Mark Palermo

The bright, young cast of High School Musical 3: Senior Year earns the hugely popular kid franchise whatever sunny vapidity Frankie and Annette brought to the Beach Party movies. Like the first two Disney Channel productions, the theatrical part three could use some melodrama to liven things. Sure, High School Musical 3 is better than […]

The problem with Kevin Smith’s movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno is that it only aspires to be a Kevin Smith movie. It’s funny and sweet-natured. But this is a comedy about a group of regular friends who start making porn. There’s so much promise there, and Smith’s creative stagnation (no new card tricks […]

George W. Bush Jr. grows up knowing the saying that power equals respect. He gets his power, and that’s the reason Oliver Stone’s W. is a tragedy. Bush is mainly concerned with how he can assert himself. Driven by his father’s expectations, the world turns against him. By affording Bush these attributes, Stone doesn’t take […]

If the title Passchendaele were spelled Passion Dale, it would still fit. Paul Gross’s prestigious directorial effort isn’t much as a historical film, but it makes an adequate soap opera. It isn’t until the movie’s last third that the battle of Passchendaele (a 1917 linchpin of Canadian valour and sacrifice) is fought. Until that point, […]

An era’s teen movies are often a reflection of when their makers grew up. The late-’90s saturation of Sex Drive plays obvious by copying the “parents walking in on a child in a sexually vulnerable state” scene that opens American Pie (already spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie.) When writers Sean Anders and John Morris […]

The lure of intelligent and exciting kids’ fantasy isn’t met in City of Ember. The latest from Walden Media, who specialize in adaptations of children’s books, misses the experience of growing up that elevates their best movies (Because of Winn Dixie, Bridge to Terabithia, the first hour of the first Narnia.) Based on Jeanne Duprau’s […]

Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a CIA field operative in the Middle East. He comes face-to-face with the politics and emotions his superiors—armchair warriors who can order a kill without feeling—don’t have to think about. Roger’s boss Ed Hoffmann (Russell Crowe) is able to multitask taking care of his kids while making illicit commands over […]

Bill Maher begins Religulous by saying he’s intent on finding out why some otherwise smart people are religious. Then he spends most of the movie talking to people who can barely articulate a thought. The mission statement was more interesting. But what ends up saving Religulous happens unknowingly of Maher and director Larry Charles’ often […]

The blind protesting Blindness, on the stated basis that it treats them as helpless, has been mocked aplenty. So let me make the movie’s offence more explicit: It’s so patronizing, and convinced of its artistic importance, it achieves the opposite of its humanistic aims. A sudden, unexplained epidemic of blindness isn’t considered with sadness or […]

Patriotism in movies isn’t a problem. It’s when it’s an out-of-nowhere and unjustified way to resolve action movies like Eagle Eye that it isolates other cultures. Until the point when a school band plays the national anthem and everything’s OK again, D.J. Caruso’s caper is serviceable entertainment. It’s a mostly cynical take on American security […]

Ghost TownThere’s so much unassuming likeability to Ghost Town, I can understand the temptation to believe it works better than it does. The new feature, directed by prolific screenwriter David Koepp, is about the transformation of a grinch. Dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) isn’t good at hiding his contempt for the ordinary people around him. […]