Curt Holman

TITLE: The Spirit

GENRE: Style-drunk superhero story

THE PITCH: After Central City cop Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) dies but gets better, he becomes a masked avenger called the Spirit who takes on criminals such as the similarly indestructible Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) and seemingly countless femme fatales.

MONEY SHOTS: Nothing looks particularly good, but it'll be hard to forget the Octopus...

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The prologue to the warm-n-fuzzy sports story The Blind Side plays so well, it’s like seeing a team return an opening kickoff to score a touchdown. A Southern-accented Sandra Bullock narrates an insider’s perspective on the five fateful seconds that cost the Washington Redskins’ Joe Theismann his career. Michael Lewis’ book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game...

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The Men Who Stare at Goats begins with a wonderful disclaimer: “More of this is true than you would believe.” Most films use phrases like “Based on a true story” or “Inspired by actual events” as a fig leaf for outrageous liberties with little connection to reality. The real incidents behind The Men Who Stare at Goats indeed seem stranger than fiction,...

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The American perspective on Japanese culture tends to obsess over the more extreme entertainment forms — the bloody samurai films, the kinky anime, the sadistic game shows — that tend to drown out the soft-spoken ones. A long tradition of Japanese film, frequently associated with Yasujir? Ozu, emphasizes serenity and naturalism. Contemporary filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda...

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It's true: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Ricky Gervais' The Invention of Lying serves as a virtual celebration of untruths by presenting a world in which deceit and falsehood do not exist. As inventions go, the lie proves nearly as significant as fire or the wheel.

Conversation is candid and merciless in Lying's alternate America. In the first scene, pudgy screenwriter...

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Even if you’ve never heard the name Oliver Hirschbiegel, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen his work. The German filmmaker directed Downfall, the superb 2004 drama about the Third Reich's final days. Last year, a clip of Bruno Ganz’s Hitler chewing out his underlings became a YouTube hit when an online prankster rewrote the subtitles so the scene depicted...

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I learned more from Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair than I did from all the other films and plays I’ve seen about African-American beauty parlors and barbershops put together. As a white guy with straight hair (and seemingly less of it every day), subjects like weaves and relaxers tend to be terra incognita. Even black audiences might view African-American hairstyle issues...

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Though only 17 years old, Clareece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) suffers enough misfortunes for several Greek tragedies remounted in 1987 Harlem. Precious’ title character endures obesity, illiteracy, a baby with Down syndrome and a sociopathically hostile, selfish mother (Mo’Nique) — and those are just the preliminaries. When Precious gets warmed up,...

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The establishment seems more firmly established in England than anywhere else. Two terrific new British films depict prodigiously intelligent characters who challenge entrenched English institutions and nearly outsmart themselves along the way. The protagonists of the soccer movie The Damned United and the coming-of-age romance An Education fit in the rebellious, angry young man...

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In the documentary Crude, Brothers Keeper director Joe Berlinger presents a courtroom drama that never takes place in a courtroom. The grim but engrossing film recounts the tactics and history of a civil lawsuit filed by thousands of native Ecuadoreans who allege that Texaco (now Chevron) polluted vast areas of the rain forest with oil, leading to contaminated drinking water and...

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Medical narratives often depict ordinary people who turn to alternative healing methods when traditional Western health care fails. Seldom can you find families that go to the lengths of Rupert Isaacson and Kristen Neff, who traveled from Austin, Texas, to the steppes of Mongolia with the hopes of improving their son Rowan’s autistic condition.

Narrating the documentary...

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A decade after filling America with pants-wetting fear, The Blair Witch Project still haunts Hollywood. Filmmakers emulate its faux-documentary, first-person narrative style, while studios seek the next no-budget horror flick that can become a $100 million word-of-mouth hit. Paramount Pictures bets that Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity will similarly set pulses and bladders...