Title: Oranges and Sunshine Director: Jim Loach Starring: Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham “Oranges and Sunshine” is re-affirming evidence that not every remarkable true story a remarkable film makes. Based on the book “Empty Cradles” by British social worker Margaret Humphreys, the movie tells the story of its crusading subject, who worked to uncover one of the most shocking government-sanctioned scandals of modern times — the forced deportation of many thousands of children from the United Kingdom to Australia. Both overall and scene-to-scene, though, ”Oranges and Sunshine” exudes a just-fine feeling of dutiful emotional string-pulling, and nothing more. It commits no great and cringe-worthy offenses, but neither does it ever really get…

Title: Margaret Director: Kenneth Lonergan Starring: Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Jean Reno, Jeannie Berlin, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Broderick,  Kenneth Lonergan, Rosemarie Dewitt, Allison Janney “Margaret,” the first film behind the camera from writer-director Kenneth Lonergan in more than a decade, is a hot mess. Considering its behind-the-scenes wrangling and long road to release, however, that’s not really that surprising. In 2000, Longergan helped bolster the mainstream careers of Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo with “You Can Count On Me,” the engaging, Oscar-nominated story of a fractured adult sibling relationship. In 2005 he shot his follow-up, “Margaret,” about a troubled high school teenager who witnesses a terrible bus accident…

Title: Shaolin Directors: Benny Chan and Cory Yuen Starring: Andy Lau, Nicholas Tse, Jackie Tse, Wu Jing, Li Bing Bing Another nationalist, feuding-warlord Chinese martial arts import, historic epic “Shaolin” delivers moderately on the expectations its core demographic might likely have, but otherwise does little else to distinguish itself for a broader audience. Ambitiously staged set pieces fall victim to portentous technique, creating an ultimately irreconcilable chasm between how much one wants to like this movie and how much they actually do. A kind of spiritual rebooting of Jet Li’s 1982 classic “The Shaolin Temple,” the film unfolds in the early days of the Chinese republic, as various warlords look to…

Title: I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive Directors: Claude Miller and Nathan Miller Starring: Vincent Rottiers, Annie Jouvet, Sophie Cattani, Christine Citti, Yves Verhoeven “I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive,” which played at the 2010 City of Lights City of Angels (COLCOA) Festival, is a stirring familial drama of simmering resentment, anchored by a searing performance from young Vincent Rottiers, whose piercing blue eyes and quiet intensity are enough to make one ruminate about a possible fraternal collaboration with Daniel Craig. The American version of these sorts of damaged-kid stories typically cedes all ambiguity in favor of pat cathartic redemption, but this gripping French import keeps an edge of violence and uncertainty about…

“Thor,” an almost $450 million worldwide box office hit earlier this year, introduced audiences to one of the players in Marvel Studios’ grand, forthcoming ”Avengers” saga. And that’s part of the problem, honestly. However admirably ambitious the creation of a unified superhero universe spanning multiple movies, certain entries, like this one, play like little more than origin story pattycake – wan set-up for something of later, actual consequence. On the verge of ascending to the throne of Asgard, headstrong Norse God Thor (Chris Hemsworth) flips out over some nasty ice giant interlopers who are vanquished in fairly short order, and decides to seek revenge, against the counsel of his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins),…

Title: Restless Director: Gus Van Sant Starring: Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska, Ryo Kase, Jane Adams, Schuyler Fisk Filmmaker Gus Van Sant, even at 59 years old, looks like the sort of guy who should be wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a hoodie. In face, body language and spirit, he retains a certain boyishness — perhaps in some small way infused, throughout the years, by his thematic preoccupation with unconventional romance and coming-of-age stories, and the idea of surrogate family. “Restless,” his latest effort behind the camera, and the first since Sean Penn scored a Best Actor Oscar for “Milk,” treads this same familiar ground, but to mostly pleasurable if still…

Title: Toast Directed By: SJ Clarkson Written By: Lee Hall, adapted from Nigel Slater’s memoir Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Ken Stott, Oscar Kennedy, Victoria Hamilton, Freddie Highmore Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 9/13/11 Opens: September 23, 2011 The way to a man’s heart may be through his stomach, but there is this big exception: it helps if you like the cook. Watching SJ Clarkson’s period piece, which takes place in small-town British Midlands during the sixties, you’ll be tempted to re-think the Scepter’d Isle as Europe’s prime location for godawful food, but Lee Hall’s script, adapted from food writer Nigel Slater’s memoir, makes us wait a while before liberating a…

Title: 5 Days of War Director: Renny Harlin Starring: Rupert Friend, Richard Coyle, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Val Kilmer, Heather Graham, Johnathon Schaech, Rade Sherbedgia, Dean Cain, Andy Garcia There are those direct-to-video movies that somehow, rather inexplicably and seemingly unfairly, bypass theaters altogether and arrive on DVD with an entirely unearned stench of career desperation (this was to be the fate of “Slumdog Millionaire,” actually, until Fox Searchlight rescued it from the clutches of Warner Bros., who knew not what they had — or at least not how to market it), and then there are those straight genre programmers that feature a third-tier wrestler-turned-actor, and were never being made with theatrical…

Title: Littlerock Writer-director: Mike Ott Starring: Atsuko Okatsuka, Cory Zacharia, Rintaro Sawamoto, Roberto Sanchez, Brett L. Tinnes, Ryan Dillon A nicely photographed and initially intriguing character study of a road trip gone awry, and a sibling pair of foreign travelers waylaid in a land foreign to them, “Littlerock” quickly fumbles away any sense of delicate engagement, and ends up a collection of posed and meandering down-tempo moments in search of an inciting incident or clarifying signifier. Pleased with itself more than it ought to be, the movie seems to believe or feel that dawdling for dawdling’s sake is in the end its own kind of precious artistic statement, a fact only underscored…

Title: Cafe Writer-director: Marc Erlbaum Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jamie Kennedy, Daniel Eric Gold, Hubbel Palmer, Richard Short, Garrett Lee Hendricks, Madeline Carroll, Alexa Vega, Michaela McManus, Derek Cecil If one has on their “bucket list” seeing a live-action, achingly precious ensemble drama in which a butterfly recites some of the lyrics to “I Want Candy,” then they should definitely see “Cafe.” Then, and only then. Actually… you know what? They may want to hold up and wait a bit longer, rolling the dice to see if some other enterprising would-be auteur works that left-field tidbit into their armchair-philosophizing cinematic treatise on paying it forward or embracing life or some such malarkey. A sincere…