Hailey Gates' "Atropia" looks at the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the War on Terror with a cockeyed air of farcical anti-drama. The title refers to a play town built to conduct military role-playing exercises before green recruits deploy overseas - one of many facilities that, as the ending titles note, are still in full use in America today. In 2006, long enough into the war on terror for the public to start asking questions, those towns were fashioned after…

It just so happens that my first full viewing of The Devil Wears Prada was 20 years after its initial release. As shocking as it sounds, regular Sex and the City director David Frankel's adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's best-selling roman à clef is something that was just never at the very top of my priority list. Coming to it so late, I must report that the movie ended up being a strangely dismal and vexing experience. There's simply no way…

So look at it this way: You're an inquisitive PhD student researching a fungal parasite that's causing great harm to livestock in a rural region. You do a bit of fieldwork in the backroads of New England for your doctorate, and bring your boyfriend along. He's an actor, so you know he'll probably carry his script everywhere with him to rehearse his lines. When your GPS fails due to lack of cell service, the two of you elect to camp…

Imagine the dumbest half-hour sitcom you've ever seen, spin it out to 90 minutes by making it even more thin and shallow, and you have "Love, Guaranteed." This movie is so appalling it doesn't even deserve comparison with sitcoms. It plays like an unendurable TV commercial about beautiful people with great lifestyles and not a thought in their empty little heads. It is an embarrassing comedy, a painful romance, and a truly insufferable romance comedy.

Only rarely is a film…