Eisenberg plays James Brennan who comes home to live with his parents after he graduates from Oberlin.  With a liberal arts degree (hey, I’ve got one of those!) he find himself either under or overqualified for anything that might resemble gainful employment and ends up getting a job at the local eponymous carnival.  Rather than zany, the cast of characters James encounters at Adventureland are for the most part morose and malcontent.  He quickly befriends his coworker, Joel (Martin Starr) who has a degree in Russian literature and develops an immediate crush on Em (Kristin Stewart), a beautiful, sharp and troubled NYU student who took a job at the carnival to escape a tumultuous home life. 

Upon reflection, these characters are easy to peg, but the way the story develops wasn’t what I expected and I found it moving in a way that the vast majority of movies, whether they are meant to target me as a demographic, are not.  The summer progresses typically, the carnys (sp?) falling in and out of love, drinking excessively, smoking a lot of marijuana and generally just trying to figure out life.  Oh god, I think I have been pandered to.

SNL’s Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are hilarious as the couple that runs the carnival.  Their straightfaced enthusiasm and confusion is priceless.  Martin Starr, who was unknown to me before, was also notable in his performance as the geeky but sweet friend and Matt Bush as the asshole friend leftover from grade school was iconically funny.  If this movie were to see the same kind of success as something like Napoleon Dynamite (I’m sure it won’t, though I would be shocked to learn the comparison wasn’t tossed around at any point) then it would be Bush’s ball punching, sweatband wearing Tommy Frigo that people would undoubtedly latch on to.

I was planning on including a paragraph here about how the female characters were all somewhat detestable, but that really wasn’t the case, I think I just want it to be.  Actually, Em is probably the most complex character in the film and even though she does make poor choices and behave irrationally at moments, that is easily attributable to the fact that she is human, not that she is a woman.  This can often be a problem with feminist theorizing: it can backfire and have you (me) end up demonizing women instead of…you know, not doing that which is the whole point.

There were points where I felt like Adventureland was trying a little too hard and the peripheral characters were a little cliche, from Ryan Reynolds’ philandering maintenance man to Lisa P, the super-hot chick who is also super-Christian but there was something truthful and flawed about the way that James and Em negotiate their summer and each other that is touching and sweet.   The poster and the trailer are very misleading — this isn’t a zany summer stoner comedy, though there are moments of that.  It’s much more angsty and dark than that, but that’s a good thing.

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 year old boy living in what seems to be the projects of a cold and dreary Swedish town (are there Swedish towns that are not like this?).  For some reason, despite his small stature and oh-so-flattering white blonde Dutch boy hair, he is bullied by the other boys in his class and, because he has no father figure in his life, can’t bring himself to stand up to them.  One cold and dreary evening in the courtyard of his horribly depressing apartment complex, he meets the beautiful but strange Eli (Lena Leandersson) and they form a tenative friendship.

Meanwhile, their sleepy (and cold and dreary) town is falling victim to a rash of inexplicable murders in which the victims are suspended upside down and their blood drained.  Oskar is morbidly fascinated by this turn of events – until he realizes that Eli is causing them because she is, in fact, a vampire.

The unfortunate thing about this movie seems to be that there are two films here that appeal to different sensibilities.  First, the element of two innocent children who are on the fringes of society developing a bond of trust and friendship and experiencing tenative intimacy.  The second is a gruesome vampire story with attack scenes that verge on cartoonish in their use of CGI and buckets of blood.  Though the movie is very pretty, it’s hard to not be taken out of the story and forget your admiration for the velvety cool colors and the wide-eyed beauty of the littlest vampire when someone is being attacked by computer generated cats.  I think less ambition in terms of the violence could have served the film well, though overall it was very well done and genuinely creepy.

The much delayed ensemble romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You, based on the book of the same name that has been dog-eared by cat-owning women across the world, is finally coming out February 6th.  The poster went online today.  Hmm…I wonder what this movie is going to be like…

Check it out, after the jump.

I don’t know, do you think maybe some attractive people are going to fall  in and out of love and learn some life lessons along the way?  I DON’T KNOW, WHAT DO YOU THINK??

I understand that they want people to get what kind of movie it is, but for all the millions of dollars spent on movie marketing they can’t get any better than a photo collage that a 5th  grader could decoupage on foamboard?  Yawn.

At least this one is a little creative:

All that being said, if He’s Just Not That Into Her, why does everyone look so damn happy?

Quantum of Solace takes the Bond character that so many people were drawn to in Casino Royale and lets him keep being awesome without going soft.  He’s learned his lesson now, and even better — he’s out for revenge.  This time around, Bond wants the truth about his dead lover and will stop at nothing to get it!  YES!

Unfortunately, some bad guys get in the way.  The movie falls right in line with so many recent films and even albums that have been trying their best to cash in on the ubiquitous “greening” of everything.  Yes, in 2008, the bond villains are eco-terrorists with a head honcho, one Dominic Greene (Eco-terrorist named Greene?  No Comment.) played by the surprisingly short, but still somehow appealing Mathieu Amalric (who is also great at playing a guy who can only blink to communicate).  While Bond tracks down Greene, has a tryst with a tall redhead, tries to get to the bottom of what happened with Vesper and constantly runs afoul of M., he also keeps encountering the luscious and exotic Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko, who had a scene stealing cameo in Max Payne, which I actually saw).  At first, he thinks he has rescued her from the grips of a deposed Bolivian dictator, but then he learns that she is on her own mission of revenge and doesn’t need rescuing at all (Ok, maybe a tiiiiiny bit of rescuing).  YES, YES, YES!

With thrilling, well shot action sequences, steely, compelling performances and an interesting if not entirely awesome plot, Quantum of Solace won’t make you fall in love with James Bond all over again.  But it’s OK, because you’re already seduced from before.

And no, for the record, they never explain what the fuck the title is supposed to mean and yes, I think it’s a shitty title.

(1) Elation? Michael Cera in a movie directed by Edgar Wright in which “a young slacker [...]meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can only win her heart by battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends. ” Oh yes, tell me more, Hollywood Reporter!

(2) Confusion? Anton Yelchin in the new Terminator movie opposite Christian Bale? Why put so much sexy oppposite so much mediocre? Why why why?

(3) Trepidation? Michael Cera is also slated to be in Youth in Revolt, directed by Chuck & Buck/The Good Girl’s Miguel Arteta, but written by the awfully untalented Gustin Nash who wrote the truly horrible Charlie Bartlett starring the way overhyped Anton Yelchin! Will it be good? Can Mikey save it? Why isn’t it written by Mike White so I can be truly excited about it??

This is why I don’t read the trades anymore…I’m just not cut out for these kinds of emotional rollercoasters.