Or, “Five Dicks and Some Penises.” The unpretentiously titled “The Hangover Part II,” credited as “A Todd Phillips Movie,” is a Rube Goldberg-style assembly of gross-outs repeating the template (and most of the characters) of the first installment with a wedding expedition to Thailand in place of the original Las Vegas bachelor party gone to hell. Attempts at synopsis would diminish what pleasure there is in deciphering the wild details of the “Wolfpack”‘s newest degenerate blackout, but the rating reasons are accurate: “The film has been rated R by the MPAA for pervasive language, strong sexual content including graphic nudity, drug use and brief violent images.” Essentially a succession of degradations bulldozered forward by an aggressive, overstuffed collection of pop songs, “The Hangover Part II” is a splendid sample of screenwriting Jenga, where the most improbable of complications arrive in the midst of the story at just the right moment to move things along. By all lights, it should topple over at any second. Read the rest of this entry »

Attacking the CIA as corrupt, this comic anti-American action film is anti-corporate to boot: the CIA’s co-conspirator in a scheme to counterfeit hundred-dollar bills is none other than Black Forest, an evil contractor named after the former Blackwater USA (now called Xe Services LLC). Based on ninety-eight episodes of the 1980s NBC series, the good guys are four Army Rangers who’ve accomplished eighty missions in the past eight years. Now they execute a bunch of fun escapes, attacks and extractions in Mexico, Iraq, Germany and California. Director Joe Carnahan earlier looked at dirty cops in his “Narc” (2002) and risky cons in “Smokin’ Aces” (2006). He writes “The A-Team” with Jim Piddock, Skip Woods and Brian Bloom, who plays the Black Forest operative Pike. The original Mr. T. character is reprised by Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as a Gandhi-quoter with “Pity” tattooed on four knuckles of one hand and “Fool” on the other. Bradley Cooper plays the cute one who hides little metal implements in his mouth for getting out of jams when fast talk cannot. Sharlto Copley from “District 9” plays the nutcase who dabbles in recreational electroshock. Their leader is played by the fatherly Liam Neeson, who insults Black Forest employees as “assassins in polo shirts” and taunts a CIA spook: “Shouldn’t you be installing a dictatorship or overthrowing a democracy?” Later, the spook cracks: “The CIA’s got rules—our rules are just cooler.” Topical commentary includes lethal military retaliation against Mexicans trespassing on Arizona airspace, and a ward of mental patients cheering a fourth-wall-breaking 3-D film screening. “Overkill is underrated,” observes an A-Teamer, speaking for all concerned in this fun summer popcorn-peddler. The leftover bit after the end credits is not to wait for. With Jessica Biel, Gerald McRaney, Patrick Wilson. 118m. (Bill Stamets)

Movies are from Earth, “Valentine’s Day” is from Mars. “Valentine’s Day” is a strained romcom drawn from disparate strands, like hair in the drain after a shower, or spaghetti in the sink strainer the morning after pasta. “Valentine’s Day” is a delivery vehicle for the coming attractions for “Sex and the City 2.” “Valentine’s Day” stars Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift, Larry Miller, Serena Poon, Paul Williams, Tracy Reiner, Hannah Storm, Rance Howard and Kiko Kiko. “Valentine’s Day” has so many roles for nondescript actors with only a single line, you know the director has lots of friends who need to renew their SAG qualifications to keep their health insurance. “Valentine’s Day” is a feat of production management: all those actors show up for only a few hours and their scenes are intercut and you’ve got “Grand Hotel.” “Valentine’s Day” is so teemingly unfunny, it’s more like “Roach Motel.” “Valentine’s Day” makes kissing look unpleasant, desire mechanical, saccharine a kind of soma. “Valentine’s Day,” its director brags, was made quickly, cheaply, for “under $50 million.” “Valentine’s Day” demonstrates that “cheap” is a set of mind, not a price tag. “Valentine’s Day” was co-written by the team behind “He’s Just Not That Into You.” “Valentine’s Day” shows that “He’s Just Not That Into You” had a real director behind the camera. “Valentine’s Day” is directed by Garry Marshall, known for “Laverne and Shirley,” “Pretty Woman,” “The Princess Diaries” and the Dan Aykroyd-Rosie O’Donnell S&M comedy “Exit to Eden.” Wait, Garry Marshall is still alive? In the inevitable, inexorable blooper reel under the credits, Taylor Swift has an affectedly unaffected riff with Taylor Lautner that would charm the socks off an old man. “Valentine’s Day,” to paraphrase 1980s power-punk group Gang Of Four, is like V.D., you wouldn’t want to catch that. 125m. (Ray Pride)

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Eleven directors shot scripts by eleven writers in New York City. Two days of shooting was followed by seven days of editing. “Each story had to involve some kind of love encounter, broadly defined,” stipulated producer Emmanuel Benbihy, who is also credited as “Conceptor.” Tristan Carne is credited with the premise for this “collective” film. Paris was the locale for the earlier “Paris, I Love You.” Rio, Shanghai, Jerusalem and Mumbai are scheduled for future iterations. Several of the short stories in “New York, I Love You” are marvels of craft and tone, and even the weakest—directed by Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes and Brett Ratner—are quite watchable. Mira Nair directs Suketu Mehta’s touching transaction between an Indian Jain (Irrfan Khan) and a Hasidic Jew (Natalie Portman) in the Diamond District. Shekhar Kapur directs a comparably poignant encounter in a deluxe hotel scripted by Anthony Minghella between an aging diva (Julie Christie) and a deformed porter (Shia LaBeouf). Taxis make for recurring locales. Characters include a Dostoevsky fan, a method actor, an NYU professor, a painter, a pharmacist, a pickpocket, a prom date, a prostitute, a soundtrack composer, and a wandering videographer played by Emilie Ohana supplying transitions and a sweet coda. With Carlos Acosta, Orlando Bloom, James Caan, Hayden Christensen, Bradley Cooper, Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, John Hurt, Cloris Leachman, Robin Wright Penn, Maggie Q, Shu Qi, Christina Ricci, Olivia Thilrlby, Anton Yelchin, Ugur Yucel, and Eli Wallach. 110m. (Bill Stamets)

In another vocational comedy with a wordy hook, Sandra Bullock (she played a Manhattan book editor in this summer’s “The Proposal”) plays Mary Horowitz, a freelance “crossword puzzle constructor” for The Sacramento Herald. Screenwriter Kim Barker and director Phil Traill aren’t credits to their own calling, as they satirize their counterparts in the news entertainment sector. Mary pursues the title character, employed by CCN, a CNN-like cable news network. Once again Bullock’s socially disabled, romantically disadvantaged character is marginalized for taking her work too seriously. About five minutes into a blind date with Steve (Bradley Cooper from “The Hangover”) she’s mounted him in his car: “Now I’m going to eat you like a mountain lion.” To get her off, this news cameraman says he just got called away to cover breaking news. Gee, it would be great if she could join him on assignments. She thinks he means it. She publishes a puzzle that’s all about Steve that gets her fired. Off she goes in full-throttle man-chaser mode. To the tune of Peggy March’s 1963 hit “I Will Follow Him,” Mary undertakes an interstate trip to follow Steve at work wherever news breaks. Her big red ugly boots are made for stalking. Her hyper-verbal tic is tiresome as solo screwball patter. The normalcy message is inane. With Thomas Haden Church, Ken Jeong, Howard Hesseman, Beth Grant, Katy Mixon, DJ Qualls and Charlene Yi for seven seconds. 99m. (Bill Stamets)

Director Todd Phillips (“Old School,” “Road Trip”) and screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” “Four Christmases”) surpass those four comedies with this smart vulgarity set in Vegas. A knowing nod is found in Phillips’ variant on his possessory credit: “A Todd Phillips Movie” (instead of “Film.”) The humor seesaws from clever to crude. Doug the groom (Justin Bartha) and two college buddies—Phil, a high school teacher (Bradley Cooper), and Stu, a dentist (Ed Helms)—steer a silver 1969 Mercedes Benz convertible to Las Vegas two days before Doug’s wedding. Read the rest of this entry »

A line in a 2003 episode of the HBO series “Sex and the City” turned into the title of a 2004 self-help book that is now the title of a romantic comedy. “He’s just not that into you” is what every single straight woman needs to hear during her pointless, pathetic wait for a call or a commitment from that man she really ought to do without. “Sex and the City”‘s consultant Greg Behrendt and executive story editor Liz Tuccill co-wrote the book, and Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein co-write the screenplay directed by Ken Kwapis (“Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and many episodes of “The Office,” “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Malcolm in the Middle”). Subtitled “The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys,” the book runs through scenarios where its one-line mantra cues women to move on, and endlessly lies that all of you are lovely and sexy and likely to meet that super-fine guy you truly deserve. But no chasing: “men like to chase and you have to let us chase you.” Fortunately, this ensemble film is smarter than that about its 20- and 30-year-olds in Baltimore, despite traces of the book’s set-up of case studies and letters-to-dating-experts. Bar manager Alex (Justin Long from “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” “Live Free or Die Hard”) dispenses shots of tough love—”If a guy is treating you like he doesn’t give a shit, he genuinely doesn’t give a shit”—to Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin). Diverse relationships are interpreted by a likeable cast that includes Ben Affleck (“Jersey Girl, “Chasing Amy”), Jennifer Aniston (“The Break Up”), Drew Barrymore (“Music and Lyrics”), Scarlett Johansson (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) and Jennifer Connelly (“Reservation Road”). Connections between the coupled and the uncoupled are not played for cute. Insights on dating are deeper than the genre typically tenders. So is the film’s coy wisdom about happy endings. With Bradley Cooper, Kevin Connolly and Kris Kristofferson. 129m. Widescreen. (Bill Stamets) 

Carl (Jim Carrey) needs a gimmick to get a life. After five years and zero promotions, he’s going nowhere as junior loan officer. Three years after breaking up with his girlfriend, he’s an asocial naysayer. Then he attends a cultish self-help lecture, much like an EST meeting from the 1970s. “Yes is the New No” is the mantra of the movement led by Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp). Carl starts saying “yes” to all sorts of things. That makes life a bit more interesting, besides freeing screenwriters to invent plenty of near random bits. Nicholas Stoller (director of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), Jarrad Paul (who played Zit Boy in “Liar Liar”) and Andrew Mogel base this OK comedy on the book by Danny Wallace. Zooey Deschanel supplies the love interest as a scooter-riding singer in a band called Munchausen By Proxy. Peyton Reed– whose “Down with Love” surpassed his “Bring It On” and “The Break-Up”– fails to optimize her inborn quirk. In “Liar Liar” (1997) Carrey played a lying lawyer who was forced to tell the truth, pursuant to a wish made his little boy when he blew out the candles of his birthday cake. Here Carl’s new “yes” strategy leads him to log on to PersianWifeFinder.com, approve 561 micro-loans and take lessons in speaking Korean, flying planes and playing guitar. The only downside to all this reckless yesness is that his life starts to interest Homeland Security. With Bradley Cooper, John Michael Higgins, Rhys Darby, Danny Masterson, Fionnula Flanagan. 104m. (Bill Stamets)