BLACK SWAN

An artistic work of severe passion and visual splendor. Some will find it superb and depressing at the same time, most others will be awestruck and exhilarated by the way it creates a sense of fatalism within the world of ballet. Black Swan is very much about paranoid schizophrenia as it is about ballet. True followers could not possibly doubt its director Darren Aronofsky, famous for “Requiem for a Dream” and “The Wrestler.” But it would be easy to walk in and doubt the abilities of Natalie Portman, whose “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” “Garden State” are decent films for their core audience but hardly a stretch. Portman’s performance though is simply amazing, she not only raises the squeamish dread of the piece but she brings a delicate beauty to the stage.


Nina (Portman) has never been a headliner for the New York Company ballet but she is approached by its impresario director Thomas (Vincent Cassell, a coup in casting) who lets her negotiate for her big break. Thomas turns everything from ballet, to cocktails, to individual coaching into an opportunity for sexual innuendo – he forces kisses on his menagerie of girls. The other girls are inherent competition.


Former ballerina star (Winona Ryder, puffy but intimidating) is dropped by the company – an implied decision by Thomas – paving way for bright future stars such as West Coast arrival Lily (Mila Kunis, a princess bitch who likes to party). Nina becomes guarded with Lily’s arrival, convinced that she wants to steal her role. Lily’s “friendliness” is a threat because there could be a shroud of duplicity as part of her confident personality.


It’s a life in a bubble for ballerinas who practice 12 hours a day, stick to a strict diet, pedicure their toes, and go to sleep early only to day after day repeat the cycle. Even for that lifestyle, Nina is a case of extreme discipline. Not one to require a boyfriend, Nina lives with and obeys her mother (Barbara Hershey), who lives vicariously through the success of her daughter. Some people aim so hard for perfection that no variants can be allowed in a routine.


Early on in the film, she is bothered by a rash that is getting bigger on her shoulder blade. The mother takes such concern that she watches Nina in every room of her house. When Nina awakens in the morning to masturbate, only to be startled, it is not a delusion that her mother is resting in the love sofa placed on the opposite side of the room.

But Nina starts seeing delusions as part of her obsessive-compulsiveness (she has a bad compulsion with her hangnails, too). She sees different versions of her own self in the mirror, sometimes a morphing of Lily who she fears, idolizes and fantasizes about all at the same time. The ballet requires a two-fold performance from Nina: To possess the pure graceful qualities of White Swan, and the tumult and fury of Black Swan. Nina is an expert of the former, and Thomas spends weeks of rehearsal razzing her so she can build up a wilder persona which the Black Swan part requires. Self-doubt feeds Nina’s paranoia, but is there some truth to her fears that Lily wants to seduce Thomas in the off-hours so she can replace her? Perhaps Thomas was right, and Nina needs to learn how to become the seductress.


Aronofsky designates his heroine with masochistic qualities as similar to his characters in his previous films. This isn’t the kind of romanticized ballet that was seen in “The Red Shoes” (1948) which had its tragic elements but was primarily embodied with an ornate beauty. “Black Swan” doesn’t always have a conventional beauty but it certainly is eye-popping. Aronofsky does have a beautiful way of photographing Portman as a pirouette. And as truncated as the final performance is for sake of running length, you still get an idea of what “Swan Lake” is all about if you have never seen it. Backstage disturbances mirror the drama of the stage performance like an unwise partnership between naïf and some version of Lucifer.

Grade: A

I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS

Features Jim Carrey in a corrosive black comic performance, yet at the end this is a dubious accomplishment. I Love You Phillip Morris has Jim Carrey as a con man and Ewan McGregor as Phillip Morris, disguising itself like feel-good entertainment for a few minutes until you see the undertow. It’s a gay love story with an unsympathetic and dishonest protagonist at its center. Lies and deception are not traits of his character; it is his character (it’s also based on a true story). All this might have been okay if it had taken a hard and perceptive approach in chronicling a pathological con artist. But it wants to be comical and quirky, and with that method, it comes out as real slimy entertainment.



Not all of it is boring, but it’s not comforting either. Steven Russell (Carrey) is a half-hearted policeman who does the dirty deed (sex!) with his wife Debbie (Leslie Mann) one minute, and then the dirty deed with another man the next. After Steven leaves his wife and quits his job, admitting dissatisfaction, he relocates to Florida to pursue a roving homosexual lifestyle. He wears gold watches, drives convertibles, and he lives in swank flats at adjustable low prices. Acts of fraud land him in prison.


While in prison, he falls for Phillip Morris. The most versatile and concentrated of actors, McGregor doesn’t do much in this movie other than act fey – it is not one of his more creative performances. Steven offers him the skies and the heavens, and as the dominant man he pretty much delivers. While they start out on different cellblocks, Steven soon fixes it so they can share the same cell. The movie is preoccupied with talking about oral sex a lot, which they both seem to share an affinity for its pleasures. But Steven gets a transfer to another prison which means they will have to acquiesce as pen pals. It’s not over, though, because when Steven gets out he educates himself on the law and figures out a way for Phillip’s case to be repealed.


Once they are both on the outside they are able to move in together. Steven desires for the both of them to have a grand and luxurious lifestyle. Steven becomes a lawyer imposter and gets himself a great big six-figure job at a fancy law firm. He doesn’t know what he’s doing at first but he soon masters it (these are among the most entertaining parts of the movie). But a great job is not good enough so Steven starts to defraud the law firm. New house, new cars, new jet skis – the spending doesn’t stop. But Steven is soon on the run from the law.


Steven keeps getting caught and then keeps fleeing, over and over again, for the rest of the film. Phillip is a flustered romantic object who gets tired of waiting for Steven, and then eventually, stops trusting him. Can Phillip love Steven back even through all that distrust? The film arrives at the most distasteful con, involving terminal disease and bilking the system, you will ever come across in a movie – if it fooled me it will likely fool most of everybody. This isn’t funny. This is about deep mental illness of a protagonist with sociopathic profiling. But the filmmakers want you to laugh it off. Take a shower at home afterwards and scrub off the muck.

Grade: C-

BURLESQUE

Campy spectacular-craptacular. Burlesque is made especially for girls who fantasize about dressing sultry and transforming from rags to riches. For guys, it is a T&A show with more emphasis on airbrushed ass. The essentials: Christina Aguilera is a beautiful blonde babe with the voicebox of an opera house orgy, a love triangle exists with Cam Gigandet and Eric Dane competing for her affections, the dance numbers are bawdy and glitzy, the one-liners sling like bitch slaps, and Cher is like a madam who ordains the fate of every rising dancer in the musical-striptease club. What else? Lots of pink and girls in high heels.

Twenty minutes in, it sustains a zingy, felicitous and campy appeal with bounteous beautiful girls. And less slimy than “Showgirls” which had T&A but no sense of what sexy is. Writer-director Steve Antin, an acquaintance and obvious admirer of The Pussycat Dolls, has a thing for limber girls in bustieres getting twisty on stage. He has an ear for overripe dialogue and uses Stanley Tucci, as a peppy stage manager, to channel fountains of gay humor. But Antin’s plotting is clunky, resulting in an overlong entertainment that bumps, if not grinds, along. The second half in particular doesn’t streamline smoothly, often forgetting characters for chunks at a time and adding subplots that don’t go anywhere.

Aguilera, as Ali Rose, is an Iowa girl working as a waitress at a beat-up café. The first scene has Ali saying goodbye to her shabby existence followed by her first solo number – no café customers, just a movie audience to perform for. Movie moments later, she’s on Hollywood Boulevard browsing through the classifieds for that job that will give her a big break. She stumbles onto The Burlesque Lounge by accident, and within minutes is enthralled and wants on the stage. Cher, as Tess the club owner, doubts her abilities and shoos her away like a stray cat. Ali assumes herself as a waitress ready for a big break.

Kristen Bell and Julianne Hough co-star as the racy dancers, both of them slink into a “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number lip-synched, unsuspecting that Ali will be the one to take over as the club star because she can sing. Bell, in dyed black hair, is a backstabbing shrew with rather tame backstabbing schemes. Not much gets in the way of true unbridled talent. Ali’s numbers are ready for soundtrack sales, “Show Me How You Burlesque” and “Express” will likely be radio hits for Aguilera.

During Ali’s financial struggles, she crashes the house of bartender Jack (Gigandet), who has a fiancé away in New York. What starts out as friendship soon gets complicated, as Jack falls hard for her but can’t (yet) act on his emotions. Big shot Marcus (Dane) is an entrepreneur with limitless funds and hook-ups, who comes off as a genuine benefactor, who pursues Ali in fast-lane courtship.

Eventually this leads to my least favorite cliché in the movies, and I’ll confess that nothing makes me groan in repulsion when I see it (which in American movies is often). Ali is in bed with her dream guy for the first time. The morning after, the former girlfriend storms in and tries to reclaim her boyfriend. The boyfriend tries to explain to Ali that it was over and not to leave before he explains his intentions and his former girlfriend’s lies. Ali interrupts and disallows any explanation and storms out before the situation is settled. Arrrghh.

“Burlesque” was considered for another audience besides me. Many will get juiced up by its flash, glitz and catchy show tunes. Aguilera has a voice like none other and her body is built for sashay, although her character goes to lovable to diva who forgets her roots and then back to lovable (I didn’t like the diva parts). Cher is the harridan before she becomes the best friend, and she has two shameless but righteously tailored songs. If you were heading to it then you will enjoy it, like cherry truffles. If you were ambivalent about going, then you probably aren’t right for it. It has the I.Q. of Mariah Carey’s “Glitter,” but it’s at least halfway fun to a non-convert of girl movies like me.

Go to the official site at http://www.burlesquethemovie.com/?hs308=BRQ6186

Grade: C+

TANGLED

The revisionist aspects on the Rapunzel story are evident but not tacky. Cheerfully animated, Tangled should keep tykes everywhere rambunctiously entertained while the older crowd should be pleasantly occupied. Over-thinking adults will be musing how this could be a much darker psychodrama if ever played straight. The witch (voiced by Donna Murphy) keeps her would-be daughter (Mandy Moore) locked up in a high tower for one and a half decades. You wonder how Rapunzel could be so loquacious with no formal education and no companions other than the voiceless pet chameleon she talks to. Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), who goes from thief to guardian of our blonde beauty, is a vivacious hunk of a hero benevolent enough to rescue her from solitude. They make a good pair, and they engage in song (and on down times, banter) and become matched to soothe each other’s hearts. Sweepingly romantic by teen standards and funny for all, and light on contemporary pop culture references, mercifully.

The opening scenes are at the most storybook-esque although the narration is a bit hipster. Thank you, Flynn, for filling us in. In the prologue, the witch snatches Rapunzel from her cradle. Rapunzel has been blessed with the gift of Fountain of Youth powers found in her magical hair which the witch will exploit for the rest of human time. Rapunzel grows up not knowing her real royal parents. The witch instills in her to not trust another living person, insisting the outside world is cruel. It must be acknowledged that the meanest aspects of psychological torment are glossed over for… well, crowd-pleasing jokes. It’s a merry time at the movies, an entry that comfortably represents the Disney brand and not Marquis de Sade.

Fairy tales can have it both ways. Flynn is a scoundrel thief but he is also a swashbuckling cool guy who likes loots and attractive blondes – so we look past his scoundrel traits. Flynn is on the run from knights dispatched from the royal palace to get back a crown that he has stolen, until he comes up on a high tower that he can use for refuge. Rapunzel has never interacted with another person so she gives him a whack over the head (cartoon violence is not really violence) and binds him to a chair, later to negotiate to have him escort her to a stargazing presentation in town – her dream, and alas, will be her first embark on the real world.

And only in a fairy tale can a horse, named Maximus, be an adversary who has the jowls to chomp the hell out of Flynn. The roughhouse chases between Flynn and Maximus could be the most pure throwback moments to classic Disney. Maximus wants to arrest Flynn (he can carry him in his teeth) and take him back to the royal palace singlehandedly. There are other lunkhead knights that try, usually unsuccessfully, to capture Flynn as well. It would probably be best for Flynn to ditch Rapunzel and venture on his own way to avoid trouble, but he’s in love. And she’s in love at the same time. There is a certain decree in formula that characters must click two-thirds into the story and not fail each other in any circumstance.

As family friendly packaging, Disney delivers. As said, kids will be enchanted and the older family members occupied. To adults, they should find the pacing of the movie brisk and only patience testing after seeing the on-screen duo go through one too many runs from the law and from the witch. But the filmmakers know how to consistently make things up tempo. The songs are boisterous: the witch gets a scintillating song called “Mother Knows Best,” but our two protagonists share a swell song with “I See the Light” which also marks Rapunzel’s transition into a self-sufficient woman who learns to trust kind strangers in the world. Through verses, there is a well-composed ethics message to be found.

As a seasoned critic, I didn’t get tangled by “Tangled” but it did pry a few smiles out of me. As long as they don’t do a live action remake with Sarah Jessica Parker as the haughty evil mother and Katherine Heigl as the preening Rapunzel, I’m OK with it.

Go to the official site at http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/tangled/#/home/


Grade: B-

UNSTOPPABLE

Sensational and rip-roaring with lots of nonstop speed, Unstoppable is one of those certified “breathless” action movies because it truly is nonstop. After awhile, a movie buff like me gets tired of men-with-guns action movies. This is a man versus machine action movie grounded in reality. Denzel Washington (“Book of Eli”) and Chris Pine (“Bottle Shock”) are ordinary men on a mission to stop a runaway train before it crosses a dangerous elevated S- curve in Stanton, Pennsylvania that will undoubtedly tip over the speeding 39-car train carrying highly flammable toxic material and doom the town’s population of over 700,000. The constant variation in backdrops while the trains are in motion adds graphic texture to the film. Disaster and wreckage fans will dig it most.

Ill-tempered audiences will simmer about Denzel’s character having two airhead-y tart daughters working at Hooters especially in how they root and cheer their dad on while observing television news footage instead of being stifled with worry. Discerning movie fans will find that some particular exposition is genre cheeseball, but if you can laugh at it all and still get psyched over the next wave of juggernaut excitement, the results can be hella fun.

Frank Barnes (Washington) is the veteran engineer with nearly three decades of experience under his belt, and Will Colson (Pine) is the new conductor who through nepotism was able to slide his way into the job. Friction occurs between man of experience and man of inexperience, each of them undergoing negligible family problems at home. If you are a hot-blooded male, you will prefer when the movie cuts to Barnes’ nubile daughters more than to cuts of Colson’s unhappy tight-faced wife.

Not wasting too much time, the predicament begins when a sloppy and careless engineer hops off the train to flip the track switch thinking that he pulled the breaks on the train. As the train gets away, a report that a “coaster” is on the loose means that it is traveling at slow enough speed to catch up with it ahead. Attractive yard master Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) puts out a quick alert and assigns yard man Ned (Lew Temple), a caffeine-hyped and ponytail guy, to get this thing stopped. They both learn soon enough that the train is on full throttle.

Connie sticks to the control room dispatching quick orders and Ned spends time racing his truck alongside the train. Corporate executive and dunderhead Galvin (Kevin Dunn, good as a white collar dunce) does not want to derail the train, that would bring things to an immediate close if done early enough, because he is concerned about the financial losses of a destroyed train.

The alternative ways of commandeering, blockading and hindering the full throttle locomotive lends plenty of danger. Quick solutions are needed to stop the train before it collides head-on with a commuter train full of school children and other prospective casualties. As the worst of disasters becomes imminent, it seems that Barnes and Colson become the last line of defense, their proposed actions meeting the approval of attractive Connie but not the soulless Galvin who is more invested in the outcome of the company’s stock holdings. Barnes and Colson run their train backwards so they can latch on and bring the runaway to a stop by means of a tug–of-war.

For those ambivalent about director Tony Scott (“Man on Fire,” “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3”) and his fixation with noise and excess, I’ll say to you that this is the best film he’s ever made and probably the best one he will ever make. This time avoiding overkill, Scott lends the torrent of images a suitable velocity without over editing or over cranking his cameras. Heaps of the action is captured by a helicopter news camera that provides us with cohesive overhead images. But the mechanics of the story are there, too. We give a damn, in terms of smart engineering dynamics, in just how these guys are going to prevent disaster before time runs out. I friggin’ love runaway train movies. There must be at least five of them: “The General” (1926), “Silver Streak” (1976), Runaway Train (1985), “Under Siege: Dark Territory” (1995) and now this bad boy.

Go to the official site at http://www.unstoppablemovie.com/
 
Grade: B+

127 HOURS

Unflinchingly graphic but a riveting survival story, too. 127 Hours sounds like the most static of all film concepts, but it never is static and instead is relentlessly visually inventive. James Franco (“Pineapple Express”) stars as the real life Aron Ralston, the 27-year old hiking and exploration jock who went out on his own in the Canyonlands National Park in Utah and literally got his arm stuck between a rock and a hard place, sandwiched in, with legs dangling. Until then, the endless miles of natural landscape splendor is awesome. After the crucial turning point, the film still has flights of imagination and dreamlike liberation. Pain enthusiasts and realist enthusiasts will be drawn in, and suckers for hardcore drama will be pinned to their seats.

Danny Boyle directed two of my favorite films in recent years, the brainy sci-fi “Sunshine” and the Indian orphan’s rise to triumph in the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire.” With “127 Hours” he uses various color stock and employs the best use of split-screen photography since, say, Brian DePalma’s “Carrie” (1976). While keeping an eye on Aron, the film utilizes split-screen in order to get the images inside his head, as if we were entering his sub-conscious. With this new film, Boyle proves he is really on a roll with proven ability to tackle drama with stylized action dynamics. Although it must be said that “127 Hours” might not be meant for everybody due to its explicitly realistic detail of body injury.

Opening with rapid-fire action, Aron showers and packs up and hits the road in the wee hours of the morning. Upon his arrival at dawn, he shoots out the back of his truck on his bicycle and soon takes a nasty spill, that, of course, doesn’t faze him one bit. While on his hike, he meets up with two attractive girls (Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara) who are just doin’ fine, if a little lost. But Aron, within bounds of politeness, really
begs to be their new tour guide. It’s his superstar time to show off.

The conventional route will show the girls the same gorge undertow and destination cove that every other hiker has ever seen. But Aron wants to show them a special way that is off the map. He leads them to a narrow crevasse that would be safer if they were all wearing suction-cups. He urges to girls to let go and fall at the end point, a drop that leads to an underground hot springs. Aron is so much a daredevil that he doesn’t realize that it just might be dangerous to the girls he has dragged along.

This is not the pivotal incident that leads to body trap, instead, it establishes the reckless nature of Aron. The girls invite him to a party to be held the following night in town (they still think he’s cute), and Aron graciously appreciates the invitation while not fully committing. Aron, now off on his own, like a primordial hunter, mad dashes across and through some jagged terrain with chasms collapsed below. Without caution, he steps on a rock that drops in a blink of an eye, his body falling over it, into a gorge with a descending boulder that pins his arm to the wall. His feet dangle, but can find foot support if he stretches them apart. His backpack is intact full of survival arsenal of descending uselessness, but when he puts the parts together he is able to manufacture an indefinite escape plan.

The food and water rations are low, and with only one free arm, he is prone to make mistakes by spilling precious crumbs and droplets. On his first night, he closes his eyes at 12:17 a.m. to get much needed sleep and jars awake after wearying agony to see that only a few minutes have passed. In the morning he gets his sight on thirty-minute sunshine that combs his body’s lower half. If he listens carefully, he can tell that there is absolutely no one to yell to for help. The more time he spends there, the more fated to hallucinations he undergoes. Persuasively, he tries to put a lid on his entrancing delusions. According to other nature survivors that have been isolated or stranded before him, Aron is bothered by songs that won’t leave his head. To keep sane, his temper is prudently self-monitored.

Aron’s tiring work on a conventional escape plan proves futile, but while in process, we come to see that while it is not working in freeing him, he is at least making the situation more bearable. Just like what really happened, Aron pours out his thoughts onto his mini-camcorder first as a diary and then as a testament. He makes apologies to his mother for not returning her calls and explains why it is a wrongful part of his “hero” nature to never tell anyone where he was going. He is the grandiose loner-adventurer who never needed assistance until now. As he continues to go through hunger and numbness, we finally arrive along with Aron the drastic measures he must choose if he wants to survive, and the option is far from pretty. The option is a salute to pragmatism over pride.

Some viewers might think that Aron made an arrogant mistake that is too painful to watch. Would it help for me to tell you that the misfortune makes Aron more cognizant to the meaning of personal attachments and teamwork? Perhaps it is worth saying, even in the face of mother nature’s confinement, the world still needs guys like Aron to trek the world where no man has gone before, so he can caution us behind. “127 Hours” is a detailed ordeal that can be riveting if you are one rapt by how the smallest tools, literal and figurative, can be orchestrated towards survival. Franco is pitch-perfect in his blend of cockiness, vigor and testy bravado; his descent is met only by spiritual enlightenment. Boyle drapes a fever over you that you can’t kick, and when it’s over, you might find yourself walking out swinging your arms and legs in appreciation.

Go to the official site at http://www.foxsearchlight.com/127hours/

Grade: A-

DUE DATE

It gets lots of early laughs but when the characters get abnormally stupid well below the plausible level you stop having faith in the movie. In Due Date, Robert Downey Jr. is a short-fused mean professional who has to share a ride across country with Zach Galifianakis as a doofus with a perm, a lot of memory problems, and an absolutely certain passive aggressive disorder. These two actors are seasoned veterans with these archetypes yet here they take it to an obstinate fault. Downey, as Peter Highman, is a stuck up white collar type who makes a very forced and unbelievable transition to tolerance (he needs the ride so he can return home in time for his wife’s delivery of their first child). Is this a comedy about letting people violate your personal space? ’Cuz Galifianakis, as wannabe actor Ethan Tremblay, is the violating annoying guy.

Flick is bound to get systematic negative reviews by critics who decisively hate mean-spirited characters and mindless boobs, and yet in this case, they might have a point. But beware the critic who declares this Todd Phillips comedy (he directed “The Hangover”) as a nadir in bad taste and coarseness. It’s not that bad in those terms. And while the movie’s insistence on the clash between normal fellows and schmucks may get annoying to some viewers, it’s never that boring.

The creative and witty writing in the first act pits the two leads on an airplane before they are discharged by TSA agents for being deemed a threat (don’t say the words “bomb” and “terrorist” so nonchalantly), and become prohibited from commercial flying in the rest of the state of Georgia. Peter loses his wallet with money and credit cards, and as a matter of convenience, joins his early nemesis Ethan in his rental car along with his deceased father’s ashes in a coffee can. In no time, they are having waffles together at a rest stop even though Ethan is allergic to waffles. “Don’t go to a waffle house then if you are allergic to waffles!”

They make a second stop at Heidi’s (Juliette Lewis), an unlicensed medical supplier who provides Ethan with marijuana to treat his glaucoma. If this isn’t a reason for impatient Peter to shake his head then the fact that Ethan spends $200 on grass is certainly a reason for Peter to get upset. That’s a major chunk of the gas money. On the next stop, Peter has to have his wife (Michelle Monaghan) wire money to them at a Western Union that leads to a fiasco brawl with a paraplegic played by Danny McBride. In another scene, Ethan has a crude masturbation episode while he thinks Peter is asleep, and his French bulldog gets in on it, too.

That’s the pattern of the movie, though, one obstruction episode after another that keeps Peter away from arriving home on time, plus the hassle of a memoriam stop to scatter dad’s ashes. There are highway hi-jinks, maybe two of them, not to mention a stop at the Mexico border. Some of the dialogue is funny. Such as when we find out that Ethan wanted to be an actor because of “Two and a Half Men.” Jamie Foxx plays a friend in Dallas who lectures the exasperated Peter on altruism. And Ethan’s inability for improv actors monologues are so pitiable that it’s easy to snicker at him, too. But it is Peter who suffers martyrdom. “Do I look okay? I have a broken arm. I have three cracked ribs. I have seven stitches in my armpit. Does that answer your question?”

The finale is awkwardly patched together but blessedly it sticks away from delivery room schmaltz, although Ethan’s subsequent play at sanctimony can make you want to scratch your eyes out. A half hour after you walk out you might forget most of what you just saw, but you might remember “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (1987) years after, which this movie carbon copies. I would rather have watched “Due Date” in the due future from my bed, after midnight, after some beer on some dubious weekend night.

Go to the official site at http://duedatemovie.warnerbros.com/

Grade: C+

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2

You won’t lose any sleep over it but it is worth a jolt or two and that might be enough for a night out. Paranormal Activity 2 makes some additions in effort to stand out from the original but it is also a bit of a recycler, it is still entertaining but too eager to scare. The higher budget sequel still employs the grainy home video and scratchy audio, and in addition to the family video camcorder, it has multi-prop surveillance video hovering over the premises. But it also wants to bring the house down with bigger effects – did a cyclone come and thrash the house apart? In this brand new household occupied by a married couple with a teen daughter and a toddler son, the unseen poltergeists are back. They are a prototypical American family of chatterboxes except for Hunter, the toddler.

The original was, in my book, one of the all-time great horrors, and it kept me up for several nights. Occasionally I experienced drowsy night tremors and thought I was seeing shadows moving in the dark. It messed with my head and I was surprised by fears that I hadn’t known were fears to me. Technically, the 2009 original benefitted from having the annoying Micah, who if anything, taunted the supernatural. The effects then were subtle, and all the more disquieting, until in one big swoop (maybe two, three) it sprang stupendous that-didn’t-just-happen and “Hell no!” wave of shocks.

The sequel has too many off in the distance bangs and clangs audio effects. It’s like the filmmakers are aware to not shock the audience too early, but they are also too conceding by giving us too much a taste of the pudding. During the “Night” titles the cameras crosscut between different angles chosen by the force of the director Tod Williams (no involvement with the first film). In “Night 3,” and “4” and “7” and on and on, the editing skips to one next shot after another, and we hear bumps and clanks (sometimes bashes) on the audio. We could see where the sounds were coming from if the director just stayed on the shot where the audio source occurred (the original benefitted from only one camera). This is manipulative to not bridge the audio and visual aspects together. As the story progresses though, there is more of a liberal willingness to show you what is happening, like direct information.

This haunted family seems to pick up the home camcorder for just about everything, hey, it must be what they do. Daniel (Brian Boland) is the father, both congenial and disagreeable to the ideas of spirits and metaphysics. Kristi (Sprague Grayden) is the sprightly wife who is full of good humor but professes that spirits are not anything to joke about. Ali (Molly Ephraim) is the teenage daughter who is the first to use playback tape as paranormal evidence. Hunter is the toddler, restricted at night in his crib, who stares at unseen apparitions on the other side of windows and mirrors. The house dog, sleepy one minute but ready to pounce when the unknown encroaches, is the most captivating character besides… Hunter.

When the camcorder is not rolling, the action and inaction is captured by surveillance cameras rigged with time codes. Theses high ceiling fixed cameras, peering down with their wide angle lenses, are effective. On the big screen, the audience’s eyes bounce back and forth looking for house objects to move scantly or to spring up in our eyes within the grainy blue nightscape of the visuals. At its tricky best, we wonder if we see something or if we merely see a blur that we thought was something.

We wait and wait to see something in each shot until we realize that the director doesn’t want us to see something in every shot. “How about it, already?” the audience might ask. But really, it would have been a stronger horror film if the filmmakers had waited a bit more. And taken excess sounds off of the audio track (the supernatural is too obvious making noises). The terrifying activity in the basement, when the film finally goes down there, has us engrossed with our eyes wide open and yet the peak result is damn confusing. One moment is terrific: Is that Hunter hanging upside down or is it merely the camera that is upside down?

To not appear like a cash-in byproduct, the sequel finds a neat-o if hambone way to intersect the events of the first film into this one. That’s one whiplash shock… to see Micah Sloat and Katie Featherstone make appearances (one of them is relative to Hunter’s family). They are happy, pre-disturbed visitors that just come over to hang out, but they are also there so the studio marketing team can cross its T’s and dot its I’s for future DVD packaging. But you might be here not to hear about graces of storytelling but to know whether or not you will have a body shuddering experience. Well, you might get rattled nerves but you won’t quite flip out and go through sleepless nights by this sequel.

Go to the official site at http://www.paranormalmovie.com/

Grade: B

HEREAFTER

Sodden and drowsy, as well as clumpy and slack in its editing – the film goes on interminably. Clint Eastwood has made three criminally underappreciated films in a row (“Invictus,” “Gran Torino,” “Changeling”) but now he has uncharacteristically unspooled a blemish called Hereafter. At the least, short-stack hunk Matt Damon does fine work in an understated role of a San Francisco forklift operator who has psychic gifts that he sees as a curse. This runs concurrent to two other storylines of varying interest until a final act overlap. The expensive set pieces include a shoreline city submerged by a tsunami, a road kill accident and a subway train bombing. You can call the heaven of afterlife scenes whatever you want but they are murky and vaporous, not to mention brief.

Renowned French journalist Marie (Cecilé de France) is a tsunami victim who gets sucked under the waves as the tide ravages the city, but she is dragged out and resuscitated. Two preteen brothers (George and Frankie MacLaren) cover up for their drug-addled mum in London (shot on location), concealing her habit from justifiably nosey social workers. At the end they both need George to tie up their loose ends.

George is the lonely guy psychic, played by Damon, who eats most nights alone until he meets a bubbly Midwest gal Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) after joining cooking school. In case it matters to anybody, let it be said that Howard is a distinguishable presence for the first time in her career that hasn’t done much for her thus far but shown her lackluster personality (“Lady in the Water,” “Terminator: Salvation”). Thank the cinema gods that at least one happy person occupies the screen.

Prompting George to use his psychic gifts is brother Billy (Jay Mohr) who can’t wait to open up a multi-suite office and tweak a services website. When George holds hands with the living, he can see the souls of the dead. He can also succinctly hear their messages which he translates to their surviving relatives. In the low-rent Spielbergian visuals, we can see for ourselves that death isn’t that much of an experience. Let’s hope that none of the audience goes there, and finds the afterlife of “What Dreams May Come” (Vincent Ward’s 1998 film) instead. And for a film that is to a degree about miracles, or at least fate, nothing is particularly exceptional.

The London boy, Marcus, is looking for a psychic to help him get in touch with a recently deceased loved one, and he initially finds one flim-flam psychic after another. The social workers get Marcus under the protective care of foster parents, marginally characterized by Eastwood and writer Peter Morgan (“Frost/Nixon”). Meanwhile, Marie is losing ratings on her TV magazine show and credibility in various professional and personal facets of her life. “When I went underwater I had visions,” she insists.

Perhaps Eastwood chose this film to be more about death than life, based on his colorless and blah visual scheme that at times looks like gloomier than his Oscar-winning “Million Dollar Baby.” His bummer approach with the story is about as much fun as a sleepover at a graveyard. Which would be fine if the film was after something originally insightful. But it’s not, and the gloom is further underscored by the mostly grimacing actors. Eastwood, like Brett Favre of the NFL, has so bungled this project that he cannot even contemplate retirement here, as he better bounce back and produce something else to make up for this.

Go to the official site at http://hereafter.warnerbros.com/

Grade: C

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

Not badly written as one would expect, as long as you get past the high concept, but the lack of star chemistry blows it. Katherine Heigl (“The Ugly Truth”) and Josh Duhamel (“Transformers”) intend to blend pathos with humor in Life As We Know It, a movie in which the characters hardly contemplate the future five years ahead. Both of their best friends die, and as godparents, they inherit their baby girl, Sophie, who pretty much stays a baby girl but she at least takes her first steps. Duhamel is the happy beer-drinking guy working to become a network sports director and Heigl is working to expand her bakery of cupcakes, scones and more. Looking at Heigl, one would have a hard time imagining her doing anything in the kitchen other than microwave instant brownies.

Director Greg Berlanti forces Josh Duhamel to go to extremes early to establish his wild bachelor behavior as Eric Messer (think messier) but after he settles in, he is quite magnetic within an otherwise predictable rom-com format. He has the programmed traits of a Vince Vaughn-type without being sitcom-y. Duhamel proves with his charisma that he has a future in a swinger’s movie.

That Goldilocks Katherine Heigl, as Holly Berenson, has a Miley Cyrus smile but the pout of a wench, investing in hideous grimaces during dramatic scenes that scream of desperation that she wants to be taken seriously as an actress. To not be boring or unaccountable, Heigl toils feminist equality into her on-screen persona but mistakes ballbusting and passive aggressiveness for feminism. “I’m a little bit of a control freak,” Heigl ad-libs, a line that she’s used in more than just one of her movies. “You’re such a killjoy,” she says of Messer, but not of herself.

They meet in 2007 on a blind date setup that does not last five minutes. He shows up on a motorcycle to take her out to dinner. “I’m not really dressed for 40 mph winds,” she says. They get in her Smart car and before they takeoff he is already making cell phone arrangements for an 11 o’clock date. The next couple of years they have too many run-ins with each other, out of script convenience, only because they share mutual friends. Then suddenly – whopper dramatic scene – they are godparents who inherit their deceased friends’ home and their assembly of dorky WASP friends. Plot essential: Holly has feelings for the token hunk pediatrician played by Josh Lucas (“Poseidon”).

The bulk of the rest of the movie consists of scheduling conflicts, diaper clean-up, unexpected romantic triangles, Christening the house, borrowed money, job advancement, fights about who needs to step up the responsibility and multiple interviews with a Child Protective Services social worker. Some of the baby mishaps are actually funny in a way neither Vin Diesel nor Eddie Murphy ever got to acquaint themselves with when they did their babysitting movies. There is an especially funny scene when Duhamel unloads babysitting chores on a taxi driver pal of his so he can squeeze in work. But in the end, the stars force themselves into a commitment in order to satisfy genre expectations even if it means self-deception. In five years for these two, who will be lying to themselves?

Go to the official site at http://lifeasweknowitmovie.warnerbros.com/
 
Grade: C

SECRETARIAT

Secretariat is a noble effort but it doesn’t work well as a consistently pleasing entertainment. Director Randall Wallace can’t keep track of why we came to his movie in the first place, for the love of the horse that would become the 1973 Triple Crown winner. In particular, there are no real close-up encounters with a horse for the beginning half hour. Benefits are certain: the golden hue cinematography almost puts you in the mood to applaud. But the indecisive storytelling is lumpy and mawkish. We get sucked into family turmoil when we should be enchanted by the horse. On a slow Saturday afternoon you might be able to fix your eyes on the screen for some of this but you need an open heart for schmaltz.

In Denver 1969, housewife Penny Tweedy (Diane Lane) takes over her incapacitated father’s (Scott Glenn, motionless) horse stables. This new venture serves as a distraction, according to her peevish husband Jack (Dylan Tweedy), nor does it involve the children either. Penny has the belief that she can make a thoroughbred racehorse out of one of her stable ponies. That horse will become Secretariat. Lane is pretty and proud, ambitious and determined for an otherwise prim and proper mid-west woman.

John Malkovich is a hoot with his ad-libs as the trainer Lucien Laurin, and yet at the same time, one is not convinced that Malkovich has ever rode a horse. Margo Martindale is Miss Ham and Nelsan Ellis is Eddie Sweat, two of Tweedy’s associates. Otto Thorwarth in his acting debut is the jockey Ronnie Turcotte. Dylan Baker plays Penny’s disbelieving brother Hollis who complains of family debt. James Cromwell is a potential investor who refuses to pay top dollar and thus bails. Dozens of other stuffed shirts play snooty Kentuckians.

What it comes down to is a semi-boring film about the world’s greatest racehorse when a horse of this pedigree deserved an exciting chronicle – the whole thing has been Disney-fied. The actors do more huffing and puffing than the horse, and some of the lesser cast members make arbitrary walk-ons and exits. The filming on Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky derby, is an appreciated site. Another track stood in for the Belmont Park in New York. Wallace and his cinematographer Dean Semler do their best for the races themselves not to whizz by, they supply visual vigor. See “The Black Stallion” (1980) and “Seabiscuit” (2003) however for more satisfying, rhapsodic horseplay.

Go to the official site at Secretariat Disney site

Grade: C

TAMARA DREWE

From Great Britain’s Stephen Frears, it is supposed to be endearing but it is kind of slimy if you think about it. Tamara Drewe is an ugly duckling who returns home to her small British village after she has turned into a smoking hot babe. As played by Gemma Arterton (“Quantam of Solace”), the once ignored and dumped on Tamara is now she the object of desire of many men. You don’t get as much Tamara as you would think, instead it’s about the guys around her that are affected by presence. We are meant to care about Tamara and who she falls in love on the outskirts, but this is another one of those stories where the goddess falls in love with an unkempt, greasy-haired, pierced-rings rock star (Dominic Cooper). This is entertainment that is less sumptuous then yucky, and yet the Academy might impulsively eat this up by mistaking British smugness for British wit.

This should be a star vehicle, as said, for Arterton. But Tamara is rather a shallow character, though. The supposed depth is that she is this journalist who gleams of self-confidencene now that she has returned home to remodel and refurbish the family estate. Heads turn when she shows up in a red body tight halter top and short jeans. The women feel threatened and have a right to be. Among the leering gentlefolk, Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) is a middle-aged writer who has already carried an on-going affair with a young tart intern once, and his wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) can’t do much to improve on her dowdy looks. Obviously, Tamara could come between them.

The country farm boy Andy (Luke Evans) doesn’t amount to a hill of beans as a character (or does he at the end?), but he was the hotshot who slept with Tamara and then dumped her back when they were teens. When you see the flashbacks, Tamara’s nose was quite a honker – like Angelica Huston’s only more exaggerated – and even after plastic surgery she is still insecure about it. Poor, insecure Tamara Drewe… but don’t feel too bad about her since she’s got gusto. She snaps, “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last man after a nuclear bomb.” She makes fun of guys who must have small shlongs. That’s the thing about fantasy girls. Once they open their dirty mouths, they no longer are as desirable.

Two adolescent girls who make mischievous trouble start an internet rumor about Tamara which is supposed to kick in the high gears in the third act. This wannabe classy comedy fare succumbs into a plot of misunderstandings and first kisses and rekindled love and relationship turnovers as if it were a game of musical chairs. The ending is poorly staged and unearned, more tacked on and obligatory – lips smack in an embrace and there you have it. Tamara is still hot after it is all over as long as you only judge such a girl by her appearances. But next time give a girl like this more on her plate to start with. One is not so sure that she would be able to fill out a playmate data page of likes and dislikes since this Tamara doesn’t even seem to know enough about herself.

Frears is usually known for intelligence and good taste with such films as “The Queen,” “The Grifters” and "Dangerous Liaisons" and he is adapting the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds. Here he tries to make comedy out of extreme contrasts: The beauty and the loud greasy rock star, the loud greasy rock and the quiet country people, the quiet country people and the infidelity scandals, and so on. Some scenes feel like long, big clumps.

Go to the official site at
 
Grade: C

NOWHERE BOY

Nowhere Boy, about the early life of John Lennon, plays like an anthology of negativity and not the wonders of musical creativity. While there is some early auspicious musical talent and first public performance at a neighborhood carnival festival depicted, the core is a tug of war over maternity issues of who was John’s real mother. Aaron Johnson (“Kick-Ass”) does play the necessary broad, if complex notes of John, encompassing the whimsical charisma, but he is also required to play pissy, mean and smug. It doesn’t help that director Sam Taylor-Wood’s maladroit pacing puts the audience’s emotions at stagnancy. The film grabs you for a few fleeting moments like when we observe John breaking out of his repressed home life and becoming a rebel.

“Do you know about rock n’ roll, what it means? It’s sex.” John starts running around, sweet-talking girls in his Liverpool hometown, and gets in trouble at school, and so on. Anne-Marie Duff, as his mom, gives him guitar lessons and dancing lessons. The actress shimmies delectably. But it was Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) that raises John, and on a contempt-filled night, will sell his guitar and such. She doesn’t believe that John, with his Elvis ducktail imitation hair, can succeed making music. John spends the course of the movie going back and forth between mom and surrogate mom, and yelling at them in how he feels betrayed.

An unedifying, torpid soundtrack fills the ears, “Mr. Sandman” and “Wild One” among them. These songs remind us that we are in the ’50’s, and they remind us as well these are not the most important days of John at all. With all the effort in trying to get a movie made, you would think filmmakers and screenwriters would want to do a John Lennon movie that captures the height of his popularity, or at least his genius. “Nowhere Boy” is yet another downer biopic that does its damndest to destroy the myth of a legend. Thomas Brodie Sangster though does a good puppy-dog impression of a young Paul McCartney.

At the end of the movie John is off to Hamburg – where the movie should have been by the 15 minute mark and not the 92 minute mark of a 98 minute film. We learn of the fate of his natural mom, Julia, and by the title card, how he continued a respectful relationship with his Aunt. We are supposed to leave and say, “John’s early life was sad, wasn’t it?” And the message is supposed to be how he transcended his lousy upbringing to create transcendent music. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Go to the official site at http://www.nowhereboymovie.com/

Grade: C

IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY

It’s Kind of a Funny Story is just that. But it is not really going to be watched by anyone except by those who like to watch indie films as a chore, since this will be no breakout indie in terms of artistry or popularity. If that’s you, then you could do a lot worse. It is written by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (“Half Nelson,” “Sugar”) and if you know those names you might have another reason to watch it. Keir Gilchrist, looking like Bastian from “The Neverending Story,” plays the depressed and overachiever 16-year old teenager Craig Gilner. After volunteering that he is a suicide risk, Craig is admitted into the psychiatric wing of a hospital for seven-day observation. He wants to get back to his homework, and friends, but now he can’t.

You almost want to say that Zach Galifianakis (“The Hangover”) is worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. As Bobby, a man-child that can no longer bear the stress of the real world and being a husband and father, Galifianakis is a real scene-stealer. His performance is nearly matched by Emma Roberts (“Valentine’s Day”) as the 16-year old cutie-pie Noelle who actually made a suicide attempt. Viola Davis (“Doubt”) is just decent as the ward staff psychiatrist.

The thing about mental hospital movies is that they inevitably spend the entire running length there and boredom clouds us as much as clouds its protagonists. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) is virtually the only nuthouse movie that keeps you riveted. The filmmaking here is highly skilled, without a doubt, and yet interest declines. One could be on the fence about whether this film deserves a three star or merely two-and-a-half star rating, and I was leaning on the high end until a highly improbably visit by high school classmate made me dock the grade. Nia (Zoe Kravitz) stops by to check on Craig, and to make-out with him. Would a girl like Nia really be surprised to find, that at the mental hospital, Craig probably has a roommate? Would a girl like Nia really been able to locate the correct wing where Craig was staying?

Nia freaks out which is no good, but there are nevertheless more entertaining freaks of nature in this offbeat comedy such as the fuss around a coin operated phone. The screenplay ennobles Craig as he tries to be peacemaker between some of the committed who seemed lost before his arrival. But it’s Galfianakis that our hearts return to, especially poignant and by means hilarious when he stresses out feverishly about how he has nothing to wear but his hobo-smelling sweater to his psych evaluation interview.

Go to the official site at http://focusfeatures.com/film/its_kind_of_a_funny_story/

Grade: C+

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Electrifying and vivid entertainment for adults but leave the kids audience out of this. The Social Network, tracing angry-geek whiz kid, Mark Zuckerberg, during his creation and invention of Facebook, is as well-written and as tech adroit, not to mention suave, as the greatest screenplays by Robert Towne, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Schrader or the Coen Brothers. In other words, the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (TV’s “The West Wing,” “The American President”) ripples through the definition and meaning of the very information age we have become a part of and has caught its colloquial essence as well. Jesse Eisenberg, in the performance of the year as Zuckerberg, proves that he can do everything that Michael Cera cannot do. He exudes as a nervy, pugnacious S.O.B. who stomps over friends for what is first bragging rights and then over friends for billions in revenue.

As the first scene fades in at a college pub set outside Harvard in 2003, Zuckerberg is giving his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) a verbal attack on the validation of belonging to one of Harvard’s elite final clubs. She mispronounces, and makes misusage, of the word final. Zuckerberg condescendingly corrects her as well as brashly scolds that she will never meet any cool people without him being admitted as a member, and without that, she would have to… (fill in the sex insinuation) in order to belong. She breaks up with him on the spot. “You think that a woman will never want you because you are a geek, but in truth, nobody will want you because you are an asshole,” she says, lowering the boom. He never loses his obsession and desire for attachment with Erica, even after he writes a blog that discerns her small and unsatisfying cup size subsequently read by peers everywhere.

On another impulsion, Zuckerberg uploads the female student body on a web creation called “Facemash” that invites peers to vote on the hotness of competing coeds. The site has so many hits that the Harvard internet server crashes, which issues Zuckerberg to face his first hearing board. But he gets the attention of other Harvard undergrads who acknowledge his gifts in web design artistry and code-making, and believe that web communities could be a viable enterprise.

This is a movie of wild ambition about wild ambition, and there is not a dumbed down line of dialogue in it. If Sorkin is the genius linguist then director David Fincher (“Zodiac”) is the mercurial orchestrator, interlacing multiple storylines and flashbacks into biographical and persuasively speculative fusion, and doing it all with visual virtuosity. Fincher might be the very first to truly capture the scene of today’s reckless and sloshed college parties, the fraternity and sorority stunts pitched somewhere between orgiastic adventure and narcissism, and the rave-bombard boom of cosmo city nightclubs without making it feel like any of it was done on a sound stage or diffused in post production at a recording studio.

The embedded colors and fastidious details will certainly keep the film sealed with freshness years from now, but the movie is best because it thinks fearless and yet tactfully, and pryingly, about its core subjects. The key to getting by the real Zuckerberg and his disdain for this film project, as well as the tainting of his public persona, was to pivot the movie around two simultaneous depositions. Hearing the testimony of two legal parties that claim they were screwed over as creators – positioned as if it were their point of views – and their corroborating voices only makes the film more persuasive. The Winklevoss Twins (both played by Arnie Hammer), are Harvard crew champions who accuse Zuckerberg of ripping off their Harvard Connection idea, intended for exclusivity among the Harvard Ivy League.

Close friend, associate, launch partner and appointed CFO Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) put up all the capital – for the servers, intern pay, office instruments – at a cap of $19,000. In all developing stages Saverin says yes to every demand by Zuckerberg, and also gets him laid for the first time. Saverin carries on a relationship with the first Facebook “groupie,” a lusty, high heels Asian girl (Brenda Song) who is so paranoid jealous that she sets fire to Saverin’s gift to her as if it were a pouting gesture. Saverin, who is just as committed to Facebook, is thinking internship connections and door to door visits to wealthy New Yorkers. But the economic wellspring seemed to be Silicon Valley, where the real internet venture-capitalists are seated.

Saverin makes the mistake of letting himself stay a day behind the progress updates. Zuckerberg forms a hearty partnership with Napster and Plaxo creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, an ecstatic actor) who sees not millions, but billions at stake. Their sudden partnership has a lot to do with Zuckerberg looking up to Parker as a party connection badass. As a consultant veering on co-partner, Parker brings sound ideas to the table, such as how to overcome the illegality of the site and usher in new iron-clad clauses standards for state of privacy on the internet. Zuckerberg forms alliances with those who help him at the nearest immediate minute.

The portrait is of Zuckerberg as a geek pining for widespread acceptance while at the same time he is so glued to his computer that there is not enough time for social interaction outside his Facebook bubble. But after he masters the infinite possibilities of cyber space his contentment is to spew his superior genius and self-righteousness onto others. Yet the positive and negative language of it all (kudos again to Sorkin) is more revitalizing and complimentary to audience intelligence than anything that has come into American movies in years.

The saving grace to Zuckerberg’s character is his invitation for any hot girl to validate or tutor him on how he could behave better (Rashida Jones, as a litigation lawyer, might as well be that girl at the end). That’s when he listens. Zuckerberg made a success of himself, becoming the world’s youngest billionaire, by linking the world together. Yet success for him was a means of revenge against the world and all the pretty women that rejected him. The rest of us, probably more happy than he, are among 500 million users that smile on daily. That upshot resonance is worth pondering over what has become one of the key revolutionary dotcoms of the internet age.

Go to the official site at www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/site/

Grade: A+

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WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

Excessive but bullish entertainment. Michael Douglas is at once a reformed and the same old Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which throws in newly introduced characters rather than recycling old ones. The original “Wall Street” (1987) is the most brilliant and shrewd of all big business films. Oliver Stone has returned to co-write and direct the sequel, and he restores all the juicy jargon. Stone lets his characters get sucked into greed and there’s lots of talk on big numbers and big losses. There are shares of relationship turmoil, too, much of it integrated suitably, but the surplus of conflicts turns this into a long movie.

The film is likely to receive lots of negative reviews by pretentiously cerebral critics that want to trump it in order to make themselves look like brighter, more tech market academic geniuses. The film is likely to be disliked by any audience that has a preemptive dislike for anything that is by Oliver Stone. Also, you may ask, does the select brainy material get compromised by a few patronizing commercial elements? Well duh.

With a prologue opening in 2001, Gekko is released from prison after an eight year sentence on insider trading and securities fraud charges; he has retrievable items such as a silk handkerchief, money clip, Rolex gold watch and an ancient mobile phone as heavy as a barbell. A limo pulls up and we think, along with him, that it is for him. The snide joke is that the limo and an entourage are meant for a rapper also released on the same day.

Jump forward seven years and we are in 2008, and – beware the hokey intros and cumbersome David Byrne soundtrack – young trader Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is smooching it up with Winnie (Carey Mulligan), the estranged daughter to Gekko. Jake’s mentor is his boss Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) of the investment bank Keller Zabel investments that is supposed to resemble the real Bear Stearns, and its collapse. After the bumpy exposition, the movie starts to get good again as soon as we start seeing the PowerPoint graphics and boiler room madness, although this boiler room has changed its appearance into something sleeker in comparison to years previous. Within a few well-played scenes, Louis becomes a fallen man and Jake blows his huge commission earnings after playing the stock market on margin.

The nemesis Bretton James (Josh Brolin, a swarthy, thrill-seeker rich man performance) makes sure Louis doesn’t get a bailout so his financial empire can buy it up for fractions of its worth. Jake is ruined, too, and he hates Bretton for all that is merciless and unfeeling. But when Jake gets a job proposition from Bretton, he takes it, mostly out of self-preservation (who else will hire him after his last job’s fiasco?) Meanwhile, Jake seeks out Gordon Gekko on advice on his impending wedding to his daughter and on finance, and they develop a “trading” favors relationship.

Tucked into two hours and ten minutes is a lot of savvy financial talk that incorporates contemporary issues of bailouts and sector bubble bursts, of a nation addicted to borrowing on credit and a nation with nothing left to sell, of banks selling illusions of an idea and selling unproven technology for fast boom bucks. Jake though thinks he is ahead of the curve on fusion technology and seeks capital investors. He also thinks he has won Bretton on his side but there are no moral allegiances only moral hazards when it comes to money and investment, and the film explores that meaning of economic self-interests.

The movie stuffs in a lot while attempting to be a social mirror to recent economic history. Gekko gives a lecture not to Teldar paper on how “Greed is good” but instead to a forum of college students on how “Leverage is bad.” In order to create believable transitions to explain and justify character, Stone just adds new scenes and new developments on top of old ones. His writing is not redundant, just extraneous. Added annoyance: Jake too quickly forgets the burn of losing his big commission in the first act of the film.

There is a perceptively snotty charity banquet halfway into the film. Rich men from all over seem to attend in order to find their rivals and cut them down to size. Rich women are competing with each other in fashionable appearance. The feeling is a certain egomaniacal vacuity in the sense that nobody cares what the charity is actually for. Stone dramatizes how the charity benefit is just an excuse for a Gatsby party soaking in greed and narcissism. It also entrances Charlie Sheen, the best cameo in the film and his transformation after twenty-plus years sums up to more than just a conceit.

Outshining the rest in charisma and swagger, Douglas gives a performance that should prove durable with passing years. He is beyond caricature. Another sequel could easily put him front and center, although good box office returns or not, this is probably the last “Wall Street” movie.

Go to the official site at http://www.wallstreetmoneyneversleeps.com/
 
Grade: B

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Director Davis Guggenheim actually shoehorns in some archival footage of the 1950’s Superman in Waiting for Superman. The focal outrage of the documentary is why the public school system in the United States has disparagingly fallen. Of the 30 major developed countries, the U.S. ranks 25th in math and 21st in science. The children in America might actually rank number one in confidence. Educators and chancellors might say that we are overconfident.

Guggenheim (Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth”) likes to cut often to Geoffrey Canada, a longtime educator and president of a special school that flourishes in Harlem. And why not? Canada is a completely charismatic speaker and he speaks fast, keeping this doc moving with urgency! Lots of information and diagnoses are courtesy of him. Bill Gates, yes the Gates of Microsoft, explains why we outsource employees from other countries to work tech. It’s because there are not enough educated students in America qualified to work the high tech jobs.

If there was a person closest to being Superman it might be Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington D.C. public school system whose first move was to fire a hundred-plus inadequate principals and close 23 ineffective schools. She would fire bad teachers, too, but it’s against national law which gives intractable rights to tenured teachers. The tradition of tenure has dubious origins, as explained. They can only discipline bad teachers (how often does that really happen!), but your jaw will drop when you see how New York deals with them.

In addition to the educators, Guggenheim tracks the lives of five young elementary school students. Guggenheim doesn’t explain why he happened to choose these five case studies, but never mind. All of their parents, of course, want their children to be served a better education. Their children are enlisted into the lottery which promises them a better, more attention-friendly small school which is better than the local “dropout factories.” In a mini-climax, Guggenheim cuts back and forth between various lotteries where there are more applicants than available spots.

The tech credits are bright, with Guggenheim once again implementing multimedia devices such as diagrams and animation graphics to inform points and statistics, as well as clips from “The Simpsons” and, why not, “School of Rock.” That part is thorough. But what is not given imperative is how education begins in the home, and in life experience, and that bad parents are not given as much the blame as bad teachers. How do you draw statistics out of that?

Go to the official site at http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/
 
Grade: B-

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

Woody Allen movies in the 1970’s and the mid-80’s, not to mention the mid-90’s too, are classics that will never die. But in the last ten years his work as writer-director is almost arbitrary, averaging one stale movie a year (although there might be a couple of exceptions). Many of his movies feature a sterling performance or two, or contain a fair number of good gags, that elevate expectations a bit. You want to like his stuff. But his movies are simply embarrassing and out of touch. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, a title that also feels plucked arbitrarily, presents multiple characters falling out or recuperating from bad marriages and switching to new partners, a majority of these characters dealing with occupational failure and situations of financial dependence.

Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, Lucy Punch, Freida Pinto are not exactly a cast of players as much as they are Woody’s game pieces. Of the entire cast, Anthony Hopkins might actually portray the film’s most intriguing character as a Viagra-popping, Ralph Lauren sweater-wearing geezer named Alfie, searching for young sex in order to feel young again, after he dumped his wife Helena (Gemma Jones) of many years. He’s obsessed with perfect genes, and he finds his counterpart not an Ivy League grad but with a juicy call girl (Punch from “Dinner for Schmucks,” is hysterically crass). Intriguing, but it’s too bad Hopkins is only in the movie for about 15 minutes.

Woody’s main focus is the hardship marriage between Brolin and Watts, as Roy and Sally. Seven years ago Roy had a breakout hit with his first novel but has been cold since, with several consecutive manuscripts rejected from publishers. In the interim, he attempted work as a chauffeur, and in one of Woody’s rare quick cutaway flashbacks, he crashes the limo while on the job. Sally takes full-time work as an assistant to art gallery boss Greg (Banderas), and overtime, develops a crush on him. Helena, mother to Sally, pays a majority of the rent checks.

Adultery and other deceptions ensue and yet the film is strangely devoid of tension. It also, like many recent Woody efforts, fails to be consistently entertaining. You want to know what happens next, but at the same time, you can’t wait for Woody to cut to the next scene already. The blabbering by all actors is incessant, and while Watts does get to perform an authentic neurotic freak-out, only Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) says her lines without making you feel like it’s just Woody-speak.

The onset of everything that happens starts with Roy, a liar and hypocrite, who does his damndest to mask his desperation and low self-esteem. “I’ve been feeling depressed” and “I’m a nervous wreck!” are among Roy’s grumbles. But wait, this is Josh Brolin (“No Country for Old Men,” “W.”) we are talking about here. Why did Mr. Good Ol’ Dude take this part? And what’s with Brolin’s 1977 discotheque hair? His hair runs berserk and his belly flab sticks out like a gorilla clad in corduroys.

In the elapsing story, Roy has been having anxiety about his latest manuscript which is under evaluation from a publishing house. During this time, he beckons the attention of Dia (Pinto), a guitar-playing beauty, seen in the window in the building across from his. It’s one of Woody’s eavesdropping themes that we have seen countless times from him since “Another Woman” (1988) and nearly every movie since. Then, as Roy’s professional life succumbs to disillusion (“disillusion” a recurring Woody theme), he decides to steal a publish-ready manuscript from a dead man. When this happens you wonder if Woody has seen “Morvern Collar.”

It is not impossible to admire some of the plot-evolving developments, but as hard as the actors work, they are not whole people. They are not whole individuals. Woody has said during interviews that he does not want to see his actors perform (he says he can’t stand that), but he wants to see them natural on-screen. Yet every bodily movement of the actors, every movement of the camera, feels overformal and constricted. In other words, unnatural. That’s the problem. Forgiving Woody fans will not care as much, and might find something to like. But it’s no “Match Point,” nor is it a “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

Go to the official site at http://www.sonyclassics.com/youwillmeetatalldarkstranger/
 
Grade: C

THE TOWN

Fierce entertainment. In a leap career improvement, Ben Affleck turns in a sturdier and shrewder lead performance than his usual. Affleck as director makes head-banging efforts to make the bank robberies in The Town different from other larcenies we’ve seen, and he makes Boston his own degenerate cesspool. Double-crosses, twists, the binds (and snaps) of loyalty exceed expectations – it is more than a one-note crime movie. A few warts keeps the movie from becoming a total triumph. But all the familiar elements of robbery movies are ecstatically amped up dispensing regularly satisfying thrills.

This is an actor’s showcase. Affleck feels (Boston) rooted in his part as bank robber Doug MacRay, Jeremy Renner is Jem, his hothead cohort ready to unload his weapon on innocent people if need-be, Blake Lively is the trashy and easy girl, Pete Postlethwaite is the florist who moonlights as the crime architect, Chris Cooper is the dad in a one-scene showstopper, and Jon Hamm is the dilligent FBI man who enjoys nabbing scumbags.

Hamm is the only refined character of the film. This is a fresh career move for the actor known, with raves, for the award-winning TV series “Mad Men.” Hamm is a stiff, straight-arrow lawman, but while stiff sounds like a criticism, it should serve more as a compliment. He is rugged enough for the field, but a stiff no-nonsense interrogator. He even gets a few scenes with the ladies. But he is dealing at the core these Boston bad boys led by Affleck and Renner. These are the kind of hardened guys who will get themselves into a brutal street scrimmage just to retain self-respect.

The script has one shameless, far-fetched stretch: Rebecca Hall (just fine), as Claire, is abducted by the guys during the first robbery of the film, and when the guys learn of her Charlestown residence from her driver’s license (which is their hometown) they want to surveillance her. Only that during the tailing, Doug runs into a consoling dialogue with her, and within a few scenes, falls for her. Once you suspend your disbelief with this development, you can accept the rest of the story.

Of course, Jem doesn’t like Doug’s involvement with Claire one bit. He is ready to rub her out if any corroborating evidence spills to the FBI. Claire is the first normal, non-trashy, non-bad girl and dignified romantic relationship in his life. Doug, of course, doesn't want to be slummin' all his life and Claire represents, err, a new flowering. Doug continues to set up and execute robberies while lying to Claire about his extracurricular activities. Will Claire ever find out that she is going with a man who held her at gunpoint? Claire finding out his real identity is inevitable, whether it be real life or just Hollywood plot mechanics. “I was never going to hurt you,” he confesses.

The guys start taking swings at each other and the grudges turn into suspicions about who will sell out whom. Doug wants out of the business but the livelihood of others becomes threatened so he has to stick with it. This leads to the final big score robbery, a set piece assembled with bravado. The ads promised robbers in nun masks, but the costumes vary each time, and better yet, what also varies is how much tougher these guys get on the bystanders. The final shootout is a real viciously charged street battle, although, one wishes that guys with double-barrel shotguns didn’t miss from ten feet away.

The camerawork bursts with energy during the big action scenes sprawling over a lot of spontaneous, anything-can-happen territory. The film ends on a satisfying, more than half believable note. Affleck is so good that he nearly gets to forget his career garbage like “Pearl Harbor” and “Daredevil.” He is also becoming a real legitimate director coming off the heels of his debut “Gone Baby Gone.” Maybe the permanent 5 o’clock shadow is working for him, or his Nike leather jacket is working for him (street cred!). Renner also deserves props for injecting sleaze and a violent mean streak into his wild card character. On a double bill, “The Town” should be the opening act and “The Departed” should be the main event.

Go to the official site at http://thetownmovie.warnerbros.com/
 

Grade: B+

HEARTBREAKER (L'Arnacoeur)

The French romantic comedy with Heartbreaker (L’Arnacoeur) should be a guilt-free joy if you are already predisposed for love conquers all stuff. It borrows “Ocean’s 11” jazzy rhythms but instead of a heist film it is a love hijack. Romain Duris (“The Beat That My Heart Skipped”) is Alex, a professional couple-wrecker who drops in to seduce and save women before they take the plunge with the wrong guy. Overprotective fathers are often the clients that pay Alex and his team to intercept. On his latest assignment, Alex falls in love with the bitchy heiress Juliette (Vanessa Paradis).

Like other popular imports “Priceless” and “The Girl from Monaco,” this is another high-gloss comedy set at a five-star French Riviera hotel. Luxurious setting, perky performers and more garter belts than in an American film. For a touch of cute, Juliette has a soft spot for “Dirty Dancing” which means that Alex must brush up on Patrick Swayze moves, imitate the swagger and slide of a legend. Also means he must sing like George Michael.

Alex has a week to break up Juliette’s wedding before she ties the knot to a supposed boring guy. Alex will pose as her bodyguard so he can follow her every shopping and spa salon move. On his side are two surveillance experts, his brother Marc (Francois Damiens) and his wife Julie Ferrier (Melanie). Damiens is a goofball – not a ladykiller like Alex, and his key role is to play the A/C repairman who deliberately puts the cooling system on the fritz. As for Ferrier, she has a fetching cougar quality. Her character slips into hotel receptionist, cleaner, waitress, etc.

Juliette has one of the biggest suites in the hotel, and Alex the would-be bodyguard is right next door. Just when Juliette dismisses Alex from duty, she gets attacked by a (would-be) thief, and Alex saves the day. Things start to look rosy, but then Juliette’s fiancé shows up. It becomes harder to predict in how Alex is going to be able to pull this off but if he can steal Juliette away for a few minutes in a cool yellow sports car and make the bachelorette party about him…

As the love interest, Paradis has a stiff face that somehow can look pretty once she gives Alex the time of day, which she is not so willing. If you have ever found beauty under a hard shell of woman then Paradis will make your day. As for Duris, he is like a cheeseball Colin Farrell trying to be John Travolta or Patrick Swayze. The movie itself is suave, snobby around the edges, and a smidgen delightful by the climax.

Go to the official site at http://www.heartbreakermovie.com/
 
Grade: B

THE AMERICAN

In response to the new film The American, some audiences are going to find its meditative distance and ambiguity to be mesmerizing and some will find that because it slows its pace down to the rituals of real life, it is boring. George Clooney, in full undeterred grimace, is a hitman trying to get away and stay low. The methodical pace lets you concentrate on the realities of a hitman’s life rituals, and if you accept, the frequent pauses benefit the style and atmosphere of the story.

The title of the original novel was better apt. Martin Booth’s 1990 novel “A Very Private Gentleman” was the name, and it probably contained terse conversations and internalized anguish as well. For the book to be adapted, it must have needed star power to attain commercial purposes. Clooney is a star that happens to be an actor first, and here he makes silence magnetic with his protagonist Jack, who sometimes goes by Edward. Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) is his only regular speaking buddy in the first half of the film. If you are enrapt by the film’s visual storytelling and by the mystery of Jack’s enigmatic background, then you will probably wish that there were even less speaking scenes between these two.

The story begins with a shocking ambush. The title cards tell us that Jack and his lover are in Sweden. But how serious can a guy like Jack, in his line of work, take love? “Make no personal friends, Jack. You used to know that,” is what Jack’s shadowy contractor Pavel (Johan Leysen) tells him. Jack abandons his lover like he abandons tube socks with holes. When Jack relocates to Castle del Monte, a region in Italy, he accepts another job. “You don’t even have to pull the trigger,” he is told.

The glacial, no facial tics mood of the film can be captivating. You wonder, “Who is going to double-cross who in this small Italian village?” We wait for Jack to be contacted about the details and necessities of this latest job. A mysterious dirty-blonde haired man starts to follow him but mostly hangs out in his car.

This film by Anton Corbijn, his second film, is a film steeped more in tenseness than intensity. He lets the film breathe and saunter in anxiety. He creates a mood, a space, wandering languor, and then surprises us with sudden bursts of action and excitement that come out of nowhere. On a television screen, Corbijn shows “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) but not “Le Samourai” (1967, French) as a homage. Corbijn has made a lone wolf art film, like the aforementioned ’67 French classic. But it is one with certain fatalistic noir pleasures: sex and bang-bang.

During all of the hushed cinematics, the story interjects a sexual relationship between Jack and a whore named Clara (Violante Placido, rendering complexity out of a potentially thin role) which takes place in a sleazy cathouse saturated in red lighting. Jack has the money to pay more for a tastier, hotter girl like Clara (her breasts are even prettier in the natural sunlight away from cathouse stench) although we can only guess how much extra a john would have to pay. During the sex scenes where money is exchanged, Jack and Clara’s bodies slosh each other in graphic rhapsody. They have bedroom chemistry. Jack temporarily fulfills his sex needs without making any committed attachments.

Clara is a very beautiful girl, with possible well-groomed religious roots. But with no other industrial talents she somehow ended up as a whore. But she does have the talent of manipulation. Clara sees Jack as this tall handsome stranger who tips big, behaves in worldly self-confidence, and decides that he could be a candidate to help her exit out of her sordid lifestyle. She doesn’t know what he does for a living, but surely whatever it is, his occupation is awesome. Clara knows if there has ever been a man, Jack is the right person to trick into having a date outside of the cathouse. No money exchanged, she is thinking, let’s just see what he can do for me.

As the film develops, we suspect there are spies or amateur spies plunking around. Father Benedetto and Clara are trustworthy allies to Jack, because they are simple people. But Clooney has a magnificent scene where his distrust is so incandescent that you can see his expert foresight into lies and deceit within a clench of an eyebrow. Why is Father Benedetto so insistent about talking about the sins of lives during the most seeming remissive morning hours? Why is Clara so willing to get so full-frontal nude – is it because she wants Jack nude and defenseless, too? And what is the symbolic meaning of the butterfly? Is the key answer supposed to be revealed in the final shot of the movie? You bet. If you find “The American” entertaining it is probably because you enjoy guessing motives of ambiguous and emotionally enfolded characters.

Go to the official site at http://www.focusfeatures.com/film/the_american/
 
Grade: B+