Garry Marshall is brilliant. He made a mildly entertaining movie with an A-List cast and a name that virtually guarantees it a place in holiday rerun history. [New Year’s Eve] is like Crash-light. Really, really, really light. It follows a bunch of folks whose lives intersect in various ways as they [embrace, reject, and reflect on all that is New Year’s Eve as the ball is about to drop in New York City].

The cast is a virtual who’s who of stars from the big and small screen – including [Hillary Swank, Robert De Niro, Sarah Jessica Parker, Josh Duhamel, rocker Jon Bon Jovi, Halle Berry, Katherine Heigl, Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeifer], Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Lea Michele, Hector Elizondo… Need I go on?

There’s no real way to review the storyline without giving too much away. All I can say is the movie is enjoyable enough, if not particularly deep. Director Garry Marshall knows how to deliver a solid mainstream chick flick. And as a fellow Northwestern alum, it’s always fun to spot his quick nod to our alma mater – in this case [if there was one, I somehow missed it!]. It’s also worth sticking around for the end credits. Among the outtakes – a fun, little salute to [Valentine’s Day].

Watching [New Year’s Eve] is like watching a special, star-studded edition of The Love Boat. If that floats your boat, then go and enjoy.

There ya have it. A re-purposed review that matches a re-purposed premise that – if it does well enough at the box office – will surely spark yet another entry into the star-studded holiday “franchise”. Place your bets now for Christmas Day, Hanukkah Nights, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Columbus Day…

The couple is Jacob (Yelchin) and Anna (Jones). They meet at a university in California where she is studying English and he is learning furniture design. She leaves a vaguely stalkerish note on his car and they meet for coffee. They bond over Paul Simon’s Graceland album (seems an odd choice, but okay) and quickly become a couple. The connection between them is powerful. Then senior year is almost up and they wonder “What are we going to do after we graduate?” What she should do is go back to England where she’s from so that she doesn’t overstay her student visa. But, matters of the heart trump legal matters for her and she stays. Too bad love doesn’t actually conquer all – especially immigration law. When she takes a quick trip back to the UK and then tries to return to the U.S. and Jacob, Anna isn’t allowed back into the country. This is when things get difficult.

She can’t resolve her immigration issues and he can’t/won’t give up his furniture business to move to England. So what are they to do? They text, he visits, they both fall into other more convenient relationships. He with a California blonde played by Jennifer Lawrence (who will most likely become a household name come March when The Hunger Games hit theaters). She with a yuppie Brit named Simon. As the months and years go by, Anna and Jacob drift apart and back together trying to figure out if they can overcome all the obstacles and whether this thing they have is really worth the effort.

It’s a fine little love story, well acted and directed. But like I said I just didn’t care about the couple. In fact, they kind of annoyed me. Her heartfelt poetry… His block-like furniture… Graceland? Really? One thing I did admire was Anna’s penchant for single malt whisky. I left the theater wanting a scotch. And one of the reasons I didn’t want to leave early to get one was the movie only runs 90 minutes. I can put up with anything for 90 minutes. I suspect if you consider yourself a romantic, you may enjoy this one more than I did. So don’t let me put you off it completely. I’d say get it on pay-per-view or Netflix when it’s available and you’re in the mood for some sappy romance, and pour yourself a scotch.

I went into the movie armed with Kleenex and sunglasses and expecting a coming-of-age Terms of Endearment. But it just didn’t move me, despite its heartbreaking premise.

The film stars Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper as Annabelle and Enoch, kindred spirits who meet at a funeral that Enoch has crashed. Annabelle helps the recently-orphaned Enoch reconnect with life even as she faces imminent death from brain cancer. The film has some sweet moments and some strange ones too. For instance, Enoch’s best friend is the ghost of a Kamikaze fighter pilot named Hiroshi (Ryo Kase). Still not sure what that’s all about.

Anyway, it’s possible that Restless is one of those indie films that works on some deeper and more profound level than my brain was willing to process… kinda like The Tree of Life (except, thankfully, Restless does have a story with an obvious beginning, middle and end). But as cancer movies go, I suggest you take a pass on this one and wait a week for 50/50, a poignant movie about cancer that will make you cry, and laugh a lot too.

The movie opens with a long, loooooong jazzy montage of modern-day Paris as the city of lights transitions from morning to night, sunshine to rain. It could almost be the opening to a travel show that’s about to highlight all the city has to offer – the architecture! the food! the wine! the outdoor cafes! the romance! Oui, oui. C’est Magnifique.

When the music montage finally draws to a close, we are introduced to an American in Paris- several of them actually. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams play Gil and Inez, an engaged couple who’ve tagged along with her parents on a business trip to the French capital. Gil, a writer (or aspiring writer, depending on how you look at it), is immediately smitten with the city and the role it played in inspiring some of the greatest artists, writers and musicians of the 20th century. Ah, wouldn’t it be great to be transported back in time…

And that’s exactly what happens. Every night as the clock strikes midnight, Gil hitches a ride into the 1920s, where he mingles with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Cole Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Picasso. The more you know about them going in, the more you’re going to get out of the film.

Woody Allen knows how to attract good actors, so the performances are all pretty solid and witty. Even Owen Wilson, who tends to be hit or miss for me, is sufficiently endearing as a guy who romanticizes the past but comes to appreciate what the present and future may offer as well.

Midnight in Paris is a decent film with limited appeal for the masses. Ironically, it will likely find its niche with the intellectual and pseudo-intellectual types that the movie often pokes fun at. C’mon, you know who you are.

Bridesmaids

The movie is actually far better than the online trailers would suggest. In fact, I think they do it a major disservice. Somebody should go back and recut them!

Kristen Wiig (SNL) co-wrote the movie and stars as Annie, a woman whose current struggles in love and life seem all the more painful when her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged and taps Annie to be her maid of honor. What follows is a two-hour laugh and groan fest (in a good way) as Annie attempts to lead a colorful and disparate group of bridesmaids through the requisite shower, dress fittings, and bachelorette party.

The outstanding ensemble cast includes Rose Byrne as Helen, a bridesmaid who is passively-aggressively determined to wrest control of the festivities from Annie; Ellie Kemper as Becca, a newlywed whose annoying ‘happy face’ belies a battle within; scene-stealer Melissa McCarthy (Mike and Molly) as the groom’s sexually-ambiguous and quirky sister Megan; and Wendi McLendon-Covey as Rita, a disenchanted wife and mother who sees the wedding festivities as a much-needed opportunity to escape her abysmal home-life. These women are like the Sex and the City gal pals – except they’re virtual strangers thrown together for the bridal party rituals. (Anyone who’s ever been a bridesmaid knows how awkward that can be).

The main sub-plot of the movie revolves around Annie’s love life and her encounters with two very different men.  Jon Hamm (Mad Men) is hysterically spot-on as a wealthy, smarmy jerk who’s just using Annie for casual sex, and Chris O’Dowd (who I’d never heard of) is absolutely charming as a sweet and sensitive policeman who falls for Annie but can’t seem to get through to her.

Bridesmaids is more than just a comedy. It’s got heart and humor and a brutal honesty that can be uncomfortably, yet hilariously funny. It has elements of a romantic comedy, but doesn’t fall into the traditional and predictable romcom trappings of the recently-released and similarly themed Something Borrowed. It’s about what defines friendship, happiness, and survival in a world where the grass is always greener. Who can’t relate to that??

Producer Judd Apatow of Superbad, Knocked Up and Get Him to the Greek fame definitely has a knack for balancing raunch and wit. He does it again here. But ultimately, this is Kristen Wiig’s movie. And it’s a really good one.

Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine is about a couple whose marriage is disintegrating for all the reasons – tangible and intangible- that relationships sometimes collapse. There’s no defining moment. No adultery. No one person at fault. The relationship just isn’t what it was.

Faith Wladyka

Ryan Goseling and Michelle Williams are the stars of this love story/tragedy. They play Dean and Cindy, a young married couple who spend a night away from their daughter in a lackluster attempt to save their marriage. Six year old actress Faith Wladyka is adorable and spot-on as daughter Frankie. She is the ‘every child’ and the one you fear for most as her parents struggle to reconcile their love for her with their growing estrangement from each other.

The movie intercuts scenes from the couple’s present-day struggles with scenes from the early days of their courtship, when love was in the air and the future held a heap of promise. Goseling and Williams truly get inside these characters to convincingly portray Dean and Cindy in both their happiest and darkest moments. And as the film progresses, you become better informed as to why the couple reacts the way they do to various characters and situations.

Blue Valentine cuts much deeper than the recently-released Rabbit Hole, yet it hasn’t gotten nearly the attention as “awards season” kicks into high gear. I will be most disappointed if Nicole Kidman gets an Oscar nod for best actress in Rabbit Hole and Michelle Williams is overlooked for Blue Valentine. Williams’ performance is far more believable.

The movie has a dark and indie vibe with camera work that feels (and probably often is) hand-held. The technique serves to bring the viewers into the more intimate, emotionally-charged scenes – one of which initially garnered this movie an NC-17 rating, though it was knocked down to ‘R’ on appeal. There is a lot of sex in this movie, but it’s not really gratuitous since those scenes help illustrate how the same acts can be construed as sweet, loving, sad, or painful as feelings change over time.

To be honest, the arty-minded guys in the audience seemed to like this movie significantly more than the gals. That’s fodder for a deeper discussion/debate for sure. Blue Valentine is not a feel-good movie. And it’s certainly not a Valentine’s Day movie – unless you’re on the verge of breaking up. So consider yourselves forewarned. I’m not sure this movie will still be around then anyway. It’ll have to make room for the romcoms… cause let’s face it, fantasy is far more fun to watch than reality.

Country Strong

It starts out strong enough, with an aspiring singer-songwriter named Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund) makin’ music with country superstar Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) while she’s in rehab for substance abuse and assorted emotional health issues.

When Kelly’s manager/husband (Tim McGraw) pulls her out of rehab early to embark on a “comeback tour”, Kelly insists that Beau be her opening act. He ends up sharing the stage with a young beauty-queen-turned-singer named Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) who is both a threat and protégé to Kelly. Between concerts, the foursome battles a mess of romantic entanglements, unresolved demons, and conflicting aspirations.

Paltrow, Hedlund and Meester are all super-talented on stage, and the music itself is certainly entertaining for those of us who enjoy belting out a verse or two of “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places”. But the movie as a whole drifts so far into cliché country that you never really buy into these characters and their pain. Moments that were surely meant to be dramatic tended to unleash an uncomfortable burst of laughter instead. It doesn’t help that the story development literally stalls for a good hour in the middle of the movie. Seriously, it’s like, nothing happens. The songs salvage the momentum, but only enough to carry the movie toward its predictable climax. But wait – here’s the kicker. Just when you think it’s over, it’s not. There’s another ending. And another one. And another one. And they’re alternately cheesy, tragic, tacky, unpredictable, and predictable.

The movie will beg comparisons to Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-winning turn in last year’s Crazy Heart. Or maybe even Walk the Line. But really, there’s no comparison. Those movies had a soul that’s missing from Country Strong. And it’s a shame, cause I really do like all the actors involved. Country Strong is ultimately more like the recently-released Burlesque. Good music. Good rental. Good time-killer on an airplane. And most importantly perhaps – it’s definitive proof that Paltrow should do more Glee, where she absolutely rocked it as substitute Holly Holliday!

Mark Wahlberg is a knockout as boxer-on-the-rise “Irish” Micky Ward. But it’s Christian Bale who really steals the show as Micky’s half-brother and trainer, Dicky Ecklund, a former boxer himself whose addiction to crack cocaine threatens to sink his own life and career – and possibly Micky’s too.

The women of The Fighter are powerhouses in their own right. Melissa Leo (from Homicide: Life on the Street) is absolutely amazing as Micky’s mother and manager. She is the matriarch of a large Irish brood near Boston that closes ranks around Micky and Dicky when “outsiders” like Micky’s girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) intrude on their dysfunctional family dynamic.

Melissa Leo

Amy Adams

For some reason, I didn’t expect to like Adams (Enchanted, Doubt, Junebug) in this movie, but she more than holds her own. I just hope that Adams and Leo don’t cancel each other out in the “best supporting actress” category come awards time. They are both very good.

The Fighter is ultimately a gritty feel-good movie that will surely draw comparisons to Rocky (the first one – not two through six!), Cinderella Man, Ali, Raging Bull and whatever other boxing films may come to mind. But that’s okay. The genre lends itself to tales of inspiration, redemption, guts and glory. And this movie has all those things. Thankfully it’s not too heavy on the blood and gore, and there’s enough comic relief to balance the intensity. Sure, The Fighter has some elements of predictability that can’t be avoided when you’re dealing with a screenplay based on a true story, real-life characters (in every sense of the word), and a well-documented journey toward a championship match. But overall, I am firmly in The Fighter’s corner.

At the beginning of the story, Russell is a closeted gay man who’s also a married, church-going, Christian police officer. After a life-altering event, he stops living the lie and fully embraces his homosexuality. But he soon finds out that the gay lifestyle he wants to live is an expensive lifestyle, so he also fully embraces insurance fraud. That’s how he ends up in prison, and that is where he meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris, a sweet and naïve fellow prisoner, played by Ewan McGregor.  That’s when things really take off because Russell will stop at nothing to be with his lover. He plots and schemes to do everything from posing as his lawyer to get Morris early release to escaping multiple times himself after he is thrown back in jail.

It’s the outrageous plot twists and turns that make the story hard to believe, even though it’s all apparently true. It is also funny in spots and sometimes surprisingly honest and even sweet in its depiction of the romance between Russell and Morris. Their relationship is the most believable thing in the movie, although the fact that Russell is such an accomplished con artist makes you think that at first he must have an ulterior motive for hitting on Morris when they meet in the prison library. In fact, it turns out to be just about the only thing Russell does that isn’t a scam.

The movie’s wild swings between broad comedy and romantic drama do it no favors – it can’t decide what it wants to be and it can’t convincingly be both. In the end, I was left a bit baffled and not really caring about Steven Russell or his love affair with Phillip Morris.

Pop superstar Christina Aguilera plays Ali, a small-town girl from Iowa who struggles (for at least a day or two) to hit it big in Hollywood.  She finds the proverbial “home” and “family” at a struggling burlesque club on the Sunset Strip. It’s run by the tough, yet maternal, Tess, played by Cher who looks fabulous if not altogether fake.

Most of the characters are quite cliché, from the Kentucky-bred bartender/artist-wannabe who is Ali’s roommate and potential soul-mate (tasty eye candy played by Cam Gigandet)… to the rich “entrepreneur” who wants to buy out the club and make Ali a star (played totally to type by Eric Dane, a.k.a. Dr. McSteamy)… to Tess’s gay best friend and right-hand man, Sean (played by Stanley Tucci). Is it just me, or does Tucci always play the exact same character? He’s fun to watch, but the role doesn’t seem much of a stretch! Oh, and of course, every ingénue needs a rival. And in this case, it’s Nikki, played by the multi-talented Kristen Bell.

Burlesque is best watched on a really big screen in a theater with really good sound so you can pretend you’re at a show on Broadway or on the Vegas Strip. The movie has that stage vibe, which could help explain the over-abundance of over-acting. There’s really no forgiving the predictable, groan-inducing dialogue, but thankfully, the musical performances drive – and save- Burlesque.  Bell, Cher and Aguilera absolutely shine when taking their turns in the spotlight on center stage. You may not remember the songs later, but you’ll enjoy them in the moment. And that makes Burlesque good escapist fare for the music-minded masses. But if you’re not a fan of the musical genre to begin with, you may want to skip this one.