Film Reviews


	The Spectacular Now by George Sax
	The gatekeepers of the motion picture awards world very seldom give prizes for the kind of unheralded performance Miles Teller gives in James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now. For that matter, they just as rarely recognize a modest, intimately scaled coming-of-age drama like this one. But Teller’s emotionally vivid, involving portrayal of 17-year-old Sutter, the central character, is about as impressive as almost any performance I’ve caught this year, and probably for a longer period than that. (Another one, Michael B. Jordan’s in Fruitvale Station, is a more likely awards nominee.)
	Paranoia by M. Faust
	They say that records are made to be broken, but you don’t always want to be the one doing the breaking. Case in point: I’m sure the people behind Paranoia were not happy to read in the trade press that their film just broke two records, one for the worst opening of the year and the other for the worst ever opening weekend of a Harrison Ford movie.
	The World's End by M. Faust
	As the final film in what creators Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have dubbed the “Cornetto Trilogy,” following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, The World’s End will put certain expectations in the minds of Pegg and Wright’s fans. That they have asked reviewers not to give away a surprising turn of plot in the film is rather disingenuous, as that is the point at which the movie turns into what fans will be expecting to see.

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