A near-fatal miscalculation in reformed film critic Rod Lurie’s sixth feature as writer and director is James Marsden’s performance as David Sumner, a screenwriter immersed in completing a sprawling Hollywood epic about the Siege of Stalingrad, who brandishes a Harvard Lacrosse t-shirt as if it were the sheepskin itself. Marsden’s dancing eyes practically patronize his leaping cheekbones and protruding eyeteeth. Uptight and unsympathetic, the character is intractable as a middlebrow wannabe-hipster who is valiantly, decisively uncool and unfunny. What does it mean to him to “be a man”? The question is more, what does it mean to come across as even human?  Kate Bosworth is another matter as his wife Amy, the local cheerleader come back South, her lightly freckled features and markedly mismatched eyes gentle until the steel behind her perkiness rises urgently to the surface. Physically, Bosworth’s is an impressive performance, where consensual teasing that’s kittenish congeals at repeated rebuffs from her increasingly indifferent husband. With native instinct, Amy dresses in tops and shorts for the swelter, best described as “rompers,” as if she shopped at Lolita-on-the-Square. Still, Bosworth’s quirky delivery of lines like, “Honey, you know a lot, but you don’t know shit about southern daddies and their daughters,” hits unexpectedly telling notes. [See the rest of my review at Newcity.]