Tag: Digital Media

When we last left Mindy/Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Dave/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), one was fatherless and the other had blown up Chris/Red Mist’s father with a bazooka. It was some truly primal shit, made all the more bizarre by the fact that Hit Girl’s dad, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), was not revealed to be a crazy insane person as he was in the comics.

Normally, the ins and outs of what makes it on screen from the source material—in this case, the revelation that Big Daddy is a psycho—don’t matter much. But admittedly, it’s nice to hear Dave say out loud to Mindy early in Kick-Ass 2, “You know your father was insane, right?”

Right. And that insanity is one of the major conundrums at the center of Kick-Ass 2. Whereas Kick-Ass seemed to revel in turning the entire idea of comic superheroes on its head, Kick-Ass 2 wants to give its audience all the shocking, brutal violence of the first, along with a side order of sentimentality large enough to qualify as a main course.

It doesn’t help that the some of the violence in Kick-Ass 2 is so distasteful. I like a good shotgun to the face as much as the next guy, but ruthlessly killing 10 New York City police officers for laughs seems at best odd and at worst cruel.

That’s supposed to be part of Kick-Ass 2’s charm, of course. Writer and director Jeff Wadlow seems to enjoy the audience squirminess potential of cheering on a 15-year-old girl stabbing a bodybuilding Russian cannibal to death. But really, is that something we should cheer on?

If only Wadlow knew, but he seems torn between making the audience laugh and shiver at the outrageous deaths and revving the audience up with sentiment. When Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) accidentally kills his mother, it’s supposed to be hilarious. When one of the superheroes ends up with a dead parent, it’s supposed to be a call to action. The message is muddled, and not because it wants to be.

Plot-wise, Kick-Ass 2 presents us with a pretty standard revenge scenario. Chris, after his mother’s death and a giant inheritance, adopts a new persona as “The Motherfucker” to kill Kick-Ass, whom, you should recall, was on the winning end of the bazooka in Kick-Ass.

It all starts as a lot of fun for Mindy and Dave as they work out and try to perfect their crime fighting personae, but eventually Mindy gets in trouble at school and with her guardian Marcus (Morris Chestnut) and gives up her vigilante nights. It’s only after her classmates embarrass her and much pleading from Dave that she dons her purple spandex.

And that’s pretty much it. What follows is a veritable assload of spurting blood via knife, dog-bite, firearm, lawn mower and 15-passenger van. There haven’t been this many big-name actors killed in one film since Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. It’s almost good that the special effects are kind of corny; otherwise, it might be unwatchable. Jim Carrey, Donald Faison, and John Leguizamo are fun in small parts.

 

Playing this week

2 Guns
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Blackfish
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Butler
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chennai Express
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Conjuring
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Elysium
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Fruitvale Station
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Internship
Carmike Cinema 6

Iron Man 3
Carmike Cinema 6

Jobs
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Man of Steel
Carmike Cinema 6

Monsters University
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Paranoia
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Percy Jackson:
Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Planes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Smurfs 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

We’re the Millers
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

It’s a good thing the heart of Lee Daniels’ The Butler is Forest Whitaker, because the movie has a great story to tell but gets in its own way. Whitaker keeps the movie centered amid the barrage of huge star cameos, corny dialogue, and choppy storytelling—plot threads come and go, unresolved—as Cecil Gaines, a White House butler for seven administrations.

From the beginning, director Daniels lets the audience know this story won’t be cuddly. One of the first images to appear on screen is two black men, lynched, hanging from a tree. It’s gruesome. It’s effective.

We flash forward to see Cecil waiting in the Obama White House to meet the president. Then we flash back to Cecil’s childhood in the deep south. In a span of about five minutes, a white man rapes Cecil’s mother and his father is killed by the same man. Cecil, about 8, can do nothing.

It’s here that the first piece of stunt casting occurs. Cecil’s mother is Mariah Carey, who couldn’t look less like she belongs on a cotton farm. She soon fades into the background, though, as Cecil is trained to work in the house by Vanessa Redgrave.

Teenaged Cecil (Aml Ameen), leaves the farm and heads north for work, but is eventually forced to break into a restaurant to avoid starving. He’s given refuge and a job by Maynard (Clarence Williams III, who’s in the movie far too little). When Maynard passes on a position in an upscale Washington, D.C. hotel, he recommends Cecil, who becomes a favorite among the politicians. It’s then that he’s approached by the White House (and played by Whitaker) to serve in the Eisenhower administration.

The rest of the movie is a mess. It’s a glorious mess, though. For all the bad dialogue —“I brought you into this world and I’ll take you out” is a phrase uttered but not for comic effect—the actors manage to transcend some of the clunky things they have to say.

For example, with just looks, Whitaker conveys the pain caused him by the relationship with his oldest son, Louis (David Oyelowo), who would rather fight racism head on than take the measured approach Cecil does. With each passing scene, we see Cecil subtly becoming sadder as he and Louis drift apart.

Oprah Winfrey, whom one would think would be the queen of distracting casting, is quite good as Cecil’s long-suffering wife Gloria. As for the presidents themselves, there’s Eisenhower (Robin Williams, awkward but quiet), Kennedy (James Marsden, surprisingly good), Johnson (Liev Schreiber, overdoing it), Nixon (John Cusack, laughably bad), and Reagan (Alan Rickman, and very Alan Rickmanesque). Ford and Carter get a pass.

Whitaker is given able support by Lenny Kravitz and Cuba Gooding, Jr. as other White House butlers, but he remains the center of this cinematic storm. The Butler has been uncharitably compared to Forrest Gump, but it’s much better; its story, even though it’s all over the place, is never cheap and it doesn’t trade on nostalgia. In Forrest Gump, the past was used as a tool for baby boomers. In The Butler, the past is strewn with the dead.

The Butler

Opening Friday, August 16

PG-13, 126 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Playing this week

2 Guns
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chennai Express
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Conjuring
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Elysium
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Epic
Carmike Cinema 6

Fast and Furious 6
Carmike Cinema 6

Fruitvale Station
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Great Gatsby
Carmike Cinema 6

Grown Ups 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Internship
Carmike Cinema 6

Man of Steel
Carmike Cinema 6

Monsters University
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Pacific Rim
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Planes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Red 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Smurfs 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

Turbo
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

We’re the Millers
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Embrace the last of the lazy August days with the Summer Camp Series at the Packard Campus Theater in Culpeper. Ten movies, including two double features, will celebrate all things campy throughout the latter half of the month. From summer sleep-away comedies to sci-fi schmaltz, you can get your fill of over-the-top entertainment with silver screen gems like Swept Away, the 1979 Italian romance in which a spoiled socialite and poor deckhand are—you guessed it—swept away by ocean tides and turns of affection; Space Amoebas, which features Japanese photographers trapped on a remote Pacific Island with ”giant mutant monsters created by aliens from outer space,” and The Parent Trap, Disney’s 1998 remake of the family-friendly twins-swap-places-and-parents-don’t-notice classic. Let bone-dry humor and ginormous space blobs remind you of a simpler time, when film-watching was fun and frivolous, when camp crushes and overturned canoes were the greatest of your concerns, and when Lindsey Lohan’s adorable freckly cheeks were 100 percent silicone free. Two of our favorites to cap off the season:

Meatballs

This 1979 comedy stars Bill Murray at the height of SNL cult glory as a prank-pulling, skirt-chasing camp counselor with a heart of gold. When lonely camper Rudy (Chris Makepeace) gets rejected by his popular peers, Camp North Star’s head counselor Tripper (Murray) brings him into the fold, which includes ribald pranks, wacky hijinks, and an annual competition with rival Camp Mohawk which North Star has never won—yet.

Saturday, August 10 at 7:30PM.

Cry Baby

Catch a very funny Johnny Depp in his pre-Tonto days. John Waters wrote and directed this satirical comedy musical in 1991, spoofing Grease and the greaser trope with rock-n-roll romance set in 1950s Baltimore. High school delinquent and wannabe singer Cry Baby Jones (Depp) simply “can’t help being bad” nor charming the pants off of every girl he meets, including a good girl (Amy Locane) whose boyfriend vows revenge. Keep your eyes peeled for Iggy Pop!

Saturday, August 24 at 7:30PM. Part of a Double Feature with Johnny Dangerously.

Click here for full schedule.

We’re the Millers has the kind of story that can be hammered out in about 15 minutes, if its writers follow the “Save the Cat” formula. (Read this outline before you see it and you’ll actually see the story beats play out when you watch the movie.)

The central plot—a pot dealer recruits three people to help him smuggle two tons of marijuana from Mexico to the United States—is totally stupid. And there are lots of things in We’re the Millers that are just dumb, backward (like the movie’s treatment of Jennifer Aniston’s character), and not believable. Despite its by-the-numbers script and predictable story touches, there are enough funny—even unexpected—flourishes scattered throughout its 109 minutes to bring out the occasional gut laugh.

David (Jason Sudeikis) is the dealer. His entire rig—from the dime bags he sells to his boss’ money and his personal finances —is stolen by guys who look like variations of Shaun White as David and his doofus neighbor, Kenny (Will Poulter), try to stop them from robbing Casey (Emma Roberts), a runaway.

Aside: In one of the pleasant unexpected touches the movie supplies, David leaps from a fire escape into an industrial trash bin, only to have his backpack land first and close the bin’s lid. As a result, David hits the closed lid and is incapacitated. The Shaun White lookalikes find his address, beat him up, and take his stuff. In most movies, David would just land in the bin unharmed and escape.

David’s boss (Ed Helms, smiling and slimey) tells David that he’ll forgive him for losing his weed and his money, if he goes to Mexico and picks up two tons of pot from a connection. He’ll even pay David $100,000.00 But how will David pull it off?

Inspiration arrives in a totally contrived way as David is sitting on his stoop, wondering how to pull off the smuggling operation, as an RV filled with Midwestern rubes pulls up, its inhabitants lost. A-ha! He’ll get Kenny and Casey to pose as his kids, rent an RV, and bring the pot up that way.

Enter Rose (Aniston), a stripper who leaves her job just as her boss demands she start sleeping with the customers. She also loses her apartment (she’s David’s neighbor), and her boyfriend steals her money. She reluctantly goes along with the plan, posing as Mom.

The purpose of We’re the Millers is not to be groundbreaking. It’s to a) make money, and b) be funny. The story’s tired conventions—solving a problem that could only exist in a movie with characters that only exist in movies—are offset by a few mildly subversive things.

First, the main characters are, for all intents and purposes, drug smugglers, and we root for them. Second, a group of supporting characters featuring Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn turn out to be fun in addition to functional. Third, David is a self-involved asshole, and he’s the lead.

In the end We’re the Millers isn’t great, but it does have a surprise or two up its convention-bound sleeve. Stay for the credits.

We’re the Millers 

Opening Wednesday 8/7

R, 109 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Playing this week

2 Guns

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

After Earth
Carmike Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Bling Ring
Carmike Cinema 6

The Conjuring
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Epic
Carmike Cinema 6

Fast and Furious 6
Carmike Cinema 6

Fruitvale Station
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Great Gatsby
Carmike Cinema 6

Grown Ups 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Heat
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Internship
Carmike Cinema 6

Monsters University
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Pacific Rim
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

R.I.P.D.
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Red 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Smurfs 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

This Is the End
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The To Do List
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Turbo
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Vinegar Hill Theatre closed its doors on Sunday after 37 years in business. The decision came suddenly, just 6 days before closure. This was written as preparations were being made for the final weekend, and by the time you read this Vinegar Hill will be gone.

The major reason that Vinegar Hill Theatre closed is that it wasn’t able to show enough financially successful films anymore. Though I managed the business, the booking of films was not my responsibility. Visulite Cinemas owner, Adam Greenbaum, and a booking agent named Jeffrey Jacobs who works with many small theaters across the East coast, handled the Vinegar Hill film programming.

Charlottesville is a closed market, meaning that distributors will only give each film to one theater in town at a time. Vinegar Hill had been the last remaining locally owned screen in the area. The other 20 first-run screens are all owned by Regal Cinemas, the largest movie theater chain in the country (by a significant margin), leaving Vinegar Hill in the tough situation of being a small business competing against a national one for the same products.

I’ve been the manager at Vinegar Hill for the past five years, and I’ve written in this column about the difficulties the theatre was facing, as well as the endangered nature of small businesses elsewhere in the Charlottesville arts community. The cost of living in Charlottesville is still getting higher, local businesses are struggling here just as they are everywhere, and I often worry that as a community, we aren’t leaving space in our city, physically or economically, for local business and culture.

Those are all important issues, but at the present, I’ll focus on the details surrounding Vinegar Hill’s closure. As is always the case with such events, there is sure to be a great deal of rumor, presumption, and misunderstanding, especially because the closure happened so swiftly.

One misconception is that Vinegar Hill lost its physical space. Since 2008, Visulite Cinemas has leased the theatre, and in February of this year the owner decided to sell and put the building on the market. (As of this writing, it has not yet sold.) The theatre continued to rent on a month-to-month basis. There was not an eviction, and the “For Sale” sign in back is not the reason that Vinegar Hill closed, but with the looming possibility of a sale, it’s fair to say that there was less incentive for the movie house to remain open.

Another question is about the conversion to digital projection. Vinegar Hill realized in 2012 that it would need to replace 35mm film with digital in response to changing distribution models in the film industry. A fundraiser was held to offset the cost of a digital projector, and the format was converted in February, allowing movies to screen digitally for the last six months. The expense of the new projector certainly didn’t help matters, but the need for conversion wasn’t the reason for the closure.

Greenbaum spoke candidly about the situation. “Our ability to book the quality of film that we have been booking, for the last five years, has been undercut by the competitive clout of the nation’s largest movie theater circuit,” he said. “We couldn’t continue to deliver the same quality of movies that we have been.”

“The situation changed dramatically when Regal opened Stonefield and converted their Downtown location to [an] art [theater]. Let’s assume that Regal makes decisions rationally, and that they didn’t decide to take low-grossing, obscure art films, and cut their own revenue at the Downtown Mall practically in half, just because they’re masochistic. They must have had a reason. Just like a Wal-Mart, or a chain grocery store, doesn’t drop its prices out of love for its customers. It’s because they know their competition can’t keep up.”

One by one, the major indie distributors —Focus, Fox Searchlight, and finally Sony Classics—started giving their most successful products to the Regal theaters, and we found that we could only pick up low-
grossing films with the hope of breaking even, or booking films from much smaller distributors, who do far less advertising and often release films to streaming services simultaneously. Many of the films shown were quite good—some were excellent—but none of them were doing well enough to keep Vinegar Hill in business.

“What’s really frustrating is that Vinegar Hill, as a business, needs maybe three big movies a year, in order to be profitable,” Greenbaum explained. “That’s it. The rest of the year, it could be small films, all sorts of interesting films, that are under the radar. But it needs a Black Swan, a Crazy Heart, a Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a Midnight in Paris. It needs a handful of ‘big,’ and I say ‘big’ in quotes, art movies. And that spigot has been completely turned off.”

“It is really hard for me to speak on it with any kind of emotional distance,” he said. “With the decision [to close], I continued to be hopeful up until the very end. But with nothing on the horizon, and the studios making it clear that, pretty much, everything of value on the horizon would be going to the Regal, it kind of sunk in. This is the state of the industry in Charlottesville right now. The landscape is inhospitable to an independent venue. But I don’t think that it’s dead forever, I’ll put it that way.”

Share your thoughts on the closing of Vinegar Hill Theatre in the comments section below.

Now that we’re six films into the X-Men series, it’s about time we got one that can stand on its own. It’s not that viewers should skip all the other X-Men films—but seriously, skip Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand, the truly wretched X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Bryan Singer’s original X-Men—but Hugh Jackman is captivating enough and the story appropriately straddles silly and thrilling well enough to make The Wolverine a hell of a ride.

Is it all that original? Will it please fan boys? Why is it set almost entirely in Japan? The answers to those questions are “not really,” “I don’t know,” and “to capture the overseas earnings 20th Century Fox so desperately craves.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to what makes Logan/Wolverine (Jackman) the perfect subject for a superhero movie. He hates himself, which is a great start. He’s a mutant, and mutants are outcasts that jus’ plain folks fear, a well-established trope in the other X-Men movies that mercifully takes a backseat here.

Worse, Wolverine is an outcast among mutants. As far as we know—and I’m going strictly on the movies, not the books—he can live forever, never really ages, and never gets close to people. Everyone else gets older and dies.

Speaking of the dead, Famke Janssen pops up in various dream sequences as Jean Grey, Wolverine’s one true love and the most recent source of his everlasting pain (he killed her at the end of X-Men: The Last Stand—spoiler alert). It’s nice to see Janssen, but her scenes are almost laugh-out-loud awkward. Fortunately, they come and go pretty quickly.

The story—not that it matters—has Logan holed up in the woods somewhere, living between some rocks, downing booze, and trying to forget he’s Wolverine. He’s such a regular fixture in the forest that he’s made friends with a grizzly bear (it’s not as dumb as it sounds).

One day, hunters poison the bear. Wolverine acts out in retaliation. A Japanese woman, Yukio (Rila Fukushima), trailing him and coming to his aid when he confronts the hunters, convinces Logan to come to Tokyo to say goodbye to a man he saved in Nagasaki in World War II.

The old man, Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi), now a successful businessman with an enormous conglomerate, wants Wolverine’s immortality. Wolverine says no. Not surprisingly, everything then turns to shit.

What’s fun about The Wolverine is the way it alters genre conventions. For example, Logan needs Yukio’s protection much more than she’ll ever need his. And Yashida’s granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), around whom a major plot point revolves, seems like something of a wimp, but she’ll occasionally throw a knife into someone’s face. There are no damsels in distress here. Another nice surprise is just how little mutant powers play into The Wolverine’s story from scene to scene, even if the plot involves mutants.

All in all, The Wolverine is goofy fun, complete with a ridiculous series of stunts on top of a bullet train. It’s a good way to spend an evening in the air conditioning. Stay for the credits.

The Wolverine  PG-13, 126 minutes, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

 

Playing this week:

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

After Earth
Carmike Cinema 6

The Bling Ring
Carmike Cinema 6

The Conjuring
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Epic
Carmike Cinema 6

Fast and Furious 6
Carmike Cinema 6

Fruitvale Station
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Girl Most Likely
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Great Gatsby
Carmike Cinema 6

Grown Ups 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hangover Part III
Carmike Cinema 6

The Heat
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

I’m So Excited!
Vinegar Hill Theatre

The Internship
Carmike Cinema 6

The Lone Ranger
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Monsters University
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Mud
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Pacific Rim
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Purge
Carmike Cinema 6

R.I.P.D.
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Red 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

This Is the End
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The To Do List
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Turbo
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

 

Movie houses:

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Vinegar Hill Theatre
977-4911

 

Give Kristen Wiig credit: She’s clearly not interested in repeating the Bridesmaids formula. And though Girl Most Likely has, at least on the surface, some plot threads in common with Wiig’s breakthrough movie—she’s a loser who moves home with her mother (Annette Bening)—it’s a decidedly more somber picture.

That’s not to say Girl Most Likely isn’t funny; it has its moments. But any movie that starts with the breakup of a long-term relationship and follows up with a suicide attempt that may or may not be real has its work cut out for it.

Wiig is Imogene, a once-promising playwright whose personal life and career have turned to shit. Actually, her career has gone nowhere for years and she’s fired from her day job. She has a habit of making things worse for herself—e.g., the fake suicide attempt. It doesn’t help that Imogene is surrounded by rotten people, including the ex-boyfriend, and Dara (June Diane Raphael, whose talent is squandered here, even if it’s nice to see her with a large-ish supporting role).

Imogene lands in a psych ward and manages to convince her doctor she’s not a significant risk. In turn, he demands that she stay with her mother, Zelda (Annette Bening), for 72 hours, which is how long he’d have to hold her by law in the hospital.

This story choice is the first of many poor choices in the screenplay. No doctor is going to release a woman on suicide watch to her mother, who, by the way, is a gambling addict. It’s just not happening. There’s suspending disbelief, and then there’s, “Oh, come on.”

The story never really recovers from this first egregious beat, though there are moments that make it seem as if there’s a different, better, more consistent movie still in the editing room. Part of Girl Most Likely’s problem is that it can’t decide whether Imogene is a loser, crazy, depressed, or just has bad luck.

There are also a series of underdeveloped story lines. For example, Matt Dillon pops up as a guy who’s sleeping with Zelda, who says he’s in the CIA and has a cover so absurd it has to be fake. But then it turns out to maybe be real. So which is it, screenwriter Michelle Morgan? A CIA operative may be dumb, but he’s not this dumb.

Then there’s Imogene’s brother, Ralph, who’s an inoffensive manchild who may be mentally challenged. Zelda and Imogene talk about him like he is—they had to look after Ralph who is almost a meme—but he owns his own business and builds armor with wireless Internet access.

Finally, Imogene is redeemed somewhat by having an affair with a younger man (that’s not a spoiler; you’ll see it coming forever). Note to directors and screenwriters: Lead characters—male or female—being redeemed by a younger lover will never not be irritating.

Girl Most Likely isn’t terrible; there are many, many worse movies out there right now. But its indecision as to what it wants to be, along with its dingy look (which may be a conscious choice, but I doubt it), keeps it from being successful.

 

Girl Most Likely PG-13, 103 minutes, Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Blending the tragic with the triumphant, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly depicts the life of renowned magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, after suffering a stroke that paralyzed his entire body except his left eye, used a blinking code to write his own memoir in 1997. Adapted to film by director Julian Schnabel in 2007, the remarkable story has touched critics and audiences alike with its breathtaking visuals and dynamic performances, and received countless accolades, including four Academy Awards nominations.

Thursday 7/25  Free, 7pm. Central Library, 201 E. Market St. 979-7151.

 

There’s an episode of “Magnum P.I.” in which Magnum (Tom Selleck), who played for Navy’s football team during his time at the academy, can’t watch that season’s Army-Navy game live on television. There’s a case or someone gets shot or something—you know how it goes with Magnum.

This is all from distant memory, but Magnum manages to avoid spoilers for the entire episode. He doesn’t read about the game and avoids talking about it with others who may have seen it. One of his friends graciously tapes the game for him.

Just as Magnum sits down to watch it, Higgins (John Hillerman) wanders in and reveals the outcome. If memory serves, the episode ends with a freeze-frame of Magnum throwing a bowl of popcorn in the air as he takes off to chase Higgins down.

That’s a long way of saying that if you’re going to avoid spoilers, that’s the way to do it. Avoid people. Avoid newspapers. In this day and age, avoid blogs, websites and Twitter.

That’s a longer way of saying I’m no longer trafficking in spoiler alerts. I doubt anyone will freak out over my decision to no longer play the spoiler card because I usually write around spoilers anyway. Just in case, here’s my reasoning:

Movies that are truly memorable don’t need spoiler alerts. Every time you watch The Godfather, don’t you shout for Fredo (John Cazale) to stop fumbling with his gun and shoot the guys trying to kill Don Corleone (Marlon Brando)?

When Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is speeding toward the clock tower so he can use the lighting to power the DeLorean in Back to the Future, don’t you think, “My God, he’s not going to make it this time”?

Same goes with Miracle, the movie about the 1980 American Olympic hockey team. I think, “There’s no way these guys are gong to win.” And then—spoiler alert!—they win. Miracle isn’t a great movie, but it gets one thing right: It tricks the audience into thinking there will be a different outcome from what happened historically.

I’m not sure when the desire to not hear or read spoilers gripped the zeitgeist. If “Magnum P.I.” is to be used as evidence, at least since the mid-1980s. But you know what’s more irritating than a spoiler? A spoiler alert.

I’m an adult. I may choose what I read. If I don’t want to know the outcome of this week’s episode of “Dancing with the Stars,” why the hell am I reading about it online?

It’s one thing for a jerk friend (Higgins) to ruin your experience. It’s another thing entirely to read about a movie and not expect plot points, some of them major, to be revealed.

If you don’t agree, take a look at this piece in Slate, “Save the Movie!” It’s a reasonable explanation for why so many big Hollywood blockbusters (and even smaller blockbusters) seem so similar these days. Short version: Someone figured out there are story beats that a screenplay needs to hit in order to generate the most money, and Hollywood took notice.

In other words, you don’t need to worry about spoilers anymore because most movies are the same. It’s depressing, and because I watch a lot of movies, I can also tell you it’s true.

And let’s be honest: Are you going to avoid a movie because a critic tells you how it ends? No! If the movie’s good enough, it won’t matter how much I reveal anyway.