A Better Life

We get to follow the story of an undocumented LA gardener. He has a teenage son who is navigating all the social pressures of high school and he has an opportunity to go into business for himself instead of working for someone. This is a good father-son relationship film, where the son is seemingly ambivalent  but clearly respects the father. Hard luck puts them together, each respecting the other a bit more. This is not a happy tale, but lets us in on the subtleties of how difficult life can be living under the radar in this country.
4 stars (out of 5)

Looper

I love a good time travel movie. And based on seeing the preview, this one intrigued me. "Time travel hasn't been invented yet. But it will be in the future". Of course, the criminal underworld is able to take advantage of this technology and we get a storyline. The future criminals send people back in time when they want to get rid of them. In the past, they are killed and there are no bodies to take care of or mess to clean up. But what happens when the guy sent back for you to kill is the older version of yourself. Meet the dilema faced by our protagonist Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Bruce Willis. We get a pretty good look at how the inevitable time contradictions play out. Although I am never really sure how the people in the past get the message about when a target is going to show up, since you can't just put an ad in the newspaper for some future person to read like you do when you go forward in time. In the end we get a nice (in my mind) recognition of the cyclical nature of violence and a non-hollywood solution. Very entertaining with a decent attempt at exploring the depth of how difficult culture change really is.
4 stars (out of 5)

Robot & Frank

My friend Joel has a standing rule about movies... they can't possibly be any good unless they have a dinosaur in them. My position is not as strong as his, but I probably feel similarly about Robots. I might say that any movie with a robot is a better movie than if the robot was not in it. My second favorite genre of film is the heist. So you can see that we have here the potential of a great film. Frank Langella is fabulous as a former jewel thief who is given a Robot as a personal assistant to help him as he ages. Actually, his son forces the robot on him with the threat of being put in a home if he does not comply. Frank begins to anthropomorphize Robot and we all fall for the sentimentality. Add in some great performances of over-the-top hipsters of the future and this is plays out as a cleverly comic film. At the same time, we are asked to think about what role family plays with the elderly and what role purpose in life plays in making life meaningful at any age. Well done.
4 stars (out of 5)

Finding Nemo (3D)

I know...

This was my first experience with XpanD 3D technology. Instead of multiple images with different polarizations (one for each eye), these active glasses flicker back and forth between the eyes in sync with theaters projection system. The result was removal of the edge/peripheral effects that always bothered me. On the down side, my nose was tired at the end of the film. Those glasses are heavy. As for the film, Nemo is a great film and it seemed like a perfect setup for 3D. A world that was deep. My only experience with real life scuba fascinated me because for the first time in my life I was in a 3D world and I hoped some of that would translate to the screen. And some of it did. But aside from a few of the panoramic views of the coral reef, it seems a bit dull (purely speaking of 3D wow factor here). Maybe the sign of a good 3D is that you aren't always thinking of the 3D? Maybe not? I am not sure here since in the past I have always been thinking of the 3D (in a bad way).

Don't have to say much about the actual film since it is part of popular culture now. A great look at an undersea world with lots of good environmental consciousness thrown in. I actually showed this film in my environmental science class once and challenged the students to list every environmental concept that they encountered. They pulled out paper and started the list. After about 100, they gave up and watched the 2nd half of the film. And I still like the turtles... dude.
4 stars (out of 5)

Goodbye Solo

Solo is a Senegalese cab driver in Winston, North Carolina. He usually drives the night shift and one night picks up William, a passenger that makes a trip reservation for 10 days later. When Solo gets a bit suspicious about William's intentions, he finds a way to become his "regular driver" over the next week and their lives become intertwined. Solo is engaging, honest and interesting. He has hopes and dreams, struggles with present reality and seems to be an all around decent person. Perhaps only because I have seen this recently, but reminds me a lot of Driss in The Intouchables.  Unfortunately, in a two person film, you really need to be able to develop both characters to hold interest. William is too much of a blank slate to warrant any real care. So we get a promising, but ultimately only adequate, film that scratches the surface of what it could be.
2 stars (out of 5)

Premium Rush

In spite of the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in this film and the fact that he is a good actor (see 50/50), there is not much acting in the film. That said, this film does not require much acting. It is pretty much a constant action film, all set up by bike messengers in New York. A nice little plot that gets Gordon-Levitt delivering something valuable that a bunch of people want, a little inter-office tension (fixie vs. gears) and lots of great biking. Of course the messengers are a bit crazy (texting and riding in Manhattan? Really?), but that is the point, right? They are also people and this doesn't drop to the level of Crank (although that wasn't bad for pure summer fluff). Everything in this genre is compared to Speed and this is similar. I might even say better since it is not about terrorism and death and killing. Good, clean summer fun. Hold on to your popcorn.
4 stars (out of 5)

Hope Springs

What could have been extremely cheesy and overplayed and caricature was only moderately so. And even then, not so much as to distract from quality acting and a decent story. Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones play a couple entering their 31st year of marriage. They have routines so fixed that the bacon and sunny side up egg slide off the griddle and onto the plate every morning just as Jones sits down for breakfast. Streep's character is a bit disaffected, not feeling the love and excitement that she envisioned and wanting to recapture the magic. She signs them up for an intensive week of therapy in Maine, throws down the ultimatum, and the stage is set. What is remarkable about this film is the sincerity of the characters. They are real people with real problems. Jones is well out of his comfort zone and his face is able to portray in a glimpse his anguish and dissatisfaction, while Streep can do the same with discovering a simple pleasure. It is not groundbreaking and the story is largely predictable. But it is quality acting and fine entertainment while prompting you to be just a bit introspective about your own relationships.
4 stars (out of 5)