This week's DVD releases

Click on title to see the film’s trailer

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness *** Directed by Mami Sunada. Granted near-unfettered access to the notoriously insular Studio Ghibli, Sunada follows the three men who are the lifeblood of Ghibli: the eminent director Hayao Miyazaki, the producer Toshio Suzuki, and the elusive and influential ‘other director’ Isao Takahata over the course of a year as the studio rushes to complete two films, Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises and Takahata’s The Tale of The Princess Kaguya. If you’re not enraptured with the work of Miyazaki, Takahata and the rest of the artists at Ghibli, this may not be precisely what you’re looking for, but Sanada captures something poetic about art and creativity that could speak to anyone, animation fan or otherwise.

Art and Craft *** Directed by Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman. When one of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history is finally exposed, he must confront the legacy of his 30-year con. A documentary that adds fuel to the argument that the art market is a rigged game manipulated by curators and gallerists spouting mumbo-jumbo.

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? *** Directed by Shion Sono. The bitter feuds and unrequited loves that bind two warring Yakuza clans are intensified by the comical interference of a deluded film director and his guerrilla crew, who are hired to propel the daughter of one of the gang leaders to movie stardom. The film’s blast of self-mocking overkill can be charming.

The Book of Life *** Directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez. Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum. Manolo, a young man who is torn between fulfilling the expectations of his family and following his heart, embarks on an adventure that spans three fantastic worlds where he must face his greatest fears. The characters move around in a thoroughly realized universe full of imaginative and beautifully rendered detail. Too bad the rest of it isn’t more interesting.

Fury **½ Directed by David Ayer. During the waning days of World War II in Europe, U.S. Army Sgt. Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) leads his tank crew against overwhelming German forces. It’s engaging and watchable, even as it marches toward a seemingly suicidal climax. Yet the complex dynamic between Wardaddy and his men is fascinating.

My Old Lady ** Directed by Israel Horovitz. Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith. An American inherits an apartment in Paris from his father that comes with an unexpected resident, his father’s former lover. Though Horovitz’s directing is workmanlike solid, and while the movie has a certain charm that makes it easy to walk in the door, it gives you little reason to stay.

The Judge ** Directed by David Dobkin. Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall. Big city lawyer Hank Palmer returns to his childhood home where his father, the town’s judge, is suspected of murder. The film is well served by intense performances from its two stars, but is undercut by obvious note-hitting in the writing and a deliberate pace that drags things out about 20 minutes past their due date.

Open Windows ** Directed by Nacho Vigalondo. Elijah Wood, Sasha Grey. A jilted fan finds himself pulled into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse after he accepts the opportunity to spy on his favorite actress via his laptop. Timidity and perhaps fear, of visual confinement, of lingering emotional engagement, closes Vigalondo’s most promising windows.

Miss Meadows *½ Directed by Karen Leigh Hopkins. A proper elementary school teacher (Katie Holmes) moonlights as a vigilante. Hopkins is unsuccessful in navigating the absurd storyline’s jarring tonal shifts, with the result that this kinder, gentler variation on Ms. 45 mainly emerges as off-puttingly bizarre.

Before I Go To Sleep *½ Directed by Rowan Joffe. Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong. After surviving a brutal assault, a woman awakens each morning incapable of remembering anything about her past, including the previous day. If it weren’t for the diligent performances of its stars, who inject some emotional depth into this bogus claptrap, this would be an unwatchable, titter-inducing catastrophe.

The Remaining *½ Directed by Casey La Scala. Friends gather at a wedding, but the celebration is shattered by terrifying apocalyptic events. There’s a fundamental problem here. The movie relies on the instinctual human fear of death, but its message is that dying is a promotion.

Days and Nights *½ Directed by Christian Camargo. Christian Carmago, Katie Holmes, William Hurt, Allison Janney, Cherry Jones, Russell Means, Michael Nyqvist, Jean Reno, Juliet Rylance, Mark Rylance, Ben Whislaw. An aging actress’s makes a fateful choice to visit her son and ailing brother in 1980s New England. The drama over dinner comes in small analgesic portions, and the secrets feel canned and the dialogue is too pretty to be believable.

The Color of Time *½ Directed by 11 different directors. Zach Braff, Bruce Campbell, Jessica Chastain, James Franco, Henry Hopper, Mila Kunis. Takes the viewer on a journey through several decades of American life from poet CK Williams’s childhood and adolescence in Detroit in the 1940s and ‘50s to the early 1980s. The tone is delicate and vaporous, more attuned to mood and melancholy than anything resembling a conventional narrative. And despite the ambition on display, the film feels awfully slight, like a dream forgotten immediately upon waking. In its admirable but muddled attempt to fuse pure poetry and pure cinema, it ends up doing justice to neither.

This week's DVD releases

Click on title to see the film’s trailer

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz *** Directed by Brian Kanppenberger. The story of the programming prodigy and information activist who took his own life at the age of 26. Delivers a touching, morally outraged portrait that, in memory of Swartz, may inspire people to ask hard questions about how the new world is being shaped away from view, behind closed doors.

The Drop *** Directed by Michael R. Roskam. Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini. An ex-con resolves to start a new life away from crime, but his bartending job at a local tavern pulls him back toward trouble when the load of cash that gangsters are laundering through the bar mysteriously disappears. The movie’s unpredictability is organic rather than sensationalistic. The movie doesn’t pull surprises out of thin air for the sole purpose of shocking the viewer — it lets them develop naturally.

The Green Prince *** Directed by Nadav Schirman. The son of a top leader in Palestine’s militant Hamas movement, spends a decade working as a mole for Israeli intelligence. A narrative documentary thriller that effectively employs many elements of a John le Carré spy novel: international intrigue, arresting twists and turns, and characters with complicated motivations.

Coherence **½ Directed by James Ward Byrkit. When a passing comet causes a neighborhood to lose power, four couples gathered for a dinner party discover a nearby house whose lights are still on. But the friends’ decision to investigate sparks encounters with bizarre phenomena. Byrkit and his actors successfully build a sense of tension, and then dread, from what appears to be an extremely limited budget. Indeed, the movie was shot primarily in his own living room.

Lucy **½ Directed by Luc Besson. Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman. A young woman forced to become a drug mule for the mob develops superhuman abilities when the narcotics she’s carrying in her stomach accidentally leak into her system. Besson’s script may let Johansson and Freeman down in the third act, but the 89 minute long Lucy is so brisk it’ll give you whiplash. Even marginal thrillers benefit from a director and star who have a sense of urgency and are as hellbent as this on not overstaying their welcome.

The Boxtrolls **½ Directed by Graham Annabelle, Anthony Stacchi. A young orphaned boy raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors tries to save his friends from an evil exterminator. This animate feature stands reasonably well on its own, as a cool steampunk fairy-tale that serves as yet another testament to the artistry of the folks at Laika.

May in the Summer **½ Directed by Cherien Dabis. May (Dabis) travels to Jordan for her wedding to Ziad (Alexander Siddig), a fellow Arab American, but faces the disapproval of her mother, a converted evangelical Christian who doesn’t want her daughter marrying a Muslim man. It’s diverting to watch and has moments of brilliance, but even with all its refreshing female characters, the film doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

Life’s a Breeze ** Directed by Lance Daly. In the process of making over an aging matriarch’s ratty apartment, a cash-strapped Irish clan inadvertently discards her mattress that’s stuffed with nearly one million euros. From a filmmaking standpoint, is something of a jumble. There’s a whimsical score that sounds like a Mumford & Sons bridge on repeat that underlines the quirky tone in rather annoying ways.

Rudderless ** Directed by William H. Macy. Billy Crudup, Anton Yelchin, Felicity Huffman, Selena Gomez, Laurence Fisburne. Devastated over his son’s death, former ad exec Sam (Crudup) removes himself from society to drink away his grief. When he summons the will to perform his son’s songs at a local bar, the music gains popularity and Sam claims to have written the tunes himself. This, despite a few stellar moments, is a not-quite-tragic-enough meditation on mourning and self-healing, crossed with a not-quite-gritty-enough portrait of indie rockers trying to break big.

The Zero Theorem ** Directed by Terry Gilliam. Living in isolation in a burnt-out church, Qohen (Christoph Waltz), an eccentric and reclusive computer genius plagued with existential angst, is obsessively working on a mysterious project personally delegated to him by Management (Matt Damon) aimed at discovering the meaning of life, or the complete lack of one, once and for all. Orwellian paranoia doesn’t die, it just gets fresh trimmings, and while The Zero Theorem is as messy and overstuffed as Fibber McGilliam’s closet (OK, I’m dating myself here), its sorrow and anger and demented humor strike just enough fresh sparks to keep his career alive.

White Bird in a Blizzard ** Directed by Gregg Araki. Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Chrisdtopher Meloni, Shiloh Fernandez, Gabourey Sidibe, Thomas Jane, Angela Bassett. A teenage girl’s life is thrown into chaos when her mother disappears. An odd little concoction, a coming-of-age story that, only in passing, is also a mystery.

Annabelle *½ Directed by John R. Leonetti. A couple begins to experience terrifying supernatural occurrences involving a vintage doll shortly after their home is invaded by satanic cultists. Sadly, Annabelle, a cheap, sleazy, low-budget prequel meant to explain the origins of that particular doll, is as undistinguished, uninteresting, and unscary as the worst of the Chucky films.

Wolves *½ Directed by David Hayter. Lucas Till, Stephen McHattie, Merritt Patterson, Jason Momoa. A boy trying to find out about his family history stumbles upon a town of lycans. If you’re in the bag for werewolves (or have a thing for hairy dudes smoking distinctive pipes), Wolves is a beckoning howl in the night. As an action movie, however, it’s surprisingly tame.

Mea culpa! Comments have been posted

I'm going to blame it on the fact that I relocated, but, whatever the reason, the system built into this blog failed to notify me that a number of individuals had commented on some of the articles I had posted. I stumbled onto that fact this morning, found the comments and all those outstanding comments have now been posted to their respective articles. So sorry about the delay. Believe me, I wasn't trying to silence anyone else's opinion. This is all about the free flow of ideas.

This Week’s DVD Releases

A real busy week.
(Click on title to see the film’s trailer)

Love Is Strange ***½ Directed by Ira Sachs. John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei. After 28 years together, Ben (Lithgow) and George (Molina) finally get hitched. But when the marriage raises controversy at the school where George works, he’s fired. Unable to afford their New York City apartment, the couple is forced to live apart. One of those lovely little movies that starts out being about a handful of people and ends up being about all of us. That’s a tricky act to pull off and the talented writer-director Sachs stumbles occasionally over moments of self-conscious lyricism. But when the film recovers its balance, looks at its characters with fondness and with faith, it quietly soars.

The Strange Little Cat ***½ Directed by Ramon Zürcher. Three generations of a middle-class clan gather in a Berlin flat during the course of a day. This kind of vérité surrealism doesn’t come along very often, and the glorious oddness that Zürcher manages to infuse into even the most routinely domestic activities is really the gift the film keeps on giving.

Gone Girl ***½ Directed by David Fincher. Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Missi Pyle, Sela Ward. With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent. A rare movie: a delicious thriller that provides plenty of titillation and gruesome pleasure while offering a dollop of social commentary. It’s smart, twisted, bloody, and almost guaranteed to satisfy anyone with a penchant for the macabre.

Wetlands *** Directed by David Wnendt. When an embarrassing shaving accident lands rebellious teen Helen (Carla Juri) in the hospital, she develops an unlikely bond with her male nurse (Christoph Letkowski) who she seduces with stories of her sexual adventures while using her illness to reunite her divorced parents. Even though Wetlands is absolutely, brutally unrelenting in its depictions of bodily functions and searching adolescent sexuality, it’s also an inventively sharp, briskly edited, spectacularly-acted post-adolescent coming-of-age story.

Keep on Keepin’ On *** Directed by Alan Hicks. A documentary that follows jazz legend Clark Terry over four years to document the mentorship between Terry and 23-year-old blind piano prodigy Justin Kauflin as the young man prepares to compete in an elite, international competition. One of the delights of this documentary is hearing Terry tell stories. Watching the movie feels as if you’ve sat down in someone else’s living room to hear tales of other legendary jazz musicians, such as Count Basie or Miles Davis.

Expedition to the End of the World *** Directed by Daniel Dencik. A three-mast schooner packed with artists, scientists and ambitions worthy of Noah or Columbus sails to the rapidly melting massifs of Northeast Greenland. The movie reveals some of the most stunning landscape cinematography imaginable, while everyone on the isolated ship waxes philosophical (which I guess I would do as well had I been in their place).

Middle of Nowhere *** Directed by Ava DuVernay. After her husband is sent to prison for eight years, medical student Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi) shelves her studies to focus on her partner’s welfare as he serves his time. Nothing is easily resolved in this complex drama, which makes it all the more honestly moving. More than anything, this is a film about a woman on a journey of self-discovery, finding her way gingerly. (This film was released originally in 2012. It is coming out on DVD now to capitalize on the fact that DuVernay directed Selma, which is currently receiving a lot of Oscar buzz.)

Bird People *** Directed by Pacale Ferran. Josh Charles, Anais Dumoustier. In an airport hotel on the outskirts of Paris, a Silicon Valley engineer abruptly chucks his job, breaks things off with his wife, and holes up in his room. It’s a tricky proposition that will surely ruffle the feathers of many viewers, but one that also makes a curious, if lasting, impression, thanks in part to strong turns from Demoustier and Charles.

The Two Faces of January **½ Directed by Hossein Amini. Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Dunst, Oscar Isaac. A con artist, his wife, and a stranger flee Athens after one of them is caught up in the death of a private detective. A sun-splashed noir that loses its appeal in the last act.

Jimi: All Is By My Side **½ Directed by John Ridley.André Benjamin, Hayley Atwill, Imogen Poots. Chronicles Jimi Hendrix’s rise to fame and the personal demons he battled along the way. At times the movie feels absolutely authentic. More often, though, it’s meandering and melodramatic, with far too many scenes of Hendrix jabbering and squabbling with two key female figures in his life, and not enough of the music.

Honeymoon **½ Directed by Leigh Janiak. Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway. Soon after arriving at a secluded woodland cabin, a honeymooning couple sees their bliss evaporate when a sleepwalking incident leads to increasingly odd behavior by the bride. It waffles between dramatizing youthful self-absorption and succumbing to it, and this tonal instability comes to effectively mirror the domestic discord that’s revealed to be its real subject.

Finding Fela! **½ Directed by Alex Gibney. A documentary that looks at the life and music of Nigerian singer Fela Kuti. As a portrait of a great artist and activist, Finding Fela is worth a look, but it’s Gibney’s weakest work as a filmmaker.

Memphis **½ Directed by Tim Sutton. A strange singer with "God given talent" drifts through the mythic city of Memphis. This is a bold and bewildering conjuring act, that might mean nothing at all, but the sleight of hand is worth the price of a rental.

Bad Turn Worse **½ Directed by Simon Hawkins, Zeke Hawkins. Three Texas teens hope to make a break for it and escape their dead-end existence in a cotton-mill town but get sucked into the seedy underbelly of organized crime when one of them steals from a gangster. Though its influences (Badlands, early Coens) are writ large, and the denouement disappoints, the performances convince, the dialogue captivates and the sense of backwater boredom is overpowering.

A Walk Among the Tombstones **½ Directed by Scott Frank. Private investigator Matthew Scudder (Liam Neeson) is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife. Unlike his tough guy roles in Taken or Non-Stop, Neeson is at least given some good dialogue. And he’s a lot more world-weary than kick-ass here.

21 Years: Richard Linklater ** Directed by Michael Dunaway, Tara Wood. The godfather of independent film is profiled in this survey of the first 21 years of the director’s career. It’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more Linklater documentaries out there, considering how substantial, influential, and plain brilliant his body of work is. In the meantime, this one will have to do.

Young Ones ** Directed by Jake Paltrow. Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, Kodi Smit-McPhee. As Earth withers in drought, farm owner Ernest (Shannon) defends his property and his children, Mary (Fanning) and Jerome (SmitMcPhee), from the harsh frontier. But Mary’s manipulative suitor plots to take Ernest’s land for a devious scheme, and Jerome is forced to fight back. The way it reaches to find the humanity in a place devoid of hope shows admirable attempt at a singular vision. But Paltrow overestimates the timeless nature of the story.

Alien Abduction ** Directed by Matty Beckerman. North Carolina’s Brown Mountain Lights phenomenon provides the grist for this saga that follows the vacationing Morris clan, whose camping trip becomes a living nightmare after a wrong turn leads to an encounter with aliens. Despite a neat narrative twist delivered during the end credits, this is ultimately a by-the-numbers enterprise that will please only the most undemanding renters.

Men, Women & Children *½ Directed by Jason Reitman. Examines the countless ways the online landscape affects the relationships, communication and self-images of digital-age adolescents, whose parents try to contend with the pitfalls. Both heavy-handed and ham-fisted, this is a self-important morality tale where you can see everyone’s uppance coming long before it arrives.

Jessabelle *½ Directed by Kevin Greutert. Recuperating at her father’s Louisiana home from an accident that’s left her unable to walk, Jessie (Sarah Snook) finds a gift from her long-dead mom and an angry ghost. The too-infrequent scare techniques are mostly by the book, rarely developing sufficient dread to heighten the film’s rather unremarkable climax.

The Culture High *½ Directed by Brett Harvey. Joe Rogan, Snoop Dog, Sir Richard Branson, Wiz Khalifa. A documentary that explores the deep moral divisions and scientific controversy that fuels America’s political debate regarding the legalization of marijuana. Harvey has gotten the documentary look and format down pat, complete with generic and gratuitous nature and cityscape shots. Where he shows an amateurish hand is in the term-paper-like voice-over narration and the inclusion of underqualified talking heads.

Revenge of the Green Dragons *½ Directed by Wai-Keung Lau, Andrew Loo. Two best friends rise through the ranks of New York’s Chinese underworld in the 1980s. In Lau and Loo’s telling, the off-the-boat indoctrination of young, undocumented Chinese families into vicious gangsterism is overstated and cartoonish, like The Warriors trying to pass itself off as a docudrama.

Viktor * Directed by Phillippe Martinez. Gerard Depardieu, Elizabeth Hurley. Viktor Lambert is serving a seven-year sentence for an art heist in his native France when, just months before his release, he learns of his son’s murder. Would be campy fun if it wasn’t so relentlessly tedious.

The Identical * Directed by Dustin Marcellino. Seth Green, Ashley Judd, Joe Pantoliano, Blake Rayne, Ray Liotta. Follows young Ryan Wade (Rayne) as he pursues a musical career, unaware that he’s the twin brother of a rock superstar. Embarrassing and weird.

Fugly! * Directed by Alfredo De Villa. John Leguizamo, Rhada Mitchell, Rosie Perez, Griffin Dunne. Fame proves elusive for comic Jesse Sanchez, who reflects on life from the bottom of a bathtub. It’s a comedy that’s so broad and cartoony that the occasional dramatic pivots seem diminished and ridiculous, like performing a soliloquy on a Chuck E. Cheese stage.

There’s something (mathematically) screwy about this sentence

From an article on Page 1B of today’s Austin American Statesman involving the cold front that hit the area:

"The National Weather Service says stiff winds will be coming from the north, too, which should make for tricky driving east or west, fully 50 percent of the directions Central Texas motorists drive."  

This Week’s DVD Releases

(Click on title to see the film’s trailer)
NOTE: It’s quite possible the best and the worst films to be released on DVD this year are both coming out this week.

Boyhood **** Directed by Richard Linklater. Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane. Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke. The life of a young man from age 6 to age 18. The greatest movies, the ones that stick with us, are those that hold up a mirror to the human condition and reflect something back at us that we too often manage to overlook. Boyhood is one of those movies, and with it Linklater proves he is among the best practitioners of that art.

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case *** Directed by Andreas Johnson. A documentary that reflects on artist Ai Weiwei’s battle against the lawsuit thrust upon him by the Chinese government in an effort to silence him. While Johnsen competently follows Ai over the course of more than a year of contemplation and anger, The Fake Case doesn’t introduce anything new to the equation, and mainly succeeds by virtue of its subject’s inherent appeal.

Get On Up *** Directed by Tate Taylor. Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer. Traces the legendary James Brown’s rocky road from humble origins to superstardom as the Godfather of Soul. A triumph — a messy, qualified triumph that even at 138 minutes makes an incomplete case for Brown’s meaning to American life and culture — but a triumph nevertheless.

Dinosaur 13 **½ Directed by Todd Douglas Miller. A documentary about the discovery of the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil ever found. Using home-video footage and talking-head interviews, Dinosaur 13 dramatically depicts the thrill of archaeological discovery. But the overbearing soundtrack and shots of weeping palaeontologists do feel a touch manipulative.

Ways to Live Forever **½ Directed by Gustavo Ron. Ben Chaplin, Emilia Fox, Greta Scacchi. Like most inquisitive boys, 12-year-old Sam wants to know about UFOs, horror movies, ghosts, and girls. Sam also has leukemia, and although his mother and father don’t want him to dwell on it, Sam wants to know everything about his disease and death, a possibility he might face. A little wan but a lot likable, Ron’s film is a forthright and surprisingly buoyant drama about facing death before you have really lived.

Horns ** Directed by Alexandre Aja. Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Max Minghella, Joe Anderson, Kelli Garner, Heather Graham, David Morse, Kathleen Quinlan, James Remar. In the aftermath of his girlfriend’s mysterious death, a young man awakens to find strange horns sprouting from his temples. This seems to have been made by people who couldn’t decide if their film was a horror flick, a whodunit, or a Hellboy knockoff.

The Houses October Built ** Directed by Bobby Roe. Looking to find an authentic, blood-curdling good fright for Halloween, five friends set off on a road trip in an RV to track down a legendary underground haunt. If you’re relatively easily scared or are in a room full of people who are, the film might be good for a few screams. But only if you’re the patient sort. It takes almost an hour to get to the good stuff.

Two Night Stand *½ Directed by Max Nichols. Miles Teller, Analeigh Tipton. After an ill-considered one-night stand, two young New Yorkers are obliged to extend their time together when a paralyzing snowstorm strikes the city, confining the pair to a small cramped apartment. Two Night Stand is a one-act sex comedy badly in need of two more acts, not nights.

The Longest Week *½ Directed by Peter Glanz. Jenny Slate, Olivia Wilde, Billy Crudup, Jason Bateman. After his wealthy parents divorce, 40-year-old Conrad Valmont (Bateman) loses his generous living allowance and posh hotel digs. It takes effort to turn a movie with a cast as appealing as the one in The Longest Week into a grating exercise in narcissism, but writer/director Glanz proves up to the task.

No Good Deed * Directed by Sam Miller. Taraji P. Henson, Idris Elba. An unstable escaped convict terrorizes a woman who is alone with her two children. By its end, No Good Deed becomes troublingly easy to read as a parable about the untrustworthiness of black men. The filmmakers, hopefully, may not have intended it that way, but the movie is so bereft of anything else that its forays into moralistic paranoia stick out.

Left Behind ½* Directed by Vic Armstrong. Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thompson, Nicky Whelan, Jordin Sparks. A small group of survivors are left behind after millions of people suddenly vanish and the world is plunged into chaos and destruction. Good God almighty: Not since Edward D. Wood Jr. unleashed a flotilla of paper-plate UFOs on beautiful downtown Burbank has there been a movie as stem-to-stern inept as this adaptation of the bestselling Christian novel series.

Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt (no stars) Directed by James Manera. The few remaining entrepreneurs in a country whose economy is on the verge of collapse rise up against a bureaucracy that’s squeezing the lifeblood out of the populace. The movie’s so slipshod and half-assed that I almost feel for author Ayn Rand, whose ideas have proved enduring enough that they at least deserve a fair representation, if only for the sake of refutation.