It's all about chemistry, and Vince Vaughn yelling at his off-screen mother, in the dry, stylish action comedy Mr. And Mrs. Smith (Columbia/TriStar). Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt star as unwitting rival assassins pitted against one another just as their marriage enters a crisis. It couldn't be slighter, but it's plenty of fun…
Sky High (Buena Vista) features an agreeable collection of would-be teen idols from the Hollywood machine, and the movie on the whole is bright, clean, good-natured, and sturdily plotted, following a superhero through puberty as he starts to power up. As the hero-to-be struggles to split time between his old sidekick friends and his new superhero friends, the movie deals with questions of loyalty and maturation without ever getting gross or overly sappy. Unlike a lot of kids' movies, there's little to cringe about…
The phenomenal success of Luc Jacquet's documentary March Of The Penguins (Warner Bros.) has left something of a sour taste, in part due to its embrace by the family values crowd, which took it as nature's argument for monogamy, and also in contrast to Werner Herzog's superior Grizzly Man, which plainly reveals the dangers of anthropomorphizing the wild. But those caveats aside, the film is still an impressive and enchanting piece of work, built around extraordinary footage of emperor penguins intrepidly braving the Antarctic chill in order to propagate the species…
Sundance favorite Murderball (ThinkFilm) was one of the more curious box-office failures of the summer, a documentary that rode a wave of positive press and MTV sponsorship into theaters, yet couldn't find even a modest arthouse audience. Perhaps people were expecting something cloying out of the film's treatment of the handicapped, but a few seconds' footage of the vicious title sport—a Mad Max-like clashing of armored wheelchairs called "quad rugby"—puts such expectations to rest…
Few series have episodes that have turned into cultural shorthand; Seinfeld is one of them: "The puffy Shirt," "Fusilli Jerry," "The Kiss Hello," and others can all be found on the Seinfeld: Season 5 and Seinfeld: Season 6 (Columbia/TriStar) box sets. Sure they play constantly in syndication, but who knows when you'll get the urge to see Mr. Pitt stare at a 3D painting?