Now You See Me (2013)

As a comic book geek, I love the crop of summer superhero flicks. This year alone, “Iron Man 3” and “Man of Steel” roar loud, and more Avengers and Spider-Man are on the way. But it’s a genre that is now well-worn, so all the more welcome to “Now You See Me,” what I call a One-Upper Film. That is, a group of great actors play out action -– here’s it’s magicians bent on Robin Hood thievery and the FBI agent on the hunt –- as they try to outsmart, out-trick, and show off to one another. Not just as characters they play, but as actors, too. Yes, CGI and big explosions abound, but “Now” is about the cast: Sharp curious eyes and bows of pleasurable worship as Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine, among others, show off for us and themselves on camera. Director/ writer Louis Leterrier’s complicated, can you top me?, magic trick plot pitches illusion, flashbacks, and double- and triple-takes, and it all may not stand up to deep scrutiny, but damn, I dug this. A wild card summer hit that’s as popcorn bright fun as “Prestige” –- another magic tale with Caine -– was dark. A-

Solitary Man (2010)

Michael Douglas is amazing. In the opening of “Solitary Man,” he provides a lesson in acting. He is Ben Kalmen, a wildly successful car salesman -- happy, dressed in a suit that shouts relaxed and confident. He’s set to golf with his pal, the family doctor. Ben is all smiles. Then doc dishes bad news. It’s your heart, something is wrong. The camera moves in and the sound goes down, and you can see Douglas play out every fiber of a man’s crashing soul -– shock, fear, desperation and panic. We jump six months. Ben has destroyed his family. He drinks. He picks up woman -- willing, desperate or just there. He would rather explode than flame out. “Man” is uneasy, funny and smart –- it offers no judgments or answers. Susan Sarandon is the painfully saint ex-wife, Jesse Eisenberg is a college naive, and Imogen Poots the 18-year-old that Ben beds. Told you it wasn't easy. The ending is perfect. B+

The Social Network (2010)

“The Social Network” opens with a jaw-dropper slashing. Words are the weapons. Harvard nerd Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) disses his Boston U. girlfriend (Rooney Mara): You ain’t as smart as me. She dishes back lines that could make James Ellroy faint. This is the start of an instant-classic movie from director David Fincher (“Se7en”) about the founding of Facebook. But only in part. It's really about the current Internet generation -– billionaires so young they can barely purchase a bottle of Jameson. Money? Boring. Six jets and a Manhattan pad? Dull. Oprah's couch is Mecca. These guys just want to be liked, in all senses of the word. The brilliant thou-shall-judge plot, of course, concerns whether Zuckerberg created or stole Facebook, and his one friend (Andrew Garfield) screwed in the process. Twenty years from now, after Facebook is gone, cinema fans still will point to this as the greatest autopsy of our fame-is-good era. This is almost 1975 “Network”-level good, and satirically funny. Eisenberg has never been better or colder, more desperate. Aaron Sorkin (“A Few Good Men”) penned the brain-candy screenplay. A

Adventureland (2009)

Set in 1987 amid a world plagued by “Rock Me Amadeus,” the stoner comedy “Adventureland” is a small film that focuses on the rites of passage for many young twenty-somethings: summer jobs, sex, pot, crashing the car, fighting with you parents. (I said most, not me.) Jesse Eisenberg is such a youth, out of college with grad school on the horizon, he’s forced to take a job at a Pittsburgh theme park after his father’s job crumbles. Adventureland is full of dorks, oddballs, the maintenance guy who sells tall tales of coolness (Ryan Reynolds) and the truly cool, truly messed up girl (Kristen Stewart). The comedy and some drama come from these people stumbling and finding their way toward adulthood and love. The movie excels at not making (all) of the adults idiots, but just older people capable of making equally bad decisions. The best scene has our hero’s mom busting him for having booze in the car, when the bottle belongs to his father. Nothing is said between father and son. But the shared look, the acceptance of both men, faults and all, is a far step above most any entire film in this often crude genre. B+