2013 Top 10 List and Awards

1. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
2. Her (Spike Jonze)
3. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
4. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
5. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
6. Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener)
7. American Hustle (David O. Russell)
8. The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt)
9. Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)
10. This is the End (Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg)

Honorable Mention: Short Term 12, Captain Phillips, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Spring Breakers, Inside Llewyn Davis

Director

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Spike Jonze, Her
Richard Linklater, Before Midnight
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
*Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

Lead Actor

*Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips
Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station
Joaquin Phoenix, Her

Lead Actress

Julia Louis Dreyfus, Enough Said
Adele Exarchopolous, Blue is the Warmest Colour
*Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
Brie Larson, Short Term 12
Shailene Woodley, The Spectacular Now

Supporting Actor

*Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Matthew McConaughey, Mud

Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Her
Scarlett Johansson, Her
*Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyongo, 12 Years a Slave
Lea Seydoux, Blue is the Warmest Colour

Original Screenplay

American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Enough Said
Frances Ha
*Her

Adapted Screenplay

12 Years a Slave
Before Midnight
The Spectacular Now
This is the End
*The Wolf of Wall Street

10 Memorable Roger Ebert Reviews

It's been a while since I've posted here, but in honor of Roger Ebert's death, I decided to gather some of my favorite reviews of his. Ebert wrote so many great reviews that coming up with a definitive top 10 is impossible, but here's a list of the ones that have stood with me for a long time. I've included a link to the full review, followed by a quoted section of the review.

Note: I decided to focus on his positive reviews, but he wrote some delicious negative reviews. There's already a good guide to those on his site here: Ebert's Most Hated

Lucas

"To describe this situation is to make "Lucas" sound like just one more film about teenage romance. But it would be tragic if this film would get lost in the shuffle of "teenage movies." This is a movie that is as pure and true to the adolescent experience as Truffaut's "The 400 Blows." It is true because it assumes all of its characters are intelligent, and do not want to hurt one another, and will refuse to go along with the stupid, painful conformity of high school."

Say Anything

"The movie treats Diane's two relationships with equal seriousness. This is not one of those movies where the father is a dim-witted, middle-age buffoon with no insights into real life, and it is also not one of those movies where the young man is obviously the hero. Everyone in this film is complicated, and has problems, and is willing to work at life to try to make it better.

The romance between Diane and Lloyd is intelligent and filled with that special curiosity that happens when two young people find each other not only attractive but interesting - when they sense they might actually be able to learn something useful from the other person."

Running on Empty

"The film is a painful, enormously moving drama in which a choice must be made between sticking together or breaking up and maybe fulfilling a long-delayed potential. The parents never fulfilled whatever potential they had, because of their life underground. Now are they justified in asking their son to abandon his own future? And how will they do that? Push him out of the car, and drive away, and trust that he will find a home, just as the dog did? Lumet is one of the best directors at work today, and his skill here is in the way he takes a melodramatic plot and makes it real by making it specific."

Malcolm X

"Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" is one of the great screen biographies, celebrating the whole sweep of an American life that began in sorrow and bottomed out on the streets and in prison before its hero reinvented himself. Watching the film, I understood more clearly how we do have the power to change our own lives, how fate doesn't deal all of the cards. The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else."

Wendy and Lucy

"I know so much about Wendy, although this movie tells me so little. I know almost nothing about where she came from, what her life was like, how realistic she is about the world, where her ambition lies. But I know, or feel, everything about Wendy at this moment: stranded in an Oregon town, broke, her dog lost, her car a write-off, hungry, friendless, quiet, filled with desperate resolve."

Moonlight Mile

"'Moonlight Mile' gives itself the freedom to feel contradictory things. It is sentimental but feels free to offend, is analytical and then surrenders to the illogic of its characters, is about grief and yet permits laughter. Everyone who has grieved for a loved one will recognize the moment, some days after the death, when an irreverent remark will release the surprise of laughter. Sometimes we laugh, that we may not cry. Not many movies know that truth. "Moonlight Mile" is based on it."

Ruby in Paradise

"When successful people tell their stories, you never hear much enthusiasm in their voices as they describe their most recent triumph. But their voices glow when they describe their first successes: Their first job, or the first time their talent was recognized, or the first time they realized what they were good at doing. That first chapter is the hard one to write. Then the rest of the book takes care of itself. "Ruby in Paradise" is a breathtaking movie about a young woman who opens the book of her life to a fresh page, and begins to write."

Searching for Bobby Fischer

"By the end of "Searching for Bobby Fischer" we have learned something about tournament chess, and a great deal about human nature. The film's implications are many. They center around our responsibility, if any, to our gifts. If we can operate at the genius level in a given field, does that mean we must - even if the cost is the sort of endless purgatory a Bobby Fischer has inhabited? It's an interesting question, and this movie doesn't avoid it.

At the end, it all comes down to that choice faced by the young player that A. S. Byatt writes about: the choice between truth and beauty. What makes us men is that we can think logically. What makes us human is that we sometimes choose not to."

The Sure Thing

The love story is one of Hollywood's missing genres. The movie industry seems better at teenage movies like "Porky's," with its sleazy shower scenes, than with screenplays that involve any sort of thought about the love lives of its characters. That's why "The Sure Thing" is a small miracle. Although the hero of this movie is promised by his buddy that he'll be fixed up with a "guaranteed sure thing," the film is not about the sure thing but about how this kid falls genuinely and touchingly into love.

Flirting

"So often we settle for noise and movement from the movie screen, for stupid people indulging unworthy fantasies. Only rare movies like "Flirting" remind us that the movies are capable of providing us with the touch of other lives, that when all the conditions are right we can grow a little and learn a little, just like the people on the screen. This movie is joyous, wise and life-affirming, and certainly one of the year's best films."

2012 Top 10 List and Awards

1. Compliance
2. Django Unchained
3. Life of Pi
4. Beasts of the Southern Wild
5. Moonrise Kingdom
6. Lincoln
7. The Silver Linings Playbook
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
9. Looper
10. The Avengers

Honorable Mention: Safety Not Guaranteed, Zero Dark Thirty, Flight, The Cabin in the Woods, The Hobbit

Director

*Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Craig Zobel, Compliance

Actor

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Denzel Washington, Flight
Logan Lerman, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
*Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln
Jared Gilman, Moonrise Kingdom

Actress

*Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Greta Gerwig, Damsels in Distress
Michelle Williams, Take This Waltz

Supporting Actor

*Leonardo Dicaprio, Django Unchained
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Supporting Actress

Kelly Reilly, Flight
Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Emily Blunt, Looper
*Ann Dowd, Compliance

Adapted Screenplay

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Life of Pi
Lincoln
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Silver Linings Playbook

Original Screenplay

Cabin in the Woods
Compliance
Django Unchained
Looper
Moonrise Kingdom

Dark Shadows (Tim Burton) **

Dark Shadows is adapted from a daytime gothic television drama that ran from 1966-1971 and was revived on primetime in 1991. The show had a cult following and the the film is the result of years of attempts to reboot the series, including a 2004 TV pilot that did not get picked up. I have not seen either version of the series and thus cannot comment on the film's faithfulness to the source material, though I do know Burton's take has been controversial for some fans. The real problem isn't how much it does or does not depart from the original series, but that director Tim Burton utterly fails at finding the proper tone for this story. He alternates between campy horror and gothic romance, but is successful at neither.

In the late 1700's, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is a wealthy owner of Collinswood Manor in Collinsport, Maine. His playboy ways get him into trouble when he rejects Angelique Bouchard, a witch. She forces the love of his life to kill herself and turns him into a vampire. Then she rallies a town mob to capture him and have him buried underground. Two centuries later, construction workers find his tomb and inadvertently free him. Barnabas returns to his old manor and finds his family has fallen on hard times. The current Collins family consists of Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), her moody teenage daughter Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), and live in psychiatrist Julia (Helena Bonham Carter). Elizabeth's sketchy brother Roger (Johnny Lee Miller), and his troubled son David (Gully McGrath). He sets about to restore the honor of his family name, but finds life in the 1970's to be very confusing.

The opening scenes of the movie set in the 1700's are effectively stylish and spooky. Burton is obviously at home with creating a dark, gothic atmosphere. If the film has stayed true to this style throughout it may have worked. The problem comes when the film shifts forward to the 1970s and it attempts to blend in some wacky anachronistic humor. Unfortunately, the jokes are stale and unfunny (ex. Barnabas thinks a car is a demon, he thinks people are trapped inside the TV set.) Also problematic is a surprisingly lazy performance from Depp. He plays Barnabas as a clean shaven, vampire version of Jack Sparrow. It's a surprisingly uninspired performance from someone who is usually one of the more offbeat actors of his generation.

This also causes problems with the film's central romance. Barnabas immediately falls for Victoria (Bella Heathcoate), a young woman hired to take care of troubled young David and happens to bear striking similarities to Barnabas' love from the 1700's. Since Depp isn't really taking the role seriously, it's hard to care if he ends up with her. Also, Burton makes the puzzling decision to excise Victoria from much of the middle portion of the film, so there's no consistent build up to this pairing. Victoria is also a completely flat, one-dimensional character, the only reason Barnabas falls for her seems to be her looks as there is no chemistry at all. Many of the other actors in this film suffer the same problem, even the usually dynamic Helena Bonham Carter who is stuck with a character that goes nowhere.

The one performer who really stands out is Eva Green as the vengeful Angelique. Green embraces the villainous role and runs circles around everyone in the film. In fact, she has far more chemistry with Depp than Heathcoate does and I actually found myself rooting for her despite her obviously evil ways. If Burton has fully embraced the campy concept, then everyone could've taken Green's lead and we would've had a very fun film here. If he embraced the gothic suspense like in the early scenes, then it could've been a typically dark and spooky Burton classic. Since the film never figures out what it wants to do, we have a schizophrenic affair that never completely comes together aside from the electric scenes involving Eva Green.

Marvel's The Avengers (Joss Whedon) ****

One of the drawbacks with superhero films is the tendency to stuff them with too many heroes or villains, forcing us to deal with an endless amount of tedious origin stories. The 90s Batman films and most recent Spider-man film are perfect examples of this problem. Because of this, taking on a project like The Avengers seems like something that had no possibility of working on the big screen. However, Marvel studios planned ahead by giving us individual films for the four big Avenger superheroes (Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and two Iron Man films), thus getting their origin stories out of the way. This ambitious effort paid off in spades as writer-director Joss Whedon was allowed to plunge right into the story, with only brief scenes needed to help us catch up to what each of the characters have been doing since the end of their respective films.

Picking Whedon himself was an inspired choice. While he does have feature film screenwriting experience (Toy Story, Speed), most of his success has come on television in beloved cult classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. He's never handled something even close to this scale before. However, he is a noted comic book fan and has written several comics, including an award winning run on Astonishing X-Men. He proved to be the perfect choice, someone who is able to deliver the action goods while retaining his trademark witty banter and ability to ground stories with just the right amount emotional catharsis. The result is big budget blockbuster entertainment of the highest order.

The Avengers starts off with Thor villain Loki causing chaos at a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility and stealing a device known as the Tesseract, with which he hopes to create a portal for aliens to come through and conquer the Earth. S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) decides it's time put the Avengers initiative in action: a plan to assemble a group of superheroes to form a team that can counteract major threats. The challenge is getting this team to work together as their wildly differing personalities cause great conflicts during the mission.

It's a pretty basic plot that simply gives a good excuse for all four superheros to be teamed up. Whedon isn't out to reinvent the comic book genre story-wise. What he is out to do is explore who these people are and how they'd potentially work as a team when abruptly thrown together. This is where The Avengers really shines. After a succession of brief, but very entertaining segments showing what each of our heroes are currently doing, we witness a fascinating clash of personalities. The old-fashioned Captain America (Chris Evans) vs. wisecracking Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) vs. noble warrior Thor (Liam Hemsworth). We also get to know more about non-superheros Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johanssen), who actually ends up with the most compelling emotional arc.

Whedon's signature witty dialogue is on full display during these scenes. Robert Downey Jr. is so natural at spouting Whedon's words that it feels like such a waste that this is the first time they've worked together. Stark is a perfect Whedon hero so it's natural that he gets most of the good lines, but Whedon does manage to spread the wealth around with Thor's deadpan ("He's adopted") and prideful Captain America's glee at understanding an outdated reference. I also loved a poignantly written exchange during a scene in Germany where an old German man, clearly scarred by the past, refuses to kneel before Loki ("There are always men like you.") There's also nice romantic banter between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) that has a classic movie feel to it and a quirky scene involving a security guard played by Harry Dean Stanton

The film especially shines with how it handles the Hulk as several of the best moments in the film involve that troubled character. I actually liked both the 2003 Ang Lee film with Eric Bana and the 2008 reboot with Edward Norton, but this is the first time the character has successfully come across as a crowd-pleasing hero. There were many people unhappy with Ruffalo taking over the Bruce Banner role from Norton, but he easily silenced those concerns with the best portrayal of Banner yet. He has a more laid back, awkward vibe that suits the character well. I enjoyed both the new take on Hulk and Ruffalo as Banner so much that I'd love to see a new individual Hulk film. He's the only one of the four superheroes that doesn't have a sequel planned yet.

Whedon also proves to be no slouch as an action filmmaker. He's never handled anything on this scale before, although his expertise at the scenes of Black Widow kicking butt are no surprise from the Buffy creator. Whedon immediately proves himself capable of designing exciting action sequences on a grand scale without having to resort to the lazy Michael Bay method of rapid cutting. In fact there is a fascinating shot during the final epic battle sequence in New York where Whedon pans from hero to hero without cutting. It's a very long action sequence and at every single point it's easy to tell what's going on and what everyone is trying to do. Most importantly, he's able to balance things very well and make sure that every one of the main characters (including non-super-powered Black Widow and Hawkeye) get a winning heroic moment.

Perhaps the best accomplishment of the Avengers is refuting the argument in defense of big budget crapfests that critics are just expecting too much. The Avengers doesn't have lofty ambitions like your regular award bait film. Hell, it doesn't even aim to transcend the genre like Nolan's The Dark Knight. However, it never once resorts to laziness or treats the audience like they're morons. It's just an incredibly entertaining film featuring some iconic characters doing very exciting things. Whedon shows you can accomplish that without requiring the audience to shut their brains off.

Pre-Summer Catch Up

It's been a couple months since I've written a review, so I decided to cobble together some capsule reviews of films I saw during that period:

The Secret World of Arrietty (Hiromosa Yonebayhashi) ***1/2

Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli has produced some fascinating animated tales including Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and two standout features Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. However the last two Miyazaki outings were incredibly disappointing. I found Howl's Moving Castle to be tedious and Ponyo to be overly cute. The Secret World of Arrietty finds the studio back to form in Hiromasa Yonebayashi's directing debut. The story about tiny people called Borrowers who fend for survival amongst normal sized humans captures the perfect balance between cutesiness and despair. It also contains a winning main character and some excellent voice work (especially from Amy Poehler). I look forward to more work from Yonebayashi.

Rampart (Oren Moverman) **

Woody Harrelson stars as corrupt LAPD cop Dave Brown, whose aggressive tactics start to catch up to him in the wake of the citywide Rampart scandal. Harrelson is well cast here and gives a memorable performance as a thoroughly detestable human being, but beyond that there is very little to admire here. Moverman doesn't seem to have anything interesting to say beyond the central character study and instead invests every scene with an overabundance of style that only serves to distract from, rather than enhance Harrelson's central performance. Harreslon's visit to a nightclub is one of my least favorite film sequences of the year.

Project X (Nima Nourizadeh) *1/2

A complete mess of a film that either doesn't know what it wants to be or just miserably fails at it. It follows a group of teenagers planning a huge birthday party for their friend, hoping that it will be such a big event that it increases their popularity. The film is shot in the noxious found footage format, which already completely destroyed a film with much better material this year (Chronicle) and it fares no better here. The format is intended to make the viewer feel like they are at the party, but all it actually does is trap us with the incredibly unlikeable main characters, who are supposed to be underdogs but generate no sympathy whatsoever. At this point, I think I might hate the found footage format even more than 3D.

John Carter (Andrew Stanton) ***

This big budget spectacle adapted from a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs is now known as a notorious bomb for Disney ($250 mill budget, $70 mill domestic gross), but it doesn't deserve such a negative reputation. On it's merits, the film is a fun sci-fi/action yarn with an appealing lead performance from Friday Night Lights vet Taylor Kitsch. Director Andrew Stanton isn't nearly as successful in making the transition from Pixar to live action as his fellow Pixar cohort Brad Bird was with the wonderful Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, but he does a good enough job establishing a strong central hero and capably creating exciting action set pieces.

Friends With Kids (Jennifer Westfeldt) ***1/2

11 years earlier, Jennifer Westfeldt completely blew me away with Kissing Jessica Stein, a romantic comedy about a neurotic woman who pursues a lesbian relationship. It wonderfully captured that Woody Allen feel that Allen himself hadn't captured in a long time and contains a controversial ending that I fervently defend to this day. She's drifted from project to project since then with varying degrees of success, but this is the closest she's come to replicating that wonderful film. Friends With Kids is about a couple of close friends (Westfeldt and Adam Scott) who watch as their friends' relationships deteriorate due to the combined pressures of marriage and parenthood. They decide to skip the pressures of a normal couple and raise a child as friends. At first glance, the premise sounds like high concept Hollywood nonsense, but the mature way Westfeldt handles the material shows she's actually interested in exploring the subject for more than a simple device. She's aided by a terrific ensemble cast (Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Chris O'Dowd, and Maya Rudolph all reunite from Bridesmaids) and her own heartfelt central performance. Hell, she even manages to coax a decent performance out of Megan Fox.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Lasse Hallstrom) **1/2

Here we have a movie with about 10 billion problems and yet it almost works solely due to one person: Emily Blunt. And it's not necessarily her performance (it's fine), but how she looks. Rarely has an actress looked as luminous as Blunt does here. Director Lasse Hallstrom and his Cinematographer Terry Stacey are clearly in love with her and seemingly chose their entire visual strategy on filming her in the best light possible. The story itself, about an incredibly wealthy Sheik who wants to introduce salmon fishing in his home country is too slight and tonally inconsistent (see: Kristin Scott Thomas' funny, but out of place press secretary who seems to have wandered in from In the Loop). However, the central romance between Blunt and Ewan McGregor is appealing enough to make this a pleasant, if not memorable film.

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) ***1/2

I don't often read novels before the film adaptation comes out and I generally like a movie much less if I do, but this is an exception in both cases. It's a rare case where Hollywood completely nails the casting as every single choice worked out incredibly well, especially Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. The Hunger Games is a difficult concept to translate to film as it had to somehow walk the tightrope between decrying violence without also making it seem exciting, something that is much easier to do on page than on screen. However, director Gary Ross does an excellent job navigating this concept. There are thrilling moments, but they are properly placed in the context of will Katniss survive. The scenes where she battles others are shot in a shaky cam format where it is a bit disorienting and often difficult to tell what is going on (the final fight scene above the cornucopia being a great example). This nicely undercuts the "excitement" of such scenes and makes them appropriately uncomfortable to watch. Katniss doesn't win the Hunger Games. She survives them. Gary Ross understands that concept and does a great job of translating it to the film.

The Five Year Engagement (Nicholas Stoller) ***

Director Nicholas Stoller and Writer-star Jason Segel reunite from the wonderful lowbrow romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall and deliver a solid, if somewhat disappointing followup. The film follows a a happy couple who get engaged, but find many complications that keep pushing back their wedding. Segel and co-star Emily Blunt have a very nice chemistry together, helping the romantic part work very well. However, the film lacks dynamic supporting characters (such as Russell Brand's Aldous Snow), which were a hallmark of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and other similar films produced by Judd Apatow. There is a solid supporting cast including Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Rhyhs Ifans, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, and many others but none of them are given strong material to work with. Thus the film isn't quite as funny as those other films, but there are enough amusing moments and an appealing central momence to make this a satisfying venture.

The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard) ***1/2

There's nothing new about a horror film that takes a knowing, satirical look at the genre. Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven got us started in 1996 with Scream. Ever since then, there have been plenty of postmodern horror films that have analyzed the genre in their own way. However, none have managed to find the right combination of incisive satire and genuine thrills as Drew Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon have done in The Cabin in the Woods. It's hard to write much more than that without giving too much away, because this is a film filled with wonderful surprises. I will say the central conceit is very clever with some funny and disturbing moments and the finale is brilliantly inventive fun.

Wanderlust (David Wain) ***

David Wain's Wanderlust is a film that takes a silly premise seemingly best suited for a TV sitcom and somehow makes it work. The film's success can be attributed to a splendid ensemble cast, strong use of improvisational humor, and an understanding of how to infuse characters with just enough depth so they don't become cartoons. It is one of the nice, early surprises of 2011.

George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) are married city dwellers who have hit a rough patch. His boring office job disappears when the company is shut down due to legal violations and her documentary about penguins with testicular cancer is met with the expected horrified reactions from TV executives. After a misadventure with George's obnoxious brother, they decide to try something new and live at a commune (or "intentional community" as the residents call it). The adjustment affects the couple differently and tests their relationship.

The film opens very strong with some solid scenes setting up the the situation for the main characters. There's a hilarious road trip montage  where they alternate fighting and singing. Small supporting characters like a real estate agent (Linda Lavin) and HBO executives are given very funny personalities and their interactions with George and Linda  are hilarious. George's brother (Ken Marino) serves an amusingly obnoxious contrast the the hippies at the commune.

Surprisingly, it's the scenes at the commune where the film has consistency issues. Wain sometimes has issues finding the right balance between broad humor and realism. There's no doubt some very funny material, including a mirror monologue by Paul Rudd that is one of the funniest things the actor has ever done. However, some of the situations are a bit over the top and the improvisational style leads to some scenes running longer than they should. It's still very funny material, just a bit more hit and miss than in the opening act.

The biggest problem in the film is a character named Seth (Justin Theroux). He has some hilarious lines about his concept of modern technology ("You know you can really get trapped in that web of beepers and Zenith televisions and Walkmens..."), but the problem comes when the movie uses him as a simple plot device to threaten George and Linda's relationship. The differences in how they adjusted to the commune lifestyle was enough of an obstacle for their marriage, so there was no need to create some cliched love triangle. This doesn't even get into the actions taken by Seth in the 3rd act, which I did not buy for one second.

Despite my complaints, Wanderlust remains funny enough to recommend. There are some very funny performances from the ensemble cast, including an underutilized Alan Alda as an old school hippie that founded the commune and Joe Lo Truglio as a nudist trying to write a political thriller with a shocking twist. Paul Rudd remains an asset to any movie he appears in and Jennifer Aniston reminds us once again that despite her penchant for picking terrible projects, she remains a very capable comic actress.