Have you heard of “People like Us”? It's by the same studio--Dreamworks--which had released “The Help.” "People" barely even meets that previous mediocre effort, however, and lacks the two name actresses who made "The Help" the film that it was. That "People" was written by the same scribes (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman; they also directed it) who were behind the “Transformers” screenplay is no surprise: this is about as

You’ll never look at your child’s teddy bear the same way again. From the mind of “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane comes his debut film about a stuffed teddy come-to-life who enjoys the finer pleasures like strippers, smoking weed, cursing, and dirty sexual innuendi. This miraculous thing happened years ago when a young boy named John made a wish, transforming Ted into a flash-in-the-pan celebrity and turning them into inse-

Hellooo abs! Pulling together all the muscle-bound actors not already in the new “Expendables” movie, director Steven Soderbergh and Channing Tatum (the later working from his own life experience) pay tribute to men in uniform, who then strip those uniforms off. Mike (Tatum) is a roofer by day, stripper by night, taking ne’er-do-well drifter Adam (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing, showing him the ropes of the dance club and, upon a twist of fate

Despite the latter half of its title, Seeking puts the charm back in "charming." The film accomplishes this by doing the impossible on two levels...firstly, by making a serious subject something to laugh at without falling into the always too familiar traps of over-the-top parody, satire or spoof. Secondly, the film takes the genre of romantic comedy and gives it edge without too much violence, shock or sadness. This thread-the-needle bal-

In U.N. Me, a new film currently playing in theatres, director Ami Horowitz (pictured) asks: is the United Nations living up to its founding ideals? The answer, rightly so, is “no.” Ever since it replaced the League of Nations in 1945 the United Nations, founded to stop wars and establish a dialogue between countries, has grown too big, too expensive, too wasteful a place where a lack of accountability and transparency has created a

Rock of Ages, this week’s hair metal spandex singalong, asks a basic question: what’s the point of a musical? More specifically, it asks a pair of underlying questions about musicals: is enjoyment a worthy artistic goal? Is sentimental simplification acceptable in the name of fantasy and fun? On one level Rock of Ages does to the metal years of the late eighties no more or less than what Singin' in the Rain did to the twenties or Grease to the

What is there about social climbers that makes their stories irresistible? Guy de Maupassant’s Bel Ami, published in installments in nineteenth century-France, enthralled readers and has been adapted for the screen a number of times. The present version stars Robert Pattinson as Georges Duroy. It is filled with descriptions of the world of journalism, politics and banking which Duroy skims for maximum profit in his ascent