Angelina Jolie stars as the title character in Salt, which could also be called Jason Bourne with lady parts, a CIA operative that finds herself on the run after being accused of being a Russian spy.

Director Phillip Noyce comes back to the action genre, which he hasn’t dabbled in since 1997′s The Saint, working from a script by The Thomas Crown Affair remake screenwriter Kurt Wimmer. These two don’t hesitate in getting right into the action as at about the 25-minute mark we are thrust into an epic 30-minute chase sequence that begins with Angelina Jolie’s character trying to escape from CIA headquarters. (Note to the men out there: there’s a scene at the beginning of the chase where Angelina takes off her underwear to cover a security camera that’s following her, which means that the next 15 – 20 minutes of her running around, dodging bullets, and scaling buildings is being done sans-underwear. Not that you can see anything, but it’s the thought that counts. Moving on…)

For a movie like this, the plot is pretty much secondary, but it stays interesting enough to make the very few plot-related scenes important pieces of the “Who is Salt?” puzzle. What is important in a movie like this is the action, obviously, and there is A LOT of it. I would say two-thirds of this 1 hour 40 minute long movie is made up of unstoppable Jolie ass-kicking bad-assery.

The action sequences are a nice mix of form and scale, there’s huge stunt sequences, to big explosive moments, to smaller hand-to-hand combat moments. All of it directed in a crisp, sharp way that keeps the action terse and violent. The end is perfect and manages to keep the feeling of momentum going even after the credits begin to roll.

It’s a fun summer action film with a script that stays agile by not being weighted down by exposition. Looking forward to Salt 2: Even Saltier.

See and hear my full review of Salt on Episode 5 of This Week in Movies by subscribing to it on iTunes.

Related films:

Writer/Director Noah Baumbach gives us another naturalist comedy about dysfunctional relationships with Greenberg, which follows in the familiar footsteps of his previous efforts The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding.

The film stars Ben Stiller, in a notably restrained role, as a just-released psychiatric patient who spends a month house sitting for his brother who’s out of the country. Stiller soon meets his brother’s assistant played by indie film darling Greta Gerwig and they begin an unlikely and unhealthy relationship.

The successful element of Baumbach’s work is the way he finesses laughs from awkward and sad situations which this film accomplishes confidently. But there’s also a distinct cringe factor as Ben Stiller’s character is unaware of acceptable social behavior. It’s this car crash onlooker vibe that creates scenes full of emotional ups and downs.

Strangely enough this film is much smaller and intimate then Baumbach’s previous films, taking it’s time to explore the awkward relationship of two awkward people. I do challenge any man to watch this film and not fall in love with the adorable Greta Gerwig. This is her first mainstream role and I hope she gets more work along these lines as it’s her unassuming portrayal of Florence Marr that helps ground the superstar aura of Ben Stiller.

Greenberg is a film that I liked, but not loved. If you want to get introduced to Baumbach’s work I suggest seeing The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding first, but Greenberg is a worthy entry in his filmography of dysfunctional character studies.

See and hear my full review of Greenberg on Episode 4 of This Week in Movies by subscribing to it on iTunes.

Related films:

Note: This film begs repeat viewings, so consider this draft 1 of my review.

From the backwards timeline of the film Memento to the non-linear storytelling of The Prestige, director Christopher Nolan further explores his infatuation with time in his newest film Inception.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, a successful “Extractor” who is paid to extract secrets from people’s subconscious minds via their dreams. The idea of “Inception” is born when a client asks if there is a way to plant an idea in the mind of a corporate rival. Thus begins Cobb’s “one last hesit” of the mind.

For me the dreams conceit is an excuse for Nolan to dabble in his fetish with time as one of the film’s biggest plot devices is the idea of dreams within dreams and how the passage of time is exponentially lengthened at each layer. The movie is full of brilliant ideas like this that tap into recognizable details we’ve all experienced in dreams and fashions it into believable mythology. These rules and laws established in Nolan’s universe are mind-blowing yet completely make sense and is presented to the audience in an engagingly dynamic way.

Inception is full of bombastic headtripping sequences like this, but it’s when the film attempts to juggle these visual representations of deep ideas with cliched damaged character histories and some uninspiring action sequences that the film falters. A well-written comedy can be stripped of all its jokes and it would still work as a great drama. Inception fails that test. You strip away all the fantastical dream elements and you’re left with a plodding heist film and paper thin characters. Poor Ellen Page is stuck with clunky exposition through most of the film while Joseph Gordon Levitt is left floating around for 40 minutes.

The film brings up the notion of Inception being impossible to accomplish since the mark is aware of the manipulation—and that’s how I felt about the storytelling in this movie. I was constantly aware of its plot mechinations rather then being made to just relish in and accept it’s amazing ideas.

See and hear my full review of Inception on Episode 4 of This Week in Movies by subscribing to it on iTunes.

Related films:

From the prolific and DIY genius of filmmaking, Robert Rodriguez, comes this sequel to the 1987 sci-fi action classic Predator which starred the Governator and made audiences cringe in fear of infrared vision. Rodriguez only produces this time around and leaves the directing in the very capable hands of Nimrod Antal, who made a name for himself with the Hungarian fantasy film Kontroll and most recently directed Vacancy and Armored.

The cast is as eclectic as you can get and seems to cover the spectrum from Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, to Brazillian-born Alice Braga, to geeky TV star Topher Grace, to fanboy fave Danny Trejo. Now when Rodriguez set out to make this sequel, which began in script form way back in 1994, he made it explicitly clear that this was a sequel to Predator and not Predator 2, which starred Danny Glover, as well as completely ignoring the events of the Alien vs. Predator series of films. And this respect to the first film is what makes this sequel work so well.

It doesn’t fall into the sequel-itis trap of more, more, more. More blood, more monsters. The film has enough confidence in itself to concentrate on the characters and story at hand, not to outdo it’s predecessor. There’s nice touches all over the place: including using the same music queues from the first film and hinting at the backstory of the characters with one or two sentences so that you get a glimpse of who these characters are without falling into boring exposition.

Were certain plot reveals predictable? Yes, but those plot reveals were done with such measured attention to detail that I got giddy everytime we got to them. I could’ve watched another two hours of these characters strategizing their survival. Tightly scripted and expertly directed with each character getting their hero moment, I found this to be the best summer film I’ve seen so far this year.

And in my mind is a film that could stand alone on its own without the need to bother with the first one. It’s THAT good.

The third episode of This Week in Movies, the show I’m co-hosting from the comfort of my Las Vegas home office, is now up for your viewing pleasure with special guest Aaron Horwitz from Joblo.com. Video embedded below.

If you want to catch our antics live, tune in to ThisWeekIn.com on Sundays at 8pm PST. Also, if you want to be extra supportive and the coolest person in my book, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

For the second half of 2010, in order of anticipation.

Ok, not really, but I am now co-hosting This Week in Movies on the Jason Calacanis owned online network at ThisWeekIn.com. First episode embedded below with my big ass face as the video still (LOL).

The folks at Gowalla were kind enough to let me curate their official Vegas trip which I’ve fondly named the Vegas Slots-o-fun Tour. I tried to include a nice mix of local haunts, tourist must-sees, Strip spectacles and my favorite dive bars. So if you’re ever in Vegas and got a hankering for tiki-themed drinks and the best Thai food in North America then give this trip a try. Also, if you complete the trip you’ll be awarded a special Gowalla Vegas pin (and maybe a hangover).

Ewan Macgregor sits in a dark hotel room poised over a laptop. He’s visibly shaken after having just dodged the grasp of two hitmen, possibly sent by a college professor he just interviewed. So, like any modern internet user he pulls up Google and searches the professor’s name. Slowly, blue link by blue link, Ewan uncovers some nefarious connections that don’t bode well for him.

The above is a scene from Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and a rather important scene that sends the trajectory of the story towards a twisty end. Notice anything? Unlike Polanski’s other well-known detective film, Chinatown, in which Jack Nicholson’s character has to traverse the L.A. landscape for clues, this large plot point is uncovered in minutes using the biggest web entity in the world.

This isn’t the first time that a character in a film has resorted to using Google to find information; though I can’t remember seeing a plot use it with such gall. Matt Damon’s character in the recent Green Zone uses his satellite connected laptop to Google a reporter that’s pursuing him. Will screenwriters encounter this plot “solution” more and more? Not that they want to, but if their story is a modern setting dealing with realistic situations then the use of Google by the characters is a given. If they choose not to then they open up plot holes as big as Mount Vesuvius as seen from space in Google Maps.

It’s going to be an interesting trend to keep your eyes on, not just in relation to Google, but web technology in general. How long before a character in a Martin Scorsese film reveals mob/police connections on Twitter?

Last night I played a video game that comes as close to successful interactive storytelling that’s ever been done. The game is called Heavy Rain, a PlayStation 3 exclusive, which was in development for five years before being released to the masses last week.

The Casting

I first became aware of the game in 2006 when a non-playable tech demo, a three-minute scene called “The Casting,” premiered at E3 of that year. The demo absolutely floored me, and still does, with it’s realistic use of camera work, high quality voice acting and detailed animation that brought a magnetic quality to the performance of a virtual actor. If you haven’t seen it yet I implore you to watch it below:

The Game

Heavy Rain is described by it’s French director and writer David Cage as “a very dark film noir thriller with mature themes” about how far you’re willing to go to save someone you love. In the game you play four different characters whose lives are affected by the serial murders of the Origami Killer. It’s this intersection of four lives, four storylines, that makes the narrative gameplay such a dense and rewarding experience. Each time you play one of the characters something subtly, on a psychological level, happens that makes you think like them and influences the way you play.

The Interactivity

What makes Heavy Rain such a successful interactive narrative is a combination of it’s semi-explorable world and innovative game controls. If the game was a free-roaming experience like Grand Theft Auto then the narrative set forth by the creators becomes unfocused and if the world is too closed in it becomes something akin to a reaction game like Dragon’s Lair. It’s the unique control scheme which is able to balance the two. Besides the typical character movements using the dual joysticks on the PS3 controller you can also bring up a selection of the character’s current thoughts by holding the L2 button which opens up a whole new level of interaction. Sometimes these thoughts will blur, and selecting them at the wrong time will affect the character’s reaction, causing them to say or do something in the wrong way thus affecting where the narrative will go.

The New Genre

The most interesting idea that Heavy Rain raises in regards to interactive storytelling is the idea of character vs. player narrative. When you watch a film you’re experiencing the story through the character’s eyes. You feel sympathy, anger, joy through the onscreen portrayal of these emotions by the character. When you’re playing a game like Heavy Rain it’s you, the player, who is having the experience. Your experience with the story will differ from everyone else, not just because of the story branches that are baked into the game, but because of your unique thought process as you traverse the narrative. If anything it makes the story even more memorable because of this first-hand real-time participation.

The review by Eurogamer France said it best in that the game symbolizes “the culmination of a genre halfway between cinema and video game that has always seemed interesting in its intentions but rarely conclusive.” I can say that the makers of Heavy Rain have made it conclusive and now it will be interesting to see what filmmakers and video game designers will do with this new genre.