Reviews

Jack Abramoff isn't known as a funny guy, and his story -- an infuriating tale of fraud and political corruption -- isn't funny, either. The former high-rolling lobbyist arguably is one of America's most hated public figures, and his scandalous tenure as a Washington power player only deepened the American public's cynicism about politics.

Given Abramoff's notoriety, mining his story for darkly comic gold is risky. And taking this risk has only a modest payoff in Casino Jack, a stylish and busy movie that's sometimes very funny but isn't quite the smart political satire it could have been.

Casino Jack, which first screened in town on Austin Film Festival's closing night in partnership with The Texas Observer, is a reasonably accurate portrayal of Abramoff's money-fueled machinations, in least in the general sense if not in some of the details. The longtime political operative (and onetime film producer who sullied many a multiplex with the Dolph Lundgren dreckfest Red Scorpion) became an über-lobbyist in the mid 1990s, using his ties to Tom DeLay and other powerful Republicans to help pass business-friendly legislation for his clients. His client list included the usual corporate conglomerates, but also governments such as The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and several Indian tribes with gambling interests.

Opening at the Arbor on Friday, the British movie Made in Dagenham is a feminist film, and doesn't hide it. It's also quite hilarious, with deft performances and witty writing.

Based in 1968, Made in Dagenham tells the true story of the female workers at the Ford of Britain motor plant in Dagenham who protest when they are re-graded as unskilled workers. This change in pay class means they are paid less, of course. The plant's union rep Albert (Bob Hoskins) helps convince plant seamstress Rita O'Grady (Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins, Happy Go Lucky) to represent the ladies for union talks with Ford leadership. Rita and Albert, along with another plant seamstress and usual union rep Connie (Geraldine James), head to London to speak to the bigwigs. Eventually a strike for equal pay is called that impacts the female plant workers as well as the males.

Buzz about The King's Speech has been circulating for months, before the MPAA fracas even took place. There have been mutterings for a while that Colin Firth is sure to win an Oscar for the lead role (and as the awards tend to favor biographical depictions, this speculation is likely not too far off). So I watched the movie bearing all this in mind, and all in all I was quite pleased with the British import. The movie opens on Saturday in Austin theaters.

The film opens in pre-World War II Britain with King George V (Michael Gambon) still reigning, but worried about his succession. Second son Bertie (Firth), the Duke of York, feels humiliated as he verbally stumbles through a speech at the 1925 British Empire Exhibition. His wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham-Carter) engages a speech therapist for her husband. Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) works with the soon-to-be king using some non-traditional techniques. He also insists that their lessons occur on equal footing. As the lessons continue, a relationship grows between Bertie and Logue.  

Joel and Ethan Coen make films that, love 'em or hate 'em, everyone loves to talk about. There's no question, Coen films are a polarizing force. They number among my favorite of all time (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), my guilty pleasures (Fargo, A Serious Man), and some of my least favored (Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men) ... yet every one of these is an object of both critical acclaim and derision.

The Coens' latest film is True Grit, opening in theaters today. This retelling of the 1969 movie and the 1968 Charles Portis novel stands out as one that will be almost universally loved. Almost the entirety of the die-hard film-loving audience with which I attended Butt-Numb-a-Thon 12 chose it as their favorite selection. Westerns aren't my first love in film, but I will list the Coen brothers' True Grit among the best ever made.

True Grit hooks the audience from the very first scene with 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) holding her own in business dealings with men four times her age. The dialogue is electric, intense and in a perfectly convincing period dialect. The closest thing I've seen to this magic was the scene where Tom Hanks met Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2007's Charlie Wilson's War.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson have made quite a large body of movies together. Little Fockers, the latest entry in the Meet the Parents series is, well, it's another of them. The 2000 movie Meet the Parents was a fun, if not high-brow, examination of the tribulations when in-laws meet for the first time. Meet the Fockers, in 2004, continued with the established formula of "Jack doesn't trust Greg, Jack spies on Greg, Jack takes things out of context, Step 3 PROFIT." But at least it added Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand as Greg's wonderfully zany, new-age sex-therapist title-card parents. This latest entry in the series throws any pretense out the window that the movieis about anything other than the love story between Stiller's Greg Focker and Robert De Niro's Jack Byrnes.

Except for the family name, it would have been more descriptive to call this entry in the series "Little Afterthoughts." The Focker children serve only as the vehicle for getting Stiller and De Niro to fight, like a set of parents embroiled in divorce proceedings. Little Samantha Focker (Daisy Tahan) is drawn to and takes on the personality of her grandpa Jack while Henry Focker (Colin Baiocchi) is hinted to have a genetic "double dose of Focker."

Twenty-eight years ago, before most of the world had heard of the Internet, before most people even had touch-tone phones, Disney inspired an entire generation of would-be computer hackers with the glorious adventure TRON. Now the studio is back with TRON: Legacy, a successor that will surely be a crowd pleaser. This modern update is faithful to the spirit of the original, but lacking in original story elements that will leave some viwers wanting more.

The story revisits Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) and ENCOM about 28 years after the first movie. After defeating the evil MCP and returning to the real world, Flynn's success with his TRON game has led to ENCOM becoming a virtual Microsoft and Flynn running it as the leading shareholder. Then he mysteriously disappears, leaving his juvenile son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) all alone for 20 years, until one night a mysterious message draws him into the world of his father's creation.

I've never thought of myself as a sports-movie fan, but I'm realizing that I truly am a sucker for boxing movies. I don't watch real-life boxing matches, I'm not a fan of the sport other than that I've been known to like the workouts, but show me a movie where a man is jumping rope or a woman is working the heavy bag and you have my attention. The Fighter, directed by David O. Russell (Three Kings) and based on real-life personalities, is no exception.

The Fighter is about two brothers, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), either of whom  could be described by the film's title. Dicky is an ex-fighter who had his moment in the spotlight years before, allegedly knocking out Sugar Ray Leonard. Dicky is supposed to be training his little brother so Micky's boxing career can take off, but he has what is eventually revealed as a serious drug problem and Micky is left to struggle on his own. The fights that Dicky and the brothers' mom Alice (Melissa Leo) are setting up for Micky do nothing to help him, either.

Eventually Micky is left to decide whether to continue with his mother as his business manager and his brother as his trainer, or find another way to try to make it as a boxer and face the wrath of his very large, very close family. He's also trying to cultivate a romance with local bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), whom his sisters and mom can't stand.

The notorious con artist Steven Russell has been both amazingly corrupt and amazingly clever. An expert at fraud and embezzlement, he masterminded many astonishing scams and escaped from prison several times. Known for his high IQ and impersonation skills, he outwitted corporate executives, bank officials, and law enforcement alike, conning his way into high-level jobs as easily as he conned his way out of prison cells.

Given Russell's notoriety and anti-hero fame, as detailed in the book by Houston journalist Steve McVicker, a movie about his life is almost inevitable. His criminal escapades and charming rogue persona are perfect fodder for a cinematic treatment. That film is I Love You Phillip Morris, a tragicomic romp written and directed by Bad Santa writers John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. While entertaining, the movie isn't quite as smart or clever as its subject.

Opening on Friday in Austin, I Love You Phillip Morris is really two stories: one chronicling Russell's life of deception and the other exploring his relationship with the titular Morris, a lover whom Russell met in a Texas jail. (The title may be misleading, as the film has no connection to the tobacco company with the same name.) I Love You Phillip Morris is ambitious in scope, equal parts true-crime caper film, love story and commentary about homophobia.

Academy award winner writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) takes the helm of the suspenseful drama The Tourist as it sails through from a cafe in Paris to the canals of Venice. Joined by seasoned writers Christopher McQuarrie (Valkyrie, The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, Vanity Fair),  Donnersmarck would at first glance appear to be making an homage to Stanley Donen's classic espionage thriller Charade, which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. However, The Tourist is actually a remake of French writer/director Jerome Salle's 2005 crime thriller Anthony Zimmer, which starred French film star Sophie Marceau.

The Tourist centers around Frank (Johnny Depp), a math teacher from Wisconsin who is traveling through Europe. What appears to be a chance encounter on a train with a mysterious beautiful woman is actually no mistake. Elise (Angelina Jolie) deliberately picks him out to throw police off the trail of her lover and embezzler Alexander Pierce, who stole over two billion dollars from his mobster boss Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff). Since both Pierce and Shaw are British citizens, the British authorities want the taxes from the money. To complicate matters, no one but Elise knows what Pierce looks like and he is rumoured to have had millions of dollars worth of plastic surgery to alter his physical appearance.

Don't be surprised if Darren Aronofsky's latest film, Black Swan, makes you want to see a ballet. From the first shot to the last, Black Swan is an allegorical performance piece wrapped up in a psychological thriller.

The twisted sister of Aronofsky's previous film The Wrestler, Black Swan centers on an emotionally fragile ballerina at a precarious cusp in her career, when her company is about to cast an ambitious re-imagining of Swan Lake. Obsessed with perfection, Nina (Natalie Portman) auditions for the coveted lead at the risk of her delicate psyche.

Like the roles she's rehearsing on stage, Nina is trapped by powerful forces beyond her control. Demanding artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) forces Nina out of her comfort zone, while her mother (Barbara Hershey) is passive-aggressively protective. Rival dancer Lily (Mila Kunis) is always around to remind Nina of what she is not, and just how insecure her position is.