Based on the children’s book of the same name by Chris Allsburg (who also wrote JUMANJI and THE POLAR EXPRESS), ZATHURA is a board game that propels two squabbling brothers, 6-year old Walter (Jonah Bobo) and 10-year old Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and their house into the reaches of outer space.  As this is a children’s rather than family film, director Favreau leads the film to its logical conclusion – brothers make up and the kids return back home. 

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the diorama at the Museum of Natural History in New York is a disturbing yet grandiose image that subtly has an impounding effect on 16-year old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) when he first viewed it with his mother, Joan (Laura Linney).  The viewing experience is an unforgettable one as are quite a few of the other images director Noah Baumbach indulges on the screen.  One is a silent scene of Linney glancing down the stairs at her son, Walt, longing for her son’s approval and understanding for what wrong she had done, while he stares up disapprovingly. But just as startling are shots of Walt’s younger 12-year old brother Frank (Owen Kline) downing a beer or a glass of hard liquor.

Shane Black’s (writer of THE LAST BOY SCOUT and LETHAL WEAPON 2) feature directorial debut is a smart-***censored*** but enjoyable flick based on paperback gumshoes stuck in a puzzling case.  The dick here is Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) who also happens to be gay by nature.  All the action begins at an L.A. party where the audience is informed how Gay, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) and a doll by the name of Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) got to get invited in the first place. Though the story takes place in 4 days (with titles to go along with them), anything can happen and occasionally does. 

In the 50’s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, the powerful chairman of the House of Un-American Activities Committee is at its height of his relenting campaign of ridding America of the ‘Red Menace’.  George Clooney’s (in the director’s chair for the second time after CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND) labor of love, a careful and detailed study of dedicated journalism sets out to prove that McCarthy is the true menace and that it is he that should be removed from such a dangerous position.

In Mike Judge’s seminal comedy OFFICE SPACE, Peter and his Initech cronies usually chill at a theme restaurant that is staffed by overly perky waiters who push jalapeno poppers and fill their suspenders with flair, much to the chagrin of the customers. It was an amusing scene in that film, and WAITING, a very OFFICE SPACE-like comedy, stretches that idea out to a brisk nineties minutes, and while it never reaches the comedic highs of OFFICE SPACE, the perversely low-brow WAITING is a funny little diversion in it’s own right that while never too clever, is filled with enough dick-and-fart jokes to keep a constant chuckle going.