Reviews

In the middle of Harmony and Me is a very telling line of dialogue. Harmony (Justin Rice) is struggling through a piano lesson, and his teacher (Jeremy Pollet) aptly sums up Harmony's playing style and personality: "You're entangled in your dedication to precision."

Indeed he is. A quintessential Austin indie, Harmony and Me -- available today on DVD and streaming through the movie's website -- is the story of the title character, a less-than-lovable loser who can't let go of his ex-girlfriend, Jessica (Kristen Tucker). His obsession with her has gone from merely pathetic to thoroughly annoying, as he subjects his family, friends, co-workers and anyone else who will listen to his hopeless pining and incessant analyses of the relationship. Despite everyone's gentle suggestions to get over it already, Harmony isn't about to move on.

Then again, Harmony's fixation on the lovely Jessica is may be understandable (albeit completely irritating), given that the rest of his life is a mostly pointless bore. He has a drab job in a drab office, a bullying boss, a grumpy, slightly dysfunctional family and equally bored friends. His only outlet is music, but even this is more of a frustration than an escape. (His lack of any real musical talent doesn't help.) Of course, Harmony might not appreciate happiness even if he found it; he's much too analytical, self-absorbed, and prone to deconstructing everything to relax and enjoy life.

In character-driven, micro-budget indie fashion, not much happens in Harmony and Me. Its ambling, laconic pace will be familiar to fans of two decades' worth of similar films that have come before it, from Slacker to Beeswax. What sets Harmony and Me apart from the others is its astute use of music as both a story element and transitional device between shots and scenes. Harmony and Me uses the music in hilarious ways, from Harmony's halfhearted piano lessons to a very funny wedding sequence featuring Austin musician Bob Schneider as a wedding singer who sings a totally inappropriate song to the very pregnant bride. (The song's most prominent lyric is "I can't change your mind.") The film's musical aspects are often deeply ironic, and none are more so than Harmony's name, for his personal relationships are anything but harmonious.

How do you rate big dumb summer movies? Sometimes they can be clever, like the first Iron Man movie -- sometimes all you want is for them to entertain you without being annoying. Predators isn't fresh or new and it isn't even memorable, but on the other hand, you can enjoy some suspenseful scenes and even a few explosions without feeling bored or annoyed. In terms of summer blockbuster scale, that counts for a lot. You don't even have to know anything about the previous Predator movies -- in fact, maybe it's best if you don't.

Predators is so predictable that you can actually recite along with the dialogue, knowing exactly what the characters will say, and then feel a small sense of pride and accomplishment at having got it right. I made a bet with myself on the time and victim of the first death and was off by only about two minutes. The problem with having a number of character actors and little-known actors among well-known stars is that the audience has a pretty good idea of who's going to survive at least the first hour of the movie.

The characters don't reveal their names, which is appropriate because they are a collection of stereotypes and ass-kicking archetypes from the action-film genre. We've got the Tough Reluctant Leader (Adrien Brody), the Tough Military Chick (Alice Braga), the Mexican You Don't F*** With (Danny Trejo, natch), Silent Yakuza, Wise-Ass Serial Killer ... you get the idea. Oh, and one meek and seemingly out-of-place Doctor (Topher Grace). They each find themselves suddenly parachuting into an unfamiliar jungle, and after a few scuffles, all band together to find out what's going on.

Any animated kids' movie following a Pixar release has its work cut out for it, with Pixar being a gold standard for family-friendly tales and animated excellence. But Universal's Despicable Me shouldn't be dismissed just because it lacks the Pixar brand, and releases right after the last Toy Story feature. 

Gru (Steve Carell), a curmudgeonly villian living in Suburbia, is happy in his misery until someone else pulls off the biggest dastardly deed ever. Not to be outdone, Gru will let nothing and no one interfere with his plans to make his most evil dream come true, even pesky orphans hawking cookies and an ubergeeky villian wannabe. Gru seizes an opportunity to use the orphans ... only they're not the simple means to an end he's anticipated. Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Agnes (Elsie Fisher) and Edith (Dana Gaier) have dreams of their own.

The 1978 hit movie musical Grease has been re-fashioned into Grease: The Sing-A-Long and is back in theaters for limited-run engagements, here in town at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar starting July 8.

The musical -- which once held the honor of longest running show on Broadway -- was turned into a movie seven years after it premiered onstage. The 1978 film is back on the big screens with the addition of lyric subtitles, hoping to find a new audience and bring out fans looking for some nostalgia and a young Travolta. It's the same movie: Rebellious Danny (John Travolta), straightlaced Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and their friends grappling with love and lust in Rydell High School's class of 1959, with an often clever mix of nostalgia and sharp wit that shows happy days weren't always so happy and innocent.

If you aren't familiar with the story, Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson have had an idyllic summer romance far from Rydell High. Only when school starts, Sandy's there too, sending both partners into a tailspin and trying to win each other back over. Not helping matters is the brassy Rizzo (Stockard Channing), the biggest rebel of the bunch, who constantly stirs things up even as she falls for Kenickie (Jeff Conaway, who played Danny in the Broadway production). 

One of the most iconic devices in horror films is a maniac terrorizing a local town, the worst of which is one who preys on children. But what if the urban legend turns out to be real? 

Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio explore a real-life horror story of a boogeyman legend come to life in Cropsey, a movie about a series of murders centering on an abandoned state institution on Staten Island, New York, the suspect, the victims, and perceived versus actual guilt.

The "Cropsey" urban legend is so pervasive in the Hudson River valley region of New York, even people in outlying areas are familiar with it. Details change, but the core is the same: there's a maniac, he's armed, and he hunts kids. From a time when it was still common for kids to spend hours on their own without adult supervision, such cautionary tales kept some of us who were old enough to leave our own yards to be just a little more careful. On July 9, 1987, Jennifer Schweiger disappeared, and suddenly the boogeyman was real.

With The Last Airbender, I've officially given up on M. Night Shyamalan.

In 1999, the young writer and director was crowned the Next Big Thing for his smart and suspenseful The Sixth Sense, a nuanced and captivatingly creepy ghost story. But Shyamalan's follow-up efforts like Signs and The Village were disappointingly clichéd and forgettable. And now, the dreadfully dull and incoherent The Last Airbender (opening today in a far too wide release) has convinced me that Shyamalan has forgotten how to write and direct a watchable film. This may sound harsh, but if this lifeless, overwrought clunker is the best Shyamalan can do nowadays, I think his career has run its course.

A live-action film based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, a popular Nickelodeon animated series, The Last Airbender (apparently, some other obscure film already claimed the Avatar part) is a mystical tale about the relationship between humanity and nature's delicate balance. The film is set on a fictional Earth with four nations, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water; for a century, the Fire Nation has been waging a brutal war against the other three. The story follows the adventures of Aang (Noah Ringer), a young "airbender" who also is an "avatar" with the power to manipulate all four elements. Aang uses his extraordinary powers and enlists the help of Katara (Nicola Peltz), a "waterbender" (a lot of stuff gets bent in the film), and her brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), to stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the others. Meanwhile, the evil Fire Nation leaders try to capture Aang.

While viewing online photos of Twilight-themed bedrooms earlier this week, I was a bit apprehensive about seeing the latest installment of the film series that's been anxiously awaited by hardcore fans. Walls covered with posters, full-size cutouts of Edward and patchwork quilts with scenes from the film were a bit disturbing, especially for the person who was obviously in her forties. However, a wall covered with images of Bella, Jake, and Edward struck a chord -- I was that pre-teen, with pictures of David Cassidy and Donny Osmond torn from the pages of Tiger Beat magazine. It was a humbling moment, and a prelude to my experience watching The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Eclipse is the most mature and palatable of the three romantic fantasy films so far. Melissa Rosenberg returns again as screenwriter, but it's director David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night) who strips away much of the prior films' campiness and poorly-executed special effects and delivers an entertaining film.

Eclipse begins with an attack on a dark and ominous night in Seattle that sets a sinister tone to forthcoming events. A series of unexplained deaths and disappearances causes concern amongst the Cullen family. Even more disturbing is that the vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) has been prowling nearby to seek her revenge on Edward for killing her mate. Star-crossed lovers Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) are reunited -- she is determined for him to turn her into a vampire, so they can never be parted. Edward is reluctant to do so, but sets a stipulation that she's not too keen on.

In a typically highbrow moment near the midpoint of Grown Ups, a character falls face-first into a pile of poop.

This moment, one of too many like it, is an apt metaphor for my experience watching this movie. A howlingly awful mess even by summer goofball comedy standards, Grown Ups (which opens today in wide release) may be, dare I say, the worst film I've ever seen.

You read that right: Grown Ups may be the worst film I've ever seen. If this sounds like an exaggeration, it isn't. I know whereof I speak, having suffered through many a horrid film, from the infamous classics (Plan 9 from Outer Space, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, and Ishtar) to the too-lame-to-be-infamous dreck that sullies the multiplexes year after year (there are many, but Porky’s II: The Next Day, Rocky III, and The Towering Inferno come to mind). I can assure you that Grown Ups holds its own against the worst of them. It really is that bad.

Filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet has finally returned to the darkly whimsical form that won him a place in the heart of many a cineaste with Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot), a hit at both Butt-Numb-a-Thon 2009 and SXSW 2010. The film opens today at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and the Arbor.

Through improbable circumstances, Bazil (Dany Boon) loses everything after a bullet gets lodged in his skull. Homeless, he's taken in by a motley crew of salvaging outcasts making a living off Paris' discarded junk. When Bazil happens upon the weapons/munitions companies that cost him his old life, he and his new friends embark on a series of capers to shut both companies down and bring their chairmen to justice.

If you're unfamiliar with Jeunet's peculiar brand of cinema magic, then imagine Chaplin's Little Tramp in a contemporary ensemble caper film. Dialogue is limited, relying heavily on the gestures and expressions of the actors that helps Micmacs transcend language barriers. In fact, many scenes in the film rely on classic street theater techniques similar to silent film comedy devices.

Independent filmmakers sometimes fall victim to their own success. If they're talented and lucky enough to strike critical and box-office gold a couple of times, they may find themselves working on larger films with respectable budgets and household-name talent, if not bona fide stars. But often as not, their art suffers when it moves uptown. Higher financial stakes come with strings attached, and these once fiercely independent writers and directors are forced to make concessions to commercial viability.

Fortunately, I'm happy to report that there are no such concessions with Cyrus, the latest film from mumblecore heroes Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass. The writing and directing team that brought us The Puffy Chair and Baghead have indeed gone uptown – but they've delivered another fine comedy that is true to the talky, quirky, naturalistic form, if not other mumblecore hallmarks like a shoestring budget and unknown actors.

Cyrus is very much a boy-meets-girl romantic comedy, but I really liked it anyway. It's the story of John (John C. Reilly), an eternally sad sack who still hasn't come to terms with his seven-year-old divorce. His ex-wife Jamie (the ubiquitous Catherine Keener) invites him to a party, where his ham-fisted attempts to chat up attractive women reveal exactly why he's spent so many evenings eating take-out for one. But for once, it's John's lucky night: He meets Molly (Marisa Tomei), a friendly free spirit who finds his awkwardness appealing and ends up going home with him.