Morgan P Salvo

At one point in Beginners, Ewan McGregor's character, Oliver, says “Jack Russells are bred to be cute.” The film's implicit statement about human beings is much darker in contrast – humans are bred to be sad… and depressed, we learn.
Oliver meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent) after the death of his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), who after 44 years of marriage came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full and energized gay life. The flashbacks of Hal's newfound honesty turn out to be funny and moving, bringing father and son closer than they'd ever expected. Oliver attempts to love Anna with the same courage and humor, hoping that his father taught him how, but is at a loss.

It must be nice to be Adam Sandler's pal. The funny man is known to keep it all in the family, sticking his buddies in movies that aren't original or risky, yet rake in cash. Kevin James is part of Sandler's crew and Zookeeper is basically Night at the Museum set in a zoo. It's a Dating Game version of Noah's Ark, with James taking cues from the wild kingdom and peeing and grunting in public.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes when no one's looking, I'll force myself to watch a romantic comedy just to see how much I can take before retching. It's never very long. Like when watching a bad accident, my mouth hangs open and I begin to wonder not only what is wrong with actors, writers and directors, but the world at large.
Something is amiss in this vacuum they call “rom coms.” The most recent flicks I attempted were The Ugly Truth and Couples Retreat, resulting in my almost committing hari kari. So I figured the only way to safely get through Larry Crowne without hurting myself or anyone in a five-mile radius was to make it a date night with my fiancée. Well, here's the deal. Neither of us liked it.

I dig Terrence Malick. Rarely have we seen such a director go out on a limb, taking chances few artists dare to make. Since his classic Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek chronicling Charles Starkweather's 1958 murder spree, Malick has made only three other movies (Days of Heaven, Thin Red Line and New World), all non-linear cinematic sonnets hailed and scorned by fans and critics alike. With Tree of Life, Malick stirs the pot. Even if this movie sucks, long live Terrence Malick for his visionary style.
Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or award at Cannes, giving credit where credit is due. I understand art and messing with it, deconstructing it and making the big artistic statement, but the two-hours-and-18-minute runtime makes this film an endurance test. Cinematically, Tree of Life is an enthralling, mesmerizing film. Meticulous to the hilt, everything shines on the technical side of things. But after a half an hour we get it. We know what this film is about and we also know what it's not going to be about. The trip it takes isn't so hard to follow, it's just image after image in Malick's surreal photogenic style. This is one of the most beautiful and intensely filmed bore-fests I have ever seen.

I have already gone on the record to say that I can't stand Jim Carrey. I recently saw him on a daytime TV show valiantly trying to prove how funny we must think he is. My view is even the lamest of actors can give one good performance. Carrey's high point was I Love You Phillip Morris. Mr. Popper's Penguins is not. Carrey clearly can act if he gets the chance, but he still cannot make me laugh. I find his rubber-faced antics, jerky movements and overall hamming it up offensive. Didn't he have his day in the sun and get replaced by Will Farrell who got replaced by Steve Carell? Let's face it, Hollywood is churning out generic scripts and ideas in “vehicle” movies in which comedians repeat everything they've done in every movie they've ever made. It's time for these tired old comedic repeat performances to retire. Thankfully, Carrey's star seems to be fading.
This innocuous film is more G rated than its PG tag would suggest. Penguins is touching, sweet, stupid and endearing and with the combination of Carrey as a goofy funnyman/jackass and cute penguins. What could possibly go wrong? The answer is nothing. This flick is such formulaic drivel that I can't fault it for its methodological genius.

I have an immediate aversion to any movie with Stephen Spielberg's name attached to it. Not just because Spielberg and George Lucas singlehandedly changed movies for the worse in the '70s by making special effects-induced blockbusters and taking away the strong story-driven anti-hero movies of that era, but because nowadays everything Spielberg touches involves cuteness, schmaltzy music and some sort of cornball ending. Plus, he has this “never grow up” agenda and gobs of money to make things overly extravagant (think Transformers franchise). Super 8 is no exception: it's a kid's movie from start to finish.
Teaming up with the brains behind TV's Lost, J. J. Abrams (also responsible for Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek), this movie is essentially Cloverfield meets ET, Stand By Me and District 9. Set in 1979 Ohio, it starts out with a bunch of kids (including Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney and Gabriel Basso) making a zombie movie with a Super-8 camera. While filming, the friends witness a horrifying train derailment. Amid a series of unexplained events and disappearances, they discover that the crash was no accident. Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler), the dad of one of the kids and designated “grown up,” searches for the shocking truth behind the crash.

After the last two X-Men installments (X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine), I expected this new one to suck, but such is not exactly the case. X-Men First Class teeters on the brink of redemption. Then again, this movie is not excellent by any means – its flaws still outweigh its high points. At least it made me realize there's still hope.
XFC reveals the backstory of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) before becoming mortal enemies as Professor X and Magneto, respectively, the antagonists who were played by old guys Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the first films. The saga of Professor Xavier and Magneto begins in a Nazi concentration camp, intertwining their relationship and juxtaposing images of both their lives before they meet, sealing their all-too-bittersweet bond before the story jumps to 1963 in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

About a third of the way into The Beaver, I realized that the only humor I was going to find in this flick was to count all of the missed opportunities for beaver jokes. But no, Beaver is not pornographically humorous or all that weird. The only strange part is how serious this movie takes itself. Actually, the puppet itself delivers some one-liners in a Cockney accent, but that's pretty much the only spice in this dismal stew.
A chronically depressed father/husband/executive aptly named Walter Black (Mel Gibson… taking a break from his life as a racist maniac to return to acting), adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his only means of communicating to try to get his life back on track. With this oddball therapy, Walter seems to be getting better: his toy company excels and even gets a blast of positive media attention. But that dang puppet eventually gets in the way of real life and takes a toll on the family.

What's with Hollywood's fixation on vampires and graphic novels? It seems every time I turn around, there's another wasteland apocalyptic tale of desolation and bloodsuckers. And what's with Paul Bettany's decision to suddenly become an action star? Wasn't he just a skinny British actor there for a while? Now, he seems to always be some sort of muscular angel/demon/hero with religious overtones.
With a storyline taken straight from John Ford's classic The Searchers, Priest features a warrior/priest (Bettany) from a dystopian wasteland who sets aside his sacred vows, disobeys church law and embarks on a quest to track down the vampires who kidnapped his niece. He's joined on his crusade by a trigger-happy young wasteland sheriff (Cam Gigandet sporting a really bad haircut), and a former warrior priestess (Maggie Q).

I'm calling BS. I know my Mighty Thor and he did not have a beard. Nor did he look like some kind of male model lumberjack hunk. As his mortal alter ego, he was the kindly Doctor Blake who walked with a cane, but when he pounded that sucker to the ground, he turned into a powerful god-like warrior from Asgard. I know these things because I was a bonafide Marvel comic book geek back when Thor was penned by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. I was also a complete Norse mythology nut, finding the Viking heroes far more exciting than those pansy Greek gods. I know all about Thor, Loki and Odin and where they resided in the heavens across the rainbow bridge of Asgard.
I thought there might be hope for humor in this Marvel installment with director Kenneth Branagh, whose over-the-top version of Frankenstein had me laughing from start to finish. Sadly, that's not the case. The saga of the fallen Norse god has been revamped into a tidy tale of good-versus-evil… versus an awful storyline… versus special effects.