Our Idiot Brother (Release Date: 8-26-2011)

        Paul Rudd is a rare kind of actor. One's appreciation of his screen presence has little to do with wether or not he's a, 'quality thespian,' or not The man has a type of charm that can't really be taught, and it allows him to hold the screen even when he seems to hardly be acting at all. A considerable amount of Rudd's appeal derives from the fact that he seems like a guy you'd love to hang out with, and before you take that as a slight, consider: Would you really say anything different about past greats like James Stewart or Cary Grant? With Our Idiot Brother, Rudd's charm is finally given a solo top-billing, and we get to see exactly how far his magnetism can take a flick.

        Rudd stars as Ned, an unbreakable optimist who, as the film opens, is tricked into selling marijuana to an officer in uniform, earning himself several months in prison. Upon his release, Ned finds out that his organic farm cohabitant/lover (Kathryn Hahn) has left him for another man (T.J. Miller), leaving him without a place to stay. From here, affable, clumsy Ned takes turns living with each member of his family, his doting mother (Shirley Knight), his career-obsessed sister (Elizabeth Banks), his shrunken house-wife sibling (Emily Mortimer), and his aloof, bi-sexual hipster sister (Zooey Deschanel). His wacky, well-intentioned antics have (surprise!) negative repercussions on all of their lives.

        As written by David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz, and directed by Jesse Peretz, Our Idiot Brother never really presents itself as the uproarious knee-slapper that it's title and R-rating might suggest. There's a real laugh here and there, but more often than not, Brother is more prone to coaxing chuckles and contented smiles. Borrowing from an, 'Enlightened Idiot,' story arch as old as Chaplin and Capra, the film is warm and tickling, its occasional vulgarities, while often well-timed and executed, contrasting against the movie's good-natured sense of innocence.

        Your enjoyment of Our Idiot Brother will likely hinge on One factor, and One factor alone: How much you like Rudd in the role of Ned. Some will undoubtably find his relentless good attitude as grating as the characters in the movie do, but I personally couldn't help but be won over by his overwhelming positivity. In fact, his character even goes a ways towards making one forget about the film's other failures, such as its dependency on stock characters and a completely rushed and botched conclusion. There's really not too much else to say about this One: Either you like what Rudd's selling (and if you're a fan of his, this is a must see), or you don't. Simple as that.

Grade: B+

Lil Wayne: Tha Carter IV (Release Date: 8-29-2011)

        Unlike many controversial mainstream artists like Kanye West and Lady Gaga, the public's love and/or hate of Lil Wayne seems to come from the right place. Where Gaga's overwhelming (and potentially over-calculated) eccentricity and Kanye's massive ego prompt people to pick sides before hearing their music, the battle of Lil Wayne has always been about his art (which, considering his sizable criminal record, is interesting). There's no denying that the man has his finger on the pulse of what people like, his record label, 'Young Money,' employing about half of the radio's most popular artists, including Drake and Nicki Minaj. But for someone with as big of a name as he has, there's a certain tendency for Wayne to pump out generic, beat-heavy tracks that sell millions and remain primarily undistinguishable from other airwaves fare. Those who know him better know better, but the semi-uninitiated (myself included) struggle to grasp the man's range, an aspect of the his creative process that is at the forefront of his newest release, Tha Carter IV.

       As Rebirth, Wayne's 2010 turn-this-off-RIGHT-NOW attempt at rock 'n' roll, can readily attest, the MC isn't afraid over-reaching, an aspect most readily attested to by his frequent stabs at R&B. IV sure has plenty of them, How to Hate featuring an even-MORE-autotuned T-Pain interspersed with verses that Weezy practically seems to be sleeping through, Nightmares of the Bottom only boasting of the latter. We're talking, "You used to be the s***/But now you ain't s***, B****," style lazy rapping, Wayne leaning with all of his weight on some lamely profane lyrics, apparently believing that courting censorship is, in and of itself, edgy (which, of course, it is not). I'll hand Wayne that his views on women prove interesting because of their sense of confusion and perpetual contradiction, as lines include:
      
        "Now you're grown up/So fly, it's like a blessing/But you can't have a man look at you for five seconds/Without you feeling insecure." -How to Love
      
        "Had my heart broken by this woman named Tammy/But hoe's gunna be hoes, so I couldn't blame Tammy" -6 Foot 7 Foot

        "I spent the night in heaven/I Slept with an angel/And when we finished/I swear that p**** said, 'thank you... I go down south/Louisiana." -So Special

        And, finally, the album's opening line: "Man, f*** them b******/And them Hoes/And them n****s' p******/Camel toes." And you wonder why that One girl feels insecure...

        In my limited experience, Lil Wayne has yet to prove himself capable of consistently producing thought-provoking lyrics, but to say that the guy can't string together a clever line or Two would be a down-right lie. They pop out here and there, begging to be noticed, in the form of, "I pay these n***** with a reality check," "detrimental on any instrumental/I say you rappers' sweet/I pay the incidental," or, my personal favorite (referring to his Eight-month prison stay), "You n***** are gelatin, peanuts to an elephant/ I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate." These lines, when paired with Wayne's occasionally feverish and insane flow, make for some great tunes, along with the disc's many cold, hard, street beats (though these instrumentals become hugely repetitive during the deluxe album's 18-track, 72-Minute runtime).

        A strangely complete summation of the disc's rap tracks can be found in the sequence of the first singles that preceded the LP. 6 Foot 7 Foot makes my jaw drop on a regular basis, it's beat so heavy and so catchy, Wayne's flow seemingly unstoppable until Cory Gunz comes in at the end to chip in One hell of a guest verse. It's far and away One of my favorite hip-hop songs of the year, and second single John, featuring a similarly weighty beat and just the right amount of Rick Ross (see: One verse), ain't half-bad either. Then there's the recently released She Will, wherein Weezy flows at mid-tempo and elicits mild interest over a gritty groove. It's not a poor song, but, like Drake's monotone hook, its complacences boarders on pleasantness, which I can't imagine is ever what Lil Wayne is aiming for. Finally, the most recent leak, It's Good, is impossible to pick out amidst the album's second half, all fury and familiarity underneath rhymes so insistent on their hardness that you start to question if some underlying insecurity issues exist. Much like this trajectory, Tha Carter IV is an album that becomes less and less interesting as it goes on, the opening trifecta of furious Blunt Blowin, maniacal Megaman, and pulse-pounding Six Foot Seven Foot proving absolutely electric, the middle section appearing pretty hit-and-miss, and the back third prompting listeners to revisit those first Three aforementioned songs. A mixed bag, to be sure, but there's gold in it.

Grade: B-

Red Hot Chili Peppers: I'm With You (Release Date: 8-30-2011)

        I'll never forget seeing Bob Dylan live. It was about Five years ago now, and the night previous, I had had the sublime pleasure of seeing a Sufjan Stevens show from the Illinoise tour. Stevens was in his late 20's at the time, experiencing what still stands as the prime of his career. Dylan, however, who played in front of a nearly-sold-out Memorial Colosseum in Portland, Oregon, was largely indecipherable. On more than a few occasions, the man almost seemed to be doing a parody of himself, and not once in the whole show did he so much as lay a finger on a guitar. At One point during the performance, my friend leaned over to me and whispered, "This is why rock stars die young."

        The Red Hot Chili Peppers released their first album in 1984. That's 27 years ago. It's certainly commendable that they've managed to stay relevant and popular for that long, but the strain of a band finally slowing down is just about undeniable. The former Tube Sock enthusiasts have waited Five years to follow up 2006's Stadium Arcadium, an album that itself ended a Four year gap (2002's By the Way). During the most recent hiatus, long-time guitarist John Frusciante finally vacated the band, opening his slot up to 31-year-old Josh Klinghoffer. And while losing a guitarist is always pretty bad news, the band could likely benefit from the infusion of some younger blood, considering the ages of Bassist Flea (48), Vocalist Anthony Kiedis (48), and Drummer Chad Smith (49).

        And while I feel quite certain that such a change-up might help out live shows, the band's newest album, I'm With You, is another story. It's not a particularly bad album; It is, rather, a disc in crisis. On One hand, the band is playing to all of their old, familiar strengths, lead-single The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie all funky bass grooves, and Kiedis' standard rat-tat-tat-tat lyrical cadence. Ethiopia and Look Around also follow this trajectory, but all of these tunes simply sound out-dated, not sonically up-to-the-minute enough to compel in a modern context, not aged enough to glisten with retro-sheen. Even the album cover and the unending 14-song track list already seem like relics of a forgotten era.

        On the other hand, the band's attempts at reaching for new ground, such as disco-infused opener Monarchy of Roses, or the positively putrid faux-lounge sing-a-long Even You, Brutus?, feel both under-developed and forced. As previously stated, there are some stand-out moments, but I cannot, in good conscious, offer you a single good reason to acquire this album if you already have Blood, Sex Sugar, Magik and Californiacation (and if you're reading this, I'm going to bet that you do). I'm With You is pretty much the exact album that you would expect the Red Hot Chili Peppers to make at the age of 50. I'd save my money.

Grade: D+

The Help (Release Date: 8-10-2011)

        Today is Wednesday, August 24th. The Help was released exactly Two weeks ago, which marks the biggest gap between a wide release date and my posting a review in the history of this site (not including Ones that I simply didn't see, of course). I relay this facinating news because I figure it's only fair to reveal my bias: I really, really, really didn't want to see The Help. The trailer promoted it as a feel-good true story, quite literally the most predictable of all genres, and when I caught sight of its weighty 146 minute runtime, I was pretty sure this One wouldn't be for me. Two weeks later, and The Help has become a sizable hit, opening at number Two at the box office before proceeding to swipe the top spot the next weekend. Oscar talk started stirring, and I finally gave in and just saw the thing.

        Based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, The Help is the story of Two social circles that live side by side in mid-60's Jackson, Mississippi. The first is the, 'society ladies,' if you will, a group of backstabbers dressed in pastel and bright flower-print dresses. Skeeter (Emma Stone) has just returned from college to find that all of her old friends have started popping out babies. Her reluctance to follow suit raises eyebrows all around, most prominently from devilish Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard). On the other side of this is the help, the colored women who practically raise their employers infants all by themselves, just to be treated like dirt in return. Recognizing this injustice, Skeeter sets out to essentially collect the memoirs of various house maids in the area, seeking to humanize women like the sassy Minny (Octavia Spencer), and the ever-suffering Aibileen (Viola Davis) in a completely unprecedented and illegal way.

        Sophomore Writer/Director Tate Taylor has got some chops: The Help manages to remain reasonably engaging throughout its mammoth runtime, and though Taylor isn't One for a whole lot of extra stylization, the movie's craft is consistently handsome and assured. The score by Thomas Newman is the same cheesy, contrived stuff as every TV anti-racism movie you've ever seen, but Taylor often (though not often enough) has the gumption to play important scenes without it. He's also good with his actors, a fact that is highlighted by the film's savvy casting, ever-credible Davis receiving more screen time than ever before, Stone proving a surprisingly effective dramatic actor. So, yeah, I suppose that I liked The Help more than I expected too, but don't get that mixed up with a recommendation just yet.

        The Help is a drama without a drop of warm blood in its veins. People are crying about lost sons and rampant mistreatment within the first Two minutes, before we've even seen a character's face, and such feel-bad-and-guilty-NOW style arm-twisting continues nonstop thereafter. The screenplay is chuck-full of mind-numbingly expository dialogue, flat, unchanging characters, and even it finds time to slip in a Magical Negro or Two (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro). Hilly Holbrook, for instance, never takes even a single break from being the worst person ever, just as Aibileen could be described as steadfast, stoic, and... yeah, that's about as much character development as anyone here gets. As I said earlier, I commend Taylor for knowing how to make a 146 minute long flick move well, but how much drama can you really squeeze out of a story where no One ever does anything unexpected, and you know the moral and eventual conclusion coming in, save minor details. I suppose The Help isn't a total mess: I'd watch it over The Blind Side any day of the week, but you can rest assured that I will be doing my best to avoid both.

Grade: C-

Fright Night (Release Date: 8-19-2011)

        Though the fact is seldom discussed, few mainstream actors are as polarizing as Colin Farrell. The thespian started out as a bad-boy and a heart-throb, a combination that seemed to intrigue American audiences less and less during a string of putrid career moves in the early-to-mid 2000's (Daredevil, Alexander, Miami Vice... I've got more if you need them). Farrell seems to have been making amends ever since, tying himself to highly touted directors (Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, Peter Weir), and other well-regarded fare (Crazy Heart, In Bruges). More important than all of that, however, is Farrell's self-reinvention into One of Hollywood's premiere over-actors. Like Nicolas Cage or Ben Foster, Farrell often gives mediocre performances in standard material, but hand him a role like his deliriously villainous prison escapee in The Way Back, or his tool-of-an-employer in Horrible Bosses, and watch out!

        It makes perfect sense, then, to have given Farrell a try as the wildly over-the-top vampire-next-door in last weekend's remake of 1985's Fright Night. Anton Yelchin stars as Charley, a recovering nerd who is using his his new, smokin' hot girlfriend (Imogen Poots) and previously undiscovered sense of cool to distance himself from his old life, most especially former best-bud Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Ed is the first to notice that the kids around town have started going missing, but his proposal of a vampiric culprit, One named Jerry (Farrell) that just moved in next door to Charley, is met with scorn. Soon, however, Charley is no longer able to ignore the evidence, and something of a showdown develops between the scrawny high schooler and the 400-year-old undead.

        It's a pretty easy movie to summarize, a simple story that produces simple results. Much has been made about how Fright Night proves that horror remakes don't have to suck, but, with the great, big, hulking exception of last year's stunning Let Me In, it does seem to put a cap on just how good they can be. As helmed by stylistically-tame director Craig Gillespie, the movie is pretty standard stuff, forgettable the next morning with color-by-numbers scares, and a slew of characters that fail to make a lasting impression. Thank god then for Farrell, who gives what is simply, unbelievably, unquestionably One of the year's very best performances. His Jerry has a twitch or sound effect for just about every thought and situation imaginable, primarily neglecting to scare, but providing positively gut-busting physical comedy. His voice, his walk, his hair, his pauses in speech; Everything that Farrell does in the movie is made of comedic gold. To say that Farrell is the life of the party would be an understatement; If not for him, there would be no party, just a get together with not enough cold-cuts and no booze to speak of. He's the only real reason to see Fright Night, but, in all honesty, that might just be reason enough.

Grade: B-

The Future (Limited Release Date: 7-29-2011)/ The Devil's Double (Limited Release Date: 7-29-2011)

The Future

        Like Italian Modernist Director Michelangelo Antonioni, or 70's avant-garde rock band Can, Writer/Director/Performance Artist Miranda July has a name that means nothing to the vast majority of people, yet somehow means the world to a very specific sect. A recent New York Times article referred to her as, "culturally essential," and Roger Ebert called her first film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, One of the very best films of the 2000's. That said, The Future, which marks only her second feature, is something of a big deal in the film world, and it's intriguing to see July use the movie to grapple with her simultaneous senses of fame and anonymity.

        The picture stars July and Hamish Linklater as a pair of frizzy-haired, California hipsters by the names of Sophie and Jason. The Two live in a state of perpetual arrested development, never saying anything important, unless that counts bemoaning their lack of importance. They decide to adopt a cat from a local shelter who is going through renal-failure, and are told that they have One month to wait. The news sets them in motion, wishing to accomplish all that there is to do before little Paw Paw (as the cat, who also narrates the film, is so named) arrives and effectively ends their younger years. Much has been made of July's penchant for including Natural Realism in her films, exemplified in this flick by a talking moon, a crawling shirt, and the aforementioned monologuing feline. 

        To be sure, they are often inspired, but considering her a pioneer of such tactics strikes me as a bit much when Magnolia Director Paul Thomas Anderson lives right down the street, not to mention Robert Altman's prophetic Short Cuts, or any number of films that employs similar senses of whimsey in the exact same city (Los Angeles). What I do deeply appreciate about The Future is its sense of humor, July's characters always speaking and behaving in wildly surreal fashion. I've read a number of reviews citing the film as a hugely insightful look into the mind of the self-agrandizing, self-defeating, over-privaliged American middle class. I can't quite go there, though I am not about to call it a pretentious mess either. I merely felt as though I had gleaned the film's meaning within its first 20 minutes, and though there were many interesting things to behold thereafter, humor and aesthetics among them, I simply don't see where people get off calling July a revolutionary.

Grade: B-

The Devil's Double

        There's no mistaking an actor-showcase when you see One. All of the other characters in the movie just sort of clear out, creating space for One performer to completely dominate both the story and the screen. The Devil's Double is just such a movie, handing the reins almost exclusively to Dominic Cooper. How have they managed to invest so much screen time in him, you ask? Well, that's because Cooper plays both of the Two leading characters. The film is loosely based on the true story of Latif Yahia (Cooper), an Iraqi who, in the mid-80's, was forced to serve as a body double for the dastardly prince Uday Hussein (also Cooper).

        The Devil's Double's first, and most egregious failure is mistaking the sentence above for an entire plot. No more than Five minutes of film have transpired before the proposal is made to Latif, and from there, the movie is comprised of Two scenes endlessly repeating: Latif lamenting his poor fortune and lashing out against his confinement, and Uday committing One harrowingly deplorable crime after another. Calling a film, 'One note,' is an often used, seldom meant expression, but The Devil's Double actually manages to merit such a description, so busy with replaying the same Two scenes that it neglects to develop a single other character, a failure most glaring in the instance of worthless-sex-object-mistaken-for-a-leading-lady Ludivine Sagnier.

        I blame hack Director Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day, Next, XXX:State of Union), who gaudily-stylizes every scene of the thing, and then has the gall to include archival footage in order to explain to the audience how, 'serious and real,' it all is. Poor Cooper, whose double performance is lost in the cluster of a lousy film, not to mention that a cadaver would have made a more compelling lead than his Latif (his over-acting as Uday is much more interesting). The Devil's Double is an endless list of gangster-movie cliches, enacted to minimal effect, played One after another for Two straight hours. I'm still glad it's over.

Grade: D

The Guard (Limited Release Date: 7-29-2011)/Throllhunter (Limited Release Date: 6-10-2011)

The Guard
      
        A funny thing happens when your movie's exact genre can be summarized in Three words fewer. Take for example, 'Horror Flick,' or, 'Inspirational True Story.' There are certain beats that can be expected in such a film, and while that fact can prove comforting, it puts a real ceiling on just how good your movie can be. The Guard is a, 'Buddy-Cop Movie,' through and through, which is already a pretty heavily populated genre, One difficult to make an impression in. It has plenty of things going for it; The unique location of Ireland, a leading man as wonderful and unique as Brendan Gleeson, and the always reliable Don Cheadle.

         Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a man of questionable moral virtue, but a real knack for his job. He's not against swiping the occasional drug from a random criminal, but at the end of the day, he gets the job done. Into his tiny town comes a vicious murder, and with it, FBI agent Wendell Everett, a man as attached to withholding standard practice as Boyle is to destroying it. Gleeson is an inspired cast, playing a lovable dirty-old-man in a way that few could. He's easily the best thing that the movie has going for it, though cinematographer Larry Smith does render the film in all kinds of eye-popping colors. But The Guard can't escape what it is; Even in the hands of a first-time Director (John Michael McDonagh) and an, 'exotic,' setting, the thing is far too heavily cliched to make an impact. As always with foreign films, I recognize that much of the film's culturally-based humor and nuance likely went over my head, but I can only judge the movie for how I saw it. The Guard is comprised of a stand-out performance confined to a largely ordinary film.

Grade: B-


Trollhunter
      
        The, 'Found-Footage,' phenomenon in the Horror genre is largely seen as an American innovation (at least here), but the rest of the world has more than gotten their feet wet. Take Spain, who's [Rec] (Later remade in America as Quarantine) was released One year before Cloverfield. That tradition carries on with Trollhunter, a Norwegian faux-true story about a band of young filmmakers (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck, and Tomas Alf Larsen) following a reclusive mountain-man (Otto Jespersen) on his secret missions to -you guessed it- hunt trolls.

        Through every Norwegian film that I have ever been exposed to runs a deep sense of dry humor, and Trollhunter is certainly no different. Jespersen, a well-known comedian in his country, has all kinds of fun drolly reciting the various practices and rules about trolls, his jaded woodsman proving to be the film's best aspect. The trolls are big and goofy looking; Before they're seen, you could be forgiven for thinking the movie might try to scare you, but once the cat's out of the bag, it's all fun and games. There is, of course, nothing wrong with making a pure dry comedy with these kinds of strange trappings, but I can't help but see a missed opportunity in not trying to maintain the Horror angle after 15 minutes. As with The Guard, I have no doubt that my enjoyment would have been bolstered by cultural familiarity, but I know I've found other films from the area far more tickling than this. Despite an initial intensity, and some pretty strong One-liners, Trollhunter is (amazingly) something of a dull affair.

Grade: C+