A veritable herd of movies is thundering into theaters this weekend. I can't decide whether it's the annual Spring Dump or if the studios really planned all along to release these pictures before George Clooney decreed summer is here—next week, April 4—with his painful period football comedy, “Leatherheads.”

So, here you are. Title. Opinion. Quicker and less painful.

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“Chicago10”: It's about the trial of the Chicago Seven, but filmmaker Brett Morgen bumped the number up by adding black activist Bobby Seale, whose inclusion in the case led him to be bound and gagged in the courtroom, and the group's two lawyers who, ironically, got the longest sentences.

If you were in college when the trial occurred in 1969, the movie is equal parts nostalgia and chagrin. Geez, just look at Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, et al.

If you were old enough to have a kid in college when all this took place, you'll likely shake your head and sigh.

And if you had just been born, like the 39-year-old Morgen, well, chances are you'll think there were Yippie giants who walked the earth in those days.

This is the heart of the film's problem. As meticulous and well-intentioned as Morgen has been, his unabashed hero-worship of these courageous clown provocateurs both obscures and diminishes his message.

The filmmaker mixes an animated version of the trial (kinda neat) with archival news footage of the police riot (very neat) that occurred in Chicago outside the Democratic Convention in 1968. And, for all the smart-ass acting-out and thumb-nosing behavior, it's still startling to see nightsticks and tear gas used against unruly but unarmed kids.

The voice talent for the animated trial is impeccable—from a wheezy Roy Scheider as the irascible Judge Julius Hoffman to Hank Azaria as a self-righteous, self-absorbed, yet curiously caring Abbie Hoffman. At one point, asked what he would give for this revolution, he answers, “My life,” which, tragically turned out to be true when he committed suicide in 1989.

Morgen wants us to applaud these holy fools, and we do. But at the same time, we wonder if he just wanted to be there when, as the kids chanted, “The whole world is watching.”

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“Flawless”: It isn't, of course. But it's an exceptionally likable, under-promoted heist film, starring Michael Caine as a seemingly harmless janitor at a major diamond firm in 1960 London and Demi Moore as a pre-Helen Gurley-Brown exec who has bumped into the glass ceiling so many times she's bleeding from the insides.

When Caine, as the knows-all cleaning guy, lets her know—because the higher-ups feel perfectly comfortable talking in front of him about higher-up decisions—that she's going to be let go, Moore is properly miffed. And Caine is properly vengeful, for reasons of his own. The minor feminist notes are as welcome as they are well done. And Caine is flat-out irresistible as a Cockney nobody who wants the powerbrokers to get what they deserve.

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“Run Fatboy Run”: Run. Away. I don't care if it has Simon Pegg of “Shaun of the Dead” in it. Run.

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“Stop Loss”: Or, “'The Deer Hunter' for Dummies.” Director Kimberly Peirce, who made a big splash for herself with “Boys Don't Cry,” examines the distasteful practice of sending soldiers back to Iraq after they've served their time and announced they aren't re-upping. It's a term I was unfamiliar with and it's just more confirmation of how creepy and heartless our government can be when we aren't looking. But the film is curiously unaffecting. Its platoon of blue-collar types is as indistinguishable as, to quote a better war movie, the mess of goo Gen. George Patton (George C. Scott) says your friend's face would turn into. (Then, he adds, “You'll know what to do.”)

Some fancy camera work at the beginning, as the soldiers are slaughtered in the midst of house-to-house combat, is “Blackhawk Down” effective. But the rest is message-laden melodrama.

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“Snow Angels”: Geez, chilly scenes of winter don't come more doleful than this. Set in some God-help-us corner of Pennsylvania in the dead of winter, the picture begins with a high-school band practice interrupted by two gunshots. The rest of the movie is a “weeks earlier” flashback in which we are to determine—care?—who shot whom and why. An offbeat cast ranging from Sam Rockwell to Amy Sedaris seems frozen out by the script. However, as a selfish, wayward wife, Kate Beckinsale reminds us she used to be able to act before she sold her soul to vampire movies.

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“Married Life”: Let's end on an up note. The trouble with Harry (Chris Cooper) in this excellent period piece—a late '40s roundelay of sex, adultery, betrayal, friendship and murder—is that he loves his wife, a patrician Patricia Clarkson, but has fallen into a torrid affair with sexy Rachel McAdams. As he confides to his womanizing best pal (Pierce Brosnan), he doesn't want to see his wife embarrassed or suffering. So, Harry plans to kill her before all is revealed.

“You don't want to build your happiness on the unhappiness of others” is an oft-repeated riff by several characters. But they really do. And watching these people try to create a noble action from an ignoble impulse is quite delicious.

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Quotable

They're afraid if they let you in there, you're gonna wear a diaper, or throw oranges at the justices, and they should be, Larry, because in all the times you've gone to the court asking for help, you've never once demonstrated any respect for its institutions and procedures.

—Edward Norton, as Larry Flynt's lawyer in “The People vs. Larry Flynt”

Source: imdb.com

Film Critic Eleanor Ringel Cater can be reached at eringel-cater@alm.com