Going the Distance

Early in Going the Distance you can tell there’s something different going on here. A female character (Drew Barrymore’s Erin) is frustrated at work, and rather than crying about it with girlfriends over coffee or ice cream, she hightails it to the bar, downs a few beers, and sets out to beat her own high score on the old-school video game in the back. When she meets new guy Garrett (Justin Long) she doesn’t hesitate to join in the trash talk with his friends, and when he takes her home and his roommate proves to be a little weird, Erin rolls with it, allowing their make out to be scored to “Take My Breath Away” from Top Gun . First-time writer Geoff LaTulippe could have written Erin as nothing but a male fantasy of the “cool” girlfriend, but guided by his smart script, directed by Nanette Burstein and played by the timelessly appealing Barrymore, Erin turns into a real, vulnerable, relatable person. The same goes for Long as Garrett, and the rest of the movie for that matter– Going the Distance is by no means perfect, but it’s light years beyond the average rom-com, bracingly honest and genuinely funny about the ups and downs of relationships

The American

Once you’ve seen The American the stylish, 70s-inspired one sheet makes perfect sense–this is a movie that bows at the feet of European art films, and isn’t so much a thriller as a meditation on hitman movies and cinema history itself. Everything about it, from the placid camerawork and minimal dialogue to the ancient Italian settings, asks you to settle down into an earlier time. Director Anton Corbijn is not afraid to bore his audience in what’s essentially a character study about a career assassin, and while he and Clooney happen upon some striking visuals and dig up a few interesting ideas, the flashy visuals tend to say a lot more than the story itself. Things start well with a striking and intense confrontation in snowy Sweden, leaving three dead and Clooney’s assassin Jack on the run to Italy, where he meets up with the mysterious man (Bruce Altman) who gives him his orders. Jack hides out in one of those Italian cities that’s all cobblestones balanced precariously on a hilltop, working on a weapon specially ordered by a mystery woman (Tekla Reuten) and frequenting a whorehouse where he repeatedly asks for the dark and beautiful Clara (Violante Placido)

The Winning Season

The Winning Season assumes that by making a traditional sports movie about a girl’s team instead of boys, it has added something new to the genre and can just proceed as usual from there. But even the most straightforward sports movies need to at least be well made, and the haphazardly directed and edited Winning Season is far from making the cut. Sam Rockwell is never quite comfortable as he attempts a take on Walter Matthau in The Bad News Bears — but, you know, with heart– and the movie doesn’t help him as it fails over and over again to establish a consistent tone. The presence of future Lisbeth Salander Rooney Mara in a substantial supporting role may spark some interest, but this is one long-delayed indie– it debuted at Sundance 2009– that was lagging for a reason. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Rockwell plays Bill, a down-on-his-luck single dad working as a dishwasher until the local high school principal (Rob Corddry, miscast and out of place) asks him out of the blue to coach the girl’s team.

Takers

Takers is the logical result of watching Heat over and over and over until your brain burns out, and then wondering what it would look like if the whole thing were remade as a Smirnoff Vodka commercial. It contains a half-hearted bank robber plot, a lot of over-produced filler-scenes, and one surprisingly creative chase sequence (thrillingly carried almost entirely by Chris Brown) which no matter how fast it runs cannot escape the fact it’s stuck in this movie called Takers . In addition to being a generally terrible, occasionally laughable overall experience, for me it’s also the nail in the coffin of the career of Matt Dillon who, at one point, for some reason, was once regarded as a legitimate acting talent. Now I’d rather be watching his brother Johnny Drama.

Piranha 3D

Somewhere near the end of Piranha 3D , as Ving Rhames was indiscriminately firing shotgun casings into the water and Jerry O’Connell was doing tequila shots off an eighty-five percent naked woman, I decided to award this film three stars. This may seem like an unusually high number of stars for a gimmicky b-movie about piranhas attacking drunk college kids in the third dimension, but I happen to find a certain amount of honor in a film delivering exactly upon its promises. Four stars, that would be ludicrous and two stars, that would imply Piranha 3D somehow disappointed. But three stars, that’s the right number for an aggressively pleasurable film involving cocaine, piranhas, inordinate amounts of nudity and Jerry O’Connell

Lottery Ticket

Lottery Ticket begins with the kind of plot that mad-cap comedies are made of: a whole lot of money appears out of thin air and a group of people will do anything to get their hands on it. It’s a formula which has worked for some and not at all for others.

Winter’s Bone

How far would you go to save your family? Sure, sure, you’d keep your crazy, ageing mother at home to avoid the trauma of an assisted living facility. You might even offer to do the laundry and keep things functioning in her wake. In a dire need, you might help pay bills or watch over younger siblings when your parents weren’t around. But would you shoulder your way into a drug den to find out truths you may be better off not knowing

Twelve

The grand finale of Nick McDonell’s book Twelve is one of the most powerful and successful buildups I’ve ever experienced. After an entire story of fairly tranquil moments, McDonell absolutely blows the reader away with an astonishingly gripping conclusion.

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Truly great family films happen when audiences of all ages can enjoy whatÂ’s up on screen, from toddlers to octogenarians. These kinds of movies have deep stories with real messages, engaging characters and, typically, genuine humor. Pixar has cornered the market on this since Toy Story first came out in 1995, but there have been plenty of non-animated films that have hit this bar as well

Comic Con: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Reviewed

I hate to break it to you guys, but you will never see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with a better audience than the one I was with tonight. But seriously– one of the first-ever official screenings of the movie happened at San Diego Comic Con, barely an hour after the film’s packed Hall H panel, and for a comics-savvy audience so familiar with the source material that they cheered louder during the credits for Scott PIlgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley than they did for star Michael Cera. It’s no surprise that the Scott Pilgrim movie–by all accounts a very faithful adaptation of O’Malley’s six-part series– thrilled the fans who gathered to see it. But I’m here to tell you that Scott Pilgrim plays well beyond the hype, an enormous burst of energy and imagination that both plays with every cinematic convention we know of and re-invents the form entirely.

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