The Middlebrow

First entry in this category is The Next Three Days. Russell Crowe plays a college professor whose wife (played very well by Elizabeth Banks) is accused, convicted and jailed for murder. The movie first goes back three years to the night of the murder and Crowe’s efforts to play by the rules, filing endless appeals, then three months to the time at which he decides to break her out of jail, and finally to the three days of the actual breakout. The movie is conventional in almost every way, but what makes it work — to the limited extent that it does work — are the setbacks. We expect some sort of master genius plan, smoothly-oiled action, and so on. But what is striking is how often Crowe hits a dead end, or appears close to giving up. He has one plan for using a “bump key” and when that plan fails and he narrowly escapes detection, he rushes out of the prison and throws up, so close was he to leaving their young son with both parents in prison. The performances are all quietly impressive, from the multiple scenes in which Banks and Crowe try to behave normally as the appeals fail and a life in jail looks more likely, to the work of Brian Dennehy as Crowe’s father, and a cameo by Liam Neeson as an ex-con was instructs Crowe on prison breaks.

It would have been very easy to make this unwatchable, but it is worth a rental.

Tron: Legacy

Twenty years ago, Sam Flynn’s father, the legendary electronics wizz and video games pioneer, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared. Sam (Garrett Hedlund) grows up angry and rebellious, and (this will prove fortuitous) very good on a motorcycle, until one day, a mysterious message sends him looking for his father. Sure enough, dad has been trapped in “the grid” all this time, and now father and son have to work together to escape and prevent an army of surprisingly life-like “programs” from crossing over into the real world and taking it over. Along the way, there is a lot of 3D and special effects, only one real equivalent to the electronic racing game that was the centerpiece of the original, but an awful lot of nifty chase scenes. It is all leavened with some unconvincing philosophical discussion of Kevin Flynn’s search for perfection, of the new beings, able to exist in both worlds, that he helped bring into being, and the kind of awkward conversation which passes for father and son bonding. Continue reading Tron: Legacy