Mark Palermo

Scale and spectacle are the two words most apt in describing the new King Kong. Peter Jackson’s three-hour remake is nothing if not big. It’s an impressive feat and — with generous frequency — a thrilling one. Yet it’s also this reach for monumental status that keeps it from greatness. Were the movie an hour […]

The best moments of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe come early. But even once they’ve passed, this adaptation of CS Lewis’s children’s classic has a surprisingly humble charm. When Lucy (Georgie Henley), the youngest of four children evacuated from home during a WWII air raid, discovers a land inside […]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire isn’t notably worse than its predecessors. It’s just harder to put up with at this point. Director Mike Newell keeps up the vendor’s manifesto adhered to by Chris Columbus and Alfonso Cuaron: “Give JK Rowling’s readers what they want. Make sure […]

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ combines two movements of hip-hop movies: The gangsta rap manifest ghetto films of the early ’90s (Boyz N the Hood, Juice, Menace II Society) and this decade’s tales of careerism (8 Mile, Hustle & Flow). Its message — crime doesn’t pay — is, like much of the film, too familiar. […]

The Weather Man finds director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) in Alexander Payne (Sideways) mode. Verbinski’s lack of distinct style makes such excursions possible, and this one mostly works. He’s better at being Payne than Steven Spielberg. Pitched between empathy and fatalism, the title character is minor Chicago celebrity David Spritz (Nicolas Cage), who’s […]

Cameron Crowe leaves no doubt that Elizabethtown is a personal film. The protagonist, like his leads in Say Anything… and Almost Famous, is a stand-in for the director — utterly without vice. His name is Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom). He’s a shoe designer who loses his job shortly before learning his father has died. On […]

Tony Scott’s Domino takes the high contrast visuals, flashy edits, mobile subtitles and seasick camera work of his Man on Fire to the next extreme. It’s a mainstream movie stylized to the point where it’s no longer mainstream. That’s part of its non-conformist kick. The sort of true story of bounty hunter Domino Harvey (Keira […]

Serenity risks being slighted as a big-screen TV episode. It’s a continuation of 2002 space-western series Firefly, which was shelved early in its run by the Fox network. Firefly gained a cult following on DVD, and the film attempts to give those fans some closure. Serenity is consistent with the series tone, but it’s a […]

Necrophilia is the unspoken threat in Just Like Heaven and Corpse Bride. Both are highly accessible. But where Just Like Heaven is soap opera treacle, only the Tim Burton film has the courage to address the lure of dead things as a rejection of established civility. Yeah, Burton went there already with Winona Ryder’s Lydia […]

The fight between religion and science in The Exorcism of Emily Rose is mirrored in the movie’s own struggle for respectability. Not content to be “just” a horror movie, the “Based on a True Story” credit is an attempt to legitimize it with a seriousness it doesn’t contain. The effect of applying horror tropes to […]