★★★★ Joel and Ethan Coen — always unfairly accused of favoring craftsmanship over emotion — might have crafted their most deeply felt movie yet. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), the 14-year-old daughter of a murdered Arkansas farmer, hires infamous U.S. Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track and bring to justice the man responsible. Even the least-loved Coen films have offered superficial pleasures, and this one has plenty: punchy dialogue; shimmering cinematography; Matt Damon’s nimble performance as a puffed-up Texas Ranger. The soul of the story, however, is the relationship between Rooster and Hattie, both brilliantly performed; what develops between Mattie and Cogburn is pure respect for someone with a toughness each had thought only existed in themselves. Mattie might be the perfect Coen heroine, with a controlled exterior that makes it seem as though there’s nothing more emotional going on beneath the surface. Her final act in the film shows that perception to be a miscalculation — and maybe folks have been making the same miscalculation about the Coens all these years. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Columbia Place; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ If all you wanted was a historically comprehensive guide to a subject’s life, you could spend five-hours-plus reading a good non-fiction biography-or hell, spend 10 minutes reading the Wikipedia entry. Spanning more than 20 years, director Olivier Assayas’s made-for-French-TV miniseries follows the career of notorious terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, code-named Carlos (Edgar Ramírez), including his audacious assault on a meeting of OPEC ministers. Ramírez does a fine job of embodying Carlos’ swaggering self-confidence as he becomes the terrorist equivalent of an egomaniacal international rock star, but Assayas really isn’t interested in putting Carlos on the couch. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Carlos will throw mountains of details at you, since virtually every new character that appears is accompanied by an onscreen caption explaining their real name, their code name, their position within whatever organization is applicable, etc. The who and what of history is enough if all you want to do is be factually accurate; drama needs to make us care more about the why. And it needs to make us believe that our time wouldn’t be more efficiently spent on Wikipedia. (NR) (Nickelodeon Theatre)
★★ Jack Black looms massively over the rest of the landscape, overwhelming everything around him — or at least that seems to have been the intent. In an adaptation that it’s best to pretend has nothing to do with Jonathan Swift, Black plays newspaper mail-room slacker Lemuel Gulliver who — in an attempt to impress the travel editor (Amanda Peet) he’s crushing on — feigns the ability to take on an assignment in the Bermuda Triangle. And thus he winds up shipwrecked in Lilliput, a big man at last among its tiny inhabitants. Aside from a few amusing pop-culture gags — Gulliver builds himself up among the Lilliputians by telling the Star Wars and Titanic stories as stuff that happened to him — it all feels mostly designed as a vehicle for Black to do his familiar shtick as a blustering loser. And while he generally doesn’t force things to the point that he becomes annoying, neither can he support a bunch of random, episodic nonsense with the same basic premise delivered more cleverly in Kung Fu Panda. (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal 7; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ It’s too easy for laud Colin Firth for his performance here, yet it’s also too easy to fold your arms defiantly against the high-toned look of the film, thus missing its considerable charms. In 1934 England, the Duke of York (Firth) begins working on his crippling stutter with unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), even as events rush him toward the likelihood that he may become king. The relationship between Logue and the monarch-to-be is the focal point, and director Tom Hooper gives a delightful spark to their sessions. There’s nothing profound going on in this tale of a prince finding common ground with a commoner — simply a satisfying pairing of two talented actors. While Firth is certainly good, Rush actually proves more impressive; his performance is a unique mix of simple self-confidence and roguish humor. It’s a bit harder to embrace the woes of an emotionally stunted blue-blood, but while Firth might not give the performance of the year, he makes for half of one hell of a team. (R) (Regal Columbiana Grande)
★★ In the closing scene of this latest return to the clash between neurotic male nurse Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his hard-nosed father-in-law Jack Byrnes (Robert DeNiro), Greg’s dad (Dustin Hoffman) says, “We have to laugh at the things that make us human: farts, burps …” And thus is excused a simmering heap of pointlessness-cum-sentimentality. The ostensible plot has Jack worrying about the family legacy after he has a heart attack, and hoping Greg has the stuff to become a patriarch. But really it’s all an excuse for an episodic parade of broad physical gags and situations where a third party arrives at precisely the moment required to completely misunderstand what’s going on. Owen Wilson provides low-key appeal returning as Kevin, but his refusal to overplay a scene only makes the manic desperation of the rest of the film more depressing. You know what else makes us human? The ability to use at least an ounce of brains to avoid complete wastes of our time and money. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★★★ Once again, director Darren Aronofsky conveys what the world looks like to people who have fallen into madness and obsession. Ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) begins to crack under the pressure of being cast as the lead in a production of Swan Lake that demands she play both the White Swan and its darker counterpart. The psychological tension involves Nina’s relationship with her controlling mother (Barbara Hershey), and what the pursuit of perfection can do to the soul — and it hardly takes a road map to find that subtext. But Aronofsky makes those ideas enthralling as we watch Nina crumble into hallucinations (or are they?) of physical transformation, Portman effortlessly playing someone whose sense of self is falling apart. There are bound to be viewers who find Black Swan too archetypal to be emotionally satisfying — or, for that matter, too just-plain-weird. Maybe that’s just further indication that Aronofsky has once again nailed the experience of prowling around inside someone else’s subconscious, seeing things you’d really prefer you hadn’t seen. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ Attempting to revive its appeal to the “faith audience,” this third installment of the Narnia series peppers its episodic adventure with unsubtle allegory. Youngest Pevensie siblings Lucy (Georgie Hensley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) return to Narnia with their annoying cousin Eustace (Will Poulter) to join King Caspian (Ben Barnes) in battling a nameless, faceless evil force. Nameless, faceless evil forces don’t make for the most compelling cinema, of course; a green mist doesn’t match Tilda Swinton’s smooth White Witch malevolence. There is, however, the welcome addition of Eustace, and the terrific casting of Poulter. He’s one of many characters with important lessons to learn, which is where the collision between conventional fantasy and Christian subtext gets awkward; scenes dealing with moral struggle are plunked down as though required to fill some quota. The charms of the film are challenged by the realization that, once again, Aslan is bound to turn into the leo ex machina that will solve all the really difficult problems with a mighty roar. (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong 10; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ Critics gripe about formulas, but if ever there were a formula that has proven its durability, it’s the odd-couple road comedy. Type-A architect Peter (Robert Downey Jr.) and spacey would-be actor Ethan (Zach Galifianakis) are forced to share a car ride from Atlanta to Los Angeles in time for the scheduled C-section birth of Peter’s first child. While co-writer/director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) works from a similar grab-bag of comedic scenarios as John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles, he isn’t nearly the sentimentalist Hughes is; the absence of a neat-and-tidy learning experience for Peter winds up being both bracing and vaguely unsatisfying. Of course, that matters less when the talented star tandem is spending 90 minutes delivering consistent bursts of laughter. It’s a bit of a disappointment that Due Date can’t build to a stronger climax, but what happens on the road to that ending proves odd couplings are still comedy gold. (R) (Carmike 14)
★★ You know what All The President’s Men was apparently missing? Scenes showing Woodward and Bernstein’s home lives, so we could appreciate the toll their investigations were having on them personally. That’s the only explanation for the approach in this fictionalized account of how former diplomat Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) wrote an editorial discrediting the Bush administration’s claims of an Iraqi nuclear enrichment program in 2003, and how administration officials subsequently “outed” his wife, undercover agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts). Early scenes do an effective job of setting up Wilson as an easily incensed crusader, and you can still build up a healthy sense of outrage at the way administration functionaries push until they get the answers they want, damn the long-term consequences. But as the narrative turns to how the Wilson-Plame family is hounded in the media by allegations of partisanship and boondoggling, it
becomes just another story of a marriage under pressure, and there’s nothing director Doug Liman can do to give it energy. Domestic angst doesn’t “humanize” this story of corrupted power; it buries the lead. (PG-13) (Regal Columbiana Grande)
★★★ Like Rocky, David O. Russell’s tale of a scrappy, working-class nobody who gets a title shot works not just because of its underdog sports-movie machinations but because of its quirky sense of character and place. It’s the real-life story of “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a brawler from Lowell, Mass., who struggles between looking out for his own career and staying loyal to his family, including employing his ex-boxer, crack-addict half-brother Dickie (Christian Bale) as his trainer. While Russell includes stuff like the obligatory “winning streak” montage, he offers plenty of smaller character moments, allowing the story and the terrific performances — particularly Bale’s sensational, motor-mouthed Dickie — room to breathe. Of course, eventually we’re going to need to see Micky in the ring, and while there’s nothing overtly wrong with the fight scenes, there’s nothing particularly interesting about them, particularly after the looser, funkier opening 90 minutes. The Fighter understands that we need to care just as much about what happens when the hero isn’t wearing a pair of gloves. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Columbia Place; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ The final installment in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy picks up from conclusion of the last one, with Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) injured and facing charges for the attempted murder of her father — but she’s still got investigative reporter Mykael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist) looking out for her and determined to blow the lid off the shadowy conspiracy that has persecuted her. The series remains frustrating as constructed, a plot-heavy monolith where the plot isn’t nearly as interesting as the characters — and even then, Blomkvist’s square-jawed determination only comes in a shabby second place. Rapace’s Lisbeth is still a magnetic presence; when she enters the courtroom defiantly clad in leather and spikes and sporting a fierce Mohawk, she’s a force of nature — and the only reason to sit through a sprawling 150 minutes of wrap-up. (NR) (Nickelodeon Theatre)
★★★ Sometimes a fantasy cliffhanger works brilliantly, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all; this one falls between the two. As the climactic chapter begins, Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is on the verge of taking over the magical world, while Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are on the run, searching for the mysterious Horcruxes that house shards of Voldemort’s soul. While taking advantage of the expanded running time to include J.K. Rowling’s allegory for militant racism, the filmmakers also spend a lot of time simply exploring the interaction between our three primary protagonists. While there’s an undeniable chemistry between these three young actors, it’s also true that they’re … well, three young actors. Previous films buffered their relative inexperience with significant roles for terrific supporting actors. Here, they have to carry plenty of emotional scenes — and as likeable as they all are, they don’t always have the necessary gravitas. Yet for all its bumps, this is a film series that has grown remarkably potent with age. The effectiveness of Part 1 becomes a function of what has come before — and what we know is still to come. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ James L. Brooks is a bit restrained for his take on romantic comedy to be classified as “screwball,” but there’s certainly something throwback about his goofy sensibility. He focuses on two people facing life-altering changes: Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), a softball star about to be cut after years on the national team; and George (Paul Rudd), a businessman facing indictment for financial misdeeds within his father’s (Jack Nicholson) company. It never feels like Brooks completely has a handle on Lisa’s character, so Witherspoon struggles to find a center. But there’s plenty of other terrific stuff here, including Owen Wilson’s genially womanizing pro pitcher and Rudd’s gung-ho enthusiasm at playing a guy determined to find hope in the middle of personal chaos. Structurally, it’s far from tidy, but its comedic rough edges make for much of its charm. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ In one of the most bizarre transitions from book to film in recent years, Jamie Reidy’s snarky my-life-as-a-pharmaceutical-rep memoir Hard Sell has become a sexier, slightly hipper version of self-sacrificing romantic melodramas like An Affair to Remember. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, a ne’er-do-well ladies’ man finding his first professional success selling drugs for Pfizer; along the way he meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway), an artist struggling with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Co-writer/director Edward Zwick-typically associated with sweeping, high-minded dramas like Glory and The Last Samurai-proves surprisingly light-footed at capturing the earthy, no-strings-attached relationship between a womanizer and a woman who’s just fine with not thinking long-term, particularly in Hathaway’s lively, edgy performance. But the framework of the early-’90s pharmaceutical biz-including the dawn of Viagra-feels utterly inconsequential to the romantic tension that ensues, and Zwick also doesn’t always know how to integrate comic relief like Jamie’s wealthy, immature brother (Josh Gad) into this story. The result is a bunch of individually interesting pieces that don’t always feel like they belong in the same movie. (R) (Carmike 14)
★★★★ This isn’t Will Ferrell’s first foray into feature animation voice work, but it’s the performance that says, “Of course he’s the perfect fit for this genre.” In this clever nature-versus-nurture spin on Superman mythology, two alien babies are sent to earth from dying planets — but Metroman (Brad Pitt) wound up with a good family and a straight shot toward heroism, while Megamind (Ferrell) landed in a prison and a life of super-villainy. While director Tom McGrath (Madagascar) includes some winking pop-culture references typical of DreamWorks animation, the gags are smart without being smug, and the story is an effective shift from predictable “be true to yourself” hokum. Mostly, though, it’s a terrific showcase for Ferrell, who lends more than a touch of Ron Burgundy to Megamind’s bombastic self-confidence. What Kung Fu Panda was for Jack Black, Megamind is for Ferrell: a satisfying adventure that’s also a star turn, even if you never actually see the star. (PG) (Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill)
★★★★ Disney might be concerned about emphasizing that this is a musical fairy tale about a princess — but even if this feels like a greatest-hits medley, it’s still charming, funny and deliciously entertaining. As per tradition, Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is held captive in a tower by an evil stepmother (Donna Murphy), until her true love (Zachary Levi) comes to rescue her. But the filmmakers are savvy enough to build an emotional hook of teen rebellion and over-protective parenting on which to hang a familiar format. And while plenty of Tangled feels familiar, from the song types to individual scenes, they nail the execution. Alan Menken’s tunes are Broadway-catchy; all three central voice performances are terrific. The comic relief proves genuinely amusing, while the action beats are choreographed for excitement and for laughs. It’s a shame that marketing worries appear to have inspired the studio to disavow a genre that has brought so much cinematic pleasure. Say it with me now: It’s a musical fairy tale about a princess. When we’re all humming and smiling our way through the happily-ever-afterward of watching, those silly words shouldn’t matter. (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ If you look too closely at anything about this remake of a 2005 French caper, it’ll fall apart entirely — so best to enjoy its purely superficial pleasures. Under heavy surveillance in Paris, Elise (Angelina Jolie), the lover of an on-the-lam thief, tries to throw authorities off the trail by picking a random guy on a Venice-bound train — American traveler Frank (Johnny Depp) — and pretending he’s the post-plastic-surgery target. Unfortunately, that suddenly puts Frank in the crosshairs not just of the authorities, but of the homicidal businessman from whom he stole billions. Don’t try to buy that authorities have engaged for two years in an operation as clumsy as what we see, or that all the plot turns make any logical sense. Simply enjoy Depp’s cagy performance — his startled utterance of the film’s lone F-bomb is priceless — and the way director Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) uses the music and scenery to capture the vibe of vintage romantic capers. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Columbia Place; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★★ The 3-D version of the film only kicks into 3-D when the action moves from the real world to The Grid, the digital universe first visited by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in the original 1982 computer-animation groundbreaker. That Wizard of Oz-ish transition feels like it might be necessary after we get the angsty back-story of how Flynn’s now-20-something son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) needs to enter The Grid to resolve his daddy abandonment issues. The Grid 2.0 proves unexpectedly breathtaking, serving up a break-neck 20 minutes of pure visual cool. But the minimalist narrative of the original is lacking here, and it’s hard to embrace the idea that there’s anything at stake emotionally in something that feels like you should be pumping quarters into it every 15 minutes. Tron: Legacy wants to lecture us about immersing ourselves in the digital world at the risk of our interactions in the real world. We could have enjoyed its candy-coated delights without having to be warned that there’s no place like home. (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Columbia Place; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
★★ Cinematically speaking, director Tony Scott just doesn’t know when to shut up. In this fact-based action drama, an unmanned railroad train carrying toxic chemicals is hurtling at 70-plus mph through southern Pennsylvania, and only a conductor-driver team pairing a veteran (Denzel Washington) and a rookie (Chris Pine) has a chance of stopping it. So what do Scott and screenwriter Mark Bomback do with that inherently propulsive story? They throw pointless background domestic drama at our main characters and wallow in cheap, evil-money-based-corporate-decision-making nonsense. Meanwhile, Scott’s camera swoops, dives, pirouettes and snap-zooms at arbitrary intervals — because that’s the only way he knows how to tell a story, even if he actually saps all the excitement from it in the process. There’s plenty of energy in Washington’s performance, but it’s tough to extract it from the yammering exposition-providing news announcers and the roar of Tony Scott making himself look very busy indeed. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal Columbiana Grande)
★★ A documentary filmmaker (Anna Faris) travels to Jellystone Park to shoot a project and soon crosses paths with Yogi Bear (voice of Dan Aykroyd) and his sidekick Boo-Boo (voice of Justin Timberlake). (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Columbia Place; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)
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