Harkins Shea 14

7:00 PM

Independent (11:25 AM), (2:00 PM), (4:35 PM), 7:10 PM, 9:50 PM

AD-Audio Description;CC-Closed Caption;SE-Special Engagement (9:00 AM), (10:00 AM), (12:10 PM), (1:10 PM), (3:20 PM), (4:20 PM), 6:30 PM, 7:30 PM, 8:35 PM, 9:35 PM, 10:35 PM

Where has Robert Downey Jr. gone? There's no doubt he’s the star of Iron Man 3; he sprints through the picture like a neurotic panther. And yet he's curiously absent, detached in a Zenlike way from the whole affair. The nakedness that defines his... More »

Where has Robert Downey Jr. gone? There's no doubt he’s the star of Iron Man 3; he sprints through the picture like a neurotic panther. And yet he's curiously absent, detached in a Zenlike way from the whole affair. The nakedness that defines his best performances has become, paradoxically, a kind of mask, not unlike the sleek, airbrushed-looking one he wears as the superhero incarnation of cocky kajillionaire Tony Stark. Today, Downey could play Stark in his sleep. The jittery self-doubt, the look-at-me hubris, the Boy Scout cluelessness about women: He's become so proficient in his believability that you can hardly believe a minute of it. Maybe you don't need to believe much in Iron Man 3. This is the first in the franchise to be directed by Shane Black, and only the second picture the prolific action screenwriter has made. (The first was the marvelously nerve-jangling Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, also starring Downey.) On the plus side, Black has a puckish sense of humor, and shows a healthy resistance to the comic-booky self-seriousness of the Batman movies. The villains in Iron Man 3, for example, include the Mandarin, a pointy-bearded sage who’s half Osama bin Laden, half Ming the Merciless. He's played with bug-eyed hamminess by Ben Kingsley, and the movie is spooky, silly, or both whenever he's onscreen. But the big problems with Iron Man 3 are less specific to the movie itself than they are characteristic of the hypermalaise that's infected so many current mega-blockbusters-- too much plot, too much action, too many characters, too many pseudo-feelings. The mechanics of Iron Man 3 are complex and rambunctious, like Keystone Kops, bouncing off one another and ultimately canceling one another out. « Less

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Justin Zackham's vile The Big Wedding opens with a foray back through silver-screen history. When Ellie (Diane Keaton) walks in on her ex-husband, Don (Robert De Niro), as he moves to perform kitchen-counter cunnilingus on his new girlfriend,... More »

Justin Zackham's vile The Big Wedding opens with a foray back through silver-screen history. When Ellie (Diane Keaton) walks in on her ex-husband, Don (Robert De Niro), as he moves to perform kitchen-counter cunnilingus on his new girlfriend, Bebe (Susan Sarandon), it's possible to see aging legends of the cinema imagined suddenly together, as if Annie Hall and Travis Bickle and Louise Sawyer one day found themselves playing out some producer's laziest scene ideas. There is, in other words, a lot of history in The Big Wedding-- a history the film not so much squanders as utterly defaces. The wedding here is an excuse to draw together cardboard characters whose prefab arcs end as obviously as they begin. The moment we're introduced to virginal doctor Jared (Topher Grace), we can be assured that we'll see him pop his proverbial cherry by film's end. Same goes for elder sister Lyla (Katherine Heigl), whose pained journey from barren womb to baby bump is too predictable to bother spoiler-warning. All this is held together by casual racism. The son about to be married is Alejandro (Ben Barnes), adopted as a child from Colombia. His biological mother, the devoutly religious Madonna (Patricia Rae), will be visiting for the ceremony, joined by Nuria (Ana Ayora), Alejandro's biological sister, and together the two represent some of the most repugnant foreign stereotyping in years. The film divides these women-- the only non-white characters-- into a literal mother/whore dichotomy. Nuria is relegated to the demeaning role of an exotic Other only present to strip nude and seduce one of the white male leads. « Less

AD-Audio Description;CC-Closed Caption (9:15 AM), (3:45 PM), 8:40 PM

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

AD-Audio Description;CC-Closed Caption (9:10 AM), (10:05 AM), (11:30 AM), (12:30 PM), (2:50 PM), (3:50 PM), 6:10 PM, 7:10 PM, 9:30 PM, 10:30 PM

A likable hagiography as nuanced as a plaque at the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, Brian Helgeland's Jackie Robinson bio 42 finds a politic solution to the challenge Quentin Tarantino faced last year with Django Unchained: How to craft a... More »

A likable hagiography as nuanced as a plaque at the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, Brian Helgeland's Jackie Robinson bio 42 finds a politic solution to the challenge Quentin Tarantino faced last year with Django Unchained: How to craft a crowd-pleasing multiplex period piece whose villain is, essentially, "all white people"? Helgeland solves this by—to flip a racist phrase of the day—showing us that Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey (a phlegmatic Harrison Ford) is one of the good ones, a white guy who transcended his upbringing to become a credit to his race. In the first half, the big moments of drift past like parade floats: well-crafted, incidentally arresting, but not strung together into a dramatic narrative. Things pick up the closer Robinson gets to Ebbets Field—here a video-game recreation that never quite fools the eye. In the majors, we have a story, one that grows more and more compelling right up until the climax's ridiculously protracted slow-mo baserunning. Some Dodgers revolt against Robinson's arrival, pitchers aim for his face, and a Philadelphia coach shouts "You don't belong here! Get that through your thick monkey skull!" A dusty intimacy distinguishes the baseball scenes, which are excellent, if abbreviated. Robinson's duels with pitchers are especially involving, both at the plate and on base, where he harrows the bastards like Bugs Bunny might Elmer Fudd. Chadwick Boseman (playing Robinson) mostly manages to play a flesh-and-blood man despite 42's attempts to present him as a statue just unveiled. Movingly, as Robinson suffers the white world's abuse, Boseman's eyes moisten, redden, and finally seem to scab over with anger and hurt. « Less

AD-Audio Description;CC-Closed Caption (9:50 AM), (1:00 PM), (4:00 PM), 7:00 PM, 10:00 PM

A charming display of auto-critique, In the House is a cocktail of one part Shadow of a Doubt, one part Rear Window, and two parts Jacques Derrida: It's not so much a thriller as a playful deconstruction thereof, allowing characters to comment on... More »

A charming display of auto-critique, In the House is a cocktail of one part Shadow of a Doubt, one part Rear Window, and two parts Jacques Derrida: It's not so much a thriller as a playful deconstruction thereof, allowing characters to comment on their own roles in the narrative. Most of the commentary comes from Germain (Fabrice Luchini), who teaches literature at a suburban French high school, where his students might be characterized as barely sentient. But one, Claude (Ernst Umhauer), has a gift for storytelling. Claude's writings detail his increasingly creepy involvement with his friend Rapha's (Bastien Ughetto) family. Claude spies on Rapha's gorgeous mom (Emmanuelle Seigner) and as his behavior approaches stalking, Germain thrills at Claude’s account of all this, urging him to proceed with his story-- and, by proxy, his behavior toward Rapha's family. "It lacks a conflict," Germain tells Claude, sounding like an exasperated filmmaker. In the House creates something far more original than the same old heart-pounding. Germain's meta-narrative commentary ensures an alienating effect, and therein lies the refreshing uniqueness: Since Hitchcock's films are perpetually analyzed by film theorists, why not provide the space for such analysis within a thriller itself? As the narrative gamesmanship ramps up—Germain becomes the audience’s surrogate and advocate, demanding more conflict; Claude begins to criticize Germain's criticism from within the stories themselves-- In the House investigates a far tougher riddle than what makes Claude tick-- it's trying to figure out why, exactly, voyeurism and mystery delight us so. In the process, it delights. « Less

Independent;subtitled (10:40 AM), (2:30 PM), (5:00 PM), 7:35 PM, 10:15 PM

Would you sign on for three months in shark-infested waters on a tippy raft under a captain who can't swim? The shrewdest joke in the surefire Kon-Tiki-- a film about Thor Heyerdahl's 4,000-mile South Pacific expedition to prove that ocean-faring... More »

Would you sign on for three months in shark-infested waters on a tippy raft under a captain who can't swim? The shrewdest joke in the surefire Kon-Tiki-- a film about Thor Heyerdahl's 4,000-mile South Pacific expedition to prove that ocean-faring Incans could have settled Tahiti-- is that practically every character Heyerdahl meets can't wait to join his suicide trip. Co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have scared up the kroner to make a handsome Norwegian feature about Heyerdahl's 1947 journey-- and, rather than risk a redubbing, they shot this English-language twin at the same time, with the same actors. As passive drift gives way to seasonal currents, Kon-Tiki works up a nice head of storytelling steam. Still, exciting as they are, we've sailed these sea lanes before. Anybody who owed as much to a loan shark as these filmmakers owe to Steven Spielberg would be dead by now. Tick 'em off as they go by: the shooting star against an inky sky, the claustrophobic shark cage, plus more bristling dorsal fins than your average stegosaurus. Without conspicuously meaning to, Kon-Tiki raises a question that remains ticklish among explorers and filmmakers both: Who, finally, gets the credit? At the climax, the hero galumphs proudly ashore in Polynesia-- with the sailors who risked their lives staggering along behind. Does heroism always have to mean hogging the frame once within reach of the loving cup? As usual, posterity gets the last laugh: Most anthropologists today think Heyerdahl was wrong about the settlement of Polynesia. Won an Oscar, though. « Less

Independent (9:20 AM), (1:10 PM), (3:35 PM), 6:05 PM, 10:40 PM

Mix a dollop of The Bourne Identity, a dash (or two) of Taken, and a pinch of the spy classic Three Days of the Condor (1975), stir it all together, and you get Erased, a thriller whose storytelling ingredients are so familiar that one could... More »

Mix a dollop of The Bourne Identity, a dash (or two) of Taken, and a pinch of the spy classic Three Days of the Condor (1975), stir it all together, and you get Erased, a thriller whose storytelling ingredients are so familiar that one could watch it with the sound off and still know what's going on. Aaron Eckhart is Ben Logan, a recently widowed private security analyst living in Brussels who awakes one morning to find his office empty, his co-workers in the morgue, and his personal identity wiped away. With his rebellious teenage daughter, Amy (Liana Liberato), in tow, Ben begins dodging assassins. As luck would have it, he's a retired black ops operative, so, game on. German director Philipp Stölzl proves adept at staging fight scenes in confined spaces, and has fun with a bob-and-weave train station pursuit. The movie zips along nicely for a while, but once screenwriter Arash Amel begins explaining the vast conspiracy Ben has stumbled upon, action gives way to talky angst. Eckhart is too lively an actor for material this mundane, although a Liam Neeson hand-me-down is probably irresistible in today's marketplace. Can Erased Again be far behind? « Less

Independent;SE-Special Engagement (1:15 PM), 6:10 PM

Writer-director Ramin Bahrani's At Any Price finds tension between rapacious capitalism and the idealized fiction of rural life in farming communities, especially as they engage in decidedly unpastoral, commodity-based feeding frenzies. Here it's... More »

Writer-director Ramin Bahrani's At Any Price finds tension between rapacious capitalism and the idealized fiction of rural life in farming communities, especially as they engage in decidedly unpastoral, commodity-based feeding frenzies. Here it's not bad weather or greedy banks that places a large, third-generation family farm in jeopardy but the doughy, Penney’s-clad inspectors of an agricultural biotech corporation. Iowa farmer Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid) has enlarged his farmstead by absorbing competitors; his deepest wish is to pass it to a son, but the youngest, Dean (Zac Efron), hates farming. The setting's austerity strips the generational drama down to the archetypal terms best articulated by James Van Der Beek in Varsity Blues: "Ah don't wahnt yore lahf." As the film begins, glad-handing Henry is pitching an offer for a dead man’s land to a bereaved family, right outside the cemetery gates, which gives you some idea of his footing, soul-proximity-wise. Quaid has a genius for broadcasting conflicting impulses. His body language twists uncomfortably away from his intentions, and his smile is built on the chassis of a cringe. Married to Irene (Treme's awesome Kim Dickens), whom he clearly loves, Whipple has tawdry office trysts with Heather Graham's go-nowhere character. The film, which compares Henry’s re-use of corporate seeds to DVD piracy, weighs patent infringement and adultery about equally. Therefore, according to the transitive property of moral transgressions, the exchange rate for spousal betrayal is 1:1 with ripping The Avengers. When Henry, facing dire legal consequences, invokes wistful memories of his simpler childhood, his dad smacks him down, casting the American dream as a modern, air-conditioned combine "that drives itself with GPS." « Less

Independent (1:50 PM), 7:15 PM

Identity theft! Cyber bullying! Runaway teens doing lurid cam shows! This ambitious, multi-storied, state-of-us-all ensemble drama plumbs our fears of the plugged-in now more stridently than local news in TV sweeps. While well-crafted and at... More »

Identity theft! Cyber bullying! Runaway teens doing lurid cam shows! This ambitious, multi-storied, state-of-us-all ensemble drama plumbs our fears of the plugged-in now more stridently than local news in TV sweeps. While well-crafted and at times moving, screenwriter Andrew Stern's cautionary tales can't help but feel behind the curve, the news they're so urgently sharing already fully absorbed by the culture. They still build some power, especially the central story of a misfit teen (Jonah Bobo) getting catfished by a couple of bullies-- and then the inevitable shame of a 15-year-old's nude pix getting shared all over his high school. With tenderness and economy, Stern and director Henry-Alex Rubin humanize all parties, especially the bullies and the father of the poor, pranked kid; this story accumulates serious weight and vitality. That dad is played by Jason Bateman, who proves adept at drama, although it's little surprise when this distracted, suit-and-tie middle-management type winds up in a hopeless brawl on a suburban lawn, as that's in the cards for all Jason Bateman characters. A less involving thread involves TV news reporter (Andrea Riseborough) getting too close to a male runaway (Max Thieriot) who masturbates on webcam. Then there's the long-soured married couple whose accounts get drained via the usual cyber-pilferers—this family seems to have the same do-nothing, plot-advancing credit card company Bateman had in Identity Thief. That said, one of their moments resonates: husband and wife (Paula Patton and Alexander Skarsgård), each with the other's Internet history laid bare, finally coming to see each other. Disconnect might play better a decade from now, when it's more clearly a compendium of contemporary fears rather than some dire expression of them. « Less

Independent (10:20 AM), (1:05 PM), (4:05 PM), 9:45 PM

subtitled, Independent (10:10 AM), (1:20 PM), (4:15 PM), 7:20 PM, 10:10 PM

It's time, apparently, for the aging ghosts of '60s radicalism to once again take stock of their sins and compromises. Once it gets its walkers moving, Robert Redford's The Company You Keep nearly plays like a green-granola-lefty counterpart to... More »

It's time, apparently, for the aging ghosts of '60s radicalism to once again take stock of their sins and compromises. Once it gets its walkers moving, Robert Redford's The Company You Keep nearly plays like a green-granola-lefty counterpart to The Expendables, a Hollywood Elderhostel reunion crowded with septuagenarian icons looking back on the righteousness and failures of the Nixon–'Nam era with rheumy retirees' eyeballs. The story, from Neil Gordon's novel about the contemporary fate of a few surviving Weather Underground fugitives, all but blows a trumpet for how rad rad used to be. First Susan Sarandon's Vermont housewife, her kids all grown up, throws in the secret-identity towel and surrenders herself to the FBI; from there, the dominoes tumble, leading cub reporter Shia LaBeouf to uncover the similarly fake ID of Redford's upstate lawyer, sending this suede-faced ex-Weatherman running. The FBI closes in, LaBeouf's annoying snoop pesters every single other character motivated only by his journalistic creed, and withering guest-stars (Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Richard Jenkins, a phlegm-plagued Nick Nolte) emerge to crinkle and wheeze about the good old days of bank robberies and protests. Redford’s noble Methuselah isn't just self-preserving-- he's got an unseasonably preadolescent daughter to worry about, and a case for his own redemption to make. It's little surprise that The Company You Keep turns out to be politically chicken-hearted—the progressive cant we hear sounds idiotic, and political principles are seen as pathetic challenges to the demands of family and law and order. Redford succeeds only in defanging the idea of resistance altogether. Far from engaged, the film surrenders in an arthritic faint. « Less

(9:10 AM), (11:40 AM)

Recently, African-American-directed relationship movies have hewed toward either incongruous absurdity (Think Like a Man), overt sentimentality (Jumping the Broom), or, in Tyler Perry's work, both. Long gone feel the days of complex films like... More »

Recently, African-American-directed relationship movies have hewed toward either incongruous absurdity (Think Like a Man), overt sentimentality (Jumping the Broom), or, in Tyler Perry's work, both. Long gone feel the days of complex films like Two Can Play That Game, Mark Brown's modern screwball comedy that provided hilarity alongside a clear-eyed critique of romantic battle. Writer-director Tina Gordon Chism's Peeples lacks the energy of Two Can Play That Game, but like that picture it manages to deliver farce without compromising realism. Craig Robinson (The Office) stars as Wade Walker, a musician who shows up uninvited at his girlfriend’s parents' house for the weekend, planning to win the approval of her father, Virgil (David Alan Grier), and propose. (Kerry Washington plays the betrothed-to-be.) Unfortunately, Wade hardly fits in with what he terms Virgil's "chocolate Kennedys" lifestyle, and the expected sparks get to flying. Peeples finds effective comedy exploring secrets underneath the familial "perfection" Virgil assiduously cultivates, via his closeted lesbian daughter (Kali Hawk) and thieving son, Simon (Tyler James Williams), a nerd who thinks he must establish thuggish bona fides, and insists on being called "Sy." However, physical comedy set pieces, like an elaborate fraternity dance Virgil performs, feel uninspired. Malcolm Barrett is given a plum role as Wade’s wacky sidekick, but fails to knock it out of the park as Mike Epps or Anthony Anderson would have once done. Yet while she doesn't quite achieve the screwball zaniness she strives for, Chism deserves commendation for crafting a farcical work that feels like it concerns real characters. « Less

AD-Audio Description;CC-Closed Caption (11:20 AM), (4:25 PM), 9:55 PM

In the same way novels can be better and worse than journalism at processing history, so can movies be better and worse than novels: too unreal, yet too specific. For the movie of Mohsin Hamid's novel, director Mira Nair mounts a sensitive... More »

In the same way novels can be better and worse than journalism at processing history, so can movies be better and worse than novels: too unreal, yet too specific. For the movie of Mohsin Hamid's novel, director Mira Nair mounts a sensitive retrospective procedural of radicalization: Here's how a bright young Pakistani man (Riz Ahmed) goes straight from Princeton into a boutique corporate valuation firm (with Kiefer Sutherland as his sharkish boss), then has a promising meet-cute with an emotionally unavailable American woman (Kate Hudson), then has his priorities rearranged by the fallout of 9/11. He returns to Pakistan as a university lecturer whose ideas may or may not encourage terrorism, drawing attention from a journalist (Liev Schreiber) whose lengthy interview-cum-standoff serves as the film’s narrative frame. At times it’s dense and sluggish, too much like a novel. But there is some exhilaration to be had from Nair's sincere interested in Hudson's character, who is appealing but hung up by grief over a previous relationship. In the richest moment, she offends her new suitor with a naively exploitative art project-- she calls it an expression of love; he says it's defamation-- and he stuns himself with the cruelty of his response. Thus the central arc is a function not just of sadly expected post-9/11 affronts-- the airport strip search, the tire slashing, the colleagues getting nervous about his beard-- but of doomed romance, with a vision of America that's all the more alluring for being so tragically stunted. « Less

Independent (9:30 AM), (11:45 AM)