The Soloist has everything it needs to be decent. A true story about a homeless musician and his relationship with an L.A. Times reporter, it’s the basic underdog-gets-a-break routine. We’ve all seen it before, most of us will keep paying to see it again.

It’s the second most overused plot in Hollywood, just behind the group-of-inner-city-kids-who-get-a-new-teacher-or-coach-who-at-first-doesn’t-fit-in-but-then-leads-them-on-to-great-things routine. These stories are completely predictable but, like a classic comedy routine, we (sometimes) don’t care that we know the ending because we (sometimes) enjoy the middle so much.

So before the opening scene, we already know that a homeless, mentally ill genius named Ayers is going to meet an L.A. Times reporter named Lopez, they’ll become friends, and in the end it’ll be the upper middle class Lopez who learns the true lessons of friendship and loyalty. When a story is this predictable, acting can be the difference between an Oscar nominee and a Lifetime Original Production.

Jamie Foxx already proved he can commit to a character (if you haven’t seen Ray, stop reading and go watch it now), and I wasn’t disappointed by his performance here. He becomes Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, balancing genius and illness on the fine line of tastefulness. Robert Downey Jr., on the other hand, is subtly perfect as Steve Lopez, an L.A. Times staff reporter whose fear of becoming obsolete drives him to find the perfect story. But I should be clear: the Soloist won’t be an Oscar nominee.

The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr.

This classic story supported by two solid performances was obscured by nearly every decision the director and screenwriter made.

Flashbacks, employed to tell the story of young Ayers, added almost no valuable information to the story. Ayers’s illness was signaled by the entrance of a chorus of random voices all repeating his full name, at some points being joined by visual effects that resembled the iTunes Visualizer. I wish someone would have told the director, Joe Wright, that on a giant screen, it’s enough to cause motion sickness and trigger epilepsy all at once. And I can’t forget to mention Steve Lopez’s horrible habit of getting covered in various types of urine.

It was these types of gags and misdirections that stepped in front of the story with a bullhorn and shouted in my face. When I wanted the front noise to die down so I could focus on Foxx and Downey doing their respective things, something would step up to say NATHANIEL ANTHONY AYERS IS MENTALLY ILL AND STEVE LOPEZ IS LEARNING ABOUT FRIENDSHIP AND IF YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION HERE IS A JARRING STUNT SCENE TO MAKE YOU LOOK. (If you’re like me, even reading that sentence was torture. We don’t like to be shouted at.)

This sort of self-destruction reminds me of this restaurant in my neighborhood called Rocket to Venus. The food is good, the ingredients are mostly local, the beer selection is great, and the environment is completely obnoxious. For hipsters looking for a trendy place to stand around and be mad at the world, I guess it works, but you won’t see me there very often. I can’t enjoy an eating experience when I’m surrounded by horrendous attitudes. They seem to have thought of everything except their interaction with me, the customer. And like most things, it’s only as good as its weakest link.

The Soloist has the pieces of an above average drama, but its weakest link is in its interaction with us, the viewers. I give it 2/5 stars (or 32/100 on Criticker).

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Normally, watching a wacky actor vomit into someone’s face would make me roll my eyes and brace for another lame, predictable farce. But when it happens in I Love You, Man, a new comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, it sort of works.

Of course, the story is still predictable. Peter Klaven (Rudd) is a great boyfriend without any friends. When Klaven overhears his new fiancé (Rashida Jones) and her friends worrying about his lack of guy pals, he goes on a mission to find a best friend and best man for his wedding.

I’m pretty sure you can guess the rest — a comical group of failed friendships leads right to Sydney Fife (Segal), the friend of Klaven’s dreams, and the two engage in a series of hilarious hijinks together. Like I said, it’s a predictable story that includes the tired vomit-in-the-face gag. But it works for two reasons.

1. Director John Hamburg and writer Larry Levin tell a real story. It’s predictable, but it’s something that could have actually happened to your cousin’s friend’s co-worker who actually almost vomited in some guy’s face and then exaggerated the story over time. It’s funny. It’s just a real, predictable, funny story.
2. Rudd and Segel completely nail it. Rudd plays the calm, quirky guy who reminds you of someone you know, cool but a bit socially awkward. Segel, meanwhile, plays off of it perfectly by being a slightly over-the-top but totally lovable wild guy.

And while the supporting cast were mostly overshadowed by Rudd and Segel, there were a few performances worth mentioning. Rashida Jones is great as Rudd’s conflicted fiancé, in her first major film role, and Andy Samberg doesn’t overdo it as Rudd’s gay, body-building brother. And who can forget Lou Ferrigno’s stunning performance as himself? In fact, the supporting cast played their roles perfectly by staying out of the way, something that seems surprisingly hard to do.

But as these two strong characters begin to build their friendship, the dialogue does take a turn toward the kind of conversation you’d expect to hear in a garage known as “The Man Cave”. If you’re offended by even the brief mention of a “masturbation station,” you’ll probably find yourself wincing in more than a few places. But if you’ve made it through an episode of The Family Guy lately, you shouldn’t worry. I Love You, Man is far less ridiculous and a whole lot funnier.

As a friend of mine described it, I Love You, Man is a romantic comedy for guys. And it’s true, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s the best comedy of the year so far.

Rating: ★★★★½ 

In one corner, weighing in at over 900 pounds of freshly squeezed shame, the recently resigned President of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon! And, in the other corner, weighing in at just 3 kilos of experience, the British talk-show host and laughingstock of the American media empire, David Frost! That’s how Peter Morgan, the British screenwriter made famous by The Queen and The Last King of Scotland, sets up his story about America’s most infamous ex-President.

It doesn’t feel like the story will be big enough to carry 122 minutes of screen time at first. Nixon resigns under the weight of the Watergate avalanche and withdraws to a California estate. David Frost, known then only as the host of several British talk shows, finds himself alongside the American media giants seeking an exit interview with the newly pardoned President.

After discussing his options with his new agent, played with comedic flair by Toby Jones, Nixon chooses Frost, who is both the highest bidder and the most inexperienced-seeming interviewer of the group. Frost struggles to fund the high-priced interviews while also preparing for them, ultimately conducting them on his own dime. It sounds like the making of an hour-long documentary at most, not a two-hour feature length production.

Something about the characters would have to carry the space. Frank Langella turns in an outstanding performance as the embattled Nixon. Rather than relying on cheap overused soundbites like “I am not a crook” — a line that thankfully never appeared in the script — Langella becomes Nixon, from his deep, gravelly voice to his nervous mannerisms and cocky swagger.

Michael Sheen (no relation to those Sheens) is brilliant as David Frost, a character that most of us don’t know and couldn’t appreciate a great impersonation of if we did. The hard work here was to make us care about the character at all, and Sheen’s portrayal is a complex mixture of silly and sad, moving toward an uncertain victory that everyone can cheer for over a dark villain that everyone roots against.

But Nixon isn’t all villain. In several conversations with Frost and with family members, and even in a brief exchange between Nixon and a bystander’s dog, Tricky Dick comes across as a real human with real emotions. Those who aren’t familiar with the intensity of the Watergate scandal and its aftermath might even leave the theater with a very sympathetic understanding of a man who made “mistakes of the heart, but not of the mind.”

This sympathetic yet sleazy Nixon, along with Frost, take up most of the screen time as the title suggests. But a small cast requires the right kind of support; Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew MacFadyen, and Kevin Bacon do an excellent job of supplementing the Frost/Nixon duo without confusing the story.

To be fair, it didn’t do everything perfectly. A drunken, midnight call from Nixon to Frost is used to explain in excruciating detail just exactly what their adversarial interview represents. Morgan’s Britishness overtakes the American story here, and the whole struggle is boiled down to a class-versus-class battle more typical of English tales.

After their lengthy midnight conversation, Frost is inexplicably motivated to work harder than ever before to prepare for their final session the next day. These all-night preparations are assembled by way of, as you may have guessed, the studying montage. In a story with so much space to work with, it’s hard to forgive the use of such a tired device.

In spite of its small flaws, Frost/Nixon comes out remarkably well. There’s a small cast of excellent characters. There’s a love interest who doesn’t artificially overwhelm the story. There’s a historical representation of a real, simple story that isn’t dry or dull. And there are other stories beneath it, about an old man living with big mistakes and bigger consequences, and about a young man struggling to be taken seriously.

If you love history, or just a good story, you’ll adore Frost/Nixon.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Milk is the story of Harvey Milk. It’s a film that could have easily been a politicized puff piece dedicated to a so-called Great American Hero. Instead, director Gus Van Sant tells the story of a rather lucky gay guy who, by natural charisma and a borderline unhealthy love of power, begins a wave of support for gay rights that would eventually spread all across the country.

Sean Penn excels as a character actor, and if it wasn’t a true story I’d swear the part was written with Penn in mind. He completely becomes Harvey Milk, at first as a 40 year old businessman from New York City secretly in love with Scott Smith (James Franco, who pleasantly surprised me in this role). He quickly becomes the openly gay Milk who moves to San Francisco with Smith to open a camera shop on Castro Street.

As the self-appointed mayor of Castro, Milk spends a good deal of the story failing. He loses the race for Board of Supervisors three times before luck takes over. In 1977, the districts are redrawn in a way that works to Milk’s advantage, finally getting him elected to the coveted seat. The new Supervisor at one point says to the Mayor, “A homosexual with power, now that’s scary,” in a mildly threatening tone. It’s obvious that he likes his new power, maybe a little too much.

It’s partially that lust for power that drives some of the ironic elements of the story. Milk’s obsession with running for the Supervisor seat, a run he dedicates to the surrounding gay community, results in the loss of his committed partner of many years. His political alignments, when he is convinced to go back on his word to fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin), drive White to depression, despair, alcoholism, and his eventual resignation from the board.

Dan White is portrayed as a socially awkward outcast looking for acceptance from constituents and fellow supervisors alike. When he finds neither, his descent into desperation is a picture of what happens to those who are cast out for being strange or different. He surprisingly resembles much of the supporting cast, the young homosexual men who made their way to Castro Street in search of acceptance. Wonderful performances by Emile Hirsch, Allison Pill, Joseph Cross, and others contributed light scenes and likeable characters to the depth of the story, complementing Penn’s strong performance by being both subtle and memorable.

Milk’s obsessions weren’t all bad. When Anita Bryant, a fervent religious activist for anti-gay legislation (portrayed by real archive footage of herself), campaigned against rights for homosexuals, it was Milk’s persistence that stirred up a revolution of young men (and a few women). His election to the Board of Supervisors allegedly saved a few lives of some who had given up hope. And his stubborn will to speak out to anyone who would listen was the driving force behind the fight against Proposition 6, a measure on the California ballot that proposed to legalize the firing of school teachers simply for being gay.

The juxtaposition of enormous success alongside ironic failure created a uniquely realistic story about the beginnings of the gay rights movement that continues today. Harvey Milk’s tragic murder happened at the peak of his influence, shot by a social outcast looking for a friend. That would’ve been the appropriately sad end to this beautiful story, too, if it weren’t for the archive footage of his candlelight procession, stretching for miles into the night.

Harvey Milk, who began his soapbox speeches by telling crowds, “I want to recruit you,” had recruited thousands of young men and women to carry on his flawed, obsessive hope.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 

When you first saw the trailer for John Avnet’s introspective buddy cop film Righteous Kill, did you honestly hope for fantastic dialogue, an award-winning plot, and heart-pounding action scenes? Probably not, and for that reason alone it had almost no chance of failing. It successfully delivers exactly what it promises – a movie starring De Niro and Pacino, even if we had to wait for the twilight of their careers to see it.

It’s been 13 years since these two giants shared a few short scenes in Heat, and another 11 years before that since they both appeared in The Godfather: Part II, in which they never shared a scene at all.  To see them side by side for an entire feature could be the main reason you were interested in Righteous Kill.

There are few scenes that don’t feature Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino). two old cops who crack jokes as they kick asses and try to solve crimes. Interestingly, they aren’t portrayed as fantastic cops or great detectives, just seasoned veterans who’ve been together forever.

When the two maverick cops watch a child-murderer go free, Turk forms a plan to put the criminal away for good. While Rooster initially tries to dissuade him from the crusade, he keeps his partner’s secret for years.

At this point, things get complicated (for the viewer even more than the characters). Turk and Rooster are on a case of a serial killer who leaves poetry at his victims’ crime scenes. The victims are all criminals, and Detectives Perez (John Leguizamo) and Riley (Donnie Wahlberg) are convinced that only a cop would have access to them all, and they take their suspicions to Lieutenant Hingis (Brian Dennehy).

Meanwhile, Officer Corelli (Carla Gugino), Turk’s masochistic girlfriend, is becoming more and more curious about what’s really happening. And all of these scenes in the present are constantly interrupted by non-sequential scenes of Turk, in a black and white video, confessing to the serial killings and explaining why they were necessary.

The movie resembles Lethal Weapon and Showtime’s Dexter combined in strange harmony. A buddy cop movie that vaguely poses some philosophical questions about the nature of right and wrong.  And there’s potential for a great, out of the ordinary story that showcases those kind of questions. Instead, it wraps up with a safe but tired gimmick that threatens to rip the story apart.

In the end, you won’t stay in your seat for dialogue like, “you pick up a check sometime and then I’ll believe in miracles” or for action that’s made up of a few people being shot.  You might even get annoyed or frustrated by the long, complicated road the storyline takes or the clichés it visits along the way.

But if the reason you’re going to see Righteous Kill is because it stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, well, it does. Have fun.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆