American Reunion (2012): C-

AKA 35 Up, remade thematically, by idiots. I pounded out the first three American Pie films with a BFF on my last day of summer vacation before college, and I can hardly think of a better circumstance for that particular brand of horny teenage discovery. I enjoyed them all well enough (obvious reliance on conventions, juvenile comedy and narrative limitations all notwithstanding), and I have deliberately not revisited them since, lest I tarnish the memory. Turns out that, on a long enough timeline, that was pretty much out of my hands. Reunion is admittedly consistent with the preceding films, if a bit more autopilot bound, so it's likely more because of my changing tastes than the diminishing sequel syndrome that I had a fairly miserable time during this retread. Characters pop in and out in what amounts to a tossed off greatest hits package, contrived scenarios involving masturbation, horny young girls, Stifler's mom, whips and feces abound, and Eugene Levy is awkward (a high point, actually). Adages have rarely felt as dusty and hollow as they do here, and I find it vaguely offensive that a script reliant on characters behaving with magnified stupidity would have the balls to interject a spontaneous bit of Certified Copy role-playing into the proceedings. A few chuckles are to be had, if you're lucky, but they can't begin to outweigh the surrounding offenses and boredom.

Extremely Important & Incredibly Urgent

Already worth the wait.

Found Things

Thanks to my friend Ali Arikan for this most spectacular find.

Cage Aeterna

And if my love for this man's brand of overexertion isn't clear enough already, know that he's on my shortlist for 2012's Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012): D+

There's plenty of offense to go around in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, and if you're someone who's ever found meaning in Green Day's album American Idiot, you'll know it within the opening minutes of this gimmicky, soulless widget. The works of Jules Verne serve as the jumping off point to this 3D in-name-only sequel to 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth, but my sense is that anyone capable of appreciating said science fiction literature is going to be as bored to tears as I was watching berries bounce off of Dwayne Johnson's chest in what might be a new low for the surcharge-friendly format, so perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that some small children will seek out those novels after ingesting this Hollywood trifle. Common sense - nay, anything like human behavior, or competent screenwriting, or a properly conceived (or even half-baked) joke - is an extinct species here, and even the second-act introduction of Michael Caine only temporarily relieves the proceedings of their life support status. Without the over-explanatory dialogue and insincere adages, this wouldn't even qualify as feature-length; the rest is noisy, banal spectacle that only occasionally taps into the awe of the natural world at the heart of Verne's texts. It's family entertainment reinvented as a numbing mental assault, and while kids might like it just fine, feeding this to a young mind should count as a chargable offense.

The Artist (2011): B

Flip-flop nametags notwithstanding, mind-changing is something I've done a fair amount of here (by which I mean, say, 4% of the time or thereabouts, for those who want to keep track; yes, I'm nitpicky, and as a critic I at least try to hold myself to high standards, including honesty and transparency), as I often find myself in the necessary predicament of re-examining my irksome (to myself) or controversial (to others) opinions on certain movies in hopes of seeing things I hadn't before. Such was the case in The Artist, which rose from festival buzz to almost immediate Oscar glory before the backlash from silent purists like myself (to say nothing of the portion of the public that scoffs at silent movies as a matter of fact; let them eat shit like Journey 2: The Mysterious Island). Consigned to its seemingly inevitable Best Picture status, I knew I'd have to revisit it, and was ultimately delighted when I did.

My original review was penned in a flurry after a bitter first viewing, during which it felt like my long-gestating wish for a modern silent film (partially satiated by Guy Maddin and others) was smeared by the Weinstein express. Reflection invited suspicions of my interpretation of the film and a second viewing confirmed them: this was not the Disingenuous Scrap of Awards Bait I'd first seen it as (as if Harvey Weinstein made the film himself, and that Michel Hazanavicius was a mere drone), although I do think it's too seriously flawed to qualify as the masterful love letter to cinema so many of its admirerer's think of it as (for me, that was Martin Scorsese's effervescent Hugo). It gets the good try award, but more time in the editing room could have made for a significantly superior product.

The temptation exists to hold The Artist to the standards of actual silent films, when clearly that is both misguided and unreasonable (if not impossible). Such former defensiveness on my part came from the same kind of love The Artist itself trades in, and is carried through by. The replication of style is mostly acute, although it's seriously rough going during an uneven and boorishly scored opening act, which starts off as a meta film-within-a-film only to subsequently waste its energy on an inert media showcase. Graciously, once the board is set and the peices are moving, the snide self-awareness subsides and things progress more or less like clockwork. It's a crowd-pleaser, almost breathelessly cute and occasionally transcendant (I, for one, am a fan of the Vertigo cameo), even when it's too obvious or drawn-out (the dream sequence is literally stupid, but contextually brilliant), and as an adorer of the flickering source of a medium that's now even more distant from its roots, I've come to appreciate what the film says about this ever-evolving medium. Warts and all, The Artist reminds us that the fire is far from extinguished.

The extent of my Oscar coverage this year

In the "should win" categories, an N/A means I haven't seen all the films nominated, and therefore cannot officially enter an opinion. An * can be found before those correctly predicted.

Best Picture
*Will win: The Artist
Should win: The Tree of Life
Best Director
*Will win: Michel Hazanavicious, The Artist
Should win: Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Best Actor in a Leading Role
*Will win: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Should win: Demián Bichir, A Better Life

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Will win: Viola Davis, The Help
Should win: Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
*Will win: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Should win: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
*Will win: Octavia Spencer, The Help
Should win: Jessica Chastain, The Help
Best Original Screenplay
*Will win: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Should win: Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay
*Will win: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, The Descendants
Should win: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, Monkeyball

Best Animated Feature
*Will win: Rango
Should win: N/A

Best Documentary Feature
*Will win: Undefeated
Should win: N/A

Best Foreign Language Film
*Will win: A Separation
Should win: N/A

Best Art Direction
*Will win: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Hugo
Should win: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Hugo

Best Cinematography
*Will win: Robert Richardson, Hugo
Should win: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life

Best Costume Design
Will win: Sandy Powell, Hugo
Should win: N/A
Best Film Editing
Will win: Thelma Schoonmaker, Hugo
Should win: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Makeup
Will win: Martial Corneville, Lynn Johnson, and Matthew W. Mungle, Albert Nobbs
Should win: Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight, and Lisa Tomblin, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2

Best Original Score
Will win: Howard Shore, Hugo
Should win: Alberto Iglesias, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Original Song
*Will win: Bret McKenzie, "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets
Should win: Bret McKenzie, "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets

Best Animated Short
*Will win: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Should win: N/A

Best Live Action Short
Will win: Tuba Atlantic
Should win: N/A
Best Documentary Short
*Will win: Saving Face
Should win: N/A

Best Sound Editing
*Will win: Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty, Hugo
Should win: Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty, Hugo

Best Sound Mixing
*Will win: Tom Fleischman and John Midgley, Hugo
Should win: Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush, and Peter J. Devlin, Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Best Visual Effects
Will win: Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White, and Daniel Barrett, Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Should win: Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann, and Alex Henning, Hugo

Overall correctitude: 75%
Meaningless validation of superior taste: 17%

That's all, folks!