Earlier this month, I posted about a contest for Full Grown Men. It's the story of a 30-something man and father (Matt McGrath) who can't seem to grow up, so he runs away from home -- right back to his childhood. But it's not just a case of a man taking comfort in environmental memories -- he puts on the whole kid suit, reverting back to the self-centered and pretty careless kid he once was as he tries to hook up with an old friend and find reinforcement for his idea that never growing up is okay.

I was able to see a screener of the film, which just opened in New York City, and it's not a bad indie. I will admit -- watching a man act like a selfish child can be pretty tiresome, but there are some great supporting performances that make the journey enjoyable -- Judah Friedlander as the friend, plus Alan Cumming as a "disgruntled ex-theme park employee," Amy Sedaris as "a horny bartending clown," and Debbie Harry as "a delusional mermaid."

The film is currently playing at the Cinema Village Theater in New York City, and will roll out to San Francisco, Florida, and other cities next month.

I've no idea how I never noticed this during my random searches on IMDb, but there's a new indie film coming out that sounds like it could be a lot of fun; it has a great cast that makes things even better, and there's a contest to win tickets. The film in question is Full Grown Men, and Emerging Pictures' blog has thrown up a contest to win tickets to the film's New York City opening on June 25, with further contests to follow for San Francisco and Miami.

The film stars Matt McGrath (the spurned friend in The Anniversary Party) as a man who acts more like a kid than an adult. When his wife chastises him for being a playmate to his son rather than a father, he grabs his childhood friend (Judah Friedlander) and heads for their favorite theme park in Central Florida, where they're confronted with the incongruities between their past and present. But it's also got some sweet cameos -- Alan Cumming as a "disgruntled ex-theme park employee," Amy Sedaris as "a horny bartending clown," and Debbie Harry as "a delusional mermaid."

As for the contest ... this is all about boys trapped in men's bodies, so you just have to do a little writing. "If you're in love with an overgrown boy, or it's your own inner child that's gone wild -- or if you're just noticing Peter Pandemonium everywhere" you can comment in the EP blog and grab your chance to win. And if you are in NYC, San Fran, or Miami and check it out, let us know what you thought of the movie.

I hate to borrow material from another film critic, but a colleague of mine offered the following words after we finished watching Chapter 27: "It's like a feature-length version of De Niro's 'You talkin' to me' speech from Taxi Driver -- only without Scorsese, Schrader or De Niro." I repeat that sentence because it perfectly encapsulates my own opinion on the deadly dull and seriously dreary Chapter 27, a movie that promises to offer some insight into why Mark David Chapman, on one chilly night in 1980, shot the beloved John Lennon to death. But after 90-some minutes of J.P. Schaefer's writing/directing debut, I was no closer to understanding Chapman's motivations than I was 90 minutes earlier. I know it has something to do with J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, but any other specifics are lost beneath waves of babble, tedium and pretense.

Lead actor Jared Leto earned himself a producer's credit on Chapter 27, and it's blatantly obvious from the first few frames of the flick that the young actor really, ahem, beefed up for the role. And Leto wants you to know it, which is why we see Chapman parading around in his tighty-whities for two or three scenes. Jared might as well look directly into the camera lens and scream "Look how much weight I gained for this role!" To make matters worse, Leto (who, to be fair, has done some excellent work in movies like Panic Room, American Psycho and Requiem for a Dream) opts to brandish a rather nasally high-pitched squeak of a voice, which makes Chapter 27 feel like a straight-faced parody of Capote. And I don't think that's what Leto and Company were going for.

• Breakfast On Pluto - The Crying Game writer-director Neil Jordan never really does get into why Patrick “Kitten” Braden becomes a transvestite, but he does manage to save his film from being a rote and self-indulgent celebration of uniqueness when he bobs and then weaves a political cry (for Irish independence) into it. The criminally attractive Cillian Murphy plays Kitten a little too much like Mrs. Doubtfire, though he does sustain the character, and an incredible glam-packed soundtrack helps create an energetic sense of time and place.
• Deep Blue - While not as stunning as the likes of Winged Migration or March Of The Penguins, this BBC-produced nature film sure is pretty to look at. With a calming, minimalist narration by Pierce Brosnan (supplanting Michael Gambon's from the UK release) and a dreamy score by George Fenton, the underwater photography is stunning. The beast-on-beast violence is a bit intense, with one hapless sea lion meeting his end when two orcas play hacky-sack with his mangled corpse (in slow-motion, no less).

The first ten minutes are the funniest part of Live Free or Die, a comedy about one of the dumbest criminals ever. In the opening sequence, we see Rugged (Aaron Stanford) stealing quarters out of a paper stand-up for charity, pocketing a pack of rebate coupons for vodka and then covertly ripping bar codes of the backs of the bottles, and trying to sell "stolen" speakers out of the back of his van (it turns out he buys the speakers himself, but figures people will pay more for hot goods). I couldn't stop laughing.

Unfortunately, Live Free or Die doesn't sustain the goofy momentum of the opening sequence. The story sets up Rugged as a legendary criminal, the New Hampshire equivalent of Clyde Barrow, and flashes back to show how he earned that reputation. He teams up with his old clam-shack coworker Lagrand (Paul Schneider), who never seems to have a grasp of what's going on. Most of their crimes are inadvertent, and of course nothing goes the way Rugged plans.