THE FIGHTER

Review: The Fighter
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Watching “The Fighter” is like being strapped to an electric chair – on wheels. A circus act of white-trash exploitation that has somehow emerged as prime awards bait, the movie jolts you incessantly while flying by the seat of its beer-stained, cigarette-burned, acid-washed pants. The tone of the first hour is so loopy, it fills the mind with a wholly unnecessary barrage of thoughts: Should I laugh? Cry? Cringe? Scream? Walk out? Based on the true story of working-class boxer Micky Ward and his contender-turned-crack-addict half-brother Dicky Eklund, the 1990s-set flick gnaws on most of its Massachusetts subjects, many of whom hail from what's portrayed as an insufferable freakshow family from hell.

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BLACK SWAN

Review: Black Swan
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I really didn't give “Black Swan” a fair shake. The first time I saw it, back in October when it opened the Philadelphia Film Festival, my damned undue expectations had me squirming every time I didn't get a class-A, cosmopolitan ballet thriller: Why is Winona Ryder all but breaking her teeth on the scenery as a drunken, past-her-prime cliché? Why is Mila Kunis spouting the lame-brained innuendos of a straight-to-DVD teen flick? And why the hell is the stunted, fractured mental state of Natalie Portman's prima ballerina reaching dizzy extremes so absurd that one can't help but laugh? Shame on me for trying to box this movie in. A little more time with it reveals: that scenery was meant to be chewed, that dialogue doesn't want to be any better than it is, and that absurdity couldn't be more throat-grabbingly effective. “Black Swan” is as much a lurid potboiler as it is an intensely sophisticated psychodrama. It's a probing character study, a window into an insular world, a twisted tale of sexual discovery, a perverse comedy and a mad nightmare of manifested fears. There's really no way in which it doesn't succeed.

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THE KING'S SPEECH

Review: The King's Speech
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Can a movie be too perfect? It's a question you may very well ask yourself once you reach the immaculate, crowning conclusion of “The King's Speech,” an Oscar-hungry British biopic about stuttering monarch King George VI. Directed with faultless precision by Tom Hooper (“The Damned United”), it's about as crisp and square-cornered a prestige picture as you're likely to find. Its fact-based subject matter is at once grand and modest, it pays graceful homage to an oft-overlooked handicap, its well-behaved humor stealthily cuts through its highbrow tension, and its par-for-the-course conflicts rise and fall on cue. Its hard-won ascent and ultimate uplift are so bloody satisfying, it's easy to skip over the fact that there's indeed a little something missing. “Speech” covers all the bases, but in staying so close to the playbook, it sacrifices necessary amounts of surprise and risk.

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TANGLED

Review: Tangled
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I'd often wondered why Disney, a studio that's pretty much cornered the market on fairy-tale princesses, never took a stab at adapting “Rapunzel,” a Brothers Grimm fable with all the happily-ever-after ingredients of “Snow White,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella.” Turns out Disney was saving the tale of the long-haired tower-dweller to serve as the basis for its 50th animated feature. It's hard to imagine the wait being more worth it. Retooled and retitled to appeal to a broader, more contemporary audience, “Rapunzel” finally arrives as “Tangled,” a classic crowd-pleaser that's spiked with attitude and beautifully marries old-school and new-school animation. An end-to-end delight, it's my favorite animated film of 2010.

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HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
2.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Did my appreciation for the Harry Potter saga's ever-darkening maturity just turn around and slap me in the face? Watching last year's gorgeous game-changer “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” I marveled at the sheer lack of “Sorcerer's Stone”-style childishness, fully convinced that director David Yates was poised to lead me down a grown-up path I could finally follow. But with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” the first half of the last chapter of the lengthy wizard opus, Yates, who's been around since “Order of the Phoenix,” jumps to extremes and abandons all sense of joy, excitement, cohesion and, worst of all, pacing. It's as if he and the series' screenwriter, Steve Kloves, grew determined to twist this penultimate installment into some sort of brooding, arty, European think piece, which J.K. Rowling's material, however rich, simply can't support. Looking on while this 146-minute movie dragged its blistered feet, I realized the filmmakers I'd hailed for putting away childish things had in fact created a monster.

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MONSTERS

Review: Monsters
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

If you're looking for a balls-to-the-wall creature feature that blows millions of dollars on flashy effects, you can always buy a ticket to “Skyline.” But if you want to see a genre picture stealthily served up as an arthouse drama, or an indie that makes extraordinary use of its shoestring budget, you need look no further than “Monsters,” the feature debut of British CGI artist Gareth Edwards. A true multi-talent, Edwards wrote, directed and shot the film, which through his dexterous handling looks pristine and expensive. Not expensive, mind you, in a “Skyline” sort of way, but in a manner that reflects a force more powerful than big-studio backing: the creativity of a filmmaker eager and able to reach terrific ends with meager means. The irony alone is just delicious: a former CGI artist makes a monster movie that leaves CGI as an afterthought, and is instead defined by handsome photography and the art of not showing. Just when you thought “Cloverfield” was the “Blair Witch” of sci-fi, “Monsters” proves it was just another blockbuster.

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FAIR GAME

Movie Review: Fair Game
4 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

Valerie Plame, the CIA agent who was wrongfully outed in 2003 after her husband ruffled the government's feathers with a probing New York Times editorial, is about the least interesting thing in “Fair Game,” a political thriller adapted from Plame's memoir that positions her as the central character. As played by Naomi Watts, in an irritatingly overacted performance, Plame is seen as a backstabbed do-gooder who's blank and boilerplate. Her efforts to balance espionage and domesticity are intriguing (as they always are in the movies), but she has little inner life save a supposed impenetrable patriotism. What takes precedent is everything that's swirling around her – a tornado of post-9/11, wartime wheelings and dealings whose jagged debris still gets under the skin today. As Plame's husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), observes in the movie, what was done to Plame wasn't so much an offense against her and her family, but part of a myriad of governmental offenses against the American public. That's what makes the movie so engrossing – not the struggle of one, but the retrospective fury of many.

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THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST

Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Since the Swedish-made adaptations of Stieg Larsson's “Millenium” books have largely succeeded in dodging the typical franchise tropes, those who've been following the trilogy should have known it wouldn't go out with a blockbuster-style bang. But did it have to go out with such a whimper? High off the enticing introductions and fierce attitude of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” and the sustained vigor and raised stakes of “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” viewers walking into returning director Daniel Alfredson's “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest” are in for a major buzzkill. Like its predecessors, this third and final chapter of the saga of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is never short on intelligence; however, it's long on tedium and pace-slowing chatter, and it makes the grave mistake of consistently tucking away its greatest commodity.

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127 HOURS

Review: 127 Hours
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Danny Boyle's sun-washed survivalist drama “127 Hours” is a movie of intensified, palpable sensations – a character study so closely intimate and keenly hip to human responses that it creates a psychic, near-tactile link between viewer and protagonist. One of the earlier sensations Boyle perfectly captures is the grating, “now-what?!” frustration that erupts when a wild inconvenience wedges itself between us and our practical plans. There's no one who hasn't felt it – the sense that some unseen force sent an asteroid plummeting to Earth to demolish the day. When these roadblocks strike, and when the screaming and stomping have died down, we have little choice but to switch tracks and chase after a solution. The things of which we're capable multiply, as we'll do anything not just to survive, but to gain back that comfy practicality.

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SECRETARIAT

Review: Secretariat
2.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Oscar Wilde wrote something to the effect of, “what was good enough for our fathers isn't good enough for us.” It's a line I've been thinking about a lot lately, and it's as good a place as any to start when discussing the problems with “Secretariat,” a beautifully made movie that's unfortunately so precious and archaic it leaves you feeling like you're floating on a cloud of mothballs. At first glance, the film, directed by Randall Wallace and written by Mike Rich, looks like “Seabiscuit” meets “The Blind Side,” and that's about right. Featuring Brady-Bunch family dynamics, broad comic tics, Magical Negroes and religious elements that creep up like Jehovah's Witnesses at your doorstep, it's the sort of bizarrely conservative entertainment that may still have an audience, but feels unwelcomely transplanted from the youth of our fathers, or even our grandfathers.

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WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN' and FREAKONOMICS

Reviews: Waiting for 'Superman' and Freakonomics
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Quite possibly the most talked-about documentary in a year overflowing with them, the manifoldly educational “Waiting for Superman” is prime Oscar bait. The worst thing about it is it's fully aware of that. The notion that more effort has gone into the marketing of this standard-structure doc than the actual filmmaking persists like a devil on your shoulder, as does the feeling that the film itself is being plugged more than the issue it represents: the dire state of American public schools. Directed by “Inconvenient Truth”-helmer Davis Guggenheim and backed by Bill Gates and Microsoft, “Superman” (named for the send-us-a-hero desperation felt by many underprivileged students) presumably has enough money behind it to start a new chain of the charter schools it champions, let alone clinch a promotional appearance on every major news show in the country. Armed with subject matter that's about as Oprah-friendly as it gets (the talk-show giant, herself a major Oscar-influencer, has already devoted at least one full episode to it), the movie is one that's so outwardly admirable that few would dare stand against it, or notice that, compared with the many jewels of its genre, it's quite underwhelming.

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THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Review: The Social Network
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

If there's a downside to “The Social Network,” it's the very real likelihood that every movie you'll see for some time after will pale in comparison. Disappointing films, like “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and “It's Kind of a Funny Story,” will seem much worse. Even fine, important films, like the change-the-public-school-systems documentary “Waiting for 'Superman,'” will register as second-rate. On top of being so many wonderful things, “The Social Network,” or, “the Facebook movie,” as many are calling it, is a movie-ruiner. It's that good.

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WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

Review: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
2 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

A funny – make that infuriating – thing happens during the course of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” Oliver Stone's 23-years-later sequel that's as strained and cumbersome as its title. At first, it seems Stone is terribly guilty of what so many other franchise-helmers have been: putting far too much starry-eyed stock in his big, iconic character. When master-of-greed Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) gathers his tacky '80s effects while leaving a lengthy prison stint, and when he later appears on television to promote his new book, his name is enunciated with such holy emphasis you'd think Stone expected every finance guru on Earth to get tingly at the pulpy, alliterated sound of it. (Gekko is a legend, yes, but there's an icky feeling he's nowhere more a legend than in Stone's own mind.) Soon, however, matters take a turn for the even worse as it grows clearer and clearer that neither Stone nor screenwriters Stephen Schiff and Allan Loeb have any interest in retaining the nasty spirit of the slick-haired villain that landed Douglas an Oscar. The new Gekko is a de-fanged bore whose actions are both contrived and incongruous, and the whole movie follows in his wavering footsteps.

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THE TOWN

Review: The Town
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Watching “The Town,” it's practically impossible to process that it was made by Ben Affleck. It's not that Affleck's movie-star slump was ever bad enough to obliterate the possibility of seeing him as an artist, or that the other film he directed, “Gone Baby Gone,” wasn't a solid (if disjointed and overpraised) debut feature; it's that nothing this man has ever created has suggested he had the capacity to create something like this – the best heist-heavy urban crime saga since “The Dark Knight” and one of the best movies of the year.

Co-written by Affleck (with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard) and starring him as well, “The Town,” based on the novel “Prince of Thieves” by Chuck Hogan, could have very well wound up a desperate, self-important vanity project. But it never feels like that, even with Affleck's main character, Doug MacRay, getting all the ponderous monologues, lingering close-ups and criminal-with-a-conscience glory. Most startling is how this Hollywood picture is so minimally compromised, and how, from the dynamic character interactions to the arresting street shoot-outs, it bears the inner-city grit and richness of a fierce filmmaker who's been at it for years. You will think: Michael Mann. Martin Scorsese.

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MESRINE

Review: Mesrine
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

“All films are part fiction,” disclaims a pre-credit scroll at the start of “Mesrine,” director Jean-François Richet's epic French-language biopic. “No film can recreate all the complexity of a human life,” it continues. Fair enough. But if the real Jacques Mesrine, the John Dillinger of France, did even a fraction of what actor Vincent Cassel does in this two-part saga about the gangster's crime spree in the '60s and '70s, it'd still make one hell of a motion picture experience, exciting and quite complex indeed.

Now playing at arthouse venues, parts one (“Mesrine: Killer Instinct”) and two (“Mesrine: Public Enemy #1”) were both released in France in 2008, where they were nominated for multiple César Awards and won three (Best Actor, Best Director and Best Sound). It would be easy to say the first part shows the rise of Mesrine and the second part shows the fall, but only the former would be true, as the man we see never really falls; he's just finally knocked down. Like Dillinger, Mesrine didn't suffer some devastating downward spiral, and given the chance, he would have surely kept on living the felonious life, smiling all the way.

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MACHETE

Review: Machete

3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Although the basis for “Machete” is in fact an idea concocted by writer/director Robert Rodriguez in the early 1990s, one could say this Tex-Mex tale of bloody vigilantism is the first movie based on a phony trailer. And if it's not, it's surely the most popular. The public got its first taste of “Machete” in 2007, when it debuted as one of the soaringly over-the-top intermission attractions of “Grindhouse,” Rodriguez's and Quentin Tarantino's hyper-stylized, cigarette-burned, midnight-madness double feature. The three-minute clip became a sensation, and it was only a matter of time before the title character, an illegal immigrant and former Mexican Federale out for vengeance and justice, finally got his own full-length película. Starring 66-year-old Danny Trejo, the career tough guy with the bullet-ridden complexion who's played countless supporting roles and appeared in many Rodriguez productions, the expanded “Machete” offers oodles of the tongue-in-cheek, blade-in-belly excess its core audience expects, but some key things have been lost in the stretching, adequate control being one of them.

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CENTURION

Review: Centurion

3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

With 2005's “The Descent,” writer/director Neil Marshall delivered one of the best horror films of the last 10 years. The subterranean thriller – which sees a group of trapped female spelunkers square off against pasty-skinned monsters – is a triumph of story, craft, atmosphere and chills, and given the slim-pickings of the genre, some might even call it vital. (Others might reach for a similar adjective when discussing “Dog Soldiers,” Marshall's cult-fave debut.) “Centurion,” a son-of-“Gladiator” splatterfest oddly aimed at the arthouse, produces the opposite reaction. More akin to his 2008 misfire, “Doomsday,” Marshall's latest is a well-enough made clash-of-the-broadswords picture, but it reeks of inconsequence. Amidst all the amply distributed plasma and the Ridley-Scott-gunmetal-filter photography, you wonder: Why should I care about this movie?

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THE EXTRA MAN

Review: The Extra Man

4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

One way for a young man to thicken his skin upon moving to New York is to surround himself with some of the city's most aloofly outré eccentrics. That's what Louis Ives, a sheepish dreamer played by sheepishness pro Paul Dano, unwittingly does in “The Extra Man,” the deeply weird and weirdly deep new comedy from Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the husband-and-wife filmmaking team behind 2007's “American Splendor.” Booted from his teaching job at a Princeton prep school after being caught in a compromising spot (he's got a thing for ladies' underthings that goes well beyond the typical male turn-ons), Louis decides to head to Manhattan, a move partly prompted by the aspiring writer's tendency to imagine himself as a character in “The Great Gatsby,” or any other novel by his literary hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald. But even one so imaginative as Louis couldn't have dreamed he'd wind up living with someone like Henry Harrsion, an out-of-work playwright with outsized quirks who rents Louis a room in his knickknack-strewn foxhole of an apartment. Played riotously well by Kevin Kline, Henry is the first and surely the most memorable of the fun and fancy freaks who enter Louis's life, which does indeed start to look like something out of a Great – or, at least greatly urbane and deranged – American novel.

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EAT PRAY LOVE

Review: Eat Pray Love
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

When Elizabeth Gilbert released her hugely successful 2006 memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia,” naysayers lambasted the New York writer, calling her selfish – a privileged, upper-crust woman with upper-crust problems whose all-expenses-paid globetrotting hardly warranted a philosophical travelogue, let alone one that would enjoy an extended stay on The New York Times Bestseller List. Yet, I don't think Gilbert set out to top the charts and conquer the world with her book, which chronicles her cross-continental quest for self and spirituality following the collapse of her marriage and emotional well-being. Sometimes people, regardless of their resources or backgrounds, need to take what they know to be the very best avenues for themselves. Sometimes selfishness is a necessity for survival, and others need not understand. That's what comes across most strongly in “Eat Pray Love,” the imperfect, pleasure-cruise adaptation of the book, directed and co-written by “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy. The movie hits lulls, overstays its welcome and follows a way-too-Hollywood trajectory, but it's also an exhilarating palate-pleaser, and a fine vehicle with which to reunite us with the movie star Julia Roberts.

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STEP UP 3D

Review: Step Up 3D
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

It doesn't get much more superficial than “Step Up 3D,” the leap-, twist-, thrust- and windmill-off-the-screen third installment of a film series defined by perfect choreography and perfectly lousy writing. Everything you see in this souped-up sequel is in support of its being an urban-confetti carnival ride. Whenever it breaks from its dance numbers and briefly strains to develop its excuses for characters, you can feel the entire production itching to get back to the spectacle, and you can practically hear the grinding gears of the conceptual process: To sustain their franchise, a crew of excitable hacks decides to employ 3-D technology and stage a bunch of truly in-your-face sequences, then realizes, “Dammit! We've got to tie this all together with an actual – gulp! – story.” Thus, the narrative is a chore, both for filmmaker and viewer. The dancing and visual design, however, are so energetic, bright and unapologetically sensational, you can't take your eyes off the screen.

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CHARLIE ST. CLOUD

Review: Charlie St. Cloud

3 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

If Zac Efron were working with better material, were a little bit older and weren't, well, Zac Efron, he'd garner some serious praise for his work in “Charlie St. Cloud,” a spiritual drama that's based on a 2004 Ben Sherwood novel but basically exists to serve as the “High School Musical” grad's first dramatic star vehicle. In the pop-culture-conscious mind (or, at least, in one that thinks in stereotypes), the word “dramatic” doesn't exactly fit nicely into conversations about teen idols. Yet, I didn't catch a single false note in Efron's “Cloud” performance – no strained responses, no glaring inexperience, no histrionic, black-and-white extremes to swallow up the necessary emotional gray area. In short, none of the typical teen idol stuff.

Clearly approaching his career with DiCaprio-like determination, Efron, 22, is a talented, consummate professional, and I think it's safe to assume he'll be headlining many films for many years to come. In “Cloud,” despite some stoic stares, he never fails to connect with the audience, and his performance – a balancing act of maintaining a non-listless nonchalance and purifying bumper-sticker dialogue with pitch-perfect line readings – is as good a case as any of a hot young star proving himself beyond his looks. Which is not to say, in any form or fashion, that Efron's reduce-to-a-puddle looks don't benefit him and the film tremendously. At times, it's almost comical how absurdly attractive this kid is. With his thick eyebrows, elfin nose, gleaming ivories and casting-director-friendly muscles, he's a bred-for-cinema hunk in the tradition of James Dean. And director Burr Steers (Efron's “17 Again”) doesn't squander a bit of his young star's assets, seizing every opportunity to swim in his blue-lagoon eyes. (You know someone was considering "Dreamboat" as the title for this nautical-themed film.)

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THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN

Review: The Father of My Children
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I love movies about making movies. Many of them, like “Sunset Boulevard,” “The Player” “8½” and “8½'s” wrongfully abused stepchild, “Nine,” are as interested in portraying the glitzy glamor of showbiz as exploring the struggles of those being digested within its underbelly. “The Father of My Children,” French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve's 2009 Cannes favorite (it nabbed the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section), ditches all the glamor and focuses on the gastric juices.

Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), an independent Parisian film producer, is hit with problem upon problem, setback upon setback, as if someone were following him around with a tennis ball cannon. His life is a fascinating, frustrating swirl of behind-the-scenes stressors, all born of the initial desire to put art up on the screen. Somewhere along the line for Grégoire, the art end was terminally eclipsed by the business end, and Hansen-Løve, a serious talent at 29, realistically exposes the hectic, money-conscious muck of her own profession while illustrating Grégoire's undoing. At least, that's the first hour of the film.

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INCEPTION

Review: Inception
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Christopher Nolan has said he was influenced by the work of trailblazers like Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Michael Mann and The Wachowski Brothers when crafting his dense, awesome, near-indescribable mind-trip “Inception,” the adrenaline-shot antidote to summer-movie malaise. Without question, Nolan, the writer/director who's also given us “Memento” and “The Dark Knight,” will himself be a major influence on future filmmakers like him, who, to borrow a choice line from his brilliant new thriller, “(aren't) afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” Amazingly ambitious in concept and execution, “Inception” marks the marriage of Nolan's talent for manipulating narrative structure and his exceptional ability to apply arts and smarts to large-scale, bankable entertainment. Nowhere else in the current realm of popular cinema will you find a film more capable of fully engaging your brain while providing sights and sounds that dazzle and electrify.

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THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

With the the books of Stieg Larsson's “Millenium Trilogy” flying off American shelves (they've officially unseated the “Twilight” tomes as the hottest must-reads of the moment), the buzz regarding the film adaptations has become all about the forthcoming American remakes, the first of which is set to be directed by David Fincher from an already-in-the-bag script by Steven Zaillian. I'm plenty interested to see what a visionary like Fincher will bring to these audacious mysteries, but it's disheartening how the original Swedish-language films are now being treated as mere stepping stones to the Hollywood versions. Americans don't know what they're missing.

The Swedish movies are brisk, intelligent, well-performed thrillers, and even if the remakes can capture all that, they won't be able to replicate the basic, indigenous nature of Scandinavian stories recreated as Scandinavian films. The second installment, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” fully retains the tough-as-nails aura of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which hit U.S. art houses in March. Following the ongoing, intrigue-ridden adventures of magazine editor Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and mysterious, bisexual hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), “Fire” also reminds us that good stories begin with great characters.

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THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

Review: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Unlike last year's “New Moon,” which boggled the mind in that it wasn't in fact some late-night SOAPnet special, “Eclipse,” the third adaptation of author Stephenie Meyer's “Twilight” tetralogy, actually has a cinematic pulse, boasting higher stakes and greater urgency than both of its predecessors. Things are getting a lot more action-oriented in the town of Forks, Wash., where a small army of hungry “newborn” vampires are headed to feast on Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), the series' brooding heroine who's still playing eenie-meenie with her dual (and dueling) love interests, the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and the werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Directed by David Slade (“Hard Candy,” “30 Days of Night”), “Eclipse” also bests “New Moon” in how it knowingly nudges its own phenomena, particularly that of its swoon-inducing heartthrobs. Though far from sure-footed, it's more self-skewering than self-indulgent. And, in a welcome development, the film often shifts its focus to the lives and backgrounds of its intriguing secondary characters, enriching the story's milieu and giving the audience much-needed opportunities to digress.

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I AM LOVE

Review: I Am Love
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Tilda Swinton has sculpted one of the most enticing bodies of work of any living actor. She is a connoisseur of exotic, avant garde roles, and even after lending her inimitable talents (and supernatural looks) to mainstream fare like the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, she hasn't lost a sliver of her art house credibility. When her work in 2007's “Michael Clayton” earned her an Oscar (an accolade that unquestionably made the film-buff favorite more popular among the unwashed masses, and one so many recipients have used as a ticket to big-paycheck blockbusters), she seemed to grow only more resolute in the pursuit of out-of-step parts. Last year she appeared in Jim Jarmusch's nothing-if-not-unique mystery “The Limits of Control,” and French filmmaker Erick Zonca's offbeat thriller “Julia,” which contains her marvelous turn as an in-too-deep alcoholic. Now she captivates in a foreign language in “I Am Love,” a luscious, intoxicating Italian melodrama and one of the best films of the year.

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JONAH HEX

Review: Jonah Hex

2 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

In the comic-book western “Jonah Hex,” the title character, a sort-of-resurrected bounty hunter with a sort-of link to the land of the dead, has a talent for touching corpses and bringing them back to life, if only for a few intense, interrogative moments. Trouble is, if Jonah holds on too long, the reanimated stiffs start to slowly, painfully burn up, inching ever closer to what I assume qualifies as a second, definitive kicking of the bucket. Watching this movie isn't much different. As safe and standard a Hollywood product as they come, “Hex” bores you to death with its platitudes and processed plot, then revives your attention with blaring noise and frenzied editing that wind up incinerating your senses. What really burns is knowing that increasingly risk-averse studios like Warner Bros. won't get behind gems like “Winter's Bone,” but they'll invest millions in this kind of dime-a-dozen rubbish. There have been worse movies this season, but “Hex” is probably the least necessary.

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JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK

Review: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

The opening shot of the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” is an unforgiving extreme close-up of Rivers' famous (and famously maintained) mug, which looks slightly alien, is still wrinkle-free at 75 and, for a few delicious seconds, is shown entirely without makeup. It's a totally arresting image, something you never knew you always wanted to see. Eye-opening and eye-grabbing, it's the perfect preview for what's to come in this surprisingly valuable film, shot over a year in the life of the loud-mouthed, trail-and-guns-blazing comedienne. Perhaps what's most surprising is how fully Rivers comes off as a real, live, flawed, scared, breathing, thinking, feeling person, since pop culture basically programmed us to believe she's just a plastic part of the media machine. “Piece of Work” aims to tackle that notion head-on, and does so from frame one.

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SOLITARY MAN

Review: Solitary Man

4 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

The icepick-sharp character study “Solitary Man” charts the dramatic descent of Ben Kalmen, a very badly-behaving, 60-year-old SOB played by Michael Douglas in a slick and lively performance. The film sees Ben move from one poor, irresponsible and childish decision to the next, all in a blind attempt to deny his age and keep a firm grasp on his youth – the good old days when he was a social and professional rock star. The proud denial and delusional nostalgia are soon the only things this former car-dealership giant has to hold on to, as his reckless, own-worst-enemy choices destroy his career and begin alienating him from his family, his friends and, essentially, reality. Following Ben all the way to the bottom, “Solitary Man” is a slightly exhausted, yet largely offbeat and attitude-infused take on the classic tragedy of a man's fall from grace. Call it “Damn-near Death of a Salesman.”

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SPLICE

Review: Splice
1.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

In its early stages of development, the cautionary sci-fi/horror thriller “Splice” surprises you with how non-horror-thriller-like it is. For a time, the bumps, jolts, screams and gore are markedly toned down in favor of the painstaking exploration of themes more provocative than simply the loss of innocence, virginity and limbs. Amazingly, it seems this typically-advertised, don't-mess-with-Mother-Nature freakshow might actually be a scary movie for mature and intellectual viewers. Oh, is that notion ever squashed. Designed to rope horror fans into some slow-boiling, sci-fi psychodrama, “Splice” thinks it's sophisticated, but it's in fact far worse than your average slasher. What it evolves into is a shockingly tasteless bit of sensationalism, which adds insult to inelegance with its absurd self-seriousness.

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SEX AND THE CITY 2

Review: Sex and the City 2
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

For all its froth and superficiality, “Sex and the City 2” gives the viewer a great deal to consider. Barely contained within this overstuffed sequel's 146-minute running time is much to love...and nearly as much to loathe. It's been two years since everyone's favorite self-involved-sex-columnist-slash-flagrant-fashionista, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), tied the knot with the tall, dark and non-committal Mr. Big (Chris Noth), and all is not well in the world of puns, posh apartments and apartment-sized closets. Marital fatigue is manifesting as surely as Liza Minnelli at a gay wedding, and that flat-screen TV Big just bought for the bedroom certainly isn't helping matters. Meanwhile, eminently upbeat mother-of-two Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is down in the maternal dumps, workaholic lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) has finally hit her legal limit, and resident floozy Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is trying everything in the Suzanne Somers Book of Menopausal Reduction to maintain her mojo. Sounds like everybody could use a little well-dressed, slow-motion strut through the deserts of Abu Dhabi.

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PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME

Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

2 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

With the huge success of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films still fresh in their minds, Jerry Bruckheimer and the rest of the folks behind “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” no doubt thought, “if we can turn an amusement park ride into a fun, mega-popular adventure movie, then doing the same with a video game franchise should be a snap, right?” Wrong. The only lightning striking again here is that which zaps the roadside tree in Bruckheimer's snazzy opening logo. Directed by Mike Newell and released, like “Pirates,” under the Walt Disney banner, “Prince of Persia” has a few minor charms tucked under its kaftan, but it's chiefly a series of hollow chase scenes, not a one of them rousing. And the whole production is so awash in artificialness, it may just as well have remained pixelated...or, been turned into an amusement park ride.

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CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY

Review: Casino Jack and the United States of Money

4 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

An e-mail message appears on the screen at the beginning of “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” Alex Gibney's overwhelmingly informative documentary about the career and downfall of infamous Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The e-mail – one of many that Abramoff apparently typed and sent with reckless abandon – reads, “Why would you want to make a documentary? No one watches documentaries. You should make an action film!” One eventually gathers that the message must have been written around the time that Abramoff, also a former film producer, nixed the notion of peddling a documentary about a GOP summit he hosted in Angola, and instead reimagined the events in the form of “Red Scorpion,” the 1989 Dolph Lundgren actioner and alleged vehicle for Abramoff's freedom-fighter fantasies (of the film's copious setups and subplots, this is one of the most entertaining).

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ROBIN HOOD

Review: Robin Hood (2010)

4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I'm deeply invested in the Robin Hood legend. Three of the more than 30 films that have featured the famous bandit – “The Adventures of Robin Hood” with Errol Flynn, Disney's foxy animated classic, and the 1991 Kevin Costner flick, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” – were staples of my youth. As a boy, I made arrows from twigs and turned my parents' backyard into my very own Sherwood Forest. I amassed a collection of Robin Hood books and even dressed up as Robin Hood for Halloween – twice. So I think I'm as qualified as anyone to complain that Ridley Scott's “Robin Hood,” an ambitiously epic origin story, abandons the saga's comfy hallmarks, lacking a single scuffle with the Sheriff of Nottingham, killing off King Richard the Lionheart in the first act and – gasp! – boasting only one scene that depicts anything close to robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.

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IRON MAN 2

Review: Iron Man 2

3.5 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

What really flies throughout much of “Iron Man 2” isn't a jet-propelled, metal-suited superhero, but the dizzying, verbose rantings of star Robert Downey Jr., who long ago mastered the art of adding extra spark to snappy lines written especially for him, or, at least, for someone with his cocksure demeanor (see: “Natural Born Killers,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Sherlock Holmes”). The team behind the original “Iron Man” made the very best use of Downey's special gifts, brilliantly casting him – and not some obvious 25-year-old heartbreaker – as Tony Stark, Marvel Comics' profoundly arrogant playboy billionaire, whose shift from weapons manufacturer to one-man-weapon-for-peace only further validated his womanizing, wisecracking lifestyle. The formula worked like gangbusters, and half the fun was watching Downey dive into a character that, to him and to us, was only too familiar.

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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
1.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I could blister my fingertips typing away about the problems with Hollywood's remake obsession, and how even in my circle of friends there are aspiring screenwriters whose work is more worthy of big-screen treatment than another rehashing of a popular film or TV show, but I'm particularly put off by the ceaseless Xeroxing of iconic horror flicks. Apart from Zack Snyder's near-masterful 2004 revival of George Romero's “Dawn of the Dead,” has a single title in the new wave of nail-biters worked? Now, I'm not talking about box-office success, since we all know every young person between 14 and 22 will hand over 10 bucks so they can amp up their heart rates and cradle their honeys during the really icky parts. But as far as artistic merit or even genuine entertainment value are concerned, from “House of Wax” to “The Last House on the Left,” these movies live in one dull and dismal neighborhood.

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EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Movie Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop
5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Banksy, arguably the world's most famous street artist and certainly its most elusive, has fascinated me since college. An anthropology class introduced me to the prankster-provocateur's blithely controversial body of work, which, via spray-paint stenciling and 3-D objects, has over the last decade turned the streets of London into a kind of art gallery amusement park, transcending the normalcy of urban graffiti and causing its viewers to stop, think and, sometimes, gasp. Often political and often incorporating their concrete canvases to create illusions of depth and dimension, Banksy's pieces have rendered him a hero and a terrorist, a visionary and a menace. And no one even knows who he is.

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DEATH AT A FUNERAL

Review: Death at a Funeral (2010)
1.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Out of a sizable ensemble, the two lead characters in “Death at a Funeral” are brothers Aaron (Chris Rock) and Ryan (Martin Lawrence), whose father's death brings their disparate, dysfunctional family members together. Aaron and Ryan are both writers – the former an unpublished hopeful whose dreams got sidelined by grown-up responsibilities, the latter a published author of what sound like smut novels – and one of the movie's recurring debates is over what constitutes good, legitimate writing. Being the eldest, Aaron wants to write and deliver the eulogy, and, yeah, he has that long-gestating manuscript of a novel just waiting to be submitted, but shouldn't Ryan, the real deal, be the one to do the honors? Or, as is also pointed out, is Ryan just a hack who writes garbage? Surely the filmmakers didn't mean to draw attention to the ineptitude of their dead-tired screenplay, but so they have, and thus the only memorable irony of this arduously unfunny farce is entirely unintentional.

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DATE NIGHT

Movie Review: Date Night
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

As a romantic action-comedy, “Date Night” is pretty routine stuff: Take a Regular Joe and a Regular Jane, drop them into an outrageously dangerous scenario, allow their ignorances and idiosyncrasies to gradually emerge as strengths, and see them outfox a batch of bad guys far more practiced in derring-do (trust me, I've spoiled nothing). But as a celebration of long-term relationships, from the magic to the inevitable monotony, this thoughtful outing is special and ridiculously sweet, enriching its sterile storyline with the adorable, believable isms of its lead couple, New Jersey suburbanites and parents of two Phil and Claire Foster. The Fosters are portrayed by America's must-see-TV sweethearts, Steve Carell and Tina Fey, who are so splendid together they made this reviewer cross his fingers in hopes of future collaborations.

With their full-time jobs compounded by parental duties, Phil, a tax consultant, and Claire, a realtor, are pretty pooped by the time the sun goes down. (“Here we go,” Phil says one morning after his son has torn off his nasal strip, begging for breakfast. “It begins,” Claire responds after getting a piledriver wake-up call from her daughter.) But, determined to keep at least a dash of spice in their marriage, the fatigued 40-somethings never miss their weekly date night, which usually involves swinging by the same local steakhouse, ordering the same potato skin appetizer, hurrying back to relieve the high school babysitter and going to bed without sex. The Fosters' best friends, Brad and Hayley Sullivan (Mark Ruffalo and Fey's former “SNL” co-star Kristen Wiig), found their relationship to be following a similar ho-hum procedure and are now splitting up.

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VINCERE

Movie Review: Vincere
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Historical fact does a mesmerizing dance with artistic license in “Vincere,” an epic Italian melodrama-cum-biopic pristinely directed and co-written by 70-year-old legend Marco Bellocchio (“The Wedding Director”). A contender for the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2009, the film tells of Ida Dalser, Benito Mussolini's one-time lover and supposed first wife, whose story – as told by Bellocchio and fellow scribe Daniela Ceselli – is by turns romantic, glamorous, scintillating, enraging, pitiful and deeply tragic.

While no records confirming Dalser's marriage to the formidable Fascist dictator have ever been found, she apparently remained insistent unto her death that the two were formally wed, and that Mussolini was the father of her only son, Benito Albino. “Vincere,” a title that translates to “victory” or “win” in English and warrants multiple interpretations, takes the liberty of filling in the holes of what's on the books about Dalser's downward-spiral life (dramatizing the secrets uncovered by investigative journalist Marco Zeni), and lifts what could be reductively described as a Lifetime-movie setup into the lofty realm of great Italian cinema.

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HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

Review: Hot Tub Time Machine
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

An exquisitely ridiculous high-concept romp with the most delectable title since “Snakes on a Plane,” “Hot Tub Time Machine” is one of those rude and raunchy male comedies that's refreshingly smarter than your average rude and raunchy male. Directed with party animal-meets-valedictorian verve by Steve Pink (“Accepted”), and written by the witty team of Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris (who put their slightly sick heads together to concoct outrageous, yet sharply convincing bro-man banter and behavior), the movie isn't liable to land on anyone's list of classics, but it makes for one helluva fun night out without zapping your brain cells. It made me laugh heartily and often, which is more than I can say for any other comedy I've seen this year.

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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” or “Men Who Hate Women,” as it's called in its native Sweden, where it broke box-office records last year to become the most successful Scandinavian film in history, constantly straddles the line between being old and being bold. An adaptation of the first book of late author Stieg Larsson's international smash-hit “Millenium” trilogy, the film, adeptly if unexceptionally directed by Niels Arden Oplev, unfolds like a lot of other elaborate whodunits, at least in terms of the mechanics of its basic structure. There's nothing all that novel or blindsiding about the major plot developments, which is never a good thing to say when discussing a modern mystery movie (even if it's clearly aiming to evoke some classic mystery-movie mojo). But there is indeed an engulfing story here, and as it sprints through most of its 152 minutes, the film gives forth an attitude so fierce it winds up standing out after all.

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GREEN ZONE

Review: Green Zone
2 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

The first time I checked my watch during “Green Zone,” an anti-war dizzy spell from director Paul Greengrass, it was to find out how long I'd been sitting through scene after scene of characters screaming at each other. The answer? Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes in which an obnoxious gaggle of barely believable soldiers, politicians, journalists, townsfolk and special agents do little more than argue and shout run-of-the-mill exposition over the din of gunfire, automobiles, explosions, riots, aircraft engines and yet more arguing. And that's just one quarter of this gripping-on-the-drawing-board, grating-on-the-screen thriller, which adamantly aims to shake up the Establishment with its attack on the motives for the Iraq war, but mainly ends up testing audience tolerance for infernal racket and bad writing.

Surely I don't expect my military movies to whisper, but, then again, a little film called “The Hurt Locker” just snagged six Oscars for mastering the art of speaking softly and carrying some big improvised explosive devices and even bigger themes of disillusionment. In “Green Zone,” written by hit-or-miss screenwriter Brian Helgeland (hit: “Mystic River,” miss: “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant”), the recipe for tension consists of near-constant cranked-up volume, hectic hysteria and ludicrously overcooked altercations. Rarely is there a burst of actual excitement because there's nary a break in this most rudimentary of dramatic approaches. Everyone's REALLY worked up about something VERY serious, but hell if we can identify with the urgency of their actions, so superficially are those actions presented to us.

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ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Review: Alice in Wonderland
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

“Alice in Wonderland,” Tim Burton's 3-D addendum to Lewis Carroll's “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” starts off in Victorian London, introducing us to 6-year-old Alice (Mairi Ella Challen), who tells her doting father (Martin Csokas) of the dreams (or are they memories?) she's been having about talking caterpillars and waistcoat-wearing white rabbits. Jump ahead 13 years: daddy has died, and Alice (Mia Wasikowska), still fanciful but visibly worn down by harsh reality, is off to contend with her unsavory betrothed, Hamish (Leo Bill), at a nose-in-the-air garden party with frilly frocks and crumpets.

From top to tails, the production design of this early portion is quite beautiful, staged and inhabited in that Burtonian, rough-around-the-pretty-edges manner that's of this world, yet still north of reality. There's a storybook ring to the dialogue, characters are vivid and enjoyably histrionic, and the environment is caught in clever, cohesive detail by a man whose aesthetic is one of the most identifiable in modern cinema. Fine as the scenery is, it's surely not Alice's scene, and as Hamish prepares to pop the question before an audience of oglers, our heroine spots her furry, hoppity friend, chases after him, and tumbles down fiction's foremost rabbit hole.

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THE CRAZIES

Review: The Crazies

3 stars (out of 5)

By R. Kurt Osenlund

While reading dozens of decade-in-review articles in December and January, I found more than a few film writers who pointed out the wave of zombie pictures that flowed through the '00s, citing titles like “Dawn of the Dead,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “28 Days Later,” “28 Weeks Later,” “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” “Resident Evil: Extinction,” “Zombieland” and “Zombie Strippers.” Well, it's 2010, and though it may seem like vampires are the reigning movie monsters of the new decade, the arrival of “The Crazies” proves the zombie genre is still alive – er, undead – and kicking.

Whether or not that's a good thing is another story. A remake of a little-seen 1973 flick by the godfather of walking-dead cinema, George A. Romero (who serves as an executive producer this time around), “The Crazies” has the benefit of a narrative that especially emphasizes the particulars of the all-important virus element, and it has the knowhow to use those details to create some real, compelling drama. But the spine of this story, and its strenuously withheld foregone conclusion, feel all too much like the same old flesh-eating song (even if I didn't catch these bad boys actually eating flesh). Do we really need another zombie movie? Isn't anyone else all zombied out? Don't these bloody outings start to blur together? Outbreak. Infection. Reanimation. Hysteria. Rinse. Repeat.

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SHUTTER ISLAND

Review: Shutter Island
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

A twisty, psycho-paranoid thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio on camera and Martin Scorsese behind it, “Shutter Island” keeps you wondering which of two endings it's going to reach even as the answers are being provided. Adapted by Laeta Kalogridis from the novel by Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”), it's the kind of convoluted mystery movie that takes great pride and delight in deceiving its audience. There are lots of movies like it, many of them prosaic and marked by foul superiority complexes (a recent example is the Hughes Brothers' “The Book of Eli”). But Scorsese doesn't simply mislead his viewers, yank out the rug, then cut and run. He fleshes out the film's twists, offering stirring, profound and thoroughly cinematic revelations, and his take on the material allows you to welcome the deception. His “Shutter Island” is what a lesser filmmaker's almost certainly wouldn't have been: a fun and focused exercise in artful manipulation.

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PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF

Review: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

2.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Chris Columbus, director of the first two “Harry Potter” installments, is back behind the camera for the inaugural run of another fantasy fiction-inspired franchise, “Percy Jackson & the Olympians,” based on the five-volume book series by Rick Riordan. The film version of the first volume, “The Lighting Thief,” has Columbus – and the rest of us – in very familiar territory. The circumstances, compadres, exploits and objectives of would-be high school hero Percy (gifted rising star Logan Lerman) all bear a striking resemblance to those of a certain boy wizard. Percy has a pitiful home life; superhuman powers he must harness and hone; enrollment in a special institution for super kids; two best friends, one male, one female; and a treacherous journey ahead of him in which he must prove his worth by saving the day. The crucial difference is the magic so prevalent in the Potterverse – even in Columbus's minor contributions – has gone missing.

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FROM PARIS WITH LOVE

Review: From Paris with Love

1 star (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

I was shaking my aching head at the buddy-spy-action-comedy“From Paris with Love” long before the scene in which Charlie Wax, a secret something-or-other (agent? mercenary?) played by John Travolta, whips out a fast food bag on a park bench and tells his partner, James Reese, a wannabe secret something-or-other played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, that he simply can't resist a Royale with cheese. That's right, a Royale with cheese, the very quarter-pounder-en-français Travolta brought to pop-culture prominence when he gabbed about it with Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction.”

So many things are wrong with this particular scenario. First there's the deplorable fact that the makers of this movie actually think it deserves to be in the same conversation with one of the greatest American films of all time. Then there's the glaring obviousness of the last-ditch effort to resurrect Travolta's live-wire coolness, which waved “au revoir” even before the Wild Hogs and Old Dogs came into the picture. For me, the scene sealed the deal: “From Paris with Love” is a Royale fiasco.

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EDGE OF DARKNESS

Review: Edge of Darkness
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Mel Gibson adopts a mean Boston accent in “Edge of Darkness,” a nervy fatherly revenge thriller that marks the former A-lister's first major starring role in eight years. Though at times allowing a nasally tinge to overtake some of its potency, Gibson wears the accent exceedingly well, growling out words like “dawtuh” with the kind of rugged intonations characteristic of someone who's spent many a grueling decade in Southie. More importantly, the accent allows Gibson to slip that much more inside his character (a veteran Boston police detective investigating his daughter's murder), thus allowing us to move that much further away from the Gibson we've come to know since he last graced the screen. It's what Tom Cruise should have done in “Valkyrie”: mastered the details of his filmic persona just enough so that the star is there, but the less-than-attractive extracurricular activities are far from thought.

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TOOTH FAIRY

Review: Tooth Fairy
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

If you're willing to fully embrace the absurdity of a movie that's basically built on the goofy spectacle of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wearing wispy wings and a tutu, “Tooth Fairy” actually isn't half bad. Though sticky-sweet and by no means outstanding, it more or less works because it, too, embraces its ridiculousness with giddy, infectious abandon. And, as it turns out, seeing the former wrestling star all dolled up in pastel-colored fairy frocks does provide a certain amusement, puerile and primitive as that amusement may be. I'm not exactly recommending the film, but if your 7-year-old – for whom it is perfectly appropriate – is begging you to take him to a matinee showing, think of it as mindless fun that's surprisingly bearable, like a ride on the Tea Cups in which you savor the spins instead of wait to vomit.

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