Rating:
Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Said Taghmaoui, Jeff Daniels

Don Cheadle is a hell of an actor, and it’s always a good thing when he gets something of substance, like a Hotel Rwanda, that’s worthy of his talent. In Traitor, he makes a strong performance from potentially difficult material, and is the key reason this introspective thriller about Islamic terrorism is worth your ten dollars.

Rating:
Director: Ben Stiller
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson

Tropic Thunder is good. It’s worth seeing and, given the action spectacle on top of the comedy, it’s worth seeing on the big screen.

The film is very funny, but cowriter/director/star Ben Stiller forgets sometimes that not everyone in the world is so wired into the important goings-on in Hollywood that all his parodic swipes at the freaky fishbowl he lives in are going to work.

But occasionally I forget that whole swaths of the population subscribe—not just read, but freakin’ subscribe to Us Weekly and People, and watch “E!” What is “E!” anyway? Is it a syndicated show or some entire network wedged somewhere high up the cable channel list? Seriously, I don’t know this. So maybe I shouldn’t be telling Ben Stiller he’s out of touch, y’know?

Rating:
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Yes, Heath Ledger really is amazing as the Joker. And good lord, does Christopher Nolan deliver a film worthy of the performance. From the start, The Dark Knight is as intense as a war zone, and while it has more noticeable imperfections than Iron Man and less charm and vision than Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight has brains and ambition and yes indeed, a hell of an effects budget. The action is spectacular, if sometimes confusing, and the film looks magnificent, especially in IMAX.

Rating:
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones

In the summer of intense comic-book violence (see Wanted and The Incredible Hulk. Or don’t.), writer-director Guillermo Del Toro certainly holds up his end. The first half of Hellboy II: The Golden Army moves like you’ve accidentally sat on the fast forward button. Mystery, horror, whimsy, action, character moments all come at triple speed, almost always in imaginative settings with a dozen things going on in the background, and it’s to the film’s detriment that the audience rarely has enough time to actually process and enjoy any given scene. If we refer to key story moments as “beats,” then the first hour or so of this movie is a relentless drumroll. The result is that the audience has a harder time connecting to the story and the characters. It’s like we’re watching scenery whip past from the sterile interior of a bullet train, when what we want is to be out there walking with the characters, breathing the same air.

Still, even at high speed, the scenery is amazing. Del Toro creates an unforgettably gruesome twist on the Tooth Fairy in a demon-infested auction house, choreographing his fight scene with inventive brilliance that is just shy of too violent and too intense. The second Hellboy movie, much moreso than the first, is clearly from the same mind that created the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth. Hellboy II is Pan’s Labyrinth on a case and a half of Red Bull.

Rating:
Director: Alex Gibney
Starring: Hunter S. Thompson, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Tom Wolfe, Johnny Depp

A documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most original, entertaining writers and personalities in living memory, is going to be a hoot. I mean, if you can’t make an engaging film about this guy, you have no business in show business. So it’s a given that there will be laughs and outrage and interest in Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Question is, will it live up to its subject or simply be an interesting clip show?