Ralph Fiennes didn’t take the easy route with his directorial debut. An adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s trickiest plays, Coriolanus (Weinstein/Anchor Bay) drops the military tragedy into a war-shattered modern Eastern Europe. As a director, Fiennes makes the most of the setting. As a lead, he turns in a remarkable performance of a man who discovers his humanity slowly, and to his great disadvantage…
For a generic thriller, a generic title: Man On A Ledge (Summit) stars Sam Worthington as a man on a ledge, and leaves viewers to wonder why he’s out there, whether or not they really care, and what they need to pick up at the grocery store later. Strong character actors like Elizabeth Banks, Ed Harris, and Anthony Mackie fill out the cast, but Worthington’s desperate bid to prove his innocence strains credulity from the start and just keeps on straining…
The tremendously unlikely thriller Gone (Summit) has three things going for it: the eerie Portland-area woodland settings, a director (Heitor Dhalia) who understands the value of stillness, and Amanda Seyfried’s weepy-but-determined performance as a woman who may be crazy and delusional, or may be the only hope her kidnapped sister has for survival. But these three elements have a wearyingly uphill battle against a laughably implausible plot and a trashy, exploitative premise…
Seann William Scott has long specialized in lovable dimwits, and in that regard, he’s found the role of a lifetime as a hockey enforcer in Goon (Magnolia), an amiable Canadian comedy in the vulgar Slapshot tradition. Scott plays a Massachusetts bouncer whose prodigious gift for thuggery earns him some attention from a minor-league hockey franchise, despite his deficiencies as a skater. His instinct to protect his teammates with his fists becomes, in this context, surprisingly sweet, and Scott’s disarming performance is a big reason for that.