The Projection Booth

The Iron Lady

2012-01-29T23:26:00.003-05:00

Fueled by a quandary of faults and embarrassments that might threaten to turn a review into a bullet point list of reasons to save your money, The Iron Lady transcends the typical aura of simply bad, simply inept movies and threatens to become something like avant garde trash. Imagine a public art display involving a derailed freight train, and you’ll be in the right neck of the woods. Speaking truly now, if you’ll indulge me: I feel bad sounding so harsh, because actual real people made this movie, and inasmuch as I disagree with their taste in much, including (but not limited to) politics (a question: is The Iron Lady a crude piece of lip service propaganda spouting current hot button words, or is it incompetent aside from party affiliation?), the fact is that their film product doesn’t suggest something evil. Except for the very valuable time it wastes from your life. To that end, they’ve actually created the perfect black hole, and they shouldn’t feel personally slighted, just professionally. “Directed with a fucking hammer” were the words of one of my hosts (or maybe it was, “by a hammer”), the other half being the first to politely break the air after twenty-five minutes and ask if anyone else already hating our entertainment of choice. I finished the screener later, by myself, in awe of sheer compounding awfulness.

Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd, now also responsible for this mess, is all gassed up with no place to go, and making movies is – if I may try to be polite – a misguided channeling of those energies. Please, stop it; there are yet positive ways you can contribute to the world. Meryl? Your talent climbed high, and higher, and higher. Now you’re in coasting mode, making good on your name and abilities and absolutely taking the path of least resistance. Projects like this are beneath you, and they might not be, if you keep on taking them. The veteran actress is technically astute in her mimicry of Margaret Thatcher, but lacks even the most basic elements of empathy (not that the script much affords it), suggesting a wax museum figure come to life without soul. She should have laughed and shredded the script, or does she want another trophy that badly? A point is made late in the film concerning the cost of a gallon of milk, the image of which most appropriately opens this astonishingly whitewashed creation. Focusing – as much as one can described the haphazard gaze as such – on the elderly Thatcher’s senile recollections in ways shrill enough to make A Beautiful Mind’s didactic representations of that organ look respectful by comparison, The Iron Lady looks, sounds and feels as if it happened by chance. Perhaps the only way its one-of-a-kind, chimpanzees-pounding-on-typewriters awfulness could be justified would be to have had the former Prime Minister revealed as an alien in disguise. Frequently selecting the worst possible camera angle, or motion, the film eventually takes to firing off meaningless and frequently nonsensical transitions, montages, and layering effects as if it were a student project on which every video editing tool had to be used at least once. The nominees have just been announced, and Oscar should feel ashamed for even considering this hogwash.

Disney Favorites and Such

2012-01-19T21:10:00.001-05:00

Within the next 24 hours, I'll have succumbed to temptation and gone to the multiplex to see the 3D-retrofitted, presumably "extended" edition (I haven't verified this fact because I want it to be a surprise) of Disney's first real crack at Oscar gold, Beauty and the Beast. Released when I was six years old, it was and remains a personal favorite, even as the years have seen it transform from timeless masterpiece to a slightly less emotionally substantial but still thoroughly entertaining, engrossing experience. Until then, it remains tied (with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, of all things) as the film I've seen the most times theatrically (seven; bless my mother for tolerating my repeat-viewing insistence).

I've never seen the 2002 cut of the film, and while I'm apprehensive about the 3D quality (The Lion King re-release looked terrible, and in hindsight, two-and-a-half stars was overly generous on my part), my primary thought is: what the hell? I owned all manner of merchandise and paraphernalia (including a collector's card series, which I completed), and listened to the cassette tape soundtrack of the film to the breaking point. Why stop now? I could certainly use a return to my youth.

Which is a very roundabout way of making this another opportunity for a mostly pointless list. For the sake of simplicity, I've made this list traditional Disney animated exclusive, while also deliberately disincluding anything with the Pixar label, both pre- and post-Disney merger. Otherwise, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird and company would threaten to eat up half of the slots, and I'd have had to kick a few more animated titles out for a certain David Lynch joint and one, maybe two, Jeff Bridges vehicles. (For the record, I haven't seen Song of the South yet, although there is a YouTube rip of the film waiting on my hard drive...) Post your own list. Or simply fire away.

1. Dumbo
2. Pinocchio
3. The Fox and the Hound
4. Lilo & Stitch
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Fantasia
7. 101 Dalmatians
8. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
9. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
10. Sleeping Beauty

2012 Capsule Log #1

2012-01-15T21:23:00.002-05:00

Now, this is what I'm talking about. Trendy and current, yet also steeped in a smartness and sincerity becoming of its Shakespearean roots, 10 Things I Hate About You does for the silver screen what Daria did for MTV, sort of. As the too-cool-to-care dude who finds it his duty to tame the shrew, Heath Ledger is simply magical; there's no doubt he was a natural from day one. Pointed satire is mixed in moderate proportion with irony-free conflict in this subversive high school rom com, which thankfully almost completely sidesteps the off-putting calculation inherent to some of its plotting. A fine rum concoction compared to...

...this gag-inducing Four Loko misfire, which goes haywire with exaggeration and a bare minimum of return value. Calling Clueless the Citizen Kane of high school movies may be accurate, but it's a dubious designation. I've never read the Jane Austin novel Emma on which Heckerling's script is loosely based, but even amidst the onscreen chaos (as if!), the genuine intelligence lurking beneath is obvious. Pity it oversells the material to a crowd that isn't going to get (or, more to the point, appreciate) it anyway, and the result is like watching a gifted student sell out to the popular idiot crowd. The movie seems afraid to show genuine sincerity, and Paul Rudd can only pull so much of the weight. The high point is a cheeky nod to Kubrick's monolith, but it's a slog to and from.

Setting aside a handful of pulse-raising set pieces, this sequel to 2009's raucous revamp of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle legend is the deflated yin to that film's energetic yang: excessively plotted, poorly characterized, thin as used sandpaper. Not unlike Iron Man 2 (although exceedingly more watchable), the effort to reproduce the spontaneity of the previous film's success imbues Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows with a weary tone of overexertion, with so little worth investing in that one might find themselves forgetting about the whole endeavor even as they're still watching it. Robert Downey, Jr.'s schtick has gone from chic to borderline embarrassing, while Guy Ritchie's directorial suave bangs around the empty script like pennies in a pot. Somebody get these men a script worth shooting.

Jason Reitman rebounds from the noxious Up in the Air with Young Adult, although it's the stamp of screenwriter Diablo Cody that's most evident in this biting look at grown-up responsibilities and the difficulties of giving up youthful desires after tragedy and trauma scar the body and mind. Charlize Theron is a barbed wire force to be reckoned with as Mavis Gary, a successful, semi-celebrity ghost writer whose attraction to her ex Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) is rekindled when she's invited to his newborn baby's naming ceremony. Balancing her character's impractical ambitions of the heart with a very real hurt that transcends the film's cultural satire (which culminates in an unfortunate speech that leaves an odious aftertaste), Theron is a tour-de-force of ping-pong emotions, contrasted almost sublimely by Patton Oswalt's turn as a hate crime victim. Smart, self-aware, and sure to be overlooked this awards season.

Once infamous for courting a round ten Oscars, now seemingly all but forgotten, Barry Levinson's gangster drama Bugsy is exhausting in all the wrong ways, suggesting less of a handsomely mounted epic period piece than it does a begrudgingly completed middle school biography paper -- all that's missing is MLA formatting. Warren Beatty is Benjamin Siegel (the name Bugsy instills him with rage, so we don't hear it often), and maybe it's due in part to the fact that his turn as the titular senator in Bulworth is my political wet dream fantasy, but I just can't believe the man as a borderline-psychotic, hairpin-trigger madman with visions of grandeur. The character study is only skin deep, and the central financially-dependent drama lacks enough thrust to sustain two plus hours running time, although Annette Bening, as Siegel's lover Virginia Hill, instills the proceedings with a sporadically volatile intensity (I'm happy to have seen the film if only to have heard her iteration of "philandering fuck"). A curious (and curiously dull) misfire.

Although bounds more digestible, the schmaltzy view of the world offered by Awakenings can now be seen as the forerunner to Robin Williams' most offensive vehicle to date, Patch Adams. Williams is Malcolm Sayer, a doctor who hasn't worked with living human patients since his schooling, now employed at a Bronx hospital at which reside numerous catatonic patients, some of whom have been completely unresponsive for several decades. A new drug may be the cure they've been waiting for. The film is empathetic and deliberately "touching" without quite triggering the gag reflex, but the script needed at least another rewrite before moving on to production, and the visual elements are Oscar-friendly bland. The reason to watch, then, is a tremendous Robert DeNiro, as Leonard Lowe, the first patient to be awoken, and the first to subsequently lose control of his body once again. Based on Oliver Sacks's memoir of the same name. Maybe life affirming, but hardly life-changing.

Sexy as Luc Besson's sleight of hand remains, his widely triumphed Nikita (aka La Femme Nikita) skimps out on the goods concerning the sexy, troubled Nikita (Anne Parillaud) herself, an amoral addict from the streets turned assassin for the French government. Part action thriller, part character examination (there isn't much to the titular female, and her void is only half as meaningfully examined as the film aims for), this stylish creation pulls this way and that, almost as unfocused as Nikita herself often is, with occasional lapses in logic that are hard to overlook in an otherwise smartly rendered film. A cool sensory indulgence, but irksomely lightweight. Pass me some Angel-A instead.

A little experiment...

2012-01-05T22:28:00.000-05:00

These are my top 25 movies of the 1990s, as of the last time I tweaked said list some months ago. I'm currently grinding away blind spots from throughout the decade, and want to preserve this incarnation for comparative purposes several months from now. (Two that almost made the cut: The Iron Giant, and Pulp Fiction. You'll get no more from me until I'm out of the isolation chamber. Goodbye, social life!)

1. The Thin Red Line
2. Crash
3. Close-Up
4. Showgirls
5. Breaking the Waves
6. Bad Lieutenant
7. The Double Life of Veronique
8. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
9. Eyes Wide Shut
10. GoodFellas
11. Heat
12. Underground
13. The Silence of the Lambs
14. Babe: Pig in the City
15. The Last of the Mohicans
16. The Rapture
17. Groundhog Day
18. Miller's Crossing
19. Naked Lunch
20. Magnolia
21. Fight Club
22. Jackie Brown
23. The Straight Story
24. Princess Mononoke
25. The Blair Witch Project

2012 Viewing Log

2012-01-02T09:55:00.041-05:00

This is probably the third year I've tried this. Let's see if I can sustain it for once. Presented in reverse chronological order (it's easier for me). A pair of "/" will be around the title if I've seen it before. A ^ will appear after the parenthesis for non-theatrical viewings. Shorts are treated all the same; ratings are out of four.

38. (Jan. 30) Undefeated (Dan Linsay, T.J. Martin, 2011)^ **1/2

37. (Jan. 29) Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)^ ***

36. (Jan. 29) /The Shining/ (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) ****

35. (Jan. 28) A Better Life (Chris Weitz, 2011)^ **1/2

34. (Jan. 28) Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)^ **1/2

33. (Jan. 28) Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)^ ***

32. (Jan. 28) Red Tails (Anthony Hemingway, 2012) **

31. (Jan. 27) The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd, 2011)^ *

30. (Jan. 27) A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011) ***

29. (Jan. 27) The Birdcage (Mike Nichols, 1996)^ **1/2

28. (Jan. 26) Reversal of Fortune (Barbet Schroeder, 1990)^ **1/2

27. (Jan. 26) The Aristocats (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1970)^ *

26. (Jan. 25) The Killer (John Woo, 1989)^ ****

25. (Jan. 24) Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011) ***1/2

24. (Jan. 24) Angels Crest (Gaby Dellal, 2011)^ *1/2

23. (Jan. 23) Albert Nobbs (Rodrigo Garcia, 2011)^ **

22. (Jan. 21) /Sucker Punch/ {Extended Edition} (Zack Snyder, 2011)^ ***

21. (Jan. 20) /Beauty and the Beast/ {3D} (Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, 1991) ***

20. (Jan. 20) Underworld: Awakening (Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein, 2012) 1/2

19. (Jan. 19) /Miami Connection/ (Y.K. Kim, Woo-sang Park, 1987)^ ***

18. (Jan. 19) In a Better World (Susanne Bier, 2010)^ **

17. (Jan. 17) Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)^ ***

16. (Jan. 16) The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)^ ***

15. (Jan. 13) Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011) ***

14. (Jan. 12) War Horse (Steven Spielberg, 2011) **1/2

13. (Jan. 12) Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995)^ *

12. (Jan. 11) Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011) ***

11. (Jan. 10) /Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace/ (George Lucas, 1999)^ **

10. (Jan. 10) The Crow (Alex Proyas, 1994)^ ***

9. (Jan. 10) Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach, 1995)^ ***1/2

8. (Jan. 9) Awakenings (Penny Marshall, 1990)^ *1/2

7. (Jan. 8) Bugsy (Barry Levinson, 1991)^ *1/2

6. (Jan. 6) La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson, 1990)^ **1/2

5. (Jan. 5) /Midnight in Paris/ (Woody Allen, 2011) ***1/2

4. (Jan. 3) /Midnight in Paris/ (Woody Allen, 2011) ***1/2

3. (Jan. 2) Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011) *1/2

2. (Jan. 1) /Midnight in Paris/ (Woody Allen, 2011) ***1/2

1. (Jan. 1) 10 Things I Hate About You (Gil Junger, 1999)^ ***

OFCS Final Ballot Submission (& Winners)

2011-12-29T12:34:00.002-05:00

In theory, I could plow through my remaining blind spots amongst these nominees between today and tomorrow, which would involve three back-to-back screeners, a purchased DVD and a bus trip to NYC, where the much-lauded A Separation opens tomorrow.

In reality, I'm going to stay home and enjoy myself at a leisurely pace so that I might be able to tax my body to unreasonable levels this New Year's weekend. Much as I kick myself for my blind spots, more often than not of late I tend to fall back on the thought that very few of my fellows have managed seen everything, too, and how many of them made a point to see In the Family? Exactly.

Nominees are listed below, my selections in bold italics, blind spots notated with asterisks. Bring on 2012.

UPDATE: January 2nd, 2012. Winners notated with ^.

Best Picture
    The Artist
    The Descendants
    Drive
    Hugo
    ^The Tree of Life

Best Animated Feature
    The Adventures of Tintin
    Arthur Christmas
    Kung Fu Panda 2
    ^Rango
    Winnie the Pooh

Best Director
    Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
    ^Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life
    Nicolas Winding Refn - Drive
    Martin Scorsese - Hugo
    Lars von Trier - Melancholia

Best Actor
    George Clooney - The Descendants
    Jean Dujardin - The Artist
    ^Michael Fassbender - Shame
    Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    Michael Shannon - Take Shelter

Best Actress
    Kirsten Dunst - Melancholia
    Elizabeth Olsen - Martha Marcy May Marlene
    *Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady
    ^Tilda Swinton - We Need to Talk About Kevin
    Michelle Williams - My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor
    Albert Brooks - Drive
    John Hawkes - Martha Marcy May Marlene
    Nick Nolte - Warrior
    Brad Pitt - The Tree of Life
    ^Christopher Plummer - Beginners

Best Supporting Actress
    ^Jessica Chastain - The Tree of Life
    Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids
    *Janet McTeer - Albert Nobbs
    Carey Mulligan - Shame
    Shailene Woodley - The Descendants

Best Original Screenplay
    Martha Marcy May Marlene
    ^Midnight in Paris
    *A Separation
    The Tree of Life
    Win Win

Best Adapted Screenplay
    The Descendants
    Drive
    Moneyball
    ^Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Editing
    Drive
    Martha Marcy May Marlene
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    ^The Tree of Life
    We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Cinematography
    The Artist
    Drive
    Hugo
    Melancholia
    ^The Tree of Life

Best Film Not in the English Language
    13 Assassins
    Certified Copy
    ^*A Separation
    The Skin I Live In
    Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Documentary
    ^Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    The Interrupters
    *Into the Abyss
    Project Nim
    *Tabloid

OFCS Nominations Ballot & Top 10 of 2011 (Round One)

2011-12-24T04:25:00.017-05:00

Going to keep this as brief as possible. I'd prefer to refrain from publishing any kind of year-end list until I'd seen enough movies to be satisfied that I'd taken in all the essentials. Unfortunately, given time, money, a GPS that dropped me off forty blocks away from my intended destination, and other circumstances, I've been unable to see the new film by Roman Polanski (Carnage), or David Cronenberg (A Dangerous Method), or the live-action half of Mr. Spielberg's Christmastime double header (War Horse), or several dozen others, and so, barring repeatedly devastating disappointments (given the at least 30 major blind spots I intend on seeing, this list could theoretically be replaced in its entirety), expect these titles to spread out a bit more in time.

Alas, we're within 19 hours of the Online Film Critics Society requiring my preliminary votes on this year's releases most deserving of recognition, so I may as well share some indication of my personal high points before the next election year gets underway. As with any good or great year at the movies, I could easily provide a top 30 and beyond, so impressive was the selection from the smallest of art house gems to the surprising intelligence lurking beneath several of Hollywood's tentpole attractions. A trend of the retro/nostalgic kind emerged, marked by the nods to cinema past provided courtesy of Hugo, The Artist, and Super 8, but more impressive was the sense that this year's great filmmakers were almost exclusively about reaching for the impossible, some of them having the audacity to find it along the way. In the canals of my mind - which have proven labyrinthine enough to continuously surprise myself, which is how I hope it always remains - such artistic growth and creative self-consciousness sees Terrence Malick and Michael Bay in the same room, I shit you not. And to think of how many discoveries yet await my hungry eyes.

Top 10, plus honorable mentions.

1. Certified Copy - An Everest-sized work of art from a long-standing master - as perfectly conceived, richly drawn and ravishingly enigmatic as any movie yet made. Ever. (Also, a great date movie.) If you don't think so, I have to wonder what exactly it is that you like about movies in the first place. Just sayin'.

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Catfish cunnilingus and relatives reincarnated as glowing-eyed simians. "Well son, I hope you learned your lesson!" You had to be there, folks. But you should still watch this movie. And if you're a current Netflix subscriber, there's no excuse but poor taste. Hypnotic, mysterious, life-affirming, and somewhere between comfortably numb and seriously chill.

3. In the Family - I missed out on the nearly-as-impossible-to-see Margaret, but this sprawling indie masterpiece came along out of the blue at the exactly right time in my life to reconfirm my belief in a greater, guiding force. Call it God if you want. This, director Patrick Wang's directorial debut, is so wrenching an account of the human experience that I'm sure it's already in His personal collection.

4. Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen's enjoying life again, and the result is his most darling and deceptively rich film in years, if not decades. Seeing this with virgin eyes, completely unaware of any plot particulars before they unfolded in context, is among the greatest experiences I've had at the movies. Go in blind, and be gobsmacked into bliss.

5. The Tree of Life - Once again dividing the adventurists from the chickenshits, Terrence Malick's latest act of trailblazing audacity is sometimes less than perfect, but always more than the sum of its parts. He doesn't merely climb mountains: he builds them. Time and life experience will likely only prove this to be a greater film than I already consider it.

6. Beginners - I saw both this and my above #5 for the first time on the same day, back-to-back. I was doubtful at first: Movies this good don't happen so close together, do they? I couldn't be so lucky, could I? Yes, they do, and yes, I can. See it, and you'll feel more complete. (On a personal note, this and The Descendants, which I liked very much, have formed some kind of parent/child/mortal illness double feature in my mind for collectively paralleling my life in 2011 with an astonishing 90+% accuracy. The ways of the universe are mysterious indeed. I love you, Mom.)

7. Nostalgia for the Light - The documentary of the year connects the microcosmic with the cosmic, examining our roots in the sky and our remains in the ground underneath the most transparent window to the heavens on our planet. Spine-tingling stuff.

8. Take Shelter - If you have to be crazy to know that something terrible's a brewin' in these troubled times, then sanity is most definitely overrated, but perhaps it is the sanest among us who are also the ones who most stand out. As a prophetic man who hopes to protect his family from the coming storm, Michael Shannon deserves a long-overdue Oscar. He won't get it. He's too good for the gold.

9. Shame - The highest of the peaks in the year of Michael Fassbender, this rhythmic, fiercely clinical character study might be the best film about sex since Eyes Wide Shut. A meaningless NC-17 rating overlooks what is obvious to anyone who understands the nature of addiction: that this body, clearly assembled by a technician very close to God, goes beyond providing mere erotic displays and reveals the soul of an empowered junkie on the brink of soullessness. It hurts, so good.

10. Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Learning from his past missteps and thusly executing his latest with newfound poise, poetry and assurance, Michael Bay's second sequel about giant fighting robots (mother of invention, folks) rises above its junk food roots to claim the mount of the $200 million art house action movie, a mix of pop euphoria and uncompromising anti-political discourse. The answer lies somewhere between John Malkovich's head and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's lower extremities. (As per Douglas Adams, what's the question?) A thousand tin cans from Marvel studios kneel before Bay's devastating war machine.

Honorable Mentions: Attack the Block, Hugo, Source Code, Jane Eyre, Putty Hill, The Skin I Live In, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Meek's Cutoff, Le Havre, Cave of Forgotten Dreams

And some more good, even great films I can't justify not giving a mention: The Interrupters, Silent Souls, Warrior, Drive, 13 Assassins, Hobo With a Shotgun, The Descendants, Kinyarwanda, Moneyball, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Melancholia, Rio, Black Death, J. Edgar, Fright Night, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Happy Feet Two, Bad Teacher, Kung Fu Panda 2, Rebirth, 50/50, The Eagle, The Strange Case of Angelica, American: The Bill Hicks Story, Bridesmaids, The Three Musketeers, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Arthur Christmas, Trigun: Badlands Rumble, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Horrible Bosses, Winnie the Pooh, Final Destination 5, Contagion, The Whale, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Of Gods and Men, Sucker Punch

Academy of the overrated: The Artist, The Help, Super 8, Project Nim, The Ides of March

Worst of the Year: Atlas Shrugged, Part I, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Cowboys & Aliens, 13, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, Thor, Cars 2, Jack and Jill, What on Earth?, Shark Night

And some additional recognitions and superlatives:

Best director: Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy
Best lead actor: Michael Shannon, Take Shelter
Best lead actress: Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy
Best supporting actor: Christoper Plummer, Beginners
Best supporting actress: Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life
Best original screenplay: Certified Copy
Best adapted screenplay: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Best editing: Beginners
Best cinematography: Certified Copy
Best animated film: Happy Feet Two
Best opening credits: TIE, Final Destination 5 and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Best end credits: "99 Problems," Fright Night
Best semi-random line of dialogue: "CAT?!!," The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Best use of 3D: TIE, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Hugo
Best superstar fuck you: Cameron Diaz, Bad Teacher
Best speech: TIE, Patrick Wang in In the Family and Rutger Hauer in Hobo With a Shotgun
Best reboot/sequel/prequel nobody expected to be remotely worthwhile: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Best pure id projection: TIE, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Sucker Punch
Best weepy guy movie: Warrior
Best documentary that cameos somebody I'm happy I'll be outliving: Rebirth
Best opening/closing shot bookends: The Descendants
Best prologue: Melancholia
Best canine: Cosmo, from Beginners
Best slow-motion action climax: Attack the Block
Best vampire: Jerry, as played by Colin Farrell in Fright Night
Best short movie dispersed throughout a feature length one: Rubber
Best short movie within a feature: The prologue to Melancholia
Best musical number: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," as performed in The Muppets
Best title: TIE, Cowboys & Aliens and Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Best unreleased film: Bagel'd

In the Family

2011-11-23T11:06:00.000-05:00

Writer/director/actor Patrick Wang's background in theater and dramaturgy is on high display in his debut feature, In the Family, an acutely felt, altogether devastating family drama as intimate and affecting as it is sprawling and untamed. Nearly three hours in length, the film is characterized by carefully blocked, deeply focused scenes that unfold naturally, if perhaps uncomfortably, beholden only to life's often overlapping, conflicting, and overwhelming emotions.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

3.29.59 - 11.3.11

2011-11-03T20:17:00.000-04:00

The 25 Best Horror Films of the Aughts

2011-10-25T12:53:00.003-04:00

If you haven't peeked at it already, now is a good time to head over to Slant for our recently published list of the last decade's scariest, or best, horror films. I voted for the list based on the former quality, although there would be only minor changes had I shifted my qualitative focus to the latter. I managed to hold on to a few blind spots on the final roster, and of course there are a few I'm sad to not see represented (see below). That said, it's still an admirable collection to these eyes (the only perfect lists are our own), not just because I like about 90% of what's on it, but more essentially because it makes me ask questions.

A good example would be that I didn't at all experience #20 as a horror film, but I've now been sufficiently convinced that I probably could. It also helps that I voted for another of that director's films, and really chewing on the matter, I sorta doubt he could ever make a film that was entirely without horror aspects. His latest will serve as a test that theory. (I'm talking, of course, about David Cronenberg.) Then there are some other great flicks that I would have liked to have seen considered, such as Red Eye and especially There Will Be Blood, which strikes a certain Gothic chord not unlike Dryer's Vampyr. But I'm rambling. It's a good list. Click the linked picture above.

My write-ups come in at numbers 19, 15 and 6, and on the point of the last one, I'm fully prepared to dig my heels in and fight to the death on its excellence. You shouldn't be surprised to know it came in at my top spot. Here's my top ten.

1. Halloween II (2009, Rob Zombie)
2. War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg)
3. Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
4. American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron)
5. Wolf Creek (2004, Greg McLean)
6. 28 Weeks Later (2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo)
7. Audition (1999/2000, Takashi Miike)
8. The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009, Tom Six)
9. Pulse (2001, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
10. 28 Days Later… (2002, Danny Boyle)

Attack of the B Movie!

2011-10-01T09:35:00.052-04:00

Here we are again. Four Octobers ago, I bit off far more than I realized needed chewing when I decided to dedicate the month to reviewing one zombie movie per day, and I'm still not quite sure how I pulled it off. This year, I've finally gotten my act together enough to attempt something similar for the Halloween season, and this time, I've done a bit more in the way of prep work before the month actually began. Here goes... something.

Since a youth largely obsessed with anything and everything aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (as it ought to still be spelled), the 1950s have been a favorite period of mine for the genre, and it is my hope to gain an even deeper appreciation for it over the next 31 days. Already I've discovered several treasures I'd never before even heard of (expect much love for Richard and Alex Gordon along the way), and had a change of heart for one movie that struck me as impossibly lame when I first watched it. With any luck, this will help win over some new fans of these frequently overlooked works, which, even at their most unpolished and MST3K worthy, strike me as a kind of beautiful art.

I realize the title of this marathon is a misnomer, as many of these movies had rather substantial budgets and don't quite fit into the B movie category. Too bad. I liked the title enough to stick with it, and hey, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms comes from the ice of the Arctic, not the ocean, so if you're going to split hairs, have at it. If you want the best resource on this topic, look no further than Bill Warren's exhaustively researched book "Keep Watching the Skies!" My efforts will be considerably less comprehensive, but I expect they'll be a blast all the same.

Day 1: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
Day 2: I Married a Monster from Outer Space
Day 3: Them!
Day 4: The War of the Worlds
Day 5: Plan 9 from Outer Space / Bride of the Monster / Night of the Ghouls
Day 6: The Blob
Day 7: Teenagers from Outer Space
Day 8: The Manster
Day 9: When Worlds Collide
Day 10: Gojira / Godzilla Raids Again / Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
Day 11: Forbidden Planet
Day 12: The Atomic Submarine
Day 13: The Thing from Another World
Day 14: Fiend Without a Face
Day 15: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us
Day 16: The Day the Earth Stood Still
Day 17: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Day 18: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
Day 19: 20 Million Miles to Earth
Day 20: The Fly / Tarantula, The Wasp Woman
Day 21: Invaders from Mars
Day 22: The Monolith Monsters
Day 23 & 24: Attack of the Giant Leeches, Attack of the Crab Monsters
Day 25 (Supernova B Movie Explosion): Gog, The Beast of Hollow Mountain, Rodan, The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, The Brain Eaters, The Alligator People, The Giant Behemoth, The Giant Gila Monster, The Killer Shrews
Day 26: The Incredible Shrinking Man
Day 27: Red Planet Mars
Day 28: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Day 29: This Island Earth
Day 30: It Came from Outer Space / It Came from Beneath the Sea / It! The Terror from Beyond Space
*Day 31: Robot Monster

And now that we're done with all of that...superlatives! But first, the question of legacy. The genre of 1950s monster movies (and all sci-fi/horror and the like) is by no means bound by the years of 1950 through 1959. These five are among those that carry on the torch, and all but one gets the official P'Booth stamp of excellence (Mars Attacks! gets the benefit of the doubt for now on account of my having not seen it in a decade).

In some attempt at order of quality, i.e. my opinion.

1. Mission to Mars

2. Gremlins 2: The New Batch

3. Tremors

4. Killer Klowns from Outer Space

5. Mars Attacks!

The there's the question of remakes, something on which I have strong opinions. Here's the deal: plenty of remakes are terrible, but that's no reason to refuse acknowledgement of the fact that plenty of them are good, even great. In fact, you probably like a lot of remakes without knowing it. The Frankenstein most everyone knows is in fact the third filming of that story. And The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland was by no means the first. This genre has afforded plenty, some of which are superior to their predecessors. (On the basis of it not being a "formal" remake, I've disincluded Alien from this roster, but the real reason is because I refuse to choose a favorite between Ridley Scott's film and John Carpenter's of a very similar nature, in both quality and ass-kicking quality.) There are other worthwhile remakes amongst these (for example, there remains something to be said on the casting choice of Keanu Reeves as an alien), but these are the top contenders.

1. The Fly (1986)

2. The Thing (1982)

3. War of the Worlds (2005)

4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Body Snatchers (1993)
[Embedding conveniently disabled on both]

5. The Blob (1988)

And now, the superlatives.

Best title shot: The Thing from Another World

Best opening credits/theme song: The Blob

Best eventual use in a music video: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

Best robot: Gort

Best monster: The Blob

Best robot monster & best line of dialogue: Ro-Man, self-explanatory

Best monster in a terrible movie: The Ymir, 20 Million Miles to Earth

Best monster in an okay movie: The Gill-Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon

Best opening shot & scariest alien: It Came from Outer Space

Best opening monologue: Plan 9 from Outer Space

Best monster that's actually real: The giant squid, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, at about the 1:00 mark.

Best animal & best death: The Rhedosaurus enjoys a snack, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

Best mineral: The Monolith Monsters

Best vegetable: The Thing

Best monster you don't actually see: The id monster, Forbidden Planet

Most Kubrickian scene: It! The Terror From Beyond Space. This clip is nowhere to be found. Just rent the sucker on iTunes. It's a dollar.

Most Lynchian scene & best musical score: The Atomic Submarine

Best resultant episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000: War of the Colossal Beast

Best movie poster & least convincing monsters: The Killer Shrews; best movie I didn't have time to review: First Man Into Space

And finally, a top ten, which may or may not include only ten titles, and may or may not correlate with star ratings, for what it's worth.

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still
2. Robot Monster
3. The Atomic Submarine (plus Fiend Without a Face and First Man Into Space, by the transitive property of the brothers Gordon)
4. Godzilla
5. It Came from Outer Space
6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
7. Forbidden Planet
8. The Blob
9. The Monolith Monsters
10. Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Plan 9 from Outer Space (c'mon, they're two sides of the same coin)

That's all, folks!

*Okay, yes, I didn't write something up on this one for this month, and instead subbed an old capsule review. If you knew what my month consisted of besides this self-induced marathon (much as I enjoyed it...wow, how did I ever find the time), particularly this past week and today specifically, you'd be happy I took a break, too. The next time I write about this movie, I want to write the Bible on it, and I just don't have it in me now. Good night. Good luck. The end.

Killer Elite

2011-09-23T12:26:00.000-04:00

Adapted from Sir Ranulph Fiennes's 1991 novel The Feather Men, the film purports to have origins in real events, delivering its action-movie gusto with a healthy side of political cynicism (think of it as a poor man's Munich) that professes even the most well intended of violent acts to be an exercise in futility—a thesis honored by the refusal to portray its bloodshed as anything but honorable or romantic.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Dumbo

2011-09-21T19:17:00.000-04:00

Largely inspired by the aesthetics of Disney's Silly Symphonies, the barely-feature-length Dumbo is essentially an epic cartoon, albeit one whose sensibilities are less exaggerated than they are a witty and fanciful caricaturization of reality (an early image, in which the United States appears in illustrated map form from the viewpoint of the clouds, is indicative), evoking the playful perspective of a child.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Silent Souls (2010): B+

2011-09-15T16:58:00.002-04:00

Water and death are the two most recurring objects in the thematically dense Silent Souls, a film that suggests the final ripples of a forgotten culture but nevertheless unfolds with ethereal, quotidian ease. Miron (Yuriy Tsurilo) and Aist (Igor Sergeev) remember and continue the ways of the Merja people, a group that was assimilated into larger Russia centuries ago; when Miron's wife, Tanya (Yuliya Aug), passes away, the two prepare her body and embark on a trip to deliver her back to the earth: first by fire, then by water. Aist narrates throughout, often contextualizing the events with cultural footnotes, but frequently the time passes silently (Andrei Karasyov's score seems to exist outside the film, like an emotional shock absorber), the deliberately unfolding events acting as a kind of mental fishing net in which ten different viewers might find ten different experiences of equally profound worth. Handheld, inobtrusive long takes readily accrue a dreamlike quality, and the film invites as much as it packs the mysteries of the universe into a brief running time; the fluidity is as musical as it is visual. A pair of birds - buntings, small, like sparrows - accompany this frequently spontaneous journey, in which past and present converge in ways both odd and oddly fitting. In an unforgiving, unfriendly world (the wet browns and dull greys of winter are so entrenched that a cut to sunshine-tinged scenery is positively jarring), loves stands above all, from the intimate wedding practices around a bride to a moving flashback in which Miron bathes Tanya in vodka. An elusive, poignantly earthbound odyssey.

The Lion King

2011-09-13T11:15:00.002-04:00

Although far from the worst offender in Disney's canon, The Lion King is nevertheless host to many of the less savory qualities common to the studio's output—namely, thematic obviousness, and a cultural insensitivity that often borders on xenophobia. That said, it's also inventive, beautiful, and even weighty in ways that are rarely acknowledged, even by those who laud it as one of Disney's greatest achievements.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Where Soldiers Come From (2011): B-

2011-09-10T12:47:00.006-04:00

Heather Courtney's personal, journal-like Where Soldiers Come From doesn't get us any closer to comprehending the magnitude of the conflicts the United States has involved itself in over the past decade, but in its own manner of accomplished modesty, it aims for the arguably more important task of understanding what these wars have come to mean to the people fighting them; the soldiers and the citizens supporting them. It would make for an illuminating double feature with the great doc Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience or even The Hurt Locker. Unlike more politically macro works, these films stick with those who volunteer themselves as pawns in what they can only hope is ultimately a greater good. $20,000 and college tuition support is enough to lure a tightly knit circle of Michigan friends to join the National Guard after high school, a decision they'd likely alter if they knew what they'd be in for (after several months in Afghanistan, one bluntly calls it "fucking stupid"). Courtney, a fellow Michigan native who wanted to counter stereotypes of small town America, follows these young men stateside and abroad, from their training to eventual deployment and return home. A family member likens their posse to the characters of The Deer Hunter, although tragedy here is of the long-term, low-key brand; lingering emotional traumas, silent brain injuries, and the damning realization by many that they still don't know what to do with their lives.

As we witness these boys becoming men, their experiences and personalities are milked for maximum universality; it's their story, but it's ours, too. What Where Soldiers Come From lacks in distinction it makes up for in heartfelt sincerity, although there is an eye-opening sequence in which soldiers are briefed via PowerPoint with information that hasn't been updated in over four years (their instructor can hardly pronounce Hamid Karzai, let alone verify if he's still president). Director Courtney's self-consciousness about the meaning of it all lends the film a distinctively picturesque beauty (better natural scenery couldn't be asked for, from the abandoned building that functions as a graffiti art gallery to the lighthouse that overlooks Lake Superior) that's at once rapturous and slightly distracting from the core of the matter. Carefully meted out POV combat footage (and no shortage of candid interviews with the soldiers) gives us a taste of their experience, but one can't help but feel stranded in Michigan with the mothers, fathers, friends and girlfriends anxiously awaiting their return. If the film feels unfinished in the end, it's a necessary reflection of how few answers we have for the countless questions we need to be asking ourselves.

One Day (2011): B-

2011-09-08T16:09:00.008-04:00

I felt that there was something rotten in the roots of An Education from very early on in that film, although the performances (particularly Carey Mulligan's) were so good that I'm tempted to return to it, perhaps to find something more inept than with actual malice. Lone Sherfig's stateside debut follow-up One Day further urges me in that direction. This anticipated adaptation bears some of the same weaknesses as that previous film, namely a handling of emotional highways that lacks any sense of human existence I can conceive of; through awkward blocking and the performances director Sherfig susses out of her cast (also awkward, but with more purpose), things always seem just a bit off. These baffling scenes are fortunately isolated, and as the progressing story eventually culminates in what I'd describe as an emotional web worth getting tangled in, I'm willing to write them off as either relative flaws worth overlooking or a result of the fact that I'm 26 and male and the director is twice my age and female. One Day is the indie equivalent of an event film, and it's central device - twenty years between two friends with a thing for the other, one day, the same day, every year - is tantamount to a high concept or the villain in a sequel, yet Sherfig and writer/screenwriter David Nicholls (who adapted his own 2009 novel) manage to avoid overly synthesizing emotions; the breath of real life, genuine pain and pent-up desires come creeping through. Ultimately, it's probably the two leads - Anne Hathaway, doing "not beautiful" (in the sickening sense that word is supposed to mean) so beautifully, and Jim Sturgess, Harry to her Sally - that keep things worthwhile. To the film's detriment, life's punches come with some predictability, and the years might seem to pass more naturally but for the decision to indicate such via an annoying text device. Sherfig's visual knack is better than she realizes; she should stop dressing it up within an inch of its life.

MST3K vs. Gamera

2011-09-08T10:22:00.002-04:00

While the movie segments of these episodes left this junkie craving more, they're rather accomplished works when one focuses on the writing and sharp comedic timing displayed in the host segments. Tom Servo's love song to a turtle is an early high-water mark, Crow T. Robot's impersonation of Ed Sullivan has rarely been surpassed by human or puppet alike, and fans of Wagner will appreciate the production of "Gameradamerung."

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Viewing Log #12

2011-08-28T18:10:00.005-04:00

So close, and yet so far. Crazy, Stupid, Love. has a lot more going for it than it seems to realize, and watching it is akin to seeing a healthy athlete lose the race because they inadvertently strapped themselves to a pair of crutches. I suppose Dan Fogelman (of Tangled and both Cars; hey, I'm trying not to be biased, here) should get some tenderness credit for his screenplay, which is frequently delightful in that it leaves room for characters to exist and be themselves beyond the demands of writing conventions, and daring in how it withholds information from the audience and certain characters for maximum laugh/shock impact when revealed. It is also downright hideous on at least one occasion, in which a character does something that almost only ever happens in stupid movies, and it goes on for a very. Long. Time. If you can look past this climactic bungle, then, Crazy, Stupid, Love. is the most honest rom-com in a time that also could have been great. Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa - of Bad Santa's screenplay - handle things with organic ease, defusing usual comedy hijinks and letting the absurd unfold in a more everyday manner. Even at its most problematic, it's an admirable balancing act of character, plot, and tone. Love goes round and round amongst a rough dozen characters whom, at best, only think they know what they want. Steve Carell, Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, and an underutilized Marisa Tomei are all top notch. And for a mainstream, tent pole film, Crazy, Stupid, Love.'s non-resolutions are decidedly non-pat and reflective of real struggle. Tweak out about twenty minutes, and this might've been more than only almost a fever pitch. [2011, B-]

I've only ever seen the 1968 Planet of the Apes, so if this reboot/prequel/whatever is going over anything thematically similar to any of the many sequels, I'm at least that much in the dark. Regardless of those relationships, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is still a damn fine bit of craftsmanship, thoughtful and exciting and only vaguely manifest of the cookie cutter production system that spawned it. A drug unofficially known as "the cure to Alzheimer's" has been proven wildly successful on its simian test subjects, and must gain investment board approval before moving on to humans. A predictably thickheaded business snafu sees the project scrapped, however, and the primates terminated. Emotionally invested scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) manages to save one of the babies and, naming it Ceasar, takes it into his home, where he soon learns that the effects of the drug were passed onto it at a genetic level. As in the original film, this entry speaks volumes to social biases and the subjugation of broad groups; a scrutinous eye towards the responsibilities of discovery and the dangers of a for-profit mindset don't hurt the thematically juicy proceedings, either. As Caesar, along with the f/x animators, Andy Serkis turns in a thoroughly mesmeric performance; you'll be rooting for the apes in the end, even if you're not rooting against the humans (although one's well-deserved comeuppance is particularly savory). Among the more cerebral popcorn films in memory, although the last-act set piece atop (and beneath) the Golden Gate Bridge can hold its own with the best of them. Sporadically profound (you'll know it when it happens), not unlike a riff on the "Dawn of Man" chapter from 2001: A Space Odyssey. [2011, B]

Hangover filmmakers, this is how you do it, and by "it," I mean lewd comedies starring primarily men who get into all sorts of trouble over a short period of time during which virtually anything can - and does - happen. Horrible Bosses is a refreshing workplace fantasy for our corporate-shilling times. As per the title, three best friend protagonists have found themselves in a kind of hell on earth employment; Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman) has been sucking up to his boss (a quasi-brilliant Kevin Spacey) for ages to no avail, Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) is assistant to a sexually aggressive dentist (smoky Jennifer Aniston) who refuses to respect his preexisting engagement, and Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis) must contend with his newfound superior, a coke-addicted asshole (a barely-recognizable Colin Farrell) who wants only to squeeze whatever profits he can from their company before it totally collapses (thus puncturing Republican theories that all companies desire "growth," as if Enron hadn't already). A Hitchcockian moment of clarity sees them decide to kill their respective bosses, but of course things don't remain that simple for long. The screenplay allows things to fly apart at the seams for a time (to frequently hilarious effect); the pacing feels as though the events are unfolding in real time, before some unexpected but no less satisfying conclusions. A keeper, and one I suspect will become funnier on repeat viewings. [2011, B]

So sue me, I kind of enjoyed The Smurfs. Maybe it was a matter of expectations, something I've routinely tried to avoid since having my heart broken by one too many big name sequels as a teenager. I rarely watch previews or gobble up production materials, but working in the Big Apple this summer past, it was impossible to not see the posters at virtually every street corner and subway station, making it one of the more soul-sucking ad campaigns I've ever experienced. A shock, then, that the commercial overtones of the movie proper are only about 10% as blatant as I had anticipated. In all honesty, it also helped that the alcohol was flowing steadily and I was almost immediately hysterical at the trip-worthy sight of dozens of little blue fellas and their mushroom-centric village. The plot device that sees them transported to New York City - a wormhole of sorts that appears during a blue moon (natch) - is pure Happy Meal fodder, and the screenplay's smurftastic tendency to use "smurf" as as many prefixes and parts of speech as possible is more boring than irritating. Points, then, to the film's general goodheartedness (provided primarily by the plot threads concerning Clumsy smurf), to Neil Patrick Harris (in general), and for Simpsons regular Hank Azaria, whose turn as the evil wizard Gargamel is some kind of slapstick genius. If the entire movie were as uninhibited and inventive as his performance, it could have been one for the ages. As it is, it's pleasantly inoffensive enough that I wouldn't mind letting my own offspring watch it. [2011, B-]

The civil rights era as filtered by the Hallmark channel, The Help isn't so much blatantly offensive as it is homogenized and naive, approaching the tumult and complexity of the past with a condescending tone manifest of the wrongheaded notion that we, in 2011, are a post-racism society. (Pardon me while I go laugh my ass off.) Not unlike what was unfairly leveled at The Blind Side, the issues many have taken with the film - namely, calling out the portrayal of black housekeepers ("the help") as passive players afraid to speak up as itself a form of racism - strikes me as just the kind of politically correct earnestness that fails to see that things like affirmative action only prolong the core issues at hand, and are themselves a form of racism (furthermore, "the help" does eventually speak up). No, there, the film is right on the money; when threatened with so much as a lynching, any group of people is likely to button their lips and do as they're told. What's stale about The Help, then, is its color-by-number use of caricature and decidedly non-violent portrayal of struggle. Even before she opens her mouth, you could pick Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) out of a lineup as the ringleader racist of the cast, while the bloodshed of the era is kept at arm's length (even a vicious marital beating, kept mostly off screen, leaves only a small bruise). If the film is racist, it isn't because it's about a white woman, Emma Stone's Skeeter, who seeks to expose the truth through her journalism (and why, exactly, is a white person like me not allowed to want to help the disadvantaged?), but because it coddles people today by insinuating that the past wasn't quite so terribly bad as it actually was. Especially given current events, the film further drops the ball concerning the fact that this subject matter is at least as much about racism as about class warfare (King, whose assassination transpires during the film, was killed because of his involvement with union protests). The pandering tone even extends to the comedic centerpiece - a very special pie that's alluded to at least half an hour before it should have been, rewarding fans of Kathryn Stockett's novel at the expense of competently telling a good joke. Ultimately, The Help is as regressive as it is well meaning. [2011, C+]

I'm now convinced that the non-cast related quality of the first Iron Man happened entirely by accident. Screw the haters: Cowboys & Aliens is a great title, and a better film would have saved it for the end credits as the cheeky punchline to what should have been a glorious set-up. If only that were the bulk of the film's offenses. A genre mash-up without a clue, Jon Favreau's attempt at Leone meets Spielberg is so tonally incompetent and dreadfully staged that it's a wonder the better qualities herein - namely, Daniel Craig, as a prodigious fighter who cannot remember his identity, and Harrison Ford, as a Colonel and rich farmer - aren't completely extinguished by simple osmosis. Every attempt at echoing the archetypes of westerns past rings with a dull thud, revealing the soul of a poseur; even the witty manner in which the aliens lasso their human captives is a possibility almost entirely unrealized (I'll have to give the benefit of the doubt to the original comic series from which the film has been adapted). Great movies breathe with life; this thing's dead from the scalp down. As if overwhelming lethargy weren't enough, Cowboys & Aliens is also stupid enough for two movies, beginning with the thoroughly lame decision to execute most of the action scenes with an accelerated frame rate that suggests someone trying to exaggerate the size of their sex organs, continuing with just about every subsequent scene and narrative development, and culminating with a battle at the extraterrestrial spacecraft that displays approximately zero understanding of action movie mechanics. If chaos was the aim here, at the very least, it might've not also substituted as a sleeping aid. [2011, D]

A remake that actually justifies its own existence, Craig Gillespie's Fright Night might even surpass the gnarly 1985 original. The drill: a vampire, Jerry (Colin Farrell, brooding in all the right ways) moves into a community in the barren outskirts of Las Vegas, and for a time, only a neighboring teenager - one Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) - knows the truth. Too bad his single mom (a perfectly game Toni Collette) has the hots for the new stud next door. Classroom politics figure in the mix when Charlie's former best friend (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, valiantly trying to distance himself from McLovin) finds himself confronted with the choice of death or becoming a creature of the night, and in these ways and more, the film is a touching consideration of what we sacrifice in the name of normalcy. Genre thrills need satiation, however, and when it becomes clear to Jerry that he won't be invited inside Charlie's house, he positively does not fuck around on the matter. Engaging, nasty, economic, violent and funny (especially the end credits), this Fright Night is a great summer joint. [2011, B]

Viewing Log #11

2011-08-26T12:50:00.013-04:00

More impressive in conceptual audacity than finished product, Man Bites Dog never struck me as more than a thesis statement, despite some excellent faux-documentary aesthetics and a thoroughly enveloping performance by leading man Benoît Poelvoorde as the psychotic professional criminal followed around by a ragtag filming crew (who eventually get in on the killing and raping action). The depicted events herein are so horrifying (the elderly woman on whom he saves a bullet; the children he dislikes killing, and why, etc.) that the chances of incriminating the audience into any kind of moral quagmire are remote at best. The result, then, isn't pointed commentary so much as sledgehammer satire, and it isn't much fun at that. When it becomes apparent we're supposed to care about these characters - even if we're not actively rooting for them - the proceedings become outright tedious. The sexy allure of violence - a la GoodFellas, Fight Club, etc. - is absent here (a needed point to counterpoint), and the film doesn't have the necessary ideological feet to stand on. It doesn't help when the supporting cast proves uniformly thick-headed in their relationships to these despicable people (even as a fantasy, it's hard to buy), or that the logic of the film's "creation" doesn't hold water in the end. If that's all part of a big joke, it's not one I find very funny or worthy of so much attention. An important film, yes, but one frequently surpassed and out-subverted. [1992, C+]

Fast Five is loads more competent than the original, functionally stupid Fast and the Furious, if only because Justin Lin has a clue on how to stage an action set piece. That said, the characterizations are still too thin to invest in, the acting too murky (is Paul Walker boringly introverted, or just boring?), and the thrills too sparse. There's a diminishing sense of largeness in recent Hollywood action films, and no amount of IMAX cameras are going to compensate for what comes down to a lack of basic craftsmanship. (And it's not like I'm asking for The Road Warrior, here, just some basic coverage and a less-than-total reliance on camera movement to generate excitement.) The third-act sequence in which The Rock and Vin Diesel kick the ever-living shit out of each other is a total snooze, splintered into blurry shots that emphasize movement (and incoherent disconnection) at the expense of spectacle. A briefly held wide shot lets us see the damage these two inflict on each other and their surroundings, and Lin would have been wise to hold it for the duration - I want to feel these bodies in space, their physical ramifications. If only because the scale is so much larger, a final heist sequence almost holds its own, but the visceral satisfaction is too little, too late. Two hours reveals the films weightlessness; a 20-minute highlight reel would have done the trick. [2011, C+]

I don't know exactly how Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale gets away with a plot concerning long-forgotten demonic Santa Clause and his army of naked, withered elves (in terms of straight-faced absurdity, it's a master class balancing act of genre know-how), but it does, and the results are frequently awesome. It's as chilly as Let the Right One In or the 1982 remake of The Thing, and it's as much fun as anything this side of Tremors. Do you really need to know anything else? [2010, B+]

Crude, but effective, 1962's The Awful Dr. Orloff (reviewed here in its not-entirely-incompetent English dub) both encapsulates and overcomes many of the traits that typically define low-rent horror whodunits of the day. The plot, about a scientist trying to cure his ailing sister and the poor deformed soul he forces to do his murder-in-the-shadows bidding, is strict pre-grindhouse fodder and about twice as intelligent as one might forgiven for expecting of it. The images are frequently flat and even lazy (inconsistencies, like the extinguished candle that continues to light a scene, abound), but there's real meat to the performances and an accruing atmosphere that refuses to yield. A great midnight experience. [1962, B]

Hyperbole be damned, I can see no reason not to say this: Phantom of the Paradise is one of the greatest film musicals ever made. I might even go one further and strike the "musical" part from that designation. Brian De Palma's 1974 masterwork is many things: an audacious cinematic statement from someone clearly aware of their own immense talent, a loving homage to horror tales past (the titularly invoked Phantom of the Opera; see also Frankenstein, Faust, and Caligari, among others), a scathing indictment of the business politics between consumers and producers, and even perhaps an autobiographical statement on De Palma's own creative processes and their always-problematic reception. Critics and audiences mostly passed on Phantom in its initial run, but even the Academy couldn't overlook the prodigious musical talent on display. Watching it is equal parts liberating and exhilarating; one images that making it was an act of absolute personal necessity. As horror or as comedy, the effect is phantasmagoric, volcanic, and profound, down to every last operatically schlocky detail. If you don't love this movie, I have to wonder what brings you to movies in the first place. [1974, A]

Film Socialisme is meta-Godardian, but for the sake of those unfamiliar with the director's long catalog of subversion, I'm going to try to describe it in other terms. If Roger Ebert's review wasn't already indication enough (and I can't say I entirely disagree with some elements his one-star assessment), this is about as narratively vague and demanding a viewing experience as you're ever likely to encounter (hell, even Un Chien Andalou strikes me as having a more concrete through-line). But as frustrating as Godard's latest may be, it's also frequently rewarding. The story seems to exist at a tertiary level, as if caught in bits and pieces by accident and only assembled into a movie once discovered; the medium is the message, here, and through the countless changes in format and storytelling "direction," a vision of anger and tongue-in-cheek troublemaking emerges. Thematically overlapping pastiches aboard a luxury cruise ship and, later, at a family-owned gas station (dig that llama) speak to issues of economy and technology; it's like some stillborn excess of a digital underworld, a Penguin (as in Danny DeVito)-like reject with a lot on its mind. I can hardly imagine a less marketable film, but that's part of the joy of watching this deliberately unwatchable thesis. Godard's "fuck you" knows no bounds. [2010, B]

It helps if you don't look directly at it. Swinging with the Finkels is a bad sitcom stretched into a bad movie, and as someone who has experienced just the kind of relationship-destroying sexual plateau as depicted herein, the superficially cute manner with which the film addresses these dysfunctional hetero woes was particularly irksome. Mandy Moore and Martin Freeman are the titular married pair. Nine years since tying the knot, things have grown stale, and they decide to enlist another couple for a one-night trade-off to make things interesting once again. Broken up by title cards with annoying quips ("Life without Wife") and platitudes that make one long for the literary qualities of a fortune cookie, the film pads out their crisis with next to no consideration for character motivation - they're stick figures to project yourself onto. If the mere utterance of penis is funny to you, by all means. Or if you feel like taking a mental trip to the 1960s. Or watching Mandy Moore masturbate with a cucumber. [2010, C-]

In my original take, I spoke too soon on Michael Bay's latest Hasbro-inspired extravaganza. While less off-the-rails insane than Revenge of the Fallen (an eye-popping drug on which I had a very bad trip the first time around), Transformers: Dark of the Moon is still gonzo where it counts the most, and whether through a willful attempt to respond to critics of The Fallen's aggressive style or simply catering to the needs of this third outing's three dimensions (since Avatar, no film has looked better in the format), Bay's images are frequently doled out in wider, longer shots that render his canted angles something like poetic; the sugar rush montage has been replaced by an ethereal kind of testosterone. My initial hatred of The Fallen was just as quickly replaced by the realization that I'd joined in the mob mentality against it without giving the movie proper a real chance. Frankly, most critics did just the same this time around, too. Too bad for them. Michael Bay's emotional complexity as a storyteller is still inversely proportional to his technical prowess and pop culture savvy; best he work with toys, catchphrases, and stereotypes. Or are they archetypes? Either way, I see no hatred here - just an eccentric juvenile made scapegoat for his influence. He's come a long way since Bad Boys II (still a contender for worst film I've ever seen); now a self-aware auteur ("It is a visual and therefore visceral betrayal"), his wielding of the blockbuster format is almost profound. Politically, you could impose any reading you want on their struggle for power, but amidst the film's agreeable disdain for government infrastructure, only Republicans are singled out for their egotistical behavior. (And amen to that.) Breathlessly realized imagery abounds: the opening war on Cybertron, the tentacles of Shockwave tearing through Chernobyl, Bumblebee transforming from and back into a car with a passenger riding inside. It's also frequently hilarious, particularly the red-faced John Malkovich (who, along with Francis McDormand and series mainstay John Turturro, turns this into something of a Coen brothers reunion), but don't overlook Shia LeBeouf's ability to freak out on cue. Bay's eye for framing and editing shows newfound economy. A historical revisionist opening brilliantly intercuts stock footage with special effects (note the CGI JFK) to give the film an audacious real-world context. I never owned a Transformers toy and have no nostalgia for earlier Hasbro culture, but there's something irrefutably chilling about the moment when Optimus Prime grinds himself to a halt with his saber, pivots to face his enemy, and lets out a demonic wartime growl. If we're to have these movies, this is how to make them. Call it apocalyptic euphoria. [2011, B+]

The Fox and the Hound

2011-08-10T13:49:00.001-04:00

The stripped-down simplicity of the story (freely adapted from the 1967 novel by Daniel P. Mannix) is appropriate for its true-to-life bleakness, which isn't to say it's a film without hope, but that archetypal singularity is fitting when a story boils down to so many singular acts with permanent, often tragic consequences.

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Do the Right Thing (1989): A

2011-08-01T18:48:00.003-04:00

As 2001: A Space Odyssey is to Stanley Kubrick and Nashville is to Robert Altman, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is as perfectly representative of a total filmmaking talent as any movie yet made, and one of the great American films. A sun-stroked Brooklyn neighborhood is the canvas on which director/writer/performer Lee paints, the coral reef through which he weaves us. The many joys of the film - the celebration of life, the sheer cinematic ecstasy of watching unfold something so assured and fully realized, Samuel L. Jackson's Mister Senior Love Daddy, and a peripatetic Greek chorus, among others - are equaled only by the fiery injustice it bears witness to in the apocalyptic third act. A pizza shop, a town drunk, an unforgiving heat wave, a classic car, a racist son, a boom box, a wall of fame, and a trash can. Lee's didactic, sometimes problematic gadflyism (no film ever went so quickly south for me as the final sequences of his Malcolm X) is channeled through his characters to profound effect, echoing the conflict within every person whose ever experienced a moral struggle and heartbreakingly examining the ways our individual bad habits perpetuate the larger failings of society. Black and white and yellow and other colors mean something in our minds, and perception determines reality; the movie wants to shake you up to shatter that reality, and whether or not you warm up to it may depend on how necessary you find its sporadically rude tone to be. Arguably perfect from the first utterly organic beat to the last, chances are it will change you, for the better.

Trigun: Badlands Rumble (2010): B+

2011-07-28T23:45:00.005-04:00

You can thank the persistence and love of committed fans for the existence of this movie. The original, short-lived anime series (itself based on a manga) wasn't even a hit with local Japanese audiences; only when the series debuted in America did it began to develop the cult following that sees it alive and well today. For those unacquainted with the material, the central character in Trigun's world is one Vash the Stampede, a legendary figure adorned in a red cape, well known and much feared for his lethal force and renowned ability to destroy entire cities. Alas, the truth differs much from the legend, and most of the damage attributed to Vash originates with the bounty hunters aiming to collect the substantial reward on his head (early on in Badlands Rumble, even newcomers will be quickly familiar with Vash's habit of preventing violence by the most extreme measures necessary, most of which include his acting like an utter (and utterly entertaining) fool). His misadventures - which routinely include two yin-yang female insurance agents and a clergyman who wields a devastating gun in the shape of a cross - span several decades in the events of Badlands Rumble, leading to much pontification on fate, the meaning of life, and the virtues of mercy and pacifism. Vash's seemingly foolish actions (intervening with warring criminals, among others) are given the long-run, It's a Wonderful Life treatment, and wisdom readily emerges from his apparently reckless behavior ("Isn't it better that they're all still alive?"). Quirky doesn't begin to describe Vash's character (note his "cuddling" of wrists and ankles), and like the preceding series, Badlands Rumble is somewhat remarkable in regards to its textured characters. The ruthless Gasback is the antagonist here, a legendary criminal whose extravagant approach to theft is pitched as an existential manifestation of natural instincts (eat or be eaten); he's less of a deliberately bad guy than an amoral creature obeying its instincts, and he takes his trade serious at an existential level. Which all makes for a cognitively satisfying and richly visceral experience, from the expressive, economic animation (computer generated animations are sparingly incorporated into traditional hand-drawn cells) to the more blatant rip-n-roar of the films action setpieces (an opening hallway skirmish with booby traps might be tops, but the last twenty minutes are nearly breathless). Fans, rejoice. There still isn't nearly enough Trigun to go around, but we'll take what we can get.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011): B

2011-07-23T14:17:00.004-04:00

Visually electrifying, modestly sermonizing and well-rounded for condescension-free enjoyment by those of all ages, Kung Fu Panda 2 is a virtual equal of its 2008 predecessor, and together the two easily surpass the Shrek films as the superior of Dreamworks' animated franchises. Having spent the first film ascending to the unexpectedly bestowed status of the Dragon Warrior, panda Po (an effective Jack Black) must now confront the internal as well as the external: inner peace is what he must find to reach his true potential, and for his superior, Master Shifu (a nondescript Dustin Hoffman), the process only took fifty years. Po begins to suspect - courtesy a recurring image from his childhood - that he was a adopted, a painful, albeit amusing development that temporarily ruptures his relationship with his father, a goose named Ping (an irreplaceable James Hong, the eyeball doctor from Blade Runner). Po's personal discoveries are schematic, to be sure, but there's a genuine feeling of character here absent from most anthropomorphized animal fodder, while the use of various species suggests a world dually segregated and tolerant of the melting pot, much like our own. Po's blindness to a species gap is indicative of some kind of voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Or something. What's lacking - same as the original - are the supporting characters, whose celebrity voices (cast for names more than vocal talent) look good on the marquee but fail to make these creations *jump* like the rest of the film. Fortunately, these weak links aren't as essential to the chain: as was Ian McShane before him, Gary Oldman proves a superior villain, and Jack Black's enthusiasm hasn't yet wavered. Inventive dream sequences and no shortage of cultural relish help make this one of the more beautiful mainstream films in the recent years; even when the plot suggests a holding device, the continuous stream of visual wit more than compensates (a scene where a parade dragon "eats" the villainous henchman may be tops). At the end of the day, Kung Fu Panda 2 isn't just a model sequel or family film: as an action movie, it's superior to 90% of everything else out there, animated or not. Don't underestimate it.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): C+

2011-07-23T02:01:00.001-04:00

The only amazing thing about Captain America is how utterly unremarkable it is. Sad to say, but it's that very creative staleness that's become par for the course for Marvel studios, whose last movie worthy of a genuine recommendation in my book, Iron Man, was practically an accident. It seems that letting Ang Lee (and, eventually, Sam Raimi) run too far with their own instincts has inoculated the studio from ever again giving a director more than passing authority on their franchise material. God knows Kenneth Branagh couldn't do much with Thor, and now Joe Johnson (of the underrated and moody horror homage The Wolfman) is saddled with the mundanely rendered origin story of WWII hero Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a strong-willed weakling from Brooklyn routinely refused from the draft, but whose persistence and guts see him recruited as part of a military super-soldier experiment that transforms him into the titular good guy. As far as boring blockbusters go, Captain America is a cut above the rest, its superior mediocrity more the result of Johnson's expert direction and action staging than the capabilities of the cast, although those shouldn't be forgotten, either. Sadly, one of the best performances is attached to the shortest-lived character, while Evans fits the film like a glove: he's immensely likable, yet quickly dulls the senses. Leave it to Tommy Lee Jones to make an impression, with what amounts to a more smartassed take on Ed Tom from No Country for Old Men. Despite the presence of many players, renegade Nazis, Toby Jones, and nothing less than the power of the Gods being at stake, the narrative loses most of its steam after Rogers' initial transformation. Lacking much in the way of character conflict or palpable drama (it's running on montage fumes by the halfway point), the film shrivels through unrealized media satire, undercooked romance, and an altogether undaunting antagonist (amazingly, given that the role is that of none other than Hugo Weaving), before ultimately sputtering to an unsatisfying stop and yet another reason to be sick of Samuel L. Jackson's eyepatch-adorned face. Good try, Joe, but I can't imagine anyone making worthwhile a script so phone-in and paint-by-numbers. The actual previews for other movies were more entertaining than this two-hour preview for The Avengers. I may bow out of this genre entirely for the time being. Wake me up for The Dark Knight Rises. Or Hellboy III.

Duel (1971): B+

2011-07-20T21:37:00.004-04:00

As the cinematic debut of Steven Spielberg (even though it was originally produced as a TV movie, this is as much of a movie as any), Duel has some undoubtedly big shoes to fill, and that's the case whether you think Spielberg is infallible or intolerable. Possibly you're aware that I'm much closer to the former camp, and if there's one thing that keeps me from loving Duel entirely, it's the knowledge that Spielberg would only improve (for many filmmakers, it would be an easy career high). On its own, it's a startlingly pure, assured piece of psychological horror indicative of a major talent with an instinctive approach to subjectivity. Adapted by Richard Matheson from his own short story, it was successful enough on television to get a theatrical re-release years later, and as a result, two cuts of the film exist: the 74-minute theatrical cut, and the 90-minute cut expanded for theaters, and available more or less intact on DVD (some shots and voice over lines have been removed). My feelings about the film haven't changed over the years; even seeing it in theaters, there remained some pacing issues, which isn't entirely unexpected when a filmmaker - especially a young one - tackles a project of such daunting conceptual limitations (hell, even a veteran Michael Mann could only come up with so many in-vehicle camera angles in Collateral). The main (and in most ways only) character here is one David Mann (Dennis Weaver, a superior everyman), who is traveling in his Plymouth through desert country on a business trip; a tanker truck on the rode first annoys, then obstructs, then attempts to kill him, beyond any reasonable doubt. We (as in the audience) catch an insubstantial glimpse of the would-be killer at least once, but Mann remains entirely in the dark as to the face of his predator. I personally would have ditched my vehicle and pulled a Walkabout, but common sense notwithstanding, what Spielberg charts here is one of the more nail-biting features of the latter 20th Century; it just grazes the edge of existentialism. Seen in his filmography, the film's rusted, growling tanker truck is an obvious predecessor to the man-eating Great White of Jaws, sharing in its pitilessness. And it's every bit as terrifying.

Battle Royale (2000): B+

2011-07-19T21:11:00.003-04:00

Kinji Fukasaku's modern cult classic Battle Royale doesn't get any points for subtlety, but nor does it need them. Pitched with the insatiable verve of a TV game show and the vacant regret of a Grand Theft Auto video game, this dystopian satire proves cutting even as it bludgeons, standing on the shoulders of voyeurs past (Hitchcock, Powell) as it puts its own gnarly spin on the gut punching methods of audience implication. The Survivor meets Lord of the Flies premise concerns the economically depraved Japan of the new millennium and the passing the Millennium Educational Reform Act, i.e., students throughout the country are kept in line by a yearly lottery that selects one classroom to be ported to a secluded island and forced to collectively fight to the death. (Don't get attached.) The details are learned alongside the unfortunate 15-year-olds selected for this years game. The camera is horrified of what follows, but simultaneously, the reptilian attitudes of survival create an intoxicating contradiction of tones, especially as friendships are tested, love endures, and bodies start piling up. Battle Royale works as its own scathing response, not so much courting controversy as exaggerating for the effect of the statement, ultimately rendering things meta via (among other touches both slight and sprawling) an in-movie sports stat animation device: think NFL turned Death Race. Part teen angst drama, part fork-in-your-eye commentary, part black comedy, part survival thriller. It's less than a masterpiece, but it's well deserving of it's popularity.

Thor (2011): D+

2011-07-12T01:47:00.013-04:00

There have been far less competently assembled superhero films (think Catwoman or Wolverine), but few can compete with Thor for sheer torture of what is best described by my own semi-immediate internal response: "This? I have to sit through, and stay awake during, another hour and twenty minutes of this?" Branagh's name is in the credits, but the film only bears a wisp of his touch; I suspect this one was done in rapid assembly-line fashion, without love, for a pay day, and such as it is, I can't hold it against the auteur. And really, who could put any genuine, creative love into this dusty, mechanical screenplay? Once you're past the start-in-the-middle device, the weightlessness of the drama becomes achingly apparent; the whole thing is so brittle in conviction and purpose that you fear the screen will crack apart. I didn't stay for the end credits Sam Yell Jackson cameo (I can't wait for The Avengers, if only because I'm tired of other movies functioning as advertising for it), but I now wish I had, as it'd have likely taken the total number of minutes I enjoyed in the whole film from about eight to about ten. The initial displacement of Thor - ancient God stripped of power and banished to the mortal realm - makes great, if fleeting, use of Branagh's skill with physical comedy. And some of the stuff that comes out of Natalie Portman's mouth is genuinely funny, for reasons both good and bad for her stardom. Alas, the pleasures are few: even the purportedly epic sights and money shots smack of green screen laziness, suggesting nothing more than an animated storyboard (minus real involvement, we're reduced to merely looking at stuff), and don't get me started on the splintered look of the action "scenes." Branagh's chosen style (and that's a generous term to use here) consists primarily of tilting the camera about forty degrees every fifth or sixth shot. Fans of the source material might find more worth here, but for how conceptually alluring it is, Thor is a rather pitiful utilization, for the uninitiated at least.

Winnie the Pooh

2011-07-11T14:42:00.003-04:00

Though less morally empowering than The Tigger Movie or Piglet's Big Movie, there's still something to be said for the film's crystalline look at friendship and selflessness; Pooh's moral triumph isn't all that weighty, but it's almost existentially profound to see the silly old bear forgo honey a little while longer because of someone else's needs.

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Super 8 (2011): C+

2011-07-06T20:41:00.005-04:00

SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT

If I were to weigh the merits of Super 8 on a scale of purely quantifiable pros and cons, it would be impossible to not recommend it. Unfortunately, the experience of watching a movie is a different beast than the numerical sum of its parts, and as far as cinematic experiences go, this one's a case of ultimately dashed high hopes, no matter how much it has going for it along the way. No doubt, J.J. Abram's expertise is as apparent here as it was in the immensely enjoyable popcorn actioner Mission: Impossible III and 2009's spunky Star Trek sequel/prequel/reboot, and similarly unmistakable is his knowledge of and appreciation for the romantic wonder of the early films of Steven Spielberg (whose serves as producer here). Alas, it's in Super 8's meticulous attempts to recreate that magic (think E.T. + Close Encounters x Poltergeist) that it ultimately comes up short, fizzling at the moment is should detonate and instead revealing a Frankenstein soul grafted together from predecessors to the point of overdependence, rather than finding its own, one organic to the proceedings at hand.

The story is exquisite crackerjack material (an escaped malicious alien, military, cold war paranoia, American suburbia, etc.), all the better as seen primarily through the eyes of a group of teenage friends who hope to spend the summer months finishing their shoestring budget zombie movie in time for an upcoming short film festival. Makeup artist Joe (Joel Courtney) is the axis on which the drama pivots: reeling from the recent loss of his mother and subsequent tension with his distant police deputy father, his efforts to lose himself in ragtag filmmaking are upset - in no particular order - by a budding romance with no less than the daughter of the person most responsible for his mothers untimely death, and the aforementioned extraterrestrial on the loose, an event inadvertently witnessed by the young filmmakers when a late-night shoot at a railway station sees an Air Force train deliberately derailed (in awesome setpiece fashion) by a former military scientist long since discharged for subversive conduct. The military's been hiding something, and that something is both hungry and pissed off.

The scenes involving these kids are the most effective and genuinely endearing the film has to offer; coupled with a knowing and humorous look at do-it-yourself filmmaking, Super 8 frequently teases the viewer with a self-reflexive commentary on cinema as self-discovery that unfortunately never develops beyond a vague thesis statement. Even so, there's plenty of truth to the way these adolescents interact, and Abram's choice (as screenwriter) to leave the monster offscreen for most of the film allows them to function as genuine characters in ways that the plot ultimately doesn't know how to fully capitalize on. As heartthrob Alice, Elle Fanning turns in a pitch-perfect child star performance that, along with her sadly unseen turn in Sofia Coppola's sadly unseen Somewhere, should propel her to stardom. (Oscar, this is something you should reward.) Amongst child and adult performer alike, there's not a weak link here, but that can't stop Super 8 from hitting a wall of thematic shortsightedness once weapons start blazing in the third act. Schematics kick in, complex relationships get wrapped up with insufficient neatness, and Abrams elicits little in the way of genuine wonder with his otherworldly revelations; the hand-me-down emotions are washed out, and fleeting value notwithstanding, the whole thing retrospectively smacks of a cinematic paint-by-numbers kit. A semi-brilliant end credits sequence salvages some of the lost promise, but by then the pleasantries feel like a mere afterthought.

2011: Halfway Top Ten

2011-06-30T18:06:00.006-04:00

Films shown: Beginners, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Certified Copy, The Eagle, Jane Eyre, Meek's Cutoff, Midnight in Paris, Source Code, The Tree of Life, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Viewing Log #10

2011-06-29T04:03:00.006-04:00

There are two primary camps of people when it comes to movies like Dario Argento's Suspiria, and I don't give a crap if pointing out that basic fact makes me sound elitist. Those who take the experience at a more face value might think it campy, over-the-top, and/or simply bad; the insinuation being, let's put on our serious faces, kids! Horror should be respectable. (And eat your vegetables.) I'm a newcomer yet to the art of Argento (Opera is still digesting, over a year later), but I'm already much grateful to be part of the other camp: those who see his films as dreamlike acts of impressionistic fear, encountered as one might a childhood nightmare or a flesh and blood incarnation of a Grimm fairy tale. The subject here is witchcraft, and you'd be a fool to expect stable logic to be guiding the proceedings; rather, it's a fractured experience at the hands of evil, the white as snow American dancer Suzy (Jessica Harper) the audience surrogate to the terrors at the German Tanzakademie. Be grateful the pieces come together as readily as they do. The Goblins' carnivalesque, tribal score amplifies the horror like the roar of fire leading to a hellmouth, and saturated, bold color schemes permit an otherworldly tone, like fantasy come to life. The spare parts of haunted house archetypes are tongue in cheek (dig that trap door, and the resurfaced memory that leads to it), but the film also exercises an immediately perpetual chokehold on the senses. (When you were young, all horror movies might have looked and felt this scary.) Blood spills like crimson strokes, the tearing of flesh hurts as much as it looks unreal (wisely opting for scariness versus disgust), and things go bump (and wheeze) in the night. It's nestled amongst the highest water marks of the horror genre. [1977, A]

Michael Bay tones it down for Transformers: Dark of the Moon (love that subtitle), but only just: the slightly-less-frequent cutting, slightly-more-static shooting methods seen here are probably as much of a catering to the needs of the film's shot-in-3D format as they are a response to the hateful intensity the last sequel courted from both critics and audiences. (Having regretfully partaken in that initial, arguably unjustified verbal lashing, I think I'm qualified to call out such sight-unseen opinion forming groupthink when noticed; I call it pulling a "Speed Racer.") Those who've enjoyed the last two films for their clashing metal action aspects will probably walk away from this one just as satisfied, and the 3D isn't the eyesore I feared it might be (although the high point - an opening, planet-wide battle on Cybertron - isn't nearly lengthy enough for this robotic dystopia junkie). But having come to appreciate Bay's juvenile maximalism as seen in Revenge of the Fallen (a film so assured, alien, and self-aware that it practically qualifies as an art film statement on its own genre), Dark of the Moon couldn't help but disappoint for lack of Bay's full-throttle freak flag waving; he's filtering his own id. The usual suspects keep it from being as visceral an experience as it should be (shoddy exposition, too many characters, lame frat boy humor, about 45 minutes too long, etc.), but the money is on display, the set pieces are routinely fantastic, and - I know I'm stepping over some kind of line here for many people - the actors stand up just fine to their equally cartoonish robotic thespians (no, I didn't mind Megan Fox in the last two movies, either). The film proper opens with a Tarantinian shot of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's glorious ass, calves, and feet, and there's something to be said for Bay's ribald honesty. [2011, B-]

Filmmaker Brook Silva-Braga's mother has taken an interesting, cutthroat stance in response to China's rising dominance in the global market: for years, she's altogether refused to purchase anything made in the economically dynamic country. Stemming not from racism but from a refusal to acquiesce to a country whose working conditions violate her personal beliefs pertaining to human rights, her attitude - or rather, her practice - is shared by few, and such is what encouraged Silva-Braga to investigate the economic, political, and cultural climates that surround China's ascension, the United States' burgeoning downfall, and the relationship between the two, via his edifying, if not wholly satisfying documentary The China Question. There are no easy answers, but the broad conclusions are unsettling (if not altogether revelatory for anyone whose b.s. detector is strong enough to see past the political/media cultural circus of the west to the soulless capitalist force that exists like a black hole at the center): China's human rights may not be as ideal as ours and their one-party government rule with oppressive force, but their economy is on the long-run track for success; in America, we enjoy freedoms aplenty, but businesses abuse their power (it's an exception to the rule when a company isn't strictly about only the bottom line) at the expense of their employees and customers, politicians are concerned more about election prospects than progress, and short-term financial interests outweigh humanitarian, environmental, and moral concerns. Silva-Braga's investigation is open-minded, thorough, and well articulated for general audiences, but if anything, his approach is too lightweight and pleasant to leave the desired impression. The proud Texan who learns his "Don't Mess with Texas" cap was produced in China should've been left stewing longer in his own juices, and the disturbing final shot - of sheep, practically lining up for the slaughter - isn't even half as long as it should be. [2011, B]

Short Circuit was a favorite of mine as a pre-ad, which led to feelings of cautious reservation when recently returning to it once again. Rather than scorn past feelings, however, the experience was an affirmation of my burgeoning taste, and not simply via nostalgia. Short Circuit isn't much when considered as a work of serious art, but I don't hold those standards like I sense I'm "supposed" to, and find that doing so would only be disingenuous - a haute slant adapted for its own sake. There's a pop art vivacity here that I naturally respond to: a light, quotidian grasp that suggests an unvarnished viewpoint, indeed, one that is quite perfect for the vantage of a new, curious life. The government war machine come-to-pacifist- life Number 5 (voiced by Tim Blaney, but brilliantly performed just as much by technicians and creative designers) is one of the great effects characters, occupying that plateau just beneath the masterstrokes of Yoda and Gollum. Essentially a predigested pro-life statement (no, not that dubious half-binary, issue-dodging pro-life, which is just as irresponsible and narrow-minded a stance as pro-choice), but the lack of a single malicious bone in this film ensures that its genuinely heartfelt approach never collapses to mere schtick. The pop culture gags - Three Stooges/John Wayne impressions abound (the Dr. Pepper shout out is tops; advertising is cool on the rare instance when it's legitimately hip) - might seem like pre-Shrek inanities but for their organic reflection of Number 5's information-voracious personality. Life recognizes its own worth; I pray I never fail to warm up to its brand of schmaltz. The returns of 1988's Short Circuit 2 only slightly diminished to these eyes, it being an awkward manifestation of both the typically overwritten trappings of a box-office mandated sequel and a seriously thoughtful rumination on free will (with the same brand of semi-subversive adult humor carried over from the first film). Number 5, now Johnny 5, is kicking ass and taking names in the Big Apple, where he's still a peacekeeper, but with a newfound demonic streak lurking just beneath; he might not toast your ass, but don't expect him to take your shit. (The ultimate influence on WALL·E emerges in full in the mortality-confronting climax.) Neither film rises to the full potential of the central character, but as cheesy mainstream entertainments go, they're damn good stabs. [1986/1988, B+/B]

How fucking sad this movie is. Sure, kids movies - and I use that term deliberately, as Cars 2 is only a kids movie, and not a family film - can and have been far worse, but for Pixar to have produced something so blatantly lazy, wooden, and transparently commercial is something close to tragic (the first Cars was the closest I ever came to disliking a Pixar film, and that was still okay). The focus shifts from Owen Wilson's race car Lightning McQueen to his unlikely BFF Mater, a Larry the Cable Guy-voiced tow truck here mistaken for a government spy, and thusly roped into an international plot to subvert a newly developed alternate energy source by jealous oil tycoons and the undercover efforts to prevent it from transpiring. The plot is unnecessarily convoluted for a film pitched at the under-ten crowd (my inner ten-year-old was bored to tears), and film entire feels designed so as to distract one from the fact that what little emotion exists herein is not unlike a few loose coins banging around inside an empty oil drum. Lip service to the virtues of friendship pads out what otherwise amounts to a rapid-fire string of uninspired anthropomorphised vehicle sight gags (although one moment, involving the black market sales of headlights, is enjoyable for a possibly inadvertent visual quotation from The Brave Little Toaster). It's Speed Racer, devoid of wit, emotion, drama, visual pizazz and visceral edge (in other words, it's an empty shell, but this one's not even pretty to look at). Save your money, save your time, and if you have to see it (like me), for heavens sake wait for a 2D screening at a second run theater. Your kids deserve better. [2011, D+]

After the functionally retarded Wolverine, this franchise had nowhere to go but up, but the improvements of X-Men: First Class are more than just comparative: it's a serious step in the right direction for a studio that hasn't even been treading water since their last good play, the enjoyable, if slightly overrated, Iron Man. Here, it's the same old thing as the last four movies, dressed up in new clothes and given a much-needed seriousness makeover. The adolescent screams of agony are still embarrassing but the cast goes a long way in selling what unfortunately amounts to yet another film squashed into a paint-by-numbers template; characters are shoehorned into dramatic puzzle pieces, themes are reduced to catchphrases repeated ad nausea, and it speaks to the pathos in front of and behind the camera that so much is done with so lethargic a script. Michael Fassbender, as the young Magneto, is clearly less interesting in the film than he is in what it will surely do for his career, yet he still out-acts about 95% of everyone else to ever star in a Marvel feature. Jennifer Lawrence, of Winter's Bone fame, is fine in her two-note role (to fly or not to fly the freak flag), but it's Kevin Bacon who truly stands out as a villainous Nazi mutant. Some fine set pieces make this watchable popcorn fare, but it's an excruciating, almost static death scene that stands head and shoulders above the proceedings. Hopefully Matthew Vaughn's distinctive style won't be wasted so on his next endeavor. [2011, B-]

For some time now, I've taken to avoiding movie previews as much as conveniently possible (probably an extension of my years-long effort to avoid media advertising almost altogether); I'll watch what's playing before a feature theatrical presentation, but I won't go online to watch them, and nor do I allow myself much in the way of spoiler-ridden reviews until after I've seen the movie in question. I never appreciated this approach so much as when I recently caught Midnight in Paris, easily one of Woody Allen's most inspired efforts and so joyous as to suggest that the director has finally emerged from his prolonged personal funk; rather than simply killing time, he seems to be enjoying filmmaking (and one would hope, life) once again. Being ignorant to the story of Midnight in Paris made its revelations that much more pleasurable, hilarious, and ultimately transcendent, especially being a prime viewer for its dreamer-friendly themes (and anti-Tea Party jokes). If you love Paris, art, literature, truth, humanity, and walking in the rain, I can't recommend this film nearly enough. Go in blind, and let it gobsmack you into euphoria. [2011, A-]

About three times as smart as one would understandably expect of the average animated talking-animal picture, Rio takes many unexpected (and unexpectedly complicated) storytelling turns even as it indulges in many of the trappings that define (and tend to limit) its overstuffed genre. Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, cast for his amusing neurosis) is a blue macaw, poached as a baby only to end up in the loving ownership of Linda (Leslie Mann), a Minnesota resident with whom he develops a lasting - if perhaps unhealthy - bond (for instance, he never even learns to fly). When it turns out that Blu is the last male of his kind, he's transported back to Rio de Janeiro to mate with one Jewel (Anne Hathaway), a wild macaw who wants nothing to do with captivity of any sort. Aside from the fact that this might be the first family film in which sex is not only frankly acknowledged, but serves as the narrative lynchpin, Rio progressively includes virtually every major story participant as a major character, calling into question personal responsibility as a larger moral and political issue. The fine animation and exciting set pieces (Blu's cliffside attempt at flight is tops) are icing on the cake; the physical comedy is histrionic at times but this is a movie that sports both brains and heart. [2011, B]

American: The Bill Hicks Story

2011-06-22T18:11:00.004-04:00

Those who know Hicks's work tend to know it well. His life's work was rich but limited by definition, and it speaks to what the man, cut down by pancreatic cancer at the unjust age of 32, accomplished in his brief career that he continues to be held in such high regard, his recognition and respect ceaselessly growing over the past two decades. Such as it is, American is less about his professional career than his personal life, insofar as one can separate the two when considering so personally honest and hardworking a performer.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Dial M for Murder

2011-06-17T01:53:00.002-04:00

In Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, even the innocent have poker faces. Based on Frederick Knott's popular stage play of the same name, this is one of Sir Alfred's least overtly cinematic works. In only a handful of moments does it exit the coffin-like setting of the original play's singular location: the living room of Tony and Margot Wendice, where the financially stranded husband arranges to have his wife murdered.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

True Grit

2011-06-06T17:03:00.003-04:00

Many have complained that the Coens' adaptation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel wants for the filmmakers' usual sense of ironic detachment. Surely, the brothers play it overall much straighter than usual here, imbuing the proceedings with a formal classicism that equally honors the work of the cast as it does the quotidian prose of Portis's text. Their unwavering sincerity and love for character is such that it complicates everything else they've achieved until now.

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Viewing Log #9

2011-06-04T11:54:00.011-04:00

The Tree of Life is only Terrence Malick's fifth film, and while it's easily his most prone to creative - nay, intergalactic - tangents, it may also be simultaneously his most earthbound. The rumblings of a gestating universe existentially contextualize the central human drama like no other film has managed since Stanley Kubrick's cosmic 2001 (whose special effects mastermind Douglas Trumball was sought out for equally impressive work here), but Malick finds equal levels of beauty and awe in all creation: The birth of the stars, of life, of a child. 1950s Waco, Texas - Malick's hometown - is the deeply personal primary setting, home to the O'Briens (Brad Pitt, never better, and the mesmeric Jessica Chastain) and their three boys. Father and mother's opposing parenting methods emerge as less than mere human traits than conflicting instincts passed on from the primordial era (a brief dinosaur interlude goes beyond mere anthropomorphism to suggest something outside of our human capability of understanding), desires and weaknesses that will dog us until the end of time (yes, the film goes there, too, or at the least, someplace like it). It's as concerned with the eternal and intangible as it is with the sensuous and the small, hopscotching through the years (suggesting equal parts memories and present tense) in a sumptuous fantasia of life, death and the interim, utterly unconcerned with basic narrative formalities as it explodes off the screen with expressionistic euphoria. It reminds one of the vividness life held in youth, and it may very well go down as one of the great works of human art. [2011, A]

I saw Beginners the same day as The Tree of Life, and those nearly back-to-back experiences drew out numerous parallels between the two (the least of which is their likely inadvertent hat-tipping to shared cast members from Inglourious Basterds). Writer/director Mike Mills engages the ambiguous and contradictory building blocks of human existence with wisdom, wit and thoughtful humility. Ewan McGregor is Oliver, a pushing-middle-age artist whose yearn to love is outweighed by his fear of loss, not to mention the near emotional train wrecks he's been subjected to by his distinctly odd but well-meaning parents. After decades of marriage parted in death, his now single, 75-year-old father (Christopher Plummer) comes out; at the start of the film, we've learned he dies from cancer only four years later. The mourning present sees Oliver with the dreamy Anna (Mélanie Laurent), an actress similarly trapped by her own personality conflicts, but Beginners frequently, exquisitely moves back and forth in time, simulating the lasting effects of emotional trauma and the messy experiences that define life, often simulated via jarring, spare visuals, or deceptively cute devices (the talking dog subtitles are brilliant). The worst that can be said of it is that its view of the big picture borders on the overly self-aware; better to call it an audaciously tragicomic high wire act of the human spirit. [2010, A-]

I'm embarrassed to admit I've never read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and so approached this latest film adaptation ignorant to all but the broadest sense of what material was to be covered. Suffice to say that Mia Wasikowska, who holds the title part, has quickly ascended from promising young actress to the full-fledged career she so rightly deserves; let's pray she keeps it going. Playwright and screenwriter Moira Buffini distills the narrative complexity of the novel into something only relatively formulaic; the drama ultimately pivots on a romantic triangle of sorts, but sophomore filmmaker Cary Fukunaga (after his debut Sin Nombre) directs with such assured, effortless poeticism that the narrative can't help but reflect the rich textures of its characters - ambiguous, wrenching, commanding. Michael Fassbender is unsurprisingly prodigious. Heartaching and heartbreaking, and resolute in its even-keeled feminism. If Oscar has any shame (which remains highly debatable), both leads will be in the running for nominations come next year. Prove me wrong. [2011, B+]

It's easy to see why The Red Shoes is a beloved classic. The Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale - in which a girl dons the titular footwear and proceeds to dance her life away, powerless to resist their magical urge - here inspires a story-within-a-story of delectably paralleling themes. "Why do you want to dance?" asks the talented but conceited instructor Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) of the passionate Vicky Page (Moira Shearer). To which she thoughtfully posits, "Why do you want to live?" The tension between creation and love (and those who feel personal desires must be mutually exclusive) fuels the romance-laden story, but it's Powell and Pressburger's typically ravishing use of technicolor that gives the film its acutely passionate edge, particularly in an extended, dreamlike sequence showcasing the the titular play. Deeper the layers go, forever. Pure cinema. [1948, A-]

I grew up with The Wizard of Oz, back when I consider even average TV to have been somewhat special and something could only play once a year (at least, other than the Superbowl). I liked it plenty then, but a recent 35 mm screening (thanks a lot, dadwhodoesnttellhisdaughtertoputhercellphoneaway) let about ten years added life experience enjoy it again, for the first time in its gloriously intended format, with a receptive audience no less. What boldness this film is - I really should read the book(s) - and what passion has been committed to it on every single creative level (we wouldn't believe in it if they didn't). It's telling how fully it's been absorbed by popular culture, and it's somewhat hard to imagine there ever being a time it didn't exist. It's pure life - nothing less than an life-affirming echo from the hall of mankind's eternal soul. Go, and follow the yellow brick road. [1939, A]

If I was forced to choose a favorite between Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead at gunpoint, I could very well be shot for lack of spontaneity. That's how much I love this somber consideration of the end of days - when the surviving people of earth could well be in only the dozens and surviving day to day is the best that can be hoped for. George Romero's once extensive vision, reduced by budget cuts (and a refusal to cater to the MPAA), remains of the emotionally epic sort - it's one of the greatest episodes never made for The Twilight Zone, in color and feature length. Judgment day has come and passed (the dead walk the earth in the millions, approximately 400,000 to every living human). Thematically, it's probably his most direct film (Dawn of the Dead is brilliant but it retains a metaphoric distance throughout) as it stares deep into the heart of darkness at man's core, but it also remains (not at all paradoxically) a work of incredible hope. The arch performances aren't just learned descendants of 50s B-horror, but serious considerations on how people handle (or don't) the end of the world as we know it. The zombies aren't just metaphors anymore: They are us, (un)living manifestations of our sins come back to haunt us, and Romero's consideration of the human condition transcends the (brilliantly violent) genre thrills to great cinema art. The director's favorite of his zombie trilogy is an unrecognized masterpiece. [1985, Rating: A]

Not only is there too much time dedicated to the relatively boring human protagonists of Invasion of Astro-Monster (something even fans of the Godzilla series are used to), but there's also far too little of the skyscraper-sized monsters to possibly justify the whole of the proceedings. This sixth film to feature the giant lizard (and fifth to be helmed by the original director Ishirō Honda) is one of the least of the early entries, investing entirely too much in a predictable twist (even for kids, for chrissakes) in a story concerning purportedly peaceful aliens wanting to "borrow" Godzilla and Rodan. There's next to none of the cheeky fun that typically sustains these movies when the rubber suit clad actors aren't slugging it out; the actors phone it in. The lip flapping English of the American version is only negligibly more entertaining. [1965, C]

Viewing Log #8

2011-05-27T11:06:00.007-04:00

The Hangover: Part II (Todd Phillips, 2011). Well, it's better than the first one, but that's not saying a whole lot in my book. The original formula is replicated here almost verbatim, the events transpiring a few years later and shuffled over from Las Vegas to Bangkok; The Wolfpack aims to celebrate the impending marriage of one of their members and agree to one beachside beverage on the eve's eve. Flash forward to morning, and their whereabouts are unknown, bodily alteration(s) have been experienced, untold substances have been consumed, and a chain smoking monkey now tags along. This time, the tone is more assured, the jokes are better, and the actors wring that much more from their respective character personalities (I'm calling it here: within three years, we'll be seeing Zach Galifianakis' own Alan movie). Best of all, the lynchpin twist xeroxed from the first movie - where is their missing friend? - isn't so transparent as to be called in the first fifteen minutes. It still doesn't tickle my funny bone that much, but the first film's unchecked homophobia is nicely countered here - maybe every wild party boy has a deep-seeded inner queer - and it's hard to rag on any film that wittily shout outs to the birth place of yours truly, Allentown. [Rating: B-]

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011). In essence: great character, great actress, good movie. The label is Apatow but the trademark raunch plays second, maybe third fiddle to a thoughtful examination of personality conflict, easily the most substantive and irony-free yet in this line of comedies (okay, maybe not more than Superbad). Kristen Wiig is Annie, a middle class woman seemingly cursed to be single (says the movie, it's really all in her head), suddenly thrown in the spotlight as her best friend's Maid of Honor, a role coveted by another close friend with more than a little money and social status to throw around for extravagant presents and wedding favors. If most comedies of this breed are extroverted, this one looks inward, and it's actually when the dial goes to eleven (read: food poisoning scene) that Bridesmaids works the least. Wiig's performance will join the many great comedic thespians to have gone unnoticed at the end of the year. Paul Feig - directing regular on The Office and numerous other series - does his best to leave the stage to the performers, but one imagines that a little more visual spark is all that's keeping this one from greatness. [Rating: B]

The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981). Nearly thirty years of subsequent horror offerings haven't dimmed the impact of Sam Raimi's feature debut, the ne plus ultra of the Kids Stuck In the Woods genre. The film commits entirely to both the terrible and the hilarious, the result an awe-inspiring genre tightrope walk in which barely restrained laughter punctuates the inevitable one-by-one possession of our protagonists - college kids spending a getaway weekend at a rented-out shithole in the middle of nowhere - by the demonic spirits unwittingly released from their ancient slumber and now assaulting them from all sides. Scraped-together low budgetry rarely feels as artful even if there's little in the way of subtext going on here, although one can easily read the film as a loving ode to splatterfests of past. Bruce Campbell's starmaking turn invites both cheers and pity, but it's Raimi's keen eye (and ear) for audiovisual intoxication - best exemplified by some of the most absurdly, wonderfully protracted death scenes of all time - that makes this creeper a home run. [Rating: A-]

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010). Leave it to cinema's greatest living spirit to give the 3D format its first legitimately artistic live action implementation (admittedly, considering Avatar live action is generous at times). Having been granted special permission from the French minister of culture to film inside Chauvet Cave - site to the oldest known human paintings, dating back some 30,000 years, discovered in 1994 and now forbidden to all but a few researchers - the German director thought the format appropriate for capturing the contours of the cave (that's a bingo!), elements embraced by the prehistoric artists in their depictions of themselves and animals on the astonishingly well-preserved walls. Ultimately, the film is as much about its subjects as its own making. Confined to specially installed, two-foot wide walkways and granted only 24 hours of time inside the cave over six days, Herzog and his crew of three rarely have enough room to get out of the shot; all the better to experience the time travel-like mystique of the cave with them. Pontificating all manner of anthropological significance at least as much as he spends lingering on the beautiful Chauvet images, Herzog suggests that this site might be the birthplace of the human soul. It may not be the masterpiece I'd hoped for, but we're lucky to have it. [Rating: B+]

Solaris

2011-05-24T08:03:00.003-04:00

Andrei Tarkovsky hated 2001: A Space Odyssey, and in a fit of insolence not unusual to his brand of genius, declared that his own science-fiction film (then in the making) would be the polar opposite of Kubrick's, which he saw as soulless and obsessed with special effects, ignorant to the human heart. It speaks to Tarkovsky's singular creative impulses, then, that Solaris proves the yin to Kubrick's yang, not out of contrarian longing, but because that was the form best suited for the content Tarkovsky wanted to explore.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

The Terminator

2011-05-23T06:19:00.005-04:00

Is it only incidental that James Cameron's greatest film is also his only work to clock in at under two hours? His subsequent films have proven consistently entertaining and frequently excellent, but the lightning of his debut—a content-to-be-small B movie that nevertheless feels epic in scope and emotion—has yet to strike twice. The Terminator remains as intelligent and emotionally complex as any film of its kind, and the reductive lens of pop culture—to say nothing of intellectual film snobs ignorant to genre pleasures—can't extinguish its mythic humanist power.

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Viewing Log #7

2011-05-07T00:34:00.010-04:00

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010). As intoxicating, seductive and sensual as it is mysterious and elusive, Certified Copy is that rare gem that confirms film's capability of magic. This is some meta-level narrative tinkering going on here, and though I'm certain that repeated viewings will clarify certain aspects as much as they might further blur their borders, even on first encounter, it's so absorbing a work of such obvious mastery on all levels that one comes away immediately certain that the medium has just clicked up another notch. Forget a plot explanation, which would be especially frivolous in this case; it's an emotional song, a pastiche of dynamic feelings and relationships (the characters, the filmmaker, the audience) so quixotic that trying to pin it down would be downright distasteful. Juliette Binoche's performance is possibly the best in a prodigious career. Add this one to your desert island list. [Rating: A]

Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín, 2010). Yeah, sure, it's kind of obvious in theme, but there struck me as being more than enough feeling and sincerity present in Paul Laverty's script to circumvent a potentially problematic self-aware structure (it's a movie about power relations that's also about a movie about power relations). Appropriately dedicated to Howard Zinn, the film wears its liberal virtues on its sleeves and never condescends, even if it hand-holds just a bit. Its biggest strengths lie in its characters, which are believably dynamic and more than just mouthpieces, which seems harder and harder to come by these days. Arthouse for the NPR crowd. [Rating: B]

Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011). Moon was the first movie I ever watched on Blu-ray, and it was glorious in all the non-technical ways, too. That film's dreamy Kubrickian tone is replaced by crackerjack glee in Jones' directorial follow-up Source Code, which tackles an initially routine Groundhog Day by The Matrix scenario with wit, intelligence, tangible empathy and just a dash of irreverence (and a very, very cute Michelle Monaghan). Jake Gyllenhaal (finally returning to the thoughtful sci-fi genre) is a soldier in a virtual reality simulation program in which he must find an enemy bomber fast enough that said enemy can be thwarted in reality, where he is expected to strike again. The simulation lasts eight minutes, and at the end of every eight minutes, he blows up. To divulge more would be cruel, except to say that the movie doesn't pull its punches, which are deep and lead to a sly kind of nirvana; what we ultimately see may not be as simple as it at first seems. [Rating: B+]

American: The Bill Hicks Story (Matt Harlock, Paul Thomas, 2009). Gracefully walking the line between fan-friendly greatest hits package and newcomer-friendly biopic, The Bill Hicks Story is a sufficient condensation of the rich, albeit short career and life of one of the great comedians of recent decades. A fan of Hicks' comedy since freshman year in college, I was ready to slam a film that didn't do him justice, which is not to say hero worship was on my list of desirables, either. Less about the man than the man's journey, American is made with obvious love for the late comedian, but also honesty about his choices, detailing the man's drug and alcohol addictions with a stern matter-of-factness that neither condemns nor approves. (Speaking as a fan, his staunch defense of smoking - he died of cancer - is particularly irksome.) His material - subversive, angry, hopeful, sometimes conflicting but always empowered and empowering - is presented in concentrated dashes, and serves as an excellent sampler package of some of his best material (a favorite: his demonstration of the ultimate commercial). Interviews and animations - often in the form of photographs digitally manipulated in a fashion that's cute without being syrupy or overwhelming - make up the majority of the film, which proves visually engaging and distinctive without demanding much of the eyes. If anything, the film could be longer, but perhaps such abruptness is appropriate for a film about a landmark life cut short. [Rating: B+]

Viewing Log #6

2011-05-04T16:26:00.005-04:00

Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder, 2011). Erupting from its creator's psyche with a volcanic intensity, Sucker Punch marks the first time Zack Snyder has directed an original script of his own creation, a fact that, while revealing/clarifying certain weaknesses of his craft as evident until now, also frees him to indulge his passions like never before. The results prove strangely intoxicating. Though juvenile it certainly is, this mishmash of elements from fanboy culture (fetishized warrior chicks, dragons, weapon-wielding robots, Nazi zombies, and a samurai warrior with a Gatling gun, among others) comes out far enough on the side of the deranged and operatic to not achieve some kind of brilliance. Sucker Punch articulates itself with a necessary sense of satiric subversion to counteract the didactic caricatures, and while Snyder's tale of one Baby Doll might not have much of a clue about what makes real women tick, its multiple reality constructions are far more tingling than Inception's wannabe mindfuck. The soundtrack synchronization is almost eerily perfect, and it's only grown in my mind since. [Rating: B+]

Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010). This follow-up to the heartbreaking serenity of Wendy and Lucy finds the indie director reaching for something similarly as intangible as that film's appreciation of resolute, silent determination in the face of worldly apathy. Michelle Williams returns as Emily Tetherow, one member of a three-family pioneer team heading west on the 1845 Oregon Trail, the titular Stephen Meek the guide they've hired to guide them there. A supposed shortcut proves disastrous, stranding them in unknown territory with little in the way of water or clue, while the catalyst of a captured Native American further divides the increasingly desperate group. Material like this would seemingly invite metaphoric comparisons to recent politics - and there's admittedly something to be said about the correlation between Meek and the bullshit battle plans of Dick Cheney, etc. - but the existential choke hold of Meek's Cutoff (evoked via long takes that emphasize the monotony of these life circumstances and ethereal images of rolling/evaporating cloud formations) more strongly suggests an eternal struggle for survival against unknown natural odds. It seems that the prose of Jack London (specifically the chilling first paragraph of "White Fang") has been effectively translated to film via the sparsity of Reichardt's intensely detailed neo-western. [Rating: B+]

Due Date (Todd Phillips, 2010). (Spoilers) Less obnoxious than Phillips' overrated The Hangover but also distinctly less raucous, this wannabe-raunchy take on the Planes, Trains and Automobiles scenario would likely be a waste of time were it not for the zen presence of a certain Mr. Downey, Jr. As an expecting father en route home as the titular date draws near, his focused businessman Peter Highman runs into a prolonged brouhaha with Zach Galifianakis' aspiring thespian/pothead Ethan Tremblay (warning: that's his stage name). Some amusing bits punctuate the tone-deaf proceedings like actual bits of chicken in Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, including a clambake scene set to Pink Floyd that's actually kinda cool. Identity crises ensue, enemies will become friends, and someones ashes will be mistaken for coffee grounds. Hey, it could have been worse. [Rating: C+]

Battles Los Angeles (Jonathan Liebesman, 2011). Veteran movie critic (and my own personal Yoda-like guru) Matt Zoller Seitz calls Battle Los Angeles (advertising material displays a colon in the title, but the title shot in the film hasn't one, so that what I'm going with here) the worst-directed Hollywood film he's ever seen, and he's not being the least bit mean in that assessment. Employing an overzealous shaky-cam aesthetic that makes The Bourne Ultimatum look restrained in comparison, this actioner sees a malevolent alien invasion grip the coastlines of the world, Los Angeles being the lynch pin battlefield to maintain on the North American west coast. It's hard to tell what disappoints more here: how utterly half-assed the visceral quota is (for all the blazing guns and shit blowing up, it's only sporadically thrilling), or how much the script drops the ball on what is, conceptually, a very well-thought-out invasion tactic. Character motivation may as well be lifted from the yellow pages. Michael Bay, show 'em how it's done. [Rating: C-]

Harvest

2011-05-03T00:43:00.001-04:00

In a just world, Harvest would be getting a wide release alongside of, if not necessarily instead of, Thor. Writer-director Marc Meyers's sophomore feature is an astonishingly confident work that avoids nearly all the pitfalls of contemporary independent cinema, flirting with cloying treacle in only the handful of moments the film employs a borderline-cliché alt-rock soundtrack. The rest of the film is sterling.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Viewing Log #5

2011-04-28T13:11:00.009-04:00

Robot Monster (Phil Tucker, 1953). What madness is this?! I knew of this film for having been an early feature on MST3K, and, similarly, for having won some award in the 1980s for worst movie of all time. This is probably more indicative of a developed taste in garbage than I'd like to admit, but, sweet Jesus, if Robot Monster is a bad movie, it is certainly one of the greatest bad movies ever made. Let those who care to do so debate whether the bare-bones absurdity on display is the result of wanting resources or audacious creative vision; I'd like to think the latter, but the result is most certainly a kind of cinematic nirvana. A family picnicking in a remote valley survives the annihilation of mankind; the invading titular destroyer, Ro-Man (performed by George Barrows, voiced by John Brown), spends the majority of the film marching to and from his cave headquarters (dig that bubble machine) in his effort to finally terminate the species. The mere sight of Ro-Man (whose species and planet are amusingly of the same name) - he would appear to be a man in a gorilla suit and diving helmet - suggests the pinnacle of 1950s sci-fi silliness, the film's title an impossibly perfect condensation of the archetype. Stock footage from One Million B.C. (factoid: D.W. Griffith served as an uncredited director on that film) suggests a Lynchian freak-out (spoilers ahoy), and in its own modest ways, the film is surprisingly cutthroat and unforgiving. Of course, in the end, love saves the day, and it's all a boys dream. Or is it? I've since tried, and failed, to watch this MST3K episode; the film deserves better than the lackluster commentary season one was able to provide. The ending - three times!!! - solidifies it as a masterpiece. All hail the Robot Monster. [Rating: A]

Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010). Supplanting obstacles typical to bubbly date movie formulas with devastations more apropos of real life, Blue Valentine reaches for heartbreaking truths and almost succeeds in grasping them. The whiffs of revelation (a sequence in a futuristic hotel room and an impromptu dance number among them) never quite transcend what is ultimately a very formulaic screenplay, one that comes down to a mannered connect-the-dots thesis whose real audacity is limited to a relentless if necessary downer attitude and a timeline that never makes explicit its nonlinear jumps (and a beautiful non-ending that's just about perfect). Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are Dean and Cindy, young parents whose relationship, once ripe with love and purpose, is in a downward spiral of disrepair. On a per-performer basis, this might be the best acted film of 2010. It's so close to achieving greatness it hurts, almost as much as the embittered relationship herein. [Rating: B]

Rango (Gore Verbinski, 2011). It's all there in the opening scene: Johnny Depp's titular lizard play acts with the inanimate objects that make up his life, until the moment a near auto crash sees him separated from his host family, his life as a pet now reduced to broken glass and rubble on a desert highway. When he finds a nearby, sun-scorched town in dire straights, his opportunity to create whatever identity he wants is put to the test, and Rango proves a thoughtful look at the ways in which drama can shape life. Sadly, this irreverent western gallery of personified animals can't quite sustain its gonzo verve for feature length (it's all too easy to see through the plot to the lurking Chinatown revelation, although a third act cameo sets a high water mark of awesome, especially for fans of Deadwood), but it's still as genuinely idiosyncratic and effortlessly entertaining as the best of big-budget family features. Actually, that's not entirely true: Rango routinely pushes the boundary of what's typical for PG animated humor, and your kids probably pick up on more of those racy jokes than you realize. Move over Shrek, you little puss. [Rating: B]

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994). Cinema's coolest new kid has arguably gone further and deeper in his subsequent works (minus the standalone Kill Bill: Volume 1, I can see any of his films argued as his best), but methinks this zeitgeist-tapping miracle will always remain his most quintessential. Maybe it's just the subsequent seventeen years worth of jumbled narratives talking, but the non-linearity of Pulp Fiction seems almost quaint now, which is not to say it was ever THAT much to wrap one's head around to begin with. (Minus the opening scene and the last chapter, and Mr. Walken's hysterically restrained cameo, it's actually entirely straightforward.) More significant than its obvious infatuation with cinema past is the subtextual meditation on pride, faith, and redemption, at least for those lucky enough to come out on top when the bullets have flown and fists landed. Look deeply enough, and the universe emerges in full. [Rating: A]

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T05:45:00.000-04:00

If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise

2011-04-19T18:08:00.003-04:00

The failure of the levees was an unprecedented blow to America's most eclectic city, but the BP disaster—from the initial rig explosion and months of leaking oil to the ensuing media cover-ups and hindsight revelations about safety regulations blatantly disregarded in the name of short-term profits—will likely go down as the example of modern capitalism-cum-cannibalism, its environmental, economic, and humanitarian ramifications likely beyond our full comprehension for years, if not decades, to come.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Gamera vs. Zigra & Gamera: The Super Monster

2011-04-06T08:24:00.002-04:00

Created by the Daiei Motion Picture Company to rival Toho's successful string of monster films, the fire-breathing, jet-propelled giant turtle was a stretch from the outset. Even in his original film, the big fella was hardly a titan of the threatening sort (especially when he walked on his hind legs), and it wasn't long before the series was catering to an under-10 demographic far more explicitly than even the most juvenile of Godzilla entries.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XX

2011-03-29T07:45:00.003-04:00

The unique clashing of the high- and lowbrow has always been part of what made this oeuvre such a resilient, democratic creation, while the ingenious in-theater presentation befits both solo and communal viewing experiences to equal, if different, effect. It's hard to imagine a series with public-access roots being more fully formed, universal, and profound.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Taxi Driver

2011-03-18T16:51:00.002-04:00

Hitchcockian unease permeates the film, but so too does a Godardian use of space and a Bressonian focus on obsession heighten the mounting sense of dread. These elements are groovy for film buffs but are mere icing on the proverbial cake; you don't need to be in the know to relish Scorsese's mastery of the form, and what may astonish even more than the creative prowess is how compulsively entertaining the results are. It may yet be his finest film, while the character of Travis is quite arguably the most enduring creation to be found in the collective works of Scorsese, DeNiro, and screenwriter Paul Schrader.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

The Desert of Forbidden Art

2011-03-15T09:10:00.002-04:00

Amongst the many threads of history carefully interwoven in The Desert of Forbidden Art is one concerning the excavation of historical artifacts from a desert. Forget the general topic at hand (in this case, the preservation of a specific kind of Russian art) and ponder this image, if you haven't already, of endless sand and the treasures kept in her ocean (really, I'd watch a movie about just this). If it (or anything concerning the desert, really) doesn't blow you away at least a little on an existential level, I don't know how much we really have to talk about. (You can let that help gauge the relevancy of this review to your person.) In this long-gestating documentary, it becomes a metaphoric image for the salvation of art from the corners of the earth. During the Soviet regime, many Russian artists experienced great oppression lest they cave to state-approved Socialist Realism, a photography-like style of art intended to glamorize the expected ways of life, versus art capable of truth and subversion (my favorite shown here is the painting unfortunately cut in half).

Though hidden away, often damaged and ailing (even used to patch roof holes), thousands upon thousands of works did come into creation and survive during this period, and with state funding, untold bravery, persistence, and even a little help the mafia, the painter-turned-curator Igor Savitsky was able to amass over 40,000 works produced during this period of oppression, tucking them into a museum in Uzbekistan away from the KGB (he made the 1,700 mile trip over 20 times). My art-hungry eyes (one of the paintings featured herein is currently my Windows desktop image) would've liked an extended cut of the film, but then, such beauty is reason to act on the continued preservation of these masterpieces. Though a miracle unto itself, the museum is in dire straights, and the film movingly chronicles the many personal plights made to create and preserve what resides there. The film makes one wonder what is being created now (to remain unseen until much later), and what riches there would be for everybody if all nations were able to host their culture for the entire world. The Desert of Forbidden Art is solid (always compulsively watchable) but ultimately only skirts what could have easily been mind-blowing. It works quite admirably, however, as a conversation piece.

Directed by: Amanda Pope & Tchavdar Georgiev Written by: Amanda Pope & Tchavdar Georgiev Vocal cast: Edward Asner, Sally Field, Ben Kingsley 2010, NR, 80 minutes

A Place to Live: The Story of Triangle Square

2011-03-15T09:07:00.003-04:00

Dual parts financially-timely social doc and skillful business infomercial, A Place to Live: The Story of Triangle Square tells the story of the creation of the titular locale - an apartment building recently built in Los Angeles to help meet the escalating housing demand for low-income, elderly gay and lesbian citizens - and a handful of the seniors who aspire to live there. Theirs is a story like many - a middle class struggling to stay afloat - compounded by whatever homophobia they've experienced over the years (the experiences vary; one man enjoyed pure acceptance by his community while growing up, only to be dishonorably discharged from military service as an adult). This chronicling is nicely polished and enthusiastically empathetic, bearing witness to both joy and sadness with equal parts hope and bitter clear-sightedness: Those who hope to live at the Square must first meet income qualifications, then be one of the lucky 150 to be selected by a random and unfeeling lottery system. If the film could be more substantial, it'd be in exploring the political and financial ins and outs of how this kind of social benefit can be achieved in the first place (the labyrinth of legal and financial yellow tape is kept out of sight, out of mind). The dramatic angle the film focuses on is essential and humane but it also hits a wall of potential; a larger look at the challenges and accomplishments herein would have revealed even greater truths and deeper flaws in society to be addressed. A Place to Live is pleasing, but in the end it's only a Band-Aid.

Directed by: Carolyn Coal Written by: Carolyn Coal, Cynthia Childs 2008, NR, 88 minutes

Viewing Log #4

2011-03-05T07:39:00.023-05:00

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) Is it that the Thai filmmaker is getting better, or am I just becoming that much more in tune with his wavelength? That question demands a reviewing of his Tropical Malady (which I liked, but didn't quite get; Syndromes and a Century was much more my bag), but for now, I'm simply grateful to have enjoyed this latest existential doodle from this most relaxed, assured, and profound of filmmakers. Life and death are blurred in ways equally mysterious and clear-minded in this fantasy mood piece, which deliberately indebts itself to 2001: A Space Odyssey via the inclusion of a red-eyed, shaggy-haired simian character, one of two deceased family members who appear to the titular relative in his final weeks in the flesh world we know. (What's more, the film actually deserves to be so audacious.) Ethereal, meditative, and surprisingly funny amidst it all; I can't wait to watch it again (and a third, fourth, and probably fifth time, at least.) [Rating: 4.5 out of 5]

Repulsion (Roman Polanksi, 1965). At age ten, I didn't know what to make of this surreal nightmare, but then, I was a late bloomer. This landmark psycho-sexual horror film (see here, Black Swan fans) strikes me largely as a tragicomedy in disguise; you may feel the urge to laugh out of sheer need to break the tension, and Polanski knows it. Featuring the fragile, tormented, and unwaveringly endearing Catherin Deneuve in the splintered lead: An easily distraught young woman whose instability is at least aggravated - if not caused outright - by the sexual attention of the men around her, be they dishonorable or not. The lines of reality to her perception are never clearly established (a subjective mindfuck that reveals itself more in hindsight), but it's terrifying in the moment nevertheless. The ticking of a clock seems to penetrate the very fabric of space in the film's haunting apartment locale (and that's the least nerve-racking of the noises to be heard), but nothing proves more frightening than when the sound goes away completely. A dead bunny may be the supporting performer of the year, and minus a single creative choice that probably amounts to little more than a petty personal preference, the film strikes these eyes as perfect. Criterion's Blu-ray is gorgeous, but then, you knew that already. [Rating: 5 out of 5]

Biutiful (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2010) It ain't Babel, but it sure ain't 21 Grams, either. The former (essentially Crash Redux, complete with pseudo-ponderous zoom out finale) might have gone down smoother had it not been so obviously the product of a talent going down in flames in the name of after school special topicality, and while Biutiful pedals back on the subtext-as-plot insufferability, it continues some of the same bad habits the director has recently let get the better of him. (Button-pushing controversiality? Blanket miserablism? Check, and check.) Iñárritu hasn't meaningfully played with time since the aforementioned Grams, although here it at least affords a revisitation of one of the film's most interesting scenes. Javier Bardem is Uxbal, a small time player in the criminal underworld of Barcelona; amidst efforts to protect a band of immigrant workers and his own family, he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. With at least one subplot too many (or too scantly explored), Biutiful never feels like a full blossoming of what's being planted; it builds and builds, and deflates when seems like it should explode. Though seriously flawed, it remains a thoughtful, moral film. Iñárritu wisely leaves the cast to their own devices (Bardem's so prodigious that even the Academy couldn't not toss him another nod in recognition), and if the film is ultimately a failure (not my opinion), it's at least one of grand and genuine aspirations. Go back to the editing room, Alejandro: There's a great movie rattling around somewhere in there. [Rating: 3.5 out of 5]

The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet, 2010) I caught this at the last showing on the last day of it's local run, which was good for my wallet, but not for my creative palate; I'd have seen it two or three more times if possible. I'm ashamed to say I'm entirely unfamiliar with the work of Jacques Tati, whose unfilmed script (written to his daughter, as both apology and love letter) was used by Chomet for this, his follow-up to the wondrous Triplets of Belleville. Nearly free of dialogue (much of which is reduced to indistinct remarks; the communication is in the tone and the remarkably drawn gestures), this story of an aging magician and the young girl he takes under his wing is the stuff of life, simply put. Eliminating the dialogue helps it to achieve some kind of universality: Yes, it's about these people, but it could be about anyone. Many riches to be mined here. [Rating: 4.5 out of 5]

Step Up 3 (Jon M. Chu, 2010) My interest in this inspired act of creation doesn't quite hit zenith levels, but I am able to say "best end credits in recent memory" without a second thought. The story, as it is, is pure bubblegum; you've seen it before, yes, but never so stripped down to the essence of the material. I know not a thing about dancing and couldn't bet my life on my ability to actually perform in any way not requiring or improved via alcohol, but this (back to the movie now), is pure, uninhibited artistry being channeled both in front of an behind the camera, a celebration of family, love and possibility. The cast members are quick-footed contortionistic masters of rhythm. Genuine and genuinely infectious, and it appears that - if watched in 3D - it'd have about four times the creativity and wit as the format did in James Cameron's Avatar. The latest example of what's possible when studio execs don't give a shit what the movie is, only that it exists in the first place to cash in the popular predecessors (neither of which I've seen in this case). I think it deserves midnight movie status, and I'm sure this guy thinks so too. IFC? Preferably someone else? [Rating: 4 out of 5]

Xtro II: The Second Encounter (Harry Bromley Davenport, 1990) This movie disturbed me as a child, but all I remember seeing were the gory money shots. Now, I've seen Alien and Altered States and, uhm, Sunshine, and the sheer redundancy of this ~~film~~ video is easily the more distressing factor. (Actually, I'm almost impressed by the special effects, seeing that this was a straight-to-video production.) Were the film entire just a few shades more ridiculous, it'd be perfect MST3K fodder, and if 4th generation Alien ripoffs are your thing, have at it. For me, it's a bit too preoccupied with keeping a straight face to ever really be the kind of fun necessary to overcome it's inherent awfulness; despite some sporadically amusing archetype riffing amongst the supporting characters, it never gains traction. Mostly, it's an unsatisfying game of Ten Little Indians, as it never even gets the cinematic basics right, probably more for lack of funding than anything else -- establishing and detail shots are so disconnected that nothing like visceral tension can accrue. The monster (a giant creature inadvertently transported to Earth from another dimension) never seems to occupy the same space as anyone else, and it doesn't help any that the score is like too many of its early 90s cheapo horror contemporaries: Cereal box synth music from hell. Alcohol might make this better, but it might make it a whole lot worse, too. Bad movie fans, proceed with caution. [Rating: 1.5 out of 5]

Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009) If ever a film demands a second viewing, it's this one: It's savage and horrifying and wicked and funny in the same vein of humor that could also find Dead Baby Jokes funny (i.e. the subject matter isn't funny, but the mere nature of it, being so sensational and offensive, is), and on top of it all, it completely denies us of context, outside the elasticity for good and bad held by the human spirit. What you see is what you get, and what you see are two parents who mentally, emotionally and physically imprison their now-adult children to sickening lengths (by the time incest is suggested, it hardly comes as a surprise). That I'm aghast must be a form of overload, and as baffled as I am by this dark underbelly of a film, I did enjoy it. Probably an evolved form of the style and judgment usual dished out by Michael Haneke (who I do like, despite both Funny Games). Stay tuned for viewing numero dos. [Rating: 4 out of 5]

The Eagle (Kevin Macdonald, 2011) It's pretty much what you'd expect from a sword-and-sandals film starring Channing Tatum and released by Focus Features, which, for me, means it kicks ass. Perhaps inevitably, it lands as something of a cross-breed between 300 and The New World, which is to say it's both viscerally intoxicating and phantasmagorical. When's the DVD? [Rating: 4 out of 5]

Diary of a Country Priest

2011-02-24T17:22:00.003-05:00

French critic Pierre Bergé said that you have to bring a belief to Diary of a Country Priest, in either heaven or in the cinema. Like the atheistic Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Robert Bresson's film is evidence to a collective spirituality that exists far outside the labels imposed by our creaky systems of belief; the film itself evokes the act of worshiping. This intense spiritual inquiry doesn't cater to any religious persuasion, but instead speaks to the universal need for personal foundation in pursuing fulfillment and meaning in one's life.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Moments of the Decade, #35-31

2011-02-18T12:05:00.013-05:00

As usual, spoilers ahead.

35. The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006) How much you groove on this kookily sincere existential sci-fi romance might just depend on your own willingness to suspend disbelief. It's a film of astonishing spiritual inquiry and emotional nakedness, rendered with fearless precision; thematically and creatively, this is God complex material, and if Aronofsky pulls it off (which I think he does), it's because he doesn't give a shit who thinks it's silly. The images often evoke the breathtaking wonder of silent films, but to these eyes, the height of earned creative audacity comes in a seamlessly included homage to what may be the greatest film ever made about death: Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru. If you've seen The Fountain and didn't know that reference already, you should be putting that classic at the top of your queue in three, two, one...

34. The Cove (Louis Psihoyos, 2009) Endangered dolphins -- a race arguably superior to ours, and frankly, I hope they rule the planet in my lifetime -- continue to be slaughtered in parts of Japan, where a natural niche in the land is employed to gather and massacre the creatures en masse, away from the eye of the media. The Cove gives due consideration to various political and cultural issues at work here, but it's the carefully plotted and executed act of infiltration (to install hidden cameras) that gives the film it's dramatic axis. Rare is the documentary where the work behind the camera is so palpable on the screen, both figuratively and literally. The hard-earned results are some five minutes of searing animal brutality, at once unspeakably tragic and -- for their potential to end the monstrosity (can we get a witness?) -- searingly triumphant.

33. Five Dedicated to Ozu (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003) Like a mental net one experiences with the same half-asleep verve as when watching clouds roll by, the plotless, five-shot Five Dedicated to Ozu is an acquired taste to say the least (it was never officially released theatrically; its five scenes were played as part of a museum exhibit, independently of each other). Easily the most accessible, the fourth of these shots -- a straightforward view of the ocean with the beach framed in the lower foreground, through which some hundreds of ducks waddle only to waddle right back where they came from -- is also certainly the most fun. Call me a hippy (I wish), but nature is more entertaining than most movies, and these birds are pure bliss.

32. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008) A heartbreaking look at the failure of the American dream, Aronofsky's old school underdog tale is as expert an exercise in archetypal purity as it was perfect a vehicle for the rekindled talent of Mickey Rourke (whose true comeback started at least as early as Sin City). Even some who hated the film remarked on the poetic beauty of the climax, a brutal end after many brutal roads, which sees Rourke's down-and-out Randy (once a celebrity, now a has-been, and a failed father to boot) choose to go out as a legend rather than endure a life where more hurt may be just around the corner. (The worst fact here is that death wasn't his only out.) If there aren't tears on your cheeks by the time The Boss begins strumming over the end credits, I fear that something may be broken inside.

31. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Adam McKay, 2004) This was my proverbial oasis in the desert for the summer of '04. Amidst Kerry vs. Bush idiocy and other usual suspects, Will Ferrell and company gave us a nearly transcendent act of tomfoolery; they embrace the absurd and point out our foibles. The film is endlessly quotable (“I'm in a glass case of emotion!”), but arguably no moment lands with as much detonation as that of a scene-stealing Steve Carell, who – as the mentally handicapped weatherman Brick Tamland, responding to the latest round of office trauma – leaps into frame, face virtually frozen, bolting with fervor that he does not, in fact, know what they are yelling about. His next contribution seals the deal. It's an exclamation point writ large, and a wry response to a decade's worth of asinine media.

Hattips to Keith Uhlich and DVD Beaver for caps of Five and The Wrestler, respectively.

[Comments can be posted on the main list page available here.]

Putty Hill

2011-02-17T13:38:00.010-05:00

Few films are capable of evoking the tumultuous feelings that accompany life's tragedies -- most of them compartmentalize them for tidy drama, or ignore/forget them outright -- so it's a genuine breath of fresh air to find one that gives voice to the many conflicting, uncertain, and even regressive ways with which people deal with life's harsher blows. At the center of Putty Hill is Cory, a young man who just recently died of a drug overdose, an event that ripples throughout his suburban community as friends and family congregate (some of them from out of town) for the impending funeral. To some, like the young James (James Siebor), Cory's brother, seen playing paintball in the opening scenes, these events might seem to barely register; I was reminded of the almost pleasant numbness I felt the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, which I take it was essentially an overload of emotional input, triggering a total loss of responsive ability. Writer/director Matthew Porterfield keenly measures the pulse of these emotions and the manner in which people absorb them (or choose not to) into their routines and future plans. Like Rachel Getting Married, the loose ends with which Putty Hill chooses to leave its character are among its many assets; anything purporting conclusion would be a lie.

I haven't seen Porterfield's first film, Hamilton, but Putty Hill would appear to be a respectable evolution of his laid-back, peripatetic approach. Plot-wise, not much happens here (the film abstains from including the funeral itself, in a tasteful bit of privacy), all the better to focus on the drama that exists between the lines. Though obviously shaken by Cory's death, life goes on with a semblance of normality for the local residents: teenagers get high by the creek, skaters kill time at the park, a tattoo artist continues his trade, etc. In ways unspoken, the film speaks to the larger economic rifts that affect these people: with little in the way of educational opportunities, many have turned to dealing drugs in hopes of securing the wealth promised to them by the American dream, and the mind reels at the long-term damage being wrought today by greedy Wall Street employees, corrupt politicians and their sinful kind. Justice is hard to come by here, but that's just an accepted, however mourned, facet of life for these souls.

This refreshingly chill approach, alas, is disrupted via a sporadic series of well-intended "interviews", in which an off-camera voice (presumably Porterfield's) talks to the characters one-on-one, asking them personal basics and letting them vent emotional steam. Unto themselves, these scenes work, as they highlight Porterfield's knack for how real people talk and his excellent use of amateur performers, but they ultimately feel like an overt reassessment of everything else the film has already observed. Putty Hill works best, then, when it simply lets these people be who and what they are, unprompted and always without judgment. The wake scene, in which a delightful motley of characters sing and dance their way through their collective grief, achieves something of a quotidian transcendence. Whether it's the joyously impromptu screech of a surprised girl or the dead-end escape that concludes the film, Putty Hill's slice of life is bittersweet indeed.

Directed by: Matthew Porterfield Screenplay by: Matthew Porterfield Starring: Sky Ferreira, Zoe Vance, James Siebor, Dustin Ray, Cody Ray, Charles Sauers, Catherine Evans, Virginia Heath, Casey Weibust, Drew Harris, Marina Siebor 2010, NR, 87 minutes

The Green Hornet

2011-02-11T13:31:00.004-05:00

To these eyes, The Green Hornet falls into a general category of moderately successful films I tend to enjoy for one unifying reason: they may not be of any particular forte or quality, but they don't front their intentions and make for a pleasant and smooth, if perhaps a bit unmemorable, bit of distraction. I feel no need to ever again watch this glib adaptation of the popular superhero radio play and television series (neither of which I'm familiar with outside a broad cultural lexicon), unless perhaps I'm with friends and inebriated; I saw the film in sensible 2D, and I imagine that the kooky, frantic, and sometimes incoherent (especially during nighttime scenes) visuals would lose all magic and become sheer headache in the 3D format (with Jäger, it'd probably be a blast, so here's rescinding my former statement).

Director Michel Gondy's idiosyncratic flair is fairly restrained here, which is probably a very good thing given his lack of experience with action kinetics. He keeps things light on their proverbial feet, and lets the chemistry of the leads do most of the work; the two makeshift heroes, Britt (Seth Rogen) and Kato (Jay Chou) are so effectively relaxed together that when the script demands they be at odds, it rarely works (Rogen's character is frequently a prick, yet he's far too likable to be convincing). In the end, the streamlined approach and frayed ends make it all that much more snappy and glibly entertaining, and though roughly a quarter to a third of the material falls flat, the stream of energy being generated is swift enough that the negative effects never linger. Rogen's extensive creative involvement may be to blame for these rifts, but the only real tragedy here is Christoph Waltz's near-total under utilization; his self-consciously witty verbosity, though skillfully delivered, is too cutesy, lacks distinguishable flair and seems to have been hurriedly rewritten for the man who was Hans Landa.

Directed by: Michel Gondry Screenplay by: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz, Tom Wilkinson, Edward James Olmos, Edward Furlong, Analeigh Tipton, David Harbour, James Franco 2011, Rated PG-13, 119 minutes

Carbon Nation

2011-02-08T19:49:00.004-05:00

There's really no honest way for me to attempt a fully "objective" review of Carbon Nation, what with environmental conservation being one of my long time pet passions. In fact, despite anything in the way of aesthetic shortcomings (the movie surely isn't art, and nor does it try to be), what is perhaps most impressive about this nifty doc isn't how chock full of information it is (even if you're up on climate change and pollution, it's a great refresher course), but the imparted feeling of common empowerment. Having recently watched it, I feel guilty, and not because of my typically Woody Allen-esque liberal white guilt, but because I know I could be doing more than I already am, and with little effort.

Make no mistake: since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the rate at which we've been burning through our fossil fuels should be more than enough to give pause to every worldly cognizant man, woman, and child. Not only are we (in this review, "we" refers to the larger western civilization this American resides in) approaching a point of diminishing resources without sufficiently dependable alternatives (how soon is soon enough to act responsibly?; if oil deprivation hits us unprepared, the survivors might end up living through The Road Warrior), but we're also seriously disrupting the tenuous natural environment we depend on to survive. It doesn't matter that cancers abound from our indulgent and wasteful technologies and lifestyle choices; caught up in the cycles of a capitalistic society, many of those who don't already oppose a less naturally exploitative lifestyle (what better way to feed lies to the masses than to wrap them in a national symbol) are simply too apathetic to do much about it.

As is detailed in Carbon Nation, the world requires 16 terawatts of energy to go round, and that includes everything from the subways to your microwave. Hundreds and hundreds of terawatts of energy are ripe for harvesting from our natural wind currents and received solar energy, but retrofitting our technologies requires foresight, money (up front, that is; the long-term savings should be enough to sway even the most environmentally disinterested for sheer income value), and the kind of leadership that is at best hard to come by in this financially corrupt society. Carbon Nation doesn't get conspiratorial -- it spends most of its time interviewing a plethora of individuals who, through all walks of life, have worked to reduce pollution and make a difference, however small -- but methinks enough wealthy oil pigs line the pockets of Washington to perpetuate this long-gestating atrocity indefinitely, until we pull our collective head out of you know where and realize that the profit motive rights of the few aren't so sacred and holy to the ideals of America as to usurp the quality of life of everyone else.

Carbon Nation isn't entirely my cup of tea, but it's slickly made and almost mathematically calculated as for wide appeal (everyone from the liberal choir to South Park Republicans), and never patronizes in the vein of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. If it is to be a significant work, it will only be because it was actively used as a tool for enlightenment, which begs the question: will we mend our evil ways? Earth doesn't stand to lose much in the long run-- if we poison her enough, she'll wipe us off and regenerate her lost tissue over some thousands of years, and we'll become a boring footnote in the archeological history of some future race. Will we let the short-term greed of a few threaten our collective existence, or will the grandchildren of our grandchildren cherish our memory because we rose as one and did the right thing?

Directed by: Peter Byck Narrated by: Bill Kurtis 2011, Not Rated, 86 minutes

Inception

2011-02-06T19:12:00.008-05:00

It is with a heavy heart that I have to report that Christopher Nolan's latest exhibits one of the great schisms between grand intentions and inept executions to be seen at the movies in recent years. Only someone who never saw (or appreciated) Dark City would be able to call it visionary (or Paprika, or Heat, or Blade Runner, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Solaris [either one], or, uhm, The Matrix... should I go on?), as Nolan's long-gestating science fiction opus (he first conceived of it as a teenager) rarely rises above its own apparent reliance on these influences. Visually, they're the only thing that stands out from the film's enslavement to one of the more redundant and unmelodious scripts to ever grace a big budget film. In the year of The Social Network's dialectic melodies, Inception is even more blatantly like nails on chalkboard. By distilling the film to its key money shots, the preview was a rush. The movie entire is mostly a snooze.

Nolan's core concept -- that a synthetic dreamland might give way to the raging subconscious of a tortured man -- is as conceptually appetizing as those similarly mind-fucky plots of the aforementioned films. It is tragic, then, that about 90%+ of Inception's running time feels like flight preparation; the stewardess, as she is, never shuts up. And here, she's every single one of the characters, a term I use loosely; mostly, they're ciphers for information, nothing more. Nolan's script seems scared shitless of letting the audience wonder about much of anything, less they get "bored." And so, it spends most of the time bending over backwards telling you things it might have far more creatively shown to you, or when it shows them to you, it usually tells you anyway, etc. The aforementioned Matrix might paint in similarly obvious strokes at times ("Trinity" is a blatant metaphor, sure, but "Mal" should make cringe anyone who holds language sacred), but it's also beautifully stylized, consistently visually inventive, and presented as a great genre tease; it peels away the layers with titillating ease. In contrast, Inception talks at you ad nausea for nearly three hours, expects food market and architectural farts to blow your mind (the lame M.C. Escher shout-outs are the real kicker for me; one man's paradox is another's retarded staircase), and holds your hand as it walks with you through supposed dreamscapes (droll city skylines that are at best casually surreal; where's Lynch when you need him?). I can only speak for myself, but this is exactly the kind of movie where I'd rather be lost, at least for a bit. That would be interesting.

The heist sequences, when they come, are something close to exciting, but that's mostly the attention-demanding score at work, and although a zero gravity Joseph Gordon-Levitt kicking ass is surely a beautiful thing, the overwhelmingly realistic presentation of the dreamland would seem to counter the reason for taking us into the dreamland in the first place (I'll take Neveldine/Taylor's Gamer, thank you, or David Cronenberg's eXistenZ). Otherwise, only a handful of shots transcend this leaden, literal approach into something sensual and poetic, and about half of those include a van in slow motion, turning corners and such. I've seen the film three times now; the first, on opening weekend, benefited of being fresh, though it still ultimately gave me blue balls; the second, at a drive-in, from the rule that any movie is enjoyable at a drive-in; the third, on a home system, was a suffocating slog. Even Oscar should feel disgraced by this fraud (the last shot might not be such a cheat if the preceding psychobabble wasn't such meaningless lip service). Leonardo DiCaprio starred in two "big" movies in 2010. Forget Inception; Shutter Island is actually worth a damn, and then some.

Directed by: Christopher Nolan Screenplay by: Christopher Nolan Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine 2010, Rated PG-13, 142 minutes

The Killer

2011-02-03T11:00:00.007-05:00

It's no misuse of hyperbole to say that violence has never appeared as operatic as it does in John Woo's The Killer -- one of the few films to hold a legitimate claim to the title of Greatest Action Movie of All Time. It's title suggests archetypal purity and existential singularity, and whether deliberately or not (the typically humble Woo thinks of his film as commercial, not art), the many pieces of this seminal work come together with such precision as to suggest something of divine inspiration. The title refers to Chow Yun-fat's Ah Jong (referred to in English dubs and subs as John or Jeff), a professional hitman with a conscience; when he accidentally blinds a female bystander whilst eliminating a club full of gangsters, he vows to secure the money needed for the necessary surgery to restore her sight. One last job should do the trick, but a snafu sees his position compromised, and before long, loyalties are tested and honor becomes the only thing left in a temporary world of masculine claims to power.

Romantic to its core, The Killer stages its many bombastic set pieces with gloriously poetic flourishes, the off-the-cuff verve stemming at least in part from Woo's infamously improvisational approach. As transfixing as it is, however, death is not something glorified here, but bemoaned as a necessary evil in an evil world; every expended bullet and flailing body of dead meat is shot as if an aching expression of a corrupted soul. Woo's impulsive editing choices (freeze frames abound for practically Wagnerian effect) compliment his rigorously framed thematic devices; men on both sides of the law become dual sides of the same coin when true justice is at stake. The blinded Jennie (Sally Yeh) is the equally melodramatic purity of essence in this world, but all does not give way to a better tomorrow. Sins must be paid for, and what separates The Killer from the commercial is Woo's ultimate refusal to give in to basic audience expectations. Like all true artists, he bites the bullet and gives us what we need instead.

Directed by: John Woo Screenplay by: John Woo Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Kenneth Tsang, Chu Kong, Shing Fui-On, Lam Chung, Yi Fanwei, Huang Guangliang, Ye Rongzu, Barry Wong and Parkman Wong 1989, Rated R, 110 minutes

Santa Sangre

2011-02-01T13:04:00.004-05:00

On paper, Alejandro Jodorowsky's vision seems drawn equally from the works of Buñuel, Hitchcock, and perhaps incidentally, Tod Browning's Freaks, but the effect of his kaleidoscopic vision never feels culled from any cloths not of his own making. For as random and free associative as his images strike one as being at any given moment, the consistency with which Santa Sangre doles out madness suggests a most assured and carefully plotted creative process.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.

Images of the Day Week, 2011

2011-01-31T23:59:00.006-05:00

JANUARY

1.10, Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005)

1.11, Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982)

1.12, Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

1.13, For All Mankind (Al Reinert, 1989)

1.14, Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

1.15, Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)

1.16, Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

1.17, Speed Racer (Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, 2008)

1.18, Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)

1.19, GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

1.20, The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)

1.21, Seven (David Fincher, 1995)

1.22, Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

1.23, Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)

1.24, Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

1.25, McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1972)

1.26, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)

1.27, Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

1.28, True Grit (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2010)

1.29, Five Dedicated to Ozu (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003)

FEBRUARY

2.03, The Killer (John Woo, 1989)

2.04, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Adam McKay, 2004)

2.05, Step Up 3 (Jon M. Chu, 2010)

2.06, Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010)

2.07, Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010)

2.08, Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

2.09, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, 2007)

2.11, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

2.12, Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

2.13, Adventureland (Greg Motolla, 2009)

2.14, Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderrson, 1997)

2.18, Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)

2.19, The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

2.20, Halloween (Rob Zombie, 2007)

2.21, Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

2.23, Curb Your Enthusiasm, "The Bat Mitzvah"

MARCH

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "Universal Remonster" (Matt Maiellero & Dave Willis, 2003)

APRIL

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

Robot Monster (Phil Tucker, 1953)

If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise (Spike Lee, 2010)

The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)

MAY

Day of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1985)

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell, David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen, 1937)

Monkeyshines No. 1 & Monkeyshines No. 2 (William K.L. Dickson, William Heise, 1889/1890)

JUNE

Rejected (Don Hertzfeldt, 2000)

The Social Network

2011-01-28T09:16:00.005-05:00

As I've already named it my personal #1 movie of 2010, I'll go ahead and assume that my affection for The Social Network is generally understood. Like GoodFellas, Pulp Fiction and David Fincher's own Fight Club, The Social Network strikes me as being as breathlessly composed as almost any work of the cinema and is equally infectious, like a great pop song. Fincher's kino eye, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's ear for wittily self-conscious dialogue (the kind that people actually use, thanks most likely mostly to the long-term effects of the movies themselves) and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's addictive electronic score make for something of a perfect storm. Similarly consistent praise is due to the cast; Andrew Garfield is a personal favorite, but the lot are not unlike the perfectly oiled cogs to a massive, beautiful, funky machine.

For a movie so popular amongst both audiences and critics, the level of discourse surrounding has nevertheless struck me as surprisingly minimal, which is to say, both the praise and the dissent have struck me as almost equally weak in their articulation (such lack of discussion has been a particular buzzkill to how I typically enjoy these things). Early hype labeling the film an heir to Citizen Kane was both blessing and curse; as a friend aptly noted, the structure of the film acutely parallels that of Orson Welles' oft-named G.O.A.T. masterpiece, possibly more so than any non-parody of that film has ever managed, but such lofty praise can easily backfire under even the most conducive circumstances. (I'm speaking of critical hype, for the record, not Fincher's own tongue-in-cheek declaration that his film would be the Kane of John Hughes movies, a title I'd think appropriately bestowed on Adventureland, which, coincidentally, shares the same lead.)

When concerning a social trend that has thus far included close to 1/10th of the world's population (over 500 million have joined Facebook's network as of 2010), it's hard not to brush with the topics that guide the very essence of modern life, and part of The Social Network's appeal surely lies in the fact that it feels so very current -- a self-aware time capsule. But the film only incidentally examines the nature of this digital tsunami (Sorkin is allegedly computer illiterate; as the cute final scene demonstrates, however, he certainly grasps what Facebook can and does mean to millions of people) as it carries on with its primary task of scrutinizing the (interpreted, not real) character of Mark Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg), the gifted programmer who launched the site in 2003 and is represented here by what are the likely questionable depositions following court action taken against him.

Early indicators set The Social Network aside from absolute factuality, and we're spared that most dubious of screen captions, "based on a true story." As is typical for movies based on real happenings, details have been changed aplenty, and as the adage goes, never let the facts get in the way (of a good story). To these eyes, The Social Network makes no claims to historical truth, and in doing so probably gets to the core of the material's truths all the better. I've not read Ben Mezrick's The Accidental Billionaires, on which Sorkin's screenplay is based, but as usual, I'm comfortable with whatever diverges have taken place so long as they remain in service of the film –- not some sloven adherence to trite details.

In collapsing the events of many years into a single streamlined narrative, Sorkin's screenplay is almost certainly deliberately indebted to Kane, a quality that wordlessly speaks to Zuckerberg's own inflated ego. As presented here, Zuckerberg's conception of Facebook followed his being courted to develop a similarly conceived web site meant to offer exclusive dating opportunities to Harvard students; after Facebook launched, Zuckerberg's would-be business partners took legal action, followed by former Facebook CFO Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who was pushed out of his stock ownership in the company in an apparent revenge stunt by Zuckerberg. As the early stages of Facebook's creation are recounted via two different court hearings in overlapping (and seamlessly logical) fashion, we see Zuckerberg squirming his way through the proceedings, dodging questions, lying methodically, defying the laws of intellectual property and showing a general contempt for the legal system. His creation being certainly his own in the majority, the film doesn't slander his character for bad business -- just bad friendship.

It speaks to the sublime ambiguity of the film that what little diversity of opinion exists on it is largely of a directly conflicting nature (key example: those who think the film blesses Zuckerberg's questionable actions versus those who think it rakes him over the coals for them entirely); as someone points out at a key moment in the film, "You're not an asshole, Mark, you're just trying so hard to be" (the term is only used three times in the film, the first two coming from those who were closest to Mark, now pushed away). Longtime indie favorite Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, Zombieland) lends Zuckerberg what feels like a natural likability buried within a deeply insecure nature, but he doesn't warm up the character in audience-friendly terms (in other words, he lets you decide).

The machine gun dialogue of the opening scene sets the tone for both the character and the film, and speaking personally, I've been exactly that kind of thick-headed guy (in a crowded restaurant, albeit minus the educational condescension and assumptive judgment about “the door guy”), and I appreciate the hell out of any film that can be honest about that kind of character without relegating the perpetrator to the status of sheer dickhead. As a representation of this moment in history, we surely cannot be the final judge on the film's effectiveness (only hindsight will allow such), but as a touching look at friendship falling outs, its personal meaning to me remains unrivaled.

Directed by: David Fincher Screenplay by: Aaron Sorkin Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Josh Pence, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones and Rooney Mara 2010, Rated PG-13, 120 minutes

127 Hours

2011-01-28T08:49:00.006-05:00

For all intents and purposes, Danny Boyle perfected his distinctively flamboyant music video-ish mode of filmmaking with the infectious and masterfully crowd-pleasing -- if somewhat slight -- Slumdog Millionaire, so it is perhaps inevitable that the similarly show-offy 127 Hours feels a bit redundant. Frequently utilizing split-screen panoramas and editorial effects that display everything from otherwise unrelated mood-setting imagery to Hulk-like multiple angles of the same event, Boyle aims (and, I would argue, mostly succeeds) to turn the infamous experiences of Aron Ralston (a recreational hiker who, in 2003, while alone in the proverbial middle of nowhere, inadvertently dislodged a large boulder and fell with it down a canyon shaft, his right arm becoming pinned between them, utterly immobile; after the titular time span, he freed himself by cutting off his arm with a dulled pocket knife) into an existential riff on determination, self-examination, and the sheer will to survive. Boyle's impulsive creative choices often lash out with seemingly little rhyme or reason, and his hyperactive editorial dashes tend to work best when they're emulating the thought processes of the main character (at one point literally, in a tongue-and-cheek talk show sequence), but they also develop collectively, not unlike the satisfying rumbles of an intense storm.

Alas, Boyle's awareness of his chosen style's limitations isn't among his present strengths, and one wishes that he'd handed the spotlight over to the almost one-man-show that is James Franco (he's as good to this film as Tom Hanks was to the similar, superior Cast Away) about twice as much as he actually did. It's not just that Boyle's flair wears itself out a bit as it goes on (rather than building to a crescendo, it just kind of fizzles out) -- it's that Franco is also just that good. As the loner Ralston, he doesn't just hide from people (implied and stated antisocialism abounds), but himself; he gradually becomes naked to himself, and we watch the unraveling with empathy. By the time he takes to the foretold limb hacking, the character seems stripped away to prehistoric carnality. As a warning to those put off by the apparent levels of violence: This squirmy viewer (icky body stuff bothers me, even though I love The Fly and even enjoy stuff like The Human Centipede, disturb me though they do) was able to get through the eventual mutilation with relative ease, so those deterred by intense levels of drawn-out violence can be at east. Then again, once you've seen Irreversible (twice), you can sit through just about anything. Now that I've gotten way off track, back to 127 Hours: It's a good movie, nothing great, but certainly worth a watch. I'm out.

Directed by: Danny Boyle Screenplay by: Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy Starring: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Clémence Poésy, Lizzy Caplan, Treat Williams and Kate Burton 2010, Rated R, 94 minutes

When We Leave

2011-01-26T18:10:00.012-05:00

When We Leave is as shrill as any handful of the interlinking paths from Paul Haggis's Crash (spoilers ahoy), and while a climactic scene that similarly involves both a child and a gun makes the film's indebtedness unmistakable, the film differs from 2004's Oscar winner in that it actually captures something resembling legitimate human emotions. As far as pro-humanitarian arguments go, one could do far worst for subtlety, but while the film's points are on target and virtually inarguable (modernity = good, ancient barbaric misogyny = bad, etc.), the degree to which the script flatters the intended liberal audience won't do much for the non-believers. In this case of calculated injustice, a traditional Turkish family (living in Germany) rejects the wishes of their daughter Umay (Sibel Kekilli), who chooses to leave her abusive husband and take their young son with despite cultural traditions dictating the husband's absolute final say (the still accepted practice of "honor killings", in which dishonorable women are typically killed by family members, is the film's key social target). The material has great potential but the ultimate shock is softened by a common foreshadowing device that doesn't contribute anything thematically -- rather, it exists merely to pull the rug out from under you. What does move is the conflicted humanity on display via the cast, who collectively embody the social disharmony that pressures so many people into behaving into the hands of the past (lead actress Sibel Kekilli in particular is sheer radiance). Screenwriter/director Feo Aladag is a hip to human suffering as she is prone to lay it on thick; a thematically encapsulating line of dialogue -- "Leave God out of this, it has nothing to do with Him" -- suggests too knowing a summary, not unlike a bumper sticker slogan. While a step in the right direction for prestigious socio-political issue films, When We Leave nevertheless remains too little Do the Right Thing, too much Crash (which is to say, it's a borderline cheat).

Directed by: Feo Aladag Screenplay by: Feo Aladag Starring: Sibel Kekilli, Nizam Schiller, Derya Alabora, Settar Tanriogen, Tamer Yigit, Serhad Can, Almila Bagriacik, Florian Lukas, Nursel Köse, Alwara Höfels, Ufuk Bayraktar, Blanca Apilánez and Rosa Enskat 2010, NR, 119 minutes

The King's Speech

2011-01-25T18:31:00.013-05:00

The King's Speech isn't the worst of the recent films to receive a gluttony of Academy Award nominations, but it is quite likely the most boring. There are films that win Oscars and there are films that are made with the intent to win Oscars, and sometimes those two overlap, but for the time being (nominees were just announced this morning) Tom Hooper's film is most definitely in the latter category. As dolled up and self-consciously serious as to count as something of an epitome of the glamour-hungry Weinstein Company's distinctive output, this dramatization of Prince Albert's (later King George VI's) journey to overcoming his speech impediment would like to think of itself as a moving, soulful character study, but such are the clothes of the naked emperor. In actuality, this high-minded exercise -- pretty looking and paper-thin -- utilizes the same template as any number of crowd-pleasing biopics, but whereas a film like Walk the Line embraces the simplifying nature of historical caricature (and Hollywood-typical manipulation), The King's Speech foolishly tries to pass off connect-the-dots psychology as profundity and sitcom mechanics as high art.

It speaks to the strength of Colin Firth's lead performance, then (as well as his shared chemistry with Geoffrey Rush, who portrays the speech expert who tries to cure the King), that the film almost gets away with it. Alas, personality has been washed from the cloth of The King's Speech with a heavy starch, and save for a few humorous sequences concerning Bertie's (as his family and friends refer to him) diction lessons, the effect is not unlike being straightjacketed for tea. A scantly-used Rorschach device typifies the wasted potential here; instead of a legitimate psychological inquiry, we're given a lavish movie of the week with lip service, and for every idiosyncrasy there are a half dozen lame concessions to sutured, unimaginative screenwriting -- it isn't long before the film feels thoroughly "safe" and insignificant. Emotional heft is traded in for tidy resolutions and pat history lessons (Hitler, the ultimate challenge of his kingship, is presented as a daunting Great Speaker and then promptly forgotten), and they all lived happily ever after. Ultimately worth watching for Firth, who finds nuance amidst what might otherwise be cartoon slickness, Helena Bonham Carter, who puts on a great fashion show as Bertie's wife, the Duchess of York, and Rush for his particular refusal to devolve into complete two-dimensionality, but only just. The pleasures are minimal, but at least the pain is, too.

Directed by: Tom Hooper Screenplay by: David Seidler Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Eve Best and Michael Gambon 2010, Rated R, 118 minutes

2011-01-20T13:17:00.005-05:00

"He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might at least be a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the money-changers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men’s acts, even the terrible became banal."

—Ursula K. Le Guin

Viewing Log #3.4

2011-01-14T19:42:00.009-05:00

True Grit (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2010). Although toned down from their usual, ironically detached style, this distinctly un-ironic remake/retelling of the original Charles Portis novel is every bit as assured and idiosyncratic as the Coens' other (albeit more subversive) western, No Country for Old Men. Never stepping on the toes of the original 1969 adaptation (an okay film elevated by at least one wonderful lead performance; the presence of the Duke never hurt anyone, either), theirs sticks closer to the reported darkness of the original novel, most notably in a touching denouement that amplifies the existential trappings of the film without literalizing them. As the young heroine Mattie Ross, relative newcomer Hailee Steinfeld is a tour-de-force of whiplash verbosity and razor-sharp wit, a maturity of character that sees her determined to avenge the murder of her father by the cowardly drunkard Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). As her hired bounty hunter Rooster Cogburn, Jeff Bridges is at least as appropriate and iconic in the role as John Wayne was four decades ago. More proof for the usefulness of remakes by great talent (if anything, the '69 original is now a better film that it can stand alongside this one), the Coens' True Grit also functions as an equally somber and hilarious criticism/correction of racism past. As a nearly-definitive cinematic representation, one doubts it will ever be contested. [Rating: 4.5 out of 5]

Tangled (Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, 2010). Disney's postmodern retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Rapunzel" certainly doesn't lack for archetypal recognition; more often than not, the film is suffocated by it. Seemingly an attempt to board the Shrek bandwagon without the excessive smartassery, this, the 50th animated production from the studio (and the most expensive animated movie ever made, at an unadjusted budget of $260 million), gets at least as much right as it does wrong but the final effect remains one of a barely-triggered gag reflex. Narrative abbreviations curtail much in the way of accruing emotional resonance as the film rushes through back story to the present where Rapunzel remains locked in a tower, convinced by her evil faux mother (who, at several hundred years old, needs the girl's anaconda-like hair for its life-giving qualities) that the outside world is too dangerous to venture. As a singer, Mandy Moore's pop voice is pleasant enough, but her ability as a voice actor is too limited, perhaps simply inexperienced, to lend much in the way of characterization to the lead role -- the princess remains firmly less than the sum of her parts. The guys aren't much better off, and frankly, I found the songwriting terribly shrill and annoying, and this coming from someone who once wore out virtually every Disney VHS through The Return of Jafar. When Tangled does work, however infrequently, the results are often breathtaking, sometimes among the finest in the studio's canon. Leave it to Rapunzel's sidekick chameleon, Pascal, to pick up the slack the rest of the time. Someone give this little guy a movie all his own. [Rating: 2.5 out of 5]

Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010). These eyes didn't glimpse 1982's Tron until adulthood, so it isn't through the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia that I say I believe that film to be very nearly a masterpiece, a Metropolis-esque utilization of technology fused with a technologically-slanted narrative that is at least as important to the evolution of digital cinema as later behemoths like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. This long-gestating sequel recognizes that relationship and capitalizes on it in the form of a pseudo-philosophical recalibration of the original concept that owes as much to the past two decades of video games as it does to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jeff Bridges reprises his original role, now trapped inside "the grid" as an exiled Zen master betrayed by one of his own creations: Clu, made in his own image and named after the departed program from the original film and whose purpose to create the perfect world turns malevolent as he attempts to weed out the impure from his digital domain. The recreation of a younger Jeff Bridges is at least as startlingly realistic as the young Arnold Schwarzenegger's digital cameo in Terminator Salvation but his lingering presence quickly triggers the uncanny valley effect to sublime (if not necessarily deliberate) results; the photo-realistic nature of the character (with the exception of his mouth, which never seems quite as spot-on as the rest of him) suggests something too good to be true. Musings about science and religion never transcend lip service but a plot development involving naturally occurring digital life is plenty to chew on amidst the surreal neon images, less revolutionary (and trippy) than the 1982 effects but never lacking for imagination or visceral thrill. The climax, involving something not unlike a reverse big-bang, is a masterstroke. If only Disney could always be this kinky. [Rating: 4 out of 5]

OFCS Winners Announced

2011-01-03T13:59:00.004-05:00

Winners can be found here (yep, we loved The Social Network, too). Of the thirteen categories, I only predicted eight correctly, but that's okay by me given that the shit stain known as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo went home empty-handed.

OFCS 2010 Nominees & Ballot

2011-01-02T10:47:00.002-05:00

My choice in each category is in bold italics; blind spots are notated with an asterisk. If I've seen less than half of the nominees in a category, I don't vote on it (my choice). As for the total absence of The Ghost Writer in any of these categories...I'm ashamed.

Best Picture

Black Swan
Inception
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
*Danny Boyle, 127 Hours
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, True Grit
David Fincher, The Social Network
Christopher Nolan, Inception

Best Lead Actor

Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
*Colin Firth, The King's Speech
*James Franco, 127 Hours
*Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine
*Edgar Ramírez, Carlos

Best Lead Actress

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Kim Hye-ja, Mother
*Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Fighter
Andrew Garfield, The Social Network
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids are All Right
*Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Fighter
Mila Kunis, Black Swan
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
*Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Best Original Screenplay

Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz & John McLaughlin, Black Swan
Noah Baumbach, Greenberg
Christopher Nolan, Inception
Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg, The Kids Are All Right
*David Seidler, The King's Speech

Best Adapted Screenplay

*Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy, 127 Hours
Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, True Grit
Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini, Winter's Bone

Best Cinematography

*Anthony Dod Mantle & Enrique Chediak, 127 Hours
Matthew Libatique, Black Swan
Wally Pfister, Inception
Robert Richardson, Shutter Island
Roger Deakins, True Grit

Best Editing

*Jon Harris, 127 Hours
Andrew Weisblum, Black Swan
Lee Smith, Inception
Jonathan Amos & Paul Machliss, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Kirk Baxter & Angus Wall, The Social Network

Best Animated Feature

Despicable Me
How to Train Your Dragon
*The Illusionist
*Tangled
Toy Story 3

Best Film Not in the English Language

*Carlos
*Dogtooth
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Mother
A Prophet

Best Documentary

*Catfish
*Exit Through the Gift Shop
Inside Job
*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
*Restrepo
*Waiting for "Superman"

And what the hell...here are my predictions for the winners, to be announced tomorrow.

Best Picture: The Social Network
Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network
Best Lead Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Best Lead Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Best Original Screenplay: Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz & John McLaughlin, Black Swan
Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Best Cinematography: Matthew Libatique, Black Swan
Best Editing: Lee Smith, Inception
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Best Film Not in the English Language: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Best Documentary: Inside Job

Moments of the Decade

2010-12-31T18:46:00.005-05:00

Let's make this clear up front: this list is deeply personal, and in some cases deliberately incomplete. Listmaking is an inexact science, so it was not my goal here to be fully accurate so much as to suggest the endlessly diverse pleasures I'd experienced over the past ten years of movie-watching (last year saw the end of the popular decade; now, the real one comes to a close, and the lists continue as always). These are the heart-wrenching, mind-blowing, tear-jerking, and gasp-inducing scenes that have stuck with me most; I feel richer having experienced them all. Some you will surely know already; others, I hope can be discoveries of your own. Some are entire sequences. Others you could blink and miss. All are magnificent in their own way.

So as to prevent over-saturation, each film has been restricted to one slot on the list -- a difficult imposition in the case of certain crowd-pleasers where an entire audience can be roused to applause four, five, even six times throughout the show (as was the case with the film at #5, which in this particular instance I saw a second time instead of studying for my math final). Enough digression; on with the show. Five entries will be posted at a time, as many days as it takes. Use the comments section to share your own favorites, or point out omissions you feel are in need of recognition. I hope this sees your queue nicely expanded.

#50-46
#45-41
#40-36
#35-31

More coming soon.

Moments of the Decade, #40-36

2010-12-31T18:10:00.007-05:00

40. The Social Network

Leave it to David Fincher to deliver not only one of the best movies of the year, but one of the best music videos to boot. The Winklevoss (Winklevi?) twins, long since burned by their dubious exchanges with official Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, have finally had enough after losing an esteemed international sculling race and learning that their stolen internet idea has now made it across the pond. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's tongue-in-cheek rendition of Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" infects one with the thrill of the final strokes of their race, and as a stylistic lynchpin, it might be just the thing that takes The Social Network to greatness. It's another indication of Fincher's ever-evolving kino eye, and not the first time he's out-Kubricked Kubrick.

39. The Royal Tenenbaums

Another snatch that once made it as far as this sites main banner. The formative years of the young Tenenbaums are summarized with grace and wit to The Mutato Muzika Orchestra's cover of "Hey Jude," with the climactic coda seeing young Richie freeing his pet falcon Mordecai from the urban prison to which the rest of them are bound. Bliss ensues. This might be the instant I fell in love with Wes Anderson.

38. Toy Story 3

Despite an overly polished narrative, Toy Story 3's heart is in the right place, never more so than during the instantly infamous climax: the toys, accidentally thrown out, find themselves trapped in a landfill's automated trash shredder and incinerator, a dead-end obstacle course that sees the iconic group reconciling their mortality in a transcendent image of solidarity. In a trilogy that respectfully considers who we are, where we come from, and where we're going, it's a sobering wake-up call to the finite nature of all things.

37. Eastern Promises

Arguably the fisticuffs sequence of the decade, this bathhouse tussle acts like a palate cleanser to all those horrid action films in which fights and shoot-outs are assembled less from proper coverage than from the sloppy editing of deliberately obscure camerawork. Here, every punch, kick, cut and body slam registers with aching force; the audience itself feels wounded by the time a victor emerges.

36. Death Proof

This sequence was absent from the stateside, Grindhouse-intact cut of Death Proof, so only those who've ventured to the full cut of the film will know it's sexy glory. It's just one of many ethereal cinematic highs in an underrated, exquisitely personal work; accept the laid back, slow-burn pacing, and Tarantino's spell works wonders (the same goes for that other forgotten QT gem, Jackie Brown). I doubt that words could do it justice. "He wears a red bandanna ..."

[Comments can be posted on the main list page available here.]

Memories of Jurassic Park

2010-12-28T19:32:00.008-05:00

[This post is my contribution to the Steven Spielberg Blogathon co-hosted by Adam Zanzie (Icebox Movies) and Ryan Kelly (Medfly Quarantine).]

As an 8-year-old, Jurassic Park held remarkably little sway over me in the days before I saw the film. I'd been caught up in hype before: Disney's Beauty and the Beast was my favorite movie by far for a time, and I remember counting down the days before I got to see it (seven times in theaters, a record unmatched by any film until Inglourious Basterds) and even being something of a prick towards my parents when I didn't get to go see it right away. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that word of the production of Home Alone 2 made me jump with excitement. I liked dinosaurs terrifically as a child; in the case of Jurassic Park, you'd think I'd have been jumping out of my skin. Alas, the preview was memorable but, once passed, left little impression on my young mind.

The reason, I think, is that at even that early point in time, I had mentally checked Steven Spielberg as someone to watch out for, in a bad way (ironic now, I know). E.T. had already rubbed me the wrong way, so clearly I was the one who had gotten off on the wrong foot (other than that negative feeling, I don't remember watching it, only knowing that it had happened). A few years later, I'd see and love Duel, but for now I was confronted with a film that had earned important notice amongst people my age (along with pogs, among other things of such importance) and, concurrently, in the local newspaper for having drawn such young interest in a PG-13 rated movie. My dad showed me editorials and cartoons on the matter as if (a) I gave a shit (I hadn't pressed to see the film, and would later be denied access to see The Nightmare Before Christmas; adventurous, my parents always are) and (b) such noise was worthwhile (already, media banter struck me as reactionary and inane). And when my first chance came to actually go see the movie, I actively dismissed it. Even I don't get my weirdness sometimes.

Suffice to say, when I finally was able to see it (a few months into its run, around Halloween, I remember), Spielberg's film disturbed me profoundly. I wasn't entertained so much as paralyzed, from the opening scene on (even the jovial first half couldn't overcome the effect). I remember ticking off the number of people who had died in the film, finding it (the film) to be horribly, sickeningly exploitative (this being the second time such an effect had happened to me: a terrible disaster picture in a tropical setting, When Time Ran Out, made for a disturbing television experience several years earlier; with no concept of special effects, these people drowning and burning were actually dying to my young eyes). My anger at the film culminated in the form of a written letter to one Mr. Spielberg, in which I disparaged him for wallowing in perceived filth and gore. I'm unsure of what happened to this letter; part of me wishes to read it, while another hopes it no longer exists, so as to not become potential blackmail fodder.

In time, I came to enjoy Jurassic Park (for the record, I've now possessed four copies of the film, the first, a VHS, being a gift, later a widescreen VHS, and two DVDs, the most latter bought for the purposes of this 'thon because the first DVD copy is still on loan to the co-host himself!), and more recently, to love it quite unabashedly. A late-night solo viewing of the film two or three years ago convinced me of its singularity: as an action film, as an auteurist vision, as a blockbuster, as a humanist statement. It's a masterpiece, and I'd go so far as to call it life-affirming. Among the many recommendables: Spielberg's exquisite character shorthand, a finely tuned orchestra, of performers, and the visual effects, which - although easier to spot these 17 years later - are still an enthralling landmark in digital evolution. The nighttime T-Rex attack might be the finest f/x set piece ever filmed, and that's coming from a died-in-the-wool Terminator fan (and you can throw all six Star Wars on the keeper pile, too).

What I eventually realized, with so much hindsight, was that Jurassic Park disturbed me at that age because this was a film that took death seriously. Unlike most of the flimsy monster movies I'd seen up until that time -- in which a cop snatched from traffic by the hungry jaws of a monster was just a throwaway figure in a fun but surface-deep framework -- this was the work of someone who considered the spirit and flesh and blood of everyone involved, even the cowardly lawyer and pudgy, scorned hacker. Films that toss off human life (singular or plural) without due cause (be it laughter or tears or something between) sicken me yet, but time has shown layers where previously none shown.

Spielberg was too experienced even at that point in his career to not be aware of an inherent silliness in the material (something Peter Jackson would fumble with in his adaptation of King Kong), and yet this awareness doesn't manifest itself as camp; it grounds the material, and with the help of technology, renders it as real as flesh and blood (Hammond's second act speech about a flea circus would be unforgivably lame if it wasn't such a blatant surrogate for Spielberg's intentions). By relocating the narrative pull away from the physical action (which is beautiful pop art) to the universal human impulses laced within (life finds a way), Spielberg elevates the material to the timelessly sublime.

It's this core of humanity that appeals to me so strongly in all of Spielberg's films, and yet he's not one without his darker sides. If Jurassic Park (and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Lost World, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, among others) tells us anything, it's that Steven likes to kill people in his movies. Humanistic or not, villains need dispatching, but his portrayals always hit a gut response of authenticity because they represent an actual loss. Nowadays, Jurassic Park's film-as-a-ride extravaganza is one of my favorite popcorn titles. And I'm entirely grateful that it, and not War of the Worlds, was there to torment my childhood.

A final tangential note: if you saw Jurassic Park at midnight at New York City's Sunshine theater early 2010 (a good showing, even if the audience was a little bit too ironic towards the movie for my taste), you'll probably remember the big audience cheer for Sam Neill when his character is introduced. Immediately following was a guy who then singly called out Laura Dern's name with meek enthusiasm. Yeah, that was me.

I love these faces.

Nedry and Hammond's past is deliberately obscured in this script. Is this line meant sincerely?

This is one of my favorite acting moments in the film. Compelled, as if by an involuntary force, to rush to the aid of the children, Alan realizes, immediately after getting the attention of the T-Rex, that he is now the prey of choice. His face twitches delightfully as he conveys dawning fear and redoubled resolution in the matter of about two seconds.

Listen at this moment for a antiquated slipping sound file, like something out of an old cartoon. Fitting.

He looked down.

What are they looking at? Limbs? Fleshy scraps?

lol

I wonder how many takes this shot required.

I love how this gotcha moment suggests greater unseen intelligence of the raptors. One of those creatures had to stuff that arm into the crevice, as if hiding all traces of themselves before the arrival of the next potential victim.

Be vewy vewy qwiet....I'm hunting waptors.

If you don't give yourself away, cheap utensil hooks surely will.

Are you there, God?

2010 - The Year in Film (1.0)

2010-12-28T11:04:00.009-05:00

2010 might be the first year in memory where movies didn't take up the majority of my personal time (*gasp!*), a fact that was not entirely out of my control. In previous years, had I the quantity of blind spots I do now, I'd be embarrassed to post this list; much as I like them, some of the latter choices in my top ten would be likely Honorable Mention candidates and nothing more. But, I'm far more grateful for the experiences I've had than disappointed at the trips to the multiplex I missed, and I'm still of the opinion that it was a damn good year at the movies. Here's what made it worthwhile to these eyes.

10. How to Train Your Dragon (dir. Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders) Dreamworks Animation, all your prior offenses are hereby forgiven. Although not as gorgeous as the clever, partially redemptive Kung Fu Panda, this account of a scrawny, wannabe Viking Hiccup and his determination to buck the trend is exciting, affirming, witty, and one for the permanent family film collection (just a few slots up from the directorial duo's last feature, the exquisite Lilo & Stitch).

9. Salt (dir. Phillip Noyce) To paraphrase a colleague of mine, Salt belongs on the list of "this is how it's done", it being on par with Die Hard, The Matrix and The Terminator for singular action gusto. It works fabulously whether you catch the details right away or not. At the center of the beautifully contrived plot is whirlwind Angelina Jolie: feline, brainy, secretive and utterly elemental. No sequel is necessary; the ending fade-out is the stuff of legend.

8. The Other Guys (dir. Adam McKay) The comedy of the year, The Other Guys sets Will Ferrell's laid-back zero-risk zen against Mark Wahlberg's clipped claws, they being go-nowhere cops by respective choice and circumstance. In catching the trail of a Ponzi scheme without prosecutable evidence, they unwittingly take bribes, lose all respect as officers, and get their shoes stolen, among other things. Adam McKay's finest act of absurdity yet rails against our collective financial C.F., capping it off with an end credits sequence for the ages.

7. The Fighter (dir. David O. Russell) The Fighter stands in the shadow of failure, and as only the best formulaic crowd-pleasers manage, it convinces us of the emerging victory. David O. Russell's take on this underdog tale - one fueled by the crushing effects of celebrity image, drug use, and familial over-attachment - is cheeky in its postmodern embrace. Highlights include: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Marky Mark, the pack of velociraptors, Amy Adams, Amy Adams, rock-scored sequences, use of slow motion, and Amy Adams.

6. Prodigal Sons (dir. Kimberly Reed) The documentary of the year acts as a palate cleanser to all those snarky over-commercialized ones. Director Kimberly Reed's transsexuality is frankly unexploitative and personal, and she treats her mentally-challenged adopted brother with the same loving, unconditional directness. The discoveries that follow as she watches his grappling with life are shocking, unbelievable, and always revelatory.

5. Winter's Bone (dir. Debra Granik) An ice-cold noir in Ozarkian clothing, Winter's Bone is strictly excellent, always personal filmmaking. Drugs and murder lie just beneath the surface of this rural America, where Jennifer Lawrence's Ree must prove her court-dodging daddy's incapacitation before the bank takes her family's home away. Raw, unflinching, moving and stylistically audacious, it's the movie that Frozen River wanted to be, and more.

4. Let Me In (dir. Matt Reeves) An immediate edition to the short list of superior horror remakes, Matt Reeves' Let Me In trades the icy empathy of the 2008 Swedish original for a classic (and classy) Spielberg glow. If you haven't seen the original (it too is one of the great vampire films), it's excellent, and if you have, it might even be better. Just think: In a parallel, just universe somewhere, this was one of the box office sensations of the year, and Twilight doesn't even exist. Mmmmm.

3. Shutter Island (dir. Martin Scorsese) This hard-boiled whodunit is the stuff of criminal cliché, but furthermore, its a pulp euphoria that taps directly into our survival instincts: (self-inflicted) violence and mental repression. Martin Scorsese's role as director - world creator - has rarely been used to more appropriately contextual ends than in this heartbreaking look at love, death, and defense mechanisms. Elemental, sensual, terrifying, monolithic, and only a sane man would ask the final question.

2. The Ghost Writer (dir. Roman Polanski) Say what you will of the director, but there remains something to be said for troubled artists, and this captivating thriller adds fuel to the argument. This politico is like razor wire, cutting fast and deep and often so swift you don't even notice its cunning straight out; the final punchline gets more brutal in hindsight. What's more, as a politically conscious work, it's timely without the overt suffocation. A masterwork in all ways; if this isn't one of the ten nominees, someone in the Academy needs to be shot.

1. The Social Network (David Fincher) The role of Facebook in society isn't of direct concern here, but it's there, writ large in the context. Writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher's film is about human connection in a digital society, where emotions become masked and muted by information. Luddites be damned, these portals have their own way of stagnating that which they intend to encourage; in our own way, we all become assholes. Like Fight Club, it's worthy of Kubrick, and further displays Fincher's emotional elasticity. The Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score is unquestionably the shit, the cast is the best of the year, and the screenplay - while traditional in structure (at least by 2010 standards) - is endlessly quotable. It holds a candle to Citizen Kane, which is to say, it's a small masterpiece.

Honorable Mentions: The Crazies, The Eclipse, Greenberg, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Human Centipede (First Sequence), The Kids Are All Right, The Town, True Grit, Unstoppable

And some more: Cyrus, Despicable Me, Inside Job, Mother, Oceans, Piranha 3D, Predators, Red Riding (1974), Resident Evil: Afterlife, The Secret of Kells, Splice, Survival of the Dead, Sweetgrass, Toy Story 3, Tron Legacy, Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest

Surprises (also honorable mentions): The A-Team, Burlesque, Grown Ups, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, The Mini, Shrek Forever After, The Warrior's Way, The Wolfman

Should Have Been Great (but still worthwhile): Black Swan, Easy A, I Am Love, Inception, The Killer Inside Me, Never Let Me Go, A Prophet, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Should Have Been Great (aka, that was awful): Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass

Blind Spots: More than I'd rather list here. As in, at least 30 or so that I'd consider essential viewing. I'll get back to you.

Best Leading Performances: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right; Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island; Ciarán Hinds, The Eclipse; Jessie Eisenberg, The Social Network; Will Ferrell, The Other Guys; Angelina Jolie, Salt; Hye-ja Kim, Mother; Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone; Tahar Rahim, A Prophet; Ben Stiller, Greenberg; Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit; Emma Stone, Easy A

Best Supporting Performances: Amy Adams, The Fighter; Christian Bale, The Fighter; Andrew Garfield, The Social Network; Rooney Mara, The Social Network; Jeremy Renner, The Town; Mickey Rourke, Iron Man 2; Justin Timberlake, The Social Network; Mia Wasikowska, The Kids Are All Right; Michelle Williams, Shutter Island

Great Ensembles: Cyrus, The Fighter, The Ghost Writer, The Kids Are All Right, Let Me In, Shutter Island, The Social Network, The Town, True Grit, Winter's Bone

Best Performance as a Bitter Old Man: TIE, Jack McGee in The Fighter and Dakin Matthews in True Grit

Thesping Moment of the Year: Jessie Eisenberg in The Social Network, “The site's live.”

Funniest line of dialogue: Jonah Hill in Cyrus, "It's like a crippled tree reaching for heaven."

Best Direction: Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer

Best Bookend Shots (opening and closing): The Ghost Writer

Best Closing Shot: Shutter Island

Best Soundtrack: TIE, Shutter Island and The Social Network

Classic Discovery of the Year: Miami Connection, aka the Citizen Kane of bad 80s action films

In Poor Taste: Remember Me

I'm Glad I Didn't Finish: Clash of the Titans, The Karate Kid, Knight and Day

Worst of the Year: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, You Again, The Back-Up Plan

'Twas the Night Before Jesus

2010-12-24T09:17:00.002-05:00

Viewing Log #3.3

2010-12-18T12:46:00.005-05:00

The Fighter (David O. Russell, 2010) If all studio movies had at least half the emotion as the crowd-pleasing The Fighter, there'd be far less to bitch about in this business of film reviewing. An exquisite example of indie sensibilities fused with mainstream cinematic formula, this Rocky-esque tale earns its way into your heart with good old-fashioned legwork, Capra-corn lite with a dusting of grit. Drug-addled family ties fuel this underdog tale of a fighter held back by his possessive and paranoid family, as well as a breathlessly genuine romantic subplot (Amy Adams, what I wouldn't do for you) and a very creepy bunch of girls who make Deliverance proud. It may not be great movie art (a distinction I care little about when I enjoy myself so much), but there's more feeling to it than most of the "great" event movies of late combined. No weak links here; Christian Bale is a standout as a crack addict. For the film and cast entire, let's hope that Oscar knows the real deal when it sees it. [Rating: 4 out of 5]

Unstoppable (Tony Scott, 2010) Confession time: This is the first Tony Scott movie I've seen, period. Seems like I've picked a good time to buck the trend, as this is as pure and breathless as damn near any mainstream action movie in recent memory. The subject matter - a massive runaway freight train carrying toxic goods through developed areas, and the scrappy efforts of money-hungry business heads and Regular Guys to stop it before derailment - has an archetypal purity, and the cast plays it as myth in action (Rosario Dawson in particular lends a quotidian balance). The shaky-queasy camera is used tightly, sparingly, like thick brush strokes; like Michael Bay, Scott's stylistic hang-ups are becoming instinctive, fluid and, dare I say, artful. Looks like I'll be catching up on Top Gun soon. Appropriately trashy, single-mindedly visceral and free of all excess, Unstoppable promises, and delivers. [Rating: 4 out of 5]

Burlesque (Steve Antin, 2010) If Showgirls is the Mt. Everest of self-reflexive, faux-trashy cinematic subversion, Burlesque is that hill from that Hugh Grant movie. Small potatoes to Verhoeven's masterpiece, however, are still quite good, and what astonishes most about this debut feature of pop singer Christina Aguilera is its total absence of irony (I suppose we've come to expect it). Chances are you know you've seen this movie before, before you even watch it, and the filmmakers play against that expectation in frequent character asides that refreshingly strain and deviate from the domino-like plot structure. Stanley Tucci's queer eye and Cher's dictatorial command cushion contrast the wide-eyed determination of Aguilera's aspiring dancer Ali; between a rock and a hard place, she emerges like a butterfly from a weather-worn cocoon. The film recycles cliches with feeling, verve, and savory camp wit; its purity is close to that of Speed Racer. [Rating: 3.5 out of 5]

Moments of the Decade, #45-41

2010-12-18T12:16:00.007-05:00

45/44. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans & The Wicker Man

How to separate these two? I'm certain that Mr. Cage has been having an absolute blast these past years, alternating between "respectable" work (in some cases legitimately so) and, more frequently, junk that lets him collect a paycheck and ham it up to eleven with little consequence. Both of these films let him off his proverbial chain to entirely crazy ends. We may never know for sure what was going through anyone's head on the set of The Wicker Man, but it was surely worth it for the embedded video above. Like the best previews, it's all of the good stuff (a favorite and oft-quoted bit starts at the 0:19 mark) with none of the drag. Meanwhile, Werner Herzog's nutters sort-of remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 Bad Lieutenant works overtime to legitimize Cage's delicious scenery chewing ("Shoot him again..."), perhaps never more than a minute-or-so long sequence in which two iguanas haunt Cage's bad cop to Johnny Adams' "Release Me". Seriously.

43. Superbad

The one. The only. Sorry, Spider-Pig, this town ain't big enough for the two of you.

42. Revolver

A film of seemingly endless, and endlessly bold creative strokes, a minor touch stands out as the height of gonzo expression: an animated Ray Liotta turns quasi-Hulk and produces machine guns as arms as he storms out of a room. Batshit crazy in the best of ways from the word go, Guy Ritchie's mind game practically leaps off the screen in such moments. Close behind is Jason Statham's climactic split-personality self-confrontation, in which he manages to out-Gollum Gollum.

41. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

It would be too easy to pick the instantly infamous "nuke the fridge" sequence, awesome and tragically unappreciated though it is. And it would be shrill of me to spotlight the fact that fellow blogger and friend Ryan Kelly of Medfly Quarantine can be glimpsed straining for the spotlight in the back of the library during the motorcycle chase. (Oops, I just did.) I'll go with the final scene, then, because I love this movie and the end is the most important part of any movie. People who complained about this touch - when Shia LeBouf, benefactor of an impromptu gust of wind, deigns to don his newfound father's trademark hat, only for it to be snatched away by its rightful wearer - want to have and eat their cake (as if suggesting the possibility was as bad as endorsing it). Could Indiana Jones be continued? Yep. Will it be? Probably. Even without Harrison Ford? Sadly. But until associates and producers have the last word again, Crystal Skull says no! Hand it over, kid. This old man's earned his keep.

[Comments can be posted on the main list page available here.]

Moments of the Decade, #50-46

2010-12-16T18:35:00.010-05:00

50. Team America: World Police

Indulge me. I first saw Team America at a preview screening I attended with a longtime friend and classmate, he a flag-waving Republican and I a lefty heathen (he's since turned sane and traded his elephant trunk for donkey ears, his words). And it was the most cathartic comedic and emotional release we had both had in memory, all that we expected, and more, and at a time when we needed it most. And it was unifying. The first true tell of just how brilliant and direct a satire this was? A highlight to a soundtrack a work of art all its own: "Ameerica, FUCK YEAH!" (emphasis mine), a hilariously overmasculinized anthem in which fervent patriotism is duly equated to mandated oral service about the genitals. A worthy successor to the South Park movie, it charges out of the gate, has an endless string of comedic lightning bolts, and is very nearly a masterpiece. Here's anticipating Matt Stone and Trey Parker's next cinematic outing.

49. The Matrix Reloaded

Actually, for me, the moment that will always linger most from the first Matrix sequel is the third scene, in which Trinity talks to Neo about his bad dreams and EVERYTHING ABOUT IT SUCKS. At that point, the movie was off the rails, should have been stopped, forgiven, forgotten, and entirely rebooted, but it's what we have, and if you accept a kind of silent-movie majesty about it apart from the wooden conventionality of the narrative and virtual invisibility of most of the performers, there's some gooey fun to be had (for the record, I believe Revolutions to be an major improvement, and nearly as much fun as the first). The ethereal high point: a 14-minute chase set piece in which heroes, villains, trucks, motorcycles, cars, and ghosts able to move through matter converge on a suffocating multi-lane freeway of symphonic metal and glass death. Tops of this mini-movie? You decide. The above snapshot is my pick.

48. The Taste of Tea

This crazy movie runs all over the place like an absurdist headless chicken, at one point (in its relatively epic run of two-and-a-half hours) presenting an impromptu musical number - "Oh, Mountain" - that's as infectious as the best produced pop music I've ever heard. (For those in a hurry, skip to the 3 minute mark.) If YouTube doesn't host it anymore, just rent it anyway. It's absolutely worth it.

47. Bad Santa

Picking the funniest scene in what might be the funniest movie of the decade isn't always an easy thing (more on that contest, much later). In the case of Bad Santa, it speaks to the sheer perfection of comedic delivery being given on all levels, so what you get here is my personal favorite aside: Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) wants to help Thurman (aka The Kid, played by Brett Kelly) defend himself against bullies, and enlists the help of his sidekick Marcus (Tony Cox, a little person) in boxing training. Needless to say, testes are kicked and punched, and when Cox falls over, his proportions allow him to peter like a see-saw for just an instance. It's brilliant physical comedy, the funniest groin-related injury since Hans Moleman, and it kills me every time.

46. INLAND EMPIRE

Those who've frequented the site (or the works of David Lynch) for some time may recognize the image above; I manipulated it into one of the earliest graphics used on the site (and without the existence of Lynch's film, this site could well have had a different name, too). This could be my favorite opening title shot ever: simple, direct, monolithic, and not unlike a violent birth into the nightmarescape about to be plunged into. Here, you start at the bottom of the rabbit hole, trying to work your way up. Just wait till you get to Pomona.

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Go, Jon, Go (again)

2010-12-14T12:31:00.002-05:00

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Viewing Log #3.2

2010-12-05T11:20:00.008-05:00

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) Clearly the work of a talent, Black Swan is also indicative of Darren Aronofsky's creative weaknesses as a filmmaker – shortcomings, mind you, that he has largely avoided, or put to good use, in all of his previous films. But this tale of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), an obsessive, self-destructive dancer intent on landing the lead role in the titular play, feels more like a deliberate stylistic exercise than a legitimate act of creation: it invites the common criticism that Aronofsky's style is technically proficient but soulless. The gonzo visual design – grainy handheld camerawork, desaturated colors, and a frequently implemented rotation shot that suggests an inverted fish-eyed lens – is ultimately one lacking much in the way of genuine subtext. What you see is what you get, and pretty as everything is, nothing is allowed to simmer long enough to accrue much meaning or verve – it doesn't even invite comparative thoughts of Aronofsky's own obsessive creative processes. It would be unfair to bring up Mulholland Dr. for comparison, but even unto itself, Black Swan's purported mindfuck is exceedingly low on legitimate crazies (I'm looking at you, derivative mirror freak-outs, here a totally wasted sight gag), and with credibility-stretching gotcha! moments peppered throughout like half-hearted Polanski shout-outs, only sporadically does it manage to rise above a connect-the-dots Pysch 101 thesis programmed with base stimuli. Clint Mansell's score propels Nina's psycho-sexual breakdown with ravenous thrust, but the screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin (commissioned by Aronofsky, who worked on several versions of it over the past decade) grounds things in an embarrassingly creaky psycho-mother device. Everything comes out too neat and tidy to court true madness: a few scenes added or a few scenes removed would likely be a step in the right direction, just to take off the Pavlovian edge. Aronofsky's fingerprints make this worthwhile for his fans, but his connection to the material seems more professional than personal – he fails to make us feel why. Portman is fearless and grounded; even Barbra Hershey, whose part, as Nina's controlling mother, is a thankless rut, manages something in the way of characterization (her nuance makes the script's two-dimensionality hurt). The finale – sharp, unapologetic, and something close to schizoid – is inspired, and, like a handful of other sequences, worth rooting around for. But the film entire doesn't earn it. [Rating: 3.5 out of 5]

Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010) Let the Right One In gets something of a tonal inversion in the remake Let Me In, a triumph of imaginative, intelligent adaptation and breathtakingly assured direction; it joins Werner Herzog's Nosferatu and David Cronenberg's The Fly as one of the greatest horror movie remakes. It might even be better than Thomas Alfredson's excellent 2008 original (as singular as any vampire film); each is now better for the other having existed, too. The template is the same: Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a normal 12-year-old girl in appearance, but has been so for many years as a vampire (blood, good; normal food, bad; daylight, very bad); she has a human partner of sorts (Richard Jenkins) who aids in the necessary killings to gather her required food. They've just moved into the same apartment complex as Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), an actual 12-year-old staying with his mother during a heated divorce and frequent target of bullies at school. The two loners first meet in the courtyard; what develops bears a certain childhood-pure love that frequently touches profundity. Whereas Let the Right One In was cold, transient and light on action, Let Me In basks in a glow of circa-1982 Spielberg nostalgia. Changes from the original script are light (a botched murder attempt is reworked here in a boffo car sequence), so what you're getting is something not unlike the same song from a different instrument. The director, Matt Reeves (of the good-but-not-great Cloverfield), displays heretofore unseen levels of talent; the veteran and child actors are entirely excellent, tragic, and heartbreaking. Let the Right One In may be the better film, but I think I prefer the B-side. [Rating: 4 out of 5] (both)

Casino Jack (George Hickenlooper, 2010) Purporting subversion via its plots indictment of corrupt financial establishments, the social timeliness of Casino Jack nevertheless proves unable to transcend crutch-bearing lip service to an undemanding middlebrow taste (the opening “based on a true story” tag is the first tell). Angry but ultimately aimless, it embodies the apathy of all those bad liberals who talk about how terrible things are and continue about their day. Chronicling the events leading up to the conviction of former “superlobbyist” Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey), the implied critique of lobbying – the means by which cash is permitted to influence votes in Congress – is one-note and, unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, far from revelatory and quite tame where it intends to infuriate. The script, by Norman Snider, is too reliant on Abramoff as a relatable surrogate to genuinely scrutinize him and his behavior – he stays warm and fuzzy compared to the reptile he should be – and although Spacey is fine to watch, he can't elevate a whitewashed script and insufficient character material. The film itself feels dispirited, all action and no thought. A handful of framing devices are the only memorable bits; Casino Jack never elevates itself above the ideologically confused and comedically lukewarm (Jon Lovitz is wasted, Barry Pepper miscast, etc.). It mistakes entertainment for enlightenment and frivolity for expose. [Rating: 2 out of 5]

Legion (Scott Charles Stewart, 2010) Legion kicks ass in fits and spurts. Things go Night of the Living Dead-meets-The Terminator at an isolated highway diner when an elderly patron starts babbling obscenities about death before mutating into a wall-crawling, scraggly-toothed menace. She's an angel, one of countless revealing themselves on Earth in a divinely mandated mission to kill Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), a waitress on site, whose unborn baby is destined to save mankind. Some earnest genre thrills are had – the cast, particularly Dennis Quaid, is entirely game for the material – but Legion ultimately flounders on the points of brevity and redundancy; the payoff starts too soon, and when we finally get to the climactic showdown between Paul Bettany's heavenly renegade Michael and the still-working-for-God Gabriel (Kevin Durand; razorblade wings are tops), the movie can't help but be staying out its welcome. A few minutes shorter, and an ending that doesn't outright quote the beginning of the movie, and we might have had something special here. [Rating: 3 out of 5]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (David Yates, 2010) I'm no expert on the subject matter, but I've read the entirety of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, enjoyed all (Year 2 was shaky, though), and chastised none of the respective films for the disinclusion of any particulars from their source material (I'm no fan of certain reworkings in Half-Blood Prince, but those are dramatic issues, not fan squabblings). Cut from largely the same cloth as its promising, flawed predecessor, this first half of The Deathly Hollows feels scraggly and, even unto its abridged self, a bit incomplete; all the better for a tale of refugees living moment to moment, unsure of their next move, and continuously being pushed to the edge of their resolve. For you muggles, an escalating war in the wizarding world has forced Harry and his two chief cohorts to flee for their lives; the dark side, aka the Death Eaters, have infiltrated society and now pull many powerful strings. Although his poeticism falls short of its intended reach (the film only almost jumps off the screen), David Yates remains the best director the series has seen after Alfonso Cuarón (whose Prisoner of Azkaban remains tops). Awkward longings and impenetrable adolescent emotions make this something of an angst-ridden chamber piece. Yates doesn't let the action turn visceral, and even when people are together, loneliness abounds (to think of what Werner Herzog would have done with the passages in the forest!). Judging by this first half, this touchstone series is well on its way to getting the sendoff it deserves. [Rating: 4 out of 5]