While We're Young, The Salt of the Earth, Home

While We're Young

The Salt of the Earth



Home (my rating)

Home (Scruffies' rating)

Capsule reviews on the week's new releases:

Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

In the oddly punctuated "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)," Michael Keaton plays a Hollywood has-been named Riggan Thompson taking one last stab at seriousness as a Broadway hyphenate, pouring the last drabs of his comic-book movie fortune into a Raymond Carver adaptation and watching - with half desperation, half resignation - as it threatens to crumble before opening.

Sunlight Jr., Go For Sisters, Aftermath

Aftermath

Sunlight Jr.

Go For Sisters

Three mild recommendations from the art house:

Adore

In "Adore," Naomi Watts and Robin Wright play Lil and Roz, best friends since childhood who live in neighboring beach homes in Australia.

Movie 43

It's terrifying to contemplate that there may be a worse movie this year than the unspeakable "Movie 43," a dozen disconnected gross-out sketches in search of a brain cell. I beg you to peruse the cast list of this picture and imagine if you can conceive of a comedy with so much talent that never comes close to generating a laugh.

The Impossible

Just capsule reviews this final week of 2012 as I plow through all of the year-end offerings. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star in the Thailand tsunami saga “The Impossible,” the true story of a happily married couple and their three young sons, separated and (to various extents) badly hurt in the tsunami, who managed to survive and (more miraculously) find each other again. Director J.A. Bayona stages the tsunami differently from Clint Eastwood’s in “Hereafter” but equally devastatingly – less supernatural, bloodier and more visceral. There are also some deeply moving scenes involving the oldest son’s efforts to help other children find their parents among the nameless faces occupying countless hospital beds. The movie’s sentimentality and thundering score wear thin by the end, but it’s worth seeing.