Note: There are two portions to this review. This first one will not contain spoilers. The second portion does include spoilers and will discuss some of the film in more detail. It will be clearly marked. Think of them as notes.

Superman is one of the more iconic superheroes around. I think almost everyone knows his signature pose and the signature “S” on his chest. However, in modern times the number of people actually interested in Superman seem to have declined. It’s not uncommon to hear people call Superman “boring.” And they’re right: It’s hard to care for a character that’s perfect, has little chance of dying and doesn’t face any thing that matches his power.

Man of Steel directly attacks those weaknesses, and for the most part they succeed. The trio of Christopher Nolan, David Goyer and Zack Snyder realize the weaknesses of the character and make great efforts to not only modernize him, but make people care about him and give him something of an equal to face off against.

Firstly, Man of Steel throws away the traditional structure of a superhero story in favor of something more refreshing: flashbacks. After a prologue on Krypton that’s a little too long, we jump straight into the life of Clark Kent as an adult. He travels the world saving people, switching up identities so he’s hard to track. During these rescue efforts we flashback to when Clark was a kid to see some of the more important moments of his childhood.

All of those moments are emotional ones that actually make you feel for Clark Kent. Sure, he’s got all these super powers and can do anything he wants, but he can’t. So he has to live as an outcast on the edge of society. It really makes you feel for this kid. He’s dealing with things that kids shouldn’t have to. He’s a kid after all, he should be worrying about girls and having fun. Not holding himself and his emotions back so he can stay hidden. It’s tragic.

Nolan isn’t the biggest superhero fan. His Dark Knight Trilogy mostly does away with any superhero genre stuff and instead replaces it with what he knows best: hard crime and James Bond. Nolan and Goyer do something similar with Man of Steel. Rather than make a superhero movie about Superman, they’ve made something that’s a lot more similar to a science fiction alien invasion film. This works fairly well, and it brings about one of the more interesting ideas that this film has: how would Earth react if we had an alien not only living among us, but could do things we couldn’t imagine?

Unfortunately, that idea isn’t explored a lot. A lot of this has to do with the fact that General Zod enters the picture and doesn’t give anyone time to really react. But I still do wish they could have explored that a bit deeper.

What they did explore deeper was the action. The spectacle and scope of this film is quite amazing and is one the rare times in a movie theater that a big, dopey smile I couldn’t contain spread across my face. Granted, I smile a lot during films – especially animated ones – but this was the biggest, dopiest smile since The Avengers. There’s one fight scene in Smallville that’s especially good and thrilling. Unfortunately, the final action scene doesn’t quite measure up but it still brought out my big, dopey smile.

Cinema hasn’t really nailed how to show superhumans fighting each other. And I’m not talking superhumans with specific powers. I’m talking human beings that can do anything. The closest we’ve come is Chronicle, which showed off the potential thrill of human flight in addition to flying fisticuffs. Man of Steel takes that and turns it up to 11. It truly is nothing like you’ve seen before.

All the credit in the world to Zack Snyder for that. He brings a scope and scale that we haven’t really seen in a superhero film before, with The Avengers being the closest example. It’s thrilling and will have people walking out of the theater saying “awesome.” Luckily, Snyder also throws out one of his trademarks in this film: slow motion. He doesn’t really use it, though he does replace it with some weird zoom thing that gets distracting, but it’s nice to see him reign himself in.

Overall, I liked Snyder’s work here. He brings this new Superman world to life, gives us bombastic CG-filled action and put together a great cast. Henry Cavill is wonderful as Superman and I can’t wait to see him do more. Michael Shannon is intimidating and stubborn and Amy Adams is strong as Lois Lane. Diane Lane and Kevin Costner are wonderful as Ma and Pa Kent, with Costner turning every scene he’s in into a tearjerker. The stand out is Antje Traue as the terrifying second-in-command Faora.

And of course, Hans Zimmer deserves all the credit in the world for his score. Although it’s used one too many times for crescendos.

And that brings me to this: Man of Steel isn’t perfect. Far from it, actually. The pace feels uneven at points, with the prologue at Krypton being the biggest offender. It moves far too slowly and was a big bore. The camera work gets really hectic at points, which manifests itself the most in the final fight scene. It’s intensely hard to get a fix on who’s doing what in that scene.

Superman’s arc also feels a bit mishandled once the big fight scenes start happening. That’s not quite surprising since there’s no narrative driving force throughout the entire film (like Joker in The Dark Knight). The script isn’t very tight and floats around at points with tons of exposition that constantly breaks the show, don’t tell rule and lessens the impact a bit. Oh, and there’s also an unearned action between Lois Lane and Superman that feels like it was thrown in just because. The action also gets a bit exhausting near the end. I want to say that’s by design because these are superhumans and we can’t even comprehend how difficult it is to do what they do, but I can’t be sure.

Despite all its very real and very harmful flaws, I enjoyed the crap out of Man of Steel. Not only have I never seen a Superman movie like this, I’ve never felt for Superman in any of the other movies what I feel for this Superman in this movie. I can’t wait to see this Superman again. I also anticipate seeing this Superman alongside some of the other DC heroes. Man of Steel may not be perfect or even great, but it had me wanting more. And that’s all that matters.

SPOILERS

Think of this as a supplemental section to the review purely for those who’ve seen the film. It’s more like my notes on what I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy in detail. This contains massive spoilers, so please avoid reading this if you haven’t seen the film. You’ve been warned.

I think one of my favorite parts of this film is that Superman and Zod are polar opposites. That’s what a good film should have, by the way. Superman is the young protector of Earth that hasn’t fully accepted that role yet. He doesn’t want to protect Earth but it’s something that he’s compelled to do. By the end of the film he fully accepts being Earth’s protector as long as he can do it on his terms.

Zod, on the other hand, is the established protector of Krypton. He will protect them at any cost, even if that means wiping out a planet to do it. That’s his goal and anything standing in the way will be demolished. Ultimately, the cost for Superman to save humanity is to wipe out his people.

One thing I didn’t like was that unearned kiss between Superman and Lois Lane. The two certainly had chemistry throughout the film, but I didn’t feel like they had enough to kiss when they thought the world was won. Supes certainly admired her for believing in him, but come on.

The prolonged Krypton prologue was a bore. I’m not quite sure if the content there was dull, whether I was just waiting for them to jettison Kal-El to Earth or whether it was paced slowly – but it was a bore. In this way, Man of Steel reminded me of The Avengers, which also had a bore of an opening. It also feels unnecessary as Russell Crowe shows up later to tell the story once again, but in a more interesting way.

I also really liked that we got to see a younger Superman. A Superman that really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He barely knows the full extent of his powers. He’s still learning and growing and that’s pretty exciting. In previous films, Superman always knew what he was doing and was able to dictate. He can’t do that here and that makes him a lot more compelling in my eyes.

I really, really did enjoy this movie though. Despite it’s flaws, it’s a must see.

This Is The End is quite the risk. Not in the box office way, because it’s filled with recognizable stars, but in the quality way. It’s not often you see a bunch of friends get together to make a movie where they play themselves during a spiritual armageddon story.

After all, The Watch tried something similar. It took a group of actors that work well together and made a movie featuring spiritual aspects. It was terrible. This Is The End realizes that what they’re doing is a tricky proposition and they maneuver around that with a very smart script.

The story revolves around Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel, playing exaggerated versions of themselves like everyone else in this film, reuniting after a long time. The two are old friends, with Rogen having success in Hollywood while Baruchel shuns that lifestyle for a more grounded life in Canada.

And that’s really the core of the film. It’s about friendship. It’s about that time in your life when you have really good friends, but your career is changing your life and yourself. What happens when your career makes you new friends? Do you push away your old ones? Do you meld the two? That’s the core of the film and it feels really personal as I’m sure Rogen and crew have gone through the same thing.

After all, this is a group of comedic actors that have known each other for ever. A lot of them met during the filming of Freaks and Geeks in 1999 and they’ve stayed friends since. Some are uber successful, like James Franco, Jonah Hill and Rogen while others are a little more fringe, like Jay Baruchel.

That’s the core of the film, but the layer of comedy over it really works. Many of the jokes are of two varieties: making fun of everyone’s public persona or poking fun of what it feels like to be part of a group of old friends. These guys are friends so their “character” versions of themselves really come across as good friends. They all have great chemistry and it really sells the group dynamic. It also brings to mind plenty of moments that you yourself have had with friends.

Plainly, this movie is hilarious and there’s a lot of different types of jokes in here. There are dirty jokes, there are jokes that are set up and paid off later in the film, there are wordplay jokes, sexual jokes and they even use a brand of absurdist random humor. The ending segment is one part of that absurdist humor and I think it worked perfectly.

If there’s a negative aspect to this movie it’s that the spiritual armageddon stuff might turn people off. The movie is so good and even grounded at parts that the spiritual portions kind of dull any impact. A special mention must go out to the monster effects though, which are easily some of the more inventive ones in recent memory. Also, folks that are easily annoyed by this group of actors may find some of these guys grating, but they make fun of their weak points enough where you can’t help but like them.

Overall, the strong friendship theme in the film along with the humor works in a wonderful way, making this one of the more funny movies this year.

Man of Steel is four days away. It’s a day that a lot of movie geeks have waited for: a pure reboot of Superman. It’s also a day that comic book fans have waited for: a modern take on an aging hero. But is it any good?

Well, a bunch of critics got to see the film in the past couple weeks and were sworn to secrecy. Magically, no one broke this embargo so we get a nice rush of reviews tonight. So let’s get on with it:

IndieWire’s Eric Kohn liked it, but had problems with it:

Impressive in parts, scattered and blandly familiar in others, “Man of Steel” attempts to rejuvenate its hero with a whole lot of big ideas stuffed into a dense assemblage that alternates between visual wizardry and complicated non-linear plot ingredients, some better than others.

Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci felt the same way:

The script is also herky jerky in construction – the movie has a few beats too many, and some of the elements could have been gracefully condensed together (ie, every subplot has maybe one scene too many. The film could lose one scene with the military, one scene at the Daily Planet, etc). That’s almost ironic because so many of the film’s character beats are perfunctory, sketched quickly based on the assumption that we know these characters already. The story itself feels tortured, and the character bits within it feel underserved.

Faraci, however, said the film rose above those flaws:

Whatever problems Man of Steel has – and it has enough to keep it from being a cohesively great movie – it has enough good to make it a must-see.

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter also agrees:

Zack Snyder’s huge, backstory-heavy extravaganza is a rehab job that perhaps didn’t cry out to be done but proves so overwhelmingly insistent in its size and strength that it’s hard not to give in.

Drew McWeeny of HitFix says that he loved the film’s take on Superman:

Snyder’s film, written by David Goyer and starring an impeccably cast ensemble, is remarkable mythmaking, a canny spin on the oft-told details that have defined the character over time. While there is plenty about it that can be be described as new, the bones of it are instantly familiar. Make no mistake; this is Superman. For my own personal sensibilities, this is the most interesting, emotionally-satisfying, richly imagined version of the story. Ever. Comics, TV, animation, live-action… doesn’t matter. Even the novel that l have often mentioned as “the perfect version,” Tom De Haven’s gorgeous “It’s Superman!”, seems to me to be overshadowed now by my excitement about what this movie does, how it does it, and what it means for the character as a whole.

Empire notes how impressive the action in the film:

Either way, the collateral damage is immense, as Superman (which he is finally, off-handedly dubbed almost two hours in) trades devastating, high-velocity blows with the black-caped Zod squad, including Carrie-Anne Moss-alike Antje Traue as Zod’s slinky lieutenant Faroa. Buildings crumble and collapse and explode, with the Earthling multitudes perishing amid the dust and fire. When it comes to wide-scale urban destruction, the Chitauri and the Decepticons should take notes from the Kryptonians (Superman included).

Charlie Schmidlin of The Playlist notes that this is Snyder’s best film and that Nolan and Goyer accomplished their goal:

Goyer and Nolan have crafted in “Man of Steel” a taut, exploratory vision, and Snyder’s later inheritance of the material indeed proves his best work since “Dawn of the Dead.” Together, they’ve humanized an icon in ways not unlike Steven Spielberg‘s “Lincoln,” although they’ve undervalued the integral supporting roles in much of the same manner. The difference is that Snyder carries a franchise flexible to second attempts.

Jordan Hoffman of ScreenCrush notes that Henry Cavill succeeds as the Man of Steel:

While my heart will always belong to Christopher Reeve, Henry Cavill more than passes muster. Like Chris Pine, he gets the essence of the character and, as in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 ‘Star Trek,’ there’s a slight wink toward the end to the version of the character we know and love.

Matt Patches of Film.com compares it to that other big DC superhero franchise, but says this one is truly epic:

As Nolan’s Batman trilogy functioned to tell a realistic story of a human superhero, “Man of Steel” does so for an inhuman one. With that mantra, “The Dark Knight” could only go so big and relied on the bravdo of actors to enliven the screen. “Man of Steel” has its fair share of talent, but with a potential to tell a truly epic tale, Snyder shoots for the heavens. He gets there.

So there you have it. The reviews are all mostly positive, pointing out the epic scope and immense action of the film while noting there are some problems with it. Is Man of Steel perfect? No. Is it a film you have to watch? Yes.

The first VHS was a refreshing take on found footage horror. And not just found footage horror, but horror anthologies too. The first film was an entertaining and creepy watch, but the quality of the segments varied wildly. There were forgettable segments and segments that were quite amazing.

The sequel cuts down on the segments by one, which proves to be a good idea because each filmmaker is able to get more time to fully explore what they want to do. They get some room to play and don’t have to fit more into less. One of the problems with the first one was that some of the segments felt super rushed even though they were entertaining. You don’t get that feeling with this one. That’s also probably because many of the segments build up and slowly escalate into odder, crazier and creepier levels.

The overarching segment this time makes a lot more sense and is far more creepy than the original. We have two people who break into a house investigating something. One of them checks out the house and his girlfriend is told to stay in the lounge area and search a computer. She ends up watching the tapes, sending us into the four main segments.

Clinical Trials

Adam Wingard’s segment is a nice bit of horror science fiction in which he directs himself receiving an optical implant after a car accident (there’s our in on the found footage! It records everything he sees!). The problem with this implant is that it allows the wearer to tap into frequencies the human eye naturally can’t see. Those frequencies have things like ghosts in them.

The result is dumb but also quite creepy. The first person gimmick is used to great effect. It’s easy for a first-person view to feel like a conscious gimmick used by a filmmaker to make things feel personal, but things move fairly quickly and you’re almost always looking at something interesting. The problem with this segment, however, is that the finale is a bit lackluster compared to the build up. It’s almost deflating, but the segment works well enough overall.

A Ride In The Park

This is probably one of the more unique uses of found footage in quite a while. We start off as a goPro camera on a bikers head as he takes a routine bike through a park but things quickly escalate into a full-on zombie attack. And soon, our biker with a goPro turns into a zombie with a goPro.

No, this segment isn’t scary. It is, however, a great deal of fun to look at a zombie attack from the viewpoint of a zombie. There’s a subplot of the biker and his girlfriend that feels unnecessary, but it doesn’t take away from how fun watching a zombie attack through the eyes of a zombie.

Safe Haven

This is perhaps my favorite segment. A group of journalists in Indonesia investigate a secret cult (using secret cameras too!) and things go to hell, almost literally. Almost oddly, this one is co-directed by Gareth Evans, director of The Raid. He makes the jump over to horror fairly nicely, building up an insane amount of dread throughout the opening minutes.

That dread is soon released in a bloody and insane sequence that proceeds to get even more crazy as the minutes pass by. And I’m not trying to exaggerate this one: things get insane. What starts as a simple investigation into a cult turns into something out of this world. It’s fantastic, although the ending literally feels like a joke and takes away some of the impact.

Alien Abduction Slumber Party

Like the previous segment, this one escalates into something insane. A lot of this actually feels like a creepy version of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. We start out at a giant slumber party, where some stupid kids put a camera on their dog. They start joking around and playing jokes on each other until the house shakes violently.

Soon, the alien abduction part of the title segment comes in. This segment shows nicely how found footage can be used to amplify the tension in a cinematic version of cat and mouse. As these kids run away from the aliens you’re right there with them – as a dog. That dog perspective is wonderfully refreshing too as the aliens are really after the humans. You’re just trying to get away with them. It works really well and being a dog was probably the best decision for this segment.

Of all the segments this probably has the best ending. Not, the best as in things are happy, but the one that maintains the tone of the segment the best. It’s a great capper to everything.

Although really, it’s not the ultimate capper. That comes in Tape 49, which is the overarching segment. There’s a lot of subtle, atmospheric horror in this one. At times I felt the most tense and scared during this segment, hoping that the female character would quickly put in another tape, which is probably what that character was feeling too.

All of this comes together to make VHS 2 a creepy, entertaining horror anthology that’s much more focused and fun to watch than its predecessor.

After Earth is a movie that’s essentially about father-son dynamics. It’s about a father learning to let his son go and hoping he does the best with the knowledge imparted upon him as well as about a son learning to walk away from under his father’s shadow. It’s ironic that the creation of the film doesn’t mirror that message, but then again After Earth is not a good movie.

We follow Will and Jaden Smith playing a father and son ranger astronaut pair. They get stranded on Earth, which has had everything evolve to kill humans. The older Smith is injured so the younger Smith needs to go find a beacon and send an emergency signal back to HQ so they could be rescued. The problem is that young Smith is terrified and wants his daddy to help him.

See, older Smith is the best soldier of them all and can do this thing called ghosting, where he can stop himself from feeling fear. This is important because humanity faces an enemy called an Ursa, which is a spider-like monster that can smell the pheromones released by the human body when someone is scared.

Most of this is explained to us in a small voiceover segment at the beginning of the film, narrated to us by an emotionally stunted Jaden Smith. It’s at this point in the film where you realize watching this movie may not be the greatest idea. That’s because every person in this film uses this weird South African/British hybrid accent that looks and sounds uncomfortable. Each actor, even Will Smith, looks like they’re struggling to keep up with this bizarre accent and it really hurts their performances.

It makes everyone feel like they’re some sort of weird android that can’t properly emote when they need to. It’s also kind of like looking at someone constantly trying not to cry while keeping from pissing themselves. It’s uncomfortable to watch and instantly takes you out of caring for anyone in this film. It’s also the worst kind of “future” talk in film. If you’re going to invest in changing the way people speak to reflect the future, you need to change the basic language not just take away the pronunciation of vowels. You need to go all the way like Cloud Atlas, and this film doesn’t.

It’s small decisions like that that sink this movie. It’s everywhere, including the script. There are moments that are called out or built up for payoffs at the end, but are never paid off. There are things that happen not because the universe calls for them, but because they need to happen for the plot to move forward. That makes the entire ordeal feel artificial and fake.

On top of all this, the film kind of meanders around with a slower pace and lots of subplots, making the script deficiencies even more apparent. That’s something that’s tough to pull off for even some of the more skilled filmmakers out there, so having M. Night Shyamalan try to do it is like inviting failure. A tighter narrative with intense focus would have served this film well, but it was not to be. I will say that this is an improvement over The Last Airbender for Shyamalan. He does pull off some tight and interesting sequences that are enjoyable to watch, but there’s not enough of them to save this thing.

Will and Jaden aren’t enough to save this thing either. The older Smith pulls off an interesting performance, sitting in one place slowly dying from massive blood loss, but it’s a supporting role to his son Jaden. The little Smith doesn’t have it easy. Not only does he have to play a scared, brash kid that just wants his father’s attention but he has to deal with that dumb accent. Right now, that’s just too difficult for him to do. He does show some confidence and ability at points, but it’s really not enough to help the film in any real way.

After Earth is a bad movie. It’s a shame because I was really rooting for Shyamalan to prove some people wrong and show that he’s still a talented filmmaker. Instead, he’s shown that he’s still not able to craft a decent film.

Epic has us following a young girl that goes by the name MK. Her mother is presumably dead and she’s headed to her slightly crazy, workaholic father to live and hopefully develop a relationship that they never had. Meanwhile, in the forest, we see the beginnings of a war between Beyonce and her army of leaf-people and Christoph Waltz and his rotten people.

That’s how it all starts, but things really don’t start getting going until MK is shrunken down and transported into this world of rot vs the life of the forest. It’s when we finally get into the central premise of MK protecting this bulb that’s going to hatch and the good side and bad side are fighting over where it hatches. See, if it hatches in the sunlight you get a good result. If it hatches with no sunlight you get a terrible result. It’s not a revolutionary premise, but the light and dark dynamic makes things a little interesting.

That point is also where the film settles in and uses MK as our viewpoint into this batshit crazy world. This is a world where slugs and snails are protectors of these bulbs, where Pitbull is a frog, where there’s a high caterpillar who documents the history of the world in scrolls that seem to be made of the residue of mushrooms.

If nothing else, Blue Sky has crafted an interesting world. And it’s certainly an enjoyable world to explore. The filmmakers do this interesting thing exploring why smaller insects and bird move at a higher speed than humans. It boils down to that these smaller creates just live at a higher frequency than us. That’s incredibly silly, but it allows for some interesting moments that are eventually overused. What they end up doing is, when looking at the small creatures from a human character, making those smaller characters move at a fly-like super pace. While one of the smaller characters looking up at humans, things slow down.

They also what could be labelled as “cancer weapons.” The bad guys have these arrows and staffs that either rot something instantly or leave an insane growth on something, eventually blowing it to pieces. Seriously. Cancer weapons.

So it’s a shame that the rest of the film, like the story, doesn’t measure up to the world they’ve created. There are multiple arcs here that are well told, but they’re all things we’ve seen before so they don’t really stand out in any special way. You’ve got the daughter trying to reconnect with her father while figuring out why her world is so special after going to a new one. You’ve got the young, stupid boy with a lot of potential disrespecting his dead father’s best friend, who promised to take care of him. And you’ve got a villain who sees his son killed near the beginning of the film so wants to take the bulb into darkness to resurrect him.

The “epic” cast for the film has been publicized a lot, but they largely don’t live up to their names. The majority of them are competent, with only three – Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari and Colin Farrell – standing out from the crowd. Ansari plays one of the slugs and is used as comedic relief to great effect. Beyonce and Pitbull, however, stick out like sore thumbs however, totally taking you out of the film the moment they speak. Beyonce is playing a Queen, but feels like Beyonce. Pitbull plays a frog that doesn’t do much except wear a weird seaweed suit but kind of feels like a punch to the groin when he talks.

In the end, Epic is far from what its name promises. It all levels out to an enjoyable movie that has an interesting world but kind of wastes it on a solidly told story that doesn’t do anything terrible, but doesn’t do anything particularly wonderful either.

Over the weekend people at the Cannes Film Festival were all talking about one film: Blue Is the Warmest Color. It’s a two-part, three-hour French lesbian coming of age story about a girl named Adele, played by Adele Exarchopoulos, who is a lively high school junior who wants to become a teacher. Adele is a bookworm that’s also immensely comfortable with her body. Oh, and she loves dancing during protests.

A senior guy asks her out and she quickly loses her virginity to her, but she keeps dreaming about a blue-haired girl named Emma, played by Lea Seydoux. While on her date with the senior guy, she and Emma shared a prolonged gaze. She soon starts to grow miserable and tries experimenting with girls, but is disappointed. None of them are Emma, you see. Vulture explains what happens next:

So when they finally do connect sexually, it culminates not just in the release of Adèle’s long-suppressed desires, but with the union of two people who share an undefinable physical connection. I clocked the first sex scene between Adèle and Emma — replete with fingering, licking, and, as a friend called it, “impressive scissoring” — at an approximate ten minutes. Audience walkouts began around minute nine. That turned into spontaneous applause (and relieved laughter), when the women climaxed and finished a minute later. Was that scene, and the many other graphic, erotic moments to follow, “necessary to tell the story?” Film.com’s Jordan Hoffman asked in his review. “Please believe the part of my brain that doesn’t house a lecherous voyeur when I say yes, absolutely.”

Others agreed, as the film took home the top prize as the festival – the Palm d’Or – yesterday. In an unprecedented movie, Cannes jury president Steven Spielberg announced that stars Exarchopoulos and Seydoux had also received the prize, which usually only goes to the director of the film.

Of course, you can guess why this movie had everyone talking. It contains a 10-minute, intensely realistic sex scene. A lesbian one at that! And it’s certainly the part of the movie that had people buzzing to see it, but when they left the theater it seems like they were left with far more: a nuanced emotional drama.

Jessica Kiang of The Playlist:

This is absolute cinema, absolute characterization, absolute storytelling, controlled and compassionate, and bursting with empathy and life…this is really the kind of film we come to Cannes in hopes of discovering.

Shaun Munro of Film School Rejects:

Kechiche captures the ecstatic highs and punishing lows of matters of the heart with piercing proficiency.

Jordan Hoffman of Film.com:

If you don’t see yourself in its depiction of intense emotion I both envy and pity you.

As you can see from the two video clips in this story, the emotions are certainly there. More than anything, this is an intense drama about the awakening of a young woman and what she wants. And not only that, but finding out who she is and coming to terms with who she is.

Blue is the Warmest Color is set to release in France in October, hopefully we get a similar release date as the film is bound to be a player at the Oscars.

The Fast and Furious franchise is fascinating. It’s an original property that continually reinvents itself and gets better with each outing while making more money each time. It’s insane, and that trend continues with Fast Six, or as the title card calls it: Furious 6.

The film takes place soon after the events of Fast Five, with the group enjoying life after pulling off a magical heist in Rio. However, Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs is having a difficult time bringing down Luke Evans’ criminal Shaw so he decides to recruit Vin Diesel’s Dom and his crew to bring the British nightmare to an end in exchange for full pardons all the way around.

The resulting plot is absolutely bonkers, filled with terrible dialogue –  just like every other Fast movie. However, I really don’t care. None of that ever detracts you from how much fun you’re having watching all these characters on screen. These characters really shouldn’t be likable in the first place. They’re all fairly simple and over the top, yet each actor puts their all into it and really sells it. In fact, this is more of an ensemble piece than anything else.

All these characters perfectly fit in together and it makes everything work. You feel as if they’re really best friends. Or even a family, which happens to be a big theme in these Fast movies. So much so that you begin to think of these characters as part of your extended family. The majority of the cast nails it, with Gina Carano probably being the sore thumb of the group. She just doesn’t fit in, though I wonder if that was by design – I’d rather not spoil it.

The usual crew puts in a good effort: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Gal Gadot, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Chris Bridges, Dwayne Johnson and Michelle Rodriguez all do well with their parts. Evans is quite menacing as well as is a nice foil for Dom; where one believes in family and loyalty, the other believes in precision and treating a group like a machine, where people are replaceable. It’s a really interesting dynamic that shows that this franchise has essentially become a superhero franchise, or as I like to call it: The Avengers with cars.

The cast really makes the action shine though. The stakes of the action are increased tenfold when you actually care about what happens with the characters, so each sequence is thrilling. The set pieces are fairly insane and completely disregard physics, but that’s all right. The film goes back and mentions how insane certain sequences are, which is great. If you’re going to destroy the laws of physics at least own up to it and make it part of your universe, which is something Furious 6 does in spades.

It’s hard to imagine that the fifth and sixth editions of a franchise can be the best, but it’s happened with these movies. The filmmakers over at Universal have managed to turn this into the best action franchise around. Not only that, but they’ve managed to strengthen these characters and actually make us care. All this contributes to make Furious 6 a ridiculous, lovable and wonderful movie.

In 2009 Todd Phllips made a comedy called The Hangover, which was a fun, dirty comedy about one of the most epic hangovers in cinema history. Then in 2011 they made a sequel, with the exact same plot but replaced with new, more bland jokes. Two years later it’s become the most unlikely trilogy of the past decade.

And now, with The Hangover Part III, we return to the gang – all of them now bigger stars than when they first took on these roles – with a new set of circumstances. Zach Galifianakis’ Alan is out of control and after his father’s funeral the Wolfpack decides to stage an intervention and check him into a rehab center. So they hop into a minivan and head to Arizona, where they’re kidnapped by John Goodman’s goons. Justin Bartha’s Doug is held hostage as Bradley Cooper’s Phil, Ed Helms’ Stu and Alan head off to find Ken Jeong’s Chow.

What happens next is probably the most unfunny of the three Hangover films. Why’s it not funny? Because the film plays out much like an action thriller. They’ve got to locate Chow and bring him back, all while revisiting characters and moments from the first two films. The problem there is that it lacks any thrill or action. And those “nostalgia” moments are actually the biggest sources of laughs. Actually, not laughs. More accurately, they’re smirks and smiles.

This movie is not very funny though. In fact, it’s almost not funny at all. There are one or two laughs, like there are one or two laughs in most films today. All the big jokes rely on two things: outrageousness or nostalgia. There’s a moment near the beginning of the film is probably the best illustration of this. Alan buys a giraffe, because he’s out of control, and ends up driving on the highway where it’s head is lopped off. The head flies into the windshield of a car, which creates a Final Destination moment. It’s not funny, but it just happens.

A lot of the film is just like that. There are moments that aren’t quite funny, but they just happen. Or they try to shock you, but they aren’t shocking. Say what you want about the laziness of Part II, but that – at least – had some insane moments that were legitimately interesting. This movie doesn’t have that.

The majority of the film relies on the first two films. There are scenes and jokes in this film that are built around moments and characters from the first two film. If you’re not in love with those two movies this movie will do absolutely nothing for you in that regard. Relying on nostalgia for a film requires that people have a deep love or affection for something, and I don’t think many people love these characters that much.

However, if this movie is anything it’s actually kind of sweet. Galifianakis in particular is able to turn this movie into something of a coming-of-age tale, which manages to make this watchable. He gets his moments that brings something a little extra to Alan. That is easily the best part of this film, but it’s not enough to save the rest of it.

In 2009 JJ Abrams did something special. He rebooted Star Trek and made it into a mainstream success. Four years later he comes back with Star Trek Into Darkness, building on top of what he started in what surely must be a trilogy.

The film has us following Chris Pine’s James Kirk, Zachary Quinto’s Spock and the rest of the USS Enterprise as they look to attain the fabled Five Year Mission. At the beginning of the film, in a thrilling sequence, Kirk violates the Prime Directive and has the Enterprise taken away from him. Then a mysterious terrorist destroys London, and then destroys Starfleet HQ shortly after. Personally scarred, Kirk goes on a revenge mission to take down Benedict Cumberbatch’s John Harrison. That’s how this crazy thing starts.

The movie is ultimately about how Kirk has to earn The Chair. In the first film he kind of fell into the whole thing and did a good enough job, but he’s still a brash, immature kid and far from the Kirk we know in The Original Series. He has to come to terms with what being Captain of the Enterprise means rather than just sitting in the chair and commanding people.

Star Trek Into Darkness accomplishes that goal, and is a fun movie filled with an excellent cast and superb direction from Abrams. However, the script keeps this movie from being anything special. I will give it props for some modern theming around terrorism, but it also dives into this 9/11 Truther mentality that’s kind of scary, though it doesn’t harp on it too much. The script also feels like Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof had a list of set pieces they wanted to do and then wrote around them to connect them.

This isn’t as prevalent in the first two thirds of the movie, but the last act of the film is riddled with forced screenwriting. You never want an event in your movie to feel forced or “dumb.” You need the events unfolding on the screen to feel organic, like that it could actually happen. Also, there’s a reveal in this film that feels absolutely unnecessary. It’s a huge bit of fan service that non-Trek fans won’t recognize. The script later cheats and comes back to explain that reveal and why it’s important.

Despite all this, I had a blast with Star Trek Into Darkness. Abrams is a master director that’s able to gloss over most of the dumb script and make it a joy to watch. This movie is paced extremely quick: it’s go, go, go all the way through. It doesn’t let you think about some of the script shortcomings until you’re out of the theater, with the exception of maybe two incidents.

Two of the things that Abrams does really well in this is the action sequences and the back-and-forth between the crew. There are some sequences in this, like a space debris sequence, that is absolutely thrilling. As a science fiction action movie, this thing shines as bright as a lens flare. By the way, the lens flare thing didn’t bother me in this movie.

The best part of the film continues to be the cast though. Their back-and-forth is absolutely marvelous. They feed off each other wonderfully and their segments on the bridge when deciding a course of action is incredibly entertaining. It’s hard to make people sitting around deciding what to do entertaining, but Abrams nails it each and every time.

I only wish some of the cast had more to do. That’s how good they are. Pine shines as Kirk once again, though Quinto’s Spock steals the screen in almost every one of his scenes. The rest of them: Zoe Saldana’s Uhura, Karl Urban’s Bones, Anton Yelchin’s Chekov, Alice Eve’s Carol and John Cho’s Sulu have some good moments but are extremely underutilized. However, that’s the trouble of having 10 or so great characters in a 2 hour movie. You can’t take care of them all. Simon Pegg’s Scotty, however, gets some good screen time here and nails it, like everyone else.

The problems with this movie are real. Any other director probably turns this thing into a train wreck, but Abrams and his cast are able to turn this into a very entertaining 2 hours. On top of all that, they made me want more. Emerging from the theater I wanted to see this cast come back for another movie. I want to see them take on new adventures and explore the universe. If that’s not a sign of an enjoyable movie I don’t know what is.