ReelFan

Review: Safe House

2012-02-14T14:09:00.000-08:00

Universal

If you like car chases, shoot outs, and all kinds of fast paced mayhem, this movie is sure to entertain you. If you also like tightly drawn thrillers and interesting, sympathetic characters, well, did I mention the car chases?

Denzel Washington plays Tobin Frost, a turncoat CIA agent hunkered down in Capetown, South Africa. He’s in the midst of negotiations on a megadeal, trading classified information for serious dollars, when he finds himself the target of a lot of determined bad guys. After some high octane action and lots of close calls, Tobin decides his only option is to take refuge at the US Consulate. CIA brass immediately hustle him off to a safe house for questioning, but the bad guys find him there, and when the dust settles the only man left standing to keep track of Tobin and provide for his security is the fellow who staffs the safe house, a green agent named Matt Weston.

Up until now, Matt thought he had a pretty boring job.

Weston, played by Ryan Reynolds, figures his career depends on how well he handles this unexpected, high profile assignment. Frost, a master of psychological manipulation, wants to slip away from his young keeper and get on with his deal making. But Matt Weston turns out to be much smarter – and less gullible – than Frost imagines; Frost has trouble escaping. (“How did you find me?” he asks Weston, when the young man shows up looking for him in a remote spot. “It wasn’t that hard,” Matt snaps back, powering an old pickup truck through a gunfight.)

The best part of this movie is what goes on between these would be antagonists. Denzel Washington - always terrific - is great here as the clever bad guy who maybe isn’t quite so bad. But Reynolds nearly steals the show from the Oscar winner, showing both the vulnerability and apprehension of a rookie along with the resolve and astute thinking of a top drawer agent. That relationship, and all the edge of your seat (it really is edge of your seat) action are good enough reasons to see this movie; it’s a shame though, that the thriller aspect of the story never comes together. When everything shakes out and you find out who’s been setting Frost up, you don’t really care anymore. Came in number two at the box office, attracting a mixed audience (not just the usual youthful action fans). Still playing in lots of theaters. B-

Big Weekend at the Movies

2012-02-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Didja go to the movies this weekend? Any trouble parking? Were there long lines for tickets? It seems like sometime on Friday or Saturday everyone in America looked at everyone else and said, "Hey, let's go see a movie!" and presto, just like that, we had one of the biggest February movie going weekends ever. Big winner was The Vow, scoring about a third more box office coin than anyone expected , but it was closely followed by Safe House, which nearly doubled its predicted take. Biggest surprise was Journey 2: Mysterious Island, which confounded prognosticators by doubling its business between Friday and Saturday; seems like good word of mouth and Dwayne Johnson propelled this one into a respectable third place finish, beating out Phantom Menace 3D, the only new opening whose business lined up with expectations. Among holdovers, Chronicle and Woman in Black held their own.

Minor historical note: if you don't count holiday weekends, this is the first time ever that four films earned more than $20 million in their opening sets.

Here's the list:

1. "The Vow" (Sony/Spyglass): $41.7 million.

2. "Safe House" (Universal/Relativity): $39.3 million.

3. "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" (Warner Bros.): $27.6 million.

4. "Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace" (Fox/Lucasfilm): $23 million.

5. "Chronicle" (Fox): $12.3 million. Domestic total: $40.2 million.

6. "The Woman in Black" (CBS Films): $10.3 million. Domestic total: $35.5 million.

7. "The Grey" (Open Road): $5.1 million. Domestic total: $42.8 million.

8. "Big Miracle" (Universal): $3.9 million. Domestic total: $13.2 million.

9. "The Descendants" (Fox Searchlight): $3.5 million. Domestic total: $70.7 million.

10. "Underworld: Awakening" (Sony/Lakeshore): $2.5 million. Domestic total: $58.9 million.

Opening this weekend: February 10

2012-02-09T14:14:00.000-08:00

Bunch of big openings this weekend, and none look to impress. The Safe House stars Denzel Washington as a CIA turncoat who is attacked while in government custody and has to be rescued by a young operative in the form of Ryan Reynolds. The story involves a lot of John Woo style action and psychological warfare between the traitor and his protector. Middling reviews. In The Vow, Rachel MacAdams plays a young wife who develops amnesia following a car accident, and she can’t remember her husband. She does remember her old boyfriend, though. Is this supposed to be a date movie? If so, which love are we rooting for? The husband is played by Channing Tatum, and he doesn't have a lot of star wattage, and the boyfriend is Scott Speedman, who - wait, who is he? Based on a true story, getting middling to poor reviews. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, stars Dwayne Johnson and Michael Caine (and a surprising number of other familiar actors) as explorers on a strange isle. This one is really just an excuse for 3-D effects and box office dollars; reviews aren’t great but they aren’t terrible either. Might be a possibility if you have kids to distract on Saturday afternoon (rated PG). Unless, that is, you can’t help yourself and need to take them to see Phantom Menace (Star Wars: Episode 1) in 3-D. Lucas has said that this special edition of his most disappointing film is designed for the grammar school set. So far, no lines around the block; in fact, the new release getting the most attention in presales and general buzz is The Vow. Must be a Valentines thing. Could be a record breaking weekend, box office wise, so if that kind of thing interests you, click back for the Monday wrap up. I’ll be here.

Smash

2012-02-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

NBC

Movies are kind of dull right now, so let’s talk TV. I caught the premiere of “Smash” this week and I felt underwhelmed. Pretty white people sing pretty songs about a pretty white woman and they all live in cool New York apartments even though most of them seem to be making just over minimum wage. Well, except for the big wigs, who live in elegant Manhattan penthouses that a hedge fund manager might envy. Do Broadway directors/producers/writers make as much money as hedge fund managers?

Never mind. “Smash” marks the television acting debut of Katherine McPhee, best known for American Idol (she came in second in 2006); her signature Idol performance was a moving, nearly acoustic rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The folks behind “Smash” seem eager to remind us of that, so the show opens with McPhee belting out the Judy Garland standard, dressed in an odd, glittery, girlish dress and surrounded by some kind of cloud. It was jarring and strange. I was reflexively hoping that the camera would cut to Simon Cowell looking bored, or aghast.

With that start the writers signal that there is nothing new to see here, just a re-hash of old tropes, and that’s exactly what we get. Two young ingénues compete for stardom, Debra Messing spars affectionately with a gay guy, Angelica Huston plays the evil queen (she may have a soft heart) and the whole thing seems like Glee Grown Up without the welcome, acerbic wit of Sue Sylvester.

The one bright spot in the show, the only reason to tune back in, is Megan Hilty, who plays Ivy, a Broadway vet looking to escape the chorus line. Her nuanced, smooth-as-silk vocals and her genuine, touchingly vulnerable performance as Ivy makes Katherine McPhee’s Karen seem flat and predictable. And if message boards, tweets, and the young people in my living room are any indication, this is a widely shared opinion. Hopefully the producers of the show will take note, and resist the urge to turn Ivy into some sort of back stage villain in order to pump up McPhee’s profile. “Smash” is a big, fluffy bit of entertainment, highly produced and good escapist fun for musical theater geeks. I will watch the next episode, but if I don’t tune in for round three, well, it won’t be because the show is bad – just a bore. Mondays at 10/9 Central. NBC

Doggie Oscars

2012-01-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

(Jaap Buitendijk / 35mm)

Dog News Daily, an online magazine for dog lovers and the companies that sell stuff to them, is sponsoring the first ever Golden Collar Awards,celebrating canine performances in the movies. Like most award shows, this one has had its share of scandal: the first list of Best Dog nominees excluded the Doberman, Blackie, who was featured in Hugo. Martin Scorsese didn't like that, so he wrote an op-ed in the LA Times complaining about it (he claimed prejudice against "anti-hero" dog performances). The Dog News people took notice and made Marty a deal: if Blackie could get 500 "write-in votes" (posts) on the Dog News Daily Facebook page, well, she was in.

You can't make this stuff up.

Blackie got the votes. On February 13, she will compete with the four legged stars of The Artist and Water for Elephants (same dog), 50/50, The Beginners, and Young Adult for Best Dog in a Theatrical Film. The event will be held at a hotel in Los Angeles, and there will be a red carpet and everything. Not sure how the interviews will go. Look for lots of press and television coverage of the event. It is said that the winner of the Golden Collar awards almost always goes on to win at the Oscars ... okay, I did make that up.

Oscar Tea Leaves: 26 Days Out

2012-01-31T12:17:00.000-08:00

There are nine movies nominated in the Oscar Best Picture race, but only five matter: The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Hugo and Moneyball all have a shot, although Moneyball barely makes the list, even though it was an early fave. Here’s the thing: Descendants and The Artist picked up awards at the Golden Globes, which should make them front runners, but The Help got the nod at the SAG Awards, and the Directors Guild gave it up for The Artist’s Michel Hazanavicius. These are confusing times.

The people who actually bet on these things have The Artist and The Descendents fighting it out for frontrunner and Hugo and The Help battling for second place. None of the other pictures matter, at least as far as winning goes.

So what will happen? Well, it’s early yet. Final Oscar ballots get mailed out tomorrow, but they aren’t due back at the Academy until February 21st. Meanwhile, it seems the buzz for The Artist is wearing a little thin. Will the Academy stick with it for the big prize, or give The Descendants the nod? Or could they surprise us for the first time in years and let something like Hugo float to the top?If I were betting today, I would go with The Artist. In two weeks, though, things could look different. Stay tuned.

New Movies 12/9/2100

2011-12-09T14:54:00.001-08:00

The big opening this weekend is New Year's Eve, an ensemble romantic comedy featuring a whole bunch of stars, like Halle Berry and Ashton Kutcher and Sarah Jessica Parker - it's a long list. This one is expected to attract a big audience and bump Twilight right off its first place perch, but the reviews are beyond dismal, even worse than the sparkly vampire story. Also opening big: The Sitter, starring Jonah Hill as a college guy who is roped into babysitting the kids next door, and then gets himself and the children into a whole lot of trouble. Reviews are worse than Twilight, better than New Year's, generally very bad. But don't despair, you can still catch some of the better fall films, like The Descendants, and Hugo, Martin Scorsese's children's story, and Like Crazy is still in a few theaters. Next week Sherlock Holmes opens, and Young Adult goes wide.

Young Adult

2011-12-09T12:02:00.001-08:00

Paramount Pictures

Charlize Theron is a brilliant, and brave actress; she’s also beautiful, which is kind of the point in her latest film, Young Adult. She plays Mavis Gary, former prom queen and belle of the high school ball, currently facing middle age in a dismal messy apartment with only a fuzzy little dog and the occasional Internet date for company. She decides that the solution to her growing angst is to go back to her tiny hometown and drag her high school boyfriend out of the trap of family life. Never mind that he seems to be happily married and celebrating the birth of his new baby girl; Mavis is sure he wants out. “It’s like he’s a hostage,” she tells a friend, and she packs up her dog and motors out of the city to rescue him.

There is really nothing likeable about Mavis Gary; she’s crudely self-centered, but Theron manages to show us the vulnerability in her, the desperation that leads her to decide that re-creating past glories is her best path to present day happiness. And while many actresses trade on their good looks, determined to look pretty under the most unlikely of film circumstances, here Theron allows herself to look scruffy and worn, wearing shapeless t-shirts, hair mussed, mascara runny. This could seem kind of sad and tragic, but Theron plays it like an ironic statement of toughness; as Mavis walks the streets of her former hometown in a Hello Kitty t-shirt, you get the impression that a smart person would not risk commenting on her disheveled appearance.

Young Adult is a comedy, a dark one, and the funniest scenes are the ones where Mavis meets up with Matt Frehauf, a high school classmate that she had nearly forgotten. As a teenager, Matt (played with perfect comic timing by Patton Oswalt) sustained life altering injuries at the hands of a bunch of football jocks who attacked him because they thought he was gay (he is not). Permanently disabled, he is cynical, funny, and sees right through Mavis’ pretensions; the two form an unlikely but extremely entertaining comic duo. The movie really brightens whenever they are both on screen. Young Adult is not an important film, it isn’t terribly weighty in its themes, but it is funny and a great showcase for the talents of Theron and Oswalt. Opening small this weekend in a few major cities, should go wide on 12/16. B+

Awards Season is On

2011-11-29T13:30:00.001-08:00

It's been a busy couple of days on the awards circuit, the Gotham Independent Spirit Awards revealing themselves last night, the New York Film Critics announcing their year end picks as well, and today the West Coast Independent Spirit folks put out their list of nominees. Put it all together and what have you got: well, The Artist, certainly. A big hit at Cannes, but playing only an extremely limited run (four theaters so far) here at home, this film is a serious critical darling but hasn't yet had a chance to prove itself among regular folks. Another small film, Take Shelter, got attention from these organizations, both for Best Picture and for lead actor Michael Shannon. But Take Shelter is a dark story with an ambivalent ending, an unlikely film to get mixed up in the big leagues, although Shannon could get a nod for acting. Brad Pitt got noticed by the New York film Critics for his performance in Moneyball; this relatively small crowd of writers also chose Meryl Streep as Best Actress in Iron Lady. Neither one of these films would get noticed by the Independent Spirit folks, who leave any big studio film out of their considerations, but certainly this is a clue that Pitt and Streep will get attention from Oscar (and the Screen Actors Guild, and the Golden Globes). Jessica Chastain also got some love for her performances in (take your pick) Tree of Life, Take Shelter and The Help. She has had a busy year, and will no doubt have a lot of red carpet walks in the next few months.

But, award hopes aside, all these picks and nominations can provide some film going direction. In the next month, there should be some high quality movies at the multiplex. Look for Iron Lady, and The Artist, although The Artist is more likely to show up in art houses. Spielberg's War Horse, a World War I story, is getting lots of buzz (it is a Spielberg film) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo should make a splash, although it's bound to be a brutal, bloody one. Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, a thriller based on a John LeCarre novel, is getting positive reviews from the handful of critics who have seen it, and Young Adult, a story about a morally ambivalent woman (Charlize Theron) who returns to her high school reunion determined to rip her old boyfriend away from his wife and family, is generating some good acting kudos. Extremely Loud and Terribly Close, based on a novel about a boy whose father died in the Towers on 9/11 and left a mysterious key behind, is getting a lot of buzz even though no one (really, no one) has seen it yet. Some bold prognosticators are even calling it for Best Picture. Back in the real world, look for The Descendants, whose Oscar hopes are rosy because of its solid box office and loving critical reviews. It's also a good film and still in theaters. My Week with Marilyn is also getting attention for Michelle Williams' performance. Too soon to tell how any of these will fare come awards times, but they should provide some good movie going entertainment. More awards insight and prognosticating as the story unfolds.

Review: The Descendants

2011-11-28T14:44:00.001-08:00

Fox Searchlight

Good movie. George Clooney stars as Matt King, a disconnected dad who has to step up his parenting game when a boating accident leaves his wife in a coma. His two daughters, ten and seventeen, are mysteries to him, but he’s a essentially a warmhearted guy, giving the unexpected dad thing his best shot until older daughter Alex (played with beautiful authenticity by Shailene Woodley) hits him with a bombshell: his comatose wife has been having an affair. “She was cheating on you, Dad,” Alex tells him, in a matter of fact tone that is only a little impatient, as though this huge development in his marriage was something she pretty much expected him to miss. But once the news is out Matt is galvanized into action, collaborating with Alex to track his wife’s lover down – determined to confront the guy, wanting to see his face when he learns that the woman he has been dallying with is at death’s door.

Obviously there is a dark side to all of this, but writer/director Alexander Payne (Sideways) teases the humor out of the drama, and George Clooney gamely allows himself to appear foolish, letting go of his leading man suave to look believably awkward when he peers over a hedge trying to spot his wife’s mystery man, or races in flip flops to his neighbors’ house to demand the truth about the affair. The film lingers a little too lightly on the real pain at the heart of this story, skims over the tough stuff, but we still feel enormous sympathy for the characters and keep pulling for them. With Robert Forster doing great work as the dying woman’s father, and young Nick Krause providing welcome comic relief as Alex’s friend. Playing a relatively small run (433 theaters) throughout the country but it’s doing good business and should expand. Lots of Oscar buzz. B+

What to See November 18, 2011

2011-11-17T14:32:00.001-08:00

The big opening of the weekend is Breaking Dawn – Part 1, and if you are on Team Edward or Team Jacob (no one seems to need a Team Bella) you are already in line for the midnight show. Good for you, but keep me out of it. I am hoping to miss this one. I’m not sure what I dread most: Kristen Stewart’s sourpuss face, Edward Pattinson’s steely blankness, or Tyler Lautner’s wholesale abandoning of any nascent acting talent in exchange for flashing his abs. It all depresses me, and we haven’t even arrived at the bizarre birth scene. Oops! Spoiler alert. The other big opening is Happy Feet 2, an animated tap dancing penguin movie. Early reviews are mixed, but it looks like a solid family film.

More highbrow, The Descendants opens this weekend in a handful of theaters; this is one of the best reviewed films of the fall, definite Oscar bait. George Clooney stars as an absentee dad who has to step up his parenting game when his wife is injured and falls into a coma.

Held over are a number of biggies: Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill, Tower Heist and The Immortals. You might be wise to skip all of those but if you are in the mood for a big Hollywood movie, Tower Heist is a better bet than the other two. Unless you absolutely love Adam Sandler, and, just a tip, the membership of that club appears to be dwindling. Jack and Jill had a disappointing opening weekend and critics really hated the film. On the other hand, people who showed up liked it well enough.

If you happen to live in a city with an art house scene, look for a film called Like Crazy. This charming, unexpected and extremely well done love story is one of the best films out right now.

Review: J. Edgar

2011-11-17T12:41:00.001-08:00

Warner Brothers

I hate to burst bubbles, but this movie is a snooze. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the title role and he tries mightily to make it work, but the script lets him down; J. Edgar Hoover, one of the most significant and controversial American public figures of the 20th Century, is presented with such a narrow, insulated focus that it’s hard to tell if he was a real threat to his enemies or just an awkward, slightly deranged man ranting about in his office. The film is shot in understated tones with muted colors, and that might have seemed retro cool if the story had any spark, but instead the low key presentation too easily allows your mind to wander. I started planning my weekend.

The story begins early on, when Hoover is an eager young agent trying to bring a new level of sophistication to crime investigations. Determined, ambitious, and socially awkward, he is appointed the first head of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation when he is only 24. He assembles a personal staff that includes his secretary, Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and his number two in command and possible love interest, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). The film spends a good deal of time attempting to explore the relationship between these two men, which was a source of speculation for anyone who paid attention to Hoover, both during and after his lifetime. The question was never resolved, though, and J.Edgar’s considerable efforts to lift the veil seem hackneyed and flat.

The film divides Hoover's nearly fifty years as head of the Bureau by referencing different crimes or crime sprees; in each segment Hoover has a young agent sequestered in his office, dutifully typing up the director's version of events. The story evolves from these memoirs, which, unfortunately, make us like those young men sitting at the typewriter: we merely take down what Hoover has to say. The film provides no context, no characters to give perspective. We don’t know, for example, why the Director feels a need to explain himself, since we see no one of any significance seriously questioning his actions. When he goes on his well documented vendetta against Martin Luther King, we don't see anyone in King’s camp react; we never get a chance to understand if Hoover’s hatred of the civil rights leader had any consequences.

Armie Hammer does excellent work as Tolson, even though his aggressive aging prosthetics never seem natural. Naomi Watts plays a routine role in a routine way. Clint Eastwood is a great director when he has the right material, but this one misses the mark. Still playing wide throughout the country. B-

Review: Margin Call

2011-11-15T11:09:00.001-08:00

Roadside Attractions

Margin Call is set on Wall Street in the fall of 2008. It revolves around a handful of upper echelon players in a big investment firm - well, they are mostly upper echelon: in a memorable performance, Zachary Quinto plays Peter, a young risk analyst who identifies the beginnings of the coming financial meltdown before any of the more experienced executives have taken notice. He gets a tip from his recently fired boss, Eric (played with calm understatement by Stanley Tucci); Eric slips him a flash drive before he leaves the building for the last time, warning Peter to “Be careful.”

It’s good advice. Peter passes up a happy hour outing with co-workers and stays late studying the file Eric gave him. Within a few hours he has it figured out: the beginnings of the biggest financial crash since 1930 laid out in colorful graphs and numbers on his computer screen. It’s about 9:00 at night, and from here the clock starts slowly ticking towards financial Armageddon.

The film doesn’t spend much time trying to explain the mechanics of the crash. It only covers a tiny bit of time, less than 24 hours. Peter alerts his boss, and as the news travels up the corporate ladder executives arrive back at the office in the dead of night (all nicely dressed, hadn’t they gone home yet?), trying to grasp what’s happened and waiting to meet with head honcho Jeremy Irons, who lands on the roof in a helicopter around 4:00 AM. And here is the heart of the story, the real question being asked: once all of these high level insiders understand the stakes, how will they respond? With nobility? Crass self interest? Is there a moral debate to be had?

It’s interesting stuff, and it’s handled in a far more intimate and revealing way than in a film like say, Wall Street 2. If you ever wondered what went on in those moneyed ivory towers as the financial system came tumbling down, this is a great film to see. With outstanding performances by Kevin Spacey and Paul Bettany as the two execs on the front lines of dealing with the crisis. Still playing in selected theaters nationwide. B+

Review: Tower Heist

2011-11-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

Universal

You would think with all the talent in the cast of thismovie, they could have come up with a better story. Ben Stiller stars as Josh, the manager of an uber-luxeapartment building in Manhattan; the grand and personalized service that he andhis staff provide are the reason rich people want to live there. But a scandal breaks out – turns out therichest of the rich tenants, the guy in the penthouse, is a Bernie Madoff type,swindling folks out of their money with an elaborate Ponzi scheme. That’s trouble enough for the luxurybuilding, but there’s a bigger problem for Josh: he arranged for the swindler,Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) to manage the staff’s pension fund. Everybody’s lost all their retirement money.

Feeling angry, and pretty guilty, Josh talks some of his colleaguesinto executing a heist: they’re going to steal the money back. Word is that Shaw has a stash somewhere; theyjust have to find it. Being inexperienced criminals, they decide they need help to learn evil ways, so Josh recruits pretty thief Slide (Eddie Murphy), toplay bad guy adviser to the team. SeemsJosh and Slide grew up together, and if that seems improbable, wait till yousee the rest of this film.

It’s not all bad. Eddie Murphy is funny, so is Ben Stiller, although he doesn’t get muchto work with here. The heist teamincludes veteran actors like Matthew Broderick, a tenant and out of work financialwiz who’s trying desperately to hold onto his fancy digs in the building, and MichaelPena, a former staffer who lost his job. And Casey Affleck, building concierge and weak willed conspirator whoalso happens to be Josh’s brother-in-law. There’s potential here but it doesn’t get a chance to develop, the storyisn’t quite clever enough, or over the top enough (even though they work in theMacy’s Thanksgiving Day parade) to make the whole thing really zing. But, did I mention that Eddie Murphy isfunny? Yeah, he doesn’t’ get enough screen time but when he’s there, the movieis fun. Playing everywhere. C+

New Movies opening October 28

2011-10-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

Big opening this weekend is Puss n Boots (in 3D!); this movie is actually getting decent reviews, and the 3D effects are said to be excellent. But it looks like a kid film, not much crossover appeal. Also up is In Time, about a world where no one ages past 25, but you can live longer than that (in your youthful body) as long as you can get your hands on a few extra minutes, or hours, or days; time is traded like currency. Stars Justin Timberlake, which is generally a good thing (remember Social Network?) Amanda Seyfried and Olivia Wilde. Decent reviews, a few very enthusiastic. The other big opener is The Rum Diary, based on a Hunter S. Thompson novel and starring Johnny Depp as a down on his luck freelance journalist who takes an assignment in Puerto Rico and has some strange and amusing adventures. Time Magazine calls it “an agreeable time waster.” Hangers on from last week include the box office bonanza that is Paranormal Activity 3, along with Footloose and The Three Musketeers. I saw The Three Musketeers; I was having a bad day and it was playing at a convenient time. It was diverting.

If you live in a big American city you will likely have the chance to see Martha Marcy May Marlene this weekend. This is a very good but very strange film; some disturbing stuff goes on, so keep that in mind if you decide to see it. Elizabeth Olsen is incredible in the title role. If you are interested in MMMM and you don’t live in a big city hang on: it’s hitting more theaters every weekend, finally going wide on November 11. (Review coming in the next day or so.)

Finally there is a lot of buzz about a little movie called Like Crazy. It’s a love story, or more like a lost love story, about two young people who fall madly in love, but then are separated by distance and bureaucratic red tape. It was a huge hit at Sundance, and has been picking up awards at festivals all over the world. Opening in just four theaters this weekend but coming soon to theaters near you.

Next week: Tower Heist with Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller, and the Harold and Kumar Christmas movie. Well, Halloween will be over by then.

Box Office Wrap Up: October 21

2011-10-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

The smash movie of the weekend was Paranormal Activity 3, its $54 million take giving it the interesting title of “biggest fall opening ever.” For perspective, that means it made more money in its opening than films like Jackass 3D, Shark Tale, and The Grudge. The third outing of the low budget franchise is a prequel to the other films in the series, working on the notion that the creepy other worldly ghostly thing that terrorized the young couple in the first movie actually got a foothold when the young woman was just a toddler. Seemed like a good idea, sort Poltergeist-y: little girl picks up communications from the beyond, and her mom is all freaked out about it.

Paranormal Activity 3 locked down about half of the box office generated by the top ten films, but the big fans who turned out for the opening weekend didn’t love it, giving the horror flick a C+ in exit reviews. Meanwhile, the latest screen incarnation of The Three Musketeers barely registered. Continuing movies Real Steel, Footloose, Ides of March, and Dolphin Tale hung on pretty well. Upcoming, we’ve got Jason Timberlake in In Time, a movie where no one ages past 25, and time becomes currency. Olivia Wilde plays Timberlake’s mother. Not sure how that’s going to work.

Looking for a Few Good Films (and Some Oscar Predictions)

2011-10-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of summer blockbusters. I like the comic book heroes and the grand battles between good and evil where good always wins and evil is defeated in a humorously ironic way.

But once Labor Day rolls around, I’m ready for something a little more thought provoking.

Which makes this fall oddly disappointing. It had a promising start, lots of hype about the great films on the horizon, but so far only Moneyball has hit the mark. Like a lot of critics, I was hoping for a little more depth from Drive and more complexity from the Ides of March; both films were well made and entertaining, but neither one could be called a great movie.

So we look forward. This weekend Martha Marcy May Marlene opens, featuring what is promised to be a stunning performance by Olsen twins sibling Elizabeth. Filmmaker Sean Durkin also won the top directing prize at Sundance. Lots of buzz on this one.

After that there is a bit of a wait before the next hyped picture arrives. J Edgar, a biopic about the controversial FBI chief comes out on November 9 in the big markets; Leo DiCaprio takes the title role, and this one has Oscar written all over it. Also in November look for The Descendents: George Clooney stars as an absentee dad who has to step up when his wife has an accident and slips into a coma. From the trailer this looks like a standard family crisis drama but, unlike Ides of March, it persistently shows up in the Best Picture conversation. The Artist opens on Thanksgiving weekend; it’s a black and white not-quite-silent picture about the advent of talking films. Screened at Cannes to wild enthusiasm.

Other possibilities include War Horse, a Spielberg picture that comes out at the very end of the year, barely making the cut off for awards consideration; it’s a World War I (that’s one, not two) movie about a horse and the kid who loves him. Okay, it’s probably more complicated than that, but it hasn’t been screened yet so nobody knows. There is also a film version of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, based on one of the very first novels to set in post 9/11 New York. Also opens late December. The American version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo looks like it’s meant for mass market pop culture consumption, but Academy voters are keeping it in mind because of Director David Fincher's pedigree (he directed Social Network). As the eponymous Girl, Rooney Mara is also expected to snag a best actress nod.

But she’ll be competing with the Grande Dame of Oscar nominees, Meryl Streep, who is expected to blow out the competition with her performance as Maggie Thatcher in Iron Lady. If there’s a lock in this awards season, old Meryl is probably it.

Review: Fifty Fifty

2011-10-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

Summit Entertainment

There are critics who love this picture and I can’t imagine why. It’s possible that the lack of impressive films in the fall “noteworthy movie” season has led them to embrace it, even though it is pretty much like any cancer movie you have ever seen. Guy is having a normal day, feels a twinge, finds out he has cancer, family and friends freak, they rally, they are inspired and full of hope because of his brave struggle. Or something like that.

50/50 doesn’t introduce anything new into this conversation. If you have ever dealt with cancer, either as a patient or as a supportive family member or friend, you will not learn anything from this film, or come away with an altered perspective.

Which is not to say it’s a bad picture. As cancer victim Adam, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does credible work even though his part is badly underwritten; he’s so low key we hardly ever get a handle on what he’s like or how all these events are affecting him. There are a lot of moments in the film where the camera focuses on his face while he … thinks, I suppose, or maybe he just feels sleepy. You start to wonder if the filmmakers have run out of things to do.

There are bright moments, mostly when Ann Kendrick is on screen; she plays Katherine, Adam’s therapist, but she’s young, new to the job, interning at the hospital while she works on her PhD. She screws up a lot but she tries hard to find her way, and you see in her expressive, intuitive face how intently she is trying to break through Adam’s stoicism. Kendrick is a remarkable actress, even though her small stature and slightly off kilter face make her a natural for odd ball supporting cast roles, she always carves out something new in her characters. You would never mistake Katherine for Up in the Air’s Natalie. Angelica Huston also has a few, pitch perfect moments in the film; she plays Adam’s overbearing mother but you have nothing but sympathy for her.

The elephant in the movie, of course, is Seth Rogen, playing the stoner buddy he always plays. It’s comforting to watch the friendship between his character and Adam become a source of support for the poor dude, but Rogan doesn’t do anything new or different here, he’s just the stoner buddy. If you enjoy his act, you’ll have a pretty good time watching him. Or you could just rent Pineapple Express. 50/50 is playing around the country, doing decent box office. B-

Review: Ides of March

2011-10-12T16:04:00.000-07:00

Columbia Pictures

In The Ides of March George Clooney plays Governor Mike Morris, a left wing politician with the strength of his convictions; he’s running for president using a straight talk campaign that delights his young lieutenant, Stephen (Ryan Gosling). “You drank the Kool-aid!” reporter Ida (Marisa Tomei), tells the young acolyte. “I drank the Kool-aid, and it was delicious,” responds Stephen with a grin. He’s working for Morris because he loves his country and it’s the right thing to do. There’s a real charm to his nearly naïve conviction, but there’s also a sense that it can’t survive the rough and tumble campaign.

The movie covers the few days prior to the Ohio Democratic primary, a race Morris needs to win to sew up the Democratic nomination. His single opponent is lagging behind but there’s a trump card to play: both candidates are hoping to pick up the endorsement of a powerful Senator (Jeffrey Wright, in a brief but convincing performance) who controls enough delegates to swing the tide.

Morris’s campaign manager Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is confident he can talk the Senator into joining their camp, but his opposite number Tom (Paul Giamatti, at his creepy best) is equally sure he can get the man’s endorsement. And Tom has another trick up his sleeve – he hopes to steal Stephen, a crack media mind, once he can convince the young idealist that the Morris cause is lost.

It’s a good story, and the back room politics feel authentic; the whole thing gives you the sense of being an insider at a critical moment in a presidential campaign. Even if you’re just a regular citizen voter, you easily see the significance of what is at stake here, and the myriad small decisions and unexpected missteps that can cause one candidate or another to become the leader of the free world. In that sense, it’s a pretty cool roller coaster ride.

But the movie has a purpose, to show up the dark underbelly of even the most idealistic campaign, and it’s here where things get a little rocky. Stephen’s slide from innocence to cynicism comes on a little fast, and seems almost arbitrary, like it doesn’t take much to stop believing. Likewise, when Clooney’s Morris shows his dark side it doesn’t feel quite authentic; it’s like there was a character mix up and Michael Clayton stepped in for a scene, his sudden tough guy act reminded me of that.

But this is the sort of thing that you think of later, when you stop off for a drink and get to talking about the state of our political universe. Ides of March is a good, thought provoking film, with terrific performances, particularly from Gosling and Hoffman, who plays a grizzled but determined old politico with an odd kind of grace. Also features Evan Rachel Wood as a young intern who enjoys the social side of campaigning. Playing everywhere. B

Review: Moneyball

2011-10-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

Sony Pictures

Moneyball is a good movie. It’s also a good baseball movie, but it isn’t like most sports flicks where some woebegone team triumphs in the stirring final minutes. Moneyball is about the business of baseball, the backroom stuff that goes into making a professional team.

Brad Pitt plays Billie Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A’s, a small market team with a small market budget. That constraint makes it tough to compete with say, the New York Yankees, so Beane sits down with the team’s owner and insists on more cash to pick up better players. Owner says no, and Beane sets off to make do, but then on an off season scouting trip to Cleveland he meets a young man with a new idea for assessing the worth of a baseball player: using computer analysis to determine a player’s value, focusing in particular on his ability to get on base. Intrigued, Beane hires Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) and the two of them crunch the numbers to come up with a roster that is affordable and has the potential to make a winning team. (Moneyball is based on true events, but the Peter Brand character is invented; Beane's actual partner in crime during the 2002 season was Paul DePodesta, who declined to have his name and likeness used in the film.)

But once the scrappy new team is recruited, the going is still tough; Beane is surrounded by a staff of old dudes who don’t see any reason to change the way they have been doing business, so they don’t like the roster and they don’t want to work the GM’s plan. The scouts are unhappy, but the coach (played by a portly Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is just plain resistant, so it’s tough for Beane to realize his vision. But this is where the fun starts, because Beane has to maneuver around these naysayers in order to find a way to turn a team of apparent misfits into something worth remembering.

Brad Pitt is terrific; you don’t really forget that he’s Brad Pitt but you believe he’s Billy Beane anyway. His scenes with Jonah Hill have a satisfying odd couple vibe, and Hill is great as the nerdy Ivy grad who loves the game, even if he can’t play it for a living. This is lighthearted entertainment but it’s well done, definitely a fun night out at the movies. Playing everywhere. B

Review: Drive

2011-09-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Simple truth: this movie isn’t for everyone. Drive might sell itself as an action picture, but in reality it’s a dark, intensely dramatic thriller that moves oh so slowly towards its violent, action packed conclusion. It’s not for the faint of heart. I liked it a lot.

Ryan Gosling stars as Driver – his character never reveals his name – who divides his days between stunt driving for the movies and working in an auto repair shop. He’s really good with cars. Nights, he contracts himself out as a getaway driver, giving his criminal clients very specific parameters: If I drive for you…I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours no matter what. One minute before, one minute after….you’re on your own.

It’s not clear why Driver takes on this shadowy underworld work, when he has two daytime jobs and a very simple lifestyle. But he smolders – Ryan Gosling is good at smoldering – so it seems like there’s darkness to him, something dangerous. Driver isn’t much for sharing – this film is very sparing with dialogue, the screenplay must be unusually short – and even as he gets to know his charming neighbor (Carrie Mulligan, in an excellently nuanced performance) and her appealing son, there really isn’t much talking. They seem to understand each other instinctively, and long silences between them are pretty much the norm. It’s all very old fashioned, deliberately paced, noirish, with Irene and Driver trying to carve out a connection, a little bit of hope in the middle of the darkness.

But it can’t last; Irene’s husband Standard gets sprung from jail early, and he comes home with villains on his trail, demanding he do a job for them. Concerned for Irene, Driver gets involved, offering Standard’s criminal colleagues his usual deal – I give you a five-minute window – but this time things don’t go according to plan.

The last half hour of this film is startlingly violent. My companions were hiding their eyes. But it’s all very well done, and it’s not done for fun; as bad as the mayhem gets, the violence serves the story, not the other way around. And Driver doesn’t seek out trouble, he just tries to protect his loved ones from it.

Also starring Albert Brooks as a quietly terrifying bad guy, and Bryan Cranston as Driver’s unreliable friend and agent. Playing everywhere, had an okay opening weekend. B

Movies Opening September 16: What to See

2011-09-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

FilmDistrict

The big movie of the weekend (bigger than that, really, this film has a lot of buzz) is Drive, an action thriller featuring Ryan Gosling as a movie stunt driver who spends his off hours behind the wheel of criminal getaway cars. Carey Mulligan co-stars as a mother with dangerous ties to the underworld. This one gets excellent reviews and the Danish director, Nicolas Refn won the best director award at Cannes; the film was also nominated for the Palme d'Or, the grand prize at Cannes. But, in spite of these lofty credentials Drive is rated R for "brutal bloody violence"; it is not, apparently, for the faint of heart. Equally challenging, in a violent way, is Straw Dogs, a remake of a 1971 Pekinpah film. In this version James Marsden plays a Hollywood screenwriter who moves back to his wife's (Kate Bosworth) home town in the bayou to get her father's house ready for sale. Once there he manages to stir up some of the locals, notably his wife's old boyfriend, played menacingly by Alexander Skarsgard. Rated R for lots of nasty stuff; getting so-so reviews. Finally, for rom-com fans there is I Don't Know How She Does It, starring Sarah Jessica Parker as a high powered executive struggling with the challenges of motherhood. The best reviews of this one say it's like Sex and the City if Carrie had a baby -- but really, there aren't any good reviews of this one. These three (along with a new 3D version of The Lion King) will dominate screens this weekend, but you can still catch Contagion, or a leftover summer blockbuster like Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And if you are just looking for some lighthearted fun, go see Our Idiot Brother. It stars Paul Rudd as a sweet ne'er do well who hits a rough patch and needs to rely on his three sisters to help him through it. Still playing but likely to move out of theaters soon. Next week: Moneyball.

Contagion

2011-09-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

Warner Bros.

If Mother Nature was one of those super villains who long to destroy the world, she might unleash a flu bug like the one that terrorizes humanity in Contagion. It’s a bat virus that hops onto a human host with deadly consequences; the hapless first victim has no natural immunity to the disease, but a remarkable ability to pass it on to other humans, who are equally good carriers, and we are off and running with a pandemic as horrifying as the Black Plague. Worse, because in the fourteenth century there were no packed airliners giving the virus efficient, free rides around the world.

The first patient, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), is a corporate executive who picks up the bug on a business trip to Hong Kong, and unwittingly spreads it through casinos and restaurants and bars and airports as she travels back home to Minneapolis. There’s a subtle cleverness to the way director Stephen Soderbergh shows how easily transmission is accomplished: we see Beth at an airport bar, waiting for a connecting flight; she fiddles with her glass, her hand toys with some nuts in a little bowl. She chats on a cell phone with a lover she has just left while she hands off her credit card to the bartender, who then taps information onto a grimy touch screen. All these ordinary little events feel ominous, even though Beth shows no sign of illness. Once she gets home, though, her health declines so rapidly that all the doctors treating her are completely baffled, and then more people get sick, and the movie pulls away from that story and takes us to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the World Health Organization in Switzerland, where we start to follow the progress of the epidemic through the clinical eyes of scientists trying desperately to stop it.

This is a cracking good thriller, but it’s cold hearted; we are engaged by the mystery of the virus but we never care much about the characters who are affected by it. It’s almost like turning on the nightly news. But, it’s a pretty scary news show, watching scientists desperately try to piece together the viral puzzle while the world descends into anarchy around them. And it’s hard not feel a cold sinking feeling when, during a press conference, the best minds of the CDC keep saying, “We don’t know.”

But that’s the point here, this film is intended to scare us, Soderbergh makes sure of it, allowing the camera to linger on every surface a sick person touches, showing unknown hands clearing cans of food off a grocery store shelf, leaving us to wonder when or if it will ever get restocked. He’s attracted a host of fine actors, and they all do good work even though most of them have little screen time and not much character to develop. Matt Damon turns in a heartfelt performance as Beth Emhoff’s husband, trying to understand what has happened to his wife (“I was just talking to her!”) while he desperately fights to protect the rest of his family from the plague that somehow entered his house. Kate Winslet is also very affecting as the CDC doctor/researcher who goes to Minneapolis to assess the scope of the epidemic and attempt to control it. And, in a nod to viral communication, Jude Law plays a blogging conspiracy theorist who gets millions of hits when he announces that there is a simple herbal remedy for the disease. But the star of the show is the virus, that’s what we’re there to watch, and it never loses our attention. Playing everywhere, won the box office during a pretty slow movie going weekend. B

Now in Theaters - August 26, 2011

2011-08-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

There are three new movies opening this weekend and none of them is highly recommended by anybody. Our Idiot Brother stars Paul Rudd as a genial ne’er do well who runs into some life challenges and elects to solve them by crashing into the well ordered lives of his three sisters. Big hit at Sundance, getting decent, but not terribly enthusiastic reviews. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a remake of a made for TV movie; it stars Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes as the parents (well, Pearce is the dad, Holmes is dad’s new girlfriend) of a precocious youngster (Bailee Madison) who unleashes goblins, or something, in the old Gothic home they’ve just moved into. Scary stuff – or not: one critic suggested that all you would need to fight off the little creatures is a good stiff broom. What does seem scary is that Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes are in this movie. Weren’t they supposed to be serious actors, once upon a time? Finally we have Columbiana, an action picture where Zoe Saldana sheds her Avatar Blue, picks up a gun and becomes a dangerous assassin. By most accounts this movie will remind you of every other movie where someone learns to kill in order to avenge the tragic, senseless death of a loved one. There are a lot of movies like that. This one isn’t very good.

So what to see? Well, The Help is a popular choice. It’s become a box office juggernaut, beating out other adult oriented films as well as the latest blockbusters. Well worth seeing: entertaining, thought provoking, all of that. If you are in a summer movie mood, Captain America and Rise of the Planet of the Apes are still in theaters, and if scares are your thing, give Fright Night a try.

Nothing strike your fancy? Well, just hang on. Next week a new shark movie is coming out. And it's in 3D!

Transformers

2011-08-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

Paramount Pictures

For the ReelFan, it’s been a long summer without enough movies. Oh, there have been plenty of films in theaters, just too much summer traveling to find time to see them. Recently I was in Chicago and from my hotel window, just past the river and peeking out from behind a skyscraper, I could see a building with the AMC logo on it. I imagined myself creating a credible pretense and strolling over there, then dashing in to catch whatever was playing. I was willing to see anything. I would have gone to Final Destination 5.

Which might have been a better choice than Transformers; I saw the latest installment of the blockbuster fighting robot franchise at a strange little theater in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was part of one of those giant, sprawling retail complexes where you can drive for hours through adjacent parking lots, trying to make sense of conflicting signposts that claim to be leading you to wherever you thought you were going. Which is a little bit like Transformers: the movie is a muddled mess of confusing parts that are vaguely connected, and you keep hoping there will be some sort of cinematic signpost that leads you to a logical conclusion. There aren’t though, any signposts or logic; instead the film has lots of crashing explosions and battles between robots that look so alike you can’t tell which one to root for. Or why they’re fighting, for that matter – I think the future of humanity was on the line. I’m not sure.

Shia LaBeouf was cool, though. Such an everyman, this guy, but he has a little swagger, a way of squaring his shoulders and striding into robot battle that makes you believe he can be a badass. He’s fun to watch, and that worked for me, but I don’t recommend anyone see this movie. No reason to go. C

Movie review: Thor

2011-05-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Paramount Pictures

You knew summer blockbuster season had arrived when Thor ripped through the May box office and a new superhero franchise was born. Played with charm, humor and bravado by Chris Hemsworth, Thor is a godlike hero based on Norse legends; he comes from Asgard, a mythical dreamy place where his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) runs the show and Thor is the presumed heir apparent. Only, he’s a little excitable, so when Asgard is threatened by an old enemy he decides to go to war himself, instead of waiting for his father to pursue patient efforts at diplomacy. He gathers up his friends and they set off to wage glorious battle, but soon realize they’re badly outnumbered and Odin has to rush to their rescue. This escapade makes the old man pretty mad, so he strips Thor of all his powers and banishes him to earth.

And then he meets Natalie Portman.

C’mon, people, it’s a comic book movie. It only stands to reason that Thor will fall out of the sky and land right in the path of a beautiful, brainy scientist. Jane Foster feels responsible for the fallen hero because he bounced off her car when he plummeted to earth, and then – in one of the film’s funniest scenes – her assistant, Darcy (Kat Dennings) tases him when he starts ranting on about Earth and Asgard. (“What! He was freaking me out!”). And so the adventure begins, with Thor trying to find his way home, and Jane trying to help him while she tries to understand who he is.

There’s a lot of great comic book style action in Thor, especially on Asgard, but the real fun happens when the young superhero attempts to navigate his way around Earth; even without his powers, he is quicker and stronger than the “puny” humans who surround him, and there is a charming buffoon quality to his efforts to understand propriety in this tiny Western town. He also eats a lot. Thor figures he’ll be in good shape if he can just get his mystical hammer back, but Odin has thrown it to Earth protected by a Camelot style curse: only someone worthy will be able to wield it. In other words, Thor has to learn his lesson; which he does, eventually, but not before he tangles with a shadowy government group that has taken an interest in him and his hammer (they can’t wield it, of course, bureaucrats aren’t worthy). He also has to manage a duplicitous younger brother who perceives Thor’s banishment a grand opportunity to pursue his own ambitions. (Tom Hiddleston plays brother Loki with slick creepiness; you recoil from him but you can’t wait for him to come back on screen.)

If you think summer blockbuster movies are a silly waste of time, this one will not change your mind. It doesn’t stretch the boundaries of the genre, it sits squarely within them. But it’s fun, lighthearted, popcorn stuff, and if you’re in the mood for that well, hit the multiplex. It scored big at the box office so it will probably survive the onslaught of the new Pirates movie on Friday. Playing everywhere. B

Movie Review: Water for Elephants

2011-04-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

20th Century Fox

Water for Elephants may one day show up in a film class as a lesson in how not to adapt a popular novel for the screen. Sara Gruen’s 2006 book is packed with unique characters and compelling stories of life in a Depression era circus – many of them based on actual accounts – but screenwriter Richard LaGravanese chooses to ignore most of that and focus instead on the love triangle at the center of the story. Then he runs out of things to do. So we see a lot of Robert Pattinson, playing young Jacob, staring into Reese Witherspoon’s eyes – she’s Marlena, the star attraction under the big top; and then we see Marlena staring into her husband August’s eyes (Christopher Walz, reprising his deranged Nazi role). And then we see August staring from a distance at Jacob and Marlena – well, you get the idea.

It’s a shame. Because the time lavished on the pretty faces of the stars would have been better spent developing the supporting characters, who are pivotal to nearly every important moment in the story. And it’s a good story, opening with young Jacob on the verge of getting his veterinary license and feeling the first stirrings of love, and then losing everything in a moment when he learns that his parents are dead and his inheritance is worthless. Despairing, he hops a train out of town and, quite by accident, joins the circus. He gets permanent work as a vet with the show, but soon discovers that owner August is a sadistic man who is cruel to his animals and his human employees, throwing men off the train if it helps lighten his payroll or soothe his easily injured pride. The troupe bonds together to maintain their spirits and protect each other from August’s wrath, and they take Jacob in, first out of sympathy but then out of respect and hope that he can become their de facto defender and leader.

But you won’t see any of this in the film, or any cohesive version of it, anyway. LaGravenese, along with director Francis Lawrence, seem to find the colorful characters and grittiness of circus life and the desperation of Depression times to be merely background noise to the story, instead of the very thing that gives it depth and authenticity. So the film is a bore. Still playing in lots of theaters but it got trampled by Rio and Tyler Perry’s latest picture over the weekend; don’t expect a long run. C

Movie review: Hanna

2011-04-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

Focus Features

This movie has a great trailer. I’ve watched it a lot. We see an ethereal blonde haired girl, blue eyes luminous, gutting a newly killed antelope. A voice behind her says “You’re dead! I’ve just killed you.” And the angelic child suddenly becomes a twisting punching shrieking fighting machine.

Cool.

Hanna has a great premise, the notion of a sweet faced youngster trained to be an elite assassin before her sixteenth birthday. She has lived her life in a remote forest in Finland, where her father (a restrained, but warmhearted Eric Bana) has instructed her in martial arts and survival skills. She can fight with a gun or a knife or a good stout stick, but all this training is very directed: once she comes of age, she needs to assassinate Marissa Viegler, an elite American agent who, according to dad, wants Hanna dead. It’s kill or be killed in this adventure, and once Hanna (played with memorable delicacy and believable toughness by Saoirse Ronan) sets events in motion so she can confront her nemesis, it seems we are off on a rollicking roller coaster ride of a movie.

Or not. When Hanna leaves the forest behind, when she makes her first assault on the evil crew that wants to do her in and then speeds away into the desert, the tension of the story slips. It appears that Marissa Viegler – played by Cate Blanchett with a cold heart and Texas twang – does want Hanna dead, but we don’t know why, and what’s more, we don’t know what’s at stake. Is Hanna at risk of becoming a mercenary soldier for some nefarious international organization? Could her sweet nature be corrupted by their evil demands? Is there an innocent population at risk? International relations on the brink?

Apparently not. Marissa Viegler wants Hanna dead because she does. She hires henchmen to help her, and they kill people because that’s what they do – the film is full of violence that serves no purpose; it doesn’t heighten the risks or propel the plot. A lot of it isn’t even interesting, the bad guys and their methods are oddly trite. And there are peculiar lapses in logic: early on, we see Hanna staring dumbfounded at a television; a few scenes later, she expertly types search terms into Google in an effort to understand her peculiar genetic make up. Pretty sophisticated stuff for a kid raised by lantern light in a remote forest.

But mostly what goes on here are chase scenes, punctuated by fights, followed by more running away. There is a charming intimacy to the early moments of the film when Hanna and her father prepare for her entry into the world, where they struggle with their upcoming separation with the kind of mixed feeling parents and children have always had, even if the kid isn’t setting off to assassinate someone. (But why Hanna needs to go off on this mission by herself is never explained. Would it have been so bad for dad to have her back?) The most entertaining part of the movie happens when Hanna meets up with an English family on holiday; they have a teenage daughter named Sophie who takes Hanna under her irrepressible wing. Jessica Barden delivers Sophie’s lines with excellent comic timing, the film is almost worth seeing just for her. But the real star of the show is Saoirse Ronan, who makes Hanna so intriguing and sympathetic you leave the theater hoping for a sequel; one with a more interesting plot. Playing everywhere, had a pretty average box office performance on opening weekend so it may not last long. B-

Movie Review: The Source Code

2011-04-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

Summit Entertainment

The Source Code is an entertaining little science fiction film that doesn’t always make sense, but then, science fiction films often don’t. It’s fun to watch, anyway. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier in Afghanistan who wakes up to find himself on a commuter train traveling into Chicago. He is the only one surprised that he is there: turns out that a government technology experiment has spirited him out of his war injured body and into the body of another man, a high school teacher who regularly rides this train. Colter was sent there to complete a mission, which he has eight minutes to get right, but like Groundhog Day, that eight minutes keeps playing over and over again until he has an opportunity to figure the mystery out.

Pretty cool, right? Actually, it is. The whole notion of being able to re-live a bit of time, even if it’s only eight minutes, and having a chance to do things better on every go-round is intriguing. Unlike the Bill Murray movie though, this story has an extra layer: the eight minutes that Colter is reliving aren’t exactly real; they represent the “halo” of consciousness left behind when people die, the last eight minutes of their earthly lives. In other words, all the folks on the train, including the poor old math teacher whose body Colter inhabits, are dead, victims of a terrorist bomb.

This is where you don’t want to start asking too many questions.

Jake Gyllenhaal does a bang up job as the bewildered but purposeful young soldier. He doesn’t understand how the Source Code works (either did I; they kept telling this geeky dude to “fire up the drivers,” and he would hit a few keys on a laptop and away Colter would go. Seems like a pretty pedestrian way to power someone into a metaphysical realm.) But Colter does understand that he has a mission to do: it’s his job to identify the guy who blew up the train before the villain goes on to ignite a dirty bomb over the city of Chicago. Train explosion is the past, but the destruction of Chicago is the future, and the military puppeteers who are pulling Jake’s strings are trying to save the city.

So Colter works his way through the train, eight minutes at a time, harassing passengers and rifling backpacks, generally acting deranged, much to the amusement and occasional alarm of his seatmate, Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), a young woman who clearly has a crush on the man Colter is supposed to be. And here’s where things get sticky, because after spending say, 40 minutes with this woman on a kind of repeat shuffle, Colter is smitten and he doesn’t want her to die. Even though she is already dead.

Again, better not to get too inquisitive.

Vera Farmiga is wonderful as the military officer who is responsible for giving Colter his orders. We mostly see her face on a small video screen, but she is calm and persuasive, determined to keep the disoriented soldier on track even as she shows glimpses of sympathy for his perplexing situation. In the end she is as much the hero of this piece as the soldier boy. Source Code is a fun night out, worth seeing on the big screen. It had a decent opening weekend so it is still playing pretty much everywhere. B+

Review: Rango

2011-03-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

Paramount Pictures

Rango is a kids movie. I hate to say it; I was hoping for a crossover experience. But while the story makes an effort to appeal to adults, and has some references to classic films – in the case of Chinatown, it’s less a reference than blinking neon sign announcing “Check it out! We’re referencing Chinatown!!” – it mostly relies on Road Runner type humor to get the audience going. That works really well if you’re ten, but it’s less compelling if you no longer spend your Saturday mornings watching cartoons.

Rango, voiced by Johnny Depp, is a pet chameleon who is accidentally thrown out of the family car when the driver swerves to avoid a passing armadillo. He lands in a desolate stretch of desert, and the armadillo, a philosophical fellow, sends him off to a nearby town to find his destiny, and some water. (Yup, water; right away we’re getting that Chinatown feeling.) Along the way he meets up with Beans (Isla Fisher), a tough lizard woman with curls and a long blue prairie dress. Beans is trying to hold on to her Daddy’s ranch but it’s tough since the water supply dried up. She’s appropriately suspicious of Rango (she all but calls him a city slicker) but she gives him a lift into town, where he waltzes into the saloon and cons the locals into believing he’s a tough guy. They send him off to meet the mayor, who appoints him sheriff (not a plum job in this town, most of the sheriffs have short life expectancies) and then things start to get complicated, because the folks want their new sheriff to find out where the water’s gone, and Rango suspects the answer lies with the mayor.

All this leads to predictable silliness, posses and chases with lizard cowboys riding birds in and out of canyons (sometimes it’s as much Raiders of the Lost Ark as Destry Rides Again). But it’s mostly flash and superficial excitement, there are no moments where the story transcends its animated silliness to touch something real, in the way that Up and Toy Story did. Still, if you’re looking for a film to see with a bunch of elementary school kids, this will work. Playing everywhere, won the box office crown on a sluggish movie weekend. C

Review: The Adjustment Bureau

2011-03-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

Universal Pictures

The Adjustment Bureau is a cool sci-fi love story. Matt Damon plays David Norris, an up and coming New York congressman making a big play for the US Senate. Everything is on track until the New York Post publishes some old pictures of him engaging in youthful indiscretion, specifically, pulling his pants down at a party. This is enough to crush his campaign, and on election night, glum and full of self recrimination, he practices his concession speech in a swanky hotel bathroom. Then, a ray of hope: Elise (Emily Blunt) emerges quite unexpectedly from one of the stalls, where she had been hiding from hotel security, caught in the act of crashing a wedding. Carrying a half empty bottle of what is probably very good champagne, the irreverent Elise immediately recognizes David (“Aren’t you that guy who’s running for Senate?”) and proceeds to tease, flirt and cajole him out of his mood and back into fighting form. He is instantly smitten, so is she, but then security shows up and she has to run, the girl of David’s dreams disappearing down a hotel staircase. But, inspired by his brief encounter, David tosses his index cards and gives a stirring speech to his supporters. His political fortunes, though delayed, are back on track.

But the path of true love, and Matt Damon characters, never runs smooth. On a sunny New York morning, when David has just set out for work (his between campaigns gig) it appears that two men are tracking him. “He needs to spill coffee on his shirt by 7:05,” Richardson (John Slattery) tells Harry (Anthony Mackie) and Harry wearily agrees but then he dozes off on a park bench, missing the cue. Meanwhile, David hops a bus and miraculously, spots Elise. Sparks fly, and this time he gets her number, but then the day takes an ominous turn. David arrives at work to discover strange doings: his co-workers are frozen in time, and his friend and colleague Charlie is getting zapped by a mysterious light beam; the Adjustment Bureau is busily making changes to the fabric of fate that spilled coffee was supposed to prevent David from seeing. Richardson corrals him and then tells him the truth: his future is not his own to plan. And, incidentally, he’s not supposed to be with Elise.

Since Matt Damon has made a career of playing stubborn rogue tough guys, we all know he’s not going to let Elise slip away just because John Slattery tells him to. And so the adventure takes off, with lots of twists and turns and elaborate foot chases through Manhattan. Along the way we are asked to speculate on what choices we would make if we knew in advance what the outcomes would be: White picket fence in the suburbs? Fame and fortune, but no satisfying personal life?

Based on a Philip K. Dick short story (it's like screenwriter and director George Nolfi read the story and decided to write another chapter of his own)The Adjustment Bureau is a fun film, and a great night out in the midst of late winter movie doldrums. Damon and Blunt have crackling chemistry, Slattery’s usual ironic light touch provides welcome amusement, and Anthony Mackie is terrific as the Adjustment Bureau “caseworker” who isn't certain that the team is making the right decisions. Playing everywhere. B

New Movies: March 4, 2011

2011-03-04T17:01:00.000-08:00

Oscar excitement has left town, and along with it the glut of nominated films that dominate movie theaters this time of year. So welcome to the new arrivals! There are many, if you count obscure foreign and Sundance type films that are only playing in big cities. Not counting those, here’s what we got:

Now Playing in a Theater Near You

RANGO Johnny Depp plays a lizard in this live action animated tale of a pet store chameleon who gets lost in the Wild West. Depp based the character of Rango on Hunter Thompson, which is edgy, to say the least, and may be why so many critics caution that this film is probably not going to appeal to the pre-school set. It’s the first animated film to come out of Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas’ special effects company, and that makes it worth seeing ; but wait, there’s more: director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) upped the realism by having his cast act out the story as though it were a live action shoot, instead of the usual thing of calling the actors in to record their lines individually. Most of the big name critics are big time fans.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU Matt Damon and Emily Blunt play star-crossed lovers in a sci-fi world that is determined to control their destinies; in order to be together, they must outmaneuver the mysterious Adjustment Bureau. Terrance Stamp and John Slattery play the mysterious evil puppetmasters. Based on a Philip K. Dick short story and directed by George Nofi (Bourne Ultimatum), The Adjustment Bureau is supposed to be a pretty good thriller and an even better love story. Generally good reviews.

TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT Topher Grace takes another stab at stardom in this story about an aimless college graduate whose life is upended when his high school crush invites him to an “epic” end of summer party. It’s sort of like American graffiti, if John Hughes had directed it in the eighties. Most critics love Topher and don’t love this film.

BEASTLY Aimed at the Twilight set, this modern take on the Beauty and the Beast fable features Alex Pettyfer (I Am Number 4) as the Beast, Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) as Beauty and Mary Kate Olsen as the witch. Cool. It’s all set in New York and has a Gossip Girl kind of vibe. Lukewarm reception by critics, who mostly seem to think it could have been a lot better. Well, we all know the story works.

Hall Pass and Drive Angry are also still around, even though they could barely scrape together an audience last weekend; theater owners seem to think they deserve a second chance. Oscar winner The King's Speech is in wide release and worth checking out if you haven’t seen it yet, and i f you’re in the mood for a fun thriller, Unknown is probably at a multiplex near you.

Oscar Predictions 2011

2011-02-26T14:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow at around 5:40 Pacific time the first envelope will bet cracked open and we will learn who the Academy ultimately chose to award at the end of this endless award season. So what do we expect? Will the favorites win?

Here's the thing: Oscar prognostication is not an exact science - it's not a science at all. There are no exit polls; there is no Nate Silver with a team of lackeys calling Academy members to inquire as to their vote. The Academy really frowns on that sort of thing, so when people tell you they're predicting the Oscars they generally are guessing based on how many awards a film or artist has racked up so far, or they might be extrapolating from a conversation they had with someone who knows someone who actually voted, or maybe they are legitimate insiders who run the cocktail party circuit and talk about these things.

But, as screenwriter William Goldman famously said about people in Hollywood: No one knows anything. So, keeping that in mind, here are the latest rumors for the major Oscars:

Best Picture

Safe bet is still The King's Speech, but there is some talk that Social Network is staging a late rally. The assumption is that the geezers in the Academy went for King's Speech, while the younger set leaned Social Network. That would leave the decision in the hands of middle aged voters. How many of them are on Facebook?

Best Actor

Colin Firth will win this. There's no point in discussing it, although there are some sly critics handing the award to Jesse Eisenberg. I think they just want attention.

Best Actress

This one has been flip flopping between Annette Bening and Natalie Portman; Portman having won most of the earlier awards, and Bening having never won at all. Four nominations, no wins. Did the Academy go for sentiment? Doubt it. Portman will win.

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, unless this is a really interesting night.

Best Supporting Actress

Again, a little excitement. Melissa Leo has won everything in the run up but her self promoting "For your Consideration" ads scuttled a lot of the community's respect. Could fourteen year old Hailee Steinfeld win? I think she could. On the other hand, Helena Bonham Carter won the BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress and gave a terrific speech. Oscar voters like that sort of thing.

Best Director

Tom Hooper won the DGA award for King's Speech, and if the film is sweeping along he might be the winner. But there are plenty of folks who see David Fincher getting this for Social Network, even if his film doesn't get the big prize. This could be a tie breaker in the Oscar poll vote, but I'd go with Fincher.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Aaron Sorkin, Social Network. No point in discussing the other nominees. This script is so celebrated that you can download it now, if you just want to gaze at the words on the page. (For the record, I thought the writing in Social Network was terrific. I will probably download the script.)

Best Original Screenplay

Inception fans, this is your shot. Will Chris Nolan get some Oscar love? I'm saying no. This one will likely go to David Seidler for The King's Speech. Hey, it's a sweep.

Unknown

2011-02-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

Unknown - Warner Bros

Unknown is a flashy action thriller, full of twists and turns and lots of car chases; since the film is set in Berlin it is mostly Mercedes doing all the chasing, and who knew those staid old cars could careen around corners like that? And take a bullet -- many, many bullets, right through the hood, and the engines just keep roaring.

Liam Neeson is a professor of biotechnology, come to town to deliver a paper at splashy biotech conference, very high profile because a Saudi Prince will be in attendance to promote a top secret project that might end world hunger. Prince Shada has been the target of assassination attempts -- there are bad guys opposed to ending world hunger, if they can still make a buck off starving people – so security is tight and press coverage intense.

But Dr. Martin Harris has a mishap: he is in a terrible car accident and falls into a coma for days. When he wakes up, no one seems to know who he is, including his wife Liz (January Jones). Slipping out of the hospital against his doctor’s orders, Martin tracks her down at a formal event, trailed by outraged hotel security. Perfectly coiffed and stunning in an elegant black gown, she looks right at him and says, without emotion, “I don’t know this man.” Then she calls over another guy (Aidan Quinn) and introduces him as Dr. Martin Harris.

Well, what a pickle! Martin half believes his brain was broken in the car wreck, but then an assassin starts to trail him and he figures that, whatever is going on, he isn’t imagining it. He can’t remember much about the events that led up to the car accident, but he does recall the young cab driver (Diane Kruger) who was at the wheel -- she heroically saved his life -- so he tracks her down and they team up to solve the mystery. (As cab driver Gina, an Eastern European illegal trying to stay under German police radar, Kruger is spunky and resourceful, shielding a luminous innocence behind cautious reserve. She and Neeson pair up nicely.)

There are twists and turns and twists in this film, the action is well paced and there are plenty of edge- of-your-seat moments. It doesn’t break any new ground or explore any deeper issues, but it’s a lot of fun. Rated PG-13 for “violence and action, and brief sexual content,” and while there is a lot of gunfire, there isn’t much actual bloodshed, so if that sort of thing makes you squeamish you should be okay. Unknown was the box office champ in its opening weekend, but that isn’t saying much because hardly anyone went to the movies. Still playing everywhere. B-

Oscar Countdown

2011-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Oscar race kicked itself into high gear when the nominations were announced last month, and then quickly slid into dull predictability. Right now you could get a better argument out of who will come in second in most of the major races than who will win the gold.

Current list of favorites:

Best Picture: King’s Speech

Best Actor: Colin Firth

Best Actress: Natalie Portman

Nothing wrong with any of these shoo ins, especially Natalie Portman, who did terrific work in a strange and challenging film. Seems to me when an actress takes chances like she did they should get some notice for it. I also have no issue with Colin Firth: he’s a great actor who has been ignored by the Academy because he’s played romantic leads a lot; it’s been good for Darcy fans but not so much for Mr. Firth’s hopes for serious acting accolades.

The Best Picture thing is the most predictable of all, the conventional wisdom being that Oscar voters can’t resist a royal drama with English accents. Now, that’s all very well if we’re a bunch of dizzy colonists, but here in the western outpost of the New World you might think that an American film or two could get some traction. Social Network enjoyed enormous hype and excellent reviews back in the fall, but it seems to be suffering a bit of backlash; some people say it was overrated, but I think it made too big of a splash too early and now it’s just worn out its welcome.

It would be pretty cool if Social Network scored an Oscar upset. It would be even cooler if Black Swan did. Not much likelihood either way, though. King’s Speech is it.

Possible toss ups:

Best Director: Tom Hooper (King’s Speech) or David Fincher (Social Network)

All along the assumption has been that Fincher would take this. He’s a respected American director with a slew of great films to his credit, most of them too strange and scary to attract much Oscar attention. But Tom Hooper won the Directors Guild award, and the DGA winner frequently (not always – check with Spielberg) goes on to win the Oscar. Still, most prognosticators (and bookies) call this one a toss up.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (Fighter) or Geoffrey Rush (King’s Speech)

Christian Bale has won pretty much every available award in this category, but if there is a King’s Speech sweep he could get pushed out of contention. Rush was excellent, but he has won before and Academy voters are known to honor rookies in supporting categories.

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (Fighter) or Hailee Stanfield (True Grit)

This is the only category where anything interesting is happening. Hailee Steinfeld was widely considered a possible Best Actress contender; the combination of her supporting status and the fact that True Grit has ten nominations could push her to the top of this heap. Not a big chance of that, but there is a bit of momentum going her way.

That’s the big six. Oscar Ballots are due two weeks from today so, if anything is going to shift, it’s got to happen soon.

Another Year

2011-01-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

If I told you that Another Year is about an old married couple you might not want to go and see it, which would be a shame because this is a fine film, a lovely meditation on life and its adventures – or lack of them. It is also a refreshing antidote to the crash bang nonsense that often passes for Hollywood entertainment. So, full disclosure – Another Year is about an old married couple, Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Tom (Jim Broadbent) – we never learn their last names, as though when the film begins we already know then too well to bother with formalities. Much of the action takes place in their cozy London house, comfortably decorated with a lifetime of good memories. Tom and Gerri garden, they cook dinner, they sip wine, they hang out.

And they have friends who aren’t nearly as content with their lives.

The film is divided into four parts, identified by the season, the passage of time punctuated by visits to Gerri and Tom’s “allotment,” a plot of land somewhere in town where they work their most ambitious gardening. On a wet spring evening they host Mary, Gerri’s long time co-worker, for dinner; Mary, played with searing, heartbreaking intensity by Lesley Manville, is a middle aged woman, clinging to her youth, disappointed by her life. She drinks too much and carries on about her great love, the one who got away, and we have the sense that all this has happened before, that Gerri and Tom have patiently listened to Mary rant many times. Then, a few months later, Tom’s friend Ken (Peter Wight) shows up with much the same story, drinking his way through dinner, complaining about his life, showing little interest in doing anything about it. (Wight does remarkable work as Ken, somehow making an unattractive, unappealing character sympathetic).

Now, if you think you can tell where this is going you are wrong; Another Year moves slowly and lingers lovingly on the routine activities of life, but it is not predictable. Sometime during the summer segment of the film Gerri and Tom’s son Joe (Oliver Maltman) shows up; he’s a thirty year old attorney who is often too busy to visit with mum and dad, but when he arrives it’s clear the family is close and has a happy history. Unlike most of the other people in this movie Joe is looking forward to the unexplored future of his life, instead of lingering unhappily on the past, and when, in autumn, he surprises his parents by arriving at their door with a girlfriend (a fresh and appealing Karina Fernandez) in tow, they are delighted even as Katie’s appearance throws the disappointments of their friends’ lives into starker relief.

There is a simple, charming elegance to this film. Nothing is overstated, and we arrive in the story as though we always belonged there anyway. When Tom pours Gerri some wine we want to hold up our glass, and when Mary starts to rant we wish we could quietly excuse ourselves to our hosts and head on home; the film is that personal and intimate. But it is also thoughtful and refreshing in its honest portrayal of regular people, well worth a night at the multiplex. A

Here Comes Oscar

2011-01-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce nominations for the 83^rd Academy Awards, and for no good reason at all I will get up at the crack of dawn to watch them do it.

I think it’s fun. Go figure.

So who’s got a shot at Oscar? There are some obvious suspects in the Best Picture Category, specifically The Social Network, The King’s Speech, Inception, and Toy Story 3. The last two will get in because they are precisely the sort of movies that the Academy had in mind when they expanded the field of Best Picture Nominees to ten. Neither one will win; barring an enormous upset (and that wouldn’t be so bad, upsets make the awards interesting) either The King’s Speech or Social Network will get the award. There is a lot of huffing and puffing today because the Producer’s Guild bucked the trend and honored King’s Speech for Best Picture instead of Social Network, but it’s still a toss-up between the two for Oscar gold. The films that will be honored just to be nominated include True Grit, The Fighter, Black Swan, Winter’s Bone, The Kids Are All Right, and The Town, with any of the last three possibly vulnerable to a surge by 127 Hours. I’m not feeling that, though; 127 Hours seems to have dropped under the radar and stayed there.

Best Actress: Natalie Portman will be nominated and surely win for Black Swan; Annette Bening will be gracious and say she is honored to be included in such a stellar group of actors – and it should be a stellar group. If the youthful Academy voters have any influence, we will see nominations for Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone and Hailee Steinfield for True Grit. Both of them are deserving and would get a boost from Oscar notice. Nicole Kidman will probably nab the last spot for her performance in Rabbit Hole, even though no one is going to see it, but folks like Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine) and Julie Anne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) could slip in. The Blue Valentine thing is kind of interesting, because in spite of the rave reviews Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling received for their performances, neither one was nominated by the Screen Actors Guild. Most prognosticators think that precludes them from an Oscar nom, since there is a lot of overlap between the Guild and members of the Academy’s Actors Branch.

Best Actor: Colin Firth will be nominated and win, with Jesse Eisenberg (Social Network), Jeff Bridges (True Grit) and James Franco (127 Hours) joining the crowd. The last spot is up for grabs; Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter) is a possibility along with Robert Duvall (Get Low) and Javier Bardim (Biutiful) in the mix. But you can’t discount Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine in spite of his SAG snub. Could happen.

As usual, the Best Supporting races have the most intrigue. Hailee Steinfield (True Grit) might end up in this category, even though most observers call her performance lead instead of supporting. If she does, she will likely join Mellissa Leo (The Fighter), Helena Bonham Carter (King’s Speech), Amy Adams (The Fighter) and Mila Kunis (Black Swan). This will edge out Jackie Weaver, who has received a lot of attention for her role in Animal Kingdom, an Australian film that didn’t get much big screen time. Winner in this group is anybody’s guess.

In the Supporting Actor category, expect Christian Bale to be nominated for The Fighter, as well as Geoffrey Rush for The King’s Speech. One of these two will win. Also likely: Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), Jeremy Renner (The Town) and Andrew Garfield (Social Network). There’s rumors of a late “surge” by Matt Damon for True Grit, but don’t bet on it.

Those are the four major categories, the only other biggie is Best Director, which will likely include David Fincher (The Social Network,) Christopher Nolan (Inception), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), and David O. Russell (The Fighter) unless the Coen Brothers (True Grit) pop in and Knock out David O. Russell. That doesn't look likely from here.

Mystery is over tomorrow morning. Mystery is over, and the over hype begins. Oscar Season is on.

The Social Network

2010-10-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

The Social Network is a fast paced, gripping, thoroughly entertaining roller coaster ride of a movie. It tells a big story but it starts out small, in a bar just down the street from Harvard, where Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), are having a conversation – more like an argument – over a couple of beers, discussing Mark’s intense desire to join one of Harvard’s exclusive social clubs. The dialogue is so sharp, so witty, and so fast paced that I actually leaned forward in my seat to catch it all, and as soon as the scene was over I wanted to watch it again. And that wasn’t even the best part of the film.

The Social Network is, more than anything else, the story of one young man’s outsized drive and determination to pursue an idea. “The Facebook” is a narrow concept at first: “I want to take the entire social experience of college and put it online” Zuckerberg explains, and he starts out only allowing Harvard students access to the site, but he quickly sees the value of opening it up to other colleges, and then to the world, essentially putting the entire social experience of everyone online. The film shows the early, frantic days of programming in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room, and then follows Facebook’s founder when he leaves school and heads boldly off to Silicon Valley, quickly evolving from wunderkind to titan. It’s a big story but it’s told on a really personal level, Zuck hanging out in his shabby dorm room with his geeky roommates, swigging beer and trying to come up with an online experience that will make his brainy upscale classmates take notice.

But there’s fallout, naturally – whenever anyone comes up with a new idea there is someone else who claims to have thought of it first. So the film time shifts back and forth between the high energy, untamed story of Facebook’s invention, and deadly quiet legal conference rooms where wounded parties demand that Zuckerberg give them their share of the wealth. Among the plaintiffs is Eduardo Saverin, played with tremendous honesty and vulnerability by soon-to-be-Spiderman Andrew Garfield. In the film, Saverin is Zuckerberg’s best friend and collaborator, but their visions for the direction of Facebook drive them apart – or, more accurately, lead Mark to push Eduardo away. Eduardo is particularly unhappy when Zuckerberg decides to take advice from Sean Parker, the inventor of Napster who has very big picture ideas for the future of Facebook. (Parker is played by Justin Timberlake in a serious star turn. The guy is great.)

Is The Social Network an truthful depiction of the founding of Facebook? Probably on some levels. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin says he was writing a good story, not a factually accurate account. But he also says that the filmmaking team got close enough to the truth to make sure that the bottle of beer movie Zuck pulls from his dorm room ‘frig is the same kind that the real Zuckerman preferred. Jesse Eisenberg watched YouTube videos of Facebook’s founder in order to nail his carriage and mannerisms, although he built the character from the script, not real life research. (Eisenberg does tremendous work here, creating a kind of geek anti-hero that we can’t help but root for, even when he is at his most ruthless. I hope he gets an Oscar nod.) But while the film may not be completely accurate it is always completely authentic; director David Fincher pulls you into the action and makes you believe. Don't see The Social Network to learn the truth about the founding of Facebook; see it because it is a terrific film, a great cinematic thrill ride. Playing everywhere. A

Photo credit: Relativity Media

Money Never Sleeps, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Owls

2010-09-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

The big kahoona this weekend is the sequel to 1987's Wall Street. This one is called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the original name plus a pithy qualifier, summer blockbuster style. Critical reception to the new picture has been mixed, apparently it's not enough to be Oliver Stone anymore -- someone even suggested the controversial director has gone soft. But the cast is interesting, with Michael Douglas reprising Gordon "Greed is Good" Gekko, and Shia Lebeouf playing his latest acolyte, Jake Moore. Carey Mulligan mixes things up as Winnie, Gekko's estranged daughter and Jake's fiancée. Playing in lots and lots of theaters. Legends of the Guardian is also opening - I think of it as the Owl movie - it's a fantasy tale that has critics praising the 3-D visuals but not much else. You Again is a mother/daughter Mean Girls story that apparently is awful, even though it has Jamie Lee Curtis and Kristin Bell. Left over from last week: The Town, Devil, and Easy A. I will definitely see Wall Street, and I might try to catch Easy A.

Next week The Social Network opens. If early reviews are for real, this film is perfect. Heaps of praise, and nothing else. Should be interesting.

Critical Summaries

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: Metacritic 59; Rotten Tomatoes 54

Legends of the Guardians: Metacritic 56; Rotten Tomatoes 49

You Again: Metacritic 27; Rotten Tomatoes 14

The Town: Metacritic 74; Rotten Tomatoes 94

Devil: Metacritic 44; Rotten Tomatoes 41

Easy A: Metacritic 72; Rotten Tomatoes 85

Catfish

2010-09-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

Catfish is a documentary, of sorts, but not like the informative ones that warn of disaster, or the entertaining, message-y ones in the style of Michael Moore. Catfish feels personal, like a home movie made by some very talented friends, a project that started out as a goof but took off when they realized they had stumbled onto a remarkable story.

And this is how it starts: Nev Schulman is a twenty something New York City photographer specializing in elegant shots of dancers. One day he gets a package in the mail from Abby, an eight year old girl who lives in Michigan; it’s a watercolor painting of one of his photographs that had recently appeared in a national magazine. Nev is flattered and decides to encourage Abby; they exchange emails and become friends on Facebook, and he sends her more pictures to paint. Before long he is also Facebook friends with Abby’s mother, Angela, her father, her brother and, most notably, her nineteen year old sister Megan, who is very interested in Nev. The two launch into a relationship, using Facebook, text messages and actual phone calls to pursue what becomes a very steamy connection. This is what gets Nev’s brother, Rel and his partner Henry to turn on the cameras; they figure they have an opportunity to chronicle a 21st century Internet love story.

There are a lot of great things about Catfish, but my favorite is that the story unfolds for the audience exactly the same way it did for Nev and Rel and Henry; as the layers peel away and the virtual becomes real, we are right there with them. Rel said he always wanted to make a movie about his brother because he’s “just very charismatic and gets into a lot of trouble and gets himself into situations.” Big brother is right – Nev is a natural on screen, disarmingly honest, and we can’t help but root for him even when he is at his most reckless. Is it a story for our time? Well, yes and no: it’s about love, and loneliness, timeless human issues; but it’s also about how the modern virtual world provides unexpected outlets to cope. Catfish was a big hit at Sundance and it opens in a lot of cities around the country September 24. Check it out, it’s an interesting, fun time at the movies - but one important caveat: don't try to find out (or even guess) the ending; you'll ruin your own fun. B+

Image credit: Rogue

The Town, The Devil, and Emma Stone

2010-09-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a long hot dry spell, but finally some high quality films are hitting the multiplex. Big opener this weekend is The Town: Ben Affleck stars in and directs a gritty crime thriller that is getting good to excellent reviews. (If you pay attention to movies at all, you’ve heard about this one; my film buff daughter turns 22 tomorrow and all she wants to do is see The Town and then have us take her out to a cool, pricey bar for dinner. This is part of a broader scope of birthday events that do not include her parents, but, we're happy she slotted us in.) In spite of the early critical enthusiasm, the LA Times reports that Easy A, the teen caper comedy very loosely based on The Scarlett Letter, is likely to beat The Town for the weekend box office crown. Apparently teen age girls are very reliable moviegoers. But, I imagine you saying, The Town has Jon Hamm! Don't teenage girls want to see Jon Hamm? Well, maybe not. He is like, 39, or something. Easy A has gotten some good reviews, most of the critics attributing the film's quality to the performance of its star, Emma Stone. Devil, a scare fest based on an idea from M. Night Shyamalan but written and directed by somebody else, will also hit screens (lots of them) this weekend. It’s about a bunch of people stuck in an elevator with Lucifer himself, and whenever the power flickers someone gets offed. No doubt there’s a twist at the end. Hardly any critics have seen this film, the few reviews out there are middling to bad.

If you happen to live in New York or Los Angeles, you can catch Never Let Me Go, playing in a handful of locations. Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, it's a sci-fi tale about cloned children who are raised to become organ donors. Early reviews say it is slow moving but brilliant. Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightly star. Also in limited release is a French movie called Heartbreaker; it's an entertaining old school romantic comedy, more Cary Grant/Doris Day than Jennifer Aniston/whoever. Fun to watch. And if none of these appeal to you well, there's always Resident Evil, still playing everywhere.

My choices: The Town, Never Let Me Go, Easy A. In that order.

What to See: September 10, 2010

2010-09-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Last week the box office crown went to The American, the George Clooney picture that everyone went to see and no one liked. Don’t expect it to repeat this weekend. New on Friday: the fourth Resident Evil movie, where Milla Jovovich keeps trying to save the world, only this time in 3D, so she will be tossing weapons around and it will seem like they are flying right out of the screen. Could be fun if you're into that sort of thing. There’s also The Virginity Hit, a movie shot YouTube style about a teenager trying to lose his virginity and his friends who want to film it. It’s not getting a lot of love in the early reviewing , even though it was produced by Will Farrell and Adam McKay, the Funny or Die team. Apparently it’s more dead than funny. If you’re curious about whatever it was that happened to Joaquin Phoenix, there is a documentary about him opening this weekend, called I’m Still Here. Directed by Casey Affleck, it has been screened to mixed reviews at a film festival or two, but even critics who admire the film find it quite strange. Some think the whole thing is a hoax, and Phoenix’ best performance. That would be ironic.

Box Office Derby August 30

2010-08-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

The Last Exorcism and Takers battled it out for the box office crown this weekend. It looked like Exorcism was going to nab it, but at the last minute Takers pulled ahead. Neither film is very good, though, so it hardly matters except to T.I., who starred in and produced Takers and wants to be sure that everyone knows his movie is number one. Otherwise, this weekend's results look a lot like last weekend's, just with these two new movies on top. So you got your Expendables, your Eat Pray Love, that stuff. Vampires Suck sank a bit, and Scott Pilgrim slipped off the top ten. Just not enough geek love. Coming up the next few weeks we'll see serious fall films start to hit the theaters (aka, Oscar bait) and that should make movie going more interesting. That will be a relief.

What to See -- August 27

2010-08-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

There's a movie coming out this weekend called The Last Exorcism; I saw a trailer and it looks really scary. Set in rural Louisiana (where else?) it's about a preacher who makes the trek to an isolated farmhouse to save the soul of a demonic girl. Only he doesn't really believe in this stuff, so he brings a documentary crew along to expose his own fraud -- except this time, the possession seems to be real. Cool premise; decent, if limited, early reviews. Then there's Takers, about a bunch of seasoned criminals (including rapper T.I. and Chris Brown) determined to pull off one last heist, and we all know how that kind of thing usually turns out. Matt Dillon plays the "hardened" detective determined to stop the criminal escapade. Apparently light on plot but good with the action; reviews have been mixed, mostly bad. And there's that Avatar re-release.

These are slim pickings, so here are a couple of other thoughts: if you're looking for some movie fun, see Scott Pilgrim or The Other Guys. Both entertaining, lighthearted films. If you want something more challenging, look for a showing of the excellent (but slow moving) Winter's Bone, or the also good Kids Are All Right. That should do it.

Avatar Redux

2010-08-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

OK, this is odd: James Cameron is re-releasing Avatar this weekend, with nine minutes of new footage showing Pandorans hunting sturmbeests, a fantastical creature that looks a lot like a stegosaurus. Do Pandorans eat these things? We don't know, but anyway now that the hunting scene is back Cameron has slipped the sturmbeests into a few other spots as well; I guess he thought we would have been confused before, if we were watching a big busy Pandoran battle and a couple of stegosauruses lumbered through. Cameron is also worried because Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon opened shortly after Avatar (the first time), and he believes this caused a dearth of 3D screen availability for all those people who still wanted to pay a premium to see his movie. So he's putting it out there again, just to help his disappointed fans. And to show off the sturmbeests. (Wanna see a sturmbeest? Click here. I would post it but I'm afraid James Cameron would get mad.)

In other box office news, turns out people are tired of paying a premium to see 3D movies; Piranha 3D had disappointing numbers last weekend, and Step Up 3D and that Cats and Dogs movie also failed to impress. Overall, the movie business is on track to match last summer's box office numbers but actual ticket sales are down -- Memorial Day weekend had the worst movie attendance numbers since 1993. (Of course, it may also have had the worst movies since 1993. Sex and the City 2, anyone? Prince of Persia?)

Box Office Derby

2010-08-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

Bit of a surprise on the weekend box office – Expendables was number one, with about $17 mill in tickets sold, everyone expected that, but Vampires Suck came in at number two, and no one saw that coming. Critics hated the Twilight spoof, but audiences showed up, giving the film a slight edge over Eat Pray Love; the Julia Roberts picture is sinking like a soft marshmallow in very hot chocolate, showing none of the staying power of Julie and Julia from last season. Scott Pilgrim continued its ride on the down elevator, looking more and more like it will have to find redemption in DVD or whatever. Piranha 3D did okay, though. They’re already planning a sequel.

The Switch

2010-08-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Aniston is Kassie, a successful career woman with a ticking clock. She decides to act before it is too late, and announces her intention to find a sperm donor and have a baby. This comes as a shock to her neurotic best friend Wally, played by Justin Bateman; he gives her dozens of reasons why it’s a bad idea, but we can pretty much tell that he’s just put out because she’s not interested in his sperm. That, and he’s probably in love with her – we know that because she’s Jennifer Aniston, and this is a romantic comedy. There’s not much else in the plot to give their relationship away – in contrast to films like When Harry Met Sally, or Broadcast News, where it is clear how much the two main characters enjoy each other’s company, these two mostly argue and act irritated with each other as the movies skips quickly along in order to get to the main event: the sperm switch.

Spoiler alert? Really? C’mon, the name of the film is The Switch, you know it’s coming.

So Justin Bateman finds himself in Kassie’s bathroom, face to face with her Viking sperm donor’s seed, and he’s drunk and not a little high from pills that Cassie’s friend Debbie (played with great humor by Juliette Lewis – where has she been?) has slipped him and he decides to have a little fun. Next thing we know, Viking seed has become neurotic seed, Kassie’s pregnant, and she moves away to raise her son in bucolic Minnesota. (I have to give some props to Justin Bateman here. For the sperm switch scene he’s alone in a bathroom, playing a drunk who is about to, well, donate. Potentially awkward and cringe worthy, but he pulls it off. It’s not hilarious but it’s amusing.)

The best friends lose touch, until Kassie moves back, seven years later, with a kid who seems an awful lot like Wally. The film picks up at that point, because Thomas Robinson, who plays young Sebastian, is a terrific little child actor, and he and Bateman have great chemistry together. When the two of them are on screen, discussing their neuroses, it’s a lot of fun. The rest of the movie is predictable fluff, but if you’re in the mood for lighthearted nonsense, you could do worse than this one. Don’t rush out to see it, though, if you’re hoping for a big dose of Jennifer Aniston – she doesn’t get a lot of screen time. With a terrific supporting performance by Jeff Goldblum as Wally’s friend Leonard. It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed Goldblum this much. Playing all over but it had a disappointing first weekend so, if you want to see it in theaters, sooner is probably better than later. B-

Photo credit - Miramax

Where did the summer go? August 20, 2010

2010-08-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

It's rumored that some East Coast school districts are starting up next week, no post labor day schedule for them, and plaintive parents are posting Facebook pictures of their near adult children settling into dorm rooms like there's something wrong with that. But the summer movie season isn't quite over, not when you've got a picture like Piranha 3D popping up in theaters this weekend. I remember the first Piranha; a bunch of us sneaked out of class to see it in a triple bill with Alligator and The Howling. It was, believe it or not, a John Sayles marathon.

This new Piranha is getting oddly good reviews, especially for Elisabeth Shue's performance and I like Elisabeth Shue. 3D sort of annoys me, especially the glasses and the dim screen, but I might show up. Also this weekend we've got The Switch; Jennifer Aniston and Justin Bateman starring in a comedy about a sperm donor baby and his dad's reluctance to embrace adulthood, in a funny way. Apparently Bateman outshines Aniston here, and the kid (Thomas Robinson) steals the show from both of them. Then there's the second installment of Nanny McPhee, for the younger set; and Lottery Ticket, about a kid from the projects who discovers he has a winning lottery ticket on a Friday, and has to wait until Monday to cash it, avoiding all sorts of pitfalls over the course of the weekend. Finally, among big openings, there's Vampires Suck, a satire parody movie that messes around with the "Twilight" series. I like the idea of this one but I don't know if I can sit through it. In any case, everyone seems to think that The Expendables will take the weekend again, and what is drawing people to this geriatric action pic I have no idea. Maybe I'll check it out.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

2010-08-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Scott Pilgrim

It’s hard to know where to start with this wacky, entertaining little film. Scott Pilgrim bends all kinds of storytelling rules, expecting us to ride along, say, when Scott, a lightweight, wimpy dude turns into a live action video game superhero, endures a colossal battle and then turns right back into his old persona, happily collecting his bonus coins from the floor (“Cool, coins!”) while his score totes up absurdly in the background. I love this stuff.

Scott Pilgrim, played by Michael Cera, is a shiftless twenty something Canadian, who doesn’t have much going on except a band (Sex Bob-omb) where he plays a fierce bass guitar. His heart was “kicked in the butt” by a rock singer named Envy who left him behind when she got famous. Scott compensates by dating a 17 year old high school student, much to the chagrin of everyone he knows, and everyone he knows is kept well informed by his roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin) who has superpowers himself when it comes to texting about Scott’s personal life. He can do it – literally – in his sleep.

Then Scott meets Ramona Flowers, an edgy young woman with purple hair; she delivers packages for the Canadian version of Amazon and occasionally shows up in Scott’s dreams because there’s a subspace in his brain she likes to use. (If you’re not a Scott Pilgrim aficionado you won’t understand what that means, and it never gets explained, but that’s the way this movie rolls.) Scott falls head over heels for Ramona but she’s got baggage: in order to date her, Scott has to defeat her seven evil exes (and, perhaps more frightening, break up with Knives Chau, his seventeen year old girlfriend). And so the video game battling begins, with the first of the evil exes mounting an assault in the middle of a Sex Bob-omb concert. Scott is baffled: “Wait! We're fighting over Ramona?” Evil Matthew Patel responds reasonably, “Didn't you get my email explaining the situation?”

This film is full of great characters, with Kieran Culkin nearly stealing the show as Wallace, a low key but sharp witted gay lothario who loves Scott like a brother but isn’t afraid to call him on his romantic peccadilloes. Anna Kendrick is terrific as Scott’s impatient, down to earth sister, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is pitch perfect as the mysterious Ramona. And a shout out is due to Alison Pill, who plays Kim Pine, the drummer for Sex Bob-omb; Pill (looking oddly like a young Molly Ringwald) nails the acerbic wit and sharp insight that make Kim a welcome antidote to the freewheeling style of the rest of the gang. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is not a serious movie, but it creates its illogical universe with such care, each piece of the story fitting snugly into the next, that we quickly believe that the whole thing makes perfect sense. This is a really fun ride. B+

Girl is Getting a Dragon Tattoo

2010-08-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

Rooney Mara

An actress named Rooney Mara has been cast in the high profile role of Lisbeth Salander in the American remakes of Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo stories. If the rumors are true (and who the heck knows for sure) everyone from Kristin Stewart to Scarlett Johansson was in the running for the role. Oh, and Ellen Page. Her too.

Rooney is relatively unknown (she was in Youth in Revolt, and The Winning Season) but she was already set to make her mark in the hotly anticipated The Social Network. With this casting, she's on track to be an "It Girl."

Daniel Craig, currently out of Bond films to work on, was already cast in the role of Mikail Blomkvist, the journalist who collaborates with the fierce, brilliant Lisbeth to solve crimes.

Photo Credit - IMDB Pro

Summer Doldrums

2010-08-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

The ReelFan is back! Spent some time visiting elderly relatives and found it oddly difficult to get internet access in retirement homes and a place called Wisconsin. Fortunately, it's been a boring summer at the movies, so not much to report.

But let's talk anyway. Expendables took the weekend box office -- no big surprise, early "polling" showed enormous interest in the 80's throwback action picture. Julia Roberts did pretty well with her Eat Pray Love debut, but distributor Sony is already talking about needing a strong showing overseas to get production costs covered. Seems that there wasn't enough love in the audience to assure steady domestic box office in the next few weeks (audiences gave the film a "B" on Cinemascore -- not a good sign from an opening weekend crowd). Scott Pilgrim pretty much tanked, which shouldn't surprise me since my hipster twenty-something daughters had no interest in going. "I'm sick of that guy," my oldest said of Michael Cera, and that was that.

The Kids Are All Right

2010-07-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are Nic and Jules, a gay couple raising up two teenage kids in a perfect little urban family setting; Norman Rockwell for the twenty first century. But like a Norman Rockwell painting, the outward appearance is a little too perfect, not quite real. Nic and Jules’ relationship is rocky, cracks showing everywhere, in spite of their charming craftsman home with the Volvo wagon parked out front. These two are an odd couple, Nic a tough, self controlled doctor, who pesters the children to write timely thank you notes and drinks too much wine; Jules is a free spirit, experimenting with careers and enjoying the moment. “If it were up to Jules,” Nic quips as she pours another glass of red, “we would skip the thank you notes and just send out good vibes.” Hilarious, actually, and as the film gets going there is a lot of funny dialogue and scenes that make any parent – or any teen, or any former teen – cringe with comic recognition.

And the kids are all right, or anyway, we’ve all seen worse. The oldest, Joni, played with heartbreaking vulnerability by Mia Wasikowska, is spending her last summer at home before she heads off to some sort of prestige college. Brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson), still in high school, asks a favor of his eighteen year old sister: he wants her to contact their sperm donor dad. She’s reluctant – “That could really hurt moms’ feelings” – but she complies, and soon Paul (Mark Ruffalo) crashes into their lives, bringing an energy and unpredictability that immediately appeals to Jules and puts Nic entirely on the defensive. Paul owns a restaurant called WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get, in computer speak – and that is an apt description of him: he is bearded and brash and sweaty, a self described “doer”; but he is also charming and friendly, even when confronted by Nic’s disapproving barrage of questions. “You must be the griller in the family,” he tells her, amiably.

I liked the beginning of this movie a lot, but it lost me towards the end, when screen writers Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Bloomberg seemed to lose their senses of humor (Cholodenko also directed). The tone of the film becomes dark and tense, and the thought provoking premise just unravels; it’s like the writers had this great, timely idea for a story and then couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I left the theater feeling vaguely unsettled and a little bit cheated; I came to see a comedy about American families, and found myself watching a predictably sorry, sudsy tale. With excellent performances from the whole cast, although Bening, Moore and Ruffalo have shone brighter in other roles. Playing in very limited release, going wider on a slow rollout. B

The A Team

2010-07-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

If you're stuck on the East Coast during a record setting heat wave and you have cabin fever but you can't stand to be outside, you might find yourself at a matinée showing of The A Team. Hey, it's cold in those southeastern theaters.

The A Team is a movie based on a TV show that I never saw. It's about a gang of tough guys,US Army Rangers who sign up for impossible assignments and succeed against all odds, usually by planning very carefully to take absurd risks. So these four dudes sit down in improvised war rooms and make intricate plans, not letting us in on too much so we don't see how all the pieces of their masterful plan come together until it's underway. It's sort of like the old Mission Impossible TV show without the brains, since mostly these guys blow stuff up and leap onto cars and then shoot people. They get shot at, too, but no one ever seems to hit them so it doesn't matter.

The characters are iconic, so we don't need to get to know them because we already know who they are. Liam Neeson plays Colonel Hannibal Smith, the brainy planner; Bradley Cooper is Lt. 'Faceman' Peck, the real cute finesse guy; B.A. Baracus is brawny Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson (Mr. T in the television show) and Sharlto Copley is Captain H.M. Murdock, a complete nut case who also happens to be a terrific pilot. The plot involves -- well, there's missions and betrayals and something about Iraq, but mostly there's a lot of explosions and cool escapes and bad guys getting their just desserts. There is no reason to see this movie, but if you're in the mood for typical summer escapist fare, this will work. (Incidentally, since the characters are so familiar I felt like I understood them better than the ones in more splashy recent event films ... I'm looking at you, Christopher Nolan.) C+

Film Review: Robin Hood

2010-06-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I used to watch Robin Hood on Saturday mornings (I think it was the 1950's TV series, recycled years later for lack of better programming). It was a black and white adventure; Robin Hood was a good humored rascal, outsmarting the Sherriff of Nottingham, facing down King John, cheerfully rousting out evil while Maid Marian smiled ruefully and the Merry Men raucously celebrated their weekly triumphs over wealthy bad guys.

There is none of that kind of fun in Ridley Scott’s version of the tale. This Robin Hood is a prequel to the old story, where our hero goes on a Crusade with King Richard and then, returning home, promotes the adoption of the Magna Carta. There are no high spirited romps; Robin and his Merry Men don’t rob from the rich or give to the poor (Robin does threaten Friar Tuck, so that the priest will give some of the church’s grain to the peasant farmers; inexplicably, Tuck takes it well and they quickly become good friends); there is precious little archery; and the cozy Greenwood, where the crew makes camp, doesn’t even show up until the final scene, announced pointlessly by Marian in an awkward voice over. This film is an historical slog with a character named Robin Hood stuck in the middle of it, and why, if director Scott was interested in 12th century English history he didn’t just make a movie about that, I don’t understand. It was an interesting time: France was trying to invade, King John, as the poet tells us, was not a good man, and the Magna Carta was on the verge of being ratified, a significant event in the history of western democracy. There are probably some pretty good stories to be found in that era, no need to drag happy fictional Robin Hood into it.

Speaking of the hero, Russell Crowe plays Robin with somber decorum, or maybe he was just bored; in any case there is no twinkle in his eye, no sense that he is on the verge of hatching a crafty plan. His men seem less Merry than bewildered, and they are rarely on screen. The one bright light is Cate Blanchett as Marian, here is an iconic character badly in need of a makeover, and the film delivers. This Marian is tough, independent, and refreshingly not at all interested in running off to a nunnery. She deserved more screen time.

Towards the end of this film there is a terrific scene. It’s a panoramic shot of the English coast line, with menacing French boats approaching and English soldiers spread out along the shore, determined to repel the invasion with bows and arrow and swords and even more primitive weapons. It’s a great, brief depiction of the vulnerability of the island nation and the determination of her people to protect it. Once the battle starts, though, it all gets silly again. With William Hurt as some sort of wise royal counselor and Mark Strong as the bad guy, as usual. Playing everywhere, but it’s okay to wait for the DVD. Grade: C

Twilight Treat

2010-05-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

I feel a little bad about harshing on Bella and Edward the other day, and anyway it's Robert Pattinson's birthday (he's 24), so here's a new clip from Eclipse. It doesn't have Bella or Edward but it has evil Dakota Fanning, and I just love evil Dakota Fanning.

It's on iTunes, click here.

What's playing: 5/14/2010

2010-05-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Summer blockbuster season continues this weekend with Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott. This is the team that brought us Gladiator ten years ago, and that made some money and won a bunch of awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. Interestingly, the reviews for Gladiator were kind of middling, and Robin Hood is starting out that way too, with Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter marveling at Scott’s ability to tell a tale, while Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly thinks the whole thing is a stodgy waste of time. Also opening is Just Wright, a romantic comedy starring Queen Latifah as a physical therapist to sports stars, and Common as the NBA player who needs her help. (Probably they fall in love or something.) Not very many critics have seen this film, but the ones that have aren’t impressed. Finally among big openers is Letters to Juliet; starring Amanda Seyfried (Mama Mia, Dear John) as a traveler in Verona, Italy, who volunteers to answer heartsick letters to the fictional Juliet of Romeo and Juliet fame, and ends up playing Cupid to a woman (Vanessa Redgrave) and her long lost love. Again, critics aren’t wowed. If you’re looking for some fun, Iron Man 2 is hoping to continue its box office juggernaut this weekend, and did you hear about this little film, Babies? It’s a documentary about the first year in the life of four babies from around the world. It was a surprise hit last weekend, in a little documentary kind of way. Playing in scattered art house theaters around the country. Might be a nice antidote to blockbuster fever.

Me personally, I will probably see Babies. Our oldest is graduating from college this weekend, and my husband has gotten all sentimental on me. So it looks like Babies from here.

Tough Times in Twilight Town

2010-05-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

My niece is a big fan of the Twilight movies. I don't really get it, but they make a lot of money, so I've seen them, mostly out of curiosity. This is what I think: Bella and Edward are a colossally boring couple -- far as I can tell, they have nothing in common, mostly they just stare at each other, all infatuated and then Bella falls asleep and Edward stares at her until she wakes up. Quite a pair.

But there's trouble in Twilight town: Summit Entertainment decided to turn the four Twilight books into five movies, and because of that the lead actors (Taylor Lautner, Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson) all re-negotiated their contracts to get more money. This upset a couple of the non-lead characters - specifically Ashely Greene and Kellan Lutz, who play Alice and Emmett Cullen. They want more money too, a whole lot more, and Summit isn't so interested in negotiating with them. Summit is known to play hard ball, they dumped Rachelle Lefevre after the first film when she attempted to up her salary and get some scheduling concessions.

Now, the Emmett Cullen character doesn't bring much to the party (okay, I've read the books too. My niece, remember?) but Alice is a bright light in the cast, with a useful ability to see the future. So I think it would be risky to ask fans to accept a new Alice. But then, it's possible that Twilight lovers won't notice; they seem mostly interested in Bella, Edward and Jacob. And those three are in for the long haul.

Review: Iron Man 2

2010-05-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

Iron Man 2 roared into town this weekend, kicking off the summer blockbuster season with a fun loving bang. Is it as good as the original? Nah, but it’s pretty good. Robert Downey Jr. returns as charming bad boy Tony Stark, brilliant inventor of the Iron Man Suit. Tony’s been busy since we last saw him, taking on American’ enemies in his high tech armor, and he pretty much believes he has single handedly made the world safe for democracy. “I have privatized peace,” he announces without humility to a Senate Committee. America is grateful and Stark expects her to be, he loves being a superstar almost as much as he loves his electronically endowed superpower abilities. But the Pentagon isn’t so happy; they don’t like leaving American security in the hands of a single private citizen, and they worry that their dependence on Iron Man will make them look foolish when someone else – particularly an evil someone else – invents a copy cat suit of their own.

Enter Russian bad guy Ivan Vanko, played by a growling Mickey Rourke; Ivan’s father was on old colleague of Tony’s dad, and Ivan believes that much of the young Stark’s mega-billionaire success comes from work the two elder scientists did together. But Tony s jet setting around the world with adoring fans in his wake, and Ivan is stuck in Siberia; he was robbed, in other words, and besides being threatening and deadly, the Russian is a brilliant – if wildly demented – scientist in his own right, so he sets about getting even.

It’s a pretty thin story line, but it’s a clean, straightforward one; you never feel like the special effects guys sent the writers home early one day so they could slip in a lot of superfluous explosions. There are some inexplicable plot developments, like when Scarlett Johansson arrives on the scene; any comic book fan or anyone who read the plentiful advance press for this movie knows she is supposed to be the Black Widow, but that doesn’t really come up in this film. She’s called Natalie, and she’s a notary, or some sort of assistant, but she’s sultry and tough and dangerous in a fight, and at first Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) doesn’t like her but then she does, and then Natalie/Black Widow hangs out for a while with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and none of it seems to matter. She does get a terrific action scene, though, where she spins, twists and kicks her way through a building full of highly trained hit guys, leaving no one standing, then breaks through a steel door, plops down in front of a computer and brilliantly unravels a complex bit of code, temporarily saving the day. (Now that’s a cool superhero – let’s have a movie about her.)

There are a couple of other challenges in the film, besides the evil Ivan: the gizmo that Tony Stark sticks in his chest wall to keep him alive is having a toxic effect on his blood, so he thinks his life might be in danger but he still can’t figure out how to tell old Pepper Potts he loves her. It’s tough to be a romantic superhero, but it it’s a blast to be Robert Downey Jr.; this brilliant actor takes such unconflicted, unapologetic joy in his superhero role that he alone is worth the price of admission. Playing in a record number of theaters all over the country. It doesn’t matter where you live, you can see this movie, probably right now. B

Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures

City Island

2010-05-04T15:04:00.000-07:00

Charming, lighthearted movie. Andy Garcia plays Vince Rizzo, the weary patriarch of a Bronx family – well, it’s not the Bronx, exactly, but City Island, a little strip of beachfront connected to the Bronx by an old fashioned bridge. Vince is proud of his roots in this little plot of urban land, living with his wife and family in the house his grandfather built, but the picturesque setting is about all that’s pretty here – the Rizzo family is a dissembling mess. Vince is a correctional officer, working in a prison, but he wants to be an actor, so he takes classes on the sly; wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies) is certain he’s having an affair. His college daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) is working in a strip joint and only pretending to go to school, and Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) has a fondness for very unusual adult websites. They all manage to get along, uneasily, until Vince has an epiphany at acting class, and decides to invite a prison inmate into their home to finish up his sentence as a “guest’ of the Rizzo family; Vince claims he just wants to the kid to help him build a bathroom, but he’s hiding the truth: Tony Nardello (Steven Strait) is Vince’s son from an old relationship.

And that is one secret too many. Tony is naturally curious about why Vince has taken an interest in him and he easily senses that there is a lot of stuff not being said around the family dinner table. Not afraid to pry, the young stranger stumbles on one secret after another, stirring up an entertaining whirlwind of revelations.

There’s nothing serious going on in this movie; even though it seems to be tackling important family issues, nothing particularly profound gets said, we’re here for fun, not to learn a lesson. Still there is something very intimate about the way the story gets told, the characters are familiar, like old acquaintances or neighbors, and by the end you kind of want to join them for a beer. Andy Garcia turns in a solid performance as Vince; his movie audition scene is worth the price of admission. And Steven Strait, as Vince’s felonious son, is a bright light in every one of his scenes. Emily Mortimer also charms as Vince's encouraging actor friend. City Island had a slow start at the box office but it hung on, got some good word of mouth and is playing in theaters all over the country. Check it out if you’re looking for a lighthearted night out. B

What to See (or not) 4/29/2010

2010-04-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

This weekend sees the opening of Nightmare on Elm Street, which opened once before in 1984, and it isn’t clear why we need to do this again. Jackie Earle Haley plays Freddy Krueger, which is kind of cool because I like Jackie Earl Haley, but I probably won’t see this movie. Early reviews suggest it’s a pale reflection of the original. A family friendly film called Furry Vengeance is also hitting lots of screens, all about a housing development that makes a bunch of woodland creatures mad, so they get even and teach everyone about good environmental stewardship. Actually it seems like a cute idea, but apparently that’s all it is; critics hate this thing. Really hate it. Left over from last weekend, we have The Losers, which got a few medium reviews and lots of terrible ones; didn’t make much money either. The Back Up Plan, also continuing from last week, is hanging on to a bunch of theaters but not a lot of high expectations. It’s an average little rom-com, where Jennifer Lopez plays a woman who decides to have a baby with a sperm donor, because Mr. Right is never going to show up, and then Mr. Right shows up. Hilarity tries to ensue.

Hollywood is holding its collective breath, waiting for the opening of Iron Man 2 on May 7, kicking off the Big Summer Movie Season. Then they believe that gleeful crowds will roar into theaters, and spend a lot of money. Meanwhile, not much to see.

What to See: 4/16/2010

2010-04-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

Couple of films opening big this weekend: Kick-Ass and Death at a Funeral. Kick-Ass is a comic book movie about a bunch of regular folks who decide to become superheroes. Depending on who you listen to, Kick-Ass is either “the best superhero movie since The Dark Night” (ReelViews) or “morally reprehensible” (Roger Ebert). It is rated R, has a lot of violence, cussing, and a 13 year old girl playing an 11 year old girl who kills people -- bad people, but still. Kick Ass will win the box office derby this weekend; the only question is by how much. Death at a Funeral is a remake of a 2007 film of the same name; this one was made with a mostly African American cast. Variety calls it a “strained, mirthless comedy” and Roger Ebert “laughed all the way through.” What’s with old Roger, anyway? I thought the original was mostly entertaining, and I would probably see this one if I have a free afternoon. In limited release, The Joneses is the story of a perfect family that turns out not to be a family at all – mom, dad, and the teenage kids are employees of a marketing company that sells “lifestyles,” and all the attendant fashion and electronic gizmos that go along with that. Basically, the folks next door are living, breathing subliminal advertisements. So far, pretty average reviews for this one; seems the film doesn’t really go anywhere with its intriguing premise. Other than that, you can still catch the 3-D trio (Clash, Alice, Dragon) or Date Night – although if you’re having a nice time at dinner, and you’re wondering if you should order more wine, or rush off to catch Date Night, go with the wine.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

2010-04-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, bear with me as I bring up one more lightweight pop culture news item: The Man from UNCLE movie is back on track! The Hollywood Reporter is saying that Max Borenstein, who you haven’t heard of, has signed on to write the script, and David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) is set to direct.

Now if you’re a little nervous that the Wedding Crashers dude is in charge well, who can blame you? No one wants Vince Vaughn to play Napoleon Solo. But the good news is that there were only three and a half seasons of the original show, so these guys shouldn’t have too much trouble catching up and getting a sense of the tone of the series. And maybe we will get a cool, hip, action packed big screen re-telling that is true to the old show -- instead of a travesty like the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies. (Love ya, Tom, but it’s the Mission Impossible Team, there’s supposed to be a bunch of multi-talented people working together, not just you, on a motorcycle, shooting at stuff.) This news is so new that there is no way to tell when this movie might come out. It just seems more likely that it will. Open Channel D!

Whedon to Direct The Avengers

2010-04-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

You heard it here first – but only if this is the first place you read it – Joss Whedon appears to be on track to direct The Avengers, the comic book movie that brings together Iron Man and Captain America and Thor and probably other superheroes, depending on how all of their flicks do between now and when The Avengers starts filming. Now I’m not a huge comic book fan (I like comic book movies, but generally don’t read up ahead of time) but I know that this project has caused some excitement in that community, and those guys usually have a big impact on the buzz of a new comic book film when it comes out. Joss Whedon is popular with this crowd and why not? The Buffy-Angel-Firefly-Dr.Horrible creator is really good at this stuff.

But don’t overreact – The Avengers isn't slated to open until May 2012. But, at least we’ll get to see it before the world ends that December.

Review: Date Night

2010-04-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

Steve Carell and Tina Fey pair up for their first big screen comedy. They play Phil and Claire Foster, a middle aged couple who are afraid that their marriage has lost its spark. To rediscover the old magic, they leave the kids with a babysitter and head off to a hip restaurant in Manhattan for dinner - but they can’t get a table, so they impulsively claim someone else’s reservation. This is a bad idea: turns out the couple they are impersonating is shaking down a corrupt district attorney, and Claire and Phil end up spending their romantic evening running around Manhattan, desperately trying to evade a couple of gun toting thugs.

The premise is good, but boy, is the script mediocre. It bounces from thriller to screwball comedy and back again, and then tries to mix the two, but it never goes far enough in any direction to be really funny or suspenseful. And the screenwriter tries to address the whole monotonous marriage thing by arbitrarily tacking on the occasional relationship discussion – Phil and Claire actually pull their getaway car over so they can “talk,” when they should be driving for their lives. There are also some weird character shifts: in the beginning, both Phil and Claire seem like interesting, smart, slightly wacky people whose spontaneous selves have gotten lost in the routines of day to day family life. But by the end of the movie, we are asked to believe that Phil is a crafty latent super spy, and Claire is unable to follow a simple line of reasoning. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she keeps moaning, and we wonder how that is possible, because there isn’t much happening at all.

All that being said, this isn’t a terrible movie, just kind of a disappointing one. It could easily wait for video but if you are looking for a night out, Date Night is good for some laughs and anyway, it’s fun to watch Tina Fey and Steve Carell work. B-

Photo - Twentieth Century Fox

Date Night opens and more on Kick Ass 4-9-2010

2010-04-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

Date Night opens today; it’s the only new film opening nationwide, taking on the 3-D juggernaut (Alice, Dragon, Titans) that has dominated the box office for weeks. Date Night is the big screen pairing of Steve Carell and Tina Fey in a screwball sort of comedy about a night out gone horribly wrong. Critics have been pretty happy with the picture; while there’ve been a few snarky comments about the script and the director, most everyone enjoys watching the two stars. Date Night has snagged almost as many theaters as Clash of the Titans, and the two will likely battle it out for the box office crown.

Meanwhile, let’s talk Kick Ass some more. (Did I mention I’m looking forward to this one?) The film is rated R but mostly the trailers – the ones that screen in theaters -- have been PG. This is normal; very few theaters will screen trailers that aren’t for general audiences, even before an R rated film. But now, thanks to the Internets you can see the so called “red band” trailers (the background for the opening screen – “the following preview has been approved for …” is red, instead of green). Traffic for the Kick Ass red bands has been brisk, although there is some concern about violence, teen style sex talk, and the fact that a 13 year old girl uses the "c" word (not that "c" word. The other "c" word. No, wait, both of them) and it's tough to keep young people from watching it on their computer screens. Hey, I get it, I kept my kids out of R rated films until they were old enough to sneak in themselves. By then I figured I'd given it my best shot. Anyway, this is a foul mouthed trailer advertising a foul mouthed film, and you can watch it here (note that when you get to the site you will have to enter your age to see the trailer).

Photo - Twentieth Century Fox

Review: Clash of the Titans

2010-04-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

Clash of the Titans is full of swords and sandals and sweaty men fighting giant mythical creatures. It’s based on the Greek legend of Perseus, although the screen writers take liberties with the story. In this telling, Earth’s humans have become disenchanted with their vengeful and unpredictable gods, so they decide to rebel. The gang on Olympus doesn’t think much of that, and in spite of their long simmering acrimony Zeus teams up with his brother Hades to put down the uprising. But they don’t count on Perseus, Zeus’ half mortal son who has an axe to grind – his adopted family was killed by Hades, collateral damage in a bigger battle.

Perseus, played by Sam Worthington (Avatar), becomes an unwilling hero of the rebellion as soon as the other humans recognize his demi-god talents; for example, he masters expert sword fighting skills after one lesson. Also, he takes a little walk in the forest and sees a glowing thing -- it turns out to be a magic sword that retracts like a light saber when anyone else tries to use it. Perseus doesn’t want to exploit all that specialness, since it makes him too much like the enemy, but it’s pretty clear that he’ll come around, particularly when Hades starts unleashing all kinds of savage creatures on his ragtag little band. And of course there are a couple of damsels in distress who can’t be rescued by just a regular guy.

Frankly, I don’t know why there’s been so much critical complaining about this movie. It’s not great cinema but it isn’t trying to be; it has a sort of dumb movie integrity. And if the 3-D was lousy well, sorry, James Cameron, it didn't bother me much. (I did suffer some sticker shock when I paid $16 for a matinee). And here’s the thing: even though I thought Avatar was visually stunning, I found Sam Worthington a lot more interesting in this film. It’s not a perfect performance but he shoulders the reluctant hero role pretty well, starting out as a kind of dazed country bumpkin and evolving, a little erratically, into a swashbuckling leader. I look forward to seeing him on screen again. See this film if you're in the mood to kick back with some popcorn and enjoy a little mindless fun. With Ralph Fiennes as Volde – oops – Hades; Liam Neeson, almost convincing as Zeus; and Gemma Arterton as the goddess Io, who doesn’t show up in the original story. Big spring hit; playing everywhere. B-

Photo - Warner Bros

Looking forward to Kick Ass

2010-04-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

You know things are slow in tinsel town when the big news of the day is that Winona Ryder might possibly be landing a gig in a Ron Howard movie, if it works out. You remember Winona? She had a promising career until she got caught shoplifting, and then things just weren’t the same.

Far more interesting is the upcoming release of Kick Ass, a comic book action picture about regular people who decide to become superheroes. You may have seen an ad or two. I’m excited about this movie; it’s got an interesting premise and Nicholas Cage (he plays Big Daddy). The film also has Chloe Moritz as Hit Girl; Chloe was the down to earth little sister in 500 Days of Summer, and she’s also slated to play a vampire in the American remake of Let the Right One In. (Now that’s a creepy movie.) Kick Ass comes out on April 16, the studio no doubt hoping to lure in a youthful pre-summer audience before Iron Man 2 hits the theaters in May. Have I mentioned that Iron Man opens on my birthday? I’m looking forward to that one too.

Photo - Lionsgate

3-D or not...

2010-04-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

Clash of the Titans raked in the dough over the weekend, biggest Easter opening ever and all that. Critics didn’t much like it but there were plenty of fantasy fans who had a great time at the movies. Interestingly, Clash generated a lot of talk in movie land about the wisdom of 3-D conversions; this one started out in 2-D but was converted by the studio to take advantage of the technology’s current popularity. And generate box office, since 3-D screens charge more. But Kenneth Turan, the best known film critic at the LA Times, griped in his review that “Clash of the Titans is the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D.” And Louis Leterrier, who directed Clash, groused on Yahoo that the conversion wasn’t his idea.

Never mind. The film made money and that’s what the studios are in business to do. And people are buying the higher priced tickets, either not knowing or not caring that the 3-D they’re experiencing isn’t the best. Hey, it’s Clash of the Titans people, this audience is looking for fun, not art.

Comments, anyone? Did you love the film?

Photo - Warner Bros

What's Playing: 4-2-2010

2010-04-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

It’s Easter weekend and you can Clash with Titans or Train Your Dragon or visit Wonderland with your 3-D glasses on. Last week there was a little kerfuffle when Dreamworks told exhibitors that if they didn’t show Dragon in their 3-D theaters, they couldn’t have the 2-D version either. Theater owners didn’t much like that, so they were happy to turn over a bunch of 3-D screens to newcomer Clash. Clash is actually a remake of a 1981 film that was a bit of a hit in its time, using stop motion photography to tell the story of Perseus and his epic battle against Hades. This time around the story gets told in 3-D, and the filmmakers are counting on the kind of audience that made 300 a hit. There are a lot of fantasy/ Comic Con types who are hotly anticipating this film. The cast is intriguing: Sam Worthington, lately of Avatar, stars as Perseus, with Ralph Fiennes as the evil Hades and Liam Neeson as Zeus. (Neeson as Zeus? Why is that automatically funny?) Early reviews are mediocre, and it's probably good to bear in mind that this film wasn't shot in 3-D, so it may not add much to the experience. Also out this weekend is Tyler Perry’s latest, Why Did I Get Married Too, starring Janet Jackson. It’s about four couples who travel to the Bahamas together and begin to question their marriages. In a funny way. No critical opinion on this because Perry’s films are never screened in advance, but they generally do well at the box office, so expect this one to make a splash. Miley Cyrus’ latest attempt to leave Hannah Montana behind, The Last Song, is holding on from its Wednesday opening; this is a weepy love story Nicholas Sparks thing, with a father/daughter conflict thrown in. Lousy reviews, but so far popular with tweeners on Spring Break.

Lots of kid stuff, because of Spring Break; next weekend grownups are targeted with the Steve Carell/Tina Fey comedy, Date Night. Meanwhile, have you seen An Education? It's out now on DVD.

Photo - Warner Bros

Review: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2010-03-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

Good movie. Based on the bestselling novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a thriller, and a mystery, and kind of a love story. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist) is a celebrated investigative journalist forced to resign his job when one his targets successfully sues him for libel. At professional loose ends, he accepts the peculiar offer of Henrik Vagner, a retired captain of Swedish industry, to research a forty year old cold case – the disappearance of Vagner’s beloved niece, Harriet. Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) , the eponymous tattoo girl, has taken an interest in Blomkvist’s libel case; she is an extraordinary computer hacker and investigator herself, and she believes the journalist was set up. Lisbeth is a loner, fierce and brilliant and unafraid of violence; only a foolish man would cross her (and when one does her retribution is extremely satisfying). Her research into Blomkvist’s libel case leads her to discover his current project, and the two of them ultimately team up into a multi-talented investigative odd couple.

The novel is crammed with detail, and it meanders a bit across multiple story lines; the screenplay is satisfyingly stripped down, so the characters can shine through, and they truly glow, especially Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a thriller with just enough action, and plenty of intrigue; altogether a good time at the movies. (Except- faint of heart take note: this picture is unrated because of some graphically violent and sexually violent images. The filmmakers were afraid the film would be rated NC-17 if they submitted it to the ratings board, so they just went with no rating at all. It is not nearly as graphic as the book, but it is pictures on the screen instead of words on the page, so fair warning.) In Swedish with subtitles, but don’t let that bother you. B+

Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

2010-03-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

Funny movie. Dumb movie, but still funny, sometimes really funny. John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry are three old friends who have lost touch, but they get back together when one of them – Corddry’s Lou – attempts suicide. Trying to cheer up their buddy, Nick (Robinson) and Adam (Cusack) whisk him off to a ski resort that was the site of many memorable youthful escapades. Problem is, the resort has become a dump, so they try to salvage their weekend by mixing a few cocktails and settling into a hot tub. Which is a time machine, which takes them back to 1986.

As a time travel movie, this picture has a lot of flaws, but as a wacky buddy comedy, it’s right on target. Rob Corddry pushes the edge of the comic envelope; if you think of him as a "Daily Show" correspondent, you are in for a rip roaring surprise – the guy is fearlessly hilarious. Cusack and Robinson are more underhanded in their humor – their funny lines sort of sneak up on you – but they both easily hold their own against Corddry’s onslaught. There are a lot of eighties jokes, but they are kind of beside the point; the real humor comes when these three guys confront their teenaged selves and have to decide what to do about it. With Clark Duke as Jacob, Adam’s twenty year old nephew who also gets swept back in time, and cameos by Chevy Chase and Crispin Glover; Glover remains one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. He is terrific here. (Word to the weak of stomach: this isn’t a polite comedy. There are a lot of cringe worthy sight gags. I never had to cover my eyes but the guys in the audience often laughed a lot harder than me; sometimes they laughed really hard at things I didn’t know were funny. I’m just saying.) B

Thinking about the weekend? DVD picks

2010-03-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

ON DVD this week:

An Education: Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard star in the story of a young woman who falls for a charming older con man just when she’s achieved her lifelong dream of attending Oxford. Set in London in the 1960s, this charming, unnerving film is all about life choices and consequences, but what really recommends it are the remarkable performances, especially Mulligan and Sarsgaard. (Mulligan was nominated for an Oscar for this picture; she also stars the Wall Street sequel, due out this summer.) Great movie; definitely the best new one out there.

Sherlock Holmes: Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law play Homes and Watson in a movie that is more of a romp than a mystery thriller. Fun, lighthearted film. It did well at the box office and scored a B with audiences, according to Cinemascore, a market research company that tracks that sort of thing. I thought it was entertaining, and a lot of fun to watch Law and Downey, Jr. spar with each other. Sort of like House and Wilson.

Baader Meinhof Complex: Not at all lighthearted, this film takes you inside a terrorist group that wreaked havoc in Germany in the 1970s. Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof were children of the Nazi generation who feared their country’s return to fascism, and with their followers used violent means to try and force change. Baader Meinhof plays out like an art film action picture, but it never loses sight of the seriousness of its subject. It got decent reviews and not much of an audience. I thought it was a fascinating story but just a good film. Should be really interesting to anyone intrigued by terrorism, especially the kind that comes from the inside, the neighbors next door.

Weekend Update 3-26-2010

2010-03-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Hot Tub Time Machine! Who hasn’t been waiting for this film to open? It’s got John Cusack and Darryl (Craig Robinson) from "The Office" and Rob Corddry from "The Daily Show." It’s supposed to be raunchy and hilarious and it’s probably pretty dumb, but what the heck, John Cusack is in it. And there’s time travel. So here’s the basic storyline: a bunch of bored middle aged guys get the opportunity to retroactively put their lives on a different track when they are transported back to the eighties via a magical hot tub. The film has a lot of fun with eighties references, including movies that featured John Cusack; Crispin Glover and Chevy Chase also make appearances. Some critics have loved Hot Tub and others, not so much. Extremely raunchy, keep that in mind – rated R for “strong crude and sexual content, nudity, drug use and pervasive language.” Also opening is the family friendly How to Train Your Dragon; this animated Viking adventure has gotten good reviews, mainly for its visuals and refreshingly natural use of 3D technology. Likely to push Alice in Wonderland off its box office perch, particularly because 3D ticket prices have gone up all over the country, just in time for this movie. Really.

In limited release, Chloe is an “erotic thriller” starring Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore. Best I can tell, it’s terrible. Steamy though. Greenberg officially opened last weekend but if you don’t live in LA or New York you might not have noticed. The Ben Stiller picture about a lonely, unemployed middle aged man who comes to LA to house sit for his successful brother has gotten good reviews, especially for Stiller’s performance. It’s a drama with funny moments. Opening all over the country this weekend. I’ll probably go see it, but only after Hot Tub Time Machine. Cusack movies are a priority.

Weekend Update 3- 19-2010

2010-03-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

Nearly three weeks in and the big news is still Alice, so if you haven’t seen it yet, and you like the 3-D experience, now is the time to go. Next Friday the big scramble for 3-D screens begins with the opening of How to Train Your Dragon. Theater owners are between a rock and a hard place on this: the new arrivals are insisting on the 3-D treatment, but Alice is just making so much money it’s tough to bump it off the screen. The The LA Times reports today that DreamWorks and Paramount are playing hard ball, telling theater owners that if they won’t play Dragon in 3-D, they can’t have the 2-D version either. So there.

This is a big story because there isn’t much else going on. The only movie doing anything in theaters right now is Alice; Green Zone pretty much tanked last weekend in spite of Matt Damon, and the other new entries didn’t impress. This weekend there is some expectation that Bounty Hunter, starring Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston, will attract women who love Aniston and men who love action pictures. Could happen, but it’s not going to top Alice. Diary of a Wimpy Kid is also out this weekend, appealing mostly to tweeners who are familiar with the books; and Repo Men, a sci fi futuristic thriller about some guys who repossess people’s transplanted organs if they can’t pay their medical bills. Just another liberal diatribe about health care. Kidding! That was a joke.

Photo - Disney

Weekend Update March 12, 2010

2010-03-12T17:18:00.000-08:00

Hollywood has seasons. There's Awards Season, which finished up last weekend at the Kodak Theater. That’s when you see a lot of serious dramatic films with great performances that Oscar voters like. Coming up is Blockbuster Season, usually kicking off the first weekend in May. Then you get a lot of big budget, special effects laden, full of explosions movies that make loads of money, even if they aren't any good (I’m talkin’ about you, Transformers 2). Between now and then studios release pictures that can’t compete with a blockbuster but aren't likely to win any awards either.

Which brings us to Green Zone, a thriller set in Baghdad in 2003. Matt Damon plays an Army inspector searching for WMDs, but then he stumbles onto some sort of conspiracy thing. Directed by Paul Greengrass of Bourne Identity fame, this has gotten decent reviews: apparently it’s fast paced, bold, and Matt Damon is pretty good. If you like action pictures Green Zone looks entertaining. If you prefer romantic comedy, you might enjoy She's Out of My League, one of those love stories with lots of gross frat boy humor that are real popular right now. This one’s getting mediocre reviews but the two lead players (Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve) are supposed to be fun to watch. There’s also Remember Me, Robert Pattinson’s effort to branch out from his Twilight persona -- but not too far, he’s still all brooding and beautiful. Doesn’t sparkle though. Remember Me is a love story about two broken people (Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin) finding each other, and critics pretty much hate it. Finally there’s Our Family Wedding, a story about a young Latina woman (America Fererra) who surprises her family with her engagement to an African American man (Lance Gross). Hilarity apparently ensues. Also featuring Forrest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia.

If you fell like staying in this weekend, Up in the Air is out on DVD; the film didn't win any Oscars but it's not a bad way to spend a Friday night. If you're a Michael Moore fan you can rent his latest, Capitalism: A Love Story. It's a very entertaining but extremely ambitious film, sometimes awe inspiring, sometimes confusing. Also it has old family movies of Michael when he was a little kid.

The wrap: it's likely that Alice in Wonderland will top the box office again this weekend. If you haven't seen it, now's the time to go because it will have trouble holding onto those 3-D screens when How to Train Your Dragon comes out in a few weeks. Alice is a fun movie, well worth a trip to the multiplex.

Photo: Universal Pictures

Ghost Writer

2010-03-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

If you like Ewan MacGregor you will like this film; there’s not much else going on. Ghost Writer is a thriller, with a conspiracy twist, all tied up with the latest news headlines about the Iraq war. Pierce Brosnan plays Adam Lang, a Tony Blair style former British Prime Minister who may have been involved in some really bad Blackwater torture kind of stuff; MacGregor is hired to ghost write Lang’s autobiography after the previous ghost writer committed suicide, or suffered a horrible accident. Or was murdered; this is a thriller after all, and anyone who’s ever seen a thriller knows that if a BMW is abandoned on a ferry after it docks in a blinding rainstorm, well, there must have been foul play.

Macgregor’s character (who remains unnamed) comes into the project with detached professionalism, until the mysterious behavior of Lang’s staff and the cryptic notes left behind by his predecessor lead him on a reckless course to discover the truth. He seems torn between terror and outrage, but his behavior is less bold than just dumb, like in a horror movie when the girl hears a noise in the basement and decides to investigate, even though it’s pitch black and the power is out because of a crashing thunderstorm.

Speaking of storms, it rains a lot on the tiny island off the coast of some place back east (actually filmed in Germany, since Polanski isn’t welcome in the US), where the action all happens in an ultra modern house right on the beach. People are always going out in the rain for no obvious reason, coming back drenched and needing to change clothes. In the rare breaks between downpours a handyman tries to sweep the deck with an old fashioned broom, but the wind is always howling so the debris flies right back. We see that all this weather and isolation are metaphorical but it’s never clear why that matters: it’s either embarrassingly obvious (sweeping under the rug?) or so obscure as to be irrelevant, and I prefer the latter because I want to believe that Polanski is still an interesting director. But in Ghost Writer he has only thrown a noirish, stylistic wash over a meager little story, leaving his actors adrift. Also starring Olivia Williams as Lang’s apparently suffering wife (if you’re interested in Williams skip this film and see An Education instead), and Kim Cattrall in the femme fatale role – her British accent, or attempt at one, is astonishingly bad. It’s hard to imagine how she even got on Polanski’s radar. B-

Photo - Summit Distribution

Oscar Scandal

2010-03-02T18:26:00.000-08:00

Last week Pete Hammond of the Los Angeles Times broke a story about The Hurt Locker: seems Nicolas Chartier, a little known producer on the film, sent an email around to a sizable Hollywood mailing list, trying to scare up Best Picture votes and getting a little snarky about his indy film’s big box office competitor. The Academy didn’t care much for that (according to their website, Academy rules prohibit “casting a negative or derogatory light on a competing film”) so today they slapped Mr. Chartier real hard on the wrist and told him he wasn’t allowed to come to the big party at the Kodak on Sunday.

Now this might seem like a blip on the Oscar season radar, but it’s a little more dramatic than that: in all its history, the Academy has never barred someone from the Awards ceremony because of bad behavior. If nothing else, it makes for some pretty damning press. Tireless Oscar prognosticators are considering whether Chartier’s indiscretion will cost Hurt Locker the big prize, but that seems like a stretch to me, since no one knew who Chartier was before he sent around his emails and all the big names on the picture immediately disavowed his actions. Also when the story broke it was late in the game: the deadline to vote was less than a week away and a big chunk of ballots were already in. There is a rumor that some Academy members have demanded their ballots back, so they can change their choices but, c’mon people, this is America. We vote all the time and we all know the rules. There’s no takebacks.

I feel a little sorry for old Nicholas Chartier. Sure he’s a bull in the Hollywood china shop, but he put up most of the money for Hurt Locker; without him the movie wouldn’t have gotten made. And now, by all accounts, his colleagues on the film are looking the other way when they see him on the street. Tough times in Tinsel Town.

So what do you think? Did Nicholas Chartier step over the line so far that he deserves to miss the show?

Weekend Update: February 26, 2010

2010-02-25T16:47:00.000-08:00

There’s a new Kevin Smith movie out this weekend called Cop Out, a buddy picture starring Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan. Smith didn’t write it; in fact it’s the first time he’s directed a film written by someone else, and critics have not been kind. Seems Willis doesn’t make any effort, Morgan tries too hard, and there’s nothing in the story worth filming. All this negativity has Smith in a testy mood; he is so miffed at Owen Gleiberman, over at Entertainment Weekly, that he actually made comments on the critic’s web page, fighting back:

My film scores a C-. This from the guy who gave "Twilight" a B grade. So I'll let that speak for itself.

That’s some of the milder stuff, see the whole exchange here. Looks like this film will not be a critical hit but there is a lot of interest in it among action fans and Kevin Smith acolytes, so it should keep the box office busy. Also opening is The Crazies, a remake of an early George Romero picture where toxins in a small town water supply turn good Midwestern folk into zombies. It’s more scary than gory, has a lot of cool government conspiracy stuff, and early critical reviews have been kind. Maybe that’s why Kevin Smith is testy.

If you live in New York, LA or Montreal and you’re in the mood for something more highbrow, check out A Prophet. It’s a French crime drama that has won a lot of awards and will probably walk away with the Best Foreign Film Oscar. If you feel like staying in (or if the snow is keeping you home), look for The Informant, new this week on DVD. Matt Damon plays a whistle blower who may not be as noble as he appears. It’s not a great film but it’s entertaining and Damon's performance is first rate.

Next week: Alice in Wonderland. Booting those blue people right off their 3-D screens.

Shutter Island

2010-02-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

This is one creepy movie, but then you would expect that, since it’s set on a remote rocky island surrounded by miles of angry ocean, and there’s a storm brewing. Leonardo DiCaprio plays US Marshall Teddy Daniels, sent out to investigate the disappearance of an inmate from a high security penitentiary located on the island – a facility for the criminally insane.

Criminally insane. There is something simultaneously horrifying and intriguing about that phrase, particularly in a movie context. These villains aren’t Mafioso types, killing to get the job done (it’s business, not personal) or tough cowboys who use their guns to wrangle justice out of the untamed west. These are people who kill because they are nuts.

Doesn't get much creepier than that.

Marin Scorsese spares no stylistic detail in bringing Dennis Lehane’s bestselling novel to the screen. Early on it’s all very noirish, the detectives hardboiled and scruffy, you half expect them to make a crack about double crossing dames. But thing don’t go predictably from there - Daniels, who should be a hard as nails cop, seems s little unhinged; he gets headaches, and keeps having flashbacks to his World War II service, liberating Dachau on a bright cold winter day. And when he bunks down for the night, he has strange, acid trip dreams about his dead wife (Michelle Williams) and fire. His investigation isn’t straightforward either – the trail of evidence twists and turns and spins back again, while conspiracy theories emerge about the impenetrable Ward C and a mysterious lighthouse that is cut off from the island by the incoming tide.

It’s a fun ride because Scorsese is one heck of a filmmaker. The story itself is a little flat, all the strange visions and fever dreams don’t get us to care much about Teddy Daniels even though Leo DiCaprio tries mightily to bring him to sympathetic life. And when the roller coaster ride finally screeches to an unfortunately predictable stop, you might feel a little let down. But never mind, the journey is worth it; Scorsese keeps surprising us, and we get to spend some time on a creepy remote island with criminally insane people.

Also starring Ben Kingsley as the progressive director of the facility, Max Von Sydow as his sinister and possibly ex-Nazi colleague, and Emily Mortimer in a terrifically eerie turn as the missing inmate. And keep your eye out for some great cameo moments with Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Hayley. Shutter Island won the box office derby in its opening weekend, the biggest ever for DiCaprio and Scorsese. Playing in lots of theaters. B

Oscar upset?

2010-02-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

Tarantino.

The name is legendary in Hollywood, even though the guy behind the mystique only has eight films to his credit and most people haven’t seen them. But they’re hip films – fast paced violence drenched stories with unexpected plotlines and lots of sharp dialogue. They’ve earned him a load of admirers in the film community and an ardent fan base of comic con attendees, but not a whole lot of mainstream attention.

Until now. With Inglorious Basterds Quentin Tarantino appears to be positioned to knock Katheryn Bigelow and James Cameron right off their Best Picture front runner pedestals. For one thing, Harvey Weinstein produced the film and he is working the Oscar voter crowd – the tireless Weinstein is known for successful Academy Award campaigns. And even though there’s general agreement that Hurt Locker is a better movie than Avatar, the little Iraq movie that could hasn’t made much money; in fact, by most standards it’s a box office dud. Oscar voters are generally leery of rewarding poor financial performance. But they’re suspicious of box office hits, too, and that doesn’t bode well for the tall blue people movie. Basterds, on the other hand, brought in a respectable 120 Million, so it’s kind of a compromise. Beyond that there is the notion that the ground breaking Pulp Fiction deserved better than it got back in 1994 – in other words, the Academy owes Tarantino one.

And then there’s the preferential ballot.

New this year, Academy members are asked to rank the best picture contenders, with their favorite first and least favorite last, and all the other ones lining up in between. This is how nominations have always been decided, but it’s a first for the final vote; in years past, you put a check mark next to your fave, sealed the envelope and sent it on its way. With the preferential thing, second and third place votes could make the difference in a close race, so a dark horse could sneak in.

And that would be pretty cool. Inglourious Basterds is a great grand goof of a movie, a World War II film made by a guy whose inspiration is other World War II films. There is little in this picture that is historically accurate – the ending is a bold, cinematic roller coaster ride not remotely connected to real events – but Tarantino isn’t trying to teach a lesson here, and you don’t go to a Tarantino film to learn one. You go for fun, to be entertained by – as the breathless comic con dude sting next to me said– "a movie making master." What could be more Oscar worthy than that?

...........

Whether his film can win the top prize or not, there is no question that Tarantino has some buzz. Yesterday on her show, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow announced the winner of a contest she was running, to find a shorthand name for the process where the minority party in the Senate threatens a filibuster whenever the majority party brings a bill to the floor.

The winning entry was “The Tarantino.” It kills bills.

Weekend Update: February 18, 2010

2010-02-18T16:13:00.000-08:00

This weekend Shutter Island comes out, and it’s about darn time. The Martin Scorsese picture was bounced around on the movie schedule, first meant to show up in theaters last fall, Oscar bait. But big studio Paramount started muttering about bottom lines and marketing costs, and sent Shutter off to open up in February, hoping to pull some gold out of the late winter movie doldrums. This could work, since no other big ticket films are opening this weekend, and some folks are betting that Marty’s thriller could pull out a record breaking box office weekend. That would be cool.

Meanwhile, the critics who have seen the film have been complimentary, and not: the New York Times A. O. Scott didn’t love it, but some guy in North Carolina thought it was the best movie ever. Most of the rest are somewhere in between. Not much else to go on at this point.

But if you’re a film lover, and especially if you’re a Scorsese film lover, you’re going to see this movie. Soon, like tomorrow.

For the rest of you, if you’re not interested in a drama/horror/suspense/mystery/thriller rated R for disturbing content, there are still some of those romantic comedies around, like Valentine’s Day, and it’s not too late to catch some of the Oscar nominees in theaters – look for Crazy Heart, The Blind Side, and Up in the Air, all still playing at a theater probably not too far from you. Oh, and Avatar is still around but, has anyone not seen Avatar? I mean anybody who wants to go?

There is also some fun to be had on DVD. Check out Amreeka, the warmhearted, thoughtful story of a Palestinian woman who moves to America with her teenage son just after the US invades Iraq. Or In the Loop, a very funny satire about high level government strategizing (or lack of it) featuring whip smart dialogue and James Gandolfini. And if you just want to have some fun, and you don’t mind a little zombie gore, check out Zombieland starring Woody Harrelson as the baddest zombie slayer ever. It’s a good movie. Really.

Precious

2009-12-04T18:08:00.000-08:00

The most unique thing about Precious is its heroine. Sixteen year old Claireece Precious Jones (played by glowing newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) is stuck in middle school and pregnant with her second child. Her home life is excruciating – her mother violently abusive, and her absent father responsible for her two children. Precious survives by disappearing into her vivid imagination, where she is famous – a movie star, a singer, a dancer – wearing glamorous clothes and walking red carpets on the arms of besotted young men. But her internal dialogue isn’t all fantasy: pondering the reality of her grim life, she bluntly calls her father a rapist, and acknowledges the emptiness of her mother’s days, which are mostly spent eating, watching television, collecting welfare checks. Somehow, in spite of these disastrous role models, Precious finds the determination to hold out a little flame of hope: “Every day I tell myself, something’s gonna happen. I’m gonna break through, or someone’s gonna break through to me. Someday.”

This isn’t The Blind Side – there are no rich white people to come to the rescue, and Precious doesn’t have special talents to market – but the very reality of this film is what makes it moving. The people who ultimately step in to help Precious are just regular folks doing their jobs: a school principal (Nealla Gordon), a teacher (Paula Patton), a nurse (Lenny Kravitz), a welfare worker (Mariah Carey).

Shot with nearly painful reality by director Lee Daniels - it’s as if there is a camera perched on Precious’ shoulder. I almost ducked when her mother pitched a frying pan her way. And when her teacher, Ms. Rain, takes her home one night, we are intimately aware of Precious’ amazed response to the modest but charming home, and the comfortable but spirited conversation between Ms. Rain and her partner. “These people talk like TV shows I don’t watch,” she observes. The film moves in small steps, taking us bit by bit through Precious’ evolution, not with giant dramatic moments but small significant ones. As difficult as it is, sometimes, to watch, the film is always believable.

With a ferocious performance by Monique as Mary, Precious’ mother; she is a monster, but Monique makes her a multifaceted one. Paula Patton plays Ms. Rain with dignity and compassion, and just enough vulnerability. But the film belongs to Gabourey Sidibe, a complete newcomer to movies who captures Precious’ grim outward resignation without letting go of the character’s inward hope and determination. Don’t stay away from Precious because of its harsh moments; this film is well worth seeing. Playing in some 600 scattered locations around the country.

New Moon

2009-12-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

Bella Swan (Kristin Stewart) is torn between two lovers, and either one could cause her serious bodily harm. Talk about feelin’ like a fool. In the latest installment of the Twilight franchise, vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) has decided that love-of-his-life Bella isn’t safe around his kind, being human and all, so he and the rest of the Cullens decamp from Forks and vanish. This bums Bella out, so she sits in her room for several screen minutes, looking out the window while time passes by in the form of scrolling screen captions: October, November, December.

But even Twilight’s got to find a plotline, so into the breach comes Jacob, Bella’s childhood pal from the local Indian tribe; he’s grown up, buffed out, and he thinks Bella’s real cute. He’s also a werewolf, and in the Twilight universe werewolves are sworn to protect humans from vampires. This could make things interesting, in a Sabrina kind of way: will Bella stick with the handsome, elegant, dead vampire, or move over to the warmhearted, good looking, very alive werewolf?

Well, lesson not learned. Bella is stuck on Edward, but it’s not all bad, because she ends up jetting off to

Italy

to save him from the only actually dangerous vamps in the Twilight saga, and that gives us about five minutes of Dakota Fanning playing a dark hearted vampire enforcer, which is pretty much the most interesting thing in the movie. Have you seen the odd film critic refer to New Moon as a Dakota Fanning vehicle? It’s a testament to Fanning’s restrained, but malevolent performance, and to the fact that not much happens in this movie.

Speaking of acting, the much maligned Taylor Lautner, who was nearly dropped from the franchise after the first film, shows his acting chops here, playing the teenage werewolf with just the right balance of fear and confusion on the one side, and delight in his newfound power on the other. The warmhearted, often humorous interactions between the wolf pack boys and between Bella and Jacob are the best part of the film. New Moon smashed box office records in its opening weekend and quickly declined, which is normal for this kind of picture – the biggest fans turn out early, and then ticket sales calm down. Still playing in thousands of theaters around the country.

An Education

2009-10-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

Set in London in 1962, An Education tells the story of Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a bright, ambitious sixteen year old who hopes to attend Oxford, become cultured and literate and leave her modest suburban beginnings behind. Played with mischievous brilliance by Carey Mulligan (Pride and Prejudice), Jenny is charming and silly and cynical and smart, and the film’s early scenes where she lounges with her schoolgirl friends, planning glittering futures and giggling about boys, are perfectly done.

But then Jenny meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), a dapper con man nearly twice her age. She is waiting at a bus stop in a downpour, bedraggled and clutching her cello and book bag; David rolls up and acknowledges that while it would be reckless for her to accept a ride from him, couldn’t he just give her cello a lift home? David is taken with Jenny and he charms his way into her life and into the confidence of her parents. Allowing them to believe that he and their daughter are well chaperoned, he introduces Jenny to a world of jazz clubs and champagne, restaurants and race tracks, extravagance and glamour. It’s all fun, David tells her, and while Jenny luxuriates in his attention and lavish lifestyle, she starts to question her own well laid plans. What she doesn’t question is David himself; with the innocent confidence of an adolescent, she believes she knows everything she needs to about her captivating paramour.

An Education is rightly described as a coming of age film, and adults watching the story unfold will assume that naïve Jenny is headed for a very long fall. But the film is more complicated than that. Screenwriter Nick Hornby surrounds Jenny with interesting adults who have taken different life paths; as Jenny rethinks her future, they revisit their own decisions (with the exception of Emma Thompson’s hard as nails headmistress – she never wavers). So while the film is all about Jenny’s experience, the story is thought provoking in a bigger way, with an underlying seriousness of tone even in lighthearted moments. Unlike most coming of age pictures, An Education is likely to appeal to adults more than teens, and given the older man – younger woman plot, that may be just as well.

The acting is terrific all around. Carey Mulligan is already on the short list for a Best Actress nod. Peter Sarsgaard plays David with vulnerability and a touch of tenderness, so that we have sympathy for him even though we know he’s probably a louse. Alfred Molina is a revelation as Jenny’s buttoned up father who wants the world for his daughter even though he rarely strays more than a mile or two from his house. And Olivia Williams is lovely as the teacher who stoically stands by Jenny even when she is at her teenaged worst. Every performance is worth seeing but, fair warning, parents of teens may find this film disturbing. Playing in limited release around the country, mostly major metro areas.

What's on for Halloween

2009-10-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

There aren’t a lot of new films to see this weekend, because people don’t much go to the movies on Halloween, so the big studios are holding out. The only splashy opening is This Is It, the documentary based on footage from Michael Jackson’s final concert rehearsals. The film drew middling reviews and middling crowds when it opened Tuesday night. Critics complained that it was neither a good documentary nor a good concert film. But there were fans, many of whom found the film as intriguing as the man, which is to say if you find Michael Jackson intriguing, you will probably enjoy the film. If you want to honor the holiday by scaring yourself silly, go see Paranormal Activity. If you’ve done that already, look for a small film called House of the Devil, which is creating a stir among horror fans – sort of a Satanic eighties cult thing, with Rosemary’s Baby thrown in. If you’re in the mood for the occult but you don’t want to be scared, try Zombieland. This cheerful little post apocalyptic buddy road movie is a lot of fun if you can manage the Zombie gore stuff.

Struck at home, answering the door? Think about renting a classic: maybe some Hitchcock, like Dial M for Murder, or The Shining. Carrie is also a fun film, particularly if you have older teenage girls around. For an elegant but creepy take on vampires look for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Won a lot of awards when it came out in 1992. And, if vampires are your thing, a little Swedish film called Let the Right One In is creepy and intriguing and not at all Hollywood. Try to see the original before the remake comes out next year. An American Werewolf in London just got a big re-release on Blue Ray and HD and all that, if you’ve never seen it it’s a good horror film; scary and dark, but well acted and funny. John Landis directed. These are mostly R rated: if you want something tamer, and you’ve missed the Zeitgeist, you could try Twilight, a vampire love story with hardly any fangs. If you have a lot of trick or treaters while you’re watching this, it won’t make any difference.

What to see, what to see...

2009-10-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend the big opener is Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze’s (Being John Malkovich) adaptation of the classic children’s book. Getting generally good to excellent reviews, although some critics think the storyline is overloaded with dysfunctional family psychology. Universal acclaim for the special effects. You can also catch Law Abiding Citizen, a thriller starring Gerard Butler (300, The Ugly Truth) as a vigilante seeking revenge when the man who murdered his wife and daughter gets a plea bargain and walks. Jamie Foxx plays the District Attorney in Butler’s cross hairs. Critics didn’t like this picture, but early screenings with regular folks went okay. Rated R for some very troubling violence. The Stepfather is a remake; the original came out in 1987 and was a surprisingly good little horror movie that did well on the festival circuit. This version, starring Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl), didn’t prescreen and hasn’t been reviewed by anyone. Not a good sign.

Still in theaters: Couples Retreat, last week’s box office winner, is not a great film but it could be diverting if you are in the mood a mindless night out. Zombieland is the most purely entertaining film in theaters. It’s funny and charming and quirky and strange. It does require a certain amount of tolerance for gross Zombie stuff, but in a fun way. If you prefer to think when you go to the movies, and you live in a major metropolitan area, consider A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers’ latest, about a father suffering like Job in a Jewish community in 1960’s Minneapolis. It’s quirky without much funny, but overall an interesting film. The Informant features Matt Damon as a corporate whistle blower with questionable motivations. Damon is terrific, the film a little odd as it tries to tell the story as an absurdist comedy. It’s not completely off the mark but it doesn’t quite work. You could also look for The Invention of Lying, the Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras) comedy about a world where no one can lie – except, apparently, Gervais. It has gotten middling reviews but the more admiring ones point out that it has a subversive message. If you see the film, look for that.

Bright Star

2009-10-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

Beautifully expressed love story. The romance of John Keats and Fanny Brawne plays out on screen with gentleness and restraint.

Keats is a legend among English poets (A thing of beauty is a joy forever…), and most of us are at least a little familiar with his work. He died young, of tuberculosis, but in the years before his death he was consumed by a great passion for young Fanny. It was not a popular match: Keats’ friends didn’t trust the young woman, believing her to be fickle and a flirt, and her mother could not approve an engagement to a penniless poet. None of this stopped the young lovers, however, and writer/director Jane Campion shows, with great believability, the inevitability of their romance. There are no Hollywood contrivances here, no “meet cute” scenes where snappy sarcastic dialogue signals that a couple will get together in the end. Fanny and John’s courtship proceeds slowly, frequently chaperoned by her young siblings, and it is the children’s reactions that often telegraph the significance of the lovers’ exchanges, necessarily subdued in Victorian England. Campion is very good at this, animating her story with supporting characters that, with an expression or subtle gesture, shine a light on a small but important moment in a scene.

One of the intriguing things about Fanny and John’s love story is that its details were unknown for decades following Keats’ death. Fanny mourned for years but finally moved on, marrying and having a family of her own. However, unbeknownst to her husband, she kept Keats’ ardent love letters, and her children arranged for them to be published after their parents’ deaths. These letters form the basis of much of Campion’s story, and she pulls whole lines of dialogue from them, providing a sense of authenticity that often goes missing when period films try to attract a modern audience. Keats’ poems are also included, but organically, read and discussed by Keats’ peers and shared between John and Fanny, even though she says plainly that she doesn’t always understand them. However, Campion makes sure Fanny gets credit for being more than an object of affection and desire: the young woman designs and makes all her own clothing; she is often shown stitching or sketching, an artist in her own right.

Tremendous performances all around: Abbie Cornish as Fanny is luminous but steely – you easily believe she would pursue her passion regardless of obstacles. Ben Whishaw inhabits Keats with all his dramatic artistry. And Kerry Fox plays Fanny’s conflicted mother with simple, beautiful, humanity. There are moments in Bright Star that are heartbreakingly romantic, and others that are heartbreakingly sad, but you never feel manipulated. It's fair to say that this film runs long but it is very good, and it will stay with you after you leave the theater. Playing all across the country. Definite Oscar bait, most likely in the acting and costume categories.

Star Trek

2009-05-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

Terrific summer movie. JJ Abrams reboots the Star Trek franchise by starting, not at the very beginning, but before that: before the 1960’s TV series, before Kirk and Spock and the crew of the Starship Enterprise got acquainted, before the ship was voyaging. It’s clever stuff, because even though there have been ten Star Trek films – six with the original cast – this Star Trek seems like the original movie version of a much loved old story, like you’re seeing favorite characters come to life on screen for the very first time. Or anyway, a youngster version of them.

So we meet James Tiberius Kirk as a brash young man, oozing bad attitude but charming as hell; he gets into a bar brawl with a bunch of clean cut Starfleet recruits, and comes to the attention of Captain Christopher Pike, familiar to true Trekkies as the original commander of the starship Enterprise. Pike, it turns out, wrote his PhD thesis on Kirk’s father, a famously courageous starship captain who saved his crew (as well as his wife and son) by sacrificing himself in a battle with a very mysterious Romulan vessel. Who knew they had PhDs in space? Pike checks up on Kirk, discovers the young man is brilliant, if incorrigible, and talks him into joining Starfleet. “You’ll graduate in four years,” Pike says. “I’ll do it in three,” Kirk rashly responds. And away we go.

Chris Pine is dazzling as Captain Kirk; he deftly pulls out the swaggering essence of the legendary captain without a hint of imitation. Zachary Quinto is slightly less convincing as Spock, but that might be due to his suggestive scenes with the stunning Lt. Uhuru. No icy veined Vulcan there. Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy and Simon Pegg as Scotty both give nods to their legendary characters (very satisfying to Star Trek fans) but also bring a youthful energy – or in Pegg’s case, a youthful goofiness – to their roles.

Of course there’s a bad guy, in this case a Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana). Nero is seething with anger towards Spock; he holds the Vulcan responsible for the destruction of his home planet. He travels through space in a colossal, dangerously armed vessel, confronting Starfleet ships, seeking Spock, hoping to wreak his revenge. His quest is complicated, though, by a rift in the space time continuum that has altered hundreds of years of events. This creates confusion for Nero, and Spock, and occasionally the audience, but it’s still nifty stuff, since it pretty much changes the future, wiping out the adventures of the original Starship Enterprise. That means that this new Enterprise can boldly go where no crew has gone before. Good set up for sequels. Opened strong over Mother’s Day weekend and still playing everywhere. If you happen to catch it on IMAX, let me know what you thought.

Cranky mutant: Wolverine

2009-05-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a prequel to the other X-Men films, telling the story of how Wolverine got his sharp silver claws, and his nickname, and all that. He’s a mutant, as are all the X-Men, each with a different but remarkable ability, and in the best X-Men stories you have big battles where the mutants team up and outsmart bad guys using their extraordinary talents. Cool stuff. Unfortunately, Wolverine has precious little of it. In the opening scenes we meet a cast of interesting mutant characters, played by interesting actors, like Dominic Monaghan and Will i Am; they are recruited along with Wolverine and his brother Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) for a mysterious government mission in Nigeria, but then Wolverine wearies of the random bloodshed and walks away. After that the story shifts to an idyllic cabin in the Canadian Rockies where our hero is living happily ever after with a pretty teacher, and mostly the rest of the X-Men fade away, showing up only in brief scattered scenes through the rest of the movie. But there’s plenty of slam bam action, because when Wolverine goes AWOL he irks the evil Sabretooth, who is really put out that little bro walked away from the family business. So he sets about trying to destroy Wolverine’s “normal life,” and then Wolverine gets all mad (his signature beserker rage) and agrees to an experimental process to have his skeleton coated with adamantium, because he wants to become indestructible and destroy Sabretooth. Sibling stuff, on a mutant scale.

To the film’s credit, there are plot twists that will surprise anyone who isn’t a diehard fan, and many of the action scenes are well staged and fun to watch. Hugh Jackman is terrific, and Lynn Collins, who plays Kayla (Silverfox to devotees), holds her own against him and brings a nice calm to the over amped proceedings. The portrayal of the foul, motor mouth, quick as lightning Deadpool has caused great angst among X-Men fans, but Ryan Reynolds is really entertaining in the role, and it’s a shame that we don’t get to see more of him. Equally fun is Gambit, a young dude who can turn any object into a deadly weapon; he’s played by Taylor Kitsch, the bad boy from Friday Night lights. X-Men: Origins is a decent popcorn picture, I’d give it a five on a scale of one to ten; it’s no Ironman, but if you’re in the mood for this kind of movie it’s not a bad way to go. Scored the top spot at the box office on its opening weekend, but it will slip against Star Trek come Friday. (Incidentally, if you’re a fan of the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, this one is supposed to be extra good.)

They're he-ere

2009-04-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

Wolverine arrives in theaters tomorrow – 4099 theaters – and the summer blockbuster season officially begins. The first weekend in May has been good to comic book superheroes, with Spiderman, Iron Man, and the X-Men all bringing in big crowds; the Wolverine people will be hoping for at least that kind of success, if only because if they don’t hit it big everyone will compare their box office to Spiderman, Iron Man, and the X-Men. Unfortunately, the outlook is a little bit bleak: early reviews of the picture are mixed, mostly complaining that the film doesn’t have much to say, just a bunch of slam bam nonsense. But c’mon, this is a comic book movie. What’s it supposed to say? And anyway, Hugh Jackman stars and he’s been working out. So I figure, grab some popcorn, get a nice stadium seat, and spend a couple hours in the dark, forgetting about the economy and torture and pandemics and that big fight Brad and Angie keep having. If you aren’t into special effects but you still want to see a mindless, mediocre movie, Ghosts of Girlfriends past also opens on Friday, with Matthew McConaughey playing an irascible playboy who learns his lesson when three ghosts visit him. Yup, somebody stole that plotline again, and it’s not even December. This one is a romantic comedy and McConaughey is usually fun to watch; Jennifer Garner also stars and from a distance, anyway, seems miscast. Playing in many theaters. If you are looking for something a little more adult, The Soloist and State of Play are holding steady at the multiplex; you could also look for Adventureland and Sunshine Cleaning, both very entertaining but in limited release. Next week: Star Trek.

Before the deluge...

2009-04-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

Three major releases this weekend: The Soloist, Fighting and Obsessed. The Soloist is based on a true story about an LA Times columnist who befriends a brilliant schizophrenic musician living on Skid Row. Robert Downey Jr. plays the columnist, Jamie Foxx plays the musician, but apparently that isn’t enough: early reviews have been mixed, and the film was bounced around the release schedule which almost always means the studio suspects a dud. However, if you love these actors The Soloist is worth a shot, as every critic has praised their performances. And it is a remarkable story. Obsessed is the Beyoncé Fatal Attraction style thriller, and there have been no sneaks or early critic screenings which makes it hard to assess, except to say you should be cautious about films that have no sneaks or early critic screenings. Finally, Fighting, surprisingly, is getting good early buzz, even though the trailer looks plain silly. Channing Tatum (Stop-Loss, Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) stars as Shawn MacArthur, a newcomer to New York who falls under the influence of con artist Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard) and becomes a street fighter, brawling for audiences of wealthy gamblers. Critics say that the story is predictable but well told, and the characters are intriguing. Rated PG-13; the fight scenes are intense but not over the top. 17 Again and State of Play, last week's box office champs, are holding on to lots of theaters, but if you're looking for something a little more small scale, consider Sunshine Cleaning, starring Any Adams as a young woman trying to make a go of a crime scene clean up business; or Adventureland, about a new college grad who is forced to work in a tacky amusement park when his family finances give out. And hold on to your popcorn: blockbuster season kicks off next weekend with Wolverine.

State of Play

2009-04-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

Entertaining political thriller. Russell Crowe plays Cal McCaffrey, a scruffy investigative journalist whose dogged pursuit of a story leads him to uncover dangerous and difficult truths about an old friend, Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). McCaffrey works for the Washington Globe (read Post) a newspaper on the edge of extinction; he is under pressure by editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren) to produce stories that will sell papers. But he’s a purist: he follows the leads, he looks for the truth, and he reports news, not dirt. When it comes to light that the Congressman Collins story includes a sex scandal, Lynne hooks him up with Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) a young up-and-comer who writes a blog for the Globe’s electronic edition. The two grudgingly go to work together, each suspicious of the other’s role at the paper, but each needing the other anyway; a new take on the old buddy formula.

And no, Cal and Della don’t fall in love or into bed; spoiler alert, I suppose. But what’s good about this film is that it avoids the clichéd traps typical of mass market thrillers, good and evil are a little blurry here, everybody has a weakness. Unfortunately, this is also the film’s failing, because it weaves an elaborate, dangerous web of intrigue and conspiracy, and then somehow drops the thread, leaving us with an odd and unsatisfying conclusion. But it’s a fun ride, and the acting is top notch: any scene with Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren is a kick, and late in the story Justin Bateman turns up and steals the show. Even if you can’t stand this movie, you should stick around for that. Not a box office knockout, but doing decent business around the country; it will probably be harder to find this weekend when Wolverine hits the screen.

April 17

2009-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend brings the opening of State of Play, a thriller starring Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams as relentless journalists trying to find the truth in the dark underbelly of Washington. Depending on the critic, this film is either darn good or a colossal bore, with most leaning towards good; overall reviews are above average. Ironically, Crank gets the same reception with a much different (no Oscar winners here) pedigree: this slam bang over the top action picture will either thrill or disgust you, depending on whether or not you are a teenage boy. Zac Ephron’s new picture 17 Again hits the multiplexes this weekend, and if you need to ask who that is well, don’t see this film.

Hollywood Waking Up -Three Big Openings

2009-03-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hollywood is quietly revving its engine this weekend, sending some high profile movies out to theaters. All the press has been about Julia Roberts so called “comeback” in Duplicity, a double crossing corporate caper movie where Clive Owen (The International) plays her partner in crime and love interest. This film looks silly but it has been surprisingly well received by critics, and it was made by the guy who wrote Michael Clayton, so, pretty good pedigree. Also features Paul Giamatti (John Adams) and Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton and also John Adams, only he played Ben Franklin). Also hitting theaters is I Love You Man, a bromance movie about a guy (Paul Rudd) who is getting married and doesn’t have any best man candidates. So he sets out to find a new best friend. Depending on who you talk to, this is very funny, a romantic comedy turned inside out, or a routine buddy flick with lots of poop jokes. In fairness, most of the reviews have leaned towards funny. Finally, we have the latest Nicholas Cage outing, Knowing, where he plays a teacher who discovers that an elementary school time capsule may be predicting the future. Spooky. Actually, this one seems really silly (and critics have pretty much panned it; Roger Ebert being the notable exception, he thought it was great), but like a lot of Nicholas Cage pictures, it is scoring big at the box office, so, looks like a hit. All three of these pictures are playing in a whole lot of theaters so you should be able to find one near you.

"Knowing" Too Much

2009-03-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Quite possibly the wackiest movie I have ever seen. It opens in a grade school classroom in 1959, where eager students are drawing pictures that are destined to be sealed up in a time capsule – except one little girl, Lucinda, isn’t drawing pictures at all: she is frantically covering her page with neat rows of numbers. Flash forward fifty years, the time capsule is opened and a boy named Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) takes home Lucinda’s strange writings. This turns out to be a good thing, because Caleb’s dad is John Koestler (Nicolas Cage), an astrophysicist who spends nights pacing his living room, drinking scotch, and mourning the tragic death of his wife; during one of these reveries he takes a look at the mysterious page Caleb brought home, and notices a series of numbers that seem to predict 9/11. Sensing significance, Koestler frantically tries to follow Lucinda’s strange trail, suspecting it warns of some kind of global catastrophe.

From here the film careens down a completely implausible course, with John Koestler roaring around trying to solve the numbers riddle while Caleb stares soulfully about, apparently unperturbed by his father’s growing terror. They find Lucinda’s daughter and granddaughter (this is where Rose Byrne comes in) , providing a kind of love interest thing for both father and son; they encounter strange glowing men who whisper, and there are these shiny black rocks everywhere that seem to have no meaning at all. But in spite of the silliness I enjoyed this movie. It’s fast paced and unpredictable, and not at all serious, and if you accept the premise that a little girl’s crazed scribbling might harbinger the future, the rest of the story makes a kind of nutty sense, except the ending, where it seemed like the writer lost his train of thought and started working on another film. Playing everywhere and making lots of money, as Nic Cage pictures tend to do.

Fun at Work: Sunshine Cleaning

2009-03-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sunshine Cleaning is a goofy movie but it’s fun to watch. Amy Adams plays a former high school hot shot who finds herself in a dead end job with a dead end romance, trying to raise a troubled child on a shoestring budget. Humiliated by her situation – especially when she runs into better off high school cronies – she decides to reinvent herself and comes up with the idea of crime scene cleanups. With little real knowledge of what her new career entails, she jumps in, dragging her deadbeat little sister (Emily Blunt) along to help her.

There are many interesting directions this plot line could take and Sunshine Cleaning pretty much misses all of them. What’s left is not always that interesting; in fact some of the big developments of the story are pretty silly. But Emily Blunt and Any Adams are so engaging it doesn’t matter. This is lighthearted entertainment with a little bit of an edge, a welcome shift from the dark themes of a lot of recent releases (Watchmen, anyone?). Wonderful supporting performances from Mary Lynn Rajskub (“Chloe” if you’re a 24 fan) and Clifton Collins, best known as the killer Truman Capote fancied in Capote. The kid (Jason Spevack) is good too, toeing a fine line between brattiness and innocence. Nominated for the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. Rated R for a handful of stomach turning moments connected to the whole crime scene cleanup thing (there is no real gore in this picture) and some sex and drugs. Currently in very limited release, opening a little wider on March 20.

Dark Side: The Watchmen

2009-03-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Watchmen is a film noir comic book gore fest, with sex. Set in the 1980’s, it imagines a world where the United States and the Soviet Union are on the verge of a nuclear showdown, and humankind is terrified. But, reassuringly, America has a convincing deterrent: a big blue guy named Dr. Manhattan, the only true superhero among The Watchmen; he experienced some kind of a nuclear accident that made him godlike. And he’s on our side! Or is he? Can a big blue guy who exists in a quantum universe outside of time really be invested in the people of planet Earth?

The rest of the Watchmen gang are superheroes in the Batman mode: regular people who are in really good shape. The best of them is Jackie Earle Hayley, and whenever he is on screen the energy, action, everything picks up. He plays Rorschach, the guy with the weird face mask that looks like a big sock with morphing patches of ink spreading across his features. I liked him better, though, when he took the mask off. Not an imposing presence, he’s a little guy wired up like a ticking bomb, and no matter how many linebacker sized thugs he faces down, his expression is slightly impatient, slightly amused, never afraid.

The Watchmen has a paper thin plot with a twist at the end that is only surprising if you’ve never seen a movie like this before. It’s not as visually arresting as 300 or Sin City, and it’s not as much fun as Iron Man or Dark Knight. And it is very, very gory; lots of disturbing images that don’t add up to much, plot wise. But if you have a strong stomach, and you’re looking for some late winter escapist action, this movie will do. Playing all over the place, won the box office on its opening weekend but lost the second round to Race to Witch Mountain. Huh.

On a Dramatic Note: Two Lovers

2009-03-01T15:03:00.000-08:00

Small, intimate drama with a performance by Joaquin Phoenix that is so fresh and intriguing I found myself hoping, early on, that this isn’t really his last film. Phoenix plays Leonard, a youngish man with a broken heart who survives a suicide attempt, and then moves in with his parents to recuperate. They introduce him to Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of a business partner, a young woman who sees Leonard’s pain and wants to save him from it. Leonard, meanwhile, is falling for his neighbor, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) an unpredictable, childlike woman who is only looking for a friend.

While this is the story of a love triangle it is not the kind Hollywood usually spins; this isn’t Sabrina, for example, where the heroine finally learns that glitz and glamour are not substitutes for love. Two Lovers is more like a coming of age story for people in their thirties. These characters are confronted by their lives and they have to decide what to do about it. It’s refreshing, and honest, but also kind of grim and claustrophobic; it’s hard to see any real happiness on the characters’ collective horizons. Nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which is a pretty big deal, and it has been generally well reviewed. Performances are terrific, including Isabella Rossellini popping up as Leonard’s mother. (Have you seen Blue Velvet, people? Who ever thought Dorothy Vallens could morph into a Jewish mother from the Bronx?) Currently in limited release around the country, mostly big cities.

Oscar Frenzy

2009-02-19T18:26:00.000-08:00

Are there films opening this weekend? A couple, yes, but they are well hidden behind the Oscar hype. This is what’s out there: Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail, and Fired Up. Madea Goes to Jail is Perry’s latest installment in his very successful Madea series; the films are not screened for critics (or anyone else, apparently) so it’s hard to get a heads up on this one. Fired Up has been reviewed, though, and it is not a well liked film. The best thing about it, according to a lot of critics, is that it borrows heavily from Wedding Crashers – but they all recommend that you see that instead. Meanwhile, there is lots of Oscar intrigue, like, who is not going to be allowed to walk the red carpet, because they are surprise presenters? (Are you all on the edge of your seats on this one?) Or, is it appropriate, in these economic times, for someone like, say, Beyonce, to wear a 200 carat diamond necklace to the show? (For the record, the jewelers and designers who dress these women think that the high ticket elegance is good for us regular folks; we are transported, they believe, by the spectacle of famous people in fancy clothes. Makes us forget all about our 401ks.)

Meanwhile, Slumdog is trying to grab the box office gold by ramping up its theater counts – the little movie that could is on almost as many screens as The International this weekend. Otherwise, if you haven’t see Milk yet, that’s a good one, and it could pull an upset on Sunday. A couple of DVD releases are interesting: Changeling -- Angelina Jolie plays a mother in 1928 Los Angeles whose son vanishes; the LAPD, desperate to solve the case, pick up another boy and try to convince her that they’ve found her son. Notorious true bit of Los Angeles crime history. Jolie is nominated for Best Actress for this part. Also Religulous, Bill Maher’s traveling documentary about religion and the religious; entertaining, generally interesting film. If you have preteens, High School Musical 3 is out on DVD this week, but then, if you have preteens, you already know that. See you on the Red Carpet! (Actually, I won’t be there, I just watch the Oscars at home on TV.)

Not so thrilling: The International

2009-02-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

Clive Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent who suspects The International Bank of involvement in a string of murders. Naomi Watts is Eleanor Whitman, a New York City Assistant DA who has the same suspicions; why the Manhattan DA’s office is interested in the activities, legal or otherwise, of a bank that is headquartered in Luxembourg isn’t exactly clear. But, if you decide to spend your Friday evening with an escapist thriller, logic shouldn’t be high on your list of priorities.

As capers go, this one is pretty entertaining. There are some good action sequences (including an elaborate shoot out at the Guggenheim) and Clive Owen brings great intensity and earnestness to his role. There are times when he seems nearly unhinged in his determination to get the bad guys. There are plot twists and shifting alliances and surprise developments and some Jack Bauer style disregard for the law. There is also a lot of stuff that doesn’t make any sense; you won’t have trouble coming up with plot holes on the ride home. The International is getting middling reviews from critics, which is pretty good for this particular bunch of February releases – most everyone, in other words, thinks it’s better than Shopaholic and Friday the 13th. Faint praise. Currently playing just about everywhere.