Ratings based on four-star system.
'The Men Who Stare at Goats'
Rated R
2 1/2 stars
A fun tone is undermined by disjointed storytelling in George Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov's romp based on Jon Ronson's amusing nonfiction book about the U.S. military's research into psychic warfare and espionage. First-time director Heslov crafts a hit-and-miss fictional narrative ornamented with some of the brighter anecdotes Ronson uncovered about efforts to create warrior monks who try to walk through walls or glare animals to death. Clooney plays a prodigy of this New Age militarism, with Jeff Bridges as his Dude-like mentor, Kevin Spacey as a psychic rival and Ewan McGregor as a reporter uncovering the story amid the war in Iraq. The movie opens with the promise of a Catch-22 or Strangelove-style satire, but while it maintains much of the book's drolly incredulous spirit, the dots of absurdity just don't connect that well. With "Star Wars" vet McGregor on hand, the repeated Jedi knight references are jarring.
'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire'
Rated R
4 stars
Director Lee Daniels assembles some of the unlikeliest ingredients — Mariah Carey, Mo'Nique, and a lead actress plucked from an anonymous casting call — to create a wondrous work of art. The film isn't easy to watch and will test your tolerance for despicable behavior as a long history of physical abuse and incest unfolds involving an illiterate, obese Harlem schoolgirl. Yet "Precious" — both the film and its grandly resilient title character — will steal your heart. Daniels crafts a story that rises from the depths of despair to a place of genuine hope. Gabourey Sidibe offers a phenomenal screen debut as Precious, who makes an utterly believable and electrifying rise from an urban abyss of ignorance and neglect. The normally lowbrow Mo'Nique delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Precious' viper of a mother, while great support is provided by Paula Patton, Lenny Kravitz and Carey in a small but honest role. This is great American cinema.
'Gentlemen Broncos'
Rated PG-13
1 1/2 stars
This latest comedy from the makers of indie sensation "Napoleon Dynamite" is so weird, so off, so simply wrong that even freakish nerd Napoleon would have a hard time lending it his catch word, "Sweet." The husband-and-wife team of director Jared Hess and co-writer Jerusha Hess, who followed "Napoleon Dynamite" with basically the same movie in "Nacho Libre," strain to mine another misfit story in like vein. Michael Angarano stars as an aspiring sci-fi writer whose story is stolen by his literary hero (Jemaine Clement). Clement is the lone highlight by virtue of being occasionally funny and not completely off-putting like the rest of the cast, which includes Jennifer Coolidge, Sam Rockwell, Mike White, Halley Feiffer and Hector Jimenez. The filmmakers wallow in such gags as explosive reptile defecation, gonad theft and projectile vomiting, delivering a chaotic, infuriating mess that will challenge the most-devoted of the "Napoleon Dynamite" faithful.
'House of the Devil'
Rated R
2 stars
Filmmaker Ti West's homage to low-rental 1980s horror scores points for restraint and attention to detail but defaults when the mortgage comes due with a bloody, pointless, uninspired climax. Newcomer Jocelin Donahue stars as a college sophomore on a baby sitting job for a creepy couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) who have devilish plans for her on the night of a lunar eclipse. The movie is 90 percent setup, some of it acutely observed and starkly evocative of the decade in which it's set, yet much of it as dull and forgettable as the big-hair '80s. At the end, when up jumps the devil and his followers at last, West's moderation vanishes in an instant, the movie collapsing into noisy, splotchy, gory mayhem, clumsily stitched together and obscured by strobe-light effects. For mood, it's a faithful flashback, but the movie's about as scary as something you saw again and again way back when.
'Amelia'
Rated PG
2 stars
Considering the risks Amelia Earhart took, losing her life in the call of aviation, Hilary Swank and director Mira Nair don't put much on the line in their film biography of the pioneering flyer. This is a biopic on autopilot, providing the facts but not the passions of Earhart's achievements, her marriage to her promoter (Richard Gere) and her fling with a fellow pilot (Ewan McGregor). Swank's Earhart repeatedly tells people how she has to fly or die. Yet when she's in the air, she's as stiff and closed-off as a passenger stuck in a middle coach seat on a trans-Atlantic flight. As Earhart, Swank exposes what could be her prime limitation: She doesn't have much range. Swank can tear up the screen in raw street drama such as "Boys Don't Cry" and "Million Dollar Baby," for which she earned Academy Awards. She's miserably out of her skin as the stately Earhart, though — drab, distant, utterly uninvolving. In choppy fashion, the movie intercuts between Earhart's doomed last flight around the world in 1937 and the achievements leading up to it over the previous decade — her Atlantic and Pacific crossings, her mentoring of female flyers, her efforts to establish regional passenger shuttle service. Lovely aerial images, lush landscapes and rich sets and costumes are the film's lone strengths. In almost every other regard, "Amelia" veers off course.
'Antichrist'
Not rated
1 1/2 stars
To say that this film is shocking would suggest that it's effective. Certainly shocking us is Lars von Trier's point — or we can assume it is. Doing so at least gives us something to hold onto when most of the movie seems so maddeningly pointless. The Danish writer-director has said this domestic thriller was the result of working through a bout of depression, a script he wrote as a therapeutic exercise. Watching "Antichrist," though, that's hard to believe; so much of it seems so gratuitous, it's difficult to imagine it would be helpful to anybody, even its creator. Among its imagery: a little boy falling from an open window to his death; graphic, sadistic sex; bloodied woodland creatures; and genital mutilation. And as it builds to its violent crescendo, it only becomes more hilariously absurd. By now you may have heard about the moment in which an injured fox, lying in the tall grass of a forest, lifts its head and growls out the cryptic warning, "Chaos reigns!" It's deservedly drawn both laughs and boos, and even become a bit of a catch phrase among film aficionados. As for the story itself, well, it's pretty dull for the most part. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a married couple known only as "He" and "She," pretentiously. Following the death of their young son in a freak accident — which they couldn't prevent because they were too busy having artfully photographed bathroom sex — they retreat to their cabin in the woods to work through their guilt and grief. This consists of long, achingly empty stretches punctuated by moments of shrill screaming and brute violence.
'Astro Boy'
Rated PG
2 stars
A shiny hodgepodge of "Pinocchio," "WALL-E," "Oliver Twist," "Gladiator" and "Superman," with some obvious visual touches taken from "The Iron Giant." As its own entity, though, it's pretty forgettable. Director David Bowers ("Flushed Away"), who co-wrote the script with Timothy Hyde Harris ("Kindergarten Cop," "Space Jam"), gets some help from a lively voice cast that includes Freddie Highmore, Kristen Bell, Bill Nighy and Nathan Lane, and the Art Deco look of the film's architecture has a classic appeal. But it almost feels like there are too many movies competing simultaneously in what is essentially a pretty standard tale of good versus evil. The jokes aren't all that funny and the father-son relationship between Astro Boy (Highmore) and brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma (a typically lethargic and curiously cast Nicolas Cage) isn't all that heart-tugging. There's a lot going on, but none of it ever really grabs you. (Along those innocuous lines, the movie is sufficiently bright and colorful for kids of all ages without ever being too scary.) Based on a Japanese comic book from Osamu Tezuka that began in 1951, "Astro Boy" traces the origin of a young superhero. He began life as a regular kid named Toby, but after dying in a freak lab accident, his father brings him back to life as a robot containing Toby's personality and memories (as well as some tricky gadgets and powers that are never explained). Once Dr. Tenma realizes this robot version of his child is inferior and ends him away, Toby flees the floating, gleaming Metro City and lands back on the now-trashed Earth below, where he becomes known as Astro Boy.
'Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant'
Rated PG-13
1 1/2 stars
It's getting downright batty trying to keep all these vampires straight. The latest entry to the overcrowded trend is "Cirque du Freak," adapted from a 12-book series, and with quixotic dreams of a movie franchise of its own. The film characterizes itself from other vampire fare in its outlandishness. Here, vampires are no longer enough; we now get a freak show complete with a bearded Salma Hayek, a super-tall Ken Watanabe and a vampire John C. Reilly. Two high school kids (Chris Massoglia, Josh Hutcherson) stumble upon the group. With remarkably little thought, they cast their lot as vampires, each taking different sides in the war between vampires (who merely sedate their prey) and vampaneze (who kill). Reilly (a fine actor out of place here) takes being a vampire seriously, but his best bits are his amusing scoffing at conventional vampire traits. He pronounces, "Vampires don't need cell phones!" Director Paul Weitz ("In Good Company," "About a Boy") should have known that's what this should have been: an out-an-out comedy. Instead, "Cirque du Freak" might be the single most overstuffed film of the year: a high school film crossed with a vampire film crossed with a mutant film crossed with Willem Dafoe cameos. PG-13 for sequences of intense supernatural violence and action, disturbing images, thematic elements and some language.
'Law Abiding Citizen'
Rated R
1 star
The real mystery here isn't how Gerard Butler's character manages to wreak explosive, bloody havoc on Philadelphia while confined behind the walls of his jail cell. What's truly baffling is how the star of the hugely successful "300" has managed to make yet another questionable movie choice since then, following "P.S. I Love You," "The Ugly Truth" and "Gamer." (To be fair, "RocknRolla" was a good fit for him and it was a lot of fun.) This time, Butler serves as a producer and stars as Clyde Shelton, whose wife and young daughter were murdered during a home invasion. Ten years later, he's out for revenge — not just against the killer who went free after testifying against his accomplice, but against the entire judicial system. His ultimate target is Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx, looking bored), the slick prosecutor who cut that deal a decade ago to maintain his high conviction rate. But before going after Nick, he takes out everyone around him in ridiculously elaborate fashion. Clyde's impossible omniscience and his sadistically convoluted game-playing feel like a rip-off of the "Saw" franchise, and the banter he shares with Nick makes "Law Abiding Citizen" seem like a poor man's "Silence of the Lambs." His tactics become so predictable, you know the second you hear a ringing cell phone or see a character climb into a car that something is going to get blowed up real good. F. Gary Gray ("The Italian Job") dully directs Kurt Wimmer's over-the-top script with a misty, bleached-out aesthetic that only makes the movie feel like more of a drag.
'New York, I Love You'
Rated R
2 stars
The title is "New York, I Love You," and it's a collection of shorts intended as one big love letter to the city and all the romance it has to offer. The result is a curiously bland hodgepodge — not terribly evocative of such a famous place, and not all that inspiring in the connections it depicts. Following 2007's "Paris Je T'Aime," this is the second in a planned series of "Cities of Love" films. Each features a group of eclectic directors and well-known actors coming together to concoct brief clips. Inherently with such a structure, you're going to have hits and misses. Not all the segments are going to work for every viewer. But whereas "Paris Je T'Aime" had a healthy number of hits, "New York, I Love You" is the unfortunate opposite. The challenge presented to filmmakers was intriguing, too: Each of them had two days to shoot, then a week to edit. Each short had to take place in an identifiable New York neighborhood. And each had to involve some kind of love encounter. Except for Shekhar Kapur's entry, with its dreamy, ethereal light, nearly everything in "New York, I Love You" has a dark, gritty sameness that feels smothering. Aside from references to Central Park and the Dakota building and restaurants like Balthazar and Pastis, "New York, I Love You" could take place in any bustling, densely populated metropolis. Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Joshua Marston and Natalie Portman are among the directors; James Caan, Orlando Bloom, Julie Christie and Robin Wright Penn are among the actors.
'Where the Wild Things Are'
Rated PG
3 stars
The book is just 339 words long, but in turning it into a feature-length movie, director Spike Jonze has expanded the story with a breathtaking visual scheme and stirring emotional impact. What keeps the film from reaching complete excellence is the thinness of the script, which Jonze co-wrote with Dave Eggers. The beloved and award-winning children's book, which Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated 45 years ago, still holds up beautifully today because it shows keen insight into the conflicted nature of children — the delight and the frustration that can often coexist simultaneously. With its warm lighting and detailed production design, "Where the Wild Things Are" remains lovingly faithful to the look and spirit of the book but functions assuredly as its own entity. Jonze also gets the feelings of fear and insecurity that the wild things of "Wild Things" represent, and he's taken the bold step of showing the creatures not through animation but rather by using actual people in giant, furry costumes. The monsters were voiced by an all-star cast and enhanced through digital effects to make the facial features seem more lifelike. And because talented character actors like James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara and Paul Dano had the benefit of voicing their roles on the same stage at the same time — rather than recording their parts independently of each other, which is standard practice — their interplay feels more organic. At their center is Max, played by 12-year-old Max Records, a lonely, misunderstood kid who runs off to the magical land where the wild things are and becomes their king.
— Associated Press
