Godzilla (2014)

Not 10 minutes into Gareth Edwards' weirdly off-kilter remake of the 1954 classic Godzilla, stunt-casted Bryan Cranston delivers a cringe-inducing scene. He's an American nuclear engineer in Japan who is forced to shut the door on his slow-footed wife (Juliette Binoche) and her team as the belly of a nuclear reactor in full-meltdown fills with radioactive gas. It's a stunning wreck of a scene that introduces this stunning wreck of a movie. Edwards ably stages scenes of mayhem and destruction as Tokyo, Vegas and Frisco are reduced to rubble and kindling by the gargantuan deep sea lizard and his two leggy foes, the M.U.T.O.'s. British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, a big-eyed cipher, is the human star of the film, as the skeptical son of Cranston and Binoche's characters, who is a bomb disposal ace. Oddly, he never does actually get to show his bomb-defusing stuff, though, because he's too busy running toward or away from screaming monsters and screaming people. The real weakness in the film, IMO, is that we have no human villain to cheer against. It's tough to unload your animus on 300-foot-critters that humans created and who eat our weapons as if they were chili dogs. Reap, sow and all that jazz.The film also features the reliable David Strathairn as an admiral who is tasked with the destruction of the big battling baddies. His character is introduced in a truly bizarre tracking shot on the deck of an aircraft carrier as Strathairn's character addresses the crew, his back to the camera. When he finally turns to face the camera, I'm sure most of the folks in the audience were thinking, "Who the hell is he?" The picture is no biggie but see it if you must.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel has beautfiul, fractal intimacy, which is to say it is lovely, complex and cold. That is NOT to say it isn't entertaining because it is, quite delightful, because like those geometric puzzles that fascinate math-nerds, Grand Budapest's component parts -- script, art direction, cinematography and performances (principally Ralph Fiennes amd Tony Revolori) -- are precise and astounding. It's a technical marvel, much like the work of Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Pillow Book), but, alas, lacks an essential warmth. Recommended.

Noah

Three-quarters of the way through Darren Aronofsky's Noah, the titular character and his family are huddled in the ark with the remains of the world's critters and he retells the creation story. The story is fairly close to biblical text but the visual elements are pulled straight from the Evolutionist's Bible. It's a pretty neat trick. In fact, the entire film (which stars Russell Crowe as Noah and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, who was not given a name in Scripture but is called Naameh in the film) is tricky in that one is never sure of the point of this cagey retelling of The Flood. Has Aronofsky (a skilled visual artist, for sure) recast the ancient story of the Creator's great displeasure with his Creation (at least the human element of it) as an environmentalists' cautionary tale (the CGI animals are marvelous) or is it, like others of Aronofsky's films, a weird study of destruction and delusion. I must say I spent so much time trying to puzzle out this question that I never connected with any of the rage and emoting on the screen and there's plenty of it courtesy of Ray Winstone as the murderously carnivorous Tubal-cain and Emma Watson as another filmic construct Ila, the once-barren but then miraculously fertile wife of Noah's oldest son, the noble Shem, played by Douglas Booth). Crowe and Connelly (a compelling coupling in A Brilliant Mind) are good here -- he's all righteous stoicism and she's all weepy, loving connivance. Recommended but it's not a Sunday School lesson.

Oculus

Horror films by definition are malevolent but Mike Flanagan's Oculus has a really unsettling meanness to it that is fairly disturbing. Murderous, demonic spirits need motivation just like any other character, to my mind, but Flanagan's haint seems to like to kill without meaning or purpose. Can it be that for screenwriters all acceptable reasons have been spent? Or has Hollywood entered into an era of pointless annihilation, which in itself signals a turn toward the dystopic. That seems too easy. The picture stars the Scottish actress Karen Gillan (whom I first noticed as the irrepressible Amy Pond of Doctor Who) and Aussie Brenton Thwaites as sibling survivors of a particularly nasty domestic upset that left both parents (Katie Sackhoff and Rory Cochrane) dead and Thwaites's Timmy in the nut house. In the 11 year interim since that really bad day, Big Sister Kaylie has been hatching a plan to call out and, presumably, destroy the devil living in a cracked and cranky mirror that Kaylie believes was the cause of a few dozen grisly murders over the past 300 years. The film, which is artfully crafted and loaded with jolts, is comparatively free of gore and guts, but puts the children in peril trope through its paces. I'm not a fan of parents beating up on tots (be they mouthy or not) so this picture was tough going for me. Recommended but with those reservations.

Captain America 2: The Winter Solider

The Russo Brothers' Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier is an exhilarating feature that is witty without being glib and thrilling without being mindless. Chris Evans, who stars as the cryogenically preserved WWII hero Steve Rogers aka Captain America, knows how to deliver patriotic indignation and fill an Under Armour T-shirt, which is not a diss because this latest edition in the Marvel comics cinematic catalog is all about talking a big game about truth, justice and the American way (with apologies to D.C. Comics) and having the muscle to back it up. In this edition, Cap has to defend S.H.I.E.L.D., the agency responsible for transforming him from a 94-pound weakling into the specimen of masculine pulchritude that he is, and the world from the evil insurgent group Hydra and its own, unstoppable fighting machine, the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) of the title. Cap is joined in this exuberant undertaking by Samuel L. Jackson as  S.H.I.E.L.D.'s head honcho Nick Fury, Scarlett Johannson as the winsome and pistol-packing Black Widow and Anthony McKie as the metal-winged Falcon. It's all great fun, action packed, reliably bloodless and features a pretty gnarly performance by Robert Redford as the milk-drinking Alexander Pierce, Fury's friend, mentor and boss, with a big secret.

Lone Survivor

It took me quite a while to see Peter Berg's latest feature Lone Survivor because his meaty and masculine films (among them Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) strike me as a smidge too earnest. True to form, Lone Survivor is brimming with decency and honor and a bloody intensity that has become de rigueur for contemporary war movies, that is, "support our troops" while damning greed and hubris. Mark Wahlberg heads a quartet of handsomely rugged (ruggedly handsome) actors (Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster [the best actor among them] and Emile Hirsch) who play real life Navy Seals on a mission in Afghanistan to take out a particularly loathsome Taliban chief. The mission is compromised, however, when they capture an elderly goatherder and two boys, one of whom would clearly reveal the team's location if released. The squad's leader Murphy (played with stolid brio by Kitsch) decides to do the decent thing and that, of course, seals their fate. (The title of the movie and book from which the screenplay was adapted is a spoiler.) Neither Berg nor Wahlberg would have signed onto a film that did not, in the end, be uplifting and life-affirming, despite its grim bloodiness. That's just how they roll.

The Wind Rises and Kill Your Darlings

Two quick hits from today -- The Wind Rises and Kill Your Darlings.

I'm not a fan of Hayao Miyazaki's animated features (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) even though I admire the intricacy of his storylines and the richness of his color palette. However, my admiration has difficulty turning into affection for some reason. His latest film, The Wind Rises, may be his most ambitious work so far as it recounts the life of Japanese aeronautic engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the Zeroes that bombed China and Hawaii in World War II. Far from a jingoistic defense of Japanese nationalism, The Wind Rises, which pulls in history and politics and science, is absolutely beautiful, occasionally poignant and a tribute to traditional painted-cel animation. Horikoshi is expertly voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt; James Krasinski plays his friend and fellow airplane designer Honjo; and Emily Blunt is the voice of Horikoshi's tubercular sweetheart and later wife, Nahoko. Warning: Though this is an animated feature it is glacially paced and fairly grim so leave the young ones home.

John Krokidas's Kill Your Darlings is an intriguing though oddly coy film about Allen Ginsberg's infatuation with a conflicted fellow Columbia University student, Lucien Carr, who fancies himself a muse but is actually a stifling narcissist. Carr (Dane DeHaan) seduces Daniel Radcliffe's closeted Ginsberg so that Carr can pull away from an older, clinging lover, David Kammerer (a terrific Michael C. Hall), a former professor who, pathetically, writes Carr's papers and supplies him with drugs and alcohol. In re-telling the story of Ginsberg's toxic friendship with Carr, Krokidas describes the origins of the Beats and rounds out his cast of principal players with Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac and the redoubtable Ben Foster as William Burroughs. Though Burroughs describes this quintet as libertines, the film is surprisingly lacking in sexual heat.

Pat Metheny and Unity Group

Pat Metheny told the audience at the Knight Theater in Charlotte last night that he's been performing live for 40 years. FORTY YEARS. What's it with jazz musicians and their longevity? (That is, when they're not riding horse or hooch?) Metheny, 59, has toured the world dozens of times over the decades and he has lost none of his dexterity -- at least to my ear. He and the Unity Group (reed man Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams, drummer Antonio Sanchez and keyboardist Giulio Carmassi) performed selections from the ensemble's first disc, Unity Band, to open the evening -- and explosively, at that. Metheny, whose work cuts across generations and genres, is a most generous band leader, despite his virtuosity. He does not exploit the spotlight but uses it for the purpose it was created -- to showcase excellence. Highpoints of the evening were his duets with band members; his riffing with Potter throughout the evening pulled SO's from the audience several times. Some might find Metheny's more experimental forays into freer-jazz off-putting, but I appreciate the expansiveness of his vision, which was on full display last night as the Group performed suites from the new disc, KIN: propulsive soundscapes and ethereal atmospherics. In most cases, the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts but in the case of Unity Group, each individual player's precision in signature and improvisation is so phenomenal that they can actually play along with ghost instruments (marimbas, high hats, accordions and vocals) without falling out of phase. Sheer brilliance!

Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen Brothers' inside Llewyn Davis is a curious picture, a film of unspectacular events in the life of a pretty reprehensible man, Mr. Davis of the title (Oscar Isaac), a struggling Greenwich Village folkie in the early '60s who is having a bad week. Though talented, the bleakness of Davis's outlook (and thus his songs) is off-putting but that would be tolerable if he were committed to loftier causes or cared about other people. As played by Isaac (who is terrific), Davis is a self-involved prick who, it seems, dares people to reject him -- which they do. The girlfriend (Carrie Mulligan) of his former folkie partner (Justin Timberlake) despises him because he seduced and quite possibly impregnated her. His response to her not altogether persuasive harangue is "It takes two to tango." But he tries to do the right thing for the wrong reasons and thus continues his descent. Inside Llewyn Davis is beautifully filmed; the smoky cafe scenes are especially evocative but it's not uplifting (has any Coen film been?) and despite featuring fine performances and great tunes might leave you irritated and exhausted like the characters on the screen. Recommended.

Her

Spike Jonze's Her is an interesting cinematic conceit about our dual fixation with detachment and intimacy. For his fourth major feature film, Jonze has crafted the quasi-futuristic tale of a divorcing ghost writer named Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix), who pens and sends fulsome love letters for the tongue-tied. He's a masterful wordsmith regarding other people's ardor but has difficulty managing his own. Theodore's brilliant though self-flagellating wife, Catherine, (Rooney Mara) has left him confused and introspective, a common characteristic of the people in Jonze's highly cerebral films (Being John Malkovitch and Adaptation.). When he purchases a new sentient operating system to organize his home and his life, Theordore meets the system's spectral personality, Samantha (the voice of Scarlett Johansson), who beguiles lonely Theodore and is beguiled by him. Their romance is touching and sparkling with newness but, as one might expect, not without complications. The world Jonze has created in this film is lousy with folks in high-wasted, belt-less trousers sporting earbuds that are connected to OS's that weed their email, joke with them and line up dates for them. Brave New World? So, Theodore's "relationship" with Samantha doesn't raise an eyebrow and for some -- neighbor Amy (Amy Adams) -- is envied. As with Jonze's other major pictures (he's also directed short films and music videos), I found Her intriguing and intellectually stimulating but not especially warm and affecting. Recommended.

Nebraska

Alexander Payne directed Laura Dern in 1996's Citizen Ruth, a wonderful movie about a not wholly sympathetic unwed mother, and her father, Bruce Dern, as a wandering fool in his latest  film, Nebraska. Both movies are studies of distressed people, brimming with imperfections, who seem to be both indifferent to and craving compassion from others. This actually might be true for all of Payne's beautifully crafted and highly personal films -- Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants. Nebraska, shot in stunning black and white,  begins in media res with Bruce Dern's codger character Woodrow Grant walking down the shoulder of a Montana highway on the way to Nebraska to pick up his million dollar sweepstake winnings. It's not immediately clear if Woody is eccentric or senile and, much to the film's credit, the question is never really answered because it doesn't matter. What is clear, however, is Woody is determined and miserable, having arrived in his twilight years with little to show for his life -- except two estranged and alienated sons, David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odendirk) and a weary and intemperate wife, Kate (an absolutely marvelous June Squibb).  Son Will agrees to drive his father to Nebraska even though he knows the sweepstake is bogus. He wants to try to connect with his old man before it's too late, but Woody is having none ofi it. The road trip, which includes breathtaking vistas of the prairies, includes a stop in Woody's hometown, the fictitious Hawthorne, Nebraska, where relatives and town locals believe their native son has indeed struck it rich. The film is both gentle and trenchant, with lovely golden threads of nuance woven through. Dern, who is 77, is terrific, and Forte, who for all intents and purposes is a television actor, brings just the right mix of youthful irritation and filial protectiveness to his part. Highly recommended.

The Wolf of Wall Street

The latest Martin Scorsese / Leonardo DiCaprio project, The Wolf of Wall Street, is a whirling howl of a movie about insider trading and money laundering during the lustful Clinton era. DiCaprio, whose highly profitable association with directorial giant Scorsese dates back to 2002's Gangs of New York, plays real-life Wall Street bad boy Jordan Belfort, whose biography is the source material for Terence Winter's screenplay. Belfort -- addicted to coke, coitus and cash -- starts a small investment firm in the early '90s that scams its clients but enriches the brokers -- a principle laid out in a marvelous scene between DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey early in the film. In short time, the modest firm of a half-dozen serial losers turns into a trading behemoth that is run like a Tony Robbins seminar. The boiler room banter crackles and the profanity and vulgarity are non-stop but there's a heart (although a fairly small one) beating underneath all of the cheating and double-crossing. Scorsese, who is a peerless master of unconventional storytelling, stages a half-dozen  outlandish set pieces that allow the cast to wallow in the narrative excesses of this delightful bacchanal. DiCaprio's work during the quaalude overdose scene reminded me of the physical comedy of a young Jerry Lewis, who was at the top of the screwball comedy heap during the '60s. Jonah Hill -- who stars as Belfort's second in command, the pearly-toothed Donnie Azoff -- is a wonderfully intuitive actor with Swiss-made comedic timing. His performance in Wolf is a true joy. Highly recommended.

American Hustle

Characters in David O. Russell's films approach one another at odd angles, sometimes glancing off, sometimes colliding. This angularity is depicted not just in his movies' unusual narratives (from Spanking the Monkey's tale of incest and self-loathing to Silver Lining Playbook's unflinching depiction of the chaotic courtship of two emotional disasters) but also in the way the characters talk to one another and, indirectly, to us, the audience. It often feels like Russell's people are mining for a just-so aphorism or bon mot that will settle the matter at hand -- whatever that matter might be. The results of this scramble are nearly always delightful and more often than not revealing. In American Hustle, the matter is a con (based on the Abscam sting of the late '70s) being staged by an unhinged federal agent (Bradley Cooper) who extorts the cooperation of two grifters, Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser (a paunchy Christian Bale and barely clad Amy Adams), to try to bring down some greedy New Jersey congressmen. Also caught up in the caper is the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) and Rosenfeld's cluelessly narcissistic wife Rosalyn ("It Girl" Jennifer Lawrence). The actors spin around each other like skaters on ice, teasing and enticing and terrorizing, sometimes as part of the con and sometimes simply because they know of no other way to behave. All of the principals and featured players are wonderful in their roles, which occasionally are upstaged by the disco-era coifs and bling. Highly Recommended.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Peter Jackson's winning formula of eye-popping visuals and affecting characters is on full display in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, but more is not necessarily better. Though episode 2 of his latest trilogy includes some marvelously uncanny set pieces of derring-do (the dwarves' barrel escape alone is a stunning bit of film-making) and a winged menace voiced by uber-villain Benedict Cumberbatch (the dragon Smaug of the title), it still pales in comparison to his masterwork, The Lord of the Rings. Unlike the earlier triology, which also starred Ian McKellan as the wizard Gandalf, this picture, which is brimming with Jacksonian splendor, feels attenuated, relying more and more on spectacle and less and less on narrative and dramatic tension. Even so, it is so much fun and is highly recommended.

Dallas Buyers Club

Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee's Dallas Buyers Club features two wonderfully transformative performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto but a script, though based on true events, that is plagued by emotional hollowness. McConaughey, bowlegged and skeletal, plays Ron Woodroof, a Dallas electrician and rodeo bull-rider, who was diagnosed with HIV back in 1985 and given 30 days to live. He rejects the diagnosis, defiantly declaring he's not homosexual and so can't possibly have HIV and rejects an offer to take part in trials for an experimental drug, AZT. An inveterate horn dog, Woodroof changes his mind as his mind as his body, and libido, succumbs to the ravages of the disease. While in the hospital for treatment he meets Rayon / Raymond, a cross-dressing hustler who becomes Woodroof's partner in a scheme to smuggle vitamins and mineral supplements into the country and sell them to HIV patients. Abandoned by his rodeo friends and hounded by the FDA, Woodroof finds himself fighting both his disease and the system. McConaughey and Leto deliver fine performances that are more than stunts but still lack the resonance needed to fully connect with the audience. Vallee spends little time exploring the nature of Woodroof's transformation from ignorant, racist homophobe and a scene between Rayon and his disapproving father, who oddly looks younger than Rayon, is painfully off-key. Vallee lets the viewer assume that Woodroof's proximity to the mouthy but clearly self-loathing Rayon was enough to break through Woodroof's tough exterior. I, for one, wasn't buying it.

Out of the Furnace

Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) has a message in his new film Out of the Furnace that is neither cathartic nor revelatory. It's just distressing. The film, co-written by Cooper and Brad Ingelsby, is the story of two brothers (Christian Bale and Casey Affleck) in a hard-luck Pennsylvania town where hope is stillborn. Affleck's Rodney is an emotionally war-torn veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Bale's Russell is the dutiful son who toils in the town's failing steel mill, while loving up on the lovely Lena (Zoe Saldana) and caring for his dying father with his uncle Red (Sam Shepherd) and trying, without much success, to keep his younger brother out of trouble. Rodney, a raging bull of a guy, channels his anger through the local fist-fighting circuit run by a bar owner (Willem Defoe) but Rodney wants to make bigger money and has heard that the action in the New Jersey mountains run by a psychopath named DeGroat (Woody Harrelson) is the way to go. A horrible idea not just because the bloody outcome is inevitable but because it forces the viewer to check any further emotional investment in these miserable people. The acting throughout is fine and the muted autumnal palette is beautiful and fitting, but the pay-off, much like the one young Rodney chases, is elusive. Also stars Forest Whittaker as the local police chief.

Philomena

In the Roman Catholic Church, St. Philomena, a 14-year-old girl martyred in the early church, is the patron saint of children and youth.  In Stephen Frears's tender new film, Philomena is a devout Irish Catholic woman looking for the son who was taken from her while she was the ward of an abbey run by an order of sanctimonious nuns. Judi Dench plays the latter-day Philomena with all of the grace we've come to expect from this grande dame, and Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the screenplay, plays a scuttled and cynical BBC reporter commissioned to help her solve the mystery of her missing child. Frears is a wonderfully economical director, and he covers a lot of emotional ground in this film, which might at first appear to be a simple tale of odd fellows on a quest but is actually about the limitations of faith -- both real and imagined. Highly recommended.

Oldboy

Spike Lee's remake of the Korean thriller Oldboy is grim, cynical and pretty repugnant and a resounding disappointment. Lee continues to squander not just the gravitas he earned with some outstanding (though often maddeningly uneven) feature films  -- Do The Right Thing, Jungle Fever, 25th Hour, Inside Man) but the good will of those, like me, who love the man's cinematic vision if not to the man himself. Josh Brolin stars and Samuel L. Jackson delivers that thing he does but the most intriguing performance comes from the South African actor Sharlto Copley (Elysium, District 9) as the mystery psychopath who imprisons Brolin's Joe Doucett in a mock hotel room for 20 years and then releases him with the charge to find out why he did so or else Joe's daughter will be killed. It's all a sick and morally bankrupt affair and suggests that Lee may be channeling his creativity into his much more satisfying documentary projects.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Judging by the response of audience members during the screening of Francis Lawrence's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire that I attended today, the film will be enthusiastically embraced by the fan girls who, based on their gasps and giggles, think Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is ever so brave and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), ever so adorable, Gale (Liam Hemsworth) dreamier than dreamy and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) hilarious. I, on the other hand, found the second entry in this trilogy-plus-one based on the novels by Suzanne Collins an irritating diversion that features a slew of highly respected and respectable performers (Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright) out of their water (a deliberate pun for those who venture out). In this installment, Katniss and Peeta and 10 other hapless pawns are again tossed into gladiatorial games staged to give the huddled 90 percent in this dystopian world something to hope for while the privileged 10 percent dress up like peacocks on meth and cheer on the doomed competitors. All of this is probably quite profound in the books but as a movie it strikes me as just silly.

12 Years a Slave

Yes, British director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is as harrowing and horrifying as you have heard. It is also brave, sure and amazingly poetic, a stunning achievement in de-romanticizing America's "peculiar institution." The scenes of violence and human degradation on Southern plantations during the 1840s and '50s are truly and justifiably disturbing, but the words spoken by the film's astonishing troupe of actors -- Chiwetel Ejiofor as the slave of the title who was a free man in New York sold into bondage, Michael Fassbender as his savage master, Sarah Paulson as his master's bitter and vengeful wife, and the amazing Lupita Nyong'o as his master's tortured concubine --  are nearly Shakespearean. To some ears, the script written by American John Ridley, might seem unnaturally stagy but for me it raised the aura of the film above "pornography of despair" to something much grander -- nearly biblical. I loved listening to the characters speak just as much as I loathed watching the brutality inflicted by and upon them. It might be true that the language and the film's cinematic elegance and elliptical structure allow viewers to safely distance themselves from what they are seeing, but, to my mind, the only way to fully process the terror on the screen is from that dramatic distance. None of this is to say this is a weakness of the film. In fact, it might be its greatest strength and what will win it every major award this year. Bravo. Highly Recommended.

Thor: The Dark World

I'm a sucker for a primordial prologue (see Lord of the Rings), and veteran television director Alan Taylor's Thor: The Dark World has a fine one that goes all the way back to before there was light but not before there were evil elves in french braids who hated everything and everyone in the illuminated nine realms (a ridiculous concept of parallel universes that merges science and the supernatural). The leader of the curiously racially diverse band of Esperanto-speaking elves is Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) who wants revenge after being imprisoned for millennia by the beautiful, English-speaking Asgardians, whose most famous inhabitants are, arguably, the hammer-fisted Prince Thor (an impossibly handsome Chris Hemsworth), his one-eyed and disapproving father Odin (Sir Anthony Hopkins), and his trickster half-brother Loki (the impossibly cheeky and surely one day knighted Tom Hiddleston, the life of this party, IYAM). The key to all of the chaos that threatens all known realities lies inside of Thor's mortal heartthrob, astrophysicist Jane Foster (the toothy Natalie Portman), who uncovers the source of Malekith's malevolence buried in London (seems fitting, actually) and becomes its host. It's all wonderful comic book nonsense with a bristling sense of humor and some kick-ass battle scenes. One thing can be said about the film series based on Marvel comics, they really know how to stage a good onslaught. Recommended.

Ender's Game

The young actor Asa Butterfield has Children of the Corn eyes, which are the most expressive part of his face. That's a good thing because as Ender Wiggin, the savant who is recruited to save Earth from marauding alien locust beings by leading a team of pubescent virtual warriors into battle, Butterfield has to look intently at three-dimensional game boy schematics, stare down rivals and superiors and weep for his lost innocence. Butterfield (who distinguished himself in both Martin Scorsese's Hugo and Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) is up to the challenge in this film which is written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on Orson Scott Card's popular novel. Hood avoids a common danger of having such a young cast, a woodiness and lack of depth due to lack of experience, by limiting the young cast's interactions and time on screen. Fourteen-year-olds are not typically great at long expository scenes and pages of dialogue, the exception being Hailee Steinfeld (outstanding in True Grit in 2010) as Ender's soul mate Petra. What exposition there is in the film is left to the grown ups -- Harrison Ford, Viola Davis and Sir Ben Kingsley -- who are all fine if not terrific. There is a lot of cool stuff to look at in the film but despite the galactic backdrop and clashes the story feels familiar (Harry Potter?) and, ultimately, at least for me, unsatisfying.

Phantasm (1979)

As low-budget shockers go, Don Coscarelli's Phantasm (1979) is as assured and imaginative as they come. Working from his own script, Coscarelli crafts a trippy little adventure that blends monster horror and fantasy and science fiction quite nicely. It's loaded with jolts and a fair amount of gore but the whole notion of a reed thin undertaker stealing bodies with a crew of robed dwarves for their masters in another dimension is ghoulishly warped and entertaining.

In A World

Lake Bell's In A World has so much clever quirkiness (quirky cleverness) that you'll catch yourself checking with your movie mate to make sure he / she heard that line or caught that bit of stage business you saw because it's all so fresh. Bell, who wrote the script and stars, has crafted a fine film about a talented, though emotionally stunted, vocal coach an dvoice-over artist (Bell) in a disjointed family who is trying to catch a break into the big time. Her disapproving father (Fred Malamed), a big dog in the voice -over business, and her self-involved, concierge sister (Michaela Watkins) are of little help as she tries to crash this boys-only party. She does have champion, however, in studio engineer Louis (Demetri Martin), who loves her and her voice, but not necessarily in that order. It's funny and refreshing and highly recommended. Note: Kids won't get it.

Things Never Said

Things Never Said is screenwriter Charles Murray's directorial debut and it's a fine one -- a refreshing and sparkling addition to the black cinema catalog that is currently overrun with Medeas and miscreant ministers. Set in Los Angeles, the film focuses on the struggles of a dreamy young poet Kalindra (a radiant Shanola Hampton of Summerville), whose painful marriage to a defeated and bitter man (Elimu Nelson) and a recent miscarriage fuel her art. A waitress during the day, Kalindra has become a regular on the open mike / poetry slam circuit. It is after one of her appearances that she meets a fellow poet, Curtis (Omari Hardwick), who is carting baggage not unlike her own. They start an affair -- the development of which is one of this film's strongest points -- which, of course, leads to a host of confrontations and revelations. Make no mistake, though this summary suggests the film is dripping with melodrama (and it has its share) it is so much more than some random infidelity potboiler. Those films lack elegance and intimacy and authenticity and Murray's film has all three in abundance. It is real and, yes, poetic and, in its way, inspiring. Highly Recommended.