As big as "Red Cliff" is -- and it's huge -- it's actually even bigger.

That's because there are two versions of director John Woo's second-century Chinese war epic. The shorter (148-minute) version of the film, being reviewed here, plays the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor this weekend. The full 271-minute version -- which was presented as two films in Asia -- comes to the Detroit Film Theater on Jan. 15.

One of the original hot names in Hong Kong action cinema, Woo came to Hollywood in the '90s and enjoyed some big time success with "Face/Off" and "Mission: Impossible II." Returning to China to do "Red Cliff," it's obvious he took some Hollywood sensibilities with him. "Red Cliff" is the story of a momentous battle fought between warring factions toward the end of the Han Dynasty.

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There's Chancellor Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang), hoping to crush opposition to the emperor he manipulates. Leading much of that opposition is Liu Bei (Yong You), aided by his crafty, alliance-building strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). The most important alliance built involves Zhou Yu (Tony Leung), Grand Viceroy to another leader.

Soon enough the opposition has gathered 30,000 troops. Which sounds nice: Except Cao Cao commands more than 100,000 as well as a vast navy.

So you've got the scrappy rebels up against the power-hungry establishment figure. Throw in some romance, the theft of 100,000 arrows (a fun sequence), much intrigue and more fireballs and battlefield slaughter than has likely ever been committed to film, and you've got a bloody turning point in Chinese history as well as one pounding action flick.

Woo's challenge here involves goosing a classic Chinese sense of tone with modern sensibilities.

He doesn't rely on wire gimmickry as much as many other recent Chinese directors, moving with more direct physicality, and although he can be as painterly as some of his contemporaries, he still delivers the gritty feel that first earned him accolades.

And Woo's battle scenes, while still using standard heroes and villains choreography, are orchestrated with perfect pitch.

The result is an awfully big and powerful movie, even in abbreviated form.

Nicolas Cage is out of his mind in "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call -- New Orleans." And it's wonderful to see.

Working with quirk thrusters set on full, Cage almost makes you forget all the oatmeal-dumb, quasi-thrillers he's done in recent years. "Bad Lieutenant" brings back the Cage of "Raising Arizona," "Leaving Las Vegas," "Adaptation," even "World Trade Center," an actor with purpose and fire in his belly.

It helps, of course, that his character really is out of his mind. Cage plays Detective Terence McDonagh, a cop covering up the pain from a back injury with copious amounts of substance abuse while investigating the bloody murder of a Senegalese family in post-Katrina New Orleans.

McDonagh has a prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes), an alcoholic father (Tom Bower) with a near-equally alcoholic wife (Jennifer Coolidge), and a nasty tendency to hallucinate iguanas in tense situations. His gambling debts are mounting, he uses his badge in all the wrong places, and he seems to be forming a bond with murderous drug dealers.

Cage was born to this, and director Werner Herzog lets him run wild. The result is a jittery, outrageous black comedy-thriller that (thankfully) bears no resemblance to the overcooked 1992 film "Bad Lieutenant," which starred Harvey Keitel.

This lieutenant isn't seriously bad at all; he's just kind of fried to the eyeballs, a situation Cage plays up by consistently popping his out as far as they can go, usually while barely controlling a Joker-like giggle spasm. There are a lot of times when the audience just has to laugh along with him.

"Port of Call" is a dizzy, demented delight, and a must-see for fans who've been wondering whatever happened to Nicolas Cage. He's still got the electricity; he's just got to find better switches.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

'Everybody's Fine" may not be a precisely correct title for the film of the same name.

"Everybody's OK But Not Really All That Good" would work.

"Everybody's Bland But Comfortable" also fits.

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"Everybody's Wondering if Robert De Niro Will Ever Make a Great Movie Again, But This Sure Isn't It" seems a bit harsh but entirely accurate.

Ah, Bobby, you're better than this.

On the other hand, writer-director Kirk Jones obviously set out to make a mildly entertaining and ultimately somewhat heartwarming film for the holiday season, and he has done just that. There's no challenge to this material, no real emotional pull, it's one of those films that simply rolls by until its right-from-the-beginning predictable ending.

De Niro stars as Frank, recently widowed and with grown kids scattered across the country. When the kids -- played by Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell -- all beg off a family reunion weekend, Frank, who's suffering some vague illness, decides to drop in on each of them unexpectedly.

And then each in turn lies about what's going on in their life. Now, Frank's no genius -- actually the film, intentionally or not, makes him out to be something of a dim bulb -- but even he can see something's wrong.

The film's progression is predictable and more than a bit absurd -- Frank acts like a child out in the big world, and De Niro has never been what you'd call a lovable lug. The script is based on a 1990 Italian film, and it may have worked 20 years ago, but Frank just seems a bit too rube-ish here in 2009.

Those in search of light family fare could probably do worse; but Hollywood, and De Niro, should be able to do a lot better.

The aptly titled "Serious Moonlight" walks a dangerous line between dark comedy and psycho-drama, but it's a tribute to writer Adrienne Shelley and first-time director Cheryl Hines that, despite the film's flaws, it ultimately pulls off its unlikely tone.

The late Shelley's last film as writer-director was the wonderful "Waitress," in which Hines co-starred. Shelley was murdered before she could see the success of that film, and left behind this script for her next. Her husband, producer Andy Ostroy, asked Hines to direct.

"Moonlight" is a long ways from "Waitress," although the dark threads that ran through that film certainly surface here. At first, it looks like some whacky romantic comedy, but then it settles down for a (too long) battle over a wrecked marriage, before taking more surprising turns.

Louise (Meg Ryan) discovers Ian (Timothy Hutton) has been having an affair with the much younger Sara (Kristen Bell) and is leaving for Paris with her the next day. After bashing him over the head, Louise duct-tapes Ian to a chair and threatens to hold him hostage until he renounces his mistress.

Thus begins much spirited bickering over the vagaries of love and the dangers of relationships. Shelley was very good at writing this kind of stuff, but there's simply too much of it.

Eventually, a burglar (Justin Long) breaks into the house and Louise ends up duct-taped beside Ian. Now they really have something to talk about.

This all could have been done much darker, or much lighter, but Hines stays true to the Shelley's high-wire act, and in the end it pays off. The cast is uniformly fine.

More a stage play than a film, "Serious Moonlight" is at the least seriously interesting, and certainly makes you mourn Shelley's passing even more.

You think you're prepared for "Brothers" -- love triangle, siblings, missing prisoner of war returns to domestic chaos, all the stuff you get from the previews and commercials.

You're not prepared. Because "Brothers," which clings closely to the fine Danish film by Susanne Bier that it's based on, does not go to expected places in expected ways.

You're also not prepared for the guts-on-the-table performance that Tobey Maguire brings to the film. Once one of the most promising young actors of his generation, he's spent most of the past decade in a Spider-Man costume. Well, he's back in the real world now, and he attacks his role here with heretofore undisplayed power.

Maguire plays Capt. Sam Cahill, a straight-arrow soldier going back to war in Afghanistan just as his troubled brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is getting out of prison. Their stiff father (Sam Shepard), a lifer in the Army himself, is filled with pride over Sam and filled with animosity toward Tommy.

Sam is leaving behind his loving wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and two daughters (Bailee Madison, Taylor Geare). Grace generally disapproves of Tommy as well, because he gives her plenty of reason to do so. But Sam remains his brother's friend and ally at all times.

When Sam is in a helicopter that's shot down over enemy territory, the Army assumes he has perished along with all his fellow soldiers. But Sam has survived along with green Pvt. Joe Willis (Patrick Flueger), and they have been taken captive by the enemy.

As far as Grace and the rest of the family know, though, she is now a widow and Sam is gone. And eventually Tommy starts coming around, bringing buddies over to build Grace a new kitchen, and getting to know Sam's daughters.

Before too long, as Sam is being tortured in the mountains, his children form a bond with their uncle -- who's a lot more fun than their ramrod straight father ever was -- and Grace does as well.

Meanwhile, Tommy finds a sense of stability as a father figure and begins to live responsibly. Then the traumatized Sam is rescued. And he returns to his once-cozy domain to find his brother has, in some ways, taken his place.

Again, director Jim Sheridan ("In the Name of the Father," "In America") has wisely elected to stay with the basics of the original film, although certain characters and situations are new. He and screenwriter David Benioff have, however, made this a most American-feeling film.

The casting here is superb -- sparkling newcomer Carey Mulligan has a small but essential role, the ever-dependable Clifton Collins Jr. plays Sam's commanding officer, Mare Winningham shows her usual grace as the boys' stepmother, and the young girls are particularly touching (Sheridan has a way with kids).

As you'd expect, Portman and Gyllenhaal bring their characters to life with heart and intelligence.

But the film belongs to Maguire, as it should. Yes, it's another film about the awful cracks that run through the minds of some soldiers returning home, and another portrait of a man bearing an unthinkable burden. Don't come to this movie expecting chuckles.

But Sheridan and Maguire orchestrate things perfectly here, running a line of tension through the film that explodes at the end, just as it should.

War never ends. Soldiers come home, adapt, move on, hopefully prosper. But the horror of the battlefield lives on in their veins evermore, and easily spreads outward to family and friends.

"Brothers" captures that cold reality, one we too easily and conveniently ignore. It's a challenging, disturbing film to watch. It should be.

Let's get this over with quickly: "Gentlemen Broncos" is absolutely awful.

Don't pay money to see it, don't waste your time if it comes on cable; you might not even want to bother reading the rest of this review.

It's that bad.

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The only positive associated with the film may be that it likely marks the end of the Jared Hess era, Jared Hess being the fellow who came up with the indie sensation "Napoleon Dynamite" in 2004. Since then he has worked his amateurish non-magic on the terrible "Nacho Libre" and now this.

The idea seems to be that you use mostly awful actors, put them in embarrassing situations, make everyone look generally stupid and lay some poop jokes on top of everything. With "Napoleon Dynamite," the results were somewhat awkwardly funny. Since then, the results have been downright embarrassing for all involved.

Surprisingly, some decent people are abused here -- Michael Angarano, Sam Rockwell, Jennifer Coolidge, Mike White, Jemaine Clement. The results are still embarrassing.

Angarano ("Sky High") plays Benjamin, a youngster in a small town who writes bad science fiction. After he enters one of his books in a writing contest, it is stolen by a onetime successful author (Clement) who turns it into a hit even as a smalltime video company in Benjamin's hometown is making it into the worst movie ever.

The audience is privileged to see this worst movie ever (starring Rockwell), which doesn't look all that much different than "Gentlemen Broncos." Lots of testicle jokes. Ha!

"Gentlemen Broncos" stumbles into a few funny moments, but as a general rule this is an absolute waste of screen space.

Jenny is an unsure girl in an unsure time.

She's about to graduate high school in early '60s London. Her father has her pointed toward Oxford, her teachers are encouraging and yet ... life all seems so planned, so according to someone else's script.

But while standing in the rain one day with her cello, Jenny (Carey Mulligan) runs into the much older and suave David (Peter Sarsgaard). He gives her a ride home. They run into one another again. And then he asks her out.

Impossible! She's so young! But David comes to her home and charms Jenny's old man (Alfred Molina) into letting her go out. Soon enough, perfect schoolgirl Jenny is on the town, drinking Champagne, smoking cigarettes and dancing the night away.

The viewer knows right off the bat that little good can come of the relationship between Jenny and David, and Sarsgaard's charm has just enough heavy-lidded menace to let us know something's off there as well.

But Jenny doesn't see it, and "An Education" turns into just that, a young girl's introduction to life's thrills and consequences.

Director Lone Scherfig, working off Nick Hornsby's adaptation of a memoir by Lynn Barber, creates a wonderful sense of pre-swinging London, more '50s than '60s, with its sense of structure and aspiration.

And the lovely unknown Mulligan, with her dazzling smile and long-limbed natural elegance, is a perfect Jenny. Whether she's an awfully good actress for her age or just an exquisite fit for the character, she gives a casually dazzling performance.

But then Hornsby's script allows most of these characters to breathe, from Molina's duped, loving father to Rosamund Pike, hilarious as a sweetly dim-witted party girl, to a wonderfully understated turn by Olivia Williams as Jenny's teacher and an iron-hard cameo from that most graceful of actresses, Emma Thompson, as the school's principal.

The film turns on Sarsgaard's David, though, and the actor unveils Jenny's suitor at just the right pace. In terms of soul, he shrinks as she grows.

There are conveniences in Hornsby's script -- Jenny's parents are too easily convinced of David's good intentions, Jenny is a bit too brazen at school -- but the acting ensemble here works so well, and Mulligan is such a luminous find that this fairly simple tale of innocence lost becomes something special.

A seemingly sure Oscar contender that could also be the starting block for a major talent, "An Education" may also boast the best acting ensemble of the year.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

The waters are choppy for "Pirate Radio," but then this is a film about rock and roll, so perhaps writer-director Richard Curtis figured that was the way to go.

It wasn't, but the film's not a disaster. Still, it will likely frustrate fans who remember Curtis' last writer-director project, "Love Actually," as one of the best films of its decade. "Pirate Radio" doesn't come anywhere near its predecessor, but then very few films do.

Crewed by a gaggle of well-known British actors -- Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Kenneth Branagh, Nick Frost -- and topped with Yank Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Pirate Radio" takes place in 1960s England, when commercial rock radio stations had to operate from offshore. So it's your basic gang-of-buddies living a rock-and-roll fantasy on the not-quite high seas, with women coming by every so often for comic and romantic relief.

Curtis plays things very broadly -- let's be frank, too broadly -- with the film's plot, casting Branagh as a preposterously uptight British official and moral guardian who wants to shut down rock and roll on the airwaves.

Meanwhile our boys keep spinning vinyl, sending out songs by the Kinks, Stones, Dusty Springfield, Yardbirds and all the greats of the time. The soundtrack is, obviously, spectacular.

The film, not so much. A few sex jokes go badly, the central story is never very central at all, and the group's dedication to the power of rock and roll feels a bit quaint. In truth, "Pirate Radio" is a bit of a mess.

But an amiable mess nonetheless, with the boys' casual chemistry and the music carrying things along, it's not that hard to watch and it's great to listen to.

There are disaster movies and there are movies which are disasters. Somewhat surprisingly, "2012" is more the first than the latter.

True, it's a big, mindless, cheese ball compilation of clichés, special effects, breathtaking escapes, maddening coincidences and explosions, explosions, explosions.

Beyond that, it's probably the largest-scale snuff film ever made, offering audiences nonstop scene after scene in which thousands of human lives are lost. Tiny ant people fall from crumbling skyscrapers, run about panicked on freeways, stand helpless awaiting annihilation as tidal wave after tidal wave hits land.

Yep, that's entertainment. But the cold hard truth is, that is entertainment these days.

The top film so far this year is the similarly destructive "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Moral considerations and human suffering be damned, let's ride the roller coaster.

The ride here is appropriately harrowing. In "2012," apocalyptically minded writer-director Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow") finally gets to destroy virtually all of civilization.

This happens because extreme solar flares are heating up the Earth's core, causing continents to suddenly shift.

Once Emmerich establishes divorced dad John Cusack and a few other characters, he promptly starts his destructo machine, and for the next full hour mankind gets hammered as the Cusack clan manages a parade of near escapes.

To where? Why, to the secret group of gargantuan arks that have been prepared for this day, though only billionaires and celebrities need apply for seating.

Emmerich follows the familiar story arc here -- devastation, perseverance, hope, salvation -- and many of the scenes seem airlifted out of his previous films.

But "2012" actually flows better than anything he's made in a decade, predictable and reprehensible as it may be. This is fear-mongering, sentimental, horror show shtick, but it's also fairly competent, making "2012" a work of awful efficiency.

As roller-coaster rides go, it is sadly on track.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Self-loathing, mean, ugly and perfectly made, "Antichrist" is probably the best film ever that you'd recommend to absolutely no one.

This is modern high horror, no monsters needed beyond a grieving, nameless couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in wrenching, guts-out performances.

As the film opens, their toddler falls from an upstairs window to its death in slow-motion awfulness. The father mourns and then recovers; the mother doesn't, hanging on to her grief and riding it through all manner of psycho-physical reactions.

He, it turns out, is a therapist, and after wrestling with his wife's anguish for months, he decides to take her to a remote cabin where she can learn to face herself.

But the reasons behind her guilt, indeed the seething creature of confusion and hatred behind her mask, are revealed in such an isolated environ. And suddenly the road to mental health becomes horribly twisted.

Danish writer-director-provocateur Lars Trier ("Dogville," "Breaking the Waves") is as masterful a filmmaker as he is apparently a damaged soul. Yes, he gets a bit carried away with symbols and surreal images, and he leaves the viewer hanging in the film's final moment, but this is a European art film, after all.

Make that a European art film with some of the most revolting footage ever shown -- self-mutilation, ingenious torture, panicked intercourse at every turn that itself becomes a form of brutality.

Watching "Antichrist" is an exhausting, blood-draining, disturbing experience, but then that's precisely what it's supposed to be.

It's easier to say this film is great than it is to call it good; indeed, if ever evil saturated the big screen, it is with this movie. Be careful of its fire; it burns.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

An urban street is overrun with great mountains of white foam on the move, people running through it, staring at it, taking pictures of it and then diving right into it.

A series of pregnant women screams through the pain of childbirth -- the screams come faster and ever more urgent and anguished.

A jolly dolt of a fellow dances around the kitchen with his friend, a ragdoll puppet monkey, making cups of tea.

These are just three of the sometimes disarming, often shocking and consistently amazing TV ads featured as part of the "British Television Advertising Awards 2009" being presented at the Detroit Film Theatre this weekend and next.

If a society is reflected in its advertising -- as it surely must be -- our British counterparts would seem to be both a bit more silly and a lot more serious when it comes to TV commercials. Overall, these ads seem to assume quite a bit more intelligence on the part of viewers as compared to American ads.

One Guinness spot, for example, goes through vignettes with a famed movie sound editor, set designer and special effects coordinator, keying in on their specialties. It is simply assumed that the viewer will know what these job titles mean; it's hard to imagine Coors making a similar ad.

Another thing that's striking is the stark brutality of the public service ads. The most stunning include a series of open knife wounds with accompanying lecture on how to treat them (for an anti-knife carrying campaign) and a bloody look at what would happen if bullets came out of our fingers (in an anti-gun campaign).

These and many others are unlike anything American television has ever seen in terms of grace, risk, scope and aspiration.

Sure there's plain sentiment and foolishness here and there, but by the end of this parade of TV commercials, you have to wonder if we Yanks would be so quick to fast-forward through our ads if they were this good.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Some of the best sports films have little to do with sports.

Such is the case with "The Damned United," which is based on the true story of hotshot soccer manager Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) taking over the reins of his archrival, the perennial powerhouse Leeds United, when that team's longtime manager Don Revie (Colm Meany) left to take charge of the national team in the early 1970s.

You would think there'd be little excitement here for Yanks, who overwhelmingly don't give a farthing about British soccer. But director Tom Hooper ("John Adams") and screenwriter Peter Morgan ("The Queen," "Frost/Nixon"), working from David Peace's novel, spend very little time on the soccer field.

This is a movie about power and friendship, and how the two don't necessarily mix, and it mostly plays out between Clough and his longtime, in-the-shadows assistant, Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall).

The two are just getting started with an out-of-the-way soccer club when they first encounter the mighty Don Revie. Or almost encounter the man -- his team comes in and mashes theirs, and then he completely ignores Clough, himself a former soccer star.

Clough sets out to prove he's a better manager than Revie, and soon he's a champion. But he becomes so obsessed he eventually alienates Taylor, even though he wins the United job.

Sheen is a modern acting wonder. This is the third high-profile film he's done with writer Morgan, having played both Tony Blair and David Frost to perfection. He's just as seamless as the far different Clough.

"The Damned United" is a thoughtful and entertaining study on the perils of ambition that has little to do with soccer and a lot to do with being human. Well-played.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Expertly orchestrated and unavoidably moving, "More Than a Game" is nevertheless your standard inspirational sports story about spunky kids who defy the odds to become champions.

That one of those spunky kids is now full-blown NBA superstar LeBron James gives the film a fairly high profile, of course, and there's no denying there's a great deal of footage of the not-much younger LeBron doing gravity-defying stunts. The guy is clearly amazing.

And so is the story of how LeBron and four other kids from Akron, Ohio, became the top high school team in the nation. But first-time writer-director Kristopher Belman glosses over reality in favor of easily consumed fantasy too often.

We hear that these kids -- especially LeBron -- grew up in trying circumstances, but few specifics are offered. And none of them seem to have any personal life beyond basketball.

What -- they never dated, got in fights, struggled in school? Doubtful. If life is indeed more than the game, you wouldn't know it by this film.

Still, the basics are undeniable. A runty kid named Dru Joyce wanted to play basketball so his dad starts assembling a team, working out at the local Salvation Army.

LeBron joins the team early, and by the eighth grade the kids are making national waves. By the time they hit high school they're near-undefeatable. Heads swell, humility is learned, small things like LeBron getting a $50,000 Hummer for his 18th birthday are tolerated.

If you love the game -- especially the dream of the game -- you'll probably like the movie; and even if you don't, there are nice little moral lessons trotted out. But a bit more reality would have helped.

Life is pain. Life is funny. Things happen randomly, with no purpose or reason that can be discerned. Searching for answers is futile. Enjoy what you can.

The philosophy behind the Coen brothers' films is hardly hidden. What's marvelous is the way siblings Ethan and Joel mix their misgivings into movies that on the surface seem to have little in common, and how consistently entertaining and challenging the results are.

"A Serious Man" may well be the funniest serious movie of the past decade, a tear-out-your-hair, pratfall-filled anxiety fest riffing on the Coen's youth as Jewish kids growing up in Minnesota in the '60s.

In contrast to their last film, the Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men," it stars no one you've likely heard of and only a few faces you might recognize. And yet the dark clouds that hovered over "No Country" hover here as well, even coming into the open as the film ends.

These boys don't change their demeanor, they just change the window dressing.

Theater actor Michael Stuhlbarg stars as Larry Gopnik. After the Coens start off the film somewhat inexplicably with a traditional Hebrew ghost story, Larry -- father of two, good husband, math professor at a local college and faithful Jew -- begins getting slammed every which way.

He's up for tenure just as a Korean kid starts trying to bribe him to get good grades. His racist neighbor starts infringing on Larry's property. His tightly wound wife Judith (newcomer Sari Lennick) announces she is leaving him for another man, the older widower Sy Ableman (character actor Fred Melamed), who wants to help console Larry over the split.

Judith's departure can be at least partly explained by the presence of Larry's loser brother Arthur (Richard Kind) on the living room couch. Arthur, who needs to constantly drain a cyst on the back of his neck, is in an ongoing battle with Larry's daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) for bathroom time, since she has a never-ending need to wash her hair.

Almost forgotten in all this is Larry's bar mitzvah-approaching, pot-smoking, Jefferson Airplane-listening son Danny (Aaron Wolf), whose chief priority in life is watching "F Troop."

Luckily, Larry finds some solace in his nude-sunbathing, swinging-but-married neighbor (Amy Landecker). But that's not enough.

So Larry turns to the rabbis at his temple for wisdom and counseling. Unfortunately what he gets are platitudes, pointless anecdotes and an increasing level of frustration.

This is, of course, taking place in the '60s, and the tumult of the age is reflected in Larry -- the sexual revolution, drug culture and even homosexual oppression all step forward to add to the confusion. No wonder Larry's a mess -- everybody is.

Larry's just more of a mess. And while there's temptation to chide the Coens for beating up on the guy so fiercely, they do it so well and offer so many dark laughs in the process -- and tap-dance toward the ending so artfully -- that you forgive them. Heck, you applaud them.

All the unknowns here acquit themselves with honor. Stuhlbarg is the film's center and is being mentioned for an Oscar nomination, as is Kind (although that's a stretch). Equally, if not more deserving, though is Lennick as the severe but somehow sympathetically sexy Judith.

No matter what, the film as a whole will be a major contender come awards season, as it should be. "A Serious Man" balances light and dark while managing to be both a specific period piece and terrifyingly general evaluation of the sad sack human condition. It makes you laugh because you have to.

Detroit News Film Critic tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879 See Tom Long's video reviews at detnews.com/movies.

Intellectually interesting, visually arresting and filled with invention, there's just one crucial thing "Where the Wild Things Are" is missing: wildness.

Oh, sure, there's some running through forests and sleeping piled atop one another, and no one pauses to brush his or her teeth or fangs.

But director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers, in drawing author Maurice Sendak's slight, classic picture-book story out to feature film length, seem to have left too much of the id in kid behind.

In fact, the film's central character, Max (Max Records) seems at his most wild when first encountered in civilization, dealing with his single mom (Catherine Keener) and disinterested older sister (Pepita Emmerichs).

After a fight with his mother, young Max races off into the night, where he finds a boat that he sails to an enchanted land populated with hairy Muppet-monsters.

And this is where the prose in the book -- which lasts a few paragraphs at most -- needs boosting. So Eggers and Jonze turn Max's monster romp into something of a pint-sized psycho-drama.

The problem with this is most of the monsters are more neurotic than purely playful. It's as if they were re-imagined by Woody Allen. You half expect them to lie down on a couch and start discussing their inadequacies.

This insecurity parade offers some opportunity for curlicue navel-gazing, but not much occasion for outright fun. What kids will think of the whole thing -- assuming it can keep their attention -- is anybody's guess.

But for many the question that will hover is: OK, exactly where are the wild things?

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

It's a good season for zombies.

Following on the trail of last week's hit "Zombieland" comes the Detroit debut of "Dead Snow," a wildly inventive zombie gore fest from Norway.

And these aren't just any zombies. These are Nazi zombies who've been hiding in the snow since after World War II. Not only that, they've got a commandant zombie. They're organized zombies. For all you know they have a pension plan.

Director Tommy Wirkola, co-writing with Stig Frode Henriksen, has all the classic horror references down -- he's even got a movie geek among his humans and an early reference to "Friday the 13th" -- but he goes way, way past the expected here.

The set-up is standard: A group of medical students are on an Easter vacation ski trip at a remote cabin. Once they've settled in and begun partying, a mysterious stranger drops by to tell them about the evil Nazis who ruled the area during World War II, and how their evil still lingers in the mountains.

That evil doesn't linger for long. As soon as the students uncover a box filled with treasure beneath the cabin, the undead start appearing.

Yes, these are apparently greedy zombies, and that's not all that's different. Let's just say this is the first zombie movie in memory in which a human bites a zombie rather than vice-versa.

Obviously some serious gore ensues, as well as many laughs -- assuming you're into zombie humor. Wirkola doesn't end up anywhere particularly novel, but he makes the trip there a mad ride.

"Dead Snow" isn't for everybody, obviously; but if you like hanging with the walking dead it's a must see. Absolutely the best Norwegian Nazi zombie movie of the year.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

The opening scene of "Cloud 9" is one of the most unique in memory.

A chunky seamstress in her 60s delivers a pair of pants to a 76-year-old customer, and then quickly seduces him in a frank, full-frontal fashion that goes against all the romantic youth culture Hollywood notions of the past 70 years.

That seduction and its ultimate consequences are what the German film "Cloud 9" is all about, and the sheer audacity of the premise carries the film. Yes, it's just another movie about the shattering effects of a love affair. But this time it's a love affair between senior citizens who look unabashedly old.

The seamstress is Inge (German film veteran Ursula Werner in an achingly human performance). Like some schoolgirl in love, she has fallen for Werner (Horst Westphal) even though she knows little about him. Her husband of 30 years, Karl (Horst Rehberg), has no suspicions.

Initially it seems as if Inge has just had a far-fetched sexual fling with Werner as she refuses his attempts to communicate with her. But soon enough she gives in and their relationship deepens.

The usual train wreck follows. Except, again, these aren't young people. Karl isn't being dumped by somebody he's been with for five years; he's being dumped by the woman he's lived with most of his life. And for a man who, frankly, probably doesn't have all that much life left.

Director Andreas Dresen wisely approaches all this in a head-on manner. The result is a film in which age matters not at all and yet still matters hugely, and in which love is still a dream come true and an absolute mess. Old or not, living on "Cloud 9" is always dangerous, but there may be little we can do to avoid it.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

'The Boys Are Back" is that extremely rare bird, an adult family film.

It's not made for kids but it's about kids, about having them and the day-to-day trials of parenting that are among the most common of human experiences.

Needless to say, such a film doesn't trade in fireworks. Instead "Boys" hinges on awkward decisions and unfinished sentences, lumbering mistakes and the range between joy and sorrow. Don't go expecting a shoot-'em-up.

Clive Owen stars as Joe Warr, a British transplant to Australia who's a big-time sports writer for an Australian daily. As the film begins, his wife (Laura Fraser) discovers she has cancer; in a series of swift but perfect vignettes she dies, leaving Joe with their emotionally distant 6-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty).

Joe has another, older son Harry (George Mackay), living in England, the product of his first marriage. Harry soon comes to stay in Australia for a while and the shape of a new family takes form.

But the anguish of loss and abandonment, mixed with Joe's unforgiving work schedule and his inclination to slovenliness, cause inevitable complications.

And that's about it, really. Director Scott Hicks ("Shine") and screenwriter Allan Cubitt, working from Simon Carr's original book, dare to think a fairly straightforward film about real parenting might actually appeal to, you know, parents.

Which puts a lot on Owen as the film's central figure, but he acquits himself nicely, expressing all the frustration, alarm and determination of a struggling parent as well as a strong sense of playfulness that occasionally skirts irresponsibility.

Overall "The Boys Are Back" is a classy, intelligent, low-key affair and a fine reminder of what's really essential to most lives: family.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Thirteen years ago Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau were just about the coolest guys around, fast-talking and finger-snapping their way through the indie-movie sensation "Swingers," bringing the heat on all fronts.

They were so money.

Now here they are in the flabby comedy "Couples Retreat," shambling through a tepid, middle-aged, psychobabble formula flick directed by longtime Vaughn posse member Peter Billingsley (yes, he's the grown-up kid from "A Christmas Story").

Don't misunderstand. Both Favreau (who directed "Iron Man") and Vaughn (who needs to tax himself a bit more) are still strong talents. They just don't show it here. It's particularly embarrassing because they also co-wrote the script, along with Dana Fox.

In truth this is one of those films, like last week's "Whip It" and so many others of late, that looks like it was a lot fun to make. It's just not all that much fun to watch.

Vaughn plays Dave, happily married to Ronnie (Malin Akerman), with two kids. They are friends with Joey (Favreau) and Lucy (Kristin Davis), high school sweethearts secretly planning to divorce when their daughter goes away to college; Cynthia (Kristen Bell) and Jason (Jason Bateman), considering divorce after being unable to conceive; and Shane (Faizon Love), recently divorced and hanging with 20-year-old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk).

In one of those absurd, only-in-movies scenes, Jason and Cynthia ask the others to go on a couples retreat -- pretty much immediately -- with them to an exotic island, where they're hoping to get counseling to save their marriage while the others are free to frolic. And of course everybody eventually agrees or there would be no movie.

Once there, though, the couples discover they are all required to go through therapy or else leave the resort and forfeit their airfare. So, what the heck, they agree.

Thus begins a cliché parade -- the hippie-dippy love guru (Jean Reno), the hot yoga instructor (Carlos Ponce), the uptight majordomo (Peter Serafinowicz), professional massages as would-be liaisons, therapy sessions that reveal hidden truths.

Much of the comedy depends on Vaughn's near-patented capacity to rant about things, but somehow those rants don't have the edge they used to. One even takes on Richard Simmons. Really? Richard Simmons?

Absolutely nothing unexpected happens and Vaughn ties up all the happy endings with a "what the heck, we all have problems" speech sure to make psychotherapists everywhere shudder. And while that might not necessarily be a bad thing, it is completely predictable.

The entire film has the feel of a Vaughn boys' club party where the actresses were asked to come along for the paycheck. Check out the official billing, where the four male characters are listed above the four females. When did Faizon Love become a bigger name than Kristin Davis and Malin Akerman, each of whom appeared in a film that made more than $100 million last year?

But hey, it's just Vince and Jon playing. And that's the problem. These dudes have so much potential. And "Couples Retreat" is so not money.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 22-8879

"Whip It" looks like it was a fun movie to make. Unfortunately, it's not all that fun to watch.

Awkward, shaky and simply off, right from the beginning, the film can't live up to the visceral promise of its subject matter -- women who exult in roller derby. This should be mesmerizing stuff, with well-carved characters and zipping action scenes, but most of the team members exist in a party-hearty haze, and the shots of roller derby are pedestrian at best.

Ellen Page stars as Bliss, a small-town Texas girl whose mother (Marcia Gay Harden) has pushed her into beauty contests all her life. Bliss wants more.

And then she discovers the women's roller derby team in nearby Austin. Keeping it secret from her parents, she tries out for the team. She makes it. She becomes a star.

That's about it. There are hot tub scenes, and party scenes, and a food fight scene that makes no sense, so we know being a roller derby girl is fun, and being a movie star can be fun.

But none of it flows. The most awful moments come in an elongated underwater ballet make-out session between Page and a beau. People holding their breath forever so they can bump noses underwater. Yeah, that makes sense.

"Whip It," shot here in Michigan, is the first film directed by Drew Barrymore, who has a small role, and the second script by Shauna Cross, based on her novel. They are obviously finding their sea legs here, and the boat never stops rocking.

The performances, understand, are fine. Page and Harden could read a phone book and make you care. And if "Whip It" serves as inspiration for young women, God bless it. But as a film, it wobbles like a 5-year-old on skates.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

A wickedly funny take on religion, relationships, business and everything in between, "The Invention of Lying" is sharp adult humor that's shocking in its honesty and near-relentless in its hilarity.

Written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson and starring Gervais, the movie inevitably loses some momentum as it drifts into romantic comedy territory toward the end. The sheer impact of what Gervais is doing necessarily makes the film front-loaded.

But assuming you're open to existential satire of the fiercest order, this film is worth every penny of your box-office dollar. The first 10 minutes alone are worth 10 bucks.

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The premise is deliciously simple: Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a short, pudgy bachelor in a world just like ours, except everyone in it tells the truth. About everything. They don't have to, they just do. Incessantly.

The movie opens with Mark going out on a blind date with Anna (Jennifer Garner), a woman far more attractive than he is; and since everyone speaks the truth, his inferiority becomes the main topic of dinner conversation. When a waiter hits on Anna, she informs him -- quite agreeably -- that he also is not in her league.

The rejected Mark goes to work the next day knowing he's likely going to be fired from his job as a screenwriter. Movies, of course, are all historical narratives recited in front of a camera (anything else would be dishonest). Screenwriters are assigned centuries to write about: Mark has the plague-riddled 11th, and no one wants to hear about that.

But after losing his job, something miraculous happens to Mark. He conceives of lying. He tests it out by telling a beautiful woman passing on the street that unless they make love immediately the world's going to end. She knows he has to be telling the truth, so she simply asks if they have to do it right there or if they have time to find a motel.

Soon, Mark is fabulously wealthy after going to a casino. And next he's a worldwide prophet of salvation. Pretty soon, he's the most famous man in the world.

But he still can't convince Anna to marry him. Because, to be honest, he remains short and pudgy.

As he showed in the underappreciated "Ghost Town," Gervais brims with screen charm, even as he juggles self-criticism with criticizing the rest of existence. He's fearless in his comedy -- those who can't take religious satire may want to take a pass here -- even as he seems a perfectly nice bloke.

The film also shows off Garner's great comic talents, letting her bubble innocently in a way she hasn't since "13 Going On 30." If she doesn't have you laughing aloud in the first five minutes of this movie, go see a doctor.

If you have any love for caustic wit colliding with big questions, go see "The Invention of Lying." This is the kind of stuff Woody Allen used to tackle. You know how people keep wishing Woody would make a funny movie like he used to? Gervais just made one.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Michael Moore is up to his old tricks in "Capitalism: A Love Story," and that's sure to both infuriate, and entertain and inform, depending which side of the Michael Moore fence you stand on.

This time out, Moore is using an absurdly wide brush, taking on the entire economic system of America, exposing rampant greed and corruption among America's ridiculously wealthy (of which he is one). It's a scattershot approach, but then there are plenty of targets for him to hit, and hit many of them he does.

Essentially, Moore takes us back to the '50s and '60s using an artfully constructed series of pop-culture artifacts -- nobody ever mentions it, but the dude is supremely skilled at this kind of stuff -- recalling when America's middle class was stable.

And then he tracks the dissolution of this stability, mostly from Ronald Reagan to the recent Wall Street meltdown, the horrendous foreclosures across the nation, and the corporate squeeze to bleed more from less.

Exhibits A and B for much of the film are Detroit and Flint, where Moore grew up. Home movies of his middle-class childhood are included, and Detroiters' reactions to the election of President Obama are shown. Moore even takes his father back to revisit the plant where he once worked, now a pile of rubble.

But the film goes beyond easy sentiment and outrage. Moore digs up some particularly egregious practices (corporations profiting from the death of employees via secret life insurance policies) and some astounding footage (a lost film of Franklin Roosevelt calling for a second Bill of Rights for the middle class).

Yes, he relies too much on familiar shtick. And what friend Wallace Shawn is doing in this thing as an "expert" is anybody's guess. Moreover, no real solution emerges past full-on revolution.

Still, there are painful and touching moments here with real Americans in distress that only the most cold-hearted could ignore.

Michael Moore is a rabble-rouser, it's what he does, and does well. "Capitalism" most assuredly rouses the rabble.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

'Zombieland" may be the best example yet of a post-Tarantino splatter comedy.

It's a black-blood-spitting mugging of a movie, but it's also relentlessly funny and innovative, the sort of film that makes you writhe and laugh at the same time.

Killing and death have always been grand sources of humor, being the least funny things in existence, but ever since that dude's brains were blasted all over the back of Samuel L. Jackson's car in "Pulp Fiction," the notion that gore could be hilarious has been worming its way into the mainstream.

In "Zombieland," a film that would have been shown only in grindcore horror theaters two decades ago, this movement becomes complete. The film even stars that adorable little girl from "Little Miss Sunshine," for heaven's sake!

It's even more fitting that a film so outrageous and yet somehow expected comes from a group of nobodies. Director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have a handful of nothing credits to their names, but they soon will be the toast of the horror crowd.

Somebody eats a bad burger. They turn into a zombie. They bite someone else, they turn into a zombie. That's about all the background offered upon meeting nerdy college student Columbus (ever-nervous Jesse Eisenberg from "Adventureland"), who has survived the rise of zombie nation and is cautiously making his way to the hometown that is his namesake.

Columbus has a long list of rules he follows -- "Beware of bathrooms" is one, "Don't be a hero" another -- that have kept him alive. Still, his chances seem limited.

But then he encounters Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson, perfectly cast), a zombie-killing enthusiast of the top order, and they team up. Soon after they run into a pair of unscrupulous but adorable young sisters, Wichita ( "Superbad" dream girl Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin from "Sunshine").

Eventually, a team is formed and a road trip is under way. The destination? A fabled amusement park in Los Angeles that Little Rock imagines must be free of zombies.

Yeah, right.

Along the way, though, the gang decides to check out the mansions of Beverly Hills, opening the film to one of the funniest cameos in memory.

Director Fleischer moves fast, and the movie only lasts 82 minutes -- prediction: The 75-minute feature film is two years away -- so there's little time to get bored (although the mansion sequence is still a few beats too long).

Beyond that, the film keeps throwing flashbacks and asides -- "Zombie Kill of the Week" -- at the viewer. This is definitely a movie for the attention-deficit crowd, which means most of us.

Does it all mean anything? Well, there's that "we're all zombies moving through life, missing the golden moments"-thing that all zombie movies live by. Other than that, though, it's mainly about what a hoot it is to blow the face off a walking piece of meat.

For many, this won't be appealing. For another crowd, though, "Zombieland" offers both the vicarious release of pent-up resentment toward all the zombies who seem to rule the world and plenty of chances to laugh aloud.

Hilarity and horror. What a twisted cool and hauntingly modern combination.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Living forever ain't what it used to be.

The new "Fame" plays less like an update of Alan Parker's 1980 original than a pilot for a series on the CW -- which, given "Fame's" incarnations over the years, might not be far off.

The structure and outline is the same -- we follow a handful of hopefuls through their schooling at the New York City High School of Performing Arts -- but everything here has been scrubbed clean and disinfected for today's coddled youth. While the original carried an R rating, this one is PG.

First-time filmmaker Kevin Tancharoen struggles to flesh out the 10 characters we meet during their freshman year at PA. There's Denise (Naturi Naughton), who plays piano but wants to sing; the brooding Malik (Collins Pennie), who sneaks off to PA behind his mom's back; the shy, naive Jenny (Kay Panabaker), who has difficulty opening up in large groups; and still seven others whom we get to know only on the most perfunctory basis.

Robert Altman would have a tough time bringing all these characters together, so suffice to say, dancer-turned-director Tancharoen -- whose credits include the Pussycat Dolls' TV show -- is in over his head.

In a clever touch, the school's staff is all played by familiar faces from TV, including Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth (sorry, Fraser and Lilith don't share any scenes together), Megan Mullally and Charles S. Dutton. But except for Mullally, who is pressured into doing karaoke in front of her students in one scene, the characters aren't allowed to be more than cardboard cutouts of inspirational/ authoritative figures.

At least, there's the music, right? The original "Fame" won Oscars for Best Song and Best Score, but this one won't be following in its footsteps. Even the title song is thrown away, tacked on over the end credits.

"Fame" plays too down the middle to even be a campy delight. You'll remember its name, but only because it rhymes with "lame."

agraham@detnews.com (313) 222-2284

A high-minded butterfly of a film, "Bright Star" takes the notion of romantic idealism to its furthest limits. That it's based on a true story gives it some historical heft, but those with even an ounce of cynicism running through their veins may be taxed.

Directed by Jane Campion ("The Piano") with gauzy purpose, "Star" recounts the early 18th-century love of the struggling, sickly poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) for his young, fiery-for-the-time neighbor Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish).

He was an impoverished fellow with grand flowery ideals, she a beauty whose family needed her to marry for money. They yearned openly for one another with the passion of a 1950s teen ballad, but it would have been ungentlemanly of him to propose, since he had nothing but his weak heart to offer.

And that's about it plot-wise. Paul Schneider co-stars as Charles Armitage Brown, Keats' fellow poet, friend and benefactor, and a little bit of triangular tension develops, but the film mostly lingers on the longing couple as they walk through woods, discuss aesthetics and -- gasp! -- hold the occasional hand.

Campion turns this into a study of "pure" love, and some of the lush images she captures do seem more painting than film. The delicate question becomes whether watching paintings and listening to poetry is enough.

The less delicate question is whether the whole thing is beauty or bore. Cornish brings undeniable feisty passion to Fanny, while Whishaw is appropriately sallow, one of those beautiful people who are constantly dying.

Still, for a film about love, "Bright Star" is curiously cold, more pretty than emotional. True stars have heat.

Guillermo Arriaga, the director of "The Burning Plain," keeps writing, and now directing, the same movie.

It's a pretty good movie, if you're into heart-wrenching tragedy and puzzle-solving plotlines, but once you've seen one of them, things start to look awfully familiar in the others.

Arriaga wrote "21 Grams," "Babel" and the criminally under-appreciated "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," so we're talking pretty high-class stuff here, with big-name stars and Oscar nominations attached. "Plain" is his first directing effort, but it holds up alongside those predecessors. Still, despite the fine performances involved, it's doubtful the film will get the attention those others reaped, simply because this road has been traveled.

Typically, Arriaga's screenplay follows separate storylines which at first baffle but eventually come together. Charlize Theron plays Sylvia, the manager of a high-end restaurant looking for love in all the wrong places. Meanwhile Kim Basinger plays Gina, a breast cancer survivor having an affair somewhere along the Mexican border, running off to a desert trailer for quickies while abandoning her family.

The true mommy figure in that family is oldest daughter Mariana (breakout star Jennifer Lawrence, a real find) who, in her own storyline, strikes up a teen-exploration relationship with Santiago (J.D. Pardo).

Arriaga keeps his jigsaw plot under control, although after a while you guess where it's going. As always, things are relentlessly dismal.

And as always, Arriaga is dealing with how the dead affect the living, how simple acts of fate echo down the decades and is holding out the hope that redemption is always possible, or at least worth a shot.

It's serious stuff, intended for serious movie people. The only problem is, serious movie people have already been there, done that.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

'September Issue' documentary goes behind the scenes at Vogue
Tom Long / Detroit News Film Critic
A mesmerizing study of the tension between commerce and creativity, "The September Issue" is filled with surprises, not the least of which is you don't have to care a bit about fashion to thoroughly enjoy the film.

This is quite the accomplishment for documentary director R.J. Cutler ("The War Room") since the movie is about the production of Vogue's biggest annual issue, a coffee-table, book-sized thing that apparently rocks the fashion world (and sells millions of copies).

The big "get" here is Cutler's access to longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour (parodied and then humanized by Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada"), the ice queen who wields more power than anyone else in the fashion world.

But the astounding part of his film turns out to be the pull-and-push tension between Wintour and her partner/nemesis over the past 20 years, American Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, possibly the most fascinating person captured on film this past decade.

Coddington's influence on modern culture is immeasurable, yet she's virtually unknown, a plain-dressed woman in comfortable shoes who has shaped a great part of modern aesthetics from behind the scenes.

She is about the beauty, the vision; Wintour is about the bucks and the power. Coming from a family of over-achieving do-gooders, Wintour has obvious qualms about her life's work; and Cutler's take on the elitist, snobby, essentially silly industry suggests she should.

But then you see the ornate visions Coddington has assembled for the magazine, stunning work bordering on true art, and realize they might never see the light of day without Wintour. And the two sides become one.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Imagine a world in which hundreds of millions of people do most of their social interacting through computers -- working, chatting, sharing and expressing themselves without ever leaving their electronic interface.

Oh, wait. We live in that world, even though today's reality would have sounded like some science-fiction hallucination only 30 years ago.

OK, then -- imagine a world in which people do virtually all of their social interacting through a computer, this time controlling robots that resemble their ideal self-image.

You lay back at home and send your robot clone out to work, to parties, to the grocery store. In everyone else's eyes, you always look great, you're thin, you never age and, if you get hit by a bus, your robot dies, not you.

This is the hits-close-to-home premise of "Surrogates," the surprisingly efficient and smart sci-fi movie starring Bruce Willis.

Based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, the film inserts a murder-mystery into this environment and then spins it into a grand conspiracy. Yet, the whole thing flashes by in less than an hour and a half, thus avoiding the operatic bloat of most future fables.

Willis plays Greer, an FBI agent in an era where crime has dropped 99 percent and violence is virtually unknown. True, there are enclaves of humans who believe the use of surrogates is wrong, and they march to the song of The Prophet (Ving Rhames), but the vast majority of mankind has gone surrogate and things are peaceful.

This was not, though, the intent of the scientist Canter (James Cromwell) who came up with the technology that made surrogates possible. He was just trying to devise a way in which people confined to wheelchairs or beds might get out and about and live more independently.

Canter has since split from the company, VSI, that turned surrogacy into the norm in everyday life. Now people lie about in their pajamas all day, hair filthy, bodies withered, attached to their computers as their surrogates move through the world.

But then one night, the unthinkable happens. Canter's son, using one of Canter's surrogates, is attacked by a living human with a weapon that not only kills the surrogate, but it also radiates back and kills Canter's flesh-and-blood son.

Soon other surrogate-human murders start popping up, and Greer, along with his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell), start investigating. Soon enough, Greer is caught up in your classic tangled web, his surrogate is destroyed, and he is forced to take to the streets in human form for the first time in years to hunt down the killer.

Some things go a bit too conveniently here -- Greer has immediate access to a VSI scientist as well as a top military official -- and his investigative style has whiffs of "Dragnet." But the film moves along so quickly, and the surrogate world look is so eerie, that it matters little.

Dealing with the robot-human interface has become common ground for screenwriters Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, who penned the last two "Terminator" films, and director Jonathan Mostow certainly picked up some robo-skills helming "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."

Mostow gets in, establishes the premise and the look, cooks up some solid action scenes, lets us know Greer's human despite it all, and solves the mystery with no grand predictions of impending doom or overlong sidetracks. The swiftness of "Surrogates" is to be admired.

But it's that basic idea that gets you. It couldn't happen here, could it? No way. Pass that along on your Facebook page.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

You don't expect to see tiny cartoon characters making their way through the fresh rubble of an apocalypse. This is the usual terrain of bulked-up warriors with big guns and dark pasts.

But then almost nothing about the premise of "9" is expected. Creator Shane Acker has created a completely novel take on what happens after mankind triggers its own annihilation, and the sheer ingenuity of his vision is enough to overcome some fairly standard plot progressions as the movie spins forward. No matter what, this film dazzles.

Acker, who expanded his 2005 Oscar-nominated short into this feature-length film, sets out with the same supposition as so many other doomsday sci-fi flicks: Eventually man will invent a machine that turns on its creator and wipes humankind off the face of the earth. This is common stuff.

But Acker takes an uncommon approach. As his film begins, an old man is stitching together a burlap puppet of sorts, filling the body with odd cogs and bolts. A zipper in the front holds the puppet-creature together and a number is painted on its back: 9.

The man collapses dead after an orb bathes the puppet in light. And when the puppet comes to life, it wanders outside to a ravaged cityscape, a new Dresden of crumbled buildings and junk.

Fairly quickly 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) runs into another creature of his ilk, with the number 2 (Martin Landau) on his back. But then the new friends are attacked: Apparently the robot menaces that wiped out mankind don't take kindly to little burlap critters either.

And thus begins 9's introduction to life. A small (literally) society of his sort has already formed, including the rebellious 7 (Jennifer Connelly), disturbed 6 (Crispin Glover) and imperial 1 (Christopher Plummer). The good and bad of the human spirit is already manifesting in its last creation.

And this is where "9" takes not a wrong turn, but a series of familiar turns, becoming an action movie as our underdog numbers do battle with a giant menacing robot and its minions. It's fairly standard hobbit versus dark lord stuff, albeit presented via some startling animation.

In many ways, the setup for "9" is so spectacular that it dooms the follow-through, which is perfectly fine, just not up to the film's initial genius.

Still, "9" is innovative, inventive stuff, both visually and conceptually. The strange thing is it becomes less exciting when it gets to the exciting parts.

But for those who've already succumbed to the film's magic -- and this is a film with magic -- that likely won't matter. "9" is a captivating film with much to say about the human spirit -- even if humans are nowhere to be found.

'9'
GRADE: B

Rated PG-13: For violence and scary images

Running time: 79 minutes

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

So this is why they haven't made "CSI: Antarctica."

In "Whiteout," Kate Beckinsale plays a U.S. Marshall who, following a traumatic work incident, is deployed down under, way, way down under, for a little on-the-job R&R. But when bodies start turning up at her outpost -- and there are only a few dozen people there to begin with -- things start to get heated (or rather, very, very cold).

The movie then becomes one of those murder mysteries where everyone is a suspect, and the murderer himself is the least likely candidate of all. Dispelling all logic, you should be able to figure out this whodunit in the opening minutes.

Like Christopher Nolan did with Alaska in "Insomnia," director Dominc Sena ("Swordfish") attempts to make the icy tundra of Antarctica the star of his picture. But with remote sections of Canada standing in for the frozen wonderland and an overexcited FX crew constantly filling the frame with blizzards of computer generated snow, you never get a sense of the sub-zero majesty of the South Pole. For that, you're better off sticking with "March of the Penguins."

Cooked up by a team of four writers and adapted from Greg Rucka's graphic novel, "Whiteout" is a twisty mess of mystery clichés. On-screen temps of 65 below aside, it will leave you feeling cold.

It's 2003 and Muna (Nisreen Faour), a divorced mother, and her son Fadi (Melkar Muallem) have just received some surprising news at their Palestinian home. They are being allowed to move to America.

It's a chance to start a new life. Muna hopes to find a job in a bank, like the one she had for 10 years in Palestine. Fadi hopes to finish high school and go to college.

And as they land on American soil, the United States is preparing to invade Iraq.

Which shouldn't matter to Muna and Fadi. They're not Iraqi. They're not even Muslim.

But it does matter, just as it mattered to all people of Middle Eastern descent at the time. And soon Muna and Fadi find themselves trying to adapt to a new world while an ugly cultural backlash is rearing its ugly head.

All of which makes "Amreeka," written and directed by Cherien Dabis, sound like a major political downer, something it very much isn't. Indeed, Dabis' great accomplishment here is in maintaining a feeling of familial warmth in the face of opposition, prejudice and just plain bad timing.

The source of most of this warmth is Faour as Muna, a woman who simply refuses to be beaten down. She loses her life savings, the family of her sister (Hiam Abbass from "The Lemon Tree") is stressed by both her arrival and the day's politics, Fadi's welcome to America is brutal, yet the polite and bright Muna perseveres.

Dabis dares to be optimistic while unflinchingly realistic in "Amreeka," never putting halos over the character; and it's that sense of flesh and blood that makes the movie work. A portrait of our times painted from an immigrant's mirror, "Amreeka" should be seen by every American.

An amiable flashback of a film, "Taking Woodstock" manages to convey the spirit of the fabled hippie music festival without ever really spending time rocking out at the actual festival.

In fact, the music central to those three days of love, peace and mud is only heard in passing. Instead, director Ang Lee ("Brokeback Mountain"), whose interest in Americana takes another unexpected turn here, concentrates on how the festival came to be and its impact on one oddball family in upstate New York.

Young comic Demetri Martin stars as Elliot Teichberg, whose parents barely operate a run-down resort in the country, near the spot where some big-money promoters want to put on their megashow. Elliot manages to find the perfect spot for the festival and then rents his folks' resort out as headquarters for the show.

All of which flies in the face of what both local townsfolk and his own rabidly uptight mother (Imelda Staunton) want; although once Elliot produces bags of cash, Mom changes her mind. And then, of course, huge crowds start descending on the area, and everyone gets caught up in the beautiful insanity.

A cross-dressing security guard (Liev Schreiber), a haunted Vietnam vet (Emile Hirsch), a couple of VW bus hippies (Paul Dano and Kelli Garner) all join in the mix eventually as Elliot goes through a late-blooming coming-of-age and coming out thing while the music plays off in the distance.

There's little fire in "Taking Woodstock" -- it wasn't a fiery event -- but Lee takes the viewer on a sweet-enough and nicely personalized trip through a corner of the '60s. And even if he skips the main event, he finds plenty of color in its surroundings.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

'Abu Raed' offers a compelling journey
Tom Long / Detroit News Film Critic
Old and tired, Abu Raed works as a janitor in an airport in Jordan. One day he finds an airline captain's hat in the trash. He puts it on, and when he returns to his impoverished neighborhood, a boy there thinks he must really be an airline pilot.

And so Abu Raed takes on the role, and begins spinning tales of the faraway places he's visited to the local kids, taking their imaginations to places of wonder. Abu Raed is something of a closet scholar, and he believes he is opening their minds, offering them hope for a better life through his tall tales.

But one abused boy knows the truth about Abu Raed's life, and sets out to expose him.

For many filmmakers that would be enough of a story, but for Jordanian writer-director Amin Matalqa, it is only a beginning.

In "Captain Abu Raed," Matalqa takes this small concept and lets it play out beyond the obvious, building a portrait of a decent man living a humble life, trying to do the right thing and both failing and succeeding but with his heart always in the right place.

Starring a wonderfully vulnerable yet strong Nadim Sawalha as Abu Raed and Rana Sultan as a female pilot with whom he builds an unlikely bond, "Captain Abu Raed" is a study in contrasts -- between wealth and poverty, modern and traditional -- that looks for alternative routes to salvation. Abu Raed may take wrong turns down the road, but at least he is traveling.

And his journey makes for a complex film that goes beyond the obvious. It, too, travels. And it travels well.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Scattered 'Post Grad' flunks all final exams
Tom Long / Detroit News Film Critic
'Post Grad" may be the strangest film of 2009. Unfortunately, not strange in a good way, strange in a bad way.

First off, who is this film supposed to appeal to? For the most part, it's one step away from a Disney Channel movie of the week, so it's unlikely recent college grads -- the subject of the film -- will be flocking to theaters. Then again, how many 'tweens are actively contemplating their post-college employment circumstances?

Whatever audience does wander into the theater will find a bizarre mix of gooey American cotton candy, safe-sex tips, dysfunctional family jokes and twentysomething angst lite. All delivered by a ridiculously talented cast that includes Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch, Carol Burnett and J.K. Simmons, and downright odd cameos from "Saturday Night Live" regular Fred Armisen and raunch comedy all-star Craig Robinson.

What are these people doing in this movie?

The film rotates around the ever-charming Alexis Bledel (give it up for "Gilmore Girls"), playing Ryden Malby, a recent college grad who worked all her student life to get a job in a publishing company ... and then didn't get the job. So now she has to move back in with her wacky family and search for a different job.

That's pretty much it. She has a long-pining best buddy (Zach Gilford) mooning around, and there's a hot Brazilian hunk (Rodrigo Santoro) living across the street, but mostly this is a movie about young unemployment.

And it's pretty squeaky-clean stuff, except when it's not and a cat gets flattened and buried in a pizza box. Rarely has a sense of tone been so scattered in such a lightweight film.

There's wacky and there's out of control. This is out of control. Since director Vicky Jenson doesn't seem to know what she's shooting for here, neither does the audience. Whatever audience might be interested, that is.

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

School teacher falls in love with autistic man in 'Adam'

Adam is a human alien.

Born of flesh and blood right in New York City, he nevertheless doesn't think, act or feel like others. He's not so distant as to be inaccessible, but he's just odd enough to be confusing. And frustrating. And perhaps just a little bit scary.

Telling stories about people who are mentally different is a dangerous venture. Go too far in one direction and you've got a freak show, veer off in another and you're mired in the mawkish.

"Adam," a small, smart film about a young man trying to survive and thrive with a type of autism known as Asperger's syndrome, manages to walk a mild middle line that acknowledges limitation while allowing for hope.

Hugh Dancy ("The Jane Austen Book Club") stars as Adam. Nearing 30, his father has just passed away, and he now lives alone in the NYC apartment they've always shared. Socially awkward at best, and given to long speeches on the nature of astronomy and telescopes, he works as an electronic engineer at a toy factory.

He is just settling into solitary life when Beth (Rose Byrne from "Knowing" and TV's "Damages") moves into his apartment building. After a few chance encounters, Beth -- a schoolteacher who wants to write children's books -- realizes there's something different about Adam. Eventually, he clues her in to his condition, and she realizes that while he's incapable of feeling "normal" emotion, he's also incapable of lying, a fact the romantically burned Beth finds attractive.

And here comes the leap of faith, as the perfectly attractive Beth decides to enter in a relationship with the sweet weird guy upstairs, knowing full well that he will not fit in at cocktail parties, that he's never left the city, that he rambles off on verbal tangents, and he rarely understands jokes.

But leap Beth does, and the film lets the consequences of Beth's decision play out. Those consequences become complicated when Adam loses his job and must search for a new one, and then complicated even further when Beth's well-off accountant father (Peter Gallagher) is indicted for fraud.

Which fits, because writer-director Max Mayer builds his entire film on the question of honesty -- its value, its limitations, its simple beauty and easy corruption. Is Beth using Adam just because she can trust him in a world filled with little lies? Can Adam learn to understand life's slight, kind betrayals?

Dancy has to balance innocence and physically brittle movements in his portrayal, and he does so with grace and even sly humor. But the truly difficult acting job here is Byrne's as she has to sell Beth's attraction to Adam while revealing her character's ultimate vulnerability, as well. In a very subtle way, she is magnificent.

"Adam" can't escape the sentiment of its setting. There's no getting around the character's plight as an eternal outsider or the natural sympathy it draws. But writer-director Mayer never loses control of this fact, offering a story that's both sweet and tart, unique and familiar. Limitations and hope; who doesn't wrestle with each?

tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879

Fanciful, gory, entertaining and a bit too brilliant for its own good, "Inglourious Basterds" bears the good news that writer-director Quentin Tarantino is still a thrilling filmmaker along with the slight irritation of his ongoing immaturity.

It's all there in the purposely useless mangling of the title's spelling, the sense of audaciousness with little real point, the sweet spirit of silly rebellion. It would be enough to make you want to smack the guy if his imagination wasn't such a stirring brew of surprises.

"Basterds" is a Tarantino salute to spaghetti westerns via World War II, filled with humor and outstanding performances from people you may never have seen or noticed before, most notably the amazing Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, playing Col. Hans Landa, a Nazi detective, of sorts, who hunts Jews and collaborators in France.

The film's one big-name star is, of course, Brad Pitt, and America's golden boy does seem to be having a hoot of a time as Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a group of Jewish-American soldiers, nicknamed the Basterds, plopped down behind enemy lines with the mission of collecting 100 Nazi scalps each.

And since this is a Tarantino movie, the audience gets to watch some of those scalps come off. Luckily, that's not all that's going on.

Because this is not really World War II; this is Tarantino's World War II, a fantasy world in which he can rearrange history any way he likes to fit the needs of his film. And rearrange he does, masterfully bringing the brutality of war to the fantasy of cinema in a manner that's a literal blast.

As with "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill," "Basterds" plays out in a series of chapters, which introduce the main characters and their objectives, beginning with Landa's silky smooth and completely terrifying interrogation of a French farmer.

The film flips back and forth between factions while building to its unlikely climax, the premiere of a German film in a French movie house run by a Jewish woman (Melanie Laurent) who has escaped detection.

Somehow this also involves a German movie actress (Diane Kruger, who receives Tarantino's well-known foot fetish attention) working undercover for British intelligence.

If this all sounds a bit convoluted, it's not really; but it is a bit much. "Basterds" runs more than two-and-a-half hours without really needing to, and a long -- though still quite good -- scene in an underground pub probably should have been either shortened or excised. Tarantino obviously, and understandably, loves his own stuff, but a bit of containment might have helped.

Still, the underlying problem with "Basterds" isn't its length: It's the repetition of Tarantino's vengeance theme, which he has now pounded through "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill" and the wretched "Death Proof," and the lack of real feeling at the film's core.

At his absolute operatic best -- think the end of "Kill Bill" -- Tarantino can synthesize violence, madness and vulnerability into grand reflection that's both visceral and emotional. In "Basterds" he's just showing his technical prowess and wit.

Luckily, he's got plenty of both and the result is great entertainment for those who embrace his twisted ways. "Basterds" is not great Tarantino but it's solidly good Tarantino, and that's sweet news for his fans.

Tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879 Come back to On Screen Friday for more movie reviews.