Movies – Page 2 – Pop Culture Nerd

Mini Reviews: MI:4, CARNAGE, YOUNG ADULT

I’ve seen so many movies lately and am so behind on reviews that I realized the only way to get them done is to write mini ones. Today’s batch:

Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (Dec. 16)

I didn’t like the last one and wasn’t over the moon about the first two, so it was a pleasant surprise to find myself having a lot of fun watching #4. Director Brad Bird (The Incredibles), in his live-action debut, has revived the franchise and made it exciting. This time, the mission is to prevent nuclear war, but it’s really just an excuse for some nail-biting action. Standout scenes include a chase—on foot and on wheels—in a sandstorm with no visibility, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) climbing the tallest building in the world in Dubai, and a fight inside a parking garage where Hunt does something insane with a BMW. The supporting actors—Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, and Simon Pegg—are not your cookie-cutter action stars. They bring a little humanity to their characters, with Pegg providing the humor. But this is Cruise’s movie, and he shows he’s still vital. There’s been talk of him passing the torch to Renner, but after this, I think Cruise should keep leading the IMF team, at least for a couple more missions. Nerd verdict: Accept this Mission.

Carnage (Dec. 16)

The entire movie, based on Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, takes place in one afternoon in one location—the apartment of a couple whose young son has been hit by a classmate. Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play Penelope and Michael, the parents of the “victim,” and Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet are Alan and Nancy, whose son is the aggressor. The four start out politely trying to negotiate how they should deal with the incident, but the gathering slowly devolves into a nasty session of finger pointing, name calling, and literal projectile vomiting. Roman Polanski gets solid performances out of all four actors, but the problem is none of the characters is very likable. Watching it is like being at a really uncomfortable tea party. Alan can’t stop yapping on his cell phone, Michael turns out to be a boor, Penny is uptight, and Nancy is high-strung. When they start yelling insults at each other, I just wanted to leave the room. Nerd verdict: Carnage is emotional road kill.

Young Adult (Dec. 9)

Charlize Theron stars as Mavis, a YA writer whose maturity level seems stuck in adolescence. After she gets a baby announcement from her high school boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson), she returns to her hometown in Minnesota determined to win him back. Who cares if he’s married to a sweet woman (Elizabeth Reaser) and just became a father? Mavis is gorgeous and they once had a connection so she’s certain he should be with her. Theron, directed by Jason Reitman, goes balls to the wall with the emotionally screwed-up Mavis (who might also be alcoholic), and her refusal to ask for the audience’s sympathy is impressive. I’ve always thought Theron a gutsy actress and this might be her gutsiest performance, playing an ugly character without the help of prosthetics like in Monster. But Mavis is inaccessible, partly because she has no character arc. She learns nothing from her experiences so what is the point of our taking this journey with her? So we can laugh at or feel sorry for her? That’s the last thing she would want. Nerd verdict: Adult more cringeworthy than puberty.

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Tired Soldier Spy(ing) on Firth

I went to a Variety screening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy last night, something I was looking forward to seeing. Unfortunately, running on only four hours’ sleep from the night before, I nodded off at one point in the movie—lots of men talking in low tones did the trick—and when I woke, I had no idea what was going on. I heard that people who stayed awake thought it was dense, so although I pried open my eyes Clockwork Orange-style for the rest of the two hours+, I was too lost to review it properly.

But the evening wasn’t lost, as ~~my boyf~~ Oscar-winner Colin Firth was there to do Q&A, along with Gary Oldman, Mark Strong, director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), co-screenwriter Peter Straughan (he and Bridget O’Connor adapted the John le Carré novel), and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. Since I’m not reviewing, I’ll just throw up a couple of pictures and call it a day. Enjoy!

Oldman & Firth

Firth & Strong

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Movie Review: WE BOUGHT A ZOO

There’s much ado about We Bought a Zoo (out Dec. 23) being Cameron’s first movie in six years, and whether or not this skews closer to Almost Famous or Elizabethtown. Being a family movie, it resembles neither, and it doesn’t measure up to his greatest work, either.

Based on the memoir by journalist Benjamin Mee, the concept is as the title says—Mee (Matt Damon) buys and moves his kids to a property with a zoo attached. Still mourning the death of his wife Katherine from an undisclosed illness (she had a brain tumor in real life), he wants to get away from all their familiar places in the city and believes the zoo would be a fresh start and grand adventure. But his teenage son Dylan (Colin Ford) hates it there, the zoo’s disrepair soon becomes a money drain, and Mee doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of exotic animals.

Luckily, the property comes with a staff, including zookeeper Kelly (Scarlett Johansson), groundskeeper MacCready (Angus McFadyen), and Kelly’s thirteen-year-old niece, Lily (Elle Fanning), who’s too young to work but helps out anyway and gets paid in cash. They become an extended family to the Mees (extension of Mees?) as they labor to restore and reopen the zoo.

Zoo is brimming with heart and good intentions, but where it falters is in not knowing when to hold back. There are scenes that would have been more moving had they not gone on too long, and others that felt manipulative and/or predictable. Seven-year-old Rosie Mee (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) says a bad word at one point, a clichéd and unnecessary gimmick. Hey, want viewers to laugh? Have an old lady or little kid spout profanity! It’s not clear who the intended audience is. It’s rated PG and promoted as a family film, but it’s just over two hours long and, comedic elements aside, it deals with grief, a more dramatic subject than some young viewers might like.

But the movie is not without its winning moments and redeeming qualities. Damon manages to take the saccharine out of some of the more tear-jerking scenes—like Benjamin crying as he looks at photos of his wife—by not overplaying the emotion. The performance could’ve wandered into the land of earnestness and gotten lost, but Damon’s emotional compass keeps Mee going in the right direction. Johansson’s role is underdeveloped but, wearing minimal makeup and old work clothes, she is refreshingly earthy, reminding audiences she can be just as captivating, if not more so, when not playing a sex object or femme fatale. Little Jones, as Mee’s daughter, is impossibly cute but real, not overly precocious like some kids you see only in movies.

And you can’t have a Crowe movie without a catchy line of dialogue. While it may not blow up like “Show me the money” or “You complete me,” I’d guess that “All you need is twenty seconds of courage” is what you’ll take away from this.

Nerd verdict: Zoo is entertaining in parts, but I couldn’t completely buy into it

Photos: 20th Century Fox

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Movie Review: HUGO

It’s ironic that a movie about the wonderment of movies lacks that very quality overall, but that’s the case with Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, based on Brian Selznick’s Caldecott Award-winning novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The adaptation is certainly stunning visually, especially in 3D, but comes across at times as mechanical as the clocks it features prominently.

The story centers around the orphaned Hugo (Asa Butterfield), who secretly lives at a train station in 1930s Paris, taking over his alcoholic uncle’s job of winding the clocks when the uncle (Ray Winstone) dies. He also assumes restoration duties on a broken “automaton”—a kind of robot with exposed gears—that he and his late dad (Jude Law) had been fixing up; he believes it holds a message from his father. Hugo has to do all this away from the eyes of the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), whose mission in life is keeping the train station clear of thieving urchins and throwing them into orphanages.

Hugo’s lot vastly improves once he befriends Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), a bookish girl who helps smooth out relations between Hugo and her godfather, the grumpy toy-shop owner (Ben Kingsley) whose whimsical things and magic tricks fascinate Hugo. The boy in turn introduces Isabelle to his love of cinema, inherited from his father, and the two find that their purpose in life might be intertwined.

The cinematography by Robert Richardson and production design by Dante Ferretti are undeniably magnificent. I’m not a fan of everything being turned into 3D, but when it’s done right, as it is here, it’s a visual treat. An opening sweeping shot that takes viewers from a snowy Parisian landscape through the bustling train station up into the clock tower is breathtaking, as are the recreated sets and scenes from real, early twentieth-century films (don’t want to spoil whose old movies they are). There’s a glass studio in particular and shots viewed through an aquarium that do evoke wonder.

Wish I could say the same for the emotional aspects of Hugo. It’s about the love of cinema and books, two of my favorite things in the world, so it’s disappointing that it fails to resonate deeply with me. Despite the many clocks keeping time on screen, the movie’s pacing is off, dragging in the beginning and often indulging in beats between dialogue that felt unnecessary. Scorsese (look for his cameo in the movie) obviously loves his subject matter but is almost too reverential, too intent in crafting a perfect film in all areas but the heart.

Butterfield, with his big Elijah Wood-y blue eyes, is competent if not a little stiff, and Moretz, speaking in a British accent (the cast is mostly British, though the characters are French) seems affected, her smiles a bit too forced. Oddly enough, the earnest-girl persona doesn’t fit her nearly as well as the dark, dangerous characters she plays in Kick-Ass and Let Me In. It feels like she’s reining in all the edginess that makes her interesting to watch.

Kingsley saves the day, however, as the toy owner with the mysterious past. The only moving moments for me came near the end, when he delivers lines that landed right smack in my chest because they come from such a deep place for his character. Kingsley speaks them simply, without theatrics, providing real magic, not just an illusion.

Nerd verdict: Hugo is visually stunning, but not well-calibrated emotionally

Photos: Paramount Pictures

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Movie Review: THE ARTIST

In the past five days I’ve seen eight movies, most of them considered Oscar contenders. I loathed a couple, liked a few, but there’s one that I’m passionate about, a film I can unequivocally get behind when the awards race heats up: Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist (out 11/23).

When I told a friend I was going to see a silent, black and white French film set in 1920s Hollywood during the transition between silent movies and talkies, she joked that she’d fallen asleep while I was describing it. Normally, I might have been snoozing right alongside her, but this was the most buoyant, unique, and charming film I’ve seen in a long time. If that’s not enough, it features a really cool Jack Russell terrier who should get an award for best supporting dog.

The film opens in 1927, with silent movie star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) at the height of his popularity. At one of his premieres, he literally bumps into one of his fans. They mug for the cameras and she ends up with her picture on the front page of Variety but remains a mystery woman. Turns out she’s an aspiring actress named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) and the two meet again when she gets a bit part in his next movie. The chemistry between them is potent, but the friendship stays platonic as George remains faithful to his wife despite their unhappy marriage.

As the story moves forward into the next few years, George’s fame starts to wane when he resists the advent of talkies, while Peppy becomes a sensation by embracing the new technology. But she never forgets the man who gave her valuable advice at the beginning of her career, watching over him even when he thinks he’s lost everything, and eventually helping him find his way back to what he loves most.

Now comes the part when I unleash a bunch of glowing adjectives to convince you to see the movie. Writer/director Hazanavicius has created a lovely valentine to the cinema, showing the heart and sometimes heartbreak behind the magic we see on screen. His cast is led by the exuberant Dujardin as Valentin—he deservedly won the best actor award at Cannes this year—and the captivating Bejo as Peppy. They spark together, managing to convey first attraction and then something much deeper, all with minimal physical contact and no dialogue.

The supporting players include John Goodman, James Cromwell, and Penelope Ann Miller, but the standout has to be Uggie, the dog who plays Valentin’s loyal companion on screen and off. He’s a combination of Asta and Lassie, accomplishing feats both clever and heroic.

The period costumes by Mark Bridges are gorgeous (Bejo’s nightgown is glamorous enough to wear to an awards show), composer Ludovic Bource hits all the right notes with the score, which is even more important in conveying the tone in the absence of dialogue, and DP Guillaume Schiffman makes everything look stunning in black and white photography. Every aspect of this movie is a delight, and not only did I not fall asleep, I left the theater feeling revived and, well, peppy.

Nerd verdict: A delightful, creative Artist

Photos: The Weinstein Company

Note: If you’re interested in hearing the stars speak about the movie, check out this video of the Q&A they did after the L.A. Times Envelope screening I attended. Bejo spoke fluent English but Dujardin brought an interpreter. He also claimed he didn’t speak “American dog” well enough to communicate with Uggie during filming but helped things along by carrying sausage in his pockets.

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Movie Discussion: Steven Soderbergh’s HAYWIRE

As part of the AFI Fest presented by Audi going on here in Los Angeles, there’s a secret screening that’s announced on the day of the screening. Organizers revealed hours before the Sunday night event that the secret movie was Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire (to be released January 20, 2012), an action-thriller starring Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Michael Angarano, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas. But the anchor of the movie is mixed martial arts star Gina Carano as Mallory Kane, an operative with a private contractor who does dangerous work for the government. A journalist she successfully rescues in Barcelona ends up dead and she’s framed for his murder, becoming the target of assassins almost as lethal as she is.

I was at the 9:30 screening with my trustworthy contributor Eric Edwards, so we decided to discuss it afterward in lieu of a regular movie review.

Pop Culture Nerd: Carano is badass for sure, completely convincing as a tough chick who beats the crap out of everyone. I didn’t think the movie was entirely successful, though. The fights were amazing, but some of the non-physical scenes were clunky.

Eric Edwards: I really enjoyed it. The story was very much a low-rent spy thriller but the cast makes it work. Usually producers hire a star or two and fill out the rest of the cast with lesser stars. What Soderbergh did was hire a non-actress and fill even small supporting roles with stars and well-known actors so she wouldn’t have to carry the movie by herself.

PCN: But it’s obviously a showcase for her, and everyone else just came along for the ride. She’s kinetic to watch in the fight scenes, but you can tell she’s less comfortable in the ones when she’s just talking (Carano admits that in the post-screening Q & A). Some of her line readings sounded like just that—someone reading from a page. But she’s beautiful, and I like her, and that’s why I wanted her to be a better actress. I suppose that will come with time and more experience if she does more movies.

EE: For me it was simpler than that. She’s sympathetic because her character is being screwed over. In every fight scene, she’s going up against a guy who’s bigger than her—

PCN: Except for Ewan McGregor.

EE: Hey now, don’t pick on Obi-Wan.

PCN: Just sayin’. Now, Michael Fassbender is a formidable opponent. He’s ripped, and their fight scene is the best.

EE: Yup. Hands down. I still don’t know how either one of them survived that.

PCN: Fassbender said he puked after two days of filming it!

EE: I’m surprised he didn’t puke while shooting. Did you see how many times her knee went into his gut?

PCN: And elsewhere. You know, for a brutal fight flick, there was very minimal blood, and I appreciated that. It wasn’t injury porn.

EE: Yeah, surprisingly little blood, but I felt every one of those hits, didn’t you?

PCN: Not really, ’cause I’m not a man and I don’t have balls. I was exhausted after each fight.

EE: Yeah, her style of fighting was breathtaking.

PCN: I liked that they didn’t try to make it pretty. It was raw and dirty. She fought to survive.

EE: And you were always rooting for her.

PCN: I thought the pacing lagged whenever the action stopped. There were weird pauses and drawn-out moments that I felt could have been more tightly edited.

EE: I disagree. The flashbacks worked well as a device to explain what was going on. Soderbergh showed us the backstory without making Carano fill us in. I think it was a smart move to give her fewer lines and let her shine elsewhere.

PCN: I got a little bored when it was just dudes explaining stuff.

EE: It was necessary!

PCN: Let’s talk about the music. Did it sound to you like it was from a cheesy ’70s action film?

EE: Yes, but I think Soderbergh did that because the story felt that way in general. It was a wink to the audience.

PCN: Why do you think Soderbergh was trying to evoke cheesy ’70s movies?

EE: Because it’s kind of retro cool. Maybe he’s trying to reinvent the B-movie by making one with an A-list cast.

PCN: He said in the Q & A he was going for a kind of early Bond movie so I guess the score needed to go back at least another decade.

EE: Well, it worked for me, and I don’t think there’s anything like this movie out there.

Nerd verdicts: PCN—Haywire but enjoyable. EE—Haywire is a cinematic haymaker.

Soderbergh, McGregor, Fassbender, and Carano participated in a hilarious Q & A afterward moderated by Joel McHale. I’ll post a recap of that, as well as reviews of other festival films, within the next week. AFI Fest continues through November 10.

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Movie Madness

Hammer, DiCaprio, Judi Dench in J. EDGAR

The next couple of weeks are going to be craaazy but it’s all good. Awards season is here and I’ll be attending loads of screenings of some of the most anticipated fall and winter movies with key talent doing Q & A afterward. I’ve already seen Alexander Payne’s The Descendants with George Clooney (review coming soon), and tonight I’ll be viewing Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar plus discussion with Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, and Armie Hammer. Tomorrow I’ll be seeing—wait for it—The Adventures of Tintin!

Thursday is also the start of the AFI Fest, with J. Edgar as the opening night gala presentation and Tintin closing the festival on November 10. In case you didn’t know this already, all tickets are FREE.

Jean Dujardin & Missi Pyle in THE ARTIST

The lineup is quite impressive with many high-profile films, including The Artist, Michel Haznavicius’s black and white silent film about 1920s Hollywood; Roman Polanski’s Carnage, featuring an all-star cast including Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster; Steve McQueen’s Shame, the NC-17 film starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan as siblings; Jim Field Smith’s Butter, set in the world of competitive butter-carving; Lynn Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, starring Tilda Swinton and based on Lionel Shriver’s novel about a mother trying to understand why her son committed an atrocity; and Oren Moverman’s Rampart, which reunites the writer/director with his stars from The Messenger, Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster, in a drama about the LAPD’s Rampart corruption scandal. Crime fiction fans, take note: the script was co-written by James Ellroy.

I plan to see all these movies, either at AFI Fest or through the Los Angeles Times Envelope screening series, so check back for reviews and recaps of conversations with the filmmakers. That way, when nominees are announced for the bazillion awards that will be given out in the next few months, you can act snooty and say you already know all about them! If I don’t get around to writing full reports on everything, I’ll at least post interesting tidbits on Facebook or Twitter.

Any of these sound good to you? Which fall/winter movies are you most looking forward to?

Photos: J. Edgar/Warner Bros; The Artist/The Weinstein Company

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Movie Review: MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

I’ll admit it: If I’d known ahead of time this movie (limited release, Oct. 21) is about a young woman struggling to survive her cult experience, I probably wouldn’t have rushed out to the screening sponsored by the L.A. Times. Elizabeth Olsen (the famous twins’ younger sister) stars as the titular character, who escapes from a cult in the Catskills at the beginning of the movie and goes to live with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law, Ted (Hugh Dancy). Martha doesn’t want to talk about the years she fell out of touch with Lucy and insists she’s fine, that she was simply living with a boyfriend who lied to her and now it’s over. But of course it’s not, as we see the damage gradually emerging and threatening her ability to move on.

Olsen has received lots of buzz since the movie premiered at Sundance and she deserves it. She seems effortless and completely guileless in a role that’s difficult to pull off due to Martha’s capriciousness. The movie incorporates flashbacks to show what happened to her (writer/director Sean Durkin, who did Q & A afterward, said they’re not really flashbacks since Martha’s past and present are all jumbled together in her mind) but it’s always clear when each scene took place because there was much more innocence in Martha’s face before she was ruined by Patrick (John Hawkes), the cult leader. The performance is more striking considering that when Olsen came out (more like she bounced/skipped out) to do the Q &A, she was bubbly and smart and confident, not the first person you’d think of to play a mousy girl in search of herself.

Paulson is also impressive as the sister who desperately wants to know Martha’s secrets but is scared of driving her away again. Lucy’s benign smiles can’t cover up the frustration she feels from being unable to communicate with Martha. Hawkes, after Winter’s Bone, risks being Hollywood’s go-to creepy dude, but he’s so good and oddly charismatic that it’s hard to imagine someone else being more effective.

Durkin can be commended for eliciting strong performances from the cast and for using restraint, allowing the audience to fill in the more disturbing aspects. But his pacing is contemplative since most of the conflicts are internal. Sometimes the score is a little too heavy-handed, as if it were shouting, “Creepy scene alert!” through a bullhorn. And the ambiguous ending…well, it’s hardly satisfying but it’ll certainly stimulate discussions afterward.

Nerd verdict: Finely acted film that May anger and/or disturb you

Photo: Jody Lee Lipes/Twentieth Century Fox

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Movie Review: FOOTLOOSE

Wormald and Hough

When I posted on Facebook that I had gone to a Paramount screening of the Footloose remake (out October 14), one of my friends jokingly threatened to disown me because I was apparently being disloyal to the original. Well, the 1984 movie was enjoyable but it wasn’t great (let’s face it—the soundtrack elevated it) so I was willing to keep an open mind.

My conclusion was that it didn’t need to be remade because this version doesn’t improve or change the story in any significant way. All the major plot points are intact, and it’s still a corndog movie minus the advantage of being first.

If you’re, oh, under twenty years old and have never been exposed to Footloose, the very slim plotline involves Ren McCormack (Kenny Wormald) coming down from Boston after his mother dies to live with his Uncle Wes (Ray McKinnon) in a small town called Bomont. Much to his chagrin, he finds that the law there doesn’t allow public dancing since five teens were killed three years earlier after a night of dancing and drinking. Ren locks horns with Reverend Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid), a staunch supporter of the law since his son was one of the kids who died. But the reverend’s daughter, Ariel (Julianne Hough), has much more amorous feelings toward Ren and together they set out to challenge the law so they can have their dance.

Andie McDowell (as the reverend's wife), Wormald, and Quaid

Though I never looked at Kevin Bacon in the original and thought, “Wow, this is a great actor who’s still going to be relevant in thirty years,” he infused Ren with an innate sense of confidence and mischief while Wormald seems to be only playing at cockiness. It’s obvious he was hired more for his dancing than acting skills, and he does okay, but that’s not enough when he’s the lead. He acquits himself better than Hough, though, who looks gorgeous but doesn’t yet have the depth of talent to convey Ariel’s little-girl-lost quality. She comes across reckless and petulant instead of as someone in pain who’s overcompensating. Then again, the script (by Dean Pitchford and Craig Brewer, who also directed) doesn’t allow her to be very sympathetic. And Quaid, famous for his roguish screen presence, is all wrong as the uptight reverend.

Teller and Wormald

If there’s a reason to see this movie, it’s Miles Teller, who steals every scene as Ren’s friend Willard, the boy who can’t dance who was first played by the late Chris Penn (Teller even resembles him a little). Teller is funny and full of crackling energy, which is especially amazing if you saw him in Rabbit Hole, where he imbued an intensely dramatic role with grace and stillness.

And the music—when I heard the opening beats and guitar riffs of the title track, with Blake Shelton stepping in for Kenny Loggins, my feet did cut loose a little under my seat. But this version sounds almost exactly the same as the other, which again begs the question of why it was remade. One of the songs, “Holding Out for a Hero,” was reinvented but not in a good way. While Bonnie Tyler sang it as an anthemic number, Ella Mae Bowen turns it into a treacly ballad that’s almost unrecognizable. By the time “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” comes on, with Jana Kramer covering Deniece Williams’s hit, the soundtrack had swung back to sounding familiar, but it also makes you want to just go back and listen to the original.

Nerd verdict: Footloose doesn’t cut it

Photos: Paramount

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Movie Review: THE DEBT

Mirren

The Debt‘s release has been delayed for some time, mostly due to Miramax becoming defunct, but Focus Features is finally getting it out in time for the last holiday weekend before fall. It’s directed by Oscar-nominated John Madden, and stars Oscar-winning Helen Mirren and Oscar-nominated Tom Wilkinson, as well as current “It” actors, Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington. Is it worth a look? Yes, but it has its flaws.

The movie, a remake of the Israeli thriller Ha-Hov, opens in 1965 with a trio of Mossad agents, Rachel (Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas), and David (Worthington) returning to Israel after a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal called the Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen, with creepy menace). Then it cuts to the present, with an older Rachel (Mirren) at a publicity event for her daughter (Romi Aboulafi), a journalist who has written a book about her heroic mother. Rachel is asked to read a passage, during which we see a flashback of the events being described. Afterward, the audience applauds while Rachel looks uneasy. The film moves back to 1965 in East Berlin to show why.

From L: Chastain, Worthington, Csokas

Because the bulk of the action takes place in the past, the movie belongs more to the younger actors than the veterans. This is not a bad thing. Chastain gets to play Rachel in the more complex scenes—Mirren mostly just has to look conflicted—and she’s definitely up to the task. Though Chastain doesn’t look much like Mirren and comes across more delicate, there’s an intelligence and determination in her eyes that make her a believable agent. She also gives Rachel a vulnerability and quiet terror, which makes the agent on her first field assignment braver for doing what she does. Rachel gets out of tense situations more by keeping her wits about her than because she’s impossibly buffed up, though she does pull some effective physical maneuvers.

Csokas, a New Zealander, is charismatic as Stephan, the de facto leader of the trio. He doesn’t look like Wilkinson any more than Chastain resembles Mirren, but it’s good to see that the filmmakers were more concerned with getting good actors than being hung up on physical similarities. Worthington is adequate enough, as he is in Avatar and Clash of the Titans, but his emotional range is limited and his facial expressions look stilted.

The movie overall is a mixed bag, with Madden creating some incredibly suspenseful scenes, aided by composer Thomas Newman’s propulsive score, while letting others drag on too long after the “Cut!” point. Tighter editing would’ve ratcheted up the tension, which is also diluted by the fact we’ve seen these characters in 1997 so we know they survive the mission. But there are a couple of twists I didn’t see coming, and in the end, with its questions about whether the truth can do more harm than lies, at least it left me thinking, which is more than most summer movies manage to do.

Nerd verdict: Debt not a complete payoff but worth getting into

Photos: Laurie Sparham

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Movie Review: ATTACK THE BLOCK

I hated not being able to make this screening last week, but luckily my contributor Eric Edwards was there to cover it. After reading his review below, my butt hurts from kicking myself.—PCN

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Forget Cowboys & Aliens and Super 8. The best summer monster movie is the one you haven’t heard too much about: Attack the Block (in limited release). Writer/director Joe Cornish, who also co-wrote the upcoming The Adventures of Tintin, has combined a cast of appealing unknowns with a tight script to give audiences a witty, edge-of-your-seat movie experience.

Boyega (in front)

Moses (John Boyega, in his first film) heads a gang of teenagers in a rundown South London neighborhood. The film opens with them mugging Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a female nursing student on her way home from yet another long day. Hoods are up, bandanas cover their faces and knives are wielded by this bike-riding group of young thugs. They don’t realize Sam wouldn’t be walking in their block if she wasn’t as poor as they are.

Before they can get too angry over getting so little money for their effort, something falls from the sky and crushes a parked car nearby. Instead of getting scared and running away, Moses shows why he’s the leader by deciding to strip the car. This is where his problems begin and the movie takes off.

Cornish proves a big budget isn’t needed to tell a great story. Sure, on the surface these guys are exactly the kind of punks everyone else would dismiss, but Cornish’s screenplay and direction move beyond their swagger and tough talk, turning them into the unlikely heroes we root for during the next 88 minutes.

Cornish doesn’t use special effects or melodrama to accomplish it either. In one heartbreaking scene, Sam enters Moses’s apartment, which he shares with his uncle. Moses is on his cell talking her from room to room while the alien monsters are hot on her trail. With very little dialogue, we watch Sam’s eyes as she changes her, and our, perception of Moses. Any more details would spoil this movie, but I will say the non-CGI, low-budget aliens instilled fear that lingered long after I got a good look at them.

I mentioned earlier that Cornish is one of the co-writers on the December’s Tintin movie, which Stephen Spielberg produced and directed. One would think this a tremendous learning opportunity for Cornish, but after viewing Attack the Block, I think Spielberg should be paying attention to the younger director’s work.

Photo: Liam Daniel/Screen Gems

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Movie Review: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Justin Timberlake’s character, Dylan, has an impediment that prevents him from doing simple math, i.e. he thinks 6×3=92. But it doesn’t take someone with a math problem to see that Friends with Benefits, despite a few mildly amusing scenes, adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

The premise, a rehash of No Strings Attached with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, has Dylan and Jamie (Mila Kunis) deciding to have sex without emotional attachment (“like playing tennis”) after getting out of bad relationships. They also agree to be friends since head hunter Jamie just got Dylan a job at GQ that makes him a Los Angeles transplant in New York City.

I saw this movie with my friend Eric Edwards, a PCN contributor, and we thought we’d review this movie Siskel & Ebert-style so you get both the male and female points of view. Turns out, a bland movie is a bland movie, no matter how you look at it.

Pop Culture Nerd: Wow. I thought this would be much funnier. JT is always hilarious on Saturday Night Live, Kunis can do no wrong, and director Will Gluck did Easy A, which we both liked. So, what do you think happened?

Eric Edwards: We already saw this movie earlier this year and it was done better.

PCN: You can tell this one was written by men and No Strings was by a woman. First of all, in this one, Jamie was dumped by Andy Samberg. Excuse me?? Then she developed real feelings first in the relationship, while Natalie Portman’s character was the one who hung tough in the other one, which I liked. It wasn’t as much a cliché.

EE: There’s a movie within this movie that makes fun of all those clichéd rom-coms, so we think we’re watching an anti-rom-com, but then it ends up doing everything it was making fun of, right down to the soundtrack! It was very confusing.

PCN: Yeah, it started out wanting to be edgy, then lost its nerve and decided to be like all the rom-coms that came before it, including bad Katherine Heigl ones that Jamie was cursing at!

EE: The other problem was, I don’t think Timberlake is ready for leading man status.

PCN: He was playing it safe and wasn’t very funny. I wanted him to break loose and get all wacky the way he does on SNL.

EE: Which probably would have made him more charming, but he came across stiff and out of his league, especially since he was surrounded by such a great supporting cast.

PCN: He wasn’t up to Mila’s level when it came to comic timing and making it look effortless. Oddly enough, I thought he was more effective in his few dramatic scenes. And he had decent chemistry with Mila but they often seemed like just friends, exactly what their characters kept claiming they were.

EE: I loved everything about her.

PCN: Oh, she’s so gorgeous and funny, I just wanted to shove her down the stairs of that tall building where she likes to go up on the roof. And I love Patricia Clarkson. She’s welcome in any movie. Richard Jenkins did nice work as Dylan’s dad, but his storyline is unnecessarily dramatic and seemed like it belonged in another movie.

EE: Woody Harrelson’s comic timing was perfect but you almost wish he was younger so he could play Timberlake’s role.

PCN: Not that it’s Harrelson’s fault at all, but I didn’t understand why his character Tommy was even there. He didn’t serve any real purpose.

EE: He’s the male sidekick who provides comic relief, and JT probably would have been better doing that.

PCN: That would have been interesting but either way, Tommy needed better dialogue. It seems the writers just made him say “dick” a lot and felt that was enough.

EE: They let him make that speech to Dylan about what it’s like to find the love of your life, but it happened too early in the movie so they had to have Dylan’s dad say it again towards the end to hammer the point home. The writers didn’t trust us to get it the first time.

PCN: When Dylan’s dad was going on about how Dylan shouldn’t waste time once he’s found the one, I couldn’t help picturing JT morphing into Billy Crystal running down the street in NYC trying to get to Meg Ryan before midnight in When Harry Met Sally…

EE: Yeah, I agree. And I could have done without the ongoing joke about how you’re gay if you like Harry Potter, and the flash mob sequences, which went on too long.