In spite of what seems to be an ever-growing backlash, I’m a perennial sucker for movies made by the Judd Apatow mafia. Every one of their films looks like they all called each other up and asked “Hey, I’ve got an idea for a movie. You wanna goof off with the boys for a month and get paid for it?” It’s almost like watching a couple swing dance; it looks like the most fun thing people could to together, and I just wish I could do it that well myself. With the accidental blockbuster success of last year’s Superbad, our friends at Sony Pictures and Apatow Productions try their hand at a real action blockbuster with this summer’s Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express is the boys’ first foray into genre films, rather than their standard “a bunch of guys standing around talking shit,” format. It is the story of Dale Denton (Rogen), mild mannered process server and stoner extraordinaire. When he’s not tricking people into accepting their subpoenas, he’s getting high and listening to talk radio in his car. After a visit to his drug dealer Saul (Franco), and equiped with the rarest, most exclusive weed in the state, Dale decides to smoke a joint in his car outside the home of his next subpoenaed target. While doing so, he witnesses a murder, is seen by the bad guys, and goes to Saul’s for help. When they realize that they might have been followed, and how serious the danger they’re in is, thus begins an absurd game of cat and mouse. That is, if the mice were high, and the cats were idiots.

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What would you do if you had the ability to freeze the world and all the people in it? Rifle through friends’ medicine cabinets without fear of being caught, compose witty comebacks to any slight, catch up on sleep and still make it to work on time? The new independent film Suspension — showing Sunday, June 1 at the University of Southern California — asks this question and suggests it’s the sort of power that could absolutely unmoor an individual, especially one a bit off balance to begin with.

In the wake of a car accident that kills Daniel’s (Scott Cordes) wife and son, Daniel rebuilds his son’s camcorder and discovers that pushing the pause button literally stops time. While the rest of the world is on hold, only he stays in motion. Having had a few brief encounters with Sarah (Annie Tedesco), the widow of the other driver involved in the accident, Daniel becomes fixated on using his power to help her.

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Evil tyrants, Exotic lands, danger and mystery around every corner, it’s Indiana Jones right? Nope, it’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Price Caspian. And from what I’ve just seen, even though Indy will rule the Box office next week, it won’t be a landslide victory.

For those of you not familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia, thank goodness for Google. Because there simply isn’t enough time to go into all the details, characters and backstory of the first film, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. If you want to do some quick homework I’ll wait……………. all caught up? Or if you’re lazy, here’s a clip.

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I cannot say enough good things about Son of Rambow and it’s Director Garth Jennings. It’s a pleasure to watch from start to end. Everything about it just works and for some reason I can’t quite explain why. It feels as if the filmmakers, the actors and everyone involved put so much heart into it that you can feel it as a viewer. It’s incredibly funny and yet full of purpose.

From first glance this film is a bit tough to categorize, but after seeing it I think I know why. There is no category for it. Any age group, any gender, anybody can really enjoy the film. The film is by no means dark, but by no means light. It simply is an honest and yet imaginary depictions of two kids making a movie. It is at all times walking many fine lines and doing it well.

Normally in a film like this you can smell the plot from a mile away. Although looking back this story did follow the usual arch I never felt the desire to try to jump ahead or figure anything out. The entire movie had so much to enjoy, that I was truly dedicated to each moment.

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The world according to David Mamet is a con game, full of hustlers and their rubes-in-waiting. It’s a tenet that has informed his best work, and casts the bitterly uplifting Redbelt as a promising departure from the canon. Is it performance-driven action, or an action-fueled drama? For the most part, it succeeds as both.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is Mike Terry, a virtuous Jujitsu instructor who’s charitably running his West LA academy into debt. When a freak accident with a fragile stranger (Emily Mortimer) destroys his storefront window, Mike plunges into bankruptcy. His humiliating search for a loan becomes a maddening cycle of betrayal and misfortune.

As a visual stylist, Mamet is finally impressing. In the age of Bourne, he’s a little outclassed, but the explosions of violence are confidently authentic. They’re more about tension than thrills, a constant challenge to Mike’s training mantra “there’s always an escape.” When money’s involved, the escape is rarely a peaceful one.

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The Hoax is a strange little movie that made very little impact when it came out in April last year. Telling the true story of Clifford Irving (Richard Gere), The Hoax details how Irving convinced editors at McGraw Hill that he was writing the authorized biography of reclusive businessman Howard Hughes. The ruse works because Hughes, as detailed in the much less enjoyable The Aviator, had become reclusive by the end of his life, and hadn’t spoken to the press in years.

The plot summary of The Hoax sounds a bit dry, and I think that’s why very few people saw it and talked about it. After all, how much fun can a movie be about a fake book? One can imagine the type of publicity the film would have received had it been made shortly after Irving’s actual ruse, which at the time was a tremendous public event; years later, Irving’s hoax is just one of the many Stephen Glasses of the world.

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As this week sees the birthday (3rd or 8th March depending on who you trust) of Jan Potocki, it seems as good excuse as any to recommend one of my very favorite films, The Saragossa Manuscript. Potocki was a Polish count (1761-1815), ethnologist and occultist, most famous today for the novel he wrote in French over the last twenty-odd years of his life, Un Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse. It is a collection of 66 tales embedded in one another in the fashion of the Thousand and One Nights, in the form purportedly of a manuscript found by a French soldier during the storming of Saragossa, written by a Walloon officer (who turns out to be the Frenchman’s grandfather) about his adventures traveling through Spain’s Sierra Morena mountains, wherein he encounters magical Muslim princesses, gypsies, the inquisition, a cabbalist and the wandering Jew amongst others.

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There are remakes that are done for the right reason - that truly bring something new and different - a new perspective or a new twist - to the table that is cinema. Nim’s Island does none of these things. But the real tragedy is that it’s not even a remake.

Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin) is an 11 year old girl who lives on a remote island with her scientist/widower father, Jack (Gerard Butler). One suspiciously sunny day, Jack is scheduled to go on a sea expedition and Nim refuses to go along, insisting she stay alone on the island and help hatch the sea turtle’s eggs. With an ominous “See you in two days,” Jack sets out to sea. The first night Jack is gone, a storm hits! Deceptively plucky Nim survives it just fine, but Jack is not so lucky and gets stranded at sea. Nim’s only hope for survival (not to mention to save her island from rowdy, drunken, uncouth and overweight Americ…I mean, Australian tourists) is Nim’s favorite adventurer on paper, one Alex Rover. But Nim doesn’t know that the rugged and courageous Alex is actually a creation of obsessive compulsive San Fransican Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster) who has been emailing Jack for help with her latest book. Despite her fears, neuroses and tightly wound urbanity, Alexandra decides to track down Nim and help her. What follows (and, to be fair, what precedes) is a jumbled, predictable, uneven, hypersentimental mess that leaves a smudge across Jodie Foster’s Oscars more noticeable than her impossibly toned legs.

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Stop Loss is a film required viewing for anyone with a heart-beat. Its emotional drive keeps your pulse racing. You could go watch a flick about a bank robbery or a border crossing…but, hey, that’s been done before.

Though highly entertaining, the story carries us far beyond mere cinematic amusement, its characters deal with high stakes of country and duty, life and death, family and identity, love and self. Its narrative handles the complexity of how red-blooded Americans are coping with the war in Iraq. The otherwise uninvolved civilian audience, we step quickly inside the lives of patriotic soldiers who care about their country and learn the hard way that good intentions and innocence hardly suffice as a compass through the big world. It helps us all to take a look at who we are as Americans regardless if we’re in or out of small-town USA, liberal or conservative.

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It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised when you go to the movies. Especially if you’re a film critic who thinks he know best, and has already deemed certain movies “rentals” based on their trailers alone. Well, I’m happy to report that this critic was wrong, again.

It’s 1960 and the London Diamond Corporation is doing big business. That is, until their diamonds are stolen from the vault. How did such a catastrophe happen? The vault codes are only know to two people, security cameras are monitoring the premises, and it seems quite impossible to move a ton of diamonds without anybody noticing. As it turns, out it’s not that hard at all. All you need is two people who have similar motives, opportunity, and are living somewhat unappreciated lives.

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Do you remember what it was like to get bullied in high school? You don’t? Well watching “Drillbit Taylor” is just the thing to help you remember. If you were a nerd, geek or just plain weird in high school then you will be able to relate (I know I did). *SPOILER ALERT*

Wade (Nate Hartley) and Ryan (Troy Gentile) think they’re prepared to embark on the journey of high school, but they have no idea what lies ahead. The day turns bad before they even get on the school bus, Wade and Ryan end up wearing the same shirt with no time to change. Of course that leads to ridicule for the rest of the day from students and teachers alike.

To top things off they get on Filkin (Alex Frost), the school bully’s bad side when they attempt to stop him from shoving a kid, Emmit (David Dorfman), into a locker (Emmit becomes friends with Wade and Ryan). With that one little act of defiance, Filkins has made it his job to make high school miserable for Wade and Ryan. Of course when they go to the principal, he ends up being an idiot that won’t help them. They would have been better off being home schooled.

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10,000 BC was easily number one at the box office this week, raking in $36 million. More than doubling the second place film College Road Trip. As the movie approached its opening day, the #1 question that everyone was asking was “will it live up to the hype?” We’ll I’m here to tell you that it did, kind of. It had its flaws, but over all it was a fun and entertaining movie experience.

*No major spoilers* In the start we hear a prophecy tell us that a young warrior will defeat the demons and bring peace to his tribe. When a little girl, named Evolet (Camilla Belle), with blue eyes is saved from the demons and brought to the tribe, Mother (the tribes spiritual leader) foretells that the warrior that saves them will be this young girls partner. Well there’s no mystery who the warrior will be, cause a young boy named D’leh (Steven Strait) falls in love with her instantly and promises to always keep her in his heart.

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