GireWire

Inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) creates a fun house of pure Jell-O for news intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) in the 3-D animated comedy “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”

---

“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” is a breezy, witty, fun little 3-D animated fantasy about a young scientist who invents a machine that can convert water into food and has it rain from the sky over his town.

But before anyone can shout something humanitarian like “Now we can feed the world’s hungry!,” the conniving mayor (voiced by horror film icon Bruce Campbell) instantly fixates on the food-making weather machine as a tourist attraction that can save the faltering local economy.

Like the business-minded mayor of Amity Island in “Jaws,” he lives to regret his commercial priorities.

“Cloudy” is an expansion of the popular children’s book of the same title (written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett), and has been rendered in eye-popping, brightly colored, richly detailed 3-D imagery from Sony Pictures Animation. (Read more…)

Biochemist Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) becomes an FBI whistle-blower in Steven Soderbergh’s comic “The Informant!”

---

About halfway through Steven Soderbergh’s fact-based comedy “The Informant!,” I couldn’t help but think, “Why, this is exactly the kind of movie that someone some day might make about one of Illinois’ more colorful politicians!”

“The Informant!” (yes, that exclamation point is intentional) tells the true story, more or less, of a federal investigation prompted by the irrational acts of an intelligent man whose warped, delusional view of his own goodness and self-importance becomes so convincing that everyone around him gets sucked into one, gigantic media storm of outrageous deception, greed, corruption and political megalomania.

It was a brush of utter brilliance for Soderbergh to mount “The Informant!” as a comedy, complete with a fun and punchy score from Marvin Hamlisch, paying tribute to Henry Mancini’s music during his original “Pink Panther” period.

But “The Informant!” offers us no jokes or boisterous humorous payoffs. Rather, it depends on a subtle comic tone and Matt Damon’s dweeby performance to work, although neither one can fully sustain Soderbergh’s bold movie. (Read more…)

A self-help author (Aaron Eckhart) falls for a florist (Jennifer Aniston) who might help him deal with his own issues in the rom-dram “Love Happens.”

---

Despite how commercials and trailers portray it, “Love Happens” is much more of a rom-dram than rom-com.

In fact, Brandon Camp’s unexpectedly mature romance is downright sad, for the “love” subplot gets shoved to the end of the issues line after death, loss, guilt, redemption and forgiveness take the limelight.

This is a strong, sincere, even thoughtful drama executed by two lead actors sparkling with charisma, at least for the first hour. Then things get a little shaky.

The fateful moment occurs near the end when “Love Happens” abruptly becomes “Clichés Happen,” and all the good will and emotions up to that point implode in a forced and fake scene that feels as if it was imported from some other film.

Aaron Eckhart plays Burke Ryan, a self-help guru who has written a best-seller about dealing with the death of a loved one. His wife died in an car accident three years earlier and his book, intended to be a therapeutic account of his loss, rocketed up the charts.

At a Seattle hotel convention for fans of his book, Burke bumps into a modern-day flower girl in the hallway. Eloise Chandler (Jennifer Aniston) thinks he’s moving in on her and dusts him off by pretending to be deaf. (Read more…)

Mike Judge, the physics major who gave the world “Beavis and Butthead,” directs his latest comedy movie, “Extract.”

---

Mike Judge is an unassuming guy responsible, say some, for the ultimate dumbing-down of the American entertainment world. He created those animated characters “Beavis and Butthead.”

Since then, Judge has written and directed the cult comedy “Office Space” (1999), the underrated futuristic comedy “Idiocracy” (2006) and his current comedy “Extract,” starring Jason Bateman as a put-upon owner of a small extract factory.

I sat down to chat with Judge about his new film, studio bosses and being a physics major in college.

Q. The guy in “Extract” seems custom-made for Bateman. Did you write the character with him in mind?

A. I had started writing it a long time ago and put it on the shelf. Then, I’d seen Jason Bateman while he was doing “Arrested Development,” so when I was doing a rewrite, I was imagining him. Otherwise, I wasn’t imagining any particular actor for the characters. (Read more…)

U. S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) goes for her gun while an ice ax-wielding killer keeps missing her in the icy thriller “Whiteout.”

---

I wanted to feel sorry for Kate Beckinsale’s beleaguered U.S. marshal in Dominic Sena’s Antarctica chiller thriller “Whiteout.”

But I felt sorrier for the mysterious guest killer who couldn’t hit diddly squat with his ice ax.

There he goes, chasing Beckinsale down the deserted hall of a research facility, swinging his wicked-looking ice ax in the air.

Swing! Miss!

Swing! Miss!

Swing! Miss!

Even the Cubs wouldn’t want this guy.

Swing! Miss!

Beckinsale’s marshal, Carrie Stetko, escapes, and so does the killer, who’s even more inept than a drunk Jason Voorhees missing four limbs.

We don’t know exactly why this guy wants Carrie dead, but it probably has something to do with the prologue, set in 1957, when a Soviet prop plane flies through the bad weather of Antarctica with a large box wrapped in chains and padlocks on board. (Read more…)

It’s easy to forecast the movies coming up in the fall. They’ll be intermittently bomby with a chance of pain and partly rowdy guys.

By all indications, we can look forward to a cooler-than-usual season populated by vampires, zombies, homicidal stepfathers, wild things, demons, aliens, astro boys and youths in revolt.

There will also be a front of animated features, with 2-D titles (“The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Planet 51,” “Astro Boy”), 3-D titles (“Disney’s A Christmas Carol” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”) and the precipitous release of a Pixar double-bill, new 3-D versions of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.” Both have good Buzz.

Although one of the most anticipated movies of the fall, Martin Scorsese’s thriller “Shutter Island,” has been dropped from the forecast (it’ll reappear on our radar next year), the upcoming season has its share of high-pressure situations (“Saw VI,” “The Box” and “Jennifer’s Body”) along with unusual amounts of show (“Amelia” with Hilary Swank as Amelia Earhart, “Young Victoria” with Emily Blunt as the Queen, “Bright Star” with Ben Wishaw as the poet Keats). (Read more…)

The After Hours Film Society presents Sergei Dvortsevoy’s seemingly plotless look at the lives of poor ranchers in Kazakhstan. It’s an astonishing work, ripe with subtle humor and deep compassion for its characters eking out a meager living in a desolate land. Not Rated. 100 minutes. (Read more…)

Go to afterhoursfilmsociety.com or call (630) 534-4528 for details.

Cost $9.00 ($5.00 for members)
Monday, Sept. 14 at 7:30 p.m
Tivoli Theater
5021 Highland Ave.
Downers Grove

Uli Edel’s fact-based drama “The Baader-Meinhof Complex” is an unromantizied examination of how Germany’s infamous domestic terrorists, the Red Army Faction (RAF), came together and how the power of its politics kept it going after the original leadership was killed or committed suicide. Rated: R (for sexual situations, violence, nudity, language). 150 minutes. (Read more…)

Now playing at the Century Centre in Chicago and the Renaissance Place in Highland Park.

The acting ranges from subtle to high-school histrionics. Some scenes are visual poetry, others not. But Dr. Sarab Singh Neelam’s ambitious drama is one of the most sincere and purposeful movies I’ve seen. It’s not only a critique of American health care, but a plea for tolerance, plus a test of identity. Rated: PG-13 (for language). 97 minutes. (Read more…)

Now playing at Pipers Alley in Chicago.

No. 6 (voiced by Crispen Glover) sketched futuristic visions in the animated feature “9,” a Tim Burton production.

---

The dark and daunting animated science fantasy “9” looks a little like H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” a little like a scary movie by Tim Burton, and a little like a horror film by Soviet-born director Timur Bekmambetov.

Wells had nothing to do with the making of “9,” but Burton and Bekmambetov did. They produced this movie, directed by a “Lord of the Rings” animator named Shane Acker, expanded from his 11-minute, 2005 Oscar-nominated film short of the same title.

Screenwriter Pamela Pettler beefed up Acker’s original, simple chase-movie story line by adding eight other characters to join the main one called 9, plus a Frankenstein-like (but not-so-mad) scientist. Then, the characters now come to life through a cast of famous actors.

The result is a haunting glimpse of a post-Apocalyptic planet occupied no longer by self-destructive humans, but by a strange little doll creature seemingly constructed of burlap-like material, with two large glowing lenses operating as eyes. (Read more…)