<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>Entertainment &#187; Mary Pols &#124; TIME.com</title>
	<atom:link href="http://entertainment.time.com/author/marypols/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://entertainment.time.com</link>
	<description>What’s good, bad and happening, from pop culture to high culture</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 18 May 2013 01:17:33 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.com/</generator>
<cloud domain='entertainment.time.com' port='80' path='/?rsscloud=notify' registerProcedure='' protocol='http-post' />
<image>
		<url>http://0.gravatar.com/blavatar/0df4e433005015e27e2188e452d16236?s=96&#038;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png</url>
		<title>Entertainment &#187; Mary Pols &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com</link>
	</image>
	<atom:link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="http://entertainment.time.com/osd.xml" title="Entertainment" />
	<atom:link rel='hub' href='http://entertainment.time.com/?pushpress=hub'/>
		<item>
		<title>Frances Ha: A Millennial Annie Hall</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/17/frances-ha-a-millenial-annie-hall/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/17/frances-ha-a-millenial-annie-hall/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 05:07:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540289</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Someone asked me if director Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha is a coming-of-age story; the answer gave me pause. A floundering 27 year-old named Frances (Greta Gerwig) does move closer to adulthood in the course of the movie. But Baumbach’s winning and provocative film, co-written with his Greenberg star Gerwig, is more precisely about the fierce importance of friendships in that drifty time of life when “real” life is supposed to begin but the start button remains worrisomely hard to locate. While it treads much of the same ground as Gerwig&#8217;s earlier film Lola Versus and Lena Dunham’s Girls—well-educated, artsy 20-somethings struggling professionally and personally in New York—Frances Ha is sharply focused on a genuine life issue that doesn’t get much play in movies: the challenges of platonic love and of the complicated passions of friendship. Frances is fond of telling people that she and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) “are the same person with different hair.” They went to college together at Vassar and, at the beginning of the movie, are sharing an apartment in Brooklyn and taking “sips” off each other’s cigarettes. The screenplay is a smart jumble of observed scraps of conversation that make sense only to the two of them and tend to the sweetly inane. “Are you drunk?” Frances giggles to Sophie on the phone. “I love you. Dumpling House!” Listening, her boyfriend eyes her balefully; there’s no room for him in this equation. Sophie is Frances’ person and Frances thinks, vice versa. They intend to have great professional success, receive many honorary degrees between them and have no children; Sheryl Sandberg wouldn’t have to tell them to lean in. (READ: Mary Pols&#8217; review of Gerwig&#8217;s earlier film Lola Versus) Or that’s what they’d like to think. In truth, Sophie has a decent career in publishing, not exactly a thriving industry, and Frances is barely hanging onto an apprenticeship at a modern-dance company. (She may be the world’s clumsiest aspiring modern dancer. Whereas in romantic comedies when the beautiful starlet is forced to takes a fall or be<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540289&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/17/frances-ha-a-millenial-annie-hall/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/still1-1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/still1-1.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/still1-1.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Frances Ha</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Stories We Tell: Sarah Polley&#8217;s Meta Masterpiece</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/stories-we-tell-sarah-polleys-meta-masterpiece/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/stories-we-tell-sarah-polleys-meta-masterpiece/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 03:30:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sarah Polley]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539444</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Director Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell revolves around her parentage. Can I leave it at that, and tell you no more? I’d like every viewer to have a chance to experience the movie&#8217;s slow reveals, rather than have its mysteries summarized in a few neat declarative sentences. Suffice it to say, there are family secrets. At one point in the film, Polley tells her sister “I can’t figure out why I’m exposing us all in this way. It’s really embarrassing.” But while the secret, which Polley herself didn’t know until 2006, is titillating, it’s not as intriguing as the style of the filmmaking, which leans more toward creative non-fiction than traditional documentary. Stories We Tell is blatantly sly, nudging the viewer to question everything they&#8217;re hearing and seeing. It&#8217;s also playfully meta—Polley’s considerable celebrity in Canada has an obvious impact on some of the secret-keepers—but without being mannered or precious. Yet despite this somewhat elastic structure, Polley renders her portrait of family love and identity in such a heartfelt, pure way that at the end, I had tears running down my face. As a narrative, Stories We Tell isn&#8217;t entirely trustworthy, but ultimately, it&#8217;s emotional content can absolutely be trusted. The most obviously captivating member of the Polley clan is one we glimpse only in photographs and home movies—Diane, the actress mother who died of cancer when Polley was 11 and just starting her own acting career as the star of the popular Canadian television series Road to Avonlea. But the director herself, hovering on the sidelines, is equally seductive. You&#8217;ll likely fall for the mind behind this strange project, presuming you didn’t fall for Sarah Polley long ago, when she was the coolest girl in Hollywood, starring in movies like 1999’s Go or 2000’s The Claim or later, when she turned into the kind of formidable young woman who could successfully adapt Alice Munro for the screen (into Away From Her) before she turned 27. (READ: Mary Corliss on Stories We Tell at last year&#8217;s Venice Film Festival) In a recent video interview<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539444&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/stories-we-tell-sarah-polleys-meta-masterpiece/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Movies</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/storieswetell.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/storieswetell.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/storieswetell.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">StoriesWeTell</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>What Maisie Knew: The Parents From Hell</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/02/what-maisie-knew-the-parents-from-hell/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/02/what-maisie-knew-the-parents-from-hell/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 03:30:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3538831</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most people with children have experienced the fear, however brief, that they might be rotten parents. Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s unsettling, exquisitely acted film What Maisie Knew is just the tonic to put it all in perspective. Its two principal adult characters, Susanna (Julianne Moore) and Beale (Steve Coogan) are truly rotten parents, unredeemable so. After watching them ignore and neglect their young daughter Maisie (played by the astonishing Onata Aprile) for 99 minutes, I felt as virtuous as Cliff or Clair Huxtable. These three characters spring from Henry James’ 1897 novella What Maisie Knew but have been modernized into 21st century Manhattanites by screenwriters Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright. Susanna is a rock singer whose star seems to be fading, although she can still rally a crowd of male sycophants to her living room to smoke and drink and discuss her “sound.” Beale, Maisie’s father is a disheveled, professorial sort who deals in art. As the movie begins, he and Susanna — living together, but not married — are already fighting, about money mostly, and how little of it he contributes, although the arguments are  just vague background noise. The movie is focused on Maisie’s point of view, functioning as her eyes and ears, and McGeehee and Siegel have turned the parental disputes into something akin to how Charlie Brown et al. hear adults: all jumbled tones, with an emphasis on ire. After one of these fights, Beale leaves and Susanna changes the locks. They&#8217;re done and she&#8217;s determined to protect her property, a category poor Maisie definitely falls into. But Beale nonetheless absconds with something valuable, the lovely Scottish nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham). Susanna, who is to Moore’s inconsiderate, self-absorbed character from The Kids Are All Right what Hurricane Sandy was to that last gentle spring rain, figures out he’s done more than swipe the nanny when Maisie details the sleeping arrangements at Daddy’s new apartment. Meanwhile, she hires her own new nanny, Mrs. Wix, another character straight out of James, a fusty old lady played by Paddy Croft. Maisie<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3538831&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/02/what-maisie-knew-the-parents-from-hell/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/rexusa_828905e.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/rexusa_828905e.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/rexusa_828905e.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">TIFF What Maisie Knew</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Love is All You Need: A Rom-Com for Adults</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/02/love-is-all-you-need-a-rom-com-for-adults/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/02/love-is-all-you-need-a-rom-com-for-adults/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 03:30:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3538770</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Fellow Mama Mia! haters, I understand how much you might fear Love is All You Need. On the surface there are so many similarities: the setting a destination wedding in the Mediterranean (in this case, Italy’s Amalfi Coast rather than a Greek island), a quirky mother of the bride and the elegant presence of Pierce Brosnan, standing around looking slightly aloof yet dreamy. But director and co-writer Susanne Bier’s (Brothers, Open Hearts) movie is a far more thoughtful, gentle look at love and family; it’s the art-house version of a good Hollywood rom-com. Ultimately, instead of calling to mind Mama Mia! it feels more reminiscent of two 2000 films, Bread and Tulips and the Dogme film Italian for Beginners. The movie, which is subtitled and alternates between Danish, Italian and a smattering of English, starts with a glowing bride, Astrid (Molly Blixt Egelind, who has even better blonde tresses than Gwyneth Paltrow) and her nervous groom Patrick (Sebastian Jessen) arriving in Italy to get his family’s vacation home ready for their wedding. The villa is set among lemon groves, has gardens with balconies built over the sea and stairs down to secret beaches. But the house has been abandoned for years; Patrick’s irascible father Philip (Brosnan) couldn’t bear to spend time there after his wife’s untimely death. Even when he&#8217;s as cranky as Philip, the sad widower is really the dream stuff of romantic comedies (see: Sleepless in Seattle). The widower is a seasoned love interest, but no culpability, no legal proceedings required, and no obligations but grieving. Philip’s own sister-in-law, Benedikte, played by the marvelous Allison Janney look-a-like Paprika Steen, practically has to wipe the drool over her chin whenever she’s around him. Would that someone would write a contemporary romance where everyone is in hot pursuit of a widow over 50. With a fine prospect like this about, is there a clumsy but good-hearted woman around? Maybe one who doesn’t know her own beauty or has been maligned by her own spouse, or better yet, both? Enter Ida (Trine<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3538770&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/02/love-is-all-you-need-a-rom-com-for-adults/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/1.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/1.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Love Is All You Need</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>42: The Jackie Robinson Biopic Is a Solid Hit</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/12/42-the-jackie-robinson-biopic-is-a-solid-hit/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/12/42-the-jackie-robinson-biopic-is-a-solid-hit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:45:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3536900</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Writer/director Brian Helgeland’s warmly inspirational 42 approaches the Jackie Robinson story as something glowing with as much promise as the youthful Robinson embodied in 1945, when Brooklyn Dodgers&#8217; general manager Branch Rickey began seriously plotting to make him the player to break baseball’s color barrier. Robinson’s hardscrabble early life, his abandonment by his father and brushes with racist and repressive authority figures are all hinted at in 42, but the movie continually pats us on the arm, assuring us that Robinson (played by relative unknown Chadwick Boseman) shall overcome, and with him, America. “All future now,” Rickey (Harrison Ford) says, gazing at his recruit. “No past.” 42’s purpose is not to make us feel shame in our national shortcomings, at least not primarily, but pride in his triumph. Is there anything wrong with this? Robinson’s widow Rachel worked closely with Helgeland on the film; so it has the family’s endorsement. It&#8217;s an easily engaging movie, well acted, lushly photographed. But some will likely label the movie too soft because of the way it so intently telegraphs, through swelling instrumentals and a warm bath of lighting, that things are going to improve, for Jackie Robinson, for his wife Rachel (played by Nicole Beharie from Shame) and his many admirers, including Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), the sweet black journalist Rickey dispatches to keep an eye on Robinson. Robinson running out Brooklyn&#8217;s Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, wearing the number 42 on his Dodgers jersey was a key moment in the history of the long march toward racial equality. (If it gives you chills just thinking about it, you’ll eat up how fantastic it looks on the big screen.) But a child walking out of 42 would be forgiven for thinking everything was settled after that season. That the jerks backed down and the beauty of a man named Jackie Robinson, who danced between bases and always held his head high, was enough to conquer all. To explain that the agonies and heartbreak of the Civil Rights Era still lay ahead would prick<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3536900&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/12/42-the-jackie-robinson-biopic-is-a-solid-hit/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/42d-06491r.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/42d-06491r.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/42d-06491r.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Image: 42</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Place Beyond the Pines: Three-Part Disharmony</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/28/the-place-beyond-the-pines-three-part-disharmony/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/28/the-place-beyond-the-pines-three-part-disharmony/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:33:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blue Valentine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dane DeHaan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Derek Cianfrance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Emory Cohen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eva Mendes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michelle Williams]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ryan Gosling]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3535300</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The movie-star business is such that I’d been thinking of The Place Beyond the Pines as Ryan Gosling’s movie, one in which he reteams with his Blue Valentine director, Derek Cianfrance. I was wrong. Though Gosling, appearing in only the first third of the film, sparks the story into motion, The Place Beyond the Pines can’t be said to be anyone’s movie but Cianfrance’s. Structured as a triptych, the movie is novelistic, earnest and somewhat exhausting — an ambitious effort that tries to be many things. And it is definitely something: a sprawling, engaging study in fathers, sons and sins. Gosling is Luke, who has a job in a traveling carnival riding a motorcycle in a round metal cage with two other cyclists. The movie opens with Luke entering a shabby tent, mounting the bike and climbing into his peculiar, torture-chamber-like workspace — which may be Cianfrance’s statement that we’re all captive, going round and round, on a carousel of time. When Luke discovers that Romina, the waitress he slept with during last year’s swing through upstate New York, has borne him a child named Jason, he climbs off that carousel and attempts to be a father. “My father wasn’t around, and look what happened to me,” he tells Romina (played by a winningly vulnerable Eva Mendes). (MORE: Wait, Ryan Gosling Is Doing What?) At first, this means loitering around the apartment she shares with the baby, her mother and Kofi (Mahershala Ali of Treme), whom Romina calls her “man.” Kofi has provided her with a home and accepted the child as his own — he’s the true prince of this drama. While Kofi is providing for Jason, Luke meets up with a mechanic named Robin (the fantastic Ben Mendelsohn from Killing Them Softly), who quickly develops a boy-crush on Luke. After helping him with a minimum-wage job and a free room, Robin hatches a bad idea involving them becoming bank robbers. “Not since Hall and Oates has there been such a team,” Luke says to Robin in the adrenaline rush that follows their first<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3535300&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/28/the-place-beyond-the-pines-three-part-disharmony/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/4072-d001-00676.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/4072-d001-00676.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/4072-d001-00676.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Image: The Place Beyond the Pines</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Room 237: Deconstructing Stanley</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/28/room-237-deconstructing-stanley/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/28/room-237-deconstructing-stanley/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:45:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Blakemore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Danny Lloyd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geoffrey Cocks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jack Nicholson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jay Weidner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Fell Ryan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Juli Kearns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rodney Ascher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shelley Duvall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stanley Kubrick]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3535144</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Famed film director Stanley Kubrick used The Shining as a way of issuing a public apology for his role in staging the moon landing. He filled the film with references to the Holocaust. Or the genocide of Native Americans. Also, he really hoped we would find a way to watch it backwards and forwards simultaneously. These fascinating and/or foolish theories about The Shining, cooked up since its 1980 release, are ostensibly the subject of a new documentary, Room 237. My happy spin (there&#8217;s another) on Room 237  is that it’s a love story about movies and their meanings, a more mainstream, cinematic version of Geoff Dyer&#8217;s Zona, a book about Andrei Tarkovsky&#8217;s movie Stalker, which is really about that movie&#8217;s place in his life. Kubrick died in 1999. His obituaries were liberally spotted with words like perfectionist and recluse, and descriptions of his films tended to include cold, chilly and icy, suggesting that filming at a physical remove is almost always interpreted as creating an emotional distance as well. Watching Room 237 is to see how that supposed chilliness of Kubrick’s can actually heat people up.  Or, since director Rodney Ascher chooses not to feature talking heads, just a cacophony of audio interviews with five people who have, for the most part, very different interpretations of The Shining, to feel rather than see them heating up. (SEE: That time Stanley Kubrick landed a nude Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman on the cover of TIME) For anyone still reading who hasn’t seen The Shining, you’ll want to fix that, fast. At 33, the movie still feels as fresh, crisp and strangely exciting as a new dollar bill. Aspiring writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) decides to winter at the Overlook, a remote Colorado hotel, with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd), ignoring reports that the isolation drove at least one previous off-season caretaker to homicide. Ascher’s title comes from the hotel&#8217;s Room 237, where some very creepy stuff goes down. It’s an item of particular interest to the subtext seekers because in the original Stephen<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3535144&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/28/room-237-deconstructing-stanley/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/still2.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/still2.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/still2.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Room 237 - Tape</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Admission: Grating on a Curve</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/21/admission-grating-on-a-curve/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/21/admission-grating-on-a-curve/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:00:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Admission]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paul Rudd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tina fey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3534638</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Tina Fey may be our most reluctant movie star. That smirk of hers always suggests a joke is in the offing, and if her work on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock have taught us anything, it is that the joke will usually kill. But when Fey is trying to convey serious emotions, as occasionally demanded by her role as beleaguered Princeton admissions officer Portia Nathan in the quasi-comedy Admission, the smirk hovers — but only barely. Whether it’s in a necking scene with co-star Paul Rudd or a contemplative moment about the child Portia gave up for adoption 18 years earlier, there’s this sense that Fey might at any moment break the fourth wall, turn toward the audience and say, &#8220;Me doing sexy and somber. I know. Right?&#8221; As an audience, we’ve made it clear that we love and admire Fey. She may not have always looked like a movie star, but she does now. Perhaps not the way Naomi Watts looks like a star, but Hollywood has plenty of history with women who have sharp, strong features: Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep — the list goes on. Yet Fey remains a smart performer with a limited (if still untapped) range. In non-comedic scenes on the big screen, she conveys insecurity. But the truth is, she&#8217;s so appealing that I didn’t mind sitting through Admission, another formulaic spin on Hollywood&#8217;s 21st century discovery, the mom-rom-com, with its disagreeable underlying messages about women, careers and motherhood. (MORE: Tina Fey Rocks On) Sex scenes and somber moments don’t exactly dominate Admission. In adapting the source material, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s much more thoughtful 2009 novel, director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and screenwriter Karen Croner (One True Thing) chose to play up the comic aspects of Portia’s story. Fey doesn&#8217;t have that much to do in the way of dramatic acting, although when she does, she makes even kissing Rudd seem like a task. There&#8217;s an eager, forced pep here, like you might see in an essay accompanying an application to a prestigious school like Princeton. When<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3534638&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/21/admission-grating-on-a-curve/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/4071-d022-00054-rcrop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/4071-d022-00054-rcrop.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/4071-d022-00054-rcrop.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Image: Admission</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Ginger &amp; Rosa: Best Friends. Forever?</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/15/ginger-rosa-best-friends-forever/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/15/ginger-rosa-best-friends-forever/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:02:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3534029</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Writer/director Sally Potter’s Ginger &#38; Rosa begins with a shot of Hiroshima, smoldering after the detonation of the nuclear bomb known as Little Boy, and then cuts to an English maternity ward where two women labor side by side, each alone in their pain until one reaches out to clutch the other’s hand. They both give birth to little girls, one Ginger (Elle Fanning), and the other Rosa (Alice Englert). As one might expect from a narrative setup like this, their lives remain intertwined.  The story picks up again shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Rosa now the stereotype of a wild child always in trouble, some of it academic: much of it having to do with boys, and the more dutiful Ginger remaining her fiercest advocate. Rosa&#8217;s mother, Anoushka (Jodhi May), abandoned by at least one man, cleans houses for a living and has no control over her daughter. Ginger has two parents, but what a pair. Her father, Roland (Allesandro Nivola) is constantly running around on her mother Natalie (Christina Hendricks of Man Men, who desperately needs help with her accent), once a promising painter, now bitterly focused on all the ways her husband disappoints her. No woman will blame her for this; handsome Roland is a pain in the arse. (READ: Richard Corliss on Elle Fanning in Somewhere.) During World War II, Roland registered as a conscientious objector, was sent to prison and wrote a manifesto called The Idea of Freedom. The very mention of it causes a hairy disarmament activist to practically genuflect in front of Ginger. That’s just a nickname, by the way, acquired because the girl has her mother&#8217;s flaming red hair. Roland, the pretentious twerp, named his daughter Africa — most of what plagues her comes direct from him and his ideology. “How can anyone really be happy when we know about the bomb?” Ginger asks him. She means this, with all her dear innocent teenaged heart. Roland looks at Ginger appraisingly, patronizingly. “You are a good girl,” he tells her. “You’re a born radical, unsurprisingly. ”The threat of nuclear war<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3534029&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/15/ginger-rosa-best-friends-forever/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ginger-and-rosa-2012-002_cmyk-e1363374963290.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ginger-and-rosa-2012-002_cmyk-e1363374963290.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ginger-and-rosa-2012-002_cmyk-e1363374963290.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Image: Ginger and Rosa</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: Strange Magic</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/14/the-incredible-burt-wonderstone-strange-magic/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/14/the-incredible-burt-wonderstone-strange-magic/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:30:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3533750</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Asked how he is, Vegas magician Burt Wonderstone answers “I am incredible” with smug glee; he considers this an utterly honest answer. The dorky abandon of this kind of low-level magic is what makes The Incredible Burt Wonderstone work. Not all the time, mind you, but enough to make me think this may be the kind of semi-bad, semi-inspired comedy that could not only stand repeated viewings but perhaps improve with them. The film, directed by TV veteran Don Scardino (30 Rock, Law &#38; Order) wavers between two goals, the first of which is the fairly tedious redemptive journey of Burt (Steve Carell), from a place of pompous piggery created by a decade of successfully headlining at Bally’s into a decent guy who believes in the transformative power of illusion in its purest form. We only know there’s decency under Burt&#8217;s spray tan, glittery costumes and rampant chauvinism because of the movie’s prologue in which he is bullied by the middle schoolers (in a nice bit of irony, the head bully is played by none other than Zachary Gordon, the Greg Heffley of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise) and neglected by his single mother. To be fair, on Burt’s birthday in 1982, she does give him the instructions for making his own cake (from a box) and an official Rance Holloway magic kit, complete with video featuring Rance (Alan Arkin), who is Burt&#8217;s idol. (READ: Time&#8217;s Mary Pols on Steve Carell as romantic lead.) The kit leads to Burt’s friendship with another put-upon child, Anton, who grows up to be Burt’s partner (played by Steve Buscemi) in the aforementioned Bally’s act, which combines the magic of a Siegfried and Roy with the sexualized showmanship of say, Tom Cruise’s Magnolia character Frank T.J. Mackey. After year’s of packing the house at Doug Munny’s (James Gandolfini) hotel, Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelton are facing dwindling audiences. Meanwhile, tensions between the old friends are rising, as exemplified by their dispute over possession of the adjective “incredible.” “It applies to both of us!” Anton says. “What a hateful<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3533750&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/14/the-incredible-burt-wonderstone-strange-magic/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/burtwonderstone.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/burtwonderstone.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/burtwonderstone.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">The Incredible Burt Wonderstone</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Beyond the Hills: A Neorealist Exorcist</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/08/beyond-the-hills-a-neorealist-exorcist/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/08/beyond-the-hills-a-neorealist-exorcist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:00:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beyond the Hills]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cristian Mungiu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romania]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3533274</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Beyond the Hills may be the best movie no one will want to see in 2013. Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian director who made the celebrated 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, has made a troubling thing to behold, a grueling but perfectly crafted story of religious faith versus human love. His is a tale of a struggle for compassion that dies in the face of fear, of good people who are also zealots making terrible choices in the name of salvation. Mungiu based his narrative (which won best screenplay at Cannes 2012) on actual events at a Moldavian monastery in 2005 involving a girl and an exorcism gone awry. (Do any exorcisms go well?) In his story, two girls who grew up together in a Romanian orphanage are reunited after some years apart. Alina (Cristina Flutur) has been living and working in Germany. She has returned to Romania to persuade her best and only friend Voichita (Cosmina Stratan, who has a sad little moon face like Christina Ricci) to move to Germany with her. But Voichita is now contentedly living the life of a novice nun at New Hill, an Orthodox convent. They seem to have had a sexual relationship in the past—Alina repeatedly asks to share a bed with Voichita and there are references to a man who abused orphans and took pornographic pictures of some or all of them, including Voichita—but it’s never clear whether the bond between them now is one of sexual love. Certainly both are psychologically damaged, and while one can take refuge only in her oldest friend, the other has taken refuge in God.“I love you too,” Voichita tells Alina. “But that can’t compare to the love of God.” See: Where Richard Corliss put Cristian Mungiu&#8217;s last film on his Top 10 of 2008 The love of God may be feeding Voichita and her fellow nuns emotionally, but it isn&#8217;t doing an adequate job in the bread and butter department. The convent is chronically short on funds and engaged in disappointing negotiations with the local bishop, who refuses to consecrate their<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3533274&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/08/beyond-the-hills-a-neorealist-exorcist/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ent_beyondthehills_0307.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ent_beyondthehills_0307.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ent_beyondthehills_0307.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Beyond the Hills</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Place at the Table: A Serving of Hard-to-Swallow Truths</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/01/a-place-at-the-table-a-serving-of-hard-to-swallow-truths/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/01/a-place-at-the-table-a-serving-of-hard-to-swallow-truths/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:55:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3532626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the more memorable scenes in Participant Media’s 2008 documentary Food Inc. involved the simple act of a family shopping in the fruit-and-vegetable aisle at the supermarket. They have diabetes medications to pay for, so their budget is tight. Broccoli and potatoes are better for them than fast food, but as they gauge the cost of those items, the burgers, fries and soda prove cheaper. And so goes the unfortunately typical American nutritional cycle: poor diet, declining health, less money to spend on better food. Food Inc. had a lot of other outrages to uncover, including meat production, corn subsidies, the struggles of small farmers, and the oppressive practices of corporate seed manufacturers, but Participant Media’s earnest new documentary A Place at the Table, a true companion piece to Food Inc., takes a closer look at the issues that faced that family. Issues that affect them and the vast segment of the population — an estimated 50 million men, women, and children — described by policy makers and advocates as “food insecure.” The term &#8220;food insecure&#8221; is widely used, but what a lousy term for hungry, with its whiff of the clinical, and a phrasing that speaks to neurosis rather than the practical. I suppose it beats “meal-challenged.” The definition applies to anyone who at any time wonders where their next meal will come from. Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush include interviews with an array of talking heads including celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, who is married to Silverbush; Mariana Chilton, the founder of Witnesses to Hunger; nutrition policy leader Marion Nestle; Dr. J. Larry Brown, author of Living Hungry in America; and Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved. Actor Jeff Bridges, the founder of the End Hunger Network, makes a passionate plea for awareness, imploring the audience to consider this an issue of patriotism (“How do you envision your country? Do you envision it a country where one in four of the kids are hungry?”). T Bone Burnett and The Civil Wars provide the soundtrack. It’s a classy, articulate and predictable group of concerned<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3532626&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/01/a-place-at-the-table-a-serving-of-hard-to-swallow-truths/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Movies</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/61.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/61.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/61.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">A PLACE AT THE TABLE</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Jack the Giant Slayer: Fee-Fi, Ho-Hum</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/28/jack-the-giant-slayer-fee-fi-ho-hum/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/28/jack-the-giant-slayer-fee-fi-ho-hum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:30:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3532460</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Jack the Giant Slayer, a retelling of the fairy tale typically known by the far less macho-sounding Jack and the Beanstalk or Jack and the Magic Beans, opens with a lengthy assault of noise (aural and visual) and clumsy computer-generated imagery. The movie feels so much like a video game that your fingers instinctively itch to do something, though a Jack video game isn&#8217;t one we&#8217;d really want to play. That’s sort of fitting for a fairy tale that always felt like the B-side of Red Hiding Hood; a tale of agriculture gone awry was not nearly as captivating as a wolf in grandma’s bed. Director Bryan Singer’s movie seems unlikely to transform Jack into an A-lister, despite a star-filled cast that includes Ewan McGregor and Stanley Tucci and as well as Warm Bodies star Nicholas Hoult in the title role. It does improve after the initial assault, with a few scenes reminiscent of the comic vibe of The Princess Bride and story elements that could have been inspired by the brilliant chapter of C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, where Eustace and Jill are almost turned into meat pies by giants. But the very capacity of today’s technology, enabling Singer to build enormity of scale through special effects, can pummel the heart out of a story. And that’s what happens here. The imposing  scale of the giants (and the beanstalk itself) might terrify children—my kid, presumably a member of the film&#8217;s intended audience, found the trailer so disturbing I opted not to bring him. And there’s such an artificiality to the whole enterprise that the humans themselves almost seem digital, as if they’ve been Polar Express-ed. Nicholas Hoult, who starred in X-Men: First Class, produced by Singer, plays Jack, the dreamy farm boy who screws up when he’s sent to sell a horse and comes back with a handful of beans. (They&#8217;re magic, of course.) Hoult is about the most interesting thing in the movie, although perhaps not for the right reasons. He spent part of his formative years in the company of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3532460&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/28/jack-the-giant-slayer-fee-fi-ho-hum/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/untitled-11.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/untitled-11.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/untitled-11.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Image: Jack the Giant Slayer</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Snitch: The Rock in a Hard Place</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/22/snitch-the-rock-in-a-hard-place/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/22/snitch-the-rock-in-a-hard-place/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:00:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3531326</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The likeable Dwayne Johnson tries so hard to be taken seriously in the ponderous and preposterous drama Snitch that it hurts to watch him in much the same way it hurts to watch the weightlifting competition at the summer Olympics. Playing John Matthews, a squeaky clean small-business owner in the construction trade who improbably goes undercover in the drug world to save his son, Johnson struggles to heft emotions into the air, pauses to be admired, and then drops them with a thud. The former professional wrestler and football player  makes a more convincing Tooth Fairy than he does an avenging father. But Snitch wasn’t going to be good no matter what Johnson did; it is so poorly directed that even Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon, playing a shrewish federal prosecutor, comes off as a hack straight off a soap opera. Director and co-writer (and longtime stuntman) Ric Roman Waugh seems to be enjoying a new career as a director of one-word titled flicks (his last was Felon; his next, Currency) that deal with an ordinary Joe being oppressed by the government’s unfair laws. If Snitch makes a case for anything other than action sequences that utilize shiny new semis—Waugh shoots John Matthews’ 18-wheeler plowing through obstacles as if it were a magnificent elephant on a freeway rampage—it is the easing of drug laws so that nice young men like John’s son Jason (Rafi Gavron) aren’t derailed on their way to college. (Read: Dwayne Johnson&#8217;s plans for the future.) Poor Jason. One day he’s sitting on the couch Skyping with a friend who wants to send him a package of drugs and resisting mightily, even though gee, it would be fun to do some Ecstasy with his girlfriend. He has about five seconds to drool over the clutch-purse-sized package of MDMA that arrives some days later, before his face is being pressed into asphalt and an undercover agent (Barry Pepper, sporting a goatee that would embarrass even Brad Pitt) is leading him off to prison. Pressured by the DEA, his buddy gave him up. According to Jason’s gloomy attorney (David<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3531326&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/22/snitch-the-rock-in-a-hard-place/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/snitch1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/snitch1.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/snitch1.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Snitch</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Safe Haven: Something Borrowed, Something &#8216;Boo&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/14/safe-haven-something-borrowed-somthing-boo/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/14/safe-haven-something-borrowed-somthing-boo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Pols</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3530436</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The 1991 film Sleeping with the Enemy featured Julia Roberts as Laura Burney, a nice young woman trying to restart her life after escaping an abusive and controlling husband. Living under an assumed identity, Laura finds love in a town bucolic enough to have a Fourth of July day parade, although the bad husband eventually shows up and memorably tidies up her bathroom (most women dream of this) before tries to kill her and her new beau. The movie was an adaptation of a novel by Nancy Prince. In Safe Haven, Lasse Hallstrom’s second adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks’ book (the first was 2010&#8242;s Dear John) cute Katie (Julianne Hough) goes through almost exactly the same motions, although absent any compulsive towel straightening and with the addition of a supernatural twist. The movies are so alike it’s a wonder someone hasn’t sued, although it seems unlikely that Hough is on the kind of trajectory Roberts, fresh off Pretty Woman, was at that point. Not to heap praise on Sleeping with the Enemy, but of all the movies Roberts made in her 20s, none exploited her talent for displaying vulnerability more effectively than this TV-movie woman-in-peril thriller. Hough, sturdy and placid, is no trembling doe on the run and she fails to make Katie compelling or even interesting. The greatest concern Safe Haven evokes is for the innocents around her who may suffer at the hands of the brutish police detective (David Lyons) chasing her. (READ: TIME&#8217;s interview with Julianne Hough) Katie arrives in Southport, North Carolina via an Atlanta-bound bus, having escaped some domestic mess in Boston—an unidentified man is left bloodied on a floor as a brunette Katie flees to an older woman’s house. By the time she boards the bus she’s a blonde with a buttery bob (her boxed dye produces gorgeous highlights) and clutching a plastic bag full of clothes. Katie has no particular destination, but she finds something warm and inviting in Southport. How could anyone resist a seaside town where a cup of Ethiopian coffee costs only 97<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3530436&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/02/14/safe-haven-something-borrowed-somthing-boo/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Review</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/movies/review-movies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/m_015_26300.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/m_015_26300.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/m_015_26300.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Image: Safe Haven</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/869f3470b9c63caef0aff35e1ccfab15?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">marypols</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
	</channel>
</rss>