Ever since his attention-grabbing debut, Super Size Me, documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock has exhibited a canny knack for self-promotion. He takes that inclination to new heights with his latest effort — The Greatest Movie Sold, a purported behind-the-scenes look at cinematic product placement itself fully financed through the product placement of various brands, all of which are transparently showcased within the film. The stated logic is that since Iron Man had 14 brand partners and grossed $585 million worldwide, throwing sponsors into a documentary will surely increase its slice of the multi-billion advertising pie, and thus its commercial gross/popularity. So, wink-wink, nudge-nudge fun, right?

Well, only sort of. Spurlock’s film is fitfully engaging in its own facile way, but also restless and unfocused — and thus it never really digs into its subject matter in a deep or interesting enough way. It isn’t that Spurlock sells out (or “buys in,” as it’s also called in the movie, in a rah-rah presentation of gotta-get-mine American capitalism), it’s just that he gets so caught up in the dizziness of chasing down partnership deals with Ban deodorant, Sheetz convenient stores, Hyatt, JetBlue, title sponsor Pom Wonderful and others (even a hybrid horse/human shampoo!) that he miscalculates audience interest in this glimpse behind the advertising curtain.

While these meetings, in their own nuts-and-bolts manner, may be representative of the horse-trading involved in trying to juggle art and commerce, they meander as much as illuminate, and generally undercut revelatory and/or thoughtful talking head interviews with more interesting figures, including Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky and Hollywood feature directors like Brett Ratner and Peter Berg. Only late in his film does Spurlock delve into interesting ethical, social and anthropological questions, with a study of the newfangled science of neuro-marketing and the exploration of a citywide ban on all billboards and outdoor promotions in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. By that point, however, the movie’s tapdance sales job has worn out its welcome. (Sony Pictures Classics, unrated, 87 minutes)

In a business that frequently has the tendency to disproportionately celebrate the contributions of above-the-line talent, the allure of African Cats is a reminder of below-the-line artisans. An involving, gorgeously photographed nature documentary that puts audiences on Kenyan plains in stunning fashion amidst its title subjects, the film, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, only stumbles in its willful insistence on imposing a family-friendly narrative on footage that is more than capable of standing on its own, with less artificial constructs. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (DisneyNature, G, 89 minutes)

Stand-up comedy is one of the most difficult creative occupations out there, because it not only possesses all of the flame-out possibility of live theater, but it’s done alone. So a set that bombs isn’t just something that doesn’t work, it has the sting of a deeply personal rejection, and a career that sputters or fails to ignite isn’t just based on the whimsy of luck but, in the mind of comedian, has the capacity to be a personal indictment. The new documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story gives viewers a fairly compelling snapshot of these emotional highs and lows via Hicks, a sort of comedic wunderkind turned philosophizing social satirist who charted an unlikely course to semi-fame in the 1980s and early ’90s before succumbing, suddenly and shockingly, to pancreatic cancer. For the full, original review, from ShockYa.com, click here. For more information on the movie, click here. (Variance, unrated, 101 minutes)

Coming more than a decade since the last franchise entry, Scream 4 again mixes murder, mystery and self-awareness, to adequate if not exceptional effect. A meta horror entry which reteams writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven, the film introduces a fresh crop of victims and suspects, blending them together with old characters and past grudges, and succeeds on its own carefully prescribed terms as a piece of diversionary puzzlebox entertainment, but isn’t really very scary and doesn’t pack the wallop of the best moments of its forebears. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Dimension, R, 110 minutes)

Trust centers around Annie Cameron (Liana Liberato), a fairly naïve 14-year-old suburban girl, and the middle child of a loving family led by parents Will and Lynn (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener). Weeks of online chatting with an out-of-town boy lead to an in-person meeting, where Annie discovers he’s considerably older than he represented. Nonetheless, she’s coerced into a sexual liaison, which has ruinous consequences for her and her family.

Director David Schwimmer work-shopped the script with Andy Bellin, one of the movie’s writers, and its layered attention to detail shows. Trust is populated with real, three-dimensional characters, and it captures both the modern-day connection between technology and teen life, as well as the manner in which adolescent judgment is reasonably fallible. For all the unsettling skill with which the film captures the somewhat darkly understandable identification and protective impulses that many statutory rape victims feel toward their abuser, the film is also heartrending in its depiction of the gulf between the female teenage victim of such an assault and especially her father. More than just about anything else males like to feel utility, of course, and the particular emasculation and patriarchal helplessness on display in Trust is both rare in modern American cinema, and strikingly devastating.

To that end, it goes almost without saying that the performances here are uniformly superb. Owen summons a tremendous amount of pathos and swallowed rage as Will — he seems to age, fray and crack before our eyes, long prior to any cathartic breakdown. And Liberato… well, burn that name into your memory. This likely won’t be her Winter’s Bone (and it’s worth noting, after all, that recent Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence absolutely shined in Lori Petty’s The Poker House two years prior to that breakthrough film), but it definitely marks Liberato as a young actress to watch, and will appropriately be the calling card that lands her many more films. (Millennium Entertainment, R, 106 minutes)

After Buffalo roustabout Henry (Keanu Reeves) unwittingly takes part in an ill-conceived bank robbery, he takes the fall and goes to jail rather than give up the names of the real culprits — seemingly as much to get away from his live-in girlfriend Debbie (Judy Greer) as any other reason. When he’s paroled, Henry learns of a Prohibition-era tunnel leading from a nearby theater, and — flashing back to a comment from his cellmate, Max (James Caan), who offhandedly remarked that if he’s doing the time he might as well have done the crime — gets it in his head to actually rob the bank for which he has already gone to prison. Soon Max is out of jail too, and working up a scheme with Henry, as well as a somewhat flighty but ambitious actress, Julie (Vera Farmiga, committed and so good), starring in a production of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard.

Director Malcolm Venville (44 Inch Chest) exhibits absolutely no sense of comedic timing or aptitude for building tension, and Sacha Gervasi and David White’s screenplay is largely indifferent to the madcap possibilities its conceit engenders. It needlessly hauls in a couple extra characters, and then does precious little of consequence with them.

Reeves takes a lot of crap for his acting — sometimes deservedly so, sometimes not. But he is utterly somnambulant here, and just dreadful in a role that really requires much more dynamism. Henry is meant to be someone drifting through life, and jarred awake by the challenge of trying something new (a crime), yes, but he’s also a character burning the candle at both ends, as well as caught up in the bloom of a new relationship, with Julie. Reeves, however, seems intent on playing him like an autistic version of Luke Wilson, the modern-day champion of wet paper bags. This movie is the real crime, guilty of stealing an audience’s time. (Moving Pictures Film & Television, R, 108 minutes)

Weddings bring together disparate groups of people — including many who
are close but not always friends, or necessarily apt to play nicely
with others — and so consequently they are an almost irresistibly rich
setting for films. One of the latest such offerings arrives in the form
of Ceremony, the feature film debut of writer-director Max
Winkler, son of Henry Winkler.

A comedy starring Michael Angarano and Uma Thurman, the movie is loosely of a piece with fellow tales of twentysomething ennui and/or upended nuptials like Garden State, The Last Kiss and Rachel Getting Married, except processed through a decidedly more manic, less ruminative filter. The result is something different, a bit offbeat and certainly not unpleasant, but ultimately also not that memorably insightful or successful. For the full review, from Shockya.com, click here. In addition to playing in theaters, Ceremony is currently available on-demand, on iTunes, Amazon, PlayStation Network and Xbox Marketplace. (Magnolia, R, 90 minutes)

The obvious jokey double-feature comparison is fellow recent arm-loss big screen adaptation 127 Hours, but Soul Surfer is less stylistically adventurous and far more streamlined and built for conventional, heartland uplift than Danny Boyle’s Oscar-nominated film. A feel-good movie of genial deification, it tells the remarkable true story of Bethany Hamilton, who in 2003 lost a limb to a shark bite.

AnnaSophia Robb stars as the teenage Bethany, a Hawaiian surfing prodigy whose doting parents (Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt) home-school she and her siblings, the better to allow them time to also catch waves. After an accident claims her left arm almost all the way up to her shoulder, Bethany faces an uphill climb back toward competitive surfing with aplomb beyond her years.

There is something of a dearth of dramatic conflict here, since Soul
Surfer basically just amounts to a gorgeous, sun-toned and by all accounts extraordinarily well-adjusted family coping with an admittedly terrible tragedy and coming (further) together. There’s a lot of rah-rah moralizing and Christianist parallelism herein, not all of which connects. (An incredible seven screenwriters share story credit, from the adaptation of a book by three others.) But the performances are solid, appealing and wholly invested in across the board, and John Leonetti’s you-are-there cinematography is gorgeous, making for an engaging albeit predictable emotional ride that should play especially well in Red State rural and suburban areas. (TriStar/Film District, PG, 106 minutes)

Nonfiction films and television programming documenting various aspects of America’s burgeoning obesity epidemic seem to constitute their own peculiar entertainment subgenre these days, so one could be forgiven for approaching Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, Australian filmmaker/subject Joe Cross’ juice-diet road trip flick, with
some skepticism, thinking it little more than a rolling, sycophantic
infomercial for the health benefits of liquidated fruits and vegetables.

Which it is, actually — at least partly. Starting out at 310 pounds, the amiable Cross wears his foreignness throughout (yep, Men at Work and INXS even pop up on the soundtrack), deploying it heartily in the name of his personality-peddling film. But he doesn’t really connect his struggle with his choice to come to the United States for 60 days of “juice fasting,” other than explaining his decision by way of saying he loves hamburgers and American food. The first half of the movie, saddled with lame animated segments showing cells under attack and the like, does an inadequate job of linking Cross’ obesity with a chronic, debilitating autoimmune disease which he has also battled for years. The audience is served up a genial but indulgent and entirely aimless travelogue.

So it’s more than a small surprise when the film — leaning much more toward the sort of self-promotion found in Super Size Me rather than something like the fact-oriented, revelatory emotional punch of Food, Inc. — pivots at its halfway point, and becomes a heartrending portrait of Phil Staples (above right), a 429-pound truck driver whom Cross met in Arizona, who suffers from the same condition. His reaching out to Cross for help, and his ensuing amazing story, give the film an undeniable poignant punch, and might leave one pondering their own micronutrient intake. For more information, click here. (Reboot Media, unrated, 97 minutes)

Russell Brand slips into the tuxedo of Dudley Moore in Arthur, an energetic but essentially only middling re-imagining of the 1981 comedy about a perpetually soused man-child who awakens to life outside his debauched comfort zone. Despite some amusing bits and a very capable and handsomely mounted production, the results never truly outgrow diversionary setpiece amusement, and coalesce or gel into something humanistic and more deeply funny. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, PG-13, 110 minutes)

A documentary portrait of art world provocateur Mark Kostabi, Con Artist is another movie that acknowledges the existence of a particularly American air-quote culture (both high and low) which requires new product to fill its pipelines, and the art world’s important role in feeding that machine. It’s a breezy, facile thing, and if it doesn’t completely crack the riddle of the man, it at least lays bare his popularized thinking regarding branding and self-promotion, the forward-reaching impact of which can also be glimpsed in the ways plenty of smiling lost souls these days jockey to make “ex-reality show participant” a full-time, life-long occupation.

Directed by Michael Sladek, Con Artist eschews a strictly chronological tack, mixing biography, archived material and the (frequently unflattering) musings of various talking heads with present-day footage tracking the artist’s movements and whims. The third son of dirt-poor Estonian immigrants, Kostabi grew up in Whittier, Calif., and attended Cal State-Fullerton before moving to New York City in the 1980s. There, he was a contemporary of Jean-Michael Basquiat, and, like many of his peers, he idolized Andy Warhol. Kostabi, though, seized upon Warhol’s “factory” sensibilities and the idea of multiple artist revenue streams, and after a measure of personal success, created a system whereby he oversaw the creation of art, and signed his name to canvasses, but did little if any of the actual work. (You know, kind of like the painter version of Ron Bass*.) After a near-bankruptcy in the ’90s, Kostabi continues in this vein to this day, while also harboring cracked visions of taking his terrible public access cable game show national.

Physically, with his long face, sunken eyes and pinched jaw, Kostabi resembles the ruddy-complexioned theoretical offspring of Nick Swardson and Richard Grant. An egomaniac with perhaps autistic or social disorder leanings of some sort, he’s not really a willing interviewee, but Sladek is wily enough to capture the essence of his subject in glancing fashion, via certain conversations with friends (where he explains how fame, in his view, is the equivalent of love) and one drunken encounter. All of the background material gives the film a convincing mooring, and Kostabi is an interesting enough character that even if he remains a bit unknowable he’s still in large measure fascinating to watch, given his various detachments from reality and the fact that he’s still experienced so much success. For Los Angeles audiences, Con Artist bows this week exclusively at the Laemmle Sunset 5. For more information, click here. (New Yorker/Plug Ugly/Acme/Room 5/Ovation, unrated, 84 minutes)

* – allegedly

Slither writer-director James Gunn channels at least a pinch of the soul-searching presumably born of his own off-screen divorce into Super, a self-reflexive, character-based, superhero spoof passion project that has some colorful moments but doesn’t fully and smoothly embrace the provocative nature of its premise.

The Office‘s Rainn Wilson stars as Frank Darbo, a fry cook and sad-sack loser who goes into an emotional tailspin when his ex-addict wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) slips up in her recovery and takes up with the sleazy Jacques (Kevin Bacon). Determined to both win her back and, vaguely, defend the sullied natures of right and justice, Frank works up a costume and starts parading around as Crimson Bolt, cracking offenders over the head with a wrench and spitting out awkward rejoinders like, “Shut up, crime!” Along the way he picks up a sidekick in the form of a spritely comic book store employee, Libby (Ellen Page), who’s sexually charged up by his vigilante ways.

Gunn seeds his movie with some weird, surprising and/or intense moments, but grossly overestimates the innate charm and hold of certain story strands. He’s also a subpar director, even working with obviously limited means. A kind of shrugging, slapdash, just-good-enough ethos — a residual effect of Gunn’s Troma days — lingers here, unfortunately. A tighter, even more emotionally inquisitive script and either more florid, over-the-top or entirely deadpan direction would have benefited this material, and taken it places its premise seems to augur. As is, however, the movie is half-sketched. Still, Page’s gleefully deranged performance — so beautifully unsafe, and lacking in preciousness — helps make Super a somewhat interesting misfire. (IFC Films, R, 96 minutes)

Eschewing the expectation that he perhaps stick to cranking out hand-wringing dramas of uptight manners, Atonement and Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright veers in a surprising new direction with the revenge thriller Hanna, which courses with an unflagging, forward-leaning vigor. The engaging results, which feel like a bold, purposeful step toward modernity on his part, show Wright has a good instinct for melding the dynamics of a more conventional piece of pop action entertainment with something a bit offbeat and barbed. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Focus, PG-13, 111 minutes)

Sent into the body of a commuter and tasked via a secret governmental program with repeatedly living out the same eight minutes leading up to a terrorist-triggered train explosion outside of Chicago, military helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) must balance his mission training with a growing sympathy for fellow traveler Christina (Michelle Monaghan). With the possibility of a second-wave attack looming on the horizon, a wildly disoriented Colter must gather clues and attempt to identify the culprit, while also trying to pry important details out of his remote handlers (Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) as to his own condition.



Penned by Ben Ripley, Source Code slots comfortably within a grand Hollywood tradition of science-fiction-tinged, high-concept techno-thrillers impatient with the nitty-gritty specifics of their own conceits (“Every second explaining things puts more lives at risk!” one character barks). So it requires you make a little leap with it, to suspend disbelief. And yet it’s a leap so easy to make, and completely worth taking.

Director Duncan Jones, taking a step up in budget from Moon, orchestrates the balance between the movie’s considerable effects work and human stakes with assurance and skill. Casting matters hugely in an endeavor like this as well, and Source Code‘s quartet of main players is more than up to the task of breathing multi-dimensionality into the material, enlivening replayed interactions and layering them with subtle but substantive and realistic physical differentiations. The result is a lively thriller that deftly acknowledges its inherent ridiculousness, but still manages to tickle the brain while also quickening an audience’s collective pulse. (Summit, PG-13, 103 minutes)