I Love You, Man

A perfectly pleasant movie that follows the buddy-comedy “bromance” recipe unabashedly. Rudd and Segel are both likeable and consistent. But I can’t honestly say I laughed a lot. The stakes were low, and the conflicts felt concocted to fill time. It doesn’t feel personal, like it was a real man’s real struggle. So the recipe’s a bit vanilla. For me, the best laughs come from Rudd when he struggles with his attempts at “dude” speak. Otherwise, you could do worse, but it’s no Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Penance

Gimmicky torture-porn with an intriguing premise, but zero percent irony, comedy or fun. It’s really just torture on the screen. We walked out when people’s genitals started getting cut off.

Hired Gun

Shane Wood is rock solid, and the producers do a good job of stretching their dollar in this ultra low-budget thriller. As a plus, there’s a hilariously over-the-top turn from Michael Madsen.

Sin Nombre

Very intense depiction of the plight of illegal immigrants and the cruelty of gang members in Mexican culture. Acting is top-notch and all the technical aspects are solid. It’s not a real FUN movie, but sometimes it’s worth seeing something heavy.

Duplicity

** Spoiler alert! **
It’s impossible to discuss this movie without giving away the ending. Suffice to say, it misleads in the most clever way -- not by twisting the PLOT, though there’s plenty of that, but by twisting the THEME. The moral of the story is a whopper, and it comes out of nowhere. And like Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy’s previous outing, you have to wait until the final scene to hear what it’s really about. Owen and Roberts are pros and deliver all their expertise to this full-court deception. It’s smart and enjoyable.

Sunshine Cleaning

At the risk of seeming derogatory, this was “chicky.” Really. The misleading trailer makes it look like a dark comedy, but there is a fair amount of sad drama, and a prominent sisterly relationship with a lot of sentiment and crying. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are both great, but the script feels like a cobbled-together mosaic of Sundance movies –- trying to include every quirk and conflict from of a bevy of successful movies in hopes of creating a grand Sundance super-hybrid. Because of this, a lot of the story comes off as disingenuous. Thankfully Adams and Blunt breathe extra life into this Frankenstein monster of a screenplay, which made it narrowly tolerable for me. It might do more for the tissue-prone.

iMurder

The filmmakers stretched their dollars commendably, getting a good, recognizable cast to do small parts and cleverly spreading them evenly throughout the movie to create an ensemble. The technical aspects suffered though. The sound was crappy and the picture was muddy and camercorderish. And ultimately, like a lot of bigger horror films, the script made absolutely no sense.

Watchmen

If The Dark Knight is "The Godfather" of the superhero movies, then maybe Watchmen is the Apocalypse Now. (Or One From the Heart?) It’s uncompromising and audacious, paying the source novel the sincerest reverence while determined to dazzle and entertain. Though it’s been a while since I’ve read it, word is the filmmakers adhered strictly to the book’s plot. So the protracted running time makes it gangly, but never dull.

The best moments are when the movie strays from the still frames of comics and uses cinematic tools: music, montage, and action to breathe in some life. Superhero action is sparse, but when it comes (in a brutal prison sequence, for instance) it’s visceral and satisfying. The filmmakers relish in the the punches and kicks, the SNAPS and CRUNCHES of bones, and the hair-raising texture of broken glass. The cast has the most fun in these moments, too. Jackie Earle Haley plunges into Rorschach’s mania -- growling, kicking and screaming in the part he was born to play. The lovely Malin Akerman, divine in gravity-defying spandex, genuinely consumes the Silk Spectre, her majestic hair somehow reacting to cataclysms seconds before the rest of her.

The alternate reality is fun, too, and poignant. Nixon as president, Kennedy assassination, and ground zero references all make this a far-fetched cautionary parable -- rubbing-in the things we could have prevented so horribly misguided super-villains don’t always have to teach the world tough-love lessons.

You can’t really criticize this movie. What would be the point? It’s so specific, so specialized, to condemn it would be to immediately compare apples to oranges. It is what it must be: respectfully bloated, hyper-real, and at times when the big, blue, naked dude is on screen, downright eccentric. But it’s cool -- and totally unique.

Fired Up

Fired Up tried to be funny. So although a lot of the gags didn’t “land”, and the leads look old enough to be teachers in a high school, rather than students, this gets an “A” for effort. Extra credit goes to the music supervisor who, to create a soundtrack for the ubiquitous villain, chose some of the most annoying songs of the last 15 years, mining some of the movie’s biggest laughs. If only it was rated “R” so there could be more sex. That should be the point of a movie like this, right?