Can’t seem to get my mind off of you
Back here at home there’s nothin’ to do
Now that I’m away
I wish I’d stayed
Tomorrow’s a day of mine that you won’t be in

When you looked at me, I should’ve run
But I thought it was just for fun
I see I was wrong
And I’m not so strong
I should’ve known all along that time would tell

A week without you
Thought I’d forget
Two weeks without you and I
Still haven’t gotten over you yet

Vacation; all I ever wanted
Vacation; had to get away
Vacation; meant to be spent alone

Vacation; all I ever wanted
Vacation; had to get away
Vacation; meant to be spent alone

A week without you
Thought I’d forget
Two weeks without you and I
Still haven’t gotten over you yet

Vacation; all I ever wanted
Vacation; had to get away
Vacation; meant to be spent alone

Vacation; all I ever wanted
Vacation; had to get away
Vacation; meant to be spent alone

Vacation; all I ever wanted
Vacation; had to get away
Vacation; meant to be spent alone

Where Miyazaki fantasies like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Ponyo connect mundane characters to enormous alternate realities, this time we’re drawn into a tiny one, contained entirely within the bounds of a semi-rural house. Twelve-year-old Shawn (David Henrie) moves to the home of his aunt, Sadako (Gracie Poletti) and her housekeeper, Hara (Carol Burnett), for some relaxation before he undergoes an operation to repair a heart defect.

But Shawn, Sadako, and Hara aren’t the only occupants of the house. Besides the cat, there is a family of “little people” — at most a matter of inches tall — living in the walls and under the floors. They are Pod (Will Arnett), his perpetually-worried wife, Homily (Amy Poehler), and their curious, fourteen-year-old daughter Arietty (Bridgit Mendler). They call themselves “borrowers”, since they subsist on materials “borrowed” from the “beans” — human beings — around whom they live. It’s never much — a cube of sugar here, a roll of tape there — but it’s enough for them to get by and nothing the beans will notice.

And this is important because — as usual in a Ghibli story — the mundane and the fantastic have at best an uneasy coexistence. Once a borrower is seen, we’re told, the beans’ curiosity cannot be contained, and the borrowers must move. It’s not clear whether the borrowers’ fates would be as grist for some sort of mill, or merely as a curiosity to be poked and prodded, but either way it can’t be pleasant to be a borrower in the humans’ world.

But, of course, Shawn and Arietty will come into contact, Hara’s curiosity will be ignited, and Homily’s fears for her family’s safety will be justified.

Must it really be said that a Studio Ghibli film is gorgeous, or is that just redundant? The usual anime-style characters walk across beautiful, painted backgrounds that Yonebayashi shoots with shifting focus, giving the images a lush depth that needs no fancy glasses or surcharge to be seen.

And the sights are every bit as fantastic as those in other Ghibli productions, despite the fact that they’re all so familiar. Homily pours tea in giant, bulging droplets, and rain doesn’t soak Arietty’s dress so much as it settles on the cloth to be brushed away. Tissues stand stiff, and postage stamps hang on the walls. There’s just so much texture that you could probably get more than one full viewing on mute just to look at it all.

It’s also a delight to listen to, with a Celtic-folk score and theme composed by the Bretonne Cécile Corbel. Though the characters and the house in general still appear mildly Japanese, there are little details that reinforce this connection to the roots of the story in stories of the Celtic fay. It’s not Ghibli’s usual source material, but they fuse it smoothly with their own style.

The Secret World of Arietty may not be the biggest, most epic story to come from Miyazaki’s pen, but it’s easily among the most charming.

Worth It: yes.
Bechdel Test: pass.

So we start with FDR Foster (Chris Pine) and his partner Tuck (Tom Hardy). Tuck’s last name isn’t given, but the script would imply that they’re brothers or cousins or somehow share a grandmother, though no relationship beyond “friends” is ever stated explicitly. Then again, I wouldn’t look to this script as my exemplar of narrative coherence.

Anyway, they’re both in trouble — “grounded” — with their boss (Angela Bassett) after a supposedly-covert operation ends up wreaking havoc in Hong Kong and earning them the enmity of the menacing German “Heinrich” (Til Schweiger), who mostly exists to provide an external common antagonist in the third act.

Tuck has an ex-wife (Abigail Leigh Spencer) and son (John Paul Ruttan), neither of whom know that he’s not, actually, the only travel agent that actually spends all of his time on the road — a quirk of his cover the movie tries, badly, to lampshade. He misses the coupled life, and puts up a profile on an online dating site, where he meets Lauren (Reese Witherspoon). FDR is the opposite: a womanizing club-hopper; he coincidentally also meets Lauren and independently sets his sights on her.

When this becomes clear to the two, they set a gentlemen’s agreement to both date her, and may the best man win. They quickly spiral into using their CIA access to first improve their own pitch to Lauren’s particular likes and dislikes, then to counteract what flaws they learn she sees in them, and finally to sabotage each other’s efforts, until the competition is ready to tear them apart.

Now, it’s just ridiculous to think that they could marshal other agents to assist their seductions, but if the movie would just say that happens and move on, that would be one thing. Instead, it makes motions like they’re trying to tie their investigations into the Heinrich case, which connections are never mentioned again. If the other agents are willing to help without any pretense, why even bring the pretense up to begin with?

It just goes on like this, and it’s beneath them. It’s definitely beneath Reese Witherspoon, who does the absolute best she can with what she’s given, and it shows. It’s beneath Tom Hardy, who feels incredibly out of place. It’s even beneath Chris Pine. The only one who feels in her element is Chelsea Handler as Lauren’s friend Trish, whose take on modern dating sounds like it’s been drawn straight from one of Handler’s own stand-up routines.

Maybe if the action was good, it could be forgiven, but is is just as big a mess. It’s chaotic, with no real sense of location in the fights or chases. Entire flaming car wrecks appear and disappear between shots. The direction isn’t entirely bad — there’s a nice long tracking shot as FDR and Tuck each place their bugs in Lauren’s house while she makes popcorn to the sounds of “This Is How We Do It” — but when the few fancy tricks do work, they feel like director McG — seriously — is trying to run before he can walk.

And once you get right down to it the core premise crumbles like everything else; if Tuck is really interested in building a relationship, why does he go in for cheap, manipulative tricks just as wholeheartedly as FDR does? I think the real answer is that cheap tricks are all the writers and directors know, and they can’t really imagine not using them.

Worth It: no.
Bechdel Test: fail.

The script lays out the essential plot points with ruthless efficiency, starting with a recap of last time: Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) made a deal with the devil (now Ciarán Hinds) and was possessed by the Ghost Rider — a fiery, skull-headed demon with chain whips and the ability to consume evil souls. He’d like nothing more than to be rid of it, since it’s getting harder and harder to keep it in line, which leads to some histrionics and rubber-faced, CGI-enhanced antics that I’d put up there with the sillier of Bruce Campbell’s scenes in Army of Darkness.

He gets an offer of help from Moreau (Idris Elba) — an alcoholic French priest who asks that Johnny find and keep safe a young boy. The boy, Danny (Fergus Riordan), and his mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), are on the run from a gang, led by Nadya’s former boyfriend, Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), who is employed by the devil to track the boy down and bring him back before the winter solstice. Seriously, this is not any sort of groundbreaking stuff in the field of storytelling.

But where Ghost Rider was merely corny and awkward, Neveldine and Taylor have run with it as a base onto which they can graft their own visuals. The traditional camerawork alone is fantastic; a highway scene halfway through brings the story to a dead stop, but provides a great palette to see what these guys can do with filming motorcycle stunts. And whoever was manning the editing machine loves the speed dial; almost every establishing shot is riddled with jerky pans.

And then there are the cutaways, particularly the animated ones used to accent otherwise dry patches of narration. This is, after all, a comic book movie, and it looks nowhere so much like one as in these scenes. Also in this pile, I’ll throw the flashback to Johnny signing his deal, which seems to have been lifted directly from Sin City in its style.

In a lot of ways this movie tries to get closer to the comics. Not only is Blaze the rough alcoholic he always was meant to be, but late in the second act we meet another of the devil’s minions based largely on the appearance of Blackout, one of the comic’s villains. Neveldine and Taylor’s interpretation of his light-blotting abilities makes for yet another striking visual leitmotif.

As for the 3-D, again I think the directors acquit themselves nicely; they stay out in the sun or in bright locales more than you might expect, they use it mostly as a diorama, and they resist the urge to throw things at the audience. Overall, I doubt you’d miss much in 2-D, but for one little trick they pull during some of the chase scenes. Since they know better than to adjust focus — decent 3-D cinematography uses an enormous depth of field so that no region is glaringly out of focus should the audience look there — they try to emulate a common use of a zoom lens in action scenes by actually stretching and compressing the entire stereo-optic stage front to back in quick succession.

Now, this is not to say that all of these visual tricks “work”. The last one, in particular, felt dizzying and disorienting. But it seems like Neveldine and Taylor knew that this movie was going to be schlock no matter what they did, and so they used it as a playground to test out some of their latest moves. I can’t say the result is great entertainment, but at least I can say I wasn’t bored.

Worth It: honestly, probably not. But if you like watching directors playing around with their craft, it might be.
Bechdel Test: fail.

But I digress. The thing I find sort of mystifying is how he could have gotten from seeing me in the theater to finding me here. He gave no sign of knowing me at the theater; I have no idea how he could have found my name. How dangerously and violently obsessed does a man have to be to search through all the Google results for the movie he was watching, possibly cross-referenced with the city, and following links until he could find a picture to verify he’d found the right person. Why would he assume that I’d be locatable at all by such a search unless he was already severely mentally unbalanced and looking for any excuse to cause injury and reassure himself of his tenuous grip on his masculinity?

So I think it’s reasonable to go for Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me”, with additional vocals by none other than Michael Jackson.

[Who's watching]
[Tell me, who's watching]
[Who's watching me]

I’m just an average man
With an average life
I work from nine to five
Hey, hell, I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone
In my average home
But why do I always feel
Like I’m in the twilight zone?

And
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
And I have no privacy

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Tell me, is it just a dream?

When I come home at night
I bolt the door real tight
People call me on the phone I’m trying to avoid
But can the people on TV see me or am I just paranoid?
When I’m in the shower
I’m afraid to wash my hair
‘Cause I might open my eyes and find someone standing there
People say I’m crazy
Just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much

That’s why
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
And I have no privacy

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Who’s playin’ tricks on me?

(Who’s watching me)
I don’t know anymore
Are the neighbors watching me?
[Who's watching]
Well, is the mailman watching me
[Tell me, who's watching]
And I don’t feel safe anymore
Oh, what a mess
I wonder who’s watching me now
(Who)
The IRS?

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
And I have no privacy

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Tell me, is it just a dream?

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
And I have no privacy

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Who’s playin’ tricks on me?

[Who's watching me]
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)

(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Tell me who can it be?

[Who's watching me]
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)

“Inspired” by a true story, the movie center on Leo (Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams). A pretty young couple in Chicago, their entire lives lay ahead of them, until they are rear-ended at a snowy intersection. Leo recovers swiftly, but Paige has struck her head and is in a medically induced coma for a short time. And then, when she wakes up, she can’t remember the last five years.

Conveniently, it was four years ago that Paige moved into the city from the toniest of suburbs, when she and Leo had a meet-cute while getting parking permits. She’s an art student, he’s an aspiring music producer, and their friends are hipsters from Central Casting. They have an offbeat wedding with their own corny vows, and are chased from the art museum by security.

So now Paige can’t remember Leo at all. On top of this, her barely-named, wealthy parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange) show up despite the fact that she hasn’t spoken to them since moving to the city — again, within the forgotten years. And there’s an incredibly preppy ex-fiancé (Scott Speedman) who, of course, she doesn’t remember dumping. And then there’s the personality; Paige is now a vegetarian, and an Obama-voter, both of which come as a surprise to the WASPy law student she remembers being.

Clearly this is not the first sudden change she’s experienced, which slots neatly with Leo’s “philosophy” about “moments of impact” — like the crash, and their meeting, and so on — that may sound incredibly deep to a teenage girl. Of course, huge swaths of the public haven’t really progressed beyond teenage girldom, so this will probably go over fairly well.

Still, it does show one sign of promise in the premise: what if Paige doesn’t need to find her way back to Leo after all? What if her life with Leo was itself a diversion from her intended course, off of which she’d been knocked by some other trauma, years ago? But of course that would be asking far too much from such a shallow story. The truth, when it’s finally revealed, is far more mundane and far less plausible.

McAdams is a veteran of romances, comedic or otherwise, and she’s well within her element here. She’s got an endlessly expressive face, and she gets to run it through a wide spectrum of emotions. On the other hand, Tatum is way out of his depth. In his last romance, Dear John, he was somewhat believable as a soldier just coming into his own romantic life, but here he spends his time standing around like a slab of meat. I couldn’t buy a single line; his performance was wooden and devoid of emotion. It’s great for Duke in G.I. Joe, but just doesn’t work in a tearjerker romance.

But if boys get Megan Fox in their action, I suppose girls deserve Channing Tatum in their romance. A little eye candy never hurt anyone but, unlike Ryan Gosling, these are some seriously empty calories.

Worth It: no.
Bechdel Test: fail.

The spy in this case is Tobin Frost (Washington), who has been on the run from his former handlers at the CIA for almost a decade. He meets with an MI-6 operative in Cape Town, South Africa, to purchase a microchip, and then inexplicably walks into a US consulate to turn himself in.

Across town, Matthew Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a young agent charged with maintaining a safe house, though he’s champing at the bit for a more substantial assignment. Sitting around the apartment alone all day answering the phone is beginning to wear on him after a year. But this is the house where the CIA extraction team is taking Frost. And in the middle of their interrogation ey are interrupted when another team of gunmen led by someone called “Vargas” (Fares Fares) busts in and shoots the place up.

In the commotion, Weston escapes with Frost, taking seriously his charge to be “responsible for his houseguest”. Meanwhile, Weston’s handler (Brendan Gleeson) and the handler of the extraction team (Vera Farmiga) get into a pissing match back in Langley to figure out just what is going on.

The thing is, we’ve seen this story before. Obviously Frost was pushed it and wasn’t really a traitor, and obviously the chip contains the evidence of the real corruption within the CIA. If you can’t make a good guess by now who’s actually behind Vargas’ team, you just haven’t been paying attention.

But an old story can be spruced up with a good interpretation or execution, but Safe House falls flat here too. There’s no new narrative twist here, and the visuals are nothing to write home about either. The graininess and soft-focus light is a good touch, but director Daniel Espinosa’s insistence on near-universal hand-held camerawork makes even quiet conversations look like an earthquake. In the action scenes it’s a jumbled mess that just looks like they’re covering for haphazard fit choreography.

But Washington does look good, and when he gets the chance he shows that he’s still got his chops, but this happens all too infrequently. Reynolds is solid too but, again, only when he’s not just there to walk the story along to the next fight, chase, or cheap shock. For a story supposedly about a master of mindgames, the extent to which they gloss over any real psychological issues is a real disappointment. There’s a girlfriend whose safety Matt worries for, but she’s never actually in danger. There’s a whole background file on him read on screen, but none of it ever matters. It feels like David Guggenheim’s script had a lot more to it that ended up on the cutting-room floor, if it was shot in the first place.

Worth It: no.
Bechdel Test: fail.

Italian vegetable stew. And this is a great illustration of the creative experimentation that makes the Cooks Illustrated test kitchens so great (and why you should buy the books yourself).

One of the biggest keys is right at the start: using some of the heartier vegetables like meat. Cut up a medium eggplant — about a pound — into big, one-inch cubes, and do the same with two medium zucchini — again, about a pound. Heat two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-high heat in a large Dutch oven or soup pot and brown the zucchini on all sides, which should take about five to seven minutes. Remove the zucchini to a medium bowl, add another two tablespoons of oil, and brown the eggplant the same way before removing it to the same bowl. Don’t worry at all about bits getting a little burny and stuck to the bottom of the pot; that’s exactly what you want to happen.

While browning the zucchini and eggplant, coarsely chop a red bell pepper and mince a medium onion. Also, open a 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes and pour off the liquid into a two-cup measure, which should be the right size. Pull out the tomatoes and squeeze out the liquid inside into the measure. Don’t be timid here, just get your hands dirty and rinse them off after. Then, once most of the liquid is squeezed out, chop up the tomatoes.

Now, once you’re done with browning the zucchini and eggplant, lower the heat to medium and throw in two tablespoons of unsalted butter, which should melt pretty quickly. Add in the tomatoes, onion, and pepper, as well as a tablespoon of tomato paste. Cook this mixture until it dries out and starts to brown, which should be about eleven or twelve minutes. Then stir in four pressed cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of minced fresh oregano leaves and cook about thirty seconds until they become fragrant.

Stir in three cups of vegetable broth, and now stir up any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pot; the heating liquid will easily release them. Stir in a point of Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into half-inch pieces, and the reserved tomato liquid, and bring the whole pot to a boil. Gently stir back in the eggplant and zucchini; cover the pot, leaving about an inch open, and simmer until the vegetables get tender and the stew thickens — around half an hour.

Off the heat, stir in two tablespoons of chopped fresh basil and season with salt and pepper. Grate Pecorino Romano cheese over each serving bowl and drizzle with a little extra olive oil.

Like its forerunner, this movie hangs on the writings of Jules Verne are actually true — a fact known to his admirers who call themselves “Vernians”. Now, I’m not going to say that there aren’t ardent admirer’s of the man’s work — it was revolutionary in science fiction — but even I know that if The Mysterious Island is a sequel to anything it follows 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea rather than Journey to the Center of the Earth. But who are we to let mere facts get in the way of a terrible story?

These Vernians are right about one thing, though: this story is not science fiction. Indeed, I amused myself mostly by trying to count the number of distinct scientific fields the movie openly mangles and insults, but I lost track somewhere in the mid-teens when trying to decide if cinematography is a science. No matter; all the cinematic arts are put through the same wringer.

Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) — a holdover from last time around, although no mention of this is made at all — is in search of his grandfather, Alexander (Michael Caine), a “scientific adventurer”. He receives a coded message claiming that Verne’s Mysterious Island is real. His stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson) — a former Navy cryptographer who now has a construction company instead of a position in software development — helps determine that it hints that the location can be sussed out by assembling not only the map printed in his novel, but the maps in Treasure Island and Gulliver’s Travels as well; the scales in Sean’s copies of each volume just happen to coincide.

The map points to a location they claim to be “just off the coast of Palau”, but the coordinates — 150º and 34º are clearly visible — are nowhere near that island. Either it’s 34º north and thus not in the South Pacific as claimed — though neither is Palau — or it’s 34º south and thus in the middle of Australia. Still, to Palau they go, where they charter a rattletrap helicopter from Gabato (Luis Guzmán) and Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), which then flies straight into a permanent hurricane and washes them up on the Mysterious Island.

Of course, by definition all small animals grow huge and all large animals grow tiny on islands. Seriously, they say that. So, after dodging a giant frilled lizard — “why did it have to be a lizard; why couldn’t it be a snake?” Hank asks, ruining both cladistics and one of Indiana Jones’ best lines — and finding Alexander, they find the island is sinking, and the only escape is Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus.

Caine and Johnson are affable enough, but they’re both phoning it in. Nothing much can be done about Hutcherson’s bland audience-surrogate, and Guzmán is basically a fount of pre-teen scatological humor. But the biggest disappointment is that Hudgens, who I know has more talent than she’s allowed to show, is here reduced to a stock character composed of equal parts sass and breasts. The latter, incidentally, aren’t even the cheapest use of the 3-D, which is among the worst I’ve seen in a long time.

Brad Peyton’s herky-jerky direction feels like someone driving a stick shift for the first time. We careen along through a set piece, and then we must stop dead in our tracks for a bit of family drama. Then it’s a poop joke. No, wait, we’re racing again. Hey, it’s a big animal! But the blame must be shared with Brian and Mark Gunn’s atrocious script, for which continuity is not merely ignored, but actively violated. I’ve seen Ed Wood films that were more narratively coherent than this one.

I know it’s supposed to be a kids’ movie, but I wouldn’t advise showing it to them; they might get the idea that this is what movies are like, and be put off of them for good. On the other hand, there is one bright point: we finally have another movie preposterously bad enough to make the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment worthwhile.

Worth It: you’d have to be blind drunk to think that it was. Actually, that might not be a bad idea.
Bechdel Test: fail.

But, to be honest, they’ve got it precisely backwards. Madonna was acting too young, like a bubblegum-pop princess version of her persona. I may be dating myself here, but I remember when Madonna had an edge.

As a case in point, remember what her closing number, “Like a Prayer” was like before it was an Audi ad.

Life is a mystery
Everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home

When you call my name
It’s like a little prayer
I’m down on my knees
I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour
I can feel your power
Just like a prayer
You know I’ll take you there

I hear your voice
It’s like an angel sighing
I have no choice; I hear your voice
Feels like flying
I close my eyes
Oh, God I think I’m falling
Out of the sky; I close my eyes
Heaven help me

When you call my name
It’s like a little prayer
I’m down on my knees
I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour
I can feel your power
Just like a prayer
You know I’ll take you there

Like a child
You whisper softly to me
You’re in control, just like a child
Now I’m dancing
It’s like a dream
No end and no beginning
You’re here with me; it’s like a dream
Let the choir sing

When you call my name
It’s like a little prayer
I’m down on my knees
I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour
I can feel your power
Just like a prayer
You know I’ll take you there

When you call my name
It’s like a little prayer
I’m down on my knees
I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour
I can feel your power
Just like a prayer
You know I’ll take you there

Life is a mystery
Everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home

Just like a prayer
Your voice can take me there
Just like a muse to me
You are a mystery
Just like a dream
You are not what you seem
Just like a prayer
No choice; your voice can take me there

[Just like a prayer, I'll take you there]
[It's like a dream to me]
[Just like a prayer, I'll take you there]
[It's like a dream to me]
[Just like a prayer, I'll take you there]
[It's like a dream to me]
[Just like a prayer, I'll take you there]
[It's like a dream to me]

Just like a prayer
Your voice can take me there
Just like a muse to me
You are a mystery
Just like a dream
You are not what you seem
Just like a prayer
No choice; your voice can take me there

Just like a prayer
Your voice can take me there
Just like a muse to me
You are a mystery
Just like a dream
You are not what you seem
Just like a prayer
No choice; your voice can take me there

Your voice can take me there

Like a prayer