Movie Reviews: Beaufort, Horton Hears a Who!, The Unforeseen

 FLASH POINT Cops catch felons: That’s what passes for philosophy with Donnie Yen’s police sergeant in the inane Flash Point, a gangland thriller that’s set on the eve of Hong Kong’s hand-over to China but doesn’t go further than alluding to the seriousness of the contentious political atmosphere. Such phony gravitas is disappointing because the film is almost fun when it plays dumb: Not since Bangkok Dangerous has such exciting use been made of electronic music, and Wilson Yip’s colorful comic-book frames accommodate some sick action sequences and giddy non sequiturs. The ability of the film’s characters to inflict and sustain superhuman pain may not befit cops or Triad gangsters, but there’s a crazed elegance to all the flying limbs and the ease with which objects as big as tables are wielded as weapons. A thug with a ginormous blade lunges out of nowhere to slice a cop’s extended arm, a bomb is hidden inside the cavity of a fat-ass chicken, and a child is cruelly but comically flipped upside down and used as protective leverage. Too bad, then, that Flash Point treats its audience like dogs, making us suffer through routine, almost inscrutable plot points and inconsequential characterizations to get to these episodes, and as such reveals itself as nothing more than a dumb action picture with delusions of Johnnie To–dom. (Regency Fairfax; ImaginAsian Center; One Colorado) (Ed Gonzalez)

 FUNNY GAMES Click here for the full-length review by Jim Ridley. (Citywide)

Blue Sky Studios

Horton Hears a Who!

The Cinema Guild

The Unforeseen

Related Content

• Nick Stahl Busted For Alleged Spank Sesh At Adult Arcade In Hollywood
  December 28, 2012
• Green Eggs & Alhambra
  March 15, 2012
• Zaireeka Listening Party - The Echo - 1/31/13
  February 1, 2013
• 81: White Anchovy, Tomato, and Fresno Chile Pizza at Pizzeria Mozza
  July 6, 2012
• 60: Huckleberry's Green Eggs & Ham
  August 29, 2012

More About

• Les Blank
• Laura Dunn
• Jim Ridley
• Movie Stars
• Celebrity News

 GO  HORTON HEARS A WHO! After the calamity that was The Cat in the Hat — one of the nastiest children’s movies ever made — you’d think Dr. Seuss’ widow and executor, Audrey Geisel, would never let a filmmaker near her husband’s expansively humanist worldview again. Yet here she is with an executive-producer credit, only this time on a movie I suspect both of them would love, albeit with minor reservations. Warm, playful and inventive, this tale of an elephant with a spirit as generous as his waistline comes juiced with the genially goofy animation of the folks who brought us Ice Age (and, less memorably, Robots) coupled with a respectful doffing of the cap to Geisel’s exuberantly wacky visual style. Voiced by Jim Carrey, Horton is a pachyderm so open-minded and empathic that he detects, then moves heaven and earth to rescue, a tiny micro-society (headed by Steve Carell) housed in a speck of clover from the clutches of a power-hungry kangaroo and helicopter parent from hell (a hilarious Carol Burnett). The catch is that Seuss’ storytelling depends on brevity and economy, a fact that opens any feature-length adaptation to the risk of bloat. A host of added characters works beautifully, but the scads of extra action feel like so much padding. Hang in, though, for the extravagantly operatic finale, whose plea for mutual understanding was written during the Cold War, yet ought to be graffiti’d on every door in the West Wing. (Citywide) (Ella Taylor)

 LITTLE CHENIER Little Chenier is a tiny, close-knit Cajun community where everyone is connected by blood, old friendships or unforgiven betrayals. When Pemon (Fred Koehler), the mentally challenged younger brother of long-suffering Beaux (Johnathan Schaech), is accused of a horrible crime, the corrupt cop who’s married to Beaux’s ex-girlfriend (and still great love) is driven by his own jealousy to turn the town against the brothers. Abusive fathers, mysteriously vanished mothers and a trove of slowly doled-out secrets flutter through the story, driving the plot to its unsurprising conclusion. What makes this movie worth a lazy-afternoon rental is the largely wonderful cast (in addition to Schaech, there’s Clifton Collins and Chris Mulkey), whose solid ensemble work is marred only by Koehler’s gratingly ­clichéd depiction of mental disability. Where writer-director Bethany Ashton really excels is in capturing the complex dynamics of small-town life — the familiar routines and lack of flash that can lead to boredom but can also be meditatively soothing; the sense of satisfaction in an honest day’s work, even when crushing poverty is a fact of life. The film also serves as a kind of memorial for the Louisiana location where it was shot; the area was completely destroyed by Hurricane Rita (which hit three weeks after Katrina) shortly after filming wrapped. (Sunset 5) (Ernest Hardy)

 GO  NEVER BACK DOWN With a generic title like Never Back Down — what, was Action-Related Content already taken? — there’s no way this unlikely hybrid of The Karate Kid and Fight Club could set your hopes lower without scraping the Mariana Trench. But if you dig the eye-of-the-tiger genre — which rarely rewards anyone who can’t pick nits between Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor and Kickboxer 5: The Redemption — you’ll recognize director Jeff Wadlow’s brawny teen melodrama as a modest surprise: better acted than needed, better made than expected. Sean Faris, the evident result of that top-secret Tom Cruise–Ben Affleck–Adam Sandler gene-splicing experiment, plays the troubled new kid at an Orlando high school who gets a YouTube-broadcast beat-down from an upper-crust underground fighter (Cam Gigandet). With the help of a Senegalese Mr. Miyagi (Djimon Hounsou) and the bully’s regretful girlfriend (Amber Heard), the kid gets his esteem back and loses the chip on his shoulder — but the bully still wants another shot. Chris Hauty’s script hits every predictable plot point, but the engaging cast looks like a portfolio of future stars — especially Faris, a buff beefcake who’s self-effacing enough to make a credible underdog — and the bone-jarring fight scenes rock as hard as they’re shot and cut. Never Back Down may be just okay now — but trust me, when it airs at 2 a.m. on Spike between male-enhancement ads, it’s gonna look like The Magnificent freakin’ Ambersons. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)