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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

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 1:20 PM, 4:20 PM, 7:20 PM, 10:20 PM

Alvin learns to grow up in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, but maturity remains an alien concept to this CG song-and-dance franchise, which in its third installment, flails about in search of a creative reason to exist. On a cruise-ship... More »

Alvin learns to grow up in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, but maturity remains an alien concept to this CG song-and-dance franchise, which in its third installment, flails about in search of a creative reason to exist. On a cruise-ship vacation, Alvin (Justin Long), brothers Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Theodore (Jesse McCartney), and their female doppelgangers, the Chipettes, become stranded on a deserted island, prompting not, alas, a to-the-death Lord of the Flies scenario but, instead, merely a perfunctory rescue mission from paternal owner Dave (Jason Lee) and bird-costumed former nemesis Ian (David Cross). In the wild, Alvin embraces responsibility, and Simon (transformed by a head-conk) becomes carefree and confident. Nonetheless, there's barely a narrative to speak of in director Mike Mitchell's slapstick-y adventure, which is mainly concerned with haphazard movie references (The Lord of the Rings, Castaway) and grating Chipmunk-ized renditions of hits by, among others, Willow Smith and Destiny's Child. Smushing together Katy Perry's "Firework" and Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" in a tossed-off finale would be more egregious if it — like a fittingly lame nod to the "Double Rainbow" viral video — didn't perfectly epitomize Chipwrecked's unimaginative pandering to contemporary top 40 and pop-culture fads. « Less

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Mr. Popper's Penguins finds Jim Carrey resorting to talking-animal kiddie crap for his latest misbegotten bid to rediscover his king-of-the-box-office mojo, pairing the rubber-faced actor with a gaggle of penguins so cutely anthropomorphized that... More »

Mr. Popper's Penguins finds Jim Carrey resorting to talking-animal kiddie crap for his latest misbegotten bid to rediscover his king-of-the-box-office mojo, pairing the rubber-faced actor with a gaggle of penguins so cutely anthropomorphized that they'd make his iconic pet detective Ace Ventura giggle with glee. Loosely based on Richard and Florence Atwater's children's novel, Mark Waters's film centers on Mr. Popper (Carrey), a career-over-family Manhattan real estate shark who is bequeathed a live penguin by his deceased dad. Shortly thereafter receiving five more, Popper initially bristles, but, when his one-dimensional kids warm to the tuxedoed creatures, he embraces them as a way to mend fences with his progeny — and, wouldn't you know, they also help him reconnect with his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) and thaw his frozen heart! This process involves having a penguin poop white-liquid nastiness in his face, though the saddest thing about Popper is that, aside from a Jimmy Stewart impersonation and a pretending-to-be-in-slow-motion gag, it exploits so little of Carrey's trademark uninhibited zaniness. The dim, slapsticky movie could have been headlined by anyone; Tim Allen would have been perfect. « Less

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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

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 10:00 AM, 1:00 PM, 4:00 PM, 7:00 PM, 10:00 PM

Much more entertaining than you might expect for one with "fast" or "furious" or "six" in the title, director Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 6 offers the series' most resplendent parade of chases and crashes yet, all shot and cut in that radical new... More »

Much more entertaining than you might expect for one with "fast" or "furious" or "six" in the title, director Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 6 offers the series' most resplendent parade of chases and crashes yet, all shot and cut in that radical new style, the one where audiences can apprehend in one viewing just what is supposed to be going on. In the most exciting sequence, there's a tank to be brought down, a hilariously high and long bridge, and winning business with a harpoon. That ridiculousness is topped by the climax, when the franchise's action figures must stop a cargo plane from taking off. Everybody races at what seems to be impossible speeds, for what seems to be 15 minutes, down what certainly is the world's longest runway. There's nothing to laud here in terms of storytelling, and the dialogue is all quips and exposition, but Lin aces something rare: the spirit of freewheeling play. His chases seem to take place in the mind of a 10-year-old, and there are few of the stiff dramatic scenes that in earlier editions suggested that 10-year-old's Hot Wheels had gotten stuck in the sandbox. Tyrese is given more one-liners than he's had since 2 Fast 2 Furious. Warheaded leads Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson leaven their hulking by making it clear their characters relish the mayhem. And the non-vehicular action is ace, especially an extended womano a womano between Gina Carano and Michelle Rodriguez, and one sublimely dumb bit of tag-team ass-kicking from Diesel and Johnson. « Less

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 10:30 AM, 1:30 PM, 4:30 PM, 7:30 PM, 10:30 PM

Is calling a film's narrative structure "airtight" a compliment or a pejorative? Clockwork storytelling can entertain, yet such mechanisms can also seem overly constructed, like one of those essays that gets high scores from the SAT folks. If one... More »

Is calling a film's narrative structure "airtight" a compliment or a pejorative? Clockwork storytelling can entertain, yet such mechanisms can also seem overly constructed, like one of those essays that gets high scores from the SAT folks. If one of those essays became an animated movie it might be Epic. This rather average-scaled adventure concerns a young woman, MK (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), who visits her father, Bomba (Jason Sudeikis), with hopes of talking him out of his reclusive lifestyle. Bomba's life's work is attempting to prove that a fantastical society of miniature people lives in the nearby woods. MK's cynicism turns to belief when she is shrunken down to thimble-size and winds up a player in the battle between the forces of good and evil in the forest world. Christoph Waltz has tons of fun in his role as the chief baddie, surely the best-cast voice here. Epic, presented in 3D, is noteworthy for its depictions of characters flying (birds are the energy-efficient vehicles of this green society) and swinging through the woods, with image depth that practically hypnotizes. With its array of goofy sidekicks (Aziz Ansari as a slug almost runs away with the whole picture) and carefully crafted relationships, Epic certainly manages to tell a compelling tale. Yet in a post-Up era where animated films can pulse with profound truths, the question remains: Is mere entertainment enough? « Less

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 10:25 AM, 1:25 PM, 4:25 PM, 7:25 PM, 9:55 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 back story 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, the Twain and the 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 that 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

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While at heart a Pinkett-Smith family bonding project, the kind of sci-fi play therapy Big Willie and son would get up to if they had a holodeck, the dreary After Earth still bears the stamp of authorship of M. Night Shyamalan, its director.... More »

While at heart a Pinkett-Smith family bonding project, the kind of sci-fi play therapy Big Willie and son would get up to if they had a holodeck, the dreary After Earth still bears the stamp of authorship of M. Night Shyamalan, its director. There's the handsome scenecraft, those smartly constructed revelations and jump scares, often sprung on you during a shot that seems to be about something else. (Recall the kitchen drawers and cabinets that suddenly all open in The Sixth Sense-- and recall that young writer-director's promise.) There’s that glum high seriousness and that insistence upon lit-class symbolism, no matter how risible. And there's Shyamalan's principled refusal to subordinate his ideas to narrative logic. Just minutes after being told that the planet he's crashed-landed on undergoes a fatal hard-freeze every single night, the hero leaps into a river-- the water's not bad. The kid (Jaden Smith) has to dash through some 100 kilometers of verdant Mystery Planet, while dad—stern, joyless, the Fresh Prince now a dour warrior king—grumbles junk cribbed from acting classes, Dianetics, and Tom Cruise's scenes in Magnolia: "Root yourself in this moment now. Stop, smell. What do you feel?" Jaden might face online wrath for his performance especially thanks to the pinched-up accent he's forced to adopt. He's a kid asked to do the extraordinary: compel us as he pretends to do ridiculous bullshit. As Will Smith coldly instructs him to feel, to root in this moment now, to master his own creation, I felt the purest horror I ever have at a Shyamalan film: What if this is what Jaden Smith’s life is actually like? « Less

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 10:45 AM, 1:45 PM, 4:45 PM, 7:45 PM, 10:10 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

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 1:30 PM

Eager young people can't find jobs; qualified older people can't find jobs. There's nothing funny about that, which is exactly why someone ought to be making comedies about it. The Internship, in which downtrodden old-school salespeople Vince... More »

Eager young people can't find jobs; qualified older people can't find jobs. There's nothing funny about that, which is exactly why someone ought to be making comedies about it. The Internship, in which downtrodden old-school salespeople Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson enter the 21st century and land internships at Google, might have been just the palliative for this sad state of affairs. But do you really want to drop 10 precious shekels (or more) on a movie so desperately unfunny it makes you want to slit your wrists? I laughed exactly once, at a moment when Vaughn’s character performs a Google search using the words "jobs for people with few skills." If you've been there yourself, you’ll probably find this funny, too. But mostly, it's depressing to watch two reasonably gifted comic actors play clueless oldies who just can't get the hang of this brand-new Internet thing. Luddite numbnuts Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) decide the path to riches lies in the World Wide Web, and they somehow land an online interview with Google. The internship committee takes pity, and before long, Billy and Nick land at the company's headquarters, where they're forced to attend corporate brainwashing sessions while wearing stupid propeller beanies, all in the hopes of landing a job. They're also, of course, lumped in with a bunch of kids some 20 years their junior. Vaughn and Wilson look out of place and uncomfortable-- they're not just playing two getting-older guys who need to jump-start their careers, they're acting out a personal pantomime of middle-age discomfort that's unpleasant to watch. « Less

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 10:35 AM, 1:35 PM, 4:35 PM, 7:35 PM, 10:20 PM

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The hook of this R-rated horror film would also work for a superior young-adult novel. A decade from now, the U.S. has mostly solved its crime and unemployment problems with one Hunger Games-style tweak: On one night in March it's perfectly legal... More »

The hook of this R-rated horror film would also work for a superior young-adult novel. A decade from now, the U.S. has mostly solved its crime and unemployment problems with one Hunger Games-style tweak: On one night in March it's perfectly legal for Americans to kill anyone they want to. With the wealthy locked down in their homes, it's the poor who tend to die on purge night, often at the hands of gangs of "hunters" shouting things like "Die, homeless pig!" The movie disapproves of this behavior but lends it ugly credence in the implication that the economy is booming thanks to the elimination of what Paul Ryan would call "the takers." As always in YA, one sensitive kid figures out that all of society is evil or phonies or whatever. In this case it's the excellent Max Burkholder, playing a likable inventor geek holed up with his family to wait out purge night. After some misadventures, he sees a black homeless man (Edwin Hodge) running down the street of their ritzy subdivision. The man screams "Help me!" Gunshots crack in the night. The kid, not up on his Ayn Rand, disables the elaborate security system and invites the man inside. Think Guess Who's Coming to Be a Moral Quandary? Soon, a lynch mob demands the man be surrendered-- or the family be killed. Writer-director James DeMonaco wrings this for some memorably tense scenes, but all this big-idea drama soon gives way to too many scenes of Ethan Hawke dispatching more faceless adversaries than is justifiable in a film committed to reminding us of the horribleness of violence. « Less

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service 10:40 AM, 1:40 PM, 4:40 PM, 7:40 PM, 10:00 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

CC/DVS-Closed Captions & Descriptive Video Service (10:55 AM), (1:55 PM), 4:55 PM, 7:55 PM, 10:30 PM

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