Tag: Digital Media

Having spent most of the last decade punching wolves and shooting whomever in pursuit of something or other, Liam Neeson’s career resurgence has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, he’s remained relevant in a genre that usually condemns talented performers to straight-to-DVD purgatory. On the other hand, there is now a very strong mold for him to break, now that an entire generation of filmgoers knows him more as the man with a “particular set of skills” than as Oskar Schindler, Michael Collins, or Rob Roy.

A Walk Among the Tombstones is an attempt to steer Neeson’s career in a different direction while it still capitalizes on the gruff, no-bullshit, bizarro ’90s Harrison Ford niche he’s filled since 2008. Neeson stars as former alcoholic New York cop turned sober semi-legal private investigator Matthew Scudder, the central character of many Lawrence Block novels (whose last appearance on the big screen was in 1986’s atrocious 8 Million Ways to Die starring Jeff Bridges). We first meet Scudder in 1991, when he gets into an off-duty shoot-out in the midst of a drinking binge. Fast forward to 1999, and Scudder has given up both badge and booze to a life of not-quite-crime, performing no-questions-asked tasks and solving problems for people who would prefer to remain off the police radar. It’s at this point in his career that Scudder is approached by drug trafficker Kenny Kristo to locate the men who abducted his wife, then killed her after collecting the ransom. Along the way, he becomes a makeshift mentor to a homeless teen named TJ with a detective’s instinct of his own.

Every criticism you will hear or read about A Walk Among the Tombstones is completely true. It isn’t enough of a departure for Neeson to be seen as altogether different from the characters he played in Taken or The Grey. Writer-director Scott Frank’s grisly fascination with the killers’ perversions and sadistic cruelty toward women borders on perverse itself. Giving the killers scenes shown entirely from their point of view sucks some of the mystery out of Scudder’s pursuit. The film also has a curious way of sabotaging its own momentum with predictability and completely avoidable clichés, best exemplified by an extended voiceover that forces a sloppy 12-step metaphor over a situation that would have been much more interesting on its own. Every attempt at stylization falls flat on its face. And the abundance of limp Y2K jokes would even feel forced in an Adam Sandler movie.

But if you can get past everything that’s wrong with it, there is a life to this film that makes it stand apart. Scudder’s brand of detective work, as a private investigator to the criminal world, is a lot of fun to watch in action. Neeson’s onscreen presence may be of the same tone we’re used to, but in this context, its familiarity with a dash of unpredictability is exactly what makes this former cop who isn’t beholden to any law enforcement procedure come to life. His mentorship to TJ is formulaic and Frank chooses strange words to put in the mouth of newcomer Brian “Astro” Bradley, but the chemistry between the actors carries it through. And though it plays by genre rules, after a certain point, the opportunities for audience predictions run out as genuine suspense over what might happen next takes over.

A Walk Among the Tombstones isn’t the first of its kind. Hell, it’s not even the first attempt at a suspense franchise by an Irish actor this month (Pierce Brosnan’s The November Man). But if Neeson is in fact looking to enter the next stage of his career, this film is as good a capstone to his action hero days as he could ask for.

Playing this week

Boyhood
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dolphin Tale 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Drop
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Guardians of the Galaxy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hundred-Foot Journey
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

If I Stay
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Let’s Be Cops
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Maze Runner
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

No Good Deed
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The November Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

This Is Where I Leave You
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Tusk
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

When the Game Stands Tall
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Visual artist Philip de Jong won’t content himself with creating beautiful work. In fact, he avoids contentment altogether.

“At some point as a trained photographer your job is to make anything look good,” he said. “If people describe my work as pretty, I feel insulted on some level because all it means is that I was present for something beautiful.”

Though de Jong cares about compositional finesse and “how light interacts and illuminates,” his artistic effort is a search for photographic connotations and annotations, hints of the “shared human experience.”

“A picture is what it is, it’s accurate, but the truth of a picture is extremely subjective,” he said. “I’m trying to harness some sort of visceral experience.”

The Charlottesville native believes discomfort often predicates such insight. After graduating from Ohio University with a master’s in photojournalism, he moved to Lake Tahoe with his wife and worked as a freelancer and a ski instructor. The lifestyle, he said, was “poverty with a view,” and it spurred creativity.

“There were a lot of divisions among the people who lived out there,” de Jong said. “A lot of relatively young people looking to do work on the edge.” He exhibited shows at galleries around town and even set up an artists’ collective to motivate sales between the haves and the have-nots.

Eventually, though, de Jong and his wife decided to start a family. “We were [both] raised with a certain amount of responsibility,” he said. “[We knew] that if we didn’t have a real career, there was an underlying guilt.” So they came back to Virginia, and de Jong set aside exhibitions.

“Discontent drives all of us, right?” he asked. “But Charlottesville is a very content place. We don’t have any edge. There’s no bite.”

Despite his new, more traditional lifestyle, de Jong continued his search. During his work as a photographer for Ethiopian Airlines’ in-flight magazine, he saw and sought to capture realities beyond the attention of tourists and international media. 

In “Ethiopia, Ark of the Covenant,” a current exhibit at The Garage (and his first in several years), de Jong explores what he described in his artist statement as “contradictions everywhere”: modernization versus subsistence farming, deforestation versus dynamic landscapes, a dilapidated chapel that claimed to hold the true Ark of the Covenant.

“Ethiopia is a really proud culture, and they’re getting influenced from China, India, Brazil, and very heavily from the U.S.,” he said. “They came out of a really awful Communist situation. They know who they are but can’t explain who they are.”

But de Jong can’t ignore the limitations of his own perspective. “As a journalist, I have a tendency to oversimplify things,” he said. “I enter the story and then I exit. I’m not so foolish as to believe it’s purely objective.” 

So where does de Jong’s truth come from?

“I think a lot of it happens after the fact,” he said. “There’s a lot of editing and waiting to understand the story you’re telling. You really don’t have a perfect view of it until you’re out.”

If critical evaluation is the source of his “few projects that have a voice and body together,” it also causes his resistance to comfort, to ease and easy imagery and the ethos of Instagram.

“I don’t really want to be part of a system that is just visual throw up: it lasts for an instant, it exists and then it doesn’t,” he said. “You want it to have meaning and impact.”

Philip de Jong’s exhibit “Ethiopia, Ark of the Covenant” will be on view at The Garage through September 28. 

Criticism of the aggressively inoffensive Dolphin Tale 2 should be taken with the same grain of salt that the critics themselves took when watching it. This film is not meant for analysis any more than Duck Duck Goose is meant to be played at a professional level, and for the same reason: because kids will enjoy it either way. Your investment in the outcome is neither considered nor required. Dolphin Tale 2 is what it is, its heart is in the right place, and if you find yourself needing to entertain children for an afternoon, this is your movie.

Yet if you do see it, consider the following an extended asterisk to everything above. Dolphin Tale 2 is so pleasant that you may find yourself humoring it rather than experiencing it. Watching it through to the end feels like spending time with someone who listens to Christmas music all year—any questions or objections you have, however legitimate, automatically put you in the position of spoiling someone else’s fun.

Thankfully, you can ground yourself in the success of the first film should you become worried that your inability to appreciate Dolphin Tale 2 means you’ve become too cynical. The original Dolphin Tale told the true story of Winter—a rescued dolphin whose tail needed to be amputated—and the team who rallied around her right to live a happy life despite her disability. It was an emotional, tonal, and financial success that managed to reach even the most jaded of critics. The characters are sympathetic, the families care about one another, the theme of not letting your disabilities own you is so resonant that it’s allowed to be as overt as it is, and there’s even a genuine struggle as difficult as the grimmest of grown-up movies.

Dolphin Tale 2, meanwhile, comes across less like a continuation of the same magic and more like a contractual obligation. Because the original is such an effectively self-contained story, writer-director Charles Martin Smith is stuck sapping whatever drama he can from other chapters in the history of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida; the trouble is that most of these chapters are little more than rescuing a sea turtle or being legally obligated to partner Winter with another dolphin. The real footage of these moments as recorded by aquarium personnel plays as the film ends, proving just how routine they were when they happened, and how unnecessary and overwrought the dramatic reenactments are, like Drunk History without comedians or alcohol. A documentary based on this same footage may have been more engaging and taken less time getting to the tearjerking moments.

There is a calmness to Dolphin Tale 2 that deserves to be applauded for going against the grain of spastic kid flicks. It has a few good life lessons that kids can use, but there just isn’t a story here that can match the original, no matter how many sassy pelicans or overlong dolphin-cam sequences they throw into the mix.

 

Playing this week

A Most Wanted Man
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

As Above/So Below
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Boyhood
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Calvary
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Che
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Guardians of the Galaxy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hundred-Foot Journey
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

If I Stay
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Let’s Be Cops
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Magic in the Moonlight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

No Good Deed
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The November Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Nutty Professor (Wed.)
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Transformers:
Age of Extinction
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

When the Game Stands Tall
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Shovels and Rope

Swimmin’ Time/Dualtone

On Swimmin’ Time, their third album, Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent are in top form. Whether they amble through Americana numbers like “The Devil Is All Around,” or stomp out ominous rockers like “Evil,” the duo demonstrates they have a firm handle on a variety of genres (plus the echoing “Fish Assassin” sounds as lively as something from a Holy Ghost Revival). They juxtapose notions of good and evil throughout, often giving their protagonists a healthy dose of skepticism about religion (“Pinned”) or at the very least about some of religion’s enthusiasts (“Swimmin’ Time”), and they do it in a passionate, engaging manner. Hearst and Trent complement each other vocally, with Hearst playing the raspy showstopper in the vein of Janis Joplin, while Trent provides more of a solid foundation for vocals to stand on to make Swimmin’ some electric stuff.

Sleep Cycles

Hibernation/self-released

If you like lo-fi recordings, then you’ll want to check out Max Holder a.k.a. Sleep Cycles. His debut self-titled release features eight richly constructed tracks and features a variety of sounds. Hypnotic, quiet electric guitars carry you along on a current of audio water in the gorgeous “Café Waltz,” while “Just a Couple” uses a distant-sounding beat loop to lay the groundwork for this dreamy track. “Get Sleep” scores points as an outside-the-box interlude with its unusual combination of Holder’s muffled voice leaving a voice mail while rain steadily hits the pavement nearby. Holder strikes an interesting note as a singer, with higher- pitched vocals nicely offset by his muted delivery—a nice effect that successfully augments the album’s overall ambient quality, making for a neat under-the-radar release.

Justin Townes Earle

Single Mothers/Vagrant

The new record from acclaimed singer- songwriter Earle is a low key dandy. Earle often leads the way with a subtle delivery, in a voice rarely approaching anything remotely loud, and the songs pack quite a punch as a result. Whether it’s the bluesy folk title track—with its story of broken families—or a groovy classic rock number like “My Baby Drives” which depicts a woman in control of the relationship, Earle’s keen sense of melody and song structure augment whatever tale he’s telling. He tugs at your heart strings on the true blue country track about a deceased mother (“Picture in a Drawer”) and dives headlong into that itch we sometimes get when we want to disconnect ourselves from life (“Wanna be a Stranger”), covering a broad range of heady subjects with aplomb. 

Cure your back-to-school blues with a little Greek life—ancient Greek, that is. The Paramount kicks off a fresh season of live streaming from London’s National Theatre with Euripedes’ classic tragedy Medea. Helen McCrory takes the title role as a wronged wife who exacts a terrible revenge in this modern production by playwright Ben Power and director Carrie Cracknell.

Sunday 9/14 . $10.50-14.50, 7pm. The Paramount Theatre, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

Not since Raul Julia’s puzzling appearance in the New Jersey Public Television video chroma key disaster “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” has A-level talent looked as out of place as it does in the attempted scandal flick The Last of Robin Hood. But where “Overdrawn” can blame its production value on the fact that it was actually made for television and has a trainwreck charm that landed it on MST3K, Robin Hood has no excuses to fall back on. It’s too cheap to be a lush period piece, too on-the-nose to be a trashy tabloid romp, and more concerned with overbearing voiceover exposition than the character development that would have at least made the previous two shortcomings tolerable.

The Last of Robin Hood stars Kevin Kline as Errol Flynn, though the film’s focus is teenage actress Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) and her mother, Florence (Susan Sarandon). At 15 years old but passing herself off as older to get work in Hollywood, Beverly grew up under the supervision and guidance of her showbiz mom. Flynn notices Beverly while peering through his blinds, setting up the seduction/coercion we expect from a man with his reputation. The two begin a relationship, and Flynn brings Florence on board with promises to take Beverly “under his wing.” The two bend over backward to convince themselves, each other, and the world that the (illegal) relationship is the right thing for Beverly personally and professionally, but end up in the center of a moral, professional, and financial shitstorm in the wake of Flynn’s death.

There is potential for a good story here, from both historical and psychological angles. The best thing The Last of Robin Hood does is focus on the Aadlands and how they were affected by this man’s (waning) power and influence. Most films about May-December relationships are more interested in the man who is past his prime than the woman who is just entering hers, when in most cases, the latter story would be the most interesting; adolescent women must confront a whole host of societal issues that would be more worthwhile to investigate than yet another midlife crisis tale. The starkly different attitude that Beverly and Florence develop in sharing their lives with the public following Flynn’s death is rich for dramatic exploration.

How strange, then, that the result is so flat in tone and presentation. While “The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story” makes waves for inventing scandal out of nothing, here we have a genuine scandal with many sides told in completely straightfaced recitation.

It’s also astonishing how bad this movie looks, with sets and hastily composited shots of 1950s cities that wouldn’t be out of place on “Saturday Night Live.” But the tone is especially problematic when the filmmakers seem content to give equal dramatic weight to the horrific and the mundane, be it Flynn’s jealousy over Beverly’s flirting or the fact that he raped her on their first date. There’s no doubt that sexuality and consent were viewed differently in the 1950s, but the film’s flatness blurs the line between depicting the logic of a different era and accepting it. For a film supposedly dedicated to Beverly, it seems disrespectful not to grant her a more modern view of the events that shaped her.

The fact that The Last of Robin Hood is being distributed by Lifetime invites the question of whether it was actually intended for television, but had a few F-bombs and a slightly risqué nude scene from Kline thrown in for a theatrical release. It also invites the question of who this movie is for. Fans of Errol Flynn will get nothing more than a spirited imitation from Kline (the fault of bad material, as he certainly commits to the part). 

Those not familiar with Flynn or Hollywood history will have a difficult time understanding why any of these people are worth paying attention to. So in the end, The Last of Robin Hood is a movie for no one in particular with no specific point to make about a scandalous celebrity who makes more outrageous claims in his own autobiography.

Playing this week

A Most Wanted Man
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

As Above/So Below
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Boyhood
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Calvary
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Expendables 3
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Forrest Gump: The Imax Experience
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Ghostbusters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Giver
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Guardians of the Galaxy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hundred-Foot Journey
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Identical
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

If I Stay
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Let’s Be Cops
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Magic in the Moonlight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The November Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Scarface
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

When the Game Stands Tall
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Lights, camera, education! Catch a sneak peek of local student films before they hit the national festival circuit at Light House Studio’s 13th annual Youth Film Festival. Works from past Light House students have moved on to larger audiences at the LA Film Festival and the Cine Youth Chicago International Film Festival, and won multiple national awards. Start the evening with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and then settle in for a cinematic celebration.

Friday 9/12 . $25-125, 6:30pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4980.

Watching The November Man try its best to be an exciting Bourne-inspired actioner is like listening to someone trip over themselves, so eager to get to the punchline of a joke that they skip key parts of the setup. And just as a botched joke can be unintentionally funny, so too is The November Man mind-bending for reasons completely unrelated to its attempts at intrigue.

The movie begins following veteran spy Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) on a botched mission as upstart David Mason (Luke Bracey) disobeys an order to save Devereaux’s life. Years later, Devereaux is pulled out of retirement to take part in a final mission with both personal and geopolitical ramifications, pitting him against Mason and the darkest depths of the CIA.

Despite its fondness for intrigue and plot twists, the only surprising thing about this Brosnan-produced vanity project—which speaks surprisingly low of Brosnan’s vanity—is that it got a theatrical release at all. Out of focus both conceptually and visually (really, the camerawork is noticeably bad), it screams of straight-to-DVD quality, and would be right at home on a shelf next to the five movies Sean Bean was in this month.

If there’s one thing The November Man should be remembered for, it’s for budding filmmakers to learn how not to handle plot twists. Potential spoilers follow: Devereaux has a weak spot that he’s been hiding for years…that is very easily discovered by a cursory photo search in the CIA database. Three-quarters of the way into the plot, we find out that someone isn’t who they said they were, but the character was introduced so haphazardly and awkwardly that I already thought the newly revealed fact was just the regular plot the whole time.

Sure, it’s dumb. You already knew that. But it’s worse than that. As it plods along, The November Man is kind of about war crimes in Chechnya, the future Russian president, student versus teacher, and the ethics of committing geographically contained atrocities to prevent global ones. Mostly, though, it’s about verbally abusing women, kidnapping women, putting innocent women in the line of fire, and just generally not being very fond of women.

Misogyny is sadly nothing new to this genre, with casually demeaning language, superfluous girlfriends, and entire conversations unnecessarily set in strip clubs, but there is nothing casual about the sexism of The November Man. It goes out of its way to be hateful to its female characters, as when a top level interrogator—who, given her high rank, we would presume is a trained and capable professional—lilts under the pressure of being casually and enthusiastically told to “show me your tits” and being called an “ignorant twat.” A lead character makes the transition from innocent bystander to secret badass, until she takes off her dress, starts crying, and has to be saved. Every female character is either sexually harassed, raped, shot, stabbed, or kidnapped. A female assassin promises to be exciting at first, but is constantly upstaged by the bros and meets a cartoonish end. Sexism is real and deserves to be portrayed, but the feeling here is that the writers jumped at the opportunity to be sexist as though it’s a guilty pleasure.

Given the glee with which The November Man discards its plot in favor of a toxic combination of clichés and a level of hatred toward women that is far and above the unfortunate norm, why its cast and crew desired to make a second-rate Bourne movie in a world where The Bourne Legacy already existed is a bigger mystery than anything in the movie itself.

Playing this week

A Most Wanted Man
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

As Above/So Below
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Begin Again
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Boyhood
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Calvary
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Expendables 3
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Ghostbusters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Giver
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Guardians of the Galaxy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hundred-Foot Journey
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

If I Stay
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Let’s Be Cops
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Magic in the Moonlight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The November Man
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

What If
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

When the Game Stands Tall
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Saying that If I Stay, adapted from Gayle Forman’s blockbuster young adult novel, is bad because it’s overwrought and pretentious is to dismiss a crucial stage of growing up when you yourself are overwrought and pretentious by no real fault of your own. The entire young adult experience is completely unfair. You’re long on feelings but short on life experience. Your entire status in life is defined entirely by trends and peer pressure, so advertisers target you the most viciously. And worse yet, all you get from adults are mixed messages about enjoying your youth versus not screwing up your future.

So it makes sense that of all literary genres, young adult fiction would be the most self-limiting in order to be understood by its target demographic. Whether the plot revolves around vampires or post-apocalyptic fights to the death, every conflict can be distilled down to which crush you choose, how you treat your siblings, wanting to be seen for who you think you really are, and where you go to college/who you marry/whether you kill the president or not.

If I Stay hits all of these notes, and isn’t without its qualities when it steps out from behind its central conceit. Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a shy cello prodigy, the black sheep in a family of punk rockers, who has an extended out-of-body experience as she lays in a coma following a devastating car accident. Not knowing whether to fight or let herself die, most of the story is told in flashbacks, most notably her romance with Adam, the cute older guy of unclear age with rebellious yet non-threatening hair who brings his guitar everywhere. He sees her for who she really is, even if they’re from opposite sides of the track. As time goes on, his middle-of-the-road indie punk band starts to take off while she plans to leave for New York to attend Julliard, resulting in the kind of fights everyone should have only once in their life.

Strangely, the paint-by-numbers teen romance storyline is more engaging than the supernatural limbo Mia can’t get out of, because the two are unevenly developed and don’t work in parallel. Mia’s family of grown-up rockers are more believable than parents in young adult stories thanks in large part to intelligent, sensitive performances by Mireille Enos (“The Killing”) and Joshua Leonard (yes, the guy from The Blair Witch Project). The romance between Mia and Adam (yes, his safely rocking last name is Wilde) accurately captures what teen love feels like at that age (and only that age). And, in a possibly revolutionary move for a movie of this type, teen sex is treated fairly and without judgment. The decision to have sex isn’t the heavy, important crossroads that you generally see in other teen movies, it’s a natural evolution of Mia and Adam’s feelings for each other. Bonus points for giving teens sex-positive role models.

Meanwhile, every time the film cuts back to Mia in the hospital, it loses all of the drama it built up. The mythology of out-of-body experiences is confusing, and focuses the story onto a single decision to live or die that is frustratingly difficult to empathize with. The beginnings of genuine adolescent emotions turn to platitudes.

If I Stay has the beginnings of a good, well-rounded teen drama that has its target demographic’s sensibilities in mind with a few social victories for the portrayal of teens along the way. Granted, the only way you’re likely to see it is if you are either a teen yourself or the parent of one, but if you are struggling to find ways to spend time with your confusing ball of hormones, there are worse choices than If I Stay.

Playing this week

A Most Wanted Man
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Begin Again
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Boyhood
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Cavalry
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Chef
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Expendables 3
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Get On Up
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Giver
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Guardians of the Galaxy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hundred-Foot Journey
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Into the Storm
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Island of Lemurs
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Let’s Be Cops
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Lucy
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Magic in the Moonlight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Sin City
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Step Up All In
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

What If
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

When the Game Stands Tall
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213