Guess what came out in theaters today.  All About Steve, a “romantic” “comedy” starring Sandra Bullock as an loopy but endearing crossword-puzzling loser who stalks a TV anchorman.  Fox Studios’ description:

Sandra Bullock plays eccentric crossword puzzle constructor Mary Horowitz who, after one short blind date, falls for handsome cable news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper).

If I just had to review the movie based on that sentence, I would give it a bad review.  But imagine actually having to sit through a 90-minute interpretation of that sentence – you can see why reviewers would be angry.  This movie has one of the lowest scores on Rotten Tomatoes right now: 5%.  Some of the hilarious reviewer trash-throwing, ATJ:  

Chicago Tribune: “There’s nothing wrong with All About Steve that a rewrite couldn’t fix, as long as the rewrite involved a different writer, a different character and a different story.”

New York Times: “It seems incredible, but the grimly unfunny comedy All About Steve might just be the worst movie on Sandra Bullock’s résumé.”

Movie Retriever: “Easily one of the worst movies of the year (if not the decade), there is not one redeeming quality to All About Steve, an offensive film morally, socially, and to the institution of comedy.”

Los Angeles Times: “If you ever wanted to know what kind of movie plays deaf children falling into a sinkhole for laughs, look no further.”

Boston Globe: “Easily the worst movie of the week, month, year, and Bullock’s entire career. It is to comedy what leprosy once was to the island of Molokai: a plague best contemplated from many miles away.” [ed: what?]

Wow, so today marks the wide release of Harry Potter and the Who the F*ck Even Cares Anymore, a movie about wizards and demons and vampires and Austrians.  In the plot, Harry Potter, who is a wizard, fights Lord Voltron, who is a Decepticon (i.e. pro-abortion) and then afterwards he gets it on with Scarlett Johansson, a gossip elf he met at a private school party.  I won’t give away the ending but there is a very touching moment when the houses of Gryffindor and Sotomayor put aside their difference to host the most poignant David Carradine tribute concert of all.

Here is what the reviewers are saying, including… the Pope??

New York Press:  Astoundingly unimaginative, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ruins the idea of popular entertainment… one bad movie in a series is unfortunate, six amounts to a catastrophe [Daaaaamn.]

New York Observer:  The sixth and worst installment yet, is two and a half hours of paralyzing tedium, featuring another colossal waste of British talent and a plot a real witch couldn’t find with a crystal ball. The kids at Hogwarts no longer have any relevance. They have never heard of iPods, cell phones or the Internet [Fun fact: The first Harry Potter book came out the same year as Chumbaf*ckingwamba - 1997.]

Slate: In a rather drab cliffhanger of an ending, Harry and his buddies gather on a parapet to swear a solemn oath that, as God is their witness, there will be two sequels. But in spite of the plodding tone of this ante-antepenultimate chapter, there’s something touching about the Harry Potter series’ loyal love for its source material.

AMCtv.com: That Half-Blood Prince stays true to Rowling’s downbeat, morose vision is a testament to the integrity of this franchise and the fortitude of its fans. The movie is quiet, graceful and restrained.

Mixed reviews!

But perhaps the most powerful film critic in the world, Pope Benedict XVI, has spoken as well:

The Vatican’s own newspaper L’Osservatore Romano lauded Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, insisting it is the best adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s hugely successful books so far. And it even insisted the teenage love scenes – with the main characters all kissing in the film – achieved the “correct balance” in creating a credible story for the audience.

The Vatican added that the movie was positive as it showed that to overcome evil, it “sometimes requires costs and sacrifice.”

Oh, the Vatican, always endearingly behind the times.  Finally embracing Harry Potter now that the rest of the world thinks the series is played-out crap.

Tonight at midnight marks the wide theatrical release of Transformers 2: Megan Fox, the sequel to the movie Transformers 1: Sure, Why Not.  Most major reviews are in already.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen as many reviewers have as much fun writing about a movie as I have here: “It’s like being hit over the head repeatedly with a very expensive, very loud train set.”  Most of the reviews feature an analogy between the viewing experience and being abused with an appliance.  The funniest Transformers metaphors, after the jump.  Watching this movie is…  

“…like standing in the middle of a dust storm and opening your eyes to let the grit pour in.” (CinemaBlend)

“…like watching someone else play a video game for two-and-a-half hours.” (DigitalSpy)

“…like Bay’s attempt to outdo virtually every action set piece of the past three decades at the same time, and that’s sort of a reason to love him: his ambition runs a mile long and an inch deep. Remember the scene in The Dark Knightwhere Batman goes to Hong Kong? Well, what if that scene, like, had Transformers in it? Or the climax of Titanic, where the upended ship bobs vertically in the water as passengers hang on for dear life? Hanging Transformers would make that much better.” (Cinematical)

“…like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan.” (The Guardian)

The Awl wins the award for Most Elaborate Transformers-Watching Conceit: “Have you ever fallen into a city-sized Cuisinart that is grinding its way through a vast Chinese scrap metal field and had your face abraded with shards of aluminum and eyelash-size scraps of rusty torn iron, so all the skin is peeling off your face, your delicate nose-bones being flayed by grinding gear bits and yesterday’s shredded microchips and at the same time that song “Citizen Soldier” from the National Guard commercials is blaring at top volume, and somewhere in the distance you can see that “The Hurt Locker” is screening for no good reason and there is sand inside what remains of your teeth and then Megan Fox float-flounces by (like the cow in “Twister”!) with her nipples nearly pouring out of her crop-top camisole…”

Bruno premiered last night in London, and some early reviews are in.  Using the reviews, I’ve put together a list of the outrageous scenes you’ll see in the movie.  It has…

• An attempted seduction of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, which finds him and Bruno in a hotel room and only one of them wearing pants.
• A romp through the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in Hasidic-style hotpants that ends with an angry mob chase.
• Bruno complimenting an evangelist preacher on his “blowjob lips.”
• Stage moms consenting to let Bruno dress their children as Nazis.

And then there’s “one of the most horrific incidents ever committed to celluloid”…  

• That would be a sex scene between Bruno and his midget ex-boyfriend, enlivened by “fire extinguishers, champagne bottles and mechanically adapted fitness equipment.”
• More: A very insulting charity musical number, sung with Chris Martin, Elton John, Bono, and Snoop Dogg.
• Paula Abdul and LaToya Jackson eating sushi off a naked Mexican gardener.
• Bruno on a Springer-style show getting his adopted African baby (dressed in a shirt that says “Gayby”) taken from him.
• Fellatio of the ghost of a dead member of Milli Vanilli in front of a psychic at a seance.
• A cage fight in red Arkansas that ends with the wrestlers kissing and the audience hostile.

“The biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler” got arrested in three different continents while making the film.  The reviews also agree that the film is more shocking that Borat.

Sources: BBC, The Sun, London Standard, The Guardian.

Blackout humor is a little played out, so I was skeptical when I first saw a trailer for The Hangover, the bachelor party in Vegas blackout comedy that’s in theaters today.  What happened last night?  I lost a tooth!  OMG where did this baby come from?  Where did this tiger come from??  Where did this Mike Tyson come from???  Where’s the groom?!!

And yet I laughed, at each one of the like a dozen trailers that the studio has flung at viewers of the types of TV shows I view.  Here’s what reviewers are saying:  

The short of it: it’s crude but also smart and Zach Galifianakis makes the movie:

Salon:  ”Galifianakis — whose mischievously oblique humor, including the strange online ads he’s done for Absolut vodka, have made him a sort-of sensation — is the trampoline against which nearly every joke bounces. His Alan is surly, temperamental, but also at times incredibly innocent, a wooly naif in a sloppy T-shirt.”

The Baltimore Sun doesn’t like it: “But like everything else in the film, the scene is the equivalent of vaudevillians smacking each other in the head and groin with rubber chickens.”  [So it's funny, then?]

The Philadelphia Inquirer:  ”I’m going to say, at the risk of doing time in the blurbitentiary, that “The Hangover” is the “Citizen Kane” of bachelor party movies.  No, it won’t be studied in film schools 50 years hence, but if Orson Welles drank a gallon of Paul Masson and made a “What Happens in Vegas” comedy, he might come up with something like this clever pastiche of mystery and narrative reconstruction.”

The London Free Press: “If all goes well, The Hangover should be a career-altering movie for many in the cast, but especially for Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis.”

And The New York Times, of course, says, “Sure, you’ll enjoy the movie.  But what does it say about you?  What does it say… about us?”  Freud is mentioned: “Mike Tyson shows up to sing along with a Phil Collins song. Mr. Galifianakis is tasered. So are the other two. By schoolchildren on a field trip. Have I ruined anything? No, I’ve just whetted your appetite.  But true to its title, “The Hangover” goes down smoothly enough and then kicks you in the head later on, when you start to examine the sources of your laughter.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Though it is only released today in a limited number of cinemas, mostly in big cities, the much-talked-about porn-star-acting-as-call-girl crossover flick The Girlfriend Experience does indeed hit theaters today.  In honor of that, we at F-Listed would like you to join us in joyous celebration of… HOOKER APPRECIATION DAY!  Secretaries have an appreciation day.  So do Moms.  Yet has no one thought to honor those other most important women – or perhaps most important “other women” – in our lives?

To you practicing the world’s oldest profession, the most basic yet most difficult yet most crucial job in society at times, today we thank you, prostitutes.  Keep it here at F-Listed for more prostitute-themed content over the course of the day.

First, a review roundup of the movie itself. 

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A:

Shot during the early days of the economic crisis, The Girlfriend Experience is a mysterious and arresting look at how the culture of money turns love and desire into something you want to control. The escort, Chelsea, is played by Sasha Grey, a real-life adult-video star who is not so much a natural actress as a natural-born placid, affectless Barbie doll (imagine Eliot Spitzer consort 
Ashley Dupré with a touch of Demi Moore).

The Boston Globe is also positive:

The dark joke of “The Girlfriend Experience” is that to be alive in early-21st-century America is to be a hustler, and to be a hustler is to be both maxed out and hooked on the dream. Not exactly a new idea (nor does it pretend to be), but the shoe fits. Chelsea’s customers are upscale professional men – slick Euro financiers, neurotic screenwriters, everyone but Eliot Spitzer – and they talk to her of job pressures and economic woes. Whatever this movie is, it’s not a turn-on; the sex, when we see it, feels perfunctory, as if these men don’t want to admit they’re actually paying for therapy.

New York is two ways about it, recognizing its merits but ultimately distracted by its failings:

It’s a desperate limbo—everyone is selling, few are buying. But most of the dialogue is listless, and no matter how much Soderbergh snips and stitches, the movie is a corpse with twitching limbs. It’s rare to watch actors who appear to be improvising (badly) and yet manage so often to step on one another’s lines. The suspense is minuscule: Will Chelsea find love with a client she barely knows or be dashed against the rocks? (Three guesses.)

And finally, another ambivalent, two-star review in Orlando Weekly:

“With her flat affect, lack of culture and utter refusal to engage, Chelsea couldn’t even dazzle the likes of Forrest F*cking Gump.” It’s a damaging review for Chelsea, but the problem is that it’s true about Grey herself, even more so than Chelsea. Grey is less convincing as her character than most porn stars are at faking orgasm.

Note that while I’ve tried to cut the good with the bad, Rotten Tomatoes has this film at a 70%, which means it’s definitely worth your time.

Green Day’s “21st Century Breakdown” is out today.  What are critics saying?  That its tremendous and huge and smart and angry and just pretty wow.  Most of the reviews, a bit unfairly I think, adopt the angle of, hey how crazy is it that that band that made that song about masturbating a dozen years ago became the best band in the world?  I mean, that’s how the lifespans of major music artists work.  Responding to the times, growing and learning, and such.

Hopefully the ejaculatory reviews were prompted by this being a timeless album rather than just relief at a good album when music at large straight sucks today.  Just because everyone makes that complaint doesn’t mean it’s not true.  Critical opinions, ATJ.

Rolling Stone: “They revitalize the whole idea of big-deal rock stars with something to say about the real world. They’re keeping promises they never even made, promises left behind by all the high-minded Nineties bands that fell apart along the way.”

San Jose Mercury News: “Greatest rock band in the world.”

LA Times: “The worst parts of “American Idiot” are gone. There’s nothing that tops the nine-minute mark here. Green Day has learned one needn’t have a mini, multi-part epic to pull off an epic album. There’s tempo and thematic shifts in the space of a song, sure, but nothing like the drastic turns of “American Idiot’s” “Jesus of Suburbia.” While instantly telegraphing the band’s ambitions, in hindsight it’s a tune that’s better to admire than actually enjoy.”

MTV.com: “And 21st Century Breakdown encompasses all that: the confusion, the skepticism, the horror and the hope. That it makes no judgments is its — and Armstrong’s — greatest accomplishment. Because, really, how can anyone judge the past 10 years?”

At this point, Bob Dylan could release a CD of duets with Fergie and it wouldn’t particularly damage his reputation – he’s probably the most untouchable musician in the world.  But when he releases an album, critical standards for judging it are already very high, higher than even those used on other legends from the era of jukeboxes and penis plaster casts.  (I think Dylan is expected to be new, if not fresh, on every CD in a way that a band like the Rolling Stones are not.)  Together Through Life, Dylan’s latest, is on store shelves today.  I’ve compiled the consensus from a few major critics below. 

The LA Times gives it four stars: “both tossed off and carefully designed to feel that way.”

The Chicago Tribune is a bit harsher, ranking it in the “middle tier” of Dylan’s late work.  “‘Less a grand picture than a grainy snapshot of an artist between stations.”

Rolling Stone agrees: “a mixed bag of this decade’s Dylan.”

“Musically, this is quite a trip through the United States of Americana,” enthuses the HuffPo. “It’s always nice to hear a musical pioneer just relax and apply that thing he or she knows best.”

The NYT cops out wisely, going more for the poetry analysis route rather than the thumbs up/thumbs down verdict.  “The songs on Together Through Life are about love, but not its redemptive qualities. They suggest that love is sweet and quaint and exciting and even necessary, but not good for you.”