Movie Nation

Surprise is a rare thing in the movies in the Internet age. So far be it for me to spoil the one at the heart of “Catfish,” an indie documentary that’s being promoted as a sort of “Blair Witch” style thriller — maybe without the witch. Seriously, the trailers and ads for this Sundance darling would have you think there are shocks, jolts and moments where characters fear for their lives.

That’s a come-on, and if you go in expecting that, you’ll be bitterly disappointed. But what New York filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost have cut together is a mildly suspenseful documentary, a game of Facebook Liar’s Poker that amounts to a cautionary tale for the  No Privacy generation.

Schulman’s younger brother, Yaniv, strikes up a friendship with a kid who is sending him colorful paintings based on his photographs. The painter’s name is Abby. She’s eight years old and she has talent. They exchange emails, and more emails. Yaniv — he goes by “Nev” — is just a young professional being nice to and encouraging a fellow artist, a child living in a remote corner of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Nev chats, online, with Abby’s mom. And then he Facebook “friends” Abby’s hot-teenage sister, Megan, and things get complicated.

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Catherine Hardwicke tries to transfer her panting pretty young things”Twilight” style to “Red Riding Hood,” a werewolf WITHOUT the vampires fantasy aimed at that magical PG-13 audience.

And for all the heaving bosoms, the big-eyed flirtation and the cool Medieval fairytale hair products, it doesn’t work.

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Alex Lippi is a man of many talents. At one moment, he is the wonder surgeon of the Sahara, bringing medicine to poor Moroccan villages, selflessly saving lives and impressing the heck out of a young tourist there with her loutish boyfriend.

Then he’s a Paris table chef of seductive charm and skill, winning the attention of a Japanese restaurant manager. He sings (not well) in a black gospel choir, charming the robes right off one of its members. He gets himself arrested and woos a lady cop in the paddy wagon on the way to the precinct.

And he does all this for money. Alex, played by Romain Duris of “Paris” and “Moliere,” is a “Heartbreaker” for hire. You’re a guy who wants to get out of an engagement, or a parent, friend or relative who disapproves of a match and wants to end it, Alex and his team are who you turn to.

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Paul Giamatti, the unlikeliest leading man of his generation, is perfectly cast in “Barney’s Version,” an intimate relationship epic based on a Mordecai Richler novel. It’s a dream role for the balding, paunchy Giamatti, who manages something like a tour de force as this neurotic, self-loathing/humanity hating Jewish-Canadian TV producer who attracts and discards a trio of gorgeous women over the course of his tortured adult life.

It’s Richler’s semi-autobiographical tale about a sour-faced Canadian TV producer who reflects back over his life even as he is forgetting that life.  And Giamatti, when he isn’t swallowing his lines in guttural tones so low and internal that only he can make out what he’s saying, is bang-on in his take on a brilliant fellow who doesn’t suffer fools or anyone else gladly.

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For one magic moment, Jennifer Aniston looks into Adam Sandler’s eyes — and we buy it.

Her character is reciting a list of what she loves about his character, and even though they’re in a fake marriage on a “fake-cation,” just doing this to compete with a mushier couple who do this sort of “What I love about you” affirmation, it works. Aniston’s eyes mist over and Sandler seems almost like the sort of guy who could get that girl.

But that moment is rare in “Just Go With It,” an uphill struggle of a farce built on the winning combo of two comic actors who seem to be able to make even the worst comedy a hit. It’s a rarely amusing movie overwhelmed by grating kids, unfunny sidekicks, halfhearted Sandler funny voices and a co-star who seems more fearful of smiling with each passing year.

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