“Angels & Demons” – The Good, the Bad and the Blurry – 2 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Just as you didn’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s Jewish Rye, you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate “Angels & Demons.” But, like the little old lady said in defense of her chicken soup Rx to treat a cold, “It couldn’t hurt.” Defrocked of its church affiliation, Ron Howard’s filmic adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel is just one more mystery/thriller.

But there’s nothing like a couple millennia of history, lore and liturgy to make a frenzied scavenger hunt more consequential. Add the architecture of Rome and the Vatican—some real, some just movie magic—and all you need to spice things up is to have the four highest-ranking cardinals, The Preferiti, abducted.

Just to make the hyperkinetic puzzle a bit more confounding, it might also be a good idea to have us wonder if the good guys are really the bad guys. Thank goodness then that Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is called to the Vatican to read between the shadows and myths and perhaps save some lives. Maybe even a soul or two.

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“Star Trek” – The Way They Were – 3 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

While the old calendar on the wall proclaims June 21 the first day of summer this year, fans of that cultural phenomenon known as the Summer Blockbuster will contend “Star Trek’s” recent arrival in movie theaters more aptly heralds the season. Either way, this prequel’s chronological hocus pocus will have you scratching your time continuum.

Indeed some techies, who doubtless include beaucoup Trekkies, will be able to explain just why the time travel plot at the heart of director J. J. Abrams’s interpolative freefall makes complete sense. Good for them. They probably also passed organic chemistry. I figure no great harm in taking their word for it and just looking at the pretty pictures.

There’s certainly an eyeful. Enhanced more than ever by the newest special effects, the noble idealism that creator Gene Roddenberry originally breathed into his TV series lives and prospers. Centuries from now, but only a flash of an eye before we first knew them, this tells how Kirk and Co. joined their stars in the resolve for a better and safer world.

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“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” – Spirited but Transparent – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Lovers of love stories who, like true fans of baseball, enjoy the pastime whether minor or major league, will at least appreciate the attempt made by Mark Waters’s “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.” Appropriating Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” and replacing Scrooge’s miser with Matthew McConaughey’s womanizer, it has its albeit predictable moments.

An enamoring cast does a nice job of making the hopeless romantic in us want to believe. Especially Mr. McConaughey. While this isn’t the watershed performance that will set him on the road to one Oscar after the next, it is when he locates the sort of swaggering likeability that can very well make a movie star out of an average actor.

Equally fit for the fantasy at hand, Jennifer Garner is alluring as both the tale’s moral center and the objet d’amour McConaughey’s Connor Read stubbornly denies. But then the man doesn’t know a whole lot, except when it comes to philandering. There, the tragically orphaned, poor little rich kid turned famous fashion photographer is an expert.

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“No. 4 Street of Our Lady” – A Saintly Address, Indeed – 3 popcorns

 By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

It is among the most confounding facts of our existence. Humankind is capable of terrible things and wonderful things. Documenting in “No. 4 Street of Our Lady” how Francisca Halamajowa saved the lives of fifteen Jews during the Holocaust, filmmakers Barbara Bird, Judy Maltz and Richie Sherman lyrically and hauntingly make that point.

 The divulgences in this tale of heroism, largely based on the diary kept by survivor Moshe Maltz and later published as “Years of Horror, Glimpse of Hope,” won’t soon leave you. Not because it is unique or amazing, though it is on both counts. But because it reaffirms how mind-bogglingly pervasive was this madness that gripped the world.

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“State of Play” …and of Confusion – 2 & ½ popcorns

 By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  

Save for one twist, one turn and one cliché too many, “State of Play” makes for fairly engrossing entertainment of the nail biting kind. But while perching at seat’s edge as reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) tries to find out if the killer is a military contractor, a congressman or Jeff Daniels’s majority whip, you really aren’t buying. 

It’s more like, “OK, so it isn’t ‘The Usual Suspects’ (1995), but I’m in the mood for a whodunit-intriguer…so I might as well go along for the ride.” Your equivocating fealty is paid back in kind. Via scenes a mite too dark and cloistered, there are thrills and spills. But alas, dear reader, you’ll find no genuine, mind-blowing, conspiratorial chills.  

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“Observe and Report” – Comic Mission Accomplished – 2 & ½ popcorns

 By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  

It’s hard to take Seth Rogen seriously. Which is probably why “Observe and Report,” a darkly comic tale about a bipolar mall security guard’s delusions of grandeur, rather works. You know the deal. The sad sack is so desirous of a status outside his disparaged lot in life that not only do we empathize, but soon we, too, believe in his inner champion. 

Temporarily abandoning his cachet as one of Hollywood’s top movie slackers, Mr. Rogen is Ronnie Barnhardt, a self-styled peace officer without portfolio or pistol. Heartening his similarly disadvantaged, ragtag crew of losers after an elusive flasher puts the mall in an uproar, he consoles, “Well, at least we have Mace and Tasers.”  

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“Monsters vs. Aliens” — A Battle for the Right Ages — 2 & ½ popcorns

 by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  

As celebrated in “Monsters vs. Aliens,” one great thing about cartoons is that instead of dying a gruesome death when hit by a meteor you turn into a fifty-foot superhero. It’s in the DNA of animated characters. Susan, who becomes the heroine Ginormica, surely owes her very being to the eons of dropped anvils the Road Runner and his ilk survived.  

Tyler and Brittney, who doubtless couldn’t care less about the Darwinian implications of this PG-rated space invasion, should find it amusing, if they’re between six and nine and not terribly jaded. Parents, on the other hand, might find solace in analyzing what the filmmakers who profit by tomorrow’s citizens feel is their educational obligation.  

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“I Love You, Man” – Mandatory Viewing – 3 popcorns

 by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic  

Because in truth there is humor, in “I Love You, Man” there is hilarity. Mining an untapped wealth of philosophy about male friendship, director John Hamburg, who co-wrote the screenplay with Larry Levin, sprinkles his farcical little gem with profundity. He signaled his talent in “Along Came Polly” (2004). But this is his breakthrough film. 

Starring Paul Rudd as Peter Klaven, a prospective bridegroom who suddenly realizes he hasn’t a best friend to stand up for him, there is a casting off of convention. Indeed, iconic classics like “Gunga Din” (1939) have long celebrated the great sacrifice and devotion comrades in arms are capable of exhibiting. But something was always amiss. 

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“Race to Witch Mountain” – Good Start…Weak Finish – 2 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Just out of the blocks this latest permutation of author Alexander Key’s sci-fi fantasy sparkles with newfound energy. “How novel,” we opine. However, once director Andy Fickman’s “Race to Witch Mountain” has unfurled all its 21st century refurbishments, the script assumes the repetitious ordinariness common to a game of Chutes and Ladders.

Still, valiantly staving off the film’s same ole, same ole nature longer than Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback’s script deserves is a bright-eyed cast, its keenest orbs peering out from Dwayne Johnson’s signature scowl. Oft on the receiving end of his faux ire, AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig complete the thespic complement.

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“Watchmen” – Alternate Entertainment – 3 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Finally, someone’s gotten this comic book-to-film thing right, or at least as right as the transport of different mediums, philosophies and the very definition of art itself will allow. “Watchmen,” Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s literarily acclaimed graphic novel, is the pop culture equivalent of Yin and Yang merging with E=MC2.

Too bad Confucius and Einstein didn’t live to see it. Aw, just a left-handed jab at the notion of smugness usually attending these highfalutin comic books. Fact is, up until now most of this stuff was as indistinguishable as the silent dog whistle. One wonders if cultish devotees will feel diminished with the welcoming of this breakthrough piece.

Not that the tale of an alternate America, circa 1985, where superheroes walk among regular folk, approaches mainstream manna. But its intelligence, creativity and boldness are undeniable. Indeed, the presumption and sweeping statement on occasion ring naïve. But once the weirdness spools up and gets its act together, one is sure to be wowed.

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“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” – The Movie, Lost in Translation – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Several years back, a N.Y. Times columnist eloquently worried that emerging writers concerned with those lucrative motion picture rights would be making sure, consciously or not, that their novels were cinematic. Would literature lose its purity of purpose? Now, films like “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” raise the ante of media anxiety.

For you see, this mediocre martial arts film has its roots in neither traditional belles lettres nor their begrudged stepchild, the originally written screenplay. Nope, dear ever-shrinking population of readers, it springs from a video game. To the great unwashed that’s just one rung up from basing a movie on a pre-recorded phone message.

Granted, there are great works that began life on a cocktail napkin, preferably at “21” in the speakeasy years, if you’re a romantic. Which apparently the pageant of time isn’t. Not if it’s willing to supersede quill, fountain pen, Underwood and P.C. with Xbox and a room strewn with McDonald’s wrappers. Oh sacrilege, where is thy gigabyte?

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“Madea Goes to Jail” – Too Severe a Sentence – 1 & ½ popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

When you were little and the cartoon’s protagonist didn’t realize who the villain was, it drove you nuts. You screamed at the TV, “Watch out, she’s bad.” Happily, the hero always heard you. If you’d like to revisit this Drama #101 lesson in smugly knowing way more than the characters, Tyler Perry’s “Madea Goes to Jail” stands ready to oblige.

It is a testament to Mr. Perry’s popular franchise that, even whilst inexpertly injecting a serious segue to the doings this go-round, his terror in drag nonetheless accomplishes some of the usual hijinks expected of her/him. However, now enjoying the madness means avoiding much tedium, a challenge akin to stepping over dead bodies at a carnival.

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“The International” — Sleuther Not Quite World Class — 2 & ½ popcorns

by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic

Funny, how it works. When you’re hungry but too hurried to stop, you can’t help but pass one enticing food joint after the next. When love throws you a curve, every song intimately echoes your plight. And when it looks like the world’s evil bankers have absconded with the funds, a film like “The International” surfaces to feed our fears.

Coincidence or mysticism, there’s nothing like it to add currency to your movie-going experience. Right now the guys in charge of the big but ever-diminishing bucks have slotted in esteem two rungs beneath lawyer and barely one above used car salesman. Director Tom Tykwer’s film invites us to come boo and hiss them.

But the exercise soon changes in nature, going from analgesic release valve to yet another lesson about the average guy’s naiveté…meaning you and me. And before the action-packed cat-and-mouser is over, we sure wish we weren’t so heartily convinced of the film’s devastating pronouncements. Chalk up yet another crime against humanity.

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“Getting The Oscars All Wrong”

 

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

By now you’ve been inundated with Oscar picks. It has become a full-fledged pastime, a key component of that unofficial holiday between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

No one is without an opinion. Every little kid in America knows he, too, may one day grow up to get all his Oscar predictions right. It’s egalitarian. When the food delivery guy, who’s only been here a few months, says, “The Brad Pitt…he should win,” we nod and think, ‘Hmm…maybe it won’t be Mickey Rourke.’

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“New in Town” – Same Old, Same Old – 2 popcorns

By Michael S. Goldberger, film critic 

Too bad for Renée Zellweger. Plopped into a production company of virtual unknowns, aided only by co-star Harry Connick, Jr., she’s expected to make beguiling the seen-it-before triteness of director Jonas Elmer’s “New in Town.” Though she practically falls off her stiletto heels trying, there’s no saving this city mouse-country mouse cliché.

Last successfully chanced by Diane Keaton in “Baby Boom” (1987), which had charm if not novelty, this poor woman’s version of the chestnut possesses neither. A smattering of witty lines and humorous snippets of otherwise overwrought characterizations occasionally mitigate the onslaught of unabashed, formulaic predictability. 

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