Capsules

New Releases

Chock full of Hitchcock references and even including a clip from a Douglas Sirk movie, Ira Sachs’ Married Life attempts to address the spectacularly unoriginal notion that, just under the shiny surfaces, those wacky 1950s were hardly as picture-perfect as they might’ve looked.

The miscast, valiantly struggling Chris Cooper stars as Harry, a prosperous businessman trapped in a pleasantly dull marriage to wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) in a suburban palace straight out of a postcard. The trouble with Harry is that he’s suddenly fallen head-over-heels in love with his mistress (Rachel McAdams, done up to look like Kim Novak in Vertigo).

But Harry just can’t bring himself to file for divorce. Thinking rather highly of himself, Harry assumes poor Pat would be despondent and ruined for the rest of her days were he to walk out. So obviously the logical, most humane course of action is to poison her.

This sounds like the stuff of acidic satire, but Married Life turns out to be surprisingly timid. Adapted from John Bingham’s novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven by Sachs and I’m Not There’s co-screenwriter Oren Moverman, the movie keeps pussyfooting back and forth between asking us to become emotionally invested and playing itself as parody. (A better movie could’ve done both.) For the most part, the actors are as hesitant as the movie’s wavering tone, as if unsure of what kind of movie they’re supposed to be in.

The exception is Pierce Brosnan, who’s simply fantastic here as Harry’s dissipated, skirt-chasing sidekick. Cooper and McAdams fumble with the period trappings, but the former 007, who always seems so phony in contemporary pictures, reveals he was born 50 years too late.

Married Life is surprisingly short on twists and turns, and the movie’s sketchy, non-committal vibe extends to the visual scheme, which every once in a while aims for a grand stylistic flourish and then immediately slinks back into flat functionality. It’s probably not fair to blame Sachs for the fact that AMC’s addictive TV series Mad Men does this whole shtick better on a weekly basis, but them’s the breaks, old chap.

Not Reviewed

Three high schoolers hire a bodyguard (Owen Wilson) to help them fight off a bully in this unfortunately timed comedy written by Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogan. (Opens Fri., March 21.)

Joshua Jackson stars in this remake of a Thai thriller in which a couple sees a ghostly presence in some photos after a terrible accident. (Opens Fri., March 21.)

An 11-year-old girl (AnnaSophia Robb) hits the road with her uncle (Nick Stahl) after her mother (Charlize Theron) abandons her. (Opens Fri., March 21.)

Ongoing

An Egyptian police band gets lost on the way to the opening of an Arab Cultural Center and must spend the night in Israel in director Eran Kolirin’s debut.
(Not reviewed.)

Jason Statham stars as Terry Leather, a small-time hood up to his ass in debt and running a floundering car lot, until an old flame (Saffron Burrows) wanders in with plans for a fool-proof caper.
C+ (S.B.)

Lucy Walker’s documentary follows six students at Tibet’s only school for the blind as they attempt to climb a Himalayan mountain.
(Not reviewed.)

Brett Morgen’s prankish, exhilarating documentary about the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots and the farcical trial that followed eschews traditional doc voiceovers or talking techniques, taking a pass on long-view perspectives, to become a fully immersive present-tense experience.
A- (S.B.)

The remarkable Karl Markovics plays a first-class Jewish counterfeiter nicked just as he’s about to forge his way out of 1939 Berlin. His skills spare him the worst of the concentration camps, and he eventually finds himself overlooking what will become the largest counterfeiting scheme in history. Seems the Nazis wish to flood the British and American market with fake dollars and pounds sterling. Is surviving worth it when it entails giving the baddies what they want? Stefan Ruzowitzky’s tale of Nazi collaboration walked off with the Best Foreign- Language Film Oscar.
B- (M.P.)

A group of people fight to save the human race from a deadly virus. Again.
(Not reviewed.)

A shot-for-shot, almost word-for-word English-language remake of Michael Haneke’s 1998 Austrian film of the same name, Games stars Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as a cheerful, wealthy couple headed to their lush vacation home for a relaxing weekend, their chipper young son (Devon Gearheart) in tow. Trouble arrives with an unexpected house call from two somewhat distressingly polite young men calling themselves Peter and Paul, both dressed in white and inexplicably wearing gloves.
B- (S.B.)

In Bruges is a shaggy, discursive trip into purgatory with a couple of ratty souls who still might be saved. Despite all the familiar hitman Indie Flick 101 trappings, the film finds its own unique tone, mixing the sacred and the blisteringly, side-splittingly profane.
A- (S.B.)

As a blustery American singer and actress vying for starring roles and social ascent in the ’30s-London-set Pettigrew, Amy Adams is a terrifying force of nature. Francis McDormand plays a frumpy but resourceful governess who cons her way into becoming Adams’ “social secretary.” Pettigrew may be ultra- super-mega fizzy, but there’s an undertow of melancholy, even despair.
B- (M.P.)

Two-time Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou? Talk about slumming.
(Not reviewed.)

Adapted by The Queen’s screenwriter Peter Morgan from a novel by Phillipa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl is riddled with loud unintentional laughs and inexplicable filmmaking decisions. But at the same time it remains far too glum and uptight to ever truly qualify as camp, existing instead in a muddled sort of unentertaining limbo.
D+ (S.B.)

Christina Ricci plays a young aristocrat who’s cursed with a pig nose until she finds a suitor who will love her for who she is.
(Not reviewed.)

Semi-Pro concerns Will Ferrell’s Jackie Moon, the owner/coach/player of an all-but-talentless ABA team not only about to be terminated by the devouring NBA but also located in a pre-Roger & Me Flint, Mich. This is still the kind of movie featuring a “Free Gerbil Night,” as well as more gags about plaid, disco, fondue, coif flips and afros than 20 Anchormans. And yet one can imagine a more acidic—and even funnier—comedy being made from the same material, if only its star could be bothered.
C+ (M.P.)

Alex Gibney’s horrifying documentary won’t let you look away, building to a staggering indictment of Bush-era POW abuse (or “enemy combatant abuse,” if you must) that’s full of evidence both barbaric and revolting.
B+ (S.B.)

From the director of The Day After Tomorrow comes another unnecessary CGI spectacular, this time set in the prehistoric era.
(Not reviewed.)

Unyieldingly pleasant and way too fussy for its own good, Andre Téchiné’s The Witnesses takes a breezy backward glance at a shocking, tumultuous time, presenting those inexplicable and horrific initial stages of the AIDS outbreak in 1984 as a weirdly wistful memory piece.
C (S.B.)