“I Love You, Man” – Mandatory Viewing – 3 popcorns

 by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  

Because in truth there is humor, in “I Love You, Man” there is hilarity. Mining an untapped wealth of philosophy about male friendship, director John Hamburg, who co-wrote the screenplay with Larry Levin, sprinkles his farcical little gem with profundity. He signaled his talent in “Along Came Polly” (2004). But this is his breakthrough film. 

Starring Paul Rudd as Peter Klaven, a prospective bridegroom who suddenly realizes he hasn’t a best friend to stand up for him, there is a casting off of convention. Indeed, iconic classics like “Gunga Din” (1939) have long celebrated the great sacrifice and devotion comrades in arms are capable of exhibiting. But something was always amiss. 

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“Watchmen” – Alternate Entertainment – 3 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Finally, someone’s gotten this comic book-to-film thing right, or at least as right as the transport of different mediums, philosophies and the very definition of art itself will allow. “Watchmen,” Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s literarily acclaimed graphic novel, is the pop culture equivalent of Yin and Yang merging with E=MC2.

Too bad Confucius and Einstein didn’t live to see it. Aw, just a left-handed jab at the notion of smugness usually attending these highfalutin comic books. Fact is, up until now most of this stuff was as indistinguishable as the silent dog whistle. One wonders if cultish devotees will feel diminished with the welcoming of this breakthrough piece.

Not that the tale of an alternate America, circa 1985, where superheroes walk among regular folk, approaches mainstream manna. But its intelligence, creativity and boldness are undeniable. Indeed, the presumption and sweeping statement on occasion ring naïve. But once the weirdness spools up and gets its act together, one is sure to be wowed.

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“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” – The Movie, Lost in Translation – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Several years back, a N.Y. Times columnist eloquently worried that emerging writers concerned with those lucrative motion picture rights would be making sure, consciously or not, that their novels were cinematic. Would literature lose its purity of purpose? Now, films like “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” raise the ante of media anxiety.

For you see, this mediocre martial arts film has its roots in neither traditional belles lettres nor their begrudged stepchild, the originally written screenplay. Nope, dear ever-shrinking population of readers, it springs from a video game. To the great unwashed that’s just one rung up from basing a movie on a pre-recorded phone message.

Granted, there are great works that began life on a cocktail napkin, preferably at “21” in the speakeasy years, if you’re a romantic. Which apparently the pageant of time isn’t. Not if it’s willing to supersede quill, fountain pen, Underwood and P.C. with Xbox and a room strewn with McDonald’s wrappers. Oh sacrilege, where is thy gigabyte?

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“Madea Goes to Jail” – Too Severe a Sentence – 1 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

When you were little and the cartoon’s protagonist didn’t realize who the villain was, it drove you nuts. You screamed at the TV, “Watch out, she’s bad.” Happily, the hero always heard you. If you’d like to revisit this Drama #101 lesson in smugly knowing way more than the characters, Tyler Perry’s “Madea Goes to Jail” stands ready to oblige.

It is a testament to Mr. Perry’s popular franchise that, even whilst inexpertly injecting a serious segue to the doings this go-round, his terror in drag nonetheless accomplishes some of the usual hijinks expected of her/him. However, now enjoying the madness means avoiding much tedium, a challenge akin to stepping over dead bodies at a carnival.

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“The International” — Sleuther Not Quite World Class — 2 & ½ popcorns

by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Funny, how it works. When you’re hungry but too hurried to stop, you can’t help but pass one enticing food joint after the next. When love throws you a curve, every song intimately echoes your plight. And when it looks like the world’s evil bankers have absconded with the funds, a film like “The International” surfaces to feed our fears.

Coincidence or mysticism, there’s nothing like it to add currency to your movie-going experience. Right now the guys in charge of the big but ever-diminishing bucks have slotted in esteem two rungs beneath lawyer and barely one above used car salesman. Director Tom Tykwer’s film invites us to come boo and hiss them.

But the exercise soon changes in nature, going from analgesic release valve to yet another lesson about the average guy’s naiveté…meaning you and me. And before the action-packed cat-and-mouser is over, we sure wish we weren’t so heartily convinced of the film’s devastating pronouncements. Chalk up yet another crime against humanity.

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“Getting The Oscars All Wrong”

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

By now you’ve been inundated with Oscar picks. It has become a full-fledged pastime, a key component of that unofficial holiday between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

No one is without an opinion. Every little kid in America knows he, too, may one day grow up to get all his Oscar predictions right. It’s egalitarian. When the food delivery guy, who’s only been here a few months, says, “The Brad Pitt…he should win,” we nod and think, ‘Hmm…maybe it won’t be Mickey Rourke.’

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“New in Town” – Same Old, Same Old – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

Too bad for Renée Zellweger. Plopped into a production company of virtual unknowns, aided only by co-star Harry Connick, Jr., she’s expected to make beguiling the seen-it-before triteness of director Jonas Elmer’s “New in Town.” Though she practically falls off her stiletto heels trying, there’s no saving this city mouse-country mouse cliché.

Last successfully chanced by Diane Keaton in “Baby Boom” (1987), which had charm if not novelty, this poor woman’s version of the chestnut possesses neither. A smattering of witty lines and humorous snippets of otherwise overwrought characterizations occasionally mitigate the onslaught of unabashed, formulaic predictability. 

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“Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” – No Place for Crybabies – 1 & ½ popcorns

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

The great thing about Patrick Tatopoulos’s “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” is that you really don’t need to pay attention. Sure, it’s complicated as logarithms, its dramatis personae a hodgepodge of vampires, werewolves and combinations thereof. But if you’re under fifteen you know all about it; over fifteen, you couldn’t care less.

Therefore, the latter should feel free to bring their needlepoint. There’s nothing like some lively crocheting while ghouls slice and dice each other in black-hearted content. And hey, here’s a chance to get a jump on those taxes…but a very, very little book light, please, and no calling your accountant/brother-in-law Manny on the Ameche.

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“The Wrestler” – No-Holds-Barred Storytelling – 4 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

You couldn’t tell my Dad wrestling was fake. In his favorite chair, our little dog Tibble on his lap, he’d root with a fervor that we feared would kill him. Here was a man who lost almost everything in the Holocaust, started all over in America, and made a safe world for two children. But wrestling was real. Like “The Wrestler,” he got the metaphor.

Darren Aronofsky’s no-holds-barred character study starring Mickey Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a onetime headliner now resigned to the faded glory of matches in Elks Clubs and high school gyms, has a Cassavetes-like starkness. It is truth artistically conveyed but without artifice. If it holds that grace is possible, it isn’t easily achieved. 

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“Bride Wars” – Something Old, Nothing New, Everything Borrowed, and Sure to Make you Blue

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

Hearing yourself utter the plot description of “Bride Wars” makes you wonder if either you or the world has gone insane. At minimum, certainly it must cause you to lose millions of brain cells. But a critic must be intrepid. So here goes: Two best friends since childhood vie to see who can have the better wedding at New York’s Plaza Hotel. 

My gray matter now doubtlessly compromised, it nonetheless occurs that such narcissism would be tasteless even in better economic times. Granted, the tell-all trailers signaled that director Gary Winick’s film would be bad. It’s the sheer length and breadth of the bad that’s overwhelming.

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“Doubt” – Casts Compelling Shadows – 3 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

You know that boring couple you’ve been promising to double with, but keep putting off for fear of the dead air that might permeate the evening? Call them now. Suggest you see “Doubt.” The film will take up 104 minutes. Following that, either at dinner or the coffee table of choice, even the dullest of dullards should be spurred to conversation.

Writer/director John Patrick Shanley’s supercharged delve into the nooks and crannies of truth, morality and the confounding gray areas that surround said principles is that kind of movie. Posing its what-ifs, maybes and do-you-supposes in a tension-filled opus to uncertainty, “Doubt” has you begging for the proverbial can of warms to be opened.  

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 4 popcorns

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

Happily ensconced in the magical, mystical, love- and life-affirming world of Benjamin Button, you won’t want director David Fincher’s film to end. Even after two hours and thirty-nine minutes, when the tub of popcorn is depleted, the box of Goobers a memory and nary a drop is left in the second, giant diet Coke refill, the fantasy is still enchanting. 

Very loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1921 short story, Eric Roth and Robin Swicord’s adaptation of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is gloriously viewer-friendly. Each chapter better than the last, practically every performance is a gem. Doubtless the title will be repeated ad nauseam at the Oscar ceremonies Feb. 22. 

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“Burn After Reading” – A Capital Satire – 3 popcorns

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

If you look thither, way out there on the cutting edge of filmmaking, you’ll see the Brothers Coen, Ethan and Joel, who now gift us with “Burn After Reading.” A bit of gallows humor to cleanse the movie palate after “No Country for Old Men” (2007), its tongue is poked full well into cheek. And, by any worthwhile definition, it is art.

Art, in the very least, because the Coens have found a way, via their enticingly trenchant work, to disseminate creativity and invigorative ideas to minds otherwise lost in the mass lockstep. They are aberrantly thought-provoking, out on a limb, cold in their deductions on first blush. Just don’t tell anyone…but there’s a lot of humanity there.  

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“Bangkok Dangerous” – See at Your Own Risk – 1 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

“Bangkok Dangerous” is so brazen a cliché that, as with the scalawag student who owns up to a transgression—“It was I, Mrs. Green, who stole the UNICEF collection can”—you must at least note the honesty. Ripping off their 1999 Thai version by the same name, twin brother-directors Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang keep it simple, and cheap.

At least that’s the way it looks…no offense to the producers if it cost more than the Hollywood equivalent of $1.98 to make. And that’s the lower rung cachet this tale about an American hitman (Nicolas Cage) in Bangkok seeks to cash in on, shamelessly. Even when its plot evolves into perfunctory moralisms, it knows not to be too convincing.

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“Elegy” — Sings of Love and Death — 3 & ½ popcorns

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

After seeing a bevy of summer blockbusters the movie equivalent of cigarette-smoking teenagers exchanging profanities in a littered 7-11 parking lot, director Isabel Coixet’s “Elegy” seems an artistic oasis. At last, a quiet dialogue with adults…intelligent ones, no less. Based on Philip Roth’s “The Dying Animal,” never mind that it’s all about sex.

Well, not really. Just had to woo you out of that dimly lighted parking lot for a bit. Truth is, the exaggeration is just slight. Tuning into the male libido some forty years after “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Roth’s protagonist is now not quite as obsessed with sex as he is concerned with it. Uh, O.K., maybe still obsessed, but in a 60-something sort of way.

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