Movie Nation

Take “Independence Day” and “Skyline” or pretty much any aliens-invade-L.A. thriller. Strip it of Will Smith and any one-liners the heroes might snap off upon killing a space invader. What you’ve got is “Battle: Los Angeles,” a straight-no-chaser war movie in which the enemy just happens to be extraterrestrial.

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Too cute, too star-studded and entirely too long, “How Do You Know” is a jocks’ romance that offers more proof that James L. Brooks has lost his fastball.  The director of “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment” serves up an immensely quotable, scene-by-scene adorable love triangle that never amounts to anything more than a sweet nothing, an excuse to swoon over Reese Witherspoon the way Paul Rudd does as he tries to win her away from Owen Wilson.

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“Little Fockers” is possibly the last and certainly the least among the trio of comedies about the power struggle between a nebbishy male nurse and his menacing, control-freak father-in-law. It’s a desultory, patchwork affair — competently made, comfortably played, but lacking the heart and wit that characterized, in varying degrees, “Meet the Parents” and “Meet the Fockers.”

But oddly, this running out of gas seems less about a film series exhausting its supply of jokes than about something more organic and recognizably human. Gaylord “Greg” Focker (Ben Stiller) is an old married man, now — settled and successful in his career, a father of five year old twins. He’s lost his manic panic at dating a scary man’s daughter, his eye-bugging rage at being married into a family whose ex-CIA patriarch has everyone under his thumb. And Jack Byrnes (Robert DeNiro), having had a few mild heart events, has less energy to devote to tormenting the son-in-law.

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There are two movies titled “Casino Jack,” and both are about the infamous lobbyist, DC double-dealer and scandal magnet Jack Abramoff.

And truthfully, you don’t need to see them both. If you saw Alex Gibney’s “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” you know the parameters of the scandal, the sleazy connection between casino cash, The Christian Coalition and efforts to funnel money into the coffers of certain well-placed Congressmen.

But if you expect to make much out of “Casino Jack,” the faintly-fictionalized George Hickenlooper drama built around another epic turn by Kevin Spacey, you might want to give a quick look at the documentary. It’s hard to “follow the money” in the Spacey film, and if there’s anything Watergate taught us, that’s what you do when you’re figuring out a Washington scandal.

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Ron Howard’s “The Dilemma” presents the viewer with one. Is it OK to laugh at what was plainly intended as a semi-serious relationship dramedy? Because the best scenes in this Vince Vaughn/Kevin James buddy picture, where one buddy’s wife is cheating on him and the other buddy finds out, give us more to chew on than laugh about.

And that uncertainty — “Wait, is that supposed to be funny?” — makes the movie an unsatisfying if often surprising experience, a less warm and fuzzy “Parenthood” from a director long removed from his warn and fuzzy years.

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