Video review: "Downsizing"

If they gave out awards for most promising films that come out during the awards cycle and turn out to be a colossal disappointment, I’ve no doubt “Downsizing” would be a top contender to win.

Starring Oscar winners Matt Damon and Christoph Waltz, from director Alexander Payne (“The Descendants”) and frequent script collaborator Jim Taylor (“Sideways”), both Academy Award owners themselves, “Downsizing” looked to be a pointed satire about consumerism and American obsession with status.

Matt Damon plays ordinary schlep Paul Safranek, who volunteers to go through the process of “minimization” along with his wife, Audrey (Kristen Wiig). This is a relatively new procedure developed in Norway where humans are shrunk down by 99%, so they consume much less food, water and space, thus putting the planet on a stronger path to a stable environment.

Of course, that’s not how it’s sold to the public. It turns out that it pays to “get small” -- quite literally. Like a lot of middle-class Americans, Paul and Audrey are struggling to get by financially. But it turns out that little folks live like kings, because of some screwy economic calculations that are deliberately left a little fuzzy.

Go little, retire early and trade in your hovel for a McMansion! Sounds great, right?

Things go south quickly for Paul when (spoiler alert) Audrey gets cold feet right before the procedure, and he’s left lonely, divorced and working in a lowly call center for little folk. His next door neighbor, Dusan (Waltz), lives the high life filled with parties and connections.

Through him Paul meets Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a political activist-turned-maid who opens up his eyes to the economic inequity at the heart of the minimization racket. The haves live the life of luxury they don’t deserve, while people like Tran can’t even get a decent prosthetic for her missing leg.

(Accenting the split between the ultra-rich and those who serve them is always an odd ploy coming from mainstream Hollywood, where multimillionaires are waited on hand and foot by subsidence help. But let’s move on.)

Things get really strange when the story takes the trio to Norway, where we meet some of the scientists who first developed the breakthrough and are now having second thoughts.

The first act of “Downsizing” is fairly smart and filled with funny observations. But right at the point where Paul is abandoned by his spouse, the movie jumps completely off the tracks and never finds its way back.

Lesson: if you’re going to hire Kristen Wiig, don’t give her the boot 30 minutes into the film.

Video extras are a might slim, and are limited to the Blu-ray version: the DVD contains none. They consist of six making-of documentary shorts: “Working with Alexander,” “The Cast,” “A Visual Journey,” “A Matter of Perspective,” “That Smile” and “A Global Concern.”

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Review: "Downsizing"

I’ve noticed that whenever Matt Damon has a comedic role where he’s playing a regular schlub, he always packs on about 25-30 pounds. At first I was impressed by the sheer devotion to physical transformation -- especially his uncanny ability to always get back to Jason Bourne fighting trim.

But over time, it’s come to feel like he’s making fun of the ordinary, unsculpted people who buy tickets to his movies. What are we to him, the pudgy faceless masses?

Hey Matt, not every middle-class person is living a life of quiet desperation with a dadbod.

I was very much looking forward to “Downsizing,” which the trailers present as a darkly satirical look at American consumerism and our footsie-playing approach to environmentalism.

In it, Norwegian scientists discover that by shrinking humans down to less than 1% of their current size, the crises of too little food and too much global warming can be addressed in a way to make human life sustainable in perpetuity. Of course, the real allure to “get small” is the scalable economy, so that a married couple struggling to get by, such as Paul and Audrey Safranek (Damon and Kristen Wiig), are instantly transformed into multimillionaires in a downsized community.

Unfortunately, this is not the film that director Alexander Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor have given us. I was expecting something along the lines of Payne’s other work like “Sideways,” “About Schmidt” or “The Descendants.” They were cerebral movies that managed to explore the danker sides of the human soul while also finding plenty of occasions to make us laugh.

“Downsizing” is that, at least for the first 45 minutes or so. We watch as Paul and Audrey go through the process, meeting an old chum (Jason Sudeikis) at a high school reunion who was among the first go through “cellular minimization.” He talks it up to them -- and not just for the referral fee, he insists -- and they visit the facility where all the magic happens. They meet with a downsizing consultant, who informs them that their $152,000 in equity will make them worth over $12 million when they get small and go to Leisureland.

(The math sounds a little fishy to me, but hey, it’s Hollywood moviemaking, not an economics seminar.)

It sounds so simple: trade in your humdrum life of working hard for one in which you live in a mansion and enjoy an early retirement of luxury.

Things don’t go the way they expect, but I’m precluded from telling you more about the plot without giving too much information away. Suffice it to say there’s a point of no return, essentially marking the end of the first act, in which the movie’s tone shifts abruptly.

It’s like the movie takes a sudden left turn, it’s not funny anymore, and instead of satirical jabs we got a lot of lazy haymakers thrown at us that fail to connect.

The experiencing is like that scene in the first “Spider-Man” movie where Peter fights the school bully, and he can’t believe how slow the punches seem. That’s us: “What’s going on? Am I supposed to be laughing here?”

The special effects are pretty neat, though I kept waiting for a moment when a small person gets accidentally squished by their larger cousins. The film features plenty of celebrity cameos, including Margo Martindale, Laura Dern and Neil Patrick Harris.

Damon’s performance gets annoying rather quickly. Paul is passive and not particularly smart, continually letting others push him around. First it’s Audrey, then Dusan (Christoph Waltz), the gleefully corrupted neighbor he befriends, and later Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese maid who represents the flip side of Leisureland’s power dynamics.

She’s played by Hong Chau, in what first seems like a very stereotyped performance but later shows layers of emotions in a way that Damon’s does not.

I get what Payne and Taylor where going for: a parable about the fruitlessness of always chasing Eden. Paul and Audrey want a one-way ticket to an early heaven, but keep finding ways to make their lives more hellish. Rather than learn from it, they chase the next magic pill.

“Downsizing” is a great concept that soon spins off the track. It wants us to laugh at ourselves, but in the end it just makes us feel bad.

Video review: "The Legend of Tarzan"

Gosh knows how many cinematic iterations of “Tarzan” there have been, but the newest big-budget effort, “The Legend of Tarzan,” adds little to the oeuvre.

Watching Alexander Skarsgård swing on a vine, fight apes and men, deliver the ubiquitous yodel, etc., it finally occurred to me that this is actually a spiritual remake of another Tarzan movie – “Tarzan the Ape Man,” the 1981 version starring Bo Derek.

Like that soft-core piffle, the main point of this new movie is to delight in displays of human flesh. Except here we’re ogling the guy instead of the girl.

Skarsgård’s body has been transformed into the perquisite tangle of veiny bulges and rippled abdominal landscape favored in this age. We watch him flex and stretch and contemplate the desert of carbs in his diet. Maybe at some point we wonder why he would look like this, since as the story opens he left the jungle many years ago to take up the life of a British nobleman along with his lady love, Jane (Margot Robbie).

Somehow, I doubt they had P90X classes in 19th century England. And you can’t rock a six-pack from playing cricket.

Anyway, they get lured back to the Congo to investigate some allegations of bad behavior, including slavery, at the mining camps, kicking off a confrontation with Leon Rom, a Belgian baddie with dreams of capturing the entire diamond operation. He’s played by Christoph Waltz, in about his sixth version of the “off-putting Christoph Waltz villain.” Samuel L. Jackson tags along as an American envoy offering to help.

A few of the action scenes are gripping, but Tarzan himself is an uncharismatic drip. The truth is the screenplay gives most of the interesting stuff to the supporting actors. Tarzan is just there to be gazed upon.

Maybe 110 minutes of ogling is enough for thee, but not for me.

Bonus features are merely adequate, and are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions. They include five making-of featurettes and a public service announcement about the African ivory trade.

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Video review: "Spectre"

It’s been said that when selecting a president, American voters seek the opposite of the incumbent, of whom they’ve grown tired. I think that holds true for James Bond actors, too.

The Pierce Brosnan Bond films were the epitome of breeziness, a celebration of the unflappable joie de vivre of the British superspy. Arriving in a grittier, scarier era, Daniel Craig’s Bond has been defined by his dourness. Here was a man to be taken seriously, and Craig was a skilled enough actor to let slip the pain that lies just behind the eyes of the icy killer.

But time marches on, and in his fourth outing, “Spectre,” the heavier nature of these movies is starting to wear down the franchise like a repetitive stress injury. Craig has mused publicly about tiring of playing Bond, and there's a lot of animated chatter about Idris Elba or Tom Hiddleston or (insert latest rumor here) sliding into the role.

The plot is… the usual near-unfathomable twist of threats, high-wire action sequences and hiss-able villains. In a not entirely convincing bit of revisionist history, the titular shadowy consortium is revealed to have been behind nearly all the troubles our man has encountered.

Christoph Waltz plays the group’s chief, a sneering manipulator named Franz Oberhauser, who has an intimate connection to Bond. He’s the best thing about the movie (which is something you can say about most films with Waltz in them).

Less successful is this iteration of the “Bond Girl,” played by Léa Seydoux. She’s the daughter of an infamous villain we’ve seen before, and gets caught up in the intrigue. (Why is it so many female characters in spy movies are the daughter of somebody important, instead of just being important themselves?) The script doesn’t give her much to do, but Seydoux is still rather drab.

The movie, the second in a row directed by Sam Mendes, is entirely watchable, and parts of it are even thrilling.

But there's something missing here, a vital essence that seems to have drained away. This iteration of the Bond legend feels tired, grumpy, chippy. It senses the anticipation for the next thing, even shares it, but isn't quite ready to let go of the Walther PPK and Aston Martin.

Bonus features feel a mite miserly. On the DVD version there are seven video blogs from production, including one by Mendes. Others touch on typical making-of topics like constructing action scenes, musical score, assembling the cast, etc.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add a gallery of still photos and the making of the supposedly biggest opening sequence ever for a Bond film.

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Review: "Spectre"

Just a few thoughts today on the new James Bond film. Evan Dossey is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head there to read his more complete thoughts.

The Daniel Craig Bond flicks have been defined by their dourness, and while that was a welcome change from the breeziness of the Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton movies -- not to mention the nearly pure comedy of the Roger Moore era -- it's starting to wear down the franchise, like a repetitive stress injury.

Director Sam Mendes is back at the helm again, a rarity in the Bond tradition, but "Skyfall" was the highest-grossing 007 film ever, so if he was game there really wasn't anyone to tell him different. Craig is loudly and publicly musing over whether he wants to play the British agent again, and there's a lot of chatter about Idris Elba or Tom Hiddleston or (insert latest rumor here) sliding into the role.

Without giving anything away, I will say that the ending of "Spectre" is such that it could either neatly wrap up Craig's tenure in the black tuxedo, or set up one final go-round.

It's very much a story of beginnings and endings, with most of the familiar Bond solar system -- M, Q, Moneypenny -- now replaced with fresher faces. James Bond is widely viewed as an anachronism by the British intelligence services, who are more keen on data and satellite imagery and drones than guys wandering around with a license to kill.

The movie for me is more of a Greatest Hits version of James Bond than anything else I've seen. Names and faces of villains and allies from the recent past are recalled and, forcibly, linked to one another. We're told that a sinister organization named Spectre has been behind nearly all the troubles Bond has encountered in recent years, with one shadowy figure at the head of the table.

I'm not giving anything away in saying that Christoph Waltz plays the chief villain, or surprising anyone by stating that he's the best thing about the movie. (You could say that about most films with Waltz.) He plays Franz Oberhauser, a supposedly dead guy with an intimate connection to Bond that I wouldn't divulge.

Suffice to say that rather than pursuing some overarching goal of world domination, Oberhauser -- who also has adopted another, familiar, moniker -- seems to delight in creating chaos and pain for its own sake. Particularly when that pain is Bond's own.

Waltz has surprisingly little screen time, but makes the most of it.

The main "Bond girl" is a bit of a disappointment, the sloe-eyed Léa Seydoux as the daughter of an infamous villain. (Why are so many female characters in spy movies the daughter of somebody important, instead of just being important themselves?) The script, a thinly written affair by a committee of four, doesn't give her much to do but react to Bond's carnivore magnetism. 

Better is Monica Bellucci in an all-too-brief appearance as a recently widowed Italian who gets intimate with the man who made her a widow. Bellucci, still a stunner at 50 -- rendering her the oldest Bond conquest of all -- shows more steel and fire in her few minutes of screen time than Seydoux does in the rest of the movie.

Craig is still a terrific Bond, the best I think aside from Sean Connery, a skilled enough actor to let slip the pain that lies just behind the eyes of the icy killer. And there are a few good action scenes and chases, particularly when Bond mixes it up with Dave Bautista, a Herculean tentacle of Spectre.

"Spectre" is entirely watchable, and parts of it are even thrilling. But there's something missing here, a vital essence that seems to have drained away. This iteration of the Bond legend feels tired, grumpy, chippy. It senses the anticipation for the next thing, even shares it, but isn't quite ready to let go of the Walther PPK and Aston Martin. 

Video review: "Big Eyes"

I’ve been hard on director Tim Burton for spending the last 15 years (mostly) cranking out soulless remakes of moldy intellectual property – “Alice in Wonderland,” “Planet of the Apes,” etc. He finally diverged to make “Big Eyes,” a low-budget original dramedy about an interesting historical curio.

The result was a funny/sad tale with some first-rate performances by Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. The film got lost in the holiday shuffle and overlooked by the Academy Awards, but I urge you to give it another look on video.

It’s the true story of Margaret Keane (Adams), an artist whose paintings featuring waifs with enormous eyes became a huge commercial hit in the 1950s and ‘60s, appearing in ubiquitous reprints all over the country. Except it was her husband, a magnetic huckster named Walter (Waltz), who claimed credit for the work. He was a more established artist and better at selling himself.

Plus he convinced her that her paintings wouldn’t be taken seriously if people thought they were created by a woman. (Sadly, he was probably right, which doesn’t make his deception and bullying any more palatable.)

The story (screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski) is about the rise and fall of their relationship, culminating in a real-life court battle in which the estranged spouses engaged in a paint-off before a judge.

Adams is sensitive and endearing as a weak-willed person who eventually finds her own inner voice. And Waltz is delightful as the charismatic, conniving Walter.

Sometimes it’s best to paint outside the lines.

Video extras are pretty disappointing. The DVD comes with a standard making-of featurette, and the blu-ray adds Q&A highlights with cast and crew.

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Review: "Horrible Bosses 2"

I liked “Horrible Bosses” just enough to give it a wobbly recommendation. It was a scattershot-funny comedy with a novel premise: three working stiffs decide to off their evil bosses, with each doing another’s tormentor to throw off suspicion. Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikas and Jason were agreeably dippy as modern guys trying to get medieval, and failing pathetically.

It did well at the box office, so here’s the inevitable sequel, with an almost entirely different set of filmmakers swapped out and anything resembling cleverness leached away.

The setup is that the trio has now left behind the world of worker bee slavery to become their own bosses. They’ve come up with an idea for a product called the Shower Buddy, which, near as I can determine, all it does differently from a regular shower head is also squirt shampoo on you along with the water. The miracles of the modern age!

Still, it does well enough that they launch their company, rent a warehouse, buy some equipment and start hiring employees. There’s a modestly funny montage of them conducting job interviews, with the joke being that they hire absolutely everyone, including the scary ex-con and the woman who can’t speak English.

At first, I thought this would be a deliciously sly bit of satire in which the upstarts themselves turn into the horrible bosses, and another set of underlings decide to kill them, leading to more recriminations and hijinks. Alas, no, it quickly devolves into an unfunny retread of the last movie, but instead of attempted murder they kidnap somebody for ransom.

The heavy here is Christoph Waltz as the magnate of a home products retailer, who agrees to carry the Shower Buddy but then reneges at the last minute, threatening to toss the boys into financial ruin. To get back at him and retrieve their money, they resolve to kidnap the jerk’s even jerkier son, played by Chris Pine. But the kid has a better idea: cut him in on the scam, and they don’t even have to go through with the actual kidnapping.

The lead actors all play familiar versions of their star personas. Bateman is Nick, the careful, slightly repressed one; Day is Dale, the nervous nebbish who now has a wife and triplet baby daughters; Sudeikis is Kurt, the resident horndog because, well, every comedy ensemble needs one.

Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Jamie Foxx all return for cameos of their characters from the original movie, respectively: sadistic boss, now behind bars; sex-addicted dentist, still addicted to sex; and criminal consigliore who’s a lot less badass than he lets on.

Aniston was the MVP of the last movie, and proves so again here. Maybe it’s because she’s largely played sweethearts that the notion of her as a lecherous pervert is especially zingy, but in any case she scores the most laughs with her naughty banter.

The jokes come fast, fast, fast and mostly miss, miss, miss. The script seems barely polished above the level of ad-lib, and largely consists of a bunch of scenes of the crew popping off and cracking on each other.

I’m still a little fuzzy about who exactly the horrible bosses of “Horrible Bosses 2” are supposed to be – the Waltz character may be a tool but he’s not their boss, just a backstabbing customer. Of course, “Horrible Vendor-Client Relationships” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

Video review: "Epic"

“Epic” is an animated movie with a big name but a small story to tell. And I mean literally tiny -– it’s set in the secret world of the forest where miniscule creatures battle between good and evil.

One the one side is Leafmen, micro-sized soldiers who wear nuts, sticks and what have you as armor. They protect the land from decay and intrusion by the Boggans, little insectoid creatures led by the villainous Mandrake (Christoph Waltz).

The set-up is that this long-running war has happened virtually under the noses of humans, who are too lumbering and self-absorbed to see the wee critters. Except, that is, for a half-mad scientist who studies them without much success. His estranged daughter Mary Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) comes to visit and is accidentally shrunk down to the size of the Leafmen, and soon joins them in their quest.

It seems the old queen of the forest has fallen to Mandrake’s schemes, and unless a new magical seed pod is brought to just the right place at just the right time, it will bloom in darkness and evil will reign.

Narratively, “Epic” has too much going on, with a romantic side story involving M.K. and a wayward Leafman (Josh Hutcherson), a psychedelic wise man voiced by Steven Tyler, and a pair of sluggish doofs who act as comic relief.

The life-lessons parts are slathered on a little too heavy, with M.K. and her dad learning to bond, the young Leafman finds out that working together as a team isn’t so bad, and so on.

It is a great-looking picture, and director Chris Wedge (“Ice Age”) has a nice feel for action and landscape.

Fast-paced and filled with cartoony action, “Epic” should entertain little kids well enough, though their parents might be tempted to wander out of the room.

Video extras are quite good, and you don’t have to buy the most expensive package to get some nice stuff.

The DVD comes with several featurettes, including an educational one about real-life insects who use camouflage. There’s also a mobile app (for Android and iOS) that allows kids to color and create their own adventure, even recording their own voice, and play it back for others.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack, and you add another featurette and a comprehensive making-of documentary, “Mysteries of Moonhaven Revealed.”

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Video review: "Django Unchained."

Quentin Tarantino has always been a filmmaker who believed in making his films as entertaining as possible, though in recent years it seemed like the person he was most trying to entertain was himself.

His latest, the quasi-Western “Django Unchained,” is his most accessible film since “Pulp Fiction,” a purely delightful frolic that’s equal parts gleeful revenge fantasy, anti-slavery jeremiad and comedy of manners.

Jamie Foxx plays the title character, a beaten-down slave who’s given a second chance at life when he’s rescued by King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a courtly little German who impersonates a traveling dentist but is actually a bounty killer.

(“Bounty hunter” is not really accurate, since Schultz only pursues men wanted dead or alive, and always opts for the former.)

Schultz enlists his help, in return for tutoring the slave as his protégé. They have lots of freewheeling adventures, mostly involving gunning down Neanderthal white villains while trading quips. One sequence has them going up against nascent KKK thugs, who debate the efficacy of riding a horse while wearing a sack with tiny eyeholes.

Eventually they get down to the real business at hand: rescuing Django’s wife (Kerry Washington) from a bucolic plantation named Candieland.

The owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a symbol of genteel Southern rot, his elegantly coiffed exterior hiding an inner moral decay mirrored by his head house slave, Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), who views the uppity Django as upending the proper order of things.

Hysterically funny one moment and bursting with blood-soaked violence the next, “Django Unchained” is a giddy absurdist romp.

Alas, video extras are a mite on the sparse side. There are four featurettes focusing on the costumes, stunts, production design and soundtrack of the film, plus a promo for a Tarantino Blu-ray collection.

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Review: "Django Unchained"

"Django Unchained" may just be Quentin Tarantino's most purely entertaining film since ... ever.

This revisionist Western mixes elements of Tarantino's beloved grindhouse exploitative violence, slow-fuse dramatic scenes building up to major bloodlettings and de rigueur juxtapositions of funky modern songs against classic genre backdrops.

It's a daffy, loopy jaunt that doesn't really add up to anything more than a good time. But what a good time it is. I don't think I've enjoyed a Tarantino movie this much since "Pulp Fiction."

With this revenge story/anti-slavery rant, the quirky writer/director feels like he's finally settled into a rhythm where he's not just trying to recreate the tawdry D-list flicks adored in his youth, but actually crafting something original that connects with an audience. With the dense, sprawling "Inglourious Basterds" and other recent work, it often seemed like he was making movies only for his own self-satisfaction.

The result is lighter and groovier, one that more fully embraces Tarantino's dark, puckish sense of humor. The first half of this nearly three-hour film is more or less pure comedy. One standout is a bit where a group of precursor KKK thugs argue about the efficacy of riding around in hoods with eyeholes cut in them, a scene that would have felt right at home tucked in the middle of "Blazing Saddles."

The plot is straightforward. Django (Jamie Foxx, in full cooler-than-thou mode) is a former runaway slave who's rescued by an oddball bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz, who needs his help identifying three brothers on his hit list.

In exchange, Schultz agrees take on Django as his protégé and help him rescue his wife Hildy (Kerry Washington) from servitude. She was bought up and packed off to Candieland, a seemingly idyllic Mississippi plantation lorded over by the superficially genteel Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Schultz is played by Christoph Waltz, who had an Oscar-winning turn in "Basterds" and is equally good here. Tarantino wrote a great part for him, and Waltz runs away with a subtle, refined performance. Schultz is a German who used to be a dentist, and still rides around in a coach capped with a giant tooth on a spring. He likes to think of himself as cold-hearted and mercenary, but Schultz is repulsed by the way blacks are treated in the South of 1858.

Though at least he's honest enough to admit the similarities with his own trade, killing men for rewards. "Like slavery, it's a flesh for cash business," he purrs.

It's fun watching Django quickly evolve from timid slave to trash-talking killer who loves nothing more than putting white folks in their place ... preferably, in a hole in the ground. He acquires the skills of quick-draw shootist, seemingly overnight, and soon sets to putting them to good use.

The villains are a virtual parade of slovenly caricatures, festooned with facial hair and Neanderthal attitudes toward slaves. "Django" must set some sort of dubious record for the most uses of the n-word in a film. Tarantino, though, seems neither afraid nor enamored with the word, simply putting it in his characters' mouths as it would have been employed pre-Civil War.

Things really get rolling when Django and Schultz meet Calvin, and lure him in with a bogus story about buying one of his prize Mandingo gladiators for an outlandish sum. The matched fights to the death, which hold all the glamour of cockfighting with humans, give lie to Calvin's courtly manors.

DiCaprio is both a hoot and a horror, playing a man who not only embodies these contradictions, but fails to even recognize them.

Samuel L. Jackson also has a nice turn as Steven, the head of Calvin's slaves who's been a thrall to depravity so long it's seeped into his soul.

The long Candieland sequence -- basically the last half of the film -- is an exercise in patiently setting the pot to simmer. Schultz and Calvin engage in a match of manners, while the latter is intrigued by the surly Django's barely concealed insults and bad attitude. We know it's all mounting up to the gunfight to end all gunfights -- replete with geysers of blood -- but we don't mind because Tarantino's buildup is almost more fun than the blowout.

The movie occasionally lapses into self-indulgence, as with a late unnecessary scene involving an Australian mining company, with Tarantino himself playing one of the heavies (and employing quite possibly the worst Aussie accent in the history of cinema). It's an amusing bit, but it doesn't fit with the rest.

Still, "Django Unchained" is a witty, brash mix-up of Old West trappings and modern cool.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Carnage"

Films based on stage plays are never hard to spot. There's the compressed cast, the static location and the carefully bookended world that exists around the characters. Perhaps most recognizably, and often to the detriment of adapting a work from stage to screen, is the theatricality -- the artifice -- of the proceedings.

"Carnage" is a wonderfully acted drama about two sets of parents, played by Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly. That's three Oscar winners and an Oscar nominee, folks.

As one might expect from such a dazzling cast, and one led by an expert director like Roman Polanski, the performances are a delight. The parents, Michael and Penelope Longstreet (Reilly and Foster) and Nancy and Alan Cowan (Winslet and Waltz), are brought together by a serious brawl between their 11-year-old sons.

Outwardly, everyone is trying to act maturely and magnanimously, endeavoring to resolve the situation without resorting to lawsuits and hysterics. Soon, though, things devolve into a quagmire of clashing egos, ulterior motives and two marriages that have carefully spackled over their deep fault lines.

"Carnage" is based on the play by Yasmina Reza, who co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski. The dialogue is sharp and stealthy, as four smart Manhattan parents reveal the bile and loathing hidden by their upper-class veneer.

The problem is, I never for a moment bought these characters as real people. As much as I often enjoyed basking in their verbal parries and thrusts, the action is always kept at emotional arm's length, as we watch these carefully constructed creatures run through their paces with all the surprises of a pre-programmed automaton.

Still, the performers themselves are nearly worth the price of admission.

Penelope is a politically correct, New Age-y type with a carefully cultivated sense of victimhood. She takes her boy's injury (the loss of two teeth) personally, and is not looking for revenge, but abject contrition. When she fails to receive it, it uncorks some serious anger beneath the placid surface.

(It's notable that the avowed peace-lover is the only one of the foursome who resorts to violence as things grow tense.)

Mike is garrulous and friendly, always ready to be seen as the mediator of conflict. But his blustery personality hides some troubling issues, from the minor (a pathological fear of his daughter's hamster) to the major (declaring marriage and children the bane of manhood).

Nancy is an investment broker, carefully coiffed and mannered, who's eternally vexed at Alan's eternal interruptions to talk business on his cell phone. A high-profile lawyer, he's handling a huge case in between needling the Longstreets.

Alan is the most mercenary of the bunch, making it quite plain he considers the spat between their sons an overblown waste of his time. But in some ways he's also the most honest, since he doesn't bother to hide the selfish instincts the others work hard to conceal.

Everything plays out in a crisp 79-minute encounter in the Longstreets' apartment, punctuated by conversations about the Darfur atrocity, the best kind of toilet mechanism and an impressive spew of vomit onto some rare art books.

"Carnage" works better when seen as a master class in acting than a workable, believable story.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "The Green Hornet"

"The Green Hornet" is what happens when smart people set out to make a dumb movie.

This hipper-than-thou would-be comedy can't decide if it wants to be a spoof of a super hero movie, or on homage to one. Director Michel Gondry and star Seth Rogen, who co-wrote the screenplay with Evan Goldberg, mock the conventions of the genre while indulging in them.

Interestingly, the Green Hornet -- who's best known to younger generations for a 1960s TV show co-starring Bruce Lee -- is one of the few costumed crusaders who didn't originate in a comic book. He started out as the star of a serial radio show in the '30s, followed by some cheapie movies, and only then did he show up in comics form.

Rogen plays Britt Reid, a petulant playboy and heir to a Los Angeles newspaper fortune. When his father dies mysteriously, he learns that the family mechanic Kato (Jay Chou) secretly built daddy an arsenal of weapons and gadgets, including a tricked-out 1965 Chrysler Imperial dubbed Black Beauty.

They decide to fight crime, but pose as criminals in order to infiltrate the underworld led by kingpin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), who frets about his drab image.

Gondry ladles on the slo-mo fight scenes and cool stuff like the Green Hornet's sleeping-gas gun -- which makes up for Britt's decided lack of combat prowess. The running joke of the movie is that despite being the sidekick, Kato is the real muscle, and brains, of the outfit.

There's one or two really good laughs, but mostly "The Green Hornet" fails to sting, either as a super-hero flick or a send-up of one.

Video extras are pretty good, especially if you upgrade to the Blu-ray version.

The DVD edition is still decently stocked, with a feature-length commentary track by the filmmakers, gag reel and two featurettes on the writing of the screenplay and rebirth of Black Beauty.

The Blu-ray adds deleted scenes, several more featurettes and a couple of Easter Eggs, including Chou's addition tape.

Go for the 3-D Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, and you'll also get animated storyboard comparisons.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras:3 stars

Review: "The Green Hornet"

"The Green Hornet" is what happens when smart people set out to make a dumb movie.

Screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote that there are only three kinds of films: Those that are meant to be good and are, those that are meant to be good and aren't, and those that were never meant to be any good. Depressingly, this last category is the largest, and where "Hornet" belongs.

It's less of a super-hero movie than a spoof of one. I'm all for making fun of a genre ripe for ridicule, but "Hornet" is loaded with action scenes and nervous energy and cool gadgets ... and not much you would really call funny.

I laughed out loud exactly once, and it was the very last scene in the movie where young newspaper tycoon Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) and partner Kato (Jay Chou) take extraordinary steps to preserve the fiction that the Green Hornet is a villain, instead of a hero. It's a genuinely clever bit, and I don't mind saying I got the joke a few seconds before everyone else did, and enjoyed a moment of solitary guffawing before everyone else joined in.

Interestingly, Green Hornet is one of the few super-heroes who didn't debut in a comic book. He started as a popular radio show in the 1930s, followed by some cheapie film serials starting in the early 1940s, and only then did he arrive in comic form. He's probably best known to recent generations for a '60s TV show.

Britt is a lazy, rich party boy living off the fruits of his father's newspaper empire, The Daily Sentinel in Los Angeles. But when dad dies suddenly and mysteriously, he discovers that his father had been ordering up all sorts of advanced weapons from Kato, his mechanic-slash-confidant. Britt, wallowing in booze and anonymous hook-ups, knows Kato only as the guy who makes him a really awesome cup of coffee every morning.

Rogen, who's made a career out of playing schlubby, chubby (though noticeably less so here) man-boys, is less charming when he's not playing a loser. Britt is supremely arrogant, not in a nasty way but with a presumption of superiority that drowns any affection the audience might develop for him.

After a late night hijinx to behead his father's statue monument turns into a dust-up with some thugs, Britt realizes he's found his calling: To become the city's masked protector. Soon he and Kato are cruising around in a highly modified 1965 Chrysler Imperial decked out with machine guns and missiles they dub Black Beauty.

The big pun of the movie is that Kato is the real muscle and brains of the outfit, but the Green Hornet gets all the attention. Kato is a genius with cars and weapons, and even invents a gas gun for the Hornet that knocks out his opponents. Kato can even take on six bad guys at once with his martial arts prowess, which allows him to see things in slow time.

Britt, of course, still thinks he's the top gun, and takes to dismissing Kato as his henchman or sidekick, leading to inevitable fisticuffs between them.

Neither has much of a notion how to act like a villain, though, so they recruit help from Britt's hot new secretary Lenore (Cameron Diaz), who works at a temp agency but somehow knows more about journalism than the people working there. Britt and Kato take turns hitting on her, even though she's, like, really old and stuff. (She's 36.)

The heavy is played by Christoph Waltz, fresh of his Oscar win for "Inglourious Basterds." He plays Chudnofsky, head of L.A.'s gangland. Rogen, who co-wrote the screenplay with Evan Goldberg, tries to make a joke out of the fact that Chudnofsky is so dull and un-flashy a villain. (James Franco, in a cameo as another gangster, dubs his fashion sense "disco Santa Claus.").

Later he renames himself Bloodnofsky and takes to wearing red in a lame attempt to dovetail on Green Hornet's sizzle. But it turns out the gag of a bad guy fretting about his lack of charisma quickly turns into a whiny bore.

Also hanging around is Scanlon (David Harbour), the smarmy district attorney who seems overly interested in how the Sentinel is portraying all the violence left in the Hornet's wake. We don't quite know what to make of him, but with his beady eyes and a name like Scanlon, we know it's just a matter of time before something nefarious turns up.

"The Green Hornet" is directed by French filmmaker Michel Gondry, whose work has not impressed me. (He's universally beloved by critics for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," but not by me.) Perhaps he, Rogen and Goldberg think they've made a really smart, hip film that mocks the conventions of the super-hero movie while indulging in them.

But somewhere along the way of trying so hard to be cool, they made the movie they wanted to watch, rather than the one anyone else might want to.

1.5 stars out of four

SAG awards are Oscar harbinger

A week ago, I wrote in this space assessing how much the Golden Globes are an indicator of the Academy Awards. Short version: Not very much.

Last night's Screen Actors Guild Awards, though are different. Unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is basically a phantom organization, the SAG is the powerful actors union. Like the Producers Guild, Directors Guild and Writers Guild, these groups' awards are notable because of the overlap with Academy voters.

People who are members of one of these guilds are often (though certainly not always) also voting members of the Academy. The SAG awards are especially notable because actors make up the largest voting bloc of the Academy.

So as the guild awards go, so often go the Oscars.

There wasn't too much surprise in last night's awards: Jeff Bridges won Best Actor for "Crazy Heart," Christoph Waltz took supporting actor for "Inglourious Basterds," Mo'Nique won supporting actress for "Precious."

At this point, those three should be considered heavy favorites to win the Oscar. Colin Firth didn't get a lot of traction for "A Single Man," mainly because few people saw it. And everyone loves George Clooney in "Up in the Air," but I think there's a sense floating around that he was playing a version of himself -- or at least his star persona.

Whereas Oscar voters love to award actors (actresses, not so much) lifetime achievement awards. So, often a respected actor will take home the statue for a movie most reasonable people would agree is not their best work. Thus, Paul Newman finally won for "The Color of Money" and Al Pacino for "Scent of a Woman" -- fine movies and fine performances, but hardly the pinnacle of their careers.

Essentially, there's a movement underway pushing the idea that it's Jeff Bridges' time. I don't mind, since in this case I think "Crazy Heart" does represent some of his finest work.

The real surprise was Sandra Bullock winning Best Actress for "The Blind Side." Her SAG win is starting me to changing my mind that she can't win the Oscar.

Unlike the Globes, the SAG awards and Oscars don't split up the acting category into dramas and comedies/musicals. So the fact that Bullock won over award favorite Meryl Streep is an indication of genuine respect for Bullock's performance. I think we could dismiss her Globe win to her film's excellent box office performance -- the Globes are the epitome of favoring the most popular over the best films. Not SAG.

The other big contender, Carey Mulligan, appears to be sliding. Not very many people saw "An Education," which was a critical darling. And given Mulligan's youth and inexperience -- "An Education" represents her first starring role -- there may be a willingness to view an Oscar nomination as its own reward for a rising star. Even Hilary Swank, who seemed to come out of nowhere a decade ago to win for "Boys Don't Cry," had headlined a couple of small movies prior to that.

This is one occasion where it helps to be the established actress in her 40s rather than the ingenue in her early 20s.

Personally, I still think Streep gave the best performance of the year. But it's starting to look more and more like Bullock's turn in "The Blind Side" has come out of nowhere to take the lead.

Review: "Inglourious Basterds"

The idea of a kooky, hyper-violent World War II comedy with Quentin Tarantino doing his usual mishmash of eclectic music and circuitous dialogue sounds like a delightful romp -- especially when paired with Brad Pitt as the Appalachian-twanging bandit leader of a group of Jewish-American soldiers sent behind enemy lines to wreak terror on the Nazis.

Except for one problem: The "Inglourious Basterds" are bit players in their own flick.

If you've watched the trailer for the new film written/directed by Tarantino, then you've already seen a good chunk of the entire screen time of Pitt and his crew. There's essentially one scene of them bashing in Nazi skulls, and away they go. They reappear a couple more times, but only as supporting figures in another plot line.

The bulk of the sometimes-thrilling, oft-onerous 2½-hour running time is occupied with four other characters: Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish girl hiding in the open as a Parisian cinema owner; Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), nicknamed the Jew Hunter, who kills her family in the film's opening sequence; Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), a famous German film star secretly spying for the Brits; and Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a German war hero and star of a Joseph Goebbels propaganda film based on his battle exploits.

Landa is by far the most compelling of the foursome. As played by Waltz, the colonel is a slithery and cunning adversary, whose modus operandi is to engage his victim in social banter until he finds a weakness, and then burrow into that crack in their facade like a boll weevil.

Kruger has a pivotal role in the film's best sequence, a meeting between Hammersmark, a British agent and two of the Basterds in a basement pub to set a plot to blow up Shoshanna's theater, where Zoller's film is set to premiere. The scene starts on a frivolous note with churlish parlor games, but suspicion and hostility are ever so patiently ratcheted up. We can practically smell the fuse burning.

This is Tarantino at his best, using his gift with dialogue and mood to stir the waters, subtly at first but with increasing turbulence.

Less engaging is the Shoshanna/Zoller storyline, in which the German soldier becomes smitten with the clearly unreceptive French (he thinks) woman. This culminates in an impromptu lunch date between them and Goebbels that just goes on and on.

Oh yes, the Basterds. Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, his accent dripping with Tennessee molasses, who demands his eight Jewish recruits each gift him with 100 Nazi scalps -- and he's not talking figurative scalps, as Tarantino demonstrates in one unnecessary close-up after another.

Sudden, gruesome violence is a signature ingredient of the Tarantino gumbo, and others also crop up. There's a kinetic scene set to deliberately incongruous music (in this case, David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)"). A Mexican standoff takes place -- in fact, two characters have a debate about whether they are engaged in one. And Diane Kruger gets to be the latest actress to showcase her feet for extended close-ups to serve Tarantino's icky fetish for females' lowest appendages.

The name "Inglourious Basterds" comes from a cheapie 1978 Italian flick starring Fred Williamson and Bo Svenson that was basically a knockoff of "The Dirty Dozen," and bears no resemblance to this film other than the wartime setting.

Like "Death Proof" and the "Kill Bill" duology, Tarantino's newest work is that of a blazing cinematic talent who only seems to be interested in making movies that satisfy his own off-kilter, retrograde fantasies. Perhaps one day he'll invite us in.

2.5 stars