For a high concept piece of fluff, “Lottery Ticket” sure has a cumbersome conscience. A feisty urban comedy bloated with feeble social messages, the picture carries a decent tune until it feels the need to preach to the audience, hoping to indulge the fantasy of easy money while providing all the guilt that comes with the loot. It’s understandable that producer Ice Cube would want to recreate his “Barbershop” success, but “Lottery Ticket” can stand up straight without getting dizzy.
“Mao’s Last Dancer” recounts the remarkable story of Chinese ballet superstar Li Cunxin, who was plucked from poverty at a tender age to study dance, not fully comprehending the extraordinary journey he was about to embark on. A delicate, well-acted endeavor, director Bruce Beresford nevertheless feels compelled to underline every last emotion, escalating the melodrama and obscuring the grit and toil of Li’s journey, turning an engaging bio-pic into something more blandly approachable.
After their cancerous 2008 effort, “Disaster Movie,” I honestly thought that would be the end of filmmakers Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, two poisonously unfunny fellows who personally suffocated the parody genre with lethal features such as “Epic Movie,” “Date Movie,” and “Meet the Spartans.” Because Hollywood is always on the hunt for a fast buck, the prankster pair has returned with “Vampires Suck,” another unreasonably amateurish spoof film, only now their sights have been trained on the easiest target imaginable: the “Twilight” saga.
For a film that runs 135 minutes, I walked away from “Eat Pray Love” with a pack of unanswered questions. Surely such an unnecessarily extravagant running time could supply some sense of the lead character and her pesky inability to control…I mean, understand the men in her life. A story that celebrates selfish behavior without ever examining the necessity of self-worth, “Eat Pray Love” is a hornet’s nest of irrational behavior, wrapped up snugly in a smug, shallow, and diseased feature film that does a masterful job brainlessly wiggling around for an interminable amount of screentime.
“Get Low” is a film that sneaks up on the viewer. Not exactly a comedy, not quite a full-blooded drama, it’s a mood piece about grief and absolution, staged with a wandering, observational quality from gifted director Aaron Schneider. Maybe too cheerless for its own good, the picture retains the force of its outstanding cast, who feel around the textures provided by the filmmaker, submitting career-best work with a screenplay that encourages their immeasurable gifts for dramatic interpretation.
With “The Expendables,” co-writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone looks to take viewers back to the action cinema heyday of the 1980s, to a time when muscle men picked up ridiculous weapons and slammed bad guys around with ease. Taking that problematic aesthetic and giving it new life in 2010, Stallone has revived his machismo mojo, making “The Expendables” a gonzo moviegoing experience teeming with perfectly modulated absurdity and gifted an ensemble of charismatic badasses the screen hasn’t seen in years.
When director Edgar Wright decides to make a movie, it’s time to rejoice. After the inventive “Shaun of the Dead” and the whiplash “Hot Fuzz,” the filmmaker has earned his hotly anticipated status. Unfortunately, there’s a crushing disappointment to find his latest, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” lacking Wright’s deft comedic timing and rounded characterization. It’s an overstuffed miscarriage, spending 110 minutes skimming source material that was spread out over six very patient books. What’s the challenge here? What’s the point of taking something so incredibly dense and head-spinningly idiosyncratic and turning into a colorless highlight reel of cult references and high kicks? This whole endeavor seems like such a colossal waste of time and talent.
Released around the world in 2006/2007, Studio Ghibli’s “Tales from Earthsea” finally makes an appearance on U.S. shores, after some contractual mumbo jumbo with the SyFy Channel kept the picture in a state of limbo for an extended amount of time. Given a polish with an English-language voice cast and branded with a controversial PG-13 rating (a first for a Disney animated release), “Earthsea” is an impressive motion picture, but perhaps not worth the incredible wait it took to reach the West.
In 1985, director Joel Schumacher made a name for himself dramatizing the lives of the young and pouty in “St. Elmo’s Fire.” In 2010, Schumacher updates his take on the state of the youth union with “Twelve,” an unsavory piece of dreary, mindless ick from a director who can’t seem to get his act together these days. That is, if he ever had an act to begin with.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s not just a motto to author Nicholas Sparks, but the very key to his vast literary fortune. The architect of North Carolina soap operas, Sparks launches another granny shot with “The Last Song,” an absurdly formulaic tearjerker based around the aging appeal of star Miley Cyrus. It’s a fascinating attempt for the former Hannah Montana to edge away from her clownish Disney ways, but even Meryl Streep would be hard-pressed to make something stimulating out of Sparks’s paint-by-numbers storytelling effort.
The “Step Up” franchise (it burns my fingers to type that) spent two movies trying to dance its way into the hearts of audiences. “Step Up 3D” wants to do the robot right into your lap. Taking furious body movement and kindergarten scripting into a new dimension of exhibition, this latest sequel offers a novelty that immediately makes it the best of the series. It doesn’t take much to climb that mountain of recognition, but there’s a bit more pizzazz to devour here, helping to wipe away the ceaseless stupidity the production seems dangerously proud of.
It’s fitting that the Weinstein Company picked up U.S. distribution rights for the French comedy “The Concert,” as it falls right in line with the harmonious Euro imports they employed in the 1990s to dominate art-houses and, eventually, suburban multiplexes. A combination of feel-good sitcom antics and lush symphonic movements, “The Concert” is moderately tolerable sunshine cinema, perhaps best reserved for a moviegoing escape during a rainy afternoon.
After 2008’s “Doomsday,” I lost faith in writer/director Neil Marshall, who torched all the promise generated by 2005’s “The Descent” to make a tuneless, odious John Carpenter wank that thankfully few seemed interested in. “Centurion” returns the filmmaker to an intriguing gallop, taking on the challenge of a historical actioner, following battered Roman soldiers as they march into Hell. This being Marshall, a nimble foray into brawn isn’t to be expected; instead the filmmaker floods the film with blood and growls, creating a mighty clang of history and gore. It’s Herschell Gordon Lewis’s “I, Claudius.”
Teaming up for their third picture, star Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay have turned their attention to the conventions of the modern action movie. They’ve made a buddy cop picture, but in their own absurdist style (popularized in the hits “Anchorman,” “Step Brothers,” and “Talladega Nights”), shaping the explosive, bullet-happy mentality of a streetwise thriller into a raucous comedy, starring a guy known for reducing anything in front of him into utter ridiculousness and another guy who’s spent most of his career making unintentional comedies.
“Lebanon” is a war film of faces, not action. Here we find the ravages of combat communicated by the reaction of young men, soldiers facing their first true test on an ill-defined battlefield. They are caught inside of a sweltering tank, observing nightmares through scopes, participating in bloodshed out of duty, while they slowly succumb to the shock of war. Perhaps not the most effective dramatic statement, Samuel Moaz’s “Lebanon” remains a wholly unnerving depiction of battle zone madness.
Art versus personal invasion is the premise that drives the documentary, “Smash His Camera.” A portrait of celebrity photographer Ron Galella, the film confronts the compulsion of paparazzi culture, isolating the experiences of its most famous member to explore the business of blasting the famous, showcasing a man who craved as much attention as his subjects. It’s an irresistible, illuminating documentary on a subject once thought glamorous, but now often resembles madness.
The documentary “Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel” aims to rise above traditional pit stops of jiggles and giggles while recounting the tale of Playboy Magazine’s founder and editorial icon. This is an investigation into a man who consistently pushed the envelope in the name of freedom; a gentleman baffled by repression, who sensed an incredible opportunity to create a magazine that catered to the curious and the liberal, personifying a sexual revolution that lasted for decades. Yes, there’s nudity and plenty of footage exploring the heyday of Playboy parties, but the picture is more concerned with the man behind the ears, who built an empire while changing the world.
“Dinner from Schmucks” is the type of comedy that doesn’t understand the proper time to take a bow and exit the stage. It’s a funny picture that pays careful attention to the rituals of dumb guy cinema, but if there ever was a film that could’ve been a multiplex miracle at 80 minutes, it’s this movie. Instead, matters meander for nearly two hours, diminishing a pure expression of stupidity, carried out by a prepared, skilled ensemble.
There’s something painfully off about “Charlie St. Cloud” that causes it to miss most of the dramatic points it endeavors to make. It’s a well-intentioned tearjerker, but the film appears to have been whittled down rather harshly in the editing room, leaving a picture of little personality, but perceptible ambition.
It’s been nine years since the release of “Cats & Dogs,” and I don’t recall hearing anyone openly request a second installment. Fresh from the file of needless sequels comes “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,” which doesn’t quite sequelize as much as rework the central premise of household pets as international spies. Handed a fresh generation of special effects, a worthless 3D bath, and a new cast, “Kitty Galore” gets about as far as the original, working itself into a lather that generates zero laughs and even less excitement.
BRIAN ORNDORF 