Review: "Hotel Transylvania"

Monsters as heroes is a pretty popular theme in pop culture. Vampires are more likely to be dreamy lovers than smelly undead bloodsuckers these days. And long before "Twilight" and its ilk, Tim Burton made the ghoulish seem normal with "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Heck, "Sesame Street" took the word "monsters" and stood it on its head more than 40 years ago but using it to refer to cute fuzzy Muppets.

Maybe that's why "Hotel Transylvania" doesn't feel terribly original. The entire premise is based on the idea that werewolves, mummies, vampires, alien blobs and zombies are outcasts hiding out from the fearsome clutches of humans who want to destroy them. The eponymous inn is the place where they get to come once a year to hang out and party in safety.

Of course, if things are so bad out there, it begs the question of why they don't all just live in the hotel year round. But applying logic to a movie like this is like Dracula deciding he needs a tan.

Speaking of Dracula, he's voiced by Adam Sandler doing a sort of Borscht Belt version of the familiar Bela Lugosi accent. Here he's a single dad trying to run a business where the help consists of mindless zombie bellboys and haunted suits of armor. Meanwhile, he's raising a rebellious teen daughter -- as in 118 years old -- named Mavis (Selena Gomez).

She wants to go out into the world to see what there is to see, but Drac takes steps to convince her to stick around. After all, the big annual event on the monster calendar is her birthday, and he's invited all his friends and regular guests to celebrate.

The animators did a great job with the various creatures, giving them a cool cartoony look with exaggerated features. The target audience here is kids who count their age in single digits, so nothing's terribly scary. (The PG rating is mostly for a few moments involving gastrointestinal humor.)

If anything, director Genndy Tartakovsky, a TV veteran making his feature film debut, doesn't linger long enough on the monsters so we can appreciate all the little details. This movie often feels like it's being spurred on by hurry-up pacing.

I did like the way Frankenstein (Kevin James) is held together with flimsy stitches that are apt to give way, leaving him a collection of parts. Or the werewolf is named Wayne (Steve Buscemi) and resembles a hectored businessman with a pushy wife and rambunctious passel of pups.

Other notable cast members are a mummy (CeeLo Green) and Invisible Man (David Spade), who's rendered as a disembodied pair of glasses.

The fly in the ointment is Jonathan, an adventure-seeking young human (Andy Samberg) who stumbles upon the hotel while backpacking across Europe. Dracula makes him up to resemble a distant cousin of Frankenstein and introduces him as the party planner for Mavis, who soon is casting goo-goo eyes at him.

The whole thing devolves into a slamming-doors farce, with people chasing each other, stumbling into awkward situations, doing double-takes and spinning webs of lies that are soon found out.

Jonathan is about as endearing as Samberg's live-action losers, hyperfast-talking slackers who register somewhere between mentally challenged and just plain dim. I kept thinking what the movie would've been like without him. Better, certainly.

With its emphasis on boingy action and goofy comedy, "Hotel Transylvania" is meant to do little more than distract wee tykes for a little while, and for that demographic it might do the job. The adults accompanying them will just wonder how soon they can check out.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "The Avengers"

Even if you're not a fan of superhero movies, you've got to appreciate "The Avengers" for its near-perfect execution of everything great about the genre.

Start with the obvious: instead of one person wielding super-awesome powers and abilities, this flick's got six: Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow, Captain American and Hawkeye. Four of them have already been featured in their own solo movies, so "The Avengers" represents one big honkin' pot of hero gumbo where they get thrown into the mix together.

Their investigable clashes result in a movie that's a helluva lot funnier than you'd expect.

Then add in a terrific villain, Thor's half-brother Loki, who has recruited a mysterious race of alien creatures to attack Earth at his behest. Loki snivels and pouts, boasts and taunts, and is wonderfully delicious to hate.

Finally, give credit to director Joss Whedon for delivering a film that's packed with action, but doesn't seem overwhelmed by computer-generated effects. The fight scenes are crisply and clearly staged, so even though the characters are doing extraordinary things they remain entirely comprehensible.

Just as movies based on comic books seem to have hit middle age, with many franchises falling back on reboots and tired storylines, "The Avengers" are hitting their stride.

The movie is available on home video in four iterations: a single-disc DVD, two-disc DVD combo pack, two-disc Blu-ray or four-disc "Super Set" with both formats.

Video features are good, though you have to pay for the higher-end sets to get the really good stuff. The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track by Whedon, plus a making-of feature about assembling the team of heroes and the actors who played them.

The centerpiece of the Blu-ray edition is "A Second Screen Experience," an interactive database of images and video that take you deep in the Marvel Comics universe. Unfortunately, it's only accessible with a Blu-ray-equipped laptop computer, iPhone or iPad.
Other goodies bridge the gap. There's "Marvel One-Shoot: Item 47," an original short film, a featurette on the visual effects in the film, gag reel, deleted scenes and "Live To Rise" music video.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras:3 stars

Reeling Backward: "King of the Hill" (1993)

"King of the Hill" is exactly the sort of picture a rising young filmmaker tackles for their third feature. In 1993 Steven Soderbergh had enjoyed his breakout with "Sex, Lies and Videotape," followed by the more esoteric "Kafka." For his third go-round, he went for a classic coming-of-age story about boy abandoned during the Great Depression.

These sorts of tales are so common they have gotten their own literary designation: "Bildungsroman," named for fairy tales in which a young person goes out into the world, encounters hardship and seeks to define themselves through their experiences. Though in young Aaron Kurlander's story, much of his journey occurs within the confines of the crumbling San Francisco hotel where he lives.

At first, it was the whole family crammed into that single room -- German immigrant father (Jeroen Krabbe), kind mother wracked by consumption (a luminescent Lisa Eichhorn) and scrappy, trouble-making younger brother Sullivan (Cameron Boyd). They were poor, along with everyone else in the Empire Hotel, where the mercenary bellboy Ben (Joe Chrest) acts as thuggish enforcer, locking people out of their rooms if they get too far behind on their bill.

But at least they were together. Father is fitfully employed as a salesman, but is a dreamer/schemer who always has a plan up his sleeve about finding a better gig. They decide to send Sullivan off to live with an  uncle to save a dollar a week in costs. Then mother's tuberculosis flairs up and she's packed off to the sanitarium.

Dad actually manages to land the job he boasted about selling watches for the Hamilton Watch Company, but it forces him to leave Aaron (who's about 12) alone for the summer in the apartment. He gives the hotel manager $17 (against a debt 10 times that) to hold him off, and arranges for one meal a day at a local diner. But Ben the bellboy has been tasked with strong-arming all the riff-raff out in favor of dance hall girls, and the diner worker was pulling a scam. So Aaron is left with an armful of dinner rolls and his instincts to make it through.

 Soderbergh's wonderful screenplay, which is based on a memoir by writer A.E. Hotchner, is filled with all sorts of authentic little details about life back in 1933. The people speak in the lingo of the times. Visually, the film is a sumptuous representation of the era, from the Model T Fords to the leather straps the children use to carry their books to school. Even the fat, corrupt policeman, who lives to pinch little kids' ears, wears a natty Clark Gable mustache.

Aaron is a bright boy, and even receives the top award at his school for the student who best represents the ideals of academia and good character. He has the former in spades, but has a penchant for lying. Asked to write an essay about his personal hero, he fabricates a tale of a personal friendship with aviator Charles Lindbergh. His supportive teacher (Karen Allen) sees it as fanciful initiative, but is more disturbed to learn Aaron has been lying about where he lives so he can attend the "rich kids" school district. She doesn't squeal on him, though.

Adrien Brody has a nice role as Lester, an older kid down the hall whom Aaron idolizes. His street smarts trump Aaron's book smarts, and he's constantly helping the kid out of scrapes or into ones -- like picking the lock on the hotel storeroom, where Ben has stashed all the belongings of former residents who got the boot. He eventually gets arrested for selling stolen hooch to the homeless people (they were called bums back then) living in the Hooverville catty-corner from the hotel.

One quiet, small moment with a lot of power is when Aaron barges into Lester's apartment looking for him. Lester never let anyone in, protesting that his sick mother needs her rest. Turns out Lester invented her, to conceal the sad, squalid little life he actually lived.

A young Katherine Heigl has a small role as a wealthy girl who spies Aaron stealing food off another kid's plate at school, and invites him to dinner with her family. Aaron is embarrassed when, at a big birthday party right before that dinner, his trail of lies catch up with him. He runs off, even leaving behind his school award medal, and holes up in his room, hiding from Ben and his box full of locks.

Interestingly, the film depicts most people in Aaron's community has being sympathetic and helpful. Even the hotel manager who wants to give him the boot does so at the behest of the bank that owns it. Ben and the abusive cop are the only true villainous figures in the movie. Instead, Aaron self-ostracizes himself through his shame at his lowly circumstances, and his many distortions of the truth.

I think the movie really shines in its portrayal of a tentative, furtive romance between Aaron and Ella, a slightly older girl who lives on the same floor, who never seems to leave their apartment. She's supposed to be unattractive and awkward, though in the finest cinematic tradition the girl (played by Amber Benson) is actually gloriously cute, simply hidden behind glasses and an unbecoming hairstyle.

Aaron is at first put off by Ella's attentions, stopping him in the  hallway to talk and inviting him over for a hot dog. He is at that age where boys begin to notice the female allure, but they're still held back by their little-kid notions of girls as The Enemy. He is horrified when she has an epileptic seizure while they're dancing, and beats a hasty retreat. But Aaron, to his credit, returns again to see her.

A few other elements don't quite get baked in to the pie. There's an on-again, off-again exchange with Mr. Mungo, the patrician gent who loves across the hallway. Played by writer Spalding Gray, Mungo is a formerly rich man brought low by the Crash, now content to eke out his last few dollars and his last few days as a wastrel prince lording it over the poor man's hostel. He dresses elegantly and keeps a prostitute (Elizabeth McGovern) around as a bored retainer -- her job, aside from some assumed sex we never see, is apparently to annoy and belittle him.

Ultimately, the physical journey in "King of the Hill" is rather small. Mr. Kurlander dreams of getting a better job so he can move his family out of the Empire Hotel and across the city to the Carlton Court Apartments, and in the end he does. It's a nice though hardly lavish abode in a better neighborhood. The Carlton is weightier in its significance than its trappings, though, as Aaron has grown and learned immeasurably in his time alone.

"King of the Hill," in tone and theme, reminds me very much of "Empire of the Sun," an  unheralded film from 1987 that remains my favorite directed by Steven Spielberg. The story is smaller in scope, as there is no world war in the backdrop, but the import approaches.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "House at the End of the Street"

Just a quick review. Joe Shearer is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head over there to check it out.

I am not a fan of the PG-13 horror film. Yes, a couple have been decent -- notably "The Others" and "The Ring." But by and large, the experience is like going to a steakhouse and ordering a salad. If you enjoy the things that make scary movies scary, then dialing back on them so the studio can hook in the under-17 crowd automatically turns it into some kind of Horror Lite.

"House at the End of the Street" is not awful, but it's not outstanding, either. The only thing that makes it stand out from the other dreck being flushed into theaters during these dark days of September is that it stars Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar nominee from a couple years back.

She's solid enough in it, but is restricted by the parameters of the story that require her character to do amazingly stupid things. It's the time-honored tradition of horror flicks to entice the audience to yell, "Don't go in there!" and similar warnings. It often seems like the people populating scary movies are collectively about 50 I.Q. points lower than those watching them.

The story has familiar themes: a teen girl and her single mom move from Chicago into an idyllic rustic town where everything's Not Quite As Perfect As It Seems. The cute neighborhood boy that all the grown-ups love turns out to be a jerk with date rape inclinations, and mom (Elisabeth Shue) is a doctor who's working all the time and sloshing down wine when she isn't.

The big mystery in town is the house next door, where a girl horrifically butchered her parents four years ago. The body was never found, so...

Property values have plummeted as a result, which is why poor Elissa and her mother can afford to rent such a huge, fabulous house in the woods -- because we all know how criminally underpaid physicians are. It's a wonder they could afford gas for the trip!

Turns out the son of the murdered family is still living there quietly, ostracized from the community. Ryan (Max Thieriot) turns out to be dreamy in an awkward, shy sort of way, so it's not too long before Elissa and he are hooking up.

I'm not going to bother hiding the fact that Ryan's sister, Carrie Anne, turns out to be still alive and living in a secret room under the house. The movie reveals this about 20 minutes in. The true mystery is in revealing the relationship between her and Ryan, why she murdered their parents, why he's determined to protect and hide her, and why he keeps leaving her door unlocked or the key in an easily accessible place so she can keep escaping and causing havoc.

Director Mark Tonderai and screenwriter David Loucka occasionally get a few flashes of inspiration. But mostly they feel like they're going through the paces, relying on a whole heap of boo-gotcha moments to generate momentary scares rather than carefully crafting a pervading sense of dread.

"House at the End of the Street" is the sort of movie a young actress stars in when she's just starting out, hoping to land meatier roles and develop some real acting chops. Lawrence, an Academy Award nominee at 20, has already been down that path. This role feels like a step backward for her artistically and career-wise.

I guess we shouldn't blame her too much. Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of great parts out there for ingenues. Next week, another Oscar nominee, Anna Kendrick, is starring in a "Glee" knockoff called "Pitch Perfect." Ah, the cinematic ides of September...

2 stars out of four

Review: "Trouble with the Curve"

"Trouble with the Curve" exceeds the sum of its parts. An imperfect movie, it has modest flaws and inconsistencies that one can point to. But in the theater with the light flickering, it all just works.

It's like a baseball pitcher who displays shaky form in his windup and delivery, but he hurls strike after strike. The fact that you recognize where it goes wrong only makes how everything ends up in the right place even more amazing.

You sit there, marveling.

This excellent drama stars Clint Eastwood in his most vulnerable performance ever, and is easily one of the finest movies of 2012. It acts as a perfect counterpoint to last year's wonderful "Moneyball."

Both films are set in the world of baseball, but are not really sports movies. Instead, they explore the mix of obsession and fear inside the players, the coaches and the scouts.

In "Moneyball," the heroes were the young nerds with their computers and cutting-edge statistical analysis, which allowed them to circumvent the hard-bitten experience of the old-timers. Here, the crotchety veteran scouts are the good guys, and the whippersnappers who stare at screens but never watch a game play the heavies.

Gus Lobel (Eastwood) is an aging scout for the Atlanta Braves, his specialty being snapping up young talent from the Carolinas. But it's been awhile since he recruited any big names, and his eyesight is starting to go. Gus has been a widower a long time, and an ornery cuss even longer, so it's no surprise that he keeps his macular degeneration a secret.
 
Perhaps his only friend in the world is the head of scouting, Pete Klein (John Goodman, in a solid, comfortable performance). He senses something is wrong, and convinces Gus' daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to go be with her dad on his big trip. Gus has been given a make-or-break assignment, to judge whether a beefy young swatter named Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill) is the real deal and should be taken with the Braves' first-round pick.

Mickey and her dad are hardly close, and if he's a piece of work, she's studying to outdo him. A lawyer who hasn't taken a Saturday off in seven years, she has a boyfriend dropping hints about marriage, but treats his overtures like a scheduling conflict.

Mickey has a big case looming that will determine whether she makes partner at her firm. Spending a week trying to reconnect with her standoffish father, and serve as his eyes at games, is not high on her list. The dutiful child, she goes anyway.

It's in plumbing this tenuous relationship between father and daughter that the movie saves its best pitches. Adams and Eastwood have an easy, organic connection -- which is a hard thing when playing characters divided by a lifelong inability to see eye-to-eye.

Playing the third wheel is Justin Timberlake as Johnny Flanagan, a former pitching ace signed by Gus who blew out his arm and is now working his way up the food chain with the Red Sox, doing some scouting while hoping to break in as an announcer.

Johnny and Mickey share a timid, funny little courtship -- two lost souls feeling each other out, natural enemies who can't help bantering. For awhile the movie shifts almost entirely away from Gus and onto them, and we don't mind because it feels so natural.

Timberlake has a tendency to be glib and superficial in his performances, oft skating by as the fast-talking charmer, but here he gets a chance to show a few deeper notes and doesn't falter. As an actor, he's getting there.

The real revelation, though, is Eastwood. At age 82, he does things he simply couldn't have done 25 years ago, balancing moments of humor or tragedy on a risky edge. At one point he sings sweetly to his wife's gravestone, and in another he rejects his daughter's heartfelt outreach.

Given the sorts of movies he used to make and the way he played them, the old Eastwood would have just landed on these moments, hit them solidly and moved on. Here, he caresses and elevates them, like a jazz musician holding a long note, bending it and adding colors unwritten on any sheet of music.

The last time Eastwood acted in a movie he didn't direct himself was 1993's "In the Line of Fire," for veteran Wolfgang Peterson. Here he's doing it for a rookie screenwriter, Randy Brown, and first-time director Robert Lorenz, who's been a producer/assistant director on a number of Eastwood projects.

It says something when someone of Eastwood's stature entrusts himself to a creative team who are novices. From the bracing success of "Trouble with the Curve," it would seem he shares Gus' knack for spotting new talent.

3.5 stars out of four

Fall film preview

Even by the forgiving standards of the bubblegum summer movie season, this May through August was an extravagantly inconsequential time for film lovers.

Most of the big box office wannabes garnered a massive ho-hum from American audiences, and had to troll overseas for most of their moolah. Luckily, Hollywood appears to have lined up a very strong showing for this fall and winter.

It's the season when the movie biz slips out of its T-shirt and into a tux, gets a shave and haircut and puts on its respectable face. There's a glint in their collective eye that says, "It's Oscar time."
Even with "The Great Gatsby," which had portended to be a top contender in the Academy Award race, pushing its release back to summer 2013, there appears to be no shortage of high-minded movies: "Anna Karenina," "Argo," "Lincoln" and "Les Miserables" among them.

There's still plenty of lighter, fun fare to be had. A number of kid-themed animated movies are on the way: "Hotel Transylvania," "Frankenweenie," "Wreck-It Ralph." The long-delayed 23rd James Bond movie falls to Earth. And the prequel to "The Lord of the Rings" finally arrives after years of uncertainty ... well, at least the first one-third of it: "The Hobbit," planned as a duo of films, has now become three.

So here is our cinematic outlook for the next few months. Films with early Oscar buzz are marked with a golden "O." (Release dates are subject to change.)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Sept. 21) -- Emma Watson attempts her first major non-Harry Potter role as half of a fun-loving teen duo that attempts to bring a shy high school freshman out of his shell.

Trouble with the Curve (Sept. 21) -- For the first time in 23 years, Clint Eastwood stars in a movie he didn't direct. He plays an aging baseball scout with failing eyesight who gets an assist from his ambitious daughter, played by Amy Adams.

The Master (Sept. 21) -- Paul Thomas Anderson, in his first movie since 2007's "There Will Be Blood," directs this drama about a 1950s cult figure (Philip Seymour Hoffman) that is purported to be a thinly-veiled portrait of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Also marks the return of Joaquin Phoenix after his stunt retirement.

Dredd 3D (Sept. 21) -- Yup, they're rebooting the comic book franchise that Sylvester Stallone nearly destroyed. In an irradiated wasteland in the future, Karl Urban plays a man with the combined powers of judge, jury and executioner.

Won't Back Down (Sept. 28) -- Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal play crusading mothers fighting an entrenched bureaucracy to turn around a failed inner city school. Probably not going to be on the NEA's recommended list.

Looper (Sept. 28) -- One of the more original concepts this fall. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays an assassin with a special niche: he kills victims sent back in time. The gig goes sour when the new guy he's supposed to plug is himself, 30 years older and played by Bruce Willis.

Hotel Transylvania (Sept. 28) -- This fun and creepy animated flick resembles early Tim Burton. The vampire proprietor of a hotel catering to creatures of the night is perturbed when a human interloper shows up and starts wooing his daughter.

Taken 2 (Oct. 5) -- Liam Neeson is back in this action/thriller as a man with "a very particular set of skills." Having rescued his daughter from kidnappers, he finds they're out for revenge.

Pitch Perfect (Oct. 5) -- Finally, someone realized the musical stage-singing phenomenon -- "Glee," "American Idol" -- was ripe for parody. Anna Kendrick leads a group of female singers into the fray of competition.

Frankenweenie (Oct. 5) -- Director Tim Burton, coming off a long slog remaking moldy intellectual properties, is back with ... a remake. At least of it's of his own stuff: Burton's own 1984 live-action short film. Now the tale of a pooch brought back from the dead is a stop-motion animation feature.

Argo (Oct. 12) -- Ben Affleck continues his evolution into a serious filmmaker by directing and starring in this dramatic thriller based on a little-known event: the CIA rescue of Americans who escaped the storming of the U.S. embassy during the 1979 Iran uprising.

Alex Cross (Oc. 19) -- Tyler Perry, practically a one-man moviemaking empire, steps out from behind the camera for a lead role where he's not wearing a dress. He plays a homicide detective/psychologist on the trail of a killer. Based on the James Patterson novels.

Cloud Atlas (Oct. 26) -- Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, each stuck in something of a career rut, try something bold in this sprawling, elliptical drama about human lives intersecting over the course of centuries. From the Wachowski duo behind the "Matrix" trilogy.

The Sessions (Oct. 26) -- This Sundance favorite is based on the true story of a writer (indie fave John Hawkes) paralyzed by polio who enlists the help of a sex surrogate (Helen Hunt) to help him lose his virginity. Kinky and life-affirming.

Chasing Mavericks (Oct. 26) -- Gerard Butler plays a surfing legend who takes a young gun under his wing to tackle the most dangerous waves in the world. Together they form a bond and learn important truths, like that those wetsuits really ride up on ya.

Wreck-It Ralph (Nov. 2) -- Disney's latest animation wonder has a zippy premise: Ralph (voice of John C. Reilly) is a video game villain who rebels against his programming because he wants to be the good guy for once.

Flight (Nov. 2) -- Robert Zemeckis, after a fitful decade-long experiment with motion-capture animation, returns to live-action filmmaking with this promising drama starring Denzel Washington as an airline pilot who's hailed as a hero, then vilified.

Skyfall (Nov. 9) -- Following legal and financial troubles that threatened the James Bond franchise, Daniel Craig is back for his third outing as Agent 007. Bond, presumed dead, goes rogue to combat a madman (Javier Bardem) who wants to take out M (Judi Dench) and all of MI6.

Lincoln (Nov. 9) -- The season's powerhouse biopic arrives courtesy director Steven Spielberg and star Daniel Day-Lewis, focusing on the last few months of the 16th president's life. This one looks like a can't-miss.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2 (Nov. 16) -- The teen vampire mega-franchise wraps up its tale as young Bella, now transformed into a bloodsucker, and her love Edward fight against the vampire nobility. Some of us still think that Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson breakup is a publicity stunt.

Life of Pi (Nov. 21) -- Filmmaker Ang Lee is back with this epic adventure about an Indian boy who is shipwrecked and stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Think "The Black Stallion" meets "Slumdog Millionaire."

Silver Linings Playbook (Nov. 21) -- Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro and Jennifer Lawrence star in this oddball dramedy about a man who went crazy, and after four years in a mental institution tries to reconnect with his family and a lonely widow. From director David O. Russell.

Red Dawn (Nov. 21) -- This oft-delayed reboot of the 1980s action/drama sees American taken over by ... North Korea. What, Burundi seemed too unlikely to play the heavy?

Rise of the Guardians (Nov. 21) -- The embodiments of childhood whimsy -- Santa Claus, Easter Rabbit, Sandman and the Tooth Fairy -- team up to combat a pitch-black bad guy who wants to take over the world in this DreamWorks animation effort.

Anna Karenina (Nov. 21) -- Keira Knightley stars in a lavish adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel, directed by Joe Wright. A high society Russian wife finds herself embroiled in family and romantic entanglements. Co-starring Jude Law and Aaron Johnson.

Hyde Park on the Hudson (Dec. 7) -- The notion of comedian Bill Murray portraying Franklin D. Roosevelt isn't so screwy when you consider his turn toward dramatic material of late. Plus, the material is funnier than you'd think. Set in 1939, FDR prepares to host the King and Queen of England.

Les Misérables (Dec. 14) -- Victor Hugo's classic novel about crime and punishment has been adapted to film many times, but this is the first attempt to translate the stage musical version to the screen. Starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Dec. 14) -- Set several decades B.F. (Before Frodo), this prequel to "The Lord of the Rings" relates the tale of how humble hobbit Bilbo Baggins set off on an adventure with 13 dwarves, slew a dragon and acquired the Ring of Power. Now expanded to three films -- from a 300-page book -- director Peter Jackson is apparently incorporating a whole lot of background from J.R.R. Tolkien's universe to pad things out.

Zero Dark Thirty (Dec. 19) -- This much talked-about war drama from director Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker") gives an insider's view of the 10-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden.

This Is 40 (Dec. 21) -- Increasingly unfunny comedy auteur Judd Apatow tackles middle-aged angst, starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as a married couple looking to put the zip back in their lives.

On the Road (Dec. 21) -- No one's quite sure why it took 55 years to bring Jack Kerouac's seminal Beat novel to the screen, but here it is starring Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund as drifters searching for an identity. Kristen Stewart's sexy scenes caused a stir at Cannes.

Jack Reacher (Dec. 21) -- Tom Cruise brings the titular star of a series of bare-fisted novels to life, playing an ex-military cop who roams the land, looking for criminals to punish. With Robert Duvall.

Parental Guidance (Dec. 25) -- Billy Crystal and Bette Midler team up as an aging couple unexpectedly tapped to look after their three grandkids. Good to see both of them back in the comedy saddle.

Django Unchained (Dec. 25) -- Quentin Tarantino's latest mash-up of grindhouse sensibilities takes him back to the 1800s, starring Jamie Foxx as a runaway slave who returns to the plantation to reclaim his wife, action-hero style. Co-starring Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Video review: "Hysteria"

"Hysteria" had me until about two-thirds of the way through. This witty, funny movie is a highly fictionalized but not entirely ludicrous account of the invention of the vibrator, circa 1880 London. Yes, that's right, the world's most popular sex toy was created by starchy doctors seeking a way to address upper-crust housewives reporting vague physical and emotional problems.

Up until the 1950s, "hysteria" was the catch-all diagnosis that medical men gave to an umbrella of symptoms displayed by women that they didn't understand: frigidity, depression, etc. Going back to antiquity, the prescribed remedy was vulval massage performed by a medical professional. In other words, women would go into a doctor's office to be manually stimulated by the hand of a doctor until they achieved ... remedy.

Director Tanya Wexler and screenwriters Stephen Dyer and Jonah Lisa Dyer take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the material, concocting a story of an ambitious young doctor, Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), who took out the first patent on a vibrator.

Apprenticed to a wealthy physician who treats the vexations of London's finest females (Jonathan Pryce), Granville woos his mentor's proper daughter (Felicity Jones) but is intrigued by her sister, the brash, idealistic proto-suffragette Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

At first, the dashing young doctor is a boon to the practice. But he soon finds himself plagued by hand cramps, and has to come up with a mechanical alternative with the help of his friend and rich patron, Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett).

It's all played for jokes and winks, to generally successful effect. I should point out that despite the film's R rating, all the "treatment" takes place under modest drapes appropriate to the Victorian era, and beyond the risqué subject matter the movie is unlikely to shock even the most matronly of grandmothers.

The last half-hour or so gets a bit forced, as the filmmakers find ways to nudge Charlotte and Granville together in ways that aren't entirely convincing. Charlotte's over-the-top progressive attitudes also become grating, seemingly stitched on to the story to benefit the sensibilities of the modern audience, rather than any temporal believability of the characters.

Video extras, which are the same for both Blu-ray and DVD editions, are substantial but not terribly expansive.

Director Wexler teams up with Dancy and Pryce for a feature-length commentary track. I like it when actors participate in commentary tracks, but it's a shame Gyllenhaal chose not to contribute. Similarly, the featurette "An Evening with Tanya Wexler, Hugh Dancy and Jonathan Pryce" exasperatingly excludes the female lead.

There are also a handful of deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, and "Passion & Power: The Technology of Orgasm," a 43-minute documentary on the history of power-assisted sexuality.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars