Lane, Gere pull off comforting love story

“Nights in Rodanthe” is another one of those bare-bones tests: a love story, two characters and a fairly simple, mostly single setting. It’s familiar territory, which makes it comforting but runs the risk of cliché.

Can they pull it off? They can when they’re pros like Diane Lane, Richard Gere and director George C. Wolfe.

Lane and Gere have teamed up before – first in “The Cotton Club,” then in the superior “Unfaithful.” This time they’re mature people seeking a second chance.

And so, fleeing their pasts – a fatal mistake for his brilliant surgeon, a failed marriage for her perfect mother – they unexpectedly find each other.

Director Wolfe’s direction is spot-on, letting crucial moments unfold in their own undistracted space, or catching subtle silences or changes of expression; you’d expect no less from a stage director.

Yet he’s also at ease in more cinematic moments: a horror-show thunderstorm, a crucial flashback, an impromptu community fish-fry.

– By Stephen Whitty, Newhouse News

“The Lucky Ones”

“The Lucky Ones” is the latest casualty in Hollywood’s unsatisfying parade of war-on-terror dramas.

Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Peña manage occasional moments of humor and pathos as three wounded Iraq War veterans on an impromptu road trip across America. But the screenplay by director Neil Burger and co-writer Dirk Wittenborn forges a false camaraderie by hurling the three lead players into perpetual artificial situations.

Beginning with a blackout that forces them to rent a car and drive rather than fly, “The Lucky Ones” tosses out one convenient contrivance after another to bond these battle-scarred strangers together, culminating in a preposterous encounter with a tornado that seems to blow in from some action flick playing in the next theater.

– By David Germain, The Associated Press

“Choke”

This raunchy new comedy is based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the cult hit “Fight Club” – and, like the David Fincher-directed “Fight Club,” it has a bunch of devices and a few themes.

The themes include family loyalty, addiction (and its treatments), and physical and emotional love. The devices include short scenes, a smart-alec narrator and anything-goes provocations.

Director Clark Gregg – a busy character actor whom you’ll recognize the moment you see him in the Colonial village scenes as the officious boss – has assembled a good cast.

Sam Rockwell – a quirky, wonderful indie mainstay since the mid-’90s – is Victor Mancini, who works as a Colonial village theme-park re-enactor, and also as a con artist who makes himself nearly choke to death in restaurants. The always marvelous Anjelica Huston is his mad mother.

But then there’s the whole sex addiction stuff and the 12-step scenes, which just feel like leftovers from “Fight Club.” Gregg obviously has a rapport with actors, but he’s no David Fincher.

– By Stephen Whitty, Newhouse News