ArcLight Hollywood

6:30 PM

Picture Zero Dark Thirty with bright pullovers and laser guns and you’ll have Star Trek Into Darkness, whose heavy-handed political parallels just might feel smart in a summer of Vin Diesel crashing cars. In the opening minutes, Khan Noonien... More »

Picture Zero Dark Thirty with bright pullovers and laser guns and you’ll have Star Trek Into Darkness, whose heavy-handed political parallels just might feel smart in a summer of Vin Diesel crashing cars. In the opening minutes, Khan Noonien Singh (Benedict Cumberbatch) terrorizes London, then makes like Osama and flees to the mountains of an enemy planet, causing Starfleet Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) to order his assassination, sans trial. Here justice will be served by the blubbering James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), who so bleeds his humanity across the Enterprise’s deck that it’s a wonder Chekhov (Anton Yelchin) doesn’t slip. Again, the central conflict is between the Captain’s swaggering impetuousness and the cold-blooded logic of First Mate Spock (Zachary Quinto). After setting up its War on Terror allusions, Star Trek Into Darkness becomes Paradise Lost in Space: It’s a battle for the good captain’s soul, as Kirk is torn between Spock’s wisdom and Admiral Marcus’s war-mongering. Can Khan destroy him simply by smashing his moral code? J.J. Abrams externalizes Kirk’s turmoil by making him spend every second scene suffering unsolicited advice about what to do. The character feels neutered, despite an early romp where he beds twin hotties with tails. His only real love is for the Enterprise, that hermaphroditic ship shaped like three phalluses and a flattened boob. Abrams, meanwhile, lifts Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’s climax, thievery that will enrage the devout as it suggests the Star Trek saga is merely a game of Mad Libs in which he plugs characters and catastrophes. « Less

10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 12:00 PM, 2:15 PM, 2:30 PM, 3:05 PM, 5:30 PM, 6:00 PM, 6:10 PM, 9:00 PM, 9:10 PM, 10:00 PM, 11:05 PM

Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and cheekbones yet still seedier than a stash of gym-locker pot, McConaughey’s radiant stoner exemplified high school promise gone... More »

Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and cheekbones yet still seedier than a stash of gym-locker pot, McConaughey’s radiant stoner exemplified high school promise gone bad. He looked like the little man of top of trophies, just horny, stupid, sapped of ambition and only likely to use his physical gifts for the least public-spirited of ends. Mud, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is the latest in McConaughey’s campaign for re-consideration as a great American actor. He plays full burnout, a starving fugitive hiding out on a small island in the Mississippi. When discovered by a pair of likable local kids, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), McConaughey lays out the backstory you might wish was more original. There’s a woman he’s waiting for, a crime of chivalrous passion, the usual thugs out to get him. Will the kids keep his secret—and even help him get where he’s going? The mode here is boys’ adventure, Twain and Great Expectations mixed up with rural naturalism. The boys talk about “titties” and wear camo pants; early on we see them pilot a small boat down the tributary they live on and into the great Mississippi itself, a rousing sequence that suggests the danger and wildness of the adulthood they’re surging toward. At moments like this, Mud is honest and involving, touched with life as it’s actually lived. Too bad it settles into melodrama. The climax feels copy-pasted from episodes of Justified, the action comically out of proportion to the small story preceding it. « Less

11:20 AM, 11:50 AM, 4:30 PM, 7:35 PM, 10:25 PM

There's a scene in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby in which Leonardo DiCaprio's hyper-rich, super-awkward Jay Gatsby takes it upon himself to redecorate the bachelor pad of his less prosperous friend, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). Gatsby's old... More »

There's a scene in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby in which Leonardo DiCaprio's hyper-rich, super-awkward Jay Gatsby takes it upon himself to redecorate the bachelor pad of his less prosperous friend, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). Gatsby's old flame, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), is coming to Nick’s for tea. Eager to impress her, Gatsby has brought in boughs draped with explosive white flowers, macarons in every color of the paintbox and tiered cakes straight out of Marie Antoinette's court. "You think it's too much?" he asks Nick. Nick offers the polite answer: "I think it's what you want." The Great Gatsby is both too much and what Luhrmann wants, less a movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel than a movie version of Jay Gatsby himself. It’s polished to a handsome sheen and possesses no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it. The performers often look lost, but the movie moves, breathes and has color on its side. Though Fitzgerald couldn't have known it, he wrote a scene tailor-made for 3-D, the one in which Gatsby rummages through his collection of brilliantly colored silk shirts and tosses one after another toward his lady love. In Luhrmann's vision, they float down around Daisy like polychrome snowflakes. It's all so fake. It should all be so horrible. But really, all Luhrmann has done is build a crazy art deco Taj Mahal to the glory of The Great Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Luhrmann is a faker but not a phony. Fitzgerald knew the difference. Can we see it, too? « Less

10:40 AM, 12:40 PM, 1:55 PM, 3:50 PM, 4:55 PM, 7:10 PM, 8:10 PM, 10:20 PM, 11:10 PM

There's a scene in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby in which Leonardo DiCaprio's hyper-rich, super-awkward Jay Gatsby takes it upon himself to redecorate the bachelor pad of his less prosperous friend, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). Gatsby's old... More »

There's a scene in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby in which Leonardo DiCaprio's hyper-rich, super-awkward Jay Gatsby takes it upon himself to redecorate the bachelor pad of his less prosperous friend, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). Gatsby's old flame, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), is coming to Nick’s for tea. Eager to impress her, Gatsby has brought in boughs draped with explosive white flowers, macarons in every color of the paintbox and tiered cakes straight out of Marie Antoinette's court. "You think it's too much?" he asks Nick. Nick offers the polite answer: "I think it's what you want." The Great Gatsby is both too much and what Luhrmann wants, less a movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel than a movie version of Jay Gatsby himself. It’s polished to a handsome sheen and possesses no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it. The performers often look lost, but the movie moves, breathes and has color on its side. Though Fitzgerald couldn't have known it, he wrote a scene tailor-made for 3-D, the one in which Gatsby rummages through his collection of brilliantly colored silk shirts and tosses one after another toward his lady love. In Luhrmann's vision, they float down around Daisy like polychrome snowflakes. It's all so fake. It should all be so horrible. But really, all Luhrmann has done is build a crazy art deco Taj Mahal to the glory of The Great Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Luhrmann is a faker but not a phony. Fitzgerald knew the difference. Can we see it, too? « Less

12:20 PM, 1:00 PM, 3:30 PM, 4:10 PM, 6:45 PM, 7:25 PM, 10:05 PM, 11:30 PM

10:15 AM, 10:45 AM, 11:15 AM, 11:45 AM, 1:00 PM, 1:30 PM, 2:00 PM, 2:25 PM, 2:45 PM, 4:00 PM, 4:45 PM, 5:15 PM, 5:45 PM, 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM, 8:25 PM, 9:15 PM, 11:15 PM

Until his arrest in 1986, most people believed Richard Kuklinski to be an all-American family man. In reality this suburban New Jersey "banker" made his fortune working as hit man for the Mafia, killing over 100 people and often freezing and... More »

Until his arrest in 1986, most people believed Richard Kuklinski to be an all-American family man. In reality this suburban New Jersey "banker" made his fortune working as hit man for the Mafia, killing over 100 people and often freezing and dismembering their bodies to obscure the time of death. Depicted in the tone of a film noir and tinged with the tensions of a horror movie, Ariel Vromen's The Iceman follows this sociopath over the course of his career. Michael Shannon portrays Kuklinski in his dual lives, the highs of success spliced with acts of brutal murder, from the courtship with his wife, Barbara (played by a doe-eyed and anxious Winona Ryder), to his induction into a mob run by Ray Liotta, and a temporary partnership with a bohemian hit man who drives a Mr. Freezy truck (Chris Evans, untamed). Shannon gives an unnerving performance as a man caged in a cruel apathy, maintaining a controlled façade that seems to twitch with barely sublimated distress. Vromen hints at the motivations behind the psyche of a killer-- an abusive father and a Catholic yet godless upbringing (see James Franco cameo)-- and allows fragments of sympathy to slip in for Kuklinski and the fate set out for him from the film's clanking start: a life behind bars. The slasher gore is lightened with moments of humor, like David Schwimmer's handlebar mustache and dopey portrayal as Liotta's right-hand man, which elicits unintentional laughter. Ultimately The Iceman is a blend of Mafia-film cliché and the jarring reality of lives undone by crime. « Less

8:35 PM, 10:40 PM

New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not... More »

New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not cutting it. Life with her best friend and roommate, Sophie (Mickey Sumner) has taken on the dull glow of old cutlery swiped from the college dining hall—“We’re the lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore,” Frances observes. When Sophie moves out to live with her boyfriend, Frances finds herself adrift, shoehorning herself into new roommate situations. She is lacks a job and resources: Encountering a transaction that requires a credit card, which she of course doesn’t have, she blurts, “I’m not a real person yet.” At what age does one become a real person? Frances Ha may be director Noah Baumbach’s tenderest movie, at least among his most recent ones. Shot digitally on the fly, its New York streets rendered in satiny black-and-white, the film is a patchwork of details that constitute a sort of dating manual, one that fortifies you for all the crap you have to deal with when you’re a young person in love with a city that doesn’t always love you back. Frances moves from here to there without flinching, but as Gerwig (who co-wrote with Baumbach) plays her, there’s always a cellophane layer of wistfulness behind her optimism. When you want things you can’t name, how do you search for them? « Less

10:35 AM, 2:10 PM, 2:50 PM, 5:00 PM, 7:05 PM, 9:20 PM, 11:25 PM