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The Fault in Our Stars,

directed by Josh Boone

(PG-13, 125 minutes)

The Fault in Our Stars has been made with enough sincerity, wit and heart to reduce its viewers to tears. For a movie involving cancer, youthful fatalities and other heartbreaks, the film is remarkably entertaining and achieves a sense of balance most tightrope walkers would envy.

Shailene Woodley, as the film's heroine Hazel Grace Lancaster, makes her character strong and believable, not an easy task as the character needs to lug around an oxygen tank in order to breathe.

Hazel has so far survived stage four cancer that has spread to her lungs. Despite incessant happy talk from her mother (Laura Dern), Hazel's chances of living beyond her teens are dim.

Her outlook improves when funny, handsome Gus (Ansel Elgort) starts attending Hazel's support group. An over-confident jock until cancer took one of his legs, Gus takes an instant liking to Hazel Grace, whom he calls by both given names. He begins reading An Imperial Affliction, the same dark novel she loves.

Soon the pair are corresponding with the book's anti-social author (Willem Dafoe) in an effort to make sense of some of the book's more baffling passages. It's a given that Hazel and Gus will become bright spots in each other's lives, but screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, working from John Green's popular novel, have some ominous surprises waiting for them and the audience.

Sometimes filmmakers behave as though they deserve congratulations because they've tried to address weighty subject matter. These folks haven't cured cancer, but they have made a movie that might bring some comfort to those whose lives have been devastated by this very real affliction.

Ilo Ilo (not rated, 99 minutes) Anthony Chen's intimate, detailed domestic drama, winner of the Camera d'Or for best first film at this year's Cannes Film Festival, follows a highly stressed middle-class couple (Yann Yann Yeo, Tian Wen Chen) and their rambunctious young son in financially unpredictable 1997 Singapore who rely on their live-in Filipino maid and nanny (Angeli Bayani) to help navigate the economic and domestic struggles of the era. In Mandarin, Tagalog and English.

Godzilla (PG-13, 123 minutes) Welcome to the contemporary American version of the fabulous world-famous predatory creature first introduced in Honda Ishiro's Gojira in 1954. In this supersized summer blockbuster, the problem shows up in the form of two Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms -- male and female -- whose cranky tempers make messes of Waikiki, San Francisco and Las Vegas, among other locations.

It turns out, though, that lumbering Godzilla, whose much-anticipated arrival occurs around an hour into the film, is here to restore balance to the world. With Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn; directed by Gareth Edwards.

Think Like a Man Too (PG-13, 106 minutes) Lazy and uninspired, Think Like a Man Too assumes that audiences aren't interested in anything beyond seeing the same old comforting fantasies. It's about reuniting the couples from the 2012 hit Think Like a Man to rake off some more cash by contriving a cliche-ridden wedding get-together in Las Vegas. Once there, the guys and the girls separate into teams and head off into the neon Nevada night for bachelor and bachelorette parties.

It's depressing to see this much obvious talent and acumen put in service of something so slight and cynical -- so dumb and yet clever enough to avoid an R rating. And not even funny. With Kevin Hart, Gabrielle Union, Jerry Ferrara, Meagan Good, Regina Hall, Taraji P. Henson, Romany Malco; directed by Tim Story.

Decoding Annie Parker (R, 91 minutes) Based on a true story, this is the resilient, surprisingly good-humored story of a three-time cancer survivor (played with warmth by Samantha Morton) who saw breast cancer kill her sister, mother and grandmother, and a geneticist (Helen Hunt) who discovers the breast cancer BRCA1 gene mutation. With Aaron Paul, Alice Eve, Maggie Grace; directed by Steven Bernstein.

Burt's Buzz (rating, 88 minutes) This sympathetic documentary investigates the world of publicity-shy Burt Shavitz, a former New York photojournalist who retreated to a 37-acre farm in Maine in the 1960s and co-founded fabulously successful natural-product line Burt's Bees, which brought him unwanted rock-star status. Directed by Jody Shapiro.

MovieStyle on 09/19/2014

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