Bovie Movie

Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) is the self-proclaimed Evel Knievel of suburban America, performing Jackass-style stunts on his moped. He’s an incompetent daredevil, but when his macho stepdad Frank (Ian McShane) needs a life-saving heart operation, Rod dons his cape and fake moustache and attempts to earn $50,000 by jumping over 15 buses. Samberg, director Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone (who plays Rod’s stepbrother) are Saturday Night Live alumni who gained internet fame with a fake rap video, so it’s fitting that Rod’s painful, amateur stunts wouldn’t look out of place on YouTube. The rest of Samberg’s humour is rather more patchy — lots of mirthless interludes only occasionally enlivened by spoofs of 1980s pop videos and childishly surreal asides on who would win a fight between a grilled cheese sandwich and a taco. 

The directorial debut of top screenwriter Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) is an offbeat thriller that confirms the rising-star status of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin, Brick). The former child star impresses again here as Chris, a brain-damaged teenager whose lack of self-esteem sees him easily seduced into facilitating a heist at the small-town bank where he works as a cleaner. The first half of the film, which concentrates on Chris’s relationship with his irascible blind flatmate Lewis (the always watchable Jeff Daniels), is much the better. In fact, the picture might have done well to maintain its focus on this storyline. The second half, in which the robbery plans of a former school friend (Matthew Goode) take centre stage, becomes rather too Rambo-like to be completely credible. Still, it’s a decent first-time effort from Frank and well worth a look. 

This remake of the 1986 cult thriller works best when it tries to emulate the intense claustrophobia of the original. Sean Bean’s attempts to match Rutger Hauer’s icy sneer as the menace of the highway are fairly successful. He involves innocent road trippers Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton in his horrific murders, so the pair must elude both the pursuing redneck cops and their motiveless persecutor. But substituting the lone hero of the first movie with a bickering couple is a major misstep in a mostly enjoyable effort, as it severely diminishes the tension. And the increased scale of the action — police car convoys and helicopter chases — actually generates less suspense. But debut director Dave Meyers’s music-video background means that the desert vistas look great, and the gory deaths deliver some well-timed shocks. 

Despite returning to Las Vegas where the series began, Steven Soderbergh’s second sequel to 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven fails to rediscover the sheer insouciance of the original. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and the rest of the cast reprise their roles as the charming conmen, who this time target the hi-tech casino of ruthless Vegas businessman Willy Bank (Al Pacino). The strength of the series was always its breezy enthusiasm, but here there’s a chronic lack of fun: Pacino barely gets out of first gear, while Clooney seems to have his mind on other things. Only Ellen Barkin appears to be enjoying herself, shining in a comic role that sees her dosed with potent pheromones and seduced by a heavily disguised Matt Damon. Apparently there won’t be an “Ocean’s Fourteen”; clearly, Soderbergh’s under no illusions that Ocean’s winning streak has dried up at last. 

Dennis Christmas is a Dennis The Menace version of A Christmas Carol where Mr. Wilson plays his own version of Scrooge. While Dennis has problems of his own with the neighborhood bully, he does his best to try and give Mr. Wilson the Christmas Spirit. Dennis causes his usual damage and Mr. Wilson ends up breaking Dennis’ spirit. An Angel of Christmas Past Present and Future steps in to help save Christmas for the Mitchells, the Wilsons, and everyone else.

From cult movie directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez comes a unique film experience: a double-bill of thrillers that recall both filmmakers’ favorite exploitation films. “Grindhouse” (a downtown movie theater in disrepair since its glory days as a movie palace known for “grinding out” non-stop double-bill programs of B-movies) is presented as one full-length feature comprised of two individual films helmed separately by each director. Tarantino’s film, “Death Proof,” is a rip-roaring slasher flick where the killer pursues his victims with a car rather than a knife, while Rodriguez’s film “Planet Terror” shows us a view of the world in the midst of a zombie outbreak. The films are joined together by clever faux trailers that recall the ’50s exploitation drive-in classics.

Susan Minot’s delicate novel about the treacherousness of memory is here given a leaden screen adaptation by director Lajos Koltai (Fateless). Co-scripted by Minot and Michael Cunningham (The Hours), it focuses on dying Vanessa Redgrave’s remembrance of things past and how it affects her bickering daughters, Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson. Claire Danes plays the young Redgrave in the 1950s flashbacks that reveal the life-changing events at her best friend’s Rhode Island wedding. The terrific female cast gamely tries to overcome the superficial emotional content and predictable storyline: Glenn Close oozes uptight old money as the bride’s mother; Eileen Atkins makes her whimsical nurse-cum-angel role fly; and Meryl Streep’s late arrival saves the maudlin third act. Sadly, a miscast Hugh Dancy fares less well with his character’s homoerotic and incestuous yearnings. Performances aside, this is an undercooked, unsubtle and overly sentimental account of an already slight tale. 

The directorial debut of Nacho Libre co-writer Mike White proves to be more than just a wilfully zany comedy. Starring Saturday Night Live alumnus Molly Shannon, this story of a lonely single woman who takes her canine obsession a step too far is a midlife crisis movie that leaves a slightly sour aftertaste. It begins with a tragedy when secretary Peggy (Shannon) finds her cute dog Pencil dying in the garden of her survivalist neighbour (John C Reilly). The loss is unbearable but the chain of events it kickstarts is absurd, as Peggy befriends a sexually ambiguous dog lover (Peter Sarsgaard) who inspires her to become increasingly radicalised by the animal rights movement until finally her whole life is facing ruin. The bleak undertones in the script make the back-from-the-brink “happy” ending feel contrived, but this uneven and dryly funny film retains a solid comedic core thanks to a fearless and sympathetic turn from Shannon. 

Steve Carell’s show-stopping turn in the 2003 Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty was the spark of creation for this biblically themed comedy. Carell here reprises his role as vain newscaster Evan Baxter, who has only just been elected to Congress when he’s visited by God (Morgan Freeman) and instructed to build an ark. Carell’s everyman quality and impeccable comic timing serve him well as he struggles to convince the world that the end is nigh, although there’s nothing here as riotously funny as that one “nervous breakdown” scene in the first film. Director Tom Shadyac struggles with a thin premise, and there are some uninspired running jokes, such as the miracle of the eternally growing beard — a gag that does indeed seem to drag on forever. Wanda Sykes has all the best lines as Baxter’s sassy assistant, but it’s Carell’s geeky charm and a bagful of CGI tricks that just about keep this afloat. 

Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom bucks the current trend for gratuitous splatter horror with this simple but effective psychological chiller. Based on a Stephen King short story, it’s an old-school creep-out, in which mounting dread and twisted mind games remind us that scares don’t have to come drenched with gore. In a powerfully nuanced performance, John Cusack plays a paranormal debunker who checks into the allegedly haunted suite 1408 as part of his research for a new book. Although the hotel’s manager (Samuel L Jackson) warns him of his folly, the sceptical writer is determined to disprove the ghostly rumours. For the first two thirds of its running time the film is a master class in slow-drip fear, exploiting every sound and visual for maximum effect and making innocuous domestic objects surprisingly terrifying. It’s only when Hafstrom goes CGI crazy in the final act that the film unravels, diluting its impact with a series of overblown set pieces.