In this week’s MovieStyle, our critic Dan Lybarger takes a look at Brave, the latest computer animation extravaganza from Pixar, and finds that its technical virtues outshine its rather ordinary story but concludes that “Pixar’s disappointments are still more captivating than most studios’ masterpieces.”
Lybarger’s also only mildly impressed with Lorene Scafaria’s low-key disaster comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, in which Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley head out on a road trip in the face of impending doom. “Scafaria has the courage to imagine what might happen if despair was the only logical conclusion you could reach,” Lybarger notes, but the movie’s very premise drains it of all meaning.
And Philip Martin isn’t all that wild about Bel Ami, though he notes that the movie’s failure can’t be laid at the feet of Twilight dreamboat Robert Pattinson, who tries very hard to embody a 19th century scoundrel in Paris but can’t escape “vagueness that is sometimes read as dreaminess by overenthusiastic ’tweens.”
Elsewhere, the early returns on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter aren’t good — you’ll have to turn to www.blooddirtangels.com to see the review.
For full details on the latest releases, read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.