Houston Movie Reviews - Houston Movies Guide

Movie Reviews

Cowboy diplomacy from our man in Paris, John Travolta.

As personal assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to France, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) can keep himself in well-tailored suits and keep his... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: February 04, 2010

Back From the Edge?

Mel Gibson gets some kind of revenge with a semi-successful vigilante flick.

"Did you shoot my daughtah?" is the question posed, in flat-voweled Bostonian, in the trailer for Edge of Darkness. And Mel Gibson, much-bereaved... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: January 28, 2010

History Repeats

There's certainty at the end of The White Ribbon's unsolved mystery — and a sure hand behind it.

The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke's first German-language film since the original Funny Games (1997) and, addressing what used to be called "the... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: January 28, 2010

Measures of a Man

Harrison Ford is nothing if not useful.

Extraordinary Measures is a race-against-time thriller in which a desperate dad (Brendan Fraser) sacrifices everything to cure a rare disease... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: January 21, 2010

My Blue (Screen) Heaven

Thanks to the magic of 3-D CGI, Peter Jackson makes a one-dimensional Lovely Bones.

A one-film cabinet of curiosities, The Lovely Bones turns the most successful CGI director of the '00s loose on one of the decade's prime... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: January 14, 2010

Kicking Ass for Jesus

The Book of Eli's postapocalyptic theology is a little warped.

Directors Allen and Albert Hughes were raised by an Armenian mother and African-American father. With such a background, it would be difficult... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: January 14, 2010

Misery and Gin

Country music, faded stardom, liquor, and age in Crazy Heart.

Yesterday's honky-tonk hero, Bad Blake, arrives at a Clovis, New Mexico, bowling alley. It's another in a string of low-pay, low-turnout gigs... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: January 14, 2010

Revolting Youth

Cult novel must continue its search for a worthy film adaptation.

For years, Hollywood has wrestled with adapting C.D. Payne's 1993 novel Youth in Revolt — which, actually, was three novels collected under... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: January 07, 2010

No Luck Among the Irish

Amy Adams is trapped in the land of blarney, cow pies and forced humiliation.

Is this a commercial for the National Tourism Council of Ireland or for the conditioner Amy Adams uses in her hair? Either way, both look... More>>

By Brian Miller

Published: January 07, 2010

Strike a Pose

Tom Ford's A Single Man: It's better to look good than to be good.

Too much is never enough for fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford, whose debut feature flaunts its capital-A Artiness the way some... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: January 07, 2010

Director's Block

Fantasy meets harsh reality as Rob Marshall takes on a Fellini classic.

There's no city-clogging traffic jam in Nine, the musicalized version of Federico Fellini's movie-about-moviemaking urtext 8 1/2, but the result... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: December 24, 2009

Something's Gotta Give

Nancy Meyers can't keep making the same movie over and over again.

Does Nancy Meyers hate women? The thought ran through my head not very long into It's Complicated, Meyers's biennial stocking-stuffer about the... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: December 24, 2009

Blind Faith

Pedro Almodóvar still believes in Pedro Almodóvar.

"Equal parts comic melodrama and film noir, and twice as fun as it ought to be, Broken Embraces boasts more bifurcations than any two Hitchcock... More>>

By Rob Nelson

Published: December 24, 2009

Money Isn't Everything

And all that glitters — including Avatar — isn't gold.

The money is on the screen in Avatar, James Cameron's mega-3-D, mondo-CGI, more-than-a-quarter-billion-dollar baby, and, like the Hope Diamond... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: December 17, 2009

Destination Unknown

Up in the Air steers clear of the predictable route, lands the emotion.

There is something oddly familiar about Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, in which George Clooney plays a commitment-phobic business traveler with... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: December 17, 2009

Agnès from O to 80

A filmmaker's life, as a beautiful waking dream.

The cinema, social theorist and sometime filmmaker Edgar Morin argued, is the model for our "mental commerce" with the world. Even awake and in... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: December 17, 2009

All's Well That Ends Well

Not much truth, but plenty of reconciliation in Clint Eastwood's Invictus.

Aside from Morgan Freeman, who makes a fabulous Nelson Mandela, there's this to savor about Invictus, a rosy tale of racial reconciliation neatly... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: December 10, 2009

Standing O

Richard Linklater's Orson Welles puts on quite a show.

The most significant American artist before Andy Warhol to take "the media" as his medium, Orson Welles lives on not only in posthumously... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: December 10, 2009

Maniac Cop

New Orleans as breeding ground for one Bad Lieutenant.

The joke's on someone in Werner Herzog's awkwardly titled Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Possibly Abel Ferrara who, exploding in fury... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: December 10, 2009

Good Housekeeping

Tackling the thorny role of a live-in maid, Sebastián Silva's film cleans up.

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but for the title character of the pitch-black Chilean comedy The Maid, it's closer to an infernal torment.... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: December 03, 2009