Movie review by Greg Carlson

Cockamamie, idiotic, and often fun, Luc Besson’s “Lucy” purees visuals from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Kill Bill,” “The Tree of Life,” “Only God Forgives,” and many other movies fancied by the filmmaker, including “Nikita,” “Leon,” and “The Fifth Element” from his own filmography. Many of Besson’s references appear courtesy of the director’s vigorous insertion of deliberately obvious, comically on-the-nose stock footage, a device far more entertaining than the cards announcing the ever-increasing cerebral capacity of the title character played by Scarlett Johansson, an involuntary drug mule who runs afoul of gangster Min-sik Choi and police officer Amr Waked after a bag of a crystalline synthetic called CPH4 leaks inside her abdomen and gives her godlike powers.

“Lucy” initiates a basic premise virtually identical to Neil Burger’s “Limitless,” the 2011 techno-thriller based on Alan Glynn’s “The Dark Fields,” in which Bradley Cooper attains superhuman abilities and enhanced brain function after gobbling a dangerous nootropic. In the two films, the pharmaceuticals operate as both MacGuffin and the fire of Prometheus, placing the protagonists in serious danger because of the gifts they unwrap. Another presumably coincidental similarity between the two stories is the side effect in which the irises of Cooper’s Eddie and Johansson’s Lucy transform into an even more electrifying shade of cerulean than naturally possessed by either actor.

Besson names his character after the 3.2 million year-old hominid, setting the table for all kinds of icebox talk on the text’s insight – or lack thereof – into race and gender. As sad as it is predictable, the protagonist is the only female with a significant speaking role. With “Lucy,” Johansson completes a strange trifecta of otherworldly characters coming into possession of knowledge that changes the way they relate to the world. In many aspects, Lucy’s intellectual progression mirrors the journey of discovery taken by self-aware operating system Samantha in Spike Jonze’s “Her,” but Lucy’s extermination of so many men also echoes the deadly alien in Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” one of the year’s best films.

Given Besson’s reliance on the tired Hollywood reflexes that demand so much gunplay and a “Strong Female Character” in a world weirdly devoid of women, it would be more than a stretch to call “Lucy” a transhumanist statement. At least the presence of Morgan Freeman, playing his umpteenth variation on the sage scientist, is less distracting and ineffectual here than in the turkey “Transcendence,” another 2014 title trading on themes of futurism, intelligence beyond measure, the mind/body problem, and the fantasy of accelerated powers associated with higher consciousness.

What Besson misses most sorely is a genuine emotional interest in Lucy, along with a meaningful treatment of any turmoil she might be experiencing as a result of her rapidly expanding awareness. Besson vaguely alludes to the cost of CPH4, but mostly by way of an overly simplified application of the race against time plot used with much greater effect in “D.O.A.” and “Blade Runner.” Like Tyrell says of replicant Roy Batty, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” but Lucy isn’t allowed to share much if any of Roy’s capacity to appreciate life as we know it. Imagine how much more interesting “Lucy” might have been had Besson spent less time on the repetitive cycle of violent showdowns and carved out some room for Lucy to experience a more profound conflict akin to the experiences of HAL 9000 or Charlie Gordon in “Flowers for Algernon.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Warm, funny, engaging, and foul-mouthed, “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” recounts the almost too-good-to-be-true rise and fall of the Portland Mavericks, a colorful minor league club that operated from 1973 to 1977 in the Class A Northwest League. Owned and operated by the irrepressible Bing Russell – one-time ballplayer, veteran cowboy actor, entrepreneur, raconteur, father to Kurt and grandfather to “Bastards” co-directors Chapman and Maclain Way – the Mavs were the embodiment of nearly every underdog and anti-establishment baseball cliché imaginable. Functioning as the only team in the league independent of the majors, the Mavs would, in their half-decade of existence, write one of the most endearing chapters in American baseball history.

The Way brothers capitalize on Bing Russell’s prodigious collection of memorabilia, combing through an impressive archive of photographs, motion picture film, and newspaper clippings to visually enhance the film’s set of interviews with many of the people closely affiliated with the Mavericks. Russell died in 2003, but his personality dominates the film. A devoted student of baseball, Russell fell hard for the game as a kid, eventually becoming “peanut smuggler” and unofficial rabbit’s foot to a classic New York Yankees roster that included Lefty Gomez, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig – who gave Russell the bat used to hit the Iron Horse’s final home run.

After an injury cut his playing career short, Russell ended up in California, where he appeared in “The Magnificent Seven” and, in his own words “never solved a case” as Deputy Clem Foster on “Bonanza.” Russell’s first love and second wind, however, arrived in an opportunity to revitalize minor league baseball in Portland, Oregon, when the Triple-A Beavers franchise relocated to Spokane. “Bastards” paints a vivid picture of the Maverick tryouts, a real life variation on the ragtag assemblage of rejects, has-beens and never-weres of “Major League.” Russell’s emphasis on fun attracted characters that would have been right at home in “The Bad News Bears.” Pitcher Rob Nelson notes, “Most of the Mavericks had a little bit of a paunch. They led the league in stubble.”

Apart from the internal Mavs film footage, the Ways tap into a pair of key visual artifacts. The first is NBC’s “The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola.” During a visit to Portland, the sportscaster collected enough material for two episodes in a single day of shooting. The broadcasts gave the Mavericks national exposure. The second is Johnny Carson’s interview on “The Tonight Show” with Mavs pitcher Jim Bouton, whose controversial tell-all “Ball Four” earned the former Yankee a reputation as persona non grata. Bouton is worthy of his own feature documentary, and the interviewees in “Bastards” speak of him with great affection. Unfortunately, Bouton does not provide any new on-camera interview material for the film that bears a title he coined.

Kurt Russell, who actually played for the Mavericks, is the most famous subject interviewed for the movie, but Nelson, Jon Yoshiwara, Carren Woods, Frank Peters, Jim Swanson, and batboy Todd Field – yes, the same Oscar-nominee who directed “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children” – speak with eloquence and salt to the “Maverick Miracle.” That miracle encompasses everything from the invention of Big League Chew bubble gum to the flaming broomsticks signaling “It’s a Jogarza!” when the Mavericks completed a sweep. “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” flies by with as much zip as one of Bouton’s best fastballs. You need not be a hardcore baseball fan to enjoy the ride.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Joon-ho Bong’s English-language debut “Snowpiercer” is a berserk conglomeration as likely to win a host of new fans as it is to put off some of the director’s longtime admirers. Turning on the talented Korean filmmaker’s deep understanding of screen space and the timeless cinematic allure of the locomotive, the movie is freely adapted from Jacques Lob’s post-apocalyptic graphic novel “Le Transperceneige,” published in 1982 with artwork by Jean-Marc Rochette. “Snowpiercer” is the name of the train that bears the only survivors of devastating climate change on an ice-encrusted Earth. Confined to the relative safety of the machine’s long line of cars, the remaining humans are divided into the same kind of instantly identifiable haves and have-nots symbolized by steerage-bound Jack and first class Rose in James Cameron’s “Titanic.”

Like Cameron’s film, “Snowpiercer” works partially as a disaster movie about people trapped in a massive machine, trading the hubris of the unsinkable, real-world engineering marvel for the outright fantasy of a chugging, perpetual motion choo choo. The demented idea that the shark-like Snowpiercer must forever barrel forward or die is presented with enough imagination to abet the necessary suspension of disbelief. “Snowpiercer” also makes use of the “city in a bottle” trope seen in “Logan’s Run” – especially in two key aspects: the deeply instilled fear/belief that life outside the shelter is uninhabitable, and the grim politics that population equilibrium must be maintained to protect the resources required to sustain a limited number of passengers.

Bong re-teams with Kang-ho Song and Ah-Sung Ko, assembling an ensemble that also includes Chris Evans, Octavia Spencer, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Ewen Bremner, and Alison Pill. Swinton makes the deepest impression as Orwellian bureaucrat Mason, whose thick glasses, severe coiffure, and ghastly dentures evoke a mutant Margaret Thatcher. Her character belongs to a universe altogether different from the one inhabited by Evans’s dour revolutionary. And even though Evans is the film’s front and center lead, the father-daughter team played by Song and Ko emerges as parallel heroes. In contrast to Swinton’s outré facade, the great Song underplays his apparently drug-addicted picklock, holding back the manic energy he brought to Jee-woon Kim’s wild Sergio Leone homage “The Good, the Bad, the Weird.”

By far the most enchanting element of “Snowpiercer” arrives courtesy of the eye-popping design of each railcar the rebels breach on their way to the engine. As the hardscrabble caboose-dwellers claw their way from the tail-end ghetto to the opulent cabins reserved for the wealthy elite, Bong escalates the tension in a series of set-pieces. Unsurprisingly, the filmmaker is not stingy with the violence and mayhem, and the movie’s most memorable scenes include brute force and bloodletting. In one, we learn how the Snowpiercer’s enforcers punish some infractions by ghoulishly freezing off limbs. In another, unglued teacher Pill’s primary-school classroom erupts in what turns out to be a lesson in small arms. Despite Bong’s firmly established sci-fi tone, the sight of so much gunfire around children disturbingly calls to mind the proliferation of American school shootings.

Working with screenwriter Kelly Masterson, Bong jettisons many of Lob’s foundational plot elements, dispensing with the novel’s central relationship between a desperate prisoner and an aid worker/activist. The filmmaker runs out of steam even before the movie’s clunky final movement, a tiresome disquisition of unnecessary explanation that cannot be salvaged by the presence of the usually dependable Ed Harris. As Harris yammers on and on, justifying the ugly “necessity” of his crazy train’s fascist state while he lounges in a silk bathrobe and fries a steak, “Snowpiercer” is drained of its vitality – something that never happened during “Mother,” Bong’s superior previous feature.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Making her feature debut with an expanded adaptation of her 2009 short, Gillian Robespierre shows plenty of talent and even more promise in “Obvious Child,” a low-budget comedy attracting as much attention for its subject matter as it is for star Jenny Slate’s breakout performance. Slate plays Donna Stern, a smart, underemployed stand-up comic whose candid onstage disclosures drive away an already unfaithful boyfriend. Reeling from the lost relationship, Donna takes refuge in alcohol and an impulsive one-night stand that leads to unexpected fertilization. The plan to terminate the pregnancy is presented as Donna’s straightforward choice – rare in a genre where the full-term outcomes of “Juno” and “Knocked Up” are the standard.

Robespierre has expressed frustration at the way the movie has been labeled online and in print, stating in a “Variety” interview with Brent Lang that “journalists have used the shorthand ‘abortion comedy,’ but that makes it feel small.” Even so, Donna’s decision becomes the motivating issue in the organization of the film’s narrative chronology, climax, and denouement. Abortion has not been entirely foreign to comedies, satires, and comedy-dramas. “The Last American Virgin” (and “Eskimo Limon,” the hugely popular Israeli movie upon which it was based), “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Citizen Ruth,” “Dogma,” and “Palindromes” all dealt to varying degrees with a topic that industry self-censorship organizations had for years discouraged even mentioning.

As explored by Eve Kushner, Lauren Rosewarne, and many others, the most common abortion trope in popular film is not the depiction of a sympathetic protagonist who chooses the procedure. It is instead the firmly established narrative precedent that “Good Girls Avoid Abortion,” the very name bestowed on the convention in the TV Tropes wiki article on the topic. In two separate “Slate” pieces, Roxanne Khamsi and Amanda Hess note the disproportionate number of TV and movie characters who die as a result of choosing abortion. Historically, the overwhelming majority of screen characters who discover an unplanned pregnancy opt against abortion.

Anti-choice viewers will find little to like about Slate’s Donna, whose sense of humor also reveals monumental irreverence about the “human vagina” and its impact on undergarments. The character’s scatological obsession sustains multiple fart and poop jokes. Some gags, like the accidental flatulence that earns one character the nickname “pee farter,” are funnier than others. The screenplay depends on a few contrivances that stretch credulity and would feel more at home in a duller, less imaginative universe. My vote for the worst scene is the revelation that one-night stand Max is a student of Donna’s mother. Max returns a book to her home when Donna happens to be visiting.

Robespierre squeezes every pretty penny out of the licensing fee paid for the Paul Simon song that also gives the movie its title. Featured prominently in the trailer and more than once in the feature itself, “The Obvious Child” underscores one of the best sloppy/goofy underwear dance scenes since Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst cavorted in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” While some have speculated on the title song’s meaning in relation to Donna’s pregnancy, the track certainly works as an allusion to the main character’s arrested development and slacker status. No matter what the interpretation, the propulsive, infectious batucada pounded out by Simon’s Bahian collaborators Olodum on the opening tune from “The Rhythm of the Saints” is an inspired selection.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Pop culture chronicler Alexandre O. Philippe, whose tremendously entertaining 2010 documentary “The People vs. George Lucas” examined the devotion of “Star Wars” fan communities, applies a similar approach in “Doc of the Dead.” Philippe splatters his canvas with bloody, broad brushstrokes, painting a rapid-fire array of talking heads both noteworthy and obscure to contextualize the development of zombiphilia. On-camera interviews with authorities like George A. Romero, Simon Pegg, Tom Savini, Bruce Campbell, and Robert Kirkman are interspersed with liberal doses of movie clips from established classics and no-budget, backyard labors of love. Even zombies can’t be all things to all living people, however, and “Doc of the Dead” is best when it remains focused on the details of great genre films.

Zombie emperor Romero shares stories with his typical candor and humility, and “Doc of the Dead” would make a good double feature with Rob Kuhns’s “Birth of the Living Dead,” the 2013 film that focuses specifically on 1968’s seminal, game-changing “Night of the Living Dead.” Everyone in Philippe’s movie agrees that there is no single figure in the zombiverse more important to its evolution than Romero, and the filmmaker digs in to both “Night of the Living Dead” – with assists from co-screenwriter John Russo and actors Judith O’Dea and Russell Streiner – and Romero’s phenomenal 1978 sequel “Dawn of the Dead.”

The latter film is cited for a number of Romero’s brilliant genre contributions, including the perfect consumerist metaphor encapsulated in the film’s shopping mall setting, humorously described by Philippe via footage of rabid bargain hunters congregating outside a big box store on “Black Friday.” “Day of the Dead” is discussed primarily in the context of Sherman Howard’s fantastic performance as Bub, a turn that Pegg affectionately compares to Boris Karloff’s iconic interpretation of Frankenstein’s monster as a reminder that Romero can even be credited with realigning audience sympathies to allow us to root for the shambling flesh eaters – a rare occurrence in the canon.

Philippe loves the well-practiced one-liners of “The Zombie Survival Guide” and “World War Z” author Max Brooks, and “Doc of the Dead” outlines all kinds of scientific correlations, rules, and guidelines, including an informal referendum on the slow versus fast zombie debate. One of the movie’s most engrossing segments investigates the links between race, slavery, Haitian voodoo and pre-“Night of the Living Dead” interpretations of zombies on film. Philippe pauses to briefly acknowledge Victor Halperin’s influential “White Zombie” (1932), but skitters past other important titles. Brief mention is made of “I Walked with a Zombie” (1943), but Philippe pretty much skips international contributions, like the work of Italy’s Lucio Fulci and the “Blind Dead” series by Spaniard Amando de Ossorio.

Of course, running time makes it impossible to cover every important zombie movie, especially when surveying such a vast and varied genre, and Philippe can be credited for squeezing in mentions of many influential titles, from the brutal but comic fatalism of “Return of the Living Dead,” which popularized the notion of zombies as brain eaters, to the libido-driven sensuality of “Re-Animator,” in which Stuart Gordon inverts a central zombie tenet by, as producer Brian Yuzna indicates, giving the priapic Dr. Hill “a stronger idea of who he is” once he becomes a corpse. A case is also made that Pegg and Edgar Wright’s socially aware “Shaun of the Dead” closely follows “Night of the Living Dead” in importance, especially in terms of jumpstarting the contemporary wave of zombie popularity.

Among the most successful content creators of the current zombie apocalypse is “The Walking Dead” writer Kirkman, who notes, “I will plainly say that Bram Stoker is to Stephenie Meyer as George Romero is to Robert Kirkman.” “The Walking Dead” aside, the film’s final section speculates on the danger of zombie saturation, and Philippe lists a variety of cottage industries that have expanded production in the wake of zombie fever. Zombie video games, pub crawls, organized runs, immersive live action role play, television commercials, pornographic parodies, and survival preparedness gear manufacturers have all benefited from our ongoing fascination with the thin, mysterious veil between life and what happens to us after we die. That curiosity means the undead business is not likely to satiate its hunger anytime soon.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Every single penny of its modest budget up on the screen, William Eubank’s “The Signal” integrates impressive special effects in a manner similar to Josh Trank’s “Chronicle,” another out-of-the-blue science fiction thriller about a group of smart young people in over their heads. Unfortunately, “The Signal” lacks a great deal of the adrenalized rush found in “Chronicle” – despite its own high octane ambitions – and labors under the weight of too many frustrating hairpin turns in the careless script by Eubank, his brother Carlyle Eubank, and David Frigerio. Despite numerous promising stylistic flourishes and several moments of inspired visual design, “The Signal” takes itself too seriously. It’s the kind of movie that one imagines was way more fun to make than it is to watch.

Eubank begins well, effectively sketching the tensions of a westbound road trip taken by M.I.T. whiz kids Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) on their way to deliver Nic’s girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) to a university on the coast. Involved in an escalating online battle with a mysterious hacker who goes by the handle Nomad, Nic and Jonah make the dubious decision to use their computer skills to locate and confront their challenger. When the journey leads them to a creepy, seemingly abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere, most audience members will groan at the movie’s first major head-scratching leap of faith: why would a couple of ridiculously intelligent kids seek out a confrontation in the dead of night with an antagonistic creeper who has been taunting them with evidence of his surveillance powers?

It only gets worse from there, as the boys make the laughable decision to explore the structure’s basement while Haley remains by herself in the car. Sure. What happens next is a fleeting mash-up of “The Blair Witch Project” and “Signs,” followed by Nic waking up in a subterranean research facility/quarantine area where the calm but menacing Damon (Laurence Fishburne) interrogates the understandably freaked out young man. While the presence of Fishburne lends “The Signal” a strong dose of Morpheus cred, Eubank starts running in circles, working the paranoia and second-guessing to a frenzy without making up his mind whether or to what extent the viewer should buy the secret operation subterfuge.

Separated from a now comatose Haley, Nic discovers he can communicate with Jonah through a convenient air vent, just another of the movie’s endless red flags/red herrings/obvious tip-offs before revelation time. Outside the hazmat hospital, Eubank introduces a few divertissements, the best of which is an encounter with an Area 51 cuckoo played by the indispensable Lin Shaye and the worst of which is the tired fallback of a bullet-riddled, slow motion, machine gun showdown that makes zero sense once the big epiphanies are leaked during the movie’s final, optically dazzling movement.

Another unfortunate similarity “The Signal” shares with “Chronicle” is a blinkered point of view so male-centric that Cooke’s Haley is repeatedly silenced, shackled, and ignored. In a suspenseful attempted escape that is arguably the movie’s best scene, Haley lies unconscious on a gurney while Nic tries to wheel them out of the facility where they are held captive. The pattern loops: Haley doesn’t get to make any decisions; Haley doesn’t get to drive the getaway rig; Haley sits and waits while Nic takes action. It’s no shock that the real relationship of “The Signal” occurs in the bromance shared between Nic and Jonah. We’ve seen this before.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The uncanny resemblance of Louis Ortiz to the 44^th president of the United States supplies the fuel in Ryan Murdock’s “Bronx Obama,” an engaging and entertaining documentary that follows the ups and downs of a regular guy trying to make ends meet on the basis of his physical similarities to one of the most well-known people in the world. Unflappable, affable, and down to earth, Ortiz makes a terrific movie subject as he recounts the tale of his decision to take a chance on a career impersonating Barack Obama. Hitching one’s wagon to the political star of a sitting head of state is risky business, but the ongoing circus sets up the conditions for Murdock to deliver a very warm, funny, and thoughtful take on the contours of an American Dream.

At the time of Ortiz’s epiphany in 2008, the former Verizon field technician had been unemployed for about a year and was financially struggling. Williamsbridge Tavern bartender and friend Pat DeBelles was the first person to suggest to Ortiz that there might be real economic opportunities playing Obama. Even though Ortiz was skeptical, he changed his mind when he shaved his mustache and goatee and took a long look in the mirror.

In the introduction to Murdock’s February 17, 2012 “This American Life” segment called “The Audacity of Louis Ortiz” (which was the doc’s original title as well), host Ira Glass hints at the motivations for adopting a different personality, saying “Usually when you play a part, the expectations are pretty clear. There are lines. There’s a script. There’s a storyline you follow. So when you’re on the kiss cam you kiss. When you’re Hamlet you stress out. You know what you’re on stage to do.” Glass also anticipates Murdock’s angle in the film version, shrewdly recognizing that Ortiz “…found himself in a part with huge expectations and no script whatsoever. He had to make it up as he went along.”

That idea and the surrounding implications of the psychological toll levied by a sometimes thankless gig are explored by Murdock in any number of ways throughout the movie. One minute, Ortiz is treated like a rock star and the next minute, people are shouting hostile insults. Ortiz makes an appearance on “Flight of the Conchords.” He performs with a rock group of fellow impersonators playing Nobel Peace Prize recipients. Most entertainingly, he finds himself in league with a talent manager named Dustin Gold, whose abrasive onscreen persona contrasts with Ortiz’s calm demeanor. Gold’s roster includes versions of Mitt Romney and Bill Clinton, and “Bronx Obama” spends a significant amount of time exploring Ortiz’s transition from mere lookalike to full-fledged performer capable of approximating the vocal cadences and nuances of President Obama.

Murdock finds the emotional core of his film in the relationship shared between single father Ortiz and his teenage daughter Reina. Geographically separated by Ortiz’s demanding and sometimes unpredictable travel schedule, the two frequently communicate through video chat. The audience glimpses Ortiz’s devotion to Reina as well as his feelings of regret and guilt for not being more present. Narratively, it doesn’t hurt that Ortiz’s parenthood calls to mind Obama’s own daughters, providing one more example of the ways that class divisions shape “Bronx Obama” into a modern echo of Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Setting aside the inevitable comparisons to “Love Story” and the less inevitable comparisons to “Dying Young,” Josh Boone’s adaptation of “The Fault in Our Stars” is the most mordant and acerbic kids-with-cancer story to achieve such widespread appeal. Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, who played siblings in “Divergent,” are now star-crossed lovers Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters, the central characters in John Green’s hit novel of the same title. Both teenagers are living on borrowed time, and one of the pleasures of Green’s writing — faithfully transferred from page to screen — is the non-stop deployment of prickly, self-aware black humor that disarms many of the genre’s unalterable expectations.

Hazel meets Gus at a cancer support group and they immediately spark, although Hazel at least pretends that romance is off the table. Augustus affixes himself so quickly and so forcefully to Hazel, several voices have questioned the appropriateness of his aggressive attachment. In a particularly prickly takedown in “Vulture,” Matt Patches writes that Gus tests the theory that “Watching any person battle cancer, even the biggest douchebag, is gut-wrenching.” Ouch. In the book but not in the movie, Hazel figures out that she bears a strong resemblance to Gus’s previous, and now deceased, girlfriend. It does not help that Augustus models every dimension of teenage fantasy without flaw: he’s gorgeous, smart, sensitive, devoted, and speaks and thinks with philosophical erudition beyond his years.

There is some comfort, then, that “The Fault in Our Stars” is Hazel’s story. Notwithstanding the age and gender of the original author, “The Fault in Our Stars” is a welcome change from the relentlessness of big screen fictions favoring a male point of view. Online carping about Augustus fulfilling the rare gender inversion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl only reinforces the need for more movies filtered through the perspective of a female. Woodley crafts an assured performance, refusing like Hazel to let the ever-present nasal cannula and portable oxygen tank limit or define her. A strong argument could be made that Woodley’s likability and charisma help members of the audience excuse some of Augustus’s pushy and obsessive behavior.

One thing hasn’t changed since long before Roger Ebert defined “Ali MacGraw’s Disease” as a “movie illness in which the only symptom is that the sufferer grows more beautiful as death approaches.” Both Woodley and Elgort are just the sort of impossibly lovely creatures that viewers demand even of their oncology patients.

The movie’s MacGuffin is the fictional document “An Imperial Affliction” and its alcoholic author Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe). Hazel’s admiration of Van Houten’s frank and honest account of cancer inspires Augustus to arrange a visit to meet the writer in Amsterdam, but the trip doesn’t quite go as planned. Dafoe is a superior Van Houten to the one described in the book, and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber make several bold changes concerning the character, improving and streamlining the novel’s more labored end game. It’s still a little weird, however, that someone as brilliant as Hazel wouldn’t be able to more quickly recognize the source of Van Houten’s expertise.

Boone retains the novel’s tour of the Anne Frank House (mostly recreated as detailed facsimile sets in Philadelphia) and its role as the site of a passionate kiss between Hazel and Gus. It is hard to say whether the moment works in either medium. While the brief length of Frank’s life echoes Hazel’s fleeting days, the parallels between death by cancer and the horror of the Holocaust are dubious. Not in doubt: the awful choice to retain the crowd of fellow tourists and visitors starting a cringeworthy slow clap for the kissers. At best, Green’s exploitation of Anne Frank as, in essence, a metaphor/symbol/emblem for the “fate” of an early death demonstrates a lack of sophistication, even if some of his fans may now be inspired to investigate Frank’s thoughts in “The Diary of a Young Girl.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Legendary magician and fraud investigator James “The Amazing” Randi is the subject of Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein’s engrossing biopic “An Honest Liar.” Covering Randi’s extraordinary life from his early years in Toronto to his more recent decision to speak publicly about his homosexuality, “An Honest Liar” seamlessly integrates a trove of mediated sound and vision from Randi’s long tenure in the spotlight. Measom and Weinstein also interview a key group of Randi associates, including several celebrity admirers as well as Project Alpha moles Steve “Banachek” Shaw and Michael Edwards. They also gain unprecedented access to their subject, now a sprightly octogenarian whose signature snow white beard, stooped posture, and reliance on a cane call to mind a wild and wizardly Yoda-Gandalf mashup.

Randi initially patterned himself on hero Harry Houdini, mimicking several of the famous escape artist’s well-known stunts before shifting a great deal of his time and energy to challenging and debunking a series of phonies who claimed to be endowed with telekinetic and supernatural powers. Randi’s bracing, no-nonsense attitude about the importance of not falling prey to flimflam conmen shaped the course of the man’s career. Randi’s relentless skepticism, made famous by the unclaimed One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge prize, makes for highly entertaining TV confrontations but is also taken seriously enough to assume the quality of a campaign for justice and rationality.

A fixture of television for decades, Randi has chatted with Bill Maher, Penn & Teller, Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, Anderson Cooper and many others. He has turned up on everything from “Happy Days” to “Nova” to “Today.” His more than thirty appearances on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson introduced a generation to his quick wit. The filmmakers have access to so much fantastic archival content they don’t spend as much time on Randi’s series of lawsuits, his annual “Amazing Meeting” summit celebrating critical thinking, his foundation’s ongoing financial struggles, and his 2009 cancer diagnosis, the latter of which robs viewers of the dedicated atheist’s brilliant quip to writer Michael Mooney: “I want to be cremated. And I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller’s eyes.”

The heart of the movie elaborates Randi’s brilliant dismantling of two key charlatans: faith healer Peter Popoff and self-proclaimed psychic Geller. The former was exposed by Randi in what amounted to a carefully crafted sting operation involving a hired private investigator who managed to locate and record the radio frequency used by the evangelist to receive information from his wife via in-ear audio receiver. Geller, of course, is Randi’s longtime bete noire, a kind of less intellectually astute Moriarty to Randi’s Sherlock. Given the nature of Geller’s antagonistic relationship with Randi, Measom and Weinstein are wise to let Geller appear on camera and tie himself up in verbal knots of his own making (Geller now prefers to call himself a “mystifier” rather than psychic), as a project of this scope would sorely miss the stealthy spoon-bender.

The final section of the movie is a doozy, presenting just the kind of shocking turn of completely unplanned events that documentarians dream about. Revelations involving Randi’s longtime partner (and now spouse) Jose Alvarez, who aided Randi in the 1980s during the perpetuation of the “Carlos” hoax designed to point out the susceptibility of the media, materialize to threaten and challenge Randi’s dearly-held attitudes about honesty and commitment to the truth. It wouldn’t be sporting to spoil the details of this twist, but Randi’s on-camera reactions to some of Measom and Weinstein’s toughest questions about the justification of deceit are every bit as electrifying as the magician’s well-crafted sleight of hand.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A dizzying whirlwind of cinematic sensory overload, Gyorgi Palfi’s “Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen” demands the attention of every serious movie lover besotted with the woozy power of the silver screen. Lyrically edited from more than 450 films – some bad, many good, several great – Palfi’s achievement is undeniable once the lights go down and the journey begins. “Final Cut” is reflexive film construction par excellence, crafting a coherent narrative from dozens of reliable visual tropes tumbling and cascading to form a celluloid romance that makes the viewer the third member of an irresistible ménage a trois. Relying on the alchemy of a quartet of credited editors whose names few Americans will recognize, Palfi’s “film for educational purposes” will very likely exist in the legal shadows for some time to come.

In the post-YouTube era, the supercut has emerged as one of the most delectable bonbons of remix culture. According to the Wikipedia entry on the phenomenon, the term was coined in a 2008 blog post attesting to, as Andy Baio put it, the “genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.” Movie-derived supercuts serve, among other things, to point out the numbing shorthand that wallpapers scripts struggling to achieve novelty – but can also be easily purposed for simultaneous critique and celebration.

For example, London-based supercut maestro Harry Hanrahan stictches together insanely gratifying mash-ups including “It’s Showtime!” and “Get Out of There!” as well as reels of heroes and villains getting hit by buses, Julianne Moore crying, Sean Bean dying, and Nicolas Cage losing his shit. Jonny Wilson’s Eclectic Method project presents a series of mind and ear-bending collages, including “mixtapes” featuring the work of directors like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Pedro Almodovar, and John Hughes. Baio and Michael Bell-Smith launched Supercut.org as a repository for the work of obsessive compilers.

When it was added to the 50^th anniversary schedule of the New York Film Festival in 2012, the program notes opened with the claim that “Final Cut” was “an odds-on candidate for the greatest movie ever made,” and as metanarratives go, that hyperbole doesn’t feel so far from the mark. At 85 minutes, however, “Final Cut” doesn’t measure up to the Incredible Hulk-like muscle of one of its closest siblings, Christian Marclay’s unbelievable installation project “The Clock” (2010), a monumental 24-hour marathon that synchronizes the moments of the day with corresponding shots from popular movies.

“Final Cut,” “The Clock,” and to some degree even Thom Andersen’s crazy ambitious 2003 documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself” allow – maybe even encourage and invite – the spectator to an individualized experience. In his “Final Cut” review, Paul Constant notices the seemingly large number of clips from “Dick Tracy” and “Sin City.” I couldn’t help but alight on the love Palfi shows for Alan Parker’s 1987 cult favorite “Angel Heart.” There is plenty of Hitchcock. And it is impossible to ignore Palfi’s affinity for David Lynch, whose images are featured prominently along with a few choice sound and music cues, including Angelo Badalamenti’s “Twin Peaks” theme.

Music is, not surprisingly, of tremendous importance in an endeavor like “Final Cut,” which depends very little on spoken dialogue to propel forward its action. It all opens to Alan Silvestri’s main title from “Back to the Future,” a perfect choice given the ability of “Final Cut” to transport audience members shot-to-shot through space and time, from the silent era to contemporary CGI-dependent blockbusters. Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly will shortly remark “This has gotta be a dream,” echoing the thoughts of most giddy viewers. The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” plays underneath a series of leading men on the move, skipping from Travolta’s strut to “Oldboy” to “Closely Watched Trains” to “Ninotchka” and so on.

On Twitch, Joshua Chaplinsky and Peter Gutierrez disagreed about the effectiveness of the movie’s boy-meets-girl device, with Gutierrez dismissing what he reads as an “intentionally simplistic” story that “ultimately doesn’t take the audience anywhere new or truly unexpected.” Chaplinsky counters that the “technical complexity of the experiment only benefits from the simplicity of the narrative,” going on to claim that “cinema is romance.” While I tend to side with Chaplinsky, one’s mind automatically begins to imagine roads untraveled by Palfi, since so much of the power of “Final Cut” resides in the rhymes of the edits. Here’s hoping more dreamers will pick up the torch.