Unique, sweet, moving, interesting. Plummer is fantastic. Mélanie Laurent is wonderful as always. And McGregor is just fine. Beginners is a bizarre semi-true story and very enjoyable to watch.

The American is, at heart, a character portrait of a craftsman. It just so happens his craft is making weapons for assassins. On his last job in a remote foreign town, Clooney's character spends his time isolating himself as much as possible while building a gun from spare parts. It's a simple story, but satisfying, and the tension built from scene to scene increases as Clooney tries to figure out his potential post-craftsman life while trying to avoid falling in love or being killed.

Before The Matrix, action movies were completely different. I still remember what it felt like, opening night in 1999, to see bullet-time in the opening moments of this film. The Matrix created an entirely new language for filming fight sequences, chases, and gun battles. It remains, to this day, one of my favorite sci-fi films.

Awful. What makes this particular film so bad is that it thinks it's better than other romantic comedies of this type. In fact, it continuously talks about and mocks these kinds of films. Except it didn't earn this right at all, because it's just as cliched and ridiculous. It takes too long to get to exactly where you know it's going and then resolves in literally 2 minutes through a completely ridiculous romcom ending. I never thought in my life I would utter the phrase, "No Strings Attached was better."