Movie review by Greg Carlson

Gordon Gekko’s release from prison, thoroughly documented in the trailer of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” takes place near the beginning of the film and provides the gag that also serves as the movie’s clearest link between past and present: the return of Gekko’s Motorola DynaTac 8000X, a bulky relic of a mobile phone long eclipsed as a state-of-the-art communication device. In an instant, director Oliver Stone conjures the brilliant visual flair that has been missing from his work for at least the last decade. And then the movie settles down, Gekko disappears for the rest of the exposition, and “Money Never Sleeps” lumbers along, not bullish but most definitely bearish – hibernation imminent.

The sequel’s enticing title suggests an exhilarating race through the high-stakes world of stocks and bonds, but Stone settles instead for a lukewarm summary of the recent global financial crisis. Set on the eve of the 2008 meltdown, “Money Never Sleeps” substitutes fictionalized emblems for the likes of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs, but the broad shorthand divides good from evil with a zeal that eliminates any moral shadings that might have stirred greater audience interest.

Admittedly, Shia LaBeouf’s idealistic hotshot Jacob Moore flirts with the dark side, even keeping secrets from fiancée Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who happens to be Gekko’s estranged daughter. There is no doubt, however, that LaBeouf’s green energy-embracing trader wears the white hat: he genuinely believes in the saltwater laser fusion outfit he champions to potential investors, he buys Winnie a shimmering boulder of an engagement ring, and he cries at the death of his principled mentor. Meanwhile, devilish billionaire villain Bretton James (Josh Brolin) crows about his rare study of Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” and puppeteers closed-door, dimly lit meetings of the Federal Reserve Board when he is not busy sharpening the tines of his pitchfork.

Once Gekko slithers into the center of the action, “Money Never Sleeps” briefly perks up, with Michael Douglas in full possession of the dangerous twinkle that allows his iconic inside trader/traitor to straddle the line between antagonist and anti-hero. Unfortunately, Mulligan shares few scenes with Douglas, whose character is far more comfortable “recognizing a fellow fisherman” in his future son in law. The father-daughter conflict proves no more than a convenient plot mechanism, and Mulligan pays the price. Despite her greater share of screen time, Mulligan is nearly overshadowed by nonagenarian national treasure Eli Wallach, whose whistled cuckoo trills suggest that he might be the only actor in the enterprise playfully winking at the material.

Weirdly, Stone eventually asks us to believe that the soulless, reptilian, backstabber Gekko recognizes the fragility and transience of life, and “Money Never Sleeps” ends with a howler of a feel-good birthday party, criminally scored to “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” by the Talking Heads in a reprise of the original 1987 “Wall Street” closing credits. That song contains the line “Never for money/Always for love,” a sentiment Stone sidesteps, overlooks, or ignores for the duration of the movie that has preceded it.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Ben Affleck returns to Boston in “The Town,” a generically titled reference to armed bank robbery academy Charlestown, the gentrified neighborhood that tough Irish mobsters once called home. Based on Chuck Hogan’s 2004 novel “Prince of Thieves,” “The Town” swings hard for Fenway’s Green Monster, and its pastiche of blue-collar drama, class-divide courtship, and jittery heist thriller will appeal to viewers who enjoy the adrenaline rush of movies like Michael Mann’s “Heat,” to which “The Town” owes a sizable debt. Despite the repetition of its shootouts, Affleck the filmmaker confidently stages car chases and gun battles, even if his facility with delicate romance lacks the same flair.

As a director, Affleck fails to top the quality of his debut “Gone Baby Gone,” due in no small measure to the challenge of pulling double duty as lead actor. Affleck’s Doug MacCray is pure Hollywood fantasy: a vicious thug and thief capable of tenderness and compassion. While the other members of his gang pound whiskey, sober MacRay nurses cranberry juice and a broken heart over the long-ago disappearance of his fragile mother. It is no wonder that he falls for Rebecca Hall’s Claire Keesey, the bank manager kidnapped and terrorized by MacRay’s disguised crew during a successful stickup. Of course, Claire has no idea that her new boyfriend held her hostage at gunpoint, and the viewers wait anxiously for the other shoe to drop.

Doug’s feelings for Claire strain the bond he shares with childhood friend Jem (Jeremy Renner), a combustible sociopath on a collision course with the FBI agents closing the net on the crooks. Also complicating Doug’s life is Jem’s sister Krista (Blake Lively), a single mother and drug addict whose child may or may not have been fathered by Doug. Unfortunately, the masculine swagger of “The Town” leaves little for the two key female characters to do, and both Hall and Lively take it on the chin, although the latter shares a terrific scene in a gritty dive with John Hamm’s federal agent. No believable explanation is offered for the ease and speed with which the more sophisticated Claire falls for the jagged Doug, and the movie’s twist on Stockholm syndrome is its most problematic component.

“The Town” has already been sized up against other Boston-set movies, including “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” “The Departed,” and “Mystic River,” and the city certainly announces its presence as a colorful, major character. Shots of the Bunker Hill Monument, the Charles River, the Zakim Bridge and the dense maze of North End construction abet the filmmaker’s desire for credibility, even if locals will scoff at the range of accents displayed by the cast members. The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr helpfully points out to residents and non-residents alike that “The Town” takes place in Movie Boston, and reminds the hyper-sensitive Suffolk County skeptics who chortled during the trailer that one of author Hogan’s aims was to comment on the drawbacks of border-defined insularity. Affleck, as expected, is more interested in getting the fantasy right, and on that score, “The Town” is not half bad.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Bleak, laconic and as chilling as its title, “Winter’s Bone” shares a rarely seen snapshot of American poverty and despair in rural Missouri. Based on Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 novel, director Debra Granik’s adaptation exchanges Woodrell’s poetry – which can feel simultaneously sinewy and rawboned – with a more lived-in realism that suggests documentary as much as tragic fable. Following the backwoods Ozark Mountains odyssey of seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), who must quickly locate her missing father Jessup Dolly or lose the family property, “Winter’s Bone” earned top honors at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it was also recognized for its screenplay, written by Granik and Anne Rosellini.

“Winter’s Bone” operates on the surface as a quiet procedural, in which Ree risks her life by assuming a role that makes her part bounty hunter, part detective, and all tenacious daughter. Despite her youth, Ree manages a household consisting of her barely functioning mother and two younger siblings, who entirely depend on their older sister for survival. Neither Granik nor Lawrence sentimentalize the character, whose fierce dedication to her loved ones knots around a generations-spanning code of behavior that governs the actions of clan and kin, especially in the service of settling disputes internally and keeping legal authorities as far away as possible.

“Winter’s Bone” is not a perfect film, and its greatest deficiency is the way it underutilizes the indispensable and magnetic John Hawkes, who plays Ree’s uncle and reluctant ally. In “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” “Deadwood,” and an impressive number of other television and film credits, Hawkes has built a reputation as a phenomenal talent. As Jessup’s brother Haslam, who goes by the nickname Teardrop, Hawkes dances from livewire menace to haunted paranoia to dutiful resignation. He surely doesn’t want to discover his brother’s fate, as that knowledge will demand the kind of retaliation that can only end in his own murder.

One of Granik’s toughest, smartest, and most surprising choices is the almost total elision of scenes in which methamphetamine openly claims the center of the action. Instead, the drug and all of its painful, destructive ravages disperse through the movie’s atmosphere like a menacing cloud of toxicity. Ree turns down several offers to snort crank, but at no time does Granik resort to sensationalized ravings of high abusers that typically come standard in mediated interpretations of films with the illegal drug trade as subject. The audience never sees an active crystal meth lab or anyone engaged in the manufacturing process. As a character named Megan points out when Ree mentions that Jessup is known for his crank cooking, “Honey, they all do now. You don’t even need to say it out loud.”

At one point, Ree meets with a representative of the United States Army, played by non-actor and professional recruiter Russell Schalk, to find out how quickly she might be able to secure the signing bonus that would ease the pressure to make ends meet (and offer Ree the opportunity to escape the black hole of her foreseeable future). In just a few short minutes, Schalk’s character thoughtfully, even tenderly, dismantles Ree’s desperate naivete. One of the film’s most powerful scenes, it serves as a reminder of Ree’s daily hand-to-mouth struggle as well as the extent to which she is rooted to an unsustainable way of life. Along with a scene in which Ree begs her catatonic mother for help, we are only offered these briefest reminders that the film’s heroine is still a teenager.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Legendary music video director and rock photographer Anton Corbijn’s second foray into feature filmmaking presents George Clooney as “The American.” Loosely based on Martin Booth’s 1990 novel “A Very Private Gentleman,” the movie delights in subverting action, espionage, and thriller genre expectations by way of a stylistic monasticism that withholds the trappings of wall-to-wall gunplay, high-speed car chases, and the otherworldly refutation of the laws of logic and physics. The film’s deliberate pacing and contemplative silences and stillness complement Corbijn’s artful sense of spatial dynamics, which are gorgeously framed by cinematographer Martin Ruhe in frequent long shot.

Clooney plays a tight-lipped gunman known to some as Jack and to others as Edward. A formidable opponent, Jack eludes death in a Swedish snowscape, but makes a regrettable decision that casts a shadow of impending doom over his relocation to Italy, where he agrees to craft a high-powered rifle for a demanding and beautiful client. Jack is resourceful and disciplined, and moves with the economy of a person who long ago grew eyes on the back of his head. Clooney is adept at comedy and drama, and knows there is little to laugh at in the contours of this stealthy killer. At one point, a clip of Henry Fonda in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” plays on a TV in a café, reminding us that sometimes, our favorite good guys need to be bad,

“The American” has drawn comparisons to the poetics of Michelangelo Antonioni and the impossible cool of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai,” and Corbijn goes out of his way to match the tailored, impeccable elegance of Alain Delon and the monochromatic palette of Francois de Lamothe’s ferociously spartan production design and set decoration. The movie also brings to mind Jim Jarmusch’s killer-for-hire films “The Limits of Control” and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” but Corbijn’s straighter portrait lacks most of Jarmusch’s irony and all of his absurdity.

Even though Corbijn strips away plenty of Hollywood fat, he never fully accounts for some wonderfully implausible embroidery, including the title character’s ongoing dialogue with a thoughtful priest, a senior thesis project’s worth of butterfly symbolism, and a whore with a heart of gold (a world-class beauty as played by Violante Placido, one marvels that she works out of a tiny Italian village). The “one last job” premise goes hand in glove with the inescapable occupational hazard often identified as the “you can never leave” clause, which makes one wonder how any master assassin of the movies could be so deluded to think that a safe and pleasant retirement awaits.

Deliberately, the viewer never learns key details that would shed light on Jack’s journey or personal history, and the mystery encourages an amount of anxiety that serves Corbijn’s detached agenda. Without knowing whether the protagonist works for a government or as a mercenary or as a willing hand to the highest bidder, we never get a grip on the man’s sympathies and allegiances. Certainly, Jack understands the consequences of his vocation, and at one point – since he knows better than to ask who will be on the receiving end of a bullet from the weapon he has built – he resigns himself to the likelihood that he will soon read about the result of his gunsmithing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A much better than expected genre outing, “The Last Exorcism” trades William Peter Blatty’s Jesuits for a Louisiana evangelical, but the battlefield is still the body of a young girl, and the thrills are plentiful. Every demonic possession movie made since 1973 owes a bottomless debt to “The Exorcist,” and filmmaker Daniel Stamm pays homage to William Friedkin’s modern classic with taut direction and pacing. “The Last Exorcism” also boasts a sly sense of humor that tempers the increasingly grim events that unfold during the ritual of the title. Additionally, the film borrows heavily from Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan’s 1972 documentary “Marjoe.”

A nimble script by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland contextualizes the entire course of action inside a collection of documentary tapes, complete with shaky handheld videography, focus shifts, and numerous “Turn off the camera” moments. No more or less credible than “The Blair Witch Project” “Cloverfield,” and “REC” (as well as English-language remake “Quarantine”), the gimmick of creepy or unsettling found footage has developed into a stylistic cottage industry within the horror narrative. The technique can simulate realism where none exists, but “The Last Exorcism” errs in its liberal application of Nathan Barr’s standard-issue, emotion-manipulating musical score, an addition that invalidates the “authenticity” of the experience.

Because the bulk of the story hinges on a delicate balance between reason and the supernatural, the film’s ending might divide viewer opinion. One of the charms of the “The Last Exorcism” is the constant tease between earthly explanations for the horrors visited upon Nell Sweetzer and the possibility that something truly unaccountable is unfolding on her family’s rural farmstead. Stamm purposefully provides intimations of the former – the insinuation of sexual abuse among other ideas – without skimping on the latter. Performer Ashley Bell, who plays the unfortunate Nell, may not cross the shocking threshold established by Linda Blair, but she does deliver an intensely physical and sympathetic performance.

Some critics have claimed that “The Last Exorcism” mocks religion, or that at the very least, main character Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) ridicules the rubes to whom he preaches every Sunday. This is a facile dismissal, however, as a close viewing shows a man in full acknowledgment of the debt he owes to his family’s occupational tradition. Yes, Marcus freely admits skepticism when it comes to personal belief in bodily possession by demons (and he is more than willing to accept payment for his services), but he also shows genuine compassion for Nell as victim, regardless of the source of her misery. The preacher’s own crisis of faith is also plausibly outlined, moving him away from pure “Elmer Gantry” con artistry.

“The Last Exorcism” is not a great movie, but its refreshing transposition of setting from the well-heeled, Georgetown Roman Catholicism of “The Exorcist” to the swampy revivalism of Baton Rouge and its isolated, rural surroundings holds tight from start to finish. The location photography capitalizes on the readymade eeriness of the Sweetzer clan’s property, and the mock documentary presentation embraces the low-budget aesthetic without making the enterprise feel cheap.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Noomi Rapace returns as compelling hacker Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” the mostly disappointing sequel to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” The second story in the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire” trades the missing person mystery of the first novel for a hydra-headed yarn that weaves together homicide, sex trafficking, a former Soviet secret agent, Salander’s troubled past, and a huge cast of cops and criminals in a cat-and-mouse procedural that works much better on the page than the streamlined movie adaptation. Fans of the novel might enjoy making book-to-film comparisons, and Rapace is still fun to watch, but the movie often feels perfunctory and unpolished.

While the intimacy of Henrik Vanger’s anguish over the loss of his great-niece cast a strong spell in the inaugural episode, the more outrageous adornments of “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” particularly the backstory detailing Salander’s biography, diminish much of the heroine’s allure. Of course, Larsson mapped out his principal character’s dossier long before readers discovered her magnetism, but more knowledge about Salander means less room to project our own speculations about the things that make her tick. In “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” Salander morphs from a brilliant but still credible investigator to the linchpin in an espionage-connected government conspiracy.

This James Bond-like turn of events places the already formidable Salander in the realm of an altogether different genre, and Larsson’s reliance on a beloved soap opera staple will be no surprise to those who enjoy working out plot twists and revelations. From “The Empire Strikes Back” to “Angel Heart” to “The Boondock Saints,” movies have lavished plenty of melodramatic attention on shocking disclosures of paternity, and “The Girl Who Played with Fire” addresses themes of attempted patricide as well as revenge-fueled filicide. At best, the device allows viewers to experience the vicarious thrill of much needed payback. At worst, it smacks of lazy storytelling.

While director Niels Arden Oplev infused the big screen version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” with a glossy sophistication that skittered over the most gaping plot conveniences and coincidences, Daniel Alfredson – who takes over in the director’s chair – stages the action with blunt straightforwardness more akin to hour-long episodic television drama than bigger-budgeted theatrical fare. Alfredson also grapples with the disadvantage of realizing many of the book’s most implausible details. The terrifying giant who feels no pain, a former Sapo agent who is easily suckered by a bogus prize offer, and the freakishly disfigured monster who succumbs to the “curse of the talking villain” are chief offenders.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist) believes steadfastly in Salander’s innocence despite evidence connecting her to a double murder (with a third added shortly thereafter). In the novel, Larsson turns the question of Salander’s possible guilt into a suspenseful stratagem that propels the simultaneously occurring chains of action. The movie takes little interest in the same tactic, a failure that deflates much of the psychological intrigue manifested in Blomkvist’s fascination with his onetime lover. Additionally, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” ends with the kind of messy uncertainty that can only be resolved by the next chapter.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Edgar Wright capitalizes on his cult status as an expert craftsman of clever, pop culture-referencing entertainment with “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” a bubblegum fantasy of young adulthood adapted from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s illustrated saga. Blending video game culture, garage rock music, and the manga-inspired style of O’Malley’s fetching drawings, Wright takes to heart and makes good on the original’s trio of back cover bookstore genre classifiers: comedy/action/romance. Wright embraces the importance of all three designations with rapturous color and knockout wit, transforming “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” into one of the year’s most welcome and inventive releases.

Michael Cera, who has already played movie incarnations of literary protagonists in “Youth in Revolt” and “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” makes a convincing Scott Pilgrim, the self-absorbed, often clueless, un- or under-employed Toronto-dwelling Sex Bob-omb bass player, whose innocent but questionable relationship with teenage fan Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) complicates the intense attraction Pilgrim feels toward the literal girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Ramona, a rollerblading Amazon.ca package courier, agrees to date Scott provided he can defeat her seven evil exes, a challenge that provides Pilgrim with a metaphoric quest toward maturity, self-discovery, and perhaps a grain of responsibility.

In the books as well as the movie, the point of view is filtered so strongly through the title character that magic realism scarcely begins to describe the manner in which Scott’s headspace traverses the actual and the imagined. Wright latches on to the conceit with confidence, presenting a graphically and sonically enhanced dreamscape that effectively charts the emotional terrain of youthful experience (Scott and Ramona’s first date is gorgeously rendered). Defeatist sourpusses will gripe that Pilgrim’s ego, his paralyzing inaction – which looms large between battles with evil exes – and his outright thoughtlessness impede the pathway to likeability, but Scott is deliberately defined by his solipsism and the glow of his highly unreliable narration.

Distilling the non-negotiable portions of O’Malley’s six-volume series into a single feature film understandably necessitated sizable cuts and conflations, and the most hardcore followers will mourn the absence of Lisa Miller and Mr. Chau, the reduced importance of key supporting players (especially Kim Pine), and the remixing, re-imagining, and re-staging of several of the mortal combat confrontations. Wright wisely opts to jettison as much expository material as possible, inviting viewers to dive into the Pilgrim universe without need of explanation for the rules that govern Scott’s consciousness. As a result, the movie diminishes the book’s emphasis on subspace, an alternate dimension used as a shortcut or hiding place that can be accessed through portals like doors and shoulder bags.

“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” has been attacked for failing to appeal to a wide range of moviegoers, but Wright leaves plenty of room for curious viewers of any gender who don’t spend much (or any) time playing video games. Even though Ramona is Princess Peach to Scott’s Mario, Winstead guarantees that her character gives as good as she gets, resisting to some degree the most limiting features of the damsel in distress. The side-scrolling chassis upon which the plot is engineered presents Ramona as an object to be won, but both O’Malley and Wright make certain the female characters fight with the same degree of martial skill as the boys, and Ramona surpasses Scott’s brainpower and matches his sense of humor (Scott: Hey, you know Pac-Man? Ramona: I know of him). See it or risk exploding into a shower of coins.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Another kaleidoscopic, anything-goes parody/satire from goofball pals Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, “The Other Guys” is the least structured of the comic team’s collaborations, and arguably the weakest. As pencil-pushing NYC police officer Allen Gamble, Ferrell trades his finely tuned sense of outrageous indignation and bullheaded machismo for a stab at meekness, passivity, and groveling obsequiousness. Mark Wahlberg’s Terry Hoitz, a dim-bulb loose cannon, is overmatched by partner Ferrell’s antics, and it would have been nice to see a variation on Wahlberg’s sharp-tongued (and much funnier) Staff Sgt. Dignam from “The Departed” instead.

“The Other Guys” peaks early with a brilliant argument pitting lion against tuna in a logic-warping bid for metaphoric food chain dominance that would be at home on any elementary school playground. The remainder of the movie’s best lunacy follows the well-established McKay/Ferrell pattern of overgrown boys masking their insecurities with pompous displays of testosterone-fueled bids for manly respect. In one hilarious example, a whispered argument interrupts a solemn cop funeral, escalating into noiseless fisticuffs to avoid disturbing the mourners. As the film grinds on, one begins to long for more scenes like these.

The supporting cast, which includes all too brief cameo appearances by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson as a pair of high-octane super detective action heroes as well as Michael Keaton as a captain who moonlights at Bed Bath & Beyond, adheres to the absurd shenanigans typical of McKay’s features. Keaton’s character, for example, peppers his dialogue with references to TLC song titles, but denies any knowledge of the musical trio. Director McKay drops in for a fleeting moment as Dirty Mike, a derelict who organizes sex parties in Gamble’s red Prius. An underutilized Steve Coogan plays the reptilian investment banker being investigated by Gamble and Hoitz.

Predictably, “The Other Guys” hews literally to the gender specification indicated by its title, and substantial roles for women are scarce. A game Eva Mendes logs some screen time as Gamble’s incongruously gorgeous wife, but the running gag that requires Gamble to abandon his daytime deference for a loutish spray of browbeating insults and put-downs directed at his weirdly complaisant spouse is one of the movie’s most inscrutable jests. Gamble’s inexplicable appeal to beautiful women, which confounds partner Hoitz, may be amusing, but the dismissive, mild sexism is far less appealing.

Viewers who sit through the movie’s end credits will see an animated series of statistics covering everything from the history of the pyramid scheme named for Charles Ponzi to runaway CEO compensation to Wall Street bailouts and bonuses, all set to Rage Against the Machine’s venomous, propulsive cover of Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.” Despite the inclusion of Coogan’s Bernard Madoff-esque financier as the film’s belabored central plot thread, the whole closing sequence feels like it should have been paired with a much tougher, smarter movie than “The Other Guys.” Instead, the preceding film relies too intently on delivering the automotive chaos and gunplay required of the genre being lampooned to transcend the already exploded myths of the buddy cop archetype.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko regularly cooks up dramatic conflict by introducing the threat of a newcomer or stranger into the daily grind of characters whose lives require some sort of jolt. In “The Kids Are All Right,” viewers can expect another of the director’s sunny Southern California soap operas. An indelicate mash-up of calculating tearjerker and broad comedy – much of it designed around an adulterous affair – Cholodenko’s third feature has been coarsely touted as a “Brokeback Mountain” for lesbians, but lacks the gravitas to match Ang Lee’s groundbreaking film.

To be fair, the only significant parallel between “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Kids Are All Right” is the presence of well-known actors playing homosexuals, but the former film was a heartbreaking tragedy and the latter film relies on wildly improbable humor. Many viewers will not be able to resist the portrayals provided by veteran stars (and heterosexuals) Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, and Cholodenko deserves praise for the effective manner in which she directs the two women. The dialogue, which Cholodenko co-wrote with Stuart Blumberg, too readily depends on liberal and literal doses of “…just sayin’,” along with goopy platitudes and an earnest inclusion of the overworked bit about hurting the ones you love. Add to all of this an unwelcome streak of casual entitlement and racism, and one can never be certain whether the central couple deserves our affection or contempt.

Mark Ruffalo plays the sperm donor whose genetic material helped produce Moore and Bening’s teenagers Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), and when the children track him down, the mothers aren’t sure how to react. Ruffalo’s roguish Paul is a follow-your-dreams stud who enjoys responsibility-free sex with a gorgeous employee at his organic restaurant. A motorcycling college dropout, Paul fascinates inexperienced recent high school grad Joni, who is navigating the treacherous waters of an attraction to a close male friend. Everyone will be tested and challenged, however, when Paul starts sleeping with Moore’s Jules.

Cholodenko goes to great lengths to remind viewers that sexuality is fluid, confusing, mysterious, and inexplicable (the “Moms,” as they are called by their offspring, watch gay male porn, for example) but resorts to the unfortunate cliché that any lesbian might be willing to “hop the fence” – as Jennifer Lopez’s gay character in “Gigli” put it – for the right man. Along with the practically unmentionable “Gigli,” variations of the trope have been covered cinematically in “Chasing Amy” and “Kissing Jessica Stein,” and on series television in “Queer as Folk” and “The L Word.” An argument has been offered suggesting that the device brings gay stories to wider audiences, but at what cost?

LGBT blogs have lit up debating whether Cholodenko is moving things forward or setting them back, and one could spend hours poring over the feedback and commentary sections of “The Kids Are All Right”-related articles at the Advocate, Lesbian Dad, Autostraddle and After Ellen, where Sinclair Sexsmith’s piece is one of the most thoughtful deconstructions of the movie that has been written so far. Individuals gay, straight, bisexual, and otherwise need to see the movie before passing judgment on whether the application of the “sex with a man” premise is a legitimate Trojan Horse or merely the perpetuation of another tired stereotype.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Juan Jose Campanella, who works regularly in both Argentina and the United States, crafts an engrossing blend of detective procedural, legal thriller, and romance in “The Secret in Their Eyes,” winner of the 2009 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. The movie is based on Eduardo Sacheri’s (slightly) differently titled novel “The Question in Their Eyes,” and author and director collaborated on the screenplay. The adaptation embraces melodramatic flourishes even as it makes room for serious questions about the nature of justice and punishment. Jumping back and forth between 1974 and 2000, “The Secret in Their Eyes” uses its dual chronology to explore themes of longing and regret, as well as class differences and the political corruption of the right-wing elements of Peronism.

Told mostly in flashback, “The Secret in Their Eyes” begins with former court investigator Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) constructing a passage for a novel inspired by a memory that has haunted him for a quarter of a century. A young woman named Liliana Colotto is savagely raped and beaten to death in her Buenos Aires home. Esposito promises Colotto’s widower (Pablo Rago), a gracious, sensitive – and now devastated – bank employee, that he will find the murderer. Against the better judgment of Esposito’s supervisor Irene (Soledad Villamil), for whom the man carries a white-hot torch, permission is reluctantly granted to continue work on the case even after it has been frustratingly and unfairly closed.

Like Laura Hunt and Laura Palmer, the spectral presence of Liliana casts a spell on the film’s protagonist and its viewers, and Campanella exploits the ways in which expectations of coded masculinity inform and direct Esposito’s motivations and choices, especially in terms of how his forbidden love for Irene fuels his desire to track Colotto’s assailant. Despite Irene’s affection for her co-worker, she is both engaged to be married to someone else and is Esposito’s superior. Additionally, the social gulf that separates Irene and Esposito prevents him from acting on his feelings. As a result, he focuses on the crime against Liliana, because it affords him a small measure of control.

Campanella, whose American directing credits include episodes of “House M.D.,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “30 Rock,” and “Strangers with Candy,” draws on his experiences with drama and comedy, infusing “The Secret in Their Eyes” with a sense of wry, deadpan humor that tempers the grim details of the central offense. Esposito’s partner Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), a sloppy alcoholic with a knack for pulling clues together, provides comic relief and an unflagging commitment to his friend. Sandoval takes center stage during a spectacularly staged foot-chase shot as a sweeping long take at a packed football stadium. Later, the character anchors one of the movie’s most tragic encounters, a symbol of Argentineans swallowed up by a regressive political regime.

Sandoval is one of a half-dozen memorable figures in the story, and the plot’s twists and surprises, which continue to the end of the film, should ignite discussion about the scope and scale of restitution, retribution and redress, particularly in the manner of how a penalty is meted out. Cicero’s classic equation of proportionality between crime and punishment does not answer whether an eye for an eye provides an adequate measure of correction, and “The Secret in Their Eyes” just as easily calls to mind Voltaire’s note that “The punishment of criminals should serve a purpose. When a man is hanged he is useless.”