Grade: A- | Genre: Rock/Pop/Dance
Summary: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out marries rocktastic beats with a dance floor that refuses to silence the pulse of gyrating bodies. These songs are the fuel to the fire.

Rock may try on as many different variations as Michael Jackson's face, but you can always guarantee it will never be too far removed from its kissing cousin addictive pop. Be it Foo Fighters or recent radio fodder Fall Out Boy, creating that surefire radio hook is the key to cementing your tune in the minds of the fickle music listening public. Usually I lampoon these ruthless media hounds for feeding the soulless music machine, but every so often you run across an artist that wrestles this pale formula to the ground to grind up some quality where you were certain that none existed. The smart band that has done the unthinkable is Las Vegas quartet Panic! at the Disco. They are the first band signed to Pete Wentz's (Fall Out Boy) Decaydance Records, and their debut effort A Fever You Can't Sweat Out marries rocktastic beats with a dance floor that refuses to silence the pulse of gyrating bodies. These songs are the fuel to the fire.

Grade: B+ | Genre: Documentary
Summary: The power of this film lies in its array of eye opening facts, coupled with a desire to let both sides be heard. It sidesteps the heavy-handed flash that Michael Moore would employee, insuring he'll never preach to anything other than the choir.

In the San Francisco airport, I was in search of reading material as I prepared to swallow the nation in my flight home. I ran across the latest US News and World Report profiling presidents at war. Basically, it was trying to remove some of that polish and shine the history books have glossed upon great emancipators like Lincoln or Nazi weed killer Roosevelt. After all, Roosevelt did authorize certain American citizens of Japanese descent be relocated to internment camps during World War II. A new BBC documentary looks to shed fresh light on America at war and, more specifically, why it is that we fight. Are we following the path of the once great Britain with our economic imperialistic ways? How much longer can we serve as the world's policeman, brandishing our guns? Are we destined to be dethroned by our own hubris like every great civilization that has come before us? Why We Fight puts these difficult questions on the table to identify what exactly is in the fabric of the American DNA that keeps us at war.

Grade: C | Genre: Comedy
Summary: Nacho Libre isn't a total loss. There are a host of funny scenes, making it entirely watchable, but you come out feeling you got gypped.

Jared Hess has to be one of the most unlikely of heroes in Hollywood. His indie flick Napoleon Dynamite has become a baffling cult hit, embedding itself in the lexicon of our generation. Can you go anywhere these days without being hit up with the campaign message 'Vote for Pedro' blazoned across someone's t-shirt? Napoleon made it cool for everyone to embrace their inner dork whether its shaking your groove thing in front of the high school auditorium or putting your nuts into an electric vise labeled 'time machine.' We've all been through the hell known as high school and can finally smile about the daily misery Napoleon suffers on a continual loop because there is a little Napoleon in all of us. Now creator Jared turns his gaze from time warped Idaho to a Mexican monk turned wrestler, spearheaded by eccentric comic Jack Black. The fusion of humor between Hess and Black was just too tempting to pass up. It's a shame that something got lost in the translation.

Grade: D+ | Genre: Independent Drama
Summary: While I'm not ready to slap this with the label as being a 'bad film,' it doesn't have much point. It's a slice of life piece featuring a life not terribly interesting, which unfortunately seems to be Matt Dillon's specialty these days.

In a recent visit to Barcelona with my babelicious girlfriend, we were seeking a brief reprieve from history's engine and magnificent modernist architectural works. It was decided a choice piece of American cinema could definitely fill this craving. The problem was not stumbling over one offensive theatre after another busy dubbing box office blockbusters like the Da Vinci Code into Spanish. Have these Spaniards not heard of subtitles? I have to say that watching Clueless dubbed on late night TV was simply priceless. "Rollin' with the Homies." Here is a thought. Why not have special headphones/glasses at the theatre so the film can always run in its original format, allowing you can plug in the appropriate dubbing/subtitles as you see fit? After bouncing around town to three different theatres, we ended up on the Passeig de Gracia that screamed cool with its trendy shops and complete absence of tourist flavor. It also housed two of the cities indie cinema houses, featuring the much sought after VOSE (Version Original Subtitulada en Espanol). After narrowing a dozen foreign films down to two US imports, we settled on Factotum with Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under).

Grade: A | Genre: Drama/Thriller
Summary: If you think you dislike big oil companies and are suspicious of the feds now, you just wait until you see this flick. This film should be seen for its political insight and the sheer power of the message.

Syriana is an intelligent and masterfully crafted movie about the intrigue, politics, and underbelly of governmental involvement in the oil business. This movie possesses more plot lines than you can count on one hand, however, rest assured that by the end of the film all the dots will be connected, but you might not like the picture you are seeing. Syriana confronts the topics of big oil, shady government and the Middle East and demands that you think about those issues. This is a big, bold movie that is as complicated and as confusing at times as the subjects it is trying to cover, but somehow this film works. The writer/director, Stephan Gaghan delivers an ambitious piece of cinema which asks really tough questions about America's need for oil, in pretty much the same way he wrote about the drug world in his Academy Award winning screenplay Traffic, and amazingly enough, he succeeds. Gaghan forges a challenging, fictional thriller and solicits unaffected, honest performances throughout, but this film is not going to make you feel satisfied at the end, or comfortable, in fact you will feel quite the contrary.

Grade: C+ | Genre: Romantic Comedy (Supposedly)
Summary: The problem(s) with The Break-Up is that it was/is marketed as a romantic comedy that in reality is more serious and not as romantic as you would expect. You don't really feel anything for the characters and don't really understand why Gary can't get his act together early on, but when he finally does, why it's just not enough for Brooke.

Review: Many therapists like to encourage their patients to act out the quirks of relationship conflicts to help find resolve and an eventual inner peace. Jennifer Aniston takes that method one step further in her new movie, The Break-Up, playing a woman dealing with the inevitable end of her relationship with Brad...I mean Gary (Vince Vaughn). Actors tend to borrow from real life experiences in order to create a role that feels more genuine. Luckily, Aniston doesn't have to go far in her research as her real life divorce (in case you haven't heard) to Mr. Pitt contributes to this tired story about a couple, Gary and Brooke (Aniston), who can't seem to turn around their doomed relationship.

Grade: A | Genre: "The production is progressive, but the reason is retro. The chords are cold-blooded murder. I named it neo-necro." (From "Necromancer")
Summary: For now, Gnarls Barkley will just be the newest and most eccentric act to stir your musical senses. They are primed to break the mold like Gorillaz did and should be on your radar. My only complaint...what took so long?

Review: DJ Danger Mouse became infamous for brilliantly mixing Jay-Z's Black Album over The Beatles White Album. With support from Jay Z himself, The Grey Album (free download), as it is appropriately called, buzzed the underground and created a strong cult following that included trend setters like Gorillaz who tapped Mouse to produce the follow up to their self-titled debut. The end product, Demon Days, torched the competition and created wannabes out of those that everyone wanted to be.

Now, DJ Danger Mouse teams with Cee Lo, from the "Dirty South's" Goodie Mob, to create Gnarls Barkely. Both are respected in their own right individually, but when you combine the two, you get an epidemic of gnarly beats over retro vocals that feel postmodern at the same time. Imagine Marvin Gaye heading up Outkast at their most inventive and you're only three quarters of the way to what Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere has become.

Grade: A- | Genre: Action/Comedy/Crime
Summary: A witty, sprawling mess of a film about a murder in Los Angeles that is as absurd and bizarre as the city it openly makes fun of.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, is a flick as breezy, surreal and disjointed as Los Angeles and yet it happens to be my first guilty pleasure of the year. Shane Black, screenwriter of the Lethal Weapon series, directs his first feature film after a long absence from the screen and surprisingly charms me silly. With a touch of film noir, a shade of Pulp Fiction, a hysterical narrative, bizarre flashbacks and machine-gun dialogue, Kiss Kiss rolls into kind of snowballing mess, and while you are not quite sure of what it is, you really do not care once it gets going. It is the first film I have laughed out loud at in at least two years. The plot has more twists than a pretzel and can almost overwhelm you with its continual barrage of action, humor and darkness making one wonder what the inside of Black's head must look like. Yes, this film is a mishmash of everything, but it somehow cooks up into a completely edible feast of a movie, thanks to some brilliant writing, superior performances by Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr., and edgy direction by a man who truly knows the strangeness of Los Angeles inside and out.