By Ray Pride

There’s small, there’s large, there’s big, and then there’s overblown and overbearing.

There’s the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, there’s “King Kong,” and now there’s Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s unlikely bestseller, “The Lovely Bones,” written with his usual collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. “The Lovely Bones” is narrated from beyond the grave by a young girl, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), as she watches over her parents (Rachel Weisz, Marc Wahlberg) and her rapist-murderer (Stanley Tucci), trying to make sense of what’s happened to her so she can move beyond the strange limbo she’s in. This is where the overbearing part comes in: in concept, her surroundings are limited to the experience and emotions of a girl her age, but the riot of stylized color and bold backdrops is less evocative of pictorial masters of subjective delirium like Powell and Pressburger (“Black Narcissus,” “The Red Shoes”) than of IMAX-sized screensavers. Fields and skies that resemble ads for over-the-counter antihistamines do the tale no favor, either.

But after its Oscar-qualifying run, Paramount and DreamWorks made a bold marketing choice, pulling the film’s Christmas release and rescheduling for mid-January. Jackson has so superlatively realized the emotional surges of an immature, inexperienced girl that it’s now being positioned as a film for an audience that sees and re-sees the “Twilight” movies. It’ll be fascinating to see how that plays out, even if some older viewers wonder where the bold yet delicate director of “Heavenly Creatures” went. Read the rest of this entry »

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Writer-director Nora Ephron (“You’ve Got Mail,” “Sleepless in Seattle”) simmers an affectionate portrait of two American women linked by French cuisine. “Based on two true stories” reads a novel title at the start of this twin biopic about a cookbook writer and a blogger. “Julia” (Meryl Streep) comes from “My Life in France,” penned by the late Julia Child with her grandnephew Alex Prud’homme. Her memoir recounts how the self-described “six-foot-two-inch, 36-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian” fell in love with French cooking during her husband’s posting at the U.S. embassy in Paris after World War II. In 1961 she published “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I.” “Julie” (Amy Adams) is Julie Powell. The 30-year-old New Yorker turned her 2002 blog about preparing every dish in Child’s cookbook into the 2005 book “Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment.” Ephron alternates episodes in the lives of Julia and Julie for an ambling chronicle of Julia’s infectious bonhomie and Julie’s beguiling angst. “Julie & Julia” is more about savoring their company than suspense about how they will make their ways into print. Loving their roles, Streep and Adams are amusing, unassuming connoisseurs of life in the kitchen. McCarthyism and 9/11, respectively, offer counterpoints to the ensuing joie de cuisine. Unlike the performance artists who enacted all the tips of Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, Powell appeared to undertake her homage without snark. Julie likens Julia to “some great big Good Fairy.” Ephron offers a butter-based alternative to “Super Size Me,” Morgan Spurlock’s thirty-day stunt of eating three daily meals at McDonald’s. Upgrading in-store pop tunes is a lithe, lilting score by Andre Desplat. With Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Emond. 110m. (Bill Stamets)

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A tiny mouse with unusual tastes is the star of this children’s tale made with uncommon craft. Despereaux (voiced by Matthew Broderick) has an un-mouse-like love of light, music, reading and Princess Pea (voiced by Emma Watson). He undertakes a quest that will remake the kingdom for rodents and royals alike. The painterly style of this lovely animated feature refers to Old World parchment, thread, and fairy tales, not state-of-the-industry software, tie-ins and fart jokes. It’s also an anomaly for articulating humanist values, a reading enhanced by the choice of Sigourney Weaver as the narrator. (Who better to map a land cursed with fear upheld by tribunals?) In a let-me-tell-you-a-story manner, she makes knowing asides to viewers, just like the original narrator of “The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread.” Author Kate DiCamillo asked “dear readers” to pause on key words in her 2003 book: “quest,” “chiaroscuro,” “perfidy” and “empathetic.” (DiCamillo’s “Because of Winn-Dixie” was earlier adapted to the screen.) “Despereaux” director Sam Fell displayed a knack for handling caste-conflict in the realm of rodents in his “Flushed Away” (2006), and here relates the distinctive cultures of meek mice and nasty rats. Co-director Rob Stevenhagen is an animator making his directing debut. Writer Gary Ross lends a lighter touch than felt in his more pedantic “Pleasantville,” another allegory of outcasts, esthetes and liberators. With uplifting whiffs of savory soup, “The Tale of Despereaux” champions storytelling as the light of the world, from torture-racked dungeons to castle spires, a land where a mouse scampers across the words “Once upon a time…” all the way to “… happily ever after.” And Despereaux makes it just so. With the voices of Dustin Hoffman, Tracey Ullman, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci, Ciaran Hinds, Frances Conroy, Frank Langella, Richard Jenkins and Christopher Lloyd. 94m. Widescreen. (Bill Stamets)

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Producer Art Linson has the power to produce a film dedicated to the proposition that producers are powerless. Pushed by Robert De Niro, Linson adapted his 2002 memoir “What Just Happened: Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line” into a screenplay that’s more blithe than bitter. It’s all it-takes-one-to-know-one tattling that stars De Niro (“Wag the Dog”) as a Linson-like producer named Ben who endures the same emasculating indignities Linson recounts in his book, a follow-up to his 1995 “A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood.” Linson’s producer credits include “Car Wash,” “This Boy’s Life,” “Heat,” “Fight Club” and “Into The Wild.” “What Just Happened?” opens with a test screening of Ben’s latest production, an arty, bloody film titled “Fiercely” starring Sean Penn. The red carpet at Cannes beckons, once that business about the dog dying in the last reel is fixed. Ben’s next project will star Bruce Willis, unwilling to shed flab or shave his bushy beard before shooting starts in five days. Ben also deals with two ex-wives and a teen daughter, the debris of his so-called family life. Barry Levinson (“Wag the Dog,” “Jimmy Hollywood”) directs with wit, extracting ripe turns from an in-the-know cast. Willis and Penn are regulars as self-spoofers, and Catherine Keener (“Simone,” “Full Frontal”) kills as Ben’s studio overseer. “I hope to get rid of the clichés of producers as big fat cigar chompers,” said the 66-year-old Linson, who copped to 175 pounds in a phone interview. “When Barry Levinson first read the script, he called me and said there’s nothing in this I haven’t experienced.” Linson insists his film, unlike his film-inside-his-film, tested well with audiences. He said he pre-screened it in “odd cities” such as Baltimore and Dallas. “It’s only people in Hollywood who think it’s too insider,” he notices. As a foray in occupational ethnography, it’s a boffo crowd-pleaser. Except for dog lovers. With Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Robin Wright Penn, Kristen Stewart and Michael Wincott. 118m. (Bill Stamets)

“Swing Vote” is yet another hosanna to Americana, like 1997′s “The Postman” directed by Kevin Costner. Once again, Costner stars as a downscale everyman who upgrades to the great helmsman. Here he plays Bud, an alcoholic single dad laid off from his job at an egg packaging plant in New Mexico. Due to an accidentally unplugged voting machine, a vote in his name did count. And the outcome of the presidential election is undecided until he recasts his vote in ten days, the time frame of the screenplay by Joshua Michael Stern & Jason Richman. Joshua Michael Stern directs an ensemble cast stocked with news personalities, including Campbell Brown, James Carville, Mary Hart, Arianna Huffington, Bill Maher and Chris Matthews. The Republican incumbent (Kelsey Grammer) and the Democratic candidate (Dennis Hopper) come to town to woo the ultimate swing-voter. Tom Petty and Willie Nelson make cameos at the behest of the two contenders. The two campaign managers, played by Nathan Lane and Stanley Tucci, are stock types, but their quickie campaign ads to appeal to Bud’s supposed issues are brilliantly cynical. There’s scant political context in this public-service announcement: JFK is the most recent president mentioned, and there’s no trace of 9/11, Iraq or Afghanistan. “If America has a true enemy, I guess it’s me,” Bud confesses on national TV, when acknowledging a dereliction of civic duty. Madeline Carroll plays Bud’s take-charge 12-year-old daughter Molly, the single most wise, decent, competent, empowered character in the entire film. With a better wardrobe, she’d be a candidate for an American Girl doll. With Paula Patton, Judge Reinhold, George Lopez and Mare Winningham. 119m. (Bill Stamets)

Canadian director Patricia Rozema (“When Night Is Falling,” “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing”), South African-born screenwriter Ann Peacock (“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe”) and Abigail Breslin, America’s indie sweetheart from “Nim’s Island” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” together create a genuinely wholesome adventure set in 1934. Breslin is the title Kit, a 9-year-old hoping to write for the Cincinnati Register. Before getting her first byline and penny-a-word payday, she will crack a string of thefts blamed on the unemployed. The messages are girl-empowering and hobo-embracing. “Not all hoboes are the same,” Kit observes. Her character is based on a doll born and branded to enhance female esteem: “American Girl celebrates a girl’s inner star—that little whisper inside that encourages her to stand tall, reach high and dream big.” When her car salesman dad (Chris O’Donnell) loses his job and his car, he heads to Chicago to look for work. Her mother (Julia Ormond) takes in boarders, sells eggs and sews feedsack dresses. Valerie Tripp’s 2000 book “Meet Kit,” the first in a series supplying Kit’s backstory, simplifies the Depression in 1934: “About three years ago people got nervous about their money and stopped buying as many things as they used to.” Thankfully, there’s only a whisper of corporate ka-ching on screen, although American Girl thoughtfully offers a $22 model of Kit’s typewriter “that ‘dings’ just like the real thing when she gets to the end of a line.” Kids take note: Kit reads and writes, and never plays with dolls or goes to the picture show. With Wallace Shawn, Stanley Tucci, Jane Krakowski, Joan Cusack, Max Thieriot and Willow Smith.) (Bill Stamets)