The Bourne series is that rarest of Hollywood commodities, a genre franchise with downhill, increasing commercial momentum and upmarket critical appeal. Swapping in Jeremy Renner for Matt Damon, and expanding the narrative playing field to tell a parallel story of intrigue and frightened governmental cover-up, The Bourne Legacy doesn’t miss a beat in doling out smart action kicks. It’s a fantastic piece of well constructed pop entertainment that has a certain air of erudite emotional remove, and doesn’t nervously or foolishly rush into revealing twists in order to satisfy or attempt to pander to impatient viewers.

Director Tony Gilroy had a hand in writing each of the previous Bourne films, and his chief value to The Bourne Legacy is as the architect of its expansive, chess board world. Abetted by the steely work of cinematographer Robert Elswit, the movie is of a piece with the other tony, slick, adult-market-minded films, Duplicity and Michael Clayton, on which Gilroy served as director. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, PG-13, 134 minutes)

Years ago, our minds warped by the spectacle of Dennis Rodman, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mickey Rourke appearing alongside tigers and exploding soda machines in Tsui Hark’s certifiably insane Double Team, a friend and I jointly speculated that Hollywood was on a path to ditching any semblance of narrative genre filmmaking and just releasing a movie called Tricks and Stunts. A feature-length indulgence of the same-named stunt spectacular, which used its MTV show in 2009 to spark a string of bestselling DVDs and, eventually, a live show in Las Vegas, Nitro Circus: The Movie 3D is pretty much a realization of that theory.

Using the latest compact camera rigs and other innovations in 3D cinematography, co-directors Gregg Godfrey and Jeremy Rawle provide viewers with bucket-seat and bird’s eye perspectives of much spectacle and mayhem as Travis Pastrana, the decorated freestyle motocross champion who co-founded Nitro Circus and still serves as one of its merry ringleaders, and his cohorts engage in all sorts of bike-, auto- and skate-inspired shenanigans. The roster of stunts includes purposefully flipping cars, ramped jumps into various bodies of water, back-flipping bikes over a chasm between two 60-story buildings, and trying to land an elusive double back-flip on modified tricycles amongst the mulch mountains outside of Pastrana’s Maryland home. For more information, visit the movie’s website. Meanwhile, for my full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Arc Entertainment, PG-13, 80 minutes)

A somewhat sloppy collection of relationship bits and shrewdly observed comedy of gender differences, the Los Angeles-based Celeste and Jesse Forever, which made its bow at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, marks the screenwriting and leading lady debut of Rashida Jones. A rom-com push that coasts along on the accrued goodwill of its game cast, this low-fi offering is built for the self-identifying embrace of mostly urban indie fans, but marked by a blend of sarcasm and end-game sincerity and life lessons that will strike other viewers as too cloying and calculated by half.



Celeste (Jones) is very career driven, the owner of her own media consulting firm, and the trend-analyzing author of pop culture book Shitgeist. Her best friend and husband Jesse (Andy Samberg), however, is less occupationally inclined. In their 30s, the couple has drifted apart — but only to a degree. Though they’re getting divorced, they still live together in a synchronized domestic routine. Their friends (Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen) find this strange, and off-putting, but Celeste and Jesse swear that it works. Until, of course, it becomes manifestly apparent that it doesn’t. When Jesse breaks the difficult news that he’s gotten another girl (Rebecca Dayan) pregnant, it freaks Celeste out, and forces her to reconsider a decision that she previously found mature and progressive. Are she and Jesse meant to be together, or have they truly outgrown their relationship?

While Samberg is the more well known comedic performer, his presence is a bit of a head feint, for a good bit of the movie’s best comedy is actually bound up in Celeste-as-hot-mess shenanigans, as with Zooey Deschanel in The New Girl. Celeste and Jesse bogs down a bit when it shifts its focus away from the mechanics of its relationship dynamics, and tries to fold in life lessons for its lead character by way of Celeste’s professional acceptance of a troubled pop star (Emma Roberts). This and the film’s other shortcomings, however, are mitigated by the fact that Jones is such a spry and immensely likable performer, as well as the fact that she and co-writer Will McCormack have such great ears for pithy dialogue. It’s a credit to their script that even if the trajectory of its fractured romance feels a bit choppy, the characterizations remain recognizably knowable, and more or less worthy of empathetic investment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 91 minutes)

Winner of jury and audience prizes at both the Sundance and Los Angeles Film Festivals, Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man is an unexpectedly fresh nonfiction tale that rustles up deep feelings of a life stolen. Part docu-mystery, part uplifting valentine about the universality and resonating power of music, the movie tells the story of Sixto Rodriguez, an enigmatic, Detroit-based singer-songwriter who in the early 1970s released two soulful but commercially irrelevant albums under his surname, and quickly disappeared into complete oblivion, only to find unlikely reception and fame in a completely different context, half a world away.



In 1968, two music producers went to a smoke-filled downtown Detroit bar to see an unknown recording artist who’d attracted a small following with his affecting melodies and mysterious penchant for playing with his back to the crowd. They were immediately bewitched with Rodriguez, a Mexican-American folk singer whose evocative lyrics seemed a beguiling mixture of wistful regret and dark prophecy. They recorded two albums, and despite superb reviews, 1970’s Cold Fact and its follow-up, Coming From Reality, were unmitigated commercial disasters, effectively marking the end of Rodriguez’s recording career. He disappeared, and all that followed were stories of escalating depression, and rumors of suicide.

But a funny thing happened. A bootleg recording of Cold Fact found its way into South Africa, where its socially plugged-in lyrics found welcome reception with a generation of Afrikaans struggling with the moral failings of their country’s apartheid. Over the next several decades, even though he was banned from government-controlled radio playlists, Rodriguez became a phenomenon (bigger than Elvis and the Beatles, we’re told). Two fans — an ex-jeweler and a music journalist — would eventually set out to try to get the bottom of his presumed death, with surprising results for all involved.

Music is at its core, which gives Searching for Sugar Man a passing familiarity to fellow docs like Anvil! The Story of Anvil and The Devil and Daniel Johnston, the latter about a troubled singer-songwriter whose mental health struggles precluded any grander commercial breakthrough. The investigative/questing aspect of its narrative, however, is much more of a piece with Mark Moskowitz’s superb but grossly under-recognized 2002 film Stone Reader, which chronicled the filmmaker’s attempts to track down the seemingly vanished author of a striking 1972 debut novel. Unlike that movie, however, which leans on the critical assessments of Moskowitz and other talking heads, viewers of Sugar Man are able to bask in the contemplative melancholy of Rodriguez’s soulful music — a unique and frequently heartrending melding of Bob Dylan’s poetic lyricism, Donovan’s lilting phrasing and delivery, and Marvin Gaye’s pained urban unrest. There are plenty of lazy and unworthy nonfiction lionizations bumping around out there, but this isn’t one of them.

What gives Sugar Man plenty of extra “oomph,” though, are its socio-political heft as well as the engaging mode of its telling. In regards to the latter, plenty of documentaries are presented in staid fashion, as little more than a collection of talking heads; Bendjelloul’s movie, on the other hand, has a much more thoughtfully constructed visual template. Working with cinematographer Camilla Skagerstrom, the director presents an inviting pastiche of sweeping Cape Town cityscapes, and contrasts them in compelling fashion with the burned-out rubble of Detroit, both past and present. This, in turn, reinforces the amazing and unlikely social connection, spanning thousands of miles, found between young, mostly white South Africans and Rodriguez’s stirring poetry of defiance.

As more details regarding his life and family come into focus, a heart aches and swells for Rodriguez. Still, Sugar Man doesn’t offer up much in the way of definitive insights about its subject. Rodriguez remains a rather enigmatic, almost shamanistic figure. As well, given the manner in which he raises it and the strong feelings in viewers it evokes, Bendjelloul would also be better served addressing more substantively the issues of artist royalties, and the money trail leading to Clarence Avant, the onetime impresario of the label which held Rodriguez’s overseas rights.

That said, Sugar Man is still a little gem — an engaging rumination on fame and inspiration, swollen with feeling. It shows the world to be a wide place, and yet a hearteningly small one as well. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. To purchase the movie’s soundtrack, meanwhile, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, unrated, 85 minutes)

Kind of loosely of a piece with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s The Trip, by way of The Hangover or Bad Santa, Scandanavian import Klown is another comedy that wrings most of its laughs from the premise that in the absence of a civilizing female presence males are apt to revert to despicable and idiotic behavior. A raunchy road movie starring Danish comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen as exaggerated versions of themselves, director Mikkel Norgaard’s film is crisply acted and peppered with enough legitimately funny set-ups to win over the subtitle-averse, even if toward the end it seems to compromise the nature of some of its characters. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Drafthouse Films, R, 89 minutes)

A wearying, lackluster sci-fi comedy about a group of suburban men who form a neighborhood watch group in the wake of a murder, and then get caught up in defusing an alien invasion plot, The Watch is a premise in search of a compelling story, and an exemplar of indulgent improvisation gone wrong and too long. Reteaming Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn for the first time since 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the movie is a collection of small handful of ideas strung out into set pieces, and a superb example of the pitfalls of Hollywood studio comedy-by-committee. For my full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, R, 101 minutes)

A winning deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl subgenre by way of Stranger Than Fiction, the beguiling, effervescent Ruby Sparks is a movie with both charm and a certain psychological heft. The screenwriting debut of costar Zoe Kazan — the daughter of screenwriters Robin Swicord and Nicholas Kazan, and the granddaughter of director Elia Kazan — this fun, enticing little curio deftly juggles disparate tones in a manner reminiscent of (500) Days of Summer, existing at a fanciful intersection of romance, literary invention and self-delusion.



Beset by writer’s block, Los Angeles novelist Calvin Weir-Field (Paul Dano) is coasting on the fumes of his celebrated first novel. After being given an assignment by his therapist (Elliott Gould), Calvin has a breakthrough, diving into yarns of rhapsodic prose about a girl, Ruby (Kazan, above right), who visits him in his dreams. Then she shows up in his living room, every detail as he wrote. Certain he’s gone mad, Calvin confides in his older brother Harry (Chris Messina), the only person to have read his manuscript pages on Ruby.

It’s then that Calvin discovers this wild, unlikely power isn’t yet capped. He’s conjured Ruby into existence, but can also still change her by simply sitting down at his typewriter and adding to his story — something he swears not to do. As the idealized glow of Calvin’s relationship with Ruby begins to fade, however, he tinkers with her character around the edges, which has consequences in the real world.

Its premise is set up for broad farce, but there’s a pleasant tenderness and intimacy to Ruby Sparks, as well as a blistering immediacy. As helmed by Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, it’s a movie that feels alive and caffeinated in every frame, but not in a showy, look-at-me sort of way. It’s cute in a bit of a mannered, bohemian way, yes, but its ideas are much more fruitfully explored and cast into relief in this budgeted telling than they likely would be in a grander, big studio re-imagination of the same conceit.

Kazan comes at the concept from a literary perspective, exploring the notion of a writer who pens the lover he thinks he wants — a bundle of “adorkable” qualities whose messy past make her endearing, but also a girl who Harry assures Calvin doesn’t exist in real life — and then finds himself threatened by the live-in complexities of those very same traits, and the chaotic problems to which they lend themselves. Somewhat common characters are also rendered far less so by the fact that Kazan knows she’s playing around with a couple archetypes, as well as the depth and skill with which she sketches them.

Like the more swooning, romantic portions of last year’s Like Crazy, Ruby Sparks movingly captures the bloom of young love. Dano and Kazan (a longtime off-screen couple) obviously have a rich, infatuating chemistry, and it’s put to fantastic use here. The rest of the supporting cast — Annette Bening as Calvin’s hippie mother, Antonio Banderas as his wood-carving artist stepfather, and Steve Coogan as a passive-aggressively competitive fellow writer and mentor — is equally fantastic, but it’s chiefly the show of these two young actors, and they deliver nuanced, emotionally perceptive work.

Ruby Sparks recalls other films (certainly Harvey and Adaptation) in flitting fashion, but it doesn’t cede or trade away its unique personality to any other work, in the gimmicky pursuit of pat resolution. After Ruby finally learns the truth about how she and Calvin came to be a couple, the film’s conclusion both puts a bow on things, closing a narrative loop, and leaves them ambiguous and open-ended. Is Ruby Sparks a morality tale, per se, a bedazzled cinematic meditation on free will, or just an inventive romance jazzed up with some metaphysical jewelry? It’s all three, really. Or at least enough of each to kickstart a wonderful conversation. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Fox Searchlight, R, 104 minutes)

A narrative competition world premiere at the recent Los Angeles Film Festival, Pincus is a delicately shot curio about the meanderings of an emotionally adrift man-child, laced with autobiographical elements from writer-director David Fenster’s life. Picture a much more melancholic, down-tempo Greenberg, vacuumed free of its pin-prick wit and sardonicism, and one begins to approximate the bobbing-cork-in-an-ocean qualities of Pincus, which exhibits a slight hold but eventually comes across as a series of posed moments in search of a clarifying signifier.



David Nordstrom sits in for the filmmaker, starring as Pincus Finster, a directionless Miami thirtysomething who lives with and cares for his Parkinson’s-stricken father (Paul Fenster, the director’s father, and an actual Parkinson’s patient). His father used to own and operate a contractor business, but Pincus’ halfhearted attempts at keeping things going seem maintained chiefly to just provide him with an excuse to get out of the house. He hangs out with Dietmar (Dietmar Franosch), an illegal German immigrant and one of his father’s old employees, drinking and smoking pot. Phone messages from disgruntled customers start piling up, but Pincus instead seeks a sort of refuge in a holistic yoga class, where he sidles up to instructor Anna (Christi Idavoy). She agrees to help Pincus try out some alternative therapy treatments on his father, but remains ambivalent about any romantic connection.

Any discussion of what’s right with the easygoing Pincus begins with its beguiling naturalistic style. Fenster blends documentary elements (his father, simplistic editorial framing) with occasionally improvised-seeming dialogue, which focuses attention on the film’s characters in hard and fast fashion. It is to the movie’s benefit, then, that Nordstorm is such an amiable peg on which to hang this loose a story.

Unfortunately, while there exists around the edges of the unfolding narrative the opportunity for much more dramatic engagement, Fenster seems allergic to conflict. His film toes the line between stubbornly minimalist and, if not pointless, then at least futile. Pincus cries out for an injection of dynamism from somewhere, be it in the form of romantic intrigue with Anna, more ruinous and concrete financial consequences, or some other problem. The sudden disappearance of Dietmar crops up as a minor mystery, but is poorly integrated into Pincus’ quest. This is shoegazing cinema — perfectly serviceable for curated, air-quote appreciation, but lacking in breakout insights or vision. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Pincus, unrated, 78 minutes)

Award-winning filmmaker Yung Chang drew praise for 2007’s Up the Yangtze, which focused on the many socioeconomically disadvantaged people impacted by the building of the massive Three Gorges Dam in Hubei. With his latest movie, he returns to China for another unexpectedly lyrical snapshot of that country’s rapidly changing economic landscape. A nonfiction look at the recruitment and training of young boxers for future hopeful Olympic glory, China Heavyweight is an unadorned, guileless work that starts slowly but accrues a deeper emotional hold and resonance as it winds on. In not dissimilar fashion from the recent Pelotero: Ballplayer, a documentary which examined teenage baseball prospects in the Dominican Republic, Chang’s film illustrates how sports are still one of the most widely pursued avenues out of outright familial poverty or working-class despair. China Heavyweight opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall and the Laemmle Playhouse 7. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Zeitgeist, unrated, 94 minutes)