Joel and Ethan Coen's "A Serious Man" is a dark, nasty tale about a man looking for meaning and purpose in his life. Read more »

Oren Peli wrote and directed "Paranormal Activity" but you wouldn't know that from watching the film. The beginning is simply a "Thanks" to the families of the characters in the film for allowing Paramount Pictures to use the following footage - which gives you some sense these characters aren't going to bode well for the duration of the flick. Read more »

Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" is a beautifully inventive film about the wonders and the pitfalls of a child's imagination. It is by no means perfect or smooth, as nothing gestating from a ten-year-old's mind would be. The benefit of this adaptation from the classic Maurice Sednak's book is that the stories and images are filtered through the visual styling of the fantastic Jonze, who made his reputation as one of the great music video/commercial directors ever. (The anecdotal evidence I would offer is his Nike ad from 1999 that perfectly captures the apocalyptic dread of Y2K, the positive aspects of New Year's resolutions, and the product itself in a span of 59 seconds.) The sparse text of the story has also benefited from a screenplay co-written by novelist Dave Eggers who finds a way to make the mind of a young boy vividly alive and believable. Read more »

Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" is an ambitious mess of a movie: Part filmmaker autobiography, part historical lesson, part exploitative emotional narrative. All of this focused around the American economic system. It is perhaps the most sweeping topic Moore has ever covered. In turn, "Capitalism" is also one of his ill-focused works; a film that does not find its emotional or intellectual thrust until the last third of its two hours and twenty minutes of run time. Read more »

Reuben Fleisher's "Zombieland" has a clever concept at its core that does not crib as much from Edgar Wright's classic comedy "Shaun of the Dead" as I had expected: This film examines the benefits of a zombie invasion. There's lots of great parking, no lines at amusement parks, and the violence against zombies act as a great stress reliever. These segments of "Zombieland" have a gleeful zeal. However, Mr. Fleisher has never directed a film before so he leans heavily on bathroom humor and has a real problem with consistency. As fun as it is, "Zombieland" could have been a little tighter. For a film that only 82 minutes long, that's almost a fatal flaw. Read more »

Robert D. Siegel's "Big Fan" follows Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt) as he contemplates whether he should put his own interests over the interests of his beloved New York Giants. In the process, he goes from being a psycho sports fan to just being a psycho. Siegal's theory is that the only thing distinguishing the two state of minds is one word. While there has been plenty of celluloid spooled out on the deranged loner, "Big Fan" is a very specific, tightly wound examination with a surprisingly good, central performance by Oswalt. Read more »