At The Movies With Peter Travers: “Crossing Over” And A Full February Scumbucket!
With Academy Awards season behind us, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is back to give you the heads up on what to see and what to avoid this weekend at the box office. The big new release is Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford. The film, a series of vignettes in which Ford plays a Los Angeles immigration officer, tries to be both Traffic and Crash but never reaches the heights of either of the Oscar-winning Best Pictures. Perhaps that’s because it’s been kicked around so much, edited so many times and tweaked by so many people that even a cameo by Best Actor-winning Sean Penn was excised. Maybe the DVD will restore the director’s original vision. In the meantime Travers recommends you see Italy’s Gomorrah, which had to have been the best foreign film of 2008, if only because the clueless Academy didn’t even nominate for Best Foreign Film.
Another film Travers is excited about: Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience — though Travers seems concerned that some of the JoBros’ phallic, foam-blasting stage props exploding out of the screen might be too much for the nine-year-olds in the audience to take. Also, Travers happily welcomes a whole bunch of craptacular new films into his Scumbucket, including Pink Panther 2, Friday the 13th, Fired Up! and an old (least) favorite, Beverly Hills Chihuahua on DVD.
This week Travers debuts a new feature onto his blog: [asktravers@rollingstone.com](mailto:asktravers@rollingstone.com). Did something that Peter said happen to get under your skin? Disagree with one of his reviews? Want to point out a mistake? Or state your case that Robert Duvall is the best actor of the past 40 years? [Send Travers an email](mailto:asktravers@rollingstone.com). Until then, check out At the Movies above.