The Social Network might be remembered as a film that came out too early. Its real-life drama is still ongoing. The film’s drama centre sod Facebook’s founding and the Internet revolution that followed. Two of its four founders – Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) – get most of the screen time. Reportedly, Zuckerberg wished filmmakers wouldn’t make his biopic while he was still alive. Not an unreasonable wish considering that The Social Network is character assassination masquerading as compelling social commentary. Story is far more important to director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin. A good story outweighs everything else, the truth especially.

Within the first five minutes of The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg is unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara). After posts a few bitchy blog comments about Erica, and hacks Harvard University’s databases with Eduardo Saverin’s help. His hacking creates Face Mash, a website where Harvard woman can be ranked by their hotness. The site gets so much traffic it crashes Harvard’s network in a few hours. Impressed, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) and their associate Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) offer Mark the chance to program their own social networking site, Harvard Connection. Mark agrees to work with them, but never does. Instead, he goes to Eduardo with a social networking idea of his own, and after Eduardo’s thousand-dollar investment, facebook is born. The website’s popularity explodes in weeks and when the Winklevoss twins and Divya get wind of it, they’re ready to sure to sue Mark for stealing their idea. As Facebook grows it acquires a president – Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster. it turns into an online empire as Parker’s influence on the company grows. And the inevitable break down of Mark and Eduardo’s partnership turns into one of the most infamous break-ups in corporate history.

Most of the performances in The Social Network are solid enough. Jesse Eisenberg has made a career of playing likeable nerd. Here he plays an unlikeable one. As Mark he talks a mile a minute, spewing pretentious, snarky observations. It’s sometimes hard to see the genius underneath all the dialogue. But Zuckerberg is more than just a whiz kid who understands codes. He can see the future because he will be friend to get there, then that’s just part of the journey. While Eisenberg plays Mark with an irritating energy, Andrew Garfield’s job is to play Eduardo with more calm. Unfortunately, this calm makes Garfield blend in with the wallpaper for most of the film. Eduardo does have one incredible moment, though you have to wait until almost the end of The Social Eduardo confronts Mark and their friendship finally crumbles, he breaks down. Garfield isn’t scenery chewing. It’s the kind of surprising scene that redeems flawed films.

The most arresting performances come from Armie Hammer and Josh Pence. The faces of the Winklevoss twins are played by Armie Hammer while Josh Pence body doubles as Tyler Winklevoss. You won’t spot the body double, but the seamless face technology may well become David Fincher’s trademark, since he also digitally aged Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Technology aside, Hammer plays the Winklevoss twins as polished preps with easy charm. Hammer will probably spend his career playing senator and blue bloods. While the Winklevoss twins are privileged brats, they also inject an absurd humor into The Social Network. Zuckerberg’s theft was probably the best thing that ever happened to them – it’s likely nobody would have heard of the Winklevosses otherwise.

While The Social Network features an ensemble cast, it really rises and falls with Sorkin’s screenplay. The dialogue feels written, if such a thing is possible. It grates on the ears and reads better than it sounds. The story itself barrels on and on, nearly going off the rails until the third and final act. Basically, The Social Network feels like two separate films. The first two-thirds give you little room to reflect and the last third is a slowly unraveling tragedy. The ending is stunning and surprisingly silent. Its triumphant and tragic as a billionaire inventor is held emotionally captive by his own creation. The surprising thing about The Social Network is how hard and fast the nerd live. Harvard life is a string of parties filled with dot-com groupies. The film isn’t an endorsement of Ivy League schools, Silicon Valley, on the geeks who infest them. These upstarts are made out as possible no matter how charming some of them may be. It’s as if the film is indicting an entire generation. This is one of its problems. The Social Network has been marked as the film that defines a generation. A film about the internet isn’t enough to pull off that feat. The Social Network isn’t great enough, and the generation it tries to capture can’t only be defined by the websites it uses.

The Facebook saga isn’t over: the Winklevosses have since been hit with their own lawsuit for theft, and they apparently plan to sue Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg all over again. While this emotional drama plays out, the film still feels cold. Caring about these characters is a tough sell. Real or on celluloid, they aren’t likeable enough to love, or evil enough to love to hate.

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An Education is about growing up, and breaking out. Its 16-year-old Jenny Mellor’s (Carey Mulligan) coming-of-age, just as it is Carey Mullingan’s and Danish director Lone Scherfig’s – Oscar nomination, and with Scherfig’s directing earning the film a best picture Oscar nomination. Set in early 1960s England, An Education is based on journalist Lynn Barber’s 2003 personal essay. At times the film is well-crafted, flawlessly acted; only to be ruined by characters add a story frustratingly out of emotional reach. Worse, you’re left wondering why you should care about any of it. It’s a whole lot of nothing; its style over substance that by the end will leave you asking “so what?”

Jenny Mellor is a middle-class English schoolgirl from Twickenham. Her strict parents Jack and Marjorie (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) are obsessed with her education. They fuss over her o”levels and A”levels, press her to study Latin, and force her to join the orchestra. All this in the hopes of Jenny getting into Oxford. On a rainy afternoon, with a cello in hand after an orchestra rehearsal, a stranger, David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard) offers her a lift. He is friendly, seemingly genuinely interested in her tales about school. As Lynn Barber remembered, little did she realize that her being a schoolgirl was precisely why David was so interested? David is nearly twice her age, but he soon persuades her parents to let him take her out on Friday and Saturday nights to the opera, clubs art auctions, five star restaurants, and eventually even a weekend in Paris. The real David Goldman took Lynn Baber as far as Amsterdam and Bruges. Over the course of their escapades Jenny meets David’s business associate Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Danny’s worldly and fashionable girlfriend, Helen (Rosamund Pike). Before long Jenny learns that David and his friends aren’t rich sophisticates, but something far sleazier.

Even though Carey Mulligan was 22 at the time of shooting she seizes upon Jenny’s innocent adolescence perfectly. She starts off as a giggling, clever schoolgirl. She speaks perfect French, even though she has ever been to France, and has an affinity for classical art. She’s smarter than everyone around her, but has had no real life experiences. She’s all theory and no practice. After meeting David, Jenny morphs into a stylish sophisticate who dances at jazz clubs and jets off to Paris an weekends. It isn’t just the hairdos and designer dresses that make Jenny seem older as time goes by – it’s the way Mulligan holds her cigarette or over time starts to look directly into Sarsgaard’s eyes.

But sophisticate doesn’t make a girl into a woman, even if she ends up engaged.

Aside from the dodgy English absent, Peter Sarsgaard does a capable job as David. At first, it’s easy to see why Jenny wants him. He’s interested in her and her parents, he drives a Bristol, and he’s Jewish – to Jenny this is exotic because she’s never met a Jew before. David has beguiling finesses that Sarsgaard plays with ease. It’s remarkable that with each amoral character he plays, Sarsgaard can still pull you into his web, despite your doubts and suspicions.

While Jenny might be easily taken with David her parents reaction is far more surprising. Despite David’s vagueness about his profession and the considerable age gap between him and Jenny, her parents are eager for them to be together. There are never any objections to their relationship, not even any tough questions. It’s as if Jack and Marjorie Mellor want to be fooled. As Lynn barber describes her parents – they were new to the middle class and they were determined that their daughter remained there or move up. An education might be the great equalizer, but in the pre-feminist, pre-swinging London era of the 1960s good husband was an even better equalizer.

Jenny and David’s affair in An Education is a by-product of the gender inequalities and class barriers of the 1960s. The film, however, barely addresses any of these issues. Class only manifests itself in Jenny’s parent’s desire to get her to Oxford. They remember how hard life was during the war, but their acceptable alternative presents itself with David. What girl needs an education or a job after she’s been married off?

Like most coming-of –age films An Education is predictable. You can see it all coming before Jenny’s desire to go to Paris is predictable. Paris seems to be only dream destination for every lonely, desperate Anglophone in film and literature. The real Jenny actually journeyed top Bruges and Amsterdam and yet it is Paris – once again – that is romanticized. The film’s other problem is that it can’t figure out its tone. Its one part light-hearted romp and one part up it nearly clashes with the film’s (and Jenny’s) world view. It’s not totally convincing.

Lone Scherfig does give an excellent representative of the 1960s – from the designer dresses to the drab school uniforms. An Education captures the spirit of England’s 1960s but in it desperate effort for sentimental nostalgia it glides over the inequalities and class warfare. For all its charm, the film, like Barber’s essay, feel pointless. It’s difficult to care about another schoolgirl getting the run-around from an older man. It’s an average and forgettable film with a few shining performances.

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They don’t make monster movies like they used to. They, being Universal Studios. For nearly 40 years Universal released scores of monster movies, some becoming classics that have influenced the horror genre ever since. The remakes of these movies, like The Mummy and its sub-par sequels, and updates like Van Helsing, have been Universal’s doing, but these remakes and re-imaginings have never captured the true horror of their originals. The Wolfman is a scary, valiant attempt. It isn’t as funny as The Mummy, but it isn’t as loud, unfocused, and dim as Van Helsing. Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman is based on 1941’s The Wolf Man, which was Universal’s second werewolf movie at the time. The original movie franchise instituted much of the werewolf lore modern audiences take for granted: susceptibility to silver, the effects of the full moon, even the humanization of the wolf form. It is upon this franchise that The Wolfman respectfully stands.

It is 1891 and Lawrence Talbot’s (Benicio del Toro) brother Ben Talbot (Simon Merrells) has been viciously murdered. Lawrence has been touring on the stage as Hamlet, but he returns to his childhood home, Talbot Hall in Blackmoor, England. There he finds Ben’s fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Bunt) consumed with grief, and his menacing father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins). The local believe a group of Gypsies is responsible for Ben’s murder. Determined to solve the mystery of his brother’s murder, Lawrence visits the Gypsies, but their camping ground is suddenly ambushed by the beast. The beast bites Lawrence and lopes off into the night. Inspector Francis Aberline (Hugo Weaving) comes to Blackmoor to investigate and immediately suspects Lawrence because of the time he spent in an insane asylum. As the full moon rises, Lawrence transforms into the Wolfman and begins his bloody rampage. When Aberline finds Lawrence in the woods in human form, and covered in blood, Lawrence is sent back to the asylum.

Lawrence Talbot is oddly heroic in human form, and despite his narcissism, he’s a tragic figure. He was a tortured man long before the wolf bite. His transformations simply fuel his angst. He tries to suppress the prowling monster inside, but the full moon is inescapable and the Wolfman is unstoppable. As the Gypsy woman Maleva says, only one who loves him can stop him. Blurring the lines of hero and anti-hero is what Benicio del Toro does best. In The Wolfman he makes it look easy enough for it to look like he’s phoning it in, even when he isn’t.

It’s del Toro’s support cast that can’t keep up. Emily Blunt as Gwen Conliffe is largely wasted. It isn’t Blunt’s fault. Hollywood has a terrible habit of casting promising young actresses as dead-eyed love interests. Gwen Conliffe has no other purpose than to weep in a dignified Victorian manner (none of that throwing yourself on the coffin, thank you very much) and glide around daintily in gothic gowns. Anthony Hopkins as John Talbot fares evens worse. He mostly blends into the disarrayed background of Talbot Hall. Hopkins lack energy, and loiters on the screen with a tired expression on his face. Only Hugo Weaving manages to reach del Toro’s level, and as in many of his other movies. Weaving even outshines the leading man.

The star of The Wolfman, however, isn’t any of the actors, but the technical achievements of the set design, art direction, and production design. Like all monster movies, The Wolfman needs a sense of atmosphere to terrify the audience. The original was set in the early 20th century so The Wolfman’s gothic Victorian atmosphere is a new development. Some of this atmosphere comes from nature – the misty moors, the dark woods, and the full moon. But the gothic architecture of Talbot hall, London, and the asylum add a sense of eerie, looming dread. London is a dark haunted shell of a city, this being a few years after the Jack the Ripper murders sent London into a panic. The Wolfman’s murders are just as gruesome as the Ripper’s, and in the film most of his kills are horribly graphic. It’s a gore-fest complete with gallons of blood, beheadings and organs spilling out. If you don’t look away, you’ll see the bloodbath in its entirety. Some might balk – the bloodiness was implied in the original; but they’re not called monster movies for nothing. The gore does go downhill when the Wolfman and his beastly werewolf maker finally meet. It’s more funny than frightening – almost cute.

The Wolfman’s classic make-up style is all thanks to Oscar-winning make-up artist Rick Baker, who worked on Michael Jackson’s Thriller and An American Werewolf in London. The make-up is amazingly wolf-like complete with latex prosthetics, hair and dentures. All this simply enhances Benicio del Toro’s lupine qualities – hair and all. What takes away from the Wolfman’s scariness is the CGI transformation from man to beast. As his bones crack and his face extends, the sense of dread is non-existent. The CGI looks cartoonish at best. Not every remake and update has to be chock-full of CGI for it to be relevant. Sometimes the CGI just diminishes the quality of the movie. It’s the make-up and the set design that looks most real. Sometimes the old way of doing things really is the best way.

The Wolfman is a suspenseful, often scary piece of entertainment, bogged down by necessary, or flat characters, and an abrupt ending that doesn’t have the emotion of the original. The Wolfman tries to strike a balance between its B-movie predecessor and glossy studio blockbuster. It ends up being a juggling act that fails.

Reviewed by: S.I.

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The Kids Are All Right isn’t just about the kids. It’s the coming-of-age of an entire family. The narrative starts off with a couple of angsty kids: 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her younger brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson), but it’s really the parents that are screwed up. Some indie film families are populated with quirky characters, but here the quirks are minimal. There aren’t any freaks in The Kids Are All Right, thanks to director and co-writer Lisa Cholodenko – just snooty, upper class misfits.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) is a lesbian couple whose marriage has gone stale. Nic is a doctor, and the provider for the family. Her wife Jules is a homemaker starting yet another business. Nic is Joni’s biological mother, while Jules is Laser’s. Both children share the same sperm donor. Joni is about to go off to a prestigious college and 15-year-old Laser is a brooding, recreational drug user. In the summer before Joni heads off to college, the siblings meet their biological father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), who is just as curious about the kids as they are about him. Nic is uneasy about having another parent in her kids’ lives, but it’s really the straying wife whom she should be keeping an eye on.

There are no true cast stand-outs in The Kids Are All Right but the performances are solid enough. Nic, with her cropped, sandy pixie-cut, is the stricter parent. And Jules gives Nic the space to be that parent. Bening plays Nic as all hard angles, sipping glasses of wine, silently perched on a patio chair, staring down her nose at Paul, who dropped out of college. This makes him a Philistine in her world. She speaks matter-of-factly, without a hint of humour or irony. Moore plays Jules as the cool mom, but she’s fraught with insecurities – enough insecurities for her to treat her Mexican gardener with cringe-worth disdain.

Mark Ruffalo’s Paul is unexpectedly closest to a character that he isn’t related to – Jules. Jules sees her son in him; so of course, she hops into bed with him. Ruffalo plays the lefty, hippie type so smoothly it’s hard to tell if he’s artfully playing himself, or if he’s masterfully fusing even the most alien character to his own persona.

Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson have seamlessly bring Joni and Laser closer together. It’s a tough task, considering their characters are competing for the affections of a new parent. Wasikowska does it because she radiates more wisdom than most adults. She channels both innocent teenager and old soul. Joni is soft and quiet at first, but she’s much more assertive under Paul’s influence. And Wasikowska does it all with a gentle, crisp, cool wisdom that never quite materialized for her in this year’s Alice in Wonderland – the blockbuster that supposedly made her a star. But in The Kids Are All Right there’s no need for a sword or an increase in size for Wasikowska to be strong. Hidden behind a mane of golden hair, she speaks, not with the haughty surety of adolescence, but the quiet confidence of adulthood. Josh Hutcherson plays the sullen, teenage misfit with a lot more charisma and humour than is usual with these kids. He does it well enough for Laser to not be a teenage type, but an actual character. When Laser discovers his mother’s gay porn stash he’s surprised to find that it’s gay man kind, not gay woman kind. Nic explains that the gay woman kind is too inauthentic, but instead of understanding, he reacts with the same horror with which all kids view their parents’ sex lives.

The Kids Are All Right is meant to be an actors’ showcase, but the film never manages to shake off its stiff, inauthentic dialogue. There are infuriatingly awkward dinners with Paul, and throughout the film Nic and Jules spend their time spouting pseudo-intellectual observations. Most of the characters spend their talking over dinner tables, eating off fancy china, with Nic constantly attached to her glass of wine. There should be a payoff but there isn’t enough there. The kids learn little from Paul except perhaps that they look nothing like him. Exactly why their search for him is a mystery. He does tell Joni to be more assured, but a few months in college would have taught her that. Paul upends Nic and Jules’ marriage, but Paul is an excuse for manufactured conflict that’s boiling just below the surface anyway. Paul could have been any man ore woman who paid attention to Jules.

The film is ambitious on paper because family dramas are a tough sell. And gay family dramas are even tougher. But despite eschewing indie quirk, this family is just as vanilla as the other low-budget film families ultimately prove to be. There’s more hetero sex than gay sex. The kids are harmless. And for all Nic’s concern about Jules not earning any money, they look like they’ve weathered the financial crisis better than half of Hollywood. The conflict is artificial. You can’t imagine the ending of a marriage when one’s spouse’s worst punishment is getting relegated to sleeping on the couch. Luckily, The Kids Are All Right is populated with intelligent female characters that Hollywood wants nothing to do with. There are no dizzy love interests for the hero to gawk at, merely pretentious California liberals for him to have affairs with.

S.I.

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Since disastrous 2-D animated films like Treasure Planet, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Home on the Rang, Disney has turned exclusively to 3-D animated films with Pixar. It’s ironic that Pixar’s chief creative officer, John Lasseter, championed Disney’s return to hand-drawn animation in 2006 by green-lighting The Princess and the Frog, written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Hercules). Though The Princess and the Frog may not quite live up to Disney classics like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, or The Lion King it nevertheless towers over some of the other products of Disney’s renaissance era like Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Princess and the Frog’s 2-D animation is simply breathtaking – drawn with pencil and paper and then scanned onto computers, with digitally created backgrounds. The film is a modern twist on an old Grimm brothers fairytale (The Frog Princess) set in Jazzage New Orleans, and it follows Disney’s traditional Broadway style with music composed by New Orleans native Randy Newman (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., and Cars). The story centres on Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) – Disney’s first black princess – a young waitress who longs to open her own restaurant.

Tiana comes from a humble background like other fairytale princesses, but she has loving parents, Eudora (Oprah Winfrey) and James (Terrence Howard) and a best friend, Charlotte “Lottie” La Bouff (Breanna Brooks and Jennifer Cody). She works two jobs, making time for little else. Soon, Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) breezes into New Orleans to find a rich bride to fund his expensive lifestyle. He settles on Tiana’s wealthy best friend Charlotte, a spoilt but generous Southern belle. Naveen unexpectedly crosses paths with the “Shadow Man”, Dr. Facilier (Keith David), who transforms Naveen into a frog in an elaborate ruse to take over New Orleans from Charlotte’s father, sugar baron
Eli “Big Daddy” La Bouff (John Goodman). Before long Tiana runs into Naveen in his frog form, kisses him, and he becomes a frog herself. The two frogs run off to the bayou to escape Facilier’s minions and to find the benevolent Mama Odie (Jennifer Lewis), a 197 year-old voodoo priestess.

Tiana is spunky, more akin to Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She’s goal-oriented, hard-working, sharp as a tack, and not easily swept away by “happily ever after”. She’s a great role model for young girls can indeed be shafted for the love of a prince. Charlotte, Tiana’s best friend, is a nightmare role model for girls – spoilt rotten, shallow, boy-crazy. But, she and Tiana share that elusive thing in film: a true female friendship. Both women support each other, love each other, and sacrifice for each other. Neither fights over the man. Prince Naveen is one of Disney’s best, and most memorable, princes. He’s funny, charming, light-hearted, and affable. He does not take himself seriously and he loves good food, women, and jazz. He’s obsessed with his independence, not his royal status, and he’d rather be jazz musician than a prince. While other Disney princes are either beasts or boys, Naveen evolves into Disney’s first actual man. Unfortunately doctor Facilier, though delightfully evil, is a bit of a weak link. He’s a great trickster, but he is made far less frightening because his magic is reliant on his powerful friends “on the other side” with whom he makes deals for favours. His plot to take over New Orleans from the La Bouffs, using Prince Naveen is complicated and more a cinematic ploy to force the two frogs into an adventure in the swamp than a way to create real tension. He’s simply more proof that Disney’s greatest villains – with a few exceptions – are female.

The soundtrack’s 10 original songs aren’t as spectacular or as catchy as those of other Disney films. Composer Randy Newman’s problem has always been that his style is far too distinct, and if one doesn’t like it, it’s difficult to get into his groove. While some songs do stand out (Tiana’s Almost There, Mama Odie’s Dig a Little Deeper and Keith David’s dastardly perfect rendition of Doctor Facilier’s Friends on the Other Side) it’s more the soundtrack’s jazz blues, and gospel style that lingers. Indeed, two of the film’s three 2010 Oscar Award nominations were for Best Original Song. (The other was best Animated Feature).

It’s a shame that Disney’s first black princess and one of their few princes of colour spend so much time in frog form. Disney barely even mentions race, which is strange because Prince Naveen arrives in the segregated south and because of his rather indistinct ethnicity couldn’t legally have a chance with Tiana or Charlotte. Dreams do come true in New Orleans, as one of the songs states, but these dreams are even harder to achieve for the city’s black population at the time. While Charlotte can realistically dream of becoming a princess, Tiana can only hope she can serve people trays of food – Disney, for all its progress, won’t even address the south’s tense racial climate of the 1920s.

It may not be a classic, but Tiana would say it’s “almost there”. It’s a heart-warming fairytale for a modern era. The heroes are unforgettable, even if their songs aren’t. Whether or not Disney’s 2-D renaissance begins its second era remains to be seen. But even if it doesn’t, The Princess and the Frog will be something parents share with their children for at least another generation.

S.I.

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Written and directed by Nora Ephron, Julie & Julia is based on not one, but two memoirs: blogger Julie Powell’s (Amy Adams) Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (2005) and celebrity chef Julia Child’s (Meryl Streep) posthumously published work, My Life in France (2006). Julie Powell’s book was based on her blog, which captured her year-long attempt to cook all524 recipes from Julia Child’s, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). Both Julie’s story, which takes place over the course of a single year in New York in 2002; and Julia’s story, set mostly in France throughout the 1950s, criss-cross throughout the film. Ephron’s direction beautifully balances both stories as we go back and forth between these women’s often humorous lives.

Julie & Julia’s strength lies in its script and the lightness of touch to Ephron’s direction. We float in and out of different eras – from post-war France to post-9/11 New York. Julie Powell, the younger and more pessimistic of the two, is a failed writer who answers phones for a 9/11 redevelopment agency. The only solace from her dreary job is her devoted husband and cooking Julia Child’s recipes in their tiny apartment. Julia child, a cheerful housewife, is stationed in Paris with her diplomat husband Paul Child (Stanley Tucci). While Julie Powell struggles with a dissatisfying job, Julia Child enrolls into Le Cordon Blue cooking school and dreams of publishing a French cookbook. In Julia’s time, fine cooking is the domain of chefs – male chefs – not American housewives. But, by the time Julie Powell sets out to try Julia Child’s French recipes, anybody with patience, the right book and ingredients can cook like a French chef. If the stories had become disjointed the film would have failed. However, with Ephron’s directing and Richard Marks’ editing, it didn’t.

The film also works because of its actors, particularly Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci who play Julia and Paul Child. This is the second time both actors have teamed up since The Devil Wears Prada, and they are in lockstep with one another. Their marriage is so loving and passionate, that were it not based on a true story, it would all seem made up since most movie marriages are rarely portrayed with such happiness. As Tucci himself has pointed out, most middle-aged couples are portrayed as either miserable or with one spouse dying. The chemistry between Streep and Tucci is undeniable, though their relationship does not follow some of the tropes from other romantic films. Neither of them is made up to be stereo-typically good-looking. Julia is imposing, clumsy, awkward, while Paul is aging and bald. But it is the older couple, this husband and wife, who flirt, kiss and make love. While in Julie Powell’s younger, modern-day marriage the couple barely even touch at all. It’s all rather sly – the older couple before the sexual revolution of the 1960s has all the fun. This is unequivocally Stanley Tucci’s best performance, and he is just as good as Meryl Streep. Paul, a career diplomat and doting husband, is a calm presence during even the most difficult times, and he is a hopeless romantic, although most of his wife’s endeavours leave him a little bewildered. Streep is made to stand at Child’s 6’2” frame and she is a force of nature.

She mimics Child’s distinct voice and mannerisms with vibrant humour. It’s not an easy task considering that Julia Child was, at one time, the most impersonated woman in America. There is one beautifully acted scene between Julia and Paul, in which it’s hinted that they are childless. When Julia discovers her sister (the hilarious Jane Lynch) is pregnant, she is happy and heartbroken all at once. Streep’s and Tucci’s performances are so honest; the film feels like an intrusion on a real marriage. Amy Adams and Chris Messina, who plays her husband, Eric Powell, also have chemistry onscreen, though it isn’t enough to outdo the older stars. Though Adams cannot compare to Streep, with whom she appeared in 208’s Doubt, she is nevertheless still delightful. She conveys Julie’s self-centerdness, hope and desperation with great charm.

Julie & Julia is not one of the paint-by-numbers biopics that have become so common throughout the last decade. The film is more a character study of two different, very complex women. We’re given a window into who they are, rather than where they’ve been or what they’ve done. The problem with most biopics is that the character’s life journey makes the very real person totally inaccessible. What Julie & Julia does, however, is give us a sense of hope. Hope that it doesn’t really matter if one is an optimist or a pessimist, a loving wife or a self-centred one, well-trained or untrained. What matters is that one follows one’s passion no matter how mundane it may seem. Julie & Julia is a feast for the eyes as well as the soul. There’s so much to look at, from Stephen Goldblatt’s airy cinematography, to Ann Roth’s cotton-candy costumes, to the sumptuous food. The film is proof that good food can bind us across time.

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She’s Out of My League piles on as much heart and happily-ever after as feel-friendly romantic comedies, but with the same crude humour of the male-friendly ones. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the brains or deft harmony of raunchy comedy and romance to pull off what some of its predecessors have. Helmed by first-time British director Jim Field smith, the movie revolves around Kirk Kettner (Jay Baruchel), a regular guy who falls for the seemingly flawless molly McCleish (Alice Eve).

Kirk Kettener work for the TSA at the Pittsburgh International Airport. He’s awkward, shy and has settled for a life he hates. His friends Stainer (TJ Miller), Devon (Nate Torrence), and Jock (Mike Vogel) are either crude, oblivious, or offensively good-looking. He’s desperate to get back with his horrible ex Marine (Lindsay Sloanel), who, despite their doomed relationship, is inexplicably still very good friends with Kirk’s parents (Debra Jo Rupp and Adam LeFevre). His brother is an obnoxious success, and worse, Kirk is too terrified to strike out and follow his dreams of becoming a pilot. Enter Molly McMleish, a blonde knockout who turns Kirk’s safe, miserable world upside down. Suddenly, Kirk is taking her out on dates, meeting her parents, and much to his embarrassment, introducing her to his friend and family. Nobody in Kirk’s life can understand why a perfect 10 like Molly is interested in a five like Kirk.

At the heart of She’s Out of My League lies Jay Baruchel as the endearing Everyman he’s played since his short, but memorable stint on 2001’s cult TV show Undeclared. A veteran of Judd Apatow’s shows and movies, Baruchel’s wide-eyed shtick is getting slightly stale. Kirk is a pushover, which is very most of the secondary characters in his life can make him as quarter-life despair as he’ll let them get away with. His brother gangs up on him relentlessly, his parents treat him like a child, and his friends are the ones who come up with the rating system in the first place. They are the ones who determine that he’s a solid five and that he has no choice but to settle and date a woman of equal numerical value. Despite their level best to explain, how exactly these boneheads determine the numbers is still baffling – a point here for being in a band, a point there for niceness, a point deducted for not working out. You also can’t date anyone two or more points higher than you. It’s a bit of a sliding scale depending on how generous they feel on any given day. Even more hopelessly absurd than their rating system is the dating advice they dish out despite either being married for so long they’re no longer on the dating scene, or being perpetually single. It’s really amazing that none of the people in Kirk’s life drive Molly away.

Molly is a sweet girl who typically dates attractive meatheads, but has made an exception with Kirk. Alice Eve, like in her breakout role in 2006’s Starter , plays the protagonist’s dream girl and she doesn’t have to stretch far for the role. It’s easy to dismiss Molly as a beautiful airhead, but Molly does have some depth, which is unusual for female characters in these gross-out comedies.

For all its crude male bonding and sweetness that is reminiscent of movies like Knocked Up, She’s out of My League doesn’t match up. It never balances the extremes of raunchy antics with sweet romance – in fact, it’s pretty thin on both counts. You can see the movie’s lesson a mile away and by the end it all feels preachy and trite. It plays as much into male fantasies as many romantic comedies play into female ones. The hero might not be dying to get to the altar, but his niceness will get him the girl of his dreams. If a man is nice (whatever that means) it won’t matter if he’s a five. A perfect 10 woman will chase after him. Kirk’s friends even add points to his attractiveness because of his niceness. For some reason nice men somehow deserve perfect, beautiful women. A nice guy’s personality makes up for whatever else he might lack- ambition, looks, courage, or whatever it is you are supposed to find attractive. This doesn’t go the other way for woman. Women who are solid fives doesn’t deserve perfect 10s because they’re nice.

Niceness is a virtue that racks up points for men, not women She’s out of My League is a nice enough trip with couple of decent kids who might be tore apart by shallow misunderstanding. The blonds are get attractive and the brunettes are bitter shrews. The average nice boy get perfect 10s and the average nice girls… well, you never see those girl in She’s out of My League. There isn’t much substance, and even less style. It also ends at an airport, but the filmmakers hint at this clichéd ending long before the movie speeds up

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It’s a good thing most romantic comedies are short. the good ones make you long for more after they’re ended; while the bad ones make you glad they’re over. When In Rome is fortunately, or unfortunately, the latter. This shouldn’t be surprising considering director Mark Steven Johnson is known for directing films like Ghost Rider and Daredevil. What’s really surprising is that the cast includes screen legends who should know better, like Anjelica Huston (she’s utterly wasted here0, rising stars like Kristen Bell, lee Pace (albeit briefly), and Josh Duhamel and Dax Shepard. It’s a mishmash of the brilliant and the horrible. When in Rome wont destroy the romantic comedy, but it’s a genre that’s in bad need of repair.

The movie thankfully begins with very little set-up. Career-driven Guggenheim art Beth Martin (Kristen Bell) finds out that her ex-boyfriend Brady (Lee Pace) is engaged to another woman. This isn’t her first heartbreak, but she’s determined for it to be last. Out of the blue, her little sister Joan (Alexis Dziena) announces her spontaneous engagement to her Italisn boyfriend of two weeks. Beth immediately heard to Rome for the wedding and at the reception meets Nick Beamon (Josh Duhamel), the groom’s American friend sparks fly but Beth isn’t interested in heartbreak. In a moment of anger she takes coins from the Fountain of Love and unwittingly unleashes an ancient spell. The coin’s owners suddenly begin to chase Beth back to New York to win her love. Her belligerent admirers include sausages king Al Ruso (Danny DeVito), street illusionist Lance (Jon Heder), Painter Nick begins to woo Beth as well.

Beth is another in a long line of romantic comedy career heroines. She loves her job, but she refuses to settle down until she finds a man she loves more than her job. A job which, incidentally, is run by an absolute shrew of a boss (Anjelica Huston). Female bosses are often shrews in movie. High- powered career woman are either never fulfilled with their jobs, or never find love. They’re stuck in a limbo of misery – married to a supposedly thankless job they love and desperately seeking a mate they can only get by shirking their professional responsibilities. Beth’s little sister Alexis is not really given a career description and yet she is rewarded with true love, even though she barely knows her husband. It’s a miracle Kristen Bell manages to play Beth with any humanity at all. Bell is sunny with a side of sourness. no matter how badly things have turned in Beth’s love life, Bell chugs her along with a pleasant disposition that’s wasted.

Bell does, miraculously, blissfully, have chemistry with her co- star Josh Duhamel. He admittedly has almost nothing to do other to do other than stand still and look pretty, but he pulls off being seemingly genuinely smitten with Bell’s character. He’s like a lost puppy. Bell and Duhamel’s chemistry gets much less screen time than ridiculous antics of the rest of the characters. Their magic is truer than the fake love spells, and When in Rome’s only shining light.

The supporting characters destroy when in Rome. Heder, Shepard, Arnett, and Devito, who play Beth’s admirers, are a creepy 21 St- century version of the seven dwarves. Each love-struck beau is more irritating than the last. Heder plays the same schtick he’s played since Napoleon Dynamite – goofy, unrelenting, and bafflingly stupid. Sherpard plays the same self-absorbed blockhead he always plays. Arnett portrays Antonio with the most cringe-worthy Italian accent this side of Nicolas cage’s in Captain Coreli’s Mandolin. And Devito manages to be more irritating than his co-stars combined. They’re even worse as a group – they’re a well-oiled machine of romantic comedy horrors. If they’re not performing mindless of romantic comedy horrors. If they’re not performing mindless street magic to gain Beth’s love, they’re not performing mindless street magic to gain Beth’s love; they’re running her down, or worse – breaking and entering into her apartment. Why doesn’t Beth call the police and get a restraining order? Because hijinks couldn’t ensue, that’s why. Beth can’t find any these buffoons attractive, so they’re hardly obstacles on her way to the altar with Nick.

When in Rome is even badly titled. Most of the action doesn’t take place in Rome in Rome, but it still stereotypes Italians as hopeless romantic, or as quaint people with tiny cars and strange customs. In addition to its wacky characters, the movie’s flimsy premise is hardly anything to go on. The spell of the Fountain of Love states that taking a coin from the fountain will make you the object of the coin owner’s affection. Nobody could believe such a thing, but somewhere despite Beth’s skepticism about true love, she believes in the legend without much proof. Instead of laughting it off and calling the cops because a group of love-struck loons are after her, Beth is determined to break the spell. If only the movie could be as hystericaly funny as its laughable premise. Instead it’s littered with unfunny gags, and unbelievable characters presented under the guise of humour. What’s even less believable is that all of Beth’s suitors are white, mostly American, and male. How convenient. Do no women or people of colour toss their coins into the fountain?

When in Rome wont suck hour of your life away that you can’t get back. Never feat. It’s too short, and so awful you’ll likely purge all memories of it from your mind.

Reviewed by S.I.

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Christopher Nolan’s inception is part-science fiction, part-crime caper. It reveals all of Nolan’s strengths and weaknesses. The movie diminishes his mind-bending work in 2001’s Memento and 2006’s the Prestige, and yet, somehow heightens it. It’s more polished, as if with themes of his work. He isn’t whittling the themes down, but pushing further down the part towards cinematic understanding. Inception is Nolan’s only originally written movie since his 1998 debut Following. It isn’t based on a comic book, short story, or novel, so it’s as close to Nolan’s mind as you can get. As multi-layered as Inception is, it’s really about a group of thieves, who led by Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), enters people’s dreams to steal their ideas.

Dom Cobb is an Extractor. His job is to invade a target’s dream and steal corporate information and ideas. Soon mysterious billionaire Saito (Ken Watanabe) offer cob a project unlike any he’s ever untaken. Instead of extraction, Saito wants Cobb to try inception, which is the act of stealthily putting an idea into a target’s mind and making him believe the idea is totally his. It is nearly impossible to accomplish and totally illegal. The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito’s competitor and industrialist Maurice Fischer (Peter Postlethwaite). Cobb starts globe-hopping from Paris to Mombasa to assemble a team to help with the inception-cold as ice Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) the Pointman, college student Ariadne (Ellen Page) the Architect, dapper Eames (Tom Hardy) the Forfer, and mad Scientist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) the Chemist.

Inception is a labyrinth of dreams. Nolan is Daedalus. He’s created a celluloid maze of twists and turns using pieces of ancient theology. Ariadne is named after the mythological Greek princess whose thread led Theseus out of Daedalus’ Labyrinth. Yusuf is named after the Koranic prophet who deciphered dreams. The team creates and enters levels of dreams together. There are wheels-within-wheels and dreams within –dreams. But not all dreamers are powerless. Those with the power can build worlds in which buildings rise out of the ground and moving in zero-gravity is as natural as walking.

In the middle of all this are the actors whose characters ground the film in reality. Without their hopes, and fears Inception is an empty maze. But Christopher Nolan’s weakness has always been tapping into true emotion, partially because his female characters are underdeveloped. The emotional cores of his movies are rarely more than hollow shells. Even Cobb notices when he speaks to his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard): “you are just a shade of my real life. You’re the best I can do; but… you are just not good enough.”

The male actors not only fare better, but they have enough chemistry among them to even bring young Ellen Page into the fld. Leonardo DiCaprio gets the job done as always. He shouldn’t have to constantly prove himself, but he does. Ken Watanabe’s Saito becomes an older brother figure for Cobb and both Watanabe and DiCaprio bounce off each other beautifully.

Tom Hardy’s Eames is a muscular, sexy flirty dandy. One moment he’s calling Arthur darling, the next minute he’s firing a grenade launcher. Joseph Gordon-Levitt still has a child –star stigma attached to him, but as he approaches 30, Inception has morphed him into a man. Arthur is like cut glass-cool, efficient, rarely rattled.

Inception is a prime example of Christopher Nolan’s light touch. You can see his faint fingerprints, but they don’t muck up the joint. For a movie about the unreal-Nolan and his crew rely more on the real world than other filmmakers. The dreamscapes in inception are hospitals, hotels, and mountainsides. Real-life dreams aren’t always this structured, but accomplishing an unstructured look would be cinematically ridiculous. Some of Nolan’s fingerprints are coincidental. When the team needs to be awakened from dreams-Edit Piaf’s non, Je Ne Regrette Rien is the music that snaps them back to reality. Nolan chose the song long before casting Cotillard who won the 2008 Oscar for playing Piaf in La Vie en Rose. Perhaps some things are beyond even the architect’s control.

Music is as much a part of Inception as everything else. Hans Zimmer’s score is unforgettable, pulsating, and impressive. It jolts and electrifies. Despite its fever-than-usual special effects, Inception is a technical wonder. Each dreamscape has its own colour palette. There are greys and blues of Yusuf’s rainy dream sequence, the dark brown shadows and golden light of Arthur hotel dream, and the stark winter white of Eames’ glacial dreams. Other achievements stand out as well. The wardrobe, for instance. Each actor is dressed to kill-or at least dressed for a spread in GQ. Not a hair is out of place, each three-piece suit tailor-made. It wound be the best eye-candy there is, were it not for the 360 degree rotating room morphed into zero-gravity sequence of Arthur’s dream.

Strangely, Inception comments on its own inelegance. There’s a moment when Arthur demands that Eames be more specific. The same could be asked of Nolan. Some of the mechanics of dream theft and inception are vague and glossed over with visual coolness. Despite all this, Inception is Nolan’s best directed movie and the best summer blockbuster in years. It isn’t the second coming of anything – that kind of hype is insulting. But it is proof that kind of Hollywood can still go above and beyond. It can use its old action movie formula with a new premise. It’s proof that the human imagination can go much farther, and it ought to.

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It’s hard to figure out if The Back-Up Plan is respectable because so many romantic comedies are terrible in comparison, or because it holds up on its own. It’s certainly better than other romantic comedies Jennifer Lopez has starred in. Lopez is a tip-off to a film’s quality (or usual lack of quality), and audiences have, over the years put with The Wedding Planner, Monster-In-Law, and Maid in Manhattan, so putting up with something that is noticeably better shouldn’t be difficult. Lopez is the lone movie veteran in the movie’s main cast and crew. Director Alan Poul has made his name by directing episodes of must-see TV shows like Six Feet Under, Rome, and Big Love. Writer Kate Angelo wrote episodes of Will and Grace and The Bernie Mac Show, while lead actor Alex O’Loughlin starred in shows like The Shield and Moonlight. Despite being clichéd, The Back-Up Plan is satisfactory mostly because of its alluring characters and surprisingly good performances.

Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) is a single New Yorker who longs for a child, even though the right guy hasn’t come along yet. Against her friends’ advice she decides to get artificially inseminated. Life, inevitably, plays a twisted joke on Zoe and almost immediately after the procedure she meets Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) in a taxi. Of course, they’re polar opposites. She lives in the city, he lives upstate. She wants children, he has never even thought about it. She owns a pet store, he makes goat cheese (nobody is ever a corporate drone in these comedies). Ignoring her better judgement she starts dating him. In the meantime she joins a single parent support group and discovers that she’s pregnant. When she reveals this to Stan, neither is sure if he will choose to stick around or leave.

Most of The Back-Up Plan’s charm comes from the characters. Jennifer Lopez brings her usual sass and focused determined, but most of the neediness of some of her past characters is toned down. The role isn’t a stretch for her by any means, but Zoe is less harsh than some of Lopez’s previous heroines. What was once shrill is now more playful – almost as if her slightly manic heroines have been written down into actual human beings. Zoe isn’t written as a character giving up who she is for a boyfriend or husband. A lot of female leads in romantic comedies have to stop being so career-oriented to land a man. Zoe, on the other hand, is self-made woman and doesn’t expect to give that up. She goes after what she wants – man or no man. Artificial insemination isn’t a popular choice for a single person to make, but she does it anyway.

The Back-Up Plan’s real stand-out is Australian actor Alex O’Loughlin. Aside from the obvious ease with which he handles Stan’s required American accent, O’Loughlin does more with the role than the movie requires. He could have been perfect, but there are moments when Stan is hesitant about Zoe’s pregnancy, and O’Loughlin’s performance has remarkably, some depth. You can feel Stan’s apprehension, his uncertainty about doing the right thing – he’s not even sure what the right thing is. What might have been written as momentary indecisiveness, O’Loughlin actually plays for what it is – a monumental choice – one nearly as huge as the choice Zoe has made.

The chemistry between Lopez and O’Loughlin is natural, but there’s never anything other than their fights and makeups and the comedy is inconsistent. Some of it is general comedy about pregnancy and looming motherhood. The funniest moments are usually the most painful and awkward ones. Poor Zoe is trying to get herself – pregnant belly and all – into a car, for example. Or her nauseous mood swings, which are bewildering than funny. Most of the comedy though, has at its heart characters forced into uncomfortable situations. The worst of the humour lies with the women in Zoe’s single parent support group. Each basket case is an even bigger freak than the last, which Zoe learns almost instantly when one woman tells her about giving birth right in the chair Zoe sits in. All this goes even more awry when one member forces them all – Zoe and Stan included – to witness her natural home water birth. It is a totally horrifying look at birth – some will find it funny, and others won’t. The movie also gives a grim reflection of the parents who grumble about parenthood. If it isn’t Zoe’s best friend and mother-of-three, Mona (Michaela Watkins) drunkenly grumbling about her kids, it’s a dad (Anthony Anderson) Stan talks to, who describes fatherhood as being most awful, momentarily amazing, and then awful again.

The good news about The Back-Up Plan is that the movie isn’t as terrible as its marketing suggests. It is actually one of Jennifer Lopez’s better films. The problem with actors who churn out the same old formula is that when that formula is slightly above-average, it’s hard to get the masses to care anymore.

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