"Bernie" — The real stars of Richard Linklater's black comedy are, unquestionably, the townspeople of Carthage, Texas. In documentarylike interviews, the East Texas locals (a mix of real Carthage folk and Texas actors) fill the film from start to finish: a gang of colorful gossips whose heavy accents and wry prattle essentially narrate the story. What drives their fascination is the true-life tale of a mannered, devout mortician, Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), who in 1997 was arrested for killing the elderly millionaire heiress Marjorie Nugent (a bitter, hardened Shirley MacLaine). The remarkable thing about the case is just how out of character such an act is for Tiede. As Black plays him, he's cartoonishly cheerful — not just a churchgoing man, but a member of the choir and just about every other community group. The film never quite rises to full comedy, but remains locked in a state of satirical curiosity, marveling at its own contradictions. Black, who memorably starred in Linklater's "School of Rock," never gives in to a punch line, but his grand, absurdist performance is closer to parody than realism. He has a number of musical moments, including belting out "Seventy-Six Trombones" in full regalia. This is Linklater's Preston Sturges comedy, an ode to small-town Texas life, where civil society is prized so much as to outweigh a little ol' thing like murder. With an excellent Matthew McConaughey as a self-promoting district attorney. PG-13 for some violent images and brief strong language. 104 minutes. Three stars out of four.
— Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer
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"The Five-Year Engagement" — The problem that plagues so many Judd Apatow productions — the one that keeps good comedies from being great ones — unfortunately exists here, too. It's a matter of knowing when to say when, of knowing which bits should be trimmed and which should have been cut altogether. "The Five-Year Engagement" is so scattered and overlong, it really feels like it lasts five years, and even the inherent likability of stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt cannot overcome the film's pervasive sense of strain. It becomes so tortured, it almost gets to the point where you hope these two will break up for good, just because it's the pragmatic thing to do and because it would finally wrap things up. And that's a shame, because the movie reunites Segel with Nicholas Stoller; the two also co-wrote 2008's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," one of the more well-balanced Apatow productions, with Stoller once again directing and Segel starring as the doughy everyman. As in that earlier film, "The Five-Year Engagement" touches on themes of love found and lost in a serious way, and to its credit it does find some moments of emotional truth amid the inconsistent laughs. But man, it can be a messy slog to get to them. Segel and Blunt star as a newly engaged couple who encounter multiple obstacles on the way to the altar, including cross-country moves, career ambitions and family issues. If it sounds like a drag, that's probably because it is, and wacky supporting players including Brian Posehn and Chris Parnell don't exactly liven things up. R for sexual content and language throughout. 124 minutes. Two stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"Marvel's The Avengers" — The hype has been building for years and it couldn't possibly be more deafening at this point. After a series of summer blockbusters that individually introduced Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America, all these characters come together alongside several other friends and foes. And with director and co-writer Joss Whedon, they couldn't be in better hands. He's pulled off the tricky feat of juggling a large ensemble cast and giving everyone a chance to shine, of balancing splashy set pieces with substantive ideology. Stuff gets blown up real good in beautifully detailed 3-D, but the film as a whole is never a mess from a narrative perspective. Whedon keeps a tight rein on some potentially unwieldy material, and the result is a film that simultaneously should please purists (one of which he is) as well as those who aren't necessarily comic-book aficionados. He also stays true to the characters while establishing a tone that's very much his own. As he did with the recent horror hit "The Cabin in the Woods," which he co-wrote and produced, Whedon has come up with a script that's cheeky and breezy, full of witty banter and sly pop-culture shout-outs as well as self-referential humor, one that moves with an infectious energy that (almost) makes you lose track of its two-and-a-half-hour running time. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., assembles a dream team of superheroes to retrieve the Tesseract, the cosmic blue cube that gives its bearer unlimited power, when the evil Loki (Tom Hiddleston) descends from Asgard and steals it. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) are among those on the case — once they stop fighting each other, that is. PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout and a mild drug reference. 143 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"The Raven" — What would Edgar Allan Poe be doing if he were alive today? Clawing at the inside of his coffin, desperate to get at the people who used and abused his diabolical tales as the basis for this pile of cinematic bird poo. Like carrion feeders themselves, director James McTeigue and his colleagues peck at Poe's stories to fill out a plot that sounds sort of cool in concept — a serial killer using the author's fiction as a blueprint for ghastly murders — but is featherheaded in execution. John Cusack makes a terrible Poe, the somber role as one of literature's great tortured souls spotlighting his limitations as an actor. With his little goatee and his black cape, Cusack vaguely looks the part, but he's a lightweight — voice too whiny, mannerisms too exaggerated, cadence too reedy to bring alive the movie's frequent passages of Poe's lyrical writing. Cusack's Poe is enlisted by a Baltimore police detective (Luke Evans) to help solve a string of killings inspired by the author's macabre stories. The movie reinforces how fiendishly clever Poe's ideas were, but the filmmakers make poor use of their source material, wringing a few moments of gore from them while adding no suspense or originality of their own. R for bloody violence and grisly images. 110 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
— David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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"Safe" — This is the worst Jason Statham movie since the last Jason Statham movie, carrying on the bargain-budget action star's tradition of building a body of work out of, well, dead bodies. Writer-director Boaz Yakin (who directed the gentle football drama "Remember the Titans" but now is back in the mode of his first-produced screenplay with Dolph Lundgren's vigilante tale "The Punisher") proves the ideal enabler for Statham's brand of mindless carnage. Together, they turn Manhattan into a shooting gallery, stacking up corpses in service of a supposed story about one man's path to redemption. But really, all they care about is stacking up corpses, as many as they can, ripped apart by as many bullets as possible, with a few snapped necks and other more intimate moments of savagery to break up the repetitive tedium of the gunplay. The thin story has Statham as a mystery man with deadly skills who becomes the unlikely protector of a Chinese math prodigy (newcomer Catherine Chan) on the run from Chinese and Russian mobsters. Yakin selectively leaves enough bad guys standing for no apparent reason other than the prospects of a sequel. Please, Hollywood, keep us safe from that. R for strong violence throughout, and for language. 95 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
— David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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"Sound of My Voice" — Is the young, beautiful blonde truly a time traveler from a war-torn future, promising safety and enlightenment for a chosen few? Or is she merely a con artist who knows how to use her looks and magnetism to manipulate people for her own gain? That is the question at the heart here, one that you'll be asking yourself until the very end and even afterward. Brit Marling follows up on the promise of last summer's "Another Earth," another sci-fi thriller that makes the most of its meager budget with intimate settings, well-drawn characters and steadily mounting mystery. Marling co-wrote (with first-time director and fellow Georgetown University alum Zal Batmanglij), co-produced and stars in both, and once again she leaves a strikingly naturalistic impression. Before we get to Marling's character, though, we meet mousy Peter (Christopher Denham) and reformed party girl Lorna (Nicole Vicius), dating documentary filmmakers who have infiltrated a San Fernando Valley cult in hopes of exposing its leader, Maggie, as a fraud. She's got a mesmerizing strength about her, though, and it doesn't take long for her to burrow into Peter's brain and root out his innermost secrets in a quietly intense scene that'll make you hold your breath. The film never reveals her truth, though; you could argue your interpretation of her actions in a number of ways. R for language including sexual references and brief drug use. 84 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
