That incorrigible Disney slapstick favorite Herbie is nicknamed "the love bug," but in Herbie: Fully Loaded (Buena Vista), he behaves like a passive-aggressive control freak seeking revenge on anyone who dared confine him to the scrap heap. He's also a shameless old pervert, lusting after a younger, sportier Volkswagen with more curves than a post-pubescent Lindsay Lohan. Is this what passes for family entertainment?
In an unprecedented gambit, the production company that supported Paul Schrader's Exorcist prequel were so displeased by the cerebral results that they scrapped it and hired Renny Harlin to make another movie with mangled bodies and oceans of pea soup. Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning turned out to be a debacle in its own right, but Warner Brothers has finally liberated Schrader's Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist, which turns out to be more than just an interesting curio. Though sometimes awkward and miscalculated, the film confronts evil with a seriousness that's unmatched even by the overrated original…
How bad can any movie boasting the combined talents of Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Jason Schwartzman, Michael Caine, and Shirley MacLaine possibly be? Unfortunately, with Nora Ephron directing and co-writing, the hopelessly muddled meta-take on the '60s TV favorite Bewitched (Sony) turns out to be worse than anyone could have imagined…
Inspired by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, Gus Van Sant's Last Days (HBO) captures a rock star's irretrievable descent in uncomfortable detail. Michael Pitt plays (and sometimes overplays) the Cobain surrogate, and Van Sant's artful reserve often keeps the film at too great a distance. But the druggy, deglamorized atmosphere has a cumulatively chilly effect that makes the film feel almost like a rock 'n' roll horror movie, in which Pitt's ghost has learned how to haunt the world before figuring out how to die…
The touching story of a boy and his boat is finally getting its due, as Titanic (Paramount) receives the special-edition-DVD treatment. Because three hours wasn't nearly long enough to tell the tale, director James Cameron adds 29 deleted scenes and an alternate ending to the package, along with hours of behind-the-scenes featurettes and multiple commentary tracks. Because if there's anything Cameron likes more than destroying, it's explaining.