Capsule reviews of films currently playing at area theaters by Elkhart Truth movie columnist Ben Ford (BF), the Associated Press (AP) and the Los Angeles Times (LAT).
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day: Troy Duffy went from a bartending screenwriter to Harvey Weinstein's golden boy in the '90s with his calling-card script "The Boondock Saints" -- a brash action comedy about twin vigilantes. His resulting bad-behavior flameout in Hollywood was humiliatingly turned into a cautionary documentary ("Overnight"). But the best revenge is a fan base. "Saints" took off on home video. Now, 10 years later, Duffy has reemerged with a sequel. Time may have healed some of Duffy's wounds, but it hasn't made him a better Tarantino knockoff, unfortunately. He tamps down his best instincts -- occasional wry humor and the appealingly oddball supporting character (Willem Dafoe last time, a bug-eyed Clifton Collins Jr. here as the MacManus' admiring Latino cohort) -- and doubles up on his worst: homophobic gags, tedious '90s-era slo-mo shootouts and overwrought gangster tropes. (LAT)
The Box: A Virginia couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) is offered a million dollars by a stranger (Frank Langella) to push a button, knowing that if they do so, someone they don't know will die. If you're a connoisseur of the cinema of the weird, you'll want to make room in your schedule for "The Box," because this movie is Looney Tunes. Actually, let's rephrase that: This movie is Looney Tunes on a three-day bender. It's nuttier than a jar of Jif. "The Box" is also hauntingly beautiful, packed with images that will stick with you for days and tells a story that even a Mensa member might need a couple weeks to fully understand. Director Richard Kelly, working with his regular cinematographer, Steven Poster, has created a fantastic-looking film that only ceases to become enjoyable when it overworks itself trying to explain just what the heck is going on. But even then, it's obvious that "The Box" is the work of a true visionary. (BF) HHH 1/2
A Christmas Carol: The time, not just the season, is ripe for a new version of "A Christmas Carol." When Charles Dickens wrote his classic story, it was a cautionary tale to greedy capitalists of the 19th century (Scrooge recalls his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, as "a good man of business.") Dickens' story is about as sturdy a one as we've got -- it would be nearly impossible to mar what might be the finest ghost story this side of "Hamlet." Unfortunately, our 2009 version is defined only by its technology. Animated in 3-D, Disney's "A Christmas Carol," directed by Robert Zemeckis, suffocates from its design. Despite (or because of) Zemeckis' approach to using performance-capture animation, the film comes off oddly inanimate. Jim Carrey plays not just Scrooge but the three ghosts who visit him. (AP) HH
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: A scientist tries to solve world hunger only to see things go awry as food falls from the sky in abundance. Transferring the popular children's book to the big screen, first-time writer-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller conjure up a veritable blizzard of ways of channeling chow, carrying it off with enough brio to send audiences into a food coma. Really, between the animated rainstorms of Flintstones-sized steaks and the creation of a translucent Jell-O palace, the movie's loopy use of food puts it in the hall of fame between "Big Night" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." The movie's humor targets both kids and grown-ups with equal success, but the main attraction here is the movie's vibrant 3-D animation and its perfect storm of foodie-friendly sight gags. (LAT)
The Fourth Kind: This flat-lining alien-abduction thriller offers a close encounter that buries an interesting idea under a barrage of gimmicky, carnival-like hokum. The movie's unwieldy mix of degraded pseudo-documentary footage and "Unsolved Mystery"-style re-enactments is as unconvincing as it is distancing. In a sleep-inducing performance, Milla Jovovich plays an actress re-enacting an Alaska psychologist's research into patients' reports of strange phenomena. Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi presents these events in split-screen fashion with the "real," raw videotaped footage of patients' recollections playing side-by-side with the actors' reconstructions. Osunsanmi invests so much time and energy trying to convince the audience of the events' veracity that he forgets to create even a rudimentary sense of tension. (AP) H
Halloween 2: The aftermath of Michael Myers' murderous rampage through the eyes of heroine Laurie Strode. In writer-director Rob Zombie's pile-it-on ethos, murder scenes that already incite déjà vu now feel as if they contain one more scream, one more angry downswing of the knife, one more pulpy stomp on a head, one more pounding of a naked woman's face against a mirror and one more lingering shot of carnage. What you won't feel is genuine horror, because unlike John Carpenter -- whose original 1978 film is a sly game of nerve-racking peekaboo -- Zombie isn't out to engage fans of the genre with a slaughterhouse bonbon like "Halloween II." Michael Myers may get the jump on his victims but Zombie's a looky-loo tradesman whose gory shtick you can see coming a mile away. (LAT)
The Hurt Locker: A new sergeant takes over a highly trained bomb disposal team amid violent conflict in Iraq. Its thoroughly current setting aside, "The Hurt Locker" recalls the Henri-Georges Clouzot 1953 classic "The Wages of Fear," both in its story of brave men working with highly explosive materials, and the feeling that passes onto the audience. Even in its calmest moments, there's a sense that an explosion could rock the screen at any moment. This may not be the best movie about the war in Iraq -- though it makes a pointed observation about the war's effect on the soldiers who fight it -- it's certainly the best one set during the war. It's also one of the year's best films. (BF) HHHH
The Informant!: Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a rising star at an agri-industry giant, turns whistleblower but his efforts mislead the FBI as much as they help. Director Steven Soderbergh isn't that interested in telling the serious side of what was actually a pretty big case of greed and corruption in the business world. Instead, he and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who adapted Kurt Eichenwald's book "The Informant: A True Story," are more transfixed by Whitacre, the strange guy in the middle of it all, and their off-center take on the material turns what might have been a straightforward, forgettable thriller into something far more appealing. (BF) HHH 1/2
Inglourious Basterds: In Nazi-occupied France, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by engaging in brutal acts of retribution. "Inglourious Basterds" is the movie that proves that top-notch Quentin Tarantino film dialogue just works, no matter what time or place it's uttered in. In fact, even though the movie is punctuated by sudden, often gleeful bursts of violence -- another Tarantino trademark -- one of its best qualities is its willingness to take its time to get where its going and luxuriate in its language. In a war movie, especially one directed by Tarantino, you expect the blood to flow, spurt and gush, and it does, but that's far from the only thing "Inglourious Basterds" has going for it. (BF) HHHH
Law Abiding Citizen: The real mystery here isn't how Gerard Butler's character manages to wreak explosive, bloody havoc on Philadelphia while confined behind the walls of his jail cell. What's truly baffling is how the star of the hugely successful "300" has managed to make yet another questionable movie choice since then, following "P.S. I Love You," "The Ugly Truth" and "Gamer." This time, Butler serves as a producer and stars as Clyde Shelton, whose wife and young daughter were murdered during a home invasion. Ten years later, he's out for revenge -- not just against the killer who went free after testifying against his accomplice, but against the entire judicial system. His ultimate target is Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx, looking bored), the slick prosecutor who cut that deal a decade ago to maintain his high conviction rate. (AP) H
The Men Who Stare at Goats: A fun tone is undermined by disjointed storytelling in George Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov's romp based on Jon Ronson's amusing nonfiction book about the U.S. military's research into psychic warfare and espionage. First-time director Heslov crafts a hit-and-miss fictional narrative ornamented with some of the brighter anecdotes Ronson uncovered about efforts to create warrior monks who try to walk through walls or glare animals to death. Clooney plays a prodigy of this New Age militarism, with Jeff Bridges as his Dude-like mentor, Kevin Spacey as a psychic rival and Ewan McGregor as a reporter uncovering the story amid the war in Iraq. The movie opens with the promise of a Catch-22 or Strangelove-style satire, but while it maintains much of the book's incredulous spirit, the dots of absurdity don't connect that well. (AP) HH 1/2
Michael Jackson's This is It: Kenny Ortega, the director of the concerts Jackson planned to give in London before his death, also directed this compilation of rehearsal footage that, at its best, is a fascinating glimpse of a true genius at work and a bittersweet last look at one of the all-time great entertainers. The movie doesn't show much of the private Michael, and let's face it: Jackson's personal life had become more intriguing to many of us than his music. But whatever may have been going on behind the scenes, it wasn't affecting Jackson's work on stage. "This Is It" is presented as a "gift" from Michael to his fans, and as such, is the most positive spin on his final days. We'll never know if any more interesting storylines exist in the footage that was taken, and it's also fair to wonder if Jackson, who's painted as a perfectionist in this film, would have wanted the public to see the unfinished product behind what was to be a very glossy show. Perhaps a better title for this movie might have been "This Is It: Take It or Leave It." (BF) HH 1/2
Paranormal Activity: This thriller about a woman (Katie Featherston) and her boyfrield (Micah Sloat) being haunted mostly lives up to the hype that preceded it. The movie presents itself as a genuine documentary made from footage found in the house after the incident -- there are no opening or closing credits and the movie begins by thanking the couple's families for participating in the film -- but unlike "The Blair Witch Project," you never quite believe that the events in "Paranormal Activity" actually could have happened. The dialogue and performances are natural enough, but the movie itself is too slick to be confused with authentic camerawork. Still, it all works beautifully, demonstrating once again that when it comes to scaring people, loud noises and special-effects monsters are no match for silence, psychological horror and anticipation. (BF) HHH 1/2
Pirate Radio: No movie can be all bad when juiced up with a soundtrack of more than 50 classic rock songs, the musical backdrop for a story about merry deejays blasting illicit tunes into stodgy mid-1960s Britain from a boat offshore. The best thing to say about this rock 'n' roll romp from writer-director Richard Curtis is that it's all about the music, man. The Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix -- these are the stars here, and the well-chosen songs are the main thing keeping the film afloat. Mostly a hodgepodge of music montages and prolonged, occasionally funny gags, the movie spends a lot of time talking about how great rock music is but only captures its soul through the actual playlist of songs. It's a big disappointment when you consider the potentially explosive combination of Curtis' supergroup of comic talent, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost. (AP) HH
Saw VI: The successor to Jigsaw's legacy, Detective Hoffman, sets the game in motion as the FBI gets close. Terrible acting, zero suspense, laughable logic and the promise of another one next year. (LAT)
Shorts: Robert Rodriguez mashes up "Shorts," fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing and following tangential story lines. But the editing high jinks don't obscure that this family adventure film is essentially about a group of kids who end up with a "wishing rock," a rainbow-colored stone that grants the holder any wish. And as tends to happen with such things (be they oil lamps or monkey paws), trouble ensues. Rodriguez populates a Texas suburb with colorfully exaggerated characters, both kids and adults. A good spirit pervades "Shorts," but it becomes too cartoonish, too scattered to register much. Somewhere around the time a giant booger runs riot through the town, one wishes for a bit more adult supervision. (AP) H 1/2
The Stepfather: A student returns home from military school to find his mother in love with a suspicious man that seems to be hiding a dark side. "The Stepfather" is that rarity, an effective remake of a screen classic that can stand alone on its own considerable merits. Director Nelson McCormick and writer J.S. Cardone deftly reworked the 1987 original (written by Donald E. Westlake and directed by Joseph Ruben) while wisely adhering to the essence of the chilling original. What's most chilling about "The Stepfather" is that it was inspired by an actual incident in New Jersey in 1971. (LAT)
Where the Wild Things Are: Director Spike Jonze's film version of the Maurice Sendak classic isn't so much a children's movie as it is a movie about childhood. That's an important distinction, and one that allows the movie to stand on its own and honor the book without betraying it. Jonze's movie is more an interpretation of the book than a film based on it. Some might say that the movie is too scary for kids because of its serious subjects, but young viewers are more likely to recognize the feelings Max displays than they are to be scarred by them. "Where the Wild Things Are" is a journey into the psyche of a boy struggling with anger and abandonment, but at other times a great deal of fun. (BF) HHH