• Haneke's "Love" wins to cheers at Cannes film festival
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• "Idol's" Phillips had 8 kidney surgeries during show

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• May 25, 2012 It's Movie Time: Men in Black III, Sound of My Voice
• May 27, 2012 On the Marquee
• May 24, 2012 Cinema Classics: The Gateway Double Barrel Summer Film Series--June

Dear John Unlovable Grade: C
Director: Lasse Hallstrom (Cider house Rules)
Screenplay: Jamie Linden (We are Marshall) from Nicholas Sparks novel
Cast: Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried
Rating: PG-13 by John DeSando, WCBE’s “It’s Movie Time,” “Cinema Classics,” and “On the Marquee I have to say one thing: Lasse Halstrom manages to keep a consistently lugubrious tone throughout Dear John. Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried fall in love only to be separated by his going to Afghanistan and she back to college. Let the tears begin.

The superficial, clichéd romantic claptrap is well represented while the more substantial topic of autism, from which not one but two characters suffer, is never explored. Besides the slow, loving gazes and Tatum bowing his head in shyness and love every other shot, the angry young man and do-gooder young woman are alive and well.

In great romances like Casablanca, I can rattle off several lines; in this loser all I can remember is the silence, or rather the lengthy pauses while Halstrom milks another close-up of his camera-worthy leads crying and expressing either faux rapture at the sight of the beloved or pain at the departure.

I don't even know why I'm not grading this pap with a "D." Maybe it's because I was seduced by my hopes in awarding When in Rome a "B" when it didn't deserve it. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Nicholas Sparks, the author of the original story, has a tearjerker reputation. I now know why.