“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.
I wouldn’t classify “The Extra Man” as particularly motivated, but it definitely reaches for a level of eccentricity that’s just barely within its grasp. It’s a character piece, adapted from the novel by Jonathan Ames, delivered in an iffy fashion from filmmakers unsure of what they hope to achieve from such roving storytelling. Still, there’s a satisfying range of actors presented here who don’t exactly provide comfort, but they have a heck of a time feeling around the film for peculiar character beats.
Attempting to balance the cerebral with the suspenseful, Alex de la Iglesia’s “The Oxford Murders” is a wonderfully compelling mess of a movie. It’s tricky trying to bond Hitchcockian flair with lecture hall semantics, but the director works his tricks with ace visual consideration. However, there are gaps in characterization that are too wide to comfortably leap, with more attention paid to the homework of the plot than its human appeal.
“Ramona and Beezus” isn’t a very apt title for this picture, but I suppose it handles better than “Ramona and Every Damn Person She Knows.” A bulky screen adaption of author Beverly Cleary’s most enduring character, the picture simply doesn’t know when to quit, hitting a few bright spots of charm and harmless tomfoolery before its gets lost, turning a cute family film diversion into a modest endurance test.
“Salt” is a tremendous load of action hooey, but unlike other action hooey, this action hooey has the sense to keep matters moving along at any cost. An adrenaline shot of international spy games, “Salt” convinces more with its sheer velocity than its enigmatic story, which is positively alien in matters of logic, physics, and hypnotic characterization. It’s a big, barreling popcorn adventure lugging around one element that helps to sustain its entertainment value and enhance its screen magnetism: Angelina Jolie.
A quasi-sequel to his 1998 masterpiece, “Happiness,” “Life During Wartime” follows writer/director Todd Solondz down his preferred path of psychological deterioration and perversity, only this time the monsters of suburbia have returned in search of forgiveness. The real issue here isn’t one of atonement, but how much longer can Solondz keep making the same motion picture. Despite newfound political trimmings and an impeccable eye for composition, “Life During Wartime” can’t help feeling discouragingly conventional for the gifted filmmaker.
“Operation: Endgame” highlights a type of showoff screenwriting that wows producers and pulls in talent, but rarely makes much of an impression once all the elements are put together. Ostensibly a tale of spy beats spy, this violent picture appears to lust for some form of outward importance or daring political stance, but the reality is a ragingly unfunny black comedy with lifeless stunt work and a cast stuck in cruddy improvisational mode, floundering mightily while preparing for death. It’s too bad they don’t all buy the farm in the first five minutes and save everyone the trouble of watching this film.
With the rabid success of shows such as “Glee” and “American Idol,” it makes sense that someone with a few bucks in their back pocket would come along to make an “inspirational” film about the lust for musical stardom. However, I wasn’t expecting a weirdo motion picture like this. “Standing Ovation” is a low-budget effort to meld the exhilaration of performance with the squeals of tweendom, throwing an impressive amount of oddity into the picture to make it stick. It’s amateurish, woefully acted by a majority of the cast, and features music even Miley Cyrus would be embarrassed to sing, but it’s certainly kooky. Compellingly so at times.
Minimalism is wielded masterfully in Lance Daly’s “Kisses,” an unexpectedly tart juvenile drama that trusts in the emotional purity of life. Short (70 minutes) but keenly aware of economic filmmaking decisions, the picture is a mood piece in the vein of a Ken Loach or Shane Meadows experience, though coated with a more musically poetic touch that assists in the picture’s lopsided hold on whimsy.
“The Kids Are All Right” is a striking film, though not due to any type of emotional hurricanes or drastic turns of fate. It’s frequently mesmerizing in the manner it observes a longstanding domestic commitment, following a married couple through the rigors of parenting teens, the strain of intimacy issues, and the irritation of habits. Writer/director Lisa Cholodenko brilliantly observes a homestead rocked by insecurity and complacency, making a vital, emotionally sound statement on the fragility of feelings and the strength of commitment, regardless of sexual orientation.
Huffing only the finest Coen Brothers fumes, “The Square” is a cracking Australian thriller that packs a staggering left hook. Dire, frantic, and unfailingly engaging, the picture marks the feature-length directing debut of former stuntman Nash Edgerton, and I hope there are plenty more movies to come from this fellow. He has an incredible knack for the genre and terrific eye for casting, shaping this outwardly mild picture into a rowdy ride of volatility and underhanded happenings.
Between “Batman” movies and taut thriller exercises such as “Insomnia,” writer/director Christopher Nolan likes to muck around with the minds of his audience. He enjoys the sport of deception, poking around the confines of unreality to fashion complex illusory puzzles that demand the utmost moviegoing attention. You’d be a fool to even blink. “Inception” is Nolan’s Fat Man mind-bomb; it’s a lavishly byzantine thriller, dripping with layers upon layers of subconscious excavation, attempting to wrap viewers up in a heist-like adventure to help swallow the complex dreamscape machinations. It’s a bold, stunning feature of impossible technical virtuosity. It also has the tendency to be about as emotionally stimulating as a college lecture.
I’m starting to believe there’s a massive steel machine in super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s office, and, when he makes a movie, he feeds the pleasing results into the furious engine, which then takes whatever clicks wonderfully about the film and smashes it to pieces. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” began life as a riff on the iconic Mickey Mouse segment of “Fantasia,” but what’s onscreen isn’t nearly as inviting or whimsical as the animated short. Instead, the feature is a winded stunt show, brought to its knees by overcooked writing and insistently fruitless attempts at comedy. Once again, Bruckheimer’s contraption takes a pure idea for adventure and kills the enjoyment by overthinking matters to a paralyzing degree.
“Predators” opens with man falling from the sky. We know he’s Adrien Brody, but we don’t know the character yet, introduced to the man as he free falls down to a jungle planet. Frantic, he searches madly for a parachute, baffled by the mechanism strapped to his body, watching as the planet below draws near at an incredible speed. It’s a pitch-perfect moment of disorientation and panic, setting an outstanding tone for this semi-sequel/rebootish/do-over motion picture, which endeavors to smash surprise back into a franchise squeezed dry by a studio that never quite understood what they had over the last two decades.
Universal Studios adds their great CG-animated hope to the summer moviegoing sweepstakes with the bouncy “Despicable Me.” A full-blooded cartoon in a genre that is typically bombarded with overt sentimentality, the picture is a mixed bag, missing bellylaughs despite rather aggressive attempts at humor, yet highlighting an intriguingly playful voice cast, who eschew their normal, moneymaking tones to match the film’s colorful world of supervillains and henchmen.
BRIAN ORNDORF 