Let me quickly put one thing out there, and you can feel free to agree or disagree: Will Ferrell is an incredibly funny guy.

I know, he has his detractors. But, if you think about it, all the great screen comedians – the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Chevy Chase, uh, Rob Schneider – had ‘em, too, and that didn’t stop any of them (well, maybe Schneider) from still doing everything in their power to make people laugh, even if some folks just simply refused to ever find them funny. There’s an art to what guys like Ferrell do, and of everyone working in comedy today, he’s one of the most charismatic and naturally talented guys out there.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, but it’s one that I stand behind without hesitation – the still-funny SNL “cowbell” sketch and the entire movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy have made me laugh as hard as anything I’ve ever seen. And this week, I’m very much looking forward to catching Ferrell in Semi-Pro, which is looking more and more like an R-rated throwback to the great raunchy sports comedies of yore – a Slap Shot or Longest Yard for our generation, but with more bear-wrestling and orgy gags. Chances are it won’t live up to those classics, but if the raunchy-sports-comedy genre has taught me anything over the years, it’s that a beer-guzzling underachiever like me can dream, at least, can’t he?

One thing the film has in its favor is that Ferrell is a sports-comedy veteran by now, having taken on everything from NASCAR racing to figure skating in the last couple of years. My favorite Ferrell sports comedy, however, is a movie that had no business being as entertaining as it was: the formulaic and derivative, yet somehow still hilarious, PG soccer comedy Kicking and Screaming.

Executive produced by Judd Apatow – before he was quite the movie-comedy wunderkind he’s become – the movie wraps a pile of bad news kiddie sports comedy clichés around some choice Ferrell bits aimed squarely at his adult audience. It’s ostensibly a family film, and there is plenty in it for the elementary school set to enjoy, but its sense of humor is ruder and more in line with Ferrell’s SNL/Funny or Die-type material than you’d ever expect. And, hey, it’s got Mike Ditka in a supporting role – you can’t not love that.

Ferrell stars as a pushover family man whose father (Robert Duvall, enjoyably slumming it) is one of those hardass, uber-competitive guys who’s made life a living hell for his never-good-enough son. Ferrell’s own young son Sam (Dylan McLaughlin) warms the bench on the undefeated peewee soccer team his grandpa coaches; tired of seeing his boy suffer the same athletic humiliations his father inflicted on him, Ferrell ends up coaching Sam when he’s traded to a ragtag, last-place team.

The tykes on the team are cute enough, and cover all the usual kiddie sports flick clichés (you know, the fat kid, the diminutive Asian kid, etc.), but Kicking and Screaming is savvy in the way it shifts its focus to Ferrell, who starts out as one of those “winning isn’t everything” kind of guys, then gets nastier and more competitive as the film goes on – at one point, he even flips out on Ditka (playing himself, as Ferrell’s celebrity assistant coach) in a rant about juiceboxes that’s easily the highlight of the movie.

The plot grunts and strains under the weight of its well-worn premise – you just know Ferrell’s team and Duvall’s are going to meet up for the “big game” in act three – but it’s the unexpected edges (like the caffeine addiction Ferrell’s character develops after Ditka buys him his first-ever cup of coffee) that make it a lot more fun than it should be. I’ve got to give Duvall some props, too, since he rarely appears in anything this frivolous – unlike his Godfather co-star James Caan – but seems to have a blast playing a pompous jerk that makes his browbeating character from The Great Santini seem like a pretty easygoing guy.

If, essentially, Kicking and Screaming is nothing but a Bad News Bears remake with a wackier star and a touch more political correctness, then so be it – again, it’s funnier than it has any right to be, and works best as a vehicle for Ferrell to explore his various forms of inspired goofiness.

If you hate the guy, this isn’t the movie that’s going to warm you up to him (try Stranger Than Fiction for that), but if you feel the same way I do, the laughs are definitely there.

More of a rough-edged, 70s-style cop flick than the gangster epic it was promoted as, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster is a consistently entertaining – occasionally stunning – movie built around two fine performances and a handful of scenes as electric as anything you’d see in an urban drama by Scorsese or Sidney Lumet.

The only problem is, it takes a little longer than it should to give up the goods.

Marred by a slow, shaky and narratively muddled first act – which certainly isn’t helped by the additional 18 minutes of footage included in the DVD’s “Extended Unrated Edition” – the film eventually establishes a compelling, energetic groove in its parallel stories of Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and downtrodden cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe).

Washington is spot-on, as usual, as Lucas, who’s expectedly ruthless and calculating but also possesses a highly developed business sense, values loyalty and integrity, and sees himself as something of a man of the people. Inspired by his mentor, Harlem gangster “Bumpy” Johnson (Clarence Williams III), Frank goes to dangerous lengths to set up an unprecedented heroin-importing operation, buying uncut product from Southeast Asia’s opium-rich Golden Triangle during the Vietnam War and shrewdly using his military connections to ship it home. Determined to run his own business on his own terms, he begins seriously undercutting his rivals – selling better dope at better prices – and thereby secures his place at the top of New York’s criminal underworld.

Roberts, meanwhile, ends up shunned by his mostly-corrupt department when he refuses to keep nearly a million dollars in illicitly obtained cash; his personal life also in a shambles, he throws himself into a last-ditch gig heading up a ragtag (but honest) drug-enforcement squad tasked with locating the source of the ultra-pure “Blue Magic” heroin that’s begun flooding the streets.

Both of these stories provide enough juice to keep the film cranking along, but Scott and writer Steven Zaillian frustratingly take their time in getting things rolling and, worse, don’t really let us inside Frank’s head until after he’s returned from the Golden Triangle with his plans already in place. Once American Gangster finds its focus, however, it’s riveting almost through to the end, covering everything from Frank’s relationship with his devout mother (Oscar-nominated Ruby Dee) to Richie’s run-ins with a brutal unit of on-the-take cops (led by an especially surly Josh Brolin) while never losing sight of the escalating violence and disloyalty that put Frank and Richie on an unavoidable collision course with each other.

Their meeting comes fairly late, and those expecting Crowe and Washington to share a ton of screen time will likely be disappointed. But American Gangster does a better job than most films of bouncing back-and-forth between both sides of the law, as absorbing in its scenes of Frank’s rise to dominance of the Harlem drug trade as it is in those of Richie and his team’s ill-supported attempts to find out who’s running it. The sequences taking a Scorsese-like approach to the day-to-day operations of Frank’s business are particularly well-done and realistic; a late-in-the-game raid on a dingy New Jersey drug lab is as tense and well-directed an action scene as anything in Scott’s canon. Scott and Zaillian also conjure up some unexpectedly powerful scenes from Frank and Richie’s personal lives, revealing both as fleshed-out, flawed characters with well-defined codes of honor but imperfect consciences backing them up.

Crowe again impresses in a damaged, gritty, blue-collar kind of role, and the film features an excellent and appealing roster of supporting actors, including the great Chiwetel Ejiofor (Washington’s police partner from Spike Lee’s Inside Man), Cuba Gooding, Jr., Ted Levine, Common, John Hawkes, Armand Assante, RZA, and Joe Morton. They’re complimented by some very strong cinematography and production design that effectively recreates 70s Harlem from the glamour of the historic Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier fight to the gut-wrenching squalor of drug-soaked slums.

For all it does right, though, American Gangster doesn’t quite have the scope or the visceral impact – not to mention the completely satisfying resolution – to put it on the level of its genre’s well-known classics. It’s a notch below Serpico and The French Connection, and at least two below Goodfellas, but those are big shoes to fill, and this is still a better American crime epic than anyone has made in a while. The film went through a number of stars and directors before ending up in Washington, Crowe, and Scott’s hands, but it ended up being a successful and enjoyable showcase for all three of them.

ON DVD: American Gangster makes its debut on disc in a couple of nicely rounded-out sets, both of which include the original theatrical version (running two hours and 38 minutes) and the “Extended Unrated Edition” (running two hours and 57 minutes) – myself, I’d stick with the shorter version, but it is pretty cool to have both. The two-disc special edition also includes two additional deleted scenes, a five-part behind-the-scenes documentary, and a three-part “Case Files” documentary discussing the film’s nods to realism in its drug-bust sequences; the three-disc Collector’s Edition also throws in two music videos, a featurette focusing on the several hip hop artists that have roles in the film, two music videos, TV segments from BET and NBC on the making of the film, and a digital copy of the Extended Unrated Edition.

Ever since I first saw his Goldilocks-inspired music video for Bjork’s "Human Behavior," I knew that Michel Gondry was a filmmaker I had to keep an eye on.

I'm happy to say that, in the fifteen (!) years since he unleashed that visually daring, ingeniously funny, and just-a-touch creepy five-minute clip on an unsuspecting public, Gondry hasn’t disappointed me once. His feature films – and you knew right away that he’d eventually earn the status to be able to make some – are some of the most inventive comedies I’ve ever seen, from the zany and way too little-seen Human Nature to the more emotionally powerful (though still pretty damn funny) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep.

So I can forgive the guy if he seems to be regressing a bit with this week’s Be Kind Rewind, maybe his most mainstream movie to date – especially since it stars the ever-reliable Jack Black and Mos Def, and features a premise so totally, ridiculously goofy that you’ve just got to appreciate it (it involves Black and Mos making half-assed low-budget versions of all the blockbusters at Mos’s video store, after Black accidentally becomes magnetized and erases all his tapes).

Both a paean to the fondly remembered VHS era (isn’t it sad that our kids will never know the joyful torture of rewinding a two-hour-plus tape or “adjusting the tracking” on the VCR) and an excuse for Gondry to gently lampoon some of our favorite movies, it ought to be a blast. What’s also pretty cool about the film is that it reunites Gondry with rapper/actor Mos Def, who previously appeared in the director’s concert documentary Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.

Made at the height of Chappelle’s popularity in 2004, Block Party was intended not only as a hip-hop concert doc – featuring acts like The Roots, Kanye West, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, and the briefly reunited Fugees – but also as the comedian’s attempt to reconnect with the regular folks after two tv seasons of being uncomfortably super-famous. Being that it was a free concert for everyone who attended – and that Chappelle, who pops in for comedy bits here and there, seems like he’s having the time of his life throughout – he seems to have been pretty successful on both fronts.

As a film, Block Party is a little bit scattershot, but fun and energetic nonetheless. Along with performance footage from the Block Party, we get to see Dave inviting some clueless Ohioans to join him in Brooklyn Bed-Stuy neighborhood for the show; some relaxed backstage moments where he talks and jokes and even plays some music with the assembled performers; even a tour of the reclaimed warehouse adjacent to the concert site, owned by a pair of friendly, highly eccentric old hippies who are happy to show Chappelle around (though we never do get to meet the pet cheetah they claim to have in there).

The actual performance footage is top-notch, though Gondry cuts away from the stage more than some hardcore fans might like him to. Still, there are some pretty powerful musical moments here – from Kanye West performing "Jesus Walks" with a college marching band backing him up to a politically charged bout of wordplay from the underappreciated Dead Prez – and they’re all capped off with Lauryn Hill’s breathtaking rendition of the Fugees’ signature cover "Killing Me Softly" (maybe worth seeing the movie for in itself).

One of the things Gondry really nails is capturing Chappelle’s personality – though the comedian’s goofy side always shines through (dude sure can tell a yo’ momma joke), you really get the sense after seeing Block Party that he’s a true man of the people; late in the film, he calls the concert the best day of his career, and it’s hard not to believe him. Block Party, of course, was made before Chappelle famously abandoned his Comedy Central series and fled to Africa to get out of the limelight, and it’s a further reminder of how talented he was before he essentially retreated from the public eye for good – though I still hold out hope for another sketch comedy series somewhere down the line.

At any rate, Block Party is a great little concert movie, and it’s also proof that Gondry’s got a lot more up his sleeve than quirky, visually dazzling comedies. As always, I can’t want to see what he does next.

Every Valentine’s Day needs a killer date movie at the box office, and this year the seriocomic romance Definitely, Maybe looks to be the flick for the job.

That makes me happy for two reasons: one, the movie is shaping up to be a lot better than mediocre past V-Day hits like Hitch and The Wedding Singer; and two, since it stars Ryan Reynolds, it gives me a chance in this column to highlight his last movie, which I haven’t been able to get out of my head since I saw it a few weeks back.

That film, The Nines, has Reynolds playing three roles, and is the directorial debut of screenwriter John August – a guy who not only has penned some really terrific movies (Big Fish, which he adapted from a Daniel Wallace novel, is one of my all-time favorites), but also maintains possibly the best screenwriting blog in existence, at http://www.johnaugust.com/. As is probably glaringly obvious, I’m a pretty big fan, but even I was sort of taken aback by just how original and ambitious – and, definitely, divisive – his first effort behind the camera ended up being.

Let me get the standard disclaimer out of the way first: The Nines is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it kind of movie, and its final twist is either going to leave you breathlessly in awe or so angry you’ll be chucking things at your TV. I fell pretty squarely into the former camp, though, and I think for anyone willing to accept the film’s unconventional style, puzzling narrative, and surprisingly insistent spiritual and psychological undercurrents, it’s bound to leave a lasting impression. Oh, and don’t worry – it’s also about as entertaining as a metaphysical head-scratcher could ever possibly be.

To be as vague as possible (and, trust me, with this one you’ll want me to be), The Nines encompasses a trio of stories bound together by connections that aren’t fully revealed until the end. In the first, Reynolds plays the burnt-out star of a CSI-like TV crime drama, who suffers a drug-fueled breakdown and ends up confined – under strictly enforced house arrest – to a rented mansion where he must contend with his uber-cheery but take-no-prisoners publicist (Melissa McCarthy), a flirtatious neighbor (Hope Davis), and a growing feeling that either the house is haunted or he’s completely losing his mind.

The second story, framed as a faux reality show, casts Reynolds as a thinly-veiled version of August, a young, gay, in-demand Hollywood writer struggling to bring a television pilot to the screen while a camera crew follows him around, documenting his efforts for a behind-the-scenes reality series.

In the final segment, he’s the designer of an exceedingly popular World of Warcraft-like massively multiplayer video game, who gets stranded in the woods while vacationing with his family and meets a mysterious – maybe dangerous – woman while trying to call for help.

McCarthy, Davis, and a handful of other actors – like The Office’s David Denman – show up playing different characters in all three segments, and in each August drops tantalizing clues as to what, exactly, the film’s title refers to (it’s along the lines of an old Pixies lyric you might remember, but that’s as much as I’ll say). The final explanation, when The Nines finally arrives at it, is beautifully handled, less a Usual Suspects-esque pulling out of the rug than a poignant revelation that perfectly ties together the film’s recurring themes of creation and self-identity.

Again, though, it’s to August’s credit that the film remains fun, intriguing, and amusing even though it’s clearly got some really big ideas on its mind; he’s got a way with sharp dialogue and keep-you-guessing plotting, and even when the captivating weirdness subsides for long stretches of screen time, you still care about what’s happening to the characters. The supporting cast is superb – especially McCarthy, a friend of August’s who plays herself in segment two – but, really, it’s Reynolds who carries the whole enterprise; if you’ve only seen him in silly comedies like his breakthrough film, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, you’ll surely be impressed with the range and depth he displays here.

Despite Reynolds’ growing popularity, though, I’m not surprised that The Nines wasn’t released to a lot of fanfare – even August himself said he expected it to find its audience on dvd. I think that’s definitely true, and that this is exactly the kind of movie that’s eventually going to win over an enthusiastic cult of appreciators and join that esteemed group of cinematic head trips (Pi, Primer, Donnie Darko, etc.) set to fuel heated film-geek discussions for years to come.

A quick note: This column went to press before the abysmal reviews for 'Fool's Gold' started showing up... if what the critics are saying is true, you'll definitely want to stick with the older flick this time around.

They say you can’t please everybody, but if you’re Hollywood, sometimes it pays to try.

Take this week’s release Fool’s Gold, for instance. The movie, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, is half romantic comedy, half treasure-hunt action/adventure – think of it as the cinematic equivalent of those chocolate-covered potato chips you can buy at the candy store in the mall (though ingesting a print of Fool’s Gold would probably be a little less damaging to your arteries and digestive system).

It’s not an easy combination of genres to pull off, but it has been done before; and when things align just right – a skilled director, a fun but not brain-dead script, a solid star pairing, etc. – the results can be both hugely entertaining and highly profitable. After all, what other kind of movie can satisfy both the sappy types and the adrenaline junkies in the audience at the same time?

We’ll see if Fool’s Gold has that special something, and if McConaughey can generate the sparks with Hudson that he didn’t with his Sahara co-star Penelope Cruz. If so, the movie might end up being a worthy update of its obvious inspiration: Robert Zemeckis’s 1984 action/rom-com Romancing the Stone.

Less dated than you might think, the Kathleen Turner/Michael Douglas blockbuster – like Zemeckis’s subsequent film, Back to the Future – is a classic of the VHS era, a high-concept crowd-pleaser that prioritizes pure entertainment value over pretty much everything else. It’s a movie that promises romance, action, and comedy, and actually delivers on all fronts without ever seeming like it’s laboring too hard to do so.

Turner, far removed from her sexy star-making performance in Body Heat, plays mousy romance novelist Joan Wilder, highly successful writer of racy adventure stories that presumably set old ladies’ hearts all aflutter. Her own personal life is far less steamy and dramatic, aside from some concerns about her sister (Mary Ellen Trainor), who’s gotten caught up in some intrigue in Columbia. Things finally turn exciting for Joan when she receives a treasure map in the mail from her recently murdered brother-in-law – and is then contacted by kidnappers claiming they’ll kill her sister if she doesn’t fly down to Columbia and return the map to them (don’t ask me why she couldn’t just stick it back in the mail).

Down in Columbia, Joan ends up stranded in the jungle thanks to some unfriendly locals and the machinations of two distinct sets of bad guys: the bumbling American kidnappers (Zack Norman and Danny DeVito) and a villainous local named Zolo (Manuel Ojeda) who commands a private army of henchmen. What’s a rich, uptight girl from Manhattan to do? Why, be rescued by a brave and dashing hero, of course – though instead she ends up with stubbly mercenary-type Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas), a swaggering smuggler who demands she pay him to take her to safety. Of course, he eventually transforms into a pretty decent guy, Joan learns to kick a little ass of her own, and the two fall in love while seeking out the treasure and foiling kidnappers, drug runners, corrupt cops, etc.

If the plot sounds ridiculous, that’s sort of the point – the movie is quite clearly supposed to resemble one of Joan’s overblown novels come to life. What makes it work, and work well, are strong characterizations, a generous helping of zippy action scenes, and a winning sense of humor that draws from classic Hollywood romantic comedies without feeling old-fashioned. Turner and Douglas, both of whom have aged a lot since this film’s release, are a terrific screen couple, cute and charismatic and even convincing enough during shoot-outs and jeep chases and the obligatory “over the waterfall” sequence. DeVito makes a pretty entertaining third wheel, as well.

Zemeckis shows his characteristic flair for fast-moving, visually spectacular setpieces, but also gives Turner and Douglas plenty of room for playful romantic squabbling – he’s smart to recall classic screwball comedy as much as he does the Indiana Jones franchise.
Neither he nor debuting screenwriter Diane Thomas (who, sadly, passed away shortly after this film script was produced) had a hand in the quickly-produced sequel, Jewel of the Nile, and it’s inferior in almost every way.

While definitely starting to show its age a little, though, Romancing the Stone remains a pleasing and altogether harmless throwback to a simpler era when a PG-rated movie could include a visible nipple in its opening scene and a crocodile biting off a man’s arm in its finale.

It’s also a very rare example of a movie that aimed to please two very different audiences and didn’t disappoint either of them.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for both better and worse, is not your run-of-the-mill costume drama.

Not that it doesn’t feature plenty of fancy period garb – costume designer Alexandra Byrne clearly worked some overtime here, and her Academy Award nomination is well-deserved – but the film, rather than being a stuffy, literate affair, is instead a fast-paced, flashy, sweeping period piece that mostly foregoes both long-winded discourse and historical precision. As such, it’s a lot more fun than your average cinematic dip into British history, though sticklers for detail (and, for the most part, dialogue) will almost surely be disappointed.Cate Blanchett, an Oscar hopeful herself, easily jumps back into the royal role she originated in 1998’s Elizabeth, though the Queen here is an older, much more practiced ruler than we saw before. It’s a good thing, too, since The Golden Age catches up with her during a particularly trying time; as Spain’s Catholic King Phillip II (Jordi Mollá) plots against her – with her imprisoned cousin Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) a key part of his cunning strategy to invade England – she also finds herself desperate to find a proper suitor and produce an heir. One possible solution to the problems posed by the looming Spanish Armada and to Elizabeth’s own biological clock is represented by the dashing seafarer Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), who shows up to appeal to the Queen’s repressed sense of adventure in order to secure funding for a colony in the New World. Of course, Elizabeth can’t actually settle down with the handsome, non-royal Raleigh (though they surely spend a lot more “cuddle time” together in the film than they did in real life) but he does prove to be a fine man to have around when the greatest fleet of ships ever assembled shows up at Britain’s back door, cannons a-blazing.

That climactic sequence, and many scenes that come before it, speak to the film’s rich visual splendor; there isn’t a corner cut or a detail overlooked in the fussed-over shot compositions, the meticulous production design, or the previously mentioned costuming. Blanchett is pretty radiant, too, and still lends the role the gravity it deserves – except for an immature outburst or two that seems forced and out-of-character. But, again, that might be more the fault of the filmmakers, who are confident to let The Golden Age play out as operatic melodrama rather than serious historical filmmaking. Only a few elements – like a sniveling Catholic conspirator played by Rhys Ifans – come off as way over-the-top, but in all its bluster the film really does miss a lot of opportunities for small, engaging moments (Geoffrey Rush, as Elizabeth’s military mastermind Francis Walsingham, feels especially neglected).

Overall, though, Elizabeth: The Golden Age succeeds where many other period pieces fail: it’s actually entertaining. That’s not a small accomplishment, and this film does have a lot to offer to the more accepting audience.

DVD features include the behind-the-scenes documentary The Reign Continues, an in-depth look at the creation of the climactic ship battle scenes, featurettes on the film’s locations and production design, nine minutes of deleted scenes, and commentary with director Shekhar Kapur.