Review: "Cruella"

“Cruella” is not the movie I was expecting them to make.

I’ve wavered on Disney’s recent obsession with turning its iconic animated titles into live action films. “Cinderella” was perfectly wonderful, “Dumbo” was a horrid embarrassment, and most of the rest have been somewhere in the middle like “The Lion King” -- technically accomplished but artistically unnecessary.

So for “101 Dalmatians,” I was expecting them to crank out another iteration of the live-action version featuring Glenn Close 25 years ago, putting iconic villainess Cruella de Vil in the driver’s seat in a family-friendly romp. Emma Stone seemed a strange casting choice, as Cruella is definitively a well-etched harridan, and Stone is barely past the ingénue stage.

“Cruella” is deeper, darker and more ambitious than I could’ve hoped. I should have expected nothing less from director Craig Gillespie, known for odd and offbeat fare like “Lars and the Real Girl” and “I, Tonya.”

It’s rated PG-13 and is an edgy origin story in which Dalmatians barely show up -- and only then as furry antagonists. That’s right, Cruella is recast as a misunderstood antiheroine who’s not trying to turn spotted puppies into a fur coat but is someone who’s been victimized and traumatized and learns to lash out.

It’s also an exquisitely striking movie filled with vibrant colors and fabulous clothes. You can already go ahead and bank on costume designer Jenny Beavan getting an Oscar nomination for all the fabulous, ostentatious gowns and get-ups Stone and the rest of the cast get to wear.

I was also impressed with the originality of the backstory (screenplay by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara). Here she is Estella, an orphaned moppet born with shocking black-and-white hair raised by a kindly British mum (Emily Beecham) who instructs her to bury her nastier instincts, even when she’s picked on by prigs at her posh school. (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland plays the role as a child.)

In this version, “Cruella” is the name they come up with for her evil-leaning alter ego. But Estella learns to push down these characteristics, both figuratively and literally, dying her bi-color hair red and hiding behind owlish glasses. After her mother’s shocking death, she grows up as a petty thief with fellow orphans Jasper and Horace (Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser), though she aspires to be a fashion designer.

She gets a job at the snooty Liberty of London store but is consigned to cleaning lady. A drunken sabotage of a display window lands her a position with the Baroness (Emma Thompson), the queen of Brit fashion, who takes her under her wing and teaches Estella the finer points of being a sneering, hateful overlord.

The Emmas, Stone and Thompson, are a delicious pairing, a battle of haughty English accents and upturned noses. The comparison to Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” seems obvious, and welcome. Though in this case, Estella looks upon her tormentor as someone to be emulated and defeated rather than serve as cautionary tale.

Estella revives her Cruella persona as the public challenger to the Baroness’ tight grip on the fashion world, using her criminal team -- the two boys plus two little dogs, including one in an eye patch -- to pull off a series of attention-grabbing stunts that double as crimes and put-downs. With a story set in the 1970s, there’s a bittersweet feminism subtext at play about extraordinary women who must command fear because they aren’t allowed to earn respect.

“Aren’t they gorgeous and vicious? It’s my favorite combination,” Baroness says of her trio of guard Dalmatians.

John McCrea turns up as Artie, a gender-fluid vintage clothing store owner who becomes a friend and ally; Mark Strong as John, the Baroness’ right-hand man and the only person allowed to talk back to her; Andrew Leung as a more toadying flunky, perpetually astonished or horrified; and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as a childhood friend turned fashion journalist.

Rather than fall back on formula, “Cruella” uses its animated and live action predecessors as a mere launch pad for something different and -- dare I say about a remake of an old cartoon? -- dazzlingly original.

  

Video column: "The Favourite"

As I’m writing this Olivia Colman was just revealed as the surprise winner for the Best Actress Oscar, beating out heavy favorite Glenn Close. She was absolutely wonderful in “The Favourite,” although anyone who’s honest recognizes that hers is the supporting role, while Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz are the leads.

Here’s a handy primer for mainstream movies: lead characters act upon their world and make things happen (or have things happen to them); supporting characters have little of their lives depicted other than that which impacts the protagonist(s)’ journey.

To put it into grammatical terms, leads are the subjects and supporting characters are the objects.

“The Favourite” is the embellished true story of the court of Queen Anne of Britain in the early 1800s. Widowed and without heirs, Anne (Colman) has become the creature of her friend, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), a “court favorite” who more or less acts in the stead of the monarch, who is either too sick or too disinterested in the running of her government.

As the story opens England’s war with France is still raging, and there is much debate about whether to end it or continue. Marlborough is opposing the Tory party leader (Nicholas Hoult) in deciding to press on or give in.

Enter Abigail Hill, a cousin of Marlborough’s fallen on hard times who begs a job as a scullery maid in the palace. Seemingly young and witless, Abigail soon realizes that the relationship between Anne and Marlborough is filled with both romance and abuse. She slyly worms her way in between the two women, eventually taking Marlborough’s place in the queen’s bed.

Like “Dangerous Liaisons” a generation ago, “The Favourite” is a period costume drama that beats with a vibrant modern heart. It’s a tale of love, betrayal and intrigue -- with the boys mostly on the side.

Bonus features are rather scant, consisting of a few deleted scenes and a making-of documentary: “The Favourite: Unstitching the Costume Drama.”

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Review: "The Favourite"

“The Favourite” is a roiling tale of deception, sex, twisted friendship and power. It reminds me a lot of “Dangerous Liaisons,” in that it contains all the ingredients of a classic romance but reduced down to a fetid brine of jealousy and loathing.

It is depressing, bitingly funny and insightful about the human condition.

The story (screenplay by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara) is based on real palace intrigue in the court of Queen Anne of Great Britain during the early 1800s. Widowed, plagued by ill health from a young age, never a mother after 17 (!) failed pregnancies, Anne is masterfully played by Olivia Colman as a bitter, pathetic woman overwhelmed by the throne.

Her friend, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), is for intents and purposes the real acting monarch. It was not uncommon in that time for women who could not officially hold a position within the British government to wield tremendous power as a “court favorite,” aka a close friend of royalty.

Sarah chides the queen like a wayward student and quietly degrades her, at point telling her her makeup makes her resemble a badger, while superficially acting as her closest friend and buttress. She acts as the queen’s go-between with ministers and generals, and since Anne is usually too sick or uninterested, Sarah really runs the show.

They even sometimes share a bed and… other forms of intimacy.

There has been some historical supposition about Anne having a lesbian relationship, but with Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), a fallen noblewoman who became her chambermaid and confidante. Most historians think it’s bunk. This fictional tale supposes even further along those lines, saying it was Sarah with whom she had a romantic relationship, which became a tense ménage a trois when Abigail entered the scene.

Abigail acts as the audience’s eyes and ears during the story, coming across as a timid young woman brought low by her family’s circumstances. She’s actually Sarah’s cousin, which is how she secures a job as a scullery maid. But Abigail has a sly cunning, and ingratiates herself with the queen by concocting a poultice to relieve her painful gout.

At first Sarah is glad for the help. Not having to kowtow to Anne’s daily whims and demands, caring for her pet rabbits or rubbing her various aching limbs, allows her to spend more time at court. She vies with Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult), leader of the Tory opposition, about continuing their war with France and the tax increases necessary to do so. Decked out with poofy wig and pancake makeup, Hoult manages to be both comical and menacing.

But when Abigail extends her ingratiation as far as the queen’s bed, Sarah recognizes her as a threat and the women launch an all-out war of wills.

“The Favourite” is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, an acclaimed filmmaker from Greece whose previous efforts (“The Lobster”) have failed to charm me like others. Perhaps because he’s not a screenwriter on this project, his weird, off-putting existentialist meanderings are kept largely in check. It’s more or a less a straight story, though he often uses a distorting fisheye lens to make the posh palace seem grotesque.

It’s also surprising, considering how dark the material is, how comedy often creeps in. Stone in particular has several scenes that she turns into a laugh with just a twist of her face or the way she delivers a line of dialogue. I especially liked her character’s relationship with Masham (Joe Alwyn), a court dandy who thinks he’s seducing her but actually becomes his plaything.

The film suffers from a classic example of the filmmakers not knowing how to end it, so they just stop the story at an arbitrary point. But the abrupt finale is more than made up for by three actresses giving knockout performances.

Review: "Battle of the Sexes"

The match was a lark, a piffle, a silly spectacle, until it became something more. Likewise, the film version of the iconic 1973 tennis game between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs is much weightier and more substantial than you’d think.

It shows the game itself, of course, featuring Emma Stone and Steve Carell as King and Riggs. If the volleying looks slow and wimpy compared to what you’d see today, it’s not because a pair of Hollywood actors couldn’t make a better show of it. Go watch tapes of the real match; the movie copies it pretty well. All sports got faster and stronger; Serena’d kill either one of them.

But “Battle of the Sexes” focuses more on the year leading up to the faceoff, giving it context within changes happening in the sport and society as a whole. Directed by “Little Miss Sunshine” team Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”), it’s also an astute character study of two people who were more alike than we’d think.

The early 1970s was the era of women “libbers,” Roe v. Wade, the first large wave of women entering the workforce and finding the traditional corridors of influence barred to them. Men liked the free love stuff, but wanted to keep the country clubs and the reins of power. Naturally, they resented people like King who had the audacity to demand that the male and female tennis champions be paid the same.

Carell looks pretty well like Riggs, with the help of some false teeth and a wig. Stone resembles King not at all, and even a pair of glasses and dark brown shag haircut fail to close the gap. But each manages to carve an authentic character out of the fog of history.

Stone’s King is at once headstrong and retiring, very self-aware and also self-effacing. She squares off with Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), the smug head of the chief tennis association, and starts her own competing league for the top women players. Sarah Silverman plays Gladys Heldman, who provided the business savvy and sponsorship -- from Virginia Slims, because doesn’t smoking and tennis go great together?

But King is also staggered by her attraction to Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), a hairdresser who eventually becomes her lover. This while she was married to Larry King (Austin Stowell), a former player who gave her unwavering support as a fellow athlete. The scene where he learns of their affair, but still tenderly applies ice packs to her knees with well-practiced efficiency, is sensitive to all three souls.

(The film fiddles with history here; King began to explore her attraction to women years earlier, and started the affair with Marilyn in 1971. And she was King’s secretary, aka employee, not a hairdresser. Years later she sued King for palimony, which resulted in her sexuality being publicly outed.)

Riggs is portrayed much as the world saw him: an over-the-hill former champ with a gambling addiction who was down on his luck and saw challenging the top women’s players of the day as a way to garner attention and money. With his own marriage to Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) foundering, he used his gift of gab and natural showmanship to play up the King match, dubbing himself a “male chauvinist pig” and giving interviews about keeping women in the “bedroom or the kitchen,” stuff he may not have even half believed.

Largely forgotten today is that Riggs had already challenged and beaten the top-ranked female player of the day, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee). Every film needs a villain, and Court is shoehorned into that role, sneering at King’s dalliance with full religious fervor. (This owes more to Court’s modern-day fight against same-sex marriage in her native Australia than anything she said or did at the time, methinks.)

Both Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King are revealed as flesh-and-blood creatures who lived behind the headlines. They make for an interesting pair: the hustler and the heroine, the lobber and the libber. They put on a show for funsies, and people paid attention and not a few minds were changed a wee bit.

In real life, King remained friends with Riggs until the day he died, which was awfully chivalrous of her.

Video review: "La La Land"

I’ve been accused of being a “La La Land” hater. It’s not really so. I admired a lot about writer/director Damien Chazelle’s second feature film, and am a big fan of his first, “Whiplash.” It’s a gorgeous love letter to the city of Los Angeles, as well as a homage to old-school film musicals of the Golden Age of movies.

I just didn’t think it deserved the mountain of Oscar nominations it received, which tied “All About Eve” for the most ever.

“La La Land” is a little bit of a lot of things -- funny, sad, romantic, melodious, handsome, charming. But it just doesn’t impact you in one or two strong ways. Rather than landing hard with both feet, the film dances around you like a zephyr, entertaining but not engrossing.

For movies, it’s better to do a few things well rather than try to be a lot of things at once.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone play Sebastian and Mia, struggling young L.A. artists. He’s a jazz purist who pounds the keys for coins, but keeps losing jobs because he doesn’t want to stick to the stingy playlists. She works as a barista to the stars but dreams of becoming one herself. She goes on an endless series of soul-numbing auditions, where casting directors take phone calls while she’s performing.

They waltz through a familiar boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wants-girl-back narrative. In between the movie also puts the pair through their paces in several musical numbers (composed by Justin Hurwitz). The tunes aren’t particularly memorable, and neither Stone or Gosling will ever be confused with singers.

I like “La La Land,” admire things about it. But it didn’t even crack my list of the top 25 movies of 2016.

Bonus features are excellent, and even the DVD edition has a handsome suite of goodies. Though you’ll have to pay for the Blu-ray version to get everything.

The DVD has a feature-length commentary track with Chazelle and Hurwitz and three making-of featurettes focusing on specific musical numbers, as well as a piece on song selection.

The Blu-ray adds a host of more featurettes, focusing on things like Gosling learning to play piano for the movie and John Legend making his featuring film acting debut. Best bonus bit: “Damien & Justin Sing: The Demos,” in which the guys behind the camera and piano, respectively, belt out some tunes.

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Review: "La La Land"

“La La Land” is kind of adorable and kind of inconsequential. It’s writer/director Damien Chazelle’s (“Whiplash”) ode to Old Hollywood, both the city of Los Angeles and the musical films it once spawned like sunrises.

It’s a stunning-looking movie, with eye-pleasing vistas, vivid colors and detailed production design and costumes. Not to mention the eminently ogle-able stars, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. You could take their faces and charms and transpose them into any Hollywood musical from its 1940s and ‘50s heydays, and they would not look out of place.

Both, alas, have rather modest singing voices. Hers is breathy and girly; his has a narrow range to which Justin Hurwitz, who composed the songs and soundtrack, carefully bookends his melodies so as not to strain. “City of Stars” is the most memorable tune and main theme, repeated in various forms and with both singers.

The story’s as old-fashioned as can be: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to woo girl back. The narrative only really takes on some heft in the final act, as our star-crossed lovers struggle to reconcile their passions and hearts -- which don’t necessarily always point in the same direction.

Chazelle uses a nifty parallel structure, so we see the tale unfold from first one perspective, and then the other. Later, this trick will be used again, unspooling in the opposite direction.

Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz purist eking out an existence hammering standards on the piano at a hip restaurant. But he has a tendency to lapse into his own compositions, much to the ire of the owner (J. K. Sebastian). One night in walks Mia (Stone), an aspiring actress worn out from endless auditions, and she’s smitten.

It’s got all the ingredients of a classic Meet Cute – until Sebastian angrily brushes past her after getting canned.

But they do meet again, he’s a little more attentive this time, and things rise from there. A long walk to parked cars ends in a dance against the starry sky, with Gosling and Stone (or at least their doubles) flowing beautiful in a pas de deux. Later they’ll wind up at the planetarium and their hoofing will grow more literally celestial.

Their careers rise and fall, which alters and leavens their romance. Sebastian abandons his principles to join a very lucrative band that’s more Kenny G than Coltrane. Soon he’s on the road all the time, doing interviews, making bank but emptying out his reserves of integrity. Mia, meanwhile, gives up on auditions and her day job as a barista to stage her own one-woman play.

I find myself deeply in like with this movie. It’s charming, it’s gorgeous, it’s nostalgic without seeming like a mere throwback. But I was emotionally detached during most of it. I understood Mia and Sebastian as constructs for a story, not living beings I could invest in. “La La Land” gives us the ol’ razzle-dazzle, but doesn’t get around to plucking the heart strings.

Review: "Irrational Man"

I’ve liked a lot of Woody Allen’s stuff over the past decade, as he got out of his comfort zone and did crime dramas, period costume trifles, romantic European adventures -- anything besides self-involved New Yorkers spinning in their own delusions and neuroses. For a guy nearly age 80, I think the last 10 years been his most fertile period since the 1980s.

(Most people consider the ’70s his heyday, but really aside from “Manhattan” and “Annie Hall” his flicks of that era are rather overrated.)

“Irrational Man” is the dry, tasteless chaser at the end of a long and exquisite banquet. This morality-play-cum-murder-mystery is flat and stale, playing out like fourth-string Dostoevsky warmed over with postmodern irony and angst.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe Lucas, a rock star philosophy professor – such persons exist only in the movies – who’s come to a tiny provincial liberal arts college in Rhode Island to teach for the summer. His reputation precedes itself: he’s a boozer, womanizer, moody rebel and suicidal free-thinker. Half the campus is gabbing about him even before Abe anticlimactically pulls up in an aging Volvo, his untucked shirt swaddling a protruding beer gut.

It’s an insular community where everybody knows everyone else’s business. Rita (Parker Posey), a fellow professor whose mid-life crisis seems to ooze from her very pores, has soon wrangled Abe into her bed. But his deepest relationship is with one of his students, a smart and discerning lass named Jill (Emma) whose parents are both music professors at the college.

They strike up a friendship that soon becomes more, at least to Jill, though Abe goes to great lengths to deny it. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Roy (Jamie Blackley), practically vibrates with jealousy toward his older rival, though he labors to make a joke of it.

Abe is searching for a reason to go on living, and he thinks he’s found it by stumbling upon the idea of ending another person’s life. He and Jill overhear the tale of a corrupt judge ruining an innocent woman’s life. Abe becomes obsessed with the idea of pulling off a Hitchcockian murder. The fact that he has no attachment to the victim and no motive for killing him will ensure the perfect crime.

It doesn’t, of course, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie. Things go on, with Abe moralizing his act to himself while Jill plays Nancy Drew, slowly circling a corkscrew of clues that inevitably leads back to the man she (thinks she) loves.

Allen’s storytelling method is to have Abe and Jill pass the narration back and forth between them, so we perfectly understand their thought process and interior monologue. The problem with this approach is that neither character ends up holding any mystery. How much better to make it a game about the impressionable student trying to suss out if the professor she’s sleeping with could be a murderer, or the morally compromised teacher worrying about being bested by his pupil.

In the end “Irrational” is more an exercise than a movie, a bunch of smart, educated people engaged in a grand game of deception – of each other, their moral posturing and, mostly, of themselves.

Video review: "Magic in the Moonlight"

Woody Allen, who started out as a TV punchline writer while still a teenager, has moved restlessly between comedy and more somber fare all his career as a film director. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his dour stuff, such as “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Match Point.”

But his newest, “Magic in the Moonlight,” is one of his most light-hearted and purely entertaining movies in years.

Set in the upper-crust world of the 1920s, it’s the story of a magician named Stanley who’s also a man of science. Played unctuously and splendidly by Colin Firth, Stanley makes a hobby of exposing charlatans who pretend to have psychic abilities. His latest target, a young would-be seeress named Sophie (Emma Stone), proves to be his greatest challenge – and an unlikely love interest.

Though Sophie’s manner while doing her act is amateurish and transparent, her divinations have the disturbing habit of being unerringly accurate. Soon Stanley, who places more trust in Nietzsche than religion, is wondering if his life of agnosticism about the great beyond has been a tragic mistake.

It’s a great-looking movie, filled with sun-dappled gardens and shorelines, terrific period costumes and lots of pretty people to look at.

Filled with wry humor, delightfully clumsy encounters and a whole lot of extravagant mannerisms, “Magic in the Moonlight” is best described in one word not lately applicable to Woody’s work: fun.

Alas, as is often the case with the Woodster’s video releases, there is only the bare minimum of bonus features. And they are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray versions: A making-of featurette, “Behind the Magic,” and publicity footage from the film’s red carpet premiere in Los Angeles.

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Review: "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"

I always thought “Watchmen” was the anti-superhero superhero movie, but this one takes the cake. It’s not so much against superheroes as movies based on their comic books, registering as a spit-flecked denunciation of the way such flicks saturate our culture, almost like a spreading disease that uses up actors’ careers and audiences’ time.

“Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” is an obsidian-black comedy about Riggan Thomson, an over-60 actor who played a costumed hero decades ago and has struggled to do anything equally consequential since. He’s played by Michael Keaton, who knows something about that.

If this sounds like stunt casting, that’s because it is -- but then this whole movie directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (“21 Grams”) is a gimmick, if a very clever one.

Thomson has now sunk most of his heart, soul and bank account into mounting a Broadway production based on the work of short story master Raymond Carver, which he also wrote and is directing.

At one point he finds himself facing off with a hostile New York Times theater critic (Lindsay Duncan), who announces that she’s going to close the play with a vicious review, even though she hasn’t seen it, because she resents Hollywood dilettantes invading her sacred space where real art is made, taking up a theater (the actual St. James) that could be better used for, well, just about anything.

We suspect her lips are channeling the thoughts of Iñárritu, who co-wrote the screenplay (along with three others), and they’re really talking about caped crusader movies.

Keaton is a marvel in this movie, providing an emotionally naked performance as a self-consumed man who has spent so much of his life worrying about being appreciated that he hasn’t ever really inhabited the present tense. Riggan is constantly reminded of this by his estranged daughter, Sam (Emma Thomson), recently graduated from rehab and hired as his assistant -- partly out of a sense of guilt and partly to keep an eye on her for his ex-wife (Amy Ryan).

Iñárritu created the role expressly for Keaton, which was deft, but then unwisely keeps getting in the way of his lead actor.

The director makes all sorts of showy creative choices, like constructing the entire movie out of (seemingly) uninterrupted tracking shots, so we’re constantly shadowing the actors like a ghostly presence. Similarly, the music score (by Antonio Sanchez) is made up almost entirely of percussion instruments, but the disjointed beats bump the movie off its rhythm rather than riding one.

Riggan professes not to think much about being Birdman, but in fact he’s verily haunted by his feathered former alter-ego. The voice of the hero speaks to him (Keaton’s guttural rasp is wonderfully eerie), offering alternate praise and scorn, trying to convince Riggan to give up his ridiculous dream and return to costume work. In private moments when the alter egos are conferring, Riggan performs feats of telekinesis that, even if imagined (?), help buck up his brittle psyche.

The play is teetering on the edge of disaster. Riggan replaces his awful second lead actor, injured during rehearsal, with Mike Shiner, who’s brilliant but notoriously difficult to work with, and he’s played by Edward Norton, who also has a reputation for… but I think you get it now.

Mike is greeted as the production’s rescuer but soon sets about as its chief saboteur, stealing Riggan’s limelight in the press and even stopping a preview performance cold when his (real) gin is confiscated. He’s also the boyfriend of the lead actress, Lesley (Naomi Watts), a bundle of neurotic self-doubt, who recruited him but soon comes to regret it. Meanwhile, Riggan is having an affair with the other, much-younger actress (Andrea Riseborough).

Flitting around the edges of the story is Jake (Zach Galifianakis), Riggan’s lawyer, producing partner and underappreciated fixit man.

The performances are delicious in “Birdman,” particularly Keaton, who will deservedly be the subject of a lot of Academy Awards conversations. I just wish Iñárritu had enough faith in his star to let him shine in the spotlight, instead of constantly distracting us with his showy, look-at-me direction.

Earlier in this review I called the movie clever, and it is that; but it’s the sort of feckless, selfish clever that feels compelled to keep reminding you how clever it is.

Video review: "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"

Sophomore slumps are an unfortunate reality for plenty of big-budget sequels, and that includes “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” It’s still an enjoyable comic book flick featuring everyone’s favorite web-slinger, but it can’t muster the verve and pizzazz of its predecessor.

Its main problem is an overabundance of characters and plot. The best super-hero movies tend to focus on a single villain or existentialist threat, but here we’ve got storylines splayed all over the place like random spider webs.

Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) has to deal with at least three bad guys, including his best friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) slowly turning into the Green Goblin and Paul Giamatti rampaging (briefly) as the Rhino.

The main heavy is Jamie Foxx as Max, a shy social outcast who idolizes Spidey. He gets zapped by some electrical eels and turned into a living power generator who dubs himself Electro – with his emotions clearing having no voltage regulator.

Foxx makes for a terrific villain, a man deluded by his own quest for power, and compares favorably with Alfred Molina’s Dr. Octopus from the last Spider-Man iteration. But he’s not given enough screen time to fully flesh out the character. Similarly, the Harry/Peter and Green Goblin/Spider-Man twin conflicts show just enough promise to suggest they deserved their own movie to fully explore.

On top of all these super-villains to fight, Peter’s got a lot weighing on his shoulders: a will they/won’t they romance with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), guilt over the death of Gwen’s cop father, tensions with Aunt May (Sally Field), and the mystery of Peter’s disappeared parents.

The CG action scenes are still a blast, but sometimes less really is more. A more focused film would’ve been a better one.

Fortunately, the video extras are first-rate. The DVD comes with four deleted scenes with commentary by director Marc Webb, a feature length commentary track, and the “It’s On Again” music video with Alicia Keys.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition, and you add nine more deleted scenes and a comprehensive making-of documentary, “The Wages of Heroism: Making The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”

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Review: "Magic in the Moonlight"

One of Woody Allen’s most briskly entertaining movies in years, “Magic in the Moonlight” is about love, mysticism and con jobs.

Set in 1928, it boasts gorgeous locations in the south of France, incredible vintage cars and costumes, and lots of beautiful rich people to stare it. In many ways, this looks and feels like Woody’s riff on the Jay Gatsby era (and the movies made about it).

Colin Firth supplies a delicious performance as Stanley, a famous magician and man of science. The marriage of those vocations may sound like a contradiction, but the erudite and very snobby Stanley would correct you -- and probably quote Nietzsche while doing it.

Because he approaches the craft of illusion with methodical precision, Stanley fashions himself a genius in ferreting out the difference between truth and charlatanism. Indeed, he has a healthy side venture debunking purported mystics and seers. A professional faker who has made his fortune at it, he looks down his nose at others for using similar talents to fool the gullible rich.

Alas, Stanley’s cold rationality has translated into a bleak pessimism about all forms of spirituality, and indeed most human endeavor: “It’s all phony, from the sales counter to the Vatican and beyond,” he sniffs.

Peevish, arrogant and yet slyly magnetic, Firth gives Stanley a sort of petulant charm.

But then he’s recruited by a fellow magician pal, Howard (Simon McBurney), to debunk a young American woman who has ensorcelled a fabulously wealthy family.

The matriarch (Jackie Weaver) has agreed to fund a foundation for her and even dangled a marriage with Brice (Hamish Linklater), the handsome, amiable but dim eldest son. Howard himself was brought in to disprove her, and ended up stumped. Stanley is quite sure he’ll have no problem ferreting out her tricks.

Their meeting, however, serves to lend credence to her psychic abilities. Despite the fact that Stanley is known only by his stage personality, a Chinese wizard by the name of Wei Ling Soo, and he adopts a fake name, career and backstory, the woman soon figures out who he is.

The fact that Sophie (a beguiling Emma Stone) is young, ravishing and full of vim catches the crusty, older Stanley off guard.

Sophie represents a beguiling puzzle to him: her occult act and amateurish demeanor would seem straight out of a carny sideshow, complete with a controlling mother (Marcia Gay Harden) who accompanies her and handles the pressing of flesh and conveying of funds. Yet Stanley can’t pierce the veil of her performance, and even begins to wonder if her gifts are authentic.

He’s finally convinced when he takes her to visit his beloved Aunt Vanessa (a spot-on Eileen Atkins), and Sophie is able to summon intimate details about the older woman’s life by clutching her favorite set of pearls. This revelation throws Stanley’s entire life of rationality and divine asceticism into peril.

If there is a great beyond, then why not a God, and love at first sight, and if there is such love, could it be shared between Sophie and Stanley?

Allen seems to be having a great deal of fun here, playing with his characters’ and the audience’s expectations. One soon senses that it’s not just Sophie and Stanley, but the venerable filmmaker himself, who enjoys wielding the tradecraft of deception.

Funny, smart and wry, “Magic in the Moonlight” conjures up a delightful impression.

Review: "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"

Just a short review today, folks. Joe is handling the main article over at The Film Yap, and ably so, so please head over there to check it out.

I was very cynical about the reboot of the Spider-Man franchise. As I wrote at the time, undertaking a production just so the creative rights to the character won't revert to the previous owner is a terrifically awful reason to make a movie. But director Marc Webb, his cast and crew came up with a fresh take on familiar characters and themes. It was exhilirating.

As I also wrote, "The Amazing Spider-Man" also took its time building up the mythology of their new-ish universe, grounding the characters and rendering them relatable as people. In other words, it earned its emotional capital for the kabloowie stuff later on.

With the sequel, I often felt like the filmmakers were using shorthand and shortcuts. Dialogue scenes barely begin before they reach their emotional crescendo. Action scenes jump straight to the big explosions and CG effects. There's no foreplay, just "hello" and wham-bang.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I need a film to stoke my fires a little bit before getting to the main event.

There are some wonderful actors in this movie -- Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone, Chris Cooper, Sally Field, Paul Giamatti (briefly). But as I sat there watching them spout increasingly ridiculous and/or nonsensical lines, I kept wondering how ill-used they are. This movie fails the old Gene Siskel test if you'd rather just watch that same cast sitting around lunch talking about whatever.

It's not a bad super-hero movie. I think there's actually a really good story here, buried underneath the unnecessary subplots and excess of secondary characters. Peter Parker, haunted by the death of Gwen Stacy's father in the last movie, dithers about keeping his promise to leave her alone, despite their desperate love for each other.

The main bad guy is Electro (Foxx), depicted here as a mush-mouthed, timid electric engineer who gets zapped by experimental eels at the headquarters of the evil Oscorp company. This turns him into a blue-skinned, semi-transparent being who can manipulate electrical energy -- eventually, even dis- and re-assembling his body through electricity.

His motivations aren't really clear -- something about feeling invisible and wanting the whole world to see him. Previously a Spider-Man junkie, he becomes disillusioned when the web-slinger helps capture him.

The filmmakers also throw in Harry Osborn, played by Dane DeHaan, who was born looking like a fallen angel, with a cupid's-bow mouth and dangerous eyes. His nasty dad Norman (Cooper), on his death bed, passes along his contempt as well as the "Osborn curse," a heredity disease he describes as "retro-viral hypoplasia." Basically, it turns you into a gnarled green goblin.

One of my standard metrics for comic book movies is you can rate them by how many villains they have. The truly terrific ones, like "Spider-Man 2" or "Blade," only need one really good bad guy to make things sing. With Spidey fighting Electro, the Green Goblin and even the Rhino (briefly), none of them get a chance to make a weighty impact.

Various subplots involving Peter's parentage, and his father's prominence as a scientist in the Oscorp machine, were better left on the writers' floor. Aside from muddying up the plot, it serves to diminish Peter as a character. The entire resonance of Spider-Man is that he's a nobody teenager who assumes great powers and, as we all well know, great responsibilities.

So: I liked the movie in pieces. There's a lot of good stuff here, and certainly the action sequences are fun and all you'd expect from a big summer blockbuster. This one just needed a half-dozen or so more rewrites to pare it down to its essence, instead of piling on the detritus.

Video review: "The Croods"

“The Croods” was pretty typical of this year’s crop of animated family films. Pleasant enough, great-looking and featuring a catchy song or two, it nonetheless didn’t offer anything that was especially engaging or clever. Designed to entertain wee ones with lots of bouncy slapstick action and cute critters, it accomplished exactly that, and little more.

It’s not a bad movie; not a great one, either; just good enough to satisfy as throwaway entertainment.

Set in prehistoric times, the titular family is a gaggle of ape-like cave people who live in utter fear every second they spend outside their darkened cave. Dad Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage) has a motto: “Never not be afraid,” and it’s one they live by religiously.

Until, that is, rebellious daughter Eep (Emma Stone) pushes them to explore the wider world out there. They encounter danger and some fantastic creatures – the walking land whales were my favorite -- but also have amazing adventures. They hook up with a somewhat more evolved guy named … Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who shows them neat things like fire and shoes.

If this sounds familiar, as if it’s been repurposed from other movies, that’s because it has. It’s basically a stitch-together of “Ice Age” and “The Flintstones.” Some characters, such as the inexplicably reptilian-tailed Gran, exist only as comic relief.

Visually, “The Croods” is a marvel, with even stuff in the corners of the frame worth looking it. I just wish they could’ve given the same level of attention to the storytelling.

Extras are decent, and like the movie tend to be aimed at kids and ignore their parents.

The DVD comes with a handful of deleted scenes and two featurettes, one of which consists of music videos from other DreamWorks Animation flicks. “Belt’s Cave Journal” is a new short film featuring a couple of supporting characters.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add another featurette, “The Croodaceous Creatures of Croods!” spotlighting more of the film’s colorful beastiary. There’s also a drawing game for children, and a mobile app that lets kids build their own Croods storybook and color it, too.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Croods"

The storytelling in “The Croods” isn’t as sharp and emotionally engaging as the better recent animated flicks -- “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Rise of the Guardians.” But it’s such a visually imaginative landscape, one filled with sproingy action, that it turns out a good bet for families -- especially those with smaller children who will savor the heaping helping of cool creatures and goofy slapstick.

The set-up isn’t awfully original, the tale of a prehistoric family that must leave the safety of its cave and traditions in response to a radically shifting landscape. There’s an ape-like father, rebellious teen, cantankerous oldster, feral toddler and primordial pets as comic relief.

Basically, it’s a mashup of “The Flintstones” and “The Land Before Time.”

But despite its lack of innovative flair, it’s still a rousing good time and a never-ending feast for the eyes. I was especially impressed with all the different critters populating the film’s environment. There are walking land whales, a flock of killer dino-parrots, a giant rainbow kitty, an ancestor of Maurice Sendak’s wild things, and something that looks like a genetic splicing of a dog, a skunk and an alligator (it’s much cuter than it sounds).

It’s quite a computer-generated menagerie, and the animators’ imaginations are so dense they even put things in the corners and backgrounds that are neat to look at.

The Croods are hardcore homebodies. They spend days at a time scrunched together in their cave hiding from predators, coming out just long enough to round up some grub and skedaddle back to safety and darkness. Physically, they’re fearsomely strong and agile – they can bound and run fast enough to keep up with the beasts they hunt and those that hunt them.

Despite this, patriarch Grug (voice of Nicolas Cage) is one seriously conservative guy. He sees his role as clan leader/protector depending on never trying anything new: “Never not be afraid” is the family motto.
Mom Ugga (Catherine Keener) is a generic maternal-worrier type. Son Thunk (Clark Duke) is dad’s chubby, under-athletic protégé, Sandy (Randy Thom) is a pint-sized terror, and Gran (Cloris Leachman) is the resident complainer and Grug antagonist. Gran is literally a throwback, sporting a vaguely reptilian tail.

(One amusing running gag is that Grug is continually disappointed when Gran survives their various ordeals. “Still alive!” she crows, taunting her son-in-law.)

But Eep (Emma Stone), the oldest child, yearns to live in the sun and experience new things, leading to obvious conflict with Grug. That rift grows when they encounter Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a more advanced type who can make fire and invent things. He warns the Croods that continental drift will destroy their home, urging them to seek out high land.

Various adventures and hijinks ensue, with Guy and Grug vying for leadership of the little band, and Eep’s affections. “Ideas are for weaklings,” Grug insists, but his brute strength is no match for the intellect of Guy, who teaches them how to make shoes and use animals to their advantage, instead of just for munching on.

The Croods are drawn in bold exaggerated lines, with thick limbs and thicker torsos offset by incongruously itsy-bitsy hands and feet. The creatures are even more out of whack, such as Guy’s pet/advisor/accessory Belt, a little sloth-like creature with arms twice as long as his body and a tendency to vocalize their plight with a funny triad of beeps.

Writing/directing team Chris Sanders and Kirk De Micco probably needed to give the screenplay a few more rewrites to punch up the storyline. The more serious “life lessons” parts tend to feel like tacked-on accouterments. And Eep, the narrator and ostensibly the main character, keeps getting shunted aside in favor of Grug during the second half.

But whatever you want to say about the conceptual crudity of “The Croods,” Sanders and De Micco certainly elicited solid voice performances out of their cast, and led their animation team to a place of wonderment and joy.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "The Amazing Spider-Man"

For an absolutely unnecessary reboot of the web-slinging superhero franchise, "The Amazing Spider-Man" is terrifically well-done. It attacks the character of Pete Parker, a nerdy kid who gets bitten by a radioactive arachnid, from a darker perspective than the previous trilogy.

Andrew Garfield, taking over the lead role from Tobey Maguire, draws a portrait of a socially ostracized kid who was probably headed to a lonely life of despair if he hadn't been turned into a non-caped crusader.

Becoming Spider-Man teaches him harsh lessons about responsibility -- particularly after his believed Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) is slain because of his inaction -- but it also helps him come out of his shell, especially with regard to lady love Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone).

The heavy here is Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist who becomes Peter's mentor as they try to unlock the secret of transferring the regenerative power of reptiles to humans. It does help Connors regrow his missing arm -- but also turns him into the fearsome, toothsome Lizard.

Director Marc Webb was an unlikely choice for a big-budget action film, his only other credit being the indie romance, "(500) Days of Summer." But Webb and the trio of screenwriters have made something genuinely new out of something old.

Please note, "The Amazing Spider-Man" will be released on video Friday, Nov. 9.

The film comes with a heaping helping if extras, even with the base DVD version. It boasts a feature-length commentary track by the filmmakers, deleted scenes, product art gallery and footage from stunt rehearsals.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add more than 90 minutes of behind-the-scenes documentaries, focusing on casting, story development, costumes, locations and special effects. There's also a Second Screen App for mobile devices with storyboards, interviews and more.

Opt for the 3-D Blu-ray combo and you add some featurettes on 3D imaging processes.

Go all in for the 4-disc Limited Edition Gift Set and you also get special packaging and collectible figurines of Spider-Man and the Lizard.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "The Amazing Spider-Man"

Let's just get this out of the way: no, there was absolutely no need for this reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise. The first film came out just a decade ago, and the last one was a mere five years ago -- and was underwhelming at that.

From what I understand, "The Amazing Spider-Man" had to be made or the rights to the iconic comic book hero would've lapsed. As motivations go for spending a reported $220 million on a movie -- or even $220 -- it's a pathetically shabby one.

But that's the studio honchos. The filmmakers and cast, however, have attacked the material with pure hearts and dedication, and come up with a genuinely terrific super-hero movie.

(Of course, the studio bosses are the ones who hired the movie-makers, so let's give them that credit.)

The most obvious question people will have about this new version of Spider-Man is how it differs from the previous trilogy, starring Tobey Maguire and directed by Sam Raimi. Without giving too much away, the answer is: quite a bit.

This Spidey is more of a throwback to themes of the original comic books, in which young high school student Peter Parker is a socially outcast science whiz who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and finds he can climb walls, lift cars and sense impending danger. He's lost and shut off, especially after his wise father figure, Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), is killed by a robber Peter could have caught but chose not to.

Andrew Garfield's Peter is much more alienated than Maguire's relatively smooth and serene take. Garfield stammers, won't look others in the eyes and hunches his shoulders like he's trying to collapse into his torso.

His lady love isn't Mary Jane Parker, but Gwen Stacy, who's just as smart as him and is played by Emma Stone, one of the best actresses of her young generation. It's a bit of a mystery why a brainy, popular girl like her would fall for the nerdy Peter, but Stone offers little grace notes that help us feel the connection.

Director Marc Webb's only other feature film was the wonderful "(500) Days of Summer," which had approximately 1/30th the budget of this movie. It was a bold choice to pick him to helm a mega-budget production like this, but one that has paid lovely dividends.

Webb chooses to go light on the CGI to depict Spider-Man's web-slinging -- at least initially. For awhile, he's more akin to one of those parkour guys, bouncing around walls like an Olympic-grade gymnast. Webb lets us to see Peter slowly grow into his powers.

Another interesting change is the use of Spidey's webs. In the previous films, the web-slinger utilized them almost exclusively for locomotion, whereas here it's an integral part of his fighting style. Also notable is that they're not an organic part of his package of spider powers -- as many have pointed out, if it was then the webbing would come out of his butt instead of his wrists. Instead, it's a bit of technology that Peter "liberates" from a huge corporation and adapts for his own use.

That company is Oscorp, known from the other movies as the brainchild of Norman Osborn, aka Green Goblin, who is absent here. Instead, Oscorp's top scientist plays the heavy. Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) is a leading herpetologist looking to perform cross-species DNA splicing.

He has a very personal motivation: Connors wants to use the regenerative powers of reptiles to regrow his missing arm. After some mad scientist experimenting, he turns into the fearsome Lizard, full of scales and muscles, who soon tangles with Spidey.

Rounding out the cast are Sally Field as Peter's Aunt May, Irrfan Khan as an Oscorp toady and Dennis Leary as the stern police captain who views Spider-Man with contempt -- and also happens to be Gwen's father.

"The Amazing Spider-Man" does take a while to get going. Like an epic roller-coaster climbing that first big hill, the first 75 minutes or so carefully -- sometimes painstakingly -- build up the characters and the universe. But in a moment, you can feel the movie achieve takeoff. For the next hour, it's an amazing ride of action-scene thrills and visceral twists.

Even though I found the first section slow-going at times, I realized as I was watching the latter part that the movie had earned its emotional capital so it could pay off dividends.

Webb and his trio of veteran screenwriters -- James Vanderbilt, Steve Kloves and Alvin Sargent (who also penned the last two Spider-Man films) -- clearly are gearing up for another run of several movies. There's a vague framing story involving the disappearance of Peter's parents that tickles us with possibilities without giving anything away.

Based on this strong reboot, though, I hereby withdraw any objections to more Spidey flicks.

3.5 stars out of four

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: "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: "Crazy, Stupid, Love."

"Crazy, Stupid, Love." reminded me of bits and pieces of movies I love, and that's always a good thing. And yet it does not feel like a rip-off or a rehash, but exists entirely as its own creation.

It's the story of Cal and Emily Weaver, high school sweethearts turned unhappily marrieds played by Steve Carell and Julianne Moore. Going over the dessert menu at dinner, he asks her what she wants and she announces that, after 25 years, she wants a divorce. This actually represents the high point of their evening.

But it's also the tale of Jacob, a smooth ladies' man who trolls his favorite nightclub like a shark hunting territorial waters. He wields pick-up lines and brash confidence as weapons to subdue his prey: pretty, gullible women. "You wanna get outta here?" is the final thrust of his attack, and when they leave with him Jacob notches another triumph.

Jacob spots Cal pathetically pouring his heart out at the bar, post-breakup, and resolves to help him. There's the superficial makeover stuff, of course, like ditching Cal's New Balance sneakers and Gap-meets-apathy wardrobe. More tellingly, Jacob wants to turn sweet-faced Cal into a killer like himself.

"I'm gonna help you rediscover your manhood," Jacob promises.

Jacob is played by Ryan Gosling, not exactly known for playing the sort of slick, shallow pretty boys we've seen entirely too much on screens lately (*cough cough* Ryan Reynolds *cough*). Later Gosling will get a chance to show off the superficial jerk's uncharted depths.

Other characters, who had been standing around the edges of the story, unexpectedly rush to the fore and briefly hold the center. Chief among them is Hannah (Emma Stone), a smart young woman about to take the bar exam and become a patent attorney. She and Jacob briefly meet early in the movie, and she is the one gal who sees through his shtick and blows him off, and yet we are certain they will meet again.

Gosling and Stone share the greatest non-seduction seduction scene in the history of cinema -- probably also the first, but then that's something, too.

Then there is Jessica, the Weavers' 17-year-old babysitter. She has her own dimensions and secret hopes, and is skillfully and heartwarmingly played by Analeigh Tipton, who I learn is a famous model in real life, but here is unaware of her beauty. Tipton has a great scene where Jessica tries to do something that is entirely out of her character, and fumbles at it charmingly.

And then we have Robbie, the Weavers' 13-year-old son, in an arresting performance by Jonah Bobo. Robbie is a hopeless romantic, but is also pretty observant about adult behavior, and has his parents' dilemma figured out perhaps better than they themselves do. I adored Robbie for his spontaneous, unembarrassed declarations of unrequited love -- and also for the way he stares down David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), the jerk who stole his mom away from his dad.

I was thinking that I would enjoy an entire film about Robbie, and that's when it struck me that screenwriter Dan Fogelman ("Tangled") has given us at least a half-dozen characters who are each deserving of their own movie. Heck, most flicks don't even give us one.

Co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa do a masterful job juggling the tone of "Crazy, Stupid Love.", which is often excruciatingly funny and sometimes mournful, and yet feels like it comes into these moods naturally rather than veering into them to facilitate the plot.

This is the sort of movie that shows us human emotions rather than tells us what they are supposed to look like. Like with Cal, who sneaks back to his former home at night to tend to the garden he knows has slipped Emily's mind. That's the whole of the man, in a moment.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Easy A"

I hope things work out for Emma Stone.

"Easy A" was a smart, literate take on the sexual politics of the high school crucible. No surprise there, since it's based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter."
But it turns out this all-too-rare kind of movie doesn't bode well for its star.

Winona Ryder was a revelation in "Heathers," but after a few years on top her career fizzled after that whole shoplifting ordeal. (Meanwhile, her male peers got into much worse scrapes and sailed right along.) Lindsay Lohan looked like Ryder's heir after the clever "Mean Girls" a few years ago, and I think we all know what a cascading train wreck she's become.

Here's hoping Stone, who made quite an impression as a smart girl who pretends to be a floozy, keeps it real.

Olive is a nobody at her school, not so much disliked as anonymous. A virgin, she spreads the rumor that she slept with a college guy to stop her friends from pressuring her into sex. Turns out it gives her a leg up the social hierarchy.

After repeating the trick for a gay friend to stop the harassment he's been getting, Olive soon finds herself the most famous -- make that infamous -- gal in town. Soon every loser and geek around is bribing her to pretend they had sex.

"I fake-rocked your world!" she complains to one under-generous benefactor.
The movie's so smart, in fact, that some of the jokes will sail over the head of some audience members. There's a novelty: A film about high schoolers that challenges those who watch it, instead of indulging them.

Extras are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions, and are just so-so.

There's a gag reel and Emma Stone's audition tape. The centerpiece is a feature-length commentary track with Stone and director Will Gluck.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars