Movies No. 38-41

Movie No. 38: "Charlie Bartlett": A movie like "Charlie Bartlett" has to conduct a rather tricky balancing act: trying to keep its glib sense of humor but not detracting from the serious issues it wants to convey. As "Juno" showed last year, it can be done. Unfortunately "Charlie Bartlett" shows too often why failed efforts litter the indie movie trash heaps. That's not to say this film is as ineffective as something like "The Chumscrubber," but for most of its running time it is simply to flippant with its writing and in the performances to really be taken seriously, which it clearly wants to be. The only one who seems able to find that balance is (yep, you guessed it) Robert Downey Jr., who gives another really good performance in a mediocre movie. Between him and a decent number of laughs, "Charlie Bartlett" is entertaining enough to be watchable, but it is rarely more than that. C

Movie No. 39: "Stop-Loss": For the first half of the movie is actually very, very good. The battle scene works creating a sense of confusion and horror, and the scenes in the couple of days following their homecoming, where they struggle to reconnect with their lives, makes for compelling viewing. Once the stop-loss of Ryan Phillippe's character happens, however, there seems to be a turning point. From there, it becomes about the message not the characters. Whole plot strands feel forced into being rather than springing naturally, causing the story to lose its effectiveness. It's too bad, because there was a lot of potential here. C

Movie No. 40: "The Unforseen": This documentary about the fight to save a famed Austin natural pool that is threatened by upstream development takes on an interesting subject: the pros and cons of development. The problem is, its focus is so narrow and its arguments so simple that they only have maybe half an hour of interesting material. Unfortunately, the movie stretches for an hour and a half. There's some good here, and the events they describe provide fertile topics for discussion, but the film rarely sees clear to dig beneath the surface. A thoroughly disappointing doc. C-

Movie No. 41: "Choke": Let's start with the good. The casting is spot-on. Sam Rockwell does about as much with this character as I could see anybody doing. His glimmers of depraved joy account for most of the movie's best scenes. Kelly McDonald also does this brand of nervous sincerity as well as anyone. The problem is, the story simply isn't as interesting as it looks on paper, almost whiplashing at times from bizarre to cliched. Also, this tale of a sex-addict, his crazy mother, and the other sundry bizarre characters is told with the almost exact same tone and style as an episode of "Scrubs," right down to the "what have I learned" narrated ending. It works on that show. Here, it just doesn't fit. C-