Movie Reviews

This time, “Harold & Kumar” seek freedom, not burgers

CRAIG OUTHIER

If you loved the reefer-fueled hijinks of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” (2004), are you preordained to laugh yourself stupid when the duo goes waaaay down south in "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay".

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“Baby Mama” is not “Knocked Up”

CRAIG OUTHIER

As Kate Holbrook, the unfashionably infertile heroine of "Baby Mama," Tina Fey embodies the reproductive flip-side of "Juno," "Knocked Up," "Waitress," et al.

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“Deception” is cold and emotionally vacant

CRAIG OUTHIER

Beware, filmmaker, the dread "erotic thriller." It has stunted greatness.

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Soft drumbeat of advocacy

CRAIG OUTHIER

Like a shrewd salesman who keeps his suitcase to the side, Thomas McCarthy's “The Visitor” doesn't immediately announce itself as a movie about immigration policy.

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“21” needs to know when to hold 'em

CRAIG OUTHIER

Far less fascinating as an over-packaged, over-plotted thriller than it was as a nonfiction book, 21 is the sort of movie that inspires the question, "Why didn't they just make it into a documentary?" Certainly, the story of six MIT blackjack geeks who fleece Las Vegas would have been more informative and credible that way.

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“Stop-Loss”: A meandering and uncertain drama

CRAIG OUTHIER

As a battle-tested Iraq war hero who cuts and runs when Uncle Sam invites him back for more, Ryan Phillippe embodies the progressive protest-politics of Kimberly Peirce's Stop Loss.

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“The Hammer” hits the comedy nail on the head

CRAIG OUTHIER

Adam Carolla has always been a bob-and-weave kind of comic – whining about this, riffing on that, finding humor in the details.

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“Under the Same Moon” sweet but forgettable

CRAIG OUTHIER

Under the Same Moon is a sweet but forgettable togetherness yarn, poised ever-so-lightly on the knife edge of America's immigration debate.

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“Drillbit Taylor” isn't as sharp-witted as predecessors

CRAIG OUTHIER

From the “Weird Science” tradition of geek-outsourcing comes “Drillbit Taylor,” the latest – and, arguably, least funny – of the extended family of Judd Apatow-produced comedies.

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“Funny Games”: The feel-bad movie of the year

By CRAIG OUTHIER

One could call Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" the "feel-bad movie of the year" and not be incorrect – to be sure, Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his 1997 German-language thriller, about a family terrorized in their vacation home by a pair of ever-so-polite killers, is a powerful downer.

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