Review: "Rocketman"

There’s a lot to like about “Rocketman,” a movie that very much wants you to like it about a man who spent a lifetime making likable music. It’s the life story of pop singer Elton John, which he produced himself after trying for two decades to get it made.

That’s a very Oprah thing to do, and watching the movie reminds me of that “O” magazine where she puts herself on the cover of every issue. It’s an enjoyable flick, as long as you understand it’s a great big ol’ narcissism pie.

Of course this film will be compared to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which was a better movie about a better singer from last year. Taron Egerton plays Elton and sings the songs himself, despite not much looking or sounding like him. For example, he repeatedly refers to himself as fat, then he takes his shirt off and it looks like the usual sculpted Hollywood bod.

It’s a solid turn, though I didn’t emotionally connect to this character like I did “Rhapsody.”

The film, directed by Dexter Fletcher (who worked with Egerton on “Eddie the Eagle”) from a script by Lee Hall of “Billy Elliott” fame, is pitched more like a Broadway musical than a conventional biopic. People will suddenly walk out of their scene into a musical number, using Elton’s sprawling catalogue of pop hits to carry the story.

Of course, Elton didn’t write his songs to be part of a coherent narrative, so some of the lyrics are changed around or very different arrangements provided. It mostly works, but sometimes it doesn’t.

We start with Elton entering an addiction group therapy having walked out of a performance wearing one of his signature extravagant stage outfits, something that looks half an angel and half a devil. He lays out his confession that he’s an alcoholic, drug and sex addict, bulimic and shopaholic. Then we flash back to his life story, starting at childhood but mostly taken up with his 20s and 30s.

At first he’s arrogant and in denial, but as the film goes on pieces of his costume fall off, and he gets more real.

Born Reginald Dwight, his childhood was unhappy, ping-ponging between parents (Bryce Dallas Howard and Steven Mackintosh) who openly loathed each other and often took out their frustrations on the shy, bespectacled kid who showed a talent for piano. His grandmother (Gemma Jones) is the only one who openly encourages him.

He grows into an awkward teen who learns the music biz backing up American soul acts touring the U.K. in the late 1960s. “You’ve got to kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you want to be,” one of them advises.

The arc of his life changes when John is introduced to Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), and they go on to form a half-century songwriting partnership. Elton had a genius for melodies but was bad with words, which Bernie supplied ably. It’s a tender, brotherly relationship with a brief hint of romance in the beginning.

If “Bohemian Rhapsody” was criticized for glossing over its main character’s homosexuality, “Rocketman” puts it front and center. It’s the central theme of Elton’s struggle in life, trying to be what others want instead of being true to himself. This plays out in a haze of drug-fueled montages as he performs for massive concert crowds in between waking up in strange places.

Fletcher sends his camera flying around his subject, with each turn of the piano resulting in a new costume change to denote the passage of time. It makes for a breezy aesthetic, but also tends to brush over pivotal events like his brief, disastrous 1980s marriage to a woman he had just met.

The other major relationship is John Reid (Richard Madden), who became Elton’s boyfriend and manager. It’s an extraordinarily vicious portrayal, depicting Reid as a soulless manipulator who was willing to sacrifice his client/lover’s health and well-being to further his own ends. Their initial hook-up is probably one of the most scorching gay sex scenes we’ve seen in a mainstream movie.

I liked “Rocketman” but walked out of it feeling like I didn’t know Elton John any better than I did going in. Ever the showman, he shows us his self-destructive side, but only the parts he knows will dazzle.

Review: "A Dog's Way Home"

Two years ago W. Bruce Cameron's novel "A Dog's Purpose" became a smash hit, barraging us with waves of pooch-ie cuteness and pathos. No surprise that he wrote another book and they've made another movie out of it, "A Dog's Way Home."

Instead of a metaphysical musing about a dog's living through multiple lifetimes as it figures out its role in the cosmos, here the protagonist, Bella (emotively voice by Bryce Dallas Howard), knows from the get-go what her purpose is: to be there for her human, Lucas. He's played by Jonah Hauer-King, who's tall and non-threatening and has impossible dimples.

They get separated by circumstance and Bella has to undertake an epic journey across two states to find her way home. These include encounters with humans good and bad, face-offs with wolves and an unlikely partnership with a CGI mountain lion. It's a little bit scary, a little bit sad, a little bit sappy and a whole lot adorable.

I felt about this movie the same as I did its predecessor: it's a great big cream-puff of a movie, unambitious but undeniably sweet. It's the rare family picture that will please audiences from 3 to 93.

You know Bella's going to reunite with Lucas in the end, but it's still a tender moment. My 5-year-old bawled tears of joy. (Dad may have had something in his eye, too...)

Bellas begins life living in a condemned wreck of a house along with dozens of cats. When her mother is impounded by the meanie animal control officer, she's raised by a "mother cat" and later joins up with Lucas, who lives across the street and works in a VA clinic that treats troubled vets. One of them is his mother (Ashley Judd), whose depression is helped by a scrabby pup.

Because she's a pit bull mix -- although the actress dog looks more like a lab/shepherd blend to these eyes -- the Denver city ordinance prevents her from being off her home property. Transferred to a temporary stay in New Mexico with some friends while Lucas sorts things out, she jumps the fence and her travails begin.

I won't belabor all her journey, though a few incidents stand out. This includes coming across a baby cougar whose mother is killed by hunters, which allows Bella to become a cat mother herself to the critter she dubs "big kitten." For awhile she becomes the (rather coerced) companion of Axel (Edward James Olmos), a homeless veteran who's desperate for a friend.

After an avalanche fells the owner of a border collie named Dutch, Bella finds herself paired up in an ad-hoc foster family with a nice gay couple. Bella likes it there, appreciates the companionship and security. But always she feels the pull of "an invisible leash" urging her to return to Lucas.

The movie is directed by Charles Martin Smith, who knows from dog tales having starred in the lovely "The Company of Wolves" back in the day. The screenplay is by Cameron and Cathryn Michon, who also co-wrote "Purpose" and previously collaborated on a non-dog movie, "Muffin Top: A Love Story."

It's brightly-shot, with pitch-perfect animal expressions and a few decent human ones, too. What can I say? Only a certified dog-hater could dislike this flick.

Video review: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is the unavoidable sequel to 2015’s reboot of the genetically-recreated-dinosaurs monster mash, which made a gazillion dollars. So we’re back for another romp in the jungle, another super-duper special “boss” dinosaur and a whole lot of quips from star Chris Pratt and downer tut-tutting from other star Bryce Dallas Howard.

(Btw, isn’t it telling that in blockbuster movies featuring male and female leads, the guy is always the “fun” one?)

The setup here is that the dinos are still running rampant on the remote Isla Nublar, which originally was built as a massive amusement park. Believe it or not, an environmental movement has been launched saying they should be protected as an endangered species. Other more sensible folks simply worry about getting chomped.

Dino wrangler Owen Grady (Pratt) and operations manager Claire Dearing (Howard) are duped into helping some bad types retrieve the dinosaurs in hopes of preserving them. Instead, the plan is to auction them off as very toothy pets for the deplorable rich.

Of course, things go awry and the dinosaurs start munching on their would-be owners instead -- sort of a delish triumph for the 99%, if you think about it.

The twist is an Indoraptor, a genetically modified dinosaur that’s a mix between a velociraptor and the special boss dino from the last movie. Want to guess if the next “Jurassic World” flick will feature the spawn of this movie’s “special” dinosaur?

There are some exciting action scenes, but “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is a paint-by-numbers sequel without a lot of ambition or heart.

Bonus features are ample. The neatest feature is a series of video journals kept by Pratt during production, including one-on-ones with everyone from director J. A. Bayona to his own stunt double.

There’s also a conversation between cast and crew, a “JURASSIC Then and Now” looking at key moments in the film franchise and an “On the Set With Chris & Bryce” that explores their offscreen moments. Plus, 11 making-of documentary shorts.

Movie: 
 


Extras:

Review: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

Twenty-five years ago “Jurassic Park” charmed us with a sense of wonderment about our world, its mysterious history and tantalizing future, while also reminding us about the unbound limits of mankind’s capacity for avarice and power-mongering. It made our hearts swell, but also left us feeling quite small.

Now here is “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” the sequel to the reboot, and the middle of a second planned trilogy. Not a one has lived up to the majesty of the original, though the previous one, starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, brought a welcome sense of humor and adventure to the proceedings.

It was fun, but forgettable -- quite literally. All I recalled was Pratt smirking and Howard incredulously clip-clopping around in high heels during the action scenes. I had to refresh myself on the plot of “Jurassic World” in preparation for the follow-up.

It’s equally forgettable, but not as much fun.

As you may (or not) recall, the theme park featuring genetically resurrected dinosaurs had been running for years after the initial disaster, until more disaster came and the entire island of Isla Nubla, off the coast of Costa Rica, was abandoned. The fearsome reptiles were contained, or so everyone thought. But now the dormant volcano is about to blow and result in a second extinction of the dinosaurs.

Despite the number of people that have been chomped, eviscerated or swallowed whole by dinos, a worldwide animal rights movement wants to save them. Leading the cause is Claire Dearing (Howard), the corporate suit who ran the old park but found her soul, due in part to a romance with Owen Grady (Pratt). He’s a dinosaur behaviorist who had formed a connection with the velociraptors, especially one named Blue.

Rushing in to save the day is Sir Lockwood (James Cromwell), a super-rich old guy who supposedly was the partner of the Richard Attenborough character from the first movie. He wants to scoop up the dinos and take them to a new island where they can live in peace, without tourists gawking or scientists prodding.

(How we got through four other films without ever hearing about Lockwood, I’ll leave up to the vagaries of script men Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow. The latter directed the last film, but turns over the chair to J. A. Bayona.)

Lockwood’s right-hand man, the soft-voiced Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), recruits Claire and Owen to return to the island to help round up and protect the creatures. But we only have to take one look at the guy leading the security force, Ken Wheatley, played by ol’ “Buffalo Bill” himself, Ted Levine, to know something’s up.

Justice Smith plays Franklin, an excitable young computer scientist, while Daniella Pineda is Zia, a puckish “paleoveterinarian” who somehow is a dinosaur doctor without ever having actually seen one. Jurassic alums BD Wong and Jeff Goldblum turn up for cameos.

Isabella Sermon plays Maisie, the prerequisite little kid who screams their head off while being chased by a raptor. I rather liked Toby Jones, wearing an elaborate blond wig and an even more elaborate drawling accent, as a broker to international a-holes who want a piece of the dinosaur pie to themselves.

The movie gives Pratt surprisingly little to do; Claire is in the driver’s seat for most of the movie, except when they need the man to show up and start flinging testosterone around.

There are some decent action scenes, including a race against a wave of lava in one of those transparent rolling globe/vehicle things, which has a wet conclusion; and an extended chase with an “Indoraptor,” the latest/greatest new-and-improved deadly dinosaur strain.

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” will make gobs of money, and we’ll get a sixth movie whether we want it or not, proving that not just fictional scientists are obsessed with cloning.

Video review: "Gold"

Matthew McConaughey goes Full Skeeze in “Gold,” a little-seen drama that came out near the end of 2016 and didn’t generate the awards buzz hoped for.

He plays Kenny Wells, a has-been/never-was mining prospector at the end of his rope who stumbles across a massive gold deposit in the deepest jungles of Indonesia. The story is loosely based on David Walsh, CEO of Bre-X, whose gold strike was found to be fraudulent back in the 1990s. Tens of billions of dollars in company value went up in smoke overnight.

McConaughey, not long removed from the skeletal figure he struck in his Oscar-winning turn in “Dallas Buyers Club,” spreads an impressive middle-aged paunch to go along with a scanty head of hair, hollow eyes and a mouthful of crooked teeth. Kenny is perpetually sweating and shifty-eyed, the sort of guy who makes others uncomfortable just by walking in the room.

As the story opens, his company is about to go belly-up. His long-suffering girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) seems to have half a foot out the door. But Kenny learns about Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez), a geologist who’s come up with a new system for finding mineral deposits that the rest of the industry has scoffed at.

Crabbing together his last few bucks and corralling a few investors, they do some exploratory drilling deep in the bush. Soon they’re just about out of money, the local workers flee the mine and Kenny nearly succumbs to dysentery. But his faith in Michael is unshakeable and, improbably, it bears fruit when soil samples reveal gold.

Soon the big moneymen (Corey Stoll among them), who had previously written off the flimflam man, come begging for some of the crumbs to fall from Kenny’s plate. And Bruce Greenwood plays the cutthroat competitor maneuvering to take it all away.

Directed by Stephen Gaghan (“Syriana”) from a script by John Zinman and Patrick Massett, “Gold” barely made a ripple at the box office. But it’s a worthy film, if a bit overly familiar in its themes, cemented by McConoughey’s fully invested performance.

Inside every slick Wall Street high-roller, like the one McConaughey played in “Wolf of Wall Street,” there’s a hungry scrounger fighting for wealth and respect.

Bonus features are pretty good, and are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions. They include one deleted sequence, feature commentary by director Gaghan and three making-of featurettes: “The Origins of Gold,” “The Locations of Gold” and “Matthew McConaughey as Kenny Wells.”

Movie:

Extras: B

Review: "Pete's Dragon"

Movies nowadays tend to fall, like our beleaguered politics, into silos. Superhero movies and gross-out comedies are aimed at men under age 30, animated flicks have lots of colors and boingy action for tykes, there are grim dramas and action movies for older men, a few pictures aimed at adult women are sprinkled here and there, often with a romantic flavor and usually as an antidote for the other stuff.

It’s all rather neat, and dreadfully boring.

“Pete’s Dragon,” beyond being utterly charming, is a throwback: a true family picture. Literally anyone from little children to oldsters to in-betweeners like me will fall under its sway.

It bears little resemblance to the 1977 Disney movie with a cartoon-y green dragon named Elliot who befriends an orphan. Here, the magical creature is part parent, part pet, all best friend. He protects and nurtures Pete, here played by Oakes Fegley as a 10-year-old feral boy who was lost in the woods six years earlier after a tragedy befell his family.

The dragon is portrayed effectively through CGI, with just enough realism to make you feel like he could exist, but fantastical enough that he still seems mystical. He’s green, but with plush fur instead of scales, a body that is leonine (though the belly is a tad soft) and a dog-like snout with one broken fang. He seems to have human-level intelligence, and can fade into invisibility when pesky hunters or tree-cutters come snooping around.

Robert Redford turns up as a crusty old grandfather who had a run-in with Elliot decades ago, and his stories have become part of the lore of the town of Millhaven. No one really believes him, but they like having the yarn to spin for kids and visitors. His daughter Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) grew up into a park ranger who’s protective of the trees and critters.

Her husband, Jack (Wes Bentley), is nice in a bland sort of way, but her brother-in-law, Gavin (Karl Urban), is a jerk who likes to take his woodcutting crews too deep into the forest. This results in the discovery of Pete, who’s taken back to civilization while a lonely Elliot wanders along the trail looking for his little boy.

There follows some predictable but still poignant stuff where the grown-ups fail to believe Pete and his stories about his dragon guardian, but Grace’s wide-eyed daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence), bonds with him immediately. Pete starts to see the appeal of leaving the woods to live with people again, but pines for his dragon.

The film is directed and co-written (with Toby Halbrooks) by David Lowery, whose last feature, 2013’s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” is as different thematically as you can get from this Disney remake. Still, that drama about a convict on the run to be reunited with his family, was filled with a lyricism that segues naturally into the tone of “Pete’s Dragon.”

Alas, childlike wonderment seems to be in short supply these days, both among filmmakers and film-goers. “The BFG” bombed horribly at the box office, and there were more empty seats than filled at the preview screening I went to for “Pete’s Dragon.”

But, if for a precious few, there is still a magic that lingers.

Nick Rogers reviews "Jurassic World"

By Nick Rogers

In an era of omniscient distraction and digression, what does it take to truly wow someone? Do marvels still exist that stop us cold and make time slow to let us behold their majesty a moment longer? The more our days revolve around refreshed pages, the more infinitesimal our incubation period for big ideas becomes; our haste to establish expectations and levy judgment makes even New York minutes quaint.

By inserting those ideas into a damn fine dinosaurs-eating-people scenario, “Jurassic World” straddles a line between an unexpectedly quizzical commentary and an undeniably slick, quick-moving crowd-pleaser. And in considering a need for reverent wonder in a world where it’s scarce, the pants-wetting fear of indifference that gets you killed plays better than “Tomorrowland’s” navel-gazing nostalgia.

In the series’ sole sequel of worth, late InGen founder John Hammond’s dream of welcoming the public to Jurassic Park has been a reality for years. (It’s been rebranded, though, as Jurassic World to avoid the whole unpleasant association with dying on vacation). Jimmy Fallon is its prerecorded tour guide. Crowds cheer an underwater Mosasaurus feeding on sharks as Rome’s hordes once did gladiators, albeit with a premium for splash-zone seats. Tykes ride tiny Triceratops as if they were carnival ponies. Teen staffers’ disaffected entreaties to “Enjoy the ride” have become as automated as the rides themselves.

That’s right: Even with dinosaurs walking beside you, Jurassic World has become just like any other moldy amusement park, to the point where it’s an outdoor mall with predators on its perimeter. Vacationers still come. But it’s not the destination anymore, prompting an (unwise) creation of multimillion-dollar, genetically modified, hybrid creatures such as the Indominus Rex — that, as the InGen company memos demand, turn out “bigger, scarier, cooler … with more teeth.”

Such memos could easily come from any studio in reference to plans for their summer seasons, where expectations for escalated thrills double not every year but every week. Twenty-two summers have passed since “Jurassic Park,” and at least twice as many movies have offered us increasingly realistic beasts battling each other onscreen since then. 1993’s anomaly is now 2015’s very affordable ante.

Case in point: The preview audience members who cackled loudly at the setup to “Jurassic World’s” first kill after the Indominus Rex, bred in such extreme solitary confinement as to become a smart, sociopathic killing machine, escapes. We’re a long way from nervous hushes and rippling water. Director Colin Trevorrow — who co-wrote the script with Derek Connolly, as well as rebooted-“Apes” franchise architects Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver — knows that and quickly silences those hecklers with unexpectedly fluid, but fun, aggression. This isn’t an annoyingly self-reflexive shredding of its forefather. It’s very much its own smart, sleek endeavor with momentum, confidence … and minor drawbacks.

As much a response to “Jurassic Park” as it is a sequel, what “Jurassic World” says about the modern us, as the “dominant” species, doesn’t, and shouldn’t, put us in the best light. It replaces the original’s inspiring “Life finds a way” mantra with a more resigned, weary and, sadly, relatable one: “Progress always wins.” Trevorrow wants us to groan as John Williams’ regal theme crescendos at the sight of charmless, churning commerce that’s crowding out corporate-sponsored dinosaurs. However genially, it’s nice to see a blockbuster flick the ears of its promotional bedfellows rather than just whisper sweet nothings into them. As critical of the machine as it can be while being a well-funded cog to make it run, this is one of several ways “Jurassic World” twists and tweaks the original’s majesty into mordant satire.

It’s just angry enough without losing its sense of adventure … or such brain-checking delights as muscular dinosaur expert Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) trying to train the perpetually deadly Velociraptors. Blue, Charlie, Delta and Echo, as they’re known, may prove useful in tracking, and taking down, the Indominus Rex. Himself a hybrid of Ian Malcolm’s swagger and Alan Grant’s sensible side, Owen assumes he’s the Alpha, and Pratt keys into a magnetic, straightforward groove that sells this silly subplot. But “Jurassic World” wisely never extends sentimental exceptions to these dinos’ basic instinct. They may not eat Owen, but they will eat. (“Are they safe?” one character asks. “No, they’re not,” Owen barks back.)

There’s more in play, perhaps a tad too much for one film. Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio, hitting slimy notes you expect) wants to militarize raptors as the next evolution of super-soldier. Jurassic World’s career-minded operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) contends with the fallout of the Indominus Rex’s escape. Hollywood’s perpetual third choice for everything (and maybe fourth now that Jessica Chastain is on the scene), Howard commendably sweats her way through a horribly written role — hardened harridan going soft — that she, and we, have seen 1,000 times. Save a hilariously dumb scene in which, it’s emphasized, women can run in heels, the part gives us nothing new.

Also, Claire’s two visiting nephews, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins), are trapped somewhere inside. The idea of distraction is essential to their story; they’ve been shipped off for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation as their divorcing parents plan to rip that life asunder while they’re gone. And when the fit really hits the shan, a passel of control-room lackeys (including comedians Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus) try to balance I-told-you-so scolding with doing whatever they can to save more lives.

You might wonder what, if anything, remains here of the Trevorrow and Connolly that intimately pondered the beauty, and danger, of love, trust, friendship and chance in 2012’s terrific “Safety Not Guaranteed.” To a sanded-down degree, you find it in Zach and Gray, especially as Zach rediscovers how to be a reassuring teenaged big brother and realizes Gray won’t soon find the freedom from family strife that he will. It’s enough to look past the unlikely amount of trouble in which these siblings find themselves, especially a scene in which the ’saurs swat their wayward tourists’ gyrosphere like a cricket ball. Emergency shutdown before an off-limits area seems like something on which insurers would insist.

That bit is one of several big thrills doled out at a regular clip by Trevorrow, who brings a crisp confidence to his inaugural action film. He’s hardly Steven Spielberg, but he has at least inherited the right ideas from the maestro: restraint, patience and a certain nervous giddiness. John Schwartzman’s swooping, thrilling camera movements help, stutter-stopping at shoulder level with characters to establish the dinosaurs’ scope, scale and speed. So do the sterling visual effects, a combo of motion-capture CGI and practical animatronics that affords these beasts more expressive traits than ever.

A nasty pterodactyl attack on the main campus unfolds in enough of a blur to protect the PG-13 rating while still ending on such horror that you’re happily tricked into thinking you’ve seen more carnage than you have. And its homage-riddled final act starts off embracing the combat of “Aliens,” edges right up to the relentless nastiness of “Deep Blue Sea,” then shifts into “The Raid” with dinosaurs. (And yes, the last bit is as awesomely realized as you’d hope due to the tactile weight and whomp of the visual effects.)

Infused with the right sense of danger, intimacy, intelligence and humor, “Jurassic World” is, like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” before it, pulpy summer fun with more on its mind than you’d think. To borrow a line from that film, this is a man-wasn’t-meant-to-meddle medley you won’t mind hearing.

Video review: "The Help"

I would not be surprised to see "The Help" get a raft of Academy Award nominations. Viola Davis and Octavia Spence seem like locks in the Best Supporting Actress Category, playing African-American maids struggling with racism and oppression in 1960s Mississippi. And Bryce Dallas Howard might just slide in there, too, as the catty queen bee of the white social establishment.

Emma Stone has a shot at a Best Actress nomination too, playing "Skeeter" Phelan, the recently graduated college woman and aspiring journalist who takes it upon herself to write about "the help" -- black women who essentially raise the children of white well-to-do families, only to be rewarded with condescension and Jim Crow status quo when those young ones grow up into adults.

For that matter, writer/director Tate Taylor did a smart job translating the phenomenally popular book by Kathryn Stockett to the screen, taking syrupy chick flick material and turning it into a moving and surprisingly funny portrait of Southern womanhood, in all its gritty glory and brittle pettiness. An Oscar nomination might just be in his future, too.

Heck, for that matter, why not a Best Picture nod for "The Help"? How many other films have grabbed audiences this year like this one, leaving them rolling in the aisles and with tears on their cheeks? It's sure to be a big hit on video.

One disappointing note is that video extras are rather on the lean side. The DVD version comes only with a few deleted scenes and “The Living Proof” music video by Mary J. Blige.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add a few more deleted scenes, and two featurettes – a making-of documentary and a tribute to real-life maids of Mississippi.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "50/50"

The characters and dialogue in "50/50" are so cool and hip and accessible, the movie almost succeeds in making us forget we've seen this story a dozen times before.

It's the tale of a young guy who comes down with a very scary form of cancer -- so scary, even other cancer patients have never heard of it. As one fellow patient advises, the more syllables a disease has, the worse it is.

Because it has an indie rock soundtrack and stars Gen-Y favorites Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard, "50/50" has a witty, funny/sad vibe. But ultimately, it's another variation on the old laughing-through-the-tears shtick, in which monumental life challenges bring on the warm fuzzies, and the laughs.

The film was reportedly based on a real-life event involving a friend of Rogen, Will Reiser, who wrote the screenplay based loosely on his own bout with cancer. Rogen co-stars and is one of the producers, and Jonathan Levine directs with loose, jazzy style that gives most of the scenes a comfortable, lived-in feel.

Adam (Gordon-Levitt) is a 27-year-old producer for the NPR affiliate in Seattle, slavishly working on a project about a remote volcano his boss could care less about. That's sort of Adam's M.O. -- he's a guy who sticks himself in a corner, keeps low expectations and is content to be the wingman for Kyle (Rogen), his garrulous best friend who's always looking to get laid, all the time.

A pain in his back turns out to be spinal cancer, as his doctor lays out for him with an appalling lack of human warmth, spouting a bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo into a voice recorder rather than talking to the man in front of him.

I happen to think Gordon-Levitt's one of the best actors of his generation, and he doesn't disappoint here, showing us the edges of Adam's interior. Adam has become very good at fooling others into thinking he's a happy person -- no one has fallen for it harder than himself.

His girlfriend, Rachael, is an artsy type played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who promises to stick by Adam, but everyone, including Rachael, secretly doubts she's up to the challenge. She only has one drawer's worth of her stuff at Adam's house, and we sense this mirrors her emotional investment in their relationship.

Kyle, meanwhile, keeps taking Adam out to drink and party, and eggs him into using his newly bald head and sad story to get women to sleep with him. (In the world that exists only in the minds of screenwriters, this actually works.)

"No one wants to (score with) me," Adam protests, "I look like Voldemort."

Some of the best scenes are at Adam's chemotherapy sessions, where he cozies up to the regulars. In this tiny community, one's affliction is announced like a vocation: "Alan, stage three lymphoma." "Mitch, metastatic prostate cancer." Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer quietly dazzle as a pair who have moved beyond fretting about letting their disease define them.

The X factor is Anna Kendrick as Katherine, the medical student who takes on Adam in therapy sessions. Adam, who is used to always being the youngest person in any room, is put off being administered to by someone even younger than he. She's so young, Katherine doesn't even get his Doogie Howser jokes.

Their relationship develops in time, though, and it doesn't take long to figure out they wish they'd met in other circumstances. I enjoyed the authenticity of Kendrick's performance as a serious young woman who's still figuring out her professional and personal boundaries. There is no doubt she will turn out to be a better, more caring doctor than the lunkhead who blurted out the news about Adam's cancer.

I enjoyed this movie, though admittedly I'm a sucker for a good weepy/funny dramedy. I just want Rogen, Reiser, Levine and the gang to know that even though I'm giving their flick a thumbs-up, I see through their ruse. This is "Terms of Endearment" with a heavy ladle of testosterone and a smirk.

3 stars out of four

Review: "The Help"

It's grown-up time. Summer has exhausted its silos of slo-mo explosions, CGI critters and second-rate super-heroes. So who's ready for a touching, serious film that should get attention come Oscar time?

"The Help," based on the popular book by Kathryn Stockett, is a look at the relationships between African-American maids in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s and the white families they work for. Written and directed smartly by Tate Taylor, it's a movie in the mold of weepy chick flicks, but with more brains and gumptions than we're used to.

Yes, it's the sort of film that looks at the plight of oppressed black characters through the eyes of a white protagonist, who swoops in to save them -- or at least fortifies their bravery enough to stand up for themselves.

But I found it to be a touching journey that manages to make most of the black and white characters relatable. And "The Help" has a surprisingly funny streak, in that tried-and-true laughing-through-the-tears way.

Viola Davis gives a knockout performance as Aibileen, the long-suffering maid to the Leefolt family. Her duties include cooking and cleaning, but her primary task is tending to the clan's offspring. By her own reckoning, Aibileen has raised 17 children, but "they always turn out like their mommas."

The greatest strength of "The Help" is in examining the sclerotic entrapment of the Jim Crow South, where black maids were adored by the children to whom they had a closer affection than their own parents, but who grow up to enforce the unspoken codes of segregation and subjugation.

It's easy to talk about the illogical mindset of that time and place, where people were terrified to deviate from the social norm because "that's the way things have always been." This movie brings the contradictions of the pre-civil rights era to full, fleshy life.

Emma Stone, who between "Easy A," "Crazy, Stupid, Love." and this film is quickly establishing herself as the most ambitious actress of her generation, plays Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, recently graduated from Ole Miss with ambitions of becoming a writer. She tackles the cleaning advice column in the local paper, but soon hatches a plan to tell the stories of "the help," the gray-uniformed maids who silently serve as the ties that bind the community.

Skeeter is initially motivated by selfish reasons: she feels ostracized by the women her age who have all gotten married already, and the beloved maid who raised her, Constantine (Cicely Tyson, in convincing aging makeup), has abruptly ended her decades-long service with the family without any explanation from her brittle mother (Allison Janney).

Skeeter's mother is less than subtle about her wish that her daughter would give up this crazy notion of a career and find a husband: "Your eggs are dying. Would it kill you to go on a date?"

But as the civil rights movement finally makes its way to Jackson, Skeeter joins forces with Aibileen to tell their stories in hopes of changing things, or at least bringing them to light.

The third leg of their triad of strength is Minny, played by Octavia Spencer, a woman whose spirit is indomitable, and whose cooking is the best in Mississippi. Minny instructs her teen daughter not to sass the white folks, but doesn't take her own advice.

The heavy of the film is Bryce Dallas Howard, the angelic-looking red-headed actress who shows plenty of brimstone as Hilly Holbrook, the queen bee of the social set who rules with a velvet fist. Hilly thinks of herself as compassionate because she wants to maintain the current social arrangement as benevolently as possible -- such as mandating separate bathrooms in white homes for the help, because "they carry different diseases than we do."

Hilly has a run-in with Minny that compels the latter to take her revenge with an act she comes to dub The Terrible Awful. Minny asks God's forgiveness for her sin, but doesn't seem very regretful about it.

An unexpected character is Celia Foote, a spitfire blonde who lives on the edge of Jackson and can't break Hilly's vice grip over the Junior League set. She's played by Jessica Chastain in a role that seems breathy and girly at first, but she finds some pluck through a growing bond with Minny.

"The Help" is like a heaping helping of comfort food mixed with a nutritional social message delivered without preachiness or schmaltz. What satisfying cinematic meal.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Hereafter"

"Hereafter" is not a typical Clint Eastwood film. But then, is there even such a thing anymore?

North of 80, Eastwood continues to be the rare filmmaker who takes genuine risks, trying different genres and approaches to directing with seemingly every new turn. Perhaps it's because he was so pigeonholed in his acting career in the 1960s, '70s and '80s that he's spent the last 20 years throwing changeups from behind the camera.

Here's a guy who made a stolid World War II picture ("Flags of Our Fathers") and then followed it up with a better one, in Japanese subtitles, that portrayed the same battle from the perspective of the enemy ("Letters from Iwo Jima"). He also directed Oscar-caliber performances out of Angelina Jolie in the under-appreciated "Changeling" about an obscure 1920s child disappearance case, and Hilary Swank in a movie about girl boxers ("Million Dollar Baby") that packed a sneaky, sentimental haymaker.

Eastwood even starred as a crotchety retiree facing off with hoodlums in a film ("Gran Torino") that was essentially a rebuke of his own tough-guy star persona.

Even when the results are plodding and predictable -- "Invictus," the wildly overrated "Mystic River" -- we never lose the sense we're watching a talent perennially in search of new stories to tell, and new ways to tell them.

"Hereafter" will go down as one of Eastwood's minor works, but it's still a worthwhile one.

It's a tender, probing drama about an international trio dealing with death -- and what comes after. The original screenplay by Peter Morgan is deliberately paced and even languid at times, as the audience awaits the inevitable denouement when their storylines will intersect.

Matt Damon plays George Lonegan, a real-deal psychic who ditched budding fame and fortune for an anonymous job at a factory because he couldn't handle the emotional turbulence that follows in the wake of his readings. "A life that's all about death isn't any kind of life at all," is how he put it to his opportunistic brother (Jay Mohr), who wants to cash in on the gift George considers his curse.

It's an intentionally cramped, interior performance by Damon as a guy with an extraordinary ability who yearns for a mundane life. George purposefully fills his days with distraction, from listening to audio books of Charles Dickens to taking an Italian cooking class, where he stumbles upon an attraction with another student (Bryce Dallas Howard) that lights a tiny spark of hope in his ascetic existence.

The second leg of the plot revolves around Marie LeLay (Cécile De France), a famous French television anchor who is nearly killed by a tidal wave while vacationing in South Asia, in the film's pulse-quickening opening sequence. Actually, technically she was killed, traveling through a wispy world of light and indistinct figures before being revived.

It sets her off on a wild jaunt to explore her near-death experience, and take on an establishment that dismisses such tales as hokum. As a result, she finds herself being elbowed out of the mainstream success she craves, both professionally and romantically.

The weakest third of the movie centers on Marcus (Frankie and George McLaren), a British boy whose twin brother was killed in a car accident. They're clever lads who used their wits to outsmart the social services investigators who wanted to take them away from their junkie mother (Lyndsey Marshal).

When he's assigned to foster care after the tragedy, Marcus seeks out a string of bogus psychics to find some way to continue their sibling bond beyond the grave.

"Hereafter" is less concerned with the metaphysics of existence after we die -- contrasted with the celestial, CGI-assisted playground of Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones" -- than the earthly tribulations of people still alive who struggle to cope with the brush of Death's hand.

While George's ability to reach across that divide drives the story, the conclusions the film reaches are unsettled and may be unsatisfying for audience members who crave crisp closure. Only Eastwood is daring enough to make a movie more concerned with raising niggling questions than answering them.

3 stars out of four