Rooted in sub-cultural specificism and the clash of both family
and public and private lives, writer-director James Gray’s We Own the Night sets itself up as something familiar — a gritty
genre shuffle through cops-and-goombas territory. While it doesn’t necessarily
break many molds, the movie does take enough interesting turns and twists (there are several moments early on which, in their own way, could qualify as
third act breaking points) to earn and keep your attention, all before an
ending that sacrifices emotional credibility for the sake of convenience.

We Own the Night
unfolds in Brooklyn’s Brighton
Beach area in 1988 (strange, then,
the Blondie and David Bowie soundtrack), against the backdrop of a rising tide
of drug trafficking and ethnic, organized criminality. As the popular manager
of Russian-owned nightclub El Caribe, Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) has
reverted to his deceased mother’s maiden name in order to conceal both his Polish-American
heritage and his connection to a long line of distinguished police officers,
including older brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) and father Burt Grusinsky
(Robert Duvall), from whom he is partially estranged. While Bobby’s Puerto
Rican girlfriend, Amada Juarez (Eva Mendes), knows about his family, his boss (Moni
Moshonov) and other friends don’t.

Bobby is sort of floating through life in a haze of booze,
smoke — some from cigarettes, some from the hippie lettuce — and, occasionally,
harder substances, but he doesn’t seem a particularly bad guy, and the rift
with his family of one of petty disagreement and hassle, not necessarily
overblown argument. Bobby has dreams of opening a club in Manhattan,
and to this end he tries to keep a friendly distance from the drug-peddling
gangster — Vadim Nezhinski (Alex Veadov), the nephew of his boss — who’s
essentially operating out of his club. When his brother’s sting operation inevitably
throws his policy of blithe non-engagement into violent disarray, Bobby is
forced to choose sides and take a stand.

Coming just in advance of his turn as a bereaved father in Reservation Road,
opening next week, Phoenix’s work deserves
special mention here, for We Own the
Night works best for much of its running time as a modest vehicle for him. When
he got his start, in films like Gus Van Sant’s To Die For and even something like Clay Pigeons, Phoenix was never an actor that one would assume had
the brio to pull off strident moral awakening — he seemed just as likely to
wander off into mumbly, Jeremy Davies-esque wallflower territory, and forever
play sensitive guys who get shit on by women and rescued or aided by the hero.
That Phoenix so beautifully and yet subtly conveys both the pain — wanting to
be accepted, but feeling like he can never catch a break — and burgeoning guilt
that drive Bobby to action is a testament to his talent. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Lust, Caution is a wartime story of espionage and intrigue, but to call it a thriller would be misleading. The constraints of modern moviegoers’ attention spans don’t concern director Ang Lee, as anyone who either loved or hated 2003’s Hulk can attest. Similarly, though the movie is rated a libidinous NC-17 (and deservedly so), neither does it flaunt its eroticism for cathartic release. No, instead, Lust, Caution is a lushly photographed, exacting, slightly overlong but still mostly involving drama about the clash of disparate forces and ethics — beauty and cruelty, desire and fidelity, personal awakening and patriotic duty. It’s also (ironically, in these tabloid times) a movie about a little girl lost, and how she finds identity, if not solace, in acting.

Charlotte Gray, and also (just a bit) the personal duplicity and plotting on display in something like Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German, which also (figuratively and literally) dealt in shades of occupied grey. If, as the saying goes, one ultimately becomes the things that they do, war has a way of forcing interesting choices upon even a civilian populace, and thus perverting individual will in not entirely explainable ways. Maybe the most interesting film that Lust, Caution tangentially reminded me of, though, is actually Mike Newell’s superlative Donnie Brasco. Like that movie, Lust, Caution is about the slippery slope of identity, and how one can lose oneself in the extreme pursuit of even-handedness or justice.

Lee’s film eventually plays the love card, but given that it’s a love born out of extreme cruelty and maltreatment, one can never be sure how sincere this change of heart is, versus the possibility of merely “Stockholm Syndrome” identification. Clearly, Lee believes that Wong’s journey is one of an awakening of sorts, but while Wei gives a performance of deftly modulated indecision, Lust, Caution never fully convinced me of love’s bloom, just that war alters everything, at home as well on far-flung battlefields. For the full review, from Reelz, click here. (Focus, NC-17, 158 minutes)

Films are repeatedly referenced as a visual medium, and certainly the release schedule of any given summer slate would bear that notion out. George Clooney’s new film, Michael Clayton, though, opens with a very theatrical torrent of words — a panicked narration about a chrysalis and rebirth. This shouldn’t be too surprising, given that the movie is the directorial debut of Tony Gilroy, the writer behind The Devil’s Advocate, Proof of Life and, most notably and directly responsible for this opportunity, the three Bourne action flicks.

Still, the degree to which Michael Clayton remains an exercise in linguistics — personal combat, gymnastics, avoidance and parsing — all while still pursuing its separate narrative threads is fairly impressive, and certainly refreshing and interesting. A loose white-collar thriller in the vein of The Firm, it’s The Insider remade and rechristened with all the coiled, white-hot intensity of a crime thriller like Heat. In fact, the specifics of its plot are almost incidental; Michael Clayton is about how dollar-chasing desperation corrodes character. It’s a study of mid-life crisis and moral awakening filtered through the rubric of a class action legal drama, and as such, the film reminds one of just how devalued language has become, both in life, but certainly on screen.

Clooney) works at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York City, Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, as their in-house “fixer,” a one-man velvet hammer. The movie opens at night, with him being summoned to a private residence after a client has committed a hit-and-run. Soon much bigger problems loom on the horizon for the firm, though. KB&L’s top litigator, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson, above left), has had an apparent breakdown during a Milwaukee deposition in a $3 billion class action suit centering on a carcinogenic field agent.

Making matters worse, it appears Edens has had a come-to-Jesus ethical conversion, and started taking steps to actually aide the case against KB&L’s client, agro-chemical company U-North, and sabotage his longtime employer. The career of in-house U-North chief counsel Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) rests on her ability to keep certain nasty matters from bubbling to the surface, and brokering a settlement on a case that’s been heretofore purposefully dragged out for more than six years. Meanwhile, the firm’s co-founder, Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), sends Clayton into the breach to tackle this unprecedented disaster. In doing so, Clayton must face down the harsh reality of the notion that we become the things we do. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here. (Warner Bros., R, 120 minutes)

A story of awkwardly overlapping romances liberally seasoned
with the patented, over-the-top humor of the brothers Farrelly, The Heartbreak Kid reunites the
behind-camera comedy specialists with star Ben Stiller in a careening showcase
for serial outrageousness that favors potent commercial formula over strict
adherence to narrative through-lines.

The Heartbreak
Kid retains the Farrelly’s trademark humanistic touch (evident with the
care paid to Miranda’s country-raised family) it also doesn’t hesitate to
offend, chiefly through Lila’s sexual voraciousness, but also a wide variety of
casual brusque language and one-liners. Notions of character consistency are hard to pin down,
though, especially since some of Lila’s sprung “surprises” are matters that would have
been sorted out, even in six weeks of virginal, whirlwind courtship. Then
there’s the contrast, too, of scenes in which Lila talks about being just like
an elderly couple in 10 years (she’s “not good at math,” she confesses), then
immediately references spending the next 40 or 50 years together.

The fact is that The
Heartbreak Kid asks in many ways to be taken air-quote seriously as
something a bit darker and of more modern, sardonic substance than director
Elaine May and screenwriter Neil Simon’s original 1972 comedy, from Eddie’s
familial entanglements with his “would-be” in-laws to the movie’s general view
of relationships and its barbed, deliciously bleak-hearted ending. The film’s wild and
crazy, blue asides, then (bits that include a shot of Lila’s hairy, pierced
pubic area, and a discussion of Carlos Mencia’s hotel concierge placing Lila’s
hand on his genitals), often arrive with the jarring force of a
less-than-well-oiled traveling theme park ride; they’re naughty,
outside-the-lines coloring, wedged in for cheap effect. Still, the performances are almost uniformly engaging,
with Stiller cycling through a catalog of sputtering resistance ploys
that still work, no matter their familiarity. For the full review, from Screen International, click here.

What with it being the month of Halloween, I figured I’d get re-linky (apologies, Will Smith) and stuff the archives here and there with a few reviews of (ostensibly) scary movies. Ergo, this refreshing of poor Wes Craven’s Cursed, only slightly redacted from its original publication in Screen International. To wit:

The release date of 2005 tells one side, perhaps the
official one, to Cursed, the new
werewolf picture from Dimension, the in-house genre arm of Miramax that
revitalized the modern horror landscape with the self-aware yet scary Scream pictures from what now seems like
eons ago. Almost every frame of its being, however, tells the other side of a Cursed story — of a troubled and shelved production (it shot in
2003) stitched together and reanimated as an awkward, unconvincing entry in the
PG-13, jolt-and-shock, teen disposable income sweepstakes. The result is
spectacularly and unremittingly awful.

Christina Ricci
stars as Ellie Myers, a talent booker on The
Craig Kilborn Show (one of several signs of the movie’s datedness, since Mr.
Kilborn is no longer on television) whose newish boyfriend is party planner
Jake (erstwhile Dawson’s Creeker
Joshua Jackson). Ellie and her younger brother Jimmy (an unappealing Jesse
Eisenberg), a bookish high school wallflower, get into a car accident with
Becky (Shannon Elizabeth).

All three are then attacked by a vicious, hairy and
mysterious creature, but Ellie and Jimmy survive, only to then have heightened
senses and a strange (and presumably new) predilection for chewing on raw bacon.
As Jimmy reads up on werewolves and faces down a coterie of gel-haired bullies
that actually do things like slap books out of his hands and lob a steady
stream of homophobic insults his way, so Ellie does her best to ignore any
symptoms of hirsute change and instead cope with a weirdly insistent and
abrasive publicist, Joanie (Judy Greer). Spurred on by a bizarre confession
from Jake, Ellie finally acknowledges there might be something to Jimmy’s
supposition that they’ve been “marked by the beast.” Things come to a
head at a Hollywood club opening where all parties meet,
under a full moon of course.

If the narrative synopsis sounds vague and confusing, it’s
because Cursed doesn’t have a
cohesive plot; the film in theory takes place over the course of two nights,
but the re-conceptualized story places scenes up against one another that find
characters behaving in nonsensical, contradictory ways. The relationships
between certain key characters are never wholly and accurately defined. The
roles of the aforementioned Elizabeth and singer-actress Mya have seemingly
been whittled down from plot-device supporting players to essentially cameos,
and Jackson’s and Greer’s parts figure to have been drastically reconstituted
and tailored to fit new-fangled conveniences.

A herky-jerky, movie-like mass, Cursed moves hastily and inexorably forward, but like one of those
wooden-track rollercoaster rides that induces more aches than thrills. A
picture of this conspicuous popcorn type shouldn’t have you checking your
watch, but Cursed stumbles so badly
with its irrational, illogical plotting that it feels interminable, and it’s
quite a shock at the end to discover only 95 minutes have passed. The esteemed Rick Baker provides some decent practical
creature effects, but these are easily cancelled out by wretched and laughable
CGI that rob the werewolf scenes of any beastly scares. “What doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger,” goes the old saying. With Cursed, though, all but the most hardcore and generous (read:
uncritical) genre audiences will be praying for an end to their lycanthropic
misery.
For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.

If there’s a notable silver lining to be found for cineastes in the
third installment of the Resident Evil franchise, it’s that a bravura, mid-film
zombie crow sequence may have squelched the need for Michael Bay’s
long-rumored remake of The Birds. In Extinction, Milla Jovovich returns
as dispassionate butt-kicker Alice, the former head of security for the
shadowy, powerful Umbrella Corporation. In a land where an experimental
virus has transformed most of the population into a mass of shambling
flesh-eaters, Alice herself is marked by biogenic experimentation that
left her genetically altered. While a shady Umbrella scientist (Iain
Glen) works to capture and/or kill Alice for his own purposes, she
hooks up with a roaming band of survivors (including returnees Oded
Fehr and Mike Epps and newcomer Ali Larter). A planned escape to Alaska
is scotched by a pit stop gone awry in Las Vegas, where O.J. Simpson
shows up and angrily demands the return of his sports collectibles.

For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.

A movie of intermittent action catharsis and reliably
deafening sound design, the altogether middling Resident Evil: Extinction takes the videogame action franchise to
the desert, allowing star Milla Jovovich to energetically lop off zombie heads
in a manner that will please series aficionados but leave newcomers mostly fidgety
and baffled.

Ali Larter), a group of around 30 people that includes Carlos (Oded Fehr) and
L.J. (Mike Epps), reprising their roles from the franchise’s second installment.
The convoy decides to head north to Alaska — their last, best hope for refuge
from the undead — but first have to make a pit-stop in Las Vegas to refuel. There, hidden beneath an abandoned radio tower, are the Umbrella Corporation’s sleek research facilities, where Dr.
Isaacs (Iain Glen) works to create a docile work force, stripping zombies of
their baser instincts by using antibodies from Alice’s
blood. When Alice surfaces and is
located by satellite, Dr. Isaacs becomes obsessed with finding and capturing
her, dead or alive.

Whereas the first Resident Evil unfolded in claustrophobic fashion in
a contained space, and the second film took place largely at night, Extinction opens things up much more. Visually,
the film takes inspiration from dusty apocalyptic movies like The Road Warrior, with original Resident Evil cinematographer David
Johnson providing a dusty backdrop for Eugenio Caballero’s stirring production
design work. Much of the ground covered in series originating director
Paul W.S. Anderson’s script is familiar, from the obligatory character trying
to keep a zombie bite secret to loose, hazy strains of conspiracy. Narratively,
everything is in play and on the table, as at times Alice
can control objects and summon forth a force-field with her mind, while at other
times she seems to have to rely on martial arts. With no explication of the
particulars of her powers, each subsequent set piece becomes more shruggingly
inconsequential from the point of any emotional investment. For the full review, from Screen International, click here.

Mandy Moore got
her start in show business as a singer. At 15, she was cutting albums and
touring with the Backstreet Boys — all the sort of coded prerequisites for an
eventual Behind the Music-type washout. Yet Moore
has gone the good girl route, avoiding all of the trampy clichés of many modern
young starlets. In the process, she’s steadily accrued respect, and more and
more fame of the good, earned kind — not to be confused with mere notoriety.

Lindsay Lohan), she’s shown a fun and flirty side, but also
convincingly modeled moderation, earning her respect and role model status from
countless “tween” girls. Moore was
good in Paul Weitz’s satirical American Dreamz, where
she was required to play an aspirant singer who shrewdly trades on her small
town roots in audacious, eye-batting fashion. She’s also shown an endearing
willingness to indulge in goofiness (on the small screen in Scrubs,
in an arc with then-boyfriend Zach Braff). In her latest film, though, Moore utterly obliterates memories that she was ever “first” a singer.

The feature directorial debut of Mulholland
Drive and Miami Vice actor Justin Theroux, Dedication is constructed around Billy Crudup’s
bitter-hearted children’s book author, an obsessive-compulsive who’s learning,
in What About Bob?-style baby steps, to interact with
the real world in a more positive, healthy manner. Yet the film also requires that
Moore push back in compelling ways
— mixing it up with Crudup in substantive fashion while still retaining an
innate likeability. Her character, Lucy, is part messed-up spitfire, part
broken-hearted bohemian — exactly the sort of role that Parker Posey would have
knocked out of the park 10 or 12 years ago. This decade, though, it’s Moore. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

A high-energy servicing of the randy, relationship-oriented sex comedy sub-genre, Good Luck Chuck feels work-shopped for big business, but beset by awkward tonal swings that seem less a function of story, and much more nakedly designed to try to lure in different demographics. The result is a ramshackle piece of fleeting entertainment that lacks the airy, character-rooted charms of fellow R-rated comedies Wedding Crashers and There’s Something about Mary, the films to which it most obviously aspires.

 Jessica Alba). Charlie becomes convinced that Cam is his perfect match, but she’s wary of his reputation. Eventually coming to believe in the curse himself, Charlie goes so far as to test out its power with the grossly overweight Eleanor (Jodie Stewart), all before a third act that comes back around to Charlie trying to get back in the good graces of Cam.

The directorial debut of longtime editor Mark Helfrich, Good Luck Chuck‘s chief concept takes a rather dim view of women, and Josh Stolberg’s script never really does much to tweak the notion of objectified masculinity, or elevate the proceedings beyond a sort of madcap steeplechase. The movie is studded with a few bawdy sequences, and mixes in some visual jokes (one woman has a “George W” tattoo just above her bikini line), but for the most part it serves as a shaggy, high-energy showcase for the affable presence of stand-up comedian Cook, with multiple set-ups designed simply to indulge character riffs rather than realistically advance the story.

Cook imports a lot of the same wild gesticulations and physical pantomime that are a large part of his stage act. It’s occasionally entertaining but also repetitive — a mannered tack which has the effect of undermining identification with him. Fogler, meanwhile, more than matches this tone of heightened mania, putting a wicked topspin on almost all of his dialogue. Needless to say, believing this pair as actual doctors of any sort is a stretch that exceeds the movie’s grasp. Mock-sexual deviants take heart, though — an end credit sequence showcases both Stu’s polymastic dream girl (addled with a third breast), and Charlie’s mock-fellating of a stuffed penguin, much to Cam‘s cooing, off-screen delight. So there’s that. For the film’s full review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 96 minutes)

At once lush and sloppy, Across the Universe recalls the sort of children’s artwork that parents display, proudly and rightly, on their refrigerators — work that is colorful, distinctive, and outside the lines of convention, but ultimately not meant for wide-scale embrace.

Evan Rachel Wood, above left). As directed by Julie Taymor (Frida, and Broadway’s smash hit adaptation of The Lion King), Across the Universe is powered by a very powerful aesthetic sensibility.

Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie) knows a thing or two about whimsicality, and pulls out all the stops here, resulting in an often beguiling visual experience. But if the movie has some fun cameos (Salma Hayek as a quintet of writhing nurses, plus Bono as a mutton-chopped, Neal Cassady-type preacher, outdone in camp theatricality only by Eddie Izzard’s Mad Hatter-esque Mr. Kite) and conjures a few sporadic moments of depth-charged feeling (“Revolution” is recast as a roiling, clench-jawed lovers’ spat), it also never lastingly gels into anything more than the sum of its art-project parts. Talking to a friend, I described the movie as a feminine ejaculation; I mean that largely as a compliment, but it also speaks to some of the movie’s limitations. For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here. I’ll likely have more discrete thoughts in a bit, as the film expands.

When it was first announced in the trades, Mr. Woodcock had
the undeniable ring of truth on its side. After all, if one couldn’t
directly relate to being tormented by a school gym teacher, then
certainly there were memories of another kid — some pudgy,
huffing, out-of-shape wallflower — serving as the constant whipping
post of a cruelly hyper-vigilant instructor. The movie’s pairing, too,
seemed an inspired one, with Billy Bob Thornton playing the titular
unrepentant jackass and Seann William Scott starring as the now-adult
object of his psychological persecution, a self-help author who returns
to his small, Midwestern hometown to find his mom dating his former
nemesis. Sadly, a post-mortem reveals nothing to the distracted,
scattershot-vision Mr. Woodcock but shattered hopes and expectations, and lots of uncomfortable silences. This just isn’t a very funny movie.

Though its faults don’t really lie with him, Mr. Woodcock is still most interesting when viewed through the prism of Thornton’s career. Despite possessing a genuine chameleonic quality (see The Man Who Wasn’t There, in addition to Sling Blade),
Thornton frequently finds a way to make parts bend more naturally to
him without it coming off as crass or lazy. Five times married and five
times divorced, he wears his troubles, mania and insecurities (like his
genuine, perhaps only slightly overstated phobia of antique furniture,
let’s say) on his sleeve, and this somehow makes him more endearing.
It’s interesting, then, that Thornton would become embraced for playing
assertive, caustic types, when in reality he’s so little like that.

1999’s Pushing Tin actually presaged greater successes to come, because
it showcased so nicely the playful naughtiness of Thornton’s
hollow-cheeked, arch-browed deviousness. Films following clearly in
that vein were the mid-sized, foul-mouthed cult hit Bad Santa, and subsequent remakes of Bad News Bears and School for Scoundrels, though each was rightly judged by the marketplace, and grossed less than its predecessor.
Mr. Woodcock, unfortunately, continues that downward qualitative
trend, and will likely do the same at the box office after lethal
word-of-mouth spreads.

A troubled production that saw original director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) booted, and Wedding Crashers
helmer David Dobkins come in for re-shoots (he takes a producer’s
credit on the final product), Mr. Woodcock is a mish-mashed affair that
never cultivates a cogent comedic point-of-view. Is the movie essentially about Scott’s character, John Farley, and his inner demons, however
colorful and writ large? Is it a crude, enthusiastically broad
slapstick comedy, as the poster and some TV advertisements would
suggest? Or is it a combative story of masculine competition, with a
young buck rising to physically take on and figuratively slay the
twisted inspiration of his personal makeover? In servicing each of
these strands in elementary, hopscotch fashion, no satisfying depth is
developed. Woodcock’s SOB father (Bill Macy) is trotted out but left
mostly unexplored as the root cause of his son’s bitterness, while Amy Poehler — as John’s voluble, alcoholic
literary agent — is left to amuse only herself. Abandoned as he is here by the material, meanwhile, one has to wonder if it isn’t
time for Thornton to hang up the high-beam glare and snappish guise for
a while. An extended layover might further whet audience appetites, making a bitter screen return eight or 10 years hence even sweeter. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Directed by Griffin Dunne — who, as the son of jet-setting Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne, knows a thing or two about rubbing elbows with the wealthy — the 1980-set Fierce People is chiefly about the collision of classes, and how even affluent factions result to primitive behavior. A collection of wildly colorful characters in search of some sort of narrative cohesiveness, though, the movie — adapted by screenwriter Dirk Wittenborn from his own novel — never gels into something more than the occasional, piecemeal entertainment of its fractured parts.

Anton Yelchin (above right) stars as 15-year-old Finn, a well-intentioned kid pinched buying drugs for his junkie masseuse mother, Liz (Diane Lane). This bust wrecks Finn’s plans of spending the summer with his estranged anthropologist father, studying the remote jungle Ishkanani tribe. Instead, Liz drags Finn out to the rural New Jersey enclave of Vlyvalle, to spend the summer with her eccentric sugar daddy, Ogden Osborne (Donald Sutherland). While Liz begins attending AA meetings and strikes up a dubious relationship with Osborne’s physician (Christopher Shyer), observant, hoi polloi gate-crasher Finn, meanwhile, settles into life with the “tribe” of wealthy country-clubbers that inhabit his new home.

He finds a brazen flirt in maid Jilly (Paz de la Huerta), a kinda-sorta girlfriend in Osborne’s granddaughter, Maya (Kristen Stewart), and a strange mentor and advocate in Maya’s older brother Bryce (Chris Evans, above left), a rakish college washout. Unfortunately, just as Finn thinks he’s found his way, things begin to spiral out of control. Sexual awakenings both pleasant and quite rude then ensue, and Finn begins to see that wealth can be a mask for some nasty deeds.

Yes, one might be surprised to learn that Fierce People, in its third act, essentially becomes a whodunit about Finn’s ass-rape at the hands of a mysterious assailant. Or perhaps that’s not a surprise. After all, that seems to make about as much sense as some of the arbitrariness on display here. It’s not necessarily the consistent collision of wackiness and earnest symbolism that hamstrings Fierce People. After all, a film need only unfold in a world that makes sense within the parameters of its own devising. But the tucked away cul-de-sac of exclusivity in which Fierce People unfolds never quite feels fully sketched out. The end result feels like a grouping of potentially interesting, if sometimes thinly drawn, characters in service of an undercooked narrative premise we see reflected more starkly every day in tabloid celebrity misbehavior. It’s just too contrived to be taken seriously, and too burdened with sometimes thought-provoking parallel imagery to be enjoyed as a trashy, turn-off-your-brain delight. (After Dark Films, R, 107 minutes)

To answer the question that will completely define the life and
memory of this movie after it hits DVD, yes, Harry Potter loses his
virginity in December Boys. Still, Daniel Radcliffe is not prancing about nude with a horse, as he did in the West End production of Equus
that’s likely headed to Broadway next year. So, when you’re ordering
your priorities for shirtless Radcliffe entertainment, plan accordingly.

For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.

A revenge flick also deeply invested in character, The Brave One is a film that takes the temperature of our times, and artfully diagnoses a collective societal fever. It centers on Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), an erudite FM talk show host who shares the sounds and stories of New York City with her appreciative audience. When a brutal attack leaves her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews) dead and her briefly in a coma, however, Erica finds strange new impulses awakened within her. After purchasing a gun for protection and stumbling upon a domestic dispute, she then puts herself in further situations where she might have to use it, all while Detective Sean Mercer (Terrence Howard) investigates string of unsolved vigilante homicides.

For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down. (Warner Bros., R, 122 minutes)

The pleasures of pure-form genre storytelling, top-shelf acting and accomplished filmmaking all come together in 3:10 to Yuma, a dusty treat that’s certainly the most rousing Western in recent memory and probably the best since Unforgiven.
It’s a movie that fires on all cylinders and recalls Muhammad Ali’s old
assessment of his fighting strategy: “Float like a butterfly, sting
like a bee.” Full of quiet, lulling character moments, but visited as
well by tense, charged action passages, director James Mangold’s film tells a line-in-the-sand tale of at-odds wills that could easily be transposed to any number of settings.

Russell Crowe),
who, along with his vicious gang of thieves and murderers, has plagued
the powerful Southern Railroad’s plans for expansion by preying on
their delivery routes and robbing their bank shipments. After his
latest strike leaves Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda, above right) wounded and a handful
of others dead, Wade holes up in a nearby town, intent on squeezing out
a few last ounces of pleasure with the fetching local barkeep (Vinessa Shaw) before escaping to Mexico.

When Wade is captured, however, a dilemma presents itself. Knowing that
Wade’s crew will be back to attempt to spring him, McElroy and
ineffectual railroad employee Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts) make
the call that holing up and waiting for reinforcements — in effect
making targets of the entire town and all of its citizens — isn’t the
best plan. Volunteers are sought to help deliver Wade alive to an out-of-town depot and the scheduled train to Yuma two days hence, a
train that will take the killer to trial and return some small sense of
safety and normalcy to their region.

Partially crippled Civil War veteran Dan Evans (Christian Bale) steps forward. Struggling to survive on his drought-plagued ranch,
Evans feels quietly emasculated by a wife, Alice (Gretchen Mol), and
headstrong teenage son, William (Logan Lerman), who each in their own
way question his cautious nature and every decision. “I’m tired of the
boys going hungry, tired of the way they look at me, and tired of the
way that you don’t,” Evans tells Alice. “I’ve been standing on one leg
for three years waiting for God to do me a favor, and he ain’t.” Out on
the trail, Evans and Wade start to feel one another out, engaging in
restrained forms of psychological battle. A cool,
curious respect for Evans even springs forth in Wade, but with his outfit — led by the leering, psychopathic Charlie Prince (Ben Foster,
strengthening his power-play grab at becoming the Gary Oldman of his
generation) — on their trail, and violence and other dangers at every
turn, the odds of success for Evans’ mission soon take a dip southward,
culminating in a holed-up showdown with each man’s future at stake.

3:10 to Yuma isn’t what you’d call modern, per se, but neither
does it hew to what Rudy Giuliani might dub a strict constructionist
interpretation of the Western genre. Michael Brandt and Derek Haas’
reworking of Halsted Welles’ screenplay for the original film takes
only moderate liberties in dialogue, but adds in bits with Apache
warriors and transcontinental railroad workers that give the movie a
nicely fleshed-out feel and broader narrative backdrop. Meanwhile,
composer Marco Beltrami’s score (especially the opening theme) has a
glorious old-school ring to it. It’s most in the design and visual
telling of 3:10 to Yuma
that flared bits of modernization creep in. Mangold and cinematographer
Phedon Papamichael (a frequent collaborator of the director who’s also
captured disparate outdoor tones and palettes in movies like The Weather Man and Sideways)
beef up the action and infuse proceedings with a galloping energy.
Arianne Phillips’ costume design, meanwhile, faintly but effectively
conveys the notion of Wade’s gang as swaggering, rock-star seizers of
whatever they want; in a high school flick, they’d be the perfectly
coiffed jocks, in a horror film, vampires.

What most works about 3:10 to Yuma, though, is just the natural, slow-burn pull of its two stars, each working at the top of their games here. Crowe oozes edgy charisma in real life, so it’s no great shock
that he excels in a role requiring a bit of malevolent seduction.
Equally important, though, is Bale, who gives a superlative performance
as a broken family man awakening to the invigorating strength of a task
greater than him, and the power of a lasting lesson he can teach his son. For the full original review, from FilmStew, click here. To view the film’s trailer, click here.

As self-centered illusionist Gob Bluth on the brilliant if short-lived sitcom Arrested Development,  Will Arnett wrung laughs out of his character’s flamboyant combination of
insecurity, competitiveness and showmanship. During his career as both
a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, Will Forte has
shown a penchant for embracing the absurd — whether in recurring bits
as soft-voiced politician Tim Calhoun and the bearded, woodsy loner
known as the Falconer, or in a sketch last year with Peyton Manning in
which he played a high school coach who delivers his halftime stump
speech in the form of an extended, goofy, improvisational dance. While
each actor has appeared in a couple movies up to this point — most
notably Arnett in this spring’s $100 million-plus hit Blades of Glory, opposite wife Amy Poehler — both performers are trying to find their way when it comes to movies.
In a way, they’re each attempting to follow in the footsteps of SNL alumnus Will Ferrell,
who, largely courtesy of his golden touch with intense himbo
vacuousness, has successfully transitioned from small screen funnyman
to someone that audiences would actually pay to see on the big screen.

The Brothers Solomon, starring Arnett (above left) and Forte (right, also the film’s writer) as two goodhearted but romantically challenged
brothers who decide to try to father a baby in order to give their
coma-stricken father (Lee Majors) something to live for. Coming on the heels of both Knocked Up and Superbad earlier this summer, The Brothers Solomon combines elements of the former’s prenatal hijinks with rudiments of the latter’s fraternal bonding.

While there’s just a pinch of Dumb & Dumber-style comedy to
the proceedings, John (Arnett) and Dean (Forte) are mostly just
socially inept, yet still somehow unflappably, unfailingly
positive-minded. After a string of dates leave them still unable to
find a woman “to enter,” as John puts it, the undeterred siblings
change tactics and place an online ad for a surrogate partner. Janine (Kristen Wiig) responds to the brothers’ entreaty
and, for a hefty fee, agrees to carry a child to term for them, even as
John works on a back-up plan in the form of neighbor Tara (Malin Ackerman). As the
pregnancy progresses and Dean and John embark on an ill-advised
crash-course of their own devising on parenting, Janine and her
ex-but-now-on-again boyfriend James (Chi McBride) — a strange fourth
wheel in the relationship — eventually begin to warm to the brothers’
full-court-press enthusiasm.

Some of the script’s few baroque touches — like the fact that the
brothers, upon hearing that their father is in the hospital, hurriedly
stop by the video store to dispute a late charge on a rental of Ulee’s Gold — make for nice laughs, but, for the most part, The Brothers Solomon is a wan showcase presentation; it’s the filmic equivalent of a performance-centric one-man show that just happens to have two stars. The problem, though, is that the brothers’ serial oddness — both of the actors’ performances are powered by waxy, perpetual smiles — could and probably should be taken as creepy, or at least a little more strange. For much of the movie, though, there’s a strange absence of conflict or tension, which means we’re just playing out a string. Ergo, devoted fans
of the principals will be suitably entertained, others by degrees less so. For the full original review, from FilmStew, click here.