Rocket Science isn’t
jet-propelled, that’s for sure. The very
loosely autobiographical narrative feature debut of Jeffrey Blitz, the director
of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Spellbound,
the movie is a slow-burning comedy of coming-of-age frustration — though like
its predecessor, it’s a work interested in the weight of words, and the power
attached to them.

The quick wit of lanky high school introvert Hal Hefner
(Reece Thompson, above) is masked by his stuttering problem, which dooms him to
outcast status. Ambitious, hyper-articulate Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) senses
something in him, though, and recruits Hal to the school’s high-powered debate
team. A warped romantic awakening ensues, though Ginny eventually manipulates
Hal to her own ends, leading him to team up with an older, brilliant dropout —
Ginny’s ex-partner, Ben (Nicholas D’Agosto) — in an effort to wow the judges at
the New Jersey state championship.

Canted tales of adolescent angst like these are a festival
circuit staple (see Thumbsucker, The Chumscrubber, et al), but what Rocket Science most has going for it is
its own strong sense of style and identity and a great, deadpan lead
performance from Thompson. Tossing aside the typical pat conventions and
rigidly defined solitary motivations of such stories, Blitz conjures up a rich world
of pubescent bewilderment and ecstatic agony. The flip side of something like
the forthcoming Superbad, which
presents its characters as walking bags of surging hormones, Rocket Science doesn’t completely shortchange
hormonal hijinks and acting out (at one point a character puts a cello through
a window… just because), but it does more fully present the awkwardness and
uncertainty that go hand in hand with teenage years, and shows how that as
often as not informs impulsive decisions and behavior that, on the surface, isn’t
necessarily sexual.

The supporting characters around Hal — from his perpetually
sweaty, snarling, obsessive-compulsive brother Earl (Vincent Piazza), to his
fractured mom’s new boyfriend (Stephen Park), the father of a classmate — are
all terrifically sketched, and the underplayed exchanges give the movie the
feel of a slowly developing Polaroid. It grows more substantial and rewarding
as it goes along. Funny, too, are the teasing, purposefully cornball
instrumental versions of the Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up” and “Blister in the
Sun” that eventually explode into the cathartic renditions that have become alt-rock
radio staples. For the original redacted capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.

Audition-style
revenge, Descent
tells the story of a promising young co-ed, Maya (Rosario Dawson), whose upward
academic trajectory is bumped off course in sudden, nasty fashion. After a week
of wooing by smooth-talking jock Jared (Chad Faust), Maya is date raped. She
then floats through summer in a glassy-eyed haze, shacking up with beefy drug
dealer Adrian (Marcus Patrick) before eventually returning to school as a
teacher’s assistant — a position that uncomfortably puts her back in contact
with Jared.

Working largely in tight, saturated close-ups, feature debut
writer-director Talia Lugacy gets around the need for large crowds of extras in
ways occasionally artful (the whispered run-through of a commencement ceremony)
but just as often awkward (a radio broadcast over an empty football stadium).
Lugacy takes her time with the material; this isn’t some tawdry version of a quick-plotted after-school special. Yet after a nice set-up, the middle of the film sags like the creaky floorboards of
a condemned house. You see a physical and emotional transformation in Maya —
she’s pallid and sullen — that more or less reinforces the arc of her acting
out. Yet there’s no correlative connection to this damage, largely the result
of Lugacy’s indulgence of far too many impressionistic musical sequences. It
all builds to a climax that’s both shocking and thought-provoking, but one that,
since it’s partially pegged to unknowable elements, only scratches the surface of the true, self-regenerating nature of victimization. Points for degree-of-difficulty effort,
then, trump execution, if only marginally. For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.

Stardust is a diversionary
treat — a lively little pop fairytale that flits back and forth from one
colorful character to another. Reminiscent, in swatches, of Willow, The Princess Bride and The NeverEnding Story,
the movie is part comedic fantasy adventure yarn, part lilting romance about awakening to the love right in front of one’s eyes; it works best as a grab-bag of brightly colored whimsy and
wonderment.

In an attempt to win the heart of Victoria (Sienna Miller), the prettiest girl in the
sleepy English village of Wall, young Tristan Thorne (newcomer Charlie Cox, above right)
makes a wild-eyed promise to bring her back a fallen star. Crossing the ages-old
barrier that rings the city and gives it its name, Tristan enters a supernatural
parallel universe known as Stormhold. There, he discovers that the fallen star
is not an object, but actually a spirited young woman, Yvaine (Claire Danes),
injured by her cosmic tumble. Sought by both a handful of scheming princes vying to
secure the throne of their dying father (Peter O’Toole) as well as a powerful witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) desperate to use the star to achieve eternal youth and beauty for her
and her sisters, Yvaine rather disobligingly elopes
with Tristan on a series of incredible adventures heading back toward Wall, crossing paths along the way with a quirky
pirate, Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro), who may not be all he seems. Like a sure but slow-dawning sunrise, love eventually blossoms between the pair.

Penned by freshman scribe Jane Goldman and directed with a spry, light touch by Matthew Vaughn, Stardust greatly favors tone over particulars.
What differentiates Stormhold from Wall is never much explained, nor
the relationship between the two cities, or certain other character
bits; one either goes with the general flow of “fairytale questing” or
becomes stubbornly resistant to the entire affair. More pleasantly distractible than enthralling, Stardust lacks either the epic-scale frosting that a more experienced genre hand (like Peter Jackson) would give it, or the skewed, hallucinatory pop vibrancy of a bolder visual stylist (like Tim Burton). Overall, though, one can’t reasonably bear ill will toward the film, and they certainly can’t hold a grudge, not the least of which because Stardust is busy not taking itself at all that seriously. In sum,
there’s much, much more right here than wrong. For my full review, from Reelz, click here.