This week, the best choices are the sweet, funny and thoughtful Beginners and Midnight in Paris. If you have kids, Pixar’s Cars 2 is an excellent choice (adults will especially enjoy the James Bond spoof thread). So is Super 8, a wonderful coming of age story embedded in a sci fi action thriller. The Trip delivers some chuckles.
In Beginners, Ewan McGregor plays a guy who tends to the depressive and sabotages his relationships. His father (Christopher Plummer) has just died after coming out of the closet at age 75. Can he make things work out with Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds)?
Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.
13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.
In The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England and duel with their Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions.
In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best.
The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life contains a good 90-minute family drama that is completely derailed by an additional hour of mind-numbingly self-important claptrap.
For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.
You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is the British terrorist farce Four Lions.