Review: Bullet to the Head

Sylvester Stallone may be old, but he refuses to play the old guy. He takes on the same types of roles he did 30 years ago -- often literally, when he makes Rambo and Rocky sequels. He's taken out restraining orders against gray hairs, wrinkles and flab. His muscles are probably the great-grandchildren of his 1970s muscles, who have all decided to stick around.

His delivery in Bullet to the Head is as wooden and garbled as ever. That's as it should be. An enunciating Stallone is hardly a Stallone at all, and would be like a Bogart who didn't snarl as he spoke or a Jimmy Stewart who didn't stutter or stretch out his vowels. This is Stallone the persona, roaming the New Orleans streets as a hitman with a heart of deer antler extract, narrating his own story like a 1940s gumshoe while spitting out 1980s catch-phrases and good-natured ironically racist jokes that might have been taken at face value in the 1970s.

His de facto partner is Taylor (Sung Kang), a D.C. cop who's under deep cover, trying to track down some mob boss or other who's connected to an evil land developer who wants to tear down old barns before kids can save them by staging musicals. Taylor exists as a surface for Stallone to bounce the post-racist jokes off of, and to antagonize the anti-hero by hitting on his semi-estranged tattoo-artist daughter.

The broad outlines of the movie are as irritatingly and comfortinly predictable as possible, but the finer details keep you on your toes. Director Walter Hill, showing a whisper of the action-crazy bliss he established in The Warriors (1979), 48 Hrs. (1982) and Red Heat (1988), gleefully trots out one bad guy boss after another, letting Stallone and his compadres cap one without a thought before they can get into Bond villain-style explanations of their sinister plans.

Bullet to the Head is a little smart in the way it's so unapologetically stupid. It drags and sags a little, then doubles back to make things right with its utter, detached cool.

The silly affair is as disposable as a tinfoil bubble gum wrapper, but just as shiny. You could get by without it, but this is a little something more than another box to check off for Stallone completionists. The everlasting gobstopper of an action star has done far, far, better and indescribably worse. An average Stallone is still better than most anything you can find in this advanced age.

Staring Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Sarah Shahi and Christian Slater. Written by Alessandro Camon, based on a graphic novel by Alexis Nolent. Directed by Walter Hill. Rated R. 91 minutes.

Review: Gangster Squad

Judged by modern standards, Gangster Squad is a pretty terrible movie. It gives haters plenty of hate to make unsweetened haterade with, and share it with one another at haters' balls, which are the types of parties everyone says they'll go to before bailing out at the last second with lame excuses.

Count me among those who bail. Gangster Squad may be a poor movie, but it's a top-a-the-heap gangsta pitcha. That's "gangster picture" pronouned in the voice of a 1920s newsreel announcer in 1940s gangsta pitchas, in case you were wondering. And as a gangsta pitcha, it's a heck of a video game.

The look, vibe and narration are straight out of the video game L.A. Noire, which is a distillation of the sorts of pulp fiction that Quentin Tarantino sent up and paid tribute to in Pulp Fiction. Gangster Squad is so pulpy, Tarantino probably will remake it next year, with Christoph Waltz as Mickey Cohen and Quentin Tarantino as Random Australian Guy Who Is In The Movie For No Reason Whatsoever.

This gangsta pitcha, though, doesn't have scenes like Tarantino's movies do, but missions. And those missions are less L.A. Noire than Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne and Black Ops Negative 3, the unreleased prequel based in 1940s gangsta pitchas. L.A. Director Ruben Fleischer is obsessed with creating ludicrous and cheesy ways for armies of trenchcoat-wearing, fedora-donning cops and mobsters to shoot what the NRA would vehemently deny are assault rifles (because assault rifles don't exist and are just a lie propagated by government schools, much like the distributive property of algebra).

As top cop John O'Mara, Josh Brolin shoots everything on the screen until all the flashing red dots on the radar circle stop blinking.

Ryan Gosling, as his smarmy, womanizing sidekick, has a differrent job, which is to mumble "hey girl" to Cohen's girl, Emma Stone, until she becomes his emotional plaything. (This only takes the "hey" in the very first "hey girl" to work, by the way.) Sean Penn's job as Cohen is to snarl and rage around breaking stuff in his high-class dining room. Meaning he basically plays himself.

My favorite moment in the movie comes when Brolin's conscience gets to him and he starts questioning whether or not he's better than the gangsters he's going after, being that he too shoots up public places in desperate power plays. This wouldn't be as cool if it wasn't followed by what happened next; that he forgets all that because the gangsta pitcha video game tells him it's time for the END BOSS FINAL MISSION, in which he and the gangster squad most open fire with their non-assault rifles on a gangster-fortified fortress, eliminating all the red dots on the radar until it's time for the final Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots fistfight, which also has much in common with the Rocky Balboa-Tommy "Not-An-Assault-Rifle-Homonym" Gunn final throwdown at the end of Rocky V.

The world doesn't have enough movies in which the good and bad guy dispense with the guns to slug it out like men in the final battle, but if the trend started by Gangster Squad holds, 2013 will feature approximately 26 such movies. That will still leave us a few short of the quota required for everything to be right with the universe, but it will have to do for now.

Starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Seann Penn, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Michael Pena and Giovanni Ribisi. Written by Will Beall. Directed by Ruben Fleishcer. 113 minutes. Rated R.

Review: The Impossible

The Impossible must be called The Impossible because it's impossible to come up with a more generic title than The Impossible. Since movies are generally about seemingly impossible things that are shown to be possible onscreen, it's possible that just about any movie could be called The Impossible, thus it should be impossible that any filmmaker is willing to name his film The Impossible.

And yet, as The Impossible proves, it is possible for a movie to be called The Impossible.

Good thing for this movie with the impossibly dull title that it's impossibly good.

Spanish director J.A. Bayona, known for the 2007 horror film The Orphanage, which is so good it makes you want to high-five everyone you see, has clearly not spent the past five years playing sudoku. Instead, he must have been doing whatever it takes a budding filmmaking phenom to shake off a sophomore slump. Perhaps his activities included turning down chances to direct Resident Evil and/or Smurfs movies while brushing up on his digital tsunami recreation technique.

Instead, he and his team have fashioned a film that manages to be inspirational while soaked in the darkest of horror trappings, all wrapped up in - here's that word again - impossibly brilliant special effects and makeup that make it truly seem as though Naomi Watts was beaten about by a vividly rendered Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004, separated from her husband and children.

That husband would be Ewan McGregor, who rounds up two of the kids, only to toss them aside in order to find his wife and, apparently, the only child he really cares about. That would be his firstborn son (Tom Holland), who hangs out with his mom until she gets swallowed up by a questionably effective Southeast Asian healthcare system that Tea Partiers will surely somehow blame Obamacare for.

This is a weird story, yes. But it works because of the tear duct-flushing storytelling, passionate acting and ludicrously spot-on effects that show the tusnami's distruction on both macro and micro scales.

Based on a true story involving a family of Spaniards, the story shifts the ethnicity of the cast for no other reason than to underline the assumption that natural disasters only matter if they happen to English speakers. The thinking must have been that the compromise was a necessary evil in order to get as many people as possible to see the movie. The switcheroo is irritating at first, but only if you bothered to see where the movie came from. And it's easy to get over it due to the magnitude of the performances by watts and McGregor help you get over it.

Now that The Impossible is finally lurking into theaters after an under-the-radar platform release, you really should get out there and see it. You can not only do a heck of a lot worse these days, like maybe getting stuck with watching Russell Crowe sing all his dialogue or watching Quentin Tarantino reduced his command of the English language to a single, vile word. And, dare I say, it's nearly impossible to do better than buying a ticket to The Impossible.

Starring Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland and Samuel Joslin. Written by Sergio G. Sanchez. Directed by J.A. Bayona. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Review: Promised Land

If M. Night Shyamalan made a movie about gas companies' pillaging of the heartland, Promised Land would be it. Meaning there's a "swing away" twist at the end that tries to explain everything but ends up pretty much ruining any credibility and relevance in the story instead.

If you see the movie, slip the projectionist a tip and ask that he dumps a soda on the equipment with 20 minutes left. You'll walk out of the theater without a resolution, but will at least be better off than those who are stuck watching the aliens get killed by water.

New "it" couple Matt Damon and John Krasinski teamed up on the screenplay and play rival tastemakers who storm a small town, manipulating the folk into voting their way on the issue of whether to let a giant energy company frack them long and hard, letting the town splash natural gas all over its farms and water in return for millions of dollars.

Damon, along with trusty sidekick Frances McDormand, is the big gas suit sent to use his silver-tongued devil charms to trick the yokels into the deal, while Krasinski is the idealistic hippie there to stop him with his goody bag of guerrilla tactics, while also finding time to pull a few outrageous pranks on Dwight.

Locked up in a game of spy vs. spy, Damon and Krasinski make for some entertaining one-upsmanship. They lock horns at a karaoke bar — unfortunately not in a singing competition, though — fight for the favor of a teacher/bar rat (Rosemarie DeWitt) and talk some crazy smack as they struggle for the soul of a confused, real-life FarmVille.

Director Gus Van Sant, who boosted Damon to stardom in Good Will Hunting, has the hunting part down pat here, but has a little trouble arranging the goodwill. This is one of those impassioned message movies that makes its point early on, then beats you over the head with it, haphazardly acknowledging the shades of grey without admitting they have any validity. The considerable star power and writing talent goes to waste, but it's to be down on a movie that's so watchable for most of the running time.

Promised Land has a lot of the pieces necessary for a watershed movie. I wish there had been less Shyamalan and more Ben Affleck, I guess. A little organic humor wouldn't have hurt, either. Because I also wish I had a double burger.

Starring Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand and Rosemarie DeWitt. Written by Krasinski and Damon. Directed by Gus Van Sant. 106 minutes. Rated R. 

Review: Django Unchained

Django may be unchained, but his movie could have used some tighter shackles. An editor could have gutted the movie into something that, while maybe not all that entertaining, at least wouldn't waste so much time. Quentin Tarantino himself should have taken out his Kill Bill katana and slashed the way too long, long, long, looooong movie in two. Then, instead of releasing it in two parts in different years, he should have thrown it away because it didn't live up to the standard of the rest of the work.

For his whole career, Tarantino has straddled and spanked the edge of hyperactive overindulgence like a wild pony. His attitude was "This is what's in my head, and I'm my favorite director ever, and if you don't like it too bad because I made this for myself."

Only someone with his talent could pull it off, and it's pretty amazing he's been able to do it for 20 years without embarrassing himself. That's because he's always covered his backside by whipping out prototypical Tarantino Awesomesauce and spraying it all over everything to the point that it didn't really matter whether or not his stories went anywhere.

Tarantino Awesomesauce is made of three ingredients: Smartass dialogue, weird music that nobody has ever heard of but him yet somehow grooves with the action onscreen, and out-of-nowhere actors knocking you down with performances even their mommas didn't realize they had in them.

Django Unchained has none of the Awesomesauce to flavor-up the bland, repetitive side dishes Tarantino serves up: Seven billion instances of people getting shot, erupting with intentionally fake-looking volcano squibs, and eighty trillion uses of the N word. Tarantino uses the N word here more than Smurfs say "smurf," and its diminishing returns hit the floor a few minutes in.

The performances are there from Yosemite Sam-style goofball Leonardo DiCaprio, doddering/sneaky Samuel L. Jackson, and especially gentleman dandy bounty hunter Christoph Waltz, but not from Jamie Foxx, who is such a lifeless, dead-eyed cypher that he may as well have been switched out for Kevin Sorbo.

There usually doesn't need to be much of a story in Tarantino movies, which are more lazy hang-outs than they are bullet trains, but there's so little interesting going on here that it needs one badly. All that's there are patched-together rags from Tarantino's past. There's the self-justified homicidal racist-killing rampage of Inglourious Basterds, an obsessive hunt like Kill Bill, an overly elaborate endgame heist like in Reservoir Dogs and blaxploitation trappings of Jackie Brown.

The framework is there, sorta, but the pieces don't fit. The core partnership of the Waltz and Foxx characters makes no sense. There's no good reason Waltz would risk his life and fortune to help the stranger, nor cause for Foxx's supposedly rage-filled, independent-minded character to latch on to a partner/master. They stay together because this is a buddy movie, and for no other reason.

All the problems could be forgiven if the movie sang, but the thing drags badly, all the more because you watch with such hope, thinking at some point the broken clock will be right and Tarantino will flash his usual magic. That wait will have to last until his next movie.

Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kerry Washington. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. 165 minutes. Rated R.

Review: Les Miserables

While there's some value in making a slavish adaptation of a near-universally beloved stage musical, sticking to all the trappings of the play is a sure path to making the film feel like a translation rather than a similarly inspired production.

That's exactly the problem with director Tom Hooper's sturdy, flashy, yet ultimately inconsequential movie. He tries to outdo the stage production by going bigger, with flashier effects and huge-name actors in every role. Hooper's repertory, though, might have been better served by forgetting about the stage behemoth and drawing solely from Victor Hugo's pages. You know, the ones without the obnoxiously sung dialogue.

At the very least, an organic Les Miserables at least would have spared us having to suffer through Russell Crowe's singing.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Crowe, while awkward, isn't all that bad. He toughs his way through a miscast performance, holding up his end as well as most anyone else.

I don't begrudge anyone who is fascinated by the film's every flourish. if you adore the play, this is your beloved object of desire on human growth hormone. The performances could have been hammy and forced, but instead are understated and elegant. Anne Hathaway, as a mother forced to disfigure her body and soul as she descends into a life of prostitution, is a standout, delivering probably the most impressive work of her career. Her haunting showing has stuck with me weeks after I saw the film, and goes a long way toward redeeming its cowardice.

And yeah, I think cowardice is the right term for Hooper's approach. It's as though the filmmaker was too afraid to take a chance after he had such success with The King's Speech. In dulling its edge and sticking so close to the stage, the movie lacks the Bastille-storming spirit of Hugo's source material. His movie feels like a pandering, disingenuous sleepwalk rather than a fiery-eyed rainmaker.

Les Miserable has no shortage of adaptations, and any new take on the material, especially at this level, needs to come with something new and bold to say. This filmed stage musical knows all the words, but can't hear the music.

Starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter. Written by William Nicholson, Alain Boubill, Claude-Michel Schonberg and Herbert Kretzmer. Directed by Tom Hooper. 160 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Review: This is 40

Middle age is life's way of mocking the human soul. The children you've spawned are Greek choruses on your shortcomings, perceived or otherwise. You've come to terms that you've spent half your life chasing your professional dreams, only to have drawn no closer and lost the momentum and spunk you had when you started the race. Parts of your body you used to be proud of now sag and are at risk of contracting cancer.

Judd Apatow plunges the stage of life for all its ample misery, just the way he did adolescence in Freaks and Geeks and quarterlife angst in Undeclared and Knocked Up. An expert in the dark comedy of hapless human disfunction, Apatow sheds the overindulgence that plagued Funny People to return to the tighter, smarter form that brought him fame.

You have to respect Leslie Mann for taking on the roles her husband hands her, because they're anything but flattering. The stuff Apatow writes for Mann is usually reserved for druken bar rants delivered by disgruntled, henpecked husbands. He starts off the movie with Mann irrationally flipping out on the verge of her 40th birthday, then stopping the action in a freeze-frame and stencilling the title onscreen and pointing at her crazy-eyed expression.

As marriages go, the bond between Pete (Rudd) and Debbie (Mann) is as solid as they come. Apatow could have gone a cheap and easy route by introducing conflict in the form of philandering, but he sticks with the higher-risk/higher-reward waters of zero-sum marital bargains and power plays. You know, the squabbles and deception loved ones share over money, time on the toilet, dietary needs and rectal examinations. The pained, fatalist kinship Rudd and Mann share feels authentic enough to hurt.

The supporting players are every bit as good as the leads. The couple's own kids, Maude and Iris, gamely play themselves, while Albert Brooks and John Lithgow are too-needy and too-distant grampas. Megan Fox is astutely cast as an absurdly hot and absurdly vacant employee at Debbie's store, and musician Graham Parker mocks his faded fame as the would-be savior for Pete's struggling record label.

There's not a whole lot of plot to chew on in the astoundingly long-for-what-it-is comedy, but that's just the way Apatow operates. His characters mope and founder rather than initiate conflict and react to story points.

This is 40 feels more like the hyperextended pilot episode of a premium TV drama than a movie. No one comes of age, stops the evil land developer or kisses in the rain. After the credits roll, life goes on. Sure, it will suck, but it will be just funny enough to make it all worthwhile.

Starring Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd, Megan Fox and Albert Brooks. Written and directed by Judd Apatow. Rated R. 134 minutes.

Review: The Guilt Trip

If there's one thing Barbra Streisand is great at, it's beying annoying. For hundreds of years, she's perfected her ability to make you cringe by her mere, grating presence. This is not a skill that usually makes for a good movie, but in The Guilt Trip, she's managed to find a film that does just that.

The Guilt Trip is a movie about how much it would suck to be forced to deal with Streisand for 95 minutes. It finds humor in that truly heinous prospect and strangles it out for your pleasure. In the easiest role of Seth Rogen's life, all he has to do is roll his eyes, bark snide comments and keep from killing himself and everyone wins. Streisand is a star of the silver screen again and Rogen is in a movie funny enough to make you forget Observe and Report and The Green Hornet.

For managing what the Focker sequels could not, and making a successful and charming Streisand commentary, Anne Fletcher deserves to be hailed as some sort of scientist making an amazing discovery, such as managing to turn nail clippings into crude oil.

Visibly agitated at being left out of the latest Judd Apatow movie, Rogen is at his bitter, hate-filled best. He's Andrew, an entrepreneur who has mortgaged his past, present and future on an awfully named drinkable cleaning product, and he hopes to make good on a national tour of the highest-bidding corporate retail sponsors.

Pitying his mom's inability to move on from her long-dead husband, Andrew decides to tote her along, hoping to hook her up with an old flame at the end of the sojourn. The result is part Planes, Trains and Automobiles, part Dumb & Dumber and part Tommy Boy. The comedy, for the most part, is based on misunderstandings and conflicts that arise from the different levels of love the characters share. As smothering momma Joyce, Streisand loves her boy like Chris Farley loved his dinner roll, and Andrew loves Joyce like bowling pins love bowling balls.

Rogen's palpable hatred of Streisand, shared by every living thing on the planet, is what lifts the movie up where we belong. Some may mistake the performance as an act; possibly the result of excellent chemistry between two gifted actors, but they are overthinking stuff. This is basically just a documentary of Streisand being herself, trying to break Rogen's soul with her mere presence, and Rogen trying to survive until Apatow rescues him once again.

Yet there is no hope of escape, and that's why the movie works so well. The mental and emotional torture Rogen endures translates to comic bliss. His sacrifice is filmdom's gain.

Starring Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand. Written by Dan Fogelman. Directed by Anne Fletcher. Rated PG-13. 95 minutes.

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

If there's a masterful cinematic trick in Zero Dark Thirty, it's the drama's ability to masquerade as truth. Taking on more of a documentary feel than the reverent re-enactment flavor of, say, Lincoln, Kathryn Bigelow's film harnesses the plausibly messy brutality of counterterrorism.

The pounding headache of a film is nowhere close to a flag-waving tale of patriotic conquest you might have expected. Instead it's a blind, bloody manhunt that gawks unflinchingly at the murky morality of black ops, sick and bizarre interrogation routines and inspid backroom meetings that amount to throwing darts at a board to flail for success, collatoral damage of innocent lives be damned. Like Bigelow's similarly dark The Hurt Locker, the film is less interested in action than the angst that accompanies inaction.

That is, until it throws up its hands and becomes an action movie at the climax. Once it's time, Bigelow dispenses with the character study and philosophizing and transforms into a video game. The mesmerizing raid of the infamous Pakistani stronghold explodes in a dizzy whirlwind of justified, exuberant bloodlust.

But it's a final scene, involving Jessica Chastain is Maya, an American agent who tracks down Osama bin Laden with a Javert-like obsession, that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

Chastain, who has emerged from obscurity to acting's top echelons in the span of 24 months, seems willing to bleed for the movie's success. Her heart-darkened journey from eager, idealistic junior agent to hardened interrogator and finally to calculating tactician echoes the American culture's metamorphosis along the winding, decade-long labyrinth to catch and dispatch its bearded bogeyman. Having dedicated her existence to the job at the expense of her humanity, Maya hurts until she can no longer recognize the emotion, or any feeling whatsoever. She's maybe a more grounded version of the Claire Danes character in Homeland.

Other than Chastain's soul-baring performance, what I most respected about the film was its general indifference to telling a traditional story. Bigelow is more interested in leading toward pitfalls and dead ends than creating the mirage of a stepladder to the ultimate bin Laden slapdown. I felt sick, angry, exhausted and thrilled at different points. And once it was over, I was left a little empty, staggered by the artistry and sad that it was over. I was all too aware that something spectacular had just washed over me and was now gone.

Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler and Joel Edgerton. Written by Mark Boal. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Rated R. 157 minutes.

Review: Red Dawn

If you doubt North Korea could ever generate the firepower to assault the United States, the Red Dawn remake will put those fears to rest instantly. The movie explains exactly how the North Koreans would get it done:

Step one: Wait until the U.S. sends all its troops away to foreign wars, leaving the homeland vulnerable.

Step two: Blast the entire country with The Matrix Revolutions-like EMPs, knocking out the power while maintaining communications with magical Game Boy Advances.

Step three: Borrow heavy weaponry from Russians, who are still secretly Soviets who want to take us over just as badly as they did in the Reagan era, but are waiting for just the right moment to ride the coattails of a crazy dictatorship.

Step four: Have nothing whatsoever to do with China, your communist superpower ally who have been cleanly erased from the movie, despite having served as the villains in the original version, which was supposed to come out in 2010, before the powers that be thought twice about offending a country that we borrow so much money from and lords such a hefty trade deficit over us.

The North Koreans' plan covers all contingencies but one -- that a ragtag squad of high schoolers and their siblings might scurry into the woods, setting up a guerrilla resistance that will undermine the occupation from within, providing a shining light for the rest of the country to follow via a ham radio program.

Chris Hemsworth leads the way as Jed, a soldier who is back in town apparently using the G.I. bill to work on a degree on alcoholism. When he's sleeping one off, he wakes up to a dawn... A RED dawn. Parachuting North Korean troops fire madly at innocents, roll through the streets with tanks and herd timid surrender monkeys into work camps. Worse still, the North Koreans drop bombs that make American toy soldiers' on boys' shelves topple over. This, kids, is what the pros refer to as "symbolism."

Not having any of that, Jed gathers up his brother (Josh Peck), a hotshot high school quarterback who plays by his own rules, and assorted hangers-on and hightails it to the family cabin, where they will plan their resistance. He coaches his charges in the ways of Rambo-like special operatives through that most effective method of training -- the montage.

Once the kids are all montaged up, they're unstoppable forces of patriotism. They blow up transport vehicles, pop out of little holes in the ground to shoot up bad guys, level entire buildings and spray-paint "Wolverines" -- the name of the local high school football team -- on building walls. The North Koreans have the payback coming, being that they're cruel enough to park their tanks on the Wolverines' football field.

The movie works as a silly parade of ridiculous but fascinating action sequences, but flops as political fiction or coherent melodrama. The dialogue is hackneyed and the performances are Power Rangers-esque, and the script hews too close to the dramatic turns of the original, without managing to tap into a nerve that matches the Cold War paranoia the first movie fed off of.

The North Koreans are clownish parodies of bogeymen, no more threatening than Scooby-Doo villains. There's never a fear that they will succeed in their idiotic mission, because they're so incompetent and comically incompetent. At least they've got big guns, even if they don't know how to use them.

But still, they would have gotten away with it, if not for those darn kids.

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, Josh Peck and Isabel Lucas. Written by Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore, based on the 1984 screenplay by Kevin Reynolds and John Milius, which was based on Reynolds' story. Directed by Dan Bradley. Rated PG-13. 93 minutes.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Silver Linings Playbook

You could say Pat Solitano doesn't have much going for him. Freshly yanked by his mom from a mental hospital after having been locked away for beating his wife's lover nearly to death, he's broke, socially awkward and directionless. An otherwise good guy who's prone to violent outbursts when he's off his meds -- which he always does his best to be -- he's not allowed to use a phone or contact his estranged wife.

On top of all that, he basis his self esteem on the performance of the perennially underachieving Philadelphia Eagles. When the team loses, as it always does, his crazytown dad blames him for not sitting in the right chair.

Playing a pitiable, psychologically damaged goofball is something new for Bradley Cooper, who is usually cast as a wise-cracking con man in The Hangover movies or the heroic stud in thrillers, like The A-Team and Limitless. For once, he's the guy to laugh at instead of with, but he's so aw-shucks earnest that you feel bad for chuckling at his failures.

Well, you feel bad for a while, until he starts hooking up with Jennifer Lawrence. And not just any Jennifer Lawrence, an emotionally unstable, sexually aggressive, highly flexible, spandex-wearing version of Jennifer Lawrence. Then you're convinced that whatever problems he's got don't mean nothin' and he's the luckiest bastard on the planet.

Lawrence's character is named Tiffany. She's a widow in her early 20s whom her sister (Julia Stiles) regards as a big enough loser to hook up with Pat, the best pal of her henpecked husband.

Yeah, you read that right. That's Saved the Last Dance Julia Stiles, in an actual acting role in an actual movie. Silver Linings Playbook is something like a lost and found of good actors, including Chris Tucker. And yeah, that's Friday "and you know this, maaan!" Ice Cube's sidekick Chris Tucker, acting in his first movie in half a decade, and his second in the last 11 years.

To that lost and found actor list you can also add Good Script Choosing Robert De Niro, who had been kidnapped by aliens 20 years ago and swapped out for Awful Script Choosing Robert De Niro. It's nice to have Good Script Choosing Robert De Niro back, if only for a moment.

Finding and sticking with the right tone in a black comedy like this is tough, but director David O. Russell, who's worked it in Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter, knows what he's doing. Sure, the Lawrence character is unrealistic -- someone who is born not of flesh and blood but horny screenwriters' late-night fantasies. But it doesn't matter. She works in the film, either as a necessary narrative conduit for Cooper's self-discovery arc, or because she's Jennifer Lawrence in spandex. Not sure which.

A story device straight out of a 1980s high school comedy gets Tiffany to bribe Pat into training with her for a dance competition, and their training montages are intercut with the Eagles' season. No doubt the deleted scenes will show a disgruntled Stiles staring holes through Lawrence's spandex, bitter that the last dance is not saved for her in this movie.

You can tell where the romantic comedy part of the movie is going all along -- gee, will Pat stop obsessing over his wife and fall for Jennifer Lawrence in Spandex? -- but it doesn't matter, because the movie is funny and smart enough to distract you away from its nonsensical silliness.

Either that or because it's got Jennifer Lawrence in spandex.

Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker and Julia Stiles. Written by David O. Russell and Matthew Quick. Directed by Russell. 120 minutes. Rated R.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Arbitrage

If there were a movie about Mitt Romney, no one other than Richard Gere could play him. Just as Romney, unfairly or not, is typecast as an over-privileged, condescending, out-of-touch d-bag, those are pretty much the only roles Gere gets. Good thing Gere is better at Romney at doing what he does.

In Arbitrage Gere plays Robert Miller, a master of the universe who made a killing on betting on the housing bubble to burst. The world regards him in awe, as some sort of visionary — the Nate Silver of derivatives trading. But inside, Miller's world is dissolving. He's overextended, getting by on credit and image rather than cash. The feds are hunting him down, determined to send him and possibly his innocent heiress/business associate daughter (Brit Marling) to jail for corporate fraud, and then there's the bone-crusher, involving his mistress, a car accident and a sloppy cover-up.

Writer/director Nicholas Jarecki's drama tracks Miller's frantic struggle to keep things together by any means necessary. On the surface Miller appears to be a nice enough guy, but he's got a calculating, cold-blooded side that thrives on an uncontrollable survival instinct. He'll call in any favors he feels are owed to him and throw anyone in range under the bus to spare his own hide. The drive that got him to the top works to tear himself down even as he flails at the pieces of his life.

Susan Sarandon sparkles as Miller's socialite wife, who has made peace with the fact that she's married not to a man, but to an image that must be impeccably maintained, lest the trappings of her silver-lined life vanish. She, too, though, is a survivor, and is prepared to lock horns with her husband, using his betrayals as a bargaining chip to ensure she makes it out of the collapse intact.

Moving at a frenetic, Michael Clayton-like pace, Arbitrage is a gripping, if insignificant race to the bottom. I'm not sure why the movie was tabbed for awards consideration — there are no standout performances to fall in love with — but the film is a rugged page-turner, which is more than you can say for drawing room dullards that can dominate the season.

Starring Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling, Tim Roth and Nate Parker. Written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki. 107 minutes. Rated R.

Review: Skyfall

Skyfall is an awesome James Bond movie until it gets tired of all that, goes a little crazy and turns into a not-so-awesome Home Alone movie.

There you are, watching a solid Bond until suddenly the Home Alone phase kicks in and there you are with a booby trap-laden house that adorable little Kevin, uh, I mean tough, gritty James Bond, uses to knock off a sneaky gang of terrorists one by one. Well, sometimes four by four.

Nothing against Home Alone and its wacky slapstick antics, but you'd think a superagent with 50 years of experience would be able to think of a better plan than running off to booby trap a mansion. Then again, maybe all that experience is exactly why Bond does what he ends up doing. After half a century you start to run out of ideas and just start repeating things you saw in Macaulay Culkin movies.

It's eyebrow-raising to see an Oscar-winning director like Sam Mendes take on a Bond flick. His presence can mean one of two things: That the American Beauty/Road to Perdition filmmaker is adding resonance, style and depth to a franchise known for its bombastic silliness, or that he's hard up and slumming for a paycheck. With Skyfall, both turn out to be true.

What the movie does well, it does very well. Start with the villain, a hackerterrorist (if that wasn't a word before, it deserves to be now, thanks to this movie) played by Javier Bardem, back in the full-throttle creeptastic zone he entered in No Country for Old Men.

His name is Silva, and he's the definition of beast mode. He can easily escape an underground plastic cell that looks like the one Magneto was trapped in at the end of the first X-Men movie. He can gross people out by pulling out dentures and revealing hillbilly teeth. He can tie James Bond to a chair and share his evil plans while totally getting to second base with him. Vampish Bond girls are a well-known phenomenon, but for a minute there, Silva is the first Bond guy.

There's more. Silva is so good with computers that he can push a button and make anything, anywhere explode. Sure, his plans for world domination may be lacking in creativity -- he grabs a hold of the proverbial file that lists the identity of every embedded secret agent around the world -- but he carries out  his cliche antics with a flourish that recalls Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.

Craig is nearly as intense, continuing to do his Jason Bourne-style Bond thing, dispensing the usual tricky Bond gadgets for the old-fashioned technique of shooting guys in the face. Craig's Bond seemingly learned how to fight from Call of Duty and has little need for disguises, compulsive womanizing, awful sex puns or jetpacks. Lucky for him, his Steve McQueen cool makes up for his lack of self-aware sass.

Mendes and his screenwriting crew try to flesh out the characters, tying Bond, Silva and M (Judi Dench) together with a dark past. The effort is far deeper than the usual Bond villain motivation, but seems a little forced and stiff, requiring characters to swap exposition-revealing monologues to fill us all in on who's got a grudge against who and why.

I could have done without the way the movie tries to issue a Batman-like origin for Bond that explains his drive and dedication. The character works better as a mysterious cipher you can't quite peg rather than a scared little boy who has built a hardened shell in which to hide.

Although the writing may be off, the action is superb. The movie is best when it shuts up and blows stuff up, sending Bond off on a wild spree of collapsing subway tunnels, blistering shootouts and lungs-burning chases.   The first hour and change is nearly all action, and it's impossible to wipe the grin off your face. The movie could have ended at the halfway point, failed to wrap up most of its plot threads and just said "Hey, that's all for now. Come back for the sequel," and would have left me with nothing to complain about.

But this is a Bond movie that wants to be more, and by reaching too far, it ends up missing greatness and pulling down Home Alone. It's enough to make you clasp you hands to your face while that grin turn into a look of shock, much like that of little Kevin when he tries to shave.

Starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Albert Finney, Ben Whishaw and Naomi Harris. Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, based on Ian Fleming's characters. Directed by Sam Mendes. Rated PG-13. 143 minutes.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Wreck-it Ralph

If you're going to rip off an animated movie, make it Toy Story.

That's the path plowed by Wreck-it Ralph, an animated Disney comedy that answers the question kids ponder: What do video game characters do when the arcade is closed?

They only ask that question, though, after wondering "What's a video arcade?" and "Why would people keep popping quarters in a machine when they can just download games for a buck on their iPhones?

The best answer parents can give to those inquiries from their adorable offspring is "Shut up. Just watch. Stop ruining the movie for me."

This is definitely one of those movies that parents like me are frighteningly overeager to drag their kids to, rather than the other way around. That's because of the trailer, which gives away the movie's best scene: Disgruntled villain Wreck-it Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) seeking comfort in a gaming bad guy support group that includes Bowser, Dr. Robotnik a pair of Street Fighter guys and a generic zombie. As soon as I saw that trailer either me or my 5-year-old jumped up and down with glee, declaring it to be the best movie ever based on that scene alone. I'll leave it to you to guess which of us it was.

While watching the full movie — which unfortunately does not consist entirely of support group meetings — dampened my enthusiasm a bit, it still gave me to grab the arm of 5-year-old Luke or my 3-yaar-old, Emma and inappropriately shout "Oh my gosh did you just see that!!" Prompting them to shush me.

Director Rich Moore, a veteran of animated TV (The Simpsons, The Critic, Futurama), crams his first feature film with enough gaming references to make you toss up your hands like a dead 8-bit Mario in Super Mario Bros. What the movie lacks in cohesive story it makes up in appreciation for a youth well wasted pouring lunch money into thirsty coin slots.

Strip away the gaming references — and the movie does just that in its feet-dragging middle act — and it's debatable as to whether Wreck-it Ralph is still a good movie. The film sputters when it focuses on the mechanics of its silly plot, involving Ralph's efforts to retrieve a hard-fought medal from sprightly kart racing character Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), who is determined to show up her condescending competitors by winning the big race at the end of the movie. Ralph was a made-up guy from a made-up game, except for the fact that there is a real Wreck-it Ralph game now, which in turn is based on this movie, so he's actually... Sorry, my brain just melted.

Also along for the ride are Ralph's archrival Fix-It Felix (Jack McBreyer), modern shooter Rambo-woman Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch), and about ten thousand real and made-up game characters voiced by the likes of Mindy Kaeling, Ed O'Neill, Adam Carolla, Dennis Haysbert and Horatio Sanz. There are parallel stories of redemption, yadda yadda, and one emotional moment that managed to make Luke start to cry, but otherwise this is a copy of the Toy Story plot that left the pathos untouched.

Like most any game, Wreck-it Ralph is most fun when it's messing around without a particular goal. Like when Ralph heads over to the Tapper machine to drown his sorrows in what's described as "root beer" but what we all have known for 29 years is just beer. Or when he's chatting up gibberish-speaking Q*bert. Or, yeppers, that support group scene. Wreck-it Ralph himself may be a brute known for breaking stuff, but I'm happy to report his film did not break my games-loving heart.

Starring the voices of John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer, Sarah Silverman and Jane Lynch. Written by Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston. Directed by Rich Moore. Rated PG. 108 minutes.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Fun Size

I guess it's called Fun Size because the marketing team wasn't cool with more accurate titles such as Drudgery Size, Fun Sighs or Don't Watch This Awful Movie.

The Halloween-themed comedy nails the "trick" part of the deal but is light on the "treat" part of the equation.   Put it this way, the movie's funniest character is the only one who doesn't talk.

Director Josh Schwartz, who has directed several episodes of just about every CW show you could imagine, seems to be going for the wacky 1980s teen comedy vibe of Weird Science and Adventures in Babysitting -- the kind of movie in which little kids slip into strangers' cars and people pull out and shoot guns for no reason, and everyone is cool with it.

Victoria Justice, or as her birth certificate identifies her, Miniature Megan Fox With Slightly More Acting Ability, manages to escape from the cage Nickelodeon keeps her in to star in a movie. She plays Wren, a social outcast who goes to the one school in the country in which ridiculously attractive girls aren't popular. This would be Wren's big night to move up into the A list and make out with a dreamy popular kid at his big party, except for the fact that her mom is forcing her to take her 8-year-old brother (Jackson Nicoll) trick-or-treating.

The kid, who doesn't talk either because he's distraught that his dad died or he refuses to recite anything in the idiotic script, scampers off into the night. Wren recruits a fellow dork (Thomas Mann) who's got a crush on her to escort her around town searching for her brother in an obstacle course of bonkers mishaps that will have you cackling -- at yourself, for mistakenly thinking you had a good idea by spending money on tickets to this thing. 

On the rare occasion something funny happens, the movie goes and screws it up. Case in point, when a giant, robotic fast food chicken sign falls down and starts making sweet love to a Volvo, all the extras stand around laughing at it way too hard, Hoovering away the moment. Then we get more footage of the chicken rocking the Volvo's world, and then still some more. And more over-laughing. 

Wren's bestie, April (Jane Levy), is such a great pal that she jokes constantly about the kid being lost and urges her to forget about it and go to the big party. There's far too little screen time spent on the kid, who could play Jay and Silent Bob's lovechild in the next Kevin Smith movie and will definitely make a solid street mime one day.

Chelsea Handler, age 37, must have an agent to fire since she's already getting miscast as mommy of people like 19-year-old Justice, which is almost like casting the Olsen twins as Elizabeth Olsen's grandmas. Awkwardly, Handler's character exists in the movie only to be made fun of for how old she is.

Johnny Knoxville, on the other hand, needs to give his agent a shoulder rub because he somehow managed to score him an acting gig in a non-direct-to-video flick for the first time since people thought making a movie of The Dukes of Hazzard was a great idea. Knoxville plays a thug whose big moment comes when he confronts a flaming bag of poop.

There are many applicable metaphors in that scene, but I'll leave you to interpret them as you see fit.


Fun Size boils down to a rotating festival of three separate, equally dull movies: Wren's boring chase, the kid's amusing-but-disturbing escapades and Handler's desperate attempts to claw her way out of the screen and strangle those responsible for sticking her there. As far as Halloween-season entertainment options go, you'd be better off bobbing for apples embedded with razor blades.


Starring Victoria Justice, Chelsea Handler, Jackson Noll and Josh Pence. Written by Max Werner. Directed by Josh Schwartz. Rated PG-13. 90 minutes.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Argo

It may be hard to believe in our peaceful times, but back in 1979, the United States didn't get along so well with Iran, which seized 52 hostages from the American embassy in protest. They would have taken six more had they not escaped and holed up in the Canadian embassy until the CIA rescued them by masquerading as a movie production.

It's a story so outrageous and silly, not the least because it was known by such as stupid name as the Canadian Caper, that it would be laughed out of production meetings had it not actually happened and were it not backed by documents declassified in 1997. It was such a brazen, daredevil operation that it can only be dramatized by Daredevil himself.

Ben Affleck produces, directs and stars in a Ben Affleck production of a Ben Affleck film about Ben Affleck being Ben Affleck. Also, Affleck Affleck Affleck.

Affleck has come a hell of a long way since he pranced around as a blind superhero in red tights. With Gone Baby Gone, The Town and now this film, he's developed an untouchable resume as a filmmaker that's almost stunning enough to make everyone forgive him for starring in Gigli, Jersey Girl, Reindeer Games and Paycheck. Almost.

He plays CIA operative Tony Mendez, who concocts the idea to rescue the hidden hostages by dreaming up a movie so awful that Affleck would have starred in it 10 years ago. It's a sci-fi film called Argo about a planet that looks exactly like Iran. It's up to Mendez and the hostages to convince Iranian officials that the movie was commissioned by a Hollywood studio that dispatched six Canadian crew members that need to do some location scouting just as the hostage crisis is going on.

Affleck is good enough in the role to chase away rumors that he was only cast because he was sleeping with the director. The ever scarier-Bryan Cranston breaks good in playing a CIA boss who champions the caper amid a doubting home office. Alan Arkin and John Goodman play the guys who have the easiest part of the mission -- to stay home and answer an office phone in case dudes at the Iranian airport call to check out whether or not Argo is a real movie.

Affleck makes the movie resemble something made in the late 70s or early 80s, thanks to all the period detail, including feathered hair, sideburns, 'staches and giant collars. If it's tough to add suspense to a story that history dictates will turn out OK for the good guys, the movie doesn't show it. Certain doom seems to be waiting for the escapees at every turn, narrowly avoided by equal parts moxie, misdirection and luck. The intensity starts as a slow grind and continues to ratchet up until the end, when you've warped both armrests with nonstop squeezing from your trembling fingers.

There's only one significant flaw in the movie, but it is a major one. It's that A Flock of Seagull's "I Ran (So Far Away)" is not the theme song. If you can overlook that shortcoming, you'll likely be entranced by Argo. If you cannot overlook that shortcoming you will hate it and Affleck will have to deal with life without your approval.

Starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman and Taylor Schilling. Written by Chris Terrio. Directed by Affleck. 120 minutes. Rated R.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Pitch Perfect

There are so many reasons to hate Pitch Perfect, and yet it's impossibly tough to do so. It's a movie that you'll laugh at as much with, then store in the back of your mind until you meet someone else who's seen it. You'll start talking about how awful it is, then start trying to top each other by talking about the parts that were the most awful.

Then, after you've spent half an hour of your life talking and laughing about a movie you were sure you didn't like, it will occur to you that you actually hate-liked it to the point that you wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Pitch Perfect is one of those movies in which a mismatched performance group gets together, overcomes infighting and strives to win the championship of whatever while at the same time uniting the lead characters in everlasting love. The hook here is that the groups are preciously choreographed a capella song-and-dance groups like what you'd see on Glee or The Sing Off.

You come for the electric song and dance numbers and feel free to take a bathroom break, snack bar run or nap when the drama starts getting all dramatic. Characters may have problems to solve, but you may as well block out what they're saying and imagine the dialogue actually goes:

"Oh no! We're not singing and that means we're really boring again!"

"Quick, let's start singing and dancing again!"

"But we're stuck in a dull story scene!"

"OK, let's just shout at each other until it's time to sing and dance again!"

For all its awfulness, there are aspects of Pitch Perfect that are undeniably good. For one, Rebel Wilson, who plays the group's answer to Honey Boo Boo, an overly self-assured plus-size bundle of joy who calls herself Fat Amy. A dynamic performer cast from the mold of Melissa McCarthy, Wilson is so exuberantly funny that if she met female comedian-bashing Adam Carolla, he would undoubtedly declare her to be a man - his highest compliment.

Also winning is Anna Kendrick, who does her eternally annoyed eye-rolling thing as Beca, a college freshman who is coerced by her dad into joining the Bellas, the all-female a capella squad, and chief rival to - not the Edwards, but the Treblemakers.

Beca's rival is Queen bee Aubrey (Anna Camp) bosses around her fellow Bellas, including sidekick Chloe (Brittany Snow) and has the adorably irritating tendency to tack on the prefix "aca" to the beginning of things the way Smurfs do the word "smurf." Aubrey forbids hook-aca-ups with the hated Treblemakers, so Beca's budding romance with Jesse (Skyler Astin) is un-aca-ceptable.

Forget about the plot, though. The filmmakers sure do. There's little rhyme or reason for anything that happens. Things are so free and loose that eventually you stop questioning why the contest announcing team of John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks are following around the Bellas just about wherever they go, deriding them for spending too much time on their Ace of Base routine.

There are just enough wacky jokes to keep things fun and lively. A shy girl making snow angels in a pool of vomit, women referring to their lady parts by male names and Fat Amy mistaking burrito residue on her outfit as evidence that she's been victimized by a drive-by shooter are some highlights. Not to mention aca-puns. Aca-puns galore!

Those are the things that stick with you when you're mulling over your inability to hate a movie that's just too easy to love.

Starring Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow and Rebel Wilson. Written by Kay Cannon, adapted from Mickey Rapkin's book. Directed by Jason Moore. Rated PG-13. 112 minutes.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Looper

Movie studios play this little game where they try to pretend the source of movie piracy is people recording preview screenings on their cell phones. They post security guards at the door to make sure people don't bring their phones inside, then those guards stand in the aisles during the show, scanning the crowd for non-existent offenders.

Looper is so good that the security guards were absolutely useless. Instead of watching the crowd, they were staring at the screen the whole time. I wouldn't have noticed, except for the fact that it occurred to me every 10 minutes or so how amazing this movie was, and how impossible it was to watch the crowd instead of the screen. Just to prove myself right, I darted my eyes over to the security guards to make sure they were watching the movie just like I had been.

And then, in that tenth of a second in which my eyes were on the guards instead of the screen, I got insanely jealous of them for watching such a great movie when I wasn't, so I immediately went back to watching. At least until I needed to verify that they were watching the movie just like I should have been.

So oblivious were the guards to what was going on, I could have propped my phone on top of one guy and adjusted the picture by shining a light off the other one's forehead while doing a celebratory tap dance with a peg leg, while wearing a parrot on my shoulder and an eye patch.

I couldn't blame them. Looper takes parts from Terminator, Blade Runner, Inception, Back to the Future, Wanted and the three and a half good Die Hard movies, creating a super movie that shoots rainbow pixie dust out from the screen and makes viewers into better people.

Writer/director Rian Johnson, who wowed everyone with the fast-talking high school film noir Brick in 2005,  but hadn't done much since, lives up to his potential with a time travel movie that makes you wish you could go back to 2005 to show everyone who watched the awful time travel movie A Sound of Thunder to deliver the message "It gets better."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is contractually obligated to star exclusively in mind-bending sci-fi thriller and seminal Zooey Deschanel anti-romances, plays a Looper, which is future-talk for Guy Who Shotgun Blasts Dudes The Mafia Sends Back In Time To Get Whacked.

The work is steady and pays well, but there are drawbacks. Like, say, when future you is Bruce Willis, sent back in time to be murdered by you, who then roundhouse kicks you instead, then totes you around trying to convince you to murder 5-year-olds who may grow up to be Looper eradicators.  

Yeah, Loopers really need to unionize.

Then again, the downside of the job is canceled out by perks, such as the occasional moments when you're stranded on a farm run by a character named Hottest Single Mom Farmer Evaaaa! (Emily Blunt), who is not opposed to sexing up Loopers when she's absolutely certain her child, Five Year Old Whom Bruce Willis Wants To Shoot Like The Dog In Duck Hunt, is fast asleep.

The plot, though awesome, doesn't quite encompass what's great about Looper. What does encompass what's great about Looper is all the ramifications of hanging out with your future self. For instance, if you want to send him a message, you can text him. But if one of you doesn't have a phone, you can carve a message into your skin and it will show up on his arm in the form of a scar. Just wait until AT&T figures out a way to charge you for that.

The movie is set in 2044, a future of hover motorcycles -- Meaning season 37 of Sons of Anarchy must totally rock -- boomerang-shaped phones and tiny frog toys that Emily Blunt uses to make booty calls to Loopers.

Although the future is amazing, the people of the era will no doubt be nostalgic for 2012, back when that amazing time travel movie came out, and security guards were powerless to stop people from pirating it.

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis. Written and directed by Rian Johnson. 118 minutes. Rated R.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: Hotel Transylvania

The whole time Hotel Transylvania played I sat frozen in terror. Judging by the general lack of creativity on display, I was absolutely sure the cast of gangly animated monsters would break out into a rendition of Monster Mash. If they couldn't work it in to the regular running time, they sure wouldn't miss the opportunity to shoehorn it into the credits.

I wasn't going to be able to handle the Monster Mash performance when it came. I knew it was destined to force me to hate a movie that I sort of liked, and I loathed that prospect. Luckily the catastrophe never came, and all my suspense was for naught.

That's just the way the movie goes, doing little to dazzle you but less to offend. Given half a chance, the kid-friendly monster romance will sink its fangs into you and convert you into its ranks of the gleeful undead. Like a giddy grandma on Halloween, it dispenses candy giddily, at least for your eyes and ears. The Count Chocula/Boo Berry-like animated style, along with the impossibly star-studded voice cast, jolts electric shocks into the dead, patched-together screenplay to pump what passes for life into the stumbling, Karlovian monstrosity, which you can only gawk at as it innocently stumbles about.

Adam Sandler voices none other than Dracula, who has created a sanctuary from monsterkind by building a mansion boardinghouse sequestered beyond a haunted forest. Mummies, hags, trolls, werewolves and the like scurry for protection from humans, which they imagine to be terrifying hunters of their kind. They all adore Drac's shelter, except for Mavis (Selenea Gomez), Drac's daughter, who longs to escape and check out the world of man for herself. Looking to protect his fresh-faced 118-year-old girl, Dracula conspires to trick Mavis into wanting to stay.

There's a lot of Monsters Inc., Little Mermaid and even a little Finding Nemo going on here. Drawing from classics, however, does not necessarily a great film make. The slapstick tries too hard, the verbal exchanges are as limp and tattered as the mummy's bandages, and the love story, pairing Mavis with extreme-dude Jonathan (Andy Samberg) is about as appetizing as Drac finds garlic.

But at least there is no Master Mash, which counts for something. Plus, the movie openly mocks Twilight, which scores it enough points to get me to drop my torch and pitchfork.

Starring the voices of Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Molly Shannon, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi and CeeLo Green. Written by Peter Baynham and Robert Smigel, based on a story by Todd Durham, Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. 91 minutes. Rated PG.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The problem with life is that it disobeys the rules of a coming-of-age movie. Whenever you address your problems head-on, start to discover yourself, only to sink into doubt during a crisis of confidence only to overcome that doubt and emerge changed and better, the credits don't roll, leaving you happy ever after.

Instead, something awful happens that makes you realize you really haven't learned anything. You're no better off than you were before, and the only thing that came of your coming of age is more age.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is determined to be more like life than a coming-of-age movie, and it's worse off for it. It lures you into the corner of Charlie (Logan Lerman), a tortured, friendless freshman, then lets a few good things happen for him, only to torpedo everything and have him sink to lower depths than before, with tougher problems and less hope.

Credit director Stephen Chbosky for nailing the rhythms and hells of adolescent life. His movie is based on his screenplay, which is based on his book, which is probably based on his memories, which is definitely based on a mess of insecurities and dread. The movie amounts to a brain dump about how hard it is to make friends, keep them, find romance and not screw it up, all while hanging on to your fleeting sanity.

Wallflower would be even more of a downer if not for the presence of Ezra Miller, who was Kevin in We Need to Talk About Kevin. As a flamboyant social outcast named Patrick, he takes the movie by force as the ringleader of a group informally called the Wallflowers, which is high school's version of the Island of Lost Toys. Chbosky seems more interested in coloring Patrick's character than the one that's probably based on himself, so he gives him all the best lines, most entertaining things to do and most absorbing conflicts.

Patrick may be the king Wallflower, but he's more like the giant man-eating piranha plant in the center of the room. Charlie, on the other hand, is so effective at living up to the Wallflower title that it's tough to see what Sam (Emma Watson), Patrick's stepsister and equally interesting wild child, would ever see in him.

Watson's got more talent than her Harry Potter classmates -- she was Hermione, in case you only ever knew her as That Girl Who Played Hermione Eight Times -- and it's exciting to see her trash her prim typecast to play the sort of girl moms warn their sons about. Patrick and Sam are too interesting to be relegated to sidebars in Charlie's long, dull descent into doom, and deserve their own movie so much that you start to coordinate your bathroom breaks and cell phone time checks to when they're off the screen.

The movie's other stars also have far too little to do. Paul Rudd plays Charlie's awesome English teacher, who cultivates the talent he sees in the kid. You hope he's got a plot twist or extra dimension somewhere up his tweed sleeves, but there's nothing. Kate Walsh and Dylan McDermott are Charlie's clueless parents, but you'll have to check IMDB to verify that they were even in the movie.

No such check is necessary to make sure Lernman plays sad, aloof and bored Charlie, who proves the greatest perk of being a real Wallflower is that at least you don't get stuck watching a movie about one.

Starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Kate Walsh, Dylan McDermott and Paul Rudd. Written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, based on his novel. 102 minutes. Rated PG-13.

My novel, Stormin' Mormon, is available as a Kindle book for $1.