WRITTEN BY Tim Gomez

I’ll come right out and say it: Richard Linklater is better than Me and Orson Welles. Sure, the indie superstar and inspiration to many a director (including Kevin Smith) is responsible for quite a few mainstream movies, but none have ever been so boring and lifeless as this film. School of Rock had Jack Black and a group of endlessly loveable kids.

Astro Boy begins with animation that’s clearly an homage to the old Disney shorts we used to watch as kids. The informational kind. The ones that would tell us how cars worked and about the amazing future we had ahead of us. While it’s a clever tool that, through exposition, helps to inform us enough to enter the story that’s about to be told, it’s done at only a fraction of the quality of those Disney shorts. And that turns out to be the case for all of Astro Boy. The movie is a retread of many great children’s stories, jokes, and plot devices, but it’s not a quality retread. Instead, it’s executed lazily and in many cases, unusually. It’s like a robot that just doesn’t work that well, even though it’s made up of pieces from all of the most expensive, fancy robots on the market.

It’s easy to write off Michael Moore as a Democratic pundit, in the same category as dudes like Al Franken and Kurt Olbermann. And sure, with films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine under his belt, it was a fair accusation. But Capitalism: A Love Story reaffirms, as Sicko did before it, that Moore is a man of the people

David Foster Wallace’s short story, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” presents John Krasinski, writer/director/actor/all-around-good-guy, with a problem. Although the dialogue on the page offers an actor an array of layers, comedy, and heart, the material isn’t necessarily film-friendly, so he’s left with a flick that feels more suited for the stage than the screen. The conversations are completely one-sided and written less from the perspective of real people and more from the psyche of the genius that was Wallace, a man with a keen insight into the human mind but most of all, his own.

Had I owned a copy of Final Draft and not been obsessed with terrible poetry, Bandslam may have been the type of movie I would’ve made when I was 15. Somewhat of a fantasy, Bandslam is about an awkward, outcast kid who’s somehow able to convince two ridiculously gorgeous girls that he’s cool because of his dork-level knowledge of music.

Orphan deserves four stars. Not because it’s good, quite the opposite actually. There should be a different scale for Orphan, a scale that would include films like Feardotcom, Pearl Harbor, and probably Transformers 2, movies that are laughably bad, that almost seem to go out of their way to be truly over the top and dreadful. They shouldn’t get graded on the same merits as films like The Departed (which actually may come back later in this review, oddly enough).

Sam Bell is nearing the end of his contract with Lunar. He's been a faithful employee for 3 long years. His home has been Selene, a moon base where he has spent his days alone, mining Helium 3. The precious gas holds the key to reversing the Earth's energy crisis.

Just the other night, I was bowling with some high school kids I’m working with in a summer program. One of the girls decided to show some of the other kids a couple of card tricks she knew

Michelle Rhee is a storm in an education system that needs an El Niño. Brought in as the DC Public Schools Chancellor in 1997, Rhee has been a controversial figure from the beginning

Lena Dunham could just as easily have been an author. At least that’s how it feels in her quietly funny and thoughtful festival circuit favorite, Tiny Furniture

Thankfully, not all films are made in Hollywood. Some are made in the company of the hundreds of miles of cornfields in the midwest. Others are made in more likable cities like Chicago or New York

This set is iconic. The seats are a dark color, and there are rows and rows of them, and the walls behind them are a mix of blue and purple. A balcony hangs over the men's heads, and against the walls are various plants, likely fake

Disney has been owning the promotion of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, what could have otherwise been another forgettable video game flick. Just a couple of weeks ago, they released an eye-popping TV spot during the Super Bowl

It's been quite awhile since we last heard about a Tomb Raider reboot. In fact, we reported on the announcement nine months ago. Since then, Producer Dan Lin has been pretty silent on the subject, though he was initially excited

It's been an overarching goal of the film industry to somehow artistically validate porn. There's Boogie Nights and The People Vs. Larry Flynt. There's even Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno

What else is there to say about the A-Team movie? It seems like another bad call modern reboot, but it will likely be a whole lot of mindless fun, especially since it's being directed by Joe Carnahan

We've been waiting for the announcement for two weeks. That's more than ten days of late-night bickering, contract rumors, Conan rallies, and Leno bashing. Now it's official. Conan O'Brien will leave The Tonight Show on Friday January 22nd. That's only several days short of the show's eight-month anniversary.

We are now knee deep in awards season. This means that we're going to start getting a better idea of who will take home some Oscars in March. While the obvious favorite these days is the smurf-ridden Avatar

It turns out that Robert Pattinson doesn't only play a doofus vampire with bedazzled body spray; he also knows how to play a rebellious New Yorker with hair that keeps its place even after a beating. That's what the dude plays in his newest movie, Remember Me, about a kid who takes a fist to the face from a cop and then starts dating his daughter to get back at him. The flick co-stars Emilie de Ravin (aka Claire from Lost), Pierce Brosnan, and Chris Cooper.

Conan O’Brien got screwed. That’s obvious. What isn’t obvious is how he plans to pick himself back up from the royal beating that NBC has given him. Sure, it’s very possible that NBC