Friday Flicks: Critics Have an Appetite for The Hunger Games

Grab some popcorn! Check out the movies you should see (or avoid) this weekend.

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The Trouble With Bliss

[youtube=http://youtu.be/jzyg8gWGFi4]

Tagline: Find your bliss. Then follow it.

If ever there was a title that screamed “first world problem,” it’s The Trouble With Bliss. And when you discover that the main character actually has that surname, your natural inclination is to roll your eyes and state that not even Woody Allen would try and pull off that trick.

But instead of Allen, we get director Michael Knowles (One Night, Room 314, Vampire’s Kiss), and Morris Bliss is played by Michael C. Hall. He’s your classic 35-year-old New Yorker (maybe Woody could relate) seemingly stuck at every turn. He wants to travel but has no money. He needs a job but has no prospects. And he still shares an apartment with his widowed father (Peter Fonda), who treats Bliss Jr. with a mixture of disdain and exasperation. But soon enough, Bliss finds himself figuring out how to deal with the advances of a young daughter (Brie Larson) of a former classmate. She’s half his age and freaks the living daylights out of Bliss by announcing, “by the way, my mom is just thrilled that you’re taking me to prom.” He’s also dealing with his equally forward neighbor (Lucy Liu).

The reviews are what we’d call hit and bliss. On the positive side, the Village Voice says that “the film manages to ingratiate thanks to a script that pleasantly ping-pongs from one digressive dialogue to another and a persuasive performance by Hall, whose natural charisma peeks through Morris’s dour facade just enough to make him appealing.” Time Out New York isn’t as charmed but agrees to an extent, noting that “Hall’s puppy-dog charisma holds up under the strain, but it isn’t nearly enough to keep this messy midlife-crisis dramedy afloat.”

LIST: TIME’s Top 10 Films of 2011

NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: It’s a guarantee that our pick begins with the word “The.” And this week, it’s followed by “Hunger Games.”

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