New Releases

What's the nature of In Our Nature? Smart but rather dull, like a sophisticated person who needs better stories to tell.

I had hoped the producers of Meek's Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy -- two of my favorite quiet little movies -- would deliver another entertaining and keenly observant film with In Our Nature. But while Vincent Savino and Anish Savjani's new film says some compelling things about human relationships, it suffers from a plodding pace and only mildly interesting narrative.

In Our Nature is set entirely in an upstate New York weekend home, where young Brooklynites Seth (Zach Gilford) and Andie (Jena Malone) hope to spend a romantic weekend. Shortly after they arrive, Seth's long-estranged father, Gil (John Slattery), who owns the house, shows up unexpectedly with his much-younger girlfriend, Vicky (Gabrielle Union). Tempers flare immediately, as Seth and Gil blame each other for the scheduling mix-up.

The indie drama In Our Nature, which premiered at SXSW in March, returns to Austin on Friday for a theatrical run. The movie stars Jena Malone, Gabrielle Union, Zach Gilford and John Slattery.

Look for Don's review this afternoon -- among other things, he's says it's "an astute film with much to say about family dynamics." It's about a father and son spending a weekend with their respective partners at a vacation home in upstate New York.

We have two pairs of tickets to give away to see In Our Nature at Regal Arbor 8. You can use these tickets to attend any screening of the movie at the Arbor from Monday 12/17 through Thursday 12/20. Tickets must be redeemed at the box office and seating is subject to availability.

If you can't wait for Monday and want to see the movie this weekend, I recommend going to the 7:30 pm screenings on Friday and Saturday night at the Arbor. In Our Nature writer/director Brian Savelson and producer Anish Savjani will hold post-film Q&As at those screenings. Savjani is a former Austinite who has produced locally connected indies such as The Taiwan Oyster, Mars, Harmony and Me, I'll Come Running and You Hurt My Feelings -- not to mention Meek's Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy.

Now, here's how to win one of these pairs of tickets. Tell us in the comments about a parent/child movie you particularly like. Make sure you include your email address, which only I will see, and will use only to contact the winners. Post your comment by 11:59 pm today (Thursday, Dec. 13). I'll pick two people at random who will each win an admit-two pass, which will be available for you at the Arbor box office. Best of luck!

One of the greatest horror films of all time is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Just a few short months ago I hadn't seen this classic movie. I wrote up my experience watching it for Horror's Not Dead: Sins of Omission: Psycho. Little did I know then that a biopic was being filmed that would document the process of making this classic film. The biopic is called Hitchcock, and it opens in Austin theaters today.

Possessing a great cast and strong story, Hitchcock tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock, his wife Alma Reville and the difficulty they experienced bringing Psycho to the big screen. While still under contract to Paramount Studios, one of Hitchcock's assistants brings a book to the director's attention: Robert Bloch's Psycho. Psycho is a fictional story based loosely on the life of the infamous serial killer Ed Gein. Soon after reading the book, Hitchcock decides it will be the foundation for his next film. When Paramount refuses to finance the film, Hitchcock decides to produce the film himself. After the director mortgages his house, production begins. The remainder of the movie is spent with Hitchcock as he's producing, casting, shooting and ultimately promoting his horror masterpiece.

The performances delivered by the film's lead actors are remarkable. Anthony Hopkins delivers a perfect representation of one of the world's greatest and most well known directors. Accompanying Hopkins on his journey are Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson. Mirren plays Hitchcock's wife and uncredited film making partner Alma Reville, and Scarlett Johansson plays Psycho's lead actress Janet Leigh. Both of these actresses deliver amicable performances in their respective roles.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing director Sacha Gervasi, who was in Austin promoting his new film Hitchcock, based on Stephen Rebello's book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. The movie provides an intimate look behind the scenes of Psycho, where the greatest influence was not from a Hollywood blonde but the formidable woman in Hitchcock's life -- his wife, Alma Reville. The film opens in Austin on Friday.

Gervasi -- seen above at a post-interview lunch -- chatted with me about Hitchcock's influences and the challenges he faced during the making of Psycho, as well as Gervasi's own method of portraying such an iconic subject.

Slackerwood: Your film Hitchcock demonstrates an intimacy that audiences normally wouldn't associate with Alfred Hitchcock.

Sacha Gervasi: I think it's interesting for audiences seeing his films -- clearly we are very intimate with his psychological neuroses, but we aren't necessarily intimate with the man himself. My perspective on it was that over the years, Hitchcock has been maligned at times. He's been painted as either a creative genius on one level, or some sort of monster who is unspeakably cruel to his actors and actresses. I think that's probably true at different times and we have that in our film.

My high-school class once spent an afternoon watching the 1956 movie War and Peace, and we susceptible sophomores fell hard for the Hollywood-ized love story with Audrey Hepburn, swoony Mel Ferrer and Henry Fonda (despite that flat drawl of "Nataaaahsha," all I can remember about the film now). I decided it would be fun to read Leo Tolstoy's novel (I was also show-offy, but never mind). I found out quickly that the story we adored in the movie was only a small, stripped-down part of a far more complicated novel, which included more of the war and much less of the romance. Plus, everyone had 10 names. The epilogues in particular were quite disappointing. At age 15, I preferred Hollywood over epic Russian literature.

The latest lavish adaptation of Anna Karenina, like that version of War and Peace, focuses is on love and romance and passion, although at least this time the accents are harmonious and the tragic ending remains. The tagline is "You can't ask why about love" and some press materials I received call it "A bold new vision of Tolstoy's epic of love." I'm not sure how Tolstoy would feel about the implication that Love Is All, but if he were going to turn over in his grave he would have done so decades ago. Besides, how many people watching this movie have actually read the novel? (I haven't.) I'd believe that filmmaker Joe Wright would focus on the romantic aspects, judging by his 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation, but the script is written by Tom Stoppard, who I hoped would be more subtle.

Anna Karenina is about a woman who falls prey to True Love and decides to follow it no matter what happens to her or anyone else, and then realizes that the price she is paying is pretty damn harsh. Kiera Knightley plays the title character, who not only cheats on her dull, older husband (Jude Law) with the dashing and passionate Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) but violates social mores by being public about it. If they'd only just hidden their affair, things might have been fine, but their love is just too passionate and amazing and strong to be kept hidden, especially by Anna.

Screenwriter/director Andrew Dominik has adapted true crime novelist's George V. Higgins Cogan's Trade into the film Killing Them Softly, which can be described as a dark comedy and crime drama. The criminal trade depicted by Higgins may be run by mobsters and "wise guys," but there are also those who don't have enough brains to know when not to talk to keep themselves out of trouble -- or alive. 

Scoot McNairy (Monsters, Argo) portrays Frankie, a two-bit hoodlum fresh out of jail and right back into a life of crime along with his pal Russell (Ben Mendelsohn). The not-so-bright pair are convinced by Johnny Amato (Vincent Curatola) to hit a high-stakes card game ran by gangster Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) with a plan to frame Markie for the robbery, which seems like a good plan since Markie had set up a raid on his own game himself. The local mobsters are not pleased, and assign an unnamed middleman (Richard Jenkins) to hire the services of hitman Jackie (Brad Pitt). Jackie brings in seasoned veteran hitman Mickey (James Gandolfini) to help by taking care of Amato, but Mickey is past his prime, spending his time drunk and holed up in a hotel room with hookers.

Killing Them Softly is a slow and evenly paced albeit a bit lengthy journey through the back alleys of a sordid part of America. Jackie comes across as a reluctant hitman who prefers to get the job done quickly rather than let his victims suffer. Connections to real life are made to historical political and economic events through background audio and video via radios and television, reflecting the dismal state of the economy and unfulfilled promises of hope made by politicians. Discussions between the mob negotiator and Jackie would seem just as fitting if they'd met in a corporate boardroom.

It is an old idea that gods lose their power when people stop believing in them, but one generally reserved for adult fiction. Opening this week, Dreamworks Animation's Rise of the Guardians makes that its central plot device as the evil boogeyman, Pitch Black (Jude Law), tries to cover the world in darkness by making children stop believing in their heroes, Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Easter bunny (Hugh Jackman), the tooth fairy (Isla Fisher), and the sandman. The screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire was based on novels by William Joyce, who has been prolific lately, with three novels and two picture books published in 2011 and 2012 as well as an Academy Award-winning short film that he wrote and directed.

The story takes place in a world where the titular Guardians are real people chosen by the Man in the Moon to act as protectors for children around the world -- though, it would appear from the script the only thing they are protecting is the children's belief in them. Newly recruited to the group, Jack Frost (Chris Pine) has abilities that will make him instrumental in the struggle with darkness.  Beautiful art design and an extremely talented voice cast bring this story to life making for an unconventional holiday adventure.

Director Peter Ramsey has crafted a fun movie that children will adore, though Rise of the Guardians likely won't be remembered by parents as a timeless classic like A Nightmare Before Christmas (the first film that comes to mind involving holidays personified). The animation is stunning, and the 3D is seamless, but scenes regularly involved rollercoaster camera work that serve more to appeal to children with short attention spans than to help the story along.

Also, a rare complaint in children's films, but the end title song "Still Dream" performed by Grammy-winning vocalist Renée Fleming (and the first listing on the soundtrack album) made it difficult to patiently wait for the post-credits scene. Though of course flawlessly performed, the song felt so abruptly out of place and different in tone from the rest of Alexandre Desplat's score, it was as though someone had changed the channel and we were watching the credits for a completely different film.

Sometimes the last 10 minutes can change your opinion of the entire movie. This happened to me with Life of Pi. Near the end of the film, another perspective is given on the story that's been unspooling onscreen, a perspective that reveals an underlying theme or message, which irritated me enough to cast a shadow on the rest of the movie.

Despite the revelation in the third act, Life of Pi is a gorgeous movie, successfully recounting a tale that could have easily veered into the ridiculous. Director Ang Lee has beautifully imagined this adaptation of the bestselling novel by Yann Martel, which I haven't read. And yet, while I was never bored, I never felt especially engaged in the story.

The title character, Pi, is a grown man (Irrfan Khan) recounting the main story in flashbacks. The story he tells is primarily about himself as a teenager (Suraj Sharma), when his family undertakes a trip from India to Canada to start a new life in a new country. A storm disrupts their sea travel and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a number of animals from his father's zoo, including a ferocious Bengal tiger.

Every generation has their boogeyman and these boogeymen often inspire the types of films being made. Films like Godzilla and Them were created because of our fear of The Bomb. Movies like Psycho and Easy Rider were reflections on our distrust of The Man or "our fellow man."

Then came the 1980s, a time of reflection for our decade about the time spent fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. Two films stand out: Red Dawn and Platoon. Platoon was a reflection of the hardship inflicted on the soldiers during the Vietnam conflict. Preceding Platoon by two years was Red Dawn. The 1984 film asked a question: What would happen if our country was invaded by a superior force, this force being the Soviet Union? The Viet Cong would be replaced with a bunch of high-school kids.

Here in 2012, the contemporary remake Red Dawn is a superficial representation about what would happen should another country -- in this case North Korea -- invade the United States. 

Set in Spokane, Washington, the story centers around two brothers, Jed and Matt Eckert. Jed (Chris Hemsworth) is a Marine, home on leave after tours of duty in Afghanistan. Matt (Josh Peck) is Jed’s younger brother and quarterback of his high-school football team, the Wolverines. As the invasion begins, Jed, Matt and a small group of their friends escape the battle and head for the hills surrounding Spokane.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, in spite of its ungainly title, is actually a surprising crowd-pleaser. Fans of Stephenie Meyer's novels will find this an improvement over the story they were expecting. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg won't likely win an Oscar for her adaptation, but it's a satisfying conclusion to the series. As with Part 1, director Bill Condon has de-emphasized the sparkle as well as the Taylor Lautner Torso, with the exception of one comical scene. There is no shortage, however, of the sappy Edward-Bella romantic schlock that is so endearing to tweenage audiences.

One of the largest complaints coming out of preview screenings was the disturbing CGI look of baby Renesmee, who sits squarely in the uncanny valley. The complaints are correct; the look goes beyond "otherworldly" to just plain disturbing. A look at the credits, however, can give a clue to what's going on. Besides Mackenzie Foy, ten other girls are credited a Renesmee at different ages. Presumably their faces were all replaced with Foy's with some alterations for aging. In fact, most versions of her look like a perfectly normal sweet little girl. Only the infant version left a truly disturbing impression.

In addition to Mackenzie Foy a number of other new faces appear in Breaking Dawn -  Part 2, including Rami Malek as Benjamin and Lee Pace as Garrett. As the Cullen clan travels the world recruiting vampire allies for a huge final battle, they join a group of characters that look as though they stepped right out of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series. Most notably, a pair of wandering Amazons bring to mind Maharet and Mekare in The Queen of the Damned.

Of course, the Volturi, led by the mind-reading Aro (Michael Sheen) fit Lestat's mold, refined and well-dressed but creepy and bloodthirsty. Sheen is a bit less threatening than when he was first introduced in Part 1, but Dakota Fanning is still a childlike terror. The most intriguing of the Italians is Christopher Heyerdahl as Marcus. Heyerdahl is one of the strongest genre actors around, and with a single word he indicates volumes of information about his character.