Partially a comedically inflected Agatha Christie conceit, and partially a money-grubbing farcical ensemble along the lines of Death at a Funeral or Daddy’s Dyin’ and Who’s Got the Will, British import Twelve in a Box is wholly a dreadful bore.

Written and directed by John McKenzie (Vol-au-vent), the movie brings together a dozen strangers for a school reunion lunch at a remote country estate. Once there, their host appears via videotape and offers them one million pounds sterling apiece if they can coexist on the grounds for 96 hours without anyone leaving. After a bit of arm-turning, an all-in democratic vote establishes everyone’s acquiescence and confirms the parameters of the contest, but from the start there are social frictions, and things only get more complicated when the eldest member of the group suffers a heart attack and dies. Throw in some standard-grade personal carping, a pair of would-be burglers, a staircase accident and an eventual visit by the police, and you have all the familiar ingredients for a souffle that doesn’t rise.

The explanation for this particular group of men and women — some classmates, many not — isn’t necessarily convincing (everyone who visited the school’s web site was logged, the eccentric benefactor explains, and he chose a dozen names at random), but Twelve in a Box stalls almost from the start owing chiefly to the fact that its characters are poorly delineated, and just not very interesting. The pacing is interminable, the banter not nearly as cute or witty as its makers fancy, and the nature and quality of the performances unsteady. Throw in pedestrian filmmaking, editing that doesn’t help whip the supposedly escalating narrative up into a dizzy tizzy, and the fact that the entire enterprise isn’t helped much by the fact that the movie features only one inarguable babe (that’d be Phoebe Sweeney), and the end result is grating, start to finish. Some of the plot twists are entirely expected (sexual dalliances, both attempted and realized), but an imaginative mind will easily outstrip the forced zaniness on display here. (Masses Entertainment, unrated, 93 minutes)

Unabashedly streamlined genre flicks get a bad rap — with critical indifference often seemingly being the best for which they can hope — because they’re so frequently made by hacks, or at least passed off to inexperienced filmmakers in the form of a less-than-totally-polished script. Writer-director David Twohy’s A Perfect Getaway, though, is a structurally solid B-movie, marked by smart casting and carefully modulated performances, that delivers high on the popcorn-munching entertainment scale.

The story revolves around newlyweds Cliff and Cydney (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich), who are honeymooning in Hawaii when they stumble across backpacking hippie couple Kale and Cleo (Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton) and, just a bit later, Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez), an ex-special ops soldier and Southern debutante turned bad girl. With news of a gruesome murder on the main island, and word that authorities are looking for both a man and woman as suspects, Cliff and Cydney become understandably paranoid about their new acquaintances. Pig-hunting trips deep into the woods and stories of Nick’s past escapades and metal-plate-reinforced head don’t do much to quell Cliff and Cydney’s fears.

Oh, and did I mention that Cliff is a Hollywood screenwriter, so he starts trying gain the psychological upper hand on Nick by stringing him along, and making him think that there might be a potential movie to be written based on his life? The introduction of such a winking, Scream-like deconstructive element — scrupulously avoided in the movie’s marketing campaign — has the danger of making A Perfect Getaway collapse under the weight of its own smug self-satisfaction, but Twohy is such a deft juggler of form and entertainment, artifice and colorful flourish, that he pulls it off with aplomb.

Then there’s the casting. I’ve written before about how Olyphant oozes charisma, displays
crackerjack timing and knows how to sharpen a casual throwaway line into a dagger
with pointed subtext, and he again brings to bear all those qualities
in A Perfect Getaway, dancing merrily along a razor’s edge in
crafting a character who comes as equal parts affable, unhinged,
contrarian and dangerous. Zahn and Jovovich are smartly cast, too, and do a great job bringing their characters’ awkwardness and vulnerabilities to the surface in small ways.

Those with a working knowledge of the thriller genre and the stakes of identity reversal will perhaps gauge where this is all headed, but Twohy (Pitch Black), not unlike John Dahl (Red Rock West, Joy Ride), has a superb grasp of structure, combined with the knowledge of how and when to integrate specific, telling details — be it in the mocking of Nicolas Cage, the inclusion of a deeply personal story from Cydney, or a slippery, unforeseen moment of violence that results in what may most charitably be described as the world’s worst between-fingers paper cut — that elevate the material, and give it some bite, and punch. A Perfect Getaway isn’t perfect; post-twist, it enters a weird slipstream that plays out too long in flashback. But it’s effective even when you feel the strings being pulled because it makes you care about and have interest in its characters, and then ponder the changes in your degrees of relatability when those investments dip and swirl. As such, Twohy’s film slots alongside something like Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown as a fun, engaging exercise in marionette cinema. “Use me so good,” you’ll likely be saying. (Rogue, R, 98 minutes)

Sometimes failure is its own form of success. After all, take the case of writer-director Judd Apatow, who stuck out on the small screen with two critically beloved and cultishly embraced but ratings-challenged shows, Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, before finding mainstream redemption on the big screen in 2005 with The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and two years later with Knocked Up.

A foray into more emotionally rooted territory, Apatow’s new film, Funny People, is partially about the trappings of success, and if not failure outright then certainly the looming specter of it as a distinct possibility, in the form of friends and roommates passing you by and establishing professional beachheads. Of course, because it’s still an Apatow film, there are plenty of dick jokes too.

The story centers around George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a hugely successful comedic actor who is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Alone and embittered, he starts venturing out to a Los Angeles comedy club, where he indulges in some self-destructive, Andy Kaufman-style stand-up. It’s here that George comes across Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a struggling, would-be comedian who lives with his pals Leo (Jonah Hill), a fellow stand-up, and Mark (Jason Schwartzman), an actor on a successful but positively wretched kids’ sitcom. George hires Ira to help write some material for him, then stay on as his personal assistant; he soon confides the secret of his illness to Ira, and comes to rely on him both for emotional support and as a sounding board for his ideas on re-entering the world, personally and professionally, in a way that might bring him more happiness.

At around the movie’s one-hour mark, George starts trying to substantively reconnect with ex-girlfriend Laura (Leslie Mann), who’s now married to Australian businessman Clarke (Eric Bana), with whom she shares two daughters. News that the experimental drug treatment George has been undergoing has seemingly staved off his illness would seem to clear the way for a possible romantic rekindling with Laura, who still has deep feelings for George, but… well, things are complicated.

Whether scoring zeitgeist points off of modern technology (anything with kittens is a surefire YouTube sensation, Leo points out) or folding in cracks about Rogen’s real-life weight loss, Funny People succeeds as a comedy, just in terms of laugh count, even in the long-form first act that comprises the spine of George’s illness tale. This is because the film is honest about George’s self-loathing, and the insecurity and anger that informs a lot of the best comedic acting out, be it on stage or in real life. It feels real, just in terms of the background and setting, and so you settle into a nice groove with it.

Things stall out in its last couple reels, though, partially owing to a subplot that sees Ira finally making a love connection with fellow comedian Daisy (Aubrey Plaza), as well as some cameos (Eminem, Sarah Silverman, Ray Romano) that drag on a bit too long. The former narrative strand is almost entirely extraneous (Ira’s self-actualization isn’t something we care much about), while the latter tidbits are more typical products of Apatowian largesse.

Funny People‘s chief problem, though, is that Apatow fails to convincingly solve — or even entertainingly chew up and spit out — his main character’s most pressing dilemma. Decamping for nearly 40 minutes at Clarke and Laura’s house, the movie grinds to a halt. We’re meant to see George struggle with coming to terms with the fact that his recaptured fantasy life with Laura may not be possible after all, and Ira struggle with figuring out how to tactfully express this to George, and we do in the broadest sense see these things, but Apatow’s writing here — both in the overarching construction of the scenes, and the specifics — too often feels sludgy and uncertain, perhaps a byproduct of letting Clarke drive so much of the action. George (thankfully) retains his spitfire irascibility, but in these passages and its more elegiac wind-down, the film lacks the pathos of something like Sideways, which managed to locate in the sadsack both the painfully familiar and the quietly noble.

Another thing that Funny People is missing, honestly, is an actor. Rogen is, well, a funny guy, and an absolute great fit for a lot of material, but he seems to hold back in some of the movie’s more baldly cathartic moments, and not out of a dewey-eyed deference to George that would make sense for his character. A fresh face may have benefited the role, as much as Apatow would loathe that. Sandler, on the other hand, has done dispirited and/or emotionally isolated before, in everything from The Wedding Singer (yes, seriously) and Punch-Drunk Love to Spanglish and the superb Reign Over Me, and, as strange as it may sound to some, he has just the right tears-of-a-clown range to pull off George’s swallowed contempt for the world that’s made him a star. I can’t think of another actor of his generation who could so readily and believably encapsulate the character’s highs and lows.

Finally, a note about all the dick, ball and masturbation jokes, which come to a head (no pun intended) with a stand-up rant from Ira in which he hypothesizes about Tom Cruise, David Beckham and Will Smith touching the heads of their cocks, just out of sheer masters-of-the-universe boredom, for novelty’s sake. The volume of this true-blue material is bound to be discussed, and pooh-poohed, by some reviewers, but it actually mostly makes sense; it’s just that the calculus overall is wrong, in my opinion. Some more clearly delineated lines between the senses of humor of Ira, George and even Leo (briefly glimpsed) would have been good, and made for some potentially rich contrast of uncomfortability. In Apatow’s world, though, everyone loves a dick joke. (Columbia, R, 146 minutes)

Paul Haggis’ Crash, of course, didn’t spawn sprawling ensembles centered around a single social issue or violent incident (this strain of American indie cinema owes a lot to Robert Altman, naturally), but its Best Picture Oscar victory did seemingly help jump-start a wave of self-deluded imitators who seem to feel that overt emotionalism ladled over a loosely connected narrative is a surefire sign of Important Filmmaking. That’s the case with Fragments, an achingly sincere slice of hooey in which those whose lives are touched by a random shooting react by acting out in different ways.

A gunman strolls into a diner in the small California town of Belmont and three minutes later, after shooting dead a handful of people, leaves a group of disparate survivors whose lives he’s changed forever. Single mom and waitress Carla Davenport (Kate Beckinsale, above left) starts neglecting her infant son, and latching onto the concern of a local doctor. After losing her father, Anne Hagen (Dakota Fanning) suddenly and aggressively finds religion, which freaks out both her mother (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and friend Jimmy Jaspersen (Josh Hutcherson), the latter of whom was with her at the diner. Gambling addicted, terminally ill driving instructor Charlie Archenault (Forest Whitaker, sporting a terrible wig), meanwhile, leaves town suddenly in search of a winning streak at a nearby casino. This leaves his single daughter Kathy (Jennifer Hudson) worried and unaware of his whereabouts.

Then there’s Dr. Bruce Laraby (Guy Pearce, above right), who wasn’t even at the scene, but stopped by for coffee on the way to work, and unknowingly held open the door for the gunman on his way out. Bruce reacts by taking a more hands-on approach with the migraine headaches of his wife, Joan (Embeth Davidtz), slipping her drugs to induce them so that he can swoop in and effectively “save” her by playing caregiver, thereby giving him an indubitable power that he cannot always statistically achieve in his hospital emergency room.

For the most part these stories unfold in discrete fashion, though Carla crushes on Dr. Laraby, and a silent Jimmy habitually avoids grief counselor Ron Abler (Troy Garity), whose services his parents (Jackie Earle Haley and Robin Weigert) are split over. Anne also counsels Jimmy — bullies him, really, via instant messenger, in one of the movie’s more cringe-inducing elements — to stay away from Ron. It’s this latter mystery, as much as anything else, that serves as the plot’s engine, driving it forward.

Directed by Rowan Woods (Little Fish), Fragments is preciously assured of its status as a shattered-soul drama. The performances in general bend toward the physically signifying, and
Fanning’s wayward, grating turn in particular is powered by faithful speechifying, and
not rooted in any realistic emotion. (Through it all, it’s Pearce alone who holds serve, trading in a smart, less-is-more style that makes one wish the movie ducked out and followed him alone.) Vast portions of Fragments are stillborn — everything having to do with Charlie and Kathy, for instance — and others, like the Anne-Jimmy subplot, not satisfyingly sketched. Roy Freirich’s screenplay, originally titled Winged Creatures, confuses abstruseness for psychological penetration; it’s like he wrote it while listening to Aimee Mann, and convinced himself that minimalist metaphor and simple parallelism (Jimmy’s dad coped with the loss of his eldest son by clamming up!) would in and of themselves automatically confer significance upon what is otherwise a pretty wan narrative. Fragments is actually a more telling and appropriate title, though, because it tips one off as to the unsatisfyingly fractured nature of this story. (Peace Arch, R, 96 minutes)

This could rightly be considered only half a review, and thus uninformed, as I unfortunately got separated from the concluding reels of Mark Hartley’s new documentary Not Quite Hollywood about halfway through a screening. But the first detailed examination and celebration of wild Australian genre cinema from the 1970s and early ’80s has more than enough re-tilled salaciousness, wit and good-natured reminiscence — even in its first 45 minutes or so — to merit a look from cinephiles looking to expand their frame of bawdy reference.

In contrast to Stateside grindhouse flicks or same-era exploitation fare from Brazil and other South American countries, unabashedly commercial Australian films were often less compartmentalized than their international peers. “Down under,” movies of the Carter and early Reagan years — which were readily available in America on big city arthouse screens, as part of a wave of foreign cinema that was predicated on sales of the exotic, no matter the narrative specifics — were basically divided into just two camps: austere fare like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Getting of Wisdom, My Brilliant Career and Breaker Morant and then… well, everything else.

In 1971, with the introduction of the R certificate, Australia’s censorship regime went from repressive to very liberal-minded virtually overnight. This fact, combined with the commercial mindset of many nascent Australian filmmakers who savvily created works that reflected the “wild Aussie” personalities and natural landscapes that they believed international audiences most of all wanted to see (and/or bagged on the British, a rival dating back to the country’s founding), helped usher in a wild and woolly period of anything-goes native cinema, full of abundant gore, nudity, gross-out gags and the like.

Hartley loads up his Not Quite Hollywood with clips of other movies, which contributes to a dizzying pace, but he also does a good job of tying together all the personalities on both sides of the camera, and highlighting both individual breakouts (Tim Burstall’s wild 1971 comedy Stork, say) and overall trends. Interviewees include Felicity director John Lamond, along with other members of the raincoat brigade (Barry Humphries in particular gets in some saucy asides), as well as more “legit” (or at least mainstream recognizable) figures like Oscar winner George Miller. Of course, because he’s such a film geek, Quentin Tarantino even pops up.

The overall snapshot that comes into focus is one of unashamedly gleeful creation and experimentation — of a young, artistic aristocracy plugged into a surging wave of social change, and just making cinematic hay while the sun was out. It’s a lesson that a lot of navel-gazing American independent filmmakers — mired in achingly sincere apings of Hollywood convention, designed to catapult them to “the big leagues” — could actually stand to take to heart. For the film’s trailer and more information, click here. (Magnet, R, 103 minutes)