Movie Reviews: The Rocker, The House Bunny, Death Race

THE LONGSHOTS In the ’90s, Ice Cube and Limp Bizkit co-headlined the Family Values Tour as, respectively, a rap legend and the nadir of music up to that point. Cube and Bizkit frontman-cum-filmmaker Fred Durst reteam for The Longshots, canceling each other out into total mediocrity. Curtis Plummer (Cube) is a laid-off factory worker, just like everyone else in Minden, Louisiana; he spends his days in mild alcoholism, one Bud tallboy at a time. Sister Claire (Tasha Smith) needs someone to look after her daughter Jasmine (Keke Palmer) while she’s working. And guess what happens? Disgruntled uncle and unhappy niece (an aspiring model who spends her time reading fantasy books, making her the easy target of every kid in school) bond over football; Jasmine shows off her terrific arm, joins the team, takes them to the Pop Warner Super Bowl, and reinvigorates the hopes and dreams of an entire town. Based on a true story rendered nearly unrecognizable — the real Jasmine developed over several seasons rather than a few weeks, for one thing — The Longshots strains so hard to inspire, every moment underlined with a by-the-numbers score, that it ends up totally innocuous. Director Durst and DP Conrad W. Hall bathe everything in a sickly beige, neutering all but Cube’s natural charisma. (Citywide) (Vadim Rizov)

 
MIRRORS Often kidded for the many times he bellows “Dammit!” at 11th-hour moments on 24, Kiefer Sutherland finally gets to show his range — and he proves equally skilled at “Goddammit!” and “Shit!” Even so, it’s a mystery why Sutherland attached himself to this dour, muddled thriller (copied from a Korean shocker) about a tormented ex-cop literally bedeviled by evil forces that use mirrors to stalk their prey. The demons have powers that wax and wane at whim, like wizards at the command of a 12-year-old Dungeonmaster: one moment they can yank apart someone’s jaws, the next they can’t even steer Sutherland’s car into an oncoming truck. Fans of murky tedium will be in heaven: apart from a few gory moments, French splatter maven Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) directs on the principle that a movie cannot have enough scenes of someone creeping through dimly lit sets. Aja saves his one clever visual trick for the end, along with a Zabriskie Point finale full of slow-motion exploding glass. Maybe that’s why the ungodly 110-minute running time feels like 47 years of bad luck. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)

 
THE ROCKER Directed by Peter Cattaneo, The Rocker is more or less the Pete Best Story — the tale of a poor bastard who gets shitcanned right on the brink of record-bin immortality. The film opens in Cleveland, mid-1980s, where Rainn Wilson’s Robert “Fish” Fishman is behind the kit for Vesuvius, a metal band fronted by three head-bobbing, hair-waving morons (Will Arnett, Fred Armisen, and Bradley Cooper) whose loyalty only extends to the dotted line. Told to either ditch their drummer or lose a deal with a record label, his bandmates choose the former, sending Fish into a tailspin from which he never recovers. Until decades later, that is, when he falls in with A.D.D., the high-school band for which his portly, pale nephew (Josh Gad) plays keyboard. Fish wins over the sulking, songwriting frontman (Teddy Geiger) and the brooding, scowling guitarist (Emma Stone), and they’re signed and touring and sell-out famous within hours of making their Interwebs debut. Sooner or later, they’re forced to choose between opening for Vesuvius or busting up the band. A juvenile fairy tale that plays like the pilot for a Jonas Brothers sitcom on the Disney Channel, this is sugary-sweet stuff — pop instead of rock. (Citywide) (Robert Wilonsky)

 
GO  TEN NIGHTS OF DREAMS Based on an anthology of short stories published by Japanese writer Natsume Soseki in 1908, Ten Nights of Dreams is a sometimes terrifying, sometimes wildly amusing and occasionally flat interpretation of Soseki’s tales by a who’s who of Japanese film­makers. To achieve the surreal dreamscapes mapped out on the page, the assorted directors toy with genre (Kon Ichikawa’s “Second Dream” is, in part, a tongue-in-cheek silent film that takes playful aim at the tenets of Buddhism and the mythology of the samurai,) use claymation, serve up off-kilter hip-hop dance moves and shape unnerving shadows through artful lighting. Of special note is the wistful “First Dream,” which was directed by the late Akio Jissoji just before his death in 2006, and is especially resonant as it deals with the feelings of abandonment and confusion following the death of a loved one. But the highlights of this collection are The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu’s “Third Dream,” with its fused psychology of writer’s block and paternal angst personified in the form of a creepy puppet-child, and the final dream, directed by Yudai Yamaguchi, whose wittily biting stance on pork consumption would earn it the PETA seal of approval. ­(ImaginAsian Center) (Ernest Hardy)