Reel Critics: ‘Paper Towns’ an unexpected summer teen flick

Movies about high school seniors coming of age are a summer staple at the Cineplex. “Paper Towns” embraces the basic concept but steps it up a notch to offer unexpected insights for the genre. It combines the usual teenage crush scenario with a quirky mystery that drives the story.

Young actors Nat Wolff, Austin Abrams and Justice Smith do a great job playing three best friends facing the end of their school days. They’re set to embark on different paths after graduation but their lives take a turn when Margo, the school’s most eccentric hot girl, disappears just before senior prom.

British model Cara Delevingne plays the enigmatic Margo. Smart and sexy, she spouts cryptic advice while taking steps that lead the boys on a wild road trip. Beautiful Halston Sage plays a teen femme fatale who joins the boys on their odyssey to find the missing Margo.

There’s a mandatory party animal scene and other conventional plot points but the film manages to avoid the expected Hollywood ending. The end result is some food for thought about the expectations and plans we all have as teenagers.

— John Depko

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Dedication to ‘Southpaw’ role not enough to save film

Over the years, many film actors have undergone radical physical transformations to get into character. Whether shaving their head, gaining weight or starving themselves, they try to make the look authentic, but it’s a gimmick that needs to be backed up with skilled acting and writing.

We encounter this problem in “Southpaw” where Jake Glyllenhaal has sculpted a lean and mean body to play an undefeated middleweight boxing champ. But the writers forgot to chisel away the fat from their script to make this movie a winner.

Throwing in every boxing cliché from the “Rocky” movies, “Million Dollar Baby” and “The Champ,” this film pummels us with sentimentality and a weak-jawed plot.

Stars Glyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker and Rachel McAdams have some good moments but this “Southpaw” can’t connect on its punches to give us more than a bloodbath.

*

Woody Allen’s ‘Irrational Man’ lacks necessary energy

Woody Allen also fails to knock us out with “Irrational Man,” which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a philosophy professor convinced his intellect gives him moral superiority.

Abe (Phoenix) arrives at an East Coast college with a flurry of excitement from staff and students, who find his writings brilliant. Abe’s shaggy, world-weary detachment is like catnip to Rita (Parker Posey) and Jill (Emma Stone).

There’s some mild comedy but mostly the film rambles on about Heidegger and Kierkegaard and not enough about Abe’s spiritual awakening after he commits a serious crime.

The production values are flawless and there’s plenty of talent, but not enough energy to make either a dark Hitchcockian tale of murder (“Match Point”) or a quirky love story.

In his later years, Allen has been consistently inconsistent. For every “Blue Jasmine” we get an “Irrational” experiment that fails to resonate. Next year, perhaps, will produce another winner.

— Susanne Perez

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JOHN DEPKO is a retired senior investigator for the Orange County public defender’s office. He lives in Costa Mesa and works as a licensed private investigator. SUSANNE PEREZ lives in Costa Mesa and is an executive assistant for a company in Irvine.