Author: BO

Spending the last few years of his career trying to make family audiences adore him, Dwayne Johnson has elected to return to his action roots with the thriller “Faster.” Wonderfully sleazy in spurts, R-rated, and filled with asphalt-peeling car stunts, the picture has enough nasty attitude in the early going to inspire unexpected confidence in director George Tillman, Jr. The woozy sense of sick doesn’t make it to the very end, but it carries the picture far enough to extract a faint recommendation, especially to anyone feeling nauseated by Johnson’s recent career choices.

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There’s one single moment during “Love and Other Drugs” that ushers in some much needed reality to the proceedings. It comes off as alien because it contains a genuine feeling of vulnerability, prominently sticking out in a film that drips with drab romantic comedy clichés and Penthouse Letter-style sexuality. If director Edward Zwick could’ve nurtured that moment for longer than a few measly minutes, this picture might’ve found a meaningful core. Instead, the filmmaker speeds on by, itching to return to the unpleasant, trivial business that forms the rest of this disappointing movie.

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The CG-animated “Tangled” is perhaps Disney’s most calculated effort since 1997’s “Hercules,” often caught begging for love from every demographic. It’s a gorgeously mounted motion picture with impeccable artistic flair, but there’s something rattling in the engine of this film that doesn’t sit right, a desperation that grows more insistent as the movie motors along. Disney magic gives the feature a satisfying lift, but the ride is rocky, caught between the lights of Broadway and the battering ram comedy tempo of a Looney Tunes production.

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Throughout his career, filmmaker Danny Boyle has taken chances. Some have worked (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “Sunshine”), others have failed (“A Life Less Ordinary”), but he’s remained a captivating, intrepid presence on the movie scene. “127 Hours” is perhaps his most astonishing work to date, bringing to the screen the staggeringly nightmarish true story of Aron Ralston, who found himself literally between a rock and a hard place as he fought for his life in the wilds of Utah for just over five days. It’s just Boyle, star James Franco, and a canyon filled with anxiety and delirium for 90 extraordinarily compelling minutes.

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An intimate thriller imbued with potent twists and turns, “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” is a sneaky creature, invested in a bleak mood of imprisonment that repels as much as it fascinates. While writer/director J. Blakeson can’t fill out the entire feature with delirious suspense, he executes a few superb surprises here, sold by a cast of three talented actors in various stages of gut-wrenching distress.

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With “The Next Three Days,” writer/director Paul Haggis steps into the thriller genre after losing himself to matters of the heart with films such as “Crash” and “In the Valley of Elah.” The change is needed, but the demands of drama have bent his sense of timing, leaving his new picture a perfectly stimulating jailbreak movie that doesn’t know exactly when to start or when to quit. Consistently entertaining, the picture nevertheless has a nasty habit of wandering aimlessly, disrupting the visceral extravaganza at hand.

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“Heartless” exists purely in visual terms. It’s an art project not meant to be understood or interpreted, but merely gawked at, with the filmmaker in question, Philip Ridley, creating a swirling, vicious depiction of grief and madness, heading in abstract directions that are easily appreciated but rarely satisfying. It’s a wicked film with convincing nightmarish imagery, but there’s no story here to cling to, making this abyss of torment rather easy to disregard.

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“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is at least 1/2 of a proper conclusion. The seventh book in author J.K. Rowling’s wizard phantasmagoria, “Deathly Hallows” has been chopped into two feature films to capture the full lung capacity of the material, and perhaps yank some additional box office coin along the way. But that’s cynicism, and there’s nothing cynical about this gorgeously crafted, perilous journey with three heroes who’ve grown up before our eyes over the last decade, iconically repelling evil with the support of a miraculous, focused production team. The first half of this final battle is a tonally unstoppable creature, blessed with a startling sense of stamina and grandeur to support the epic tale of a boy wizard facing a dire journey towards manhood.

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“Don’t Look Back” pairs two titans of the European film market: Monica Bellucci and Sophie Marceau. So, turn down the lights, kick back with a bottle of wine, wear something comfortable, and spread around a few candles. It’s time for some lovin’.

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When I viewed “The Golden Boys” during its limited 2009 theatrical release, I never imagined it was situated to be the first part in a planned trilogy of movies concerning the romantic woes of turn of the century Cape Cod residents. “The Lightkeepers” is the second chapter of this interminable saga from writer/director Daniel Adams, and while it’s a feature of commendable morality and casting accomplishment, the filmmaker once again submits a bloodless viewing experience slavish to retro dramatic ambiance, while lacking the directorial chops required to keep it all awake.

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It’s a tale told joyfully and told often, gobbling up film, stage, and audio adaptations with incredible regularity. Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella, “A Christmas Carol,” has been reworked and reheated time and again, and who could blame anyone for trying? Perhaps the perfect tale of rekindled morality set against the backdrop of the most enchanting of holiday seasons, “Carol” is brought back to life for another cinematic go-around, this time through the eyes of writer/director Robert Zemeckis and the efforts of his motion capture (mo-cap) animation tools. While shadowing Dickens’s work as much as it can, the latest “Carol” takes a bold technological leap forward, permitting a newly abstract take on a perennial saga of remorse.

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Grief, death, and rusty scissors collide in Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist.” A metaphysical sojourn with cinema’s loudest spoilsport, the picture stuns and sickens, almost daring viewers to keep watching as it articulates the ravages of the unwound mind, filling the frame with demented acts of unspeakable violence and deeply considered thematic stimulation. For fans of Trier, “Antichrist” is a return to his once irresistible provocative appetites, shamelessly exploiting suffering and misogyny to generate the outrage that fuels his daydreams (and bank accounts). It’s a pitch-black torrential downpour of pain, and should only be approached by those willing to allow Trier 100 precious minutes to play his madcap mind games.

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With “The Chosen One” (shot over three years ago), Rob Schneider makes a valiant attempt to ditch his clownish persona and attempt something substantially dramatic. It’s an exciting move for the actor, best known for his sidekick stints in increasingly rancid Adam Sandler movies, trying to take on material that demands a true test of his thespian skills. This is not a very enlightening picture, but instead of a flaming wreck promised by the film’s troubled production history, “The Chosen One” is merely a mild failure, trying urgently to attain spiritual significance via an actor who’s made a career out of puerile slapstick.

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Alien invasion movies don’t need an excessive amount of encouragement to succeed. Sure, the finest features put in the time and effort to give audiences a rowdy ride of chills and spills, but as long as aliens furiously attack and some screamy humans are dutifully riled up, basic genre requirements are taken care of. “Skyline” seeks to prove that theory wrong, taking an enthusiastic premise of intergalactic war and reducing it to glimpses of chintzy CGI-laden chaos sandwiched between lengthy stretches of tedious, amateurish dramatic filler.

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Director Stephen Frears has spent most of storied career selling tales of cheeky behavior involving miserable folk, occasionally darkened with a devious sexual edge. “Tamara Drewe” offers the filmmaker a shot to hone his gift of social disruption, galloping forward with a merry-go-round tale of betrayal, deception, and lust. Overlong, but humorous and spotlessly performed, “Tamara Drewe” is an appealing web of discontent, given a dry Brit twist and some needed immoral sway.

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It’s the 1990s all over again with “Unstoppable,” a high concept thrill ride featuring all the trimmings that made director Tony Scott such a hot action commodity over a decade ago. It’s completely brain dead, but one heck of a whirl, blasting through the screen with a dedication to blistering pace that immediately scrapes away the troubling dead spots of the script. Big, dumb, and loud, “Unstoppable” is a marvelous popcorn thriller, crafted in an almost passé style that recalls Scott’s more electrifying, white-knuckle efforts from the past.

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Observed from afar, “Fair Game” comes across as another drab, fact-based political thriller, running through a tiresome routine of white men in suits making sour faces and speaking with slippery Washington tongues. And the film is exactly that in spurts, but it’s also a Doug Liman picture. The man who gave the world “The Bourne Identity” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” makes a valiant effort to take the provocative story of Valerie Plame and give it an elastic thriller overhaul, turning every corner of the tale into an opportunity for conflict. A tiring, overlong investigation of betrayal, “Fair Game” manages to nail a few heated high points, but not enough to combat the dramatic limitations of the source material.

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