While many of the so-called “torture porn” films that it helped spawn — including this spring’s The Hills Have Eyes 2, which did less than half the business of its 2006 predecessor, and this summer’s Captivity, which couldn’t capitalize on controversy surrounding its advertising — have fallen on hard times, LionsGate’s Saw franchise as of yet shows no signs of surrendering its box office
relevance. The fourth installment, and the third in the series helmed
by Darren Lynn Bousman, opened this past week to bloody good returns,
pulling in just over $32 million on 4,600 screens, easily besting
fellow wide release Dan in Real Life. Less than a week into the release of Saw IV, the series has now scared up $450 million in theatrical receipts alone, not to mention spinning off various bestselling DVD iterations.

Tobin Bell) — more popularly known as Jigsaw, for his labyrinthine puzzles with human lives forever hanging in the balance — died at the end of Saw III, he still figures prominently in Saw IV.
The story finds a pair of FBI agents (Scott Patterson and Athena
Karkanis) searching for Jigsaw’s accomplice, which leads them to his
ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell), who proffers clues to his past which help
further flesh out the motivations behind his homicidal inclinations. In
parallel fashion, meanwhile, as the investigation proceeds, SWAT
commander Rigg (series veteran Lyriq Bent) is kidnapped and forced to
participate in one of Jigsaw’s twisted games, opening up more questions and setting the scene for an inevitable fifth serving of squirm-inducing mayhem.

Saw IV represents the first film in which originating
actor-turned-producer Leigh Whannell does not have a hand in scripting
it as well. Screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, whom
dedicated Project Greenlight fans will remember as the young writers behind John Gulager’s Feast,
step into the series, and for the most part ably follow its prescribed
formula, much like a youngster trailing their parents’ footsteps
through a knee-high snow drift. Dividing the action between extended
flashbacks of Jigsaw’s pitiable past and elaborate present-day games
which require victims to try to think in order to stay alive, Saw IV’s
surprises aren’t as inventive as some of the other twists in the
series. But the sheer volume of its obfuscation (literally — the film
doesn’t cheat you on its sound mix) keeps things interesting for
diehard fans. Despite the clucking disapproval of the cinematic
intelligentsia, the Saw
films aren’t successful by accident. A well-oiled machine, the
franchise has consistently shown smarts about sticking with what
works about their movies, as well as a dedication to narrative invention. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Well acted if sweetly moralizing, Martian Child tells the
story of a science fiction writer who adopts an orphaned boy who claims to be
from Mars. Based on the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short story by genre
luminary David Gerrold, the film is an extremely personable, smarter than
average family dramedy with just a pint-sized pinch of the is-he-or-isn’t-he
commotion of 2001’s K-Pax, which also centered around the claims of an alleged
extraterrestrial.

John Cusack)
is feeling some pressure from his nervous agent (Oliver Platt) to deliver a
sequel to a publisher desperate for their own “Harry Potter
in space.” David, though, finds his head elsewhere. Ignoring the
well-intentioned advice of his sister Liz (Joan Cusack), herself a mother of
two, David files paperwork to adopt Dennis (Bobby Coleman, above left), an almost
pathologically introverted youngster who keeps insisting he’s an alien.

Dennis — who applies slick layers of sunscreen to his skin,
and sports a “weight belt” ringed with batteries, all to keep himself
from drifting up and away, he explains — comes to live with David, and
rechristens his aging dog with the Martian name “Flomar.” David, along
with his friend Harlee (Amanda Peet), teaches Dennis baseball, and eases his
transition to school, all the while trying to strike a balance between
indulging Dennis’ quirks and slowly socializing him, drawing him out of his shell
of defensive construction.

Owing to its literary roots, Martian Child benefits from the
fact that all its characters are of above average intelligence, and thus
approach problems with at least a small degree of self-awareness. This means
many scenes can be played on several levels at one time. The movie tugs at
heartstrings, yes, but does so in a manner free from pretense or affectation. Perhaps deciding them too tough of a sell, the script
jettisons the source text’s autobiographical elements about a single gay man,
recasting David as a widower and playing up his own troubled, misfit adolescent
past. Despite the potential for disaster such a tweak invites, the changes are
handled not only convincingly but also artfully, since the alienation David
felt from his artistic inclinations, pre-career success, remains intact, informing
his adult personality.

The only big knock on the film — apart from an arguable schmaltz
factor — is that David’s professional pressures are less convincingly sketched.
That they recede into the background for so much of the film is fine until a
jarring reentry of slightly heightened tone involving Anjelica Huston’s
blustery publisher. That said, Menno Meyjes, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of
The Color Purple who first transitioned behind the camera with 2002’s Max, also
starring Cusack, has a fantastic touch with actors. He doesn’t lean too much on
Coleman, who delivers his lines in a prepubescent rasp, to play up Dennis’
quirks; for every bit of emoting, there’s a matching bit or two of guarded
silence or sparse exchange.

Cusack typically injects no small amount of caginess into
almost all his performances, but he eases up on that persona to an admirable and
pleasing degree here
. The fun interplay with his real-life sister, which
underpins a number of scenes, might well be expected, but Cusack has worked
with almost all of the other actors with whom he shares significant screen time
— Peet, Platt, Huston and Schiff — and that loose-limbed idiosyncrasy also helps give the movie a genuine
sense of rootedness. Then, of course, there’s the matter of Cusack’s chemistry
with Coleman. The pair has a low-key, very believable rapport that isn’t born
of endless patter. Martian Child embraces offbeatness and whimsy, recognizing the
importance of small actions, and for the most part artfully obscures its clichés with this tack.
For the full review, from Screen International, click here.

Luke Wilson is a puzzling Hollywood case study. Every significant box
office success of his career appears to have been more or less
incidental to his involvement (witness Blue Streak, the Legally Blonde films and Old School), and every movie in which he’s been touted as a topliner has drastically underperformed if not flopped (witness Alex and Emma, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Vacancy and You Kill Me).
Despite all this, Wilson continues to find work, with one film in the can (Blonde Ambition) and another on the way next summer (Henry Poole is Here). Not bad for a guy who, when he co-starred in a romantic comedy with Drew Barrymore, barely hit the $10 million box office mark.

In short, this guy has absolutely zero pull with an audience, and no lasting commercial footprint of consequence.
Like fellow officers of Blandsville Edward Burns and Jim Caviezel,
Wilson has found consistent work because he seems to have a certain
likeability. (Actually, strike Caviezel from that group; he obviously
has a Passion voucher from Jesus helping procure him steady
gigs.) Wilson just kind of looks the part and frequently, in
mid-level-budgeted pictures, that’s good enough. So if ever there were
a more shrug-worthy modern hop behind the camera than The Wendell Baker Story,
new this week to DVD, it’s hard to recall. It’s not that the words
“multi-hyphenate” attached to Luke Wilson’s name conjure up irrational
irritation or aversion; rather, it’s that they elicit no feelings at
all.

The Wendell Baker Story fancies itself a shaggy beguiler, able
to coast by on latent charms only partially or occasionally manifested.
Its tonal incongruities and barely concealed self-satisfaction, though,
render it a deluded mess. It’s not that it’s always lazy, per se, it’s
just that it seems to have an ambling tone born of too many false
compliments. That the story is somewhat arbitrary is forgivable, but as
an actor Luke Wilson doesn’t even craft an inviting lead. For a film
with a possessive title, that’s a problem indeed. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Heading into this summer’s epic-scale spin-off of 2003’s $480 million worldwide hit Bruce Almighty, Steve Carell was the hottest comedy star of the moment, with both the reputation of a savvy scene-stealer and a hit, Emmy-winning television show in the form of The Office. With a rumored budget of somewhere between $170 and $200 million, Evan Almighty was probably the most expensive straight-up comedy of all time, so its near-unanimous critical lambasting and meager returns (it just finally eked past the $100 million threshold at the end of September) have to feel like a rebuke on some level, an adjustment of the scales of comedy.

Evan Almighty exudes the feel of a meticulously corporate-vetted tale from every pore of its narrative; it’s a movie so nakedly designed to radiate broad appeal that it ends up being a totally unfunny bore for all. Carell’s fall follow-up, Dan in Real Life, is an intimately sketched affair that makes far better use of his talents, namely presenting a sort of rumpled, Everyman proxy for the slings and arrows of indignity that come with normal, day-to-day existence. The curious thing, then, is the irritating manner in which this Disney movie is being sold as something far less quirky than it is.

An airy, autumnal, ensemble family dramedy — in the mold of movies like The Family Stone and Home for the Holidays — built chiefly around one beleaguered character, Dan in Real Life stars Carell as Dan Burns, a widowed New Jersey newspaper advice columnist with three daughters, two teenagers and a fourth grader. He’s an inherently decent and upstanding guy, but one having trouble realizing his girls are growing up.

One wouldn’t necessarily glean this from the movie’s trailer and TV ads, however. A few moments of spontaneous catharsis (Dan dancing in a bar) and resignation (Dan telling a cop to “put it on his tab” after getting nailed with a ticket) are played up for generic comedy, but the problem is that these moments, lifted considerably from their original context, simply aren’t very funny or uniquely memorable as presented. If Evan Almighty had delivered a star-making mandate, I could understand this sham-job, because Carell’s drawing power would be firmly, indisputably established. Assuming that fans of Evan (to the degree that there were any) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin already have cash in hand, however, wouldn’t the smarter play be something along the lines of trying to expand Dan‘s audience by actually selling the movie as what it is — namely, a relationship comedy with a touch of mania and a little bit of grey in its palette?

After packing up his girls and heading to his parents’ place for a nuclear family reunion of sorts, Dan finds welcome reception from mom and dad (John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest, ably functioning as human set dressing). He also enjoys a chance encounter at a bookstore with Marie (Juliette Binoche, coasting by on transatlantic charm), but is soon crestfallen to learn that she’s the new girlfriend of his younger brother Mitch (Dane Cook). Complications then ensue as Dan and Marie dance around one another, keeping their harmless encounter secret from the rest of the family.

As the adapter of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and About a Boy, writer-director Peter Hedges has a firmly established background in familial dysfunction, and his previous film behind the camera, 2003’s Pieces of April, dealt with a black sheep, wayward daughter (Katie Holmes) putting on a Thanksgiving dinner for her dying mother and estranged family. For better or worse, Dan in Real Life is much more well-adjusted than those movies, if also less crisply and intricately drawn; points are earned for giving Dan’s daughters distinct personalities, but no one else in the family makes an impression. The film’s emotions certainly come through, though; whereas Evan Almighty smacked of scrupulously constructed mock sincerity, Dan in Real Life has an easy, amiable charm, especially to its early scenes. One feels coddled and loved, even before the dance-along group fitness workouts and Kennedy-esque games of touch football begin in the backyard. (Costumes and production design from J. Crew, and achingly on-the-nose music from Norwegian singer Sondre Lerche, meanwhile, further inflate the sense of the film as an ample, welcoming bosom.)

The problem is that Dan, as a professional dispenser of advice, would in theory have some greater situational realization of his acting out, and/or control over his behavior. Here, he doesn’t, and it irrevocably sabotages the realism of certain scenes. There certainly is, on balance, more good here than bad. A bit more convincingly portrayed bitterness, though, would have made the movie’s laughs all sweeter in contrast. For the full, original review, from FilmStew, click here. (Disney/Buena Vista, PG-13, 95 minutes)

After a heyday in the 1950s, for many years musicals were considered
not just box office poison, but something not to be attempted at all.
In 1994, James Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything — originally conceived and filmed as an old-fashioned movie musical,
with songs by Prince, Carole King and Sinead O’Connor, among others —
was famously gutted and released as a straight narrative, courtesy of a
couple savage test screening reactions. This millennium however, the
tune has changed. The film that most single-handedly helped transform
the moribund state of the musical was director Baz Luhrmann’s dazzling
2001 pop costume opera Moulin Rouge,
a worldwide smash to the tune of $120 million, and a Stateside critical
darling if theatrical under-performer (total gross: $57 million). The
very next year, Chicago rode a cleared path of public
consciousness and acceptance to $170 million in theaters, 13 Oscar
nominations and six victories, including a win for Best Picture.

Since then, though, musicals’ track record has been rather
hit-and-miss. A lot of the bigger-name stage modern Broadway
adaptations (Rent, Phantom of the Opera) have bombed or at least drastically underperformed, while High School Musical
became the Disney Channel’s highest-rated original programming of all
time, and a bonafide zeitgeist sensation. This summer, the buoyant,
teen-centric Hairspray punched through (a cult John Waters
flick remade into a stage musical remade into a film, for those keeping
score) to the tune of $120 million, introducing audiences to newcomer
Nikki Blonsky and showcasing John Travolta in a whole new light.
Hollywood must be pulling their hair out trying to figure out a formula
for the success of modern musicals, one that they can then apply to
their precious “four-quadrant” rubric. Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, then, presents both challenges and some seeming hand-in-glove benefits. After an extended period of limited play the film has expanded nationwide, and while it still hasn’t cracked 1,000 theaters, it’s inching toward $20 million in theatrical receipts, something that can’t be said for the fast-falling Elizabeth: The Golden Age. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Harlem’s notorious Nicky Barnes, an adolescent junkie turned
multimillionaire drug lord — and a figure played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.
in the forthcoming American Gangster — gets a nonfiction workout in
director Marc Levin’s engrossing documentary, which takes its audience
deep inside the heroin industry of the 1970s. One of the most powerful
black drug kingpins in New York City history, Barnes reached such
heights of arrogance that he actually posed for a cover story in the
New York Times Magazine (below) touting his status as a Teflon Don. Soon after,
it all came crumbling down. Slapped with a life sentence, Barnes would
eventually seek payback, cooperating with law enforcement by turning
his organization inside out.

Avarice and revenge are the two main throughlines here, and they pulse
with a quicksilver energy unmatched in many genre features that tread
similar narrative ground. Candid interviews with criminal syndicate
deputies like Joseph “Jazz” Hayden and Leon “Scrap” Batts (as well as common-law wife Thelma Grant, who comes off as a Imelda
Marcos-type figure) set the
scene, painting a convincing portrait of prison as little more than
“crime school.” Various attorneys, police detectives, and newspapermen
of the era, meanwhile, help tie up loose chronological ends in fine
fashion. Still, Mr. Untouchable has the chief benefit of being told in
the voice of its subject. Though interviewed in shadow, and now
70-plus, Barnes still has an arresting presence; he quotes Dietrich
Bonhoeffer and Machiavelli at length as the inspirations for his
business. Some of his air-quote insights are rather silly (“There was
something about pure cocaine and young women that held an inevitable attraction
for me…”), and if Barnes is additionally delusional and espouses seemingly incongruous value
sets, the film still shows you, in fascinating fashion, how he comes to
these contradictions honestly, out of self-preservation. For the review in its original capsule form, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.