Movie Reviews: Children of Invention, Mother, The Art of the Steal

GO  MOTHER Mother, Bong Joon-ho's follow-up to his killer killer-tadpole allegory The Host, is a more subtle yet no less visceral horror-comedy. Opening as tumultuous slapstick, this tale of a 27-year-old village idiot Do-joon (Won Bin) and the local madwoman who is his single parent, Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja), quickly darkens once someone bludgeons a schoolgirl. Do-joon is accused of her murder and easily confused into signing a confession. With the simpleton packed off to prison, Hye-ja's hyperaroused maternal instincts drive the movie. She campaigns for her child's release and attempts to pin the murder on Do-joon's only friend. Pushing Mother into a realm beyond routine policier is the giddy realization that there may be no lengths to which Hye-ja won't go to establish Do-joon's innocence — and that, although he might indeed be innocent, the mother-son dyad is founded on its own guilty secrets. The two share a bed, and Hye-ja shows a marked interest in her son's virility. While in jail, Do-joon has time to think about the past and, rather than provide the evidence Hye-ja hopes for, he confronts her with a recovered memory that allows the movie to pivot into psychological (or perhaps just Psycho) drama. It would hardly be surprising if Hollywood attempted a remake — although it will be a rare studio movie with the nerve to re-create Mother's final reel, an ending that leaves its protagonist stranded in a moral netherworld, applying her acupuncture needle to the spot that "unknots the heart." (J. Hoberman) (Landmark, Playhouse 7, Sunset 5)

MYSTERY TEAM Just because you're a hit on YouTube doesn't mean you should be making movies. Case in point: the three likable NYU grads who perform Internet sketches as Derrick Comedy. Two or three minutes is fine, but 105 minutes is excruciating. Riffing on the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown, the trio of Donald Glover, D.C. Pierson and Dominic Dierkes plays overgrown boy detectives now shunned by their high school classmates. For good reason: The three überdorky 18-year-old virgins are oblivious to girls ("Yuck!"), an embarrassment to their parents, and weak on their powers of deduction. A rash of murders breaking out at the lumber mill provides them with the opportunity to visit a strip club, score some coke and drink dog urine (don't ask), all of which is even less funny than it sounds. The forced Napoleon Dynamite naiveté was already tired by that movie's 90th minute, and Mystery Team feels more than six years past its sell-by date. A late-film appearance by the always-reliable Matt Walsh (The Hangover, Upright Citizens Brigade) confirms the movie's core problem: It's more fun to watch adults knowingly misbehave than innocents unwittingly bungle. (Brian Miller) (Nuart)

OUR FAMILY WEDDING An unconvincingly broad culture-clash comedy whose Latino and African-American ensemble might've made for a progressive film if director and co-writer Rick Famuyiwa (Brown Sugar) hadn't pandered to the lowest common denominator with brainless screwball laughs, this sitcom-grade competition of paterfamilial egos is essentially Meet Los Fockers or My Big Fat Black Wedding. Afraid to tell their folks about their new engagement, law-school dropout Lucia (America Ferrera) and her bland do-gooder beau, Marcus (Lance Gross), drop the bomb while out to dinner, fueling an alpha-male rivalry between their respectively out-of-touch dads — married, working-class clown Miguel (Carlos Mencia) and womanizing radio personality Brad (Forest Whitaker). "I'll be right black," mocks Lucia's pop, setting the tone for more casually racist sniping and pathetic displays of one-upmanship as wedding compromises are made to accommodate both Miguel's traditional views and Brad's more unorthodox ways. A few of the sentimental scenes, especially between Brad and the best friend he should settle down with (Regina King), hint at the sweet movie hiding within, but then he's nearly raped by a goat hopped up on Viagra. (Aaron Hillis) (Citywide)

THE CRY OF THE OWL The grass isn't always greener on the other side, which the sad-sack hero of The Cry of the Owl learns to his horror in writer-director Jamie Thraves' promising but ultimately frustrating adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's suspense novel. Robert (Paddy Considine) walks through his days shell-shocked, unable to accept the fact that his wife is divorcing him. His miserable life's only ray of light comes from the illuminated kitchen window he stares into every night after work — behind it lies a young woman (Julia Stiles) whose happy domesticity Robert tries to absorb from afar. But when she spots him one evening, she doesn't recoil, instead introducing herself as Jenny and instantly exhibiting a weird, almost unhealthy affinity for him. What follows is, at first, quite enjoyably odd: Thraves keeps the audience off-balance as we observe these two people's unlikely burgeoning friendship and Jenny's unexplained abandonment of her longtime boyfriend to spend more time with Robert. Unfortunately, The Cry of the Owl starts to unravel once a murder occurs and Robert is fingered for the crime. Considine proves quite adept at playing the patsy, but Stiles overdoes Jenny's emotional fragility to such a degree that her growing craziness seems to affect the film's storytelling, which becomes increasingly nonsensical and melodramatic as the twists and revelations fly. All of this is almost redeemed by a nicely ironic final shot that, belatedly, reestablishes this thriller's priorities: forlorn characters over red herrings. (Tim Grierson) (Music Hall)