REVIEW: The Descendants

14 03 2012

Mixing comedy and drama is a perilous task, but Alexander Payne makes it look like he could do it in his sleep in his remarkable new film “The Descendants.”  An absolute triumph of writing and directing, he finds the humor in the tragic situations and gravity in the funniest moments.  His pathos is unconventional and unexpected, leaving his words and messages lingering in your head for days.

Just like some of Payne’s previous films like “Election” and “About Schmidt,” he chooses to tell the story through the eyes of a prickly protagonist.  In “The Descendants,” it’s Matt King (George Clooney), the owner of a massive Hawaiian land inheritance.  After his unfaithful wife lapses into a coma after a freak boating accident, Matt must come to terms that he has been absent as the head of his family.  His role as the “understudy” comes to bite him in the butt as he is forced to assume both parenting roles actively on short notice.

Payne’s screenplay (which he co-wrote with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash) begins its narrations through voice-overs from Matt that illuminate his thoughts.  We get a chance to fully grasp his frustrations, his anxieties, and his fears before we really get down in the mud with him during these trying times.  The narration slowly disappears as the movie progresses, but that hardly means we lose our connection to Matt.  Instead, Payne wisely trusts leading man George Clooney to take over control of communicating his character to the audience.

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REVIEW: Melancholia

13 03 2012

It’s a shame “Melancholia” lasts more than eight minutes.

The movie’s prologue is absolutely stunning.  Writer/director Lars von Trier evokes a strong emotional response with his use of stunning imagery and an evocative score from Tristan und Isolde.  The gorgeous shots, drifting slowly across the screen, are like a walk through an art gallery of film.

But the opening of “Melancholia” is so good that it’s almost too good.  It purveys basically the entirety of the movie, even giving away the movie’s big ending.  So in essence, once you’ve seen the beginning, you’ve seen it all.

So when von Trier starts using words to communicate a message, the movie ceases to be very effective.  The first half’s naturalism just hits flat note after flat note.  The wedding of Kirsten Dunst’s wildly depressed Justine is an utter disaster, and her moodiness is painful to watch.  It’s supposed to be beguiling us into figuring out her every whim, but instead it just makes Justine unsympathetic and a pain to watch.  Excuse me for totally ceasing to care about an hour through the movie.

Then the movie’s second half descends into the bizarre as a planet, Melancholia, begins a collision course into the earth.  While Jack Bauer – I mean, Kiefer Sutherland, and his wife Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) begin to panic, Justine is calm as a cucumber, uniquely suited to face the crisis because of her condition.  “Melancholia” seems to be trying to enact those how would you spend the last hours of your life fantasies, but they are hardly illuminating save for the manic depressants in the crowd.

So perhaps the best way to view “Melancholia” is as a short film.  The movie’s opening is where von Trier’s artistry shines the brightest.  If you want to wait around for another two hours for genital mutilation or a remark sympathizing with Nazis, you will just waste your time.  The movie is not all that far-fetched; add in some robots and the plot would work as a Michael Bay movie.  B- / 


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Classics Corner: Singin’ in the Rain

11 03 2012

What a glorious feeling it was to behold the Best Picture win for “The Artist!”  A celebration of the glory of silent film, a look at the industry’s apprehension during the pioneering days of the talkies, and an ultimate wide-faced grin at what film would become … sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Benjamin Sutton of The L Magazine wrote this in a column back in December: “[T]he lion’s share of ‘The Artist”s many narrative and aesthetic quotations allude to films of the sound era,”specifically naming “Singin’ in the Rain” as a movie he constantly saw parallels to within Hazanavicius’ movie.

I saw “Singin’ in the Rain” a few weeks before watching “The Artist,” and perhaps part of the reason why I felt the movie suffered a slight dearth of originality was because it was so obviously inspired by Gene Kelly’s classic musical.  I don’t, however, intend to judge the original solely in terms of the knock-off.  Such would hardly do justice to a movie that has stood the test of time and is still a fun romp six decades after release.

As a riotously fun musical in its own right and a parody of the overblown proclivities of the genre’s early classics, “Singin’ in the Rain” follows Kelly’s Don Lockwood, a silent film star who exudes more charisma than George Valentin, as he is forced unwillingly by his studio into talking movies.  When he is shown a demonstration of the new technology at a party, he scoffingly laughs it off.  But with the success of “The Jazz Singer,” Kelly has no choice but to add sound to his latest picture.

That brings up a unique problem though: his leading lady Lina Lamont has a grating and screeching voice that would totally destroy her image and the film.  Quick thinking leads him to bring on Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), a songbird if ever there were one, to provide dubbing services for Lina.  The zany, crazy situations that follow are as numerous as Gene Kelly’s overblown dance numbers – that man REALLY loves to dance, and darned if we don’t leave this movie knowing it!  And beyond the titular song that everyone knows from rainy days or “A Clockwork Orange,” the film also boasts great tunes like “Make ‘Em Laugh” and “Good Morning” that will have you whistling for days.

While the pleasures that exist within the frames of “Singin’ in the Rain” have made it an endearing audience favorite for years, it remains thematically relevant because it speaks to the common fear of technology displacing us.  With 3D, video-on-demand, and streaming services bringing about a new sea change in moviemaking, Kelly’s film speaks loudly to filmmakers past, present, and future.  As A.O. Scott so perfectly put it in his piece “Film Technology Advances, Inspiring a Sense of Loss” back in November 2011:

“The birth of the talkies, it goes without saying, represents the first death of cinema […] The movies survived sound, just as they survived television, the VCR and every other terminal diagnosis. And they will survive the current upheavals as well. How can I be sure? Because 10, 20, or 50 years from now someone will certainly be complaining that they don’t make them like they used to. Which is to say, like they do right now.”


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REVIEW: Weekend

10 03 2012

In a year that saw “No Strings Attached” and “Friends with Benefits” make light of sex’s role in determining the fate of a serious relationship, it’s very refreshing to see the dark and honest underside of those movies in “Weekend.”  Andrew Haigh’s British realist tale of two men (yes, get over it) attempting to determine what their one-night stand really means is a very illuminating film about assessing their values and priorities.  No matter your sexual orientation, the movie speaks to the tortured and uncertain romantic desires in all of us.

The characters, Tom Cullen’s Russell and Chris New’s Glen, are so lucidly and poignantly realized that their candid conversations never seem the tiniest bit fabricated.  Haigh’s intimate, fly-on-the-wall filming strategy pays dividends as we feel a part of the discussion, a third character in the narrative with no lines.  The naturalism is effortless, the execution practically flawless.

“Weekend” is mostly told in poignant shots and informal conversations, parts that seem small but ultimately add up to something big.  As Russell and Glen sort through their past, their commitments, and their futures, they start to get at the core of some very important questions for all couples to ask themselves.

Of course it wasn’t Academy-friendly because neither of the characters died – yes, this is real – but the real accomplishment of “Weekend” is to make a movie that speaks to the problems that all relationships face without ignoring or glossing over the particular challenges that face homosexuals in 2011.  It doesn’t shy away from some raw images, so if that makes you uncomfortable, then maybe this isn’t the movie for you.  But if you want to see the movie of 2011 that best captures humanity between the sheets, then this is definitely one to add to your Netflix queue.  B+ / 


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (March 9, 2012)

9 03 2012

It’s the movie the oil companies don’t want you to see.  It was a nominee for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars in 2010.  Now, “Gasland” is my pick for this week’s “F.I.L.M.” (Just another reminder, that’s First-Class, Independent Little-Known Movie.)

Filmmaker Josh Fox takes the Michael Moore approach to documentary filmmaking – that is, making a movie about an issue that concerns them, explaining it, and then filming their active involvement in trying to change it – but actually does it right.  There may be some errors, according to various fact-checkers who have examined the movie, but at the very least, “Gasland” will make you think twice before jumping immediately on the natural gas bandwagon.  It’s all too easy now with gas prices soaring to record highs; however, there is no easy solution to America’s energy problem, no silver bullet.

If natural gas is ever going to be more than just an alternative form of energy, Fox shows us how the industry is in dire need of reform and regulation.  After receiving a letter that a gas company wanted to drill for gas on his land in Pennsylvania, Fox decides to look into the process of hydraulic fracking that would be happening on his property.  Going from house to house in areas where fracking took place, he finds that the gas companies often contaminate the water supply.  Put a lighter under the faucet at these homes, and you can light their water on fire.  Scary, right?

Turns out, Congress exempted the natural gas industry from following the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005 when new energy policy was being pushed down the pipelines.  If this frightens you, this is only the beginning of the real-life horror story in “Gasland.”  It’s worth a watch if you are concerned about what these companies can do to average citizens without the knowledge to realize it or the resources to stop it.


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REVIEW: Pina

8 03 2012

Not since “Avatar” has any film so gloriously realized the transformative potential of 3D  as Wim Wenders has with his dance documentary “Pina.”  I don’t know what made him think to combine the technology with the choreography of the late Pina Bausch, but someone had to figure out that the best way to eat peanut butter was with jelly, too.  This may very well be the new gold standard for 3D, bringing back the “WOW!” factor in a way that I haven’t felt since leaving Pandora in 2009.

So whether you can still make it to a theater still showing “Pina” in an added dimension or you need to run down your list of Facebook friends until you find one with a 3D TV, the only way to see this movie is with the glasses on.  I’ll admit that the movie does have a limited appeal; if you can’t watch 100 minutes of Pina’s expressionist dance compositions, then the movie will just be an empty and boring experience for you.  But even if you just watch a tiny bit of the film, the cinematography and the stunning 3D will make it a few worthwhile minutes.

I am hardly an expert dance interpreter, so I myself am hardly the audience for “Pina.”  Yet even as my interest began to wane in the second half of the film, I was so in awe at the brilliance of the aesthetics on display.  Whether you understand the meaning of Pina’s work or not, Wenders makes sure you appreciate the beauty, the passion, and the physicality that allowed the piece to blossom.  He matches her unparalleled eye for dance with his own virtuosic camerawork.  Pina’s work no longer lives in old videos and old memories; Wenders captures it in vibrant life and breathes a new spirit into her choreography, communicating its magic on stage through his own magic on the screen.

His “Pina,” more of an exhibition and a memorial service than a documentary, is realized through her soul and through her dance.  While the film begins to test our patience and does not do a particularly great job in defining Pina Bausch herself, Wenders’ mushy-gushy valentine may do more for cinema than it does for dance.  His 3D actually puts you in the frame and all but makes the dancers tangible.  Now you know I would never advocate seeing a movie just to see a movie … but in the case of “Pina,” I might just make an exception.  B / 


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REVIEW: Puss in Boots

7 03 2012

We’re all allowed some major guilty pleasures, aren’t we?

So sorry that I’m not sorry about loving “Puss in Boots.”  I’m well aware that it’s a shadow of DreamWorks Animation’s heyday of “Shrek” and “Shrek 2” (which introduced the titular character).  And it’s still no Pixar.  But the day that there’s something wrong with having a good laugh at clever wordplay and situations is a day I don’t want to see.

I was busting a gut throughout the movie, and it wasn’t even in spite of myself.  It’s delirious fun through and through, reclaiming a shrewd wit that seems to have eluded this studio’s movies for the past few years.  I’ll admit that I had my doubts about a spin-off, even if it was based on one of my favorite “Shrek” characters.  Yet once the movie began, all my doubts were put at bay and I was enjoying the movie like I was five years old again.

Antonio Banderas’ thick Spanish accent once again brings that sucker punch of spirit to the character of Puss in Boots, no longer a marginalized sideshow (can anyone say Mike Myers’ Shrek was their favorite character in the series?) but headlining a prequel to the action.  I must say, he makes a good case that DreamWorks should have spent ten years and four movies focused on him.  Trotting from pun to pun and one twisted-off fairy tale character to the next, he brings a laugh and a wide-faced grin with him wherever he goes.

Whether it’s romancing Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), a perfect romantic foil, through dance battles or attempting to decode the mysterious motivations of Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis in some truly inspired vocal casting), his adventures are a blast as he pursues the golden eggs at the top of Jack’s magic beanstalk.  The story never feels like something we’ve seen before, a remarkable feat for a franchise entry.  “Puss in Boots” really is just rollicking good fun for some reason.  I could spend more time trying to figure out what exactly that reason is, but I’d rather just let its silliness be and accept the mystery.  B+ / 


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REVIEW: Like Crazy

6 03 2012

An indie movie for people that hate indie movies, “Like Crazy” aims for the lowest common denominator at all times by stretching the star-crossed lover formula to the edges of watchability.  Writer/director Drake Doremus really tests his audience’s patience by asking them to sympathize with two characters who spend 90 minutes complaining about a dilemma caused by their own willful negligence of the law.  You would think that only in a fantasy universe do actions not have consequences, but the reality of the film expects to defy the logic of reality.

The entire film hinges on the notion that we are supposed to somehow blame the government for the rift in the relationship of young lovers Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones) when it is clearly their fault.  Only two morons would really believe that she could just overstay her visa in the United States and not face any ramifications.  Just because they are “in love,” as they see but we don’t, does not mean that immigration officials will simply deny the fact that she broke the law.  I guess such is the independent spirit of upper-class educated hipsters, believing everyone to be below them and thus only there to serve their peculiarities and desires.

Maybe it would be easier to forgive the two idiotic protagonists if they actually had some chemistry; Yelchin and Jones have as much heat as an industrial-strength freezer.  Their relationship begins almost on a whim, continues due mostly to carnal passion, and subsequently fades because an ocean separates them as they are forcibly split by the government.  Tell me where I’m supposed to root for anyone in this story, not to mention the actors make their characters surly, grumpy, and generally unpleasant.  They’re kind of like the grouches you really hope aren’t making your coffee at Starbucks in the morning.

Really, if Doremus wanted the audience to care at all about such stupid characters, he had to give them something to work with.  Instead, he gives us nothing, and it’s all too easy to resist the story and whatever it might have to say about love.  “Like Crazy” had the opportunity to really say something about connectivity and modernity, yet it settles to just be two attractive twenty-somethings moping about having to take responsibility for their actions.  Welcome to adulthood, kids.  C+ / 


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REVIEW: Footloose

5 03 2012

I’m no better or no worse for having seen the 2011 remake of “Footloose.”  I really can’t insult it too much; Craig Brewer’s movie is extremely corny to the point where it almost invites self-mockery.  It’s the kind of movie tailor-made to people who don’t want their movies to be sophisticated and crave dialogue that just ridiculously follows a stupid cinematic template.  To compare it to the last movie I reviewed, “A Separation,” does neither justice as this movie relishes being something very far removed from reality.

And indeed, if you can just fade into a world where dancing, not drinking, is the societal evil, then “Footloose” may be just the movie for you.  There are plenty of decently choreographed sequences that catch the eye, but they feel a little out of place without the framework of a Broadway musical.  It wants to be a musical movie without fitting into the musical genre, a hybrid that didn’t really work when Tim Burton tried it in 2007 with “Sweeney Todd” and doesn’t fare any better here.

If you can’t remove the critic in you to watch a movie, then “Footloose” probably just isn’t a movie you should spend your time watching.  Kenny Womald, the newcomer cast as leading man Ren, will undoubtedly irk you.  While it’s admirable that they didn’t just cast a Zac Efron-type for looks, casting an unknown carries risks, and the movie becomes a 101 course on why you shouldn’t cast one in a big role.  He has what Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em would call an annoying “pretty boy swag,” meaning that he struts his body and hair around as a replacement for really acting.

Julianne Hough sure can sing, but I’ll need a few more movies before I can buy her as an actress.  She gets the prickliness of her loose character Ariel right on, but I got the feeling she should have been a little more sympathetic than Hough made her come across.  Leave the emo teenage angst to Kristen Stewart, please.  Miles Teller as Ren’s boon companion Willard is the closest thing “Footloose” has to a scene-stealer, yet knowing that this was his follow-up to the superlative “Rabbit Hole” just made me sad inside.  And Dennis Quaid, once again, puzzles me with his undeniably eclectic role choice as the fire-and-brimstone Reverend Shaw.

I haven’t seen the original with Kevin Bacon, but I feel like I can say “don’t fix something that isn’t broken” to Brewer’s remake just as easily as I can to any other half-baked and uninspired Hollywood retooling.  New faces on an old story … sigh.  It’s ok, many greater directors have tried and failed just like you, Brewer.  Not everyone can be Martin Scorsese; there have to be some directors who can make him look like a saint in comparison.  C / 


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REVIEW: A Separation

4 03 2012

It’s interesting to see the parallels between the last two movies awarded the Best Foreign Language Film prize at the Academy Awards, last year’s “In a Better World” and the most recent winner, “A Separation.”  Both are very broad, universal tales that provide a richly humanistic exploration of important themes.  The former took on revenge, and the latter tackled honesty.

But the wonder of “A Separation” is that it manages to simultaneously tell a rich tale grounded in common experience and one that is distinctly Iranian.  By exploring how his culture could very well be a microcosm for the entire world, writer/director Asghar Farhadi probably could not have come at a better moment.  In his acceptance speech, he relished the moment as it promoted an image of the country beyond their crazy leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The Iranians battle their society but also themselves, just as we all do; Farhadi remarked, “I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.”

Really, that’s the core of his movie, too.  All the characters know the way to be a better person, but there are personal and social forces holding them back from doing the right thing.  Whether it’s their pride, their zeal, their lifestyle, or their religion, “A Separation” is an excellent chronicle of people consciously missing the mark.

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REVIEW: Safe House

3 03 2012

We all know Denzel Washington is an outstanding actor.  Most of us know that the same could not be said for Ryan Reynolds.  (For those that refute this, ask yourselves whether you are in love with his physique or his performances.)  “Safe House” amounts to little more than a “Bourne”-lite adventure reaffirming these virtually self-evident conclusions.

The adventure takes us to South Africa, where the dullness of Matt Weston’s (Reynolds) humdrum job supervising a CIA safe house has begun to take a psychological toll as he feels stuck and unable to move up the institutional ladder.  This would be an Occupy-friendly film if only Reynolds were complaining about not having a job; later, the film delves into a new favorite action movie trope that would also have the vagrants of Zuccotti Park licking their chops: THE GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT!  All of them!  Just working the government destroys your soul and taints your brain!  I get it, Hollywood, you love 1968 and want to keep the spirit of skepticism and distrust of institutions alive … but that was four decades ago and the schtick is getting a little old.  Maybe it’s time for a new target.

But the monotony of his vocation gets suddenly broken when a captured criminal is brought it – young Cornel West!  Just kidding, Denzel Washington’s rogue CIA agent Tobin Frost only looks like him.  The difference between the scholar and the character is that Frost is much better at getting people to see things his way.  As the latest Hannibal Lecter knock-off, Frost is hardly as frightening as might be expected, but Washington’s calm portrayal certainly makes him an eerie wild-card and a ticking time bomb.

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F.I.L.M. of the Week (March 2, 2012)

2 03 2012

Not HER again…

Actually, YES, her again.  Meryl Streep won her third Oscar last week, and while many (including myself) were a little upset because we were hoping Viola Davis would pull out a historic Best Actress win, it’s reason for celebration.  She’s the greatest living actress, and I think few would dispute that claim.  The way she gracefully and naturally inhabits any character she chooses to play is astounding.  “Doubt,” my choice for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week,” is no exception.  It was Oscar nominations all around for everyone in the cast including Streep, who received her fifteenth Oscar nomination for the role back in 2008.

John Patrick Shanley’s film, adapted from his own Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play, explores a host of complicated moral and theological dilemmas in the wake of a potential priest-child sex scandal.  Streep’s Sister Aloysisus becomes convinced that Father Flynn, played with a fiercely tenacious resolve by Philip Seymour Hoffman, has committed a vast wrongdoing despite having no proof.  Her basis for such grave accusations are the suspicions of the naive Sister James (Amy Adams), who merely makes observations and leaves Aloysisus to construe her own meaning from them.

What results is nothing less than an acting battle between some of the best players in the game.  They debate race, gender, sexuality, submission, and authority with such high stakes that you can’t help but be totally drawn into the conversation.  No one would accuse Streep or Hoffman as giving constrained performances in the film, but “Doubt” hardly devolves into a shouting match as it easily could have.  Rather, the dialectic struggles are only enhanced by the loudness of their voices.  Adams, meanwhile, plays her typecast airhead role so well yet with a remarkably enhanced bravura.  She really nails the loss of innocence arc that so often devolves into senseless banality.  Davis is phenomenal as well in a single scene that packs more punch than many actresses can in an entire movie.

Hopefully Adams and Davis aren’t too far off from finally winning the Oscar that has eluded them for the past few years; Streep can now sit back and enjoy the ride; Hoffman is probably due for a second trophy at some point.  So while we wait for the next Oscars, we can relish in movies like “Doubt” where four great actors act with so much intensity that the frame can barely support it.


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REVIEW: Gone

1 03 2012

The fact that movies like “Gone” are allowed to be written, green-lit, financed, filmed, and released is shameful.  To call it a trite trifle is to do the flagrance of its unoriginality a disservice; I can think of few worse ways to spend 90 minutes of my life than watching this movie.  If this movie didn’t nab Amanda Seyfried, I would expect it to be in the $5 bin at a truck-stop stuffed below a dozen copies of “Pootie Tang.”

A girl goes missing?  Her sister (Seyfried) will stop at nothing to find her and the kidnapper?  That same sister is just as crazy as the criminal?  Please, no-name directors, leave stories like this to masters like Scorsese, who actually did something masterful with a similar plot in “Shutter Island.”  For once, I’d like Hollywood to stop belittling the work of true artists by doing half-baked carbon copies that border on outright plagiarism.

Moreover, it’s not just what they are doing that makes me mad, but it’s also how they are doing it.  PLEASE do not put a movie before paying audiences if you cannot come up with an ending.  Do not cop out and scrap together an open ending if you don’t have the decisiveness or intelligence to devise one.  Again, leave that to people with a vision.  Do not borrow their techniques to hide your own laziness.  C- / 


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REVIEW: Wanderlust

29 02 2012

I think it’s crucial to apply a comparative approach to evaluating the merits of “Wanderlust.”  When you look at it in relation to “Role Models” and “Wet Hot American Summer,” director David Wain’s first two comedies, it’s a disappointment that settles for cliches and stereotypes rather than the unique brand of humor on display in his prior work.  But of course, compared to other mainstream comedies of the moment, its mild satisfactions are amplified probably more than they should.

Marveling at cult-like communes is nothing new, and the colorful cast of nudists, stoners, and washed-up hippies certainly play into just about every single one of our preconceived notions.  It’s amusing enough to watch their antics play out in front of two newly unemployed Manhattan refugees played by the ever hilarious Paul Rudd and the ever gorgeous Jennifer Aniston.  Both are a little creeped out at first, but she eventually warms up to the idea of living in a subculture of open doors and open marriages.

There are a few good laughs here and there, but the majority of the time, I just sat there wondering when it would reach “Role Models” heights.  Thankfully it does at one point due to Paul Rudd, who honestly might get my vote for the funniest person working in comedy at the moment.  His dry, caustic, and biting sarcasm hits home every time even when he’s not trying to be funny (and if someone made a movie of my life, I would want him to play me).  Rudd gets one scene, improvised I assume, where he gets to totally let loose with wild accents and wordplay trying to pump himself up for a sexual encounter that absolutely brings down the house.  I was easily laughing for a solid two minutes afterwards, totally missing the next scene.  And really, as long as I get one of those for my money, I go home happy no matter how derivative or childish the rest of the movie might have been.  B- / 


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REVIEW: The Vow

28 02 2012

If you don’t read the fine print, you could easily be duped into thinking “The Vow” is the latest film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks beach read – I mean, novel.  The marketers were certainly happy to sell it as such, reminding us that the movie doesn’t just star Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum but rather the leads of “The Notebook” and “Dear John.”  Little did I, or many others, realize that their obsession with framing it in terms of Sparks’ work was just a big cover.  The movie is actually merely “inspired by true events,” Hollywood’s catch-all phrase that reminds us that something similar happened in real life and that they intend to take massive artistic liberties.

After seeing the movie, I can tell why they had to bombard people with the idea that they had to judge it on the “standards” of Nicholas Sparks (if you can even call them standards).  While it may be inspired by reality, it is based on his formula for tears and gushy displays of shameless romanticism.  Hollywood never seems to take the right lessons away from their smashing successes, and “The Vow” is just a further reminder of how skewed their logic has become.  Some things only work once, and to hammer them away into hackneyed oblivion.

There comes a point when these calculations eventually stop yielding success and the total becomes less than the sum of its parts.  “The Vow” represents that for the Sparks weepies, although it may have come earlier since I don’t make it a point to see movies like this.  A big group of friends insisted on seeing this movie (although I did remind them that there was a great movie called “The Artist” showing a couple of screens down), so I decided I might as well see what the fuss was about these movies.

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