Roger Ebert Movie Review

Weekend Box Office: June 13-15, 2008

The Incredible Hulk tops the box office with $55.4 million

Daily Box Office: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

The Incredible Hulk tops Wednesday's box office with $4.5 million

"Get Smart" (PG-13, 110 minutes). Steve Carell makes an ideal Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but ambitious and unreasonably self-confident agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency. Anne Hathaway is his sidekick, Dwayne Johnson is their fellow agent, Terence Stamp is the Russian villain, and Alan Arkin heads the agency. It's funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we'd expect from a new Bond movie. 3.5 stars Three and a half stars.

The Love Guru / * (PG-13)

"The Love Guru) PG-13, 87 minutes). What is it with Mike Myers and penis jokes? Having created a classic funny scene with his not-quite- visible penis sketch in the first Austin Powers movie, he now assembles, in "The Love Guru," as many more penis jokes as he can think of, none of them funny except for one based on an off-screen "thump." He supplements this subject with countless other awful moments involving defecation and the deafening passing of gas. Oh, and elephant sex. Co-starring Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake and Ben Kingsley. Rating: one star.

Mongol / ***1/2 (R)

"Mongol" (R, 126 minutes). A ferocious film, blood-soaked, pausing occasionally for passionate romance and more frequently for torture. As a visual spectacle, it is all but overwhelming, putting to shame some of the recent historical epics from Hollywood. If it has a flaw, and it does, it is expressed succinctly by the wife of its hero: "All Mongols do is kill and steal." At the end of two hours, its hero, not yet known as Genghis Khan, has two more movies to go. Awesome, if you go for nonstop carnage. Three and a half stars

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl / ***1/2 (G)

"Kit Kittredge: An American Girl" (G, ///minutes). Inspired by one of the American Girl dolls, and just about perfect for its target audience, with great look, engaging performances, real substance, and even a few whispers of political ideas, all surrounding the freshness and charm of Abigail Breslin. Director Patricia Rozema's intelligent treatment doesn't condescend, and her first-rate cast includes Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci, Max Thiriot, Chris O'Donnell, Willlow Smith, Glenne Headley, Joan Cusack and Wallace Shawn as the snarly local editor. Rating: Three and a half stars.

Sangre de Mi Sangre / *** (No MPAA rating)

"Sangre de Mi Sangre" (Unrated, 100 minutes). The grand jury prize winner at Sundance 2007, giving us wonderful actors struggling in a tangled web of writing. Two illegal immigrants, young Mexicans, meet on the truck smuggling them to New York. One steals the other's identity, and poses as the son of an old man who has never seen him, and comes to accept him as his son. Well-acted, especially by Jesus Ochoa as the old man; the two central relationships in the film are as deep as the plot is shallow. Rating: Three stars.

The Dutchess of Langeais / ***1/2 (No MPAA rating)

"The Duchess of Langeais" (138 minutes). Jacques Rivette's elegant, mannered story of a marquis (Guillaume Depardieu) obsessed with a teasing duchess (Jeanne Balibar). They never consummate their love; it consummates them. The marquis, a military hero, faces rejection night after night, while tensions coil beneath the surface. A hypnotic story of psychological captivity, set in the 1820s and based on a novel by Balzac. Rating: Three stars.

Surfwise / *** (R)

"Surfwise" (R, 93 minutes). Documentary of the Paskowitz family, "first family of surfing,"and how "Doc" Paskowitz and his wife Juliette raised eight sons and a daughter in a 24-foot camper while following a dream of healthy surfing and healthy living. Was Doc a messiah or a monster? He's 85 now, and the verdict is still mixed. Rating: Three stars.

The Incredible Hulk / **1/2 (PG-13)

"The Incredible Hulk" (PG-13, 114 minutes). Less psychology and more action than the 2003 Ang Lee version, and not to its advantage: The movie sidesteps the fictional dilemma that when Bruce Banner (Ed Norton) becomes the Hulk, he doesn't much know who he is, and thus his actions are simply anarchic. Lots and lots of CGI-generated action sequences, but a flimsy story. With Liv Tyler as Banner's love interest, William Hurt as her father the general, Tim Roth as a Hulk clone, and Tim Blake Nelson as a scientist. Directed by Louis Leterrier. Rating: Two and a half stars.

The Happening / *** (R)

"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live." -- Albert Einstein By Roger Ebert An alarming prospect, and all the more so because there has been a recent decline in the honeybee population. Perhaps it is comforting to know that Einstein never said any such thing -- less comforting, of course, for the bees. The quotation appears on a blackboard near the beginning of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening," a movie that I find oddly touching. It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man.

The Edge of Heaven / **** (No MPAA rating)

"The Edge of Heaven" (Unrated, 122 minutes). Three parents, two daughters and a son, divided between (and by) Turkey and Germany, in a wonderful, sad, touching film. An old man pays a prostitute to move in with him, her death causes his son to express repentance with her daughter, the daughter falls in love with a German girl, that girl's mother tries to act as her daughter would have wanted her to. It sounds like a "hyperlink movie" with all the strands connecting--but the characters never discover how they are connected. Writer-director Fatih Akin sees them as connected only by their common humanity. Contains a magnificent performance by the great Hanna Schygulla as the German mother. Largely in English, a common tongue of many of the characters. Rating: Four stars.

Fugitive Pieces / ***1/2 (R)

"Fugitive Pieces: (R, 108 minutes). A lovely film that glides seamlessly betwen past and present, linking a litte Polish boy who sees his family destroyed by the Nazis, with the same character (Stephen Dillane) now an adut in Toronto and obsessed with his memories. With a warm performance by Rade Sherbedgia, as a Greek who rescues him and shares his obsession with the past. But, the film argues, we must somehow seek healing or we cannot be happy. Based on the novel by Anne Michaels; written and directed by Jeremny Podeswa. Rating: Three and a half stars.

When Did You Last See Your Father? / *** (PG-13)

"When Did You Last See Your Father?" (PG-13, 92 minutes). Based on a best-selling memoir by Blake Morrison, who nursed a lifelong resentment against his father, Arthur (Jim Broadbent). Moves from the 1960s to the 1970s to 1969. The father is an outgoing philanderer, and the son hates the way his mother (Juliet Stevenson) is treated. In a way, Blake never did see his father, in a movie where the two men never talk man-to-man. There's no reconciliation or catharsis, but sometimes life happens that way. Rating: Three stars.

War, Inc. / ** (R)

"War, Inc." (R, 106 minutes). Brave and ambitious but chaotic attempt at a political satire. John Cusack stars as a hit man sent to a middle eastern country to protect the interests of an American super- corporation. Marisa Tomei is a liberal journalist, Hillary Duff is a Mideast teen idol (!), Ben Kingsley is a shadowy manipulator, Joan Cusack is a p.r. whiz, and Dan Aykroydseems uncannily like vice president Chaney. The elements are here, but the parts never come together. Still, an honorable attempt. Rating: Three stars.

Savage Grace / **1/2 (No MPAA rating)

"Savage Grace" (Unrated, 87 minutes). The sad, decadent story of Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dilane), heir to the Bakelite fortune, his wife Barbara (Julianne Moore) and their son Tony (Eddie Redmayne). They move in social circles of New York, Paris, Majorca and London from the 1940s through the 1950s, leading empty, vapid lives that sum up into overwhelming tragedy. Well directed by Tom Kalin and well acted, but living these lives must have been sad and tedious, and so is their story. Rating: Two and a half stars.

Great Movie: Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

By Roger Ebert Luchino Visconti was a man of many tempers, styles and beliefs, and you can see them all, fighting for space, on the epic canvas of his masterpiece, "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960). Visconti (1906-1976) was gay, an aristocrat, a Marxist, a director of theater and opera. He was a key influence in Italian neorealism and later abandoned it to make movies of elaborate style and fantasy. He loved the subject of decadence, and yet "Rocco" is profoundly idealistic. As an aristocrat himself, he had a love of tradition that showed in his great film "The Leopard" (1962), although that film was about the slow dying of aristocracy.

Movie Answer Man: NYC too small for Hulk, Spidey?

Q. Even though Spider-Man is Marvel's creation and property, on film Spidey belongs to Sony. But since Marvel Studios is trying to regain control of its characters (watch the post-credits scene in "Iron Man" and the last one in "Incredible Hulk") for an "Avengers" film, why would they have set the climax of "The Incredible Hulk" in New York City?