Movie 43

It's terrifying to contemplate that there may be a worse movie this year than the unspeakable "Movie 43," a dozen disconnected gross-out sketches in search of a brain cell. I beg you to peruse the cast list of this picture and imagine if you can conceive of a comedy with so much talent that never comes close to generating a laugh.

Tabu

Perhaps the hardest film to describe since “The Turin Horse” is Miguel Gomes’ allusive, languorous and entrancing “Tabu,” filmed in 16mm black-and-white and told in two halves, the first in contemporary Lisbon and the second in colonial Mozambique. We first meet Dona Aurora late in life, an ornery woman given to gambling sprees who believes her lifelong maid, Santa, secretly practices witchcraft against her. (Slow-acting curse.) Her kindly neighbor, Dona Pilar, wants to help her, but doesn’t know how, until Aurora asks her to summon a man, Gian Luca Ventura, whose name she’s never before mentioned.

Parker

“Parker” is a straightforward if exceptionally bloody action flick, with Jason Statham’s Parker a bank robber content to pull off million-dollar heists such as the one that opens the picture, in which he and his crew, using more masks and wigs than a quick-change act, steal the weekend take at the Ohio state fair. Parker balks when the rest of the crew wants to apply their haul to a bigger job – stealing $75 million of jewelry from a Palm Beach matron’s upcoming estate auction – and they shoot him and leave him for dead on the roadside.

56 Up, Let My People Go!

56 Up

Let My People Go!

Every seven years, I can tell you the best documentary of the year before I see it. Michael Apted's "Up" series, which began with a public television program interviewing fourteen British seven-year-olds in 1964 and has followed up with them every seven years since, finds our friends at age 56, and has by now become one of the handful of most important projects in film history, an endlessly fascinating (and I must say delightful) exploration of life, aging, hope, fear, ambition, achievement, love, contentment and heartache.

The Last Stand

Boy, I enjoyed "The Last Stand" much less than I expected to. In the past, the Governator has been able to ease through low-aiming pictures such as "The Last Action Hero" and "The 6th Day" with winky appeal. I was surprised how earnest "The Last Stand" is about its plot, and judged on that level it fails to generate or sustain much forward momentum. At times during its 106-minute length, I was bored.

Broken City

Of all the movies I've ever seen, "Broken City" is one of them. There's just nothing distinctive or memorable about this chop-shop amalgam of stock characters, overdetermined plot points, and empty political rhetoric - which is disappointing, given the solid cast.

A Haunted House, I Am Not a Hipster

A Haunter House

I Am Not a Hipster

There are a few scattered laughs in Marlon Wayans' "Paranormal Activity" spoof "A Haunted House," along with buckets of unfunny scatological humor and several good comic ideas (a white neighbor couple into swinging) overplayed into oblivion.