MovieBabe

What if I told you about a major motion picture that said God is a myth? That its main character, living in a world in which people are incapable of lying, soothes his dying mother by saying she’s about to leave this life for a better place, where she’ll have a mansion and see all of her friends and be happier than she’s ever been?

Mum isn’t the only comforted dupe of the falsehood in the story: When her caretakers hear of this wonderful afterlife, word spreads fast, and soon the accidental prophet is telling the masses about heaven and hell—though there are no such terms for them yet—and exactly how you need to behave to avoid eternal damnation. To complete the fib, he preaches about “the man in the sky,” who he says is responsible for good things! Such as saving someone from drowning. But he’s also to blame for bad things, such as cancer.

And the even more subversive cherry? The people who believe him are largely portrayed as idiots.

One would imagine that such a film would generate howls of blasphemy from conservatives and Christians, à la The Golden Compass andThe Da Vinci Code before their openings. But the movie described above isThe Invention of Lying, released wide on Oct. 2 and seemingly on no one’s radar except Ricky Gervais fans',

Granted, actor, co-writer, and -director Gervais’ film is fundamentally a big-studio romantic comedy—but Golden Compass was merely a big-studio kids’ flick, and it had groups from the Catholic League to the American Family Association drumming up a boycott. On his blog, Gervais acknowledges that Lying has a bit of an edge: He calls it a “sweet Hollywood family rom-com; it just happens to be the first ever completely atheistic movie with no concessions.”

So why no protest? Critic James Berardinelli, who runs the Web site Reelviews.net, accuses the film’s distributor, Warner Bros., of intentionally hiding the religion subplot, writing in his review: “In an effort to limit controversy, the distributor, Warner Bros., has decided to obscure the film’s unsubtle commentary about religious matters. You won’t find anything about it in the trailers; you have to see the movie to be exposed to it.” (Warner Bros. refused to comment.)

Beliefnet blogger Michele McGinty agrees, accusing the studio of “smug condescension” and trying to trick her into “paying to see a movie that insults me as a gullible sap.” (Unlike Berardinelli, McGinty has not seen the film, instead reacting to a review in the New York Post.)

Former church-group leader Phil Petree of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., said in an e-mail interview that Christians likely took a “Don’t feed the monkey!” approach. “The more we respond,” he mused, “the more publicity [the film] will get, and the more people will see that message.…In the end, by ignoring them, movies like The God Who Wasn’t There go largely [unnoticed] by the media and audiences in general and become dismal failures.”

“Dismal” may be a tad strong to describe The Invention of Lying’s initial two-week box office, but it’s not too far off the mark. Even with Hollywood A-listers such as Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Rob Lowe, and Jonah Hill, the film ranked fifth in its opening weekend, bringing in a paltry $7.4 million and dropping approximately 53 percent in its second week. (Its budget was $18.5 million.) Though that’s a slight improvement over Gervais’ first leading-man comedy, last year’s Ghost Town, you still gotta wonder if some pre-release Internet fisticuffs would have given it a Passion of the Christ–like boost.

Another Beliefnet contributor, Nell Minow (the “Movie Mom”), believes that the film didn’t raise a ruckus because there’s not much for Christians to be upset about. “I don’t think the movie is anti-religion, even though Gervais is an atheist,” Minow says. “It’s not like Dogma or The Last Temptation of Christ, which attack the church head-on. Gervais’ character sort of makes up the idea of religion, and it is his fake religion that is the subject of the film, not an actual denomination. It’s more like Life of Brian.”

Plus, Minow adds, “I have not seen any bloggers objecting to the portrayal of Judaism in A Serious Man, though it is arguably as offensive as The Invention of Lying is to Christians. The Jewish characters are all grotesque—glib, fatuous, irreverent, remote. Is it because [writers-directors Ethan and Joel Coen] are Jewish that this is permissible?”

It’s likely as well that The Invention of Lying’s skewering of religion is permissible because Gervais is not exactly a household name this side of the pond yet. Or could it be we’re just gaining a sense of humor about spiritual questioning? Doubtful. On his blog, Gervais encourages those who do find the film funny to “enjoy it while you can. They won’t show it in Heaven.”

[Originally published in the Washington City Paper.]

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

Hello. I'd like to trade in my testicles, please.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a movie in possession of a title such as The Jane Austen Book Club will be in want of a male audience. Based on a novel of the same name, the Robin Swicord-written and -directed film is exactly what you'd expect it to be: It's breezy one moment, somber the next, and, of course, full of women, sentimentality, and reaction shots of dogs. And when each showing lets out, it's likely there won't be a long line at the men's room.

The somewhat interesting idea of Karen Joy Fowler's novel is that real people can find in Austen parallels to and guidance for their own lives. But it's a gimmick that was set up to fail. Go too deep with the theory, and you risk alienating viewers who aren't Janeites. Skimp on it, and there's little else to differentiate the story from countless other romantic comedies. Swicord, a first-time feature director, decided on the latter, offering characters and plot turns whose resemblances to Austen are often too superficial to be recognizable.

Five women and one man comprise the titular Sacramento book club, and each is a shameless type. Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is the organizer of the group and its eldest member, a currently single, freewheeling sort who's been married as often as Austen published. (That'd be six times.) Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) has just been dumped by her husband (Jimmy Smits) of two decades. Sylvia's daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), is a lesbian and extreme-sport enthusiast who immediately clashes with Prudie (Emily Blunt), a young, snooty high-school-French teacher with a severe black bob and an unhappy marriage. And Jocelyn (Maria Bello), the arguable focus of the story, is Sylvia's best friend, a never-married dog breeder who impulsively invites the handsome, chick-flick-ready Grigg (Hugh Dancy) to join the club when he hits on her at a conference.

Grigg agrees, with a caveat: He'll give Austen a chance if she'll try science fiction. The chemistry between them as they argue the merits of each of their preferred styles of literature is obvious, and when Jocelyn asks Grigg how he feels about older women, it seems clear where this is going. But Jocelyn doesn't want Grigg for herself. Instead, she means to set up him with Sylvia, and in this case the unforeseen plot turn is irritating: Jocelyn never lets either of them know about her intentions, leaving both the characters and the audience baffled when she switches from being sly to getting angry at Grigg for not asking Sylvia out. "You need to dance with Sylvia tonight!" she admonishes him before they all meet for a library benefit. But wouldn't you know it, as soon as Grigg shows the slightest interest in her friend, Jocelyn turns pouty. And yet later yells at Grigg for not sufficiently appreciating what a great person Sylvia is. It's a back-and-forth even Elizabeth Bennett would find exhausting.

Swicord's script is woefully underdeveloped, with the passage of time marked with montages of the members reading each book and only cursory subplots for most of the characters. Prudie's may be as hole-y as the others – you can't imagine how the buttoned-down, romantic teacher ended up with a distant, jockish husband – but because of Blunt, this story is the most compelling: Quite the opposite of Blunt's outspoken, nearly boorish character in her breakout movie, The Devil Wears Prada, her Prudie is quiet and mannered, peppering her speech French phrases that make her seem arrogant. But she speaks slowly and avoids eye contact, often running her hands down her bob as if to squeeze out a clear thought from a brain noisy with thoughts of her miserable home life. One of the movie's most realistic and raw moments involves a fight between Prudie and her husband when she thinks he was flirting with another woman at a party, a blonde "with those ridiculous plastic boobs," she cries. "Is that what you go for?" Unfortunately, any credibility in that story line is wiped out with the suggestion that a caveman need only spend an afternoon reading Austen aloud to undergo a Mr. Darcy transformation.

Blunt may be the standout in this terrific ensemble, but it's because no one else is given material worthy of their talents -- Brenneman cries a lot, Baker tosses off bon mots, and the typically intense Bello is reduced to romantic-comedy giddiness and embarrassing dialogue such as, "Reading Jane Austen is a freakin' minefield!" Dancy gets a pass: Not only is his character supposed to be little more than charming window dressing, the unthreateningly handsome actor is a much better fit as Grigg than in serious leading roles such as in last year's Beyond the Gates. The cast is ultimately wasted on a film that, at best, might have been a Cliffs Notes version of Austen, but more closely resembles a bargain-bin romance.

 

The Hunting Party

If Kent Brockman came to life...

The Three Stooges Go to Bosnia could have been an alternate title for The Hunting Party, an odd political thriller/comedy hybrid mined by writer-director Richard Shepard from a 2000 Esquire article. Naturally, the short piece about a handful of journalists and their attempt to find a war criminal required some tarting to be movie-ready, and Shepard isn't bashful about his embellishments; the end credits, in a rather fun touch, do a quick revisit of the film and point out who and what was real. But "fun" may not be what most people are looking for in a story about an ethnic cleanser and one man's need for revenge.

It all starts out earnestly enough. Network cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) is in Sarajevo with a just-out-of-J-school reporter, Ben (Jesse Eisenberg), for an easy assignment when he's tracked down by his former partner, Simon (Richard Gere). Simon has become a journalistic cliché – scruffy, drunk, crazed – since an on-air meltdown left him unemployable some 10 years back. But he's got a scoop, and he wants Duck to help him report the story he's sure will get him back in the game: Even though the United Nations have been looking for him for years, Simon knows where to find the Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes), the person responsible for the rape, torture, and slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslims. So the three travel to the country's mountains, where they're immediately threatened and shot at – and as Duck and Benjamin shit their pants, Simon admits that he doesn't really want to interview the Fox, he wants to capture him. OK, not really: It's all about a girl, and Simon wants to kill the guy who took her away from him. And, by the way, he never actually got any tips on his location.

Bumbling and weaponless aren't good things to be in this situation, and the movie does offer some tense, gasp-inducing moments due to the sheer lunacy of these characters' choices. Its light side can be enjoyable as well, particularly the teasing, best-bud chemistry between Gere (doing a more rumpled version on his manic role in The Hoax) and Howard (who's charming as always, if excessively laid-back). With the Fox's real-life counterpart, Radovan Karadzic, still at large, The Hunting Party isn't only trying to compelling, it's begging to be talked about. But chances are you'll be less inclined to discuss world affairs than how in the world a pregnant woman's bloodied corpse could be shown in the same film that brings out a midget in a pink track suit for laughs.

It's so cool how tortured we are

Justin Theroux's Dedication is aching to be an edgy Garden State. The actor's directorial debut, written by first-timer David Bromberg, premiered at Sundance and reeks of the festival's hipster-courting preciousness, telling a love story that's freighted with the angst of its protagonist and the messiness of life in general. Reality bites, and all that.

But instead of insight, Dedication offers a world in which artists don't comb their hair and a headache in one scene means a brain tumor in the next. And although you're not necessarily supposed to like the film's central character, his trials might have been worth caring about if he hadn't walked right out of a Staind song. Henry (Billy Crudup) is an obsessive-compulsive, self-loathing children's-book author who tells kids there's no Santa Claus. He's in his early 30s, but still talks about how his father screwed him up. His friendship with a much-older illustrator, Rudy (Tom Wilkinson), helps fill that void, though even Rudy refers to his partner as "a miserable shit." When Rudy dies suddenly, Henry mourns by going into full-asshole mode. Wait, he's not an asshole: He's complicated.

Or that's what we're supposed to glean when Lucy (Mandy Moore) is forced into his life. Henry's publisher (Bob Balaban, a dim highlight) hires the struggling Lucy to replace Rudy, but first she's gotta convince the writer that she's worthy – a battle that nearly makes her give up the promise of a $200,000 bonus upon completion of a Christmas project. They meet in a diner, where Henry proceeds to make up a wretched backstory about their waitress – down to the number of eggs left in her ovaries, because he's just that thorough and clever – and concludes it with, "You're much more pathetic than she is." They meet in his apartment, and Henry suggests they exchange brief bios. His includes an unending list of quirks and the quite serious declaration, "Life is pain." Hers includes a syllable or two before he basically tells her to shut the **** up.

Worse than Henry's grating character, however, is Dedication's bait-and-switch: Its invasive, too-cool soundtrack is dominated by the indie rock band Deerhoof. Its characters spout psychobabble like, "We communicate through damage." And Theroux adds flashes, static, and jitters to his camerawork to reflect Henry's jagged psyche. But at its unpleasant heart, Dedication is nothing more than a by-the-numbers romantic comedy that is sure to alienate anyone who does dig its depressive vibe. That's right, the pair fall in love, and the only thing more difficult to believe than their attraction is the story's abrupt switch to Hollywood conventions – particularly the Big Gesture, which in this case is arguably more ludicrous than you might expect from even a typical Moore movie.

As usual, though, the actress isn't nearly as bad as the scripts she chooses. Her Lucy may be mussed and kohl-eyed to a cliche, but the performance itself is relatively even and refreshingly adult. Crudup's is naturally more attention-grabbing, full of tics and mood changes that in a lesser actor's hands might seem gimmicky. But a skillful portrayal doesn't count for much when your character is too ridiculous to even hate.

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

Cheese: The new Brussels sprouts



At one point in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, a struggling Chicago actor named James is giving a career-day talk at an elementary school when he starts rambling. "Get this," he tells the stone-faced kids about his latest job. "It was supposed to be a funny show, but I made people cry. Isn't that silly?"

Curb Your Enthusiam's Jeff Garlin plays James – and also wrote and directed – and although he won't make you cry here, he'll probably make you yawn. Garlin's pet project with the unwieldy title feels terribly familiar, with its chatter about minutiae and throwback, accordion-heavy soundtrack making it seem like a Curb episode directed by Woody Allen. But instead of neuroses that are black-tinged and deep-seated, most of Cheese's navel-gazing is genial to the point of being childlike. "Where'd the term 'dealership' come from?" James asks a receptionist when the reality show he hosts plays a joke on a mechanic. "What about tent sales? What is it about tents that make people want to buy cars?" With each scene change, you can picture Garlin cut-and-pasting riffs he's written over the years to form some semblance of a story. Occasionally they're amusing; mostly, though, it's like hanging out with someone who tediously must express every thought that comes to mind. Or a toddler who just learned how to ask questions.

Then again, perhaps that's fitting considering that the 39-year-old James still lives with mother. The two other things that are important to know about James is that he's fat and looking for love. (If watching the plus-size actor in every scene isn't enough to remind you about his weight, someone mentions it at what feels like five-minute intervals.) He seems to find love but not a solution to his dieting problems when he meets Beth (Sarah Silverman), a "hot girl" who gives James her practice sundae when she's watching her sister's ice-cream shop – and soon, uh, asks him to go underwear-shopping with her. (He's as incredulous as we are.)

Silverman is initially a bright spot in this exceedingly loose film, but her character is impossible to like. The same can be said of the majority of the well-connected Garlin's guest stars: Second City alumni such as Bonnie Hunt, Amy Sedaris, and Dan Castellanata show up, though their main direction was apparently to act weird so Garlin can scrunch his eyebrows together at them.

James does little but meander from rejection to rejection throughout the film. He's dumped personally, he's dumped professionally. None of these turns are given much explanation, despite the fact that, clocking in at a meager 80 minutes, the script had plenty of room for some. Every time someone tells James what a loser he is, though, he never raises more than an affable fuss over it, which makes the character's problems feel all the more contrived. Hearing about a remake of Marty for the Tiger Beat generation, in fact, seems to upset James more than the idea that his life is tanking. This sub-sub-plot at least leads to Cheese's funniest scene – which involves a secondslong upstaging by teen pop star Aaron Carter. Now that's silly.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

It’s a little hard at first to believe Billy Mitchell, the subject of the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It’s not because the Florida restaurateur and hot-sauce shill, now in his early 40s, was once crowned “Gamer of the Century” after setting records on a number of classic video-arcade games—most notably Donkey Kong, on which he recorded a seemingly unbreakable high score of 874,300 in 1982. Nor is it because he’s still proud of those achievements and was happy to talk about the good ol’ days with Seth Gordon, the film’s director.

Rather, what’s difficult to believe is that the character of Billy Mitchell you see onscreen actually exists. Now that reality shows and mockumentaries have hardened us to the truthiness that’s out there, your natural reaction to Mitchell may be that the dude’s been coached. The hair: long but tidy and businessman-slick, accompanied by a trimmed full beard. The clothes: skinny black pants, dark shirts, and patriotic ties for a monochrome look that says “I love the ’80s.” And, finally, the attitude, which involves not only referring to himself in the third person but announcing things like, “No matter what I say, it draws controversy. Sort of like the abortion issue.” Come on.

But Mitchell persistently uses that same self-important tone whether he’s talking about the “absolute brutality” of Donkey Kong or going on about what it takes to be a winner in life and, well, it would have taken some serious craftiness on the filmmakers’ part to fashion a person who wasn’t an inherent ass into the Mitchell you meet. The King of Kong also isn’t a nostalgia trip but an update. Mitchell had been sitting pretty on his record for more than two decades when a challenger emerged in 2003. Steve Wiebe, a 35-year-old father of two, had just been laid off from what he expected would be a lifelong job at Boeing (his father had worked there) when he discovered that he was pretty good at Donkey Kong. Desperate for a purpose, he looked into the game’s best score and decided to try to beat it on his home machine. Fate was not on his side: As the film shows, Wiebe was always the frustrated-but-amiable loser, gifted in sports and music but never quite able to become the No. 1 anything. He even lost his job the same day that he and his wife bought their first house.

The nerds went wild over the competition anyway. The nerve center of the gaming world is Twin Galaxies, an organization with “referees” who police the virtual world by recording game statistics and player rankings as well as creating codes of conduct. Its founder, a slightly weird and vaguely bummish man named Walter Day, is tickled by the unexpected rivalry, as are the assortment of eccentric characters—mainly refs and other record-holders—included here, most of whom pretty much admit that they’ve got nothing else going on in their lives. Again, the high degree of geekdom that Gordon presents knocks you off-balance a bit: Is this meant to be merely a let’s-laugh-at-the-freaks project, a real-life Napoleon Dynamite?

Mercifully, the answer is no. The King of Kong genuinely unfolds into a classic and very funny underdog story, yet because of the bizarre subject matter—and bizarre subjects—it never feels clichéd. Better yet, Gordon makes you understand that the competition really isn’t a joke to these guys: Wiebe submits a tape that shows him beating Mitchell’s record (and in which Wiebe’s young son repeatedly and hilariously demands, “Wipe my butt! Stop playing Dooooonkey Koooooong!”), but when his score is disqualified by Twin Galaxies, he twice travels to compete in person at a sanctioned machine. (Yes, there’s a conspiracy, and it’s strangely compelling.) But Mitchell, even after sneering about how setting a world record at home doesn’t mean a thing, well, let’s just say that the talent he shows off best here is running his mouth. The players’ motivations, and therefore their humanity, eventually trump their initial caricatures as it becomes clear that neither of them want to hold the world record just because. As with any other sports film, there’s tension and snarkiness and thrills and even, unfortunately, tears, although this bit of melodrama is kept to a flash. “It’s not even about Donkey Kong anymore,” Wiebe says as the competition is about to boil over. And you believe him.

 

 

 

Balls of Fury has nearly all the elements that make The King of Kong a success—a nerdy pseudo-sport, characters that can politely be described as eccentric, an obsession with the ’80s—yet the music to Donkey Kong will stick in your head longer than this disaster. Born of Reno 911! creators and stars Robert Ben Garant (writer-director) and Thomas Lennon (writer-co-star), Balls of Fury barely even counts as a one-joke movie, considering that the sloppy former table-tennis champion who serves as its main sight gag isn’t very funny.

Cringingly unsuccessful Jack Black wannabe Dan Fogler is Randy Daytona, a one-time Ping-Pong prodigy whose defeat in the 1988 Olympics resulted in his gambling father’s death. Nineteen years later, Randy is still digging Def Leppard and headbands but no longer competes, instead eking an existence out of performing Ping-Pong-related stunts at a dinner theater favored by the elderly. One day, an FBI agent (George Lopez) enlists his help in catching Feng (Christopher Walken), some kind of criminal table-tennis overlord who killed Randy’s father. In order to get close to Feng, Randy needs to be invited to his underground competition, which means receiving training at the hands of a blind Chinese man (James Hong) and his lithe-but-fierce niece (Maggie Q).

If you’re waiting to read about the funny parts, you just did. Garant and Lennon bring a vague sense of Reno 911! silliness to Balls of Fury, but set against the series’ best episodes, it feels like the first draft from a couple of guys who drunkenly slurred “Let’s make a movie!” after stumbling home from karaoke night. How else could they defend what feels like dozens of jokes about prostitutes? And a love interest—poor Maggie Q—who literally hates Randy in one go-nowhere scene and is kissing him in the next? And here’s an easy game: Guess what’s coming when the FBI guys say that a communication device needs to travel with Randy “the old-fashioned way.” Gas, groin kicks, and a random pet panda—ha ha, it’s dead!—are also dragged out for so-called laughs.

Fogler, all hair, chub, and unfunny mugging, is as unpleasant as the attempts at humor are exhausting. Even Walken can’t redeem a minute of this mess, though his contribution might have been a little amusing had the trailers not given it away. Allow me to throw one of Balls of Fury’s lines right back at it, courtesy of Randy’s boss when he gets fired: “Get your stink out of my theater.”

 

The setting is Manhattan's Upper East Side. A fresh college graduate, eager to put some sort of imprint upon the world but clueless about how to properly do so, takes a job – so easily gotten! -- as a nanny. If she squints really hard, this young woman can see the position being sorta-kinda related to anthropology, the field she eventually wants to enter. She's thrilled. Until she finds out that the exhausting, humiliating, and often just plain impossible mother-child-nanny power struggle she's now engaged in is its own circle of hell.

If The Nanny Diaries sounds familiar, it's because you've seen it before – only it was called The Devil Wears Prada, with a fabulous spring collection standing in for the baby that a slave-driving bitch casually bears, then orders an exasperated lackey to kill herself trying to care for it. Oh: And it was also a book, a novelized bit of composite nonfiction by former New York nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. But this is Hollywood, and the book was predominantly dark and biting. So readers should prepare themselves to see the more precious, message-touting, "In a world..." version of Annie's story on the big screen. (Yes, Annie's: The character is also no longer "Nan.")

The shift in tone is surprising only when you consider the film's writers-directors, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The pair may have 2003's witty, meta Harvey Pekar biopic American Splendor on their resumes, but their offbeat sensibility isn't much in evidence here. The movie is framed as an anthropological study – which would have been more interesting if Mean Girls hadn't taken a similar approach three years ago – of "resourceful" UES mothers who manage to juggle days full of pursuits such as shopping, pampering, and puking. And, of course, monitoring not their children, but their nannies: When Annie (a dowdied Scarlett Johansson) runs into her tiny future liege, Grayer (Nicholas Art), and his mother, Mrs. X (Laura Linney), in a park, the mother and son are together only because Mrs. X had just fired Grayer's latest nanny. Annie wasn't looking to become a sitter – she'd majored in business -- but she'd just blown a big corporate interview, and when Mrs. X mishears her name as her occupation, she begs Annie to work for her. Grayer seems sweet, and Annie needs a job, so she agrees.

Bergman and Pulcini at the very least still rather entertainingly eviscerate the book's main target, well-off women who are mothers in name only. The gorgeously coiffed and wardrobed Linney easily pulls off the icy, deplorable caricature that comprises the bulk of Mrs. X (the authors kept most of the characters anonymous, including Nan/Annie's love interest, "Harvard Hottie"). The woman mistreats her employees while pretending to live for haute couture, bullshit benefits, and general one-upmanship; really, though, she does care that her husband (Paul Giamatti, using his schlubbiness to dirtbag effect) is cheating on her and spends even less time with their bratty son than she does, and Linney is careful to let cracks of this show as well.

But even though the end of the story was changed to emphasize this damnation of absentee parenting, the alteration is really all about making the heroine look good. Annie and her adventures in babysitting are no longer part of a satire, but a feel-good fable about growing up: Annie lies to her working-class mother, whom at one point randomly insists that "no man is going to squash your dream!", about taking the lowly job and struggles with "which kind of New Yorker" she is destined to become. The angle would be more palatable if it weren't mired in sitcom humor (how else to meet the man of your dreams but locked out in a hallway with your pants down?) and treacle ("I wuv you!"). Worse, Johansson just isn't all that likable in such a comic-everywoman role, appearing stiff as she tries to flail and sputter like a more normal 22-year-olds instead of the preternaturally self-possessed one that the actress actually seems to be. One could imagine Anne Hathaway getting it right, but apparently she was busy.

 

Whatever you say, Mom. Party!

Human beings in general are under the microscope in The Invasion, the fourth film adaptation of Jack Finney's novel, Body Snatchers. Why make a version in 2007 after it's already been done in 1956, 1978, and 1993? Iraq, of course. And Darfur. And even Hurricane Katrina. This generation's Invasion, penned by first-timers Dave Kaiganich and directed by German-born Oliver Hirschbiegel (with some help, reportedly, from The Matrix's Andy and Larry Wachowski), doesn't just hint at the allegory inherent in its story about an alien life form steathily taking over the human race, creating a world without emotion in the process. On one side, there are the converted, who naturally want to convert. On the other are the paranoid, friends and family to the outsiders who, though they can't quite put a finger on how, are pretty sure that Uncle Joe and little Jimmy just ain't right.

In 1956, Communism was the thing to be feared, yet the makers of the first film only briefly mention "what's going on in the world" to prompt viewers who wanted more than a mystery to read between the pods. Here, you *will* get the message. Current news constantly pours out of televisions, radios, newspapers, and, in case you can't read headlines, characters' mouths. The idea: Would we be better off as a society of robots, living without war and crime because we no longer feel? The answer is an altogether too positive one, at least for an otherwise dark and satisfying thriller.

Nicole Kidman stars as Carol Bennell, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist who hears the infamous "My [blank] is no longer my [blank]" line from one of her patients (Veronica Cartwright, who co-starred in the 1978 movie and gives a terrific monologue here). Immediately, Carol begins noticing oddities, too – a kid who gets attacked by a dog yet isn't frightened, the people spread out neatly at a bus stop, the sudden appearance of her ex-husband, who now insists on spending time with their son, Oliver (Jackson Bond). Even though she spends her days personally quelling her clients with drugs – here's another message for you -- she's not so hot on the idea of it occurring outside of her control. With the help of her boyfriend, Ben (Daniel Craig), Carol gets a sample of some goo she found analyzed and discovered that it's a gene-mutating life form that alters its hosts when they sleep. By this time, Washington is full of replicants – well, more than usual.

Despite its political overobviousness, The Invasion is a taut adaptation of Finney's well-worn story. The explanation of where the body snatchers (though the term isn't used) came from and why they're a danger is more comprehensible, both in actual explanation and in feeling. These zombies aren't vacant but have menace in their eyes, and are second-Dawn of the Dead-quick to gather and zone in on creatures that aren't one of them. Whereas previous fighters against the invasion seemed to be merely living among the sleep-deprived, Carol and her small group seem in constant, claustrophobic danger of vultures out for their lives. The fear is still largely psychological, with a layer of tension added when Carol is separated from her son. But there's also an injection of action, albeit nowhere near the overload you might expect from a modern-day, Wachowski-enhanced blockbuster. (Their touch is subtle but recognizable, particularly during a darkly lit and balletically blocked car chase.) The fun ends, though, with a narrative twist that's blown up into, essentially, a giant cop-out that's completely out of character with previous versions. In the end, The Invasion is the opposite of what it should be: all emotion and no guts.

 

By Tricia Olszewski 

 

Hot Rod's Rod Kimble is a moped-driving stuntman, but he may as well be figure-skating while reading a teleprompter and wearing a "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt. Saturday Night Live comic Andy Samberg's amalgam of Napoleon Dynamite and every Will Ferrell character to grace the big screen overestimates his talents, his appeal, his friends – and does much of it while wearing a thick fake mustache and occasionally making noises reminiscent of a barking walrus.

Rod is your go-to loser, a petulant college-age kid who doesn't work, still lives at home, and had a vaguely triangular haircut. He butts heads – quite literally – with his stepdad, Frank (Deadwood's Ian McShane), attempting to win his respect by challenging the old man to fights. These battles are put on hiatus, however, when Rod's mother (Sissy Spacek, embarrassingly filling the Julie Hagerty space-mom role) tells him that Frank has a heart problem and will likely die soon because they can't afford a transplant. So Rod decides he's going to put his stuntman skills to use to raise funds: "I'm going to get you better," he seethes to Frank, "then I'm going to BEAT YOU TO DEATH!"

 

Hot Rod is the misfit brain child of Samberg's comedy trio the Lonely Island (also comprising director Akiva Schaffer and co-star Jorma Taccone), best known for creating SNL digital shorts such as "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box." Though some of its basics are derivative, the movie still manages to add new color to the stupidity rainbow. Really, you can't go wrong with the elements thrown together here – Samberg's gangliness, a terrible hair-metal soundtrack, and completely random gags such as a character (Chester Tam) who seems to exist only to thrust-dance in various scenes are reflexive laugh-inducers despite the resistance your brain will inevitably put up.

 

It's way less consistent than such top Ferrell vehicles as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. But the silly genius of, say, an extended scene of Rod falling down a hill that's made up of obviously separate takes are just enough to compensate for awkward misfires, including many moments with a wasted Isla Fisher, who as Rod's love interest mostly has to look uncomfortably confused.

 

 

Just because Eddie Punchclock and Sally Housecoat have managed to keep The Simpsons on the air for 18 years doesn't mean that it's still worth tuning in to. The past few seasons have become increasingly painful to watch, with forced, out-of-character antics and jokes being shamelessly recycled like so many stapled-together Krusty Burgers. So for loyal, longtime fans, the prospect of The Simpsons Movie was as worrisome as it was exciting: A failed big-screen adaptation of the beloved series would be the unfortunate, unequivocal sign that it was time to release the hounds on the clan for good.

What a relief, then, that it doesn't suck. Creator Matt Groening gathered a veteran series director, David Silverman, and plenty of back-in-the-day writers to create a zippy, 87-minute mega-episode, one that doesn't quite rank among the best but is far from the worst. The story returns to Simpsons-save-the-day basics and reverses a couple of recently developed bad habits along the way – most egregiously, the morphing of Homer from cranky buffoon to enraged jerk.

Of course, he still screws up, and this time it's a big one that potentially dooms not only his marriage but all of Springfield. The no-state town is in denial about its toxic lake, despite attempts by Lisa (Yeardley Smith) to environmentally school her neighbors by preaching about pollution door-to-door and hosting a conference, An Irritating Truth. Lisa convinces the residents to stop dumping, but eventually doughnuts speak louder than words: When Homer (Dan Castellaneta) hears that Lard Lad is giving out free goodies, he decides that he doesn't have time to properly dispose of a silo filled with the waste of his new pet pig. So into Lake Springfield it slides. Immediately, the waters burble into an ominous green and a skull appears, growling "Eeeevil!" Soon after, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (Albert Brooks) seals off the whole dirty city in an impenetrable – or is it? -- dome.

The literally and figuratively sharply drawn Simpsons Movie doesn't show off with an onslaught of celebrity cameos (Green Day and Tom Hanks being the quick exceptions), and, in fact, even many favorite secondary characters are restricted to populating crowd scenes or spouting a line or two. The latter is somewhat unfortunate – no episode has suffered because of too much Principal Skinner or Mr. Burns – but the writers' decision to focus on the family doesn't backfire. (The choice to include a "President Schwarzenegger" instead of the show's Ahrnold stand-in, Rainier Wolfcastle? More puzzling.) It's not only Homer that's been de-caricaturized: Marge (Julie Kavner) and Lisa are once again do-gooders who are funny instead of annoying and Bart (Nancy Cartwright), though arguably the character who's stayed the truest throughout the years, is a troublemaker who's entertainingly rebellious (two words: skateboarding sequence) without coming off like a brat.

Homer, though, is the center of this universe, and the script effortlessly laces a story of government corruption with lessons geared toward the bumbling patriarch on maintaining a good marriage and thinking of people other than yourself. Still, this isn't a Hallmark special: Sly humor and subversion are what have won The Simpsons fans for the past two decades, and the movie continues that tradition by including mischief such as drunkenness, nudity, slams on cultural icons, and social commentary that will offend sensitive sensibilities. A wide canvas gave the animators ample opportunity to fill the screen to bursting with gags you'll likely need the DVD to catch, including credit-crawls of fake names. Turning out a film worthy of 18 years' of anticipation couldn't have been easy – but cheers to Groening for not taking Homer's legendary advice to never try.

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

Vitus asks you to believe in a myth that pops up in film from time to time, usually in the most melodramatic of family dramas: the precocious little boy who prefers to dress like Tucker Carlson. The tiny vests and ties denote a type, to be sure. This kid is gifted. Serious. Far smarter than the adults who are nurturing him. And he knows it.

If you’re familiar with this particular personality, your first glimpse of the latest incarnation will likely give a good indication whether you’ll love him or hate him. Vitus’ titular character is introduced in a way that may not win him fans immediately. A boy of 12 is wearing a suit and shuffling on a sunny morning toward the runway of a small airport. The gate is padlocked shut, so he climbs over and hops into a plane. No one notices until he turns on the engine, at which point an employee waves his arms frantically and pleads with the boy to shut it off. Instead, Vitus gives a thumbs up, and away he goes.

Away he goes? Please. Mercifully, writer-director Fredi M. Murer immediately turns back the clock to when Vitus (Fabrizio Borsani) was a much more darling tyke of 6. His parents, Helen and Leo (Julika Jenkins and Urs Jucker), are just realizing how gifted their son is—he’s a natural on the piano, terrifically bored in kindergarten, and takes it upon himself to look up words that Dad doesn’t have time to define for him. They feel pressured to nurture Vitus’ talent, but, you know, it’s not so bad. After all, the kid can be trotted out at dinner parties to show up snooty co-workers who expect that Leo’s boasting means that the boy can play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Vitus’ grandfather (Bruno Ganz), meanwhile, is more of a salt-of-the-earth type and has his grandson help with small construction projects while Gramps talks about his own dreams of being a pilot.

Metaphor alert! Vitus is being piano-benched by one generation and receiving hushed odes on the beauty of flight from another. For a while, it’s captivating. Vitus isn’t quite enough of a smartass to be irritating at this stage (see the recent Joshua or 2002’s Valentín for good examples of how exasperating these characters can become), though, admittedly, it’s mostly because Murer focuses more often on the boy’s incredible performances instead of, say, his arrogant ways with a babysitter. The awe of—and sympathy for—the child who is too smart to fit in anywhere dissipates, however, when the film skips ahead a few years. Vitus is now 12 (played by real-life pianist Teo Gheorghiu) and rebelling against whatever the world’s got. He’s sick of his mother’s stage-momness and those teachers who think they know everything. But really, he just wants to be normal.

Vitus, co-written by Peter Luisi and Lukas B. Suter, devolves into a ridiculous adolescent fantasy from this point. Try to keep liking the kid as he pulls off an act of supreme manipulation after deciding he no longer wants to pursue a career in music. Or becomes a whiz at the stock market. Or woos his former babysitter, going so far as to buy her a diamond ring and using statistics about death rates and peaking libidos to argue his case. This downturn is a terrific disappointment considering the film’s achievements: The acting, particularly Jenkins’ turn as Vitus’ cool, aristocratic mum and Ganz’s charming grandfather, is excellent, and the score (all piano, naturally) remains enjoyable even when the story goes downhill. It’s nearly enough to fool you into believing you’re watching one fine film—but like its main character, Vitus tries so hard to be intelligent that it forgets to be likable.

 

 

My Best Friend suffers from nearly the opposite problem: Its main character spends the movie trying to figure out the secret to being liked, but it’s unclear why those around him think he’s a git in the first place. François (Daniel Auteuil) is a French antiques dealer who owns a gallery with his partner, Catherine (Julie Gayet). François isn’t exactly the bleeding-heart type—he attends a former client’s funeral only to procure one final piece of furniture from the man’s estate—and at an associate-attended birthday dinner later that night, his colleagues accuse him of not having any friends.

Now, you’d think such a charge would be made lightheartedly, especially considering that the discussion begins not a minute after François smilingly joins them. But these people are rather serious: You don’t bother to notice anyone, they say. No one’s going to come to your funeral. Catherine goes so far as to guess that François doesn’t even have one close friend. In fact, she bets on it. If he can’t present a best bud to her within 10 days, a valuable Greek vase that the dealer impulsively bought that afternoon will be hers. So François spends the evening struggling to come up with a list of pals, shooing away his loving, obviously devoted girlfriend (Elisabeth Bourgine) as he works.

Writer-director Patrice Leconte’s film (co-written by Jérôme Tonnerre) has two major strengths. One is the uniqueness of the script. It’s not often you see stories that are strictly about friendship—sure, there’s guy-love in plenty of films, but its portrayal is inevitably accompanied by explosions, sexy women, or other devices that are distracting enough to show grown men liking each other without making it seem as if they like like each other.

The other plus is its leads: Auteuil, always a charming presence from such fluff as Après Vous… and The Valet, is—in what will prove to be the film’s undoing—also quite likable here, as is Dany Boon (also from The Valet), playing Bruno, an easygoing, trivia-obsessed cab driver sought out by François for advice on how to make friends.

The problem with My Best Friend, however, is that its execution is as strained as its idea is unusual. After that first, mean-spirited dinner—at which point we’ve yet to see any red flags regarding François’ personality—the writers never bother to layer their main character, instead showing him approaching people from his past, all of whom act like he’s murdered their families. Even his college-age daughter tells Bruno that her dad “stinks.” (François’ sin against her? He thought she had a dust allergy, when really it was pecans.) Meanwhile, François’ predicament is played for laughs. He’s thrilled about his apparent instant rapport with salespeople and goofy when he asks two gentlemen in a restaurant how they cultivated their relationship. In other words, he’s funny and personable. Not exactly what the script ordered.

Worse, the plot takes turns contrived enough to get a sitcom canceled. Bruno and François develop a friendship, of course, but just as predictably things get strained—because François, you know, just can’t help screwing up. But the film wipes its hands of all plausibility in its final chapter. Let’s just say it involves Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and those lifelines. Against all odds, there are a few chuckles in this predictable arc, and the sentiment expressed about true friends is touching. But My Best Friend is ultimately a trifle that's too labored to be sweet.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski 

 

The mop top is gone, the torso is muscular, and the attitude is pissy. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth cinematic installment in the gargantuan Harry Potter franchise, the Boy Who Lived is now more like the Boy Who Didn’t Ask to Be Born, and You’re Not My Real Dad, So Shut Up and Leave Me Alone! When we last saw Harry, he was finishing another year at Hogwarts, mourning the accidental death of a fellow student he was competing against in the grueling Triwizard Tournament, and freaking out over his unexpected battle with Voldemort, the all-powerful dark lord who murdered his parents but failed to take out the infant Harry. Voldemort has been in hiding since the beginning of the series, making his sudden appearance a very big deal.

Not many of these nor other particulars are recapped in Order of the Phoenix, so newcomers should be ready to enter the bewitched world so meticulously (and successfully) crafted by J.K. Rowling without their hands held. The story opens before the start of the new school year. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is miserable living with his obnoxious Muggle guardians, the Dursleys (Richard Griffiths and Fiona Shaw), and he’s forever fighting with their lunkheaded son, Dudley (Harry Melling). Worse, Harry’s hardly heard from his best friends, Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson). It’s not merely a lack of pen pals that bothers Harry—he’s waiting to hear news about Voldemort, specifically whether he’s turned up again and what Hogwarts, particularly headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), is going to do about it.

The 138-minute Order of the Phoenix, written and directed by Potter neophytes Michael Goldenberg and David Yates, respectively, has been culled from Rowling’s nearly 900-page book. Yet the movie is not about a whole lot in and of itself; it feels more like the mere chapter in an epic series that it is. Harry is 15 now, and in addition to worrying about Voldemort—whose presence Harry feels in his dreams—he’s got a pile of typical teenage concerns as well. He’s nearly expelled for performing underage magic, he’s dealing with his first crush, and he can’t stand the fact that Dumbledore is trying to protect him by withholding information about Voldemort while everyone else knows what’s going on. But no one really believes that the evil wizard is back, so Harry, once revered, has also become the laughingstock of the school. He’s soon questioning his own motivations: “I just feel so angry all the time,” he says.

Behind much of this is the slow takeover of Hogwarts by the frilly yet stern Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton, always grinning and puffed with self-satisfaction). An employee of the Ministry of Magic—essentially the wizarding government—Umbridge begins teaching at the school, implementing a “Ministry-approved” curriculum and devising fresh, Patriot Act–like policies faster than the students can figure out ways around the old ones. Her rules result in Harry teaching a defense class in secret to aid the kids who are now getting only theoretical lessons in the classroom.

The scenes of the students mastering new skills turn out to be the lightest and most enjoyable of this otherwise seriously minded sequel. Though Order of the Phoenix is continually absorbing and often exciting, much of the tiny magicians’ charm that dominated the start of the series has given way to workaday storytelling. (At least that’s true of the film. Rowling did stuff the book with her usual quaint, otherworldly details such as prickly house-elves or paintings whose subjects move and complain.) The new tone suits Radcliffe best, though: Now 18, he does troubled just fine, as he showed in his recent star turn in the London production of Equus. Ask him to act cheery or relieved, though, and you get the stiff expressions of an actor who might not have made it out of obscurity if it weren’t for his resemblance to a popular literary character.

The finer dramatic talents of Radcliffe and his co-stars, however, is nearly a nonissue—one of the joys of the Potter series is watching how they’ve grown since the first film in 2001, pretty much matching the development Rowling imagined for them. While each of them is capable, the star power comes from glimpses of the movies’ ace supporting actors such as Gambon, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, and now Staunton. All of them make their short screen times memorable, upholding the reputation that even though the Harry Potter stories are about kids, they aren’t exclusively for kids.

 

 

The title character of Joshua could school the Hogwarts students in a bit of evil Muggle magic. The debut feature of documentarian George Ratliff doesn’t exactly employ the supernatural in its story about a Manhattan boy who’s murderously jealous of his infant sister. After all, any 9-year-old can get his hands on some poison. But being able to psychologically torture your elders, say, or plant Crayola scribblings that any therapist right out of graduate school would recognize as the work of the abused? Now that’s a gift.

The trouble is that in this case, these bwah-ha-ha moves persistently feel like they were carefully spawned from a scripter’s imagination rather than a child’s cunning. Co-written by Ratliff and freshman screenwriter David Gilbert, Joshua is the latest twist on the increasingly tired spooky-precocious-kid thriller subgenre. This bad seed, played by Jacob Kogan, is a meticulously groomed private-school student and piano prodigy. He doesn’t care much for soccer or baseball, which gives him the sense that his racquetball-playing father, Brad (Sam Rockwell), might not be so crazy about him. Joshua relishes the attention he gets from his musically inclined uncle (Dallas Roberts), but it’s not enough to quell his insecurities. And when his mother, Abby (Vera Farmiga), brings home baby Lily, the family’s fawning stresses him out so much that one day he vomits. “Do you ever feel weird about me, your weird son?” Joshua asks his dad later. “You know, you don’t have to love me.”

Don’t worry, Josh—everyone will stop loving you soon enough. The filmmakers make this kid someone you eventually want to strangle. It’s partly Kogan’s irritating stare, which projects blankness just as often as menace. But mostly it’s the character’s, well, weirdness. Joshua doesn’t talk much, but when he does it’s random, wannabe-spooky statements such as “Are we safe, Mommy?” and “Someone died in this apartment.” He’s so stiff and unchildlike that any affection he does show his parents—and especially his little sister—comes off as patronizing. Instead of feeling frightened of Joshua, you’ll probably figure that a good slap could put an end to all the unfortunate things that start happening.

Yet until its absurd end, the film itself is fairly enjoyable. It’s just as much about postpartum depression as it is sibling jealousy, and it’s much more interesting when viewed as a story about a breakdown of a household. As Lily morphs from a gurgling angel to a sack of constant shrieks, Abby slowly begins to lose it. Brad is always working and when he isn’t, he’s of little help, leaving his evangelical mother (Celia Weston) to insist she knows what’s best. Meanwhile, construction on the apartment above the family’s combines with the noise already inside Abby’s head to drive her to popping pills. Farmiga’s fierce performance, with her increasingly mussed hair and vacant, disconnected eyes, is what’s truly unsettling, aided by a subtle, string-heavy score and creepy shots of the long, narrow hallways of the couple’s home. Abby’s eventual madness is deeply rooted and believable. But the Zen kid with one masterfully planned act of evil after another? Be grateful for the film’s scariest moments—which tend to happen whenever Joshua is offscreen.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

There’s a Herbie the Love Bug moment in Transformers. A high-school kid just got his first car. He’s crushing on a girl who looks 10 years older than he is and doesn’t tax her taut body by throwing on a lot of clothes. She needs a ride home; the vehicle flings its passenger door open and plays the Cars’ “Drive.” Once it’s got her inside, it further helps out its owner by motoring them to a remote spot—and switching the radio to “Sexual Healing.”

OK, so maybe it’s a scene that would make Herbie blush. But what do you expect from a movie based on…toys? Transformers is the latest directorial effort from Michael Bay, so you probably don’t need the PG-13 rating to tell you that despite its Hasbro origins, the movie’s not for the little ones. But unlike the rest of this summer’s something-for-most-of-the-­family fare—particularly other fanboy stuff like Spider-Man 3—the live-action Transformers has an unflattering vibe all its own: It’s not for kids, but it’s not quite for geeked-out adults, either. It’s for the stunted.

Bay and his screenwriters, Mission: Impossible III duo Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, are betting that audiences will feel that a heap of CGI sophistication will make up for lack of depth elsewhere. (And they’re probably right, alas.) The story is a gibberish-laden shell that integrates the giant robots from another planet, who until now have been kept there in the animated TV series and 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie. Shia LaBeouf trains for his upcoming Indiana Jones role as Sam, the uncool student who ends up with the prying old Camaro that he eventually learns is Bumblebee—though Bumblebee was originally a Volkswagen Beetle—one of the good-guy Autobots. It (he?) and a few other bots are there to support their leader, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), as Optimus travels to Earth and hunts for the Allspark, something that’s ridiculously important for the Autobots to have.

Of course, the evil Decepticons also want it. And they almost had it: Megatron (Hugo Weaving), the baddest of the bad, came searching for the Allspark back in the 19th century, only to accidentally freeze and later be discovered by Sam’s great-great-grandfather, an explorer. Before he was paralyzed, though, Megatron etched out a map to the Allspark on Grandpa’s glasses, which are currently in Sam’s possession. Why did the Autobots wait until 2007 to gain control of the Allspark? Apparently it took that long for the Decepticons to figure out how to hack the government’s security system (and, uh, attack U.S. soldiers in the Middle East) and defrost Megatron—or something like that.

All you really need to know, though, is that the shape-shifting androids are in a battle of good vs. evil, and it’s just an excuse for a lot of explosions, gunfire, childish humor, and a couple of completely unnecessary hot women. (How important are the actresses’ looks compared to the movie’s logic? Sam’s love interest, played by Megan Fox, somehow gets a wardrobe change while everyone else is knee-deep in Armageddon.) The action is mind-numbing rather than stupidly invigorating, filmed primarily in Bay’s messy style of thrashing cameras and dizzying edits. What Bay and his technical crew do get right, on the other hand, is what most of the audience members probably came to see: the alien stars morphing from their disguises as helicopters, trucks—whatever each stealth situation calls for—into their badass (or goodass) robot selves. From machine to ’droid and back again, their transformations are quick and fluid, often seamlessly occurring midair. The bombs may not impress you, but at least this will.

If only the script weren’t unbearable. Despite a 144-­minute running time, the story gets choppy. (Days turn instantly into nights, while lines such as “I had fun” refer to nothing we’re privy to.) The characters are one-note: Sam’s immediately comfortable with his new world, rattling off details of the planet’s possible doom to others; Fox’s Mikaela is a function of her wardrobe. And the jokes are painfully adolescent. (Ha ha, that robot is peeing—­something—on a government official! That guy’s picking his nose!) The package would be passable for kids—if they were the movie’s intended audience. But our inner children deserve better.

 

 

Ratatouille’s hairy version of vermin isn’t anything like Mickey and Minnie. Which means that the latest animated Pixar offering has a similar, though much less significant, problem as Transformers. Adults may roll their eyes at a movie that turns their childhood heroes into urinating clowns, and grown-ups may not be thrilled about watching rats—even friendly ones with opposable thumbs—swarming buildings and getting their paws on restaurant food. But will children be interested in a 110-minute story of a rodentian Rachael Ray?

It’d be a dicey proposition if it weren’t for Mr. Incredibles. The newest creation of writer-­director Brad Bird, now officially the darling of Pixar, is Remy (Patton Oswalt), a French rat with a refined palate and desire to “add something to the world,” despite his family’s insistence that their kind was meant to take things from it. Neither Remy’s gruff father (Brian Dennehy) nor his dimwit brother, Emile (Peter Sohn), understand why he won’t just eat garbage like the rest of them. Remy wants to be a chef, but Dad tries to scare him straight, telling him that the human world is too dangerous and that he should abandon his dream of leaving the clan. Remy’s father does finally recognize his son’s talent for identifying the ingredients of a concoction by sniff—and puts him to work as a poison detector.

The family and their horde of friends are discovered in an old lady’s house—in a surprisingly violent scene, a carpet of them fall through the ceiling when she goes crazy with a rifle after spotting Remy among her seasonings—and they get separated while escaping. Remy negotiates gushing pipes (another frightening sequence, though the inky waters look damn good) and ends up safe beneath a once five-star-rated French restaurant. Since he assumes his family is dead, he takes the advice of his new companion, the ghost of his idol, rotund chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), to sneak into the joint and spice up the kitchen.

Bird may not have created anything as exciting as superheroes or an iron giant when he developed Remy, but the rat’s culinary adventures are both sophisticated and kid-friendly—while mercifully avoiding the usual two-tiered paradigm of lots of face-plants and potty-humor for the little ones while grown-ups get assaulted with pop-culture references. Instead, the story is kept simple while the visuals are extraordinary. As Remy takes rather entertaining steps toward his goal, plenty of worthy life lessons are served as well: Not stealing is a big one, but there are more subtle messages about the importance of family (OK, that’s a yawner) and how not everyone can do whatever they want, but that those with talent need not feel inhibited by their circumstances to succeed (not only a wise teaching, but one that’s ingeniously woven).

Lifelike delicacies may be served in Gusteau’s place, but the eyes get a feast elsewhere as well, particularly in the amazingly realistic skyline views of Paris glowing at night. Bird also loads the film with clever passing details, such as the goings-on in apartments that Remy scampers above or the backstories of the more zestily painted minor characters, such as a severe cook named Horst (Will Arnett) who’s featured in a brief montage of the various reasons he gives for having spent time in prison. (“I killed a man with this thumb.”) Ratatouille is not a showcase of belly laughs, which is a bit of a disappointment if you compare it to its predecessor, The Incredibles. But it’s charming, original, and solid—not a description that will make your kids beg you to see it, but like the patrons eating Remy’s dishes, they never have to know.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

Forget everything that Cops has taught you—according to John Dahl’s You Kill Me, drinking and homicide actually don’t mix. At least not when you’re Frank Falenczyk, an alcoholic hit man who once prided himself on his murderly precision. When his Buffalo-based gangster family forces him to go to San Francisco and dry up, Frank resists, but he eventually takes the 12 steps to heart. Particularly the one about making amends: “I don’t regret killing them,” Frank tells his girlfriend of the victims he’s listing on paper. “Just killing them badly.” And so, the next of kin of the woman whose eye he sliced instead of her throat gets a $50 gift certificate to Macy’s.

The monster-with-a-sensitive-side premise has been done before, mined for laughs (Analyze This and That) or melodrama (The Sopranos). Here, the premise is spun as nearly intolerably cute. Ben Kingsley’s Frank isn’t a sexy beast—he’s a compact, well-dressed package of charming tics and few, funny words. He’s initially appalled by the AA meetings he attends, but he’s soon sharing ’n’ caring, and when he meets Laurel (Téa Leoni), a—naturally—beautiful Californian whose tongue is as sharp as his knives, she wants to love him. But, darn it, she’s got boundary issues. They meet, by the way, in a funeral home: Frank was strong-armed into taking a temporary job as an embalmer, and one day he was working on Laurel’s stepfather when she brought in bowling shoes for the deceased to wear. Now that’s a story to tell your grandkids.

Thanks to a delicately woven, genre-crossing script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who, in a departure, also worked together on The Chronicles of Narnia) and the strength of its leads, You Kill Me keeps its potential wackiness in check. (Though the Polishness—and drunkenness—of Buffalonians is emphasized so heavily that the city, represented by Winnipeg, Manitoba, becomes a caricatured character itself.) Much of its humor is culled from Frank’s AA experiences, whether it’s his introduction to the process (his look of subtle alarm every time someone introduces himself and is quickly accosted with “Hi, [Blank]” is terrific), his blossoming candor (“The only way I’m going to get to [kill] again is to stop drinking”), or the members who share their stories (“You know, it’s a whole lot easier fucking girls you don’t like when you’re drunk”). The film doesn’t just poke fun, however: There’s a quite uncomfortable scene where a merry family at the funeral home, laughing the whole time, is trying to force a drink on Frank, as well as heartbreaking consequences whenever he does give in.

Kingsley is a font of dryness as Frank, making his character bug-eyed and uncomfortable in his own skin when he’s sober. His exquisite comic timing and expressiveness is impressively matched by Leoni, who on more than one occasion makes too-sly jokes work with great physical follow-through. (Also notable is Bill Pullman as a real-estate agent/babysitter, schlubby in an ill-fitting raincoat and bad haircut—he’s tasked with watching Frank but looks like he can barely keep it together himself.) And just when their scenes together start to get too lovey, the filmmakers know how to cut the sugar: The expected new-couple montage, for example, features shots of them practicing knife-wielding on a head-shaped watermelon.

You Kill Me doesn’t completely abandon its gangster roots, though, while it’s vacationing as a romantic comedy. There’s tension and violence as Frank’s family deals with a rival that the hit man had failed to whack because he was drunk; Dahl, who also balanced similar moods in The Last Seduction, switches between locations and plotlines smoothly. The only surprise as the pieces come together is that you’ll likely have enjoyed the movie more than you might have thought.

 

 

The creators of Brooklyn Rules abided largely by only one: If anything mob-related was popular enough to become cliché, it was good enough for their movie. The film opens in a church as the main character narrates, talking about his boyhood in the titular borough and how it affected him and his two best buds as they grew up. Fast-forward to 1985, when one’s working in a butcher shop and going to college, one’s a bumbling, directionless innocent, and one’s flirting with the local family. Cue conversations about whether being feared is the same as being respected, as well as plenty of whatsamatta-you banter full of “da”s, “foockin’”s, and “douchebag”s.

Alarmingly, this amateurish story was written by Terence Winter, a veteran Sopranos scribe—apparently he’s saved his first-draft scraps for the big screen. Alec Baldwin is billed as a star, but his slightly over-the-top yet effective turn as the boss, Caesar, is minor—the kids are allowed to run the show. Freddie Prinze Jr. is Michael, the cartoonishly accented, responsible lead character who’s studying pre-law and adjusts his personality for his WASPy classmates and Brooklyn friends accordingly. Michael has big dreams but tries to keep his lives separate, confessing in voice-over that “in my neighborhood, it was better to keep ambitions like water polo to yourself” and acting reluctant when his buddies want to accompany him to a party in the city for Ellen (Mena Suvari), a fellow student Michael’s trying to date. (For good reason: The mixing doesn’t go so well.)

Meanwhile, baby-faced Bobby (Jerry Ferrara) is religious and good-natured, wanting nothing more than to start working for the post office so he and his squeeze can settle down. Carmine (Ocean’s Thirteen’s Scott Caan) is the troublemaker: Smart but vain—both about his looks and in feeling indestructible—he begins doing small jobs for Caesar, seeing it as the only agreeable way to make a good living in his ’hood. He dismisses Michael’s concerns. Of course, trouble is waiting, and Carmine’s antics start to involve his two friends as well.

The three young actors do have a likable presence onscreen, but Michael Corrente directs them to extreme Brooklyn-isms—such as those awful accents—that make the work at times skirt parody. The film is interesting mostly when it integrates the real-life rise of John Gotti with Carmine’s story, and its inevitable tragedy is heartbreaking, even if you see it coming from practically the start. But like the mob life, none of its perks is enough to make Brooklyn Rules worthwhile.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski 

 

The decades-spanning story told in Crazy Love isn’t the headline-grabber you’d read in a typical supermarket tabloid—this one’s hard to believe, but it’s actually true. Burt Pugach and Linda Riss, the subjects of Dan Klores’ and Fisher Stevens’ documentary, first made the papers in 1959 and have continued to do so until as recently as 1996. Their relationship has been publicly defined by betrayal, obsession, violence, and a stranger-than-fiction ending. Now the directors are betting that viewers can shrug off the luridness of the saga and be entertained by the wackiness of how these two Bronx natives ended up together.

Both Pugach and Riss narrate their own stories, which are accompanied by old photos, archival footage, and shots of an old-school, glamorous New York. In 1957, Burt was a wealthy ambulance-chaser in his early 30s when he spotted Linda, a 20-year-old beauty, sitting on a bench. As he says now, he “had to have her”—a sentiment that’s repeated frequently by Burt as well as other commentators—and struck up a conversation. Linda humored him but was far from enamored: “I thought he was very weird,” she says in her gravelly Bronx accent. “I probably gave him my phone number just to get rid of him.” She began to feel differently, though, once Burt showed her the good life, which included socializing at his nightclub, flying in his private plane, and generally living like stars. “I believe that Burt fell in love with Linda,” a friend of hers says. “I believe that Linda was impressed with Burt.”

They remained a couple until 1959, when Linda discovered that her fawning boyfriend was married. He promised to divorce his wife, even going so far as to fabricate papers. But that was finally enough for Linda to kick him to the curb. She began dating someone else and got engaged. Burt was desperate to get her back. When she refused, he hired a few goons to go to her home and throw lye in her face. (Though he claims he merely wanted to “beat her up.”) Linda was disfigured and almost completely blinded. Burt was sent to prison in 1962 after a circus of a trial in which he acted as his own lawyer, repeatedly tried to delay proceedings, and even slit his wrists in an attempt to use an insanity plea. Linda claims that at that time, “If someone told me Burt was dead, I would have said, ‘Wonderful.’”

In 1974, Burt was released from prison. Later that year, he and Linda became husband and wife.

That’s hardly a spoiler—there are plenty of other tabloid-worthy twists that occur during Burt’s incarceration as well as after they’d wed. The now-elderly pair seem to enjoy giving a play-by-play version of events, and it’s admittedly engrossing: Linda, with giant Liz Taylor hair and flashy sunglasses, seems a tough, colorful, no-nonsense type, using her eyebrows and drags of her long cigarettes to express what her eyes cannot. Burt, meanwhile, is more of a mystery. In a suit with a white goatee and glasses, Burt looks and even sounds like a smart former businessman and playboy who’s still sharp at 80. But when he casually relates his lies and wrongdoings, from his affairs to his negligent practices to his assault on Linda, Burt is coolly detached and matter-of-fact. There’s debate in the film over the state of his mental health. Though some of the interview subjects dismiss the idea that he’s a psychopath, journalist Jimmy Breslin claims, “Nobody is as visibly insane as Burton Pugach.”

Judging his sanity is a tough call, especially considering that the couple are clearly happy to categorize their disturbed history simply as a wild ride. They bicker and putter around like many pairs who’ve known each other 50 years, and unlike dirt-digging documentaries such as 2003’s Capturing the Friedmans, Crazy Love tries as hard as its subjects to make light of the unsettling elements of its story. Sensational headlines from papers are shown, as well as photos of Burt looking wild-eyed as he’s escorted to prison. But one buddy of his laughs about Burt’s life (“They say even Hitler had friends—whaddya gonna do?”), and the young Linda appears to be having the time of her life after the incident, traveling around the world and picking up suitors despite her disability. (At least until she was comfortable enough to take off the sunglasses—Linda concedes that she married Burt partly because she was “damaged goods.”) Worse, though, is the film’s soundtrack: Buddy Clark’s “Linda” gets a pass, especially considering Burt constantly had it played for her. But “Poison Ivy”? “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”? “Burning Love”?

It’s difficult, too, not to take the film’s central issues of stalking and domestic violence and put them in today’s context. After Linda was injured, for example, she received 24-hour police protection—how often does that happen now? Theirs also is no longer such a unique story; obviously many women still decide to stay with their abusers, usually with not-so-cheerful results. And, of course, though the main message here is supposed to be the adaptability of humans willing to compartmentalize emotions to serve their best interests, the subtext is that if you harass and even harm an estranged love interest, you’ll eventually win that person back. Crazy Love does, however, encourage the idea that sometimes first impressions are best heeded: When Burt introduced himself, Linda says, “I looked at him like he was a nut.”

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski 

 

Can you take Crash Davis seriously as a bad guy? Kevin Costner, who’s so good at inhabiting characters from baseball players to…baseball players, tries to find his dark side in Mr. Brooks, writer-director Bruce A. Evans’ thriller about a man who isn’t quite what he seems to be. Mr. Brooks, a righteous citizen and family man, is also Mr. Serial Killer. In Costner’s hands, though, he’s more like a big meanie with a petulant scowl, OCD tendencies, and pretty good aim.

We even get an additional actor (William Hurt) to play Brooks’ shoulder-devil, helpfully sparing Costner from having to project too much inner malevolence. Hurt’s performance as the goading Marshall—“Why do you fight it?” he asks in a deliciously evil rumble—is the best thing about the movie. But the character himself wears out his welcome (really, does no one notice Brooks talking to himself?) as does Evans’ and co-writer Raynold Gideon’s contrived plot. As the story begins, the serenity-prayer-spouting Brooks has been attending AA meetings for a couple of years, trying to control his “addiction.” But as an opening placard ridiculously warns, the hunger has returned to mr. brooks’ brain! He’s been following a young couple and decides on a last hurrah, meticulously planned and executed in a manner that the authorities have come to expect from the so-called “Thumbprint Killer.” Assigned to the case is Detective Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore), who’s a—surprise!—headstrong woman who “can’t ask for help,” even though she’s going through a draining divorce and dealing with the escape of another murderer she’d put behind bars.

After he’s gotten the urge out of his system, Brooks’ life gets complicated as well. An amateur photographer (Dane Cook) happened to see him in the couple’s apartment and snapped a picture—and is so excited by it that he wants to learn to kill, too. Meanwhile, Brooks’ daughter (Danielle Panabaker) appears to have an issue of her own, which is supposed to be deadly serious but will more likely give you a good laugh. Mr. Brooks’ somewhat intriguing premise is marred by cheap scares, unbelievable plot points, and a rather sickening attitude, mostly courtesy of Cook’s usually pouty character, who yelps “Yes! You are the man!” after he watches his mentor murder again. Costner’s not the man here, but he’s far from the worst part of Mr. Brooks—which may be the film’s most unbelievable twist.

 

By Tricia Olszewski 

 

You’re supposed to be horrified at the goings-on in Provoked. As the tag line (“based on a true story”) trumpets, the drama is based on the experiences of a Punjabi woman named Kiranjit Ahluwalia, who was wed to a British Indian through an arranged marriage and spent the next 10 years physically and mentally abused by him. Until, that is, the night in 1989 when she waited for him to fall asleep, doused his legs with gasoline, and set him on fire. Ahluwalia was arrested on attempted murder charges; when her husband died from his injuries, she got handed a life sentence. The case is most notable, though, because it became a landmark in British criminal law, the first time (in Ahluwalia’s 1992 appeal) that “battered woman syndrome” became an acceptable defense for murder.

Unfortunately, director Jag Mundhra takes these truths and fashions them into sub-Lifetime material. Written by Rahila Gupta (the woman who helped Ahluwalia write her memoir) and Carl Austin, Provoked offers a simplistic portrayal of the ordeal that irritates more often than it elicits sympathy. Aishwarya Rai, famously declared the world’s most beautiful woman, proves that she’s far from the world’s most talented actress in her turn as Kiranjit. It’s understandable that her character would be traumatized after the incident and, considering she spoke little English, shy about communicating. But Rai’s widdle-girl voice when Kiranjit does peep—“He sleep with other womans!”—is perpetually grating. And combined with her go-to expression—blank stare, occasionally tweaked with frightened-animal anime eyes—Rai grows nearly intolerable to watch, dialing up Kiranjit’s passivity to caricature levels better suited for, well, maybe a production by Waiting for Guffman’s Corky St. Clair.

Provoked begins on the night of the crime. After an off-camera person torches Deepak (Lost’s Naveen Andrews), we see Kiranjit sitting outside her home with her two children, unresponsive to the authorities on the scene. She remains largely mute throughout questioning and even after she’s sent to jail, where guards mispronounce her name and a fellow inmate calls her “Asian Barbie.” But Kiranjit begins to open up thanks to her cellmate, Ronnie (Miranda Richardson), the Henry Higgins of the prison yard, who not only teaches delicate Kiranjit to stand up to ruffians but also encourages her to get a new look and dramatically improves her English as well. (“I need ‘U’?” Kiranjit asks Ronnie when she misspells “shoulder” during a Scrabble game. “Yes, you need me!” Ronnie responds, in case you weren’t hip to her magic.)

Mundhra, who’s mainly known for directing erotic thrillers, is terrifically awkward with Provoked’s material, persistently cueing flashbacks by using things as generic as a meal to set off Kiranjit’s memories. Besides Deepak’s brief hospital stay—in which he mutters to a nurse, “Bitch tried to kill me”—these scenes are our only exposure to the character, and they’re not exactly well-rounded. Deepak threatens, yells, throws his wife down stairs, etc., all without any indication of what drives him to such violence. Andrews, therefore, can’t help but come off as a paper-thin villain. Also ineffective is Nandita Das as the head of an advocacy group that helps Ahluwalia, acting shrill instead of passionate and throwing school-play tantrums when something doesn’t go their way. Provoked does get better in its last chapters, helped by Robbie Coltrane as a member of the Queen’s Counsel guiding Ahluwalia and her supporters in their attempt to appeal. But neither the film’s coda nor tragic subject matter can overcome its amateurish telling.

 

 

28 Weeks Later is horrific, gross, and intense from beginning to end. It’s also depressing as hell. The sequel to the 2002 British hit 28 Days Later borrows its dark tone from Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic nightmare and adds another coat of bleak. The focus is no longer on the survivors of a viral epidemic that turned England into a zombie factory; rather, director and co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is subtly but unmistakably more interested in the carnage. Sure, we have protagonists to root for, this time a small family and some conscientious military personnel. But who really cares about them when there’s nonstop bloodletting to get to?

As the title explains, 28 Weeks Later takes place about six months after the original film ends. The infected—who instantly turn into ravenous, blood-puking maniacs after being exposed to the “Rage” virus—are believed to have all starved to death, and a United States-led NATO force has been brought in to begin reconstruction. Slowly, carefully screened people are brought back into London and set up in a small section of the city that’s been declared safe. It’s here that handyman Don (Robert Carlyle) reunites with his children, 12-year-old Andy (newcomer Mackintosh Muggleton) and his older sister, Tammy (the striking Imogen Poots), who were in a Spanish refugee camp during the outbreak. As for their mother (Catherine McCormack), well, Don sort of left her for dead when the house the couple holed up in was attacked.

Don tries to keep his children close by explaining what the “Rage” days were like, but kids being kids, they run off outside the safe zone to visit their home and grab pictures of Mum. Imagine their surprise when they discover their Kodak moments haven’t necessarily come to an end—their mother’s there, hiding, shocked but still alive. It’s not long, however, before the virus sneaks back into the quarantine, the soldiers declare Code “Shoot Everything That Moves” Red, and the siblings are suddenly so precious that people could just gobble them up.

As anyone who’s seen the original knows, this franchise, like the Hostels and Saws of the New Horror trend, is not about camp. One-liners and goofy slow-moving members of the old-school undead are absent, replaced by talk of hopelessness and monsters that seem to need a good exorcism more than a fresh supply of brains. There’s even a lame attempt at political commentary if you choose to look for it: “They’re shooting everyone!” says a citizen about the military. “This makes no sense!”

Those who’d rather ignore allusions to Iraq will also probably let slide the bits of stupidity—though few are as glaring as in your typical American horror flick—that allow the plot to proceed as it does. Fresnadillo isn’t exactly the new king of fright: He relies too heavily on a shaky camera that results in several confusingly chaotic sequences and on whipping out the loud, cheap scare from the Hack’s Bag of Tricks. But his gift for creating atmosphere is undeniable: Besides the gallons of gore, there are several aerial shots of London, freakily deserted and dark; terrific action (when you can actually focus) such as the firebombing of the city and a helicopter-tuned-Cuisinart; and, more remarkably, lots and lots of quiet. The few people who remain are wordless, the excellent score (by John Murphy) is used sparingly—in contrast to the mania, the effect is unsettling. There’s no fanboy glee in this gruesomeness. You’ll jump, squirm, and grip your armrest, but mostly 28 Weeks Later will leave you with a lingering sense of unease.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski 

 

Waitress has received plenty of attention for a reason that has nothing to do with its quality: The film’s writer, director, and co-star, Adrienne Shelly, was murdered shortly after the movie wrapped and was submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. Shelly never got to hear any reactions to Waitress. She died before she could find out that it was accepted to the festival.

Happily, there’s no need for critics to go soft and sentimental because of that tragedy—Waitress is excellent, a lovely legacy for the late indie “it” girl. It’s also a triumph for Keri Russell, the film’s star. Russell plays Jenna, a Southern diner waitress with a talent for making pies. She’s miserable with her rotten husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto), whose behavior ranges from annoying (honking repeatedly as he’s getting close when he picks her up) to abusive (casually belittling her and grabbing her when he’s angry). Jenna is squirreling money away—Earl takes her tips every night—and hopes to leave him. But things get complicated when she finds out she’s pregnant. Since their relationship isn’t exactly affectionate, Jenna knows it happened the one night he got her wasted. “I do stupid things when I drink,” she tells her co-workers. “Like sleep with my husband.”

Waitress is a small movie, but its characters, its humor, and its warmth have a universal appeal. Jenna decides to have the child, dreaming up pies in an effort to stave off her unhappiness about the situation. The resulting concoctions include “I Hate My Husband Pie.” Or, when she finds herself attracted to her new, bumbling doctor (Nathan Fillion), the “I Can’t Have No Affair Because It’s Wrong and I Don’t Want Earl to Kill Me Pie.” Perhaps the most appealing thing about Jenna is that she doesn’t suffer from movie-motherhood syndrome, going all gooey over the prospect of a little bundle. “I’m having the baby and that’s that,” she informs a perplexed Dr. Pomatter. “It’s not a party.”

Jenna’s storyline is central, but Shelly beautifully fleshes out the supporting characters as well, including Becky (Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly), her fellow lovelorn servers, and Joe (Andy Griffith), the cranky owner of the diner who comes in regularly to give Jenna hell with his picky orders and eventually provides the counsel and support that ultimately leads her to a life-changing decision. They’re all likable while being far from saccharine: Becky has more to her than what threatens to be clichéd, Flo-like sass; the slightly dorky Dawn is lonely but not pitiable as she begins a relationship with someone who initially seems to be a loser—and even he isn’t drawn as a misunderstood prince, just a decent person. The sharpest portrait, though, is Griffith’s Joe, a character that every waitress in neighborhood joints countrywide will probably recognize.

Russell is the movie’s biggest surprise in her first leading big-screen role. Her Jenna is sweet with a side of tart and subtle all the way through. It’s all in her face, from Jenna’s mulling-it-over grimace when Earl is begging for sex to her outright horror when she spots someone else’s screaming kid. Sisto is also slimily (and sometimes humorously) perfect as the poisonous husband who isn’t a cardboard monster but occasionally elicits moments of sympathy that more acutely demonstrate the tough spot Jenna’s in. Though full of tiny truths, Waitress’ main message is one that you can’t help but hope Shelly practiced herself: “This life will kill you,” Joe advises Jenna. “Make the right choices.”

 

 

The Ex pits an asshole versus an imbecile—and one imagines it’s supposed to be clear with whom viewers are supposed to side. Formerly known as Fast Track and repeatedly delayed, Jesse Peretz’s comedy (written by a pair of freshmen) tries to envelope-push like South Park and stage highly awkward scenes like The Office. The results are merely an embarrassment for all involved.

The film stars Zach Braff and Amanda Peet as Tom and Sofia, a New York couple on the verge of parenthood. Sofia is quitting her career as a lawyer to be not a housewife but “a full-time mom”—she actually makes this distinction to a co-worker—hoping that Tom, a chef in line for a promotion, can support the family. When Tom ends up in a maximum–high jinks scuffle with his boss (Paul Rudd) and gets fired, though, they obviously need a new plan. The solution: moving to Ohio so Tom can finally take up an offer from his father-in-law (Charles Grodin) to join his advertising company. (The fact that Tom doesn’t have any experience in the field is apparently not an issue.) Once there, Tom finds out he’ll be working under Chip (Jason Bateman), a paralyzed former cheerleader who was slightly more than friends with Sofia in high school. Chip is an awful human being who tries to sabotage Tom because he still carries a torch for Sofia. Naturally, no one believes Tom when he starts to make accusations. After all, how could a guy in a wheelchair be a jerk?

The script veers from the absurd to the appalling as the conflict plays out. Tom’s new workplace is ridiculous—and, considering it’s small-town Ohio, not terribly believable—teeming with cartoonish New Age types and practices such as tossing around an invisible “yes ball” to encourage a positive, freethinking atmosphere. Bob, Sofia’s father, spouts intolerable psychobabble while her mother (Mia Farrow) just babbles. Tom has a gift for only-in-a-wacky-comedy gaffes. And besides Rudd, other usually ace comedians such as Donal Logue and Fred Armisen make unfunny appearances as a superhippie corporate mogul and a bisexual perv, respectively.

The humor isn’t merely bad, however—it’s often jaw-droppingly racist and offensive to homosexuals (the word “gay” is used pejoratively on a couple occasions) and the disabled (a wheelchair basketball game is set to “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”). The very few jokes that work are quashed by the nastiness of the rest.

As Braff and Bateman belittle themselves, Peet gets the most interesting storyline. Sofia’s initial joy at motherhood turns into loneliness at being home all day and frustration with the one outlet she does find, a “baby group” whose mothers are psychotics who emphasize approaches such as asking infants permission before doing anything to them. Sofia is not immune to the script’s caricature, but the character is by far the most human and sympathetic especially considering that she ultimately has not one baby to deal with, but three.

 

 

By Tricia Olszewski

 

From the opening moments of Fracture, we know whodunit. A man witnesses his trophy wife cheating. He confronts her. Then he pops a cap in her face. He doesn’t bother to act innocent when the cops show up. “I shot her,” he tells them. Here’s the weapon. Case closed, it would seem. Or is it?

Of course it isn’t. Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), the murderous cuckold, has a twinkle in his eye when it all goes down, and though that first suggests far-gone madness, he’s really expressing delight that his scheme has been set in motion. Crawford staged the shooting as a hostage situation to ensure (at least according to movie reality) that the first person he’d deal with would be Rob Nunally (Billy Burke), a negotiator and the dude who’s been schtupping Crawford’s woman (Embeth Davidtz). Her name is Jennifer Crawford, but Nunally only knew her as Mrs. Smith, because, well, at the time it seemed cute that they didn’t know a thing about each other outside of the hotel bedroom. When Crawford shows him Jennifer’s barely breathing body, Nunally attacks him. Crawford’s arrested and brought to the precinct to give an official confession, grinning with feathers sticking out of his mouth all the while.

On the other side of the law, an ace assistant district attorney named Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) is celebrating his last days serving the public before starting a position at a prestigious corporate firm. He’s called to take on one more case, though—Crawford’s—and agrees only because it promises to be over by lunch. Especially when Crawford asks to represent himself, in an aw-shucks-it-can’t-be-that-hard kind of way that leaves everyone agape. Even Beachum urges him to seek counsel but isn’t too upset about his next notch coming that much easier.

Fracture plays out like an extended sweeps-week version of Law & Order—it goes on too long, has extra-special guests, and delivers a that’s-it? ending instead of the bang it so fervently makes you expect. Director Gregory Hoblit— who fashioned a hit out of similar, if stronger, material in his feature debut, 1996’s Primal Fear—may be to blame for the pacing problems that make Fracture occasionally drowsy at nearly two hours. But as he did with Primal Fear’s Edward Norton, who nabbed an Oscar nomination for his role, Hoblit gets terrific performances out of his stars. Then again, it’d probably be difficult not to: Hopkins’ portrayal of a callous criminal has inevitably been compared to his Hannibal Lecter, and while Crawford isn’t nearly as psychotic, Hopkins’ approach is just as fun to watch. He winks, he smiles, he seizes your attention with his lined face and expressive blue eyes that suggest he’s way smarter than you are and is having a great time watching you try to figure him out. The greener Gosling, himself an Oscar nominee for last year’s Half Nelson, is equally dazzling as the cocksure lawyer who’s got as much charm as self-confidence in his ability to win no matter what the circumstances.

And the circumstances in this case are certainly stacked against him. The confiscated gun isn’t the one Crawford fired, and nobody can figure out where the murder weapon is. Regardless, Beachum continues his dig, and even if you don’t figure out what’s going on before the lawyer does, you’re sure to be underwhelmed when the aha! moment arrives. As with so many thrillers, implausibility is Fracture’s weakness. Unlike so many thrillers, though, the cat and mouse don’t get any more sensational than this. It’s best to watch them play and pretend you’re as dumb as the characters ultimately turn out to be.

 

 

There’s no way around it: Vacancy is nasty. The premise is about a creepy motel owner (as if there’s any other kind) who manages a gang of murderers and surreptitiously shoots snuff films in the rooms. He sells the films, and he also enjoys them—in fact, he’s watching one of his creations at top volume when his next targets wander into the lobby at the start of the movie. But it’s not like the guests don’t get any warning. Each filthy room comes complete with a VHS collection of the men’s previous work for the customers’ viewing terror, heavy on women in nighties getting pulled around by their hair.

Yet…well, if you can excuse its inherent abhorrence, Vacancy is pretty good, too. Props go to director Nimród Antal for maximizing tension while minimizing gore—are you listening, Eli Roth?—which makes this most dangerous game way more palatable. It all begins with a slasher-flick cliché: Amy (Kate Beckinsale) and David (Luke Wilson), a couple on the verge of divorce, are on a road trip and realize they’re lost after David tries a shortcut. Things get worse when he swerves to avoid a raccoon and screws up the car. Naturally, they’re in the middle of nowhere, and naturally, it’s the middle of the night. (It doesn’t help that their honeymoon has long been over: When Amy repeatedly calls the animal they nearly hit a squirrel, David hisses, “You know? It was a fucking raccoon.”) So they reluctantly check in to a deserted motel, cared for by Mason (Frank Whaley), a thin, long-faced nerdy type with giant glasses and a grudge.

Vacancy is Antal’s first American movie and only his second feature after his excellent debut, the Hungarian festival-favorite Kontroll. Like that film, Vacancy is highly claustrophobic, taking place mainly in the small motel room as well as a suffocating tunnel system underneath. It’s also efficient: Amy and David have barely settled in when the phone rings (no one’s there), there’s banging on the door (no one’s there), the phone rings again (you guessed it), and the banging resumes (this time on a door adjoining another room as well as the couple’s own). It’s all terrifically disturbing and should tense you up good for the rest of the hunt, in which Amy and David are heavily surveilled and find themselves seemingly trapped by freaky, gray-masked killers who patiently wait to block the pair’s every dodge.

Comparisons to Psycho are inevitable, but Antal’s homage to Hitchcock goes beyond the Bates-ian storyline. The credits are dramatic and menacing: large red and white blocked letters accompanied by an aggressive string soundtrack. The director’s shots are often elegant, too; he captures Amy’s reaction to the car breaking down not by pointing the camera in her face but by capturing her reflection in the driver’s-side mirror. Though Beckinsale, a Brit, occasionally loses her American accent, she and Wilson are great as a combative couple and even better as victims—these characters actually sweat, get dirty, and cry during their ordeal, and you’re terrified for them every minute. For a plot that’s so gleefully disturbing, Vacancy offers a surprising amount of old-school fright-film class.