5-minute movie reviews: 'Men Who Stare at Goats,' 'Fourth Kind,' 'Coco Before Chanel,' 'Ong Bak 2: The Beginning'

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Opens Friday at theaters everywhere; rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity; 93 minutes..

A little of George Clooney's charm, and a lot of his exposure to the Coen brothers, has rubbed off on actor-turned-producer Grant Heslov (who co-wrote Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" and produced "Leatherheads") in his directorial debut. The fact-based story, adapted from journalist Jon Ronson's book, follows a hard-luck reporter, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), trying to get an assignment into Iraq just after the U.S. invasion. Wilton finds the eccentric Lyn Cassady (played by Clooney),

a contractor who divulges his work in a super-secret U.S. Army program, led by a far-out officer (Jeff Bridges, in full Lebowski mode), to develop "superwarriors" with weaponized psychic powers. Heslov's deadpan handling of the movie's strange-but-true vibe, coupled with Clooney's full-tilt devotion to his outlandish character, smooths over the rougher patches of Peter Straughan's quirky screenplay.

 

The Fourth Kind

Opens Friday at theaters everywhere; rated PG-13 for violent/disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements and brief sexuality; 98 minutes.

In this otherwise routine alien-abduction

thriller, director Olatunde Osunsanmi works overtime trying to convince us it's all true -- from actress Milla Jovovich breaking the fourth wall to give the opening disclaimer that what follows is based on actual events, complete with the "real" video diaries of Jovovich's character, Alaska psychologist Abigail Tyler. "What you believe is yours to decide," she tells the audience. I believe that the story, in which Dr. Tyler's patients report strange nocturnal events, is a cut-rate "X-Files" rehash cleverly dressed up with the trappings of supposedly "real" footage a la "The Blair Witch Project" or "Paranormal Activity." The razzle-dazzle fails to hide the lack of real shocks or real emotions from the blank Jovovich.

Coco Before Chanel

Opens Friday at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated PG-13 for sexual content and smoking; in French with subtitles; 105 minutes.

Before Coco Chanel, women's fashion was flowery and feathery adornments over restrictive corsets. But it was the societal restrictions of being a man's adornment that drove Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, according to director Anne Fontaine's lush biopic. Fontaine follows Coco, played by Audrey Tautou ("The Da Vinci Code"), from saloon singer to kept woman of a Paris tycoon (Benoît Poelvoorde) to lover of a British businessman (Alessandro Nivola). Along the way and after many cigarettes, Coco discovers her "less is more" fashion philosophy and her signature style. Fontaine luxuriates in the rich period costumes and sets of pre-World War I France, but it's Tautou's embrace of Chanel's simplicity -- through her carefully controlled performance -- that makes this drama so engaging.

 

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning

Opens Friday at the Tower Theatre; rated R for sequences of violence; in Thai with subtitles; 98 minutes.

Thai martial-arts star Tony Jaa kicks, punches and slices his way through a slew of extras in this epic, set in 15th-century Thailand (and having little to do with the character Jaa played in the first "Ong Bak"). Here, Jaa plays Tien, who was born in nobility but raised to fight by a band of outlaws -- a process that, with exposition-heavy flashbacks, takes up most of the movie. Jaa, who co-directed with his martial-arts mentor Panna Rittikrai, pretty much ignores story structure in favor of pumping up the fight scenes to ridiculous degrees. It's exciting for a while, until you realize you know little about who Tien is or what he is fighting for.

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