Author: Don Malvasi

Will Farrell has played his share of low comedy nincompoops but in Everything Must Go, set on a front lawn with a recliner chair next to all his worldly possessions, he’s both serious and a serious bore.

He plays Nick Halsey, devoid of depth and a recurring drunk. The film supposes you’d fall off the wagon, too if you lost your job and got simultaneously locked out of your house by your offscreen wife. Determined not to let it bother him any further, Nick decides to sleep on the recliner under the Arizona stars.

After running out of beer money (the wife messed up the credit cards, too) a far too precious, industrious, chubby neighborhood kid on a bike shows up and goads him into putting his motley junk spread all over the lawn up for sale on a no-end-in-sight yard sale. The kid (Christopher Jordan Wallace) is an equally annoying preteen version of the 7- or 8- year old girl in the TV commercial whose Dad starts her on a lemonade stand only to see her sprout up like a Mark Zuckerberg who eventually has her handlers screen her Dad with an “is he expecting you?”

Things go on, Nick cracks open a lot of PBR beer cans while not failing to attract to the house his AA-sponsor and cop (Michael Pena), a conveniently alone younger woman (a good Rebecca Hall) just moved in across the street, more cops, and crazed neighbors (including stud character actor Shea Wigham) that Nick eventually spies on.

Often ridiculous, Nick shaves in the backyard, catches a rinse in his poolside shower, drinks more Pabst, pisses in the pool, and manages to get off the recliner long enough to tell off and scare away Rebecca Hall. Looking through his high school year book, he”s encouraged by a positive note from an acquaintance (Laura Dern) who still lives in town. Off he goes to ring her doorbell. Needles to say their ensuing conversation, like this film, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Director Dan Rush is a veteran commercials maker. Here his untidy and trifling product placement feels mostly tiring.

4 recliners out of 10

How We Rate Our Movies:

Kristen Wiig may not immediately bring to mind Lucille Ball but by the end of the spunky, insightful Bridesmaids, there’s the realization she’s a major comedic film talent who has hit her stride. The Saturday Night Live vet plays an engaging down-on-her-luck but indomitable failed bakery retailer, Annie, who learns her best friend Lillian (SNL co-star Maya Rudolph) is getting married.

Now Annie isn’t just broke, she’s low on self-esteem, a state compounded by the way a funny-in-his-haughtiness John Hamm treats her in their no-strings-attached physical hookups. Her sensitive yet hilarious reactions lead her to pow wows with Lillian. It’s all about to change though. Not so much from the entrance into the picture of the groom, but the ramming into the scene of the groom’s boss’s wife Helen (Rose Byrne), an instant nemesis to Annie on the maid-of-honor front. Helen is perfectly dressed and silly wealthy, and you get the idea she always has her way pretty effortlessly. Her undermining seems almost subconscious.

And since we’re talking Judd Apatow here (he produced) there are enough coarse and callous jokes and send-ups to keep things moving briskly, or occasionally holding them back. That one involves a scatalogical food poisoning episode ending with Lillian in a borrowed wedding dress squatted in the middle of the street while its shopkeeper owner looks on in horror is de regueur Apatow.

More colorful characters ensue. Melissa McCarthy as a junk-yard-dog, take- no-prisoners sergeant of arms among the bridesmaids. Chris Dowd as a nice-guy, witty Irish cop whose affection for her Annie barely seems to notice. An odd-as-hell brother and sister landlord/roomates to alienate Annie further.

What sets apart Wiig’s (who also co-wrote) and director Paul Feig’s film is the way it cleverly demonstrates both the necessity and the durability of female friendship while showcasing Wiig’s tour de force talent right down to her low-key, subtle facial movements.

So Bridesmaids is truly funny, yet what’s trailblazing here isn’t so much the chick-flick-goes-gross-out as the reinvented feminist comedy arrives wearing a brutish mask of street cred.

7.5 tiaras out of 10

Kristen Wiig may not immediately bring to mind Lucille Ball but by the end of the spunky, insightful Bridesmaids, there’s the realization she’s a major comedic film talent who has hit her stride. The Saturday Night Live vet plays an engaging down-on-her-luck but indomitable failed bakery retailer, Annie, who learns her best friend Lillian (SNL co-star Maya Rudolph) is getting married.

Now Annie isn’t just broke, she’s low on self-esteem, a state compounded by the way a funny-in-his-haughtiness John Hamm treats her in their no-strings-attached physical hookups. Her sensitive yet hilarious reactions lead her to pow wows with Lillian. It’s all about to change though. Not so much from the entrance into the picture of the groom, but the ramming into the scene of the groom’s boss’s wife Helen (Rose Byrne), an instant nemesis to Annie on the maid-of-honor front. Helen is perfectly dressed and silly wealthy, and you get the idea she always has her way pretty effortlessly. Her undermining seems almost subconscious.

And since we’re talking Judd Apatow here (he produced) there are enough coarse and callous jokes and send-ups to keep things moving briskly, or occasionally holding them back. That one involves a scatalogical food poisoning episode ending with Lillian in a borrowed wedding dress squatted in the middle of the street while its shopkeeper owner looks on in horror is de regueur Apatow.

More colorful characters ensue. Melissa McCarthy as a junk-yard-dog, take- no-prisoners sergeant of arms among the bridesmaids. Chris Dowd as a nice-guy, witty Irish cop whose affection for her Annie barely seems to notice. An odd-as-hell brother and sister landlord/roomates to alienate Annie further.

What sets apart Wiig’s (who also co-wrote) and director Paul Feig’s film is the way it cleverly demonstrates both the necessity and the durability of female friendship while showcasing Wiig’s tour de force talent right down to her low-key, subtle facial movements.

So Bridesmaids is truly funny, yet what’s trailblazing here isn’t so much the chick-flick-goes-gross-out as the reinvented feminist comedy arrives wearing a brutish mask of street cred.

7.5 tiaras out of 10

In the final scene of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s 3D homage to the recently discovered French Cauvet Caves, the film switches gears. Pristine Paleolithic cave paintings give way to a scene of radioactive mutant albino crocodiles about to get loose and head over to Chauvet.

Lunacy from a headstrong director? Hardly. Merely the latest masterwork from the unique eye of a filmmaker talented enough to make the crocodile scene feel anything but incongruous as we realize the fraility of our human need to preserve and classify.

Herzog has hauled a steamboat over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo), gone to Antarctica to make a documentary about it’s outsider resident scientists (Encounters at the End of the World), and refashioned a controversial film as a funny, irreverent noir thriller (Bad Lieutenant).

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, channeling his archaeologist grandfather, he goes into the Chauvet Caves, discovered in 1994 after being sealed off for thousands of years by moving rock formations. Braving the cave’s toxic gases and operating on a narrow gangplank with cameras limited to what could be carried in by hand, he presents both another eerie environment, and fascinating and dedicated if eccentric scientists. In a dramatic scene demonstrating the stillness of the cave, the film explodes with the sound of it’s human visitors actually able to hear their own heartbeat.

One of the paintings, the Panel of the Horses, demonstrates the intelligence of its makers some 20,000 years ago. Herzog, stunned by how the viewer’s own shadow actually becomes an apparently intentional part of the image, references the famous scene of Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time. When the shadow goes off in a separate way, Astaire follows the shadow.

Paintings of horses, of lions, of a half-woman, half bison; Confrontal Rhinoceros, males fighting, a male and a female about to mate–the Chauvet Caves, closed to tourists, and severely restricted to scientists, now has a wonderful filmed record. Let the radioactive, mutant albino crocodiles try to alter THAT.

8.5 Herzogs out of 10

In the final scene of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s 3D homage to the recently discovered French Cauvet Caves, the film switches gears. Pristine Paleolithic cave paintings give way to a scene of radioactive mutant albino crocodiles about to get loose and head over to Chauvet.

Lunacy from a headstrong director? Hardly. Merely the latest masterwork from the unique eye of a filmmaker talented enough to make the crocodile scene feel anything but incongruous as we realize the fraility of our human need to preserve and classify.

Herzog has hauled a steamboat over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo), gone to Antarctica to make a documentary about it’s outsider resident scientists (Encounters at the End of the World), and refashioned a controversial film as a funny, irreverent noir thriller (Bad Lieutenant).

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, channeling his archaeologist grandfather, he goes into the Chauvet Caves, discovered in 1994 after being sealed off for thousands of years by moving rock formations. Braving the cave’s toxic gases and operating on a narrow gangplank with cameras limited to what could be carried in by hand, he presents both another eerie environment, and fascinating and dedicated if eccentric scientists. In a dramatic scene demonstrating the stillness of the cave, the film explodes with the sound of it’s human visitors actually able to hear their own heartbeat.

One of the paintings, the Panel of the Horses, demonstrates the intelligence of its makers some 20,000 years ago. Herzog, stunned by how the viewer’s own shadow actually becomes an apparently intentional part of the image, references the famous scene of Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time. When the shadow goes off in a separate way, Astaire follows the shadow.

Paintings of horses, of lions, of a half-woman, half bison; Confrontal Rhinoceros, males fighting, a male and a female about to mate–the Chauvet Caves, closed to tourists, and severely restricted to scientists, now has a wonderful filmed record. Let the radioactive, mutant albino crocodiles try to alter THAT.

8.5 Herzogs out of 10

Every once in awhile a film grabs you viscerally, shakes you, has you on the remotest edge of your seat nearly at the jump.

First-time Italian director, Giuseppe Captondi, knows what he’s doing craftsmanship-wise in the sparkling Double Hour. He mixes robust character
development with Hitchcockian suspense elements and not a little horror genre sprinklings. He also uses a device (spoiler alert!), which will leave you either further impressed, or, er, cheated. I’ll allude to it rather than reveal it since we’re basically talking The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game level of surprise conceit here. And while the film’s first-half works nearly flawlessly and it’s second-half kicks interpretative complexities up a notch, I thought the pull-the-wool-over-your-eyes “stunt” anything but a laborious trick.

The Double Hour has an exceptional depth–of perception, of psychology, of thrilling suspense–only rarely achieved by filmmakers who’ve been doing this a lot longer tha Captondi. That it does so cinematically wiith an economy of traditional exposition, is a further feather in its cap.

Plotwise, suffice it to say, this is about an intriguing immigrant chambermaid (Ksenia Rappoport) and a charismatic security guard and former cop (Filippo Timi), who meet in a speed dating event. Anymore plot you’re better off not knowing. Both actors won Best of Venice Film Festival Awards. Their performances are splendid. There will only be justice when a film like this can make a dent in American mulitplexes … Oh, wait: There’s the inevitable, likely-to-be-lame Americanized version awaiting production. Skip this film for that and you’re a sap.

9 suspenses out of 10

Every once in awhile a film grabs you viscerally, shakes you, has you on the remotest edge of your seat nearly at the jump.

First-time Italian director, Giuseppe Captondi, knows what he’s doing craftsmanship-wise in the sparkling Double Hour. He mixes robust character
development with Hitchcockian suspense elements and not a little horror genre sprinklings. He also uses a device (spoiler alert!), which will leave you either further impressed, or, er, cheated. I’ll allude to it rather than reveal it since we’re basically talking The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game level of surprise conceit here. And while the film’s first-half works nearly flawlessly and it’s second-half kicks interpretative complexities up a notch, I thought the pull-the-wool-over-your-eyes “stunt” anything but a laborious trick.

The Double Hour has an exceptional depth–of perception, of psychology, of thrilling suspense–only rarely achieved by filmmakers who’ve been doing this a lot longer tha Captondi. That it does so cinematically wiith an economy of traditional exposition, is a further feather in its cap.

Plotwise, suffice it to say, this is about an intriguing immigrant chambermaid (Ksenia Rappoport) and a charismatic security guard and former cop (Filippo Timi), who meet in a speed dating event. Anymore plot you’re better off not knowing. Both actors won Best of Venice Film Festival Awards. Their performances are splendid. There will only be justice when a film like this can make a dent in American mulitplexes … Oh, wait: There’s the inevitable, likely-to-be-lame Americanized version awaiting production. Skip this film for that and you’re a sap.

9 suspenses out of 10

In A Better World, winner of this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, follows two Danish schoolboys and their parents up to the edge of a moral abyss and into ethical areas where they’ve never been. The film explores revenge, violence on behalf of a greater good, and parental responsibility and guilt while it entertains to the hilt. Intriguingly and credibly, director Susanne Bier (the original “Brothers,” far superior to it’s American version) ties together parallel stories. One involves the encounter of Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a pacifist, altruistic physician, with a Sudan-like country’s civil war; the other his bullied son’s rebelling at school against his vicious tormentors. The son, Elias (Marcus Rygaard) is delivered a petulant, fearless rescuer when Christian (a stunning performance by Willam Johnk Nielson) moves back into town after his mother’s death.

The kids begin to take action, propelled by Christian’s increasing nihilist reaction to the absence of his mom. Christian further makes an impression on Elias as a counterpoint to Anton’s own inaction in matters of standing up for himself in the face of being humiliated in front of the boys. Throw in a harrowing incident in Africa that forces Anton to make a no-win moral choice, and you’ve got a full plate of a film.

Does it verge on exploiting the plot’s schematics in almost handing us a too-close-for-comfort neatly wrapped parable package? Let’s not quibble. The critical backlash to this film ignores that it’s highly suspenseful, impeccably crafted, superbly acted, and quite thought provoking. My only quibble is they should have stuck with a more literal translation of the title: the straight scoop from the Danish is more like “Vengeance,” a subject on which Bier writes a whole new chapter.

8.5 out of 10

In A Better World, winner of this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, follows two Danish schoolboys and their parents up to the edge of a moral abyss and into ethical areas where they’ve never been. The film explores revenge, violence on behalf of a greater good, and parental responsibility and guilt while it entertains to the hilt. Intriguingly and credibly, director Susanne Bier (the original “Brothers,” far superior to it’s American version) ties together parallel stories. One involves the encounter of Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a pacifist, altruistic physician, with a Sudan-like country’s civil war; the other his bullied son’s rebelling at school against his vicious tormentors. The son, Elias (Marcus Rygaard) is delivered a petulant, fearless rescuer when Christian (a stunning performance by Willam Johnk Nielson) moves back into town after his mother’s death.

The kids begin to take action, propelled by Christian’s increasing nihilist reaction to the absence of his mom. Christian further makes an impression on Elias as a counterpoint to Anton’s own inaction in matters of standing up for himself in the face of being humiliated in front of the boys. Throw in a harrowing incident in Africa that forces Anton to make a no-win moral choice, and you’ve got a full plate of a film.

Does it verge on exploiting the plot’s schematics in almost handing us a too-close-for-comfort neatly wrapped parable package? Let’s not quibble. The critical backlash to this film ignores that it’s highly suspenseful, impeccably crafted, superbly acted, and quite thought provoking. My only quibble is they should have stuck with a more literal translation of the title: the straight scoop from the Danish is more like “Vengeance,” a subject on which Bier writes a whole new chapter.

8.5 out of 10

Imagine a present day war where eight million Americans perish. That’s the scope of the devastation produced by our Civil War, where 600,000, or two percent of our population, died. Taking place only days after Lee’s surrender and while battles still raged, the Lincoln assassination produced a government crisis where the Union’s fragility was starkly tested.

Robert Redford’s compelling The Conspirator chronicles a dark chapter in America’s history that took place amidst that crisis. The film depicts the outrageous trail by military tribunal of Mary Surrat (a radiant and dignified Robin Wright), who operated a rooming house frequented by assassin John Wilkes Booth, who was often in the company of Mary’s son. That Mary takes a hit for her vengeful son’s actions is an understatement. That she is innocent is still up for debate 150 years later.
Government prosecutor Danny Huston, taking cues from Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (an intensely forceful Kevin Kline), throws the Constitution to the wolves. The rush to judgement is driven largely by Stanton’s desperation to hold the tenous Union together at any cost. Stanton leads the charge to bring down any and all conspirators as quickly as possible, to leave them “buried and forgotten.”

With comically contradictory government witnesses against her, with no right to testify, no jury, no opportunity for appeal, and ultimately no right of habeas corpus, Mary’s trial quickly becomes aa shambles. She’s defended by a reluctant former Union soldier Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) whose mentor, the Senator and former Attorney General Reverdy Johnson (a brilliant Tom Wilkinson) can’t defend Mary himself due to his southern background. Surratt, a Confederate sympathizer is the lone woman accused conspirator tried by a court that is more Kafka than kosher.

A strong supporting cast includes Evan Rachel Wood in a pivotal role as Mary’s daughter aand the incomparable Shea Whigham as a prosecution witness–his second such role recently after playing a jailhouse snitch witness so effectively in The Lincoln Lawyer.

The Conspirator is a vivid, dramatic old-fashioned-feeling film whose characters stand up to scrutiny and whose art direction poignantly depicts the era. Anything but a dry history lesson, it contains lessons nonetheless. Parallels to more recent dilemmas about the wisdom of military tribunals and their relationshp with government security can be drawn, as can the question of when is it ever moral for forecful political revenge to seek a convenient scapegoat?

8 Out of 10