‘Fantastic Mr. Fox,’ ‘Bad Lieutenant,’ ‘Old Dogs,’ ‘The Road’: Movie reviews, news

“Fantastic Mr. Fox”

Very pretty and quite precious (though not in a “Precious” way), Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” stars the hip voice of George Clooney as Mr. Fox, a vulpes vulpes (red fox). I’m not getting fancy. Fox himself likes using Latin species names as he rallies other furry folk like a badger (Bill Murray) and weasel (director Anderson). Their enemies are three greedy and obnoxious British farmers, who’ve driven Fox from chicken stealing, which he loves, to writing a newspaper column, Fox About Town.

His wife (voiced by Meryl Streep) is driven to painting pastoral murals that feature lightning storms, since she’s conflicted about Fox and their teen son (Jason Schwartzman). The core source is a darkly whimsical book by Roald Dahl, tweaked by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, though with much respect (much of the scripting was done in Dahl’s former country home in England). “There’s a lot of attitude going on around here” sums up most of the verbal side of this crafty animation. It chuckles along like “Animal Farm” redone as New Yorker cartoons.

What’s truly special is the design. Animation director Henry Selick, and then Mark Gustafson, laid on fairly shallow fields of perspective, yet brilliantly colored and detailed with great flair. Using Nikon D3 cameras they attained impeccable  clarity, and sustain a level of impish inspiration. The main textural element is fur, since Fox’s missing tail is the main mover of the plot.

Is this a film for kids? Few will relish words like “paranoia” and “astigmatism,” the small dialog lift from “Rebel Without a Cause” or the room-bashing nod to “Citizen Kane,” or the animal club where a pianist tootles “Night and Day.” But the action scenes, including the one with a rabid dog, are swift and funny, and the critters are (apart from Willem Dafoe’s Rat) more human than the humans. That is, of course, an old Disney truth, and Anderson, in his foxy way, has taken it to heart. (Rated PG) ★★★

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”

Before releasing her memoir “Going Rogue,” Sarah Palin should have spent quality time with an actual rogue: police detective Terence McDonaugh. Entertainingly inhabited by Nicolas Cage, Terry swings loose on coke, grass, heroin, booze, gambling, extortion and violence. He also hallucinates iguanas singing “Release Me.”

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” which is absolutely not based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, has some debt to Abel Ferrara’s weirdly mesmerizing “Bad Lieutenant” (1992). That starred Harvey Keitel as a New York lunatic. His lesson endures: life is hell and redemption is for sissies. Director Werner Herzog, who says he never saw Ferrara’s picture, revels in his taste for the extreme edge, yet adds little to his artistic portfolio. We can guess that the German visionary wanted to prowl beat-up New Orleans with Nic Cage, the uncaged actor of whom he said fondly, “Just turn the pig loose.”

Briefly heroic, Terry rescues a man from rising Katrina waters, but then faces chronic back pain. For that he takes daily relief, often illegal, as his posture turns twisted, lurching, almost spastic. He’s a Quasimodo Nixon, a horror-comic gargoyle for a Mardi Gras float. Herzog explores the story (script by William M. Finkelstein) with ramshackle exuberance. He must be the only director to emphasize the city’s mediocre high-rises, avoiding the warm and sexy N’Orleans of Shainee Gabel’s “A Love Song For Bobby Long.”

In his supreme role, as Ben in “Leaving Las Vegas,” Cage seemed to rub himself raw with alcohol, down to some primal bone of soul. Here, despite strong talents packed around him (Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Coolidge, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Xzibit, Shawn Hatosy and Eva Mendes as McDonaugh’s whore girlfriend), he is almost the entire loony show, the snake spine that keeps jerking and twisting. Herzog pumps the pulp as if this were a séance for Charles Bronson, and his Big Easy is a toilet that Katrina couldn’t quite flush. (In theaters; rated R) ★★★

“Old Dogs”

It is 20 years since John Travolta hit a profitable career crater with “Look Who’s Talking” and its sequel. Those films had talking babies, and maybe those babies grew up to write “Old Dogs.” Travolta is Charlie, rakish partner of glum Dan (Robin Williams), eager to seal a hot deal with a big Japanese outfit for their sports marketing firm. The movie intercuts scenes of Dan pathetically trying to bond with his unexpected twins, from a fly-by marriage seven years before, with scenes of the men holding slapstick business conferences (how many Disney brains thought this was a hip mix?).

While Travolta labors at idiotic charm, and flashes grins enhanced by special effects, Williams looks ready to die from creative nausea. Gags include dog reaction shots, Japanese stereotyping, golf balls hitting crotches, fossilized aging schtick, potty stall humor, a dog’s funeral (the casket looks human-sized), a fake gorilla and Ann-Margret as a screaming grief counselor. Also implicated are Seth Green, Matt Dillon, Rita Wilson, Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston and the late Bernie Mac as “Jimmy Lunchbox.” Goldman Sachs must have been a consultant, since lavish expenditure is never a problem in this laff-burger. Courtesy, or dismay, requires me to mention that some preview viewers did laugh. (Rated PG) ★

“The Road”

Piously extruded from a grim novel of Cormac McCarthy, “The Road” has characters known simply as Man, Boy and Mom (or Woman). That is always a bad sign, of archetypal pretension, and “The Road” is studded with many bad signs. The world has become a sort of post-2012 septic tank, with animals and plants dying off and people driven to frantic scavenging. This is old sci-fi territory (”Mad Max” nailed it down, “Water World” is the  wet version, and “A Boy and His Dog” may be the most oddly appealing). Director John Hillcoat does establish some wretched reality, a modest advantage over “2012.”

Viggo Mortensen is Man, a wreck held together by dirt, fear and rage, enduring only to protect Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee, who has a resemblance to the briefly seen Mom, Charlize Theron). Boy is a fledgling Christ figure, full of good feeling, and Man-dad says, “If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.” Speaking matters little in “The Road,” which is mostly made of dismal landscapes, trashed buildings and sudden ambushes by cannibals, or “meat people.” Man is still sensitive enough to be moved by finding an old piano, and delicate piano music underlines the groans of a dying world.

Among the dreary remnants is Old Eli (Robert Duvall), who speaks as a fallen prophet. Guy Pearce is a gaunt and gallant stranger, appearing like the munchy foretaste of a sequel. When Man starts coughing blood, Boy whimpers, “Dad, don’t leave me.” This funeral dirge makes “The Postman” seem like a jubilee of glad tidings. As a holiday offering, well, it beats “Antichrist.” (Rated R) ★

STARS: Four (ace), Three (worthy), Two (involving), One (dud), Zero (nil)

RECOMMENDED (and current): “An Education,” “The Messenger,” “Pirate Radio,” “Precious”

Read other David Elliott columns:

‘The Messenger,’ ‘Precious,’ ‘Blind Side,’ ‘The Maid’: Movie reviews, news

‘2012,’ ‘Pirate Radio,’ ‘Disgrace,’ ‘Dead Snow’: Movie reviews, news

NEWS Etc.

The Big Box - Holidays loom, and the film fan “who has everything” will need almost everything Kurosawa. “AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa” is a centenary DVD tribute to perhaps the greatest master of big themes richly explored (and in technique, Japan’s answer to Hitchcock). Almost all of his major works are here, including three early movies new to American digital release: “Sanshiro Sugata” (both parts), “The Most Beautiful” and “The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail.” The 25 newly printed discs come in a Criterion set, with texts by AK experts Donald Ritchie and Stephen Prince, and with luck you might find it below the $400 issue price. Of Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” the brilliant young American director Ramin Bahrani said: “Lessons 1 through 100 in how to write, shoot, direct and edit a film.”

So long for now - Tops Presents Cinema Under the Stars will close down its season this weekend, but should return by late spring. The curtain dropper is a laugh rouser: “The Big Lebowski,” perhaps the most cultish hit of the always cultish Coen Bros. It gave Jeff Bridges his signature scrawl as The Dude, and the criminal malarkey has good spots for John Turturro (best tongue scene ever?), John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and the door of the delightful theater opens at 5:30, at 4040 Goldfinch in Mission Hills (for details, see www.topspresents.com).

A QUOTE (not a blurb!): “I’m the boss, not Aunt Wendy. When it’s your time to use the bathroom, you tell Aunt Wendy to get the (bleep) out of the bathroom!” - Harvey Keitel in “Bad Lieutenant” (1992), offering paternal support to his sons.

David Elliott is the SDNN movie critic.

Tags: Abel Ferrara, Akira Kurosawa, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Bill Murray, Criterion Films, David Elliott, David Elliott reviews, Eva Mendes, Fantastic Mr. Fox, george clooney, Going Rogue, Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage, Old Dogs, review Bad Lieutenant, review Fantastic Mr. Fox, review Old Dogs, review The Road, Sarah Palin, SDNN, SWRNN, The Big Lebowski, The Road, Tops Presents Cinema Under Stars, Viggo Mortensen, Werner Herzog, Wes Anderson

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