Capsule reviews of films opening this week:
"Attack the Block" — On paper, it might not sound like it would work: a mash-up of alien-invasion thriller and teen-stoner comedy. They're two genres that wouldn't seem to make sense together, with the paranoid intensity of the former a potentially odd fit for the laid-back laughs of the latter. But "Attack the Block" is a giddy blast, remaining faithful to both of its points of origin while offering something new and refreshing that confidently stands on its own. Writer-director Joe Cornish, a British comic and television host making his first feature, has crafted a low-budget adventure with propulsive energy and plenty of laughs. With its tweaking of styles and its dry humor in the face of absurd danger, it's sure to draw comparisons to the neo-zombie hit "Shaun of the Dead" (not to mention that that film's director, Edgar Wright, is a producer here and Nick Frost appears in both). "Attack the Block" is already developing a cult following through midnight film-festival showings, and deservedly so; it's definitely a movie you want to watch in a raucous, packed house. Young thugs in a South London housing project try to survive an alien attack by arming themselves with makeshift weapons and hiding in a pot dealer's grow room. R for creature violence, drug content and pervasive language. 87 minutes. Three stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"Cowboys & Aliens" — Director Jon Favreau's genre mash-up is more a mush-up, an action yarn aiming to be both science fiction and Old West adventure but doing neither all that well. The filmmakers — and there are a lot, among them 11 producers or executive producers including Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, plus half a dozen credited writers — start with a title that lays out a simple but cool premise: invaders from the skies shooting it out with guys on horseback. For all the talent involved, they wound up keeping the story too simple, almost simple-minded, leaving a terrific cast led by Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde stuck in a sketchy, sometimes poky tale where you get cowboys occasionally fighting aliens and not much more. Craig's a stony-faced amnesiac with a weird hunk of metal locked on his wrist who wanders into a dusty town just before alien craft swoop in and start abducting the locals. He joins cattle baron Ford's posse to retrieve the missing and teach these creatures not to mess with hardy western pioneers. PG-13 for intense sequences of western and sci-fi action and violence, some partial nudity and a brief crude reference. 118 minutes. Two stars out of four.
— David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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"Crazy Stupid Love" — For a movie that intends to be rooted in a recognizable and insightful reality, this features an awful lot of moments that clang in a contrived, feel-good manner. Because you see, it's simultaneously trying to charm us. Sometimes, it achieves that goal. At the same time, it also has its share of moments that hit just the perfect, poignant note, with some laughs that arise from a place of honesty. When you assemble a cast that includes Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, you're already on the right track. Because "Crazy Stupid Love" also aims to be a romantic comedy of substance and intelligence. Sometimes, it achieves that goal, too. That's what's frustrating here — the unevenness of it all. Carell stars as Cal, a nebbishy fortysomething whose high-school sweetheart, Emily (Moore), announces that she's slept with someone else and wants a divorce. Drowning his sorrows nightly at a local bar, Cal finds an unlikely mentor in Jacob (Gosling), an expensively dressed womanizer who gives him a makeover. It seems unlikely Jacob would even give this guy the time of day in real life, but Gosling is charismatic as hell and surprisingly funny in the role. He also has a great, flirty chemistry with Stone as the one woman who sees through his game. PG-13 for coarse humor, sexual content and language. 118 minutes. Two stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
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"The Devil's Double" — Dominic Cooper delivers two excellent performances as both unhinged party boy Uday Hussein, son of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the body double he uses to thwart assassins. Yet as grand and showy as Cooper is, the characters and action are so unsavory — even sickening, at times — that you really need to be sure you're up for a peek into Saddam's inner circle of crooks and monsters before laying your money down. Director Lee Tamahori ("Die Another Day") lays on the savagery relentlessly, from revolting sexual abuse of women to nauseating slaughter. The people mostly come off as one-dimensional thugs in a gory gangster flick, intent only on their own pleasure and profit. Cooper has done such a good job bringing Uday to life, it's a bit of a trial to watch. He's not a fascinating portrait of evil, such as Bruno Ganz's Adolf Hitler in "Downfall" or Forest Whitaker's Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland." This is a creature, a ranting beast, one you can't wait to see put down. R for strong brutal bloody violence and torture, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and pervasive language. 108 minutes. Two stars out of four.
— David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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"The Guard" — In a cinematic world so awash either in corporate flatness or high-art pretension, John Michael McDonagh's film is a proud, foul-mouthed exception. Brendan Gleeson plays Sgt. Gerry Boyle, a sardonic Irish police officer who describes himself as "the last of the independents." An expected drug shipment brings FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) to Boyle's Galway shores. While the philosophical smugglers (Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot) lurk, Boyle and Everett investigate. A thoroughly entertaining buddy-cop film sets in between the opposites: Everett a suit-clad professional; Boyle an offensive, far more reluctant keeper-of-the-peace. The excellent Ennio Morricone-style score by the band Calexico hints at the Western mythical tones: Boyle is a comedic lone gunman of veracity. It's a great role for Gleeson and Cheadle serves as a top-notch straight man. It's also a late, promising directorial debut for McDonagh, the older brother of the playwright and "In Bruges" writer-director, Martin McDonagh. They share a fondness for ruthlessly unsentimental absurdity. R for pervasive language and violence. 96 minutes. Three stars out of four.
— Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer
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"Life in a Day" — Director Kevin Macdonald has taken the sort of inane narcissism that reality television perpetuates and turned it into an exploration of universality with this clever and collaborative project. This fluidly paced documentary consists of video that regular folks from around the world shot of their lives on a single day — July 24, 2010 — then uploaded to YouTube. After more than 80,000 submissions totaling about 4,500 hours from 192 countries, this is the entertaining result. Yes, it's a small world after all — everyone gets out of bed in the morning, everyone eats breakfast, etc. It's the small details that make this film compelling, and the massive effort it took to craft it: A team of researchers spent months watching and categorizing clips for possible inclusion by Macdonald ("One Day in September," "The Last King of Scotland") and veteran editor Joe Walker, who clearly did yeoman's work in making it all flow together seamlessly as a cohesive whole. And even though the players aren't uniformly introduced by name or country, certain stories emerge that make you wish you could see more. Among them: an American mother with cancer who's recovering from surgery and raising a young son, a news photographer in Afghanistan and a Russian, tattooed, shoplifting parkour expert who could be the star of his own action picture. PG-13 for disturbing, violent images, language and a sexual reference. 90 minutes. Three stars out of four.
— Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic