By The Associated Press

‘The Boys Are Back’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
This true-life drama delicately and deftly finds a balance that’s hard to strike: It depicts death, and the way a family rebuilds and redefines itself afterward, without any mawkishness. Director Scott Hicks’ film, with its dreamlike, sun-splashed landscapes of Southern Australia, is visually arresting. But the content of Allan Cubitt’s script, based on the memoir by Simon Carr, is meaty and straightforward, which gives it an unexpected power. This is easily Hicks’ best film since the Oscar-winning “Shine” way back in 1996 (since then his work has included the admirable but uneven “Hearts in Atlantis” and “No Reservations”), and much of the allure comes from Clive Owen’s complex performance. As a man learning how to function as a single father after the death of his wife, Owen shows great liveliness but also a natural vulnerability. His character, sportswriter Joe Warr, takes a “Just Say Yes” attitude in raising his 6-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty).

‘Brief Interviews With Hideous Men’
Not Rated
1 star

The “brief” part is one of the biggest problems here. In adapting the late David Foster Wallace’s book of the same name, writer-director John Krasinski spends so little time with each of the male “subjects” being interviewed about their fears and fantasies, it’s hard to connect with any of them or feel intrigued or moved by their stories. They mainly come off as neurotic, obnoxious or both. And the actors playing them are so self-consciously performing, their soliloquies feel stagey and false. By contrast, the woman questioning them for her doctoral thesis in anthropology, the reserved Sara (Julianne Nicholson), exhibits so little personality, she’s a cipher. Krasinski makes his debut behind the camera here, but the star of TV’s “The Office” is actually more effective in front of it. He appears in one of the stronger sequences in this scattershot production. Timothy Hutton, Dominic Cooper, Bobby Cannavale and Josh Charles are among the ensemble cast.

‘Capitalism: A Love Story’
Rated R
3 stars

How do you make a movie about the country’s current economic crisis and actually get people to see it? Two obstacles most obviously arise: illustrating such a potentially dry subject in a compelling way, and persuading audiences to pay money for information they can get at home — and feel depressed about — for free. Having Michael Moore as our guide certainly helps. Twenty years after he took on General Motors with his powerful debut “Roger & Me,” the proud provocateur is taking aim at the same sorts of targets with his latest documentary. As he did with “Sicko” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” he typically oversimplifies a complicated topic to make it accessible for the broadest possible audience, but he also tells moving stories of specific families who’ve lost their homes to foreclosure. With a big assist from his crack team of archivists, he brilliantly juxtaposes 1950s footage of wholesome guys and gals extolling the virtues of capitalism with all-too familiar shots of contemporary hardship. But we also see home movies of a young, towheaded Moore, excitedly visiting Wall Street from his home in Flint, Mich., which will become even more relevant when Moore returns to the economic vortex in the film’s final, dramatic moments.

‘Coco Before Chanel’
Rated PG-13
2 stars
The young Coco Chanel noticed style everywhere, even in the crisp white and basic black of the nuns’ habits at the orphanage where she was raised. “Coco Before Chanel” has a similarly keen eye for appearances, but there’s not a whole lot of passion or insight beneath the surface. Director Anne Fontaine’s film, which she wrote with her sister, Camille, traces the early years of the fashion designer who would come to define a bold kind of feminine style throughout the 20th century. Audrey Tautou has great appeal as Gabrielle Chanel — Coco, as she was known — presenting the designer’s feistiness not as bravado but as a straightforward reflection of how she felt. Of course, Tautou looks adorably chic in Chanel’s clothes. Still, you wonder what moved her, aside from the simplicity of the men’s outfits that would inspire her own suits and hats.
— Associated Press

‘The Damned United’
R
3 stars
You don’t have to be a soccer expert, or even know much about the sport, to get sucked into the competing personalities and personal dramas depicted here. Sure, it probably helps in terms of appreciating some of the details, especially if you’re a fan of British football. But director Tom Hooper doesn’t include very much action on the field: “The Damned United” is more about the larger-than-life figures behind the scenes, mainly Brian Clough, the real-life manager of Leeds United for a brief and tumultuous period in 1974. And you don’t even have to know who Clough was to care about him.
As he did with his brilliant and underappreciated supporting work as Tony Blair in “The Queen” and David Frost “Frost/Nixon,” Michael Sheen brings this cocky coach vividly to life. It is such a joy to see him grab hold of a starring role like this, and to see him work once again with screenwriter Peter Morgan, who wrote those earlier films. Morgan has an uncanny knack for taking powerful and polarizing leaders and making us see them in a totally new and humanistic light.

‘Fame’
PG
2 1/2 stars
This “reinvention” of the 1980 high school musical — please, people, don’t call it a remake — stays faithful to the spirit and structure of Alan Parker’s original while sucking out all the raciness. There’s no nudity in the new “Fame,” no one gets an abortion. No one even lights a single cigarette. But at the same time, dancer and choreographer Kevin Tancharoen, making his feature directing debut, doesn’t turn “Fame” into the kind of slick, overly edited eye candy you might expect.
Starting with Debbie Allen’s famous “You got big dreams, you want fame” speech over the opening titles, “Fame” follows a group of aspiring singers, dancers, actors and musicians from their auditions for New York’s High School of Performing Arts until their graduation four years later. Among the familiar types are Denise (Naturi Naughton), a classically trained pianist who longs to branch out creatively; shy actress Jenny (Kay Panabaker); the privileged dancer Alice (Kherington Payne); the shticky wannabe film director Neil (Paul Iacono); and the misunderstood actor-rapper Mailk (Collins Pennie). Among the faculty are Kelsey Grammer as the stern but fair piano teacher; Bebe Neuwirth, formidable as always as a dance instructor, Megan Mullally as a voice coach and Allen herself, in all of two scenes, as the school’s principal.

‘Surrogates’
PG-13
2 stars
Itself a kind of surrogate, “Surrogates” is a stand-in for many of the sci-fi movies of the recent past: In it, you’ll recognize the ideas of “Blade Runner,” ‘’Minority Report” and even “WALL-E.”
In a quasi-present day Boston, nearly everyone has a surrogate — a younger, thinner, cosmetically perfect robotic version of themselves. They’re controlled while you’re reclining at home and plugged into a machine. This means, most importantly, that we have a blond Bruce Willis on our hands. Willis is an FBI agent who, along with his partner (Radha Mitchell), is trying to solve two murders which, though committed on surrogates, also “liquefied” the brains of their human operators. Having a robotic stand-in has some obvious perks: Sexuality is less inhibited. If you fall, you don’t scrape your elbows. And if your helicopter crashes, you don’t die. But this crime-less utopia is also a superficial wasteland, devoid of meaningfulness. The film isn’t shy about its feelings about technology — it’s time to unplug. But dreams of a computer-less society are as much fantasy as a blond Bruce Willis.

‘Jennifer’s Body’
Rated R
2 stars
The second screenplay from Diablo Cody following her debut smash “Juno” is so chock full of her quirky trademarks, it almost plays like a parody of something she’d write. The self-consciously clever dialogue, the gratuitous pop-culture references, the made-up phrases intended to convey a specific high school ethos — they’re all there. Even though fembot Megan Fox is an excellent fit to spit out these witty quips, it’s all so familiar, it makes you wonder whether Cody has any other weapons in her arsenal. Part of the allure of the Showtime series Cody created, “The United States of Tara” — beyond the versatility of star Toni Collette — is the humor she finds in everyday suburbia, the reality and the absurdity. And that’s the best part of “Jennifer’s Body,” too. Never mind that it’s a mash-up of horror flick and teen comedy: When her characters talk about regular stuff like awkward adolescent sex and high-school dances, it’s funny in a relatable way. It’s when Cody tries too hard to dazzle us that she loses her footing; meanwhile, director Karyn Kusama struggles in her own way to find the right tone.
Fox is a great choice, though, to play Jennifer, the queen bee in the small town of Devil’s Kettle. One night, after attending a concert by her favorite band that goes disastrously awry, Jennifer seems … different. This is immediately obvious to her childhood best friend, the nerdy Needy (Amanda Seyfried). But soon the whole town knows something’s wrong when boys’ bodies start turning up eviscerated.

‘9’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
Despite their roughhewn appearance, the resourceful rag dolls in “9” obviously were crafted with great love and care, both by the scientist who made them in the film and the mastermind behind them in real life, director Shane Acker. If only as much complex thought had gone into the script. The animation is so breathtaking in its originality, so weird and wondrous in its detail, you wish there were more meat to the screenplay from Pamela Pettler, who previously wrote “Monster House.” Based on Acker’s 2004 animated short of the same name, which was nominated for an Oscar, “9” follows a group of creatures who represent the last vestige of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s set in the future after a war between mankind and machines but eerily resembles Europe after World War II, with its sepia tones blanketing the decimated surroundings in danger and fear.
9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) awakens to find no people are left, but there are a few others like him: tiny, fabric dolls stitched together coarsely but sturdily, with lenses for eyes. Each has a number on his or her back signifying who they are and the order in which they were created. They include 1 (Christopher Plummer), the priestly, rigid leader; 2 (Martin Landau), an aging but feisty inventor; 5 (John C. Reilly), who’s loyal but afraid of everything; and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), a brave and butt-kicking warrior.

‘Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’
PG-13
1 1/2 stars
Beyond its generic, forgettable title, this feels like some throwaway 1980s TV movie, with its implausible premise, dizzying twists and melodramatic score. It’s a remake of a 1956 thriller, but in modernizing the story, writer-director Peter Hyams merely makes it feel rushed and insignificant. Hyams gets very little right here: not journalism, not romance, not even fundamental things like pacing and suspense, which are so crucial to making this genre work. He even manages to squander Michael Douglas in a juicy role as a slimy district attorney eyeing the Louisiana governorship. Douglas appears so infrequently, his villainy seems far less menacing than it should be. Instead, “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” feels like a vehicle for hunky Jesse Metcalfe, who stars as ambitious TV news reporter C.J. Nichols. He suspects prosecutor Mark Hunter has been tampering with DNA evidence to secure convictions because his record is just too perfect, so he sets himself up as the suspect in a prostitute’s murder. His producer and sidekick (Joel David Moore) documents the process of gathering circumstantial evidence to prove C.J.’s innocence later. As if that weren’t ridiculous enough, C.J. also happens to fall for assistant district attorney Ella Crystal (Amber Tamblyn), even as he’s trying to expose her boss.

‘All About Steve’
Rated PG-13
1 stars
It’s bad enough that Sandra Bullock has found a way to star in not one but two flat romantic comedies this summer, between “The Proposal” in June and now this. But what’s truly baffling — disheartening, really — is the fact that this latest one was written by a woman. Kim Barker came up with the script in which Bullock’s character, a crossword puzzle writer named Mary Horowitz, is singularly annoying from the word go.
Mary is a goofy, clingy, hyperactive chatterbox who bores people everywhere she goes with her arcane bits of trivia and long-winded anecdotes. She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don’t get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. When she finally meets handsome cable-news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper, all blue eyes and blinding teeth), she immediately throws herself at him. Then she misinterprets a comment he makes in the frenzy of scurrying away from her as an invitation to join him on the road covering breaking news, and ends up stalking him across the country.
— Associated Press

There is nothing about Mary that’s even vaguely appealing, but the feature debut from director Phil Traill makes it obvious we’re meant to find her weirdness endearing. Thomas Haden Church provides a couple of laughs as Steve’s self-serious reporter, while Kerri Kenney-Silver, Luenell from “Borat” and Charlyne Yi go to waste in throwaway supporting roles. PG-13 for sexual content including innuendoes.

‘Extract’
Rated R
2 stars
Ten years ago, Mike Judge satirized the absurdities of the workplace experience from the perspective of put-upon employees with “Office Space.” It didn’t do much when it came out but, as we all know by now, it became a cult favorite on cable and home video, to the point where it changed the way you looked at the common stapler. Now, Judge is back to the daily grind with “Extract,” but this time the writer-director tells his wacky working tales from the boss’ point of view: that of Jason Bateman’s Joel Reynold, owner of a flavor extract factory. It’s doubtful that this comedy will grab its audience in the same way, though. Judge’s characters are so one-note and their misadventures so ridiculous that it’s hard to get attached to them or care about how they turn out. Pretty much everyone in “Extract” is stupid, unlikable, self-destructive or all of the above — and so there are no real surprises. Joel is on the verge of selling his company to General Mills. At the same time, his nonexistent sex life with his frosty wife (a thoroughly underused Kristen Wiig) has him pondering an adulterous fling with a sexy new employee (Mila Kunis), who happens to be a scheming sociopath. So his suave bartender friend (an amusing Ben Affleck) encourages him to hire a gigolo to sleep with her and justify his own affair.

‘Big Fan’
Rated R
3 stars
Jim Rome urges his listeners (or “clones,” as he so lovingly calls them) to have solid takes, to bring it, when they dial into his sports talk radio show. Patton Oswalt’s character in “Big Fan,” Paul Aufiero, ensures that his takes are solid because they are his raison d’etre. A portly Staten Island parking garage attendant stuck in his childhood home with his mother at age 35, Paul lives and dies for the New York Giants, and spends each day at work in his little metal box honing the arguments he’ll make about his beloved football team during his favorite sports talk radio show each night. Paul Aufiero feels completely believable in the hands of Robert Siegel, writer of the equally stripped-down and realistic “The Wrestler,” who wrote the script and makes his directing debut here. Siegel has captured a very specific fan: the kind who refers to his team as “we,” who derives confidence from walking around the neighborhood in his puffy red-and-blue jacket and prepares all week for a few hours on Sunday. You could describe him as pathetic in his arrested development, his lack of perspective. But Oswalt, best known for his comedy and his starring voice work in the animated “Ratatouille,” brings enough depth to the character to make you feel sorry for him. This is especially true once Paul and his best friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) have a run-in with the Giants’ star linebacker, Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), on a night in Manhattan that quickly shifts from veneration to violence.

‘The September Issue’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
Anna Wintour’s eyes are green, we learn from this documentary in which she actually takes off her trademark, oversized sunglasses and even lets a smile slip loose from time to time. But that doesn’t mean the notoriously icy editor in chief of Vogue magazine ever truly puts down her guard. Director R.J. Cutler and his crew spent eight months roaming the halls of the Conde Nast publication and accompanying Wintour to meetings, fashion shows and glamorous events with designers and celebrities. We also see her at home with her daughter, Bee Shaffer. While that kind of intimate access provides a glimpse at some juicy showdowns, it never really allows us to understand what inspires this enormously influential figure. Wintour is quickly decisive but seems to operate on the whim of her preferences in dictating what’s in style and what isn’t; if that process is maddening for us during a brief time, imagine what it must be like to work for her every day. (To her credit, though, she acknowledges her businesslike nature — and she doesn’t seem as withering as the fashion magazine editor in “The Devil Wears Prada,” a character supposedly modeled after her.) What we do come away with is an appreciation for clothing and photography as art forms and the kind of work and emotion that go into each issue, especially the September issue, the largest each year for its fall fashion features. Cutler follows the creation of the September 2007 Vogue, the title’s most voluminous edition ever — which makes the film seem like a time capsule now that magazines are struggling financially.

‘Taking Woodstock’
Rated R
2 stars
They aren’t words you hear very often: an Ang Lee comedy. He hasn’t really made one since he directed “The Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” back-to-back in 1993 and 1994. And so, on the heels of the emotionally heavy “Brokeback Mountain” and “Lust, Caution,” Lee lightens up — and the result is actually too lightweight. He approaches the fabled concert from an outsider’s angle, which is innovative; truly, the significance of Woodstock has been chronicled ad naueseam, especially lately upon its 40th anniversary. But in telling the story of the people who inadvertently launched the event, Lee leaves out the substance. Rather, he ambles amiably among these motley figures, with civic leader Elliot Teichberg (comic Demetri Martin) at the center. When Robert Altman used this structural tactic — and he did it often — it still felt cohesive, like an intricate but subtle dance. “Taking Woodstock,” by comparison, feels scattershot and incomplete. The script from Lee’s longtime collaborator James Schamus, based on Elliot Tiber’s book, traces the pieces that fell into place to make Woodstock happen. Elliot, a New York City interior designer, happens to have moved back home with his Russian immigrant parents (Henry Goodman and an over-the-top Imelda Staunton) to help them salvage their run-down Catskills motel. An arts and music festival in a neighboring town happens to have lost its permit. As president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce, Elliot thinks it would boost the economy to play host instead — and he just happens to know a guy named Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) with a 600-acre dairy farm, the perfect place for such an event.

‘World’s Greatest Dad
Rated R
2 1/2 stars
This is tricky: How to talk about the latest comedy from Bobcat Goldthwait without giving away all its twists and twisted details? “World’s Greatest Dad” is extremely dark and daring and definitely not for everyone, but it shows that with his third film as writer and director, Goldthwait is honing a unique and fearless voice, and that’s exciting to see. The comic’s first, 1991’s “Shakes the Clown,” was about an alcoholic party clown; his second, “Sleeping Dogs Lie” from 2006, was about a woman who enjoys a sexual dalliance with her pet. This time, Goldthwait explores the ugliest and most selfish human instincts following the death of a teen. Robin Williams stars as Lance Clayton, a loser of a high-school poetry teacher. He’d dreamed of fame and fortune as a novelist; instead, he can only get a handful of students to sign up for his elective course while the young, popular creative writing teacher (Henry Simmons) finds his classroom packed. Lance’s 15-year-old son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara), is among the students who view him with disdain; then again, Kyle is a vile human being. All he cares about are video games and graphic porn, and he bullies the only friend he’s got. A freak accident alters both of their profiles on campus, a social shift that Lance exploits in hideous ways. “World’s Greatest Dad” borrows maybe a bit too obviously from “Heathers,” and it relies on the same joke being told repeatedly. But Goldthwait finds enough clever ways into that joke to make it fresh, and he makes you curious to see how far he’s willing to push it.

‘Inglourious Basterds’
Rated R
2 1/2 stars
If only Quentin Tarantino the director weren’t so completely in love with Quentin Tarantino the writer, this might have been a great movie rather than a good movie with moments of greatness. Everything that’s thrilling and maddening about his films coexists and co-mingles here: the visual dexterity and the interminable dialogue, the homage to cinema and the drive to redefine it, the compelling bursts of energy and the numbingly draggy sections. And then there is the violence, of course: violence as a source of humor, as sport, violence merely because it looks cool on camera, and because the 46-year-old Tarantino still has the sensibilities of a 12-year-old boy. “Inglourious Basterds” also reflects the discipline, or lack thereof, of an adolescent — one who’s never been told “no.” Certain scenes of his wildly revisionist World War II saga have a palpable tension, but then he undermines them by allowing them to go on way too long. As for the plot … well, it might be in there somewhere amid the many meandering threads. The film follows a band of Jewish American soldiers, led by twangy Tennessean Lt. Aldo Raine (a hilarious Brad Pitt), who hunt Nazis. Tarantino also intertwines the stories of Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), who fled to Paris and opened a movie theater after Nazis killed her family; Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), the Nazi colonel who orchestrated that attack; German movie star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), who’s an undercover agent for the Brits; and Nazi war hero Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who’s about to become a star by playing himself in a propaganda flick about his exploits.
— Associated Press