Brad Bird wants to help you love the movies again.

And I don’t mean film in the academic sense. I mean movies. Big, loud, fun, slightly insane movies. Movies with explosions and fast cars and fabulous locales and women in tight dresses. Not to put too fine a point on it, movies with balls.

And Bird has decided to take his stand for the good, old-fashioned action flick, and make his live-action film debut, using a tired, 15-year-old franchise starring a manic Scientologist entering middle age. Frankly it sounds like the perfect recipe for disaster. And it very well could have been, in another director’s hands. But Bird uses deft sense of storytelling, a visionary skill with the IMAX camera, and a healthy dose of humor elevate what could have been a flop to the best action film of the year.

Part of “Ghost Protocol’s” merit lies with Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec’s script- the plot is tight, complicated enough to keep your interest, but simple enough to keep you from getting tied up in knots. Instead of the overwrought cat-and-masked mouse game of earlier films,the problem is simple: a terrorist named Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) has stolen nuclear launch codes, blown up the Kremlin and blamed it on spy agency IMF. The entire agency has been disavowed, including the legendary Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), who puts together a team to steal back the codes.

That’s it. No weird kidnapping scenarios, no Jon Voight. Without over-complicating the plot, Bird leave enough room to let the movie breathe and create truly stunning action set-pieces. The best take place in Dubai- Bird uses the surreal landscape of an adult playground in the middle of the desert to great effect. A scene where Cruise has to scale the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, is possibly the most thrilling, terrifying sequence I’ve seen this year- and a later chase scene through a dust storm isn’t far behind.

Say what you want about Tom Cruise (and there’s plenty to say), but he knows how to command a scene. Ethan Hunt isn’t exactly riveting by himself. Like Jason Bourne, and James Bond before them, the expert spy is only as interesting as the people and places around him. Cruise understands that limitation and knows how to work with it. Whatever he is in his personal life, in his career he’s nothing less than a consummate professional. He’s backed up by Paula Patton, making the most of the token hottie agent role, Simon Pegg, reprising his role as the comic relief techie, and of course Jeremy Renner, whose expressive eyes and fancy krav maga moves are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Renner is the only one who is capable of taking the spotlight from Cruise, with a slow-burn energy that will treat him well as he continues his ascent to stardom.

It’s not all gold. There’s a silly portion involving Renner’s character’s past, and a bizarrely out-of-place end scene that should have been cut out completely. There’s also the usual continuity/believability issues, but really why should we care how Ethan and his team get from Russia to Dubai when their entire agency has been shut down? Ignoring those little problems are part of the fun. Logistics are for suckers.

So bring on the explosions and the car chases and Paula Patton in a cut-out dress! Brad Bird is here and he wants to make goddamn movie. Give yourself a present this Christmas, and see it on the biggest screen you can find.

Forbes has compiled a list  of the 10 most overpaid actors in Hollywood. The numbers are deduced by the amount of money the stars earned for their past three films in comparison to the overall income for each movie.

The results are as follows:

1. Drew Barrymore
2. Eddie Murphy
3. Will Ferrell
4. Reese Witherspoon
5. Denzel Washington
6. Nicolas Cage
7. Adam Sandler
8. Vince Vaughn
9. Tom Cruise
10. Nicole Kidman

Get your boys together. Find some girl and sing “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,” over and over.

Tom Cruise’s epic fighter jet movie is about ready to take off again in the newly announced “Top Gun” sequel.

According to New York Magazine, Paramount Pictures has made producing and directing offers to Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott to make a follow-up to the 1986 action flick, which won an Academy Award for best song for Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away.”

Despite earlier reports that Cruise would reprise his role, his agent has announced he will not be involved in the sequel.

Who is SALT? This is the question you’ll undoubtedly find yourself asking throughout the entire movie, should you decide to go. But at the end, see if you’re don’t come to the same conclusion that I do — who really cares?

Angelina Jolie stars in this action flick as (purported) russian spy Evelyn Salt. She’s a brilliant replacement for the original actor, Tom Cruise, who was to play Evan Salt. But while Cruise is currently fighting it up with Cameron Diaz in “Knight and Day,” Jolie slips back into the familiar ruthless killer role that made us love her in “Tomb Raider” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

The plot is this — Salt, who works for the CIA, heads for the hills when a Russian defector claims she’s planning to kill the Russian president at the American vice president’s funeral. She claims to be innocent, that she’s only running to protect her husband. The plot thickens when her husband is brutally murdered by the Russian who ratted her out. Truly pissed off now, Salt goes on a killing spree that ends with her in control of American nuclear weapons.

Now who wouldn’t be interested in that plot? Certainly, this reviewer was. But as the audience vacillates back and forth (Is she innocent? Is she really a spy? Was her husband a cover?), a more accurate thermometer for the potential popularity of this movie becomes clear — it’s really fun to watch Angelina Jolie display creative new ways to kill people.

So who cares if she’s a spy or not? The plot is a thinly-veiled reason for Jolie to leap from the tops of fast-moving trucks on freeways without getting a scratch. Her stunning killer-face is firmly in place as she yanks a motorcycle right out from under a guy with one hand. In possibly the most breathtaking action sequence in the film, she leaps into the center of a stairwell and dangles by a chain wrapped around a guy’s neck.

Sure, we never really know who Salt is — because she never speaks. Jolie’s only lines are “I’m innocent” repeated over and over again with varying levels of urgency as she moves from one killing sequence to the next. But who’s complaining? Well, maybe me, but just a little. The only weakness of the movie is that we get little real acting from a very good actress (remember “Girl, Interrupted”?). But, in part, that gets made up for with some good acting from Liev Schreiber, who plays her CIA buddy.

In the end, if you want to see some acting, go see “Inception.” But for a good old summertime romp with Russian spies and car chases, “SALT” is your movie.

I have to admit these kind of movies kind of annoy me. The whole mock spy story has been played over and over again, until now record has warped and melted to the turntable, the remnant spinning pointlessly on its axis while a producer bathes in a pool of money in the other room.

I’m bored with the whole genre. Add in Peter Sarsgaard slumming and a romance plot with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz (because “Vanilla Sky” was such a great movie!) and I’m ready to give this whole enterprise the red card. For God’s sake another mock spy movie was just released last month!

But I must judge each overplayed storyline according to its own merits, and much to my surprise “Knight and Day”, about a woman who accidentally falls in with an international spy, has some pretty delightful, and even outright hilarious moments.

The plot involves Roy Miller, a spy who meets June Havers, who’s on her way home to Boston to go to her sister’s wedding. He’s been protecting a young scientist (a sweet, mustachioed Paul Dano) who’s being hunted for his newest invention. Roy’s partner (Peter Sarsgaard, doing his very best sleazy Southern accent) has gone rogue and is attempting to steal the boy’s invention and sell it on the black market.

Cruise especially seems to have a gotten a second wind as a comedic actor, since his truly inspired role in “Tropic Thunder”. Instead of smooth entrances and coy double entendres Roy’s character relies on simple good-guy charm to seduce us. At one point he lands sprawling on top of a car containing June that’s speeding through a tunnel and being shot at. But instead of a great action line a la James Bond, he simply looks up and brightly says, “Hey June! Open the door for me?”

Unfortunately then there’s Diaz, who’s just a hot mess if there ever was one. Due to what I can only guess is some brutal Botoxing, Diaz’s face looks haggard and unhappy. Watching her trip over things adorably and scrunch up her nose while she prattles her lines manically is not cute anymore; it’s undignified. Diaz can be a serviceable actress when she’s allowed to be, but director James Mongold has committed the usual sin of relegating her to the tough/vulnerable hot chick who just needs a man.

That said there is a pretty kickass scene where she’s outrunning bad guys in a GTO.

Mangold has a spotty record: he’s directed both “Girl, Interrupted” and “Walk the Line,” but also the snoozer epic “Kate and Leopold.” “Knight and Day” falls somewhere in the middle. The action scenes are expertly choreographed and the music is truly wonderful (a Latin-infused medley by John Powell). But Mangold cuts a lot of corners and leaves a lot of holes to be filled in. In a film named “Knight and Day,” would it kill you to name the female protagonist June Day? (Miller’s real name is Knight, so at least that makes a little sense.) June’s sturdy firefighter ex-boyfriend Rodney (Mike Blucas) is introduced and then dropped about two scenes later, never to be heard from again, along with June’s sister. He has an inspired scene involving an action montage viewed through a drug-induced haze, but then lapses into the cliched romantic play fight/sexual tension scene.

It has a satisfying ending, centering on that fabulous GTO, and that counts for a lot. But so much of the middle grazes the surface of parody without actually taking a dive. The jokes just aren’t funny enough. “Knight and Day,” was a surprise, but it’s not enough of one to pay $10 at the cineplex. Wait for it on DVD. It’s charms will still be fully visible.

Photos: Getty Images

Jimmy Kimmel, in perhaps a coming out party for Mel Gibson, pulled a hilarious stunt on his after-Oscar show.

Gibson, who has largely avoided the spotlight since a 2006 drunken anti-Semitic tirade, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel live and showed an “exclusive clip” from what he and Kimmel played up as his latest top-secret film project about a Civil War officer who loses everything.

That actually got us on IMDB for a second.

Instead, the video shows Gibson coming into his bedroom to see his dying wife surrounded by chickens. She’s clutching “the original recipe.” In a fit of vengeance, he vows that “Kentucky shall fry.” Then we see Gibson with shiny black shoes, a white suit and a black southern tie — Colonel Sanders.

Kimmel also did this hilarious promo with Tom Cruise.

You should also remember last year’s after-Oscar hilarity with a cast of Hollywood A-list stars including Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford singing “I’m fucking Ben Affleck.”

“Valkyrie” could be the continuation of Tom Cruise’s comeback that began in his hysterical supporting role as a chubby, balding film exec in “Tropic Thunder.”

Its plot, about the last known assassination attempt on Adolph Hitler during World War II, is a plot that doesn’t seem like it can support its own weight until it does.

The tumultuous journey of rotating release dates and studios backing the film left many wondering if “Valkyrie” would ever reach the public eye. But, finally, it has, and it turns out it was a strong movie after all.

“Valkyrie” is an action thriller that holds its suspense throughout the entirety of the film, even though every viewer is armed with the clandestine knowledge that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s (Cruise) attempt to kill Hitler is unsuccessful. It’s hard not to hold your breath tightly locked inside your chest as the movie reaches its climax and wish that, for once, history was wrong about how things ended.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film was how director Bryan Singer handled incorporating the character of Adolph Hitler into the film. Other than in “Indiana Jones and the last Crusade” and “Little Nicky,” Hitler is a physical presence not often scene in modern films. What Singer started to do, and which would have been so much more effective had he been able to continue it through the entirety of the movie, was only film David Bamber, who plays Hitler with chilling accuracy in the film, from behind. This allowed Singer to show the horror and awe that the Nazis felt before their Fuhrer without giving a face in the movie to a face that will be printed in history text books well into the future. However, Singer didn’t, and Hitler became a fictional character instead of a permeating historical memory.

The biggest flaw with the film was the dialogue. Though all the characters are supposed to be speaking in German, they speak English throughout the entirety of the film. This is supposed to be solved neatly at the beginning of the film when the title, “Valkyrie,” and opening text is shown in German and then shifts to be in English. Even Cruise opens out the film speaking in German and then dubbing over himself in English, until he finally he is only speaking in English. It’s a great idea, but instead of having just one English accent, Cruise speaks in a blunt American accent, Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branaugh talk with a British twang, and Hitler and his lackey’s all talk with hints of German in their voice. Minor details, but the dialect messed with the continuity of the film and became down right annoying and distracting.

Cruise, however, was enthralling as von Stauffenberg, a German who, from the beginning, is against everything Hitler stands for. Stauffenberg shows himself to be an intriguing historical figure that is rarely touched upon in World War II history and one that very nearly could have ended that war and seized control of Germany in the aftermath of Hitler’s assassination.

It is in the , directed by Newton Thomas Sigel, that “Valkyrie” really shines. The usage of grey, black and white hues make the film look very drastic and bleak, but the incorporation of red into the film, like in the Nazi flags, makes the film very intriguing to watch visually. The cinematography is stunning, especially during a show of the siege of Berlin when Stauffenberg’s soldiers march into a government building through a courtyard filled with Nazi flags.

A lot of effort went in to making “Valkyrie” a near-flawless film, and the effort shows. From its acting to visuals to historic significance, “Valkyrie” is engaging on all ends. Though it may not be the most heart-warming movie to be released Christmas day, it is the perfect movie for Oscar season.

Hot grandma

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes celebrated their two year anniversary on November 18. Scientists marked the occasion by continuing to ponder life’s great mystery: Why does she look so freakin’ old?

Ben Stiller might not act in the greatest movies, but he sure knows how to write and direct them. With ‘Tropic Thunder’, Stiller creates an explosive new comedy that’s sure to blow anyone’s socks off.

‘Thunder’ starts off right from what its trailer sets up: director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) wants to create the greatest war movie of all time, but his lead actors in his film-based-on-a-book-based-on-a-true-story (but is it?) don’t have the emotional scope needed to understand the complexities behind the Vietnam War.

After some difficult struggles with his prima donna actors: Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) and Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Cockburn is convinced by the author of the book Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte) to drop the actors in the middle of Vietnam and shoot the movie ‘guerilla-style’. Both the film and the book in the movie are named ‘Tropic Thunder’, which is where the title of the actual film comes from.

It takes about 20 minutes for Lazarus, Portnoy, Speedman, Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) to be stranded in the middle of nowhere in Vietnam, thinking that they are filming a movie that had suddenly become very real. The movie just becomes funnier as it goes along, with the actors never being quite sure whether or not they are actually in a movie or not.

Also, as a slightly-spoilerish warning, the ad you will see for “Booty Sweat” is not the cinema going insane, but rather marks the completely inventive and perfectly hysterical introduction to “Tropic Thunder”. You have been warned.

While not as outlandish as ‘Zoolander’ was, ‘Tropic Thunder’ is set outside our reality in a way that everyone can understand. Ben Stiller has said in previous interviews that he wrote ‘Thunder’ as a parody of the movie business and, even if no one in the audience understood it, it would still be hysterical to him. Well Ben, we get it, and it’s still pretty funny.

Unexpected were the many cameos, both big and small, made by some of Hollywood’s biggest actors. Matthew McConaughey has a surprisingly big role as Speedman’s agent, and Tom Cruise definitely deserves all the buzz he’s been getting as the big-time film executive behind ‘Tropic Thunder’. Danny McBride was hysterical as the pyromaniac effects guy Cody. Also keep an eye out for Bill Hader, Tyra Banks, Maria Menunos, Jason Bateman, Lance Bass, Alicia Silverstone, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jon Voight, Christine Taylor and an I-can’t-believe-he-did-that Tobey Maguire (don’t be late or you’ll miss that one). Oh yeah, Stiller got them all.

Sure it may not be the most outright intelligent film to make a mockery of Hollywood, but there is plenty of insider humor that can be relished by all. The scene where Lazarus explains to Speedman why he didn’t get an Oscar for his role as the mentally retarded boy Jack in his film ‘Simple Jack’ because he went “full retard” was one of the funniest scenes in the film.

Downey was hysterical as Lazarus who becomes so immersed in his role that he changed his skin color in order to become more in character. Black was very two dimensional and not funny as Portnoy, the heroine-addicted fat guy. And Stiller was, well, Stiller.

The most break-out role in the film was hands-down Jay Baruchel, who many will recognize from “Knocked Up” and “Million Dollar Baby” but who has not landed a leading role since Judd Aptow’s lesser known but just as short-lived TV series, “Undeclared”. Baruchel’s character Kevin Sandusky is very similar to Baruchel in real life: he is an actor who has gotten his first big role and is playing everything by the book, like going to the boot camp training that had been assigned and learning how to read a map, while his fellow actors just brushed everything off. As the only one with a lick of common sense, Baruchel has some definite potential and it seems like we can expect big things from him in the future.

‘Tropic Thunder’ so far has been the best comedy of 2008, and it very much deserves that title. While the movie will keep audiences laughing well into the credits, it brings about two important questions: Why hasn’t Ben Stiller written and directed more movies, and will this be Tom Cruise’s big comeback (in more than one way)?

The not-so-viral stunt that made going to see “Tropic Thunder” a must. This clip is property of MTV Networks, no copyright infringement intended.

Oh yeah, Carl makes a cameo too. See if you can spot him!