Mark Palermo

By almost any standard, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is a slicker, more professional contraption than its megahit predecessor The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The effects are more polished, the battles more grand, there’s more camera movement. All it’s missing is charm. The lack of fantasy-movie bombast was precisely what gave the […]

Morgan Spurlock was the most successful filmmaker to piggyback on Michael Moore’s brand of celebrity documentary-making. By starring in Super Size Me, he made himself famous while shocking America by revealing that junk food is unhealthy. Returning to centre-stage in Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?—the opening credits even feature a video game […]

The comedy What Happens in Vegas upholds a hedonistic view and then adds that happiness can be bought. Of course, it’s good to be happy. Yet “feel-good” movies that promote ignorant self-absorption are meant to appease the socially empowered. But how much can even the most carefree person feel invested in Cameron Diaz and Ashton […]

The kaleidoscopic acid-colour explosion of Speed Racer brings the thrill of spectacle back to action scenes. By diverging from standard action greys and blues, it makes physics and motion goofier and more vibrant. The Wachowski brothers turn the races into three-dimensional roller coaster courses of neon cars against starry night skies. These big visions of […]

The spin Iron Man puts on the usual becoming-a-superhero story is key to its appeal. Tony Stark isn’t another of those teenagers who learns he can scale tall buildings. He’s a billionaire middle-aged playboy living with an arrogance that Bruce Wayne has always been too broody and reclusive to indulge. Played by Robert Downey Jr., […]

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bayis the best comedy in theatres right now. It has the most wit and, in its East Indian and Korean title characters (Kal Penn and Jon Cho), the most endearing protagonists. The writers of 2004’s Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, take on […]

There are relatively few close-ups of babies reacting to things in Big Mama. But it’s also a missed opportunity: Stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler aren’t provided with a good-enough showcase to jumpstart the under-represented category of the female buddy comedy. That’s not for lack of trying on their part. The script, by Michael McCullers, […]

That’s also Michael Angarano in Snow Angels, playing a bright-eyed teen among small-town people making small-town mistakes. That’s Halifax playing the town. That’s my high school library and auditorium. And if you play it in slo-mo around minute 40, that’s me. Writer and director David Gordon Green has a sense for which haunts of this […]

Forgetting Sarah Marshall isn’t very funny, which could be OK except it’s not interesting. Judd Apatow combines his usual sitcom plots and ideology with moments of fake radicalism. It gives into the most over-indulgent weakness of the slightly wittier Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Stretched across two hours, it has no rhythm. Cameos by […]

The misleading advertising sells Jet Li and Jackie Chan headlining a movie together at last. This is an easier pitch than admitting the main star is the lesser-known Michael Angarano, playing Jason, an American teenager whisked into ancient China where he’s mentored by Li and Chan. But confronting it openly reveals its charm. The Forbidden […]

Hockey masks, glove knives and fisherman uniforms have been slasher get-ups already. There seemed like nowhere left to go, until some genius decided the killer in Prom Night could wear a black ball-cap. This is a name-only remake of the 1980 Canuck slasher, but that’s not to imply there’s any fresh life in this. There […]

The Rolling Stones, the rock ’n’ roll institution, are the subject of Shine A Light. Depending on your point of view, this is either the strength or weakness of Martin Scorsese’s concert documentary—shot over two performances at New York’s Beacon Theater. No other band has as many significant documentaries to their name, but Shine A […]