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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