30 Days of Night
“30 Days of Night” takes a clever idea and beats it into a bloody pulp. Allow yourself one moment of logical thinking, and this movie makes no sense. It is reduced to being nothing more than a series of humans being killed by vampires and vice versa. Josh Hartnett, who used to have a career, plays the sheriff of Barrow, Alaska. The film also crosses the line in using children. These types of horror films can be fun to watch as long as it is adults running and screaming. R; 1 hour, 40 minutes. Released today. Rick Bentley, McClatchy Newspapers
Goya’s Ghosts
Milos Forman long wanted to make a movie about the Spanish Inquisition that reflected his own dire experience under Nazi and communist regimes. This is it. But in realizing his dream, he seems to have lost track of the film’s central subject. That, of course, would be Francisco de Goya, played rather drably here by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård. A genius so classically gifted he earned commissions from Spanish royals, as well as the emperor’s puppet replacements, Goya quite arguably also pioneered modern art with his shocking “Black Paintings,” and the seminal “Disasters of War” series, which weren’t seen until after the artist — and Napoleon — were long gone. R; 1 hour, 53 minutes. Released today. Bob Strauss, Los
Angeles Daily News
“Death at a Funeral”
Brits dig up plenty of laughs in “Death at a Funeral.” Comedy tickles the funny bone in a couple of perfectly predictable ways. Funeral decorum will take it on the chin. Bodies will be mixed up, and pile up. There will be funny revelations about the dead man, inappropriate romantic advances among mourners, a foul-mouthed aged uncle who disrupts things, family infighting over money, a wayward bottle of pills that seems to get all the wrong people stoned at the worst moments. It’s all here in this very British comedy. R; 1 hour, 29 minutes. Released today.
Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel
