(RATINGS: The movies listed below are rated according to the following key: 4 stars -- excellent; 3 stars -- good; 2 stars -- fair; 1 star -- poor.)
By Michael Phillips, Tribune Media Services,
Source: Film Clips
(This week's package includes: 1) capsule film reviews by Michael Phillips, chief movie critic for the Chicago Tribune, and other contributing writers; 2) longer reviews of "Alice in Wonderland," "Brooklyn's Finest" and "The Good Guy.")
(M.P. -- Michael Phillips; B.S. -- Betsy Sharkey; K.T. -- Kenneth Turan; R.M. -- Roger Moore)
ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Director Tim Burton's new extravaganza, the second Disney-backed "Alice" and a bookend to the cheerily benign 1951 animated version, won't be for everyone. It's a little rough for preteens, and it doesn't throw many laughs the audience's way, but along with "Sweeney Todd," this is Burton's most interesting project in a decade. Wonderfully well-chosen Australian actress Mia Wasikowska plays Alice, and Johnny Depp continues his fruitfully nervy collaboration with Burton by playing the Mad Hatter. PG (fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and a smoking caterpillar). 1:48. 3 stars. -- M.P.
AVATAR. The first 90 minutes of "Avatar" are pretty terrific -- a full-immersion technological wonder with wonders to spare. The other 72 minutes, less and less terrific. Director James Cameron's futuristic story becomes intentionally grueling in its heavily telegraphed narrative turn toward genocidal anguish, grim echoes of Vietnam-style firefights and the inevitable payback time and sequel setup. Cameron nonetheless has delivered the screen's most anticipated and persuasive blend of live-action and motion-capture animation to date. PG-13 (intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking). 2:42. 3 stars. -- M.P.
THE BLIND SIDE. Based on a book by Michael Lewis, this film fumbles a true story of an African-American product of the Memphis projects who ended up at a Christian school and in the care of a wealthy white family, then went on to NFL glory. The star is Sandra Bullock, whose character is conceived as a steel magnolia with a will of iron. Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), now a starting tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, has been sidelined in his own story. At its queasiest "The Blind Side" veers perilously close to the concept of poverty tourism. PG-13 (one scene involving brief violence, drug and sexual references). 2:06. 2 stars. -- M.P.
BROOKLYN'S FINEST. This film lays out a big spread of law enforcement corruption, intertwining the tales of three cops in crisis. One (Ethan Hawke) has a plan to buy a better future. Another (Richard Gere) is a suicidally inclined alcoholic just days from retirement. The third and most interesting (Don Cheadle, one of the best actors alive) is an undercover detective in trouble every which way. With so much complication and woe jammed into 125 minutes, credibility is in short supply. R (bloody violence throughout, strong sexuality, nudity, drug content and pervasive language). 2:05. 2 stars. -- M.P.
COP OUT. Tracy Morgan plays the motor-mouth NYPD detective partner of Bruce Willis, and there's no reason these two couldn't headline a perfectly proficient action comedy. But this is a lousy, invention-free script, and Kevin Smith -- an interesting and valuable filmmaker doing direction-only work for hire -- cannot do anything to save it. His directorial personality is not to be found. This clunker makes you appreciate well-made buddy cop films such as "48 HRS." and "Beverly Hills Cop" all the more. R (pervasive language including sexual references, violence and brief sexuality). 1:50. 1 star. -- M.P.
THE CRAZIES. One of the year's nicest bloody surprises, the remake of the 1973 George A. Romero virus thriller "The Crazies" must be approached with the proper expectations. It should not be judged for what it is not. But nearly everything about it works. The good people of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, turn into murderous lunatics, owing to a nearby downed plane carrying germ-warfare viral nastiness leaking straight into the town's water supply As in Romero's Vietnam-era original, the real adversary is the U.S. government, which, after the craziness starts, launches "containment protocol." R (bloody violence and language). 1:41. 3-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
CRAZY HEART. There's a powerful symmetry at work in "Crazy Heart." It's a parallel between protagonist Bad Blake, a country singer at a nadir of disintegration, and star Jeff Bridges, whose exceptional film choices have put him at the height of his powers in time to make Blake the capstone of his career. It's a mark of how fine a performance Bridges gives that it succeeds beautifully even though the besotted, bedeviled country singer has been an overly familiar popular-culture staple for forever. R (language and brief sexuality). 1:51. 4 stars. -- K.T.
DEAR JOHN. Like "The Blind Side," "Dear John" offers audiences a meat-and-potatoes story of love, loyalty, heartfelt generosity and other matters seldom brought to the screen with any skill at all. I truly wish this adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel were a better, less shamelessly manipulative movie, but a couple of the actors got me through it alive. Amanda Seyfried, who plays a driven-snow saint without making you gag, falls for a Green Beret (Channing Tatum, not so good) with an autistic father (Richard Jenkins, another asset). Tears ensue. PG-13 (some sensuality and violence). 1:42. 2 stars. -- M.P.
AN EDUCATION. Novelist Nick Hornby's screenplay for British journalist Lynn Barber's memoir sands a few edges off the corners of its heroine's story, yet the film is awfully charming. It bops along with so much esprit and lively acting, and such an observant sense of the period (the early '60s), you're seduced by the results in the same way charming, slightly oily David (Peter Sarsgaard), entices young Jenny (Carey Mulligan) into his glamorous orbit. The film belongs to Mulligan, who showcases her comic range and natural authority. PG-13 (mature thematic material involving sexual content, and for smoking). 1:35. 3-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
THE GHOST WRITER. Director Roman Polanski turns a conventional conspiracy thriller into a triumph of atmospheric menace. A hated politician (Pierce Brosnan, playing a variant on ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair) owes his publisher an autobiography. Enter the ghost writer (Ewan McGregor), who arrives on Martha's Vineyard to research his subject. Some may perceive this as an anti-Bush polemic, but Polanski is less intrigued by specific topical reference points than by the cramped corridors of power and what misdeeds lie in the shadows. PG-13 (language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference). 2:08. 3-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
THE GOOD GUY. Writer-director Julio DePietro draws from his previous life as an investment firm employee to tell a story of three New Yorkers: an urban conservationist (Alexis Bledel), her slick broker boyfriend (Scott Porter) and a conveniently located dreamboat (Bryan Greenberg) who may not be cut out for high finance and low morals but seems like a good guy to build a future around. The film has its moments, but DePietro struggles to reconcile the perceived demands of the romantic comedy genre and the hustle and detail of real life. R (pervasive language and some sexual content). 1:30. 2 stars. -- M.P.
THE HURT LOCKER. Vivid, assured and extremely suspenseful, director Kathryn Bigelow's latest (and strongest) film takes moviegoers by the collar and throws them headlong into one horrifying life-and-death situation after another. Jeremy Renner plays a soldier in Iraq running toward the explosives while everyone else is ducking and covering. He's a bomb tech whose job entails disarming one Improvised Explosive Device (IED) after another, day after day. Time will tell if this politically neutral war movie is a classic, but it's certainly a formidable experience. R (war violence and language). 2:10. 3-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. A queasy historical do-over, Quentin Tarantino's new film has been described as a grindhouse version of "Valkyrie"; a rhapsody dedicated to the cinema's powers of persuasion; and a showcase for Austrian-born character actor Christoph Waltz, who waltzes off with the performance honors as a suavely vicious Nazi colonel. All true. Tarantino's revenge fantasy recasts the iconography and mythic cruelties of Sergio Leone's Westerns as the stuff of World War II history -- not the history we know, but an alternate-reality version. R (strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality). 2:32. 2-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
THE LAST STATION. The final years of Leo Tolstoy's life were all war and no peace. The savage rivalry for his attention and legacy between his redoubtable wife and his craftiest disciple has now been turned into a showcase for tasty acting by performers who really know how to sink their teeth into roles. Under the accomplished direction of Michael Hoffman, who also wrote the script, "The Last Station" is well-acted across the board, but the film's centerpiece is the spectacular back and forth between Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya, his wife of 48 years. R (a scene of sexuality and nudity). 1:52. 3-1/2 stars. -- K.T.
PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF. The first installment in Rick Riordan's five-book series suggests that this could be the start of something adequate. Its limitations are less a matter of scale than of imagination. It may be director Chris Columbus' fate to initiate a fantasy franchise destined to be improved by his successors, as with the "Harry Potter" juggernaut. Now, Columbus has taken on this fantasy construct in which Greek gods threaten war in modern-day America over Zeus' missing lightning bolt. PG (action violence and peril, some scary images and suggestive material, and mild language). 1:59. 2 stars. -- M.P.
PRECIOUS. The first 20 minutes of "Precious" are so intense, you may not feel like sticking it out. Stick it out. This is an exceptional film about nearly unendurable circumstances, endured. The story is about a teen living in 1980s Harlem, raped by her barely glimpsed father, abused by her unfathomably cruel mother (Mo'Nique). Precious is illiterate but bright, and she switches to an alternative school where she comes under the life-saving tutelage of Ms. Rain (Paula Patton). There'll be an Oscar nomination or two in this film's near future. R (child abuse including sexual assault and pervasive language). 1:49. 3-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
SHUTTER ISLAND. A U.S. marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his amiable new partner (Mark Ruffalo) hunt for an escaped patient at an insane asylum run by a shifty doctor (Ben Kingsley), whose island clinic may harbor sinister doings in the name of progressive health care. The esteemed Martin Scorsese directs this adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel, but Scorsese overcooks the stew. Not even supporting players as deft as Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley and Emily Mortimer can make this more than classy, well-acted junk. MPAA rating: R (disturbing violent content, language and some nudity). 2:18. 2 stars. -- M.P.
A SINGLE MAN. Some films aren't revelations, exactly, but they burrow so deeply into old truths about love and loss and the mess and thrill of life, they seem new anyway. This is one such film, one of the best of 2009. In adapting Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel to the screen, first-time feature filmmaker Tom Ford (better known for being a famous fashion designer) has put his admiration of the source material to excellent results. Ford also has facilitated a career best for actor Colin Firth, one of the screen's great and subtle portraitists. R (some disturbing images and nudity/sexual content). 1:39. 4 stars. -- M.P.
THE TOOTH FAIRY. Dwayne Johnson stars as a minor-league hockey player known as "The Tooth Fairy" for his ability to knock his opponents' teeth all over the rink. The real tooth fairies do not approve of him, so he's lifted off to Fairyland, where Julie Andrews oversees his stint as a "real" tooth fairy whose wings sprout at inconvenient times. Johnson's a game and antic presence, but saddled with this material, he comes perilously close to tiring out the audience with all his nervous activity and mugging. PG (mild language, some rude humor and sports action). 1:42. 1-1/2 stars. -- M.P.
UP IN THE AIR. For a movie set in a sour economy, "Up in the Air" is very crafty about lobbing to the sweet spots of all concerned. It is smooth as glass, destined for a big audience and many awards. George Clooney stars as a well-tailored hatchet man for an Omaha firm specializing in delivering bad news to laid-off employees. Vera Farmiga plays the love interest he meets in a hotel bar one night, and Anna Kendrick plays the tightly wound whiz kid he's forced to mentor. This is a well-polished star vehicle, and it's easy to see how it could win the Oscar for Best Picture. R (for language and some sexual content). 1:48. 3 stars. -- M.P.
VALENTINE'S DAY. Set in a sprawling, grime-free L.A., director Garry Marshall's "Valentine's Day" is "Crash" with hearts and flowers, an ensemble romantic comedy that believes in bulk. Is "Valentine's Day" good? Not really, though plenty of the actors are. The massive cast includes Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel, Queen Latifah, Topher Grace and many others. In sum it plays like 12 landlocked episodes of "The Love Boat" rammed together. PG-13 (some sexual material and brief partial nudity). 2:05. 2 stars. -- M.P.
THE WOLFMAN. The new edition of the old Universal horror title "The Wolfman" constitutes a pleasant surprise, if "pleasant" can be used to describe a brooding $100 million-plus diversion with this many beheadings and eviscerations. Someone or something is on the loose in late-1800s England, slaughtering Gypsies and good, upright English folk. When a famous Shakespearean actor (Benicio Del Toro) is attacked and begins showing signs of trouble, it's his father (Anthony Hopkins) who takes care of him, though he seems strangely interested in letting "the beast" run free. R (bloody horror violence and gore). 1:43. 3 stars. -- M.P.
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FILM REVIEW: ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Tribune Newspapers Critic
3 stars
In the new "Alice in Wonderland," the wonderfully well-chosen Australian actress Mia Wasikowska embarks on her character's quest to recover her "muchness," while director Tim Burton wages a war against his own.
The struggle is worth it. The movie won't be for everyone -- it's a little rough for preteens, and it doesn't throw many laughs the audience's way -- but along with "Sweeney Todd," this is Burton's most interesting project in a decade. For every familiar Maxfield Parrish landscape, there's a more arresting and peculiar detail to catch your eye. Or your ear, despite a dull Danny Elfman musical score: A key moment late in the game relies on the thump-thump-thump of something massive rolling down a long, long staircase.
It's tempting to imagine what Burton might have done with Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" 20 or so years ago, with a budget on the scale of "Beetlejuice," which remains one of the director's great unruly achievements. But commercial artists move on, and Burton's new extravaganza, the second Disney-backed "Alice" and a bookend to the cheerily benign 1951 animated version, has been decked out in 3-D (though photographed in 2-D and later converted). It's best approached as corporate undertaking, undertaken successfully.
Odd? Yes, it's full of oddities. Then again, most film versions of "Alice" have been odd, from the 1933 Paramount version (leaden as it is, I still wake up screaming over some of its more grotesque flourishes) to the bone-dry, marvelously witty 1966 Jonathan Miller version (Peter Cook, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers and Leo McKern, plus the music of Ravi Shankar).
The central idea in screenwriter Linda Woolverton's version veers dangerously close to "Hook," the dubious "Peter Pan" riff. After being plagued by girlhood Wonderland nightmares of a place she remembers as Wonderland (in this version, its official handle is Underland), Alice is now 19 and about to be fobbed off on a Victorian simp of a suitor at a manor garden party. She spies an old friend: a hare with a timepiece. She flees in pursuit, and soon she's falling down a rabbit hole once again.
The kingdom of Underland is ruled with a iron fist by the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, with digitally enlarged noggin). Screenwriter Woolverton worked on "The Lion King," and there's a related premise at work here, that of a lovely, dangerous place run into the ground by a despot. The Jabberwock must be destroyed in order to restore Underland to the benevolent administration of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). Johnny Depp's lisping, top-hatted hatter plays a key role in the transition of power.
While certain action sequences, such as the climactic battle, recall similar bits from Burton's "Planet of the Apes" remake -- which is to say, they're virtually impossible to recall -- one gets tangy reminders often enough of Burton's imagination. He heightens the malevolent pageantry in Carroll's work, and while one misses the verbal dexterity of Miller's BBC version (newly available on DVD), the best and strangest interludes assert Burton's skills as a fantasist, as well as Depp's as a squirrely, inventive character actor.
It helps that the bookend sequences actually work. We see Alice's stultifying family and relatives and probable future laid out before her, like a miserable Merchant-Ivory parody, and therefore feel some investment in her adventure. Wasikowska cuts through the excess with her plaintive sincerity and utter lack of cant. After struggling vocally in "Sweeney Todd" it's good to see Bonham Carter (Burton's partner in real life) in high form again, fearsome as well as eccentric.
Top-billed Depp doesn't really dominate the film so much as unsettle it, slyly. While he doesn't confine the Mad Hatter to as brittle (and misjudged) a shell as he did the eerily Michael Jacksonian Willy Wonka in Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (a film I found less enjoyable than this one), Depp remains a risk-taker, and an affecting one. I hope Burton and Depp continue their fruitfully nervy collaboration. Long may they both juggle commercial diversions like this one with less commercial ones -- because you never know when something as droll as "Ed Wood" will come along.
MPAA rating: PG (for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar).
Running time: 1:48.
Cast: Mia Wasikowska (Alice); Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter); Helena Bonham Carter (Red Queen); Anne Hathaway (White Queen); Crispin Glover (Stayne); and the voices of Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Barbara Windsor and Timothy Spall.
Credits: Directed by Tim Burton; written by Linda Woolverton, based on "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll; produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd and Joe Roth. A Walt Disney Pictures release.
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FILM REVIEW: BROOKLYN'S FINEST
By Michael Phillips
Tribune Newspapers Critic
2 stars
Everything that does and does not work in "Brooklyn's Finest" arrives in Scene One. A twitchy, cash-strapped detective played by Ethan Hawke is driving around with a shifty associate played by unbilled Vincent D'Onofrio. They park by a cemetery. (Warning.) Director Antoine Fuqua takes his time with this scene and doesn't visually hype the inevitable. He and the actors finesse the encounter artfully. Yet the dialogue is such a weird combination of the stilted and the obvious, you think: Is "Brooklyn's Finest" going to be like this the whole way? Good actors and a talented director doing what they can to bring the truth to a script that's mostly bogus?
It's a movie you truly want to like, because it reminds you of movies you did, most of them made by Sidney Lumet. First-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin lays out a big spread of law enforcement corruption, intertwining the tales of three cops in crisis. One (Hawke) has a perpetually pregnant wife (Lili Taylor), a house full of mold and a plan to buy a better future. Richard Gere shelves most of his vanity (sorry, that haircut looks a little pricey) to play a suicidally inclined alcoholic just days from retirement. The third and most interesting, an undercover detective in trouble every which way, is portrayed by Don Cheadle, one of the best actors alive.
The problem isn't in trying to tell three stories; the problem is Martin has made those stories so tonally similar, and grimly determinist, the three-sides-of-the-same-soul strategy dies on its feet. Fuqua's "Training Day" had the structural advantage of simplicity; here, with a "Wire" season's worth of complication and woe jammed into 125 minutes, credibility is in short supply.
Cheadle shares a couple of scenes with Wesley Snipes, as a gangster just out of the joint, whose life he saved while working undercover in prison. It's a pleasure to watch them go at it. (Good to see Snipes on-screen in any circumstance.) On the other hand, like "Training Day," "Brooklyn's Finest" degenerates into florid movie-movie excess and depravity, which isn't the same as gritty realism.
At the film's 2009 Sundance Film Festival debut, the picture ended on a note three notes beyond grim. The ending has been substantially changed for the final release version, though the climax still has every cop in Brooklyn wrapping up his business in the same convenient housing project full of rotters. I think Fuqua should do another corruption-mosaic drama; he's a curious blend of honesty and flash, and he's genuinely interested in what his performers can pull off in tense, claustrophobic conditions. But here, the writing has the clang of dramaturgy rather than the echo of the streets.
MPAA rating: R (for bloody violence throughout, strong sexuality, nudity, drug content and pervasive language).
Running time: 2:05.
Cast: Richard Gere (Eddie Dugan); Don Cheadle (Clarence "Tango" Butler); Ethan Hawke (Sal Procida); Wesley Snipes (Caz); Will Patton (Hobarts); Ellen Barkin (Agent Smith); Michael Kenneth Williams (Red).
Credits: Directed by Antoine Fuqua; written by Michael C. Martin; produced by Basil Iwanyk, John Langley, Elie Cohn, John Thompson and Avi Lerner. An Overture Films release.
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FILM REVIEW: THE GOOD GUY
By Michael Phillips
Tribune Newspapers Critic
2 stars
In his previous life as a Chicago investment firm employee, writer-director Julio DePietro picked up a few things about the way roving packs of fiscal sharks work and play in their 20s. "The Good Guy" uses that nervous, hard-charging world to tell a story of three New Yorkers: urban conservationist Beth (Alexis Bledel of "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," Parts 1 and 2), her slick, hungry broker boyfriend (Scott Porter) and the all-too-conveniently located dreamboat (Bryan Greenberg), shy but substantial, who may not be cut out for Wall Street high finance and low morals but who certainly seems like a good guy to build a future around.
"The Good Guy" is narrated by Porter's character, whom we see in a prologue after he's been "blindsided" by his breakup with Beth. What brought him to this point? The film trots back six weeks to show us how it all went down, and just how reliable (or un-) our narrator really is. DePietro struggles to reconcile the perceived demands of the romantic comedy genre (though his film is more bittersweet than most) and the tang and hustle and detail of real life. For every good line there are two functionary place-holders, and the literary references -- from Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier" to Jane Austen and the like -- resemble textual window dressing. Still, the banter of these brittle Manhattanites, looking for love and related payoffs, has its moments.
"I'm in the low-self-esteem business," says one investment wizard. "If a girl's parents are still together, I just move on."
MPAA rating: R (for pervasive language and some sexual content).
Running time: 1:30.
Cast: Alexis Bledel (Beth), Scott Porter (Tommy), Bryan Greenberg (Daniel).
Credits: Written and directed by Julio DePietro. Produced by Linda Moran, Rene Bastian, DePietro. A Roadside Attractions release.
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