It's All Relative.

Head over to PopMatters and read my brand new review for Nicolas Roeg's stunning Insignificance. Have you all seen this movie? I was quite pleased and dumbfounded by its mix of fake biopic, metaphysics and comedy.

Cars 2 **

Director: John Lasseter, Brad Lewis

The adage implies that if it ain't broken, you shouldn't be fixing it right? Well, they should add "or messing with it" in order to describe the history of Pixar and Cars. The original movie is now mostly remembered for being Paul Newman's last fiction motion picture and for breaking Pixar's streak of perfect critical scores. It was received without much fanfare and never really achieved the transcendence of other films by the studio (how often do you hear anyone quote Mater the tow truck?). Apparently though, the film and its characters were deeply loved within the company and in order to atone for previous sins (or critical head-scratches) they decided to give Cars a twist, precisely be relieving it of everything that made the first installment endearing, if not completely successful.

The problem with Cars was never that it was a bad movie, because it's not. The "problem" was that it was a big fluffy piece of good old fashioned Americana. Obviously this love for purely American mythical figures (Route 66 and such) made it impossible to connect from coming from an international perspective (heck even immigrants must've felt alienated by it).

Pixar failed to see that the international response didn't really spell "failure", it just meant that they had crafted a specifically American art piece which failed to resonate with foreigners (and even more progressive audiences within the country) in the way that country music, Norman Rockwell and Westerns do.

Instead of actually grabbing on to this patriotic fervor (Cars is unarguably propagandistic in post 9/11 terms) the studio wanted everyone to love it and Cars 2 commits the cardinal sin of misunderstood local ideals: it transports and experiments with them in different locales.

Like the proverbial fish out of water, Cars 2 takes Mater the tow truck and turns him into an accidental spy (think If Looks Could Kill) trying to solve a mysterious set of car murders (carders?) during the first World Grand Prix, organized by extravagant billionaire Miles Axlerod (think Sir Richard Branson as a talking Range Rover which he kinda is, no?)

Mater not only will prove he's no redneck truck (which he is) he also will help save his dear friend, race-car, Lighting McQueen from the evil forces trying to destroy him.

In a nutshell the film is a James Bond spoof by way of anthropomorphic vehicles that fails to elicit any actual emotional connection with audiences but delivers exciting chase sequences and some of the most beautiful animation that has graced the screen so far.

There is so much going on in this film, plot-wise, that it's pretty safe to say that most children won't even know what's going on, much less will they understand the sly humor, which in delicious Austin Powers tradition names a female car Hollwy Shiftwell. That her colleague is the sexy spy Finn McMissile does little to prevent double entendres from forming in older audience members' minds.

The film features clever little jokes, the reference to Ratatouille's restaurant in a Paris sequence is especially endearing as is the entire part of the movie set in Japan, but overall it's pretty much child's play that might get a bit too complicated for kids.

Most troubling of all is perhaps the film's message which precisely contradicts the entire existence of this installment other than financial reasons. After almost two hours of endless activity, flashy animation (fortunately no seizures were reported) and obnoxiousness by way of extreme cuteness, the film tells us that we should be who we are, wherever we are.

As if to continue the Born This Way manifesto of most 2011 blockbusters, Cars 2 shouts out loud that you should be proud of who you are, after making you spend your hard earned money in a shallow, mildly entertaining ride.

Style Sunday.

Oh Diane Kruger, you magnificent bitch. I pray that the day will never come when you fail to elicit gasps and glamgasms from my pithy self. This draped YSL is just magnificent and the way you pull off red, just ugh.

I love how Kate Winslet has looked so fresh, sexy and happy after dumping Sam Mendes last year. She keeps pushing the envelope when it comes to elegant sensuality.

Nathaniel and I discussed this dress and more here.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Well, gimme some, some, some o' this in a bun.

Aren't these two just truly gorgeous? This movie promises to be a superb comedy (just look at the cast!) and even if the poster isn't especially memorable, it takes a cue from the Love and Other Drugs school of "if you got 'em, flaunt 'em".

Now this, we probably won't even get to see but the poster is a work of art. It gets you curious and makes you want to know what¿s going on with the faceless man, the classic font and the overall feeling of melancholy transmitted by the image.

Then you see it's from the man who directed The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and things just click.

What are some of your favorite Romanian movies?

The Lincoln Lawyer **

Director: Brad Furman

Cast: Matthew McCounaghey, Ryan Phillippe, Marisa Tomei

Josh Lucas, Frances Fisher, John Leguizamo, Michael Peña

William H. Macy, Bryan Cranston

It's not that The Lincoln Lawyer is a bad movie per se, it's just so forgettable that throughout its running time you try hard not to wander around looking for something more interesting. McCounaghey plays Mickey Haller, the title character, a lawyer who specializes in getting guilty people out of jail. That is until he has to defend playboy Louis Roulet (Phillippe) who has been accused of beating a prostitute. Haller detects the slimy heir might have a connection to one of his previous cases and you guessed it, a change of heart occurs.

There is nothing in this movie that we haven't seen before and while McCounaghey is charming enough to carry the movie, the rest of the cast never really clicks.

You can't help but feel bad for McCounaghey who obviously is pushing his "serious actor"chops here (he doesn't even show his abs!) but the plot just becomes less interesting by the twist and who would ever believe that Marisa Tomei ever was married to him?

The Lincoln Lawyer often demands your attention but some will object to its dull pace and thrill-less ride.

I See Red.

Via The Playlist come the truly mindblowing news that Nicolas Winding Refn not only is dying to make a feature film about the kick-ass Wonder Woman, but he wants the even more awesome, redhead extraordinaire, Christina Hendricks to play her!

"If I get to do it, she's going to be it" he says and my oh my I already feel like the following comic book scene...

I see red too...

Wouldn't Hendricks, fantastic rack and all, rock this character?

Style Sunday.

Catherine Zeta-Jones looks insanely hot (pun totally intended) in this fiery Elie Saab gown. The Welsh beauty wore this to last week's Tony awards (remember she's a winner there!) and looked positively regal.

It's so cute to see Cameron Diaz working the cougar look ahead of time, she does one of her favored mini dresses and high heels to show off her stunning legs. This Emilio Pucci is remarkable in its simplicity, fun factor and elegance.

Gotta love the surfer hair.

Short Takes: "The Other Woman", "Kaboom".

Will someone please tell Gregg Araki that he's no David Lynch? Despite his florid use of intense white lights for scene transitions, psychosexual explorations and use of actors with animal masks, Araki lacks the conviction of Lynch to deliver stories about chaos within the quotidian. Take this for example, in Kaboom, Dekker plays Smith, a sexually "undeclared" film student who lusts after his surfer roommate (Zylka) while having an affair with ferocious British import London (the truly and utterly fantastic Temple). One night after consuming hallucinogenic cookies, Smith accidentally realizes there's more than meets the eye at his campus and soon finds himself part of a dangerous game involving masked cult members and apocalypse worshipers.

Araki fails to make his film's plight something worthy of our attention and the more he deviates into selfindulgent moments where he uses witchcraft and sci-fi, the less we are thrilled by his film. What Araki gets right is the extreme horniness and carelessness of college students: the irresponsible way in which they engage in affair to affair as if life was merely comprised of hookups and partying. He also aces the relationship between Smith and his best friend (Bennett) even if Dekker is too passive an actor to inspire more sympathy towards his character.

Best in show? Temple, whose fierce London asks "would you like to have sex?" seconds after meeting you. The fact that you wouldn't think of saying no to her is what the whole movie should've felt like.

Natalie Portman is a truly hit-and-miss actress. Send her to a great director and she blossoms onscreen (Black Swan, Closer), place her under the tutelage of a more divisive filmmaker and all bets are off.

While Don Roos has proven himself to be one of the most clever makers of "movies for grownups" (see the underrated Bounce and Happy Endings) Portman lacks the presence to play The Other Woman her baby face and whining come off as annoying more often than not as she plays a second wife, trying to get her stepson (Tahan) to like her. The film's languid pace doesn't help to convince us that any of these characters even want their lives to be onscreen.

Grades

Kaboom **½

The Other Woman *½

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

When it comes to superhero movies I'm usually completely blasé until I watch them (see how much I enjoyed Thor for example!) and I'd been even more than indifferent towards the new Captain America until I laid my eyes on this fantastic poster.

This is how you do a film poster people! The retro factor gives the film a completely different perspective and truly makes me salivate at the possibility of encountering a throwback to the Fletcher Superman cartoons for example. Can you imagine how awesome that would be?

Love the Hitler punching, the font, the colors and heck, if Chris Evans doesn't look like a young Gary Cooper in that illustration.

Do you love this one as much? Excited about Captain America?

Thor ***

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman

Stellan Skarsgård, Tom Hiddleston, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba

Renee Russo, Anthony Hopkins,

Superhero movies can be divided into three main kinds: the obnoxiously preachy ones (Watchmen, The Dark Knight), the blissfully entertaining and therefore more memorable ones (Spider-Man 2, X2: X-Men United) and the Daredevil ones (i.e. the worst kind).
Directed with unusual glee and un-selfconscious gravitas by Kenneth Branagh, Thor falls into the second category. Breakthrough star Chris Hemsworth plays Thor, son of the Nordic god Odin (Hopkins) who has maintained peace in the world for millennia. When Thor is about to succeed his father as king of the realm of Asgard (imagine a Pink Floyd album cover turned into an 80s amusement park) they are suddenly attacked by their dormant enemies: the Frost Giants.
After the crisis is averted, Thor, encouraged by his sneaky brother Loki (Hiddleston) goes against his father’s wishes and attacks the Giants’ kingdom: Jotunheim. After learning of his son’s disobedience, Odin has no choice but to strip him of his godly gifts, exile him from Asgard and send him to a place so hideous that he’d spend the rest of eternity trying to ascend back to the heavens: Thor lands in New Mexico.
Lucky for him, his father out of some Shakespearean whim (can’t have Branagh without the Bard) also throws Thor’s mythical hammer Mjolnir to Earth, in the hopes that, sooner than later, his son will regain its power. Thor is discovered by scientist Jane Foster (the absolutely ravishing Portman) and her colleagues Erik Selvig (Skarsgård) and Darcy (a scene stealing Dennings) as they study wormholes and strange storms in the desert.
Like an alien version of Tarzan, Jane has to teach Thor about the ways of the world but in the meantime, watching Hemsworth in all of his brutish glory is a true spectacle. He enters pet shops demanding horses, calls New Mexico a realm and kisses the hands of the delighted ladies. Darcy’s comments about Thor’s undeniable hotness are hilarious (Dennings’ dead pan delivery is comedic wonder) and soon enough Jane has developed a crush on this man from the stars who might just prove her scientific theories right.
The film tries to stress this out a bit too much (people from different worlds learning from each other) without ever realizing that the more it points us to this, the more we’ll question the film’s motives and discrepancies. How many different gods from how many different cultures coexist for example? Or is the film choosing Nordic mythology as the one?
This is why the movie works best when it’s simple fun. The action sequences are done with just the right amount of kitsch (a 50’s inspired robot attacks a small town!) and the characters are interesting enough without being overdone (Hiddleston’s slimy Loki is the right mix of angst and silly comic book evil). Branagh shines in scenes where he gets to make the actors truly act: Hopkins’ Odin is King Lear minus the actual tragedy and the director is kind enough to give comic book enthusiasts a peek at upcoming projects as well as filling the movie with references only some of them will get.
Interestingly enough, with all of its fun and seeming silliness, the film also works as a fascinating study of gender dynamics and homoerotic identification. There is one particular scene in which Thor, who seems ignorant about the attractiveness of his physique, takes his short off revealing a perfectly chiseled torso. Branagh lingers in this moment more than any heterosexual filmmaker would dare to (directors like Nolan for example prefer showing the ugliness of masculinity) and then cuts to reactions of Jane and Darcy who literally open their mouths in disbelief.
However in doing so, Branagh also forces audiences (heterosexual males included) to embrace the beauty of another male body and heck, even admire and envy it.
When the year comes to an end, this will still remain one of the most talked about scenes of the year and if Branagh manages to make strictly heterosexual and even homophobic audiences talk about Hemsworth with the same spark Jane Foster does in the movie, he’ll have achieved something slightly divine.

Battle of the Bulges.

What better way to spend a night of leisure, after a long day of work than sitting in front of your TV and watching shitty action movies right?

That's what I had in mind yesterday when I decided I wasn't in the mood to think and decided to treat myself to a double bill of Priest and The Mechanic.

Let it be established that I am, by no means, the target audience for either of these movies, I just wanted to see them for well, the beef factor.

Priest gave me this:

The amazing Paul Bettany's abs appeared for little less than a second and the rest of the movie, which is an uninspired postapocalyptic mix of The Searchers and Underworld, other characters talked about Bettany's character's chastity.

The Mechanic ineversely gave me these (all within the first ten minutes! Plus gratuitous scenes with Ben Foster and Jason Statham caught in tiny spaces)

Bettany might be the better actor, although you really couldn't say based on his recent work, but Statham knows that if you got it, you should flaunt it!

Grades (based on factors beyond the beef)

Priest *

The Mechanic **

While Watching "Red Riding Hood"...

...I was shocked to learn that Twilight wasn't the worst thing Catherine Hardwicke has ever inflicted upon us, this one is!

How, and why, you would ask yourself, would the woman who made one of the worst movies of all time, not attempt to atone for her sins with something even slightly better? Heck, even slightly entertaining? What we get is essentially Twilight with werewolves...wait (maybe Catherine resents she never got the chance to have Taylor Lautner shirtless turning into a big dog?)

The plot isn't worthy to even bother with although Julie Christie's appearance is baffling! It's a shame Hardwicke can't even get her to deliver one of those loony performances given by legendary actors in shitty movies. Perhaps the most puzzling element in this (besides just how beautiful Amanda Seyfried can look) is, what the hell does Catherine Hardwicke have against sex?

This movie is filled with morality clauses about infidelity, marriage, virgins, engagements etc. and when she actually tries to create a sex scene (between Seyfried and Shiloh Fernandez), everything is so icy and staged that she manages to make two beautiful people in horny mood, look completely stale and dull.

What do you think is her problem? Is she secretly trying to use her movies (Twilight, The Nativity Story, Thirteen) to make the whole world chaste?

Reverse Dorothy.

In Peggy Sue Got Married, the title character finds herself transported to high school after a traumatizing reunion goes wrong. The whole sequence reminded me of The Wizard of Oz of course...

Later in the film, we even meet the wizard!

It's all smoke and mirrors people!

This post is part of Nathaniel's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

The Big L.

The lovely Laura Linney literally floored me with her tremendous performance in The Big C and I have reviewed the complete first season for PopMatters.

Based on her likability, overall charm and especially the power of her performance I think she pretty much has the Emmy for Comedy Actress in the bag.

Sure, the show isn't especially funny and truth be told Amy Poehler is the one who should be collecting this award, but as we know these silly academies like their "comedy" to have tears and more drama than good old laughs.

Anyway, this made me wonder, is Showtime the new go-to channel for Best Actress Emmys?

If Linney triumphs, she will be third lady in a row (after Toni Collette and Edie Falco) to come from that cable channel.

Anyway, have you checked out The Big C yet?

Also check out my review for Demob.

Scream 4 ***

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette,

Erik Knudsen, Anna Paquin, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere

Rory Culkin, Mary McDonnell, Kristen Bell, Nico Tortorella

When Scream was released fifteen years ago, a new generation of moviegoers were introduced to the way a horror movie should be made. Drawing inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock, Dario Argento and the entire French New Wave, Wes Craven crafted the first in a series of postmodernist takes on the genre. The film’s constant self-references and winks at other horror movies made it both refreshing and old fashioned, it would remain the definitive slasher movie of the late twentieth century. By the time Scream 3 was released, the genre had once again fallen to victim to overwrought plots and excessive gore, yet Craven’s series remained smart and ahead of its time because of its social commentary and obsession with the media’s effect on our lives. It’s not an accident that Scream still manages to be scarier than Saw in all its incarnations and funnier than the Scary Movies made to poke fun of it.
Fast forward eleven years and we get Scream 4, which is actually more of the same. Whether this means a good or bad thing is strictly up to the viewer. Those looking for gore and excessive amounts of movie blood, will get their fix in limited quantities, while those looking for a lesson in cinephile geekiness, disguised as a genre flick, will go home more than satisfied.
The thing with Scream 4 is actually quite simple: you either like it or you don’t. The film feels like a time capsule which chooses to ignore how much horror sensibilities have changed in the past decade. Instead of turning Ghostface into a serial torturer or a demon, it gives us the same old Scooby-Doo mystery the first ones made us crave: who is the killer?
This time around Ghostface has gone on a killing spree to celebrate the anniversary of Maureen Prescott’s gruesome murder fifteen years before. Maureen’s daughter Sidney (Campbell) has become a successful self-help book author and is back in Woodsboro to promote her book and pay tribute to her mother. Sidney seems to have forgotten that whenever she’s happy, Ghostface will strike.
Lucky for her, she still counts with her friends: Sheriff Dewey Riley (Arquette) and his feisty wife Gale (Cox having more fun than anyone else!) who has reluctantly given up journalism to become a small town wife. There’s also a new group of nubile victims in play, including Sidney’s cousin Jill (a simply delicious Roberts), her friends Kirby (a scene stealing Panettiere) and Olivia (Marielle Jaffe). There’s also her ex-boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella) and high-school movie geeks Charlie (Culkin) and Robbie.
The dynamics of this installment are the same as before (although an appearance from Jamie Kennedy to help us understand the new rules would’ve been great...) and Craven seems to be at his best delivering playful scenes in which Ghostface plays with his victims like a cat would with a mouse he’s about eat.
This dynamic between primal fear and comedy is what makes this film so effective. It might be more of the same, sure, but it still manages to feel fresh even when it makes so much fun of how stale the genre has become. In the opening scene there’s a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie that takes meta out of proportion and turns it into a fascinating look at the Russian doll effect the media has achieved in the last few years.
The movie even comes with a dark message of sorts as Craven deals with the thirst for fame that drives people to do all kinds of crazy things. Scream 4 might be slightly misunderstood because it’s both the joke and the punchline. As much fun as it makes of unnecessary sequels it dignifies itself, in a totally self-aware way, thinking that it’s above them all. To call this film delicate might sound ridiculous, but in a way it is: it tries hard to grasp onto the last remains of a genre it helped refresh and like its scream queens, it seems completely unaware that it’s only a matter of time before they perish as well. As Dewey himself says “one generation's tragedy is the next one's joke.”

Just Don't Go With It.

The movie sucks but my review rocks!

So head over to PopMatters and check it out!

Style Sunday.

This look might not really work completely but it showcases Nicole Kidman at her experimental best. The style icon opted for a weird fitting Proenza Schouler to join her husband for an awards show and even if some parts of it fail, the intention (Those shoes!) makes Kidman truly shine.

She's simply fierce. 'Nuff said.

The dress is L'Wrenn Scott.

Who do you like best?

The Adjustment Bureau ***

Director: George Nolfi

Cast: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt

John Slattery, Terence Stamp, Anthony Mackie, Michael Kelly

Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau deals with fate and the forces that shape our every day lives. The film doesn't question the existence of a godlike figure, it establishes there is one (interesting touch for sci-fi) and instead focuses on the bureaucratic processes that said entity uses to maintain order in his plan.

The title bureau in this case consists of men (apparently the heavens have no gender equality programs) dressed in perfect suits and fedoras who are able to freeze time and like race-car mechanics, polish, clean and fix the unaware people who then just keep on living.

No human is ever supposed to see this and the bureau makes sure of that, until one day New York Congressman David Norris (Damon) accidentally runs into one of their interventions. He is warned that if he ever speaks about what he saw, they'll reboot his brain, but worse than that, they forbid him from pursuing the love of Elise Sellas (Blunt) an eccentric dancer he met recently. The film then makes a fascinating turn: instead of becoming a flat out sci-fi thriller, it shifts into a breathtakingly romantic study of humanity's need to explain love.

Sure, the way in which Nolfi bends Dick's story to fulfill his romantic agenda might seem off-putting to some who want their sci-fi to be more cerebral and less sentimental, but the way in which the story is told, without any stylistic frills (despite the genre) makes for a purely classic film aesthetic.

It feels like watching an interpretation of timeless pieces like Love Story or Casablanca, with a twist, yet like the romance movies that endure the test of time, the added genre details aren't necessary to fulfill the film's larger theme.

If you took the sci-fi out of The Adjustment Bureau, you'd still have a wonderful movie, this can't be said of recent films in its vein like Inception, which only dreams it could've mustered the humanity Nolfi injects into this one.

Most of the film's success is owed to Damon and especially Blunt, who achieve a delicious screen chemistry. All throughout the movie you want them to be together and this helps make the audience an accomplice, giving the film a distinctive participatory feeling. Damon squeezes the hell out of his good looks and Blunt is seductively ethereal. Few times in recent films have two leads had the intense chemistry these two have. You really leave The Adjustment Bureau wishing you could follow these two characters for years.

Framed.

Above everything else, The Woman in the Window is a morality tale about the dangers of looking for adventure outside of home. Edward G. Robinson stars as Professor Richard Wanley, who runs into a painting of a beautiful woman and has his life go down the drain after it (no spoilers ahead so fear not)

The woman in question is Joan Bennett, who plays Alice Reed, the model for the painting.

Directed by Fritz Lang, this movie attempts to create a noir-ish mood achieved through shadows, oblique angles and of course Bennett as the ultimate femme fatale.

However, it's slightly hypocritical to cast The Woman in the Window as noir, when it's so freaking conservative in its values.

Film noir was known for its moral decay, perversity and dead ends. Nobody comes unscathed out of an iconic noir! Yet in this one, what we find is a moralizing tale about a man who can't cope with the guilt brought by his fantasies.

It's no coincidence that Professor Wanley first spots the painting after sending his family away on a trip. It's as if he has not allowed himself to even see other women while his wife is around (out of sight, out of heart), if to this you add the fact that he's a psychology professor, we have ourselves a quite dated, even facile attempt at deconstructing the unfaithful male psyche.

The point however isn't to curse the film for its old fashioned values and its silly finale, but to observe how Lang aptly taps into the misogyny contained in the way that Wanley (as the ultimate viewer) places Alice within his life. She is merely a piece of art to behold.

Lang and his DP, Milton R. Krasner, keep placing Bennett within frames for the entire movie.

Notice in this scene where she confronts Dan Duryea's character, her head fits perfectly within this frame. Sure, he's framed in this one too, but next time they meet...

...she's still perfectly framed. He's not.

The surprising twist in the film is represented in my favorite shot though. It's not one of the two famous turns that the film is famous for, but the eventual realization that it's not only Alice who Prof. Wanley has framed.

As he looks back on what he's done, we see that his entire family is held within frames as well. As he looks at them with sorrow and regret we realize that in his narrow vision of life, he's the only one entitled to a godlike vision. When things get out of control, he still has these people in cages. The Woman in the Window might fail as pure noir, but it's entirely effective as a disturbed vision of male egocentricity.

This post is part of Nat's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

Cat's Out of the Bag.

Did you know there's a way to make this dress look subdued?

This is not it. Behold the ferocious Lady Gaga at the CFDA awards where she received the Fashion Icon award. Don't we all go the office like this?

Rawr.

Read as the fabulous Nathaniel Rogers and I discuss this outfit and many more in a hilarious red carpet lineup.

Brokeback Mutants.

If like me, you spent the entire running time of X-Men: First Class waiting for Magneto and Charles to make out and do nasty stuff in a tent, then you probably had a bloody good time.

If you're less of a horndog and actually love the comic book mythology, then you had a great time as well.

Go read my review for X-Men: First Class by clicking here.

Also, head out to PopMatters by clicking here and catch my review for the new DVD edition of Shoeshine.

Style Sunday.

Pé looks amazing but the point this time around isn't what she's wearing but where she's buying. Don't you just love when movie stars shop at places where you can shop too? It's all very Sharon Stone in Gap in a way, no?

The angelic Kylie Minogue rocks the hell out of this electric blue Emilio Pucci. She wore it to debut her stunning Aphodite: Les Folies tour in her home country.

Who's your fave?

Sheet-y Saturday + Kylie!

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Why isn't Anna Faris the biggest female comedy star in the movie world? She constantly delivers purely genius work, and no this is not hyperbole. The other day watching X-Men for example, the trailer for this movie was the only one that brought a smile to my face (sorry Harry Potter Part 20 and Mr. Popper's Penguins). On the bright side, it's refreshing to see that she still gets leading roles, her movies haven't been precisely huge by any chance, so I'll take my Faris as I can.

If this movie had been made thirteen years ago I would've been all over it. Back then Tom Hanks was my favorite actor and Julia ruled my world, actually come to think of it, wasn't it that way for everyone else too?

Now, I find Hanks smirk utterly irritating and while Julia still rules my world, she abandons it so much, that I've learned to survive without her. With that said, the poster for Larry Crowne, which should feel like an event, is so dull.

Yes, it's about Hanks' character going back to college and being taught by Julia but it's not really Big or anything. The poster wants to reflect the fun of doing things at an inappropriate age, and as much as Julia's smile creates new angels, Hanks riding a Vespa feels less Gregory Peck and more like Old-man Holiday.

Dying to see either of these flicks? Do you remember loving Tom and Julia as much as I did?

On another note, go check out my Kylie article over at The Film Experience. It's all part of the Moulin Rouge! anniversary.

I still can not believe ten years have passed since I became obsessed with this movie.

Yet still every viewing feels like the very first one.

Sigh.