Playwright-actor-producer Tyler Perrya star of the so-called chitlin’ circuit, with eight shows currently credited to himadapts one of his hits for the big screen, directed by Darren R. Grant. The title heroine (Kimberly Elise)who’s angry, not crazyis dumped by her rich attorney husband (Steve Harris) for a white bimbo after 18 years of marriage; eventually she gets even and finds both true love (Shemar Moore) and her soul’s salvation. Perry plays her battle-ax grandmother Madea (featured in several Perry shows) as well as Madea’s lecherous brother and his upstanding son, and Cicely Tyson plays her mother. The stylistic discontinuities and pile-driver excesses can be off-putting for an outsider like me, but for fans this may well be part of the appeal. PG-13, 116 min. (JR) Read more
This gothic jigsaw puzzle, directed by John Maybury (Love Is the Devil) from a script by many hands, promises to be another Jacob’s Ladder but doesn’t deliver. Maybury’s art-world talents don’t include storytelling, and his visceral bursts of fast editing and extreme close-ups don’t yield any full-blown characters, narrative, or political vision (though I could swear I heard Noam Chomsky’s voice briefly coming from a TV). Leapfrogging between 1992 and 2007 and between fantasy and reality, the plot concerns an American GI (Adrien Brody) who nearly dies from a head wound during the first gulf war, gets framed for the murder of a cop back in his native Vermont, and winds up in a hospital for the criminally insane, where an evil shrink (Kris Kristofferson) performs hideous experiments on him. With Keira Knightley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, and music by Brian Eno. The executive producers include George Clooney and Steven Soderberghmaybe they can explain what’s going on. R, 104 min. (JR) Read more
A rarely screened early sound (1929) musical comedy adapted from the stage and featuring six-foot Charlotte Greenwood in the title role. (A silent version had been released nine years earlier.) An energetic, highly physical performer, Greenwood appeared later in such 50s musicals as Dangerous When Wet and Oklahoma. With Grant Withers, Patsy Ruth Miller, and Bert Roach. 64 min. (JR) Read more
