It’s funny how you can read or see something, and suddenly you start noticing references that you would have completely overlooked beforehand. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, I read Howard Zinn’s provocative A People’s History of the United States this summer. Now, almost everywhere I look someone is paying tribute to Zinn or invoking his famous book.

The latest example is the hour-long video Profit motive and the whispering wind (lack of capitalization is intentional). Directed by film curator and scholar John Gianvito, it explicitly echoes Zinn in its attempt to reawaken our grasp of progressive history and the heroes who blazed the trails before us. Gianvito accomplishes this by shooting gravesites and other markers of memory all over the United States. Some are tombstones of famous people: Henry Thoreau, Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chavez. Others are less well known, though history fans and readers of Zinn’s book will recognize the names of Anne Hutchinson, Daniel Shays, and Eugene Debs, among others.

Although some footage of signs detailing labor strikes and battles will inform those who don’t already come with the necessary background knowledge, Gianvito provides little context for his shots, obviously believing that merely recalling the dead will honor them and provoke the viewer to find out more. There is an implicit trust in the audience, which has inspired some critics, but I couldn’t help wondering whether most viewers (at least those not already part of the “choir”) would just find the exercise baffling and unproductive. Admittedly, there’s little of the patronization that comes with PBS documentaries, but there’s little of the information either.

Not that providing information need be a primary goal, but the movie’s formal structure is also wanting. Intercut with the 3-5-second shots of gravestones and other markers are repeated shots of nature, specifically wind blowing through the trees. Gianvito has spoken of his pantheistic perspective, but there’s little rigor to his choices. I have no idea why he chooses certain locations and times for the trees, and I fear Gianvito doesn’t, as well. And certain motifs pop up (decaying tombstones, signs of big business) only to disappear as if Gianvito had an idea but then got distracted by something else.

Several critics have invoked James Benning, but Benning’s editing is much crisper, much more intentional. A cynic might wonder if Gianvito edited his nature shots by picking them at random. I’ll admit the film creates an almost hypnotic effect as it reaches its conclusion, with the pleasant use of ambient sound washing over the audience. And it has its heart in the right place. But if you didn’t know who Sojourner Truth was (or others like her) before you came in the theater, I can’t imagine that this movie will have any impact on you.

Cathy Kanavy / Focus Features

Judging by the squeals of laughter in the theater where I saw it, Hamlet 2 has some of the same appeal as Waiting for Guffman and The Producers. Steve Coogan plays a failed actor who now teaches high school drama and plans to direct the students in his own play, a nakedly autobiographical sequel to Hamlet. If you sketch the movie on vellum, with lines, boxes, arcs, and arrows, it might seem to be a functional piece of comedy: attractive, load-bearing, and fully inhabitable. The dual pleasures of a terrible amateur stage play and jokes that are obviously, intentionally offensive sound like the strong pillars of a grand arch, but when the project is actually built, it's clear from the first rain that this roof leaks like a sieve.

One reason is that the so-offensive-it's-hilarious routine requires the filmmakers to operate with a certain amount of precision. It helps to know that they aren't laughing about pedophilia and rape; they're laughing about someone whose artistic abilities are so poor that his well-meaning treatment of such issues is hideously crass. The needle is threadable, but this film's crassness isn't limited to the production staged by its characters. In one scene, an ACLU lawyer played by Amy Poehler (Saturday Night Live) mouths off to a large man and then holds him back by saying, "You want to hit me? Go ahead. I'm married to a Jew, so I got nothin' to lose!" Poehler delivers the line with enough spunk to sell almost any string of English words, but did they have to be these? I can't for the life of me figure out what's funny about equating a Jewish marriage to battery of women.

And once the film stirs its casual, unmotivated anti-Semitism into the mix, I find myself less comfortable with the jokes about incest, even though they seem to be penned by a clueless character. We already knew the character had poor judgment. Now we know the filmmakers do, too.

When it's not stabbing haphazardly toward irreverence, Hamlet 2 has the more mundane problem of not being very funny. Mild amusements -- like a guy who roller skates badly, or a guy who's trying to keep his testicles cool on doctor's orders -- are repeated until the chuckles are dead, like three cartoons tessellated on unfunny wallpaper.

The movie does have brief glimmers of inspiration: the roller skates are finally explained with a clever, almost throwaway comment; the abrasive theatre critic who seasonally trashes the teacher's productions feels like a character from Rushmore; and Catherine Keener's general attitude, like Amy Poehler's, is inherently funny even when her lines aren't.

But the only inspired touch that sustains more than a few seconds is the casting of Elisabeth Shue to play herself, a nurse in Tucson, a former actor who left the rat race because the world always needs nurses. Shue's self-deprecating performance is funny and absurd. Plus, she's right about the need for nurses. Maybe she can convince a few of her peers to follow her into the field of health care and stop signing up for dismal films that misuse their talent.

Robert Murphy

Sara Simmonds and Scoot McNairy in In Search of a Midnight Kiss

“Misanthrope seeks misanthrope” is the craigslist personals ad that Wilson, a screenwriter recently arrived in L.A., places the day before New Year’s Eve. Vivian is the blonde, unemployed starlet who answers his ad and bullies him into a date just hours before the clock strikes midnight. In Search of a Midnight Kiss is the movie that follows these two cynical but hopeful romantics through the streets of Los Angeles. It has the problems that afflict many an indie dramedy, but it also captures a certain vibe that’s winning and affecting.

The film does not start well. Our protagonist (played by Scoot McNairy in an adequate performance) is caught masturbating in the living room ... to a photoshopped nude picture of his roommate’s girlfriend ... and he’s caught by the roommate who finds the situation more comical than creepy ... and the girlfriend finds it “sweet.” Hmmm.

There are other moments in the film that don’t ring true. At one point Wilson and Vivian stand on an empty proscenium stage improvising a play. I don’t need to tell you that the skit is their cute way of working out their relationship. But writer/director Alex Holdridge must think he’s got something special, because the scene drags on and on.

Yet much of the movie has a different ring, of authenticity. I’ve only spent three days in L.A., but this movie is how I imagine the place to be. Despite the film’s low budget, the black-and-white street cinematography (courtesy of Robert Murphy) is well used, and Holdridge creates a sense of place that’s critical to the subtle desperation both Wilson and Vivian feel. And while some of the dialogue falls flat (it’s not clear whether the script or the lack of retakes is to blame), other scenes have a quiet power. I particularly like a morning-after sequence, as two people try to figure out what happens next.

Even in low-budget films, the actresses are usually attractive, a reminder that there are an awful lot of beautiful women struggling to make it in Hollywood. Fortunately, Sara Simmonds is more than a pretty face. She gives a standout performance as the brash but ultimately vulnerable Vivian. The chemistry she finds with McNairy builds as the movie closes in on midnight, with both leads beautifully conveying the emptiness that loneliness can bring. The secondary characters aren’t quite as interesting, and the story gives way too much time to Vivian’s hysterically angry ex-boyfriend. But when it’s just Wilson and Vivian trying to make it till “Auld Lang Syne,” I was happy to root for ‘em.

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States was first published in 1980 and has inspired in some people a fanatical devotion we don’t normally associate with a 700-page history book. Songs, movies, and plays have all been dedicated to Zinn and his work, and a documentary co-written by Zinn based on the book will premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

A People’s History is a conscious attempt to provide a different kind of historical record. As Zinn writes early on:

If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win.

The resistance Zinn refers to involves how people throughout U.S. history have stood against the forces of power--the moneyed elite, government, business--and tried to construct a fairer, more equitable system. A country in which the system worked for the common man instead of the other way around.

It’s amazing how different a history this is. The moving of armies, the electing of presidents, the “great men” of national leadership get only a few lines. Instead the emphasis is on workers and labor unions, women and African Americans, Native Americans and immigrants as they struggle for better and fairer conditions.

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Merie Weismiller Wallace/DreamWorks

Brandon T. Jackson, Ben Stiller, and Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder

Comedies these days lack explosions and firearms, but Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller are on the job. Apatow's Pineapple Express and Stiller's Tropic Thunder, which have arrived in theaters during the dog days of August, are action-comedy hybrids that follow genre conventions even as they poke gentle fun at them. As a low-budget affair, Baghead, also in theaters, adds modestly-funded terror instead of top-dollar napalm to its comedy, but it too is a hybrid. Genres are back in vogue among hip young filmmakers, with rubrics so nice, they've followed them twice.

Very funny and very frivolous, Tropic Thunder is a big movie about making a big movie. Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black star as actors shooting a Vietnam war film in the jungle. The film-within-the-film has a British director, played by Steve Coogan, who's in over his head, but the producer, played by Tom Cruise under heavy makeup, is turning the screws. He barks orders and spews invective over a video link from California, determined to whip this movie into the can. Desperate to comply, the emasculated director takes the radical step of 1) planting digital cameras in the jungle's trees and 2) dropping his stars in the middle of nowhere, with their costumes, fake guns, and a script outline. His last-ditch effort is to shoot their improvisations guerilla style.

The setup reads like the parody of a well-known piece of moviemaking folklore, one that's retold like a war story: the massive production beaten by the jungle. Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo are as famous for their schedule overruns, uncontrollable stars, and maniacal directors as they are for the final products. Consequently, their associated behind-the-scenes documentaries -- Hearts of Darkness about Coppola's adventure and Burden of Dreams about Herzog's -- are as fascinating as the films themselves, and maybe more.

But Tropic Thunder's satire isn't so lofty. It's down in the undergrowth, skewering certain Hollywood personality types using the folklore as a frame. Critics have collectively tied themselves into knots trying to measure how close the movie comes to crossing various lines of good taste, but more interesting than whether it causes offense is how carefully, or carelessly, Stiller and company navigate a minefield of stereotypes. They're walking on eggshells one minute and riding roughshod the next.

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Victor Bello/TWC 2008

Vicky is serious and engaged. Cristina is carefree and impulsive. Barcelona is beautiful and very, very sexy. Actually, that’s also true of Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, who play Vicky and Cristina in this golden-hued romantic drama. Oh, and Javier Bardem, too, who plays Juan Antonio (the name itself is sexy). And we can’t forget Penelope Cruz, as the overly neurotic Maria Elena, who is, despite her character’s troubles (or maybe because of), the sexiest one of all. That’s pretty much what you need to know about Woody Allen’s new movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona. To be honest, there’s not much more than that.

As the movie opens, Vicky and Cristina have arrived in Barcelona for a summer vacation. A droll but largely unnecessary voiceover brings us up to date, and soon the two have met Juan Antonio, an exceedingly suave Spanish painter who forthrightly invites them on a weekend getaway which will probably involve a threesome. 99.9% of all men would find themselves slapped in such a situation. Javier Bardem does not. What follows is a love triangle that later becomes a trapezoid when Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, enters the picture. Word might have reached you that Johansson and Cruz engage in some kissing, but voyeurs (and aren’t we all, in a dark theater) should remember that the movie is rated PG-13.

To Allen’s credit, this rather preposterous setup comes off almost naturally. I might have recalled this hilarious Onion article on a couple occasions, but the actors are so strong and Barcelona so gorgeous that I found myself swept along for the ride. It helps immensely that, unlike Woody's films of the last 40 years, the male protagonist isn’t anything like Woody himself, for no one would ever confuse Allen and Bardem. Instead, Bardem plays the sophisticated European as every woman’s fantasy (women wishing to argue for Allen’s fantasy value can send their comments to our Antarctica office). He’s romantic and assertive, strong but sensitive, creative and handsome. We understand why a one-night stand with Juan Antonio might have Vicky reconsidering not only her wedding but her entire future. Her early declaration “I’m not free, I’m committed” feels more and more like a noose as the movie continues.

That theme of commitment vs. romance plays out like a battle, especially when a friend named Judy (Patricia Clarkson) encourages Vicky to follow her fantasy and screw the consequences. But even the plot threads of suicide and infidelity can’t compete with the filtered summer light that Allen and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (Talk to Her) conjure, with everything subsumed in a warm, hazy glow.

Yet, the film ends strangely like a sitcom, with the finale bringing us back to the very spot from where we began and with each character largely the same. A summer vacation may seem like an escape from the real world, but it’s hard to imagine that Barcelona and Juan Antonio wouldn’t leave more of a mark.

Jose Haro/First Look Studios

A filmmaker can do a lot with two people on a train, especially if they’re a husband and wife still working out their relationship. The cramped quarters, the parade of strangers, the disorientation of a new environment all provide rich soil for character development and conflict. So it is with Transsiberian, a movie about Jessie and Roy (played by Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson) riding a train from Beijing to Moscow.

The two are relatively happy, but differences lurk over whether to start a family and how to deal with their respective histories (Jessie has led a much more colorful life). Things get more complicated when Carlos and Abby, a mysterious young couple, join them in their sleeping car. Carlos takes a liking to Jessie, while Jessie is trying to figure out what’s going on with Abby. Roy and Jessie soon get separated (is Carlos responsible?), leaving Jessie in a tenuous position.

Director Bran Anderson knows how to manipulate the audience. Hints abound that Carlos might be up to something bad. Drug smuggling? Maybe. Human trafficking? Possibly. But he also could just be a suave Lothario. No matter what, we know that Jessie shouldn’t go on that "innocent" walk with him when they get off the train, and soon she’s in a lot more trouble than she could have ever imagined.

But just when the movie should focus on characters and relationships, it takes a right turn into plot. And an ugly, barbaric plot it is, which is surprising. If you’re making a movie that stars Ben Kingsley (as a narcotics investigator) and features exotic railway travel and interesting characters, the likely target audience will be middle-aged arthouse fans. Last I checked, that demographic isn’t so big on brutal mutilation and punishing violence.

This shift in tone is particularly regrettable because Harrelson gives a wonderfully subtle performance as an earthy, religious husband. I’m not usually a fan of Harrelson’s wide-eyed approach, but here he creates a likable and genuinely interesting character. Roy wants to connect with his wife despite their contrasting pasts, and he’s willing to look like a fool and take some chances to make it happen. Kingsley doesn’t have much to do besides practice a different accent (Russian this time), while Mortimer is a nicely down-to-earth actress who’s a bit outmatched in the movie’s more intense scenes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of those.

Lucasfilm Ltd./Warner Bros. Pictures

Mark Hamill, the star of the first three Star Wars films, once remarked, “I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.” Film critics who sat through The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had a similar feeling. And now with the further development of animation technologies, Lucas has reached that point.

He isn’t directing the new computer-animated flick Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but his DNA is all over it. The story about Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi trying to save the son of Jabba the Hutt is just a skeleton for some cool battles (at least my nephew thought so) and overly intricate political intrigue.

The movie is a set-up for the TV show set to debut this fall on Cartoon Network. The animation is intentionally retro, in the movie, at least. None of the beautiful backgrounds of Kung Fu Panda, little of the sleek design of the Pixar films. Instead, we have the somewhat geometric characters that are common in video games, which fits since most of the movie feels like a long video game, with various battles involving ships, droids, and clones. And of course Jedis with lightsabers.

The most interesting character is also the one that feels the most calculated. Ahsoka is a young Jedi-in-training, or Padawan for the fanboys out there. So she functions as both the spunky sidekick and the object of interest for the pre-teen crowd who are the most likely viewers of the TV show. And yes, she’s a she, in what I suspect is a vain attempt to attract young girls to the franchise.

Fans of the franchise won’t need any prodding to check out Lucas’s new direction, though ‘new’ isn’t quite the right word. The Clone Wars storyline started out as a video game in 2002, became a TV show in 2003, and morphed into a series of graphic novels. But re-baking old material is old hat for Lucas. Only the technology changes.

As many critics have remarked, the first 45 minutes of WALL*E feel like a silent movie, using purely visual elements to construct its characters and story. It’s possible, though, that the Pixar folk didn’t look all the way back to the silent era. Rather, they might just as easily have studied Albert Lamorisse’s famous 1956 short film, The Red Balloon.

That 34-minute movie relates the tale of a little boy who discovers that an unusually large balloon is following him. ‘Tale’ might be too sophisticated a word, however, as the narrative is simple to the point of being iconic. Boy finds balloon, boy sometimes loses balloon, boy and balloon join together again, boy and balloon traipse through Paris. The delight in watching such a simple story comes from how Lamorisse endows the balloon with a strong, magical personality. It hovers outside the boy’s room, waiting for him to come outside again. It refuses to let other boys play with it. In one hilarious sequence, it taunts an old man who, in frustration, has locked up the boy.

Still, the primary relationship comes from how the balloon teaches the boy. It is more than happy to play with him, but it refuses to be controlled by him. Early on, he scolds it, “You must obey me and be good.” Not quite, we soon learn. Rather, the boy must learn to respect the balloon, and only then can the magic happen. And indeed it does happen, with finely tuned sight gags and beautiful, visceral tracking shots through Paris streets. This reaches its zenith when a rebellion of balloons fills the sky with brilliant color over the famous Parisian architecture. Then in a truly transcendent moment, boy and balloon become one and take flight. Don’t let its short length fool you; there is more joy here than in most films four times longer.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Three years ago, when the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie hit theaters, Alexis Bledel and Amber Tamblyn were the well-known stars, courtesy of their TV shows Gilmore Girls and Joan of Arcadia. But now things have shifted, with their fellow Sisterhood stars Blake Lively and America Ferrera grabbing magazine covers with TV hits Gossip Girl and Ugly Betty. As for their characters in the Sisterhood, well all four are riding high when we first meet them in the sequel, with Brown, Yale, NYU Film School, and Rhode Island School of Design the markers of success.

Still, as most 19-year-olds would tell their younger siblings, just getting into your dream college doesn't necessarily guarantee happiness. And as Tibby (Tamblyn), Lena (Bledel), Carmen (Ferrera), and Bridget (Lively) head towards the summer, not all is well. For starters, all four are scattering to summer projects, so that last f in bff looks a bit tenuous. Even worse, those projects have a way of bringing up problems of their own. Lena finds out her boyfriend from the first film has gotten married to someone else, Bridget is dealing with issues related to her mother's suicide, Carmen is struggling at a theater camp and, in the most provocative of the storylines, Tibby might be pregnant.

Although this material could be ripe for after-school specials, the conflicts are handled with patience and surprising depth. It helps that the actresses are strong. Tamblyn is especially good in conveying the anxiety that an unwanted pregnancy could bring, and Lively combines her natural charisma with some genuinely emotional acting. Only Bledel looks a little bored, though that might have something to do with her storyline being the purely romantic one of the bunch. Not that the other girls don't have potential love interests (in today's teen entertainment, this goes without saying), but romance is refreshingly secondary to issues of family and identity.

As with the first film and the books they're based on, the four storylines are largely independent of each other, so the narrative sometimes feels fragmented. Ironically, when the quartet finally does come together, the movie doesn't know what to do with them. But otherwise, director Sanaa Hamri keeps it all going, and there are several affecting moments. Tibby's scenes with her boyfriend are refreshingly mature (parents take note), and the movie slows down enough for us to appreciate their interactions. The same is true when Bridget confronts her dad and grandmother. Twelve-year-olds will be able to follow the story, but twenty-year-olds won't find the material beneath them.

True, the boyfriend possibilities feel like the work of a focus group of 14-year-old girls (soooo dreamy). But in a summer when Anne Hathaway has been caught in her lingerie and Angelina Jolie has been dipped in wax, it seems the height of hypocrisy for male critics to begrudge young women a little wish fulfillment of their own.