Maki at the Movies

Narc (2002)

2012-01-26T12:46:00.001-05:00

Ray Liotta, left, and Jason Patric are shown in a scene from "Narc."

Joe Carnahan, director of the new Liam Neeson survival thriller "The Grey," had his breakthrough with the 2002 cop movie "Narc."

Detroit cop Henry Oak is a beast of a man, an intimidating figure with an end-justifies-the-means attitude toward law enforcement. Brought to ferocious life by Ray Liotta in "Narc," written and directed by Joe Carnahan, he's a ticking time bomb hellbent on finding the killer of his former partner and friend, an undercover narcotics cop named Michael Calvess.

Oak is the man with whom Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), a narc who's been suspended since accidentally shooting a pregnant woman 18 months earlier, must work when he's brought onto the case. The departmental brass hope Tellis can use his old street contacts to get to the killer. With his captain (Chi McBride) dangling full reinstatement in front of him, he has to accept the offer even though it will take him away from his wife (Krista Bridges) and baby son. He tries to refuse, but he's as addicted to the job as he was to the drugs he got hooked on while working undercover.

The mean Detroit streets of "8 Mile" seem almost cheerful compared to the cruel world of "Narc." Carnahan employs every stylistic trick in the book to create this effect, including extensive use of handheld camera shots (used to great effect in the opening chase scene), filters, flashbacks presented with quick-hitting, violent edits, toying with the focus and using split screen (an economic method to get us through the more mundane period of the investigation). Used intelligently, these tools all serve to enhance the story, characters, mood and tone.

Carnahan mines familiar cop-movie terrain, but this is not a "buddy" movie and nothing is played for laughs. This is a cold, brutal look at two dedicated cops with very different but effective approaches to their jobs. While most movies draw distinct lines between right and wrong, good and evil, "Narc" exists in a gray area. As they methodically go about their investigation, the routine of Tellis and Oak is not so much good cop/bad cop as it is bad cop/worse cop. We get the feeling Tellis is acting as he needed to survive working as an undercover narc, while Oak is driven by some deeply-rooted anger, the source of which is unknown to us.

Adding 30 pounds and a menacing salt-and-pepper goatee, Liotta is electrifying, reminding us of what a great actor he can be when he has strong material. It is important that Oak is not just a bloodthirsty madman. In one of many scenes that easily could seem clichéd but is not, Oak opens up to Tellis during a stakeout as they talk about their families and the death of Oak's wife. Oak passionately pursues his work and is protective of his murdered partner's family—he's furious when Tellis questions them without him.

Liotta has the showier role, but he knows when to pull back, and he never overshadows Patric, the movie's true lead. The conflict between Tellis and his wife is familiar, but it works. Having been there before, Tellis knows the problems that will arise when he goes back to work; the job consumes him so much that he's practically abandoning his family, but he cannot resist. His wife's concerns seem real, and Patric, who has been absent from the movies for far too long (he last appeared in "Your Friends and Neighbors" in 1998) is so convincing that the scenario works beautifully. It's a small part of the film, but it immeasurably fleshes out Tellis as a character.

Together, Liotta and Patric bounce off each other nicely, with an instant, natural camaraderie forming between the two cops. But as the investigation continues and Tellis sees more and more of Oak's violent nature, he begins to wonder just how far his new partner will go.

The details of the actual investigation are unimportant until the final act, when a few startling twists occur. Looking back, the surprises are more than simple trickery, and Carnahan makes no obvious attempts to mislead us before we get there.

The ending—far from a happy one—is unsettling and does not provide the tidy resolution most people expect from movies. Tellis's fate on the police force and that of the investigation are left open. But that is not what's important here. This is a character-driven film, and it's not about action—though there's plenty of it—or finding the bad guys.

"Narc," a showcase for two talented actors and Carnahan's technical wizardry, is a welcome entry in a tired genre.

Greg’s Grade: A

(Rated R for strong brutal violence, drug content and pervasive language. 105 minutes.)

Haywire

2012-01-24T17:43:00.003-05:00

RELATIVITY MEDIA, CLAUDETTE BARIUS
Gina Carano and Ewan McGregor are shown in a scene from "Haywire."

Action film, spy movie, revenge picture—any way you slice it, the nuts and bolts of “Haywire” have been done to death. But never before by maverick filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.

In his hands, the movie becomes a bit of a puzzle, with cross-cut flashbacks, occasional shots of black and white, and an array of unconventional camera angles.

To top it off, Soderbergh and his screenwriter, Lem Dobbs (who also wrote Soderbergh's “Kafka” and “The Limey”), developed the movie around a performer with virtually no acting experience, former mixed martial arts star Gina Carano.

They tailored the script to her strengths, resulting in a terse heroine of the Jason Bourne variety and a narrative that, despite everything Soderbergh pulls from his bag of directorial tricks, is based on a handful of visceral hand-to-hand combat scenes.

The approach to the action is novel in this age of shaky, handheld cameras and furious cutting. Soderbergh, who acts as his own cinematographer and camera operator, shoots the fights in either static or tracking shots, often at a wide angle and with relatively long takes. He cast Carano for her physical abilities, and he truly captures her skills with his camera. You wouldn't cobble together a single line reading by Meryl Streep from multiple takes, so why would you want to show Carano in action a second or fractions of a second at a time?

Soderbergh heightens the intensity by dropping David Holmes' bouncy musical score during the action scenes, leaving us only with the natural sounds of the fights [-] a fist smashing a face, a back slamming into a wall.

When it's time for Carano to deliver dialogue, she isn't going to win any awards, but she gets the job done. She has to given the talent around her.

Ewan McGregor is the head of a covert team, which includes Carano's Mallory Kane, that the government employs for jobs it would rather not be involved with directly, such as a hostage extraction in Barcelona.

Michael Douglas is the government agent who serves as a liaison to the team.

And Michael Fassbender is a British intelligence agent with whom Mallory is paired on an assignment in Dublin. The discovery of a dead body there arouses her already piqued suspicions about the job. Her partner's attempt on her life confirms them.

Marked for death and framed for murder, Mallory goes on the run from both her employers and international authorities while trying to sort out what went down in Barcelona and Dublin.

Soderbergh moves the movie along at a swift pace, his concise storytelling and rhythmic editing fitting it snugly into its 93-minute running time. The action is low-tech—no fancy pyrotechnics or computer graphics—and that only increases its impact.

You might think you've seen this movie before—but you haven't seen it like this.

Greg's Grade: A-

(Rated R for some violence. 93 minutes.)

2012 Movie Preview: Part Two

2012-01-12T15:48:00.000-05:00

Here's some of what Hollywood has lined up for the second half of 2012.

COLUMBIA PICTURES/JAIMIE TRUEBLOOD
Andrew Garfield is shown in a scene from "The Amazing Spider-Man."

"The Amazing Spider-Man" (July 3)

Director: Marc Webb

Stars: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field

Plot: Teenager Peter Parker deals with human problems and new superhuman abilities.

Maki Meter of Anticipation (on a scale of 1 to 10): 7

"Ice Age: Continental Drift" (July 13)

Directors: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier

Stars: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo

Plot: Manny, Diego and Sid embark upon another adventure after their continent is set adrift.

Maki Meter: 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES/WALL PFISTER
Tom Hardy is shown as Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises."

"The Dark Knight Rises" (July 20)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Stars: Christian Bale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathawy, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman

Plot: Eight years after the events of "The Dark Knight" (2008), the terrorist leader Bane arrives in Gotham City, forcing Batman to resurface after taking the fall for Harvey Dent's crimes.

Maki Meter: 10

"Neighborhood Watch" (July 27)

Director: Akiva Schaffer

Stars: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Billy Crudup

Plot: Suburban dads form a neighborhood watch group and discover a plot to destroy Earth.

Maki Meter: 6

"The Bourne Legacy" (Aug. 3)

Director: Tony Gilroy

Stars: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton

Plot: A story centered on a new CIA operative in the universe based on Robert Ludlum's novels.

Maki Meter: 8

"Total Recall" (Aug. 3)

Director: Len Wiseman

Stars: Colin Farrell, Bryan Cranston

Plot: As the nation states Euromerica and New Shanghai vie for supremacy, a factory worker suspects he's a spy, though he doesn't know what side he's on.

Maki Meter: 3

"Dog Fight" (Aug. 10)

Director: Jay Roach

Stars: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis

Plot: Two rival South Carolina politicians with presidential aspirations tangle with one another.

Maki Meter: 7

"The Expendables 2" (Aug. 17)

Director: Simon West

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture

Plot: The Expendables seek revenge when one of their own is murdered.

Maki Meter: 3

"Argo" (Sept. 14)

Director: Ben Affleck

Stars: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman

Plot: As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA agent concocts a plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.

Maki Meter: 8

"Resident Evil: Retribution" (Sept. 14)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Stars: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez

Plot: Alice fights alongside a resistance movement against the Umbrella Corporation and the undead.

Maki Meter: 1

"Savages" (Sept. 28)

Director: Oliver Stone

Stars: Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Benicio del Toro, Uma Thurman, John Travolta

Plot: Two pot growers face off against the Mexican drug cartel who kidnapped their shared girlfriend.

Maki Meter: 5

"Frankenweenie" (Oct. 5)

Director: Tim Burton

Stars: Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short

Plot: Victor faces unintended consequences when he tries to bring his dog back to life.

Maki Meter: 6

Untitled "Taken" sequel (Oct. 5)

Director: Olivier Megaton

Stars: Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace

Plot: Retired CIA operative Bryan Mills and his wife are taken hostage by the father of a kidnapper Mills killed while rescuing his daughter.

Maki Meter: 6

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D" (Oct. 5)

Director: John Luessenhop

Stars: Alexandra Daddario, Tania Raymonde, Scott Eastwood

Plot: A young woman travels to Texas to collect an inheritance only to encounter a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

Maki Meter: 3

"Parker" (Oct. 12)

Director: Taylor Hackford

Stars: Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis, Nick Nolte

Plot: A thief lives by a code of honor that includes never stealing money from people who need it.

Maki Meter: 3

WARNER BROS. PICTURES/WILSON WEBB
Sean Penn, left, and Josh Brolin are shown in a scene from "The Gangster Squad."

"Gangster Squad" (Oct. 19)

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Stars: Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone

Plot: The LAPD fights to keep mobsters out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and '50s.

Maki Meter: 8

"Halloween 3D" (Oct. 26)

Director: Patrick Lussier

Maki Meter: 4

"Skyfall" (Nov. 9)

Director: Sam Mendes

Stars: Daniel Craig, Helen McCrory, Javier Bardem

Plot: As MI6 comes under attack, James Bond must track down and destroy the threat.

Maki Meter: 7

"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" (Nov. 16)

Director: Bill Condon

Stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Plot: After the birth of Renesmee, the Cullens gather other vampire clans to protect the child.

Maki Meter: 0

"Gravity" (Nov. 21)

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

Stars: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Plot: The lone survivor of a mission to repair the Hubble telescope tries to return to Earth and reunite with her daughter.

Maki Meter: 8

"Les Miserables" (Dec. 7)

Director: Tom Hooper

Stars: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter

Plot: Adaptation of the popular stage musical.

Maki Meter: 4

"World War Z" (Dec. 12)

Director: Marc Forster

Stars: Brad Pitt, Matthew Fox

Plot: A UN representative writing a report on the great zombie war interviews survivors of World War Z.

Maki Meter: 8

WARNER BROS. PICTURES/JAMES FISHER
Martin Freeman is shown in a scene from "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey."

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (Dec. 14)

Director: Peter Jackson

Stars: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen

Plot: Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and a group of dwarves journey to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim a treasure taken from them by the dragon Smaug.

Maki Meter: 10

"This Is 40" (Dec. 21)

Director: Judd Apatow

Stars: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel

Plot: A look at the lives of married couple Pete and Debbie a few years after the events of "Knocked Up" (2007).

Maki Meter: 8

"Django Unchained" (Dec. 25)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Stars: Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kurt Russell, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Plot: A slave-turned-bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

Maki Meter: 9

"The Great Gatsby" (Dec. 25)

Director: Baz Luhrman

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan

Plot: Nick Carraway finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby.

Maki Meter: 4

"Lincoln" (December)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jared Harris

Plot: The 16th president of the United States guides the North to victory during the Civil War.

Maki Meter: 10

2012 Movie Preview: Part One

2012-01-05T14:23:00.000-05:00

Box office revenue and attendance at movie theaters were down in 2011, but Hollywood is eyeing a big year in 2012.

The schedule is packed with the latest adventures of Batman, Spider-Man and other superheroes, James Bond, the sparkly vampires of “Twilight,” Abraham Lincoln and a return to Middle-Earth.

Here is a sampling of what to expect at the movies in the first half of this year.

“Contraband” (Jan. 13)
Director: Baltasar Kormakur
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Beckinsale
Plot: A former smuggler heads to Panama to score millions of dollars in counterfeit bills to protect his brother-in-law from a drug lord.
Maki Meter of Anticipation (on a scale of 1 to 10): 4

RELATIVITY MEDIA/CLAUDETTE BARIUS
Gina Carano is shown in a scene from "Haywire."

“Haywire” (Jan. 20)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas
Plot: When freelance covert operative Mallory Kane is double-crossed, she becomes the subject of an international manhunt while trying to exact revenge on those who betrayed her.
Maki Meter: 8

“Underworld: Awakening” (Jan. 20)
Directors: Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein
Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy, India Eisley
Plot: Humans wage war on both vampires and lycans.
Maki Meter: 5

“The Grey” (Jan. 27)
Director: Joe Carnahan
Stars: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo
Plot: A pack of wolves hunts an oil drilling team whose plane crashes in the wilds of Alaska.
Maki Meter: 5

“One for the Money” (Jan. 27)
Director: Julie Ann Robinson
Stars: Katherine Heigl, Jason O’Mara, Daniel Sunjata
Plot: Stephanie Plum lands a job at her cousin’s bail-bond business, and her first assignment puts her on the trail of a local cop from her romantic past. Based on the popular book series by Janet Evanovich.
Maki Meter: 4

“Man on a Ledge” (Jan. 27)
Director: Asger Leth
Stars: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks
Plot: While a police psychologist works to talk down an ex-con threatening to jump from a Manhattan hotel rooftop, the biggest diamond heist ever is in motion.
Maki Meter: 4

“The Woman in Black” (Feb. 3)
Director: James Watkins
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer, Ciaran Hinds
Plot: A young lawyer travels to a remote village where the ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals.
Maki Meter: 5

“Big Miracle” (Feb. 3)
Director: Ken Kwapis
Stars: Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski
Plot: In small-town Alaska, a news reporter recruits his ex-girlfriend to help save a family of gray whales trapped by ice in the Arctic Circle.
Maki Meter: 2

“Safe House” (Feb. 10)
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Stars: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Robert Patrick
Plot: A young CIA agent is tasked with looking after a fugitive in a safe house, and finds himself and the fugitive on the run when the safe house is attacked.
Maki Meter: 6

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” (Feb. 10)
Director: Brad Peyton
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Michael Caine
Plot: Sean Anderson teams with his mom’s boyfriend to find his grandfather, who is thought to be missing on a mythical island.
Maki Meter: 1

“Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” (Feb. 17)
Directors: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Ciaran Hinds, Idris Elba
Plot: Johnny Blaze is called upon to stop the devil, who is trying to take human form.
Maki Meter: 2

“This Means War” (Feb. 17)
Director: McG
Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy
Plot: Two CIA operatives wage an epic battle against one another after they discover they are dating the same woman.
Maki Meter: 5

UNIVERSAL PICTURES/GEMMA LA MANA
Paul Rudd, left, and Jennifer Aniston are shown in a scene from "Wanderlust."

“Wanderlust” (Feb. 24)
Director: David Wain
Stars: Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston, Malin Akerman
Plot: Unemployment causes a New York City couple to move to a rural commune where free love rules.
Maki Meter: 9

“Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” (March 2)
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Peter Stormare
Plot: Fifteen years after their gingerbread-house incident, Hansel and Gretel have become a team of bounty hunters that tracks and kills witches.
Maki Meter: 6

PARAMOUNT PICTURES/HILARY BRONWYN GAYLE
Jason Segel, left, and Ed Helms are shown in a scene from "Jeff, Who Lives at Home."

“Jeff, Who Lives at Home” (March 2)
Directors: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass
Stars: Jason Segel, Ed Helms, Judy Greer
Plot: Jeff, dispatched from his basement room on an errand for his mother, might discover his destiny when he spends the day with his brother as he tracks his possibly adulterous wife.
Maki Meter: 7

“John Carter” (March 9)
Director: Andrew Stanton
Stars: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe
Plot: A Civil War veteran is transplanted to Mars, where he discovers a lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians.
Maki Meter: 6


RELATIVITY MEDIA/LARRY HORRICKS John Cusack is shown in a scene from "The Raven."

“The Raven” (March 9)
Director: James McTeigue
Stars: John Cusack, Alice Eve, Luke Evans
Plot: Edgar Allan Poe pursues a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer’s stories.
Maki Meter: 8

“Silent House” (March 9)
Directors: Chris Kentis and Laura Lau
Stars: Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese
Plot: A young woman descends into madness while trapped inside her family’s lakeside retreat.
Maki Meter: 5

“Mirror Mirror” (March 16)
Director: Tarsem Singh
Stars: Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, Armie Hammer
Plot: An evil queen steals control of a kingdom, and Snow White enlists the help of seven rebels to win back her birthright.
Maki Meter: 3

“21 Jump Street” (March 16)
Directors: Phil Lord and Chris Miller
Stars: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube
Plot: A pair of underachieving cops is sent back to a local high school to bring down a synthetic drug ring.
Maki Meter: 4

“Casa de mi Padre” (March 16)
Director: Matt Piedmont
Stars: Will Ferrell, Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Nick Offerman
Plot: Trying to save their father’s ranch, the Alvarez brothers go to war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord.
Maki Meter: 6

LIONSGATE/MURRAY CLOSE
Jennifer Lawrence is shown in a scene from "The Hunger Games."

“The Hunger Games” (March 23)
Director: Gary Ross
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson
Plot: In a post-apocalyptic future, 24 teenagers must fight to the death in the televised Hunger Games. Based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling young adult novel.
Maki Meter: 7

“Wrath of the Titans” (March 30)
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Stars: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes
Plot: Perseus ventures into the underworld to rescue Zeus, who has been captured by his traitorous son, Ares, and his brother, Hades. Sequel to “Clash of the Titans” (2010).
Maki Meter: 2

“American Reunion” (April 6)
Directors: Jon Hurwitz, Hyden Schlossberg
Stars: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott
Plot: It’s high school reunion time for the “American Pie” crew.
Maki Meter: 4

LIONSGATE/DIYAH PERA
From left, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz and Kristen Connolly are shown in a scene from "The Cabin in the Woods."

“The Cabin in the Woods” (April 13)
Director: Drew Goddard
Stars: Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Chris Hemsworth
Plot: Bad things happen when five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Written by Goddard and Joss Whedon.
Maki Meter: 9

“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” (April 20)
Director: Lorene Scafaria
Stars: Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Patton Oswalt
Plot: As an asteroid nears Earth, a man and his neighbor take a road trip to find his high school sweetheart.
Maki Meter: 7

“Lock-Out” (April 20)
Directors: James Mather and Stephen St. Leger
Stars: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace
Plot: A man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States can win his freedom by rescuing the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by the inmates.
Maki Meter: 5

“The Five-Year Engagement” (April 27)
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Stars: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt
Plot: A comedy charting the ups and downs of an engaged couple’s relationship.
Maki Meter: 7

“The Avengers” (May 4)
Director: Joss Whedon
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson
Plot: The heroes of “Iron Man,” “Captain America,” “Thor” and “The Incredible Hulk” come together.
Maki Meter: 9

“Dark Shadows” (May 11)
Director: Tim Burton
Stars: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Chloe Grace Moretz
Plot: Based on the soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971 about vampire Barnabas Collins.
Maki Meter: 7

“Battleship” (May 18)
Director: Peter Berg
Stars: Alexander Skarsgard, Brooklyn Decker, Liam Neeson
Plot: Action movie based on the classic guessing game.
Maki Meter: 3

“Men in Black III” (May 25)
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Stars: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin
Plot: Agent J travels to the 1960s to stop an alien from assassinating Agent K and changing history.
Maki Meter: 5

“Moonrise Kingdom” (May 25)
Director: Wes Anderson
Stars: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel
Plot: A search party looks for a couple that has fled its New England home.
Maki Meter: 4

“Snow White and the Huntsman” (June 1)
Director: Rupert Sanders
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron
Plot: The Huntsman ordered to take Snow White into the woods to be killed becomes her protector and mentor.
Maki Meter: 4

“Prometheus” (June 8)
Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Michael Fassbender
Plot: Discovering a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, explorers journey to the darkest corners of the universe, where they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.
Maki Meter: 8

“Jack the Giant Killer” (June 15)
Director: Bryan Singer
Stars: Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor
Plot: A young farmer leads an expedition into the giants’ kingdom to rescue a kidnapped princess.
Maki Meter: 6

“I Hate You Dad” (June 15)
Directors: Sean Anders and John Morris
Stars: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Leighton Meester, Susan Sarandon, James Caan
Plot: A father moves in with his son before his wedding and begins sparring with his daughter-in-law.
Maki Meter: 0

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” (June 22)
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Stars: Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell, Dominc Cooper, Anthony Mackie
Plot: Detailing the 16th president’s secret life stalking the undead.
Maki Meter: 9

“Brave” (June 15)
Directors: Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
Stars: Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Craig Ferguson
Plot: Granted one wish, Princess Merida must rely on her bravery and archery skills to undo a beastly curse. From Disney/Pixar.
Maki Meter: 6

“G.I. Joe: Retaliation” (June 29)
Director: Jon M. Chu
Stars: Channing Tatum, Dwayne Johnson, Ray Park, Bruce Willis, Ray Stevenson
Plot: The G.I. Joe team faces off against Zartan and the world leaders he has under his influence.
Maki Meter: 2

Stay tuned for part two of my 2012 preview (July through December).

The best of 2011

2011-12-30T00:01:00.002-05:00

"There's a hundred thousand streets in this city. If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place, I give you a five-minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes, then I'm yours, no matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that, and you're on your own. Do you understand?"

The opening lines of "Drive," the best movie I saw in 2011, set the tone for the entire picture.

Like the Driver's (Ryan Gosling) approach to his nighttime gig as a wheelman, Nicolas Winding Refn's filmmaking is deceptively simple and direct. Dialogue is spare. Action is sudden and brutal. Car chases appear to be composed solely of stunts.

The tight-lipped Driver remains a mystery to the end, even as he romances his neighbor (Carey Mulligan), bonds with her young son (Kaden Leos), tries to help her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) out of a jam and runs afoul of two gangsters (Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks).

The supporting actors, Brooks foremost among them, provide the personality Gosling forcefully holds back from the Driver.

Refn works with silences, stretching them out as the Driver weighs every word, using them with Cliff Martinez's addictive electro-pop score and Newton Thomas Sigel's warm nighttime cinematography of Los Angeles to create a hypnotic tone.

"Drive" is an action movie that has nothing in common with the latest "Transformers" or "Fast and Furious" sequels. It is more intense and suspenseful than any of those big-budget franchises because its focus is character—yet its central figure is defined completely by his actions. Refn and Gosling use this compelling contradiction to draw in the audience, placing us in the Driver's seat as those five minutes tick away.

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The following films, listed alphabetically, fill out my top 10 of 2011.

"The Artist"

The most daring movie of the year employs filmmaking techniques as old as the art form, though that's not why it makes this list. "The Artist," from French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, is a black-and-white silent film, yes, but it's the joyful performances—chiefly among them, Jean Dujardin as a silent movie star and Berenice Bejo as a young dancer who becomes a sensation when "talkies" are introduced in 1927—and an unabashed love of the movies that make this a special experience.

"Cedar Rapids"

"Cedar Rapids," from director Miguel Arteta, presents a group of characters so inviting you just want to hang out with them. Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), Dean "Deansy" Ziegler (John C. Reilly), Ronald "Ronimal" Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche) make a convention of insurance salesmen in Iowa seem like the party of the year. The good-natured, likable vibe starts with Helms and filters out through the entire movie, making it the best pure comedy of the year.

"The Descendants"

Set in a Hawaii that actually feels like people live there, Alexander Payne's "The Descendants" presents George Clooney, in one of the year's top performances, as a real estate lawyer who must sell off his family's 25,000 acres of undeveloped land while trying to find the man with whom his now-comatose wife was having an affair and reconnecting with his two daughters. Like life, "The Descendants" is both happy and sad, and often inhabits the gray areas of morality.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Dark, pulpy, slickly made entertainment by David Fincher. The American adaptation of Stieg Larsson's international bestseller gives birth to a new star in Rooney Mara as the iconic character of the title, computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, while Daniel Craig gives a more workmanlike performance as Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist brought to solve a decades-old murder. Fincher digs deep into his bag of tricks to breathe new life into a story many already have seen on the screen and even more have read.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"

Ten years after the first movie, the boy wizard's saga comes to a spectacular end with the Battle of Hogwarts and the inevitable final showdown between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Though this second half of the final book in the series is the most action-packed Potter movie, director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves never lose sight of the beloved characters brought to life by actors we literally have watched grow up on the screen. Powerful, emotional filmmaking on a grand scale.

"Midnight in Paris"

Woody Allen continues his sojourn in Europe with this fanciful tale of Gil (Owen Wilson, in the performance of his career), a Hollywood screenwriter who longs to be a novelist. With his imagination and sense of nostalgia running wild while on a Parisian vacation with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams), the clock strikes midnight and each night he's whisked away to the 1920s, where he befriends F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo).

"Moneyball"

Director Bennett Miller finds the human story in a book about using statistics to build a winning baseball team. Brad Pitt is at his best as Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, presented as brash and bullish in public but plagued by self-doubt in private, and Jonah Hill flexes his dramatic muscles impressively as an economics major who sells Beane on a new approach to scouting. "Moneyball" is a classic underdog story and a baseball movie that isn't really about baseball.

"Rango"

It is animated and its characters are talking animals, but no, "Rango" is not a kids' movie. It's a Western in every sense and features a hero, a little lizard who calls himself Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp), with a bent more toward existential pondering ("Who am I?") than action. Celebrating genre conventions and referencing movies such "Apocalypse Now," "Chinatown" and "Star Wars," this is about as ambitious as it gets for major-studio animation.

"Super"

The deconstruction of superheroes continues in writer-director James Gunn's independent feature starring Rainn Wilson as Frank, a man who strikes out with his wife (Liv Tyler) and decides to win her back by becoming a masked crimefighter called the Crimson Bolt. Armed with a pipe wrench and with help from his demented sidekick, Boltie (Ellen Page), Frank takes to the streets, seeking out evildoers and people who cut in line at the movie theater. With wild shifts in tone—the movie careens back and forth from comedy to horrific violence—"Super" is one of the year's most interesting and disturbing films.

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BEST ACTOR: Ryan Gosling, "Crazy, Stupid, Love," "Drive," "The Ides of March"

BEST ACTRESS: Michelle Williams, "My Week with Marilyn"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Patton Oswalt, "Young Adult"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Shailene Woodley, "The Descendants"

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE: Jonah Hill, "Moneyball"

BEST COMEDIC PERFORMANCE: Paul Rudd, "Our Idiot Brother"

FUNNIEST MOVIE: "Horrible Bosses"

PLEASANT SURPRISES: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," "Fright Night"

ANTICIPATED IN 2012: "The Avengers," "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Bourne Legacy," "Lincoln," "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," "Django Unchained"

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2011-12-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

To stay up to date on what's new here, follow me on Twitter: @Greg_stardem.

War Horse

2011-12-23T00:02:00.004-05:00

DREAMWORKS PICTURES/ANDREW COOPER
Jeremy Irvine is shown in a scene from "War Horse."

Coming from Steven Spielberg during the year-end Oscar-bait season, "War Horse" is exactly the kind of movie you probably think it is.

It is gorgeously shot by the great cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, features stirring music by the always reliable composer John Williams, boasts several harrowing World War I battle scenes, includes bits of slapstick humor and has at its center a protagonist that virtually defines the term "rooting interest."

It has all these things, and they all work well.

Yet it feels a little routine, like Spielberg and his ace team of collaborators could have made this movie in their sleep. I suppose that's not a bad problem to have, and more than anything else, it's a testament to the superb work Spielberg has done for nearly four decades. So I'm trying not to hold that against "War Horse."

We get both Spielbergs for the price of one here—the sentimental filmmaker of his earlier days (think "E.T.") and the more intense auteur of his later years (think "Saving Private Ryan" only with a lot less blood).

The hero of the story is the horse of the title. He goes by many names throughout the movie, but I'll stick with Joey, the one given to him by Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the English teenager who raises him and trains him to work on the family farm.

In 1914, war comes to Europe, and Albert's father (Peter Mullan), seizing the opportunity to make some much-needed cash, sells Joey to the cavalry.

The horse's odyssey takes him from being the steed of a kindly British officer (Tom Hiddleston) to the companion of a sickly girl (Celine Buckens) and her grandfather (Niels Arestrup) in the French countryside to a beast of burden for the Germans to being lost, alone, in no man's land, and you probably can guess where he ends up by movie's end.

With a cast lacking in recognizable names, the horse truly is the star. And what a magnificent creature he is, touching the lives of people no matter which side of the war they are on. He even provides a platform for a British soldier to bond with a German counterpart.

Best of all, "War Horse" is a throwback, an old-fashioned movie that doesn't rely heavily on computer effects, shot and presented in two glorious dimensions only.

Presenting optimism even in the face of war, Spielberg isn't afraid to tug on the heartstrings. But he does so with restraint and it's earned after everything Joey endures.

You might not be able to predict exactly where Joey's road will take him, but there are no real surprises to find. "War Horse" is exactly what you think it will be, no more, no less. In this case, I'll take it.

Greg’s Grade: A-

(Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of war violence. 146 minutes.)

The Artist

2011-12-23T00:01:00.004-05:00

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
Jean Dujardin, left, and Berenice Bejo are shown in a scene from "The Artist."

"Retro" does not even begin to describe "The Artist."

From French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, "The Artist" not only takes back to Hollywood in the late 1920s, when sound revolutionized the art of movie-making and the entire film industry, it takes us back to the filmmaking of the time, too. It is a black-and-white, silent film presented in the square-like 4:3 aspect ratio.

It celebrates the movies by focusing on a time when the term "movie magic" actually had meaning. The purely visual filmmaking, accompanied by Ludovic Bource's musical score, is an absolute delight.

The year is 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a beloved movie star. He loves the spotlight, and the spotlight adores him, sometimes to the consternation of his wife and co-star (Penelope Ann Miller). But the advent of sound ("talkies") is about to change everything. He gives the young dancer Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) her big break, then her star quickly shoots past his as she adapts to sound and he does not.

That essentially is the plot, though that does little to describe what this movie truly offers.

Dujardin, well known in his native France, is a wonderful physical comedian. He and Bejo adopt just enough of the overly expressive silent movie acting style to get that vintage feel without outright mugging for the camera.

Bejo's shining moment comes early, when Peppy sneaks into George's dressing room, slides her arm into his suit jacket and fantasizes about being in his arms—a scene more romantic than anything Hollywood has done in years.

I'm just excited that a movie like this can get made in this age of 3D and endless franchises. It will be a new experience to many movie-goers. Do yourself a favor and give it a chance.

Greg’s Grade: A

(Rated PG-13 for a disturbing image and a crude gesture. 100 minutes.)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-20T16:00:00.004-05:00

SONY/COLUMBIA PICTURES, MERRICK MORTON
Rooney Mara is shown in a scene from "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."

Early this year, in an interview with W magazine, director David Fincher divided his work into two categories: "movies" and "films." A movie, he said, is a commercial undertaking, with pleasing the audience its only goal. A film is to be daring and also is intended for public consumption but even more so for fellow filmmakers. On his resume, "Fight Club" (1999) and "Zodiac" (2007) qualify as films, Fincher said, while last year's "The Social Network" is merely a movie.

We now can add "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" to Fincher's "movie" list.

His version of the internationally best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson is as pulpy and noirish as the book—and as engrossing as the written version is page-turning. And though it trades in dark, dark subject matter, it's ultimately disposable, a Hollywood tentpole movie designed to kickstart a screen franchise, entertainment that treads into lurid territory with the comfort of the bad guys getting their due and an unlikely heroine taking justice into her own hands in a dramatic, emphatic manner.

It seems odd to say given the multiple scenes of rape and torture, but "Dragon Tattoo" easily is the safest, most commercial movie Fincher has made to date. It has a built-in audience around the world, and this is, after all, the man who made the bleak serial killer thriller "Seven" (1995) and later gave us "Zodiac," which focused on the most minute, procedural details of a murder investigation.

In "Dragon Tattoo," the killing in question is 40 years old. Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), the retired CEO of a large, family-owned corporation, brings disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to his remote island home—during what appears to be the coldest winter ever in Sweden—to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet. Though her body was never found, no one could have left the island due to a traffic accident on the bridge. The suspects: the members of the Vanger family, a shady clan if ever there was one, what with the multiple Nazi connections.

SONY, COLUMBIA PICTURES, MERRICK MORTON
Daniel Craig, right, and Christopher Plummer are shown in a scene from "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."

As he delves into Henrik's decades of notes and research, and begins to probe various Vangers, Blomkvist decides he needs help, a research assistant. He turns to the one who did the (mostly illegal) background check on him for Henrik: Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), 23, a wisp of a woman, with choppy, black hair, bleached eyebrows, piercings, tattoos, tattered clothing and a strong antisocial streak.

Declared legally incompetent at age 12, she is a ward of the state. Her new guardian, Nils Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), lets her have her own money only in exchange for sexual favors. Fincher doesn't shy away from presenting the rape and Salander's equally brutal retaliation.

The narrative doesn't fully take off until Blomkvist and Salander meet, though every scene involving Salander is compelling.

This all is familiar to anyone who has seen the original Swedish movie (2009), directed by Niels Arden Oplev and starring Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as Salander. Though some details differ, both adaptations stay true to the source material and have a similar ominous air hanging over the events.

Filmed entirely in Sweden and with all Swedish dialogue, the first movie feels more authentic, and it gave us Rapace in one of the most magnetic performances the screen has seen in many years.

Mara plays the role similarly—she has no choice given the character's iconic status—yet still delivers the knockout performance the movie needs. With her radical physical transformation and Swedish accent, she is virtually unrecognizable, disappearing into the role. Salander's whole life has been controlled by others, giving us the sense that the piercings and tattoos are her way of seizing some small bit of independence. Her striking appearance, then, is a product of the life forced upon her.

The character is just as much about attitude—a quiet confidence, a complete distrust of everyone around her, an utter hatred for authority.

Mara carries the weight of all this on her small frame—and the movie along with it. I cannot say I prefer her to Rapace, but I can say I did not think about Rapace until I did so consciously after the movie. Mara's performance stands on its own and likely gives birth to a new star.

Fincher's movie is, by far, the more cinematic of the two (the Swedish production was made originally for TV), with aerial shots of the desolate, snow-covered Swedish landscape, a shot that places us on Salander's motorcycle as she zooms through a tunnel and another from inside a plastic bag placed over someone's head. The editing, by Fincher's frequent collaborators Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, is key in montages depicting Blomkvist and Salander's investigation, performed both together and apart. On top of that, there is the eerie, electronic music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Oscar-winners for "The Social Network").

But for all its technical achievements, Fincher tells the story with a detachment from its emotional content, as if he's merely observing the events, while the Swedish movie went in deeper and created a real sense of danger around every turn.

Fincher's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" lacks urgency, the feeling that it needed to be made—a sense that powers the director's best work ("Seven," "Fight Club," "The Social Network"). It is exactly what Fincher probably would call it himself: just a movie.

Greg's Grade: B+

(Rated R for brutal violent content including rape and torture, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, and language. 158 minutes.)

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2011-12-16T00:02:00.001-05:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES
Noomi Rapace, left, and Robert Downey Jr. are shown in a scene from "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows."

For a man known as the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes doesn't do much detecting in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," Guy Ritchie's second stab at bringing the master sleuth to the big screen.

This Holmes, again brought to roguish, mischievous life by Robert Downey Jr., favors running, jumping, shooting and stabbing his way to the answers. In fact, it's his sidekick, Dr. John Watson (Jude Law), who gets most of the opportunities for deduction.

And, with apologies to Holmes purists, that's OK, because after 2009's "Sherlock Holmes," audiences should be aware that this franchise is traveling a path leaning more toward action and adventure than mystery.

The now-familiar formula is in place: the buddy-movie-style banter and bickering of Holmes and Watson; Holmes acting quirky, if not downright kooky (he drinks embalming fluid in one scene and takes his disguises to a whole new level); and lots of things going boom in creatively staged action set pieces.

The year is 1891, and a series of bombings has escalated tensions between France and Germany. Holmes, though, believes it is all the work of a criminal mastermind, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), whom he has been tracking obsessively.

Holmes follows the clues, which include the murdered Crown Prince of Austria, to a gentlemen's club, where he and his brother, Mycroft (a delightful Stephen Fry), celebrate Watson's bachelor party. An assassin comes for a gypsy fortune teller called Sim (Noomi Rapace), but Holmes comes to her rescue.

From there, the plot takes us to France and Germany before ending in Switzerland, and involves a massive amount of artillery and maybe a world war.

Yet for all the pyrotechnics and stylized shootouts, the climax is understated, suspenseful and very smart.

"A Game of Shadows" benefits greatly from its villain, an adversary for Holmes who is his intellectual equal. In the best scenes, Holmes and Moriarty merely talk, playing out a battle of wits and showing a mutual respect. Harris projects an air of quiet, confident menace that infects the entire film. The stakes are high, and it feels that way. By contrast, two years later, I can't even begin to tell you what Mark Strong's bad guy was up to in the first movie.

The other significant newcomer is Rapace as the gypsy who unwittingly has become entangled in Moriarty's diabolical scheme. Sim serves as Holmes's gateway into the mystery, then does little more than tag along for the ride, Ritchie and the screenplay, credited to Michele Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney, never figuring out what to do with her. Rapace, the magnetic star of the Swedish version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," is a fresh, engaging presence onscreen, but maybe it's good that she is allowed to ease into her first English-speaking role.

The often contentious (typically in comedic fashion), brotherly bond between Holmes and Watson again forms the movie's heart, and the two actors appear to have settled even more into their roles. We can analyze every other aspect of the movie ad nauseam, but just as its predecessor did, "A Game of Shadows" succeeds largely on the strength of Downey and Law, one of the most entertaining duos in the movies today.

Greg’s Grade: B+

(Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some drug material. 129 minutes.)

Young Adult

2011-12-16T00:01:00.028-05:00

PARAMOUNT PICTURES/PHILLIP V. CARUSO
Charlize Theron is shown in a scene from "Young Adult."

"Young Adult" is the rare film that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.

Its central character, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a former high school beauty queen, now approaching 40 and still a knockout, is deplorable at the start, and we like her less and less as the movie progresses.

She escaped small-town Mercury, Minn., after high school, moving to Minneapolis, where she ghost writes a series of young adult novels, once popular but now coming to an end due to cancellation. We sense she had everything handed to her when she was younger, and has grown bitter and resentful of everything and everyone around her because that's not how the real world works.

A typical day starts with her waking up with a hangover (or possibly still drunk from the night before), still wearing yesterday's clothes, with one of many vapid reality shows on her TV.

An email from her old high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), announcing the birth of his first child, along with a photo of the baby girl, inspires a return to Mercury, where she intends to win Buddy back, because, in her mind, they always were meant to be.

Mavis is an alcoholic and probably mentally ill. Buddy sees both traits and is friendly despite her obvious intentions.

Another former classmate, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), recognizes them, too, even if Mavis doesn't recognize him—until she remembers him as the "hate crime guy." Back in high school, a group of bullies severely beat Matt, incorrectly believing him to be gay, shattering his legs and another body part below the waist.

Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, who previously collaborated on "Juno" (2007), present an unflinching character study of a woman whose emotional development has been stunted for 20 years.

Theron doesn't shy away from it either, showing no desire to win our sympathy or approval, resulting in one of the year's best performances.

Oswalt, who is nothing if not sympathetic, is her equal. In his own way, Matt, too, is stuck in young adulthood, and he's able to both pity and connect with Mavis.

Cody, who has received much criticism for her attempts to be youthful and hip in earlier screenplays, pokes fun at herself when we hear Mavis's writing in voiceover, which also serves as an outlet for Mavis to comment on her own life.

The difficult, surprising aspect of the film is that we have been conditioned to expect the protagonist to see the error of her ways, to learn and grow from gaining new insight into herself and others—and Reitman, Cody and Theron deprive us of that. The truth is, most people do not change—not in ways that are profound, at least. For most of us, we are who we are; those epiphanies so often found in movies and TV shows are rare in real life.

We might not like Mavis, but given what we have seen, the path she eventually takes is the one most believable.

Though there is much humor in "Young Adult," its lasting impression is one of sadness and disappointment—it's the anti-"Juno."

Greg’s Grade: B

(Rated R for language and some sexual content. 94 minutes.)

The Descendants

2011-12-09T12:18:00.000-05:00

FOX SEARCHLIGHT FILMS, MERIE WALLACE
George Clooney, left, and Shailene Woodley are shown in a scene from "The Descendants."

"The Descendants," director Alexander Payne's fifth feature, is all about taking things that could be salacious and sensational, and paring them down to a realistic, deeply affecting, human level.

The setting is Hawaii, and though there is beauty here, it comes from a love ingrained in its inhabitants through generations, not the luxurious images used to attract tourists.

Matt King (George Clooney) is a real estate lawyer descended from one of the first land-owning white families in Hawaii. He's now the sole trustee of 25,000 acres of unspoiled land owned by his extended family. A new law will dissolve the trust in seven years, so the family must sell the land, their choice of buyer coming down to a Hawaiian developer or one from the mainland.

But Matt has more on his mind. His thrill-seeking wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), injured in a boating accident, is in a coma from which she will not wake up, and the time has come to pull the plug. A workaholic, Matt never has been the most present husband and father, referring to himself as the "backup parent." Now he must connect with his daughters—17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley, who could be the movie's breakout star) and 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) —and help them through this trying time.

Alexandra drops the bombshell: Elizabeth was having an affair, with a real estate broker named Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), and was planning to ask Matt for a divorce.

Joined by his daughters and Alexandra's stoner boyfriend, Sid (Nick Krause), so begins Matt's journey to inform family and friends, including his gruff, disapproving father-in-law (Robert Forster), of Elizabeth's impending death, and to find the man his wife claimed to love.

In his recent films, Payne has dealt extensively with men who find ways to grow, to better themselves, while overcoming personal tragedies. Jack Nicholson loses his wife and lifelong companion in "About Schmidt" (2002). In "Sideways" (2004), Paul Giamatti must deal with his divorce and failure as a novelist.

Clooney's Matt King has it even worse—losing his wife, learning of her affair, becoming a single father, Alexandra's history of drug and alcohol abuse, Scottie acting out in bizarre ways, pressure from his cousins to make a decision on the land deal.

Clooney is one of the world's biggest movie stars, but he's all actor here. Never does he come across as cool, slick or in control; he's a middle-aged man whose life is unraveling in every way possible. He's lost in the sudden complexity of his life, and the movie refuses to give him an easy out.

Payne, working from a screenplay credited to himself, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, operates in the gray areas of morality, giving us multiple perspectives and reserving judgment. Brian Speer, due in part to surprisingly effective dramatic work by Lillard, is allowed to be sympathetic. Matt's father-in-law, who is not shy about blaming Matt for his daughter's accident and obviously never cared much for him to begin with, gets a heartfelt scene at Elizabeth's bedside, played so tenderly by Forster. There even is more to Sid, who initially seems merely a doofus kept around for comic relief.

There is humor throughout the movie, and Payne again shows a knack for using it to accentuate the drama rather than distract. Keeping with what comes before it, the ending is both happy and sad—what could be more lifelike?

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated R for language including some sexual references. 115 minutes.)

Jack and Jill

2011-11-11T00:01:00.003-05:00

AP PHOTO/SONY-COLUMBIA PICTURES, TRACY BENNETT
Adam Sandler portrays both Jill, left, and Jack in a scene from "Jack & Jill."

Why, Al Pacino, why?

I know it's been a while since you were truly great on the big screen, but have you really fallen this far?

Is this the best we can get today from Michael Corleone, Serpico, Tony Montana?

Did you owe Adam Sandler money? Does he have embarrassing, incriminating photos of you?

Please, give me something. Help me make some sense out of your involvement in the cinematic atrocity that is "Jack and Jill," a movie not content simply to be horrifically awful; it seems intent on retroactively tarnishing your entire career.

Clearly, Sandler has surrounded himself with yes men at his Happy Madison Productions. Anyone with any sense would have stopped at nothing to prevent this debacle from reaching theaters.

You have to hand it to Sandler in one respect, though—he managed to find a co-star more annoying than he is: himself. As producer, co-writer and leading man/woman, we have to start questioning his sanity at this point.

Sandler portrays the two characters of the title: Jack, who can save his failing advertising agency only by convincing Pacino to star in a Dunkin Donuts commercial, and Jill, Jack's twin sister whose annual Thanksgiving visit turns into a stay of more than a month.

As Jack, Sandler is the straight man. As the excruciating Jill, he runs rampant through the movie, terrorizing all who cross his path, the audience most of all.

Between poop jokes, Pacino inexplicably falls head-over-heels in love with Jill and agrees to do Jack's commercial only if Jack can hook him up with her.

It's no spoiler to say Pacino eventually does Jack's TV spot. His reaction upon seeing the commercial applies even more readily to "Jack and Jill": "No one must ever see this."

Greg’s Grade: F

(Rated PG for crude and sexual humor, language, comic violence and brief smoking. 89 minutes.)

Tower Heist

2011-11-04T00:01:00.004-04:00

AP PHOTO/UNIVERSAL PICTURES, DAVID LEE
Ben Stiller, left, and Eddie Murphy are shown in a scene from "Tower Heist."

"Tower Heist" feels like it got a green light based on the timeliness of its premise alone.

Because once you look past that, aside from Eddie Murphy's best comedic performance in many years, there is nothing there.

The movie clearly aims to be a more relevant "Ocean's Eleven," but the scenario—a high-powered Wall Street trader (Alan Alda) is arrested on fraud charges, inspiring a group of employees of the luxury high-rise where he lives to plan a robbery of his condo to pay back him back for losing their pensions—is too grim for the kind of breezy fun that came from knocking off a Vegas casino.

And remember that Steven Soderbergh directed the heck out of "Ocean's Eleven," giving it a jaunty rhythm that carried it through some of the contrivances and plot holes. "Tower Heist" has Brett Ratner at the controls, he of the "Rush Hour" series and the much-maligned "X-Men: The Last Stand."

Ben Stiller, with a New York accent that comes and goes, is the ringleader of the planned heist, his crew filled out by Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, Michael Peña, Gabourey Sidibe and, as a small-time crook brought in to instruct the others in the ways of crime, Murphy. Respectable names all, but we're not exactly talking George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts here.

The movie is no fun, except when Murphy is around, which isn't nearly enough. The characters are drawn so thin, and the actors given so little of substance in the script, that it's hard to care about their plight. And the film's supposed centerpiece—the heist—is unimaginative and contrived even by heist movie standards.

Where's Danny Ocean when you need him?

Greg’s Grade: D+

(Rated PG-13 for language and sexual content. 105 minutes.)

Shaun of the Dead

2011-10-27T13:31:00.000-04:00

UNIVERSAL PICTURES
From left, Nick Frost, Penelope Wilton, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Kate Ashfield and Simon Pegg are shown in a scene from "Shaun of the Dead."

There are many signs "Shaun of the Dead" (2004) is a step—or two or three or four steps—ahead of its zombie movie counterparts: the wit of its screenplay, the performances, the filmmakers' reverence for classic zombie movie tropes.

But the real reason? It's flat-out better made, with its filmmakers' technical skill on full display, and real thoughts and ideas behind its undead hordes.

The movie, directed by Edgar Wright, who also co-wrote with star Simon Pegg, reaches its pinnacle with a pair of long Steadicam shots following Shaun (Pegg) on his morning walk from his London flat to the market across the street.

The first shot follows Shaun, a 29-year-old electronics salesman, through his normal, brain-dead routine, buying a can of Coke and returning home.

By the time of the second shot, "Z-Day" has begun—only Shaun doesn't know it. The camera movements are identical while Shaun is oblivious to the death and destruction that surrounds him. In fact, he even starts to feel good about himself when he opts this time for a Diet Coke. In the best gag, he slips on a puddle of blood and continues going about his business without giving it a second thought.

Shaun and his best pal, Ed (Nick Frost), who's such a slacker he makes Shaun look good by comparison, are so absorbed in their own insulated world that they do not realize the end may be near until it literally reaches their backyard.

The point is, Shaun, through his own lack of ambition, mind-numbing job and free time spent either at the pub or parked on the couch watching TV and playing video games, might as well be a zombie already. Even when Shaun aims to be a hero, his immature nature shines through. His plan: Round up his girlfriend (Kate Ashfield) and mother (Penelope Wilton), and ride out the apocalypse at his favorite watering hole.

George A. Romero's classic zombie films (including "Night of the Living Dead," 1968, and "Dawn of the Dead," 1978), to which "Shaun" owes a great debt for its mythology, traded in satire and social commentary, but never were as laugh-out-loud funny as "Shaun of the Dead." Here, we get Shaun and his friends learning to act like zombies to avoid getting eaten; a running joke about the meaning of the word "exacerbate"; Shaun and Ed bickering over which records to use as weapons against the backyard zombie (the "Batman" soundtrack is an acceptable loss; Prince's "Purple Rain" is not); dialogue repeated and characters reappearing with different meaning; and an endless barrage of visual gags.

We also have a real rooting interest in Shaun. Often in zombie movies, humans turn on each other and become the real villains. Wright and Pegg, however, show great affection for their characters, and the relationships between Shaun and Ed, Shaun and Liz, Shaun and his mother, even Shaun and his stepfather.

For all his faults, the movie doesn't prove Shaun's lifestyle wrong. He betters himself without changing who he is—he still watches TV, hangs out at the pub, plays video games with Ed.

"Shaun of the Dead" is a rarity in its genre for ending with a real sense of hope. That helps make it the best zombie movie ever made and the best horror film of the 21st century.

The Ides of March

2011-10-07T00:01:00.006-04:00

COLUMBIA PICTURES/SONY, SAEED ADYANI
Ryan Gosling is shown in a scene from "The Ides of March."

"The Ides of March" is a political thriller that concerns itself more with issues of loyalty and trust than advancing a particular agenda. That's a surprise considering the presence of George Clooney, known for being a liberal political activist, as director, producer, co-screenwriter and co-star.

With this movie, which is based on a play by Beau Willimon (who also shares the screenplay credit with Clooney and Grant Heslov), Clooney keeps his politics mostly in check, shying away from making any grand, new statements. The thought he leaves us with is politics is a dirty game, which you probably know even if you have never watched a minute of CNN or Fox News.

Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) is a hotshot press secretary for the presidential campaign of Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney). It is the eve of the Ohio Democratic primary, though winning the support of an influential North Carolina senator (Jeffrey Wright) virtually will ensure the nomination for Morris. That support, however, will not come without a price—a price the rival candidate appears willing to pay.

More complications: Stephen takes a meeting with Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the opponent's campaign manager, who implores him to jump ship and work for him. Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Morris's campaign manager, is not pleased when Stephen tells him of the meeting, and Stephen is even more nonplussed when a reporter (Marisa Tomei) learns of it as well. Stephen also finds himself entangled with an intern (Evan Rachel Wood) who is the daughter of the DNC chairman (Gregory Itzin).

Clooney keeps himself mostly in the background until a crucial plot point emerges, ceding the spotlight to Gosling.

After rising to fame in a romantic drama ("The Notebook"), Gosling this year has solidified his leading man status with a comedy ("Crazy, Stupid, Love"), action movie ("Drive") and, now, a thriller. His Stephen is an idealist, gushing about how he believes in what Morris stands for and his ability to accomplish what he has promised. But pushed to the edge, he is not afraid to get his hands dirty and will play the game as readily as anyone else. Is it the environment in which he works that turns him or was he fooling himself with his earlier, principled rhetoric?

The scene-stealers are Hoffman and Giamatti, two of our very best character actors. They play their rival campaign managers with a world-weary quality and emerge as sympathetic figures despite the dirty games they play. We know Tom is sincere when he urges Stephen to get out while he can.

I appreciate a filmmaker bold enough to take a stand, but I don't go to the movies to see someone's politics plastered across the screen. A movie that is well crafted and well acted has value for those reasons alone. Such is the case of "The Ides of March."

Greg's Grade: B

(Rated R for pervasive language. 101 minutes.)

Interview: Trick 'r Treat writer-director Michael Dougherty

2011-10-06T16:36:00.001-04:00

I conducted this interview about a year ago. You can find the feature story I wrote then on this blog, but this seems an appropriate time to post the entire interview.

I know your birthday is very close to Halloween, so how much did that influence your interest in the holiday, growing up?

Michael Dougherty: I think it played a massive part in my interest in Halloween. October just kind of became a magical month. A lot of times my birthday party and Halloween pretty much merged. They still do today. I've been having a Halloween party for the last 10 years, and it kind of doubles as a birthday party for my friends who know. But even as a kid, it was, “Let's go trick-or-treating and then come back and have birthday cake.” So the importance of the holiday kind of doubled for me as a kid.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was Halloween like growing up in the Dougherty household?

It was really traditional. One of my earliest memories was carving a jack-o-lantern with my dad, which is partially where the Dylan Baker story comes from. It was very much a father-son tradition. I remember seeing my dad carve it and thinking it was the neatest thing in the world but not understanding it or understanding what he was doing. And then you put the jack-o-lantern in the window and you light it, you step back from the sidewalk and you look at it, and it's magic. You just look at it and go, "Wow, we made that." Yeah, it was as simple as carve a jack-o-lantern, hand out some candy and then hit the streets with the parents and my sister. I think it was great to have a very traditional Halloween upbringing. Charlie Brown found his way into the mix. It evolved as I got older, but it just got better.

When did horror movies become part of the equation and what were some of your favorites?

It was fairly early. Again, my dad was big on exposing me to a lot of the classic horror movies first. And being a child of the ‘80s, when cable first started, all these networks were popping up and they just needed stuff to fill the airwaves, so they were constantly airing the classic Universal monster movies and Godzilla. And so that was pretty much my upbringing for forever. Every Saturday was a double feature of a black-and-white horror movie with a Godzilla movie. Halloween, that's when the horror movie marathons would kick in on the TV, and then eventually I got exposed to "Halloween" and a little bit more of the R-rated fare.

Over the years, there have been a lot of movies that have taken place on or around Halloween. But before "Trick ‘r Treat," I hadn't seen a movie that was really about the holiday itself. Was that part of your thinking when you were coming up with the idea for the movie?

Oh yeah. It was a huge part of it. I had kind of the same realization that you just did, that we had seen movies that took place on the holiday—even Carpenter's classic film bears the name—but there was nothing that was really about the holiday itself. Having grown up obsessed with the holiday, I really knew about a lot of the traditions and a lot of the back stories and origins of these traditions—why we carve jack-o-lanterns and why we dress up and hand out candy. Because as a kid, you just think, "OK, we wander around, we get free candy, we wear costumes." But when you research the history of these traditions and you realize they go back thousands of years, pre-dating Christianity, and the idea that you are trying to appease the spirits of the dead by doing the things we do, it suddenly takes on a much more serious and sinister tone. And I thought that was awesome, the idea that American culture just kind of does these things for the sake of having fun, not realizing that they're participating in ancient pagan traditions—that's the best prank in the world, whoever came up with that. But I realized that there was never a movie about that and actively set out to make one that addressed that stuff.

The character Sam, he appeared in the animated short that's on the Blu-ray. When did you first start to draw him and how did you come up with that character?

He started as a character in an animated short film that I did way back in 1996. It was a hand-drawn animated short called "Seasons Greetings." It was simple, three minutes long, completely hand-drawn—this was before computers pretty much took over animation. It kind of became my calling card. To this day, my agents still send out that short film as an example of kind of my tone and style. It's a little creepy, a little cute, it's kind of Charles Addams/Tim Burton-y. So Sam started there, and then he never went away. He kept popping up in greeting cards that I drew for friends. Every Halloween, I send out greeting cards instead of Christmas cards or some combination of the two. But he kept popping up there. But then I decided I wanted to make the transition from animation into screenwriting into feature films, and so I decided I'm going to write a horror anthology film like "Creepshow" and it's all going to be set on Halloween. And then Sam kind of became one more layer added to that film, to that screenplay. I decided to interweave him throughout the stories mysteriously and then eventually give him his spotlight in the fourth story. He's like my personal Frankenstein creation.

The four stories that make up the feature, were they ideas that you had independently of each other long ago or did you write them specifically for the movie?

It was a mix. Two of the stories were written originally in college for a screenwriting class. Those two stories were the Dylan Baker father-son story and the Anna Paquin story. Versions of them were written in film school. They're a little different than what I ended up with but pretty much the same. The school bus massacre and Brian Cox/Old Mr. Kreeg story were written pretty much for the film. I'd always wanted to do stories like the two of them. I'd always wanted to do my version of "A Christmas Carol" set on Halloween. And I always knew it would be a cranky old man tormented by a trick-or-treater. And I always wanted to do kind of a dark version of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," except the Peanuts die. Because in my mind, that's what that is. If you really look at the school bus massacre story, it's kind of like you have one kid who knows all about Halloween and believes potentially in some sort of Halloween entity, taking a group of other kids to this haunted site. In short, it's kind of like Linus killing all the other Peanuts gang. Rhonda is kind of Linus. She's the one who believes in the Great Pumpkin, that knows how to obey his rules and survive the night, whereas all the other kids die. At one point, all the other kids were named, I think we had Chuck, Patty, Linus, Marcie, and Warner Brothers legal said, "No way in hell," so we had to change the names slightly. So if you look at the names, you see they kind of do resemble Peanuts characters—like we have Schrader instead of Schroeder.

With most anthology movies, it's one story, then the next story, then the next story—basically a collection of short films. When did you make the decision to have your stories intersect and do some cutting between them?

The evolution of this movie was so strange and long before it actually got made. It took five, six years before we finally got the movie off the ground. And in those five or six years, there were dozens of different drafts of the script. The first version was very linear—one story ended, the next one started, one story ended, the next one started. There were characters crisscrossing between the stories, but the narratives themselves did not intercut. Now, the script got bought by different companies over the years and got developed in so many different ways, so there were versions where the stories jumped back and forth between each other in that development stage. But when we finally greenlit the film and shot it, it was with the idea that we were back at the original linear structure. So we had one story following the other following the other. Then when we sat down and watched it, it felt long. It felt kind of tedious all of a sudden. Traditionally, movies are three-act structures. So when you're asking people to watch a four-act structure, it just feels long. Even though the cut was only 90 minutes, it feels long. So a lot of debate back and forth. I was completely uncertain. I actually wanted to keep the linear structure but tried the intercutting method in the editing room, and it worked really well. It took some finessing, but it eventually got there. So it was a lot of back and forth on that decision.

Once you started doing that, was it hard to keep track of where everyone was and who was doing what when?

I had a chart. I had a chart and a timeline. I knew exactly where everyone was at a certain point. It does all work together.

There's obviously a lot of humor in the movie. Was it hard to kind of find the balance with that? Did you ever worry about it being too funny?

No. Horror and comedy are such close cousins to me. They're bedfellows, really. When I watch a horror movie, I usually laugh instead of scream. That's my way of relieving tension and I'm having a good time. For me, pretty much every horror film is kind of a funhouse ride, and that's what I think they should be. But yeah, I wasn't really concerned. I think there was more concern from people on the studio side that didn't really understand blending horror and comedy. It's a rare creature these days. We don't have a lot of movies these days that do it, whereas back in the ‘80s you had "Poltergeist"—even "Nightmare on Elm Street" is morbidly hilarious. But you look at the remake and it's not at all. It's straightforward horror and there's little to no comedy. "American Werewolf in London," another perfect example. "Evil Dead," "Evil Dead 2." We were more willing, I think, to accept that blend. We've kind of lost that over the years, which I think is sad.

I know you've said that you had Dylan Baker specifically in mind when you were writing the script. Are there any other cast members you were thinking of as you were developing the stories?

Dylan was a big one. He really was. I had seen him in "Happiness"—I had seen him in a lot of different things. In real life, he's one of the most charming, friendliest men, and yet he tends to take on these roles where he gets to use that kind of charm to creep you out. I described him and his story as kind of Norman Bates meets Norman Rockwell. So he really grabbed my eye. The other cast just kind of fell into place over time. I got to know Anna Paquin and Brian Cox from "X-Men 2," and so they were always in the back of my mind as I was working on the script and trying to get it made. So when we finally got the chance to pull the trigger and offer to them, they were the first calls I made.

This was your feature that you directed. I'm sure through working on "X-Men" and "Superman (Returns)" you got to spend time with Bryan Singer, but did you feel like you were ready and prepared for this?

I don't think anyone's ever truly prepared for their first time. I was more prepared than most. The way Bryan runs his movies is really great because he likes having his writers around at all times. On "X-Men 2" and "Superman," I was around from pre-production through post on those flicks. That's really rare. Usually with writers, you e-mail your script in, and that's it. Maybe you'll get your obligatory invitation to the premiere, but rarely are you on set. So I got sit in on budget meetings and casting meetings and visual effects meetings and sit in the editing room and get feedback. It was really collaborative. So it wasn't as daunting to step into the director's chair after that. You spend 200 days on the set of "X-Men 2," spending 36 days on my little horror movie wasn't that frightening. Now when we actually started making the movie, then I realized OK, there's still a lot of learning to do. I very clearly remember calling Bryan—because he wasn't on set—calling him at home and going, "I understand the pain now. I understand that pressure. I get it." But yeah, overall, I think I was much better prepared than a lot of first-timers.

You actually finished the film back in 2007. After that, you had a long period of limbo, really, where you didn't know what was going to happen with the movie. How hard was that?

Agonizing. It was horrible. Those are really, really odd times, looking back at those years. It was like being pregnant forever. Imagine you're pregnant and you tell friends, "I'm having a baby," and you show them sonograms and everyone's waiting for it, they're like, "When are you having it? When am I gonna get to see it?" The not knowing was really difficult because I felt like it was something special. I was still very, very proud of it. And yet there was a bit of resistance from the studio because they didn't know what it was. Like I mentioned, they didn't understand the blend of horror and comedy. They got test scores back from the test screening, and it said this movie is funny—they would point to that as a flaw. And I'm going, "No, it's OK. Have you guys seen ‘Creepshow?’ Have you seen a lot of these classic horror movies that blend horror and comedy?" A lot of those pleas fell on deaf ears.

Legendary Pictures, which was one of the co-financiers—they put up half the money—they were really, really behind the movie, and they supported it from day one and throughout. They started to ask for permission to take the film out and screen it at festivals. One of the first ones that came up, Harry Knowles, who runs Ain't It Cool News, he said, "Listen, I've been hearing about this movie, I've seen the stills, I think the trailer's awesome. I know you haven't been able to release it. Let me show it at my film festival in Austin." And so he was the first person to screen it in a public forum. It was really daunting because his film festival runs for 24 hours. You're locked in the theater. You watch movies for 24 hours straight. He doesn't tell you what movies he's going to show you ahead of time. It's an amazing experience because you watch classic films mixed with movies that haven't come out yet. So he tells me, "I want to show ‘Trick ‘r Treat' as the final movie of my 24-hour film festival." And I'm thinking, "You're out of your freakin' mind." Because we're talking about the Ain't It Cool News crowd. These are people who know their movies, and they will have been up for 24 hours straight sitting in a movie theater. I was really worried about disappointing them because I wasn't really sure what the movie was at that point. They ended up loving it, and that turned everything around. That screening turned everything around. All of a sudden, there was a buzz. All of a sudden, there were reviews coming out of that screening on Ain't It Cool News saying, "No, this is a good movie."

So then we started doing more screenings and more screenings, and it snowballed to the point where the Internet and a lot of the movie bloggers really embraced it and supported it and kept touting it, and they still do to this day. This is the second Halloween that it's been released and people are pulling it off their shelves and showing it, and the bloggers are talking about it again. Honestly, I think you're probably the first reporter who's actually discussing it in an actual publication. Honestly, I think you might be. I think we might have gotten a couple teeny sidebar mentions in Entertainment Weekly or something when it first came out. But I think you're the first reporter to write an article about it. We've never really gotten that much attention from the press.

But like you said, all the reviews online, they've just been glowing reviews, and there have been some special theatrical events this month. Does that feel like vindication to you?

Completely. Yeah. I wouldn't call it vindication as much as—I feel like a proud parent who's finally watching this kid go out in the world and make something of himself. And that kid would be Sam. The more important thing for me, honestly, as a filmmaker—you want to make a living doing it, absolutely—but the more important thing is to make good movies that people continue to watch down the road.

And this one, every year people are going to be watching this.

That's what it seems like it's becoming. There have been similar films like this in the past—not that I want to put myself up with them yet. But Carpenter's film had a really slow burn. It was not a huge success the first few weeks of its release. It took awhile for word of mouth to build. And "A Christmas Story"—same thing. It was not a commercial success. It became a bigger hit on TV and home video, and it took time. Hollywood these days is all about opening weekend, opening weekend, opening weekend, and so they fall short of trying to create films that people actually want to watch 10, 15, 20 years from now. So I'd be honored if "Trick ‘r Treat" became one of those movies. And from what I can tell, I think it's heading down that path.

I know you've said you have ideas for a sequel. Can you tell me anything about that and whether anything is happening with that?

It's a big maybe. I don't know. It's honestly not really that much up to me. The things that help a sequel are if the original makes money. We have to get to a point where the guys that check out the books go, "Huh. This thing is becoming something, and DVD sales are really spiking. Is there something here?" If that happens, if that phone call ever came, I have plenty of ideas how to do another one. The format of the movie lends itself to sequels because of the fact that it is an anthology. The one recurring character, in my mind, would be Sam. Now where he ends up or when he ends up—if we did one back in the ‘50s, that could kind of intrigue me. But yeah, it would be fun to do more. It would be fun if all the movies kind of tied together in a gigantic way. If you got to a third one and it harkens back to the first one, or if the trilogy loops around entirely, I think that would be fascinating, and I don't think anyone's really done that yet. In a worst case, I would love to do comic books. An annual "Trick ‘r Treat" graphic novel could be really interesting.

What are you working on now?

Right now, I'm working on my Halloween party for Friday. I've got a full cemetery out front right now. I'm working on a couple other things. One is a sort of dark fairy tale. I hate to sound vague when I'm discussing these things with you, but when I say too much I get in a lot of trouble. And then there's another project that involves giant monsters that I'm doing with Robert Zemeckis. That one I'm really excited about because I'd be directing that and he'd be producing.

Halloween this weekend, your party Friday night. Are you going to be in costume?

Yes. I'm going as Indiana Jones.

What have been some of your favorite costumes over the years?

Last year, I went as Khan from "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan." The year before that, I went as a crew member from "Battlestar Galactica." My house tends to be a horror show, my costumes usually tend to be comfortable, flexible-still of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but I'm hosting a party, so I've got to be somewhat accessible.

I think that's about all the questions I have. Is there anything we missed, anything you'd like to add?

Sit down, grab yourself a bowl of candy, pop in Carpenter's "Halloween," Charlie Brown and my movie, and have a good time.

VISIT THE FOLLOWING LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION:
"Trick 'r Treat"
Michael Dougherty

Drive

2011-09-26T16:38:00.001-04:00

FILM DISTRICT, RICHARD FOREMAN
Ryan Gosling is shown in a scene from "Drive."

"Drive" is proof action movies need not be a deafening assault on the senses nor a nonstop barrage of explosions and feats that defy the laws of physics. "Drive" is an action movie with a brain, that allows its characters to use theirs, that spends more time focusing on its characters than the action around them.

The Driver (Ryan Gosling) is at the movie's center. He's a taciturn protagonist in the tradition of Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name; one even wonders if his employer ("Breaking Bad's" Bryan Cranston), who owns an auto repair shop, knows his name. He also works as a stunt driver for Hollywood movies and moonlights as a wheelman.

He doesn't carry a gun or go inside to take an active role in his clients' heists. He drives. He gives his clients a five-minute window to get the job done while he waits in the car, his watching ticking away.

When it's time for the getaway, it isn't all about speed. The Driver is smarter than his police pursuers. He knows the terrain—pause under an overpass to elude a helicopter, slip into a parking garage at a basketball game, and the job is done.

A neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan), catches the Driver's attention; it feels like this is a rare occurrence. They appear to form a connection, while an even stronger bond develops between the Driver and Irene's young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos). Irene's husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is due home from prison in a week, putting a strain on these budding relationships.

Standard got involved with some bad people while behind bars, and the Driver agrees to help get them off his back, thus protecting Irene and Benicio. It doesn't go as planned, blood is spilled, and it all leads back to Nino (Ron Perlman), a crime lord who works out of a pizzeria in a strip mall, and Bernie Rose (a scary Albert Brooks), a movie producer who's even more sinister than Nino.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn works with silences, adopting a hypnotic, contemplative tone. The supporting cast, which also includes "Mad Men's" Christina Hendricks, provides enough personality to balance Gosling's tight-lipped, inward performance.

When it comes, the action is sudden and brutal—a jarring experience instead of the fetishized violence of so many other movies. I could not detect any digital effects enhancing the stunts, which have a real weight and visceral quality to them.

"Drive" is not the "Fast and Furious" knockoff you might think it is based on the advertising. It is far more artistic and thoughtful than any of those films could ever hope to be. Consider it a thinking man's action movie.

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence, language and some nudity. 100 minutes.)

Moneyball

2011-09-23T00:01:00.004-04:00

COLUMBIA PICTURES-SONY, MELINDA SUE GORDON
Brad Pitt, left, and Jonah Hill are shown in a scene from "Moneyball."

Baseball long has been a popular subject in the movies, but "Moneyball" is not about the drama on the field. Its concern is the behind-the-scenes action that, in 2001-2002, revolutionized how talent is evaluated and teams are built.

And it just might be the best movie I have seen so far this year.

The subject of Bennett Miller's ("Capote") film, which is based on a book by "Blind Side" writer Michael Lewis, is Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), general manager of the Oakland Athletics. Following a 2001 playoff loss to the New York Yankees, a team with a payroll nearly three times that of the small-market A's, and the offseason defections of several star players to clubs with deeper pockets, Beane realizes a change in philosophy is in order.

He turns to Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), his young assistant GM, an economics major who believes the scouting methods used throughout baseball history are outdated and fail to recognize a player's true worth. Using a detailed form of statistical analysis known as sabermetrics, which places more emphasis on stats such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage than batting average, home runs and stolen bases, Beane assembles a ragtag group of players that baffles his scouts, his manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman)—essentially everyone inside and outside the organization.

Players include Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), a catcher who, due to elbow problems, can no longer throw to second base (Beane insists on moving him to first); David Justice (Stephen Bishop), once a star, now believed to be washed up at the end of his career; Chad Bradford (Casey Bond), a relief pitcher who never has been given a shot, largely due to his unorthodox, submarine delivery; and Jeremy Giambi (Nick Porrazzo), brother of former A's star Jason Giambi and known more for partying in Las Vegas than for his athletic ability.

Beane's younger days, when he was a "can't-miss" prospect coming out of high school who flamed out within a few years, give him firsthand knowledge that subjective scouting methods often are unreliable.

Pitt anchors the movie with one of his finest leading man turns, contrasting Beane's stubborn, often bullish public face with vulnerability and self-doubt. Hill holds his own next to Pitt, showing unexpected dramatic chops.

With a script by Steven Zaillian ("Schindler's List") and Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network"), a strong forward momentum propels the movie, even without much action. They drop in a lot of laughs along the way, but this is very much a drama.

For all the talk of statistics and baseball, "Moneyball" isn't really about either. You don't need to know the first thing about OBP or OPS to get caught up in the drama. This is a classic underdog story that just happens to have baseball as its backdrop.

Greg’s Grade: A

(Rated PG-13 for some strong language. 133 minutes.)

Contagion

2011-09-09T12:47:00.004-04:00

AP PHOTO/WARNER BROS. PICTURES
Jennifer Ehle is shown in a scene from "Contagion."

The disease/pandemic movie has grown up. And with "Contagion" in the hands of Steven Soderbergh, we should expect nothing less.

During the past two decades, the director has swung wildly from populist fare (the "Ocean's" series) to award-winners ("Traffic," "Erin Brockovich") to obscure indie pictures ("Bubble," "The Girlfriend Experience") to everywhere in between and back again.

"Contagion" falls into the between category. Soderbergh employs a cast of Hollywood stars, but this is no "Outbreak." Rather, it is a clinical, procedural telling of how a disease spreads from a bat to a pig to one woman to virtually the entire world.

Starting on "Day 2," Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (Soderbergh's "The Informant!") mark the passage of time by counting the days and measure the threat by identifying on screen the population of each new location.

Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is patient zero, bringing the disease home to Minneapolis from Hong Kong and dying soon after. A similar fate finds her son (Griffin Kane). Her husband, Mitch (Matt Damon), appears to be immune and spends the rest of the movie trying to shield his daughter (Anna Jcoby-Heron) from exposure.

As the disease quickly spreads and the body count rises, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization frantically work to determine exactly where it originated and develop a vaccine. Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) dispatches a protege (Kate Winslet) to Minneapolis and, due to one questionable decision, becomes the fall guy when things don't go as hoped. A WHO epidemiologist (Marion Cotillard) takes the investigation to Hong Kong.

Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), a blogger with millions of followers, spouts conspiracy theories, becoming a cult-like figure. But his motivation—his entire story, really—is unclear and becomes the movie's only major misstep.

The characters—there are many more than I have mentioned—function not to relate their personal stories but to tell of the disease and the reaction to it around the world. (Perhaps that is why Krumweide feels so out of place; his story becomes very personal.) The subject matter is so terrifying that characters essentially are not necessary to supply an emotional center; we do most of that work ourselves.

The movie covers a lot of ground despite a running time well short of two hours. Soderbergh and Burns avoid artificial thrills and allow the movie to unfold in a methodical, yet fast-paced, fashion. Short of a documentary, this is as realistic a depiction of this type of scenario as we are likely to see. And that makes it all the more effective.

Greg's Grade: B

(Rated PG-13 for disturbing content and some language. 105 minutes.)

Our Idiot Brother

2011-09-06T16:21:00.001-04:00

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY, NICOLE RIVELLI
Adam Scott, left, and Paul Rudd are shown in a scene from "Our Idiot Brother."

"Our Idiot Brother" is a misleading title.

Ned, brought to life by the great Paul Rudd, isn't an idiot at all. He merely is naïve, possessed of an innocence stemming from a good-natured, well-meaning manner that completely overwhelms him at times.

Take the event at the movie's start. A uniformed police officer (Bob Stephenson) approaches Ned at his organic vegetable booth and asks to buy marijuana. Ned refuses and laughs it off until the officer appeals to his senses of compassion and trust. "It's been a really rough week," he says. Ned offers to give him what he wants, but the officer talks him into letting him buy it for $20—then arrests him after the money changes hands.

At the end of his jail term (which is shortened due to good behavior, naturally), Ned returns to the organic farm where he had lived with his girlfriend, Janet (Kathryn Hahn), for the previous three years. But Janet has a new man (T.J. Miller) and won't even let Ned take his beloved dog, Willie Nelson, when she kicks him out.

So Ned begins a sojourn through the homes of his mother (Shirley Knight) and three sisters—Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), a career-minded journalist; Liz (Emily Mortimer), a mother and the frustrated wife of a documentary filmmaker (Steve Coogan); and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), who performs terrible standup comedy and lives with her girlfriend (Rashida Jones) and several other roommates.

It would be easy to look at what occurs as Ned cutting a swath of destruction through the lives of everyone he encounters, which also includes Jeremy (Adam Scott), Miranda's neighbor and potential love interest, and River (Matthew Mindler), Liz's young son. But the conflicts arise because Ned inadvertently exposes the lies each one is living. Without meaning to, he forces everyone else to be as honest as he is [-] he doesn't know any other way.

The entire cast is exceptional. Banks, Mortimer and Deschanel make for a believable trio of sisters, while Scott, so good on the TV shows "Parks and Recreation" and "Party Down," makes the most of his brief time on screen.

Rudd, one of our best comic actors, gives one of his finest performances, clearly reveling in stretching himself beyond his usual straight-man persona. He never plays Ned as the title describes him, and the movie, directed by Jesse Peretz, and written by David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz, avoids presenting him that way to the audience. All involved ensure we never laugh at Ned, steering clear of the kind of mean-spirited humor that turns my stomach.

The dramatic material is heavier than expected, and the laugh rate is not as high as several other comedies released this year. But "Our Idiot Brother" goes down in a good way, with an infectious positivity.

Greg's Grade: B

(Rated R for sexual content including nudity, and for language throughout. 90 minutes.)

Colombiana

2011-08-30T16:24:00.000-04:00

COLUMBIA PICTURES-SONY, MAGALI BRAGARD
Zoe Saldana portrays Cataleya in a scene from "Colombiana."

Early in “Colombiana,” young Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg), recently a witness to her parents' murder at the hands of a Columbian drug lord (Beto Benites), tells the man who has taken her in, an unspecified relative (Cliff Curtis), that she does not want to go to school; she wants to be only one thing: a killer. To make a point that never becomes clear, her uncle(?) pulls a gun, shoots up a random, passing car, causing it to crash (the innocent driver's fate is left a mystery), then continues the conversation—on a busy city street—in front of a school—as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

The movie, too, never gives another thought to this character's evil act and later tries to use him as a sort of conscience for its young heroine, who grows up to become Zoe Saldana (”Avatar,” “Star Trek”).

The adult Cataleya is a killer all right, one of the serial nature. She even leaves behind a signature at each of her victims, a cattleya, the variety of orchid for which she is named. Her body count tops 20, each one connected to the man responsible for the death of her parents. She appears to be able to kill at will—in one ludicrous scene, she gets herself arrested to take out a man behind bars—so I'm not sure why she hasn't gotten to the big bad sooner.

Written by Luc Besson (who also produced) and Robert Mark Kamen, and directed by Olivier Megaton (”Transporter 3”), the movie skirts around the fact that Cataleya is a total psychopath who, in addition, to the murdering, lies constantly to her artist boyfriend (Michael Vartan); trains two dogs to kill on command; and makes vile threats to the poor FBI agent (Lennie James) tracking her.

Having just plowed through all five seasons of the Showtime series “Dexter,” I've had serial killers on the brain lately. To varying degrees throughout its run, that show has dealt with the moral issues of its title character's extracurricular, nighttime activities. “Colombiana” never even considers that what Cataleya has devoted her life to doing might not be entirely justified and that what she does might make her just as evil as the people who wronged her.

The filmmakers clearly put more thought into Saldana's form-fitting outfits.

Greg's Grade: D

(Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, intense sequences of action, sexuality and brief strong language. 107 minutes.)

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

2011-08-26T00:01:00.003-04:00

FILM DISTRICT, CAROLYN JOHNS
Bailee Madison is shown in a scene from "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark."

In this hyperactive digital age, "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" is almost antiquated in its approach to horror.

And that is its greatest strength.

Produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker responsible for "Pan's Labyrinth" and the two "Hellboy" movies, and directed by rookie Troy Nixey, "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" stays away from the blood and guts that dominate so much of modern horror in favor of building suspense and creating scares through whispers in the dark, the production design of its creepy old mansion and placing the audience in the shoes of its protagonist, a young girl sent away from her mother in California to live with her dad in Rhode Island.

Guy Pearce is Alex, the father, an architect living in the dilapidated Blackwood Manor while he restores it with his new, younger girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes). He's lost when it comes to dealing with Sally (Bailee Madison), a sullen little girl who desperately wants to return to her mother.

Sally's only joy comes in exploring the old house and its grounds—to the dismay of Mr. Harris (Jack Thompson), the groundskeeper who clearly knows more of the place's history than he lets on. When she uncovers a hidden basement, which has an ash pit that's been bolted shut, Alex orders her to stay away.

The whispers come to her at night, promising friendship, telling her about other children.

Sally opens the ash pit and quickly learns the owners of the whispers don't exactly have friendship in mind. The mischief caused by the troll-like little buggers she unleashes, who have a hankering for the teeth of young children, grows more violent by the day. But of course, no one believes she is suffering from anything other than nightmares and a need for attention.

There is solid, spooky work done here across the board. The real stars are production designer Roger Ford, art director Lucinda Thomson and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, who bring Blackwood Manor to an unsettling, dark, moody life.

The monsters have an intense aversion to light of any kind, so they spend the first half of the movie mostly lurking in the shadows, just out of sight, whispering and scurrying about. They eventually are revealed in full, and while the movie remains creepy, it cannot retain the tension and suspense built to that point.

Though there is nothing wrong with the actors' performances, the characters are thinly drawn and plot is almost nonexistent. Those are not the movie's chief concerns, however.

As a horror movie, "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" is a refreshing, old-fashioned piece of filmmaking—a nice change of pace as summer nears its end.

Greg's Grade: B

(Rated R for violence and terror. 99 minutes.)

Conan the Barbarian

2011-08-20T10:16:00.043-04:00

LIONSGATE, SIMON VARSANO
Jason Momoa portrays Conan in a scene from "Conan the Barbarian."

I'm trying hard not to come off as a broken record, but 3D at the movies needs to go away. And it needs to go away yesterday.

"Conan the Barbarian" surpasses last year's "Clash of the Titans" for the worst use of 3D I've seen. Director Marcus Nispel has a hard enough time presenting a coherent action scene in two dimensions; add a third and what a mess we have on our hands.

And it's not just in the action scenes, of which there are many. The use of 3D—which was added in post-production via computers—is a constant distraction. A fantasy film must draw the audience into its world; an unrelenting reminder that you're watching a movie might as well be its death knell.

Beneath this nonsense, there actually is a kind of entertaining movie, in a pulpy, B-movie sort of way.

The Conan character originated in the 1930s in the stories of Robert E. Howard. Most know him from a pair of early '80s movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger ("Conan the Barbarian," 1982, "Conan the Destroyer," 1984). This new movie, while not a direct remake, has a similar feel, though Nispel, whose career has taken him from directing commercials and music videos to remakes for the big screen ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," 2003, "Friday the 13th," 2009), ramps up the violence. Spurting blood, accompanied by wet, slurpy sound effects, is the most common sight in the fight scenes.

Jason Momoa takes on the role of Conan, a deadly warrior roaming the continent of Hyboria. The words he lives by: "I live, I love, I slay, and I am content." Only he's not. There is a purpose to this travels: He's searching for Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), the bandit who led a raid on Conan's village when he was a boy, killing everyone, including Conan's father (Ron Perlman).

Zym, with help from his daughter (Rose McGowan), a mysterious witch, is looking for the pieces of a mask that will give him the power to conquer kingdoms. Something about bringing his wife back from the dead, too—I think. He also needs the blood of Tamara (Rachel Nichols), a virtuous monk, to make it work.

Momoa is a physical specimen and a better actor than Schwarzenegger. But he doesn't command the screen the way Arnold did, or even the way he did earlier this year in a similar role on the HBO series "Game of Thrones." Still, he is good enough for this material, and he clearly is having a blast. Attitude is important in a movie like this.

Nichols never comes off as anything other than bored, causing the romantic sparks that ignite between Tamara and Conan to feel forced.

On the bad guys' side, Lang and McGowan appear to be having a contest to see who can out-camp the other, Lang with his over-the-top accent and line readings, McGowan with her exotic costumes and makeup. They come at it with the kind of full-bodied gusto this movie needs.

Special effects generally are solid; Conan's fight against monsters made of sand is a standout scene. The fight choreography also is topnotch, even if the furious cutting of Nispel and editor Ken Blackwell and the 3D conversion do their best to obscure it.

This "Conan" is a completely disposable, mindless movie that's easy to pick apart. I started down that route until my long-held soft spot for this kind of swords-and-sorcery fantasy took over. There is fun to be had here—not as much as there could be, but it kept me entertained, faults and all.

Greg's Grade: C

(Rated R for strong bloody violence, some sexuality and nudity. 112 minutes.)

Fright Night

2011-08-18T14:58:00.003-04:00

DREAMWORKS PICTURES
Anton Yelchin is shown in a scene from "Fright Night."

Evil has a new name.

And that name is ...

... Jerry?

Actually, it's not new at all, as "Fright Night," with refreshingly old-fashioned, bloodthirsty, bursting-into-flames-in-the-sun (no sparkling allowed) vampires, is a remake of the 1985 film written and directed by Tom Holland.

This new version, directed by Craig Gillespie ("Lars and the Real Girl") and written by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" veteran Marti Noxon, is a tight little horror movie, well staged and acted, and with a fair amount of comedy sprinkled among the scares.

Right off the bat, the movie establishes its suburban Las Vegas setting, a cookie-cutter neighborhood in the middle of the desert, the kind of mind-numbingly ordinary locale that is the perfect spot for a monster hiding in plain sight. It's a place where teenagers can go missing without the outside world taking notice.

Our hero is high school senior Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin, the young Chekov from 2009's "Star Trek"), who's left behind his nerdy past and best friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, aka McLovin), in favor of the "cool" crowd, including his girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots).

Colin Farrell is Jerry, the vampire-next-door originally portrayed by Chris Sarandon. Farrell plays him with a friendly blandness designed to help him blend in with his surroundings: He flirts with Charley's single mother, Jane (Toni Collette), but doesn't come on too strong; later, while entertaining a lady friend, he pops over to borrow a few beers.

Ed is on to Jerry's true nature, and Charley eventually comes on board, too, leading to a suspenseful sequence (with a whopper of an ending) in which Charley breaks into Jerry's house; a visit with Peter Vincent (David Tennant), a Criss Angel-like illusionist who puts on a vampire-themed Vegas stage show and maybe a real-life vampire hunter; and an impressive car chase with camera work and special effects reminiscent of a famous scene in "Children of Men" (2006).

Farrell's performance grows stronger as the movie unfolds, his dull, nonchalant exterior holding up even as he's trying to kill Charley, Amy and Jane. He offers a casual "hey" when he catches up to them after the car chase, and when Charley stands up to him and orders his mom and girlfriend away, Jerry gives them an equally neighborly "see ya around." It's funny and a bit unsettling at the same time.

Yelchin, one of the more likable young actors to emerge in recent years, is a competent lead, while—to the movie's benefit—Collette, an Oscar nominee for "The Sixth Sense" (1999), seems overqualified for her small role.

It has been so long since I've seen the original "Fright Night" that I cannot offer much of a comparison. My faded memories tell me the original went a little harder for the camp factor than the remake does. Gillespie and Noxon get in some commentary on the monotony of suburban life, but mostly, this is just an enjoyable horror movie.

As is almost always the case, the 3D presentation is nothing but a hindrance. The movie is dark to begin with—it's "Fright Night" after all, not "Fright Morning" or "Fright Afternoon"—and 3D makes the images even dimmer. See it in 2D and have fun.

Greg's Grade: B+

(Rated R for bloody horror violence and language including some sexual references. 106 minutes.)

30 Minutes or Less

2011-08-12T00:01:00.002-04:00

SONY-COLUMBIA PICTURES, WILSON WEBB
Aziz Ansari, left, and Jesse Eisenberg are shown in a scene from "30 Minutes or Less."

The principals of "30 Minutes or Less" all appear to be acting in different movies.

Jesse Eisenberg, as Nick, the pizza delivery guy who's kidnapped and ends up with a bomb strapped to his chest and orders to rob a bank, plays it straight and sincere. He's suitably terrified and desperate both to save himself and prevent harm from coming to those close to him.

Aziz Ansari, as Nick's best friend, Chet, a substitute elementary school teacher, employs the loose, riffing style of a Judd Apatow movie. It works for him, and he gets most of the movie's laughs.

Then there are Danny McBride and Nick Swardson doing what they do—whatever that is (it certainly isn't comedy).

McBride is Dwayne, a foul-mouthed lout, and Swardson is Dwayne's friend, Travis, who's only character trait is that he has some aptitude with explosives.

McBride and Swardson play their roles with an obnoxious sense of entitlement. Someone got it into these guys' heads that they're funny, and they strut across the screen as if it's comedy gold whenever they open their mouths. Swardson has so little to do that he barely registers, but McBride continues to be one of the most aggressively unfunny performers I've ever seen.

Dwayne's father (Fred Ward), a retired Marine, hit it big in the lottery a few years back, and Dwayne, fearing he will blow through the entire $10 million in winnings and leave him without an inheritance, concocts a scheme to murder the old man. His dream is to use the money to open a tanning salon, which really will be just a front for a prostitution ring.

Laughing yet?

Didn't think so.

The problem is, Dwayne and Travis don't want to do the deed themselves, and they don't have the cash to pay a hitman. So, using Travis's only useful skill, they kidnap Nick, load him up with a bomb set to blow in 10 hours and force him to rob a bank to get them the $100,000 they need. Nick goes to Chet for help, but there's tension there because Nick just told Chet he slept with his twin sister (Dilshad Vadsaria) several years ago and very much would like to do so again.

We've also learned Chet is partly responsible for Nick's parents' divorce and, in effect, ruining Nick's childhood.

Any of this tickling your funny bone?

With a script that fails miserably as it searches for laughs and actors who seem like they didn't meet until he called "action," director Ruben Fleischer is completely lost—a surprising development considering how well he blended horror, action and comedy in his debut feature, "Zombieland" (2009).

The movie unfurls without rhythm, momentum or visual flair, but at a furious pace. Maybe that's Fleischer showing mercy to the audience.

True mercy would have been making the movie's running time live up to its title.

Greg's Grade: D+

(Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity and some violence. 83 minutes.)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-07T13:29:00.000-04:00

20TH CENTURY FOX
Caesar the chimp, a CG animal portrayed by Andy Serkis, is shown in a scene from "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

Their endgame is the planet. But first, San Francisco.

In "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," a prequel to the original 1968 "Planet of the Apes," it is there, in the not-too-distant future, that scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) is developing a virus for use in gene therapy that not only repairs brain cells but improves them. His goal is a cure for Alzheimer's disease, which has all but taken his father (John Lithgow) from him.

Of course, before it can be used on humans, the virus must be tested. That's where the apes—chimps, specifically—come in. When one test subject goes on a violent rampage, Will's boss (David Oyelowo) attributes it to the virus, ends the program and orders the chimps put down. Only the virus is not to blame. The ornery chimp was protecting a perceived threat to her baby, which she birthed in secret.

Will takes the little simian home, names him Caesar and, to his astonishment, watches him learn at a pace that far outdistances that of a human of the same age, the smarts inherited from his test-subject mother. Will also uses the virus to treat his father, who makes a remarkable recovery.

Eight wonderful years pass before an unfortunate incident with a neighbor leads to Caesar's seizure and placement in a zoo-like facility at which the guards—including one played by Tom Felton, better known as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies—horribly mistreat the animals. They don't know Caesar has the wherewithal to not just fight back but to lead his fellow apes in an organized rebellion.

And so it begins.

Ten years after Tim Burton's remake of the original "Planet of the Apes" (which is not entirely deserving of the bad rap it has gotten), I don't know if anyone was clamoring for a return to the franchise. There probably are other properties that could be revisited for an easier buck, so it's refreshing to find we are back with the apes because there actually is a story worth telling, one that expands and deepens the mythology of the series. Director Rupert Wyatt and writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have added a new emotional level and an even greater sense of tragedy to the ultimate fate of the planet.

Led by a typically earnest Franco, even if his role is underwritten, the cast acquits itself as well as can be expected. The star, however, is Caesar, portrayed by actor Andy Serkis in a motion-capture performance similar to his work as Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings" (2001-03) and the great ape of "King Kong" (2005). It's the best performance in the movie, and Serkis is the clear master of this new breed of acting. Without the benefit of words, he and the expert computer graphic artists create a fully realized character, someone we can empathize with and who is essentially the hero of the picture.

That's the "twist" this time, if you want to call it that. The apes aren't the bad guys; with a couple exceptions, we are.

Sequels will be on the way if this movie makes any money. They will be unnecessary, but let's not think about that now. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is one of the better movies of the summer.

Greg's Grade: B+

(Rated PG-13 for violence, terror, some sexuality and brief strong language. 105 minutes.)

4th Chesapeake Film Festival set for September

2011-08-05T10:59:00.000-04:00

EASTON — The Chesapeake Film Festival returns from Sept. 23 to 26 for its fourth year, with screenings of more than two dozen films at venues in Easton, Cambridge and, for the first time, Chestertown and Chesapeake College.

Each year, members of the CFF board of directors and advisory committee travel to film festivals across the country, including the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, to scout films and network with filmmakers and producers—all in effort to bring the best in independent film to the Eastern Shore.

“Not all of us can go to Sundance. Not all of us can go to South by Southwest,” said Liza Moore, the festival’s filmmaker liaison. “But somebody from the committee will go, and they actually can bring them back here. So you’re getting that same experience.”

The CFF slogan is “Watch. Think. Discuss.”

“We are a community hub, and in a way, we can be like a community book club,” said Doug Sadler, one of the festival’s founders and its artistic director. “We can really elevate the community and the dialogue, because there’s a shared experience hopefully. People see the same film, experience it, and it creates a dialogue.

“And we bring in filmmakers, which is one of the key components, as well as experts and panelists.”

Since the festival began, organizers have worked hard to establish relationships with filmmakers.

“They don't forget that we had one of their first films here when nobody else had necessarily given it such a front position,” Moore said. “And they stay in touch, and they bring their friends, and they want to support.”

The festival’s setting is another part of its appeal.

“People who come, whether they’re filmmakers or actors or people coming just to go to the festival, they fall in love with where we live,” said festival director Rhonda Thomson. “They love the Eastern Shore, and they want to come back.”

Dennis Farina is shown in a scene from "The Last Rites of Joe May," the opening night film of the 2011 Chesapeake Film Festival, which is set for Sept. 23 through 26. Farina and writer-director Joe Maggio will appear at the festival.

Writer-director Joe Maggio, whose film “Bitter Feast” showed at the 2010 festival, is one of those who is returning. This year, he has the opening night slot for his latest picture, “The Last Rites of Joe May.”

“I’m thrilled and honored to be returning ...,” Maggio said. “In my opinion, CFF’s got it all. Great town, great venues and some of the smartest programming of any festival in North America.”

“The Last Rites of Joe May” depicts the last days in the life of an aging hustler (Dennis Farina), who continues to believe a glorious destiny awaits him.

Farina, whose long list of credits includes films such as “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), “Snatch” (2000) and “Get Shorty” (1995), and the TV series “Law & Order,” will attend the festival.

“If you don’t know him, you will when you see his face. He’s basically a character actor that's been all over the place,” Sadler said. “This is a role that’s created some Oscar discussion already and really is an opportunity for him to shine.”

The closing night film is “Cafeteria Man,” a documentary following Baltimore City Public Schools food service director Tony Geraci’s efforts to replace the school system’s processed foods with nutritious, locally grown, freshly prepared meals. Geraci and director Richard Chisolm plan to attend the festival.

Between opening and closing nights, the schedule is packed with a wide range of films, including the following:

- “Hell and Back Again,” a documentary following 25-year-old Sgt. Nathan Harris, a Marine wounded in Afghanistan. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for documentary, world cinema, at Sundance. Director Danfung Dennis will attend.

- “Band Together,” Chestertown resident Kurt Kolaja’s documentary on the Kent County Community Marching Band. Kolaja brought his previous film, “Charlie Obert’s Barn,” to the festival in 2008.

“‘Band Together’ is a really beautiful, sweet film about all the small-town characters that make up these little groups, and particularly this marching band,” Sadler said, “and I think he’s drawing a larger narrative about how people come together and what holds us together and who we are.

“There’s not a cynical bone in the film’s body, and that's incredibly refreshing both in life as well as in independent film.”

- “Everyday Sunshine,” a documentary on the punk/funk band Fishbone.

- Classics honoring Peter Falk, Sidney Lumet and Elizabeth Taylor, all of whom passed away earlier this year—“A Woman Under the Influence” (Falk, 1974), “Network” (Lumet, 1976) and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (Taylor, 1966).

- “The Great McGinty,” the 1940 Preston Sturges comedy, with special guest Sheila Lanahan of Oxford, who appeared in the film as an 11-year-old girl.

- “Bull Durham” (1988), the baseball comedy starring Kevin Costner.

Star Democrat cartoonist/columnist Rick Kollinger will host this screening as a result of his back-and-forth banter with festival organizers on the newspaper’s editorial pages, during which he accused the festival of being elitist and they invited him to select a movie to be shown.

“It should be a lot of fun. He’s been a very good sport,” Sadler said.

- A collection of animated short films from the New York International Children’s Film Festival, including several award-winners.

These are “really remarkable, beautiful, animated films for kids that you’re just not going to see anywhere else,” Sadler said.

- “A Cat in Paris,” an award-winning animated feature from the New York International Children’s Film Festival.

- “Budrus,” a documentary about a Palestinian leader who unites Fatah, Hamas and Israelis in a nonviolent effort to save his village.

- “Meek’s Cutoff,” a Western set in the early days of the Oregon Trail, starring Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood.

- “The Lie,” in which a fib told to get out of work for a day dramatically changes a man’s life. Written and directed by, and starring Joshua Leonard.

“I think we’ve done a beautiful job this year,” Sadler said of the 2011 slate of films. “Our team is strong and growing stronger.”

Though having a full-time staff is a goal, the festival remains a volunteer effort.

“There are a lot of people that have put a lot of energy into birthing and growing this event. I think there’s a lot of potential,” Sadler said. “Obviously, when they started a film festival in a little, tiny town called Park City, Utah, they had no idea—no idea.

“I’m not saying that we want to grow to that, but I think there’s a beautiful possibility here. ... I think this is a gem, and I think it can bloom."

Tickets for most individual films are $10 for adults and $8 for students. Passes for the entire festival are available, as well. For tickets, the full schedule, venue locations and more information, visit www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com.

Zombies invade Delmarva in Cambridge couple's horror-comedy

2011-08-05T10:43:00.001-04:00

From left, Stefan Gural, Wendy Renee Cade, Connor Smith, Lacey Hancher, Brett Cover and Alexis Droke from the locally made movie "Dead on Delmarva" are pictured.

CAMBRIDGE — John McDonald and Karen Harrison had never made a movie. They have no background in filmmaking. But that hasn’t stopped them.

“Have you ever sat around and watched a movie and said, ‘I can do better?’” Harrison asked. “That is what happened with this.”

The “this” she is referring to is “Dead on Delmarva,” a zombie comedy she and McDonald, her fiancé, wrote together and shot last fall at locations in Dorchester, Talbot and Caroline counties.

“I’ve just loved stories since I was a kid,” said McDonald, who is also the director, during an interview at his and Harrison’s Cambridge home.

McDonald and Harrison each write short stories—“She’s a big-time horror freak, and I’m a science fiction/fantasy freak,” he said.

They’ve always enjoyed watching zombie movies together and had been joking about making one of their own when they learned the late ‘80s film “Redneck Zombies” had been shot—on a $10,000 budget—in Delmar and that Harrison works with one of the writers and one of the actors.

A short story idea quickly turned into the 72-page “Dead on Delmarva” script, McDonald and Harrison formed Arkham Productions, and McDonald prepared to direct by reading a handful of books on filmmaking.

“Independent” doesn’t even begin to describe the nature of the production, which took place on six weekends last September and October.

Cast and crew, all volunteers, came from throughout the Delmarva region; McDonald and Harrison set up air mattresses at their house and cooked meals for those who came from out of town.

“It was like one big family,” Harrison said.

Actors auditioned for their roles, but some dropped out and had to be replaced shortly before production began.

The makeup artist bowed out at the last minute, too, and the job fell to Harrison, whose on-set role was to be first assistant director.

Props came primarily from eBay, costumes from military surplus and thrift stores.

And, of course, there was blood. Lots and lots of blood.

“We’ve got gallons of blood laying around,” McDonald said.

“We actually made our own blood,” Harrison said, “two different formulas—one you could eat, one you could wash. They were not interchangeable.”

The edible blood was based on corn syrup, while dishwashing detergent is the main ingredient of the washable variety.

McDonald said they made 16 gallons of blood.

“There was blood everywhere,” Harrison said. “There’s still blood in my van.”

Once the makeup and props were in place, the scene on set was often surreal.

“One girl literally walks around holding her intestines,” McDonald said. “That was condoms filled with blood inside of a pair of nylons. And she just walked around covered in blood. I made this appliance where it looked like her stomach was ripped open and put half of it inside, and she just walked around like that.”

Though Harrison contacted local authorities before each weekend of shooting, that didn’t stop Maryland State Police from responding to the set near the end of production—not because of the people with mutilated bodies covered in blood, but due to concerns from people who had seen the actors in military fatigues with prop guns.

Actors David Edward Cooper, left, and Daniel F. Purcell are shown in a scene from "Dead on Delmarva."

The military plays a prominent role in “Dead on Delmarva.”

“We had watched lots and lots of zombie movies, and in almost every single one of them, all the military does is run away,” McDonald said. “My dad was a master sergeant in the Virginia National Guard. I know what he would’ve done, and he wouldn’t have run away.

“So one of the things we really wanted to do was have a very positive view of the military.”

Shooting locations included Canvasback Restaurant and Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge, a farm near Cambridge on Bucktown Road and the General James F. Fretterd Community Center in Denton. Principal production was completed last fall.

McDonald said the Dorchester County Department of Tourism was helpful in finding locations.

At the community center in Denton, zombies attack a group of karate students portrayed by a class from the Eastern Sun Karate Club.

“It took them about two seconds to decide” to participate, said instructor John Liszewski.

Liszewski said it was a fun experience for him and the students. “They got to bleed, fall down and get bitten by zombies,” he said.

McDonald and Harrison are stressing the comedy factor of the movie, and they pointed to the 2004 British film “Shaun of the Dead” as a source of inspiration.

“It was done in a humorous way even though there was lots of guts and gore,” Liszewski said of the karate scene.

McDonald, who has degrees in psychology, religion and computer science—“My family likes to joke that I collect degrees,” he said—and is a database administrator for Quality Health Strategies in Easton, said he is a bit behind schedule as he works on editing and adding special effects. He and Harrison hope to have the movie finished by December.

They plan to submit “Dead on Delmarva” to several East Coast horror movie festivals and possibly the Chesapeake Film Festival, as well, though that will have to wait until 2012.

“We did it as cheaply as possible, but we’re trying to make a funny but good movie and have fun making it,” McDonald said.

“We just wanted to have fun and make a movie,” echoed Harrison, who works at K&L Microwave in Salisbury. “We’re not out to make tons of money or anything. We wanted to make people laugh.”

“I do want to make enough money to recoup my losses and make another one,” McDonald said.

McDonald said he has put about $14,000 into the project so far, and he’s not done yet. Taxes associated with setting up the production company accounted for much of the expenditures, he said.

McDonald and Harrison already have decided on their next two movies. McDonald described one, based on a story he has been working on for 10 years, as a fantasy superhero movie with horror elements and said the other, based on a short story by Harrison, is about a “haunted mansion with an ancient secret.”

“I just wanted to show my parents that, ‘Look, all those horror movies really did warp my brain!’” Harrison said.

Information on “Dead on Delmarva” can found on its Internet Movie Database page.

Super

2011-08-04T14:05:00.000-04:00

IFC FILMS, STEVE DIETL
Rainn Wilson is shown in a scene from "Super."

Available Aug. 9, 2011, on Blu-ray and DVD.

Superheroes have been deconstructed so much that it is practically its own genre at this point. In the tradition of such wildly different films as “Watchmen” and “Kick-Ass” comes “Super,” writer-director James Gunn’s independent feature mixing humor with disturbing acts of violence.

Frank (Rainn Wilson, better known as Dwight Schrute on “The Office”) is a good guy but a bit of a loser. He spends his days as a fry cook, and he’s experienced exactly two perfect moments in his life—marrying Sarah (Liv Tyler), a recovering drug addict, and helping a police officer catch a mugger. He’s so clueless that he doesn’t notice his wife slipping back into her old ways. When the man who steals her away from him, a drug dealer named Jacques (Kevin Bacon) who operates out of the local strip club, comes to their house looking for Sarah, Frank lets him in and cooks him breakfast.

Late one night, mired in depression, parked in front of the TV, Frank comes across the Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion), a superhero on the religious channel. The Avenger comes to Frank in a dream, giving him all the inspiration he needs.

Spurred on by Libby (Ellen Page), an eager clerk at a comic book store, Frank fashions himself a mismatched red costume and christens himself the Crimson Bolt. His plan: Hide behind a dumpster downtown and wait for crime to happen.

That turns out to be a bore, so, armed with a pipe wrench, Frank goes out in search of crime, punishing offenders who sell drugs, molest children and cut in line at the movie theater. His ultimate goal, of course, is to win back Sarah from Jacques.

As the Crimson Bolt’s notoriety grows, Libby guesses his secret identity and joins him as his sidekick, Boltie. But Libby also happens to be completely off her rocker and a bit of a psychopath.

Much like Gunn’s career (he wrote the two recent live-action “Scooby Doo” movies, as well as the “Dawn of the Dead” remake (2004), then wrote and directed the 2006 horror-comedy “Slither”), “Super” delights in playing with the audience’s expectations. The movie is ostensibly a comedy, though it grows darker, seemingly by the minute, as the violence becomes more and more graphic.

The tone shifts wildly several times but with confidence, Gunn never losing control and the story following a natural course to an ending impossible to anticipate, but ultimately satisfying.

Wilson is the ideal leading man for this kind of material. Despite having a prominent role on one of TV’s biggest sitcoms, he is a fresh face in the movies and he’s funny because he plays Frank as if he is not trying to make us laugh. This is a sad, desperate man, clinging to his last gasp of hope, and everything is deadly serious to him.

Page is more over-the-top in her portrayal, giving the movie the shot of upbeat energy it needs to balance Wilson’s dour turn. Tyler barely has a chance to register in her brief time on screen, but Bacon routinely steals his scenes as the slimy Jacques.

“Super” is the kind of movie that will make a lot of people uncomfortable. It starts as one thing, then becomes another and another. The violence is not sanitized or stylized as we’ve come to expect from our superheroes; it’s as blunt and shocking as a blow to the head from Frank’s pipe wrench.

The even more disturbing part comes later, when you think about what happens in any other comic book/superhero story. If you condemn Frank for meting out his brand of justice, how do you justify the actions of any other masked crimefighter?

Greg's Grade: A

(Not rated. 96 minutes.)

Cowboys & Aliens

2011-07-29T13:56:00.000-04:00

UNIVERSAL PICTURES, TIMOTHY WHITE
Harrison Ford, left, and Daniel Craig are shown in a scene from "Cowboys & Aliens."

“Cowboys & Aliens”—just saying the title is fun, isn’t it? Too bad that’s the only real joy the movie offers.

How did it go so wrong?

James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) team up. “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau is at the helm. It’s a mash-up of two of the most iconic genres.

Based on its credentials, boring probably is one of the last things one would expect it to be. But that's exactly what it is: a lifeless Western story injected with uninteresting sci-fi elements.

Craig is our hero, a literal man with no name when we meet him, waking as he does in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is or how he got there, and a strange metal bracelet stuck on his wrist.

Actors who seem destined for a more intriguing Western populate the nearest town—Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano, Keith Carradine. There’s also Ford growling his way through the role of Col. Dolarhyde, who is set up as an adversary for our hero, who learns he’s wanted for a smorgasbord of crimes, including murder.

Then aliens come calling in their spaceships and all conflict the movie has spent developing in its first act is tossed aside as everyone bands together to rescue the townsfolk taken captive in the raid.

This material needs a light, irreverent touch a la “Iron Man.” Instead, it’s a dour affair that fails to capture the spirit of either genre.

Greg’s Grade: D

(Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of western and sci-fi action and violence, some partial nudity and a brief crude reference. 118 minutes.)

Horrible Bosses/Friends with Benefits

2011-07-22T13:51:00.000-04:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES, JOHN P. JOHNSON
From left, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis are shown in a scene from "Horrible Bosses."

Much has been made of the glut of R-rated comedies hitting theaters, with this year already seeing the highs of “Bridesmaids” and “Paul;” the lows of “Your Highness,” “No Strings Attached” and “Bad Teacher;” and the middle ground of “The Hangover Part II.”

Add two more to the high category—“Horrible Bosses” and “Friends with Benefits.”

“Horrible Bosses”" easily is the best of the bunch, with an ingenious though not quite original premise, genuine wit and a fantastic cast.

Nick (Jason Bateman, the best comedy straight man we have today) works for a man (Kevin Spacey, at his smarmy best) who all but promises him a big promotion only to later take the job himself. Dale (Charlie Day of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) is a constant victim of sexual harassment by his boss (Jennifer Aniston, cast completely against type). Kurt (Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live”) actually enjoys his job, but that changes when his kindly boss (Donald Sutherland) dies and his maniacal, cokehead son (Colin Farrell, sporting a wicked combover) takes over.

The solution to their problems starts as an offhand joke over a few beers. But soon they’re hiring a “murder consultant” (Jamie Foxx) and name-checking Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” (1951) and the Danny DeVito movie “Throw Momma from the Train” (1987) as they plot the demise of their employers.

Seth Gordon, a veteran of the best current TV comedies (“Parks and Recreation,” “Community,” “The Office”), directs with a sense of rhythm that places his cast’s impeccable comic timing at the fore. He’s not afraid to take the movie into dark, twisted places, and the wonderful performances make it easy for us to follow.

SONY SCREEN GEMS, GLEN WILSON
Justin Timberlake, left, and Mila Kunis are shown in a scene from "Friends with Benefits."

“Friends with Benefits” comes with the same premise as the aforementioned “No Strings Attached”—two good friends decide to leave emotions behind to embark on a purely physical relationship—backing up Roger Ebert’s oft-repeated quote: “A movie is not about what it is about, but how it is about it.”

In “Strings,” Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman are unlikable bores Portman’s character is especially mean who seem to lack the necessary connection to be friends or lovers. “Friends with Benefits” features Justin Timberlake, following up his electric performance in last year’s “The Social Network” with an effective leading man turn, and Mila Kunis, giving off some of the magnetism we haven’t seen from her since “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (2008), as, respectively, Dylan, the new art director at GQ magazine, and Jamie, the corporate headhunter who found him in Los Angeles and brought him to New York to take the job.

The inherent likability of the two leads alone elevates this above the average comedy. Their willingness—especially Timberlake’s—to appear foolish doesn’t hurt either.

The supporting cast is strong, too Patricia Clarkson as Jamie’s absentminded, free spirit mother; Richard Jenkins as Dylan’s aging father; Jenna Elfman as Dylan’s loving, supportive sister; and maybe best of all, Woody Harrelson as the GQ sports editor.

Directed by Will Gluck (“Easy A”), “Friends with Benefits” wants us to think it is not the typical romantic comedy; characters repeatedly comment on the genre’s conventions. But clichés can be avoided for only so long, and the movie starts to run out of steam in its final act. But it’s an acceptable trade for the good work leading up to it.

Greg's Grades: “Horrible Bosses,” A-; “Friends with Benefits,” B

(“Horrible Bosses,” rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language and some drug material; 98 minutes. “Friends with Benefits,” rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language and some drug material; 109 minutes.)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

2011-07-15T13:38:00.001-04:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES, JAAP BUITENDIJK
Daniel Radcliffe is shown in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2."

WARNING: This review may contain spoilers for previous Harry Potter movies.

It all comes down to this.

J.K. Rowling’s book is four years old, so millions already know how the story ends. But many do not, and even if you have that knowledge, it is an entirely different experience to see images and events previously confined to your imagination projected onto the big screen.

With the eighth film, the Harry Potter saga comes to an end, and this final picture assures it will go down as one of the great achievements not just in cinema, but all of popular culture.

Picking up where we left off last fall, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” wastes no time in jumping back into the action, with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) stealing the all-powerful Elder Wand from the tomb of Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), while Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) continue their quest to find and destroy the remaining Horcruxes, the items in which the dark lord placed pieces of his soul to attain his apparent immortality.

Their quest takes them first to the vaults of the goblin-run bank Gringotts and then back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, once a place of comfort and security—a home—now a foreboding structure under the rule of a new headmaster, Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), the man who slew Dumbledore.

Mostly reactive until this point, Harry embraces his role as the chosen one, retaking the castle with help from Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith), Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tene), the Weasleys, a newly courageous Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) and other allies.

The Battle of Hogwarts is on in full when Voldemort and his dark forces retaliate.

All of this will be completely unintelligible to anyone coming in blind. But that’s your fault if you decide to watch the eighth movie in a series without any prior knowledge.

“Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is by far the most action-packed Harry Potter movie, though director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves never lose sight of the characters, the human drama that has fueled the story from the beginning. Beloved friends and hated villains meet their ends together, and Harry rushes toward the confrontation to which his entire life has been leading him.

Yates is back for the fourth time, and of the quartet of directors the series has seen, he clearly has the best understanding of this story and its characters, knowing which beats to hit and hold and for how long.

Radcliffe, one of many actors in this franchise we literally have watched grow up on the screen, leads one of the most impressive casts you will ever see and lead it he does, with a confident, commanding, yet still vulnerable performance. Escaping the shadow of Harry Potter will be a difficult task as he moves forward in his career, but I think he has the chops to pull it off.

With special effects of the highest caliber, the movie is designed and shot so well that not even 3D, which normally does nothing more than make projected images darker and blurrier, can detract from it.

At 130 minutes, this is the shortest of the eight movies, but that’s because most of the heavy lifting already has been done. The pieces—the characters, the plot, the themes—are in place; this needs only to be a thrilling, satisfying conclusion. Movie history tells us that is often harder than it seems, so the achievement here should not be underestimated.

From any perspective—technical, emotional, storytelling—“Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is a smashing success. After so much buildup, it's everything it needs to be epic, gripping and heartbreaking. Now that's magic.

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense action violence and frightening images. 103 minutes.)

Through the years: Harry Potter on the big screen

2011-07-15T13:29:00.000-04:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES From left, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe are shown in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001)

The adaptation of the first book chronicles year one at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for 11-year-old Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson). Tasked with introducing a boatload of characters and essentially creating the look and setting of the entire film series to come, director Chris Columbus has a lot of grunt work to do. His solution is to stay slavishly loyal to J.K. Rowling’s writing, resulting in a movie that is entertaining in fits but plagued by pacing problems throughout its 152 minutes. Like the book, it is the most kid-friendly entry in the series, even though the child actors are painfully wooden at times. Luckily, an esteemed cadre of British actors (including Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, John Cleese and John Hurt) classes up the entire production, and a typically brassy John Williams score enhances the excitement. Greg's Grade: C+

“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (2002)

Introductions are out of the way, but “Chamber of Secrets” still is exposition-heavy and moves at a ponderously slow pace at times—there simply is not enough plot to sustain 161 minutes. Columbus returns to the director’s chair, so again, Rowling provides all of the imagination and the filmmakers offer little more than a page-by-page translation of the book. Radcliffe, Grint and Watson already show improvement, and the supporting cast, including a delightful Kenneth Branagh as a foppish new Hogwarts teacher, is uniformly excellent. C

“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004)

Here’s where it gets good. Alfonso Cuaron takes over as director, providing a sense of directorial vision sorely lacking in the first two movies. After two rather episodic adventures, we finally get into the meat of the story, this part of which is centered on the escape from prison of convicted murderer Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), the man accused of betraying Harry’s parents and causing their deaths. The more personal story raises the stakes, and the tension remains high throughout. Radcliffe, Grint and Watson are growing quickly into their roles, and the bond between Harry, Ron and Hermione feels deep and genuine. Along with Oldman, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson and Timothy Spall are among the cast additions, though all eyes are on Michael Gambon, who ably replaces the late Richard Harris as Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. With the filmmakers finally starting to take liberties with the text, this is the most divisive and lowest-grossing film of the series. But it also may be the most important, taking the first steps onto the darker path Harry and his friends will follow through to the end. A

“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005)

The Triwizard Tournament, a magic contest held between the three largest wizarding schools of Europe, and in which Harry is a surprise entrant, provides a strong narrative backbone. The characters have evolved to the point where we care not only about what happens to them in the grand scheme of the overall plot, but also with regard to their relationships with one another. With more new characters and a lot of plot to get through, director Mike Newell keeps forward momentum, building up to a climax that changes everything. B+

“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (2007)

As the wizarding world scoffs at Harry and Dumbledore’s warnings of Voldemort’s return, the Ministry of Magic wrests away control of Hogwarts through a new professor, the domineering, wretchedly cheerful Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). Harry becomes proactive for the first time, secretly training his classmates for the war Voldemort is bringing but the authorities deny. David Yates comes onboard as director for the only movie in the series not scripted by Steve Kloves (Michael Goldenberg is the screenwriter here), and important elements, such as the characterizations and pacing, feel just a little bit off as compared to films three and four. The finale—the first knock-down-drag-out magic battle of the series—is underwhelming until Voldemort and Dumbledore arrive. The movie gets a lot right, though, especially Harry’s torment over his firsthand encounter with death at the end of “Goblet of Fire.” The threat, the impending sense of doom, has never seemed greater. B

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009)

Yates’s second go-round as director is a confident, mature picture, performing a delicate balancing act as it moves from the series’ funniest moments to its most grave. Teenage hormones run wild about Hogwarts, while Harry and Dumbledore delve into the past to unlock the secret to defeating the evil Lord Voldemort. “Half-Blood Prince” is filled with striking visuals; it is the only entry in the series to receive an Academy Award nomination for best cinematography. With its production design dominated by shades of brown and dim lighting, it almost looks like “Harry Potter” as directed by David Fincher. The special effects are better than ever and even more effective for being merely a backdrop for the human drama. A

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” (2010)

The bad guys are winning as the penultimate film begins, and they keep winning right up until the credits roll. Again under Yates’s direction, this is about as bleak as a mainstream, Hollywood picture gets. With Voldemort and his Death Eaters seizing control of both Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, Harry, Ron and Hermione go on the run (eliciting the best work yet from the actors portraying them), searching for the means to defeat the dark lord. “Deathly Hallows: Part 1” is a gritty, moody piece bearing virtually no resemblance to the cartoon-like early movies. It may be a little light on action for some, but it effectively moves the many pieces into place for the grand finale. A

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

20TH CENTURY FOX, MURRAY CLOSE
From left, Caleb Landry Jones, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy and Lucas Till are shown in a scene from "X-Men: First Class."

The ideas, themes and characters of “X-Men: First Class” feel fresh and relevant despite its position as the fifth film in the series and taking place in the early 1960s during the build-up to the Cold War.

The action actually begins in 1944 for brief glimpses of the children who will become Professor Charles Xavier and his archenemy, Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto.

We meet young Erik, who has power over metal, in a concentration camp in Poland and watch as a doctor, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), murders his mother in front of him. Shaw then presumes to take the boy under his wing to teach him how to control his powers.

The telepathic Charles, on the other hand, lives in luxury, growing up in a palatial mansion and befriending a pretty, young intruder in his home who also happens to be a blue-skinned, shapeshifting mutant.

Fast-forward to 1962, when a scientist (Rose Byrne) working for the CIA enlists the aid of Charles (James McAvoy), now a professor specializing in genetic mutations. With help from the U.S. government, he starts tracking down other mutants, leading him to Erik (Michael Fassbender). The two become fast friends, forming a recruiting team of sorts, even though their ultimate goals differ greatly—Charles wants to offer guidance and training for others like him, to show them they are not alone; Erik wants to kill Shaw, who also is a mutant, and the others he holds responsible for his mother’s death.

Shaw, meanwhile, is greasing the wheels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the aim of starting World War III and creating an opportunity for mutants to seize power amid the certain destruction. If his rhetoric about mutants and their place in the world sounds familiar, well, there’s a good reason for it.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn (“Kick-Ass,” 2010) from a screenplay credited to the director and three others, based on a story by Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer (director of the first two “X-Men” films; he’s also back onboard as a producer), “First Class” moves at a breakneck pace throughout its 131 minutes without ever feeling rushed. With so many characters to introduce or reintroduce, Vaughn has a lot of ground to cover, and he does it in a way that at once feels retro and modern. Some of the opening scenes in particular have the feel of an early James Bond movie.

The casting, including one perfect cameo, is exceptionally strong, with McAvoy anchoring the movie and Fassbender in a breakout, star-making performance. There are many delights in this movie, and the greatest is seeing the start of the literal and figurative chess match between Professor X and Magneto, as played by these two fine actors. It’s so compelling that its origins easily could have been played out over more than just one film.

With an undeniable, propulsive energy, “First Class” feels like the beginning of a new big-screen franchise rather than the latest entry in one that has existed for several years and films. It's similar to J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” in that respect.

More importantly, “First Class” is the best “X-Men” movie to date. This is how you do a summer blockbuster.

Greg’s Grade: A-

(Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some sexuality and a violent image. 131 minutes.)

The Hangover Part II

2011-05-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES
From left, Bradley Cooper, Ken Jeong, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis are shown in a scene from "The Hangover Part II."

Did you enjoy “The Hangover?” Judging from the box office receipts, many of you did. So did the people who made it, so much so that they essentially made the same movie again and called it “The Hangover Part II.”

Before I get into what director Todd Phillips and company did wrong, let me say this: “The Hangover Part II” is consistently funny and entertaining. Leading men Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis easily slip back into their roles, and it is a joy to watch them play off each other.

It was their chemistry and the camaraderie of Phil (Cooper), Stu (Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis) that gave the first movie its heart. That and a wildly unpredictable story made “The Hangover” an instant classic and possibly the funniest movie of the past decade. Yes, it has its moments of shock humor, but it’s secondary to the characters and the plot.

Not so with “The Hangover Part II.”

Phillips, who also co-wrote this time with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, undoubtedly felt the need to top the first movie. That means going more outrageous, more over the top, and as a consequence, the character moments are harder to come by.

At the same time, though, Phillips rigidly sticks to the familiar formula, employing an identical structure, hitting the same beats. The word “again” keeps showing up in the dialogue, as in “I can't believe this is happening again!”

With constant references to events of the first movie, it is as if the filmmakers are trying to remind us how much we liked it. But it’s only two years old, and if you came back for part two, it’s probably safe to say you’re a fan of part one.

The only significant change is moving the action from Las Vegas to Thailand.

Stu is the one getting married this time, to the beautiful Lauren (Jamie Chung), whose father (Nirut Sirichanya) disapproves of him while doting on his 16-year-old son, Teddy (Mason Lee), a pre-med student at Stanford and cello prodigy. After Phil and Doug (Justin Bartha), the groom from part one, talk Stu into extending a last-minute invitation to Alan, who describes himself as a “stay-at-home son,” the “wolfpack” is back.

Two nights before the wedding, the group heads down to the beach for a beer. The next morning, Phil, Stu and Alan wake up in a seedy Bangkok hotel room, along with a chain-smoking, drug-dealing monkey, Teddy’s severed finger and the international criminal Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Alan’s head is shaved; Stu has a fresh tattoo on his face; Phil is relatively unscathed. Doug is safe back at the luxurious seaside resort where the wedding will be held.

But where is Teddy?

That’s the question this time around, and the search for an answer encompasses an American crime lord (Paul Giamatti), Russian gangsters, Buddhist monks, a brothel and more. Some of it is “shocking,” but because we know the movie is not going to stray far from its path, nothing is truly surprising.

Most of the funniest moments are one-liners from Galifianakis.

I laughed during this movie and so did the other people in the packed theater—a lot. I suppose that is what really matters when assessing something like this. It's just that it was done so much better the first time around. Even though the two movies are almost exactly the same, it feels like part two was made in a completely opposite spirit.

Entertaining though it may be, “The Hangover Part II” is more than a little depressing. It is the epitome of lazy Hollywood filmmaking.

Greg's Grade: C+

(Rated R for for pervasive language, strong sexual content including graphic nudity, drug use and brief violent images. 102 minutes.)

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

2011-05-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

DISNEY, PETER MOUNTAIN
Johnny Depp portrays Captain Jack Sparrow, left, and Geoffrey Rush portrays Hector Barbossa in a scene from "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides."

You know the old saying “less is more?” I present to you exhibit A: “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

Of course, it’s only within the context of this franchise that anything about this, the fourth movie inspired by the Disney theme park ride, could be considered “less.”

“On Stranger Tides” is nearly wall-to-wall action, with swashbuckling aplenty; daring escapes and rescues; zombie pirates; vicious mermaids; the British navy; the Spanish navy; and the Fountain of Youth.

But while parts two (“Dead Man’s Chest,” 2006) and three (“At World’s End,” 2007) were bloated, convoluted messes drowning in special effects, “On Stranger Tides” gets back to what made the franchise such a hit in the first place: Johnny Depp as the outrageous, flamboyant pirate Captain Jack Sparrow and action scenes powered more by impressive stunt work than computers.

Though nothing will quite match the experience of seeing Depp in the iconic role for the first time in “The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003), he is in top form here, the screenplay by returning writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio allowing him to seem more like a person than the cartoon character he had become.

Jack has been a significant part of popular culture for the better part of a decade, but it’s still a delight to see Depp swishing and swaying his way through a movie. Whereas he seemed to be going through the motions at times in the previous sequels (or maybe he was just confused by impenetrable plot), Depp seems reinvigorated by the smaller scale and more straightforward story of “On Stranger Tides.”

The Fountain of Youth is the objective. The Spanish are after it. So are the British, and they’re led by Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, still reveling in bringing every pirate cliche to life), now sporting a peg leg. Throwing in with respectable sorts goes against the grain for the old buccaneer. He’s clearly playing an angle, because in these movies, everyone is.

The infamous pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane, who strangely comes across as tired more than menacing), he of the ability to “zombify” his crew and shoot flames from his boat, seeks the fountain, as well. That’s where Jack comes in. Seems he’s acquired a map indicating the fountain’s location. A chance encounter with a former associate, Angelica (Penelope Cruz, holding her own with Depp even with a somewhat underwritten role), for whom he might have had—gasp!—feelings, leads to his imprisonment aboard Blackbeard’s ship. Oh yeah, Angelica is Blackbeard’s daughter.

Throw in the young priest (Sam Clafin) who falls for a mermaid (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), and that’s about it for the plot. Most of the movie consists of shifting the various players around the board in often thrilling encounters.

Rob Marshall, owner of an Oscar for “Chicago” (2002) but also the man behind the 2009 musical flop “Nine,” injects fresh blood by taking over for director Gore Verbinski. That, and dropping the dead weight of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, brings a new energy to the screen, resulting in a leaner adventure. At 128 minutes, “On Stranger Tides” is the shortest “Pirates” film to date (“At World’s End” stretched to an unmanageable 169 minutes).

Parts five and six are already in the works, and while they surely will be as unnecessary as the past three installments have been, “On Stranger Tides,” far from perfect as it is, at least appears to have set the series back on the right track.

Greg’s Grade: B

(Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action/adventure violence, some frightening images, sensuality and innuendo. 128 minutes.

Bridesmaids

2011-05-13T12:46:00.000-04:00

UNIVERSAL PICTURES, SUZANNE HANOVER
From left, Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig are shown in a scene from "Bridesmaids."

More and more these days, you just can’t trust the advertising for movies.

Based on what you’ve been able to see of “Bridesmaids” so far, it probably looks like a “chick flick” or the female equivalent of “The Hangover.” The title gives the impression of an ensemble-driven movie.

Though there is a fine cast around her, “Bridesmaids” is principally a vehicle for Kristen Wiig, one of the most valuable performers in the current cast of “Saturday Night Live” and a frequent supporting player in big-screen comedies (“Knocked Up,” “Ghost Town,” “Adventureland,” “Paul”).

The movie, from a script by Wiig and Annie Mumolo and directed by “Freaks and Geeks” creator Paul Feig, isn’t really about a wedding, and it isn’t a wild, “Hangover”-style romp. Sure, it has some of the R-rated raunch typical of a picture from producer Judd Apatow—a dress-shopping scene in which food poisoning leads to vomiting and other unpleasant bodily functions easily springs to mind. But at its heart, this is a movie about friendship.

Wiig, in her first leading role, is Annie—30-something and single, having just lost her boyfriend, as well as her business. There is a man (Jon Hamm) in her life, though he’s a jerk and the relationship is purely physical, showing just how little Annie thinks of herself.

When Lillian (former “SNL” regular Maya Rudolph), her childhood best friend, announces her engagement, Annie accepts her invitation to be her maid of honor, becoming the unofficial leader of an oddball group of bridesmaids: Helen (Rose Byrne), the wealthy wife of Lillian’s fiancé’s boss; Lillian’s cousin, Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a frustrated wife and mother; Lillian’s co-worker, Becca (Ellie Kemper), an innocent, young newlywed; and Lillian’s future sister-in-law, Megan (Melissa McCarthy), a friendly, masculine type and the only one who seems truly happy.

Annie finds a rival in Helen, the two of them vying for control over many of the pre-wedding activities and the even-more-coveted title of “Lillian’s best friend.”

Wiig, known for going way over the top on “SNL” but for subtlety and restraint in the movies, finds a balance in that here, giving a sympathetic, funny performance. She carries the movie in a way that women do not often get the opportunity to do, especially in ribald comedies like this. It’s a rare case of the lead being the breakthrough performer in a mainstream, studio movie.

At 125 minutes, “Bridesmaids” is long for a comedy, but it earns its running time by fully developing its characters and their relationships, including a romantic subplot involving Annie and a friendly police officer (Chris O’Dowd). Laughs become a little scarce for a small stretch toward the end before picking back up for the finale.

Though I can think of a handful of Apatow-produced movies I enjoyed more (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Superbad,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Get Him to the Greek”), “Bridesmaids” is likely to be one of the best comedies of the year.

Greg's Grade: B+

(Rated R for some strong sexuality, and language throughout. 125 minutes.)

Thor

2011-05-06T12:45:00.000-04:00

PARAMOUNT PICTURES-MARVEL STUDIOS, ZADE ROSENTHAL
Chris Hemsworth, left, and Natalie Portman are shown in a scene from the film "Thor."

As Marvel Entertainment ramps up for next year’s all-star superhero bash “The Avengers,” the trickiest part of the process is undoubtedly “Thor,” one of its lesser-known titles. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because this is the same Thor you might have learned about as a child, the Norse god of thunder.

Despite his superhuman strength, mighty hammer that only he can wield (and only after he’s proven himself worthy of it) and formal way of speaking, this Thor (Chris Hemsworth), when it comes down to it, is just a man, the son of Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and brother of the trickster Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

It’s a comic book movie with gods as characters, but “Thor” is, at its heart, the story of a father and two sons. Thor is the favored child, heir to Odin, the king of Asgard. But he is reckless and arrogant, his actions threatening to start a war with the dangerous frost giants.

To teach him humility, Odin banishes him to Earth, specifically the New Mexico desert, where he’s found by physicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her colleague Erik (Stellan Skarsgard) and college intern Darcy (Kat Dennings).

Under the steady direction of Kenneth Branagh (an unusual choice given his reputation as the modern movies’ foremost authority on Shakespeare), the action plows ahead swiftly, alternating between the tumultuous situation in Asgard and Thor trying to find his way on Earth.

Similar to “Iron Man,” “Thor” has a light sense of humor that provides its best moments Thor walking into a pet shop demanding a horse, Thor and Erik bonding over a beer (or several).

This should be a star-making role for Hemsworth, an Aussie actor best known as Capt. Kirk’s heroic father in 2009’s “Star Trek.” He’s equally adept at portraying the imposing mythological warrior and the fish out of water down on Earth. With the movie light on plot and most of the characters drawn broadly, much of its appeal comes from Hemsworth’s performance. It's not up to the caliber of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, but it’s a good start.

Branagh has the tricky task of providing set-up for “The Avengers” and making a movie that is satisfying in its own right. I’m not sure he completely solves the riddle, but he succeeds more than Jon Favreau did with “Iron Man 2.”

There is a sense of fun about “Thor” that overrides all else. It never takes itself too seriously, yet sets the stakes high enough to keep the audience invested. It will be interesting to see how this mythological character meshes with the more reality-based Iron Man, plus Captain America and the Hulk, in “The Avengers.”

“Thor” is a solid introduction to the character, and the idea of encountering him again isn’t a bad one.

Greg’s Grade: B

(Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence. 115 minutes.)

Scream 4

2011-04-15T13:50:00.004-04:00

DIMENSION FILMS-THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY, PHIL BRAY
Neve Campbell is shown in a scene from "Scream 4."

"New decade, new rules."

Or at least that's what "Scream 4" director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson would have us believe.

Eleven years have passed since the disappointing "Scream 3" seemingly put an end to the franchise, but despite a new, young cast of corpses-in-waiting mingling with the returning characters, it's basically back to the same old, same old. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this age of endless "Saw" sequels.

With a movie franchise within the movie, based on the original movie (there's even a movie within the movie within the movie at one point), the meta commentary is back in full force—Craven does well to avoid drowning in it in the early scenes.

"Scream" spelled out the rules of horror movies, "Scream 2" of sequels and "Scream 3" of franchises. "Scream 4" deals in reboots. (Never mind that "Scream 4" is not a reboot at all, but another sequel.)

Even though the characters are more aware than ever before, that doesn't limit the body count. Apparently, it doesn't matter how smart a horror movie wants you to think it is; its intended victims always will go outside to investigate strange noises in the night and run up the stairs when the killer chases them.

A key to "Scream's" success that other slashers have lacked has been a real rooting interest in its core characters: victim/survivor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), police officer Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and sleazy tabloid journalist/author Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). Campbell, Arquette and Cox effortlessly slide back into their familiar roles.

Now the author of a self-help book based on her horrific experiences, Sidney has returned to where it all began, her hometown of Woodsboro, on the final stop of her book tour. Now a married couple, Dewey is the local sheriff, and Gale, frustrated with small-town life, suffers from a case of writer's block.

The fresh blood (heh heh) includes Sidney's teenage cousin, Jill (Emma Roberts); Jill's friends Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) and Olivia (Marielle Jaffe); Jill's intense ex-boyfriend, Trevor (Nico Tortorella); Sidney's publicist (Alison Brie); and the requisite film geeks, Charlie (Rory Culkin) and Robbie (Erik Knudsen), who constantly wears a camera on a headset, streaming his entire life live online.

A new "Ghostface" killer or killers starts reenacting the events of "Stab," the movie based on Gale's book about the original Woodsboro murders (and first seen in "Scream 2"), making Sidney's homecoming complete.

Though bloodier than previous entries in the franchise, "Scream 4" plays more as comedy than horror. The drama suffers from the same problem that plagued "Scream 3" the central character, Sidney, spends a lot of time on the sidelines, the movie more interested in Jill and friends.

"The unexpected is the new cliché," Charlie says.

It actually has been the cliché throughout the series, with previous killers frequently coming out of nowhere. And again in "Scream 4," there is no real way to guess the motive of the main perpetrator. Just once, I want to see an obvious suspect unmasked as the killer. That would be unexpected.

Greg's Grade: C+

(Rated R for strong bloody violence, language and some teen drinking. 111 minutes.)

Your Highness

2011-04-08T13:46:00.003-04:00

UNIVERSAL PICTURES, FRANK CONNOR
From left, Natalie Portman, Danny McBride, James Franco and Zooey Deschanel are shown in a scene from "Your Highness."

"Your Highness" feels like a live-action version of a really bad game of Dungeons & Dragons.

Or maybe something director David Gordon Green cooked up with actors Danny McBride and James Franco as they got a little too into character on the set of their 2008 stoner comedy "Pineapple Express."

Maybe "Your Highness" plays better if you're in a similar state of mind. I wouldn't know.

This is a comedy without a whisper of wit. There are no punchlines, no jokes—not even failed ones. Every pitiful attempt at humor is nothing more than the insertion of modern vulgarity in its medieval fantasy setting. Why waste time and thought trying to be clever when you can simply utter a four-letter word?

As the lead actor and co-writer (along with his "Eastbound & Down" collaborator, Ben Best), I place most of the blame on McBride. He is Thadeous, the lazy, jealous, younger brother of Fabious (Franco), a famed adventurer who is in line for the throne of the Kingdom of Morn. When Fabious's virginal bride-to-be (Zooey Deschanel) is taken by the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), Thadeous reluctantly joins his brother on a quest to rescue her.

Along the way, they fall in with the fiercely independent and driven warrior Isabel (Natalie Portman), whose personal quest coincides with their own.

I know several people who all but worship at the altar of "Eastbound & Down," McBride's baseball comedy series for HBO. Since I've never watched it, I can judge McBride only on what I've seen from him in the movies. Based on my relatively small sample, I cannot grasp what the appeal is. Thadeous is the typical McBride character: obnoxious, crude, mean and not funny.

Nothing turns me off from a movie quicker than mean-spirited humor, and "Your Highness" overflows with it. That tone seeps into everything, to the point where it seems like no one is having even a hint of fun—certainly not Franco, who is as lifeless here as he was hosting the Academy Awards, or Portman, who can be great (see "Black Swan," which won her a much-deserved Oscar), but tends to perform to the level of her material (see "No Strings Attached" as a recent example).

"Your Highness" is a movie without a single redeeming quality. And I'm not alone in my displeasure—the audience with whom I saw it was silent throughout its entire running time.

Who could have possibly thought any of this is funny?

Greg's Grade: F

(Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity, violence and some drug use. 102 minutes.)

Arthur

2011-04-01T13:42:00.002-04:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES, BARRY WETCHER
Russell Brand is shown in a scene from "Arthur."

The 1981 Dudley Moore comedy "Arthur" was successful on multiple levels. Its $82 million domestic box office take was the fourth best of the year, and it garnered four Academy Award nominations, winning best supporting actor for John Gielgud and best original song.

But it's not exactly a familiar title to movie-goers who were either not alive or too young to have seen it during its initial run, making it an unusual choice for a remake three decades later.

It makes a little more sense when you consider who is stepping into Moore's shoes in the lead role: British comedian Russell Brand, best known on these shores as hedonistic rock star Aldous Snow in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (2008) and its spin-off, "Get Him to the Greek" (2010).

The role of Arthur Bach, a perpetually drunk playboy heir to a family fortune worth nearly $1 billion, seems tailor-made for Brand's particular talents. He's essentially a tamer, more innocent version of Aldous Snow.

Brand has a unique presence on the screen and a very distinct rhythm that meshes well with Peter Baynham's ("Borat") witty, urbane script.

Brand plays Arthur as more astute and perceptive than Moore did. While Moore was just a lovable drunk, seemingly oblivious to the world around him, Brand's version, while still childlike and petulant, is aware of his detachment from those around him and the isolation that comes with living in his lavish penthouse apartment. The character also has been softened a bit, and his obvious alcoholism is not played solely for laughs.

Helen Mirren is Arthur's beloved nanny, Hobson, the role that won Gielgud his Oscar. Hobson masks her deep affection for Arthur with layers of disgust for his immature behavior. Cracks in her armor grow larger and larger throughout the movie.

Thinking only of the future of her family's corporation, Arthur's mother, Vivienne (Geraldine James), blackmails him into proposing to Susan Johnson (Jennifer Garner), a gold-digging heiress. Arthur's other option: lose his inheritance.

Reluctantly, he is prepared to go along with the scheme until he meets Naomi (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring writer of children's books who gives unlicensed tours of Grand Central Station to New York City tourists. Arthur is willing to give up everything for her—if you're familiar with Greta Gerwig, how can you blame him? (It's also worth noting that Gerwig is a major upgrade over Liza Minnelli.)

Director Jason Winer (making his feature debut after helming several episodes of the sitcom "Modern Family") hits most of the same beats as the original movie, though there are several new scenes (a bit in which Arthur tries to enter the workforce is particularly amusing) and the ending occurs at a later point in time.

There is no real reason for this movie to exist, but with Brand's winning star turn, it's likable and its heart is in the right place.

Greg's Grade: B

(Rated PG-13 for alcohol use throughout, sexual content, language and some drug references. 110 minutes.)

Paul

2011-03-11T13:32:00.003-05:00

UNIVERSAL PICTURES
From left, Simon Pegg, Kristen Wiig, Nick Frost and Paul the alien (voice of Seth Rogen) are shown in a scene from the film "Paul."

Watching their movies, especially the ones they make together, you get the sense that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost would be lined up to see them on opening night if they were not the stars.

"Paul," like "Shaun of the Dead" (2004) and "Hot Fuzz" (2007) before it, is filled lovingly with references to other films and pop culture—science fiction and general movie geekdom in this case. It gently pokes fun but never openly mocks its protagonists, sci-fi nuts Graeme (Pegg) and Clive (Frost), playing like a love letter more than anything else.

Pegg and Frost wrote the screenplay together, and when the movie opens with Graeme and Clive attending that hub of geek activity, Comic-Con International in San Diego, you easily can imagine the two actors doing the very same thing.

After meeting revered author Adam Shadowchild (Jeffrey Tambor), Graeme and Clive, longtime friends who refer to each other as "Eggy" and "Sausage," set out in an RV to tour famous UFO sites in the American heartland.

Near Area 51 in Nevada, they come across a most unusual hitchhiker: Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a little gray alien who crash-landed in Wyoming in 1947 and has spent the past 60-plus years advising the U.S. government and influencing the depiction of aliens throughout popular entertainment. Having outlived his usefulness, he's hightailing it to a rendezvous with a spaceship that will take him home.

The Feds are hot on Paul's trail—grim-faced man in black Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman), who reports to the ominous "Big Guy" (Sigourney Weaver), and two eager rookie agents (Bill Hader, Joe Lo Truglio).

In an RV park along the way, Graeme, Clive and Paul pick up Ruth (Kristen Wiig), a staunch intelligent design advocate (she wears a T-shirt showing Jesus shooting Darwin) who starts letting loose after being liberated from her Bible-thumping father (John Carroll Lynch) and confronted with Paul's existence.

The movie's central joke is that foulmouthed, beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking Paul—essentially a computer-generated version of the typical Seth Rogen character—is more "human" than any of his counterparts. It takes an alien to show Graeme, Clive and Ruth how to live like actual human beings.

"Paul" is part road trip movie, part buddy comedy, part science fiction with a heavy dose of heart courtesy of Graeme and Clive's friendship, always the foundation when Pegg and Frost work together.

Removed from their native England and under the direction of Greg Mottola ("Superbad," "Adventureland") instead of Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz"), the humor is broader and more American than their previous output. But don't worry, there are still plenty of instances of dry British wit.

Wonderful comic actors fill out the supporting cast—I haven't mentioned Jane Lynch yet. It's both a blessing and a curse; on one hand, everyone is capable of getting laughs, but on the other, when people like Tambor, Bateman, Hader and Lo Truglio show up, you want to see them do more than the movie allows.

It's a minor criticism, though; "Paul" is a very funny movie with its heart in the right place. I rank it above "Hot Fuzz" but short of the greatness of "Shaun of the Dead."

Greg's Grade: B+

(Rated R for language including sexual references, and some drug use. 104 minutes.)

Rango

2011-03-04T13:21:00.000-05:00

PARAMOUNT PICTURES, INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC
Spoons (voice of Alex Manugian), left, and Rango (voice of Johnny Depp) are shown in a scene from the animated feature "Rango."

"Rango" boasts sparkling computer animation rivaling the output of Pixar; its characters include talking lizards, toads, an armadillo, a turtle and various other rodents, bugs and desert animals; and international movie star Johnny Depp headlines its voice cast.

Now here's the thing Paramount Pictures doesn't want you to know: It's not a kids' movie.

Though the littlest ones might be scared by the intensity of the action (which includes a handful of character deaths), there probably is enough excitement and comedy to keep most children entertained. But "Rango" is a full-blown Western, one of the best of the past 20 years, and younger viewers won't recognize its references to other movies (which are wide-ranging enough to include the expected Westerns and other classics, such as "Apocalypse Now," "Chinatown" and "Star Wars") and its near-giddy celebration of genre conventions. They won't know what to make of its hero's existential pondering—"Who am I?" he asks himself several times.

The hero in question is a small lizard (Depp) who spends his days acting out original dramatic productions in his terrarium, with a plastic wind-up fish and the discarded torso of a doll as his co-stars. He must confront the artificial nature of his existence when he unexpectedly finds himself stranded in the Mojave Desert. After guidance from a sagely armadillo (Alfred Molina), he finds the desolate town of Dirt, inhabited by the aforementioned creatures and caught in the grip of a crippling drought.

Mistaken for a genuine hero and all too willing to play the part, the lizard gives his best performance, christening himself "Rango" and becoming the new town sheriff. A crisis arrives shortly thereafter when bandits pilfer Dirt's meager supply of water.

A wonderful cast of character actors has been assembled—Ned Beatty, Stephen Root, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, Timothy Olyphant. There are also Isla Fisher as Rango's love interest, a feisty lizard named Beans, and Abigail Breslin as a youngin who idolizes her town's new hero.

The principal creative forces behind the movie come from live-action features—director Gore Verbinski ("Pirates of the Caribbean"), screenwriter John Logan ("The Aviator," "Gladiator")—which perhaps explains a tone that is so unconventional for major-studio animation.

The great cinematographer Roger Deakins, a nine-time Oscar nominee, most recently for the Coen brothers' "True Grit," served as a visual consultant and surely had an impact on the dynamic visuals. In fact, the cinematography here is no less an achievement than that of "True Grit" or any other celebrated film of the past few years.

"Rango" is a lot of things but not what has been advertised. It is, however, the best non-Pixar animated movie in recent memory and a shining ray of light in the early months of 2011.

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated PG for rude humor, language, action and smoking. 107 minutes.)

Cedar Rapids

2011-03-04T13:19:00.003-05:00

FOX SEARCHLIGHT, ZADE ROSENTHAL
Anne Heche, left, and Ed Helms are shown in a scene from "Cedar Rapids."

"Cedar Rapids" is the rare movie that feels too short.

After a vastly entertaining 87 minutes, most of it in the title city at an annual convention of insurance salesmen, I wanted to spend more time with these characters—idealistic Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), who has never left his hometown of Brown City, Wis., and is positively giddy over his affair with his former junior high teacher (Sigourney Weaver); crude but surprisingly kind-hearted Dean "Deansy" Ziegler (John C. Reilly); friendly, supportive Ronald "Ronimal" Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.); and Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche), who uses her weekend in Cedar Rapids as a yearly vacation from all aspects of her daily life.

Helms, known to fans of "The Office" and "The Hangover," takes on his first big-screen leading role with ease. He makes Tim so darn good-natured and likeable that you can't help but root for the guy.

All of the characters begin as specific stereotypes, but in short order, Phil Johnston's script allows the actors to develop them into living, breathing people.

Comparisons to "The Hangover"—Tim quickly goes from being a non-drinker to reluctantly ordering a cream sherry to downing shots of whatever's put in front of him to doing drugs with his new friend, who happens to be a prostitute (Alia Shawkat)—are easy to make, but "Cedar Rapids" is much more character-based. The good-natured sincerity that starts with its lead character spreads out to engulf the entire film.

Director Miguel Arteta ("Youth in Revolt," "The Good Girl") briskly moves the movie along, yet never rushes the story. When I say it feels short, it's only because it's so amiable and the characters are so inviting.

Greg's Grade: A-

(Rated R for crude and sexual content, language and drug use. 87 minutes.)

The Roommate/The Rite/No Strings Attached/The Green Hornet

2011-02-11T13:11:00.005-05:00

PARAMOUNT PICTURES, DALE ROBINETTE
Natalie Portman, left, and Ashton Kutcher are shown in a scene from "No Strings Attached."

January and February of this year are living up to their hard-won reputation as a cinematic wasteland. With Oscar bait still going strong in theaters and bad weather frequently keeping many moviegoers at home, the studios use these two months almost exclusively to unload pictures they know will have little to no chance of succeeding at any other time of year.

That's how we get drivel like "The Roommate" finishing atop the box office over its opening weekend.

Directed by Christian E. Christiansen without a hint of subtlety or any mind toward building suspense, "The Roommate" features Leighton Meester (of TV's "Gossip Girl") as Rebecca, an off-her-meds college freshman who obsesses, "Single White Female"-style, over her new roommate, Sara (Minka Kelly of TV's "Friday Night Lights" and "Parenthood"). Don't waste your time about what has made Rebecca this way; no one who made the movie gave it a second thought either.

Sara and Rebecca attend a school where, evidently, Sara has only one class (a course that has something to do with fashion, presided over by an unsettling Billy Zane) and Rebecca passes the time doodling in her sketch pad. The only other people they have contact with on campus are party girl Tracy (Aly Michalka) and Sara's fratboy love interest (Cam Gigandet).

"The Rite" at least succeeds in creating a mood. Its plot concerns Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donaghue), who runs away to the seminary to escape the family funeral home business and then is forced to confront his skepticism by studying in the Vatican at the foot of a church-sanctioned exorcist (Anthony Hopkins).

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom ("1408"), "The Rite" is suitably creepy and, until the third act spins out of control, features a nicely understated performance by Hopkins, his best in years.

In a world in which "The Exorcist" (1973) never existed, "The Rite" might approach something special. But in the really real world, it brings nothing new to a small category of films that has been stagnant for nearly 40 years.

Natalie Portman is piling up the awards for her horror/dance movie "Black Swan" and trying to show her range in the comedy "No Strings Attached." In the latter, she is Emma, a doctor who embarks on a strictly sexual relationship with Adam (Ashton Kutcher), an aspiring TV writer.

There are multiple problems plaguing "No Strings Attached," but here's the biggest: Emma is mean through and through. She's not a nice person and doesn't deserve a happy ending. I doubt director Ivan Reitman ("Ghostbusters") intended to turn the audience completely against one of his leads, but he's limited by the inability of Portman and the rest of his cast (except for Kevin Kline as Adam's father, a fading TV star who steals his son's girlfriend) to do anything more than go through the motions of the script.

This kind of material cries out for actors capable of giving the kind of performance we see from Seth Rogen in "The Green Hornet."

Rogen is Britt Reid, the slacker playboy son of the late publisher (Tom Wilkinson) of the L.A. newspaper The Daily Sentinel. Britt isn't a nice person either, but Rogen's affable comic persona gives us a rooting interest when Britt teams with his dad's former assistant, Kato (Jay Chou), to become a masked crime-fighter.

"The Green Hornet" dates back to the 1930s and has appeared in radio programs, movies, TV shows and comic books, and this film had been in various stages of development for years. Longtime fans waiting for a serious take on the character a la other recent big-screen superhero adaptations are sure to be disappointed. Written by Rogen and Evan Goldberg ("Superbad," "The Pineapple Express"), and directed by Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), this "Green Hornet" works better as a comedy than an action movie.

GREG'S GRADES:

"The Green Hornet," B-

"No Strings Attached," C-

"The Rite," C+

"The Roommate," D

The King's Speech

2011-01-28T13:08:00.004-05:00

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY, LAURIE SPARHAM
Colin Firth, left, and Helena Bonham Carter are shown in a scene from "The King's Speech."

"The King's Speech" tells the story of a monarch left virtually impotent by democracy and, even more so, his own insecurities.

"If I am king, where is my power?" asks King George VI of Britain (Colin Firth). "Can I declare war? Form a government? Levy a tax? No! And yet I am the seat of all authority because (the people) think that when I speak, I speak for them. But I can't speak, because I have no voice."

When we meet the king in 1925, he is Prince Albert, "Bertie" to those close to him, the Duke of York, and he is about to speak at the closing of the 1925 Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium. What comes out, though, hardly could be called a speech, plagued as it is by Bertie's uncontrollable stammer.

With the advent of radio and his role in the public eye—or ear, more accurately—growing, Bertie seeks out a variety of speech therapists in an effort to overcome his lifelong impediment. None of it works, though, until Bertie's wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter, reminding us she is capable of playing so much more than eccentrics), happens across the unconventional Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a struggling actor-turned-therapist.

Logue insists on calling his new patient "Bertie," something no commoner has done before, and believes that, in addition to coaching him on muscle relaxation and breathing, he must find the psychological roots of the stammer. After initial resistance, therapist and patient, common man and nobleman become friends and confidants.

While this is happening, two major events occur. First, King George V (Michael Gambon) dies and Bertie's older brother, Edward (Guy Pearce), inherits the throne. Second, Edward falls in love with Wallis Simpson (Eve Best), a twice-divorced American. The king cannot marry a divorced woman under English law, so Edward abdicates the throne, elevating Bertie, now known as King George VI, to a position he never wanted and never dreamed of having.

Earlier this week, "The King's Speech" picked up a leading 12 Oscar nominations, including best picture, director (Tom Hooper), screenplay (David Seidler), actor (Firth), supporting actor (Rush) and supporting actress (Bonham Carter). It is the kind of classically produced film that seems tailor-made for such recognition, but to say that feels like a disservice to the extraordinary work done by all involved.

Here is a movie that consists entirely of dialogue and presents no real villain to speak of. (You could make a case for George V, Edward and other figures from Bertie's childhood as villains but not in a conventional sense; their antagonism occurred off-screen, long before the events of the film.) But instead of feeling stodgy and stiff, the movie inspires and it humanizes the Royal Family with warmth and humor.

Firth is simply magnificent, not just because he nails the stammer, but because he portrays a man who becomes a king instead of just a monarch who stutters. Rush's role draws less attention to itself but is equally important, providing steady support (and most of the comic relief), an anchor for Firth's showier performance. The bond that forms between Bertie and Logue and the chemistry of Firth and Rush gives the film its heart, making it almost a buddy movie of sorts.

It is not just the acting that distinguishes "The King's Speech." The editing, music, art design, costumes—it's all virtually flawless. "The King's Speech is an exquisite, delightful film.

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated R for some language. 118 minutes.)

NOTE: "The King's Speech" is rated R because of one scene in which Bertie shouts a string of expletives as part of his therapy. This movie is appropriate for most teenagers.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

2011-01-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

MUSIC BOX FILMS
Annika Hallin, left, and Noomi Rapace are shown in a scene from "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."

Late in "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," Noomi Rapace, as Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant, misfit computer hacker recently recovered from taking a bullet to the brain, wrongly accused of three murders and abused throughout her life by officials within the Swedish government, cracks just a hint of a smile. There is nothing that speaks more to the greatness of Rapace's performance than the fact that this small moment, one that might go unnoticed by some viewers, serves as an emotional release for not just this film but the entire "Millennium" trilogy.

A young woman hardened by the hand life dealt her, Salander has gone to great lengths to guard not just the secrets of her past but the emotions of her day-to-day life. Her distrust extends beyond authority figures to include virtually everyone she meets. She doesn't have friends so much as a handful of people whose presence she can tolerate—but only in small doses and on her terms. She has been a victim, and more than anything, she wants those who prey on others—specifically, men who commit acts of violence toward women—to know what it means to be victimized.

For Rapace, it is an iconic, transformative performance. It has become a cliché to say an actor inhabits a role, but after months of training and a year and a half of filming these movies, that is what she has accomplished. She takes a character that could be seen as cartoonish on the page and turns her into a living, breathing heroine unlike any we have seen on the screen before. And she does it with very little dialogue. Never have I seen an actor say so much with silence; it is as if we can see her thinking. Her subtly expressive face is a special effect far superior to anything you will see in a "Transformers" movie.

As for the plot, "Hornet's Nest" picks up where the previous film, "The Girl Who Played with Fire" (which followed "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"; all three films are based on novels by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson) left off, with Salander, her body riddled with bullets, flown to a hospital and fighting for her life. Her father, the Russian gangster Alexander Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), whom she unsuccessfully tried to kill, lies in a hospital bed a few doors down the hall.

While Salander licks her wounds and awaits trial on three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist, who has become something of an unsung hero in the series, despite being one of the leads) races to prove her innocence by delving deeper into the government conspiracy that protected Zalachenko and had Salander institutionalized and declared legally incompetent.

Though there is little action in the movie, director Daniel Alfredson and screenwriter Ulf Ryberg sustain the tension by spending less time with the many government bureaucrats and police investigators that fill so many pages of Larsson's book and more with the people we care about: Salander and Blomkvist. They cannot overcome completely the redundant, static nature of much of the novel, but they put up a good fight.

The "Millennium" trilogy and Rapace's stunning performance stands as one of the great cinematic achievements of the past few years. David Fincher and his Lisbeth Salander, Rooney Mara, have their work cut out for them; the American version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is scheduled to hit theaters in December.

Greg's Grade: A-

(Rated R for strong violence, some sexual material, and brief language. 147 minutes.)

The best of 2010

2010-12-23T12:57:00.004-05:00

WARNER BROS. PICTURES/STEPHEN VAUGHAN
From left, Dileep Rao, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Leonard DiCaprio, Ellen Page and Ken Watanabe are shown in a scene from "Inception."

Writing about the movies today, it's easy to focus on the negative. But where's the fun in that?

As much as people like to complain, 2010's release schedule included several wonderful films. In fact, so many were so good that I cannot single out one as the best picture of the year.

Maybe I'm taking the easy way out, but how do you make comparisons between a survival story that largely features one actor in one location; a psychological horror movie about ballet; a film based in dreams that ultimately has four action movies spinning simultaneously; a digital-age "Citizen Kane"; and a classic Western?

The next tier was nearly as solid: a Swedish import heralding the arrival of a major new star; one of the most entertaining comic book adaptations to date; an incredibly well-acted period piece; a mindbending thriller from one of our master filmmakers; and a taut crime drama.

So here they are, my picks for the best movie of 2010, in alphabetical order.

"127 Hours"

Danny Boyle follows his award-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" with the true story of outdoorsman Aron Ralston, who in 2003 had his arm pinned by a boulder in a remote area of Utah and, after more than five days, resorted to drastic measures to survive. Carrying a movie as much as any single actor can, James Franco is riveting as Ralston, giving a performance that requires more than a little willpower and endurance of his own.

"Black Swan"

Natalie Portman is fearless in her portrayal of a prima ballerina in a New York City ballet company, cast as the Swan Queen in a new production of "Swan Lake" and taking her director's (Vincent Cassel) urging to lose herself in the role to extreme lengths. Director Darren Aronofsky employs the documentary style he used for "The Wrestler," cleverly disguising for a time that the story is being told from inside the shattered mind of its protagonist.

"Inception"

No one does summer blockbusters like Christopher Nolan, whose ability to mix art with popular cinema rivals that of Steven Spielberg. Its plotting so intricate, its construction so careful, "Inception" easily confounds those not paying attention while rewarding those who keep up. And nothing in the movies this year sparked more conversation and debate than the ambiguous ending.

"The Social Network"

Visionary director David Fincher, working from a script by wordsmith Aaron Sorkin, tells of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and the founding of Facebook. But it's really an American story of capitalism, greed, friendship, betrayal, envy and regret. Though its subject matter is very much of the moment, its themes will never fade.

"True Grit"

From the Duke to the Dude. Jeff Bridges assumes the role that won John Wayne his only Oscar grizzled, drunken U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in the Coen brothers' new take on Charles Portis's 1968 novel. The result is equal parts classic Western and Coen quirk, with a love of language showing in the dialogue and a slew of fully realized characters brought to life through rich performances by Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper and feisty newcomer Hailee Steinfeld.

THE NEXT FIVE (in alphabetical order)

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Noomi Rapace steals the show as iconic computer hacker Lisbeth Salander in this Swedish murder mystery based on the internationally best-selling novel by the late Stieg Larsson. An American version is scheduled for release next December.

"Kick-Ass"

Funny, surprisingly dark comic book adaptation highlighted by Chloe Grace Moretz as the pre-teen superhero Hit-Girl.

"The King's Speech"

Colin Firth gives a masterful performance as King George VI of Britain, who must overcome his stammer with the help of a speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush).

"Shutter Island"

The fourth pairing of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio resulted in what might be their best work together yet, essentially a haunted house story told from the perspective of a character who fled from reality long ago.

"The Town"

Ben Affleck continues his career reinvention as director, co-writer and star of this Boston-set crime story based on a novel by Chuck Hogan.

BEST ACTOR: Colin Firth, "The King's Speech"

BEST ACTRESS: Natalie Portman, "Black Swan"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale, "The Fighter"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hailee Steinfeld, "True Grit"

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE: Noomi Rapace, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

BEST COMEDIC PERFORMANCE: Russell Brand, "Get Him to the Greek"

BEST ANIMATED MOVIE: "Toy Story 3"

FUNNIEST MOVIE: "The Other Guys"

BEST MUSICAL SCORE: Clint Mansell, "Black Swan"

BEST SONG: "Going Up" from "Get Him to the Greek"

PLEASANT SURPRISE: "Unstoppable"

ANTICIPATED IN 2011: David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

True Grit

2010-12-23T12:52:00.003-05:00

PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Jeff Bridges, left, and Hailee Steinfeld are shown in a scene from "True Grit."

Whenever I watch a film by Joel and Ethan Coen, I am reminded of what Joss Whedon (creator of the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly," among others) often says of his philosophy toward writing. Paraphrasing, he says every character must have something to say and a reason to be there, and it is important that the audience understands the perspective of each character.

Whether they have ever stated it outright or not, the same goals drive the Coen brothers. There are no insignificant characters in their latest picture, "True Grit," and everyone who appears adds something to the movie, even if they wander through only one scene before moving on.

The Coens' movie is not so much a remake of the 1969 John Wayne film, for which the Duke won his only Oscar, as it is a new adaptation of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. So even though the story is an older one and known to many, "True Grit" 2010 is readily recognizable as the Coens' work, incorporating their signature quirky characters and humor against the backdrop of a classic Western. It's even something of a crowd-pleaser, a first for the idiosyncratic brothers.

Much of the attention has gone to Jeff Bridges, an Oscar-winner himself for last year's "Crazy Heart" and the star of the Coens' cult classic "The Big Lebowski" (1998). Here, he steps into Wayne's boots as aging, drunken, one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn. And he's a hoot as the ornery, blustery old coot, who, despite his line of work, has drifted from one side of the law to the other, yet still retains his own code of honor and morality. He's a man of "true grit," we are told.

It's also hard not to take notice of Matt Damon as LaBoeuf (pronounced "la-BEEF"), a preening Texas Ranger possessed of a healthy dose of grit of his own.

Then there's Josh Brolin, whose breakout role came in the Coens' "No Country for Old Men" (2007), nearly unrecognizable as the murderous Tom Chaney.

But the one who carries the movie is the one you've never heard of at all. It's newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, whose 14-year-old Mattie Ross hires Cogburn to hunt down her father's killer, Chaney. Tough as they come and wise beyond her years, Mattie's grit might be the truest of all. Steinfeld makes it look easy as she holds her own with the heavyweights around her, navigating her way through the script's formal, flowery dialogue. Mattie's early confrontation with Col. Stonehill (Dakin Matthews), haggling with him over money she feels she's due, establishes how formidable she is and the Coens' obvious delight in the language of the day. Though there is plenty of Western-style action, it's the dialogue that brings the film to life.

"True Grit" is the best of both worlds: a classic Western and classic Coen brothers.

Greg's Grade: A

Black Swan

2010-12-17T12:47:00.003-05:00

FOX SEARCHLIGHT, NIKO TAVERNISE
Natalie Portman is shown in a scene from "Black Swan."

What a devious trick Darren Aronofsky pulls off with "Black Swan."

The film takes place in the world of a professional New York City ballet company, so you might expect something sophisticated, classy, intellectual. It begins by presenting the action in a cinema verite style, following dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) with a handheld camera, showing us the nitty gritty of ballet—the bitter backstage rivalries, the hours of arduous practice, the bruised, bloody toes.

That's not to say "Black Swan" is not sophisticated, classy and intellectual, and does not show us the world of ballet from the inside out—it is and it does. The trick occurs after the first act, when the movie shifts from the documentary feel of Aronofsky's last feature, "The Wrestler" (2008), to a twisted psychological drama bordering on horror, its story mirroring that of "Swan Lake," the venerable ballet at the heart of the action.

After putting aging star Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) out to pasture, ballet director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) casts Nina in the lead role of his new version of "Swan Lake." Though Nina strives to be perfect, she isn't perfect for the role. Her flawless technique and fearful innocence make her an ideal fit for the virtuous White Swan, but her evil twin, the Black Swan, requires someone sensual, seductive—someone more like Lily (Mila Kunis, a revelation in a dramatic role), newly arrived from San Francisco.

Thomas praises Nina for her discipline but tells her that, to become the Black Swan, she must lose herself in the role. Nina, in her unending quest for perfection, takes "losing herself" to a whole new level.

Portman is simply phenomenal, giving a fearless performance requiring months of rigorous training beforehand as Nina grows from a young woman living like a child under the thumb of her overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey) in a bedroom filled with stuffed animals and dominated by the color pink into something … else. Appearing in every scene, she and Aronofsky take us inside Nina's head, casting doubt on everything we see, especially Lily, who alternately appears as a rival, friend, lover and adversary. The movie all but cries out for a second viewing to determine exactly what is real and what is the product of Nina's fractured mind, and that still might not be enough.

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique brings us onstage with the dancers, dropping us in the middle of the action. Clint Mansell's musical score incorporates the indelible themes from "Swan Lake" (recognizable even to someone who knows nothing of ballet, aka me), further exaggerating the surreal, melodramatic quality of the world in which "Black Swan" exists.

The intensity builds as opening night draws near, Nina's grip on reality becoming more tenuous by the day, and reaches a fever pitch during the first performance of "Swan Lake," the movie's themes crystallizing in a beautiful, gut-wrenching, head-spinning climax.

"Black Swan" is the kind of film that stays with you, a moving experience on multiple levels.

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated R for strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use. 108 minutes.)

The Fighter

2010-12-17T12:38:00.002-05:00

PARAMOUNT PICTURES, JOJO WHILDREN
Christian Bale, and Mark Wahlberg, right, are shown in a scene from "The Fighter."

Who is the title character of "The Fighter"?

The obvious answer is Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a struggling welterweight boxer from the working-class town of Lowell, Mass. Not even a has-been, Micky is a never-was, north of 30 years old and viewed as a stepping stone for up-and-coming boxers. After a particularly bad fight against an opponent who outweighs him by 20 pounds, his heart just isn't in it anymore. Maybe it's time to give it up, move on with his life, settle down.

The title just as easily could refer to Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), Micky's half-brother and trainer, a former boxer himself whose shining moment was going the distance but losing a late-'70s bout with Sugar Ray Leonard. Even with a debilitating crack cocaine addiction and multiple stints in jail, Dicky is affectionately known as "the pride of Lowell" by its inhabitants. An HBO camera crew follows him, but the movie they're making is not, as Dicky claims, about his attempt at an in-ring comeback.

"The Fighter" also is a fitting description of Alice Ward (Melissa Leo), mother and manager of both Micky and Dicky. She has steered both of her sons' careers with only flashes of success, but not for lack of trying.

It even applies to Charlene (Amy Adams), a college-educated woman who has scratched out a living working mostly in bars. Courted by Micky, she's the one who helps him see that his family loyalty is holding him back more than anything else.

There are a lot of fighters in "The Fighter," which is based on a true story, and the movie's strength is in the gritty performances that bring these characters to life.

Bale, who is nearly as frail as he was when he infamously lost more than 60 pounds to portray a chronic insomniac in "The Machinist" (2004), practically writhes and wriggles his way off the screen as Dicky. Always moving, always talking, Dicky is a long way from the severe characters Bale has been portraying with regularity over the past several years. He makes Dicky both likable and reprehensible, and tragic above all else. I found myself rooting for his redemption even more than Micky's in-ring success.

The two are inextricably linked, with Dicky living vicariously through his little brother, getting a second shot at the career defeated by his own demons.

Wahlberg's role is essentially that of the straight man, easily overlooked but vital to the film's success. All of the characters are defined through their relationship with Micky. Others might grab your attention first (not always in a good way—see Micky's seven sisters, who come across as parodies of daytime talk show guests), but the movie needs that rock, that emotional center to ground the action, and that is exactly what Wahlberg provides.

Wahlberg, also credited as a producer, spent several years trying to get this movie made and a like amount of time training. That determination serves him well in portraying Micky in and out of the ring.

Leo is strong, as well, as the domineering mother who truly does have her sons' best interests at heart and doesn't realize just how controlling and detrimental she can be.

The big surprise is Adams, who is cast against type as the sassy, sexy Charlene and delivers a performance that could change the way we view her as an actress going forward.

A good chunk of the comedy the movie offers comes from Jack McGee as Micky's father, a kind-hearted, supportive man who long ago admitted defeat to the strong personalities of the many women in his life.

Director David O. Russell, working with Wahlberg for the third time, following "Three Kings" (1999) and "I Heart Huckabees" (2004), and his trio of screenwriters focus on the family drama as much as the boxing, a wise choice given that the underdog sports story has been done countless times, and the presentation of the fights—shown as if they are excerpts from TV broadcasts—removes some of the tension.

"The Fighter" isn't revolutionary, but Russell's tweaking of the formula and stellar work by the actors, especially Bale, elevate it above many of its peers.

Greg's Grade: B+

(Rated R for language throughout, drug content, some violence and sexuality. 116 minutes.)

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

2010-12-10T12:35:00.005-05:00

20TH CENTURY FOX, PHIL BRAY
Will Poulter, right, and Reepicheep the warrior mouse are shown in a scene from "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader."

Loads of cash are being poured into it, but "The Chronicles of Narnia" just can't seem to find its footing on the big screen.

The first installment, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (2005), was a certifiable hit, grossing $291.7 million at the domestic box office and $745 million worldwide even though it was not a particularly good film, struggling to find a balance between its fairy tale atmosphere and heavy-handed Christian symbolism.

Part two, the darker, grittier "Prince Caspian" (2008), was more war movie than fairy tale and the best fantasy film of the decade without hobbits or Harry Potter. Yet audiences weren't particularly interested; its domestic box office take was less than half that of its predecessor, causing Disney to back out as the distributor of future installments. (20th Century Fox stepped up in its place.)

That brings us to "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," its budget slashed to a reported $140 million from "Prince Caspian's" $225 million. Based on the third of C.S. Lewis's beloved seven-part series, it is a movie hindered by a story that simply is not cinematic enough to sustain its 115-minute running time.

We pick up the action in England at an undefined point after the four Pevensie children have returned from their second trip to Narnia. The elder siblings, Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell), are visiting America (and remain mostly off-screen), while Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are forced to stay at the home of their wretched cousin, Eustace (Will Poulter). Very quickly, the three are transported, via a painting, to Narnia, where they end up onboard the Dawn Treader, the royal ship of King Caspian (Ben Barnes).

From there, it's a quest to find the seven lords who Caspian's uncle Miraz banished years ago when he seized the throne.

An effects-heavy fantasy movie generally is not a showcase for actors, and this is no exception. I did, however, enjoy Simon Pegg (replacing Eddie Izzard) as the voice of the warrior mouse Reepicheep. I also wanted to throttle Poulter as the insufferable Eustace, so I suppose that goes down as a win for the actor.

Michael Apted ("The World Is Not Enough") takes over from Andrew Adamson, director of the first two films, and returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are joined by Michael Petroni. They work hard to beef up the plot and create a sustainable story, reordering some of the events and adding some business about a green mist that captures boatloads of unfortunate Narnians and whisks them away to the foreboding Dark Island.

Some changes are beneficial. The story of Eustace, for example, resolved fairly quickly in the book, is allowed to play out over the course of the entire film, lending it significantly more weight.

While there are clashing swords and a battle with a ferocious sea serpent, the action is downplayed in favor of religious overtones reminiscent of those in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"—no doubt an effort to win back the faith-based audience that made the first movie a hit, then helped make the second a disappointment by staying away.

The movie's chief problem, though, lies not with its tone but its largely episodic structure. Lacking a strong central narrative force, there is little sense of what is at stake. "Dawn Treader" is not entirely unenjoyable, but it's missing the energy and urgency that elevated "Prince Caspian."

Greg's Grade: C

(Rated PG for some frightening images and sequences of fantasy action. 115 minutes.)

127 Hours

2010-11-26T12:30:00.003-05:00

FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES, CHUCK ZLOTNICK
James Franco is shown in a scene from "127 Hours."

Could you do it?

That is the unspoken question of "127 Hours," a riveting, life-affirming story of determination and survival from director Danny Boyle, whose last film, "Slumdog Millionaire," swept the Academy Awards two years ago.

Would you do it?

Have you truly lived your life? Appreciated the people around you, your family and friends, and the time you spent with them?

Life, even to the most indomitable of spirits, can be such a fleeting thing. It's also our most precious gift, sharing it with others.

Unlike, say, Christopher McCandless of "Into the Wild," Aron Ralston, the subject of "127 Hours," has never outright rejected the many people who care about him. But, as he nears what he thinks is the end, he can't help feeling like he took them for granted as he spent the first 27 years of his life engaging in daring ,often reckless activities, principally mountain climbing.

The film is based on Ralston's autobiographical book, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," so we know he survives. His story well publicized, many already know of the extreme lengths he went to in his battle against death.

Is your life worth those efforts? Will you make the changes necessary to make it so?

In his book, Ralston includes a quote from Tyler Durden, the Brad Pitt character in "Fight Club": "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

These are the ideas Boyle and his "Slumdog" writer Simon Beaufoy trade in as they tell the story of how, in late April 2003, Ralston (James Franco) went for what should have been an easy one-day jaunt into and out of Blue John Canyon in Utah; met and aided two lost female hikers (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn) along the way; and, after parting from his new friends, dislodged a relatively small boulder (but still weighing several hundred pounds) in a narrow slot canyon, causing it to pin his right arm at the wrist, trapping him in one of the most remote places in the country.

His food and water supplies are meager, and in his most grievous oversight, he didn't tell any of his friends, family or co-workers where he was going before leaving for his mini-vacation.

The movie spends about an hour alone with Franco as Ralston, an engineer by trade and a skilled, experienced outdoorsman, tries various strategies to free himself. A multipurpose tool with a small, dull knife blade becomes more and more enticing as the hours and days pass.

Despite the action's confinement in the canyon, the movie pulses with energy drawn from Boyle's mastery of his craft and the skill of his collaborators—editor Jon Harris, composer A.R. Rahman, and cinematographers Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle, chiefly among them.

Onscreen, it is essentially Franco in a one-man show, and his charm and enthusiasm instantly win us over. He invests us so much in Ralston's fate that we spend an hour rooting, yearning for him to do the unthinkable.

Talking into a video camera he brought to document his trip, Ralston provides a running commentary to his predicament, along with his last will and testament. Franco brings a dash of dark humor to a segment in which he interviews himself, daytime-TV-talk-show-style. It ends with a single, simple, heartbreaking word after Ralston reveals that no one will know he's missing until he's been stuck for a couple days, and then it will be another 24 hours before he's officially missing by police standards, and he isn't likely to be alive when someone finally finds him: "Oops."

But even as he dreams and hallucinates, even after he consumes his last bite of food and last drop of life-giving water, the will to live never fully dissipates. Knowing the outcome does nothing to diminish the drama.

The film, of course, cannot answer the questions I posed at the start of this review. It does, however, offer encouragement, providing hope that your answers would be "yes."

Greg's Grade: A

(Rated R for language and some disturbing violent content/bloody images. 94 minutes.)