film

Video Comentary

What set the first Iron Man movie apart from the superhero pack was the film’s good humor, a potent cocktail of glibness and whimsy. Star Robert Downey Jr.’s Olympic-caliber smartassery and director Jon Favreau’s bright, shiny approach to the material differentiated it from Christopher Nolan’s self-serious Batman, Bryan Singer’s stilted Superman and soap operatic X-Men, and Sam Raimi’s increasingly emo Spider-man.

The superhero-movie field is more crowded than ever, with four more big-budget comic-book spectacles coming later in 2013: the Superman reboot Man of Steel and second installments for Thor, Wolverine, and Kick Ass. But by Iron Man’s fourth outing, counting his previous two solo flicks and his appearance in The Avengers, Downey Jr.’s livewire performance has been refined and codified to the point that it’s just another special effect. On a couple of occasions in Iron Man III, our mechanized protagonist is revealed to be an empty suit of armor controlled remotely by its master. It’s an apt metaphor for this perfunctory-feeling blockbuster, which hits all its marks with mechanical precision but doesn’t seem to have any humanity within.

Months after the cataclysmic events featured in The Avengers, billionaire supergenius Tony Stark (Downey) is suffering the after-effects. His neurotic tics have grown into full-blown panic attacks. It’s a nice little nod toward continuity and character development that ultimately comes to nothing in a story overstuffed with subplots and extraneous supporting players. Yet the story, for all its embellishments and asides, is stupefyingly simple: A terrorist is mad at Stark so he blows his house up, puts him on the run, then blows up some other stuff as part of a broader plan that has no greater purpose than to just be really evil because, hey, bad guy here!

The terrorist in question is the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), a curiously not-at-all-Chinese terrorist who releases Osama-style mixtapes to the news media threatening America’s imminent destruction. Meanwhile, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), an awkward scientist Tony blew off years ago, reemerges as a handsome Stark-esque inventor whose Extremis technology could make him a prominent weapons developer. The movie attempts a bad-guy switcheroo reminiscent of the similarly dumb gimmick in Batman Begins that generates a modestly surprising plot twist at the expense of having a villain with any distinct motivations or personality.

Meanwhile, distractions abound. Tony’s pal James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), whose entire character description is “Tony’s black friend,” is piloting one of Tony’s suits of armor for the U.S. government as the Iron Patriot. One of Tony’s ex-girlfriends (Rebecca Hall) returns, and she’s mad. The Vice President (Miguel Ferrer) appears in two scenes, and he’s not nice. Tony’s girlfriend Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) is still around. None of this has anything to do with the price of rice in whatever country the Mandarin is from, but it pads out the two-plus-hour running time, dragging the proceedings out on the way to the climax, where at long last the movie delivers a thrilling, well-choreographed action sequence.

Director Shane Black takes over the franchise from Jon Favreau. Black has a strong track record with action-comedies; he wrote Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout, and both wrote and directed the excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with none other than star Robert Downey Jr. When Black makes his mark on this franchise, though, it’s sometimes a little too familiar: Robert Downey Jr. is held captive by hanging from a metal post à la Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, he sprints through a Christmas tree lot à la Mel Gibson, and he makes buddy-cop jokes with his older black friends à la Mel Gibson.

Black, who cowrote the script, does have a way with zippy dialogue, and the quips are what stand out most about Iron Man III. Unfortunately, a few good zingers can’t overcome the movie’s distractible pandering to all possible audience members, be it gun-lovin’ middle-Americans with a flag-toting American robot called War Machine, younger audience members with an annoyingly plucky kid sidekick (played by Ty Simpkins), or to female audience members with the perfunctory girl-power moment at the conclusion, which seems to have been dreamed up by Paltrow’s management team. None of these subplots have anything to do with the central storyline, which starves from lack of attention. There’s too much everything, but not enough of anything.

Follow Bryan Miller on Twitter@bmillercomedy.

Video Comentary

> opening this week in Carbondale (Friday unless otherwise noted).

< leaving Carbondale this Friday.

by Bryan Miller unless otherwise credited.

The Big Wedding (R, *): This American adaptation of a French comedy (which is the French term for “comedy about adultery”) has been improperly translated. The cultural dissonance between the stiff, WASPy family and the casual infidelities that drive the plot would be too much to bear even if the movie was overloaded with extraneous subplots that add nothing but running time. Robert De Niro stars as a divorced artist now living with the best friend (Susan Sarandon) of his ex-wife (Diane Keaton). But to appease his adopted son’s conservative biological mother (Patricia Ray), a Columbian Catholic/ethnic caricature, the family must pretend the divorce never happened during the wedding proceedings, setting off a series of low-grade farcical encounters. The bride and groom (Ben Barnes and Amanda Seyfried) are almost completely lost in the shuffle in this tonally inconsistent mess, which veers from light slapstick to strained ribaldry from moment to moment. Like most weddings, you’ll probably go to this out of obligation and mostly just be relieved it’s short.

< The Company You Keep (R, *1/2): Robert Redford directs and stars in this rambling, pedantic movie that rehashes tired arguments about the efficacy of the radical leftist movement in the 1960s. When an upstate New York attorney (Redford) is outed as a former member of the Weather Underground by an obnoxious, plucky journalist (Shia LaBeouf), he goes on a cross-country road trip to find the one person who can verify his innocence. Along the way he meets a bevy of one-dimensional characters who never have enough screen time to develop beyond their bumper-sticker platitudes, and the fact that they’re played by such notable actors-- Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Elliot, Chris Cooper, Susan Sarandon, Anna Kendrick, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Julie Christie-- only highlights how little meat is left on these particular bones. Only slightly less pedantic than Redford’s awful antiwar movie Lions for Lambs, but twice as dull.

Forty-two (PG-13, ***1/2): The life of baseball legend Jackie Robinson is such an inspirational tale that any movie about him is bound to be affecting, but writer/director Brian Helgeland’s appropriately reverent biopic is such a straightforward hagiography that it fails to capture the nuances of the man and the troubled era in which he lived. Chadwick Boseman, with emotive eyes and a credibly athletic build, is excellent as the man who broke baseball’s color barrier. Less inspiring is the jowl-centric, hammy performance by Harrison Ford as Branch Ricky, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner who hired Robinson and who receives far too much screentime. The film doesn’t entirely avoid the tough issues, but it mostly provides the kind of historical gloss you’d expect out of a museum filmstrip. It’s better for Forty-two to exist than to not, but such a remarkable life deserves a more remarkable film.

< G.I. Joe: Retaliation (PG-13, *): There are plenty of worse movies than this sequel to the movie based on the cartoon based on the toy line, but not many that are dumber. Even by live-action cartoon standards, this 3D-enhanced cash-grab is poorly conceived and shoddily executed, with a plot involving a satellite that drops giant rods using the natural gravity of space to destroy cities around the world unless their leaders pledge allegiance to Cobra. Can the Joes stop it? Sure, but which Joes? Channing Tatum and Bruce Willis are all over the trailer, but they’re barely in the movie at all-- the focus is split between a trio of good guys led by The “Dwayne Johnson” Rock and a tangentially related plot involving the faceless, voiceless, personality-free Snake Eyes and his relationship with Cobra ninja Storm Shadow. The blundering storyline would be more forgivable if the action sequences were thrilling enough, but they lack any sense of scope or adventure. Makes Transformers look like My Dinner with Andre. In 2D only.

< The Host (PG-13 , 1/2*): Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War), who should know better, writes and directs this bumbling adaptation of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s asinine sci-fi novel. A group of defenseless, glowing alien bugs with limited technological superiority have somehow managed to completely take over Earth, and only a handful of survivors remain. One of the survivors, Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), is captured and implanted with an alien called Wanderer, but her mind remains intact, and she forges a bond with the creature controlling her body. Together they seek to make peace between the alien overlords and the human resistance fighters, which leads to a bizarre love triangle between Melanie, her boyfriend Jared, and Kyle, a fellow resistance fighter who falls in love with the alien inside Melanie’s body. (Awkward!) The sci-fi trappings here are absurdly perfunctory and cheap-looking, and the human drama here can only aspire to the level of soap operatics. A failure on every conceivable level.

Iron Man III (PG-13, **1/2): Writer/director Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) takes over the Iron Man franchise, which seems particularly lackluster post-Avengers. A bevy of subplots and superfluous supporting players isn’t enough to distract from a stupefyingly simple plot and one-note characters motivated by nothing more than plot necessity. An evil terrorist leader called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), who is from a country that is not China, is somehow in cahoots with an evil scientist (Guy Pearce) who’s driven to villainy after being snubbed once a party. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) must contend with this, plus distractions galore from his girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow) and generic best friend (Don Cheadle) in between quips and lackluster action sequences-- although admittedly the final setpiece, featuring an armada of Iron Man suits, is pretty damn cool. Downey’s charisma has been reduced to a cheap special effect in this bland blockbuster. In 2D and 3D.

Oblivion (PG-13, ***1/2): This sci-fi action flick has nothing particularly original to offer, but it’s well-paced and gorgeous to look at. Writer/director Joseph Kosinski adapts his own graphic novel about the last two people left on Earth (Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough), who are assigned to be the maintenance crew for the last few machines left on the shattered planet after the rest of humanity has departed for the safety of a new colony on one of Saturn’s moons. But our man’s investigations in the ruins of his former civilization lead him to wonder if the alien attack that brought about the destruction isn’t a cover story for something more nefarious. The answers to his questions aren’t terribly original, but they’re deftly employed, and the action is crisp and effective. It makes for a movie that’s big and beautiful to look at but has barely a thought in its head. Featuring Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko.

< Olympus Has Fallen (R, zero stars): A potentially great premise for a silly action movie-- Die Hard in the White House-- is bungled at every level and reduced to a smoldering pile of absurdities and leaden quips in this patience-testing study of incompetence from director Antoine Fuqua. Ex-Secret Service agent Mike Bannerman (bad-movie king Gerard Butler) is back near his old office when the White House is attacked from without and within by North Korean terrorists. They take the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage and force him to reveal nuclear codes that will allow them to detonate America’s entire nuclear stockpile in one fell swoop. Plot holes fall into other, bigger plot holes as Butler races around the White House dispatching terrorists with ease while all the politicians make blatantly stupid decisions. Fuqua’s inept action sequences are borderline incoherent, and he piles on the gore and exploitative September 11 imagery, along with American flags in various tattered states, making this an absolute slog.

Oz the Great and Powerful (PG, **): The real wizards of this Oz prequel are the digital-effects crewmembers who do all the conjuring. Pretty much everything in this vivid but sometimes gaudy cartoon is computer animated except for the actors. The story is something between a faithful recreation and an unimaginative rehash (pre-hash?) of the original, with the titular wizard sucked into a tornado during a black-and-white prologue and transported to a magical land where he must do battle with some wicked witches, aided by new friends, including a sassy flying monkey (voiced by Zach Braff). It’s not a terrible movie by any stretch, but its cheap aping of the original and total lack of a raison de Oz renders it little more than an expensive but craven cash grab piggybacking on someone else’s imagination. Starring James Franco as Oz, Michelle Williams as Glinda, and Mila Kunis as a soon-to-be-wicked witch. In 2D only.

Pain and Gain (R, ***): Michael Bay’s version of a smaller-scale, quirky comedy is still over-edited and overblown nearly beyond recognition, but his pumped-up style is a nice match with the excessive milieu of the bodybuilding world and the bizarre true tale of a trio of meatheads (Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie) who kidnap a loathsome entrepreneur (Tony Shalhoub) and hold him for ransom. Ultimately Bay’s penchant for hyperbole at all levels gets the better of him, but along the way he conjures up a decent action-comedy that works best as a showcase for the talents of Johnson, who gives a powerhouse performance that still never quite taps the full range of his potential. It’s a slick piece of entertainment that’s funnier than it has any right to be, although it remains near impossible to tell when Bay is winking and when he’s being serious.

< The Place Beyond the Pines (R, ****1/2): Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance focuses on tiny incidents while simultaneously expanding the scope of this riveting crime drama, which is an early candidate for best film of 2013. Ryan Gosling costars as an ex-con eager to prove his worth as a father to his skeptical girlfriend (Eva Mendes), but when he resorts to robbery to be a provider, he puts himself on a collision course with well-intentioned rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who has his own legacy to live up to. The meeting between the men sets off a chain of events that unfolds during the course of fifteen years and will change both of their lives. This is a fantastic, nuanced film that’s also decidedly pragmatic and unpretentious. A bevy of great supporting players, including Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn, and Dane DeHaan, round out a terrific ensemble. Under writer/director Cianfrance’s guidance, they’ve made a crime drama more suspenseful than your average plot-driven shoot-’em-up and more affecting than any number of more nakedly ambitious movies.

Also in or Coming to Local Theaters

The Croods (PG): Computer-animated family comedy about a prehistoric family that ventures out of a cave to discover the wonders and terrors of the natural world. Featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds. In 2D only.

Disconnect (R): Ensemble drama about the way technology and social media causes isolation in modern society, featuring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Alexander Skarsgård, and Paula Patton.

The Great Gatsby (PG-13): Baz Luhrmann applies his hyper-stylized technique to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel about the dark underside of the American dream, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role and featuring Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire. In 2D and 3D.

> Mud (PG-13): Matthew McConaughey stars as a fugitive who convinces two young boys to hide him. Also starring Reese Witherspoon.

> Peeples (PG-13): Tyler Perry produces this distinctly Tyler Perry-esque comedy directed by Tina Gordon Chism about a lovestruck man (Craig Robinson) who faces flack from the well-to-do family of his girlfriend (Kerry Washington) when he shows up at the family reunion with plans to propose.

Scary Movie V (PG-13): Cinema’s septic system once more overflows with yet another installment of one of the worst series in film history, which replaces jokes with cultural allusions and appearances by fallen stars like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan.

Video Comentary

Hollywood has done plenty of pontificating about the origins and aftermath of the 1960s leftist movement. Probably the most famous cinematic summation of the hippie revolution is Easy Rider’s stark declaration, “We blew it,” although sentiments range from “the Cubans and the mafia and the CIA blew it for us” (JFK) to “It blew” (Helter Skelter).

Nearly a half century after the Summer of Love, Robert Redford offers his reflections on the antiwar movement with The Company You Keep. Redford doesn’t find any answers blowing in the wind, although he lets the wind blow on and on and on. Hindsight hasn’t necessarily led to any insight here, and the ultimate effect is something like sitting next to a chatty old hippie on a long Greyhound bus ride.

Redford himself stars as Jim Grant, an older single father living in upstate New York who runs a private law practice specializing in pro-bono work and social justice. But before he was Jim Grant, he was Nick Sloan, a member of the radical left-wing group the Weather Underground. Following a botched bank heist that left a security guard dead, the various members broke off and assumed new identities.

The recent arrest of a former Weatherman (Susan Sarandon) has reignited interest in the old case, and a scrappy journalist (Shia LaBeouf) discovers Jim Grant’s secret past, which sets Grant on a largely uneventful cross-country journey to find the one person who can reveal the truth about his involvement.

The Company You Keep spends three-quarters of its bloated two-plus-hour running time chasing after a single secret that, when revealed, turns out not to be terribly interesting. What’s worse is that on its way there, The Company You Keep moves from episode to episode without uncovering a single noteworthy sequence or memorable character. Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Root, Brendan Gleeson, and Sam Elliot all turn up in small roles that are distinguished only by the familiar actors who play them. Their dialogue could be easily interchanged, like a Mad Lib, and still cause no confusion, with everyone offering their own version of, “Things were different then, people don’t remember, et cetera.” (Sample line of dialogue: “I’ll turn myself in the same day the politicians and the corporations turn themselves in.”)

Presumably-- and understandably-- these actors, as well as Chris Cooper, Brit Marling, Anna Kendrick, Terrence Howard as a generic FBI agent, and Stanley Tucci as a generic newspaper editor, just wanted to work with Redford; there’s no other justification for casting such high-profile performers in the blandest of bit parts. Only Sarandon and Julie Christie manage to make any headway with what turn out to be the movie’s strongest scenes, by default. The Shia LaBeouf factor is an impediment as well. Here, as in every LaBeouf movie, there is a scene where he frantically tries to convince someone to talk to him even though they recoil at the idea, and it’s always believable.

Redford is still a screen presence to be reckoned with. Even in a movie this slight and sedate he quietly commands attention. It’s a reminder why he’s the icon the above-mentioned performers are so eager to work with. His very real talent as a director, as evidenced in 1994’s Quiz Show, seems to diminish as his art merges with his outspoken left-wing politics. The Company You Keep is only marginally better and less pedantic than the infuriating, bumbling antiwar tract Lions for Lambs, the low point of Redford’s directorial career, and both movies share a tendency to lecture without providing much real substance. You’d be much better served watching the solid 2002 documentary The Weather Underground, or going closer to the source with Medium Cool, or reading Bill Ayers’s memoir Fugitive Days, which is prominently displayed on Nick Sloan’s coffeetable.

Those who forget history may be doomed to repeat it, but those who keep repeating the same historical arguments aren’t doing us any favors either.

Follow Bryan Miller on Twitter@bmillercomedy.

Video Comentary

> opening this week in Carbondale (Friday unless otherwise noted).

< leaving Carbondale this Friday.

by Bryan Miller unless otherwise credited.

< The Call (R, **1/2): This throwaway thriller is both overheated and undercooked, but its suspenseful real-time kidnapping sequence generates enough suspense to make it fun. Halle Berry stars as a 9-1-1 operator whose mistake leads a young girl to be abducted by a killer. Months later, she gets a call from a kidnapped girl (Abigail Breslin) who Berry suspects was taken by the same mystery man. The girl attempts an escape while Berry talks her through the process. When Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) shows up as a do-gooding limo driver, the stakes are raised and the chase takes a sharp turn. Silly as it is, The Call makes the most of its premise and ratchets up the tension in its middle stretch, which makes it all the more unfortunate when it lapses back into utter preposterousness in the last act and becomes an expensive episode of CSI.

The Company You Keep (R, *1/2): Robert Redford directs and stars in this rambling, pedantic movie that rehashes tired arguments about the efficacy of the radical leftist movement in the 1960s. When an upstate New York attorney (Redford) is outed as a former member of the Weather Underground by an obnoxious, plucky journalist (Shia LaBeouf), he goes on a cross-country road trip to find the one person who can verify his innocence. Along the way he meets a bevy of one-dimensional characters who never have enough screen time to develop beyond their bumper-sticker platitudes, and the fact that they’re played by such notable actors-- Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Elliot, Chris Cooper, Susan Sarandon, Anna Kendrick, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Julie Christie-- only highlights how little meat is left on these particular bones. Only slightly less pedantic than Redford’s awful antiwar movie Lions for Lambs, but twice as dull.

< Evil Dead (R , ***): There’s no real justification for this shiny, relatively expensive remake of Sam Raimi’s truly indie original, one of the last drive-in classics. That said, writer/director Fede Alvarez does a solid job of crafting this superfluous update, which is more a straightforward horror take on the material. A group of twentysomethings venture to a remote cabin in the woods to help their junkie friend Mia (Jane Levy) kick the habit, but when one of them reads a passage from a spooky old book they find in the basement, a demon is unleashed that turns them against one another and sets off a massacre. It lacks the essential glee and wit of the original, but Alvarez’s slightly different take is still a passable splatterfest, more carefully crafted and smartly paced than the average offering in the genre. It’ll never inspire cultish devotion, but it’s a good time for moviegoers who actually got all the jokes in the superior Cabin in the Woods.

Forty-two (PG-13, ***1/2): The life of baseball legend Jackie Robinson is such an inspirational tale that any movie about him is bound to be affecting, but writer/director Brian Helgeland’s appropriately reverent biopic is such a straightforward hagiography that it fails to capture the nuances of the man and the troubled era in which he lived. Chadwick Boseman, with emotive eyes and a credibly athletic build, is excellent as the man who broke baseball’s color barrier. Less inspiring is the jowl-centric, hammy performance by Harrison Ford as Branch Ricky, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner who hired Robinson and who receives far too much screentime. The film doesn’t entirely avoid the tough issues, but it mostly provides the kind of historical gloss you’d expect out of a museum filmstrip. It’s better for Forty-two to exist than to not, but such a remarkable life deserves a more remarkable film.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (PG-13, *): There are plenty of worse movies than this sequel to the movie based on the cartoon based on the toy line, but not many that are dumber. Even by live-action cartoon standards, this 3D-enhanced cash-grab is poorly conceived and shoddily executed, with a plot involving a satellite that drops giant rods using the natural gravity of space to destroy cities around the world unless their leaders pledge allegiance to Cobra. Can the Joes stop it? Sure, but which Joes? Channing Tatum and Bruce Willis are all over the trailer, but they’re barely in the movie at all-- the focus is split between a trio of good guys led by The “Dwayne Johnson” Rock and a tangentially related plot involving the faceless, voiceless, personality-free Snake Eyes and his relationship with Cobra ninja Storm Shadow. The blundering storyline would be more forgivable if the action sequences were thrilling enough, but they lack any sense of scope or adventure. Makes Transformers look like My Dinner with Andre. In 2D only.

The Host (PG-13 , 1/2*): Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War), who should know better, writes and directs this bumbling adaptation of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s asinine sci-fi novel. A group of defenseless glowing alien bugs with limited technological superiority have somehow managed to completely take over Earth, and only a handful of survivors remain. One of the survivors, Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), is captured and implanted with an alien called Wanderer, but her mind remains intact, and she forges a bond with the creature controlling her body. Together they seek to make peace between the alien overlords and the human resistance fighters, which leads to a bizarre love triangle between Melanie, her boyfriend Jared, and Kyle, a fellow resistance fighter who falls in love with the alien inside Melanie’s body. (Awkward!) The sci-fi trappings here are absurdly perfunctory and cheap-looking, and the human drama here can only aspire to the level of soap operatics. A failure on every conceivable level.

< Jurassic Park 3D (PG-13, ****1/2): Michael Crichton’s pitch-perfect sci-fi novel made perfect fodder for the director of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Despite a few touches of the Spielbergian schmaltz that intensified in the sequel and beyond, this remains one of the most thrilling popcorn movies of the era--or any era--as Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern trek through an amusement park gone haywire with rampaging dinosaurs. The combination of animatronics, puppetry, and first-wave computer-generated effects makes for special effects that still dazzle, but most of the awe and suspense comes from Spielberg’s uncanny sense of timing and visual dynamics. Now in 3D, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Oblivion (PG-13, ***1/2): This sci-fi action flick has nothing particularly original to offer, but it’s well-paced and gorgeous to look at. Writer/director Joseph Kosinski adapts his own graphic novel about the last two people left on Earth (Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough), who are assigned to be the maintenance crew for the last few machines left on the shattered planet after the rest of humanity has departed for the safety of a new colony on one of Saturn’s moons. But our man’s investigations in the ruins of his former civilization lead him to wonder if the alien attack that brought about the destruction isn’t a cover story for something more nefarious. The answers to his questions aren’t terribly original, but they’re deftly employed, and the action is crisp and effective. It makes for a movie that’s big and beautiful to look at but has barely a thought in its head. Featuring Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko.

Olympus Has Fallen (R, zero stars): A potentially great premise for a silly action movie-- Die Hard in the White House-- is bungled at every level and reduced to a smoldering pile of absurdities and leaden quips in this patience-testing study of incompetence from director Antoine Fuqua. Ex-Secret Service agent Mike Bannerman (bad-movie king Gerard Butler) is back near his old office when the White House is attacked from without and within by North Korean terrorists. They take the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage and force him to reveal nuclear codes that will allow them to detonate America’s entire nuclear stockpile in one fell swoop. Plot holes fall into other, bigger plot holes as Butler races around the White House dispatching terrorists with ease while all the politicians make blatantly stupid decisions. Fuqua’s inept action sequences are borderline incoherent, and he piles on the gore and exploitative September 11 imagery, along with American flags in various tattered states, making this an absolute slog.

Oz the Great and Powerful (PG, **): The real wizards of this Oz prequel are the digital-effects crewmembers who do all the conjuring. Pretty much everything in this vivid but sometimes gaudy cartoon is computer animated except for the actors. The story is something between a faithful recreation and an unimaginative rehash (pre-hash?) of the original, with the titular wizard sucked into a tornado during a black-and-white prologue and transported to a magical land where he must do battle with some wicked witches, aided by new friends, including a sassy flying monkey (voiced by Zach Braff). It’s not a terrible movie by any stretch, but its cheap aping of the original and total lack of a raison de Oz renders it little more than an expensive but craven cash grab piggybacking on someone else’s imagination. Starring James Franco as Oz, Michelle Williams as Glinda, and Mila Kunis as a soon-to-be-wicked witch. In 2D and 3D.

Pain and Gain (R, ***): Michael Bay’s version of a smaller-scale, quirky comedy is still over-edited and overblown nearly beyond recognition, but his pumped-up style is a nice match with the excessive milieu of the bodybuilding world and the bizarre true tale of a trio of meatheads (Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie) who kidnap a loathsome entrepreneur (Tony Shalhoub) and hold him for ransom. Ultimately Bay’s penchant for hyperbole at all levels gets the better of him, but along the way he conjures up a decent action-comedy that works best as a showcase for the talents of Johnson, who gives a powerhouse performance that still never quite taps the full range of his potential. It’s a slick piece of entertainment that’s funnier than it has any right to be, although it remains near impossible to tell when Bay is winking and when he’s being serious.

The Place Beyond the Pines (R, ****1/2): Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance focuses on tiny incidents while simultaneously expanding the scope of this riveting crime drama, which is an early candidate for best film of 2013. Ryan Gosling costars as an ex-con eager to prove his worth as a father to his skeptical girlfriend (Eva Mendes), but when he resorts to robbery to be a provider, he puts himself on a collision course with well-intentioned rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who has his own legacy to live up to. The meeting between the men sets off a chain of events that unfolds during the course of fifteen years and will change both of their lives. This is a fantastic, nuanced film that’s also decidedly pragmatic and unpretentious. A bevy of great supporting players, including Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn, and Dane DeHaan, round out a terrific ensemble. Under writer/director Cianfrance’s guidance they’ve made a crime drama more suspenseful than your average plot-driven shoot-’em-up and more affecting than any number of more nakedly ambitious movies.

Also in or Coming to Local Theaters

The Big Wedding (R): Star-packed dramedy about a divorced couple (Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton) who pretend to still be married to appease their conservative future inlaws. Featuring Amanda Seyfried, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, Topher Grace, and Katherine Heigl.

The Croods (PG): Computer-animated family comedy about a prehistoric family that ventures out of a cave to discover the wonders and terrors of the natural world. Featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds. In 2D and 3D.

< Disconnect (R): Ensemble drama about the way technology and social media causes isolation in modern society, featuring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Alexander Skarsgård, and Paula Patton.

> The Great Gatsby (PG-13): Baz Luhrmann applies his hyper-stylized technique to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel about the dark underside of the American dream, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role and featuring Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire. In 2D and 3D.

Iron Man 3D (R): Writer/director Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) takes over the Marvel comics franchise, which finds dapper superhero Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) forced to rebuild his empire after it’s brought down by the nefarious Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). Featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, and Don Cheadle. In 2D and 3D.

Scary Movie V (PG-13): Cinema’s septic system once more overflows with yet another installment of one of the worst series in film history, which replaces jokes with cultural allusions and appearances by fallen stars like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan.

< Tyler Perry’s Temptation (PG-13): A marriage counselor begins cheating on her husband. Written and directed by Tyler Perry, but not starring him-- the cast includes Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Vanessa Williams, and Brandy Norwood.

Video Comentary

> opening this week in Carbondale (Friday unless otherwise noted).

< leaving Carbondale this Friday.

by Bryan Miller unless otherwise credited.

The Call (R, **1/2): This throwaway thriller is both overheated and undercooked, but its suspenseful real-time kidnapping sequence generates enough suspense to make it fun. Halle Berry stars as a 9-1-1 operator whose mistake leads a young girl to be abducted by a killer. Months later, she gets a call from a kidnapped girl (Abigail Breslin) who Berry suspects was taken by the same mystery man. The girl attempts an escape while Berry talks her through the process. When Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) shows up as a do-gooding limo driver, the stakes are raised and the chase takes a sharp turn. Silly as it is, The Call makes the most of its premise and ratchets up the tension in its middle stretch, which makes it all the more unfortunate when it lapses back into utter preposterousness in the last act and becomes an expensive episode of CSI.

Evil Dead (R , ***): There’s no real justification for this shiny, relatively expensive remake of Sam Raimi’s truly indie original, one of the last drive-in classics. That said, writer/director Fede Alvarez does a solid job of crafting this superfluous update, which is more a straightforward horror take on the material. A group of twentysomethings venture to a remote cabin in the woods to help their junkie friend Mia (Jane Levy) kick the habit, but when one of them reads a passage from a spooky old book they find in the basement, a demon is unleashed that turns them against one another and sets off a massacre. It lacks the essential glee and wit of the original, but Alvarez’s slightly different take is still a passable splatterfest, more carefully crafted and smartly paced than the average offering in the genre. It’ll never inspire cultish devotion, but it’s a good time for moviegoers who actually got all the jokes in the superior Cabin in the Woods.

Forty-two (PG-13, ***1/2): The life of baseball legend Jackie Robinson is such an inspirational tale that any movie about him is bound to be affecting, but writer/director Brian Helgeland’s appropriately reverent biopic is such a straightforward hagiography that it fails to capture the nuances of the man and the troubled era in which he lived. Chadwick Boseman, with emotive eyes and a credibly athletic build, is excellent as the man who broke baseball’s color barrier. Less inspiring is the jowl-centric, hammy performance by Harrison Ford as Branch Ricky, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner who hired Robinson and who, to my mind, receives far too much screentime. The film doesn’t entirely avoid the tough issues, but it mostly provides the kind of historical gloss you’d expect out of a museum filmstrip. It’s better for Forty-two to exist than to not, but such a remarkable life deserves a more remarkable film.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (PG-13, *): There are plenty of worse movies than this sequel to the movie based on the cartoon based on the toy line, but not many that are dumber. Even by live-action cartoon standards, this 3D-enhanced cash-grab is poorly conceived and shoddily executed, with a plot involving a satellite that drops giant rods using the natural gravity of space to destroy cities around the world unless their leaders pledge allegiance to Cobra. Can the Joes stop it? Sure, but which Joes? Channing Tatum and Bruce Willis are all over the trailer, but they’re barely in the movie at all-- the focus is split between a trio of good guys led by The “Dwayne Johnson” Rock and a tangentially related plot involving the faceless, voiceless, personality-free Snake Eyes and his relationship with Cobra ninja Storm Shadow. The blundering storyline would be more forgivable if the action sequences were thrilling enough, but they lack any sense of scope or adventure. Makes Transformers look like My Dinner with Andre. In 2D only.

The Host (PG-13 , 1/2*): Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War), who should know better, writes and directs this bumbling adaptation of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s asinine sci-fi novel. A group of defenseless glowing alien bugs with limited technological superiority have somehow managed to completely take over Earth, and only a handful of survivors remain. One of the survivors, Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), is captured and implanted with an alien called Wanderer, but her mind remains intact, and she forges a bond with the creature controlling her body. Together they seek to make peace between the alien overlords and the human resistance fighters, which leads to a bizarre love triangle between Melanie, her boyfriend Jared, and Kyle, a fellow resistance fighter who falls in love with the alien inside Melanie’s body. (Awkward!) The sci-fi trappings here are absurdly perfunctory and cheap-looking, and the human drama here can only aspire to the level of soap operatics. A failure on every conceivable level.

Jurassic Park 3D (PG-13, ****1/2): Michael Crichton’s pitch-perfect sci-fi novel made perfect fodder for the director of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Despite a few touches of the Spielbergian schmaltz that intensified in the sequel and beyond, this remains one of the most thrilling popcorn movies of the era--or any era--as Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern trek through an amusement park gone haywire with rampaging dinosaurs. The combination of animatronics, puppetry, and first-wave computer-generated effects makes for special effects that still dazzle, but most of the awe and suspense comes from Spielberg’s uncanny sense of timing and visual dynamics. Now in 3D, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Oblivion (PG-13, ***1/2): This sci-fi action flick has nothing particularly original to offer, but it’s well-paced and gorgeous to look at. Writer/director Joseph Kosinski adapts his own graphic novel about the last two people left on Earth (Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough), who are assigned to be the maintenance crew for the last few machines left on the shattered planet after the rest of humanity has departed for the safety of a new colony on one of Saturn’s moons. But our man’s investigations in the ruins of his former civilization lead him to wonder if the alien attack that brought about the destruction isn’t a cover story for something more nefarious. The answers to his questions aren’t terribly original, but they’re deftly employed, and the action is crisp and effective. It makes for a movie that’s big and beautiful to look at but has barely a thought in its head. Featuring Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko.

Olympus Has Fallen (R, zero stars): A potentially great premise for a silly action movie-- Die Hard in the White House-- is bungled at every level and reduced to a smoldering pile of absurdities and leaden quips in this patience-testing study of incompetence from director Antoine Fuqua. Ex-Secret Service agent Mike Bannerman (bad-movie king Gerard Butler) is back near his old office when the White House is attacked from without and within by North Korean terrorists. They take the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage and force him to reveal nuclear codes that will allow them to detonate America’s entire nuclear stockpile in one fell swoop. Plot holes fall into other, bigger plot holes as Butler races around the White House dispatching terrorists with ease while all the politicians make blatantly stupid decisions. Fuqua’s inept action sequences are borderline incoherent, and he piles on the gore and exploitative September 11 imagery, along with American flags in various tattered states, making this an absolute slog.

Oz the Great and Powerful (PG, **): The real wizards of this Oz prequel are the digital-effects crewmembers who do all the conjuring. Pretty much everything in this vivid but sometimes gaudy cartoon is computer animated except for the actors. The story is something between a faithful recreation and an unimaginative rehash (pre-hash?) of the original, with the titular wizard sucked into a tornado during a black-and-white prologue and transported to a magical land where he must do battle with some wicked witches, aided by new friends, including a sassy flying monkey (voiced by Zach Braff). It’s not a terrible movie by any stretch, but its cheap aping of the original and total lack of a raison de Oz renders it little more than an expensive but craven cash grab piggybacking on someone else’s imagination. Starring James Franco as Oz, Michelle Williams as Glinda, and Mila Kunis as a soon-to-be-wicked witch. In 2D and 3D.

The Place Beyond the Pines (R, ****1/2): Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance focuses on tiny incidents while simultaneously expanding the scope of this riveting crime drama, which is an early candidate for best film of 2013. Ryan Gosling costars as an ex-con eager to prove his worth as a father to his skeptical girlfriend (Eva Mendes), but when he resorts to robbery to be a provider he puts himself on a collision course with well-intentioned rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who has his own legacy to live up to. The meeting between the men sets off a chain of events that unfolds during the course of fifteen years and will change both of their lives. This is a fantastic, nuanced film that’s also decidedly pragmatic and unpretentious. A bevy of great supporting players, including Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn, and Dane DeHaan, round out a terrific ensemble. Under writer/director Cianfrance’s guidance they’ve made a crime drama more suspenseful than your average plot-driven shoot-’em-up and more affecting than any number of more nakedly ambitious movies.

< Side Effects (R, ****1/2): Steven Soderbergh directs this nifty thriller that examines America’s fondness for better living through prescription pills, but social critique never gets tangled up in the twisty plot machinations, which are heavy with Hitchcockian overtones. Rooney Mara stars as the emotionally fragile wife of a recently released white-collar criminal (Channing Tatum). Smarmy psychiatrist Banks (Jude Law) puts her on an experimental drug he just happens to be getting a $30,000 kickback to test. When she commits a sudden, shocking act of violence during a druggy stupor, not only are his ethics called into question, but his culpability is examined. Soderbergh has of late harmonized his abilities to make slick genre pictures and more unconventional and experimental films, and the results have been consistently fantastic, never better than here. His latest is part lurid potboiler, part chilly, cerebral examination-- the combination of which produces a dizzying high. Also featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

< Silver Linings Playbook (R, ***1/2): The eccentric David O. Russell moves yet another step closer to convention with this adaptation of Matthew Quick’s novel about a bipolar divorcé (Bradley Cooper) trying to reconnect with his ex-wife after a stint in a mental hospital. In addition to dealing with his compulsive gambler of a father (a very good Robert De Niro), he becomes entangled with a socially maladjusted widow (Jennifer Lawrence) who coerces him into partnering with her in a dance contest. It’s a well-acted, frequently funny take on a pretty conventional romantic drama. The characters are uniquely depicted, and Russell does a particularly strong job of presenting the daily tribulations of dealing with mental illness. The story follows an arc that should be familiar to anyone who’s ever gotten a peek at Hollywood’s playbook.

Also in or Coming to Local Theaters

> The Big Wedding (R): Star-packed dramedy about a divorced couple (Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton) who pretend to still be married to appease their conservative future inlaws. Featuring Amanda Seyfried, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, Topher Grace, and Katherine Heigl.

> The Company You Keep (R): Robert Redford stars as a former political extremist now in hiding whose new identity is threatened by an investigative journalist (Shia Labeouf). Directed by Redford and featuring Julie Christie, Stanley Tucci, Chris Cooper, Nick Nolte, Terrence Howard, Susan Sarandon, and Richard Jenkins.

The Croods (PG): Computer-animated family comedy about a prehistoric family that ventures out of a cave to discover the wonders and terrors of the natural world. Featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds. In 2D and 3D.

> Disconnect (R): Ensemble drama about the way technology and social media causes isolation in modern society, featuring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Alexander Skarsgård, and Paula Patton.

< Emperor (PG-13): When the Japanese surrender in the nuclear aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Gen. Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) is taked with determining whether Emperor Hirohito will die for war crimes. Starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur and directed by Peter Webber (Hannibal Rising, Girl with a Pearl Earring).

> Iron Man 3D (R): Writer/director Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) takes over the Marvel comics franchise, which finds dapper superhero Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) forced to rebuild his empire after it’s brought down by the nefarious Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). Featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, and Don Cheadle. In 2D and 3D.

> Pain and Gain (R): Action-movie demagogue Michael Bay is out to prove he can make films without exploding robots with this dark comedy based on a true story about a ‘roid-raging crew of bodybuilders (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “Marky” Mark Walhberg, and Anthony “Respected Actor Without a Goofy Nickname” Mackie) and their bumbling attempt to launch a criminal enterprise. Featuring Ed Harris and Tony Shalhoub.

Scary Movie V (PG-13): Cinema’s septic system once more overflows with yet another installment of one of the worst series in film history, which replaces jokes with cultural allusions and appearances by fallen stars like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan.

Tyler Perry’s Temptation (PG-13): A marriage counselor begins cheating on her husband. Written and directed by Tyler Perry, but not starring him-- the cast includes Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Vanessa Williams, and Brandy Norwood.