August: A-

Josh Hartnett has a certain look, a certain pose (some would even go so far as to call it a shallow tic). And, in the past, it hasn't served him all too well. In films like The Black Dahlia or Pearl Harbor, when he tends to pull it out, he just sort of…well…stares off. Into nothing. Yet in Austin Chick's August, a canny and poignant snapshot of a corporate wunderkind flaming out, Hartnett's stare does some glorious things: no longer is it a blank mask. This time around his face—eyebrows drawn across like heavy slashes, eyes in premature saddened down-turn—is the audience's window into a soul only slowly and most fully revealed in quick, dodgy glimpses. And, more, it's also the most fascinating tool of a larger character scrutinized to fascinating, microscopic degree.

Arguably, a movie—a story—about what happened in the summer of 2001, right before 9/11, has never quite been told before. Sure, on paper, the outline of events is eerily similar to a host of other films: meteoric economic rise, and then precipitous crash. (Even reading this now, I can see a far larger application for the true mechanism behind this description: a hero's rise and fall.) But the "dot-com" bubble was something different, in its way, something entirely new; and so too was the environment of commerce it sought to create from the old system. The rules had yet to change, but the game had already switched over—changed in mid-stream by a bunch of 20-and-30-something college grads with dreams and the technological skill to (as Hartnett's character Tom Sterling says in a rather beautiful speech half-way through the movie) "write in a language being created right before our eyes." They had business models and financial projections and were pioneers into an area of exploration so vividly exotic as to win the world over. And then: the metaphorical iceberg. A hole, unexpectedly—sinking, then, followed by disaster. In the early summer of 2001, the world of E collapsed, and we enter into the wreckage a month afterward, when Tom—with his brother Joshua (Adam Scott)—is trying to keep their brainchild from going bankrupt three weeks before its stock starts trading publically.

Written by Howard A. Rodman, the first and most notable thing that August does right is create this world piece-by-piece, in seamless fashion. Directed, at first, by Chick like a sort of hazy, drugs-and-women-and-money-and-all breezy biopic about success and easy living, the transition of tone is nearly translucent, making the later implications all the more surprising and powerful. We begin on the outside, looking in on Tom and his circle of corporate cohorts, snorting a little now and then at how much of a jerk he can be. And then we, the audience, is sucked inward, inexorably, unknowingly, bit-by-bit, until the crisis is viewed from the inside-out. His sense of cornered helplessness, of a financial world that has caught him in a cage the size of cigar box, becomes ours.

In that revelation, cleverly, is packed so much more. In showing the psychic strain of being captain of a sinking ship, we see the captain in his naked entirety—the mirror of his perils and follies reflecting back on him with sharp and objective skill. Amidst the morass of shrinking revenue stream, Tom is struggling with hippie-intellectual parents (Rip Torn and Caroline Lagerfelt) who aren't quite sure what their son does…or are proud of it anyway; plus there's the ex-girlfriend (Naomie Harris) he wants to rekindle things with; and his brother, whose relationship to Tom provides the emotional center of the movie. They're partners, but in a dynamic that is equal about as many times as it is peaceful. Through a perspective efficiently crafted from long-term familial tension, and short-term mega-success, Tom comes to the central revelation of August (in a climactic investors meeting with poignancy that sneaks up and grabs you by the throat and heart simultaneously)—about how, in the end, no bubble burst, no balloon popped. The summer of possibility simply faded into the fall of pragmatism. And a man, played by an actor giving his very best high-wire performance—a cocktail of zest and hurt and charm— was left standing in a strip-club, playing pinball with his brother, slightly wiser now, staring (wistfully now, with a bit of contentment, but still with ambition) at the changing leaves and wondering where the hell all the sunlight went.

W.: C+

It's not that I don't think a movie about the life and times of George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush and our 43rd President, doesn't need to be made—and that one made well, and I mean extremely well: full of perception and curiosity or satire and viciousness, wouldn't on its own merits be some sort of cinematic event (coming as it would not minutes after the shadow of the man had begun to fade) both for skill in structuring and for purporting some sincerity or force of emotion about our current Commander-in-Chief. But W. is not that film; and as much as director Oliver Stone wants us to believe that he is both a curious pragmatist and an outraged satirist, he comes across—really—as neither. Instead he directs this semi-biographical, semi-comedic, semi-tragic film as if from a place I thought Stone didn't even know existed: restraint.

Things start out fine, though, as the director and his writer Stanley Weiser seem to have chosen a certain path from the very beginning: black comedy. We open on a trademark Stoneian symbol of the President standing in an empty ball field (remember now: he used to own The Rangers), arms wide open—embracing the empty stands full of imaginary hoots and complimentary applause. It's a joke, a pot-shot, a jeer at both the lunacy and megalomania of the world's most infamous cowboy. And it works for what it is: the viciousness of the delivery making up for the hollowness of the attack itself. And so then does that tone carry over, through the ensuing scenes as the audience gets a feel for Weiser's structure—how he loops the present Pre-Iraq/Post-9/11 to the past, before "Jr." became "Dubya." Stone's camera darts back and forth, in hazy pointed jags, through the Oval Office and then back to a Yale fraternity hazing, and then back again, already building for the viewer a foundation from which to mock George Bush's (Josh Brolin) every move.

And then it shifts. The angry sarcasm that pools at the feet of those early few scenes dries up quick as the tone morphs from activist comedy to biography. Less and less do we see of those more recent unstable times, and more and more do we see the son as he tangos with his father (James Cromwell) over those post-college days when the alcoholic young man can't seem to find a job—or even keep down a stable way of life. Sounds a bit clichéd, right? It is, and the device is nearly as trite: used to upend the previous platform from bared teeth into open minds—bleh.

But the transition isn't terrible, and that's not the point. Using the rails of Weiser's articulate, cleanly elegant scenes of dialogue as a jumping off point for his more abstract symbolism, the director finds himself unnecessarily entranced with the background of the man he seems only to want to rake over the coals. And that's a big mistake, since as he is pulled in two directions, so is his audience. It doesn't help that the film is overlong at roughly two hours, and that the perfectly adequate presence of a biographer's eye becomes unwelcome as it begins to cloud over with Stone's overreaching. (Did we really need Thandie Newton doing a terrible, terrible, Condie Rice?) There's a big plus in most of his casting—Brolin is an exemplary Bush Jr., shooting past imitation into an ctual, characteristically fascinating, performance—but a big minus in the film itself. Shot, edited, and marketed in just under nine months, W. is exactly the kind of film we don't really need, from exactly the kind of filmmaker we do. He bottles a sizzling subject, and douses him all with water, leaving us to choke on the illusion of smoke and wet ash.

The Crying of Lot 49: A

I took three months out of my life to wade through Against The Day, and then re-enlisted the very next winter to battle through V., and then Mason & Dixon. And somewhere in there I distinctly re-call getting lost amidst the tangles of Vineland, only to pull myself back out halfway through. I’m a fan of Thomas Pynchon—but I can also recognize a critical fact about him: it’s not necessarily that he’s under-appreciated (those who dismiss his intense postmodernism and knack for writing baroque sentences that span paragraphs aren’t lazy, contrary to the belief of some), but rather that he’s over-wrought. In his a-novel-once-or-twice-every-decade work ethic, there appears time and again the tendency to overwrite, coating the pieces of what are undoubtedly brilliant works with layers of dense academia and imagination that are, at their best, nearly as fulfilling…but that can be, at their worst, more off-putting than some sick love-child of Proust and Joyce. It is then that I, from this unique perspective of a fan in a semi-masochistic love/hate relationship with the author, report that his 1966 novella The Crying of Lot 49 is—all at the same time—his most accessible work, his most piquantly engrossing, and his best.

The period from which Lot 49 emerged was a strange one, in the timeline of Pynchon’s work. It came three years after the publication of his debut novel V., a work justly praised for its dense blending of wit, dramatic meta-construction, and archly-grave sociopolitical commentary, and—reportedly—was released at the very same time the author was putting together the beginning pieces of his most adored novel: Gravity’s Rainbow. So, then, could a reader come to this story of Oedipa Mass’ accidental uncovering of a global postal conspiracy and expect to find intermittent touches of the works that came both before and after? Well, I can’t quite speak to the latter—I have yet to build up the mental stamina for another 700-page trek into Pynchonland—but as to the former: definitely not. Sure, the usually flourishes that mark even his most casual output are seen in both stories (e.g., characters with exceedingly silly names, made-up songs that leap into and out of the central narrative spontaneously) but there the similarities end. V. is a difficult, fascinating mess of a novel; something great was it not so opaque nearly 70% of the time. The Crying of Lot 49 is something else entirely—a mystery compounded by elements of suspense and lurking doom, and written with that rarest of Pynchonisms: clarity of purpose.

In just the 150 pages afforded him between the book’s front and back covers, Pynchon writes something that does so much with so little as to make you, in hindsight (if you’ve had the pain/pleasure), regret the nearly 1000 you spent with the dozens of characters in Against the Day. He’s concise and satirical and stark and descriptive and fanciful and, above all else, entirely certain in what direction the book will lead his readers. Mrs. Mass’ journey is one of tension and self-revelation (she begins as an executor for her old lover’s will, and ends up tracking down the agents for a mysterious continent-spanning cabal), but the author himself seems to have gone through a brief journey (if only to slide back into old ways by the ‘90s). The prose is full of such a grand order of symbolic imagination as to be staggering (a third the way through, the main characters attend the performance of some made-up Jacobean tragedy, and for the next twenty-or-so pages, the entire performance is brought to life, act-by-act, from scratch), were it not so compulsively readable. And if you ever get tired, nestled between every page are the usual wisecracks and inane witticisms, just to remind you: even at his tamest, Thomas Pynchon still sees the American novel as his personal playground. And when he has fun—as he does transcendently, madly, deeply, here—so does the reader.

MoveMe.com: Product Review

You swore to yourself to never get married. And then you did.

You swore to yourself that your one-bedroom apartment would be enough. And then it wasn’t.

You swore to yourself that you’d never, ever, move away from the city—even to try and find a bigger place. But then you did.

Now what?

You’ve got a tiny apartment full of stuff that needs getting gone; you’ve got a much bigger house that stands empty; you need to get from Point A to Point B. But moving—the moving process—just sounds like such a headache: the packing, the moving, the driving, the shipping, and (above all) the having to constantly worry that some boneheaded mover is going to drop that vase your grandmother gave you. It’s all just so draining.

And then in steps www.moveme.com. And everything is easier.

First off: they’re not just a traditional moving service—it’s more like they collect useful information for anyone who’s looking to move and needs answers to their big questions of When, How, Who. They’ve got useful links to find stuff on removal companies, moving companies, and other tips and tricks for the first-time mover. It helps, too, that the site is tastefully arranged, with as many different options (a search bar, various tabs, and a helpline) presented with minimal clutter. From the homepage forward, the user is pulled in to exploring to their heart’s content until they know everything there is to know about moving, or until they feel completely
comfortable with the process—whichever comes first.

“MoveMe.com: The site that makes moving simple.” That’s a simple endorsement, but a truthful one. Sticking to the old adage that information is power, the UK-based site is powerful indeed, and is more than willing to offer up that power to any-and-all confused users. Click around for a few minutes or a few hours as the need dictates; prepare for an upcoming move that’s weeks off, or do it the night before. Need a removal company? Need ten removal companies? They’ll find it for you, no problem.

So you swore to yourself you’d never, ever, find an easy way to move all of your junk.

And then you did.

Glow-Sticks.Org: Product Review

The night’s just starting: you’ve just gotten all dressed up and you’re about to head out to a party at a friend’s house. Now, this particular friend had specifically told you not to head to the clubs—that their house, on this night, would have the most intense party around: all the best dancing, the best music, and the best drinks. How could you resist? So here you are ready to head out while the moon is still high and the hour is not sufficiently late for you to pass out on someone’s couch. You’re ready to go…but something is missing. You’ve dodged the clubs for what is supposed to be the most intense, life-changing, mind-shattering night of your life, and there is something a bit off about it. What do you need?

Glow sticks.

Www.glow-sticks.org offers exactly what you need. They’ve got everything—from flashing rave horns to flashing whistles to even flashing sunglasses—that will help light up your nightlife. (No pun intended…ok, a bit of a pun intended.) The vendor’s online boutique is well-designed, without too many tabs or scroll-down menus to bog down the Average Joe just looking for a cool favor to take out to his rave. The site even has a cool flash graphic across the top of every page that, along with its hot-pink font, keeps you in the party mood even when you’re not partying.

So flash-back: you’re standing there in the doorway of your friend’s house. You spent hours preparing for this night—this night that you’ve been told over and over again would be super-fantastic. And yet here you stand, staring, knowing something is wrong. Now, insert a glow-stick, as if from the heavens (come on now, humor me folks), into your hand. And it all clicks into place, doesn’t it? Thanks to glow-sticks.org, your night just got a whole lot better.

Peloop: Product Review

I’ve discussed some sensitive subjects before on this blog: I’ve praised or reviled films about illicit affairs, murder, torture, fornication, cruelty, sadism, abuse, and sexuality perversity. And yet there is one thing I’ve never discussed: penis enlargement. Well, now I’m going to—and I hope you stick around for the conversation. It seems a bit unorthodox, but in my drive to categorize and quantify all facets of media under the sun occasionally product reviews will enter my sphere. I’ve posted a few already, and now I’m posting another: it’s for peloop.com. It’s a website that offers guaranteed effective male enhancement. It won’t let you down.

Now I know exactly what you’re thinking: you’re thinking two things. One: “Why on Earth is this guy writing about this on his blog and why am I reading it?” And two: “Why should I care? I don’t need this.” And now I have an answer to both. One: you’re reading me because I’m compulsively addictive and delightful. And two: you don’t need need this—penis enlargement—but you’re curious. It presents opportunity. You’ve always felt a bit underwhelmed. They say it doesn’t matter, but who knows for sure? And besides, with all that’s going around, who would care if you went in for a little help?

It’s not as expensive as you’d think, and it’s easy, too. Which is why I’m here now, extolling the virtues of peloop.com. It’s male enhancement for everybody that always thought they either didn’t want to consider the option, or thought it was too weird to be worth the effort. News flash: it’s not. In fact, the website even has customer testimonials backing up their claim to success. And now, here I am doing the same. And if you can’t trust people these days…well then, you can’t trust me, right? And I’m always worth trusting.

Perry's: Product Review

The advantages of owning a computer and a high-speed connection never really cease to amaze me. Beyond the fact that the Internet can provide an endless stream of entertaining videos and music and television (because who actually uses a television anymore anyway?), as well as 24/7 commentary on just about any and every issue, the web also gives you the power to shop, and shop, and shop—and it’s biggest charm (at least for me anyway) is also perhaps its most obvious: no personal contact. There are no lines, no annoying customers to work around, or meddlesome salesmen to coax away from your carefully browsing person—no, none of that. Just you and the things you may want to buy. (There is, of course, that other great benefit of online shopping: pretty great prices.)

Because, as has become apparent, shopping of any kind that doesn’t actually take place in a store is pretty appealing to most people, there are now stores online for everything: books, music, clothing, erotic DVDs…whatever. Even vehicles—especially vehicles (how great is it to be able to pick out that new sports car and not have to shake hands with the oily dealer?), and when it comes to buying vehicles online, http://www.perrys.co.uk/new-cars is the place to be.

Beyond the fact that the website is totally user-friendly—it offers a handy interface on the home page that immediately lets a prospective buyer pull up any car by price range, model, etc.—it also offers helpful tips and insight through its blog: http://www.blog.perrys.cok.uk. They highlight award-winning cars, like the Vauxhall Insignia, as well as great vehicles on a budget, like the Vauxhall Corsa, and even focuses on humanitarian efforts of those occasionally-pesky salesmen (as with this story about a Vauxhall dealer).

All-in-all, Perry’s provides both accessibility and assistance for the first-time car-buyer, as well as the experienced pro—all with nary a hassle in sight. Gotta love the Internet.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist: A-

Filled with Lower-East Side indie music, characters who shuttle back and forth in a stale-banana colored Yugo, and that old "meet cute" device, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is nonetheless completely, utterly, and excitingly modern. Told in the course of one night, the film is enchanting in its fresh take on all the old tricks—romantic conventions aren't so much trashed as merely discarded in favor for deeper, more vividly domestic (and thereby more sincere) views of our characters. Nick & Norah is a trip, a joy ride, a plug-in-and-let-go existential experience that is, I'm entirely too certain, one of those rarest of cinematic treasures: the once-in-a-decade-or-two romantic comedy that is so clever and bright and new as to not just represent those feelings on screen, but also the feelings of an entire era. What's important, though, isn't how well everything fits into the old, if high-standard, mold. What matters is how refreshingly un- it all can be; the details of courtship and love and life in this city-that-never-sleeps are fleshed out with the deftest of touches, and so their world we visit is also subtly but continually opened up—blossoming right before our eyes.

The boy: Nick (Michael Cera, who's quickly becoming the quietest of indie triumphs). He's a senior in high school, from the suburbs of Jersey, and the only straight member in a very hardcore rock band: The Jerk-Offs. Plus, his girl—Tris (Alexis Dziena)—just kinda, sorta, broke up with him…a while ago. He can't quite get over it (and is, in fact, still sending her mixes from his wounded heart). And then his friends/band-mates, Dev (Rafi Gavron) and Thom (Aaron Yoo), pull out into NYC night-life to play a gig…

The girl: Norah (Kat Dennings). She, too, is a senior (maybe attending Brown in the fall, maybe getting a job), but she's from Englewood, Jewish, and apparently has more influence in the club scene than just about anyone save Jesus. That's why she happens to be in a club one night with her friend Caroline (Ari Gaynor, who—if she's not the heart—is the comedic engine continually at work in the background, churning out consistent laughs) when Nick's band takes the stage…and Nick sees Tris…and Norah needs someone to pose as her boyfriend.

The meet-cute: you already saw coming. But it's the sole conventional element in a staging that prepares us not in the slightest for a very period ("period" being The Now) narrative, filled with subplots about looking for your drunk-buddies, supporting your "uni-boob" with the correct bra, and finding clues as to the location of the super-secret show by the super-cult band Where's Fluffy? Once Nick and Norah have become acquainted, they're far from gaga over the other. (For one, he still finds every moment an opportunity to pump Norah about her frenemy's feelings over the break-up.) But we watch them find that connection, and—as directed by Peter Sollett from a wisely urban script by Lorene Scafaria based on the titular novel—the search is done in just the perfect way: through shared smiles, jokes that went bad half-way through (but it's the attempt that matters, anyway), and moments shared in the oddest of places, made homely and yours through the sheer power of being there. In short, Nick and Norah find each other in Nick & Norah as if they were every teenager in the world, crammed into two symbolic bodies—flirting and bantering and letting silence flow out awkwardly in perfect imitation of the real thing, so as to make it real. There's derivation in the concept, but triumph in its staging.

"I just want to hold your hand," Dev tells Nick, in one of the many inspired moments in the movie, and that same easy-going whimsy of love and lust and everything-in-between just sort of happening carries over to the treatment of the film's every character. Dev and Thom (and the no-name beefy pick-up that starts tagging along with them after The Jerk-Offs' first gig) are gay, but their no one's flamboyant anything, just as Norah is Jewish—but you'd only know it when she brings up one of her favorite philosophies from said religion (which lets Nick put his own funky little, completely sincere spin on it). This is the New York City of the new millennium, and it belongs to these people, the movie tells us, who find life and love in the moments when no one is looking, and everything just comes rushing up to meet you. Say "Hello" and dive right in.

30 Rock: The Complete First Season: B+

The Rural Juror; "Muffin Top"; dating your distant cousin (accidently); "Vice President of East Coast Television-and-Microwave Programming"; Fat Bitch I & II; The Black Crusaders—this is 30 Rock: Tina Fey's irreducibly insane, incandescently clever show-within-a-show sitcom. Such moments as those above are the reason her show first hit the radar, why it won over critics and (small but fanatical) audiences alike; and it's obvious why: 30 Rock has an admirable spirit of loony iconoclasm, it's a stalwart of left-brain/right-brain/no-brain bubbly wit. Built like the drunken, one-night-stand bastard of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (but far more entertaining) and fleshed out by mind-bogglingly quick zings between the Smart and the Dumb, the High and the Low, Fey's brain-child is a bit like doping up on laughing gas for thirty-minute intervals—the drug hits quick and stays, sizzling pleasantly in the back of your head, driving you to laugh spontaneously, constantly.

That's not to say everything works. A lot doesn't. Or didn't—see, the opening four episodes of Rock seem counterintuitive to what should be happening: they sink steadily downward, becoming almost impishly ridiculous; hollow and quirky: Scrubs Zero. The "Pilot" is more the tasteful precursor, though it too has some bumps. And then "The Aftermath," "Blind Date," and "Jack the Writer" become increasingly, almost imperceptibly, difficult. One can see, in Fey's writing and producing, the thread-bare work of her vision. And then the uptick, and stuff starts shifting for the better.

Leaving objectivity at the door, the concept is this: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the creator and head-writer of The Girlie Show, a mildly-hot sketch show on NBC with a crackpot star (Jane Krakowski). In comes a new executive, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who recruits fallen-movie-star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) to boosts the show's ratings. Lemon, already a frazzled career-woman in the greatest of clichéd traditions, now has to contend with her paranoid best-friend being replaced with a loose cannon…and the new boss who really wants to mentor her.

For several reasons, this would never happen. Like, in a million-billion-'till the end of time years never. But with a loopy conceit comes an even loopier product—and 30 Rock delivers pretty uniformly. The punch-lines are written as confessions; the action is sliced up into an ironic mélange; and the cast is such a phenomenal support (excluding Mr. Baldwin, who we'll get to in a moment) as to make even the weakest moments fresh. Even "The Head and the Hair" is infectiously goofy. And "Up All Night," "Cleveland," and "The Fighting Irish" are about all the necessary prove of Rock's crystallization as a comedy fount.

…Now: Alec Baldwin. Frequent-SNL host, movie star, Baldwin Brother—but funny, funny, man? Yes, yes, a 1,000 times yes. Delivering his lines a silken purr, squaring his physical presence into a box of imposing dexterity, and centering even those jokes that fly off the screen, the actor isn't just the heart of the show, but also its breakout show. He does something almost transcendent, and he does it in the context of a lesser, if very loose and very witty show. He makes the impossible possible, and turns the alt-NYC of Fey's world not just into a fanciful place, but also a state-of-mind: where sketch shows can have the name "Girlie" in their title and still air; where NBC is just a subsidiary of the Sheindhart Wig Company; and where in Cleveland, everyone's a model.

Eagle Eye: C

It's 2008—so why do movies like this keep getting made? We live in an age of hyper-awareness and literacy; and yet, when confronted with the possibility of creating a thriller gussied up as an allegory for our modern-1984 times, director DJ Caruso makes…this? This—Eagle Eye—that is like some dusty-retro relic from yesteryear, dug up and cleaned with spit-shine, then plopped before us as an audience and beamed directly onto our retinas—its mediocrity made "relevant" for a culture now long past being fooled by the old as the new. It's the kind of movie where the enemy is (spoiler!) a giant supercomputer; where the heroes are struggling, pretty, Americans With Issues who still find time to spark some sexual chemistry; and where the government always seems to get in its own way until—everyone together now—the maverick of the bunch realizes the hero is in the right. Sheesh, what is this: Tron?

It isn't as though Eagle Eye is entirely incompetent; and it's in no way not quite a thrill ride. In fact, the first 45-minutes are about as engaging as one could have hoped for. Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) is down on his luck, his brother just died, when he begins to receive mysterious phone calls, shipments of terrorist contraband, and money. Soon the FBI is involved, and he's running for his life—the omnipotent Voice on the other end of the line always directing him. Rachel (Michelle Monahan) is in a similar predicament, except that on her end, it's her son the Voice is holding hostage.

What's going on? Who is this "they"? And why are on Earth are such nice-looking young people like Jerry and Rachel being put through so much insanity?

Sad news: the propulsion of the first act runs dry quick, as answers become apparent (the most stultifying of which I've already revealed for you). And without that source of fuel, first you realize how banal the script is. And then you realize how completely and incompetently absurd is the craft presented to you as coherence and entertainment. Yes, stuff blows up and people are thrilled and scared and put in life-or-death situations. But why, exactly? Anyone?

I didn't think so.

Written by John Glenn & Travis Wright, and then Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, Eagle Eye is a hollow trifle—a curio of pop entertainment that seems to have wandered in from a far dustier set. Reportedly, the idea was conceived by executive-producer Steven Spielberg, but in whatever iteration he may have originally seen it, none remains. There is, instead, cliché after disconnected cliché. Even the extraordinarily well-cast actors—among whom, as no one should be shocked to learn, Mr. LaBeouf is the stand-out (his funeral sequence early on is the sole moment that actually reaches out and grabs you)—struggle and stumble under the weight of so much bull. And Mr. Caruso…well, after being given the bigger-budgetary reins after last year's Disturbia, he seems mostly content to let stuff get larger and more impossible, until it all spirals out of control—an '80s plot, meets '90s star-power, layered thick with '00 Michael Bay technical sensibilities. Welcome to the future, folks.