Film reviews: Summercamp!, Self-Medicated, The Nines and More

THE NINES Screenwriter John August (Go, Charlie’s Angels) wrote and directed this solipsistic, sub–Charlie Kaufman head trip about a washed-up cop-show actor confined to house arrest, a gay TV writer battling the network over his latest pilot, and a successful video-game designer whose family holiday turns sinister after his car breaks down in the woods. The catch is that all three characters are played by Ryan Reynolds and are versions or fragments of the same person. There’s no fixed reality per se, but as each successive storyline plays out, it becomes clear that August is trying to show us the inner workings of a writer’s mind, and how a writer’s life competes with and influences those of his fictional creations. It’s hardly a novel idea, but at least when Kaufman, David Lynch or Michel Gondry invites us on a tour of the creative subconscious, it’s a fascinating place to visit. Plunging into August’s gray matter is more like a season in vacation hell. The film’s first section, in which Reynolds’ vain sex symbol hooks up with his married neighbor (Hope Davis), plays like outtakes from a low-rent porno; the middle section suggests a wan retread of Jake Kasdan’s recent The TV Set. And the grand finale — presumably the pilot that the writer has been writing — quickly devolves into must-not-see TV. In each segment, Reynolds (who gives the movie his all but gets little in return) finds himself haunted in some way by the titular numeral — a feeling likely to be shared by anyone who spends about that many dollars on a ticket. (Nuart) (Scott Foundas)

PRIVATE PROPERTY See film feature.



SELF-MEDICATED The 24-year-old writer-director Monty Lapica, whose bony, angular face makes him look a good decade older than that, takes an ill-advised stab at playing the 17-year-old version of himself in this autobiographical drama about a Las Vegas high schooler with a superhigh IQ, a grade-A anger-management problem and a varsity-level alcohol addiction. A dead father looms large, as does a dissolute, pill-popping mom (Diane Venora, method-acting into next week) who begs God to save her son from his reckless ways. As it happens, Self-Medicated does concern an intervention — albeit not a divine one — in which Lapica (here called Andrew) is interred in the kind of rehab center that makes San Quentin look like Club Med; cue tough-love counseling sessions, trips to the disciplinary “standing room,” and the inevitable escape attempt. As director, Lapica labors to affect a kind of stark, airless “realism,” yet long before Andrew’s eleventh-hour encounter with a saintly, homily-spouting homeless man, Self-Medicated reveals itself as a uniquely narcissistic fantasy about the brilliant, tough, misunderstood kid with a heart of gold who finally figures out how to get his shit together: Good Will Hunting with a heaping side of Capracorn. (Monica 4-Plex) (Scott Foundas)


SUMMERCAMP! For fans of cute-kid docs like Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom, Summercamp!, which follows a group of Wisconsin nature-campers over the course of three weeks, should be the perfect summer movie. Unfortunately, as anyone who’s ever spent an interminable afternoon with a 7-year-old who wants to show off her Beanie Baby collection knows, kids are sort of . . . boring. Sure, they say the darnedest things, but they’re also tremendously entertained by peeling blades of grass and giving each other wedgies. The campers here are a pretty uniform group (read: white), and are, as they should be, more interested in playing than playing to the cameras. Co-directors Brad Beesley and Sarah Price make the mistake of jumping so rapidly from cabin to cabin that we have little opportunity to get to know the most interesting kids, including a chickadee-obsessed girl mourning for her dead father. The counselors, meanwhile, seem almost creepily clueless — “It’s just sand,” one of them tells a distraught boy after his castle falls apart. Although it’s hard to be too churlish about such a goodhearted film, Summercamp!manages to make watching kids have fun surprisingly tedious. (Grande 4-Plex) (Julia Wallace)

(City Lights Pictures)

Related Content

• The Devil's Auteur: Rob Zombie Faces His Fans -- and His Art
  April 18, 2013
• Rob Zombie Hates That Movie Scores Aren't Catchy Anymore. So He's Trying to Change Them
  April 10, 2013
• Rich Kids and Wizards: Readers Weigh in on Steve Aoki and James Franco
  March 21, 2013
• Hollywood Action Movies Suck These Days (But They Don't Have To)
  August 24, 2012
• Rob Zombie Is Quite Hot
  August 7, 2012

More About

• Kevin Bacon
• Hollywood
• Rob Zombie
• LIVE- MAID Beba
• Celebrity News

WAR What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Offering neither the enjoyably preposterous auto-heroics of the Transporter movies nor the lithe, legible athleticism of even second-tier Hong Kong thrillers, the title-card matchup of just-below-A-list-stateside action heroes Jet Li and Jason Statham is pure straight-to-video rope-a-dope. The rip-off starts with the title: The battle, alas, is not between the stars — who have maybe three scenes together — but between rival triad and yakuza clans in San Francisco, set at each other’s throats Yojimbo-style by Li’s calculating assassin. Statham plays the lawman who lost his partner to the mysterious pro, which means This Time It’s Personal; to show his anguish, he chews a toothpick and keeps his stubble at regulation height for grieving. The stars don’t face off until the finish, and given director Philip G. Atwell’s overall ineptitude — attention-deficit editing, indifference to acting, lighting that seems to have been purchased cut-rate from a morgue — the big fight is less a Thrilla in Manila than Disarray by the Bay. Is this lemon the only joint star vehicle Li and Statham could find? In the immortal words of Edwin Starr: good God, y’all. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)