Eastwood scouts for another hit

Trouble With the Curve is low on surprises, but still offers some satisfaction.

Predictable, a little corny and featuring a familiar performance from Clint Eastwood as a crotchety old baseball scout whose bosses think he may have lost something off his fast ball, Trouble With the Curve can be pleasing in the way of formula movies that pretty much work.

Eastwood portrays Gus, a legendary scout for the Atlanta Braves. Gus has two problems: a statistic-addicted younger man in the organization (Matthew Lillard) doesn't trust his judgment and he's losing his eyesight. Disabilities or no, Gus is stubborn, and he does have one loyal supporter in the Braves organization (John Goodman).

Gus's baseball future seems to hinge on his evaluation of Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill), a high school slugging prospect the Braves are eager to sign.

Randy Brown's screenplay contrives to have Bo's daughter (Amy Adams) join him in North Carolina to help scout Bo. She'll be Gus's eyes. Of course, Gus doesn't want help, and Adams's Mickey (she was named after Mickey Mantle) has problems of her own. On the verge of earning a hard-won partnership, she has to leave her Atlanta-based law firm for a few days to assist Gus.

Eastwood can play a character like Gus in his sleep, but his performance is by no means lazy. He gives the role its due, creating a hard-boiled type who has trouble coming to terms with any sign of vulnerability.

My respect for Adams continues to grow. Watch her in The Master and look at her here. You'll be hard-pressed to tell it's the same actress. I'm not talking about the way she looks, but the way she acts. Her character in The Master has a spine of steel; here she's playing a strong woman, but one who has to hold up her end of a romantic tale.

While helping her father, Mickey meets a young scout (Justin Timberlake) who takes an immediate interest in her.

The story pits Gus's instincts and experience against the statisticians, and you don't need a score card to know who's going to win that battle. This is, after all, a Clint Eastwood movie, and it's unlikely that he's going to suffer an irreparable defeat.

This time out, Eastwood cedes directing chores to Robert Lorenz, who has worked as a second-unit director and producer on a variety of Eastwood productions. Aside from creating a blurry spot in the middle of images that are supposed to represent Gus's fading eyesight, Lorenz does a straightforward job with material that's fairly straightforward.

To the extent that there's subtext, it goes like this: Mickey's an adult, but she and the long-widowed Gus still have issues, which the screenplay doesn't deal with until the end and which hardly qualify as dramatic dynamite.

Trouble with the Curve wraps things up so neatly, it's a bit like watching a player who never gets his uniform dirty. This one's for moviegoers who long for happy endings and who are inclined toward what's commonly known as old-fashioned entertainment.

I'm not always one of those people, but saw no reason to fault a movie that wants to tell its story, maybe moisten a few eyes and move on.

Two docs about two kinds of artists

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON IN A WORLD-CLASS KITCHEN

Despite a title that suggests seam-head delights, Paul Lacoste's Step Up to the Plate is about as far from baseball as any movie possibly could get. Lacoste's spare documentary takes us into the minds of two master chefs -- Michel Bras and his son Sebastien. The movie begins at a pivotal moment in both men's lives; Sebastien is about to take the reins of his dad's world famous restaurant in the Aubrac region of France. Sleek and modern in its decor, the restaurant is located in a rural area, and looks pretty much like a destination stop for those for whom food is a passion. You get to watch both Brases at work, and you learn a bit of Bras family history in a movie divided into four seasons, each revolving around certain kinds of vegetables and flowers. During the winter, Michel and Sebastien travel to Japan, where the family has another restaurant. It's fairly clear that Michel Bras isn't going to have an easy time "retiring," and he's never shy about critiquing his son's food. It's also clear that Sebastien -- who works on developing a new dish throughout the movie -- has patience, as well as his own approach to food. Lacoste shows us how various dishes are created from start to finish. The completed dishes have the look of small sculptures, raising -- at least for me -- questions about whether one is supposed to look at it or eat it. But then, I'm the kind of guy who's repelled when he sees the word "drizzled"' on a menu, as in, say, a balsamic drizzle. For serious foodies, though, Step Up to the Plate is a must.

HE SEES ART AS ENTERTAINMENT

I'd never heard of Wayne White until I saw Neil Berkeley's documentary Beauty is Embarrassing. Maybe I should have. It turns out White -- now a full-time painter and sculptor -- once designed sets and puppets for Pee-wee's Playhouse, the short-lived but much-praised TV show that spawned a couple of movies and became home to a variety of visual artists who found themselves happily ensconced in a creative playpen. The documentary shows how White, who has had a lifelong interest in art, went from being a rebellious southern kid to being a rebellious adult living in Los Angeles. These days, White makes paintings on which he displays (in very large letters) epigrammatic statements, often laced with profanity. After putting himself in a Hollywood pressure cooker making videos for Smashing Pumpkins and working on other high-profile projects, White decided it was time for art to trump commerce. Whatever you think of his White, you'll have a difficult time denying that the man is tremendously versatility. There's also something refreshing about White's insistence that there's nothing wrong with art that entertains. I don't want to put words in White's mouth, but after seeing this documentary, I wondered whether he might not advise all "suffering artists" either to get a grip or try something else.

A tense, well-acted 'Arbitrage'

Robert Miller has a lovely wife and two grown children who work for him at his wildly successful hedge fund. As befits a man of great wealth, Miller and his wife give major money to charity, and he's regarded as a Wall Street wizard, a guy who hits way more than he misses.

But Robert -- Richard Gere in a performance that's smart and icy -- may not be anyone's idea of a role model. He has a mistress (Laetitia Casta), and he's in the midst of carrying out a fraud, a $412-million scheme designed to fool auditors who are evaluating his company for a possible merger.

Robert desperately wants the merger to succeed, which means he's walking a financial tightrope. He hopes he can close the deal before he faces exposure and ruin.

Despite the movie's initial appearance, writer/director Nicholas Jarecki isn't necessarily out to make a major statement about financial corruption, something, say, on the order of last year's Margin Call.

First and foremost, Jarekci cranks up a thriller that has Robert trying to cover up another crime, a task that involves him with a young black man (Nate Parker) who owes him a favor and helps carry out the deception.

This part of the movie introduces a determined cop (Tim Roth) who spends most of the movie trying to prove Robert's guilt. If things threaten to get dull, an amusing Roth's around to pose questions that seem to annoy everyone with whom he talks.

Adding a second criminal element to the financial deception has a dual effect: It keeps the movie from bogging down in complex wheeling and dealing (good), but it also prevents Jarecki from making a strong enough statement about a financial system in which unethical and illegal behavior seems to be tolerated -- so long as no one gets caught.

Jarecki has a lot on his plate, but he mostly weaves the movie's many threads into a brisk and coherent thriller that features a variety of strong performances. Among them: Susan Sarandon portrays Robert's wife, a woman who may know more than she lets on. Brit Marling plays the daughter who works for and idolizes her father, and who provides the movie with a character who experiences morally based doubt.

About three-quarters of the way through, I began to wonder how Jarecki would join the movie's many plot lines, and I can't say I found his resolution entirely satisfying, but there's enough crackle, intrigue and pleasure (smart guys trying to outsmart one another) in Arbitrage to keep it percolating nicely.

A comic hones his stand-up

A MONOLOGUE BECOMES A MOVIE

If you have any desire to try your hand at stand-up comedy, Sleepwalk with Me could give you major second thoughts. Based on the experiences of comic Mike Birbiglia, the movie tells the story of how a comic named Matt Pandamiglio (played by Birbiglia) hones his chops at a variety of low-rent locations.

Birbiglia, who shares directing credits with Seth Barish, narrates this story of comic aspiration, adapted from one-man show he performed in 2008. Although I didn't find the stand-up routines all that funny, the comic's take on his relationship with Abby (Lauren Ambrose), his live-in girlfriend, is well-observed.

Matt and Abby have been together for eight years. She's ready to marry. He's not. Enough said.

About the title? It turns out that Matt is a sleepwalker who acts out the wild scenarios of his dreams while still asleep, a problem that gives the movie its bizarre climax.

Matt's march toward success begins when he receives a bit of advice from comic Marc Maron, who tells him he'd do well to personalize his act. Maron's suggestion stems from an off-hand remark made by Matt, who says he doesn't want to get married until he's sure that nothing else good can happen in his life. Use that, says Maron.

Birbiglia winds up being a likable enough presence to keep us involved, and Ambrose -- familiar from TV's Six Feet Under -- shines as a woman who ignores more than a few signals about Matt's intentions.

The movie's script was written by Birbiglia, his brother Joe, Ira Glass -- of PBS's This American Life -- and director Barish. The screenplay has Matt talking directly to the camera when he needs to elicit sympathy, a gimmick that probably shouldn't work, but does.

A COMEDY THAT'S NOT TO BE BELIEVED

Neither Jesse Eisenberg nor Melissa Leo can save Why Stop This?, a fatally mixed-up comedy about a brilliant high school pianist who's trying to get his drug-addicted mother into rehab. An early picture contrivance has Eisenberg's Eli and Leo's Penny searching for cocaine so that her urine will test "dirty." The uninsured Penny, who has been clean for three days, is told that the only way she'll qualify for treatment is to fail a urine test. Mother and son contact Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan) and his partner Black (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), drug dealers who, alas, are in need of re-stocking. All four set out to score drugs from a bigger dealer (Paul Calderone). Eli, who on this very day is supposed to audition for a scholarship to a prestigious music school, wants his mother to get straight so that she can take care of his younger half-sister (Emma Rayne Lyle) when he leaves home. Eisenberg, who turns 29 in October, is too old to be playing a high echooler, but he manages a few laughs in a comedy built around escalating desperation. Morgan fares better in the comedy department, and Leo looks appropriately bedraggled. But what is this? A coming-of-age comedy? A comedy about the way illegal drug use creates colliding class contacts? Or a half-serious look at the problems caused by a good-hearted but negligent mother? Whatever it is, Why Stop Now? certainly didn't need scenes in which Eli's high school classmates dress up as Revolutionary War re-enactors. Huh?

''The Words:" How about a rewrite?

This melodrama seems to be looking for something more serious than anything it finds.

A successful and well-respected author takes the stage for a public reading of his latest novel. Our willingness to accept this supposed literary titan as the real deal depends on what we think of his writing.

So here's the first sentence that Dennis Quaid's Clay Hammond reads: "The old man stood in the rain." Really? That's it? A bit of scrawl that's only a step above "a dark and stormy night?"

Fortunately, the movie quickly leaves Quaid and begins showing us the story his character is reading, an improvement (though a small one) over the writing we've just heard.

Hammond's tale centers on Rory (Bradley Cooper), an aspiring writer who lives in New York City with his girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife (Zoe Saldana). Rory's writing career is going nowhere. His confidence is ebbing. His father (J.K. Simmons) suggests that it might be time to look for a job.

A frustrated Rory eventually does seek employment, landing a low-level position at a literary agency. But Rory still dreams of becoming a literary success, and his self-image is tied to that dream.

As often happens in lesser works of fiction, contrivance -- masquerading as fate -- intervenes.

During a honeymoon trip to Paris, Saldana's Dora buys Rory an old briefcase. Upon returning to the U.S., Rory discovers an unpublished manuscript tucked in one of the briefcases folds. Lo, it's a terrific book about an American GI in post-war France.

Because The Words has been operating with a kind of precise predictability, we immediately know that Rory is going to appropriate the novel, that it will become a major success and that he will have launched an impressive (if fraudulent) career.

To add another layer of complexity, directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, who also wrote the screenplay, dramatize the story told in the purloined novel. That tale features Ben Barnes as a GI turned writer and Nora Arnezeder as the French woman who steals his heart and with whom his life hits a tragic snare.

But back to the story that Quaid's character is reading.

In that melodramatic tale, the old man who was standing in the rain (a withered-looking, bearded Jeremy Irons) reappears to claim authorship of the book Rory has passed off as his own. Irons's character wants Rory to wrestle with his conscience.

Rather than adding dizzying complexity, the movie's stories-within-stories approach feels entirely routine. It does, however, bring about a few minor realizations. Among them: Cooper should henceforth try to avoid appearing with Irons, who -- even in a silly role -- can't entirely hide his superior acting chops.

The rest of the cast doesn't exactly soar, either. Quaid's face shows plenty of mileage, but he's stuck in slim role in which he's both admired and challenged by a literary groupie (Olivia Wilde). Wilde's character attends Hammond's reading and very obviously is looking for more than bookish inspiration.

It's entirely possible that The Words wants to explore big themes: The tension between life and art and what happens when a young man's ambition is unmatched by his talent, but the movie winds up feeling as thin as the paper on which its multiple novels are printed.

The Words tells many stories. Unfortunately, all of them are mediocre.

Playing phone sex for laughs

A comedy with an indie spirit -- and dirty talk..

Just about anything can be a source for comedy -- and that includes phone sex, the central gimmick in For a Good Time, Call ..., a movie that tries to celebrate female friendship while taking a giggly approach to its risqué hook.

Here's the gist: Economic necessity forces two antagonistic young women (Lauren Anne Miller and Ari Graynor) to share the same digs, a spacious but pricey Gramercy Park apartment that Graynor's character took over after her grandmother died.

We quickly learn that Graynor's Katie supports herself with multiple jobs: She's both manicurist and phone sex worker.

After losing her publishing job, Miller's character -- named Lauren -- decides to help Katie make the move from employee of a phone-sex service to owner of her own operation. The two become partners in a story that begins to look like an advertisement for starting a small business -- with dirty talk added for ribald measure.

If you're looking for a movie that in any way explores the moral and psychological impact of being a phone sex worker, you'll have to look elsewhere. Working from a script by Miller and Katie Anne Naylon, director Jamie Travis has nothing much in mind other than turning out a gloss of a comedy that offers the female equivalent of a "bromance." Does it become a "she-mance" when women are involved?

I won't include spoilers, but know that the script revolves around a few twists that are ridiculously improbable and that it also provides the two women with a gay male friend, an obligatory presence in this kind of comedy. As the gay pal responsible for bringing the two women together, Justin Long battles cliche -- and I'm afraid loses.

Few expect realism in a giddy comedy, but the idea that Katie would meet with one of her regular callers (Mark Webber) makes too big a mockery of verisimilitude. And the movie's suggestion that there might be something more than friendship bubbling beneath the surface of Lauren and Katie's relationship seems ill-defined and confusing.

In this odd couple pairing, Miller portrays the organized woman; and Graynor -- who makes the bigger impression -- portrays the free spirit. The actresses work well enough together and whip up a few chuckles, but despite its phone-sex focus, For a Good Time, Call can't let go of convention: Girl meets girl. Girl and girl have a Big Fight. Girl and girl reunite as best buds.

Cameo appearances by Seth Rogen and Kevin Smith (as masturbating callers) do little aside from helping to establish the movie's comic and indie credentials -- and up the gross-out ante.

The visiting relatives are French

Julie Delpy's new comedy deals with culture clashes, but in a strained way.

In 2007, Julie Delpy starred in and directed 2 Days in Paris, a comedy about a couple that traveled to Paris hoping to salvage a foundering relationship. Delpy has now moved her act across the ocean for 2 Days in New York, a comedy about a Manhattan-based couple trying to survive a visit from her amazingly intrusive family -- and one of her old boyfriends.

Delpy plays Marion, a French photographer who's living in Manhattan with her boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock). Mingus and Marion seem to be getting along well enough until her recently widowed father (Delpy's real-life dad Albert Delpy) shows up with Marion's sister (Alexia Landea) and the sister's boyfriend (Alex Nahon). As it happens, the boyfriend used to date Marion.

2 Days in New York serves as a kind of ragtag sequel to 2 Days In Paris: Both Delpys, as well as Landea and Nahon, appeared in the earlier movie, which provides a foundation for this one. But, no, it is not necessary to have seen the first movie to get something out the second.

Delpy evidently likes the kind of complications frequently found in contemporary life. Marion has a daughter (the child she had in 2 Days in Paris). For his part, Mingus has a son from a previous marriage.

This time, the comedy centers on what some of have called culture clashes, but which struck me as strained comic situations. Marion's father is supposed to be endearingly crude, but can seem more the latter (crude) than the former (endearing), and the whole business plays as if Delpy wanted to make a ribald sitcom with lots of loopy undertow.

To complicate matters, the French characters don't understand American blacks, and Mingus becomes increasingly frustrated with Marion's visiting relatives.

Delpy gives Marion a scattered quality that borders on frenzy, and Rock -- who's playing a talk show host -- does his best to make the transition from an annoyed but tolerant boyfriend to a guy whose patience is pushed to the limit.

In the movie's biggest piece of oddball casting, Vincent Gallo shows up as an art buyer who purchases one of Marion's works at an exhibition. She says she's auctioning off her soul to the highest bidder: Gallo's character is only too happy to play the devil.

How you react to 2 Days in New York probably depends on whether the movie inspires laughter or irritation. I leaned toward annoyance. Like Mingus, I found myself eager for these visiting French marauders to go home. Maybe the movie then could have taken a more convincing look at the relationship between Marion and Mingus.

Instead, Delpy turns her movie into a testing ground for a stream of situational humor and jumbled comedy -- only about a quarter of which struck me as amusing.

Back to Brooklyn for Spike Lee

Spike Lee returns to Brooklyn for Red Hook Summer, one of the gifted director's least satisfying and most puzzling movies yet. This time, Lee focuses on the relationship between a teen-ager (Jules Brown) and his grandfather (Clarke Peters). The young man, who lives in Atlanta, is taken to New York by his mother (De'Adre Aziza) so that he can spend a summer with the grandfather he has never met. Not surprisingly, Brown's "Flik" isn't happy to be cooped up in a small apartment in Red Hook's projects. To make matters worse, Flik isn't the least bit religious and his grandfather is an old-school preacher. Familiar from both The Wire and Treme, Peters is a fine actor, but he's stranded without much of a script. Long scenes in the Lil' Peace Of Heaven Baptist Church tend to make you wonder whether Lee, co-wrote the script with James McBride, knew where he wanted to take a cast of characters that includes Chazz (Toni Lysaith), a no-nonsense girl who becomes Flik's friend. Lee makes a cameo appearance as Mookie, the character he played in Do the Right Thing. Some 23 years later, the savvy Mookie is still stuck delivering pizzas, which might be the strongest comment Lee has to make in this mostly languid movie. For the longest time, nothing much happens in a movie that shows Flik trying to film everything he sees with his iPad 2. Then, something dramatic does happen. The trouble is that Lee hasn't laid the groundwork for a major reveal that turns the movie into a blur of pain and emotional confusion. I won't disclose the movie's big twist, but it makes Red Hook Summer seem like an entirely different film from the one Lee began. Lee displays demonstrable fondness for this Brooklyn neighborhood and for some of its residents, but Red Hook Summer simply doesn't work.

A beautiful, towering 'Samsara'

If you're looking for a generalized definition of the sanskrit word "samsara," try this: Samsara is the cyclical condition marked by birth, old age, sickness and death. In Eastern religious traditions, the only antidote to the suffering inherent in samsara -- i.e., life as most of us know it -- is the liberation of enlightenment. That idea (and many more) are woven into the fabric of director Ron Fricke's towering and meditative new movie, Samsara.

Fricke, who directed 1992's Baraka and who worked as the cinematographer on director Godfrey Reggio's landmark Koyaanisqatsi (1982), this time tries to unite his many disparate images around themes of impermanence, rebirth, death, destruction, desecration of the planet and more.

Working in 70 mm, Fricke spent more than five years filming in 25 countries. His visual feast of a film proceeds without dialogue.

The resultant "documentary" takes us to familiar and exotic locations for many different purposes. But for me, the real subject of Samsara is the photographic eye. I'm not talking only about stunning visuals, although Samsara contains a veritable glut of them. I'm talking about the way photography can decontextualize pieces of reality, presenting them in ways that feel strange, invigorating and fresh. Samsara, then, is about the power of seeing, a testament to the transformative possibilities of new vantage points.

At one point, Fricke takes us inside a massive Chinese factory where legions of workers manufacture high tech electronics. His images emphasize the dehumanizing scale of this kind of mass production. He allows us (perhaps even forces us) to come to terms with what we're observing.

And, yes, I'm writing this on a computer that probably was produced in such a factory.

As Samsara unfolds, Fricke takes his cameras to places such as the Himalayas, Jerusalem, and Mecca. In aerial night shots, cars on the freeways of Los Angeles mimic the ceaseless flow of blood cells through veins and arteries.

If there's a flaw in Fricke's approach, it involves the way he edits the movie to score worthwhile but obvious points. Desperate Brazilian favelas threaten to spill into modern downtowns, underlining a devastating social and economic split in Brazil. A chicken processing plant exposes cruel indifference to animal suffering. A section on the manufacture of ammunition is chilling.

A Filipino prison, where the prisoners (as exercise?) participate in what looks like a choreographed dance fascinates while it unsettles, a combination found in many of the images in Fricke's enormous catalog of visuals.

Fricke balances his critique of modernity -- if that's what Samsara is -- with images that are as strikingly beautiful as they are mysterious. Samsara is at its best when Fricke offers the least amount of guidance, and we're left to contemplate the movie's mysterious cascade of images.

For most of the movie's 110-minute length, these images wash over us with a wavelike force that both inspires and chastens.