THE DICTATOR

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

In The Dictator, no real-life, innocent bystanders are accosted, and that may just be the most significant flaw of Sacha Baron Cohen's latest, an uncharacteristically arid and unfunny potboiler that makes Borat seem worlds away. For the first time since 2002's Ali G Indahouse, Baron Cohen forgoes the mockumentary style that made him a global superstar, and opts instead for ultra-produced, narrative-humor traditions. He emerges with something that calls to mind the worst of Mike Myers, and lacks the utilized vigor of mad happenstance that colored his last two Larry Charles collaborations. In terms of being on trend, it makes sense that Baron Cohen would want to change his formal tune, as the 15 minutes for faux docs are most certainly up. But in the past decade, no mock-doc star has pushed buttons and tickled ribs better than the man behind Borat and Brüno, and it's something of a crime that The Dictator, a base-level provocation at best, feels like thousands of other filmic expressions of gross-out, bad behavior.

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!

HICK

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

It doesn't take long to gather the influences trickling through Derick Martini's Hick, an aimless tumbleweed of a road movie if ever there was one. Pointing a .45 at a bedroom mirror in her shabby Nebraska home, which rests in the silo-riddled outskirts of a podunk main drag, 13-year-old Luli (Chloë Grace Moretz) does her best Travis Bickle while reciting lines from Dirty Harry. Her walls are papered with drawings of both cowboys and princesses, and as she asks her reflection if it "feels lucky," she shakes her hips to move the ruffles on a pair of rainbow panties. Over the rainbow is indeed where Luli dreams of ending up, and with her halter top, sunglasses, pistol, and improvised basket (a fringed and studded cowgirl's handbag), the soon-to-be runaway looks every bit the hybrid of Judy Garland's Dorothy and Jodie Foster's Iris Steensma, whose mohawked guardian seems a Luli fantasy spawned by daddy issues (her boozy father, played by Anson Mount, is barely in the picture).

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

Review: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is continually resuscitated by the basic elements of its conceit. Based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, it tells of a handful of senior citizens who converge on a 55-and-over retreat in India, and the golden-year stars and golden-hot locale offer grand assistance to screenwriter Ol Parker, whose adaptation otherwise feels like a rather workaday rom-com. The dialogue penned for the characters isn't without heart or interest, but it's much ado about little until spoken by the likes of Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith, who lend the material a sizable touch of class. Clustered together as if headed to a summer camp for West End stage greats, the distinguished company of Dames and Sirs (also on board are Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, and Celia Imrie) provides numerous pockets of earnest interplay, and the surroundings, a bejeweled bit of third-world bustle that visually recalls Fernando Meirelles's shaky-cam stomping grounds, manage to add urgency and natural beauty to a plot flecked with saccharine flourishes.

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!

SOUND OF MY VOICE

Review: Sound of My Voice
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

In this age of dime-a-dozen mockumentaries and found-footage thrillers, the urgent phrase "We have to complete this film!" has become both eye-roller and mood-killer. For modern audiences, there aren't too many plot and protagonist propellers more tired than the moral obligation to keep shooting whatever troubling things are afoot. And so it is that Sound of My Voice arrives with a built-in drawback, hinging its infiltration of a time-traveler's cult on a young couple's filmmaking project, and devoting plenty of screen time to arguments over whether or not production should cease. Peter Aitken (Christopher Denham) is a skeptical journalist determined to expose the deception of Maggie (Brit Marling), the ailing leader of a group of L.A. basement dwellers, who claims she's journeyed back from 2054. Lorna Michaelson (Nicole Vicius), Peter's recovering-addict girlfriend, is the accomplice quick to voice trepidation when things get extra spooky.

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!

THE GIANT MECHANICAL MAN

Review: The Giant Mechanical Man
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

For a first-time filmmaker, Lee Kirk sure knows how to pick his establishing shots. He opens The Giant Mechanical Man, his alternative rom-com debut, with quaint stills of a gray, generic city; a collection of well-worn art supplies; and a hanging silver suit, whose precise pairing with a bowler hat plainly evokes René Magritte's The Son of Man. Giving you his movie in three nutshells, Kirk introduces an archetypal urban fantasy centered on a romantic artist, whose signature act as an anonymous curbside robot makes him a walking commentary on the lost millions devoted to a grind. So much of Kirk's triumph is in the telling—in his handling of tone, tableaux, and acting talent. A lesser director would have turned his flawed script into a giggly, spiritless romance of the week, and missed by a mile the sweet fable of broad strokes the film thankfully became.

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!

FREE SAMPLES

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

If you're particularly fond of Hitchcock muse Tippi Hedren, then you're among the few who should be even slightly persuaded to sit through Free Samples, an angry indie that favors hollow ridicule over credibility. In the L.A.-set film, Hedren plays an aging bombshell not unlike herself, who keeps the TV tuned to TCM because it "seems like a reunion," and shares insights on lust and vanity like a shrewd call girl trapped in elderly skin. Hedren's brief scenes prove remarkably arresting, and her character's life tips for lead whiner Jillian (Jess Weixler) mark the only true escape from a litany of bad jokes and affected crises. Frequenting the ice cream truck that Jillian's manning as a favor to a friend, Hedren's actress, Betty, offers fascinating wisdom on everything from life stages to gay husbands, and she confides that she visits the truck because it reminds her of her childhood. But the fact that Betty prefers ski poles to a cane, and walks down the street with them in the gleam of the midday sun, is a good indication of the kind of faux quirks this movie peddles, and it's telling that even the ice cream is discussed as being creepily artificial.

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!

THE LUCKY ONE

Review: The Lucky One
2.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Fate plays an integral role in movies based on the works of Nicholas Sparks, not just in terms of theme, but also in the way the films are made. At this point, Sparksian romances unfold via their own preordained formula, and measures of their merits largely hinge on how well each can bend the cookie-cutter. Just as inevitably as Zac Efron's Iraq War vet mutters narration about everyone having a destiny and making the choice to follow it, Scott Hicks's The Lucky One dutifully follows a set, familiar path, taking place in a North Carolina of perpetual golden sunsets, and showcasing the very best of life according to those of Sparks's mindset—a spiritual Americana consisting of rowboats, ice cream, tire swings, faithful dogs, elbow grease, churches, and, of course, love of country.

READ THE REST AT SLANT MAGAZINE!