And most critics have adored the new American remake of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” heralding Rooney Mara’s performance as the extremely damaged character Lisabeth Salander as an ass-kicking breakthrough for actresses and exciting entertainment for adults.

Sure, the movie’s got plenty going for it, at least for most of its nearly two-hour, 40-minute running time. Adults who can handle bleakness will get to see strong performances, interesting locales and a nicely twisting mystery in return for their time and money. But the film’s most important scene, the one that shows Lisabeth driven to her breaking point, shows that Hollywood filmmaking conventions and the critics who applaud the film wholeheartedly aren’t really on the side of women at all.

In fact, the American film, its literary source material in a trilogy of novels by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson, beg the question of how far art can and should push the envelope. “Dragon” offers up an anal rape scene against Salander that is utterly horrifying, but then takes things even further with Salander’s multi-faceted and despicably torturous response to her attacker.

These are two scenes that take up a total of about 10 minutes in a 158-minute film. The rape and Salander’s response to it are key moments, but viewers and the society at large should ask themselves why there seemingly wasn’t any other way else to bring Salander’s inherent rage to the surface. For decades, and in much better films that will continue to stand the test of time far better than this “Dragon,” filmmakers have found plenty of other methods to motivate revenge in their antiheroes – and both Larsson, director David Fincher, and screenwriter Steven Zaillian could have done so here.

In fact, in Larsson’s books, the male journalist who teams up with Salander (played by Daniel Craig in the American film) ridiculously seems to nail every woman in sight, as Larsson obviously indulges fantasies of his own prowess while ignoring the fact that no journalist – and almost definitely not Larsson – gets that much action. It’s impossible on a journalist’s salary!

Seriously though, why is it considered progress for a female heroine to save the day and kick some ass if she still has to be anally raped to find her motivation? From Humphrey Bogart to Harrison Ford, and from Stallone to Schwarzenegger, male heroes and antiheroes have been allowed to just show up onscreen and be the hero, no questions asked. They don’t have to be anally raped or otherwise humiliated, so why should a woman have to pass through that to be heroic?

Thankfully, a new movie opening last week offers a refreshing change of pace from the rancid misogyny that actually lies at the heart of the Salander stories. “Haywire” comes from the team of writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh, who previously created the superb arthouse thriller “The Limey.” They’ve created a movie that is inexplicably rated R, even though its admittedly frequent violence is neither graphic nor bloody, and the film pulls off the stunningly classy move of being an action movie for adults that has only one “F” word in  it.

While Soderbergh directed the two-part “Che” film biography of Che Guevara, which thankfully was a massive flop, he eschews any political message in “Haywire.” His film focuses on visceral and propulsive action centered around a female special ops agent named Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), who is described as the best in the business. The cool thing is, the audience is asked to believe this fact simply because the other characters in the film say she is the best – and they don’t have to watch her be brutally beaten, raped or otherwise assaulted in order to make her “prove” it.

As played by Carano – the world’s top female MMA star making her acting debut – Mallory knows how to shoot a gun, but is far more impressive at beating, kicking, running long distances and dismantling her opponents with stunning hand-to-hand combat moves. And Soderbergh also admirably one-ups “Dragon’s” Fincher and the rest of the falsely feminist forces behind “Dragon” by trusting newcomer Carano to hold her own against and/or beat the tar out of veteran male movie stars, including Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas and Ewan McGregor.

Isn’t the very fact that “Dragon’s” Salander has to be raped in the most degrading fashion imaginable merely exploitation wrapped up in a heroic bow? And what does it say about how this kind of film affects our minds when a good chunk of the audience laughed and cheered at each sick step of Salander’s revenge?

I’m afraid to see what’s coming out a decade from now, to see how far our thirst for new and badder ways to harm, torture, rape and kill people will take us. And even worse, where we’ll be drawing the line on what constitutes payback then as well.

But at the same time, I have hope that some filmmakers like Soderbergh will step into the muck like “Dragon” surrounding them and put out work like “Haywire” that elevates and breaks the rules that say a woman has to be humiliated or worse just to have a shot at being heroic. Thank all the people involved for the fact that “Haywire” provides such a strong female character without the nasty misogynistic undertones of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”: Mallory Kane doesn’t need to get degraded to find her drive.

Just like Carano, she’s born that way.

That means movie theaters are filled with what are supposed to be the finest films Hollywood has to offer. But what was the worst movie of 2011? Surely Big Hollywood readers, with their hatred of George Clooney and Matt Damon, can name any one of their films for that dubious honor despite the fact that their films are almost always extremely well-made despite their liberal messages.

But surprise – there’s actually a movie so awful and filled with such vile hatred of middle-aged, suburban American life that even critics agreed it was a cinematic stink bomb.

That film is called “I Melt With You,” and it was recently picked as the worst movie of 2011 in the annual comprehensive critics’ poll conducted by the iconic liberal weekly newspaper Village Voice. While I’m often at odds with my fellow film critics over the underlying social messages Hollywood is sending out through its films, and the impact those messages have on viewers and society, this is a rare case in which we actually all agreed.

“Melt” features TV stars Jeremy Piven and Thomas Jane (well, they’re HBO stars at least) and longtime pretty boy movie-turned-TV star Rob Lowe (who, as a professed conservative family man, should have known better – wait til you hear what this movie is about!). It sill wasn’t able to land a big studio to release it. Instead, it crawled through a couple of LA and New York movie theaters en route to a thankfully quick box office death and has been infecting TV screens nationwide as a video on demand movie instead.

Seriously, after watching this movie, you’ll feel like scrubbing your TV set with Lysol. Name any wrongdoing or illicit behavior that a human being is capable of, and these guys do it. The almost-nonexistent storyline takes a full hour to have any true narrative drive, but basically, it follows four supposedly average American middle-aged males – high school writing teacher Richard (Jane), a doctor named Jonathan (Lowe) whose entire practice has come to revolve around selling prescription drugs illegally, a financier named Ron (Piven) who is about to be arrested and their homosexual friend Tim (Christian McKay) who is mourning his unexplained part in the death of his lover five years before.

Spoilers ahead …

The four men signed a mysterious pact as a blood oath while they were in college 25 years before. And as they engage in a numbing array of drugs, alcohol and sexual behavior throughout the film’s pointlessly indulgent first hour, glimmers of their inner hopelessness seep through and it briefly appears that the film might wind up exploring how off-track they are in every way.

Instead, the film winds up completely romanticizing their behavior, even as the homosexual abruptly commits suicide by hanging himself in the bathroom after a sexual threesome, the financier asks the writer to smother him to death with a pillow, the doctor commits suicide by intentional drug overdose and the writer finally dives off a cliff into the ocean to choose death over capture by a policewoman. This final suicide leads to the last-moment revelation that the oath entailed that the men would agree to “die as one” if any one of them ever decided life wasn’t fun enough anymore.

The core idea behind it all is that the definition of a “fun” life is to live like an animal and indulge every urge that hits your body. Having to live with any sense of responsibility or restraint, whether through jobs or marriage, means that you’ve sold out and it’s better to just die already – even if, like Lowe’s character, you have a young son who is going to be left without a father.

In case I haven’t convinced you yet of just how rancid this movie is, I’d like to share with you the review I did of this film for the Christian movie-review site Movieguide.org. For that site – which I recommend to any film fan who wants to know in advance if they’ll be offended or not by a movie – critics are asked to rate a film on both an artistic level of one to four stars, and a morality/message level of +1 to +4 for positive films and -1 to -4 for films with negative content.

We also spell out how much profanity and obscenities are in a film, as well as sex, nudity, violence, drinking and drug use plus miscellaneous immoral behavior like lying and deception. We also take note of a film’s political stance if it has one, pointing out if it’s conservative or liberal and why – such as is it pro- or anti-capitalist, or espousing a pro-life or a pro-abortion viewpoint?

Yet I’m proud to say that the site is intellectually honest, in that even if a film gets rated -4 for “abhorrent” content, it can still get a +4 for being extremely well-made and entertaining on an artistic level. (For example, a movie like Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” was rated -3 (extreme caution, even for adults, on a moral level) but also received four stars for its quality.

So, how badly did I have to spell out the content of “I Melt With You”? My content assessment took up 752 words. This entire essay, prior to this paragraph, was nearly 900 words. Yep, as I said, this film had it all: copious sex, drugs, alcohol, swearing (more than 200 cuss words!), the guys running naked into the ocean, killing each other in the name of brotherly love, and just generally showing a hateful, piggish attitude towards all of mankind but especially towards women.

Perhaps I should have expected as much from director Mark Pellington, who previously directed the similarly dark and anti-suburban “Arlington Road,” in which Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack are a “perfect” patriotic suburban couple who turn out to be murderous right-wing zealots. I suppose the one positive sign gleaned from “Melt” being far more over the edge of sanity is that it didn’t get the major-studio theatrical release that “Arlington” did, and will be even more forgotten than that film, which only made about $20 million at the box office before fading into obscurity. By comparison, “Melt” made a paltry $6,361 during its theatrical run.

Despite its normally ace cast of leads, who have all delivered solid work in the past, this is one film that is a must to avoid for anyone, literally anyone, as its lead characters will undoubtedly be melting together for an eternity in Hell.

So take heart in the fact that big Hollywood studios actually found a Sundance movie so vile themselves that they refused to release it. And be warned that as bad as you make think some major releases are, there’s always something out there that’s even worse.

Its cover was a gorgeous picture of then-young actress Tuesday Weld gazing into a camera, a vision of beauty that nonetheless appeared too perfect to last.

Indeed, both the cassette and the relationship wore out eventually, as I played its 15-song cycle of love prayed for, won and lost until it snapped in my stereo deck, and as Laura fell for another guy while spending the next semester in Spain. As Sweet ruefully sang in the closing song, nothing lasts.

That lesson and those memories came back to haunt me and a few hundred other people Jan. 13 when Sweet hit the stage of the Echoplex for the final stop of a special tour marking the 20^th anniversary of his best-selling album, a record considered along with the likes of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” as one of the seminal albums of the ‘90s.

Despite continuing to craft mostly sterling power-pop in the decades since, Sweet had fallen into relative obscurity before launching what could have been just another cash-in nostalgia tour. But for every band like Creed or Motley Crue that hops on a bus to milk the cash cow, there remain a few true artists whose initial passion still shines through. And even as Sweet has fattened considerably and grown a white-flecked beard which together make him look like the aging stoner uncle of his once young and clean-shaven self, he still delivered the album’s tunes, start to finish, with passion and the occasional surprising insight.

It’s admittedly unfair to single out Sweet’s bigger gut and aging jowls, as nearly everyone in line – including my own now-bloated self – looked like they were trying to recapture their college glory days, if only for an evening. And at least Sweet’s songs still carried the lyrical power and the hard-charging oomph that they were born with, back when he wrote the album as a go-for-broke final shot at success after a couple of prior albums had bombed.

As I pulled my bike up on the sidewalk above on Sunset, outside the Echoplex’s sister club, The Echo, I was happy to see dozens of twentysomethings in line for what I thought was the same show.

“This the line for Matthew Sweet?” I asked.

“Who?” responded a young Latino Romeo, who was awaiting an entirely different show, his arm wrapped around his girlfriend in the exact same way I once held Laura on a cold night in Austin, waiting for Sweet’s initial “Girlfriend” tour back in 1991.

“Sorry, I guess he’s downstairs. Who are you seeing?”

“The Growlers,” he replied, to which I had to laugh right back with a “Who?” of my own.

It was a rare case in which I felt the generation gap slap me in the face, between my young, music-loving self at age 20 and the guy I am now at 40, who favors watching and performing comedy over exploring new bands in dark clubs. As I hustled down to the actual Sweet line below, I overheard several other guys my age and older laughing about their own interactions with the “kids” above.

What these ex-frat boys out for a night away from the kids didn’t seem to realize is that 20 years from now, those kids upstairs might be lining up themselves to see The Growlers relive their glory days, long after Sweet and the rest of us are parked full-time on the couch in a retirement center.

Loudest of all was a guy named Bob, a late-40s home contractor from Riverside  who was loudly boasting of his college concert-going days and about the fact he wrote a letter of outrage to a Nevada sheriff who made national news for a pot bust against a ski trip-bound busload of college kids. Ironically, by the time I got a drink about 15 minutes into Sweet’s set, Bob was either passed out or asleep in a seat along the back wall of the Echoplex, as his wife chatted with another lady friend like they were hanging out at a church social.

At least Bob had found a wife and partner to settle in for the long haul. I and plenty of other people in the crowd were obviously still single, having endlessly repeated the cycle of longing, love and loss that Sweet had so expertly captured. As I played the CD endlessly in the week leading up to the show, I thought about Laura and the girlfriends who had come and gone through the years since, and I remembered that since she was “the one who got away” – a gorgeous and funny girl from Missouri whose voice dripped with Southern-tinged honey – I had tracked her down a couple years ago after finding her mom’s number in a college photo album.

I was surprised to find Laura at her mom’s house right at that moment, just as surprised as her mom sounded to hear me calling again, no doubt. And while I, of course, hadn’t wished Laura any serious sadness over the years, anyone who’s ever checked in with a love who broke their heart knows that you don’t exactly hope to find them ecstatically happy, either.

And Laura wasn’t. She had just moved home after a five-year live-in relationship had ended and told me that she had spent the 15 years since graduation with a “5-5-5” situation – five years of marriage to the guy from Spain, five years alone, and then five years of cohabitation hoping for another ring that never came. In return, I told her of my broken engagement several years before after finding my fiancé had severe and incurable bipolar disorder, and of my own health struggles in the years since (now healed, glad to say).

We spoke for an hour, in the kind of surface-happy yet actually-awkward conversation that exists especially between past loves. And then it was obvious that nothing more would come of this, ever, and it was time to say goodbye in a falsely sunny fashion. I threw the number away and put my scrapbook back on a high closet shelf, thinking I’d never think of her again.

And I rarely if ever have, until that week leading up to Sweet, that CD in perpetual play on my stereo half a country away from Laura. Watching Sweet that night, he joked about how some people actually had “Girlfriend” on cassette (“Can you imagine that? Wow, remember cassettes?”)   Yeah, I can imagine, and remember. And as Sweet encored with songs like “Time Capsule” and “Baby We’re the Same” from other brilliant albums, I realized his CD and this concert formed a perfect capsule for about 500 of us, standing in a dark club the way we used to in our college days. And while we’d like to think we’re the same, it’s still even more sadly true that nothing lasts.

Starting today, America has a chance to see Iran through a simple yet fascinating prism, as the Iranian submission for Best Foreign Film Oscar consideration – “A Separation” – opens in select theaters.

While it is only playing in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, it should prove to be compelling viewing for art-house film lovers as it expands to more theaters nationwide in the weeks to come.

The film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, starts out with the deceptively simple premise of a young couple sitting before a judge and arguing over whether they should be granted a divorce. The wife, named Simin, wants to move with her husband Nader and 11-year-old daughter Tamreh to a foreign land where their daughter can have an unspecified “better life.” The couple is afraid to admit it in front of a judge who represents either the government or Islamic rule or both, but the implication is that they know their daughter will never have a truly free and happy life under the oppressive Iranian system.

The reason that Simin needs to consider divorce is that Nader feels he can’t move with her because he is caring for his own Alzheimer’s-afflicted father and is afraid the move could kill him. When the judge won’t grant a divorce because Nader won’t agree to one, Simin calls his bluff and moves out under the guise of having a separation, which leads Nader to seek a day-care nurse for his father.

So far, so simple – and seemingly boring. But it is here that things start to spiral out of control, as the new nurse, Razieh, is not only inexperienced and afraid to fully attend to his father’s care like washing him due to her fear of breaking Islamic rules, but she’s also hiding the fact that she’s pregnant because she’s afraid Nader won’t hire her if he knows she’s physically limited.

When Nader comes home early one day, he finds his father nearly dead on the floor of his room, with one arm tied to his bed and the nurse nowhere in sight. When she tries to sneak back into the apartment as if nothing happened, the normally cool-headed Nader loses his temper and orders her out. And in an expertly shot moment designed to leave viewers guessing about what happens next, he pushes her out of the apartment.

Razieh claims that the push caused her to fall and miscarry her baby, which drives her husband into a rage-fueled lust for revenge and drags Nader into a complex investigation in which everyone around him seems to have conflicting opinions of not only what actually happened between him and Razieh, but about his very character himself. With seemingly every character hiding a motive and revealing their true natures with one plot twist after another, “A Separation” grows into a psychological thriller of quiet but unforgettable power.

I’m normally not a big fan of foreign films and didn’t have any idea that “A Separation” was headed into such involving and exciting directions. The film is being poorly described on IMDB.com and elsewhere as a mere portrait of a marriage and the stresses of caring for an elder, when in reality its final 90 minutes are nearly Hitchcockian in their portrait of an average man having to prove himself innocent in a nightmare situation.

Adding to the film’s many pleasures is the fact that its cast is completely unknown to American viewers. If Brad Pitt had been caught in Nader’s situation, audiences would be predisposed to think how he’ll get out of the situation. But as played by the magnetic Peyman Maadi, Nader’s motivations and reactions to one terrible twist of fate after another are utterly unpredictable. Is he innocent? Guilty? Both?

Farhadi manages to keep viewers guessing nearly all the way to the end before bringing things to a close with a quiet emotional wallop that returns the story to the marriage. While his characters are all believing Muslims and swearing on the Koran becomes central to some of the plot threads, the film offers a quiet critique of the extent that strict Islamic rules pervade every aspect of Iranian life.

After all, the entire plot kicks into gear because Nader’s wife Simin wants out of the country so badly. Her desire for basic rights and freedoms and the ability to live out her dreams on equal footing as a woman in that male-dominated society is a universally relatable one. And the fact that “A Separation” puts a human face on its average citizens who have nothing to do with the insane pronouncements of their leader (which in itself is parallel to America these days), is what makes it must-see viewing for any American who hopes we can effect change in that society without resorting to war.

As the co-creator and producer with Christopher Lloyd Bratten of the “For The Record” series of live events held at the Barre VT bar in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, he has paid tribute to the films of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. The series features performers re-enacting the most iconic dialogue exchanges of those filmmakers’ features, as well as singing and dancing their way through the greatest tunes of their oeuvre.

But Scheel has topped himself big-time with his current show, “John Hughes: Holiday Road,” which plays Wednesday through Sunday nights before closing Dec. 30.

The two-hour extravaganza features an amazingly talented six-person cast and a five-piece rock band bringing the best of Hughes’ scenes and songs to life from his ‘80s films through “Home Alone.” Whether you’re a fan of Hughes’ high school movies (“Pretty in Pink” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) or the “Vacation” series and “Planes Trains and Automobiles,” the interactive cabaret-style show is one of the most entertaining nights of music and comedy you’ll ever experience.

Scheel spoke with Big Hollywood recently about how the “For The Record” series – which next takes on Baz Luhrmann’s films including “Moulin Rouge” – came about, and why he thinks Hughes’ films continue to resonate with American film fans.

“I had been working in LA for a few years and my partner, who’s music director for the shows, had been looking for a project to do,” explains Scheel, who ironically grew up in the small town of Buhler, Kansas. “We started by taking complete soundtracks, knew a lot of really great singers and actors and decided to pull the best ones together and started these as concerts. We later decided to add quotable lines.”

The producing duo started with the films of Tarantino because his soundtracks actually included the most memorable lines from his films. As they refined their hybrid concept, they tried to create shows so strong that they would help define Los Angeles entertainment, creating a scene unique to the city.

Yet they also learned from a viewing of the failed “Sister Act: The Musical” that the balance of music and dialogue had to be just right if the shows were going to work.

“I was in London a year ago and went to see ‘Sister Act: The Musical,’” Scheel says. “As an audience member I was expecting to hear some of the songs that made the movie what it  was, redone in a very fun fresh way. When I got there it was an original score with none of the original songs from the movie, which was a little disappointing. Soundtracks are under-appreciated, but music helps tell these stories and in particular John Hughes helped launch a lot of British bands in the ‘80s through his movies.”

Scheel feels that Hughes’ enduring appeal lies in the fact that “we were all teenagers once,” yet Scheel was careful to make sure that the show was evenly divided between the high school era of Hughes’ work and the films set outside the academic scene.

“I’ve read a number of times that he gave teenagers a very clear, fresh, unapologetic voice, as real people with real problems and a real clear voice for that time period as well,” he says. “He had such great archetypes through the geek, rebel, princess, basket case and jock. We all identify with one of those and that’s where the universality of his material came from. I watched my dad with the ‘Vacation’ movies laughing and laughing, and kids have a classic in ‘Home Alone.’”

“There are universal truths in all his movies, I think we can all identify with different portions of his career,” he adds.

The show ends with a rousing, gospel-style romp through “Joy to the World,” which Hughes used in at least one of his many Christmas-set movies. Having built a long-running career in production management for many touring musicals, Scheel knew that sending people out with a burst of extra-spiritual uplift was a winning proposition and underscored the broad appeal of the show.

“I grew up in the church and know a ton of gospel songs, plus a number of our actors have strong ties to that music and one of our performers is married to a minister,” Scheel says. “Just like in Hughes’ movies, there are a couple of words you might want to tune out, but this is a show I can bring my church to.”

Scheel hopes to bring “John Hughes: Holiday Road” to Chicago and New York in the future, but for now, it can be seen at Barre VT bar, located at 1714 N. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles.

In the new Oscar-buzzed film “The Descendants” by Alexander Payne (“Election,” “Sideways,” “About Schmidt”) George Clooney may be getting all the glory for his terrific lead performance as Matt King, a real estate mogul who has to deal with his comatose wife’s wishes to die at the same time he is forced to become a better father to his two daughters.

But it’s when he learns that his wife had been cheating on him with a smarmy-looking real estate agent named Brian Speer that the film really takes off, as he sets out to find Speer in order to gain closure.

It would be easy to play Speer as a heartless cad, and a lout who callously disrupted the family life and betrayed the marriage of another man. But as Speer, actor Matthew Lillard delivers a powerfully nuanced performance that actually makes viewers feel his pain as he begs for forgiveness from King and also begs King not to tell his own wife what he had done.

Lillard nails the pivotal role in a turn that comes as an almost complete surprise. After all, he’s had two other shots at big-movie success, as one of the two teen killers in the original “Scream” and as the iconic cartoon character Shaggy in the live-action film adaptations of “Scooby-Doo.”

In both cases, Lillard’s star potential waned after the films left theaters. But this third shot at stardom may prove to be the charm, as the Pasadena-based family man – a long-married father of three – has seen his career opportunities soar in just the three weeks since “The Descendants” was released. In fact, he just had an audition for Clint Eastwood’s next film, a fact that even he admits “wouldn’t have happened three years ago.”

Speaking with Big Hollywood, Lillard looked back on his career as a working actor thus far, and spoke of the ups and downs that he and so many other actors face. Yet he remains grounded, down to earth and hopeful about his future.

BH: How’d you decide to live in Pasadena, rather than a more trendy area like the Hollywood Hills or Beverly Hills?

LILLARD: My wife and I lived in the Hollywood Hills, and I had just gotten back from doing “Scooby Doo,” she was pregnant and we needed to decide if we’d go West side or East Side in LA. We found a house in Pasadena that nullified the entire debate. Within five minutes of walking through it, we bought the house. That was ten years ago. I can’t imagine living anywhere else, it’s got everything every family in America would want. Great Schools, restaurants, incredible culture like the Pasadena Playhouse. We’re happy to be living here and can’t imagine living anywhere else.

BH: How did “The Descendants” come about?

LILLARD: The audition came across my desk and I wanted the opportunity to audition for Alexander Payne, I’ve always been a fan of his work. I was to play Clooney’s wife’s lover, and thought there’s no way I’d get this part. But I went in to audition anyway and five of the best looking guys in the world were there and I thought I’ll never get this.

I promised to take my kids to the Warner Bros ranch for a screening of a film that day, but though I can do this quickly and do it fast and be off to take my kids to the movie. I auditioned once, and Payne said it was the best audition he’d ever seen. I said there’s no way I get the part, because there’s no way George Clooney’s wife cheats with a guy like me. They said to get out of the room, and four months later I got the call.

The good news is there’s a lot of hype built up around that part. The whole movie is a ticking clock about when Clooney’s going to confront that guy. The climax of the movie is that scene and I knew reading it, what was coming and what everyone said in terms of the script. I knew there’d be a lot of pressure on that moment because if you suck at that scene you destroy the whole movie – and in an Alexander Payne movie with George Clooney you want to be really good.

BH: How did you manage to make Speer rather sympathetic?

LILLARD: You go back to the genius of Alexander Payne. I think if the character is the quintessential better-looking guy than George Clooney then viewers automatically hate him. But I don’t think you can hate Brian Speer as me, ‘cause I’m a nice guy and the lines are like “Please don’t screw up my life, I love my wife, it was a mistake, just sex.” Alexander Payne did a really smart move in casting a guy like me, a really normal guy. Every time you think it’s going cliché or melodramatic, he makes a left turn and Brian is simply human.

BH: Are you getting any new heat out of the role?

LILLARD: Things are starting to move a little bit differently. I just came back from auditioning for Clint Eastwood and I don’t think that would have been available to me three years ago. Every artistic career ebbs and flows, you’re hot or not and you hang in there to come back. Right now it feels good to come off a lull in my career and if nothing happens at least I have something I can be proud of.

BH: Where did you grow up, and did you always want to act?

LILLARD: I grew up in Detroit, moved to Orange County when I was 10 and lived in New York for a long time.

I was 13 and my dad said take either typing class or acting class, and I took acting. He thought I’d be a salesman and it would help me to be put in front of people. It was the first time in the world where I didn’t suck at something, and adults said ‘You did good.’ I studied at New York’s Circle in the Square, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts which used to be in Pasadena and studied there. I try to stay busy and endure the downslides that come.

BH: What was it like being part of “Scream,” which just came out of nowhere to be enormously popular?

LILLARD: It was a movie that at the time was really exciting to be part of, always fun to be part of something big and unexpected and it changed the trajectory of my life for awhile.

BH: And how about playing Shaggy?

LILLARD: To be a big part of a big Hollywood popcorn movie is fun and exciting and for better or worse, it provided the opportunity of staying the course as an actor and not selling pharmaceuticals. The good side is I got paid good money, the bad side is it ended my “cool card” doing Scooby Doo. You have to get that back and “The Descendants” is a part of that journey, hopefully.

He’s built his reputation on being an offbeat yet obnoxious slob in such movies as “Superbad” and “Get Him to the Greek,” while occasionally showing a deeper side in the outstanding “Cyrus” (my favorite film of last year) and “Moneyball.”

But for thus far unspecified reasons, Hill has spent the past year on an impressive effort to lose more than 100 pounds. While this will no doubt prolong his life and has transformed him into a surprisingly dapper fellow, it also means that he will have to completely reinvent his performance style.

That might be a good idea after his new movie “The Sitter,” in which he plays Noah, a college-dropout slacker who stumbles into a babysitting gig on the same night the hottest girl he knows makes him a deal: she’ll finally have sex with him, but only if he brings her some cocaine from her drug dealer (Sam Rockwell).

Well, the man’s got needs, so despite being in charge of three young kids – a 13-year-old dreamboat of a boy (Max Records) who turns out to be gay, an 8-year-old girl (Landry Bender) who aspires to be a Kardashian-style club tramp and reality TV star, and an adopted Latino boy named Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), who steals the movie with his nonstop criminal antics – he takes her up on her offer.

But when Rodrigo not only steals a porcelain egg filled with cocaine from the dealer but also sets off cherry bombs in the bathrooms of two luxury restaurants, events spiral out of control and the gang is on the run for their lives from the dealer’s henchmen.

Basically, this plays as an updated, gender-switched “Adventures in Babysitting” with a far more crass tone. The kids’ parents in the film have no business leaving their kids with a guy like Noah, and frankly, the parents of the young actors playing the roles should have their heads checked, too.

The kids all swear, watch drug deals, survive shootouts and car chases, and have to hear Noah talk about his desperation for sex throughout the film. At least they were spared being part of the opening scene, in which the obese Hill orally drives a girl (Ari Graynor) to ecstasy and wipes his face before he even delivers his first line.

Basic moral standards thankfully prevent the film from sinking even further, and the film only occasionally scores big laughs thanks to Rodrigo’s criminal behavior and Hill’s energetic performance. Yet director David Gordon Green keeps botching the action with the same sloppy staging that ruined his prior foray into R-rated comedy, “Pineapple Express.”

Very little of “The Sitter” rings true, especially when Noah starts doling out advice to the gay boy after making an immense leap of logic to guess he’s gay. By the time the movie crashes to a conclusion at just 81 minutes, Noah’s also convinced the little girl to ditch the voluminous makeup she’s wearing and has dished out moral life advice to the trampy girl he’s finally learned not to be fixated on.

With any luck, “The Sitter” will be quickly forgotten, giving Hill – who is more amiable and intelligent in real life than in most of his roles – a chance to fly higher in the future. But if he keeps making slapdash retreads like this film, his career will be grounded – just like the kids he’s watching in this film should be.

With a stunning 0 percent so far on Rotten Tomatoes the day before it hits theaters one might think Sandler had made a film that was completely, utterly and irredeemably lacking in laughs and entertainment value.

—–

But – taking into account that this isn’t pretentious art-house, Oscar-aiming fare – “Jack and Jill” is just another sad example of most critics’ single-minded agenda to give Sandler a smack down for daring to make movies that, while engaging in some crude humor, nearly always wind up upholding old-fashioned values like solid families, respect for elders (especially grandmas with meatballs!) and true love.

This time around, he includes a strong anti-bullying angle, and dares to have not one, not two, but three broad-sided smack downs of an atheist character – so be fully aware that while this isn’t a perfect film, it is damn funny. The packed audience I saw it with laughed their heads off while the few critics in attendance groused afterwards about what an atrocity it was.

In dealing with the film “Blue Valentine” back in January, I noted that most critics were treating it like the second coming of Christ set to celluloid. Depicting an awful relationship that goes from wonderful to sick within six short years, the nation’s alleged arbiters of taste declared it a masterpiece, while I pointed out that most people don’t want to spend their hard-earned money on date night watching a husband practically rape his wife before she kicks him out screaming “I have nothing left for you!” I predicted it wouldn’t even make $10 million, and I was right.

Meanwhile, I pointed out that only 10 percent of critics dared to say Sandler’s “Grown Ups” – featuring intact families with fathers regaining their leadership roles – was any good, despite the fact that, again, a packed house of regular folks had just exploded with laughter around them for 90 minutes. “Grown Ups” made $160 million. It wasn’t Oscar fare, but for Pete’s sake, it did its job by making people feel good.

So, know going into this review – or better yet, the film itself – that the critics who dog it are lying. They are completely disregarding the simple truth that the movie delivers plenty of laughs and good, solid values. They know Sandler is an openly Republican Hollywood figure, and they are out to take him down.

Now, about the movie: “Jack and Jill” is a typical creation from Sandler’s Happy Madison production company. He plays both Jack and Jill, brother and sister twins who have argued since birth. When Jill, who is single, lonely and in her 40s, comes to visit at Thanksgiving, it’s supposed to be for four days. But complications repeatedly ensue, dragging her visit all the way through a New Year’s week cruise with Jack’s family.

Along the way, the siblings fight constantly, but Jack puts up with her presence because he needs to get Al Pacino to act in a Dunkin Donuts ad for his advertising company, and Al surprisingly becomes smitten with Jill. Ultimately, Jill learns to value herself through the attentions of Al, and Jack’s wife helps win him over to seeking reconciliation with his sister.

“Jack and Jill” is unmistakably silly, and Sandler looks like he’s having more fun than he’s had in years in playing the twins, diving into his dual personas with comic gusto in addition to engaging in physical comedy including a “double Dutch” jump rope routine with his alter ego.

The real surprise here, however, is Pacino, who satirizes his over-the-top, angry public image by falling for Jill and seeking to win her heart in order to regain his artistic courage. In scene after scene, he’s completely, daffily absurd, and yet his joy is infectious. Katie Holmes as Jack’s wife also does a nice job, but the biggest and best aspect of the film for Christians and families is that the film places a high and unmistakable value on the beautiful power of families and sibling bonding, while also criticizing dishonesty and meanness, mocking atheism and making belief in God look cool. Most importantly, the film shows true inner beauty can lie within anyone.

Yeah, the movie’s got a few fart jokes. Yes, Sandler looks ridiculous in drag. But “Jack and Jill” has heart and plenty of laughs, and if you’re an honest human being – unlike my robotic brethren of critics – you’ll enjoy it. A lot.

Jonathan grew up in a Queens housing project where he earned the nickname “Milk” for being the only white kid surrounded by minorities. He was stuck living there with his impoverished grandmother because his cop father was killed in the line of duty. Surrounded by broken lives and with a black child named Vinny as his only true friend, Jonathan dreamed of getting out fast – particularly because a crack addict named Hanky is constantly terrorizing the kids in the building.

—–

Milk and Vinny find a gun and never really intend to use it other than to scare Hanky away, but in a moment of panic Milk shoots and kills the junkie. When he and Vinny move the body to cover up the killing, another drug dealer finds out and, in an ensuing tussle, the dealer tumbles down a flight of stairs to his death.

Detective Charles Stanford (Al Pacino), the former partner of Milk’s father, figures out these were innocent accidents that took out the worst human trash in the projects so Milk is never charged. The deaths are left officially unsolved.

Sixteen years later, amid NYC’s rabid love for its police after the heroics of 9/11, Milk (now played by Channing Tatum) becomes a rookie cop himself. And just as his precinct chief, Captain Marion Mathers (Ray Liotta) is imploring his officers to keep their noses clean for the public love affair to continue, Milk starts getting mysterious notes threatening to expose his secret killings. Making matters worse for Milk is a neighborhood newspaper editor (Juliette Binoche) printing notes calling for justice in the killings.

As the threats escalate and his past closes in on him, even Milk’s wife (Katie Holmes) starts to wonder what’s going on. The young cop must race against time to figure out who knows about his past and figure out how to stop them from destroying his life.

As written and directed by Dito Montiel, who came out of literally nowhere at age 38 in 2003 to win the best picture prize at Sundance with his debut film “A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints,” “Son” stands in the proudly gritty tradition of Sidney Lumet’s and Martin Scorsese’s best New York City films. Its story is harsh and uncompromising, but it provides a meaty series of ethical dilemmas that rarely are seen in the dumbed-down movies of our times.

Montiel provides a terrific script to build upon but also draws great performances from his deeply talented cast. While Tatum does solid work as Milk, there are three particularly strong and surprising turns. Katie Holmes does her best acting to date while Pacino actually manages to be subtle and affecting. The biggest surprise is comic Tracy Morgan, expertly playing the adult Vinny, a man who has been pushed so far by a hard life that he may never come back to normal.

With a profuse amount of profanity (that nonetheless feels true to the setting and characters) and some intense moments of danger involving children, “A Son of No One” might be difficult viewing for the easily offended. But for those who are longing for the kind of gritty cop drama that is all too rare these days,  it more than fills the bill and in my mind stands as one of the very best films of the year.

The main difference between the two ‘Footloose’ features lies in the fact that one has Kevin Bacon and one, well, doesn’t. And there is a surprising similarity between ‘Footloose’ and ‘The Thing’: both have jaw-dropping visuals, with ‘The Thing’ offering up an impressive monster and “Footloose” offering up Julianne Hough. Both are guaranteed to make men ogle the screen like characters in a Tex Avery cartoon.

The new ‘Thing’ features a female scientist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as its star instead of Kurt Russell and is directed by a Norwegian with an unpronounceable name (for the record, it’s Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.) rather than horror maestro John Carpenter. It’s still set in Antarctica, and the filmmakers do score some impressive snowy visuals from Canadian locations without lecturing viewers about the demise of the polar ice caps.

I don’t remember a whole lot from the Carpenter version, other than that a dog wound up a gory mess and that Russell looked like he could handle the freezing temperatures a lot better than Winstead, who in one scene here actually runs outside to wave down a helicopter without putting on gloves or a scarf. If you think that’s silly, then consider the fact that the monster here is an alien that looks like a cross between a crab and an ostrich and that the film isn’t so much scary as it is goofy.

The monster in ‘The Thing’ is actually an alien that crash-landed in Antarctica 600,000 years ago and has now been discovered along with its spaceship by a team of burly Norwegian dudes. Winstead’s character, a paleontologist, is called in to evaluate the find but winds up being ignored the whole time by the greedy head of the Scandinavian scientists. He gets one of his fellows to whip out a drill and cut through the ice encasing the alien in order to get a tissue sample, but he doesn’t expect the drill to actually touch the creature.

We know this is a Very Bad Thing because everyone in the scene gets really tense and because the idiot in charge heads up the drilling and sample retrieval while wearing just a pair of surgical gloves — no mask, scrubs, hazmat suits or anything like that. And soon after, the alien is left to thaw out while everyone drinks, dances, and tells bad Norwegian jokes.

Of course, it’s The One Black Guy who pokes around the alien storage room and is the first to see the critter leap back to life. And soon, the Thing is attacking everyone and using its evil alien cells to replicate its victims’ cellular structures – meaning it can look like anyone it attacks, causing everyone to distrust each other because no one knows whose body is going to explode next.

I’ll spare you the rest of the story, as the only fun to be had is when those explosions occur. Since it’s hard to make a human skull split open, reveal a giant alien jaw, and have a chest cavity pop open to reveal seemingly hundreds of elastic tendrils that can snatch and grab anyone in the vicinity, the effects often seem obvious rather than seamless. Each time the monster pops out of another body, it for some reason reminded me of the world’s fattest man exploding in ‘Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.’

All told, the new ‘The Thing’ is too ridiculously over the top in its effects to satisfy all but the most ardent genre fans. But I will grant that some of those true-blue types burst into applause when its closing moments revealed an unexpectedly strong connection to the Carpenter film. If you love monsters, you might like this; if you don’t, you won’t. Either way, you know who you are.