Robot & Frank (Jake Schreier, 2012)

Befitting a movie about a man losing his memory, Frank Langella's character in Robot & Frank is also named Frank to keep things simple. And true to the title, his companion is a robot, assigned to care for the old man. Afflicted with not-explicitly-stated-but-obviously Alzheimer's disease, Frank gradually reveals himself to be a retired thief, still capable of pulling off small grabs and even intricate break-ins but less able to remember what it is he wants to steal, or why it is an awful idea in the first place. Initially resistant to the idea of having his diet and activity controlled by an eerily pleasant, vaguely humanoid being, Frank soon relents when he learns that he can convince his caretaker to assist in burglaries.

That Frank's children (James Marsden and Liv Tyler) did not think to program the robot to prevent their once-incarcerated father from committing further crimes speak to how little they think the addled man can do, an unwitting admission of their perfunctory sense of filial duty. As Frank slowly bonds with his personal trainer and eventual accomplice, the robot becomes a complex repository for the emotionally (and, often, physically) absent parent to both vent his frustration with his kids and to vicariously attempt to make amends with them. So effortlessly does Langella invest these feelings into the emotional void of his "co-star" that Robot & Frank works best when its thin commitment to a narrative evaporates and lets the actor simply inhabit his odd role.

Green Lantern (Martin Campbell, 2011)

Watching Green Lantern in 3D is like watching a glowstick through sunglasses, the already unimpressive neon goop dimmed to a murky hum of sickly light. Its dulled visual scheme matches the narrative, a story about a man chosen for the highest honor in the universe that has all the excitement of finding out one has been selected to be a Nielsen family. In fairness, this movie is not as bad as the increasingly increasingly garish X-Men: First Class, which is aging in my short-term memory like milk left out in a hot sun. Green Lantern at least lacks the pomposity and waste of recent blockbusters, but it makes up for this "shortcoming" with a stupefying lack of creativity, in a film about a hero whose power is his imagination.

The first sign of the dearth of ideas is the hero himself. The Hal Jordan of the comics, a conservative, stoic pilot without fear, is replaced with a smarmy jackass played with much-practiced knowing by Ryan Reynolds. Jordan here is nothing more than Tom Cruise's character from Top Gun, to the point that, after he becomes the titular hero and inevitably saves the day, I expected Hal to buzz the giant lantern core on the planet Oa, making the gruff drill sergeant Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan, because of course he is) spill his galactic coffee all over himself in surprise and rage. But, if wishes were horses...