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This animated trilogy concludes on a very high note with this smart, involving and often hilarious adventure. Both the writing and the animation are especially strong this time around, drawing in bigger themes while still keeping things both thrilling and very silly. But it's the endearing central characters who make it resonate.

As the Dragon Warrior, the panda Po (voiced by Jack Black) is struggling to rise to the challenge to become a teacher, coaxed by his master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). He'd rather be out fighting battles with his five warrior pals Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane (Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu and David Cross). Then he meets his long-lost father Li (Bryan Cranston), who tells him of a secret homeland for pandas, where Po might be able to find himself. Meanwhile, the power-mad warlord Kai (J.K. Simmons) has broken through from the spirit realm, determined to collect the chi of every master in the mortal world. So it's rather urgent that Po discovers his own chi before Kai finds him.

This is far more than the usual story about discovering your place in life. It's a complex exploration of how our backgrounds and communities contribute to who we are, and why each of us has a distinct role to play. These themes emerge naturally through the snappy, sometimes exhilarating story and characters. In voicing Po, Black finds the perfect balance between goofiness and honest emotion that often eludes him in live-action roles. His interaction with all of the surrounding characters bristles with humour and insight, with sharply funny one-liners peppering every scene. Most of the side roles are spread very thinly, but both Cranston and Simmons register strongly, while Jolie and Hoffman get some solid scenes all their own. And Hudson's riotously flirtatious ribbon-dancing panda easily steals her scenes.

Continue reading: Kung Fu Panda 3 Review

Mixing the action, comedy and horror from novelist R.L. Stein's books into a family-friendly package, this lively romp is entertaining enough to amuse the audience even when it veers off the rails. It helps that Jack Black is on board, giving one of his more energetically charged performances, and that the script peppers scenes with smart gags. But an over-reliance on big special effects weakens the movie's big climax, and the breathless pace is sometimes exhausting.

Black plays Stein himself, a reclusive author and over-protective father who lives in a small town with his daughter Hannah (Odeya Rush). Then single mother Gale (Amy Ryan) moves in next door with her teen son Zach (Dylan Minette), who is immediately intrigued by Hannah. Despite Stein's warnings, Zach and his new school friend Champ (Ryan Lee) sneak into the house to find out more, opening one of the novelist's manuscripts in the process. Out pops an abominable snowman, who proceeds to wreak havoc in the town. And the next literary escapee, the sadistic ventriloquist's dummy Slappy, is even worse. He sets about releasing all of Stein's fictional monsters into the real world, unleashing chaos on a massive scale. But Zach has an idea that may stop the mayhem.

Screenwriter Darren Lemke and director Rob Letterman have a great time bringing the maximum level of pandemonium to this small town, with a range of outrageous creatures that are both comical and scary. These are rendered in rather obvious digital animation, including a gang of militarised garden gnomes, a slimy blob, zombies, werewolves and a gigantic praying mantis. But the cartoonish sheen is undercut intriguingly by some genuinely tense moments, mainly because Slappy is properly menacing. Black provides Slappy's gleefully sinister voice while hamming it up on-screen as Stein. Minette and Rush are fine as the usual bland youthful heroes with a cute hint of romance between them. And more textured acting is provided in small roles by Ryan, Jillian Bell (as Gale's airhead sister) and Ken Marino (as a lovelorn colleague).

Continue reading: Goosebumps Review

Richard Linklater mixes comedy, drama and documentary to tell a frankly outrageous true story, and in the process he also gives Jack Black one of his best-yet roles. Even though his character is camp and colourful, Black beautifully underplays him, channelling his normally excessive style of acting into something utterly endearing. And while the story is packed with tragedy, Linklater still manages to keep us laughing.

Black plays Bernie, a well-loved member of the community in small-town Carthage, Texas. Bernie is the local mortician, and he has a reputation for caring for the families of the deceased. Mainly the widows. Then his life takes a strange turn when he meets Marjorie (MacLaine), a cranky widow who's estranged from her family and has more money than she can spend. Now in addition to running the town theatre club and managing a local art show, Bernie is managing Marjorie's finances and traveling with her around the world. Then she rewrites her will to leave everything to him, and events take a startling turn.

The film is narrated through documentary-style interviews with the town's brutally honest residents, and only some of them are played by actors. They talk about Bernie's place in the town, and how opinion shifted when he was accused of Marjorie's murder. Knowing that Bernie was a real man, and that these events really happened, adds a spark of energy to the film that actually augments the blackly comical tone. And opposite Black, MacLaine delivers one of her strongest, snappiest turns. McConaughey is also great fun as the blustering prosecutor who's shocked that anyone in town still loves Bernie. But they all do.

Continue reading: Bernie Review

In Smalltown America, Walter (Linz) has always felt different from his brother Gary (Segel). He has longed to meet the Muppets, his childhood heroes, and gets the chance when Gary and his girlfriend Mary (Adams) take him on a trip Los Angeles. But the Muppet Theatre is in ruin, and an evil tycoon (Cooper) is planning to tear it down and drill for oil. After meeting Kermit (Whitmire), Walter, Mary and Gary hatch a plan to save the theatre. But most of the Muppets have moved on with their lives.

Continue reading: The Muppets Review

Brad (Black) is a birdwatcher who decides to do a Big Year, seeing as many birds as possible in 12 months, while holding down a full-time job and borrowing against his credit cards. Jetting around the country for rare spottings, he comes up against his record-holding nemesis Kenny (Wilson) as well as Stu (Martin), a corporate big-wig who has taken a year off work to follow his dream. But will their obsession with birding cause problems in their private lives?

Continue reading: The Big Year Review

Now that Dragon Warrior panda Po (voiced by Black) has joined the Furious Five (Jolie's tigress, Rogen's mantis, Chan's monkey, Liu's viper and Cross' crane), there's peace in the valley again. But in a distant kingdom, the villainous peacock Lord Shen (Oldman) has developed a secret weapon with which he plans to take over China and put an end to kung fu. Although he's been rattled for decades, since his soothsayer (Yeoh) told him he'll be conquered by a panda.

And he knows the Dragon Warrior is on his way.

Continue reading: Kung Fu Panda 2 Review

Blazing across the screen with eye-popping, sublime artwork, Kung Fu Panda sets itself apart from the modern domestic animation trend with its sheer beauty. From an opening dream sequence whose abstract style seems culled straight from a modern manga, the film enters instant classic status as some of the most gorgeous animation Hollywood has produced since the golden age of Disney. Eschewing the cold and severe art of Dreamworks' Shrek films, the makers of Kung Fu Panda fill the screen with painterly backdrops of mountain vistas and fluttering leaves that give Zhang Yimou a run for his money. It somehow makes it all the funnier to have the titular panda, Po (Black), come huffing and wheezing through the impeccable and non-specific ancient China landscapes like a less-active relative of Hurley on Lost.

Continue reading: Kung Fu Panda Review

Comprised of dueling acoustic guitarists Jack Black and Kyle Gass, the D fills albums with harmonious and ridiculously clever odes to their own awesomeness. Their rock operas would make excellent B-sides for Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell album. Indeed, the band belongs on a triple bill with '70s monsters of melodic metal Black Sabbath and Queen.

Continue reading: Tenacious D: The Pick Of Destiny Review

It begins with two working stiffs, Tim (Ben Stiller) and Nick (Jack Black) plodding their lives away at a 3M facility. By-the-book Tim is creeping into middle management while dreamer Nick wallows on the factory floor concocting wacky ideas for useless products. All of that changes when one of Nick's hare-brained schemes, a spray that dissolves dog excrement called Vapoorize (No. Stop. I think I'm gonna bust a gut.), pans out and makes millions.

Continue reading: Envy (2004) Review

Alas, my prayers were not answered. Saving Silverman is an often-funny farce -- and probably the best comedy we're going to see until the summer -- but it's a poor imitation of some much better movies, desperately longing to be Woody Allen while ending up as Adam Sandler.

Continue reading: Saving Silverman Review

Jack Black isn't an actor, he's a clown -- and a one-schitck clown at that.

Compare any two-minute clip of his new comedy "School of Rock" to any of his scenes from "Orange County," "Shallow Hal" or "Saving Silverman," and you'll see the exact same tongue-wagging and eye-bugging mugging, the exact same frenzied, finger-knotting gestures and roly-poly, off-balance dancing, the exact same eyebrow-stitching failed attempts at momentary sincerity, and the exact same set-devouring dialogue delivery.

"Read between the lines, baby! Read between the lines!" he whispers then screams, whispers then screams while giving a three-fingered flip-off to the musicians who have just kicked the embarrassing stage-hog out of their band in this movie's establishing scene.

Continue reading: School Of Rock Review

Even if you have not yet tired of the eye-bugging, eyebrow-dancing, class-clown schtick of Jack Black or the eye-bugging, eyebrow-dancing, fretful straight-man schtick of Ben Stiller, the first collaboration between these two one-trick ponies is still unlikely to draw a single laugh for its slapdash story of one-dimensional "Envy" run amok.

The pair star as K-Mart-class stiffs in the sandpaper trade who are best pals and neighbors in an under-the-power-lines cul-de-sac of the San Fernando 'burbs. A fusspot pragmatic by temperament, Stiller slowly turns bitter green when Black -- a wild-eyed daydreamer full of half-baked inventions and get-rich-quick schemes -- gets rich quick by helping conceive an aerosol spray that makes pet poop evaporate.

Soon Stiller and family (Rachel Weisz is wasted in a do-nothing role as his wife) are living across the street from the gaudy uber-mansion that replaced Black's tract home, complete with a carousel on the grounds and Corinthian-styled stables for a white horse that's always getting loose and nibbling on their apple tree. When jealous Stiller accidentally kills the horse in a midnight fit of drunken archery (Black's yard also boasts a bow-and-arrow target range), he tries to hide the body with the help of a weird hobo (Christopher Walken), and hilarity is supposed to ensue.

Continue reading: Envy Review

Somewhere inside the surprisingly fresh, sharply jocular, angst-of-youth comedy "Orange County" there's a trite, typical teen movie struggling to get out. But director Jake Kasden just keeps out-witting the monster, pulling the carpet out from under its inherent clichés and giving his characters the chance to breathe and break free of their stock moldings.

A screwball affair about a bookwormy high school beach bum from the SoCal 'burbs who thinks his life is over when he doesn't get into Stanford, this flick rises above the spiritless, increasingly insipid, cookie-cutter teen genre simply because Kasden ("Zero Effect") and screenwriter Mike White ("Chuck and Buck") cared enough to try a little harder.

Played with pitch-perfect Everykid exasperation by sublimely expressive string bean Colin Hanks (son of Tom), Shaun Brumder had his heart set on pursuing his literary aspirations under the tutelage of his favorite writer, a professor at the venerated campus. So when he finds out his rejection was the fault of an inept guidance counselor (Lily Tomlin -- in the first of several inspired cameo performances) who sent the wrong transcript, Shaun goes on a dogged mission to get the decision reconsidered.

Continue reading: Orange County Review