There are many reasons a film might be hard to watch: unbelievable performances, sloppy writing, unskilled direction. Some movies offend with tasteless portrayals of strong sexual content or graphic violence.

Beautiful Boy doesn’t have any of these problems. The film is beautifully acted and well made. Its one sex scene is very thoughtfully done. Beautiful Boy is hard to watch because of the sheer intensity of the subject matter it covers.

Bill and Kate are emotionally distant and muted until they receive the worst news two parents could possibly get. Not only has their only son been killed in a campus shooting, but it turns out he was the shooter.

The couple must deal with their own loss while trying to weather the varied opinions of family, neighbors, and media. This also gives them more time than they wanted to examine how they feel about one another.

We can’t really put into words our feelings about Twilight and it’s various big screen treatments. Suffice it to say there’s another movie coming soon called The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and we’ve got a preview for it to show you.

Not that you need any extra encouragement to see the upcoming movie. If you’re a fan of the series you’re going to go, no matter what. If you hate all-things Twilight well, then, you probably won’t — unless you get dragged there by some weepy female. Hey, we’ve all been there, there’s no shame in it.

Sometimes you gotta do things you don’t want to do to make other people happy. Or, to get some, shall we say, action.

Whatever you’re motivations, or lack thereof, look for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One to hit theaters on November 18. In the meantime, check out the preview after the break.

There’s a moment in Radio Days when a young Allen and his parents have a chance encounter with a “Whiz Kid,” one of those freakish adolescents who spend every moment of their day memorizing trivia. Allen’s parents are in awe of the kid’s diction and “intelligence” while to Allen and ourselves he comes off as a stuffy automaton.

That single scene exemplifies the theme of Midnight in Paris: (and I take this line from Tyler Cowen’s excellent summation) “if we somehow managed to meet the cultural titans of previous eras, how many of them would come across as blowhard hacks, if only because their own subsequent work has made their personae obsolete?”

The Allen surrogate is Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), an American Hollywood hack in Paris with his shrewish fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her disapproving parents John (Kurt Fuller) and Wendy (Mimi Kennedy). Gil, currently engaged in his novel, longs for the Paris of the 1920s and, after a walk one night, meets a cab that whisks him back in time to a party with F. Scott (Tom Hiddleston) and Zelda (Alison Pill) Fitzgerald.

Beautiful Boy has an undeniably appealing premise—what do the parents of school shooter go through? And it has two very good actors—Michael Sheen and Maria Bello—who fully commit to their roles. Sheen and Bello play Bill and Kate Carroll, the parents of Sam (Kyle Gallner), the freshman who goes on a shooting spree at his college before killing himself.

Director Shawn Ku begins almost in medias res, as it’s only a matter of minutes for the premise to be established before Bill and Kate, and by extension the audience, are confronted with a flurry of television cameras, media pundits, and frustrated parents looking for someone to blame. The couple’s first instinct is to shut themselves up in their house and ignore the rest of the world, but the media hounds are relentless, and the two retreat to the home of Kate’s brother Erik (Alan Tudyk), his wife (Moon Bloodgood), and their small child.

It is remarkable to think just how long and varied of a career Woody Allen has had.  His decades long body of work has already earned him the status of a legendary filmmaker, yet that has hardly slowed him down from constantly pushing himself to be a better writer and director.  And recently, we are seeing a freshness in his work that only reaffirms his true talent as a filmmaker.

To be honest, it use to be that Woody Allen was kind of hit-or-miss.  Of course, he has his classic films like Annie Hall and Manhattan, but more recently, for every Match Point or Vicky Christina Barcelona we would find films like Whatever Works which, despite starring Larry David, seemed to fall flat and felt more like an off-Broadway play than a feature film.

Luckily, Allen seems to be on a roll recently.  Midnight in Paris is one of his films that is able to achieve that rare combination of brilliant dialogue and strong performances that we have come to know and love.

It is here that I would normally give a quick plot recap of the film to give context to the review, but I really do think this film is most enjoyable if you go in knowing nothing more than what was given in the trailer.  I know some people don’t like going into films completely blind, but I do suggest that you skip the next paragraph if you want the full experience.

This was a big week for news, especially of the comic book movie variety. Surprisingly, even with all that coming out we still have even more items worth talking about on the radar. Batman beats Superman…again, a Star Wars character makes a bid for a mascot job, MGM is still looking for money, Brian De Palma may get paranormal and what cities will Michael Bay reign destruction upon next?

Batman trumps Superman on the auction block

Looks like Batman wasn’t content with beating Superman at the box office, he had to do it at an auction as well. The 1939 first appearance of The Dark Knight sold for a whopping $1,075,500. This beats Superman’s first appearance in comics which sold for 1 million. Sorry, Supes…but, hey, you did land an awesome writer for your upcoming reboot.

Blockbuster struggles to remain relevant in the digital age

Video rental store Blockbuster continues an uphill battle to compete against digital alternatives.  The brick-and-mortar business reported a “$435 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $360 million in red ink in the year-ago frame. Revenue dropped 18% to $1.1 billion.” As companies like Netflix and Redbox continue to steal market share some believe Blockbuster has some merit left:

“The drying up of retail competition from the ongoing closures of most Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores; major studios aren’t making their new releases immediately available to Redbox; and Warner Bros. will begin a 28-delay before giving Netflix access to new-release DVDs.”

Personally, I don’t see a rebound at this point and beyond the legit competition Blockbuster still has piracy to content with. Is this the end? We’ll see.

This week sees more new film and TV releases on Blu-ray and DVD. Among the ones we’re more interested in this week are Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Dead Snow, The Box, Season One of Nurse Jackie and Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (pictured above with John C. Reilly and Chris Massoglia).

Check out all the new releases below.

Movies

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant ~ John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek (Blu-ray and DVD)

Dead Snow ~ Vegar Hoel (Blu-ray and DVD)

Dirty Harry/Magnum Force ~ Clint Eastwood (Blu-ray)

Everybody’s Fine ~ Robert De Niro, Drew Darrymore (Blu-ray and DVD)

Grumpy Old Men/Grumpier Old Men ~ Walter Matthau, Jack Lemon (Blu-ray)

Howards End (Criterion Collection) ~ Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter (Blu-ray and DVD)

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths ~ Mark Harmon, Alyssa Milano, William Baldwin (Blu-ray and DVD)

While Twilight was a guilty pleasure, its sequel New Moon just made me feel guilty. Guilty for paying a sitter, guilty for the gas I wasted, and guilty for buying into the Twilight phenomenon to begin with. A wretched excursion into franchise baiting, New Moon is flat out an embarrassment for everyone involved.

Briefly, if you don’t know the story of the sequel, Bella Swan is a mortal in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen. Towards the beginning of New Moon, Edward realises that it is too dangerous for Bella to continue seeing him, so he pretends that he doesn’t love her anymore and disappears. Bella behaves like a petulant infant and doesn’t leave her room for months because she is a narcissistic, co-dependent teenager.

When she finally emerges after months of alienating friends and family, she sidles up to Jacob, a local boy of Native American descent, who also is a werewolf. Bella then becomes co-dependent on Jacob, because that is what she does. She also becomes a thrill seeker, because whenever she endangers her life (via cliff diving, motorcycling, etc) she sees a floating spectre of Edward pleading for her to quit engaging in said risky behavior. In her melodramatic mind, this is how she can be close to her beloved Edward, if only for a second. That’s a healthy depiction of true love, right?

Since last week’s Comic-Con in San Diego, many of the millions of Twilight fans have been anxious to get a glimpse at what the members of the New Moon panel got to see in the legendary Hall H. Most of that footage probably won’t be leaked online for some time, but one thing we do get is an image of the illustrious vampire clan, the Volturi, from the new film.

The Volturi, according to Twlight lore, is one of the oldest vampire clans, operating from the city of Volterra, Italy, eating people and hunting werewolves whenever they choose. In New Moon, Edward rushes to the clan for a solution, which is when we get the first appearance of the dark group. Don’t expect to see much of them, as the Volturi have a more prominent role in Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the series. Check out the image in full after the jump.