Short Take: "This Means War" and "Friends with Kids".

We get it, romance has evolved with the changing times and the movies have to adjust to the new ways in which people meet and fall in love, however this shouldn't mean that in the process we also must relinquish our human dignity, something that This is War not only suggests but encourages.
Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine) are two CIA secret agents who are "grounded" after ruining a mission and spend their boring office time trying to meet women. Tuck is a romantic with old fashioned ways who recurs to online dating to meet someone, FDR is a playboy who beds a different woman every night. They accidentally end up setting eyes on the same woman, consumer marketing expert, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) who by dating different men finds the perfect outlet to escape from her ex-boyfriend's shadow, try out her wilder sexual side and practice housekeeping. Where the movie suggests that Lauren is a hands on, ultra feminist woman, the plot and character development merely make her dalliances look like irresponsible promiscuity and of course, she is the only one getting accused of it, the guys and their jobs make them look like heroes who have earned the right to use their security clearance to harass the woman they think they're in love with. For all its misogyny, double standards and ultra conservative morality (you know who Lauren will pick from the very start) the film's greatest mistake is how utterly joyless it feels. Witherspoon seems to have forgotten how to be bubbly and charming, while Hardy and Pine hardly make for heroes worth pining for. The only war this movie declares is one against the intelligence and taste of its audience.

If you were one of those die-hard fans who were craving a Friends reunion, Friends with Kids should be the movie to dispel those wishes. Even if it's in no way associated to the popular TV show, the film works as a post-finale version of it, given that it un-creatively matches three women with three men to create the same dynamic as the series. Two of the couples are together and have started families, the single friends are those eternal bachelor (Adam Scott) and bachelorette (Jennifer Westfeldt) who seem to enjoy their "freedom" too much to lose it just to fit in with social norms.
In order to prove how awesome they are, the two friends decide to have a child and raise it without the typical family structure, of course their plan backfires as the movie conservatively reminds us that friends can't have sex and remain just friends, that children need two parents to be happy, that marriage is something we should all aspire to, and an assortment of other stereotypes that romantic comedies and dramas have helped perpetuate.
The problem at this point isn't whether they are right or not (morality and ethics aren't as universal as we'd think) but that movies like these pretend they will defy the conventional, only to become even more stilted and predictable themselves. The ending in Friends with Kids for example seems to be straight out of a cheesy 80s movie and the thing is that writer/director Westfeldt does not deliver it with a wink, she really thinks her movie is sincere.
More than a decade ago, Westfeldt brilliantly explored alternative sexual orientations in the wonderful Kissing Jessica Stein, if the characters in her new movie spent doing as much melancholy but hilarious soul searching as the characters in that one did, instead of screaming, cursing and dashing off dinner tables when upset we might've had our hands on a movie with some insight. Instead what we get are grownups who have replaced toys with wine, espresso machines and cursing to hide the fact that they are really nothing but kids.


Grades
This Means War ½
Friends With Kids *

The Devil Inside ½

Director: William Brent Bell
Cast: Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth
Ionut Grama, Suzan Crowley

If by any chance you hadn't had enough of the "found footage", "mock documentary" style of horror movie, here comes the one that should hopefully end it for good. The Devil Inside might just be the most preposterous  entry in a filmmaking technique that peaked, and should've ended, with the superbly done The Blair Witch Project.
This one focuses on that oh-so-tired mean of scaring audiences: the exorcism and sets the first part of its story in the 80s where a woman (Crowley) murders three clergy members who were performing an exorcism on her. The Catholic church intervenes, without acknowledging the truth of what happened, and has the woman moved to Rome (as if an American citizen would really be moved to a foreign country just because...) where she remains hospitalized for twenty years, until her daughter Isabella (Andrade) packs her bags and goes to Europe, accompanied by a camera guy (Grama) who's making a movie about her case.
In Rome, Isabella realizes her mom might be possessed by demons after all and with the help of two new age-y priests (Quarterman and Helmuth) tries to rid her of them.
As with the Paranormal Activity movies, the only real appeal in this one is figuring out how they will use special effects without messing up the DIY aesthetics. Smart visuals of course, might be the lowest priority behind The Devil Inside which relies on tired stereotypes about the Catholic church, exorcisms and horror.
There is not a single moment in the movie that can be deemed scary, unless you count the whole experience of watching this instead of reading a book or having a good meal as timely reminders of mortality and wasting one's time.
There is one scene where Grama's character sits in front of the camera during a confessional moment, there he expresses his disgust with the way in which the demons and other characters have no regard for the filmmaker's duty. For one second the film seems like it might try and explore the harrowing experience of shooting something, an angle that would've been fascinating in this sub-genre that all but takes the camera for granted (have you noticed that nobody in these movies ever drops or leaves behind the camera?) but before you can say "the power of Christ compels you", it's back to its old, cheap trickery.
The Devil Inside for all that matters isn't even a complete movie as it reaches a rushed, halfway there climax that leaves the plot incomplete...Not that anyone would want to spend more time in its company any way.

The Woman in Black ***

Director: James Watkins
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer
Sophie Stuckey, Liz White, Misha Handley

It's almost impossible to look at Daniel Radcliffe and not think of a certain boy wizard who plagued movie screens for an entire decade. His face became synonymous with the idea of typecasting and viewers should not feel guilty about having a hard time pretending he's someone else while watching The Woman in Black.
Kudos must be given to the young actor who is trying so hard to show audiences they haven't seen the last of him, however this is nary a benefit for him when his physiognomy evokes such blandness that he becomes a blank slate for whoever's directing him. Try as he does, onscreen Radcliffe can only muster two emotions: surprise and fear.
Luckily for him, his face is more than fit for this adaptation of Susan Hill's horror novel, which has him play the lead character of Arthur Kipps, a widowed London solicitor asked to handle Eel Marsh House, the estate of the late Alice Drablow. He travels to the remote village where he is welcomed by locals with unbecoming hostility. The reason? They think that Eel House is haunted by the ghost of a mysterious woman who is slowly eradicating the town's children. Not one to take superstitions seriously, Arthur visits the house where soon enough strange things begin to happen.
There is nothing particularly extraordinary about The Woman in Black, other than the fact that it's such a delightful throwback to atmospheric horror movies. It forgoes any signs of gore or extreme violence, in favor of creepy ambiance which paired with expertly crafted production design and efficient cinematography produce chills the likes of which we rarely get anymore.
The film might've been improved if the writers had put more emphasis in the fascinating dichotomy that lies between the advent of technology and the disappearance of the ghost story. Throughout the film there are numerous mentions to how machines have been used to move forward and leave behind superstition, something that becomes altogether more haunting during a scene in which a series of macabre wind toys perform a demonic symphony.
Throughout, Radcliffe does his best to look pale enough not to be confused with one of the movie's actual ghosts, while talented thespians like Hinds and McTeer chew the scenery with such subtle gusto that they are the ones mustering the real magic.