GireWire

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), left, takes on a young Wall Street trader (Shia LaBeouf) in “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”

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In Oliver Stone’s sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” financial uber-villain Gordon Gekko goes soft, the characters around him go soft in the head, and the director who hard-balled capitalism in his 1987 drama “Wall Street” has apparently misplaced his political Viagra.

“Money Never Sleeps” celebrates the return of Gekko, who won a best actor Oscar for Michael Douglas just for delivering his now-classic speech praising unregulated capitalism. (“Greed is good,” he says to room full of investors. “Greed works!”)

Stone attempts to capture lightning in bottle again by having Gekko – reprised by a much older Douglas, of course – address students with an update on the “Greed” speech.

He tells them that not only is greed still good, “apparently, now it’s legal!”

That’s it?

The original “Wall Street” cast Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, a naive young stock trader who learns the worst from the best. He winds up in the hoosegow for illegal practices, but he still takes down his mentor the great Gekko by wearing a wire for the cops.

Gekko has served his time and gets sprung into the world like a financial Darth Vader, except his constant uttering of philosophical axioms (“It takes a fisherman to see another fisherman on the horizon!”) makes him sound like Yoda writing fortune cookie sayings for Wall Street restaurants.

As he did in “Wall Street,” Stone teases us with quick glimpses of Gekko, building up our anticipation to see how he’s weathered prison. (Read more…)

A family (Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristen Bell and the immortal Betty White) star in the revenge-themed comedy “You Again.”

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“High school was a horror movie!” Marni shrieks. “And this weekend was the sequel!”

Actually, if Marni could see her own movie “You Again,” she would realize high school was nothing compared to the horror that she’s giving us.

A listless, draggy, torpid revenge comedy, “You Again” throws characters of varying degrees of dislikeability on the screen, gives them inane things to say (“I’m so sorry I was evil!”) and stupid things to do. (A woman falling once is not funny. Falling down twice? Really not funny.)

“You Again” is also a dishonest movie that doesn’t make any effort to keep track of its own history. One key character, the beautiful Joanna (Odette Yustman), supposedly has seen the light, repented for being a bully in high school and become a better person.

No, she didn’t.

Joanna is a proven liar who clearly has continued her bullying ways. Yet, the ending to Andy Fickman’s comedy must ignore all this in order for it to make sense.

Kristen Bell plays Marni, who went through high school as a zit-infested, brace-wearing nerd subjected to intimidation and harassment by the beautifully evil Joanna.

Years later, Marni has come into her own beauty and evolved into a successful PR executive whose brother Will (James Wolk) is getting married.

To Joanna!

Or as Marni refers to her, Satan’s Spawn.

When Marni meets Joanna, she’s shocked. Joanna doesn’t recognize her from high school. Or does she? (Read more…)

The poorly animated “Alpha and Omega” features the voice talents of Hayden Panettiere and Justin Long as the lupine title characters.

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Early this summer when I was a guest on the now-defunct, local CBS morning news show “Monsters and Money,” I was asked about the future of 3-D movies.

I said that the biggest danger to the current 3-D boom will come when the market gets flooded with cheaply made, poor-quality 3-D films and the term “3-D” will quickly become associated with mediocrity, or worse.

Here comes the beginning of that flood.

“Alpha and Omega” traffics in the sort of sophomoric storytelling and shortchanged animation we’d expect to see on a Saturday morning cartoon rush-job.

This isn’t to say that “Alpha and Omega” is a terrible motion picture with no redeeming values. (The 2008 3-D “Fly Me to the Moon” was far dumber with flatter, more lackluster animation.)

For a feature theatrical release, though, “Alpha and Omega” just can’t compete with the polish of a Pixar picture, or other more sophisticated animated productions from DreamWorks SKG.

This movie comes from Crest Animation Productions, an India-based company with a satellite office in Los Angeles.

The press notes brag that while most big-budget animated movies take an average of three years to create, Crest managed to make “Alpha and Omega” in half the time.

Uh, did Crest ever think there might be a good reason those other animated movies took three years to make? (Read more…)

Olive (Emma Stone) narrates her own version of how she earned a scarlet letter in the high school comedy “Easy A.”

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Emma Stone possesses soft, come-hither eyes that could drink in the oceans, a sexually playful, raw, husky voice that could melt icebergs, and a feminine fragility that summons forth the protector in males.

“Easy A” fulfills the promise that this remarkable young actress showed in the horror/comedy “Zombieland.” She single-handedly carries her sassy new high school sex comedy with crates of confidence, charisma and charm.

In “Easy A” (also one of the smartest, cleverest titles in recent years), Stone tosses out a career-making performance fraught with conflicting emotions, torn loyalties and adolescent confusion, all built upon a foundation of Christ-like good will toward men.

Stone’s seemingly effortless performance does wonders to cover the sins of the movie, such as a weak, tentative use of her character as a Christ symbol, the ridiculous overuse of the word “awesome!” (nine times) and a blatant pandering to 1980s nostalgia at the cost of the story’s unnecessarily sacrificed originality.

Stone plays Olive Pendergast, a high schoolgirl who narrates her story via a streaming broadcast from her computer. She lays out everything that has happened, complete with chapter titles.

One day in the restroom, Olive’s best pal Rhia (Aly Michalka) pushes her hard to find out what she did on the weekend. To shut her up, Olive tells a white lie: She lost her virginity to a college guy.

Faster than you can run around the campus with a super-speeded-up camera lens, rumors spread that Olive has become a woman.

This works well thematically for Olive, who’s studying Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” in English class, taught by the cool Mr. Griffith (Thomas Hayden Church). (Read more…)

Two pals (director Ben Affleck, left, and Jeremy Renner) pose as cops to rob Fenway Park in the crime drama “The Town.”

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“The Town” is a slickly constructed heist thriller that dares to suggest that a person born in violence and brokenness can yearn for something better and can muster the strength to break the cultural and familial chains that have kept him a prisoner all of his life.

Yet, just like breaking up, breaking away is hard to do.

This impressive crime drama – directed with assured style and unexpected humor by star Ben Affleck – deftly balances an empathetic character study with the obligatory genre elements of cat-and-mouse game, car chases and lots of guns blasting away.

A harrowing car chase through the narrow streets of Boston is the showcase sequence in “The Town,” with Dylan Tichenor’s pulse-pumping editing every bit as tight as the tiny alleys negotiated by getaway cars and police cruisers.

One of the toughest denizens of this world is Doug MacRay (Affleck), a working-class guy in Charlestown, Mass., a piece of turf that we’re informed has spawned more bank robbers and armored-car plunderers than any place else in the country.

MacRay works as part of an elite team of local robbers who hit both banks and armored cars with impunity.

They strike with split-second accuracy. They know how to cover their tracks with bleach and fire. They know not to do anything that might compromise their capitalistic enterprise.

Until the day when MacRay, his lifelong pal Jim Coughlin (“Hurt Locker” star Jeremy Renner) and their team put on masks, storm a bank and force a pretty executive to open the safe.

Coughlin insists on taking the woman, Claire Keesey (a charismatic, fresh-faced Rebecca Hall), hostage just in case, although he releases her unharmed.

Worried that she might be able to identify the robbers, MacRay pretends to be a regular guy at a Laundromat. Just to, you know, check up on her. (Read more…)

Actor Joaquin Phoenix takes the microphone to reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician in Casey Affleck’s “I’m Still Here.”

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If Casey Affleck’s new movie “I’m Still Here” had been a genuine exploration of Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix’s wacked-out journey to become a white hip-hop star, it would have been a shocking, revelatory glimpse into the painful limits that a real artist will go to find personal fulfillment.

But “I’m Still Here” is a wax job, a fake, a put-on, a sham.

Some scenes appear to be real documentary footage cut in with the hocus-pocus. But for the most part, signs of directed fiction are all over this project.

First, nobody objects to having Affleck’s camera around 24/7 recording every intimate detail of their lives.

Nobody demands the camera be shut-off or refuses to talk (although Sean Combs at least asks Phoenix why he brought a camera crew to his apartment late at night before he lets them in).

Whole scenes scream “set up.”

In the most obvious one, Affleck’s night-vision camera captures — in a happy accident of good timing? — a disgruntled “assistant” named Anton pulling down his pants to defecate on Phoenix while he sleeps in his bed.

Phoenix’s assistants (well-endowed males with apparently no qualms about full-frontal shots) don’t get last names. A Newsweek “journalist” gets no name at all. (Read more…)

Garrett (Justin Long) meets Erin (Drew Barrymore) in a bar in “Going the Distance,” a romance about faraway lovers.

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Erin and Garrett have been separated for too long while working in different cities, so they decide to indulge in some phone sex.

But after thrashing out the embellished details of their fantasized tryst – car vs. elevator? – the two long-distance lovers finally cave to frustration.

“This isn’t really working!” Erin confesses.

Neither is “Going the Distance,” a romantic comedy surprisingly light on romance and fun, but heavy on the sort of randy vulgarity that falls way short of riotous humor.

Documentary film director Nanette “American Teen” Burstein directed “Going the Distance,” and she follows the formula of producer/director Judd Apatow in his string of successful comedies (“Superbad,” “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” plus others).

Her movie proves it’s not all that easy to duplicate Apatow’s ability to find the right balance between empathetic characters and wince-inducing, gross-out gags.

Garrett (Justin Long) meets Erin (Drew Barrymore) at a video game in a New York bar soon after being dumped by his girlfriend. They chat. They flirt. They bond.

He works as an assistant in a record company. She serves as an intern with the fictional New York Sentinel newspaper.

With Erin scheduled to jet back to her San Francisco home in two weeks, Garrett proposes a long-distance relationship, and she accepts.

So, the couple embarks on a naive quest to date by Skype, until the impersonal grind takes its predictable toll on the two and forces them to reconsider their options. (Read more…)

Danny Trejo plays “Machete,” a legendary ex-Federale with a deadly attitude, originally created for a fake movie trailer.

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“Machete” is a deliriously daffy tribute to the over-the-top, 1970s grindhouse features flooded with excessive nudity, sex, violence and hilarious tough-guy dialogue.

Its villains include a cruel Mexican drug lord, a corrupt U.S. senator and a militia commander who shoots illegal immigrants for sport – to protect America, of course.

Its un-young hero, Machete, apparently can’t be killed and never needs Viagra.

The women are sexy all of the time, naked some of the time, and when they actually wear something, it tends to be stiletto heels and leather halter tops or else a nun’s habit.

But we’re getting ahead of the story.

Character actor Danny Trejo plays the title character, a dedicated Mexican Federale who, in the opening sequence, disobeys orders to stay put and charges into a drug lord’s den to rescue a kidnapped woman.

Torrez, the “Mexican drug lord,” is played by paunchy former action superstar Steven Seagal. (Oh, that must be why he didn’t have time to star in “The Expendables.”)

After Machete has already sliced through Torrez’s henchmen like a lawn mower through crabgrass (he performs a monumental quality kill by cutting three heads off with a single stroke!), Torrez captures Machete and executes his wife in front of his eyes.

We don’t see all of it, because a really bad and clumsy edit deletes the throat-slashing moment.

This is part of the “Machete” appeal. (Read more…)

George Clooney plays Jack, an American assassin in Rome, in the European-flavored espionage drama “The American.”

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Anton Corbijn’s contemplative espionage drama “The American” marks a throwback to the existentialist spy movies of the 1960s flavored with a touch of European cinema.

That’s code for: It doesn’t come close to the action-packed thriller that the trailers and TV commercials suggest.

This fatalistic character study – and this film does a lot of studying – is steeped in the creeping sense of paranoia, isolation, distrust and loneliness experienced by an American assassin named Jack, played with soulful eyes and a heavy heart by George Clooney.

Forget the hyperactive high jinks of Jason Bourne and the thrills of a 007 feature film.

If “The American” recalls Ian Fleming’s James Bond, it’s only during the spy’s literary, never-filmed introspective moments when Agent 007 exercised in his hotel room to stay fit and stave off boredom.

Clooney plays Jack, an American agent whom we never know much about.

After dispatching an attacker during a snowy shootout in Sweden, Jack gets orders from his gravel-voiced supervisor (Johan Leysen) to head to Rome and wait. And wait.

Eventually, Jack meets his conscience in the form of a kindly priest (Paolo Bonacelli) who possesses a heart of gold and exceptional English skills.

Jack also meets his might-have-been dream girl in the form of a beautiful, loving prostitute (Rome-born actress Violante Placido) who also possesses a heart of gold and absolutely no latent male hatred issues.

The plot, or what passes for one in “The American,” kicks in when a hot, international assassin of vague political orientation (Thekla Reuten) approaches Jack to build a specialized weapon she can use for an unspecified target. (Read more…)

A.J. (Hayden Christensen) launches into action as one of several efficient bank robbers in the action drama “Takers.”

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“Takers” ranks as one of the most pretentious, ill-conceived and badly botched heist movies ever made.

“We’re takers!” shouts Gordon Jennings (Idris Elba), leader of a band of efficient and elusive L.A. bank robbers. “We take!”

They sure do.

They take the famous armored car robbery plot from “The Italian Job.” They take the messy hotel room shootout from “True Romance.” They take the final scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (plus the line “Who are those guys?”). They take the street gunfights from “Heat.”

They take and take and take!

And what do they give us in return?

A dour, soulless action movie riddled with dopey, expository dialogue, dislikable characters, horribly misplaced music (a sad cello playing during a violent shootout?) and a hyper editing style so cranked up and blurry that you can’t tell what’s going on in most of the action sequences.

This last criticism is particularly annoying when bank robber Jesse Attica (Chris Brown) leads cop Jack Welles (Matt Damon) on a dynamic street chase through L.A. and escapes by performing some of the best and boldest parkour moves since the French thriller “District B-13.”

But the sequence has been shot so tight and edited so quick that we never really see how magnificent these stunts are. “Takers” actually undermines its own quality. (Read more…)