Movie Reviews: Max Payne, Sex Drive, What Just Happened?

 
MAX PAYNE If Oscars were handed out for fake snow, director John Moore’s bleary, dreary, sub–Sin City big-screen video game would clean up like Ben-Hur: by the 50th exterior shot strewn with fistfuls of art-directed dandruff, a viewer stuck in this film-noir snow globe feels like W.C. Fields in “The Fatal Glass of Beer.” Trudging sullenly through Moore’s winter wonderland is avenging lawman Mark Wahlberg, tracking the syndicate responsible for his family’s murder. The role requires Wahlberg to run the gamut of emotions from A to A as he opens doors, glowers, assembles guns, glowers, points guns, glowers — and, for a big finish, glowers. (Even if he endows Max Payne with min brayne, the actor still comes off better than Mila Kunis, a vengeful assassin by way of a Macy’s makeup counter, or Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, who plays bad-ass Lieutenant Bravura as if his name were Rookie Nondescript.) At least the summer’s dunderheaded Wanted indulged its thrill-junkie jones for destruction without shame: Apart from one cool effects shot of a dragon-winged demon whisking a thug from a high-rise window — you’ve seen it in the trailer — and a constructivist fistfight rendered in comic-book panels of discrete motion, this joyless, humorless third-person-shooter cheats even on its modest promise of mindless mayhem. The only moment that even mildly ruffles the harbinger-of-doom PG-13 rating belongs to future Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, who peels off her dress with NC-17 aplomb — then vanishes from the movie, proving more adept than anyone else involved at dodging a bullet. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)

 
MORNING LIGHT Two unnerving phenomena — the popularity of reality-TV competitions and the Walt Disney Company’s ability to churn out entertainment starring the most squeaky-clean humans on Earth — come together in this nightmarishly upbeat documentary about a group of young people who face off with the world’s best sailors in a 2,500-mile boat race from Long Beach to Hawaii. Under the watchful eye of Disney exec Roy E. Disney, 15 hand-selected college-age seafarers train for the annual Transpacific Yacht Race, eventually deciding among themselves who will make up the final crew of 11. The movie’s first half consists of typical America’s Next Top Model–type rigmarole where we’re forced to hear every contestant’s back story — although here, no one’s a closet lesbian or anorexic. Once the crew is selected, things improve somewhat, as director Mark Monroe shifts his attention to the race, treating the audience to one gorgeous panoramic shot of the Pacific Ocean after another. But no matter how many times these young adults insist that this grueling competition is changing their lives, Morning Light strenuously ignores the obvious emotional and physical toll, playing up the gosh-darn fun factor until the participants feel like cogs in the film’s inspiration machine. These kids survive their adventure on the high seas, but escaping the powerful Disney agenda is another matter entirely. (Selected theaters) (Tim Grierson)

Sex Drive

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PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE If Patti Smith’s narration to Dream of Life was simplified into a stanza, it might go something like this: As long as I can remember, I sought to be free/Bob Dylan once tuned this guitar for me/My mission is to give people my energy/Fred, Jesse and Jackson are my family tree/New generations, rise up, rise up, take to the streets/Me and Flea talking about pee. Her much more long-winded monologues are just as randomly assembled in the documentary, 109 mostly black-and-white minutes of punk’s wet nurse floating through the modern world while endlessly ruminating on mortality, art and the occasional bodily function. Problem is, there’s nary a hint of context, even with biographic essentials: When Patti sprinkles the ashes of “Robert” onto her palm, we’re momentarily left to guess that’s Mapplethorpe; when she and erstwhile paramour Sam Shepard are acoustically jamming and their respective tattoos come up, the playwright muses, “That was a weird night at the Chelsea.” More, please? Blame first-time director Steven Sebring, the fashion photographer whom the “very private” Patti entrusted to film her for 11 years, and who says in regard to Dream of Life: “I want to turn people on to Patti Smith.” If the resulting movie had been comprehensible to anyone besides those who have an armpit-hair fetish thanks to Easter, he might’ve stood a chance. (Nuart) (Camille Dodero)

 
GO  QUARANTINE The megaplex boneyard is littered with inferior U.S. remakes of superior overseas horror films, and their existence is even more galling when they keep the originals from getting domestic distribution. It’s a shame that this English-language cover of an excellent Spanish shocker will eclipse the original, at least in U.S. theaters — but even those who despise remakes will have to admit that director John Erick Dowdle’s furious retread is scary as hell. (Unless, that is, they’ve seen the idiot trailer, which gives away the entire damn movie.) Practically a scene-for-scene re-creation, the U.S. version retains the setting — an apartment building under siege by zombie contagion — as well as the gimmick: The movie unfolds in on-the-spot news footage shot by the crew penned up inside. Far more convincing than Cloverfield or Diary of the Dead in its fake-found-footage ambience, Quarantine wisely spends its first 15 minutes acclimating the audience to its chirpy feature-reporter heroine (Jennifer Carpenter). From there, it’s utterly relentless as the dwindling dwellers lunge through infested corridors in gradually vanishing light. The lack of music, the nerve-wracking sound design, the suggestive lighting and the unobtrusive cutting combine to keep us off-guard, but it’s the ensemble that evokes bat-shit terror so convincingly. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)