Movie Nation

“Prisoners” is a mystery told with such skill that just when you think you’ve figured it out, it finds new blind alleys for us to visit.
Well-cast and wonderfully acted, it’s a child kidnapping thriller with sorrow, intrigue, psychology and just enough urgency to suck us in. Then it almost outsmarts itself with a draggy, “Let’s explain it all” third act that undercuts the big theme it wants us to ponder.
The grey skies of a Pennsylvania winter set the tone. The Dovers and the Birches are friends and neighbors. Remodeling contractor Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is man’s man, something of a survivalist, teaching his son Ralph to hunt and “be ready” in case things get hairy and society starts to break down. With his wife, Grace (Maria Bello), they’re raising a teen (Dylan Minnette) and a tyke, Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) in their middle class subdivison.
The Birches (Viola Davis, Terrence Howard) have the Dovers over for Thanksgiving, so that tiny Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons) can play with her best pal, Anna. The teens (Zoe Borde is Eliza Birch) are in charge of the little girls, who are young and trusting and prone to not see the risks in playing on that strange, ratty old RV parked down the street.
The girls disappear, and as their mothers stumble into shock and the men, especially Keller, hurl themselves into a frantic search, a loner police detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes charge of the case.
Keller knows too many statistics about how long such abducted kids survive, the increasingly long odds facing them, to control his temper. Detective Loki (I know, right?), chewing on a matchstick, blinking hard every time he takes some fresh detail in, is sure to get under his skin.
“You need to CALM down!”
They nab a suspect, and it’s easy to mark Alex Jones (Paul Dano) as the perpetrator. Creepy, uncommunicative, with veritable thick-glasses cliche of a pervert. Keller, a paragon of moral certitude, is sure of it. And when the cops can’t make a case, he takes matters into his own hands. And that’s when “Prisoners” turns truly disturbing, grisly and morally ambiguous. Here is “enhanced interrogation” laid bare, showing both its cost to the victims of it and those who carry it out.
Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies”) and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski (“Contraband”) give each major character moments of pain, grief and rage. Grace cracks up. Nancy (Davis), a veterinarian, shuts down. Franklin (Howard) feels helpless and can-do Keller just lashes out.
The two girls are merely the first prisoners. Soon, everyone is trapped; parents, siblings, the cops, the suspect, the suspect’s aunt (Melissa Leo).
“Prisoners” gives everybody a history. Add to that the dragnet that has Loki visiting every sex offender in the area, where assorted perverts (including a defrocked priest) are either ruled out or added to the mystery.
But despite the occasional chase or chilling moment during surveillance, “Prisoners” loses urgency as it drags on. The dread and weight of “The Lovely Bones” and “The Vanishing” hang over it, augmented by chilly scenes of winter. But Villeneuve loses himself in that and his “they’re all prisoners” thread in a third act that goes on far too long and explains far too much.
“Prisoners” is never less than engrossing. It’ll keep you guessing. It’s just too bad that the last thirty minutes make us feel like the prisoners, here.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content including torture, and language throughout
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, Terrence Howard
Credits: Directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Aaron Guzikowski. A Warner Brothers release. 
Running time: 2:30

There’s an amusing wistfulness to Nicole Holofcener’s latest exploration of woman and love, “Enough Said.” And since it co-stars the late-James Gandolfini, you can throw in a touch of melancholy, a sort of dark cloud that hangs over an otherwise light and hopeful L.A. romance among those pushing 50. He gives one of his last screen appearances a poignancy that lives on past his death.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, a long-divorced single-mom and massage therapist. Her job is a bore, her daughter (Tracey Fairaway) is about to move off to college and she’s resigned to the shrinking dating scene she faces.
Then, Eva joins her friends (Toni Collette, Ben Falcone) for a party. That’s where she meets Marianne (Catherine Keener).
“I’m a poet.”
“And I’m a dreamer.”
No, she’s serious. She could be a new customer and maybe even a new friend.
And then Eva meets the portly, frumpy Albert (Gandolfini), who clicks with her because they both find “no one at this party I’m attracted to.” They’re both down on rude “younger people.” He finds her random, inappropriate wisecracks funny, and he’s able to make her laugh, too.
They date, even though she’s hesitant. She tries not to judge the way he loads his low-fat yogurt down with M&Ms or look askance at his Sunday sweatpants for brunch routine.
That becomes tricky when Eva realizes that the ex-husband her new client/pal Marianne is constantly griping about is named Albert, too. Her “Fat Albert” must be Marianne’s Fat Albert.
That’s a slim coincidence to build a movie on, but Dreyfus makes the most of it — letting us see the wheels turn as Eva starts looking for the same faults that her friend saw in Albert, and then tries to figure out how to address this “problem” of revealing to one that she knows the other. Dreyfus wears Eva’s neediness on her sleeve, reaching for her sounding board (Collette’s character is a shrink), clinging to a teenager who actually listens to her, her daughter’s best friend (Tavi Gevinson).
What’s fun here,to a point, is the collision of sensibilities. Dreyfus has made this sort of lovelorn joker her specialty, with a “Seinfeld”-polished bag of expressions, laughs and acting moves. Holofcener even cast one of Dreyfus’s “Seinfeld” boyfriends (Toby Huss) to play her ex-husband, here.
Work Dreyfus’s shtick into Holofcener’s cycle of screen journeys through life, which includes such movies as “Lovely & Amazing,” “Friends with Money” and “Please Give”, co-starring her muse, Keener, films that capture her heroines’ shifting priorities as they age and endless search for love and happiness. What comes out is wistful, a shallow character trying not to be, upset when others see past her facade and can judge her the same way she judges them.
Gandolfini, in one of his last screen appearances, is charming and winning, but the butt of too many weight/calorie counting jokes to let us forget that he died — overweight and entirely too young –earlier this year.
That knowledge doesn’t hurt “Enough Said.” It actually deepens an otherwise lightweight romance. But unlike “Friends With Money,” where Holofcener and Keener teamed with Jennifer Aniston, the sitcom star here doesn’t transform into a new character. Apparently at Holofcener’s urging, Dreyfus just tends to overwhelm the movie with her regular, if charming, bag of tricks, as if that’s enough. And it isn’t.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for crude and sexual content, comic violence, language and partial nudity
Cast: Julia-Louis Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Toni Collette, Catherine Keener.
Credits: Written and directing by Nicole Holofcener. A Fox Searchlight release.
Running time: 1:35

Hetfield is lead singer/guitarist/songwriter/rock god of Metallica, the heaviest of the heavy, loudest of the loud and the subject of/inspiration for “Metallica: Through the Never,” a concert film with an offstage element involving a gofer/roadie (Dane DeHaan) caught on the nightmarish streets of a Metallica video (anarchists battling cops, murder, mayhem, Death wearing a Gas MAsk and Riding a Black Horse. You know, real heavy metal stuff.

Nimrod Antal (“Kontroll”) directed it, and Hetfield and his bandmates wrote it. They perform a few songs, then we catch up with the drug addled kid who is living through the mean Metallica night. “Metallica: Through the Never” opens Oct. 4.

Got questions for James H? Post’em below.

Help a brother out.  And thanks.

Sexual addiction earns a big screen discussion that is equal parts serious and silly in “Thanks for Sharing,” a sober-minded dramedy from the screenwriter of “The Kids are All Right.”
The serious side spins out of the struggles of Adam (Mark Ruffalo), a 12-step devotee who walks the straight and narrow, prays and is never more than a phone call away from his stern, no-nonsense sponsor, Mike (Tim Robbins).
The silly stuff comes from the comic struggles of Neil (Josh Gad), an addict who pays lip service to 12-step dogma, but who cannot stop bumping into women on the subway or leering at every woman he sees on the streets of New York — a veritable minefield of legs, short skirts and cleavage.
“Is it me, or is Manhattan just one big (bleeping) catwalk?”
Adam is five years sober, careful to avoid the Internet and even TV, doing all he can to purge his life of the sexual temptation that so permeates modern culture. Titillating magazine ads, taxi TVs with leotard clad workout commercials, buxom billboard models, how can he keep it together?
Then he meets the adorable and gorgeous Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the sparks fly. She confesses her “big secret” straight away — she survived breast cancer. He hides his, especially after she confesses that she could never get involved “with an addict” again.
Contractor Mike’s addictions appear to have been many, which is why he struggles and fumes through each day, spouting self-help aphorisms as he does.
“Feelings are like children. You don’t want them driving the car, but you shouldn’t stuff them in the trunk, either.”
Neither man has much time for Neil, an emergency room doctor with mommy issues (Carol Kane), given to inappropriate jokes, thoughts and behavior. But he’s at the 12-step meeting, he has an honest moment, and that touches fellow sex addict DeDe (pop singer Alecia “Pink” Moore).
Paltrow’s Phoebe is the surrogate for the audience here, the person who asks our questions, who doesn’t quite buy this “addiction.” “That’s just what guys say when they get caught, right?”
But the all-inclusive 12-step meetings, filled with testimonials from drug, booze,gambling and sex addicts, take pains to treat this malady as seriously as the more accepted forms of addiction.
The movie lurches between weepy, tragic moments and laugh-out-loud ridicule. Adam struggles, Mike cannot figure out how to stop judging his addict son (Patrick Fugit). And then the sexy, promiscuous and tattooed Dede tests Neil. And as they lean on one another, you start to appreciate the idea that addiction is something you can’t beat alone, by simply “white-knuckling” it.
“United we stand, divided we stagger,” Mike says.
Ruffalo and Robbins give the film its heart, repeating the encouraging mantra “You’re coming back” after each addict shares how his or her day went. I love the pains that the movie takes to show that we’re all dealing with something — illness or “issues” that eat up our potential. Paltrow and Ruffalo have such great chemistry that their characters are a study in how fragile relationships can be.
But “Thanks for Sharing” is a bit of a head-snapper in its tone changes, stumbling into flippancy. The light moments are appreciated, but they do tend to undercut the sobriety of it all.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some strong sexual content
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Gad, Alecia Moore
Credits: Directed by Stuart Blumberg, written by Matt Winston and Stuart Blumberg. A Roadside Attractions release.
Running time: 1:52

Last weekend’s box office take fell off once studios got beyond guessing their numbers and had to actually tally the results.

“Insidious: Chapter 2” did a brisk $40 million, but it won’t catch “The Conjuring” ($136 million and counting) in the horror sweepstakes.

“The Family” faded to a middling $14 million. Maybe it’ll play funnier, dubbed into French.

“The Way, Way Back” finally cleared $20. “Blue Jasmine” is closing in on $30.

“This is the End” cleared $100, “World War Z” eclipsed $200 million, thanks to a brief re-release at the end of summer.

“Riddick” plunged on its second week.

And now, with “Prisoners” and “Enough Said” and “Thanks for Sharing” opening FRiday, fall films are finally here.

The happiest fifteen minutes in the history of cinema really pop off the screen in the new 3D IMAX conversion of “The Wizard of Oz.” Those minutes, coming as Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) steps into the Technicolor wonder of the Merry Olde Land of Oz, are as giddy, goofy and gloriously kitschy as ever — singing and dancing dwarves, silly trilling Broadway star Billie Burke (as Glenda, the Good Witch).
And thanks to 3D and digitally cleaned-up copies of the film, the details are nothing short of stunning, even if the depth of field isn’t improved much from when Victor Fleming pointed the camera at those sets 75 years ago. The sheen on the fake plants shimmers, the freckles show beneath Garland’s ruby-red made-up cheeks and the stitches stand out in the burlap face of Scarecrow Ray Bolger.
Garland’s wise-beyond-her-years crooning, full of longing in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Frank Morgan’s tour de force supporting work (five different roles) as Professor Marvel, the Wizard and others, Bolger’s rubber-legged genuis — the virtues of this masterpiece are as obvious as ever.
And those songs by Harold Arlen and “Yip” Harburg! Even the filler tunes are wickedly funny.
“You’ve killed her so completely that we thank you very sweetly.”
Take that, Wicked Witches.
All these decades later and it’s still a wonder how this “children’s classic” ever caught on with kids. That horrid witch (Margaret Hamilton), that nightmarish tornado effect, those alarming Flying Monkeys — and what child was going to focus on Judy as Dorothy as long as Toto, too, was on the screen with her?
The improved texture was reason enough to convert this to 3D. Even on IMAX screens, the original aspect ratio hasn’t been monkeyed with, the original sepia-toned opening and closing is intact and the best effects have nothing to do with 3D. The Wicked Witch’s gnarled green hands seem to poke through the screen and the Haunted Forest attack by the monkeys gains something by the conversion.
The witch-arrivals, in clouds of red smoke, are still primitive (you can see the trap door), and the whole thing looks and sounds like a product of its era. But with “The Wizard of Oz,” the passing of the years merely adds to its charm. Since most of us have only experienced it as a pre-HDTV small screen experience, this bigger-than-ever re-release comes at the perfect time.

And the 3D glasses do a grand job of hiding from the kids your tears of sentimental joy at seeing the greatest generation-to-generation tradition, revived, renewed and back on the big screen — where it belongs — for a limited run.

MPAA Rating: PG for some scary moments
Cast: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Billie Burke, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan.
Credits: Directed by Victor Fleming, based on the L. Frank Baum book. An MGM release
Running time: 1:41