The Frozen Ground (2013)

“The Frozen Ground” got me burning mad. Nicolas Cage as cop. John Cusack as serial killer. Shot and chopped up young women. Alaska. True story. 1980s. The whole murky grisly movie works OT to condemn violence against and the objectification of women ... And yet writer/director Scott Walker’s camera stares nose close at Disney Princess Vanessa Hudgen’s stripper ass as she stage grinds. Because one can’t make a film about strippers and hookers being slaughtered by a loser kook without a little T&A stage action. At least if everyone behind the camera is male. Maybe only women should make films about cruel ways men treat women. Especially talking fact. Plot: Cusack’s Robert Hansen has 20 girls in the grave, but Hudgens’ (“Spring Breakers”) prostitute/stripper has escaped and can ID him. Her lone hero is Cage’s cop, who works so hard on the job, his family is neglected. Nothing on screen differs from an episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” so we only have stunt casting to cheer. Cusack underplays. So does Cage. The less said about 50 Cent’s pimp, the better. Recalling the victims to pop music: Ugly bad move. D+

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Perfect case of best intentions, and short results. “The Butler” aspires for Oscar glory and to do nothing less than tell the story of African-Americans and their plight to obtain true equality in America through the eyes of one White House butler (Forrest Whitaker) and his family (Oprah Winfrey as an alcoholic wife, and David Oyelloyo as an activist son). 

The titular butler is Cecil Gaines -– based ever so loosely by a thin thread on real-life figure Eugene Allen -– and his prideful job and moral millstone is to play silent witness to the terrible and great moments of the 20^th century Civil Rights movement as he serves tea and roast beef to a line of succeeding American presidents. Naturally, or so the film wants us to believe, each POTUS is won over to see the light of love and racial equality by Gaines’ stoic silence and dedication to the job, making sure the butter knife is just perfectly set so. 

Look, Whitaker knocks the part out, no surprise. He’s been a favorite actor of mine since “Platoon,” and his quiet anger and love shine through in scene after scene. But he’s still standing still for 99 percent of the film, like an end table. Mouth shut. It is Winfrey who near owns the film. Her rounded performance captures illness, anger, love, and jealous hate of the attention Cecil gives Jackie Kennedy, and is the sharp. The wife, though, barely leaves the house. That’s a mixed-bag. See, Daniels’ staging of those at-home scenes with Whitaker and Winfrey shine and sting as we finally see the American story through the hearts of our nation’s most belittled people. This is no “Leave it to Beaver” American Dream lie sold by conservative Tea Party drones. 

But, damn, “Butler,” is a mess. We get an eye-rolling list of Hollywood big names as those presidents, each one more miscast than the last: Robin Williams as a fuddy-duddy Ike, John Cusack as an “SNL” version of Nixon, and -– worst move ever -– Alan Rickman as a Reagan so piss-ant dreary, one wonders if anyone here ever saw film of the real man. Reagan dripped charisma. Love him or hate him, you know the man practically sparkled. Rickman? Not at all. Sorry. These cameos stop the film and had the audience snickering. 

As well, spread out for five decades and hitting every historical race marker like some warped liberal version of “Forrest Gump” -– that feels racist to say, but it’s true -– “Butler” plays like a road trip with a rush-rush-rush pop racing the family car down I-95, yelling to the children in the back, “There’s New York, there’s Philadelphia, there’s Washington, we’ll make Orlando by noon,” never stopping to see Independence Hall. 

This history is too important for such treatment. The scenes of black protesters at lunch counters being molested and tortured are soul-crushing, and this is not ancient history. This story would have made an amazing television series on HBO, with room to truly explore what it means to work in a marble building that represents the highest office in all the world, but have absolutely no power of one’s own, unable to even safe your own child from death or a policeman’s billy club. Mr. Allen’s life seems to have played more quieter than the story here. I want to see that life. Not a stand-in quietly serving Hans Gruber supper. B-

The Numbers Station (2013)

What happened to John Cusack? This is a guy who I have long admired, from “Say Anything,” with the boom box serenade, to “Grosse Point Blank,” a CIA assassin satire. But with “The Numbers Station,” on the heels of the regrettable “The Raven,” it seems Cusack has hit a deep, unfortunate slump. This has Cusack as one of the most tired of clichés, the deadly CIA killer (see, again) with a crisis of conscious after a job goes south and an innocent is killed. So his sad sack agent is sent to timeout, or more precisely, a remote U.S. Army outpost in England to babysit a code sender (Malin Akerman, because no government worker forced to live in isolation for two years at a time would look like Ma Barker) with orders to pop her if the station is ever compromised. Low and behold, the station falls under attack, and Kent must fight the good fight and talk about his wounded psyche with Ackerman’s coder, as people tend to do while being shot at. Will Cusack’s agent kill the lady? Right, the moment after Lloyd Dobler buys an iPad with ear buds. D+

The Raven (2012) and Me and Orson Welles (2009)

Two famously eccentric American artists who burnt fast and hot get the fictional film treatment in “The Raven” –- with writer/poet Edgar Allan Poe playing super sleuth over a series of murders related to his writings –- and “Me and Orson Welles” -– with the actor/director as scoundrel muse to a plucky “High School Musical” hero. 

As Poe, John Cusack does that arched-eyebrow John Cusack thing he always does, and he’s flat out wrong in the role. The plot is a grisly rehash of “Se7en” stitched onto a carbon copy of Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes,” with a villain that’s dull as rag paper. Worse bit: Poe is shown playing with a pet raccoon. Director James McTeigue thinks he’s still filming “V for Vendetta.” Fawkes that. 

“Me” focuses on a teen drama protégé (Zac Efron) as he cons his way into a gig at the Mercury Theatre for the renowned staging of “Julius Caesar.” Christian McKay plays Welles as madman, genius, romantic, cad, screw-up, and artist, and brilliantly crushes every scene, but with “Tiger Beat” poster boy Efron in the lead pining for a smirking bored Claire Danes, the film sinks. 

Poe and Welles would torch these films. Raven: C- Welles: C+

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

“Hot Tub Time Machine” is utterly, proudly ridiculous. The premise: Four guys jump in a ski resort hot tub and are zapped back to their own mid-1980s bodies. Correction: Three of them do so: John Cusack, Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson. Clark Duke is 20 in present day, and so, should be a sperm. But he’s not. Nothing makes sense here. All this is made OK when Robinson looks directly at the camera and screams the film’s title, with a big smile on his face. His shout says, “You think I’m dumb for being in this flick? Hell, you payin’ money to see it!” It’s a ballsy and hilarious wink at the audience. This is a wild celebration of all ’80s flicks where the bad kids were rich snobs and the heroes were stoners. Cusack sends up his own career, while Corddry steals the whole movie. The humor is so gross, you’ll gag. Even if the end is limp and sentimental, this is kitty nip for anyone who proudly wore a Members Only jacket. B-

2012 (2009)

Roland Emmerich’s latest world-ender “2012” is a helluva lot like his previous efforts “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Independence Day” – humankind ignores glaring signs of cataclysmic event/big attack and suffers for it. Immensely. Billions die. Most of our heroes and their dog (where's the cat, man??) live. The end.

“Tomorrow” was heavy-handed leftist crap and silly. “Independence” was clever – and I kid you not – the best sci-fi genre satire ever made. (I have erased “Godzilla" from memory, only recalling that I wished every character on screen would die. Bloodily.) “2012” falls in the middle, jumping off the age-old premise our number is up in two-plus years.

It has all the eternally re-rehashed Emmerich elements – the father, his estranged child(ren), the ex-wife, the brilliant scientist, the tough president, the a-hole bureaucrat, blah, blah, blah. John Cusack stars. I need not go into details. OK – one detail – Woody Harrelson is the guy with the scoop of being dead-on correct smothered under 40 gallons of crazy glue. Harrelson looks like he couldn’t wait to get on set every morning. He’s a delight.

As long as the dim-witted chore “Transformers” sequel, “2012” mostly squeaks by all the science and logistical plot holes and “come on!” scenes where characters walk around in freezing temperatures but the actors barely seem slightly chilly. The special effects are seriously top-notch, and let’s face it -- this film exists for no other reason than to wow people with special effects. Consider me wowed.

Yet, the film irks, even past the Emmerich standards. There are long moments where - despite the thrills – I’m watching billions of people die and skyscrapers fall. For fun. I got the feeling Emmerich watches news footage of earthquakes, terrorist attacks and tsunami’s with one eye for mild concern and the other glazing over with an “I smell movie” high. The movie snob and liberal inside me winces. The other part of me, who laughed his way through the most tragic scenes in “Independence Day” (and got mean glares for it), stares in awe. For awhile.

Like the film’s long climax, "2012" is a washout. B-

War, Inc. (2008)

"War, Inc." is a leftist rant/satire from the mind of John Cusack against the American war in Iraq, Halliburton, Dick Cheney and the American media that's so ill-conceived, I'm thinking of becoming a Republican.

Billed as a comedy in line with "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," this 2008 independent release only comes close. If "Strangelove" were directed and written by Uwe Boll and a gaggle of international studies college freshmen.

Cusack has the lead role, along with a screenwriting, story and producing credit, as Brand Hauser, an assassin hired by a spectacularly huge private military firm to oversee a trade show and kill a politico in fictional Turaqistan. (Hauser apparently is a take-off of Cusack's charming, witty assassin in the great "Grosse Point Blank," a comedy from the 1990s. Some of the cast from that film, including Dan Aykroyd, appears here in equally similar roles. But I digress.) Having bottled any sense of humanity for years, killer Hauser is beginning to see his conscious bubble to the service. To drown his inner Jiminy Cricket, he downs ungodly amounts of hot sauce. The trick: Concentrate on not crying, and you won't cry.

The film is as obvious and shallow throughout as it is with that psycho babble. The most thoughtful gags involve jokes about Omar Sharif as a terrorost and Aykroyd on the can, describing his ... efforts. War-ravaged amputees are made fun of, U.S. soldiers are depicted in the crudest satire, a whole session is depicted to mocking the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Look, I have no problem with satire and mocking the powers that be, but the war in Iraq and all of its blunders by the Bush administration are far, far too serious for this treatment. Cusack and director/co-writer Joshua Seftel seem to have no understanding of Middle East events greater than any casual viewer of CNN. Looking for blame in the cluster funk-ups that are Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan and a host of other countries? Try the British and their devastatingly inept "Christian" colonialism campaign of the 1800 and 1900s. America has plenty of blame to carry in Iraq, yes, but we're a late arrival to the party.

The biggest shocker here: Hilary Duff is great as a Britney Spears-in-full-meltdown-clone from Israel who has a secret that's far too easy to guess. So, the girl can act. Huh. But why are Cusack and friends lampooning Spears, her family and handlers? In a war film?

"Strangelove" was brilliant, light, fun, had wonderful characters and stayed on target. None of that is here. To down it all off, Joan Cusack plays a soulless PR hack with nothing to do but use the "F" word ceaselessly and loudly, while Ben Kingsley fumbles about as a CIA boss who fights Hauser in the back of a garbage truck (!!!) and uses a ridiculous white aristocratic Southern accent found only in slave dramas. If Ann Coulter made a right-wing film about the Iraq war, she couldn't do worse. D-