Cinematical

A Serious Man
Coen Brothers. Academy Award-nominated. Need more? "The culmination of their lives, reminiscent both of their own suburban childhoods in the '60s, and of their cinematic successes over the last twenty-five years." Michael Stuhbarg stars as "a man utterly at a loss to explain his life's severe turn for the worse; he is a man desperate for answers." (Monika Bartyzel, Cinematical.) Buy it.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

Couples Retreat
Shameless it may be, but "you end up laughing more than expected," I wrote in my review. Vince Vaughan, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, Faizon Love, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, Kristen Bell and Kali Hawk star. The comedy is broad and silly, but harsher truths occasionally emerge. Rent it.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

The Time Traveler's Wife
Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams star in an adaptation of the novel by Audrey Niffenegger. "Adds up to a mildly successful time-passer, though one too concerned with trying to target its audience rather than with trying to figure out where it's actually coming from." (Jeffrey M. Anderson, Cinematical.) Rent it.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

The Stepfather
"The most intense Lifetime Channel Original Movie that the Lifetime Channel never made. ... [It] just isn't enough." (Peter Hall, Horror Squad.) Skip it.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

Also out: Serious Moonlight, Free Style, Emma, Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic.

After the jump: Indies on DVD, library titles on Blu-ray, and Collector's Corner!

Hmm, why would religious leaders be disturbed by a horror / comedy movie that features sex, large-breasted women in lingerie, plenty of bloodshed, a beheading, and zombies ripping still-beating hearts out of chests? The Menstruating Ghost of Puncak (AKA Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan) has come under fire by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which is asking the government to ban the film, according to The Jakarta Post.

The Council fears that the movie could "hurt the younger generation's morality" and are appealing to Muslims not to see it. (Indonesia reportedly has the world's largest population of Muslims.) However, the Film Censorship Board claims they have not received any such request, with one board member telling Jakarta Globe: "More than likely this latest rumor is some kind of promotional gimmick for the film." Still, the clerical Council insists on their concerns: "it's violating social norms. It's okay to have freedom of expression but without violating the norms [of decency]." The film opened in Indonesia yesterday and, as far as know, it's still playing.

Andi Soraya and members of the pop group Trio Macan star; Steady Rimba )?!) directed. The trailer, which is posted after the jump, is NSFW due to partial nudity and numerous bloody bits, including the beheading. It looks like a somewhat routine, low-rent, soft-core horror flick, the kind that could be a lot of fun if you're in the right mood and atmosphere -- and if your morals have already been damaged. You decide!

Jennifer Hudson set the bar very high for American Idol contestants. Hudson may not have won the competition, but she earned a singing career and then won an Academy Award for Dreamgirls, her big screen acting debut. Carrie Underwood won American Idol in 2005 and promptly blazed a trail to country music stardom. Now she wants to make movies too.

Instead of appearing in a splashy, big-budget musical, however, Underwood will take on a supporting role in the indie drama Soul Surfer, reports Variety. Based on the true story of teen surfing champion Bethany Hamilton, who had one of her arms bitten off by a shark, Soul Surfer stars Anna Sophia Robb (Race to Witch Mountain) as Hamilton, with Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt as her surfing parents. Filming has begun in Hawaii under the direction of Sean McNamara (3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Bratz).

Hamilton's religious faith is clearly very important to her -- she even has a "Daily Devotional" on the front page of her web site -- so Underwood's supporting role as a church youth leader is likely to be an important one. Underwood's a gifted musical performer, and while that doesn't ensure commensurate acting talent, this sounds like a good role for her to get her feet wet. Maybe she'll sing a song or two. And, hey, it's gotta be better than From Justin to Kelly, right?

Speculation has been rife about the planned "reboot" (yeah, I hate that word too) of the Spider-Man movie franchise, now that Sam Raimi and Toby Maguire have departed that particular Marvel universe. Adding fuel to the fire, Logan Lerman tells Access Hollywood that he's been talking with Sony about playing Peter Parker.

Lerman, 18 years of age, stars in fantasy flick Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which is due out next week. Previously he's had roles in the 3:10 to Yuma remake and Gamer. (I first saw him in the TV show Jack & Bobby; he was the younger brother and quite good.) Lerman says of Spider-Man: "There has been a few discussions, it's definitely something I'm looking into." He claims to be a huge fan of the character and the series. He acknowledges that talks are in the early stages, but says: "I'd love to focus on the human element a bit more."

Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios have said the next film in the series will focus "on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises," though it's not clear if the new, high school Peter Parker will take cues from the original Spider-Man universe or perhaps display influences from Brian Michael Bendis' Ultimate version of the comic. Somehow, I don't think Logan Lerman will be the last we hear of possible Peter Parkers in the coming weeks, and possibly months, as the picture gets ready for its 2012 release.

Update: The Hollywood Reporter adds that both the studio and Lerman's reps have denied there's anything to this story, adding there are currently no ongoing discussions with Lerman for the role and that no offers have been made.

Indie Roundup is your weekly guide to what's new and upcoming in the world of independent film. Pictured clockwise, from upper left: The Freebie, Winter in Wartime, Trucker, Saint John of Las Vegas.

Deals. Our own Eric D. Snider highlighted The 10 Sundance Films You Need to Watch For, which nicely sums up the buzz and the biggest distribution deals from the festival. Millions of dollars have been committed and the theatrical release schedule will be dotted with Sundance acquisitions for months to come. And the deals continue, as reported by our friends at indieWIRE.

Phase 4 Films won a bidding war for rights to writer/director Katie Aselton's The Freebie. Aselton stars with Dax Shepherd as a married couple whose relationship "is still full of love but lacking in lust," according to that dashing critic Eric D. Snider. He called it "an honest, unadorned relationship drama that suggests a new talent on the horizon." We await word of specific release plans.

Martin Koolhaven's Winter in Wartime has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. The drama follows a 13-year-old boy who becomes involved with the Dutch resistance after he helps a wounded British soldier near the end of World War II. Winter in Wartime was shortlisted, but ultimately not nominated, for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. As with The Freebie, specific release plans have not yet been announced.

Online / On Demand Viewing. Acclaimed drama Trucker, starring Michelle Monaghan, is now available on iTunes. Cinematical's Erik Davis wrote: "Monaghan finally delivered the sort of performance I've known was trapped somewhere inside her, hidden behind a variety of big, flashy Hollywood films."

After the jump: Saint John of Las Vegas reaps material rewards.

Vinnie Barbarino, where have you gone? John Travolta was the breakout star of the 70s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, so forgive me if I see every role he's done since then as a variation of the sweet, wisecracking Sweathog. He was Nancy Allen's ill-intentioned accomplice in Brian DePalma's Carrie, but after he hit the big time as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (1977), he stayed firmly on the side of the good guys until John Woo's Broken Arrow (1996). In that high-octane action flick, he played an out and out evil, cackling villain.

Travolta had played bad boys throughout his career, but even professional killer Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction had a core of heroic goodness somewhere inside. Not so the nuke stealing, government blackmailing Major Vic Deakins. That performance unleashed the devil inside, and over the past 14 years Travolta has played a series of oft-hysterical, over the top villains (Face/Off, Swordfish, The Punisher, and last year's The Taking of Pelham 123).

In Pierre Morel's From Paris With Love, which opens on Friday, Travolta looks, acts, and tosses around the f-bomb like a menacing, swaggering, nasty bad guy, even though, (psst!) he's supposed to be a good guy. Whenever he's played a character like the over-the-top American spy he plays in Paris, he seems to be having a helluva good time, even if the movie fails to live up to expectations, which is why I've come to prefer the "Bad Boy Travolta." The "Good Guy Travolta" in movies like Old Dogs is the kind that receives Razzie nominations. What about you? Do you prefer "Good Guy Travolta" or "Bad Boy Travolta"?

Two professional basketball players were recently suspended for the remainder of the season by the NBA for brandishing firearms in the workplace. Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton got into serious trouble for their actions but, to their credit, at least they didn't start shooting each other on the court. Neither, by the way, do the players in the Thai action flick Fireball -- they just beat the crap out of each other.

Fireball, which was released on DVD last week, combines basketball with Thai boxing. Director Thanakorn Pongsuwan says that he wanted to try something different; setting the action on a basketball court serves two purposes. First, it enlarges the field of play for the martial arts action while still limiting it to a set stage. Second, pitting two teams of "players" against each other creates a dizzying array of battles to fill the screen. Thus, the tired premise of savage, underground duels to the death, controlled by shadowy criminal figures gambling large sums of money on the outcome, gets a fresh coat of blood paint.

Pongsuwan amps up the violence and films in such a way that it's often difficult to figure out what's going on. The quick cuts and crazy angles help cover up the extensive wire work. And the basketball is really incidental to the bashing and the kicking. Between the action scenes, though, we get to know the player / warriors on one team, and the plight of the characters adds some nice, if secondary drama to the fisticuffs.

Must movies always portray female journalists as lame, tamed at the expense of their journalistic ethics? Sara Libby at doubleX asks because she's seen Crazy Heart, directed by Scott Cooper. Jeff Bridges won a Golden Globe for his performance as Bad Blake, a country singer redeemed (perhaps) by the love of a good woman. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jean Craddock, a small-town journalist assigned to interview him. Libby describes the character as "the latest in a long series of silver-screen female reporters who can't help but fall for their subjects."

She lists a dispiriting number of examples, starting in the 1930s and continuing down to Sally Field in Absence of Malice, Nora Dunn in Three Kings, Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and Katie Holmes in Thank You For Smoking. Even Helen Mirren and Rachel McAdams were "marginalized and dependent" on Russell Crowe to save the day in State of Play. Libby notes Gyllenhaal's comment to The New York Times that her character in Crazy Heart was not making a rational choice, "at any level, at any point." Libby concludes: "That's precisely what makes it infuriating."

I had a similar reaction to the casual way that Gyllenhaal's character conducts herself without regard to her ethics. As Libby points out: "Injecting journalists into movies makes for a convenient plot device." Yet male journalists seem to get carte blanche to do whatever they want, while still getting the story and maintaining their professional reputation. Women are reduced to stereotypes -- or are they? How did you react to the actions of Gyllenhaal's character in Crazy Heart? What movies have portrayed female journalists in a positive light?

[ Via Kevin Roderick at LA Observed ]

Bodies bob to the surface of a deserted river. A playful little girl is captured on home video. A troubled man waits for his daughter. Edge of Darkness, a powerhouse dramatic thriller directed by Martin Campbell, tends a bed of smoldering embers that occasionally, unexpectedly, explodes into a raging fire.

The largest ember is Craven, a Boston police detective. As played by Mel Gibson, Craven becomes a man on a mission only after his daughter is shot dead in front of his eyes. Before that, his life is a blank slate, more notable for the things that are missing rather than any sense of purpose. Unresolved questions follow him around like a lost puppy: why didn't he visit his only daughter? Why did he demonstrate so little interest in her career or her friends? What happened to his wife, evidently long gone from the scene? Why doesn't he have any friends? What kind of police detective is he?

From the evidence presented, Craven is a haunted loner with deep reserves of seething anger and brutal competence. The death of his daughter destroys him, as though he himself had absorbed the shotgun blast to the gut, but there's never any question that his own brand of justice will be served. First, though, he has to figure out who was trying to kill him.

Indie Roundup is your weekly guide to what's new and upcoming in the world of independent film. This week: a special festival edition. Pictured, clockwise from upper left: One Too Many Mornings, International Film Festival Rotterdam, El Sol, Red White & Blue.

Fest Scene. As our extensive coverage of Sundance 2010 reflects, the festival has kicked off the year in style, inspiring genuine enthusiasm for new American independent films. Sundance is not the only place to discover exciting new work, though, and relatively few of the festival's selections win distribution deals, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.

Enter The Film Collaborative, a new "non-profit, full-service provider." As reported by indieWIRE, the outfit "aims to provide a range of what it describes as 'affordable' distribution, educational and marketing services to independent filmmakers, but it will not take film rights." The latter is an important point for filmmakers, obviously. The Film Collaborative says it's "opening up a new landscape of distribution opportunities free of extraneous middlemen and unfair contract terms." Hmm, if I'm reading this correctly, The Film Collaborative is a middle man, and most of their services are fee-based, but I guess the idea is that one middle man is better than many middlemen.

Meanwhile, Cinetic Rights Management's FilmBuff, self-described as a "digital movie label," has launched a channel on the Babelgum mobile platform, according to a prepared statement by the company. Babelgum has a downloadable app for phones (if they happen to be smart, like iPhone and Android), and FilmBuff will make available past Sundance titles such as Slacker, The Order of Myths, and The Unforeseen on their channel; 'indies to go,' as it were.

After the jump: The YouTube experiment! Strange cartoons and slacker revenge at Rotterdam!