Reviews: Carrie, All is Lost and 12 Years a Slave

"Fruitvale Station" Brings Tragedy to the Big Screen

Film Reviews: "White House Down," "The Heat," and "I'm So Excited"

Fandango Report: Drive, Straw Dogs and Restless

Hollywood Bites Reviews: "I Love You Phillip Morris"

Largely abandoned following a promising debut at Sundance in 2009--presumably because distributors were worried about standing behind a farcical romantic comedy centered on prison breaks and gay lovers--"I Love You Phillip Morris," the true story of super scammer Steven Russell (Jim Carrey) and his beloved Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), finally arrives in theaters after a string of missed release dates.

Adapted from investigative journalist Steven McVicker's book, I Love You Phillip Morris: A True Story of Life, Love, and Prison Breaks by Steve McVicker, Carrey leads the charge as an ex-police officer-turned-produce salesman, happily married to a lovely God-fearin' woman (Leslie Mann, as funny and captivating as ever despite minimal screen time), and living on the down low as a gay man, until a near fatal car accident convinces him that life is too short to be squandered. He comes out of the closet, divorces his wife and starts a fabulous new life in South Beach with his boyfriend (Rodrigo Santoro), only to discover that “Being gay is expensive.” The only way to afford his new lifestyle is to turn to a life of crime and fraud, which eventually lands him in a Texas prison where he falls madly in love with a fellow prisoner, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor in all his doe-eyed, dreamy glory), setting off a string of jail breaks and new crimes in the hopes of living happily ever after with his beloved cellmate.

Written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the twisted team behind "Bad Santa," I Love You Phillip Morris achieves a rare blend of witty, zany comedy with an unbridled sense of romance minus any sentimentality. Carrey's Silly Putty physicality and bravado performance, one of his best in years, set just the right tone of wackiness as Russell recounts his misadventures from what appears to be his death bed. Narration is rarely a good thing in movies; it's usually what writers throw in when they're at a loss creatively and/or need to cram in as much exposition as possible. But Ficarra and Requa use Russell's narration to deliver some of the best jokes of the film.

Cheeky and irreverent, yet surprisingly emotionally charged, "I Love You Phillip Morris" is a genre defying romp that was worth the wait.

I Love You Phillip Morris is currently in theaters.

If you're living high on the hog, Steven Russell-style, here's a great way to treat yourself:

Grilled Wagyu Beef with Parmesan and Brie Polenta and Quick Creamed Spinach
Serves 8

Steak-
1/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons fresh rosemary
Freshly ground pepper and salt to taste
2 pounds wagyu beef (flank steak can be substituted)

Polenta-
5 cups water
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups instant polenta
1 cup parmesan
5 oz. brie cheese, rind removed
Salt to taste

Quick Creamed Spinach-
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic
2 bunches fresh spinach, thoroughly washed and chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
salt and black pepper to taste

Combine all marinade ingredients and toss steak to coat. Allow to marinate for 20-30 minutes while preheating the grill.

If using a gas grill, preheat the grill with high, direct heat. If using coals, allow coals to burn down to glowing white embers. The grill is hot enough when you hold your hand about an inch over it for only a about second. Lightly grease grill with olive oil to prevent sticking.

Grill 4-6 minutes per side, depending on your well-doneness preference.

Remove from the grill and place on a cutting board. Allow to rest on a cutting board for 10 minutes, tented in aluminum foil to maintain heat.

Meanwhile, bring water and milk to a boil in a large heavy saucepan, adding butter and allowing to melt at the last minute.

Gradually add cornmeal, whisking until smooth. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until thick and creamy, whisking constantly, about 8 minutes.

Stir in Brie and Parmesan cheese.

Season to taste with salt and set aside while preparing spinach. If polenta seizes up, add 1/2-3/4 cup milk and reheat, whisking until desired consistency is reached.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, melt butter and sauté garlic until it softens, about a minute. Don’t allow it to brown.

Add spinach and sauté until dry.

Add cream, Parmesan, nutmeg and cook until thick and creamy. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

If using Wagyu, divide steak into portions per person. If using Flank Steak, carve into thin slices, against the grain, and at a slight diagonal so that the slices are wide.

To serve, spoon a large mound of cheesy polenta onto the center of a plate, top with steak and creamed spinach.

Hollywood Bites Review: "Harry Brown"

"Harry Brown" is an unyieldingly dark film that's taut, blood splattered and gritty. And it stars Michael Caine. Say whaaa?

That’s right, Caine, giving a turn reminiscent of his role in 1971’s “Get Carter,” stars as Harry Brown, a recently widowed ex-Royal Marine who goes on a vigilante killing spree to avenge the murder of his last remaining friend by a gang of local teenage thugs in East London.

Beginning with hyper-realistic first-person footage, seemingly shot on a Flip Cam or cell phone, of teenagers smoking heroin from a light bulb before going for a joy ride and repeatedly shooting an innocent mother walking her infant in a stroller, “Harry Brown” is varnishless. Violent, bloody and merciless, the film can be painfully, overpoweringly silent, using only ambient noises and the sound of Harry wheezing with emphysema as he plunges into the dark night of the soul.

Delving deep into Charles Bronson-“Death Wish” territory, first-time director Daniel Barber is unflinching in his portrayal of a man whose life is filled with loss and loneliness. Shooting the film in a gun-metal grey hue, through graffiti riddled concrete caverns and in the flickering TV light of a drug den, sunlight is as absent from the film as hope.

While Caine is his usual brilliant self, Emily Mortimer is unfortunately cast as Alice Frampton, a police officer investigating the murder that send Harry over the edge. Mousey and gentle, she’s not believable as a cop walking the roughest beat around, but her tenderness is the only in the film and it’s occasionally a welcome, necessary addition.

Dark, disturbing and unsettlingly realistic, Caine gives a master class on elevating material. This vigilante story has been done many times before but it usually ends up closer to The Rock’s "Walking Tall" than Eastwood’s "Gran Torino." Thanks to Caine, this is one of the few credible exceptions. But it’s still a beast to sit through.

Hollywood Bites Review: "Please Give"

How do you make a mammogram funny?

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener manages to, opening her new film "Please Give" with a perky soundtrack over images of breasts being smushed into a mammogram machine.

It's cheeky and touchingly human, just like the film that follows. It's also a little self-indulgent and overly personal, just like the film that follows.

Holofcener ("Walking and Talking," "Lovely & Amazing," "Friends with Money") has made a career documenting the female side of neurotic, well-to-doers who combat issues like self-esteem and fidelity, all featuring her muse, Catherine Keener. In their fourth tale of rich people problems, Keener stars as Kate, a New York mid-Century antiques dealer tortured by the success she and her husband, Alex (Oliver Platt), have achieved by reselling furniture purchased from the families of the recently deceased. To combat her bourgeois guilt, she over-compensates by handing out fives and twenties to homeless people and attempting to volunteer with the less fortunate, which only leaves her in tears, whispering "It's just so sad."

A large part of her unrelenting torment rests in the other side of the wall in the family's stunning Manhattan apartment. They've purchased the adjoining residence but have to wait for their elderly neighbor, Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), to die so that they can live every New Yorkers dream and expand their living space. In an effort to ease a tense situation, they host a birthday party for Andra, who is both tragically fragile and hilariously blunt, and her granddaughters Mary (Amanda Peet), a tanning bed addicted aesthetician, and Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), a mammogram technician. The fallout from that dinner creates the film's tapestry of sorrow, regret, joy, fear and kindness.

"Please Give" spends a great deal of time staring at everyone's least favorite subject, the end of life. Kate spends her days surrounded by haunted relics of other people's lives while Rebecca is constantly forced to confront the naked possibility of death and disease, and Mary decrees "Things get worse, not better." It's a tough subject to tackle but Holofcener handles it with tact and grace, reminding the audience that hope is always around the corner, as is destruction. Darkly funny and refreshingly honest, the movie is like your drunk uncle at Christmas dinner; uncomfortably funny and repellently familiar.

Banksy Invites You to "Exit Through the Gift Shop"

If art imitates life, then what happens when art imitates art?

Those are the kinds of questions you find yourself asking after watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, the new documentary touted as elusive artist Bansky’s directorial debut. But, since it’s Banksy, we may never know if it’s simply a fascinating, illuminating documentary or another in the string of stunts he’s so famous for pulling.

In truth, the film is less about Banksy than it is about French videographer Thierry Guetta, the Forrest Gump of street art, a man whose obsessive need to document every moment of life led to his chronicling, under cover of darkness, across rooftops and down the sides of buildings, of some of the greatest graffiti artists of our time. Introduced by his cousin, Space Invader, Guetta finds himself at the inner sanctum of the movement, filming the likes of Shepard Fairey, Neckface, Swoon, Seizer, and, eventually, the man himself, Banksy.

But don’t get too excited. Though Banksy appears in the film, he’s hooded and shrouded in darkness, his voice obscured and warped, but it’s still the closest most people will ever come to seeing the man whose graffiti is considered to be the ultimate masterwork of the street art movement.

Attempting to follow in his footsteps, Guetta reinvents himself as Mr. Brainwash, the newest deity on the art scene, whose work is a derivative mishmash of all the truly great artists who came before him, homogenized and commodified. The audience can only watch in horror as his work is celebrated and gobbled up, selling one million dollars worth in just a few weeks.

Observing the artists whose work you’ve driven by a thousand times on La Brea or along Sunset is revelatory and engrossing, but watching the bastardization of the medium is as horrifying as anything that happens on Elm Street.

Was that Banksy’s point? Or are we looking too deeply into the film’s Rorschach test? We may never know but, at least, it’s something to think about long after the enjoyment of some great entertainment is over. And isn’t that what the best art does anyway?