The basic elements of effective drama, if stripped down to the core essentials, are shockingly simple. It isn’t particularly difficult to create, say, strong romantic or erotic pull in a love scene, or to generate adequate tension in a chase sequence, and when a film accomplishes one or more of those goals, it might hook us and pull us in for a brief time. That’s perhaps the most that can be said of David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s experimental, nonlinear drama Uncertainty; it has a handful of scenes with real dramatic force, but if one steps back to consider the whole equation, the movie disappoints. It leaves us with precious little to take away — sacrificing elements like character depth, thematic resonance, profundity, and visual bravura for the sake of a been-there-before narrative conceit that seems to exist merely for the sake of its own cleverness.

Something of a low-rent variation on Peter Howitt’s 1998 Sliding Doors, Uncertainty opens on Independence Day, with a young couple, Bobby Thompson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and girlfriend Kate Montero (Lynn Collins), standing in New York City and pondering which direction to choose for that afternoon’s adventure. They opt to settle that decision with a coin toss, at which point the film forks off into two potential narratives — one, “Green,” dramatizes what happens when the couple high-tails it to lower Manhattan; the other, “Yellow,” finds the couple venturing to Brooklyn for a July 4th celebration with Kate’s sprawling Hispanic family.

To the directors’ credit, the film never grows confusing, despite the intertwined stories with the same two leads playing out two separate narratives at the same time. McGehee and Siegel create a distinct set of stylistic elements for each tale; each has its own wardrobe, cinematographic style, tone, and pace, so that we know exactly where we are, and what is happening, at any given point in the movie. Unfortunately, the movie lacks narrative balance — not in terms of screen time but in terms of raw audience interest. The tension and suspense of the “Yellow” story — which finds Bobby and Kate relentlessly pursued through lower Manhattan by suited thugs, and attempting to extort a ransom from the owner of a cell phone found in a taxicab — grow so strong and overwhelming that they detract from the “Green” story. The “Yellow” tale is no more than a cheap, tacky, two-bit melodrama (and it more than strains plausibility), so that we might even feel embarrassed to care, but on some rudimentary level, the cliffhangers in that story really do work, though the ending feels like a complete cop-out. The “Green” story is not only less eventful, but quasi-anemic; its dramatic highlights consist of the couple finding a stray dog, and Kate waffling over whether or not to open up to her domineering mother.

In neither case do the stories succeed at creating genuinely interesting, multilayered characters that earn our empathy and fascination — and in neither case do the stories contribute to some larger thematic basis that the movie desperately needs to justify its parallel narrative conceit and avoid the trap of film-school-level pretentiousness. In Sliding Doors, writer-director Howitt fell back on the obvious but endlessly intriguing idea of chance versus fate — how the entire course of one’s life can be altered permanently by a split-second decision — so that the divergent paths of the central character (Gwyneth Paltrow) wound up at two wildly different destinations. But here, Siegel and McGehee essentially bring the central couple to an identical emotional and spiritual place at the end of each story, so that we’re still questioning what each “journey” really demonstrates to the audience, and why it was necessary to even observe multiple outcomes. In the end, the film’s chase sequences through Manhattan are incredibly thrilling, and the scenes of physical and emotional intimacy between the central lovers genuinely touching, but the movie seems to lack an overarching purpose.

\Based on a 1956 Fritz Lang movie of the same title, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt tells the thrilling yet hard-to-swallow tale of a reporter who frames himself in order to bring down a powerful, smug, and corrupt district attorney. The original - a minor noir starring Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine - is a strange film to tap for a renovation, even more so to transform into a modern car-chase thriller. Veteran director Peter Hyams is no stranger to building suspense among preposterous circumstances, but like The Relic and End of Days before it, while the ride can sometimes be invigorating and distracting, often it’s just numbingly head-scratching, and by the final twist, credulity is so stretched as to render the turn ineffective.

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There are elements of a Quentin Tarantino film you can always count on — upturning genre conventions, strong female characters, extended conversational detours, and forceful violence. Right from its engaging, nail-biting beginning, Inglourious Basterds overflows with QT’s signature style.

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Many of the films about the Irish Republican Army — including Bloody Sunday, In the Name of the Father, and Michael Collins — present the group in a sympathetic light, but Fifty Dead Men Walking is far less kind in its approach. Kari Skogland’s thriller begins in the late ’90s, with ex-IRA informant Martin McGartland (Jim Sturgess, 21) being shot repeatedly while hiding out in Canada. The movie rewinds to the 1980s, and the IRA’s tactics are soon revealed as the reason for Martin’s switch to informant. The film shows the terrorists’ torture of their enemies in unflinching detail; at times, this is a gritty, violent movie that isn’t for the faint of heart — or the weak of stomach.

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Paradise has rarely looked as gorgeously ominous as it does in A Perfect Getaway, director David Twohy’s return to the small-scale thriller following the bloated would-be sci-fi epic The Chronicles of Riddick. Anyone who has followed Twohy’s career over the years knows that he’s at his best when dealing with tense situations in an intimate environment, and with the story of real-life murdered honeymooners Ben and Catherine Mullany still in the news thanks to a surprising controversy, the plausibility of such a heinous crime lends the film an extra punch of morbid realism. But filmmakers will be filmmakers, and while Twohy nearly deep-sixes the whole endeavor by straining for cleverness, A Perfect Getaway somehow pulls back from the brink to deliver some solid scenic thrills.

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With their burglar-versus-serial killer shocker The Collector opening in theaters nationwide today, filmmakers Marcus Dunston and Patrick Melton were kind enough to sit down with me for a revealing chat about the making of their unforgiving new flick, their love of Italian horror legend Dario Argento, the state of the Saw franchise, and just what went wrong with their proposed remake of the William Castle classic The Tingler.

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The apocalypse shines an eerie shade of gold in director/co-writer F. Javier Gutiérrez’s haunting, genre-bending take on the downfall of humanity. Shifting gears from domestic drama to rite-of-passage saga to nightmarish thriller with effortless efficiency, Before the Fall (co-written by Juan Velarde) shows that even when death is inevitable, the struggle for survival goes on. And though the film may irritate some for its staunch refusal to fit into any certain genre or mold, it’s precisely that trait that makes it a fascinating treat for fans of innovative and unpredictable cinema.

Shiftless handyman Alejandro (Víctor Clavijo) always lived in the shadow of his older brother — the fallen hero of his small town — and these days Ale has resigned himself to the fact that he will never amount to much of anything.

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If you’re still longing for Walter Matthau’s jowly mug to pop through that apartment door by the end of the third feature-length adaptation of John Godey’s 1974 best-seller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, perhaps you’ve finally lost your sense of fun. Because, while director Tony Scott’s brash and boisterous take on the material may lack that certain ’70s quirkiness, it gets just about everything else exactly right. Sporting enough differences from that criminally under-seen classic to keep viewers rapt with tension from the opening scene, Scott’s Pelham cleverly integrates technology into the story and keeps the action moving at a truly breathless pace. All the while, the movie keeps us completely engaged by focusing on the adversarial yet uniquely amiable relationship between the charismatic criminal mastermind who planned the clever crime and the defeated dispatcher who tries to reason with him. Surprisingly, in a summer full of action-packed blockbusters, this cracking remake may be the movie to beat for sheer popcorn-chomping thrills.

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With just a handful of cinematography credits and a pair of short films to his name, filmmaker Cary Fukunaga makes his impressive feature directorial debut with Sin Nombre, an emotionally involving thriller following a Honduran teen and a marked gangster on their flight toward the Mexico/U.S. border. Harsh yet hauntingly tender, the film succeeds as a well-crafted thriller, an unflinching look at the difficulties of escaping gang life, and a harrowing study of the desperate lengths that immigrants will go to in hopes of building a better life.

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Director Kevin Macdonald successfully revives the 1970s-style paranoid thriller with State of Play, a taut and assured reworking of the 2003 BBC series of the same name. Paring down the original six-hour series to a lean 127 minutes, Macdonald and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy, and Billy Ray barely give the audience a moment to breathe as a veteran reporter and a doe-eyed blogger race through the streets of Washington, D.C., to uncover an ominous political conspiracy.

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The last time wrestling superstar John Cena was seen on the big screen, he was bursting through walls and diving away from rapid-fire explosions in The Marine. Three years later, he returns in 12 Rounds, another seemingly action-packed fiesta that finds him cast as another cop whose wife is kidnapped by a diamond thief. The fact that the muscle-bound jock is basically making the same movie all over again would normally be good news – until you sit down and realize that this is not the same tasty dumb ’80s throwback as before. In reality, this far-too-serious affair is Cena’s foray into thriller territory, where his fists do less talking than his mush-mouth does (which for half the film is mumbling into his cell phone on speaker). Sure, there are stabs at fiery suspense, but mostly the flick boils down to a tepid Die Hard With a Vengeance retread (which is ironic, since 12 Rounds is helmed by none other than Renny Harlin, the director of the second John McClane adventure).

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If you know your con-game movies, then you’re familiar with the differences between short cons and long cons. The short con is all about making a quick buck — like getting a bartender to give you change for a 20, when you really paid with a 10. Long cons, on the other hand, require months, if not years, of setup, and come with a payoff to match. They also make for timeless movies like The Sting, The Grifters, House of Games, and Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity. Like those other time-tested con movies, Duplicity is about more than just lying, deceit, and trickery — the story’s mind games also serve as a metaphor for bigger issues — in this case, love. In the opening scene, Ray Koval (Clive Owen) seduces Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) at a cocktail party thrown by the government of Dubai. Their passionate night together ends with him drugged, and her taking pictures of some sensitive documents in his possession — and thus begins a most unusual courtship between people who inherently mistrust everyone around them. It would be just plain wrong to reveal much more about the plot, but years later, the two end up on opposite sides of some serious corporate espionage, and their time together in the past has more of an effect on their present than anyone — the characters or the audience — really understands.

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Raw and relentless, Olly Blackburn’s Donkey Punch isn’t your mother’s Dead Calm; after straining a bit too hard for jet-setting hipster cred during the setup, it pulsates with debauchery as the tension starts to build and the eponymous jab is thrown. With one dead body on board and six still breathing as the tension starts to build, it’s anyone’s guess as to who will be the last person standing. Despite the possible exception of its crude MacGuffin and some especially raunchy sex, Donkey Punch really isn’t that different from any number of stranded-at-sea suspense thrillers. Still, for those willing to ignore that nagging sense of déjà vu, this cynical little shocker does a serviceable job of amping up the tension as the balance of power fluctuates in a cleverly plotted series of deceptions, manipulations, and double-crosses.

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Like a Halloween episode of 90210 or The Omen IV crossed with The O.C., The Haunting of Molly Hartley is horror of the glossiest, safest kind. It’s a boring bubblegum shocker that loses its flavor faster than Fruit Stripes, and few horror fans will want anything to do with this over-polished, under-baked tale of a high-school girl attempting to discover whether she’s the “devil’s daughter,” or her dangerously unstable mother is just another religious wacko.

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Jon Avnet’s Righteous Kill is a perfectly polished three-star thriller, a compulsively watchable piece of Hollywood product that’s sure to sell popcorn as DeNiro and Pacino fans dutifully file in to receive their recommended weekly allowances of badge-flashing testosterone and pistol-whipping machismo.

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Note to M. Night Shyamalan: No matter which angle you shoot it from, a mild summer breeze is not terrifying. A hurricane, absolutely; a tornado, most certainly; a typhoon, indubitably. Hell, even an especially large dust devil may prove capable of jangling the nerves of some particularly sensitive anemophobics. Unfortunately (at least for Shyamalan), the continuous scenes of trees ominously rustling in the breeze or fields of grass churning like a menacing green ocean throughout The Happening mostly elicit feelings of tranquility and inner peace rather than paralyzing fear and insurmountable dread – the kiss of death for a film attempting to paint nature as the ultimate enemy of mankind.

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Like Funny Games without the pretension or Halloween (1978) without the suspense, The Strangers chugs dutifully along for its contractually obligated 90 minutes, compelling viewers to jump with a series of carefully timed loud noises and false scares before giving them precisely what they came for with as little fanfare as cinematically possible. The Strangers is the kind of horror thriller that feels like it was written on a calculator rather than a word processor; every startling noise, false scare, and genuine payoff is carefully formulated for maximum effect, yet so precise and scientific that the whole exercise becomes strangely dry — and all too predictable, if you have even the most rudimentary knowledge of the original formula.

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The most effective thrillers and horror films are the ones that place sympathetic characters in precarious situations and then make the audience watch helplessly as those characters do everything that the viewer would in order to survive. If we, as an audience are lucky – and the filmmaker is only trying to entertain us – then perhaps one or two of those characters emerge from the conflict alive. On the other hand, if the filmmaker is operating by a different set of rules or trying to deliver a distinct message with their film, then the audience might be in for a bit of a rough ride. This said, anyone familiar with the name Michael Haneke knows that by no means is he simply trying to entertain us: Haneke’s films are persistently polarizing, consistently challenging, and never forgiving – and his English-language remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games is as bleak, nihilistic, and as difficult to endure as the original.

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Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium: Zach Helm attempts to out-Gondry Michel Gondry in his G-rated directorial debut starring Dustin Hoffman.

Awake: What is something you will not be by the end of this movie?

Into the Wild: Emile Hirsch stars as a young man who decides to live in the Alaskan wilderness, presumably after seeing Awake and giving up on humanity.

Things We Lost in the Fire: Of the two 2007 Halle Berry movies that I’ve forgotten even exist, this is the one I’ve forgotten most. Except for the other one.

Also out this week: Mrs. Doubtfire [Special Edition] and 12 Angry Men [50th Anniversary Edition]

Inspired by the Kung Fu Flicks series I had previously posted about and still lamenting the lack of fun choices on Detroit area movie screens, yours truly has partnered with Synapse Films and the Emagine Theaters to cook up a mondo bizarro movie series that is absolutely guaranteed to overload your cerebral cortex with some of the most outrageous cult films ever produced!

Every Thursday evening in April, Detroit area moviegoers are invited to come out to the Novi Emagine and experience the seedier side of cinema as we present a series of $7 double features featuring everything from punk rock zombies and flesh-eating schoolgirls to alien parasites, demonic heavy metal bands, debauched detectives, and gore drenched winos!

This isn’t Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse folks… this is the REAL DEAL!

The complete schedule follows the jump.

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Gone Baby Gone: Ben Affleck directs Casey Affleck in this well-received drama that I can only assume was scored by Ulysses Affleck and catered by Geppetto Affleck.

Martian Child: If you loved K-Pax, then this one is for you, Mrs. Spacey.

We Own the Night: Probably the closest I’ll ever get to realizing my dream of watching Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch duet with Johnny Cash.

Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married: Writer/director/producer/actor/gaffer Perry performs out of women’s clothing opposite Janet Jackson. [Insert 3-year-old Super Bowl joke]

Also out this week: No Reservations, The Amateurs and Becoming Jane

The Brave One: Jodie Foster stars as a vigilante bent on avenging her boyfriend’s death in this film that John Hinckley Jr. gave “two thumbs way up!”

2 Days in Paris: Actor/director Julie Delpy’s indie romantic-comedy was warmly received by critics, but disappointed theatergoers who mistook it for a sequel to One Night in Paris.

The Ten Commandments: At long last, the cross-section of animated religious epic aficionados and Christian Slater fanatics has a movie to call their own.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: There’s a scene in this where a horse walks into a bar. The bartender sees him and asks, “why the long face… and title… and movie?”

Also out: Elizabeth - The Golden Age, Feast of Love, Across the Universe and Descent.

Just last week I stared at a standee for M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming thriller The Happening and wondered just when the heck 20th Century Fox was going to unleash a sneak peek at this bad boy — well, wonder no more, for the teaser has finally hit and it is good. The flick follows a father (Mark Wahlberg) and son that embark on a frantic journey to outrun a mysterious airborn virus. This is the first time that Shyamalan has dipped his foot into the R-rated game, so expect some dark material both thematically as well as viscerally. The Happening opens on June 13th and co-stars Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo.

The Killing Kind:

A captivating tale of psychological torment from Night Tide director Curtis Harrington, The Killing Kind has gone largely unseen due to a bungled distribution deal that found it screening in a handful of small southern theaters before being quietly locked away in a Hollywood vault - it’s quite a shame, too, considering this tense little thriller features a smart script from screenwriters Tony Crechales and George Edwards, and a pair of powerhouse performances by John Savage and Ann Southern. Cast as a mother and son whose twisted relationship ultimately turns tragic, Savage and Southern play off one another beautifully; their ambiguously incestuous, eerily symbiotic relationship steadily building steam like a broken pressure cooker of dysfunction set on high, and ready to blow at any second. Watching the film, this viewer couldn’t help but feeling that it shared quite a bit in common (both tonally and thematically) with Bob Clark’s masterful 1974 anti-war frightener Deathdream. Not only did the two films make their original premieres within a mere year of one another, but they both explore the complex family dynamics experienced by young men returning home after a particularly traumatic experience (the Vietnam War in Deathdream, and a forced rape that resulted in an extended prison sentence in The Killing Kind), while highlighting that there’s no easy exit once one has been subjected to such profound psychological torment. The chilling final scenes in both films - each providing a key moment of realization between mother and son - are striking similarity as well.

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Here’s a sampling of the new titles hitting DVD shelves today:

3:10 to Yuma: Christian Bale and Russell Crowe team up to perpetuate the myth that everyone in the Old West was faking their American accents.

Smiley Face: Despite more good reviews than bad, this stoner comedy starring Anna Farris barely made it into theaters. Seems destined for cult status.

Death Sentence: Kevin Bacon treads into Charles Bronson territory, spurring hope for a Kinjite remake.

Sunshine: The guy who reinvented zombie flicks reinvents the space-adventure.

Eagle vs. Shark: The guy from Flight of the Conchords stars in this quirky indie romantic-comedy without that other guy from Flight of the Conchords.

Film lovers curious to see how Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Key to Reserva” may have turned out had the Master of Suspense lived to see his vision realized are advised to check out this compelling film experiment for in which Martin Scorsese uses pages from an incomplete script to shoot the story exactly as he believes Hitchcock himself would have.

It’s a curious approach to film preservation in the form of a classy wine commercial, and it’s bound to fascinate fans of both filmmakers.

Check it out here: http://www.scorsesefilmfreixenet.com/

Cheers!

Few endings in recent memory have stirred quite as many gut reactions as the one in No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Cohen’s brilliant meditation on… well, what were they getting at exactly? While many critics are keen to spout their own educated opinions on the matter, the fact remains that there might not even be an answer for this controversial lightning rod of a closer. And though this reviewer is more than happy to continue to ponder the film’s final act, the real joy is to see the great film debate renewed once again. Case in point, the comment board on Jeffrey Wells’ recent Hollywood Elsewhere post, where parties on all sides weigh in with their highly opinionated thoughts on the matter. It goes without saying that those who haven’t seen the movie should sway away from the discussion, but for those that have, it’s become a fascinating forum for film fans on both sides of the argument to share their thoughts. Readers looking to delve further into the rabbit hole best check out Premiere’s thoughts on the matter, as it includes a bit more novel-to-screen comparisons as well as a conclusion that should aggravate confused moviegoers even more. To this, I say – what a great time to be a movie lover!

While the cineplexes are beginning to fill with some of the year’s better films, it’s pretty slim pickings on home video this week. Here are some highlights of what’s hitting stores today:

Bratz: Yes, it was universally panned and tanked at the box-office, but at least they didn’t try to give the live-action versions of the characters those giant heads.

Waitress: If you missed the late Adrienne Shelly’s final film in theaters, now’s your chance to catch one of the year’s best-reviewed romantic comedies.

Hot Rod: To call it one of the best SNL-fueled movies in years isn’t saying much, but Andy Samberg’s admittedly uneven starring debut is funny more often than it isn’t. Think of it as a more coherent Freddy Got Fingered. I’ll let you decide if that’s good or bad.

I Know Who Killed Me: Don’t listen to the reviews. This erotic thriller starring Lindsay Lohan is a bad-good masterpiece on par with Showgirls and The Butterfly Effect.

Who’s Your Caddy?: This movie got a wide theatrical release. You’re likely laughing more now than you will throughout all of Who’s Your Caddy’s 93 minutes.

Also out today: Skinwalkers, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, and Paprika.

No Country for Old Men, the darkest, bleakest film yet by Joel and Ethan Coen, manages to be both an unsettling thriller and a statement of great concern for the future. As has always been the case with Joel and Ethan’s work, the movie is cast to perfection. Javier Bardem’s personification of psychotic evil fills the screen with an unflinching power — it’s as impossible for the audience to look away from him as it is for his victims to get away from him. Josh Brolin plays the Vietnam veteran who kick-starts the plot with a perfect mix of practicality, durability, and quiet desperation. You can believe he’s seen enough horrible things during his years in the military that he’s willing to go toe-to-toe with someone as malignantly evil as Bardem’s remorseless killer. As Brolin’s wife, Kelly MacDonald serves up a vivid, tragic character with very little screen time. Tommy Lee Jones centers the film as a Texas sheriff who notes early on that the old-timers never even wore a gun on the job. He longs for a time like that, and although he is a man not prone to emotional displays, his recognition of the horrors he sees registers in unmistakable ways.

The Coens build the tension like the masters that they are, often going minutes without any dialogue. What sets this film apart from their others is the refusal to let their comedic impulses temper the material. As always, they get chuckles out of the Texas patois, and there are characters on the fringe who stick in the memory because of their distinct speaking patterns. However none of the levity breaks from the remarkably serious intentions or tone. The one scene Kelly MacDonald shares with Bardem echoes the final confrontation between Frances McDormand and Peter Stormare in Fargo. But where that film offered some hope, some sense that there is an essential rightness in the world worth preserving, No Country is about the world we know coming to an end. Those expecting a pure genre film may be taken aback by the final act, especially since the first 100 minutes rank as an expert thriller. Consisting primarily of extended dialogue scenes, save for one last shocking act of violence, the closing passages of the film underline that themes that Jones’ character lays out in the movie’s opening voice-over. In Fargo, Margie grieved because she realized not everyone has the simple decency not to kill. No Country for Old Men is an expression of mourning for a world that seems to have lost any semblance of decency or order.