Arts & Entertainment

This Week at the Movies

'Admission' has its charms, but 'Olympus Has Fallen' is a gory 'Die Hard' ripoff.

Paul Weitz’s “Admission” does not, as some critics have pointed out, exactly provide the best showcase for Tiny Fey’s comedic talents.

Instead, it’s a modestly funny, and mostly charming, dramedy featuring a more subtle performance from the “30 Rock” star as a Princeton admissions officer who finds out that an eccentric young man at a new-agey New Hampshire school could be the son she gave up for adoption many years ago.

Fey plays Portia Nathan as likeably uptight and increasingly wary of the parents who hound her for information on how to ensure that their progeny are accepted to the illustrious university.

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She is in fierce competition with Corrine (Gloria Reuben) for taking over Princeton’s admissions office after their boss (Wallace Shawn) announces his retirement.

But her life begins to slowly unravel, first after an announcement from her foppish live-in boyfriend (Michael Sheen) that he has impregnated a sour Virginia Woolf scholar in his English department and, then, upon learning of her (potentially) long-lost son.

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During a visit to the boy’s New England school, she not only reconnects with her mother (Lily Tomlin), but also gets involved with a world-traveling school administrator (Paul Rudd).

“Admission” treads familiar ground thematically and it provides a healthy amount of laughs without being riotously funny.

But the film’s myriad of plot threads successfully come together as the picture moves along. And while the story contains no great revelations, it’s charming throughout.

So, while I’d agree with contentions that Fey could, perhaps, find better material to suit her comedic talents, the likeable – if slightly muted - “Admission” will do for now.

However, subtlety is nowhere to be found in Antoine Fuqua’s outrageous – and bordering on absurdist – “Olympus Has Fallen.”

The director, who was responsible for the significantly better “Training Day,” has delivered a hyper violent and slightly xenophobic flag-waving action film that makes “The Patriot” appear restrained by comparison.

In the picture, Gerard Butler plays Mike Banning, a Secret Service agent who is removed from the White House after an accident occurs that takes the life of the president’s (Aaron Eckhart) wife (Ashley Judd).

But during an egregiously violent – and completely ludicrous – attack on the White House by a North Korean terrorist group, Banning is the only man left standing after the entirety of the Secret Service is wiped out.

The rest of the picture involves Banning’s stealthy moves as he sneaks around the White House, unleashing a torrent of gore-spattered stabbings, shootings and neck snappings on the imposters.

A talented cast of supporting actors – all apparently in need of a paycheck – includes Morgan Freeman as the speaker of the House, Angela Bassett as the Secret Service’s director, Robert Forster as a general and Melissa Leo as the secretary of defense.

The villains are portrayed in the crudest of terms as foreigners hell-bent on destroying the American way of life, tossing out phrases that incorporate catch phrases regarding “globalization” and Wall Street.

And Fuqua makes sure to include a news clip announcing widespread cheering across the Middle East at the carnage taking place on the White House’s lawn, where Secret Service agents are blown to bits, soldiers are left with blown off limbs and innocent civilians are mowed down with a spray of gunfire.

The picture’s lead villain (Rick Yune) also threatens the life of a child and engages in an extended sequence in which he punches and kicks a defenseless woman.

Yet the picture has no sense of irony as Butler – the film’s hero - ties up other characters and stabs them in the throat to extract information.

To be fair, the film’s numerous action sequences are well choreographed and there is a reasonable amount of suspense in the movie’s second half.

But “Olympus Has Fallen” is, ultimately, a bust. At best, it’s a gory “Die Hard” knockoff and, at worst, something slightly more offensive.

“Admission” is playing at AMC Loews Bay Terrace 6, while “Olympus Has Fallen” is screening at Douglaston’s Movie World.


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