"Puss in Boots"

Richard's Review: 2 stars

Sometimes less is more. Often a supporting character who flits in and out of the action, brightening up every scene she/he is in, is the cat's meow. But promote that same character to centre stage and the results can be as much fun as coughing up a hairball.

In "Puss in Boots" Antonio Banderas gives the character Puss in Boots, the plucky ginger cat, a tenth life as the leading feline in an all new animated spinoff to the popular "Shrek" series. This is a prequel, the origin story of how an orphaned cat became a boot-wearing legend and how his curious friendship with Humpty Alexander Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) almost killed the cat.

"Puss in Boots" is more an action movie than a comedy, more cute than good. The sharp writing and the fairy tale in-jokes of the "Shrek" series are both missing in action, replaced with a standard story with some romance, some intrigue, some action and even a quick lesson in why you shouldn't declaw your cats.

There are some inventive, fun scenes, like a Sergio Leone-inspired cat dance fight featuring a move called the Litter Box.

Banderas has a great character voice, but too often the movie is content to take the easy route story wise. Also, can we please call a moratorium on "The first rule of Fight Club" jokes?

"Puss in Boots" brightened up the "Shrek" movies. Here, however, a weak voice cast brings little more than name recognition to the roles of Humpty Dumpty and Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek). An even weaker script renders a once effective character neutered.

"Anonymous"

Richard's Review: 4 stars

Coming from director Roland Emmerich, you might expect "Anonymous" to be a large-scale action movie about the end of the world, a prehistoric beast or giant Japanese monster. Instead, the German director has left the disaster motifs of his previous work behind and created a large-scale period piece about the importance of literature set against a backdrop of intrigue and sexual peccadilloes in 17th century England.

With a plot that mixes and matches themes from history and Shakespeare's plays, "Anonymous" uses the backdrop of the struggle for succession between the Tudors and the Cecils as the Essex rebellion moves against Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) to set the scene for the debut of Shakespeare's plays. But were they actually written by Shakespeare? The movie supposes it was Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) -- the Anonymous of the title --who penned the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. He kept to the shadows to save his family the embarrassment of having a common writer in their midst. The plays were also openly critical of the Queen's advisors Cecil and Raleigh.

In a story ripe with mystery the only real question is how this got made at all. Big-budget Shakespearean movies don't get made much anymore. I guess the next best thing is to make a big-budget movie about Shakespeare and Emmerich, despite his tendency to try and juggle too many story threads at one time, does a good job in this elegantly filthy world of Elizabethan Britain. Powdered faces, filthy fingernails and velvet jackets abound and the atmosphere adds much to the story.

This is a sprawling story with many twists and turns. The downside is the film's sketchy casting. In flashbacks the queen and Edward appear to be the same age. But later, after a major twist, they are revealed to be sixteen years apart. This kind of lack of attention to detail muddies the waters in the flashbacks, making it difficult to follow the story in the first hour. Soon enough, however, all the players are straightened away and the pleasures of the story take hold.

A liberal mix of fact and fiction -- there is no real life evidence that the Earl of Oxford penned the plays -- "Anonymous" is a twisted tale about how politics and art intersect and the written word's ability to instigate change.

"In Time"

Richard's Review: 2 stars

"In Time," a new sci-fi film starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is as timely a movie as will be released this year. It's an allegory for the haves and have-nots. In this case 1 per cent of the population controls 99 per cent of the world's most precious commodity -- time. Instead of occupying parks, however, our hero JT sets out get time back on his side.

This movie has a lot of time of its hands, or should I say forearms. "In Time" takes place in a world where people are genetically engineered to stop aging at twenty-five. Sounds like Eden, but this is a dystopian world where once the calendar clicks on your twenty-fifth birthday the clock starts ticking, literally. A digital readout appears on your forearm and you have one year until time runs out. But, because time is money -- again, literally -- your wages top up your clock, buying more time. When a time millionaire willingly gives Will Salas (Timberlake) a century of his time, Salas finds himself on the run from the Time Keeper police and one step closer to discovering the secret link between immortality and poverty.

Insert the word "money" for "time" at any point during "In Time" and the story reveals how run-of-the-mill it is. Stripped of its sci-fi premise it should have been an interesting comment on the divide between rich and poor. Instead, it's content to be a tepid action film. Not smart enough to be an interesting metaphor and not wild enough to be a thriller, it falls between the cracks.

JT hands in a performance that makes you wish he would bring the sexy back. The more leads he does in movies, the more I can't help but think his triumph in "The Social Network" was some kind of fluke.

As bad as the movie is Amanda Seyfried somehow remains compelling. She is so unusual looking, like an alien cupie doll, and that otherworldliness gives some flavor to her disconnected, rich-girl character.

Neither is helped by a script which provides as many unintentional laughs as genuine ones, and whose idea of witty banter is: "You forget I almost killed you a few times." "I'm willing to overlook that."

"In Time" has an interesting-ish premise. Unfortunately, there's not enough quality time in the movie to earn a recommend.

"The Rum Diary"

Richard's Review: 2 1/2 stars

Hunter S. Thompson wrote "The Rum Diary" in 1961 before he became the revered gonzo journalist who penned "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." It's very loosely based on a period of time he spent in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the early days of his writing career, before, as his alter ego Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) says in the film, he knew "who to write like me."

So don't expect the surreal poetry of "Fear and Loathing" or the disjointed charm of "Where the Buffalo Roam." This is an origins story, the roots of gonzo, but the gonzo spirit of its creator is sadly missing.

Depp plays Kemp using a slight variation on the clipped Thompson accent he made famous in "Fear and Loathing." He's a hard-drinking, failed novelist who thought he'd try his hand at selling some "words for money" to a newspaper in Puerto Rico. His plan to "lift the stone on the American Dream," however, is kiboshed by an editor (Richard Jenkins) who is more interested maintaining the status quo than exposing the country's ills. Assigned to writing an astrology column, Kemp peers into the bottoms of lots of glasses of rum and becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard) -- the girlfriend of a shady PR man (Aaron Eckhart).

Kemp is a struggling writer, an artist still struggling to find his voice, which echoes the main failing of the film. Despite a director, Bruce Robinson, who made one of the funniest and best films about boozing ("Withnail and I") and Depp's close friendship with Thompson, the movie feels as if it's searching for a purpose and a voice. Despite the presence of a Hermaphrodite Oracle of the Dead, countless ounces of rum, one drug trip and some major movie star mojo from Depp, the movie falls flat.

It's a story about perception (Eckhart's PR man is selling one vision of the island, Kemp wants to reveal another) and how gazing into that chasm helped Kemp discover his voice and integrity. But in the end it's neither the savage indictment of lazy journalism it should be, or (because of an ambiguous non-ending) the celebration of the power of the written word it could have been.

As the main curator of Thompson's cinematic legacy Depp breathes some life into Kemp, although at times the broad performance feels at odds with the tone of the rest of the story.

As for the rest of the cast, Michael Rispoli embodies the boozy spirit of the piece. Giovanni Ribisi goes one swig over the line and will someone please give Amber Heard a job on "Mad Men?" Her face screams 1965.

Of course, the film's main character's name is Paul Kemp and the story takes place before the finely crafted persona of Hunter S. Thompson came into being. But a healthier dose of the writer's "ink and rage" might have given "The Rum Diary" the spark it needed to really ignite.

"The Skin I Live In"

Richard's Review: 4 stars

Proof that Pedro Almodovar's reputation as a provocateur is secure came after a recent screening of "The Skin I Live In," his new film starring Antonio Banderas as an obsessed plastic surgeon. As I was filing out another critic came to me and said, "Wow that was weird, even for an Almodovar film." It's a skin flick (literally) about oedipal revenge, sex and plastic surgery.

Based on Thierry Jonquet's novel "Mygale," Banderas plays Robert Ledgard -- a brilliant plastic surgeon with a troubled life. His luxurious mansion is not only an operating room and recovery facility, but a dark secret. Hidden from the world is Vera (Elena Anaya), a patient -- or is she a prisoner? -- who acts as a guinea pig for the doctor's experiments. He's trying to perfect a new kind of skin resistant to burns and bites. There'd be no more malaria, no more burn victims. Trouble is his experiments are completely illegal.

There's more. Lots more. But part of the pleasure of "The Skin I Live In" is allowing Almodovar to reveal the story at his own pace. It's part "Frankenstein (with better skin) or Plastic Surgeons Gone Wild, but all Almodovar. It's audacious, diabolical, unexpected and possibly the kind of film Hitchcock might have made, but only in his wildest imagination.

Banderas, in his first pairing with the director in twenty years, is a revelation. His Hollywood work, while often successful, is dwarfed by his performance here. Working with Almodovar and in his native tongue brings out nuances often missing from his English films. It's an understated but powerful performance that conveys the doctor's evil compulsions without ever dipping into the central casting mad scientist box of personality tics.

He leads the strong cast, including the impossibly beautiful Elena Anaya as Vera and Marisa Paredes as Marilia, the exposition giving housekeeper.