Bronson

Dubbed “the most violent prisoner in Britain,” real person Michael Peterson (nicknamed Charlie Bronson for his brief stint as a bare-knuckle boxer), has spent some 35 years in prison to date — most of them in solitary confinement, thanks to his penchant (ironically) for taking prisoners and for being the instigator of the 1983 Broadmoor Riots.

Fortunately, most of the film spotlights Bronson’s hostage-holding and transitory times on the outside; the agony of his abject aloneness is expressed through audacious fantasy sequences which are reminiscent of the more creepy vaudevillian vibe of classic cinema, such as A Clockwork Orange or even Cabaret.

Accomplished but little-known English actor Tom Hardy in the title role is really what keeps one riveted to an often vulgar and quite distasteful display. It’s the unflinching eyes of the director and DP (Nicolas Winding Refn and Larry Smith, respectively) which brand imagery on the viewer’s brain — there’s a surreal fight montage culminating in a shot of lunging, slavering, barely leashed attack dogs that’s particularly iconic.

The barrage of brutality did set my teeth on edge at times, as I wanted to know more about the convict’s thought process (the film is very much about what happens but not why). So while I can’t say Bronson is — to lean on a running gag of the movie’s — “my cuppa tea,” I can’t say it isn’t art either.

Youth In Revolt

There’s an endearing yet mawkish mishmash of Holden Caulfield meets Hunter S. Thompson meets Serge Gainsbourg in this enchanting, bizarre coming-of-age comedy starring lovesick Michael Cera as…Michael Cera. Yeah, he plays the same “character” in every movie — for now, his wimpy wiseass allure is working. (If the name doesn’t ring a bell, surely you have seen him in Superbad, Juno, or Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist.)

The collision of adolescent hormones and a bent for passive-aggressive tactics is eventually what unravels the delicate psyche of Nick Twisp (Cera), a kid who splits personalities (or, as he calls it, forming a “supplementary persona”) to deal with the tug-of-war of lust for his wannabe sophisticate girlfriend (an impressively layered Portia Doubleday) and disdain for his bitterly divorced parents (Steve Buscemi and Jean Smart shine). Director Miguel Arteta can’t quite keep all the balls in the air long enough to sustain the film’s running time, but he does manage a bang-up ending that’s worth the wait.

While Youth In Revolt isn’t much different from other artsy-fartsy quirky-teen movies (ranging from the superior The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys to Orange County, to this director’s own Chuck & Buck), it’s still worth conforming for, just once.

Whip It

Actor Ellen Page can do no wrong. Unfortunately, director Drew Barrymore, screenwriter Shauna Cross, and cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman can.

Whipped together quite sloppily, Whip It is neither a sports movie nor a coming-of-age story. There are a few funny moments, but it’s not a comedy. There’s some teenage grappling and some female bonding, but it’s not a romance or a buddy movie. It tries to be all of those things, and winds up being none.

The story steadfastly follows Texas trucker-town-dwelling, pageant-crown-wearing Bliss (Page) on her journey from the runaway to the roller-rink. Lying about her age (she’s only 17) and with not one whit of experience or talent, Bliss is accepted into the local derby and secretly becomes one of the Hurl Scouts. While hiding this from her parents, Bliss/Baby Ruthless also loses her virtue and her heart to a boy in a rock band and begins to question who she really is and who she wants to become.

Page is excellent, as is most of the supporting cast (Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern are mom and dad; Alia Shawkat is the BFF). The rest are caricatures or cardboard cutouts, placed like so many toy soldiers amongst pop-rock musical montages, shoehorned hilarity (an out of nowhere food fight? Please…), and teary-eyed angst.

I am not familiar with Cross’s writing, but I definitely expected better from Barrymore (who’s been around a set a time or two) and Yeoman (who’s done gorgeous work on films such as CQ, Red Eye, and The Darjeeling Limited). Almost as painful as some of the bumps and bruises sustained by the derby girls, I can only recommend Whip It to the most die-hard Page fans.

The Informant!

Kind of a kooky combo of Burn After Reading, Shattered Glass and Insider, director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, The Informant! is based upon the (mostly) true story centering on the exploits of bipolar corporate drone, Mark Whitacre (a doughy Matt Damon, who put on some 30 lbs of lard for the role but still can’t bury his innate charm).

Using a chance brush with FBI Agents Shepard (the woefully underrated Scott Bakula) and Herndon (Joel McHale, proving he can do more than make great “Soup”) as a way of assuaging his conscience, Whitacre implicates his employer, his supervisor, and international business partners in a super-scheme to keep the price of lysine fixed. The amiable and wily — yet awfully dopey — hero’s track of his career-crushing whoppers becomes increasingly scattered as evermore outrageous events unfold in this whistleblower caper.

All the ins and outs of the conference-room falsehoods and the jet-setting subterfuge are fun to follow, but it’s really the acting, characters, and cleverly interwoven backdrops which make the flick stick.

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Flint Lockwood (delectably voiced by Bill Hader) has the name of a swingin’ ’60s super-spy, but in reality (or CGI animation, as the case may be), he’s a gung-ho geek who wants nothing more than to create an incredible invention that will change the world. Turns out “spray-on shoes” and “rat-birds” aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes, so he takes his half-baked ideas and turns them into made-to-order food that rains from the sky.

Needless to say, too much good food is too much of a good thing — not only do waistlines expand, but greed grows and potentially lethal lakes of chili-fire form. When weather reporter Sam Sparks (adorable Anna Faris, as her first-ever cartoon character) gets wind of the mouthwatering story, she and Flint join forces (and, of course, lock lips) in an effort to close the malevolent menu.

Based on a bestselling children’s book from 1978, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is presented in 3D and IMAX, and while I got more of a headache than a sweet-tooth from it, I must say the story does lend itself perfectly to the medium: How better to present hurricanes of hamburgers, ice-storms of ice cream, and buttery breezes? It’s not only a super cute adventure, perfectly appropriate for kids of all ages, but the vocal talent is a bountiful buffet, to say the least: James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T., Benjamin Bratt, and Neil Patrick Harris, to name a few (but no Bill Murray as the cherry-on-top? He should be in all movies with “Meatballs” in the title!).