Hail Caesar!, Rams

Hail, Caesar!

Rams (Hrútar)





Capsules as we flip the calendar to February:

Closed Curtain, Lucy

Closed Curtain

Lucy

In 2012, Jafar Panahi, the celebrated Iranian director banned from filmmaking by his government, gave us a peek at life under house arrest in the cinematic art-object "This is Not a Film," one of a trio of films that year (including Joshua Marston's superior "The Forgiveness of Blood" and Marc Simon's four-star documentary "Unraveled") to explore the subject.

Chef

You can't say Jon Favreau lacks for chutzpah.

The Top Ten Films of 2013: #3

#3

Her

"Her" is the stupidest movie to wash down the pike in a very long time.

Don Jon

Uproariously funny and very sexy, "Don Jon" makes a perfect date movie and an exceptional directorial debut for its too-cute-for-words star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Hitchcock

Breezy, efficient, and good-humored, “Hitchcock” sets about its business and sees to it briskly. Not for this movie the self-important aspirations of a biography such as “Lincoln”; it seeks only to pull back the curtain for an hour and a half and give us a glimpse into the lives of Hitch (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife, collaborator and most trusted adviser, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), as they self-finance the film adaptation of “Psycho” on which Paramount (where Hitch had made his previous half-dozen pictures) and every other studio in town took a pass.

Marvel's The Avengers

The biggest opening in movie history belongs to a giant spinning top of a picture whose frenetic energy, constant motion, and all-out sensory assault mask a no-shades-of-gray storyline that, over the course of 2 ½ hours, goes past boring to downright stultifying. Two of the four Avengers, Thor and Captain America, add only extra runtime; their scenes really weigh the flick down. As you'd expect, Robert Downey, Jr. scores most of the laughs as Tony Stark; he's the only one who seems to get the ridiculousness of the enterprise, while the Chrises (Evans and Hemsworth) recite their SciFi-meets-Scientology technobabble with thudding earnestness. Mark Ruffalo turns in a nice performance as Bruce Banner, and in the end it's he who gives Loki (the villain of the piece) his comeuppance in a way so simple and amusing it makes a mockery of all that has come before. Scarlett Johansson provides the eye candy, but doesn't get to flex the comic muscles she's shown in her recent work with Woody Allen, while Samuel Jackson does what he does best: cash paychecks and bring nothing to the proceedings. The visuals are surprisingly unimpressive, almost retrograde, lots of flashes of electricity and slithering Asgardian serpents. There's not a scene you'll remember five minutes afterward. "Marvel's The Avengers" is a perfectly fine movie to put on the tube. In the background. While you're taking a shower