Current Releases
BODY OF LIES Despite Russell Crowe's shared marquee billing, this is really Leonardo DiCaprio's film, as the young thespian handles the part of Roger Ferris, a compassionate CIA point man working in the Middle East under the jaded eye of his ruthless superior (Crowe) back in the U.S. Hoping to track down a bin Laden-like terrorist (a menacing Alon Aboutboul) responsible for a series of attacks on America and its allies, Ferris ends up traveling to Jordan and entering into a terse relationship with Hani Salaam (Stardust's Mark Strong), the head of Jordanian intelligence. The film's best scenes are between DiCaprio and Strong, as their characters alternate between working together and keeping each other at arm's length. Better than the vast majority of the post-9/11 terrorist yarns, Body of Lies is both more ambiguous and ambitious than such heavy-handed duds as Rendition and Redacted. Director Ridley Scott (who last teamed with Crowe on American Gangster) and The Departed's Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monaghan (working from David Ignatius' novel) refrain from merely putting Ferris and Hoffman through the good-cop-bad-cop routine: Ferris' idealism isn't always beneficial, while Hoffman might be a prick, but he occasionally exhibits more clarity than might be expected. And even a superfluous romance between Ferris and a Muslim nurse (Golshifteh Farahani) allows for some insight into societal disapproval for such a coupling, as the pair can't even shake hands in public. It's the extra attention to smaller details that gives this Body its necessary heft. ***
THE DUCHESS A substantial number of British costume dramas focus on the efforts of a corseted beauty to land a husband to call her own. These tales generally end on a "Happily Ever After" note, but The Duchess, based on a true story, begins where the others end and takes matters down a darker route: What if the man you snag turns out to be a complete lout? Keira Knightley stars as Georgiana, who, as a teenage girl in 1774, is entered into a marriage with the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). She soon discovers that the Duke's only interest in her is that she produce a male heir, so after she gives birth to a couple of girls, he loses complete interest and embarks on an affair with her best friend, Lady Elizabeth (Hayley Atwell). For her part, Georgiana keeps busy in her role as a society trendsetter, but she eventually finds herself contemplating an illicit romance with rising politician Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). The Duke commits some monstrous acts during the course of the film, but it's a credit to the performance by Fiennes that the character never emerges as a dull, one-note villain but rather an emotionally stifled man whose Neanderthal brain can't quite grasp certain aspects of civility and respect. Likewise, Lady Elizabeth is revealed as far more than merely a spouse-stealer, and Atwell does an exemplary job of insuring her character remains the tenuous connective tissue between the Duke and the Duchess. As for Knightley, she's establishing herself as England's go-to girl for this sort of period epic: A bright and sunny presence in Pride and Prejudice, she's given greater depths to explore in this picture. She doesn't disappoint. ***
EAGLE EYE The peril of encroaching technology has been a cinematic mainstay at least since Stanley Kubrick allowed HAL to temporarily get the upper hand in 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey (film purists can feel free to go even further back, to Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis), but rarely has this intriguing concept been presented as daftly as in Eagle Eye. Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, this tiresome action yarn finds slacker Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and single mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) drawn into what appears to be a terrorist strike against the United States. Initially strangers, they find themselves working together after each one receives threatening phone calls from a woman who orders them to carry out her instructions ... or else. The caller seemingly has control over every electronic device in sight, as she's able to manipulate traffic lights, power lines, subway cars and cell phones. Even allowing for the big twist that reveals the villain's identity, this requires a greater suspension of disbelief than might be humanly possible. If Jerry perishes during the course of his misadventures, then the assignment's a bust, yet the caller repeatedly places him in death-defying situations (I especially liked his leap-before-you-look jump from a speeding train). A faster running time might have helped us overlook the gaping idiocies, but the film is packed with repetitive – and poorly edited – vehicular chases that bloat this to a punishing two hours. But pay heed to the movie's warning: Technological advancements might indeed become a concern in the future, especially if they allow for greater mass production of duds like this one. *1/2
THE EXPRESS The problem with most musical and sports biopics is that they adhere so much to rigid formula, they rarely allow their subjects to breathe. There's a sameness to these types of films – their characters' triumphs and travails can be predicted at every turn – that it's no surprise to see most critics go gaga over something that dares to break the mold like I'm Not There, which was audacious enough to allow both a woman and and a black child to portray Bob Dylan at various points in his career. There's nothing daring about The Express, which, like most real-life sports stories co-opted by major studios (The Rookie, Miracle, Remember the Titans), strips the achievements of any individuality or historical worth and renders them all part of the same gumbo of sticky clichés. Here, the sanitized story is that of Ernie Davis (Rob Brown), who became the first African-American player to win college football's Heisman Trophy, only to helplessly stand by as personal tragedy derailed his plans to become an NFL superstar opposite his idol, Cleveland Browns legend Jim Brown. It's a heartrending tale worthy of the Greek gods, yet here it's been robbed of its vibrancy, and as blandly and beatifically played by Brown, the character never registers as anything more than a walking sliver of American history. But the sight of gridiron-star-turned-actor Jim Brown (played here by Darrin Dewitt Henson) does raise a thought: How about a movie based on his interesting life? Because even if the studio homogenizes it to the point of tepidity, at least audiences might get treated to a few scenes from Brown's best-known Hollywood outing, The Dirty Dozen. **
MAX PAYNE Imagine The Constant Gardener after a frontal lobotomy, and that's basically Max Payne in a nutshell. The latest bomb based on a popular video game, this stars Mark Wahlberg as a New York cop who, years after the fact, is still solely obsessed with solving the murders of his wife and baby. It sounds like standard Death Wish fare; the picture even opens with Max luring three drug addicts into a subway restroom, then proceeding to inflict Payne – excuse me, pain – on them. But as in The Constant Gardener, a major pharmaceutical outfit figures into the proceedings, though it's safe to say that Ralph Fiennes never had to contend with winged demons flying all over the cityscape. That's not the case with Wahlberg, whose character also has to deal with invincible super-soldiers, a leggy druggie (Olga Kurylenko) and a career assassin (a miscast Mila Kunis) who's about as menacing as a Scooby-Doo plush doll. Rather than focusing on making a kick-ass action flick (presumably what fans of the video game would crave), director John Moore and novice scripter Beau Thorne dress up their simplistic revenge yarn with various twists and turns – all of which are absurdly easy to predict (if the revelation of the piece's final villain surprises you, you really need to add more mysteries to your moviegoing diet). Yet even when they do get around to the shootouts and fisticuffs, they prove to be flagrantly opportunistic, rehashing both The Matrix and the John Woo oeuvre to diminishing returns. Incidentally, stay through the final credits to see the coda that promises a sequel. My bet is that it will star Donnie Wahlberg instead of Mark and debut directly on DVD. *
NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST Nick and Nora (no "h") were the sophisticated sleuths played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the popular The Thin Man movies back in the 1930s and '40s, and this married team never encountered a criminal they couldn't bring to justice. By contrast, the Nick and Norah in this tone-deaf feature are vanquished by the piece's villains, who are revealed to be director Peter Sollet and scripter Lorene Scafaria (adapting the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan). In short, this is one Thin Movie. Michael Cera, who needs to play a Norman Bates-like character to shake things up, stars as Nick, a high school kid crushed by being dumped by Tris (Alexis Dziena), the sort of vapid princess who in real life wouldn't even give someone like Nick the time of day, let alone six months of quality dating time. Through plot contrivances too laborious to outline here, Nick and Tris' pal Norah (Kat Dennings) end up spending an entire after-hours session combing New York for both Norah's drunken friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) and a secret jam session by the city's latest "It" band. Dennings displays a slightly off-kilter personality that marks her as someone to keep watching (she's also appeared in Charlie Bartlett and The House Bunny), and Cera's teddy-bear cynicism – his wisecracking character is sweet even when trying to be caustic – provides extra zip to his better lines. But for a film set amidst the hustle and bustle of late-night NYC, this is one lethargic picture, with Sollet's inert direction bringing nothing to the party. For an infinitely better movie about hipsters looking for love, wait for In Search of a Midnight Kiss to hit DVD. **
NIGHTS IN RODANTHE Diane Lane and the Tuscan countryside prove to be a more dynamic duo than Diane Lane and the Outer Banks, an assertion that immediately becomes clear when placing Under the Tuscan Sun and Nights in Rodanthe side by side. The former made the most of its setting and its star, resulting in a winning romantic comedy whose love-struck spirit rubbed off on audience members eager to lap up its sense of joie de vivre. The coastal-Carolina-shot Rodanthe, on the other hand, starts off well as Tuscan Sun's more serious-minded cousin, but it eventually sinks under the weight of the shameless plot devices thrust upon it by author Nicholas Sparks and adapters Ann Peacock and John Romano. Lane, teaming with Richard Gere for the third time (following 1984's The Cotton Club and 2002's Unfaithful), plays Adrienne Willis, who agrees to look after her best friend's (Viola Davis) beachfront inn at the same time that her philandering husband (Christopher Meloni) is begging her to let him come back. Gere co-stars as Paul Flanner, a doctor brooding over a minor surgery procedure that went tragically wrong. As the only two people stuck at the inn, Adrienne and Paul open up to each other and gradually fall in love. For a while, Nights in Rodanthe works as a mature and even touching drama, but then the melodramatic devices take over with the force of a hurricane. And speaking of hurricane, the second-act emergence of this force of nature is but one of the hoary aspects that sink the production, along with a sour twist that is as expected as it is defeatist. **
PRIDE AND GLORY The award for the year's most generic title thus far handily goes to Pride and Glory, a moniker so instantly forgettable that, in just a few short weeks, folks will be remembering the film as Honor and Justice or Law and Order or Cops and Crooks or, with apologies to Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. Then again, this snoozy title reflects the picture bearing it, since this is nothing but one more look at police corruption, a subgenre that's become especially threadbare during the course of this decade (Narc, Dark Blue, We Own the Night). What's especially lamentable is that this movie strands yet another exemplary turn by Edward Norton, who once again is superior to the material surrounding him. Here, he plays Ray Tierney, part of a clan of cops: His father (Jon Voight), his brother Francis (Noah Emmerich) and his brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell) also have NYPD blood coursing through their veins. Troubled by a past tragedy and therefore satisfied to be working a quiet desk job, Ray is reluctantly pulled back onto the streets after four police officers are fatally gunned down in the line of duty. As Ray works his connections in the back alleys and juggles a handful of clues, he makes the startling discovery that the murders are connected to dealings within his own family. For the first hour, Pride and Glory wears its formulaic trappings fairly well, but a movie that refuses to offer anything fresh – watching Farrell go hyper for the umpteenth time in his career certainly doesn't qualify – has no reason to clock in at a strenuous 125 minutes. **
THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES This adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's novel is the sort of Southern-spun, honey-soaked confection that in the wrong hands could have turned out dreadful. Yet writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) largely stays away from grandiloquent gestures designed to manipulate audience emotions, relying instead on sound storytelling and accomplished performers to punch across the story's humanist appeal. Set in 1964 South Carolina, this centers on young Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), who's haunted by memories of her late mother (Hilarie Burton) and ill-treated by her unfeeling father (Paul Bettany). Hoping to learn more about a mom she barely remembers, she runs away from home, dragging her caregiver Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) along with her. They end up taking shelter in the home of the Boatwright sisters: patient August (Queen Latifah), suspicious June (Alicia Keys) and sentient (if simple-minded) May (Sophie Okonedo). There, Lily not only finds the answers she seeks but also the family she never had. It's only been two years since I last saw Fanning (in Charlotte's Web), yet she seems to have passed that vaguely defined mark between adorable moppet and self-assured teen. No longer able to count on the safety net of precociousness (not that she ever really did), the 14-year-old is expected to deliver a full-bodied performance here, and she handles the task like a seasoned pro. Her co-stars prove to be equally memorable, and it's especially nice to see Hudson handed a role somewhat more substantial than the discarded-tissue part she had in Sex and the City. ***
W. Love him or hate him, there's no denying that George W. Bush is a remarkably controversial figure. So how is it possible that Oliver Stone has managed to make a biopic that's about as incendiary as Kung Fu Panda? The leftist Stone has been down this road before, when he tried to inject sympathy and dignity into the tale of Tricky Dick in his 1995 effort, Nixon. Yet that feature looks as hard-hitting as All the President's Men when compared to W., which suggests that Dubya's only real character flaw is that he isn't always the sharpest tack in the box. Are we talking about the same president? So much damning evidence has been stacked against Bush that the movie's narrow focus on precious few incidents in his life hardly makes the production of this picture seem worth the effort. The film flashes back and forth between the decades, but it never manages to find time for any mention of, for starters, his ineptitude in the face of Katrina or his paralyzed state during those first fateful moments of 9/11. Stone further decides that every move Dubya makes in his life is to seek approval from a perpetually disappointed father (James Cromwell), thereby reducing this man to a Pop Psychology 101 test subject. As W., Josh Brolin's performance can't be faulted: He tackles the part as conceived by screenwriter Stanley Weiser, providing the proper mix of swagger and insecurity. Playing loose with history is one thing, but when you make Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Karl Rove (Toby Jones), two of the most vile politicians ever to set foot in D.C., appear almost as cuddly as newborn kittens, then something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. **
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO The latest from writer-director Kevin Smith is always likable even if it isn't always inspired. As he proved with Chasing Amy (still the Citizen Kane of his output), Smith can deftly pull off the proper mix of sweet and funny and raunchy; in this case, though, only the "funny" clears all hurdles, as the "sweet" is of the standard variety while the "raunchy" often overwhelms the picture. Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are aptly cast as Zack and Miri, lifelong best friends and present-day roommates who are so broke that they can't even afford to pay their utility bills. After a life-altering high school reunion, Zack hits upon the brilliant idea of making their own hardcore adult film in order to raise significant amounts of green. Initially, the eight-person cast and crew (played by, among others, Smith vets Jason "Jay" Mewes and Jeff Anderson and former porn star Traci Lords) plan to mount a Star Wars spoof titled Star Whores (featuring such characters as Hung Solo, Princess Layher and Darth Vibrator), but after that falls through, they opt to use a coffeehouse as their setting. Rogen and Banks are both utterly winning, and their charisma helps offset the fact that their characters' romance takes off down a disappointingly predictable path (remove the risqué trimmings, and we're left with a Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan rom-com). The vulgar material is alternately hilarious and off-putting, although any movie with the imagination to cast perpetually boyish Justin Long as a gravel-voiced Hollywood gay porn star obviously has much to recommend it. **1/2
OPENS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7:
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan.
MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA: Animated; voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock.
MORNING LIGHT: Documentary
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED: Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger.
ROLE MODELS: Seann William Scott, Paul Rudd.
SOUL MEN: Samuel L. Jackson, Bernie Mac.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED: Robert De Niro, Catherine Keener.