This 'Wonder Wheel' turns lame

Woody Allen's latest sinks toward the bottom of the director's large filmography.

At times, Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel feels more like a play than a movie -- and not a very good play at that, something along the lines of cut-rate Eugene O'Neill.

As with most Allen movies, a nicely composed surface masks the paucity of the drama. Put another way, the peripherals are top notch. Vittorio Storaro's cinematography and Santo Loquasto's production design skillfully blend beauty and nostalgia in creating the world of Coney Island during the 1950s. Visual competence goes only so far, and the overall effect of Wonder Wheel tracks toward abiding unpleasantness.

Allen breaks little new ground as he tackles familiar themes in this aggressively retro setting: love, betrayal and the way sexual desire and love can blur, creating uncomfortable emotional smudges for all involved.

If you want to spend time wondering how all this relates to Allen's well-publicized private life, have it. But taken on its own terms, the movie represents a misbegotten journey into a lower-class hell of the 1950s. The movie feels strained, artificial and tawdry.

Wonder Wheel revolves around a massively disappointed woman named Ginny (Kate Winslet). After a disastrous first marriage (she cheated), Ginny married Humpty (Jim Belushi). Humpty provides Ginny with stability and safety. He more or less tolerates Ginny's young son (Jack Gore), who happens to be a pyromaniac. The kid likes to set fires.

The arrival of Humpty's daughter (Juno Temple) from a previous marriage upsets Ginny's applecart, which isn't all that sturdy to being with. Humpty, a raging alcoholic who's no longer drinking, still manages to rage. He's Ralph Kramden without the laughs.

Juno's Carolina has been estranged from Humpty, but she fears reprisals from the mobster husband she's fleeing. Humpty warned his daughter against marrying a mob guy, but Carolina didn't listen. It doesn't take long for Humpty to crack; he loves Carolina too much permanently to reject her. Besides, she has no place else to turn.

All of these characters are penned up in a shack overlooking the Coney Island boardwalk, where Humpty operates the merry-go-round and Ginny works as a waitress in a clam house.

Allen sets us up for a kitchen sink drama that's intermittently narrated by a Coney Island lifeguard (Justin Timberlake), a dreamer. Timberlake's character aspires to be a playwright. He also starts an affair with Ginny, who once had acting ambitions and who imagines that she might find a better life with Timberlake's Mickey. She separates herself from reality by claiming that she's only "acting" the part of a waitress.

The actors are often stuck with dialogue that might better have suited Allen's contemporary New York characters, but, in this instance, turns them into labored fictional creations. Temple does her best to be young and flighty. The usually wonderful Winslet elbows her way into an unappealing version of a Blanch DuBois-scale unraveling. Timberlake does his best to portray an Army veteran who dropped out of NYU but doesn't take easily to the role. Belushi either pleads Humpty's case or bellows like a wounded ox.

I'd put Wonder Wheel near the bottom of Allen's abundant filmography. The story isn't very good and it leaves a bad aftertaste when it's done. I'd call that a double whammy of badness.

For a folksinger, life is no picnic

Inside Llewyn Davis -- the latest from the Coen brothers -- is plenty bitter, deliciously so.

An unlikable main character. A dated '60s folk-music scene. Rooms full of cigarette smoke. Fringe life in New York City during a miserably cold winter.

Those are just some of the ingredients that help make Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Daviss the cinematic equivalent of stepping into a puddle of slush. Now, if you know and appreciate the strange, funny and chilled sensibilities found in most Coen brothers' movies, you'll understand that I mean that as a compliment.

Inside Llewyn Davis defies the odds and turns out to be a tribute to the Coens' ability to tease out the humor in almost any situation, including one in which their main character suffers a series of misfortunes.

I particularly loved the fact that the folkies we meet during the course of Inside Llewyn Davis are not burdened by anything as cliched as concern for their fellow inhabitants of the planet. They're a sometimes unpleasant group of struggling careerists, most of them waiting -- albeit unknowingly -- to be eclipsed by an emerging Bob Dylan, the artist who ultimately would leave them all behind.

Put another way: If you're looking for kumbaya fellowship, you'll want to stay outside Llewyn Davis -- far outside.

The Coens focus their acerbic attentions on Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a former seaman who's trying to establish himself as a viable solo act in the New York folk music scene. Llewyn's attempting to go it alone after his partner committed suicide. It's not like Llewyn has been toppled from a lofty perch, though: He and his partner weren't that big a deal anyway.

As played by Isaac, Llewyn is talented enough to be encouraged about his prospects. He has reason to see himself as an unrecognized artist. It's not until late in the movie that he meets a Chicago folk impresario (F. Murray Abraham) who tells him that he's got something -- but not enough to be a headliner.

And that's the rub: Llewyn's story is a grimly funny take on a proverbial frustration: "close, but no cigar."

So what does the title mean? What's inside Llewyn Davis? The way I read the movie and Isaac's masterfully dour performance, it's this: Llewyn thinks he's an artist. He thinks that he should be paid for his art. He refuses to perform like a trained seal, clapping his hands in hopes that someone throws him a fish. He's got standards -- even if no one else happens to give a damn about them.

As the story unfolds, Davis wanders around Manhattan looking for a place to crash. He imposes on Jean (Carey Mulligan), a former lover and singer who's now living with Jim (Justin Timberlake). Jean and Jim sing together, but their music isn't as soulful as Llewyn's.

To make matters worse, Jean has become pregnant and doesn't know if the baby is Llewyn's or Jim's. She's furious, a woman of blistering scorn.

In Llewyn Davis, the Coens have made a movie without much forward progress. Nothing momentous happens. While staying at Jean's apartment, Llewyn meets a strangely sincere soldier who also sings (Stark Sands) at the fabled Gaslight Cafe on weekends: He later tries to impose himself on a wannabe cowboy with a rumbling bass voice (Adam Driver).

Llewyn meets Driver's Al Cody at a recording session for a song he totally disdains: Written by Jim, it's called Please Mr. Kennedy, a ridiculous pop anthem that takes Kennedy to task for his interest in a reinvigorated space program.

When it comes to skewering a certain kind of upper Westside couple, the Coens show no mercy. Ethan Phillips plays a professor who's always happy to welcome Llewyn into his home. His wife (Robin Bartlett) likes to sing with Llewyn and who has the aura of a worn but comfortable piece of furniture.

For this duo of West Siders, Llewyn's the weird, artsy guy who might be asked to entertain other dinner guests, and you get the feeling that Llewyn disrepsects the couple's tolerance, generosity and boundless capacity to endure his impositions.

To make matters worse, Llewyn loses the couple's cat, a pet whose name clues us into the nature of the Coens's enterprise. (See movie. Discover name.)

The movie supposedly was inspired by the story of real-life folk singer Dave Van Ronk, but its origins don't really matter. You'll get the drift as the Coens unfurl their deadpan take on the early '60s.

Nowhere is this more evident than when Llewyn joins a jazz musician (John Goodman) and a stoic driver (Garrett Hedlund) on a car trip from New York to Chicago. Goodman sits in the back seat, alternately sleeping and tearing Llewyn apart for being something he deems as risible as a folksinger. It's a small bit of genius characterization from one of the Coens's regular performers. Goodman is funny, dissolute and sometimes dead-on.

The Coens open the movie with a scene that repeats at the end and which becomes even more mordant the second time around. What else should we expect? Inside Llewyn Davis is a bitter pill, but like many other bitter pills that the Coens have served us, it's well worth swallowing.

Eastwood scouts for another hit

Trouble With the Curve is low on surprises, but still offers some satisfaction.

Predictable, a little corny and featuring a familiar performance from Clint Eastwood as a crotchety old baseball scout whose bosses think he may have lost something off his fast ball, Trouble With the Curve can be pleasing in the way of formula movies that pretty much work.

Eastwood portrays Gus, a legendary scout for the Atlanta Braves. Gus has two problems: a statistic-addicted younger man in the organization (Matthew Lillard) doesn't trust his judgment and he's losing his eyesight. Disabilities or no, Gus is stubborn, and he does have one loyal supporter in the Braves organization (John Goodman).

Gus's baseball future seems to hinge on his evaluation of Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill), a high school slugging prospect the Braves are eager to sign.

Randy Brown's screenplay contrives to have Bo's daughter (Amy Adams) join him in North Carolina to help scout Bo. She'll be Gus's eyes. Of course, Gus doesn't want help, and Adams's Mickey (she was named after Mickey Mantle) has problems of her own. On the verge of earning a hard-won partnership, she has to leave her Atlanta-based law firm for a few days to assist Gus.

Eastwood can play a character like Gus in his sleep, but his performance is by no means lazy. He gives the role its due, creating a hard-boiled type who has trouble coming to terms with any sign of vulnerability.

My respect for Adams continues to grow. Watch her in The Master and look at her here. You'll be hard-pressed to tell it's the same actress. I'm not talking about the way she looks, but the way she acts. Her character in The Master has a spine of steel; here she's playing a strong woman, but one who has to hold up her end of a romantic tale.

While helping her father, Mickey meets a young scout (Justin Timberlake) who takes an immediate interest in her.

The story pits Gus's instincts and experience against the statisticians, and you don't need a score card to know who's going to win that battle. This is, after all, a Clint Eastwood movie, and it's unlikely that he's going to suffer an irreparable defeat.

This time out, Eastwood cedes directing chores to Robert Lorenz, who has worked as a second-unit director and producer on a variety of Eastwood productions. Aside from creating a blurry spot in the middle of images that are supposed to represent Gus's fading eyesight, Lorenz does a straightforward job with material that's fairly straightforward.

To the extent that there's subtext, it goes like this: Mickey's an adult, but she and the long-widowed Gus still have issues, which the screenplay doesn't deal with until the end and which hardly qualify as dramatic dynamite.

Trouble with the Curve wraps things up so neatly, it's a bit like watching a player who never gets his uniform dirty. This one's for moviegoers who long for happy endings and who are inclined toward what's commonly known as old-fashioned entertainment.

I'm not always one of those people, but saw no reason to fault a movie that wants to tell its story, maybe moisten a few eyes and move on.

'In Time' may have you clock watching

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried play for time in a monotonous, one-note thriller.

The sci-fi thriller In Time takes place in a world in which the wealthy can extend their lives indefinitely and the rest of the population is programmed to die young.

In the movie's dystopian future, time has replaced money: Workers are paid in time, and people buy, sell and trade time in order to prolong life. Of course, time (like money) isn't easily acquired -- and some people steal it.

That's an intriguing premise, but writer/director Andrew Niccol, who also wrote The Truman Show and who wrote and directed the similarly chilly Gattaca, doesn't do enough with it.

Justin Timberlake plays Will Salas, a young man who -- since turning 25 -- has been scuffling to earn one additional day at a time. The plot contrives to put Will in the company of Amanda Seyfried's Sylvia Weiss, a rich girl whose father (Vincent Kartheiser) has accumulated vast amounts of time for himself and his family. He does this by exploiting the poor.

The movie goes to some lengths to mount a class-conscious social critique. The rich live abundantly in a zone referred to as New Greenwich. The poor are walled off in a ghetto where they're always borrowing time at exorbitant interest rates.

Not surprisingly, Timberlake's Will winds up on the run with Seyfried's Sylvia. A cop (Cillian Murphy) follows in hot pursuit. Seyfried's Sylvia gradually realizes that her life of privilege has been built on intolerable exploitation of the poor: She joins Will in a Bonnie and Clyde-style rampage.

Niccol gets amusing mileage out of the fact that everyone in this world looks 25. An example: Sylvia's father, mother and grandmother all appear to be the same age.

Additional interest is generated by the way in which people give each other time. They lock arms and transfer hours. (A luminous clock -- planted in an arm -- ticks off every hour and second of a person's life.)

Timberlake and Seyfried -- who seem to be vying to see whose face can reveal the least -- aren't exactly a combustible item, the score by Craig Armstrong tends toward monotony, and -- to tell you the truth -- I can't say I believed a minute of this coolly mounted tale.

I was surprised to learn that In Time is a mere 110-minutes long. For me, the movie seemed to expand time rather than make it go faster. What went wrong? Niccol does a good job creating a time-conscious world, but doesn't have a strong enough story to keep his movie ticking.

'Friends with Benefits' -- and not much else

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis generates some chemistry, but it's mostly wasted in a fizzy, R-rated bauble.

In Friends with Benefits, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis play characters that decide to pursue a no-strings-attached sexual relationship. If this sounds familiar, it’s because you already may have seen No Strings Attached, an Ivan Reitman-directed rom-com with precisely the same premise, but with different stars: Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.

Timberlake and Kunis are far more appealing than their predecessors, but their movie still feels like a major helping of been-there, done-that – albeit one that’s enlivened by chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake and an R-rated approach to the sex scenes.

Both Timberlake and Kunis have acting cred. Timberlake easily could have received a best-supporting actor nomination for his work in Social Network; Kunis, in another supporting role, did standout work as a ballet dancer in Black Swan.

Here, both actors have been encouraged to keep things light and airy, and Timerlake redeems himself (at least a bit) from the mediocrity of Bad Teacher, a much worse summer comedy. In this outing, he's Dylan, a Los Angeles graphics designer who’s recruited by headhunter Jamie (Kunis) for a major job at GQ magazine.

Once he arrives in Manhattan, Dylan and Jamie become fast friends. The two hit it off; both claim to have no interest in emotional attachment. Dylan proposes that they sleep together, thereby dispensing with the cumbersome baggage that usually accompanies sexual relationships.

From that point on, director Will Gluck (Easy A) follows a conventional rom-com arc, adding extra spice with extended cameos from Patricia Clarkson (as Jamie’s salacious mother); Richard Jenkins (as Dylan’s Alzheimer’s-stricken dad); and Jenna Elfman (as Dylan’s single-mom sister).

The supporting cast seems to be having fun. Wish I could say the same for myself, but Gluck’s mixture of body-worship, glib one-liners, preposterous characters and energetic pacing seems more suited to Bollywood than Hollywood, and a bubble-gum silliness of tone keeps the movie from attaining full-fledged grown-up status.

Friends With Benefits also includes a self-conscious, against-the-grain performance from Woody Harrelson, as Tommy, GQ’s openly gay sports editor. Harrelson, like much of the rest of the movie, seems to be trying way too hard.

If you've seen a ton of current rom-coms, you may be amused by the script's knowing swipes at the whole soggy genre. But little about Friends With Benefits struck me as natural or real, and at times, the movie seemed so committed to its own blithe absurdity that I couldn't help wondering whether it was touched in the head.