“Hitler’s a joke,” Viggo Mortensen tells a friend in the new film, “Good.” “He won’t last.”

Gee – didn’t they say that about George W. Bush?

I’ve been wracking my brain for the right quote or analogy to capture the gradual encroachment and irresistible rise of evil which the Nazis represented – but all I could come up with was the one about the frog in the pan of water that’s gradually heated to boiling. But why bother when it’s so casually captured in this adaptation of C.P. Taylor’s play of the same name? (More…)

The season is so packed with movies that deal in one way or another with Nazis and the Holocaust that it’s nice to find one where tough Jews stand up for themselves and fight back.

Edward Zwick’s “Defiance” chronicles the true story of the Bielski brothers, who fled the Nazi massacre in their village in 1941 and hid in the woods in what is now Belarus. Eventually, they collected an entire community of Jews, who hid, raided villages for food and guns and created a resistance force of their own.

Though the film suffers from the same problem as Zwick’s “Blood Diamond” – an propensity for large-scale action scenes – “Defiance” has a cohesive, gripping story to tell. And it raises more questions that aren’t easy to answer, which is a good thing.

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“If being crazy means living life as if it matters, I don’t care if they think we’re completely insane.”

So says April Wheeler, as played by Kate Winslet in Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road,” the devastating film adaptation of Richard Yates’ 1961 novel. She’s talking to her husband, Frank, played by Leonardo DiCaprio – but he’s not really listening.

The film is directed by Sam Mendes, who also looked at the dark side of suburban life in the Oscar-winning “American Beuaty.” It reunites Winslet and DiCaprio for the first time since “Titanic,” playing a decidedly less starry-eyed couple. (More…)

I walked into “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” a skeptic.

I walked out a believer.

While I make a point of reading as little as possible about a movie before I see it (except for possibly reading the novel on which it is based, which I didn’t do in this case), what I had absorbed about “Benjamin Button” was not encouraging. That’s because the comparisons I saw inevitably referenced “Forrest Gump,” which ranks in the top 5 of least-deserving best-picture Oscar-winners of all time.

So the good news is that, aside from offering seamless visual effects, David Fincher’s new film is nothing like “Forrest Gump.” It is at once enchanting and emotional, sweeping and intimate. It never hammers its gimmick but utilizes it to give depth to the feelings it evokes, as it weaves its magic across the decades. (More…)

Maybe you have to be a fan of “The Spirit” as a comic strip to enjoy it as a movie. Which would seem to limit its appeal severely, given that it was a cult item in printed form – and essentially ended in the early 1950s.

To me, the Will Eisner series was neither fish nor fowl – not exciting enough to compare to, say, “Batman” comics. But neither was it funny enough to hold a candle to Mad magazine – Mad classic, that is, back in the day – which Eisner’s work helped inspire.

Still, based on Frank Miller’s work with Robert Rodriguez on “Sin City” and the look of the “Spirit” trailer, this film seemed to promise something special. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

The action is listlessly cartoony, the humor even limper. The comparison here isn’t to “Sin City” – it’s to the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” movie (the one that serves as a permanent stain on Robert De Niro’s filmography). This movie does indeed have a dated 1950s’ Mad sensibility, just not its wit. If someone had used the word “fershlugginer,” it would have been complete. (More…)

Of all the comedians to emerge from “Saturday Night Live,” the one whose continued popularity most consistently baffles me is Adam Sandler. Even Rob Schneider is funnier, at least to me.

Still, I’ve laughed at the occasional Sandler film – “Big Daddy,” “Happy Gilmore” – and will even give credit where due: that Sandler showed more acting chops than I expected in films like “Punch Drunk Love,” “Spanglish” and “Reign Over Me.”

But the Adam Sandler in “Bedtime Stories” is the Sandler I hate most: both infantile and juvenile (a deadly combination), irritating to the point of fingernails on a chalkboard. This is a movie for 7-year-olds – and not particularly discriminating 7-year-olds, at that. (More…)

The tension is palable during “Valkyrie” – and I’m not talking about the movie itself.

Most of the speculation is about whether Tom Cruise’s career can be pulled out of the nosedive it’s been in for a couple of years. Knives are sharpened for this one, particularly after it was bumped from summer to Christmas (a postponed release date is never a good sign).

But “Valkyrie” is not bad. Indeed, I’d even up that grade to “pretty good.” If I was awarding star ratings here, I’d give it three. (More…)

It makes me feel old to think that it’s been 41 years since Dustin Hoffman exploded on to the scene in “The Graduate.”

Intriguingly, in the subsequent films that form the outline of his career, there are very few movies that could be called romantic comedies, where he pursues and wins the girl.

So “Last Chance Harvey” leaps to the top of a very small pile. It’s a deft mid-to-late-life romance about two people fearing – then seizing – a late-breaking opportunity for an unlikely relationship. (More…)

Perhaps you need to be a dog person to overlook the shortcomings of “Marley & Me.”

I am – and so I almost can.

Certainly, I’ll cop to squirting out tears at the end – but then, I cry at virtually the mention of “Ol’ Yeller.” Same ending (sort of) – same response.

Should I have put a spoiler alert there? Perhaps – but, again, if you’re a dog person, you’ve probably read John Grogan’s book, on which this movie is based so you know how it ends. Certainly, you already know how “Ol’ Yeller” ends. And if you’re not a dog person, well, you’re probably too young to know who Ol’ Yeller is.

Let’s just say that it doesn’t take a genius to know how this movie ends – dogwise – whether you’ve read John Grogan’s memoir or not. (More…)

“The Tale of Despereaux” has a classic fairy-tale structure and stunning animation. But it’s missing two big components: excitement and humor.

A friend told me her young nephew enjoyed the film exactly because it wasn’t smart-alecky. But a movie doesn’t have to be snarky to be funny. While “The Tale of Despereaux” has its moments of visual wonder, it is distinctly short of laughs, smart-aleck or otherwise. (More…)