Movie Nation

Give the Smurf Devil his due — “Smurfs 2” has a couple of pretty good effects. A Ferris wheel busts loose and rolls through Paris, for instance.

But the movie? Somebody pull Neil Patrick Harris’s cool-and-gay card. What drivel.

Even by the pre-school pablum standards they set for themselves, there’s nothing to it. And the reviews are reflecting that.

Though a couple of reviewers gave it a thumbs up.

“The Spectacular Now” opens in limited release as one of the best-reviewed films of the summer. I’m working on a Shailene Woodley profile today. Everybody in it is good, but she gives it gravitas and grounding.

“Europa Report,” a decent-enough sci-fi picture in the “Moon” mold — from Europe — is getting good reviews. I wasn’t nuts about it, but it’ll do.

“Drift,” an Aussie surfing period piece, isn’t bad.  A nice sense of place, a time, and a decent Sam Worthington performance. Reviews are mixed-to-negative for that one.

Yeah, I have a hard time figuring out which one I’m seeing in “Drinking Buddies,” “The Spectacular Now,” or “Safety Not Guaranteed.” How about you?

Duplass is in the middle, and if it’s indie, I expect it to be him.

Chandler (top, left) and Livingston? Depending on the haircut…

Disney and its longs-estranged former partners, The Weinsteins, will bring the popular children’s book series “Artemis Fowl” to the screen, according to a report in THR.

The eight sci-fi books by Eoin Colfer, about a teenage criminal mastermind, were a part of the Weinstein’s going away package when they parted ways with the Mouse. A Disney exec with Harry Potter picture ties, and the screenwriter of one of the Potter films are also involved.

So we see where this is going and what Disney’s ambitions for it are.

Get yourself into a Smurfy frame of mind, hum a few notes of “The Smurf Song” and try to remember your cartoon watching primary school years. Cross your fingers that actors Neil Patrick Harris, Hank Azaria, Jayma Mays and Brendan Gleeson will find something funny to do.
Never mind. Filled with Smurf wholesomeness, Smurf puns and posi-Smurf messages about never giving up “on family,”  “The Smurfs 2” still sucks Smurfberries.
Gargamel the Smurf-hater is now a big shot magician, filling venues around the world. But the wizard (Hank Azaria, who never lets us see the boredom) is running out of Smurf Essence for his shows. As he preps for his Paris Opera House debut, he conjures up a couple of Naughties (voiced by Chrisina Ricci and JB Smoove) who Smurf-nap Smurfette (Katy Perry) from Smurf Village. She knows Papa Smurf’s magic formula and a little enhanced interrogation by Gargamel and his digital cat (the movie’s best effect) and it’ll be “Smurf-a-geddon.”
“Oh, the Smurf-anity!”
Unless Papa (the late Jonathan Winters) and his motley “B-team” ( voiced by George Lopez, Anton Yelchin and John Oliver) can stop them, with the help of their human friends, Patrick and Grace (Harris, Mays) and Patrick’s clumsy, pushy stepdad (Gleeson).
There are five credited writers in this retread, and the best line sounds as if it was improvised by comic George Lopez, as Grouchy Smurf.
“Every time a Smurf toots, somebody smiles.”
The puns are feebler (“I was Meryl Smurfing Streep in there!”), the animation passable, the special effects quite good and the 3D utterly pointless. But if your tiny-tyke target audience has to see something, at least it’s harmless.
And if Neil Patrick Harris isn’t getting better offers in between sitcom seasons and Tony Awards shows, and he’s if he’s got to do blue material to get by, he could do worse.

MPAA Rating:  PG for some rude humor and action
Cast: Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Brendan Gleeson, the voices of Jonathan Winters, Katy Perry, Christina Ricci, Anton Yelchin
Credits: Directed by Raja Gosnell, written by J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick, David Ronn, Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the Peyo comic. A Sony Pictures Animation release.
Running time: 1:35

Both sides of the Lindsay Lohan divide can draw comfort from “The Canyons,” Paul Schrader’s lurid film of the Bret Easton Ellis script about “what a small town” LA is for the young and beautiful around the fringes of the film industry.
Lohan fans — those few who haven’t given up — can see the talent in the wounded, almost autobiographical vulnerability she brings to a one-time aspiring actress who settled for a rich creep
“who takes care of me.” She may be puffy and pale with a weary smoker’s laugh, but the lights are still on and the self-awareness of this performance should give her hope for the future.
And Lohan haters can smirk that they always knew she’d end up in porn — or something like it.
“The Canyons” sees Ellis (“Less Than Zero”, “American Psycho”) and Schrader (“American Gigolo”, “Auto Focus”) reliving their ’80s glory days in a sordid tale of sex, betrayal, decadence, sex and manipulation. Two couples, and assorted hangers-on and friends of friends, find themselves under the spell — the thumb, actually — of another Ellis “trust fund” psycho.
Christian, in a riveting turn by the porn actor James Deen, gets his  way in this world — living high in the hills overlooking LA’s canyons, driving sports cars and spending daddy’s money on a movie about to shoot in New Mexico.
Tara (Lohan), his girlfriend, spoke up for a young untested actor, Ryan (Nolan Funk). The fact that Ryan is the boyfriend of Gina (Amanda Brooks), Christian’s assistant, both seals the deal and seems awfully convenient, something a brittle dinner date between the two couples makes clear.
Christian is eager to tell the other couple that he and Tara aren’t exclusive — “It’s more fun to keep it a little complicated.” He’s what they used to call a “swinger,” hiring women, men and couples to mix things up, sexually, with Tara.
She’s irked at his lack of discretion, looking up from her cell-phone long enough to complain — “What’s with all the dudes, lately?”
And we’re off. Tara has history with Ryan, Christian has a yoga teacher he sees on the side and a need to “be in control” of all the others within his orbit. His machinations include spying on Tara, reading her texts, threatening Ryan through the film’s producers and maintaining a cat-that-molested-the-canary grin.
Deen, a younger, thinner Hugh Jackman, is a real find, a throwback to the vivid Ellis characters of the big screen — especially Christian Bale’s “American Psycho.”
Lohan delivers layers of meaning to many of her scenes, Tara’s clever way of fending off Christian’s fishing for compliments, pausing just long enough to consider how to turn his latest suspicious interrogation into an accusation aimed at him.
When she, with resignation and tears, meets Ryan and says “I’m not going back there,” remembering their dating years of want and anonymity, Lohan makes it too easy to read her own history into the moment.
This no-budget drama has an ’80s techno-score and more production values than many a mainstream movie that cost 200 times as much. Schrader maintains a steady, chilling tempo and makes great use of the Sunset-Melrose settings. Even the daylight scenes have an air of sunshiny dread, and only a couple of scenes that scream out for re-takes hint at how little the veteran filmmaker had to work with here. He had to include an ’80s style orgy scene just to get this financed.
And you’d have to go back to the ’80s to find a film with this jaded a view of Hollywood, a town where every aspiring actor knows every yoga instructor who knows every producer and they all swap partners and dance. Constantly.

(Roger Moore’s interview with Paul Schrader is here)
MPAA Rating: unrated, with drug use, nudity and explicit sex, violence
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Funk, Amanda Brooks
Credits: Directed by Paul Schrader, written by Bret Easton Ellis. An IFC release
Running time: 1:35

It’s a tired Hollywood maxim that gorgeous actresses have to dress down and frump up to be taken seriously in their craft. Take that far enough — as the statuesque goddess Charlize Theron did in “Monster” — and there’s an Oscar in it for your trouble.
Olivia Wilde loses the makeup that made her the fanboys’ feminine ideal in”Tron” and “Cowboys & Aliens” and turns believably, charmingly working class for “Drinking Buddies,” a wistful romance about couples wishing they were couples with someone else.
And in this case, some of these lovers have a first love — beer.
Kate and Luke are old friends who work in a Chicago’s Revolution Brewery — he’s in production, she’s just “one of the boys,” even though she works in marketing, setting up tastings, beer tents at public events and the like. They spend their days joshing with the team and enduring the boss (Jason Sudeikis) and nights swilling the stuff they make and sell at a bar, The Empty Bottle.
Luke and Kate kid around, finish each other’s sentences and get each other’s jokes. A beer tasting turns into a faux wine tasting.
“I detect jelly sandwiches, with the dark clouds of puberty on the horizon.”
Kate’s a little bit too much “one of the boys” for her bookish beau, Chris (Ron Livingston). She doesn’t see that. Luke kind of does.
And when Luke takes up with cute special ed teacher Jill (Anna Kendrick), Kate shows a glint of jealousy.
It’s only when they go off for a couples’ weekend at a cabin in the woods that this simmering mismatched chemistry is put on the stove and allowed to boil over. Kate and Luke love to sit on the porch and drink, or sit in front of the fireplace and drink.
Chris and Jill would rather hike, talk about books and picnic.
Swanberg, a prolific director in the recent, chatty-indie “mumblecore” tradition (“Nights and Weekends” is his best) creates a convincing, lived-in world and he and his actors cook up dialogue that feels real, uncluttered and yet poetic.
“Maybe we should ‘take a knee’ on this romance stuff.”
“I guess you have to take a person at their word that they’re actually into you.”
The set-up is predictably awkward and worn, but what they do with it and where the story takes us has plenty of surprises.
We knew Livingston, Kendrick and Johnson (“Safety Not Guaranteed”) would work in this setting. But Wilde adds to the growing repertoire she showed off in “Deadfall” and “Butter,” films no one saw but which revealed that she’s a lot more than a pretty face.
In “Drinking Buddies,” she and Johnson click — as friends, as possible lovers, and best of all, as two working people who can hold their beer.

(Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson talk with Roger Moore about drinking on the set of “Drinking Buddies” here).

Writer-director Joe Swanberg (“Nights and Weekends”)
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout.
Cast: Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, Jake Johnson, Ron Livingston
Credits: Written and directed by Joe Swanberg. A Sony Magnolia release
Running time: 1:30

Strip away the makeup and the pretense, turn a few generic high school situations on their ear and an amazing thing can happen to a teen summer movie. Reality sets in, romance feels awkward, difficult and earned and characters make the journey from amusingly familiar to moving.
“The Spectacular Now,” the James Ponsoldt film based on the Tim Tharp novel, is a light summer fling that turns serious. Witty, warm and wistful and in just the right proportions, “Spectacular” is the best-acted film of the summer.
Sutter Keely (Miles Teller of “Project X” and “Rabbit Hole”) isn’t much to look at. He’s got more than the usual quota of teenage scars. But he has confidence, a bit of swagger and an undeniable charm. We meet him as he’s typing out an inappropriately candid college application essay, raving about “the best girlfriend” that he just lost, Cassidy (Brie Larson).
In quick strokes, we see that relationship — fun, laughter, sex. And in more strokes, we pick up on what draws people to Sutter — his heart, his wit and his access to alcohol.
But Cassidy ditched him, and Sutter is floating and flirting his way past that — slacking off in school, not making plans, emphasizing “the now.”
And then he wakes up after an all-night drunk to the sight of sweet, innocent Aimee. She’s delivering newspapers. She’s nice, so she’s utterly anonymous to Sutter. She’s never had a boyfriend. When he turns on the charm, we instantly worry for her.
The fact that Aimee is played by the peerless Shailene Woodley (“The Descendants”) turns this light slice-of-high-school-life tale into something more serious, a movie with weight and consequences.
To him, he’s just “trying to help this girl out.” But we wonder if Aimee will be “the one to yank (Sutter) out of neutral” or if he’ll break her heart.
Director Ponsoldt did “Off the Black” with Nick Nolte and “Smashed” with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Alcohol abuse is his niche, and he skillfully guides us into Sutter’s life of the party charm, through his boozy but quite functional be-here-now existence. Sutter laughs easily, has genuine moments with his ex-girlfriend and her new beau, and yet takes nips from a flask at school, on the road, on the job (Bob Odenkirk is his boss) at a men’s clothing store.
Aimee? She’s not a drinker, is flattered by the attention and is putty in his hands. He gives her booze, strokes her ego, and without a whit of malice, accidentally woos her and changes her world.
The lead performances are engaging in all the right ways. And Ponsoldt assembles a great cast around them, giving Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Sutter’s divorced, haggard working mom (a nurse) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (his escape-the-past older sister) and Kyle Chandler (his absent dad) good scenes which they repay with warm, wonderful moments.
But the best things about “The Spectacular Now” are the ways it goes deep. Teller never lets us see the wheels turn as Sutter juggles feelings for his ex with his guilty, casual reaction to Aimee. Woodley gives Aimee a glorious guilelessness that make us instantly connect with her.
And Ponsoldt, doing great service to Tharp’s novel, gradually but firmly shows us the pitfalls of the philosophy of “living in the now,” and what happens to people who embrace that credo a little too literally at a too-young age.

(Shailene Woodley talks about being “Spectacular” here)

MPAA Rating: R for alcohol use, language and some sexuality – all involving teens
Cast: Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyle Chandler
Credits: Directed by James Ponsoldt, scripted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, based on the Tim Tharp novel. An A24 release.
Running time: 1:35