‘10,000 B.C.’ lazy, dumb and forgettable

In theaters

10,000 B.C., directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich and Harald Kloser, 109 minutes, rated PG-13.

Sometimes, there’s just nothing good that can be said about a movie, so the best recourse is to just bury the mother and move on.

Such is the case with the dumb new Roland Emmerich movie, “10,000 B.C.,” which is hamburger onscreen – and not the lean variety. This movie is about 90 percent cinematic fat. The other 10 percent? Gristle. Maybe a bit of bone.

Based on Emmerich and Harald Kloser’s script, “10,000 B.C.” doesn’t know where it is, let alone what year it is. Since it’s either too lazy to look back into history and do its homework or too cynical about its audience to believe that they have done theirs, it just charges forward with zero knowledge of the time it’s trying to evoke.

With irritating casualness, the filmmakers set their movie during a specific time and then ignore the realties of that time. This is a movie that makes the similar “Apocalypto” look like a history lesson. What Emmerich has created is his own 10,000 B.C., tossing a hive of elements onto the screen in hopes that they’ll stick without the audience erupting into snorts and sniggers. Let’s wish him well with that.

In its most streamlined form, the cluttered plot goes like this: Steven Strait is the dreadlocked D’Leh, a member of the Yagahl tribe who hunts woolly mammoths for food and who possesses a powerful love hunger for Evolet (Camilla Belle), a blue-eyed goddess-witch who looks like a cross between Fergie, Carmen Electra and Lindsay Lohan, but a bit more rough-and-tumble, if that’s possible.

Strife strikes when Evolet and others are stolen away by a competing tribe. When the Yagahl’s psychic Old Mother (Mona Hammond) falls into one of her creepy hypnotic trances and sees D’Leh’s future laid out in front of her, she instructs him to go after Evolet. This generates all sorts of trouble, not the least of which involves D’Leh coming to throws with some hilarious-looking giant birds, the lot of which are about as real as Rod Hull’s aggressive puppet, Emu, from the 1960s.

Also against D’Leh and his stoic sidekick Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis) are, well, any number of things – a saber-toothed tiger, which looks as if it sprang out of a weak PS3 game; the most truncated journey ever across barren deserts and mountain ranges; and naturally, since the movie is, after all, set in 10,000 B.C., a lost city filled with pyramids, which the Egyptians apparently built 7,000 years earlier than we thought. Who knew?

Not Emmerich, or maybe he did know and doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. At least his characters aren’t fighting tooth decay – they all have amazingly white, perfect teeth. And at least many of the men were able to find a Bic in the B.C. – most are shaved, including their chests. But enough. As with any movie that stretches history to suit its needs, “10,000 B.C.” could have been forgiven every one of its missteps and shortcomings had it been a blast, which it isn’t.

This is a movie you actually forget while watching it.

Grade: D-

On DVD and Blu-ray disc

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 123 minutes, rated R.

The Academy Award-winning, modern-day Western “No Country for Old Men” hails from Ethan and Joel Coen, who arm themselves with Cormac McCarthy’s fantastic 2005 book of the same name and deliver one of 2007’s best films in the process.

Working from their own script, the Coens craft a violent, engrossing movie that never telegraphs or condescends; it keeps its twists and its surprises close to its bleeding heart, which is significant because in this violent movie, that heart often is hemorrhaging.

Set in 1980, the film stars Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran hunting one day along the Texas-Mexico border when he comes upon a grisly mass murder in the desert. There, he also comes upon a stash of drugs and, later, $2 million in cash sandwiched within a black case.

It’s when Moss takes the money that everything goes sour for him.

After all, working against him is the formidable psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in an Academy Award-winning performance), a man who sports a Buster Brown blowout and who, for reasons best left for the screen, decides that Moss is going to pay for stealing that money. He’s going to track Moss down, he’s going to get that money for himself, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

One person who does is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who completes the film’s deadly triangle by going after Moss and Chigurh. This superb movie is about the sly weaving of skill and chance that unfolds between them all, with the characters crisscrossing in and out of each other’s reach with such mounting heat, they create a knot onscreen that tightens in your gut.

With its accomplished performances, direction, writing and cinematography, “No Country for Old Men” ultimately is a movie haunted by what the West was and what the West has become. At its core, the movie knows they aren’t so different – and that’s what troubles it.

Grade: A

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the blog and archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.