The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Plot: Childhood friends Burt (Steve Carell) and Anton (Steve Buscemi) learn magic as kids and grow up to have a show in Vegas. They grow old and get stale, and upstart magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) comes to town with a bold street magician act. Soon Burt and Anton are booted out and are doing birthday parties and old folk's homes. At one home they meet old-time great magician Rance (Alan Arkin). Rance re-inspires Burt about the wonder of magic, and soon they are back out hustling. In the end there is a magical face-off with rival Steve Gray.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The funny parts are funny, but the majority is dry and a bit dumb. Overall, I was glad I saw it, because it was light and likable. 

Highlights are the intro scenes with kid actor Mason Cook as young Burt. Those scenes were very evocative. Any scene with Jim Carrey was good. Jim Carrey was so intense that his stupid tricks seemed great. I loved the swollen cheek trick. 

I liked the soundtrack too, but sadly the pop songs were left off the soundtrack album. 

Cast: Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin

Directed by: Don Scardino

Rating: 2.0+ stars: Some parts are very funny, and maybe that makes it 2.5, but mostly its just a little too dumb. A little life from Steve Carrell might have kicked it up a rating point. I am glad I saw it on this relatively weak movie weekend.

More: The guy in the poster just doesn't look like Steve Correll. There has never been such a poor likeness. 

Even More: Real magic shows are more fun than movies about magic because all the tricks in a movie are special effects.  The illusionist aspect of magic is missing, and that makes magic seem retro. 

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Admission

Plot: Portia (Tina Fey) is an admissions officer at Princeton, and high school principal John (Paul Rudd) invites her speak at his school, which is progressive, rural and odd. Portia falls for John. Almost immediately John brings senior Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) to Princeton and tells Portia something that I won't reveal here, but Portia tries hard to get Jeremiah into Princeton. This leads to funny sitcom situations. There is a subplot with Portia's mom (Lily Tomlin) who is a hard-core 1960's feminist.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: This is a well-written story that primarily features sitcom humor in embarrassing situations. The film has a ironic, wry tone that I liked. I like relationship-based humor, and there are many cringe-worthy situations which are hard to watch because the audience knows more than the characters.  

Tina Fey does a great job playing a neurotic every-woman who gets trapped in circumstances. I am not so fond of Paul Rudd, who seemed generic. I thought Susannah, Lily Tomlin's character,was inspired, but Lily Tomlin herself was just OK. 

I really liked the admission committee meeting because of the all the relationships between people at the table. I have been at meetings like that. Director Weitz did a great job of capturing it -- very clever. 

Cast: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, 

Directed by: Paul Weitz based on the novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Rating: 2.5 stars:  pretty funny, good dialog -- it just does not feel like 3 stars. 

 

More:  I liked Mom's Bella Abzug tattoo. No one in the world has a Bella Abzug tattoo, but it was very funny to have it on Susannah. 

Even More: DW Jenny says, it is "Admissions" in more ways than one because the characters are admitting things about themselves. 

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Warm Bodies

Plot: After a zombie apocalypse, the humans have walled themselves into a single walled city, and the zombies and their more demented cousins, the skeletons, rule the world outside. Julie (Teresa Palmer) and her boyfriend Perry leave the walled city to scavenge for supplies, but get surprised by R (Nicholas Hoult), M (Rob Corddry) and other zombies. R eats Perry's brain and acquires his memories including his love for Julie. R is immediately smitten by Julie, and can't kill her. Instead he disguises her and takes her into the zombie city. Soon she begins to trust R, and hate the skeletons who are meaner and more aggressive than the ordinary zombies. She meets M and their zombie friends, who also don't eat her, and like having her around. The skeletons force them to run, and in time R arrives at the human city where he is not wanted.  In the end, there is a battle between humans, skeletons, and zombies, and the movie proceeds to its ending/s. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Warm Bodies is Romeo and Juliet with R, the zombie, as Romeo, and Julie as Juliet.  M is Mercutio, and Nora is Juliet's Nurse. Plus there is a scene with Julie on the balcony and R calling up to her, as in the play. 

Since R is a zombie and can't emote very well, most of the movie is carried by Palmer's Julie; we never get much emotion from Nicholas Hoult's R -- although he gives a voice over narration to tell everyone what he is thinking.  Aside from some nice facial acting by Teresa Palmer, the middle of the movie is slow. Zombies are dull monsters.

The skeletons are faster moving and clearly animated, and often they were scary. The photography is serviceable, and the sound effects were good, which made the average sets seem better.  The soundtrack by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders was great; there were multiple good songs.

There is a symbolic meaning, which is the love can redeem the world -- bring dead people back to life. That was a nice plus. 

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Nicholas Hoult

Directed by: Jonathan Levine based on the novel by Isaac Marion

Rating: 2.0 stars: possibly 2. 5 stars if you like the Shakespeare angle a lot. Some good parts, but only occasionally fun. Although advertised as a comedy, it is not funny -- see the SPOILER section below.

 

SPOILER: Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, and this movie is advertised as a comedy, which means a happy ending. There is a symbolic death scene that is supposed to serve as the tragic death of the play, and a rebirth: I like the idea that when zombies 'die' they come back to life. If Julie had stabbed herself after R died as in Shakespeare's original, it would have felt wrong because the evil skeletons would have won.  By introducing a common enemy of skeletons, the writers create the option for a happy ending. 

More: As everyone knows, there is no such thing as zombies, and you can't ask a movie like this to make sense. If you need sensibleness, you should stay home and read -- I was going to say watch CNET on TV, but that isn't very sensible either -- maybe you should read geometry.

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Oz the Great and Powerful

Plot: A 1890 circus show magician Oz (James Franco) is swept away in a gas balloon by a tornado to Oz. This portion is shown in black and white in a squarish screen shape. When he gets to Oz, the movie is in color and in full width. He meets the witch Theodora (Mila Tunis) who he flirts with as they journey the Emerald City, where he meets Evanora (Rachel Weisz) her sister witch, whom he also flirts with. Evanora sends him to Glinda (Michelle Williams) who is their enemy.  Glinda beguiles him, and Oz switches sides. The sisters figure out that he has been romancing both of them and now Glinda, and suddenly hate him. Oz is not actually a wizard but he uses his showman tricks to defend himself, and then in the final battle. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Wonderful. This is a clever retelling of the classic story that is both fresh and comforting. It is something between a remake and sequel in that it copies so many elements from the original. Notably how people in Kansas show up in Oz.

The tone of the movie is just a little bit comedic, and this distracts from dramatic elements. I wonder what it would be like as a straight drama, darker, stronger and more adult, but probably less magical and less interesting to the whole family audience. In the end, this is a family movie and some of the comic elements need to be seen in that light, for example, Finley the talking monkey.

In the end the Wizard gives gifts to his friends. I thought this was sweet, charming and affecting. It verged on too saccharin, but this is family movie. The end also tied up the story of China Girl (Joey King) which is important thematically.

The movie is built on the excellent performance of James Franco, who I had not seen before, but I am sure that I'll see again. Rachel Weisz was strong too; Mila Kunis was good, but Michelle Williams was only OK. The Danny Elfman sound track was the best orchestral soundtrack recently. 

The photography, aside from the black & white gimmick, shows an other world reality in a theatrical way where the scenery represents the real Oz, and the audience is to suspend disbelief. In the 1939 Wizard of Oz, the journey to Oz is really Dorothy's dream, and she was actually sleeping at Aunt May's house the whole time. It is possible that director Raimi was trying to show that through set design and photography. 

All in all, this was a great piece of filmmaking. I liked it, and I want to see it again. It may become a cult classic, but I am not sure mass audiences will go for it. 

Cast: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Willams, Joey King

Directed by: Sam Raimi

Rating: 3.25 stars: Not as good as some more serious films. It is fun to watch most of the time. 

  +1/4

More: Being a Disney movie, I am pretty sure that there will be another Oz movie someday. I wonder if the dreaminess of the world will continue to play into it. Will Oz someday take his balloon back to Kansas and wake to find his Anne and Frank?

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Jack Reacher

Plot: Five people are shot by a sniper and quickly the police arrest Charlie. He tells the police to call Jack Reacher, and then he gets beat up and spends the rest of the movie in a coma. Immediately Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) shows up at the police station, and meets with the detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) and the defense attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike.) Reacher is a tough-guy, former Army investigator who lives off-the-grid. 

Reacher checks into the evidence and finds it too neat, and suspects the Charlie is being set up. Soon someone tries to murder Reacher, and then witnesses start to die. Reacher just gets mad, leading to chase scenes, fist fights and a showdown at a quarry.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: I saw Jack Reacher at a $1 matinee since I did not like the first-run movies this weekend. Jack Reacher had a lot to like, and plenty of imperfections too. Not a bad popcorn movie -- better if you don't think about it. A few of the characters are well developed, and there are some clever plot twists.

I never really bought the idea of a drifter, tough-guy super cop like Jack Reacher -- why would someone live this way. Taking the bus everywhere? No cell phone?  Really? 

Rosamund Pike does a adequate job, but a better performance in the female lead would have really helped. Despite the fact that she might be double-crossed by people she trusts, we don't see much emotion. Tom Cruise does a nice job acting, but since Jack Reacher is such an enigma, it is hard to say what he is acting for. 

I liked the scene where he jumps out of the car curing a chase scene, and walks over to the bus stop to hide from the police. Then a guy loans him a ball cap as a disguise -- pretty funny. 

Cast: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, David Oyelowo, Vladimir Sizov

Directed by:  Christopher McQuarrie, based on the book series by Lee Child (Lee Child can't be his real name, can it?)

Rating:  2.0 stars: good but with weaknesses. Enjoyable but not super fun. 

More: Nice scenes of Pittsburgh

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Beasts of the Southern Wild

Plot: Six year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) lives in a rural southern Louisiana swamp called The Bathtub with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) who is poor, sick and often drunk. Hushpuppy takes care of  herself and the neighbors watchover her. Her father gets sick; there is a storm with terrible flooding; there are dream sequences of monsters; and  Hushpuppy looks for her mother. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: This is two movies at once: on one level it is a story of poor people with a "It Takes A Village to Raise a Child" message, and it is also about the monsters of life, the horrors of civilization, global environmental breakdown. 

The enjoyable part is how Hushpuppy overcomes problems and how the poor people of the Bathtub take care of each other. The sobering part is poor and dysfunctional it all is, and how it could be better. Films need evil to be overcome so I should not complain about how dreary it is, but the bad parts are pretty unpleasant.

The dreary parts in the middle are redeemed by the relatively optimistic ending, so I finished watching in a good mood. 

Cast: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly

Directed by: Benh Zeitlin; based on a play by Lucy Alibar

Rating: 2.75 stars: I saw this on a plane, so it might have been rated higher in the theater. It was enjoyable. 

 

More: Poverty porn is showing photos extreme poverty to produce emotions in the audience perhaps made worse by not aiding the subject of the photography. There is melodramatic manipulation in this movie, but that is what moviemaking and storytelling generally is. In a modern US movie, none of the actors are mistreated. In a documentary, perhaps there could be moral liability. 

The ethics of poverty porn are distant from the ethics of journalism which hold that a journalist cannot objectively tell a story if s/he is involved in the story. Of course, there is no journalism here. On the other hand sometimes the best thing a photographer can do is take pictures and show them. 

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Side Effects

Plot: Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) is depressed and Dr Jonathan Banks (Jude Law)  prescribed a new anti-depressant -- whose side effect is sleepwalking. One night Emily is sleepwalking and she stabs her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) to death in her sleep.  It looks like Emily will plead insanity but then the plot starts to twist and twist again. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Side Effects hinges on the photography and acting from Rooney Mara. It isn't what she says as much as the way she holds herself -- reacting to the action. Jude Law is just as good especially later in the film as the tension turns up on his character Dr. Banks. 

You might think that Soderbergh is making a film about over-medication or the prescription culture -- but actually not. It is an suspenseful psychological thriller -- very smart writing with clever plot twists. 

The music by Thomas Newman was always interesting and appropriate. I liked the interesting interior photography and actually the set decoration. Several of the paintings were interesting. 

I liked the ending, because once we figure out what is happening, the evil doers pay. 

Cast: Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Rating: 4.0 stars: a well-crafted film with a clever story and great acting; Why not 4 stars? 

 

More: I hate to give a movie 4 stars too early in the year, but it is as good as a lot of last year's favorites like End of Watch, but not as good as LIncoln or Cloud Atlas. Better than The Impossible, The Avengers, and Perks of Being a Wallflower. It does not have a message though.

Even More: By the end of the movie, we see that one of the characters is purely evil: fully disassociated from humanity kind of evil. Way past super villain evil into shoot up a room full of 1st graders kind of evil. 

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