little miss sunshine

what starts off as a fun, off-kilter story about a dysfunctional family devolves into too many wacky adventures that serve to slowly push you away with its absurdity. you'll laugh but you'll also leave feeling "what was the point of this movie?" for a nuanced look at a dysfunctional family, i'd recommend "the squid and the whale," which is just as funny and far superior. don't believe the little miss sunshine hype.

pirates of the caribbean 2

swashbuckling adventure or silly romp? driven by the antics of johnny depp, pirates is now a huge blockbuster trilogy. orlando and keira are simply window dressing, taking a backseat to johnny and the cgi folk. still, pirates 2 was hardly terrible. advance reviews tried to blow it out of the water but i found it to be generally amusing and entertaining.

then again, i re-watched the first one recently afterwards and was stunned by how much better that one was. maybe the third one can reach such heights again.

the devil wears prada

aside from the constant snipes at anne hathaway's weight (she's hardly fat, even in the hollywood sense of the word), the devil wears prada doeesn't exactly go for the jugular. still, the movie is amusing enough due to meryl streep's performance; anne hathaway ably pulls off what is essentially a "princess diaries" for grown up girls.

the outfits should have been better in the movie. nothing grabbed my attention and none of the clothing on-screen was even as fashion "forward" as anything you might see on carrie in sex and the city.

cars

it's hard to make movies as inventive and entertaining as monsters inc, a bug's life, toy story, and finding nemo isn't it? the hits can't keep on coming forever right? with cars, pixar shows off their technical skills but the story (and humor) were just run of the mill. this might have been great four years ago but when the best parts of this film refer to past pixar hits, that's not exactly a good thing. mildly entertaining overall.