Helen

In real life you don’t want to hang out with someone who’s a drag, so why sit through an entire movie focused on a woman and her misery? It’s one thing to check out a drama in which the main character has an actual problem at hand, but in Helen, the titular character’s issue is confined to her head and not just because she’s suffering with a mental illness. The gravity of her situation is never relayed clearly making it impossible to sympathize with her situation. Helen never seems sympathetic, she seems unjustifiably sad and selfish.

From the outside, Helen (Ashley Judd) seems to have it all. She’s a successful college music professor and lives in a beautiful home with her daughter, Julie (Alexia Fast), and loving second husband, David (Goran Visnjic). But inside she’s harboring a secret and when that secret surfaces, her life unravels. An overwhelming case of depression quickly escalates from short panic attacks to a condition that consumes her every waking moment. She can’t sleep, she can’t teach, she can’t function in the least. Finally David takes her to a hospital where the seriousness of her state is finally revealed. A doctor explains to David, “Your wife is not unhappy, Mr. Leonard. Your wife is ill.”

Imagine how hard this must be for David. He’s married to a wonderful woman for seven years without the slightest idea of the turmoil raging within her. Out of the blue he finds out her condition is so intense, she’s a suicide risk. Think that’s tough on him? It’s way worse for the audience. Not only do you have to deal with Helen’s depression, but also one of Helen’s music students, Mathilda (Lauren Lee Smith). The two have their first one-on-one encounter when Helen is still in a semi-sane and she comes across Mathilda losing it over the fact that the notes coming from her cello just don’t sound right. It’s easy to tell something is off with Mathilda, but later in the film it’s so evident that she’s got some serious problems, it’s downright terrifying. Even beyond her personal issues, the manner in which she interjects herself into Helen’s world is particularly creepy as she steps into the picture one day and assumes the role of Helen’s confidant, blocking David out. Mathilda lurks in dark corners, speaks cryptically and comes across as more of a villain than a friend. The more she pushes, the darker her character becomes. Even when she puts Helen at ease, it’s impossible to look at her as anything but a person who can snap at any moment.

Helen goes on her downward spiral before we even get to know her. She looks gorgeous, has a nice husband and bright kid, but that doesn’t convey anything more than she’s just a typical mom with a good job. The only character that makes a positive impact is David. At the onset, while Helen is moping around, we get a glimpse at what he’s really about at home and at work. Once things take a turn for the insane, he’s the only likable person left, so it’s instinctual to latch onto him.

Rather than simply telling the story of a woman struggling with a mental illness, writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck suffocates you with it. No matter how good her cinematography, the performances, or anything else in the movie is, it’s rendered nearly ineffective by the film’s miserable material. You won’t feel for Helen, you’ll be angry at her. Maybe if the movie moved at something other than a torturous, deliberate pace it might be bearable. It doesn’t and it isn’t. Unless you’re prepared to be needlessly drowned in another woman’s problems for nearly two hours, stay away from Helen.

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Dinner for Schmucks

Making a comedy centered entirely around a dinner party isn’t easy. The makers of Clue pulled it off brilliantly but almost no one else has. It’s hard to fill 90 minutes with people hanging around, eating, talking, and drinking and make it consistently funny. It’s complicated. It takes real talent and yet when it works, it’s legendary. So Dinner for Schmucks, in spite of a title which might suggest otherwise, doesn’t try. It should probably have been titled “A Bunch Of Idiots Ruin Some Guys Life And Then They Eat”. But it’s easy to see why that might be too long. Schmucks avoids the perils of making a dinner party movie entirely by not being a dinner party movie at all. Instead it opts for the easiest route possible and tells the story of some idiots being stupid while a normal guy suffers. This is the kind of comedy Hollywood makes frequently and Dinner for Schmucks pulls it off well enough. Yet it’s with a wistful sort of what might have been disappointment that I note the movie never really takes off until it finally gets to that dinner party, a dinner party which is sadly, barely a footnote in an otherwise long and rambling comedy about nothing.

The biggest disappointment here is the way Schmucks uses Paul Rudd, which is to say it doesn’t use him at all. Instead Rudd, a tremendous comedic talent, is asked to stand there looking bored while people around him do things that are funny. It’s as if Rudd is in a different movie, a French romantic comedy starting Audrey Tautou perhaps, while everyone else in the film mimicks an Austin Powers movie. Rudd is the generically named “Tim”, one of those boring stockbroker types who has a cute girlfriend, lives beyond his means, and wants a promotion. To get his promotion, his boss tells him he’ll have to attend their monthly executive dinner. There’s a catch: To attend he must bring an idiot with him and whoever brings the biggest idiot, wins.

Moments later Tim hits just such an idiot with his car. This idiot is Barry, played by Steve Carell as if he’s the third member of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniel’s Dumb & Dumber duo. But Steve Carell is not Jim Carrey and his great strength as an actor is in the way he convincingly plays the sympathetic everyman. Carell’s too talented to blow it even when he’s miscast, but he ends up bringing a lot of that everyman sympathy to a character who is absolutely not an everyman and would probably be funnier if he didn’t have our sympathy. Barry should probably have been played by Zach Galifianakis, who incidentally shows up later in the movie and runs away with the whole thing.

So Tim hits Barry with his car, discovers Barry’s a pretty weird guy with a habit of dressing dead mice up in miniature outfits, and invites him to the dinner party. Then for no reason at all, Barry won’t go away. Barry starts following Tim around everywhere, ends up at Tim’s house and gradually begins to ruin his life with the kind of buffoonery that only happens in movies. And the script goes on like that, as it starts asking us to care about Tim’s relationship with his girlfriend (we don’t) and introduces characters which have nothing at all to do with the Schmuck dinner that’s supposed to serve as the film’s big finale. Occasionally we’re rewarded for sticking with all this tedious plodding. When Jemaine Clement shows up as an out of his mind artist bent on stealing Tim’s girlfriend, he turns every scene he’s part of into comedic gold.

But there’s never enough Zach Galifianakis or Jemaine Clement and the movie never seems interested in being anything other than another one of those been there, done that buddy comedies in which a straight man is forced to hang out with a total dufus. Dinner for Schmucks has the kind of premise that could have made it well above average, but it takes that premise and then does everything it can to make it turn out as average and infinitely forgettable as possible. It succeeds. By the time Dinner for Schmucks gets around to serving the desert, you’ll be more than ready for the check.

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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Cast:
Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim
Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona V. Flowers
Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells
Chris Evans as Lucas Lee
Anna Kendrick as Stacey Pilgrim
Brandon Routh as Todd Ingram
Alison Pill as Kim Pine
Jason Schwartzman as Gideon Gordon Graves
Ellen Wong as Knives Chau
Satya Bhabha as Matthew Patel
Mark Webber as Stephen Stills
Brie Larson as Envy Adams
Aubrey Plaza as Julie Powers
Johnny Simmons as Young Neil
Mae Whitman as Roxy Richter
Abigail Chu as Trisha 'Trasha' Ha
Chantelle Chung as Tamara
Nelson Franklin as Comeau
Ingrid Haas as Monique
Emily Kassie as Winifred Hailey
Erik Knudsen as Luke 'Crash' Wilson

Directed by Edgar Wright

Story:
22-year-old Toronto bass player Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) has fallen hopelessly in love with the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a cool-headed hipster whose sway over men has left her with seven evil exes who Scott has to defeat in order for her to commit to being his girlfriend.

Analysis:
As someone who absolutely loves Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novels and Edgar Wright's previous two movies, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is the type of slamdunk in theory that makes it easy to ignore how hard it is to really to do a comic book adaptation that fully captures everything that makes the source material so enjoyable. O'Malley's six-volume series combines so many different elements and genres and ideas, Wright's decision to turn the story into one single coherent movie may not just seem ambitious as much as possibly being outright impossible. And yet somehow Wright makes the movie work in a way that fans of the books certainly won't be even remotely disappointed, because whichever aspect of the books they enjoy is probably in there, sometimes even verbatim.

This is very much Wright's show and he's in complete control. While a little more transparency in his direction would have gone a long way--it's possibly one of the most frenetically-paced movies ever made—the movie is incredibly funny not just due to the source material, but also due to Wright's own sense of humor and his ability to make the most out of every single gag however big or small. In fact, it's sometimes so hard to separate the bits from the books and those brought to the table by Wright himself that the results are essentially the perfect amalgam of innovative filmmaker with equally creative source material. The most immediately noticeable thing is how "un-British" the movie feels, especially since Wright, along with his usual conspirators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, successfully created a similar blueprint for modern British humor and culture as Monty Python did in their day. Instead, Wright's mission this time around is to recreate for the viewer the experience of being a 20-something slacker in the hipster Toronto scene, a lifestyle that seemingly involves music, video games, parties, making out and little else.

The overall look of the movie is quite fascinating in the way Wright sometimes recreates full panels from O'Malley's books down to the smallest detail, then other times drifts off to create something inspired by other sources. This is most apparent during the fantastic battle sequences where Wright's talents deliver in a big way turning some fights into live action video games while paying homage to comic books and anime--complete with split screens, speed lines and words --with some of the best Hong Kong martial arts action you're likely to see in a non-Asian film. When Ramona starts getting into the fights, the movie becomes most reminiscent of "Kill Bill Vol. 1," and that comparison also boils down to the fact that so many different influences are thrown into Wright's stockpot you never feel as if you're watching something derivative, maybe because he always shies away from normal movie formulas and tropes.

As much as the weight of making this material work falls squarely on Wright's shoulders, it's just as much about whether Michael Cera can pull off the suave cluelessness that makes Scott Pilgrim such a loveable comic character. Cera brings a similar boyish charm to Scott as he has with previous roles, but also exudes a confidence we haven't seen from him before as he mans up to take on a more heroic role against Ramona's Evil Exes. Up until that point, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's too-cool-for-school Ramona Flowers seems so out of his league in every possible way one might question what she's doing with him. That's because Winstead's performance--never laughing and delivering a smile like the "Mona Lisa"--is akin to Zooey Deschanel's character in just about anything she's done but especially in "(500) Days of Summer."

Then there's Ellen Wong as Knives Chau, Scott's significantly younger "fake high school girlfriend." Wong may be the find of the century, her casting in the movie being as significant as Carey Mulligan in "An Education" last year, starting off innocent and naïve, full of awe at anything Scott says or does - you almost feel bad for her that it's Scott who becomes her tour guide for the world outside high school. Not only is Wong absolutely adorable in every scene, she also provides some of the movie's funniest laughs whenever she shows up, usually at the oddest and most awkward moments. In fact, her character is given a far more satisfying arc in the movie than in the comics, and it's impressive how an actress with so little experience is able to deliver on every aspect of what that entails.

As much as this love triangle drives the movie, what keeps it so entertaining are all the side characters that act as a hipster Greek Chorus commenting on Scott's many less-than-wise decisions. Kieran Culkin steals every scene as Wallace Wells, Scott Pilgrim's snarky gay roommate, as does Aubrey Plaza as Julie Powers, the foul-mouthed acquaintance who shows up to criticize him. Allison Pill's Kim Pine, the cynical drummer for Sex Bob-omb, delivers some of the funniest lines in a perfect deadpan, often getting laughs merely with a look or an arched eyebrow. Then there are the exes themselves--Chris Pine as a macho action star and Brandon Routh as a pretentious Vegan bass player--delivering heightened performances that perfectly enhance them as caricatures. At times, you almost feel bad for Cera that his character is often left playing straight man.

While some of the coolest and funniest moments are retained from the comics, Wright doesn't shy away from the strange bits either. When Scott's battle with Ramona's first Evil Ex Matt Patel breaks out into song, it's one of those times that could immediately lose those unfamiliar with the books. It's also one of the times when Wright sticking with something so weird because it is from the books is actually quite commendable. Sometimes the zaniness goes a little too far, some points even in danger of veering into "The Spirit" territory--the "Seinfeld" reference comes from about as far left field as you can get--but things go by so quickly you just don't have time to hold any ill will against it. Within seconds, you're laughing or being wowed by something else, whether it's a cool fight sequence or the way Scott's opponents explode into a shower of coins.

The results are significantly better than "Kick-Ass," mainly since when the movie does deviate from the books, mostly in the final half hour, it allows Wright to flex his creative muscles to create something truly epic. Scott's fight with the Katayanagi Twins is the one time where his entire band gets involved in the fight and where Wright's FX budget is stretched to its absolute limits. Normally, something so fantastic would be saved for the final battle yet there's still an even more impressive set piece to come.

Even so, Wright never loses sight of the story amidst all the action, the side characters and other distractions, and the other obvious way he greatly improves upon the source material is that he gives Scott's band Sex Bob-omb a much better arc than in the comics. This movie is just as much about them as it is about Scott's quest for love with Ramona. The movie's opening titles run over the band rehearsing and then it culminates in the band falling in with Ramona's final Evil Ex, Jason Schwartzman's Gideon G. Graves, a sleazy music producer who clearly has his hooks well into Ramona.

Musically, the film sports one of the hippest soundtracks of any movie this year, last year or in recent memory, from the 8-bit version of the Universal theme that opens it to various snippets sampled from classic video games to cool tunes by the likes of Beck and Broken Social Scene. When Scott's own rock star ex-girlfriend Envy Adams (played by Brie Larson) appears on stage with her band The Clash at Demonhead performing Metric's "Black Sheep," it's a moment that immediately elevates the movie from a series of quip-filled vignettes to something truly karmic. Likewise, the way the music performances are enhanced by abstract animation instills a subliminal layer of emotions in the viewer that's hard to put into words.

The movie's only real flaw, if it can be considered one, is that Wright clearly has way too much story and ideas on his hands to possibly fit into one movie. It worked out just fine for "Shaun" and "Hot Fuzz," but forcing so much story to move at such a lightning speed sometimes leaves one wanting to slow down and savor some of the movie's finer moments. Maybe that's why (like those movies) "Scott Pilgrim" is an experience that's sure to only be enhanced by multiple viewings.

The Bottom Line:
In terms of adapting O'Malley's comics, Wright does everything possible to capture the look, the feel and the very essence of O'Malley's creative imagination. The fact that it works as well as it does makes "Scott Pilgrim" another genius turn in Wright's career and filmography, made even more impressive by how impossible this task must have seemed from the offset. Because it relies so much on knowledge of video game culture and the book's unique tone, some people may not get it right away (or at all), but it's destined to become a beloved classic among the under-30 ADD generation whose lives have been intrinsically linked to MTV and video games. And who knows? Possibly even a few open-minded older folks as well.

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Charlie St. Cloud

Beneath the glossy sheen of Zac Efron there exists the makings of quite a fine actor, glimpses of which were seen in both the blockbuster comedy 17 Again and the indie drama Me and Orson Welles. His transition out of the Disney-fied teen-dream world and into more adult-oriented projects is a gradual, uneasy one, as is evidenced by his latest film, the metaphysical drama Charlie St. Cloud, which finds him perched squarely in between the two camps. Efron, it appears, is in that awkward stage.

In Charlie St. Cloud, Efron plays the title character, a carefree, college-bound sailing star whose bright future is torpedoed when an awful auto wreck takes the life of his beloved kid brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan). Charlie, at the wheel of the car at the time of the crash, briefly dies himself, only to be wrested from a flatline by a particularly stubborn and spiritual EMT (Ray Liotta).

Years later, Charlie’s body has made a full recovery, but his mind remains plagued by some nasty after-effects of the tragedy. He’s given up sailing, ditched his college plans, gotten a job at a cemetery, and taken up the habit of holding regular conversations with dead people — specifically his brother Sam, with whom he meets daily in a forest clearing to play catch. Usually, such mental deterioration coincides fairly closely with physical deterioration, which is why you don’t encounter a lot of well-groomed paranoid schizophrenics on skid row. But Charlie has kept up with his workout and grooming regimens, earning a reputation among the residents of his sleepy Pacific Northwest town as a sort of beautiful nutcase.

Unable to escape his all-consuming grief, Charlie seems doomed to retreat further into isolation and despair until salvation arrives, wrapped in a cardigan: Tess, (Amanda Crew), a feisty pro sailor and no stranger to tragedy herself, can see beyond Charlie’s unhinged persona to the sensitive, troubled, and irresistibly hot man that lies beneath. As their relationship deepens, Charlie is increasingly torn between his imaginary friends and his real-life love.

It’s a noble aim, giving tweens questions deeper than just “Edward or Jacob?” to contemplate, and Charlie St. Cloud’s principal message, “life is for living,” is a worthwhile one. But director Burr Steers, having learned from the success of 17 Again, clearly knows where his bread is buttered, and so he takes care to sate the demands of Efron’s screeching fanbase by stocking the film with ample glowing shots of his star, lovingly lit and clad invariably in a light blue, solid color shirt and emoting against a picturesque coastal landscape. (Lest you think I'm exaggerating, check out this studio-supplied promo clip, featuring an interview with a shirtless Efron.) The awkward mix of existential drama and Abercrombie & Fitch commercial, combined with a healthy dose of loopy, Sixth Sense-esque supernatural shenanigans tossed in toward the end, makes for an experience only the most fawning of Efron’s fans could enjoy.

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'Salt' Movie Review

Salt, the propulsive new thriller from Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games), has been dubbed “Bourne with boobs,” but that label isn’t entirely accurate. In the role of Evelyn Salt, a CIA staffer hunted by her own agency after a Russian defector fingers her in a plot to murder Russia’s president, Angelina Jolie keeps her two most potent weapons holstered, hidden under pantsuits and trenchcoats and the various other components of a super-spy wardrobe that proudly emphasizes function over flash.

But flash is one thing Salt never lacks for. Its breathless cat-and-mouse game hits full-throttle almost from the outset, when a former KGB officer named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) stumbles into a CIA interrogation room and begins spilling details of a vast conspiracy. Back in the ‘70s, hardline elements of the Soviet regime launched an ambitious new front in the Cold War, flooding the western world with orphans trained to infiltrate the security complexes of their adopted homelands and wait patiently — decades, if necessary — for the order to initiate a series of assassinations intended to trigger a devastating nuclear clash between the superpowers, from which the treacherous Reds would emerge triumphant.

The Soviet Union may have long ago collapsed (or did it? Hmmm...), but its army of brainwashed killer orphan spies remains in place, and if this crazy Orlov fellow is to be believed, they stand poised to reignite the Cold War. It’s a preposterous — even idiotic — scheme, but no more so than any of our government’s various harebrained proposals to kill Castro back in the ‘60s. As such, the CIA treats it with grave seriousness, even the part that that pegs Salt, who just happens to be a Russian-born orphan herself, as a key player in the conspiracy.

Salt bristles at the accusation, but, suspecting a set-up, she opts to flee rather than face interrogation from her bosses Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A former field agent, she’s been confined to a desk job since a clandestine operation in North Korea went south, leaving her with a nasty shiner and a rather unremarkable German boyfriend (now her unremarkable German husband). She’s clearly kept up her training during while cubicle-bound, however, and in a blaze of resourceful thinking and devastating Parkour Fu, she fends off a dozen or so agents of questionable competence and takes to the streets, where she sets about to clear her name and unravel the Commie orphan conspiracy before the authorities can catch up with her. That is, if she isn’t a part of the conspiracy.

The premise, which aims to resurrect Cold War tensions and graft them onto a modern-day spy thriller, is absurdly clever — and cleverly absurd. But Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay isn’t satisfied with the merely clever and absurd — it must be mind-blowing. Salt is one of those thrillers that ladles out its backstory slowly and in tiny portions, every once in a while dropping a revelatory bombshell that effectively blows the lid off everything that happened beforehand. No one is who they seem, and every action, every gesture, no matter how seemingly trivial, is imbued with some kind of grand significance. The effect of piling on one insane twist after another has the effect of gradually diluting the narrative. When anything is possible, nothing really matters.

But spy thrillers, by definition, trade in the preposterous, and the principal function of the summer blockbuster is to entertain. In that regard, Salt more than fulfills its charge. Noyce wisely keeps the story moving at pace that allows little time for asking uncomfortable questions or poking holes in the film’s frail plot. And he has an able partner in the infinitely versatile Jolie, who, having already exhibited formidable action-hero chops in Wanted and the Tomb Raider films, proves remarkably adept at the spy game as well.

It’s well-known that Jolie wasn’t the first choice to star in Salt, joining the project only after Tom Cruise dropped out, citing the story’s growing similarities to the Mission: Impossible films. But she’s more than just a capable replacement; she’s a welcome upgrade over Cruise, not least because she’s over a decade younger (and a few inches taller), than her predecessor. Should Brad Bird require a pinch-hitter for Ethan Hunt, he knows where to look.

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Ramona and Beezus

Beverley Cleary is one of those rare authors whose works can transcend generations without seeming dated or archaic. Her books’ messages, be it about the importance of family, individualism or friendship, are universal, which explains why you’ve never met a person who has never read one of her books. Though they’re primarily written for children, many adults still cherish the stories. Because of this, Elizabeth Allen’s Ramona and Beezus had a steep mountain to climb from the film’s inception, and, unfortunately, it’s one that it leaves unconquered.

The film follows Ramona (Joey King), a young girl with an over-active imagination that occasionally gets her into trouble both at home and at school. Her teacher, Mrs. Meacham (Sandra Oh), wants nothing more than for her to stop being a class distraction and as her sister Beezus (Selena Gomez) is growing into maturity, she is looked at as little more than a pest by her sibling. The only person that really seems to understand Ramona is her father (John Corbett), but after he loses his job and the family enters a serious financial situation, everyone’s relationships become strained and Ramona tries to find a way to fix it.

The film’s greatest weakness is its attempt to jam far too many storylines into a 104 minute runtime. The film soon begins to feel episodic instead of like one continuous plot. This would be fine if executed well, but, instead, all of the vignettes seem to follow the same pattern. 1) Ramona is being a rambunctious free spirit, 2) Someone gets upset about Ramona being a rambunctious free spirit 3) Someone has a heart-to-heart with Ramona about growing up, being responsible and learning to mature. The pattern then repeats, as Ramona fails to apply any part of the speech to her life.

To the film’s credit, it actually achieves something that was long thought impossible: making a hyperactive elementary-schooler anything other than exhaustingly annoying. All of the credit for this has to go to King who not only delivers lines in a way that doesn’t make you want to grind your teeth, but simply appears to be in her element and having fun. It would have been easy to pluck any energetic 11-year-old out of a crowd and place her in front of the camera, but the King casting decision was a great one – she truly seems to embody the spirit of Ramona Quimby.

Also deserving praise for a performance is Corbett as Ramona’s father Robert Quimby. Though his character is often the one giving the obscenely sappy heart-to-heart speeches to his daughter (seriously, the music swells and everything), the actor looks to be having fun in the role of the family man. There are many points throughout the film that he is forced to play Bob Saget at the end of an episode of Full House, but, moving past that, he has great chemistry with his on-screen family.

Thanks to the actors, this film isn’t the train wreck that it could have been, but it still doesn’t do Cleary right. Had screenwriters Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay focused more on the film’s structure and not made it into an after-school special every 15 minutes, they might have been successful, but instead it simply falls flat. Ramona and Beezus won’t tarnish Cleary’s legacy, but it certainly is no alternative to her books.

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The Karate Kid

The fact of the matter is it's been 26 years since the first Karate Kid, and given how many other movies have relied on the exact same formula, a full-fledged remake is pretty fair game. By moving things to China and casting 11-year-old Jaden Smith (as opposed to the 25-year-old Ralph Macchio of the original), Sony successfully put a fresh coat of paint on the rickety old story, and despite a gargantuan running time and paper-thin characters, it's kind of nice to see yet another kid learn the crane pose.

It's hard to know who to credit or blame for the film, since director Harald Zwart was brought in well after things were in development, and the film's likely true authors, Will Smith and the Chinese government that authorized the on-location production, are entirely offscreen. But even though The Karate Kid is a paint-by-numbers remake that exists so Smith can make his kid a star and China can promote itself to the West, it's also exceptionally well shot, frequently funny and touching, and perhaps most importantly, a vehicle for a great Jackie Chan performance. It's not quite enough to justify a two and a half length, but it comes close.

As for the plot, imagine the original Karate Kid with a few language barriers tossed in. Dre (Jaden Smith) and his mom (Taraji P. Henson) leave Detroit for brighter job prospects in Beijing, where Dre quickly tussles with the local group of thugs who also happen to be kung fu masters. Dre starts up a showy flirtation with Meiying (Wenwen Han), who's spoken for by head baddie Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), and soon he's hiding from these kids every day after school. In the middle of one particularly mean fight Dre is rescued by his apartment building's reclusive handyman Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), who reluctantly agrees to teach Dre kung fu but only after taking the arrogant tween down a peg or two. Lessons are learned, poses are struck, a friendship begins to blossom-- cue the training montage.

It actually takes nearly an hour for the training montage to show up, thanks to The Karate Kid's glacial pace and greater interest in Beijing scenery than creating believable characters and letting us spend time with them. Just when Dre's training with Mr. Han picks up narrative steam, we're stuck watching Dre's baby romance with Meiying and constant shots of Beijing landmarks, so much that you can almost hear Chinese officials saying "Include that! It looks great on the postcards!" Cinematographer Roger Pratt captures the city and the surrounding countryside beautifully, but precious little of it serves the film's rote story. We get a great sense of Beijing scenery, sure, but none of how it impacts Dre and his mom, who experience so little actual culture clash they may as well be in Epcot.

It's truly fascinating to watch snotty and rambunctious Dre transform into a confident warrior, and the charismatic Smith and expert Chan build a believably tender and touching surrogate father-son relationship. Unfortunately all of the other characters fall a little flat, from the villainous rival kung fu instructor who glowers like a Mortal Kombat baddie to the pretty and blank Meiying and even Dre's mom, who played by Oscar-nominee Henson feels more like a plot device than an actual human. Direct Zwart does well handling the violence of the fight scenes and the emotional bond between Dre and Mr. Han, but everything else falls victim to his experience with broad children's comedies like Agent Cody Banks.

There's a lot to swallow with this new Karate Kid-- you have to accept that privileged child of Hollywood Jaden Smith is now a movie star, that a remake of a beloved 80s classic isn't automatically a travesty, and that about an hour and a half's worth of good material within a two and a half hour running time is a reasonable ratio. In any other summer, it might not be worth the trip, but summer 2010 is proving to be unusually dismal, and at this point there are worse things than sitting in the air conditioning, marveling at some beautiful cinematography and excellent fight choreography, and witnessing the acting rebirth of Jackie Chan.

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'Inception': Reviews Are In

A cabal of critics isn't lulled by the blockbuster dreamscape, with one deriding it for having 'no soul, no sex and almost no joy.'

It happened last winter with "Avatar" and it's happening again with "Inception": a hugely hyped, big-budget thrill-ride hits theaters, pretty much everyone loves it, yet there remain a few critics on the sideline defiantly shouting, "But it's really not that good, people!"

To those "Inception" haters, we might ask: Um, what exactly do you expect from a summer blockbuster? Because "Inception" is about as perfect as a summer blockbuster can be. Which is not to say it's a perfect movie. No doubt, Christopher Nolan's cinematic dreamscape has its fair share of flaws. But if you expect a ripping story line, whiz-bang special effects and the sense of being transported to another world, you will not be disappointed. In fact, you will be elated.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, the brains behind a crew of thieves — including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy — with a peculiar specialty: They possess a machine that allows them to enter another person's dreams and steal a secret. Their quest in "Inception" is to implant a memory, which requires them to create dreams worlds within dream worlds — and not get lost forever on the bewildering shores of their own subconscious.

Will you be a fanatic or hater of "Inception"? There's only one way to find out: Get thyself to the multiplex. And before you do, check out what the critics have to say.

The Hype
"The accomplishments of 'Inception' are mainly technical, which is faint praise only if you insist on expecting something more from commercial entertainment. That audiences do — and should — expect more is partly, I suspect, what has inspired some of the feverish early notices hailing 'Inception' as a masterpiece, just as the desire for a certifiably great superhero movie led to the wild overrating of 'The Dark Knight.' In both cases Mr. Nolan's virtuosity as a conjurer of brilliant scenes and stunning set pieces, along with his ability to invest grandeur and novelty into conventional themes, have fostered the illusion that he is some kind of visionary."

The Dissenters
"If you approach 'Inception' with lowered expectations it's a pretty good time ... For all the complexity, craftsmanship and color of 'Inception,' it's yet another of [Nolan's] ultra-serious schematic constructions with no soul, no sex and almost no joy, all about some tormented dude struggling with his ill-managed Freudian demons. That same guy sitting next to me cracked that Nolan needs to stop seeing a therapist; there's not nearly enough sublimation in his movies."

The Complexities
"Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay, lays out the rules of his world deftly. A ton of exposition is needed, yet it never feels like exposition. Things are explained plausibly, and in just enough detail for us to get it — the last thing Nolan wants to do is over-explain himself. The information is parceled out carefully, not all at once, but not in a way that's maddening or cryptic, either. Again, I marvel at how many films with concepts far simpler than this one never make sense at all, or else only make sense because they repeat themselves clumsily."

The Performances
" 'Inception' benefits immensely from a series of low-key and thoroughly credible performances. DiCaprio, in a kind of riff on his 'Shutter Island' performance, embodies both the steel and the putty of Cobb, a man who can do remarkable things and is at the same time deeply vulnerable. Gordon-Levitt, stylish and lean as a dagger, makes a fine and steady cohort, Page is utterly at home in the intellectual depths of her character, and Hardy has a seedy nobility that suggests a John le Carré antihero. In [Cillian] Murphy we have a man who isn't a villain but a decent fellow with reasonable defensiveness, and in [Marion] Cotillard, as you might expect, we have a woman worth losing one's mind for — literally, as it happens."

The Director
"Nolan exemplifies the best kind of filmmaking, unchained from the laws of time, space and even gravity, but never from the most basic rules of narrative. Even at its most tangled and paradoxical, 'Inception' keeps circling back to the motivation that has driven films from 'The Wizard of Oz' to 'E.T.': Cobb, finally, just wants to go home."

The Stunts
"Many of the movie's effects and digital manipulations are spectacularly imaginative, especially a sequence of weightless action in a rotating hotel corridor, the unexpected arrival of a huge train in a scene without tracks, and the startling sight of a long boulevard peeling up off the ground and rising to double over on itself."

The Final Word
"When was the last time you had your mind blown by a movie? Because when 'Inception' ends and the lights come up, you'll be sitting in your seat, staring at the screen, wondering what the hell just happened. Of course, it won't be the first time director Christopher Nolan has shaken us out of the apathy that modern moviegoing induces. 'Inception' blends the blockbuster enormity of his 'Dark Knight' with the indie insights of 'Memento' to create an all-encompassing experience that makes most other summer films seem mediocre."

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Inception

Watching Inception is like striking a match and setting your brain on fire. The movie’s tagline, your mind is the scene of the crime, is so much more than a reference to what happens in the film. Sure the plot involves a group of dream-invading thieves, but in the process of telling that story, something much bigger happens inside your own head. It’s as if writer/director Chris Nolan has invaded your brain as well. As he attempts to unlock the secrets of the human psyche, his movie implants its own ideas in your subconscious. You’ll walk out of Inception questioning your own reality. It’s a feeling I haven’t had since the first time I saw The Matrix, only, Inception pulls it off without fetish leather and kung fu.

Inception spends almost all of its running time risking collapse as the plot becomes more and more complicated. It never holds back. It dares to challenge its characters and its audience. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb as a desperate man teetering on the edge. We learn he has the technology to invade people’s dreams and he uses it to get inside their head and steal secrets. Where this technology came from or exactly how it works is never discussed, it’s accepted by everyone as a matter of course. Is Inception set in a near future? An alternate universe? We don’t know it’s just one of the many layers hidden inside Nolan’s film left for you to either unravel or accept as the rules of this world. And as Cobb’s story unfolds, it’s riddled with more unexplained complexity. We learn that he’s unable to return to America to see his kids, but don’t know why. Are we even sure his kids exist? Is Cobb mad? At some point you’ll have to decide, but Inception won’t give you all the answers.

Cobb assembles a team and starts diving deeper and deeper into the dreams of their target. His dream-thieves are like psychology superheroes and their discussions of how to invade and alter the human consciousness from the inside out are as fascinating as any fight scene. But just in case you were wondering, Inception has a few of those as well. Joseph-Gordon Levitt ends up with the movie’s most physically demanding role as Cobb’s assistant Arthur and the zero gravity combat sequence he pulls off towards the end of the film may be one of the coolest things you’ll ever see on screen.

Cobb isn’t interested in the gritty details of how they’ll get their mission done, though. He’s too wrapped up in himself, his private hell, his all-consuming need to get home. He hopes that if he goes deep enough, dreaming dreams within dreams, within dreams, within dreams, he’ll be able to plant an idea in the mind of the dreamer and in the process, earn himself a ticket back to his kids. But as the dreams pile on top of each other, as Cobb throws himself in deeper, he risks losing himself and in trying to unravel it, you may lose yourself along with him.

Inception captures the inner workings of dreams in a way no other movie has before: Realistically. How do you know when you’re dreaming? You don’t, at least not until you wake up. The world of Nolan’s dreams is almost real and you’ll have to look closely around the edges for discontinuity, for the little places where things don’t quite fit together. It’s all there in the way the movie’s filmed and as Hans Zimmer’s brilliant, throbbing score swells around you in the theater and Nolan’s carefully chosen images shine out from the screen you may even find yourself wondering not if you’re watching a dream, but if you’re actually in one.

As the dreams go deeper the complexity of what’s happening skews dangerously close to becoming overwhelming and there are a million moments in the film when it could have and maybe it all should have collapsed under its own weight, buried beneath Nolan’s psychological hubris. At times understanding it is almost like trying to hold four or five different movies in your head all at once. Yet it never collapses. Inception runs along a razor’s edge, layering worlds on top of each other and pushing the audience’s ability to keep up right to the breaking point, but never passing it. It holds together because even if you’re baffled by the details, Inception isn’t actually a movie about the riddles of dreams. Though the plot’s ever deepening layers play out with impossibly perfect precision, at its root this is the ultimate heist film, what matters are ideas and Inception has big ones. It’s not the idea Cobb is trying to implant in his subject that matters, it’s the ideas that Nolan’s movie quietly plants inside you.

Inception is about ideas; contagious, powerful, unstoppable ideas and how they shape the way we live, breathe, and think. It wonders how you became the person are and explores how the things you’ve experienced have affected the decisions you’ve made and will make. It’s a blisteringly original and breathtakingly smart, a movie willing to take every risk imaginable to create a significant work of art using the power of cinema. That it does that while also entertaining the hell out of everyone who buys a ticket to see it, is an achievement beyond measure. You won’t just like Inception, you’ll be a better person for having seen it.

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The Sorcerer's Apprentice

The original "Sorcerer's Apprentice" short was a bit of Disney magic made at a time when the studio was overflowing with it, casting Mickey Mouse as a young student overwhelmed by mops given a life of their own, simultaneously creating an icon of magical power and breathing new life into a pretty terrific piece of classical music. The fact that this clever and concise short has been appropriated for a bloated Hollywood blockbuster probably ought to be blasphemy, and in some ways it is, but Jon Turteltaub's Sorcerer's Apprentice offers enough endearing goofiness and magic of its own to earn a pass this time.

While the expensive CGI effects and lavish action sequences are getting all the attention in the trailers, it's actually Nic Cage who provides the most magic, playing sorcerer Balthazar Blake as a thinly-disguised version of the real-life crazy Nic Cage, with a few added powers and only slightly flashier fashion. Balthazar is actually many centuries old, having been one of three trainees under Merlin himself and doomed to wander the globe seeking a Prime Merlinian in order to free the soul of his sorceress love (Monica Bellucci), which is trapped in a set of Russian nesting dolls along with that of Merlin trainee gone bad Horvath (Alfred Molina) and Queen Evil Morgana (Alice Krige). This is all explained in a pretty efficient prologue, so just accept that it makes sense in context.

We meet Balthazar again in the year 2000, where he's holed up in a New York City magic shop and by chance runs into 10-year-old Dave, who-- wonder of wonders!-- is the Prime Merlinian Balthazar has been seeking. Dave being a klutz, though, he accidentally frees the evil Horvath and sets the shop on fire, fleeing his magical fate for another 10 years until Balthazar and Horvath come back knocking on his door and Dave has grown up into Jay Baruchel. From there we get a pretty standard hero's journey story, as Dave learns to harness his magical skills, tries to evade Horvath and his magical plots, and tries even harder to get the girl (Teresa Palmer), with whom he's smitten for her pretty blond hair and apparently nothing else.

The script cobbled together by no fewer than four credited writers-- Matt Lopez, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard and Lawrence Konner with a story credit-- is exactly as rote and unimaginative as you would expect, but some eye-popping visuals and the ever-unpredictable Nic Cage keep things interesting. A Chinatown fight scene in which a New Year's dragon puppet turns real is genuinely thrilling, and whoever had the idea for Balthazar to fly around New York on one of the metal eagles from atop the Chrysler Building deserves sole writing credit on the sequel. Many of the best ideas never pan out as well as they should, and the lavish Times Square chase sequence is largely a dud, but director Jon Turteltaub and his team take good advantage of both the New York City locations and the CGI that augments it.

Though poor Bellucci is squandered entirely, the rest of the cast keep things moving along nicely as well; Baruchel and Cage play nicely off each other as the apprentice learns from the master, and Cage actually seems somewhat restrained for the first time in a while, playing with our expectations of how crazy this sorcerer will be. It works to the point that he and Molina actually seemed well-matched in their lunacy, and given that this is a movie about throwing balls of plasma at your opponent and using Tesla coils for seduction, that's no small feat.

Unfortunately none of these bright spots can save the dreadful third act, which unravels to the point that the central villain merely wanders away from the climactic battle and a fight sequence is interrupted so Dave can reconcile with his bland girlfriend. Fun and good intentions can only get you so far, and when it comes time for all of Dave's burgeoning magic to finally pay off, it instead becomes clear that nobody making this movie had any idea what they were doing all along. That's the point where you have a choice: recognize the flaws and dismiss the movie, or will that rabbit back into its hat. The creaky storytelling gears are plainly visible throughout the entirety of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but like any good magician, it usually manages to divert your attention to the point that you don't care.

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Predators

In 1987, in the midst of his heyday, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in Predator, an action sci-fi mixed genre film that won over both critics and movie-goers. But just like everything successful in Hollywood, the studio system attempted to build it into a franchise. The first sequel, Predator 2, was made in 1990 and both Alien vs. Predator and AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem arrived in the last six years. A mixed bag commercially, the films received a common line from the critics: a big thumbs down. While containing the same alien species, there was no linear connection between the sequels and the original film (the final two films merely an excuse to get two of cinema’s classic creatures to do battle). With Nimrod Antal’s Predators, the fifth film in the line, that pattern comes to an abrupt and blissful end.

With no opening credits, the film jumps right into the action as Royce, played by Adrian Brody, awakens mid-fall as he is dropped from high in the sky on to the lush, green, forested planet below. After awakening on the ground, barely surviving the fall, he discovers that he is not the only one to arrive in this fashion. Scouring the area, he finds others just like him who have no memory of how they arrived. After settling down, they realize that they all come from a similar background, be it military, FBI’s Most Wanted, or mercenary. In short, they are all killers. But the question persists: why are they there? Quickly, however, they realize that not only aren’t they the deadliest group in the jungle, but that they’re being hunted by those that are.

The film’s greatest asset is its “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. Much like the rest of Schwarzenegger’s filmography, the original was very much part of the muscles-and-guns genre. The storyline was simple: a group of trained commandos head into the jungles of Guatemala and come face to face with the ultimate killer. Sound familiar? That’s because you just read the same plot outline in the previous paragraph, with an alien planet replacing the Central American country and an added sense of mystery. But the strangest thing here is that those seemingly minor elements are enough to prevent the film from feeling stale and repetitive. The movie doesn’t seem like a copycat, it feels like a true fan’s version of what should have followed the first film.

Going in, the wildcard was always going to be Adrian Brody. An Oscar winner for his performance in the Holocaust drama The Pianist, the large-beaked star has spent the bulk of his career establishing himself as a dramatic actor. Even in King Kong his character is pushed aside in favor of a giant ape, but it’s Brody who has the last laugh here. In spite of using a fake, gravely voice he completely sells the character as a selfish ex-military mercenary. Putting on at least 20 pounds of muscle for the role, he’s no Ah-nuld but he certainly looks like a man with a history of ass-kicking and a guy who you’ll believe can go toe-to-toe with a Predator. Not bad for an actor who’s greatest trademark up to this point has been endlessly middle-gazing.

For all the movie’s highs, the movie’s large cast causes problems. Taking a hard-R approach, the Predators needed characters to be the occasional victims, but this leaves many of the stranded human killers feeling ancillary and superfluous. From the very start it’s obvious where the line of demarcation between survivors and victims lays, and while it’s endlessly entertaining to watch the alien hunters do what they do best, it would have been useful to get to know these people before we watched them slaughtered.

What Predators represents is the first true sequel to John McTiernan’s 1987 film. The three films made in the 23 years since never felt authentic, with the word “franchise film” more applicable than “follow-up.” With this new entry, Antal and producer Robert Rodriguez (who has been working on this story since 1994) show what can happen when talent comes to a franchise with a passion for the material in mind rather than cash.

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Despicable Me

Despicable Me falls somewhere in the middle range of animated films targeted at kids, featuring none of the delirious wit of How to Train Your Dragon and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and certainly not the outright Pixar genius, but also absent the mindless pandering and obvious plotting we all fear in children's films. With a smart concept, some clever gags and well-choreographed action it moves along nicely, but it also squanders considerable voice talent and doesn't really take advantage of the twisted world it successfully creates. You get the feeling that a darker and more clever Despicable Me may have existed at some point before the studio, still trying to break into the animated market, defaulted to the safe side.

As Gru, a hunched supervillain conducting all his plots from the suburbs for some reason, Steve Carell uses a constricted German accent to great effect, abandoning his typical Michael Scott comic persona for someone even more insecure and struggling. Gru gets the big idea to steal the moon after new kid in town Vector (Jason Segel) starts upstaging him with dastardly deeds of his own, but Gru's plan is foiled when the Bank of Supervillains (formerly Lehman Brothers) won't float him a loan. Making matters worse, Gru's flashy new rival Vector steals the shrink ray Gru needed to capture the moon, and now all the evening news reports focus on Vector, with poor Gru stuck abusing his freeze ray and popping childrens' balloons for his evil deeds. For pretty flimsy reasons Gru decides that the only way to steal back his shrink ray is to adopt a trio of orphan girls, whom he plans to use as bait and otherwise ignore while locking them in the kitchen and tinkering away in his underground lair.

The girls-- voiced by Disney star Miranda Cosgrove, Elsie Fisher and Dana Gaier-- have other plans, of course, and slowly go about melting Gru's heart even when he'd rather skip the bedtime stories and let them walk to ballet class. Gru's developing relationship with the girls doesn't fit all that well with the supervillain rivalry plot, and the script by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul bounces somewhat haphazardly between family bonding and Gru's scheming in the basement. Each has their moments-- a trip to the amusement park is fun and funny, and a heist at Vector's house is pure well-executed tension-- but you miss the airtight script of a Pixar or DreamWorks Animation film, or even a plot that doesn't feel utterly predictable from moment to moment. It's also a shame to see all kinds of other talent, including Russell Brand as Gru's elderly lab assistant and Kristen Wiig as the meanie orphanage manager, either shoved to the sidelines or forgotten about entirely by the scattered script.

Adding insult to injury, an incomprehensible amount of screen time goes to Gru's minions, those little globular yellow guys in the overalls who scurry around Gru's lab doing all kinds of jobs and bear the brunt of the film's physical comedy. Clearly the studio and directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud think they've come across gold here, but the minions never develop distinct personalities or even meaning within the plot, popping up from time to time to be cute but, like all the other disjointed plots, never amounting to much. The focus on the minions, so disproportionate to their actual quality as characters, speaks again to the disorganization of Despicable Me, a movie with a few good ideas and vocal performances and no idea where to go with them.

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The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender is a movie of exquisite beauty and, in its best moments, sublime visual clarity. It also contains some of the worst dialogue ever allowed on screen. It’s based on an animated series in the mold of Japanese-influenced anime, and if you’ve ever watched any anime, you know that when it’s dubbed from Japanese the translated dialogue often sounds strange, stilted, and composed mainly of unnecessary exposition. For some unfathomable reason writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has applied that same, awkward speech pattern to what’s supposed to be an English language movie. It’s as if he wrote his script in English, translated it into Japanese, and then translated it back again. Airbender is the kind of movie where characters use twenty or thirty words to say something even when it could probably have been said better with one or two. At times, it’s exhausting.

It’s not just dialogue that’s the problem, it’s the way he’s put the story together too. In theory this is an epic journey across a massive, landscape in an alternate world, but you never really get a sense of what that world’s about or the size of the journey. The movie sort of jumps from one scene to another, as if it doesn’t know how to convey a sense of movement, and when all the time lapsing leaves holes in the plot Night the director is forced to fix the problems of Night the writer by injecting narration to explain what’s going on. That does work to avoid confusion, but it’s a cheap trick and one which wouldn’t have been necessary with a better script. With a few notable exceptions, which we’ll get to later, most of the movie’s characters fare little better. They’re cardboard cutouts there to spout ridiculous sentences in which they repeat portions of the plot which we already know or recite the names of people we’ve already met at least a dozen times before. I can’t think of a better way to describe the writing here than just awful.

So, if you’re someone who thinks great writing is all that matters in a movie, you’ll think The Last Airbender is the worst movie of the year. But I think there’s more to film than words written on a page and in The Last Airbender, while Shyamalan the writer may be at his worst, Shyamalan the director delivers one of his best efforts yet. He does that, in spite of the way he’s been hamstrung by M. Night, the writer. It helps that he didn’t come up with this concept. The blow of his bad writing is blunted by the source material, which has already laid out where this movie must go, preventing M. Night the awful writer from turning it into a story about mildly annoyed house plants. That means no matter how bad his writing is, as a director Shyamalan has something worthwhile here to work with, and work with it he does.

Set in a fantasy world where people have the ability to control the natural elements, The Last Airbender revolves around Aang, just a kid, but also the only person with the ability to control them all. The world has divided itself up by elemental powers. Those who can control the elements are called Benders, and the Fire Benders live in a militaristic place called the Fire Nation, full of smoke belching machines and heat. The Water Nation opposes them with its ability to control all things wet, while the Earth Benders have fallen beneath the Fire Bender boot heel. Air Benders long ago became a group of monks, and it’s from there that Aang, the last Airbender and the only person with the power to control all four elements at once, sprung.

Aang is the Avatar, which is a lot like the Dalai Lama with super powers, and the casting of unknown 13-year-old Noah Ringer to play him was a stroke of genius. It’s more than just the way he manages to make the movie’s awful dialogue seem nearly credible, there’s a calmness that surrounds him, even when he’s at his most direct and intense. A lot of it is in the way he moves. Ringer’s role is a very physical one, but he pulls it all off with an unbelievable sort of grace. There are moments, great moments, in the movie where M. Night’s camera simply stops and lets him move, performing a complicated martial arts dance on screen as if there’s nothing else in the world but him and the blowing wind.

Dev Patel’s Zuko works too, as the movie’s most complex character. A prince abused and cast off by his father, he wanders the world in search of the Avatar, his only means of regaining a place in his father’s household. Guided by a gentle uncle, Zuko wrestles with a desire to do the right thing, and a burning need to regain his place in the world by doing his father’s bidding. Patel, in spite of the horrible dialogue he’s forced to spout, brings a sort of sympathetic anger to the character.

It’s more than just Noah or Patel’s solid performances that make Last Airbender worth seeing. It’s also how much fun M. Night seems to be having with opportunities the movie’s bending powers afford. Water flies around the screen in perfectly propelled blobs or leaps out of the ground in great, tentacled rivers. Flame artfully gouts from a fire bender’s hands, framing the screen and creating a breathtaking image. Put to use in battle those powers are thrilling, yes, but in Night’s hands also heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. It's imaginative and immensely creative. Almost every frame of Night’s movie is a work of art, with perfectly used camera techniques and luscious wide shots that let you see what’s going on even in the film’s most frantic and frenetic moments.

These aren’t just stunning, empty images. The Last Airbender uses its visual prowess to push itself beyond the miserable constraints of its script. We learn almost nothing substantive about Aang from the movie’s misguided, exposition filled dialogue, but his enthusiasm for life oozes out of every frame. It’s in the way he walks or the way he goes down a flight of stairs, taking four steps at a time propelled by tiny bursts of energetic air. Aang feels alive and, visually at least, it all seems to happen effortlessly.

This isn’t an easy movie to praise. The Last Airbender seems as though it’s daring people to hate it. It’s hard to believe anything could be this badly written by accident. In order to get to what’s good in it; you’ll have to endure a lot of M. Night Shyamalan missteps. In the hands of a better writer, this could have been the next Lord of the Rings. The material behind it feels that good. Should someone else take charge of writing the heavily teased sequel for him, I fully expect to give it five stars. The Last Airbender though, is the kind of movie that’s only good in spite of itself. If you’re able to get past Shyamalan’s failings as a writer, this is an achingly beautiful film full of stunning special effects, driven by a powerful score, and based on material so good that even the worst script of the year couldn’t entirely ruin it. It’s worth putting up with M. Night the writer to enjoy the work of M. Night the director.

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The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

One of the primary problems with the Twilight franchise so far has been how seriously it took all its teen angst and fantasy elements, building two entire movies on Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart staring at each other, and presenting with a straight face vampires who sparkled in sunlight and had bright amber eyes. It's not that the directors should have made fun of Stephenie Meyer's source material or discounted fan passion for the books, but at some point someone needed to acknowledge that this is a story about hormonal teenagers with superpowers, and maybe it could be romantic and a little funny at the same time.

With the third film Eclipse, director David Slade doesn't just bring a much-needed dose of humor to the glum franchise, but cranks up the action to the point that some sections could be considered genuinely exciting. Much of the film is still a slog, of course, and atrocious dialogue and wooden acting abound, but Eclipse is the first Twilight film that works at all on its own, giving us better characters, tense action sequences, and a wry acknowledgement that, yes, this is maybe all a little bit silly.

The wink-wink nods to Twilight mania are pretty brief-- Edward (Pattinson) asks if Jacob (Taylor Lautner) even owns a shirt, Jacob later counters by telling Edward "Admit it, I'm hotter than you"-- and are balanced nicely by some of the first genuine human interactions between the characters. It's amazing that it took us this long to see Edward and Bella (Stewart) smile at each other, or to watch Bella's dad Charlie (Billy Burke) cope, in a very realistic Dad way, with his daughter's all-consuming new relationship. Little moments like these ground the film in a way neither of the first two managed, and while they don't exactly make you care about the characters-- they're all far too thinly drawn and ridiculous for that-- they at least make them a lot more tolerable this time around.

It also helps that Eclipse has much more plot than the previous two films, and though Slade and writer Melissa Rosenberg don't quite make sense of all the vampire logic-- what are the Volturi doing there again?-- things move along swiftly enough that you don't much care. Down in Seattle the newborn vampire Riley (Xavier Samuel) is amassing an army of ultraviolent vampires at the behest of Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard), who want revenge on the Cullens and Bella for killing her true love James way back in the first film. Knowing they can't fight the newborns on their own, the Cullens reluctantly team up with Jacob and his pack of werewolves, forcing Edward and Jacob to also stop their macho posturing and team up to protect Bella, the woman they both love.

The central trio all have their moments- Pattinson has never seemed more natural or likable in his vampire makeup, Lautner occasionally overcomes Jacob's generally creepy demeanor, and even the simply awful Stewart acts like a real human once or twice-- but when the side characters step up, Eclipse really shines. The flashbacks showing how Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) became vampires are narratively pointless but fun to watch, and though they're both terribly underused, Howard and Dakota Fanning (as evil Volturi Jane) both take advantage of their every moment onscreen. Recent Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick pops up for a bubbly graduation speech, and even the constantly shirtless wolfpack manage to be endearing while also looking straight out of a gay porn. There many moments in Eclipse when you can forget the Twilight series is about a dull girl and her romantic troubles and get wrapped up in the action or the weird magic of the vampires and werewolves. Just try not to let yourself think too hard about how much better the movie might be without Bella at all.

The purpose of Eclipse within the franchise is to solidify Bella's decision to join Edward as a vampire, but aside from a hastily included speech in the final scene, the movie fails entirely to convey that. I'd be happy to blame Stewart only, but the Twilight films have now failed three times to build Bella as a believable lead character, putting her in place as the human window into a supernatural world but giving us no reason to relate to her or care about her struggles. Eclipse works because it gets away from much of that, focusing on Edward and Jacob's poorly contained rivalry and Cullens' conflicted feelings about their immortal status. But Bella is relied on for all of the film's emotional stakes, and because she is such a blank slate, there are none at all. Because of the human crater at their center, the Twilight films have no choice but to be faithful adaptations to please the fans; Eclipse is merely the first of the three to have a few things to offer to the rest of us as well.

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Cyrus

The plot of the Duplass’ brothers new film, Cyrus, is not exactly original. The idea of having a son go to war with his mother’s new boyfriend has been seen many times and is, frankly, a tired dynamic. Yet they pull it off anyway. Thanks to wonderful aesthetics, great characters and an ability to capitalize on its own awkwardness, Cyrus makes an old cinematic conflict seem fresh.

John (John C. Reilly) is a self proclaimed lonely guy. Divorced for the last seven years, he has yet to meet anyone else and, instead of trying, stays hold up in his apartment. One night, his ex-wife (Catherine Keener) comes by to deliver some news: she’s getting remarried. Shocked and upset, John allows her to drag him to a party to meet some new people. Despite drinking far too many vodka and Red Bulls, he manages to charm the far-out-of-his-league Molly (Marisa Tomei) and ends up sleeping with her. What he doesn’t know, however, is that Molly has a 21-year-old son named Cyrus (Jonah Hill), who is still living at home. Though John and Cyrus maintain a friendly relationship while in front of Molly, they can’t stand each other, the son declaring that separating the couple has become his personal mission.

Since making their feature debut back in 2005, Mark and Jay Duplass have been labeled the forerunners of the mumblecore movement, a genre defined by low-budgets and dialogue-heavy scripts. Where this movie separates itself is in the use of mainstream actors, but, because of casting choices and how the characters are presented, it preserves its independent feel. Reilly and Hill are not exactly George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Tomei is, purposefully, not at her most dolled up. If this were the first film a person ever saw after hearing stories about Hollywood glitz and glamour, they wouldn’t comprehend that this is a cast with two Oscar nominated actors and one of the biggest comedy stars around. They aren’t beautiful; they just feel like normal people and it’s a quality that does the movie more than a few favors.

Appearances aside, Cyrus is a film about its characters and not only are they fantastic as individuals, but their interactions are what make the movie work. There is more love in John and Molly’s relationship than in any romantic comedy that has come out in the past year and the adversarial nature of John and Cyrus’ association gets by far the most laughs, but it’s the bond between the mother and her son that takes this film to a whole different level. Films like these tend to feature sons that are teenagers or younger, but by making Cyrus a mature twenty-something a whole new can of worms is opened. Also unique is that the dependency works both ways. Molly wants Cyrus in her life and by her side just as much as Cyrus wants to be there. Does it occasionally cross a few bizarre barriers? For sure, but it’s done in the name of humor as opposed to incestuous creepiness (okay, maybe a little of both).

Beyond the romance and the mumblecore, this film is a comedy, so I am required by law to tell you whether or not I found it funny. The film’s script and actors never miss an opportunity to squeeze something hilarious into a scene, be it John drunkenly performing the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me Baby,” Cyrus never losing eye contact with his mother’s new beau while a sample of his self-made techno music, or John reassuring Molly that everything is not going to be all right and will end in disaster while she is crying in bed. The actors sell the simplest stares and eyebrow-raises to great effect.

It’s typically a disappointment to see unoriginal plotlines come from independent films, but Cyrus gets a pass for being so enjoyable. The film is on the shorter side, clocking in at only 92 minutes, which results in some pacing issues, but you’ll likely be too busy laughing to notice. The team of Reilly, Hill and Tomei is superb, hitting every note that their characters require. The Duplass brothers have made a film that looks and feels like it only belongs on the festival circuit, but it deserves so much more.

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