SPINNING INTO BUTTER At an elite Vermont college, a self-identifying Nuyorican student (Victor Rasuk) fumes over having to identify himself as Hispanic to receive his minority scholarship, a compromise advised by dean of students and general purveyor of liberal guilt Sarah Daniels (Sarah Jessica Parker). Meanwhile, when an undergrad receives racist threats (the story of Little Black Sambo, giving the film its title), the hate crime brings excessive attention to the school via local TV reporter Aaron Carmichael (Mykelti Williamson). Director Mark Brokaw’s flat, overdollied adaptation of Rebecca Gilman’s sanctimonious play (co-scripted by Gilman and Doug Atchison) approaches its ideas of reverse racism and the hypocrisies of tolerance with a heavy hand and odious moralizing. “You want me to solve racism with a bulleted list?” asks Sarah of a member of her out-of-touch administration, then admits in a heated moment that she left her post at a predominantly African-American university because black people were loud and scary. Every line of dialogue sounds contrived, right up to the phony-baloney twist ending and Aaron’s sincere rejoinder to Sarah that, “Most people are racist. They just don’t know that they’re racist.” (Sunset 5) (Aaron Hillis)
GO THREE MONKEYS From its modest apartment, the lower-middle-class Turkish family in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new film has a splendid view of the ocean. But it lives — if that’s the word for its members’ spiritless shuffling around a cramped and graceless space — mostly in shadow both physical and existential. The prior sorrow that has cut them off from each other is soon compounded by several cruel blows from the father’s boss (Ercan Kesal), an aspiring politician who not only pins his own crime on his driver Eyüp (Yavuz Bingöl) but takes advantage of his incarceration to begin an affair with Eyüp’s wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), that will inflict further damage on the couple’s already-fragile teenage son (the excellent Ahmet Rifat Sungar). Ceylan’s departure from his moody sonatas Distant and Climates into more plotted film noir is equal parts Bresson and Buñuel, a merciless etching of the indiscreet charmlessness of the Turkish bourgeoisie, which sharply raises the stakes on that class’s petty hypocrisy and serial betrayals. If Ceylan works the clichés of the genre a touch too hard — a gathering thunderstorm, the cry of gulls and the clatter of passing trains function as a plaintive soundtrack that speaks more eloquently than the spare dialogue — that’s a small price to pay for the beauty of Three Monkeys, whose hauntingly slow rhythms underscore the immanent violence and impotent rage that cripple already attenuated lives. It takes a strong stomach, though, to follow the pitiless gaze the director casts on this benighted crew for whom, bourgeois or not, moral discrimination may be a luxury it can’t afford. Life itself couldn’t punish them as harshly as their creator does. (Nuart) (Ella Taylor)
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12 ROUNDS Renny Harlin has an unjustly terrible reputation, but with the right material (Deep Blue Sea, Mindhunters), he’s very good at delivering stylish, knowingly ludicrous entertainment — that is, if he goes for hard R material, like the lurid deaths that fuel his best films. 12 Rounds is a wan PG-13 vehicle. WWE stalwart John Cena is pleasingly stolid as New Orleans cop Danny Fisher, facing off against crazed Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen, The Wire’s Tommy Carcetti). Jackson — an international criminal with a broad résumé that covers everything from planting dirty bombs to shooting down international flights — is mad that a chase with Fisher inadvertently resulted in his girlfriend’s death, so he kidnaps Fisher’s girlfriend (Ashley Scott) and sends Fisher around the city to complete 12 games to win her back. Mayhem ensues, but at a flattened roar: This is the kind of amiable time-killer that belongs on a basic-cable weekend afternoon. (Only a brief death-by-elevator sequence gets Harlin’s juices going.) The New Orleans location shooting lends a little atmosphere, but not as much as in Dejá Vu; the main image that sticks with you is Cena’s Nike firmly depressing the gas pedal on whatever vehicle he’s commandeered now. (Citywide) (Vadim Rizov)
