An adorable talking dog remained just the sort of escapist movie hero audiences wanted after a week of awful economic news. Disney's family comedy "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," with Drew Barrymore providing the voice of the pooch, was the No. 1 flick for the second-straight weekend with $17.5 million, raising its 10-day total to $52.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

"Beverly Hills Chihuahua" is the only light comedy in a market heavy on drama. Chuck Viane, Disney's head of distribution, said movie-goers may be turning to the perky pooch to help forget the market free-fall on Wall Street.

Continue reading "Top Box Office" »

Taylor Lautner's smile arrives in the hotel lobby before he does -- a huge white movie-star grin.

The 16-year-old Hudsonville native has a lot to smile about.

Monday, he'll be on TV in one of NBC's most-hyped shows of the new season, a spy drama called "My Own Worst Enemy," starring Christian Slater.

The buzz couldn't be bigger for his November movie, "Twilight," based on the phenomenally popular teen vampire books by Stephenie Meyer.

Last month, his cool quotient went up when he was a presenter at MTV's Video Music Awards, appearing with "Twilight" co-stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

As Kimberly writes on the Taylor Lautner fan Web site: "Taylor is SO SO SO SO SO HOT!"

Taylor hails from Hudsonville but moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue an acting career.

Things worked out. His big break came at age 13 when he was cast as Shark Boy in the 2005 movie "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl." Then he won a role in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," with Steve Martin and Hilary Duff.

He sat down to chat in the hotel lobby at Country Inn and Suites on 28th Street SE, where his family stayed during a recent trip to Michigan to visit family.

Continue reading "Profile: Actor, teen heartthrob Taylor Lautner is in the 'Twilight' zone" »

Have you heard of Ernie Davis? If you have, you'll love "The Express," a classical sports biopic of the Syracuse running back who in 1961 became the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy.

And if you haven't -- well, you'll love "The Express," too, if only because Davis' story is so worthy of attention and respect.

Born in 1939, Davis was reared by his grandfather in a Pennsylvania coal town until the boy moved to Elmira, N.Y., to live with his mother and stepfather. He quickly emerged as an athletic prodigy, and in 1959 he was recruited by Syracuse University, replacing Jim Brown, who was on his way to becoming a superstar Cleveland Browns running back. (He even inherited Brown's Syracuse jersey number, 44 -- but no pressure!)

Continue reading "Review: 'Express' a moving tale of football and awakening" »

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Wanna spend about half an hour watching movie trailers? Let me give you that opportunity (some of them are even pretty good!).

There are people out there that apparently get so excited about the Academy Awards that they start trying to guess the nominees in October, weeks before most of the potential award winners have even been screened. Witness this poll at the Los Angeles Times.

Continue reading "Pick the Oscar contenders -- before you see the movies?" »

The transformation of excellent literature from other parts of the world into impressive cinema continues with "Brick Lane."

Though not as compelling as Marc Forster's "The Kite Runner" or Mira Nair's "The Namesake," Sarah Gavron's condensation of Monica Ali's novel carefully respects the original in theme and spirit.

Like its predecessors, "Brick Lane" focuses on people who transport their lives from one culture to another, though always retaining memories of the beauty and the sadness of that other way.

Continue reading "Poignant 'Brick Lane' tackles cross-cultural conflict" »

At first, it sounds like they're snoring. Then, it resembles growling. Then comes the foaming, the blood-puking and the biting.

I'm not certain if the afflicted in "Quarantine" are zombies by definition, but they share many of the same traits, as listed above. The undeadish folk are isolated in an old Los Angeles apartment building, and with them, a number of uninfected innocents, one of whom, conveniently, is a veterinarian. He diagnoses the spreading plague as a particularly nasty strain of rabies, a conclusion more astute audience members already have come to, what with all the growling, foaming and biting among not just crazed humans but crazed dogs and rats as well.

Continue reading "'Quarantine' may be the best place for this film" »

I've heard many good things about "The Secret Life of Bees," the adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's best-selling novel. In fact, my esteemed colleague over at The Kalamazoo Gazette, James Sanford, saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival, and called it "a touching, often funny and wonderfully played drama that deserves to become a word-of-mouth hit."

Taking Mr. Sanford's word for it is quite often wise, thus, "Bees" will be the next topic of my movie-chat series, My 2 Cents.

Continue reading "Next My 2 Cents: 'The Secret Life of Bees'" »

Download this week's movie podcast, subscribe via iTunes or listen here:

Body of Lies

Movies about the war on terror haven't done well at the box office, but none of them have had names like Ridley Scott, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe attached. DiCaprio plays a CIA agent hunting terrorists in the Middle East while Crowe is a chubby bureaucrat barking orders from the comfort of his own home.

The movie sidesteps political opinion on the war, focusing instead on high-tech surveillance, explosions, and people getting shot, and Scott makes all this look as awesome as you might expect.

Continue reading "New Movies Podcast: 'Body of Lies,' 'The Duchess' and 'City of Ember'" »

Widowed college professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) seems to lead a quiet life that's as uneventful and predictable as one of the economics classes he's been teaching for decades -- that is, until he stops in at the New York City apartment he hasn't visited in a while and meets a couple of tenants who weren't supposed to be there. That might seem like the set-up for a horror movie, but writer-director Tom McCarthy's THE VISITOR generates shocks of a different kind. It's a beautifully written story about overcoming fears instead of being paralyzed by them. McCarthy holds up Walter's personal journey against the backdrop of post-9/11 America, in which "stranger" is too easily rhymed with "danger." Continue reading "Now on DVD: "The Visitor" is one of the year's best films" »

"Love" is a special one-night-only presentation of Cirque du Soleil artists interpreting the work of the Beatles, filmed at The Mirage in Las Vegas. It will show at 5:30 and 8 p.m. Oct. 20 at Celebration Cinema North, 2121 Celebration Drive NE, and Celebration Cinema South, 1506 Eastport Drive SE. Tickets are $8, available at respective box offices, call 530-7469.

Continue reading "Film Notes: Beatles meet Cirque du Soleil" »