Meet the Greenberg

Grade: A-

It's becoming increasingly clear that Noah Baumbach's movies are an exercise in empathy. From Jeff Daniels' horrifyingly pretentious professor in The Squid and the Whale to, well, everyone in Margot at the Wedding, his characters tend to be self-involved, clueless to others' needs, and very vocal about their strong and unpopular opinions. So in that sense, Roger Greenberg, as played by Ben Stiller in Greenberg, is very much a Baumbach lead.

How you feel about Greenberg may have a lot to do with how able you are to tolerate its protagonist. Having left LA for New York in his youth, Roger returns after a mental breakdown to housesit for his far more successful brother. Unable to drive (since he's a New Yorker, natch), he soon buddies up to his brother's assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), a pretty and much younger woman inexplicably interested in him. Much of the rest of the movie consists of them hooking up, him freaking out on her, then asking her for another chance.

See, Greenberg is pretty much an asshole from start to end. He constantly badmouths the wife of his best friend Ivan (Rhys Ifans) while insisting Ivan devote all his time to driving him around. He's unapologetic about ruining his high school band's chance at the big time by turning down a record deal for creative reasons. And he continually treats Florence terribly, whether because she's too young for him, works for his brother, or because he'd rather be with his high school ex-girlfriend who barely remembers him.

But lest you think this is just Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Movie, there is a lot to sympathize with in Roger too. As a guy returning to his hometown after leaving over a decade ago, as a New Yorker in LA, and as someone who never grew up when all his friends did, his disconnection and desperation is legitimately sad. Despite telling everyone he's concentrating on "doing nothing," he spends a lot of the movie begging people to meet him for a drink or for dinner, desperate for company. And he continually has to hear that they're too busy with family and children. Helps forgive some of his jerkier qualities.

As you may have also gathered, it's not a typical part for Ben Stiller. He's not the everyman nice guy from Meet the Parents nor the comical bad guy of Dodgeball. He's not even playing a grown-up Jesse Eisenberg, as I had guessed from the trailer. It's a very different kind of role for him, which makes his performance all the more impressive. He makes all of Roger's more unlikable qualities believable, but he carries in his own charisma so that somewhere in that awkward little smile you sense you should feel for him.

And as downbeat as some of the story can be, Baumbach is fantastic at finding a way to add humor in all the right places. There's a great recurring bit in which Roger writes complaint letters to companies about all sorts of minor things. Even the most ordinary scenes have some great lines that are just so clever or witty that I found myself laughing through a lot of the movie. Then again, other people I know who have seen it didn't think it was funny at all, just sad. So everyone's likely to have their own personal reaction, good or bad. As always, comedy is extremely subjective.

Whether you laugh or not, Greenberg's bound to make you feel something. And unlike in Margot at the Wedding, all of the supporting characters are generally likable, so it makes an impact when Roger does or says something particularly outrageous. This early in the year, it's good to have something a little more thoughtful in theaters.

Best Pairing Ever

I wasn't planning to write about Date Night for reasons of obvious bias, but after going to the premiere last night I realized I'd be doing my readers a disservice not to tell them it's the first great comedy of 2010 and the funniest movie to be released since The Hangover. And I'm totally not just saying that cause I got to see Tina Fey. Though I did.

The idea of putting Steve Carell and Tina Fey in a movie together seems brilliant on paper, but turns out it's even more brilliant in reality. Not only are they both individually hilarious, but they have amazing comedic chemistry. Their interactions make every scene ten times funnier. It would be a huge shame if this was their only chance to work together, but seems like a safe bet it won't be.

While the two of them are certainly the biggest draw, everything else about the movie works just as well. The supporting cast is absolutely ridiculous, with people like Kristin Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, and Leighton Meester filling in some of the smaller roles (and for any Curb Your Enthusiasm fans out there, J.B. Smoove plays a bit part and is just as great here). The script keeps the jokes going strong and consistent, and contains two big sequences I won't spoil here that kept me laughing from start to finish.

With Baby Mama better in concept and casting than execution, Tina Fey's biggest success in film is still for writing Mean Girls. This will be the movie that launches her as a movie star. So if you enjoy laughing, go see Date Night this weekend. It's a far better use of your money than the super lame looking Clash of the Titans, and you don't have to pay the extra $4 for added-after-the-fact 3-D.

Also, 300th post!!!

Alice in Narnia

Grade: C+

I saw Alice in Wonderland opening weekend, and given its crazy box office numbers, many of you have probably seen it by now as well. It may be a month later, but I figure there's still plenty of people out there wondering if they should pay what I think is now $17 in New York for 3-D tickets, so here we go.

Despite seeing the many negative reviews heading in, I hoped for the best in Alice's first half. Sure, the opening segment was almost identical to the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean seriously. An ahead-of-her-time 19th century young British woman who doesn't want to marry a boring guy and complains about wearing corsets? Makes you wonder if they even switched out the script. But in case you were wondering, Alice is a Disney movie far more than a Tim Burton movie, and one that borrows liberally with previous Disney movies.

Still, the beginning left me hopeful largely due to Mia Wasikowska's performance as Alice. She gives the part a nice touch of spacy oddness, like Luna Lovegood-as-Disney princess. She embodies Alice's curiosity in a believable and appealing way. And when she first enters Wonderland, or Underland as it is inexplicably called here, there's a certain amount of good will for Tim Burton's visual sensibility. Based more on Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass than Alice in Wonderland, the movie has a very Return to Oz vibe - dark and busted up. Unlike Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where Burton went all circus-y, here he actually delivers the dark Burton vision his fans crave.

But as soon as it becomes clear the movie has more of a plot than just following Alice through the land, the movie quickly begins to lose steam. Taking the Jabberwocky poem from Looking Glass as an inspiration, the script has some prophecy say that Alice must slay the Jabberwocky. This is said many, many times. Also, she may not be the "right" Alice. Oh, and there's an evil queen in control of the land who's only major difference from the queen in Chronicles of Narnia is that she didn't create permanent winter. And she has a big head. That's also mentioned a lot.

By the time you realize Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is not a wacky loon but in fact a super serious rebel leader dead set on creating a revolution against Helena Bonham Carter's Queen of Hearts, Alice has been shrunk to Thumbelina size and begins to spend most of the movie in people's pockets. The curse of getting a big star like Depp is that he insists on playing a major role, so he practically becomes the main character. And at this point Depp just recycles the same "I'm crazy" act he's done in the last however many movies. It's getting old.

Alice's biggest sin though is that for a movie based on the most infamously drug-induced fantasy ever written, there's just not enough fun. Everyone's so dreary and straight-to-business, whining about the queen and talking about the resistance. Alice still has some time to wander and react to the wacky characters, but it's all rushed through to get to the "big movie plot." Which is pretty lame. Especially since by the time the White Queen and Red Queen's armies are fighting each other, it's become clear the movie has just turned into a direct Narnia rip-off. Except with a very silly talking dragon.

A lot of these problems wouldn't matter if the movie didn't take itself so seriously. But the only one in the cast bringing any levity is Carter, who has a ball with the Queen's catchphrase of "Off with their heads!" After sucking all the humor from her lines in Sweeney Todd, she's made up for it by being the sole source of it here. There's a lot of cool effects on display here, from the visual palette to, ok fine, the 3-D (even if it mostly consists of stuff jumping out at you. It's no Avatar and probably not worth the extra $4). But there's no wonder to be found in this Wonderland, and Johnny Depp dancing doesn't change that.

Sex, Drugs, and Sorry I'm Bored

Grade: C

When it comes to movies about music, there are some that really nail it, like Almost Famous, and there's those that just don't. Put The Runaways in the latter category. If the sole purpose of the movie was to help Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning break away from their Twilight images while providing some nostalgia for people alive in the 1970s, then I suppose it accomplished that. But it doesn't do anything more.

The Runaways was a band of teenage girls in the 1970s that seems to mostly be remembered for launching Joan Jett, here played by Kristen Stewart. Yet The Runaways is based on a book by Runaways singer Cherie Currie, played here by Dakota Fanning, which means this is no duel biopic - it's the Dakota Fanning show from start to end. Which is a shame, since Stewart gives the far more dynamic performance. Fanning may not make you think of her childhood roles, but with her pale skin and soft voice, she comes off here like a bland version of Gossip Girl's Jenny Humphrey. She may be growing up, but she just doesn't have the star power to carry a movie yet.

Not all of that is Fanning's fault though. The movie in no way takes the character approach, only shallowly exploring any of the central figures. Two of the band members are basically extras. The drummer seems appealing in her early scenes, but all but disappears once the band takes off. Even Stewart is really only allowed to play guitar, wear leather jackets, and make out with girls every now and then. Stewart gives a believable impression, but the script doesn't give her the opportunity to go any deeper.

Ok, so the movie's not going to give us insights into the girls in the band or try to get us to know them. At least those of us who had never heard of the Runaways can get the cliff notes history, right? Well, the movie fails as a conventional biopic as well. It's never clear at any given point how successful the band is supposed to be. In one scene, they're playing a high school kegger. In the next, they're being swarmed by fans. When did the fans get the chance to hear of them? As for the "fall" section of the typical "rise and fall" arc, it occurs solely in one scene, and it doesn't make a strong impression.

So the movie isn't about character, and it isn't about telling the history of the Runaways. What does it want to do? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. That's right, this is one of those movies that thinks showing teenage girls hooking up and snorting cocaine will so thoroughly shock and titillate us that those scenes alone will make the movie. No context or significance to the story needed, it's just there for shock value. Thing is, it doesn't. Compared to what we see on MTV any given hour today, these girls seem tame in comparison. And there's been so many other, better movies about the 1970s that it's hardly a revelation that this was going on. All the sex and drugs just becomes monotonous and adds to the overall boredom.

All that said, the music does, well, rock. All of the performances have an energy completely lacking in any of the non-musical scenes, and just try to get "Cherry Bomb" out of your head afterwards (kind of embarrassing to be sitting at your desk inadvertently going "ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-CHERRY bomb, but so be it). The movie ends on a high note by playing out the Freaks and Geeks theme song over the credits, further proof a Joan Jett movie would have been more worthwhile. And Michael Shannon gives a terrific performance as the band's sketchy manager/producer/writer. He hams it up and showboats to the max, but he's got so much charisma and energy that the movie comes to life whenever he's onscreen.

With musical biopics becoming so ubiquitous, there's no excuse for making a movie about Joan Jett that's this limp and dull. If you're in the mood for some rock, save yourself the money and go see Almost Famous again instead. In fact, I should probably go do that too so I remember what a great music movie looks like.

Lackluster, Actually

Grade: C

With the utter glee critics have taken in brutally destroying Valentine's Day in print, you'd think it was the second coming of Gigli. Entertainment Weekly gave it an F, Peter Travers called it "the date movie from Hell," and Manohla Dargis said its only saving grace comes from making Love Actually look good in comparison (a rather backhanded compliment for one of the best date movies ever made). Against all of that critical hatred, I find myself in the rather odd position of trying to defend a movie I didn't particularly like. Valentine's Day may be a predictable and painfully cliched romantic comedy, but it's hardly an affront to human decency.

Now, when I first heard of Valentine's Day, I thought what many of you must have: "An American Love Actually! Nice!' And that was certainly the idea, as not only does Valentine's Day take the same format of individual love stories with somewhat connected characters, but it even rips off some of the same plots. When you see a young boy who's recently been separated from his mother seek advice on how to woo a girl from school, it's hard not to think of Liam Neeson and "All I Want for Christmas." But in execution, this version is less a cultural translation and more of a straight-up advertisement for the Valentine's Day holiday.

For all of Love Actually's cutesiness, each and every one of the individual love stories was clever and something different. A prime minister who falls for a servant. An English man who falls for a non-English-speaking Portuguese woman. Porn stars who fall in love during film shoots. A rock star who realizes his closest relationship is with his agent/business manager. All individually interesting stories that, when put together, form a filmic mosaic of all types of love. It's hard to watch that movie and not feel good.

What does Valentine's Day have? A florist (Ashton Kutcher) who realizes he's meant to be with his best friend (Jennifer Garner). Said best friend realizing her boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey) is married. An agency mail room guy (Topher Grace) whose new girlfriend (Anne Hathaway) secretly works at a phone sex hotline. An older man (Hector Elizondo) who learns that his wife (Shirley MacLaine) hid an affair years earlier. A publicist (Jessica Biel) who hates Valentine's Day until she gets the attention of a sports reporter (Jamie Foxx).

Does any one of those storylines seem like something you haven't seen a billion times before? Ok, fine, maybe the phone sex. But otherwise, the individual stories here make up an impressive cross-section of the most obvious romantic plots possible. I think I can say that literally every romantic comedy cliche is utilized to some extent. The very public reunion that leads everyone to clap? Check. The minority best friend who offers sage advice? Check. Talking your way through airport security to stop someone from getting on a plane? Check. And enough nauseating lines about love that I actually left the theater with a headache? Check a hundred times over.

On a rather more specific note, I'd like to point out Taylors Swift and Lautner for carrying the most extraneous subsection of the movie. Unlike everyone else, they actually have no plot of their own. There's one scene where he doesn't love her V-Day gift and you think that's going to be the story, but nope, never brought up again. Instead, they pop up randomly around other characters while sporadically hogging screentime so Lautner can do backflips and Swift can do what seems to be a 40 year old's idea of how high schoolers act. Seriously, she was just there like a year ago, has she forgotten so soon?

Still, despite all of what I've said, I do think the critics miss one important thing: the movie's still pretty watchable. Sure, in the last half hour (which drags on waaaaaaaaay too long) the cheese factor gets too much to bear, but until then the movie is a painlessly mediocre experience. Even when given nothing to do, likable stars do go a long way. Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Bradley Cooper, Topher Grace - all people I'm willing to watch do otherwise stupid things. Even Ashton Kutcher as the de facto lead didn't bother me as much as usual (and goes the longest you will ever see him away from Twitter).

Obviously Valentine's Day is a movie that hinges on its title and release date, script be damned. But what else was I supposed to take my girlfriend to on Valentine's Day? The Wolfman? No thanks. Nobody else stepped up with a smarter romantic comedy, so Valentine's Day gets to carry the weekend. And I should also point out that I'm hardly the target audience here. My theater was pretty evenly split between couples and large groups of girls, making the male proportion of the theater about 15-20%. Women who enjoy watching these cliches over and over again probably had a perfectly good time. For the rest of us, we'll just enjoy the real Love Actually all the more next time we see it.

A Frog's Leap Back to Childhood

Grade: B+

I don't know about you, but I've missed the traditional, hand-drawn, classic Disney musicals, the kind that ended with Mulan in 1998. Don't get me wrong - I do love Pixar and the wonderfully sophisticated movies they make, but the old Disney movies have a certain special quality to them. Maybe it's because we all grew up on them, whether it was The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin for my generation, or Snow White and Pinocchio all those decades ago.

So while The Princess and the Frog, the much-anticipated return to traditional animation form, may be kids' stuff, it's also worth grown-up viewing for anyone with a healthy sense of nostalgia. I know that when I saw the Magic Kingdom intro, I felt pulled back to Sunday night Wonderful World of Disney and all the movies of my youth. But it works because it doesn't just rehash the old, instead finding a new enough variation on the familiar story to hold up to what came before it.

Set during Jazz Age era New Orleans, Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a waitress who has always dreamed of opening her own restaurant. Instead of living her life, she's worked two jobs and saved every penny. Rich and lazy party boy Prince Naveen (Bruce Campos) arrives to New Orleans and soon ends up turned into a frog by Voodoo Man Dr. Facilier (Keith David). When froggy Naveen convinces Tiana to kiss him and turns her into a frog as well, they set off on an adventure to regain their human forms. Will they learn their life lessons and fall in love in the process? If you don't know the answers, you've never seen a Disney movie.

While the formula's still intact, the setting and characters do make this feel new beyond the obvious benchmark of "first African-American Disney princess." This older New Orleans may be Disneyfied, but it's still a fun place to visit, and Tiana makes for an immensely likable lead. It's refreshing that Disney took a turn away from the current inclination to stuff animated movies with celebrities. Sure, you may remember Rose from Dreamgirls and Campos from Nip/Tuck, but John Goodman's the most known voice here (outside of Terrence Howard and Oprah in bit parts). The actors all slip into their parts without distracting and make the movie feel all the more timeless.

Mostly though, it's the familiarity that makes Frog successful. Tiana and Naveen meet up with an assortment of colorful animal characters along the way, including an alligator who wants to play jazz and a firefly in love with the North Star, both of whom would fit in just fine in The Jungle Book. The villain is like every other Disney villain, even if the voodoo gives him a new twist. And like all Disney movies, it ends with easily digestible morals and a happily ever after. But while all of that shows how much more ambitious Pixar may be with its stories, that doesn't mean there's not a place for this simpler form, which continues to satisfy each and every time Disney does it.

I do wish the music had been stronger, as all Randy Newman songs kind of sound the same to me (plus I always think of that Family Guy bit from the Y2K episode). But while there's no "A Whole New World" or "I'll Make a Man Out of You," and you likely won't be humming any of the songs a week later, they're all perfectly serviceable and entertaining. The Princess and the Frog may not be in the same league as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, but it's a worthy addition to the canon that will hopefully inspire more to follow, proving they still can make 'em like they used to.

Feels Like Nine Hours

Grade: D

It's rare to find a movie with such a high profile and so much talent behind it that manages to fuck so much up that it leaves you feeling embarrassed for everyone involved. This season, that movie is Nine. In every way you can imagine, Nine takes the worst path from stage to screen, managing to simultaneously feel stagy, lifeless, dull, cold, and neverending. If you wanted to kill the movie musical genre, this is a pretty good way to do so.

There's so much wrong with Nine that I don't really know where to start, but it's got to be with the musical numbers. Director Rob Marshall decided to follow up his success with Chicago by utilizing the same method in filming Nine's musical numbers. Namely, instead of having the actors sing to each other within the scene, they magically appear onstage as part of a fantasy sequence. Doing an actual musical where people break into song might throw some people off, so better to have it all in their heads.

The first mistake with this line of reasoning: Nine is not Chicago. Chicago was a musical about theater and performance, so it was natural that people accustomed to spending time onstage would appear onstage in their innermost thoughts. But Nine has NOTHING to do with theater. Based on Fellini's classic 8 1/2, it's the story of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), Italy's most famous movie director who, after a few flops, finds himself with writer's block ten days before his next film is set to go into production. As he struggles to start page 1, he's pulled in different directions by his wife (Marion Cotillard), mistress (Penelope Cruz), star (Nicole Kidman), producer, costume designer (Judi Dench), mother (Sofia Lauren), and an American fashion journalist who seems to have stepped into this movie by accident (Kate Hudson, and a lot more on her later).

See, it's a movie ABOUT movies, so you might expect some love for cinematic history, maybe some visual references to Fellini, or even some demonstration of the advantages that film has over theater. None of that is there. Because Rob Marshall only knows how to make musicals like Chicago, it's always in theatrical mode. Worse, not only is every musical number on a stage, it's always on the SAME stage, and a highly unappealing one at that. For some unknown reason, everyone only sings inside the indoor studio with Guido's half-built set, and with the lights off. So they're singing on an ugly stage, in the dark, and usually in drab looking costumes. There's no light and no color, leaving the visuals consistently drab and depressing.

I'm still not done with the musical numbers. The decision to show them all onstage doesn't just look bad, it also lessens the dramatic effect. Marshall seems so terrified that people will get bored during the songs that he does everything he can to make you forget there are people singing. That means wild and frantic choreography that's completely out of tone with everything in the movie (also crude and unsexy). That means songs are constantly interrupted by spoken dialogue from another scene. And that means you're encouraged to do everything but listen to the lyrics.

This is especially problematic when half the songs involve characters sharing their feelings. It would make more sense for them to just start singing, but Marshall seems so trapped in his gimmick that they still go into fantasy mode even when really saying those things. It creates a disconnect that lessens the impact when say, the movie star's trying to tell Guido she's more than just a symbol (and as Nicole Kidman plays her, she isn't), or when his wife is saying she's leaving him (while stripping in a nightclub. Yeah, I have no idea who thought that would make for a dramatic message).

Now, ok, filming musical numbers is hard. Every movie musical has struggled to find a way to keep them interesting, and Rent provided like five different not to do it. So let's go a little more basic: what can movies do that theater can't? Show the environment. This is a movie set in 1960s Italy that's supposed to actually be about Italy. Yet you see none of it. There's no sense of Italy, and no sense either of the spa at which most of the movie is set. Guido claims he just stopped there after driving for awhile. So is it a nice spa? A crappy one? Is this Guido's vacation, or just a Motel 6? In the original movie and musical, it's clearly a vacation, but this movie never bothers to say. There's a single gorgeous shot over a cliff, but otherwise it's all claustrophobically indoors.

I think I've pretty well established how visually lacking the movie is, so let's move on to story. In both the original movie and play, Guido hides the fact that he doesn't have a script from his crew, letting them continue onward until the pressure builds to a breaking point at which he considers suicide. Fellini's version visualized it perfectly in this enormous spaceship that just gets bigger and bigger as Guido feels more and more trapped. But in this movie, the set is no more complete at the end than the beginning. The crew knows the entire movie that he hasn't written a page of the script, yet seem to think he'll just make it work. And he never seriously tries to write anything. When the movie collapses, everyone seems to just go "oh well, guess we should have seen that coming." There's not that much plot to begin with, and by eliminating the stakes there's none at all.

Which leaves characters. The relationships are the center of the story, and we're really supposed to care when everyone abandons him at the end. But we don't. The movie doesn't develop a single one of the central relationships, so we never understand what any of the women really mean to Guido. You understand what Guido means to his wife, because Marion Cotillard makes you see it, but Guido seems to treat all the women as interchangeable. When the movie star says she can no longer play the role for him, you don't know what she's talking about because it hadn't previously been addressed. The movie, like Guido, takes its relationships for granted, but if you haven't already seen the play you'd be completely lost.

Finally casting, which has some of the only bright spots in the entire movie. Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, and Judi Dench are the only reasons I didn't just give it an F. Marion Cotillard is at least 15 years too young for the part, and her accent seems at least a continent away from the French/Italian it's supposed to be, but she still gives the best performance in the movie. Her songs are the only ones with any emotional resonance, and she's always just so beautiful. That also helps out Penelope Cruz, who also brings most of the movie's energy. And Judi Dench is always great, even if her thoroughly British character suddenly becomes French in order to sing a COMPLETELY pointless song.

Moving to the other end, one of the weakest links in the cast is, rather shockingly, Daniel Day-Lewis, who previously seemed incapable of delivering a bad performance. But he's so incredibly bland and lifeless that you don't for a second believe that any of these beautiful women would be so in love with him. There's absolutely none of the charm displayed by Antonio Banderas on Broadway (why wasn't he cast?) or Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2. Maybe all of his energy went into his accent, but since his vowel elongation made him sound kind of like the Count from Sesame Street, he might have been better off talking like Daniel Plainview.

Still, the award for most incomprehensible character of the year goes to Kate Hudson's Stephanie, an American fashion reporter from Vogue who adds absolutely nothing to the movie. To be clear: I'm not blaming Kate Hudson; the character has absolutely no purpose. I had thought she was an expansion of the critic character (who was definitely missed), but instead she just flirts with Guido in a bar and then sings the worst song I have ever seen put to the screen. I'm not exaggerating. It is laugh out loud terrible. Kate Hudson's made a lot of bad career moves in the decade since she was Penny Lane, but I've never felt so embarrassed for her as I did during that song.

There's so much else that doesn't make sense and doesn't fit together. Everything about Guido's childhood was cut for the movie EXCEPT for his encounter with a prostitute (played by Fergie, who at least does the best singing job), but you never know what the point of the song is because there's nothing else to explain it. And if you tried too hard to think about it, the worst use of Chicago-style choreography yet gives the opposite impression of what the scene is supposed to mean.

The music doesn't match the choreography doesn't match the dialogue doesn't match the visuals doesn't match anything. The relationships don't feel real. There's no dramatic stakes, and there's nothing fun at all. There's even a lengthy epilogue tacked on in which Judi Dench spells out the moral of the movie before an utterly conventional ending and, no joke, a curtain call. But nobody was clapping in my theater. Those that hadn't walked out already rushed to the door the second the credits rolled. So congratulations Nine. You thought you would get Oscar nods this year, but instead you win the first ever Zandervision Award for Worst Movie of the Year.

Welcome to the Future of Cinema

Grade: A

Few movies have had the insane build-up of expectations that Avatar has. The first film from James Cameron in the TWELVE YEARS since Titanic, which you may remember still holds the record for highest grossing movie OF ALL TIME. A movie that Cameron says he wrote the script for over twenty years ago, and has been in development for nearly as long. A movie with a budget so high people estimate in increments of $100 million. And most insane of all, a movie that promises to revolutionize film, ushering in an era where 3-D and computer effects can make the unreal real.

A movie with that high of a build-up has almost no choice but to disappoint, and yet Avatar may just be the most visually stunning movie I've ever seen. The moment when you first set eyes on the jungle of Pandora, the alien moon that Cameron created out of imagination, technology, and time...think of Charlie entering the chocolate room as Gene Wilder sings "Pure Imagination." Or Dorothy first seeing the colors of Oz. In Avatar, 3-D and computer simulation have finally gone that extra step to make you feel like you're there.

Stepping back a moment, I should probably let you know what this thing is about. Set in a future (2154) in which Earth has run out of oil, humans take the 6 year flight out to Pandora, an alien moon with a precious resource they call Unobtainium. The planet is populated by the Na'vi, a species of ten foot tall blue humanoids with feline facial features, who are very much in tune with their environment and not so much with the aliens trying to uproot their sacred tree. To help with that, the humans created the Avatar program: human/Na'vi hybrids each controlled by the individual human providing his DNA. Yeah, there's a lot of exposition early on to get all this out, but somethings there's no way around it.

Into this mix comes Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-Marine whose scientist brother was supposed to pilot an Avatar until he wound up dead. Now Jake has come to take over his brother's job. His first time out, he meets a Na'vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who takes him back to the tribe and starts training him to join. His mission is to earn their trust and convince them to move so the humans can get the Uobtainium....or barring that, to give critical intel to help with the military strike. But you don't need me to tell you once he falls for Neytiri, his loyalties shift.

As complicated as all that may be to write out, there's not really anything in the plot we haven't seen before. It's kind of a mix of Dune, Jurassic Park, Fern Gully, The Matrix, and (from what I've been told) Dances with Wolves. The characters aren't all that new either, but the actors sure work hard to make up for that. Instead of a parade of celebrities, Cameron's assembled an eclectic mix that all play their parts well and don't distract. Saldana especially stands out, bringing a particular fierceness to all of her scenes, as does Sigourney Weaver as the head scientist. Cameron sure does like having the women do the most ass-kicking.

What really makes Avatar special though is that unlike any other sci-fi movie before it, Avatar creates an alien world and brings you inside of it. There's really no overstating how incredible Cameron's attention to detail is here. Everything about the planet - from the leaves that rustle below your feet to the flies buzzing in the air - is intended to make the environment as authentic as possible. Despite the fact that all things animal, vegetable, and mineral don't exist in the real world, it doesn't take long to feel real.

Here's where the 3-D plays in as well. You may have seen some other recent 3-D movies that have a few things jump out at you for fun, or make you feel like you're on a roller coast for a second, or provide some nice texture to the scenery. But Avatar is the first movie to use 3-D in a way to make you feel like you're inside the scene. At times I almost wanted to brush the flies out of the way, since they seemed right in front of me. And EVERYTHING seems more immediate, including the explosions and gunfire often aimed right at the audience.

It all takes some getting used to. At first it's almost too much for the eye to take in, and I looked at everything but the person who was talking. But that's just because there is so much there to see. In one scene, Neytiri chastises Jake as being a baby for the way he must touch everything he sees. But can you blame him? When every step lights up the ground and plants shoot up into themselves with a single touch, you'll want to go around and explore as well.

Beyond the beauty of the environment, Cameron's creatures are some of the best put to screen since Jurassic Park. Best of all are a type of pterodactyl-like creatures that the Na'vi ride after each selecting one to bond with in a ritual. All of the flying scenes have such a sense of joy to them that it's clear Cameron knows first and foremost how to entertain. That's even more clear in the phenomenal action sequences, pitting flying creatures and arrows against large machines and ships. The final battle is the exact kind of big, epic battle that a movie of this magnitude deserves.

If you want to, it's easy to poke holes in Avatar. You can call it cheesy, which it is, but it's the kind of cheesy you find in the big Hollywood event movies of yesteryear that Transformers 2 could never hope to be. You can call the dialogue clunky, and it is, or point out the disconnect in having a back-to-nature moral in the most technologically advanced movie of all time. But to me at least it just seems silly to nitpick in the face of such enormous achievement, and even more than that, enormous entertainment. With so much joy in the filmmaking, I preferred to just give in and smile.

In the end, it comes down to this: Avatar will be remembered as a landmark in cinematic innovation. It's a movie that demands to be seen in theaters, and will provide a wholly unique viewing experience. It will be the most talked about movie of the season and the one everyone will eventually accept they have to go see. So instead of laughing at the blue people or mocking the trailer, just suspend disbelief long enough to enter another world. It's worth it.

Where the Sad Things Are

Grade: B

Keeping with the theme of movies based on classic kids' books following Fantastic Mr. Fox, it seems time to review Where the Wild Things Are, which I saw a month ago. Now, they've been trying to turn this picture book into a movie for decades. It's probably gone through countless scripts, directors, and concepts. So for all of the movie's accomplishments, and there are many, I can't help but asking: why, of all the possible ways to adapt this book, did Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers choose to do a movie about depressed monsters?

Seriously, that's what it's about. Like the heroes of many children's movies, Max (Max Records) is an imaginative young lad who doesn't get enough attention from his family, specifically his overworked mother (Catherine Keener). After getting into a fight with his mom while her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo, in an odd cameo) is over, Max runs away, eventually making it to the island of monsters. But once there, he realizes they feel even worse than he does. They soon elect him king under the promise that he can make the sadness go away. But no amount of giant forts or mudball fights can keep the depression at bay for long.

That's pretty much it for plot. The biggest conflict is that KW (Lauren Ambrose), formerly dating or bffs (it's unclear) with Carol (James Gandolfini), has found new friends (who cause the strangest scene in the movie), making Carol angry. There's a lot of emotion, a lot of mood, and a lot of cool visuals, but story's not a major component. And since the monsters spend most of their time moping around feeling sad, it's hard to see many children enjoying themselves.

Still, if you accept that this is a movie about depressed monsters, the idea is incredibly well-executed. The visual technique of using CGI for the faces but real bodies, or however they do it, works completely. The monsters are completely distinct from any other movie creations beforehand. And many of the other visuals are stunning, especially the enormous fort they build under Max's command. It may be what we expect from Spike Jonze, but good to see him deliver.

As odd as some of the emotions in the film may seem, they're also very effective. More than any other recent movie I can think of, Where the Wild Things Are really makes you remember what it feels like to be a kid, the highs and the lows. The joys of how wonderful a snowball fight at the first snow of the season can be, and how lonely it can feel to have no one to share it with. For anyone over a certain age, the movie seems guaranteed to bring on nostalgia.

I will say that Where the Wild Things Are is very original - from the visuals to the tone - and an impressive feat for Jonze and co. But I also wonder if fans of the book - or even the Arcade Fire-scored trailer - can really be satisfied by it. The movie is absolutely the logical extension of its creators' vision; it just isn't the vision most of us hoped for.

What I Saw Over Thanksgiving Weekend

People have different Thanksgiving traditions. Some people play football. Some people have loud fights with their families. I see movies. Last year I had a post on movies to see with your family in the midst of a turkey-based food coma. Much like last year, the perfect Thanksgiving movies got pushed to Christmas. But even without Nine and The Princess and the Frog, I found plenty to watch over the holiday weekend.

Grade: B+

First up, the movie I actually saw on Thanksgiving day. In a lot of ways, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is like The Incredibles, which I saw and loved during Thanksgiving five years ago. Again you've got a family in which the parents gave up their dangerous and preferred line of work to settle down with a family, only to come back to it after the father gets restless. This time they're foxes and not superheroes, but it still leads to a movie ostensibly for kids that's really more for adults.

Hating on Wes Anderson has become popular, between The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited, but Foxes is a strong step towards winning those former fans back. That dry, sardonic Wes Anderson style is still very much here, but it's used for something much more fun. A lot of the humor comes in the "animals acting like people" form, but the voice cast helps sell it. There's a bit of Daniel Ocean in George Clooney's Mr. Fox, a former chicken thief who misses the thrill. Anderson mainstays Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray are back to keep things light. Meryl Streep is underused, but does a lot with what she's got.

All that said, there's still plenty of dark stuff to make you question whether kids should see it, as you'd hope from something based on a Roald Dahl book. Mr. Fox gets his tail shot off, and all the animals' lives are continually in danger from all the angry farmers. But the stakes make all the many capers legitimately suspenseful. Especially after the mopey Where the Wild Things Are, it's nice to find a kids' movie for adults that wants to excite instead of depress. Hence why it gets fantastic in the title.

Grade: B

When I walked in to see 2012, I was expecting it to be really stupid but fun, and you know, it delivered on both counts. Continuing a string of big-budget disaster movies from destruction master Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 boasts the least specific threat with the craziest amount of damage yet. From the trailer, it's hard to judge what's destroying Earth. Earthquakes? Fireballs? Mayans? Turns out to be some combination (of the first two), but you won't be listening to the talk of neutrinos in the earth's crust. You'll be watching shit blow up.

All of Emmerich's movies are basically the same, it's just a matter of recasting the roles and switching the targets of destruction, so it's probably easier to discuss 2012 with Independence Day in mind. The story starts when a scientist (Chiwetel Ejiofor filling in for Jeff Goldblum) discovers that, due to some evil neutrinos, the world will be destroyed in 2012. After telling his compassionless superior (Oliver Platt) and the president (Danny Glover), they form a plan to help a select group of the worthy survive the coming onslaught.

After a whole lot of prep, around 30-45 minutes into the movie we meet our actual protagonist, John Cusack (playing Will Smith), a writer with an ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and two kids. Somehow, the four of them plus the ex-wife's boyfriend wind up as the only people in America able to outdrive earthquakes, outfly explosions, and outswim floods to survive. Nothing about any of their escape scenes makes a remote amount of sense. Just try counting the number of times somebody falls into an earthquake-induced abyss and makes it out alive. But it doesn't matter, because there's high-quality disaster porn all around, like skyscrapers shattering on top of Cusack's limo and their plane magically bursting through smoke clouds.

There's nothing here we haven't seen before in any of Emmerich's other movies, but that doesn't mean 2012 doesn't still have its merits. For one thing, the explosions are probably bigger than in his previous movies. It is the end of the world after all. And to me at least Ejiofor, Cusack, Peet, Glover, and Thandie Newton make for a more appealing cast than that in The Day After Tomorrow (no offense). Though no matter how many famous monuments get destroyed (and there are a lot), nothing's as iconic as that destruction of the white house in Independence Day. As far as dumb action movies go, I'll take 2012 over Transformers 2 any day, but that doesn't mean I'll ever revisit (or remember) it.

While not catching up on movies in theaters, I also tried to make some progress on my Netflix queue, which I've been woefully neglecting ever since the TV season began (and pretty much all summer as well). First on the DVD front (to keep me entertained on the train) was Adventureland, a coming-of-age movie set in the '80s from the director of Superbad. But one thing I didn't realize from the trailer: not a comedy.

Jesse Eisenberg, known as "the guy that's not Michael Cera even though he plays the same characters," plays a college-grad with no job prospects who's forced to work at a local amusement park to pay for grad school. You'd think between bonding with the community of park workers, the wacky antics of such a place, and '80s nostalgia there'd be plenty here for laughs. And there are some, but there's a lot more angst as Eisenberg's character falls for Twilight-er Kristen Stewart, a fellow park employee who's sleeping with (gasp) Ryan Reynolds' married rocker/handyman.

The romance is cute and all, but it's nothing that hasn't been done in a million coming-of-age movies beforehand. It's Adventureland itself that makes the movie stand-out, especially strong supporting players like Martin Starr as an unlucky-in-love nihilist and SNL's Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as the married couple who run the park and account for approximately 95% of the movie's laughs. The drama's handled well enough that it's still enjoyable to watch, but if there was more Hader and Wiig and less moping, this might not have been left for Netflix.

Finally, Drag Me to Hell, a VERY well-reviewed horror movie that was hailed as a return to the comic horror Evil Deads of Sam Raimi's past. Maybe I just don't get horror - or this movie - but I'm not seeing the comedy. Yes, there are occasional moments of gross-out camp, especially when they bring the demon in question to form during a seance, but those moments seem vastly out of tone with the rest of the movie.

Playing into the times, the story begins when Alison Lohman's bank worker denies a gypsy woman an extension on her mortgage, and the woman returns the favor with a gypsy curse. Soon Lohman's being attacked by the toothless crone and a goat demon when not swallowing flies or bleeding out the nose.

Thing is, the movie hardly goes horror to horror. It actually spends a lot more time looking at her life at the bank and her relationship with boyfriend Justin Long (yes, the Mac guy). Since most of the movie is played straight and without camp, the campiness of the horror is less funny than disjointed. As such, I didn't find it funny - or scary - just sad. Now, I was going to have issues with this movie regardless because (SPOILER ALERT) she kills her cat to offer to the demon, which pretty throughly turned me off to it. But overall, it's definitely got its moments; it just doesn't congeal into a single consistent movie.

The Humor in Lying

Grade: B+

Humor is, of course, subjective, so I'll say this upfront: if the trailer for The Invention of Lying didn't appeal, you're probably not going to like the movie either. But for all the many, many high-concept comedies coming out of Hollywood these days, this concept is actually kind of brilliant: in a world where everyone only speaks the truth (and, by extension, tends to share every unpolite but honest thought in their head), one guy (Ricky Gervais) has figured out how to lie.

You'd think that concept might get old, creating a one-joke act that plays itself out far before the end. But with so much material within that concept, it doesn't. Maybe it's just me, but watching Tina Fey say how much she loathes her job and waiters telling Gervais that his date (Jennifer Garner) is way out of his league kept making me laugh. Best of all are some hilarious truth-in-advertising campaigns from Coke ("it's very popular") and Pepsi ("for when they don't have Coke.") Also, Jennifer Garner proves here that, just as in 13 Going on 30, she's actually quite a talented comedic actress, and her truth-telling is often the funniest. All of which makes the first act of the movie provides a frequent and consistent amount of laughs.

Writer/directors Gervais and Matthew Robinson knew they couldn't let the whole movie go on like that though, so, for better and for worse, it heads off in different directions. Trying to comfort his mother as she's dying, Gervais ends up inadvertently inventing religion. At first it seems like that shouldn't work (or belong in this movie), but once you see him try to explain "the man in the sky" to his followers in the movie's funniest scene, you'll change your mind.

Sadly, the last act reverts to what so many similar comedies feel obligated to do: go the tried-and-true romance route, with a Gervais/Garner will-they-or-won't-they you've seen about 500 times before, and each of them better done. Cause this time the central concept all but disappears (as does the humor) as Gervais mopes about wanting Garner back. As Gervais' character is basically an even more depressed version of Extras' Andy Millman, the movie illustrates that a movie about depressed characters is sometimes kind of depressing. And even if the truth-telling never gets old, the hundreds of times they say "genetic match" and "fat kids with snub noses" most certainly does.

You'd think the guy who created Tim and Dawn (who would eventually become Jim and Pam) could make a better romance, and find a balance between funny and sad instead of bouncing back and forth between them. Maybe that's what was lost in Gervais finding a new collaborator instead of usual co-writer/director Stephen Merchant (who does have a fun cameo). Speaking of cameos, the movie is packed full of them. I won't spoil them all, but they run the gamut from the more expected comedians (like Merchant) to legit big names (Edward Norton!) Guess there's a lot of fans of The Office (or Extras?) in Hollywood these days.

Basically, it's uneven. When it's good, it's hilarious. When it tries to be serious, it fails. But since it's the funny parts you'll remember when you leave the theater, I'm not lying when I say you should check it out.

The Anti-Bourne

Grade: B+

The Informant was not just any movie-going experience for me. When I showed up to the free screening I found online this past Tuesday, I met the unexpected sight of a red carpet. Turns out I was at the New York premiere, and I soon found myself sharing a theater with the likes of Matt Damon, Joel McHale, and Steven Soderbergh. Not that I got a good look at any of them. I came in the back entrance and sat in the front with the commoners. Still, pretty cool.

As for the movie itself, it was a lot of fun. Based on a true story (but adjusted heavily enough to turn the serious truth into a comedy), The Informant finds Matt Damon playing Mark Whitacre, family man and top exec in one of those big pharmabiological type companies that make a ton of money even though you and I have no idea what it is they actually do. When the FBI is brought in over another matter, Whitacre gets the chance to play the crusader as he volunteers information on a massive price-fixing scheme.

Sure, the FBI agents (played by Scott Bakula and The Soup's Joel McHale) question why a guy making six figures who isn't wanted for any other crime would turn informant, but soon enough that's exactly what he becomes. Wearing a wire for years, he gets the FBI their case. But once they start looking a little closer at their informant, they realize he may not be all he says.

With all of that though, the movie succeeds most as a character piece. Matt Damon, not needing the extra weight to make you forget the Jason Bournes and Will Huntings he's played in the past, takes a character who at first seems a joke into something far more interesting. Early on, we're given snippets of his nonsensical, word association inner monologue, simplying nothing is going on upstairs. And if you've seen the trailers, making him out to be some sort of bumbling fool who does all but should out "I'm an informant," you'd think the same thing.

The movie works though because that's not at all the case. Damon's Whitacre is actually a highly intelligent man. He's got a PHD, speaks multiple languages, and as far as we can tell executes his job well. Furthermore, he actually makes a decent spy. He never for a second breaks character in front of his bosses, and even improvises when the FBI's gadgets don't work. So it makes all the less sense when he narrates to his wire where people can hear him or pulls out a recorder in the middle of a meeting. This question of how someone can be so smart and so dumb at the same time creates most of the comedy in the movie's first half.

It's in the second half though that the movie really expands from something slight and amusing enough to something better. Once Whitacre becomes the FBI's focus and you start to see what Whitacre's really up to, his character only becomes more complex and Damon's performance all the more impressive. Is he naive, malicious, stupid, crazy? You don't really get any answers, but it's certainly fun to try to figure out.

I've seen some reviews complaining about the '70s aesthetic for a movie set in the '90s, but I think that only adds to the general tone of absurdity. The '70s mood makes as much sense in this environment as all the stand-up comedians who populate the cast. In addition to McHale in a major part, there's also Tony Hale (Arrested Development's Buster) as Whitacre's lawyer, and cameos by Patton Oswalt, Best Week Ever host Paul F. Tompkins, and Scott Adsit (30 Rock's Pete).

Since the main jist of the comedy is the incomprehensibility of its lead's actions, the incompatibility of the style and some of the cast only raises the laughs. Which all makes sense for a satire about greed and business ethics. But I'm making this movie sound more serious and thought-provoking than it actually is. The movie's good for laughs, but it's Damon and his character that make it more.

Serious Summer Movie Catch-Up

In an effort to go into the fall with a clean-slate blog-wise, I'm taking care of 5 summer movies I saw months ago yet somehow haven't written about yet. I know you've already seen 3 of these, so there's no point in going into too much detail. And I still owe you District 9 and Julie & Julia.

I'm going in order of enjoyment, from Star Trek to Transformers 2.

Star Trek

Grade: A-

A Star Trek movie equally beloved by the hardcore Trekkies (sorry, Trekkers) and those like me who had never seen a single movie or episode of any of the TV shows. Why? 2 reasons: 1. JJ Abrams made the kind of light, fun blockbuster we wish all summer movies could be. 2. The young cast of insta-stars brought all sorts of new life into an aging franchise. I wouldn't say this was a Dark Knight level instant classic, but more Iron Man level: a thoroughly enjoyable movie that made me very excited to see what will come next.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Grade: B+

Ok, there were some strange changes from the book (what happened to the final battle sequence?), and it did feel like like a warm-up for Deathly Hallows. But there's a lot this Potter got right in ways the previous ones didn't. More than ever before, this one didn't get bogged down in excess exposition and extraneous sub-plots, keeping it simple with the most important story threads (like snogging. How great was Lavender Brown?). And it's probably the most visually stunning Potter yet. So I say no, Manohla Dargis, this is not a tiring franchise, but one ready to rev up for a (hopefully) incredible finale.

Away We Go

Grade: B+

Sam Mendes can't get any respect. Pretentious film school types call American Beauty the worst Best Picture winner in recent memory (have they not seen Chicago or Million Dollar Baby?) and Revolutionary Road got unfairly snubbed by everyone last year. Now his newest has gotten a rather lukewarm response from most critics. But you know what? I liked it. Some episodes along the road trip story get a little too over-the-top and sitcommy (I'm looking at you, Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal), but the two leads keep everything nicely grounded. John Krasinski proves he can be more than Jim Halpert, and Maya Rudolph amazes in her first dramatic performance. Even if nobody else remembers, she's on my shortlist for year-end honors.

The Taking of Pelham 123

Grade: B+

It's sad that this somehow ended up on that infamous list of movies that supposedly prove people don't want movies for adults (always along with State of Play and The Soloist). Because it was actually one of the most satisfying action movies this summer. Updating a classic (which, by the way, still totally holds up and you should go see now) to fit today's times, this Pelham is a completely different movie that still completely works. At first John Travolta seems way too ridiculous, but once you get used to him you kind of enjoy his villainous turn. And Tony Scott keeps the suspense and action coming strong. People may not still be watching this version 30 years from now, but they're missing out if they don't catch it now.

Transformers 2

Grade: C-

In the movie's defense, it was exactly what I was expecting. Problem is, I was expecting 2 and a half hours of machines fighting each other with ridiculous dialogue and a plot that makes absolutely no sense. And honestly, the special effects aren't even that great. You can't even tell what's going on in the machinery most of the time. As for the "humans," I continue to not get the appeal of Shia Labeouf, who's at his most annoying here, while I kept expecting Megan Fox to turn into a robot (that's not a comment on her acting, I just don't think she seems entirely human, which is why Jennifer's Body is a good movie for her). The plot has something to do with robots trying to destroy the sun with a gun hidden in the pyramids, but you're not really supposed to pay attention to that. More pressing was that the movie NEVER ENDS. I'm sure this is some people's idea of entertainment, but not mine.

Another Win for Pixar

Grade: A

It may seem silly to write about Up now, when it's been in theaters for over two months and probably all of you have already seen it. I saw it a month and a half ago by now, so it's not even fresh in my mind. But now that we're in to summer's final month, I realized I had to say something about the summer's best movie.

Why #1? I have to say, it's largely due to a single sequence at the very beginning of the movie. You know the one I'm talking about. That five minute, largely silent sequence that shows the entire relationship between Carl and Ellie, from first meeting to Ellie's death. Not only is it beautifully done and leaves everyone a bit teary, but by the end of it you know everything you need to know about Carl. Before the plot begins and with only a few words spoken, we know Carl better than we know most movie characters after 2 and a half hours.

Which is why Up proves Pixar's crazy success and universal lovability is not due only to its impressive animation or even its choice of stories. Whether rat, fish, toy, or talking dog, Pixar is incredible in its ability to develop its characters, making you care very deeply for that hunk of metal with a thing for Barbara Streisand or, here, the old man who takes his house with him on an adventure to South America.

Carl's hardly the only standout character from Up. After launching his house in the air via a few thousand balloons, Carl soon finds a co-pilot in Russell, a Boy Scout who inadvertently tagged along for the ride. Russell could easily have been the typical annoying little kid, so the fact that he remains likable is to the movie's credit. But the best is Dug, a talking dog they encounter upon landing. With a collar that lets him speak everything he thinks, including every squirrel-shaped distraction, Dug provides the movie's best humor.

If talking dogs seems like the stuff of kids movies, it is. Even with all of its adult themes, Up is a big step back towards pleasing the young ones after the far more adult Wall-E. Also, I'm not sure the extra $4 for 3-D was quite worthwhile, since it was there more for texture than to really give a 3-D experience. I still wouldn't say Up is Pixar's best film (that would be Wall-E or The Incredibles for me), but certainly top echelon. By combining fun, Lost World-style adventure with effective emotion and solid humor, Up ranks top for the summer.

Enemies to My Patience

Grade: C+

How would you choose to make a period piece feel exciting today? Would you: a. find ways to connect your period's themes to today's issues, b. give your story an exciting, modern feel without going into full anachronism, or c. use a lot of shaky cam-style modern filmmaking techniques that have nothing to do with your subject matter and are frankly kind of distracting? If you chose c, then guess what? Public Enemies is for you.

Set way back in the 1930s, Public Enemies is about John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), a badass bank robber who got himself listed as the FBI's Public Enemy Number 1. Unlike some of those nicer bank robbers in movies, Dillinger and his band of merry men had no qualms about shooting a few people along the way, making Bonnie and Clyde look like a couple on a picnic. Meanwhile, FBI superagent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), first seen gunning down another notorious gangster, is sent to hunt him down. So to recap, we've got Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, two of the most exciting actors today, plus Michael Mann (of Heat and Manhunter fame) directing. How could this be boring?

Hard to believe I know, but Public Enemies still somehow made its 2 hour 20 minute running time feel around twice as long. So what went wrong? Let me count the ways. First off, the movie repeatedly tells us of other gangsters like Baby Face Nelson, yet at no point in the movie could I tell you who anyone was. I don't even mean I didn't catch names - I mean I had absolutely no idea who anyone was outside of the three main characters (and J. Edgar Hoover, I guess). How can I care about the half the movie spent catching or killing these gangsters if I didn't remember seeing them onscreen ten minutes earlier?

It's possible I just wasn't paying enough attention, but I'll give you two other reasons for why this happened. The first - cinematography. This movie is really, really dark. Not dark tonally. I mean like I legitimately couldn't see their faces a lot of the time. What purpose this served, I couldn't tell you. But the second is a general lack of concern for character. As with any historic recreation, this movie seems so imprisoned by all the fancy costumes and historical accuracies that it loses the reason it was made - to tell a good story.

That lack of focus on character affects those three main characters I could recognize as well. I'd never say anything against Johnny Depp's performance as Dillinger, since he makes the part come alive as he does all of his roles. But if you saw the trailer thinking this would be a fun part for him, think again. Most of the time his Dillinger is a quieter, lonelier gangster, the opposite of his public persona. May be true, but that doesn't make it exciting.

He's a giant barrel of laughs compared to Bale's Purvis, who's the Company Man through and through, never letting you latch onto the hope of a Javert-like personal vendetta. He's got no stake in his case, so I had no stake in him. The best of the three is Marion Cotillard as Dillinger's girl Billie, who brings so much life into her part that the movie gets ten times more interesting whenever she's onscreen. Sadly, that's for far too little time.

Which brings me back to my original point, of what is given emphasis if not character, and that's style. There's handheld camera, jarring close-ups, and fast cutting that all serve to put you on edge while watching. But why? This isn't a Bourne movie where the cutting matches the car crashes. The only real accomplishment of all that is to take you out of the world presented onscreen. It doesn't match the movie, and it often makes it more confusing to figure out what's going on. So if you like awkward shots of nameless men being killed, enjoy. For everyone else, it's a long two and a half hours.

Funny People: Actually Funny

Grade: B+

Funny People had one of those trailers that just kind of made you go "huh?" Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? How is this the guy who did Knocked Up? I for one wasn't any more relieved to see a lot of mixed early word, focusing on the 2 and a half hour running time and uneven tone. But I'm here to tell you: don't believe what you hear.

That strange first trailer gives away most of the movie, so I won't worry about giving away too much plot. Funny People is the story of two comedians - one successful but dying and lonely (Adam Sandler's George Simmons) and one unsuccessful and awkward with women but, well, not dying (Seth Rogen's Ira Wright). After the diagnosis, George decides to go back to his stand-up roots, hiring Ira to write jokes and be his assistant.

Sure, the illness thing is more serious than either of Judd Apatow's other movies, but in this section of the movie there's still plenty of typical Apatow humor to go around. Say what you will about all the penis jokes or the overabundance of movies marked with his name these days, but he knows how to write characters you like watching and hanging out with. The best moments here are still in those plot-free moments when the actors get to just riff off each other.

He's also got a knack for getting lots of legitimately funny people together. As Ira's roommates, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman give two of the most enjoyable performances, and I didn't like either of them much before this movie. Hill's youtube-video-within-the-movie may be one of the funniest things he's done. I've said it before and will say it again: Aziz Ansari is always hilarious. But one of my faves this time around was Aubrey Plaza as Ira's comedian crush, who made the typical awkward flirting scenes all much much funnier. Do I actually now have a reason to watch Parks and Recreation? Still probably not gonna happen.

As many scene stealers as there are though, the two leads do command the movie. Showing off (and frequently mentioning) his newly slimmer figure, Seth Rogen again goes beyond his typical 40 Year Old Virgin/Knocked Up role (and to much better results than in Observe & Report). But most surprising is Adam Sandler, who seriously gives one of his best performances. In many ways, the movie can best be seen as a chronicle of the life of a celebrity, and you can easily see George Simmons being who Adam Sandler would have become had his life taken some different turns. He's probably the least "funny" part of the movie, but he makes the serious parts work.

Now, as you may remember from the trailer, all of that ends when George is told he beat the cancer, and he drives up to Northern California with Ira to win back his ex-girlfriend (Leslie Mann). This lengthy final section feels like an entirely different movie, and is definitely the most problematic section. Largely my biggest problem with it is that Ira - who had up to then been basically the protagonist - is left with nothing to do but act really nervous. But does this section ruin the movie as some critics have suggested? No.

The laughs-per-minute ratio may not quite be as high here, but there's still plenty of funny to go around. Eric Bana, as the husband, gives an impressive comic performance you wouldn't have guessed he had in him after movies like Munich and Troy. And Judd Apatow's family is always fun to watch. I actually found the part perfectly enjoyable in its own right, just less so in conjunction with the movie that preceded it.

If you come in expecting The 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up, you're going to be disappointed. After two such well-received comedies, the expectations for Funny People were way too high. But if you can take it for what it is, in all of its messy, oddly toned glory, you may find yourself having a good time. If nothing else, I'll say this - compared to Transformers 2 and Public Enemies, it's the fastest-moving 2 and a half hour long movie this summer.

Bruno Gets a Nisht-Nisht

Grade: B-

To be fair, I should tell you that I spent a healthy percentage of my time watching Bruno laughing. Maybe not Hangover level, but still, it did have a lot of laughs. If you respond well to crude and uncomfortable humor, you'll be in for a good time. Yet unlike Borat, I found the more I thought about what I saw the less I liked it, to the point where I questioned why I was laughing. So does it entertain? Sure. Is it a disappointment? Absolutely.

Now, Bruno doesn't disappoint solely for failing to live up to Borat's high expectations. That would be unfair. It disappoints for failing to even attempt it. Bruno's function isn't too different from Borat's - he's there to act dumb and encourage people to say stupid things on camera that they should know better than to do. Where Borat exposed anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and misogyny in average Americans, Bruno was supposed to bring out all the latent homophobia. But as easy a task as that may seem in a country that won't permit same-sex partners to marry, it somehow doesn't work out that way.

For those who didn't see him on Da Ali G Show or see any of the numerous trailers the past few months, Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a gay Austrian fashion reporter, and on the show always played third fiddle to Ali G and Borat. But here he has the chance to shine, a chance he relishes more than the others. After being kicked out of the Austrian fashion circuit for a velcro-laced faux pas (the second time in a century Austria has banished its greatest citizen, he tells us), he comes to American in search of celebrity. Somehow that leads him from LA to the Middle East, Africa, and the South.

The unifying theme on all his anecdotal misadventures is that it's all about him. Whether in the multiple sex scenes full of inventively-used dildos or in his self-produced TV pilot (which prominently features a still shot of a penis), the focus is solely on Bruno. Which makes this one feel at times like a long SNL sketch. Crude sex jokes are funny to some extent, but they're also easy laughs. Borat's naked wrestling scene worked because it was unexpected and isolated. Bruno is more like an entire movie of naked wrestling.

Not to say that Bruno is completely devoid of Borat's more socially-conscious style of humor. Whether fortunately or frustratingly, it has some scenes of absolute brilliance that hint at the stronger movie this could have been. While many of Bruno's victims knew better than to take the bait (Ron Paul emerges unscathed), Paula Abdul was not so fortunate, humiliating herself by falling into Bruno's trap. You can also see Sacha Baron Cohen's glee behind Bruno's mask as he questions mothers about what atrocities they would allow to be committed to their babies for the sake of a photo shoot. Not to mention some hilariously bungled German (in which Brad Pitt becomes Bradolf Pittler).

You also have to give Cohen credit for being willing to go farther for his comedy than probably anyone else out there. In the course of the movie, he interviews an actual terrorist, lets a woman beat the hell out of him with a whip for a good 3-5 minutes, and repeatedly offends people carrying guns. He takes on anger, pain, and the possibility of death without ever breaking character for a second.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that he couldn't sustain the idea for the 87 minute running time of the movie. Maybe he's too well-known post-Borat to find as many people willing and able to fall for his tricks. Maybe he just had bad luck in the people he chose. But as for any debate about whether the movie is pro-gay or anti-gay - it's irrelevant. There's no social agenda here, just silliness. There's far worse things a summer movie could be. But from a comedian like Cohen, I expect better.

It's Official...I'm in Love with 500 Days of Summer

Grade: A

Is a sleeper still a sleeper if everyone knows it's going to do well? Because I won't try to claim any originality in stating that 500 Days of Summer (opening Friday) is the small indie gem of the summer of 2009, the one friends will make their friends go see as they did Garden State five years ago (not that the two movies have anything else in common).

Still, at first glance, there's nothing about this movie that seems like it would be special. It's about as basic a story as you get. Boy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets girl (Zooey Deschanel). Boy believes in love; girl doesn't. Boy loses girl. Boy is sad. Outside of possibly the now accepted modern-day norm of "guys are the new chicks," it seems like your basic romantic dramedy, right?

Yet somehow the movie never feels familiar. Creative storytelling certainly helps. The romance is told out of sequence (enough to remind you of Eternal Sunshine without seeming too similar), there's a fantasy dance number (that's awesome), and there are plenty of other neat little tricks that keep the movie feeling fresh.

Mostly though it's just really well-executed. Both the leads are immensely likable, so much so that you totally get why he would fall so heavily for her, and you stick with him no matter how much time he spends moping. And unlike most of these type of movies, it actually does work as both a comedy and a drama, cause you really do feel for them the whole way through.

Watching Top Chef: Masters tonight, I saw a ton of trailers for this and each time thought, "you know, I kind of want to see it again." Certainly can't say that for Bruno (review to come, but it was disappointing). So don't be like those people who hate Garden State because they saw it long after the hype took over. Go in with expectations in check and enjoy.

He Said He'd Be Back

Grade: B-



It was a big deal when Christian Bale was cast as John Connor in the post robot reboot Terminator Salvation. No more whiny Edward Furlong or still-kind-of-angsty Nick Stahl. No, now we were going to get a badass John Connor and understand why he's humanity's only hope against the machines. And the movie does deliver - he is Batman after all. But what's surprising is it's not his movie.

That's cause the star this time is not John Connor but Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a former criminal who wakes up after scientific testing from the present day in the land of the terminators. He soon teams up with teenage Kyle Reese (Star Trek's Anton Yelchin), John Connor's future dad, to get to Connor and fight the machines.

You'll know Worthington's name soon enough, as this Christmas he's starring in Avatar, James Cameron's first movie in forever, and if Terminator is remembered mostly for launching him than fair enough. He's got the action movie hero stature that can sustain a movie (and get through some ridiculous chase scenes). Also, movie logic dictates that teen Reese should be annoying, but thanks to Yelchin's second scene stealing performance this summer, he's miles above T2's Connor.

Having three dependable leads makes up for the occasional imbalances in tone. On the one hand, director McG has said in interviews how he used Cormac McCarthy's The Road as an inspiration, which you can see in the harsh greys and bleak look to the whole environment. On the other hand, I'm not sure I've ever seen so many explosions in a single movie.

As much as McG may want this to have been his Children of Men, it's the brainless action half that ends up winning out, and well it should. Like T3, another widely critized Terinator sequel, Salvation is enjoyed best when not compared to the first two but taken on its own as a thoroughly enjoyable piece of summer action entertainment.

This one loses points because it's not as fun when the bad guys look like machines, and it may be even more forgettable. But if the idea of Christian Bale and Sam Worthington blowing up robots sounds appealing, you'll probably have a good time.

The Good Kind of Hangover

Grade: A-



What can I say about The Hangover that you haven't already heard from all of your friends? In its second week, it's already a huge word-of-mouth hit, so much so that I missed it last week cause it was sold out on a Sunday (!) night, and it passed the $100 million mark this weekend. So all I can tell you: it holds up to the hype.

Like many good comedies, this one keeps the premise simple: after a wild bachelor party in Vegas, three guys (Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galafinokalamanokus (or something like that)) wake up with no memory of the night before and a missing groom. As they piece together all the clues of what went down (missing tooth, tiger in the hotel room, hospital wristband) with the help of some wacky characters (Heather Graham as a stripper/escort, Ken Leong as gay Chinese mafia, Mike Tyson as...Mike Tyson), hilarity ensues.

I wouldn't want to go into any specific gags, cause that would ruin the fun. To be honest, I couldn't name you all that many off hand anyway. But I do know I was laughing nearly constantly from the movie's beginning to its end. And since even good movie comedies are sometimes more pleasant than actually funny, I think that's all that really matters.

There's more scenes involving pissing and vomiting in this movie than in any five I've seen in the past year year. Too crude? Probably, but somehow they make it work. And picking less established actors makes them all the more fun to spend time with. If you can put up with the occasional onscreen penis, you'll be rewarded with the most laughs you'll get at the movies this year.