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Machete
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This unholy mess replaces the artful ambition of The American with torture, blood spray, kinky sex, twisted fun and a bizarro critique of U.S. policy on illegal immigration. It's a digital gorefest that expands on the faux trailer Robert Rodriguez included in Grindhouse, the 2007 exploitation epic he unleashed with ...
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The American
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It's a tale so used, abused and broken you can hear it wheezing. George Clooney's American gunslinger and gunmaker finds himself contemplating mortality, morality and the possibility of starting over. Clint Eastwood polished this redemption theme to burnished brilliance in Unforgiven. The subject is even tackled in the video-game Western ...
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Going the Distance
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Having phone sex with Drew Barrymore, Justin Long yells, "I want to come all over you." And so it goes in Going the Distance, a sappy-sweet romcom that seems to have been invaded by a screenwriter — one Geoff LaTulippe — with delusions that he's David Mamet. Peter Travers reviews ...
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A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
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Heads up, Coen Brothers junkies: Chinese master Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, Hero) has put his own spin on the brothers' 1985 Texas film noir, Blood Simple. Set in the deserts of ancient China, the film has colors that pop like a hooker's lip gloss, ...
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The Last Exorcism
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For a movie made from spare parts — take The Exorcist and attach to The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity — The Last Exorcism delivers the heebie-jeebie goods. In mock documentary style (the film purports to be found footage), director Daniel Stamm follows the Rev. Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), ...
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Piranha 3D
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Piranha 3D ends the summer on a note of shamelessly entertaining B movie bottomfeeding. Man-eating fish, blood everywhere, full frontal nudity, girl-on-girl action, a hard R rating, tacky 3D added after the fact, actors who look like they want to kill their agents, and a chance to laugh at everything ...
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Vampires Suck
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This movie sucks more. Get more news, reviews and interviews from Peter Travers on The Travers Take.
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The Tillman Story
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This documentary succeeds triumphantly on so many levels that its full impact doesn't hit you until you have time to register its aftershocks. If the Army had its way, you would remember Cpl. Pat Tillman as an NFL star (he was a safety for the Arizona Cardinals) who died in ...
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The Switch
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It's subpar sitcom: Jennifer Aniston wants a baby. She uses a sperm donor. Jason Bateman loves her, but his passion is unrequited. So he drunkenly switches his sperm for the donor's. Seven years later, the kid (Thomas Robinson) shows up like Bateman's Mini-Me. Peter Travers reviews The Switch in his ...
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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
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Unleashed imagination is a hell of a rare thing to find at the movies this play-it-safe summer. Inception, sure, but then what? Try Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a dazzling distillation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's six-volume graphic novel. Many graybeard critics don't understand what any sentient being past the age ...
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The Expendables
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Admit it. the idea of Sylvester Stallone assembling a team of inglorious bastards to kick ass in The Expendables is a testosterone turn-on. And who gives a crap that the man who was Rocky and Rambo is now 64. Or that Arnold Schwarzenegger, coaxed out of the governor's office for ...
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Eat Pray Love
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Having not read Elizabeth Gilbert's bestseller about her yearlong journey to Italy, India and Bali to achieve balance and spiritual enlightenment, I can only speak of the torture of watching the movie. Despite the star shine of Julia Roberts as Gilbert and the presence of gifted Glee creator Ryan Murphy ...
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Animal Kingdom
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Step up for a pulverizing Aussie crime drama that cuts to the dark heart of the killing machine known as family. Jacki Weaver sets the screen ablaze as Smurf, the bottle-blond mom from hell. Smurf's three sons, Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) and Darren (Luke Ford), all do her ...
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The Other Guys
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Take a plot about two NYPD detectives who sit on the sidelines while other cops get all the shootouts and glam headlines. Kick it up a notch by casting Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as the losers who stumble into the big time. Spice with giddy action from the script ...
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Middle Men
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This one's coming in under the radar. Keep an eye out. Three guys get nutso rich by giving people what they want: something to jerk off to on the Internet. The time is 1995, and Wayne Beering (Giovanni Ribisi), an ex-veterinarian, and Buck Dolby (Gabriel Macht), a NASA technician, need ...
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Twelve
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Picture Gossip Girl with hard drugs, R-rated sex and bloody shooting massacres at parties for privileged Manhattan teens. Wait, that sounds like fun. Peter Travers picks the season's can't-miss films and the ones with a bad vibe in his summer movie preview. Joel Schumacher's Twelve, from a much better 2002 ...
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Cairo Time
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Patricia Clarkson is a consummate actress, and she crafts something artful and ardent out of this fragile romance. Clarkson's Juliette is a Canadian magazine editor – her kids have flown the nest – in Cairo for the first time to meet up with her husband, Mark (Tom McCamus). The plan ...
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Dinner for Schmucks
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When Hollywood decides to remake French farce by Francis Veber, the result can be a champagne cocktail (La Cage Aux Folles spawning The Birdcage) or pâté de merde (Les Compères degenerating into Father's Day). Dinner for Schmucks, adapted from Veber's Le Dîner De Cons, falls somewhere in the middle. What ...
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Get Low
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Robert Duvall is an indisputably great actor who approaches his iconic roles like a man with a secret. As Felix Bush, a Depression-era hermit out of the Tennessee backwoods, Duvall finds the soul of a character who has shrouded himself in mystery for four decades. That Felix waves a shotgun ...
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The Extra Man
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In this maddeningly uneven film version of Jonathan Ames' acclaimed 1998 novel, Kevin Kline gives a master class in acting. Kline plays Henry Harrison, a hard-pressed Manhattan aristocrat (his income can't finance his tastes) who gets by being an extra man, a walker who escorts rich elderly ladies on the ...
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Charlie St. Cloud
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Some bad movies should carry a leper's bell to warn off ticket buyers. Such a contagion is Charlie St. Cloud, a load of mawkish swill starring Zac Efron (bereft of the talent he showed in Me and Orson Welles). Peter Travers reviews Charlie St. Cloud in his weekly video series, ...
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Salt
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Suspend disbelief, all who enter here. Salt, starring slinky-sexy-scary Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent accused of going over to the Russians, is primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, "WTF!" Go with the illogic or you'll miss the fun. Salt has the action pow ...
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The Sorcerer's Apprentice
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Remember that scene in Disney's animated Fantasia when Mickey Mouse, as an apprentice to the sorcerer Yen Sid (that's Disney spelled backward), stole his master's hat and made brooms dance? That scene is a classic. Now producer Jerry Bruckheimer has fashioned a live-action epic around that moment with Nicolas Cage ...
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Inception
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The mind-blowing movie event of the summer arrives just in time to hold back the flow of Hollywood sputum that's been sliming the multiplex. Inception, written and directed by the visionary Christopher Nolan, will be called many things, starting with James Bond Meets "The Matrix." You can feel the vibe ...
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The Kids Are All Right
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I like how this hilarious and heartfelt movie approaches family. Director and co-writer Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon) knows how easy the ties that bind can become undone. And the hell of trying to tie new knots. Gay marriage is the subject here, but not the issue. Peter Travers ...
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2012: The end is near—again
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Dan Dick takes a look at our fascination with the end times and suggests we instead focus on the present.
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Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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Even though the secret of the skull is itself a bit of a letdown, this film has plenty of appealing surprises to compensate for its failings. If Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not a great film, it's still more than good enough.
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Movie Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian succeeds not by duplicating The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but by building on it, taking what could have just been “Battle for the Planet of Narnia” and instilling it with spiritual lessons about faith, courage and service.
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Movie Review: Iron Man
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Iron Man is a film of both fun and substance, whose imperfect hero struggles to be on the right side in a violent and complex world.
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The Visitor
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 The Visitor asks us to examine our own humanity, particularly as it relates to immigrants in post 9/11 America and to search our souls to find where compassion ends and a hard heart begins.
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Movie Review: Leatherheads
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Leatherheads provides a good natured, often hilarious look at a bygone era when pro football was more brawl than organized sport. With appealing performances by Clooney, Zellweger and Krasinski—and don’t forget those silly helmets!—Leatherheads scores.
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Movie Review: Bonneville
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Bonneville asks us to consider how we measure a life. The film shows that just like the changing leaves, the autumnal years of life can still yield deeper, richer colors ahead.
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Movie Review: Horton Hears a Who!
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Horton Hears a Who! is a great piece of entertainment—as relevant today as it was 50 years ago—filled with laughs and lessons suitable for the whole family.
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Movie Review: Penelope
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As a modern-day parable, Penelope serves as a clever and good natured reminder that it’s what’s inside a person that counts and that even a girl with the face of a pig can have the heart of a princess.
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Movie Review: The Spiderwick Chronicles
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Although The Spiderwick Chronicles isn’t the next Narnia, the movie succeeds as a delightful 98 minutes of family-friendly fantasy and is filled with stunning visuals, ample excitement and a surprising world where more exists than first meets the eye.
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