Asteroid City

See, this is why artsy types get beaten up. Wes Anderson’s flamboyant use of artifice and affectation keeps growing ever more out of control with every movie he makes, to the point now where a former fan such as myself is forced to ask, is all the weirdness for the sake of weirdness a strategy to hide behind? Or is it a means to hide the simple fact that there’s actually no there there? I’m not ready to declare Anderson a total fraud—I think he does still have interesting stuff on his mind—but it is less and less evident that he can be successful in putting said ideas on the screen. This film serves as a model for that problem: everything is so unusual, and seemingly without much point to it, that it’s hard to give this work credit, even though there’s enough going on to hold the viewer's attention throughout (even when the story drags a bit). Put together, you get a movie that is not bad so much as it is baffling, even for a viewer who wants something more sophisticated than cookie-cutter entertainment. It is also worth noting that this film’s huge ensemble cast works against it; the audience is so wrapped up in noticing who is on the screen to pay as much attention to what is actually happening. (Apparently, there’s a reason for the typical “two stars plus a cast of minor players” movie formula.) It would be nice to see this auteur return to his earlier standards of work, but at this point it seems like he is too lost in his own head to ever connect with a broader audience again. Talk about being lost in the stars.

Final

It's not that I don't believe Denis Leary as a traumatized man trying to cope with his mental problems. But the story here stays too shallow to make the struggle engaging. A film like this--a set piece with very little in the way of story progression--must be chock full of insight/wit/energy to keep the viewer tuned in. The pace here is too slow, and when the WTF moment comes, it's too unbelievable and its impact too muted to make a difference. Not worth it.

The Secret Lives Of Dentists

A married couple is having problems. Why do we care? Well, mostly, we don't. There's little about the focal family that's particularly engaging. The film only perks up--and earns the "MEOW" grade--when Denis Leary is on the screen, playing the voice in the jealous husband's head. Without him, it drags.

American Splendor

You might be fooled by the promotional materials into thinking that this is a comedy. It is, in fact, a biography of a man and his art, and true to that fact it has its funny and serious moments. The cast does decent work, but the true star here is the real life Harvey Pekar (appearing throughout in documentary interludes) and his commitment to presenting his work and its philosophy in blazing, uncompromising honesty. We should all be so legitimate.

Mumford

Nice, quirky little story of a small-town psychologist who isn't exactly what he seems to be. Amusing and momentarily poignant. And it makes a pretty good case that psychotherapy isn't all it's cracked up to be, either.