"The Black Dahlia," dir. Brian De Palma (Oklahoma Gazette)

L.A. Convoluted

Being a great moviemaker doesn’t always mean being a great storyteller. Take Brian De Palma, whose best work comes when he doesn’t have to worry about making too much sense. But give him a big, juicy story to tell, and he winds up lost. Adapted from James Ellroy’s novel and involving perhaps the most infamous unsolved murder in California history, “The Black Dahlia” ought to thrill and amaze. Sadly, it mainly just disappoints.

Set in post-World War II Los Angeles, the saga follows straight-arrow police officer Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), an ex-prizefighter who is paired up with another boxer-turned-cop, Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart). The two become friends, but when Bucky meets Lee’s sultry girlfriend, Kay (Scarlett Johansson), the three grow virtually inseparable.

Their lives are shattered the morning of Jan. 15, 1947, with a grisly discovery in a vacant lot downtown. The body of a young woman, Elizabeth Short, has been cut in two, disemboweled and drained of blood. The grotesque piece de résistance: the killer has slashed the mouth into a clownish grin. Lee and Bucky are assigned to investigate the death of the woman who is nicknamed “Black Dahlia” by the tabloids.

What follows is an orgy of incoherence. Lee suddenly obsesses over the case, while Bucky meets up with Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank), a vampy Dahlia lookalike who trolls lesbian clubs. The femme fatale has an even more interesting family, particularly her Loony Tunes mother (Fiona Shaw) and naughty nymphet of a younger sister (Rachel Miner).

The deeper Bucky digs into the Dahlia mystery, the deeper the movie sinks into incomprehension. De Palma and screenwriter Josh Friedman are too enraptured by stylistic excess to bother with simplifying the novel’s dense plot. Amid the period detail and De Palma’s fluid camerawork, it is nearly impossible to catalog the mounting backstories of characters with whom we have only a glancing familiarity. This is no “L.A. Confidential,” much less “Chinatown.”

Mucking things further is wildly uneven acting. Hartnett is too much a blank-faced lightweight to generate much interest. Eckhart fares marginally better, but he looks positively Shakespearean next to Johansson’s vacuous turn.

Still, De Palma is incapable of making a movie that isn’t visually arresting, and he has a terrific collaborator in cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. The camera sweeps and soars with elegance, and De Palma is at the top of his game in a set piece that involves murder on a staircase. The director also revisits some favorite themes of his -- voyeurism, pornography and the like -- but they feel stranded, like jigsaw pieces to a puzzle that was forgotten long ago.

It’s a shame. You sense what “The Black Dahlia” could have been in scenes where Bucky watches old audition reels featuring a sad and pathetic Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner). Macabre and mesmerizing, the images of this ghost woman are rife with spooky possibility. But then “The Black Dahlia” switches back to its absurdly complex story, and we’re back in a movie with more mysteries than clues.

"Flyboys," dir. Tony Bill (Oklahoma Gazette)

Flight Patterns

When someone describes a war movie as “old-fashioned,” it can refer to rip-snortin’ entertainment. It can also mean just plain old, as in stale and mawkish. “Flyboys” is old-fashioned enough to encompass both senses of the phrase.

The movie’s blandness is a bit mystifying in light of its rich source material. “Flyboys” details the exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille, a real-life squadron of mostly American fighter pilots who fought for the French before the United States entered the First World War. With the trappings of that romanticized period – roaring biplanes and aerial dogfights, square-jawed Yanks squaring off against dastardly German foes – what could possibly go wrong?

The script, for starters. Judging by the stock characters gathered here, France must have made it a point to recruit only cardboard cutouts. The Escadrille includes such one-note Johnnies as Nebraska-farm-boy-who-wants-to-be-a-hero (Philip Winchester), guy-who-can’t-do-anything-right (David Ellison) and religious guy (Michael Jibson). The filmmakers subtly convey *his* single character trait because he reads the Bible and sings “Onward Christian Soldier” in the heat of battle.

For greater depth, “Flyboys” offers Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) as its nominal hero. The young man hightails it out of his Texas hometown after roughing up a banker, but all traces of a potentially shaded -- and interesting -- personality have disappeared by the time he arrives in France to join the squadron. The only remaining mystery about Rawlings, in fact, is how his Texas accent comes and goes at will.

This is the sort of movie that telegraphs everything within the first few minutes. When a rich ne’er-do-well (Tyler Labine) balks at having to share quarters with a scrappy black soldier (Abdul Salis), you know it’s only a matter of time before the cad learns the error of his ways.

But lame characterization can be forgiven in a war flick if countered by solid action. Thankfully, “Flyboys” steeps itself in World War I’s iconic imagery of biplanes sputtering machinegun fire through skies of ash and smoke. The special effects are impressive, and director Tony Bill does a serviceable job with the aerial sequences, even if “Flyboys” falls short of the derring-do evident in classic WWI movies such as 1930’s “Hell’s Angels” or 1937’s “The Dawn Patrol.”

While there are some startling scenes -- German planes suddenly emerging from clouds like a swarm of wasps, the earth-rattling explosion of a zeppelin -- they add up to little more than momentary diversions. It also doesn’t help that the pilot garb of goggles and scarves makes it nearly impossible to know who is doing what.

Once on terra firma, there’s no such confusion. The screenwriters ladle on the clichés with subplots running the gamut from racism to shellshock, oppressive fathers to the war-hardened cynicism of a veteran pilot (Martin Henderson). Perhaps the biggest groan-inducer is a tacked-on love story in which Rawlings falls for a pretty French girl (Jennifer Decker) who is apparently smitten by the man’s inability to speak her language. Luckily, there is common ground between American cheese and French cheese.

"The Last Kiss," dir. Tony Goldwyn (Oklahoma Gazette)

People Behaving Badly

You probably don’t need a movie to know that commitment can be a scary concept, but a motion picture as searing and insightful as “The Last Kiss” is well worth seeing. The film is populated with characters who are case studies in troubled relationships, but their problems and how they cope with them rarely feel clichéd.

Zach Braff stars as Michael, a 29-year-old architect who launches into a premature midlife crisis when his girlfriend Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) announces she is pregnant. Doubting that he is ready for marriage -- much less parenthood -- Michael is terrified that his youth is over.

It doesn’t help that his best friends are in relationship meltdowns. Chris (Casey Affleck) is in a marriage strained by the advent of a baby, while Izzy (Michael Weston) is reeling from being dumped by his girlfriend. The only seemingly happy one, Kenny (Eric Christian Olsen), is firmly entrenched in a succession of one-night stands. The most cautionary tale for Michael might be Jenna’s parents, Stephen and Anna (Tom Wilkinson and Blythe Danner), whose 30-year marriage has dissolved into bitterness and indifference.

The surfeit of misery pushes Michael into selfishness and stupidity. When he meets pretty college student Kim (Rachel Bilson) at a wedding, he knows no good can come from their flirtation -- but he doesn’t stop himself.

An English-language remake of a 2001 Italian film, “L’ultimo bacio,” “The Last Kiss” has a startlingly clear-eyed view of relationships. The men and women in the movie’s orbit are imperfect people given to bad choices. Michael appears to have it all – a good job, loving girlfriend, promising future -- but he can’t shake off a paralyzing fear of commitment. Jenna’s parents are lugging an airport’s worth of emotional baggage. Stephen, a therapist by profession, has little patience or empathy left over for his unhappy (and unfaithful) wife.

The picture is written by Paul Haggis, who directed and co-wrote the Oscar-winning “Crash,” and he employs a similar approach here, presenting a cross-section of characters plagued by selfishness, pettiness and casual cruelty -- but all of whom are too three-dimensional not to elicit sympathy.

The screenplay’s honesty is augmented by a superb cast. Danner and Wilkinson are excellent, but Barrett’s performance is riveting. Also first-rate is Bilson, who projects a vulnerability that keeps Kim from being a one-note vixen. If there’s a weak spot, it is Braff, but he still earns points for bucking the nice-guy persona he has built with TV’s “Scrubs.”

“The Last Kiss” is hardly without flaws. The filmmakers go to considerable lengths to follow the story threads of Michael’s buddies, but appear to lose interest about two-thirds into the flick. Moreover, director Tony Goldwyn, despite an obvious skill with actors, can be uneven with the mechanics of tone and pace.

But why quibble? It is rare to come across a movie that rings with such authenticity that it challenges our expectations of what its characters will do next. If that isn’t a sign of genius, I don’t know what is.

"Little Man," dir. Keenan Ivory Wayans (Oklahoma Gazette)

Diaper Rash

I’m a decent enough guy. I love my wife and child. I pay my taxes. I vote in school bond elections. In short, I’m at a loss as to why the entertainment editor of this weekly you hold in your hands forced me to watch and review “Little Man.”

With “Scary Movie” and “White Chicks,” the Wayans brothers -- Keenan Ivory, Shawn and Marlon -- had come close to surpassing Rob Schneider in the crappy comedy genre. But the Wayans’ “Little Man” might push the brothers ahead in that dubious competition. Hell, Schneider even makes a cameo in the movie -- perhaps a sign of surrender.

The nominal plot involves Calvin (Marlon Wayans), a tough but pint-sized thief who teams up with his moronic partner (Tracy Morgan) to steal a huge diamond for a mob boss (Chazz Palminteri). In a close call following the heist, Calvin is forced to ditch the jewel in the purse of an unsuspecting bystander. The purse belongs to a career-minded woman named Vanessa (Kerry Washington), whose husband, Darryl (Shawn Wayans), is desperate for the couple to have a baby.

Needing to get into the couple’s home and retrieve the diamond, Calvin poses as a baby left on their doorstep. Vanessa and Darryl are not puzzled that the toddler has the mug of a fortysomething man, much less that he sports a tattoo on his forearm. A doctor who examines the mystery child is equally oblivious. This is the sort of movie in which stupid characters must continually do stupid things, thereby setting the stage for more stupid happenings.

In the universe of “Little Man,” not a single character appears to realize that little adults actually exist. Nothing seems to shake the young couple’s assurance that Calvin is anything but a baby, even after he steals Darryl’s car and is chased by police.

Why should the characters be suspicious? The filmmakers must not be familiar with dwarves, either. They evidently believed Calvin had to be a CGI creation, as Marlon Wayans’ head is digitally grafted on to a little person’s body (Linden Porco and Gabriel Pimental providing the aforementioned physique).

The special effect is presumably because no actual actor of small stature was suitable for the complexities of a role that calls for rubbing a chocolate chip cookie all over his crotch, swallowing dog urine and enduring the humiliation of an anal thermometer. From soiled diapers to buxom hotties offering to breastfeed, there is no joke too obvious or odious for “Little Man.”

Some talented people turn up here -- Palminteri, Alex Borstein, “In Living Color” alums David Alan Grier and Kelly Coffield -- and all, without exception, are wasted. Molly Shannon appears for a particularly torturously unfunny cameo. What gives? Do all these folks have huge gambling debts or something?

If you are determined to see a grown man dressed like a baby, you would probably be better served surfing the Internet. It’s certainly cheaper, and probably funnier, too.

"Idlewild," dir. Bryan Barber (Oklahoma Gazette)

Empty (Zoot) Suit

Who doesn’t appreciate a good tussle between style and substance? The age-old enemies known as Form and Content, always itching to slug it out on the big screen, are at it again in “Idlewild,” a dizzyingly anachronistic musical featuring the hip-hop duo, OutKast.

This time around, it’s not much of a fight. With Form prancing around the ring and flexing muscles built from MTV-addled steroids, Content is cowered in the corner and peeing all over itself. “Idlewild” has energy and panache to spare, but not even the most eye-popping visuals can mask the hollowness at its core.

The nominal setting is the fictitious Idlewild, Georgia, circa 1935, but it’s a version of the 1930s as imagined by a C- history student. Writer-director Bryan Barber has fashioned a fantasy world where a sepia-toned past and hip-hop present do the bump and grind, where rappers sport zoot suits and fedoras, and where whiskey flasks jabber on like something out of “H.R. Pufnstuf.”

OutKast’s Big Boi and André 3000 (otherwise known as, Antwan A. Patton and André Benjamin) star as lifelong friends Rooster and Percival. Rooster is the rogue, a womanizing family man who raps nightly at a crazy cool speakeasy ironically called Church. By contrast, the painfully shy Percival works with his crotchety father (Ben Vereen) as a mortician. Their lives intersect at Church, where Percival plays the piano and dreams of performing his own compositions.

The feature debut of music video director Barber, “Idlewild” is packed with an orgiastic visual flair that ranges from adventurous camera movement to animated stick figures leaping across sheets of music. The excess of style recalls another first movie by a music video director, Julien Temple’s “Absolute Beginners” back in 1986. Like that long-forgotten flick, “Idlewild” is sumptuous eye candy, and Barber benefits from the magnificent work of cinematographer Pascal Rabaud, production designer Charles Breen and costume designer Shawn Barton.

No matter how dressed to the nines, however, “Idlewild” is a threadbare suit of movie clichés. Rooster inherits Church when his bosses (Ving Rhames and Faizon Love) are pumped full of holes by the vicious gangster Trumpy (Terrence Howard in another powerhouse performance), who quickly turns his sights to terrorizing the new owner. Meanwhile, Percival falls in love with a luminous torch singer (Paula Patton, no relation to Antwan). But this is simply a pretense of plot. More likely, Barber stitched together sundry pages from the screenplays of other, better movies. “Idlewild” is the sort of flick in which a character is handed a Bible, and you just know that book will end up stopping a bullet.

The soggy stretches of story get a much-needed break when the production numbers crank up at Church. Hinton Battle’s choreography is amazing, and it is further enhanced by Barber’s supercharged presentation, a mix of quick edits and momentarily freezing the wildly acrobatic dance moves. Patton and Benjamin might be merely serviceable actors, but their musical genius is not in dispute. In fact, when the music of OutKast takes center stage, “Idlewild” finally sounds as good as it looks.