Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters

Right around the time Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) and his adventure-seeking crew hitchhiked on the scaly back of a rainbow-colored dragon and rode to the center of the Sea of Monsters (known to humans as the Bermuda Triangle), I officially stopped critiquing director Thor Freudenthal?s wondrous fantasy excursion and just plugged in for the head-shakingly outlandish but consistently entertaining ride.

Monster-laden oceans, centaurs, fire-breathing mechanical bulls, and Civil War-era zombies sound bizarre out of context. But parents and kids who?ve absorbed author Rick Riordan?s imaginative novels ? with their calculated balance of Greek mythology and contemporary teen angst ? will expect nothing less from this second installment in the ongoing Percy Jackson cinematic series, Sea of Monsters.

What?s unexpected, at least from my professional perspective, is the impressive special-effects work presided over by Freudenthal as he shepherded Sea of Monsters to the multiplex. While no stranger to the bestseller-to-movie process, Freudenthal?s past kid-friendly credits of Hotel for Dogs and Diary of a Wimpy Kid gave no indication of the technical prowess and visual ingenuity he brings to Percy. Riordan, obviously, deserves credit for cooking up the imaginative exploits that power Sea of Monsters in the first place. But mythological storytelling can fall flat in the wrong hands, so Freudenthal and his team deserve praise for pulling the fantastical elements off Riordan?s page, then stockpiling them in a familiar world young audience members should enjoy exploring.

Jackson, as followers know, is the offspring of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea. As Monsters unfurls, Percy and his friends are attacked at Camp Half-Blood, a safe haven that?s supposed to be protected by an ancient force field. In order to restore the protective barrier, Percy, Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and newcomer Tyson (Douglas Smith) ? a teenage Cyclops ? must retrieve the mythical Golden Fleece from the Sea of Monsters before it falls into the perilous clutches of Luke (Jake Abel), our hero?s chief rival.

Percy Jackson comes off as Harry Potter lite, with three handsome and adventurous teenage leads cracking wise as they hopscotch from one preposterous mousetrap of danger to the next. The mythology underlying the Percy films doesn?t pretend to carry the same weight as J.K. Rowling?s text, and the performances aren?t nearly as compelling. Lerman, in particular, can be accused of going through the motions as Percy, especially when you consider the exquisitely emotional work he pulled off in the mature The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The young actor has chops, but his enthusiasm for the admittedly corny green-screen antics in the Percy Jackson universe are nonexistent. It?d be wise of Lerman to invest the same level of commitment into the franchise that?s currently paying his bills, particularly because Riordan has delivered three more Percy Jackson books that could fuel sequels if these movies continue to connect with the target YA audience.

And if Fox decides to push on, they?d also be wise to lock Freudenthal up for at least the next installment, which could adapt the 2007 novel The Titan?s Curse. Under Freudenthal?s direction, Sea of Monsters escalates its mythological hijinks without heavy-handedness or a coy wink at the audience. Charismatic character actors like Stanley Tucci, Nathan Fillion and Anthony Head relish the opportunity to play ?big? in smaller roles, and the effects work never ceases to impress. If subsequent Percy movies can rise to the level of Sea of Monsters, I predict smooth sailing for this enjoyable YA fantasy series.

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Austenland

Jane Austen had a unique skill for crafting stories of enviable romance that were made all the more engaging by her biting wit and clever social commentary. It?s no wonder her books?like Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield--have inspired filmmakers again and again. Directors like Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice), Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility), and Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park) have made beautiful films from her work, vibrant with emotional honesty and poignant performances. Others translate her tales of overthinking young women into wonderfully funny modern classics, like Amy Heckerling?s Emma-inspired Clueless or Sharon Macguire?s Bridget Jones?s Diary. Still others like Robin Swicord, helmer of The Jane Austen Book Club, and Dan Zeff, director of the charming mini-series Lost In Austen, threw contemporary-Austen obsessed protagonists into familiar situations that defy the rules the iconic author laid out, achieving bubbly and rewarding narratives clearly spun out from Austen inspiration. Then there?s Jerusha Hess?s Austenland, which could fit into the last category if it weren?t so painfully stupid.

I made it a point to list all of the movies (and mini-series) above because I would recommend each and every one of them before I would ever tell anyone to watch Austenland. Based on a novel by Shannon Hale, this rom-com follows American gal Jane Hayes (Keri Russell) on what she hopes will be a life-changing romantic adventure. Jane is in her 30s, and single. (Heaven forbid!) A blink-and-you?ll-miss-it first act suggests her threatening spinsterhood looms because of two things: 1) modern men are no Mr. Darcy, and 2) she is obsessed with Mr. Darcy. To get the latter point across, her apartment is covered with various Darcy-centric memorabilia including a full-sized cardboard figure of Colin Firth as Darcy from the iconic BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series?which I would also suggest watching instead of this movie.

To solve her love slump Jane decides to spend her entire life savings to go to Austenland, an English theme park where pathetic women pay to be romanced by actors while everyone dresses up and acts like it?s the early 1800s. Let me repeat that: she spends her entire life savings on a trip where a man is paid to pretend he?s falling in love with her. It?s like live-action-role-play meets prostitution without the sex, as if that as a concept makes any sense.

As Jane rushes off to take this trip, I had hoped the film would make some effort to explain how paying strangers to play wooing suitors would fix her life. Instead, it introduces a barrage of other characters just as confounding and senseless as Jane. Her companions/rivals for fake love are a crass and wildly wealthy American (Jennifer Coolidge) who seems incredibly enthusiastic for the theme resort even though she?s never heard of Pride & Prejudice, and a flirtatious and mysterious blonde (Georgia King) who is alternately catty and kind, depending on what the plot demands. A final reveal of who she really gives no worthwhile insight, opting instead for a lame twist that is sadly one of many.

Under the sneering countenance of the resort?s owner (Jane Seymour), the women fight for the affections of a Darcy imitation called Mr. Henry Nobley (J.J. Feild), a flamboyant Colonel Andrews (James Callis), and a dashing and oft-shirtless pirate Captain George East (Ricky Whittle). But despite Jane?s long-held desire to be in this very world, she soon grows bored of these archetypal men (to be fair, so did I), so she begins a secret affair with a lowly stable hand named Martin (Bret McKenzie). Listening to modern music in his cabin establishes him as a rebel who seems to reject the Regency-era mimicry and faux romances. Accordingly Jane falls for him hard and begins sneering at the Darcy doppelganger she?s so long wished for.

From there, Hess and Hale, who co-wrote the screenplay, attempt to mimic the kind of plot and character reversals that are a key and celebrated element of Austen?s work. We learn everything is not as it seems, but the truth is so unsurprising that it?s difficult to know if we?re meant to think Jane is incredibly stupid, or if Hess and Hale assume we are. But let?s set aside for a moment that the plot and the characters? motivations are incomprehensible. I struggle to think of any part of Austenland that would make it worth watching.

Granted, Coolidge, a fantastic comedic actress, scores a few laughs with her ugly American, and McKenzie is a charming romantic lead. But neither is given enough to play with. Instead, much of the focus goes to the tumultuous relationship between Jane and Henry. Sadly, Russell?for all her adorability?can?t save this ridiculous movie. Worse yet, she has virtually no chemistry with her Darcy co-star Feild, making their possible romance seem more a required plot point than a sparking attraction. Beyond this, Hess manages none of the insight or wit of the works she references in only the most superficial ways, and it makes for a bland and boring experience. This is all the more shocking considering Hess co-wrote such dedicatedly colorful films as Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre and Gentleman Bronchos. But in her directorial debut, everything feels muted and mindless. ?

Usually I cringe when people use the phrase ?chick flick? in place of "romantic comedy" because they often mean ?a poorly written movie that is meant to appeal to women solely because it is about a female protagonist, romance and includes at least one makeover sequence with a peppy pop song blaring in the background.? But in that respect, Austenland is a chick flick. And frankly, as a woman who this is clearly meant to appeal to?I like love stories and Austen!?I?m insulted. Why can?t a movie have romance and fashion, but also have an engaging heroine and plot that makes even a little bit of sense!? It?s really not too much to ask. A bunch of the films up top managed it. Go see those.?

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The Smurfs 2

The biggest problem with bad movies being successful is that when it comes time to make a sequel, there is no incentive to make something better. If people are willing to settle for lowest-common denominator material, there isn?t much sense in putting in extra effort the second time around. Like many terrible family films before it, this is the origin story of director Raja Gosnell?s The Smurfs 2 and, surprise, surprise, it fully lives up to its rock bottom expectations.

The story begins with Gargamel (Hank Azaria) becoming one of the world?s most popular entertainers, performing sorcery in front of crowds in Las Vegas, New York City, and Paris, but still being desperate to harness more magic from Smurf essence. In an effort to try and generate his own source of power, he creates two grey Smurf-like creatures called the Naughties (Christina Ricci, J.B. Smoove), but finds that they won?t produce Smurf essence he needs without the special spell cast by Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters) that would turn them blue. In order to learn the enchantment, Gargamel kidnaps Smurfette (Katy Perry), who was also created by the wizard and learned the spell when she was turned into a Smurf. Banding together, Papa Smurf, Grouchy Smurf (George Lopez), Clumsy Smurf (Anton Yelchin) and Vanity Smurf (John Oliver) travel to the real world, enlist the help of their human friends Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays), and go to Paris to try and save Smurfette.

Much like the first movie, The Smurfs 2 is exclusively filled with humor targeted at the very youngest members of the audience, leaving grown-ups no option other than to cover their faces with their palms and shake their heads. Not only does most of the comedy consist of crappy puns, the movie?s laziness really shines through in the fact that some of the jokes and gags are actually repeated multiple times without any sense of irony or cleverness. The ?catfish? joke made early in the movie when the Naughties capture Gargamel?s cat Azrael in a net is bad enough, but it?s even worse when the exact same joke is used later in the film when Azrael falls into a fountain.? It?s the kind of stuff that makes you wonder if the filmmakers even watched the final cut before it was shipped off to theaters.

Some animated films are at least able to skate by with a less-than-stellar script thanks to quality work by the animators, but in The Smurfs 2 even that aspect is a total mixed bag. There were some moments in the movie where I was honestly amazed by the rendering of the CGI characters ? featuring very life-like (albeit blue) skin and beautiful eyes ? but other moments made it abundantly clear that some of the characters are simply a collection of pixels. One would think that the animation process would be less taxing on a hybrid movie like this one, but it still seems like the team could have used a few more months to get the job done.

Terrible as the script may be, I will at the very least stand up for the film?s central theme. Playing on two separate levels ? both between Papa Smurf and Smurfette and between Patrick and his step-father Victor (Brendan Gleeson) ? the movie makes the argument that where a person comes from doesn?t matter nearly as much as the kind of person one chooses to be, and that is a legitimately great moral to teach young audiences. Of course, it?s handled with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face, but the quality of the message takes away some of the sting.

I could continue on for a long time explaining the problems with The Smurfs 2, from its continued lack of development for supporting characters to the fact that a good chunk of the movie could be mistaken for a Sony tablet computer commercial, but there are far too many better uses of our short time on this planet. All we can hope for is that audiences recognize how bad the film is so that when 2015 rolls around I don?t have to write a review for The Smurfs 3.

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We're The Millers

It's a good time to be an R-rated comedy, as the Hangover trilogy has emboldened a whole new flock of raunchy efforts that use their salty rating as part of the selling point. At a time when Ted and The Heat and Bridesmaids are giant hits, why wouldn't you throw in a few extra F-bombs to get some of that transgressive appeal? But not every comedy premise is going to translate to R-rated extremes, and We're The Millers takes what seems to be a script from a decade-old, PG-13 Robin Williams vehicle-- RV, maybe?-- and forces it unsuccessfully through the Horrible Bosses filter. A film with this many funny people in it should never strain so hard for its meager laughs.

Proving once again to be effortlessly, smarmily likable, Jason Sudeikis plays David, a petty pot dealer who, in his one moment of doing something good-hearted, gets robbed of his entire stash and all his money. Forced by his sharklike supplier (Ed Helms) into becoming a drug mule to pay back what he owes, David concocts the scheme to assemble a fake family as his cover for traveling across the Mexican border laden with many pounds of pot. After some clanking exposition he's joined in a top-of-the-line RV by his stripper neighbor Rose (Jennifer Aniston) as his fake wife, local gutter punk Casey (Emma Roberts, history's least-convincing gutter punk) as his fake daughter, and goofy neighbor kid Kenny (Will Poulter) as his fake son.

They manage to pick up the weed without much difficulty, actually, but the trouble comes after, in the kinds of obstacles that are familiar from every family-adventure comedy from The Out-of-Towners to National Lampoon's Vacation. There's another RV-driving family (Kathryn Hahn and Nick Offerman) who just won't stop trying to be their friends. There's the drug dealer (Tomer Sisley) who wants his drugs back. There's the Mexican cop (poor Luis Guzman) who wants a specific kind of favor to overlook their drug stash. There's a broken-down RV, a spider bite, some "unexpected" romance-- check, check, check.

Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose last comedy was 2004's Dodgeball, directs with requisite energy and enthusiasm, but it's the script-- written by no fewer than four people, including Hot Tub Time Machine writers Sean Anders and John Morris-- that lets down so much of the talent assembled here. Probably half of the jokes are about sex, and they're all over the map, from a squeamish sequence of Sudeikis trying to persuade his fake son to give a cop a blow job to a long scene of Aniston doing a striptease inside a warehouse, ostensibly as a diversion to help the gang escape but largely a leering, pointless opportunity to ogle Aniston's toned bod. An endless scene inside a tent watches Sudeikis and Aniston squirm at the idea of being approached by swingers, but also lingers long on Kathryn Hahn grabbing Aniston's breasts-- hey, it's hot when ladies do it, right? The film veers from that to a sickly sweet story about Kenny trying to have his first kiss, and then right back into watching Kenny practice kissing with his fake mom and sister. It's "anything for a laugh" scattershot comedy, but straining inside a framework of a plot-heavy story we're told ought to make sense.

Aniston and Sudeikis almost save it. When he's not calling her "just a dirty stripper" and she's not acting idiotic just for the sake of keeping the plot going, the two have a fantastic rapport, prodding each other with the perfect level of animosity that eventually, obviously, blossoms into love. Aside from a handful of solid visual gags and every single deadpan line from Offerman, Aniston and Sudeikis are the only things able to rise above the constant mediocrity of We're The Millers, a movie so lazy that it opens with clips from famous YouTube videos, just to prime the pump for laughs. The raunchy R-rated comedy and the family comedy have probably deserved to meet again since National Lampoon's Vacation, but the mash-up has got to make more sense than it does here.

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The Canyons

The Canyons is a sharply uneven and often uncomfortable take on trust funds, sexual appetites and daddy issues. The film has a deep mistrust, or perhaps even dislike, of its own characters. They experiment, try to advance their own careers, judge anyone and everything and ultimately spin their wheels because they?re too broken or dumb or single-minded to do anything else. This isn?t the Los Angeles you?d read about in a brochure or even the one you?d get in a John Singleton movie. It?s the Hollywood no one is interested in talking about. It?s the girls ready and willing to fuck their way not to stardom but into a house in the hills. It?s the rich twenty-somethings who produce because they have no skills beyond their inheritances, and it?s the endless series of creepy and uncomfortable auditions every wannabe takes. It?s all deeply Bret Easton Ellis-y in all the best and worst ways, and while it doesn?t always work, it certainly has its moments.

Many of those moments start and end with Lindsay Lohan, who gives her best performance in years. Opposite James Deen, who actually has a nice charisma about him, she?s able to waffle between vulnerable and slyly controlling, depending on the mood of her character. There are a handful of scenes that she deftly controls from start to finish. Unfortunately, wonderful as those moments might be, the plot really isn?t the best offering either Ellis or director Paul Schrader have worked with. Not enough grunt work is done to earn the payoff the film is ultimately looking for, and a few of the characters really need to be in a higher percentage of the runtime to offer a greater sense of cohesion and balance. As a story, it?s just the wrong combination of marginal and grandiose to support a great movie, but an above average to pretty decent movie, it can and does shoulder that burden.

That aforementioned shaky plot follows Christian (Deen) and Tara (Lohan). He?s a sexually aggressive twenty-something with deep pockets, and she?s a failed model whose life goal is to be better off than most. Together, they invite singles and couples over for sex and casually fight off the boredom extravagant, unearned wealth so often brings. To pass the time, Tara decides to work on a movie Christian is funding, but when his assistant (Amanda Brooks) winds up dating an actor (Nolan Gerard Funk) that she used to live with, the casual foray into the film business devolves into a mess of insecurities and complicated revenge schemes. It?s graphic and sometimes outlandish.

Apart from the acting performances from the two leads, the film?s best asset is its dialogue. Sharp, biting and often very honest, many of the conversations bristle with authenticity. They never pull any punches, but they also don?t feel as if they?ve been written to intentionally shock. The right stream of words can inflate an ego, tear down a self-esteem, completely change an up and coming actor?s life path or in the best of moments, artfully comment on the Los Angeles culture The Canyons is aimed at. For example: Tara and Christian?s assistant Gina talk about movies over lunch, and the former muses that while many people in Los Angeles claim to love movies, they really don?t sit in a theater and appreciate the movies themselves. They just like being around movies, which is not the same thing.

The Canyons isn?t really a movie for one of those people who like being around movies more than watching movies themselves. It?s way too messy and uncomfortable to be fun or a potential Oscar nominee. It has a nice enough rhythm and pace to it, but there aren't a lot of goofy or redeeming asides or gags that let the viewer crack a few smiles. It's the type of subject matter you would expect to see on IFC late at night, but with an engaged Lohan owning a handful of scenes and a vibe all its own, The Canyons has something to say and should be worth a look to the right crowd.

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The Wolverine

It?s rather fitting that director James Mangold?s The Wolverine begins with its titular hero, played by Hugh Jackman, stuck at the bottom of a pit. After all, the last time that the character got his own solo adventure the results were rather disastrous. Not only was X-Men Origins: Wolverine a horror show for comics book fans, taking fan favorite characters like Deadpool and Gambit and stripping away everything we love about them, the movie was an ugly mess with a terrible narrative. It?s a stigma that has followed the new film all the way through production, but just like in the film it doesn?t take long for Wolverine to get out of his pit once the story gets going, and when he does the adventure he has is a pretty entertaining one.

Set after the events in Brett Ratner?s X-Men: The Last Stand, the new film finds Logan as a nomad living in a state of constant grief over his lost love Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). His situation changes, however, when he is found by a young Japanese woman named Yukio (Rila Fukushima), who has been searching for him for more than a year. She convinces him to return with her to Japan where her employer, a dying industrialist named Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) makes the mutant hero an incredible offer. In return for saving Yashida?s life during the atomic bomb drop in Nagasaki during World War II, Wolverine is given the chance to be rid of his immortality and live a normal life. But while Logan initially turns down this offer, he quickly finds himself embroiled in a plot surrounding Yashida?s granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), who has been targeted for assassination by the Yakuza.

The Wolverine successfully avoids some of the pitfalls that the worst of the X-Men movies fell into ? particularly the urge to just load up the screen with as many different mutants as possible ? and it definitely treads on some interesting ground thematically, but it never feels like the movie is fully capitalizing on its best ideas. Grief over the death of Jean is a perfect emotional starting point for Logan in the story, but the full weight of that emotion never really hits the audience. Likewise, the Japanese setting opens the doors to samurai culture, Wolverine?s life as a Ronin (a samurai without a master) and the concept of an honorable death for an immortal, long-suffering character, but by the end it all feels very surface level. You can appreciate what Mangold and writers Scott Frank and Mark Bomback tried to do with the story, but it just never feels fully realized.

While the story winds up being fairly straightforward and not everything works perfectly, credit should be given to the film just for trying something different than anything we?ve seen from the X-Men franchise. It doesn?t always work thematically, but Mangold successfully capitalizes on his setting aesthetically, as the director takes full advantage of the nation?s unique architecture, clothing, and even language to make the movie feel unique. It?s also surprisingly refreshing that Jackman is really the only recognizable star in the film, which both helps support the story?s focus and adds an extra fish out of water layer to the narrative.

Unlike the director of the last Wolverine movie, Mangold doesn?t ignore the fact that the central hero is a hot-tempered beast with knives that grow out of his hands, and makes the movie justifiably vicious and blood-pumping. The big chase and action sequences are fun ? particularly a sequence set atop a 300mph bullet train ? but Mangold?s camera and Jackman are at their best when the raging mutant is slicing and dicing Yakuza gangsters. It?s far from R-rated, but a quality portrayal of the character?s brutality in the comics. The movie may not fully deliver on many of its themes, but it does hit squarely on the man vs. beast battle that exists within Logan.

Reactionary fanboy culture has made it so that superhero movies are usually classified as either ?the worst movie of all time? or ?high art that should be on display at the Louvre,? but The Wolverine sits squarely in the middle. What it gets right gets somewhat undone by what it gets wrong, but at the same time its worst parts are elevated by its best. It?s a simple story adequately told, and it works just well enough.

What review score would you give The Wolverine?

For our To 3D or not to 3D guide to The Wolverine, go HERE.

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Elysium

It?s impossible to talk about Neill Blomkamp?s Elysium without first talking about District 9. In 2009 the South African writer/director made his debut with the small-budget science-fiction movie and completely shocked the world with beautiful mix of parable and genre filmmaking. The title earned near?universal praise, and wound up receiving four Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture.

Any film that Blomkamp made as his second feature was going to be born in the shadow of District 9 and impossibly high expectations. Elysium, sadly, doesn?t eclipse its predecessor, but it?s still a strong follow-up and an engaging piece of original science-fiction.

Elysium, like the best examples of sci-fi, has something to say about the status of our current world, but in trying to fully create the metaphor the movie?s reach exceeds its grasp, and the result is some unfortunate plot holes. Making a statement about global issues like immigration and health care, the film is set in a near future where all of the rich and powerful people on Earth have moved up to an exclusive space station called Elysium, a place where disease has been completely eliminated (thanks to non-specific advancements in technology). Matt Damon?s character, an ex-con turned factory worker named Max, is trying to lead a normal life, but is struck by tragedy when an on-the-job accident leaves him with only five days to live. In order to live he needs to get to Elysium, and to do that he must return to the criminal world he was trying to escape.

As on-the-nose as the film?s central premise is, Blomkamp actually does a smart job finessing it into the story while also avoiding being preachy or overbearing (he?s partially aided by the fact that he can regularly distract the audience with awesome fight sequences and explosions).Two well-paced acts lead to a chaotic finale, where fight sequences and explosions cloud any explanation of Elysium's mechanics and security practices. It's the kind of messy logic that bugs you while walking back to the car ? and not in a good way.

A well-written character lacking in typical hero tropes, Max is a strong character as brought to life by Damon, whose natural charisma shines through this hardened new look of tattoos and a shaved head. Blomkamp mixes in plenty of negative, selfish behavior for the character to keep him interesting, and Damon once again shows why he is one of the best lead actors we?ve got. It helps that he's surrounded by an outstanding supporting cast, with actors like Wagner Moura, Diego Luna, and Alice Braga all putting in strong turns, but the movie?s real scene stealer is District 9 star Sharlto Copley.

Completely changing gears from the meek Wikus Van De Merwe in Blomkamp?s last film, Copley?s new character, Kruger, is a hardcore, evil son-of-a-bitch mercenary who is hired by the security team on Elysium to track down Max, and the South African star truly gives one hell of a performance. The only problem with this is that Copley manages to completely outshine every other villain in the story, particularly Jodie Foster?s Delacort, the Secretary of Security on Elysium and Kruger?s handler. While she does play a crucial part in the movie?s plot, the fact that she?s stuck up in space keeps her away from most of the action and undercuts her significance. The role is so minimized that the character ends up being more of a high-powered plot device.

Filming in Vancouver as a stand-in for Elysium and Mexico City as a stand in for future Los Angeles, Blomkamp creates two very disparate settings that are touched with amazing accents and details, part of the impressive sci-fi aesthetic we've come to expect from him. Much like he did with District 9, Blomkamp invents some awesome futuristic gadgets, from the exo-skeleton that Max is equipped with in order to complete his mission to the security discs that Kruger uses to hunt Max. All of it is backed by flawless CGI that never takes you out of the film.

It's easy and true to say that Elysium isn't as good as District 9, but it?s also slightly unfair and reductive. Blomkamp?s sophomore effort stands on its own and is a solid, well-made, original film that also has its fair share of problems. The writer/director remains one of the most exciting filmmakers to watch, and if he can keep producing at this level he will only elevate the science-fiction genre.

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Planes

Pixar discovered that they could mint money after the release 2006's Cars, and you know what, good for them. The studio that has spent-- and earned-- enormous amounts of money on some of the most ambitious animated films ever made probably deserved its little money tree, even if that meant bringing us last year's Cars 2 and now the spin-off, Planes. Initially relegated to the direct-to-DVD ghetto, Planes is now getting a theatrical release, but it's still best to think of how it was originally intended: playing in the early afternoons in living rooms to entertain kids freshly home from kindergarten.

Anyone older than that is likely to feel restless in Planes, which shamelessly lifts the plot from Cars with the minor transformation of its lead character; instead of a hot-shot race car who must learn humility, Planes's hero is a starry-eyed crop duster named, appropriately, Dusty. Voiced by Dane Cook after apparent coaching from Cars's Owen Wilson, Dusty dreams of being a high-flying racer, but of course the world is full of meanies who tell him he's just a lowly crop duster. After qualifying by the skin of his teeth for a round-the-world race, Dusty enlists grouchy former warplane Skipper (Stacy Keach) and his plucky truck friends (Brad Garrett and Teri Hatcher) to help him train.

Wouldn't you know it, Dusty meets a whole bunch of colorful characters at the race too, each of them conforming to some generally established national stereotype-- John Cleese voices the stuffy tea-drinking British plane, Antonio Banderas the lusty Mexican plane, Julia Louis-Dreyfus the aloof French-Canadian plane, etc. Will he learn not to be intimidated by the hotshot Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith) and fly on his own terms? Will he be wooed into danger by the mysterious Indian plane Ishani (Priyanka Chopra)? Will he learn to overcome his fear of heights? Will Skipper ever reveal the scars from the war that have kept him from flying all these years?

Oh boy, will they ever. The only audiences who will be surprised by Planes are those for whom its intended-- children who may have never seen a movie before, period. Gentle humor and lessons are delivered to back row with the precision of air traffic controllers, and director Klay Hall (veteran of the direct-to-DVD Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure) manages it all at a swift, disarmingly accomplished pace that almost makes Planes feel like a real movie. The animation, while not quite as lively for the characters as in actual Pixar productions, is impressive in many of the flying scenes, and a nighttime crash landing in the ocean is visceral and a little terrifying-- maybe to jolt the audience awake. Accepting that Planes is at heart a direct-to-DVD film can allow it a little leeway, and if you laugh at the silliest of the dumb jokes it can help you forget that you've spent 90 minutes with characters and a story wispier than the vapor trails behind a jet.

Have you had Cars on repeat in your Blu-ray player for the last 5 years? Planes is for you and your kids who can't get enough of anthropomorphized machinery. For the rest of you? well, come on. You knew Planes wasn't for you anyway. As a perfectly agreeable if not especially smart little animated film, it's an effort-- and probably a burgeoning new franchise-- that you now have permission to forget entirely.

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Paranoia

The people behind the new thriller Paranoia probably think their timing is perfect, arriving after a summer dominated by headlines about the NSA and how much they know about us, and the feverishly anticipated arrival of Google Glass, which can document our entire lives without those around us even knowing. And it might be perfect timing if Paranoia actually had anything interesting to say about our all-knowing modern digital culture. A movie about spies and cell phones and technology titans, Paranoia wants so badly to be enmeshed in modern tech headlines, but is so silly and meaningless that it manages to already feel dated.

Technology has advanced immensely since overcooked hacker thrillers of the 90s, but you wouldn't know it from Paranoia, which follows a bunch of horrible people trying to improve cell phone technology in ways that are supposed to be impressive but make no sense whatsoever. When we meet hotshot douchebag Adam (Liam Hemsworth), he's pitching what's supposed to be a game-changing technology to his company's president Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman)-- it apparently puts your phone's screen on your TV, but Adam barely gets into the pitch before Wyatt throws him out and fires Adam and his whole team. Adam is supposedly sympathetic, caring for his emphysema-suffering dad (Richard Dreyfuss, for some reason) and coming from blue collar roots, but he also puts $16k on the company card to take his friends out to an awful-looking club, so? sorry bro. And it turns out, Wyatt actually liked Adam's pitch! He was just magically anticipating Adam blowing that cash so Wyatt could blackmail him into some corporate espionage against Eikon, the rival tech company run by Wyatt's former mentor, Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford).

The reunion of Air Force One foes Ford and Oldman is pretty much the best thing Paranoia has going for it, and it knows it, dragging out their face-to-face conflict to nearly the end of the film. But neither actor goes the kind of Full Bonkers you would hope for, with Oldman retreating into his own features and expensive suits to look like a sharply dressed mouse, and Ford at least glowering in an engaged way, but not an especially striking one. Aside from that "Now I'm standing on your neck!" line their rivalry is tepid and muddled by the loopy plot at the film's center, in which it's obvious that they're both double and triple-crossing each other behind Hemsworth's back, and we just have to wait patiently until the end for it all to be revealed. Ford is developing some kind of amazing phone technology and Oldman wants to see the specs, but from what we hear the new phone is essentially a souped-up Google Wallet, which has failed to catch on. Not exactly world-changing stuff.

As the younger brother of Thor himself Chris Hemsworth, and the most neglected point so far of the Hunger Games love triangle, Liam Hemsworth has a natural also-ran quality to him that does nothing for the amped-up tech god he's supposed to be playing here. Jason Dean Hall and Barry Levy's script doesn't offer him a lot to work with-- the conflicting details of "cares for sick dad" and "blows money at awful clubs" are meant to enrich him, but never line up-- but Hemsworth can't put the pieces together anyway, leaning on a smidge of charm and endless shots of his shirtless torso to make us follow Adam through this corporate espionage wormhole. Director Robert Luketic essentially follows suit, assembling crisply shot scenes and a thrumming, anonymous score to make the whole thing feel like it ought to be thrilling. Paranoia and its lead both get the surface-level stuff right, but none of the depth that makes actual thrillers succeed.

Promising supporting players are littered all over the edges of the story, from Embeth Davidtz as a chilly psychologist who helps Wyatt with all his manipulating to Amber Heard, trapped in a thankless role as Adam's corporate love interest at Eikon but still managing to be sultry even in square office clothes. Lucas Till, mysteriously outfitted with slicked-back Gordon Gekko hair, is perfectly serviceable as Adam's left-behind pal, but Lost's Josh Holloway is wasted as a generic FBI agent who arrives late in the film. Holloway's name in the credits promised more potential than the entire exhausted premise of Paranoia, but the movie found a way to squander that too. In a movie in which a Gary Oldman-Harrison Ford standoff is boring, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

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Kick-Ass 2

Matthew Vaughn?s Kick-Ass was an extremely violent and surprisingly fun addition to the comic book movie genre when it came out in 2010, but when its box office numbers disappointed the chances of a sequel looked dim. Now that writer/director Jeff Wadlow?s Kick-Ass 2 is actually here, however, we have to wonder if maybe we should have left this franchise where it started

Telling three separate narratives within one big story, the sequel finds Dave Lizewski a.k.a. Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor Johnson) continuing his efforts to help the city as a low-rent superhero; Mindy Macready a.k.a. Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) leaving the violent vigilante world behind to try and be a normal teenager; and Chris D?Amico a.k.a. The Motherfucker (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) looking for revenge against Kick-Ass for killing his father, becoming the world?s first supervillain in the process. While two of these narratives manage to be modestly entertaining, Mindy?s story drags the whole film down. Kick-Ass?s efforts to join a team of fellow amateur crime-fighters called Justice Forever introduces some interesting, though underdeveloped, side characters like Jim Carrey?s born-again, ex-mobster Captain Stars and Stripes. Chris's transformation into The Motherfucker?s gives the audience a peek into how a supervillain kick starts their career. But Hit-Girl (who was the best part of the first film) gets screwed over by being stuck in an R-rated, half-baked version of Mean Girls. In the shadow of Kick-Ass?s crime fighting The Motherfucker?s chaos, watching Mindy go up against a Regina George rip-off just feels like a waste of an interesting character and a talented young actress.

The choppy structure holding it all together doesn't make these narratives mesh any better. The stories are really only connected whenever Kick-Ass tries to get Hit-Girl to put on her costume again, but outside of that the film just bounces back and forth, failing to establish any real rhythm. Up until the climactic finale, the three central arcs feel completely disjointed, which isn?t exactly what you want to see in a sequel that?s supposed to reunite the fun, interesting characters from the first movie.

Kick-Ass 2 has focused a lot of its marketing focusing on the movie?s gratuitous violence and shock value, but it weirdly doesn?t even deliver on that front. While there certainly is plenty of gore to go around ? characters getting stabbed, shot and having body parts chopped off ? but it isn?t anything you don?t normally see in an R-rated action film. Even the impact of Moretz?s Hit-Girl is lessened, as the actress has grown a lot in the last three years and isn?t the same adolescent we saw in the 2010 original. I?d even go as far as to say that the movie is far more graphic when it comes to language, but even that feels mostly forced.

Many of the film?s flaws originate in the source material from comic book writer Mark Millar and illustrator John Romita Jr., but to its credit the movie actually makes some very important changes. There are parts of the comic arc on which Kick-Ass 2 is based that are downright sadistic, with scenes of animal mutilation and rape, but not only are those elements dropped from the adaptation, Wadlow actually openly mocks how awful those ideas were in the first place.

There?s a good amount to like in Kick-Ass 2, including some manic performances from Mintz-Plasse and Carrey as well as some cool comic book flourishes by Wadlow (such as having subtitles appear in speech bubbles and new settings set up with yellow boxes in the top left corner of the screen). But the good stuff is continually buried in the things the movie gets wrong. The end of the film does set up the story for a potential part three, and while part of me wants to see if there?s any chance the series could be redeemed, it might just be smarter to let sleeping dogs lie.

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Blue Jasmine

"There's only so many traumas a person can stand before you take to the streets and talk to yourself," says the hilariously unhinged heroine of Woody Allen?s Blue Jasmine, confessing what is essentially her unfortunate motto. You?d think Jasmine French has it all together, between her lofty accent, enviable grace, and elegant designer clothes. But a few minutes of small talk with this former New York socialite reveals what a total train wreck she really is. And while her story is thoroughly tragic, writer-director Allen and his stupendous ensemble make her movie deeply delightful and wonderfully funny.

? Cate Blanchett stars as Jasmine, whose journey begins on a flight to San Francisco, where she?ll be staying with her estranged sister. We know this because Jasmine is chatting with a stranger on the flight. But as this scene spills into next and another with Jasmine practically stalking the woman so she might finish her tale, it becomes very clear how desperate and lonely she is?and what a tenuous grasp she has on her sanity.?This might sound like a setup better suited to a 1930s melodrama, but it proves the perfect staging ground for Allen?s latest dark comedy.

? Jasmine was forced to abandon her beautiful Manhattan apartment and give up most of her wealth when her millionaire husband was arrested for some sort of Bernie Madoff-style scandal. Cast out by her fair-weather friends, she?s forced to move in with her divorced blue-collar sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), taking a cot in a small apartment crowded with two rambunctious young nephews and Ginger?s hovering grease-monkey boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale). Still, Jasmine tries to resurrect a new dream life for herself, even while reluctantly taking on a ?menial? job at a dentist office and generally insulting everyone around her with her deeply ingrained snobbery.

? As Jasmine struggles to make the best of her very bad situation, flashbacks flood her mind and inform us exactly how she went from the height of NYC society to scraping by in San Fran. What?s most remarkable?and what seems destined to get Blanchett an Oscar nod this winter?is that no matter how horrible a person these flashbacks reveal Jasmine to be, I still empathized with her. Maybe it was because I admire her tenacious optimism that maniacally seeks out a silver lining no matter what. Or maybe it?s that she made me laugh so damn much. Jasmine is so in need of a kind ear to hear her tale of woe that she will take one wherever she can get it, the stranger on the plane, the passerby on the street, her completely confused young nephews, or us the movie audience. Allen mocks her need by giving Jasmine only visibly disinterested listeners for her darkest confessions, and perhaps it?s this that binds us most to her. More than anything else, she just wants to be heard. Who hasn?t had a moment like that?

? Blanchett shoulders this movie with a deft comedic touch and a trembling vulnerability that not only makes Jasmine unquestionably compelling, but also makes the actress a force to be reckoned with come Oscar time. But the whole cast is sensational. When I initially saw this ensemble also included Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobby Cannavale, Sally Hawkins, and Louis C.K., I was perplexed at how all these players would fit into one film, much less one Woody Allen film. But the San Francisco setting where most of the movie unfolds breaks Blue Jasmine away from the NYC/Allen standard of posh intellectuals and high brow kvetching. Glimpses of Jasmine?s time in NYC reveal her smooth talking husband (Baldwin who is perfectly cast), but then the blue-collar residents of San Francisco provide a sharp contrast and burst her above-it-all bubble.

? Hawkins and Blanchett masterfully create a gnarled sister-bond that is barbed with resentment and rivalry, making their every interaction electric. As the overly friendly and happily low class Chili, Cannavale proves a fantastic foil to Blanchett?s cool exterior and posh posing. Plus, he brings some welcome sex appeal. Tough guy comic Clay is surprisingly solid as Ginger?s rightfully bitter ex-husband, and C.K.?aside from being expectedly funny?is shockingly sexy as her promising new love interest. Together this cast creates a vivid cast of characters whose exploits are both hilarious and heartbreaking.

? Perhaps too prolific, Allen?s film career is checkered with hits and misses. But Blue Jasmine offers what he?s most loved for: ridiculous yet relatable characters, whip-smart dialogue, and sidesplitting social humor. And it does it in a fresh setting to boot, which gives it an unpredictable air. Like many movies this year Blue Jasmine, but Allen is rare in knowing just how to take full advantage of them. This movie is bright and bitingly funny, tender, and a bit tragic. It?s hands down one of Allen?s best ever.

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Lee Daniels' The Butler

Given the amount of white baby boomer nostalgia we've been flooded with for the last two decades, there should be just as many films about the civil rights movement, and specifically the Freedom Riders, young idealists who fought and died for an unerringly virtuous cause. Lee Daniels' The Butler is, in at least a few scenes, the Freedom Riders movie we've been waiting for, visceral and passionate and led by David Oyelowo, convincingly playing a young activist from his teenage years through old age.

Except, as the title suggests, Lee Daniels' The Butler is in fact about the father of Oyelowo's character, a butler who worked in the White House from the Eisenhower administration up to the arrival of Ronald Reagan. Based on a true story and a stirring Washington Post article, The Butler-- can we ditch that awkward title for the sake of this review, at least?-- filters decades of tumultuous history through the unassuming figure of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), a man who witnessed great power but held none of it. That makes Cecil an interesting historical footnote, and probably a man with great stories to tell, but a deadly passive central figure in a story with much more interesting characters surrounding him.

The fact that those other characters are played by a constellation of big stars keeps The Butler entertaining, at least, as it cruises through history like a visit to Disney's Hall of Presidents. We start with Cecil on the sharecropper farm where he worked as a child, and where the petulant young owner (Alex Pettyfer, perfectly cast) rapes Cecil's mother (Mariah Carey) and murders his father without a second look. The owner's kindly mother (Vanessa Redgrave) trains Cecil to work inside the house and soon he's packed his bags off to the city, where a bartender (Clarence Williams III) trains him, a fancy D.C. hotel hires him, and soon Cecil's been scouted to join the kitchen staff at the White House.

Working alongside pals played by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz, and of course a rotating cast of actors dressed up like Presidents, Cecil accomplishes? well, he accomplishes hanging on to a well-paying job, and occasionally lobbying to his boss for equal pay for black and white employees-- his one nod toward the civil rights movement exploding around him. Years pass, White House administrations change, and we see Cecil have some kind of meaningful moment with nearly every President who comes by (Jimmy Carter, for whatever reason, is absent). The way Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong tell it, a single conversation with Cecil inspired Eisenhower (Robin Williams) to support integration, Kennedy (James Marsden) to support voting rights, Lyndon Johnson (Liev Schreiber) to promote the Great Society, and Nixon (John Cusack) to at least think for a second about all the awful things he's done. Cecil's humble, quiet presence can't quite convince Reagan (Alan Rickman) to speak out against apartheid, but hey, a single butler can't change all of history on his own.

Back at home, Cecil's job pays for a modest but comfortable house, a college education for his son Louis (Oyelowo), and a way for his wife (Oprah Winfrey) to stay home and raise the kids. In her first screen performance since 1998's Beloved, and never acting for a second like she's anything less than the most famous person in the cast, Oprah is straight-up channeling Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. She pours herself drinks and swans around the house, donning a series of wigs as Cecil's troubled, outrageously bored wife, careening toward alcoholism while her husband is busy caring for Presidential families. It's an odd note to strike in a movie that's otherwise doggedly devoted to the story of what the poster calls how "one quiet voice can ignite a revolution," but as out of place as she may be, Oprah brings some much-needed levity-- and eventually high drama-- to the film. A subplot in which her character gives in to temptation with a neighbor (Terrence Howard) goes nowhere, but it gives Oprah the flirtatious line "What you doing with my hangers?" and God love it for that. When Cecil comes home the day Kennedy is shot, her honest-to-God response is "I'm really sorry about the President. But you and that White House can kiss my ass." How can anybody else be expected to compete with that?

Oyelowo is the only actor who does compete, giving yet another one of the focused, intense performances that's made him such a promising up-and-comer. But he and Whitaker seem to be in a completely different film than Oprah and others, whose performances are imported from a movie more like Lee Daniels efforts like Precious and The Paperboy, one willing to go gonzo for better or for worse. The Butler feels like Daniels straightening his shoulders and trying to grow up, and except for a few dramatic scenes-- attacks on the Freedom Riders, a dinner table conflict between Cecil and Louis, the D.C. riots that followed Martin Luther King's assassination-- the film operates at the same even, needlessly stuffy level. Somewhere between Oyelowo and Whitaker's natural acting and the dinner-theater craziness of John Cusack's sweaty Richard Nixon, The Butler gets torn in too many directions, a story with too much to say and almost no effective way of saying it.

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The Spectacular Now

As we grow older, we miss more and more than feeling of recklessness, invincibility and spontaneity that was being a teenager. Learning to think ahead to the future was a crucial part of becoming an adult, and it?s this lesson that is at the center of James Ponsoldt?s stupendous coming-of-age dramedy The Spectacular Now. On its surface, the film's bad-boy-meets-good-girl plot is something we?ve seen again and again. However, with an intentionally stripped down approach and an intensely talented cast, Ponsoldt creates something fresh and entirely exhilarating.

Based on the novel by Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now centers on charismatic class clown Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), a party animal whose devil-may-care attitude wears thin with his peers as senior year draws to a close. His classmates?including his ex-girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson)?are looking ahead to college, but Sutter can?t even complete an online college application form. A major part of Sutter?s problem is his drinking, as he is always stealing sips from a flask. Day drunk is a near constant state, and at night he amps it up ending up passed out on some random lawn. This is where he is found one morning after by newspaper-delivering Aimee Finicky (Shailene Woodley) a sweet, smart but plain girl who doesn?t really register on the high school popularity charts. But she interests Sutter, so he follows his ?live in the now? dictum and pursues her.

To both?s surprise, they find a deep connection, and love soon blooms. Their support of each other inspires both to bravery. For Aimee, this means standing up to her mom about her choice of college. For Sutter, it means finding what happened to his long-gone dad. And from there, the film takes a dark turn in which Sutter must face who he is and what loving someone really means.

The Spectacular Now is remarkable, full of heart and humor while being threaded with threat of heartbreak. It?s a movie placed almost entirely on the shoulder of two young actors, and both Teller and Woodley are perfect in their portrayals. I described Sutter as charismatic above, but I struggle in beginning to express how deeply charming and engaging Teller is onscreen. Throughout the movie Sutter wins over would-be haters and foes with an easy smile and a friendly patter, and it?s totally believable because Teller oozes affability. He?s Ferris Bueller without the ambition, or Tom Cruise without the typical leading man good looks. But beyond this surface charm, Teller layers Sutter with a guarded emotional core. As the movie progresses, these layers fall away and Teller manages each turn with a delicate touch. So when we?ve reached his low point, where his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) clutches him close in a tight hug, I wanted to join in and hold him and fix him and just make him feel okay again. Teller?s onscreen charm is radiant, and pulls you into the movie. But it?s his vulnerability that keeps us invested when things become dark.

For her part, Woodley is a brilliant foil. She beams with chipperness as Aimee, but what could have been a flat role of supportive girlfriend is given depth within Woodley?s graceful performance. Whether she?s learning how to own an f-bomb, tasting her first shot, or losing her virginity, Woodley?s Aimee feels real, made up of a mix of nervous enthusiasm and hopefulness. Together, Teller and Woodley create a young love that feels vibrant, beautiful and painfully fragile. Strong supporting turns come from Larson as Sutter?s conflicted ex, Leigh as his over-extended single mom, Kyle Chandler as his deadbeat dad, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Sutter?s posh sister, Bob Odenkirk as his kind-hearted boss, and Dayo Okeniyi as his romantic rival.

Beyond its incredible performances?which on their own are worth the price of admission?Ponsoldt makes this teen movie more mature by rejecting the glossy exteriors typically put on the genre. Sutter and Aimee go to prom, but it?s not stocked with red carpet ready teens performing a big group dance number. The dialogue?crafted by (500) Days of Summer scribes Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber?isn?t punched up with unrealistic witticisms or attention-grabbing pop culture references. Ponsoldt aims to take his teens seriously, but without falling into weepy melodrama. ?And he also makes them real, sidestepped the typical level of movie makeup that makes pretty girls flawless. Sutter has visible scars. Aimee doesn?t appear to wear any makeup, and favors slapdash ponytails. Their clothes don?t fit to a T, nor are they peppered with the kind of interesting details that typically set movie clothes apart from real-life wear. It?s striking what a difference allowing young people to look like real young people makes onscreen. Everything felt more real and therefore more urgent. The emotional stakes are raised by mindfully stripping away artifice and gloss.

While I can?t say enough positive things about the film?s look and performances, Ponsoldt struggles in structure. The movie goes off the rails a bit in the third act, reeling awkwardly from one scene to the next up to its final shot?which should be said is earned and sure to spark debate. More disappointing is the blur of its timeline that made it impossible to know how much time had passed from scene to scene or over the course of the narrative. But frankly, the emotional thread of the film is so strong and its leads so captivating, I?m willing to forgive its gracelessness in pacing and plotting.

The Spectacular Now is a glorious coming-of-age drama and a fantastic first love tale. Teller and Woodley share a great chemistry, but better yet create full-blooded characters whose journey feels important and profound. Ponsoldt?with the help of a great script and story?brings to the screen a teen character who feels familiar yet unique, and should be celebrated on the level of Bueller and Risky Business?s Joel Goodsen for his life-changing charisma. ?Because it premiered at Sundance, I worried to some degree that this would be a movie too arty to be appreciated by the masses. But while it lacks the flash and sex appeal typically slathered on teen romances, The Spectacular Now is so moving and heartwarming I can?t imagine it not winning over anyone who gives it a shot.?

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