I was pleasantly surprised by The Skeleton Twins this weekend. Portrayed in the previews as just another comedy (and maybe a silly one at that), it is actually a very serious, heavy drama, albeit with good laughs thrown in to keep the movie from feeling too dark.

On the same day that Maggie (Kristen Wiig) is contemplating suicide, she gets a call that her brother Milo (Bill Hader) has just had his own attempt and is recovering. They haven’t spoken in 10 years, but the reason why is left a mystery for most of the film. She brings Milo home to live with her and her husband Lance, played by Luke Wilson. Both Maggie and Milo are a little strange, the product of their upbringing. They were raised mostly by their dad who was also a little out there, until his suicide when they were 14 years old. Their mother, as we learn, never wanted to be a mom and was never there for them either before or after their father’s death. Both siblings struggle with relationship issues and depression in their own way. You learn as the film progresses why each has become the person they are, and though the viewer begins to piece things together before the end comes, the final big reveal will still induce a gasp from you.

This movie shows Wiig and Hader can do much more than just SNL style comedy, with Hader in particular being tremendous as the troubled Milo. The Skeleton Twins is not a huge blockbuster and I don’t see it hanging around theaters for long (and you might have to search for a theater even showing it in your area), but it is well worth a watch.

The Maze Runner is kind of a mess. It has a fantastic premise and background, but the teenybopper themes permeate the whole film and really hold it back.

The story is that of group of teenage boys living in “the glade,” the center of a large maze from which no one has escaped. They don’t know why they are there or who put them there, all having had their memory erased before waking up one day in the glade. Every day the door to the maze opens and runners go in to map it out, but they have to return before the door closes at night, as monsters called grievers haunt the maze then. The plot revolves around Thomas, the newest member of the group, who pushes the laws they’ve been living by in a relentless pursuit of finding the answers behind it all.

Sounds great right? Unfortunately it’s just not a great film. There is a lot of overly dramatic pauses, right out of the Twilight series. The acting overall is subpar, and whole sequences don’t make any sense. When there is a fairly large group of adventurous youth, why is everyone content to live in the glade until Thomas arrives? Why does the film try to create a huge, gutwrenching scene when a character dies near the end, when others have died left and right throughout with nary a whisper? When all is revealed in the end, it just opens up more questions, that I guess you have to wait for the sequel to find out. Fans of the teen book series this film is based on may love it, but I think most adults will do what I did and count the minutes till the end of this labyrinth.

Liam Neeson continues his trend of playing tough guys in A Walk Among the Tombstones. Adapted from one of Lawrence Block’s popular mystery novels, it is the story of a former cop turned PI who is drawn into hunting down a pair of twisted murderers, not to bring them to justice, but to bring them to the surviving spouse for vengeance.

As I said, this movie is based on a mystery novel, which unfortunately means I can’t say much about the plot without giving things away, and ultimately the build up is the best part about this film. All I can say is there are multiple layers that Neeson must twist through. He has this rough demeanor act down pretty well by now, and does a great job here again. He admits during the film that he wasn’t a “clean” cop, and his morals seem fairly low as he tries to get to the bottom of this maze. However, he is struggling with the steps of AA as a former alcoholic as he goes as well, and Neeson does well conveying these personal challenges.

The movie is really good along the way. As new elements are made clear, the suspense keeps clicking up, until it feels as if you are on the edge of a deep cliff waiting for the fall. Unfortunately the constant building does not lead to a tremendous climax, and the ending is really sort of a letdown. After the terrible things the culprits have done, the only thing that would have satisfied me was if they were truly monsters, but of course, the bad guys are just bad guys, and sort of fumbly ones at that. Still, the movie as a whole is enjoyable, but ultimately only worth watching once, since its greatest element (the mystery unfurling as you go) can only be experienced the first time.

Love is Strange isn’t your typical summer movie. It is a very slow-moving, thought-provoking film, and features subtle acting, made brilliant by the context of the movie.

Love is Strange is the story of an aging couple, played by John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. Partners for nearly 40 years, they are just recently able to marry due to changing laws in New York. However, doing so causes Molina to lose his job as music teacher at a local Catholic school. Though the school, kids, parents, etc., all knew he was gay and was living with his partner for years, the act of getting married angers the higher ups who invoke the “Christian lifestyle” clause in his contract and terminate his job. Lithgow is (and always has been) a struggling artist, and Molina’s private lessons aren’t enough to pay for their apartment. With all of their nearby friends and family also living in tight, small New York apartments, no one has an extra room to take them both in, so they split into different places.

Lithgow ends up with his nephew and his family, in the bottom bunk bed of the family member’s 16 year old son. He is a bit of a burden to the family, as the mom (played by Marisa Tomei) is a work-at-home author trying to complete her new book, while Lithgow is a bit of a conversationalist. Molina has the opposite problem, staying on the couch of another gay couple they are friends with. The couple is much younger, throwing regular parties and loud get-togethers, to the ire of the normally quiet-loving Molina.

There are spots to chuckle at, but for the most part the movie is a sad look at the plight homosexuals can face for doing nothing more than what others do every day. Amazingly this same scenario happened in my area this past summer, where teachers were fired from a Catholic all-girl school for getting married and trying to buy a house together. Our society has come a long way but obviously it isn’t there yet, if it ever will be. In Love is Strange, you sharply feel what our protagonists are going through, yet they don’t complain and plod on just trying to live out their remaining time together. A very poignant film.

This is Where I Leave You is one of the more heartwarming and heartbreaking movies I’ve seen in a little while. It is the story of a family coming back home after the passing of their father. It features some truly incredible acting, by people you wouldn’t expect. Comedy heavyweights Jason Bateman and Tina Fey show a personal side, and while there are plenty of laughs here, it’s the heavier moments in the film that really stuck with me.

The Altman family is made up of Bateman, Fey, Adam Driver, and Corey Stoll, with matriarch Jane Fonda. Each of the kids has issues that they need to deal with through the course of the movie. The movie is told through Bateman’s view, who found his wife in bed with his boss just weeks before his father’s death. Fey is struggling with her marriage as well, with a career-focused husband who doesn’t have time for his family, and coming back home has set off old feelings she had for the neighbor across the street (played here by the highly underrated Timothy Olyphant). Driver (youngest child syndrome) and Stoll (oldest child syndrome – the responsible one looking to carry on Dad’s legacy) each face their issues as well.

The movie is funny, laugh-out-loud funny at times, but it is also very well acted. Anyone with a sibling feels the familiarity the actors display with each other. These are adults that grew up and moved away from home. They are family and once shared everything together, and while they can joke at each other, time and distance has them feeling hesitant to bring up any serious issues. The quartet do an amazing job of feeling like a family through the screen. It isn’t long into the movie that you really start hoping that everyone ends up ok by the end.

This movie is getting middle of the road reviews (currently 45% by critics on Rotten Tomatoes, 71% by audience), but many of the “professional” reviews I’ve poked through this morning seem to have issues with silly stuff if you ask me, such as the family doesn’t look much alike, and Fey should stick to comedy since it is her strong suit. If you aren’t a movie critic and don’t tend to over-analyze, I think you will very much enjoy this film.

Been a slow couple weeks, with no movies that I cared to see at the theaters lately. That changed this weekend with The Drop, James Gandolfini’s last film. Starring him and the brilliant Tom Hardy, this is a gripping, building film with a you-don’t-see-it-coming fulfilling climax. It is based on a book by Dennis Lehane, who’s books have also become the films Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone Baby Gone, all great ones in my opinion.

With last year’s Enough Said (released just after Gandolfini’s death), we all saw he could play more than the tough guy we know from The Soprano’s, and play it well, but The Drop takes him back to his roots. He plays the manager of a bar, which the local organized crime use as a drop where money can change hands. Hardy plays the bartender, and the two of them keep the money flowing right in front of everyone, but no one is foolish to rob the place, until one night someone is. Cops start investigating, and the crime group wants their missing money. When questions start getting asked about a missing bar regular, a 10 year old unsolved case, the viewer is left wondering who is on who’s side and who is the real bad guy behind it all. It might sound too complex, but it really isn’t. The story is told so well, with interlocking plot elements, that it isn’t hard to keep up, even when you don’t know exactly what may be going on.

Hardy has been around for 15 years, but it seems he didn’t really get his due until Inception, and everything I’ve seen of him since is compelling. The Drop is no different, where he is the quiet, unassuming barkeep, yet you sense his underlying edge throughout. This isn’t a fast moving film, the tension builds slowly but steadily, until 45 minutes in you realize you are sitting at the edge of your seat and don’t remember moving forward. The climax hits like a hammer. This is the kind of movie you can watch again and again, and well worth a trip to the theater for the first viewing.

Two nights in a row, a movie started with a lot of promise and really fizzled out before the end. The Giver is based on a popular young-adult book, which I haven’t ready but I know is supposed to be very good. The movie however was a bit of a mess. It started well, though a little familiar, with a typical dystopian future society where emotions are subdued to keep the populace in check. In fact, all memories of the past (before the current regime) have been erased, with only a single person charged with all previous knowledge so he can act as an adviser to the government. This person, known as the Receiver of Memories (and played by Jeff Bridges) is the only person who knows what war, famine, and crime are, but is also the only person aware of love and joy. Every generation the Receiver passes his knowledge onto the next person, and so on.

The new Receiver is picked, a young man named Jonas, and as his eyes are opened to all that society is missing, he refuses to not pass this along to his friends and family. If it sounds like a great premise, it really is, but the film loses steam by the end. What seems like a central plot element is never fully explained, including the importance of a baby that Jonas refuses to let go. The movie does make want to read the book, because it has to be better that this jumbled puzzle.

Since his stint as James Bond ended, Pierce Brosnan has seemed to do an awful lot of dramas and romantic “comedies” so I was excited to see his return to a spy-thriller. And The November Man started out well. For the first half of the film, it is full of action, double agents, and a real wonder of who is on who’s side and what mastermind is behind it all. Unfortunately the film really falls apart in the end, by which point you’ve all ready deduced the real “surprises.”

Brosnan plays a retired CIA agent who is pulled in to get info from one of his former colleagues. When that person ends up dead at the hands of the CIA themselves, Brosnan is left to wonder who is giving the orders, and ends up in an international hunt for the one person who may have the answers. When he finds her, he spends the rest of the movie trying to keep her alive long enough to get the truth from her.

Parts of this movie really rubbed me the wrong way. You spend much of the movie rooting for Brosnan as you think he was roped into this game, but then when he starts doing despicable things you are left wondering who you should be behind as a viewer. Not to mention some of the main characters change allegiance so many times, that by the end I was more confused than in the beginning. A very bad ending ruined what started out as a lot of promise. The only highlight was (parts of) Brosnan’s performance. Even at his age, he can still play the action movie star well.

I’ve said before, I have a soft spot for based-on-a-true-story movies. I should have said ones that were done well. Unfortunately When the Game Stands Tall is not one of these. This film is about a high school football team, De La Salle in California, that lost their first game in 2004 after an unprecedented 151 game winning streak spanning 12 years. More than the streak and the subsequent loss, the movie is about the bond of the team and their coach, and what is important in life.

There are some nice points in the film. The penultimate game is pretty thrilling, and the final scenes do try to tug at the heart, but the directing is pretty poor, and the acting throughout subpar overall. The editing also seemed very disjointed to me, scenes ended and began very abruptly especially in the first half of the film, and the sorry soundtrack had a made for tv-like feel. This can be an ok watch-once kind of film, and with the faith element attached to it, I can see it being popular among a certain audience, but for most it will be a very lackluster and borderline boring movie.

What If is charming movie with a very underrated cast. The main guy, Wallace, is played by Daniel Radcliffe, who since his Harry Potter days has made it point of tackling serious roles on stage and screen, and he is fantastic in this movie. He plays a somewhat jaded character, recently dropped out of med school and unable to get over a breakup. At a friend’s party he meets Chantry, played by the adorable Zoe Kazan. If you missed last year’s The Pretty One (and most people did, very small release), you should check that one out too.

The two hit if off immediately, the problem is Chantry has a longtime and serious boyfriend. The movie would make it easy if he was a jerk, or mean spirited, but he is non of these things. He loves his girlfriend, treats her well, and is supportive in all things. She is thus torn between her safety net and this new guy that is more alike to her than anyone. Wallace on the other hand doesn’t want to break up her relationship, knowing that she could resent him for it later, and walks the fine line of being a friend while wanting more.

The movie is full of funny and witty dialogue, and the chemistry between Wallace and Chantry is felt through the screen. My only knock against it is the very ending of the film, which doesn’t fit in well with everything that came before it in the movie, and in my opinion if it had ended 5 minutes earlier it would have been much better. Still, the movie as a whole is well worth a date night.