Hall Pass **

Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly

Cast: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis

Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Joy Behar

J.B. Smoove, Stephen Merchant, Richard Jenkins

Everyone in Hall Pass looks terrible. Leading men Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis sport crow's feet and physiques that lack fitness to say the least. Jenna Fischer shows strange sunburns and Richard Jenkins has the worst tan of all time.

Perhaps the Farrelly brothers thought that exposing actors as they "are" would give their film a shot at achieving some sort of emotional authenticity but not really...

What we end up with instead is an attempt of the crass filmmakers at creating the kind of comedies that Judd Apatow has excelled at during the last decade. Apatow's films display men-children forced to mature, usually by strong women, who shake up their hum drum lives with their knowledge, genitalia and love for them.

This is the only thing Hall Pass has in common with something like say The 40-Year Old Virgin, and it's that the film assumes that women were created to teach men lessons, even when this means they have to reduce their personalities to often overbearing examples of "she's being a bitch because she loves me".

In this case, Wilson and Sudeikis, play the horny husbands of Fischer and Applegate respectively. The two friends spend their days checking out women and fantasizing about how much they would get laid if they were single again (obviously Fischer and Applegate's characters always have headaches and come up with excuses to avoid intercourse with them).

When their hormonal behavior leads to social embarrassment, the women decide it's time to give them a "hall pass": they get an entire week off of marriage to satiate their sexual appetite.

The film then follows the guys as they spend their week attempting to have sex and usually failing. This obviously will lead them to realize that, like Dorothy, they have no other place like home, but before that they take part in Farrelly stunts that involve farting, African American penises, psychotic DJs and Jenkins playing an expert ladies' man.

At the center of the film there are some signs of something deeper than we'd expected and this is mostly seen through Applegate's character, who takes on a pseudo-affair of her own with a younger man.

Watching the talented comedienne you can't help but wish she was in a better movie, because she provides her character with melancholy traits that seem out of place in the rest of this frat-boy fest. Even if her character receives a ridiculous punishment for exploring her own sexual liberty (something that says more about the latent misogyny in the movie than its attempt at cherishing married love) she's perhaps the only time the movie ever comes close to achieving humanity.

The rest is a mildly funny excuse for defending immature male behavior filtered through humor that could've been ruder and less cringe worthy because of its forced warmth.

Eat Pray Love ***

Director: Ryan Murphy
Cast: Julia Roberts
Javier Bardem, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis
Billy Crudup, Hadi Subiyanto, Tuva Novotny, Mike O'Malley
Luca Argentero, Rushita Singh, David Lyons

How do you sell a movie about a woman who leaves her husband to find herself, while traveling to some of the most exotic locales on the planet? You get Julia Roberts to play her.
It makes no difference that Eat Pray Love is based on the autobiographical novel written by Elizabeth Gilbert, the truth is that perhaps there would've been no way to bring this movie to the screen without making it feel like a "whine fest" if it wasn't because Roberts turns it into a Julia Roberts movie.
Not to pay any disservice to Gilbert, since apparently those who love her book think it gets to be spiritual and transcendental, but the thing is that watching Julia on a movie screen immediately takes you to a place where movie stars still are gods of sorts and mortals can still drool over them.
This helps the movie because it helps make Gilbert approachable, given that we rarely think of her as an actual "normal" person, she's pretty much Julia Roberts' version of Gilbert.
This makes it easy to like Julia because it wouldn't really be easy to like Liz.
When the film begins she decides to leave her husband (Crudup) after figuring out she doesn't love him. She begins an affair with a young actor (Franco) who she doesn't love either and then decides it's time to travel the world and find her balance.
She begins her journey in Italy where she eats, then goes to India where she prays and culminates it in Bali where she loves (Bardem plays Felipe her Brazilian love interest).
Director Murphy (who also wrote the screenplay with Alice Salt) seems to have no real intention to make anything in the movie subtle.
Besides the obvious explanation of the title, he spends trying to digest everything for the audience. Along with director of photography Robert Richardson he tries to make everything seem like what we'd expect it to be.
Therefore the entire movie is bathed in a golden light that makes everything seem nice but doesn't really allow elements to breathe. Richardson who is an extraordinary DP, here seems restricted by the homogeneous look Murphy tries to impose on everything.
The same can be said about the editing, which more often than not seems overcompensating. The scenes where Liz eats are usually cut with such quickness that they make her bites seem car commercials, it's as if Murphy is too worried we would get too envious about the foods and chose not to show them too much and there's a particularly obnoxious scene where a woman's fashion success is celebrated by an entire crowd of football fans.
It's fortunate then that while Murphy digests for us, Julia gets to do the actual savoring. Her performance might not be a reinvention of modern acting but the actress shows glimpses of a maturity that she has experimented with very few times in her career.
Not only does she look more radiant and beautiful than ever but she also manages to infuse Liz with a certain sense of earthiness despite the whole "she's Julia" issue.
Even when the movie succumbs to cliché Julia takes it to a completely different place. For example it doesn't take long to assume Gilbert was a fan of Sex and the City given the way she narrates and tries too hard to deliver Carrie Bradshaw-isms, but Roberts takes these comments with a pinch of salt and instead of turning them into puns or teabag advice she confronts them and even make us wonder if Gilbert wasn't actually consciously creating a marketable product while trying to be spiritual (think Paulo Coelho minus the ominous hocus pocus).
After all this is a woman who literally had to begin from zero after an ugly divorce. It would make sense, and give her some humanity, to think that she was finding ways to make money after her trip was over.
Eat Pray Love rarely gives us a glimpse of the Julia Roberts laughter, you know that big, loud roar that's impossible to ignore, instead we get more of her soulful smile this time around.
Perhaps the screenplay doesn't really try hard to see what's behind Liz, her motivations rarely move past the "find myself" stereotype but Julia detected this and tries to explore it without acquiring methodical tics.
Instead of approaching Liz like a vessel waiting to be invaded, Roberts gets near her and tries to empathize, which is why it's evident that nobody else would've been able to play this woman and not make her seem selfish and to an extent an anti-heroine.
Because for all its soul searching and mumbo jumbo, Eat Pray Love is still very much about an American woman using the world to expiate her sins but without the selfawareness to make it a satire.
Because it has Roberts though it gains a heart, one that is broken on several occassions (mostly by herself) and because of this we leave the movie, not feeling patronized or offended but actually questioning what we just saw.
If people like Gilbert get to travel the world and still come up empty handed, what hope is there for the people who only get to travel from movie to movie looking for answers to their existential questions.
Murphy doesn't seem to know that his glossy travelogue might seem shallow but Julia does and with a comforting smile lets us know that however deep we sink in our own tragedies, almost everyone knows that a spoonful of gelato makes the world seem perfect even for at least a second.

Dear John *

Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Channing Tatum, Richard Jenkins
Henry Thomas, D.J. Cotrona, Cullen Moss, Gavin McCulley

Your knowledge of Nicholas Sparks' work doesn't need to be so extensive to know the kind of movie Dear John will be. His formula of doomed love, life threatening diseases and third act twists has been established in films like A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe and especially The Notebook.
This one is obviously not different but by now the formula is so established that this one isn't even fun.
The lovers this time are Savannah (Seyfried) and John (Tatum); she's a good girl who doesn't drink, smoke or curse and he's the former rebel now on army leave.
They meet when he rescues her purse after it falls on the ocean, she is so impressed by his lifesaving skills and pecs (after all her "whole life is in that bag") that two weeks later they're already declaring eternal love for each other.
During these two weeks they frolic in the beach, make out under the rain and Savannah even diagnoses John's coin-collecting father (Jenkins who obviously deserved better) as slightly autistic.
When John has to go back into service, they decide they will write each other and keep no secrets, which turns the film into a dull, uninspired version of a Green Day video. For almost half an hour Dear John takes on an epistolary form and the sun tinted, overlong montage that serves as background for the actors' readings, comes to a sudden end on 9/11.
John decides it's his duty to reenlist and their relationship enters a limbo that makes the film take a turn for the worse as it suggests that the evil war is responsible for the leads' tears.
Perhaps nothing about the movie intends to be fresh but little in it makes its existence justifiable. Tatum and Seyfried, while pretty to look at, have no chemistry and never evoke the angst and longing we're supposed to perceive from their tacky Now, Voyager redux quips about the moon.
The issue might not be the actors but the terrible writing which seems reasonable on the surface but might lead to some disturbing and complex realizations from anyone with the slightest analytical capacity.
In the time of instant gratification and e-mail, Savannah and John's love isn't only utterly fantastical but also fake; instead of breaking hearts the movie should serve to stimulate naive minds and make them realize that perhaps this so called love is nothing but fear of commitment represented through the perpetuation of a faux state of romance.
When the reasoning for a life altering decision is justified by saying "you think it was easy without you", it's fair to say that Dear John isn't an ode to the romantic but to the idiotic.

Burn After Reading ***

Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich
Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, J.K. Simmons, Brad Pitt

Gym employees Chad Feldheimer (Pitt) and Linda Litzke (McDormand) find a disc containing information they assume to be highly classified CIA information.
They link the disc to former CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), who has just been fired from his job and has decided to write his memoirs, to the disapproval of his wife Katie (Swinton) who is having an affair with Treasury agent, womanizer, Harry Pfarrer (Clooney) and has decided to divorce Osbourne.
Dim witted Chad sees the opportunity to get a reward for the safe return of the information, while Linda would finally get the cosmetic surgeries she desires in order to enter the next stage of her life as she sees it, but when they get rejected by Osbourne they approach the Russian Embassy unleashing screwball comedy that gets as dark as the Coen brothers can deliver.
"So we don't really know what anyone is after" goes CIA superior (J.K. Simmons who is in the film for two scenes but might be the ones you remember the most) when one of his employees briefs him on the actions of the other characters. Truth is we really don't know where anything is going, which doesn't diminish the joyful rush of the ride.
"Report back to me when it makes sense" he asks later on with no better results.
Aimlessly, but not purposely, throwing their characters into the plot like mice inside a labyrinth, the Coens seem to be having the time of their lives (and with reason considering their previous film) also providing the ensemble with some of the most entertaining roles they've played.
Clooney, who now seems part of their filmography is at his underrated best, playing a man who has found in sex the thrills he's lacking in his married life. What's wonderful about his character particularly is that the Coend don't turn him into a dislikable sex fiend, just as someone who is looking for what he needs in all the wrong places but has a real soul.
If the Coens planned to create characters exemplary for their idiocy, their plan backfires as they can't help but inject a certain amount of sincere emotional ache in all of them.
When we find Harry is building a gift for his wife we can't help but go aww, when we see what the gift is (where Clooney's eyes sparkle with puppy like fervor) we cringe while we go aww and when he leaves his lover's house offended, sex pillow under his arm, we know this could very well represent his heart.
Malkovich, at his neurotic best, is the poster boy for upper middle class failure. An alcoholic in denial, he moves into his yacht where he drinks and does aerobics as he plans his comeback to the world that shunned him. You laugh at him more than with him, but Malkovich doesn't really care, he's like a human version of Tom the cat.
Swinton is magnificent combining her ice queen qualities with an irresistible sex appeal. With Malkovich she reminds us that familiarity breeds contempt as she is disgusted by everything he does. Swinton doesn't even need to roll her eyes to let us know her apathy.
Pitt's Chad is a genius comedic creation, as the actor vanishes into this bleached blonde muscle machine who smiles when he has no other way of defense.
He never stops chewing gum or moving to what one can only assume is some sort of 90's Eurotrash piece on his iPod, he is ditzy and, scarily reminiscent of some political juggernauts (one whose picture is featured in the film), harmlessly likable.
McDormand's Linda is also some sort of small miracle, the actress absolutely devoid of any vanity becomes this insecure woman whose lack of self esteem comes off as a bizarre, almost admirable determination. "I've gotten about as far as this body can take me" she says and can you really blame her for seeking options instead of just moping?
The Washington D.C. in this film is some sort of bubble where bureaucracy and patriot paranoia gets in the way of common sense.
Everyone seems to think they're part of a bigger picture and with this the Coens (with a wicked eye for comedic detail) poke fun at the mindless fear that pervaded post 9/11 America, Carter Burwell's selfonsciously selfimportant score does a brilliant job highlighting this.
But they also deliver an acute observation of how people face aging; you might very well argue that "Burn After Reading" is a midlife fantasia, both for the Coens who have become filmmakers of whom one expects only great cinema amidst their undeniable flops and of all the characters to whom their actions, as idiotic as they result, might be their last chance of making a difference for self and country.

The Visitor **

Director: Thomas McCarthy
Cast: Richard Jenkins
Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira, Hiam Abbass

Richard Jenkins plays Walter Vale a lonely, college Connecticut professor who goes to New York for a conference and discovers Tarek (Sleiman) and Zainab (Gurira), a young couple that has been squatting in his apartment.
After kicking them out, he feels compassion and invites them to stay over until they find a better place to live. In the process he befriends Tarek who is a talented djembe (Syrian drum) player while slowly earning the trust if Zainab.
The young couple gets him out of his rut, until immigration problems arise and Walter must prove his humanity.
For a film that tries so much to keep small proportions, "The Visitor" retains an underlying condescension that makes it more uncomfortable than sweet.
Writer/director McCarthy tries to deliver both a story about second chances and an exposé on the way immigrants are treated in the United States without really backing up his ideas.
It's as if the plot has a backup plan, thinking that if it doesn't work in a certain way, they will always be able to push the other way.
The melting pot that is New York City brings an organic feeling to the movie, but this can't be attributed to the filmmakers but rather to the inevitability to escape the richness brought by the multiculturality of the city.
What can be attributed to the film are the beautiful performances from all the ensemble. Jenkins gives a master class in subtlety and layering. While his professor could've been an eccentric Grinch of sorts, Jenkins knows better and lets him blossom slowly.
The beauty of his performance is that you're never able to detect the moment where his characters turns into something else.
Sleiman is charismatic and irresistible as is Abbass, who plays Tarek's mother in a role whose quiet dignity and class screams "Shoreh Agdashloo".
But at the end the film can't help but feel a bit inconsistent, because someone like Walter, who harbors so much pain and anger, wouldn't have let two immigrants off the hook for living ilegally in his apartment just like that (he didn't even take a late paper from one of his students!), especially not when the film highlights 9/11 paranoia so much.
And then with all of its worldly wisdom, McCarthy can't help but limit his vision and make the film feel like everything happened in order so that the well to do American learnt a lesson.