New Releases

Horrible Bosses, which opened in theaters on Friday, is the best workplace comedy since Office Space. Co-stars Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis capture a dynamic not seen since Tomlin, Fonda and Parton in Nine to Five. This movie is solid comedy that never misses a beat, destined to be the cult classic of the 20-teens.

Bateman, Day and Sudeikis, all regular guys caught in bad situations, play off one another like Larry, Moe and Curly as they land each other into ever more outrageously sticky situations. In fact, one of my favorite scenes involves simply an overhead shot of them trying to back their cars out of a parking lot -- a genius bit of vehicular choreography. The film plays out like watching the events that led up to The Hangover in real time. This is the Hangover sequel I wanted to see.

Horrible Bosses is of course about the bosses, and they are absolutely horrible. Colin Farrell is a cokehead spoiled rich bastard who wants only to squeeze every penny from the company he's inherited from his deceased father (Donald Sutherland). Jennifer Aniston takes sexual harrassment to new levels when she spices it up with a little blackmail. And finally, Kevin Spacey plays the meanest, toughest, slickest SOB to ever wield a pink slip. He makes Dabney Coleman look like Bob Newhart. These are bosses you really do kind of want to die.

To help that happen for the three leads, special recognition has to go to Jamie Foxx, playing a character whose name I can't spoil. Foxx has some of the best scenes in the movie as he instructs the trio on the finer points of murdering without getting caught. Other exceptional cameos include Ron "Tater Salad" White as a hard-hitting detective, Isaiah "Old-Spice" Mustafa, John Francis Daley and one very special cameo that steals the show.

Why don't animals talk? Well, if Zookeeper is any indication, it's because they have absolutely nothing worth saying. At the end of the year, this movie will be tops on many worst-of lists.

Two former Spin City writers who brought us Norbit a few years ago teamed up with with a few of their buddies to write one of the most worthless, predictable, groan-inducing and even objectionable talent black hole of a script Hollywood's seen this decade. That's right, it's a script so bad it sucks the talent out of more stars than were at this year's Oscars.

Cher, Stallone, Nolte, Favreau, Breuer, Apatow, Rickles -- these folks are all so big they only need one name, but as the voices of a zoo full of obsessive-compulsive furry/feathered friends, they are telling more poo and pee jokes than you could dig up from a full season of South Park. Even Ken Jeong, one of the craziest funny guys in movies lately, is reduced here in Zookeeper to a tepid, boring, creepy approximation of his screen self.

The sad thing is that beneath all the jokes of extraordinarily bad taste is a family-friendly movie about being yourself and recognizing love when you find it. Kevin James as titular zookeeper Griffin Keyes has spent five years heartbroken over the girl who turned down his marriage proposal, Stephanie (Leslie Bibb). When she suddenly appears at a reception for his brother's wedding rehearsal, his animal friends decide to help him win her back. How very Disney a premise. Indeed, many kids today can identify with the story as they've wanted to help keep their parents together or reunite them after a divorce. But Griffin is an adult so insane over his ex-girlfriend and somehow so intensely stupid, he is willing to listen to these animals as they instruct him in the finer arts of walking with his crotch thrust out and peeing to mark his territory.

Like the thoughtful, strategy-driven game of chess that is its focus, Queen to Play (Joueuse) is not for the impatient.

A study in parallels between chess and the larger game of life, this quiet French film is many things -- sophisticated, insightful, mildly funny and generally pleasant. One thing it may not be: captivating enough to hold most viewers' interest.

Which is not to say Queen to Play is a bad movie; to the contrary, it has many hallmarks of intelligent, competent filmmaking, with a believable story, great and sometimes surprising character development, and fine acting. And its pacing arguably is appropriate for its subject matter. But depending on your tolerance for slow-paced films -- and mine is quite high -- these attributes may or may not save Queen to Play from being rather dull. I'm still undecided.

Set on the picturesque island of Corsica, Queen to Play is the story of Hélène (Sandrine Bonnaire), a middle-aged chambermaid whose boring job and marital frustration leave her longing for a more meaningful, happier life. She develops a new interest in chess (actually, it's more of an obsession); to improve her skills, she asks for help from one of her employers, grumpy American expat Kröger (Kevin Kline).

I love summer. I especially love the summer movie season. We go to the metroplex to watch films packed with cowboys, robots, aliens, wizards and superheroes. We go to escape from our reality. Finding quality films in this environment can be difficult but every once in awhile you find yourself seated in front of a true gem. For me this gem is a film called Larry Crowne.

Larry Crowne takes its name from its lead character, played by Tom Hanks. It opens with our protagonist being fired from his job at a Wal-Mart-like retailer. The reason: Larry lacks a college degree. Upon being fired, Larry re-evaluates his life and decides to explore returning to college via his local community college. While visiting the college, Larry is advised to him to take a couple of classes: speech and economics. The classes are taught by Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts) and Dr. Matsutani (George Takei). Each of these actors brings their respective characters to life in unique and amusing ways.

I had strong reservations about Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Its predecessor, Revenge of the Fallen, is easily one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I'm definitely no fan of director Michael Bay. Of the 14 previous films he's directed, Armageddon is the only one I find worth watching a second time, and The Island is on my list of films with the greatest potential that turned out to be the biggest disappointments.

So, I went into Transformers 3 with lowered expectations in spite of the general good buzz I'd been hearing. True to form, Bay has created another example of terribad filmmaking. He's nothing if not consistent, with his films chock full of slow-motion action shots, cameras making love to the super-hot babe-of-the-month and yes, people looking up. Bay got his start making music videos and Playboy centerfolds, and his movies still play like extended music videos. The difference is that this one, this time, somehow just works, at least for about 50 percent of the people who have seen it.

The thing is, Transformers: Dark of the Moon has the attention span of a ten-year-old kid after a six pack of Yoohoo. The action moves from a battle on the Transformers' home planet Cybertron to the moon to Shia LaBeouf and girlfriend Rosie Huntington-Whitely to an insanely hilarious scene with Ken Jeong that doesn't fit in with the rest of the movie.

Each scene plays like a ten-minute music video, the medium where Bay works best, making the first two-thirds of the movie like a night of watching MTV. If you like the majority of these vignettes, and the Shia LaBeouf detective story that ties them together, you'll be in a great mood for the EPIC unbelievable 3D actionfest of the last 40 minutes.

If those don't work for you -- and they may not, even though Transformers: Dark of the Moon has the most cohesive storyline of the trilogy -- you may be in a bad mood when the real action starts. And this is one point where I'm most mixed on the movie. The action is amazing, but at times Bay focuses too long on any two robots fighting at the expense of missing the action that's going on in the rest of the battle. This is an all-out three way fight between Autobots, Decepticons and the U.S. military. After two hours of story buildup, the 40 minutes of fighting dispenses with any story and then comes to a sudden end with little to no wrap-up. The result is that you'll walk out a little exhausted and overwhelmed or else entirely wound up like a spring.

In Jake Kasdan's latest comedy, Bad Teacher, Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) ends one school year assuming that she will never have to teach again, only to have her opera-loving fiance -- and his mom -- dump her. Instead of living off her rich almost-hubby, she ends up rooming with someone she found on Craigslist (Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family) and goes back to teaching at John Adams Middle School. She befriends an older teacher (Phyliis Smith, The Office), is annoyed by Ms. Squirrel (Lucy Punch) across the hall, and starts saving up for a boob job. Oh, and there's also a new slightly spacey substitute teacher (a geeky-looking Justin Timberlake), and a phys-ed teacher (a schlumpy Jason Segel) who assures her that her breasts are fine the way they are.

Diaz portrays the despicable -- yet still a tad likeable -- Ms. Halsey with aplomb. She stumbles into class high and/or drunk in scuffed-up Louboutin heels, pops in a school-related movie and is stunned when her students admit to never seeing Stand and Deliver before. Throughout the first half of the film, I don't recall a mention of what subject she is supposed to be teaching (it's English). Compare that to Halsey's nemesis for the film, Ms. Squirrel, who kicks off the start of the year with apples for each of her students, wearing a captain's hat as she welcomes the kids to her class. I joked to my middle-school teacher friend that I was sure she did the same with her students.

In 2006, Pixar released a film that uniquely celebrated America's automotive culture and the small communities that were displaced by the interstate freeway system. Not only did Cars shine a light on a dying piece of Americana, it also had a dramatically unique visual presentation where everything in the world, including insects, was an automobile.

Five years later, after giving us Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3, Pixar returns with Cars 2, only their second film to get a sequel. It's not a surprise given the popularity of Cars, especially the rustbucket tow-truck character Tow Mater (voiced by comedian Larry the Cable Guy), that it would be chosen for the sequel treatment with "Mater" at the center of the story. I would be willing to bet the merchandise sales for Cars double that of any other Pixar movie. If that means this is a Pixar cash grab, I'm willing to accept it given the money will go into creating more original works like Up.

The entire cast of Cars returns with the exception of two greats. It's sad that in the last five years we've lost not only George Carlin, who was replaced in the role of Fillmore by Lloyd Sherr, but also Paul Newman, whose Doc Hudson receives a poignant memorial in the beginning of Cars 2 (indeed, Cars was Newman's last feature film appearance). New to the cast are the fantastic talents of Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, John Turturro and Bruce Campbell, as well as a great number of celebrity cameos.

While Cars was a classic story full of nostalgia that resonated with an older audience even as it entertained the kids, Cars 2 is an enjoyable spy spoof that may appeal more to a younger crowd. The story follows Mater as he stumbles into the clandestine world of espionage due to a case of mistaken identity, leaving very little time spent with his fellow residents of Radiator Springs. Worse, depending on your viewpoint, the world is not populated just with cars, but also now with boats and planes, a change in style that is necessary for the places the film goes in a bigger world, but counter to the autos-only spirit of Cars.

According to the laws of coherent filmmaking, Beginners shouldn't work at all. The movie combines disparate elements unlikely to work together -- two love stories, a coming-out comedy, a withering statement about bigotry, a tragic death, a commentary about art versus commerce and even an oh-so-cute dog. And while juggling all these moving parts, the story constantly jumps from now to then and here to there and back again, taking us from modern-day Los Angeles to 1930s Germany to a half-dozen worlds in between.

But Beginners works well, smashingly well, so well that it's among my favorite films of this year. Much of the credit goes to Christopher Plummer, who blesses Beginners with one of the finest performances of his career.

Beginners is told from the point of view of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a young artist whose father, Hal (Plummer), has recently died of cancer. When Oliver's mother,Georgia (Mary Page Keller) died a few years earlier, Hal announced he was gay, having been not quite totally closeted through more than 40 years of marriage. In funny and sympathetic flashbacks, we see that Hal's coming out was both awkward and profoundly liberating. Freed from the bonds of a pointless marriage and in a new relationship with a much younger man, Andy (Goran Visnjic), Hal never was happier.

"A lot of times, rather than helping people with horse problems," says Buck Brannaman, "I'm helping horses with people problems."

The subject of the documentary Buck, horse trainer Brannaman travels America teaching horse owners positive ways to communicate with their animals. He is the gentlest of gentle souls, a skilled cowboy whose believes the best way to train a horse is through leadership and sensitivity, not brutality and punishment. Buck is as gentle as its subject, a finely made, ever thoughtful film that shows us how Brannaman's approach applies not only to horses, but to people as well. The movie opens Friday in Austin.

Brannaman's skill with horses is amazing. As he transforms a frightened, unruly horse into a calm, obedient one in a matter of minutes, it's as if he has unique insight into the equine mind. But Brannaman would be the first to say that while he has many well honed skills, he has no special relationship with horses. He merely understands that the best way to work with a horse -- or a human -- is to instill trust, not fear.

In a summer of blockbuster comic-book movies, maybe we've grown spoiled. The overwhelming audience reaction to Green Lantern when I saw the film was, well, patently underwhelmed.

Directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Legend of Zorro), Green Lantern was perhaps the most anticipated film of the summer for legions of fans of the comic book. When I saw it was scripted by Greg Berlanti (Broken Hearts Club), I should have heard warning bells ringing in my head.

Berlanti, writer and producer for screens big and small, is responsible for some of the most original (and most short-lived) series on television: Dawson's Creek, Brothers & Sisters, Eli Stone -- all highly acclaimed but brief. Does he have experience with comic book-style superheroes? You need look no further than his latest failure on ABC. No Ordinary Family failed for exactly the reasons Green Lantern is so weak. Endless excessive mopey dialogue before we get to see any action and characters that act against not only their type, but against rational judgement. This works in a Sunday night drama soap opera like Brothers & Sisters, but it murders a $150,000,000 action film.

If you're a serious Ryan Reynolds fan who can't wait to see him in his titey whities, go see Green Lantern. Plenty of abs are on display, and it's obvious he's been working out harder than ever. And if you're a big Green Lantern comic-book fan, you should enjoy a very faithful adaptation of the comic to the big screen, once 45 minutes of exposition and poorly-executed love story get out of the animators' way. Campbell is no stranger to action directing, and those are the parts that work. Everything that takes place away from Earth is visually exciting, even stunning.

Back on our home planet, however, Reynolds' character dwindles into a cutout cardboard puppet flipping between the actor's limited repertoire of two expressions: mischieviously giddy and sad puppy dog. Reynolds was never my preference to portray Hal Jordan (they should've gone with Nathan Fillion), but at least whenever he dons the mask, the animators expand the character's range by two or three more expressions. Co-star Blake Lively likewise is either frustrated and upset or exuding doe-eyed passion. Peter Sarsgaard, as tortured villain Hector Hammond, is the only actor on Earth who does anything remotely interesting. Even Tim Robbins phones in his role as Hammond's scheming Senator father.