“Revolutionary Road”, the first post-Titanic reunion of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, is first and foremost a showcase of some pretty amazing acting. Kate and Leo play a married couple with two kids trying to make good on the hopes and ideals they held during their courtship. The story carries a nuclear amount of potency and is certain to make a lot of people look at their own marriages and relationships, but it doesn’t really deliver.

Sam Mendes, Winslet’s real-life husband and director of another suburban hell film, American Beauty, provides a wonderful backdrop for his two stars. The piece plays in the 1950s and everything is spot on. Slow sweeping shots within the house on Revolutionary Road display an impressive attention to detail. Between this obsessive attentiveness and the space given to his actors, the story itself massively suffers. In addition to a couple of holes, (where are their two kids the whole film?), you can pretty much see where things are going. I also anticipate that this is the kind of movie where sides will be taken divided by gender. The guys will side with Leo’s character, the ladies with Winslet’s. The actors definitely put on a good show, but the story fails to give the character’s much depth.

Another point of criticism, (and I sort of hate to go there but have to), is Leo’s uncanny trademark boyish look. Don’t get me wrong, he gives a brilliant performance here, but the guy just does not seem to age. He could literally play a teenager. Here he’s placed in a very grown-up setting and is seen grappling with pretty tough issues. He pulls it off, but his looks work against him. They really do.

I don’t think “Revolutionary Road” is really a film for Titanic fans or for those who want a story into which they can sink their teeth. As an actor’s showcase, however, it does have its merits.

Bamn! It takes a few minutes for Gran Torino to get going, but once it does, fasten your seat belt. Clint Eastwood is at the helm and stars as a jaded old man. Once you see him squint his eyes and mutter a few threats, comparisons to Dirty Harry are inevitable. Instead of San Francisco, we find ourselves in Detroit, Michigan, in a deteriorating neighborhood, where Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is a tiny island of whiteness in a neighborhood taken over by Hmong immigrants. Walt is outwardly very racist and the machine gun fire pace of racial epithets spewed in this film would likely make Tarantino blush. It’s so over the top, it lends one to believe that these are superficial, as opposed to ingrained beliefs.

We’re introduced to Walt as a recently widowed, retired auto worker of Polish descent. Not to knock Clint Eastwood, but he has such a huge screen presence, that no one’s really buying that. Clint plays Clint, and that’s really ok. He’s pretty much the only recognizable face here, and to his credit, he decided to work with a bunch of newcomers of Hmong descent. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this movie, (and it is damn entertaining), is the interaction between Clint’s character and these kids.

Things get going, when a kid tries to steal Walt’s prized Gran Torino out of his garage. He can’t identify the kid, but he seems ready to go postal on the whole neighborhood to get to the bottom of things. The next night, a fight breaks out on his neighbor’s lawn. It spreads to his lawn where, among other things, a few garden gnomes are destroyed. For heaven’s sake, do not mess with man’s garden gnomes. This you do not do. Out comes the rifle he used in the Korean war and out comes an angry old man with whom you do not want to mess. He succeeds in getting them off his lawn and, as it turns out, has also thwarted a local gang from recruiting the shy teenager living next door. Walt becomes a hero among his Hmong neighbors though he’ll have nothing of it. The shower him with gifts and won’t leave him alone. This gets on his nerves to no end. Once he lets his guard a tiny bit down, however, they literally invade his heart. Watching him warm up is a joy.

That’s not to say this is a feel good movie. Gran Torino combines aspects of the deterioration of the American family, turf warfare, assimilation difficulties, and, perhaps the most disturbing, the power of a gun. Clint certainly does come across as a menacing, tough old man, but until he whips out his piece, his threat is not fully accepted. NRA members are sure to love this, but this is very troubling indeed. I didn’t mention racism as one of the troubling aspects of this film, because I really do feel that this is a case of actions speaking louder than words. And the “Oh sh*t!” knee-jerk reaction to much of the language is part of what makes the movie so entertaining. The film literally floats on a sea of racial epithets. The amazing part is that we are able to look past this language and gaze in awe at the film’s glowing, warm heart.

Nice work, Clint. You are the man.

Part “Waiting for Guffman”, part “Stand & Deliver”, part “Rushmore”, “Hamlet 2″ gives Steve Coogan a lot of room to run free; a very good thing if you like his brand of humor.

Coogan plays failed actor Dana Marschz. (Yes, his last name is meant to be unpronounceable.) He lives in Tuscon, Arizona, a place writers Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming hint is where “dreams go to die”. Marschz is in charge of Drama at a high school and has a whopping two students. His plays are lame, reproductions of Hollywood fare and he gets deservedly reamed (or “raped in the face” as Marschz puts it) by the school paper drama critic, played well by sharp newcomer Shea Pepe.

Asbestos in the portable classrooms and the axing of almost all electives suddenly gives Marschz a room full of indifferent students. At the same time, the school principal gives Marschz a pink slip, telling him the money is just not there for Drama. Standing in front of a wall of sports trophies, the principal pronounces that all the arts are “on the chopping block”. If you, however, think this movie has an undercurrent serious agenda, you’re in for a disappointment.

At the urging of the school paper drama critic, who Marschz sees as some sort of a mentor/father figure, Marschz decides to create his own play; a play which will serve to save the school’s Drama department. “Hamlet 2” is born. Marschz uses the play to work out his issues with his father and to rip off a number of famous songs. Marschz, as your stereotypical dramatist, is quite the eccentric and his inspired opus’ themes touch a nerve in Tuscon. The principal tries to cancel the show, Christians are offended by his portrayal of Jesus Christ, most people with decent taste are outraged, threats are received; all this without anyone actually having seen the play.

The grand finale is, of course, the play itself, and though it begins somewhat clunkily, it does manage to find some sort of salvation towards its end. It’s so over the top with elaborate staging, wired action sequences, and a number of very adult themes, that the audience (both of them) are manipulated into a state of bewildered amazement.

“Hamlet 2″ does have a number of laughs, almost all of which are thanks to Coogan. Personally, I think he is excellent. Much to his credit, he rivals Christopher Guest’s “Corky St. Clair” of “Waiting for Guffman” fame. Coogan, thankfully, has the humility and ability to riff off of teenagers, cats, inanimate objects, you name it. He is the film’s saving grace because most of the side players are poorly written, poorly acted, or both. We know Catherine Keener can act, but she’s not doing much of it here. David Arquette, on the other hand, even fails at a bit part playing a dumbass. Amy Poehler is wasted, forced to recycle the same joke over and over again. One bright spot is Melanie Diaz, who was good in “Be Kind Rewind” and continues to show a level of depth which rises above the superficial pithy mostly seen here.

I tend to enjoy movies about midlife crises. You can build a wonderful story around a character whose well-established life is falling apart. You can keep the audience on their toes because in the midst of a crisis, it’s not always clear in which direction a character will go. “Meet Bill” falls under the midlife crisis category and, based on preliminary information about the film, I thought it would be a decent film. Bill is played by Aaron Eckhart, whose performance in “Thank You For Smoking” was stellar. Throw in a bit of eye candy in the form of Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Alba and we got us a movie, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

“Meet Bill” tries to follow in the footsteps of “American Beauty” and “The Weatherman”, but has no real story to support its sagging dead weight. From the get go we’re supposed to sympathize with Bill because he’s got a gut, messy hair, and compulsively eats Snickers bars. We quickly find out that his wife Jess (Elizabeth Banks) is shacking up with a local TV news reporter Chip (Timothy Olyphant). The in-laws think Bill is a lame push-over and he works as a phony executive at his father in law’s bank. He dreams of independence, and thus wishes to take part in donut shop franchise.

The final part of the puzzle is “the Kid”, a prep school student played by young Logan Lerman. His job is to shake things up further, providing Bill with the youthful spirit he needs to shake off his middle age slumber.

Meet Bill provides actor Eckhart with plenty of chances to embarrass himself, but none of them are particularly funny. In fact, the movie is rarely funny. There is a good comedic turn by a firecracker salesman (Paul Goetz) with his “Get excited” commentary. SNL’s Kristen Wig is also funny as the donut franchise maestro.

The movie loses steam very quickly. Elizabeth Banks seems to be about as human as the doll in “Lars and the Real Girl” and the movie is slapped carelessly together. I’m not one to notice continuity errors, especially when I’m just trying to stay awake during bombs like “Meet Bill”. And yet, I couldn’t help but notice one of the worst continuity errors I’ve ever seen. Bill is eating a donut and is about one bite from finishing her off, and in the next cut the donut has only one bite in it. Stuff like that just throws me right out of the film. Later. after an accident, one character doesn’t if mention the accident or what happened to the injured character. I’m assuming they cut out scenes that didn’t work, because I can’t believe they didn’t write those scenes into the screenplay.

Jessica Alba as a lingerie shop employee is mildly passable, and Logan Lerman plays a good kid, but his character is poorly written. Even worse is the TV reporter Chip, a complete waste of Olyphant, who was good in movies such as “Go” and “Die Hard 4″.

In conclusion, by all means, do not “Meet Bill”.

This movie has practically every living comedian in it — David Cross, Cheryl Hines, Chris Parnell, Michael McKean, Ray Romano, Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Estelle Harris, Richard Kind, and the list goes on. If you were combine all the jokes possible from all these funny people, you would have a very funny movie. And yet, this movie is very moderately funny.

Its main man is One Eyed Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson), kind of a Keith Richards of the casino world. His excessive lifestyle has lost him the casino he inherited from his dad. The Grand poker tournament is his chance to win it back.

Not being a poker player myself, I can’t vouch for the quality of the poker games on hand, but I have a strong hunch that this is no Rounders. The tournament does give the movie momentum, but there’s just too many shabby ideas thrown in to really add up to a good film. The Grand also heavily borrows from movies like Best in Show and Blades of Glory. As in Best in Show, it has its atypical tournament finalist Andy Andrews (Richard Kind) and it copies its over-the-top superbowl character introductions from Blades of Glory. In fact, much of this film feels like a commercial, or a bad parody of poker TV. Perhaps it’s tartgeting folks with extremely low attention spans, because just as things start to get slow, BAMN, the next loud song or flashy segue.

Woody Harrelson and Cheryl Hines are quite good, but others such as Ray Romano or Michael McKean just drone on and it gets very old, very fast. I do like a lot of the movies that The Grand copies from, but I can’t say I like The Grand.

Street Kings is advertised as being directed by the writer of Training Day, which in my opinion, doesn’t say a whole lot. The ability to write a good film does not automatically make you a good director. Furthermore, Street Kings is not even written by David Ayer, the writer of Training Day, just directed by him. To be fair, Ayer does have one film, Harsh Times, under his belt as director.

Street Kings does have a a few big guns in its pack. Hot off his heels as an Academy Award winner, Forest Whitacker plays police captain Jack Wander. Wander is totally loyal to troubled detective, Tom Ludlow, played by a moping Keanu Reeves. Ludlow has a bad habit of drinking a few minibar bottles of Smirnoff and then heading into a house full of Korean gangsters without backup. Through his huffing and overly serious behavior, we realized that Reeves’ character is bothered by something. To quote Reeves’ most famous film dialogue, “Whoa”.

Ludlow’s gotten into a bit of trouble for his awful police work, and rightfully so, though we’re supposed to understand him and sympathize. Reeves does his darndest to with every acting bone and muscle in his body to show us that he’s battling inner demons. In capable hands, this could have been a character I really liked. Reeves, however, can’t do much more than avoid eye contact. This might have worked in other films, where other actors could have picked up the slack, but in a movie boasting a number of rappers/actors, Jay Mohr with a stupid mustache, and Whitacker who sounds like he’s foaming at the mouth the whole time, it just doesn’t cut it.

And yet, I keep getting away from the storyline. The fact is, there is not much of a story here. Reeves’ Ludlow mopes around, gets in a few gun battles, shows us he’s an unorthodox police officer. A fellow officer who he apparently used to be friends with, gets mowed down. Ludlow happens to be there, wants to get revenge. He then gets in over his head in some really bad stuff. All in all, really bland material. The interesting thing about Training Day was watching notorious good guy Denzel Washington play against the grain. In Street Kings we have notorious troubled inner demons guy Keanu Reeves doing the same thing he always does. Sure, he’s playing an insane detective who is the kind of guy who probably would have fit right in with the Stasi, but because he’s doing the Keanu vibe the whole time, we barely notice it.

One final word about the whole actor/rapper phenomenon. What’s the deal? 8 mile, where Eminem played a version of his rapper persona, was a load of crap, and I really like Eminem. Ludicrous in Crash was decent, but other than for box office returns, I can’t really see why they couldn’t have picked a capable actor. In Street Kings you’ve got Common and The Game both playing L.A. crime figures, in other words, not too far from their rapper personas. I though Method Man was pretty awful in American Gangster, but at least he was playing a straight cop. This is a trend that has just got to stop. I wonder if I’m the only one annoyed by gangster rappers playing their gangster rapper characters in movies. (In other words, not themselves, but copies of what they copy in real life. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.)

I really do enjoy a good action flick once in a while and I’m also totally cool with the whole Dirty Harry badass cop thing, but this movie really gets nothing right. If this thing had been a TV pilot, I doubt it would have ever passed the first round. Skip it.