Movie review by Greg Carlson

Award season exuberance follows “The Sessions” like an adorable puppy dog, but director Ben Lewin’s sharp exploration of one man’s quest to dispense with his virginity before his “use by date” mostly steers clear of the inevitable platitudes of affirmation that accompany so many movies in which able-bodied actors portray the disabled. John Hawkes will have to tally more votes than Daniel Day-Lewis to win an Oscar, and one of the trivial anecdotes sure to be noted in the likely event that Hawkes find himself nominated is that his “Lincoln” castmate collected his first Academy Award playing “My Left Foot” artist and poet Christy Brown.

Based on the experiences of tenacious Berkeley, California resident Mark O’Brien, a victim of childhood polio confined to an iron lung for all but an hour or so on any given day, “The Sessions” focuses on the adult O’Brien’s desire to reconcile his religious faith with his drive to experience sexual intercourse. Lewin maximizes the comic mileage inherent in the juxtaposition of erotic curiosity and Roman Catholic Church doctrine. William H. Macy, as the priest who eagerly counsels O’Brien, endorses the quest, saying, “In my heart, I feel like He’ll give you a free pass on this one.” O’Brien goes on to hire Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate.

In Jessica Yu’s Academy Award-winning documentary “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien,” O’Brien says, “My ambition as a journalist is to be able to write about anything. I know I’ll always be asked to write about disability…  but I think of an actor like Danny Glover, who doesn’t play ‘black’ men all the time. He just plays men.” Hawkes’ performance, due in no small measure to the weight of O’Brien’s own words, allows the viewer to see O’Brien not as a disabled man but as a man. Hawkes makes the tremendous effort to accomplish the physical transformation into O’Brien, but he particularly excels at embodying his subject’s biting sense of humor and clear-eyed lack of self-pity.

Along with Yu’s short film, O’Brien’s 1990 essay “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” shares indispensable insight into the psychological and emotional dimensions of the events dramatized by Lewin in “The Sessions.” Archived on O’Brien’s website, the brief essay describes in clear prose both the procedure O’Brien followed to arrange the sessions with Cohen Greene and the psychological barriers he surmounted to get past imagining himself as damaged and deformed. The article and documentary touch on aspects of O’Brien’s life, particularly his relationship with his parents, not explored in the dramatization.

If “The Sessions” fails on any level to meet the high standards set by O’Brien’s directness and honesty, it is in Lewin’s struggle to understand Cohen Greene’s psychologically challenging line of work. The viewer is told that surrogacy is not the same as prostitution, but the director struggles to articulate to what extent Mark transcends his position as a client. We also experience domestic tension between Cheryl and her husband Josh (Adam Arkin), and even if a great deal is deliberately left unsaid by the filmmaker, the audience is not invited to understand Cohen Greene to the same degree as O’Brien.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Flight” is a tale of two movies. In the first, technical craftsman and special effects-focused veteran Robert Zemeckis constructs a lollapalooza of a doomed commercial airliner crisis. In the second, Denzel Washington battles the demons of alcoholism in an old-school social morality play. Altogether, the movie’s running time comes in at just under two hours and twenty minutes, a mark of its unnecessary sense of self-importance, but audience members looking for a character study could do worse than what amounts to a made-for-TV, grown-up after-school special enhanced by the presence of an A-list star and a huge production budget.

Boozehounds are attractive to actors for a variety of reasons, and potential award recognition probably ranks on the list. Nine men have won Oscars playing alcoholics from a pool of many more nominations. Tim Dirks, Emanuel Levy and others have pointed out that all five 1983 Academy Award Best Actor nominees played “drunks of one kind or another.” As a two-time Oscar winner, Washington doesn’t need any more golden hardware to remind us of his status, but his turn as Captain Whip Whitaker has a good shot at earning his sixth performance nomination.

The dependably watchable Washington is surrounded by a group of terrific supporting players, including Bruce Greenwood as a pilot union representative, Kelly Reilly as the recovering addict who moves in with Whip post-crash, and John Goodman as a funny, scene-stealing Dr. Feelgood. Unsurprisingly, Don Cheadle makes a perfect criminal defense attorney brought in to help exonerate Whip by, among other things, working to suppress a damning toxicology report. Cheadle’s Hugh Lang makes no secret of his disgust at Whip’s irresponsibility, and the actor’s handful of scenes with Washington remind viewers of their chemistry in the excellent “Devil in a Blue Dress.”

One of the most thought-provoking questions raised by John Gatins’ screenplay seriously considers whether Whip’s chemically altered state actually prevented a greater loss of life. Lang explains that pilots in ten FAA simulations of the crash failed to successfully land, but for whatever reason, Whitaker was able to avoid total catastrophe – even though several people lost their lives. “Flight” flirts not so much with the possibility of divine intervention, but rather the existential crisis that arises when Whitaker must decide whether to accept responsibility or allow someone else – a very specific, innocent someone else – to take the fall for the vodka bottles found in the aircraft’s trash.

Even though the movie will almost certainly be missing as an in-flight airline viewing option, I’ll take Zemeckis films with flesh and blood performers over soulless, uncanny valley motion capture animation any day. The last live-action movie Zemeckis made was “Cast Away,” in 2000. That film also featured a terrifying plane crash sequence. That said, “Flight” relies too often on formulaic explorations of the distance between heroism and the need for redemption. Whip’s post-crash struggles to stop drinking, even against the increasingly tense backdrop of the ongoing federal investigation and an upcoming NTSB hearing that will determine the captain’s fate, simply cannot compete with the initial rush of the movie’s thrilling depiction of every traveler’s worst nightmare.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Providing a ray of hope for the future of videogame-as-movie and vice versa, Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” carries on the company’s once-automatic tradition of churning out art-meets-commerce product that attracts the kids but offers enough charm for the grown-ups.  So much of videogame cinema is littered with the charred remains of titles that failed to bridge the appeal of play with the narrative imagination demanded by the feature film. For every movie that embraces the logic and aesthetics of videogaming there are trash heaps of the forgettable (“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”), the cacophonous (“Doom”), the misguided (“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”), the balding (“Hitman”), the insensible (“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”), and the certifiable (“Super Mario Bros.”).

And let’s not talk about Uwe Boll at all.

Of course, “Wreck-It Ralph” is not directly based on an existing franchise, so to be fair, its code more closely resembles movies in which videogame culture frames the story, including “Tron,” “WarGames,” “The Last Starfighter,” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” In “Wreck-It Ralph,” the characters that populate the graphically challenged coin-operated arcade machines of the 1980s interact with the more three-dimensionally rendered avatars representing the current state of the art. A universe is carefully constructed and presented with no small debt to the basic premise of “Toy Story.” In fact, Pixar’s influence on “Wreck-It Ralph” is so strong, one can imagine some executives wringing hands that the movie wasn’t released under that banner.

John C. Reilly lends his voice to the title character, a Donkey Kong-like heavy in the game “Fix-It Felix Jr.” Tired of being the bad guy in the Sisyphean world of re-starts and endless lives, Ralph attends a therapy group for other heels who must cope with the knowledge that medals for heroism lie forever out of reach. When Ralph decides he can take no more, he abandons his game. This grave breach, referred to by videogame cabinet inhabitants as “going turbo,” threatens “Fix-It Felix Jr.” with permanent “out of order” status. Even worse, if a character dies outside of the game to which he or she belongs, there are no more second and third chances.

Like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” the rights and clearances team for “Wreck-It Ralph” surely wrote another chapter in the book covering cross-platform, competing company synergy. Cameo appearances from vintage pixel stars like Pac-Man, the Tapper bartender, Q*Bert, Sonic the Hedgehog, Bowser/King Koopa, and Zangief provide the nerdy recognition factor for older filmgoers, but the moviemakers keep the primary focus on the quartet that includes Ralph, Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), Felix (Jack McBrayer), and Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch). A villain also emerges in Alan Tudyk’s King Candy, whose close resemblance to Ed Wynn’s Mad Hatter will endear some and infuriate others.

Silverman’s sassy, hyperactive smartmouth lives in a racing game called Sugar Rush, and her status as a “glitch,” conforms to another of Disney’s most cherished traditions: the picked-on outsider whose initially undesirable differences will be affirmed as assets en route to the lesson that everyone has value. Like many of her corporate kin, Vanellope can be anyone she wants to be and do anything she sets out to accomplish, no matter the “disability” hidden in her programming. While the outcomes for Vanellope and Ralph can be guessed by the viewer long before the retro-styled Buckner & Garcia song plays over the end credits, director Rich Moore makes the journey entertaining for gamers and non-gamers alike.

By the way, for everyone keeping track of high scores, the greatest videogame movie of all time remains “The King of Kong.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

For the defense, “Cloud Atlas” has enough ambition for a few lifetimes of storytelling, but ambition does not make a great movie – or in this case, even a mediocre one. The adaptation of David Mitchell’s cult novel, a dreamy, puzzling mash-up of period and science fiction, is ideally suited to the talents of the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, filmmakers whose greatest successes have dealt with epistemological pretzels, philosophical synchronicities, and the elasticity of time. “Cloud Atlas” slices up and cross-cuts among six interconnected narratives that cover a span beginning in the 19^th century and stretching to a post-apocalyptic future the world has yet to experience.

In a 2004 review for “The Telegraph” critic Theo Tait wrote that Mitchell’s novel, “spends half its time wanting to the be The Simpsons and the other half The Bible.” The film retains those lurching shifts in tone, and they are even less successful on the screen. “Cloud Atlas” pinballs from the broad slapstick farce of a nursing home breakout to the somber melodrama of a doomed love affair between a vagabond composer and a future atomic scientist. One intention of the book, less apparent in the movie, is to address a variety of well-worn genres via the self-acknowledgment of metafiction, but the technique fails on film because the directors deliver a product that is, as Karina Longworth so aptly points out, “totally lacking in self-awareness.”

“Cloud Atlas” surely wants to communicate something profound about the human animal’s tendency toward destruction through the way we mistreat one another, but a motif exploring cannibalism, like so many others things in the film, is variously treated as a joke (the morbid humor of a rascal collecting teeth on a beach once used as a “cannibals’ banqueting hall” and later, a flip shout-out to “Soylent Green”) and a matter of grave import (the rather horseshit revelation scene in which a servant “fabricant” is shocked to learn that her fellow clones are kept nourished by unwittingly consuming one another). The weak are meat the strong, and apparently the slave class, do eat.

For a fiction in which the structure is designed to replicate a musical composition and a major thematic link involving the sextet of the title, “Cloud Atlas” desperately needs a grander score than the one provided by co-director Tykwer and his regular cohorts Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek. What should be critical, indispensable material is forgotten the moment it is played. Additionally, the pulsating, techno-reprise of essentially the same lines Tykwer and company wrote for “Run Lola Run” does not help a clumsy 1970s thriller homage when Halle Berry’s investigative journalist Luisa Rey is on the run from an assassin on the streets of San Francisco.

Alongside Berry, stars Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Keith David, and Doona Bae all play multiple roles across the various sections. Most of their accents and prosthetic makeup effects are so ridiculous, one wonders if the rubber Halloween mask looks were done on purpose. A flap over the ill-advised use of so-called “yellowface” resulted in a somewhat weird defense from the moviemakers, but the visual evidence is nasty no matter how you feel about actors playing other races. Instead of sub-titling an alien language, the infantile pidgin patois (the truth is the “true true” and a great distance is the “far far”) spoken by the Hawaii-dwelling Valleysmen tribe in the long-away future is as gross as anything that dribbled out of Jar Jar Binks’ snout.

For a movie from the creators of “The Matrix,” the staging of the laser gun shootouts in the Neo Seoul sequences set in the year 2144 look like they are taking place in slow motion and underwater, and not in that cool “bullet time” way. As Jim Sturgess rolls around the hood of his hovercraft to trade fire with a bunch of black-clad ninja stormtroopers, the thought may cross your mind that you have probably seen student films with better fight choreography. The Wachowskis should be in clover with this stuff, but the scenes featuring Bae as revolution inspiration and future deity Sonmi-451 merely contribute to the status of “Cloud Atlas” as the umpteenth failed “Blade Runner” larceny.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Heart-on-its-sleeve earnest and desperate to be both taken seriously and embraced by the young people who helped put more than a million copies of the novel in print, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” aspires to the same kind of teen angst insider credibility owned by John Hughes in the 1980s. With David Bowie on the soundtrack and a cameo appearance by Joan Cusack, the movie pays Hughes respectful tribute during the course of its exploration of lunchroom caste systems, post-football game pot brownie parties, Rocky Horror performances, and heartfelt mixtape compilations.

Written and directed by “Wallflower” author Stephen Chbosky, the movie sticks close to the events described in troubled protagonist Charlie’s (Logan Lerman) letters to a “friend” in the book, dropping a subplot about an abortion and family scenes involving holidays spent with cousins. The author retains the core trio of thematic ballast: sexual abuse, the ugliness and consequences of homophobia, and (mostly) unrequited love. In “Slant,” Chris Cabin attacked the film as a “somewhat revolting piece of pop martyrdom, made for and isolated to the damaged middle class.” Cabin also detected “that certain, odious brand of liberalism that favors and tends toward victimization.” Given the movie’s milieu and ambitions, Cabin’s position may be a bit harsh.

The film remains virtually silent on the issue of class, but the characters clearly inhabit a world where attending college is a given (the movie version adds a thread of anxiety about Sam’s shaky application credentials). In the book, Charlie indicates that his family is not wealthy, and also that his grandfather is a racist, but the movie depicts the suburbs of Pittsburgh as a universe without much color. The same criticisms were often leveled at Hughes, causing one to wonder if teen films are somehow more glaring or noticeable in their homogeneity than romantic comedies, musicals, or thrillers.

As an epistolary novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” relies solely on Charlie’s descriptions of his friends and the members of his family. Obviously, a film adaptation requires actors to inhabit the characters, and the casting choices – particularly the principal trio of Charlie, crush object Sam, and Sam’s step-sibling Patrick – prove one of the film’s greatest strengths. Both Ezra Miller and Emma Watson break free of their best-known roles – he as sullen, deeply damaged kids in “Afterschool” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and she as Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” juggernaut. Both supporting players leave a mark, and Miller especially runs off with every scene in which he appears.

Not all of Chbosky’s decisions carry water, however, and I for one find it hard to believe that bright, artistic-minded, popular culture-obsessed teenagers of 1991 would not recognize or be able to figure out how to identify Bowie’s “Heroes,” which is used as the “mystery tunnel song” in bookend scenes. And while the movie’s pre-Internet setting precludes the possibility of iTunes and Google searches, Charlie’s affinity for the Smiths’ “Asleep,” along with the soundtrack inclusion of New Order, Sonic Youth, XTC, the Cocteau Twins, and Galaxy 500, among others, paints a picture of sharp musical taste.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A painfully unfunny movie that sticks to formula like Enfamil, “Pitch Perfect” has all the authenticity and verisimilitude of the Fiji mermaid. The sharp-eyed Anna Kendrick, taking a big step down from the quality of her recent roles, trades supporting status for a headlining turn, but her character displays no distinguishing features or personality traits. Kendrick’s Beca, a faux-rebellious wannabe music producer who reluctantly enrolls at the college where her father works, joins a competitive all-female a cappella group that can only exist in the cotton candy imagination of Hollywood. The members of the Bellas take a vow not to date any members of the all-male rival Treble Makers, but Beca falls for the handsome Jesse (Skylar Astin) faster than you can say “Romeo and Juliet.”

Building the structure of its narrative on the template popularized in low-stakes competition laffers like “Bring It On” and “Dodgeball,” “Pitch Perfect” even apes the former’s affinity for manufactured slang and the latter’s convention in which a pair of dysfunctional commentators banters through the performances, nattering away as if in some other, funnier film while carpet bombing their scenes with double entendre. John Michael Higgins, whose singing and arranging experience mark him as an obvious choice, and producer Elizabeth Banks, do the honors in the broadcast booth. Other than Kendrick, only Rebel Wilson escapes anonymity among the Bellas. Wilson continues her run as an indispensable generator of empathy in a society seemingly hell-bent on the ridicule of the overweight. As Fat Amy, Wilson walks off with every scene in which she appears.

Like “Glee,” “Pitch Perfect” depends on the razzle dazzle of its pop song choices, and only a handful of the tracks selected for vocal arrangement have cross-generational appeal. The movie crushes hard on John Hughes, returning several times to a motif revolving around “The Breakfast Club,” but director Jason Moore doesn’t hold a candle, let alone sixteen of them, to the legendary 80s auteur of angst. To win back the heart of her boy, Beca belts “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” but the thrill is blunted by an earlier scene in which the heroine weeps while watching Judd Nelson freeze mid-step with his fist raised in triumph. It’s never a good idea to include a clip reminding viewers of a much better film.

Given the bland, uninspired tone of “Pitch Perfect,” it is only a small surprise when Moore includes a scene in which Bella leader Aubrey (Anna Camp) empties the contents of her stomach all over the floor of the choir’s rehearsal space – a reprise of the embarrassing onset of nervousness that cost the singers a trophy during their last competition. The gushing fountain of vomit splatters and sprays everywhere, and Moore cannot resist adding additional gross-out gags, including a high-angle view of one of the Bellas slipping and falling in the foul, lumpy spew. The amateurish puking effects even fall short of the tube-in-the-sleeve technique beloved of “Saturday Night Live,” but the rancid disgorgement only serves to remind viewers that successful gross-out humor ala “Bridesmaids” is not easy to replicate.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

It goes without saying that many film students and wannabe auteurs will worship at the feet of “The Master,” another audacious, dazzling, and occasionally frustrating tour de force from the preternaturally gifted Paul Thomas Anderson. Highly anticipated as a potential expose itching to pull back the curtain on Scientology, the film functions instead as a rich character study of two particular types of American loser. The first is Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a misguided sailor in the U.S. Navy marking time in the South Pacific during the waning days of World War II. A deliberately unlikable alcoholic quick to outbursts of violence, Freddie is a self-taught mixologist, experimenting with paint thinner, photo processing chemicals, and any other available toxic substance that might give him a buzz.

Lost, angry, and very likely seriously mentally ill, Freddie blacks out and wakes up on a yacht commanded by Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self-confident conman of the highest order who introduces himself by saying to Quell, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all, I am a man, just like you.” Dodd is enough like Charles Foster Kane that one would not have been surprised to hear him add newspaper publisher to the list of his achievements. To the chagrin of his family and inner-circle, Dodd falls hard for Freddie, inviting him to join the traveling circus Dodd calls “The Cause,” a cult-like system that blends fantasy, science, and sense memory with the power of suggestion in intense, therapeutic “processing” sessions, sometimes conducted one-on-one and sometimes played out in front of a roomful of spectators.

“The Master” most closely resembles Anderson’s own “There Will Be Blood,” both as portrait of outsize dreamers and as clinic on male screen performance. Amy Adams, as Dodd’s wife Peggy, is allowed but a fraction of the screen time devoted to the movie’s real romance between Freddie and Lancaster. If only PTA loved women as much as he loved men, Adams might have been given more moments like the fantastic scene in which she brings her husband to climax over a bathroom sink. Truly private, it is one of the few times in the film Anderson allows a glimpse of the Master without his shield, and suggests at least the possibility that the hand that rocks more than the cradle rules Dodd’s world.

“The Master” is by turns claustrophobic and panoramic, although the former outpaces the latter in scene after scene of intimate medium and close shots in which many speeches are given and “applications” are administered. The highly presentational nature of Dodd’s movement/religion incorporates and even demands that the Master’s every word be documented, a strategy that affords Anderson the luxury of non-stop grandstanding every time Lancaster opens his mouth – which is a great deal more than Freddie, who is often photographed in reaction, gazing at his mentor in wide-eyed awe.

The best moments in “The Master,” including the much-discussed barking mad jail scene, indicate that underneath his collected, controlled exterior Dodd is every bit as unhinged and fragile as Freddie. Jealous of Freddie’s unselfconsciousness, Dodd manipulates and abuses his friend, who masochistically takes everything dished out to him and comes back for more. By the time the Master croons the second of his two major musical performances, we may not understand much, but we will have seen that Lancaster contains within himself a riot only Quell can quell.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

WARNING: The following review reveals plot information. Read only if you have seen “Looper.”

The best scene in writer-director Rian Johnson’s “Looper” frames the profiles of Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Old Joe (Bruce Willis) in the booth of a small, mostly deserted diner. The two men are one and the same, and the face-to-face meeting knowingly flouts one of the longstanding paradoxes of time travel. The wheels of the plot insist that the Joes have incompatible tasks to accomplish, and even though the viewer hopes that the two appealing actors will spend significant screen time together, Johnson has other, equally ambitious ideas in mind for the second part of the movie.

That Joe would be at cross purposes with himself is one of Johnson’s smartest touches in a film bursting with promise. As a murder-for-hire trigger man carrying out dirty work for a future mobster who uses time travel to vacuum any trace of assassinations by having the killings done in an earlier decade, a “looper” like Joe belongs to the cinematic tradition of weary tough guys popularized in hardboiled detective noir. We are told (but can also certainly figure out) that these blunderbuss-wielding “gat men” are not a particularly optimistic class of outlaw. The very nature of their business insists on something Johnson calls “closing the loop,” which means pretty much what you think it does.

Johnson’s debut “Brick,” which also showcased the talents of Gordon-Levitt, remains the filmmaker’s strongest effort because it was less pedantic than “Looper” in its explorations of pain and loss. “Looper,” however, reaches for the cosmic territory of the very biggest questions of normative ethics, including the whopper conundrum that asks whether the murder of a particular child to spare the lives of many is a justifiable action. That wicked game dominates the last section of the film, and Johnson has it both ways by using Joe as the protector of the future killer known as the Rainmaker while Old Joe plots to pull the trigger on the little boy.

Johnson effectively constructs his own version of the so-called Hitler’s Murder Paradox, or at least the element of it in which we are asked whether a person should be held responsible for crimes that he or she has not yet committed. Sara (Emily Blunt), the maternal guardian of the child who may turn out to be the Rainmaker, believes that despite evidence to the contrary, the future is unwritten, and her point of view rejects predestination. To date, nobody has cinematically expressed the Hitler’s Murder Paradox and the unfathomable transformation from innocence to evil better than Elem Klimov in the apocalyptic masterpiece “Come and See.”

The resolution of “Looper,” a grand trope often described as the Heroic Suicide or Heroic Sacrifice, is Johnson’s answer to the problem. Despite being presented in the context of the film’s climax as a surprise, Joe’s death has been foretold and foreshadowed since the opening voiceover exposition, and will shock only those who were not paying much attention. Or those who have never seen “Alien 3,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “Constantine,” “Gran Torino,” “Sunshine,” “Dancer in the Dark,” “Armageddon,” and “Sin City,” the latter two of which (perhaps coincidentally) afford Bruce Willis the opportunity to do himself in for a good reason.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A vast improvement over the weak 1995 adaptation by Danny Cannon, “Dredd” better understands the pulp sensibilities of the dystopian nightmare patrolled by Mega-City One Justice Department employee Joseph Dredd (Karl Urban), the grim, perpetually helmeted law officer whose authority as a judge fuels the fanboy power dream of immediate arrest, sentencing, and execution (when necessary, which is to say, very often). The suggestion that elevated future crime rates – the first Dredd story was set in 2099 – have necessitated a radical overhaul to the entire judicial system certainly won’t comfort those who identify as anti-authoritarian, but the comic book’s police state resides comfortably in a fantasy realm where the law represents a sane refuge from the hellish threat of drooling thugs.

Lame explanatory voiceover notwithstanding, director Pete Travis dispenses with most of the leaden exposition that weighs down so many movies aiming to please existing fan constituencies while simultaneously grubbing for new ticket buyers. Wisely, the audience is invited to identify with rookie Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a mutant who can read the thoughts of others. Assigned to Dredd for a probationary evaluation, Anderson’s unique psychic abilities allow her to recognize nuance and complexity that contrasts sharply with Dredd’s rigid application of the rulebook. Cult screenwriter Alex Garland’s snapshot “day in the life” approach limits the principal conflict to one primary location, a concrete jungle housing project where Madeline “Ma-Ma” Madrigal (Lena Headey) conspires to consolidate the megalopolis’ trafficking of Slo-Mo, a crystal meth-like synthetic.

Action movie aficionados will no doubt recognize similarities between “Dredd” and “The Raid: Redemption,” the Indonesian martial arts thriller directed with panache by native Welshman Gareth Evans. Both movies revolve around the infiltration of high-rise slum blocks controlled by drug-dealing crime lords. Both movies feature showdowns in narcotics laboratories. Both movies include trapped law enforcement officers threatened by scores of bloodthirsty residents. Each movie treats violence with an obsessive degree of aesthetic care and concern.

Many of the film’s most unexpected surprises come courtesy of the impressive talent pool aiding Travis behind the camera. Frequent Lars von Trier and Danny Boyle collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle photographs the interiors of the Peach Trees block with a strong affinity for classic noir, and his collaboration with visual effects supervisor Jon Thum on a series of slow motion explorations of stomach-churning violence invests the visuals with a repulsive beauty. Grisly shots of bullets tearing through flesh and bone compete with low-angle, through-the-floor views of bodies plummeting to the pavement.

There is just enough gallows humor to keep “Dredd” from becoming overwhelmingly morose, and Garland thankfully holds the number of puns and one-liners to a minimum. The story’s chief deficiency is the handling of Ma-Ma. Headey is a wonderful actor, and Ma-Ma is presented as a shrewd opponent, but the best villains contain some element of humanity and Ma-Ma never lets down her guard as a ruthless tyrant. Wood Harris, as a gang lieutenant in the custody of Dredd and Anderson, has a better opportunity to develop a rounded character. A truly worthy Judge Dredd movie might explore the idea that the title character’s tendency to dispense blistering beatdowns is every bit as sadistic as the criminal behavior of the villains.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

With a mash-up premise that unites buddy movie, family drama, character study, and crime caper, “Robot & Frank” raises stakes higher by placing all of these ingredients inside the sci-fi trappings of its not-too-distant future setting. The movie marks the simultaneous feature narrative debut for former NYU classmates Christopher Ford, who wrote the screenplay, and Jake Schreier, who directed. The filmmakers are blessed to have Frank Langella as their protagonist, particularly because the juxtaposition of a forgetful senior citizen being scolded by a diminutive machine could so easily disintegrate into the pit of odd-couple ridiculousness.

Langella’s Frank is a one-time jewel thief and ex-con now moldering away in his modest rural retreat. Despite a lack of interest in housekeeping and grocery shopping, Frank regularly visits a local library to check out books and Jennifer (Susan Sarandon), the kind, sweet librarian dealing with impending repurposing of the facility following the community’s waning interest in physical media. A valuable copy of “Don Quixote” echoes Frank’s position as a chivalrous but antiquated conjurer of fanciful illusions, and Jennifer’s role as Frank’s Dulcinea will come to have bittersweet significance by the movie’s final scenes.

Frank’s robot, a gift from his impatient but concerned son Hunter (James Marsden), is programmed to assist with household chores and meal preparation, and to provide companionship and therapies designed to help with Frank’s cognitive deterioration. Designed by the creative minds at special effects firm Alterian (the veteran company known for Daft Punk’s helmets), physically performed by petite dancer Rachel Ma, and voiced by Peter Sarsgaard with an obvious affinity for Douglas Rain’s restrained sense of politeness and calm, the VGC-60L automaton makes a believable comic foil for the curmudgeonly Frank.

Many science fiction enthusiasts will appreciate the light touch of Ford and Schreier’s vision of things to come. Aside from a handful of subtle markers applied to automobiles, fashion, and communication devices, the film presents a familiar world similar to our own, and along with the aforementioned items, the presence of sophisticated robots provides evidence that the story is not unfolding in 2012. Frank’s daughter Madison (Liv Tyler), a globetrotting humanitarian, expresses strong displeasure at the thought of a robot in her father’s life, but by the time she arrives to complicate Frank’s plans, the robot has already been taught a great deal about casing potential targets, picking locks, and avoiding detection (one can only speculate whether training a mechanical caretaker to steal imperils the Three Laws of Robotics).

More than one critic has bemoaned the film’s apparent lack of interest in the philosophical explorations of humanness at the heart of works like “Blade Runner,” but “Robot & Frank” effectively addresses the topic by establishing a parallel between Frank’s dementia and a plot development in which the total erasure of the robot’s memory will provide a solution to a significant problem. By the time this dilemma materializes, Frank has come to value the friendship provided by the robot, and the possible destruction of his companion’s “brain function” reminds the old man of his own fragile mental state.