AMELIA In its effort to be one of the first Oscar-bait titles out of the gate, the stately but sterile Amelia ends up stumbling over its own feet. A handsome production that fusses over every detail in order to provide the proper look, this biopic forgets to include any sort of spark necessary to get its motor running. As Amelia Earhart, Hilary Swank adroitly mixes tomboy charm with feminist strength, but she's let down by a script (by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan) that doesn't allow her to burrow even an inch under her character's skin. Her Amelia is painted in broad strokes, and as such, the dramatizations of her aerial achievements don't carry the power that should automatically go with lofty historical territory of this caliber. Where the movie most succeeds in its exploration of Amelia's relationships with two distinct men. Publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere) was the person who discovered Amelia and guided her career; they eventually married, but the film posits that she embarked on an affair with fellow aviation pioneer Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) before returning to her loving husband. Swank and Gere don't exude magnetism in their scenes together, but it's not that kind of relationship: Theirs is a partnership forged from mutual respect and common ground, and it's a credit to both performers that the union feels authentic and enviable. The final portion of the picture naturally centers on the ill-fated 1937 flight that led to the disappearance of Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston) over the Pacific Ocean. Despite knowing the outcome, this segment is inherently tense, although some feeble fabrications surrounding the tragedy prove to be as daft as the cinematic theory that the Titanic sank into the chilly depths because the watchmen were too busy watching DiCaprio and Winslet smooch to notice the iceberg right in front of them. **
ASTRO BOY Superheroes are known for showing up on the scene just in the nick of time, but in the case of Astro Boy and his big-screen debut, it's clear that his arrival comes when it's too late to really matter. The star of both comics and television as well as an early model for anime, Astro Boy has been around for well over a half-century, finding immediate success in his Japanese homeland before marching on to international acceptance. A big-budget animated extravaganza from Hollywood was probably a predetermined fate, but turning up at a time when slick superhero sagas are often the rule rather than the exception – even in the toon field (The Incredibles, Bolt) – limits the film's ability to stand out from the pack. In a futuristic city that hovers well above a largely forgotten Earth, the brilliant Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) is so attached to his young son Toby (Freddie Highmore) that, after the boy is accidentally killed, the grief-stricken scientist elects to revive him in a manner that mixes elements of both Frankenstein and Pinocchio. Tenma places Toby's memories in an advanced robot powered by a celestial power source, but he soon realizes he hasn't exactly created (in Geppetto's words) "a real boy." But while Tenma ends up shunning Toby, the opportunistic General Stone (Donald Sutherland) realizes he can use the lad for his own nefarious schemes. Astro Boy is full of incident, and it picks up steam when its title character lands on Earth's surface and falls in with a Fagin-like scoundrel (Nathan Lane) and his young charges. Yet attempts at profundity (themes of societal prejudice are emphasized) yield erratic results, and while the film is visually attractive and the vocal performers are well chosen, at the end of the day there's little to really distinguish this from similar family films about a young outcast who combats loneliness before meeting other colorful characters. Just dub this one Where the Mild Things Are. **1/2
A CHRISTMAS CAROL Officially, the title is Disney's A Christmas Carol, which is acceptable since it sure as hell isn't Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. While it might be true that this animated version retains more of the literary classic than might reasonably be expected, it's also accurate to state that a key ingredient of the novel – namely, its humanist spirit – is largely missing from this chilly interpretation. Director Robert Zemeckis, who used to make fun movies in which the spectacular special effects served the story and not the other way around (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump), has become obsessed with the motion capture process (this is his third consecutive picture utilizing this technique, following The Polar Express and Beowulf), and one gets the sense that he chose the Dickens chestnut not because of a desire to revive its moral tale for a new generation but because it seemed like a suitable vehicle for his new techno-toys. But Zemeckis can't keep still, and rather than remain within the parameters of the meaty story, he follows in the footsteps of the recent Where the Wild Things Are adaptation by fleshing out a story that didn't exactly cry out for extraneous material. But while Wild Things' additions at least made thematic sense, Zemeckis pads the material with such nonsense as Scrooge (Jim Carrey) being blasted into the stratosphere or dashing through the cobbled streets of London (a chase scene? Really?) while simultaneously turning into the incredible shrinking man. Carrey gives the role of the miserly Scrooge his all (he also voices a half-dozen other characters), and the 3-D effects (offered in select theaters) are expertly realized. But you don't need glasses – 3-D or otherwise – to see that this holiday release is too diluted for adults, too frightening for children, and too tiresome for just about everybody. *1/2
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS Although it's based on a children's book (by Judi and Ron Barrett), this animated charmer is one of those equal-opportunity exercises that provides as much merriment for adults as for kids. After all, it's the grownups who are sure to get a chuckle out of a voice cast diverse enough to include Bruce Campbell, James Caan and Mr. T, and it's the grownups who will pick up on the movie's gentle ecological themes. As for the rest, the adults will feel like kids when bombarded by the film's freewheeling innovations and bright color schemes – all made even more irresistible in 3-D. The film's central character is Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader), a gangly inventor whose latest contraption – a device that turns water into food – seems to be a winner. After its unceremonious launch into the heavens, the machine pours down all sorts of cuisine – hamburgers, pancakes, pasta, you name it – on a regular basis. Flint becomes the town's savior, but stormy weather lies ahead. The visual design of Cloudy is wondrous: There's something inherently amusing in seeing a castle built out of gelatin or a street lined with ice cream rather than snow, and the movie repeatedly offers up these gastronomical delights. Yet underlying the frivolity is a warning about our nation's gluttonous and wasteful ways, a message certainly to be lost on children (who'll wish they had their own candy-dispensing machine hovering above their homes) but relevant to environmentally aware adults. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an entertaining ride, but it doesn't possess the lasting power of, say, this summer's Up or any of the other top-tier animated features that stick with us for the long haul. It's more comfortable in the company of Kung Fu Panda and Monster House: Like those worthy animated features, this one shows up, gets the job done, and leaves us feeling satisfactorily full. ***
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Like Young Mr. Lincoln, Butch and Sundance: The Early Years and the Che Guevara yarn The Motorcycle Diaries, Coco Before Chanel is one of those films that promises audiences a peek at the formative years of a historical figure, in that underreported stretch of life before fame (or, in some cases, infamy) came calling. Audrey Tautou plays Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, who went on to become one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century. For now, Coco is spotted as a struggling showgirl who makes the acquaintance of the rich Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde) and soon becomes the in-house mistress at his large country estate. Writer-director Anne Fontaine (co-scripting with Camille Fontaine) initially downplays Coco's sartorial impulses to such a large degree that the film never makes a strong connection between the opportunistic waif presented here and the international icon that would later rock the couture culture. Tautou's Coco thus never emerges completely from the shadows, while two key characters, her actress friend (Emmanuelle Devos) and her one true love (Alessandro Nivola), never break out of their sketchily drawn biopic stances. That leaves the complex Balsan – equal parts sensitive gentleman and drunken boor – as the most interesting person on display, and Poelvoorde delivers a strong performance in the role. Ultimately, he's the one who holds this knotty yarn in place. **1/2
COUPLES RETREAT For all its visual splendor, Couples Retreat never feels as liberating as its locale. Working from a script by Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Dana Fox, director Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story's Ralphie, all grown up) oversees the project more like a foreman making sure the product gets turned out rather than a filmmaker injecting any personal style into the proceedings, leaving it to certain capable actors to provide any juice via well-timed witticisms and double takes. The premise finds married couple Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) imploring their friends to join them on a vacation to an oceanic paradise where the purpose is to reconnect spouses experiencing turbulence in their unions. The other six – overworked but content couple Dave (Vaughn) and Ronnie (Malin Ackerman), bickering spouses Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), and divorce' Shane (Faizon Love) and his 20-year-old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk) – are led to believe that the workshops and counseling sessions are optional, but they quickly learn that everyone is required to take part. Before long, nerves are frayed, feelings are hurt, and all the relationships teeter on the edge of disaster. Amidst all the low-simmer shenanigans, Couples Retreat does make some salient (if obvious) points about the inherent difficulties in keeping any marriage fresh and vital. The movie would have benefitted from a more realistic ending than the feel-good slop force-fed to audiences by the heaping spoonful, but along the way, it at least feints in the direction of testiness before backing off. The characters played by Bateman and Hawk are too annoying to be funny, while Bell herself is too bland to be anything. But Ackerman and Love are pleasing to watch, while the lion's share of the barbs are adroitly handled by Davis, Favreau and Vaughn. Ultimately, though, Couples Retreat is too mellow for its own good. Hardly paradise, it's more like the cinematic equivalent of a leisurely walk around the park. **1/2
GOOD HAIR Like most odysseys, Good Hair begins with a single question. "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" the little girl asks of her celebrity pop. And armed with that query, Chris Rock sets off to make a movie that turns out to be endlessly fascinating and funny. Along with director Jeff Stilson, Rock uses his documentary to examine the complex relationship that African-American women – and many men (Prince is the target of a well-timed jibe) – have with their hair. And for a movie that runs just over 90 minutes, the pair cover an extraordinary amount of ground. Interviewing both celebrities and ordinary citizens alike, Rock manages to engage participants in discussions on the dangers of hair relaxers (aka "creamy crack"), the high cost of weaves, the distribution of the wealth earned by hair products created specifically for blacks (Asians and caucasians benefit the most), the idiocy of straightening the hair of little girls (some as young as three), and, tying it all together, the cultural significance of hairstyles for black women and the drive among many to blend in (i.e. look more white) by any means necessary. On top of all this, Rock also manages to squeeze in a trip to India, home to the vast majority of hair purchased by African-American women. Good Hair is such a marvelous movie for most of its running time that it's a shame several missteps are taken toward the end. One bit finds Rock trying to sell – to no avail – bags of black women's hair, a silly stunt that smacks of Michael Moore grandstanding. The movie's climactic set piece revolves around a gaudy show in which various oddballs compete for the honor of being deemed the best hairstylist by a panel of supercilious judges – an amusing sequence that's nevertheless too trite to anchor the home stretch. And, most jarringly, Rock unwisely chooses to end the picture with a rude remark by Ice-T, an insulting selection considering the movie is packed with choice quotes by the (female) likes of Maya Angelou and Tracie Thoms. On balance, though, Good Hair stands as an informative and entertaining documentary, and one that's pulled off with no small measure of style. ***
LAW ABIDING CITIZEN Vigilante justice in real life is, to put it mildly, highly problematic, but when it comes to cinema, who doesn't occasionally feel some measure of catharsis in watching a sympathetic protagonist skirt around a deeply flawed legal system and exact his revenge on his own terms? Law Abiding Citizen initially appears as if it will be a modern rendition of the black-and-white Death Wish, as loving family man Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) must watch helplessly as his wife and little girl are murdered right in front of him. The killer (Christian Stolte) and his accomplice (Josh Stewart) are apprehended, but while Clyde wants them to pay for their crime, his lawyer Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), who's only interested in maintaining his high conviction-rate percentage, negotiates a deal. Cut to 10 years later, and Clyde sets out to get his revenge – not only on the criminals but also on the whole judicial system that failed them. Initially, Law Abiding Citizen makes all the right moves, and it's fun to watch Clyde punch holes in the whole manner in which this country handles its criminal cases. It soon becomes clear that the film is going past the simple morality of Death Wish, which is fine had it continued to offer viewers thought-provoking scenarios. Instead, this turns into an ugly, sordid affair, a gruesome melodrama that, too afraid to tackle the issues it brings up, instead elects to transform into a ridiculous thriller about a psychopath terrorizing a city. Foxx's character is ostensibly supposed to be the hero – or at least turn into one before the end – but Nick Rice remains a shallow, unrepentant lout whose final act is designed to earn audience approval but instead goes down about as easy as spoiled milk. By the end, the murdered wife and daughter are all but forgotten, and Clyde Shelton's pain has been trivialized to an offensive degree. Justice may be blind, but it's got 20/20 vision when compared to this movie that stumbles around in the dark with no hope of providing illumination. *1/2
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS Loopy enough to stand out from the homogenized pack but not bold enough to truly go the distance, this eccentric satire (inspired by Jon Ronson's nonfiction book of the same name) proves to be a modestly pleasing piffle in which journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor, sincere but straightjacketed by an undemanding role) searches for a great story on the outskirts of the Iraq War and finds one in Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Cassady claims to be a former super-soldier, a military man who had been trained in the ways of the paranormal in order to use psychic abilities to combat the enemy. Cassady and his fellow recruits flourished under the tutelage of Vietnam War vet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), but once a devious soldier named Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) entered the picture, everything went to hell. Now many years later, Cassady insists to Wilton that he's on a covert mission, and he drags the inquisitive yet uncomprehending reporter along with him. Clooney and Bridges are both adept at giving off-kilter performances (let's not forget that they've both headlined quirky Coen comedies), and they achieve the proper buzz in a picture that, until a protracted finale, gets high off the fumes of its own freewheeling inclinations. ***
THIS IS IT A sadness permeates the opening scene in the behind-the-scenes documentary This Is It, but it has nothing to do with Michael Jackson's death. Instead, the sequence – filmed, like the rest of the movie, while Jackson was very much alive – centers on the talented young dancers and singers who auditioned to be a part of the King of Pop's planned series of London concerts. As each person describes the thrill of being included in the Jackson legacy – many of them tearing up as they speak – they comment on how much this opportunity means to them, with a couple stating that this concert even gives them a newfound purpose in their unfocused lives. It's a heartbreaking sequence, considering that Jackson's death meant that none would be able to live the dream that seemed within their collective grasp. It's a smart way to open the film, filling audience members with emotion before the man himself takes the stage to prepare for his mammoth undertaking. After all, many folks (myself included) turned away from Jackson once he made the complete transformation to tabloid freak, and, to be sure, certain audience members are sure to experience a initial wave of nausea as this physical grotesquerie with a dubious history gets ready for his close-up. But then an amazing thing happens. It starts with the music, those generation-spanning hits that have the power to produce instant bouts of affectionate nostalgia. Then there come the dance steps, not as fast and furious as before, but still deft enough to catch the eye. And finally, there's the sheer spectacle, the showmanship that was arguably as responsible for keeping MJ in the light as any other aspect of his carefully built persona. Combined, these element make resistance futile, and for two shimmering hours, all the ghosts of scandals past melt away, leaving in their wake a boy whose only desire is to dazzle. Ultimately, This Is It doesn't quite feel like a documentary, nor does it seem like a concert film. It's clearly a love letter to the fans, but, perhaps more importantly, it's an olive branch to the latter-day critics, cynics and naysayers, all of whom have probably shown up to bury Jackson, not praise him. But the joke's on us. The movie keeps sensationalism and sordidness at bay, and by doing so, it allows us one final look at the Man in the Mirror, an unblemished view that reflects back nothing but a desire to let the music play. ***1/2
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE In tackling Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book, writer Spike Jonze and his co-scripter Dave Eggers have a difficult problem to overcome. Because Sendak's book is so slender – certainly not enough to fill a 100-minute movie – the pair had to build on characterizations, alter some connecting tissues, and concoct entirely new scenes. The end result isn't a bastardization of the literary classic, but neither is it a further canonization of the acclaimed source. It's the sort of film certain to be poked, prodded, discussed, dismissed and/or deified. But ignored? Never. Max Records plays young Max, a troubled child not very adept at dealing with anger or frustration. After a spat with his single mom (Catherine Keener), Max bolts from the house, soon stumbling on a body of water where a small boat awaits him. Max sails away and eventually arrives at an island inhabited by large, furry beasts who alternate between sounding like confused children and neurotic adults. Max especially bonds with Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), the most temperamental of the monsters, but he enjoys spending time with all these behemoths as they play various games and generally have a good time. But petty squabbles erupt among the beasts, and Max, who's been made their leader, clearly doesn't always have the answers or advice that the others hope to hear. Technically, Where the Wild Things Are is a stunning achievement, and the beasts – a combination of costumes and CGI – particularly look astonishing. But there's a reason why Sendak's book runs only a few dozen pages, and by blowing up the story, Jonze has in effect stripped it of much of its wide-eyed wonder. Both the book and the movie are children's tales sporting a dark underbelly, but the film version, unlike its predecessor, is often too literal, resulting in a suffocating atmosphere that further undermines the simplicity of the tale. Like the wild things inhabiting Max's world, it's fascinating but also lumbering – and (to paraphrase The Troggs) it's unlikely to make everyone's heart sing. **1/2