Movie Reviews: Kung Fu Panda, Mongol, Mother of Tears

GO  MONGOL You want a history lesson? Take a class. You want clanging swords, sneering villains, storybook romance and bloody vengeance? Here’s a brawny old-school epic to make the CGI tumult of 300, Alexander and Troy look like sissy-boy slap parties. “Do not scorn the weak cub; he may become the brutal tiger,” the opening title card reads, and Russian director Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains) shrewdly casts this reverent retelling of Genghis Khan: The Early Years not as the rise of an emperor but as a classic underdog tale. Using mostly real extras, stunt work and staggering locations, Bodrov recounts the 13th-century conqueror’s path from childhood enslavement to tender lover, doting dad, all-around square dealer and — oh yeah — builder of the Mongol Empire. As storytelling, aside from its unobtrusive flashback structure, the movie’s as straight as the arrows that fly in close-up — a CGI trick that, like most of the movie’s limited digital effects, is more effective for being seldom used. Mongol is powered by a quietly commanding lead performance by Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, and by the forceful evocation of its physical details: horses traversing a field of boulders, the heft of its bulky costumes. Last year’s Academy Award nominee from Kazakhstan for Best Foreign Language Film, this is purportedly the first in a multifilm saga on the wrath of Khan; as such, it’s probably the last thing you’d expect — great fun. (ArcLight Hollywood; The Landmark) (Jim Ridley)

MOTHER OF TEARS Smashed heads! Smashed faces! A woman disemboweled and hanged with her own guts! Vaginal impalement with, er, a snap-together vagina impaler! Already a vocal cult calls the long-awaited, long-deferred final film in Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy some kind of twisted Film Moe Dee classic — but for anyone with fond memories of Suspiria and Inferno three decades ago, it’s impossible to see this awe-inspiringly awful shocker as anything but a high-camp fiasco. A regrettably restrained Asia Argento plays the innocent who must confront the return of the all-powerful witch Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, whose arrival triggers a cheapo apocalypse in modern-day Rome. Without Argento’s once-trademark cinematic panache, all that’s left is poorly staged, protracted sadism interrupted by expository narcolepsy, abysmal acting and unintended horselaughs. Those who make a case for this as an elaborate jape get the most support from the movie’s deranged final third, which starts with a hilarious montage of cackling, clawing supermodel witches converging on Rome like a Transylvanian Sex and the City convention; it ends with Asia crawling through an excremental downpour toward a closing-shot curtain call, where she collapses in gales of cathartic laughter. If you believe someone of Dario Argento’s proven talent would make a movie so deliberately sucky, feel free to join in. (Nuart) (Jim Ridley)

THE POET It’s a setup that straddles the line between maudlin manipulation and very crude joke: A sensitive Nazi officer and a rabbi’s daughter fall in love in 1939 Poland ... And director Damian Lee, working from a hackneyed screenplay by Jack Crystal, crudely hard-sells the maudlin. After a literal whirlwind (snowstorm) first encounter leads to an improbable sexual tryst that’s presented to the audience as love at first sight, a soap opera of epic proportions kicks in: ill-fated lovers denied their true love by fate and Hitler’s madness; an arranged marriage; a hidden love child; some raunchy, Night Porter–style bump-and-grind involving the rabbi’s daughter. There’s one ludicrous plot twist after another, with no serious thought given to character or story development — or to believable dialogue — as the film races to its shocking! heartbreaking! conclusion. As the audience is herded from cliché to unintentional farce to insult-to-its-intelligence, actors Jonathan Scarfe (as Oskar, the reluctant Nazi and tenderhearted poet of the film’s title) and Nina Dobrev (as Rachel, the fallen young Jewish woman) work hard to overcome the film’s innumerable flaws, including Daryl Hannah’s accent and a lackluster last performance by Roy Scheider. It’s wasted effort. (Music Hall) (Ernest Hardy)

TRYING TO GET GOOD: THE JAZZ ODYSSEY OF JACK SHELDON Anyone who can elicit glowing tributes from both James A. Baker III and Dom DeLuise is probably worth knowing about — and Trying to Get Good, a new documentary about Jack Sheldon, is a cool refresher about the life of L.A.’s jazz trumpet icon. The first half rolls out evocative stock footage of 1950s Hollywood, which, along with some smoky William Claxon still photos, effectively places Sheldon as one of the key players in the postwar West Coast Jazz movement. The second half sags a bit, though, as directors Doug McIntyre and Penny Peyser strain to stretch what would have been a perfect short subject to feature length. The film doesn’t quite live up to its subtitle: Despite a few brief anecdotes about Sheldon being jailed in Florida for playing with black musicians and his ongoing struggle with alcoholism, most of the film feels like a breezy tribute rather than a warts-and-all ­biography. Luckily, Sheldon is an immensely likable subject; plus, the music and interviews (featuring an extensive list of working L.A. musicians in addition to the requisite celebrity fans and friends) ensure that Trying to Get Good never goes bad. Production values are rough, but the lack of polish serves both Sheldon’s raffish, off-color persona and the film’s argument that L.A. jazz is still alive in small nightclubs, not something confined to a much-mythologized past. (Majestic Crest) (James C. Taylor)