I say to you, Will, the same thing I recently said to Seth Rogen about his recent decision to appear in the (so I’ve heard) execrable Observe and Report: you’re a naturally likable guy. That’s why you’re one of the biggest movie stars in the world — because people like you. You’re a good-looking man, you’re obviously smart as hell, you’re filled almost to overflowing with charisma. So why in the world would you want to appear in a movie in which you’re so not likable — especially in a disaster like Hancock? I’d understand if this movie were a matter of your trying to stretch yourself as an actor; that desire would be and is commendable. You’ve made plenty of movies for exactly that reason, and you’ve earned yourself two Oscar nominations so far for it.

But this? This isn’t stretching, Will; Hancock represents exactly the sort of SFX-laden blockbuster which has been your bread and butter for the last decade. Were you so desperate to play a superhero — any superhero — that you thought this was a good choice? It wasn’t, Will. Hancock’s big draws are A) you (wasted, since your charisma and intelligence were so damped down), B) Charlize Theron (almost entirely wasted) and C) big special effects sequences. Those the movie has in excess, but they’re not even close to well-done enough or compelling enough to make up for its almost complete lack of humanity.

There’s some massive worldbuilding fail going on in Hancock: the entire story is rooted in ideas which clearly weren’t thought through very well. The world of Hancock is one in which Smith’s John Hancock is, in theory, the only super-powered person on the planet, yet there’s no real discussion of the implications of that reality either for him or for the world. We know that Hancock occasionally begrudgingly helps stop some crimes, destroys lots of property, and the people of Los Angeles hate him. But why did this happen, what does any of it mean? What does it mean to have one super-powered person in an ordinary world? Yes, we get a nod to “it’s lonely to be Hancock,” but there’s no serious effort put into what it really means to be this man. You may argue that director Peter Berg doesn’t want to get into those discussions, and you’d probably be right; but avoiding the questions made the movie feel much more lightweight to me — and again, that might well have been Berg’s intent, to produce light, brainpower-lite summer entertainment.

I know that I’m getting dangerously close to violating my own rules here. I’m putting forth what I think the movie should have been trying to do and not simply accepting what the movie gave me. But dammit, this is a Will Smith superhero movie — he should’ve known better, should’ve done better.

See, Hancock feels like a superhero movie created by people who don’t know, like or understand superheroes…and I know that in Smith’s case, that’s absolutely not true. He’s one of the most famous comic book fans in the world, and surely should have been capable of making a better superhero movie than this. Hancock features exactly two likable characters (neither of whom sports any superpowers), a metric crap-ton of property damage, and very little to no logic or sense. Things happen without consequence, or with inconsistent consequence: for example, Hancock’s disregard for property or, from the looks of it, human life drive the first half of the movie’s plot and what tiny bit of characterization Smith and Berg attempt, but a later massive CGI rampage through downtown L.A. causes not so much as a ripple in the movie’s world. Again, there’s that unshakable feeling of “not thought through very well.”

The one bright spot to me — and sadly not even a bright spot throughout — was, entirely unsurprisingly, Jason Bateman. His character, while entirely unbelievable as a hotshot public relations exec, also provided most of the comedy and likability in the first two thirds of the movie. After the movie’s Big Shocking Twist, however, Bateman seemed to have no idea what to do with his character — and it was at that point that his reactions and feelings should have been most important to the story. I place the blame there on director Berg, because Batemen didn’t even try; had he tried to act like a human being and done so unconvincingly, I might have blamed Bateman, but when there’s no effort whatsoever, that seems more like the fault of the director.

I’m going to give you a Mulligan on this one, Will. I think you’ve got a quality superhero movie in you, but Hancock certainly wasn’t it. Of course, the $227 million domestic this movie took in means your next superhero flick will probably be Hancock 2: Hancockier, so I have a sad feeling that quality superhero movie inside won’t ever see the light of day.

I’ll admit that I had doubts when I heard that Affleck had cast his little brother Casey Affleck as put-upon P.I. Patrick Kenzie — I’ve long been a fan of Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie-Gennaro mystery novels and, like you do, had my own vision of what the characters looked like, a vision what I knew of Affleck the Younger just didn’t fit. I’m sure I’m not the only person who assumed the casting was pure nepotism. And perhaps it was — but even if so, it doesn’t matter, since Casey Affleck’s performance fits the character as if Lehane had written Patrick Kenzie with Affleck in mind from the start. Kenzie and partner (in life and in business) Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan, whose character is sadly less involved here than in the books) are hired to find a missing four-year-old girl; of course, the case becomes far, far more convoluted than expected.

Affleck the Elder also draws stellar performances from his supporting cast, including Broadway vet Amy Ryan (who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) as the perhaps-not-quite-as-anguished-as-she-should-be mother and the always-reliable Ed Harris as a cop reluctantly working the case with Kenzie and Morgan Freeman as the head of the Boston Police Department’s missing child division.

Gone Baby Gone is a mystery, technically, but almost not quite; who was responsible for the crime committed — or even which crime was committed — proves less important than what the events say about the people involved, both the victims and the investigators. The plot has all the mechanics of a whodunit, all the reverses and reveals, but those concerns are secondary.

Never, never have I so badly wished for a character not to do something which his nature insisted he must. I’m not one given to talking to characters in the movies and TV shows I watch, but I wanted to grab Patrick Kenzie and slap some sense into him: “You’re not a parent, you don’t — perhaps you can’t — understand. This situation is out of your depth. All of your moral absolutes are whispers in the wind when the well-being of a child is involved.” But I think Kenzie knows he’s stuck in a murky area ethically and his rigid divisions between Right and Wrong provide his only signposts toward right action; the movie’s heartbreaking final scene shows him that those signposts might not have been guiding him correctly after all.

• The Breakfast Club (1985)
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
• National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
• Mr. Mom (1983)

…and if I were to extend this list with other movies from the Eighties which I really enjoyed but couldn’t necessarily count as “among my favorites,” you’d see:

• Sixteen Candles (1984)
• Weird Science (1985) (Yes, really.)
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

That’s a pretty impressive list, especially for covering only a six-year span. Every one of those movies was written (and some were directed) by John Hughes, who passed away yesterday.

Hughes didn’t look down on nerds, unlike so many of his contemporaries. In fact, Hughes celebrated them (mainly through his nerdly avatar, Anthony Michael Hall) and showed us — or, rather, showed all of you who weren’t nerds in the 1980s — that they were real people, too, and their stories deserved to be shared just as much as the pretty people’s do. Even iconic “cool kid” Ferris Bueller was really a nerd at heart: he might have gotten a computer instead of a car for his birthday, but he used that computer to hack into the school’s computer and change his number of absences, a very nerdy thing to do.

Of all of Hughes’ movies, The Breakfast Club most particularly spoke to me (and many others like me, I’m sure), in no small part because I was basically the same age as its characters when I first saw it. That movie was the first time I can recall that I was presented the idea that we are all freaks in some way, we are all of us different, no matter how “normal” we may look on the outside. I remember a couple of long walks from my house with my dad to get milkshakes at McDonald’s, and we’d talk about that movie and the characters and what it meant and how it related to me and my friends.

So thank you, John Hughes, for creating so many characters I could relate to when I was a teenager, and for creating so many movies I enjoyed so much. You can be sure my kids will be watching your teen-oriented movies when they’re teenagers themselves — which will be thirty years after those movies came out — and that’s a fantastic legacy for you to have. (Of course, my kids adore Beethoven, which you also wrote, so they’re already in love with your work.) Rest well.

Yet for all of the threat which lies barely underneath the surface of the film, Half-Blood Prince certainly feels much lighter in places than Order of the Phoenix ever did. While the newer film certainly has some of the scariest moments in the series yet, it’s balanced nicely by a frivolity the previous film lacked. That lightness, of course, comes largely thanks to the hormones bubbling over in most of the now firmly teenaged characters. With all of the big important goings-on happening around them — and knowing what’s coming up for them in the final two installments — it was a good thing for director David Yates to let the kids have some fun with the romance. Ron (Rupert Grint) in particular gets to provide some much-needed comic relief, a feat at which Grint has become quite adept over the last few years.

Personally, I enjoyed seeing Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) — one of my favorite characters from the series — with a much bigger part in this film, more on par with the importance her character took on in the books; she seemed almost to be on an equal footing with Ron and Hermione this time out. Ginny seems worthy of Harry (though she and Radcliffe don’t exactly set the screen ablaze with their chemistry): Ginny’s someone who’s now proven repeatedly that she’s not afraid to risk her life to protect her family and friends. I’ll also admit that it certainly doesn’t hurt that Wright has turned into an absolutely stunning young woman.

The grown-ups in Half-Blood Prince don’t let the kids have all of the fun, of course. Alan Rickman has possibly his biggest part as Professor Severus Snape to date, and he makes the most of the opportunity, reveling in his character’s moral ambiguity (though perhaps not quite as much as I’d like; that’s a topic for another time). Series newcomer Jim Broadbent provides an astonishing performance as new Potions professor Horace Slughorn; I’ve seen a couple of critics indicate Broadbent could possibly be up for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work…if it weren’t in a Harry Potter film. I’ve finally started to warm up to Michael Gambon’s version of Dumbledore (or maybe I’ve simply gotten used to it), though he’s never exuded benevolent wisdom the way the late Richard Harris did, and that’s the one trait I most strongly identify with the character. Still, once I’m able to put my personal prejudices aside, I can admit that Gambon does a fine job in his most difficult outing with the character yet.

I can’t imagine someone seeing this movie without either having seen the previous five in the series or having read the books: there’s zero effort made to introduce viewers to any of the characters or situations. Characters are brought on-screen without any explanation of who they are or their relationships to anyone else; locations are shown without naming them; magical objects are used without explaining what they do; situations are referenced without context. For those viewers already well-immersed in the Potterverse, the shorthand works well, but Yates and returning screenwriter Steve Kloves had to sacrifice new-viewer friendliness in order to get even as much of the novel as they did in here; had they tried to hand-hold the uninitiated, the movie would have been six hours long.

Yates has set the series up for what I’m hoping/expecting will be a fantastic conclusion with the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. While I might not agree with all of the changes he and Kloves have made to the source material — and really, what Potter fan does? — I believe they’ve changed what they have in order to ensure those last two movies will end the story in an exciting and memorable fashion. I can’t wait.

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The Nines contains three stories which more or less add up to one larger meta-story. Each episode features the same three actors in roles which roughly correspond consistently: Reynolds is the focus; Melissa McCarthy is someone important to him in some way; and Hope Davis tries to keep McCarthy’s character away from him. Each story includes numerous callbacks (or call-forwards) to the others. To say more than that starts to eat into the fun of the movie, that piecing together of little bits of information and visual clues.

Reynolds in particular makes the most of his multiple roles. It’s easy to think of him as something of a one-note actor because most of the time he suffers from Movie Star Syndrome: he’s handsome enough and charismatic enough and naturally funny enough to carry a role by essentially playing himself (or so it seems; it’s not like I’ve ever met the man). But in The Nines, he shows that when given a part which requires it, he actually can act. Two of his roles here are well within his regular wheelhouse, but in the second segment, he plays a thinly-veiled version of writer-director August: his turn as a reserved, driven gay man runs refreshingly against the normal Ryan Reynolds type, and it give me hope that he’ll find more roles in the future which can bring this level of work out of him.

(On a side note, I’d like to say that I was very happy to see Gilmore Girls‘ Melissa McCarthy given such a large part in a movie. Her performance here was mostly nothing exceptional, one scene of barely-contained rage withstanding, but it’s always nice to see an actress who so flouts conventional Hollywood wisdom about body image get to do her thing in a major role and remind people that there’s more than one way to define beauty. Of course, this movie wasn’t especially Hollywood in the first place…)

The Nines kept me intrigued through its first two thirds, but the conclusion gave me a serious case of whatthefuckitis. I can’t say that the ending didn’t play fair or set itself up properly, because it did, but I kept waiting for some indication that there was another layer to be peeled back to give me the real ending. Even though everything we’d seen in the previous ninety minutes had indeed been building toward this particular conclusion — in retrospect, anyway — the final nine minutes of The Nines seemed very much like a left-field copout. I’d rather have had a much more open, vague ending than having something decisive but which felt so awkward. Watch this movie to enjoy Reynolds’ performance, but don’t go in expecting to have everything wrapped up satisfactorily.

(Incidientally, I’m curious to see the seeming shift in her on-screen persona in the more recent The Proposal — she’s clearly playing against type as the less vulnerable of the leads and letting the also-affable Ryan Reynolds take on the more likable role. The shift didn’t seem to affect the movie’s box office any, but I’m curious to see if I’ll like her in the position of power.)

Lonely Chicago transit system employee Lucy Moderatz (Bullock) spends her days in a tiny booth taking an endless supply of train tokens from commuters; she spends her night in her apartment alone with her cat, eating frozen dinners. Lucy has convinced herself she’s fallen in love with Peter, a handsome, well-dressed man (Peter Gallagher) who comes through her station every morning, though of course she’s never spoken to him. On Christmas Day, she witnesses him get mugged and knocked onto the train tracks, then manages to pull him off the tracks in time to save his life. At the hospital, in the sort of misunderstanding on which romantic comedies are designed, his family mistakes her for a fiancée they’d never heard about. Peter’s in a coma and can’t clear up the issue, and Lucy’s unsure how to do so and unsure she wants to…until she meets Peter’s brother Jack (Bill Pullman).

Bullock’s Lucy is the perfect sort of heroine for a movie like While You Were Sleeping: she’s endearing and harmless, letting herself sink into the moral morass of the film’s plot because she can’t bear to break the hearts of her newly-adopted family. Even when we disagree with her choices, we get where she’s coming from — she only has the best of intentions. We’d never stand for her decisions in real life, but within the context of the movie, they’re, well…adorable. Bullock’s natural charm shines through in this movie — as does Pullman’s. In many romantic comedies, some even starring Bullock, we think the protagonists should end up together only because their names are above the credits and we know they’ll be together in the happy ending. Here, both Bullock and Pullman are so likable that we want them to work their way through the convolutions of the plot so they can find each other.

The movie’s very professionally directed by Jon Turteltaub, and I don’t mean that to sound disrespectful. So many movies feature awkward reaction shots or questionable line readings or bizarre transitions, just to name a few pet peeves, which make the film seem amateur no matter what the budget. But Turteltaub leaves none of those moments in While You Were Sleeping (with the possible exception of some strange lines from the venerable Glynis Johns, but I’ll cut her some slack). Turteltaub assembled a thoroughly professional cast (and again, I use that word as praise). Any cast with Peter Boyle, Jack Warden, Gallagher and Pullman will yield some solid acting; Gallagher in particular plays his part with glee, even the throwaway lines. (Of course, he spends half the movie in a coma, but still.)

In the end, While You Were Sleeping might not be extraordinarily witty or incisive and might be more than a little predictable, but it is very pleasant, charming and heart-warming, and I can think of many worse ways to spend an hour-and-a-half.

[1] No, it’s not because Ryan became all collagened and scary-looking; that actually happened later on — indirectly as a result of her dethroning.

Let’s get this out of the way up front:  the plot of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is utterly and completely ludicrous.  The mystery at its core relies on such incredible levels of coincidence to get anything at all in motion or to reveal clues to its characters that it’s utterly divorced from anything approaching reality.  And I’ll also say this:  I truly didn’t care.  Don’t watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang expecting a mystery which plays fair and makes sense, because really, this just ain’t the movie for that. I believe Black made the plot this outlandish on purpose, as the entire movie is something of a loving tongue-in-cheek sendup of old film noir flicks.  Watch this movie for the actors and their chemistry, for the plentious wit in the screenplay and for the sheer fun of it.

Petty thief Harry Lockhart (Downey) flees New York for California after the first of those amazing coincidences:  he stumbles into an audition for a cop drama while running from the police after being busted trying to steal a toy for his niece.  Suddenly he’s at a fancy Hollywood party thrown by producer Harlan Dexter (a creepy Corbin Bernsen), where he’s introduced to Perry van Shrike (Kilmer), a private investigator hired by Dexter to help train Harry for his movie role.  Perry also happens to be gay, meaning he’s known as “Gay Perry.”  (Get it?)  Soon after, Harry meets Harmony Lee (Michelle Monaghan), a woman who seems to be perfect for him — and it’s at that point that the ridiculousness of the plot kicks into high gear, and at this point that it’s best I stop recounting it.

Downey plays Harry in full-on Manic Downey mode:  Black’s hyperverbal screenplay fits that aspect of Downey’s persona perfectly.  Harry narrates the film in true film noir fashion, but unlike the more hard-boiled narrators of those movies this one reveres, the fourth-wall-breaking Harry forgets details, has to reverse and correct himself, and berates himself for missing crucial bits of plot.  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was one of Downey’s first steps toward reclaiming his career, and anyone who enjoyed his performances in 2008’s Iron Man and Tropic Thunder should greatly enjoy him here.

One of the more refreshing facets of the movie was the fact that Kilmer’s portrayal of Gay Perry was, regardless of his character’s name, in no way stereotypically “gay.”  There’s none of the pop cultural shorthand we normally use to indicate that a character is homosexual; if Perry and the other characters didn’t tell us himself about his sexuality, we’d have no way to know.  The humor in his character isn’t to be found in his homosexuality, but rather in his conisderable wit, his total self-confidence and the way he deals with the much less refined Harry. Any “gay humor” with Perry is in the reactions of other people to him — Kilmer, pardon the phrase, plays Gay Perry totally straight.   But it’s still Kilmer’s funniest performance since Real Genius and a reminder that he doesn’t do comedy nearly frequently enough.

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And I Love You, Man gets that difficulty exactly right.   In some ways making friends is more difficult than dating: at least with dating, the asked-out has a pretty clear guess what the asker-out wants.  But while it seems like it shouldn’t be so, saying to someone “I want to be friends with you” turns out to be far more awkward than asking for a date. (I’ll admit to the possibility that maybe this is just me, and other people have no problem whatsoever doing so…but I suspect it’s not I’m not alone.)

Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) asks his girlfriend Zooey (Rashisa Jones) to marry him and realizes shortly after that he has no one to be his best man at the wedding — or, more technically, realizes that he has no male friends close enough to deserve the honor of being his best man — and no one he thinks would accept, anyway.  Even his father (the always wonderful J.K. Simmons) and brother (Andy Samberg) are far closer to each other than they are to him. Peter has one of those ideas that only ever occurs in movies and sets out to meet new guy friends, hoping one will click well enough for that person to be his best man. He finds a likely candidate in Sidney Fife (Jason Segel) who, in fine buddy comedy tradition, represents Peter’s polar opposite: relaxed and confident where Peter is neurotic and unsure, easily likable where Peter is reserved. (Not so coincidentally, Sidney shares his surname with one of the most legendary best friends in the pop culture canon.)

But here’s the thing: I said this setup follows in “fine buddy comedy tradition,” but it doesn’t follow those footsteps too closely. Because while most comedies of this sort would have Sidney turn out to be in some way wrong for Peter, that’s not the case with I Love You, Man. Writer/director John Hamburg gets it: Sidney actually is a really good guy. As is Peter. There’s one scene which seems to be setting us up for a big twist in the nature of the relationship between Peter and Sidney, but that twist never comes. Both characters — as well as both actors playing them — are completely likable. We want these guys to be friends because we want to be friends with both of them.

Also, a more traditional (read: lazier and dumber) comedy would have made Zooey out to be a nagging shrew, and Sidney would have shown Peter the light in realizing why he shouldn’t marry her.  That’s not the case here:  Zooey remains loving, caring and sympathetic throughout, even during the expected late-movie problems between her and Peter.  That’s one of the beauties of the movie:  all of the main characters only want what’s best for the people they care about.  Sidney wants Peter to marry Zooey.  Zooey wants Peter to have a good male friend, even if she’s a bit jealous when it actually happens.  Peter wants to have both of these people in his life, difficult as becomes to balance the two.

I Love You, Man follows solidly in the recent Apatowian tradition (though Judd Apatow himself has nothing to do with the movie):  it never makes fun of its characters.  It doesn’t ask you to laugh at Peter either for not having any real male friends or for wanting them; we can laugh at how he goes about trying to find them and the results of the search, but not at Peter for the desire itself. The movie’s humor comes from the interactions between the characters, not from any inherent ridiculousness of the situation.   I Love You, Man lets these characters and the relationship between them stay real, and we care about them far more than we might have expected as a result.

I’m not sure how I feel about this development; recognizing more quality movies is very much A Good Thing, of course, but I’m wondering how this change will work out in practice.  Will it mean that we’ll get to see more of a diversity of the kinds of movies which get nominated for Best Picture — movies that surely won’t win because they’re just not the kind of film to which Hollywood wants to give its top prize, but still deserve some commendation?  And by that, of course, I specifically mean:  will we see more comedies nominated for Best Picture?  Or more big-budget (but well-done, of course) action movies?  If this rule had been in place last year, I think we can safely assume The Dark Knight would definitely have gotten the Best Picture nomination it deserved.  (Hell, if they’d expanded to ten, even Iron Man could possibly have slipped in there.)

And what about animated movies?  Are they still stuck in the three-nominee Best Animated Feature ghetto?  Let’s look at Up, which is already a mortal lock for a Best Animated Feature nomination, if not a victory:  can it get both nominations?  I think a great many critics would agree that Up will likely be one of the ten best movies of the year, and I’d wager more than a few will have it as the best.  So let’s say it does indeed get a Best Picture nomination — if it’s then ineligble for Best Animated (and please note that this is purely my speculation/concern right now; I have heard no information to indicate it’s true ) and loses Best Picture…and then something else wins Best Animated Feature…well, that just seems kind of wrong to me.  Up (or any future Pixar movie you care to imagine) would sort of end up screwed (for some very loose definition of “screwed”), and that would be a damn shame.

We’ll have to see how it shakes out, of course.  We still have more than six months before the Academy announces the first expanded batch of nominees.  But I’m sincerely hoping it allows for more diversity in what gets honored rather than simply doubling the number of pretentious piles of Oscar-bait we already get.