Olivia Wilde Page 4

This may look like it's going to be a zany Christmas romp, but it's really a warm exploration of family connections, essentially an American take on Love Actually's multi-strand comedy-drama. At least it has an unusually strong cast and moments of hilarity scattered throughout the story. And while it's never very deep, the themes are strongly resonant.

The Cooper family is gathering for what Charlotte (Diane Keaton) hopes will be one last perfect Christmas together. She knows that her 40-year marriage to Sam (John Goodman) is on the brink, but is ignoring that to plan a massive dinner. Their son Hank (Ed Helms) is stinging from divorce and unemployment, while daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) has picked up a hunky soldier (Jake Lacy) in the airport and asks him to pose as her boyfriend so her family will stop asking about her love life. Meanwhile, Charlotte's father Bucky (Alan Arkin) is trying to cheer up his favourite waitress (Amanda Seyfried), and Charlotte's sister Emma (Marisa Tomei) is delayed when a cop (Anthony Mackie) arrests her for shoplifting.

Narrated with wry joviality by Steve Martin, the interwoven stories are fairly simplistic, but each touches a raw nerve. And the above-average cast brings out the underlying themes without overplaying their scenes. Keaton and Goodman add subtle shades to the slightly undemanding central roles, while Arkin finds a couple of new textures to his usual twinkly grandad persona. Helms and Wilde strike the right balance in their intriguingly unlikeable roles, while Tomei gets the most complex character as a woman who feels like she's merely watched her life drift along. By contrast, the outsiders played by Seyfried, Lacy and Mackie are much less defined, but each actor brings just enough magnetic energy. The most wasted performer is June Squibb, as a ditzy old aunt who's little more than the requisite gross-out relative.

Continue reading: Love The Coopers (aka Christmas With The Coopers) Review

With a focus on messy family relationships, this thriller's deranged comical touches almost make up for its contrived plot and annoyingly thin characters. Director Ruzowitzky (an Oscar winner for The Counterfeiters) makes the most of the snowy landscapes and an eclectic cast, but the jarring combination of grisly violence, black humour, romance and drama never quite comes together.

In a northern Michigan blizzard, Addison (Bana) is on the run with his sister Liza (Wilde) after a casino heist. When their car crashes in the snow, they decide to head for the Canadian border separately. Liza is picked up off the road by Jay (Hunnam), a hunky ex-con boxer who's stopping to see his parents his parents (Spacek and Kristofferson) while running from the cops himself. Addison encounters a variety of local characters himself as he tries to catch up with Liza. And the local sheriff (Williams) relentlessly picks on deputy Hanna (Mara), his daughter, as they track the fugitives through the snow.

Every relationship in this film is deeply dysfunctional, and the actors have a great time playing with the soapy wrinkles. Bana and Wilde play up the creepy innuendo between the siblings, while the contrived romance between Wilde and Hunnam is like the set-up for a porn movie. Meanwhile, Mara's ambitious cop is so belittled by her awful dad and his equally sexist deputies that we don't really mind it when they start dying one by one in their encounters with Addison. And holding everything together is the wonderfully level-headed Spacek, who carries on cooking dinner while her husband goes out to shoot a deer, then cheerfully serves pie even with a shotgun levelled at her head.

Continue reading: Deadfall Review

Like a Russian nesting doll, this film tells a story within a story within another story, playing around with fact and fiction, as well as the nature of creative inspiration and integrity. These themes are thoroughly engaging, although the film has a nagging familiarity to it because of its cliched story elements. And the structure prevents us from getting properly involved in any of the three story strands.

The main narrator is Clay (Quaid), who is reading from his book The Words, which tells the story of writer Rory (Cooper) and his wife Dora (Saldana), who struggled for five years before his first novel was published to rapturous acclaim from both critics and the public. But out of the shadows emerges an old man (Irons) who knows Rory's secret: he found the manuscript for the novel in a briefcase he bought in a Paris junk shop, then passed it off as his own. So the old man in turn tells Rory his own story, about when he was a younger man (Barnes) in Paris married to a French waitress (Arnezeder).

The layered storytelling lets filmmakers explore quite a few big issues, from the way most novels are based on elements from the writers' lives to the ruthlessness of the publishing industry, in which even the most talented authors struggle to earn a living. But of course, most of the characters in the film are fictional, so we never become very invested in their situations. And the only "real" person is Quaid's cocky, leery Clay, who's engaged in squirm-inducing flirtation with a grad student (Wilde) who stalks him.

Continue reading: The Words Review

While not the laugh riot it could have been, this comedy consistently amuses us with its pastiche characters and silly gags. It threatens to get bogged down in sentiment at a few points along the way, but manages to veer back into something witty just in time. And while none of the characters are quite as classic as Anchorman's Ron Burgundy, it's an entertaining addition to the affectionate-spoof genre, which includes Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights.

The events take place in the sequin-filled world of Las Vegas magicians, where childhood pals Burt and Anton (Carell and Buscemi) have packed out their theatre for 10 years. But their new assistant Jane (Wilde) is surprised to see that it's now performance by numbers for them, and they can barely stand the sight of each other. Meanwhile, the egomaniac Burt won't consider freshening the act even when faced with competition from attention-seeking street magician Steve (Carrey), who's stealing their audience. But the hotel owner (Gandolfini) urges them to try a big stunt themselves. Or maybe they should return to their roots with their old-school mentor Rance (Arkin).

Carell creates a remarkably believable idiot in Burt Wonderstone, an arrogant womaniser who clearly needs to be brought down a peg or two. What's impressive is how likeable he is, even opposite Buscemi's more sympathetic (but less interesting) Anton. Arkin delivers his usual dryly hilarious supporting turn, while Wilde and Gandolfini do little more than play gently with their usual images. By contrast, Carrey's performance is much more broadly comical. He's funny but far too clownish to ever be taken as a serious threat.

Continue reading: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone Review

There's an intriguing true story buried inside this overly structured drama, and by playing by simplistic screenwriting rules the filmmakers make everything trite and predictable. Fortunately, the cast is much better than the material, and they bring their characters to life with jaggedly engaging interaction and some resonant emotion.

The story centres on Sam (Pine), a fast-talking New York salesman who is in big trouble professionally. So when his estranged father dies in Los Angeles, it gives him a chance to escape. He heads off to see his mother (Pfeiffer) and find out what he has inherited. But the lawyers hand him a bag of cash that he has to give to smart 11-year-old Josh (D'Addario), whose barmaid mother Frankie (Banks) is the half-sister Sam never knew he had. Without revealing his identity, he worms his way into Frankie and Josh's life. But the Feds are catching up with him, and Frankie is about to learn who he really is.

This is one of those films that hinges completely on the characters' inability to talk to each other. So one honest conversation at the beginning would make this a very short movie! But no, the screenwriters force everything into an unnatural formula that completely undermines the genuinely interesting things going on. Even so, the actors manage to hold our interest, mainly due to some terrific chemistry. At the centre, Pine nicely holds his own in scenes with the wonderful Pfeiffer and Banks, while D'Addario proves to be a young actor to keep an eye on. Meanwhile, side characters add texture, most notably Duplass as a neighbour with the hots for Frankie, and Wilde as Sam's frazzled girlfriend.

Continue reading: People Like Us Review

While Dave (Bateman) has become a successful lawyer, complete with gorgeous wife Jamie (Mann) and three kids, his childhood friend Mitch (Reynolds) is living like a slacker with a string of random women. One night they wish they had each other's life and the next morning they wake up in each other's skin.

Of course, after the initial wackiness, Mitch is going to have to learn how to take Dave's responsibilities seriously, while Dave will need to discover how to relax and live a little. But how can they return to their own bodies?

Continue reading: The Change-up Review

Jake (Craig) wakes up in the desert with no memory of who he is or why he has a strange metal bracelet clamped onto his arm. He staggers into a dusty town, where the sheriff (Carradine) helps him until he clashes with local bully Percy (Dano), the son of power-mad landowner Dolarhyde (Ford), who has a history with Jake. But when strange airborne "demons" attack the town, Jake discovers that his bracelet is a weapon that can fight them. So Dolarhyde drafts him into a posse to hunt them down.

Continue reading: Cowboys & Aliens Review

Former Marine and perpetual bad boy Tim Kearney (Paul Walker) has been asked to do just that. Serving a long prison sentence for all manner of illegal activities, Kearney is given conditional release if he's willing to impersonate the missing Bobby Z. DEA agent Tad Grusza (Laurence Fishburne) sets Kearney up for the exchange. Kearney looks enough like Bobby Z to pass muster, but the exchange goes to hell and Kearney is left to fend for himself. When he's captured and taken to Don Huerto's (Joaquim de Almeida) palatial Mexican estate, he meets Bobby Z's old flame Elizabeth (the striking Olivia Wilde) and her teenaged son, Kit, who just might be his (well, Bobby Z's) kid. Because Kearney isn't Bobby Z, and because he's far too brash and selfless, all sorts of trouble ensues.

Continue reading: Bobby Z Review

What immediately sets Conversations apart is how, over its 85 minutes, it makes such fun and inventive use of the split-screen technique. The technique's most obvious function is to convey how the story's man and woman (Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter), no matter their passion for each other, inhabit disparate and irreconcilable worlds. But it goes brilliantly beyond that, using split-screen also for flashbacks, triggered by memory, in which younger versions of the characters (Erik Eidem and Nora Zehetner), play out the halcyon days of their long-ago romance. What's more, the details of these flashbacks warp and alter, depending on who's doing the remembering. In an intriguing twist, the split-screen projects not only alternate versions of the past, but of the present too -- showing variations on small but important moments either as a character perceives they happened or he/she wishes they had. It's a sensationally expressive use of a tired cinematic device, now revitalized and itself revitalizing a tired genre.

Continue reading: Conversations With Other Women Review