Dedication

Actor Justin Theroux makes an auspicious directorial debut with a disarmingly funny romantic comedy full of emotional life and witty filmic textures. Henry Roth (Bill Crudup) is a children’s book writer whose illustrator and collaborator Rudy (Tom Wilkinson) is about the only person in the world patient enough to tolerate Henry’s nervous tics and angry outbursts. Rudy’s death forces Henry to attempt working with a publisher-assigned collaborator in the guise of Lucy Riley (Mandy Moore). Once Henry stops insulting Lucy long enough to apologize, he realizes the flame burning between them but battles with his grip on reality—he’s scared of driving and superstitious about everything. Billy Crudup makes us root for his confused character, and Mandy Moore is convincing and funny as the best that thing ever happened to Henry. The are no special features. Aspect ratio is 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality delivered via Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – No Stars) Rated R, 93 mins. (Weinstein Company)

The Brave One

As its blandly heroic title forecasts, "The Brave One" is a revenge fantasy that floats like a narrative helium balloon waiting to find its ceiling. Jodie Foster plays Manhattan talk radio personality Erica Bain, whose poetic "Street Walk" monologue segment invites WNKW listeners to contemplate the "safest big city in the country" with a bittersweet nostalgia for the ripe culture wiped out by corporate ideology. And yes, some of that nostalgia is for the all-night cafeteria atmosphere of pimps, druggies and prostitutes that inhabited Scorsese’s "Taxi Driver" and Michael Winner’s "Death Wish." The movie dredges up the bad old days of perpetual street hassles in the Big Apple and drops a bag of rotting fruit at the feet of its impressionable protagonist. Special features include English, French, and Spanish language, English, French, and Spanish subtitles, a making-of featurette, and additional scenes. Aspect ratio is anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features Two Stars) Rated R, 122 mins. (Warner Bros.)

Rendition

After overblown stories of walkouts by critics during its Toronto film festival debut, "Rendition" proves to have enough substance, momentum and drama to validate its entertainment value as a politically charged thriller. Reese Witherspoon plays Isabella, the pregnant wife of Egyptian American Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who gets abducted by U.S. Special Forces on suspicion of terrorism upon his return from a business convention in South Africa. El-Ibrahimi is secreted to a North African dungeon where local police kingpin Abasi gleefully tortures him with the tacit assistance of CIA cat’s paw Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) who survived the suicide bombing that gave rise to El-Ibrahimi’s abduction.

"Rendition" comes out in a season of R-word film tittles (see "Redacted" and "Reservation Road") set to assault cinema marquees with bloody threads of alliteration. What these films share in common is the death of young people by mechanized forces. Cars, bullets and bombs dismantle callow human life with an abstract force and logic that most people can comprehend, if not rationalize, in a way that lets those responsible off the hook. "Rendition" is the best of the three movies because it’s a humanitarian film rather than a political one even if that subtext is present. It might not rise to the complexity of "Syriana," but "Rendition" isn’t a flimsy movie either. Special features include English and Spanish subtitles, audio commentary with director Gavin Hood, a documentary short, and a making-of featurette. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality produced in Dolby Digital 5.1, and 2.0. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated R, 122 mins. (New Line)

Margot at the Wedding

Nicole Kidman gives her best performance since "To Die For" (1995) in this neurotic cultural zeitgeist comedy that methodically goes against the grain. Kidman plays Margot, the bi-polar sister to her equally screwed up sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Short-story author Margot feigns sibling loyalty to ostensibly repair the rift she created with Pauline some years ago when she brings her son Claude (Zane Pais) to witness Pauline’s marriage to her slacker fiancé Malcolm (Jack Black) at the couple’s New England home. Familial melodrama explodes in sequenced intervals as Margot gets up to her old tricks of sabotaging Pauline while her obvious motive of hooking up with an old flame that lives nearby shocks her androgynous son’s sensibilities. Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to "Squid and the Whale" is a sophisticated satire that takes hilarious and accurate aim at the not-so-squishy belly of American family life where narcissistic psychosexual games are played out with shameless immediacy. Claude is the likable protagonist among a slew of warped family members. The narrative weak link is Baumbach’s refusal to introduce the girls’ mother even though she arrives during the film’s closing moments. Special features include a making-of featurette with Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Aspect ratio is 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality produced in Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie –Three Stars, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 91 mins. (Paramount)

Gone Baby Gone

For his directing debut Ben Affleck, and co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapt a Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River") novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square. Casey Affleck does leading man honors as Boston native Patrick Kenzie, a youngish private detective sharing his home-office business with love interest Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Relatives of a missing four-year-old neighborhood girl induce Patrick and Angie to take up the case in hopes of recovering her. The girl's mom is a negligent drug addict. Assigned to work with career cops (played by Ed Harris and John Ashton), our private-eye duo find their personal relationship threatened as they descend into a world of brutal drug dealers and lying cops. Strong performances from its ensemble cast can't compensate for undeveloped character-reversals, splashes of exploitation, and a broken storyline that feels like two different narratives pasted together. Special features include commentary by Ben Affleck and screenwriter Aaron Stockard, two making-of featurettes, and a selection of deleted scenes. Aspect ratio 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie – Two Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated R, 115 mins. (Miramax)

Becoming Jane

Jane Austin’s real-life inspiration for writing "Pride and Prejudice" is the subject of this temperamental period piece with Anne Hathaway fairly miscast as the young would-be author whose romantic sensibilities are ruffled by Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), an Irish lawyer-in-training. Tom’s under class social standing proves a bridge too far in spite of Jane’s deepening affection for the man that her family firmly rejects. McAvoy shines in the role of a good-hearted rogue, and director Julian Jarrold ("Kinky Boots") depicts 18th-century England with a convincing less-is-more approach. Jarrold delivers an emotional zinger during the film’s outro that solidifies the otherwise underdeveloped narrative. Special features include English, Spanish, and French subtitles, a commentary track with director Julian Jarrold, screenwriter Kevin Hood, and producer Robert Bernstein, a "pop-up facts" feature, a making-of featurette, and a collection of deleted scenes. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated PG, 120 mins. (Miramax)

Martian Child

Another installment in a current spate of magical realist films, "Martian Child" focuses on the primal fear of abandonment of a young orphaned boy named Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who professes to be from Mars. John Cusack plays David Gordon, a widowed science fiction writer who sees himself in Dennis, and adopts the troubled boy. With help from his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) and would-be girlfriend Harlee (Amanda Peet), David breaks through Dennis's defense mechanisms and teaches him to see life on terms he can relate to-like baseball. John Cusack's favored co-actors (Oliver Platt, Joan Cusack, and Angelica Huston) add color to a sweet movie that intermittently gets bogged down by poor pacing. Special features include English and Spanish subtitles, a commentary track with produceres Corey Sienega and David Kirschner, and screenwriters Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins, two making-of featurettes and fourteen deleted and additional scenes. Aspect ratio is 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in choice of Dolby Digital Surround or 2.0 Stereo Surround. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – Two Stars). Rated PG, 108 mins. (New Line)

Michael Clayton

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy ("The Devil’s Advocate" and "The Bourne Supremacy") makes his directorial debut with the assistance of pedigreed producers and executive producers that include Sydney Pollack, George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella. The list of Academy Award-nominated names sets a cultivated tone for a scathing corporate thriller that emanates from the same narrative petri dish that spawned films like "The Parallax View" and "The China Syndrome." The point of view in "Michael Clayton" is appropriately more alienated than that of those dated films, but is nonetheless rooted in the reality of a corporation’s tendency to chew up and spit out humanity in the name of quarterly profit gains. Special features include English, Spanish, and French subtitles, a commentary track from director Tony Gilroy and film editor John Gilroy, and three additional scenes. (Movie – Four Stars, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 119 mins. (Warner Brothers)

Talk to Me

The outsized talents of Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Taraji Henson go a long way in compensating for the undernourished script about real-life ex-con-turned-Washington D.C. radio and TV personality Ralph Waldo "Petey" Green Jr. (Cheadle), who became a beacon of hope for thousands of disenfranchised blacks in the late ‘60s. Co-writer/director Kasi Lemmons ("Eve’s Bayou") fails to shape the biography drama after the likable Petey storms the airwaves of WOL-AM with his anti-establishment message under the benevolent guidance of station programmer Dewey Hughes (Ejiofor). In spite of Cheadle’s forceful performance, the watered down script fails to capture the rawness and the logic of a groundbreaking social commentator who spoke truth to power on a daily basis. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in 5.1 Dolby Digital. Special features include: Spanish, English, and French subtitles, two making-of featurettes and a collection of extended or deleted scenes. (Movie-Two Stars, DVD features – One Star.) Rated R, 118 mins. (Universal)

Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections

Anyone who doubts that the Republican Party, using systematic methods that were supported by an irresponsible media, stole the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections should be prepared to have their eyes opened. Here is an important and essential account of the treachery that cost America its democracy in two bloodless coups that portend yet another such rape in 2008 if something isn’t done to annihilate rampant voter fraud being committed by neocon fascists. Documentarian David Earnhardt utilizes in-depth conversations with such political figures as columnist Robert Koehler, Representative John Conyers, data analyst Bruce O’Dell, investigative journalist Brad Friedman, and voting rights activist Antonio Sanford to give voice to the terrible acts that put an illegitimate president in office. If you only see one documentary this year, find a way to see "Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections." Special features include extended interviews & speeches and deleted scenes.

(Movie – Five Stars, DVD features – Four Stars) Not Rated, 80 mins.

A Mighty Heart

"A Mighty Heart," like the other post-9/11 Hollywood movies ("United 93" and "World Trade Center"), is a would-be documentary subject inflated with promotion in its incarnation as a narrative feature. The turgid emphasis on sentiment and emotion is intended to overpower the viewer into believing and agreeing with everything on the screen, lest he or she be thought of as callous or insensitive. All of the oh-so-sincere earnestness seems to say, you are either with us or you are a bad person. "Hokey" is a word that springs to the lips when I think of these films, but not hokey in a cool Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" way. No, these movies are meant to be perceived as "important" and "serious" because they ostensibly reveal "heroes" that we the audience should aspire to, but could never be, since we were not in the enviable position of the suffering person onscreen.

The "mighty heart" of the film’s title refers more to the long suffering wife of the deceased Wall Street Journalist reporter Daniel Pearl than it does to the man himself. We know this because the climax of the piece arrives when the protagonist, a pregnant Mariane Pearl, goes into an extended primal scream session after hearing news of her husband’s long foreshadowed death. Never more has the Shakespeare quote from Hamlet, "the lady doth protest too much" applied so obviously to a crisis decision in a movie. Daniel Pearl and his wife were acutely aware of the dangers of his job. He was in Karachi trying to get interviews with known terrorists. That Mariane Pearl chose to improperly apply for the 9/11 victim’s relief fund, even though her husband did not perish in that event, informs her unflinching sense of opportunism that carried over to writing a book and participating in making a film about her husband’s death.

Somehow, all of this obvious motivation escaped director Michael Winterbottom, the film’s producer Brad Pitt and his wife Angelina Jolie, because they bought into Mariane Pearl’s money grab pity party hook, line and sinker. Never mind that the linear story isn’t capable of maintaining a three-act structure merely because actress, star and supermom Angelina Jolie plays the rather homely-looking Mariane Pearl with every curly hair flawlessly in place. If only Warren Zevon’s "Werewolves of London" played on the soundtrack, then we’d know for certain that her "hair was perfect."

Special features include English, French, and Spanish audio and subtitles and a making-of featurette and a promo short. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound processed in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. (Movie – One Star, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 103 mins.

Glue

Writer/director Alexis Dos Santos sets his distinctive coming-of-age comedy/drama in the small town of Patagonia, Argentina where 15-year-old Lucas (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) and his best friend Nacho (Nahuel Viale) create Violent Femmes-inspired music for their band. Lucas and Nacho share an ambivalent crush on Andrea (Ines Efron), a bespectacled girl with similar lustful thoughts as the boys. Dos Santos intercuts reverie sequences shot on Super 8 to give internal meaning to his teen characters’ awkward sexual confusion that veers between polarities of gender. "Glue" is an inspired artistic effort at capturing the sense of urgency, freedom and alienation of a group of teenagers growing up in a cultural vacuum that ironically gives them space to experiment and explore. As part of the New Argentine Cinema, "Glue" is a bold and tasteful film that wears its warts well.

In Spanish with English subtitles. (Picture-This Home Video) (B-)

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea

Without a doubt the Salton Sea is one of the weirdest places in America. Documentarians Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer lovingly examine the creation, history and abysmal state of a land developer’s ecological disaster that directed water from the Colorado river to California’s sea-level Imperial Valley. John Waters narrates between interviews with Salton Sea locals describing their hopes for the forsaken area. Millions of fish die annually and regenerate in the 35 mile-long, 15 mile-wide salty pond around which communities of impoverished people congregate. The film serves as a clarion call for some type of government assistance to address the terrible plight of a place in desperate need of help. Funny, tragic, and informative "Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea" is an unforgettable portrait of a desert town turned into a sewer. DVD features include six short films and an alternate environmental version. (Movie – Four Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Not Rated, 73 mins.

Who’s Been Talking?: Johnny Thunders In Concert

The last recorded concert of the late New York Dolls guitarist occurred in Osaka, Japan just weeks before John Genzale’s (AKA Johnny Thunders) corpse was discovered in a New Orleans hotel room. The event is a festive affair with Johnny doing a kind of cabaret show with backing band The Oddballs, featuring blonde buxom bombshell Alison Gordy adding vocals, and an impossibly young-looking Stevie Klasson on rhythm guitar. Johnny is clearly on his last legs, but glimmers of the snotty former leader of the Heartbreakers comes through on Thunders’ classics like "Pills" and "Born to Lose" (AKA "Born too Loose"). Jamey Heath’s sax playing adds a nice layer of bluesy inflection to Johnny’s rockin’ sound. The look of the footage is fuzzy, the concert lighting strictly amateur and the camerawork questionable, but the sound quality good on this momentous document of a gifted songwriter and guitarist ravished by heroin. Aspect ratio is 4:3, with sound processed in Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. (Concert—Four Stars, DVD features—Zero Stars). Not Rated, 99 mins. (MVDvisual)

1408

DVD
John Cusack Brings Stephen King Story to a Boil
By Cole Smithey

Adapted from a short story by Stephen King, Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom ("Derailed") skillfully helms this twisting one-man showcase in terror. Horror novelist Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a debunker of paranormal myths. He tackles his latest book project, "Ten Nights in Haunted Hotel Rooms," with the been-there-done-that cynicism of a wizened professional knocking out yet another routine assignment. Things get exciting when Enslin reads a news clipping about a mysterious "room 1408" in New York's Dolphin Hotel, where more than 50 guests have perished. With his curiosity properly piqued, our plucky author disregards the earnest warnings of the hotel manager Mr. Olin (snappily played by Samuel L. Jackson), and enters the room with tape recorder in hand. The alarm clock begins a one-hour countdown as walls move and the landscape of the room becomes a demonic presence taunting the author to lose hold on his already loosened sanity. The triumph of "1408" rests squarely on John Cusack's perfectly pitched performance as an unshakable disbeliever repeatedly pushed to the brink of suicide by memories of his own past. Room 1408 presents a psychological, paranormal and physical juggernaut that will curl your insides in knots. Special features include English and Spanish subtitles, commentary by director Mikael Hafstrom and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, three making-of featurettes, and an extended director’s cut with an alternate ending. Aspect ratio is16X9 widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby 5.1. (Movie – Four Stars, DVD features – Four Stars) Rated PG-13, 94 mins. (Dimension)