The Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston quasi-comedy The Break-Up (Universal) did better at the box office than anyone expected, prompting a lot of hand-wringing about the irrelevance of mainstream movie critics. But maybe the critics who panned The Break-Up got it wrong. Director Peyton Reed actually does a lot with this movie, building a story around reaction shots and sound design, as the central couple's condo becomes an increasingly hushed and hostile place to live. The Break-Up isn't as funny as it could be, and the tone is all over the map, but it's an admirably uncompromising look at how relationships go wrong…
Paul Weitz's American Dreamz (Universal) tries so desperately to capture the contemporary cultural zeitgeist that it all but hurls itself into a time capsule. Weitz's glib satire is equally toothless in its attacks on American Idol, the war on terror, and the Bush administration, but a strong cast, peppy pacing, and an agreeably overstuffed plot make it a decent enough time-waster on DVD…
It's probably for the best that the 2006 version of The Omen (Fox) is a virtual shot-for-shot remake of the 1976 original, because the one original scene—a slideshow connecting real human tragedies like Katrina and 9/11 to the rise of its silly fictional demon-boy—may be the year's most offensive. Without it, the film is a good-bad treat, highlighted by eerily appropriate nanny Mia Farrow and a child devil whose most menacing expression makes him looks like he needs a nap…
With the year wearing on, memories of Over The Hedge (DreamWorks) have been buried under a drift of too-similar CGI kids' features, all featuring a crowd of bubbly, neurotic animals voiced by celebrities. But it still stands out, largely for its winningly creative way of handling the same ol' cartoon clichés. Bruce Willis voices an opportunistic raccoon out to manipulate a bunch of woods-dwelling naïfs into collecting junk food to placate a pissy bear, and the script takes this as an opportunity for manic satire about how suburbanites live…
The Project Greenlight series wrapped up long before Strike Three, the long-delayed splatter-comedy Feast (Weinstein), hit theaters briefly as a midnight movie before shuffling off to DVD. While it didn't exactly deserve a better fate, at least the film showed more personality than Stolen Summer or The Battle Of Shaker Heights. Too bad this disc doesn't come attached to PGL 3, perhaps the most entertaining season of them all.