Annette Bening and Julianne Moore’s long-term relationship is tested when their children track down their biological father in The Kids Are All Right.

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MOVIE REVIEWS (Week of July 16)

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

Starring Julianne Moore, Annette Bening
Directed by Lisa Cholodenko
In the opening minutes of her latest feature film, co-writer and director Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon) seems intent on pushing as many buttons as possible. Teenagers rail prescription medication, lesbians try to get off by watching gay male porn, and some graphic interracial sex is tossed into the mix just for kicks. Given these bold opening salvos, it’s a little surprising that what eventually unfolds is an honest and heartfelt examination of long-term relationships.

Devoted partners Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) find their world turned upside down when their teenaged kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), insist on meeting their sperm-donor father. Much to their moms’ chagrin, the kids and Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a free-spirited restaurateur, forge an immediate connection. Nic is left all the more on edge when Paul hires Jules to landscape his yard and a strong sexual chemistry develops between them.

Cholodenko, along with co-writer Stuart Blumberg, has crafted a sharp-witted and insightful script that affords each cast member the opportunity to play to his or her strength. Bening is exceptional as the family’s tightly wound breadwinner and disciplinarian. When she’s pushed past her breaking point, it’s utterly heart-wrenching to behold. While we’ve certainly seen Moore’s spacey shtick before, it’s been a spell since we’ve witnessed the searing intensity she brings to the film’s central speech. Meanwhile, Ruffalo is ideal as the rough-hewn charmer who means no harm but seems incapable of foreseeing any consequences to his actions.

Unabashedly comic and emotionally messy, The Kids Are All Right ratchets up the tension on its players right until its three-hankie finale. All told, it’s a tight and timely piece of storytelling and one of this summer’s only genuine crowd-pleasers. —Curtis Woloschuk

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

Starring Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel
Directed by Jon Turtletaub
Director Jon Turtletaub, über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and actor Nicolas Cage kicked off a blockbuster franchise with National Treasure, inspiring kids to seek anthropological action and adventure by playing fast and loose with history. The trio offer another unruly education, this time in history and science, with the occasionally magical Disney fantasy, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Cage plays Balthazar, one of legendary sorcerer Merlin’s three apprentices. He’s tasked with finding Merlin’s eventual heir, who will help defeat the evil sorceress Morgana, herself trapped in a Russian nesting doll inside the body of Balthazar’s love, Veronica. After roughly 1,300 years, and two tries, 20-year-old Dave (a reliably charming Jay Baruchel) proves to be Merlin’s successor and the only one capable of defeating Morgana. Of course, a few things stand in the way: Horvath (Alfred Molina), Merlin’s evil third apprentice, and Becky (Teresa Palmer) the blond bombshell distracting Dave from his magic training.

Sorcerer Cage and apprentice Baruchel have nice chemistry, riffing off each other with funny line deliveries and jolting physical comedy chops, but everything is strangely safe. Turtletaub shies away from letting his actors really go for it. In Balthazar, Cage could have created a character that rivaled Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow. Instead, we get a 1,000-year-old wizard with a penchant for long, leather coats wearing a wig that resembles the unfortunate coif of Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger.

Many of the action sequences are fantastic, from a beautifully choreographed Chinese street festival where a dancing dragon transforms into a real dragon, to an array of magical tricks that prove genuinely thrilling (the so-called “mirror world,” though briefly seen, is brilliant). But the action stalls and starts with all the finesse of a birthday party magician. Turtletaub achieves some elements of wonder and wow, but his Apprentice never quite proves spellbinding. —Andrea Warner

INCEPTION

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan’s sixth feature is his first not to be adapted from an existing work. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Inception brims with originality. Parallels can be drawn to cult favourite Dark City, and an extended Arctic chase proves more than a little reminiscent of the opening to The Spy Who Loved Me. Nevertheless, in the cerebral filmmaker’s capable hands, this sci-fi mind-bender proves to be a genuine cinematic experience and one of the few summer blockbusters not to treat its audience like complete idiots.

As with all of Nolan’s films, moral ambiguity is the order of the day here. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) leads an industrial espionage unit who procure privileged information in the most elaborate of ways: “Architect” Ariadne (Ellen Page) creates a familiar dream world in which to trap their victim, and Cobb and his cohorts (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy) extract information from their mark’s unsuspecting subconscious. Things turn shadowy when a particular client, Saito (Ken Watanabe), asks Cobb to change the rules of the game and plant an idea in the mind of a rival (Cillian Murphy).

The high-concept reverse-heist flick culminates with a climax that unfolds simultaneously in multiple levels of reality, one of which is zero gravity. Nolan orchestrates the chaos with visual panache and the assured hand of consummate storyteller, keeping his narrative hurtling forward when it could just as easily be falling to pieces.

Alas, the writer-director’s inspired alternate reality isn’t populated by equally engaging inhabitants. Spouting functional dialogue and inhabiting cursorily sketched characters, the actors are never quite able to convincingly lose themselves in their roles. Consequently, a viewer is never capable of completely surrendering to Nolan’s “shared dream.” Instead, moviegoers must be satisfied with simply being knocked for a considerable loop. —Curtis Woloschuk