Weekend Movie Forecast: Greenberg Vs. The Bounty Hunter

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One of the most impressive aspects of <a href="http://gothamist.com/2007/11/19/noah_baumbach_d.php">Noah Baumbach</a>'s Greenberg is that for its entire 107 minutes, Ben Stiller ceases to be Ben Stiller. Between his aged, emaciated face, darting eyes and continually hunched shoulders, Stiller strips himself of his entire career and for once becomes another person. Unlike, say, Adam Sandler in Punchdrunk Love or Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the transformation isn't fostered by a dramatic change in genre, because Greenberg is a very funny film, but by the control and ability of the performances, script and direction.Roger Greenberg is a single, forty-ish, ex-musician, carpenter, who, after a stint in a mental ward following a nervous breakdown, ends up crashing at his brother's place in L.A. for a few months while he and his family are away on vacation in Vietnam. Greenberg has the goal of doing absolutely nothing on his stay, except building a doghouse for the family dog, and is given the number of his brother's personal assistant Florence, in case he needs anything. Greta Gerwig, who plays the equally lost Florence, is not only showcased by the film but totally deserves all the attention she gets from it. She is so impossibly lovable and sweet that she makes Amy Adams look like Hitler as drawn by Disney.A lot has been made about the music in Greenberg because it was done by the brilliant James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem), and because his last proper album came out in 2007 and his new one is still in the works, this is all we have. Sorry to break it to you, but although it's a good movie score, it's also a conventional one. This isn't a sign of anything, other than that Murphy understood the sensibility of the film and wanted to contribute to it, rather than use it as a showcase for his upcoming album. In fact, startlingly enough, the musical highlights of the film come via Duran Duran, Albert Hammond, and Steve Miller Band ("Jet Airliner" not only sets up the movie's infectious pleasantness, but sets the tone for the entire picture).Noah Baumbach and his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh (who gives a small, subtle but very engaging performance) have written a simple story about that awful age between 22 and married-with-children ("People don't call me on my birthday anymore") and render it not only absurd and funny but startlingly affecting. Although it's intentionally small, directed simply and conventionally, the film leaves a bittersweet feeling in the back of your mind, one you hope never goes away.

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Hold on to your hats folks, because today sees the release of The Bounty Hunter, and boy howdy does it sound sweet. The movie follows a hunter (Gerard Butler) who, in order to get his bounty, has to kidnap his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston)! How sweet is that, right?! Ya know, ex-wives are like the worst, and forget about amicable break-ups when you can be professionally hired to continually stalk her and keep the dysfunctional relationship around as long as you want.So, yeah. This movie hasn't been doing so hot with the critics. Scott Tobias from <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-bounty-hunter,39336/">The A.V. Club</a> says: "Based on the onscreen evidence, not a single person in front of or behind the camera cared a whit about how The Bounty Hunter turned out. "Together, the three [Aniston, Butler, and Director Andy Tennant] seem perfectly content just to toss another movie onto the pile, drifting along on star power, generic thriller plotting, and the standard bicker-bicker-bicker-bicker-near-kiss-bicker-kiss formula. Some movies are passion projects; The Bounty Hunter is an inertia project."

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The Law man has returned, and this time, you're waking up in a bathtub full of ice water (we swear it happened to our friend's cousin's step-brother). Repo Men, not to be confused with Alex Cox's Repo Man (Estevez!), follows hey Jude Law as he collects artificial organs from people who couldn't pay their bill. We give it a few years before Sallie Mae starts preforming lobotomies for the same reason. Nick Pinkerton from <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-03-16/film/repo-men-another-wholesale-dystopian-future/">The Village Voice</a> says: "The movie shares [its] premise with 2008's Repo!: The Genetic Opera. It would be worth researching who ripped off whom if both weren't ghastly."As it is, this is a poor man's Daybreakersâa phrase I'd hoped to go through life without sayingâa supercilious inhumanity-of-the-system fable that the invisible hand will mercifully sweep into discount-DVD oblivion."

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Starting today is the epic saga of Joan Jett (we hear she loves Rock and Roll) and Cherie Currie (who?), who would go on to form the band some consider comparable to the Beatles or the Stones: The Runaways. The film notably stars Kristen Stewart (who destroyed her hair for the role) and Dakota Fanning, in her first major role since she starred in The Dakota Fanning Rape Movie (we apologize beforehand but the rape scene was probably the least painful part of that piece of shit movie). The film is directed by Floria Sigismondi, who did some killer music videos (shout out to Sigur Ros's Untitled #1, it's on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPBQniIeBUg">youtube</a>), and it stars the brilliant Michael Shannon, so hopefully it won't be terrible.Joshua Rothkopf from <a href="http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/83860/the-runaways-film-review">Time Out New York</a> says: "Wasnât it only yesterday that Dakota Fanning shrieked her way into your splitting headache in War of the Worlds? She was just 11 back then, and in this fast-and-loose dramatization of the flameout of the 1970s proto-grrrl group, sheâs all of 15. Fanningâs costar, vamp bait Kristen Stewart, isnât that much more experienced (she can vote)."Still, you do get a sense of the moment when glam was being fought out in American high schools, and teen sex was barely contained in tight pants. Thereâs lots of volume in these tunesâthe soundtrack is killerâand at least everyone gets their rocks off."

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Anyone who's come in contact, or had to put up with (depending on your outlook) human beings under the 48" mark, are probably aware of the "wimpy kid" books. Now when we were in grades 6-8, being a wimpy kid was actually looked down upon, but thanks to grown-up wimpy kids like Bill Gates and David Byrne, it is now a desirable trait in some job markets. So with the release of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, we can all go and embrace our wimpinessâas long as we're not hit by snow caps thrown by no good teenagers during the movie, 'cause that would paralyze us in fear and hopelessness. The movie has actually been getting pretty good reviews, with Tasha Robinson from <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/diary-of-a-wimpy-kid,39333/">The A.V. Club</a> says: "Still, for all its ridiculousness, its enthusiastic comic excess, and its fart/booger/gross-out jokes, Diary Of A Wimpy Kidâs heart is firmly in the right place."Director Thor Freudenthal (Hotel For Dogs) presents all this with upbeat spasticity; the filmâs energy is relentless, good-humored, and over-the-top enough to be a little exhausting. Thereâs no subtlety or nuance whatsoever to the characters or story, which tend to bray their feelings to the cheap seats. Fortunately, those seats are likely to be full of little kids who are themselves full of Twizzlers and soda, and thus are operating on the exact same wavelength."

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Have you even been to City Island? Weird right? More so than say, Roosevelt Island (which at least has a subway station and a lighthouse), City Island is a strange place you end up when you're either lost in the Bronx or stopping to go to the bathroom on your way upstate. For those who haven't been there, its a bunch of really small bungalow type houses up against one another, a number of middle-grade seafood restaurants (all in a 4 block radius by the way) and then some water here and there (it is an island after all). Well someone made a domestic drama that takes place there (it better have been filmed there, otherwise it's a mean ruse) and it stars Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, and Alan Arkin. Not too shabby.Kevin B. Lee from <a href="http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/83851/city-island-film-review">Time Out New York</a> says: "Who would think that a sleepy seaside snippet of the Bronx could foster a Faulkner novelâs worth of family skeletons?"Somehow, writer-director Raymond De Felitta pulls off these proceedings way better than anyone has a right to, thanks to his light touch with potentially lurid plot developments and his generosity in letting actors flesh out their sitcom setups."

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Opening tonight at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas is the film Vincere. The film tells the story of Ida Dalser, Mussolini's secret lover, who gives up everything to support her lunatic lover's revolutionary ideas and, after giving birth to a secret son, is scorned to see him back from WWI with new arm candy. Ida and her son are then placed in two separate asylums for over a decade. This is one of those foreign films that gets insanely good reviews, everyone says they want to see, but then ends up being trumped by a night at home with tall boys and reruns of The Office. But don't be a statistic!David Denby from <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/03/22/100322crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=2">The New Yorker</a> says: "[Director] Bellocchio gets the opera-buffa and the carnival side of Italian Fascism, and parts of the movie are excruciatingly funny, like the sequence in which Mussolini, who has been wounded in the First World War, lies on his back and stares in ecstasy at the ceiling of a church where a silent film of Christ on the cross is projectedâhis fantasy of what he will mean to his people. Filippo Timi, a powerful presence, begins to disappear from the film (though he shows up later playing the dictatorâs mad son) as Bellocchio incorporates more and more newsreel footage of Il Duce."Her story is one of endurance and martyrdom, and Bellocchio treats her with grave courtesy, focussing on her battered face as she is subjected to years of beatings in the asylum, and on her drive to escape. Yet audiences may not accept Dalserâs suffering in the spirit in which it is offered. Is misguided obsession necessarily tragic? Why did she passively accept her loverâs transformation from Socialism to military nationalism? Didnât she ever notice that he wasnât looking at her when they made love?"

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Poor Stieg Larsson. The man wrote a trilogy of mystery novels and, after handing the manuscripts to his publisher, went and died. Now his novels are selling well into the millions, but he'd never know it. In fact, they even made a movie out of the first one, and it comes out today! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo involves two unlikely detectives hired to investigate the murder of Harriet Vanger and end up unraveling a dark family history.David Fear from <a href="http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/83852/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-film-review">Time Out New York</a> says: "Every so often, you get the gift of watching an under-the-radar actor bloom into a critical-mass phenomenon before your bloodshot eyes: Franka Potente in Run Lola Run, or Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. Add Noomi Rapace to the list; what she does with the title character of this Swedish thriller-cum-pop-lit-adaptation will spawn cults of swooning Rapacephiles stat."[Director] Oplev himself speeds through the storyâs plot twists like heâs on deadline, but importantly, the filmmaker nails the bookâs indictment of the sexual-predatory vibes seemingly embedded in Swedenâs landscape. Vengeance, however, will be Lisbethâs; just give this abused hellion a tattoo gun, a camcorder and an actor who can bring her to screaming, sucker-punching life. Mission accomplished."

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If you feel like the last handful of movies previewed were too 2D for your taste, then head to <a href="http://www.google.com/movies?hl=en&near=Brooklyn&dq=amc+loews+lincoln+square+13&theater=amc+loews+lincoln+square+13&ei=mqqjS8C_IIS8lQegg9mLCQ&sa=X&oi=showtimes&ct=title&cd=1&ved=0CAcQxQMoAA">AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13</a> for Hubble 3D narrated by that lovable oaf Leonardo DiCaprio!

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Tonight at the <a href="http://www.filmforum.org/films/prowler.html">Film Form</a> is, quite possibly, the creepiest noir ever made: Joseph Losey's The Prowler. Think creepy like Peeping Tom as if directed by Robert Siodmak and written by Jim Thompson. If you've never seen it, get to Film Forum and expand your definition of what noir can be.

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You wanna see a dead body? Then head to <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/NewYork/NewYork_frameset.htm">Landmark Theatre</a> where Sunshine at Midnight presents Stand By Me! Forget the pain of Corey Haim and see Corey Feldman and....oh yeah....River Phoenix (sob).

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Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Greenberg</em> Vs. <em>The Bounty Hunter</em>