"Limitless"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
"Limitless" is a drug movie with Bradley Cooper as a chemically enhanced knowledge junkie. Imagine Keith Richards with a four digit IQ and you get the idea.
Cooper plays a slacker writer with a crappy apartment, an ex-wife and soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Like the rest of us he's only using 20 per cent of his brain, and often, not even that. His life changes when he begins taking a drug that allows him to access the other 80 per cent.
Suddenly he can learn languages in hours and can retrieve everything he has ever read, seen or thought about. His intellectual ability is, as the title says, limitless. Also limitless are the people who will do almost anything to lay their hands on the drug.
"Limitless" begins with a premise that would make Timothy Leary proud and becomes a Nancy Reagan "Just Say No" drama before it winds down to an ambiguous ending. I wasn't exactly expecting "Reefer Madness," but I would have liked a clearer point of view.
This is, after all a drug movie. It's a drug movie with a twist mind you, but at its heart it's a movie about addiction and the effects of drug use. In this Charlie Sheen world there are enough images of drug abuse out there for this one to be noncommittal.
But that's a quibble when the movie is as entertaining as "Limitless." Despite the limits of the story it's a whole lot of fun. The drug haze scenes are effective and the 18 hour blackout sequence is a tour de force, complete with Bruce Lee flashbacks.
Neil Burger only oversteps when he tries to illustrate Cooper's newfound intelligence.
No matter, the movie is so adrenaline-paced the gimmicky scenes are over before they have much of a chance to register. The movie is as jittery as the drug addicted lead character.
Cooper is in virtually every scene and proves that he's leading man enough to carry a movie, charming enough to keep us interested and has the chops to pull off the drama.
I'm not sure I could have accepted him in a gritty drug movie like "Last Train to Brooklyn," but as the upwardly mobile brainiac with an edge he's perfectly cast.
"Limitless" will be a good gap filler for Cooper fans who are anxiously awaiting the release of "The Hangover 2" scheduled for this May.
"Paul"
Richard's Review: 3 stars
"Paul," the new comedy from "Sean of the Dead" duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, is a something-for-everyone movie. Sci-fi, check. Buddy comedy, chase scenes, fish-out-of-water and romance? Check, check, check and check.
Pegg and Frost play British sci-fi nerds exploring "the less touristy side of the American Midwest." Starting at nerd central, ComicCon, they plan to RV it to every UFO landing site they can find -- the Black Mailbox, Area 51 -- but their trip is sidelined when they come across an actual alien, Paul (voice of Seth Rogen), a foulmouthed ET on the lam.
For 60 years after crash landing on Earth he lived at an army base thinking he was a guest. When he realized he was a prisoner, he says, he made a run for it. Pursued by federal agents (Jason Bateman, Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) and the angry father of a girl they accidentally kidnap (Kristen Wiig) they try and make it back to Paul's mothership and his ride back to the safety of his own planet.
"Paul," which was written by Pegg and Frost, lacks the laugh-out-loud-every-two-minute rhythm of their previous movies, "Sean of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," but it has a lot of heart. Pegg and Frost have great chemistry -- they're kind of the Laurel and Hardy of geek culture -- and are absolutely likeable in the leads. They are responsible for 90 per cent of what makes "Paul" so agreeable.
The alien is amusing and way less of a frat boy character than the trailer would have you believe. They've also given him a cool backstory -- he was the model for all big eyed pop culture extraterrestrials and consulted with Spielberg on the making of ET -- and while Rogen's voice work is OK and the computer face rather expressive, he's not as much fun as Pegg and Frost. Ditto Wiig who is stuck with running gags involving Charles Darwin -- born again Christians beware! You will not be pleased -- and loads of creative swearing that never tickles the funny bone.
Despite its downsides -- some misfired gags and a conventional story structure -- "Paul" is satisfying not because of its homage to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" or the excellent call-back to "Aliens" but because of the relationships and bonds that form between the characters. I can't help but think that "Paul" might have had more of a funny edge had "Sean of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" director Edgar Wright had been at the helm. But as it stands "Paul" is an enjoyable diversion.
"The Lincoln Lawyer"
Richard's Review: 3 stars
"The Lincoln Lawyer" feels like a throwback. It echoes an era when courtroom procedurals featured anti-heroes and more turns than a twisted mountain road and to a time when its star Matthew McConaughey made good movies.
Based on a novel by American crime writer Michael Connelly, "The Lincoln Lawyer" is the story of Mickey Haller (McConaughey), a wheeling dealing L.A. criminal defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln sedan with the vanity plate NTGUILTY. He's a bottom-feeder who values money more than ethics until he takes a case involving a dead prostitute, a head strong client, a legal conundrum and his very survival -- both personally and professionally.
The first fifteen minutes of "The Lincoln Lawyer" aren't all that promising. McConaughey appears to be less a character than a collection of charming tics; the kind of work he's spent the last few years doing in forgettable films like "The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" and "Fools Gold." At least he doesn't resort to taking his shirt off, which, while pleasing to some, is the cheapest way for him to fill the screen.
The winning smile and movie star charm, however, begin to fade as McConaughey drops the smarm and actually begins to explore the character and the story's twists and turns. The deeper we get into the story the more entertaining and edge of your seat it becomes leading up to a surprising ending.
"The Lincoln Lawyer" will remind you of "Primal Fear" and feels like something that might be more at home on cable TV than on the big screen, but it is a well written, edgy drama with good performances and a welcome return to form from McConaughey.
