Zookeeper (2011)

See Kevin James. See Kevin James play Kevin James-ish fool with romantic woes. See Kevin James talk to the animals. See Kevin James take a gorilla on a man date to TGI Fridays. Hear Nick Nolte voice said gorilla. See “Zookeeper.” Or not. Look, James vibes as the nicest guy in the world, a heart of gold and a grand man. I shall not malign him. But this romantic-comedy/talking-animals film, starring James, is shit. When Adam Sandler playing a monkey extols the virtues of flinging poop at the one you love, I got what he meant. He’s been doing to his audience for years. Sandler produces. James stars. Rosario Dawson looks sad. The opening gag is funny. James’ personality shines. But, duck, the shit is flying. And it stinks. Do better, Kevin James, do better. D+

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” left me dead cold. That is a compliment. This Sundance hit is a dark psychological drama-cum-thriller about a young woman (Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of toddlers-turned-tabloid stars Mary Kate and Ashley) who runs from an upper-New York State cult/farming commune and reunites with her estranged sister (Sarah Paulson of “American Horror Story”) at the latter’s posh lake-front home. There, our girl of many names and pains unravels as a scared, paranoid and wounded woman who will wonder into a bed during sex, and yet fear a falling pinecone. Martha declares herself a “leader and a teacher,” but who is talking? She, or the vile/musician/ rapist/father figure (John Hawkes, again mesmerizingly sinister) who ruled her life for two years? Newcomer writer/director Sean Dirkin leaves no easy answers as his jump editing, changing film stock, and inscrutable screenplay leaves the viewer aloof and, in the final shot, horrified. Its best trick is to equal the rich, capitalist “green” American consumer as a cultist all their own. Ms. Olsen is a phenomenal actress, leaving us unbalanced as victimized (sinister?) Martha Marcy ... A-

Margin Call (2011)

“Margin Call” is an end-of-America disaster flick with a Too Big Too Fail Weapon of Mass Destruction: Lehman Bros., slightly fictionalized. The harbinger of doom is a literal rocket scientist turned stock market shark (Zachary Quinto) who discovers his firm is a monstrous pig gorged on a diet of bad mortgages, and a heart attack just hit. His revelation sets off a chain bomb up the corporate ladder, from the floor manager (Kevin Spacey) to the CEO (Jeremy Irons at his most “Dead Rigner”ish). The reaction is not a heroic effort, but a scam far more sinister than anything in “Glengarry Glenn Ross,” another great F.U. to the Capitalism at All Costs mantra that fuels America. (GOP cheer!) A guy named J.C. Chandor makes his writing/directing debut, and he plays as if a decade-old pro as “Call” races like a thriller, and sports an acidic wit (no one in charge understands math). Quinto produced, and is a major star here, not just through massive-high-IQ acting, but because he lets the lions (Spacey, Irons and Demi Moore among them) rule the den. Sick twist: It all happened. A

Hugo (2011)

Leave it to Martin Scorsese to not just set a new high bar for children’s films, but all 3D movies. “Hugo” is a – superlative! -- masterpiece, a tale of an orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) in love with machines, cinema and stories, living in a Parisian train station as a clock master. Thid 3D gem glows with a boundless joy of movies and books beloved by Scorsese, making his best film in years, and his brightest, most wide-eyed adventure in ... forever. Hugo – this will upset Fox viewers – is poor, and steals food and drink to survive. (Call Newt!) That thievery puts him at odds with a short-fused toy shop owner named Georges Melies, who you well know if you know cinema. The plot kicks into glorious gear when Georges (Ben Kingsley) confiscates a notepad from Hugo, not knowing it once belonged to the boy’s dead father (Jude Law). I will say nothing more of the plot, watch and enjoy. Everything in “Hugo” – from the scenery and special effects to the actors and words -- is for proudly childish dreamers of all ages, all the ones who ever held a film camera or took pen to paper and thought, “What world can I create today?” Amazing from start to finish. A

Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011)

Is there a better hero for “Page One: Inside the New York Times” than David Carr? He is the guy every young journalist – myself included – has met and envied. His voice cracks like a car compactor chocking on a tank, and his body says north of 80, but he’s maybe 50. He has burned years and brain cells on booze and drugs, and yet come back fighting. Their real drug, though, was and is getting the big story. The quote. Nailing the Big Bad Wolf. I was an addict. Shit, that man is cool.

Carr is the “New York Times,” according to Andrew Rossi, director of this documentary. If Carr can rise from the ashes, then the “Times” can. And the paper has seen its share of ash. The Jayson Blair scandal. Management upheavals. Advertising and revenue wilting as the economy falters. The real kick in the balls: A vastly changing media landscape courtesy of the Internet, 15, 20 years young and far more powerful than the centuries-old printing press. All the news in the world one click away. No more wait for home delivery or newsstand runs. How is The Gray Lady (and the entire newspaper industry) going to get back fighting again? The answer is, of course, the Internet.

Rossi follows more “Times” staffers than Carr, including a war reporter who can file stories from a fox hole, and the new media kids on the block who spit out Tweets like reporters of old sucked down cigarettes. It isn’t easy. A longtime obituary writer is laid off, and anyone who has worked in news will cry for her. I did.

There’s something ironic about the title “Page One.” Having worked at newspapers, I well know the plans – sometimes weeks ahead – of what goes on the front. What is the “face” of the day? Sad death reports. Angry piss at corrupt bureaucrats? Happy features on three-legged dogs? The very idea of such is going away as websites change out the headlines hourly. For the better? No one knows. “Page One” touts meaningful investigative journalism, and shits on an upstart website that treats shocking poverty and war as some ironic gag. Is this what we want? Are we as a nation more interested in the Kardashians than the economy? If that’s the future, we are doomed.

“Page One” isn’t perfect. The ending – where the “Times” wins several Pulitzers in a major staff announcement – is a fumbled climax to a race I didn’t know was occurring. Another sticker: We see a heap of talking guy heads, all as white as me. That is not the modern “New York Times,” or modern journalism, or modern America. Still, a must see for anyone with ink running through his or her veins, and who fondly recalls the rumble of a massive printing press starting up as a magical childhood memory. Every newsroom scenes rock, Rossi film nails the banter and slams, and the editor who calls the liar, “liar.” B+

Hanna (2011)

Here’s a fairytale the Grimm Brothers dare not have imagined: A 16-year-old girl, raised in full isolation and trained to be a ruthless assassin by her golden knight father, is set out onto the world to exact revenge against the wicked witch who killed mommy. “Hanna” is not that bluntly supernatural, though. Daddy (Eric Bana) is an ex-CIA agent who we think is nutty paranoid until we learn he is rightfully so. The Wicked Witch (Cate Blanchett) is his CIA boss, a soulless Texan obsessed with material goods. Yes, it’s a commentary. Director Joe Wright is clearly having fun by squashing logic and ending his taut thriller at a derelict amusement park, with Blanchett walking out of the mouth of the Big Bad Wolf. This would all be laughable were it not for Saoirse Ronan, who ruled over Wright’s “Atonement.” As Hanna, she effortlessly bounces from a teen with no memory of women, and no idea of TV or music or cars, to a killer on a dime. She’s a better heroine than the girl from “Twilight.” Very “Never Let Me Go, Jason Bourne.” B

Ides of March (2011)

See “Ides of March” for its standout cast. Ryan Gosling. George Clooney. Paul Giamatti. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Jeffrey Wright. Evan Rachel Wood. A Giamatti and Hoffman face off? How cool is that? They need a better movie. This grim political drama should torch the screen. It barely sparks a flame. It’s about a suave campaign director (Gosling) devoted to his governor boss (Clooney) who is eyeing the presidency. And then – bam! – our hero learns his boss is a loose cock. Shocker? Not to the audience. But to Gosling’s Stephen Myers, yes. In modern America!?! Go on, watch. See if you can pick up motives I did not. Why does the governor reek of a trite symbol and not a person, and his wife (Jennifer Ehle) barely human at all? Did Wood’s intern eye Stephen with an agenda? She must have. How can anyone as smart as Stephen still believe in the whole candidate-savior crap at age 30? The dialogue should sting “Sweet Smell of Success” style, but it slumps. Clooney directs, with grey skies, dark bars and kitchens. Shakespearean? No. Melodrama? From start to finish. The high grade is for the cast alone. B

The Muppets (2011)

My childhood has a pop culture Holy Trinity: “Star Wars,” Superman, and “The Muppets.” So, a new film – after a long silence following the 1999 dud “Muppets from Space” -- is massive in my life. Ask my wife. (No. Don’t.) So, is this rebooted comedy-musical farce, with Jason Segal and Amy Adams as the human leads, all it can be? No. Devout to classic Muppet spirit? No. But it is a start. The plot concerns the old gang -- Kermit, Miss Piggy, Scooter, Fozzie, Gonzo, etc. – reuniting to save not just the rundown Muppet Theatre, but their felt bodies and ping-ball-eye selves, and souls, too. And these things have souls. Better than CGI. It is daft, and spends far too much time on its human stars and has too many fart-shoes jokes that seen unwise, but it’s a blast. As with the TV show and original films, guest stars abound. Jack Black leads the pack. Heaps of hip comics. But no Steve Martin, who knows his Muppets. I wanted that. But I loved seeing Scooter again, and hearing “The Rainbow Connection.” Just wow. I can’t wait for more. RIP Jim Henson. Oh, Chris Cooper raps. Hilariously awkward. B+

Immortals (2011)

The first shots of “Immortals” are breathtaking in their 3D glory. We open on a massive stone cube and we then swoop in to see black-grime-covered men, lined up perfectly, their heads held in metallic clamps, their teeth clenching rods. It’s another startling image from director Tarsem Singh, the visual artist who made “The Cell,” a flick that took us inside the mind of a serial killer. There’s not much on anyone’s mind here, just insanely buff guys clanging swords and spears – hey, nothing gay here – during the ancient days of Greece. You know the tale: After his family dies, mad King Hyperion calls war on the gods and slays thousands of people as an attention grabber. The brave peasant Theseus -- who is the son of an earthly woman and a god, does that sound familiar? -- must stop him. The talking bits are ridiculously serious and full of blowhard boasts, especially when our hero rallies his troops “Braveheart”-style, but the blood-soaked action is something to behold. Henry Cavill, soon to be Superman, is the stalwart hero. Mickey Rourke is Hyperion, a bit too cool and ironic. From the makers of “300,” but not nearly as bloodily cathartic. B-

Beverly Hills Ninja (1997)

Chris Farley as a ninja. No one can hate on that. It’s too deliciously ludicrous. And yet 1997 gave us just that, “Beverly Hills Ninja,” with the “SNL” comic whirlwind as a clumsy white guy raised in a Japanese ninja commune who visits … well, you know. Look, it’s negative IQ dumb and smells of an alcohol (or worse) induced joke come alive, but there’s a what-the-hell fun zeal to it as Farley stumbles, falls and generally acts like a buffoon. He did that well. I heartily laughed at the bits where characters fly to a transcendental hand-drawn cartoon world to chat philosophy, and at a running gag with our fearless warrior losing his shoes. Farley had an unquenchable appetite for drugs, and yet he always came off as a big kid with a kind heart, even in his worst films. A trace of sadness lingers, but I laughed. C+

J. Edgar (2011)

John Edgar Hoover was one of our nation’s most powerful guardians, who created the FBI, championed fingerprinting as a form of identification, and launched the very notion of criminal forensics. He remains the Holy Trinity of U.S. law enforcement. He did great things. He also was a control freak who drove his patriotic cop zeal so far up the flagpole, it turned from love of country to illegal and immoral bludgeon tactics not out of place in the Communist Russia that Hoover so loathed. His hunch or mood was law, the law be damned. He did terrible things. He kept files on and blackmailed presidents, Hollywood stars and corporate tycoons. How the hell can a movie about him be boring?!? This is it.

“J. Edgar,” the latest cinematic effort from Clint Eastwood, is a dead-eyed, soulless, filmed in shit-colored browns biopic unworthy of the man in the title. Directed by Eastwood and written by Dustin Lance Black – a gay leftist who penned “Milk” – this film should explode off the screen, polarize, and burn our conceptions. Recall “Nixon” or “Malcolm X.” They had balls. No balls here. Tackling Hoover is a tall order. No film could ever get it all. I could not do it. That anyone could try is surely of respect. But no love.

Black goes bust from the start as old Hoover is dictating the narrative of his life to various underlings, for a book of some sort, spilling his secrets… Wait, what? Hoover spill secrets? No. Worse, the agents question Hoover’s accuracy. Bullshit. No one questioned him. Still worse, the story jumps timelines throughout, Hoover at 70 at 19 at 35 at Gate 6F, and the edits kill all momentum. The scene of JFK’s assassination carries the impact of a burned pizza. As does the Lindbergh baby murder. That case is sliced and diced throughout the film. All the history and fascinating crime talk sinks. More bullshit: When Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover dons a dress as his dead mother – yes, we go there – it’s a cheap potshot of a rumor long disproved. And also hilarious, a contender for worse scene of the year. No joke.

And, yes, the film eyes Hoover’s debated sexuality, and as much as “J” tries to tackle the homosexuality slant as tippy-toes as possible, it’s undone by Armie Hammer (“Social Network”) who plays Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s confidant and reported lover as a wide-eyed swish. A cruel word, but it fits. It is not all bad. Black writes some beautiful bits about the absolute forbidden gay life of the time, a period all of our GOP presidential candidates long to bring back, and tells of a boy Hoover knew who committed suicide because he was bullied. As a gay. Judi Dench is Hoover's Bible-thumper bigot mom who says better dead than queer. Great performance, her psychologically whipping her boy because he dislikes girls. But, damn, does he have to dress like her? Is that not counter-productive, for gays, for Black? Such stereotype?

DiCaprio plays Hoover with all the Oscar Nomination power he can muster, and for that I never forgot I was watching a performance. (Dig Penn as Harvey Milk. Effortless.) DiCaprio is a fine actor -- he is -- but he does not have the gravitas, the sheer power that Hoover must have exulted, the fear factor. Not here. That said, Leo nails one scene where he declares his love for Tolson to himself. No sex, though, as Hoover is too repressed, or is it Eastwood? Whatever. Does not matter. When our two stars play old, they toddle around like drama majors doing “Odd Couple,” each smothered in terrible makeup. All the drama, gay and straight, seeps away.

It all ends with Hoover dead and the files – the thousands of files Hoover kept – shredded. There is no substance to right now, the sheer horror of what a guy like Hoover could do with cell phones and the Internet. (Hey, with Gingrich as president, we may find out.) Eastwood, Black and DiCaprio would be better if the screenplay were shredded. Hoover, too. Check out the 1950s Hoover/Hollywood propaganda flick “The FBI Story.” It’s so hilariously opportunistic and blindly in love with Hoover’s ego, and the America is God, I consider it a comedy classic. It tells more about J. Edgar than “J. Edgar.” Our nation, too. Always right. Eastwood -- a favorite of my life and forever, no matter his faults -- is just sagging of late. C

The Other Guys (2010)

In every testosterone-filled cops and their partners flick, there’s always the barely in-focus fellow detectives, no name extras taking up space. No one cares if they die by gunfire. Unlikely partners in every way (casting, too) Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are those men, one a paperwork nerd, the other a hot-headed dunce, in “The Other Guys.” When the cliché super cop heroes – played hilariously by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson – die not pulling off a stunt every movie cop pulls off, our “Guys” enter the fray. In a red Prius. Director/co-writer Adam McKay gleefully throws one of those impossible-to-follow coincidence plots at us as a greedy Wall Street tycoon (Steve Coogan) runs amok. Explosions and car chases abound, all sickly ridiculous, and yet not out of place in any “Lethal Weapon” movie. McKay ridicules mega-masculinity, the hot wife syndrome in every guy flick, and the economy. The bad guys get a bailout. Talk about realism. Ferrell is genius uncorking rage, and Wahlberg is a good straight man, although clearly uncomfortable yelling “I’m a peacock!” Still, great laughs. B+

Puss in Boots (2011)

Antonia Banderas as Puss in Boots was the best gag in the latter “Shrek” films, boring affairs that smelled of hastened scripts and all eyes on boosted 4Qs at Dreamworks. Luckily, the stand-alone film of “Puss in Boots” – the Latin Lover kitty stars, with no ogres or talking donkeys about – stands on his own four legs despite the studio curse of all jokes and flimsy story. Puss teams with Humpty Dumpty to score the golden goose from “Jack and the Beanstalk” fame. Salma Hayek voices a femme fatale, and Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris play a redneck Jack and Jill. A flashback is dull, Jack and Jill are after-thoughts, and Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) is a shell, but the writers clearly love cats, and they pitch gags galore as Puss breaks his cool to chase a light or give himself a bath at the most dramatic moment. The “camera” has fun as we weave around this CGI world, over a bridge, and later up a beanstalk. Cat nip for feline lovers. B-

Footloose (2011)

It’s been too long since I watched the 1984 Kevin Bacon-starring “Footloose” to compare it side-by-side to this 2011 remake. Both follow the same concept: A big-city high school guy named Ren McCormack (here Kenny Wormald) arrives in a small town that has gone all 700 Club following the fatal DUI wreck of several students: Dancing is banned. Loud music banned. Church mandatory. The plot is set in stone: Ren loves to dance, and he will dance, bringing a wild child (Julianne Hough) and a geeky country seed (Miles Teller) along the way. It’s a goofy movie with lines such as: “It’s our time now!,” but it’s a fun fight-the-power trip for teens bored of living at home. This version is more sexual and violent. Director Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow”) for the most doesn’t belittle small town people, and his camera happily follows the feet and hips of youths dancing until adulthood arrives. Wormald scores bonus points over Bacon: He does his own dancing, and does it spectacularly well. Diverse helpings of music abound. B+

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)

“Gnomeo & Juliet” is exactly what you think it is: A child’s eye version of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet,” minus the suicide, blood, lust and sex. Although there’s a helluva lot of jokes about cock – hat – sizes, and references to brave boy gnomes having huge balls. But will children get that? Likely not. They won’t care, either. Nor will they care that the movie’s concept steals from “Toy Story,” the gnomes come to life when left alone by people, and turn back into objects when they appear, and its humor stolen from the Dreamworks line of film parodies and famous voices for entertainment. There are some witty bits: Dig the moving truck, or the Taming of the Glue. The opening is a silly wink-wink nod to narrators of old. Nine writers took part. Up to 10 or more if you count Shakespeare and actorly improvisation. With that many people, you can have a soccer club. But a good film? No. C+

Just Go With It (2011)

Looking for a film to signal a breakup with your S.O.? “Just Go With It.” And “The Break-Up.” Hey, both star Jennifer Anniston. Why does she choose such awful projects? Here she plays a single mom and receptionist/ assistant/Jiminy Cricket to a smug plastic surgeon (Adam Sandler) who fakes being married to bed marriage-wrecker college girls. When doc falls in love with one of his scores, he bribes Anniston to play his greedy ex-wife, and her kids to be his offspring. This is one of those con shell games where the lies pile high for no other reason than to keep the plot going, and I stopped caring who hooked up with whom. Everyone on screen is an idiot or cruel or both, and the women are made to be especially gullible. You can see Anniston’s dread, and when Nicole Kidman (!?!) pops by as a snob, you can see her regret. Dennis Dugan made the awful Sandler flick “Grown-Ups,” and this is just as sloppy. Sandler hates his audience. Anniston deserves better. Nick Swardson, a Sandler apprentice, plays a vile, dumb character as an extra F.U. to the paying suckers on ... date night. D+

Bridesmaids (2011)

The Kristen-Wiig-spearheaded “Bridesmaids” is at once a female take on all-guy flicks such as “The Hangover” and a goofy yet sharp take on women wondering how they fit into the world, as opposed to the insufferable women who think the world revolves around them as in “Sex and the City 2.” This comedy revolves around Annie (Wiig), a mid-30s single woman with a failed business behind her, a dumpy jewelry store gig, and a crude fuck buddy (Jon Hamm) who doesn’t even appreciate the sex. When she learns her childhood BFF (Maya Rudolph, another “SNL” vet as is Wiig) is engaged, Annie reacts not with happiness, but despair. She fears being alone.

Annie means well, for sure, but her mental id makes hell for the bride’s life, including a literal shit-storm pileup at a high-dollar dress shop and a Las Vegas plane ride to nowhere. The best comedies, as with the best fantasy or sci-fi or romance films, take relatable, real people and put them in outlandish situations, and this is it: Drunk Annie balling at the death of Wilson in “Cast Away” and the sister-in-law bridesmaid (Melissa McCarthy, stealing the movie) not giving a flying F about what people think, and laying it all out for men. McCarthy says of a guy at a party, “I’m going to climb that like a tree.” Make a movie about her.

This is a fun movie, smart, happy to make an ass of its heroine, but never treating her as stupid or in a demeaning way. Nor are any of the women beholden to men, although they long for relationships, so they exist in a world Katherine Heigl fans cannot contemplate. It’s slow to go, and many scenes drag for a beat too long, as does every other Judd Apatow creation. He produced this. Still needs a sharper editor. But what a hilarious film. B+

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” twice in one week to truly understand how much of an empty-headed, empty-hearted letdown it is, a dull gray shadow of its first outing, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” one of the most fun Big Hollywood Tent Pole Movies of 2003 and the past decade.

That was a deserved Hollywood blockbuster: The thrill of seeing undead men walking on the ocean floor in moonlight to take a ship, Geoffrey Rush’s gleefully nasty villain who, I swear, I wanted to win because he was so … rotten good, Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, a swashbuckling conman hero with eye-liner who took part in the action yet remained aloof, a comedic Puck-like character from Shakespeare. With an undying thirst for rum, rum, rum. And rum. It was as if Depp said, “You want me to headline a Hollywood summer film? Alright, stand back.” The cast and characters (including Orlando Bloom and then-unknown Keira Knightley as the hero and damsel in distress) seemingly had no idea how to contemplate the actor Depp or the character Jack, and in once hilarious scene Bloom all but breaks the fourth wall to make sport of Sparrow/Depp.

“Black Pearl” was and remains a fun blast. No one knew it would work. It did. Massively. (Rush was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination, fact.) The film remains endlessly rewatchable, just to pick out the shifts and squirms in Depp and his pirate self. The inevitable sequels disappointed, they had nowhere to go but down, but they limped along nicely enough. This? This fourth sequel? Third sequel? Shit, does it matter? No. I have thus far avoided talking about it have you not noticed? It hurts my cinematic brain.

Depp is back, and the center stage as Jack Sparrow, the first mistake in this Rob Marshall-directed (he made “Chicago” and “Nine”) crapper that has no spark, no center, or soul, or logic. (Gore Verbinski helmed the first three.) Even hair-brained Hollywood logic, by which I mean the “Don’t think, enjoy” mantra is gone. Depp looks deeply sullen and uninterested from the start as he badly impersonates a London judge then – must I explain? – gets mixed in with a former flame (Penelope Cruz) and the nastiest pirate of all, Blackbeard (Ian McShane). It is McShane who gives some pulse to this mess, which leaves Bloom and Knightley behind for another couple two boring to speak about, and I say that knowing the dude plays a Christian missionary and the lady plays a genuine mermaid. How that can be boring, I’ll never know, but the writers behind this film make it so.

The whole darn lot is after the Fountain of Youth, and the climatic fight over it – involving pirates, Brits, the Spanish navy, those mermaids and zombies, yes, zombies – plays like an AARP promo. Arthritic, with bad-lighting, and lots of mugging. I mean sorry-ass smiles, not robbery, unless one counts the price of a movie ticket or DVD. The filmmakers whip up so many switcheroos that the endless double crosses become redundant echoes of “Gotch’ya!” In one ugly spot, Sparrow pulls a mutiny prank that gets an innocent man executed (by flamethrower!) at the hands of Blackbeard. Sparrow just shrugs it off. The scene is all kinds of wrong, bad for Jack and the series.

No scene is more boring and overlong than an early sword fight between Depp and Cruz, shot in pitch dark and from angles so unpleasant and haphazard, even a child would know we are watching stunt doubles piss about in a second-unit action scene. The once-rousing “Pirates” music by Klaus Badelt, Depp’s comedic timing, and the way he once slipped in and out of the action like an armed drunken court jester, is all off, as is the supernatural kitsch. We get zombie pirates, massive ships (the Black Pearl!) shrunken and captured in rum bottles, and voodoo magic. None of it is explained, and all of it reeks like half-assed script ideas abandoned whilst cameras rolled.

Rush returns (again!) as Barbossa, but that joyously evil glimmer he showed in “Black Pearl” is gone. Rush is here for the paycheck and the vacation in Central America, same as Depp. Having seen Depp slump through “Rum Diary,” I’m not too shocked, but Rush is usually above that. The first film played like a wild card gag, while “Stranger” lacks strangeness and magic, it is a lifeless bore, so dark (and in useless 3-D) I thought the big-screen TV we recently purchased was off kilter.

A fifth (!) “Pirates” is in the works, but I hope it’s a chest never opened. Beyond McShane and employing hundreds of CGI geeks and model makers, this third sequel (that hurts typing that again) has no reason to exist other than to have made hordes of money. (Which it sadly did.) Jump the shark? Jump off the plank. Captain Jack should quit the sea, and retire. To the ocean floor. Black Pearl: A On Stranger Tides: C-

The Runaways (2010)

When MTV debuted, Joan Jett’s shouted anthem “I Love Rock n’ Roll” (a cover) seemed to be the only female voice in an all-male sport. That chapter of Jett’s life is unseen in “The Runaways,” the standard biopic treatment of her first band, The Runaways – the early 1970s all-girl band that set guys’ eyes and other parts bulging, before the band imploded from drugs, sex, in-fighting and all the other rock band woes. “Runaways” puts Jett (Kristen Stewart) in second place, and focuses on Cherie Currie, the 15-year-old singer of the band, picked from a nightclub for not dancing. She jumps at the chance to escape her shattered family, and the band’s “I am God!” producer (Michael Shannon) drools at the thought of exploiting Cherie’s jailbait age. Dakota Fanning (who co-stars with Stewart in the “Twilight” pics) plays Cherie in a brave performance. Writer/director Floria Sigismondi hits every single Behind the Music tour stop, down to the prerequisite recording studio meltdown. The Runaways used the definitive F.U. song “Cherry Bomb” to burn the rules; the movie is a wet match. C

Attack the Block (2011)

“Attack the Block” is a short (88 minutes) B-grade flick shot with digital cameras, sporting no stars, and smelling of a 1970s–era sci-fi action piece that aired way late on crap cable channels when I was a child. I mean that as a compliment. It is what it is, silly, mildly scary fun. The Attackers are aliens that resemble wild wolves with glowing teeth. The Block is a massive cylinder monolith of low-income housing flats in South London. The heroes are young punks known as Hoodies, derived from their sweatshirt attire. The opening scene has the thugs (led by John Boyega as the aptly named Moses) robbing a young nurse (Jodie Whittaker) on the street. The crime is interrupted by a fetus-looking alien smashing into a car, and it’s off nonstop to the end credits. Joe Cornich is the writer and director, and like Quentin Tarantino before him, he uses every cliché of the genre he works in to new affect, including the myriad ways characters flee one another, only to end up together. It’s no “Reservoir Dogs,” but it is a great way to end an all-night movie marathon. Boyega is a star-to-be. B+

The Rum Diary (2011)

I discovered something about myself not too far into “The Rum Diary,” the latest gonzo tale by and about journalist/novelist/debaucherist Hunter S. Thompson, who never met an alcoholic drink or illicit drug he didn’t like. Correction, I learned something about Johnny Depp. He’s the star here. See, I have grown tired of Depp as an actor.

After watching “Pirates of the Caribbean: Are they Still Making These Things?,” I realized he no longer is an ace actor game at playing emotionally aloof rascals who involve themselves in dangerous games, but standoff at a safe distance. He has become an emotionally aloof actor involving himself in big films, but stands off at a safe distance. “The Tourist” more than fits that bill. His characters are no longer the ones who don’t give a shit, now it’s Depp himself.

Here, a journalism/discovery-of-self drama set in 1960 Puerto Rico from a HST novel, he plays Paul Kemp, a failed novelist who gets mixed up in a dying newspaper rag (headed by Richard Jenkins) and a corrupt real estate deal (headed by Aaron Eckhart), and must dig himself out. Between hits of rum and mescaline drops.

Depp lazily walks all over the film blasé style, hiding behind sunglasses, rather than the Captain Jack eye liner, and making jokes about mermaids (too soon) and dishing out that “Whoa, can you believe this?” double jerk take reaction he does without end. (He seems only jazzed by Tim Burton films.) Paul is supposed to be enraged by film’s end, but he barely ever registers a pulse. Ink and rage? Zzzzz. When the plot’s air leaks out of the bag and Paul leaves the scene with a defeated shrug, we have to rely on an end credit’s title scroll to tell us, “No, really, this Kemp guy is important! He did things!” From the sights on screen, I would never have guessed it. Not in 1,000 tries.

As the sexy femme fatale that messes with Kemp’s head and other body parts, Amber Heard is the only pulsating person on screen, seconded by Michael Rispoli as an overweight photojournalist comic foil, and the only guy on screen with a heart. They are the rum shots in this watered down drink. C+

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

“Sex and the City 2” is an abomination. Over reaction? I present this scene: NYC sex columnist/novelist/wife Carrie Bradshaw (Sara Jessica Parker) is sitting in a private jet, flying to Abu Dhabi on an all-expense paid trip. Free. No strings. Is she looking out at the window at the majestic world below her? Is she contemplating the wonders of culture and geography at her destination? No. She is pouting. She says, in that “I’m so witty” voice that Parker employs, and grinds my soul apart, and I quote, “Somewhere over Africa, I began to wonder about relationships.” Who. The. Fuck. Talks. Like. That? I mean, even in a fictional high-on-sugar-and-schmaltz fantasy cream fizz bullshit film about rich, snobby, soulless New Yorkers?

Carrie pouts because husband Mr. Big, a wildly wealthy Wall Street type played by Chris Noth, bought her a massive TV for their anniversary, so they can snuggle and watch movies in bed. The horror! The abuse. Pfft. It sinks in fast during the first 20 minutes of this ungodly long film that God Himself, if He exists or not, in all His infinite glory could not satisfy Carrie Bradshaw. So she will pout. She’s become a caricature reality show Housewife of Wherever, I guess New York. She is a 45-year-old child, with Botox. Syringes of Botox.

But that’s just the tip of this vile fantasy anti-feminist comedy that is so unaware of its self and the universe and any remote reality, it thinks having Arabic women lifting burkas to reveal hidden Madison Square Avenue clothes equals liberation. In a region infamous for killing women who dare speak out, drive, and ask for equal rights from their men overlords. More eye-opening side trips in this in-Hollywood-only Middle East include the four TV “SATC” friends (Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis are all on hand with Ms. Parker) having an openly swishy gay Arabic manservant because … we all know how Islamic-nations love gay people. As much as the Republican party. I won’t get into the multi-million-dollar opening gay wedding with swans, an all men’s chorus, and Liza Minnelli as the officiator and entertainment. So damn vulgar.

Director/writer/torturer Michael Patrick King has said this film -- this capitalism-is-God soul fuck -– is a throwback to the fantasy films of the ’30s, purposeful fluff made to cheer up audiences rocked by the Great Depression. Never mind that many people in 2010 could not afford the $12 movie ticket to be sucker punched. It was a nickel back in 1931. The HBO TV show was known for some crass consumerism, for sure, but it also was amazingly smart and shrewd, giving men the window-shop treatment women suffer in 99 percent of films and music and TV shows. Heartbreaks were played out, and 9/11 honorably looked upon with love for New York. The few moments of insight in this -– Davis’ mother weeping over hectic children and Nixon’s attorney dealing with a sexist boss, everyday stuff women deal with -– are drowned out in silliness such as a hot nanny with no bra, Jude Law jokes, and Nixon chirping all Minnie-Mouse-like saying “I’ll get a better job!” Really, lady, in this economy?

That the movie winks at true sexism and the economy, the housing market, and joblessness, GREED that has destroyed millions of lives, and yet has every character blissfully not giving a fuck is all the more insulting. A better film could have had these ladies knocked down a peg, holding fast to their friendship through the loss or a job, or eviction, or uncertainty. I have read reviews comparing the excess and dumpsters of money found here to “Transformers 2.” I’d say this film is more akin to “Grown Ups,” a sad sack comedy full of 40-year-olds acting like 20-year-olds, fully unaware no one in the audience finds them relevant anymore. At least the first film, released in 2008, had kick and spark of character growth, mixed in with the commercialism.

Final insult: The women flaunt their “feminist” power in the land of Allah like a pack of Westboro church members screaming free speech as they belittle every single human within earshot, and yet cry foul when criticized. Cattrall’s sex lioness -- once a pop culture icon, now a stereotype – is the prime offender, mimicking oral sex at an Arabic restaurant. That’s not feminism. That’s pissing on feminism. On culture. The whole film is an insult to women, Muslims, gays, America, the Middle East, all sense and sensibility. If you like this film, please, buy, rent or borrow a soul. There is none to be found here. F

Hellboy (2004)

Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy” is among the best comic book adaptations out there. And why not? The Spanish master of cinema (he had “The Devil’s Backbone” behind him, and “Pan’s Labyrinth” before him) has a massive bright-red-skinned, sawed-off demon-horned, cat-loving superhero as his star, one who smokes – PC alert! – cigars.

Del Toro doesn’t shy away from the comic book tone, as so many others do to be as audience-pleasing as possible, he embraces it. He even has “Hellboy” comic books be part of the early plot as a young novice FBI agent (Rupert Evans) is assigned as a baby sitter to the prime agent of a top-secret super-natural subdivision of the fed. That’s the tough hero Hellboy, played by Ron Perlman, a character so bizarre to look at onscreen, one marvels still this film ever got made. Or produced a sequel. Perlman, by the way, gives a star-making performance, and clearly is having a blast as the center of attention. He’s the Hulk meets Dirty Harry meets Lucifer, as a misunderstood good guy, and the color of a red Crayola. John Hut, always good and just oozing majesty is Hellboy’s adaptive father, a scientist in love with the strange and unusual.

Part comedy, part horror and action, and all World War II Spielberg Nazis as bad guys opera, this film is a delight from frame one to frame last, because of del Toro’s love for the bizarre, and fantastical sci-fi nonsense. The main villain is none other than Rasputin (Karel Roden), or at least the comic book version of infamous Russian madman, over the top evil and yet grounded as one would expect from the guy who made “Cronos.” (Perlman starred in that gem and “Blade II,” too.) Del Toro’s onscreen pranks include “anything goes” sights in New York to an assassin with sand for blood, and a box full of kittens in need of rescue. (A box full of kittens!)

This is how you take a film from ink-stained comic book pages to the big screen, just go for it. Excellent special effects, makeup and art direction throughout, it’s clearly been inspired by the similar “Men in Black.” Great popcorn fun. A

The Long Good Friday (1980)

“The Long Good Friday” is an absolute pinnacle classic gangster film in the U.K., place of my birth. Here in the States, not so much. It may not have glory and prestige of “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas,” but it belongs in the same esteemed crime family. This is a hard-scrapple bitchin’ bloody mafia flick about a common London mafia thug who has risen to the level of Godfather, and now he wants to go legit.

It’s 1979, and in several years’ time, the city is expected to play host to the Olympics. (It’s fictional, youz guys.) Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) wants to buy up London’s real estate abutting the Thames River for development, with promised riches beyond compare to come. His investors? The American Mob. Guy ain’t going legit, just thinks he is, or tells us he is. Oh, but the IRA is bugging about, as one of his men has double-crossed them, and ended up knifed in a gay bathhouse.

The title is on purpose. It’s a long and bloody Easter weekend when Shant’s mob life goes to a violent hell, with bombings, murders, and threats galore, and one man will end up nailed Jesus-style to a floor. Hopkins has never been better or scarier, or more volatile, you can smell the brimstone coming off the guy through the TV set. When he rips a man’s throat apart with a broken whiskey bottle, it’s still a shocker, even on a 10th viewing. (I love this film.)

Helen Mirren is just amazing as Shants’ girlfriend-slash-brutal brains of the mob operation; every equal smarts to Hopkins’ brutality. She has to be one of the greatest actresses ever, period, end of story. Royally good. I will not stoop to a “Queen” joke, err, damn. Sorry.

The film starts off a puzzle box, with seemingly random scenes of dealings and bar hook ups and body dumps, all coming together at the end, in a wordless climax that should have won Hopkins an Oscar and can stand aside any scene in the more well-known films made by Coppola or Scorsese. Scotsman John Mackenzie is the director. He never made a better film and he died without merely a blip in the news this past June. Criminal indeed. (I cannot say I have seen his other work.)

Oh, and bonus points for “Remington Steele” and James Bond fans, this is Piece Brosnan’s first film rule, and he plays a wordless assassin who goes from man-on-man bathhouse shower action, I mean the kind that would send GOP voters into shock, to killer in a flash. But, hey, he uses a gun, so GOP voters will dig that, eh? Seriously, if you dig crime film, watch this, then put it in your collection. A+

Moneyball (2011)

What better time to see “Moneyball” than now? World Series! Baseball is in its glory, when even the folks who don’t care a whiff about RBIs suddenly start paying attention to the diamond drama. And this is a solid out of left field drama that avoids the tired comedy antics of “Major League” and focuses solely inside the back offices. (That said, this is no “Bull Durham.” But what sports film is?)

It's 2001 and Oakland Athletics’ GM Billy Beane is coming off a post-season crushing by the Yankees. His top players bolted for greener pastures, money –wise and location-wise. He needs replacements. STAT. But his recruiting budget is a third of the Yankees’. So, how the hell can Beane compete? That’s the gist of “Moneyball,” where Beane – played by Brad Pitt in a powerfully understated Everyman tone – goes against the biblical rules of baseball scouts, and instead relies on the “get on Base” mantra of one Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), an economics geek. If you know baseball, you know the rest. The As start the season awful, with a piss-ant coach (Philip Seymour-Hoffman, head shaved and crusty) ruining the lineup. Beane must take control.

Co-written by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zallian, “Moneyball” is about any passion or business – pizza-making, movie-making, banking or professional sport – steam-rolled by Big Money, all the joy and unknowns crushed under consumer surveys and greed. The baseball scenes are almost beside the point as Beane never watches the games. That said, the tumults of an imploded 11-0 lead make for damn fine filmmaking by director Bennet Miller, who made “Capote.” Yeah, the ending goes long in the bottom of the ninth, but it is painless.

I cannot say enough how much I dug Pitt’s performance, and Hill is brilliant, who knew? What an amazing, quiet, smart performance he gives. Bravo, sir! The camaraderie between the two men is often awkwardly funny, including a scene where Beane teaches Brand how to fire players -- guys twice Brand’s size and who carry bats. The dialogue, as expected from Zallian and Sorkin, pops like a fly ball that never comes down. A-

Gangs of New York (2002)

I’ve re-watched “Gangs of New York” several times recently, and still come to the same conclusion I felt in 2002: It’s a powder keg film at its opening with Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson swinging axes and blades as 1840s rival gang leaders in New York’s Five Points, the sector of race, religion and pride ran over. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting – that’s Day Lewis – stands unbowed as Neeson’s Priest falls dead. I was slack-jawed then and now at the onscreen carnage. Yet, the film’s remainder never balances or even gels, making for a fascinating disappointment from director Martin Scorsese. The story dissolves in an odd (and literal) telegraphed narration as the Priest’s grown son (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks vengeance against Cutting. A climatic riot/gang fight/naval attack is so spastic, we require text to pinpoint what’s going on. Too much. Not enough. It’s a tremendous telling of democratic America’s terrible, blood-soaked birth that Tea Party folks refuse to believe. (They actually think this nation began with freedom for all and biblical values, and want to go back.) It’s just not a satisfying film, feeling sliced even at 160 minutes. Day-Lewis is volcano, spewing a violent code of “honor” shocking in its depravity. DiCaprio wilts in his presence. B-

Priest (2011)

Paul Bettany says he is an atheist. Yet the man seems obsessed with God. Overtly so. He played an outcast priest in “Reckoning,” an albino monk assassin (!!) in “Da Vinci Code,” a devout and troubled Charles Darwin in “Creation,” and a vengeful angel of God in “Legion.” In “Priest,” he scowls as a ninja clergymen battling vampires. Priests slicing vampires with swords! Makes sense. This ought to rock. But it’s a dull flick with “Matrix” fight scenes leftover from 1999, and art direction that marries blown-out white dessert to “Blade Runner” cityscapes. It’s all ugly, and PG-13 safe. The sullen Bettany – so cool in “Master and Commander” – is far less interesting than Karl Urban channeling classic Eastwood as the vamp leader or Christopher Plummer channeling a Republican-type giddy on church-state rule. The plot – the Priest must save his kidnapped niece – is pure “Searchers,” but the only thing found is another sinkhole franchise launcher going nowhere. And it was all in 3-D in theaters. Lord have mercy. C-

The Way (2011)

Emilio Estevez is a quiet and introspective writer and director of the self-funded “The Way,” a family drama starring real-life pop Martin Sheen (ne Ramon Estevez) as a grieving father coming out of his all-for-capitalism shell. It deals with fathers/sons and religious values, and not cheekily so. Sheen is Tom Avery, an aging eye doctor who receives a call while on the golf course: His son (Estevez) has died while walking the famed trail Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James. Tom goes to Europe to collect the body and return home. But, alone and openly weeping in his hotel, he decides to finish the son’s journey, one he openly mocked to the son’s face. So, yes, Tom will have his own awakening. His eyes (did you miss that symbolism?) will open. I wish we knew more of Daniel’s intent (why that trail, why not hike in Chile?), but the film is about Tom’s character, and stopping to see sunsets and going to church. Even if you don’t believe. Sheen is stoic in this quiet thoughtful tale. (He is just as stoic in person, I saw this screen in his presence at Virginia Tech. Amazing man.) P.S. I want to see Estevez cut as wildly loose behind the camera as he did on camera in “Young Guns.” That would be a freakin' blast. B+

Contagion (2011)

“Contagion” will stay with you for weeks, like a bad infection or the title killer virus that spreads around the globe thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow’s businesswoman/mom/wife/adulteress. This is a medical apocalypse horror flick where every cough, sneeze and human touch comes on like an axe blade. Director Steven Soderberg and writer Scott Z. Burns present a cold and smart drama, as if told by a veteran crime reporter. The duo refuse to go for the loud orchestra-assisted heroic deaths of major characters: They get sick and die, the scene moves on. No comment. Like the virus. Some great actors – Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and John Hawks among them – are the scrambling heroes, locking their surviving children in their home, taking to the field to control the virus’ spread, or managing from on high at Center for Disease Control. The characters spill expert medical terms without apology, make errors both terrible and loving, and the saviors wear lab coats. The women rock. Science rocks. Jude Law plays a snakey left-wing blogger, and is deviously good. Damon marks his best onscreen moment: A husband so shocked upon hearing of his wife’s death, he asks to speak to her. The doctor repeats, “She’s dead.” Cold and sad. A-

Warrior (2011)

“Warrior” is a two-for-one “Rocky” tale set inside the metal cages of Mixed Martial Arts. Tom Hardy is Rocky 1, a hulking slab of muscle and seething anger named Tommy Riordan, returned home to visit his Found Jesus father (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic whose past sins run deep. In Philly is Rocky 2, Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), an ex-MMA pro now teaching high school physics. The kicker: The men are brothers, split apart by the old man’s carnage. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, who made “Miracle,” the movie plays with every sport film cliché around from the loyal wife to the hero with a dark secret. Nolte’s listening to “Moby Dick” on CD pushes the edge of symbolism, that white whale being his sin. It could have been cut. But like “Miracle,” this is a go-ahead-and-cheer film with the brother-against-brother final bout dishing out drama that hurts. Nolte plays regret so well, and Edgerton (“Animal Kingdom”) is heroic as the underdog fighting to pay the mortgage. But this is Hardy’s film. He stalks and defeats opponents with a Raging Bull glare, and builds on the grisly prison flick “Bronson” and his scene-stealing from “Inception.” He’s up next as the steroid-crazed Bane in “Dark Knight Rises.” Batman better watch his back. B

Don’t Look Now (1973)

Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter, an academic and artist/restorer, obsessing to the point of tedium over the exact size and shade of colored squares for bas relief sculptures on his latest facelift project, a centuries old church in a dreary, wintry Venice. The work is good, it keeps him distracted from thinking about the soul-crushing drowning death of his young daughter back home in England, the brokenness pooling inside his wife, Laura (Julie Christie), and the fact that he foresaw the girl’s death moments before it occurred.

When a small gesture – the closing of a restaurant window – brings Baxter and his wife into contact with two sisters (Clelia Matania and Hilary Mason), one of whom is blind and psychic, lives will unravel. For the blind woman can see the dead daughter, and the girl has a message for daddy: Flee Venice or die.

That is the premise of Nicolas Roeg’s justifiably famous psychological horror/thriller “Don’t Look Now.” There is a serial killer here, yes, but the suspect is off to the side, a secondary plot tangent, whereas the real onscreen horror is about a couple desperately trying to come to terms with unfathomable loss and guilt, and further losing their paths – mentally and physically – along the way to recovery. The latter part is literal, as the streets and alleys of Venice can be an endless puzzle box, where light often is absent and unreachable. Even during daylight.

I have been there, to Venice, and I have never seen its dark side – and it has a dark side, no lie – put to better use than here. This is a city where walking around a corner can bring you to the safety of a market square or a pitch black dead end. Dread follows this couple.

Roeg’s story, loosely based on a short story, and his editing and camera work, and the refusal to use subtitles for spoken Italian, constantly keep the viewer off balance. Some scenes play out mysteriously and suddenly, and it is not until the end credits roll that one realizes their significance. A second viewing is a must. Also our heroes are not so lovable: They abandon their surviving child to a boarding school back in England after he watched his sister drown. Who does that? One pauses at their parenting skills, and ponders the meaning of such a send-off.

Absolutely among the most terrifyingly real films I’ve ever seen, and winced through twice in a row. Sutherland I don’t think has ever been better, or Christie more lovely and hurt, and as the blind woman with a special sense all her own, Mason nearly steals the film in the final freakish minutes.

Not for all tastes that’s for sure, it contains one of the most notorious sex films ever put in a film. The drowning of the child, at the opening of the film, is also startling, leaving one cold and uneasy. Emotions throughout the film, including the climax, cling to you. Or they dd to me, even writing this blog piece days after viewing the film.

Incidentally, or not, “Now” has one of the most layered depictions of a Catholic priest I have ever seen. The bishop (Massimo Serato) overseeing the renovations dismisses the detailed work by Baxter. Having suffered his own tragedies, he shrugs off stucco choices and the shapes of gargoyles, and all the brick and mortar worry. Baxter foams and protests, “This is important!” It’s just a building, the priest says, looking with grave concern at his troubled and grieving employee and friend, “God has more important priorities.” A+

Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

“Airplane!” has been a favorite since I first saw it 30 years ago. A spoof of 1970s-era airplane disaster flicks such as “Airport,” plus “Saturday Night Fever” and “From Here to Eternity,” it is the tale of a shell-shocked flyboy vet (Robert Hays) who buys a ticket on a Chicago-L.A. flight to woo back the stewardess (Julie Hagerty) he loves. But tragedy – food poison! – strikes, and Hays must command the airplane after the crew is laid ill. Insert dramatic music.

Directors/writers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker just kill it, every joke either a gold-star winner or so awful, you laugh anyway. The genius is how nearly every actor – Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack -- in the film is dead-set serious no matter what insanity occurs. My favorite bits change with each viewing, from Barbara Billingsley talking jive to the white man saves Africa spoof to the wrong engine sound and a horse in bed. I could drone on for hours about this classic, but just know this is the ultimate pick-up film on any bad day. Leslie Nielsen as the doctor is a cinematic god. RIP, sir. A

The sequel – aptly named “Airplane II: The Sequel” -- is not classic, or even really memorable. The cherries are far outnumbered by the shit balls in this mostly scene-for-scene remake-part-sequel set not in airplane, but a passenger ship Space Shuttle headed to the moon.

Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers moved on to greener pastures, as did much of the cast, leaving some guy named Ken Finkleman to helm this space ride. He’s the guy who made “Grease 2.” The semi-plot: An onboard computer control goes whack, causing mayhem. HAL spoof! Boring! Hays and Hagerty return, both on Ottopilot. Jokes about armed terrorists boarding unscathed as old ladies are strip-searched is funnier now than the 1980s, in a twisted way. But even at 85 minutes, the film nose dives. C+

Drive (2011)

Steve McQueen would faint. “Drive” is a soaked-in-blood B-Grade car chase flick living the A-Grade life, with a silent, stewing Ryan Gosling (“My Blue Valentine”) as Driver, a nameless Hollywood stunt man by day and a freelance wheelman by night. When he drives, cutting j-turns or racing past other cars, he does so with the exact precision of a brain surgeon. A toothpick sticks straight out of our hero’s closed mouth, as if it’s a holy cross, and biting on it will keep Driver’s tires spinning. He doesn’t sweat the cop car chases or the helicopter search lights, barely blinking as he turns and swerves and hides, the wide-eyed thieves in the backseat sweating and bopping around like loose grocery items.

Of course “Driver” is a Hollywood film itself, so there must be a lonely, pretty woman (Carey Mulligan) down the hallway, an oddball mentor (Bryan Cranston), and sadistic mobsters out to make the hero’s life hell. The heavies are played by Ron Perlman – turning his Hellboy hero upside down to pure-fire menace – and Albert Brooks – erasing decades of nice guy nerds by taking kitchen cutlery to a man’s head and throat. It’s a bristling, seething performance, and it deserves an Oscar nomination.

But don’t think Gosling is be lefty empty-handed against such villainy. As with Clint Eastwood as The Man with No Name and Kurt Russell as Snake Plisskin, Gosling’s acting is all in his glare, the slight movement of an eye against an opponent. For the first part of the film, one assumes he is just a driver for criminals, not prone to violence or crime. Wrong. He threatens a betraying woman, beats a man with a hammer and makes him swallow a bullet, and then ups the ante by beating a man to death. Gosling’s Driver does this seemingly without raising his pulse, a mere sweat mark, as if he’s just jogged a mile or two. A nice workout. Great performance.

There’s not a wasted moment in this economic film, shot similar to a late ’70s midnight feature that shows up on cable every now and then, and scored with a pulsating 1980s rock beat that sizzles. Hossein Amini’s screenplay is sparse, sharp. Gosling maybe has under 100 words. One great exchange: Brooks’ mobster wants to shake hands with Driver at the start of the film. Driver demurs. “My hands are dirty.” Grease and grime. “So are mine,” the man shoots back. Blood and sin.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn stages chases low to the ground, as if we’re following along on a jet-fueled skateboard. The fights and murders are doused with buckets of blood: A skull explodes wide open from a shotgun blast and when Driver stomps a man to death, we hear every crack of skull then the mushy plop of brain tissue. Wisely Refn pulls back the on-screen carnage toward the end for shadows and long shots. His prison drama “Bronson” was a shocking powerhouse film, but I thought his Viking flick “Valhalla Rising” was too artsy. Here Refn is in full gear, grinding the throttle until the engine gives, not sweating.

“Drive” doesn’t break new ground. The plot is, to put it mildly, familiar. So was “13 Assassins,” another summer winner for me. I’m not sure Mulligan pulls off her role: A mother and waitress barely scraping by money wise with a husband in prison. Most women in that position would be tired and frazzled. Her Irene seems more grad school track. But that’s Mulligan’s mug, I think. This past summer left us little in the way of pure adrenaline rushes, and “Driver” than fits the bill. I can’t wait to take it for another spin. A-

Secretariat (2010)

Walt Disney airbrushes life. That is its specialty. And in “Secretariat,” the studio does a splendid job: This biopic of the horse that won Triple Crowns shows no grit and grime of track racing, nor does it delve into race issues, Vietnam, drugs and sex, or feminist issues despite its 1960s-1970s setting. When Tea Party Patriots talk about the gleaming glory days of American history, they mean the America depicted in this movie. Not reality. But I digress, because this is a rousing lump-in-your-throat film. It focuses on Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), a housewife compelled into taking over her parents’ horse farm. Born with horse sense, Penny knows there is a champion soon to be born in her stable and so she marches full force into a sport run by cigar-smoking old men. You know the rest. From Lane’s whip smart take-no-crap aura to the beautiful cinematography (by Dean Semler) to the long finale where the horse gallops to glory, my snob standards fell and I smiled big. A must-show to girls looking for female heroes. B

Men in Black (1997)

I love “Men in Black.” To think it once was going to star Clint Eastwood and Chris O’Donnell. Thank God for Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. Jones is K, an agent for a secret government organization that is like Department of Immigration for outer space arrivals. K’s mission: Keep the aliens a secret from us human saps. Smith is J, a plains clothes street cop who ends up working for K. The plot has Smith as a surrogate “us,” seeing a whacky world that’s been all around us, but just out of sight until now. Our Men in Black have to stop the world from going asunder, and their enemy is a bug-infested famer whose body was smashed flat so he drags himself around with tics and hiccups. He’s played by Vincent D’Onofrio in an endlessly funny and Oscar-worthy performance. Director Barry Sonnenfeld makes the talking dogs, one-liners and the climactic joke about the N.Y. fair grounds seem effortless and perfectly sensible. Rick Baker designed the unique aliens. Smith and Jones -- I love their surnames here -- play like a father-and-son comedy team, having a blast. Even Jones smiles. A

The Help (2011)

“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary.

Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all.

Let us get my major grind out of the way. “Help” is geared toward the widest American audience possible, so it will not cut bone. It will not show the true Jim Crow South, made horrifically real and alive in the book “Carry Me Home.” (Read that book. Do it. Now.) It will not dare go the route of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” with a rightfully angry black man -- that is a fine, true Civil Rights film -- ready to tear down the institution that has torn him down his entire life. It mostly avoids blood and death, and follows a liberal, white, pretty girl, because that’s what Hollywood thinks we want. Looking at box office receipts, they nailed an “Easy A,” to bring up Emma Stone. (“Easy A” is Stone’s biggest hit film.)

Stone plays the hero: Eugenia, a … wait for it … newspaper reporter (liberal!) who starts out writing a housecleaning advice column but soon dives incognito into telling the stories of black maids/ nannies – The Help -- hired by wealthy families. Including her own. In a Hollywood story, a young black woman or man could never dream up this idea. No. Help, so to speak, has to come from outside. Just like the heroic FBI (!!!) had to help in a certain Gene Hackman film I mentioned above. (Talk about a crock of history.) And, I know, it’s all based on a book. A best-seller. Whoopdeefriggin’ do, my point still stands.

But I digress. Stone’s newly minted University of Mississippi grad Eugenia returns home to the town of Jackson as an aspiring writer, her eyes now open to the horror that she was raised in and never thought of for a second. Eugenia’s first choice for the book is Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), the caretaker of her best pal’s daughter. Aibileen is, of course, scared of revenge from her white employers and local Klan, the latter of whom never actually appears. That would scare test screening audiences after all.

Eugenia asks upfront dumb questions: Do you regret raising the babies of others, whilst missing out on the lives of your own children? And do you have dreams other than being a maid? Well, no, shit, girl. Really? But here’s the beauty of this film: Davis rips the film from Stone with a fierce, devastating performance. She makes that awkward scene work. When Aibileen talks of her life, her body language vibrates with heartbreak, sadness, regret and, yes, anger, directed at herself and the world that belittles her based on skin color. (I can’t image being so treated, I’d rage forever. I would burn buildings down, no lie? Would you not?)

We also follow another white family, headed by a Stepford Wife-type monster, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is the villain, a young lady who speaks of Christian charity and yet proclaims Separate but Equal must always stand. The character veers close to caricature, but Howard – pouring out judgmental evil from her eyes – makes it work. Hilly, that’s her Southern Belle name, takes great pleasure in ridiculing her own maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer). And Hillies still exist today, no lie, and I have met them.

It is Minny who serves a dish of revenge, the comedic comeuppance, and brings about the film’s most controversial moment. It’s funny. I admit I laughed. I did. I also wondered if any such thing could have ever truly happened, in a state where murder upon African-Americans for the lightest infraction was the norm. The whole gag seems a modern, not historical, touch. I suppose from the book. I skipped reading it. Thankfully, the final scenes have Aibileen taking on her oppressors. No Eugenia about. It ends seriously, with quite a heart-breaker, and with an uplift.

So, see the film. Watch it for the scene toward the end where Eugenia walks into Aibileen’s home and sees a roomful of African American women. It is the first time I have ever seen a summer Hollywood flick that featured a roomful of African American woman, and that in itself says the struggles depicted here are not ancient history. They still exist. And be warned, when we have presidential candidates saying our Founding Fathers worked to end slavery and congressmen who shrug off the Civil Rights Act as passé federal oversight, and make a half-hearted apology that they were taken out of context. Jim Crow, institutionalized racism with state’s rights ... it could happen again. (That “Take our country back” mantra is a threat, do not doubt it. We have a black man in the Oval Office.)

But also know this: When you are watching and laughing along at the funny bits (and I am guilty) in a movie about this era, remember not many people were laughing during the real 1963. Not in the South. The emotions, I gather from stories told to me and read by that occurred before my birth, were far more grim. On both sides of the divide. Give me “Malcolm X.” It is far closer to the ugly truth. This could play on TV, Sunday night movie, uncensored, and not raise a pulse. B-

Paul (2011) and Spaceballs (1987)

Within a few days of each other, I watched “Spaceballs” and “Paul,” two comedy-spoofs that kick the shins while kissing the feet of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in their full 1970s “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” glory. Hell, this blog title is named after “Close Encounters,” so I and my fellow sci-fi geeks are a happy target, too. So on we go…

Every child of the 1980s has seen “Spaceballs,” Mel Brooks’ spoof of “Star Wars” with rips at “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Alien” tossed in as extras. I knew this film before I knew several of the targets, being 13 in 1987. But space battles are not what Brooks is satirizing here. Rather, he targets the crass commercialization of those films, especially Lucas’ still-insatiable thirst for dollars: The way selling childish Ewok action figures became more important than crafting a nuanced child-like imaginative finale to the hallmark trilogy of Generation X’s youth. “Spaceballs” even stops midpoint to hawk its own release on VHS, a wiser joke now with present-day instant downloads and DVD releases within 8 weeks of a theatrical run.

The plot is “Star Wars” simple: A space cowboy named Lonestar (Bill Pullman) must rescue a princess (Daphne Zuniga) from the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis, stealing the film even with his face covered most of the time). Brooks plays two parts: A “Wizard of Oz”-like lizard alien named Yogurt, spoofing Yoda, and a clueless president, modeled after, dare I say, Ronald Reagan. But it’s not a laugh riot. With none of Gene Wilder’s sharp gags and line delivery from “Producers,” Brooks’ comedy flounders far more than it soars.

Brooks relies on Jewish jokes, and one penis gag after another. Those get old fast. Much of the time, “Spaceballs” just sits there, almost proudly being dull as the heroes really are an unmemorable bunch of slouches. If that joke is on purpose, it back fires. Or one wonders if Brooks’ is just coasting. My theory: He doesn’t love “Star Wars” enough to really tear into it, and have giddy dirty fun as he did in “Blazing Saddles” or “Young Frankenstein.”

Brooks might enjoy “Paul,” with its dick and smoking pot jokes and the “I’m not gay” gay humor that play throughout. Realized in spring 2011, “Paul” plays along similar lines of “Spaceballs,” but stays on Earth with a classic two pals in a road chase plot. It’s more interesting, and has better lead actors. Even better: Some big sci-fi stars pop by spoofing our image of them. And we have Jason Bateman finally (finally!) playing a bad-ass fed prick, with a black suit and a gun. He’s no pocket protector nerd here. He rocks the part.

Our focus is on two Brit sci-fi nerds (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who previously teamed in “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) who are in the States for Comic Con at San Diego, and then a road-trip in an RV to see Area 51, the famed Black Mailbox and all the other alien invasion hot spots dotted along America. Running from a couple red necks ala “Deliverance,” our heroes see a car crash on the desert highway. The driver: A little green alien. Just like in all the History Channel specials, big raisin head, big black eyes, wee frail body. But this guy sports the demeanor of Seth Green, the actor who made me hate “Green Hornet,” but like such fare as “Superbad.” Speaking of that, Greg Mottola, the guy who directed “Superbad,” is in charge here.

This is a love letter to all films sci-fi, and other American hits: “E.T.,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Blues Brothers,” “Thelma & Louise,” the list goes on. But there’s also a tweak of all those films, as our green guy here dismisses “E.T.” hi-jinks, and smokes a joint with his road trip buddies. There are plenty of great jokes here, but some of the film – including a bit with a Christian fanatic (Kristin Wiig) – drag. At 90 minutes, “Paul” might have been great, at more than 110 minutes, and with an ugly punch of graphic blood, this alien sticks around longer than it should. Closing on a high note: Bateman’s character sarcastically rips into his minions, each a sci-fi fanatic. “You’re a grown man, right?,” he mocks them, and us in the audience. Ouch. But clever.

“Spaceballs”: C+ “Paul”: B

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011)

Windi Murdoch has a mean right hook. Mess with husband Rupert and she will fuck you up. No joke. Awesome wife, she is. But movie producer? Not so much. Ms. Murdoch’s first foray into Hollywood is “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” a sufferable drama about four women suffering in modern day and 19th century China. What we learn: Friendships among women are good, sexism is bad, and foot-binding is really bad. Confession: I already knew all this going in.

The gist: In modern day Shanghai, successful businesswoman Nina (Li Bingbing) is set to move to New York when she learns estranged BFF Sophia (Gianna Junn) has been in a terrible accident. A distraught Nina rushes to the hospital to be by Sofia’s bedside. There, Nina finds a typed manuscript in Sophia’s belongings, an account of two women in 1800s China growing up and marrying in a society where women were mere son-bearing sex objects. I was never certain if the manuscript was fiction, or a historical record. I don’t care enough to know.

Director Wayne Wang (“The Joy Luck Club”) desperately wants us to care for these four women, but the heart just isn’t there. Nor the punch-in-the-gut drama. Riffing on “Godfather Part II” style editing, he cuts back and forth between past and present, making the audience work to keep up with what’s going on when, and who’s who, and giving us a clear choice in deciding which story is more boring. I vote for the modern tale as it was written fresh for the screen. It has female struggles that are just laughably bad, with high school drama galore and adult Sophia living in a “poverty” that half the modern world would kill to experience. The hokey English-written lines do not help.

The book, from which this film is based, focuses solely on the 1800s. Yet this historic portion is never allowed to dig deep. Yes, we see terrible sexism, and beatings, and cruel mothers-in-law, and it all happened to some one, but it has been played in a hundred other films. The editing does not help, denting emotional impact. Case in point, we witness a village massacre and the cold death of a child, but the scenes trip across the screen with a shrug, almost as if the script blankly stated “Insert Massacre Here.” The running villages scene could be stock footage for all I know. The music is standard issue, too.

Several unintended LOL moments derail this snoozer into distracting life: Hugh Jackman saunters on screen as a charismatic lounge singer because … I have no idea. Is he pals with fellow Aussie Rupert Murdoch? A woman near me yelled, “Oh, good! He’s gorgeous!” Worse still, the four women cross into each other’s time lines, because it’s … a trite liberal salute to women facing oppression throughout history? A stab at saying everything changes even as nothing changes? “Doctor Who” time travel? I have no idea. I burst out laughing, and others did near me, as two centuries-dead women with bound feet sipped coffee on an art deco high-rise patio. Not what Ms. Murdoch or Wang were going for, eh? D+

Get Low (2010)

Robert Duvall gets few parts worthy of his fierce, unlimited talent. “Get Low” is worthy. He plays Felix Bush, a 1930s Southern backwoods hermit, cantankerous and so feared by locals that little boys dare each other to step foot on his property. When he hears of a former friend’s death, Bush – ill, worn out, tired of being alone and haunted by a tragedy – opts for a unique send-off: He wants his funeral held before he dies. He wants to hear stories about himself, and tell one of his own, not to the townsfolk – all are invited – but to one woman (Sissy Spacek) from his past. Duvall tears into this role with the hellfire might he had in “Network.” This is his film, and the other actors – a hilarious Bill Murray as a likely ex-con turned legit undertaker – stand back in awe. Only Lucas Black as Murray’s trainee is out of his league, but his character is written as a dull Boy Scout unsuited to the dark brushes of comedy and pain on display. Director Aaron Schneider makes his debut here, and his work – cinematography, sound, music, cast, design – feels directed by a pro. Duvall is a national treasure. A-

The Jonses (2009)

America’s addiction to consumer glitz gets skewered in “The Jonses,” a satirical comedy-drama about an atypical family with Demi Moore and David Duchovny as mom and dad, respectively. One will figure out the film’s wink-wink catch within 10 minutes, but I’ll hold dishing on it. The gist is, of course, that keeping up with the Jonses -- who have the best cars, latest cell phones, killer TV gaming system and the tastiest flash-frozen food you’ll ever eat -- is hell. The Jonses have unlimited funds. Their neighbors do not. The deficit is not kind. Much of the film plays like “Fantasy Island”: People live like this? What jobs do they have? No one here seems to work. It’s sci-fi to me. Director/writer Derrick Borte has a point to grind, and he does it well for a while, but there’s a nagging feeling that a thousand companies fought to get their products placed on camera, from the Audis to the coffee makers, and the fancy-pants Dell laptop at film’s end, all to make the audience say, “I want that.” Muddled message, eh? Duchovny and Moore are fantastic, movie stars forever. B-

Buck (2011)

“Buck” follows the man behind “The Horse Whisperer,” the 1995 book and 1998 Robert Redford film about a kind cowboy who tames a wild horse and therefore saves its owner, a wounded girl. The real Horse Whisperer is Dan “Buck” Brannaman, a former rodeo child star who found solace and salvation in horses after a life of hellish abuse. We follow family, horse owners, trailers and farms, but director Cindy Meehl makes it clear, this is about anyone’s life, even Philly boy, and taps into raising children, holding a marriage together, and reaching out to others. It’s not all sweetness. Just as the film turns Buck into a Zen Jedi Magic Man, he meets a troubled horse he cannot save, one that – in a jolt of shocking violence – nearly rips a man’s face off. The gush of blood is real. Buck is heartbroken. I could have saved him, he says. Old film of the dad with Buck is an unsettling peak at child abuse, the old man’s claws dug into the boy’s wee shoulder. A jolt to anyone who knows what that means. Maybe Buck is a Zen Jedi Magic Man. A-

Windtalkers (2002)

John Woo’s “Windtalkers” is sold as a never-before-told chronicle of Marine-trained Navajos who used a code based on their language to communicate military ops over radio during World War II. Naturally, this being a Hollywood drama, “Windtalkers” actually follows a white guy (Nicolas Cage) as he struggles with war wounds of body and soul, and relegates the persons of color (Adam Beach and Roger Willie) to supporting bits, and most shockingly their Navajo-spoken subtitled-in-English almost mute. Yes, battles are staged with absolute chaos and one can feel the heat of explosions and spent cannon shells, but war flick clichés abound, from campfire sessions to the devoted nurse to the nasty bigot who will have a change of heart. Beer bong alert: A serious drinking game can be made of Woo’s trademark slow-mo action shots. There’s a great story buried here, one that tackles the ironies of a people once hunted and killed by and subjected to white American rule, now fighting for that very nation with their lives. But this ain’t it. Not unless Cage -- playing a ridiculous Rambo killing machine with perfect aim -- is part Native American. C-

Spider (2002)

David Cronenberg’s “Spider” is a somber-as-ash take on a man bowed by schizophrenia that dares to not provide a miracle ending with “Big Movie Climax!” stamped in red ink. There is no escape here from the dark. We first see Dennis Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) deboard a London train, alone, shuffling, mumbling, his vital possessions – money and directions to a boarding house – stuffed in a sock. Dennis was raised in the neighborhood of his new home, and there he wonders – in his mind, for real, one does not know for sure – back to his 1950s youth with a mercurial father (Gabriel Byrne) and dotting mother (Miranda Richardson). Here’s where the spider’s web starts to form as we, through Dennis’ barely functioning mind, piece together a murder. In present day, the murk darkens as the dead mother seems to live on. Fiennes never budges from Dennis’ inner turmoil, his every move made with fear of punishment, and it’s a brilliant performance. Cronenberg traps us in Dennis’ world, itself trapped inside London’s dark-as-hell industrial gas district, which seems to exist in the same realm as David Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” another story with a narrator not only unreliable but quite mad. A-

Beginners (2011) and I Love You Phillip Morris (2010)

Ewan McGregor’s career never took off the way it should have: “Trainspotting” and “Moulin Rouge!” should have put him in orbit, but those “Star Wars” prequels – with McGregor lost amid CGI overload – may have spoiled Hollywood on him, or, actually, him on Hollywood. But I just caught two films with the Scotsman as the co-lead. By sheer coincidence, they both deal with gay issues – is McGregor going niche? – that would send bigot GOPers planning constitutional bans.

The real-life premise of Mike Mills film “Beginners”: Just after his mother died of cancer, his 75-year-old father came out, leaping head first into California’s gay culture before dying himself of cancer. Here, Mike is dubbed Owen and played by McGregor. Christopher Plummer is the dad. The film is moody, artsy and contains short diagrams where, say, multiplying coins equate growing cancer. It focuses on Owen recalling his emotionally cold childhood and then his 38-year-old self as he falls for a French actress (Melanie Laurent of “Inglorious Basterds”). Owen’s woes are not as compelling as daddy Plummer, the latter giving a shining performance as a man who seemingly has found the secrets to all of life’s happiness just as the ax falls. There’s anger missing here. Isn’t Owen allowed to be pissed? Dad was never home, out having dalliances. Even if dad was with women, that has to create a lasting deficit. More so, one wonders how Owen and his gal eat and pay rent, as he is a failure on the job and she never seems to work. A dog with subtitled dialogue is way too cute a gimmick. B

McGregor is the Phillip Morris of “I Love You Phillip Morris” which has nothing to do with the cigarette maker, but instead focuses on serial con artist Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey). Russell starts out as a married father in Virginia Beach and ends up in prison for credit card fraud, embezzlement, theft, malpractice and numerous prison breaks, one by faking his own death. It’s in prison where Russell meets Morris, and so, yes, this is a Jim Carrey rom-com-drama … behind bars, way queer, and based on a true story. Directors/writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa tell us so three times in the credits. “Morris” is funny at the start, but revels in mincing gay stereotypes and feels wildly contradictory, and overly silly. Carey’s “Liar, Liar” smirk made me wonder how anyone could take him seriously. He steam rolls McGregor, who misplays as a fragile daisy. Stabs at drama – an AIDS death – are forced and unearned. Critics loved this, a con all its own. C+

El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (1960)

One of the great gags in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” has a direct reference to Luis Buñuel’s acid-to-the-face classic satire “The Exterminating Angel,” a nasty little tale that makes “The Lord of the Flies” seem quaint and targets the privileged class of Europe. The gist is wildly “Twilight Zone” simple: The servants at a lavish mansion are inexplicably leave their stations and the home just as a lavish dinner party begins, and never ends. For the same spirit, or psychological block, keep the guests trapped in one room. Food and water runs out, hygiene turns ugly, a man dies of a heart attack and his body rots, the hosts and guests – Sivia Pinal is the lead actress – go quite mad. Into animals, the kind these hoity-toity blue bloods described the working/lower class as in the film’s opening. Incest, drugs, witchcraft, demons, suicide and sheepacide (is that a word?) – nothing is off limits to Buñuel who saves his final daggers for The Church and The Military. It’s a dark, nasty, scathingly funny slab at the powers that be, the elite folks who place themselves on higher moral ground, closer to God, because they hold more wealth. A timely movie for sure. A

Heist (2001)

Heist films – and this one is called “Heist” – are as contrived as any rom-com: The old crook is on one last score, has a big screw-up whoops, and gets strong-armed by a higher-up villain pushing a real final game with a massive pay day, all seasoned by double crosses, switched vehicles, fake outs, shoot outs, the sad but quickly overlooked death, and the coup de grâce gotch’ya. David Mamet, he of the pen is mightier than the sword school of film, serves up no different a dish here. Gene Hackman is the old crook, and Danny DeVito is the higher-up (so to speak) villain. Much of “Heist” is clever, and the dialogue stings and slings, and bruises. Yet, it barely gets the heart pumping as we wait for the next surprise and shock, none surprising or shocking. There’s little joie de crime here as in “Ocean’s Eleven,” or spastic blood-letting as in “Reservoir Dogs.” The opening 1940s-era Warner Bros. logo is meant to recall storied classic film noirs, but the movie never rises to the occasion. All praises to the cast, especially Hackman and Delroy Lindo, who carry the film. B

Midnight in Paris (2011)

“Midnight in Paris” is a delight. A reminder that Woody Allen is one of the best movie writers/directors out there no matter how creepy he is off camera. This is a comedy about a struggling American novelist (Owen Wilson) who becomes lost – figuratively and literally – in Paris’ nighttime streets, the lights and spirits of deceased artists, musicians and writers lulling him in utopia. Then he gets lost – in time – when a 1920s taxi, every night at midnight, whisks him away to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway, what Owen’s Gil considers the greatest era for artisans in history.

Back in 2010, Gil is the fiancé of a wealthy woman (Rachel McAdams) who as with her Tea Party parents rejects anything not American and has no appreciation of art. Only status. She openly pines for a former professor, a know-it-all played wonderfully by Michael Sheen, who starts off every sentence with, “If I’m not mistaken,” when he is indeed. So, yes, Allen uses the crutch of the wicked girlfriend to allow his male hero the right to fall in love with the more pure Adriana (Marion Cotillard), the mistress of Picasso. Small error in a grand film.

This just isn’t a new classic Allen comedy, it’s a tweak at nostalgia fever by both Tea Party Americans who long for the founding days of America, and daydreaming liberals who think art was somehow more pure 100 years ago. Both are wrong. “Midnight” has more wit than any film I’ve seen all year. The best joke has Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Dali (Adrian Brody!) and dozens of others treated as biopic shadows. Picasso belligerent, Dali talking nonsense and Hemingway uttering every word like a bull fighter with a rifle slung over his shoulder. It is all a wicked satire ala homage. The great artists (and he never says it, but Founding Fathers) we uphold as gods are as false as the notion that life was happier in 178whatever. Fact: You were likely to die of small pox than live out a life of glorious freedom, no matter what cracked teapot Michelle Bachman says.

The best scene has Gil talking to Dali and his fellow surrealists, fretting over his time travel predicament, confused by the mess of his life, and they nod their heads, knowingly and approvingly. Flustered, Gill spits out, they’re surrealists, they have no concept of normal. Fantastic screenplay. Wilson has never been more likable, and “Inception” star Cotillard knocks every other female onscreen out of the park. A

25th Hour (2002)

Edward Norton rules in “25th Hour,” a knockout post-9/11 New York drama about a dealer on his last free day before staring a 7-year prison stint. His Monty is a brilliant guy who dumped his gifts and turned stupid and lazy by pushing dope. That’s one of the marvels of Spike Lee’s in-your-face drama, Monty is likable, but guilty, he’s never celebrated, and as one of his best friends says, he deserves the millstone. Monty comes to recognize that. The 25 hours sees Monty reconnect with his best chums – a high school teacher (Philip Seymour Hoffman) lusting for a student and a narcissistic stockbroker (Barry Pepper), wonder if his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) ratted on him, and console his heartbroken pop (Brian Cox). Meanwhile, the attacks of that awful Tuesday morning weigh harsh, how could they not, and how could Lee – a New Yorker – ignore the wound? Brutally honest and caustically funny, “Hour” is anchored by a beaut of a long nightclub scene where Monty learns prison isn’t his only worry. Lee is a genius at showing smart guys getting torched by their own sins. He ought to adapt Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy. A

Another Year (2010)

Few filmmakers portray life as real as Mike Leigh, and “Another Year” feels not so much like a movie, but an invite to stay with the family who’s at the center of this drama. Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent play a married couple, perfectly content with gardening, eating and reading in bed. She’s a counselor. He’s a geologist. They invites family and friends to a handful of dinners during the course of a year, including a divorcee (Lesley Manville) crumbling under loneliness who gulps wine as if it is an antidote, and an equally lonely old school chum (Oliver Maltman) who holds onto wine bottles as if they were oxygen. Alcohol equals life in this film. The main couple enjoys it as a side to the wonderful dishes they whip up. Take it or leave it. Manville and Maltman are full-fledged alcoholics, drowning their miseries in wine and all the more miserable for it. There’s not a false word, performance or scene in this drama that lays bare the jealousy that the miserable feel toward the happy. Manville should have won an Oscar. Fact. A

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 sci-fi novel is a brilliant under-handed writing pitch, a dystopian alternate universe cautionary tale built on high-tech ideas but plays as razor straight as a Charlotte Bronte novel. The film version is very good but it doesn’t pack the devastating emotional wallop. It can’t, this is a story about what goes on in people’s heads, little action, and no amount of narration can cover such ground. The gist: Three youth (Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield as adults) learn that their lives, raised in total control at a boarding school, are preset. There’s no alternative. No happy ending. We get a slow half-hour start of their childhood upfront that read far better on the page. I will not divulge anything else, except there is some comedy (the trio ordering food at a café) among the drama. Garfield shows teeth and rage only hinted at in “The Social Network.” Watch the movie, but read the book. It is heart-breaking and unforgettable. B+

Sucker Punch (2011)

I saw two-thirds of “Sucker Punch” in a cinema back upon its release in March. The previews promised a kick-ass film of armed-to-the-teeth women taking down Orcs, massive samurai warriors and Nazi goons straight out of a 1970s Marvel Comics book. It looked like a feminist take on “300,” served up by the guy who brought Frank Miller’s graphic novel to life, Zack Snyder. He promised as much, this being his first original screenplay. The trailer’s pop-art bright images zinged.

Alas, the film itself was and is a dreadful, ugly-looking CGI bore, and a massive lie. It’s not feminist. It relishes in violence against women, and serves up its heroines in “fuck me” costumes of micro-skirts, high heels and fish-net everything, their very skin computer-polished clean and lifeless as their vacant personalities. I was indifferent when a storm knocked out power to the theater, scuttling the end. Yet I caught it on DVD this week. Pfft. I should have re-watched “Killers.”

The story: Emily Browning plays Baby Doll – that’s the actual character’s name for God’s sake – a 1960s orphan railroaded to a nuthouse for refusing step-daddy’s sexual advances. Facing a hellhole life that’s “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by way of Guantanamo Bay heavy on the rape, she imagines herself as a dance-queen prisoner in a musical bordello, but in those dreams when forced to dance she enters a third dream state where she’s an ultimate Xbox warrior, swords, guns and knives at the ready. (All teenage girls imagine this life, right?) She has four friends along the way – parts of her own vapid personality? – and each may well represent a sex fantasy of Snyder’s, or that of his intended audience of lonely nerds. Like Asians? Here’s one. Like butchy girls? Here’s another. Etc. Etc.

The opening is a worthwhile short film, as Baby Doll (I hate writing that name) fights off her step-dad, and valiantly tries to safe her baby sister’s life. The sequence – scored to a new riff of “Sweet Dreams” – ends with our protagonist dropped off at the Lennox House (Get it?) for a lobotomy. That’s where all wit ends. CGI takes over as Snyder whips up giant dragons, exploding zeppelins, “Terminator” robots and pixelated mayhem, each scene more fake than the last, and as flat as his Baby Doll’s empty eyes. It’s all the dreams-within-dreams drama of “Inception” hooked to the razzle-dazzle of “Moulin Rouge!,” minus everything worthwhile, dragged through a “Maxim” editors’ sordid annual retreat, and mangled with a PG-13 rating. Run-on sentence.

This flick was put together by guys who think “smoking hot” is a character trait, and they piss on the wound with a monologue about girls finding the power within each other to fight oppression. Pfft. Snyder could have filmed Barbie dolls on strings and gotten the same result. It’s there in the lead character’s name. Baby Doll. That’s all women are to Snyder, who’s making the next “Superman” film, toys. Pro-feminist? Then “The Jazz Singer” is a Civil Rights film. Scott Glenn, looking as if he died a decade ago, is a yammering fortune cookie, while Carla Gugino plays the bordello dance instructor as if she were Rowan Atkinson in drag. The title fits. It’s what I got. D

Biutiful (2010)

“Biuitful” is a Spanish drama about the 40something Uxbal (Javier Bardem) who’s scrapping by, raising two children as his bi-polar ex-wife prostitutes herself – with his own brother no less, operating an illegal Chinese sweat shop that will go tragic, exhuming the dead father he never met, and battling terminal cancer. This is the one-upper of sob movies. It makes “Monster’s Ball” seem jolly. There’s more wrong in Uxbal’s life, but you would not believe me. OK, I’ll spill. Dude sees dead people. I warned you. “Babel” director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s story follows Uxbal as he sacrifices himself to right all the wrongs in his life, self-made and otherwise, Job-meets-Christ. The miracle is that Bardem makes you mourn Oxbal’s slow passing, pissed pants and all. Dig Bardem’s performance, the cinematography and the grimy realism. Then go put your eyeball on a hot grill, lie down in traffic, snort cocaine off the tire of a moving bus. You’ll feel better. B

Season of the Witch (2011)

Film critics threw darts at the Nicolas-Cage-as-a-Crusader flick “Season of the Witch” because it lacked historical accuracy, an odd complaint since they were watching Nicolas Cage play a Crusader. Did they miss the title? Cage, so good in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” is puffy and disinterested as Behman of Bleibruck, a warrior for God who unwittingly massacres women and children, decides that’s wrong, and goes AWOL. Yep, pure Cage Shit Flick. For reasons too tiring to explain, he and his absolutely platonic best pal (Ron Perlman) find themselves playing guard to a woman (Claire Foy) accused not just of being a witch, but of creating the Black Plague. “Will she get a fair trial?” Behman asks. The church leaders nod, “Yep.” And he believes them! From there, it’s werewolves, murder, and Foy making goofy eyes with blue ambient light under her face. The special effects are 1980s bad. Perlman, good actor, looks like he's in hell, boy. Hanged and drowned, this "Witch" isn't coming back. Cage continues his shit streak. C-

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is a solid summer flick with killer special effects and a fairly solid brain, and a cool reboot/reimaging of the 1960s/1970s “Planet of the Apes” film series that scored golden box office hits, inspired a TV cartoon series and a whole bunch of lunch boxes. (Many a friend sported one in first grade. I was jealous. And, yeah, I’m ignoring Tim Burton’s ass hat 2002 remake.)

Not a prequel, this entirely new take on the apes-rule-humans story focuses on our hairy primate cousins who leap massively forward genetically after being exposed to a “miracle drug” that a young pharma scientist named Will (James Franco) has created to cure Alzheimer’s. Will has a literal deadline: The disease is wasting away his musician/academic father (John Lithgow). It all goes so ape shit wrong.

The leader of the “Rise” is Caesar, a chimp that Franco has raised since it was born, living at home as a pet-cum-child, one who can draw, use sign language and cleverly leap and climb kitchen furniture to snatch cookies atop a cabinet. A trip to San Francisco’s redwoods park leaves a mark on Caesar: He is on a leash led by Will and encounters a snarly dog … on a leash. The wheels start turning. His eyes narrow. A violent encounter with a prick neighbor pushes the house of cards over.

The plot and pacing is smart using elements, lines (“Get your damn hand off me…!) and names from the earlier “Ape” films but to new effect, and there is a real mission to Mars on the telly. “Rise” hints at being a franchise set-up but doesn’t play like you’re watching one-third of a film. The classic 1968 “Apes” was seen as an anti-war pic and a (I would think freakin’ offensive) satire on Civil Rights. (Charlton Heston appears on a TV in a rare wink-wink tip.) Director Rupert Wyatt and writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver seem intent on steering clear of big messages here, but slyly play on man’s insistence that he can do whatever he wants to who and whatever he wants, as long as it means more coin in the bank. And, yes, animal experimentation takes a walloping. But none of this is in-you-face preachy.

When the apes attack at the end wrecking havoc on the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s one of the best action sequences of the summer, a wild scene where chaos finally reigns in a summer tent pole movie. How rare is that? Franco gives a sleepy-eyed performance that grinds some critics, but it fits the part, the man is obsessed with finding a cure and probably considers sleep, rest, play, a luxury. (What doesn’t work: A romance between Will and a vet played by Frieda Pinto of “Slumdog Millionaire,” they have as much spark as a brother and sister.)

Now the reason why this film rocks: Andy Serkis, the man who played “Gollum” in “The Lord of the Rings” and King Kong in the 2005 remake, is our main rebel yell chimp. Again using motion capture technology, he makes Caesar into the best anti-hero of 2011, a glaring, plotting creature far smarter than his human costars. All of the primates are CGI and early in the film, especially baby Caesar, they hit and miss. Once Serkis takes over playing Caesar, though, it’s as if the animators were inspired to push the visual boundaries, and in several scenes – helping Lithgow’s pop use a fork, and when he fights a cruel prick (Tom Felton of “Harry Potter”) – all on screen looks real. Serkis is an amazing actor, and could snag an Oscar nom for acting without appearing on screen. His performance is worth the ticket price. B+