The Last Station (2009)

Leo Tolstoy wrote “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.” But I never read his books. Boo-hiss on me. So I’m flying blind on “The Last Station,” a fine drama about the famed Russian writer’s last days, marked by a wild/loving marriage and scores of disciples. Tolstoy preached Christ-type stuff such as feed and clothe the poor, foregoing wealth and property.(Smoke that, Sarah and Glenn.) Facing death, he wanted to give all he had away, yet knew that doing so could ruin his wife. Yet he did it. Christopher Plummer plays Tolstoy and Helen Mirren is his long-suffering, patient Sofya. When these two actors are on screen, there’s nothing else better to watch. They are magic. The Tolstoys are run up the walls by Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), an agent/confident who has the soul of George Steinbrenner. James McAvoy also has a big role in this large cast as a young follower. The extra characters are fine, but never truly compelling, and every scene without Plummer and Mirren makes you long for them. The dialogue is amazing. B+

Madeo (2010)

My jaw hit the seat no fewer than 30 times in “Madeo,” a South Korean flick that combines drama, mystery, comedy and a sick incest vibe into a film that would make Hitchcock dizzy. The gist: Hye-Ja Kim plays Mother (the title of the film, naturally) who dotes far too deeply on her mentally challenged son, Yoon Du-joon (Bin Won). The film starts as a comedy, fears into mystery and then dives into a violent thriller that out gores Lynch at his bloodiest. See, Yoon is accused of bashing in the skull of a local school girl, who happens to fuck for even a bowl of rice, and momma knows her boy is innocent. And she will burn earth, heaven and God, even her own soul, to prove it. This is wild, high-wire, no-net filmmaking from Joon-ho Bong (“The Host“), and just got a small release stateside. I loved/hated/feared and pitied Mother, who’s never named, but remains the most fascinating female movie character I’ve seen in many months. A total mind-screw. Do not ever watch with your mother. A

The Ghost Writer (2010)

Let’s me say it upfront: Roman Polanski is an snake bastard. The guy should be in prison, not making films. But, damn it, he is one gifted filmmaker. His latest movie is “The Ghost Writer,” a tense thriller that packs a political grenade inside a cache of classic movie lying, cheating, double crosses and swindling. It recalls those great thrillers from when I was a babe, such as “The Conversation.” It also maybe a very dark comedy/satire ala "The Manchurian Candidate."

Ewan McGregor plays the never-named title character, a novelist on the skids who takes a job as the second ghost writer of the in-the-works autobiography of one Adam Lang, former Prime Minister of England and now the target of a possible war crimes trial. Why the second? The first fella drowned, washed up on a New England beach after a fall from a ferry. Or some such incident. Soon enough, Writer No. 2 finds himself in the kind of trouble that would send Bruce Willis into a coma.

“Ghost Writer” crosses the tracks and double backs a dozen times, and even if I saw some of the path ahead, I sure as hell didn’t know exactly how I was going to get there. Nearly every scene, including the final frame, can be taken at least three ways, and all of them more clever than the last. (And funny, darkly nasty funny.) MIA from any real good film since 2001’s “Moulin Rouge,” it’s a treat to see McGregor back in leading-man status. And is it me, or is Brosnan at his best playing a dick?

When Polanski is released from prison after many years, I hope the SOB goes back to work. Movies such as this are too scarce in today’s “Transformers,” spandex-wearing super hero world. Enjoy it while it lasts. And, yeah, I feel dirty for liking this man's work. A-

Kick Ass (2010)

"Kick Ass" is a superhero flick like no other: Horrifically violent, vulgar, and a self-aware smart ass romp that rips a hole into the underside of whiner Spider-Man’s long johns.

This is no kiddie flick, not by a long shot because the youngsters on screen are beaten, stabbed, shot and pulverized in a dizzying spell of nastiness. Any moral person should flee from this film. I dug it.

Aaron Johnson plays Dave Lizewski, a comic book-collecting high school loser who fancies himself a wall-crawling, bullet stopping hero of the night. But here’s the crazy catch -- Dave is dumb enough to actually go out into the night and play superhero. Five seconds into his first criminal bust, Dave is beaten, stabbed and run over.

The Kick Ass of the title is Dave’s moniker, but as one man quips, it out to be Ass Kick. That man is an ex-cop (a grounded Nicolas Cage in a rare great performance) who’s way unstable, haunts the NYC night as a murderous Batman-knockoff and is schooling his young grade-school daughter (Chloe Moretz) to be his Robin. A way-scary Robin with a Marine's mouth.

This is a zany fantasy that regularly dives into high comedy before jumping feet first into hardcore Tarantino-inspired action. It takes the whole comic book genre down a few notches, but loves the film type all the same. B+

Wild at Heart (1990)

David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” is another slice of a dream-state American pie. Burned to a crisp. Nobody sets a mood quicker or with romantic/doomed/thrilling atmosphere than Lynch, and this film is loaded with scenes beautiful (a couple in love dancing wildly on a desert side road) and hellish (Grace Zabriskie as a wordless demonic killer) and downright weird (Crispin Glover, going 111 on the nut-bucket scale).

The dancing lovers are Nicolas Cage’s Sailor, a newly paroled convict, and Laura Dern’s Lula, an innocent with a her bat-poop crazy momma (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real mother). The couple head West, fleeing mom, who sends a private eye (Harry Dean Stanton) and then a troupe of killers. I won’t dish on the rest of the pretzel-twisty plot, but say only that Lynch riffs off “The Wizard of Oz,” but with hard-core graphic sexual and violent content. There literally is a magic globe, a Wicked Witch and a Good Witch.

There’s so much to love here. A roadside car accident in particular is a dip into tragic/magic life and death as a Sherilyn Fenn plays a young girl whose head literally splits open. (Half the cast came from “Twin Peaks.”) Yet, this whacked trip Cannes Film Festival winner has its faults: Sheryl Lee, the dead Laura Palmer, plays a great corpse. Playing the Good Witch, not so much. She sucks, actually. And Willem Dafoe plays a disgusting, ill-conceived, seedy reincarnation of Frank Booth from “Blue Velvet,” but with a dash of “Deliverance” teeth and the strut of a 13-year-old boy. Dennis Hopper’s Booth came from Hell and remains the absolute movie psychopath. Dafoe’s bonehead is an unfunny joke. And, sure enough, someone’s head is blown off into tiny chunks. Is this Lynch on autopilot?

Side note: I still don’t get Lynch’s apparent fear of North Carolina. (Is it the barbecue?) “Heart” opens in Cape Fear, N.C., not too far off the map from Lumberton, where “Blue Velvet” was set. Or is he just paying homage to the original “Cape Fear” from decades back, as the 1992 remake was not yet released? Not sure...

Oh, this is where Cage’s Elvis homage began, and several years before the former’s career crashed deader than the latter's fat butt. Cage is throbbing with energy here, frightening one moment (the opening scene) and insanely funny the next (“What do you f-----s want?”). He is on 100 percent, though, in a daring, damn the rules role. He needs good directors. Alas, Dern plays another pure girl who bemoans if love is enough to conquer evil and death. Lynch loves a blonde like Hitchcock.

Not Lynch’s best by a long shot, but still a shocking, mind-blowing Avant-Garde treat with scenes that dead end but nevertheless fascinate. “Velvet” from start to finish stays on the soul, and is part of me, whereas “Heart” comes and goes in spurts. Still, less than perfect Lynch is one amazing ride. B+

Surrogates (2009)

It’s a two-for-one Bruce Willis in “Surrogates,” an action/sci-fi flick that giddily plays with the idea of the unkillable "Die Hard" hero … until the damn thing becomes another run-of-the-mill action/sci-fi flick with Willis as an unkillable "Die Hard" hero. The setup is cool: In the near future, shut-in humans live flawless Second Life existences via mass-produced “Cosmo”-worthy replicants. There is no pain. No spread of disease, sexual or otherwise. No crime. No need to work and then hit the grocery on the way home. Willis is Tom Greer, a grizzled FBI agent mourning a lost son, and also Tom’s superhuman FBI agent clone who’s like a blond Six Million Dollar Man. RoboTom get sucked into a conspiracy involving big business, bigger money, a hippie prophet (Ving Rhames ) and a new secret weapon that looks like a space-age Dustbuster. Of course, FlabbyTom must save the day. “Surrogates” at first plays like a welcome revisit of classic Ira Levine, but is sadly hijacked by Michael Bay Hollywood mentality. B-

10,000 B.C. (2008)

In “10,000 B.C.” a young warrior (Steven Strait of “Sky High”) is hunting big hairy mammoths with his tribesmen one day and then chasing after the mysterious “four-legged demons” (that is, men on horses) who took his woman the next. This is a disaster movie of a different sort from Roland Emmerich, master of the Earth in Peril genre (“2012”). The set-up, including the temple climax is much like Mel Gibson’s 2006 adrenaline bloodbath “Apocalypto,” but made for little boys who gawk at the “PG-13” rating. I just yawned at the so-so actors mucking about as cavemen with bad wigs and clean shaven faces out of a Norelco commercial, fighting nothing more deadly than continuously bad CGI. Everything on screen -– languages, climates, animals, those pyramids -- are sure to give scientists and Creationists alike heart attacks as they fume over what’s correct. Me? The movie's not worth any effort. D+

Bright Star (2009)

Directed by Jane Campion, who gave us the 1993 gem “The Piano” and has done few great films since, “Bright Star” tells the absolute, ultimate, momma-of-all Tale of Doomed Romance. Tweens and other gals who get weepy at “Twilight” will need oxygen tanks after watching this dramatized take on John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fannie Braun (Abbie Cornish). Y’know, Keats was the prince of romance poems. Braum was his muse and love. He died at 25. She might as well have, too. I love many of Campion’s films -- the way she can pulsate drama and God-knows-all simply by having a camera track a woman being followed by a man, through the woods, or her use of natural light. I also dig the way she demonstrates the sexism of the 1800s, the brick wall in life that every woman faced, without banging a frying pan over the viewer’s head. “Star” might not have the same explosive drama of “Piano,” but it’s a solid (albeit too low key at times) drama. It certainly surpasses most every eye-roller romance drama out there now. All that sobbing feels true. Loved the end spoken-word end credits. B+

Crazy Heart (2009)

Is there a present-day actor cooler than Jeff Bridges? No. And in “Crazy Heart,” Bridges is cool. And, yet, pathetic. He’s Bad Blake, an immensely talented country singer whose career never peaked beyond bowling alleys and bars. Facing 60, Blake is a lifelong drunk staring at death from emphysema, heart attack, lung cancer, or a drunken car crash. The kicker: His protégé (Colin Farrell) is a mega-hit superstar, packing arenas with adoring fans. As with every redemption story, and make no mistake about it, “Crazy” is that, there is a woman. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the single mom who falls for Blake’s weird country grunge charm. Is it a believable? Not fully. Yet, it’s oddly touching more than creepy. Blake isn’t just after a pretty woman, but a surrogate son. Thankfully, director/screenwriter Scott Cooper avoids the syrupy ending. It’s not all roses or overly “art house” dark at the end. Bridges earned that Oscar, showing miles of wrong ways and dead ends in Blake’s bleary eyes. The country lyrics are amazing testaments to men (and women) who have killed or blown every good chance in life, and are yet cling on for another swing at the bat. And that, essentially, is the film. B+

Couples Retreat (2009)

I find nothing more dreadful than watching married couples bicker, especially in a comedy. It is a chore. Seriously, it's like visiting my parents. Yet, Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and director Peter Billingsley (Ralphie!) give us “Couples Retreat,” a dull romp about four couples who vacation in Bora Bora for R&R, but get instead stuck with awkward therapy sessions. Screaming matches and door slamming ensue. Fun? No. Every laugh was dumped in the previews, even the kid and toilet display scenes. Sure “Retreat” looks good. It made me miss sunny getaways. What I don’t miss: The “Swingers” boys rehashing their ancient bromance hi-jinks, which peaked a decade ago. These guys actually create a dude who sells video games for a living (really?) for no other reason than to set-up a “Guitar Hero” gag late in the film. And Jason Bateman again as a tightwad who must learn to have fun? Zzzz. With “Retreat,” “The Break-Up” and “Four Christmases,” Vaughn has created a new film genre: Romcom Torture Porn. D+