I’m no great fan of “Moulin Rouge,” but of all the things I despised about that movie the one criticism I never quite “got” was that it had committed some kind of capitol offense by reconfiguring various pop/classic-rock anthems into cheeky Broadway-style ballads.

Well, if you DID feel violated those particular covers, it’s safe to say you are not the audience for “Rock of Ages;” Adam “Hairspray” Shankman’s movie version of the popular “jukebox musical” that repurposes a laundry-list of 1980s Cock Rock (re: “Hair Metal”) into your basic young-lovers-with-dreams Broadway crowd-pleaser with an on-and-off “self aware” streak (our female lead’s name is “Sherrie Christian,” to give you an idea where this is shooting from.)

The thrust of the story involves the owners/patrons/etc of an infamous LA rock bar trying to stop an evil developer’s plan to “clean up” the Sunset Strip by getting a soon-to-break-up super-band to play their farewell show at said bar; as experienced by a busboy and a waitress with dreams of rock/acting stardom of their own.

The big stunt-casting is Tom Cruise as the Axl Rose/Brett Michaels hybrid who fronts the main band; which is kind of inspired – comedy, particularly self-parody, is the only thing that seems to bring real energy out of Cruise anymore, and he’s every bit the weirdly-ageless Reagan-era relic as the songs (particularly “Wanted Dead or Alive”) he’ll be singing.

Happy New Stuff!

Do you enjoy science-fiction movies that employ an elaborate visual-effect and/or worldbuilding-conceit to make a really, really heavy-handed societal point? Then you’ll want to reserve your seat for “Upside Down,” a French-produced English-language film with Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst as star-crossed lovers inhabiting a pair of alternate worlds seperated not by dimension but by gravity – his world is essentially the “floor” below her’s which is the reverse-gravity “ceiling” above his. Are you wondering if “above world” is ostensibly wealthy-looking while “below world” is working-class? How’d you guess?