HAPPILY EVER AFTER (NR) Run of the mill kvetching about a bunch of middle-aged guys feeling trapped by marriage, work and life in general, and compensating by fantasizing about sex (and, in some cases, acting out those fantasies). The film happens to be French, but it's very nearly as shallow and clichéd as what you'd expect in an equivalent tale from Hollywood, and is only slightly redeemed by the presence of the always engaging Charlotte Gainsbourg (Serge's daughter) and a few tasty cameos by the likes of Johnny Depp and Anouk Aimee. The blame for this self-indulgent time waster can mostly be laid at the feet of writer-director Yvan Attal, who also co-stars as Gainsbourg's philandering husband, who acquitted himself much better in the similarly themed but somewhat more energetic My Wife is an Actress. Also stars Alain Chabat, Emmanuelle Seigner and Alain Cohen. 2 stars.
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (PG-13) Although somewhat darker in tone than its predecessors, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is every bit as blockbusterific as the rest of the series, and, despite its long length, is designed for maximum efficiency. The new Potter adventure moves at a brisk clip, re-establishing old characters and introducing new ones while supplying an abundance of those purely fantastic flourishes that fans of the series have come to expect. Director Mike Newell pares away Rowling's gratuitous sub-plots and paces what's left beautifully, segueing from moments of light comedy and budding romance to sequences of unexpected intensity. The story is basic good-versus-evil stuff, but Newell and company present it in such fine style that we barely notice the empty calories. 4 stars.
HELLBENT (R) Despite being aggressively marketed as a "gay slasher movie," and despite nearly every one of its characters being in fact homosexual, Hellbent plays it surprisingly straight, you should pardon the expression, when it comes to its craft. Taking place on Halloween eve (arguably the most important date on the queer calendar), the movie follows a quartet of hunky revelers as they're stalked and picked off, one by one, by a buff, bare-chested dude in a devil costume. There's perhaps just a smidgen more character development here than you might expect, but Hellbent is more interested in being a competent genre flick than in coming off as clever or campy, much less subversive or original. The basic, time-honored slasher flick formula is followed closely here and, outside of the characters' sexual orientation, Hellbent doesn't seem remotely interested in screwing with that formula. 2.5 stars.
IN HER SHOES (PG-13) Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette play radically dissimilar sisters whose only common ground is a love for footwear, in this meandering, unfocused romantic comedy from normally dependable director Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, 8 Mile). Collette plays the plain but dependable sister while Diaz gets to smolder and twitch as the sexy but dysfunctional bad-girl sister, a terminally unemployed nut-job who sponges off her sibling and then sleeps with her boyfriend. To its credit, this is a chick flick that doesn't focus on the sisters' man troubles so much as on their relationship to each other, but the characters and their conflicts are still pretty broadly drawn, and things soon become trite, then ridiculous. The responsible sister finds inner peace by getting in touch with her irresponsible side and quitting her well-paying, anxiety-producing job, while the ne'er-do-well sis straightens up, bonds with a gaggle of old folks (including her estranged grandmother) and, in her spare time, overcomes the heartbreak of dyslexia. Also stars Shirley MacLaine. 2.5 stars.
JARHEAD (R) Director Sam Mendes does an awful lot of rambling and posturing here, while showing precious little of the insight that elevated his American Beauty above its pretensions. Jarhead is a war movie where the war is barely seen. This might be his whole point — something about modern warfare being a largely technological exercise devoid of heroism or human drama — but that doesn't make the film any less dull. There's not much excitement, tension or depth as we watch a bunch of newly-minted marines go through basic training, clean toilets, talk about wives and girlfriends. The soldiers don't wind up seeing combat until the last 20 minutes or so, at which point we get a handful of arresting images of the killing fields of Kuwait, but not much else. The real war always seems to be happening somewhere else, and all the characters can do is complain about it. You might say that Jarhead is an anti-war movie — not in the sense that it's against war, but in that it almost deliberately seems to be going against the grain of what we expect a war movie to be. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Saarsgaard, Lucas Black, Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper. 2.5 stars.
