Sam Worthington is probably a perfectly nice guy. But whenever I hear some piece of casting news about him (he’s already plugged into at least three mega-franchises, possibly four), I have to quickly, quietly remind myself that they’re not actually talking about Sam Huntington. He’s perfectly anonymous, in other words — a growly, studied-intense blend of Russell Crowe, Orlando Bloom and, I don’t know… Daniel Craig? He looks the part of an Anglo-foreign movie star, sure (Australian? British? Kiwi? Midwestern soccer moms are never quite sure…), but is being plugged into Hollywood studio film leading roles at a somewhat alarming clip, seemingly before any independent commercial or critical referendum. (Even Colin Farrell had Tigerland.)

Of course that’s only one of the problems with Clash of the Titans, a competent but hardly rousing piece of effects-spectacle entertainment in which Worthington, exuding the yep-I’m-here charisma of a middleweight Steve Reeves stand-in, stars as Perseus, a demigod who sets out to settle a score between man and the gods. Standing on the shoulders of other recent 3-D Hollywood rib-pokers, and featuring choppily edited action sequences that pass the time as much as thrill, this in some respects lush but also murkily shot movie seems destined to both score a king’s ransom at the box office and be utterly forgotten in fairly short order.

For those who skipped Latin, or tuned out during those scattered middle school mythological overviews, and never caught 1981’s Harry Hamlin-starring flick of the same name, a solemn female voiceover provides just about all the specifics about Greek gods that one needs to know in order to lay back and let Clash of the Titans wash over them. Mortals, you see, are fed up with the whims of the gods, who hang around in a pillared Mount Olympus, sporting lots of guyliner and letting streams of white light bounce impressively off and around them. So they’ve stopped praying to them, and have started toppling statues and the like. This is a problem, since the gods… um, need the prayers and adoration of mankind in order to remain immortal. Why does this all sound like a pyramid scheme? Don’t ask.

Some backstory: in order to teach a lesson to mankind, his emotionally wayward whimsical creation, god-daddy Zeus (Liam Neeson, enjoying the paycheck) trick-raped a human woman, posing as her blasphemous husband, and begot Perseus. Abandoned at birth, Perseus has been raised by a simple fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) and his wife, who dismiss Perseus’ lingering concerns over his uncertain biological lineage by noting that their love is “the love that gods and kings fight over,” whatever the hell that means. Daddy (and uncle) issues come bubbling to the surface when Perseus’ seafaring parents are killed, collateral damage in an attack on humans by Hades (Ralph Fiennes), Zeus’ scheming, banished-to-the-underworld brother.

Swearing revenge against Hades and any minions he brings to bear against him, Perseus finds a lover/guide in the form of comely fellow demigod Io (Gemma Arterton), who takes time away from a slate of Pantene commercials to drop some helpful exposition. A-questing Perseus will go! A few hearty, sandled warriors join him, and together they team up with Blue-eyed Barkface Magic Guy (I’m pretty sure that’s his name) to lay waste to some giant crabby creatures from Starship Troopers, cross the River Styx (“Come sail away!”) and lop off Medusa’s head, all so that they might then do battle with the gods’ ultimate weapon, the Kraken, which resembles a steroid-enhanced version of that monster from Cloverfield.

There is a genuine sense of whipped-up energy here that will likely connect with the adolescent set, but the skills of director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) are far better suited to hand-crafted, close-quarters mayhem (Transporter 2 is still his best movie), of which there’s really very little in Clash of the Titans. This is big, size-queen action, and Leterrier seems not to intuitively know how to stage these set pieces in a manner that communicates a proper sense of scope and space. And while the technical craftsmanship on display here is in sum fairly solid, there’s not what I could aptly characterize as a honest sense of knowing fun — that everyone is participating in a slick piece of goofy, escapist entertainment. Parts of the movie lumber, especially whenever Io has to deliver history lessons or shading detail, in an effort to underline the Big Stakes. Other moments in the movie just don’t fit together on a very basic dramatic level; when Zeus pops by mid-journey to offer Perseus an out, the two chat almost matter-of-factly, not as if Perseus had only recently come to know of his godly origins, and had never before spoken to his biological father.

Most damningly, it’s worth noting that the 3-D presentation of Clash of the Titans is, no lie, flat-out terrible. As with Alice in Wonderland, the effect was lacquered on after production, and it renders the entire first act far too dark and murky. This, as well as over-caffeinated editing that doesn’t jibe with the more fluid rhythms that 3-D presentation generally requires, undercuts Peter Menzies’ cinematography, which otherwise features some nice vistas. When the Kraken is finally unleashed, the movie once again roars to life, an orgiastic display of CGI-rendering. Without much in the way of personality or human connection, however, this Clash elicits mostly yawns and shrugs. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 106 minutes)

Married Manhattanites Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), parents to teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), operate a successful secondhand furniture store shrewdly stocked with trendy estate sale items. Planning for the future, they purchase the apartment next door in order to expand their two bedroom apartment. Their only problem is the cranky old lady, Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), living in it by herself, and the fact that they’ve got to wait for her to die.

Andra is mostly cared for by one granddaughter, Rebecca (Rebecca Hall, above left), a sweet-natured radiology technician, and scorned by her other granddaughter, Mary (Amanda Peet, above right), a callous and self-centered spa clinician nonetheless thrown for a loop by the fact that her last boyfriend dumped her. Things become complicated when these two families’ lives intersect, resulting in a dramedy that’s billed as being about love, death and liberal guilt.

The simple, brilliantly calculated shock of an opening montage of mammograms gives way to interactions that are of a piece with writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s three other films — talky, urbane ensemble flicks that pry quiet but deeply sincere smiles and laughs from an audience, and just as often showcase hushed moments of pinprick vulnerability. Holofcener’s touch with actors is so superb, and her ear for smartly calibrated revelatory dialogue generally so acute, that one feels like they could trip along forever with these characters. Kate’s emotional frailty (she gives charitably to homeless people and wants to volunteer, but is overwhelmed with sadness on the occasions she does reach out) is deftly contrasted with Andra’s deteriorating physical condition.

The only false notes — small qualms, really — come when Holofcener tries to nakedly advance the plot, or color in tragic backstory. These bits feel forced, like some sizzle added to sell the steak. Otherwise, though, Please Give is a wry, absorbing and beautifully observed snapshot of free-floating malaise and burgeoning hope. In gazing both outward and inward in equal measure, it encourages, in nudging fashion, more human engagement and connection, which is always a good thing. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 90 minutes)

A wild, hit-and-miss stab at high-concept comedy, Hot Tub Time Machine tells the story of four guys (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke)
who inexplicably wake up in 1986 after a night of debauchery at a ski lodge. The movie should find mostly welcome reception in younger audiences willing to submit to its slipstream rhythms, but most moviegoers will deeply feel at least some nagging lack of narrative underpinning and infrastructure, which crucially, and fatally, undercuts momentum and goodwill. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (MGM, R, 99 minutes)

A remake of the 2004 French movie Nathalie, and the first of his 13 feature films that Oscar-nominated director Atom Egoyan didn’t write, Chloe is a sleek and erotic drama that uses the familiar and often tawdrily presented plot points of sexual addiction, infidelity and betrayal to dig into the nuance and reasons surrounding the distance between men and women. It’s the rare arthouse, thinking person’s erotic thriller, in other words, and a fairly good one at that, if dinged by some late machinations.

Gynecologist Dr. Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore) comes to suspect her husband, friendly and flirtatious college professor David (Liam Neeson), of having an affair, so when she comes across the mysterious title character (Amanda Seyfried), an alluring escort, she decides to hire her to test David’s fidelity. Meeting up regularly, Catherine then absorbs the increasingly explicit details Chloe shares regarding her encounters with David, which sting and hurt but also ignite long-dormant and far trickier sensations of surging desire.

Superbly acted and almost flawless in its scene-to-scene construction, Chloe is imbued early on with a woozy sense of mystery and intrigue, something underscored by Mychael Danna’s sumptuous score and Paul Sarossy’s equally lush and inviting cinematography. Despite its title, Moore is actually Chloe‘s anchor, and she gives a stirring performance of considerable depth and emotional insight, shining a light on the way flickering passion warps thinking.

Never mind the roots of its source material; on a macro-narrative level there are common threads to much of the rest of Egoyan’s work: differences between appearance and reality, complex characters who sometimes act against their own perceived best interests, and the subjective nature of truth. Adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary), the film only stumbles a bit with some of its third act plotting, and in particular its ending, which seems nipped from a melodrama that, on a very fundamental level, just doesn’t match the rest of the movie. After delicately balancing the cerebral and corporeal for much of its running time, Chloe in the end yields to the baser instincts of what it’s generally believed that film audiences wish to see. It’s not the first time feeling has trumped thought, though, and it certainly won’t be the last, in cinema or in life. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 96 minutes)

Hollywood films which unfold in some dystopian near-future run all sorts of risks, not the least of which is something largely beyond their measure of creative control — where they fall in the marketplace, in terms of how receptive the public is to both bleakness of tone and the specifics of their subject matter. A pleasant touch of kismet, then, that Repo Men hits theaters against the clamorous backdrop of the current health care reform debate. A competently pieced together dramatic thriller with flashes of action and streaks of mordant humor, Repo Men is a movie that won’t get the respect it deserves in part because of its genre trappings and easy-sell marketing campaign, but also because it expressly doesn’t waste time trying to court that respect. It’s facile with its colorful background strokes, breezy but effective with its characterizations and generally more thoughtful than it needs to be, and the overall result is a spry, fun film that also seems in some ways tailor-made for the current zeitgeist.

Remy (Jude Law) works as a repossession officer for The Union, a slick corporation which specializes in “artiforgs,” nano-technologically engineered replacement organs (lungs, heart, knee cartilage, you name it) that can be financed just like an automobile purchase (a free-marketer’s dream!), and of course then be contractually seized back in similar fashion if/when the recipient — sometimes powered by vanity, but frequently desperate and bereft of medical alternatives — cannot pay. This line of work is a point of contention between Remy and his wife Carol (Carice van Houten), with whom he shares a young son. Remy is good at what he does, and more or less a creature of leonine, unblinking, heart-hardened efficiency (he thinks nothing of holding a pair of bloody tweezersin his mouth as he works his gloved hand into a body cavity up to hiselbow), but Carol wants him to talk to his boss, Frank (Liev Schreiber), and arrange for a transfer to the more civilized realm of the sales department.

Jake (Forest Whitaker), however, Remy’s best friend since childhood and a barrel-chested, garrulous guy who takes a more naked delight in needling strangers on the street who are approaching their allotted payment cutoff dates, sees their shared work as exciting and fresh — a masculine competition loop from which he wants no exit, for either himself or his friend. Things change in an instant for Remy when, in a work-related accident, he’s rendered unconscious and outfitted with a transplant heart. In short order he’s both single — Carol leaves him when he doesn’t immediately take a desk job — and uncertain how to continue his work. Remy then finds himself approaching overdue status, but instead of looking for money or accepting Jake’s offers of help, he spends his last free-and-clear days playing savior to a junkie singer, Beth (Alice Braga), with multiple transplants — the result of a near-fatal auto accident. Together, the duo lives on the lam for a while, then take up a mission of self-preservation — to break into The Union’s corporate headquarters and erase their transplant accounts, thus clearing what they owe.

Repo Men is directed by Miguel Sapochnik, from a screenplay adapted from Eric Garcia’s novel The Repossession Mambo, and even if one didn’t have knowledge of this fact they would likely pick up on trace elements of its novelistic roots, since the movie evinces a smart, realistic depth of setting without having to resort to overwhelming special effects crammed into every frame. It’s also the rare futuristic movie that peddles drama or action but still isn’t afraid to have a sense of humor about itself. A big part of it is the jocular rapport that Law and Whitaker establish early on, certainly, but there’s a buoyancy to the proceedings, even as it progresses into darker territory.

The script massively drops the ball on one fundamental question — as a Union employee, it defies credulity that Remy would not be covered with an underwritten protective policy, especially while actually on the job. Even though much hinges on this plot pivot, there’s not even any real attempt at writing around it, which could have been achieved in cursory fashion with one scene, or just a small handful of dialogue exchanges. Bridging the gap of this suspension of disbelief is undeniably Repo Men‘s greatest shortcoming.

Otherwise, however, the screenplay and story are characterized by a pleasant unpredictability that is informed by realistic motivations: Remy is a lunch-pail kind of guy jerked rudely awake, which sudden health concerns can certainly do. The movie’s action, too, is a nicely presented mix — the penultimate corporate siege sequence is a nice mash-up of THX 1138, Oldboy and some David Cronenberg wet dream — blending together balletic modernism, queasy absurdism and good, old-fashioned knuckle-dusting. There’s plenty of exaggeration here, but also enough exposed-nerve truth to make Repo Men one part discomfiting to every two parts entertaining. One hopes this isn’t the future of health care in America. Insert nervous laughter here… (Universal, R, 111 minutes)

The violations and indignities that the written word suffers in Hollywood are many and sundry, but screenwriters get their say in Tales from the Script, a highly interesting documentary built around wide-ranging conversations with 46 big screen storytellers, from John Carpenter and Frank Darabont to Bruce Joel Rubin and William Goldman. Eschewing voiceover narration or some artificially manufactured chronological narrative structure, the movie instead more or less embraces chaos theory, loosely grouping its anecdotal insights with title cards.

Yes, Tales from the Script is exclusively a talking-head affair, which lends it the feel of a cultured curio — a selling point, to be sure, for cineastes, but something of a hurdle for general audiences. (There’s also a hefty companion book to the film, underscoring a certain academic worth.) A lot of the observations herein are pointed but somewhat generic. Steven de Souza (above) amusingly and perceptively notes that there are people in the room during a story meeting who basically “make their day,” work-wise, by offering comment on your script, so such an environment encourages even dumb, from-the-hip remarks over more thoughtful silence.

Some stories, however, are pure, unadulterated gold, like Guinevere Turner hilariously recounting her work experience with director Uwe Boll on BloodRayne, Darabont talking about being offered a $30 million budget for shooting The Mist with a different ending, and Rubin ruefully recalling a Disney executive taking him to lunch and surreptitiously picking his brain for ideas for Armageddon by just letting Rubin talk about his work on Deep Impact. Director Peter Hanson and co-producer/co-writer Paul Robert Herman are also smart enough to include in the mix a number of writers laboring chiefly in the straight-to-video realm, which keeps Tales from the Script grounded in reality, providing an accurate, unblinking look of the balancing act between art and commerce that is screenwriting, and moviemaking in general. (First Run, unrated, 105 minutes)

The usual framing perspective of drugs and sex and rock ‘n’ roll tales gets a kick in the pants with The Runaways, a boozy, pungent, femme-centric coming-of-age flick that chiefly connects courtesy of a nervy, burgeoning adult performance by Kristen Stewart, and a smart, economical sense of period style.

Written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, the music-fueled film is a nervy, nervous piece of celluloid-captured acting out — a flick for fans of Garage Days, Lords of Dogtown, SLC Punk! and
Almost Famous, peddling the true story of the groundbreaking, all-girl 1970s rock band of the same name. Set in Los Angeles, it revolves mostly around two valley-girl teenage misfits, paint-huffing guitarist Joan Jett (Stewart, above left) and recruited lead singer/sex kitten Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), who bloom under the Svengali-like influence of outlandish impresario Kim Fowley (Revolutionary Road‘s Oscar-nominated Michael Shannon). With their tough-chick image and punchy, unvarnished talent, the band quickly earns a name for itself, touring Japan and touching off a sensation among young girls there before backbiting and Behind the Music-style flameout predictably ensues.

Some of the snapshot excess here seems designed or included chiefly for effect (who takes a phone call while having sex on an ironing board, for instance?), and the nature of the movie’s source material (it’s based on a book by Curie) additionally becomes something of a problem, in that the film never fully takes shape as either a true ensemble piece (two members of the Runaways, including Alia Shawkat, above right, have literally almost no lines) or something more explicitly through the eyes of Curie. Since the latter flamed out (and became a “chainsaw artist,” the end credits tell us) and Jett went on to a successful solo career, there’s a lingering disparity that hangs over the film. Narratively, it feels miscalibrated in small but significant ways, never truly getting at the heart of Curie and Jett’s relationship, but instead just flitting around its boundaries in mock-provocative ways, like a much-discussed kissing scene between the two actresses. Style and energy go a long way, though, and The Runaways has at least those elements in abundance. (Apparition, R, 102 minutes)

A wilderness-survival tale loosely in the vein of Jacob Aaron Estes’ Independent Spirit Award-minted Mean Creek, Surviving Crooked Lake illustrates the downside of body wrangling that Weekend at Bernie’s never showed. An earnestly pitched tale that played the Slamdance Festival a couple years back, the movie features some decently grounded if not star-making adolescent performances, as well as a pleasantly hazy visual scheme that uses its natural surroundings as a more compelling backdrop than many like-minded great-outdoors dramas, which trade in a prodding and peculiarly modern fear of the unknown. Eventually, however, hackneyed story choices overwhelm the film, which devolves into a lather-rinse-and-repeat cycle of arguments, river-rowing and wandering about.

Co-written and directed, in unusual collaborative fashion, by Sascha Drews, Ezra Krybus and Matthew Miller, Surviving Crooked Lake centers around a quartet of 14-year-old teenage girls who take a canoe trip as part of their summer camp experience. Reticent Steph (Stephannie Richardson) is the focal point, and occasional narrator herein, while Morgan (Morgan McCunn) is most in bloom. Also along for the ride are Alysha (Alysha Aubin) and Candice (Candice Mausner). Steph is sill traumatized by her dad’s recent death, and afraid of the water, so her older brother Jonah (Guy Yarkoni), a camp counselor, convinces her to go along by volunteering as the group’s chaperone and promising to look out for her. He does, until an unfortunate accident befalls him — after an abortive make-out session with Morgan — leaving the girls to make some tough decisions about what to do with his body as they try to navigate their way back to civilization.

There are grace notes of the same sorts of themes — grief, loneliness and misplaced attraction — plumbed in something like 12 & Holding, another snapshot of cusp-of-pubescence turmoil, but the nitty-gritty of dramatic conflict and the acting here are not up to snuff, quite simply. The girls are good at reacting, and conveying the easy rapport of adolescent friendship. But once things get “heavy,” as it were, their difficulties in believably emoting ramp up and poke through.

There’s also a major problem with suspension of disbelief; it defies credulity that, absent some clever write-around to explain matters, Jonah alone would be granted custody of the four girls, or that they would take two canoes, leaving three girls alone in one vessel and he and one of the girls in the other. Some clear, easy explanations in the set-up could have helped circumvent these problems, along with questions about maps and other matters that later come into play. As is, the movie basically just plays out a string, consisting of arguments over whether or not to dump/bury Jonah’s body, battles with nature (rapids, a lingering wolf), and then more arguments over maps and direction, since apparently none of the girls can remember that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

The film’s cinematography (co-credited to Drews and Krybus in press notes, though IMDb lists only the latter in this regard) is a big plus, all things considered, though there’s an impulsivity to the hand-held camerawork which sometimes works well and serves the story, and other times submarines its effectiveness. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that Surviving Crooked Lake is all that bad, it’s just that there’s no memorable or original driving tension to the story. It merely happens, and then is done. (Neoclassics, unrated, 89 minutes)

Yes, it’s another hot-chick-with-schlubby-and-or-otherwise-outclassed-guy comedy, but She’s Out of My League nearly scrapes the bottom of this already familiar barrel in its quest for laughs. There’s an interesting and most likely quietly devastating movie to be made from the basic idea at this film’s core — that of an average, working-class guy who’s so convinced of his general unworthiness that he subconsciously sabotages the golden romantic opportunity that falls into his lap — but this overly broad exercise in set-piece histrionics surely isn’t it.



Despite a couple loyal friends with whom he works, Pittsburgh airport security drone Kirk (Jay Baruchel) leads a pretty numbing existence. He’s habitually tortured by his older brother Dylan (Kyle Bornheimer) and has an ex-girlfriend, Marnie (Lindsay Sloane), who’s so thick with his parents that she and her new himbo boyfriend Ron (Hayes MacArthur) constantly hang out with his family. Things change when Molly (Alice Eve), a super-hot event planner, drifts into his life, courtesy of a forgotten iPhone. Soon they’re dating, even if Kirk can neither quite explain things to his friends nor seal the deal, physically.

With his Barney Fife physicality and ably communicated set of self-negating tics, Baruchel, a bit player in Tropic Thunder and several Judd Apatow projects, is the right sort of peg on which to hang this film’s conceit. And Eve (striking in Wayne Kramer’s Crossing Over) is a rather delightful presence. But the script, by Sex Drive writers Sean Anders and John Morris, feels like nothing but a slapdash first draft; it has a few outrageous moments (all available in the film’s red-band trailer) but hits most of its capital-B beats in nervous, clamorous and cursory fashion, like a scene with a girl impressing a guy by knowing something about sports. Feature debut director Jim Field Smith’s absolutely leaden touch further sullies matters. T.J. Miller (aka Cloverfield‘s Hud) and Krysten Ritter (aka Breaking Bad‘s Jane) each eventually leave a fairly winning stamp on supporting roles, but it’s too little, too late. The script’s the thing, and She’s Out of My League is a halfheartedly executed idea that’s far less engaging than the sum of its parts. (Paramount, R, 104 minutes)

Part murder mystery, part domestic melodrama, part dark comedy, Mother is also a wholly original treat that confirms writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s touch with multiple tonalities, as well as his status as South Korea’s preeminent modern auteur.

Simple peasant Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja, above) is the profoundly devoted single mother of 27-year-old Do-joon (Won Bin), a naïve, memory-impaired man-child whose affability helps mask the fact that something isn’t quite right with him. Walking home drunk and alone one evening, Do-joon encounters a schoolgirl who he follows for a bit before she disappears into a dark alley. The next morning, she’s found dead in an abandoned building. Do-joon is eventually arrested for her murder, and an apathetic police force doesn’t seem much interested in investigating Hye-ja’s insistent refusals that her beloved son could ever possibly be guilty. Embarking on an obsessive quest to prove her son’s innocence, Hye-ja at first focuses her efforts on his scummy friend Jin-tae (Jin Goo), but slowly learns more and more about the victim, which expands her suspect pool.

Like the works of David Lynch or Alexander Payne, Bong’s films unfold in mannered worlds where comedy and drama are hopelessly commingled. Owing to the combination of both this and its innate foreignness, Mother is unnerving — you don’t really know what it wants or expects from you as an audience member. Despite the general dramatic success of its homicidal mystery story strand, Kim’s bravura performance is the glue that holds everything together; with her plaintive eyes, she makes you deeply feel both her character’s mania and sadness, which is crucial to Mother‘s artful navigation of those treacherous pivots in tone. The film’s hold slackens a bit, understandably and almost necessarily, after a great third act shock, but one doesn’t greatly begrudge Bong the privilege of closing things out with an eerie, melancholic denouement. (Magnolia, R, 129 minutes)

Movies detailing the lives of corrupt, disinterested and/or tempted New York police officers could and probably should constitute their own subgenre Netflix listing, and that’s where Brooklyn’s Finest slots. Those inclined to like this sort of thing — less discriminating fans of Training Day, We Own the Night and Pride and Glory — will find enough about it to like; others will likely shrug.

Unfolding over the course of one chaotic week, the movie centers around three conflicted Big Apple cops whose discrete stories eventually come together in a massive drug sting operation. There’s burned-out veteran Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), one week away from retirement; narcotics officer and family man Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke), struggling to make ends meet for his seven (!) children and mold-allergic wife (Lili Taylor); and Clarence “Tango” Butler (Don Cheadle), who’s been undercover so long his loyalties might have started to shift from his fellow officers to old friend Caz (Wesley Snipes), a drug dealer just out of prison. With pressures bearing down on them, each man is forced to make some tough decisions that have lasting consequences, both anticipated and unforeseen.

It’s not a grade-A slur to say that Brooklyn’s Finest feels entirely constructed from prefabricated parts, or like the comeback single from an aging, reconstituted band. There’s Fuqua and Hawke, reuniting from Training Day; Snipes, playing a character who could be a cousin of New Jack City‘s Nino Brown, and Cheadle working undercover, as in Traitor. Fuqua shoots the film with much style, naturally, but the plotting here is all strictly by the book — except for Gere’s story strand, actually, which flirts with intrigue in detailing his complicated relationship with a hooker (Tawny Cypress). Unfortunately, audiences can’t dictate which story of the triptych with which to stick, so when the finale ducks headlong into clashing egos and agendas, and a grim standoff involving kidnapped sex trade junkies, they’re all held hostage, along for the ride. (Overture, R, 125 minutes)

If ever confirmation was needed that the American legal system, as it pertains to non-criminal matters, is basically just a gamed system for moneyed interests to eventually win out, it arrives definitively in the form of The Art of the Steal, Don Argott’s absorbing documentary investigation into the decades-long tug-of-war over the late Albert Barnes’ $30 billion dollar art collection.

A self-made industrialist millionaire who rose from modest beginnings and amassed an array of post-impressionistic and early modern paintings at a time when such works were looked down upon by critics and art world movers and shakers, Barnes (above) so loved art that he created a suburban educational institution in Merion, Pennsylvania, based around his unparalleled, aesthetically presented collection of masterworks by the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, Cézanne and Matisse. And he so hated the art establishment and Philadelphia’s ruling journalistic elites, the Annenberg family, that he built into his will that the collection never be moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In a further poke to the eye of WASP-y privilege, Barnes even established a trust that eventually ceded control of the collection to Lincoln University, a small African-American college to which he had no ties. For decades his wishes endured, until a powerful cabal of political power players and wily charitable organizations took the matter to court, with an eye on the potential tourism boom that relocation to a new museum in Philadelphia would provide.

Tilted toward a loyal group of Barnes’ former students and colleagues, The Art of the Steal is a bit subjective, certainly, but always engrossing. Argott deftly highlights the fact that in America there very tangibly exists an industry of air-quote culture, which requires new product to fill its pipelines and thus cannot abide unexploited value. The film also reveals the truth that mainstream Hollywood movies almost always hide from us: it frequently isn’t just one villain screwing someone over, it takes a village. For more information on the movie, click here. (IFC Films, unrated, 101 minutes)

Italian import Vincere, a richly photographed historical drama that
charts the life of the discarded mistress of fascist, war-mongering dictator Benito Mussolini, would be sort of interesting to view with
Rielle Hunter, the flighty New Age lover (and baby mama) of erstwhile
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. After all, her insights
into the continued love of a man who would very publicly and harshly
disown his own progeny could be considerable.

Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket), Vincere (which translates as “to win”) chronicles the largely unknown story of the secret marriage of Mussolini (Filippo Timi, above third from left) to Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a woman whom Il Duce meets when he’s a rising star in the Socialist movement. Inspired by the intensity of his beliefs, Dalser sells off all of her belongings to fund the newspaper that would eventually launch his political career. After bearing him a son, though, Dalser discovers that Mussolini already has another family, and he will do everything in his power to keep her away from them. She rants and rages, but finds out it’s hard to fight a dictator.

Purely in terms of information, and the manner in which this peek behind the fascist curtain informs an understanding of Italy leading up to World War II, Vincere is of historical interest. But while undeniably told with passion and verve — it feels almost operatic at times — Vincere is a basically nativist document that bogs down because of unresolved tension between its conflicting political and melodramatic instincts. Early on, Bellocchio establishes the primal, almost animalistic connection between Dalser and Mussolini with little dialogue, and for a while seems intent on exploring a very intriguing idea — the notion of women responding so nakedly to provocation, aggression and accumulated power. Eventually, though, Bellocchio mostly abandons this focus, so when Dalser, committed to an insane asylum for refusing to recant her paternity claims, asserts that Il Duce is merely “testing her” and mentally preparing her for an eventual reunion… well, it runs counter to evidenced fact, and tips the movie over into crazy-mistress Lifetime movie territory. At least that’s a man’s reading; I’m not yet sure Rielle Hunter would think. (IFC Films, R, 122 minutes)

A gorgeously mounted but fundamentally humdrum telling of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novels, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, costarring Johnny Depp (above), is no more or less engaging than one might expect it to be based only upon a cursory glance at its marketing materials. Filtered through the director’s highly subjective, singular visual perspective, the movie achieves sumptuous beauty with ease but fails to connect on a full-bodied emotional level, making for a pleasant but somewhat empty ride. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG, 107 minutes)

Tracy Morgan’s antic demonstrativeness and Bruce Willis‘ slow-burn dourness would seem to provide a solid foundation for a buddy cop comedy of sharp, amusing contrasts, but the meandering, listless, tonally schizophrenic Cop Out serves as ample proof that actors can’t merely show up on the day of filming and wing it. This is a banter-driven comedy in which most of the banter just falls flat. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., R, 109 minutes)

If the funky, energetic The Runaways is the film
that proves Kristen Stewart has a future outside of movies with
vampires and Robert Pattinson, The Yellow
Handkerchief is the pleasant, slight, oblique character study
that finds her not yet in full control of her instrument, and trading
in familiar, telegraphed cues of adolescent distress. An idyllic road
trip, not played for any particular peril or menace, through
post-Hurricane Katrina Louisiana, this wistfully pitched
travelogue/mood piece works best as a showcase for William Hurt.

Fresh out of prison and dealing with a painful past, taciturn Brett
Hanson (Hurt) crosses paths with troubled teenager Martine (Stewart)
and Gordy (Eddie Redmayne, above left), an eccentric loner. The latter has a car,
and Martine wants to hit the open road but also wants a father-figure
protector, so some back-road meandering ensues. Along the way,
conversation and doleful introspection impacts both mindsets and
relationships, leading to the possibility of new life choices. Brett
weighs trying to track down his ex-wife May
(Maria Bello), for whom he still yearns. Martine, meanwhile, wants to escape her
family, while the pathologically introverted Gordy hopes to just get
close to her.

Attractively, almost plaintively photographed, and directed in
humanistic fashion by Udayan Prasad, The Yellow
Handkerchief flashes back and forward in time, charting
Brett’s relationship with May as well as its 2005 present day. Despite
the revelation of the reason behind Brett’s incarceration, there’s
really no grander sense of mystery tugging the film forward, and eating
at the edges of these three strangers’ relationships. And so its
dawdling pace is never truly earned. Shuffling the temporal deck a bit
in favor of chronology, and reframing the story more through Brett’s
eyes would be the best thing for this story. The kids are all right,
beset by wanly defined problems that can’t (and shouldn’t) be neatly
wrapped up in any story arc of just a couple days. It’s Hurt’s keenly
observed hurt that is most mesmerizing, though, which makes The Yellow
Handkerchief chiefly a reminder that he’s too infrequent a
big screen visitor, at least in roles of such layered quietude. (Samuel Goldwyn, PG-13, 102 minutes)

Written and directed by Julio DePietro, The Good Guy has originality on its side — a different, interesting cant than most films of its ilk — but it can’t quite turn that positive into a deal-closing recommendation. A sort of much more polite, estrogenized filmic companion piece to a lost, mid-era Bret Easton Ellis novel, the Manhattan-set movie grabs your attention in unusual ways scene to scene, and then slowly squanders almost all that forward-leaning intrigue.

The film opens on the rainy-night dissolution of a twentysomething relationship, then flashes back six weeks earlier to a few of its key pivot points. Tommy (Scott Porter, above left) is a sexy, young Wall Street hotshot — the supervising manager of a financial crew who make mad, Boiler Room-type chatter and toss a little hacky-sack back and forth to indicate when they’ve done something good, and worthy of impressing their main boss Cash (Andrew McCarthy). Tommy’s been seeing demure urban conservationist Beth (Alexis Bledel) for several weeks, and they finally get around to sealing the deal. But just as everything seems to be falling into place, complications arise in the form of Tommy’s sensitive and handsome new hire, Daniel (Bryan Greenberg), an ex-soldier computer whiz who comes across as so unassuming and non-threatening that Beth invites him to her all-girl book club. Daniel’s burgeoning feelings for Beth complicate matters for all involved.

A romantic dramedy with a certain amount of insight into alpha-male behavior, The Good Guy has the nominal advantage of a hidden authorial perspective, and some nice, if rounded and smooth, lead performances. Nonetheless, it feels a bit too generalized. It lacks clarifying detail and the messy stamp of definitive personality, especially in the case of Daniel, who’s basically more a bundle of warm-and-fuzzy, Mom-approved traits than an actual character. DiPietro also overplays his hand with a plot strand that finds Tommy, feeling pressure from Cash, becoming Daniel’s “man coach,” transforming him with clothes and plying him with drink and drugs. The film’s occupational backdrop is also problematic, unfolding as it does against a den of willfully abstruse masculine chatter, in which guys demonstratively point with one telephone while talking on another. In the current economic climate, who wants to spend time with jack-offs like this, and see them win, or even get close. Not this guy… (Roadside Attractions, R, 91 minutes)

French filmmaker Luc Besson’s career hasn’t gone the way a lot of people might have expected, which is a fact that in and of itself likely delights Besson. After bursting onto the international scene in the mid-’80s with Subway and The Big Blue, and then making the phrase “French action film” sound not quite so silly with the equally stirring La Femme Nikita and The Professional, Besson dialed back his directorial ambitions just a bit, focusing on writing and producing in a way that would make even John Wells or Dick Wolf nod in admiration, and mentoring a new generation of French directors. While some ofhis latest efforts behind the camera have continued to prove delightfully off-kilter (animated films featuring a voice cast of Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon and Mia Farrow, say), much of Besson’s work as a writer-producer conforms to the expectations of low- and middlebrow genre fare — punchy, hybrid works that trade in kinetic transport and enchantment.



All of which brings us to the Besson-scripted sequel to 2006’s District B13, the movie which first introduced parkour — or spry, urban escape, in which super-caffeinated participants surmount obstacles through perpetual motion — to Nike commercials and Jason Bourne. Directed by Patrick Alessandrin, the movie is a potent slice of cheery hokum, powered by the no-nonsense charisma of its two returning leads. Those inclined to want to see a couple white guys exercise cat-like martial arts moves against a loosely egalitarian sociological narrative backdrop will spark to the movie, and its sloppy embrace of joie de vivre.

A couple years have passed since elite undercover cop Damien Tomasso (Cyril Raffaelli) first teamed up with reformed vigilante Leito (parkour originator David Belle) to save the notorious District 13, a racially charged Parisian slum populated by violent, drug-dealing gangs and vicious killers. Besson dispenses with the conclusion of the first film with some amusingly blunt introductory text (“The government has changed, but little else has…”), and then proceeds to plunge our two protagonists back into a class-tinged struggle for equality, against a cabal of corrupt cops and elected officials conspiring to cook up civil unrest so that the five high-rises in the area in question can be razed and lucrative redevelopment contracts spread around to friends and benefactors.

After three kilos of heroin is planted in his apartment, Damien is incarcerated. He reaches out to Leito, who breaks into prison in order to break him out. Damien and Leito quickly lay hands on some incriminating evidence and then, uniting the slumlord leaders of five disparate gangs (the Arabs, blacks, Chinese, gypsies and skinheads), who rather inexplicably put aside any differences in an effort to stick it to le homme, hatch a plan to reach out to a French president (Philippe Torreton) who appears, on the outside at least, to have a humanistic streak, and sensitivity to the mass displacement and/or murder of thousands of poor.

The plot’s ticking-clock element doesn’t really make that much sense, and the mode of villainous wipe-out (a proposed nuclear air strike!) doesn’t seem all that subtle or practical. But then again, subtlety has never really been Besson’s thing. (The French company standing to benefit from all this is “Harriburton.”) He lacquers on the visual cues fairly thickly here, and indulges a pair of lazy escapes in which a hail of cops’ bullets cannot find their target. Still, even with these transgressions and a subtitled translation that sometimes appears a bit shoddy (“You want us to eat you here or to go?” reads one character’s query), one doesn’t hold too much of a grudge against the movie, since the action really needs no translation, and the actors are likeable enough to carry it along. With his thin, pinched face, the bald Raffaelli resembles a Gaellic, ass-kicking Seth Meyers, and Belle, with his shock of hipster hair, his lithe comrade in deceptively quick kicks to the face. More pitched, personal stakes (as in the first film) work best for these characters, but District B13: Ultimatum is a serviceable re-upping which works OK for those who favor underclass hand-to-hand action. (Magnolia, R, 100 minutes)

A small stable of recognizable faces in supporting roles cannot save
When in Rome, a vapid romantic comedy fable pitched at some fantasy
demographic of young professional women who value love seemingly only
as a commodity, another box to check off on a very long and modern
to-do list. That the movie’s plot is malarkey through and through is
perhaps expected, but that it is delivered in such thunderously obvious
strokes pushes it from merely bad to nearly intolerable in certain
stretches.

Saddled with clunky expository dialogue, lame humor and baffling character motivations, When in Rome
has two settings: broad, and broader. Easy-on-the-eyes leads Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel mostly escape judgment on the
strength of their smiles. A litany of strange cameos, along with a fervently pitched dance-along by the entire cast over the end credits, all seems
desperately designed to create the impression that someone is having
fun. It’s certainly not the audience, however. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG-13, 91 minutes)

Working from a screenplay by writer John Collee, director Jon Amiel delivers a waterlogged look at Charles Darwin with Creation, a muttenchop enthusiast’s delight that’s part historical drama, part hysterical drama. While the film doesn’t span decades, but instead concentrates on a moretightly prescribed patch of time in Darwin’s life, it still proves true an old maxim regarding cinematic postscripts: the more you feel it necessary to say in pre-end credit crawl text, the less you’ve probably said during the entire rest of your movie’s running time.

Paul Bettany stars as British scientist and author Charles Darwin, a brilliant and deeply emotional man devoted to his religious wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and the rest of his family, but also somewhat increasingly removed from them. Part of that distance stems from a burgeoning conflict between his (flickering) faith and the rooted reason of science, which is driving a wedge between he and a longtime family friend, Reverend Innes (Jeremy Northam). Charles and Emma have also lost a child, which has understandably strained their relationship. As his health begins to falter and Thomas Huxley (Infamous‘ Toby Jones), a strident comrade-in-reason, urges him on, Darwin struggles to finish his legendary book On the Origin of Species, which would of course go on to lay the foundation for much of evolutionary biology.

The movie is built around multiple conversations with the deceased Annie (Martha West, above), and then additionally flashes back in time to various stories Darwin relates to her. Collee’s script is based on Annie’s Box, a biography penned by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes using personal letters and diaries of the Darwin family. Perhaps this insider-ish access compromises any sense of independent thinking that would give this project some definition and perspective, it’s hard to definitively say. Regardless, Collee, and by extension Amiel, are so heartily invested in showcasing Darwin’s descent into near-madness, and injecting overwrought emotionalism into their story, that they dip into dream-sequence-within-dream-sequence nonsense, to the detriment of any accrued interest and narrative momentum in Darwin’s scientific research and writing. In so hammering home the guilt Darwin feels over having married and had children with his first cousin, the filmmakers render secondary (perhaps even tertiary, behind interpersonal relationship histrionics) the importance or modern-day relevance of his work.

Consequently, Creation feels slack and inert, its stakes shrunken and collapsed to the point of near-pointlessness. There are certain personal details here (Darwin’s affinity for bracing water therapy, for instance, which provides Amiel with the chance to get a bit arty) that are obviously fascinating to consider as they relate to Darwin’s work. But the film connects the dots in only the most obvious and perfunctory ways. The personal overwhelms any deeper consideration of the professional in Creation; gimmicky, surface-level grieving and hand-wringing gives way to pitched, plaintive and downright grating voiceover narration, and one just knows at some point that Connelly will look beautiful but get all emotional, screaming and crying about how she’s had enough and can’t take it anymore. By the time the movie posits that the impetus for Darwin’s writer’s block being cured is a simple act of coitus, however, well, one could be forgiven for thinking that Creation bears no evidence of evolution in storytelling nuance. (Newmarket, 108 minutes, PG-13)

Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner Fish Tank, from British writer-director Andrea Arnold, is a gritty, naturalistic drama that will slowly envelop patient arthouse audiences on the strength of its powerhouse performances. A slice of social realism in the vein of Ken Loach, this slow-boil, Essex-set tale of teen alienation and acting out is an example of character study done right.

Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis, above) is in a constant state of war with her younger sister, her schoolmates and neighbors, without any constructive creative outlet for her considerable energies, save a secret love of hip-hop dancing. When her party-happy mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing), an across-the-pond version of Amy Ryan’s character from Gone Baby Gone, brings home a rakish new boyfriend, Connor (Inglourious Basterds‘ Michael Fassbender), the rudderless Mia is quietly amazed to find him return her attention. In fits and starts, she argumentatively pushes him away and seeks his approval, believing he can help her start to make sense of her life. Slippery slope inappropriateness ensues.

In Fish Tank, there’s none of the vanity so typically associated with American films centered on teen protagonists, and the performances are something special. Acting neophyte Jarvis shines, conveying a believable spitfire mixture of teen vulnerability and anger, while the charismatic Fassbender, a star in the making, puts a good sheen on a character whose actions label him a cad. At two hours, Fish Tank is a bit overlong, but part of its engagement lies in the inexorably mounting tension in wondering whether the narrative is really going where you think it might be headed. It goes without saying that Hollywood studios wouldn’t touch this material without benefit of a moralizing conclusion, but the American indie version of this story would also most likely find it necessary to ascribe explicatory backstory, motivation or revelation to Connor, which Arnold rather refreshingly does not. Men, like adolescents, Arnold seems to say, tend to take. The value judgment one places on that is not her primary concern. For more information, click here. (IFC, R, 122 minutes)

Martial arts maestro Jackie Chan makes a play for adolescent embrace in The Spy Next Door, a mirthless, unimaginative piece of desultory entertainment that is neither well executed enough to elicit any substantive emotional response other than begrudging tolerance, nor hyper-realistic enough to work as a slice of silly, colorful fun, a la Robert Rodriguez’s recent Shorts. The Spy Next Door will benefit from a general lack of family film competition in the latter frames of January, but its poor word-of-mouth among Chan’s Stateside fans, familiar with the slightly more adult tones of his Rush Hour and Shanghai series, will quickly consign its best commercial prospects to home video.

The movie suffers from anemic follow-through on its most basic comedic set-ups, as well as an overall lack of imagination. While one blanches at passing too harsh a judgment on a film’s adolescent performances, the unfocused and uneven nature of the child acting further evidences Brian Levant’s poor direction. Chan, meanwhile, mugs mercilessly. The jokes all misfire, but there’s still something mildly amusing about Chan’s indefatigable effort and consistently sunny personality, which helps make the English-mangling outtakes which play over the end credits the film’s undisputed high point. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, PG, 94 minutes)

It’s to be expected, really. As Amy Adams climbs the Hollywood ladder, and slots alongside dramas and prestige projects the sort of inevitable romantic comedy slop that studios believe women want to see, she’s going to be required to tread water in a few stinkers. Not every film that’s a studio “giveback” can be as enchanting and engaging as Enchanted, which actually had a premise, characters and smartly presented, believable conflict, within the confines of its world of heightened absurdity.

Yes, some movies are going to be like Leap Year, an undercooked confection which can most charitably be described as a moment-in-time measuring stick for how many box office dollars Adams can wring out of her burgeoning fanbase without alienating them into tuning out and ignoring her future choices. By attaching the “Sadie Hawkins” conceit to a mock Irish tradition — in which women are “allowed” to propose to dawdling boyfriends once every four years, on the Leap Day of February 29 — the movie at least becomes a bit of a travelogue, in the visual sense. There’s precious little else to recommend it, however.

Adams stars as Anna, a successful Bostonite property “stager” who is happy but feels a bit restless in her four-year relationship with surgeon boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott). They’re moving in together into an exclusive apartment community, but their anniversary passes without a marriage proposal, much to her consternation. When Jeremy’s work pulls him away to Ireland for a conference, Anna decides to traipse after him to get down on one knee herself, and pop the question. Waylaid by inconsiderate weather, however, Anna finds her airplane diverted from Dublin to a smaller burgh, where she must enlist the assistance of surly but handsome innkeeper/bartender Declan (Matthew Goode) to help get her to the big city. Naturally, romantic complications and second-guessing ensue.

Directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl), Leap Year is a film with warm, soft, rounded edges on all sides, designed to rake in modest eight-figure returns from undemanding audiences who just want to see a couple good-looking kids get together. The script, credited to Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, endeavors to whip up some romantic chemistry by having Declan peg Anna as snooty and she regard him as provincial, but Bringing Up Baby or even Moonlighting this most assuredly isn’t. The quips, while delivered with zest, simply aren’t up to snuff. So what we have are two people bickering at one another through rain and mud while, given largely the absence of other people their own age, they fall for another. Modest points are credited for an attempt at a modulated ending that doesn’t favor grand-sweep romanticism over any degree of sensibleness… but only modest points.

Mostly, though, this is all just a big shrug. Goode gets to add another accent to his grabbag. And Adams again displays an uncanny skill with small gestures; she knows how to convey inner uncertainty and subtle shifts in mood that many screenwriters needlessly labor over and overwrite. Unfortunately, the considerable charms of her company can’t sustain Leap Year, which, despite its name, putters along like any other normal, workaday cinematic offering, not a quadrennial breath of fresh air. (Universal, PG, 100 minutes)

In everything from Arrested Development to big screen hits Superbad and Juno, Michael Cera has traded mainly in self-negating humor and muttered, sardonic asides. He shakes loose of that character template (well, partially, at least) in Youth in Revolt, a picaresque booster shot of wily irreverence that puts a fresh, outrageous spin on adolescent obsession and rebellion.

Based on the acclaimed novel by C.D. Payne, and brought to the screen with flair by Miguel Arteta — who injects stop motion animation into the opening credits and works in a splashy palette of primary colors — the film stars Cera as Nick Twisp, an affable, artistically inclined, shoe-gazing teenager who doesn’t feel at home with either of his divorced parents (Jean Smart and Steve Buscemi). On vacation with his mom and her loser boyfriend, Nick falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful, free-spirited Sheeni (charming newcomer Portia Doubleday, above right). After he’s forced to return home, Nick abandons his buttoned-up niceties and, at Sheeni’s urging, initiates a campaign of revolt to try to get shipped off to stay with his father, closer to his new crush.

Certain elements of the story here don’t totally connect (the perfectly polite Sheeni’s encouragement of Nick’s pursuit despite the fact that she has a boyfriend, for instance), and the concluding narration reaches for a grand stab at self-actualization that isn’t there. Still, all the performances are terrifically funny, and the dialogue is smart and crackling without tipping over into the hyper-articulate style of Juno that that so rankled some.

The film most catches fire when it grants Cera permission to cut loose with “supplementary persona” Francois Dillinger, a mustachioed Casanova that the young actor plays with narrow eyes and a big cat’s stalking state of mind, as a sort of cross between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Fight Club‘s Tyler Durden. Understand that when Nick says to Sheeni, “I’ve never had something in my life I wanted to fight for so much” he’s really, subconsciously, talking about his quest to lose his virginity, and Youth in Revolt is every bit the same sort of raised-stakes love lust story that has teenage girls squirming in their seats during Twilight. (Dimension, R, 90 minutes)

It’s hard to bear much ill will toward Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, given that it was thrown into a state of disarray when Heath Ledger passed away last year, with much but not all of the film complete. Nevertheless, the movie doesn’t really work, apart from the gobsmacked reaction elicited by a small handful of vividly imagined set pieces. A fantastical morality tale set in a grubby present day of Gilliam’s twisted devising, it sort of ambles along, like a scavenger hunt with an ill-defined search list, before collapsing in on itself in a finale of utter inconsequentiality.

Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is also a drunk and inveterate gambler who, thousands of years ago, made a series of bets with the devil (Tom Waits) in which he first won immortality but later lost his daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), once she reached her 16th birthday. Desperate to protect her from her impending fate, Dr. Parnassus again renegotiates the wager, with the winner now being determined by whoever first collects five souls. Parnassus and his traveling theater show companions (Verne Troyer, Andrew Garfield) happen upon an amnesia-stricken stranger, Tony (Ledger), and together they set out to woo a quintet of well-heeled ladies into willingly crossing over to the other side. More trippiness then ensues.

Rather disconcertingly, Ledger’s first appearance on screen comes with Tony hanging by his heck from a bridge. Ledger is later replaced by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell in three discrete fantasy sequences within the mirrored world that constitutes Parnassus’ playground, and this “fix” actually works well within the narrative. The story, though, has no innate emotional pull. There’s some sly fun to be had with the notion of a devil who so enjoys interacting in needling fashion with the strong-willed on Earth that he habitually indulges a gambling jones. But this narrative strand, and many others of fleeting intrigue, is quixotically embraced and discarded by the director and his writing partner, Charles McKeown. No one does cracked-world visuals quite like Gilliam, but he’s at his best when he has a strong producer sitting on him, or more strongly defined source material, and neither of these are the case with The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. There are moments of fitful wonder here, but they are few and far between; overall, score it an “I,” for Incomplete. (Sony Pictures Classics, PG-13, 122 minutes)