The Last Song -1/2*

Greg Kinnear stars along Miley Cyrus in The Last Song, the latest too-sappy-for-its-own-or-anyone-else's-good Nicolas Sparks adaptation, playing the guilt-ridden estranged Dad, keeping cancer a secret from the kids. While watching the film one thing is clear, and that is that Kinnear must have a daughter between the ages of maybe seven and fourteen, and she is surely a Hannah Montana fan. Why the Hell else would he be involved with this awful schlock? There is almost nothing else good about the film other than Mr. Kinnear, who makes about a quarter of the film almost bearable, but it's all muddled by the intolerable little asshole who plays his son and Miley's approach to acting, which is speaking with perpetually clenched teeth and casting dirty looks at the pretty boy she will later fall in love with as Dad withers away. I guess it's a coming-of-age story, only it depicts a rebellious seventeen year-old girl mature into a calm fifteen year-old.

Green Zone - ***

There's something about Green Zone that just doesn't feel right. It follows fake characters who influence a real war, with an outcome that clearly didn't happen, which would normally be fine. But because the outcome is Matt Damon discovering the corrupt and fallacious beginning of the war and exposing it to the world, an ending with so much hope it seems that it is signaling an end to a war that clearly did not end three months after it started, it feels wrong. What you get is essentially a fantasy film told in the hyper-real Paul Greengrass "shaky-cam" style that worked so well for United 93 and the Bourne series. In Green Zone, Greengrass proves to anyone that didn't already believe that he has mastered the technique of shooting an entire film handheld; there are some outstanding chase sequences through darkened streets that rival the Bourne films. Matt Damon and a supporting cast that includes Amy Ryan and Greg Kinnear are great, but the film suffers from the clash between style and substance. Had it been a straight-forward action film, or had it been released six years ago, Green Zone probably would have been great, but today it just feels... off.