BIG FAN Robert D. Siegel, who wrote the original screenplay for last year's superb drama The Wrestler, now makes his directorial debut with a picture that shifts the spotlight from the sports arena to the stands. Big Fan's protagonist is Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt), who considers himself nothing less than the New York Giants' most ardent supporter ... ever. Now in his mid-30s, Paul is perfectly OK with living at home with his exasperated mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz), staying away from members of the opposite sex, and working a dead-end job as a parking attendant. Aside from the occasional masturbatory session under the sheets, his only pastimes are watching Giants games with his friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) and religiously calling into a nightly sports-radio station to offer opinions which he's scrupulously scripted ahead of time. All runs smoothly in Paul's insulated bubble until the night he spots his favorite Giant, linebacker Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), and gets up the nerve to talk to him. The encounter lands Paul in the hospital and Quantrell on the NFL's suspension list, but Paul ultimately isn't too worried about his own well-being; more importantly, he wonders how this distracting incident will affect the rest of the Giants' season. The cult of organized sports often requires many sacrifices from its diehard devotees – of time (for starters, that Fantasy Football can sure eat up weekends!), money, even family. Siegel's picture takes it to the extreme, examining the outer reaches of this particular mode of hero worship and the psychological impact of sacrificing one's entire life to something that yields limited dividends. Big Fan stretches credulity in spots, but for the most part, it manages to keep its eye on the ball. ***
BRIGHT STAR Commencing in 1818 London, the story of Bright Star, with its key events based in fact but its smaller ones colored in by writer-director Jane Campion's poetic license, takes place over the course of a couple of years, as the forward and fashion-conscious Fanny (Abbie Cornish) makes the acquaintance of two English poets trying to build names for themselves. One is Charles Brown (Asheville native Paul Schneider), who views Fanny as no more than a bubble-headed flirt and frequently engages her in vicious verbal combat (she holds her own quite nicely, thank you). The other is John Keats (Ben Whishaw), who's initially preoccupied with tending to his dying brother but in time falls for the lovely Fanny. She's equally smitten, but since he's penniless and since the women of the day were expected to set their sights on men with money, their love seems doomed – even before he develops that bothersome cough. Bringing the creative process to life on screen is always an uphill battle – how does one turn thoughts into something tangible? – but Campion uses the characters' dialogue to provide reasonably sturdy stepping stones into often abstract territory. Fanny's strong desire to learn about poetry – to understand it, to appreciate it – stirs our own interest (perhaps buried since college!), and Keats responds with an absolutely lovely speech comparing poetry to a dive in the lake. A similar respect for the craft remains on view throughout the picture, thereby never reducing the art to a mere plot device but rather constantly working it into the very fabric of the film. Campion has made several films over the past 16 years, but all have been disappointments in the wake of her 1993 masterpiece The Piano. Bright Star isn't in the same ballpark as The Piano – heck, it's not even in the same time zone – but it's the first Campion movie since then to warrant 10 Best consideration. It's that special. ***1/2
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY It goes without saying that Michael Moore's latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, hardly shows the United States of America at its best. The sobering afterthought is that it hardly shows Michael Moore at his best, either. Easily the controversial filmmaker's weakest nonfiction piece to date, Capitalism contains many powerful sequences yet ultimately is too scattershot to serve as effective agitprop. Tackling the subject of capitalism is even more daunting than tackling the subject of health care (as he did so expertly in Sicko), and Moore is unable to coalesce all the different chapters of his odyssey into a cohesive whole. He jumps all over the place: watching ordinary folks being thrown out of their lifelong homes by the evil banking industry; chatting with erudite actor-playwright Wallace Shawn about economics; detailing how various people (including a judge) were getting rich by throwing typical teens into a juvenile detention center for offenses as minor as hurling a piece of meat across the dinner table; and noting how many banking-industry officials have been a key part of the past few administrations. This is all well and good, but we already knew most of these stories from even just cursory glances at newspapers and news blogs, and more than ever, we get the sense that Moore is preaching to the choir with no real inclination to expand his audience. As always, he's at his best when he gets the hell out of the way and lets average citizens have their say; these are the moments that alternately provide the most inspiration and the most outrage. By the end of the picture, Moore takes to the streets, brandishing the verbal equivalent of a shotgun and calling for the end of capitalism. Yet even his own footage often suggests that the problem isn't capitalism itself but rather capitalism as it's abused by those in charge. Moore means well, but in this case, he seems to have used that metaphorical shotgun to shoot himself in the foot. **1/2
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS Although it's based on a children's book (by Judi and Ron Barrett), this animated charmer is one of those equal-opportunity exercises that provides as much merriment for adults as for kids. After all, it's the grownups who are sure to get a chuckle out of a voice cast diverse enough to include Bruce Campbell, James Caan and Mr. T, and it's the grownups who will pick up on the movie's gentle ecological themes. As for the rest, the adults will feel like kids when bombarded by the film's freewheeling innovations and bright color schemes – all made even more irresistible in 3-D. The film's central character is Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), a gangly inventor whose latest contraption – a device that turns water into food – seems to be a winner. After its unceremonious launch into the heavens, the machine pours down all sorts of cuisine – hamburgers, pancakes, pasta, you name it – on a regular basis. Flint becomes the town's savior, but stormy weather lies ahead. The visual design of Cloudy is wondrous: There's something inherently amusing in seeing a castle built out of gelatin or a street lined with ice cream rather than snow, and the movie repeatedly offers up these gastronomical delights. Yet underlying the frivolity is a warning about our nation's gluttonous and wasteful ways, a message certainly to be lost on children (who'll wish they had their own candy-dispensing machine hovering above their homes) but relevant to environmentally aware adults. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an entertaining ride, but it doesn't possess the lasting power of, say, this summer's Up or any of the other top-tier animated features that stick with us for the long haul. It's more comfortable in the company of Kung Fu Panda and Monster House: Like those worthy animated features, this one shows up, gets the job done, and leaves us feeling satisfactorily full. ***
THE INFORMANT! No stranger to coloring outside the margins, Steven Soderbergh displays a quirky brand of lunacy with The Informant!, a like-it-or-leave-it endeavor blessed with a terrific central performance from Matt Damon. Damon leaves behind Jason Bourne's muscularity and goes all pudgy as Mark Whitacre, a midlevel executive at the major conglomeration Archer Daniels Midland. Whitacre seems like a pleasant enough fellow, so when he approaches FBI agents Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) and Bob Herndon (Joel McHale) volunteering to uncover a price-fixing racket at the company, they believe he might be honest when he claims he's turning whistleblower because it's the right thing to do. Unfortunately, with Mark Whitacre, there's far more than meets the eye. Whitacre has a way of embellishing some stories and leaving crucial facts out of other ones, which leads to no small amount of frustration for the agents trying to do their jobs. In Whitacre's mind, he's the hero of this particular saga, but to everyone else, he might merely be a lying nutjob. In adapting Kurt Eichenwald's book The Informant (A True Story), scripter Scott Z. Burns and Soderbergh find the proper consistent tone to allow this to function as a loopy satire. Adding to the mirth is a bouncy score by veteran Marvin Hamlisch, which never provides us with the musical cues we might expect. In fact, given the current state of the nation, with its stories of greedy banks and fat-cat CEOs bleeding average Americans dry, tackling this saga of corporate malfeasance with all comic cylinders firing might have been the only palatable way to present such a downbeat tale. Otherwise, if we weren't busy laughing, we'd be busy crying. ***
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS With its freewheeling exploits and liberties with historical veracity, Quentin Tarantino's World War II excursion is a celebration of film as its own entity, beholden to nothing but its own creative impulses. One would be correct in assuming that Inglourious Basterds is a remake of 1978's international production Inglorious Bastards, but except for the similar title, the films have nothing in common. The joke is that Tarantino's film isn't even primarily about the Basterds; rather, Tarantino pulls his story this way and that, to the point that marquee star Brad Pitt, as Basterds leader Aldo Raine, is MIA for long stretches at a time. In screen minutes, he probably places third under Melanie Laurent as Shosanna, the lone survivor of a massacre that left her family members dead, and Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa, the so-called "Jew hunter" responsible for the aforementioned slaughter. All three are fine, and it's easy to see why Waltz won a Best Actor award at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Like the best Tarantino flicks, this one is more talk than action, and the auteur also continues to be as big a film fan as he is a filmmaker, evidenced by how the movie is marinated in an unequivocal admiration for cinema. For all its attributes, the film does make a couple of miscalculations. The stunt casting – exploitation director Eli Roth as Raines' right-hand man, Mike Myers as a British officer – doesn't work at all. And after 2-1/2 hours of leisurely storytelling, the ending feels disappointingly rushed, the sort of abrupt conclusion sure to leave a bad taste in the mouths of countless moviegoers. Truth be told, another half-hour wouldn't have damaged Inglourious Basterds; it moves so quickly anyway that it's (to quote a famous line about another movie) "history written with lightning" – even if these particular chapters exist only in Quentin Tarantino's feverish imagination. ***
JENNIFER'S BODY When Diablo Cody won the Oscar for penning the delightful Juno, I'm assuming it was less for her hip-today-gone-tomorrow dialogue and more for her creation of ingratiating yet recognizably flawed characters as well as her deftness in telling a story with numerous emotional peaks. With her sophomore – and sophomoric – script, Cody has retained the hipster-speak but left out everything else. In Jennifer's Body, the warmth and wit have been replaced with cruelty and denseness, and what might have been a penetrating high school comedy – a new Heathers or Mean Girls – turns out to be nothing more than a cheap horror flick packed with lowbrow titillation. Megan Fox stars as Jennifer, who, after being served up as a satanic sacrifice by the members of an obscure band seeking fame and fortune (hey, it beats taking the humiliating American Idol path), returns as a vampire-zombie-thingie that must gorge on human blood to survive. There's always an audience for revenge fantasies, and perhaps if Jennifer had gone after misogynistic creeps, there'd be more rooting interest for her even given her demonic state. But Jennifer solely seems to target nice guys, which not only makes her a one-note killing machine but also cripples any attempts by Cody and director Karyn Kusama to provide any originality to a played-out genre that has traditionally been owned by male filmmakers. Instead of serving as a much-needed role reversal take on the standard terror tale, Jennifer's Body is merely a sellout, most notably in a pointless scene in which (fanboy alert!) Jennifer and her best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) briefly lock lips – a desperate sequence that's about as erotic to behold as Glenn Beck in a wet T-shirt. Seyfried is fine while Fox is dreadful, delivering her lines as if she doesn't quite understand half the words she's uttering. More than anyone else, she's the one who turns Jennifer's Body into a rotting corpse of a movie. *1/2
9 Not to be confused with Rob Marshall's upcoming musical Nine (or, for that matter, with the summer hit District 9), this single-digit offering is actually director Shane Acker's expansion of his own Oscar-nominated short film from 2005. That animated work ran approximately 12 minutes; this new version clocks in at 80 minutes, shorter than most theatrical releases but still thin enough to outstay its welcome by at least a quarter-hour. Set in a post-apocalyptic period caused by a gruesome battle between humans and the machines that ended up turning against them (sorry, no Arnold Schwarzenneger cameo this time around), the plot centers around a doll-like creature (voiced by Elijah Wood) identified by the "9" that's marked on his back. 9 discovers that humanity has been completely eradicated and fearsome mechanical monsters roam the earth, but he has no idea of his own origins or what his future might hold. He meets other rag dolls like himself – a warrior woman (Jennifer Connelly), a kindly scientist (Martin Landau), a scheming elder (Christopher Plummer), a timid sidekick (John C. Reilly), and more – and they argue as to whether they should continue to live in hiding or confront the enemy head-on. It's easy to see why Tim Burton signed on as a producer: The staggering visual scheme is dark, dank and dangerous, and characters often meet unexpected – and undesirable – fates (as the PG-13 rating suggests, this one clearly isn't for the wee ones). But these attributes, atypical for animation, are seriously undermined by a pedestrian end-of-the-world storyline and by characters with zero personality. **1/2
NO IMPACT MAN Like Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock and others, Colin Beavan is one of the new breed of ego-tripping documentarians, ably mixing sincerity with showmanship. With No Impact Man, he's made a nonfiction film based on an idea that turned into a blog and then into a book and will soon be transformed into a fictionalized Hollywood feature. Whew! That's a lot of mileage for a project that's only a couple of years old, but Beavan is nothing if not adept at selling himself. The title refers, of course, to Colin himself; his plan was to minimize his impact on the environment for one year. That meant no motorized transportation (including elevators), no food that had to be shipped in from somewhere else (local produce only), no electricity, and – yikes – no toilet paper. For the project to work, Colin had to get the cooperation of his wife Michelle, and it's clear from the start that she's not as gung-ho about the idea. A city girl if ever there existed one, Michelle lives for designer clothes, fancy expressos, and expensive makeup. Admitting that she doesn't care for nature, she's not thrilled when Colin purchases a mess of worms to break down the garbage in his makeshift compost bin or when she's required to give up meat and live solely off vegetables and fruit. Described by acquaintances as "bourgeois fucks," Colin and Michelle can be an infuriating couple, he with his frequent moodiness and she with her occasional shallowness. But as the project progresses, they both relax and adapt to their new lifestyle, which, among other pluses, gives them more opportunities to spend quality time with their button-cute daughter Isabella. In the end, No Impact Man – both the movie and the project – is little more than a stunt (otherwise, why only a year instead of a lifetime?), but its message is admirable, its tactics are amusing, and its family dynamics are intriguing. ***
WHIP IT Despite the title, you won't find any Devo on Whip It's soundtrack, but the Ramones and .38 Special both make vocal appearances in this film that marks the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore. If those two songs ("Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" and "Caught Up in You," respectively) made the journey from Drew's iPod to the big screen, more power to them, as they're certainly in tune with the rock & roll aesthetic on display throughout this rowdy, rebellious film. Juno's Ellen Page once again flashes her impressive acting chops, this time playing Bliss Cavendar, a 17-year-old whose mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is hellbent on entering her in every beauty pageant that pops up anywhere near their rundown Texas town. But Bliss eventually finds her true calling when she discovers the sport of roller derby: Adopting the name Babe Ruthless, she lands a second family in the form of her sisters on skates (played by, among others, Kristen Wiig as Maggie Mayhem and Barrymore as Smashley Simpson). The trappings are all familiar – a disapproving parent, a competitive rival (Juliette Lewis as hard-as-nails Iron Maven), scheduling conflicts, and the climactic championship match – but in the capable hands of Barrymore and scripter Shauna Cross (adapting her own novel, Derby Girl), they're all given a fresh coat of paint that allows the movie to easily skate by on the charms of both its novel setting and its gung-ho cast. ***
ZOMBIELAND What's with this unlikely epidemic of good zombie flicks? From 28 Days Later (and its sequel) to the imaginative regional shorts featured in last fall's George Romero event here in Charlotte, there have been approximately a dozen zombie yarns in this decade alone worthy of the critical accolades hurled their way. Now here's another one. The blood flows freely in this gonzo horror tale, but, more importantly, so do the laughs. And while the humor may be frosty around the edges, it's never downright mean-spirited, thanks in part to a director (Ruben Fleischer) with a light touch, two screenwriters (Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) who have obviously done their zombie-film homework and humorously place the rules for survival front and center (they include keeping fit, being weary of bathrooms, and always wearing seat belts), and four actors (five, if you include the A-lister who turns up in a crowd-pleasing cameo) who remain ingratiating throughout. Jesse Eisenberg, giving up Adventureland for Zombieland, plays the lovably geeky Columbus, while Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are savvy survivalist sisters Wichita and Little Rock. Yet it's Woody Harrelson, all rolling thunder as kick-ass cowboy Tallahassee, who makes the biggest impact. In a wild and wide-eyed performance, he stops just short of completely chewing the scenery – even the zombies aren't capable of matching his ferocious bite. ***