Male immaturity seems to be the only strong theme among the comedies of not the last few years. Sure, Bridesmaids attempted to establish a bit of gender equality, but that was certainly the exception, not the rule.  Whether it be a slob who lost the TV-star-love-of-his-life, the potheads that get involved with the trade a little more than they’d like, or, in Our Idiot Brother‘s case, an unwillingness to abandoned the joys and naivete of childhood. There are a few other commonalities that lift these films above their peers, but one of the most important is the lead performance. If Brother had been in the hands of an actor less capable than Paul Rudd, I fear all would have been lost. Fortunately, it wasn’t.

Rudd plays Ned, a hippie, organic farmer, who’s happy to do nothing more than play with his dog Willie Nelson, enjoy the high of some decent bud and occasionally spend some time with his family.  He’s so good and pure that he sells weed to a fully uniformed officer after the latter mentioned he needed it after a particularly rough week.  This early scene perfectly captured Ned’s character, and the outlook for the rest of the movie doesn’t look so promising.  Could anyone so dim really offer an interesting hour and a half in the theatre?

Coming off his eight month prison sentence for the drug peddling, Ned returns to his bohemian farm to find his girl has replaced him with a similar version of Ned.  She makes it clear he’s not longer welcome there and he should keep moving.  She’s also keeping Willie Nelson which seems to sting Ned the most.  This catalyst forces Ned to venture into Brooklyn where moves around between the home of his mother and the homes of each of his three sisters.  If Ned seems a bit more of an idea than a character, his sisters will further reinforce this reaction.

There’s Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), who’s playing cutthroat to get a major foot up at Vanity Fair where she works.  She’s ruthless, and fully willing to skirt the edges of ethics to get what her editor wants.  And there’s Liz (Emily Mortimer), the tired-looking, married mother of two, living in Park Slope where she and her husband (Steve Coogan) instill the most inane of values into their children.  And lastly, there’s Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), an artist’s model, who’s taking an awfully awkward run at stand up comedy, and who’s approaching crisis at the thought of becoming serious with her girlfriend Cindy (Rashida Jones).  There’s the soulless one, the one who let herself go, and the commitment-phobic, underachiever slut.

The script was written smartly by husband and wife David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz (the latter is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair), and Peretz brother, Jesse Peretz, directed. These three manage to steer these otherwise flat characters, and worn out ideas by anchoring the film around strong moments among those on screen, and some poignant scenes, without which, would render the film lifeless.

Ned’s innocent upsets the lives of all three of his sisters, and, as they put it, he ruins their lives with some frequency. But as a beacon of integrity, roles slowly change, almost imperceptibly, and Ned, despite his flaws, ultimately is exposed for what he is–something much, much more.

Our Idiot Brother suffers from a few of the expected bittersweet indie pitfalls you’d expect.  Let me remind you it premiered at Sundance.  However, the alarmingly talented cast, and sometimes wise, and generous script makes it worthy to take note of.

3 out of 4 stars

Emily Browning plays Anna, an emotionally disturbed young girl who’s got some daddy issues after watching her terminally ill mother die in an explosion.  You may remember Browning from Lemony Snicket, Ghost Ship, and other B movies.  Anna just couldn’t take it all, slits her wrists and ends up in a mental institution (where she clearly doesn’t belong).  After ten months of therapy, she’s released and returns home to Dad (David Straithairn), older sis Alex (Arielle Kebbel), and Dad’s new girlfriend/mom’s former nurse, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks).  Understandably so, Rachael’s presence doesn’t sit too well with the teenage girls.  Tensions constantly run high between the Alex, Anna, and Rachael.  They all attempt to mark their territory around an incredibly unobservant father who seems to be as uninterested in his family as I was with the film.

The sisters fight to expose Rachael as some sort of identity thief serial killer, and Rachael fights to keep control of her man, and the household.  Mostly this comes down to menacing looks, lots of crying, and several completely illogical plot turns that can’t, no matter how hard you try, be explained.  The scares (if they can be called that) come from sudden loud noises, from Rachael (who is constantly on the edge of releasing her inner psycho) spitting ambiguous threats, and lots of blood covered clothing.  However, none of this will really scare you.  It seems the Guard brothers tried to hide Browning’s and Kebbel’s lack of acting skills with lots of screen time for the girls in bikinis.  Straithairn’s role doesn’t demand much of him, and that’s how much he gives.  Banks does deserve a special mention.  She couldn’t change the script, but she was as creepy as it would allow her to be.  The screenplay is written by Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro, and Carlo Bernard, and it’s based off the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters.  Despite decent source material, The Uninvited is filled more with boring, underdeveloped characters, than it is with excitement.  Believe me, before the short eighty seven minutes is up, you will have witnessed every horror cliche in the book, and checked your watch at least 5 times.  The Uninvited is shallow and boring, and should be skipped.

1 out of 4 stars

The spoiler-ific trailer gives most of the plot away.  Two BFFs (a respectably bromance), Wheeler (Sean William Scott) and Danny (Paul Rudd), are stuck in a dead end job pimping energy drink ‘Minotaur’ to high school-ers.  Wheeler is the happy-go-lucky funny guy that gets more tail than James Bond, and Danny is the cynical, anti-social, quasi-loner who really needs human affection.  They get into a little bit of trouble with the law and with a little assistance from Danny’s newly ex-ed lawyer girlfriend (the ubiquitous Elizabeth Banks), are only sentenced to 150 hours of community service with a Big Brother-like program called Sturdy Wings.  Sturdy Wings was founded by Gayle Sweeney (played by Jane Lynch who hits all the right notes), a former drug-addicted, alcoholic whore.  Danny and Wheeler are stuck with two of hardest, most maladjusted kids, Auggie and Ronnie (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb’e J. Thompson-no that’s not a typo).

David Wain is a triple threat, having large amounts of experience in acting, writing and directing in shows like Reno 911 and Mad TV.  His direction clearly made this movie the success that it is, but equally important are the pitch perfect performances by the two leads.  Rudd couldn’t have done any better in his role.  His comedic timing is almost perfect.  And despite Scott’s character being mostly a continuation of his Stiffler role in the American Pie movies, he’ll make you laugh.  A lot.  The movie only took a few unfortunate missteps.  For one, little kids swearing is funny, but not that funny, they certainly beat that dead horse to death (hearing 8 year-olds discuss oral sex is a stretch even for the most tastefully handled scenes).  And two, the perfect happy ending was a little forced.  Well, a lot forced.  Not that the climax didn’t make me laugh out loud, it just could have been more than it was.  Despite these complaints, I loved the movie.  It’s great if you can get past the potty and sex humor.  And I’d encourage you to try to.

3 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 75% – Cream of the Crop: 67%

The story follows two BFFs, Zack (played by garbly voiced Seth Rogan) and Miri (played by the wicked hot Elizabeth Banks).  The two can’t seem to make ends meet, and find their bills piling up so far, it’s hopeless to try and pay them back on their meager salaries.  They devise a plan to make a porno called Star Whores. Their plan is thwarted when their costumes and equipment (purchased with the last of their money) are destroyed in a building demolition.  It’s then they decide to make Swallow My Cockachino, conveniently set at the coffee shop where Zack works.  The rest of the movie is a mix between a romantic comedy and all the half-naked sex scenes they could fit in.

Perhaps the movie would have been more hilarious if their situation wasn’t so sad.  This is emphasized when the two go back to their high school reunion and it’s made clear, they’re the saddest, least successful of their graduating class.  This scene does provide a hilarious interaction between Superman‘s Brandon Routh and Accepted‘s Justin Long, who carry on a flaming, homosexual affair, despite being married.  There isn’t much redeeming about Zack and Miri, and the prospect that they finally find their true love for each other while doing it (literally, while they’re doing it) for a low budget porno in the kitchen of a coffee house, really just isn’t that great.  The emotional climax of the film happens while Zack is shouting through a bathroom door, while Miri is seated on a toilet, going number 2. This, to me, isn’t funny.  Seth Rogan should stick with Judd Apatow.  Zack and Miri is good for a few cheap laughs, but more often than not, illicits a smile, and not a laugh-out-loud chuckle.

1 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 65% – Cream of the Crop: 48%

I think most people aren’t quite sure what to make of this film.  It comes across as more of a documentary than a satire, following the Bush family from when Jed and Dubbya are in their teens.  It shows Dubbya’s inability to keep a job, his love of alcohol (all the way through is AA meetings), his tumultuous time while at Yale, all the way up through his elections, the first and second time.  The problem is, none of it was really interesting.  And since this seems to be a documentary, you have to wonder where Stone’s sources come from.  He obviously tried to make it somewhat accurate, now all I can think about is, ‘where did he stray from the truth?’  I have the same question while watching Michael Moore documentaries, and believe me, it’s no fun.

Josh Brolin excels as both the younger, and older Dubbya, and does an impression that would put the SNL cast to shame.  The rest of the cast was just as impressive, except for an oddly characterized Condolizze Rice, played by Thandie Newton.  It almost seems like Stone’s purpose was not to defame Bush, but to expose Washington to be an exclusive ‘good old boys club.’   He also encouraged actual sympathy for Bush, as he’s clearly just searching for the approval of his father most of the movie. In the lower points of the plot, Stone sought after his laughs in cheap ways, like showing Dubbya on the toilet for no apparent reason.  Thanks Oliver, that was hilarious.  He also attacks the media for being such whores when it comes to who’s side their on one day, and who’s the next. And I’m not sure what Colin Powell did right, but for some reason, he’s portrayed as the completely levelheaded one.  The film was uneven, it was unclear what the point was, who he was attacking, what is to be learned.  It fails to leave any sort of lasting impression on its audience.

1 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 55% – Cream of the Crop: 36%

W. features a stellar cast of fantastic actors: Richard Dreyfus as Dick Cheney.  Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush.  Ellen Burnstyn as Barabara Bush.  James Cromwell as Bush Sr., and the list goes on. This is Stone’s first directing project since 2006′s widely hailed World Trade Center.  Though the film has been screened to several critics, rottentomatoes.com only reports five official reviews, leaving it with an 80% fresh rating.

On behalf of W.‘s production company Lionsgate, eBay will be auctioning off five of the film’s posters, signed by Oliver Stone, Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, and Ellen Burstyn.  The proceeds will all go to benefit Stand Up To Cancer.  The winning bidders will receive the poster as well as a letter of authenticity from Lionsgate.  Bidding has already begun, and will end on October 20th. Click here to find out more about the auctions, W., clips from the movie, trailers, etc., etc.

Check out the hilarious trailer:

Diane (Glenn Close) is a superstar actor living the pretentious life of a New York Shakespearean actor.  While casting for her new stage production, Diane gets a crush on the Julliard trained, aspiring actor Alec (Jesse Bradford).  Jesse just happens to live in the same building as Diane’s daughter Isabel (Elizabeth Banks), who lives with her fiance, Yale educated attorney Jonathan (James Marsden). The film covers just twenty four hours of these people’s lives. Due to circumstances beyond their control, the characters are forced to choose what sort of life they want to live.  They can change, or continue to live in quiet desperation, satisfied with ‘good enough.’

The problem with the film, isn’t the script, which was relatively well written.  The ensemble cast was fantastic.  Glenn Close is an acting tour de force as always, and the younger, less experienced actors were fun to watch as they excelled in their roles.  The problem was with Terrio’s direction.  Terrio took everything much too seriously.  He doesn’t allow the viewer to decide how he or she feels about what’s going on.  The tension is shoved down our throats thanks to the incredibly over-dramatic soundtrack and the never ending scenes where the characters stare importantly (and wordlessly) into each others eyes. While the film provides decent entertainment, it shouldn’t be considered much more than a good popcorn flick. The final scene did provide quite the shock, however, and while you could sort of see what it was building up to, the shock isn’t lessened one bit.  It’s worth a rental just to watch the last 15 minutes.

2.5 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 65% - Cream of the Crop: 54%