OPENING THIS WEEK
MAX PAYNE (R) Mark Wahlberg takes on the title role as a DEA agent out to avenge his family's murder in this major release based on the popular video game. (Not reviewed)
THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES (PG-13) Read Curt Holman's review.
SEX DRIVE (R) The bar for teen-sex comedies has never been very high, but this one clears it and then some. A high school virgin in the Chicago suburbs (Josh Zuckerman) steals his brother's vintage Pontiac GTO and, accompanied by two pals (Clark Duke and Amanda Crew), sets off for Knoxville to meet an online girlfriend who's promised to initiate him sexually. The gags are as idiotic as you'd expect, but they consistently hit the bull's-eye (as part of his after-school job, the hero patrols the local mall in a giant doughnut costume, unaware that pranksters have appended it with a big dildo). There's also a very funny extended sequence at an Amish farm where the tradition of rumspringa — allowing adolescents to sample mainstream morality — leads to a crazed, bacchanalian barn party with live music by Fall Out Boy. Sean Anders directed, and Seth Green contributes a cagey performance as a jaded and sarcastic Amish farmer. —J.R. Jones
W. (PG-13) Oliver Stone tells the story of George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) from his youth as a spoiled, oblivious fuckup to his maturity as a spoiled, oblivious fuckup. This is a familiar and facile take on the president, attributing the Iraq war to his oedipal problems with H.W. (James Cromwell) and treating him alternately as an object of fun or pity, neither of which is particularly useful when he's still littering the world stage. This is most entertaining for its stunt casting of movie stars as the president's family and advisers; their performances range from the masterful (Richard Dreyfuss and Jeffrey Wright duking it out as Dick Cheney and Colin Powell) to the cartoonish (Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice). With Elizabeth Banks (as Laura Bush), Ellen Burstyn (Barbara Bush), Scott Glenn (Donald Rumsfeld) and Toby Jones (Karl Rove). —J.R. Jones
RECENT RELEASES
[RECOMMENDED] APPALOOSA (R) Ed Harris's performance as Jackson Pollock was probably the best thing about his directorial debut, Pollock (2000), and it's largely the performances that linger in his second feature, a solidly constructed traditional western that he and Robert Knott adapted from a Robert Parker novella. Harris and Viggo Mortensen star as hired guns, Jeremy Irons is the ruthless rancher they're tangling with, and Renee Zellweger is a mannerist standout as the promiscuous and unpredictable widow who wins Harris's heart. This isn't a visionary western like The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), but in its own quiet way it delivers the goods. —Jonathan Rosenbaum
BLINDNESS (R) I have to admire a mainstream movie that's so overwhelmingly bleak, but that's the only real distinction of this dystopian sci-fi drama by Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener). An epidemic of blindness paralyzes the world, and in one city armed guards herd the victims into a deserted mental hospital to fend for themselves. Conditions inside quickly devolve into Lord of the Flies-style savagery, as a compassionate doctor (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Julianne Moore), who's concealing the fact that she can still see, clash with a self-appointed dictator (Gael Garcia Bernal). Adapted from a novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, this ends on an uplifting and philosophical note, equating moral blindness with the literal sort, which you'll probably appreciate if you haven't already slit your wrists. With Alice Braga and Danny Glover. —J.R. Jones
BODY OF LIES (R) A disillusioned CIA operative (Leonardo DiCaprio) risks life and limb in Iraq and Jordan; meanwhile his pudgy, cynical boss back in the States (Russell Crowe) checks in with him on a telephone headset, coldly moving human chess pieces around as he ferries his kids to school and soccer practice. This anti-jihadist action thriller beats the pants off such previous efforts as Traitor and The Kingdom: director Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down) gives the eruptions of street chaos a visceral solidity, and screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed), adapting a novel by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, wades deep into the ethical quicksand of the war on terror. But like Scott's last picture, American Gangster, this is a little too slick and commanding for its own good; despite Crowe and DiCaprio's best efforts, their characters keep getting flattened by the steamroller narrative. —J.R. Jones
[RECOMMENDED] BURN AFTER READING (R) A pair of dim-witted gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) blackmail a disgruntled CIA analyst (John Malkovich) in this comedy from the Coen brothers. In contrast to their bleak Oscar winner No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading offers a hilarious parody of spy thrillers, replete with sinister music and shadowy figures following the protagonists. The Coens' fondness for anticlimaxes diminishes the film's potential punch, but the hilarious performances alone would make it worth seeing, including Michael Clayton co-stars George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. —Curt Holman
CHOKE (R) Character actor Clark Gregg adapted, directed and played a supporting role in this ineffectual version of the novel by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. Sam Rockwell plays a "historical interpreter" at an 18th-century village who struggles with sex addiction, tries to care for his demented mother (a charismatic Anjelica Huston) and chokes on food at restaurants so he can scam his rescuers. Choke retains Palahniuk's snide, aggressive voice and engineers some memorably dark gags, but the different plot threads never add up to much. —Curt Holman
[RECOMMENDED] THE DUCHESS (PG-13) This historical melodrama gets much of its kick from the fact that its 18th-century heroine — Georgiana Spencer, who married to become the Duchess of Devonshire — so closely parallels her 20th-century descendant Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. Played with nostril-flaring indignation by Keira Knightley, Georgiana foolishly weds the icy William Cavendish (Ralph Fiennes), who wants nothing from her besides a male heir. ("My wife is in labor!" he announces as she's led howling from a party. "I think this calls for a toast.") The duchess becomes a beloved figure in Britain, but the duke humiliates her by taking as his mistress her best friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster (Hayley Atwell), then conspires to squash her tit-for-tat romance with the progressive Whig politician Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). Adapted from a biography by Amanda Foreman, this is scandal-mongering fun that also lays bare the deforming power of the male aristocracy. Saul Dibb directed; with Charlotte Rampling and Simon McBurney. —J.R. Jones
EAGLE EYE (PG-13) Working in the finest tradition of brain-dead blockbusters, director D.J. Caruso (Disturbia) and executive producer Steven Spielberg take a script riddled with absurdities and throw millions and millions of dollars at it. Two Chicagoans who don't know each other (Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan) are coerced into carrying out a terrorism plot by a mysterious and omnipotent organization that communicates with them by cellphones, manipulates their movements with split-second timing and controls almost every electrical device in their path, from security cameras to traffic lights to the scrolling LED screen in a travel office window. Caruso and Spielberg probably thought they were reviving the paranoid style of '70s political thrillers, but their story is so implausible it barely provokes a tremor. With Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Chiklis, Rosario Dawson, and Anthony Mackie. —J.R. Jones
[RECOMMENDED] THE EXPRESS (PG) Rob Brown (Stop-Loss) gives a gracefully understated performance as Ernie Davis, the astonishing Syracuse University running back who flouted the unwritten gridiron rules of the Jim Crow south and gave the civil rights movement a shot in the arm in 1961 when he became the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. Dennis Quaid provides him with an excellent foil as the barking Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder, director Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls) does an end run around the genre's cliches, and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau plays with desaturated color and highlights for a rich period feel. With Charles S. Dutton and Darrin Dewitt Henson. —Andrea Gronvall
FLASH OF GENIUS (PG-13) Greg Kinnear stars in this crowd-pleaser about Robert Kearns, who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and waged a decades-long legal battle against the auto industry for stealing his invention. In the course of the movie, Kearns manages to lose his family, his friends and apparently his sanity before he puts his life back together and launches one last legal assault on the corporate Goliaths. The cast is excellent — especially Kinnear, who's perfected his wounded everyman persona — and Marc Abraham's direction is elegant and understated. But their work is seriously undermined by the skeletal script, which barely develops the characters and unintentionally raises more questions about Kearns's quixotic battle than it answers. With Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney and Alan Alda. —Reece Pendleton
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE (R) The Devil Wears Prada for lads. After causing a ruckus at a British awards show, a muckraking journalist (Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead) lands a job at a Vanity Fair-style glossy and moves to Manhattan, where he offends everyone in sight and fights the urge to sell out. Of course, in a movie that's dripping with glamour and jammed with beautiful stars (Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Megan Fox), "selling out" has to be defined down to whether a puff piece is obsequious or snotty. Pegg has some good obnoxious moments, but he's only a few movies away from becoming Dudley Moore. Robert Weide, a veteran of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, directed. —J.R. Jones
[RECOMMENDED] LAKEVIEW TERRACE (R) Lake View Terrace, you may recall, is the Los Angeles suburb where in 1991 four LAPD officers beat Rodney King for more than a minute while a bystander caught the incident on video. In this incendiary social thriller by Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men), it's also the home of a black cop (Samuel L. Jackson) who takes it upon himself to get rid of the interracial couple who've moved in next door (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington). By scrambling the typical power relationship between black and white, LaBute focuses our attention on power itself, and by plunging into the still-taboo subject of black bigotry, he gets closer to the truth of bigotry in all its forms than does the pious white atonement of most racial dramas. This is being marketed as a slam-bang entertainment, but it's also one of the toughest and most relevant movies of the year. —J.R. Jones
MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA (R) With this adaptation of James McBride's novel, Spike Lee aims for an African-American Saving Private Ryan that will recognize the bravery and sacrifice of the segregated soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division, who helped liberate Italy in World War II. Malcolm X (1992) proved that Lee could rise to the challenge of a sweeping historical epic, but this 160-minute drama is overblown and unconvincing, the director's bright, poppy style clashing with the grim subject matter. Lee is typically heavy-handed in detailing the racist treatment of black soldiers, both at home and in the European theater, but at least in these scenes he's fully engaged; the long stretch set in a Tuscan village behind enemy lines, where the four heroes (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller) wind up after being separated from their unit, plays like second-hand Rossellini. —J.R. Jones
MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL (R) Dane Cook stars as a major-league asshole who specializes in mending other people's relationships: Jilted boyfriends hire him to date their exes and repel the women back into their former lovers' arms. His lucrative business is threatened, however, when he meets his roommate's brassy, self-centered ex (Kate Hudson), whose immunity to Cook's antics proves irresistible to him. Cook does some surprisingly good work, bringing a darker and more malevolent undercurrent to his character than the script might have suggested. There's something genuinely transgressive beneath the movie's rom-com surface, though director Howard Deutch keeps retreating to the safety of frat-boy humor. —Reece Pendleton
[RECOMMENDED] NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST (PG-13) Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl and they make great music together. It's a familiar formula, but as the title characters, Michael Cera (Juno) and Kat Dennings give it such a fresh spin you'd think they invented love at first sight. Nick, a New Jersey senior who pines for his shallow ex-girlfriend (Alexis Dziena), is playing bass for a gay rock band when he meets Norah, a rich but soulful Manhattanite who's wowed by his CD mixes. Recognizing each other as kindred spirits, they decide to track down the elusive underground band they both love. Director Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Varga) and cinematographer Tom Richmond transform nocturnal New York into a soft-focus wonderland for their sweet but screwball courtship. —Andrea Gronvall
RELIGULOUS (R) In his first film as writer-star, comedian Bill Maher surveys the malign influence of organized religion, arguing that faith is a neurological disease that must be cured before it destroys the planet. This has its funny moments, but unlike Maher's excellent HBO show, Real Time, it aims for laughs more than insights — and aims low. Maher interviews a few heavy hitters (Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project; Reverend George Coyne, director emeritus of the Vatican Observatory), yet he mostly bypasses serious religious thinkers in favor of fundamentalist goofballs he can ridicule with ease. And he and director Larry Charles (Borat) play dirty, using on-screen captions to mock the interviewees and creating phony reaction shots by editing in footage of them taken out of context. The end result is a small movie about the biggest questions of all: why we're here and how this all came to be. —J.R. Jones
[RECOMMENDED] TROPIC THUNDER (R) Ben Stiller writes, directs and stars in this uneven but often hilarious comedy about a group of pampered Hollywood actors who come under real-life fire in the jungle while making "the war movie to end all war movies." Robert Downey Jr. nearly steals the show while channeling Russell Crowe as a method actor with a major identity crisis (he's convinced he's African-American for most of the film); Jack Black is reliably Jack Black-ish as a drug-addled twit known for his Meet the Krumps-styled fart comedies, and Stiller plays a fading action star whose attempt at a career revival had him playing a mentally challenged boy who talks to horses ("Never go full retard," is Downey's advice). —Lance Goldenberg
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2008.