The Secret of Kells

The Secret of Kells

An Irish abbey's 12 year old novice risks the wrath of his uncle, the abbot, and danger in an enchanted forest, all for the sake of an illuminated manuscript in The Secret of Kells, the dark horse nominee in this year's animated feature Oscar race. The stealth entry that beat out more high profile titles, such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Ponyo for the coveted fifth spot previewed ahead of its March 19 U.S. release and was seen recently at San Francisco's Mostly British Film Festival. A riff on medieval history, religion and Celtic mythology, the subject matter may be a tad obscure for American audiences, but the exquisite art and fairytale ambience will win over animation fans and children alike. With the Academy Award nomination considerably raising its profile, the Secret is out, and careful promotion could translate into a modest box office hit.

With Vikings on the march, bringing with them death and destruction, Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson) has dedicated everyone at the abbey at Kells, including his orphaned nephew Brendan (Evan McGuire), to building walls to keep out the invaders. That routine changes for Brendan when Brother Aidan (Mick Lally), a master illuminator, arrives from the Scottish island of Iona and takes up residency in the abbey's scriptorium. Fascinated by Aidan's life work, an intricately illustrated book of the gospels, Brendan defies his uncle, slipping past the wall with Aidan's little white cat, Pangur Ban, and into the forest to find the berries Aidan needs to manufacture ink. Monsters and black magic await him in the woods, but so does Aisling (Christen Mooney), a white wolf-fairy, who serves as his protector. Back at the abbey, Brendan discovers his own talent for illumination and dedicates himself to the craft despite his uncle's disapproval and the advancing Viking hordes.

The illustrations in The Secret of Kells are mostly handmade and almost defiantly 2D. The human characters and the cat have the aspect of cartoon characters of the 1960s or ’70s about them. It is the imagery that surrounds them that makes the film so very special. Taking inspiration from images in the real Book of Kells (a Celtic, illustrated version of the first four books of the New Testament), the movie uses the rich colors and vibrant imagery of an illuminated manuscript in many of its scenes. Other images are more ominous. The Vikings, for example, are monstrous in form, as frightening to look at as Abbot Cellach imagines. There are backgrounds, such as the wall, that look completely static, but look closely and often there is action independent of the main drama in the foreground of the screen.

Parents with small or sensitive children should be warned, there are some frightening scenes in The Secret of Kells, but there is also a strong air of enchantment, a hero that kids can identify with in Brendan and a fluffy little sidekick tots will adore in Pangur Ban. That Oscar nomination is not such a surprise, after all: The movie is a pure delight.

Distributor: GKIDS

Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Evan McGuire, Mick Lally and Christen Mooney

Director: Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey

Screenwriters: Fabrice Ziolkowski and Tomm Moore

Producers: Didier Brunner, Tomm Moore, Vivian Vanfleteren and Paul Young

Genre: Animation/Family

Rating: Unrated

Running time: 75 min.

Release date: March 12 ltd.

Colombiana

While most action films fall apart because they succumb to stupidity, Colombiana suffers most because it tries to be too smart. Luc Besson, having largely abandoned stateside filmmaking to carve out a cottage industry in France with film series like Taxi and The Transporter, aspires to export to Hollywood this next-generation version of The Professional. But as with many of his previous producing efforts, his focus on cool ideas and crazy set pieces overwhelms the effectiveness of character development and clear-eyed storytelling. With Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and Our Idiot Brother as its opening weekend competition, the film will have action junkies to itself, but expect this one to disappear quickly as more respectable—and better executed—fare storms theaters in September.
Zoe Saldana (Avatar) plays Cataleya Restrepo, a young woman who escapes Colombia for Chicago after a drug lord guns down her mother and father and points their machine guns at her. Tracking down her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) in Chicago, she forces him to teach her how to be a killer and grows up to become a formidable assassin. Despite committing more than 20 murders (that we know of), the FBI has only one link to her: a drawing of her namesake flower, which she leaves on the body of each victim. But after Cataleya's "calling card" is leaked to the press, her parents' killers renew their pursuit of her in full force—which is exactly what she wants. But when her bloodlust puts her new family in danger, she's forced to decide between exacting revenge and saving the rest of her loved ones from certain death.
According to interviews with Luc Besson and director Olivier Megaton (The Transporter 3), the script for Colombiana started out as a follow-up to Besson's The Professional, the acting debut of a 13-year-old Natalie Portman and the highpoint of Besson's career. Though Portman is hardly an imposing physical presence as an adult, it's easy to imagine a grown-up version of her pint-sized killer Matilda picking off bad guys with ruthless efficiency. But as Matilda's stand-in Cataleya, Saldana is a lithe and intimidating figure, and the change of locale and back story lends her determination a degree of credibility that would have likely been absent from that imaginary sequel, especially since The Professional was more hopeful than this cruel catharsis. Where Jean Reno's Leon protected Matilda from the hitman lifestyle, Cataleya's uncle breeds her into it, and that single change gives Saldana's violence a gratifying inevitability.
There's little more to expect from a film like this than some sexy ass-kicking, and on that scale it delivers most of the goods. Saldana takes to the fight choreography like she was born to it and Colombiana doesn't waste energy trying to make her unnecessarily super-heroic when it comes to squaring off physically with her opponents. She's a slender shadow who sneaks up and shoots—not a Salt-esque superhero—and the film embraces her limitations. And the story as a whole is almost refreshingly simple, straightforwardly chronicling the repercussions of Cataleya's determination to avenge her parents' deaths. But as is the case with many of Besson's stories, it fails to distinguish the difference between clever and smart, ultimately undercutting its own effectiveness by bogging the audience down in plot developments that add no narrative complexity.
The worst example of this sort of over-thinking is the process by which the authorities actually figure out the identity of Cataleya. If the miraculously advanced technology that allows the FBI to scan through a database of photographs and match them by mapping body parts like fingers and arms wasn't absurd enough, there's the chain of events that puts a photo of her in their hands: the domino effect requires screw-ups from her lover, his friend, and his friend's friend. I have no doubt this technology exists today. Still, it seems hard to believe that a random FBI agent would have it at his disposal, and then be using it at precisely the moment a picture of his suspect was uploaded to the worldwide police database. Such quibbles are of negligible importance when they're only interstitial material for the plentiful fight scenes, but the film's lackadaisical momentum leaves the audience with too much time to ponder the myriad ways in which it's implausible, if not plain ridiculous.
Like the other filmmakers in Besson's stable of directors, Megaton knows how to shoot action stylishly, and he certainly cultivates a love affair between his camera and the indisputably gorgeous Saldana. But he lacks the sort of commercial hunger—or maybe the creative ambition—to give a story like this the urgency or sense of spectacle that it requires. Instead, he achieves a glossy, familiar proficiency without adding anything extra to its cinematic arsenal. As a result, Colombiana lives up to the title of its would-be predecessor—it's professional—but it seems to share little else in common other than a leading lady who will unquestionably go on to bigger and better things, and a director who might not.

Distributor: Sony
Cast: Zoe Saldana, Michael Vartan, Callum Blue
Director: Olivier Megaton
Writers: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Producers: Luc Besson, Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama
Rating: R for violence, disturbing images, intense sequences of action, sexuality and brief strong language
Running time: 105 min.
Release date: August 26, 2011

Circumstance 2011

Circumstance

Coming off a strong run at festivals, where it picked up an audience award at Sundance as well as other prizes at gay-themed fests, Circumstance is a drama of depth, nuance and ambition. In it, two teenage girls explore their mutual attraction against the backdrop of a culturally oppressive Iran. The fiction feature debut for writer/director Marayam Keshavarz, an academic and documentarian, Circumstance demonstrates raw talent and a taste for big ideas. While the market for Persian ex-pats would seem a given, the film could do some business with gay audiences too, and based on its festival pedigree it could even potentially crossover to slightly broader arthouse crowds.
The basic tensions in the story are set up cleanly and efficiently: Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) is from a protective, wealthy family, but her schoolmate Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) is the daughter of dissidents, and faces continual hardships as a result. Their attraction for one another grows as they explore the city's underground youth culture of parties, dancing, drinking and drugs. When Atafeh's brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) returns home from drug rehab, he sets his sights on Shireen for himself and also falls in with the Morality Police, who enforce the cultural laws.
Keshavarz packs the film with small cultural details that might sail past Western viewers—example: women are not supposed to sing solo for others—but these details give the film an unmistakably authentic feel. Though it was filmed in Beirut for logistical reasons (it's nearly impossible to shoot in Iran), the locations communicate a vibrancy worth the effort.
The film's intimate moments are its best and Boosheri and Kazemy bring an unformed, youthful wildness to these close performances. (And for a high-minded film about cultural repression, there are some real window-fogging make-out scenes.) It's through the girls that the film best captures how Western cultural products influence perceptions all over the world. The girls lose themselves belting out "Total Eclipse of the Heart" alongside a television singing competition. Perhaps most tellingly, Keshavarz visualizes their fantasy lives as if from a glammed-up music video, glimpses of a mysterious women's-only nightclub and a gleaming seaside apartment for them to get busy in. Safai's Mehran is, by contrast, a character underserved by the story: when he uses surveillance equipment to spy on his sister, his character becomes villainous to a melodramatic degree, sticking out sorely from the film's otherwise nuanced portrayals.
There's a brief subplot involving some friends who want to dub Milk and Sex And The City into Farsi. The notion that all liberation movements are somehow linked, be it gay rights or broader political rights for all peoples, is particularly tantalizing but all too quickly cast aside. Meanwhile, it sounds odd to criticize Keshavarz for trying to pack too much into her debut, as if she was afraid that she might never have the opportunity to make another fiction film so she better get it all out now. Ambition like that can be tough to come by.
Even with its rough edges, Circumstance feels purposeful and put-together.
Distributor: Roadside Attractions/Participant Media
Cast: Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai
Director/Screenwriter: Maryam Keshavarz
Producers: Maryam Keshavarz, Karin Chien, Melissa Lee
Genre: Drama; Farsi-language, subtitled
Rating: R for sexual content and some drug use.
Running Time: 106 min.
Release Date: August 26 ltd.

prom movie

 Prom

A surprise for those expecting a watered-down High School Musical, Prom is a highly entertaining original movie that's funny, touching and real. The story of a group of kids surmounting the ordeal of the Best Night of Their Lives, this PG affair is a perfect family film that will benefit from word of mouth. High schoolers are the obvious target audience, but the picture could capture nostalgic adults as well, if Disney's lucky. Box office should be prom decent if it can withstand intense early summer competition and hang in theaters long enough to fill its dance card.

With 14 characters to follow, you need a scorecard to keep them straight. Prom has the feel of American Graffiti (if not that film's edge) and emphasizes the disparate types found in every school. Don't expect coked-out kids or gangs, Prom is interested in the ideal—not the reality—but within that Disney fantasy are recognizable and engaging characters. Central to them all is Nova Prescott (Aimee Teegarden), the honors student who prom heads up the Prom Committee and obsesses over the decorations—they rival the set for a major movie. She's teamed up with bad boy Jesse Richter (Thomas McDonnell), a rebel sentenced by the principal to prom preparations. After the guy she thinks she wants (Jonathan Keltz) stands her up, a slow-brewing attraction simmers between opposites Nova and Jesse, with complications aplenty prom.
In addition to this soap opera, novice writer Katie Welch's cheerfully cliché screenplay includes Nova's chatty best friend (Janelle Ortiz); the oh-so-cool popular couple destined to be prom queen and king (Kylie Bunbury and De'Vaughn Nixon); the sweet undiscovered girl next door (Danielle Campbell); the steady-as-they-go long termers who are having problems communicating (Jared Kusnitz and Gossip Girl's Yin Chang); the goofy guy who just can't get a girl (Nolan Sotillo); the nerdy comic who tells everyone he's got a hot date (Joe Adler); the friendly independent musician (Cameron Monaghan); and the nerdy big brother Lloyd (Nicholas Braun) whose freshman sister (Raini Rodriguez) is his prom consigliere helping him have at least one good high school memory.

Director Joe Nussbaum deftly weaves all these kids into the action with style and never dumbs-down the material. Unlike most films of its ilk, Prom is genuinely human and relatable, veering with ease between comedy and drama. The talented kids in the cast are all well-cast with standouts including the lovely Teegarden and Johnny Depp-lookalike McDonnell, who anchor the proceedings. Adults are minimally included but as Nova's over-protective dad,prom Dean Norris has a few nice moments.
When the prom streamers come down and the lights come up, we've all had great date night at the movies. Pass the punch.

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Cast: Aimee Teegarden, Thomas McDonell, De'Vaughn Nixon, Kylie Bunbury, Danielle Campbell, Yin Chang, Jared Kusnitz, Nolan Sotillo, Cameron Monaghan, Joe Adler, Janelle Ortiz, Jonathan Keltz, Nicholas Braun, Raini Rodriguez, Dean Norris.
Director: Joe Nussbaum
Screenwriter: Katie Welch
Producers:prom Justin Springer, Ted Griffin
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Rating: PG for mild language and a brief fight.
Running Time: 103 min.
Release Date April 29, 2011

Earthwork movie

Google images for "Stan Herd," and what pops up are pages of aerial photographs of fantastic , large-scale art that ranges from portraits to Pepsi cans to the abstract, all of it made from flowers and other plants. Dubbed "earthwork" by the artist, the work is designed so that it can only be seen from above and so ephemeral that photographs are the only proof it ever existed. Writer/director Chris Ordal's debut feature is not a documentary nor is it precisely a biopic. Instead the drama captures the artist at a pivotal moment in time. The winner of two awards Earthwork, including the audience prize at the 2009 Santa Fe Film Festival, arrives in theaters hoping to capitalize on star John Hawkes' new, higher profile. Certainly Hawkes' fans will want to see him demonstrate his range in a role that is the antithesis of his Oscar-nominated performance in Winter's Bone, but with limited distribution most will have to wait for DVD.
A short prologue shows how Herd connected with what would become his life's work when he was still just a child. Years later he's still at it, covering acres of Kansas farmland Earthwork with his art-but there's no money in it and he has a family to support. Through a friend he hears that Donald Trump is weighing proposals to add art to an empty Manhattan lot that he is not yet ready to build on. Desperate for the exposure, Herd offers to do the project for nothing, gambling that work he gets out of the project will erase his debt and put him on the road to success.
While part of the film deals with his loving but tense relationship with his wife Jan (Laura Kirk) and his wide-eyed interactions Earthwork with Trump's people and other upscale New Yorkers, the bulk of it is about the work. The field Herd toils in is adjacent to abandoned subway tunnels that homeless claim squatters' rights to, spending their days lolling in the lot. Herd befriends and recruits them to help him, his nonjudgmental amiability winning over even the most angry and suspicious among them Earthwork.
Ordal certainly picked the right moment of Herd's career to memorialize, because while the tale seems to follow a predictable path, it eventually veers off into a different direction. This is one of many satisfying things about it. Others include Hawkes' sweet performance as an artist with more heart than sense and supporting turns by Zach Grenier, James McDaniel and Chris Bachand as Herd's homeless pals. Herd himself designed the film's spectacular title sequence. However fictionalized, the glimpse Earthwork gives into Herd's working methods is fascinating Earthwork. Weighing against that is an uninspired visual style (made all the more glaring by the contrast with Herd's art) and a story that sometimes feels slight. But Ordal deserves a lot of credit for giving Hawkes a rare starring role and for celebrating the work of an unsung artist.

Distributor: Shadow Distribution
Cast: John Hawkes, Zach Grenier, Chris Bachand, James McDaniel, Laura Kirk, Brendon Glad, Sam Greenlee and Bruce MacVittie
Director/Screenwriter: Chris Ordal
Producer: Chris Ordal, Brendon Glad and Brad Roszell
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG for thematic elements, smoking and mild language.
Running time: 93 min
Release date: April 29 NY, May 20 LA

Secretariat

Secretariat

It may not break any new ground in the well-worn, horse racing movie genre, but this thrilling and inspiring entertainment about the legendary, 1973 Triple Crown winning horse should have audiences standing up and cheering. Obvious comparisons to Universal's multi-Oscar nominated money maker Seabiscuit aside, this magnificent tale of a true thoroughbred champion was, according to its producer, made for a third of the price of that 2003 sleeper, and actually tops it for pure emotion and strong production values. This makes Secretariat a good bet for box office success from the same ticket buyers who not only embraced Seabiscuit but also loved last year's surprise, sports-oriented hit, that little, unheralded $250 million grossing movie that won Sandra Bullock an Oscar. In terms of feel-good, old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing filmmaking, Secretariat IS this year's Blind Side. Disney ought to hit the exacta with this one.

Director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) and screenwriter Mike Rich (working from the book, Secretariat: Making Of A Champion) have indeed taken a page from The Blind Side formula book. These filmmakers have managed to make what on the surface would seem a predictable story about a well-known legend into a nail-biter about an uninitiated horse owner who bets it all on a colt that stood up the moment he was born. Smartly centering their story on the horse's owner, Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), and her partnership with down-on-his-luck trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), the filmmakers show us how Chenery risked all on the offspring of another great racer because she believed the horse could grab the Triple Crown. Should she fail on this long shot (no horse had done it in 25 years) her father's entire business would come crumbling down. Complicating matters for this mother of four and devoted wife are her brother (Dylan Baker) and husband (Dylan Walsh), who are convinced she is going down the wrong path and want to sell the horse to pay off estate debts. Although the outcome made sports history, the film remarkably manages to build mounting suspense right up to that incredible final stretch run at Belmont when Secretariat took off like the wind and won by 31 lengths.

Particularly impressive is veteran cinematographer Dean Semler's inventive cinematography that manages to put the audience right in the middle of the races like never before. Pulsating sound design by Benjamin L. Cook emphasizes the heavy breathing and the thunder of hoofs on the track. Beyond the technical innovations, Wallace stays true to biopic convention in the storytelling, turning out a solid family film that should please everyone, if not hardcore critics who may wince at the traditional trail the film takes.

As Penny Chenery, Lane is just wonderful, particularly in one-on-one scenes with the horse she calls Red and in detailing the dogged determination of a woman thrust into a male-dominated world, succeeding though her family said she wouldn't. Malkovich is terrific, stealing every scene he's in as the colorful trainer. Entourage's Kevin Connolly is sharp as a reporter. Adding warmth is Margo Martindale as Chenery's close friend and confidante, and Nelsan Ellis as the ever-optimistic stable worker who grows close with Secretariat. Otto Thorwarth plays legendary jockey Ron Turcotte close to the vest and rides in style. Veterans James Cromwell and Fred Dalton Thompson also have nice moments. Casting of the horses is flawless.

In Secretariat Disney has a fine fall entry, a truly exciting and beautifully made movie that makes a run for the heart.

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Kevin Connolly, Margo Martindale, Dylan Walsh, Dylan Baker, Otto Thorwarth, Nelsan Ellis, Fred Dalton Thompson.
Director: Randall Wallace
Screenwriter: Mike Rich
Producers: Mark Ciardi, Gordon Gray
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG for brief mild language
Running time: 90 min
Release date: October 8, 2010

Hereafter

Hereafter

With Clint Eastwood now entering his fortieth year as a director, we have enough experience with his films to see how every frame of Hereafter is his. Marked with his characteristic widescreen tableaux, roving yet unobtrusive Steadicam, unhurried pacing, intricately separated light and dark so layered it's almost cross-hatched and a natural tendency to err on the side of understatement, Hereafter sits easily alongside Eastwood's other works. Though Hereafter has plenty to give you pause: its plot flatly insists there's an afterlife without really doing much with the matter, metaphorically or otherwise, and its tri-pronged story flattens three interesting cities (San Francisco, London, Paris) into mostly generic backdrops. In many ways, it's his silliest film since 1990's The Rookie, only without the guilty pleasures of, say, watching Charlie Sheen burn down a bar using nothing more than his natural fire-breathing talents. Box office prospects are shaky; audiences may find the material too outré to take seriously while auteurist admirers, will have a field day, and the film's certainly zippier than much of Eastwood's past decade.

San Francisco psychic George Lonegan (Matt Damon) has retired from communicating with the dead to try to attain a normal life; he fends off the attentions of those seeking his help. In London, young Marcus (Frankie McLaren) loses his twin brother to a car accident and mopes about, trying to find a psychic to keep him in touch while his mother goes through alcohol rehab and his foster parents try to cope with him. In Paris, reporter Marie LeRay (Cécile De France), survived a tsunami (an early disaster-movie highlight, with much satisfying crunching of cars and slamming of waves) and near-death experience, becomes convinced she paid a brief visit to the afterlife and is determined to write about it, wrecking her career in the process.

All three stories will eventually converge, though Eastwood's in no real hurry to get there. The strands come and go in ten-minute clumps. Damon's is the most abrasive and engaging: he's in top form, and his awkward flirtation with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) is fascinatingly unresolved. All teeth and manic giggling, Melanie's function in any other film would be to come off as simperingly girlish and cute, but Howard transforms that into a manic frenzy that will take audiences genuinely off-guard once her back-story is revealed; the overused adjective "brave" applies to how little the performance offers audiences to like.

The other two stories are considerably more diffuse. Marie LeRay is boringly self-righteous and, for a political reporter, surprisingly naive about the realities of the publishing industry; her tale is also the one that focuses almost exclusively on "scientific evidence" of the afterlife, and her character is the most one-note. Frankie LeRay fares a little better, presumably because he's tasked with delivering some of the most embarrassingly amateur line readings of any mainstream film this young decade; his quest for connection, plowing through laughably phony psychics, is the film's only gesture toward skepticism.

All three plots converge in pleasingly low-key fashion at the London Book Festival, which is surely novel; Eastwood, as usual, avoids the highest highs ("I'm not going to go into a trance," Damon defensively explains at the climax), keeping things eminently watchable when they could be unbearable. Some of the material's risible: it's unclear if The Sopranos' Steve Schirippa is supposed to be playing for laughs as a stereotypically guido-ish Italian chef who does adult education classes, or if he's just cartoonish, but it's funny either way. Dicier still are invocations of 2005's London subway attacks of July 2010, here they're used for an especially dubious sequence of fantasy intervention: the context overpowers the scene.

Ultimately, Hereafter's virtues are all Eastwood's: that makes it a prime autuerist test case, which makes it a film for very specialized viewers indeed. Anyone who reads the above and finds it hard to stifle a laugh will probably want to stay away.

Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Frankie McLaren, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard, Thierry Neuvic and Derek Jacobi
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Peter Morgan
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Kathleen Kennedy and Robert Lorenz
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements including disturbing disaster and accident images, and for brief strong language.
Running time: 129 min.
Release date: October 15 LA/NY, October 22 WIDE

Red movie review

Red

Being old isn't fun, but movies where a group of old people gather together for one last adventure can be lots of fun. Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys and Martin Brest's 1979 comedy Going in Style, for example, are terrific. Then there's Red, in which 65 year old Helen Mirren and 73 year old Morgan Freeman play retired CIA agents who reteam after being targeted for assassination. It's gutsy to hand a modern action film to an AARP-ready cast, but if director Robert Schwentke really had guts, 56 year old John Malkovich would act 56 years old and the anemic script would find clever ways for our heroes to overcome their age disadvantage. Instead, bets are hedged with generic action and the casting of Bruce Willis, an actor whose only acknowledgments of aging have come with a wink, a nod and a forearm to the face. Red tries to have it both ways, then, and gets little of it right. Summit Entertainment should see okay theatrical numbers, followed by robust ancillary.

Red is based on a graphic novel, which doesn't mean much anymore because everything is based on a graphic novel. Someday there'll be a graphic novel based on another graphic novel and both graphic novels will result in terrible movies. Here, the Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner original is fatally compromised in the adaptation by sibling screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber, who also adapted the graphic novel Whiteout, making for an almost elegant circle of failure. The brothers (whose latest credit is the WTF?! adaptation of the board game Battleship) have little feel for crafting believable relationships, which becomes evident as the film's central coupling is introduced. Frank Moses (Willis) is a retired Black Ops super spy for the CIA whose only respite from loneliness is talking on the phone to far-away pension services operator Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). Frank's boring and lonely life gets a surprise jumpstart when he's ambushed by a cadre of assassins, barely escaping to Kansas City to rescue Sarah. It's a credit to Parker that she plays her underwritten role with hushed amazement and lip-biting sexual interest when others would have played it shrill and scared. After this initial set-up, though, Schwentke almost completely neglects their blossoming love in favor of Frank and Sarah driving around the country rounding up his old CIA buddies to discover why a pensioner is suddenly marked for death.

In a better movie, you'd chuckle at the ingenuity with which a 73 year old retiree turns back his pursuers, lead by CIA whippersnapper William (a stern Karl Urban). Figuring out ingenious ways for the group to use their old school training and hard earned wisdom to avoid death is, alas, too much work for this movie. That's what guns are for, so the fight scenes are mostly point and shoot, although it's rather sweet that we're expected to deem the sight of a nice older lady like Helen Mirren firing an enormous machine gun as cool. Schwentke (Flightplan) is not above the Zach Snyder-esque visual orgasms that have become the default style of fanboy filmmaking. Yet here the effects feel tacked on, like a lame attempt to jazz up a film that lacks zip (admittedly, there's a slick moment in which Willis steps out of his car as it spins out). The real sparkle comes from Malkovich as Marvin Boggs, a conspiracy-minded paranoiac living in an underground bunker that can only be accessed through a hollowed-out car. Whatever movie Malkovich feels he's acting in is more satisfying than the one we're watching, furthering his reputation for putting a whacked-out charge into any supporting role. Mirren and Freeman add measures of grace and gravitas to counterbalance Malkovich and Willis. Mirren especially harkens back to the bad old days of Cold War double-crossing when she's forced to revisit a long-ago affair with a Russian spy (the ever-awesome Brian Cox).

No one is expected to take any of this seriously, so Schwentke keeps things light: light on big laughs, light on unique action set pieces and light on any sense that these game but retired spies are too old for this crap. And the larger the story gets (eventually the Vice President of the United States gets looped in), the further it drifts from what we should be caring about: the characters and the comedy. It's too bad. After the failure of The A-Team¸ here was an opportunity for more seasoned pros to show the kids how it's done. Schwentke blew that chance with this forgettable comedy. If he feels the need, maybe he can brag about his ability to take a stellar cast and put them in a thoroughly pedestrian film.

Distributor: Summit
Cast: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox and Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Robert Schwentke
Screenwriters: Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber
Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian
Genre: Action/Comedy
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence and brief strong language.
Running time: 110 min
Release date: October 15, 2010

It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story

The third time is charmless for writers/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. With their adaptation of Ned Vizzini's young adult novel about a teenager's adventures in a locked mental ward, they step away from the resonant, character-driven drama of Half Nelson and Sugar into the realm of dramedy. These two most earnest of filmmakers are flummoxed by the demands of humor and despite the presence of a gifted cast headed by Keir Gilchrist and Zach Galifianakis, It's Kind of a Funny Story isn't very funny or much fun at all. Arriving in theaters a month after its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival with Focus Features' muscle behind it and the ever hotter Galifianakis' name on the marquee, this misfire may still make waves (however minor ones) at the megaplex.

It's Rocket Science meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when stressed teen Craig (Gilchrist) gets himself committed to a locked New York mental ward after confessing to thoughts of suicide. With the adolescents' wing of the hospital under renovation, kids are thrown with the adults, so while Craig meets lovely, depressed cutter Noelle (Emma Roberts), a girl his own age, he's also thrown in with the likes of Bobby (Galifianakis) whose outward bonhomie hides a deeply troubled soul. Most of the patients are more eccentric, including a former professor (Novella Nelson) with paranoid delusions, a Hasidic acid casualty (Daniel London) and Muqtada (Bernard White), Craig's despairing and deeply antisocial new roommate. It's a week of revelations for Craig, not just because he gets to view his youthful angst in comparison to people with real problems, but also because this boy who strived to get into the prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School discovers art and music.

Once again, Boden and Fleck prove themselves gifted when it comes to directing actors. Down to the smallest role, the performances are terrific and that could not have been easy because, given the exceptions of Craig and Bobby, the characters are pretty much caricatures. These are human cartoons with tics, not people. Also, like Craig, Boden and Fleck are strivers, this time out to pay homage to the late John Hughes, right down to a musical number plopped into the middle of the movie for no particular reason. This is the second film in less than a month to take its cues from Hughes, but where Easy A (the previous film to homage Hughes) was buoyant and assured, It's Kind of a Funny Story is leaden, its mix of comedy and drama uneasy.

Mental illness and locked wards are hard to get right in a comic setting. For every Harvey, there are far too many Crazy Peoples. It's Kind of a Funny Story is not as big a disaster as that Dudley Moore vehicle; it's heart is in the right place, at least. But with a pair of filmmakers uncomfortable with the nature of comedy and a story that works better on the page than on screen, a movie that struggles for laughs was inevitable.

Distributor: Focus Features
Cast: Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts, Viola Davis, Lauren Graham and Jim Gaffigan
Directors/Screenwriters: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Producer: Ben Browning and Kevin Misher
Genre: Dramedy
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic issues, sexual content, drug material and language.
Running time: 101 min
Release date: October 8 ltd.

I Want Your Money

I Want Your Money

If there's a lesson to be gleaned from a decade's worth of political documentaries - most of them left-wing in orientation - it is that they have virtually no impact whatsoever on the electoral process. That Michael Moore's scathing Fahrenheit 9/11 could soar to nearly $120 million on the very eve of George W. Bush's reelection effectively proves that such films do little but preach to the converted - far less effective at disseminating a message, it turns out, than the more traditional thirty-seconds of televised libel and slander with which the American electorate is traditionally more comfortable. But that hasn't dissuaded filmmaker Ray Griggs from throwing his hat into the ring, perhaps because Griggs believes that a right-wing message - especially one that aims to validate the concerns of the nascent Tea Party movement - has more persuasive power. Unfortunately, I Want Your Money amounts to little more than a Moore-style screed with a conservative bent and a less corpulent and sardonic host. Nonetheless, Freestyle Releasing should be able to squeeze solid numbers from limited screens at least through Election Day thanks to free publicity from conservative radio and television personalities.

For Griggs - an independent filmmaker best known for his universally derided 2009 narrative debut, Super Capers - the present political landscape basically boils down to a nagging left-wing contempt for the ideas of Ronald Reagan, a legacy which President Barack Obama is hell-bent on reversing. Amiable and well-spoken if not particularly charismatic, Griggs leads viewers through a methodical explication of this premise, all the while making the broader case that free market capitalism is morally right and economically vital as opposed to Obama's big government reliance on spending and social programs which, he counters, is fundamentally un-American and fiscally suicidal.

Keenly aware of the fact that the dusty details of supply-side economics are neither sexy nor particularly entertaining, Griggs relies heavily on both talking heads (conservative and libertarian standard-bearers like Mike Huckabee, Steve Forbes, economist Kate Obenshain, John Stossel and the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore) and a handful of crudely animated CGI cartoon interludes in which Reagan endeavors to school Obama in the finer points of free market economics while a supporting cast of ex-presidents and noteworthy politicos (Nixon, Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, both Presidents Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin) provide comic relief.

There is no doubt that Griggs has done his homework; unlike Michael Moore, whose rambling, disjointed Capitalism: A Love Story never quite seemed to grasp what capitalism actually is, Griggs goes to professorial lengths to define his terms and support his points, documenting the history of government interference in the economy from FDR to the present day with judiciously selected archival footage and statistics. The problem here - as with Moore's films - is that there are no opposing voices, no attempt to even feign the kind of objectivity that might have given the effort a semblance of real legitimacy. That's certainly not to take away from the interview subjects - Huckabee, Gingrich, Stossel, Forbes, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart and CURE President Star Parker are undeniably articulate spokespersons, but absent the kind of opposition with which gifted debaters score their most salient points, it's impossible to feel as though Griggs' film is anything but a giant Election Year puff piece. Not coincidentally, the film's most powerful and persuasive moment comes courtesy of archival footage of legendary economist Milton Friedman passionately rebutting Phil Donohue during a guest appearance on Donohue's television show in 1979 - precisely the kind of energy the rest of the film sorely lacks.

While his primary focus is Obama and his policies, it's fairly clear that Griggs is also taking aim at Moore and Capitalism: A Love Story. Several sections seem designed to specifically rebut portions of Moore's film, at one point attacking FDR's Second Bill of Rights address (which forms the climax to Capitalism) while later soliciting several interview subjects to make a religious case for free market capitalism (rebutting Moore's view that Capitalism is inherently un-Christian). Just as those sections were already tangential and ill conceived in Moore's film, so are they here.

It's the animated sequences, however, that most severely handicap the picture's ambitions - needlessly larded with unfunny jokes, forced parody and obscure references, they end up having precisely the opposite of their intended effect, distracting from the message at hand and reinforcing, rather than undermining, the stereotype of conservatives as stodgy, dusty and uncool.
Not that any of this will much matter to Griggs' target audience; like Moore, he means for his film to be polemical and one-sided. I Want Your Money is a call to arms for like-minded conservatives to take to the polls on November 2 in hopes of putting the nation back on the path of the ideals of Ronald Reagan. To this end, he has no trouble throwing the likes of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon under the bus - counterfeit conservatives need not apply. Neither, it seems, should anyone but the Fox News faithful; and that's a pity because it's a topic well worth debating.

Distributor: Freestyle Releasing
Director: Ray Griggs
Screenwriter: Randall Norman Desoto & Ray Griggs
Producers: Doug Stebleton
Genre: Documentary
Rating: PG for thematic elements, brief language and smoking.
Running time: 92 min
Release date: October 15 ltd.