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AMERICAN TEEN Perhaps the best way to enjoy this documentary is to pretend it's a fictional motion picture, no different than Pineapple Express or Sex and the City or even WALL-E. Otherwise, you might start second-guessing every aspect of the movie, a path that can only lead to frustration. Fortunately, I found American Teen absorbing enough as it unfolded that I was able to keep most questions refrigerated until after the movie was over. Filmed over the course of one year at the high school in Warsaw, Indiana, it borrows the template from The Breakfast Club and applies it to real-life seniors. There's the Jock: Colin Clemens, a lanky comedian who's pressured by his dad into securing a basketball scholarship. There's the Popular Girl: Megan Krizmanich, a rich bitch whose cruelty seemingly knows no bounds. There's the Geek: Jake Tusing, a shy kid with a bad haircut, crippling acne, and a tendency to put himself down. Finally, there's the Artsy Girl: Hannah Bailey, a sensitive type who wants to escape from her conservative hometown ASAP. As much as we'd like to accept that everything in American Teen is unscripted and unforced, there's simply too much slickness (and far too many coincidences) to believe that director Nanette Burstein wasn't off on the sidelines pushing and prodding her teen stars this way and that. Yet regardless to what extent the teens are "acting" for the sake of the cameras, it's still apparent that we're privy to their basic make-ups, and this in turn immediately invests us emotionally in their lives. As a character, Hannah – the movie's heart and soul – is a keeper; if she didn't really exist, Diablo Cody would probably have to create her. ***
BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*: *THE SIDE EFFECTS OF BEING AMERICAN Christopher Bell and his two brothers were pudgy children, but luckily for them, they grew up in the 1980s, when prominent role models included Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Hulk Hogan. Inspired by these larger-than-life heroes, all three Bell kids eventually started hitting the gym and grew up to become ripped musclemen themselves. So imagine Bell's shock when he learned that his childhood faves confessed to achieving their freakish sizes via performance enhancing drugs, primarily steroids. With a personal investment in the subject – he briefly tried steroids, his brothers are hooked on them – Bell elected to make a fascinating documentary that doesn't take us exactly where we expect to go. At first, the movie looks as if it will evoke the 1980s in another manner besides Hulkmania and Rocky IV and Conan the Barbarian, by bringing up the spirit of crusty Nancy Reagan as she warned us all to "Just Say No" to drugs. But as the movie progresses, it also deepens. Are steroids really as bad as the typically hysterical American media makes them out to be? Some interviewees contend that it's basically an update of the mindset behind the film Reefer Madness, which asserted that a single puff from a marijuana joint could lead to murder and madness. It all makes for a fascinating point-counterpoint debate, but hold on, there's more. Bell then starts to notice the overwhelming double standards surrounding what's legal and what's not. The hypocrisy in pro sports has always felt knee-deep; after watching this insightful work, it now feels as if it's risen past the neck. ***1/2
BOTTLE SHOCK To lay it out in terms that both an oenophile and a cineast would understand, if Sideways is the cinematic equivalent of an unopened bottle of the 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, then Bottle Shock figures to be akin to a plastic cup filled with 2007 Boone's Farm Country Kwencher. The movie's catchy, based-on-fact premise contends that, in 1976, a wine tasting event between France (considered the world's best producer of vin) and California (whose wineries weren't on anyone's radar) helped put The Golden State's Napa Valley on the international map. The vintner who organizes the event is Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a Brit living in Paris, and as long as the film focuses on his exploits as he travels to California to sample the wines, the movie's in good hands: Watching Rickman's quizzical expression as his snobbish character bites into a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken is probably the picture's high point. But whereas Sideways insisted on retaining the wine culture itself as a central player – that film made it clear that wine wasn't just a beverage but a life-force for its characters – this drowsy undertaking devotes far too much of its running time to the familial tensions between vineyard proprietor Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) and his slacker son Bo (Chris Pine), and even more to a tepid love triangle between Bo, hottie intern Sam (Rachael Taylor) and Bo's best friend Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez). Nothing any of these people say is particularly interesting, leaving audiences wishing that they – and the movie – would just put a cork in it. *1/2
THE DARK KNIGHT Given the fact that Christopher Nolan's 2005 Batman Begins ranks as one of the best superhero flicks ever made, then where does that put this sequel that manages to be even more phenomenal than its predecessor? Certainly, it places it somewhere at the head of the class, and there's a nice symmetry to its release date: After all, it was 30 years ago that the Christopher Reeve version of Superman – still the greatest of all comic book adaptations – was released, and now we have its equal on the other side of the aisle, a superhero saga that's as dark and deep as its forefather was cheery and colorful. In fact, this might be the first superhero movie that exudes a palpable sense of dread and menace that tugs at our nerves in a way that both disturbs and delights us. Even in superior entertainment like Spider-Man and Iron Man, there's a feeling that it's all make-believe, but The Dark Knight offers no such safety net – it wears its danger on its sleeve. In this outing, Batman (Christian Bale) has done a fine job of tightening the reins around the mob bosses who have long controlled Gotham City, and he's soon aided in his efforts by idealistic district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). But their combined attempts to corral the city's crooks are hampered by the presence of a murderous psychopath known as The Joker (Heath Ledger). Eckhart stands out in what proves to be the picture's most fully realized characterization, though we all know who's the MVP of this particular show: The late Ledger is simply mesmerizing as this whirling dervish of cackling, lip-smacking, cheek-sucking sin. ****
THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR 1999's The Mummy was a barely passable Indiana Jones rip-off, while 2001's The Mummy Returns proved to be rather dismal. This one, though, is the worst of the lot. In the China of 2,000 years ago, a sorceress (Michelle Yeoh) places a curse on an evil emperor (Jet Li) who can now only be awoken by a drop of human blood; cut to 1946, where retired adventurer Rick O'Connell (series star Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz after the latter declared, "Screw this; I have an Oscar now!") mope around their English estate while son Alex (Luke Ford) is off digging up the emperor. Plot contrivances reunite all of them – plus Evelyn's brother Jonathan (returning stooge John Hannah) – in Shanghai, and from there, the gang is forced to fight the now-revived emperor. The sloppiness of the entire enterprise is immediately evident by the fact that the 27-year-old Ford looks nowhere near young enough to be playing the son of 39-year-old Fraser and 41-year-old Bello. From there, the movie only gets more absurd; for example, do the O'Connells really encounter abominable snowmen who, based on the employment of a field goal signal, must subscribe to DIRECTV's NFL Sunday Ticket package? And do scripters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar think that audiences will be impressed by dialogue that basically consists of variations on Rick yelping, "Well, here I am fighting mummies again!"? This manages to make even an epic battle between armies of the undead a dull undertaking. Clearly, here's a perfunctory franchise which needs to take a long-overdue dirt nap. *
MY WINNIPEG There probably won't be a more abstract and experimental movie released in Charlotte this year than Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, yet for all its avant-garde innovations, its biggest source of delight is decidedly a flesh-and-blood one. That would be the presence of 87-year-old Ann Savage, appearing on screen for the first time in 22 years. Film buffs will remember Savage as the slinky femme fatale in the 1945 film noir classic Detour, and here she plays the other type of femme fatale: mommy dearest. The third picture in what Maddin refers to as "the 'me' trilogy" (after 2003's Cowards Bend the Knee and 2006's Brand Upon the Brain!), this finds a character named Guy Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr, though the film's ongoing narration is spoken by the real Maddin himself) trying desperately to escape from his hometown on a train that never seems to make any real tracks. As he sits there, he reflects back on what the city means to him, even as the oversized face of his mom (Savage) peers through the boxcar window, not unlike the manner in which the looming visage of King Kong peeks through that New York skyscraper window at a terrified Fay Wray. Through both family scenes and ones involving the city at large, Maddin creates a rich tapestry weaving together fact and fiction, along the way having great fun not only with experimental shooting techniques but with taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to the fluidity of memory and the fallacy of historical accuracy. Both whimsical and melancholic, this might be draggy in spots but never relinquishes its idiosyncratic grip. ***
PINEAPPLE EXPRESS As far as crude, rambling, shaggy-dog comedies go, this one's better than most of the modern-day crop. In a sense, this harkens back to the "buddy flicks" so rampant in the 1980s, odd-couple outings like 48 HRS. and Midnight Run (no wonder iconic '80s band Huey Lewis and the News was tapped to belt out the closing-credits title song). Here, the pair are process server Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) and drug dealer Saul Silver (James Franco); they're forced to take it on the lam after Dale witnesses a drug lord (Gary Cole) and a crooked cop (Rosie Perez) commit cold-blooded murder and the killers are able to trace the rare pot ("Pineapple Express") that Dale leaves at the crime scene back to the eternally fried Saul. Under the direction of N.C. School of the Arts grad and indie filmmaker David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls), Rogen again scores in his standard role as a disheveled slacker with a way with words, while Danny McBride, another N.C. School of the Arts alumni and star of the disappointing martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way, offers broad laughs as a duplicitous drug dealer with seemingly more lives than a Looney Tunes character. Yet the biggest surprise is Franco: Generally the blandest of pretty boys, he succeeds in his change-of-pace role as a long-haired stoner. And it's Franco who's at the center of what will likely remain the summer's funniest sight gag. I won't spoil it here, but let's just say that viewers probably won't ever look at car chase clichés the same way again. ***
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2 The 2005 screen version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was based on the first novel in Ann Brashares' best-selling series, but this sequel reportedly combines the events from the remaining three books in the franchise. One reason is probably because the studio felt that audience interest wouldn't extend past a second installment, while another might be that the four ascending stars are now keeping busy with other projects. Besides, who wants to eventually see 30-something actresses still playing college-age kids? (It brings to mind the final film in the Porky's series, wherein high school boys were suddenly having to contend with receding hairlines.) Yet by ending it at number two, the filmmakers have insured that this series won't be subject to the laws of most franchises and grow shoddier as it creaks along. A solid follow-up to the solid original, this might feel a bit more scattershot than its predecessor, but its engaging characters, entertaining situations and emotional reach help keep it afloat. Set three summers later, it finds brainy Carmen (America Ferrera) heading to Vermont to work in theater (check out a funny Kyle MacLachlan as the pompous director), introspective Bridget (Blake Lively) traveling to Turkey for an archaeological dig, rebellious Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) remaining in New York to work on her film, and shy Lena (Alexis Bledel) finding romance at the Rhode Island School of Design. Problems are worked out in an orderly manner, tears are shed in sincere fashion, and everyone is reunited in sunny Greece, with nary a single ABBA-mangling peasant in sight. ***
STEP BROTHERS The battle for the title of Hollywood's Ultimate Man-Child finds Will Ferrell finally overtaking Adam Sandler. While Sandler plays an actual adult (well, sort of) in the recent You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Ferrell again adopts an infantile pose, this time in the service of Step Brothers. The law of diminishing returns – to say nothing of Step Brothers' cringe-inducing trailer – suggests that this should represent the nadir of Ferrell's efforts, but the truth is that he's done worse: This is rescued from the bottom of the sewer by several choice quips as well as a surprising sweetness at the center of its storyline involving family dysfunction. Ferrell and Talladega Nights partner John C. Reilly star as Brennan and Dale, two 40-ish men still living at home with their single parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins, respectively). When said parents decide to marry each other, the two "kids" are forced to not only live under the same roof but also share a bedroom. Initially combative, they become best friends after they're united by their mutual hatred of Brennan's smug, perfectionist brother Derek (Adam Scott). As usual, Ferrell doesn't know where to draw the line when it comes to childish antics on screen. But the theme of how parents and children will often fail each other carries some startling resonance (thanks largely to Steenburgen's delicate performance), and every time we write off the dialogue as just a string of schoolyard taunts, along comes an unexpected zinger. Step Brothers is clearly a step up from recent Ferrell offerings like Semi-Pro and Blades of Glory, but please, guys, it's time to grow up and give this formula a rest. **
SWING VOTE There's a terrific segment in the middle of Swing Vote in which the two men running for U.S. president, Republican incumbent Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammer) and Democratic challenger Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper), are persuaded by their campaign managers (Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane, respectively) to do anything to win the favor of Texico, N.M., resident Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner), whose single vote will decide the outcome of the election. So when Bud lets it be known that he doesn't care what people do in their own homes, even homosexuals, the right-wing Boone is forced to appear in an ad in which, surrounded by members of the gay community, he cheerfully embraces diversity. And when a comment by Bud is misunderstood to mean that he harbors ill will toward Mexican laborers, the left-wing Greenleaf reluctantly films a TV spot in which he rails against illegal immigrants, even as real immigrants hired as extras dash across the set. These bits are funny, biting and provocative, and they demonstrate that this had an opportunity to emerge as a scathing political satire rather than a timid political comedy. But the central thrust isn't the election as much as it's the bonding between Bud and his daughter (Madeline Carroll). Costner delivers a fine performance, but we see this type of sentimental film just about every month. We're here to watch the electoral process receive a sharp kick in the pants, but Swing Vote isn't inspirational as much as it's simply afraid to take a stand on anything. Given this narrative trajectory, the film ends just as we suspect it would, not with a bang but with a wimp-out. **1/2
TROPIC THUNDER The opening salvo of Tropic Thunder reps perhaps the funniest 10 minutes I've encountered in a movie theater this year – that's good news in that it kicks the picture off on a high note and bad news in that it instantly raises concerns that the remaining 95 minutes won't come close to touching this raucous beginning. But the best news is that the movie manages to keep the laughs hurtling forward for its entire running time, no small feat in an era in which many comedies lose steam by the final reel. Ben Stiller stars as Tugg Speedman, a macho action star whose one attempt at an awards-bait title, the resounding flop Simple Jack, has largely derailed his career. Jack Black plays Jeff Portnoy, a comedian known for vulgar blockbusters (up next: The Fatties, Fart 2). And Robert Downey Jr. essays the role of Kirk Lazarus, a five-time Academy Award-winning actor. All three, plus rap star Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and screen newcomer Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), are in Vietnam shooting the war movie to end all war movies. After finding themselves lost in the jungle, they become the targets of heavily armed locals who don't take kindly to what they mistakenly believe to be DEA agents searching for their heroin factory. Rude and crude, Tropic Thunder displays minimal mercy toward its targets, yet even its gross-out gags display a manic ingenuity far removed from the one-note crudeness found in your typical Will Ferrell vehicle. All the performances are inspired (including Tom Cruise in a change-of-pace part), yet top acting honors go to Downey, who between this and Iron Man is having a helluva summer. ***1/2
OPENS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20:
THE ROCKER: Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate.
OPENS FRIDAY, AUGUST 22:
DEATH RACE: Jason Statham, Joan Allen.
HAMLET 2: Steve Coogan, Elisabeth Shue.
HELL RIDE: Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper.
THE HOUSE BUNNY: Anna Faris, Colin Hanks.
THE LAST MISTRESS: Asia Argento, Michael Lonsdale.
THE LONGSHOTS: Ice Cube, Keke Palmer.
TELL NO ONE: François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze.
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