Martin's Musings

In the movie Please Give, Catherine Keener stars as Kate, the owner of an antique furniture store in New York. Like a lawyer who hangs around a hospital hoping to score new clients, Kate and her husband, Alex (Oliver Platt), pounce when there’s a death, buying up the deceased’s furniture for cheap and selling it in the store for a significant profit.

It’s not that easy, though. Kate is wracked with guilt about what she does, and she tries to balance out her lifestyle by giving money to homeless people and volunteering — a fruitless pursuit because it’s motivated more by pity than by compassion.

And that’s not lost on Kate’s daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), who is dealing with body image issues and could use some compassion from her mother. Continue reading →

Iron Man 2 begins with a bang.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, with a zip, zoom, swish, and a bang — not to mention a rockin’ song by AC/DC playing over the action.

Those are the sounds we hear as our hero flies through the air amidst fireworks and then lands to wild applause. “Oh, it’s good to be back,” exclaims Tony Stark, after shedding his Iron Man costume.

The expression could go many ways.

In my world, it applies not just to Stark, but also to Robert Downey Jr., the Iron Man series, and summer movies in general. Yes, IM2 kicks off the summer season in high style; this movie is a great big ball of fun. Continue reading →

In Date Night, Steve Carell and Tina Fey play Phil and Claire Foster, the prototypical suburban New Jersey couple who, with busy jobs and two kids, feel like they’ve too-easily slipped into the role of great roommates rather than happily marrieds.

Even worse: They’re in a rut and are too exhausted to do anything about it.

So one night, in an attempt to do something different (instead of their weekly dinner at a local restaurant where they always order the same thing), Phil decides to take Claire into New York City and to a hot new restaurant they’ve been wanting to try. Suffice it to say, “date night” doesn’t go as planned after they claim to be another couple at the restaurant.

Soon, the couple get caught in the middle of a case of mistaken identity involving corrupt cops, a mobster, and the District Attorney. Continue reading →

In The Ghost Writer, Ewan McGregor plays, yes, a ghostwriter who is hired to craft the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), the former UK Prime Minister. (What? You thought folks like that wrote their own books?) McGregor’s character (who is never actually given a name) is on the clock to deliver a manuscript to the publisher in a month. As if that’s not already a challenge, Lang’s former ghostwriter has just turned up dead, the Prime Minister (clearly modeled after Tony Blair) is being accused of war crimes, and his life story is awfully suspicious. Soon enough, writing the memoir is the least of the problems the ghostwriter has to deal with.

Directed by Roman Polanski, and featuring a cast that includes McGregor, Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Timothy Hutton, Tom Wilkinson, and Eli Wallach, The Ghost Writer is a mostly engaging film. McGregor gives a great performance, the story is well told, and I was entertained throughout. That said, a few of the accents are not always convincing (Cattrall never convincingly passes for a Brit, for example, and that makes her a really weak link in the cast) and the film goes on a bit too long. I liked The Ghost Writer, but I’m only going to give it a B.

This may sound funny, but … While watching the new film Greenberg, I couldn’t help but think of The Blind Side. That latter film, and particularly the performance by its star, was surely helped by its end-of-the-year release.

Had it been released around now, would Sandra Bullock’s work have been praised as much as it was?

And by extension, would Ben Stiller have been Oscar nominated for his performance here if Greenberg had been released in November? Was Sandy’s performance that much better than Stiller’s?

I guess we’ll never know the answers, but the questions surely crossed my mind. Continue reading →

Sometimes, it’s all in a name.

Hot Tub Time Machine, like Snakes on a Plane before it, is a movie where all you need to know is spelled out right there in the title: Four guys in 2010 go to a ski resort, get drunk in a hot tub, and wake up in 1986. That’s the entire plot, basically.

John Cusack, who produced and stars, seems to be having a better time here than he did in 2012. Other laughs come from Craig Robinson, best known as Darryl from The Office, and Crispin Glover (Back to the Future).

Mostly, though, Hot Tub Time Machine is a bit of a one-joke letdown (yes, I was actually looking forward to seeing this one and was expecting good things). Continue reading →

She’s Out of My League comes from a long line of dweeb-gets-the-girl comedies, and like its predecessors, it’s got a totally unbelievable and completely predictable story arc. In this case, geeky TSA officer Kirk (Jay Baruchel) meets hot-chick Molly (Alice Eve) when she leaves her iPhone behind after going through security before a flight. He returns it to her, and much to his surprise (and the surprise of his friends and family), she’s interested in him. Will Kirk’s insecurities (and her more attractive ex) get in the way of his happiness? (What do you think?)

Alright, enough synopsis. This is not the kind of film where you get bogged down in plot details. After all, the second you start questioning things, that’s the sign that this isn’t the film for you. Rather, it comes down to casting and chemistry, and I’m sorry to say, this film doesn’t have it.

In other roles, Baruchel has been more engaging, but here, he is a guy so gawky and geeky and awkward, that you’ll find yourself really wondering, what is this girl doing going out with him? Eve sure is attractive, but that’s about all there is. Let’s be honest: No woman this good looking would ever be this open-minded and tolerant of Kirk or his crude, obnoxious friends and family. Speaking of which, all the other supporting characters don’t have much to make them likable. So, despite some decent chuckles along the way, She’s Out of My League just isn’t in the same league as, say, Knocked Up or The Girl Next Door. This isn’t a dislikable movie, but I’m still only going to give it a 6.5, which (with a slight curve) would translate to a C.

Green Zone, director Paul Greengrass’ new film, takes us back to those exciting days in 2003 when the Iraq war was just beginning and the search was on for weapons of mass destruction. (Yes, that was sarcasm.) Of course, now we know that there never were any WMDs, but for Roy Miller (Matt Damon), a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Army, this is a new discovery — and he’s pissed. The film focuses on Miller’s search for an intelligence source known as Magellan, who was the person who sent the Army on its wild goose chase.

Reuniting Greengrass and Damon for the first time since their Bourne films (and Damon with Greg Kinnear, costars in the Farrelly brothers film Stuck on You), Green Zone is certainly an exciting two hours. Greengrass’ beloved shaky-cam method of filming reflects the chaos of the situation in Iraq, and he keeps the action moving from start to finish. If only the film was less underwritten. Oscar nominee (and erstwhile The Office guest star) Amy Ryan, for example, isn’t given enough to do as a Wall Street Journal reporter. And that shaky-cam stuff does get a bit nauseating. So while Green Zone is a compelling Iraq war action film, I’m only going to give it a B.