The Bounty Hunter
Jennifer Aniston is bounty hunter Gerard Butler's ex-wife, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- he's been hired to catch her. Let the fun -- not commence. Our very, very unimpressed critic said, "A romantic comedy is built from the relationship of its leads, and all The Bounty Hunter has to work with are blank stares."
Chloe
Sweet Hereafter director Atom Egoyan's latest tale of sexual mores and oddities stars Julianne Moore as an insecure wife who's so convinced that her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair that she hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him, as a test, only to become enamored of Chloe herself. We thought that it ended as a letdown but that the film's "Hitchcockian overtones and apt pacing mark a welcome return to form for Egoyan."
Greenberg
In this urbane drama from Margot at the Wedding filmmaker Noah Baumbach, Ben Stiller plays a surly misanthrope house-sitting for his much more successful brother in Los Angeles, when he enters into a curious relationship with his brother's young nanny. We thought this off-key story to be "perceptive and very beautiful."
Formosa Betrayed
Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek resurfaces to star as an FBI agent who gets in way over his head in this politically tinged Taiwan-set suspense thriller that we found "directed with skill and precision."
8: The Mormon Proposition
When California passed Proposition 8 to keep same-sex couples from getting married, the fact that the Mormon church was one of the proposition's biggest supporters riled many people, including the makers of this incensed documentary. While we appreciated the film's subject matter, some "overwrought and saccharine" passages undermined an "otherwise strongly worded piece of issue cinema."
Saint John of Las Vegas
The ever-reliable Steve Buscemi plays a gambling junkie on a road trip to (where else?) Las Vegas in this low-budget drama. Our critic thought the cast was one of the film's strongest points (Buscemi, Sarah Silverman, Peter Dinklage, among others) but disliked the "paper-thin story" that was only "good for a quick laugh."
Our Family Wedding
Everything you need to know about this new wedding comedy (starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, and Carlos Mencia) is summed up by our critic, who asked, first, whether the film was made because somebody lost a bet, and then noted, "Never have 100 supposedly laugh-filled minutes felt more like a death in the family instead of a marriage."
