What Just Happened

"What Just Happened" gets all the details right and the big picture wrong. It's well-written and well-filmed, but it's exactly the kind of movie that Ben, a producer played by Robert De Niro in the film, would not greenlight.

The film shows us two weeks in the life of Ben as he scrambles to deal with issues in his professional and personal lives. "What Just Happened" is very good at showing us the frenetic pace of a Hollywood producer, rushing to put out one fire after another. It manages to demonstrate the cold, hard logic of numbers that rules studio decisions without getting preachy, no small feat. And it gives us the seamier side of LA--using sex to get a film role, abusing pills and so on--in a matter-of-fact way, without rubbing our nose in how dirty things can get.

Trouble is, the three crises Ben is dealing with are slender reeds on which to hang a film. He's trying win back his ex-wife--one of two we meet--but she's sleeping with someone else. He's wrestling with a director, who appears to be based on a combination of Sid Vicious and Keith Richards, over taking out a controversial dog shooting in his new film. And he's fighting mightily with Bruce Willis, playing an outsized version of himself, to shave a ridiculous beard before a new movie begins filming.

"What Just Happened" never really delves past the surface in dealing with these issues. Ben's half-hearted attempts to win back his wife are clearly never going to work. The Willis subplot is particularly undercooked. Ben doesn't even try to negotiate--how about a goatee?--or find out why Willis wants to play the character with a beard. These sins might be more forgivable if "What Just Happened" played as a breezy comedy. But while there are clearly efforts at humor here, they fall very short. There's little effort made at witty dialogue or comedic setpieces. A running gag involving an agent with some sort of hacking cough gets very old.

It's very unfortunate, because "What Just Happened" is a well-made, well-intentioned film with a loaded cast. De Niro plays a variation on his character in the terrific "Wag the Dog," a cynical insider who's seen it all. He doesn't try very hard, but with his talent, he doesn't have to. Stanley Tucci, John Tuturro and Catherine Keener, all capable scene stealers, do solid work. Sean Penn and Willis both play versions of themselves. As one might expect, Penn plays a credible version of himself, while Willis has fun going way over the top as the bearded, overweight diva. Even Kristen Stewart gets to do her usual brooding thing as Ben's daughter.

These characters would all fare well in a grim drama or, better, a zany comedy. But "What Just Happened" is too serious to be funny and too funny to be serious.

True Grit

By now, we know what the Coen brothers do well: deadpan wit, white-knuckled suspense, and cruel twists of fate. But never have they blended their talents as seamlessly as in "True Grit".

Working off a novel by Charles Portis, which supplies much of the dialogue, the Coens spin a wonderfully moving little yarn. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) inherits her family's estate at 14 after her father is killed. Far from being in over her head, she quickly uses her business acumen to generate some capital and hire Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to avenge the death. Alternately boozy and razor-sharp, Cogburn searches for the killer on Native American lands. He soon meets LaBouef (Matt Damon), a Texas ranger also on the killer's trail. LaBouef is a character rarely if ever encountered: he has a good heart and dogged determination, yet he's frequently incompetent and arrogant as only a Texan can be. The fate of these three motley travellers isn't hard to guess, but the story is so well told that we still get swept up in it.

The acting is uniformly terrific, the score appropriately sentimental. Other than that, there's not a lot of technical brauvara here. The Coens know it's not necessary: they've got a great story, lively dialogue and fantastic characters. They do just enough to make it all sing beautifully. "True Grit" is the best American picture of the year.

The Runaways

The Runaways helped introduce female sexuality to rock and roll. There, I just saved you an hour and 45 minutes.

What's that? You've got some time to kill? Well, I don't recommend wasting it on this film. Actually, it's more of a music video: endless montages of girls playing gigs, taking pills, snorting coke and having sex.

The plot is a "Behind the Music" episode without the interviews. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), motivated by a desire to rebel against their irresponsible parents and bland peers, form a band with help from producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon, whose terrific intensity is wasted in a role that requires him to constantly exhort the girls to be tough and sexy, then tougher and sexier). The girls break all the rules, refuse to be tamed--until it all comes crashing down. I'm bored just typing this.

There's one consolation: a terrific soundtrack feature the Stooges, the Sex Pistols and David Bowie. Really, the whole film is an attempt to capture the intensity of a song like "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog".

But there's a problem with that approach. "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog" is three minutes long. The hook gets in your head, the beat rattles your bones, and then it's done. A movie, on the other hand, is a world you inhabit for two hours. And it helps a lot to have something to draw people into that world: technical mastery, wit, compelling emotions, thought provoking ideas, something. An amateurishly filmed screenplay about teenagers dicking around that took about as long to write as a Ramones song isn't cutting it.