Heading to the movies this weekend? Find out what's worth your time according to the top women film critics at the nation's best publications. Every Friday morning we'll give you the female perspective on what to expect when the curtain rises.


A note about the links: Some sites require registration or are for paid subscribers, and some links are good for a limited time only.



Ocean's Twelve
Stars: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Rating: PG-13

You might think female film critics would run screaming in the other direction from such a testosterone-laden caper flick ‑- even more so than they might from one of those mindless action movies ‑- but this one drew their attention instead. The New York Times's Manohla Dargis even likes the thing. Well, at least she finds it "enjoyable," despite also having a "criminally underdone plot and smog of self-satisfaction." New York Daily News critic Jami Bernard has equally mixed praised, calling it "easy on the eyes, easy on the brain." And USA Today's Claudia Puig compares the film to the Yankees. That is, it's got an all-star team with not just a little swagger, and people can complain about it all they want, but the team will still win.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Eleanor Ringel Gillespie didn't have high expectations for the movie in the first place, given that most sequels are duds, but ended up thinking that it wasn't so terrible. "It's all a lot like the old Bob Hope/Bing Crosby road pictures. You half expect Dorothy Lamour to show up in a sarong," she writes, just before noting that Catherine Zeta-Jones is the best part of the movie, mostly because she's the only one working. Think you'll be getting a lot of Clooney in this flick? Forget it, she says. Zeta-Jones is on screen more than eight of the 11 put together. But Salon's Stephanie Zacharek is most intrigued by Julia Roberts's return as Tess and the way that director Steven Soderbergh melds her character with her real life ‑- since she says nobody will buy Julia as a character anymore. "Soderbergh makes Tess seem even more 'real' than Julia Roberts, a feat I wouldn't have thought possible," she writes. Los Angeles Weekly's Ella Taylor is the contrarian of the group in that she actually likes the plot: Its "many twists and turns are intricately fitted together and accessorized with nifty flashback and delirious pauses for nutty banter," she says.

Female consensus: They don't respect it, but they like it anyway


The Life Aquatic
Stars: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston
Director: Wes Anderson
Rating: R

The female critics have a better time in the almost equally male-dominated movie universe of Wes Anderson's latest comic creation. This band of guys is not off on a heist, but on a revenge mission to kill a shark that ate a favorite crew member on an aquatic adventure. This film doesn't have much more of a plot than Ocean's Twelve, but that's practically a selling point for Los Angeles Times critic Carina Chocano, who calls it "an exquisitely evocative movie that elevates rueful melancholia to a superpower." Los Angeles Weekly's Ella Taylor, on the other hand, longs for the days when Wes Anderson made smaller movies. "The Life Aquatic is a potentially great little cult picture shrieking in protest at being bumped up into a $50 million studio movie whose only real pleasure is its happy-color production design. A huge ensemble with little to do but act wacky doesn't help," she says. But it's Salon's Stephanie Zacharek who is the least impressed. The movie, she says, is "waterlogged with whimsy."

Female consensus: Mostly a nonguilty pleasure, but not always a pleasure in the first place

Read our review of The Life Aquatic, written by Senior Producer Beth Pinsker, right here.

In limited release:

  • New York Times critic Manohla Dargis enjoys Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira's A Talking Picture.
  • Los Angeles Times critic Carina Chocano finds Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's controverisial Bad Education (rated NC-17) to be his most satisfying political work to date. When the movie opened in New York a few weekends ago, Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News liked it too.

Seen these films? Tell us what you think.

Find out about last week's releases: Closer and House of Flying Daggers.