Well-made, doesn't make a lick of sense. Grade: B-
Director Joe Cornish has a keen eye that makes me interested in what he'd bring to a superhero flick, but for all its B-movie immediacy, Attack the Block feels more like a technical exercise than a populist fable. It's better than Super 8 but it's no District 9. Grade: B
With its moments of Alexander Payne-like authenticity punctuated by antic summer-comedy shenanigans and jaded movie children, Crazy, Stupid, Love shouldn't work—and it almost doesn't—but hopelessly charismatic performances and sharp direction carry the day. Grade: B
Super 8 may have received the Spielberg imprimatur but Spielberg protégé Joe Johnston delivers an actual successor to the director's early works in the form of this latter-day Rocketeer riff—that earlier movie itself a successful Joe Johnston exercise in WWII derring-do. While the results this time around feel somewhat more machine-assembled, nothing beats beating Nazis in an air-conditioned theater on a hot summer day. Grade: B+
Richard Jenkins was fucking hilarious in Step Brothers. He's wasted here in an Alzheimer's subplot that almost derails the second act, but that damper not withstanding, this fast-talking, fleet-footed rom-com nimbly juggles the old-timey demands of the genre with millennial expectations of topicality and fizzy set-pieces. Grade: B+
Artist: The Wombats. Album: The Wombats Proudly Present: This Modern Glitch.
All's well that ends well. Grade: B+
Artist: Peter Gabriel. Album: Scratch My Back.
Artist: Kate Nash. Album: My Best Friend Is You.
Artist: Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. Album: Record Collection.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unlikeable Events. Grade: C
With its corporate intrigue and tropical setting, Ann Patchett's feminist Heart of Darkness reads more like a literary take on Michael Crichton's Congo. The heart-wrecking final chapter, however, is vintage Patchett.
More of a trompe l'oeil than a dark comedy but Jake Kasdan knows how to keep things moving as he puts the game and likable cast through its paces. Grade: B+