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THE AGE OF ADALINE(2015) Review

Blake Lively stars in Lee Toland Krieger's decades-spanning romantic melodrama as a woman who stops aging at 29.

After swanning through six seasons of Gossip Girl as Upper East Side teen queen Serena van der Woodsen, Blake Lively made some smart choices. Aside from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies (the first of which she shot before becoming a small-screen star) and Green Lantern (which, if little else, hooked her up with current hubby Ryan Reynolds), she’s kept her head down, delivering credible supporting turns for directors like Rebecca Miller (The Private Lives of Pippa Lee), Ben Affleck (The Town) and Oliver Stone (Savages).
A preternaturally poised blonde whose statuesque beauty is softened by kind, squinty eyes and a melancholy spaciness, Lively is an odd screen presence — somehow both warm and cold, accessible and recessive. She’s long been ripe for a breakthrough lead role that allows her to stretch and surprise.
Her new film, The Age of Adaline, about a woman whose physical appearance stops changing just before she hits 30, doesn’t quite give her all that, but it’s a significant step in the right direction.
Movies revolving around time-defying protagonists have bedeviled auteurs as wildly talented as Francis Ford Coppola and David Fincher, whose Youth Without Youth and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, respectively, were career low points. If the far less tested Lee Toland Krieger — who followed up his sour debut The Vicious Kind with the wittiest and most luminous of recent rom-coms, Celeste and Jesse Forever — fares better, it’s partly because he sets his sights lower. An elegantly confected cream puff of a melodrama, The Age of Adaline plays like an exercise in handling a preposterous story, booby-trapped for maximal ridiculousness, with tasteful conviction. Far from the bloated tearjerker suggested by the trailer, the film is pleasant, respectable and a bit dull, reining in the inherent silliness of its material and taking few risks.
Read more Watch Harrison Ford and Blake Lively Deal With Her Immortality in 'Age of Adaline' Trailer
Handsomely mounted and shot and edited with confidence and fluidity, if not much imagination, the movie (written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz) kicks off on a note of noirish mystery as a solitary Lively, regal in the first of several long, vintage coats, walks the San Francisco streets. Via voiceover (by Hugh Ross) and a few sepia-toned flashbacks, we learn that by some stroke of pseudoscientific hocus-pocus, Adaline stopped aging the moment she was in a near-fatal car accident nearly 80 years ago. In other words, she’s a 107-year-old with a 29-year-old’s face and body (and, I guess, muscles, bones and organs, given her lack of any apparent health problems).
That may sound like a dream scenario for many in the movie business, but Adaline, wary of being treated like a freak, keeps her condition a secret. Changing her name and residence every 10 years, our heroine, despite her traffic-stopping looks, becomes adept at avoiding intimacy — and hits the road each time someone gets too close, not wanting to commit and then watch her beloved grow old and die. When we meet her, she’s working as a librarian, maintaining regular contact only with a blind pianist friend (Lynda Boyd) and the now-elderly daughter she left many years ago (a still-vivacious Ellen Burstyn). In a handful of scenes that easily could have veered into camp, Burstyn and Lively manage to convey the strange, tender dynamic between two women whose physical appearances belie their actual relationship.
All things considered, life appears to be coasting along for Adaline until she meets Ellis (Game of Thrones’ Michiel Huisman,who looks like a more strapping, less demented Shia LaBeouf), a charming hunk with lots of money and a rather convenient penchant for all things old. Ellis falls hard for Adaline, who, in turn, gradually gives in to his persistent courtship, and just when The Age of Adaline starts slipping into corny-romance platitudes (a cloyingly staged date at an old drive-in, a cutesy road trip), the plot twists in a welcome way: Ellis takes Adaline to meet his parents (Kathy Baker and a touching, dewy-eyed Harrison Ford), and — without giving too much away — let’s just say it’s not the first time Ellis’ dad has laid eyes on Adaline.  
With clipped diction and a discreet, old-fashioned formality to her posture and movements, Lively persuasively pulls off the aural and visual incongruity of being — literally — an old soul in a young body. The performance is all the more impressive for not coming off as overly studied; Lively has a refreshingly naturalistic acting style, and she brings a quiet, unshowy gravity to the role. The fact that she’s not an especially vivid performer — picture her next to an Anne Hathaway or a Natalie Portman and she all but evaporates — actually makes her ideal for Adaline, a woman who closes herself off to the world with a demure smile.
The film itself is, for long stretches, nearly as graceful and sympathetic as its leading lady. Krieger keeps the bombast and heartstring-yanking to a minimum — even Rob Simonsen’s too-present score is relatively restrained — and weaves some fine narrative and visual details into the story, such as the photo album Adaline keeps of her dog, one of her few long-term emotional touchstones, or the fleeting shot of Ellis’ foot seeking out Adaline’s in bed the morning after their first night together. But if anything, The Age of Adaline is too polite, too cautious. It never lunges into four-hankie territory, nor does it melt into Nicholas Sparks-like goo or boil over into full-on Sirkian melodrama. For all its competence and polish, the movie feels a bit bland and noncommittal; one wonders if the story might have been better told with Almodovarian excess, or as a lean, atmospheric thriller.
The filmmakers don’t pull us inside Adaline’s head space or play meaningfully with their premise — never, for example, hinting at the character’s response, as a woman at once old and young, to the shifting social, political and cultural landscapes of the country she lives in. Instead, they stick to the wan romantic storyline, reducing Adaline’s presumably terrifying, enlightening experience to a predictable choice between following her head or her heart.
Director of photography David Lanzenberg does fine work, using different color palettes for different eras — a touch which, along with unfussy production design and period costumes, goes a long way toward preventing the film from feeling dusty or embalmed. One of the pleasures of Celeste and Jesse Forever was its shrewd use of L.A. locales, and Krieger similarly brings his settings here to casually vibrant life, with a moody Vancouver standing in for San Francisco. Whatever its flaws, The Age of Adaline proves that he can work effectively on a bigger canvas, and that Lively can hold the center of a movie with her stillness — promising omens for their futures.
Production companies: Lakeshore Entertainment, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Sierra / Affinity
Cast: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker, Lynda Boyd
Director: Lee Toland Krieger
Screenwriters: J. Mills Goodloe, Salvador Paskowitz
Producers: Sidney Kimmel, Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi
Executive producers: Andre Lamal, Eric Reid, David Kern, Richard Wright, Jim Tauber, Bruce Toll, Steve Golin, Alix Madigan
Director of photography: David Lanzenberg
Production designer: Claude Pare
Editor: Melissa Kent
Costume designer: Angus Strathie
Music: Rob Simonsen
Casting: Tricia Wood, Deborah Aquila

'Robin Hood: The True Story' ('Robin des bois, la veritable histoire'): Film Review

French YouTube sensation Max Boublil reunites with his 'The Brats' director Anthony Marciano for this sort-of sendup of the hero from Sherwood Forest.

The title of the French comedy-drama Robin Hood: The True Story (Robin des bois, la veritable histoire) isn’t the only thing that doesn’t quite get things right. This second collaboration from writer-director Anthony Marciano and YouTube sensation turned actor-screenwriter Max Boublil completely re-imagines the do-gooder from Sherwood Forest in an anachronistic prequel, in which the young Robin and Tuck (no longer a friar but a gay Jewish Arab) only steal from the poor, women and kids, and Marianne (no longer a lady) and Little "Jean" (still not little) rally a group of merry misfits in the woods that want to defend the deprived and disadvantaged and force Robin to repay his debts. Unlikely to reach the heights of the co-writers’ previous joint effort, the surprise hit The Brats, which bowed in a similar April slot, this Robin nonetheless managed to sell almost 200,000 tickets over its first weekend in France, a very respectable if not outstanding number.

Hood (Boublil), a petty thief, is still a youngster here, barely 30 and with a beanpole body the color of snowed-under mozzarella. He has a perfectly homophobic — and not remotely funny — rapport with Tuck (Malik Bentalha), his gay sidekick, who’s obviously in love with him (a running gag has Tuck accusing Robin of homophobia, racism and anti-Semitism at every turn, but the execution of this potentially funny idea isn’t close to sharp enough). The king is supposedly dead and his 13-year-old son is on the throne, with the malevolent Sheriff of Nottingham (a scenery-chewing Gerard Darmon, best in show) acting as a regent. Many have fled into the woods, including Little John (Ary Abittan), the supposedly ugly Marianne (Geraldine Nakache, actually very pretty) and their rather bland band of outsiders, who have started to steal from the rich to give to the poor.
The film opens and will return several times to whooshy if always brief action sequences that are reminiscent of the work of Ridley Scott. But unlike the British director’s rather leaden (if tonally coherent) adaptation of the Hood saga, there are quite a few attempts at humor here, often of the childish variety, such as when Robin and Tuck hide in the bushes and a small regiment of soldiers they’re spying on decide to jointly take a pause pipi (bathroom break) and the youngsters get showered with urine. Also supposedly funny are such anachronistic elements as the helmet-wearing musical duo whose songs sound suspiciously like a minstrel-era version of Daft Punk. Unfortunately, the only belly laugh comes from a surprise cameo in the closing scene, but this will totally fly over the heads of audiences unfamiliar with popular French culture and its various incarnations of the Robin Hood story. 
The Brats, which co-starred comic heavyweight Alain Chabat (who’s sorely missed here), had its fair share of hilarious moments but wasn’t very strong in the story department, with scenes often only perfunctorily stitched together. Audiences can be forgiving if you give them enough to laugh about, but the main problem here is that there aren’t enough inspired gags — the film never devolves into Mel Brooks’ Men in Tights levels of silliness, with the costumes and sets mostly lived-in and grimy, suggesting how awful it must have been to have been a pauper in that time. It goes without saying that this is not necessarily fertile ground for comedy. The problem here is that the dramatic elements of the story that would be needed to support such a radical choice are scattershot and often weak, though Darmon certainly gives it his all in his villain role. 
Boublil’s comic talents, which rely on improvisation and a generally manic way of being, are too often hemmed in by the constraints of the costume drama and Hood’s preestablished persona, at least some elements of which are needed every now and again to at least justify using his name for this tonally messy adventure.
Production companies: Adamapictures, Mars Films, M6 Films, Umedia
Cast: Max Boublil, Geraldine Nakache, Malik Bentalha, Ary Abittan, Gerard Darmon, Patrick Timsit, Eric Metzger, Quentin Margot
Director: Anthony Marciano
Screenwriters: Max Boublil, Anthony Marciano
Producers: Ilan Goldman, Simon Istolainen
Director of photography: Jean-Paul Agostini
Production designer: Jean-Philippe Moreaux
Costume designer: Olivier Beriot
Editor: Samuel Danesi
Casting: Coralie Amedeo
Sales: Mars Distribution

'Bare': Tribeca Review

Dianna Agron of 'Glee' plays a small-town woman who becomes romantically involved with a free-spirited female drifter in Natalia Leite's gritty drama.

Fans of Glee will relish the opportunity to see actress Dianna Agron getting down and dirty in Natalia Leite's drama about a repressed young woman living a dead-end, small-town existence who finds her horizons expanded by her burgeoning friendship with a free-spirited stranger played by Paz de la Huerta. Unfortunately, that's the most intriguing aspect of Bare, which purports to explore serious themes even as it posits the idea that the way to truly blossom is by becoming a stripper. The film recently received its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Sarah (Agron) lives in a Nevada desert town where the chief employment opportunity is working at the local department store. But even that is denied her when she's fired early on by the store manager, who soberly informs her, "You're just not Super Town material."
Her career prospects dwindling and dissatisfied by her unfulfilling relationship with her boyfriend (Chris Zylka), Sarah naturally finds herself intrigued by the sexy drifter Pepper (de la Huerta, in her usual sexpot mode), who quickly introduces her to the joys of partying in Reno and smoking peyote in the desert, becoming so stoned that she barely notices the snake slithering all over her body.
Read more 'Dixieland': Tribeca Review
Pepper works at a strip club — not as a stripper, she assures Sarah, but rather a bartender — and when Sarah later attempts to track her down she becomes friendly with the working girls and even takes an awkward stab at working the pole herself. Her confidence in her sexuality soon blossoms and she finds herself awash in the sort of easy money that few other occupations available to her could provide.
Meanwhile, her relationship with Pepper deepens, with the women soon becoming lovers. But Sarah finds herself disillusioned when she discovers that Pepper is actually a recruiter for the club, receiving a commission for every new girl that she brings in.
The mundane storyline is not enlivened by such moments as when, during a late-night gabfest, Pepper asks, "Did you ever Google 'abnormally large clitorises?'"
Read more 'Palio': Tribeca Review
Performing her first onscreen nude scene, Agron is quite convincing as a character markedly different from her duplicitous cheerleader on Glee, well conveying Sarah's newfound sexual freedom and adventurousness. The perfectly cast de la Huerta is equally effective as the alluring seductress, even if her familiar character offers few surprises.
But by the time Sarah realizes that she can longer retreat to the comforting security of friends and family, viewers will have long since ceased to care.
Production companies: Purple Milk, Indion Entertainment Group
Cast: Dianna Agron, Paz de la Huerta, Chris Zylka, Louisa Krause
Director-screenwriter: Natalia Leite
Producers: Alexandra Leite, Natalia Leite, Chad Burris
Executive producers: Dennis Mykytyn, Chris J. Scott, Giorgio Guglielmino, Jasper Zweible
Director of photography: Tobias Datum
Production designer: Lisa Myers
Editor: Joe Murphy
Costume designer: Meriwether Nichols
Composer: Kyp Malone
Casting: Angelique Midthunder

Paul Walker's 'Fast and the Furious' Supra Heading to Auction

If you've been wanting to own a set of wheels like Dom, Brian and the gang, now is your chance. 

The orange 1993 Toyota Supra that was used as a stunt car in key scenes in the original The Fast and the Furious film is hitting the auction block. The vehicle is listed by Mecum Auctions and will be available to the top bidder during their Indy 2015 event, taking place May 12-17 in Indianapolis.

The car was one of several of this model built for the first installment in the Universal franchise. This particular car can be seen in footage throughout the 2001 Rob Cohen-directed action hit, including in the pivotal final race, when it was driven by Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner against Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto. 

The vehicle comes equipped with a 2JZ-GE 3.0-liter inline-6 engine with 220 hp. It also features stunt suspension and a roll cage, which were added for the shoot.

A chance to drive like the film's heroes won't come cheaply, however, as the car is expected to sell for a price in the neighborhood of $150,000 to $200,000. Hopefully, if you plan to bid, you won't have to steal a bank vault to come up with the cash. (If you don't get that bank-vault reference, it may be time to rewatch Fast Five.)

'Avengers: Age of Ultron': Film Review

Joss Whedon tries to top 2012's 'The Avengers' with the new installment, which finds the all-star Marvel superheroes dispatching the remnants of the nasty HYDRA organization.

The powers of Marvel's all-star superheroes go a bit wobbly in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Faced with the daunting prospect of topping the surprise and excitement of 2012's The Avengers, the third-highest-grossing film of all time, writer-director Joss Whedon mixes some brooding down time in with the abundant spectacle. To be sure, series junkies will get their fix from the sheer massiveness of the exploits, but at least two of the big action scenes are lackluster, while the climax and resolution could have been worked out in more complex, less rote ways, so as to further increase intrigue and anticipation for Avengers: Infinity War parts one and two, already scheduled for release in May of 2018 and 2019, respectively. Not that any of this will matter much, since the pent-up excitement among the enormous international fan base is so intense that nothing will keep the summer's presumed biggest franchise blockbuster from soaring beyond the $1 billion threshold internationally.
Hands-on producer Kevin Feige and his associates have built a cinematic empire quite unprecedented in Hollywood history, a veritable solar system of staggeringly profitable individual franchises unified by the overpowering collective force of the Avengers. So while sideline enterprises like the new Daredevil TV series continue to pop up, the company's confidence in the enduring appeal of its theatrical mainstays is such that it recently published a release schedule for its remaining big-gun commercial titles from now through the end of the decade. At this point, no one would be willing to bet on when and whether a sense of terminal deja vu might set in to bring it all to an end.
Read more Why Fans Aren't Thrilled With 'Batman v. Superman' Footage So Far
In the meantime, the key points of interest surround how many surprises and twists can be wrung from a format that, due to core-fan expectations, demands great fealty; any significant deviations from the source material are taken as personal betrayals by the hardest-core geeks. Last summer, Guardians of the Galaxy showed that Marvel could play it a bit more fast and loose than it generally does, but the big-name franchises still seem sacrosanct.
And so it is with Avengers: Age of Ultron, which at moments takes a peek down some shadowy side roads but ends up mostly zooming along the main highway to deliver what the audience wants rather than something even a little bit different. Picking up where last year's Captain America: Winter Soldier left off, the new film, without preamble, dives right in to show the Avengers dispatching the remnants of the nasty HYDRA organization in a hectically and indifferently staged forest combat scene that leaves Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) worse for wear while also introducing two new adversaries, twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen), aka Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
Victory allows for some passably amusing scenes of the heroes blowing off steam: The favorite party trick of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is to challenge all comers to lift up his hammer; Natasha/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) pursue a little mating dance in which her amorous interest is predicated upon his retaining his human rather than superhero form; and Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) take stock of the advances their old Nazi nemesis Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) appears to be making in the artificial intelligence department, specifically with the most sophisticated humanoid ever devised, Ultron (voiced with marvelous robotic nuance by James Spader).
Ultron is a cool and sophisticated creation; what he lacks, of course, is a heart, which is what makes him such an imposing villain. A sleekly designed robot you might even call handsome, he makes an excellent intellectual and smart-ass sparring partner for Stark, but when he first appears, he's still on training wheels. However, he does recruit the Maximoffs to his cause, an easy matter since Stark killed their parents. Ultron is not yet entirely ready to conquer the universe but, in their first skirmish with him, the Avengers are outclassed enough to begin worrying.
Licking their wounds at the "safe house" of Hawkeye's farm, the Avengers go into a funk. The impatient Thor quickly takes off "to find answers," Bruce resists Natasha's desire to get something physical cooking between them; Stark, lamenting that "Ultron is tryng to tear us apart," consults with old cohort Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, briefly), while Mad Men's Linda Cardellini, playing Hawkeye's stand-by-your-man wife, is stuck with the (intentionally?) funniest line of dialogue in the film: "You know I totally support your avenging."
While some of his partners wallow in disarray, Captain America heads for Seoul, where the next evolutionary step is to emerge via a device called "the Cradle," which will hatch mass-produced android soldiers that will pave the way for Ultron's world domination. But a major chase through the city involving a runaway subway train falls flat due to basic conceptual silliness and poor continuity.
Of course, the Avengers ultimately get it together to do the kind of butt-kicking they're supposed to do, and a very welcome addition to the team comes in the form of the android Vision. Red-faced and green-garbed, Vision is given a striking profile and overall presence by Paul Bettany (heretofore limited in the Marvel world to vocal work as Stark's computerized butler JARVIS), and it can be hoped, if not assumed, that this most intriguing character will play an even more important role in the final two Avengers installments.
Ultimately, Whedon's efforts to invest the heroes with a degree of unsurety and vulnerability comes off as half-baked, as such an effort can only go so far due to the nature of the material. After all, these are comic book characters defined by their double identities; a third dimension is neither required nor perhaps even desired.
Read more Marvel's 'Secret Wars': What Newcomers Need to Know
If ending on a dramatic cliffhanger note had been desired, the elements were there for the taking; including a semi-tragic component along with uncertainty about Ultron's ultimate fate would arguably have only further cranked up anticipation for the coming chapters. But, then, what does that matter when the automatic attendance of millions is assured?
Avengers: Age of Ultron succeeds in the top priority of introducing a worthy opponent for its superheroes and giving the latter a few new things to do, but this time the action scenes don't always measure up and some of the characters are left in a kind of dramatic no man's land. The returning series actors acquit themselves in the expected agreeable manner, while series newcomer Andy Serkis has a terrific couple of minutes as a tough but stressed South African criminal.
Production company: Marvel Studios
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Linda Cardellini, Stellan Skarsgard, Claudia Kim, Thomas Kretschmann, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Serkis
Director: Joss Whedon
Screenwriter: Joss Whedon, based on the Marvel comic book characters
Producer: Kevin Feige
Executive producers: Jon Favreau, Stan Lee, Victoria Alonso, Jeremy Latcham, Patricia Whitcher, Alan Fine, Louis D'Esposito
Director of photography: Ben Davis
Production designer: Charles Wood
Costume designer: Alexandra Byrne
Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Lisa Lassek
Music: Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman
Visual effects supervisor: Christopher Townsend
Casting: Sarah Halley Finn

HAIRY BUSINESS: COURTENEY COX'S NEW BOB AND MILEY CYRUS' BUSHY PITS

Courteney Cox not only debuted the results of her first full-length directing gig on Monday night in Hollywood, she debuted her brand-new lob, aka long bob. The superchic new cut is by Chris McMillan, and helped make the Just Before I Go director stand out even more on the red carpet, where she wore a sexy low-cut red suede dress and cuddled up to buddies including Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Meyer and Laura Dern.

Cox’s new hairdo is very easy to love. Less so? Miley Cyrus’ shocking new hairy armpits. While we believe everyone should be allowed to groom themselves as they wish — or not! — the pop star’s apparent aversion to razors, which was revealed while attending and celebrating Joan Jett’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was pretty off-putting. But hey, she’s freeing her nipples, so why not her armpits? Perhaps this new hippie habit of hers was also a turn off to her brand-new ex (ahem, Patrick Schwarzenegger)?

Following his Paris Fashion Week platinum hair makeover, we’re finally getting a close-up peek at Jared Leto’s Suicide Squad ‘do, and it’s definitely not as pretty as we’re used to. Let’s just say his slime-green Joker locks, paired with bleached-out brows, are not the most flattering thing. Fingers crossed the actor books a session with his stylist Chase Kusero immediately after filming wraps and returns to his dreamy natural color ASAP.