I am not the audience for this movie.

I did not see the original Twilight. I read the novel and was horrified; how many teenage girls truly believe that men like Edward Cullen exist? (Fewer, probably, than the number of boys men who expect to meet a gorgeous independent woman who caters to their every whim and is miraculously attracted to slovenly underachievers, but that’s a rant for another film.) In real life a man who stalks protects a woman the way Edward does will continue to do so whether her life’s in danger or not. Perhaps the majority of Twilight fans recognize this, and treat the stories as wish fulfillment, much as this reviewer does with good romantic comedies (though not, it must be said, The Ugly Truth, which peddled a similar adolescent fantasy).

On that level, New Moon delivers. It reproduces the central appeal of the books: a man who’s faster, stronger, more romantic, better at playing baseball and musical instruments alike and more beautiful than anyone you could possibly imagine falls for Bella Swan, an ordinary, unremarkable-looking girl, and continually professes not only that he loves her, but that he cannot live without her. So protective is he that when his otherworldly urges place her in danger he actually abandons her to protect her.

This is the basest sort of adolescent fantasy, the kind any writer who’s attended university could dream up, and yet it would be undone by a sense of manufactured cynicism if author Stephenie Meyer didn’t wholeheartedly believe in it. She does, and it would appear a wide cross-section of the western world does too.

The audience I saw New Moon with cheered when Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner entered, gasped when Bella was attacked by a vampire and cheered when a pack of werewolves defended her. Director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) provides plenty of eye candy, and even throws in a flourish or two (I enjoyed the way he depicted three months passing). With two exceptions – one of the worst-looking CG werewolves I’ve ever seen (only one, thankfully, not the entire pack, and only for one shot) and a flash-forward near the end that I doubt was intended to elicit hearty laughter from the audience but did – he gets the job done.

My problem with the movie lies completely with the source material. I hate Bella; she’s a wallflower, reacting to (instead of acting upon) events around her by screaming, moping and becoming recklessly suicidal when Edward leaves, yet suddenly protective of (and willing to die for) him if he’s in the room and in danger. Fans of Edward will be less than pleased that he’s off-screen for more than half the movie, appearing sporadically in a series of visions. And we all know the central conflict in Twilight is a metaphor for sex, with vampirism standing in for the horrid corruption that awaits Bella should she (gasp!) consummate her relationship with Edward without tying the knot first. To phrase it diplomatically, I do not share Meyer’s Mormon beliefs.

On the other hand, how is an adolescent girl’s desire to meet someone as protective as Edward any different from the hope that your True Love is out there, somewhere, and you could meet them, which forms the backbone of all romantic comedies?

I was completely and utterly indifferent to New Moon. Its fans will lap it up.

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Dunno if you heard, but a concert documentary, starring a little-known performer who died recently, opened across the country at 12:01 this morning.

This performer, Michael Jackson, would likely have been plagued by scandal through much of his adult life had anyone actually heard of him, so perhaps it’s just as well.

To Sony’s credit, This Is It does not feel like a quickie cash-in on Jackson’s death. A bit over-adulatory perhaps, but that’s to be expected. It must be said, however, that Jackson’s death casts a pall over the movie’s early proceedings; to me, his fake cleft chin and overly manufactured nose make his face look like melted wax, his voice occasionally lilts – not in a good way – and some of his dance moves look robotic.

But as time passes, the rehearsals have an obvious effect on him; his dancing becomes smoother, his singing becomes stronger, and he appears to become younger. Performing came as naturally to Jackson as breathing, and while his voice occasionally disappears, he’s never off-key (and explains more than once that he’s trying to save his vocal cords), and every number yields enthusiastic applause from the gathered technicians and back-up dancers.

If there’s an aspect of This Is It worth complaining about, it’s that a series of early interviews with Jackson’s back-up dancers never mentions their names, nor does the movie return to them, making their initial praise of him and nervousness when auditioning both creepily voyeuristic and shamelessly sentimental. It’s also worth noting that we never learn anything about Jackson himself; whenever he’s talking it’s all business, though it’s enlightening to learn just how clearly he knew his music inside and out. As you might expect, Jackson is very affectionate with the people he works with, and the choreographers, musicians, back-up singers and dancers all speak highly of him.

And what of the performance itself? Jackson and High School Musical director Kenny Ortega created a very cinematic production – show-stopping sequences were filmed for at least five of the songs – and after a clumsy introduction, the movie soon feels like a private concert.

Most of the expected hits are here – half of Thriller (the title track; “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”; “Billie Jean”; “Human Nature”; “Beat It”), some of Michael’s early stuff with the Jackson 5 (“I’ll Be There,” “Dance and Shout”), half the singles from Bad (“Smooth Criminal,” “Man In The Mirror”; “The Way You Make Me Feel”) and some of his most popular late-period work (“Black or White”; “Heal the World”; “They Don’t Care About Us”).

Watching This Is It, I couldn’t help but think about what Jackson’s detractors would have thought of the final product. Would they have seen his show and enjoyed it, or dismissed it as overproduced fanservice mounted by a fallen icon? Hard to say, since those detractors won’t see the movie; as for his fans, those who haven’t seen it already can expect a fond farewell. Whatever his faults, Jackson wrote some great music and remained a terrific performer until the end, and my impression is that anyone lucky enough to get a ticket would have seen a hell of a show.

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Here’s an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser; albeit, a crowd-pleaser with lots of blood spewing, limb-chewing, and bone breaking – but really, why would you see a movie called Zombieland if you didn’t want to see that?

Here’s a horror film that acknowledges how ridiculous it is by depicting a group of eight-year-old zombie girls before the opening credits; and a comedy that, by casting Jesse Eisenberg in the lead role, quickly establishes an enjoyably quirky tone, and maintains it by adding Abigail Breslin as a shotgun-toting 12-year-old and Woody Harrelson (in a terrific performance) as the movie’s resident badass.

Here’s a genre movie with a coherent plot – Breslin and Emma Stone, playing nervy sisters, push the thin but logical story along – and which pays attention to its characters, giving each of them solid backstories and respectable screentime. (My biggest complaint with Zombieland is that while the sisters are much stronger than typical damsels in distress, they nonetheless wind up being damsels in distress).

Here’s an action movie with an extended, glorious climax at an amusement park, with all the standbys (roller coaster, tilt-a-whirl, drop mechanism) used in exactly the way you’d expect; plus characters using really big guns, and firing them with a generous helping of one-liners.

Zombieland is that rare film which knowingly (rather that ignorantly) prefers to play into its conventions rather than create new ones, parading its influences on both the front and back of its blood-splattered t-shirt (in one scene a pair of characters actually sit down to watch Ghostbusters). What is wrong with that? When it’s done this well, nothing.

Horror comedy is a tough sell with audiences, and even the gold standard of this decade, Shaun of the Dead, barely raked in $13 million at the North American box office. However, I must confess I did not particularly like Shaun of the Dead. It was a great movie, but the “happy” (of sorts) ending was so dark I had forgotten what I was laughing at by the end.

I had no such problems with Zombieland. While it has few genuine scares, and much of it coasts on warm-hearted good humour rather than laugh-out-loud laughter, I can’t remember the last time I consistently heard an audience gasp, laugh, or clap at the same moments during a film.
What a wonderful year we’re having when I can say Zombieland is the best pop entertainment to hit theatres since District 9.

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Note: If you’re already interested in seeing District 9 - you know the setup, you’ve seen the posters – go see it. Like all good stories, the best way to experience it is to know nothing about it going in. A word to the squeamish, however – this is a Peter Jackson production by the man who directed The Frighteners and the icky spider-pit sequence in King Kong, not the man who directed Heavenly Creatures or Lord of the Rings.

When we first meet Wikus Van der Merwe, we don’t really notice him; he’s one of many talking heads in the faux documentary that opens District 9, and he isn’t important. Others explain that in the 1980s an alien mothership appeared suddenly over Johannesburg, and that, after nothing happened (by all appearances, there was nothing to keep this ship from torching South Africa like the aliens in Independence Day) humans broke in and discovered a sickly race of alien refugees whose ship had literally run out of gas. Wikus (newcomer Sharlto Copley) is a cubicle drone tasked by MNU, the corporation that has kept the refugees under (debatable) control, to lead a team that will hand the aliens eviction notices, lending a sense of legitimacy to their forced extraction from District 9, the slums in which they currently reside, to District 10, which is more of a concentration camp. In his opening scenes, Wikus comes across as an officious bureaucrat who in any other movie would be the first to go, in a spectacular and probably funny manner. That appearance is crucial, because it means his ultimate role in the story is as much a surprise to the audience as it is to him. I can’t say that if Hitchcock made an alien invasion film Wikus would have been his protagonist, but I do think he would have been proud.

This is science fiction. This uses allegory to cast a light on one of the most shameful aspects of humanity. First-time writer/director Neill Blomkamp, who lived in South Africa until he moved to Canada at 18, never bludgeons us with the parallels, but his film has a clear thesis in mind, and he states it well.

With their clawed hands and hardened carapaces, the aliens almost resemble bipedal lobsters (they’re derisively referred to as “prawns”), and with their tentacled mouths and garbled speech they appear half a step removed from the Aliens/Predator mold of goopy hunters. Yet with their bulbous eyes and thin waists, they’re just as easily injured as humans, and with their weapons confiscated (you didn’t think humans would free them and allow them to live with their own technology, did you?) they can’t easily hurt us – nor is there any indication they’d want to, since they rarely fight unless being attacked.

And here is the sole element of District 9′s plot that I’ll spoil (it’s not much of a spoiler, since it’s revealed in the opening mockumentary, but it’s not underlined): MNU is funded by corporate interests who, as you might expect, are interested in the aliens’ weaponry. Problem is, no human can work them, since they’re attuned to the aliens’ DNA. Both “legitimate” MNU forces and the Nigerian black market that has appeared in District 9 have a cache of alien weaponry, but after 20 years neither has figured out how to operate them – until our plot comes along.

For those who desire nothing else, District 9 is a thrilling action yarn. The mercenaries hired by MNU to police the increasingly volatile district are capable villains, and while their bald leader, Koobus (David James), isn’t the most memorable antagonist in screen history – think Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon rather than Alan Rickman in Die Hard – he gets the job done. The Nigerians, whose wheelchair-bound leader is obsessed with eating the aliens’ flesh, hoping it will let him utilize that robotic exoskeleton taking up space in his warehouse, won’t win the filmmakers any points for racial sensitivity, but they actually come off as slightly more sympathetic than the (mostly white) corporate villains. At least they’re open about what they’re doing.

If there’s a problem with District 9 it’s that the documentary format can’t sustain the story. It’s impossible for a human being holding a camera to capture the aliens’ perspective, and unlike The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, the cameraperson is never identified. Long stretches of movie trade the format for straight narrative, albeit narrative with the same handheld cinema verite style, before abruptly becoming a documentary again. It’s jarring, but I’m not sure Blomkamp could have handled it differently. For whatever reason, the film almost reaches perfection, but not quite.

It is, however, an instant classic that will be fondly remembered for years to come.

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It’s a funny thing about life; even though we’re all (obstensibly) unique, certain experiences fall into distinct patterns. Most middle-class children in the western world, for instance, go through a period in their childhood where the world revolves around them, followed by a period in their teenage years where they’re convinced it should and are surprised when it doesn’t. This leads to a period of intense self-reflection, during which they discover their place in the world and are shocked again some years later when that place doesn’t welcome them with open arms either.

In Julie & Julia, Amy Adams’ character, Julie Powell, is in that directionless place between shock and reaction when she decides to give herself one year to cook all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and if you’re in the same place, or recently past it, you’ll probably identify with her.

Another stage many adults find themselves in, and which people of Julie’s age hope to avoid, is that of the middle-aged, middle-class (or upper-middle-class) person who suddenly realizes they haven’t accomplished anything. Sure they’ve survived, but they still don’t recognize their place in the world, nor have they experienced anything they could call a “dream.”

Julia Child (Meryl Streep) has reached this stage when we meet her. A virgin until 40, lucky enough to marry a U.S. diplomat while working as a secretary, she found herself living in France unsure of the direction she wanted her life to go. In the movie, she tries her hand at bridge and hatmaking, but ultimately settles on cooking, as we all know. And what a cook she became!

It must be said: this is a delicious-looking movie. Recipes for crunchy bruschetta, sauteed mushrooms, raspberry cream, breaded duck, stuffed chicken breast, and braised fish, among others, are lovingly depicted, most of them perfectly caramelized and nearly all of them fried in butter. You might expect the sort of Crisco and shellack-based tricks used by the advertising industry, but no: it’s all real food, something writer/director Nora Ephron, apparently an accomplished cook, insisted on. (And this is a director who, when she couldn’t find a rustic enough 18th-century British cottage in The Holiday, ordered one custom-built from scratch – so you know she got her way.)

The problem with Julie & Julia is that while Julia’s story is engaging no matter what your age, if, like many older viewers, you passed Julie’s stage a decade or more ago there’s a good chance you’ll be turned off by her. Streep plays Julia Child as a genuine character, a gregarious Amazon with a warm smile, an easy laugh, and an American accent that never quite sounds like it came from anywhere, while Adams’ Powell frequently burns her food, screams at her husband, alienates her friends, yells at her cat and cries in her kitchen until you expect her husband to come in, burp her, kiss her hand, and make it all better – and that’s more or less what happens (minus the burping).

This isn’t Adams’ fault, exactly – Child was a genuine character with a warm smile, easy laugh, etc. who got past the directionless stage, recognizing that after discovering her place in the world she would have to fight for it, while Powell occasionally comes off as a self-indulgent narcissist who, in the primitive blogging world of 2002, simply whined loudly enough for her voice to be heard.

It may not sound like I enjoyed the movie, but I did – I was engaged by Adams’ side of the story, despite the fact that she and her husband (Chris Messina)’s arguments came off as obligatory beats in a bad romantic comedy. (Streep and Stanley Tucci, who plays Julia’s husband, Paul, on the other hand, have what would have been the sweetest onscreen relationship I’d seen in ages had I not seen Away We Go two months ago.)

Basically, unless you’re a foodie, or passing through one of Julie or Julia’s life stages, or a fan of Meryl Streep and/or Amy Adams, there isn’t much here that will interest you.

But that’s okay. Just because certain life stages fall into patterns doesn’t mean everyone experiences – or gets past – them.

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I was shocked to discover that three women wrote this screenplay. (Or that, more accurately, two women wrote and a third re-wrote it.)  I do not harbour any illusions of women being the “fairer” sex. I recognize that women are just as likely (or unlikely) to enjoy dick, fart and sex jokes as men. However, some idealistic part of me still believed a woman was above writing something like The Ugly Truth.

I more or less saw this movie three months ago, under the title Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Like that Matthew McConaughey vehicle, The Ugly Truth revels in juvenile stereotypes about men and women, with Gerard Butler’s Howard Stern-like cretin more or less encouraging control freak Katherine Heigl to pick up a man the same way McConaughey’s cad kept picking up women: by playing to their baser instincts.

Romantic comedies live or die based on two things: their central gimmick, and the viewer’s willingness to buy into said gimmick, which is often affected by their own experience with romance. My experience has left me angry at anything which frames the difference between the sexes as a battle between Martians and Venusians, since by my observation both men and women are essentially attracted to the same things (confidence, a sense of mystery and, if they’re popular, someone they like who apparently doesn’t care about them) and would like a partner who will essentially act as a parent, protecting them (women) or feeding them (men). Both like sex, but since most men will sleep with almost anyone who approaches them, women usually hold the power.

Anyway. Follow the rules like Katherine Heigl does in The Ugly Truth, and you may eventually land your dream man. Of course, once he discovers you’re not his dream woman but have only been acting like her, he’ll walk away. The Ugly Truth knows this – but fear not, ladies, because that Howard Stern type will, like the real Howard Stern, ultimately reveal that his shtick is all an act and in fact he’s a kind, caring human being whose heart was simply hardened by too many nasty women.

Come to think of it, maybe it isn’t hard to believe this film was written by women after all.

I realize that romantic comedies are all about wish fulfillment, that a large percentage of the audience agrees with the movie’s take on men and women, and that said audience likes it that way. I will not be shocked if The Ugly Truth is a hit; at the screening I attended, there was plenty of laughter, including my own, but (for me, at least) it was soon followed by uncomfortable squirming. Not because the movie was depicting the ugly truth, but because it was perpetuating ugly stereotypes. To its credit, I bought almost every decision the characters made until the 80-minute mark (the movie is 97 minutes long). The exception is a When Harry Met Sally sequence involving a pair of vibrating panties; it’s not immediately clear why Heigl decides to wear them (though it sort of makes sense in retrospect), nor is it clear why she leaves them on.

Reader, I did not want to see this movie. For Katherine Heigl to appear in this sexist garbage after publicly berating Judd Apatow for Knocked Up’s depiction of women (nevermind that Knocked Up’s message was to grow the fuck up, and that the main women were depicted as grown up already) struck me as the definition of hypocrisy. Not to mention it rips off one of the genre’s few genuine modern classics.

You, like the audience I saw it with, may feel differently about the subject, and if so you are welcome to it.

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I hadn’t seen the trailers for Year One. I wasn’t expecting a “Jack Black” movie; for me the most important name in the credits was director/co-writer Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day).

Year One begins with a boar hunt; not as convincing as the one in Apocalypto perhaps, but credible nonetheless. For two brief, shining minutes I thought here was a movie that understood that most important and least followed rule of comedy: the more seriously the participants take it, the funnier it is.

Then a hunter played by Horatio Sanz is hit with a spear, the type that if thrown properly would have gored him. It barely scratches his shoulder, and after discovering Sanz isn’t a boar, Black apologizes for throwing it. He sounds exactly like the Jack Black we’ve seen in countless other films (King Kong excepted), and if the movie began here I would have found myself wondering what he was doing dressed as a caveman.

Michael Cera sounds exactly like the character we’ve seen in countless other films too – which, as a coworker pointed out, is odd, because he played a completely different character in his breakthrough, Arrested Development.

Soon Black is thrown out of his village for eating the fruit of knowledge. He accidentally burns the village as he’s leaving, so everyone else has to leave too. Rejected by the girl of his dreams (Juno Temple), Cera’s character soon follows.

At first, Black and Cera continue to stumble across some bible stories: they witness Cain (David Cross) accidentally murder his brother Abel (Paul Rudd); they prevent Abraham (Hank Azaria) from sacrificing Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse); and they journey to Sodom, which you might think they end up burning to the ground (at least, I did). But no; 40 minutes in, the bible angle finishes. Black and Cera wind up in Sodom (along with, coincidentally, the rest of their tribe), and stay there.

Like all viewers, critics are biased; I have a soft spot for dumb comedies, am critical of religion, and appreciated seeing a movie whose central thesis (if it has one) was, “what if there is no God?” I like Cera, and Black in the right material, and accepted their pseudo-stoner dialogue without difficulty.Year One is more genial than funny, but its lightweight story is enough to string us along, and you can tell the actors were having a good time. I’ll admit I laughed occasionally, and when I wasn’t laughing or closing my eyes I smiled much of the way through.

Unfortunately, biases run both ways, and I have a big one when it comes to comedy: I hate toilet humour.

Despise it.

To this day I’ve never seen “classic” scenes such as Leslie Mann vomiting shrimp all over Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or the “pale ale” in American Pie. I accept that on a conceptual level it serves its purpose (it makes the characters painfully human) and a segment of the audience finds it funny. In an otherwise wonderful movie, I’m happy to close my eyes for a moment and move on.

In Year One, however, something disgusting happens every 20 minutes: Jack Black examines (and eats) a pile of shit; Michael Cera, while hanging upside down, pees on his face (judging from Black’s lines, some of it lands in his mouth and nose); a man sharing a bed with Cera proudly farts repeatedly. In a major supporting role, Oliver Platt plays a high priest who’s extremely hairy, and the camera lingers while Cera is forced to slowly rub oil all over his chest.

Does a majority of the audience actually find this funny? I thought nothing could top the running gag involving gum thrown up at Penn Station in last year’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Once again Hollywood proved me wrong.

There are other problems – Mintz-Plasse’s Isaac is wasted, while Cross’s Cain remains onscreen long past his sell-by date; Black’s love interest (June Diane Raphael) falls for him even though he repeatedly forgets about her, jokes about her parents’ deaths, and would happily dump her for Sodom’s princess (House’’s Olivia Wilde) – but they pale in comparison to the film’s desire to shock.

I enjoyed parts of Year One because I kept hoping it wouldn’t disgust me again (the shit-eating scene comes at the beginning; the Michael-Cera-pissing-on-his-face scene near the end). You’d have to pay me to see it a second time, and during that repeat viewing I would get up ten minutes into the movie and never come back.

2*

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“There are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.”
- Anton Ego, Ratatouille

Here is the pitch for Away We Go that arrived in my inbox, and which put me to sleep before the second paragraph:

Longtime (and now thirtysomething) couple Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are going to have a baby. The pregnancy progresses smoothly, but six months in, the pair is put off and put out by the news from Burt’s parents Jerry and Gloria (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara), that the eccentric elder Farlanders are moving away from Colorado – thereby eliminating the expectant couple’s main reason for living there.

So, where, and among whom of those closest to them, might Burt and Verona best put down roots to raise their impending bundle of joy? The couple embarks on an ambitious itinerary to visit friends and family, and to evaluate cities, eventually realizing that they must define home on their own terms.

If that sounds riveting, skip my review and see the movie – the less you know walking in, the better.

If, like me, you’d rather see a film about watching paint dry (an idea my friends and I once came up with a surprisingly credible pitch for), continue reading as I put on my critic’s hat and attempt to dissuade you from skipping the movie.

Away We Go was directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road), and while it doesn’t sound like a Mendes production – neither lead has a lousy job or is chronically depressed – it contains the same world-weary eye for exact, offbeat details, not to mention it was written by McSweeney’s cofounder Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, which alone would have made me excited had I known in advance.

What the pitch doesn’t tell you is that unlike every other couple in every other “romance” the studios have cranked out over the years, Krasinski and Rudolph never fight. They don’t argue. That isn’t to say they never disagree about anything, but it never turns into shouting. They’re not drunk on each other either, making out every chance they get and having wild, passionate sex every night. Their relationship is as credible as Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet’s in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie which hammered home just how fantastic (literally) most Hollywood romances are. Away We Go shows the reality, and it’s a lot more pleasant-looking than other movies would have you think.

Krasinski and Rudolph do indeed embark on a road trip, visiting a range of  quirky characters such as her former boss (Alison Janney) in Tuscon, Arizona; his childhood friend (Maggie Gyllenhaal) in Minnesota; and their old university friends in Montreal. Some, such as Rudolph’s sister (Carmen Ejogo) are fully rounded; others (especially Gyllenhaal’s neo-hippie, who still breastfeeds her seven-year-old and claims to have sex in front of her children) are two-dimensional caricatures, but still embody traits you’ve probably seen.

The ending, of course, is disappointing: how could it not be? There is no destination in North America that could live up to Krasinski and Rudolph’s expectations, and the place where they settle seems as good as any. They certainly stay for the right reasons, and while they may not know what’s coming next, during the credits I was left with a feeling I’ve rarely experienced watching a Hollywood romance: that whatever happens, they were going to be okay.

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A few months ago I caught a 20-minute non-screening of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, where the most memorable thing that happened was me falling down a third of a long flight of stairs, injuring my shoulders in a way that still hasn’t fully healed.
The scenes were disconnected, 12-year-old Kirk announcing himself as “James Tiberious Kirk!” was still stupid, and the time travel device driving the plot looked sketchy. The film was written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orchi, who typically favour setpieces over plot and quirks over character development. But the actors were effective and during the rapid-fire action sequences I could actually tell what was going on. I’m glad I saw it; when the lights came down on the full-length movie, I knew what to expect.

Make no mistake: this is not science fiction. It does not utilize a technology-driven society to explore an issue in the present. It is not Star Trek as defined by The Next Generation onward; there are no Big Ideas, no debates over man’s place in the universe. It is, in short, no Battlestar Galactica. But I underestimated Abrams and company; this is an exhilirating, slam-bang space opera, one of the best I’ve seen, that happens to star the characters from the original Star Trek. That also means it has one of the most memorable casts ever to grace a screen, and while most of them are drawn in broad strokes, that’s long been the fate of supporting characters: Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) do have actual character arcs.

This must be what watching Star Wars was like thirty-two years ago. It didn’t present anything new, but came across with a credibility and vitality audiences had never seen before. Abrams understands, like few modern directors seem to, that it’s not just about the budget. Granted, Star Trek’s $150 million investment was considerable, but it could have easily gone to waste (as it did in the excreable Wolverine) without a properly fleshed-out setting, plot and characters.

This version of Star Trek looks lived in. The future Earth that gave rise to the Federation looks tangible and welcoming. The planet Vulcan feels like it has its own history. Suddenly it isn’t surprising that monitoring stations of the type manned by Scotty (Simon Pegg), which appeared to be there simply so Kirk could stumble across it in the preview, would be set up in the middle of nowhere, staffed by a mechanic who was sent there as punishment. As in the various series, aliens of the Deep Space Nine variety are all over the place like intergalactic immigrants, in all levels of society, with their otherness never commented on.
As in the preview, Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy (Karl Urban), Sulu (John Cho), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) feel like the characters of pop-culture lore, and the players inhabit them wonderfully. The screenplay is peppered with beats (such as the “red shirt”) from the original series, and while Urban perhaps overdoes his character a bit, it’s hard to argue with the way he says “dammit.”

More than anything, Star Trek reminds me of the animated epics Titan A.E. and Treasure Planet, in that every 20 minutes something spectacular happens, but it actually has a solid plot, unlike Titan A.E., and doesn’t feel neutered, unlike Treasure Planet. Incidentally, that time travel device is still ludicrous. But it lets the future Spock (Leonard Nimoy) come onto the scene, and gives the nasty Romulan villain (Eric Bana, of all people) some real depth. Also, the plot is internally consistent: once it establishes the rules, it doesn’t break them, unlike every other science fiction epic from the past ten or so years.
After the debacle that was the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the Matrix sequels (not to mention Titan A.E. and Treasure Planet), I’d forgotten what a good space opera was like. Movies like Abrams’ Star Trek remind us why they’re still bankrolled however – when they work, they’re amazing.

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Is there any formula more credible than A Christmas Carol? Done correctly, the story plays on two primal aspects of human nature: that when it comes to remembering how we hurt others, our memories are fuzzy; and that we hate feeling guilt. Forced to confront every nasty thing committed against someone else over the course of three hours, even the most unrepetant jerk would undergo some kind of change (unless they’re a clinical psychopath – which would make for an entertaining, though less marketable, movie).

And yet it results in trash like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a pandering, obvious slice of counterprogramming shuffled into theatres against the likely blockbuster Wolverine, starring an especially off-putting Matthew McConaughey.

This is a terrible movie. You don’t need me to tell you that. Just watch the trailer.

As you’ve no doubt seen, McConaughey plays a successful photographer with a reputation for bedding women and dumping them as soon as they fall in love with him. After breaking up with three “girlfriends” in front of another woman, he beds the other woman. He’s had a mentor – his late Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) taught him everything he knows, including that whomever has the least invested in a relationship holds the power.

Of course these kinds of men exist. Worse, their techniques often work. Women in McConaughey’s position are often called sluts. Men in his position are often called players – and indeed he’s glorified as such. The film tries to have it both ways – eventually McConaughey realizes he’s pathetic, and a bridesmaid jokingly refers to him as a man-whore – but it comes across as shameless hypocrisy. After all, it’s much easier to condemn a habit once you’ve come out the other side.

The film’s blatant misogyny wouldn’t hurt so much if its featured example of monogamous bliss – McConaughey’s brother, played by Breckin Meyer, and his shrewish bride, played by Lacey Chabert – wasn’t so clearly headed in the wrong direction. Jennifer Garner plays McConaughey’s love interest, a woman too smart to put up with him for two minutes, let alone twenty years.

Eventually, of course, McConaughey’s visited by ghosts. Poorly conceived ghosts. In A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley was at least seen lugging around chains; he wanted to keep Scrooge from meeting the same fate. Here, Uncle Wayne appears relatively normal. Still an asshole, but hey, if sex was more important than having friends or building a family.

Perhaps if Douglas had simply warned McConaughey the ghosts were coming – and even better, warned him not to listen to them – his prescence here would have been credible, but he tells McConaughey to stop emulating him, then continues hitting on the other (female) ghosts until the end of the film. Not to mention he and the other ghosts randomly touch and pass through solid objects without any consistency.

The worst part about Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, however, is that it makes McConaughey’s transformation almost believable. Every minute of the film is immaculately telegraphed, and better paced than many romantic comedies I’ve seen. It’s only once you pause to think about it for any length of time that its wrongheadedness becomes clear.

Men are not automatically from Mars and women not automatically from Venus. There are far more differences among the sexes than between them, and anyone who’s progressed beyond a high school relationship, on some level, knows this.

It’s a shame nobody at the studios seems to.

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I saw Watchmen with a friend who had finished Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ masterwork last week, and both of us had the same reaction: what would someone who hadn’t read the novel think of it? It’s a meticulous, impressive-looking movie, directed with obvious reverence for the source material and care for the film being created, but it was impossible for us to be fully engaged by the story, because we kept comparing every shot, every line, every choice director Zack Snyder made, to the comic.

Here’s my theory – someone who hasn’t read Watchmen will be blown away by this film, because it reproduces the comic’s central appeal: You’ve got your heroes, you’ve got your villains, you’ve got your costumes and gadgets and action sequences and grandiose plans to take over the world, all wrapped in a solid noir mystery; but for those demanding more from their literature (and Watchmen is literature – that’s a fact, not an argument), there’s more – literate philosophy, silver-age-style artwork packed with details wrapped in more details, a chilling comic within the comic, and more atomically detailed backstory and alternate history than you can shake (insert obligatory Dr. Manhattan genitalia reference) at.

Much of that is retained in this translation. What’s lost, at least for viewers like me and my friend, is the unmistakable sense that you’ve witnessed art. Finish the book and you know you’ve read a classic; finish the film and you know you’ve seen a great movie (or at least a film made by someone who wanted to make a great movie), but you haven’t seen art.

Here’s what Snyder and his team got right:
- The opening: there’s a reason nearly every advance review mentioned Snyder’s use of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” – it’s brilliant. Backstories are conveyed, characters introduced and alternate history created with a terrific handful of brief, colourful sequences.
- The look: many sets and setpieces, including an iconic newstand, the death of the Comedian (which opens the story), the Nite Owl’s lair, the Minutemen and Watchmen (the superhero teams)’ photo ops, and a character’s stint in prison, appear lifted directly from the comic. Newsreel footage and talk show appearances feel authentic.
- Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan: of the five protagonists, these two are the best reproduced. Manhattan, the only genuine superhero of the group, is played by Billy Crudup, who reuses his quiet tone from the American dub of Princess Mononoke. Rorschach, a vengeful sociopath, is brought to life by Little Children’s Jackie Earle Haley, who puts on a gravelly voice and retains his American accent (the character was originally Polish), and wears an eye-popping inkblot mask that’s continuously shifting.
- The action sequences: there aren’t many, but the ones that exist are exciting and eye-catching, with brutal choreography and Snyder employing his trademark slow-cam for the most bone-crunching moves. Dr. Manhattan may be the only “super” hero, but you’ll know why the others put on their costumes.
- The soundtrack: In addition to “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “All Along The Watchtower,” Leonard Cohen’s “The Future,” and Mozart and Philip Glass (who didn’t compose the score, unfortunately) pieces are perfectly used.
- The sex: much has already been written about Patrick Wilson and Malin Ackerman’s coupling, which is more erotic than anything to grace a screen since… (When was the last time on-screen sex was erotic? The Reader?)
Here’s what (in my opinion) could have been improved:
- Ozymandias: the protagonist given the shortest shrift in the novel is predictably given the shortest shrift in the movie, but he still gets enough screentime to leave an impression. My complaint is that actor Matthew Goode is at least ten years too young for the role (though he does a good job with what he’s given).
- Nite Owl and Silk Spectre: my problem isn’t with the actors (Little Children’s Wilson and The Heartbreak Kid’s Ackerman, respectively) or their ultimate role in the story, but rather with their initial characterization. Much like Martin Sheen’s character in The Departed, Wilson and Ackerman’s initial scenes are cut short (an early fight with a street gang is clumsily intercut with a Dr. Manhattan interview, which is far more interesting), and the overall effect makes them weaker characters. (To be fair, they’re also the least nuanced characters in the book.)
- The score: Tyler Bates scored 300, so it’s more than likely nepotism is involved here, but he’s not exactly lacking in work, and Watchmen cries for a classical soundtrack. What has Philip Glass recorded lately anyway?
- “Hallelujah”: I literally grew up with Leonard Cohen – he’s the first musician my parents introduced me to – and the man’s written at least half a dozen songs that would be perfect for a sex scene. His overplayed hymn to lost love isn’t one of them.

The problem is that as someone who has read the comic, I can only speculate what someone who hasn’t will think; I can never know. Perhaps a Watchmen neophyte will find the story confusing, the flashbacks jarring, and witness the experience slack-jawed, wondering when the story is going to begin (hint: the flashbacks are the story). Personally I think Snyder made the right choices, telling Alan Moore’s tale in broad strokes and cutting nearly everything that didn’t relate to one of the five main characters. Reading other reviews, I suspect my initial theory is correct: those who love the movie haven’t read the comic, while those who have know they’ve witnessed something, but they’re not sure what.

Here’s the other thing: I’m not one of those fanboys who demanded fidelity to the comic. The opening is one of the best sequences because it was one of the only new ones. My favourite sequence in the novel (Manhattan’s meditation on Mars) is one of the slowest in the film. I’m not going to say shifting the lynchpin event to the war on terror instead of Vietnam would have been correct, but it was on the right track. Those who haven’t read the comic may have heard that Snyder changed the ending. The fanboys are wrong: he didn’t change a thing. 

Graphic novels are not movies. Sin City, still the adaptation’s high-water mark, worked not because Robert Rodriguez used the comics as a storyboard, but because he turned them into an exercise in filmmaking. Both mediums have their strengths. Watchmen the graphic novel plays to its strengths. Too often, Watchmen the movie does not.

If you haven’t read Watchmen and think you would enjoy the movie, see the movie. Then read the book.

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I like Clive Owen’s character in The International for the same reason I liked him in Children of Men: he’s resourceful, reasonably intelligent, and despite the bitterness of experience retains an iron-clad belief in doing the right thing. At the same time he’s never quite certain about what’s going on either, and remains one step behind the enemy. He survives most situations because he’s accompanied by someone smarter than he is, more skilled than he is, and/or more aware of what’s happening than he is (yet who isn’t willing to go through everything he’s gone through), and this makes him an excellent cipher for the audience.

As directed (and reportedly, heavily reshot) by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), The International is a slick, cynical thriller, and while it isn’t nearly as good as Run Lola Run or Children of Men, falling somewhere between the Bourne movies and Quantum of Solace in terms of quality, it’s enjoyable, has a brain in its head, and you can usually tell what’s going on. One action sequence in particular stands out: a shootout at the Guggenheim, logically constructed and well choreographed, is sure to be devoured by action fans the world over.

Owen plays Louis Salinger, an INTERPOL agent whose partner dies while investigating a secretive Luxembourg bank that’s apparently involved in illegal arms dealing with third world nations. When Salinger’s source dies a couple days later, his supervisor at INTERPOL orders him to close the case. INTERPOL is not involved in persecution, the supervisor says, but investigation, and the bank’s trail is cold. In the manner of all action movie protagonists, Salinger refuses, and with the help of a New York agent, Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) decides to follow the trail on his own.

Like the Bourne movies, The International takes place all over the globe, with location shoots in Milan, Istanbul, and New York City. Owen and Watts feel like the protagonists of a globe-hopping episode of Law and Order as they investigate the bank, and though I don’t claim to be terrific at following such plots, this one appears to be more or less consistent. (There is one odd scene, when Salinger is pricked on the back of his neck – the same wound that killed his partner – that lacks any kind of discernable payoff).

Salinger, however, makes only one breakthrough on his own. The others are made by someone accompanying him, or by Watts (who despite her second billing, only shares about a third of Owen’s screentime). Salinger knows what to do once someone points him in the right direction, but even then he often survives only because he was accompanied by someone who could help him along.

And that used to be the essence of a great action movie, wasn’t it? A person viewers could identify with, trapped in extraordinary circumstances, accomplishing something the viewer wishes they had the power to. It’s been said this film is undermined by the economic crisis, but I’d say it’s buoyed by it. Salinger’s enemy is a perfect example of a bank with its funds in the wrong assets, and like many of us, Salinger would like nothing more than to expose those assets and send the bank tumbling like a house of cards.

Of course, in real life such banks haven’t tumbled. They’ve been propped up by their governments, without any guarantee of what they’ll do next. Or they diversify their assets. Either way, they survive and make money. The International seems to predict this; I’m not saying it has a tragic ending, but it certainly doesn’t finish the way it would have ten years ago. The movie’s half-hearted explanation is that forces even larger than the bank are at work, and like Salinger, we’ll never learn precisely how far their agents can go. It doesn’t feel better that way, but it does feel realistic – an unfortunate observation of our current age.

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Here was an odd assignment: “We would like to extend an invitation to you to join us for a Special Presentation of footage from our upcoming film STAR TREK.” It was sent by a publicist from Paramount.

Now, screening 20 minutes of footage for an audience at a sci-fi or comic convention, I could understand. Screening said footage for folks like me, who couldn’t fill a page with their knowledge of Star Trek, seems a little… odd. After all, four scenes out of context can’t help but lose some of their impact when compared to the finished product. And what can I do except review said scenes as if I had seen the full-length movie?

The footage began with the trailer Paramount released two months ago, complete with the Thelma & Louise scene that’s never sat right with me (“What is your name?” “My name is James Tiberius Kirk!”). I realized something: like Paul Greengrass (the Bourne movies), J.J. Abrams gets rapid-fire editing: the images that flash by add up to something, and throughout the footage, I could always tell what was going on. I still would have preferred more conventionally edited action scenes, but c’est la vie.

Abrams himself introduced the scenes in pre-taped segments. The first was of Kirk (Chris Pine) at a bar, clumsily trying to pick up Uhura (Pirates of the Caribbean’s Zoe Saldana) and starting a fight. The second was of Kirk successfully going against executive orders and saving the Enterprise’s crew. The third was of Kirk being led by Spock (the real Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy) to a remote shelter which apparently existed for no reason except to house Scotty (Simon Pegg) for six months while he and Spock waited for Kirk. And the fourth was of Kirk, Sulu (John Cho), and a random officer in a red shirt parachuting from near-orbit onto a drilling platform. Guess whose parachute rips?

I love science fiction, but I’m not a Star Trek fan; I’m a Star Wars fan, and at their best the former favours realism, group dynamics and political intrigue, while the latter favours fantasy elements, action and questions of morality. This new installment attempts to bridge the gap, honouring the inherent altruism and group dynamics of the Trekuniverse while including a number of action setpieces and there-for-the-sake-of-coolness technology (none of which appears to be human in origin, a fact Trek fans will probably appreciate). Both series are at their best, of course, when focusing on great characters, and Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Pegg (Scotty), Karl Urban (Dr. “Bones” McCoy), Cho (Sulu), Saldana (Uhura) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov) are certainly handed memorable roles. Whether they do justice to the originals is for Trekkies to decide, but they feel like the characters of pop culture lore, and since Trekkies aren’t Paramount’s primary audience, that’s probably what’s most important.

While directed by Abrams, a casual sci-fi fan, the movie is unfortunately written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orchi, both Trekkies, who wrote Transformers, Mission Impossible III, and The Island after the first 45 minutes. I’m not a fan of their work; they build their stories around action sequences instead of characters, and favour broad quirks over character development. There’s also that sketchy time travel device, which I bought more easily in Star Trek IV and First Contact.

I have no doubt Abrams’ take on Star Trek will be entertaining, and for most moviegoers, that will be enough; perhaps that’s why Paramount held this non-screening. But as a sci-fi fan, I can’t help but compare it to this season’s other big science fiction release – the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica, which has successfully explored group dynamics, politics, morality, racism, religion, and includes a healthy dose of action – and remain doubtful this new Trek will measure up.

Star Trek hits theatres May 8, 2009

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I get it, studios. I’m wise to your game. Every year since I began writing for andPOP, just before Oscar time, I’ve been suckered into invited to my first screening of the year, a featherweight comedy I’ve heard nothing about, starring an actress I really like (this time Anne Hathaway instead of Diane Keaton), and whose presence at the multiplex is meant to provide a welcome respite from all that serious fare. And every year, when your movie is over, my brain hurts and I watch an example of said multiplex’s so-called serious fare to restore my faith in cinema.

I am not an elitist. I enjoy romantic comedies. I wanted to like Made of Honour. I loved Sex and the City. I’m looking forward to Confessions of a Shopaholic. And I was impressed by the quality of one-upmanship as Kate Hudson and Ms. Hathaway played dirty tricks on each other throughout Bride Wars.

But there’s no getting around it: this is a not-good movie.

It will entertain its intended audience. Its set-up (two best friends are forced to mount their dream wedding on the same day) is executed about as admirably as it can be. Only one plot contrivance stretches the boundaries of credibility. But every instance of “character development” brings the film to a screeching halt.

I empathize with movie characters easily. This means I’m more likely to be strung along in a genre film, provided the characters are consistent, but it also means I’ll curse the screenwriters especially vehemently when I recognize them trying – and failing – to sell me on what occurs. It also means I devote more space to a movie like Because I Said So or The Happening than it really deserves.

Basically in Bride Wars Hudson’s character is a bitch and Hathaway’s character is a doormat. Proving the screenwriters understood the first paragraph (and little else) of character development 101, by the end of the film Hudson recognizes that she does not have to be in control all the time and Hathaway is no longer a doormat. There is, however, a fine line between assertiveness and becoming an arrogant jerk, and I think Hathaway crosses it. Instead of the logical conclusion (the brides agreeing to a dual wedding), we’re offered a false ending masquerading as a happy one.

I feel obligated to mention that I am not a fan of Ms. Hudson. If you are, your enjoyment of Bride Wars will increase accordingly. Nor do I regret seeing it, but that is solely because of Ms. Hathaway. The ending made my brain hurt. I would not have paid good money to see Bride Wars outside of andPOP.

The film I saw afterward, you may ask? Milk. Wonderful movie. Populist entertainment, believe it or not. Worth every cent.

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It is not what a story is about, but how is it about it. I could summarize the plot of Seven Pounds for you in a paragraph and you’d be rolling your eyes or laughing. Or scolding me for suggesting that you’d roll your eyes or laugh. If you lapped up The Pursuit of Happyness (which I didn’t), this movie’s for you.

And yet I liked Seven Pounds, because it doesn’t reveal its plot as you would in a summary. It begins with its protagonist, Ben Thomas (Will Smith) phoning an ambulance and announcing his suicide. Then it pulls back and we see bits and pieces of Thomas’s former life: he had a high-powered job, a gorgeous house, a beautiful wife and, for reasons that won’t be clear until the end, apparently ditched his former profession to become an IRS agent. As you probably know from seeing the trailers or reading the summaries, he takes it upon himself to change the lives of seven people, most notably a heart disease patient named Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson). The why is easy to guess. The how is a little more tricky.

In its way, the film is ingenious as it presents a protagonist who knows exactly what he is doing and why he is doing it, even though his actions appear random and sometimes cruel. That we do not understand until the end makes a certain sense; as another critic said, Thomas (and his best friend, a lawyer played by Barry Pepper) already knows what he’s doing, and has no reason to explain why.

The dramatic reason, of course, is director Gabriele Muccino (who also directed The Pursuit of Happyness) wants us to sympathize with Thomas before the Big Reveal, in which case we accept his actions rather than rolling our eyes at him.

A certain breed of critic will dismiss the film as crassly manipulative. I am not that breed of critic.

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He’s only directed three other movies, yet five minutes into Australia I could already tell I was watching a Baz Luhrmann film. It wasn’t just the old-time opening, or the grainy-yet-computerized globe-trotting animation detailing Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman)’s journey from Britain to Australia (though that certainly helped), it was the film’s aggressively old-fashioned atmosphere, combined with a complete lack of cynicism on the director’s part. Formula rules in studio movies, but it’s a knowing, calculated formula, created by executives who don’t believe in it to hoodwink the masses who do. Like Moulin Rouge before it, Australia is most groundbreaking in its creator’s sincerity.

Pity it’s not a better movie.

It starts off well, justifying the reason for its existence by mentioning something about the Australian government’s policy during WWII to kidnap half-white/half-aboriginal boys and take them away to be trained for service – and to have the “black” stripped from them. These kids, according to the movie, became known as “the lost generation,” and the government didn’t issue a formal apology for them until this year. Australia is narrated by one of these lost boys, a “half-breed” known as Nullah, played by newcomer Brandon Walters. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Nullah’s place in history is just a backdrop for the old-fashioned romance he witnesses between Lady Ashley and Drover, a cattle driver played by Hugh Jackman.

This Western romance, which takes up the movie’s first act, is gorgeous and entertaining, as Luhrmann makes liberal use of both the Australian outback and his effective leads to bring us scenes that are by turns touching, thrilling, and funny. Lady Ashley and Drover (with Nullah’s help, of course) lead a cattle drive across the desert while contending with a group of wranglers led by Lady Ashley’s former rancher (played by David Wenham). I’d heard complaints the movie feels too long, but my impression with this first act was it wasn’t long enough – most glaringly we hear multiple stories about the treacherous “Never Never,” and apparently Nullah and co. trek through it, but we never actually see it.

Then their trek comes to a successful close (was there ever any doubt?) and the second act begins.

The problem is this second act, the brooding, romantic war epic promised by the trailers, feels completely separate from the first. And since I already felt like I had seen a complete film, it would have needed a new setup to engage me. As is, it never gained its footing. The second act isn’t a total loss, since Kidman, Jackman, and Walters’ characters remain engaging, and Wenham makes an especially good nasty-yet-sympathetic villain, but instead of being pulled along like I was in the first act, I felt disconnected, and was simply watching it lumber from one plot point to the next with Luhrmann’s characteristic quickness. Perhaps audiences will disagree with me; I hope they do. Personally I was left to think about (and shudder at) what was ideologically wrong with the movie.

You didn’t think I’d finish this review without mentioning something, did you? The film pretends to be about something, but really isn’t. It elevates a beautiful white woman to sainthood for realizing how unfortunate the circumstances around her are, but never leaves any doubt that she is above them, nor does it address the underlying reasons. It pays the social consequences Nullah would have faced being a half-breed lip service without depicting them. It presents another character as an adult mirror to Nullah – half-black, half-white, when in reality he isn’t, nor could he look, less black. No less than three aboriginal characters are reverently presented as magic negroes, including one who heroically sacrifices himself. You really want to depict a lesson being learned? Have the sexist, racist white Russian sacrifice himself.

…And yet this is a Baz Luhrmann film. It was clearly directed by someone who cared about his audience and wanted to entertain. It looks like something that required nine months of shooting. As I’ve said before, better a movie that aims high and misses than a movie which aims low and hits. I would not have regretted spending $11 to see it. We deserve a market for intelligent filmmaking like this, so here’s hoping it does well.

I just can’t help wishing Australia had been a better movie.

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Throughout Bond movie history, one thing has remained constant: the plot of each new entry in the series has jack all in common with the others. Quantum of Solace immediately breaks with tradition by featuring a story that picks up 20 minutes after the last one. It even explains why Vesper Lynd betrayed Bond. Sort of.

As Daniel Craig returns in the series’ first direct sequel, a number of predictable complaints will be made:

- “It’s not as good as the last one!”

Of course it isn’t. Ever tried photographing a especially gorgeous sunset, or capturing a particularly sprightly wild animal? Twice? It isn’t easy the first time. You can shock our systems once by reinventing Bond with Daniel Craig. Inevitably our systems will be shocked again once the next Bond rolls around. If Bond was changed every movie, we’d stop becoming shocked and beg to see the same actor twice. Get over it.

Also: Casino Royale was not a great movie. It was a great Bond movie. There’s a difference.

- “It’s a lousy title!”

It’s unwieldy, yes, but:

A) Quantum = a small increment or parcel into which many forms of energy are divided; solace = to console, soothe, provide peace. Makes sense, given the ending of Casino Royale;

B) It refers to a super-secret secret agency, QUANTUM;

C) Many Bond titles don’t make a lot of sense anyway.

- “Daniel Craig is not as good as (insert previous Bond)!”

People are still complaining about this?

- “The action sequences are incoherent!”

Actually, that one’s me. Here’s the odd thing: the Bourne movies have been fingered as the source of this modern tendency to utilize dozens of quick cuts within a two-minute period, which I’ve chalked up to bad directing (and it is) but am now having to accept as the modern norm. Indeed, Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction) hired Dan Bradley, the second unit director of the Bourne films, to helm the second unit of this movie, and it’s the second unit director who handles the stunts. So Forster cut everything this way on purpose.

And yet… during the Bourne films I always knew exactly what was going on. Paul Greengrass would show us Matt Damon running, followed by a crowded subway tunnel, followed by a display that told us what time it was, followed by a bad guy pursuing, followed by a… you get the idea. We still experienced the action along with Bourne; the picture on screen was augmented by a second one inside viewers’ heads. Quantum of Solace has no such mastery of montage. Instead we’re basically given a few snapshots (with less than half a second to look at them) after missing the action.

“The title song sucks!”

Imagine something written for Amy Winehouse and performed by Pete Doherty. On the upside, the animated sequence that accompanies it is terrific.

Simply put, enough of Casino Royale’s rough edges remain to give Quantum of Solace the same gritty feel. The action sequences (when you can follow them) are creative, and the villain (played by French actor Mathieu Amalric) is refreshingly realistic. Judi Dench is nearly given a full supporting role. And the location work (except for the villain’s headquarters, oddly enough) is spectacular. Like Royale, Quantum of Solace is very good – for a Bond movie. It will not, however, win the series any converts, and I feel obligated to mention that during at least three action sequences, I had no clue what was going on.

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I have mentioned before that I like studio films – good ones – but have also seen enough of them to recognize the off-the-shelf formulas, the test audience-driven elements, the ingredients calculated to elicit gasps, groans, cheers, arousal and – ideally – repeat business from various segments of moviegoers. Rare is the studio film that feels like its makers genuinely wanted to entertain you – most of them begin with a producer (or producers) deciding a given idea will attract a profitable audience, and everyone from the director on down making sure the resulting film does so. If moviegoers are lucky, it will be entertaining.

Independent movies, on the other hand, are made with a greater purpose in mind. Profit matters – always has, always will – but independent filmmakers know that art house audiences are after quality, not predictability, and that a good movie will typically yield good business.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is not an example of why I see independent movies.

You can feel the wheels of the screenplay turning from the moment the film opens. Every word that Nick (Michael Cera) speaks into his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine (which he erases before delivering) is for the benefit of the audience; each line at Norah’s (Kat Dennings) high school either establishes that A) she hates Nick’s ex (Alexis Dziena); B) is perfect for Nick; or C) has the sort of relationship with her friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) that will get one or both of them in trouble. To get Nick out of his New Jersey home and Norah from high school, their favourite independent band, Where’s Fluffy, announces a surprise concert which could be at any one of five (or more) locations. Nick’s band happens to be playing at the first location Norah visits. When Nick and Norah meet and decide they don’t like each other, Caroline, who’s now drunk, goes missing. And so on.

A public service announcement: the film contains one of the most gag-inducing running jokes in recent memory. A wad of gum, initially chewed by Caroline, is thrown up and lands in a used toilet at Penn station. With her bare hands (and the camera focused firmly on the toilet bowl and its tranluscent chocolate-coloured water), Caroline frees her gum from the murky depths and sticks it back into her mouth. She isn’t the last person to chew it either. I haven’t heard an audience collectively groan like that since the hair gel scene in There’s Something About Mary.

To be fair, the movie handles a pair of typically bungled elements especially well: that Cera’s bandmates are gay is established with a single line (“you don’t know what it’s like to be straight”), and instead of mining it for laughs, the film acknowledges their sexuality and moves on. Likewise, it’s clear none of the main characters are virgins, but their activities are neither exploited nor ignored; they’re simply acknowledged when needed and remain offstage when not.

The two leads are well cast. As Nick, Michael Cera may not look like the kind of guy who would command Kat Dennings’ attention during a concert, but in every other aspect he’s perfect. In her first lead role, Dennings (Catherine Keener’s daughter in The 40-Year-Old Virgin) handles herself admirably, wearing a tentative smile that suggests far more character development than the script does.

The problem is the long arm of the plot remains tangled in everything until the last half hour, at which point Nick and Norah are progressing smoothly, but without any surprises. The film is an unabashed crowd-pleaser, as engaging, warm-hearted – and calculated – as any studio-backed Oscar winner.

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I don’t typically mention video games in my reviews, but The Clone Wars unavoidably made me think of one: BioWare’s masterpiece Knights of the Old Republic, which offered an unforgettable take on George Lucas’s galaxy by taking place 4000 years before any of the movies and giving itself carte blanche to add to the series’ history, creating not only an origin story for Tattooine but for the entire Star Wars galaxy. More than one critic called it the best thing to happen to the series since The Empire Strikes Back. I love Return of the Jedi, but I wouldn’t dispute that.

I couldn’t help but think of KOTOR during The Clone Wars which, like other questionable cinematic Star Wars properties released in the last nine years, attaches itself too rigidly to the existing material. A world like Star Wars, rooted in myth, was never meant to be defined by a consistent socio-political reality. Who cares about the physics behind an AT walker or planet-sized spaceship or how they were financed or how the grim reaper who was apparently the hero’s father came to have control over them? The grim reaper was a tragic badass and the technology looked cool, dammit!

The prequel trilogy attempted to explain these things without offering a compelling reason to care about them, within a structure that was too faithful to the existing movies. Also, unlike KOTOR, it was in the hands of George Lucas, who’s allowed his his gut instinct of what a 10-year-old would like, sudden interest in politics and atrocious dialogue (I’ve seen the original Star Wars more times than I care to count, and it wasn’t that bad) to nearly eclipse his flair for action sequences. Unsurprising that the best thing to come out of the new trilogy was Genndy Tartakovsky’s existing Clone Wars series – which, like KOTOR, freed itself from certain aspects of the world (physics, politics) to strengthen others (action sequences, character development, philosophy).

The Clone Wars was not written or directed by Lucas, although it was supervised by him, so it carries both the strength of new blood (Dave Filoni, who directed several episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender) and the weakness of fidelity to the existing material. The music, by one Kevin Kiner, occasionally moves beyond the blueprint established by John Williams, offering Asian and Middle-Eastern themes for two of the planets.

Another advantage is The Clone Wars’ introduction of and focus on a new character, Ahsoka Tano (voiced by one Ashley Eckstein). Though not quite the protagonist (Anakin, voiced here by TV actor Matt Lanter, still comes off as that), she’s easily the most interesting character, because she’s not defined by existing baggage and we know anything could happen to her.

Speaking of Anakin, he’s a bit more interesting in this movie, heroic but with some of the chaotic edge that led to his becoming Darth Vader (and which was poorly hinted at in the prequel trilogy).

This is a Star Wars movie, so dialogue is primarily there to describe what’s happening on screen. It sounds better than it did in the prequel trilogy, though the banter between Ahsoka and Anakin is atrocious.

I must admit I found the animation off-putting. The stylized characters that worked in Tartakovsky’s series don’t translate all that well to 3D, and the lightsaber battles are obviously staged and appear to be conducted by action figures. I understand what reviewers meant when they said lightsaber battles in KOTOR were impressive – inThe Clone Wars, they simply aren’t smooth.

Die-hard fans of the series who weren’t fazed by the prequels will eat this up. Those of us who Lucas lost can wait for the video. Or forego it entirely. You won’t be missing anything.

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As a teenager, Amy Price-Francis had few dreams of becoming an actor.

“I had a wonderful teacher in high school who basically insisted that I audition for the National Theatre School of Canada,” she says. “I thought it was a waste of time.”

Price-Francis’s teacher paid $50 for the application anyway, helped her fill it out, and sent it via express mail a day before it was due. Three auditions and a final interview later the NTS, which admits approximately 12 students into its acting program each year, offered Price-Francis a place at the school.

“I never was inspired to become an actress until I became one,” Toronto’s Price-Francis says. “Although my teacher, and many other angels along the way, are great sources of inspiration in my life, which of course bleeds over to the work.”

Since graduating, Price-Francis has performed regularly, acting in both new and classical theatre and landing leading roles on Canadian television series and guest spots on American ones. Her most recent, The Cleaner, is a dramatic series centred on former heroin addict turned interventionist William Banks, played by Benjamin Bratt (and based on real-life “extreme interventionist” Warren Boyd, who is a producer on the show).

Like many extreme workplace dramas, the show provides both a glimpse of Banks’s family (his wife, played by Price-Francis, and kids, played by Brett DelBuono and Liliana Mumy) and his crew (played by Grace Park, Esteban Powell and Kevin Michael Richardson), which is made up of former drug users. Banks decided to become an interventionist upon the birth of his daughter, and though no longer using drugs, he now tackles his work with the same determination as his former addiction. Each episode depicts Banks and his crew taking on a new case.

“Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t,” says Price-Francis. “Though if I had to sum the show up in one word, it would be ‘hope.’”

Asked to describe her character, Melissa Banks, Price-Francis says, “Melissa is very near and dear to me.” Just as the character of William Banks is based on a real person, she says, so is she. “She is a wife and mother of two, with a job and a household to maintain, but first and foremost, she is the glue that has kept the family together.”

Price-Francis got the job after three separate auditions with casting directors, studio heads, and the network, and was in a sporting goods store next to the studio lot when she heard the news. “I answered the phone and was greeted with five congratulatory voices,” she says. “The creators, director, casting director, and Benjamin were all on the line. It was great.”

Asked what she hopes viewers take away from the show, Price-Francis replies, “As a television show, it is first and foremost entertainment.” That said, “I do believe that this show has the ability and power to offer much more than that. Impact can generate movement, and movement can be a very good thing.”

The Cleaner airs Tuesdays on A&E at 10 PM EST.

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