Omar Epps

But forget about September 11th for a moment and consider this: Is there ever a good time to release a film that endorses bribing airline personal for tickets to carry a suitcase containing a ticking nuclear bomb onto a plane? The answer is easy. Pre- or post-September 11th, there is no appropriate time for a comedy this poorly conceived. Big Trouble is irresponsible filmmaking; it doesn't even justify the space for an explanation. But since reviews are my business, let me try to sort out this movie's mess.

Continue reading: Big Trouble Review

Jeff Collins (Omar Epps) is a recent Police Academy graduate. His first assignment is to infiltrate the city's largest narcotics ring and take down druglord Dwayne "God" Giddens (LL Cool J). In order to get close enough to God and make an arrest, Collins [alter ego J. Reed] is forced to plunge further and further into criminal activity himself. Clashes with the Captain (Stanley Tucci) over crossing the line between effective undercover work and unjustifiable violence, and a love affair (Nia Long), are mandatory sub-plots in the formulaic script. Every element of the story is underdeveloped and flat, none providing additional value or even distraction. It's too bad that Omar Epps' solid performance is buried almost as deeply as the pool queue God uses to torture a victim during one of his outbreaks.

Continue reading: In Too Deep Review

An inspired labor of love about sports and romance in which the female lead is an athlete, too, "Love and Basketball" is one for the "why didn't anybody think of this before?" file.

For decades, the women in sports movies have to settle for being glorified cheerleaders while the men took all the glory as athletic heroes of various varieties. But writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood sets this picture in the world of college basketball where the couple in question (played by Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan) are both gifted ball players.

It's an idea whose time has definitely come, and what's more it makes for swell dramatic conflict since Quincy (Epps) has it easy as a heavily-recruited wunderkind and Monica (Lathan) is frustrated in her second-string role on the school's much-neglected women's team.

Continue reading: Love & Basketball Review

In its first five minutes "The Wood" looks likeit's going to be a breaking-the-fourth-wall disaster, as Omar Epps ("TheMod Squad") narrates to camera, explainingto the audience that it's two hours and ticking until his best buddy'snuptials and the groom is AWOL.

Epps is not a good narrator -- at least at first. He lookslike he missed a rehearsal and has been stuck reading cue cards.

But the day is saved with the entrance of Richard T. Jones("Event Horizon"), as another groomsman who helpsEpps find their cold-footed friend (Taye Diggs) and talk him back to thealter.

Continue reading: The Wood Review

Playing an inveterate womanizer as a sympathetic hero didn't work especially well for Michael Caine in 1966's "Alfie." He was Oscar-nominated for the performance, but his title character was a misogynistic, egomaniacal cad -- taking advantage of vulnerable women, then disposing of them offhandedly. Even when a vague health problem became a plot point meant to turn his life around, there was still nothing redeemable about the jerk.

On the other hand, in this year's "Alfie" remake, the irresistible Jude Law plays a more credibly charismatic and playful playboy whose contented superficiality steadily gives way to emerging self-awareness and perceptible depth -- which surprises even Alfie himself.

As the wily rake admits -- frankly, charmingly and direct-to-camera -- his concurrent affairs with a bevy of Manhattan beauties are a product of good looks, practiced flattery, an upscale metrosexual wardrobe, his English accent and the fact that he drives a limo.

Continue reading: Alfie Review