Kyle Smith has been a film critic for the Post since 2005. He also contributes book reviews and columns on current affairs to the Sunday Post and is the author of the novels "Love Monkey," which was adapated into a CBS TV series, and "A Christmas Caroline." He is a graduate of Yale University.
All I expected out of “Battleship” was a stupid action movie. It’s more than that, though: It’s also a stupid comedy and a stupid sci-fi yarn. It makes “Top Gun” look like the work of Orson Welles. At least the Tom...
May 18, 2012 12:00 AM
How huge is “NCIS”? So big even its time-slot competitor “Glee” can’t ignore it. In an episode last month, the Fox show’s Puck worked in a diss of the procedural by saying, “My Nana watches that!” True, “NCIS” may not...
May 13, 2012 12:00 AMThe quippy guy in the ironic T-shirt, the generically hot wife who is both charmed and exasperated by his wacky schemes: “Nesting” is a sitcom, but a really slow and dull one that barely grinds out 22 minutes’ worth of...
May 11, 2012 12:00 AM
In Washington, clichés are common currency, the coin of the realm, a stock in trade. They can also be lethally effective as political speech, precisely because they embody lazy thinking and off-the-shelf analysis....
May 06, 2012 12:00 AM
Sex, drinking, all manner of carousing — it’s shocking what old people are up to these days. It’s hard to begrudge them a good time in the amiable if corny “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” an Elderhostel “Eat Pray Love...
May 04, 2012 12:00 AM
If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily...
April 29, 2012 12:00 AM
‘The Avengers” is neither overwhelming nor underwhelming. What it expertly is, is whelming. Iron Man shooting through the gastrointestinal tract of a giant space lizard like atomic vindaloo? WHELM! Hulk and Thor going...
April 27, 2012 12:00 AMDon’t eat at a restaurant packed with beautiful women. Any Chinese place, even at the most woebegone formica joint in the dullest small-town strip mall, can be a good one if you know what to say. And get to a barbecue...
April 22, 2012 12:00 AM‘Fightville,” you had me at “gladiator school.”This alternately hair-raising and chuckle-unleashing documentary peeks at the droll goings-on inside a sad little Lafayette, La., academy (it shares a strip mall with a...
April 20, 2012 12:00 AMYet another cheesy sci-fi flick Luc Besson has dumped on his long but not especially impressive résumé, “Lockout” is a mangled action thriller mostly set on a space station that also serves as a prison.Besson co-wrote...
April 13, 2012 12:00 AMAs ferrous as Margaret Thatcher but as elegant as the trademark flowers in her hair, “The Lady” is the Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, who gets her due in an appropriately respectful and dignified biopic.Suu Kyi...
April 13, 2012 12:00 AM
Picture a reverse “Dead Poets Society”: This time it’s a traditional teacher named Monsieur Lazhar who gets caught in the jaws of modernity. This beautifully restrained French-Canadian production, set in Montreal, was...
April 13, 2012 12:00 AM
I’ve seen a lot of rip-offs of “The Truman Show” and a lot of rip-offs of “Scream.” I guess I have to give credit to “The Cabin in the Woods” for ripping off both at once.Fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” whose...
April 13, 2012 12:00 AM
This year’s London mayoral race recalls the epic 1993 New York City rematch between David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani, which Giuliani barely won despite Dinkins’ abysmal record.On May 3, voters will choose between a...
April 12, 2012 12:00 AM
A beautifully photographed outdoorsman’s thriller with an environmentalist theme, “The Hunter” takes place in Tasmania, where an American hired gun (Willem Dafoe) takes to the mountains in search of an animal long...
April 06, 2012 12:00 AMAnother gimmicky, low-budget thriller from Chris Sparling, the writer who did the Ryan Reynolds flick “Buried,” “ATM” takes place mostly inside a . . . you guessed it. After a Christmas party, three colleagues (Brian...
April 06, 2012 12:00 AMA good-natured high school dramedy that borrows from many others, “We the Party” alternates cheerful homilies about the importance of staying in school with standard party scenes, talk about losing one’s virginity and...
April 06, 2012 12:00 AM
A sinewy and breathless thriller from France, “The Assault” recounts the true story of the 1994 hijacking of a French plane in Algeria, where extremely well-armed Islamist fanatics stormed the plane with the intent of...
April 06, 2012 12:00 AM
It was a shocking story when a Manhattan cop, Michael Pena, was accused of accosting a young schoolteacher at gunpoint in Inwood, dragging her into a back yard at 6 a.m., threatening to shoot her and then raping her in...
April 01, 2012 12:00 AM
A two-headed dragon. A fanged serpent. A brutish 50-foot Cyclops. Another Republican debate? No, it’s “Wrath of the Titans,” a journey back to an ancient time when gods walked the earth, monsters breathed fire and stout...
March 30, 2012 12:00 AM
Set out to make a comedy about bad behavior on a minor-league hockey team, and you tread in the footsteps of giants. You might as well try to make a movie about a shark terrorizing a New England beach community or a...
March 30, 2012 12:00 AM
It’s important to know when you’ve been beaten,” Snow White’s evil stepmother (Julia Roberts) says, early in “Mirror, Mirror.” Yes, and the screenwriters of this attempt to do a hip comedic take on the legend were...
March 30, 2012 12:00 AM
On Sept. 13, 2009, Tiger Woods notched his 71st victory on the PGA Tour. It wasn’t ’til last Sunday that he marked his 72nd, the first time he’d ever gone more than a year without a win on the circuit. Whatever could...
March 27, 2012 12:00 AM
So “The Hunger Games” is a futuristic dystopia with a hard-edged political subtext? It implicitly tells Americans of 2012 how badly we treat our children? No. Wrong. Critics are praising the movie, in which kids are...
March 25, 2012 12:00 AMHere they came, in their tens: annoyed teachers bent on proving to The Post that if we continue to publish unpleasant facts, there will be hell to pay. Well, if you count 22 people whining in unison hell. “Hey HEY! Ho...
March 23, 2012 12:00 AMStriving mightily to be the indie equivalent of a wacky sitcom, “The Trouble With Bliss” fails to draw much humor from farcical situations.Michael C. Hall plays Morris Bliss, an unemployed Manhattan slacker and dreamer...
March 23, 2012 12:00 AM
Amusing and informative (and hyperbolic) as it is, “All In: The Poker Movie” is a documentary whose intended audience is unclear.Cardsharps will probably be familiar with every point made in this film about the history...
March 23, 2012 12:00 AM
"The Hunger Games” may be derivative, but it is engrossing and at times exciting. Implicitly, it argues that “The Truman Show” might have been improved by Ed Harris lobbing fireballs at Jim Carrey, and it’s now clear...
March 21, 2012 12:00 AM
Viewing an exhibition of children’s art in 1956, Pablo Picasso said, “When I was the age of these children, I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.” These two factors —...
March 18, 2012 12:00 AM
Assigning two young cops to go undercover at a high school, their boss tells them, “The guys in charge of this stuff lack creativity and are completely out of ideas.” Then he tells them to report to “37 Jump Street. No,...
March 16, 2012 12:00 AM
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