Movie Reviews: Ninja Assassin, Old Dogs, The Sun

OLD DOGS Robin Williams works hard for his paycheck, give him that. I hope he was paid per-square-inch of bared flesh, much of it shorn of its thick fur coating for Old Dogs. A chest tattoo repeatedly factors in as a sight gag; there’s also an overlong encounter with a spray-on tanning tank, in which Williams is left to beg for mercy, and what’s intended to play as comedy comes off as...disconcerting. John Travolta likewise doesn’t hold back — appearing facedown in a dead woman’s rhubarb pie, which isn’t even a euphemism. Williams and Travolta play lifelong BFFs who are also the namesakes of a sports-marketing firm trying to land a Japanese account that’ll set them for life. Into this international-incident-in-waiting walk two cherubic seven-year-olds (Conner Rayburn and Ella Bleu Travolta as fraternal twins), the result of a drunken South Beach one-nighter that Williams’ Dan spent with a woman named Vicki (Kelly Preston — yes, John’s wife and Ella Bleu’s actual mother). Dan and Travolta’s “Uncle” Charlie are left to cope with the twosome for two weeks, during which Uncomfortable Moments will eventually melt away into Bonding Experiences as strangers become family. A note: You see where this is going, but, apparently, kids don’t know the formula. My easily amused six-year-old thought the copious sight gags were absolutely hysterical, especially that bit from the trailer involving Seth Green and a gorilla. Disconcerting. (Citywide) (Robert Wilonsky)

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE Personal Velocity and The Ballad of Jack and Rose director Rebecca Miller’s fourth feature may be the only film you’ll ever see with both Cornel West and Monica Bellucci in minor roles. But it is also immediately recognizable as the millionth iteration of a sheltered suburban housewife who has a slight crack-up and decides she better get her ya-yas out. Devoted helpmeet Pippa (Robin Wright Penn, in near-permanent Stepford Wife mode), approaching 50, is married to publishing powerhouse Herb (Alan Arkin), a man 30 years her senior who becomes a surrogate daddy. Before finding papa, teenage Pippa (Blake Lively), recounted in flashback, must escape the soul-sucking vortex of black beauty–popping mommy (Maria Bello), and is eventually rescued by Herb. Middle-aged Pippa wonders if she’s “having a very quiet nervous breakdown”: She commits sleep crimes, somnambulistically driving to the convenience store, where Chris (Keanu Reeves) works. A wayward son with the Son of God tattooed on his chest, he becomes Pippa’s personal Jesus. Though she’s to be understood as a 21st-century heroine, Pippa ends up making a retrograde, new-lease-on-life decision similar to that of Betty Draper in Mad Men’s third-season finale. Yet this concluding entry in Miller’s diary of a mad housewife is supposed to make us root for Pippa, a woman with a new fella but no friends and no apparent job skills. A woman without much of a life at all. Pippa’s got her ya-yas, but where is her sisterhood? (ArcLight Hollywood; Playhouse 7; Town Center 5) (Melissa Anderson)

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GO  STRONGMAN If Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun didn’t exist, someone would have invented him by now, possibly Danny McBride or Will Ferrell. The self-proclaimed “world’s strongest man at steel-bending,” Pleskun is the same kind of possibly delusional big dreamer — with an equally big gut — that comedians love to make mock-docs about. But Strongman, winner of the Best Documentary prize at Slamdance, is the real deal, and so is Pleskun, who can lift trucks with his legs and bend a penny with his bare hands. Yet he also works a menial blue-collar job, and the closest he gets to fame is the occasional TV appearance and the odd parking-lot or elementary-school performance. Worse, as Pleskun gets older, his strength isn’t quite what it was, and a new class of more showbiz-savvy up-and-comers are ready to do what he does and more. Zachary Levy’s documentary offers no context, titles, narration or music — it just observes its subject in the same uncomfortable verité style favored by such spot-on documentary parodies as The Office. Unlike the titular band in Anvil! The Story of Anvil!, or American Movie star Mark Borchardt, Stanless Steel isn’t likely to see a robust second act to his career. But he’s equally fascinating to watch, whether you laugh at him or cry with him ... and there’s a good chance you’ll do both. (Downtown Independent) (Luke Y. Thompson)

GO  THE SUN The most perverse installment of Aleksandr Sokurov’s dictator cycle, The Sun follows the Russian director’s meditations on Hitler (Moloch, 1999) and Lenin (Taurus, 2000) with a curiously upbeat portrait of Japan’s last divine emperor, Hirohito, in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Much of The Sun is spent with Hirohito in the bunker, waiting for the Americans. Attended by his chamberlain and a single, doddering servant, the isolated, childlike emperor ignores air-raid sirens to work in his lab. He’s a marine biologist who, examining a specimen crab, exclaims, “What heavenly beauty!” Hirohito (Issei Ogata) is himself something of a specimen — a naive eccentric whose distinctive twitch suggests a carp gasping for breath. When it comes to assigning responsibility for wartime atrocities, Sokurov gives Hirohito the benefit of the doubt. Preparing a message for his defeated people (who have never heard his divine voice), he ponders his sacred heritage while leafing through a family photo album and then one devoted to pictures of Hollywood stars. Shall the emperor take his place among them? Though he successfully humanizes Hirohito, Sokurov doesn’t entirely exonerate him. He contrives a shock ending that, as measured as everything else in this engrossing, supremely assured movie, acknowledges one last blood sacrifice on the emperor’s altar. (Music Hall, Playhouse 7) (J. Hoberman)