New Releases
IN THE LAND OF WOMEN It's not quite a case of "like father, like son," but Jonathan Kasdan, the offspring of the excellent writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, shows that he at least harbors some of Dad's easygoing way with words with this engaging if underwhelming comedy-drama. In his first theatrical endeavor as writer-director, the young Kasdan shows plenty of promise in relating the tale of Carter Webb (Adam Brody), a screenwriter of softcore erotica who hopes that by leaving L.A. to stay with his crotchety grandmother (Olympia Dukakis) in Michigan, he'll have time to refocus his energy and start on that autobiographical high school tome he's always dreamt of penning. Having just endured a heartbreaking split with a beautiful French model (Elena Anaya), women are the farthest thing from his mind, yet upon arriving in the Michigan 'burbs, the 20something Carter instantly draws the attention of the neighboring Hardwicke women: middle-aged housewife Sarah (Meg Ryan), her teenage daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart), and her precocious youngest, Paige (Makenzie Vega). How Carter copes with this sudden influx of females provides the picture with its spine, as his presence forces all the characters to confront their own foibles and learn to properly relate to one another. Brody's scenes with Ryan are the film's strongest, as Sarah provides Carter with a stabilizing sense of maturity while he allows her to rediscover both her inner and outer beauty. More haphazard are Carter's tête-à-tête interludes with Lucy, which range from authentic to awkward and often betray Kasdan's ear for natural dialogue. **1/2
Current Releases
BLADES OF GLORY Unless he keeps his eye out for innovative fare like Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell might find himself driving his career into a rut. Blades of Glory shows the strains of the comedian trying to keep himself contained in a box: His Chazz Michael Michaels, a coarse sex addict who's also an unlikely skating champion, mines the same comic territory as most Ferrell performances, ranging from Talladega Nights to Anchorman and beyond. Since Ferrell is only playing variations on a theme, it's costar Jon Heder (of Napoleon Dynamite fame) who provides most of the modest chuckles. As Jimmy MacElroy, a rival figure skater who's forced by circumstances to team with Chazz to become the first male-male figure skating team in history, Heder plays up his character's delicate traits to the point that they offer a pointed contrast to Ferrell's predictable boorishness. "You're like a 15-year-old girl," taunts Chazz, "only not hot." After a sluggish beginning, the laughs pick up during the midsection, and I appreciate that Queen's Flash Gordon theme plays a prominent role in the finale. Otherwise, this is one more assembly line comedy by the Ferrell-Stiller-Vaughn-Wilsons conglomerate (Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are AWOL, but Ben Stiller serves as a producer and Luke Wilson pops up in a tiny role). For a similar yet superior film, rent the Farrelly brothers' 1996 bowling flick Kingpin. Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid and especially Bill Murray offer moments of lunacy so inspired, they make Ferrell in Blades of Glory look like a visitor to the comedy genre. **
FIRST SNOW Building upon an impressive indie career, Guy Pearce (Memento, The Proposition) adds another prickly personality to his resume, further revealing that here's an actor who couldn't give a damn whether audiences warm up to his characters. He plays Jimmy, an unctuous salesman who visits a fortune teller (J.K. Simmons) off the side of a New Mexico highway. The palm reader's initial predictions come true, so Jimmy is understandably upset when it's revealed that he won't live long after the first snow falls. Gripped by paranoia, he begins to plan his life around the notion that he will soon die, even as he attempts to do everything in his power to prevent his imminent death. Writers Mark Fergus (also making his directorial debut) and Hawk Ostby both had a hand in the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Children of Men, so they clearly enjoy tackling weighty issues not usually explored in current thrillers. Here, they engage in a metaphysical debate concerning the ebb and flow between destiny and free will, and whether or not an individual's attempts to alter his life only end up limiting his choices even further. The stages of Jimmy's breakdown and rebirth are gripping thanks to Pearce's intense performance, and there are notable turns by Simmons (Spider-Man's J. Jonah Jameson) as the somber psychic and William Fichtner (in a rare good-guy role) as Jimmy's skeptical business associate. The subdued ending might disappoint those hoping for a more lively denouement, but really, it seems just right for a tale as chilly as this one. ***
FRACTURE For the most part, Hollywood has grown so inept at staging whodunits that it's a blessing to come across a film like Fracture, which lets audiences know from the outset that he-done-it. The "he" in question is wealthy engineer Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), who has just shot his adulterous wife (Embeth Davidtz). With the identity of the villain in place, Fracture can then borrow a page from the Columbo playbook by following the protagonist as he tries to piece together the details of the crime. But the lawman here is a far cry from Peter Falk's lovably rumbled detective; rather, he's Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), a hotshot attorney who's used to winning and who agrees to prosecute Ted because, hey, the man has already signed a confession, right? But in his arrogance, Willy has underestimated Ted, and it's a disastrous move that might end up costing him his career. Fracture has its fair share of plotholes -- enough that you might be tempted to grab a shovel and a bag of cement mix -- but it features an exquisite cat-and-mouse game that makes it easier to overlook its flaws. And for once, here's a film in which it's not instantly obvious to predict every twist resting just over the horizon. The film grows flabby in the midsection thanks to a superfluous subplot involving Willy's romance with his new boss (Rosamund Pike), but once it gets back to focusing on business rather than pleasure, it straightens itself out. Hopkins is solid in a role that veers toward Hannibal Lecter terrain, but it's Gosling who gooses the proceedings with a thoughtful performance. ***
GRINDHOUSE Designed as an homage to the low-budget exploitation flicks that ran rampant in past decades (most notably the 1970s), Grindhouse finds cinematic bad boys Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez attempting to create their own down-and-dirty double-bill, two grisly features (complete with bogus trailers, the best being Werewolf Women of the S.S.) that would have been right at home playing in a disreputable Times Square movie theater circa 1974. It's a terrific idea, but unfortunately, the quality of the individual works veers all over the map. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is tons of fun, not only in its gleeful siphoning from George Romero's zombie classics but also in the manner in which Rodriguez insures that every frame looks like it came from a beat-up film print buried in somebody's garage since the 70s. As for the story, it's the usual slime-and-grime saga of a plucky band of survivors fighting off hordes of shambling, oozing creatures who have all been infected by a deadly virus. But while Planet Terror is the bomb, Tarantino's Death Proof is simply a bomb. Did he not understand the assignment? Presented in a blemish-free style full of show-off techniques and scene after scene of dull chatfests, this ends up resembling not so much a grindhouse flick as a Quentin Tarantino movie -- and a bad one at that. As Stuntman Mike, a psycho who uses his own souped-up vehicle as a weapon with which to murder comely young women, Kurt Russell is the story's MVP, but Tarantino too often leaves him stranded on the side of the road. Planet Terror: ***1/2; Death Proof: *1/2; Overall: **1/2
THE HOAX There's a fleet-footed exuberance to The Hoax that suits the film just perfectly. Although based on a true story, the picture displays a freewheeling style that's more attuned to the rhythms of Richard Gere's performance than any sort of somber veracity. Gere stars as Clifford Irving, the author who in the early 1970s convinced the bigwigs at McGraw-Hill that he had landed an exclusive interview with reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. There was absolutely no truth to the boast, but with dollar signs dancing in their eyes, the publishing house accepted Irving's flimsy evidence as proof, a decision that resulted in the company handing over an incredible sum for publishing rights. Gere has always excelled at playing amoral yet charming creeps, and he strikes gold once again; while attempts on the part of scripter William Wheeler (adapting Irving's tell-all book) to imbue the character with some degree of sympathy fall flat, Gere is skilled enough to nevertheless add some complex shadings. Also memorable is Alfred Molina, sweating up a storm as Irving's nervous accomplice in the scam. With its allusions to Richard Nixon and Watergate, Hallstrom and Wheeler firmly establish the timeframe of their film. Yet if anything, the movie feels more like 2007 than 1971, given that fraudulent writers (like Stephen Glass) have proliferated in recent years and "identity theft" has become a commonplace expression. The Hoax might be intended as a cautionary tale, but in today's climate, it stands a better chance of emerging as an inspirational training film. ***
HOT FUZZ The team that brought us Shaun of the Dead -- writer-director Edgar Wright, writer-star Simon Pegg and costar Nick Frost -- now take a shot or 12 at the police procedural with Hot Fuzz, a funny if distressingly overlong comedy that also manages to evoke memories of The Wicker Man, Plague of the Zombies and other spooky yarns centering on eccentric villagers inhabiting the less-traveled paths of the British Isles. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a dynamic, by-the-book cop who's so efficient at nailing the bad guys that his three superiors (cameos by familiar English actors) ship him off to the remote hamlet of Sandford so he won't keep embarrassing the rest of the London force. Upon arriving in Sandford, he realizes that his commanding officer (Jim Broadbent) is a flake and his peers are morons, although he does strike up a friendship with Danny Butterman (Frost), a well-meaning cop who finds spiritual guidance in the movies Bad Boys II and Point Break. But a string of gruesome accidents convinces Angel that some dark secret exists in Sandford, and he enlists the bumbling Butterman to help him get to the bottom of the mystery. Hot Fuzz appears to be England's attempt to prove to Hollywood that it can make brawny, blustery blockbusters every bit as noisy as those churned out by Tinseltown on a weekly basis, but even this pissing-contest mentality can't drown out the satiric edge that earns this a recommendation. But did the film have to feature more faux-endings than even The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King? ***
MEET THE ROBINSONS Select theaters across the nation (including a couple in Charlotte) are showing this latest Disney animated feature in 3-D, and I'm sorry I didn't catch the film at one of those venues -- at least it would have added an extra dimension to what is otherwise a shallow cartoon that somehow manages to be slow-moving and hyperactive at the same time. Imagine The Incredibles made by profiteers and that's pretty much Meet the Robinsons in a nutshell -- it's not surprising that, like Chicken Little (to name but one dud), this is Disney operating without the safety net of John Lasseter and his Pixar team. This obnoxious film focuses on obnoxious Lewis, an orphan whose scientific contraptions are coveted by an obnoxious villain known as the Bowler Hat Guy. In a bit of time-hopping not worthy of Back to the Future (I, II or III), a member of the obnoxious Robinson family of the future comes to help out Lewis, thereby leading to a scattershot adventure involving obnoxious singing frogs, obnoxious food fights and an only-slightly-less obnoxious dinosaur. The final 20 minutes include a pair of decent plot pirouettes, but by then, I was so bored out of my skull than even a wayward reel of Raiders of the Lost Ark somehow slipping onto the projection booth platter probably wouldn't have stirred me out of my comatose state. *1/2
PERFECT STRANGER As far as Halle Berry thrillers go, this one beats Gothika and The Rich Man's Wife hands down -- though it still isn't up to the challenge set forth by Catwoman, which had us on the edge of our collective seats wondering if it would ever get better. Unlike the aforementioned trio, Perfect Stranger is at least fairly competent -- at least for a while -- although "fairly competent" doesn't exactly translate as "very good." Berry plays Rowena Price, an investigative reporter who seems to specialize in scandalous "gotcha" exposes (making her less New York Times and more National Enquirer). Her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) claims she's been having an affair with advertising king Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), so when Grace turns up dead, Rowena and her colleague Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) suspect that Hill, a notorious womanizer, was responsible. Grace creates two fake identities in an attempt to nail Hill -- she poses as a temp at his office and as an online party girl looking for action -- but as she continues to juggle separate personas, she begins to realize that other parties might also be involved. This might be the first film in history in which product placement (in this case, Victoria's Secret) might indirectly infer the guilt or innocence of a major character, though it's certainly not the first movie in which the tiresome Ribisi plays a patented nutjob. At any rate, the picture only skims the surface of potentially intriguing issues (specifically, the use of the Internet as the ultimate predatory tool), and its unveiling of the killer (and the ludicrous scenes that follow) is sure to elicit more shrugs than shrieks. **
THE REAPING Chalk it up to wishful thinking or poor taste (or both) for Warner Bros. to have released an R-rated, FX-driven horror yarn about the Biblical plagues on the day before Good Friday, but at any rate, studio suits are probably more fearful of the apathy of disinterested moviegoers than the wrath of God. Hilary Swank, whose second Oscar still wasn't enough insurance to save her from shoddy efforts like this, stars as Katherine Winter, a university professor who, after losing her faith in God about the same time she lost her husband and daughter to tragedy, has gone 48-for-48 in exposing so-called "miracles" through scientific means (with so much globe-trotting, when does she have time to grade test papers?). Her latest investigation takes her to the small town of Haven, La., where a blonde child (Bridge to Terabithia's AnnaSophia Robb) is believed to be a satanic emissary sent to unleash the 10 plagues on this quiet hamlet. Stephen Hopkins, who directs every film as if it were a NASCAR vehicle gunning for the finish line, doesn't have much faith in the screenplay by Carey W. Hayes and Chad Hayes, since he orchestrates much of the picture (most notably the flashbacks, dream sequences and CGI orgies) with all the delicacy of a lumberjack in ballerina slippers. (Then again, maybe he merely saw that dreadful House of Wax remake -- written by the Hayes -- and panicked.) A last-minute twist adds some drama, but a last-second twist merely leaves a bad taste. *1/2
300 Positioned as the Ultimate Fanboy Movie, this adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel is indeed ferocious enough to satisfy basement-dwellers with its gore, violence and chest-pounding machismo while savvy enough to downplay the homoeroticism that will ever-so-subtly cause heretofore unexplained stirrings in the loins of these same armchair warriors. Yet for all its brutality, 300 has as much chance of satisfying a sizable female contingent, since it's ultimately a beefcake calendar posing as a motion picture (interesting, then, that the lockstep online trolls attack anyone who doesn't rave about the film as being like "a girl"). Beyond its demographic-targeting, however, its greatest claim to fame is that it's positioning itself as the next step on the evolutionary CGI ladder, offering (in the words of director and cowriter Zack Snyder) "a true experience unlike anything you've ever seen before." Snyder was responsible for the surprisingly accomplished Dawn of the Dead remake three years ago, but here he seems to have been swallowed up by the enormity of the project, which depersonalizes the major players in the battle between the Spartans and the Persians to such a degree that one ends up feeling more sympathy for the shields that end up receiving the brunt of the sword blows and arrow piercings. 300 contains a handful of staggering images -- and, for once, the color-deprived shooting style fits the tale being spun -- but Sin City, a previous adaptation of a Miller work, offered more variety in its characterizations and, more importantly, in its cutting-edge visual landscape. **1/2
OPENS FRIDAY, APRIL 27:
BLACK BOOK: Carice Van Houten, Sebastian Koch.
THE CONDEMNED: Steve Austin, Vinnie Jones.
THE INVISIBLE: Justin Chatwin, Marcia Gay Harden.
KICKIN IT OLD SKOOL: Jamie Kennedy, Vivica A. Fox.
NEXT: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore.
YEAR OF THE DOG: Molly Shannon, Regina King.
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