RickStarr11

Having watched 4 other rom-coms in the past couple weeks, I realize how hard it is to make one that delivers on the promise, but without absurd Hollywood exaggerations at every corner, ridiculous and unreal plot contrivances, or, let's face it, bad acting, editing, or direction. This is a rare one that hits all the high notes without suffering the lows. Yes, OK, let's all agree that the ending of a rom-com is a foregone conclusion, and if "critic" reviewers would stop bemoaning that I would appreciate it. And yes, there's a meet-cute, but those actually do happen all the time, else the humnan race would have disappeared thousands of years ago.

The leads, Hadley & Ben, are a joy. Both restrained, charming, and competent, as is most of the rest of the cast, particularly Ben's Mom (Sally Phillips) and even the 4th-wall-breaker Jameela Jamil in a recurring, if ever changing role as Greek chorus-ine. The plot, such as it is, compresses a handful of plot hours into an enjoyable 90 minutes of screen time, and the editing, costuming, and casting all contribute to one of the most enjoyable rom-coms I've seen in ages. Yes, really, a 10. I wish more people would see this movie, if only to see how a good rom-com is made, and to see excellent performances by the two leads.

Special note: only on second viewing did I notice that Haley Lu Richardson is Executive Producer. Good show. You go girl!

The Disney brand lives on in "Secretariat", a come-from-behind almost-all-true story of the famous Triple Crown Winner. The two leads are great: Secretariat's owner and trainer Diane Lane and John Malkovich respectively; James Cromwell is decent and Nelsan Ellis and Otto Thorwarth credible as the stable boy and jockey, but the rest of them - particularly the family and friends - you can put in a tub and sail away.

The story, of course, is well known; Secretariat turns out to be the greatest race horse ever (he even makes ESPN's "Top 50 athletes of all time" the only non-human to do so.) The true-to-the-story twist is that Secretariat turns out to be the consolation prize of a lost bet, but still triumphs over all obstacles and odds.

Actually, the story is as much about Secretariat's owner, Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) and how she, well, triumphs over all obstacles and odds. Funny, that. While there are some empty moments while the actors are on screen (the anti-war protests are just dreadful), there aren't when the horses take over, and the POV filmography at the horses' hooves is pretty darn good. The festivities at the actual Kentucky Derby last a week and the race is over in two minutes. I wish there was more screen time for the horses here, but at least it's a better balance than that.

Disney stays true to Disney rather than conduct fealty to actual history, however the changes are not earth shattering, and you will come away with a fair semblance of the real story, if not a perfectly accurate one. A nice tear jerker, very typical for the House of the Mouse, but worth the afternoon if you have an interest in a great sports story, a horse flick, or just like seeing more of John Malkovich's quirky side in an otherwise straightforward role.

This movie made me angry at Oliver Stone. I enjoyed "Wall Street 2" and went for his excuse that he didn't hang the bad guys up by their thumbs because (paraphrase) "it's hard to made a compelling moving about CDO's, CDS's and synthetic derivatives." So he turned in a treacly movie with a love story, and on the level of treacly Hollywood movies, it's good.

But "The Social Network" has an even harder task: to make computer coding somehow interesting, and just to handicap it, it's a true story. So you can't just make up a lot of crap, you have to follow certain real life plot points and still produce a compelling story. (And boy, does it.) It's true that there are no likable characters here (and how hard must it be to write a screenplay where there's no good guy - bad guy dynamic to bounce around?) but then there didn't have to be in Oliver Stone's film either. Heck, he could have made everybody purely evil (as the first Wall Street managed) and taken them down even while producing a financially successful film, but he didn't.

Meanwhile Aaron Sorkin writes dialogue that reverberates like a Gatling gun, all the better to showcase the brilliant but socially clueless Zuckerberg as he hurtles past, not through human relationships. The film doesn't have a car chase, an over-choreographed bar fight, or much more than a few seconds of implied sex, yet it's one of the most compelling movies I've seen this year.

There are times when you just want to agree with the first female in the film who tells Zuckerberg "You are an asshole", and you wait for redemption or payback which never comes. Yet you can't take your eyes off it.

"Wall Street 2" was a candy confection next to "The Social Network." That's too bad, because Zuckerberg is only one jerk, and Wall Street has thousands of them. Would that they had gotten a more insistent whipping.