LITTLE ROCK — Burning Bright (PG-13, 90 Minutes) - While the synopsis makes it sound exploitative and cheesy - Briana Evigan is trapped in her house (in her underwear) with her autistic little brother and a hungry tiger during a hurricane - this low-budget thriller is smarter, wittier and stronger than it has any right to be. With Garrett Dillahunt, Meat Loaf and a pretty good turn by Charlie Tahan (I Am Legend, Charlie St. Cloud) as the juvenile lead.
Grade: 83
Ca$h (R, 108 minutes) - Not to be confused with the 2008 film (which starred Jean Reno) of the same cutesy name, this Ca$h is a clumsy would-be psychological thriller starring Sean Bean as a thug trying to squeeze repayment out of a young couple who happened onto a cache of stolen money.
Grade: 73
Dead Man Running (R, 92 minutes) - Sub-Guy Ritchie British crime movie marks the first-ever teaming of 50 Cent and Brenda Blethyn.
Grade: 77
Furry Vengeance (P G, 92 minutes) - I give up. I couldn’t bring myself to watch this. But it has an 8 percent positive rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website, and two critics I like a lot (Chris Hewitt of theSaint Paul Pioneer Press and Stephanie Zacharek of Movieline) gave it sort-of positive reviews. My guess is that if you see this movie, it will be in the company of someone who loves wacky animals. (Though I’m told in this one they don’t speak English, they just make computer augmented faces.) With Brendan Fraser, who has to pay his bills somehow. No grade
The Good, The Bad, The Weird (R, 139 minutes) - One of those wonderful, senselessly weird pictures that argues the merits of globalization, this is an over-the-top Korean remake of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (itself sequel to Sergio Leone’s rewrite of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo) set in the Manchurian desert by the inimitable genre-bender Kim Ji-woon.
Grade: 87
The Last Song (PG, 107 minutes) - Another treacly romance movie made from a Nicholas Sparks novel. Sigh. The one with Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear.
Grade: 70
Me and Orson Welles (PG-13, 108 minutes) - Curiously inert but for the excellent (and accurately stagy) impersonation of Orson Welles by British stage actor Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles is one Richard Linklater movie we can’t love unconditionally, although it does serve to demonstrate that, like Stephen Soderbergh, Linklater is an excellent technical director who can seemingly divorce himself entirely from any subjective notion of style.
Grade: 85
Sorority Wars (Unrated, 95 minutes) - Strangely compelling, if absolutely dopey made-for-TV film about two attractive young ladies (Lucy Hale and Courtney Thorne-Smith) whose lifelong friendship is strained when they go off to college and pledge different sororities. Really. Shot in beautiful Victoria, B.C.
Grade: 81
Temple Grandin (TV PG, 103 minutes) - While HBO movies are generally out of this column’s purview, we’re running a little short this week, so why not recommend this sparkling, inspirational bio-pic that - while conventionally plotted - has some tremendous rewards, including Claire Danes’ unsentimental portrayal of the remarkable Grandin.
Grade: 87
MovieStyle, Pages 33 on 08/20/2010