Rum Diary

Something went wrong with this, but it’s hard to say what. It has everything going for it. Famous source material, big time movie star lead, likeable supporting cast, exotic location. All winning ingredients. But the story feels like a series of subplots without any kind of main plot. So nothing hooks you in, nothing gets you excited or fulfilled, and there’s nothing to resolve at the end. Plus the tone is uncomfortably inconsistent. It jumps from silliness to melancholy for no apparent dramatic reason. It’s hard to tell if everyone making the move was on the same page, literally.

The Thing

The filmmakers of this prequel have a FUNDAMENTAL misunderstanding of what made the John Carpenter movie so great. The creature in John Carpenter’s paranoid masterpiece imitates humans. Therefore, like the other guys stranded in Antarctica, you never know who has been snatched by the thing and who hasn’t. This is where the suspense comes from. But in this catastrophic rehash, the creature is always in its slimy, mutating, goopy phase, and never seems to successfully imitate anything. Poof! There goes the suspense, dumbass remakers.

Ides of March

What’s funny about this movie, it feels like it was written 50 years ago. The scandal, the catalyst for the movie’s low-impact intrigue, seems relatively tame compared to today’s real-world Jack Abramoffs and war profiteers. Though she’s a competent performer, Evan Rachel Wood’s intern-in-trouble character feels like she fell out of a 1950’s propaganda film about teens in trouble. Everyone in the cast is solid, and it’s well-directed by Clooney, but the movie doesn’t say a lot about today’s political world that we didn’t already know.

Real Steel

It’s a family-friendly cobbling of all the boxing movies, with, ya know, robots. There’s lots of Rocky, plenty of The Champ, a little bit of Raging Bull, and some recognizable stuff from the robot greats: Wall-E, Short Circuit, Robocop. So it’s about as original as a Big Mac. But I got a kick out of it, mainly because of the adults: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Hope Davis and James Rebhorn. I think it’s the sign of a good actor when they can take a script as corny and derivative as this and commit whole-heartedly to its reality. Never winking, never tongue in cheek. The exception to this: the villains. I laughed out loud every time the wicked, Russian, robot-owning vixen spoke. She made me nostalgic for Brigitte Nielsen. Anyway, I went into this expecting a movie about boxing robots. My expectations were fulfilled.

50/50

I’ll admit it: I’m Seth Rogened out. It seems like he’s been in too many movies lately playing the same kind of role. But if all of that was a warm-up for 50/50, maybe it was worth it. As the producer and actor, Rogen plays himself, gives himself the best part, and owns the best scene in the movie. Everyone in the cast is first-rate, elevating the script from a C+ dramedy into a B+ Oscar baiter. It’s neither the directing, the writing nor the cancer concept that makes it special. It’s the fact that the story is personal that makes it emotionally honest. It’s unusual, too, that the main character, played perfectly by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is so atypically plain. He’s not exceptional in way. He doesn’t have an interesting job. He doesn’t have some great calling in life. He’s not hilarious. In fact, the only thing vaguely unique about him is he has a pretty girlfriend -- a thankless role rendered skillfully and unselfishly by Bryce Dallas Howard. Howard’s shrew is juxtaposed beautifully by Anna Kendrick’s plucky young shrink. The cup is almost full here. A lot of talented youngsters have tried to nail down a James L. Brooks style dramedy tearjerker with mixed results. For every Up in the Air and 500 Days of Summer, there’s a Funny People. 50/50 manages to be more like the former than the latter.