Producer JJ Abrams went to great lengths to keep 10 Cloverfield Lane a secret. The announcement that director Dan Trachtenburg would be working for Bad Robot on a post apocalyptic project called Valencia, which was also referred to as The Cellar, didn't really raise any eyebrows. After some rewrites, Abrams then announced that the film was moving forward as a “blood relative” of the found footage giant monster movie Cloverfield, with a name change of 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Paramount's website had a quote from Abrams saying he wanted to keep the title a secret for as long as possible. Now, 10 Cloverfield Lane is supposed to take place in the same universe as Cloverfield, but is not a direct sequel. In fact, it has little in common with the original film. For one, it isn't found footage (something I was happy about), and it also isn't about a giant monster smashing up a city (something that I was less happy about. I do love a good giant monster smash fest.)

10 Cloverfield Lane is about a woman, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who wakes up after a car accident in stranger's basement. She is then informed that this stranger, played by John Goodman, has in fact saved her life, and that there had been an attack, nuclear or chemical in nature, and that it isn't safe for her to leave. She discovers she is in a well-constructed, fully-stocked fallout shelter with Goodman and another man, played by John Gallagher Jr.

Where the film shines is in the performance of Goodman. He plays an ex-navy survivalist who has gone to great lengths to build and maintain his shelter, a level of doomsday preparation that in and of itself is indicative of a man who is not quite normal. Goodman manages to cultivate an air of imposing menace and, at times, almost clinical detachment, while at other times he projects a patriarchal benevolence that feels protective and almost jovial. But, Goodman's character is clearly hiding something.

10 Cloverfield Lane does a fantastic job of feeding Winstead's character, and by proxy the audience, the truth of her situation. Sometimes it comes quickly and as a matter of fact, and sometimes it happens slowly, with partial truths wrapped in bigger lies. What results is a film that draws us in to the mystery of Goodman's character and what is going on behind his benevolent facade, and the larger mystery of what exactly is happening out there on the surface.

The majority of the film is intense, claustrophobic and mysterious. It's incredibly tight and deliberate, with subtle foreshadowing and little wasted movement or superfluous scenes. But, and this is a pretty big “but” that also is kind of a spoiler. So be warned. This may spoil the film for you. I am about to type something possibly spoiler-y. I have made it quite clear this next bit may spoil this film. Here goes: I felt the film falls apart in the last 15 minutes or so. The ending seemed so incongruous with the rest of the film. It takes a major tonal shift and becomes something completely different from the entirety of the build, and it honestly felt tacked on to somehow tie the film to the original Cloverfield. I think the film could have been better served by losing this attempt to join it to the Cloverfield universe and just letting it be its own thing.

​But, maybe, that's just me. 

—Eric Harrelson

French director Jean-Jacques Annaud is no stranger to Chinese history. His film Seven Years in Tibet was condemned by the government of the Peoples Republic of China, resulting in he and Brad Pitt being banned from ever entering China. The ban held for 15 years, with Annaud being welcomed back in 2012. His newest film, Wolf Totem, is adapted from the 2004 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, written by Jiang Rong. The film is set in 1967 and takes place in Inner Mongolia, during China's Cultural Revolution. Throughout that period, the People's Republic of China was sending students to teach reading and writing to the inhabitants of China's more remote regions. Wolf Totem is about a young Han Chinese student, Chen Zhen (Feng Shaofeng), sent to do just that.

What follows is a critique of the People's Republic of China's attempts to modernize the people of the steppes. The nomadic Mongolian shepherds have lived in the steppes for hundreds and hundreds of years, finding a delicate balance with wolves and other animals with whom they share the harsh terrain. The People's Republic is convinced that bringing industrialized agriculture will turn the steppes into a productive, happy part of the ideal communist country. Unfortunately, the arrival of industrialized agriculture and opportunism ruin that balance and threaten the Mongolian's entire way of life.

Chen Zhen becomes fascinated with the wolves that co-exist with the shepherds. Although ordered by the government representative from Beijing to exterminate the wolves, he finds a pup and decides to study it by raising it himself. The wolves themselves become the stars of the story, and their struggle against the encroaching industrialism mirrors the difficulty that the Mongolians themselves are having adjusting to the new way of living. The wolves are handled with a kind of wistful reverence, a respected and ever present threat to the shepherds.

A beautiful film, Wolf Totem isn't without its problems, however. Shown in IMAX 3D, I found it difficult to read the subtitles. Now I know that isn't necessarily a fault of the filmmakers, but it still made the film difficult to watch. The long shots of the steppe were marred, I felt, by the unnecessary 3D effect. The performances were great, but I found myself unable to connect with Chen Zhen. His ill-advised, and of course ill-fated, attempt to raise a wolf cub against all reason and logic struck me as unnecessary. I see the metaphor, however. The wolf is a wild creature that essentially can't be tamed, and trying to force it to live in captivity can't possibly work. Just as forcing industrialized agriculture on the steppes and their people won't work. Although I see the reason in the broader sense, in a practical one it doesn't work with the story. Chen Zhen just decides he wants to “study” the wolves to better understand them, but the people who have lived along side him have been studying them for hundreds of years. What could he possibly figure out in a few months? It just didn't fit for me. None of the human characters felt real, for that matter. They all seemed so stock and flat. Wise old man, young city slicker, precocious child. Now, maybe the novel gave us more to go on and fleshed the characters out, but that development does not happen in the film.

Well acted and expertly filmed, Wolf Totem is by no means a bad film. The political overtones are real and palpable, and one really feels that sense of loss over a way of life that is all but gone. That wistful reverence I spoke of earlier really comes through. I get the feeling, however, that there was much in the novel that couldn't be shown to us on screen, whether it be for time or content. Distracting 3D and flat, stock characters mar the experience, but the story is still at its core interesting and watchable.  

—Eric Harrelson

Pixels seems like one of those films that is just randomly generated by A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. So, maybe, um, the world is attacked by, um, old video games somehow, but it turns out to be aliens and the only thing that can stop them, is, like, um, Adam Sandler?

Actually, that is pretty much the plot synopsis. A video game competition in 1982 was recorded and put into a probe that NASA launched into space as part of a cultural something or other—it isn't really clear. Sandler's character was really good at video games in '82 but was beat by a cocky asshole calling himself “The Fireblaster” who grows up to be Peter Dinklage. Fast forward 33 years, and Sandler is part of the Nerd Brigade (Best Buy's Geek Squad), and his best friend is Kevin James (and somehow, inexplicably, the President of the United States). Galaga attacks Guam, and President James calls his buddy in because he recognizes the aliens attacked with what looks like Galaga. Sandler was always great at recognizing the patterns of those old video games, after all, he was the second best in the tournament, and we're off!

Pixels is a science-fiction film without all that pesky science. How are the aliens actually showing up as glowing cubes of varying sizes, put together as 3-dimensional representations of old school video game characters? Blah Blah living energy something something...shut up and move on! How are they turning real world objects into energy cubes, effectively pixilating aircraft, buildings and people? I said living energy! Okay, so how do we defeat them? Energy cannons! Great. 

I'm actually fine with that. Science-fiction doesn't necessarily have to be real, genuine, believable, provable science. What it does have to be, however, is consistent. Set up the rules to your universe and then abide by them. There are so many plot holes, questions, and inconsistencies in this film that are just never addressed. It's like being shushed by Louise from Bob's Burgers and told to not worry about it, it's Art Crawl.

None of the alien stuff makes any sense. (Mild spoilers ahead) The aliens took the footage of video games as a declaration of war. Now they are attacking Earth with video games. They transmit the rules of their attack via creepy Clutch Cargo mouthed 1980's icons, (Reagan, Madonna, Hall and Oates, et al) and tell the world that they have three lives, much like an old video game, and there will be more attacks. Beat the video games, beat the aliens, save the world. 

Okay. So, now there are rules. First attack: Guam. Galaga. The little bug characters wreak havoc. Earth is the player of the game, the aliens are the enemies. Second attack: Agra, India. The Taj Mahal. Arkanoid paddles show up and Breakout the shit out of it. So, how does that follow the rules of video games? In Arkanoid, the PLAYER is the paddle, and breaks the bricks, which aren't really enemies, they just kinda sit there. I guess in Arkanoid the enemy is the pit? So, how was Earth supposed to defend itself against that, within the rules of that particular video game? Also, Arkanoid was released in 1986, and the footage the aliens got and took for a declaration of war was from 1982, SO HOW DID THEY EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT ANYWAY?

Further, (more spoilers) the fourth attack is Pacman. The Arcaders (Sandler and crew, replete with stupid NASCAR-esque jumpsuits) are somehow the ghosts vs Pacman. If they are supposed to be the player, with the aforementioned three lives, how are they now the ghosts versus Pacman? Now they're driving Mini Coopers fitted with science stuff (about as far as the explanation goes) and going after Pacman, who has presumably been destroying New York while they got the cars ready.

The film keeps enforcing that the reason why Sandler is so good at the old games is because he was great at recognizing the patterns. It's how he recognized Galaga, and more specifically, 1982 Galaga, which contained a glitch in the patterns. It's why he's even involved with the defense of Earth in the first place. It's the patterns that enable Sandler to defeat the aliens when they send Centipede. Over and over, the film reinforces the fact that these guys are good is because of the patterns. Now, he has to drive through the crowded streets of New York as the ghosts from Pacman trying to beat Pacman, which is controlled by the players in the original game, and therefore has no pre-programmed pattern! 

Also, how are they all super awesome race drivers now? Even worse, after this battle, somehow it is revealed that Dinklage used cheat codes during the Pacman game and therefore the world is doomed! What exactly are the rules, anyway? Also, how can you use a cheat code from a video game while you're driving a Mini Cooper around New York? That's not how cheat codes work. I can't just yell out “UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A START!” before getting shot in the face and expect to have 30 lives.

Pixels is a mess. Rules are set up and then broken. The science barely exists at all. The character arcs are all just a grab bag of standard Sandler plot points: lovable loser becomes hero, jerk cheater has a change of heart, nerd sings inappropriately at fancy function, recently heartbroken character finds love again—you know the deal. 

It exists solely to bring old school video game characters to life on the big screen. It's a sequence of admittedly beautiful animated set pieces held together by a razor thin plot and a few fart jokes. Just don't ask it any questions.

—Eric Harrelson 

Russell Crowe has his directorial debut, directing himself, in The Water Diviner. The film is supposed to be based on true events, but from the limited research I conducted via a quick Google search, the only truths in the film are 1.) World War one happened. 2.) There was a horrific battle between the Australian forces and Turkish forces at Gallipoli, resulting in thousands of casualties on both sides. 3.) An Australian farmer went to Gallipoli in search of a dead son.

So, with all that out of the way, we can approach this as a piece of historical fiction, inaccurate warts and all. If anyone viewing this as an accurate historical account, evidently they think Braveheart and Pearl Harbor are documentaries, and lets movies write their history. Clearly, historical fiction and history are two very very different things and should be treated and viewed as such. I have no issue with a movie just being a movie that takes place during a historical point in time—there are plenty of films that do just that and tell us a compelling story framed by a significant historical event. I take issue when a film such as this tells us that it is based on true events, yet only fulfills that obligation in the most basic way possible. I think it is disingenuous.

Now to be fair, I don't think that Crowe set out to lie to the public about the battle of Gallipoli, or that he wants us to think that the what happens in The Water Diviner is abject fact; however, there is a reason why “based on true events” is something we are told at the beginning of the film. It's a cheap way to ad gravitas to the situation, and in this case I feel it to be unnecessary. The character arc doesn't need supposed reality to feel real and carry weight. A father losing all three of his sons to war, on the same day in the same battle doesn't need to be true to be effective. A footnote at the end would've sufficed.

Crowe directs himself as Mr. Connor, an Australian farmer and water diviner who sent his three boys off to war. All three boys were lost, and Mrs. Connor is never able to recover. She drowns herself, leaving Connor by himself. Connor is determined to find his boys and packs up his things and heads to Turkey. In Turkey he meets an attractive Turkish woman and her son who have also lost someone to the war. Connor finds his way to Gallipoli and befriends the Turkish officer who commanded the Turkish forces during the battle. The Turkish commander takes an interest in Connor and tries to help him find his missing sons.

The romantic subplot with the incredibly beautiful Turkish woman (Olga Kurylenko), with whom Russell Crowe immediately falls in love and whose son still thinks his father will come back from the war, follows throughout the entire film, which results in very basic storytelling and is all very flat and predictable.

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but The Water Diviner, to me, is just dramatic schlock trying to give itself importance by wearing a cloak of historical significance. Crowe's direction is muddy, heavy handed, and cliché, never really giving us anything to grab and hold. If it is trying to show the horror of the war and the campaign in Galliopli, it falls flat. 

Just listen to Pogues cover of “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” and you'll get a better picture of how horrible that battle was, and how it affected the nation of Australia.   


—Eric Harrelson 

I don't really know what The Lazarus Effect was trying to do. On one hand, it raises some very interesting questions about what happens when we die. On the other, it completely ignores those questions and goes straight to cheap jump scares. The film tries to build a philosophical debate about religion and science, about messing with nature and playing god, then in just throws up its arms and says “Forget it, lets start killing stuff!”

In an attempt to prolong the period of time when the human body dies and the brain is still viable for resuscitation, a team of medical researchers, led by Frank (Mark Duplass) and his fiancee Zoe (Olivia Wilde) have created a serum that they believe can actually revive a recently dead brain. After many many years and failure after failure, they succeed and reanimate a dead dog. Shortly thereafter, Frank is called into the Dean's office and told he violated the terms of the grant contract. As a result of the violation, all of their work is owned by the company that provided the grant. They no longer retain any intellectual rights to the serum, the research, any of it. Seeing all his hard work stolen from him is more than Frank can handle, so he convinces the group to break into the lab and recreate and document the experiment, so they can prove that they were actually responsible. Something goes wrong, of course, and Zoe dies. Frank can't handle it, of course, and brings her back to life, of course. But, something isn't right with Zoe when she wakes up, because of course.

While the premise is marginally interesting, albeit at its core a little cliché, the film just doesn't really do much with it. Tension is key in horror movies, and all the tension in this film comes from flickering lights and “BOO!” moments. Nothing was built organically through the story; the movie tells us, “Hey, I'm being scary now--look at the flickering lights and jump cuts!” and we're supposed to just react accordingly. It's kind of like a haunted house attraction. A walk through one of those haunts is only a few minutes, so they have to just hit you hard with the obvious visual stuff. Scary masks, low light, cramped spaces, and monsters doing the old jack-in-the-box and shouting “A-BLOOGY-WOOGY-WOOO!”

There just isn't the time to build up tension in those few minutes. And sure, we know a monster is going to jump out and yell at us, we just don't know when and how, and that is enough tension in the context. A film, however, has quite a bit of time to slowly build that tension, and give us a much better pay off, something The Lazarus Effect has no interest in doing.

The film introduces ideas and plot threads, explores them for a couple minutes, then just drops them and moves on. Possible spoilery things ahead, so if you're really excited about this movie probably stop here. Before they reanimate the dog, it had really bad cataracts. After it comes back, boom, cataracts gone. The characters make a “well, that's weird” statement then never address it again. The dog itself is being intensely strange and creepy, at one point standing on the bed and just staring at a sleeping Zoe, and at another exploding the refrigerator. So, "what happens to the dog," you ask? No idea. I think it was killed off screen, but I'm not sure. The serum causes extreme brain activity in both Zoe and the dog, and maybe that is causing the all the weird stuff. But Zoe says she was in hell for years in the moments when she was gone, so did she bring back something evil with her and maybe that is causing all the weird stuff?

Throughout the film there is a science versus religion question about what happens when we die and all that, which never resolves. Maybe it's the serum, maybe it's the DMT released by the brain at death interacting with the serum, maybe it's demons and hell is real or maybe Zoe is just evil and terrible all on her own, augmented by the serum.

I am not expecting a horror film to settle the science versus religion debate once and for all, but I expect to explore the questions a little further than introducing them and immediately dropping them for strobe light effects and spooky contacts. I envision the filmmakers being asked to answer the question if it was all science or was it religion and demons, and they just answer “Yep! NNNEEOOOOOWWW” and speed away on a scooter.

--Eric Harrelson

In the midst of fallout from Clint Eastwood's incredibly polarizing American Sniper, Sean Mullin's romantic comedy Amira and Sam gives us a completely different take on the returned soldier. While Sniper is grandiose, heavy handed, and kind of messy, Amira and Sam is incredibly personal, effective, and manages to remain light-hearted without being shallow and flimsy. 

Amira and Sam is, at its heart, a love story, and it never tries to be anything but. Sam is an ex-solider who is trying to find his way upon his return from the war. He meets Amira, the niece of an Iraqi translator with whom Sam served and formed a deep friendship. Amira isn't all that fond of American soldiers, but when she runs into some immigration problems Sam offers to let her stay with him. Of course, they don't get along at first, and, of course, she begins to soften on him, and, of course, their friendship begins to develop into something more.

It seems a little easy and a bit trite, but that's just how romance films work. What makes Amira and Sam fun and effective is Martin Starr. Starr plays the lead, Sam, and is fantastic in the role. Subtle, funny, dry, awkward at times, confident at others, Starr really gives the character the weight and depth of a real person. When it comes to romantic movies, that is what really makes or breaks them. Regardless of the framework, motivations and circumstances, all the smart dialogue and pretty faces, none of it will work unless the actors can make you care about the characters. Starr really makes us like Sam, and in turn makes us very invested in Sam's arc. We want Sam to succeed, we want Sam to be happy, and when things are going poorly for him, we really want Sam to overcome those obstacles and come out on top. 

In addition to Starr's excellent performance, another part of what makes the film work is how it uses the soldier returned from war trope. Instead of Sam being this tortured, conflicted, and grizzled veteran that has seen too much and returns to a world that he no longer understands, Sam is just a regular guy that served his country because he thought it was the right thing to do and comes back to a world where doing the right thing really doesn't matter. He struggles not with the horrors of war and his actions overseas but with trying to maintain his ideals in an apathetic and crooked world. Sam is given an opportunity by his cousin (played by Paul Wesley of Vampire Diaries) to help him manage hedge funds, particularly those of his clients who are military veterans. Sam is offered an obscene amount of money, but his cousin's dealings may not be exactly on the up and up. 

Where I feel the film falls a little flat is Amira's character development. I feel as if she is a little too quick to soften on Sam, but I am willing to overlook it because Dina Shihabi really owns the role and gives Amira the emotional weight she needs. In order for us to accept that Sam is truly in love with her, she has to be someone that is truly lovable, and not just a frowny face painted on a board, like Kristen Stewart for example. 

There are a few flaws, but overall Amira and Sam is a superbly acted film, and is a very real and adult love story. Considering that this is writer/director Sean Mullin's first feature length film, Amira and Sam is a great romance. Never too cliché, never heavy or morally preachy, it makes us feel for the characters and gets us invested in their struggle, and we really want them to just be able to be happy together.

—Eric Harrelson

I feel as if I should begin this with a bit of a caveat: I genuinely do enjoy musicals. I love Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Cry Baby, A Nightmare Before Christmas, and The Blues Brothers.

As a narrative form, the musical is a great way to give us an insight into the motivations of a particular character. It provides us an inner monologue without having to contrive a reason for them to orate to another character, or force us into a voice over. The character is simply overwhelmed and breaks into song, giving us all the exposition we need. The musical form creates the context at the outset, and in and of itself answers the question of “Why?” We accept it because it is a musical.

That being said, I felt Into the Woods failed to tell a good story and was mired in its translation from stage to screen. Bogged down rather than enhanced by its narrative form, the film left me cold.

Into the Woods shows us a different story interwoven with traditional fairy tales. Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Bean Stalk and Rapunzel all tie into the new story of a baker and his wife. A witch has cursed the baker's house, declaring that no child shall ever be born within those walls. The witch gives the baker an out, and tells the couple that they can remove the curse if they bring the witch four items: a cape as red as blood, a cow as white as milk, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold by midnight of the blue moon. It's essentially a new spin on old stories.

Unfortunately for the narrative of Into the Woods, this is not something new. In recent years there have been numerous times where the traditional fairy tale has been updated and modernized, told from a different angle, and/or “re-imagined,” (a phrase I particularly loathe.) Between Wicked, Maleficent, Once Upon a Time, and the new Hansel and Gretel, we have been given new angles on the villains of the old tales, a new world where they all co-exist in the same world, and a world where they are turned into action heroes. The new take on the old fairy tale is no longer something interesting and unique, it has become common place. Now I acknowledge that Into the Woods was originally performed in 1986 on Broadway, and at that time it may have been a little more unique. But by this time even if the audience hasn't read Bill Willingham's Fables, they have seen more than enough fairy tale re-treads.

Read more (there's even a wrestling reference) after the jump! 

Instead of Stan Lee putting Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen head on top of a robot body to fight crime, this team-up is just Disney studios using a Marvel-owned property. Although, now that I've written "Disney's cryogenically frozen head on top of a robot body," I desperately wish that was what this movie was about.

Big Hero 6 is the latest from the Disney Animation Studios and marks the first time that a Disney movie features characters from the Marvel universe, although you wouldn't know it unless you are really really into Marvel comics. The characters of Big Hero 6 are a really deep cut. It was inevitable that this would happen eventually, what with Disney acquiring Marvel in 2009, and I for one am glad that they went with characters that I had absolutely no idea were part of the Marvel Universe.

What Disney has done by choosing an obscure property like the team of Big Hero 6 is brilliant: they get to use the Marvel name and dip into how popular comic movies are these days, but they also can do pretty much whatever the hell they want with the characters because nobody knows nor cares who they are. They can also lose all of the baggage that comes with Marvel's convoluted continuity, and absolutely no one will be freaking out about it. So, what we get is a property that uses the basic core ideas of these characters and completely changes and reinvents them, leaving only a vague similarity to what was originally in the comics.

Think about it as if a writer was going to do a Spider-Man film, and the only parameter that he had was “this guy has spider powers.” No radioactive spider, no Uncle Ben, no Mary Jane, none of it. Just give the guy spider powers and see what happens. Which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

Set in the fictional future city of San Fransokyo, the film is the story of boy genius Hiro, who is incredibly gifted in the field of robotics. His brother Tadashi is a student in the very competitive and advanced robotics program at the university and has created a medical companion robot Baymax. Baymax is an inflatable robot shaped kind of like a teddy bear with short little legs and a big belly. The idea behind Tadashi's design was to make Baymax friendly and huggable, as a care provider has no need to be a big stompy robot. A bad guy does bad thing, and Hiro uses his technological genius to turn his friends, as well as Baymax, into superheroes to fight the bad guy. It's a children's movie, so that's about as complex as the plot really needs to be.

The movie does hit a lot of sweet spots. The city is beautifully designed—basically San Francisco if it were in Japan. Baymax is very well designed as well; visually he communicates everything his character is supposed to be. The villain’s design is also right on the money. The movie moves along quite well, getting in all the beats an action film needs. It has some laughs, some drama, some good action scenes, and a fairly well-constructed plot—pretty much what we've come to expect from Disney's animated features.

On the other hand, it does leave a little to be desired. On the design front, the other characters that make up the team are a little muddy and aren't nearly as well-designed as Baymax. When creating a superhero, the costume needs to communicate the hero's power set and personality immediately, and other than Baymax, the other characters don't really have that visual impact. The characters are all fairly one-dimensional and fairly stock in their personalities as well, minus Fred.

The screening I saw was in 3D, and I felt it added nothing to the film whatsoever. Although, that is how I feel about anything in 3D in general. Well, except Friday the 13th Part 3. 

What Big Hero 6 ends up being is just pretty good. It hits all bullet points but fails to give us anything as charming as Disney's other recent standout features, such as Wall-E or Frozen. It just doesn't have that same next-level cleverness or appeal. 

—Eric Harrelson

I liked Juno. I did. I also liked Young Adult. I thought both gave us compelling stories about likable characters in relatable situations. I was hoping to get more of the same from Men, Women and Children. Jason Reitman is a capable director, and I am always interested to see what he does. I'm usually happy with the results.

This film follows a group of high school teenagers and their parents struggling with the minutia of their own lives and how the pervasiveness of various social media affects them. It is clear early on that the attitude towards social media and the accessibility of the Internet, in general, is primarily negative. There is little to no positive interaction between characters that happens online. A running theme through the film is the comparison of humanity's cosmic insignificance and how social networking is so incredibly selfish and egocentric.

The film opens with a shot of the Voyager I craft floating out in space and an explanation of the craft and its mission, showing the picture of earth that Voyager took right as it left the solar system in 1990 entitled Pale Blue Dot. A YouTube clip of Carl Sagan's reflections on the photo also titled Pale Blue Dot is discovered by one of the characters after his mother abruptly leaves him and his father for California and a new life. The emotionally distraught teenager latches onto the video's nihilistic undertone.

On the other side of that, one of the characters is an incredibly self-involved teenage girl who, with the help of her mother, has a “modeling” website dedicated to just pictures of her in marginally provocative poses. The film succeeds in showing us that we should all take a step back from our Facebook,Twitter etc., and stop to realize that we as individuals are not the most important things in the universe. Score one for Nietzsche!

While the message is clear (internet: BAD!), the film tries to show us all of the new problems that the internet has caused, but ends up just showing us new spins on old favorites. Infidelity existed before Ashley Madison.com. Parents were overbearing before keystroke counters, history searches and GPS phone tracking. Teenagers hated their bodies before anorexia encouragement sites. There were asshole dudes before text snubbing. Parents made some questionable decisions in the name of helping their children before modeling websites. I kept thinking it was Fast Times at Ridgemont High but with the Internets!

With only about two likable characters in the movie and meandering plot threads that just kind of bump into one another, this film feels self-indulgent and a little messy. Attempting to split the focus on so many characters can be difficult. Here, it results in a number of unremarkable and underdeveloped stories that don't deliver on their own and, unfortunately, don't come together to form a cohesive narrative.

To be fair, though, the film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Chad Kultgen, and as everyone is well aware, the detail and complexity of a novel is quite difficult to replicate on film. Having not read the book itself I can't possibly pretend to know how the movie and book line up, but I felt it deserved a mention.

But, that is not to say I give Men, Women and Children a pass; it still failed to hold my interest in all but one character's story. It felt bloated and plodding, never giving enough attention to any one character at a time. What we end up with is a film that is like a giant bowl of oatmeal with only half a dozen blueberries. Sure, the blueberries are in there, but there is just far too few of them to make the oatmeal enjoyable.

—Eric Harrelson

The Good Lie follows a small of a group of Sudanese refugees and their eventual relocation to the U.S. The film starts strong, dropping us in a small village in Southern Sudan at the outset of the second Sudanese Civil War. Soldiers massacre the village, killing all but a few children who managed to stay hidden. This begins a 1,000-mile trek southwest to Kenya, where they have been told they may find asylum. Starving, sick and dehydrated, the children narrowly avoid capture and murder numerous times, finally making it to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. The young boys displaced/orphaned by the conflict became know as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”

The film shifts gears at this point, basically turning into Coming to America but without Darth Vader and Arsenio Hall. The kids are grown, and granted asylum in the U.S. We get some typical fish out of water, Borat-style cultural differences played for a few laughs, but this is where the narrative starts to fall apart. In order to appeal to U.S. audiences, we need a white lead, so we get Reese Witherspoon as the tough employment agency counselor. Maybe seeing the suffering of refugees will make her take stock of her own life, and she will form a bond with these strong, noble people. Maybe we've seen this subplot a 100 times before, and maybe we no longer care. There is little conflict moving the story forward after the first act with the hardest part of the refugee's lives behind them. A story about refugees adjusting to life as lower working class citizens in Kansas City, Missouri is less than compelling.

The Good Lie is a fictional story, and suffers for being less interesting than the actors' real life experiences (minus Reese Witherspoon.) Take the actor that played Paul (Emmanuel Jal), for example. At the age of 11 he was recruited by the Sudan People's Liberation Army and brought to secret military camps disguised as schools. When the fighting started, he was saved from the conflict by a British aid worker, Emma McCune, and he attended school in Nairobi. A few months later, McCune is killed in a suspicious accident, and Jal is forced to live in the slums. He finds hip hop and goes on to be a successful performer, activist, speaker and actor. In 2008, a documentary was released about his life entitled War Child.

Ger Duany, the actor playing Jeremiah, was also conscripted into service during the war. He managed to flee on his own to Kenya, traveling over 1,000 miles on foot. He was granted refuge in the U.S. at the age of 16. He began playing basketball and excelled at the sport enough to get a college scholarship. An injury forced him to take a year off, during which he was cast in I Heart Huckabees. This launched a modeling and acting career, as well as a friendship with David O. Russell, the director of Huckabees, and Mark Wahlberg.

Not only are the lives of the actors more interesting than the film, the story of how the film eventually got made is one of rejection, luck, circumstance and perseverance. After being green-lit, the project lingered in Hollywood limbo. The original writer, Margret Nagel, was so intent on making the film she optioned the script back. While searching for other work, Nagel had submitted the script as a writing sample to another studio. Turns out that studio was run by Molly Smith, whose family had taken in one of the Lost Boys of Sudan in 2001, so she had a personal connection with the material and agreed to finance the project.

Clearly the writers and eventual producers of The Good Lie were very passionate about the film and the children who had to endure the hardships caused by the war. So much so that they set up a charity to help those children. The Good Lie Fund will help children living in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.

The Good Lie is surrounded by remarkable and compelling stories: the real conflict it depicts, the actors who suffered through that hardship and the producers who are so dedicated to helping victims of that terrible violence they founded a charity to do just that. It's just unfortunate that the film itself isn't as interesting as the people who made it.

—Eric Harrelson