It&#39;s A Turd! It&#39;s Plain! <em>Man Of Steel</em>, Reviewed.

1. On the surface, it seems obvious why you'd attempt to reboot the Superman franchise using the Christopher Nolan-Batman model. Nolan's Dark Knight films are terrific, brooding and powerful, and, oh by the way, they grossed a combined $2.5 billion worldwide. But their trying to make a tortured-superhero Batman movie out of Superman was, frankly, a lousy idea. Batman is a hero, sure, but a twisted, human one; by the end of the second film, you're legitimately wondering, in name of his personal vengeance and obsessions, whether or not Batman is doing more harm than good. That is not who Superman is. Superman is brightness, goodness, a shining example for humanity to aspire to. Superman needs to have a light touch. Man of Steel does not have a light touch. Man of Steel is loud and bludgeoning and exactly the wrong kind of Superman movie to make.

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Joss Whedon Enjoys His Job More Than You Do

The best part about Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing is that it's not particularly proud of itself for adapting Shakespeare. Filmmakers tend to tackle the Bard out of hubris (the Mel Gibson Hamlet), an attempt to be some sort of authority (Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet), a flamboyant go-for-batshit-nutty-broke spirit…

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What Happened To The Jokes? <em>The Hangover, Part III,</em> Reviewed.

1. The Hangover, Part III is better than Part II, but not by much, and really only because it didn't just recycle, almost beat for beat, the plot of the first film. The plot it lands on this time isn't much better, though, and all told, it doesn't have much more energy than that film did. The two sequels to The Hangover don't even have the energy to try to recapture the lunacy of original; they can barely muster up enough juice just to bring the cast back together into the same shot every once in a while. These movies have become such a franchise—it amazed me to see a Hangover-themed slot machine at a St. Louis riverboat casino—that people are starting to forget what made the first film so funny and so fresh. These two sequels are doing their part in that as well.

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Before Midnight Is Darker Than You Want It To Be

Did you want to learn that Jesse and Celine, the couple we fell in love with as they fell in love with each other in the Richard Linklater films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, have become cantankerous, unhappy middle-aged jerks? That their love has curdled into passive-aggressive routine and barely disguised…

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Connnnnnnn! <em>Star Trek Into Darkness</em>, Reviewed.

1. I've never gotten the sense that J.J. Abrams really cares all that much about the Star Trek franchise. Abrams has said that he was far more into Star Wars—as any reasonable person would be—and that his first, well-received Star Trek was more about rebooting a franchise than any particular passion he had for the original brand. The first film, thusly, has a shake-it-up quality that's sort of irresistible, sci-fi nerds both adhering to and upending the expectations of fanboys. (They even make a "Beam Me Up, Scotty" joke.) It was fun, if ultimately a bit empty. But I'm not sure you can pull off an improved sequel—almost an expectation, in the world of The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2—without some real, deep affection for the material. Abrams is going to direct one of the upcoming Star Wars films, and in Star Trek Into Darkness, you can almost feel him rushing through this to get to something he really cares about. Abrams is too natural an entertainer to let anything get boring, but this one, in many ways, feels like everyone just going through the paces.

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Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Crap. The Great Gatsby, Reviewed.

1. I'm confused at to what Baz Luhrmann, the crazy over-the-top director of Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet, would possibly want with The Great Gatsby. Well, I see why he might like it as a theoretical challenge: What ambitious filmmaker (and Luhrmann is nothing if not ambitious) wouldn't want to try to solve the…

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Iron Man 3, Reviewed.

1. Other than that terrible Todd Phillips-Zach Galifianakis comedy Due Date, Robert Downey Jr. hasn't played a character other than Tony Stark or Sherlock Holmes in four years. Of all the actors who could have ended up settling into tentpole action star roles? Downey? I caught Robert Altman's Short Cuts again…

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