Trainwreck

Judd Apatow movies have the distinct and perhaps dubious honor of being among the raunchiest mainstream movies while also being the most subversive. Where 40 Year Old Virgin challenged male promiscuity, and Knocked Up suggested that maybe getting and staying together for the sake of a child is not such a bad thing, we now have Trainwreck, which challenges that holiest of grails: Female promiscuity.

Some time ago, rather than rein in the men who are dogs, a loud, connected and unimpeachable group of women decided they should "get to be" dogs, too, hence this story of a woman who finds her life of drunken hookups unsatisfying is controversial.

I mean, not to sane people, of course, but to...well, they're out there in the media. You can find them without even looking too hard.

Amy Schumer stars, and she wrote it, sort of by cribbing the opening of Shallow Hal, reversing typical rom-com tropes, and mixing in a bunch of her trademark humor which, yes, is reminiscent of Sarah Silverman and Janeane Garofalo. (In fact, I was frequently reminded of a Garofalo bit where she's kicking the guy out of her apartment post-coitus.)

There's a lot of what typically makes Apatow films enjoyable: Frequent humor delivered with a sure hand, not frantically or desperately, and a supporting cast which doubles both as humor relief pitchers and dramatic backstops. So, while the cute love story between Amy and Aaron (Bill Hader) would be an okay chick flick (like Bridesmaids chick flick, not Beaches chick flick), this movie transcends that with:

• Aaron's best friend being a very sensitive (and passionate about Cleveland!) LeBron James.
• Amy's former boyfriend being the phenomenally thick and musclebound Steven (wrestler John Cena), unable to talk dirty, and possibly a little "confused" sexually.
• Amy's dog of a father, played by Colin Quinn, having MS and being both wildly offensive and lovably human.
• Amy's sister Kim, played by Brie Larson (Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now), who's generally the nice one, but who has unresolved resentment toward dad.
• Vanessa Bayer as the work friend. I've never seen her before, but she was quite appealing.
• Dave Attell as the homeless guy who begs outside of Amy's apartment. Attell may have adlibbed all his stuff, it sounds so...Attell-y.
• Randall Park (Kim Jong Un in The Interview) and "Delocated"'s Jon Glaser play Amy's dorky co-workers at S'NUFF magazine.
• Mike Birbiglia (Cedar Rapids) and Evan Brinkman have the sort of thankless task of being Kim's husband and stepson (respectively), who must be dorky and unlovable when Amy has one point of view, and then endearing when she reforms.
• There's an awesome running gag about an arty film called "Dogwatcher" featuring a morose, chain-smoking Daniel Radcliffe as the guy walking seven dogs, and a troubled Marissa Tomei as the woman who wants to give him one more dog.
• Tilda Swinton as the evil boss and Ezra Miller as the odd intern. Swinton and Miller were the contentious mother and son of the grisly We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Actually, we've seen so much of Miller, we were going nuts trying to remember where. The Boy and I both thought maybe he was part of The Wolf Pack but he had an important role as "8612" in The Stanford Prison Experiment, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Kevin and, hell, going back a ways, City Island.

It doesn't all work. Arguably LeBron James makes the movie, with his earnest Aaron's BFF performance, but then he's gone from the last third of the movie. (He shot all his scenes in one week.) And there's an intervention that features a randy Chris Evert, Matthew Broderick and Marv Alpert that broke the suspension of disbelief for me.

I mean, I guess the one-on-one basketball between Hader and James was stretching it. But the intervention seemed sort of pointless.

100 year old Norman Lloyd is in it. That was nice.

Raunchy, though. A lot of mid-coitus humor. A lot of post-coitus humor. A lot of pre-coitus humor. A lot of humor in non-coital situations referencing coitus or other sex acts.

As for Schumer, she's not model thin, and that works pretty well for her, although she's not looking great next to the cheerleaders. Literally. I mean, her body looks fine but cheerleaders are top-notch athletes and she doesn't come close. Which is played for a pretty good, if overlong, gag.

Her face, on the other hand? Well, I'll grant that Fox News has some great makeup people, but the Amy of 2015 looks a bit haggard compared to the one of 2010. I don't know if that's due to her fair complexion, or if they wanted to, to some degree, not over glamourize her, but she doesn't quite pull of the "only four years older than Brie Larson" thing.

She is likeable, and a fine actress (as comedians often are)—her interactions with and about her father being truly fine, emotionally moving work (and apparently based on her real life situation with her father).

Anyway, by this point, you should probably know if you like this sort of thing, this Apatow humor, with the condoms and the bodily fluids and what-not. If you do, this is a reasonably good example of same.

Riiftrax: Sharknado 2

The guys at Rifftrax have hit their 200th riff track this weekend, surpassing the amount of riffing done by Mystery Science Theater 3000, and we trundled down to see the second film in The Crappening, the 2015 slate of four films, starting with The Room and closing out with Miami Connection and Santa Claus vs. The Ice Cream Bunny.

Sharknado is one of those dumb Internet things, that would be barely worth a second look, except for the hyper-attention it got and the sort-of communal watching experience provided by Twitter which, even with all that, did not deserve even the "let's all goof on it" attention it got. And, hyper-attention notwithstanding, it apparently did no better than an average SyFy channel monster-fest. Perfect riffing material, right?

Well, no. At least not for me. Don't get me wrong: Mike, Kevin and Bill do yeoman's work here, by-and-large. We laughed. We had a good time. The only serious problem, technically, with this riffing was that the sound mix was bad. Like almost every other aspect of Sharknado 2: The Second One, the sound is half-assed. It's poorly mixed, in such a way that it was often hard to hear what people were saying, and the riffing sometimes got lost in the noise.

Bad sound was such an issue in MST3K that "good audio" was one of the key points of a good riffing movie on a list made by, I think, Joel in later years. But unlike the muffled ambient sound or poor overdubs of something like Manos: The Hands of Fate, this just feels neglectful.

In fact, all of Sharknado 2 could be summed up as "They just didn't care," a riff used during the classic MST3K episode "Attack of the the (sic) Eye Creatures". But it's more likely that the "Eye Creatures" creators did care but lacked the budget and skill to make a watchable film. This film is more a pure cynical calculation done on a spreadsheet in the bowels of NBCUniversal that answers "It doesn't matter what's in this. We can sell the rights for $X, and with $Y for budget, we'll make Z% profit."

And that trickles all the way down from the top to almost every corner of this looks-like-it-was-shot-on-a-cell-phone film. In the opening of the film, there's an airplane-in-distress sequence where the pilot is Robert Hayes. Although I barely recognized him, I guess that's worth a smile. But then you're kind of doing that through the whole movie: Is that somebody? Or somebody who used to be somebody?

But it can't keep your mind off, for example, the visible makeup, because the lighting is so bad. Or the sparing, awful special effects, which often look like somebody ran a blur filter on the frame. Or the constant, weather-free-except-for-sharks-and-flood effects of the Sharknado itself. (It never rains but floods figure big.)

You can justify some of this as being the natural effect of a low-budget, but I would point out the doubtless lower budget Big-Ass Spider or this year's Zombeavers. The former is constrained by the SyFy formula as much as Sharknado, but it looks like people cared. Zombeavers manages to be very entertaining and also highly skillful at balancing an extremely dumb concept with humor and horror.

And I recognize that these are largely people past their primes but I don't know if I were in the business of selling my face that I would agree to be in something like this. I don't know who Ian Ziering is, really, and had even less idea about Mark McGrath. Tara Reid at 38 needed a much gentler treatment. Vivica Fox looked decent, partly due to her skin I imagine, and partly due to fighting the trend of starving yourself thin so that when you hit 50 look like a drumhead. Kari Wuhrer also looked good, and actually professional.

The guys even commented on that: Something like "Stop that. Nobody else is acting..." I thought Bill Corbett said something about Wuhrer being in a worse movie (maybe the Eddie Murphy disaster "Meet Dave" with Corbett co-wrote) but I couldn't quite make it out. And she wasn't in that, so maybe he was talking about someone else. (Wuhrer was in Anaconda, of course.)

There's probably a master's degree or doctorate in characterizing "riffs", but I want to do a quick categorization to explain why, movie aside, the riffs here didn't entirely work for me.

1. You can riff on overall quality. This is standard audience-level riffing, where you turn to your friend and say "This sucks." It's easy and the sort of thing that makes you think you could riff, too, given a chance. There's actually a good example of this here where Ian Ziering is flying around in the tornado, able to kill sharks as he flies by. I think it's Mike who says, "You know guys, this movie is kind of dumb."

2. You can point out plot flaws. Murphy does a long riff here pointing out the complete stupidity of the idea that sharks could be tossed about in a weather event and not only not be killed but be so completely unaffected that their sole purpose would be to bite you. But here, as with everything in comedy, timing and brevity is everything. In episode #305 of MST3K, "Stranded In Space", one of the characters must abandon the hero because he spills his medicine, and he can't live without it. Crow comments: "Note to myself, pack more life-saving liquid."

3. You can draw physical environment references. Something looks like something else. Penises and boobs are always popular, though they mostly avoid that obvious stuff.

4. You can draw cultural references, which is a big source of jokes. As it turns out Jared Fogle, of Subway fame, is in this, with the FBI raiding his house only three days earlier, apparently looking for child porn. So, when he shows up on screen, they say, "We had a joke for this on Monday" which is better than any actual joke.

5. You can make fun of the actors. I think this is the trickiest thing to do well. It's best when there's an idiosyncratic element at play, like when Adrianna Miles can't pronounce "werewolf" in the movie Werewolf, or pretty much all of Tommy Wiseau. Ed Wood. Even Joe Don Baker. Or if there's an element of the movie that the actor just doesn't fit, like being lusted after by all the other characters inexplicably, or being really out of shape and yet still an action star.

So, here we have a lot of riffing on Tara Reid. A whole lot. I get that she's had plastic surgery. I get that she's sort of rough looking (and the lighting, makeup and camera work don't help). I get that she doesn't seem to be able to (or care to) act. And as someone who bashes this whole movie for its cynicism, I can relate to the idea that not trying is particularly mock-worthy.

But it stops being funny after a while, and for me, in fairly short order. It just feels mean.

I don't want to rag on it because it is funny, and Reid's not on screen much, but when she is, the laughs for me (and my companions) mostly stopped. Although we enjoyed it, it's not one I'd select for repeated viewing, especially with all the gems in the Rifftrax/MST3K catalogue.

Ex Machina

This was one of those movies with EXTREME buzz, which then cooled off, weeks before I saw it.

And that's good.

Because Ex Machina is a good movie, but not a great one. In fact, while we both agreed it didn't suck, The Boy said he preferred the thematically-similar Spanish film Eva to this. I don't object to that sentiment at all.

The story is that of a young man (Domnhall Gleeson, Harry Potter, Unbroken) who visits a secret laboratory where and odd, manipulative super-genius (Oscar Isaac) wants to use him to test his artificial intelligence. Said artificial intelligence taking the form of the lovely Alicia Vikander (Son of a Gun, A Royal Affair, Anna Karenina) in CGI makeup that's a dead rip-off of that in Eva.

Her name is Eva, too.

But where that movie played on paternal instincts, this one goes straight for the groin—er, heart, as Eva involves Caleb (Gleeson) in the shadowy underpinnings of the spooky lab and Nathan's (Isaac) ultimate plan for her.

So, yeah, it's Island of Doctor Moreau.

I mean, seriously, this isn't as blatant as the gushing over Under The Skin, but it really is just a standard mad scientist/haunted castle scenario, dressed up in Mac/iPhone styling.

First of all, though, it does not suck. And it's to be commended for that.

Second of all, it avoids most of the really terrible pitfalls of this genre of Mad Science/Old Dark House movies.

Thirdly, Isaac really does a good job as the mad scientist.

Fourth, the remaining cast is certainly up to the task. Vikander and Gleeson are appropriately vulnerable. Sonoya Mizuno is suitably exotic and mysterious.

Fifth, the ending, while overlong, mostly works.

So, with all this goodness, why weren't we blown away? Well, I think, first of all, it really is just a restyled '50s horror movie plot which, even if The Boy didn't recognize it, was full of unanswered questions and plot holes. One point, which we didn't agree on, was the implication of Nathan working on "classified" stuff. I got the impression he meant government-classified, in which case the whole setting seemed preposterous.

The setting is that Nathan is completely alone out in the Alaskan wilderness, by the way. I pointed out to The Boy that, at work, it will take a team of people to perform a relatively trivial task. (It's not always true, but generally speaking "cowboy coders" started vanishing in the '90s.) But in this case, Nathan's conquering both Artificial Intelligence and AI literally by himself. One presumes he gets shipments of supplies from somewhere but it's never discussed.

And that's a plot point. In fact, the whole point of the plot is whether or not Eva is alive in a meaningful sense. When we find out Nathan is reusing stuff, we simultaneously have to ask why since there's no reason to do so, and then later there's a strong implication that, no, he doesn't really re-use much of anything. I can't explain it without spoilers but it doesn't make a lick of sense.

There's a lot of stuff like that which, if you gave it a moment's thought as an engineer, wouldn't fly. But, you know, the mad scientist stuff never made any sense either. It still works, basically. There are a few surprises, just because you expect a major screwup at some point.

The ending's a bit too long.

Good acting all around. Vikander is a great choice for the 'bot. She's lovely, of course, but she's not a sexpot, and as a result she comes across more vulnerable than anything, which is important to the story. As Mike Nelson quipped on Twitter: "Saw the film Ex Machina, a contemplative take on Artificial Intelligence and how it's affecting our -- look, the robot chick isn't THAT hot."

Heh. No, she's not. It's not a role like Under The Skin.

So, the broad strokes? Typical goofiness. The details? Fun, clever and lively. Worth a look.

Life of Crime

Frank Dawson is skimming the money from his housing projects and Ordell and Louis know it, but can't prove it. So to extract money from the corrupt developer, they decide to get a little bit of extra leverage by kidnapping his wife, Mickey.

Frank is too busy ignoring his son, Bo, and diddling his mistress, Melanie, to notice. When Louis and Ordell make him aware of his plight, it takes very little persuasion from Melanie to convince Frank not to negotiate with the kidnappers: win-win, either way, right? Louis and Ordell, meanwhile, are struggling to keep Mickey reasonably safe while they shelter her in the house of neo-Nazi Richard.

The first thing you've gotta be grateful for when someone adapts a crime story, particularly one by Elmore Leonard (3:10 to Yuma) is that you can follow it, and this one you mostly can. I couldn't quite figure out how Ordell sussed out Melanie's plans, nor did I exactly buy the relationship between Mickey and Louis.

But the bigger mystery is how a movie with Jennifer Aniston (Mickey), Tim Robbins (Frank), Mos Def (Ordell) and Isla Fisher (Melanie) ends up with under 50 theaters for its opening. Maybe it's 'cause of John Hawkes, who plays Louis, who is restricted to independent films (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Winter's Bone) by law, apparently.

I mean, it's not great, sure. But it's good. It's fun. It's dark, but not overly so. Writer/director Daniel Schecter moves things along at a pace that allows you to appreciate the cleverness and gloss over the silliness.

So I guess it's the Leonard thing. People who go see films based on Leonard's work have expectations. I guess those expectations were met by '90s films like Jackie Brown and Get Shorty, both of which are probably over-rated.

Guessing. I've only ever seen the 3:10 to Yuma flicks, and John Frankenheimer's ugly and unpleasant 52 Pickup. (The latter film along with the even worse film The Men's Club, released the same year, left me with a life-long aversion to Roy Scheider films.)

I don't know who makes these decisions. After a summer when Lucy is still in the top 10 in its 9th week, this movie (in its second week) is sandwiched between Land Ho! and Snowpiercer which are both in their third months! In fact, those two films are picking up theaters while this one languishes after a not-even half-hearted attempt to market it.

Did you hear of it beforehand? I didn't. It was just playing and not awful (though the popular RT score has dropped from the 60s into the 40s since it first came out).

Anyway, it's fun, short, dark, and maybe too cute for some. Good acting, especially from Aniston (not in Rachel mode) and Hawkes (who's always good). Mos Def and Tim Robbins are doing their things: It's not a reach for either of them, with Def seeming only slightly more sleazy than he did in Begin Again and Robbins having perfected the Evil Republican caricature years ago. (Of course, the character's party is never mentioned out loud but you know what template Robbins is drawing from.) Mark Boone Junior is amusingly loathsome as the Nazi.

I was struck by how long-in-the-tooth Isla looked in this. She's 38, but the lighting really revealed a heavily applied makeup. Perhaps that was a deliberate choice; I know I've never thought in the past, upon seeing Fisher, "She's getting long in the tooth." Aniston, 45, looks great. Like a woman in her 40s, but not one mutilating herself in an attempt to look like a woman in her 20s.

So, maybe it's deliberate, to keep the audience from identifying too much with Melanie. On the other hand, Melanie is far-and-away the most evil character in the story, so I'm not sure that was ever an issue. (Actually, given that the movie takes place in 1978, they're all too old for their roles.)

I spotted two things in Life of Crime that struck me as anachronistic: At one point the smarmy country-club confrère play amusingly by Will Forte (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2, Nebraska) is about to dial 9-1-1. And at another point Aniston talks to Robbins about "quality time". Those things were '80s in my world, but 9-1-1 has a long history and the first recorded use of "quality time" is in the '70s, so maybe both things were in the original book, written in '78.

Anyway, details aside, The Boy and I liked it.

Guardians of the Galaxy

I hereby make this (highly dubious) announcement: We have hit peak superhero movie. It's all downhill from here on out, and the death knell is Guardians of the Galaxy. Not because this isn't a good movie, it is: One of the best superhero movies to-date, though overrated. And not even overrated necessarily on its own merits, but in the sense of the "Marvel can do whatever it wants!" message being promulgated. More on that in a moment.

But first, our movie: Guardians of the Galaxy is the story of a boy kidnapped from Earth by aliens who goes on to become a petty outlaw that goes by the name of Star Lord, a pretentious moniker nobody seems to know but himself.

One of his jobs results in him getting stuck with a particularly powerful artifact (along the lines of the Tesseract that was in a lot of the other movies and the Aether from the second Thor film), which in turn leads him to cross paths with a bunch of people who initially want to kill or capture him: The barbarian dude, the hot green daughter of the evil emperor, the wiseguy raccoon and his companion giant tree pal.

And, really, if reading any of the above slows you down, you haven't been going to the movies lately.

Despite the fate of the universe being in the balance, the proceedings are light and lively, and mostly not bogged down in their own CGI, which is interesting because it's pretty much all CGI. This is a space opera, essentially, like Star Wars or any of its many clones, but with more of that cool-nerd vibe that all the kids are into today.

And it's funny.

The Flower liked it. The Boy also liked it, even though he finds the fights in these things dopey; he thought they kept them within the bounds of good taste.

I could go see it again. I'd take the Barbarienne, but there is some stuff that might scare her. (She couldn't make it through Thor 2.)

Solid cast: Chris Pratt, whom the Flower recognized from "Parks and Recreation" and whom we know best as Emmett Brikowski from the Lego movie, plays Star Lord affably enough. Zoe Saldana seems to need a minimum amount of makeup to look like a hot alien chick. I assume her skin's not really green, but she does look in serious need of a sandwich. Wrestler Dave Bautista makes a good barbarian. Bradley Cooper is stunt cast as the raccoon, though he's doing a voice sorta. (I kept thinking it should be Bruce Willis.) Vin Diesel reprises his role as the Iron Giant, er, Giant Tree.

Other notable smaller roles include Glenn Close as some sort of leader/functionary, Benecio Del Toro as some sorta creepy guy, Michael Rooker (famous for playing a creepy guy on the "Walking Dead") playing a creepy pirate guy, Karen Gillan (we just saw her in Oculus, and she has a series coming up this fall called "Selfie"), and John C. Reilly as Everyman.

It's probably good idea to point out that if you set your movie in space, and people go to this super-advanced universe completely alien to Earth, and they find John C. Reilly, there? Well, you might as well have set it at the corner 7-11.

I'm kidding. Sort of. But sort of not: Nothing says "NOT REALLY SPACE" like John C. Reilly.

Oh, and Gregg Henry. Fine character actor. Been playing a dick since at least Body Double. Plays a dick here.

It's all slick and fun and breezes by to a '70s/80s soundtrack, including even a few songs I've heard, like "Fooled Around and Fell In Love". Writer/Director James Gunn, who did a fairly decent body-horror film back in 2006 called Slither, is to be commended.

All in all, though, I think it's all downhill from here. I probably shouldn't be trusted, since I was pretty sure this was going to be the next Howard The Duck (who has a cameo at the end of the movie), but this feels like a sea change. Even as the #1 film of the year, it's just barely going to crack the all-time Top 200.

And the tonal balance it strikes is precarious, indeed. If all superhero movies (as the Ace of Spades suggests) ultimately become Batman movies, it's because the danger of falling into camp is very high indeed. And nobody gets that better than The Batman, at once the grimmest of heroes (though not nearly as grim as he's been made out in the movies) but also the one with the campiest history. (As has been noted, the problem with the '60s TV series wasn't that it wasn't faithful to the comic book, just that it was faithful to elements and time periods of the comics fans wanted to forget.)

Gunn manages the comedy/drama/silliness well. Others will not be so successful. Widening gyre, center not holding, and what not.

None of which means you shouldn't enjoy this. But I'm thinking you probably won't remember it for long either, except, years from now, when "Daredevil vs. Batman" comes out, and Robin starts helping Batman on with his pink cowl. You'll think "I remember when superhero movies didn't suck" and then "Blake said this would happen."

The cool thing, is that if it ever happens at all, I can take credit for being right. And if it doesn't, I'll just pretend I didn't write this.

Expecting Amish

Well, this is kind of a weird one. Trolling for a movie on a Tuesday night (I think it was Tuesday) and this movie Amish shows up on the schedule of our local Laemmle. No description. Can't find out anything about it. Director Richard Gabai.

Wait, Richard Gabai?

The same Richard Gabai who starred in Dinosaur Island and Assault of the Party Nerds? The very same Richard Gabai who starred in dozens of '80s and '90s Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski flicks that kept us up late at nights before the Internet allowed us to watch anything at any time?

That Richard Gabai?

Aw, hell yeah, I'm in.

Well, who knew? It was actually a movie for the Lifetime Movie Channel. This was a showing for the cast and crew. That's always fun because I can look at all the tiny people.

Honestly? Well, we enjoyed it! The Boy wasn't enthusiastic, but added it wasn't the sort of movie where you sat there regretting the choices that brought you to this juncture in your life. It's charming and it's sometimes funny, and I liked that (given the constraints) it was reasonably respectful of the Amish.

The acting was hit-and-miss, but as I point out in that review of The Graves, in low-budget flicks that's very often a matter of editing and pacing. This had a definite TV-movie pacing, with some awkward fade-outs to commercial breaks. (They don't seem so awkward on TV, but they stick out in a theater.) There were a few scenes that seemed like awkward line readings that probably could've done with some re-takes.

Beyond that, well, this is, essentially, a Romance novel, and we are most assuredly not the target audience. The premise is that Hannah (AJ Michalka of Super 8) and three of her Amish peers are running off to L.A. for their...uh...crap...I forget what it's called. The thing where they go spend a few weeks not being Amish, to decide if they want to be Amish for the rest of their lives.

As a sidenote, I just want to say that, if this is a real thing (and none of the Amish people I've run into have ever mentioned it), I have a lot of respect for it on the one hand. Treat your kids like adults and let them make their own decisions. Right on.

That said, what a stupid idea to throw teenagers into the Sodom and Gomorrah of modern life and expect any of them to come back. Even hard-working Amish kids (maybe especially them) are going to be tempted by the life of ease presented by modern day technology, loose morals and Barack Obama. (Bam! Just turned this into insightful political commentary! Take that A.O. Scott!)

Back to the movie: Hannah's friends adapt quickly to the "English" way of life, while she does the good girl thing for most of the trip until a sensitive and non-threatening DJ, Josh (Jesse McCartney, a well-established voice actor), catches her eye.

He shows her the world, at least the world of Southern-California-when-you're-on-vacation-and-not-having-to-make-money which, it must be admitted, is pretty damn nice. Well, pretty soon, she's comparing her modern life to the one back in the 18th century, and the modern life is looking pretty good, especially since she's been doing all her mother's work since her mother passed away.

The movie makes a few feints at looking at some really heavy issues before glossing over them for a completely pander-y ending.

Eh, I give it points for making the feints. But I presume everyone watching these movies knows exactly how they want the movie to end, as does everyone making them. I mean, if you're looking at the movie realistically, the main character sells out her sister to get her happy ending. But that's kind of like faulting the plumber in a porno for neglecting a house's infrastructure.

A few parts were casually amusing, though: For example, why would Pennsylvania Amish send their kids across the country to L.A., rather than to New York? (Obviously because they were from a section of Pennsylvania located in the Santa Clarita valley.)

The Amish "kids" are all way too old for their field trip, which is a standard Hollywood trope, so no big deal there. But they are varying degrees of successful in pulling off the Amish part. Michalka's all right, for example. Her boyfriend, played Jean-Luc Bilodeau (Pirahna 3DD), is perhaps a little exaggeratedly stiff, but it mostly works, as his character seems to be struggling with his role in life.

Actually, all the Amish men, including the great Ron Ely (back after a 15 year hiatus!), come off a little stiff at times. Brian Krause (as Hannah's father) probably finds the best balance between formal, stern and wooden. Bonus points for not doing the "thee" and "thou" thing.

Then there are Hannah's two friends, Mary and Sarah, played by Alyson Stoner ("The Suite Life of Zack and Cody") and Aurelia Scheppers, respectively. Stoner played the Tomboyish Max on "Zack and Cody", though she's blossomed since then. And while her character is handled somewhat ham-handedly to advance a few plot points, she's fairly convincing as Amish.

Scheppers (who was in the audience, I believe) I know nothing of, but her film credits have her as "Beach Babe", "Hot Tub Hottie" and perhaps most tellingly, "Venus Vavoom" and "Aphrodite". You get the idea. It's like casting Megan Fox as a nun.

It's not really about acting—there's nothing about her behavior that seems out-of-place—but the glowing makeup, the perfectly tweezed and arched eyebrows, and the glossy hair didn't exactly say "Amish" to me. I'm going to guess the target demo would prefer that to the kind of stocky, pasty, unibrowed look of actual Amish women.

But as I say, these were points of amusement more than scorn. It's a fine TV movie, with only a few slow spots, and if Gabai can get his sci-fi flick with Christopher Lloyd movie going, I'll be sure to check it out.

Demon's Rook

The next feature had such a tantalizing premise that we swallowed our disappointment over Cannon Fodder and marched in to see it.

It was called Demon's Rook and the idea is that a young boy communes with demons until one takes him to the underworld, where he lives for a decade or more, only emerging as a confused, heavily bearded adult. And, as it turns out, leading a bunch of other demons up into our world, where they wreak havoc.

The other hook this had going for it was that all the effects were practical. The director, James Sizemore, was also the special effects chief and star of the film (with his wife Ashley Jo). The makeup is quite good, very old school '80s but lovingly done, and by itself sets this movie apart from other low budget flicks.

Which is why the movie itself is such a crushing disappointment, in its way far worse than Cannon Fodder, which didn't really have much promise.

The best parts of this movie were the stretches without any dialogue, and another long stretch where the dialogue is entirely in demon-ese (no subtitles).

Another amusing thing was how it hearkened back to '80s, '70s and (at points) even '60s horror flicks. It starts out squarely in the '80s, during that Creepshow-inspired wave of monster-oriented horror features, videos and TV shows. Then at other parts it evokes '70s cult-oriented flicks like The Devils' Rain. At one point, there's a virtual go-go dance with demons, a la '60s. And the ending is kinda '60s nihilistic and reminded me of, like, Manos or Dementia 13 or something from that ilk.

Apart from that, it's a complete and utter mess. It's said that it took over two years to make with all the consequent cast and crew issues that would occur when you make a movie over the course of two years, even if it's mostly with friends and family. At the same time, Mrs. Sizemore can be seen in videos from a year ago talking about how "principal photography" is about to begin, and the movie was first aired in March.

Both things are possible, of course. It might be that many of the scenes were filmed over the course of two years with little more purpose than "this will be cool" and an idea about demons terrorizing a rural community.

Anyway, it's a sort of depressing experience, precisely because there's some real talent involved, not just in the makeup (obviously) but Sizemore seems to have a real facility for the visual aspect of filmmaking. But this comes off as sort of special-effects porno: the non-SFX portions are just filler.

We were so bummed at the end, we gave up on the festival.

The Spectacular Now

It's possible that I am a traitor to my generation. At the time, I found a huge number of the popular teen films of my youth flat-out gross. Not just vulgar, crude and artless, but morally appalling. By the time Say Anything... closed out the '80s teen-flick-fest, I was just singularly unimpressed with the canon.

I still watched Ferris Beuller with my kids, but about the mid-'90s, the casual ease with which he lied to his parents started to make me really uncomfortable. (I didn't have the kind of parents you needed to lie to to take a day off, and I am not that kind of parent, so I can't relate to a lot of the teen angst, admittedly.)

What I'm getting at is that the modern flicks seem to be far better. Young actors, as I've noted, are leaps and bounds better than they were before the proliferation of cable created a crucible for them to hone their skills. Production values are phenomenal.

Also, since it's (roughly) my generation who are the parents now, we're more-or-less complete washouts. Less "square" and more burnt-out losers—actual drags on their children. And not in the abstract off-screen way of The Breakfast Club—although I guess all kids are Bender now—but in a more in-your-face Harry Dean Stanton way, where they're stealing your paper route money for booze and crack and whatever.

(Have you noticed I'm digressing longer and longer before getting to the actual movie these days? I have. I assume it's my transition into old age where I tell long, meandering stories that don't go anywhere.)

Anyway, The Spectacular Now is the story of charming drunkard high school senior Sutter who breaks up with his fun-loving girlfriend, Cassidy, and ends up hooking up with bookish, unpopular Aimee.

Aimee is played by Shailene Woodly, who would not be out of place on a "top 100 hottest" list of a men's magazine, but they have her without any makeup and her hair back in the early scenes so...sure, why not. (Acting plays a part here, too, snark aside.)

Miles Teller plays the likable buffoon, Sutter, who has a Live For The Now philosophy (hence, the title) and a lot of pent up anger toward his mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh, herself a starlet of '80s teen flicks) regarding absentee dad (ultimately played by Kyle Chanlder, Zero Dark Thirty).

The movie follows Sutter and Aimee through their rather sweet relationship, which is marred only by Sutter's alcoholism and adherence to his "live for the moment" philosophy. And if Sutter was originally using Aimee as a rebound, he becomes increasingly attached to her, as she sees in him the potential to do greater things.

There's actually a very interesting perversion there, as Sutter has a job that he does well, but it's actually a sign of irresponsibility, since he's using it as a way to never have to do anything more challenging in his life. It's not Molly Ringwald working at the record store in Pretty In Pink. It feels more like Glengarry Glen Ross.

Anyway, you have a substance-dependent and an enabler, and there's not a lot of plausible ways to end this story happily. I understand the book ends unhappily, in fact. There are some scenes of near crushing despair toward the end of this movie, but it does at least allow for the possibility that our hero is not hopelessly screwed for the rest of his short, brutish and nasty life.

The Flower was okay with it, though hoping for something funnier and lighter-hearted, which I guess is one thing the teen movies of my youth had over these newer ones. The Boy liked it as did I.

The characters are likable and have some depth and their own arcs, and a lot happens in the space of 90 minutes. In a big picture sense, if the teen movies of the '80s were all about people living in the now because their futures were bright (because they were bright, young and full of energy), this movie contrasts that with a picture of someone who really does live totally in the now.

And even though he's a very decent fellow, he's not wearing shades because his future's so bright. It's because he's hungover.

The World's End

Jason The Commenter (@BXGD) mentioned, when he saw The World's End, that it's best to go in not knowing anything about it, and there's some truth to that. So if you like going in blind, you might want to stop reading after the next sentence, which is: My caveat to that is that if you're familiar with the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright oeuvre (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and "Spaced!"), you can't be too surprised by what happens.

Nonetheless, the movie has a bravura first act ending which hooks you into the rest of the film. Then, as @JulesLaLaLand noted, it kind of falls apart at the end of the third act. (Shaun and Fuzz suffer similarly, though not nearly as badly, from this Need For The Big Finale syndrome.)

Anyway, the premise of "The World's End" is that loser Simon Pegg gets his old teenage gang together for one night of epic pub crawling called "The Drunk Mile". Wait, no, "Golden Mile." (I think "Drunk Mile" would be both more honest and less gross.)

Of course, even as he wears the same clothes, hairstyle (sorta, he's bald-y now), and drives the same car, his friends have moved on and had real lives. So the comedy aspect is tempered with a kind of poignancy of a life wasted.

But that all changes soon enough and the movie goes off in a completely different and amusing direction that keeps the second act popping.

I can't really say much about it without spoiling it, but if "Shaun of the Dead" recalls classic Romero zombie movies and "Hot Fuzz" is basically a fun update of "The Wicker Man", this movie strongly recalls—well, again I can't say, or it'd spoil it.

But you'll see it, if you look.

We enjoyed it but I was inclined to think it was the weakest of the so-called "trilogy" (Caveat: No actual narrative connection to Shaun or Fuzz)—but it's the sort of movie I'll watch again to see how I feel later on. I think I felt slightly let down by Fuzz after Shaun, but on multiple viewings I think it's the strongest of the three. (Definitely best, and lowest-key, ending of the three.)

What I particularly enjoy is how the actors change characters from movie-to-movie. Nick was a gross loser in Shaun and a childlike naif in Fuzz and a no-nonsense businessman (though still somewhat idolizing Pegg) in World. And he doesn't even consider himself a real actor. (How English!)

Similarly, Pegg plays a low-ambition retail manager in Shaun, a super-cop in Fuzz and a burnout in World. And basically I think they didn't use much makeup, so he looks all of his 43 years and then some.

Even Edgar Wright, whose signature cuts and camera moves powered the hilarity in "Spaced!" and Shaun hearkens to these techniques here without leaning on them. These are not one-trick-ponies. They have a style but they're not limited by it.

Bill Nighy has a fun voice-over only role.

Thing is, if you like these guys, of course you're going to want to see it. And if you don't, you won't. But if you don't know, it's really hard to say if you will. There's really nothing quite like the stuff these guys put together.

Wolverine

The Ackman in this movie is big. How big? Why it's huge!

Just one of the many so-called jokes virtually mandated around casa 'strom.

It's Wolverine with Hugh Jackman and Famke Janssen reprising the roles (of Wolverine and Jean Gray, respectively) they originated thirteen years ago! That's kind of impressive. Especially since Jean Gray's been dead since 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand. (I didn't see it but it seems to have been subtitle "Up Your Bryan Singer For Abandoning The X-Men For Superman".)

The story is that Wolfie is moping around (Man of Steel style, kinda), seeing Jean in his dreams, coaxing him to die (he killed her in The Last Stand) when an old pal contacts him to come to Japan to say goodbye.

Important setup info that might be confusing if you don't know: Wolverine is immortal and indestructible, and has been since at least WWII, when he saved this Japanese guy from the A-bomb. In current day, said Japanese guy is old and dying and wants to offer Wolfie the opportunity to transfer his immortality to him.

(The given of any Hollywood movie about immortality is that the immortal will be seeking death.)

The other big trope this movie uses is robbing the hero of his powers (since it would be too easy otherwise). In this case, it's the insidious Viper who poisons him and weakens his regenerative strength.

The ending of this movie is obvious almost from the beginning. And it's not great. But.

Overall? This movie is really solid, avoiding most of the problems that plagued Man of Steel. The scale isn't save the world stuff, but more traditional hero with crisis saves day, finds love, handles personal crisis. That gives you a shot about caring what happens.

It's not super-heavy on the CGI, either, relying more on traditional stunts and choreography which, by-and-large is more interesting.

Acting is solid. Jackman is really good in this role. Janssen is ridiculously beautiful as she closes in on 50; if she's had any work done, she's escaped looking like a frozen-faced alien. I suspected CGI was used at points but I think maybe it's just good old-fashioned makeup and lighting (and good genes).

Tao Okamoto and Rila Fukushima play the young Japanese girls, the former as the love interest and the latter as the sidekick, and they do a good job. Fukushima is sort of odd looking, like Devon Aoki, which I found somewhat distracting.

Svetlana Khodchenkova plays the evil viper and, thinking about it, the main characters, except for Wolverine himself, are females. All different character types, too.

The use of Japan as the setting was cool, too. The whole thing, really, was more enjoyable than a lot of the more bombastic summer flicks of the past few years, I think because it focused more on one man's struggle—less the super and more the hero—than on cataclysmic consequences.

We both liked it, The Boy more than I. I found the obviousness of the ending somewhat detracting from my enjoyment of the proceedings. Still: One of the summer's better comic book flicks.

Pacific Rim

What's this Pacific Rim movie about? I think it's best summed up by this poster the North Hollywood Laemmle had up:

Actually, the only way Pacific Rim could've been better is if it had featured Gigantor beating up Godzilla.

After Man of Steel, I was basically never wanting to see another big-budget CGI summer blockbuster ever again, but I love me some Guillermo del Toro and, despite bad box office, the buzz on the movie was very solid indeed.

Verdict? Well, it's a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. And it's about as good as a movie about giant robots fighting giant monster can be. Which ain't great—but also ain't bad!

The premise is unapologetically Japanese Video Game-y, with the earth under assault by Kaiju, monsters who emerge from the ocean (via a gate to another dimension) to terrorize shore cities. In order to combat the Kaiju, earth's governments band together to create Jaegers, giant robots which must be controlled by two psychically linked pilots.

The frequency, power and quantity of kaiju incursions is on a rapid increase, so level up Kaiju pilots!

Here's what works in Pacific Rim:

• The CGI is excellent, but it doesn't seem to exist for its own sake. 

Think about that for a second: A movie about giant robots and monsters fighting—a movie that would not exist without CGI—actually shows tremendous restraint, and avoids the 20-minute-combat set pieces found in, say, Man of Steel.

• The scope is global, but the drama is primarily personal.

Also kind of astounding, in a movie that sets up the "save the world" plot from scene 1 is actually focused primarily on the (melo)drama of the lead characters. The psychic link is a convenient shortcut for the sort of bonding you get in more realistic combat movies. This makes it more engaging than either Man of Steel and (most of) World War Z.

• The plot has a few mild twists.

Nothing super-shocking, but not a straight shot from first punch to final boom.

• It has a real "anyone can die at any moment" feel.

You don't usually get any kind of surprise in a blockbuster as to who is going to live or die. But this was almost horror-movie-esque. (More on this in a moment.)

• Ron Perlman!

More on this, after we cover the bad, too.

Here's the bad:

• The acting isn't very compelling

Maybe it's not the acting, exactly, but there's not a lot of charisma on screen here. A movie like this needs a William Shatner or a Nic Cage even selling it. 'cause, you know: silly. Suspension of disbelief hard-strained.

• It's magicky.

OK, this bugs me, though obviously, in a movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots, engineering isn't a big deal. And there's a typical (enjoyable) comic book logic that leads one to the path that says "Yes, giant robots are, of course, the way you'd fight giant monsters, because you couldn't possibly deliver the same or far worse damaging payloads from long ranges with missile and plane attacks."

That aside, the actual combat is about at the level of Toho's Godzilla movies and, truth-be-told, most action movies these days: We have a fight until the plot necessitates some resolution, and the damage done is exactly what is called for at any moment.

I'm not complaining, in the sense that of course that's the way it would play out. Why spend a few thousand dollars of your $200M budget to try to make sense? Whatever you came up with to tie things together with some semblance of coherence would get taken about in one of the draft processes any way.

But it does distance me. It's not even that I object to being awkwardly manipulated, it's that this stuff is so clumsy as to be completely ineffective manipulation.

Probably the worst thing is that this movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots isn't even the worst offender of this variety.

Now, the neutral:

• No all-star cast.

This aspect of the film was interesting. Ron Perlman was the only actor I could name in this film, and he's typically B-movie fodder, though he played Hellboy, the beast in the '80s "Beauty and the Beast" TV series, and a caveman in Quest for Fire.

He's usually in makeup, in other words.

But this allowed them to make the results of the movie somewhat less predictable. It made the horror movie-esque aspect possible, or at least more likely. And it doubtless knocked $30-40M off the budget.

It may be why there was no really compelling charisma there. The Japanese girl, Rinko Kikuchi (who was in one of my favorite films a few years back, The Brothers Bloom) is a good mixture of vulnerability and moxie, and Charlie Hunnam (Children of Men) strikes the right notes as the humbled hero. Even Idris Elba (Prometheus, the black Norse God in Thor), whose role is the most egregiously clichéd, pulls it off.

I don't know if it's the acting per se, really. But there's a lot more genuine chemistry in del Toro's Hellboy movies. This may be one place where the scale actually did hurt: There's too much space for the camaraderie to fill. Also, the characters end up dying at an alarming rate, long before you can care much for them.

Weirdly, this might need a four hour director's cut.

Anyway, The Boy, who hates this kind of stuff really and truly enjoyed it. I mean, he saw the original Transformers movie when he was about 10, and hates it to this day, and leans against the big, dumb action flicks that are aimed primarily at his demographic. But this won him over, I think due to a general lack of pretentiousness, and a degree of respect for the audience.

It's bombed here in the U.S., looking like it might just barely clear $100M, but it's earned twice that overseas, such that we might actually get a sequel.

So, I guess the recommendation is: If you can like a movie about giant monsters and robots fighting, this is probably a movie you can like.

Oz: The Great And Powerful

Theory: Producer Joe Roth decided he could make a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie without either Tim Burton or Johnny Depp and it would be just as good.

Conclusion: Tragically, he was right.

Neither The Boy nor The Flower wanted to see this, but The Barb, being seven, was primarily concerned about whether the flying monkeys would be too scary. The Flower wobbled, almost heading out with us at the last second, but got cold feet and bailed.

The Boy yelled "YOLO!" and ended realizing the shortcomings of that philosophy. I said no fewer than six times afterwards "You didn't have to come with us!"

The Barb declared it the greatest movie EVER!

Oz is directed by Sam Raimi, which is why I wanted to go see it. Raimi's movies are almost always interesting. The Quick and the Dead, for example, is highly watchable for all its flaws. Spiderman 3 is the only movie of his which I would dread watching again. I figured it would be a plodding fantasy like, say, Jack The Giant Slayer or Roth's Alice In Wonderland, but Snow White and the Huntsman is more on the mark.

It's not that it's plodding; it has that going for it. It's just that some of the artistic choices are so staggeringly bad, the movie never fully recovers.

James Franco is no Johnny Depp. I generally like Franco, whether he's trapped under a rock or being assassinated by a hitman, but while handsome, he doesn't have the raw charisma needed for the part. He's a carnival magician who flits from town-to-town and woman-to-woman, and while he's believable enough as a womanizer (is there any chance he could not be in real life?), he just doesn't have the raw charisma, stage presence or the voice to play a great huckster.

He always seems like a decent guy, which may be the problem. Honestly, I'd have a hard time thinking of who could do this role these days. Johnny Depp's a little old. That would make him 70 when Dorothy Shows up. (Frank Morgan was around 50 in the original.) Jack Black, too. Actually, even Franco's a bit old.

I dunno. Channing Tatum? Seriously, I have no clue what 30-ish male actor has the necessary stage presence. Depp 20 years ago was just developing that presence. In fact, Depp's portrayal of Ed Wood is closer to the mark than Franco here.

Sorry to harp on it but in a movie about Oz, the portrayal of Oz himself is pretty important.

Even so, the opening black-and-white in Kansas is one of the stronger parts of the movie. The backstory was okay, even if a bit eye-roll inducing. The story introduces Dorothy's mother as Annie, the love of Oz's life, whom he can't commit to because he's got greater ambitions...that...uh...she wants him to live up to but he can't. Or something.

The need to connect the stories struck me as cheesy, but I'm not 100% sure that's not from the books. L. Frank Baum was the honey badger of retconning. First book? The Emerald City isn't emerald at all. It's a normal city where everyone is required to wear green lenses. Second book? It's emerald.

When we get to Oz, the second staggering artistic failure emerges: The Whimsy Woods (I think) are a garish nightmare of CGI, completely devoid of any verisimilitude. The Boy pointed out astutely that this kind of splashy, garish, and completely unnecessary sequence is akin to the mandatory sex scene in movies of the '70s/'80s.

It's really and truly awful. And the 3D is irritating. (We saw it 2D, so it was stupid as well as irritating.)

Then we're hit with the next big casting disaster: Mila Kunis. We generally receive Miss Kunis favorably here at the 'strom, having occupied the niche of "World's Coolest Girlfriend" in a number of movies, but when we first hear her (offscreen), she sounds like she's off the set of "That '70s Show". The makeup is troweled on so thick (or maybe it's CGI), she looks completely artificial. She does a little better later on.

Then we're introduced to Frank, a friendly flying monkey (Zach Braff) who becomes Oz's companion. I was cringing at this point but...this actually works out okay. It's not great, but given the capacity for "Frank" to turn into another Jar Jar or Ewok or other cutesy irritating sidekick, it's sort of amazing that I didn't want to "Fluffy and Uranus" Frank by the end.

Similarly, China Girl (a girl literally made of china) should've been both creepy and cloying, but Raimi very deftly handles this.

Apparently, he eschewed motion capture and had the actors do their parts, which were filmed and then rendered independently by real-live animators. This was a solid choice.

Next we get Rachel Weisz who's been growing on me of late. She's all right.

The cast is rounded out with Michelle Williams, who is the brightest spot in the cast. I was not a huge fan of her Marilyn, you may recall, but she imbues her portrayal of Glinda with a purity that recalls Billie Burke (who was 56 at the time of the 1939 flick!) without a trace of camp or irony.

After the initial shocks, the movie actually works pretty well because of its absolute sincerity. Raimi is a true believer and his earnestness is precisely what pulls iffy premises like The Quick and the Dead into the watchable category, and comic book flicks like Spider-Man 2 into greatness.

The Oz books are dubious in a lot of ways: They're not surreal, like Wonderland, but they're not fantasy-realist, like Middle Earth or Narnia. I can't recall if they were actually violent—violence in kidlit being a non-issue back then—but if memory serves there were occasional outbursts, with the overall inclination being to resolve things via absurdity and bluff rather than actual conflict.

Raimi deftly handles The Battle for Emerald City without turning it into Minas Tirith, although the resemblances to Army of Darkness are unavoidable. Oz in Oz is much like Ash in the 13th century. Still there's less violence and more chicanery, which is really keeping with Baum.

Yeah, we hated it. We really couldn't get over the initial awfulness. The Boy was really turned off by Kunis, though he was somewhat more favorable toward Franco than I. We both conceded that we didn't not care at the end, which is an accomplishment, really.

And, again the seven-year-old thought it was the greatest movie ever! (And wasn't scared, which has been a real issue for her.)

Music by Danny Elfman. In case the Burton-y-ness of it wasn't obvious enough.

The Sessions

What's a paralytic polio victim to do, once he's hit 38 and wants to get some action?

I'm assuming here, the guy has no game, what with being in an iron lung most of his life.

Well, if he's a poetic Catholic in Northern California in the late '80s, he might consult with his priest. And since it's Northern California in the late '80s, that priest is probably going to encourage him. And before you know it, he's got a sex surrogate showing him the (heh) ins and outs of makin' sweet love.

And who better to star as the sex surrogate than Helen Hunt, reprising the role she played 20 years in The Waterdance? And who better to replace Eric Stoltz than John Hawkes?

Nah, just kidding, the two movies aren't really that close. Just paralysis and naked Helen Hunt.

So, this is a typical Hollywood glorification of sin and promiscuity, but it's a pretty good movie for that.

John Hawkes plays Mark O'Brien, a sufferer of polio (based on a true story!) who finds himself yearning for a real romantic relationship, especially when he replaces his frumpy old caretaker (played the great character actress Rusty Schwimmer) with the hot young co-ed (Annika Marks).

This leads him to Moon Bloodgood (who is quite good in this, apparently surviving her brush with the mediocrity that is "Falling Skies"). Then Helen Hunt. And finally Robin Weigert. Lotta chicks end up liking this guy.

Earl W. Brown also has a role, by the way, making a mini-"Deadwood" reunion (Hawkes, Weigert and Brown).

So, the acting is top notch. Hawkes is great and consistently under-appreciated around award season.

The story—well, it's touching. O'Brien wrestles with God and theology, and is genuinely concerned at the prospect of sinning. And you can't help but root for him. He's a sensitive, intelligent guy with normal drives that are utterly thwarted by his physical state.

It's the sort of thing that the secular world just says "Screw theology. Go for it." The fact that the movie never really gets deeper than that keeps the proceedings light and fluffy, but probably shortchanges Macy's priest and O'Brien's devout Catholic.

Eh. It's impossible not to root for this guy and hope that his "sessions" don't work out. But it's shallow in the area of morality.

The story touches briefly on the general ickiness of sex surrogate-ness. Hunt has a kid and is married to a worthless "philosopher" (the always excellent Adam Arkin). And while it's all supposed to be profesisonal, O'Brien's desire for a normal, romantic relationship is seductive in its own way to a woman whose own husband doesn't care enough about her to, you know, stop her from having sex with other guys for a living.

(Hey, that's my interpretation. I'm sure more sensitive ones are available.)

So, fun, lively, heartwarming and incredibly graphic film of dubious moral proportions. View accordingly.

It's impossible to discuss this film without discussing Helen Hunt's looks. She's in her late 40s, which is age appropriate for the role, and she's also about as nude as you can be in an MPAA "R" rated flick. I'm reminded of the saying (attributed to Catherine Deneuve) that "after 30, an actress has to choose between her face and her ass".

Well, Hunt's ass is amazing. Actually, her whole body is. She's lean and tight and there are plenty of women 20 or even 30 years younger who would kill to have her body.

Her face? Well, I'm not someone who ever thought Hunt was a great beauty. But her face is positively distracting in this film. Part of it can be attributed to really severe makeup in the styles of the '80s. But not nearly enough. I suppose part of it can be attributed to knowing what she looked like 30 years ago, though The Boy thought she was odd looking, too.

So, whether it's that she hasn't gotten plastic surgery or that she has, it's conspicuous. (It may be, per Deneuve, that the same leanness that makes her body look so tight also makes her face tight.) It's a testament to her acting ability that she can overcome this, at least to a degree. She still can project a winning warmth and appeal.

But I can't help but wonder if they'd gone a little less porny and had her put on 10-15 pounds, if that might not have better served the story.

Argo Eff Yourself

Ben Affleck is at it again, directing and starring in yet another interesting and entertaining picture, and proving that not only does he actually have some skill at a director, he gets a better performance out of himself than other directors!

Almost five years ago, one of this blog's first movie reviews was Gone, Baby, Gone. The Town came out when I was working the three jobs and doing the weekend commute thing, so I don't think I have a review of it here, but it was also solid.

Argo is probably the best work he's done to date. And except for the opening narrative, which explains how the Iran hostage crisis was all our fault, and the closing voice-over from Jimmy Carter, it's actually a pretty pro-America movie.

The story, for those of you who weren't around in 1979, is centered around the Iranian hostage crisis, when terrorists stormed the American embassy and captured everyone and held them for 444 days. It probably didn't cost Carter the election—he was going down hard anyway—but it sure didn't help him to have Ted Koppel making his career and establishing "Nightline" as a serious news show by harping on it night after night.

Hell, Howard Hessman did a thing on it as his opening monologue on "Saturday Night Live".

Yes, children, there was a time when the leftist media would criticize lefty politcians.

I digress. Argo concerns six Americans who weren't in the embassy who found refuge in the Canadian Embassy, and the CIA planning to get them out. Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez, master spy, whose specialty is extraction, and who quickly dismantles the proposed plans for getting the hapless Americans out of Iran.

The plan they hit on—and it helps to emphasize that this is based on a true story—is to pose as a Canadian film-making team in Iran to film a sci-fi epic called,  you guessed it, Argo!

This may offend or shock some of you but, in fact, Mr. Affleck takes some liberties with the truth. And there have been a lot of Monday-morning film-producers bitching about this. For example, the Canadians were far more active and important than the film shows.

But this is the sort of thing film-makers do all the time to create focus. (Steven Soderbergh probably wouldn't have done that.) Similarly, the ending is a nail-biter race against the bad guys that never happened. But it's a great climax.

Affleck gave Mendez personal and profesisonal problems he doesn't seem to have had, which was probably gratuitous, but since it was his ass on the line, Affleck can be excused for making more time for ACTING. It's not the strongest part of the flick but it would be churlish to begrudge him that.

The acting is wonderful: John Goodman plays makeup artist emeritus John Chambers, whom he strongly resembles; Alan Arkin is an archetypal (fictional) producer past his prime; Bryan Cranston, Clea DuVall, Tate Donovan, and lots of other hard-working actors who always seem to turn in good work and enliven a movie.

The hostages have plenty of drama to act out, of course, with Goodman and Arkin providing comic relief—and great chemistry—as Hollywood old-timers. Bonus: An abundance of porn-staches and feathered hair.

Double-secret-super-bonus: Adrienne Barbeau as a sexy space queen!

Adding to the fun, if you were there, is all the 1979 references, even if slightly discombobulated. Like, "Battlestar Galactica" had been canceled by the time of the hostage crisis, but there are Cylons on the movie lot. I guess, arguably, they could have been from the short-lived "Galactica '80" series but mostly, I think they were there to emphasize the popularity of sci-fi post-Star Wars. (Said presence is strongly felt, of course.)

They even matched the color scheme to '70s. Not just interior design stuff, but the film itself had a bit of that ugly brown/yellow palette that was favored in the "realistic" movies of the day. (But without the ugliness, happily.) All that was missing was a score that was brass-heavy.

Anyway, overall, a thriller that manages to be tense and fun and warm. Quite an achievement really.

The Boy liked it a lot. The Flower liked it a lot. I liked it a lot.

I just wish they hadn't tried to pin this whole thing on the USA. The narrative glibly refers to how the US and Britain interfered with a legitimately elected rule who "nationalized" the country's oil wells, returning the oil to The People.

Seriously? "Nationalize" is just another word for "steal". And after being "nationalized" wealth ends up being squandered. Damn little of it gets to the people. And I can't help but think, from the spate of Iranian movies we've seen, that things haven't been so rosy for Iran even though it's been free of evil Brit and US control for over 30 years.

But, like I said, that only bugged me a little.

Prometheus

The opening scene of Prometheus features an alien landing on a lifeless earth, drinking some black goo, and then dissolving into a cloud of life-granting DNA.

I missed that scene.

The movie makes a lot more sense without it.

Prometheus is a prequel to the seminal 1979 sci-fi horror flick Alien, directed by Ridley Scott. It's not a "side-quel" as originally suggested, it's a straight-up prequel that explains how the alien-infested ship in the first movie came into being.

Sort of.

Prometheus can only marginally be said to explain anything. Well, that's not fair: It actually does explain Alien. It does so in such a way that raises a whole bunch of other questions that it can't possibly answer.

New franchise anyone?

The Red Letter guys did a bit where the one guy (who plays "Plinkett", I think, in the mega-star-wars-hooker-killing reviews) just fired off a series of things that don't make sense for about five minutes while the other guy sat there dumbfounded.

I thought one of the questions missed something pretty obvious, and a few others were deliberately raised, but there were a bunch of illogical things in the film, and a few of them bugged me. There's a couple of twists toward the end that are so obvious from the beginning that they're silly.

Actually, if the movie suffers from anything, it's the number of well-established sci-fi/horror tropes it hits—which it then feels the need to spell out. Not often in great detail or anything, but it has been over 30 years since the original Alien and we all know the drill by this point.

That said, I confess I liked this movie. I guess a lot of people had higher expectations because they were thinking "Ooh, Alien! By the original director! And the guy who did Blade Runner!" And maybe a few were thinking Gladiator, too. But, of course, those are three films over a 35 year career. And, if you think about it, it's really H.R. Giger's alien design in Alien—and a whole mess of visionary artists in Blade Runner—that make those films so iconic.

Not to minimize Scott's contributions to those movies in any way, but it's remarkable lightning struck twice in his career, and that shouldn't be confused with an ability to call lightning at will.

But I do tend to like his films, and I include this one with it. Noomi Rapace, the formerly dragon-tattooed girl, shows another side of herself: Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character is split between her, on the softer side, and Charlize Theron, whose character seems to have been almost entirely transplanted from Snow White and the Huntsman. Irdis Elbra reprises a character close enough to Al Matthews' Sgt. Apone in Aliens to where I started to wonder why they didn't just call him Sgt. Apone, Sr.

Other than that, there's Guy Pearce in ridiculous old-age makeup. As I mentioned in my review of J. Edgar, old-age makeup is always bad and that doesn't usually bother me. In this case, it called to mind an episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Peter (I think) plays Benedict Arnold on his deathbed. He's supposed to look like he's only got a few days to live, besides being 112-years-old or something.

The other characters are alien-fodder. The attempts at characterization clearly buckle under the larger need to put said characters in jeopardy.

The other thing that I really enjoyed about the film was the way it referenced and set up the original. The original, if anyone were to think about it, makes no sense either. How does it happen that a bunch of creatures on a forsaken planet are waiting there—completely untended—for untold time for compatible biological life to come along? It don't make no sense.

This, at least points to a connection that, if not plausible, is still way more plausible than any aspect of the "Star Wars" prequels. But there were nice directorial touches, shots and moments that pleasantly recalled the original.

You could say, in fact, this is one of the better Alien rip-offs. That's damning with faint praise, of course.

The Boy was fairly "meh" about it. Not too impressed, and a little insulted by the lampshade hanging, I think. Well, not really lampshade hanging but maybe more Narrating The Obvious. Ridley Scott hasn't directed a sci-fi or fantasy movie in over 25 years, but I am beginning to suspect he hasn't seen one in at least as long.

But, look, if you go in with modest expectations and a high proficiency at belief suspension, you'll see an expertly shot movie that moves almost fast enough to escape it's own illogic. Well, okay, not really, but you might not care.

Dark Shadows

The phrase "hot mess" comes to mind when viewing Dark Shadows. A lot.

But really, Tim Burton should be happy to have "hot" anywhere near one of his movies these days.

My mother tells me I loved the "Dark Shadows" TV show. I have a pretty good memory. I remember nursery school (which I started at 21 months) and lying in my crib and our first TV (my dad hated the things so we never had one till we got it as a gift). But I don't remember watching that show.

Which is probably just as well, because this really doesn't have much to do with it, except that it concerns the exploits of a vampire in modern times. Where modern times is the '70s, anyway. (I look at The Boy and do the math: A movie about '72 is as modern for him as a movie about WWII was for me at his age. Chew on that for a while.)

The premise is lifted from Thorne Smith's last screenplay I Married A Witch (later the inspiration for Bell, Book and Candle and "Bewitched"), in that Barnabas Collins is cursed when he spurns a witch's love. Only in this case, instead of being doomed to unhappy romances in all his subsequent incarnations, he's turned into a vampire. And if that's not bad enough (and by gosh don't you think it oughtta be?) he's buried for 400 years until uncovered in an excavation.

Whereupon he murders nine construction workers in a rather horrific display.

That would be our hero.

Then it's camp time! The bloodied, archaic Johnny Depp—whose makeup through the whole thing is campy in its awful obviousnessness—wanders around the '70s for a while until he finds his old estate where his listless descendants live, their riches drained by the same evil witch (Eva Green, Casino Royale) whose desire for destruction didn't stop with him.

You know, it's always a mistake for Burton to try to do a hero story. Barnabas is supposed to be the hero, but he's killing people right and left. Innocent people. And his only excuse is that it's the witch's curse. Not his fault.

There is some humor found in here. It's not the boring mess that Alice In Wonderland was, at least not until the end when it devolves into a kind of low-rent-Superhero-meets-Beetlejuice set piece. But tonally, it doesn't know what it wants to be, and undermines the heroic narrative, and the comedy narrative is undermined by the graphic horror, with the drama undermined by the comedy, and the whole thing undermined by some really bad special effects.

The Flower picked it as her birthday movie and was not disappointed. So, y'know. If you're an eleven-year-old girl, maybe. The Boy didn't hate it but he thought it just didn't work on most levels.

I really didn't hate it either. I was expecting much worse.

It's been almost 20 years since Tim Burton and Johnny Depp collaborated on Ed Wood, which is a great, great film where Burton's quirks fit perfectly in with the romantic retelling of a bizarre artist's life. I'm beginning to suspect them of milking my good feelings of that film at this point.

Bernie

I try not to use the phrase "pitch-perfect" too much but I can't think of a better way to describe the casting of Bernie, the true story of the world's nicest man and his encounter with the world's meanest woman.

Jack Black plays Bernie, the guy-of-indeterminate-sexual-orientation who manages to befriend Shirley MacLaine's Marjorie, with Matthew McConnaughey as Danny Buck, the politically ambitious DA who wants to see Bernie hang when Marjorie goes missing.

Richard Linklater's (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, School of Rock) film feels a bit like a Chris Guest mockumentary, with parts of the story being told in retrospect by the townspeople whose appearance and cadences seem to genuine to be actors.

But this isn't a comedy. It's funny in parts. Darkly funny in others. Funny weird in still others. And it's provocatively philosophical in a very deep way.

Bernie's a successful guy on most observable levels. He's an assistant funeral home director who is a master at...uh...corpse preparation. (Makeup and clothing,) But once working in this small town mortuary, he also brings a more religious tone to the business. And when things get awkward or slow during a funeral, he's there to smooth it out, or to lead the people in song.

Because he has a lovely singing voice. Lovely enough that he's soon performing in the town's community theater. And not long after that, he's directing the plays (musicals, natch).

Wherever you look, he's there helping out. And people might have some doubts about certain aspects of his personality, nobody seems to care too much.

Why, when an old man in the town dies, he's at the widow's house the next day with flowers and condolences, making sure she's feeling okay.

And that's where the trouble begins.

It's in this way that he meets Marjorie, a rich old woman married to a mean old man who dies, revealing that however mean he was, she is even worse. But now she's all alone. She's estranged from her family, which has tried to sue her to get her money. She has no friends, although there are a few people who sort of tolerate her, like her business manager.

But to Bernie, why, this just means she's even more in need of a friend than anyone.

 There's a reason the cast has to be perfect for this story. Bernie is just very good with people. He upsells them on caskets—but he does it because he truly and genuinely believes it's respectful to the dead. He's devout. He's sincere. He's generous.

His only serious flaw is that he's a compulsive shopper, but even there he just gives everything away.

Very, very few actors could make this work. Just the slightest hint of unctuousness and you could end up despising Bernie faster than a California hillside catches fire. (Er, maybe a Texas one, since this takes place in Texas. Do they have hills there?)

But that wouldn't be very interesting at all. If Bernie were just a greasy hustler on the make, this would be a horrible tale barely worth telling. But Bernie is good. At every turn, given the opportunity to do something good or right, he'll do the right thing.

Well, almost. Which is what raises deep, and moving, questions.

This isn't going to be a blockbuster hit, of course. It's not exactly escapist, though its picture of a small town like one not many of us live in any more. It's not a comedy, either; really, it's a tragedy. A light tragedy, if such a thing is possible.

The Boy and The Flower both enjoyed it as well, though I think not as much as I did.

J Edgar Whozits

One of my outré positions is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't really have a right to exist under the Constitution, and that J. Edgar Hoover was an evil little troll who was a horrible influence on this country.

So, yeah, Eastwood does a biopic of J. Edgar? Why not.

Let me say, first, that this is classic Eastwood (as director): Much like last year's Hereafter or (say) Million Dollar Baby, the octogenarian auteur is all about telling the story, whatever it is. And, in this case, the story is about an ambitious, vainglorious, sexually repressed blackmailer (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as he tells the story on the one hand of the history of the FBI, and how, at the end of his life (as blackmailer in chief), he is threatened by the incoming President Nixon on the other.

I can't help but admire the direction, which is unflinching and unsentimental. He doesn't demonize Hoover—who could arguably benefit from a demonization—but he portrays him gathering his blackmail and expanding his powers, good intentions cheerfully in tow.

And yet. It's not a great movie, and I'm inclined to blame screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. If Tim Burton has daddy issues, and Alfred Hitchcock had issues with being falsely accused, Mr. Black has gay issues.

Actually, before I get to those, I want to also say that it seems like everyone has some issues when it comes to this movie. I read quite a few reviews of this beforehand (which I don't normally) at places like Big Hollywood and PJMedia and I'm not convinced we all saw the same movie.

For example, I read a reference to Hoover's mother, as played by Judi Dench, as domineering, which feeds into the clichéd gay thing, But that really reduces the role to a cartoonish level that isn't warranted. Dench's portrayal is stern and forbidding, but not domineering.

Likewise, getting back into the gay thing, Hoover is (at least initially) portrayed as a complex person, or perhaps if you prefer, a very simple person for whom sex (in whatever form) isn't on the menu. Sex is only going to be permissible if it's of a non-blackmail-able variety, is sort the impression you get.

But then Black goes whole hog (as it were) into "Hoover was a homosexual but refused to act on it." I'm of two minds as far as this goes: One, it's a completely hack and stereotyped way to indulge in a little fantasy; and two, it has the effect of humanizing Hoover in a very unlikely way, a way that makes the movie rather more watchable.

I think there's a little truth to both these ideas, but it also has a couple of other effects: One is that it's complete fantasy. I don't mean Hoover wasn't gay, 'cause I don't know. (I'd always heard he was a transvestite, though, and TVs are usually men—often macho men. But on reflection, it seems unlikely that the king of the blackmailers would ever put himself in a compromising situation.) What I mean is that the completely undocumented aspect of his relationship with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) gives Black free reign to do this sort of wish-fulfillment thing.

This includes a scene where Hoover and Tolson (Armie Hammer) virtually swish over the gaucheness of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball at Del mar, and Tolson describes Dorothy Lamour as "camp". (That's not the only time that the dialog assaults the ear with a too modern sound, but it's one of the most egregious ones.)

The other effect of this, though, is that we're sort of mired in this (ultimately trivial) aspect of Hoover's life. This is the problem with the modern obsession with private details: The real story gets crowded out. This is sometimes justifiable, say, with something like The King's Speech (another largely fictitious but far more interesting movie).

But here, it doesn't matter that Hoover is gay (at least partially evinced by the fact that he probably wasn't). It could have been just as interesting to see him as bottled up, and tested by his attraction to Dorothy Lamour (who claimed to have an affair with him).

And it's not like there isn't 50 years of interesting dirt about Hoover, you know? The whole thread feels self-indulgent.

It's a flawed biopic. The acting is good. I think Dicaprio—who normally leaves me kind of cold—did one of his better jobs here. A lot of criticism has been leveled at the old age makeup, and it's got some validity to it, but I kind of register that as a big "so what"? Old age makeup is always bad, and always has been.

I would have preferred to see more actual FBI stuff. The fact that the FBI got their guns as a result of the Lindbergh kidnapping perhaps beginning the precedent that states that all laws named after children are bad ones.

HBO did a movie a few years back on the Lindbergh kidnapping which took the point-of-view that Hauptmann was innocent of the charges, whereas this movie posits that he didn't act alone—that he was maybe a patsy for the real criminals. Sorta. He's essentially a vehicle for the bureau's expansion of power.

Then there's the whole FBI rising while denying the existence of the mafia. What up wid dat? I mean, seriously, if you're going to go into fantasy-land about the story, how about bringing in the mafia? As a character study, wouldn't it have been more interesting to know (or speculate) on whether it was pride, arrogance, stupidity or something else causing Hoover's complete bungling of the major crime issue of his day?

Ah, well, lost opportunity. Also, keep in mind that my review isn't much like any of the others I've read, so maybe I saw a different movie from the ones other people saw, or the one you'd see.

As an Eastwood fan since Flags of our Fathers, The Boy was a bit disappointed, and found it overlong, though not especially so for a biopic. As someone more-or-less ignorant of the politics and history, his experience viewing the movie was probably one of the purer ones, and he rated it "so-so".

Captain America. F--- Yeah!

I finally got around to seeing Captain Ameria: The Last Trailer For The Avengers Movie and it was...well, a movie. The superhero things are kind of losing their luster for me; the gee-whiz factor has really been gone for years—a casualty of ubiquitous CGI—but the real thing is just that the movies are getting (predictably) worse.

Captain America starts very strong. It's World War II (the best war). We're introduced to the physically frail Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, who played The Human Torch in The Fantastic Four movies) who, like all red-blooded young American men in 1943 wants to enlist in the armed forces. But he's just a wreck, physically. 4F.

He finds a way in when he's picked out by an army scientist for a super-soldier person. The scientist (Stanley Tucci, who seems to enliven every movie he's in, no matter how otherwise banal) reasons that an honorable, frail man will respect the power that the super-soldier program will give him in a way a naturally powerful man might not.

This part of the film is really good. It's unabashedly pro-American. Rogers is a truly heroic character in his wimpy form. And the transformation from wimpy dude to muscle-bound hero is great. (Well, really, it's the imposition of Chris Evans' face on a frail body that's so impressive.)

It's after he becomes Captain America that things start to drift. First, he's off selling war bonds. This is kind of cool and realistic, but it goes on too long. But then it gets into the action. And the action is, well, meh.

You know, director Joe Johnston has made one really excellent film: October Sky. But I guess that stuff don't pay the bills, so he does stuff like Wolf Man and Hidalgo—which, upon reflection all suffer in the same way. Johnston likes his characters, and you see this in a lot of little ways. Every character seems to matter.

But the action is just dull. It's all of the "fight until the scene is over" kind of stuff. The story progresses as it should but lacks tension and excitement.

Acting-wise, Evans seems to have gone to charm school since his Johnny Storm days, which is good, given the role. Hayley Atwill is appealing even if her character is somewhat stale even by comic book standards. Tommy Lee Jones is Tommy Lee Jones. And Toby Jones is Toby Jones, but with an English accent.

Then there's the villainous Red Skull. He's played by Hugo Weaving, who's been a popular heavy since his days of menacing Keanu Reeves in the Matrix movies. (He also made elves a lot more menacing than I imagined them to be in Lord of the Rings.) Thing is? He's actually way scarier without the Red Skull makeup.

The Red Skull's villainy is another place where director Johnston seems to lack conviction. I mean, he's a Nazi and he's got all kinds of blasty weapons, but there's no blowing-up-a-planet moment. I never felt like he was a real threat to the Captain.

Suffice to say that The Boy was mildly offended at the stupidity of the action scenes. Even with low expectations, they weren't met. And we did find ourselves talking about how bad the scenes were. Like, when the Captain is conducting his first raid amongst a crowd of laser-gun equipped Nazis, you can see the various Nazi extras waiting for their turn to attack. And the Boy felt it was unrealistic for a bunch of soldiers to be firing with automatic weapons at point blank range and not hit anything.

I've always kind of liked Johnston's movies, even when they weren't popular (like Hidalgo), but this whole movie felt a lot like padding. I'm feeling a little milked by the Marvel folks. This bodes ill for the Avengers movie.

I Just Driiiiiiiiive!

In Drive, the 14th (of 29) Ryan Gosling films due out this year, Mr. Gosling plays—wait for it—a driver! Actually, I like the guy, which is a good thing, since he's in, like, everything.

In this flick, he plays a guy with three jobs: Mechanic, stunt driver for the movies, and wheel man. The story begins when he gets involved with his cute neighbor Irene (the adorable Carey Mulligan) and her cute son.

When I say "involved," I mean sort of minimally involved. They pass in the hallway. He helps her with her car. He smiles at her kid. It's a testament to Gosling's acting that his emotionless, possibly sociopathic, affect is humanized so easily with a few reticent smiles. You do end up liking the guy, especially when Mulligan's jailbird husband Standard (Oscar Isaac, of the recent Robin Hood) comes back.

As it turns out, Standard is a pretty good guy. And Gosling's (nameless) character wins us over by helping him out, despite his obvious attraction to Irene. But there's something not quite, let's say, well-adjusted about him.

I don't want to spoil the story, but let me warn you: This movie turns suddenly and shockingly violent about at the mid-point. You might think you're going to see a fun caper flick, but no: This movie decides that not only does it need violence, it can't be the fun, semi-campy violence of an action flick. It needs graphic violence and extreme brutality.

I'm not knocking this, I'm just pointing it out for those who don't like that sort of thing.

The Boy and I liked it, though The Boy felt that the violence represented a somewhat unsuccessful tonal shift, and that the movie had a couple more shifts toward the end that didn't work. That didn't bug me, particularly, because this movie was basically a homage to the '80s, where it was common to put some grittily "realistic" aspect into your heretofore semi-dopey genre flick.

Call it "Miami Vice Syndrome". Or "Michael Mann Syndrome" if you're film-literate.

The movie imitates (and improves in a lot of ways) on the '80s crime drama, which a Moog-y synth pop track, slow-mo moments, inappropriately beautiful music over violence, and even hot pink opening credits! (The Flower noticed the hot pink "Drive" written on the movie poster and asked why it was pink. '80s, baby!)

There is a lot of fun stuff in this movie: Bryan Cranston plays Gosling's loser boss who's trying to get money so Gosling can do stock car racing. Albert Brooks as the mob-ish boss he's trying to get the money from. And Ron Perlman as his brutish Jewish mob-ish friend (that's a lot of -ish, but how these guys are syndicated isn't really explained). It's nice to see Perlman not only get to play without heavy makeup (Hellboy, "Beauty and the Beast", Quest for Fire) but also play a Jew!

Also, if you're a native, the movie is full of street and overhead shots of the City of Angels, which is kind of neat. Though at one point, Irene takes her beater from Echo Park to Cranston and Gosling's garage in Reseda, which strikes me as as improbable as Gosling living in Echo Park and commuting to Reseda. But these are of course just fun details.

Talented crew. Confident direction. Artsy, bordering dangerously close to pretentious. The ending doesn't really make sense, and is a little murky to the actual details.

The Boy and I approved. I more than he, as he didn't really get the '80s homage and hasn't driven the streets as much.

I would reservedly recommend for crime drama fans, for '80s crime drama fans especially, but not for the squeamish.