MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA

, 160 min, 2008

Director: Spike Lee
Writer: James McBride (screenplay), James McBride (novel)
Stars: Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso

Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna is a long, sometimes brilliant, often meandering, maddening, frustrating, yet powerful take on World War II – indeed, a war film like perhaps only Lee could make.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE

, 110 min, 2008

Director: Neil LaBute
Writers: David Loughery (screenplay) and Howard Korder (screenplay), David Loughery (story)

Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington

Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace, the provocateur’s latest attempt at ripping the lid off of moral hypocrisy in upper middle class America, exposing the rotten core just under the surface, is a treatise on modern race relations couched in the terms and style of a Hollywood thriller.

RIGHTEOUS KILL

, 101 min, 2008

Director: Jon Avnet
Writer: Russell Gewirtz (written by)
Stars: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Carla Gugino

Righteous Kill is a police thriller that is a decently engaging example of itself; nothing more, nothing less.

BURN AFTER READING

, 96 min, 2008

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Writers: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (written by)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney

The Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading, their slap-happy and often hilarious follow-up to their 2007 Best Picture Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, is the 180 degree opposite: an off-the-wall, and over the moon, and outta orbit spy thriller combined with a loopy, quirky and often hilarious sex farce. And that’s not even counting when it’s parodying those disciplines. Then again, the Coens have never let discipline be their strongsuit, and it shows here with a labyrinthine plot that is at the service of what is essentially a stylistic exercise and an extreme examination of the far shores of human (if cartoonish) behavior.