Film

Space is the place

Gravity

Finally, with Gravity, we get a big event movie that delivers the sort of thrills absent from too many large-scale movies promising big things this year. If you put this movie in your face, you are going to have a cinematic trip like no other. This is what going to the movies is supposed to be about. I sound like a movie critic quote machine, and I don’t care. I want to make this perfectly clear: YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE! And shell out the extra few bucks for 3-D, because the whole idea of this film is to physically make you feel like you are lost in space. This is an example of a 3-D movie where those glasses really add to the experience. The way this film is shot often puts you inside a spacesuit looking down at the Earth or, if the movie character happens to be drifting and tumbling in space, looking out of a space helmet as the Earth rhythmically passes by your view as you are flipping over and over. If you are one of those people currently getting nauseated by your iPhone IOS 7 update and all of those crazy moving graphics, you might want to go see Don Jon instead, because this sucker has a lot of movement. In her first true blue science fiction role since Demolition Man, Sandra Bullock puts herself through the wringer as Ryan Stone, an astronaut on her first space shuttle flight. Her mission commander, played by a charismatic and calming George Clooney, ribs her about her upset tummy as he flies around space in a jet pack while she works tirelessly on the Hubble. They receive an ominous message from Earth. The Russians have purposely destroyed one of their satellites, and this has set off a chain reaction destroying multiple satellites and creating loads of fast moving space debris. At first, they’re told it shouldn’t be a problem. Moments later, they revise that theory and let the astronauts know that they appear to be totally screwed.

The space debris collides with their shuttle, and the movie is off and running. Director Alfonso Cuaron delivers the action seamlessly, often as if it were all one shot, and the effect is unrelenting. When Ryan reaches out to grab something to prevent herself from spinning out into space, you will be straining right along with her. by Bob Grimm Cuaron isn’t all about the thrills, either. He and son Jonas have written a screenplay that bgrimm@ packs plenty of emotional wallop along with newsreview.com the thrills. Bullock, who has gone public with how difficult the shoot was, is both physically 5 and emotionally taxed, and her haunting performance will surely put her in Oscar contention. Actually, just about every aspect of this film should find itself in an Oscar race, from the astronomical cinematography, to the gripping writing, and the amazing feats achieved through sound. Gravity would actually be a trippy experience if you took it in with your eyes closed. What Cuaron and his crew do with sound will astound you. Clooney, in a part that originally went to Robert Downey, Jr., looks like a guy who should be floating around in space, doesn’t he? The man’s mug just screams “Astronaut!” The actor appears to relish every second he spends on screen. His Matt Kowalski is on his last mission, sharing stories, trying to break spacewalk records, proving his iron resolve and pervading good nature even when space debris has just whizzed by his head and pulverized his spacecraft. In honor of this momentous cinematic achievement, I don’t wish to draw comparisons to any other films. Gravity is its own beautiful beast, a singularly unique experience that will leave you beyond satisfied, and very happy you didn’t wait to watch it in your living room. See Gravity on the biggest, boldest screen available to you, and prepare to have your mind blown. Ω

“I’d kiss you, but we’d both die.”

1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

excellent 4 Don Jon Joseph Gordon-Levitt writes, directs and stars in this frank sex comedy about a sex addict who thinks porn is better than true romance. Gordon-Levitt is excellent and consistently funny as the title character, a Jersey boy who’s quite the stud, yet finds himself jerking off to internet porn within mere minutes of finishing with a live woman. His little problem comes to the forefront when he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), the first real love of his life, a woman with high standards who doesn’t approve of the porn thing. The movie is full of porno clips, so don’t see it with kids or a first date, unless you and that first date already have some sort of naughty understanding. Gordon-Levitt has given us something akin to a funnier Saturday Night Fever, with porn replacing disco. Julianne Moore is her usual excellent self in a supporting role, and the shock casting of Tony Danza as Don’s dad proves smart. Danza gets to show some cinematic comedy chops that he hasn’t been able to show off before. This is an overall triumph for Gordon-Levitt.

1Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 This is animation done with all the style and grace of a spastic colon saturated with hot sauce. While the first film in this series had a reasonable amount of charm, this one goes haywire from its start right until the finish line. Bill Hader returns as the voice of Flint, the overly excited inventor who, in the first movie, managed to use a crazy invention to inundate his hometown with giant food. Now, the machine has gone nuts, creating a race of living food including cheeseburger spiders and dolphin bananas. The film boasts an intolerably frantic pace, with a plotline that’s scattered beyond reasonability. It’s hard to follow, but it does have the occasional fart and poop joke to make the kids laugh. The only character I managed to enjoy was a jittery monkey trying to put out a sparkler, and that accounts for about 30 seconds of the film. Don’t waste your time and, trust me, your kids won’t like it either.

1Insidious: Chapter 2 Director James Wan was on a bit of a roll with the first film in this series and his recent The Conjuring. That roll doesn’t simply come to a halt with this film. That roll crashes into a concrete, steel enforced wall that Jesus himself built while reminiscing about his carpentry days. This latest attempt to make a haunted house movie with next to no money is a hilarious catastrophe. Wan basically uses the same tricks, including smoke machines, green lights, practical makeup and crappy music, to try and get scares out of a formula that clearly had a short shelf life. This one involves Josh (Patrick Wilson), the father from the first film acting a little strange after his trip into another dimension to retrieve his son. His wife (Rose Byrne) suspects that, gosh darn it, something must be wrong because there are still funny things happening with her baby monitor. The movie wants to be a poor man’s The Shining, with Wilson going all Nicholson wacky and Byrne doing her best Shelley Duvall impersonation. It’s terrible, but it’s a big moneymaker, so, as with the Paranormal Activity films, this isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

3Lee Daniels’ The Butler Director Lee Daniels, prominently mentioned in the film’s title after a much publicized lawsuit, delivers a fine emotional wallop with this historical epic very loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen, a butler at the White House for 34 years. Those going to this film for its true historical significance take note: the film contains much fiction. Allen is renamed Cecil (played by Forest Whitaker), and is given a fictional son in order to depict a family conflict regarding the Civil Rights movement. So, this film, which shows the butler interacting with presidents from Eisenhower (Robin Williams) thru Ronald Reagan (Alan Rickman), is mostly made up. That doesn’t hurt the film’s dramatic significance. It’s an ultimately moving experience. What does damage the film a bit is horrible makeup, especially a goofy fake nose for John Cusack as Richard Nixon. The makeup is sometimes so bad that the film turns into unintentional comedy when some characters are on screen. Whitaker holds the whole thing together, and Oprah Winfrey, in her first starring role since her excellent turn in Beloved, does strong work as Cecil’s wife. Other stars playing presidents include a relatively makeup-free James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, and an absolutely covered Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson.

3Prisoners For a good part of its running time, this one seems as if it could wind up being one of 2013’s best pictures. Alas, it frays at the end, with a finale as stupid as the rest of the film is gripping. Hugh Jackman delivers a fierce performance as Keller Dover, a survivalist who goes into vigilante mode after his daughter and her friend are kidnapped. When a semi-irritable detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) apprehends a mentally challenged suspect (Paul Dano), Dover and the detective go head-to-head on how to deal with matters. When the suspect is set free, Dover captures and tortures him. This part of the film is solid, dealing with the lengths a parent would go to find a child. As for the film’s mystery element, that’s where things fall apart. Gyllenhaal is quite good here, even when the screenplay lets him down. The movie was shot by Roger Deakins, so it always looks good. It’s worth seeing, but it’s a bit of a disappointment.

2Runner Runner Was the world aching for a movie about online gambling? If so, was it aching for a movie about online gambling where Justin Timberlake gets beaten up a lot while looking really scared most of the time as Ben Affleck feeds poultry to his pet crocodiles? Timberlake plays a college student making his tuition through online gambling. After possibly getting hustled, he travels to Costa Rica to get in the face of the guy in charge of the gambling site (Affleck). He winds up getting a job and thrusting himself into a seedy online gambling underworld that involves running around a lot and acting real confused. Timberlake is an actor who can look really good, or really, really lost. This time he’s in lost mode. As for Affleck, I kind of like him in this movie, and enjoy when he plays bad guys. The movie lets him down in a big way with its silly subplots and failed attempts at being clever.

2Rush Hollywood has a real hard time making car-racing movies even remotely compelling. The latest genre misfire comes from director Ron Howard, who brings the true story of James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) to the big screen in surprisingly ho-hum fashion. The surprise comes in that the story itself is so amazing, it wouldn’t’ seem possible to render it dull, yet Howard manages just that. For a racing movie, surprisingly little of the film actually takes place on the racetrack. Instead, too much of the film is devoted to routine love stories that seem to be a means of saving budget. Bruhl is decent as Lauda, a determined man who returned to racing mere weeks after being severely burned in a near fatal crash. Hemsworth is charming as Hunt, but little more. Their rivalry was one of the greatest in sports history, yet this movie turns it into a soap opera.

3We’re the Millers Jason Sudeikis plays a small-time drug dealer who gets in over his head and is forced by his boss (Ed Helms) to smuggle drugs from Mexico. Realizing that border agents seem to go easy on families, he hires a fake family to make the trip in an RV. The family includes a wife (a stripper played by Jennifer Aniston), a daughter (a homeless girl played by Emma Roberts) and a son (a hapless neighbor played by Will Poulter). The film has a Vacation movie vibe, especially because Sudeikis is charming in a way that Chevy Chase was for a brief time in his career. Aniston plays a mighty good stripper, for sure. She has another calling in case the whole acting thing doesn’t work out. Roberts gets perhaps her best role yet as Casey, delivering some great eye-rolling moments. As for Poulter, he steals scenes nearly every time he speaks, and his encounter with a tarantula is priceless. Sure, the movie gets a little gooey and sentimental by the time it plays out, but we’ve come to like the characters by then so it’s OK. It’s not a grand cinematic effort by any means, but it does provide some good laughs, with a fair share of them being quite shocking.