Buck – 5

When a documentary maker sets out to chronicle someone’s life, he or she never knows if something dramatic will occur that will make the finished documentary exciting, emotional, or at least interesting. In this case, the story of horse trainer Buck Branaman, nothing happened and the result is, frankly, boring. If watching horses in a ring was your turn-on, then maybe this would rise to a 7, but for me the only highlight came during the credits, when Buck’s adoptive mother told a joke.

Tree of Life – 5

There was no shortage of ambition, or pretension, in Terrence Malick’s fifth opus, which complements, for some reason, the evolution of the universe with the arc of one average man’s (Malick’s?) life in Waco, Texas. Young Jack has steely eyes, and his bildungsroman might have made a good story, although how he morphs into the artistic and sensitive Sean Penn is a bit of a mystery. But the other stuff, from amoeba to dinosaurs to a place that looks like heaven takes us away and slows down what is already the slowest American film I can think of. Nor is the movie helped by the presence of Brad Pitt, whose character looks ugly and acts worse. What do these major directors, like Tarantino and Malick, see in him that I miss completely?

13 Assassins – 7

A quintessential samurai movie (I forget the Japanese word for this genre), replete with the gathering of ronin, the revenge motive, the uncouth jester, and the bloody battle at the end. There is a hint, maybe more, of a larger message: what a waste this is, wouldn’t it be better if we devoted our energies to the good of the people instead of the petty politics of our nobles. But there is little else that wasn’t done in Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, and countless similar flicks. Still, the formula was followed faithfully, and it is a good one.

Super 8 – 7.5

After wandering out of Bad Teacher, I dropped in to the adjoining theater to see why the local paper had given this movie four stars. Accordingly, I didn’t see the first twenty minutes, but I sort of think that any “explanation” I missed is beside the point. This was E.T. for the age of video games, and the action was there for action’s sake, not to develop a meaningful plot. What mattered, instead, were the people, specifically the five youngsters, who while making their own movie got caught up in the bigger movie around them –  a Blow-Up hommage, literally. There was more honest chemistry between Joel Courtney and the spectacular Elle Fanning than you see between most grown-ups who are bedding each other, and the interplay among the boys was as good as Diner. Best was the completed home movie, shown alongside the credits, in which the same young actors who were convincingly realistic in the main movie were just as convincing as untutored seventh-graders. If every scene in the kids’ movie was a cinematic cliche, the same could be said for the entire film. But what fun!

Bad Teacher – 1

A vile movie. If the moviemakers’ idea of fun is mocking public school teachers as fat, naive and overly conscientious and contrasting them with a glib, irresponsible gold-digging character played by glamorous Cameron Diaz, then my audience didn’t get it. After fifteen minutes of buffoonery producing nary a laugh, I quit the theater, not wishing to waste my afternoon (see Super 8, below). If it turned out that after my departure, Miss Squirrel becomes the movie’s hero and is rewarded with Justin Timberlake, I admit I would have to reevaluate my score.

Midnight in Paris – 7.8

When a movie has a simple message to deliver, it can do a lot worse than getting Owen Wilson to deliver it. Moreover, he was the best Woody Allen-character surrogate I can remember, channeling Woody’s physical moves and intonations without the harsh edge or credulity strain when beautiful women fall for him. That simple message and Screenwriting 101 plot were simply the armature for Woody’s paean to Paris and, more particularly, Paris in the ’20s. Every line in Gil Pender’s fantasy world was an inside joke, not all of which I got (Djuna Barnes??). And what was that fantasy world but Woody’s literary answer to Inception, clinched by the presence of Marion Cotillard, playing a far more suitable role and playing it brilliantly. Not a major movie by any measure, but for someone who still churns out a flick a year (at age 75), it was a happy evening at the cinema.

Bobby Fischer Against the World – 8

An impeccable documentary, if there is such a thing, telling the story of chess master Bobby Fischer from beginning to end. The interviews were just the right length: all contributed to the story’s momentum and came from people who seemed to know whereof they spoke. The climax of the Spassky match was folded neatly into the story arc in a way that didn’t diminish what followed. How amazing, when today hardly anyone can name a single chess master or heavyweight boxer, that there was a moment in recent history when the two most famous athletes, if not personalities, in the world were Muhammad Ali and Bobby Fischer. (And how great that the associate producer could get Nick Cage to play Bobby!)

Incendies – 8

The plot, I think, ultimately made no sense, and many steps along the way weren’t credible, but the journey itself was powerful and disturbing. The two women actors, especially the daughter played by Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin , were extraordinary, and the overall depiction of Arab-on-Arab violence was hauntingly, and depressingly, real for someone who lived with the story of Sabra and Shatila for many years. So, too, was the juxtaposition of the mdern high-rise and mud huts, of cell phones and tribal culture. In the end, will a moment of love break the cycle of anger and hatred? I don’t think so.

Queen to Play – 6

A trifle, although being French and filmed on Corsica, it was not without interest. The basic premise was absurd – an uneducated chambermaid goes from nothing to chess champion in a few months, and remains beautiful while staying up to practice all night and holding down two jobs during the day. Then there is the inscrutable character played by Kevin Kline, who has a mysterious past and an apparent fatal illness in his near future, neither of which is explained or resolved, and who, despite being American, reads Jack London in French. In fact, there are dozens of annoying touches that are never explained (as to why they are in the movie, other than they were presumably made more of in the book). But there is the French lifestyle, and the rocky coast of Corse.

Cedar Rapids – 7.9

“Cute,” was the word I heard most often from the decidedly older crowd leaving the Friday night $3 movies at the Hopkins Cinema, and that struck me as just about perfect. Like an Adam Sandler movie, it was sweet-spirited, with the bad guys not really being bad, just pompous. Sure, no one could be as naive as Tim Lippe, played adroitly by Ed Helms, but he was more the foil, the Pogo/Jerry Seinfeld around whom the more interesting characters revolved – none more wildly than John C. Reilly, who was beyond perfection as Dean Ziegler. Ann Heche and Isiah Whitlock were pretty good, too. The setting reminded me of Up in the Air, but where that hit a number of discordant notes, this was pitch-perfect throughout. And in every awkward scene, of which there were many, the director simply cut away before I started squirming.