New to the Queue

The impeccable Kelly Reichardt returns, with Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard as environmental terrorists in "Night Moves."

A near masterpiece or a prodigious self-serving wank? "Alejandro Jodorowski's comeback, "The Dance of Reality."

Back to Brooklyn: A standup comic (Jenny Slate) contemplates abortion in "Obvious Child."

I can afford to spend 90 minutes with a know-it-all scold: "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia."

Another New Yawk insider drama, this one about a kid with Asperger's wandering the city, "Stand Clear of the Closing Doors."

Three '80s girls go punk in Lukas Moodysson's latest slice of life, "We Are the Best!"

Back to the sea

The Onion's AV Club marks the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray release of "Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," Wes Anderson's masterpiece that is turning 10 this year. Here's the link.

"Life Aquatic" stars Bill Murray as a Jacques Cousteau type leading an amazing cast -- Jeff Goldblum, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Houston, Michael Gambon, and Seymour Cassel -- in Anderson's most fully realized vision on screen. All that and Portuguese versions of David Bowie songs by Seu Jorge.

The film suffered from having to follow the critical  darling, "The Royal Tenenbaums," Anderson's breakthrough from 2001. It may be Murray's career high point. His character's rivalry with Goldblum's Alistair Hennessey is unrivaled. It's one of my all-time favorite movies. Time to revisit it.

Boys

THE DIRTIES (A-minus) - Director Matt Johnson crafts a clever and quite funny quasi-mockumentary about two high school kids making a film about getting revenge on the class bullies (the Dirties). And they also might be actually planning a Columbine-style bloodbath wiping out the bad guys.

Johnson stars with Owen Williams as crazy film-buff pals, name-checking classic movies like junior Tarantinos. They work with a faculty adviser, giving him a bit part in the incredibly lame story, as part of a filmmaking class. They goof off while story-boarding and editing. The sight of Matt standing on a kitchen table in his underwear and wielding a boom microphone to create background voices and sounds ("getting foley") is a hoot. Johnson, on a shoestring budget, has crafted one of the better movies about moviemaking.

Matt and Owen (they use their real names) have a natural bond. Owen seems genuinely amused by Matt. And Johnson is, indeed, a skilled comic and mimic. He has a goofy demeanor and a goofy look, as well. His rubber face brings to mind Owen Wilson, Zero Mostel and Michael Palin. If you don't like his smart-ass antics, you might not make it through this. For me, Matt and Owen's stupid shenanigans reminded me of the endless banter with my best friend in junior high. At times I had the vague sense of deja vu; this is truly a heartfelt buddy movie. Their back-and-forth is winning.

The boys, however, start to drift apart when Owen starts making inroads with one of the school hotties, Chrissy H. (Krista Madison). (She's pals with Krissy B. (Shailene Garnett), a popular dynamic duo.) Owen's persistence (he recalls her once paying attention to him in third grade, so he never lost hope) earns genuine flirtation from Chrissy, threatening the boys' bond as losers till death do they part. The angst of adolescence snaps into focus.

Matt starts to lose perspective. His thirst for revenge starts to feel real. This might not be just about making a dumb movie.

A part of the appeal here is the "Office"-like gimmick of having all of the events filmed by an unseen crew, often surreptitiously through windows. Matt has a winking connection to that "secret" camera, turning him into even more of a rascal. Is it a commentary on the media and the public's lurid gaze, or just a neat trick?

The proceedings build to a crazy ending that makes you rethink much of what came before and adds another dimension to what we thought we were watching. This whole movie comes out of left field. It's a small gem.

Atta Turk

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan took home the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last weekend, with his latest Anatolian epic, "Winter Sleep."  Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times crafts a fine primer covering  Ceylan's latest film and his catalog.

For the second year in a row, the Cannes jury went for a three-hour film. Last year's winner was the brilliant relationship film "Blue Is the Warmest Color." Ceylan, like few others, understands the fundamental ways in which humans interact.

Here's my take on Ceylan's four previous efforts, from most to least favorite:

• CLIMATES (2006) (A) - The relationship film that all others are measured by. Three seasons in the life of a couple (Ceylan himself and his real-life wife). A scene early in the film focused on her in closeup, in which a range of emotions passes over her face, is breathtaking. Who hasn't been left adrift in the cold?
• ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (2011) (A-minus) - A long and winding police procedural (it's 150 minutes), in which police search for a dead body in the Anatolian countryside. Funny and insightful.
• THREE MONKEYS (2008) (A-minus) - A slow boiler of a thriller revolving around a husband, wife and son, pained by a past tragedy. The father offers to do time for his boss's crime. Will that tear apart the family?
• DISTANT (2002) (B+) - A photographer descends into an existential crisis after his wife leaves him. His cousin from the country visits, presenting a challenge. Claustrophobic and wry.

All four are available on disc through Netflix. "Climates" (start there) and "Three Monkeys" are available for streaming on Amazon.

Here's the trailer for "Winter Sleep." It's got French subtitles, but you can catch the drift:

Name Above the Title

GOD'S POCKET (A-minus) - It's a little heartbreaking to watch Philip Seymour Hoffman, post-mortem. It's touching to see his name immediately precede God's in the opening titles. About 80 minutes later, as the end credits roll, the heartbreak is complete, as you are reminded, yet again, how he was able to take a flawed script and turn it into a memorable film.

Not that the screenplay for "God's Pocket" is a dud in anyway. In fact, it's a surprisingly funny and touching late-'70s period piece. It's a legitimate black comedy, sly and knowing in its depiction of a few days in the life of a petty criminal (in a blue-collar South Philly neighborhood full of 'em) trying to get his step-son to the kid's own funeral. Hoffman is Mickey, who runs his own meat business. He's married to Jean (a lost Christina Hendricks from "Mad Men"), who brought to the marriage a slacker son who is mangy and hopped up on speed.

The kid ends up dead at his job at the plant after acting like a total jerk. The body is taken to Smilin' Jack's funeral home, and now Mickey must find at least six grand to give the stiff a sendoff that won't disappoint the missus. He'll need his buddy Arthur "Bird" Capezio (John Turturro) to help him out of his fix.

The locals are pitching in. The sad regulars at the corner loser bar (called The Hollywood) stuff a jar with $1,400 in bills. (In one of the best gags of the film, the square-jawed barman, Mole (a perfect Jack O'Connell), puts the cash in a paper bag, hands it to Mickey -- and asks Mickey to return the bag when he's finished with it.

There are some tired tropes to be found, for sure: the shlub of a husband huffing and grunting in bed above his hot wife who looks bored; the betting of your stash on a horse that can't lose; a pistol-packin' old lady; a drunk who chugs his booze; even an awkward tip of the hat to "Weekend at Bernie's." But those are minor distractions. And some of those awkward moments somehow feel like homages to classic '70s urban dramas (and TV shows). This has the grit and grime of some of the best from that era; it's no poseur.

Turturro is on top of his game here. The film has his scent all over it. I wouldn't be surprised if he was looking over the shoulder of first-time feature-film director John Slattery ("Mad Men's" Roger Sterling) throughout the production. Richard Jenkins, however, doesn't come off so well. He's our narrator, a seriously alcoholic daily newspaper columnist (in the style of Mike Royko) assigned to snoop around the job site to see if Mom's hunch is right, that her baby's death wasn't an accident. His local celebrity status makes him improbably irresistible to women (look for the riveting Sophia Takal from "Supporting Characters" who steals a scene as a randy journalism student), but Jenkins' hard-boiled Mike Hammer shtick is woefully hit-and-miss. He and Hendricks both fall flat, especially in their scenes together. She's particularly adrift in the role of the distraught mother, which perhaps betrays Slattery's inexperience in guiding a close colleague.

However, Slattery (who co-wrote the adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel with Alex Metcalf) shows a sure hand in weaving the characters and wisecracks and bitterness into a believable and entertaining film. It feels like an organized mess. And it sure didn't hurt to have Hoffman there to glue it all together. Poor Mick is human and vulnerable and gob-smacked trying to make his sorry life work.

God knows what Hoffman was going through when he turned in one of his last powerful performances. This is an honorable sendoff.

True Blood

THE ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (B+) - Jim Jarmusch creates the ultimate mood piece.

Don't expect much action in this high-brow vampire flick.  Better yet, it's best to not expect any action at all. Instead, "Only Lovers" offers the ultimate cool hangout with a few hipster immortals, marking time as they traverse the centuries.

A few months ago, the Onion had a sharp piece of satire about God suffering from existential angst over his immortality -- staying awake all night, riddled with anxiety over the idea that he's never going to die.  Here, indie legend Jarmusch ("Stranger Than Paradise," "Mystery Train," "Broken Flowers") sounds a similar riff, playing it half-serious and half-deadpan, exploring the joys of living forever (mastering Latin) and its pitfalls (unable to escape the culture).

Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are Eve and Adam, estranged lovers from way back (they know Christopher Marlowe, played here exquisitely by the ancient John Hurt and confirming once and for all that Shakespeare totally ripped him off). Adam is a musician struggling with his art and his place in the musical canon, but more important, he's jonesing for his old lady.

He's in Detroit, and she agrees to leave Tangier and reconnect in his gothic mansion in an abandoned neighborhood (a Detroit specialty).  They drink primo, Grade A blood that she scored from Marlowe; they make love languidly; and they sleep all day, like vampires do. They catch the occasional rock-club show (with his stoner pal), where he's revered not unlike Jarmusch strolling through Sundance.

So, what happens? Eh, not much. Eve's sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) crashes the Detroit pad and stirs up trouble with her Millennial attitude when she gets a  little overly nippy with another houseguest. This sends Eve and Adam on the road, hitting the mattresses back in Tangier (with its creepy back alleys), where they also are desperately hoping to replenish their dwindling supply of O-positive.

None of this would be nearly as interesting without the immortal Tilda Swinton. No one does thin and pale like she does. Eve's longing smirk across an airplane aisle when a fellow passenger cuts his hand and dribbles a little blood on his seat-back tray is pricless. It's the film in a nutshell -- wry, yearning and perpetually suave.

Jarmusch peppers these proceedings with great music, starting with the proto-garage-grunge-a-billy of Wanda Jackson's "Funnel of Love":



He then relaxes into the atmospherics of Jozef Van Wissem (Squrl), with whom Jarmusch has recorded three experimental albums. The soundtrack is worth the price of admission on its own. Van Wissem's spooky instrumentals (which stand in for Adam's) span centuries of styles.  If you've got that and a blood-thirsty Swinton luxuriating in a juicy role, time flies.

BONUS TRACKS
The film climaxes with this haunting song performed by Yasmine Hamdan, called "Hal":



Van Wissem's "A Taste of Blood":

  

New to the Queue

It's blockbuster season! In other news ...


Jesse Eisenberg stars in a new take on an old Russian novella, "The Double."

John Slattery serves up a gritty city period piece with a strong cast, including Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Turturro, in "God's Pocket."

A screed about sugar, narrated by the saccharine Katie Couric, "Fed Up."

A pair of documentaries about alt-artists look interesting: "Sol Lewitt" and "Llyn Foulkes: One Man Band."

Third-Gen Coppola (Gia) channels aunt Sofia in adapting some James Franco coming-of-age stories in "Palo Alto."

Robert Duvall, in his ol' Western comfort zone, in "A Night in Old Mexico."

A follow-up look at the artist and dissident: "Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case."

A wry tale of a writer hanging with his parents in Florida, "A Short History of Decay."

Classic Comedy

Laziness + HBO = Retro rewinds

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) (A) - I remember first watching this at a late screening on a weeknight at the second-run dollar show in La Grange, Illinois. It was a last-minute decision, and I was by myself, and I howled like an idiot throughout this Farrelly Brothers comedy.

Ben Stiller at the top of his game. Cameron Diaz playing goofy so well. Utterly childish humor from start to finish. Watching solo again, I laughed away a bunch more brain cells.

I'm not a huge Farrelly fan -- my other favorites are "Dumb & Dumber" and "Stuck on You" -- but I think the key to their successful films is that they get their actors to be good sports and to leave all dignity behind (like Jeff Daniels in "D&D" and Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon in "Stuck"). Matt Dillon as the ridiculous villain (a cousin to Kevin Kline's Otto in "A Fish Called Wanda") with the silly mustache fills that role here. And Diaz -- dazzling with those translucent eyes, pixie haircut and athletic build -- goes all out despite a budding career, at the time, in rom-coms.

The slapstick is not confined to the infamous "styling-mousse" scene: There's the running gag about her brother Warren being sensitive about people touching his ears. Lee Evans doing his spastic balancing act as the handicap-fraud Tucker. The scary-tan old lady Magda (Lin Shaye), years ahead of her time. Matt Dillon's teeth and his frantic attempts to revive a dead dog using the electrical cord from a lamp. Stiller getting attacked by various characters, animals, zippers and fish hooks.

The idea that the Farrellys have comedy to burn is evident by the casting of three fundamentally funny people in relatively minor roles; ho-hum, it's Chris Elliott, Sarah Silverman and Jeffrey Tambor. And then there's Jonathan Richman, with original songs, as the traveling troubadour, and "Build Me Up Buttercup" accompanying the clowning closing credits. Keith David in a '70s 'fro wig.

This is the Farrellys with an overflowing trick bag and a story that bears repeated viewing.

BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (1984) (B) - I would have given this an A, I'm sure, when it came out. It's one of the last tolerable Woody Allen films. Things have changed.

Allen, as the sad-sack agent of the title, sports a full Woody here, and it's a reminder of how appealing his stammering shlub shtick was before it all went south.

The story is simplistic. After dealing with a steady parade of anachronistic loser performers for years, one of Danny's old-timers gets hot as a nostalgia act. In order to keep Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte) happy and in good voice, though, Danny must baby-sit Lou's mistress, a floozy named Tina Vitale (Mia Farrow, alas), who is surrounded by mob types. And those thugs, of course, end up chasing Danny around New York and New Jersey.

There's enough of a time buffer here, looking back, to be able to separate these lovable kooky characters from present-day Woody & Mia and the unpleasantness of their real life. Farrow is barely recognizable in a big blond wig and sunglasses. A greek chorus of old comedians, led by Sandy Baron, narrates, adding another layer between real life and the corny caper unfolding.

By the third act, Danny's own act gets a bit predictable and tiresome (Allen beats several gags into the ground), but there's a legitimate personal story here, and that gets us to the happy ending we always secretly hoped was possible.

Goin' to the Show With a Regular Guy*

FINDING VIVIAN MAIER (A-minus) - We make no secret of our love of documentaries about regular folk. Add this fascinating character study to the list.

Vivian Maier was a nanny, mostly in Chicago, for decades. But she also was a compulsive photographer and videographer. No one had any idea of how talented and prolific she was until a few years ago.

This unfolds like a fine whodunit, as we slowly fill in puzzle pieces of the stern lady with the sorrowful eyes, glimpsed in decades-old selfies and other fleeting images.

John Maloof, a real estate agent researching the history of a neighborhood in Chicago, stumbled across a box of Maier's photos. Smitten, he sought out the rest of her stash, tracking down estate sales and the woman's stuffed storage unit, which also included undeveloped rolls of film. Right about the time Maloof figured out what he had, he found Maier's recent obit online.

Maloof here teams up with L.A. TV producer Charlie Siskel to create an expertly paced documentary peeling back the layers of the mysterious Ms. Maier and championing her work. It's really a slick piece of work. And the woman's photographs -- now traveling the world in museum shows -- stand up next to the work of the venerated street shooters. She was particularly drawn to the down-and-out.

The viewers predicament depends on your level of ease with voyeurism. Here's a woman who was painfully private. Evidence of mental illness creeps in as the film unfolds. She obviously could have shopped her photographs around and sought fame and glory, but she chose not to. She didn't ask for this close public examination of her life.

Maloof and Siskel talk to the families she worked for (including single-dad Phil Donahue in the early '70s), and as time goes on, Maier's quirks turn into darker habits that left some traumatic scars. The filmmakers go to France to track down her "roots" (everyone assumed she was French; was she?), as well as evidence that perhaps she did place some of her images in circulation after all. I hesitate to reveal much more; that would ruin the film's main appeal.

Yes, this is invasive. But it's also quite captivating. The sleuthing by these young men comes off more as a posthumous homage than a hit job on an anonymous soul.

I was moved. One could only hope to be the subject of such a random, ordinary obituary. 

BONUS TRACK
Here's the trailer:



* -- With apologies.

One-Liners

SOUND CITY (B) -This is 70 minutes of a cool nostalgic paean to the scruffy Sound City recording studio in L.A., followed by a crappy half hour of a marketing gimmick in the form of mindless noodling.

Dave Grohl is just not that interesting as a personality or even as a performer since 1994. He oversees a fine curation of the recording studio's history, recruiting most of the big names from its past. It was the place where Mick Fleetwood met Buckingham-Nicks, putting Sound City on the map. Soon came Tom Petty and then the million-dollar babies, Rick Springfield and Pat Benatar.  The joint fell on hard times in the '80s, but then along came Nirvana to record "Nevermind"; cue the Rick Rubin years.

Alas, the playground finally went belly-up in the last decade, which would have been a fine place to end this film around the 70-minute mark -- a wistful look back at a scrappy little analog paradise for the nerds and cool kids. Instead, we get a tacked-on half hour featuring Grohl collaborating with alumni, including Trent Reznor and the paleolithic Queens of the Stone Age, to record new tunes on the old board, which now sits in Grohl's private studio. The new songs are pale attempts to recapture the magic; a song by Stevie Nicks is particularly painful to listen to.

Finally, old man McCartney, of all people, shows up to take Kurt Cobain's place in Nirvana (!) to breathe a little life into the proceedings and crank out the generic Grammy-friendly rocker "Cut Me Some Slack." It's a bit startling to see the ex-Beatle with so much energy and growl left in him; he also seems to be the quintessential studio rat and father figure.

As Pitchfork put it: "With its hit-and-miss deviations in tone and quality, Real to Reel feels less like a tribute to a studio that created some of the greatest albums of all time, and more like an approximation of a typical Active Rock Radio playlist."

A NEW LEAF (1971) (B-minus) - Another Elaine May classic from the early '70s, this one is her debut as a writer/director. It features Walter Matthau, feeling miscast as a trust-fund dandy who has burned through his entire inheritance and immediately embarks on a mission to find a rich woman to marry -- and kill. May herself stars as the new love interest, a bumbling, dorky botanist whose staff is robbing her blind.

Too often this one relies on mugging and slapstick (she's really clumsy, get it?), and it feels like a short story dragged out to 100 minutes. When the comedy clicks, it's magic. An extended deadpan scene features Matthau methodically trying to rearrange May's toga-style nightgown, so that her head and arms are in the right holes; it's like the Marx Brothers on quaaludes.

The ending is predictable. Along the way, some strong character actors check in, including James Coco, Jack Weston and Doris Roberts. They help detract from the fact that Matthau and May are struggling throughout to stretch the soup.


BONUS TRACK
If you've never seen Nirvana perform "Lithium" live in a room full of punks, well, that's a little sad:


 

Fear and Loathing

We get out of our comfort zone for a couple of disturbing thrillers:

BLUE RUIN (B) -A super-cool revenge flick is buoyed by a breakout performance by Macon Blair, previously mired in fare such as "Murder Party" and "Hellbenders 3-D."

The premise is delightfully old-school: a double-murder suspect is being freed from jail after agreeing to a plea deal, threatening to re-ignite a feud between two families. It was one of the nasty Clelands (either Wade Sr. or Wade Jr.) who offed the parents of Dwight (Blair) and his sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves) because of a love triangle involving the families' elders.

As the film opens, Dwight has been living out of his car for a few years (the rusty Pontiac Bonneville that gives the movie its title) as a wild-haired bum. The local authorities bring him in to warn him of the impending release of Wade Jr., and he immediately goes on the offensive, tracking down Wade to strike first.

On the lam, Dwight shaves his beard, cuts his hair and makes sure to hustle his sister and her kids out of town for their safety. He next deals with another Cleland son, Teddy (a solid Kevin Kolack), after securing some weapons and training from an old high school pal, Ben (Devin Ratray, one of the bumpkin cousins in "Nebraska," wonderful here).

Things get awfully bloody, but writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (Matthew Porterfield's cinematographer) elevates the material beyond simple pulp. The script is smart and the pacing swift. The movie glides by swiftly in a neat 90 minutes, building to a fantastic ending. In a pop-culture bonus, we're treated to an unrecognizable Eve Plumb (forever Jan Brady) wielding an automatic weapon as one of the crazy Cleland sisters.

But the heart of the movie is Blair, with his sad-eyed serial-killer look. He single-handedly drives the narrative and allows the viewer to slog through some gore and still care about the ending. This is dark fun.

IN FEAR (C) - A couple of young adults head out to the U.K. countryside looking for a hotel on their way to a music fest in Ireland, but instead they get trapped in a maze of back roads, and it appears that they've become the butts of someone's cruel joke.

Camera tricks abound to make us jump and screech. But veteran TV director Jeremy Lovering can't breathe life into his child-like leads, Iain De Caestecker and Alice Englert (daughter of filmmakers, including Jane Campion), who have little chemistry and even less charm. These are not personalities that can do the necessary dramatic heavy lifting.

The scenario takes place mostly in the couple's car, and Lovering is skilled at maneuvering the camera so that we feel a part of the action without getting claustrophobic. But he can't overcome the inherent tedium in having two people literally drive in circles for most of the film's running time.

This wants to be an all-out slasher film but with indie cred; it fails at both.

O, Sister

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (B) - The first half is a chore and a bore, but the second half -- the actual annual competition -- makes this worth the effort.

The trite (and platonic) love/pal triangle among Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), Peeta and Gale is less of a big deal this time, thankfully, though Katniss and Peeta must fake an engagement for the audience. The good stuff is the intensity of the games this go-round, including some pretty damn scary special effects.

In addition to juicy return performances by Stanley Tucci (as the unctuous reality-show host), Elizabeth Banks (channeling Katherine Helmond's "Brazil" character as the ditzy escort for Katniss and Peeta), and a snarling Woody Harrelson (as their guru), the sequel adds the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as the all-but-mustache-twirling villain, Plutarch Heavensbee (!), in a sluggishly menacing turn.

Lenny Kravitz's appearance here is limited, though his scenes are key: as Cinna, he transforms the prim, presidentially approved dress worn by Katniss into a subversive (and, of course, fiery) mockingjay costume. And he pays the price for his defiance. That spirit of rebellion is handled oafishly in the first half (we must watch Katniss's heart break on her pre-games tour each and every time a silent protester is subdued by security), but it resonates in the second half, leading to the revolutionary twist at the end. (By the way, at two-and-a-half hours, this second installment is way too long. I can't imagine watching it one sitting; I split it into two viewings.)

Earlier, Cinna styles Katniss in heavy eyeliner as a callback to Liz Taylor's Cleopatra -- as if breaking the fourth wall and winking to the audience, and proclaiming Jennifer Lawrence a true movie icon. Star or not, she's a great actress, going back to "Winter's Bone."

It's to her credit that Lawrence can raise this material to an acceptable level while signaling to both teen girls and middle-aged men alike that we're going to join together as faux radicals in a Hollywood extravaganza for a couple of hours and reel off a trashy tale.

THE HEAT (B+) - A guilty pleasure that's easy to stumble across on HBO, this trashy buddy-cop film is buoyed by the fine comic chemistry between Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, who frequently take pratfalls over the line between clever and stupid.

Not much to analyze here.  The goofiness between McCarthy and Bullock either works for you or it doesn't. To me, the chemistry was just right: McCarthy finds the perfect pitch for her typical ballsy babe, and Bullock avoids the pitfalls of Jerry Lewis excess by hitting notes both straight and broad.

The running gags are perfectly placed. McCarthy's hard-ass cop must take perpetual guff from her cartoonishly Boston family for arresting her brother over his drug activities. (A joke about an albino cop gets run into the ground, but not before it will make you uncomfortable.) My favorite scene involves McCarthy visiting Bullock's bland apartment and going through her things, savagely summing up Bullock's loser life. Her readings of the pathetic epigraphs in Bullock's old yearbooks show perfect comedic timing, and they also provide a perfect bookend (sorry) at the movie's end.

This one's about as funny as "Bridesmaids" with 75 percent less sap, which makes it a straight guilty pleasure. (It's a debut screenplay, and not a bad one, from Kate Dippold a writer from "MadTV" and "Parks and Recreation.") And at about two hours, also is best divided into two viewings. That way McCarthy's  shtick doesn't grow stale.

New to the Queue

A period in which sisters named Tointon have a movie released on the same day, neither of which made our list; here are the ones that did:

Pawel Pawlikowski (last year's guilty pleasure "The Woman in the Fifth") offers a period piece from the early 1960s about a Polish nun who explores her own Jewish heritage in "Ida."

A war veteran hunts down a man who might possibly be a former POW living in Vietnam in the documentary "Unclaimed."

A black comedy about an unlikeable comedian, "Ape."

A sly, understated dramatization based on Joseph Mengele's years in South America, circa 1960, "The German Doctor."

One of our absolute favorites, Francois Ozon, a questionable French coming-of-age(-as-a-prostitute) story, "Young & Beautiful."

Dare we go slasher? We might hit the Guild Cinema this month for "Blue Ruin."

Alex Karpovsky always grabs our attention, so we'll check out the little indie "Marvin, Seth and Stanley."

The recent sappy drama bombed, but we're looking forward to the Cesar Chavez documentary "Cesar's Last Fast."

We're tempted by a documentary that consists entirely of 11 uncut static shots of people riding a mountain tram in Nepal (from Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab), "Manakamana."

What's Up? Docs.

Quick hits from real life:

ZIPPER: CONEY ISLAND'S LAST WILD RIDE (B) - PBS offers up a rich slice of classic New York: the real estate battle to save Coney Island from developers. The film's framing device is the Zipper, the tossing-turning ride that is threatened with extinction by the political maneuvering that is killing off the old-fashioned amusements

Eddie Miranda and his decidedly blue-collar crew on the Zipper provide the Brooklyn attitude. They represent the working joes, the powerless community, and the end of an era.

The bad guy is Joseph Sitt (who likes to style himself as Joey Coney Island), a low-rent mall developer (under the heading Thor Equities) who comes off like a Jerry Lewis character. He likes to whip out his Blackberry and tick off the names of the classy tenants he hopes to bring to Coney Island. In order to develop all the land he has bought up, he must conspire with the Bloomberg administration (and his Botoxed head of city planning) to effect a zoning change.

The local City Councilman starts out with a populist fervor but eventually melts into a middle-of-the-road voice for compromise. Surprise alliances are unveiled. The city starts carving up the area committed to actual amusement, in favor of retail, condos and hotel developments.

Writer/director Amy Nicholson enlightens and entertains. We visit the Midwest company that manufactures the Zipper. Riders and operators tell stories about wild rides that evoke screams and send pocket change flying. And stay tuned for the credits to find out the fate of the Zipper.

In the end, this is a classic New York story, full of colorful characters.

DOGTOWN & Z-BOYS (B-minus) - This nostalgia trip about the early days of skateboarding is fun for a while, but it gets dragged down by repetitive footage and an incestuous production.

Former skater Stacey Peralta rounds up all his old SoCal buddies, including Tony Hawk and Tony Alva and the rest of the guys who were present at the dawn of a phenomenon. The extensive footage documenting the transition from '60s surfers to '70s skateboarders is fascinating. But it's one thing to reveal the origins of the Dog Bowl -- finding empty outdoor pools to frolic in -- and another to show footage from pool skating over and over and over. Neat tricks soon grow old.

Peralta himself is included as a talking head. The production was financed by his sponsor, Vans. All his old pals agree that they were quite the cool bunch. Their group high-five, however, gets old quickly. 

THE LAST GLADIATORS (C+) - Pre-eminent documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side") slums with hockey goons. More precisely, he hangs out almost exclusively with Chris Nilan, a notable tough guy with the Montreal Canadiens from the late 1970s and early '80s, who struggled with addictions in retirement.

This is really a 90-minute profile of Nilan, a good ol' Boston boy, but his story just doesn't have the heft to carry the whole film. We get snippets of other enforcers from the golden goon era, as well as some fun clips, but Gibney keeps dragging us back to present-day Nilan, unfolding his history as we go along. A snippet of the funeral

If you're looking for a thorough examination of that era and its impact on the NHL and the men who played the tough-guy role, this isn't it.

BOLIVIA BEYOND BELIEF (D+) - More of a home movie than a real documentary, this looks at Bolivia's transition to socialism under its first indigenous leader, Evo Morales. Director Robert Dunsmore happened to be there, rolling film, and he interviews a bunch of talking heads. Dunsmore himself provides the translated narration from these interviews, which drag on, in need of editing. We literally get the same voice for 90 percent of the film.

This is somewhat educational, but rarely rises above the production values of an old-fashioned film strip. It's heartening to hear world leaders take on capitalism's attack on human dignity; there must be a decent documentary out there.

BONUS TRACK
Speaking of amusement parks, here's Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices, backed by Doug Gillard's buzzing guitars: