What kind of memories and resonance by “Lady Bird”?

Bird said, give me a number, so I earn enough money, back to you, and then we do not have to talk again. It reminds me of the same quarrel with my mom when I was in high school.

Lady Bird

Bird and mother quarrel on the fire, pushed open the car door, jumped down. I really understand the urge to hurt myself. Actually, it is not just young people. One year after I even saw a pupil quarreling with his mother, I jumped straight from the tricycle and did not understand the high speed. When the kinetic energy how much heavy down on the ground, fainted, the body still kept trembling. His mother scared, I was shocked.

Now, as a man, I am living in a big city alone and with a seemingly endless debt as my parents were when they were young. I started to comprehend completely, their frustration and anger at that time. I understood how much I was a child when I was young … If I had a child, I would not hesitate to say: No, my father can not buy that toy car for you.

I am deeply grateful to my parents, for more than 20 years for me to do everything. Is it a blessing to have a well-meaning parent – when Bird attacks Mom and says “Have you ever been home, no matter what you wear, you’re blamed by your mom?” Her mother calmly said: “My mother is an alcoholic violent mad.”

Although dreams often can not be fulfilled, it is easy for one’s loved ones to hurt each other deeply and not even know what they have done until it is too late. It was a complete tragedy if Bird fell to his death while getting off the bus, and teenage suicide was a very common social problem. Over the years, have seen jumped after college entrance examination, college graduates jumped from the floor, there are not long ago ZTE jumped middle-aged people. Just a few minutes to die, and many people have to suffer long suffering.

“Lady Bird” is not a popcorn movie, there is no fairy tale, there is no myth, no miracle, no hero, only ordinary and compromise, adolescent impulses and confusion, stampede under the pressure of life, sexual enlightenment and a mess of private life … … What a true history of growth. So trivial, warm, because true, so full of strength.

Wearing a ring of young people, put themselves clean and dressed in suits; temper of adolescents, began calmly in the face of difficulties and misunderstandings, patience to seek reconciliation; young endowed with an inexhaustible energy will soon decline, superficial Carefree into thinking under the pressure of life and calm, small meat will become a bald middle-aged holding a thermos cup will lose a lot of things, but also will have more real.

The Amazing Spider-Man

We live in an age of speed-up, which may explain why the “Spider-Man” franchise feels the need for a reboot only 10 years after its first film, and five years after the most recent one. In its broad strokes, “The Amazing Spider-Man” is a remake of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” (2002), but it’s not the broad strokes we care about. This is a more thoughtful film, and its action scenes are easier to follow in space and time. If we didn’t really need to be told Spidey’s origin story again, at least it’s done with more detail and provides better reasons for why Peter Parker throws himself into his superhero role.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Parker is played by Andrew Garfield (“Never Let Me Go”), who at 28 looks too old to be in high school, but then movie teenagers usually do. His key quality is likability, which he shares with his predecessor, Tobey Maguire. Gwen, his classmate and girlfriend (Emma Stone, “The Help”), is a well-grounded female who needs some persuasion to bond with Peter. That’s partly because Garfield’s take on Spidey is sometimes a few strands short of a web. He’s not above showoff stunts in high school and takes chances with his newfound superpowers. This is the first Spider-Man who can leap off a skyscraper and make us wonder if he has a plan in mind.

The origin story takes at least an hour to tell, and I enjoyed that, because it seems to me that CGI superhero films often go on autopilot during their big action climaxes. We learn how Peter lost his parents and came into the care of Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen, replacing the late Cliff Robertson). Finding his dad’s old-fashioned briefcase in the attic, Peter comes across brilliant scientific work about cross-species interbreeding, and that leads him to the Manhattan skyscraper of Oscorp, your typical comic-book mega-corporation with a madman at the top.

The screwball scientist is his dad’s old partner, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans). He has lost his right arm and obsesses about regenerating it by injecting himself with the genes of lizards, which can replace lost limbs (almost instantly, it appears). Connors overdoses on lizard juice and expands into the hyper-violent Lizard, who goes on rampages and knocks cars off bridges with its tail.

Meanwhile of course the cops blame a midtown trail of destruction on Spider-Man, and wouldn’t you know that Gwen’s father is police chief Stacy (Dennis Leary). This sets up various close calls and reconciliations, and the movie’s single best action scene, when Spidey rescues a boy from a burning car dangling from a bridge. The kid is able to assist in his own rescue after putting on Spidey’s face mask; I doubt the mask has magical powers, but simply provides a psychological boost.

That also may help explain why Peter/Spider-Man spends so much time not wearing the mask. That, and the fact that Andrew Garfield is very good-looking, and the mask reminds me of Hellboy wearing a screen door.

The best of all the “Spider-Man” movies remains Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2” (2004), with the best of the series’ villains, Doc Ock. This film is probably the second best. The Lizard is not especially inspired and seems limited to the dramatic range of a Godzilla. Luckily, the climactic battle atop the Oscorp Tower is intercut with parallel action involving the plucky Gwen, who risks her life in an attempt to immunize all New Yorkers from becoming lizards. Director Marc Webb is aware that effective CGI action must be slow enough to be comprehensible, and although the Lizard sometimes thrashes about in a rage, Spidey’s action makes sense.

A technological footnote: Peter/Spidey depends on cell phones, which save the day when Spidey urges Gwen to — quick! — find the blue serum! Peter Parker is still a photographer (and still using rolls of film); although we see a front page proving the Daily Bugle is still being published, Peter doesn’t seem to free-lance for it anymore; no doubt he’s been downsized. The credit cookies promise a sequel, and I suppose by the time they make it, Peter will have switched over to making videos for YouTube.

The Adventures of Tintin

In gearing up to make “The Adventures of Tintin,” I suspect Steven Spielberg reached down into that place inside that fueled his “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Here again is an intrepid hero involved in a nonstop series of exploits involving exotic locations, grandiose villains, planes, trains, automobiles, motorcycles, helicopters and ships at sea. It evokes Saturday afternoon serials in an age when most of the audience will never have seen one.

The Adventures of Tintin

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself. Spielberg not only uses 3-D but bases his story on one of Europe’s most beloved comic characters. The 3-D he pulls off, just as Scorsese did in “Hugo,” because he employs it as an enhancement to 2-D instead of an attention-grabbing gimmick.

The beloved character … can we flash back? It is a morning in May at the Cannes Film Festival, and I am drinking my coffee in the sunlight and reading Nice-Matin, the regional paper. A back page in full color is given over to comics, and half the page is devoted to Tintin. I ask a French friend about him. “You don’t know Tintin?” She is amazed. “Zut!” So loved is he, I learn, that papers would rerun his old exploits even after the death of his creator, Hergé.

This Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell in the film) is a piece of work. He is a newspaperman who rarely seems to go to the office but can usually be found globe-trotting on an unimaginable expense account, always accompanied by his gifted dog, Snowy. Two maladroit Interpol inspectors named Thompson and Thomson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are often on the same cases. A rum-soaked old sea salt named Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) is often found nearby. Tintin looks like a prepubescent to me, but is treated by everyone as sort of an honorary grownup. His yellow hair comes up to a quiff in the front.

Tintin’s adventures come in book-length, their pages the size of old Life magazines. They are drawn by the Belgian artist Hergé with elegant clarity (the “clean line” approach). Sometimes a situation will require an entire page. Starting that year at Cannes, I read every single Tintin book, and even bought a Tintin and Snowy T-shirt. My little French-English dictionary was a great help.

It was reported that Spielberg would use motion capture technology on his characters. This seemed wrong, wrong, wrong. Not only did Tintin inhabit an adamantly 2-D universe, but he was manifestly not real. Anyone could draw him; his face has two dots for eyes, little curves for eyebrows and a mouth and a nose that is like a sideways “U.” To make him seem more real would be to lose Tintin.

My worries became irrelevant during the movie’s opening scene. It was going to be all right. Tintin looked human, if extremely streamlined. His face, as described by an eyewitness to a police artist, would produce a sketch of … Tintin. The other characters are permitted more detail; Thomson and Thompson in particular are given noses that would make W.C. Fields weep with envy.

Spielberg and a team of artists and animators have copied not the literal look of the Tintin strips, but the feel. A more traditional 2-D approach was done for a TV series, which you can check out on YouTube; I like it, but Spielberg is more ambitious and his characters seem more believable, to the extent that anyone created by Hergé is real. The movie involves the same headlong hurtle through perilous adventures, involving dire endangerment by explosives and so on. The chase is on to find a lost treasure with ancient connections to Capt. Haddock’s family.

There’s one change I didn’t appreciate. Spielberg too closely imitates a traditional action movie. There’s gunfire in the Hergé comics, but the amount that goes on here is distracting. Hergé devoted more time to local color, character eccentricities and explosive dialogue, and I learned to mystify my friends with such Haddockisms as “Tonnerre de Brest!” and “Mille sabords!” (“Thunder of Brest!” and “A thousand portholes!”).

One of the benefits of animation is what it allows Spielberg to do with Snowy. The little dog has always been dubious about his master’s daring schemes; Tintin will propose an expedition, and Snowy will think in a thought balloon, “Not by foot, I hope!” Some of the funniest moments in the movie involve Snowy’s determination to convey urgent information to dunderheaded humans.

“The Adventures of Tintin” is an ambitious and lively caper, miles smarter than your average 3-D family film (how can any thinking person want to see one Chipmunks movie, let alone three?). It plays fair with Spielberg (who received Hergé’s blessing before his death in 1983). I give it 875 portholes.

From Here to Eternity

This is a film that many people now will know for its most famous scene: the kiss and embrace on the beach between Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster. That scene is truly awesome. Technically, emotionally and for its timeless appeal. Often copied and even parodied, it is one of the best lip-clinches in cinematic history. For viewers looking back on it now, little can be said of the rest of the film in such superlatives. But it is worth watching for that kiss.

From Here to Eternity

The story is a watered down version of a famous novel. Set in the American army just before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, it shows the harsh reality of the attack (in a finale that is in sharp contrast to the easygoing flamboyance of the rest of the movie). It was one of the first films to show the harshness of military life, including bullying (though this was one of the many aspects watered down for the censors at the time). It has award-winning or famous performances from many stars who are still household names. A vast amount of talent was poured into it. Some subtleties (such as Deborah Kerr playing against her standard, pure-as-the-driven-snow roles) will be lost on modern audiences if they miss the contrasts. But who has not heard of the title?

Two love stories form subplots to the main story, which is one of a harsh and unfair commander (together with a brute also in charge of the stockade) and an unfairly victimised young bugler. There is a passionate and illicit love affair between a First Sergeant and the Commander’s wife. Then there is an equally furtive liaison between the young bugler (in between beatings) and a ‘hostess’. Using Hawaii as a backdrop, there is great contrast between the idyllic setting on one hand and the vicious treatment of junior soldiers (not to mention the horrific bombing scenes) on the other. And some nice bugle playing.

The merits of the film could be eulogised at greater length, but in the interests of balance and to reflect the concerns of modern audiences, two other aspects might be mentioned. At least they were things that stuck out quite horribly to me, so I am going to mention them.

The first is the overwhelming portrait of drunkenness and brawling (according to reports, the first was common among some of the stars, not just the characters). There are many justifications, including the suffering they were going through and the general tolerance of alcohol in American society. But what I found disconcerting (and still find disconcerting in many modern films featuring American soldiers, both fiction and documentary) is the toleration. If viewed through the lens of a society that doesn’t embrace drunkenness (for instance Brazil, which is about the same size as America), it portrays a simplistic picture of American G.I.s as drunken louts. The datedness of the scenarios, although probably effective at the time, makes such obnoxious behaviour stand out all the more.

The second thing that made me feel uncomfortable (though not to the same extent as the thoroughly awful modern film, Pearl Harbor) is the pervasive jingoism. America, it seems, can confront its own weakness in films about Vietnam (when the war was so obviously lost), but in 1953, as now, America was ‘all perfect’ and Japan was ‘all evil’. It would be refreshing to see a film that embraced not only the inhumanity of Japanese attacking forces but acknowledged some of the background – the Washington-imposed oil-blockade of Japan that gave that small nation state the bleak choice of capitulation or war.

From Here to Eternity is a great film. But it is perhaps little wonder why the excerpted clips are usually of Burt and Deborah on the beach rather than Sinatra falling about drunk. The realistic footage of unexpected bomb attacks however, probably deserves more acknowledgement.

A Little Bit of Heaven

I had no idea colon cancer was so much fun! You get to lose weight… without even trying! You get to giggle your way through your first exam with your doctor: mostly cuz you’re ticklish, but also, he’s just really really cute, with a foreign accent and everything! Then you can flirt with him before your colonoscopy. Then, while you’re under anesthesia, you get have an awesome near-death experience and go to heaven — just for a visit! — where God is Whoopi Goldberg and she gives you three wishes, just like a fairy godmother or a kindly wizard. Then, back on Earth, you win radio-station contests and get amazing insurance payouts — even before you die! — that lets you give your friends way-cool shopping sprees, and you supposedly look like hell, what with getting the cancer and everything, but you actually look great, and you figure out what life is all about. Oh, and here’s the best part: the cute foreign doctor falls in love with you!

A Little Bit of Heaven

It is so fantastic to be dying! Call it the Ass Cancer Life Plan. Every modern girl needs it. Especially the modern girls like Kate Hudson’s (The Killer Inside Me, Nine) Marley Corbett — Marley! what a great modern-girl name! — who knows all about condoms and how to use them but doesn’t know how to commit. Doesn’t she know that that’s like, literally, a fatal flaw in women? Tee-hee! Whoopi God-berg (For Colored Girls, Toy Story 3) sets her straight, sort of, though Marley doesn’t realize it at first. See, cuz Marley — who is definitely, absolutely, 100-percent dying, not even Whoopi God-berg can give her a reprieve — simply doesn’t know what to ask for with that third wish. “I don’t know what I want,” Marley laments to Whoopi. “You know,” Whoopi replies wisely, “you just don’t want to admit it.”

Tee-hee! It’s so true! Of course Marley really wants to fall in love and settle down with one man, instead of the parade of gorgeous studs she beds for fun. That’s what every woman wants! And she gets the beautiful Gael Garcia Bernal (Letters to Juliet, Blindness) to commit to — if only for a little while! That’s funny cuz he’s her doctor and he’s called Julian Goldstein, and everyone knows Puerto Rican guys or whatever he is can’t be Jewish.

Every girl should wish to be dying, because Marley’s life is so perfect! She lives in New Orleans — in the nice part that never got drownded in Katrina, naturally — which is just the kookiest-nice place ever. She has a fabulous gay black friend (Romany Malco: The Love Guru, Baby Mama), who puts the swish-swish-sizzle back in Magic Negro, and also gets to make a new fabulous dwarf lothario friend (Peter Dinklage: Death at a Funeral, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian), who might be the first Magic Midget! She forgets to cook the noodles when she makes dinner for her friends, and they still love her and don’t think she’s a total ditz! But women like Marley can get away with that kind of thing, because they’re perfect even when the movie is trying to tell us they’re not perfect. It’s almost like these movies don’t really understand what they’re saying. I mean, after seeing A Little Bit of Heaven, I want to find out how I can get ass cancer so I can meet a cute doctor who will love me forever and ever and pine after me after I die so prettily and without ever having had to spend hours on the phone yelling at my insurance company for denying coverage of an ass-cancer test or treatment or whatever.

The movies always make life look so great. Even when you’re dying of a terrible disease. It’s like they’re trying to convince us of something that we don’t already believe. But the movies wouldn’t do that, would they?

The Usual Suspects Film review

“THE USUAL Suspects,” starring Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey and a slew of others, is a smart-aleck murder mystery, the kind that layers itself with flashbacks, stories within stories and murky clues. You’re supposed to follow its demanding convolutions like a knowing tango partner or, at least, one of those bespectacled movie-school nerds, right down to the gasp-inducing punch line.

It’s intriguing for a while. The movie, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer (together they made “Public Access,” a former Sundance Film Festival winner), starts with a ship explosion and the following title: San Pedro, California—Last Night. Twenty-seven people (we learn later) are killed in the blast, and an estimated $91 million in cocaine (we also learn later) goes up with them.

The story jumps six weeks earlier, as the police haul in five criminals: ex-cop Byrne, sleepy-eyed cripple Spacey, as well as amusing henchmen Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak and Benicio Del Toro. After trading friendly insults and comparing notes (it’s a small world, most of these guys know each other), the suspects realize they’ve been brought in on some trumped-up charge. When they’re finally sprung—the authorities have nothing on them—the five decide to take a little revenge on the NYPD for the unceremonious indignity.

At this point, you sit back for an enjoyable, criminal version of “Mission: Impossible,” in which crooks ingeniously get back at the bullying law. It’s a great team to watch. Byrne is a moody mystery, a sort of Pat Riley with menace and an Irish lilt. Spacey, in stark contrast to his hyper roles of before, is a credible, slow-witted, over-chatty loser, who merits the nickname Verbal. Baldwin, who gets better with every movie, is a charmingly obnoxious joker. Pollak, as usual, works ironic one-liners into his role. And Del Toro is a weird gem, with his just-off-the-boat butchery of the English language.

The interest level holds out a little longer, as the five are pulled in again—this time by Pete Postlethwaite, a polite criminal who claims to represent a mysterious presence (whom they never see) called Keyser Soze. Soze, apparently a nasty crime lord from Hungary with a Machiavellian hand in everything from Belfast to Pakistan, has a deal to make.

Apparently all five have—in unintentional ways—stolen from Soze. They, in effect, “owe him.” Soze—through Postlethwaite—gives them the opportunity to repay their debt and make some money besides. This is where the $91 million comes in.

Most of the action involving the five suspects occurs in flashback while Spacey is grilled by U.S. Customs agent Chazz Palminteri. And as Palminteri tries to pin down Soze’s identity, the exploits of Byrne, Baldwin et al. become less important. The Spacey interrogation becomes the main event. But although the character matchup is interesting (the bullying inspector versus the unreliable creep), you miss those other engaging lowlifes; the movie’s flashback-happy, time-bouncing structure feels like a long-winded interruption. Way before the grand finale (in which Keyser Soze’s secret threatens to be revealed), it becomes clear that “The Usual Suspects” is nothing more than an over-designed lobster pot. After following the beckoning twists and turns, you’re left trapped and more than a little disappointed for getting in so deep.

Wreck-It Ralph English Critic

Best videogame movie ever! Not that there was a high bar: movies based on games tend to replicate the experience of playing a game as if we were watching over another player’s shoulder while entirely missing the point that that’s not much fun. We don’t like watching games — we like playing games. We have a relationship with games that exists beyond the point at which play in any given game stops. We have a relationship with gaming.

Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-It Ralph gets this. It is not beholden to any real game, which smartly sets it free from fan expectations and desires about what a story based on a classic 80s arcade game such as the invented Fix-It Felix should be about. (Though, ironically, movies based on games are never really about their games, either; they just steal the skeleton of a plot from the games without acknowledging their interactive roots at all.) What Ralph is beholden to is gamers’ love of games, and of the multiverse of games that we dwell in when we play. It acknowledges how much games have changed in the past 30 years, by giving us glorious pastiches of games across that span of years, and how that has only deepened our love of gaming. It is bursting with nostalgia, sometimes to the point of indignation. (Ralph encounters a homeless Q-bert. The ignominy! I frakkin’ loved Q-bert. How can I play Q-bert again and give that squidgy little guy a home again?) Ralph wouldn’t work at all if gamers weren’t a fun-flexible bunch who, while we might have our favorite games, happily spread our game time around to myriad diverse electronic entertainments. Ralph wouldn’t work if it couldn’t rest assured that we’re gonna grasp all its many in-jokes and references.

So we have Wreck-It Ralph, who is the “villain” in Fix-It Felix in almost precisely the same way that the gorilla is in Donkey Kong, its clear inspiration. After 30 years of trying to knock down an apartment building — called, with spot-on retro cartoonishness, Niceland — and terrorizing the occupants, only to have “hero” Fix-It Felix repair Ralph’s damage with his golden hammer and organize the tenants in tossing Ralph from the roof, Ralph has had enough. It’s one thing to play a role, which Ralph is proud of playing well, but quite another for his “castmates” to ignore him “offstage,” as they do. Ralph (voiced with immense personality by John C. Reilly: The Dictator, Carnage) is not the brightest icon on the screen, and he’s rather clumsy with his freakishly oversized hamfists. But he has a good heart, and he’s lonely. So he sets off on a quest to win a medal like the one Felix always wins so his gamemates will appreciate him more.

It’s not the best conceived plan ever, but Ralph’s sweet, clueless desperation is part of his charm, and his tragedy. Ralph’s journey takes him into two other games: Hero’s Duty, a gritty military SF first-person-shooter, and Sugar Rush, a literally candy-colored, Japanese-pop-esque racing game. (All the consoles in this particular arcade are traversable in clever ways that I will leave you to discover — among the immense pleasures of this thoroughly enjoyable film are the many ingenious touches that bind it into a cohesive world. Power-up to TV director Rich Moore, making his feature debut, and screenwriters Phil Johnston, who wrote the wonderful Cedar Rapids, and newbie Jennifer Lee.) The visual contrasts between these two domains — and between both of them and Ralph’s chunky pixellated 8-bit world — represent some of the most extraordinary computer animation yet: any one of them alone would be marvelous, its ingenuity a joy to watch unfurl, but to see such deeply different styles done so well in a single film and interact in such fun ways is amazing. It’s a feast for the eye and for the fannish brain. As is, indeed, the notion of getting characters from such wildly antithetic games to meet and interact: Ralph must contend both with Duty’s tough-as-nails Sergeant Calhoun (the voice of Jane Lynch: The Three Stooges, Paul) and Rush’s snarky little-girl wannabe racer Vanellope (the voice of Sarah Silverman: School for Scoundrels, School of Rock). It’s a conceit that owes a lot more to how fans think of games and gaming than reproducing a first-person-shooter onscreen and calling it “a videogame movie” ever could.

Ralph is, on the surface, similar to the Toy Story films, in that the videogame “actors” are fully aware of their responsibility to the players of their games, but that relationship, between the toy and the person who plays with it, is not the primary focus here. Buzz and Woody define themselves by their person, Andy. Ralph, Calhoun, and Vanellope are defined by their programming, and Ralph’s quest — as well as challenges thrown at Calhoun and Vanellope — is about fighting destiny… or, actually, discovering that what you think is your destiny isn’t necessarily your fate, and that much of how we see life is dependent on our perspective. (I think Obi-Wan Kenobi had something to say about that, too.) But it’s more like The Matrix, in more ways than just the one that has to do with computer code: we may not be more than the sum of our pixels, but the sum of our pixels may be far greater than we realize.

Maybe this is the secret to making a videogame movies that works: give us characters we actually care about having an adventure that we actually care about the outcome of. (I know: That’s the secret to making any movie work. Yet some filmmakers, especially those making videogame movies, seem to think this isn’t as important as throwing cool levels at us.) There’s no triumph in leveling up unless it takes us to a level that changes what’s come before, and not a level that’s just about more monsters. And so, ironically, the bits of Ralph that do ape gameplay — as in the big race in Sugar Race that will determine Vanellope’s fate — are supremely compelling and suspenseful and, unlike any other videogame movie I’ve ever seen, make me itch to get into an arcade. Sugar Rush doesn’t exist, but I wanna play it!

American Reunion English Critic

Has Stifler’s mom spent the last 13 years upstairs in her room, reclining on her chaise lounge, occasionally touching up her pink lipstick and waiting for one of her son’s young friends to wander into her lair? I’m growing concerned for America’s most iconic mother. When she made her first appearance in the “American Pie” movies, she landed like a blond bombshell. This time, when her son throws a party downstairs, and she still looks and behaves exactly the same, we get a sense of tragedy. I dread the thought that she has been sitting there for year after year, plumping up her cleavage and sexily brushing a lock of hair back from her eyes.

American Reunion

Stifler’s mom (Jennifer Coolidge) and Stifler himself (Seann William Scott) seem to be trapped in a warp in time. The other members of the old high school gang, now in their early 30s, have moved on in one way or another. So much have they matured, indeed, that when three of the guys plan to get together three days early in the old hometown to get an early start on the class reunion, they actually don’t even let Stifler know their plans. They still like the Stifmeister, but they keenly recall the trouble that he got them into in their previous meetings.

“American Pie” (1999), “American Pie 2” (2001) and “American Wedding” (2003) have made the cast so familiar that this movie actually feels sort of like our reunion with them. We get an update. Oz (Chris Klein) has become a sports expert on an ESPN-like channel. Jim and Michelle (Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan) are still married and have a baby boy as consolation for the fact that their sex life has ground to a halt. Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) has apparently morphed into an adventurer who scales mountains and roars through exotic nightclubs.

Though Jim is a straight-arrow type, he finds himself alarmingly aroused by Kara (Ali Cobrin), once the little neighbor he baby-sat, who’s now disturbingly older and nubile.

Another familiar face is back: Jim’s dad (Eugene Levy), who you may recall was all too willing to provide his son with tips on masturbation and other topics that Jim recoiled from. A film that seems to have been constructed by typing in cross-references to the earlier films, “American Reunion” breaks new ground in a way by dealing fearlessly with the famous Levy eyebrows; when a girl offers to thin them a little for a makeover, he gets defensive (“They’re sort of a trademark”), but she is able to pluck enough hairs to stuff a pillow while making little visible difference.

The charm of “American Pie” was the relative youth and naivete of the characters. It was all happening for the first time, and they had the single-minded obsession with sex typical of many teenagers. “American Reunion” has a sense of deja vu, but it still delivers a lot of nice laughs.

Most of them for me came thanks to Stifler. Seann William Scott, who has a respectable career otherwise, has made the role of Stifler his own, and seems able to morph his face into an entirely new person: narrowed eyes, broad maniacial grin, frightening focus, still with all the zeal for seduction and adventure he had in high school. The ingenuity with which he destroys the jet skis of two jerks can only be admired.

“American Pie” (1999) became infamous for one of the ingredients in its titular pie. That recipe is reprised in the dialogue this time, too. In fact, “American Reunion” seems to depend so much on nostalgia for “Pie” history that I wonder if a first-timer to the series would feel a little out to sea. If you liked the earlier films, I suppose you gotta see this one. Otherwise, I dunno.

Total Recall English critic

The two biggest differences between this new “Total Recall” and the 1990 original are that no scenes are set on Mars, and it stars Colin Farrell instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mars we can do without, I suppose, although I loved the special effects creating the human outpost there. This movie has its own reason you can’t go outside and breathe the air.

Total Recall

But Schwarzenegger, now, is another matter. He’s replaced as the hero Quaid by Colin Farrell, who in point of fact is probably the better actor. But Schwarzenegger is more of a movie presence and better suited for the role of a wounded bull stumbling around in the china shop of his memories. The story involves a man who is involved without his knowledge (or recollection) in a conflict between a totalitarian regime and a resistance movement. Both films open with him happy and cluelessly married (to Sharon Stone in the first, Kate Beckinsale in this one). In both, he is discontented with his life. In both, he discovers that everything he thinks he knows about himself is fictitious, and all of his memories have been implanted.

The enormity of this discovery is better reflected by Schwarzenegger, who seems more wounded, more baffled, more betrayed — and therefore more desperate. In the Farrell performance, there’s more of a sense that the character is being swept along with the events.

The ingenuity of the plot, inspired by a Philip K. Dick story, is handled well in this version, directed by Len Wiseman, and in Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 version. In both, there are passages in which Quaid has no idea what to believe and must decide which of various characters can be trusted. Both films are top-heavy with non-stop action, but there’s more humanity in the earlier one, and I think we care more about the hero. A film that really took this premise seriously would probably play more like Christopher Nolan’s “Memento,” following a man adrift in his own timeline.

But enough about 1990. In the new film, Earth is uninhabitable because of chemical warfare, except for two areas: a federation centered on the British isles and a colony on the former Australia. Workers from the colony provide factory labor for the federation, which sidesteps the commute time by linking them in what looks to be a tunnel straight through the Earth. That’s a lot of effort to go to in order to get cheap labor; Quaid’s factory job involves tightening two screws on the breastplates of robot soldiers being manufactured by the federation. These robots have a neat design, are sleek and shiny black and white, but are apparently doofuses. I can’t remember a single robot doing much more than marching in step and getting itself destroyed.

The film does a detailed job of creating its cities, which in the federation is a towering futuristic marvel, and the colony seems to be countless small hovels endlessly stacked on top of one another, like the dwellings you can see clinging to the sides of other buildings in Hong Kong. Quaid gets involved in chases in both places, which require the ability to jump from great heights without breaking his ankles, or (it seems to me) his legs. One clever chase sequence involves his character and a resistance member named Melina (Jessica Biel) jumping onto and off a maze of vertical and horizontal elevators; it’s sort of an action version of 3-D chess.

“Total Recall” is well-crafted, high energy sci-fi. Like all stories inspired by Philip K. Dick, it deals with intriguing ideas. It never touched me emotionally, though, the way the 1990 film did, and strictly speaking, isn’t necessary.

The Usual Suspects

“THE USUAL Suspects,” starring Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey and a slew of others, is a smart-aleck murder mystery, the kind that layers itself with flashbacks, stories within stories and murky clues. You’re supposed to follow its demanding convolutions like a knowing tango partner or, at least, one of those bespectacled movie-school nerds, right down to the gasp-inducing punch line.

It’s intriguing for a while. The movie, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer (together they made “Public Access,” a former Sundance Film Festival winner), starts with a ship explosion and the following title: San Pedro, California—Last Night. Twenty-seven people (we learn later) are killed in the blast, and an estimated $91 million in cocaine (we also learn later) goes up with them.

The story jumps six weeks earlier, as the police haul in five criminals: ex-cop Byrne, sleepy-eyed cripple Spacey, as well as amusing henchmen Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak and Benicio Del Toro. After trading friendly insults and comparing notes (it’s a small world, most of these guys know each other), the suspects realize they’ve been brought in on some trumped-up charge. When they’re finally sprung—the authorities have nothing on them—the five decide to take a little revenge on the NYPD for the unceremonious indignity.

At this point, you sit back for an enjoyable, criminal version of “Mission: Impossible,” in which crooks ingeniously get back at the bullying law. It’s a great team to watch. Byrne is a moody mystery, a sort of Pat Riley with menace and an Irish lilt. Spacey, in stark contrast to his hyper roles of before, is a credible, slow-witted, over-chatty loser, who merits the nickname Verbal. Baldwin, who gets better with every movie, is a charmingly obnoxious joker. Pollak, as usual, works ironic one-liners into his role. And Del Toro is a weird gem, with his just-off-the-boat butchery of the English language.

The interest level holds out a little longer, as the five are pulled in again—this time by Pete Postlethwaite, a polite criminal who claims to represent a mysterious presence (whom they never see) called Keyser Soze. Soze, apparently a nasty crime lord from Hungary with a Machiavellian hand in everything from Belfast to Pakistan, has a deal to make.

Apparently all five have—in unintentional ways—stolen from Soze. They, in effect, “owe him.” Soze—through Postlethwaite—gives them the opportunity to repay their debt and make some money besides. This is where the $91 million comes in.

Most of the action involving the five suspects occurs in flashback while Spacey is grilled by U.S. Customs agent Chazz Palminteri. And as Palminteri tries to pin down Soze’s identity, the exploits of Byrne, Baldwin et al. become less important. The Spacey interrogation becomes the main event. But although the character matchup is interesting (the bullying inspector versus the unreliable creep), you miss those other engaging lowlifes; the movie’s flashback-happy, time-bouncing structure feels like a long-winded interruption. Way before the grand finale (in which Keyser Soze’s secret threatens to be revealed), it becomes clear that “The Usual Suspects” is nothing more than an over-designed lobster pot. After following the beckoning twists and turns, you’re left trapped and more than a little disappointed for getting in so deep.