THE SWITCH

No miracles are evident in The Switch, a by the numbers if not below the numbers look at artificial insemination for a single working woman at age 40 played by Jennifer Aniston. There is the longtime friend played by Jason Bateman who despite being a stock trader doesn’t make it past the second date with women. Juliette Lewis plays the longtime acid-tongued best friend.

This is one of those movies that by the end of the opening credits you know it is going to play it awkward and disingenuous for the entire running time. Kassie and Wally (Aniston and Bateman) aren’t even clearly established in their first scene of how really close they are, with less tug the heart moments than snap and bite banter that defines what they mean to each other. Jeff Goldblum, as Leonard, the only male friend to Wally, acts manic and neurotic in his attention-hungry first scene.

An insemination party is thrown by Kassie which is attended by all her friends, and because many of them go to the office the next day, you must assume is a very loud bash held on a weekday and not a weekend. The sperm donor is Roland (Patrick Wilson, a colorful but genuine performance), a teacher by profession who actually brings his wife to the party, too, although she goes and stands in the corner. After ingesting drugs and shots of booze, Wally spills the sperm cup in the bathroom and decides to substitute it for his own. The next day he does not remember.

Flash forward seven years later after he meets Kassie’s son Sebastian (Thomas Robinson), who has been long absent from his life, and well, he starts to remember according to the laws of screenplay convenience. For attempts at humor, Wally and Sebastian share a lot of similar ticks and neuroses even though the two of them have never met until now. Kassie is a very non-observant mother, and non-observant in general thanks to Aniston’s uninspired, by the numbers performance.

A miracle could have occurred had the lead character gotten the news off his chest in the first scene of his realization. But “The Switch” is one of those misunderstanding plots where the guy takes the entire movie working up the courage and right time to tell the woman he loves that he’s the father. Wally’s time is running out before Kassie knots it up with Roland (who is now single and interested) who offers husbandry. The screenplay, by Allan Loeb, contrives a plentitude of unforeseen bumps that interrupt Wally’s chance to confess. For someone who didn’t see “The Back-Up Plan,” does “The Switch” grade above or below the cliché meter? Somebody enlighten me, please.

Aniston is no stranger to sitcom-range characters but the surprise is that Bateman is boring for the first-time ever on-screen. He is playing a neurotic, chronic complainer as well as a thoughtless non-father type – in his first dinner date with Kassie and Sebastian he orders duck, which to no surprise the kid doesn’t want to eat. As another contrivance, is it no surprise that Wally the non-father type transforms into a caring and willing father type who decides he wants to settle down, too? If Kassie says no to Wally, does he have a back-up plan other than to make a foolish and ill-timed interruption during Roland’s public proposal? It’s an uneasy blend of forced poignancy and bad comedy.

Go to the official site at http://www.theswitch-movie.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=the%2Bswitch%2Bofficial&utm_content=The%2BSwitch&utm_campaign=Title

Grade: D

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

Upright and involving for a broad comedy, Dinner for Schmucks never strays away from the focus of the material nor does it neglects its own guests. But in simple terms, it’s just damn funny – about business sharks who invite remarkably stupid people to dinner to show-off and humiliate (don’t worry schmucks lovers, the humiliation is tamed). You will experience laughter and chortles, but very few yuks, and no bad yuks if that. How many comedies these days lose faith in their own appeal and decide to throw in something disgusting to get your attention? Many do, but not this one.

If there’s nothing disgusting in the movie than there’s something at least annoying. But Steve Carell is supposed to be annoying in a socially unaccustomed way, and Paul Rudd is the navy blue suit professional who has to endure this pest – the odd couple both get girl trouble, too. Carell (last shined in “Date Night”) is worth the millions he gets paid, he is one of the last movie stars who is not vain, and he takes risks to look lame. Rudd (last shined in “I Love You, Man”) for awhile looked like he had limited appeal, but he keeps surprising with his likeable everyman range.

Speaking of shining, Jemaine Clement (“Flight of the Concords”), Ron Livingston (“Office Space”) and Zach Galifianakis (“The Hangover”) are among the co-stars who milk laughs in the spotlight. Of those three, only one of them is a climax guest schmuck. There’s also an English actor named David Walliams (yes with an “A,” not an “I” in the last name spelling), who plays a Swiss tycoon built like a skier with a Caribbean tan, who is also a natural magnet to comedy. There is no logical math in the business of film criticism, but if you add all these guys up you have about a hundred laughs.

The film is a tad cutesy with Carell as a mouse taxidermist, but then again, the dead mice get fabulous diorama sets as playgrounds (but has this ignorant dweeb really ever heard of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream?”). And Rudd has the cute girlfriend, an artist type played by Stephanie Szotstak (“The Devil Wears Prada”, who is easily susceptible to jealousy. Can she accept an apology without running away first? She’s cute in a luxurious French dessert way, and Rudd and her together look like they could squeeze some hugs together, but are they really the prototype for a modern American couple? You have to root for them to reconcile in a facile, kidding way.

As the rich arrogant mastermind, Bruce Greenwood (“Star Trek,” as Christopher Pike) brings the right amount of high society evil – he dislikes well-read people who think and respond too thoughtfully. Rudd is the guy who plays along in gale in the hope to get a promotion. His better conscience is telling him to play but play fair – let Carell attend but escape with dignity. Lucy Punch is also another whacked character, a daffy stalker blonde in tall platform heels, who gets in the way of both Rudd’s relationship with his girlfriend and with the signing of the Swiss tycoon as a client.

What you may be wondering about is the dinner. Well, the movie takes awhile building up to it but keeps you entertained before the main course. Slow patches are subjective to the viewer, but I didn’t feel one until about the one hour mark. Until then, director Jay Roach (“Meet the Parent”) creates one amok and social faux pas after another. We are occupied, the whole movie is an unceasing parade of dweeb behavior that is embarrassingly funny, so much that it could inspire furious (frustrated at these idiots) laughter.

Go to the official site at http://www.dinnerforschmucks.com/

Grade: B

GET LOW

You don’t need to take a leap of faith to know that Robert Duvall is still as good as ever after all these years. He is not one of those fading icons like DeNiro or Hoffman that has thrown in the towel for a hefty paycheck. But with Get Low, in particular, it is his most complicated role he has been given in quite some time. He plays a 1930’s character named Felix Bush, a backwoods recluse who has stayed away from folks for decades but now wants to throw a funeral – while he’s still alive – so he can hear what attendees really have to say about him.


Supposedly this is based on a true story of a man and his “living funeral,” although the drama has been embellished (almost to a fault). Felix is a hard man submerged in the squalor of his cabin in the woods before he comes to town with a shotgun and a bundle of saved cash, but he is not a stupid man. His case gets mileage out of the local funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) and his apprentice Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black) who think in 1930’s “modern” terms how they can spruce up and promote this unorthodox funeral and turn it into something of a festival. Sissy Spacek as widow Maddie Darrow, and Bill Cobbs as preacher Charlie Jackson, play the other key Southern characters.

Duvall is Duvall, the fine-tempered crazy genius with just enough articulate composure that makes him less the crazy type and more the genius type. When has this acting icon ever disappointed? He hasn’t, although this is surely his richest gruff and growl performance since the western “Open Range” (2003). From the roster of supporting characters, Bill Murray nevertheless stands out more than anyone else, because you think, there must have been loosey-goosey guys like Murray that existed somewhere back then in the 1930’s. Murray’s specialty has become bringing comedy to dramatic roles, as proved with “Lost in Translation” (2003) and “Broken Flowers” (2005). Here his character is a huckster who operates on half sincerity, one with a salesman smile.

The details of how the radio and poster ads are configured to publicize Felix’s funeral becomes a focal interest. Until a dramatic “secret” begins to make the narrative drag, bypassing whimsy and folksiness for the sake of creating faux mystery in Felix’s character, a secret that he has been harboring for decades. When Felix is let down by his associates, he wants to call the whole thing off, this sends Frank into panic over this unusually high-priced funeral arrangement that he has sunk all business cash into. Also trouble is that with Felix’s passing there was a promised raffle for his property, but after pulling out, he hardly cares that he has inconvenienced everyone.

Do you think that his ensemble of new friends will coax him to attend his own “living funeral” as promised? The secret itself, not revealed until the end, is nothing that will shatter the soul, but Duvall gets a grandstanding, if beautifully modulated delivery, out of a monologue that says all. “Get Low,” as you can tell, has beautiful acting from top to bottom. The story, wrapping around the mysterious secret, only passes for mustard only because it is in the context of the 1930’s period setting where obsession about God and Devil, and of the sin of adultery, could have only taken place so dogmatically then.

Go to the official site at http://www.sonyclassics.com/getlow/

Grade: B

THE CONCERT

Ever see a Euro comedy that doesn’t rouse you but at least sedates you into a pleasantly mild and agreeable state? The Concert has at least two characters you care about in its large ensemble – they are undeclared father and daughter, whoa! – but with a splash of Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major music and that might be enough to flutter your heart.

Thirty years after the dark days of Communism stole his profession, Andrei Filipov (Aleksei Guskov), a once renowned conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra, is now a lowly janitor at the Russia opera. Intercepting a fax, he decides impromptu to reassemble his lost orchestra and storm Paris to perform at the Chatelat Theater. If this isn’t reckless enough, Andrei and his friends turn this into an epic ersatz voyage (it’s been a long time since outside Russia!) But the French are more than ready to be hospitable, but they cut corners, too.

What we have here is a comedy of Russian slobs, with musical talent, invading the French. The real Bolshoi head department cannot find out, not unless a premiere documentary hits the cable waves, one supposes. It is restaurant, hotel and trips on the Seine river that fill out the demands of this fake motley crew. But Andrei has the more intimate request of having a French violinist virtuoso join their orchestra for the special event. Now isn’t Melanie Laurent (“Inglorious Basterds”), as violinist Anne-Marie Jacquet, easily one of the most beautiful and sublime women on the planet?

The second half of the movie is less funny. Perhaps because the obvious jokes are played out at length, and because the storyline gets schmaltzy. Lots of amusing scenes, however. Laurent radiates in her every scene whether she goes for drama or comedy. You are grateful for her scenes. Your heart is warmed by her presence, not because she inflects any great human insight in her slightly written character but because, she’s just damn beautiful. Her eyes are obsessive, her lips are mysterious, her poise is classy. The concert finale is a certifiable triumph that celebrates anything and everything that matters, even family matters of father and daughter sharing a united moment. Not truly believed, but nice.

Go to the official site at http://www.weinsteinco.com/#/film/the_concert
 
Grade: B-

SALT

Angelina Jolie is considered gorgeous and desirable among the male crowd but there is at least one guy that hasn’t been susceptible to her beauty. There has always been something a little non-human about her, and the obvious put-down of her is to say that she lacks softness – but not even does that exactly turn-off guys at large, so this indeed is a minority complaint. But that very non-human, efficient and beautiful machine-quality makes her the perfect actress to star as Salt, an action programmer that sprinkles a dash of espionage ingredients before it goes into non-stop chase mode. Overall this works as a superficially enjoyable action yarn.

When you say programmer, it means that it is a recycled female version of “The Bourne Identity,” going for all the fast pans and think-fast ingredients, not to mention handiness at making a rocket launcher out of a swivel chair and a fire extinguisher. Matt Damon, as Jason Bourne, was also good at creating cocktail weaponry. But Evelyn Salt (Jolie, as limber as she was in “Wanted”) nevertheless can’t run in heels like Bourne, and in the early scenes, has to run in barefoot which she does well, on-camera. Salt is depicted as an invincible character that can withstand endless whacks and falls, but it is Jolie who must be no stranger to painful foot blisters.

Before all the chasing begins, Salt is established as a CIA agent. She is assigned to interview a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), who has a tall tale: Since the Cold War and the Russian-blooded makeover of Lee Harvey Oswald, a secret agency has been programming an army of assassins. Salt was born to American parents but raised in Moscow, and those golden blonde braids of hers screams Russian descent (!), so when Orlov announces to Salt that she is one of them then the CIA panics and demands immediate apprehension. It is never explained why Salt is afraid of the interview, so a few Jason Bourne moves later dispatching guards, she is on a nonstop run, and additionally, the hysterical camera rattling by the film’s director Philip Noyce (“Clear and Present Danger”) also never subsides.

Chase after chase, Salt goes for astonishing leaps often across traffic and from the hoods of various tanker trucks, and at one point, aerobically jumps down one lower wall to the next in an elevator shaft without fail. Most of the dialogue occurs from her pursuers Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Agent Winter (Liev Schreiber), two characters who are known for wary elusiveness. But for the most part this is an action film short on motivated characters. The movie circumnavigates over assassination plots of both the Russian president and the President of the United States (who in the audience will believe we should root for the death of our own president?), and injuring but falling short of fatality of the targets is one of the film’s preposterous gambits.

In the heat of all this plot contraption we are supposed to be guessing which side Salt really is on, the American or Russian side. A surprising death takes place of someone who is close to Salt at one point, and the very cold spy-machine face of Jolie adds to the ambiguity, or at least wants to add to the ambiguity. Salt only appears fleetingly as if she is thinking of herself and nothing but. The film gives her character an agenda, and her choices will impact on whether or not there will be a nuclear Holocaust, one that not only entwines the United States and Russia, but other parts of the world as well. Salt is not a superspy, despite all the action chicanery, but at the end the fate of the world rests on her shoulders.

Somebody at the end of the movie should announce to Salt that with all her physical perfection she is ready for superspy stature. The CIA conspiracy stuff is not as beholding as anything with Jason Bourne, and the film lacks the romantic grandeur of a James Bond adventure. The film remains as alluring as a supercomputer machine. But that’s it. But it moves fast and sleek, and Angelina Jolie’s body is mechanically flawless.

Go to the official site at http://whoissalt.com/

Grade: C+

INCEPTION

Dreams wrapped inside dreams, riddles wrapped inside riddles. Inception is the brainiest blockbuster in many a moon, selecting to confuse and bewilder its audience deliberately, not because it doesn’t know what it’s doing but because it’s a Pandora’s Box that keeps you guessing. Director Christopher Nolan (the extraordinary talent behind “Memento,” “The Dark Knight”) doesn’t just want to keep you guessing, he wants you to keep deconstructing the intersecting puzzles he has created for the screen – the brainteaser work never rests. Nolan presents multiple threads of reality, or dream stories, toppling over each other, ripples linking to each other, throttling the narrative forward and explaining little. The film is as aggravating as it is enthralling.

The futuristic technology is not fully explained and the multi-national corporations are faceless, but Leonardo DiCaprio is a virtual dreamcatcher named Cobb, hired to steal ideas from competitors by infiltrating their minds. His target in the first chapter is Saito (Ken Watanabe), but his mind has a defense safeguard, and near impossible to purge. Saito now hires Cobb to work for him, this time to not extract but to plant ideas inside the head of rival corporate raider Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy), heir to his dying father, to surrender his financial empire. “Ideas grow on the mind like cancer,” Cobb says.

Other espionage members, all on the legit, include Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and new collegiate analyst Ariadne (Ellen Page) – all specialists in the art of deception and brain pathology. You also need these characters to spout quick philosophical and theoretical references, but their most valuable commodity is to explain the subconscious to the audience. As a final staple, you have Michael Caine as a professor, and as you might know, Caine shows up in every Nolan film, acting with restraint and bearing himself as perhaps keymaster to the mystery.

As a rule, five minutes of sleeping equals one hour in the dreamworld. When Cobb hacks into other people’s minds, he can spend an hour navigating the mind within. Other people within the dreamworld are “projections” and if a person dies within their dream than they can awaken in the real world. When Fischer, or any other mark, become aware that it is just a dream they try to make themselves dead, pointing guns at their own skulls, and Cobb within the dream does what he can to thwart suicide. Guys like Fischer, by the way, experience eternal threats within their subconscious.

While inside Fischer’s paranoid and violent-addicted head, this leads to permeating violence within the four interlinking dream stories in the final third (a proposed explanation: to keep the illusion consistent to Fischer all the dreams toppling each other have to inflect each other). Nolan circumnavigates between a white truck falling into the bay, a swank hotel room that turns into zero gravity exploits for Arthur who attempts to simulate free-falling for other sleepers, a snow summit stock with machinegun soldiers on skis and a secret vault, and a row of personal history architecture in a decimated fantasy city.

All of these bits hinge on each other in exploitive complexity, but it is Nolan cranking up the filmmaking wizardry: the slow-motion on the white truck, the allusions to “2001: Space Odyssey” in the hotel corridors and elevator, the snow summit choreographed like a James Bond invasion and more allusions to “2001” once inside the vault, and imaginary row of ersatz architecture built on subconscious projections that feels out of the Alex Proyas’ film “Dark City.”

Nolan also uses the symbolic object of a thimble in the same way that Ridley Scott used a unicorn in “Blade Runner,” and when Nolan nods the camera on the object in the final shot he is telling his audience more than he is telling his own character what his surroundings signify. But if we back step a moment and fall into a criticism, the action at the snow summit feels rather gratuitous after awhile. We know it is part of Fischer’s subconscious (or whatever) to crop up violent projection characters, but these dreams feel more belonging to a 21st century Warner Bros. action picture than it does from a character.

The music score by Hans Zimmer is pulsating and throbbing in the same spectacular way that “The Dark Knight” was, and the production design by Guy Dyas is so good that he would have been worthy to have been on the production team of “2001” or “Blade Runner” had he a career that went back that far (Dyas helmed the production design on the last Indiana Jones picture), the particular highlight, is the origami city of a new re-imagining of Paris, France. There is hardly a second that goes by that isn’t memorably traced to Zimmer or Dyas’ touch on this production.

An emotional backbone supports all this eye candy with the inclusion of Marion Cotillard (she was Billie Frechette in “Public Enemies”) as Mal, the former wife to Cobb who supposedly at one point could not tell the difference between dreams and reality following what one could describe mildly as, she had a deep sleep. Now she permeates through all of Cobb’s dreams, and then whenever infiltrates and shares dreams with others. Coincidentally, the character of the fallen wife is similar to that in “Shutter Island,” also with DiCaprio haunted twice now by recent past withered love. This is not a case of DiCaprio forcing motifs in all of his pictures. DiCaprio just merely selects good scripts, or gets lucky by good scripts, and gets chosen by top-notch directors like Nolan and Martin Scorsese, whom themselves are not trying to compete with each other.

Some movies require a bottle of wine (if it’s a chick flick), some action movies require a six-pack of beer shared between friends, and “Inception” is a rare movie that requires four cups of coffee. Maybe not just for the morning after, but four cups a day for a week, consulting your friends at Starbucks and together going over what you think you know about “Inception.” A $160 million Warner Bros. picture that’s adventure and mindbender has been made, a super rarity if there ever was one, and you might as well have something to talk about for the rest of the summer. Aggravating it may well be, but there won’t be another movie this layered to talk about for a very long time.

Go to the official site at http://inceptionmovie.warnerbros.com/

Grade: A-

PREDATORS

Predators is the most entertaining action picture in many a moon, and perhaps if this movie and hopefully the upcoming “The Expendables” teaches Hollywood anything it is that old school action pictures are far more enduring and exciting than chaos-heavy spectacles (“The A-Team” and “Jonah Hex” are among the jerkiest currently). The imaginative script idea is by Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”) who places a band of anti-hero humans back in the jungle, which is as inescapable as a Rubik’s cube is solvable. Nimrod Antal (“Kontroll,” “Vacancy”) directs.

Beginning with a crash landing out of the sky, Royce (Adrien Brody, “King Kong”) just barely manages to put the pieces together while seven other strangers around him drop in – a toss-up of mercenaries, an African warlord, a death row inmate, a Japanese Yakuza, the unmistakable presence of Dannny Trejo, an Israeli markswoman and a baby-faced doctor (that would be Topher Grace). It’s like “Survivor” with high stakes, but moreover, the script has Joseph Conrad’s classic story “The Most Dangerous Game,” also an entertaining and enduring 1932 movie as well as the inspiration for two dozen and a half movies over a hundred years, is written all over this sequel.

Yes, it’s perhaps the fourth sequel if anyone’s counting but good enough that it should be considered the first worthy continuation since Arnold Schwarzenegger fought the Stan Winston creation of alien-prawn / jungle-warrior back in the 1987 “Predator.” (You had the “Alien vs. Predator” films that wandered between the monotonous attacks.) The strong female heroine of this film is Isabel (Alice Braga, “I Am Legend”), the former Israeli markswoman, and she is a sharp-shooter as well as a girl with heart and active compass of loyalty. Isabel makes resounding efforts to raise morale amongst the troop.

Instead of an insistent mash-up of action scenes, the movie develops suspense as well as geography, allowing the characters time to discover their surroundings as well as the details of their circumstances. As an addition to this installment, there are rabid Predator dogs that rush the humans this time, six of them armed and ready to shoot these creatures in the eyes. The dogs are deliberately rushed out, and it becomes apparent to Royce that there is a game preserve strategy attempted by the villain Predators. These encounters are photographed in a fluid and comprehensive manner that lends the film its potency. The first noticeable CGI shot, a wide-angle reveal over innumerable humps of mountains, happens to be an awesome shot.

Popping in unannounced halfway in is a surprise actor appearance, a thirty-year veteran of movies, whom should not be mentioned other to say it momentarily feels like an Alec Guinness or Michael Caine role. Except that the encounter is a little more spooked out than you would hope for or would anticipate. From that point on, the action is very unremitting, the Predators attacking in ones or twos, the humans running for cover. In the film’s most amusing one-on-one encounter, the Yakuza engages in a swordfight with a Predator.

Enough background story becomes available about the Predators this time out, but it never convinces that these creatures are sophisticated enough to develop their own machinery and artillery. It’s possible to overlook this if you are able to acknowledge that the Predators have confiscated machinery and war ammunition from humans and other species from over the galaxy, and have adaptively learned how to use the technology competently. The primary interest of the filmmakers is to provide whippy sci-fi and hard and fast action, and they do all of this well and with a good sense of photography and editing composition.

If the film is not an entire orbital success it is that the film disappoints in a variety of small details. I never believed, for instance, in one of the human’s sudden shift of behavior in the final act. Somebody out there in the audience will find a large gaping hole in the plot, surely there is somebody, but perhaps you can suspend your disbelief long enough to not find it until after the movie is over. Until then, terrific action is back, in a film that is an echo to the ’80’s – when action choreography made relative sense.

Go to the official site at http://www.predators-movie.com/

Grade: B

RESTREPO

The term “apolitical war documentary” has a particular dishonesty to it because it is hard to believe that a feature containing real deaths doesn’t have some kind of agenda to it. Restrepo, a real deal guerilla documentary, isn’t obscenely graphic in presenting the deaths but it is as vicarious in combat as you can get – that level of intimacy can be riveting. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger are the credited directors, and cinematographers, who were not only there but risked their necks out in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.

Documentary cameras arrive on location along with the platoon, with an attack on the very first day. They build their own outpost, named after Restrepo, a medic who became the first casualty, and the shaggy construction is as ragtag as the battle company. The outpost rests on a hillside that is exposed to everyday fire. Interspersed interviews inform us that “It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military.” The soldiers will spend a year there, some admitting nakedly that they didn’t read too much into the area before their arrival but now are afraid that they will die there before the end of their tour of duty.

There is not an interview subject that isn’t interesting, but even though their reminisces are supplied post-combat, you feel their existential distress. The film is allowed stretches of no-combat oxygen with the young men jollily horse-playing and singing guitar songs. But the film knows its business of why they are there and with an elongated green valley difficult to scale and travel sideways, it results in long range gun battles. The soldiers, and the cameramen, actually get themselves ambushed from all angles at high elevation at one particularly scary, intense segment.

This is very hairy, as an action film would say. If you had seen a documentary like “Gunner Palace” than you would have seen a war documentary that leaves out the war – it’s a doc in Iraq that hardly gave you a sense that there were any battles, nor danger (the result, no reason to watch). “Restrepo” is a rare work of courage, first and foremost, for actually being there during its hairy moments, and for showing you a part of Afghanistan and its insurgents that you had probably not seen or considered previously. The film has a lack of commentary at times, but you do witness pathetic attempts at diplomacy between infantrymen and Afghanis.

Yet for all its rawness the film suffers for not having an organized narrative structure or sturdy timeline. That’s the tradeoff supposedly, skimping on the implications of world history for the sake of personal soldier history. The camerawork and editing meets first-rate standards especially for a guerilla piece. This leaves us OK for not having more. But even though its apolitical for its lack of words, lack of speeches, it is hard to not find this anti-war when you witness soldiers bawling right on camera. And what did the boys accomplish for the U.S. military in their year on duty? Hmm, that question might even puzzle them.

Go to the official site at http://restrepothemovie.com/

Grade: B

TOY STORY 3

It would seem to be an impossible task for any critic, or exhaustive DVD collector, to pick a favorite Pixar film (eleven entries to date). At least not until you’ve watched a particular selection three or four times, watched it alone, with a loved one, or with your entire family accompanied by a jumbo popcorn bowl. But I have found mine. Toy Story 3 is my favorite Pixar film after seeing it only once. I happen to think that it is a perfect film, and I need not a second viewing to certify my declaration. I nearly forgot what it was like to attend a film that contained a hundred laughs. The film’s laugh-to-minute ratio is unparalleled and yet the heart and soul of every character is explicit in many wonderful ways.

With childlike intuition, the writers of this third installment are submerged into the myths and branding of every character, every toy: Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, Hamm the pig, Rex the dinosaur, Slinky Dog, Ken and Barbie, the (obsolete) Chatter Telephone, the Bookworm, and of course, Woody and Buzz Lightyear (Tom Hanks and Tim Allen respectively). If the toys are alive – when humans aren’t around – then they must see everything from a ground level, and from a human boy’s bedroom level, and the writers and its director Lee Unkrich (overtaking John Lasseter’s seat) captures their microcosm world with fantastic, boundless wit.

That’s not to say that “Toy Story” (1995) and “Toy Story 2” (1999) didn’t also contain many sublime moments of small toys in a tall world, they remain golden in Pixar’s retrospective. The predecessors had such dazzle and freshness when it was first released, but this newest addition somehow unearths, well jokes, at a deeper and more imaginative level if you can believe it, with aging toys trying to adapt in a convalescent Sunnyvale type of retirement while at the same time belong in some place where they are given human love. “Toy Story 3” is going to be a hefty worldwide blockbuster, no doubt about it, but if there are a few out there reluctant to attend because they think they are just going to get more of the same then it must be said: You are only depriving yourself unadulterated joy if you skip this.

The prelude is a fantasy cliffhanger (just as “Toy Story 2” did) that is rock ’em and sock ’em, but we are soon back in Andy’s bedroom only after a montage that shows him growing up, but now on the verge of taking off to college. This means that the toys are either going up to the attic for permanent storage or going off to donation. Andy and Andy’s mom, two imperfect humans with imperfect communication, get confused as to their agreement of where the toys go. And Woody is the one toy selected to attend Andy to college while the rest will meet another fate.

That other fate is a Daycare Center where they will be loved by more a few dozen rugrats. For Buzz Lightyear and the rest, this new destination will be paradise but minds are changed abruptly as soon as 21st century daycare kiddie monsters roughhouse the toys – playtime does not equal fun time. Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty) is the overseer of this community, so when adults and kids go home at night he is less sweet and chubby and more gruff and bossy. The story has fun with satirizing camps and prisons, as well as a police state with Lotso (short name) as Big Brother. Ken is like the Gestapo of the camp dishing out special privileges to the high-maintenance Barbie who uses the art of fashion as an ultimate means of empowerment.

In a way the entire message of the movie is about identity-shifting – with its characters compromising themselves under a new ownership, not an individual ownership but a community property ownership that is the Daycare Center. Woody wisely foresees that his family is being broken up and divided like low-grade commodities, and the Daycare Center is the grounds of a stock exchange (toys are used, more often abused while traded in the hands of copious humans, but not loved).

As characteristic of him, Woody reacts swiftly to overthrow Lotso and to lead his family of toys to exodus. In the meantime, Buzz falls victim to mainframe pre-programming that only makes his good time heroics more debonair. This adventure of revolt will delight kids, but on a more adult level it takes on existential meaning: If the toys are obsolete in Andy’s world, then where in the world can they live now?

As usual of Pixar cleverness, the twists and turns tap its characters to make bold new decisions while embarking onto strange new lands – ordinary land to us, the unknown to them. While I was worried that the film was taking its characters into a place way too trashy (excuse the pun) in its final act, the filmmakers extract its setting as a perilous destination of doom. As Woody’s gang faces their apparition of Inferno, a collective heart is discovered amongst the toys that is as touching as anything found in Disney animated classics. And the animated art itself is as imaginative as to final scenes of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957), an eternal sci-fi classic that modern audiences might have unfairly neglected. Check it out.

The anxiety at the conclusion is genuine, but the cheerful and triumphant feelings an audience will discover will be unmistakable here. Walt Disney has not fulfilled the promise of old-fashioned, good-hearted entertainment with their roster lately (fear the drudgery of both “Prince of Persia” and “Alice in Wonderland”). But here arrives an exception that Disney (and its division Pixar) takes you to a brand new wonderful world once again. And it’s – you read it here – a perfect creation.

Go to the official site at http://disney.go.com/toystory/

Grade: A

JONAH HEX

Moments before Jonah Hex began the publicist announced that the film was only 83 minutes in running time, and right then, it curried favor from me – for a moment. By the time the opening scenes were over it becomes certain that it would have been better if the filmmakers put another five minutes back in, with the exposition tripping over itself in jarring smash cuts. Are filmmakers afraid audiences are going to be demanding refunds within the first five minutes if there’s not enough bam! pow! zonk! thrown in to hammer you over the head?

With the title role of Hex, this is Josh Brolin’s attempt to go mainstream with this DC Comics-fueled western, and for the first time, he looks uncomfortable. For those unaccustomed, Brolin has starred in “No Country for Old Men” and “Milk.” He has a scarred face, with latex tissue stretching over the cheekbone over the mouth – the tissue looks like an elastic band. Brolin is designated to speaking in a low groan the entire movie.

Hex is commissioned by the government to hunt down Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, “Burn After Reading”), but it is likely Hex would hunt down Turnbull even if he wasn’t commissioned – it was Turnbull as a matter of fact who scarred Hex’s face and killed his family in front of his eyes. Malkovich delivers what is perhaps the least interesting performance of his career, although with his long-flowing greasy hair that hangs over his menacing scowl of a face, he seems like a candidate to play Judge Holden if Hollywood ever makes a movie out of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.” Besides the makeup and hair job, Malkovich never appears dedicated to this part.

I wasn’t a fan of Megan Fox in “Transformers,” but I am a male, and I was gaga over seeing her for the first time in a corset. She plays Lilah, the prostitute. She gets offers to leave the sordid lifestyle all the time but turns them down. “I don’t play house,” Lilah explains. Hex is her favorite customer, and she foresees a future with him. Keep in mind, Fox doesn’t have many scenes in the movie, so if you too are a male that might disappoint you. She is a supporting character, not a lead. There is a moment where she looks better than she has ever looked in the movie, but director (hack) Jimmy Hayward holds the shot for about 1.5 seconds.

In my notes, I wrote down that there is no subtle scene to explain Malkovich’s motivation. I don’t know what I was referring to, but pointedly, there are no subtle scenes. There is little motivation beyond the surface motivation. There is also a dream flashback inserted into the movie twice, as if you would forget. Visually the movie is not always boring, but storywise it is. Get rid of the groans and you have a story that is simplistic.

Maybe the original comic book explained more and provided depth. Don’t write in and complain that a film critic has to have thoroughbred knowledge of every comic book ever written, that would take forever, and besides this is film criticism, not comic book criticism. But “Jonah Hex” is such nonsensical mish mash that for the first time it prompts me to take back some of the things I said about “Watchmen” (there you have it), which although I disagree with the ideology of that film at least it had characters with emotional layers and a more complex objective.

“Jonah Hex” all lies in the collapse of its director who didn’t have a clear cut vision and so decided to mimic the crappy queasy cam and smash cut aesthetics of other current trash filmmakers. This is a self-conscious effort made to heap in on the bandwagon success of others. Hayward should go back to animation where his career started. Your movie sucks, Hayward, and sucks all the more because you didn’t try to at least imitate a paramount like Quentin Tarantino or Sergio Leone, you tried to imitate an amalgamation of every creative sell-out in Hollywood.

Go to the official site at http://jonah-hex.warnerbros.com/

Grade: D

THE KARATE KID

You can forget about a relocation from New Jersey to Los Angeles because in this new update of The Karate Kid you get a relocation from Detroit to China. Jaden Smith is the 12-year old kid barely starting puberty and Jackie Chan is the martial arts trainer. The 1984 crowd-pleaser, back when crowd-pleasers were an honorable craft, featured Ralph Macchio as a 17-year old high school senior who gets roughed up too many times by rich kid snobs so he falls under the guiding hand of Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi.

They don’t play the original often enough on cable. But they will still be playing it on cable in twenty years. The new one might not find the same accord. Although it doesn’t have my endorsement, it is not rotten, either. Our young actor Jaden, son of uber-famous Will Smith, has pluck and presence as Dre, and looks skilled and nimble during the martial arts action. Chan is doing one of his aging man morose acts as Mr. Han, the kind he’s been doing since he lost his stunt abilities, but he has a caring aura around him and so we buy that he has a bond with the kid.

Besides Mr. Han, Dre has two friends the entire movie: a white kid we meet at the beginning and never see again and a gifted young violinist Meiying (Han Wenwen) who has bashful eyes for him. Dre’s mom is played by that feisty actress Taraji P. Hensen (she was nominated for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), and in screenplay neglect, we never get an idea of what kind of job she got that forced her to move with her young son to China! She hardly comes off as a supermom with international communication skills, but hey, it may be set in China but it’s still the land of Hollywood corn.

If there is one big unintentional laugh it takes place within minutes after their arrival, it is observed that Dre is to start school the next day. Haha, so the movie is saying that when mom’s move their sons to foreign soil they don’t get there early to settle in and observe local sights for the first few days, no, they start work and school right away, as in next day. Another lack of subtlety: Dre gets in a fight with the local bully (Wang Zhenwei) who will become his adversary for the rest of the movie.

There is some Chinese flavor and even some dialect (with English subtitles) throughout the movie, and visits to a kung fu palace is actually the kind of awesome sequence that mightily supersedes expectations. For a moment, Dre even gets into the yin and yang spirit of advanced martial arts and we see through his eyes that he understands the interior of his opponent.

At the big tournament, Dre has to get in the ring with a number of bullies who are trained under the Fighting Dragon school which is coached by the unforgiving Master Li (Yu Rongguang Yu). It is through this character that we see the movie look at the Chinese as cruelly exotic: Master Li punches a student who is a tad on the merciful side. Once again, mercy is for the weak. Yet throughout the entire film, it’s odd, in an off-putting way, to see 12-year olds beat each other and somehow more accessible to have seen 17-year olds with developed bodies compete in the original film. The training sequences are the coolest part, but substituting the wax on / wax off is jacket on / jacket off, yet when Dre demonstrates his moves for the first time – well, it makes you want to join a karate class.

Depending on who you are, you might or might not have a problem with 12-year olds engaging in hand to hand combat. And so you want to know, how is the action in the final tournament? Is it cool? The honest answer is its half good, half bad. Half the time the action is photographed with finesse shots that are held steady and comprehensible, but the other half it is done in jarring close-ups and indistinguishable cutaways. Smith is a movie star in the making though – if he keeps his dreadlocks he can play Predator one day. But sincerely, it would be a just choice if Spike Lee or John Singleton cast him in something one day.

Go to the official site at http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thekaratekid/

Grade: C

THE A-TEAM

There are a hundred questions to be had, within the opening ten minutes alone, along the lines of how did the good guys end up tied up, who are the bad guys and where did they come from, who is representing who, how and why did two of the heroes just happen to convene in the desert, and how did these reckless guys manage to last 80 missions together, and so forth with The A-Team. Some questions are more relevant than others but the mind scans feverishly when there is nothing else to do.

Of all the TV show adaptations, this one seems particularly like a good idea to blow up to the big screen since the action possibilities of a Special Forces team gone rogue after being framed by high up government conspirators seem limitless, with built-in colorful characters. Efforts are immediately deterred when “The A-Team” is edited like a two hour coming attractions trailer.

Bradley Cooper is pre-occupied acting sexy, reprising the same kind of overgrown fraternity boy he was in “The Hangover” but is laborious here while playing Templeton “Face” Peck. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, a UFC light heavyweight, is B.A, Baracus but is no match for Mr. T. Sharlto Copley, the star of last year’s “District 9,” is pilot and navigation expert Howlin’ Mad Murdock, and also a loon but too much of a loon.

Beyond all these calculations it is humbling to report that Liam Neeson (“Taken”) gives a full-bodied performance as Hannibal Smith, the chief of the outfit. Even Neeson’s haircut seems like serious divide and conquer business. Neeson not only builds rapport with his co-stars and believable seething ridicule with his adversaries, he looks like he can take on some of his own stunts. However, there are few actual human stunts in the movie.

“The A-Team” will be attended by millions worldwide, many of them will be in a cheering mood for action and excess (mostly just excess). But as a critic I am bewildered as to why so many moviegoers are impressed with computerized stunts anymore. I can still get wowed by action, but it is much more impressionable if there is human probability.

When a tank flies in the movie by way of discharging artillery and somehow hovering the vehicle in mid-air (uh-huh), my eyes are not impressed. Certainly there are other moviegoers like me interested in what the human body is capable of doing and not what Hollywood computers are capable of doing. There is a reason why East Asia action pictures are currently more exciting.

I was finally entertained, and nudged upright in my seat, by the distraction-diversion-division finale – a gigantically staged showdown at a cargo dock stocked with freight containers – but the rest of the action in Joe Carnahan’s (he directed “Smokin’ Aces”) movie is incoherent or impossible. There is one love story in the movie involving Jessica Biel (“The Illusionist”) as a Captain Charissa Sosa and Cooper’s character Templeton. She is high level enough to order her military team to shoot down and blow-up Cooper and his buddies at one point (no arrest or detain, just shoot down), and yet somehow, he forgives her and waits for her kiss at the end of the movie. Uh huh. With so much excess and flash, the movie couldn’t care less about changing its mind about its characters five minutes later. The cinematography is flashy, too, with lots of flash-pans and crooked angles, which is a shame, too, to the discerning moviegoer.

Go to the official site at http://www.ateam-movie.com/#/splashscreen

Grade: D+

SPLICE

Splice is a horror film and a class act, and it is reassuring to report that Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley brought the best of their talents to this project. Just when horror film was dissolving into bottom of the barrel entertainment, it has somehow shot back. “Paranormal Activity” was a smart and inventive quasi-documentary that used grain and shaky cam to its benefit. “Splice” is a smart and cleverly re-tooled classic style horror that uses rhythm, anticipation and a controlled visual style.

The big players like Quentin Tarantino (“Inglorious Basterds”) and Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”) are directors who understand what a rigorous visual style can bring to a picture. More and more these days, directors are losing sense of what rhythm and control are. Look at “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” to see how haphazard the shooting and cutting style are, with disjointed images of running, jumping, swinging all randomly jumbled in the editing room, not to mention a camera that whooshes along without coherent navigation or purpose.

But here we return to the fundamental joys of moviemaking. The director of “Splice” is the talented but relatively unknown Vincenzo Natali who thirteen years ago made the claustrophobic horror “Cube” which was so good at what it’s trying to do that its effects were divisive among audiences that were elated and nerve-rattled and others who were just unnerved. Natali uses chilly blue filters for the lab technician scenes and slow zooms to heightening effect, he fixes the camera down and lets grotesque things drop into frame. What Natali fervently does is create a self-contained mood for the entire film, something that is a bit 1930’s “Frankenstein” and a body mutation David Cronenberg picture.

Brody (“King Kong”) and Polley (“Dawn of the Dead”) are the genius genetics scientists, romantically linked, who use their pharmaceutical company resources to raise a gigantic worm. But no, that’s not all folks. In order to produce higher levels of genetically-enhanced proteins for mass consumerism, they hybrid various animals, the worm, and human genetics into a hybrid creature that ages exponentially eventually is named Dren (the portrayal is by actress Delphine Chaneac). “What could possibly go wrong?” Polley asks, and as the experiment stays secret, the problems stack up.

Like all mindful horror films do, the medical duo attempts to create a relationship with the creature that has conditioning and associating learning capacity (less mindful horror films have no relationships). You’re always aware, gleefully, that Brody and Polley are too close to their experiment. We see before they do that Dren is a creature with problems tempering its own rage. While the early scenes are the true terrifying ones, the horror evolves into comedy. But creature features have always been funny in their Darwinistic free for alls. “Splice” is a comedic battle of the minds, between doctor and creature, and the doctors who have varying degrees of sympathy for this… thing.

If “Splice” falls short of being a masterpiece of its genre then it is because the engineered foreshadowing is too obvious and the final climactic showdown is a re-boot of countless other thrillers. Scariest film ever, no (but your mom might think so), but it has the kick of a quality amusement park ride. “Splice” is a irresistible breed of both brains and style, with a contagious stir of laughs and screams.

Go to the official site at http://www.splicethefilm.com/

Grade: B+

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME

Only minutes into Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time passed before I had the desire the play one of the old versions of the video game over sitting through the rest of the movie. Even for blockbuster movie nonsense, this one takes the cake. It tries so hard to be about something historic in the times of 6th century Persia. In the final banal scenes, it turns into a parable of how the United States found no WMD’s in Afghanistan. Uh huh.
The film often has an impressive look but it fades from memory like quicksand, possibly because there is nothing meaty in the storytelling for you to chew on. Oh, how the filmmakers try to rope a seemingly complex story out of all this nonsense. Jake Gyllenhaal, sporting a British accent, is the adventurer prince Dastan who is framed by somebody in the palace, by somebody likely also with a British accent.

Gyllenhaal (“Jarhead”), a born American, has been in a lot of terrific movies where he beautifully underplays his characters with a dash of humbleness. Now he is in leather-strapped warrior outfits spouting tough-gruel dialogue like he’s Orlando Bloom as Maximus. When he gets lovey-dovey eyes then that’s the Gyllenhaal we know, a lover not a fighter. A Town & Country boy, not a Persian Empire warrior. Anyway, it’s about time to ask this: Do audiences worldwide accept that British accents pretty much cover any foreign culture from any time in the past? Let’s hope not.

The outfits are intended to make Gyllenhaal, and everybody else, look beefy. And so our hero looks muscular, albeit, but not a genuine specimen of ancient times. The movie contains military strategies unbeknownst to history, featuring actors scaling walls in unprecedented and impossible ways. Yet, wink-wink humor aside, the acting is so square and serious, but let’s not forget inauthentic. I would have preferred the blockhead acting of Brendan Fraser of “The Mummy” movies, the it’s-so-stupidly-self-aware-it’s-priceless kind of acting.

As obligatory for the plot, Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, “Quantam of Solace”) is dragged through the political upheaval, at one point enslaved, but in family movie terms. She has a love and hate relationship with Dastan, but at first it’s just hate, and then it’s bantering, and then the rest of the formula. Arterton is a confused actress who doesn’t have a clue on how to modulate the love-hate formula to endear the audience. Her screen personality is poison.

Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina, cast for their pedigree, don’t add much class either despite their reputations – they parody themselves. What’s left is a CGI-heavy action film (even the snakes are CGI), with lots of rapid cutting to no positive effect. The awe is brief, though existent, in the swirling aerial shots that reveal an entire city. But the messy shooting and editing style is rampant, and director Mike Newell (“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) has no sense of crowd control.

The worst special effects are the core ones dealing with a magic dagger that turns back the sands of time. These effects are video game similes cranked to a slow-motion effect that only lets the eye wander endlessly upon the lousy CGI. The climactic inferno – who will fall into the abyss? – is at least an imaginative and tactile demonstration of effects except that it is also ridiculously overblown (doesn’t it look hot down there, like Fahrenheit 451 kind of hot?). Even for fantasy purposes nothing in “Prince of Persia” is remotely humanly plausible or made to feel “real.”

The public statement that Disney made recently reflected that the company will make no more traditional films at all, focusing entirely on animation, franchises and superheroes. With this insultingly bad cast, incoherently scripted and disjointedly directed formula product, Walt Disney spotlights its directive in company soullessness.

Go to the official site at http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/princeofpersia/

Grade: D+

ROBIN HOOD

By casting Russell Crowe, the filmmakers are in hopes that the public will prefer a rugged he-man as the titular Robin Hood. Crowe, still an obvious body-builder at the gym in the off-time, is brawny enough to marshal an army. He also has the deadly thousand-yard stare to let you know that he’s pissed off, and in this case, in the mood for a revolution. This is the realistic rendering of the Robin of Locksley tale, alas, pivoting on the times prior to him becoming a folklore outlaw.

Notably the film is directed by Ridley Scott, and the marketing and finished product angle is to make this the “Gladiator” version of “Robin Hood.” But let’s not forget that Scott directed “Kingdom of Heaven,” which put some people into a three hour coma. Scott mimics the visual strategy of his earlier success, taking the gritty old-world terrain and desaturating the colors even further, while also using flickering candlelight as a seeming natural source.

But Scott’s serious-mindedness, along with screenwriter Brian Helgeland (whom wrote two overlong pics “Man on Fire” and “The Postman”), suck the juicy adventure out of the classic tale in favor of boring smart talk that stinks of “Kingdom of Heaven” waste. Kings and clergy have many verbose conversations on the meanings of politics, the servitude of the common peoples, and such. So much said about honor, justice, valor, nation’s pride. So obtusely strung together that minutes later you won’t remember who said what or care. There’s no time for Scott or Helgeland to include a scene of Robin stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Nor is there a swordfight.

The question remains as to whether you are the kind of moviegoer that can hang in there and wait for the exciting 20-minute finale, where cool bow-and-arrow stuff happens. The raiding and persecuting of the denizens of Nottingham has a cruel serpent suspense to it. Supremely, the climax is filmed in hyperspeed, with army men unleashed from watercraft boats, in a way that recalls the Normandy invasion that opens “Saving Private Ryan” (What the hell, why not?). Scott doesn’t skimp on the shots where you see a thousand arrows shot high in the air, only to plummet at lethal speeds at an army desperately raising their shields to protect their faces while the vertiginous camera bursts over the action.

The ending comes alive in a way that almost makes you forget what you had to slog through to get there. Crowe is more brooding than merry, and that’s alright (but it’s far from his best performance on film, he’s inward and glum). The Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen) is almost an afterthought. Robin’s Merry Men – four of them – are valorous but offered to make only a couple of amusing, ribbing remarks. Danny Huston does good work as the fallen King Richard the Lionheart, his majestic aplomb is bigger than anyone else’s and we admire his stature even if we don’t care for his methods of making examples out of lesser men.

Then there is Maid Marion, more here known as Marion Loxley, is played by Cate Blanchett (“Elizabeth,” “The Aviator”). Why studios, filmmakers and audiences have marveled in her over the years is a mystery to me. She lacks the very ability to express that quintessential quality called… emotion. When Robin enters her life at Nottingham, and is given hand to him by her father (Max von Sydow), she goes into cold, don’t-touch-me-or-I’ll-sever-your-manhood-mode. Somebody out there is defiantly angry with this review (I know, she’s supposed to be like that). But even when Marion kisses he-man Robin for the first time, she conjectures a melting heart look that still reminds one more of the Tin Man than of a blossoming woman swept away by the possibilities of love blazing on fire.

This is a busy, scene-shifting historical drama that offers few familiar pleasures, but Scott, a master of the zooming lens, does make the forests into an emerald-colored visual feast. But the speechifying gnaws on your patience. One has to fear if Scott puts out a future DVD of “Robin Hood: Super Deluxe Extended Edition with More Endless Speeches.” If that ever happens, I’ll go as far as to take back every mean thing I ever said about Kevin Costner’s “Prince of Thieves” which is looking better with every undeserved buck that Scott’s film will earn in box office receipts.

Go to the official site at http://www.robinhoodthemovie.com/

Grade: C-

JUST WRIGHT

Who out there wants to be Queen Latifah’s friend? Queen is so vivacious, and upbeat, with her eyes always popping up like a toaster machine. But Paula Patton is the girl that guys everywhere want to date because she’s cotton candy from head to toe. Common, the rapper turned actor, has to choose between the two and gingerly drive his charisma through Just Wright in a way that doesn’t make himself look like he’s trapped in a formula romantic comedy that he’s actually in. Common plays Scott McKnight, a fictional NBA star who falls in love fast but whose inconvenient on the court injury threatens both his career and his love life.
There are a fair number of readers out there who don’t know these actors. Well, you should know Queen Latifah because she starred in “Chicago” and “Living Out Loud,” is chubby but bubbly, and generally has a great zest of life on screen. Patton is a hot, yummy gams sight for sore eyes who just happens to have acting chops as seen in “Precious” and “Idlewild.” Common was in “American Gangster” and “Terminator: Salvation” and yet I don’t remember seeing him, he also had a one-note hitman role in “Date Night” and now is here, and you know what? He’s as fine as brown sugar.

As a chick flick romantic comedy “Just Wright” can be pretty decent, but the basketball stuff is subpar. Latifah is Leslie Wright, a physical therapist who goes from the standard medical building to the deluxe penthouse of Scott McKnight. Patton is, Morgan Alexander, the best friend who is beautiful but shallow like a Kardashian sister. McKnight dates Morgan for all the obvious good public image reasons, but after his injury, she steps out and Leslie Wright steps in. New chemistry is stirring but the movie forgets about half a dozen characters during this unlikely but engaging courtship. In the meantime, McKnight has only a few weeks of rehabilitation before he has to get back for the playoffs. This is a movie to careless to worry about loose ends.

I cared about the people on the screen – does that mean I cared more about the actors or the characters they were playing? I am still trying to figure that one out. The movie is cheerfully acted and competently directed. But while the screenplay has a pro forma film school structure, the dialogue is nevertheless amateurish. Yet the actors go through as much tongue-zinging as possible to make it fresher than what it is.

The boys out there in the audience won’t like that the movie doesn’t teach you nothing about behind the scenes basketball and training that we don’t already know. Scott McKnight is supposed to be a league superstar but in reality his moves on the court aren’t that good. He would get torched by Kobe Bryant or Chris Paul.

If you are not expecting art and lower your standards than this is nice and easy to watch movie. In a way it is more of a compliment than it sounds in relation to all the mean garbage we’ve been getting in theaters the last couple of months. Nobody gets hideously hurt, and for the intended criteria the characters try to be kind and not vindictive on purpose. This is the kind of entertainment that is an antidote to nihilism. And Common’s final apology and plea for forgiveness is one of the best deliveries I’ve ever seen, he should be teaching classes on how to be a babe magnet.

Go to the official site at http://www.foxsearchlight.com/justwright/

Grade: C+

GREEN ZONE

The unstable region of Baghdad following March 19, 2003 is the subject of Green Zone, the new Iraq military drama which has an action movie pulse and the presence of stalwart Matt Damon, playing Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller who is a man of sweat and non-stopping motion. Following the initial military strikes of Iraq of the invasion date, Miller’s team is unable to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on mission searches. This quickly prompts skepticism in Miller’s perspective on Pentagon intelligence.


Frenetic action cameras make the promise that this is going to be a desert war movie, but let’s not mince words, we’re talking about Iraq here. No war movies set in Iraq have done bang-up business at the box office (Best Picture Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker” will make more dough in DVD sales than it did in its theatrical run), and the public has fastidiously avoided documentaries like “No End in Sight” and “Taxi to the Dark Side.”

Exception might be made for this Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Ultimatum”) movie which has the charge of an action thriller. But when you take out all the noise it is more of a drama of a military squad at work (conducting routine field work and trying not to kill), and of course, the idea of defiance. Miller stops listening to the brass and begins consulting with CIA man Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) and enlists a born Iraqi who calls himself Freddy (Khalid Abdalla) to guide him on his own expeditions of the truth.

The idea of Matt Damon gone rogue is a recipe for successful box office formula, as proven by the Jason Bourne series. As for Hollywood movies putting together a mainstream simplified idea of what went wrong in the early days of Iraq, as starvation and destitution ravaged the people and government anarchy wreaked vast, “Green Zone” is not entirely reliable but it is nevertheless entertaining and gives us a broad overview picture on the subject.

Other than a television clip of the real George W. on CNN, most of the characters are composites of numerous individuals. The most clear-cut wormy official is Greg Kinnear as Clark Poundstone, who is a Defense Intelligence specialist who also does the backwards job of manipulating American public opinion. Amy Ryan is the Wall Street Journalist who is deemed responsible for inaccurate press feedings to American media.

Out to find the definitive truth is Miller, whom at first tracks down various leads through Baghdad for the search of WMD’s and then figuring out no matter where he looks he is not going to find any. Instead, he goes on the hunt for one of Saddam Hussein’s men who is referred to as “the Jack of Clubs.” What doesn’t make sense if Miller’s over-reliance on Freddy, who can barely get around on his prosthetic leg yet seems to be there every time Miller needs him.

If there are any clips to be made famous from this movie it will be Damon bellowing “Put your game face on” and “Unacceptable” which he invokes with mean but sincere contempt. But the end chase sequence, as excitingly staged as it is and captured by endless multiple angles by Greengrass, becomes dramatically unacceptable – it is simplification and contrivance met at one intersection. Lest be reminded that this is a mainstream entertainment.

What makes “Green Zone” stand out is its amazing location work with its messy and jagged surroundings. Immersed into these locales makes every beat of the film palpitate with high tension. You may not believe five or six scenes (maybe more, depending on how knowledge-detail you are about the Iraq invasion) but you are never bored. Greengrass’ frenzied, fast-cutting isn’t for all audience digestive systems, but if you enjoy the Bourne’s series immediate-to-the-max urgency, then this film will draw you in as well even if you do have a contempt for composites and convenient plot structures.

Go to the official site at http://www.greenzonemovie.com/

Grade: B

SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE

She’s Out of My League is an adorable sad puppy of a movie, something that keeps you laughing and sighing in disbelief. Jay Baruchel, as über-dork Kirk, is the hero with the sad eyes who doesn’t have much experience but he does have a monster ex-girlfriend that he is trying to get back with. The ex-girlfriend isn’t exactly a monster, but she’s definitely less than 7.


Kirk’s friends are generous enough to rate him a 5. He would get a 6 if he didn’t get subtraction points for having no ambition and driving a crappy car. Then he meets Molly (Alice Eve), a classified 10, who is not even aware that he is out on a date with her when they’re at a hockey game. How did this happen?

In what is a better than average script for a geek meets babe comedy, the dialogue eventually gives supporting reasons as to why Molly, an event planner, would be interested in giving Kirk, a TSA security guard, a more than fair shot. In the stretched past realistic conventions of this scenario, Molly isn’t exactly a real girl but a fantasy girl who meets all the qualified insecurities you find in a movie like this.

What’s not so surprising is that Molly’s friends are way bitchier than she is, particularly Krysten Ritter who is ready to pounce the line to Kirk’s friend, “I’m so not into you.” When Kirk and Molly are actually out on dates none of their friends matter, and the dialogue has a cute-polite and dorky-polite polish. It’s so embarrassing watching Kirk make a move on Molly that it’s a relief to see her get on top in the make-out scene. Which ends in a spill.

To be honest, I’ve been wanting to know for the past two years what it would have looked like for Kevin Sandusky to get it on with Jennifer Love Hewitt in “Tropic Thunder,” one of my favorite repeat viewings comedies along with “Hot Rod” with Andy Samberg and “Hamlet 2” with Steve Coogan. We never saw Sandusky win a Teen Choice award, but his date at the Oscars at the end of “Thunder” was with little dimples Hewitt. But in the back of my mind I wondered, can Baruchel with the right movie role put the cool in nerd again?

In this out-and-out first big movie lead role, Baruchel is a fumbling and inept neurotic that makes Woody Allen in his heyday seem more attractive in comparison. As it turns out, Kirk is such low self-esteem droop that he is hoping that Molly has a really bad defect that can bring her down more to his level. On a bell curve, Sandusky gets like a rate of 8 on the cool scale and Kirk gets about a 2.

Broad as formula, the flick sinks down to bathroom humor just like any other comedy has been compelled to do since “American Pie.” Except this time the bathroom humor can at least be given credit for shear originality, thus construed by the shaving of Kirk’s nutsack. This leads to a visual joke in the final moments that will prompt the use of those gag reflexes of yours.

To its credit there are plenty of feel-good laughs in “League,” and if there’s anything that goes sour, it’s the third act that comes on too much as a strained heart-tugger, but it’s encouraging to watch Kirk grow a pair. This is not a bonafide classic entry in the geeks comedy canon, but if anything, this is a cool hangout movie. The hangout movie only amounts to a good time though if you have a bunch of friends to watch it with you – it helps if somebody is there to take the task as commentator to make fun of Kirk non-stop.

So this makes for a minor hangout movie recommendation that could be worth one more additional viewing on DVD in the supposed future. It helps that Alice Eve, on the cover of this month’s Maxim Magazine issue, is perky and sweet on top of being a blonde bombshell. I almost want to give it one letter-grade subtraction for having us gaze at Baruchel’s hideous body for long stretches. But it does keep in common to what the movie is striving to achieve in the first place: Embarrassing laughs.

Go to the official site at http://www.getyourrating.com/

Grade: B-

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Extravagant but missing that precious quality that connotes that thing called enjoyment. That’s the gut reaction to Alice in Wonderland. Then again, it’s dicey to call this expensive 3D film “extravagant” because the visuals are dreck. But that is what happens when you try to turn a classic into something hip and contemporary for a new generation.


For reasons that are never explained to good purpose, the world is now called Underland and not Wonderland, although Alice (Mia Wasikowska, acting with her heavy and tense brow) has returned for the second time. She cannot remember the first time she was down there. But the creatures remember her, and the White Rabbitt (voiced by Michael Seen) and Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) act as her most obliging aides.

Alice is 19, and she has been thrown a garden party so a nerdy suitor can propose to her. Alice is no longer a girl but not quite a woman, and she excuses herself into a hedge maze before falling down a rabbit hole. These are the few fleeting enchanting scenes in the entire film. Although Fry as the Cheshire Cat manages to deliver lines that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Much dialogue is spent with Alice convinced that it is just a very deep dream, and something will spark to wake her up. In her entire visit in Underland, she is looking to get out. In earlier incarnations of “Wonderland” the rabbit hole was a wonderful place to get lost in. Now in director Tim Burton’s muddy fantasia the return to the real world isn’t soon enough.

Movie buffs will look back at this in twenty years and observe this as the weakest use of 3D (if you happen to see it in 3D IMAX). After the dazzling depth of field of “Avatar,” the 3D experience of Burton’s “Wonderland” is seriously lackadaisical. Magical dragonfly organisms are lacking texture and look airy. Tweedledee and Tweedledum look like a couple of synthetic mushrooms with the authenticity of an old Nintendo game. Where’s the magic? The grubby plains and dead trees certainly don’t add up to a soothing sight either.

Liberal acts of creativity are demonstrated by punching up the Mad Hatter as a bigger character than in the Lewis Carroll books. The Mad Hatter, whose verbal patter is all razzmatazz, has to be rescued from the Red Queen before she commands execution (“Off with his head” is repeated endlessly), but you feel like they’re bigger players only so Burton (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Sweeney Todd”) can spend more time with his favorite actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Adventure builds to a climactic showdown between Alice and a Jabberwocky beast, and it is by this time that Burton’s entire visual palette for this film seems inspired by the work of Zack Snyder (“300”) and the videogame “Shadows of the Colossus.” Burton, in his newfound obsession for playing Frankenstein on beloved light-hearted classics, is the wrong director.

Isn’t the world hungry for “The Wizard of Oz” like beauty again? Another “Alice in Wonderland” adaptation could have facilitated that kind of movie lover’s craving, that craving for candyland fantasia. I would have chosen Tarsem Singh (“The Fall”) to direct. Burton is wrong, dead wrong, in his methodology and approach because his head seems stuck in the swamp.

I look forward to a new adaptation even though it would be a couple of decades before anybody tries this again. For the meantime, I’ll take the 1951 animated film of the same title, or Hiyao Miyazaki’s 2002 animated film “Spirited Away” which is as enchanting as any fantasy, and seeming closest cousin to Lewis Carroll, as any film in say the last twenty years. Take a look, Burton, wake the child inside again. File this “Alice” under biggest blunders of all time.

Go to the offical site at http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/

Grade: C-

COP OUT

If you are one who says that you have discerning taste then by all means avoid Cop Out. This is the crappiest film in awhile to feature major stars, in this case action movie icon Bruce Willis and TV star Tracy Morgan, crappy and horrendous in every way that a movie can be horrendous. On the brighter side, the movie begins with OK shtick and that is where it peaks.


This is a buddy cop movie with one well dressed cop and another cop who looks like he dresses at Mervyn’s. Usually the icon cop is assigned a nincompoop partner at the beginning of these movies and the tolerance improves with time. The difference here in this buddy cop film it’s that these mismatched guys, Willis as Jimmy Monroe and Morgan as Paul Hodges, have been partners for nine years.

The duo is long accustomed to each other but that doesn’t keep them from learning new things about each other. Get ready for potty jokes, private parts jokes and porn movie lingo (101 porn terms, nothing new). Interspersed into the lame comedy are by-the-numbers action scenes that are sloppily edited together. They say cops have eyes in the back of their heads, but Morgan is such an incompetent cop that twice within the first act terrible things happen when he’s not looking.

But that is of course the joke of the movie. Casting Willis (last seen in the underappreciated “Surrogates”), you have the leading machismo presence to headline a cop movie. By contrast, the entire comedy depends on co-star Morgan’s childlike personification (I liked him as Astronaut Jones on “SNL.”). On TV, he has been funniest when he puts on that 12-year old voice and subsists in that squishy man-child posture with just a hint of hidden anti-social rage simmering underneath ready to thump anyone who misunderstands him.

The funniness and funkiness of Morgan is that he is always playing that 12-year old who thinks he is the center of the universe. He does that in the movie, and he doesn’t for a second look like he could have hung in there as a law enforcer for nine years – he’s so incompetent that he gets somebody killed, too, within no time, and his entire modus operandi is quoting from other cop movies. Oh, and it looks like his momma does the shopping for him at Mervyn’s.

In last year’s staggering and audacious comedy “Observe and Report,” the film took Seth Rogen’s bi-polar disorder problem seriously then satirized contemporary white trash reality. I wish that “Cop Out” could have addressed Morgan’s childish narcissism and dealt with it in a way that reflects the real world. Instead, the movie doesn’t want to tweak reality, but instead be this (vulgar and profanity-strewn) meta dirty-boys fantasy for nearly two hours and stick to boilerplate plots. In other words, be a big-screen TV sketch comedy.

This is the kind of stinker where Bruce Willis chases down bad guys to retrieve his stolen baseball card, a plot that just happens to crossfire with Mexican drug dealers the whole police department has been longing to shakedown. In smaller parts, Rashida Jones (“I Love You, Man”) is a welcome attractive walk-on as Morgan’s wife, but I could have done without another one of Fred Armisen’s stereotyped caricatures.

But here I am trying to look around for something else to mention. But the truth is that I don’t feel the need to go look for further excuses. I hated this film, and that should be enough. I will mention that the film is directed by Kevin Smith (“Clerks”), in his first effort where he didn’t write the script, but it’s as typically clunky as his rest. But it’s certain that Smith without a doubt encouraged his actors to ad-lib jokes about the size and smells of certain body parts, which pervades through the rest of his films, too.

Go to the official site at http://copoutmovie.warnerbros.com/
 
Grade: D