The Reel World

In the wake of the Hunger Games and Twilight studios have been snatching up the rights to young adult fiction and gearing up for franchises all in the name of capturing the hearts and wallets of the legions of fans of these book series.  Though there have been a few hits, the failures have been plentiful i.e.: City of Bones, The Host, and The Vampire Academy.  As a guy approaching his mid-thirties, it’s safe to say I’m nowhere near being the target audience for this film, but call me crazy, I actually dug it.

The Muppets debuted in 1955, and the late great Jim Henson’s creations have been delighting audiences (and fellow entertainers) of all ages ever since. They’ve made their mark on the small screen — most notably with The Muppet Show (1976-81) — and at the movies, starring in eight feature films across four different decades. However, 2011’s The Muppets was their first big-screen outing in a dozen years, and the movie spent most of its time wondering if the Muppets’ old-fashioned, irreverent charm still had a place in a more jaded pop culture landscape.

A concussion is a brain injury that causes trauma, confusion, loss of concentration, and impairment of judgment balance and coordination. The new film Concussion starts with a woman getting hit in the head with baseball thrown by her stepson. Abby (Robin Weigert) is married to divorce lawyer Kate (Julie Fain Lawrence). They seem happy but bored in their relationship. Kate obviously probably was in a relationship with a man before but gave up on it. The two kids seem distant and grouchy toward Abby.

Need for Speed is based on a video game. It caters to people who love the experience of speed. There is a huge audience for this sort of thing. To their credit, the writer and director makes every effort to create an actual story and real characters in this presentation. It is easy to compare it to Fast and Furious, but why bother. That gives these sorts of films too much credit. Fast and Furious and Need for Speed are designed to give people a thrill. If anything Need for Speed takes things more seriously than the Fast and Furious series. It also focuses more on beautiful and very expensive cars.

“I know it may seem scary, but flying really is quite fun.”

I respectfully disagree. Air travel is terrible. The seats are too small, the air is stale, there’s hardly any leg room, and the food stinks. (Assuming you even get food.) And I haven’t gotten to the part where you’re hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour at more than 30,000 feet. Ok, so maybe I enjoy air travel a lot little less than some of you out there, but I think we can all agree airliners provide an inherently tense setting for a variety of stories. We’re talking everything from Air Force One to Snakes on a Plane. So while flying may be awful in real life, it’s a reliably thrilling time at the movies.

Most action pictures have an aura of super-seriousness, or they are filmed as comedies and everything is meant to be ridiculous. It definitely is a difficult task to mix the two effectively. On some level most action pictures are ridiculous, since most of us will never experience the close proximity to death and danger that is depicted on the screen. Also, life and death are often cheapened with high body counts but little consequence for our hero. In 3 Days To Kill, all sorts of elements are brought to bear in order to reinforce the average everyday family experience and not the lone killer.

In 1983, a massive 672-page novel by Mark Helprin called Winter's Tale was published. In 2006, The New York Times Book Review named it one of the 22 best books of the last 25 years. It is an almost universally acclaimed book, and one that is nearly impossible to translate into any one movie because it covers many characters over a long period of time. Screenwriter/Director Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, I Am Legend) has taken on this difficult task. Some of his famous friends have joined him. He has admitted in interviews that he had no choice but to cut many large sections and story lines from the sprawling book.

“What are we fighting about now?”

About Last Night isn’t the first — and certainly won’t be the last — movie about adults taking clumsy, tentative steps toward commitment. Heck, it’s not even the first movie called “About Last Night” to tackle the subject. The film is one of a whopping *three* remakes of 1980s hits descending on screens this week. I could easily bemoan the general lack of imagination in Hollywood, but by now that sort of rant is almost as unoriginal as all these remakes. Besides, I’d rather spend my time talking about this engaging, formulaic, frequently funny movie.

There have been complaints that there are not enough films that have decent lead roles for women. There are those that say that Hollywood does not make enough movies for women. Then when they do, critics tend to dismiss them as “Lifetime” movies (a term that is dismissive because of the cable channel that churns out generic movies for women). It seems far easier to accept excessive violence or male-oriented films with sexual content. If a movie tries to legitimately capture real situations from a woman's point of view, it can be patronizingly categorized as pap and schmaltz.

The title refers to the junction in every romantic relationship when a couple has to decide between moving forward and moving on, but That Awkward Moment could also describe the dicey transition between squeaky clean teen star and legitimate adult performer. (Hi, Miley.) To his credit, Zac Efron has already dipped his toe — and other body parts — in provocative waters. (Including Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire.) But That Awkward Moment is the star’s first big, commercial, R-rated swing. The real awkwardness happens the moment you realize the movie isn’t nearly as clever or subversive as it seems to think it is.