Film Reviews: Opening This Week (July 15-19, 2013)

A critical digest of the week’s latest U.S. theatrical releases. Where applicable, links to longer reviews have been provided.

The Conjuring
Distributor: Warner Bros.
The mere sound of two hands clapping will have audiences begging for mercy in “The Conjuring,” a sensationally entertaining old-school freakout and one of the smartest, most viscerally effective thrillers in recent memory. Dramatizing a little-known account from the 1970s case files of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, director James Wan’s sixth and best feature is pull-out-the-stops horror filmmaking of a very sophisticated order, treating the story’s spiritual overtones with the utmost sincerity even as it playfully mines all manner of apparent cliches — creaky doors, cobwebbed cellars, toys you’d have to be just plain stupid to play with — for every last shiver of pleasure. What’s a moviegoer to do but join with the demons and applaud?
— Justin Chang
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R.I.P.D.
Distributor: Universal
Thank heavens — or at least the “Department of Eternal Affairs” — for Jeff Bridges, whose hilariously free-associative performance as a 19th-century frontier marshal-turned-21st-century undead lawman is like an adrenaline shot to the heart of “R.I.P.D.” A generally uninspired mashup of “Ghostbusters” and “Men in Black” (plus a sprinkling of “Big Trouble in Little China”), the film is most notable for having had its obituary written by the press, and even its own studio’s marketing department, well before its release. While the end product still seems all but certain to turn up DOA at this weekend’s box office, the pic itself isn’t quite the calamity some portended, due largely to Bridges, some genuinely impressive visual effects and one of the few running times of the season well under two hours.
— Scott Foundas
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Turbo
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
In DreamWorks Animation’s winsome toon “Turbo,” a junior speed maven dreams of competing in the Indianapolis 500. There’s just one small problem: He’s a snail. Closer in spirit to Pixar’s “Ratatouille” than anything the folks at DWA have yet made, this endearing underdog story finds the publicly traded computer-animation studio taking a welcome risk and betting on a farfetched story idea, rather than a clearly spinoff-ready property (that said, Netflix has already booked the “Turbo F.A.S.T.” series for December). The result is plenty appealing, especially for younger auds, though it will be a stretch for this snail tale to snare the crowd it needs to recoup its nine-figure budget.
— Peter Debruge
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Red 2
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
More turns out to be less in “Red 2,” an obligatory sequel that can’t quite recapture the sly, laid-back pleasures of its cheerfully ridiculous predecessor. While Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, et al. are still good for a few chuckles as a gang of superannuated government assassins, this globe-trotting action-comedy diversion applies a bigger-is-better philosophy across the board, upping the stakes, the firepower and the travel budget, but keeping real thrills and laughs at a modest trickle. “Red” became a surprise hit in 2010 with nearly $200 million worldwide, a feat that this Summit release will be hard-pressed to match even with solid opening numbers.
— Justin Chang
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Only God Forgives
Distributor: Radius-TWC
The wallpaper emotes more than Ryan Gosling does in “Only God Forgives,” an exercise in supreme style and minimal substance from “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn. In retrospect, the controlled catatonia of Gosling’s previous perfs is nothing compared to the balled fist he plays here, a cipher easily upstaged by Kristin Scott Thomas’ lip-smacking turn as a vindictive she-wolf who travels to Bangkok seeking atonement for the death of her favorite son. As hyper-aggressive revenge fantasies go, it’s curious to see one so devoid of feeling, a venality even “Drive” fans likely won’t be inclined to forgive.
— Peter Debruge
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Blackfish
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
A mesmerizing psychological thriller with a bruised and battered killer whale at its center, “Blackfish” goes even further than 2008′s Oscar-winning “The Cove” to launch a direct attack on Sea World and the practice of keeping marine mammals in captivity. Righteous, captivating and entirely successful as single-issue-focused documentaries go, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s film draws on startling video footage and testimonies from former orca trainers, building an authoritative argument on behalf of this majestic species. Magnolia and CNN Films have a powerful educational tool on their hands, and would do well to push it into appropriate science-friendly venues beyond theatrical and cable play.
— Justin Chang
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Computer Chess
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Never one to jump on anyone’s bandwagon, writer-director Andrew Bujalski ditches celluloid for video in deeply bizarre fashion with “Computer Chess.” An endearingly nutty, proudly analog tribute to the ultra-nerdy innovators of yesteryear, shot on ancient black-and-white cameras and centered around a weekend-long tournament for chess software programmers circa 1980, this quasi-mockumentary is easy to admire in spirit even when its haphazard construction practically defines hit-or-miss. The result is about as weird and singular as independent cinema gets, an uncategorizable whatsit that makes Bujalski’s earlier low-budgeters look slickly commercial by comparison. Loyalists will check it out.
— Justin Chang
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The Act of Killing
Distributor: Drafthouse Films
A blood-boiling look at a crime whose perpetrators remain national heroes in their native Indonesia, Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” challenges those responsible for carrying out the executions of nearly a million convicted “communists” — technically, anyone whose views conflict with the current regime — with a chance to re-create scenes about the murders in whatever way they choose. The incendiary experiment is a bombshell, both for opening the world’s eyes to Indonesia’s recent bloody history and vis a vis the tradition of objective nonfiction filmmaking. Already a hot potato at its Telluride premiere, pic will stir controversy wherever it travels.
— Peter Debruge
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Girl Most Likely
Distributor: Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions
Shrewd comic instincts keep a formulaic pity-party largely afloat in Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s fourth feature collaboration, “Girl Most Likely.” An able cast, led by Kristen Wiig’s prickly lead turn, saves this uneven, excessively quirky but ultimately ingratiating story of a mopey Manhattanite forced to return to her inglorious New Jersey roots for an extended period of self-rediscovery. Offering another sly snapshot of the filmmakers’ native New York, a la “The Nanny Diaries” and “The Extra Man,” this soft-bellied crowdpleaser should post modest numbers in specialty play and DVD/VOD rotation.
— Justin Chang
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Beneath
Distributor: Chiller Films
Steven Spielberg’s sage decision to show the mechanical shark as little as possible in “Jaws” springs to mind with each successive glimpse of an incredibly fake-looking man-eating catfish in Larry Fessenden’s “Beneath.” Sporting the plasticine texture of an inflatable raft and a beady yellow eye that flits back and forth as if controlled by a joystick, this aquatic predator actually starts to seem kind of cuddly after a while, or at least more sympathetic than any of the half-dozen recent high-school grads who unwisely cross its path during some post-graduation merriment. That sly toying with audience sympathies is, alas, all that’s notable about this otherwise poverty-row quickie produced for the Chiller cable network, receiving a token theatrical/VOD release en route to broadcast.
— Scott Foundas
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Dealin’ With Idiots
Distributor: IFC Films
For once, truth in advertising: “Dealin’ With Idiots” spends 83 minutes doing exactly that. Drawing on personal experience, actor-comedian Jeff Garlin co-wrote, directed and starred in this flat, aimless comedy skewering the parents of junior baseball players, a group of losers, malcontents and fussbudgets who are apparently in a league of their own where stupidity is concerned. Too weightless to qualify as misanthropic, the IFC release is getting a limited bicoastal run but will find its most appreciative audience among fans of the numerous standup comedians rounding out the ensemble.
— Justin Chang
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Broken
Distributor: Film Movement
Following in the footsteps of Blighty stage helmers-turned-filmmakers Sam Mendes and Stephen Daldry, acclaimed theater director Rufus Norris (“London Road”) takes his own crack at the bigscreen with “Broken,” presenting the interlocking tales of three neighboring families on an English private housing estate. Melding heightened drama with quirky, state-of-the-nation social realism, the pic aims to undercut epic plot contrivance with naturalistic perfs and a lyrical shooting style. Further fest action is assured, although theatrical prospects look decidedly niche, and ancillary a challenge, for this hard-to-categorize item.
— Charles Gant
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Nicky’s Family
Distributor: Menemsha Films
Essentially a reprise of Slovak helmer Matej Minac’s 2002 Intl. Emmy-winning docu “The Power of Good — Nicholas Winton,” but with a surfeit of dramatic re-creations, additional interviewees and an over-the-top grand finale with hundreds of schoolchildren waving lighted mobiles celebrating good deeds, “Nicky’s Family” retells the story of “Britain’s Schindler,” Nicholas Winton, now 101 and still healthy and active. Providing a valuable albeit overproduced history lesson, the conventional but inspirational pic will be ideal for classroom use following fest and broadcast exposure.
— Alissa Simon
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Historic Centre
Venue: Anthology Film Archives, New York
Omnibus pics offer perhaps the best opportunity for a layman to recognize differences in helming styles, and “Historic Centre” is an ideal example, since all four directors couldn’t be more themselves. Commissioned by the northern Portuguese city of Guimaraes as part of its European Culture Capital celebrations, the quartet of shorts shows off its makers’ cinematic personalities, with Aki Kaurismaki the most gloriously wistful, Manoel de Oliveira the funniest, Victor Erice the most socially engaged and Pedro Costa the most pretentious. With these names, the pic should travel far and wide as a festival side attraction.
— Jay Weissberg
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Ways to Live Forever
Distributor: World Wide Motion Pictures Corp.
“Ways to Live Forever” shows it’s possible to make an upbeat movie about a 12-year-old dying of leukemia if you focus on the kid and not the disease. Lively, entertaining and well made, pic is thankfully neither mawkish nor grueling, though its refusal to confront some of the harsher realities of its dramatic situation does leave it feeling somewhat bland. “Forever” deserves to find an aud beyond the fanbase of the bestseller on which it’s based, but much will depend on whether the marketing can emphasize the feel-good factor.
— Jonathan Holland
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La Playa D.C.
Distributor: ArtMattan Prods.
A scrawny Afro-Colombian boy displaced with his brothers from the country’s Pacific-coast region hustles to create a new life in “La Playa D.C.,” a well-intentioned coming-of-ager strong on ethnographic interest but disappointingly lax on narrative. First-time director Juan Andres Arango’s film would be less surprising to find at a second-tier sprocket opera than at Cannes, where it premiered in Un Certain Regard, but the nevertheless impressive debut should rep Colombia nicely on the fest circuit for the next year or so. Like its artfully shallow-focus lensing, “La Playa” erects an artificial distance between auds and characters, to the exclusion of a more proletarian appeal.
— Peter Debruge
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The Romeows: Retired Older Men Eating Out Wednesdays
Distributor: Sarnoff & Associate Prods., Kevin S. Raman Prods.
A lively group of septuagenarian alumni of Brooklyn College, who have known each other for half a century, attend weekly get-togethers to eat, reminisce, shoot the breeze, dissect the world and, as all concur, stay young and positive. Helmed by group member Robert Sarnoff, “The Romeows” has much to recommend it — the men’s strong personalities, their deep-seated friendship and shared humor shine through. Plus, their evocations of safe Brooklyn streets, where sons of first-generation immigrants grew up to receive free higher education, strike nostalgic notes in these student loan-encumbered days. But at 80 minutes (expanded from a previous hour-long version), the film’s constant reiteration of how life-affirming the gatherings have proven, however borne out by the evidence, become wearisome, and the noisy, overlapping conversations partly lose their vigor. The pic’s genuine if attenuated charms might best be appreciated on public TV or at community screenings.
— Ronnie Scheib

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