THE SIN CROWD

Check out my reviews, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Ryan Coogler's badass Sinners...

...and the anthropomorphic footwear adventure Sneaks...

PARTY COOPERS

Opening this weekend:

Love the Coopers—The Coopers, and their extremely First-World problems, being:

Dad (John Goodman) wants to leave mom (Diane Keaton) because he’s sick of her putting the concerns of their grown kids ahead of their own relationship. She’s talked him into sticking around for one more picturesque family Christmas in their handsome suburban Pittsburgh home.

Meanwhile, Gramps (Alan Arkin) has bonded with a young diner waitress (Amanda Seyfried) and now she’s planning to move away. Son (Ed Helms) has lost his job, and is hiding it from his family. Daughter (Olivia Wilde), dawdling in the Pittsburgh airport, meets a handsome young solider (Jake Lacy) on his way to deployment and talks him into posing as her boyfriend for the holiday in hopes of avoiding the disappointed, disapproving, worried looks of her parents.

Gee, wouldn’t it be something if two of them actually fell in love?

Middle-class whining about what a drag it is to spend time with your family at the holidays is theme which the movies have pretty thoroughly explored over the last few decades. Indeed, Keaton has already starred in a similar ensemble comedy-drama, The Family Stone, back in 2005. She’s one of the executive-producers of Love the Coopers, so she must like this sort of thing, or at least like the sort of money it can make.

Directed by Jessie Nelson from a script by Steven Rogers (which went into production under the better title The Most Wonderful Time), Love the Coopers is slickly produced and more watchable than it really deserves to be. Partly this is thanks to a Starbucks-compilation-CD-style soundtrack of genteel holiday numbers, including Sting’s lovely version of “Soul Cake.” Partly it’s because of the underrated winter beauty of Pittsburgh.

But mostly, as you might guess, it’s because of the ability of that cast to engage, even with fairly blah material. Along with the above, by the way, the ensemble includes June Squibb as a dotty old aunt, and Marisa Tomei and Anthony Mackie as, respectively, Keaton’s shoplifting sister and the cop stuck with taking her in. This promises to become the most interesting strand—Mackie gives his role a little tension and sting, and he and Tomei have a nice rapport—but it peters out without a real payoff.

There’s also narration, but both the (unmistakable) voice of the famous speaker and the identity of the narrator seem meant to be a surprise until the end credits.

OVER THE CAP

There are many exciting, ingeniously-directed scenes in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the extravagant sequel to 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

On the deck of a ship, for instance, the Marvel hero (Chris Evans) engages in an extended scrap with a French pirate that looks like some sort of folk dance. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) holds off an attack by gunmen dressed as cops from inside his heavily fortified SUV. A little later, Cap finds himself surrounded by turncoat enemies in an elevator, and all hell breaks loose in the enclosed space.

These sequences and others are cleverly executed by directors Anthony and Joe Russo. The movie also has Scarlett Johansson going for it—she’s drolly alluring as Cap’s butt-kicking ally Black Widow. I enjoyed Johansson’s gentle prodding of the less-than-electric Evans, but overall, when the end credits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrive, it’s more a relief than anything.

The 2011 film, which squared Cap off against his nemesis Red Skull, was a period piece, circa WWII, which maybe gave it a bit more snap and flavor than some of the other Marvel flicks of recent years. Cap was frozen in that film and thawed-out in contemporary times, and the new movie pits him, along with Black Widow and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and a few other good guys, against cyborg menace Winter Soldier. It’s watchable, but it gets bogged down in too many interminable shoot-outs and chases, and a lengthy finale involving giant airships.

Indeed, it suffers from the same problem—though I may be in the minority in regarding it as a problem—as most recent superhero flicks: None of them seem to know When To Quit. They dawdle on, climax after climax and then coda after coda, even interrupting the end credits for a now-obligatory parting shot. My best guess is that, having charged us so much for our tickets, they’re terrified that we’re going to feel we haven’t gotten enough for our money.