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  EW review: Stay away from 'The Man'And an average 'Exorcism'By Owen Gleiberman  Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson play an odd couple in "The Man." YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(Entertainment Weekly) -- The buddy action comedy is now the megaplex equivalent of an old vaudeville routine. It is shticky, it is beyond predictable, it is such a creaky ritual that one would be hard-pressed to remember when it was actually fun. Yet someone -- audiences? writers? studio bean counters? -- refuses to give it up. In "The Man," the forces of circumstance that place Samuel L. Jackson, as a street-dapper Dirty Harry of an undercover ATF agent, and Eugene Levy, as a dental-equipment salesman so mild he looks like he carries a slide rule, in the same law-enforcement car are contrived enough that the film barely asks you to believe them. Levy, with his skewed gaze and neurotically logical manner of Schmuckus Americanus, mistaken for an icy arms dealer? Why not! Jackson, who puts the funk in being in a funk, forced to use Levy as bait? But of course! Most of "The Man" is as awful as last year's Jimmy Fallon-Queen Latifah debacle, "Taxi," yet Levy, stuck in a no-brainer variation on Billy Crystal's predicament in "Analyze This," shows just enough noodgy passive-aggression to suggest what the movie might have been were it not shackled to buddy-action cliches. The money scene, to the extent that "The Man" has one, arrives when Levy, to sustain his cover, has to slap Jackson in front of the bad guys and ask, "Who's my bitch?" It isn't quite Gene Wilder learning to walk like a soul brother in "Silver Streak," but it'll do. EW Grade: D+ 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose'Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum I have little problem believing that there are people in this world who become possessed by evil spirits. I have a larger problem believing that the only movie those evil spirits have ever seen at the hellplex is "The Exorcist." If the devil and his minions are so devilishly clever, why don't they express themselves in more nefariously unexceptional ways, blending in with the neighborhood to wreak havoc? The devil is strictly Linda Blair-era old school in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," an intelligent inquiry into the limitations of belief and faith as a defense in a court of law woo-wooed up with a heaping of religious-girl-gone-mad conniption fits. Part "Law & Order," part "The Omen," the movie doesn't trust the audience to follow serious theological and legal discussion without a spook hook.  Tom Wilkinson plays a priest on trial for negligent homicide in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." The story is, as they say in the Church of Movie Coming Attractions, inspired by real events (the case on which it's based took place in 1978). Emily (Jennifer Carpenter, a champion shrieker), the tormented young woman of the title, leaves her family in Rural Devout, USA, goes off to Godless University, and becomes infested, one dark dorm night of the soul, by demons. She can't sleep. She looks into the eyes of her classmates and sees blood and ghouls. Eventually, her torment drives her to drop out and return home, where she is first diagnosed as epileptic, and then as psychotic. By the time Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson, reliable player of responsible men) sees her, she is a ravaged soul in need of a full exorcism. The approach fails. The girl dies. And Father Moore is charged with negligent homicide, represented at his trial by Erin Bruner (Laura Linney), an atheist tough cookie in a power pantsuit. The prosecution argues that Emily died because her priest ignored her medical condition. The defense contends -- well, Erin doesn't know what to contend. To explain her shift from secular doubt to a newborn faith in her client's veracity, director Scott Derrickson and writing collaborator Paul Harris Boardman put the attorney through her own mild attack of spiritual demons. Linney doesn't have to shriek and vomit, but her character does see strange doings (Lucifer loves breaking things in kitchens). Unfortunately, by the time she comes to believe in the power of belief, my eyes had rolled back in my head. EW Grade: B- Click Here 
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