2009 | Director: Stephen Sommers (“The Jungle Book,” “Deep Rising”) | Writers: Stuart Beattie (“Collateral,” “Australia”), David Elliot, and Paul Lovett

The cast make their way to the Oscars

As the second Hasbro franchise to take flight this summer, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” should be at least as good as either of the “Transformers” films; after all, one product concerns itself with the plights of two opposing fighting forces made up of relatable, flesh-and-blood humans, while the other is about alien robots who turn into dump trucks and punch each other. But instead of leveling the toy-based playing field, the unbelievably terrible “Joe” reminds one more of 1994’s miserable “Street Fighter,” which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme as a man trying to commit career suicide by acting in “Street Fighter.” I can say without exaggeration that I’d rather watch that ridiculous film than “Joe,” though it pains me to denounce the remnants of my childhood in such a way.

The movie breaks down like this: Channing “The Worst Actor in the World” Tatum plays Duke, a Special Forces dude who, along with friend Ripcord (Marlon Wayans, “Little Man”), gets caught up in the thick of things when weapons made of neon green nanotechnology are saved from the clutches of the Baroness (renowned strumpet Sienna Miller) by the secretive NATO force G.I. Joe, made up of gunner Heavy-Duty, hot chick Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), electronics expert Breaker, mute ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park), plenty of killable extras, and led by terse, three-word-phrase-barking General Hawk (Dennis Quaid). Duke’s all, “Sign me up for this secret army, Bro!” and Hawk’s like, “No! Well, OK.”

The Baroness turns out to be working for double-crossing weapons dealer James McCullen, whose second-in-command “The Doctor” (a seriously slumming Joseph Gordon-Levitt) may or may not secretly be planning to become Cobra Commander and double-cross McCullen, aka Destro. Also, fan favorite Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-hun) is along for the ride so that there can be an evil Asian ninja to fight against Snake Eyes’ good white ninja. Also, The Baroness may have strong enough feelings for former flame Duke to want to double-cross Destro. Also, stuff about the nano-weapons…Cyborg suits…Kissing…Sword-fights…Zzzz…

Race war! Race war!

The acting in “Joe” is circus-grade, and director Stephen Sommers (“Van Helsing”) probably huffed tons of glue while shooting. But they’re currently roping off the biggest part of Movie Heck for the studio execs who greenlit this malfeasance against mankind. Yes, this may very well be an adequate G.I. Joe adaptation for hardcore fans—catchphrases and tips of the hat abound, down to the super-secret under-the-ocean base Cobra calls home—but hardcore fans aren’t the general moviegoing public, so why foist “Joe” upon everyone else? Besides, for every wink to knowing viewers, the film bastardizes two more hallowed characters’ back-stories. Now second-generation G.I. Joe fans will grow up thinking that mortal enemies Duke and Cobra Commander started out as boot camp roommates.

The totally rad new Cobra Commander mask that's supposed to be a secret until the end of the movie, if only they hadn't released its image on the action figures that dropped three months ago

Admittedly, the whole reason “Joe” exists is to sell toys, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for a film this bad. Making something better wouldn’t have been hard, with a vast world and interesting characters created by the franchise’s cartoon series and comic books at the writers’ disposal; though it might have alienated some of the more fervent followers, weren’t the filmmakers duty-bound to create and display the best product they could? That magical G.I. Joe movie, sadly, exists only as a pipe dream, leaving this “Joe” as cold as a corpse, riddled with holes in the shape of dollar signs. As a bit of G.I. Joe media it’s passable kitsch, with names and tone intact, but as a movie it’s artless, dangerously stupid, and an utter disappointment.

Rating: One and a Half of Five Stars

In what is sure to be a regular occurrence, I’m now posting on the death of beloved film icons. In this case, that icon is John Hughes, director of such seminal 1980s teen crap as “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and “Uncle Buck,” but the writer of many, many more memorable hits from the 80s and 90s. Hughes died today after suffering a heart attack while walking his dog in New York.

I’ll personally remember him for what is one of my favorite holiday-themed films, “Home Alone,” which he wrote and produced. Others will hate him for introducing the world to Jon Cryer.

While the whole of his work is sometimes sentimental and overly gooey, Hughes truly was a great comedic writer, and I’m sure he’ll be missed by his loving, tightly-knit Hollywood family. Seriously, though, he was pretty good, as Kevin Smith will no doubt tell you.

2009 | Director and Writer: Judd Apatow (“The Larry Sanders Show,” “Freaks and Geeks”)

Janusz Kamiński's inventive lighting, wasted on these guys

Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” aspires to be a James L. Brooks-like dramedy that explores the dark reaches of comic stardom, where the hilarity of public persona meets the grim loneliness behind the velvet curtain. It’s a decent idea, not without a semblance of dramatic heft, but it’s built upon a quickly-tired foundation of hard-R improv comedy, which is a little like dressing a homeless guy in a $7,000 suit: it may get him into the country club (or the Golden Globes), but he’s still a filthy, miserable, unkempt transient deep inside.

The film stars Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a stand-up comic who grew into superstardom in the form of family blockbusters like “MerMan” and “Re-Do.” When Simmons receives a virtual death sentence during a visit to the doctor’s office, he decides to try stand-up again, and in the process of a painful night, hires fledgling comedian Ira Wright (Seth Rogen playing Seth Rogen)—a frustrated showbiz novice who lives with two annoying roommates played by Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman—to write jokes for him. Wright finds that Simmons, despite the joy he’s ostensibly brought millions, has no friends, and so the writer tries to get the beloved icon back into the good graces of those he left behind for the Big Time—especially former flame Laura (Leslie Mann).

"I--he--we--uh--no--er--um--woo--ee..." Awkward!

The most fundamental flaw in “Funny People” is that it’s just not funny. The movie is packed with self-indulgent filler from Apatow, from way too much screen time for real-life spouse Mann to an entire third act crammed with flat footage featuring his (and Mann’s) children, Maude and Iris. But the most egregious indulgence is Apatow’s formerly-novel sense of humor. While the meandering improv style the director has championed scored big in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” it’s also been trotted out ad nauseam in his various non-directorial productions like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “I Love You, Man,” meaning that by the time it has reached “Funny People,” the free-form dialogue sounds like the same jokes about genitals we’ve heard over and over for the past five years.

These guys are also in the movie, for some reason

The humor in “Funny People” has nothing to do with situations, little to do with physicality or observation, and everything to do with obscenity, profanity, and pop culture references. Frankly, for how it listlessly coats the bloated body of the film, the humor feels shoehorned into the semi-serious premise, a rumination on death and stardom that should have absolutely nothing to do with the now-cliché ramblings of Sandler and Rogen. As a result the movie fails as a comedy, fails as a drama, and saddest of all, fails Apatow himself, who strains for new ground with one hand while holding onto his old shtick with the other.

Rating: One and a Half of Five Stars

“Wendy and Lucy” 2008 | director: Kelly Reichardt | writer: John Raymond

 I am all for a film that is a slice of life character study about a quirky character in an absurdly banal series of situations or something like that. I am also willing to abide some self indulgence in camera work and a lack of structure in narrative if what I get from the picture is an exegesis on some kind of concept about humanity. But what I get from “Wendy and Lucy” is mostly nothing. Thankfully, this is a short film, clocking in at 1 hr 15 m; that said, the abruptness of the ending was still unsatisfying, even though it meant I was free from the tedium of watching this film.

So what happens to Wendy, played very well by Michelle Williams (“Broke Back Mountain”, “Dawson’s Creek”) and her dog Lucy? Wendy is trying to get to Alaska for some transcendental ideal of freedom. I guess working at a fish canning plant is really free or something … anybody? She is disaffected and estranged from most people and her family, whom she calls at one point in a rare scene that borders on elucidating some kind of back story for the character.

Car trouble finds Wendy and Lucy marooned in some bland looking serfdom of the Pacific Northwest; here she finds little help from the locals, save from one hippie burn-out security guard who eventually turns around and helps her out of what I guess is pity (he gives her directions, the use of his cellular phone, and I think $7 to her).

What is the main conflict of the film? (Not that all movies need a big conflict or to be entertaining or to have a purpose for scenes other than to just have them or anything.) Well … Wendy, who we see counting the remaining cash for her trip and realizing that she has over $500, inexplicably decides to steal some dog food. She gets nabbed by a self righteous stock boy who, I guess, lays out the theme of the movie: “If somebody cannot afford to feed their dog then they shouldn’t have one.” The real motivation for this contrived theft is that it separates her from Lucy just long enough to give us a scene where she is processed by the authorities (Dennehy is lacking from this film, so there is no fire-hose treatment). After paying bail (which is much more than the cost of the dog food she stole) she finds that her dog is missing.

"This is The Postal Service right? I'm here about being an extra in the music video"

The remainder of the movie, the last 45 minutes or so, finds Wendy morosely wandering the unfamiliar town, looking for the pound, trying to find her mutt and get her car fixed. She finds little-to-no help in this endeavor. Eventually she finds Lucy and notices that she is living with what appears to be a “nice” old man. So anyways … she decides to leave Lucy for awhile planning on coming back when she strikes it rich (seriously is there another gold rush in Alaska or something?). She hops a train presumably bound for fortune and glory and that is the end of that.

Everybody seems to love this film but me. I can see potential in this narrative but it seems to lack about 38 minutes of material that might give us a reason to care about Wendy and her plight or to flesh out some kind of meaningful theme from the story. I just can not muster any kind of emotional concern for a presumed clepto-hipster-depressive-girl on a road-trip of self delusion or whatever is going on in the subtext of this movie. To quote the Radiohead song “Fake Plastic Trees”: “It wears me out”

Rating: One of Five Stars

 

2009 | Director: Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde,” “21″) | Writers: a bunch of them

No matter its imbecilic plot—successful TV news producer Abby (Katherine Heigl) agrees to let disgusting pig Mike (Gerard Butler), her popular game-theory segment host, take control of her pathetic love life to land the handsome doctor of her dreams—“The Ugly Truth” really boils down to the basic tenets of rom-com catechism: Uptight (man/woman) meets laid-back (woman/man), and through the stupidest of circumstances they are thrown into close proximity, resulting in mutual annoyance, followed by mutual hate, and, to complete the cycle in the most unlikely manner possible, ending in purest love. It’s nothing new, nothing funny, and I wish I hadn’t watched it.

The face Butler wears in this shot of Heigl yammering is the same expression I had all movie, except I was asleep

Perhaps my intense dislike of this film has more to do with the presence of Heigl, the maddeningly-popular star of “27 Dresses,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Knocked Up,” than my ambivalence toward romantic comedies in general; after all, I’ve digested billions of rom-coms and tolerated roughly half of them, but I’ve hated Heigl, in all her Tina Fey-like condescension and unwarranted self-importance, in exactly 100 percent of the films she’s been in. Maybe it’s because a typical scene of Heigl dialogue goes like this:

BIT CHARACTER: Excuse me, Ma’am, but I need you to sign for this package.

(Heigl removes her pince-nez and glares at the serf, affronted)

HEIGL: I shall do no such thing, blaggard!

(Heigl steps regally into her zeppelin, which takes her to the moon for high tea with Lady Chatterley and the Monopoly man.)

The target audience of "The Ugly Truth." I mean Serena Williams; not women. Serena Williams is the target audience.

Or maybe the intensity of Heigl-ism is greater in “Ugly” because opposite her looms Butler (King Leonidas of “300” fame), a normally-agreeable Scottish actor whose questionable comedic talents are obscured further by the intrusion of a harsh American accent—a characterization achieved, apparently, by stuffing his cheeks full of Slim Jims. Thus the “rough-edged jerk vs. stuck-up lady” interplay is heightened, but at the expense of any believability whatsoever. If you were a classy dame who hated everyone beneath you, would you really want to roll in the sack with a slovenly man-whore with Orson Welles jowls? I wouldn’t, but that’s me.

She didn't like it.

However, believability shouldn’t ever come up as an issue in a rom-com as long as a handful of decent jokes make their way from the script to the screen. Unfortunately for “Ugly” (and even more so for me, who sat through it) the screenplay is slightly less funny than watching a bus full of orphans drive into an open volcano. It could be that all three of the movie’s writers suffered personal tragedies during their somber collaboration, but that’s no excuse for director Robert Luketic, who could have spiced up the proceedings with some Benny Hill music and a food fight or two, at least.

Rating: One of Five Stars

2009 | Director: Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”) | Writers: Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida

Look at the expressions on these hipsters' faces. Can you believe the gall?

No one’s ever accused me of being a pretentious film critic. Sure, I’m a little more style-conscious than others—I wait to put on my monocle until after I’ve fastened my spats and powdered my wig—but then, my pristine garb is usually spattered with bugs and dirt by the time I’ve finished rollerblading to my local theater. I doubt any of the cinema employees find it pretentious when I pick up trod-upon popcorn in the hall and put it in my bindle for later, either.

Thus it pains me to call such a winning film as “Away We Go” the dreaded p-word, for as pervasive as its self-important sense of cool may be (mostly in the post-gen-X style and attitude purposely worn thin by nearly every character), it’s also a brilliant rumination on impending parenthood, and a remarkable showcase for impeccable comic acting—especially from its perfectly-cast leads. Most interestingly, the movie features characters who find the value of judging others even as the audience (me) learns not to condemn them for their newfound parental discretion.

Check out these hipsters walking away from their safe, whimsical car! Nice coat, Sgt. Pepper!

“Away” stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph as Burt and Verona, a loving, bright couple who learn that their looming child’s flighty grandparents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) are moving away, causing them to set out across North America in an effort to find a new home in which to start their family. Along the way they visit friends (played nicely by the likes of Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Chris Messina) who inadvertently show them the pitfalls of raising children too stridently one way or another; meanwhile Burt tries to convince Verona to marry him, and she attempts to put her past in the ground before she gives birth.

There’s an explicit superiority apparent in Burt and Verona—they’re smart, friendly, kind, well-tempered, and functional—as compared to the hilarious families they come in contact with (the film almost plays like a series of thematic sketches, such as Hipsters vs. Suburbanites, or Hipsters vs. holier-than-thou Intellectuals), but I believe that was director Sam Mendes’ intention. After all, they should seem better; unlike characters in most comedies, Burt and Verona are truly good people—complex, scared, and naïve, but good—while the other families, the “afters” to the protagonists’ “before,” bear all the pathologies of concentration camp survivors.

Yes, the characters are written (by noted author Dave Eggers and wife Vendela Vida) self-righteously, but the actors bury that with heartfelt, good-natured (and career-making) performances. Rudolph is marvelous as an orphaned illustrator whose calculated sobriety offsets the unbridled optimism and upbeat humor of Burt, played by Krasinksi with effortless charm and a meticulous sense of comedic timing that eventually cracks to show the character’s hidden vulnerability. In fact, if it wasn’t for the shaggy hair, second-hand dresses, and Rivers Cuomo-esque glasses, the duo might not have come off as uppity in the least.

These people act like they own this commercial airliner. Cool fetal heart monitor, Stephen Malkmus!

But, really, a little pretentiousness is more fun. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about “Away” is watching Burt and Verona’s faces fall as they grow from being merely quietly stuck-up hipsters living in the woods to people horrified by what kind of parents they might become. If they haven’t earned the right to judge the awful behavior of their peers, then who has?

In the end, the parents-to-be are simply two people trying to define “home” for themselves, and while the answers at which they arrive may seem simple, they don’t make the couple’s journey any less meaningful. The last shots of “Away” imply that Burt and Verona, despite the hope that grounds them, have no way of knowing if they’ll fall into the traps their weather-beaten friends now inhabit.

Rating: Four of Five Stars

2008 | Director: Brad Anderson (“The Wire,” “The Shield”) | Writers: Brad Anderson and Will Conroy

“Transsiberian” is a thriller that follows a Christian American couple played adequately by Woody Harrleson (“Money Train”, “Play it to the Bone”) and the always fetching Emily Mortimer (“Redbelt,” “Lars and the Real Girl”) as they travel from Beijing to Moscow along the famous railway.

I love trains in movies. They offer a look and an environment for great suspense and excitement (“Narrow Margin” “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory”). I also enjoy settings that have great character in mood and tone. “Transsiberian” has some of this but not enough to overcome a first act that is about 20 minutes too long and ultimately leads to a convoluted and derivative crime plot.

This first act also offers Harrelson and Mortimer giving up their collective back-stories in perfunctory monologues delivered to the young sketchy couple they meet on the first leg of the trip. The way the Americans offer information about their past is amateur and forced. It took me out of the story and left the rest of the movie trying to get me back.

The movie is here. It's not as great as it looks.

Things do pick up in the second half as Mortimer’s character engages in a somewhat inexplicable series of actions that ultimately serve the plot by connecting her and Harrelson with the crime story. Once this happens the film is more engaging though it never seems to get beyond mediocrity in anything other than Mortimer’s performance. This is too bad because Ben Kingsley (“Species”, “BloodRayne”) shows up on the train at this point to help kick the tension up a notch.

Ultimately, problems with execution kept me from enjoying the movie as much as I would have liked. Plot issues aside, Anderson does not handle the landscapes and environment in a way that is particularly exciting. And the crime story and characters are for the most part just-so average. I really wanted to like “Transsiberian” but in the end it was nothing special.

Rating: Two of Five Stars

 

2009 | Director: David Yates (“Harry Potter 5″) | Writer: Steve Kloves (“Harry Potter 1-4,” “Wonder Boys”)

Slughorn regales the British kids with yarns of mortarboards past

The “Harry Potter” films—like J.K. Rowling’s books before them—are remarkable in that no single aspect of any of the movies stands out; audiences are truly receiving them as parts of the whole overarching storyline, which is a testament to Rowling’s fantastically accessible source material as much as it is due to level-headed directors and solid acting. So while David Yates’ well-done “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” doesn’t manage to separate itself much from the previous five entries, such a feat would not have been necessary, nor welcome, in a series that relies so heavily on the coming-of-age journey.

“Half-Blood Prince” begins where “Order of the Phoenix” left off, then takes Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) off with venerable Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) on a quest to piece together murderous Lord Voldemort’s past, a quest that requires the assistance of an unwilling Hogwarts potions professor (a wonderful Jim Broadbent, “Hot Fuzz”) with ties to unspeakable evil, if a devastating climax is to be averted.

Meanwhile, love is in the air, and much like in the scene in “Bambi” where all the animals go through puberty and decide that creatures of the opposite gender are sexy, the Hogwarts students start going googly-eyed for each other. Not immune to such twitterpated behavior are Harry’s buds Ron (Rupert Grint, never better), Hermoine (Emma Watson, never as legally hot), and everybody else, for good measure.

People need to lock up their red-headed daughters when short, bespectacled nerds come around

If nothing in the last two paragraphs makes sense, that’s because Yates understands that none of the “Harry Potter” films need to be able to stand alone—“Half-Blood Prince” is a serial in the best sense of the word, and the filmmakers seem to find freedom in that. Where Yates truly excels is finding balance between the great number of surprisingly humorous moments and the ever-ramping sense of dread that has picked up since “Goblet of Fire;” while this is by far the funniest Potter film, there is never any doubt that the mostly-carefree world that existed in the beginning of the series has permanently changed for the worse, exemplified by Bruno Delbonnel’s pristinely baroque cinematography.

Dumbledore, flaming

Fans love Rowling’s series because she’s injected the universal tale of growing up, making it through school, and learning to love with elements of fantasy and the deeply satisfying undercurrent of heroism; but in a way, the filmmakers in charge of bringing the series to the silver screen have achieved even greater heights in that they’ve somehow faithfully adapted such a far-reaching, thematically-dense epic without lessening the impact it’s had on the page. In that sense, Yates may be little more than a middle-man, but his delivery is in perfect sync with Rowling’s own vision.

Rating: Four of Five Stars

2009 | Director and Writer: Michael Mann (“Collateral,” “Miami Vice”)

Most good Michael Mann films feature a distinguishing action setpiece that exemplifies the stakes for his characters, such as the somber chase on the picturesque cliffs in “Last of the Mohicans,” or the dazzling shootout on the L.A. streets in “Heat.” In Mann’s case, as with many premier directors, form and function are two sides of the same coin, so it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that Mann’s “Public Enemies” both lacks one of these all-important scenes and fails to give any solid reasons why the lives of the famed criminals of the 1930s were important.

John Dillinger lays out the plan for his bank-robber buddies

“Enemies” takes an interesting stand in its depiction of real-life populist bank-robber John Dillinger (a decent-as-usual Johnny Depp) as a limelight-addicted rock star masquerading as a felon, but the film quickly loses that edge in the miasma of its accoutrements, such as FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and his robotic, motivation-free quest to bring Dillinger to justice for a chip-shouldered J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), a man dedicated to eradicating the sexy crime of robbery in a new age of coast-to-coast smuggling syndicates and gambling rings.

Dillinger and friends stare up at Chicago's biggest bank

Mann attempts to instill the movie with a “Wild Bunch”-like theme—outlaws of yesteryear making a final stand in the face of a changing world—but that thesis is limited by Dillinger’s own desire for the mythic Lady in Red, Billie Frechette (bug-eyed French actress Marion Cotillard), forming a wholly unconvincing relationship that dampens any concrete goals Dillinger might have. Along the way viewers get to see what happened to such luminary killers as Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson. Or they could just look it up and save two and a half hours.

Dillinger pleads for parlay from criminal-hunter Melvin Purvis

In a word, “Enemies” is boring. A major issue—and the main reason why the film fails to achieve the aforementioned stakes-setting action setpiece—is Mann’s continued insistence upon using a rudimentary digital-video filming technique to shoot both high- and low-light scenes, resulting in gunfights that look like BBC documentaries about shadows.  Sadly, the form just doesn’t match the function in this case, deadening any profound thoughts that may be floating around within the margins of the screen.

The big 2nd-act shootout. Baby Face Nelson is on the left

And if I’m wrong, and everything Mann meant to say is there to be taken from the tale of Dillinger and his inevitable downfall, then it just may be that Dillinger’s life didn’t really mean anything worth learning about. So why make a movie about him? You got me.

Rating: Two of Five Stars

2008| Director and Writer: Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

It was damn near 10 years ago that a young college freshman looking forward to studying medicine took a Friday night off and went to the movies. The movie was “Fight Club” from Director David Fincher. It was dark and funny and offbeat and everything that an 18-year-old hopelessly hopeless kid wants from his entertainment. It was also based on a book from an up-and-coming author Chuck Palahniuk. Flash-forward to September 12^th 2001, where said “kid” is on a bus trip in a newly confused and frightened United States of America with Radiohead’s “O.K. Computer” and Palahniuk’s newest book “Choke” as the only thing to keep his mind at ease.

Needless to say the kid was me and when I got to school after that bus ride my brief flirtation with a career in medicine was over.

Now, years later, “Choke” is a movie staring the ever likable/unlikable Sam Rockwell (“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” “Matchstick Men”) as protagonist Victor Mancini. We learn that, as a child, Victor was taken by his crazy mother and spent most of his childhood on the road and on the run. As such he never learned to feel love. Now a loser approaching middle age, Victor’s plight is that he is a sex addict. The sex angle is really the gimmick of “Choke,” an offbeat comedy–or beat-off comedy if you will.

Between the crazy road-trips with Mommy and the sex addiction, Victor also aspired to study medicine, but like so many others, didn’t quite make it. He uses his mother–and specifically the cost of her treatment in a mental care facility, where her years of reckless drug abuse are quickly bringing her to the twilight of her life–as an excuse for never having completed med school and moved on with his life. So Victor and his friend and fellow sex addict Denny (a fan of Mastodon) waste their time working at some 17^th Century historical theme park.

Many of the modern comedies by people like Judd Apatow and Jody Hill deal with an emotionally stunted man/boy getting into hijinks and screwing around, literally as well as figuratively. Usually the result is the delight of an audience who must suspend their disbelief of the contrivances of the plot as well as their own sense of good judgment. This is fine in a comedy and in this sense “Choke” is no different. There are brief moments of seriousness that some might read as pretense but the film does not linger on or belabor these parts in any sort of way that bothers me.

In terms of execution the film is appropriately rough in its look and simplistic shooting style. It was shot by director of photography Tim Orr, who has worked with David Gordon Green and Jody Hill on most of their past projects, and as such it has a similar look. In terms of performances, Rockwell does what he does best by playing a creep, and Angelica Huston (“Ice Pirates,” “The Royal Tenenbaums”) is also good in the sort-of-dual role as a crazy kidnapping mother and older dementia-ridden mental patient. The film has some moments that some might find disturbing, but in this it is on the level of something like Trainspotting. At 92 minutes it is the sort of movie that shouldn’t kill your entire evening, though I don’t recommend it as a date movie.

 

Three stars  of Five Stars