Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) **

If you only see one smart-alecky, sci-fi, action movie this year, it should be 2013's “Star Trek: Into Darkness.” Or you could just watch the movie “Serenity” again, or maybe “The Empire Strikes Back.” “Guardians of the Galaxy” shoots for the combination of heart, memorable characters, snappy dialogue, and irreverence that those films have, but it fails to pull it off.

Expectations were high for this one. It's the surprise hit of the summer, and most reviews I have seen are positive. Everyone seems to love Chris Pratt's performance, love the raccoon, love the tree thing, and think that this rag-tag bunch of reluctant heroes is the perfect antidote to the typical comic-book movie. I found the movie to be largely targeted at 13-year-olds, with lots of cuteness, way to much sentimentality, and so-so acting.

The sentimentality starts right away, with a young boy (the future Starlord) watching his mom die of cancer in a very over-wrought scene. Then the kid gets abducted by aliens, and the movie gets fun for a while. We meet the grown-up Starlord (Chris Pratt), a handsome rogue of a smuggler who likes to listen to his mom's old mix-tape on the Sony Walkman she gave him. He picks up some type of powerful orb from an abandoned planet, and immediately finds himself the subject of pursuit. The orb is coveted by a psychopathic terrorist named Ronan, who plans to trade it to a Titan named Thanos in exchange for destroying a planet. Ronan sends the green assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) after the orb, but it turns out she has plans to double-cross the terrorist. Meanwhile, Starlord's old partner, Yondu (Michael Rooker, playing the exact same Merle character he plays in “The Walking Dead”) puts out a bounty on him, which puts him in the sights of bounty-hunters Rocket (a genetically-modified, talking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (a walking, talking tree whose only words are “I am Groot.”) Later, this motley crew meets Drax the Destroyer, a hunk of muscle played by professional wrestler Dave Bautista. These guys wind up teaming up to stop Ronan, of course.

There's no reason this setup couldn't be plenty of fun, and for 20 minutes or so it is. The misanthropic raccoon is hilarious, and Starlord shows some Han Solo-esque potential. Then the movie takes a sappy turn and never looks back. Where Han Solo was a reluctant hero and lover, Starlord signs on for both roles with little resistance. (In fairness, I suppose you could point out that the raccoon is really the Han Solo character, and Starlord is more like Luke Skywalker, but the plot still sucks.) Gamora, who was never really impressive as an assassin anyway, spends the rest of the film whining to her adopted sister to join her and “not let all those people die.” Even the raccoon turns sentimental. It seems the screenwriters got too lazy to create a plot in which the characters would have semi-credible motivations for teaming up, so they made “friendship” the motivation for guarding the galaxy.

Ironically, we went to this movie thinking I would love it, and my wife would just tolerate it. Turns out that while I was bored, she thought it was delightful. She liked the soft-hearted Groot and the lost-70's soundtrack, and she didn't think it was too sentimental at all. She isn't alone. This film is a massive hit, and my grumpy opinion is definitely in the minority. But hell, there were people who liked “Return of the Jedi” better than “The Empire Strikes Back,” too.

2 stars out of 5

Juan of the Dead (Juan de los Muertos, 2011) **1/2

It's 2014, and we have spent the last few years fighting a zombie invasion. They are in our books, at the cineplex, and on our TV screens. All of us survivors now know the basic tropes of zombie fighting: They hunger for flesh. They are mostly slow, but sometimes fast. You kill them by destroying the brain. Finally, zombie-ism is spread by a bite or scratch, like rabies.

The horror of having our loved ones rise from the dead to devour us has become a cliché, and it's time we retire the genre, but not before we talk about “Juan of the Dead.”

Much like 2004's “Shaun of the Dead,” the hilarious Simon Pegg/Nick Frost comedy, “Juan of the Dead” riffs on the original of the genre, George Romero's 1978 “Dawn of the Dead.” “Dawn” is a pretty easy word to rhyme, and one could imagine this going on indefinitely: “Levonne of the Dead” (blacksploitation), “Don of the Dead” (a Mad-Men-themed version), “Lebron of the Dead” (zombie basketball) and so on.

Juan, a thief and general layabout, considers himself a survivor. He has persisted through poverty, prison, and the ups and downs of Cuban life. Thus, when the neighbors start rising from the dead as bloody biting machines, Juan takes it all with an insouciance that is at once fatalistic and pragmatic. While other Cubans flee the island in droves, Juan enlists his fellow shady characters to start a business. For cash, they clear people's houses of zombies. They are raking it in for a while, but eventually it becomes clear that the zombie outbreak is not a self-limited infection. The entire island is being overtaken, and the only intelligent option is to build a raft and flee.

As a comedy, “Juan of the Dead” mostly misses the mark. There are moments of humor, but the jokes are mostly broad. Where the movie succeeds is in its commentary on Cuban history, turning the zombie invasion into a metaphor for life in Cuba. Looking down from a rooftop as zombies attack the living on the street, Juan's daughter points out that “You can't tell the good ones from the bad ones.” Juan replies, “Things in Cuba haven't changed.” Later, after a night of zombie-fighting, Juan and his crew wait at a bus stop, because “No matter how bad things get in Cuba, public transportation runs, no matter what.” As things get worse and worse, more people flee on makeshift rafts, but Juan stays, figuring that sticking with his home is better than trying to build a new life elsewhere. Whether he is a hero or a fool depends on your point of view, and I imagine Cubans would give you a variety of answers to that question.

2.5 stars out of 5

I Don't Want To Be A Man (Ich Mochte Kein Mann Sein, 1918) ***1/2

This is the kinkiest, most twisted movie I have seen in a while, and I loved it! The great German director Ernst Lubitsch was known for imbuing his films with a cheeky, sexual humor, and his “Lubitsch Touch” is fully displayed in this short, silent film, one of his earliest productions.

In this strikingly feminist piece, Lubitsch presents Ossi (Ossi Oswalda), a tomboyish, rebellious girl who drives her uncle and governess crazy by gambling, smoking, drinking, and flirting with men. When her uncle travels out of town, leaving her in the care of a handsome, younger new guardian, Ossi figures it is party time. The new guardian, however, turns out to be even stricter than Ossi's uncle. Ossi decides that the only way to achieve any freedom is to pose as a man, so she has a suit tailored, and after bed one evening sneaks out on the town. As a man, Ossi get attention from women and feels exhilaratingly free, but she soon finds that men have it tougher than she thought. On a train she is forced to give up her seat to a woman, and when her foot is stepped on, she is told not to cry about it, to “be a man.” At a dance hall, Ossi runs into none other than her new guardian, who doesn't recognize her in her man's garb. After almost getting in a fight, the two become drinking buddies, then progress to some very un-buddy-like kissing.

I call the movie feminist, because the point of the story seems to be that Ossi doesn't want to be a man, she just wants to enjoy the freedom and independence that would be hers if she were a man. Some have described the movie as ahead of its time, but in fact there was a robust feminist movement in Germany at the time. Much as in the U.S., many of the gains made by the women's movement were undermined by the worldwide Great Depression, (and in Germany by the Nazis). Before the Depression (and the Hays Code), however, many films featured strong-willed women.

Many films from this period also featured scenes of cross-dressing and implied homosexuality. In “I Don't Want to be a Man,” the guardian's actions are not technically gay, since he is making out with a woman, but he sure does think that Ossi is a man when he is kissing her. There's also a scene where the guardian wakes in Ossi's room, wearing her sleeping cap, suggesting that the cross-dressing goes both ways. Perhaps the title, “I Don't Want to be a Man” can also be interpreted as a plea from the guardian. Maybe it is he, not Ossi, who is struggling with gender-identity issues.

3.5 stars out of 5

Bad Words (2013) **

“Bad Words” has almost all of the elements of an interesting story. There's a unique premise. There's a flawed character, and at the end he has changed a little bit. What's missing is the part in between where he faces some crisis and has an epiphany that explains the change in him. The story arc of this film is like a bridge that has collapsed in the middle.

Jason Bateman plays Guy Trilby, a wounded man-child who is nursing some kind of grudge that drives him, at the age of 40, to enter the Spelling Bee circuit. Because he dropped out of school in eighth grade, he technically qualifies for the tournament, so the outraged parents and Bee officials are forced to let him compete. Kathryn Hahn plays a reporter who sponsors Trilby and tries to pry some of his motivations out of him for her story. At the National Bee, Guy is befriended by a big-eyed, adorable, little Indian kid (Rohan Chand), who turns out to be his biggest competition.

Bateman does achieve the feat of being unlikeable in this film, which I wouldn't have thought possible. His Guy is the sort of misanthropic jerk whose antics might be amusing if he weren't directing his slurs and dirty tricks at little kids. The film attempts to capture some of that hilarious one-upmanship that worked so well between Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray in “Rushmore,” but here it falls flat and is ultimately aborted. What we keep waiting for is that moment where Guy is forced to examine himself and change. Instead, Guy simply changes his behavior right at the end. We never know whether this was his plan all along, or if he changed his plan, and why. Ultimately, the characters and the relationships between them are never developed properly, and one wonders if the rest of the movie didn't get lost in some editing accident.

It's a shame, because this film has a great premise and excellent actors. Rohan Chand isn't the most inspiring child actor, but he is serviceable, and really, Jason Bateman and Kathryn Hahn should have been able to carry this film by themselves. I think the fault lies with the director, who, as it happens, is Jason Bateman. This is his first film to direct, and while I enjoy him as an actor, he doesn't show much promise here as an auteur.

2 stars out of 5

Hit and Run (2012) ***1/2

I don't know how this movie snuck past me before this. I remember liking the trailer, but then I forgot about it until it popped up on Netflix the other day. I'm glad it did, because this movie is nothing but fun! Kristen Bell, of course, is adorable. I would watch her in anything. Dax Shepard, who co-stars, co-directs, and wrote the screenplay, is very naturalistic and likeable. It's Bradley Cooper in dreadlocks, however, that puts the movie over the top.

Shepard plays Charles (AKA Yul), a pleasant guy living in a sleepy town as part of the witness protection program. His world gets turned upside down when his girlfriend, Annie (Kristen Bell), is offered her dream job in the one place he can't safely visit, Las Angeles. Throwing caution to the wind, Charles whisks Annie off to L.A. in his classic Lincoln Continental, trailed by all kinds of trouble in the form of Annie's ex-boyfriend, Charles's police liaison (Tom Arnold), and Charles's old partner-in-crime Dmitry (Bradley Cooper).

“Hit and Run” is ironically titled, because all the characters are trying not to hit and run, but to build a stable relationship with someone. Charles and Annie are on the classic, relationship-testing road trip. Dmitry has his own committed relationship with his bank-robber girlfriend and their collection of dogs. Even Tom Arnold's U.S. Marshall finds love in the end.

Fortunately, with all this lovey-dovey stuff getting passed around, the movie manages to avoid sentimentality. “Hit and Run” gets it right by taking time to develop the characters as individuals, not just as chess pieces that have to be moved around in fast cars to serve the plot. There are fast cars, however. This is an action-comedy, after all, and “Hit and Run” strikes a nice balance between the two.

Another thing the movie gets right is the dialogue. Reminiscent of a Tarantino movie, the conversations in “Hit and Run” are treated as genuine events that matter to two people, not just as exposition or plot devices. Whether they are debating the use of homophobic slurs or the virtues of buying better dog food, the characters talk to each other like people who actually have something to say.

3.5 stars out of 5

Bad Santa (2003) ***1/2

Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) may just have the best job in the world. He gets to spend eleven months out of the year lazing about, doing whatever he wants. Then, each December, he meets up with his friend Marcus (Tony Cox) to pull a burglary. Marcus, you see, is a dwarf, which makes it easy for him to get a seasonal job as one of Santa's elves. Willie, who is also a safe-cracker, plays the Santa role, and the job gives them easy access to whatever mall or department store they work in. Once they have cased the joint, they clean it out, then spend the rest of the year enjoying their earnings.

The beauty of this setup is lost on the alcoholic, perpetually-depressed Willie. His drinking and nihilism are gradually making him less reliable as a mall Santa and as a partner-in-crime for Marcus. Then Willie meets a girl. Sue (Lauren Graham) is way too cute for an alcoholic bum like Willie, but apparently she goes for him because she has a Santa fetish. (Also, Billy Bob Thornton married Angelina Jolie in real life, so maybe we are just meant to understand that this is his superpower.) You would think that a hot, new girlfriend might inspire Willie to clean up his act a little, but he pretty much keeps on drinking and trying to screw everything up. It isn't until Willie gets involved with a weird, little, fat kid that he starts to feel some empathy and grow as a person. The kid's parents are gone, leaving him in a fancy house with his demented grandmother. At first, this just gives Willie a great place to hide out and party with Sue, but eventually these four form a twisted family.

“Bad Santa” is an example of how a lot of cinematic sins can be forgiven if a filmmaker gets the tone of a movie right. There are tons of holes in this plot, but the darkly comic tone is maintained consistently without getting TOO dark or resorting to sentimentality. The result is a fairly hilarious little dark comedy. As holiday films go, I'll take “Bad Santa” over “Miracle on 34^th Street” any day.

3.5 stars out of 5

The Lego Movie (2014) **1/2

I've come to have high expectations for animated films. Spoiled as I am by a decade of Pixar films like “Wall-E” and “Monsters, Inc.,”I have little tolerance for weak plots and acting. “The Lego Movie” and all of its hype crashed into those expectations, and the results were rather disappointing.

“The Lego Movie” tells the story of Emmett (voiced by Chris Pratt), a generic, Lego construction worker who spends his days with the other workers, building things exactly according to the Lego instructions. Everyone in Legoland follows the instructions, in obedience to Lord Business (Will Ferrell), an OCD, control-freak micro-manager. Emmett is the most boring Lego person in town, with absolutely nothing to distinguish him, but he gets thrust into an adventure when he accidentally finds a legendary hunk of plastic called the Piece of Resistance. Rebel Lego-people bring Emmett into their movement, believing him to be the prophesied Master Builder, who will use the Piece to defeat Lord Business and save Legoland.

Given that all the characters and backgrounds are made up of Legos, you might think this would be a true stop-action animated film. Nope, this is another CGI-fest, which freed the animators up to make “The Lego Movie” one long, frenetic action sequence. Oh, every now and then they slow down for a brief lesson about “believing in yourself,” but mostly everything just MOVES, exhaustingly.

It isn't until the end, when Emmett meets the Man Upstairs, that things get really meta and interesting. At this point, all your assumptions about the story get turned on their heads, and the movie becomes quite open to interpretation. This segment explores the value of play and creativity versus structure and control. It would be possible to find some commentary here on regimented societies like China versus individualistic, more chaotic societies like the U.S. Going deeper, one could view the relationship between the Man Upstairs, his son, and the Lego world as an allegory of Christian theology. Truth is, there's all kinds of potential religious symbolism in this film. Emmett, himself, could be viewed as a Christlike figure, a promised savior who turns out to be different from what the people were expecting. The film also asks whether prophesy is real or just made up to serve as a self-fulfilling guide to future generations. Some might find the movie to be Existentialist. I can't divine, though, whether the filmmakers intended all this subtext or not, because they can't seem to wait to get back to the mind-numbing action. That's the problem with “The Lego Movie,” they don't slow down to offer any thought or meaning until it's too late,your mind is already mush from all the seizure-inducing kinetics.

When I first heard they were making a Lego movie, I thought it was the dumbest idea ever. Then I started hearing positive reviews and buzz, and my expectations rose to Pixar levels. Now, having seen it, I feel pretty “meh” about it. The ending does somewhat redeem the movie and provides some interesting fuel for discussion. Truth be told, though, I was bored while watching it, and for a movie like this, being boring is the one unforgivable crime. Even worse than not following the instructions.

2.5 stars out of 5  

Mud (2012) ***1/2

One thing you can count on is that when Hollywood sets a movie in Arkansas, it isn't going to be about lawyers, or university professors, or company executives. It'll be about backwoods, country-talking, toothless rednecks. “Mud” is no exception. That's my only real complaint about “Mud,” however. It's a funny, strangely entertaining coming-of-age tale.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are a couple of 13-year-old boys whose lives are wrapped up with the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the Arkansas delta. Everything in their lives is covered in mud, but the movie is named for a drifter (Matthew McConaughey) they meet on an island in the river. The boys sneak out to the island to check out a boat that has been lodged in a tree by floods. They find Mud living in it, and he ropes them into his world of superstition and romance. Mud is hiding out, waiting for a chance to meet up with his trashy girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon). The boys, especially Ellis,can't help but be impressed by such a romantic situation. They help Mud out, even when doing so runs them afoul of the law and a gang of bounty-hunters.

I like that “Mud” isn't about any big issue or theme. It's just a good story, well-told. Matthew McConaughey has fully left behind his lightweight, pretty-boy rep. He does take off his shirt in “Mud,” but he also sports bad teeth, looking as greasy and dirty as anyone should hiding out on an island in the summer. Equally fearless is Reese Witherspoon as Mud's trampy girlfriend, Juniper. She trashes up even better than Blake Lively did in "The Town." It's the teen actors who really impress, however, especially Tye Sheridan. Sheridan only had one movie role before “Mud,” playing in Terence Malick's “Tree of Life,” which is not a bad start, artistically. Jacob Lofland had even less experience. “Mud” was his first movie role; he was chosen because he is an Arkansas boy who knows how to ride a motorbike and drive a boat. Both actors have been working steadily since.

It's true that “Mud” is overly optimistic, and certainly predictable, but the humor of the movie makes up for any weaknesses of story. The boys riding around town trying to sell fish, Ellis's fumbling attempts at romance, and Neckbone's wetsuit-wearing uncle are all comedy gold! It's also a testimony to how much love, or the lack of it, can mess you up. It's like the song says, “Love is like oxygen. You get too much, you get too high. Not enough, and you're gonna die.”

3.5 stars out of 5

American Psycho **Spoilers** (2000) ****

There's no way I can discuss this film without giving some things away. If you haven't seen it yet, then I recommend you watch it before reading any further. And I do HIGHLY recommend you watch it. It's an adeptly drawn modern fable full of dark humor and social satire.

Christian Bale plays wall-street trader Patrick Bateman. We know Bateman is on Wall Street because he tells us, but we never see him actually doing any real work. This is part of the story, that Bateman and his “friends” are all about spending money in the most extravagant ways possible, but none of them produce anything of value. These 20-something suits spend their days going out for expensive meals and drinks, one-upping each other with fancy stationery, and cheating with each others' Ivy League girlfriends. These alpha males live in a world devoid of any trace of human connection or empathy. Bateman narrates our journey through this world, describing to us his exercise and skin-care regimens, ultimately telling us:

“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there. “

Bateman deals with his emptiness through violent fantasies and possibly bursts of murderous violence, and this is where the film gets vague, because it's hard to tell where fantasy leaves off and reality begins. Viewing the storyline literally, we see Bateman abuse prostitutes, then later murder them. He murders a colleague and hides the body, making everyone think the guy disappeared on a trip overseas. We eventually see that he has filled an apartment with dead bodies, and he finally engages in a shootout with police in which he wins by blowing up a squad car with a single shot. It's here that it becomes obvious (even to Bateman, who looks disbelievingly at his pistol) that some contact with reality his been lost.

I will try to leave off here in describing the plot, because I really don't want to ruin the delight of watching this fable. The upshot is that Bateman is clearly psychotic, and there are a variety of interpretations as to how much of the violence is real versus what takes place in his mind. I prefer to believe that it all takes place in his head, and that Bateman is in reality just another bland, American male, going through his day having one violent fantasy after another. What separates him from the rest of us is not the content but the extremity of his thoughts, and his growing inability to distinguish them from reality. This would make “American Psycho” a scathing commentary on the Western, male mind.

As it happens, director Mary Harron has indicated that she regrets making the plot so vague, and that we were really meant to understand that Bateman is an actual murderer. With this more literal interpretation, the film is still a hilariously dark send-up of '80s, Wall Street culture, but I like my interpretation better. The good thing is that the film works either way. Art, after all, is not what the artist creates, it is what happens when you experience the artist's creation.

In the perfect end to the film, it is made clear that nothing real matters in Bateman's world. Even a confession of murder is considered interesting only as an ironic jest. Nothing matters except an Ivy League pedigree, a good suit, and picking the right restaurant.

4 stars out of 5

Arbitrage (2012) **1/2

The definition of arbitrage is:

“The simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price. It is a trade that profits by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms.”

In other words, arbitrage is yet another way of making money without actually producing anything of value. In the film “Arbitrage,” securities trader Robert Miller (Richard Gere) has grown rich this way, but his latest scheme has not worked out well. In order to hide the losses from a bad bet that was against his own company's rules, he is selling the company. With altered account books and with secretly borrowed money in the bank, he hopes to fool his potential buyers and leave them with the losses. Miller needs everything to remain stable and quiet until the sale can go through, but fate is against him. First his daughter becomes suspicious of the company's books, then Miller gets into a car accident in which his mistress dies. This random mistake threatens to kill the buyout deal, which would leave Miller with no way to cover his losses, and ultimately lead to jail time for fraud. With the clock ticking, Miller scrambles to protect a web of lies that grows to threaten his family, his friends, and his freedom.

“Arbitrage” would never work without an actor of Richard Gere's caliber, because, really, there is nothing to admire about Robert Miller. His self-image and the image he projects to the world is of this patriarch, this wise lion of the financial industry. Really, though, he's just a guy who gambles with other people's money and likes to screw a young woman on the side. He's a fraud, and cheering on his efforts to maneuver his own labyrinth is ultimately an un-rewarding experience. Robert Miller is surrounded by people who are much better human beings than he is, but alas, he is the protagonist, so it's him we have to follow as the sordid tale wends its way. More unfortunate is that while Miller is lousy, he isn't evil enough to be really interesting. Even with Richard Gere trying desperately to liven the guy up, he isn't nearly as compelling as the Frances Underwood character from “House of Cards.”

As ably acted and directed as it is, “Arbitrage” is ultimately a milquetoast thriller. Nothing in it will make you groan, but there's nothing in it to compel you to watch it either.

2.5 stars out of 5