Capsule reviews of films opening this week:
"Brighton Rock" — Graham Greene's crime novel previously was made into a 1947 film famously starring Richard Attenborough with a script Greene co-wrote; this version shifts the setting from the late 1930s to 1964 as the Mods and Rockers were battling it out on Britain's south shore. You half expect to hear songs from "Quadrophenia" pop up here and there but alas, no such luck. But the feature directing debut from screenwriter Rowan Joffe ("28 Weeks Later," ''The American") does maintain the dark tone and stylish visuals of its noir origins, with dramatic shadows and camera angles that almost fetishize the genre. It's rapturous to look at, but the film as a whole often feels like an exercise in style over substance, especially as it becomes clear just how many times we've seen these kinds of characters in this kind of story. Still, Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough are watchable in a pulpy way as mismatched teenagers awkwardly caught in a mob war. "I'm bad. You're good. We're made for each other," Riley's ambitious gangster Pinkie says to Riseborough's innocent waitress Rose. And even though she buys the line, nothing is that simple. Helen Mirren and John Hurt are among the strong supporting cast. Unrated but contains pervasive language, violence and smoking. 111 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"Colombiana" — A brawny B-action picture with a gorgeous, graceful woman wreaking havoc at its center: Yup, this is a Luc Besson movie. The director of "La Femme Nikita" and "The Fifth Element" serves as co-writer and producer here, but this is very much a spinoff of his brand, a continuation of the kind of stereotype- and gravity-defying characters he's made his name on. "Colombiana" feels more hammy and muscular, though — but knowingly so, and that's what makes it solid, late-summer escapist fun. Zoe Saldana stars as Cataleya, who saw her parents killed in front of her when she was a 9-year-old schoolgirl living in the slums of Bogota. Fifteen years later, with the help of her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis), she's transformed herself into a highly efficient professional assassin in the United States, but she still seeks revenge against her parents' killers. Over-the-top bad guys spew generically menacing lines and hot women parade around in bikinis and lingerie: It's all big and silly. But Saldana manages to earn our sympathy, as the script (which Besson wrote with frequent collaborator Robert Mark Kamen) allows her to convey a surprising amount of emotion and inner conflict. PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, intense sequences of action, sexuality and brief strong language. 108 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" — Size shouldn't matter when it comes to scary creatures. After all, plenty of people are terrified of rats and spiders. Yet savage and ugly as the tiny monsters are in this remake of a 1973 TV horror movie, they're not as frightening as the filmmakers would have you believe. These wee beasties are not all that interesting, either, and frankly, neither is the movie. Producer and co-writer Guillermo del Toro and director Troy Nixey manage a lot of creepy atmosphere in their story of a couple (Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes) and a young girl (Bailee Madison) menaced by nasty little things that swarm up from beneath the mansion they're restoring. With the girl at the heart of the tale and del Toro's name the big selling point, the filmmakers want you thinking of the movie as a cousin to his masterful "Pan's Labyrinth," another story of a girl caught up in a world of fantastical terror. This is an awfully tame cousin, though, the creatures uninvolving and their antics more irritating than petrifying. R for violence and terror. 100 minutes. Two stars out of four.
— David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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"Higher Ground" — Vera Farmiga has done something miraculous in her directing debut. She's managed to make a movie about religion that's neither preachy nor mocking, and she treats her characters with great decency and respect. She extends that courtesy to herself as its star, and her character, Corinne — like the movie itself — seems to be seeking answers with an open heart. Based on the memoir "This Dark World" by Carolyn S. Briggs (who co-wrote the script with Tim Metcalfe), "Higher Ground" traces Corinne's evolution, from the time she was a little girl and thought she was saved at vacation bible school through her adulthood as a still-questioning wife and mother of three. Farmiga's naturalistic approach both in front of and behind the camera draws us in and makes Corinne's journey feel immediate and relatable, regardless of where any of us might stand in terms of our own spirituality. The excellent supporting cast includes John Hawkes and Donna Murphy as Corinne's parents, Joshua Leonard as her husband and Dagmara Dominczyk as the one free spirit in Corinne's insular, evangelical Christian community. But it's Farmiga's younger sister, Taissa, who plays the character as a pregnant newlywed teen, who really stands out. R for some language and sexual content. 109 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"Our Idiot Brother" — Paul Rudd hops from one sofa to another to another as the title character, and that's sort of what the film itself does, too. Rudd stars as an amiable, ambling dude named Ned who has no real goals in life; what he does have is a guilelessness that consistently gets him into trouble, both with his family and with the law. He has a knack for always saying or doing the wrong thing, even though he always means well. Director Jesse Peretz, working from a script written by his sister, Evgenia Peretz, and her husband, David Schisgall, follows him as he bumbles his way from one situation to the next with no great momentum or sense of character evolution. Ned grows increasingly irritating to his hippie farmer ex-girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn), the three sisters he mooches off of (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks and Zooey Deschanel) and to us. But then supposedly once they've all shunned him for causing so much inadvertent damage, they take him back because they realize what a positive influence he is in their lives. It makes no sense — there's a gap of logic and emotion that's hard to overcome. R for sexual content including nudity, and for language throughout. 90 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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