http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-20-1-films-reviews.html Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2003 debut film Camp, the underappreciated—yet secretly influential—pop music celebration set at a training school for young musical theater aspirants.]]> In a movie about servants, is it possible to take the masters’ side? Probably not. But that doesn’t make another story about aristocratic anomie versus proletariat pluck the solution, and that’s exactly what director Philippe Le Guay has done. Accomplished, well-acted and sporadically charming, The Women on the 6th Floor is ultimately too predictable and inoffensive to ever make us care.]]> Alain Corneau was remarkable. Sixty-seven years old, dying from cancer, not only did his style remain as rigorous and lucid as ever but with Love Crime, he tapped into adolescent truths inaccessible to directors half his age. The story’s first half is an office drama between Isabella (Ludivine Sagnier), a young executive who despite her brilliance is hopelessly innocent, and her boss Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), who steals Isabella’s ideas. Her colleague and lover Philippe (Patrick Mille) is a callous coward. And she’s happy with that because everyone likes her.]]> Taking the low-budget movie The Family Tree seriously is virtually impossible, given its overly pedigreed cast and the vacuum it’s set in. As the dysfunctional Burnett family falls apart in Serenity, Ohio, they do it on suspiciously empty streets and the world’s most under-populated town fair. Extras were apparently out of the question once the salaries for stars Hope Davis and Dermot Mulroney were paid.]]> Special Treatment aims to be both funny and philosophical and succeeds at neither. The first half follows the independent stories of Alice and psychotherapist Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners). Alice is the consummate professional; as we watch her fulfill eclectic fantasies—the scenes are always shot using the same comedic formula, a bizarre preparation followed by the postcoital punchline—we get the impression nothing will faze her. Strange sex doesn’t affect her everyday demeanor and she thinks of clients as less than people.]]> Count Our Idiot Brother among Paul Rudd’s poor choices—a select group of dumb to unbearable films including The Shape of Things, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Dinner for Schmucks that waste the actor’s estimable gifts. Rudd’s commitment to playing off-center characters who combine nerdiness with idiosyncratic charm has made him a new kind of romantic comedian. He takes the Cary Grant mantel into the post-feminist era, where masculinity shades easily into non-aggressive, quasi-gay traits—the hallmarks of Rudd’s best characterizations in I Love You Man, Role Models, Diggers and Clueless. ]]> The recent boom of superhero movies has led to the development of a subgenre: the superhero parody. And, at least at first, Leon Ford’s debut feature looks like one of these uninspired comedies. Griff (Ryan Kwanten, True Blood’s Jason Stackhouse) is a crime fighter with problems. He works an office job at boring WW Enterprises; his colleagues pick on him; police want to end to his vigilante justice.]]> It’s perfect coincidence that the comedy 30 Minutes or Less opens the same week as Spike Jonze’s music video for the controversial Jay-Z and Kanye West song “Otis” is released. Together they usefully gauge how Americans judge behavior, success and the mixed-up values of post-9/11 masculinity.]]> As a piece of entertainment, The Help succeeds where Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls failed: this comic melodrama is geared to please a broad audience by contrasting the experiences of black and white women in 1960s America, just before the Civil Rights Act and the popularity of feminism. Sisterhood is shown as a circumstance of different but shared sacrifices based on gender, but controlled by race and class.]]> More than a prequel, better than a reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the most exciting installment of that series since its beginning in 1968 and—are you ready?—it is easily the best American movie of this corrupted summer. Rise succeeds on modest B-movie terms (terms confused by Hollywood’s blockbuster mentality, where action-exploitation films now carry the weight of exorbitant budgets, studio expectations and adolescent notions of prestige). Director Rupert Wyatt brings glory back to the B movie. ]]> Good Neighbors, Jacob Tierney’s third feature, is set in 1995 Montreal. Nationalists clamor for Quebec separation, but the real tension is created by a man who separates something different: women. A serial killer is slashing throats around Notre-Dame-de-Grace, and the residents of Madame Gauthier’s (Micheline Lanctot) apartment complex are worried. Cat-loving Louise (Emily Hampshire) and wheelchair-bound Spencer (Scott Speedman) live a floor apart and gather nightly to discuss the latest murders. Could it be Victor (Jay Baruchel), that suspicious new tenant moving in a couch?]]> Apparently, $100 million means you wont risk asking audiences to think about their fear of the Other or the racial and territorial issues of the American West. Merely after a circus, Spielberg sanctioned the hack Favreau, whose lucrative but unimaginative Iron Man.]]> The Guard, Irish writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s new cop movie, opens with shots of a verdant West Irish landscape and overcast sky, backdrops to the grimacing face of Sgt. Gerry Boyle,]]>