Chris O'donnell

Well, you borrow the oldest trick in the book by putting your characters in the desert, where you can pretty much shoot your movie for free!

Continue reading: 29 Palms (2002) Review

With only the thinnest thread of a tether anchoring its mountain climbing action in reality, "Vertical Limit" takes suspension of disbelief to new extremes for a film that goes out of its way to seem credible.

Celebrated Everest-conqueror Ed Viesturs has a multiple-scene cameo in this adventure about a climber trying to rescue his sister from a huge crevasse near the top of K-2, the world's highest mountain.

But the stunts are so far-fetched you don't even have to own a pair of hiking boots to find them laughable. Even more hilarious, it's pathetically obvious that much of the movie was shot on a soundstage with cheap mountainside scrims in the background.

Continue reading: Vertical Limit Review

Writer-director Bill Condon has a talent for hitting just the right tone in his work. Whether he's paying stylistic homage to "Bride of Frankenstein" creator James Whale in "Gods and Monsters" or writing a screenplay for "Chicago" that re-envisioned the Broadway musical as a wannabe showgirl's uniquely cinematic daydream, Condon always finds a way to seamlessly marry the crux of his story to the strengths of his medium.

In "Kinsey," he legitimizes and revitalizes a rather tiresome narrative gimmick -- on-camera interviews with the characters. For a biopic about legendary sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, there could be no more apropos structure for the story. Kinsey himself interviewed thousands of Americans about their bedroom predilections in the 1940s and '50s to compile his groundbreaking, rather comprehensive and certainly controversial studies on the subject. So Condon opens the film in kind -- with a simple, head-on, black-and-white image of the bluntly matter-of-fact and obliviously awkward Professor Kinsey (Liam Neeson) being quizzed about his own background and sexual experience.

Composing the film around Kinsey's answers, Condon cues flashbacks of an upbringing under the fire-and-brimstone hand of a preacher father (John Lithgow), introduces the equally clinical-yet-passionate student who becomes his wife (Laura Linney), touches on the man's own pseudo-scientific dalliances and their promiscuous effect on his marriage, and sets the stage for the studies that helped launch the sexual revolution.

Continue reading: Kinsey Review

You know something is just not right about a movie when even the most insignificant supporting characters have more charisma and personality than the leads.

Such is the case with "The Bachelor," a comedy about an heir to a $100 million fortune who has 24 hours to get married or be cut off without a dime.

Chris O'Donnell (Robin in the recent "Batman" movies) is said heir, a commitment-o-phobe from central casting named Jimmy whose persnickety, cantankerous grandfather (Peter Ustinov) kicks the bucket and reveals in his videotaped will that -- surprise! -- he's a millionaire. But grandpa is also obsessed with begetting a family legacy and decrees that Jimmy, his soul heir, gets zip unless he's married by his 30th birthday. Unfortunately grandpa has the bad timing to die two days before the deadline.

Continue reading: The Bachelor Review