Rick's Flicks Picks on AWN

This high school comedy was inspired by THE SCARLET LETTER. It's certainly not surprising to see a classic being adapted for modern teens. What is surprising is that it took this long for Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic to be given this kind of teen treatment. The best surprise is how funny and smartly it was done.

Olive (Emma Stone, SUPERBAD) tells an innocent lie, which gets her in a great deal of indecent trouble. She wants to avoid a weekend away with her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka, TV's PHIL OF THE FUTURE) and her crazy hippie parents, so she tells her that she has a date with a college guy. When Rhiannon asks her about the date on Monday, she ends up getting trapped into admitting that she lost her virginity to cover up her weekend in her room singing greeting card songs. As these things go, the news travels fast and Olive develops a new reputation quick.

Well the new year is here and it's time to start getting excited for what 2011 will have in store for us movie-wise. As always, we have to endure the winter dumping ground and the summer sequel parade for the serious fall films. This spring already has some intriguing films for us. Here's hoping that this is better than the last.

Honorable Mentions (Some are just curiosities at best)
THE GREEN HORNET (Jan. 14), BARNEY'S VERSION (Jan. 14), THE COMPANY MEN (Jan. 21), THE RITE (Jan. 28), THE MECHANIC (Jan. 28), SANCTUM (Feb. 4), FRANKIE & ALICE (Feb. 4), THE EAGLE (Feb. 11), GNOMEO AND JULIET (Feb. 11), I AM NUMBER FOUR (Feb. 18), OF GODS AND MEN (Feb. 25), APOLLO 18 (March 4), BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (March 11), MARS NEEDS MOMS (March 11), RED RIDING HOOD (March 11), LIMITLESS (March 18), THE LINCOLN LAWYER (March 18), HOP (Apr. 1), INSIDIOUS (Apr. 1) and ARTHUR (Apr. 8).

The title of this film can either be positive or negative depending on the character you're seeing the film through. For the couple who hosts the get-togethers the film revolves around another year represents another year of joy and landmark events to add to their memories. For their single middle-aged friends another year is JUST another year.

Tom (Jim Broadbent, MOULIN ROUGE) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen, ALL OR NOTHING) have been happily married for decades. They tend a small community garden together and throw little get-togethers with their friends and family. Mary (Lesley Manville, SECRETS & LIES) is Gerri's friend from work; a desperately single woman who drinks to forget. Her life is a mess. Ken (Peter Wight, BABEL) is Tom's friend from his youth; a desperately single man who drinks to forget. His mess of a life makes Mary's life look stable. He's the kind of good hearted guy who could make a woman very happy, but can never get his foot in the door because he's fat, drunk and a slob.

For a Coen Brothers film, this Western is pretty straight forward. A young girl’s father is murdered. She seeks revenge. Her determination is undaunted. And yet this is a Coen Brothers’ film. The siblings love of language and dark humor color this compelling character study.

Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld, TV’s SUMMER CAMP) was 14 when her father was gunned down by his worker Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN). She goes to settle her father’s affairs, which includes hiring a U.S. marshal to hunt down his killer. She wants to enlist Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), because he is the most ruthless. But Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon, THE INFORMANT!) has been tracking Chaney for killing a Texas state senator. Neither of the two men is interested in taking a young girl out to hunt down Chaney, who has taken up with Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA) and his gang.

This animated feature from Sylvain Chomet, the director of THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE, is an unsettling experience. To understand why I say this there is some background that must be known. It is based on an unfilmed script from famed comedian Jacques Tati animated in the French icon’s style. When I think of Tati, I think of the charming Mr. Hulot, a hapless Buster Keaton-like everyman. I think of sly humor in a light comedy. The sly humor is there, but there is nothing light about it.

Known to us only as The Illusionist (Jean-Claude Donda, THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE), the main character is a vaudeville magician trying to continue performing his art well into the 1960s. Rock ‘n roll has replaced his kind of entertainment in the minds of the people. He gets a gig at a bar in a way off village where he meets the young maid Alice (Eilidh Rankin), who is captivated with his magic. He sees that the poor girl’s shoes are much worn, so he kindly buys her a new pair. When he leaves, she follows him back to Edinburgh. So what is this man supposed to do with this girl?

The best way of looking at this documentary is to look at this credit — A Banksy film. So what does that imply? Street art for one. Provocative cultural commentary. A rebellious spirit. This film is all of those and possibly more. It is a work of art in and of itself.

The best way to start is to look at the story on the surface level. Thierry Guetta is a French transplant to L.A. where he made his money selling vintage clothes to hipsters. He was obsessed with his videocamera and recorded everything. Upon visiting France, he began recording his cousin, a street artist known as Space Invader, who pasted mosaics of SPACE INVADERS characters all over the city. Thierry formed a new obsession with street art and began making friends with the cutting edge artists in the field through his cousin. He began following Shepard Fairey, who is famous for the Andre the Giant/ Obey stencils that lined the streets of L.A. and then the iconic red, white and blue campaign image for Barack Obama. By following these artists, we get a great sense of the art form and how repetition and volume create importance in addition to the strategic placement of the art, which takes on meaning in context with its placement.

It has been nearly thirty years since the original TRON made waves with its then groundbreaking visual effects. Visual effects have caught up with the visionary ideas of the digital world of the original, making the sequel a visual treat. Unfortunately, the story is less compelling.

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) idolized his father Kevin (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), a brilliant computer programming who dreamed of creating a perfect world inside the computer. He called this world The Grid and promised to show it to Sam one day, but then he disappeared. Sam has grown despising what ENCOM, the company his father ran. Each year he plays a prank on the company to get under their skin. Then his father's old partner Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, TV's BABYLON 5) comes to him with news that he's received a page from his father's old office. When Sam goes to investigate, he stumbles across his father's work and inadvertently gets transported into The Grid.

Albert was not born with a stammer, but developed one around four or five. He was born a prince. The former creates a great problem for the latter when public speaking is key to the job he was born to do. Making matters worse, he was prince during the boom of wireless radio and disturbing times with an older brother that had little interest in being king. He would become King George VI.

Colin Firth plays Albert, or Bertie as his family knew him. Inside Bertie was very capable of being a great king, but the stutter made him sound like a fool. His father King George V (Michael Gambon, HARRY POTTER) lorded over him with an iron fist and had no time for his "problems." His brother Edward (Guy Pearce, MEMENTO) was a globetrotting party boy right up until the moment his father died. He was not capable of being a great king. He wanted what he wanted and gave up the crown to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson (Eve Best, TV's NURSE BETTY). Now Bertie wasn't just a stammering prince, but a stammering king, the only king to ever take the throne with the previous king still alive and well. This kind of pressure didn't help his stutter.

Read my review of GOING THE DISTANCE.

It's a rom-com, so one knows going in that the visuals and sound aren't going to explode your home entertainment system. Warner Bros.' 1080p transfer is fairly true to its source. Digital problems are absent. The color palette is natural in the way a documentary looks, so nothing really pops. Some scenes actually look like they were filmed using a different camera from others. As for the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, it’s weighted to the front speakers. The soundscape is moderately immersive giving some ambiance during bars scenes, etc. The dialogue and music are clear.