Knight and Day

Hall and Oates make a not unwelcomed appearance in Tom Cruise's new flick, Knight and Day. The movie is entertaining but draggy in places and riddled with narrative holes and general nonsense. I wondered what Matt Damon would have made of Cruise's role as the "crazed" secret agent who is accompanied by a winsome automobile restorer played by Cameron Diaz as they track down a missing teen savant (Paul Dano) who has the key to perpetual energy. Cruise looks like he's had some body work -- fake pecs and lats.

Finlay Falls Sunday Morning

Splice

Splice is a squishy, oozy, nasty and repugnant David Cronenberg film without David Cronenberg. The squish and ooze belong mostly to the human/animal hybird created by lovers/scientists Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody, who
provide the nasty and repugnant elements, IMO. The film does take a couple of interesting turns but it telegraphs the ending fairly early on. As with Cronenberg's movies -- notably Crash (1996), Naked Lunch (1991) and The Fly (1986) -- Splice, directed by Vincent Natali, has an unsettling eroticism that transforms sex into a dance with mortal danger. The message of this motion picture of science run amok is you must always be careful who (or what) you're effing with.

How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon is at its core a familiar affair -- a senstive boy tries to find his place in his tribe and win his father's approval but his efforts are complicated when he finds a new pet. In this beautifully insightful film, the boy is a Viking, his father is the Viking chief and his pet is a fearsome (and ...misunderstood) dragon -- one of hundreds that have been pillaging the Viking village for generations. DreamWorks' animated features have been spotty, IMO, but this film is wonderfully realized, the characters enormously appealing, the action scenes cleaner than the CGI battles in The Prince of Persia and Clash of the Titans (to name two of the more recent spectacles), AND the movie's message is life-affirming. The ending may be a bit shocking for very young children but overall it's a family affair.

Robin Hood

Yes, as a matter of fact, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood is quite a lot like his Gladiator. (Has it really been 10 years?) It's well-crafted, smartly scripted and boasts an enviable assortment of veteran actors and new faces. Russell Crowe as Robin Longstride is firmly at the center of this story about the origins of the legendary well-redistributor -- and there is quite a lot of action -- as he opposes Mark Strong's nefarious Lord Godfrey, who is in service to a vain and ineffectual ruler, King John, played winningly by the Guatemalan actor Oscar Isaac. But this time, Crowe, is oddly understated this time out, must share the stage with the estimable Cate Blanchett as Lady Marion Loxley. The lengendary Max von Sydow, in a small but pivotal role, gives a sure and studied performance as does William Hurt; but you would not expect less from actors of their caliber. This film has a palpable sense of time and space. My only quibble is with the prologue that sets the scene by telling us days of tyranny and oppression are no cup of tea. "England in the 12 Century was just such a time." Shouldn't that be "just such a place?" I'm just saying.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Much has been made of Jake Gyllenhaal's studliness in Mike Newell's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and for good
reason -- he looks great. He and his equallty stunning co-star Gemma Arterton are the most watchable elements in this fairly uninteresting and uninvolving but terribly busy film about magic and mystism in ancient Persia that's
based on a computer game. To be honest, I spent most of my time in the film wondering why they'd asked the L.A.-born actor to play valiant young Dastan with a British accent. Perhaps it's because Newell is a Brit, and so is Arterton, and featured players Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina. Perhaps they thought Gyllenhaal's swashbuckling adventurer would
be a distraction if he spoke in his normal voice. Trust me, nobody will be listening to anything this kid says in the film. Take the youngsters. It's got some scary moments with deadly serpents but overall the movie is harmless.

Kick-Ass

The over-the-top action picture genre is hit-or-miss with me. Hits have included most of Guy Richie's stuff, the little praised but much seen Wanted and the little seen but much praised Shoot 'Em Up. Misses include the Jason Statham collection, which is getting pretty hefty, and much of the lesser comics-to-cinema attempts starting, I think, with Daredevil (2003). Kick-Ass is a comic-to-cinema film that is as self-referential as a movie can get. A high school nobody is inspired to amateur superherodom by little more than reading comics and asking the question "Why not?" His first foray into crime fighting ends with him getting his "ass kicked" but through the intercession of modern medicine he is turned into a schmo who can take a punch better than most. The young British actor Aaron Johnson plays the youthful schlub and Nicolas Cage adds some gravitas (in a weird Christopher Walken kind of way) as a Batmanesque crusader Big Daddy. But the true star is 13-year-old Chloe Moretz who plays Hit-Girl a pre-teen badass who spits the c-word (yes, that c-word) like a pro. The movie's base vulgarity is exceeded only by the bloodletting. Do NOT take the kids.

Date Night

The laughs in Shawn Levy's Date Night, which stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey, are pretty rich and fairly frequent, and its underlying message to keep love alive in marriage is sweet, but the film is weighted down by weary cynicism. This cynicism will be familiar to those who have seen Fey's 30 Rock and Carell's The O...ffice, although Date Night is not nearly as biting as either of those programs. Still, I pulled for the poor, hapless Fosters as they climbed out of a pit of ridiculous mishaps and mistaken identities and howled at their antics.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Clash of the Titans (2010) is loud and exhausting, predictably short on exposition but long ... numbingly long ... on fight scenes led by Mr. Avatar, Sam Worthington, and directed by Louis Leterrier, who brought us the better of two Hulk movies. It's swords and sands and so everybody speaks like an earl. The Medusa is... wicked hot. The audience in screening cheered at the end. Go figure.

The Ghost Writer

No director does paranoia like Roman Polanski, and his latest film, The Ghost Writer, is a model of crackling suspense and suspicion. Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Catttrall, Olivia Williams and Tom Wilkinson swoop and swerve around one another effortlessly, guided assuredly by Polanski's masterful direction and a script that is a dream of literate intrigue and snipe. It's been ages since I've been in a film with a story so fresh, lean and tightly crafted that my attention NEVER wavered. Wonderfully entertaining.

Green Zone

Green Zone is more than a Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon vanity project but less than the latest Bourne installment. It has the kinetic madness of both Supremacy and Ultimatum and a bit of the political craziness of a Syriana but it lacks heft and intrigue mainly because we know the story -- there weren't no WMD. Greengrass's signature hand-held camera work left me especially dyspeptic this go round. Damon, long one of my favorites, delivers.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a visual feast but it is not the cinematic wonder that Avatar is and it often feels junky and cluttered, qualities that are worsened by the 3D effects. I don't think I could have tolerated more length but the film feels disjointed and underdeveloped. Mia Wasikowska (stellar in HBO'sIn Treatment in 2008) is suitably spunky as Alice but the film overall is anemic and uninvolving. Pity.

Edge of Darkness

Edge of Darkness is like a conventional detective flick except for the body count and the bloodletting. Mel Gibson's performance as a Boston detective whose whistleblower daughter is shot down on his doorstep is surefooted, his Boston accent not too distracting and he is fairly generous when playing against the others in the cast. In fact, a fairly long scene between him and a mysterious British fixer played by Ray Winstone is a highpoint of the film. The lowest point is the last scene, which reunites Gibson's Tommy Craven and his murdered daughter, Emma, for a last goodbye. It's unbearably treacly.

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island feels more like a tribute to Hitchcock, Welles and Polanski and less of Scorsese's own unique vision. That's not to say it's a bad movie. I don't think Scorsese is capable of making a bad film. It's to say that the story (suitably convoluted and deceptive) is secondary to the staging wh...ich are infused touches of the "old" masters. Yes, it's beautiful but it's not really bold.

A Single Man

While Colin Firth and Julianne Moore undoubtedbly offer the best performances in A Single Man, it's Firth's searing scenes with the young actor Nicholas Hoult that give this marvelous film it's complexity and, ultimately, it's romantic ambivalence. Adapted by director Tom Ford from the novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man is startlingly beautiful and achingly human. I loved it.

The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli is not devoid of ideas, the action sequences are tight, the twist is a bit surprising, and the parade of British character actors is delightful but the movie feels more like an exercise than a complete work. Denzel does Denzel without much exertion. The morality, which is to say the message of the movie, is unclear. Still, the showdown set piece featuring Denzel, co-star Mila Kunis, Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour is masterfully choreographed.

Daybreakers

The vampire science is ridiculous and the guts and gore are pornographic but I love ghoulish feeding frenzies that end with decapitations? Yum.

It's Complicated

It's Complicated is not complicated at all. It's a pristinely crafted storythat's set in some of the most impeccably appointed interiors this side of House Beautiful. (www.housebeautiful.com) Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are an inspired pairing as two exes who haven't completely embraced their ex-ness.

Invictus

Clint Eastwood's Invictus is from start to finish a paean to human decency. The film exploits (in the positive sense of that term) every visual and musical cue to rouse the audience as it tells its tale of a heretofore pitiful South African rugby team's battle for world domination, and respectability, in 1995. The team's struggle was emblematic of the nation's own quest under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.

Brothers

Brothers is a perfectly decent movie with credible, spot on performances from beginning to end. Everyone hits the marks, each scene is crafted for optimal believability and the ending is satisfying. It is a good but unremarkable film. The child actress Bailee Madison holds her own when on the screen with Gyllenhaal, Portman and Maguire.

The Road

Yes, The Road is as bleak, maybe bleaker, than you had pictured it in your head while reading the book. But, as McCarthy had intended, those redeeming moments of transcendent humanity are to be found in the boy, played by the young Aussie actor Kodi Smith-McPhee. What a face.

A Serious Man

The Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man" left me sad and blue as I thought about the Jobian troubles that had befallen the mild-mannered physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). Were he not so blasted mild-mannered half of the crap that he had to deal with wouldn't have happened. Therein lies the beauty of this "morality" tale.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes really packs a wallop, and that's a good thing. The Holmes / Watson interplay put me in mind of a more amped-up House / Wilson pairing from the TV series House, all bromance and codependency.

Colors

Jay Smooth and the Yankee Victory