Edwards University Town Center 6

There's a scene in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby in which Leonardo DiCaprio's hyperrich, 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 hyperrich, 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, macaroons 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

(12:30 PM)

You're either with Brit Marling or you're against her. The 29-year-old blond filmmaker (who describes herself on Twitter as a tree climber/actor/writer/producer) catapulted out of obscurity in 2011 with two obfuscatory indies-- Sound of My Voice... More »

You're either with Brit Marling or you're against her. The 29-year-old blond filmmaker (who describes herself on Twitter as a tree climber/actor/writer/producer) catapulted out of obscurity in 2011 with two obfuscatory indies-- Sound of My Voice and the mournful sci-fi drama Another Earth. Marling specializes in films about faith, loyalty, and paranoia, where rationalists argue with dreamers and everybody seeks a greater meaning to what could just be nonsense, which is to say her specialty is life. In The East she acts/writes/produces/and, yes, even climbs a tree. Marling plays Sarah, a former FBI agent turned corporate spy, paid handsomely to protect McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Exxon, and the like from the terrorists: vegans, environmentalists, and activists out to besmirch their names. Handing Sarah a pair of brand-new Birkenstocks, her boss (the coolly cynical Patricia Clarkson) sics her on the latest shadowy supergroup, The East, who we meet dumping crude oil through the air-conditioning vents of a gasoline mogul's mansion. Sarah is cut from Marling's own image. She's clever and capable, a whiz kid who can't fail. Over the course of the film, she picks handcuffs, punches men, and leaps from trees with the grace of a private-school ninja. If she has a flaw, it's that she can't hide thinking she’s the smartest person in the room. In another life, I'd love to see Marling play Bond-- imagine those Botticelli waves falling over a tuxedo. But in this life, she's still proving her brains, which is why it's disappointing that, for all its empathy and equilibrium, The East has nowhere to go after the script backs itself into a corner. « Less

(1:00 PM), (4:20 PM), 7:30 PM, 10:20 PM

(11:30 AM), (2:10 PM), (4:00 PM), (5:00 PM), 7:00 PM, 7:40 PM, 9:30 PM, 10:10 PM

For many people, particularly those who were in their twenties at the time of its release, Richard Linklater's 1995 Before Sunrise-- in which Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke play young tourists who fold a lifetime of romance (and plenty of arguing)... More »

For many people, particularly those who were in their twenties at the time of its release, Richard Linklater's 1995 Before Sunrise-- in which Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke play young tourists who fold a lifetime of romance (and plenty of arguing) into one night--is one of those secret movies we keep in our pockets like lucky coins. For others, 2004's Before Sunset, which reunites Hawke's Jesse and Delpy's Celine in Paris and ends with one hell of a cliffhanger, is the treasure. Now along comes the painfully articulate Before Midnight. Proceed with caution, tissues, and possibly wearing armor. Here, Celine and Jesse-- now together although not married-- head off to a romantic hotel, free from their kids, where Celine's frustrations explode in a diatribe melding thousands of years of female oppression with the everyday anxieties of raising twins. She turns on Jesse with such vengeance that she nearly crushes their union. The original tagline for Before Sunrise was "Can the greatest romance of your life last only one night?" Here Celine raises a horrible counterpoint: Can you destroy the person you love most in less than an hour? Her suffering is real; it's her choice of words, their heat-seeking precision, that makes you want to take her by the shoulders and shout “STOP!” Celine does most of the talking, but it's really Hawke's movie-- we see in his eyes how Celine's misery cuts him. Her anguish is his failure. Jesse still dresses and carries himself like a kid, but adulthood has hit him hard, like a crack to the jaw, perhaps just now. « Less

(12:50 PM), (4:10 PM), 7:10 PM, 9:50 PM

Sitcoms, especially since Seinfeld, have a way of getting audiences to root for jerks. The Kings of Summer attempts to pull off the same narrative trick by getting us to mistake 15-year-old protagonist, Joe (Nick Robinson), for a scamp instead of... More »

Sitcoms, especially since Seinfeld, have a way of getting audiences to root for jerks. The Kings of Summer attempts to pull off the same narrative trick by getting us to mistake 15-year-old protagonist, Joe (Nick Robinson), for a scamp instead of a sullen little shit, even when he calls his widower dad's girlfriend a "spider woman you found in the gutter." Joe thinks his gruff, sarcastic father (Nick Offerman, playing a less noble variation of Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson) is totally ruining his life, so he moves into a fantasy cabin-- complete with a loft and air hockey table-- with his athletic best friend, Patrick (Gabriel Basso), and a nonsense-spouting ethnic cartoon named Biaggio (Moises Arias)-- one of the two dark-skinned, asexual characters the film prods us to laugh at. To clinch all the Urkel-era clichés, Joe and Patrick run away by telling their parents they're sleeping over at each other's house. For a while, the teenagers live in a Boys' Life paradise, jumping into lakes, dueling with swords, and sneaking off to Boston Market to retrieve dinner. But their idyll evaporates with the arrival of a popular blond girl (Erin Moriarty)-- do teenage boys in movies ever fall for anyone else?-- who unwittingly pits Joe and Patrick against each other. Joe’s conflicts with his friend and father lead to a tense, funny, mettle-testing climax, but the ending is more cornball than Tony Danza. The film's grown-up world-- populated by the tart, shticky likes of Offerman, Megan Mullally, Alison Brie, and Mary Lynn Rajskub-- a lot more interesting than its pimple-faced counterpart. « Less

(12:00 PM), (2:20 PM), (4:40 PM), 7:20 PM, 9:40 PM

(11:45 AM), (2:00 PM), (4:30 PM), 6:50 PM, 9:20 PM