#Reviews: Movie

Here are this weeks top 3 movies!!! enjoy!
Being on the Rebound Never Felt So Good
In ‘The Spectacular Now,’ Growing Pains Precede Graduation


Anatomy of a Scene: 'Spectacular Now': The director James Ponsoldt narrates a scene from his film featuring Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley.


Sutter Keely is a teenager with the gift of gab, able to flip the mood of an encounter with brash good will. You run into guys like this in teenage dramas or comedies, the charm often backed up with sarcasm or a pretty face. But Sutter has genuine heart, and his cheer masks closely held fears, an ambivalence about the future and an insecurity over his separated parents’ past.


Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller in "The Spectacular Now."
Similarly, James Ponsoldt’s new film, “The Spectacular Now,” overcomes echoes of familiarity as Sutter finds his way through the end of high school and the responsibilities looming after graduation (that perennial movie horizon) in his small town. Much of this patiently achieved success flows from Miles Teller’s winning, seemingly effortless performance as Sutter, in all his laziness and charm, open-mindedness and fatalism, always with a glimpse of the unease beneath.
Adapted from (and somewhat burdened by the twee title of) Tim Tharp’s 2008 book, the movie picks up with Sutter immediately after he is dumped by Cassidy (Brie Larson) over a misunderstanding. As in Mr. Ponsoldt’s other features, “Off the Black” and “Smashed,” booze has a place in the routine of the main character, and Sutter is no different, if perhaps unusual for his age. He recharges his spirits from a flask even while on the job at a men’s wear shop, whose owner is played by a gravelly-voiced Bob Odenkirk.
It’s during one hung-over morning that he strikes up a bond with Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a very together bookworm who is dealing with a demanding family life and is unaccustomed to the attention. They make a sweet couple, even if Sutter still has one eye on Cassidy, and their bond bears out Sutter’s better tendencies. It also seems to strengthen him enough to confront his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) about the father he never sees.
Just as Aimee’s own challenges help show how young people with problems often find each other, Sutter’s fresh understanding of his dad (Kyle Chandler) yields a warning of the wrong way forward and the ever-renewable sting of abandonment.
Shooting in Athens, Ga., where he grew up, Mr. Ponsoldt keeps the perspective close to Sutter, near enough for us to sense faintly that sadness in him. The story, adapted from the novel’s first-person voice by the screenwriters of “(500) Days of Summer,” becomes a bit strained by a third-act bump that comes after the film has already successfully darkened somewhat. Yet Mr. Ponsoldt ably charts a journey through the high stakes of adolescence, with both Sutter and Mr. Teller showing great promise.
“The Spectacular Now” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for all the things an average teenager tries to do before graduating.
The Spectacular Now
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by James Ponsoldt; written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, based on the novel by Tim Tharp; director of photography, Jess Hall; edited by Darrin Navarro; music by Rob Simonson; production design by Linda Sena; costumes by Peggy Stamper; produced by Michelle Krumm, Andrew Lauren, Shawn Levy and Tom McNulty; released by A24. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.
WITH: Miles Teller (Sutter Keely), Shailene Woodley (Aimee Finckley), Brie Larson (Cassidy), Kyle Chandler (Thomas Keely), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Holly Keely), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Ms. Keely) and Bob Odenkirk (Dan).









The Cellphone Gets Its Close-Up
‘The Canyons’ Is an Erotic Thriller With Lindsay Lohan


Movie Review: ‘The Canyons’


“The Canyons” — directed by Paul Schrader, written by Bret Easton Ellis and starring Lindsay Lohan — is a dispiriting, unpleasurable work punctuated with flashes of vitalizing vulgarity. It isn’t a good movie in terms of the conventional norms (acting for starters), but it also exhibits a crude integrity. If you take the characters seriously or at their word, a mistake for such a dissembling, venal group, you may think that this is just another story about the dirty business of making movies. Hollywood types have been rolling around in the muck about as long as there’s been an industry (that’s what made Sammy run); the twist here is that no one here seems to care anymore.

More About This Movie

Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie
Paul Schrader, Bret Easton Ellis, Lindsay Lohan and a porn star named James Deen try to make a movie for $250,000 that will save all of their careers. What could go wrong?


Lindsay Lohan and James Deen in "The Canyons."

Mr. Schrader and Mr. Ellis make an odd match, despite some outward affinities. Mr. Schrader is an iconoclast who’s long worked outside the mainstream, while Mr. Ellis is a literary outsider who’s well known for igniting critical outrage. Mr. Schrader tends to focus on existential loners on the margins in films that touch on subjects like pornography and prostitution, themes that have figured in Mr. Ellis’s work. But while Mr. Schrader is a deeply serious moralist who pulls you into worlds of churning emotion, Mr. Ellis delivers shocks at a chilly, seemingly noncommittal distance. (In a 1999 interview, Mr. Schrader bemoaned that the existential hero had been supplanted by what he called the “ironic hero” — the guy who asks not “should I exist?” but “who cares?”)
“The Canyons” takes place in that reliable Hades known as greater Los Angeles, a stereotype of the city that conflates it with Hollywood and has been in circulation since the movies began. The title suggests that it may have something in common with Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” to name two films about Los Angeles, its fault lines and broken dreams, but “The Canyons” isn’t in the same neighborhood. One crucial difference is that “Sunset Boulevard” and “Mulholland Drive” each draw you in through the complex, destabilizing and productive play between irony and idealism. “The Canyons” initially appears to be doing much the same, as in a desultory introductory scene set at a bar-restaurant, except that idealism isn’t anywhere on the menu.
Another difference: “Sunset Boulevard” is narrated by a corpse; “The Canyons” is overrun with them. These include Christian (James Deen, a porn star) and Tara (Ms. Lohan), a power couple first seen in a bar in theChateau Marmont, an old hotel known for its bad, beautiful clientele and for being where John Belushipermanently checked out. Christian is a trust-fund brat and producer who’s managed to snare Tara, who in turn is hooked on his money. They’re having dinner with his assistant, Gina (Amanda Brooks), and her boyfriend, Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk), who’s been cast in one of Christian’s flicks. Christian and Tara spend more time looking at their phones than at their companions. This may signal their anomie, but, given the dull talk, they may merely be bored.
The scene is awkwardly staged, lighted and shot, but it inches everything forward by mapping the characters and their relationships. (The characters regularly use one another’s names — “Nobody has a private life anymore, Tara” — perhaps so they can remember who they’re talking to.) Mr. Schrader directs the actors to deliver some of their lines while facing the camera, a modest breach of the fourth wall that makes it seem as if the characters are talking to the audience. A favorite critical orthodoxy, one that builds on Brecht’s concept of the epic theater, is that such breaches disrupt or break the cinematic illusion of reality, thereby making ostensibly passive viewers aware of the filmmaking processes and thus the ideology behind that illusion.
The entire scene, from the camerawork to the stilted, stop-and-go dialogue, can be read as a Brechtian enterprise, but mostly it feels like Mr. Schrader isn’t in control of his material. Ms. Brooks and Mr. Nolan deliver their lines unpersuasively, their sincerity bouncing off Ms. Lohan’s and Mr. Deen’s glazed personas. Ms. Lohan, ornamented with a topknot and Cleopatra eyeliner, wavers in and out of the scene much as she does for the rest of the movie, pulling you in with husky murmurings and pushing you away with darting glances that suggest a woman searching for the exit. Mr. Deen mostly just sneers (his default expression) while he details Christian and Tara’s online hookups. Waving his cellphone, Christian says he makes his own movies.





Two Good Guys (or So They Seem) Behaving Badly
Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg Star in ‘2 Guns’


Movie Review: ‘2 Guns’


Big bangs and fast talk are the name of the genre game in “2 Guns,” a slick, slippery thriller that taps into the anarchic playfulness that made the best American action flicks of the 1980s and ’90s pop. Directed byBaltasar Kormakur, riffing on the cheerful irreverence of Shane Black and the hyperbolic style of Tony Scott, the movie turns on a pair of seemingly bad guys who may be good. A reissue of the five-part comic series on which it’s based sets the scene nicely: “Two guys walk into a bank. It goes badly.” It does in the movies as well, although now the duo spring off the page courtesy of Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, one of the better odd couples to bond and bicker since Mel met Danny.




Edward James Olmos as a drug lord.
A smooth operator, Bobby (Mr. Washington), and a fast talker, Stig (Mr. Wahlberg), are the resident ebony-and-ivory tag — but are they cops or are they robbers? Stig certainly sounds like a nod to Riggs, the funny, frantic cop played by Mel Gibson in the “Lethal Weapon” series, as does Stig’s jokey yammering, military-honed skill set and concern for animal welfare. (Mr. Wahlberg has the sweet appeal of the young Mr. Gibson if none of the unnerving dangerousness.) In Steven Grant’s original comic, Stig is called Steadman, and Bobby looks like a California surfer complete with a blond flop and goatee. The casting of Mr. Washington, augmented with a fully upholstered chin, underscores the “Lethal Weapon” connection even if he sexes up the joint in a way that Danny Glover’s family man never could.
Written by Blake Masters, who embellishes the tricky story with generous repartee, the movie opens with Stig and Bobby edging around a Texas town and then settling into a diner for some breakfast and banter. An irrepressible flirt, Stig plays with a pretty waitress, but it’s soon clear that his heart belongs to Bobby. (Unlike in the “Lethal Weapon” series, there isn’t a dead wife or a living brood to bring anyone down.) Across from the diner there’s also a tiny bank that Bobby and Stig plan to relieve of $3 million belonging to Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos), the head of a Mexican drug cartel who, in turn, has recently relieved an associate of his head.
That head, briefly seen peeking out of a satchel, is a cheerfully vulgar touch, as is the glib use of Mexican cartel violence. Both feel almost calculated to offend, but like many other action movies of this blithe type, “2 Guns” doesn’t take place in the here and the now but in a burlesque version of the same. Some of its artificiality can be chalked up to the usual mainstream filmmaking imperatives, like stars who are at once recognizably real and prettier, thinner and sleeker, with whiter teeth and glossier skin, like the operative for the Drug Enforcement Agency played here by Paula Patton. Even Mr. Olmos’s beautiful, craggy mug looks buffed. That same unreality principle extends to the story and Mr. Kormakur’s bright, uncluttered style, which instantly shake off the real world and its obligations, thrusting the film straight into fantasy.
It’s an enjoyable place to be, even more so as this twisty film grows increasingly complicated and preposterous with the addition of some Navy types (James Marsden and Fred Ward, among others), a Central Intelligence Agency whack job (a funny Bill Paxton) swooping in on a black helicopter and empty gesturing at corrupt national institutions. Working with an editor, Michael Tronick, who doesn’t step on the sometimes wittily choreographed action by overcutting, Mr. Kormakur sets and keeps up a fast rather than frantic pace that never runs the movie off the rails even when the story nearly does. Much as he did in his last movie, “Contraband,” another thriller with Mr. Wahlberg, Mr. Kormakur has put his imprimatur on a pulp fiction that easily could have become another generic diversion instead of a fine genre one.
“2 Guns” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Violence throughout, including a disturbing scene involving live chickens that’s both played for laughs and comes with a sharp, ethical jab.
2 Guns
Opens on Friday.


Directed by Baltasar Kormakur; written by Blake Masters, based on the BOOM! Studios graphic novels by Steven Grant; director of photography, Oliver Wood; edited by Michael Tronick; music by Clinton Shorter; production design by Beth Mickle; costumes by Laura Jean Shannon; produced by Marc Platt, Randall Emmett, Norton Herrick, Adam Siegel, George Furla, Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.


WITH: Denzel Washington (Bobby Trench), Mark Wahlberg (Stig Stigman), Paula Patton (Deb Rees), Bill Paxton (Earl), James Marsden (Quince), Fred Ward (Admiral Tuwey) and Edward James Olmos (Papi Greco).




curled from nytimes.