Breakin’ All the Rules
PG-13
Director: Daniel Taplitz
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Morris Chestnut, Gabrielle Union, Peter
MacNicol
Breakin’ All the Rules
PG-13
Director: Daniel Taplitz
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Morris Chestnut, Gabrielle Union, Peter MacNicol
Jamie Foxx stars as a man dumped by his fiancée who writes a bestselling “how-to” book about breaking up that messes up all his friends’ love lives in this comedy.
– reprinted with permission from The Good Times
Laws of Attraction
PG-13
2 Stars
Director: Peter Howitt
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore
Laws of Attraction is a romantic comedy that settles for dreamy settings and a few good one-liners, as opposed to actual chemistry or consistent humor. Brosnan and Moore play the star-crossed-lovers, two divorce lawyers who find themselves being drawn together even as they fight dirty to save their warring clients’ assets. Brosnan is charmingly disheveled and Moore gets her uptight role down pat, but they can’t overcome a script that repeatedly puts them in the same exact scenarios. More interesting by far are their supporting characters: Frances Fisher is perfect as Moore’s surgically-enhanced high society mother, and Parker Posey and Michael Sheen make the most of their roles as a terrifically unstable celebrity couple in the midst of divorce.
Man on Fire
R
3 Stars
Director: Tony Scott
Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning
Washington is always at his most compelling playing a man on a mission, and he doesn’t disappoint in Man on Fire, the story of a hardened bodyguard (Washington) who learns to live again thanks to his precocious 10-year-old charge (Fanning). When she’s kidnapped, he goes on a brutal hunt for the men who grabbed her. Washington and Fanning start out playing characters so archetypal it’s hard to empathize with them. But with Fanning’s heartbreaking kidnapping scene, they start to come to life – albeit never as fully developed as they should be. Director Scott’s shaky-cam and other stylized techniques are sometimes jarring, but mostly contribute to a feeling of uneasiness that’s a good match for the thriller.
Mean Girls
PG-13
3 Stars
Director: Mark Waters
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey
Teen queen Lindsay Lohan plays a home-schooled teen who finally enters public school and gets a crash course in how to maneuver through high school’s treacherous waters. A funny and sometimes poignant discussion of how women treat each nother, wrapped sneakily inside a teen comedy, Mean Girls is a lot deeper than it seems on paper. Lohan transitions from wide-eyed innocent to sneaky backstabber with scary believability. Her other teen cohorts don’t have as much range, but they handle their one-note roles with humor and honesty. The film’s ending is on the saccharine side, but the rest of Mean Girls so well-captures the horrors of the high school experience you’ll be willing to forgive it’s makers for a little optimism.
