jimchudnow@sbcglobal.net

CHICAGO – Joshua Michael Stern’s “Swing Vote” hit theaters at the peak of the Presidential campaign and it’s no coincidence that the Blu-Ray release lands in stores a week before President-Elect Obama takes office. With a great ensemble and old-fashioned sensibility, “Swing Vote” is a film that should work. Like a misguided campaign for office, it just doesn’t come together.

CHICAGO – The coming-of-age comedy “The Wackness” with Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Olivia Thirlby, Mary-Kate Olsen, Method Man, and Famke Janssen may feature a bouncing hip-hop soundtrack and be about joyful things like first love, but it’s an oddly inert, haze-filled film, as if the regular marijuana usage in the film cast a haze over the entire project.