Are you offended by the title of my new “movie reviews in brief” series? Well can you think of a better one? Huh, punk???

… Seriously, if you can think of a better one, please leave me a comment. This name is ridiculous.

The Ten

I have to give The Ten credit. Despite its satirically religious premise, despite scene after scene in which characters creatively break each of the Ten Commandments, never once did it occur to me that someone might find this movie offensive for God-related reasons. Perhaps that’s actually a testament to the movie’s toothlessness rather than its comedic acumen. The audience really wants to be offended by The Ten, but the movie can’t quite summon the fire and brimstone.

The story is disorganized just beyond the point of manageable chaos. The 10 parables (anti-parables, really, because those who sin do not always lose out in the end) are connected just enough to make your head hurt a little. The movie features an impressive retinue of absurdist comedy’s patron saints. Despite this, it has hilarious moments, and then it has moments where I thought, “wow, that gag is really clever,” but no actual laugh materialized. And that, for a movie with a cast and concept as great as this one’s, is the real sin.

Becoming Jane

Although I am a longtime Jane Austen fan (Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy is my one true love), I had misgivings about Becoming Jane, a fictionalized tale of the author’s youthful romance with Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy). Even in the hands of an actress as capable as Anne Hathaway, I feared that the story of Jane Austen’s real life would pale in comparison to the wit and sophistication of her novels. Austen didn’t lead a romantic life, or even a long one, dying unmarried at age 41. Having loved Pride and Prejudice (the book and the film), would Becoming Jane be a sad letdown?

I was right about one thing — her real life makes for a very different kind of movie. Where Austen’s novels are all decorum and subtle irony, Becoming Jane is full of impolite notions like passion, sex and violence, things the author would have found quite vulgar. Hathaway does a reasonably convincing British accent, though she’s far too pretty to be convincing as a Plain Jane. Although she handles the character decently, her talents are much better suited to comedy. And like all good English films, the real joy is the supporting cast, comprised of such all-stars as Maggie Smith, James Cromwell and Julie Walters. They give the otherwise pretty depressing story some humor and depth, while the two main characters argue and inevitably fall in love against a beautifully accurate backdrop of English society.

I still find Austen’s works of fiction much preferable to her bittersweet life story, but then again, I’ve always been a sucker for happy endings.

Death at a Funeral

Oh, how boring was the beginning of this movie. Epic tales will be told of Death at a Funeral and its yawn-inducingness. It doesn’t help that it was actually supposed to be funny, a fact of which the audience is constantly reminded by the dippy, self-congratulatory music punctuating moments the director clearly found hilarious. Example: several somber British gentlemen haul a casket into a quaint little manor house for a funeral, only to discover — whoops! — they’ve brought the wrong body. Oh, the unfunniness.

But after about 30 minutes this zany Brit comedy picks up significantly. I think it was about the time the fantastic Peter Dinklage, who is amazing in everything, came onscreen. His character, an unwelcome guest at the funeral of an upstanding father of two, suffers more indignities than one would generally expect for a funeral, even a zany Brit-com one. Adding to the mayhem is a repeatedly misplaced bottle of hallucinogens, a belligerent, cane-brandishing great-uncle, and a secret about the deceased that the family desperately wants to keep quiet.

I’ve seen much better dark comedy offerings from our overseas friends. Wait for this one on DVD. In the meantime, rent Waking Ned Devine to see how madcap dead-guy comedies should be done.