Pedro’s not in a rush.

Last time I wrote a review of an Almodovar film, I got into some shit with a hyper-intelligent friend of mine. And now I’m actually hesitant to do it again, after having my intellectual grill so thoroughly dismantled.  What happened was, I didn’t like “Volver” much, but I wasn’t thoughtful or clever or even patient enough to articulate why I didn’t like it. So instead, I fell back on evaluating Penelope Cruz’s cleavage. It’s a good thing to fall back on (literally), but it’s cheap (not literally), and it gets you in trouble when smart people read what you write.

So I am hereby swearing off the hormonal brand of adulation (if only for this round).

“Broken Embraces” (“Los abrazos rotos”) was my fourth Almodovar film and my second-favorite. “Talk to Her” (“Hable con ella”) takes it, of course, as one of my favorite movies of all time. “Volver,” as I mentioned, not so much.  But as hit-or-miss as Spain’s preeminent auteur has been for me, he’s never failed to transport me to his Almodovarland. Watching one of his movies is decidedly different from watching any other. I don’t know where he finds it all, but his films just burst with beauty: Color. Language. Sexuality. Music. Art. I go see his films because he—and forgive the cliché—stops to smell the roses.

For example, in “Talk to Her,” he didn’t need to shoot “Café Mueller,” a dance piece by Pina Bausch for several minutes. Same goes for the “Cucurrucucú Paloma” performance at the party. And “Volver,” too, takes a little break and puts its feet up while Ms. Cruz ’s character sings for a couple minutes. Indispensible? No. Beautiful? God yes. So why not?

Much of what sets Almodovar apart from other directors—what gives him the license to flash “Un film de Almodovar” in the credits—is his exquisite taste. We don’t mind pausing with him for a little bit, just to admire whatever it is he’s unearthed for his mise en scene. We trust that whatever he puts in front of us is well worth our time. His camera lingers and we exhale and we stare at some piece of radiance. And we’re completely immersed—drowned, transported—before we even realize it.

He does it again here. There’s one scene in “Broken Embraces”—a pair of hands pressed to a television screen playing a grainy video in slow motion—during which I wasn’t even aware of my own body. The guy behind me probably could’ve set me on fire and I wouldn’t have realized it until the take was over.  The movie is worth it just for the few seconds of that image.

That said, the rest of it isn’t too bad either. The narrative is split, about half taking place in the early nineties, when Mateo Blanco was in his movie-making prime. He meets the irresistible Lena (Penelope Cruz), who, to finance her father’s medical care, has married her much older former boss, well known businessman Ernesto Martel. Lena has gotten sick of the housewife existence and has decided to audition for Mateo’s film. She has no real acting experience, but gets the part because she has that whatever-it-is that turns every straight man in her radius into a chunk of warm candle wax. It’s only a matter of time before she begins her affair with Mateo, inciting Ernesto’s ferocious, desperate, deeply painful, and hard-to-watch jealousy. So powerful is it that he decides to produce the film so he can keep a closer eye. Then he has her followed. Then he has her taped. Then things turn a little violent, because, really, how could they not?

All this is flashback from present day, as Mateo, who’s now completely blind and has adopted his writer alias Harry Caine as his actual name, tells the story of his lost love to his convalescent assistant, the likeable young Diego. He confides in the young man as a result of recent events: Ernesto Martel has just died and now his scorned gay son has returned under the alias “Ray X” and suspiciously attempted to contact Mateo (now Harry) about writing a script about a scorned gay son.

Oh, these Almo plots are so fun to summarize…

The biggest story surrounding this movie was that it was to be Penelope Cruz’s toughest role yet, playing an aspiring actress who isn’t all that great of an actress but is possessed of a magnetism that could coax small planets out of orbit. Without question, she’s lived up to her task. I could tell because I completely forgot about it. She will rake in some awards for this; I guarantee it. But she isn’t a lone rose. The movie is full of strong performances. Another that was especially good was Ruben Ochandiano as Martel’s awkward gay son who later becomes the dubious Ray X.

Still, the reason to see this movie is its writer/director. We’ve seen jealousy plots before, and stories of loss and of doomed, desperate loves. Shakespeare was all over that before I was even born! But this story is told with such meticulousness and grace that the audience can forget that they’ve seen it before and simply enjoy it. I’ll always jump in the carriage as long as Pedro’s driving.

It Is a World of Hateful Philistines, Mr. Jacobs

I don’t even want to think about what kind of problems “(Untitled)” is going to cause for film archivists, search engines, video store employees, librarians, etc. Believe me; I’ve been there. Titles like this would make my blood boil. But if the title weren’t such an obnoxious pain in the ass, it wouldn’t have been so apt.

It’s not that the movie itself was obnoxious. The movie, actually, is really good. It’s the cast of characters that’s exceptionally grating. In fact, the first thing I scribbled on my little piece of paper in the darkness of the movie theater was, “dickhead artists.”

We open with a painting by one Josh Jacobs. A crowd is gathered around it. It’s an abstract—a few dots and some colors fading into one another. Suddenly, we hear a ding, and the crowd disperses. We realize then that they weren’t looking at the painting. They were waiting for the elevator alongside which the painting had been hung. They get on, which leaves Adrian Jacobs (Adam Goldberg), Josh’s brother, staring at it by himself.

Josh is doing fairly well with his painting. They’re being sold en masse to hotels, banks, and corporations as lobby décor. Adrian, a sound artist, is not doing so well. Josh lectures him with a comical pretension, a smarmy concern for his brother’s well being. He tells Adrian that if he would just sacrifice a little bit of his vanity to get a larger audience, he could do well. Like him. Adrian, however, has no concern for others’ thoughts on his art. What matters is what people will say after he’s dead. His philosophies make themselves very evident later, when he performs his concert of atonal music, scaring off even his own parents.

One person he doesn’t scare off Is Josh’s date for the night, the pale, thin, bespectacled Madeline (Marley Shelton), who has a pension for clothing that is loud in the literal sense (squeaky leather, beaded skirts, a jacket that crinkles like a Frito bag). She’s intrigued by the quiet, brooding Adrian and asks him to perform at her Chelsea gallery (an honor Josh has never received). The event—Adrian’s documents looking more like architectural diagrams than sheet music—doesn’t go well, but afterward, Madeline asks him to her loft for a few drinks—and thus proceeds one of the funnier sex scenes I’ve seen. Mind you: Madeline wears extremely complex clothing.

So that’s the set-up. The rest of the movie spends its time trying to sort out the endless pushing and pulling between the belligerent forces of artistic ambition, money, and integrity. Everyone shows his ugly side. Adrian becomes hypocritical, Madeline becomes greedy, Josh becomes desperate, and then they all take turns backhanding each other like it’s some absurdist episode of Gossip Girl.

It would’ve been easy to make this film a straight modern-art-is-bullshit comedy. The elements are there. The funniest characters are Madeline’s other artists. Ray Barko does unorthodox taxidermy. His work includes: an angry chimp sucking on the hose of a vacuum cleaner, a distraught mini goat on a tricycle, a Ramboesque bobcat armed with a stapler gun, and three chickens which appear to have been thrown headfirst through a dartboard. Monroe, a nervous, soft-spoken man prone to weeping, does….well, not much. He’s a minimalist. One of his pieces is called “Post-It Stuck to Wall (2007)” and another is “A Light Bulb Turning On and Off (2008).” Yes. That’s what they are. Grant, the assistant curator, points out their “superficial banality—that’s both sexual and imposing” and you want to roundhouse kick him, but you’re laughing too hard.

So there’s that. There’s definitely a few jabs at (air quotes) high art and those involved in it. However, “(Untitled)” manages to distance itself from pure parody with an underlying respect of its subject matter. A few of these crazies pushing the boundaries might just have something. There’s just a lot lost in hypocrisy and inevitable subjectivity. And in fear.

Fear governs the life of one of the movie’s most interesting characters, Porter Canby—a young, naïve, and very wealthy man, deathly afraid of being bland. His philosophy is that if he doesn’t understand something, it must be worthwhile. And thus he’s taken advantage of—bullied, duped, and robbed—again and again, until his home is filled willy-nilly with all the bizarre, creepy shit he’s been told to buy. You can’t help but feel sorry for him, watching him struggle to fit into a world he’d be better off without.

But the movie in no way implies that the world would be better off without “that world.” As much of an asshole and a hypocrite as Adrian is, you want him to succeed—he cares so deeply about his work. There’s something to be said for that, something magnetic about it. Progress must be made somehow, and it’s usually a rough ride. Some suffer. Some sell out. Some even die. But not us. We can laugh at these idiots from our comfy theater seats. And kind of wish we were one of them.

Cellist prettifies dead folk

It happened again: I was very upset with the Academy’s choice of foreign film. I had seen “Waltz with Bashir” and I knew that it must win. But this other movie, “Departures,” won instead. And I was like, “Whaaaat? Bullshit.” But I’d said the same thing in 2006 about “Pan’s Labyrinth” which fell to “The Lives of Others.” I was really pissy about it. Then I saw “The Lives of Others.” And then I kind of understood. Now I’ve seen “Departures.” And I kind of understand.

I don’t know that it was better than “Waltz with Bashir,” but it was close. They were different movies entirely. One’s animated, one’s not. One deals with bulk death, one deals with one death at a time. One twists your intestines and opens your eyes, one probes for your heart. (It found mine—well, at least my tear valves. Let’s just say I’m glad I went by myself this time.)

The film begins with Daigo, its doubtful narrator, driving on a snowy road, an old man in the passenger seat. He’s wondering whether he can actually do this new job: this job of ceremoniously preparing the dead for the casket. A cellist by trade, Daigo had been recently hired by an orchestra, only to have the orchestra dissolved shortly thereafter. So he’d moved back to his hometown, where his mother had left him a house, and started looking for work. Then he stumbled upon a newspaper ad that mentioned working with “departures”—and the rest is history.

At first he does it because it pays well, but the quiet beauty of the preparation ceremony quickly grows on him. No one comes out and says it, but there is an obvious parallel between the pre-casket ceremonies and his cello performances. Both are slow, precise, and elegant solemnities. No one will be left wondering, “why a musician?” The film does a wonderful job convincing us that someone who loves the cello could not help but love jazzing up cadavers. Ludicrous, I know, but you believe it.

Before the job starts to grow on him, however, is when the film has its best comedic moments: the infomercial for his business in which he plays the dead body; the suspiciously expedient hiring process; Daigo’s inability to deal with a decaying corpse; and the dodging of a cute, effervescent, sweetly inquisitive wife. This last item eventually plays a major role when she leaves him, calling him a liar and declaring him “unclean.” Well, honestly, what did you expect? Hiding the nature of your occupation from a spouse is rarely a successful enterprise (see “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”).

However, this is not a love story. The connubial drama is a plot device—an obstacle, in a way. One of many. The movie is about Daigo finding his calling in an unexpected place, after his musical ambitions were ostensibly lost in the laundry. He knows that his new job has a certain nobility. It’s just that no one else knows. Besides us. The other characters’ inability to see this is maddening.

Toward the end, I was afraid it was losing focus. There comes a hackneyed monologue from an old man about how he thinks death is “like a gateway,” which is initially an eye-roller—until you realize that this is exactly the speech this blue-collar old-man character would give. He didn’t say anything revelatory, but he meant every word. There’s something admirable in that. Much the same, “Departures” will stick, even if you’ve heard it all before.

A Classic BildungsBROman

I know, Man. I feel you.

I didn’t have exactly the same problem as you, Paul Rudd. (What was your character’s name again? Ah, fuck it. Who cares.) But it was pretty close. I’ve never had a problem with having a “best friend” or a “go-to guy.” It was just that my m/f ratio was all messed up for awhile. Way too many platonic chick friends. I was the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water every where / Nor any drop to drink.”

Paul Rudd, you’ve got plenty to “drink”; you’re happily engaged. You’re in love. But there’s something missing; you don’t have a man in your life. And now your fiancé’s friends are telling her that your lack of a male best friend is going to cause problems with clinginess and dependency. It’s weird because—I mean—what kind of a guy doesn’t have any real male friends? You need to get you some, Paul Rudd. And if I did it, you can do it.

Such is the premise of “I Love You, Man,” the latest successful comedy of the Apatowian Confused Boys Era. Peter Klaven (Rudd) needs a Best Man and just doesn’t know where to look.

Male bonding isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s recently been given a new name, “bromance,” and an eponymous VH1 reality show. This movie satirizes that whole potentially awkward process, the careful quickstep between “I don’t want him to think I’m a pussy” and “I don’t want him to think I’m a tool” one must perform to win quality male friends. Klaven can’t do this dance very well, as we see through his various encounters, but he knows that he has finally found a potential friend in fellow Rush fan Sydney Fife (Jason Segal), and must struggle to win him over.

The courtship, as many courtships are, is painful to watch. But because it’s these two, it’s hilarious. Rudd’s performance is genius, from his failed sobriquets (“Jobin”? Brilliant.) to his little-man stiffness. There’s no one in Hollywood better for laughing at. Jason Segal complements him well with his effortless California whimsy, but doesn’t steal the spotlight. This is Rudd’s movie, and he makes it.

This is the first movie I can remember of its kind. There have been flashes of awkward male-to-male courting before—the one springing to mind being “Tommy Boy,”—but never a movie fully dedicated to the cause. Perhaps it is the moment for it, what with the aforementioned “brocabulary,” and perhaps it is also the place. I don’t know if this comedy would work in, say, Europe, where homophobia (and sorry, but that’s at least part of what the humor is based on) doesn’t seem as pervasive, but here, where the “man date” is still a pretty funny concept, it’s good laughs.

To see a straight grown man in a cubicle pacing and rehearsing like we males (or at least this one) used to do in high school before dialing up our still-unravish’d paramours is ridiculous in itself. To know that he’s calling another straight grown man makes it all the more so.

“I Love You Man” isn’t without its peccadillos—a few too many shots of the iPhone and one dispensable scene involving animal-howling under a bridge (a scene of which some iteration seems to be present in every “boyz” movie)—but its charm is undeniable. It’s another movie that seems a little too familiar. We know these people, or we are them. Or in the case of Paul Rudd, we want to sing karaoke with them. Because Lord knows it’s hard to find a good man.

The Animated Ones

Unfortunately, I was proven right by the Oscars last Sunday. As I mentioned in the post below, when making one’s picks, it’s better to have not seen the movies. The one live-action short that I didn’t like won the little gold man last Sunday, and I wanted to throw my cupcake at the TV.

In the other “small-potatoes” categories, Best Animated Short and Best Documentary Short (categories in which I hadn’t seen any of the nominees), my picks of “Smile Pinki” and “La Maison de petits cubes” both won. I’d picked them because I liked their names, mostly. The whole phenomenon makes me want to shove a spoon in my eye.

But I’m glad I didn’t, because then I never would have gotten to see the animated shorts. It was the best $12 I’ve spent since I upgraded to boxer briefs.

Not only was I impressed by the quality and diversity of the art involved in making these films, but also by how funny some of them were. France’s “Oktapodi,” for example, had me laughing for about three minutes straight, and “Oktapodi” was three minutes long.

Once, a few years ago, my friend Sharon “Turbo” Marquart told me a French joke whose punch line “No arms, no chocolate!” When I looked at her with a Pomeranian blankness, she explained that “it’s really funny in French.” I took her word for it. She has a great sense of humor. Watching these animated shorts, though, there was no need to take anyone’s “word for it” about how funny they were: None of the five nominees had even one line of dialogue.

The obvious upside, then, is that they translate really well. I don’t have to speak Russian to appreciate “Lavatory – Lovestory” exactly as much as a Russian guy might. They’re truly global, and I love that.

I’ll rank these too, but they were all really damn good.

1. La Maison de petits cubes: This was the least funny, but the most interesting and imaginative. And old man lives in a land where the water level keeps rising slowly, as it has for many years, and he must build new floors on his home whenever it starts to flood. When he drops his pipe, he must rent some scuba gear and retrieve it, and we see him remembering his life, stage by stage, as he goes down through the levels.

2. Oktapodi: An extremely short, action-packed love story of two octopi, one of whom is nabbed from the tank by a spiteful truck driver. An incredible, slapstick chase scene ensues.

3. Presto: A Pixar joint about an egotistical magician in battle with his sly, carrot-starved rabbit. Bugs Bunny would be proud.

4. This Way Up: An extremely well made and wildly inappropriate story of two casket bearers having a really bad day after a boulder crushes their hearse. This may have been closer to the top of my list if it weren’t for a Dumboesque scene of macabre song & dance that didn’t seem to fit.

5. Lavatory – Lovestory: A lonely public lavatory attendant finds flowers in her coin jar, but has no idea who has given them to her. Its beauty lies in its simplicity. Like Justin Timberlake lyrics.

Quickies in a small theater

It’s one of those categories in the office Oscar ballot that your friend wins, and it puts his total just above yours, and now you’re in not third but fourth place, for which there’s no prize money, and there goes your ante, and now you’re secretly upset because you know it was all luck because there’s no way that guy had seen all those short films because no one sees short films.

Ha, well, that was moi a few years ago. The irritatingly lucky friend, that is. I nailed the short film winners on my ballot going solely on title. It was glorious.

But this year, it’s different. This year, I’ve seen them. And now there’s pretty much no shot at getting it right.

IFC in the west village is now showing “Oscar Nominated Shorts” of both the live-action and animated variety. Unfortunately, I was too hungry to stick around for the animated shorts, but I did get to see the live-action numbers. Just as I suspected, they were a treat.

Outside of student films when I was in college, I haven’t seen very many shorts. It’s really too bad, because they’re so appropriate for my generation’s Twitterific attention span. I tend to see them once a year or so in sets of five or six, usually at theaters where you can sit in the back row and still spit on the screen.

What usually strikes me the most when I see them is the diversity of the selections. They’ve always been from different countries and in all kinds of languages with an enormous range of moods, themes, aesthetics, etc. I remember a collection called “The World According to Shorts” where I saw one movie about a group of nine old men who get stuck in quicksand juxtaposed with another—animated B & W—about abstract, tentacled cowboys and a giant vagina. (American. Go figure.)

This year’s Oscar nominated shorts are much the same in their differences. Let me see if I can do about a sentence for each. And I’ll rank them in order of how much I liked them, because I can.

1. The New Boy: Freckled English grade school delinquents antagonize a new boy in school who’s transferred from South Africa after his father—who was also his schoolteacher—was murdered. Almost unfathomably, it has a happy ending.

2. On the Line: A quietly powerful German meditation on love, jealousy, and regret featuring the puffy-faced security-camera stalker, Rolf, with whom you can’t help but sympathize even for all his undeniable creepiness.

3. Manon on the Asphalt: Wistful narrations of a dying woman who’s been struck by a car, wondering how her friends will react to the news of her death and what her lover will think when she doesn’t show up to meet him, which are striking in their absurdity despite their ostensible accuracy.

4. The Pig: An absurd ditty about a docile-turned-cantankerous old man in surgery who falls in love with a painting of a pig jumping into a lake, which causes a clash of cultures when he’s put in a room with an Islamic patient. Nice twist at the end.

5. Toyland: A semi-confusing piece about the Holocaust and two little boys, one of whom is nearly sent off to a camp, but (his?) mother rescues him at the last moment. Seemed very hackneyed after The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, but I possibly didn’t “get” it.

The Saddest Happy Movie of All Time

Having just obliterated one of the gnarliest rum & cokes in recent personal history at an awkward social event, I was already feeling a little emotional. So it’s possible that “The Visitor” had a heightened effect on me. The bar was literally next door to the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in SoHo, so, having bought my ticket, I was able to move from a leaning position against the lounge jukebox to a leaning position against the cinemaplex urinal in a matter of seconds. Then, even before the ice cube in my mouth fully melted, I was seated and ready for the evening’s good long cry.

My eyes water sometimes, admittedly, when I watch movies. What sets me apart, though, from your normal crier, is that I only tear up at happy moments: a reunion (“Antoine Fisher”), a slow-clap (“Cool Runnings”), a carry-off (“Rudy”), etc. Almost never do my eyes water at sad moments. Just keep that in mind.

“The Visitor” opens with a series of “highlights” of Professor Walter Vale’s life, the point of which is, it’s boring. Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins, “Six Feet Under”) is bored. He reuses his syllabus each semester. He’s frigid and uncompromising with his students. He takes piano lessons because he feels like he should.. The message is that he’s resigned. His wife is dead and so is his passion for academia, if there had ever been any. We saw a similar jaded professor character earlier this year in “Smart People,” sharply played by Dennis Quaid, who, reinvigorated by a romance with a former student, finds his way again in his field and as a father. One can only guess that something will free Walter’s boots from the muck as well.

This time, it’s not romance, but an African drum, that’s able to inject a little life into a somnambulant academic. Reluctantly returning to New York for a guest lecture at NYU, Vale goes to stay in his apartment that he hasn’t used in many months, only to find it inhabited by an immigrant couple who have been scammed into thinking it was vacant. After a painful exchange, husband and wife Tarek and Zainab arrange to gather their things and leave peacefully. As they wait with their worldly possessions on a corner, desperately seeking shelter for the night, Walter, his heart seemingly uncorked by Tarek’s undeniable charm, decides to let them stay with him until they can find a place.

Tarek plays the djembe, a west-African drum, in a local band. Vale, intrigued, picks it up one day a gives it a few curious slaps. Tarek, delighted in his interest, begins to give him lessons, and, before long, the cantankerous Walter Vale is playing djembe with Tarek in a drum line in Washington Square. He’s not especially talented, but he’s welcomed, and his friendship with Tarek blossoms (much to the dismay, at first, of his wife).

Things change suddenly when Tarek, having trouble fitting his drum through a subway entrance, hops the turnstile and is immediately confronted by two stern officers of the law. He and Walter plead that he has paid (he had) and was simply jumping it because of the bulk of the drum, but this is to no avail, and we begin to see the ugly face of the post-9-11 consciousness emerge from the film’s otherwise feel-good atmosphere. Tarek is immediately hauled off to a detention center in Queens, where he is held for immigration-law violation.

To see a character like Tarek, so full of life and positivity, in a jumpsuit and trapped behind a pane of glass, with a desperate wife and mother on the outside (both of whom cannot visit, themselves being illegal), is excruciating. Walter visits regularly and hires a lawyer to work on getting Tarek out, and we see Tarek’s desperation mount to a point of anger, and we can’t help but share in it.

The beauty of the unlikely friendship and the ugliness of Tarek’s legal injustice superimpose to create a madly vivid and tightly wound crescendo that will loosen just about anyone’s plumbing. “The Visitor” is full of love and full of pain full of music, engendering hopes as often as it dashes them. The rare harmony of happy and sad: This is why I spent almost the entire movie blinking, not just at the happy parts.

Beauties and the Schlep

I’ve only been to a screening once before, for “Match Point” in 2006. They really do make you feel pretty important, screenings. For this one, they even had a girl in a hula skirt present me with a lei after they patted me down for recording equipment. Nice of them.

I remember we didn’t run a review of “Match Point” until after the film’s release, so I don’t even know if I’m allowed to write this, but, whatever, I’m going to anyway. The hell with protocol…right? Now watch some Hollywood kneecrackers tackle me tomorrow evening as I sit here in my computer chair in gym shorts and a sombrero watching Jabbawockeez videos. I don’t think I’d even fight back.

My friend declared the other day that she doesn’t approve of movies where “the schleppy guy gets the hot girl.” I guess I can see that. In this one, “Schleppy guy #1” is Jason Segal of “Freaks and Geeks.” Doughy, pasty, and sweatpants-clad-if-clad-at-all, he plays a good one. Does he not deserve the girl? Well, at least in my book, if the schleppy guy writes the movie, the schleppy guy does what he wants.

Peter Bretter (Segal) is a musical composer for a hit cop show starring his long-time bombshell girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell, “Veronica Mars”), who, as we find out almost immediately, has “found someone else” and cannot be with Peter anymore. It’s very hard news for Peter, who loves her very much, and it’s very hard news for us that we must watch him—all of him—as he takes it, in the nude. This is not heteronormative glossing. His five or six full frontals are a lot of lumpy paleness to bear—for anyone. I have to admit, though, I was kind of amused. (And I felt a little better about my body.)

The awkwardness continues when, after a few rounds of inadvisable sex, Peter decides to get away to Hawaii where, sure enough, Sarah Marshall herself is also vacationing with her new boyfriend, British rockstar Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, the actor, not the athletic equipment). The situation itself is unfortunate enough, but the real genius in the writing is the incredibly stupid and masochistic way Peter deals with it. Anybody who’s been in a similar situation knows the hideous truth of it—the sneaking around, just aching for a glimpse of exactly what we don’t want to see. No one knows why. We just know it hurts, and we laugh because it’s not us.

As luck would have it, though, the front desk chick is really hot, and she feels some sympathy for Peter and his predicament. Who knew Mila Kunis could act? The ditzy chick from “That 70’s Show” turns in a believable star performance as Rachel, college dropout turned Hawaiian resort clerk, and manages to maintain an buoyant chemistry with Peter—despite a serious deviation on the pulchritude scale.

Surrounding them is one of the funniest assortments supporting characters in recent cinema: a strung-out surfer (Paul Rudd, “Knocked Up”); an obsessive super-fan waiter (Jonah Hill, “Superbad”); a nervous, poorly-endowed honeymooner and his sex-hungry bride (Jack McBrayer, “30 Rock” and Maria Thayer, “Strangers with Candy”); a giant, shiny-headed Hawaiian sage (Taylor Wily), a hotel staffer obsessed with sea turtle copulation (Davon McDonald), and Peter’s “happily” married step-brother (Bill Hader, “Superbad”). McBrayer is especially funny as the recently de-flowered and baffled newlywed, mumbling airily about the “mythical clitoris” and eventually taking sex lessons from the knowledgeable Aldous.

While “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is funny—very funny—it also has, in the tradition of “Superbad” and “Knocked Up” before it, a degree of sanguinity and tenderness that penetrates in a way that other screwball comedies cannot. Even the evil Sarah Marshall shows her human side once or twice, and we can sympathize. I hate to use the phrase, “it had a lot of heart” to describe a movie. I think what people really mean when they say that—and I’m guilty—is that it affected more than their diaphragms and their cheeks. I don’t think I could say that about “Happy Gilmore,” but I can say it here. Despite its highly improbable concept, this movie has something real-life about it, and it deals with a phenomenon—coping with a lost love—that almost everyone has gone through or will go through (fortunately? unfortunately?). “Sarah Marshall” is a rarity. It’s comically outlandish and dangerously real. It’s life. It’s the best kind of funny.

Good “Point” (but not great)

I get the sinking feeling that there’s a fundamental problem with my movie-reviewing idea. It used to be that I’d mosey into the cineplex for free with my press pass and see whatever Paul Walker garbage I’d been assigned to eviscerate that week. But now it’s different. Just the thought of saying, “one for College Road Trip?” makes my glutes tighten. That’s $11.50. A.k.a. two weeks’ worth of full-service laundry or 5,441.53 cubic centimeters of Mountain Dew. I just can’t do it.

So, what’s happening here is that I’m seeing movies that I actually want to see, which, most of the time, I end up liking. And a movie that one likes is much harder and much less fun to write about than a movie one despises. No one wants to read a positive review. I guess I’ll need to either get rich, sleep with a cineplex manager, or wax iniquitous and start sneaking into movies I don’t even want to see. Oh, the irony.

Meanwhile, though, meditations on “Vantage Point”.

The preview for this movie, aside from the useless flashing antonyms between the action sequences, is extremely well done, effectively touting “Vantage Point” as a complicated, sleek, high-action thriller. That’s pretty much what it is. There are explosions and suspense and surprises and revelations aplenty. But there’s also a subtle higher purpose and a good bit of structural cleverness.

The film, hinging on its name, shows us a small-scale but high-prominence terrorist attack in a public square in Spain. First, we’re shown as we, the public, would see it— through the perspective of a news team covering a political event. The attack unfolds in about 23 minutes (movie time), at which point we are taken back to the beginning and shown the same attack from the perspective of secret-service agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid, “In Good Company”). Then, we’re taken back again and shown the attack from the perspective of an American tourist, Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker, “Last King of Scotland”). Then we’re taken back again and shown the President’s perspective, and so on and so on, each time through revealing a little more of what exactly unfolded and how and why.

The “why” is where this movie falters. I haven’t read anything yet, but I assume that major critics pummeled this movie for its political vagueness. I’m sure someone noted that it’s never made quite clear who the terrorists are or what they hope to accomplish; that the purpose of the “summit” in Spain has something to do with the commencement of “peace,” but the details are never ironed out; and that the psychological damage apparent in Barnes is never fully explained other than “he took a bullet for the president not long ago.” It’s all true.

However, I doubt that the writers of “Vantage Point,” like the writers of last year’s “The Kingdom,” set out to make an “intelligent commentary” on the War on Terror. They would have handled it differently. Terrorism here, as audacious as it sounds, is nothing but a backdrop. Aside from one news anchor’s banter and one line about how “this war will never end,” the film effectively steers clear of politics focuses on entertainment.

The real crux and point of differentiation for the movie is its unique structural device. Not everyone has the patience to be told the same story five times. I know from the groans emitted by my fellow audience members. But at the same time, this is one of the best methods I’ve seen used to portray the impossible complexity of a crisis situation. It reminds its audience that there is much more going on—in any situation, really—than what we can see as individuals. If the film were to have told its story from an individual’s perspective, it would’ve been unable to make that point and would’ve been limited to a smaller cast of characters and a simpler plot. In reality, it’s rarely one bodyguard versus one bad guy. Hollywood just does it because it’s simple (or they want to glorify Sinbad), but they veered away from simplicity here, and made complexity the point.

Mr. Ocean Never Used a Jackhammer

Having been born into the Italian Job/Ocean’s Integers generation, I was confused at first as to how this small, coarse-whiskered troop of amateur Anglo-bandits expected to pull this job off without an electromagnetic pulse generator, or a fleet of Mini Coopers, or even one guy who could break dance through lasers.

Tunneling? Really? So impractical. Well, I guess it worked in Shawshank. (And Caddyshack.)

Jason Statham (“The Transporter”) plays Terry Leather, local chop-shop chief with debt and young children—a combination of forces that might drive a man on to bigger things, for better or for worse—who takes an proposal from his ridiculously tall and elegant old flame Martine (Saffron Burrows: yeah, that’s Hector’s wife from “Troy”) to rob a local bank’s safety deposit vault. But as he assembles his lumpy, tuft-headed cohorts who will assist him in tunneling under the bank, he has no awareness of Martine’s ulterior motives. In one of the deposit boxes are some compromising pictures of some very prominent citizenry, which she has vowed to help retrieve on behalf of the semi-corrupt government. So, as one would assume, Mr. Leather ends up with (cliché time!) “more than he bargained for.”

“The Bank Job” would be very easy to discount as “unrealistic” if it hadn’t been based in truth. The inspiration behind this movie is the real-life Baker Street bank robbery which took place in 1971 in London, a robbery about which not much is known due to a gag that was set upon the British media to protect, presumably, members of the Royal Family. The writers have done a thorough job filling in the blanks with their plotting, having even gone as far as to use dialogue from the actual ham-radio conversation that took place in 1971. They’ve added levels upon levels of corruption, some illicit romance, some civil-rights history, fatherly concerns, a torture scene, a morally complicated hero, whips ‘n’ chains, and, of course, lots of T&A. (Have no doubt: this is a product of a testosterone-soggy brain.)

The problem the movie faces is a bit of identity crisis. It seems lost somewhere between the fun & games of the Ocean movies and the grime & sweat of old-school heist films. Daniel Mays (“Atonement”) and newcomer Stephen Campbell Moore play Dave and Kev, a couple of Terry Leather’s charming gang of human potatoes, while the waifish lookout (Michael Jibson, “Flyboys”) bumbles about with the walkie-talkie outside. The obtuseness and somewhat ridiculous physical appearance of these characters causes them to wax comical, which doesn’t fit with much of the rest of the film’s gritty texture.

I’d personally like to hear Statham’s take, this being his second heist film with “Job” in the title, on how he feels the two movies differed. With him at the helm, portraying the occasionally fractious but utterly likeable hero instead of one-dimensional Handsome Rob, the ride was much more authentic. Or maybe authenticity is just something I associate with large amounts of dirt.