At the Movies With Peter Travers: “An Education” and “Couples Retreat”
The must-see film hitting theaters this weekend is An Education, featuring a star-making performance by young actress Carey Mulligan that Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers predicts will win this year’s Best Actress Oscar. A coming-of-age tale based in 1960s London, the film stars Mulligan as a 16-year-old who falls for an older man, played by Peter Sarsgaard. Get your mind out of the Roman Polanski gutter; it’s not like that at all. Instead, we’re taken on an odyssey through adolescence with Mulligan’s Jenny as written by High Fidelity writer and the screenwriter here, Nick Hornby. “An Education earns its place at the head of the class,” Travers says.
Don’t be fooled by all those funny little commercials with Vince Vaughn that you’ve been seeing the past few weeks; Couples Retreat is heading straight to the Scum Bucket.
Even with talents like Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau and Malin Ackerman in the cast, Travers says that “This is a movie that the Scum Bucket was built for. It goes wrong in so many ways with so many good people.” Let’s face facts here: The ensemble only signed up for this film to go to Bora Bora, and who can blame them? If you’re going to blame anyone, blame yourself for spending $10 on this film this weekend.
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This Week’s Reviews:
• An Education
• Couples Retreat
• Bronson