"These days, I feel like a bit of an oddball when I tell people that my parents are actually still happily married. Divorce is more common now than it ever has been, but in 1897, author Henry James wrote a novel called What Maisie Knew, which he wrote from the perspective of a little girl named Maisie whose utterly irresponsible parents go through a bitter divorce and are forced to share custody of their daughter. It's hard to believe that someone over a century ago, when divorce was more rare, would have such a firm grasp on what divorce looks like for a child caught in the middle. But the modern-day adaptation of What Maisie Knew from directors Scott McGehee and Robert Siegel shows that James was more than prescient, with themes and sensitivities that feel so thoroughly modern that this film should be required viewing for all parents, divorced or not.

Aside from the story's 19th century roots, the most amazing thing about What Maisie Knew is Onata Aprile, the little girl who plays seven-year-old Maisie and gives an extraordinary performance as engaging and subtle as anything you're likely to see this year. While Maisie lives in a fancy apartment and goes to a good school in New York City, we see early on that her real problem is her parents. Her mom Susanna (played by Julianne Moore) is a hot-tempered aging rock star who resembles a less druggy Courtney Love, and Maisie's dad Beale is an inattentive art dealer played by Steven Coogan, who seems to be cornering the market on aloof British husband roles. While her parents are going tooth-and-nail in and out of court, Maisie finds solace and stability with her caring Scottish nanny Margo (played by Joanna Vanderham).

After the divorce goes through, Beale marries Margo to better his case for full custody. So Susanna responds by marrying Lincoln, a handsome if somewhat meek bartender played by Alexander Skarsgård. But despite these fairly drastic moves to get custody of Maisie, Susanna and Beale seem to view Maisie as more of an inconvenience and an impediment to them getting on with their lives, leading to lots of arguments over who should be picking Maisie up from school and who she should be staying with, often dumping her with Margo or Lincoln, who seem to be the only ones truly looking out for her.

But as I said, this is Maisie's movie, and Aprile's performance is so captivating, genuine, and real that it's easy to forget that she's acting at all. As she's alternately viewed as a football, a weapon, or a burden, we see little Maisie doing her best to figure out the situation, clamming up when she senses a parent digging for dirt on the other, searching for honesty in her parents' faces, or simply being buffeted by events she's too young to control, as we watch Maisie's faith in her parents slowly erode from one disappointment to the next. All of the performances in the film are exceptional, but it's Aprile's that will tap a deep well of sympathy that viewers like me didn't think they had.

And while I don't have kids, I think What Maisie Knew holds an important lesson for parents with young children, and especially parents going through a divorce. It shows that regardless of whatever's going on, children need their guardians to be consistent and keep their word, but just as importantly, to be present. Not just physically, but mentally in the moment with them in whatever's going on, whether it's playing, drawing, or simply observing the world with them. And from the way Maisie lights up around Margo and especially Lincoln, you can see that this is all Maisie really wants, which is sadly what her parents refuse to provide. What Maisie Knew is a terrific movie with one of the best child performances I've ever seen, and I'm sure it'll be a film I think of for years to come when I'm with my nephews or hopefully kids of my own."

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We watch a lot of movies, and some of them are quite good. But every once in a while, an indie movie comes along that's so refreshingly genuine and low-fi that it reminds you that even our favorite movies and TV shows bear almost no resemblance to real life in how they look or how people talk and act. I had a moment like that for the first time in a while with Noah Baumbach's latest film, Frances Ha, a funny, wonderful movie about a 27-year-old woman dealing with adulthood and the growing distance between herself and her best friend. It's a movie that feels like what would happen if Manhattan-era Woody Allen made his own version of Bridesmaids on a shoestring budget, and I mean that in the very best way.

Greta Gerwig, who also co-wrote the screenplay, plays Frances, a struggling apprentice dancer living in Brooklyn with her best friend Sophie (played by Mickey Sumner) who has a good job in publishing. While there's no romance between them, Frances and Sophie, by their own description, are a lot like a happily married couple in a sexless relationship, doing everything together, sharing their own language and inside jokes, and reminiscing about their past together. But their life as besties is thrown into disarray when Sophie tells Frances that she wants to move to an apartment in a neighborhood Frances can't afford, causing some hurt feelings and distance between them, which gets even worse when Sophie decides to move to Japan with her boyfriend who Frances isn't crazy about.

Yes, this sounds a lot like the premise of Bridesmaids, which was also about a woman who's forced to reevaluate her life when her best friend decides to join the ranks of married grown ups. But instead of veering into the sillier, more slapstick world of wacky characters and group diarrhea, Frances Ha goes more realistic and low key as Frances must confront the many unromantic and familiar aspects of being young in America -- finding cheap or free places to stay, struggling to make money but still being irresponsible with it, wondering if you're too quirky to date and make new friends, technically being an adult while not feeling like one, and questioning if it may be time to give up long-held dreams for something more practical.

While these are issues most young people face, Frances Ha feels so true-to-life that it feels totally familiar but never cliché. Much of the credit for that goes to Gerwig, who gives a wonderfully fresh and natural performance, aided by the fact that she probably wrote a lot of her own dialogue, and the fact that her 5'9" frame and overall awkwardness makes her seem both physically and mentally like a teenager struggling with the responsibilities that come with an adult body.

Baumbach's directing style is the other major contributor to what makes Frances Ha feel so genuine, in what I hope serves as an inspiration to both aspiring and established directors. Filmed in digital black and white with apparently minimal lighting, Frances Ha is the opposite of flashy, with little to distract you from what the movie actually is, which is Frances Having conversations and trying to figure out where her life is going in the streets, bars, and tiny apartments of New York. Frances Ha doesn't take place in a heightened alternate reality full of dramatic moments and glamorous locations, but instead gives you the feeling of real life condensed, with the film structured around the various places Frances ends up living, which is how we often divide the phases of our lives.

But Frances Ha also confirms that you don't need a big crew, lots of money, and a tight or twisty plot to make a great movie. You don't even need color! Because a strong, realistic performance coupled with some truth and honesty will beat production value every time. And with instantly relatable issues like these, Frances Ha is a wonderfully entertaining time at the movies, and it wouldn't surprise me if Frances Ha becomes a touchstone and cult classic for artistic twenty-somethings for years to come.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald's book The Great Gatsby is considered one of America's greatest novels. It's been adapted for the big and small screen with limited success, with many claiming it to be unfilmmable due to Fitzgerald's conspicuously artsy prose. So there's a lot of potential in the idea of Baz Luhrmann, a director known for over-the-top spectacle, tackling this story and attempting to translate Fitzgerald's words with the color, vibrance, quick pace, and glamor Luhrmann became known for with his period mash-up musical, Moulin Rouge! Or all that glitz and style, in 3-D to boot, could be a distraction to this tragic, uniquely American tale of greed, love lost, pasts hidden, and the emptiness of wealth. And that's what I think happened with the 2013 version of The Great Gatsby.

Set in the roaring 20s, the story is narrated by Nick Carraway, an aspiring Wall Street bond salesman played by Tobey Maguire. Nick rents a cottage on Long Island next to a megamansion owned by Jay Gatsby, a millionaire with a mysterious past played by Leonardo DiCaprio who's known for throwing extravagant parties every weekend attended by the toast of New York. Moulin Rouge! fans will love these early party scenes, which are filled with era-mashing dance music, beautiful period outfits, confetti, and wild dancing. However, they're short-lived, since it's learned that these parties are only thrown to lure Daisy Buchanan, Nick's second cousin (played by Carey Mulligan) who lives across the bay from Gatsby in a mansion owned by her husband Tom, an old money polo star, philanderer, and white supremacist played by Joel Edgerton.

Turns out that Gatsby and Daisy fell in love years earlier, with Gatsby vowing to return from World War I and marry her when he had enough money. To do this, he fabricated a new identity and backstory to hide his humble roots, becoming so consumed with amassing greater and greater wealth that he neglected to return to Daisy, who eventually gave up on him and married Tom. Nick and Daisy's friend Jordan (played by Elizabeth Debicki) help reunite Gatsby and Daisy, setting up a love triangle between Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom, with Gatsby urging Daisy to move into his mansion and pretend that her marriage to Tom never happened.

A lot has been made about the fact that The Great Gatsby is a "serious" 3-D movie for adults, and in case you're wondering, yes, it is a distraction, as is a lot of the signature style Luhrmann brings to the film, which is constantly drawing attention to itself and away from the story. The soundtrack -- which features rap, old-timey-sounding covers of recent hits, techno club music, and new songs -- seems more designed to sell the soundtrack than inform the scenes, where you'll find yourself pulled out of a moment wondering, "Wait, is that an old-timey cover of Beyoncé's 'Crazy In Love'?" The 3=D and the widespread use of computer-generated scenery gives the movie a feeling of unreality, which might help if The Great Gatsby was more of a fable. But the story of Gatsby is an idiosyncratic, distinctly American one, whose themes fit with modern times but are not well served by the film.

In many ways, Gatsby embodies the American dream, disowning his past and reinventing himself in pursuit of wealth, ostensibly so he can marry Daisy. But is the dark side of that dream the fact that Gatsby seems to have become consumed by his money, unwilling to give it up or stop pursuing more for the woman he's supposedly amassing it for? Or that the upper crust Gatsby has struggled to emulate are largely portrayed as jerks who contribute nothing to society? Is Gatsby's confidence that Daisy will disavow her marriage a function of naivety, being a romantic, what Nick calls Gatsby's "extraordinary gift for hope", or that Gatsby was successfully able to ignore his own past? Or has Gatsby been in the bubble of wealth so long that he simply expects to get whatever he wants, an indictment of the dehumanizing effects of wealth and power? While DiCaprio does a great job and reaffirms himself as perhaps the most watchable and intense actor of his generation, Luhrmann's adaptation feels like too much style for those wanting substance, and not enough pizzazz for those wanting Moulin Rouge 2!.

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It feels like a long time since the first Iron Man came out in 2007, when Marvel Studios was just beginning its multi-franchise campaign for summer movie superhero domination. Back then, Robert Downey Jr. was better known as a recovering addict and a major on-set liability before director Jon Favreau decided to take what was then considered a huge risk by putting the Iron Man franchise and a big part of Marvel's future on Downey's shoulders. As we know, that gamble paid off huge, with Downey's Tony Stark not only becoming perhaps the most popular of all current movie superheroes, but also helping set the comedic tone that made 2012's megahit The Avengers so refreshing. And now, with the third and final chapter of the Iron Man series, it seems that Downey and the character of Tony Stark are now a single entity, much as Stark claims he and his armor are indistinguishable.

Iron Man 3 takes place after the events of The Avengers, and one of my favorite things about Iron Man 3 is that Stark acts like it. Having not only learned that gods and aliens are real and barely staving off an invasion of earth, Stark has been shaken to his core and is showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress like panic attacks, insomnia, and an obsessive desire to build more Iron Man suits. All of this has strained his relationship with his girlfriend Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) who's now running Stark Industries.

Meanwhile, there's been a string of terrorist bombings around the world, with a shadowy middle-Eastern-looking terrorist with an American accent incongruously called the Mandarin (played by Ben Kingsley) taking responsibility. This coincides with the return of Aldrich Killian (played by Guy Pearce), a scientist from Stark's past who's developed a new procedure called Extremis that will help amputees regrow missing limbs. Stark challenges the Mandarin, leading to a devastating attack on Stark's home that leaves Stark stranded in Tennessee and presumed dead. But when Stark starts investigating the Mandarin and a seemingly unrelated suicide bombing, he uncovers a conspiracy that could lead to the assassination of the president of the United States, with grave implications for the rest of the world.

Don Cheadle returns as Colonel Rhodes piloting the repainted War Machine suit (now dubbed the Iron Patriot), and as you saw in the trailer, there are about a dozen new Iron Man suits, though their main feature seems to be how to get in and out of them. And there are plenty of big action scenes that are as big or bigger than the ones in the first two Iron Man movies. However, there isn't anything that really matches the size or stakes of the action scenes in The Avengers, which is perhaps Iron Man 3's biggest problem.

With the possible exception of some of the Lord of the Rings movies and perhaps The Dark Knight, The Avengers may be the biggest and I'd say the best giant action movie I've ever seen, accomplishing the seemingly impossible task of combining the stars of multiple franchises into a coherent, satisfying, and wonderfully witty film that gave every hero a chance to shine. After that, a movie with only one Avenger where the fate of the earth isn't directly at risk just doesn't seem as exciting. And even though Iron Man 3 is supposedly the end of the Iron Man series, it doesn't feel like it since we know Stark will be back for The Avengers 2, which has already been scheduled for 2015.

Obviously, part of the goal of a movie like Iron Man 3 is to leave you wanting more to build excitement for The Avengers 2, but it also means that Iron Man 3 isn't as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be. But it's still a fun movie, primarily due to Downey's performance as a man much like his past self, who had it all, lost it, and must reevaluate what's most important to him and his obligations to others. And in case you're wondering, stick around through the closing credits.

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For over a decade, director Michael Bay has symbolized the dumbing down of cinema, with films that forego things like coherent storytelling, interesting characters, logic, and human emotion in order to bludgeon audiences into a dazed summertime stupor with a non-stop maelstrom of destruction, dizzying camera movement, deafening sound, and gratuitous titillation. This is best exemplified by his stewardship of the megabucks Transformers franchise, where Bay's contempt for his audience's intelligence seems palpable. But some have posited that Bay is just making this schlock for the money, and that Bay is actually yearning to make more substantive, thought-provoking films if he wasn't so busy cranking out and planning Transformers sequels. His latest film, the musclehead crime comedy Pain & Gain, is supposed to exemplify these loftier ambitions, though what it eventually reveals over an unnecessarily long 130 minutes is that Bay isn't nearly the director he either thinks he is or hopes to become.

Pain & Gain apparently sticks pretty closely to the true story of Daniel Lugo, a bodybuilder and trainer at a Miami gym played by Mark Wahlberg who shares the optimism, obliviousness, and delusional confidence of Wahlberg's breakout character in Boogie Nights, porn star Dirk Diggler. Daniel, who was once jailed for fraud, is inspired by a motivational huckster (played by Ken Jeong) to seize the life and success he deserves. In Daniel's mind, that means kidnapping and ripping off one of his gym clients, a rich and arrogant loudmouth named Victor Kershaw (played by Tony Shaloub). Knowing he can't do it alone, Daniel enlists the help of Adrian Dorbal, a fellow gym rat (played by Anthony Mackie) who's become impotent due to steroid use, and Paul Doyle, a newly-released ex-con (played by Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson) who's found Jesus.

After some boneheaded failed attempts to abduct Kershaw, the trio are finally able to kidnap him and torture him into signing away his home and fortune, and for a time (with the help of a bungled police investigation) they seem like they may actually get away with it. But with their stupidity and irresponsibility compounding their mistakes and a sharp private detective played by Ed Harris on the case, the trio's actions become more desperate, violent, and sloppy, leading to more kidnapping attempts, murder, and dismemberment, but in ways more designed to elicit laughs than screams from the audience.

With movies like Fargo and No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers have shown what you can do with movies about crimes that violently spin out of control. And there are plenty of good and not so good films about dummies who try to pull off a scam and get in over their heads. But while Bay is probably hoping to show off what he's learned from better films, it seems like the bad habits he picked up making profitable crap have become ingrained.

The film starts with Daniel declaring his belief in fitness, and Pain & Gain is supposedly about the pursuit of the American Dream, but the film largely abandons these themes. The film mostly fails in taking us inside the world of bodybuilders, their mindset, and how their devotion to weightlifting informs the way they see the world and themselves. Nearly every named character narrates at least part of the film, a tricky thing for even a great director to pull off, but in Bay's hands, it's gimmicky, pointless, and inconsistently handled, as is the use of onscreen text. There's music playing over nearly every second of the film, as if Bay doesn't have faith in the dialogue or is afraid of quiet moments. And while Bay clearly relishes the freedom he has with the film's R rating, Pain & Gain is WAY too long, making the film's cavalcade of hot and/or dead bodies feel increasingly gratuitous.

The film's brightest spot is Johnson, whose character has the most developed arc as he struggles to stay sober and Christian in the midst of so much crime, violence, and decadence. But while Pain & Gain is far from Bay's worst film, the jury's still out on whether years of Transformers sequels have left him incapable of making a truly good one.

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Turn on your indie radars, because I've got a great movie you're going to want to track down. It's called Mud, and a third of the way into 2013, it's the best movie I've seen so far this year. It skillfully yet almost casually manages to mix a coming of age tale, a twisty crime thriller, and a tragic love story in the slow-flowing waters of the Mississippi river, producing a masterful film with an edgy, contemporary darkness, yet with the timeless feel of adolescent adventures like Stand By Me and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Mud follows two junior-high-age boys growing up in Arkansas in the poor and increasingly scarce houseboat fishing communities along the river's edge. Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan) is at the age where he's starting to get interested in girls, but his concepts of love and relationships are being battered by his parents' constant fighting and impending divorce, which could lead to Ellis moving away from the river life he loves so much.

One day, Ellis and his best friend Neckbone (played by Jacob Lofland) take a boat to a small island to find an abandoned boat they heard had been swept into the branches of a tree by a flood. But it turns out that the boat is inhabited by a mysterious stranger who appears to be living on the island. He goes by the name of Mud and is played by Matthew McConaughey in one of his best dramatic roles to date. While the boys are initially wary of Mud, especially because he's carrying a gun, they agree to help him by bringing him food and scrounging materials Mud can use to bring the boat down from the tree and repair it. As the boys become more enamored with Mud, he reveals that he's actually wanted by the law and that he's waiting on the island until he can meet up with his lost love, Juniper (played by Reese Witherspoon), who's waiting for him at a nearby hotel. With Ellis desperate for a male role model and to keep his belief in love alive, he commits himself and, by extension, Neckbone to helping Mud and Juniper reunite, which puts the boys in more danger than they'd imagined.

One of the most fascinating things about Mud is its sense of place and how that intertwines with Ellis' transition into young adulthood. While the river makes a great playground for Ellis and Neckbone as sort of a modern-day Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the lives of the poor white people who live on the river and rely on it for their livelihoods feels like the last gasp of a bygone era. Not only is the possibility of Ellis having to leave the river due to his parents' divorce a metaphor for leaving his childhood, but in Ellis' eyes, it also symbolizes not only the failure and unreliability of the most important adults in his life, but the failure of his boyish ideas about love and the role men should play in relationships, which Ellis is trying to work out through his crush on an older girl. Then Mud comes along, a cool adult who treats Ellis and Neckbone like adults and affirms Ellis' adolescent belief that true love conquers all, and it's easy to see why Ellis would invest and risk so much to help a dangerous man he hardly knows.

Mud is a film where you never know what's going to happen next as the tension and the stakes increase, yet has the feel of life simply unfolding where no one knows what's going to happen next, where everyone seems to be in over their heads and you just hope that no one gets seriously hurt. It has great performances, particularly McConaughey and the two boys, and the film's tone and understated naturalistic cinematography feel just right. Seriously, Mud is a great film, so do yourself a favor and keep your eye out for it, and you can thank me later.

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Despite all the flack he's taken over Scientology, Tom Cruise is still perhaps the world's biggest international movie star and one of the few actors whose name is listed above the title on a movie poster. In that sense, Cruise's new film Oblivion seems like a no-brainer, especially for the international market, if you watch the trailer full of action; neat sci-fi vehicles and gadgets; beautiful 4K cinematography and CG effects; perhaps some romance with attractive accented women; and, most importantly, Cruise's megawatt star presence. But audiences expecting a sci-fi shoot-'em-up may be in for a surprise since Oblivion is actually a fairly slow-paced, twisty film about memory, identity, and humanity that will leave a lot of sci-fi fans feeling they've seen all this before.

Oblivion takes place on an earth left devastated and abandoned after a war with an alien race known as Scavengers, or Scavs. Despite winning the war, humans have been forced to flee to one of Saturn's moons or are waiting to depart aboard a giant space station orbiting earth called the Tet (short for tetrahedron) which is powered by huge generators on earth fueled by ocean water. Cruise plays Jack, sort of a futuristic fix-it man whose job is to repair flying robots called drones that protect the generators from Scavs still running around on earth. Jack and his wife/support team Victoria (played by Andrea Riseborough) have had their memories erased to protect the secret nature of their mission, though Jack is haunted by dreams or flashbacks of a life before the war with a mysterious woman.

That woman turns out to be Julia (played by Olga Kurylenko), as the hottest astronaut in the history of space exploration and a dead ringer for a young Catherine Zeta-Jones. When Jack discovers Julia in a crashed spacecraft and she seems to know who he is, and Jack later learns that a band of humans (led by an underused Morgan Freeman) is still living on earth, he begins to wonder if everything he's been told by his commander on the Tet (played by Melissa Leo) about his job, the war, and himself are lies.

So let the sci-fi comparisons begin. The first part of Oblivion is actually a lot like Pixar's WALL•E, since both are about diligent yet unusually curious workers on a desolate and abandoned earth who begin to wonder if there might be more to life and themselves than just doing their jobs. The issues of identity and the unreliability of memory reminded me of Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film Solaris, and the last part of Oblivion (which goes about 20 minutes too long) gets very Matrix-y. But the strongest parallel is with a film I won't even mention since it'll give away Oblivion's biggest twist, so I'll just say that it's written and directed by Duncan Jones and came out in 2009.

But while Oblivion is derivative, that's not at all saying it's a bad movie. The 4K digital cinematography (especially in IMAX) looks fantastic, the CG effects are totally seamless, and the production design is top notch. The score by M83 is nice, though sometimes a bit loud, and the acting is mostly good, except for Freeman, who does a lot of explaining but seems out of place, like he never bothered to figure out what the story was about. And Cruise, as always, throws himself into the role 100%, does a lot of his own stunts, and still has that star quality that's hard to take your eyes off of.

However, this is also not to say that Oblivion is a great movie. It's...an interesting movie that doesn't bludgeon you with action, keeps you on your toes with some twists and surprises, and expects the audience to pay attention. But unlike most sci-fi stories, Oblivion doesn't have anything to say about society, humanity, or culture, nor does it provide any predictions or warnings about where mankind might be headed, nor does it have characters you really relate to. Oblivion is well made and will keep you engaged, but I doubt it'll elicit strong emotions in either direction.

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Other than his penchant for bright colors, quick cutting, and pulsing electric soundtracks, director Danny Boyle's filmography defies easy categorization, with such diverse works as the junkie adventure Trainspotting, sprinting zombies in 28 Days Later, the rags-to-riches Mumbai love story Slumdog Millionaire, and slow motion amputation in 127 Hours. So after pulling off the spectacle of London's 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, Boyle has gone to something considerably smaller, a twisty crime caper slash love triangle slash psychological thriller called Trance that would get Alfred Hitchcock's nod of approval.

Trance takes place in modern-day London with an art auctioneer named Simon (played by James McAvoy) who gets bashed in the head during a heist to steal a Goya painting worth millions. But we quickly learn that Simon was no innocent victim and had plans to steal the painting for himself, but the concussion Simon suffered has erased his memory of where he hid the painting. So when Franck, the heist leader (played by a wonderfully menacing Vincent Cassel), realizes he doesn't have the painting and can't simply torture its location out of Simon, he forces Simon to find a hypnotherapist (played by Rosario Dawson) to uncover his lost memories.

But as Elizabeth and Simon grow closer as she digs further into his unconscious, it becomes clear that Trance is about more than a heist gone wrong. And as you learn more about Simon, Franck, and Elizabeth, you'll find yourself not only wondering what genre of movie you're watching, but also who's tricking who, who the main character is, and who you should be rooting for. That's why Trance reminded me somewhat of a Hitchcock film, where the crime itself was often only a springboard for psychological examinations of criminals, their victims, and their pursuers. Trance also reminded me of Christopher Nolan's breakout film Memento, another twisty film with an unreliable narrator who can't trust his own memories.

Perhaps Trance's biggest flaw is some of its claims about hypnosis. While hypnotherapy can certainly be a powerful and effective tool, it won't get someone to doing something against their will or their own self interest. But I don't begrudge it since hypnosis in movies has always existed in its own semi-magical reality, and in the case of Trance, it's the portal to interesting themes like dealing with the past, our past selves, and what we'll do in an attempt to forge a more hopeful future, similar to the role the sci-fi memory-erasing technology in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind plays.

Trance isn't out to save the world, but it's nice to see a solid little piece of entertainment that has a fun time mashing up genres, going against conventions, and keeping you guessing while expecting the audience to keep up with its zippy pace and twisty plot. And if you need a more juvenile reason to see Trance, it has Rosario Dawson getting very, very naked which, like Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis' kiss in Black Swan, is probably going to dominate the coverage of this movie. But don't let that distract you, since Trance is an engrossing Friday or Saturday night movie and a reminder that Danny Boyle remains one of the most interesting directors out there.

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Last week, I praised Olympus Has Fallen for having an appropriate amount of violence and bloodshed for a movie of its subject matter. That earned the film an R-rating, as it should, instead of trying to lure younger audiences by going for a PG-13. This week, we have virtually the opposite scenario with G.I. Joe: Retaliation, a film full of guns, explosions, violence, and death, yet is scrubbed clean of blood and other realities of actual violence to supposedly make it appropriate for kids.

2009's equally bloodless G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra introduced us to the elite international special forces group, the G.I. Joes, and showed the creation of the international terrorist group known as Cobra, ending with Cobra's master of disguise, Zartan, taking the place of the American president, played by Jonathan Pryce. In Retaliation, after the imposter president attempts to wipe out all of the Joes so a revitalized Cobra can implement their plan to take over the world using space-based weapons, it's up to a new group of surviving Joes to figure out the plot and stop it.

Now here's a SPOILER ALERT, or really more of a warning. When I say a "new group" of Joes, I mean it, because Retaliation seems to be the sequel that no one wanted to come back for. Channing Tatum, who's clearly moved on to better things, returns as Duke just long enough so using him in the film's advertising isn't a complete lie. Marlon Wayans as Ripcord, Sienna Miller as the Baroness, Dennis Quaid as General Hawk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander, Rachel Nichols as Scarlett, Christopher Eccleston as Destro, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty, Saïd Taghmaoui as Breaker -- all gone. So if you're a fan of these actors or their characters, you're in for disappointment if you see Retaliation.

However, the film's two most interesting characters, the feuding ninjas Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow (played by Ray Park and Korean hunk Lee-Byung Hun), are back being badasses and filling out their mythologies. The surviving Joes are Roadblock (played by Dwayne 'the Rock' Johnson), Lady Jaye (played by Adrianne Palicki), lady ninja in training Jinx (played by Elodie Yung), and Flint (played by D.J. Cotrona), who spends most of the movie seeming befuddled that he's in a movie. Bruce Willis also joins the team as General Joe Colton, confirming that Willis will be in just about anything if it's not too much work and you pay him enough. New bad guys include Ray Stevenson as Firefly, Luke Bracey as the masked Cobra Commander, and lots of nameless Cobra minions sent to bloodless deaths in droves.

Of course, the G.I. Joe movies are meant to essentially be live-action cartoons, not a realistic take on how an elite fighting force using next-generation technology would fight an international terrorist organization. But why is it that the conservative, often puritanical MPAA thinks that kids should only see movies where mass violence starring live humans, not cartoons, is turned into a bloodless farce? If we're worried that kids see too much violence, isn't it better to make movie violence as awful, scary, and detestable as it is in real life instead of trying to sanitize it by making every death bloodless or something that happens just offscreen?

This take on violence isn't the only thing that makes G.I. Joe: Retaliation a crummy movie. Retaliation should be labeled "Made for children and non-English speakers," meaning that the action is big, but the story, acting, and characters are lame and simplistic since kids and foreign viewers reading subtitles and looking for Hollywood spectacle supposedly won't care, and the cast seems to be chosen more for international box office appeal than performing talent.

But I still hold to the idea that big movies don't have to be dumb, and they certainly don't have to display their mercenary goals on their sleeves. Some of the action in Retaliation is decent, but the lack of blood and pain also means a lack of stakes, consequences, and tension. If you like dumb, mindless action, G.I. Joe: Retaliation might satisfy you, but when there are so many great and compelling action movies out there, all of us should be expecting a lot more.

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Last year saw the horrible reboot of Red Dawn, where an army absurdly led by North Korea came close to occupying the United States. Only slightly less absurd is the premise of Olympus Has Fallen, where a terrorist group again led by North Koreans is somehow able to attack and take over the White House, perhaps the most heavily guarded building on earth, and take the president hostage. But for some reason, and to my amazement, Olympus Has Fallen totally works. And I think the reason why is something that recent events have made us sensitive to, yet still remains a guilty or not-so-guilty pleasure: unrepentant violence. Which I'll explain.

In the film, Aaron Eckhart plays President Benjamin Asher and Gerard Butler is his favorite Secret Service agent, Mike Banning, who is pushed out of the presidential detail after failing to rescue the first lady after a tragic accident. Years later, Banning is near the White House when a large group of North Korean terrorists launches a bloody and brazen frontal assault on the White House, killing scores of security personnel and workers before taking the president and his cabinet hostage in the White House's impenetrable underground bunker. With his inside knowledge of the White House and its security, Banning must kill his way through the building to rescue the president and his cabinet before the North Koreans are able to kill them, or even worse, extract launch codes for the U.S.' nuclear arsenal.

In a lot of ways, Olympus Has Fallen could loosely be described as "Die Hard in the White House", and Olympus Has Fallen certainly lifts quite a few aspects of that 1988 classic. But as I mentioned, what makes Olympus Has Fallen a fun movie is its use of violence. First, I don't believe that violent entertainment necessarily causes violent behavior, otherwise countries whose citizens watch the same movies and play the same video games as Americans do would be just as murderous, which clearly isn't the case. Second, I do believe that some movies are too violent or are pointlessly, needlessly, or ineffectively violent.

But for a movie like Olympus Has Fallen to be good, it NEEDS to be violent. This is a movie about highly trained commandos on a suicide mission who will kill anyone to achieve their goal, and a former Special Forces operator and Secret Service agent trained to obliterate any threat without hesitation -- which Banning does with a nonchalance and humor befitting his training and experience. It would be both inauthentic and inconsistent if a story like this didn't involve lots of cold-blooded killing, which is unfortunately the route that the new Red Dawn took in its effort to get a more teen-friendly PG-13 rating. The result was a film about a massive military invasion and resulting insurgency that was curiously bloodless, thus never invoking the brutal reality of what a foreign invasion on US soil would really be like.

With the spike in mass shootings the U.S. is experiencing, violent movies have been accused of being partially responsible for creating a climate that glorifies guns and violence. And if you want to say that there are too many violent movies being made, go for it. But that's different from saying that a movie with a violent premise should have its violence reduced regardless of context, akin to people who criticized Django Unchained for its liberal use of "nigger," regardless of the fact that the story takes place in the slave-owning south before the Civil War. Olympus Has Fallen is bloody and violent -- as it should be -- which is what makes it such an exciting good time. And in my mind, the fact that the makers of Olympus Has Fallen earned the film's R rating by not sanitizing the violence at its core, even if it meant sacrificing some ticket sales, strikes me as a responsible way to make and market stories where violence and gunfights are unavoidable.

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Blue Sky studios is the company behind the ultra-successful Ice Age franchise, as well as The Croods, which you'd think is following the same winning formula of having a group of characters traipsing across a prehistoric landscape, encountering animals and scenarios more or less consistent with what we know from the fossil record. But that's barely what The Croods is, and to explain why, here's my impression of a bunch of Dreamworks executives:

"Those Ice Age movies have done so well, we should make a movie that's exactly the same, but different."

"Good idea! You know, superhero movies are doing well, so let's make it like that, too."

"Awesome! But you know what movie has made the most money? Avatar! So let's make it like that, too!"

And that might explain why The Croods is such a mess.

The Croods are a family of cavemen -- the father Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage), his wife Ugga (voiced by Catherine Keener), their adventurous daughter Eep (voiced by Emma Stone), their dimwitted son Thunk (voiced by Clark Duke), their seemingly feral baby Sandy (voiced by Randy Thom), and Ugga's mom Gran (voiced by Cloris Leachman). While The Croods are presumably Neanderthals, you wouldn't know it from one of the film's opening scenes, where we see that every family member, including Gran and baby Sandy, is capable of running 50 mph, jumping dozens of feet in the air, and in Grug's case, is able to perform feats of strength more suited to the incredible Hulk. Eep, with her stocky gymnast's build, is able to jump and perform acrobatics that would make Spider-Man jealous, despite spending the film wearing an inappropriately short tiger skin cocktail dress.

The family spends most of the time shut in a cave in a desert canyon, only emerging briefly for food, largely due to Grug's uncleverly blunt and repeated proclamations and parables that curiosity and things that are new are bad and that, in life, one should, "Never not be afraid." But Eep wants more from life, and she finds it in Guy, a more evolved human, maybe a cro-magnon, voiced by Ryan Reynolds who's mastered fire and other more advanced technologies. Guy, who sort of develops a mutual crush on Eep, is convinced, and it's never explained why, that a geological catastrophe is coming, and when an earthquake destroys The Croods' cave and reveals a lush, forested new land, the family decides to follow Guy to safety.

Now much is known about the amazing flora and fauna that existed at the same time as the Neanderthals, and portraying it realistically could potentially get young viewers interested in studying prehistory, just as Finding Nemo will surely inspire generations of young marine biologists. But for some reason, the makers of The Croods decided to totally fabricate an alien environment that most closely resembles the forests of Pandora in Avatar, with swarming piranha birds, fluorescent giant-headed tigers, and feathered wolf owls. Is the actual prehistoric world with its diversity of extinct animals and plants so boring that it needs to be spiced up with flying turtles and giant corncobs that turn into rockets?

The Croods had an opportunity to maybe make an interesting point about overcoming differences in race, class, or education, contrasting the more advanced Guy with The Croods. But this movie isn't interested in that kind of thoughtfulness or complexity, but is instead focused on being loud, fast, slapsticky, colorful, and shallow, even if doing so creates a world that makes no sense. Another way to say it is that this is no Pixar movie, and while a lot of the visuals in The Croods are pretty impressive, the film's lack of substance and interesting characters really highlights how Pixar's real edge isn't in technology, but in how much time they put in to developing their stories. I'm sure small kids will be amused by The Croods and its physical humor, but as an adult, I think I would've been much more entertained watching a weirdo like Nicolas Cage recording his dialogue than I was watching this uninspiring, incongruous effort.

When I heard that rapper Snoop Dogg now wants to be called Snoop Lion and would be releasing a reggae album, I, like a lot of people, had a nice scoff. After all, for over 20 years, Snoop Dogg has been virtually synonymous with rap, and there's always something ridiculous about an artist changing their name to take a stab at another genre -- I'm looking at you, Garth Brooks, or should I say Chris Gaines. Besides, are we really supposed to believe that Snoop Dogg, the quintessential West Coast gangster from Long Beach, is now a Rastafarian? So when I went to see Reincarnated, a documentary about Snoop's trip to Jamaica to record his reggae album, I was fully prepared for some ridiculousness. But I was very quickly reminded that Snoop has spent his entire career defying expectations and breaking barriers, and should never, ever be underestimated. And neither should Reincarnated, which, to my surprise, is one of the best music documentaries I've ever seen.




In the beginning of the film, Snoop says something that sounds like a brag but is simply the truth: that Snoop has been at the top of the rap game from the moment he burst onto the scene in 1992, has made songs that will live forever, and has literally accomplished everything there is to achieve in the world of rap. But even though Snoop, aka Calvin Broadus Jr., has barely aged since we first saw him with Dr. Dre in the "Deep Cover" video, the film finds him at the age of 40 wanting to leave a legacy more positive than songs mostly about violence, crime and objectifying women.

So Snoop travels to Jamaica, the home of one of Snoop's heroes, Bob Marley, to see the birthplace of reggae, get the blessing of Marley's descendants and bandmates, and learn more about the indigenous Jamaican religion, Rastafari. At the same time, Snoop plans to soak in the vibe of Jamaica and translate it into a reggae album free of rapping recorded with DJ/producer Diplo and his team, which is a fascinating process to watch. All of this, of course, is done while smoking a heroic amount of weed, apparently during every waking moment.

But Reincarnated goes beyond reggae, since to explain what brought Snoop to Jamaica, it's necessary to look at where he's been. Using new interviews, Snoop recounts his mindboggling rise from frequently incarcerated gang member, drug dealer and pimp to an international rap superstar and one of the most charismatic and likable figures in all of entertainment. Yet Snoop could never shake the specters of violence and death, with his 1993 murder case, the deaths of close friends Tupac Shakur and Nate Dogg, the dangerous fallout from his relationship with Suge Knight and Death Row Records, and an unexpected tragedy that even reaches Snoop all the way in Jamaica.

But with Snoop in such a reflective mood and wanting to break from his past, this is hardly a retread of Behind the Music. Snoop shows a vulnerability and earnestness I've never seen before, revealing pain, weariness and regrets Snoop usually keeps hidden behind facades of a gangster or a fun-loving pimp. At the same time, he still manages to be the funny, charismatic icon he seems to inhabit so effortlessly.

Reincarnated is that great type of documentary that follows an utterly captivating subject doing what he does best at a unique and extraordinary moment. Snoop's life story practically embodies the history of gangster rap, from its dangerous roots to its dizzying heights and its pointlessly violent lows, and having survived it, Snoop now hopes to leave it behind and reinvent himself both musically and spiritually as an advocate for peace, love, and togetherness. While the jury's out on whether this will result in great music, Snoop has proven people wrong before and has more than earned the right to take any musical foray he wants. Snoop's motives and the respect he has for reggae, its legends, and Rastafari seem totally genuine, and the life and career that brought him to this point is a totally fascinating one that speaks volumes about modern America, the black experience, the growth of an artist, and a uniquely American form of music.

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Jack the Giant Slayer was number one at the box office over its opening weekend with $27 million. But with a budget somewhere around $200 million, it's been deemed a bomb of epic proportions, drawing comparisons to 2012 megaflops Battleship and John Carter. Now, I've seen those two movies, and they're both horrific, comically misguided stinkers. But aside from its weak opening weekend, Jack the Giant Slayer doesn't deserve such ignominious company, since it's actually a surprisingly entertaining movie with good actors and a solid concept. So why did it bomb so hard?

The film is obviously based on the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale, with a few details taken from a later work called Jack the Giant Killer, which was the original title of the movie until executives decided they wanted something that sounded more kid-friendly, which is emblematic of the film's biggest problem, which I'll get to later.

Nicholas Hoult plays Jack, a farm boy who lives with his uncle near a kingdom called Cloister and grew up fascinated by the legend of Erik the Great, who battled giants from a land in the sky and eventually conquered them using a magic crown. Now a teenager, Jack travels to Cloister to sell his uncle's horse to make ends meet, where he meets and falls for the princess of Cloister, Isabelle (played by Eleanor Tomlinson) who likes to leave the castle in disguise to commune with her subjects and find adventure.

As you probably guessed, magic beans are obtained and discarded, and a mighty beanstalk grows, carrying Isabelle to the giants' realm. The king (Ian McShane) sends Jack up the beanstalk with his best knights to bring Isabelle back, led by Elmont (Ewan McGregor). Accompanying but not helping are Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci) who is set to marry Isabelle but has his own scheme to gain power, and his lackey Wicke, who's played by Ewan Bremer, making it a mini Trainspotting reunion with his former castmate, McGregor. The army of impressively detailed giants are led by the two-headed General Fallon (Bill Nighy), who knows that the beanstalk is their ticket to conquering the world of humans.

Jack the Giant Slayer has a wonderfully palpable sense of adventure, especially since it takes place over a short period of time, and the way the fairy tale is woven into the story as a legend that faded over time into a myth is wonderfully cohesive, and actually makes the film feel like a retelling of a story that's existed for centuries. All of the performances are good, particularly Tucci, McGregor, and Hoult, who do well with a script that doesn't resort to overly modern or winkingly self-referential language, nor do the characters have to suffer the antics of comic relief gnomes, talking animals, or other nonsense. The giants are scary, but they also have distinct characters and their own culture, and the action scenes are exciting and satisfying.

So if there's nothing drastically wrong with Jack the Giant Slayer, why is it in such trouble? As I alluded to, there's a major, apparently fatal disconnect about who this film is for. Despite the fact that it's based on a children's fairy tale and the advertisements for it make it seem like a movie for kids, Jack the Giant Slayer is rated PG-13 due to some occasionally jarring violence involving humans or giants being killed. That leaves you with a movie that seems like it's for small children, which would keep teenagers away, while the PG-13 rating tells parents they should keep little kids away -- leaving Warner Brothers with a $200 million movie, and a pretty good one, with no real audience.

Director Bryan Singer delivered an exciting and entertaining movie with good performances, despite the fact that no one was calling for Jack and the Beanstalk -- or really any fairy tale, for that matter -- to be made into a movie. But Jack the Giant Slayer should be a cautionary tale, showing that even if you make a pretty good movie, people won't see it if they're confused about who it's for. Which leaves me in the strange position of seeing a movie and liking it, but not knowing who to recommend it to.