BATTLE OF THE SEXES

There have been plenty of times through history when the differences between men and women have been determined by all sorts of competition.  Battle of the Sexes is a biopic depicting this direct clash on the tennis court in 1973.

The early 1970s were a great time for Billie Jean King (Emma Stone): She was the premiere women's tennis champion in America and, in fighting for equal rewards for female tennis players, founded her own all-female tennis league.  She also began an affair with Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough), which Billie wanted to keep under wraps, both for fear of hurting her husband and for fear of losing her sponsors.

Meanwhile, 50-something Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) had his own issues.  A former tennis champion, he loves gambling and hustling, while chafing at working at an office job set up by his father-in-law.  His plan to return to competition and fame: Set up big tennis matches between him and female tennis players, with him taking on the role of a sexist villain.  ("I'm putting the show back in chauvinist.")  Billy turns him down, but when she's beaten by Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) who then gets trounced on the court by Bobby, Billie takes up his challenge for the dignity of female tennis players -- and women everywhere.

Battle of the Sexes is decent but uneven.  While Steve Carell is pretty much regulated to a self-involved clown,  Emma Stone is the focus of most of the movie as Billie, a woman being pulled in several directions -- champion, wife, lover, defender of womankind -- in the public eye.  While she's good in the role, the movie seems to spend far more time on her same-sex affair than on the tennis issues, making the big match seem almost like an afterthought.  Battle of the Sexes could have been a period piece, if it didn't let itself get so distracted.

Overall grade: B-
Reviewed by James Lynch

LA LA LAND

When a movie opens with folks in a California traffic jam getting out of their cars to perform a big song and dance number, you know you're in for a treat.  La La Land is a big nostalgic love letter to the movies and music of yesteryear -- as well as the challenges of today.

Mia (Emma Stone) is a barista on a film studio lot with dreams of becoming a big actor -- and a lot of failed auditions behind her.  Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist with dreams of opening his own jazz club -- but he's stuck doing music gigs beneath him, like Christmas standards and '80s covers.  They don't exactly have a meet cute -- he blares his horn at her in the traffic jam; she flips him off -- but they keep running into each other, and soon they're hanging out and falling in love.

Their lives are literally punctuated by musical numbers breaking out, whether Mia's preparing to go out, the two stars dance-sparring and tap dancing on a park bench, or literally dancing on air under the stars.  But as their lives get more complex and they work on making their dreams come true -- Mia preparing to put on a one-woman show, Sebastian joining Keith (John Legend) for a most crowd-pleasing and synthesizer-based form of jazz -- their schedules keep them apart and their relationship starts to become strained...

La La Land is a glorious celebration of the movies and music of yesteryear.  Fans of classic musicals will recognize the numerous homages to musical numbers in film; in addition, Sebastian's almost obsessive pure love of jazz is reflected in La La Land's soundtrack.  Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are terrific, whether as reluctant lovers or striking out on their own.  And the movie is wonderful, from the spontaneous musical numbers to the drama of the two stars trying to make it work between them while pursuing their separate dreams.  La La Land truly brings the magic of the movies and music to life.

Overall grade: A+
Reviewed by James Lynch

BIRDMAN

 Here's an unusual mix of a movie.  Birdman: or, (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is part comedy, part drama, part roman a clef, part theater, part satire, and part insanity -- overlaid with a jazzy drumbeat.

Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, who's something of a dark parody of Keaton.  Riggan had been a blockbuster movie star playing Birdman in three movies over two decades ago.  Now he's a washed-up actor, staking everything -- his reputation, his finances, even his sanity -- on a Broadway production of  theRaymond Carver short story "What We Talk About When We Talk about Love"  that Riggan adapted, directs, produces, and stars in.

 Naturally, the play -- still in previews -- seems to have nothing but problems.  Riggan's lawyer and friend Jake (Zack Galifanakis) is working to keep everything working together.  Riggan's cynical daughter Sam (Emma Stone) is fresh out of rehab and wandering around as an assistant.  Laura (Andrea Riseborough) is one of the plays' stars, and tells Riggan that she's having their baby.  When a stage accident takes out an actor, Broadway newcomer Leslie (Naomi Watts) brings in her boyfriend Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), who's box office and critical gold; he's also amazingly hard to work with.  Oh, and when he's alone Riggan hallucinates that he has superpowers and that Birdman is talking to him to get him to do more Birdman movies.

Birdman is a whole lot of things, as it meanders from comedy to introspection to fantasy to drama as much as the (seemingly) single camera shot that jumps from characters to characters for the whole movie.   While it works, it's also disjointed and somewhat disorienting.  The movie has terrific acting, and there are plenty of laughs (especially the Times Square walk) and moments of tenderness and discovery.  But it's hard to settle in and enjoy or appreciate one scene or tone before the movie jumps into a new one.  Birdman is definitely unique and enjoyable, but I wish it had come together or held together a little bit tighter.

Overall grade: B+
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

Spider-Man returns to swing and deal with angst in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the latest Marvel summer blockbuster.  This reboot of the Spider-Man franchise adds more villains and more drama but isn't all that satisfying.

It's high school graduation for Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and the course of their love never could run smooth.  Peter is in love with her but is afraid her being around him could get her hurt (reinforced by his imagining her dead father -- to whom Peter promised he'd stay away from Gwen -- staring at him), while Gwen is considering a scholarship to Oxford, taking her far away from Peter.  And there's still the mystery of why Peter's parents Richard and May Parker (Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidzt) vanished, and what Aunt May (Sally Field) is doing to keep Peter provided for.

But superheroes need super villains, and ASM2 introduces two (technically three, but the last one is barely in the movie).  Max Dillon (Jaime Foxx) is a mousy, angry nerd who idolizes Spider-Man.  When an accident gives him electrical powers, he becomes Electro -- and his hero worship turns to hatred when he feels like Spider-Man is stealing all of his attention.  Meanwhile, Peter's old friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) has just returned, inherited Oscorp, and found out that he's dying of the same degenerative disease that killed his father.  And Harry thinks the cure lies in Spider-Man's blood.

While ASM2 has more interesting villains than its predecessor, it also has some of the same annoyances.  The action often relies on a combination of slow-motion and freeze-frame shots, which is meant to show speed but gets distracting at times.  While Stone is spirited as the smart, spirited love interest with a mind of her own, Garfield always seemed more like a sullen cool kid than the nerd Peter Parker was supposed to be.  Jamie Foxx is fun as the uber-fan of Spidey, but most of that vanishes under a deeper voice and glowing blue makeup.  And Dane DeHaan is fine as Harry, though his villainous transformation happens so late in the movie it's almost unnecessary.  (The final villain could have been left out entirely.)  And the conspiracies seem to exist solely to keep churning out sequels.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has some exciting sequences, but the same problems as the last time (not to mention some glaring absences of subtlety) make it a movie that can be entertaining and then forgotten almost immediately.

Overall grade: B-
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

Spider-Man is back: back to the beginning. The Amazing Spider-Man is the reboot of the wall-crawler's franchise, leaving behind the Tobey Maguire films for a darker, more conspiratorial movie.

As a child, Peter Parker was left with Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) when someone seemed to be after his scientist father Richard and mother Mary (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz, appearing very briefly in the film). Jump ahead, and Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a lonely teenager picked on by jock Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) and with a crush on Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone). An accidental discovery leads Peter to Dr. Curt Conners (Rhys Ifans), a colleague of Richard Parker. Curt and Richard worked together on splicing together human and animal DNA; Curt imagines this would both let him regrow his missing arm and improve humanity by removing its weakness. Of course, during the visit Peter Parker winds up in an area where experimental spiders are, and when one bites him, it leads to superhuman spider powers -- and, eventually, the spandex-clad Spider-Man. Similarly, Curt's experimenting on himself transforms him into the Lizard: a giant, disturbingly powerful cgi creature with plans for his transformational formula...

Oddly, Gwen Stacey isn't just the romantic interest; she's the center of several plotlines. She's the daughter of Captain Stacy (Denis Leary), the police officer determined to arrest the masked vigilante. She's the intern of Curt Conners, involving her in the movie's scientific endeavors. And she's a "regular" pretty girl at school, turning up in the halls and classrooms to run into Peter.

As with most comic book relaunches, The Amazing Spider-Man spends too much time retelling an origin we largely know. While the parental conspiracy is new (and a led-in to the sequel), pretty much anyone who's heard of Spider-Man knows the fate of Uncle Ben and its affect on Peter Parker. Andrew Garfield plays Peter Parker more as a sullen, rebellious teen than geeky outsider, neither particularly good not bad in the role. Emma Stone is a bit better as the teen with numerous responsibilities, but Rhys Ifans is fairly boring as the movie's villain, who goes from put-upon scientist to cgi monster interested in his own power and transforming others without their consent. The action is well done -- but it doesn't really kick in until quite late in the movie. The Amazing Spider-Man is decent, but amazing it ain't.

Overall grade: B-

Reviewed by James Lynch

THE HOUSE BUNNY

It's kinda sad when a comedy manages to revolve around two amazingly broad stereotypes. This is the case with The House Bunny, an extended dumb blonde joke.

Shelley (Anna Faris) went from an orphanage to living her fairy-tale life as a resident of the Playboy Mansion. This nice-but-naive blond dreams of being a centerfold, but the day after she turns 27 she's thrown out of the Mansion for being "too old." After living in her car and a night in jail, Shelley wanders onto a college and discovers her perfect job: sorority mother!

Unfortunately, the only sorority that will take Shelley is Zeta Alpha Zeta, a group of misfits (to put it mildly) whose main spokesperson is Natalie (Emma Stone, who is at least more nerdy here than as the "nerd" in Easy A). Of course, the girls of Zeta House are about to lose their sorority and house unless they can get 30 pledges.

Every genre has its cliches -- and just about every cliche for the comedy is present here. Completely different types of people teaching each other? Check. Montages of unattractive people getting makeovers, then strutting in slow motion? Check. Montage of dumb character with lots of books to become smart? Check. Woman with an unrequited crush on a cute boy who gets him in the end? Check -- twice! Snobbish, petty characters who exist only to be booed and get their comeuppance? Check -- twice again.

What's missing here is humor or interest. Anna Faris has done this sort of character so often it's far too familiar to us, and no other actor in the movie stands out. There are no good jokes (Shelley's mispronouncing and misunderstanding words only goes so far) or good sight gags. And every character here is a cliche. Shelley is the continual dumb blonde. The women of Zeta House aren't just misfits, they're virtually freaks: the woman in the full body brace, the short woman who never speaks, the hunched-over woman with pigtails and unibrow, the very visibly pregnant woman, the heavily-pierced gloomy goth, etc. As for the baddies, they're preppies who are snobs, underhanded, and exist solely to be booed and get their comeuppance by the movie's end. As for dvd extras, they consist of a few deleted scenes, a few behind-the-scenes features, and a music video from Katharine McPhee, who is barely in this movie.

Director Fred Wolf scored a hit with the similarly-themed Legally Blonde, but the fish-out-of-water treatment doesn't work at all here. If you want to see The House Bunny, save yourself a lot of time and a lack of laughs and just read a few dumb blond jokes.

Overall grade: F
Reviewed by James Lynch

EASY A

In Mother Night Kurt Vonnegut warned, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." This is a theme, sort of, in the teen comedy movie Easy A.

The framework of Easy A is high school student Olive (Emma Stone) making a webcast about the truth of what happened with her reputation. Olive is smart, clever, attractive, and -- since the movie needs her to be an underdog -- unnoticed and an outcast. Not wanting to admit to her foul-mouthed friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that Olive spent the weekend alone getting hooked on the song "Pocket Full of Sunshine," Olive makes up a story about a fling with a college man who took her virginity. This is overheard by ultra-religious Marianne (Amanda Bynes), and before you can say "texting" the rumor is all over school.

Things get more complicated when Olive pretends to have a very public romp with closeted gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) so he'll stop getting harassed. Soon everyone wants to have a pretend fling with Olive (usually paying her with gift cards), Marianne's religious clique is trying to get her kicked out of school, and Olive decides to strike back by dressing risque and adding something inspired by The Scarlet Letter. Of course there's the cute boy Todd (Penn Badgley) who Olive may have a crush on.

I'm not sure what universe Easy A is set in, but it's certainly not this one. This universe has a high school where one person having sex becomes the talk of the entire school and the principal threatens a student with expulsion for saying a dirty word. That would be fine is Easy A were more amusing, but...

Easy A doesn't do anything particularly creative or amusing with its premise. Much like Ellen Page in Juno, Emma Stone is an always-cool character whose every utterance is clever and often dripping with sarcasm or irony, which becomes grating qickly; there's also no transformation from geek to beauty, so it's hard to buy her near-immediate change in social status. The movie talks about romatic '80s movie cliches -- and works them all in. Amanda Bynes has a thankless role as the one-dimensional woman (albeit of the first mean Christian clique since Saved). And while Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are fun as Olive's free-spirited parents, the movie largely wasted Thomas Hayden Church, Lisa Kudrow, Fred Armisen and Malcolm McDowell in small roles.

Easy A is more about honesty than promiscuity, but it's neither inspired nor terribly funny. There are some decent moments here and there (like a painfully bad faked sex noises) but Easy A certainly doesn't earn an A.

Overall grade: C
Reviewed by James Lynch