Capsule reviews of films playing the week of June 15 

Page 5 of 6

SOMETHING BORROWED Based on Emily Giffin's novel, this gruesome rom-com stars Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson as Rachel and Darcy, lifelong best friends both in love with Dex (Colin Egglesfield). Dex and Darcy are set to be married, but a drunken tryst between Dex and Rachel causes complications. Should they tell Darcy about their dalliance? Or should Rachel just continue to hold her tongue and allow Darcy to abscond with the only man she's ever loved? As in most formulaic romantic comedies involving a love triangle, the filmmakers attempt to make things as easy as possible for the audience by presenting one of the players as the "bad guy" — in this case, it's Hudson's shallow, self-centered ditz. But here's where this ruse backfires on director Luke Greenfield and adapter Jennie Snyder: Practically all of the characters are odious, insufferable twits, meaning we don't care about the fates of any of them. Especially unlikable is Dex, who's presented as the most desirable man in all of New York even though he's a hypocritical, indecisive, insensitive and unobservant dullard (Egglesfield's bland performance doesn't help). Only John Krasinski, as Rachel's sarcastic best friend, provides any spark. True to its generic, genetic code, Something Borrowed also features a rainstorm during a climactic confession (perhaps Thor was working overtime?) as well as the sight of our leading ladies engaging in a torturous living-room dance of an oldie but goodie. Yet as they gyrated their way through Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It," all I could think was how I wanted to take this movie and shove it. *

SOURCE CODE Has Duncan Jones already sold out? It's hard to say, but Source Code, his sophomore effort as director, can only be considered a disappointment given his knock-it-out-of-the-park debut. 2009's Moon, which missed my 10 Best list that year by one spot, was a dazzling achievement, the sort of heady sci-fi extravaganza one would expect from the son of David Bowie. Source Code is far more mainstream; that's not meant as a knock, but this highly entertaining movie concludes with what will doubtless remain one of the worst sell-out endings of the year. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Colter Stevens, a soldier who's being used in an experiment that allows him to occupy the body of one Sean Fentress, who's about to be killed, along with all the other passengers, by a bomb planted on a Chicago commuter train. Colter's mission is to use those last eight minutes in Sean's body to ferret out the killer's identity and thereby prevent any future attacks. As explained by his military contact (Vera Farmiga) and the experiment's creator (Jeffrey Wright), he will keep being sent back to those eight minutes until he acquires the knowledge being sought. It's a Groundhog Day scenario mined for tension rather than laughs, and while it's not that difficult to ID the assassin, the fun comes in watching Colter repeatedly interact with the other commuters and use knowledge from previous "trips" to inform the decisions he makes on subsequent jumps. There's really only one way for all this to end, but scripter Ben Ripley jerry-rigs his own storyline by coming up with a conclusion that's illogical, infuriating and impossible to defend. It provides Source Code with a sour coda that cripples an otherwise sweet ride. **1/2

THOR Kenneth Branagh, whose devotion to the works of William Shakespeare resulted in his designation as the modern-day heir to Laurence Olivier, might have seemed an unlikely choice to helm Thor, the latest in the growing line of Marvel Comics adaptations. Yet it's possible that the man who successfully brought (among others) Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing to the big screen took his marching orders directly from the Bard himself. "O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder," wrote Will in Henry VI, Part 2, a sentiment that Branagh tries to capture in this superhero opus centering on the Norse God of Thunder. A perfectly serviceable entry in the cinematic superhero sweepstakes, Thor provides viewers with a good time as long as they're not taking notes and comparing it to most other high-profile Marvel properties. More straight-laced than the Spider-Man films and less exciting than the X-Men oeuvre (the first two, anyway), Thor can't even match the rollicking ride of the original Iron Man, which had the advantage of Robert Downey Jr. to steer it over rough terrain. But that's not to say there isn't much to enjoy here. The film is gorgeous to behold (the 3-D is used effectively), and the battle sequences are ably handled — there's a kinetic kick in seeing Thor twirl his mighty hammer Mjolnir to batter opponents, a perfect realization of the manner in which it was caught on the printed page. Chris Hemsworth is well-cast as Thor, and while he and Natalie Portman (as an astrophysicist) don't set off any massive fireworks, they prove to be an affable screen couple (at any rate, Natalie Portman + Chris Hemsworth > Natalie Portman + Danny McBride). **1/2