Mud

When Mud first shows up onscreen (played by a swaggering and disheveled Matthew McConaughey), he is looking decidedly non-Hollywood, with his scraggly beard and unwashed tangly hair. 

What follows might be a modern-day Huck Finn with a little more seediness and dysfunction thrown in (it was certainly influenced by the Mark Twain classic).  14-year-old Ellis is making his own first awkward steps into the adult world of relationships, is the product of a disintegrating marriage, and wants very much to believe in the all-consuming power of love.  Enter Mud, a fugitive they meet on a secluded island, with his wild tale of a passion-induced crime.

Everything is complicated in Mud; everything has two or more sides to it.  The moment you try to place any of these characters inside the standard lines someone else comes along with an entirely different view of them and we're left with a Picassoesque view of a character that seems to shift every time we refocus our eyes.

Is Mud a rough around the edges drifter with a heart of gold as Ellis believes?  Is he a charismatic manipulator who is ultimately selfish as his intermittent girlfriend played by Reese Witherspoon tells us?  Or is he a fool in love, who had the misfortune to choose the object of his desires unwisely, per the account of old friend and father figure played by Sam Shepherds?

The camera work is fluid and sharp, and makes the Arkansas world of strip malls, church billboards, houseboats and motels seem romantic and mysterious.  This is clearly a labor of love for writer and director Jeff Nichols, who grew up in the area.  It is reported to be the largest production ever filmed in the state, though by Hollywood standards it is more or less a small indie film.

This is either a film about loss of innocence, or about preserving idealism even in the face of the disappointments of the world, all dealt with in a touching way that is only somewhat undercut by the too conventional whiz bang ending.  Subplots and digressions abound, making this film as rambling as the river it takes place on, but then, that's part of the charm.

Grade:  A-

Pacific Rim

This movie makes Michael Bay look bad.  For any of use who'd been excusing his Transformers movies by saying that Hollywood flicks about massive fighting robots are predestined to mediocrity, we are now officially proven wrong.  Of course there's probably a long list of directors who would look unimpressive standing next to Guillermo del Toro, the auteur from Spain who also brought us Pan's Labyrinth.

Pacific Rim is not entirely original, with elements taken from (or homage being paid to) Godzilla, and even one or two whole lines seemingly lifted from Independence day.  But with a finished product that matches the accomplishments of either one, I can't imagine anyone complaining too much.  It grants itself full summer-movie license to a ridiculous premise:  Giant alien sea monsters from another dimension are taking out our cities, starting with the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and since our current technology proves inadequate to the task of taking them down, we construct giant robots to do the job for us.  (Why a few tactical nukes wouldn't do the job much better is never addressed, but that would make for a pretty boring film so let's all just agree not to mention it.)

With talent mined from all over the entertainment ecosystem, we finally have a summer blockbuster with heart.  Top billings go to Guillermo del Toro's behind the camera direction, which imbues everything here with a visually stunning and surreal appearance, whether it's malevolent behemoths from the ocean's depths or bustling futuristic streets of Hong Kong.

Then there's Charlie Day who pivots from his borderline retarded character on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" to a highly entertaining and manic off-his-rocker scientist without missing a beat.  There's also Idris Elba who brings his steely badass intimidation factor from the Wire to this role as supreme military commander defending the Earth.  "Today we cancel the apocalypse!" he yells out in the best line of the movie.  (Note: It's not a spoiler because it's in the trailer.)

One of Japan's more popular actresses, Rinko Kikuchi, bring some talent from the other side of the Pacific as a pilot for one of the giant robots (or "jaegers" as the film calls them, a German word for hunter).  Whoever did computer affects deserves an academy award as well.  The sea monsters (or "kaiju" in the parlance of the film) will get your heart beating.  They are beautiful and terrifying, even artistic in the way they look and move.

There's some typical silliness about global warming and acid rain having made our planet hospitable to these alien invaders (have to fit a moral in somewhere, right?) but it's not nearly so hamfisted as the ecological preaching of Avatar, which also managed to be a good film.  It almost seems to take a stance from the other end of the political spectrum against government waste, as a cowardly coalition of world politicians decides to defund the robotic jaegers in favor of massive coastal walls, which prove completely ineffectual.  But it stops short of making the heads of state look too foolish, and goes back to mad scientists, simmering sexual tension and fighting aliens.  Which is not an entirely bad thing.

If you're going to see one blockbuster this summer, I would make it Pacific Rim.  It's not a sequel and there are no big names, but again, that's not entirely a bad thing.

Grade:  A-

This is the End

I was unsure how my usual love of all things post-apocalypse would fare against my general dislike of stoner comedies, and after seeing what is possibly the very first movie ever to be both simultaneously, I would have to say it's a decidedly mixed bag.

Just about every comedic actor between the ages of 20 and 40 is in this movie with at least some sort of cameo, playing themselves as attendees to a party at James Franco's house during the Apocalypse.  Michael Cera plays the opposite of his usual innocent screen self, an over the top caricature of pretty much every negative trait you can imagine, all 7 deadly sins rolled up into one, with a few others that should probably be added to the list.  Jonah Hill plays the nicest guy you've ever met, but also manages to be not a particularly good or likable guy without any sense of contradiction.  His eventual possession by a demon makes for some entertaining watching.  Aziz Ansari has about 20 seconds of screen time, before getting swallowed up by a pithole from Hell; Jason Segel is more or less wasted as part of the scenery, as is the talented Mindy Kaling, among others.

The characters are unlikable, vain, venal, self-absorbed, self-congratulatory.  This is by design, a major part of the comedy Seth Rogen and his team have constructed here--a self-referential mockery of Hollywood culture in all its smug self-importance and triviality.  But it's a satire that also glorifies what it condemns, making the party setting and stars seem glamorous even as they are playfully taken to task for their hedonism.  This attempt to have it both ways makes the film muddled in its feel and message.

Shallow character revelations mix with pop-ethics and pop-theology, giving the whole venture an unsatisfying and unreal feel.  While it is only a comedy, and one which takes itself none too seriously, characters we can care about and like are nice in any genre.  Can an entire film be fueled by Schadenfreude at watching bad things happen to unlikable people?

That being said, there are a few moments which standout.  The couple scenes with Emma Watson are some of the funniest in the movie and make up for a number of other misfires.  While the schtick of actors playing fictional versions of themselves starts to wear thin at times, there are some amusing moments like when Rogen walks through an airport bashfully ignoring the obnoxious paparazzi hounding his steps.  Unfortunately this scene comes at the very beginning and by then end you're starting to wonder if maybe Hollywood shouldn't be swallowed up and stomped on by demons.  Okay, Jonah Hill and Emma Watson should be raptured up out of there, but for the others if this is the best you can do, Sayonara!

Grade:  B-

Now You See Me

At the beginning of Now You See Me, Jesse Eisenberg performs a card trick and reminds his audience that in magic the closer you look, the less you see.  In this sense, the latest film from Louis Leterrier could indeed be called "magic."

The trick here is just not to look too hard, and let the charisma of the movie's stars, the glitzy production values and the very cool premise of magicians turned bank thieves sweep you up.  Ignore the gaping plot holes and the too clever by half trick ending that tries to give you a Keyser Soze moment but doesn't.

Sometimes that's difficult however.  Consider gaping plot hole #1.  A bank in Paris has been robbed, and our Robin Hood magicians leave their calling card lying inside the safe in place of the 3.2 million Euros which are then sprinkled down onto their Las Vegas audience.  Then follows some legal mumbo jumbo whereby it turns out that since the FBI can't prove exactly how this trick was done, they're forced to let the so-called "four horsemen" go free to perform their upcoming much-publicized "Act II."  I'd have to dig out my law notes, but I'm pretty sure that's not how the non-Hollywood FBI would respond to this situation.

Or there's lone wolf lawman Mark Ruffalo's obligatory objection to being saddled with the partner from the other agency (Interpol in this case), because what man would want the beautiful Melanie Laurent by his side at all times?  Not all formulas need to be adhered to.

But certain tropes of the genre aside, watching the charm and bickering of the four leads is worth the price of admission.  Jesse Eisenberg plays reprises his Zuckerberg role of arrogant smart aleck, except this time he does magic instead of programming and has a better wardrobe.  Fine by me.  Isla Fisher plays a modern Houdini escaping handcuffs, tanks of water and CGI piranhas.  Quirkmaster veteran Woody Harrelson plays a sleazy mentalist (on the off chance anyone doesn't find that redundant), pulling it off with laughs and pizzazz.  Dave Franco, kid brother to the currently more famous James, holds his own against the better known stars, as pick-pocket and lock-pick extraordinaire.  They're sexy, wear sleek expensive black suits, and have a charisma that's by turns dorky and subversive.

And while the ending may seem like it was directed by a post-Village M. Night Shyamalan, the individual tricks and twists throughout the movie really are fun and quite clever in some cases.  Worth seeing, just don't look too closely.

Grade: B

Speaking of looking too closely, here's a vid revealing how Eisenberg did the card trick at the very beginning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hsaIV2xpg8