Movie Reviews: This Is It, Boondock Saints II, Gentlemen Broncos, The House of the Devil

JUMP The Austrian-born photographer Philippe Halsman immigrated to America during World War II and became one of the seminal photographers of his time, known not only for his witty “Jump” series, featuring the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon, but also for his remarkable collaborations with artist Salvador Dali. In the handsomely produced but dramatically inert Jump, screenwriter Ryan James and director Joshua Sinclair (both making their feature debuts) look back to 1928, when a 22-year-old Halsman (played by Ben Silverstone) was put on trial for murdering his father. The Halsmans, Jews at a time when Austria was falling under the spell of the Nazis, see history record Philippe’s trial as a textbook case of anti-Semitism at work. In a film heavy on speechifying and low on insight, Halsman’s accusers, who include B-movie goddess Sybil Danning, are depicted as hillbillies with mean stares, while Halsman himself comes off as a whiny narcissist — and an uninteresting one at that. As his lawyer, the late Patrick Swayze works wonders with regrettably trite dialogue, and though Jump can’t be termed a crowning glory, it’s lovely to see Swayze looking more handsome than ever, and drawing on a deep well of resources — actor first, heartthrob second. (Music Hall; Monica 4-Plex) (Chuck Wilson)

MAKE THE YULETIDE GAY It’s old news that American queer cinema is splintered between movies with serious artistic and intellectual aspirations and those which, like the bulk of contemporary pop culture, are aggressively mediocre. Make the Yuletide Gay falls into the latter category. Written and directed by the prolific Rob Williams (Long-Term Relationship, 3-Day Weekend), the film follows the coming-out journey of Gunn (Keith Jordan), a handsome, closeted college senior who travels home for Christmas only to have his wealthy boyfriend (tragic family tale in tow) show up on his family’s doorstep. Ruh-oh. Jordan is charming and talented; his performance is the film’s saving grace. But even he can’t overcome the script’s juvenile sexual humor (bad puns; relentless and lame innuendo), overly broad characters (Gunn’s parents are lifted straight from the bad St. Olaf tales that The Golden Girls’ Rose used to tell), and the creaky turning of the plot from one predictable scenario to the next on its way to a pat happy ending. (Sunset 5) (Ernest Hardy)

SAW VI If you haven’t followed the series up until now, there’s not much point in trying to catch up with the agonized convolutions of the Saw saga’s plot line. Somebody tried to explain the plot of Saw III or IV to me once, and it took a half-hour — this film, presumably like its predecessors, is a bumblefuck involving a serial killer, Jigsaw (a thin-lipped Tobin Bell, now intoning from beyond the grave), who devises Fear Factor/The Pit and the Pendulum–style deadly dilemmas for his victims. Taken just as an objet d’art, Saw VI — gray, grisly, solemn, stupid — would be about the most dismal thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, the argument against film preservation, but it vaults into the realm of real detestability through pretensions of relevance: having Jigsaw go after faddish bad guys such as usurers made to cut their own pound of flesh, and a team of insurance-company employees looking out for the bottom line. Yes, Saw VI, you’re a vehicle for positive social action. Suggested plot for the inevitable Saw VII: Jigsaw captures and tortures “artists” and studio execs who have money and access to a supple, potentially transcendent and ennobling medium but instead make a lot of Saw movies. (Citywide)(Nick Pinkerton)

GO  SKIN If ever there were a true-life tale that laid bare the laws of South African apartheid in all their arbitrary lunacy, it’s the one dramatized in Anthony Fabian’s straight-ahead biopic of Sandra Laing, the visibly black daughter born in the 1950s to white Afrikaner parents as full of denial as they are of protective love. The inconvenient fact that most Afrikaners have some black ancestry spurred even greater rigidity in the application of institutional and private separatism. Played as a child by the charmingly open-faced newcomer Ella Ramangwane and as an adult by the exquisite British actress Sophie Okonedo, Sandra is turned into a human shuttlecock, classified and reclassified as black or white, according to the needs of her doting but racist father (ably portrayed by Sam Neill) and the schools and government agencies that have no idea what to do with her. Every minute of Sandra’s life is defined by her color, which makes her story here feel oppressive and overdetermined at times. Yet this workmanlike but enormously moving movie makes the case that apartheid really does control her life, even her decision to rebel and fall in love with a black man. That Sandra finally avoided becoming a walking Greek tragedy was due as much to her own survival instincts, sharpened by nonstop adversity, as to the collapse of a toxic regime. (Town Center 5; Playhouse 7) (Ella Taylor)