At the Movies With Peter Travers: ‘Green Zone,’ ‘She’s Out of My League’ and ‘Remember Me’
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Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers is still beaming from The Hurt Locker‘s Best Picture Oscar win, and this week At the Movies there’s another Iraq War-based thriller entering theaters: Green Zone starring Matt Damon in the very Bourne-like role of a military man searching for the WMDs the government said existed in Iraq prior to the second invasion. Joining Damon is the “running-moving-jumping camera” of director Paul Greengrass, who also directed the last two installments in the Bourne series. Might as well call this the Bourne Zone, as Damon and Greengrass transform a non-fiction book about the post-war restructuring of Iraq called Imperial Life in the Emerald City into an action film. With the Bourne team in place, this film is worth seeing — though no one will; Hurt Locker made nothing at the box office and audiences generally avoid Iraq films — but Travers says he is a bit disappointed by the finished product.
She’s Out of My League , starring Apatow Universe member Jay Baruchel, also hits theaters this week. As you can tell by the film’s title, this comedy about a “soft 5” guy dating a “hard 10” girl is “incredibly silly, almost stupid,” Travers says. However, he says the film has its heart in the right place, and even though the jokes are the same teen-com gags you’ve seen a million times, it’s a good time all around.
Finally this week, we have some bad news for the Twilighters out there: Your boy R-Pattz’ new film Remember Me is going straight into the Scum Bucket. Robert Pattinson trades in his fangs for the role of a brooding dude in 2001 New York whose rough life gets turned around when he finds love in Lost‘s Emilie de Ravin. It’s a fairly innocuous tearjerker until the horrible, deplorable ending jettisons Remember Me right into the Scum Bucket. Travers calls the ending “horrendous and amazingly offensive” as it makes light of a real tragedy. No spoilers, but reading this paragraph carefully tells you all you need to know, which is don’t reward producers with your money for making films like Remember Me.
Read This Week’s Movie Reviews:
• Green Zone
• She’s Out of My League
• Remember Me