Tag: Digital Media

It’s the sort of utopian, not-too-distant future. Men wear high-waisted pants and mustaches without irony. Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his operating system.

It sounds crazy. And creepy. Though how far are we from that reality? We’re already in love with our gadgets. Why shouldn’t it be plausible that someone invents an operating system that has artificial intelligence? And why couldn’t that operating system fall in love with its user, and vice versa?

That’s Her’s premise. For all its problems—and it has plenty—Her raises enough thoughtful questions to keep you thinking about it long after the closing credits end.

Theodore (Phoenix, recovering nicely from his performance as Popeye the Sailor in The Master) writes letters for people who don’t want to write for themselves—or maybe they don’t have a gift for words. Whatever the reason, Theodore sits in a lovely light-filled office and writes for others.

He’s addicted to technology. One day on his way to work he sees an advertisement for the first operating system that has reliable artificial intelligence. He buys it, uploads it after work, and soon the O.S. (Samantha, who’s voiced by Scarlett Johansson) is chatting with him about his personal life and what it means to be human.

It’s all rather innocent at first. And it remains rather innocent, which is one of Her’s charms. That helps keep the creepiness factor at bay. Samantha just wants to love Theodore, who is separated from and divorcing Catherine (Rooney Mara), a real-life person.

There are complications. Samantha has no body and her attempts to find a surrogate backfire drastically. Plus, as she grows in strength and intellect—the operating systems keep learning—she becomes more distant from Theodore as she seeks knowledge and experience from other people and machines.

In the end, it becomes a relationship not unlike other relationships: It grows and changes. And once you get past the she’s-not-flesh-and-blood angle of Samantha’s existence, Her becomes emotional and highly watchable. Phoenix is spectacular, and Johansson’s performance is award caliber.

About those problems: First, Her is clearly a movie about a relationship written from the point of view of a man. If you’re looking for female insight, look elsewhere. Second, Her fails the Bechdel Test—none of the women in this movie talk about anything other than their relationships with men. There’s one couple (played by Amy Adams and Matt Letscher) that’s so stereotypically mid-20th century, it feels as if they’re only slightly more evolved than Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billingsley.

Third, Samantha comes dangerously close to Manic Pixie Dream Girl status (and I apologize for using that phrase). The fact that she grows and changes seems simultaneously good—everyone needs to change, especially in screenplays—and bad, because her evolution dramatically changes the tenor of the relationship. Here’s the question: Is she changing because that’s a natural thing for her character to do? Or is she changing, and not to Theodore’s liking, because Spike Jonze fears change? (Short answer: Who knows?)

Her must be doing something correctly because I’ve found myself thinking about it often. In the end, it’s a surprisingly sweet, melancholy, and touching meditation on how we manage relationships.

Playing this week

12 Years a Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

47 Ronin 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

American Hustle
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Big
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Book Thief
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Grudge Match
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Nebraska
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Saving Mr. Banks
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Tyler Perry: A Madea Christmas
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Walking With Dinosaurs
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolf of Wall Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is terrible. Just terrible. It’s wrongheaded, silly, and worse, confused. The story—about Walter (Ben Stiller), who works as a negative asset manager at Life magazine—is pretty straightforward. Walter doesn’t have much of a life, so he fantasizes. But then something happens to a 35mm film negative that’s going to grace the cover of the magazine’s final issue and he has to spring into action to find it, letting Walter become the adventurer he’s always daydreamed of being.

Sounds harmless, but this is where the wrongheadedness comes in. First, forget what you know about Life’s real history. Here it’s been acquired by a heartless corporation that wants to make it digital only. But there’s so much product placement in the movie (by giant, presumably heartless corporations) that it becomes distracting. Watch Walter talk about how Papa John’s killed his dreams (which is some serious irony considering how much Papa John’s flashes its corporate logo). Watch Walter and some guy (Patton Oswalt) who works at eHarmony (which is great with customer service!) eat at a Cinnabon and talk about how great it is.

But, the giant corporation is getting ready to kill Life. So, Mr. Stiller, do we love the corporations, or are they killing us? Or does it not matter when you have a movie to make? If the story were captivating enough, there wouldn’t be a question.

The story, however, is for the birds. The original piece, James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” which ran in the New Yorker in 1939, manages to be more captivating in a shade more than 2,000 words than Stiller’s movie is in one hour and 54 minutes. I’ve written before about how source material doesn’t matter, but I’ll amend that rule: If you’re going to bastardize something, don’t lionize the person doing the bastardization.

In other words, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty turns into the ain’t-Ben-Stiller-grand show. Maybe it means to, maybe it doesn’t. But jumping into icy waters from a helicopter in order to get aboard a boat seems like grandstanding when 30 minutes earlier Walter was afraid of everything. It’s as if the power of being portrayed by Ben Stiller infused Walter Mitty with a heretofore unused spine.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Walter has given up on life, see. His favorite photographer (Sean Penn) has taken the cover photo for Life’s last issue. The negative has gone missing. Walter, who until this point has spent a boring life daydreaming about excitement, springs into action to find it.

He goes to Greenland, then Iceland. It would all be kind of charming if it didn’t seem so smug. Alfred Hitchcock plunged normal people into extraordinary circumstances and let them rise to the occasion (see: North by Northwest, The 39 Steps). Here, Walter is simultaneously saving the magazine’s final issue, getting the girl, and reaching toward life, but it’s mundane because this is the same character Stiller always plays: A loser who looks like Ben Stiller who isn’t a loser. It doesn’t help that the comedy isn’t funny and the action sequences look antiseptic. Maybe Stiller and company should have left this one in the daydream stage.

Playing this week

12 Years a Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

47 Ronin 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

American Hustle
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Book Thief
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dallas Buyer’s Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dhoom 3
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Grudge Match
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Nebraska
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Saving Mr. Banks
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Walking With Dinosaurs
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolf of Wall Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

American Hustle is, in some circles, being touted as a masterpiece. It’s easy to see why. Good cast (Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner). Respected director (David O. Russell, who had a major hit with Cooper and Lawrence and Silver Linings Playbook). And crime in the 1970s: Wide ties! Bad hair! Good music!

Unfortunately, American Hustle is no masterpiece. It’s a bore. It’s a fictionalized account of Abscam, a late 1970s, early 1980s FBI sting that, in real life, resulted in convictions for about a half-dozen members of Congress (including a senator). Great. Here in the movies, it’s an excuse for Russell to get together with his pals—all the stars with names above the title have worked with Russell before, save Renner—and have their characters shout at each other while the camera moves quickly and often.

It’s exhausting. There are no stakes. There are wigs and braless dresses and fat suits and perms. There is nothing resembling a compelling character or story.

American Hustle has the bones of a good movie. Bale (doing a ham-fisted Robert De Niro-lite, if two such opposing choices can live within one performance) is Irving Rosenfeld, a Bronx-born dry cleaner owner and con man who scams dopes into giving him money with false promises of providing big loans. He’s joined by Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a con woman who fakes an English accent and lures the dopes with her good looks.

Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is a low-level FBI agent who’s on to Sydney’s game. He arrests her. In order to avoid prison, she agrees to help Richie set up a sting. She gets Rosenfeld to help. He and Richie hate each other. Shouting ensues!

Then there’s Lawrence. In a classic case of miscasting, she’s a mid-30s shrew of a housewife, married to Rosenfeld and determined to make his life difficult. And despite her miscasting, she’s good—Lawrence has the talent—but there’s just nothing believable about her marriage to Rosenfeld, her jealousy of Sydney, and the way she plays him to get what she wants.

Oh, and Renner is the mayor of Camden, New Jersey. He’s modeled, sort of, on then-mayor Angelo Errichetti, whom he looks nothing like. But he does some shouting (a Russell mainstay).

Maybe American Hustle is itself a hustle. Maybe the filmmakers, including Russell and co-writer Eric Singer, got together and said, “Hey, we’ll do this movie with big stars. And then we won’t give them anything to do. But we’ll move the camera a lot and we’ll have them scream at the tops of their lungs, and everyone will think we made art.”

That’s a big maybe; the screenplay’s authors have an “and” between their names, indicating they didn’t collaborate. Maybe Russell conned himself into thinking he made a great movie. In reality, it’s dull. There are entire scenes when Adams stands there with nothing to do. And it also has a garish trick ending that’s straight from the school of lazy plotting.

One bright note: Comedian Louis C.K. plays Cooper’s haggard boss, and he’s excellent. He’s the one person not in on the joke, playing his character straight and hitting the right tone.

Skip American Hustle. Re-watch Goodfellas.

Playing this week

12 Years a Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Best Man Holiday
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Blue Jasmine
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Book Thief
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dallas Buyer’s Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Delivery Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Homefront
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games:
Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Out of the Furnace
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Thor: The Dark World
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Each year when I put together a list of the best movies—whether for work or for fun—it usually doesn’t take much effort. There are, generally, five or six movies that stand out above the rest, whether they’re huge Hollywood blockbusters or tiny indie gems.

This year the story is a little different. When going back through my notes, I easily found 11 movies that were deserving of special mention. It’s almost as if there was a trend in 2013, and the trend was releasing good movies.

Not that there weren’t stinkers (hello, Safe Haven!), but this isn’t one of those lists. Here are the films that affected me most in 2013, starting with the best and working toward the honorable mentions.

12 Years a Slave

No one has portrayed slavery in the United States as director Steve McQueen and writer John Ridley have here: Brutal, inhumane, terrifying. The story of a free man from the north (the wonderful Chiwetel Ejiofor) kidnapped and sold into slavery, the story shines a light on the normalcy of owning human property, the quiet acknowledgment from southerners that the institution was wrong, and their uses of physical and psychological torture to keep it in place. 12 Years a Slave is heartbreaking, its performances are superior, and its direction and editing shockingly efficient in showing the horror of the everyday.

Blue is the Warmest Color

If you’ve heard about or read about Blue is the Warmest Color, you know it’s filled with long, explicit lesbian sex scenes. (If not, you’ve just been told.) You should also know it’s one of the most honest portrayals of a young person’s life ever put on film. In its three-hour running time, we follow Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) as she slowly comes out (to herself but not her family), finds love (and nearly obsession), and makes a life as a young professional. It’s long and indulgent, but like many of the best movies, it rewards the patient.

All is Lost

As I noted in my review, Robert Redford has long been one of our greatest movie stars. He’s never been one of our greatest actors. In All is Lost, he rises to the challenge. He must: Redford is literally the only cast member, a man struggling to survive on the Indian Ocean as his boat suffers a hull breach and terrible weather. There’s little dialogue, and Redford and director JC Chandor work well together to increase tension and propel the story.

The Spectacular Now

Did high school hurt this much? The wild guy who doesn’t give a shit and the quiet, charming, straight-A student fall in love in director James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now. Sutter (Miles Teller) is a budding alcoholic and Aimee (Shailene Woodley) has never had a boyfriend. At first, it’s unclear whether she’s bringing him up or he’s bringing her down. When it becomes clear, it’s painful watching these two get lost in each other, even as we keep rooting for them. This movie has been unfairly compared to John Hughes; it’s better. See it with Kleenex.

Drinking Buddies

Olivia Wilde is a good actor who’s never found a good lead until Drinking Buddies. She’s Kate, a microbrewery manager who may be in love with her coworker, Luke (Jake Johnson). Of course, they both have significant others. It sounds banal, but writer-director Joe Swanberg finds the sublime in the mundane, and he nails the difficulties that can sometimes spring up in male-female friendships.

http://youtu.be/wxuxkQF7Bak

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Director Alexander Payne’s Nebraska—my vote for best original screenplay (by Bob Nelson)—takes his standard premise of showcasing difficult people and making them human. Here, Woody (Bruce Dern), an old coot, hits the road with his reluctant son (Will Forte) in order to track down $1 million Woody thinks he’s won. It takes time finding its way, but this father-son road trip movie is worth the effort.

Lake Bell’s writing and directing debut In a World… manages to combine a romantic comedy with explorations of gender roles, marriage, and the world of voiceover acting. It’s funny and charming, even if it could have used a different director of photography.

http://youtu.be/VcXd6W00DTI

In the foreign film department, No is as captivating as they come. It’s the story of the 1988 vote Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet allowed to determine whether he would serve another eight years, and the campaigns the pro-Pinochet (“Yes”) and anti-Pinochet sides (“No”) mounted. Gael García Bernal is perfect as the “No” side’s leader. Technically No came out in 2012, but it didn’t get much stateside play until this year.

http://youtu.be/ApJUk_6hN-s

Matthew McConaughey was in two winners, Mud and Dallas Buyers Club, which are both uplifting and downbeat in their own ways. It’s nice to see McConaughey use his powers for good instead of evil after years and years of terrible romantic comedies.

And finally, for horror movie fans out there, there’s You’re Next, possibly the best mainstream horror movie of the last 10 years. It’s a simple premise: What happens when there’s a home invasion and the invaders run into someone who’s just as violent  as they are? This movie is riveting and manages to avoid the trap most horror movies run into: It never runs out of steam.

It’s too much to assume 2014 will go as swimmingly, but here’s to dreaming. And nothing will be as bad as Safe Haven. Maybe.

Sam Bush and Kathryn Caine

Love and Mercy/Self-released

Love and Mercy will stoke the embers of even the most jaded cynic’s heart during the cold holiday season. This collection of covers succeeds in inspiring listeners to hope, even in the darkest times. Employing an engaging folk rock sound, Bush and Caine wind their way through spine-tingling renditions of Wilco’s “Blood of the Lamb,” and offer a soulful take on the Jeff Tweedy/Mavis Staples number “You are Not Alone.” The duo provides a powerful performance on the Johnny Cash track “Redemption,” and on their version of Tom Petty’s “Square One” Bush sounds like Petty’s vocal doppelganger, and it’s a nice surprise. The tracks are earthy and stripped-down, making them feel like humble offerings, and that’s the point; these songs are meditations on God, man, relationships, and how we intersect. They are presented simply and honestly. A CD release show is scheduled for December 11 at Christ Episcopal Church with all proceeds going to benefit The Haiti Mission.

Ed Kowalczyk

The Flood and the Mercy/Soul Whisper Records

Former Live frontman Ed Kowalczyk has always been something of a lightning rod for music fans. Either you love his earnest performances and cryptic lyrics, or he leaves you puzzled. His solo work, including his latest, The Flood and the Mercy, continues the trend and keeps the diehard fan happy. The build-ups to raucous choruses still abound (“The One”) and Kowalczyk still wears his heart on his sleeve as he cries to the heavens on tracks like “Angels on a Razor.” The alternative rock of his former releases is tempered on this album, though tracks like “Parasite” prove he can still rip through a track. Religious imagery is everywhere (“Supernatural Fire,” “Holy Water Tears”) and Kowalczyk wrestles with God (“Seven”) as much as ever despite his own faith. Kowalczyk has never been one to shy away from emotional moments and questioning belief systems, but on The Flood and the Mercy you get the sense he is finding some hard-won answers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsftTzOu6YY

Mason Jennings

Always Been/Stats and Brackets

Always Been may not appeal to everyone because it is almost entirely devoted to love and relationships, however, a lot of the numbers have an earthy folk vibe to them (“Lonely Street”) or are just downright easygoing (note the combination of ukulele and whistling on the closing track “Just Try”). The album works through familiar themes—living up to the one you love (“Instrument”), a woman willing to put up with your crap (“So Good”)-—in the name of love’s power. There are fun moments that add balance, like when Jennings riffs on revival songs as in the  countrified “Witness.”

Out of the Furnace is so dark, gritty, and earnest, it’s a wonder it was made in a film world where irony rules. The movie’s inhabitants—mostly blue collar factory workers, cops and their families in dying Braddock, Pennsylvania—take their lives seriously, and so does their director and co-writer Scott Cooper.

Unfortunately, Out of the Furnace isn’t quite sure what to do with itself and begins to collapse under the inevitability of its own story. Early on, we see Russell Baze (Christian Bale) sitting at a bar, nursing a beer. The late Senator Ted Kennedy is on television espousing the virtues of Barack Obama, setting us in 2008.

So we begin at a hopeless time for blue collar workers, or really, anyone in the United States who isn’t among the top 10 percent of earners. But for anyone who thinks Out of the Furnace has something to say about choices, circumstances, or the plight of the working class, think again. Soon after Russell finishes his drink, he’s in a drunk-driving accident that results in two deaths, and he’s in prison.

When he gets out, much has happened. The girlfriend, Lena (Zoë Saldana, underused), is with someone else. The brother, Rodney (Casey Affleck), a four-tour Iraq War veteran, is street fighting for money, and Russell’s father is dead.

Worse, Rodney is in hock to John Petty (Willem Dafoe), the local loan shark and bookmaker. Dafoe is good, but his character is as dumb as Affleck’s is bewildered, and before long they’re in Appalachia dealing with the kind of redneck, Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson on auto-pilot), that cops are afraid of.

And what starts as a tale of hard working class lives at the dawn of the Great Recession turns into a family revenge tale. If Out of the Furnace—a reference to the steel mill in town—were a Western, it would be called Frontier Justice. And hopefully, like the great Westerns, it would be about something deeper than a bunch of people on the prairie defending their families.

But Out of the Furnace, which has a chance to say something about the working poor and veterans, is instead about revenge. The sheriff (Forest Whitaker, underused), is impotent to take care of things when Rodney and John go missing and Russell must intervene with help from his uncle (Sam Shepard, who’s always welcome).

Out of the Furnace does tap into larger themes, if only momentarily. There are rumblings of Rodney’s apparently undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, and more than one character mentions the lack of opportunity for returning vets. Ultimately, word comes that the mill is closing.

It’s backseat territory. Movies that want to be about hard lives under difficult circumstances don’t open with a showpiece in which DeGroat, at a drive-in, shoves a whole hot dog down his date’s throat and beats the hell out of a man who tries to help her. No, a movie with that opening scene ends with a showdown, and that’s exactly what we get in Out of the Furnace. See if you can spot all the references to The Deer Hunter.

Playing this week

12 Years a Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

All Is Lost
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Armstrong Lie
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Best Man Holiday
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Black Nativity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Book Thief
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dallas Buyer’s Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Delivery Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Free Birds
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Homefront
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Oldboy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Thor: The Dark World
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

It’s December, and that means the awards-fodder movies are out. And guess what. Some of them are good! Here’s a list of five movies that range from near-great to head-scratching (but worth seeing) to one guilty pleasure.

The Book Thief

If Life is Beautiful is absolutely the wrong way to make a non-military World War II movie, The Book Thief is the right way. Ten-year-old Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) is taken from her mother and given to a childless couple, Hans and Rosa (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson). Liesel can’t read, but likes books, and Hans teaches her to read as a way to bond with her. Soon Liesel is saving books from Nazi burning rallies and hiding Jews in the basement. It’s better than it sounds, but don’t think about it too much.

Her

A man and his operating system fall in love. The long-forgotten Electric Dreams (1984) has a similar premise, but none of the wit or skill that goes into writer-director Spike Jonze’s latest. Joaquin Phoenix is Theodore (recovering nicely after his performance as Popeye the Sailor in The Master), a writer mourning his crumbled marriage. He buys an operating system with artificial intelligence, and before long he and Samantha the O.S. (Scarlett Johansson’s voice) are in love. If you’re looking for a movie that passes the Bechdel Test, you won’t find it here, but Her is a surprisingly sweet, melancholy, and touching meditation on how we manage relationships. (December 18)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4

American Hustle

Crime. The 1970s. The FBI. Con artists. Honestly, this movie sounds like my nightmare, but not because I don’t like those things in movies; I’ve just seen enough of each (crime, FBI, con artists). Plus, no one does the 1970s better than the 1970s, and this is 2013. But Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are reunited with their Silver Linings Playbook director, and Christian Bale is here, too. You can bet it won’t be boring. (December 18)

Inside Llewyn Davis

The latest Coen Brothers confection is the aforementioned head-scratcher. It has the humor of No Country for Old Men but not the violence, and the mundane pacing of The Man Who Wasn’t There without the awfulness. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, who’s quite good) is a moody folk singer in early 1960s Greenwich Village, crashing on couches and trying to make it. An orange cat and a long ride to Chicago may hold the keys to his success, and he may literally be living in a loop, but decide for yourself. It’s certainly unique. Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, and Adam Driver have welcome supporting roles. (December 25)

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Much like those pesky poltergeists, Ron Burgundy and his dumb pals are back. This time they take on cable news and racial diversity in the 1980s, and honestly, if the trailer contains the best jokes, we’re all in a lot of trouble. But everyone needs a Christmas Day movie after unwrapping the gifts and binging on eggnog, right? Right! And why not do it with the world’s creepiest mustache? (December 25)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlYuK0jZzXk

Playing this week

12 Years a Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

All is Lost
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Bad Grandpa
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Best Man Holiday
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Black Nativity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Book Thief
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dallas Buyer’s Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Delivery Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Homefront
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Kill Your Darlings
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Oldboy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Thor: The Dark World
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

A quick rack of the brain and I come to this conclusion: I cannot remember a major, big budget action film that is at once so emotionally draining, deeply dramatic, and incredibly bleak. Thought the death of Rue was difficult in The Hunger Games? Just wait to see what happens when Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) travel to Rue’s home, District 11, on their victory tour.

The revolutionary flags are flying in this second chapter of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Picking up roughly a year after the conclusion of the first movie, we first see Katniss, looking like Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans, surveying the horizon. She’s startled by Gale (Liam Hemsworth), one-third of the weakish love triangle established in The Hunger Games.

From there, she goes to her new home, the location she’s earned as a result of winning the Hunger Games. The entrance to the grounds looks like a cemetery, which can’t be coincidence.

It’s at home that she’s met by President Snow (Donald Sutherland), who informs Katniss that if she wants to live, she’d better prove to him that the romance between she and Peeta is the real deal. He’s had her tailed and knows her heart lies with Gale.

Peeta and Katniss don’t like each other much, but play up the romance on their victory tour to stay alive. Worse yet, there’s a new games master, Plutarch Heavensbee (a bored-seeming Philip Seymour Hoffman; maybe he can’t believe his character’s name), who informs Katniss that the next Hunger Games will be cuh-razy.

See, the 75th Hunger Games are approaching, and every 25 years there’s a wrinkle: It’s a Quarter Quell, and all the contestants are former winners. And because Katniss is the only female winner from District 12, she’s automatically entered. Peeta and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) are the male winners, and Haymitch’s name is drawn. Peeta, good guy that he is, volunteers in Haymitch’s place.

The remaining minutes of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire—and there are plenty of remaining minutes—have to do with Katniss and Peeta staying alive while making uneasy alliances. There’s Johanna Mason (a terrific Jena Malone) and Finnick (Sam Claflin), for starters, and they have plans of their own. There’s also Beetee (Jeffrey Wright) and Wiress (Amanda Plummer), welcome additions to an above average cast.

Lawrence doesn’t have much to do other than react. But when your family is threatened by Snow—Sutherland revels in his icy menace—and the man you love and the man you’re supposed to love are closer to death’s door each time you pass within earshot, maybe you’d look pained, too.

Per the machinations of the plot, Katniss is mostly a pawn in this movie, and the ending isn’t much of an ending. But The Hunger Games: Catching Fire looks great, it’s a joy to see Wright and Plummer in a major American movie, and—no joke—this flick is a nail biter, even in the quiet moments. Can’t wait for Mockingjay.

The Hunger Games:Catching Fire / PG-13, 146 minutes/ Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Playing this week

About Time
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

All is Lost
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Bad Grandpa
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Best Man Holiday
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Blue is the Warmest Color
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Captain Phillips
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Dallas Buyer’s Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Delivery Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Ender’s Game
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Enough Said
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Free Birds
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Last Vegas
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Ram Leela
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Thor: The Dark World
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Twelve Years a Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

 

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Maria Taylor

Something About Knowing/Saddle Creek

Inspired by a new phase in her life—that of being a first-time mother—Something About Knowing breaks slightly from singer-songwriter Maria Taylor’s traditional folk pop leanings and adds some new aesthetics to the mix. On “Up All Night,” her ode to motherhood and a baby not sleeping, she juxtaposes thoughtful, joyous musings with an edgy electric guitar riff, and on “Broken Objects” breathy background vocals and a bubbling undercurrent of bass and hypnotic beats make for an otherworldly experience. The easygoing mid-tempo title track praises the simple life and knowing you are loved, while “Sum of Our Lives” is an uplifting track that provokes introspection. Taylor winds her way through the album with comfortable grace which does not make for an overly dramatic record, but it makes Something About Knowing an immensely pleasant experience.

Stone Temple Pilots with Chester Bennington

High Rise/Play Pen

If we’re being honest, then Stone Temple Pilots as a band hasn’t been relevant for a while. The band’s last notable album was 1999’s No. 4 (2001’s bloated Shangri-La Dee Da and 2010’s self-titled misfire do not count), and it’s been all Scott Weiland, all the time, for most of the band’s history. But when he was fired and replaced by Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, the adjusted Stone Temple Pilots with Chester Bennington suddenly became very interesting.
On its debut EP, High Rise, the group’s new lead singer charismatically and melodically blasts his way through the songs while avoiding his patented throat-shredding screams. The new tunes are notable as classic STP driving rock songs (“Out of Time”), or the glam rock style numbers that pervaded the Tiny Music… record (“Black Heart,” “Same on the Inside”), and the DeLeo brothers still provide their groovy signature guitar and bass hooks. At five songs and 16-plus minutes in length, it’s a quickie, but it’s a potent taste of where this new incarnation of STP is headed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glbhUc7GuHc

Alex Caton

Swimming to Lindsey/Self-released

Singer-songwriter Alex Caton’s third album is a rich, lyrical treasure to behold. Swimming to Lindsey demonstrates Caton’s skill at infusing her music with varied moods and musical sensibilities. The title track lays down a simple, hypnotic bluegrass tone that captivates and the country folk number “Who Will Sing for Me?” matches Caton’s evocative vocals with the dark subject matter of death. She shows her prowess with the fiddle on tracks like “Ora Lee” and “Yew Piney Mountain,” and banjo fans will enjoy the adept plucking on “Morning Glory.” The charming folk song “Beauty Abounds” is picturesque and easygoing, and “I’m Thinking, Ever Thinking” is an a cappella track that marks a nice change in style from the rest of the album. Swimming to Lindsey is a joyfully engaging and organic record.