crazyheartreview

Despite being produced by A-list record producer T-Bone Burnett, Scott Cooper’s film Crazy Heart is a not a music film.  It has all the purity and rawness of real country music at its core, but the soul of the film is Jeff Bridges who hasn’t given such an infectiously good performance since The Dude (re: The Big Lebowski).

Bridges is all wear and tear, smoke and stress as Bad Blake, a country singer/songwriter who insists that no one will know his real name until he’s laid in the ground.  Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jeannie Craddock, a young reporter who falls for the washed-up, old star.  Her blithe countenance, quiet demeanor, and face that radiates wisdom make the chemistry between Jeannie and Blake work.  There’s not one lackluster performance in Crazy Heart.

Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges

Stardom is a thing of the past for Bad Blake and instead of playing to sold-out auditoriums of screaming fans, he’s relegated to smoky bowling alleys and barrooms, crooning his hits to the over-50 crowd.  The whiskey bottle constantly at his side keeps him oddly contented and forgetful of the glory days, but there’s one memory that boils inside of him: how young country music star Tommy Sweet (a subdued Colin Farrell) rode his coattails into stardom and cut and run with fame and fortune.

Blake’s agent calls one day and says he’s been invited to open one of Tommy’s concerts.  He reluctantly gives in and when the two men meet for the first time in years, Tommy is unpredictably grateful to Blake for the jumpstart he gave to his career.  The two talk about how pop country music isn’t really country at all; Tommy says he’d love it if Blake would write him some new tunes.

It’s here that the differences between Bad Blake and Tommy Sweet become glaringly apparent. When Tommy takes the stage and is greeted by a roaring crowd of young fans, he exudes confidence to the degree that his song lyrics exude clichés.  Comparatively, when Blake gets on stage, the audience is silent and listens as he sings with all the sincerity and life-worn weakness of a grandfather.  His songs are thick and weighty; you can feel the price he’s paid to get those words.

Blake writes a new tune

“Sometimes fallin’ feels like flyin’,’ he sings in his most famous tune and Blake soon hits the ground with a deafening thump.   Despite the honesty of his art, the whiskey that courses through his body is wasting him away and becoming his ruin.  After an irresponsible breach of trust, his relationship with Jeannie disintegrates and, as he collapses in shame on his bed, he realizes that the whiskey – his lifelong companion – must go.

In showing Blake’s struggle and misery, Cooper doesn’t romanticize the facts.  Blake flips his Silverado while asleep at the wheel, loses a small child in the mall, blacks out mid-morning in front of the toilet, hurls drunk into a trash can, and lives in a filthy house that symbolizes years of careless living.  This fearless approach to reality will no doubt make stomachs churn, but it gives Bridges the opportunity to show what a limitless actor he is and how much he deserves the Oscar nomination for Best Actor he received a few weeks ago.

The fruit of Bad’s struggle is not a new existence on flowery beds of ease, but a constant process of reconciling the past with the present in the hope of a renewed future.  The painful thing about redemption, he finds, is that it comes at the price (and with all the pain) of total purification.  The new songs he writes for Tommy all center around this process: “Whiskey has been a thorn in your side / and it doesn’t forget / the highway that calls for your heart inside.”

Though we may have seen this story before (Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler comes immediately to mind), Crazy Heart is a film both poignant and true because of its great performances.  It makes us walk alongside a man struggling to take the high road not because it will bring him success, but because it is the only road that leads home.  And in the end, we’re all the better for it.

A Single Man, the directorial debut of  fashion designer Tom Ford, has seemingly brought actor Colin Firth past the realm of type-casting that has plagued a considerable span of his career. Firth, known for his always playing the always amiable English gentleman, digs deep to hone in on a subtle, yet heart wrenching performance as a homosexual English professor reeling from the loss of his lover from a tragic car accident. Firth, as George delves within a character study saturated by symbolism both abstract and poignant. His delivery is calm, piercing, and conjures the “what if” the what if that may have one asking, ’if I lost the love of my life, a forbidden love by society’s standard, how would I grieve, where could I possibly turn for condolence?”

Colin Firth, as George, contemplates life without his lover.

Seems the only person George can turn to is a neighbor, a lonely woman by the name of Charley (Julianne Moore) with a big heart. The two bond and vent, emitting their frustrations over a relationship both conflicted and loving.

But it is enough for Charley to move on and continue his life?

With this, the assumation of a thematic question, Ford directs a movie heavy with a burdening secret. Firth delivers a melancholy performance but fails to overact and emotionally manipulate his audience. For those craving a linear plot dealing with such deep subject manner, A Single Man may frustrate. But tamed, subdued viewers accustomed to a more cerebral approach in regards to drama, will walk away feeling all questions have been answered and abstractions were well executed and revealing.

Queen

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and starring Emily Blunt in the title role, The Young Victoria is a sumptuously beautiful drama brimming with visual detail and loveliness.  That alone is enough to warrant seeing as it may very well consume you with its lush sights and sounds, but the movie as a whole is so committed to manners and good taste that it rarely brings its characters to proper life.  More on that in time.

The early years of Queen Victoria’s rule of England as portrayed in Vallée’s film were turbulent at best.  Born the only direct ascendant to the throne, Victoria’s manipulative mother (Miranda Richardson) and her dastardly adviser (Mark Strong; currently seen as Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes) plotted all through her childhood how to manipulate the impressionable young woman once she took the throne.

Controlled, cloistered, and endlessly kept behind closed palace doors, Victoria still remained determined not to sign the Regency document that would give her manipulators legal right to the throne.  This jealous drama permeates the first few moments of The Young Victoria, but when the queen finally takes her rightful seat on the throne and lays to waste the hopes of her deceptive relatives, her romance with Prince Albert becomes central.

Albert (Rupert Friend) is the nephew of royalty and has been coached by his advisors on how to win Victoria’s favor.  His predictable advances annoy Victoria, but the two forge a bond over their equal hatred of manipulation.

The newly married couple

“Do you ever feel like a chess piece yourself? In a game being played against your will?” Victoria asks.  Albert empathizes and gives a searing reply: “You had better master the rules of the game until you play it better than they can.”  She grants Albert permission to write to her and though political foibles and less-worthy suitors try to muddy the waters, the two marry and rule the kingdom together.

The cast is perfectly suited to the material and culled from the very best selection of British characters actors (the great Jim Broadbent has an amusing bit-part), but Emily Blunt is the main attraction and proves, perhaps for the first time, that she is capable of carrying the soul of a film with dignity and grace.  She imbues Victoria with the biting self-confidence necessary for a young woman who is pressed to relent on all sides.  Her beauty is beguiling.

The script, on the other hand, is not.  Penned by Julian Fellowes, a scribe who seemed so adept at structuring class drama when he wrote Robert Altman’s majestic Gosford Park, Victoria’s screenplay is structured through voiceover and monologue by way of letters and correspondence written between the historical figures that populate the narrative.  It’s a neat trick, but one that gets old after the tenth of eleventh time.

Consequently, characters we don’t learn about via personal correspondence – Victoria’s mother, The Duchess of Kent; Lord Conroy, the Duchess’s fiendish advisor; Lord Melbourne, one of Victoria’s early advisors – seem to populate the script only because it would be inaccurate for them not to.

Albert and Victoria

Still, the visuals are almost unbearably dignified and sparkle with royal finery.  (It seems as if Vallée and his cinematographer have recently discovered the ability to pull focus for emotional affect; they use it multiple times in every scene and it becomes a jolly novelty.)  The musical score by Ilan Eshkeri elegantly adapts snippets of Schubert and Handel and plays as big a role in the emotional life of the film as any of the actors.  Then there are the costumes by Sandy Powell (The Aviator, Far From Heaven) that will surely win awards for their attention to detail.

Yes, The Young Victoria is that classic case of style over substance.  It feels akin to visiting an elegant museum for the sole purpose of looking around for a few moments.  We’ve all been guilty of that, perhaps to our shame.   That said, a dose of aristocratic poise might be just enough to calm nerves that have been jangled by the recent onslaught of American war films.  If you think The Young Victoria could do you some good, don’t resist her charms.

Snide witticisms aside, what we really while watching It Might Get Loud is, not so much the history of the guitar or the history of rock & roll per se, but the personal histories of how these three generations of guitar heroes (or anti-heroes if you will) have come to be who they are – both musically and in essence, since their lives revolve around such, personally. We watch as White pontificates on the old bluesmen that most influenced him (the youngest of the concocted trio is influenced by the oldest of influences) and the way their improv natures have had such a lasting impression on the music he writes and plays and the way he writes and plays such music. We watch as The Edge explains his fascination with the punk movement of the late seventies and in accordance with punk principles (most of them knowing only about three chords) how he can strum just a few chords and through the magic of modern technology sound like a Rock God. He even gives this admission with a sense of pride, as if he is both the Wizard behind that curtain and Toto unveiling himself to the world.

The highlight of It Might Get Loud though, is of course, that true Rock God, Jimmy Page. We watch in awe, along with White and The Edge, as Page tells of his early days in a skiffle band and his psychedelic days of the late sixties all the way up to his legendary recording sessions with Led Zeppelin. We watch in awe, again, as do both White and The Edge, as Page plays around on his guitar with the most nonchalant of ease. His musical doodles head & shoulders above anything the other tow could even dream of doing. The highlight of Page’s already highlight-filled section of the film, comes when we see the Guitar God, surrounded by a roomful of vinyl, playing air guitar to a record he giddily places on his turntable. Nothing can top that.

Unfortunately though, even with Page’s guitar antics and constant impish grin, Guggenheim’s film never delves as deep into the history of the guitar as it probably should. It is surely fun to watch Paige, and to a point White (snarky but brilliant at times!) and it is entertaining to watch the three work their way through a closing credits rendition of The Band’s The Weight, with Page refusing to sing for it and White not knowing the words (it’s Fanny you idiot! Take a load off Fanny!!) but the film never, as the title suggests it should, gets quite loud enough. But at least we have that image of a devilish looking Jimmy Page air-guitaring to old time rock & roll.

Now one should not put that much blame on Adams. Granted she is a young actress and she is competing for screen time with La Streep (poor Anne Hathaway was blown away by the power of La Streep in The Devil Wears Prada). Then again, she held her own – and then some – against the formidable actress just a year ago when they co-starred together (and actually had scenes together, unlike here) in Doubt. Portraying, the sad sack Powell (upon whose blog-turned-best seller about making every dish from Child’s epic master cookbook, this movie’s lesser half is based) schlepping around Brooklyn, whining that she has no life, is a dead end job if ever there was one. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the tracks (that being Paris of course) we have the aforementioned La Streep, one of the most enthralling, enticing and engrossing actresses of her day (of any day!) taking on the role of Julia Child (upon whose memoirs “My Life in France” the better half of this movie is based) who in her own right is one of the most enthralling, enticing and engrossing women to have ever broiled up a batch of Boof Bourguignon on national television. How can an actress compete? For that matter, how can a movie compare?

Granted, the food is quite enticing throughout (with the notable exception of a misguided attempt By Powell to make her way through Child’s aspic chapter – ughhh!) and one should definitely not go to this film hungry (as yours truly did), but in the end – no matter how appetizing much of it may be (well, except for those aspic attempts) and no matter how much we all love Meryl Streep (and who doesn’t – even in the worst of films? Well, maybe not Mamma Mia!, but hey…) – all we are left with are a few hunger pangs and half a movie to take home in a doggie bag. Bon Appetit…not!

nic and eva

A symbolic vision, the dark and water-logged surroundings fit well with the eventual introduction of director Werner Herzogs latest film-in which antagonist Terance McDonagh-portrayed by Nicholas Cage with fervor and zeal void in his last few roles-is a character whose outer layers and soul resemble the worst kind of snake: a corrupt, amoral cop.

Flanked against the dismal cynicism of post Katrina, The Bad Lieutenant isn’t your typical examination of good cop gone bad; it is constructed with a multitude of abstract ideas then one may appreciate. Its dark view of an embattled city offers little hope in regards to ridding its criminal element during the throes of disaster, and shows a side of New Orleans rarely seen by those only familiar with its excessive debauchery offered on famed Bourbon Street.

Herzog intersperses a reptilian theme cleverly, infusing his often off-putting camera angles and symbolism in places where transitions are craved. It appears, frankly, that the goal is to linger within a scene, and seduce the viewer into taking a mental survey as to what may be the purpose. It appears he wants the viewer to follow McDonagh, and all but gasp as he gambles and snorts his way through an intricate murder investigation involving illegal Senegalese immigrants.

At times the pacing and scenarios border ridiculous, and teeter on the edge of comedy; but Herzog and a cast that includes Eva Mendez, Val Kilmer, rapper turned actor Xzibit, and Vondie Curtis Hall, mesh well with the unorthodox dramatics offered in Bad Lieutenant; but it is hardly enough to make Bad Lieutenant a remarkable film, an effort only tolerable because of Nicholas Cage’s performance. Undoubtedly, as McDonagh, Cage often appears as though he’s improvising, playing the role as if it will be his last. His [Cage] bravery makes Mcdonagh an antagonist character rivaling the wretchedness of Alonzo in Training Day, and we want to see how he [McDonagh] comes out on the other end.

Unfortunately, once one goes beyond the delirious decor and blooming lyrical vision of Scherfig’s kino-eye (and I suppose one must at some point), the film falls rather fast and hard into the easy trap of cliche. The innocent wide-eyed schoolgirl. The wolf-like charming older man smooth-talking his way past all obstacles. The hapless and quite clueless father. The caring teacher trying to talk sense into her favourite pupil. The hard-as-nails head mistress. Though based on Lynn Barber’s memoir (and in theory a true-ish story) all the obvious routine is here throughout. One can easily blame screenwriter Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy). We could shake this off as Hornby’s first attempt at adapting someone else’s work (his three previous scripts all doctorings of his own novels) but that would be too easy as well. Hornby certainly has a way with turning a witty phrase or creating implausibly interesting characters in his work, but his depth is usually mere surface scuttle.

Fortunately, once one goes beyond the cliche (and one must certainly go back to the fortunate of this motion picture), the film gains strength not just in the ambrosial aspects of Scherfig’s (and cinematographer John de Borman, whose work on Hideous Kinky foretells of the sublime palette of this film) movie, but in the body of its cast. Peter Sarsgaard as the slick older man and Alfred Molina as the pompous but endearingly so bumfuzzled father are both superb in their polar opposite ways, but it is newcomer Carey Mulligan who simply and sincerely runs away with this picture. The lovely Mulligan – part Audrey Hepburn, part Michelle Williams – swells with a quiet grandeur in the role of Jenny and raises the film surrounding her well above the aforementioned surface scuttle of Hornby’s writing. Though Scherfig directs with an ever-roving eye toward a certain cinematic pulchritude, and achieves something akin to (pardon my own cliche, but…) visual poetry, this is Mulligan’s film inside and out – and as I mentioned before, she simply and sincerely runs away with it.

I guess you could argue that it worked: when they started deviating from the formula, they stopped raking in the bucks pretty fast. It’s probably not a coincidence that their films from the early 2000s — Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, among others — were some of the biggest flops in Disney history, and led the studio to give up hand-drawn animation altogether. It was a decision that was roundly criticized, but fortunately it didn’t last long — once Pixar execs were on the Disney board of directors, they insisted that traditional cel animation be brought back. After all, that stuff is kind of what Disney does.

So here we are. The Princess and the Frog is the new hand-drawn animated Disney film. With it, the princess theme was reinstated, co-directors John Musker and Ron Clements were brought back (after being fired in 2002 for nearly bankrupting the studio with the notorious Treasure Planet), and half a dozen more songs were written. Also, the Disney Princess-branded merchandise was rolled out the door.

If I sound like I’m rolling my eyes a bit, I apologize. I’m really not (though I’m also well aware that if I stop being sarcastic, you’ll stop reading this review). Truth be told, I love animation, and I think Disney has been (and is) the source of some of the finest the art form has to offer. I even count Treasure Planet as my personal favorite movie ever (though, for obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to admit this in the presence of serious film buffs). So, of course I was thrilled to see Musker and Clements return to the animating desk, and I’ve been holding my breath waiting for this film since I heard about it more than two years ago.

So yeah, I walked in with a lot of baggage. But the from the first frame, I was still completely blown away. The oil paintings of 1920’s New Orleans (yep — a fairytale set in the Jazz Age — how cool is that?) are stunning. Randy Newman’s jazz/blues/gospel-inspired score is incredible. The character animation is some of the most beautiful, consistent and fluid to come out of the studio since The Lion King. From the first few notes of the first big song and dance, I was sold.

“Sold”? Who am I kidding? I was literally on the edge of my seat, tingles going up and down my spine, tears in my eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw something this beautiful on the big screen.

But alas, the magic didn’t quite last. Twenty minutes in, the lead characters turn into frogs and are banished to the bayou, and everything slows to a crawl. The pastel rainbow of New Orleans is replaced with a dull, drab, brown-and-green swamp. The beautiful human character models are replaced with lazily drawn animals. The spectacular voice of Broadway actress Anika Noni Rose (who voices the titular princess, Tiana) never sings again (not counting a few lines here and there), and a lightning bug with an annoying Cajun accent (voiced by admittedly talented voice actor Jim Cummings) gets not one, but two songs.

It’s a film that sets you up, but fails to knock you down. It’s hard to say who dropped the ball — Musker/Clements films, as a rule, all have serious pacing issues (Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet all move at a breakneck pace, turning corners with reckless abandon). Producer John Lasseter (who directed Toy Story; Monsters, Inc; and Cars) managed to turn Disney’s Bolt into a masterpiece last year, but he’s never produced a traditionally animated film, and he’s never produced a fairytale or a musical. But more than anything, I’m going to bet that this one was rushed out the door a bit too fast, perhaps in an attempt to announce Disney’s triumphant return to 2D animation.

Well, it ain’t exactly triumphant, but there is still much to like about it, and there is even much to love. While they use the best song up in the first act, Newman’s other songs are still quite charming. The breathtaking detail of New Orleans and the psychedelic voodoo sequences are truly something to behold. Louis, an alligator who wants to be a jazz trumpeter (voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley), practically steals the show in the bayou. And, as every article written on this film has pointed out, Tiana is the first black Disney princess.

I’m, of course, a white guy. I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to go through life as a black female, seeing whiteness held up as a standard of beauty in all media, and I’m probably not even allowed to bring it up, by standard PC rules. But there is one thing I can’t deny: being in a theater filled with little African-American girls, enthralled to finally see a beautiful princess that looked like them, is something I’ll probably never forget.

And something like that is a million times bigger than pacing issues.

Not that would have been any different if it had been set at Christmas, mind you. It’s a pretty simple family drama, and it even manages to streamline the original and ignore most of its subtleties. It begins when recent widower Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) decides to get his four children together for the last week of summer, and then watches them cancel, one by one. Ever the optimist (and despite a fairly serious medical condition), he decides to hit the road to surprise them all at home.

Of course there wouldn’t be much of a movie if they weren’t all weaving a complex web of lies, so the rest of the movie is about Frank untangling them all. And it’s actually pretty good — really — but I still can’t think of a real reason to recommend it. The operatic aspirations of the original have been replaced by the relatively facile conflict between Frank’s blue-collar background and his kids’ artistic aspirations; there are some pretty good visual metaphors at play — until the movie beats you over the head with them. Robert De Niro puts in arguably one of his best performances in quite a while, and Drew Barrymore (playing one of his daughters) is as engaging as always, but Kate Beckinsale (playing his other daughter) remains as bland as she’s ever been. That Christmas tree on the poster finally does make a cameo in the final scene (you were getting worried, weren’t you?), but in the end, Everybody’s Fine is nothing more than the latest bland remake of a much-better foreign film to come out of Miramax. You could do a lot worse, but you could probably do better.

Based on the acclaimed novel, Push: by Sapphire, Precious simply breaks your heart, opens you up, and pours within you all the nightmarish events you could possibly imagine in regards to being a teenager with a life spiraling toward hell. Precious Clarice Jones (Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe) is your sister, only sixteen, and the mother of a child with one on the way due to being horribly raped by her own father, she can neither read nor write, and it appears her existence is purposed solely for the act of abuse by her- my-God-I-can’t-believe-she’s-so- monstrous-mother, Mary, portrayed with ominous fire and rage by Monique (Yeah, she will get an Oscar nomination).  Precious is your aunt, your mom even; she’s the embodiment of all things society has labeled African American women, especially African American women battling educational issues, self-esteem, obesity,  and teen pregnancy.

Mary (From Precious)

Director Lee Daniels, who helmed the slow moving and quiet Monsters Ball, adapts a poem into an enigmatic film that leaves you fulfilled and angered. The performances are truly remarkable by a physically scaled down cast; Mariah Carey is unrecognizable as a tough, yet sensible, social worker, Lenny Kravitz, as ordinary as he could possibly appear, is a sympathetic male nurse, along with Paula Patton, as Ms. Rain, the only character whose appearance seems softened by makeup

Along with dead on characterizations and dialog authentic and smothered in the usual honesty associated with at-risk urban youth, Precious captures Harlem via 1987 with an undying ease; and its contrast, seen through humorous, subliminal clips of Precious’ imagination, add depth to the reality that has seized her troubled life.

By far Precious is 2009’s Slum Dog Millionaire, a brave, relentless film both moving and satisfying. It grabs your throat, yells in your face, demands your attention, plays with your emotions, manipulates, taunts, and then after all is said and done, it offers hope and closure to all that is awful and void of brightness. Lee Daniels has brought to the screen a film that audiences would usually steer away from and shows us the “real” of one woman’s fight to gain an identity and self-worth. Newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe is refreshing in her film debut, and it isn’t unfair to assume we’ve seen the birthing of a star and perhaps a change that may occur in Hollywood.

Yes, Wes Andreson — the guy who directed Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited; in other words, essentially the same comedy-drama hybrid about the same dysfunctional families and individuals, four times in a row. I don’t mean to be harsh — they weren’t bad films, by any stretch — but by the time Darjeeling rolled around, it was clear the returns were diminishing. Audiences stayed home, and the Academy pretty much ignored it (after giving an award to the Tenebaums’ screenplay a few years prior). Clearly, he needed to shake things up a bit.

And wow, has he. Fantastic Mr. Fox, his latest, isn’t only a different genre — it’s a different medium altogether. Gone is his usual motley crew of pseudo-indie actors, replaced by stop-motion figurines. Gone are his mostly-plotless screenplays, replaced by a children’s storybook by English author Roald Dahl (writer of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach). And — strangely — gone are all the usual four-letter words, replaced by the word “cuss” (“What the cuss!”; “This has become a total cluster-cuss!”; etc.).

The result is easily Anderson’s most accessible film to date, even as it retains much of his oeuvre’s baroque, esoteric charm. As the story of a strikingly anthropomorphic fox (voice of George Clooney) who has to protect his family and friends (a menagerie of woodland creatures that includes Meryl Streep, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, and others) from an onslaught of vengeful farmers, the story has quite a bit more thrust to it than any of Anderson’s recent films, making it much easier to sit through for the casual viewer. At the same time, its animation style — mostly fur-covered stop-motion figurines against hand-painted backgrounds — gives it a rustic, provincial (and somewhat retro) charm.

It’s beautiful, it’s funny, and the cast is top-notch — but more than anything, it left me wondering exactly who it was made for. One usually assumes that animated fare is intended for children (at least on this side of the Pacific), and the PG rating would seem to confirm that, but it has an edge that makes it hard to recommend for any child younger than ten (the morals here are  pretty complex, and one of the “bad” characters dies a pretty violent death). Additionally, while animation is “big” right now, it’s increasingly difficult to sell people on anything other than CGI. (Coraline was a moderate success last year, but it had something of a polished look to it; Mr. Fox intentionally looks a bit unfinished.)

But I’m sure finding an audience isn’t really the first thing on Anderson’s mind. The usual crowd of college hipsters will probably show up (heck, they probably made up half of the audience for Coraline, anyway), and — along with the families who take a chance on this one — they won’t be disappointed. Mr. Fox has a vitality to it that was missing from some of Anderson’s recent work — instead of being ponderous and self-indulgent, it’s light on its feet, adventurous, and fun. It’s not the best animated film to come out this year, but it’s definitely worth a look.

But do I understand it?  I wish.  

Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik

Here’s the rundown: life is unraveling for physics professor and generally good man Larry Gopnik.  His wife Judith is having an affair with an aloof family friend and wants a divorce. His brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is emotionally and physically incapable of living alone and spends his nights in Larry’s living room.

The Gopnik children, Danny and Sarah, are pilfering cash from their father’s wallet to buy pot and save up for a nose job. There’s an anonymous person writing nasty letters to the university to tarnish Larry’s good reputation and destroy his chances at tenure.  An unhappy graduate student is attempting to bribe him for a better math grade with an envelope of large bills.

Larry gets a checkup

Distraught and terribly confused, Larry sets out on a quest to find some balance to the chaos.  A devout Jew, he’s advised by his friends to talk to the Rabbi.  He consults three and they all have different non-answers.  Temptations arise, questions go unanswered, doors get slammed in his face, and Larry is confronted with many a harrowing choice, each one compounding the mystery of the Coen brothers’ latest existential riddle.

The Coens know how to harvest the hilarity out of life’s absurdity and A Serious Man is a movie for people who can laugh at exaggerated characters put in situations that easily reach a level of gleefully deranged poeticism.  Here we have messages written on the back of people’s teeth, a Rabbi who quotes Jefferson Airplane, and a perpetually drained cyst all working to prove yet again that these filmmakers specialize in their own brand of niche comedy.

Newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg imbues Larry Gopnik with a jittery, painful unease that makes his strife even more relatable.  His character shares many similarities to William H. Macy’s character in Fargo, but whereas Jerry Lundegaard caved to criminal activity under the crushing weight of self-pity, Larry Gopnik chooses to fight it out and make the most of his ability to choose.  It’s a delicate balance and Stuhlbarg pulls it off beautifully.

In typical Coen fashion, the supporting characters nearly steal the show, particularly Fred Melamed who plays Sy Ableman, the agonizingly serious and overbearing family friend who has stolen the heart of Larry’s wife.

The licentious Sy Ableman embraces Larry

Sy Ableman is the kind of friend who thinks it advantageous to uncork a Bordeaux and have a polite chat with Larry about how his marriage should end.  His throbbing, earnest insistence is completely riotous as he suggests that Larry move out of the house to a local motel called the Jolly Roger. “Larry, Larry, Larry,” he intones, “I think, really, the Jolly Roger is the best course of action.  It has a pool.”

The story is set in the 1960s and lensed impeccably in sharp focus by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins.  Nothing is amiss in this film and each dramatic and comedic note is pitch-perfect.   The characters in the absurd world of A Serious Man fit the film’s structure like puzzle pieces.

Still, when we step back to view the whole puzzle, it’s hard to be sure what exactly it is.  If you took one piece away, the whole structure would fall, but like any truly great piece of art, multiple questions are necessary to interpret why everything fits.

For example: Why does Larry Gopnik suffer so much? Is it as a result of something he’s done?  Does he need to make better choices?  What does it mean to be a good man?   Could Larry ever achieve it?  Is it possible for anyone to be truly good?

What can we make of the film’s spare hopeful moments, including a startling intrusion of grace just before the final act?  Are these tiny shreds of common grace sufficient to make life worth living?  And how does that darned Jewish fable at the beginning of the film relate to the rest of the story?

Much has been said of how A Serious Man is a retelling of the Biblical story of Job, that pitiable saint put to the test by the devil to see if he would deny God.   Nearly drowned in raging waters of uncertainty, Job had the courage to say of God, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.”  Whether you think this wise or foolish, the Coens appear to have a more secular course of action in mind.

The film begins with a proverb from Rashi: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.”  Is this the blanket answer to all the questions of A Serious Man?  I think the auteurs behind it would say yes – and even though it seems like a terribly simplistic retort, they should be applauded for finding a strangely funny, very dark, and surprisingly human way to announce it.

Part Remains of the Day, part Brady Bunch Goes to Hell (but in the most strangely yet cleverly loving way) The Maid tells the story of Raquel, a fortyish-something domestic who has been in the employ of one family for so long she is at that bizarre precipice where she is treated almost as if one of the family yet kept distant enough to be very aware of her station in life. The brunt of the story takes place after Raquel physically falls apart and the family decides to hire a second maid as a sort of assistant to Raquel. Though meaning well, Raquel takes this as an affront to her own abilities and takes it upon herself to sabotage each new recruit. That is until she finds fellow compatriot Lucy, who actually befriends the standoffish Raquel – becoming in essence both her closest (and only) friend and her de facto, platonic spouse.

Whether Raquel does feel love – or desire – for Lucy is actually beside the point. Raquel is unaffected by sexual desire. Her one attempt at such in the film – with Lucy’s uncle – ends in near disaster. Raquel isn’t in need of sex (her forty year old virginal status may say otherwise) so much as she is in need of freeing herself not only of the physical servitude of her life but of the self-imposed mental servitude as well. In meeting Lucy, Raquel manages to pry herself away from her loneliness and her instability of emotions. Whether it will stick is another problem for another time. The Maid does not try to answer these problems so much as give Raquel the option to save herself.

Shot very matter-of-factly – and as a matter-of-fact, acted quite matter-of-factly – this brave, sometimes charming, sometimes claustrophobic (in the emotional sense) little film is easily one of the biggest surprises of the cinematic year. The second release this year from Chile (the first being the even darker surreality of a John Travolta-obsessed serial killer in Tony Manero) The Maid, with the bravurest of performances from Catalina Saavedra, is a genuine domestic horror film wrapped in the simple ribbons of a (albeit way-past-its-prime) coming-of-age story. Here’s hoping more comes from Chile soon.

With that in mind, I guess it’s no surprise that the Mouse House has deigned to grace us with yet another version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, that classic tale that everyone in the entertainment industry has already raped into oblivion. For anyone keeping score, this is the third version of the tale to have the Disney branding stamped on it (which really shows a surprising amount of restraint on their part, all things considered), the other two being 1983’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol and 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol (which actually may be one of the best adaptations of the story ever — not that you asked). This new version, while not un-gimmicky, eschews the Mr. Magoo-inspired shoehorning in of extraneous characters, and has been titled simply (and perhaps somewhat resignedly) Disney’s A Christmas Carol.

Come in, and know me better, man!

Sounds almost prophetic, doesn’t it? As though this is the definitive “Disney” version of the tale, the one you’ve always been waiting for, the one that will finally tame the wild spirit of Dickens and lock him safely away in Disney’s stable, right between a relinquishing A.A. Milne and a very bemused Victor Hugo. If that’s what you’re expecting, though, you’re going to be surprised at just how un-Disney the whole film feels. Actually, it turns out that A Christmas Carol is “Disney’s” in the same way that Disney’s Toy Story was when it was released under that title back in 1995. In other words, Disney bought it from an animation studio you’ve probably never heard of, stuck their name on it, and distributed it to theaters.

The studio in question, of course, is Robert Zemeckis’ Image Movers Digital, the company that brought you The Polar Express and Beowulf (and, in case you’re wondering, is now a full subsidiary of Disney). A Christmas Carol is less a “Disney” film than a spiritual sequel to those two — a literary adaptation where actors play multiple characters thanks to the power of computer animation and motion capture (in this case, Jim Carrey plays Scrooge and all three spirits of Christmas) — and it has more-or-less the same strengths and weakness as its predecessors.

And, plastic automatons are better than real people...how?

Shall I start with the weaknesses? Okay, first: these animated characters do not look like people. At all. They never have, and they never will. I’m not sure how the director behind classics like Back to the Future and Romancing the Stone got it into his head that motion capture is the future of cinema, but after three films, he has yet to come up with results that really manage to impress. The technique used here involves having the actors act out the sequences while wearing motion-capture suits, and then applying their voices and motion to CGI characters. It’s a technique that’s been used to great effect in live-action films (witness Andy Serkis as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series), but seems entirely purposeless in a fully animated film. Why should animated characters, in an animated world, attempt to look and move like real people? If you’re really trying to approximate real life, why no just use real actors and some good old-fashioned special effects?

It doesn’t help that Zemeckis’ character models look just enough like real people to be unsettling — think Gigolo Joe from A.I., or better yet, just look up “uncanny valley” at Wikipedia — giving all of the proceedings a soulless, plastic sheen. Actually, this seems vaguely appropriate, given that the material is A Christmas Carol — a work that once bled Dickens’ sympathy for the underclass, but has been stripped of its politics, co-opted by the corporate establishment, mass-produced, and sold back to the poor each and every year in order to line Scrooge’s proverbial pockets — but, of course, that fact doesn’t make it bearable any more than a plastic, light-up baby Jesus reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas. The whole thing looks like a cut-scene from a videogame circa 2003, and feels totally out of place on the big screen. It’s all the ugliness of a videogame, plus all the passivity of a movie. Fun!

Ghosts? Humbug.

All that being said, there’s one strength here that’s impossible to deny: this is actually the most faithful adaptation of Dickens’ story to come along in quite some time. The story’s relentless adaptations of the last century and a half have done it no favor, scrubbing it to a complacent luster and filing its visceral teeth down to stumps (much like they have that Other Famous Christmas Story — y’know, the one where the teenage Jewish girl gets knocked up and then gives birth in a barn). It’s easy to forget that A Christmas Carol is, first and foremost, a ghost story (a “scary ghost story,” if you believe a certain seasonal song). Zemeckis’ new version actually manages to restore much of the awe and terror that the work once inspired, and two sequences in particular — the appearance of Jacob Marley and the death of the Ghost of Christmas Present — are some of the most frightening and grisly scenes I’ve seen on screen in a while. (Truth be told, they almost make the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come seem anticlimactic, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad). Add to this a script that takes almost all of its dialogue directly from Dickens’ pages, and you have an experience that’s surprisingly frightening and political for a PG-rated film with the word “Disney’s” in the title.

That leads me to tentatively recommend the film, but I’m still scratching my head as to exactly who it was made for. The screening I attended was filled with parents and their children, but most of the children seemed either frightened or bored for most of the experience. After all, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, for all its cultural ubiquity, is almost all dialogue, and the film reflects this. More than anything, this makes the story seem like an odd choice for the CGI treatment, let alone the now-obligatory digital 3D — after all, Beowulf is crammed full of action, but A Christmas Carol is mainly about an old man brooding over his past. Zemeckis seems to have been implicitly aware of this, and has grafted on a handful of action sequences to provide the expected eye candy. Unfortunately, they do nothing to advance the story, and they even fail to make interesting use of the 3D. They’re just sort of there, and they appear at such irregular intervals as to be completely jarring. (Imagine that you’re trying to read A Tale of Two Cities, and every so often, Michael Bay breaks into your house and blows something up. That’s what this feels like.)

SPOILER ALERT: Scrooge has a change of heart.

Honestly, it’s hard to pass any sort of meaningful judgment on a film that has both so many towering strengths and so many glaring weaknesses — frankly, it feels like watching two different movies that have been spliced together. I can tell you that it’s easily the best version of A Christmas Carol currently showing in 3D at the local multiplex; perhaps that alone makes it worth seeing. But as I’ve mentioned, it’s not for young children, unless your children are very brave and enjoy long sequences of nineteenth-century-era English dialogue. That being said, only time can truly judge the value of this version of the tale, and part of me doubts we’ll be seeing it rerun on network TV every December. It’s a noble attempt, but it feels like it’s not quite finished wrestling with its own personal ghosts.

Wait, sodium hydroxide?

These are the follicle-altering components highlighted in Good Hair; a permed, curled, and  lazily combed documentary that examines the effects of those in the African American community.

The idea for the film — based on a question posed by one of Rock’s three daughters — Good Hair is at times informative, humorous, and proverbially misshapen like a nap-riddled Afro. Directed by Jeff Stilson, G.H. comes complete with narration by Chris Rock (which just so happens to sound like an episode of Everybody Hates Chris), and is often hard to take seriously, even when an exodus toward the origins of the illustrious strands takes him on a trip to India. Once there, the religious and spiritual reasons for the removal of their hair are revealed, and coming from the mouth of Rock’s high-pitched, relaxed vernacular, his cartoonish  voice-over dilutes the magnitude and significance of an Indian ritual.

The satirical slant in Good Hair applies a layer of needless sheen, and upon viewing the ridiculous and showy nature of gawdy hair shows showcased in Chocolate City (that’s Atlanta, GA, for those that don’t know)  the film is simply hard to take serious. For those  in the black community, the self-image issue is a topic that requires a deeper, more introspective approach.

There are positives though; interviews conducted inside barbershops and hair salons offer great insight, and there’s a revealing look at the damage sodium hydroxide can cause; as well, appearances by African Americans from the entertainment business and others from all walks of life discussing a touchy subject induce laughs that come easy and offer brow-raising insight.

But nonetheless, Good Hair fails in its attempt to take on serious subject matter, so in turn, why should moviegoers take it seriously?

This isn’t a film about his life, trials and tribulations, and if you have a negative opinion on the man then this probably won’t sway that. It’s just footage from the last few rehearsals for his final performance. There are tiny bits of interviews with some of his tech crew, and other musical performers, but it’s kept to a minimum because we came here to see Michael.

We get to hear most of our favorite songs complete with the dance moves we know and love, as well as some extended pieces of song and dance we haven’t seen before. A decent amount of newly shot footage for “Smooth Criminal” and “Thriller” are icing on the cake.

Michael is often half in costume, and not completely shaven, but the man is never out of mind. When it comes to his show, his music, his vision, the man is on the ball. He knows when a beat is off by a millisecond, and he could sense an off-note a mile away. He was the King of Pop and everyone around him is a sort of third-class citizen. Not in a bad way, but you don’t look like much when you stand next to the man who made “Thriller.” When it comes down to it, most of these people are living out their life dream by getting this opportunity to play with their icon, and they are all overjoyed. He gives many of them a chance to shine and his energy flows into them and brings out the best in every performer.

Michael is older here, and we don’t get to see his moves completely crisped to perfection because he’s rehearsing, and we know he’s waiting for the big show to unleash the beast. Nevertheless we see him start to get down several times in the film. Afterward he would jokingly scold everyone for letting him get too into it during rehearsal.  There are the common Michael themes such as love for the planet which play a part in his vision, and we can see and hear the passion in his voice.

After walking out of the theater I couldn’t help but feel sad. It didn’t hit me until just then that the King really was gone. It’s a shame that nobody will every get to see the complete vision of what Michael wanted to paint, but his spirit will groove every time someone moonwalks across a stage. May he rest in peace.

Based on the memoir The Boys are Back in Town by English expatriate Simon Carr (who is here renamed “Joe Warr” and played by Clive Owen), the film is the story of a man trying to raise his two sons — neither of whom he really knows — after his wife has died. This is no saccharine flood of sentiment, though (in fact, if anything, it errs in the opposite direction), nor is it a series of cheap misandrist laughs (as it would have been in the hands of Hollywood); instead it’s a very quiet, subtle film that seems almost unaware of the depths that it’s plumbing.

This touch is no doubt attributable directly to Hicks, who seems to have a touch for imbuing comparatively simple material with surprising visual resonance. Two years ago, he directed the Aaron Eckhart/Catherine Zeta-Jones romantic comedy No Reservations – a film that would have been yet another generic chick flick in the hands of almost anyone else, but became something deep and beautiful under the vantage of Hicks’ rich camerawork. This visual touch is even more obviously present in The Boys are Back, which just might be the only film that makes a trash-filled bachelor pad look beautiful.

That, like much of the film, is both entirely unexpected yet disarmingly comfortable to the point that you’ll hardly notice it. As should always be the case in narrative cinema, the purpose of the photography is to facilitate the interactions of the characters. The real stars here are Warr’s two sons — played by Nicholas McAnulty (who manages to be both adorably cute and a pretty decent actor) and George MacKay (who seems to be channeling Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley — for whatever that’s worth) — both of whom are fully realized as characters, and both of whom can simultaneously make you laugh and break your heart with a single line.

This kind of subtlety is doubtless required for the material, which is light on identifiable “plot,” but is ultimately the story of a man learning to walk a tightrope between letting his boys be boys and teaching them how to be men. Watching someone learn an impossible stunt is always a messy and lopsided experience, but it also always has a clumsy beauty all its own. The Boys are Back is no exception to that, and as long as you’re not expecting any forced symmetry or easy answers, you’ll find it a trip worth taking.

Ricky Gervais’ (star/writer/producer/etc. of the original British version of The Office) new vehicle, The Invention of Lying, is a prime example of a “high-concept” film — so much so that the concept itself is the title (I believe that the last time so little credit was given to audiences, snakes were on a plane). What if, the film asks, humankind had never developed the ability to state anything other than the facts? And — yes — what if one man figured out how to do otherwise? Ready? Go!

Perhaps it sounds familiar? It’s essentially the inverse of Liar Liar, Jim Carrey’s 1997 high-concept vehicle. Instead of having only one member of the human race incapable of lying, though, here only one member of the human race is capable of lying. Fortunately, Gervais’ subtle, character-based humor is somewhat more interesting than Carrey’s slapstick (no disrespect intended towards Carrey’s slapstick, of course — you can never have enough of that) and we get a film that’s not afraid to tread some less-beaten and more-controversial paths than the average broad, PG-13 comedy. I’d be lying if I called it an unqualified success, but at least it’s a little different.

The world with which Lying initially presents us is really nothing short of Twilight Zone material. Not only are people entirely incapable of lying, they’re also unable to write fiction and completely without anything resembling tact. Films consist exclusively of history lectures (Gervais’ character, Mark Bellison, is an unsuccessful screenwriter), and people routinely confess, unprompted, to recent bowel movements and masturbation sessions. In such a world, anyone who can tell untruths is essentially able to mold reality to their will — so when Bellison realizes he can increase the size of his bank account with some simple vocal sounds, his world flips upside down.

For whatever reason, within the first ten minutes of the film — when this Totally-Lie-Free World was still being introduced to me — my mind immediately jumped to the obvious theological question: What does religion look like in this world? If everyone is incapable of lying, does everyone have perfect theology? Or does religion remain a simple matter of opinion? Or something else? Apparently, Gervais and company had the exact same thought, and the entire second act might as well have been titled The Invention of Religion.

Yes, in a world without lies, there is no religion. I imagine this will offend quite a few, but that fact just might make me respect Gervais a bit more. The safest tack would of course have been to ignore religion entirely, but that would have been lazy; instead, he’s chosen to be an equal-opportunity offender (though the Dawkins-worshipping set will perhaps escape unscathed). Bellison invents the idea of God almost by accident, and everyone in the world believes him to the letter, giving him more power than he knows what to do with — and turning the film’s second half into something of a Bruce Almighty for secular humanists. (Gervais should watch out, or he could get typecast as the thinking-man’s Jim Carrey.)

Those who think that any sort of serious assault against religion is being launched here, though, should probably lighten up; rather than coming off as spitefully anti-religious, the film actually manages to function as a primer on several essential and ancient theological debates — the problem of evil, the paradox of free will, etc. — making it undeniably far more interesting than anything FoxFaith has ever released.

More to the point, though, there’s material here that’s far deeper than the question of any given faith’s veracity. An incapacity for lies is more than that — it’s an incapacity for fable, for metaphor, and for abstraction as well; it’s subhuman. The fixation that Lying’s characters have on exacting scientific fact cripples their ability to look beneath the surface of life and toward any deeper realities. An incapacity for Lies is, paradoxically, an incapacity for Truth as well. Marriages are arranged entirely based on genetic matches, and no ideas any deeper than “You look like a dork” and “My poop stinks” are ever exchanged.

It’s a hollow existence.

It’s not a hollow film, though. Its anarchic take on humanity’s sacred cows will likely alienate many, but that’s what gives it its offbeat philosophical appeal. Unfortunately, it’s a two-edged sword, and it also makes for a film lacking in structure. The laughs don’t come as fast and furious as one would hope (face it, this is a one-joke comedy), and the storyline is sacrificed to make a “point” more than once. The result is a film that’s more likely to make you think than laugh, but whether that’s good or bad is entirely up to you. One thing, however, is for sure: reactions to it are likely to be strong.

And, in an era of bland, broad comedy, that’s hardly a criticism.

With the business of managing unrealistic expectations out of the way, Paranormal Activity is unequivocally better than 95% of the splatter industry’s yearly output. Its effectiveness lies not in innovation (found-footage films that are – we swear! – based on a true story lost their novelty post-Blair Witch), nor in gratuitous jump scares, but in simplicity. Paranormal Activity is about a young couple who purchase a video camera in order to document the spooky happenings in their house… and that’s it. There is – almost literally – nothing else to the plot. Director Oren Peli, happily restrained by a shoestring budget, focuses on wringing every ounce of creepiness from the nighttime footage. All he does is flip on a few light switches, insert some thump-thump sound effects, and ruffle the sleeping couple’s sheets, but the chill factor is off the charts. You’ll be sitting on a pin – and the theater will likely be as quiet as a dropping one – waiting for the bedroom door to simply creak open a few inches. Less certainly is more.

Doesnt look very scary, does it?

Such minimalist cinema, especially when it has the hokey task of convincing you that ghosts are real, relies entirely on the strength of its performances. Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (playing, ha-ha, Katie and Micah) are superb in that regard. Their relationship is authentic, their chemistry effortless, and when the freak starts hitting the fan, their mounting fear is unbelievably believable. Small bit parts – the proverbial psychic, the concerned best friend – are likewise bona fide. A false performance would have instantly sunk the film; kudos to Peli and crew for recognizing the necessity of pitch-perfect casting.

Don’t believe the hype. Paranormal Activity isn’t the scariest thing since Jack Nicholson went postal on Shelly Duvall, and the ending (apparently fiddled with by Paramount) feels a bit plastic and out of step with the rest of the film, but considering the upcoming slate of splatter-schlock – The House of the Devil, The Fourth Kind (yet ANOTHER its-so-true-we-promise! flick) and, joy of annual joys, Saw VI – it would be criminal for you to skip out on this ghostly gem.

Bright Star, the auteur’s seventh film – and her first in over six years – is the story of poet John Keats and muse Fanny Brawne (the original DIY fashion designer?). He, the disheveled rock-star-esque poet and she, the sassy, yet naive, girl next door. Like many – if not all – of Campion’s previous films, Bright Star is about passion and desire truncated by tragedy. Though more staid than usual, the filmmaker’s latest effort is no less scrumptious in both its ecstatic highs first breathed love and trembling lows of inevitable disintegration and death. Australian Abbie Cornish (poet Heath Ledger’s heroine chic art student girlfriend in Candy and the lost little girl runaway in the criminally overlooked dark down-under masterpiece Somersault) and Brit Ben Whishaw (Perfume’s psycho with a nose for murder and the most poetic of Dylan avatars in I’m Not There) play the tragic couple with a near perfect chemistry. Cornish’s heaving tantrums and desperate, sometimes obsessive, longings give her rather shallow Fanny Brawne a deep, textual sensuality. We see in her an undying – and somewhat unforgiving – love for Keats. Meanwhile Whishaw becomes a ramshackle tubercular genius and his Keats a tragic hero. In the end Campion’s performers seem just as delectable as her film.

To end on the same note the film does – and to deliver the titular finale – I will hand this review over to Mr. Keats himself, and allow the poet to punctuate Ms. Campion’s film better than I know how.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art–

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–

No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Max runs across the street and peeks in his house to get his teenage sister’s attention.  She’s busy on the phone and her friends are coming over soon.  Spurned, he goes back to his fort, but when the friends arrive, Max initiates a surprise snowball fight from behind the fence.

The fight, born from an innocent hunger for fun, escalates suddenly and ends with an older boy crushing Max’s snow fort with an impassioned, vindictive leap.  The defeated Max emerges from the snow fort with tears rolling down his face as his sister hops in the car with her friends and drives away without even a wave or caring gesture.  In turn, Max runs into the house and tears her room apart, crushing even the paper heart he once made her for Valentine’s Day.

Max and his mom

Here we are introduced to the other side of Max.  Like any small child, he is easily hurt and his fragile emotions ever vulnerable.  He cauterizes this hurt through destruction and anger and after an evening altercation with his mother (the beautiful and reliable Catherine Keener), bolts from inside the house onto the street where he soon loses his way and gets lost in the woods.  Soon enough, he has escaped to the imaginary land of the wild things.

The wild things are beautiful puppet/CG creations elegantly envisioned by the Jim Henson Company and voiced by the likes of James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, and Chris Cooper.  Lumbering through their native land – a wondrous place in walking distance from an ocean, a desert, and a verdant forest – they sound like humans, have the momentary reasoning power of adults, and use the logic of the smallest children.

The Wild Things

Upon entering the land of the wild things, screenwriter Dave Eggers takes Maurice Sendak’s setting and transforms it into a literary world where Max’s real-life experience is mirrored in the words, actions, emotions, and thoughts of the wild creatures.  Their world looks much different than reality, but the motions of the heart and the consequences of actions remain the same – and for Max, this is the most profound surprise.

Max Records as Max

The film hinges on Max and Spike Jonze and his team have snagged the perfect child for the role: Max Records.  How a small child could keep a character like this so stunningly consistent throughout a two-hour film that takes place in so many settings and sustains so many imaginative flourishes is stunning.  Then again, perhaps he’s just being himself.

Still, because it tries so hard to faithfully envision childhood imagination, Where the Wild Things Are is often visually and aurally confusing.  The wild things act like children and while Jonze’s camera inhabits their land, it does too.  We’re taken from one immaculately designed setpiece to another, faced with the immaturity and confusion of one wild thing after another and soon enough we’re disoriented.  Is this the point?  Perhaps, but cinematically less is more for a land like this.

Carol and Max walk through the desert

And though it may be far from obvious, this is not a children’s film.  It is dark, it is often harrowing (in a PG kind of way), and it is free from the sentimentality and romanticism that plagues lesser films about children.  Warner Bros. rejected a preliminary cut of the film months ago because it was too dark and with the final product in view, it doesn’t seem like much has been toned down.

Humor me some introspection, if you will.  Exiting Where the Wild Things Are, I felt as if I had missed something for I found myself thinking, “If only someone would please calm that kid down!”  I soon realized why.

I am not Max.  I wasn’t the energetic kid who built forts out of chairs and blankets, who ran around in an animal costume and wished he could run without stopping for ever and ever.  On the contrary, I was the kid from that children’s classic The Red Balloon, quietly content to myself, glad to follow the metaphorical red balloon around the streets for hours on end.

An adventure with a new friend

I don’t think my caustic reaction to Max is entirely unfounded, but to eschew him would be to close my eyes to what a profoundly wounded character he is.  Though there are moments when Jonze urges us to empathize with Max’s misbehavior to an unhealthy extent, his vision of Sendak’s story culminates in a subtle redemptive flourish that is stunning in its power and profound in its implications.

All the imagination in the world may help a boy function in private, but it is the love and care of people in the real world that shape a young man.  This is the heart of Where the Wild Things Are and a lesson that will hopefully take root in the hearts of people who welcome this classic story into their lives now and in the years to come.

Thing is, Year One, the mistake made by the otherwise suitable and crafty Harold Ramis, just simply does not work, and this was due to its casting: Micheal Cera and Jack Black, two huge stars, as what we expected. True comedy comes from the reversal of personas, and the totally, utterly, unexpectedness of the straight man (Cera) becoming the bumbling crap-eating boob hell-bent on starting what was hilariously known as the Muscle Tribe of Danger and Excellence!

But behold, none of this occurred.

So now we’re back to, well, square one (no pun intended): the same old lame comedy that some producer thought would work because the sensible caveman with a soft voice fails to score the girl until he saves the day, and the village stooge runs around spouting lame jokes and making funny faces.

Year One is where it should be at this point; concealed on a nice, shiny DVD packaged and ready to clog up space in your collection — because that’s where it will likely sit until perhaps the Second Coming.

Starring Jason Ritter (best known as being the son of the late John Ritter) and Jess Weixler (best known for having the hoo-hoo with an eating disorder in the subversively suburban Teeth!) as the titular couple, Peter and Vandy, though at times dry and listless, is not without its high points. Or should I say medium points? To illustrate, one need look no further than the centerpiece of sorts to this disintegrating relationship fable. For those of you scoring at home, that would be the PB&J argument. The PB&J argument, wherein Peter unleashes his pent up anger at Vandy for not making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to his exacting standards is the chewy emotional center of DiPietro’s film. It is in the PB&J argument where we see all aspects of the relationship come together in a supernova of sorts. Pointless in a way perhaps, but one can surely see the absurdist comedy-cum-tragedy in such a scene – can one not?

At this point it may seem as if I have some sort of vested interest in this film – an associate producer credit perhaps, or maybe I was just inundated with junket swag – and therefore have decided to take it upon myself to become its champion. Not true of course, but I do seem to be one of the very few critics who have not totally dismissed this film right off the cinematic radar. All snarky championing aside, Peter and Vandy is a well-constructed, well acted film. Ritter and Weixler are tragically sublime as the young couple coming together and falling apart and coming together and falling apart and coming together. Their melange of sweet bitterness and salty tenderness acts as a catalyst for what makes their in-movie relationship seem all the more real. We have all had that PB&J argument (or something akin to it) at least once in our past and/or present relationships and therefore can see ourselves in the crackling desperation of both Peter and Vandy.

True, the film tends to get tired a bit too often – and may seem a low-rent something-or-other – but its blend of humanistic acting and subtly warm photography against an extremely chilly backdrop – both literally and figuratively – make for a film that reaches higher than anyone would ever think it could. To harken once more back to its Sundance cohort, this is a much rawer, much more intimate portrayal of the ubiquitous relationship than (500) Days could ever dream of being. That film had its cute, hip thing going rather nicely for it, but it never reaches the ugly depths this film can sink to in showing the heartache of love. In sum, Peter and Vandy is a bare-bones, emotionally true, down-to-the-core relationship movie far removed from the candy-coated non-reality of what passes for romantic melodrama in Hollywood today – and that is more than enough for this critic.

So just in case you’re still thinking of going, let me save you the trouble. I can tell you the whole movie in two sentences. Ready? Here we go: Politicians that tend to vote against gay rights initiatives? They’re totally closeted gays.

There. Now you have no reason whatsoever to see it (you owe me one). Mr. Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated) takes an hour and a half (!!!) to tell you that. Over and over, in excruciatingly boring detail. It’s like gossip hour, only when you yell “Oh no he didn’t!” Mr. Dick doesn’t respond with “Oh yes he did!” — at least not in so many words. (Have you ever seen that episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a couple of gay roommates who like to flip through channels and point out all the gay actors? That’s pretty much what this is, except with a straight face.)

Charlie Crist. Wait, this guy's gay? I don't see it...

Now I don’t want to leave you thinking that Mr. Dick is outing gay politicians for no good reason. Of course he’s not. He’s outing them because he doesn’t like the way they vote. Each one he outs (he focuses on Idaho Senator Larry Craig and Florida Governor Charlie Crist, but there are a half dozen more he touches on as well) is given an animated voting record that shows all their “no’s” on issues like gay marriage, gays in the military, and funding appropriation for AIDS research. Each one has a “conservative” history, and each one also appears to be leading a double life. One that involves copulating. With dudes. Wink, nudge.

Am I being too vague? No? Good.

Mr. Dick’s argument here essentially boils down to some pretty standard pop psychology: Repression of urges leads to self-hatred; self-hatred leads to hatred of others; hatred of others leads to unsavory politics. I have no doubts that some political positions stem from hatred, and I have no doubts that some hatred comes at least in part from repression. The problem is when it’s stated with such certainty as to come across as some sort of Freudian dogma — particularly when the case for such dogma is poorly argued at best and simply taken for granted at worst.

Filmmaking technique aside, this is the fundamental reason that Outrage isn’t an interesting film — there’s no serious inquiry here. Kirby goes for the easy (and already popularly accepted) explanation for everything — and he simply can’t conceive of the possibility that anyone would disagree with his political viewpoints for any reason other than hate. If you’re against gay marriage, you’re hateful. If you’re against gays in the military, you’re hateful. If you’re against government-funded AIDS research, you’re hateful.

Mr. Dick shows his true colors when he includes a clip of Mike Rogers — a blogger who makes it his business to “out” gay politicians — calling the men in question “traitors to our people.” Whoa, slow down there, Mike! That sort of rhetoric is not only divisive and politically regressive — it’s borderline fascist. I’m no expert, but experience has shown me that people hold opinions for all sorts of reasons. Not all vegetarians love animals. Not all capitalists are rich. Not all war protestors are pacifists. Self-loathing expressed through irrational hatred may be a reason to oppose government funding for AIDS research, but it’s not the reason. Some of these men could simply believe that the money would be better spent elsewhere. Just because the gay rights community has claimed the issue as its own, everyone who happens to be gay should be in favor of it? This is the same sort of prescriptivist groupthink that has been lobbed at everyone from women who dared to oppose abortion, to blacks who didn’t demand reparations for slavery, to white Aryans who didn’t back Hitler. (Yeah, I went there.) Jingoism is our enemy, not our friend. If people can’t think for themselves, what good is this democracy stuff, anyway?

Barney Frank, being at least as gay as Charlie Crist

You might think I’m being a bit too hard on Mr. Dick, but he seems determined to undermine his credibility here from the get-go. The very first sentence in the film (related through some on-screen text) tells us that “There exists a conspiracy to keep gay politicians in the closet. It’s so powerful that the mainstream media won’t report on it.” Really? A conspiracy? When you confuse a general reluctance to report on politicians’ sex lives with the sort of thing that crackpots believe keeps the lizard-men who orchestrated 9/11 in power (and is often modified by the words “vast” and “right-wing”), you’ll forgive me if I think you’re foaming at the mouth a bit too much.

And foam at the mouth he does. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s so much anger in a film entitled Outrage, but what’s truly off-putting about it is that it’s the sort of blindly unthinking anger that’s characterized both ends of the gay rights debate since its inception. Both “sides” (if you’ll allow so crass a term) have spent the last 40 years arbitrarily declaring their viewpoint to be the moral high ground, and then using long-discredited pop psychology factoids to belittle the other side, all while patting themselves on the back for it. It’s lazy, and it’s pointless, and frankly, it wastes countless hours in our political system — hours that could be used to accomplish all sorts of things. Perhaps an individual can be forgiven for blindly clinging to half-baked ideas, but a documentary film cannot.

And, in any case, a film that neither entertains nor educates is inexcusable.

The story follows the lives of con-men Stephen (Ruffalo) and Bloom (Brody) from their early days when they were kids to the height of their deceptive prowess. After their latest escapade Bloom decides that this isn’t the life for him. Years later, Stephen shows up with one last con for the duo to pull off.

While being repetitive nearing the end of the film, I found the story to be fresh and lively. The plots within the story seemed more convoluted than they actually were, and were easily followed, giving the viewer more freedom to experience the film. There were times, however, when I felt like the film needed a little more subtlety. While the narrator was needed and kept the story going at it’s brisk pace, I occasionally felt that the narrator gave away too much information. There were also a few quick flashbacks near the end of the film that were redundant.

The subtext of the film is hard to pinpoint, and I expect that I will be revisiting this film very soon. It’s difficult because The Brothers Bloom is at times subtle and at times very upfront about what’s going on. Thinking back, one of my favorite scenes is when Bloom, who has been struggling with his personal freedom (seemingly) steals an apple at random. It’s a defining moment for Bloom and for the theme of free will, which is ironic within the environment of the film.

While Bloom is the main character of the film, Mark Ruffalo is the talent that shines. Mixing Cary Grant with a dash of Paul Newman, Ruffalo exudes a roguish charm, topped off with a black fedora.

Robbie Coltrane shows up as a minor character, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt sneaks in with my favorite cameo of the year so far. The character of Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), while mildly entertaining, is an unnecessary character that has very little bearing on the other characters…although she did bring explosives.

At the end of the day I have to ask myself, did I take much away from the film? I’m not sure. But it was one hell of a ride, and I look forward to watching it again.

If you can answer no, you’ll probably enjoy Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It. The film breaks very little new ground (and, frankly, contains nearly every “indie” film cliché that will make Juno and Garden State haters squirm), but is still a charming and funny flick that manages to be offbeat enough to be a lot of fun.

Juno herself, Ellen Page, stars as Bliss, a teenager living in an “armpit” of a small Texas town, and who is routinely forced into local beauty pageants by her overzealous mother. In an act of rebellion, she runs off to Austin one night to witness an underground roller derby take place, and gets sucked into the world — eventually becoming the star skater on the team — and begins leading a double life.

In other words, it’s basically Bend it Like Beckham on roller skates — minus the art-housey pretensions to importance, of course (and it ends up being much more fun for the exact same reason). Give Barrymore credit, though, for starting out with a simple formula. As an established actor debuting as a director, the temptation for her is to try to impress first and entertain second — this has led to many first-time directors biting off more than they could chew (Crazy in Alabama, anyone?). In Barrymore’s case she’s simply picked a tried-and-true formula with a better-than-average script, and lined up a talented cast to execute it.

Credit also should go to the choice of setting, which is just off-beat enough that the novelty works in its favor. There are plenty of sports movies, after all, but how many roller derby movies have you seen, ever? (A quick Google search just yielded approximately four results, and one of them featured the Addams Family.) The opportunity here isn’t missed, and some great roller derby action is committed to film.

Of course, all of that wouldn’t matter if the story didn’t ring true. And it mostly does. As I’ve said, there’s nothing earth-shattering about the very-“Austin” Bliss and her very-“The Rest of Texas” family, but Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern (where has he been lately?) both put it nuanced performances as her parents. Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development and Kirsten Wiig of Saturday Night Live also both show up in disarmingly funny roles, and everyone does their job of pushing Bliss into adulthood. It’s not exactly the sort of comedy that makes you fall out of your chair laughing, and it’s not the sort that you’ll be quoting for weeks afterward, but it is the sort that makes it impossible to stop smiling — and that just might be the best sort.

If you disagree, you obviously hate sunny days and dropkick puppies for fun.

As for those folks who know nothing outside their world’s of NASCAR, wrestling and reality TV trainwrecks, they are not going to waste their “precious” time by seeing anything higher-browed than the latest Adam Sandler and/or Will Ferrell comedy anyway. Ironically, many of these people are the very ones Moore is standing up for in his latest film. The common person. The Middle American. The laid-off blue collar backbone of the nation kind of people. The people who lost their jobs after the factories closed. The people who are losing their homes due to corporate and political greed. Although he does proclaim an affinity, an empathy if you will, with and for such people – and I believe he is sincere in this affinity and/or empathy – Moore does not make his movies for these people either.

As for either side of the so-called political spectrum, Moore is a two-headed coin of sorts. Never claiming to be fair and balanced (as a certain “news” agency arrogantly does!) he alienates one side while placating the other. Those of a more liberal bent (myself whole-heartedly included) – Moore’s core fan base if you will – end up being nothing more than the proverbial choir being preached to. Those of the tea party set – Glenn Beck’s angry mob of Stepford children if you will – would never be caught dead in a Michael Moore film, unless they were outside lobbing absurdist Beckian soundbites at all those going into the theatre as if they were outside a West Virginia-set Planned Parenthood and Moore was the “evil” abortion doctor holed up inside. No, Moore doesn’t make his movies for either of these groups of people either.

So the question remains – who the hell is this bombastic badger making movies for? The answer is the cinephile. Yeah, you heard me. It may not be a conscious effort (then again, it may be – at least to a partial degree) but it is for those of us obsessed with the cinema for whom Moore makes his movies. The film buffs, cineastes and auteurists out there are Moore’s true core audience. Or at least they damn well should be. Taken as pure entertainment, albeit with a rather satiric Marxist bent, Moore’s films – from 1989’s Roger & Me right on through to the rather under-appreciated Sicko two years ago – have been leading up to something wholly unexpected. With each successive film, Moore has become more and more resemblant to a certain New Wave cinematic icon. Now, with Capitalism: A Love Story, the filmmaker’s sixth film (unless one wants to count the John Candy vehicle Canadian Bacon, the director’s lone foray into fictional movie-making – and why would one?), he has made his most Godardian film to date. Yes, for better or for worse, Michael Moore has become an auteur.

From the very start, Moore has created the most Godardian of motion picture excesses. From his primary-coloured opening note and his montage comparison of ancient Rome (via sword & sandals-esque footage from an old movie on the subject) and modern America (juxtaposing the image of Dick Cheney with the narrator’s mention of the emperor!) Moore gives us a creature that would fit in perfectly with the French new waver’s late sixties-early seventies output. This is Moore’s Tout va Bien, his Made in U.S.A., his Week-end, even. Although Moore doesn’t seem to share JLG’s once rather right-wing dalliances (he got over it!) he near-perfectly captures Godard’s flippant reverence for both cinematic history and political outrage. With Marxist mantra in tow, Moore has become less the godhead of self-righteousness many claim he is, and more the agit-prop provocateur in the realms of Godard and von Trier and Haneke and the like. Yes he still cares about that aforementioned backbone of America crowd – and makes his movies to help them best he can – but that hasn’t stopped his films from becoming increasingly more cinematic in nature. Cinematic to the point that not only is his finger on the pulse of the people and his tongue firmly pressed against chubby, unshaven cheek, his camera-eye is set toward the ancillarily artistic.

Yes, Moore should – and does – take his subjects seriously. Like Godard, his films are no mere entertainment alone, but something more. Something important. Yes, Moore – like Godard again in a way – plays at being the clown prince of liberal indignation, but he never loses sight of the grand picture. Mixing lark with pathos, he paints this grand picture with broad strokes of buffoonery in order to get people to take notice. Like the class clown in school, shouting, laughing and mocking until everyone is looking at him for what he’ll do next. But unlike the class clown, once everyone is looking Moore’s way, he pulls the camera away from himself and points it at his intended sympathetic subjects. The real drama unfolds when Moore points his camera at these subjects and we hear their stories. A family being kicked out of their home due to relentless foreclosure, only to turn around and have to work for pittance for the very bank that is throwing them to the curb. A widow wearing bitter indignation on her face when she finds out how her late husband’s company had made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the so-called “dead peasant” insurance policy they took out on him in secret. Moore may clown around in his crazy ape kind of way in order to get people to pay attention to his movies, but once they do he hook- line-and-sinkers them with the seemingly endless sad stories from his beloved Middle America.

The debate of clownish buffoon or serious auteur aside, Moore is always fodder for the right. Called a fat, bloated liar by many of the red state commentators, it seems his weight gain is the most abhorrent personality trait to their overly sensitive palettes. He is even shown as such in the horribly misleading – and quite unfunny – An American Carol (that movie made by the last seven remaining Republicans in Hollywoodland). Of course, the “liar” portion of their complaints is ballyhooed about like pork rinds and Natty Light at a red state tailgate party. Granted, there may have been some truth-coaxing in some of his films, though never any outright lies, but using poetic license to get your point across has always been the forte of the muckraker. Moore has never claimed to be unbiased, and his movies have never acted as such. Moore paints with broad strokes, and just like Godard before him, he may leave some information out in order to make his point clearer to those watching his movies. None of this voids the fact that the greed of capitalism has hurt this country and the people who are its backbone. None of this should be ammo for those who hate the man as much as they hate his “dirty pinko” ideas, but it is of course. Then again, you will probably never meet a middle-of-the-road Moore observer. He is either all hate or all love. It’s just the haters club is the more vocal. One anonymous Wall Streeter, when asked by Moore for advice, tells him to stop making movies.

Then again, Moore seems to be getting at least a little less flack this time around. Even many Republicans – the bane of Moore’s crux so to speak – are against the bailout and the ridiculous greed of people such as Bernie Madoff and his ilk. As many of the families getting the foreclosured boot are Republicans as they are Democrats.  There is also the notable mention that the film is being released by Overture Films, which is owned by noted Rush Limbaugh fan John Malone.  The irony of conservative indignation at Moore is palpable. Moore ends up blasting just as many Dems as he does G.O.P.-ers in his latest work. Much has also been said of how Moore can tout a Marxist revolution of sorts while still making millions on his movies. These critics never mention that Moore pays for every one of his employees’ medical benefits out of his own pocket. They never mention his living in a modest home and driving an older, American car. They never mention his charity work for Katrina victims or the like. Of course Moore has not completely denounced capitalism. You don’t get a body like that without more than a few trips to McDonald’s late-night drive-thru. If anything, Moore still loves capitalism – like an old girlfriend who has ditched him for a richer, cooler boy – and mourns its death in these days of corporate greed and commercial excess. He does subtitle his film A Love Story after all. Of course don’t try explaining any of this to Glenn Beck.

At the end of his film, Moore wraps Wall Street (or at least part of it) in yellow crime scene tape as if he is some sort of blunderbuss, rabble rousing Cristo. He follows this by saying he can’t live in a country like this, but that he is not going anywhere. It is a call to arms in a way. Perhaps not an out-and-out revolution but still a call for people to rise and take their country back. The country that striking workers demanded when they were forced out of their lifelong jobs. The country that FDR dreamt of when he laid down his new bill of rights just before he died (shown in archival footage near the end of the film). The country that Moore remembers from his childhood in the now defunct Flint, Michigan. Moore claims this is his final documentary and when he heads back to the corporate offices of GM – where his first film, Roger & Me started off (and of course he is still not allowed in) – it acts as perfect bookend to a career forcing people to think about what their country – or more apt, their government – has done to them. Whether this is his final film, only time will tell. Perhaps he will make Canadian Bacon II: The Iraq Equation next – who knows.

In sum, as I defend the man along with the film it has hit me that perhaps I am a bit too biased myself.  After all, I am one of that aforementioned proverbial choir being preached to.  So I wish to end my review with the words of someone who has a little more knowledge about such things as capitalism and its fellow buzzwords – and a person one would think would be somewhat biased in the other direction.  As the end credits roll, there is a quote from Warren Buffett, one of the richest people on the planet and surely one of those purported 1% who own 95% of the wealth. I want to close with that quote. “It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.”. ‘Nuff said.

Welcome to Zombieland, where if you follow the rules laid out within the narration of the films main star — named after under-appreciated city of Columbus and played by Micheal Cera duplicate Jesse Eisenberg (there’s a metaphor in there somewhere) — you’re likely to survive. But what about rules in regard to well-balanced, well-devised scenarios amongst horror and mayhem?

It appears throughout the film, one filled with predictability and jokes that fall flat like a beheaded maniac with blood spilling from his/her mouth, that Zombieland is an overload of all things wrong with numerous renditions in regard to this particular genre.

Unlike Shaun of the Dead, which, believe it or not, consisted of a well executed plot, Zombieland focuses on the sheer shock and awe of its impressive and, disturbingly wretched makeup effects, and forgets that in order for the audience to care we must invest in the lives of its central and supporting characters.

Instead we’re thrown into what becomes a muddled, poorly crafted, and cheesy story that spoils its own value even during the opening credits. The positive, though, isWoody Harrelson — one reason this film was tolerable — as Tallahassee. His need for redemption and Twinkies becomes suitable scene-stealing fodder.

Appearances by Abigail Breslin (as “Little Rock”) and Emma Stone (as “Wichita”) provide the film with the usual balance and contrast but fail to enlighten or refresh the main character’s point of view. Simply, they seem placed in a film for the mere fact that Columbus can barely manage to free himself from his own insecurities. There’s nothing new in regard to this aspect of becoming a man.

Nonetheless, for tongue-in- cheek horror fans, Zombieland offers an escape and great makeup effects. There are a few good jokes sprinkled in, and also stunts to satisfy action buffs. So as Tallahassee would proudly put it, “It’s time to nut-up or shut up!” and see for yourself if Zombieland is worth the liters of blood spilled.

This film critic chooses to shut up.

In all sincerity, the Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida written, Sam Mendes directed Away We Go is not really a bad film. It has some genuinely funny moments throughout. Many of these are already shown in the trailer (which seemed to play before just about every damned movie I saw for the two months prior to the film’s release!) but they are funny nonetheless. As alluded to in my opening salvo, it is not the humour aspect of the film that is lacking but rather it is when Eggers & Vida and Mendes decide to emotionally manipulate their audience that the film plummets into a proverbial pit of maudlin excess. A self-indulgent rap of indie movie cliches. It’s almost as if the film were a two-headed bipolar beast without any real instincts to know which way to better go. And that is my being generous again.

Hey, we deserve a better script than this.

Mendes is a director that can be – and has been – a pretentious hipster doofus (American Beauty), an overly ambitious visual artist (Road to Perdition), a mistaken technical experimenter (Jarhead) and a daring would-be maestro (Revolutionary Road). With Away We Go, he has created what, by all accounts, appears to be nothing more than a mere distraction in what is otherwise a strongly well-manicured, if not somewhat stumbling at times, oeuvre. In the past, even when Mendes has failed as a director, his films have, at the very least, been born of hearty cinematic stock. Even in his most extreme cases of ridiculousness – the infamous plastic bag indulgence of the extremely over-rated American Beauty – Mendes manages to indulge also his cinematic senses. Here it seems as if Away We Go were merely a toss-off he made while having some free time between filming and post production of Revolutionary Road. I’m not sure if the dates coincide, but it surely seems that way to this critic.

Granted, Away We Go is well filmed – a visually striking panorama of road movies as it were – and therefore, even with his seeming nonchalant directorial attitude, does have delusions of cinema. And as (again) alluded to earlier, both Rudolph and Krasinski make the most of what they are given. Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal are also quite hilarious in their supporting roles as polar opposite mother figures. Unfortunately though, along comes the husband and wife team of Eggers and Vida (once called “the current literary equivalent of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston” by the San Fran Chronicle – there’s an ominous foreboding if ever there were one) and with them a sickeningly sweet solipsistic screenplay, via the snarkiest of highways. Nothing more can be done for the poor film at this point. Its course hath been cast.

On top of all this schmarmy hullabaloo, the soap-sudsy wrap-up ending (daring to go even further over the precipice of self-righteous indignation than ever before in the film and having an everything will work out if only you follow your heart Hallmark moment) acts as insult to injury.  Especially to those who the film was most aiming toward – the navel-gazing in-crowd slackers who drink way too much coffee and read way too much David Sedaris. A disappointing display in its unwieldy mediocrity (never terrible but never great either – that two-headed bipolar beast rearing its ugly heads once again) considering the potential the film had from the beginning. I suppose though, such audiences never even take notice. As for me, I just took it as just another unfortunate lump on the whopper saccharine headache I was already wearing from the first 80 minutes or so.

Now this girl — who’s totally captain of the cheerleading squad and stuff — is, y’know, like an unholy monster from hell. And, like, when she eats people she’s hot like that cute-butt-of-the-month girl that the boys all like, Megan Fox? But when she doesn’t, she gets all splotchy and stuff, and looks like Megan Fox probably does when she forgets her makeup, or whatever. You can totally see the dilemma, right?

Anyway, this one is the new one written by that Diablo Cody chick — she’s like some sort of skanky stripper or something? She wrote that movie Juno, which I guess was one of those Oscar movies that smart people go to? Whatever. People are always talking about the “sophomore slump” (which is totally that girl in my French class, am I right? burn!), and, like, maybe that’s what’s going on here? This one has all that dialogue filled with a bunch of slang that I’m pretty sure Diablo just made up, but, like, without any of the interesting characters to say it. It’s, like, so annoying. This Diablo lady’s like 30 years old! You’re not that cool, okay Diablo? Gawd, I hope I don’t live to be 30.

It's like 'Carrie.' But, y'know, different.

So like, okay, some people tell me that back in the 60’s and 70’s, when like, old people were alive, there was a genre of movie called “exploitation,” where horror movies would have ridiculous plots and then be, like, full of gore and nudity to get people to come see them. And maybe that’s what she’s going for? But, there’s like almost no gore in this movie, and no nudity at all! It’s definitely kept at PG-13 levels, which I totally don’t get, since there’s, like, a butt-ton of f-bombs. And then they’re, like, all trying to shock me with a lesbian kiss? It’s like, welcome to 1996, Diablo!

Okay, so I totally don’t want to blame just Diablo here, because the director was Karyn Kusama, and she made that terrible Aeon Flux movie that nobody likes, so whatever. And also, like, there’s definitely some good stuff here. There’s some pretty funny jokes about how indie rock music sucks, and some stuff about female sexuality that they tell me is “vaguely Freudian,” whatever the hecks that means. But really, it all ends up just feeling like a long episode of Buffy, and that so isn’t enough if you’re trying to impress those weird Hot Topic kids. So whatever, right? I mean, like, I liked it, but I don’t know who I’d recommend it to, right?

Anyway, now I totally need a shower.

Telling the story of James, a twenty-twoish college student who, when confronted with his father’s layoff, is forced to take a job at a local decrepit old amusement park in order to get next semester’s tuition bankroll. This, of course, is where he will meet the girl of his supposed dreams. Filled with a stylish (and unstylish) array of cast-offs and misfits, all with their own typically indie-cinema quirkiness, Adventureland could easily have fallen into the realm of the ridiculous (possibly even the purgatory of straight-to-video). Instead, it is raised above such muck by a relatively well-adjusted cast of characters who manage to go beyond the fiddle faddle of typicality so prevalent in such movies (much like the mundane boorishness of the aforementioned Apatow universe. In short, the wry, acerbic crowd with which it is populated saves Mottola’s film, a by-the-book rom-com in most ways.

It is the laid back, but in his best panic-mode style, Gen X (or is it Y?) sarcastic witticisms of Jesse Eisenberg, as the strange kid in a strange land that get everything started. Following in the footsteps of his (admittedly similar) roles in The Education of Charlie Banks and the wonderfully lacerating The Squid and the Whale as well as the soon-to-be released Zombieland in hindsighted perspective, Eisenberg is once again the voice of manic, jaded reason and esoteric intelligentsia. The kid is simply a blast to watch and listen to as he acts out his role as the very antithesis of what Hollywood – and the middle American corn belt and minivan set who go along with it – think of as the ideal leading man. The kid is just too smart for that kind of thing. Quirky, sensitive and full of bitter, pop-culture-referenced angst, Eisenberg – and in turn James – is not what the mass-media hype-mongers want us to see in the movies and/or on TV, but what the rest of us see when we look in the mirror everyday.

Joining Eisenberg in this playground of dehumanizing absurdities that is their park of pathos, is his femme fatale in faded jeans and ringer t-shirt, Kristen Stewart as Em, the dark, brooding girl of his supposed dreams. Stewart plays the part of permanent malaise to near perfection. This may not be so much her acting prowess (one cannot see that she has any to speak of really) as her actually being a dark, brooding girl of (somebody’s?) dreams. Cute, and rather appealing on a basic college quad girl kinda way, but just as listless as attractive.  It’s as if she were one of those emotionally-lobotomized Russian mail-order brides who just lie there in order to please their men and get their green cards. In other words, the typical twenty-something of today.  I suppose as long as Stewart sticks to roles that play on her dark, heroin (or is it meth? – I’m saying meth!) chic dullness – aka, vampire’s blood interest, depressed small town slut, Joan Jett – then she should have a strong career ahead of her. Running the acting gamut from A to B (as Dorothy Parker would likely say) should not be that hard. Of course we are lucky that her role as Em falls squarely into that two-letter thespianic spectrum.  I suppose though, this is what the role is asking for from its portrayer.  Now if only we could get her to have an emotion that does not involve just a crooked smile and cynical eye roll.

Rounding out the cast is a group of actors as mish-mashed as the characters they portray. SNL buddies Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are on the characterizing best as the hilariously square management team of the park. The oft-maligned Ryan Reynolds plays the half-studly maintenance man who may very well be the long-lost, slightly less skeevy brother of Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson from the contemporarily set Dazed and Confused. Martin Starr as Joel, the pipe-smoking class-centric oddball and soon-to-be best friend of James. You will also find Matt Bush as the in-serious-need-of-Ritalin Frigo (he is best known for being the thoughtless son who keeps catching the ire of his mom by throwing away all his unused minutes in those AT&T commercials). All in all, the cast (even the blase-for-blase-sake Stewart) pops with an almost ironic tone of self-awareness. A Freaks and Geeks of the amusement park set, I suppose you could say, all the while referencing not only another contemporarily set work (1981 this time) but also another Judd Apatow connection to boot.

Set in the seventies, and with a seventies aesthetic to it as well, Adventureland plays out as kitsch comedy tinged with a leering self-awareness by its always-on-the-nod-and-wink cast. It may not be perfect (but what is?) and it may play in typical rom-com territory when first explored, but Adventureland is fun once one decides to allude the surface schmaltz and go deeper into the belly of the proverbial beast. Perhaps though, it is just my nostalgic, somewhat romantic idealizing of the 1970’s of my childhood and the simple, but quite head-tilting fact that I actually grew up in an amusement park. Whatever the case may be, at least I had a fun ride. You didn’t think you would get away without a cheesy amusement park cliche did you? At least I didn’t call the movie the roller coaster ride of the summer.

It all fell shockingly apart when Rowan was diagnosed with autism in 2004 and The Horse Boy is their story; a beautiful picture of a family’s love for their ailing son, a love that manifests itself in an unconventional journey across the world to heal the little boy’s raging autism.

The family begins their journey.

Unlike some cases of autism, Rowan Isaacson’s case is debilitating.  At 5 years old, he was still not potty trained.  It was impossible for him to interact with his peers and his tantrums—caused not by physical circumstances but by events inside his brain—made him inconsolable, leaving his parents at a dead end when it came to helping him.

Anyone who has suffered from mental illness or walked alongside someone who is struggling will immediately identify with the Isaacsons.  To see any child suffer is unbearable, but to see Rowan suffer so uncontrollably and inconsolably while knowing that nothing can be done to stop the pain is nothing less than heartbreaking.

The only thing that the Isaacsons found that calmed their son’s raging mind were animals—particularly horses.  Confronted with a horse, Rowan’s tantrums would stop and his mind become calm.  Animals would run to him and be uncharacteristically gentle.  This puzzled Rupert and caused him to do some more research.

Having worked in Africa with human rights organizations, Rupert was aware of traditional healing ceremonies performed by tribal shamans.  He had seen people cured of a variety of illnesses, but eventually found that the only place that still practiced Shamanism was Mongolia, the country where, coincidentally, horseback riding originated.

Not knowing what to expect, the family flew to Mongolia and started their journey in the plains.  In the film, it comes as a shock when they are made to kneel on the grass next to a man beating a loud drum, and allow themselves to be whipped by a shaman while little Rowan screams in a tantrum in the background.  Kristin is even asked to wash herself with a special soap to rid her of a black spirit.  “You have to stand in the direction of your country,” the shaman advises, “and you have to wash your lower body where Rowan was coming out [during birth].”

Think what you will of these extremes. The Horse Boy is not a call to embrace shamanic tradition as the key to healing a child of severe autism.  In fact, even Rowan’s mother Kristin remains skeptical in the end as to whether the shamans were the key to Rowan’s healing.  Rather, the film is about fidelity and how commitment to the health of an ailing child is the most necessary component for renewal.

The family journeys through the mountains, where Rowan’s tantrums worsen as comforts are stripped away and the days achieve no pattern of normalcy.  He is incontinent, constantly screaming, but his parents never lose their patience.  Rooted in deep love for him, the spare hopeful moments are enough to keep them going.  Abandoning any adult agenda, they press on even through their own great discomfort.

The film features interviews with leading scholars and autism experts including Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin to Sacha Baron-Cohen of Borat fame) of Cambridge University and Dr. Temple Grandin, author of a book about using autism to better understand animal behavior.  Their expert opinions give the film an added sense of immediacy, but constantly seeing the Isaacsons go through hell to bring their son a sense of peace is never less than powerful.

Rupert and Rowan

At one point, Rupert and Rowan run through the plains of Mongolia through herds of goats before a brilliant sunset when the cameraman catches up with an exasperated Rupert.  “Quite an adventure,” the cameraman says to him. Panting and sweating, Rupert looks into the camera and simply says, “I love my son.”  A huge smile breaks across his face as he runs to catch up.

Yes, the film makes us aware of autism, but it’s in a moment like this that we get to glimpse what love it truly about.  The power of a father’s fidelity is the lasting effect of The Horse Boy and the spark that ignites a flame of hope that burns all the way to Mongolia and back.

Might.

Our sixteenth president graces nearly every scene. He’s just sitting there, in plaster or bronze form, smiling at the camera like he was Superman and this movie was Seinfeld. At first, I was wondering why there were so many Lincoln busts. After all, this is a movie about trust-busting; surely a bust of Teddy Roosevelt would be more appropriate? But then it hit me: Abraham Lincoln never told a lie! And this movie is about a guy who’s always lying! Get it?

No, really: do you get it? Because I’m pretty sure that’s the whole joke. Also, I’m fairly certain that it’s the only joke in the movie. The film, which relates the story of Mark Whitacre, a high-ranking whistle-blower at the chemical company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), tries to tell a true story and be funny at the same time; somehow, in the course of its two (long) hours, it forgets to do both.

Let me start with the first point: There is a true story here. ADM really was the subject of a multi-year investigation by the FBI regarding its price-fixing practices with regard to certain chemicals. Unfortunately, very little of that story is actually told. This is actually a biopic of Whitacre, who, due at least in part to his bipolar disorder, was a pathological liar — and somehow, director Steven Soderbergh has taken the old mantra “keep ‘em guessing” a bit too literally. The upshot is that Whitacre (played here by Matt Damon) is constantly saying things, but Soderbergh never bothers to show us which of them are true. In other words, if you’re not already intimately familiar with the case, you’ll be lost, and probably bored.

Informant! Licky boom-boom down!

As to being funny, I’m not sure who dropped the ball here, but I suppose we should have been tipped-off by the fact that whoever titled the film was convinced that exclamation points are the epitome of wit. The film itself is just as overwrought and half-baked. Matt Damon, dressed as a dork! Ha ha ha! Didn’t computers from the early nineties look funny? Ha ha! And hey, Abraham Lincoln sure gets around! Also unnecessary are the constant non-sequitur voiceovers from Damon, which serve to remind us again and again that This guy’s mind wanders!, and no doubt are covering up necessary plot exposition. But they’re funny, right? Well…no, and by the time they actually start telling you important things, you will have stopped listening a long time ago.

It’s likely that I’m being a bit too hard on this film. I’ve never been impressed by twisty-turny plots (mysteries and spy movies are pretty low on my list of genres), and I’m certainly not impressed by storytellers that lie to me (you’re telling the story here — it takes absolutely no skill to mislead a passive listener). But I don’t feel terribly bad about that, seeing as this one is sure to get a generous reception from most of the critical establishment. After all, it’s a period piece! And it took guts for Matt Damon to wear that stupid mustache, right? And this one’s from Steven Soderbergh — that visionary who knew the world needed not one, but three remakes of Ocean’s Eleven! That counts for something, right?

Right?

You load sixteen tons (of sardines), and what do you get?

The land of Chewandswallow where the book was set has here been re-imagined as Swallow Falls, a tiny island whose economy is based entirely on the export of sardines. It falls on hard times when the world realizes, as headlines everywhere put it, “Sardines are Super Gross!” With no source of income, the people of Swallow Falls are forced to eat nothing but the sardines they’ve caught (which, as previously discussed, are super gross). Fortunately, they have an aspiring mad scientist in their midst. Flint Lockwood (voice of Bill Hader, Saturday Night Live), a twentysomething who’s dreamed of being an inventor since childhood, is on the verge of perfecting a machine that will turn ordinary water into any kind of food you want. Something goes wrong with the first test, though, and the machine is shot into the stratosphere, where it begins making it rain hamburgers.

It’s somewhat telling that the film feels the need to add an explanation for the island’s gastronomic meteorology — the plentiful food here isn’t unexplained manna from heaven, as in the book; it comes through the barrel of technology. Even more telling is the fact that once Flint’s experiment becomes a success, absolutely no one brings up the possibility of duplicating it in order to help relieve world hunger (or do anything else philanthropic). Once proven effective, the machine is simply allowed to hang in the air over the island, as Flint frantically types the increasingly gluttonous requests of the town members into his control box and the morbidly obese mayor (voice of the peerless Bruce Campbell) plans to exploit the unusual weather to draw tourism and bolster the town’s economy.

It's raining hamburgers...hallelujah, it's raining hamburgers.

As with all great science fiction — comic or otherwise — Cloudy uses the presence of hypothetical technology to criticize the events of its day. Thanks to our own enthusiastic implementation of technology, we currently have the cheapest and most plentiful food in history — and all we can think of to do with it is eat more and more stuffed-crust pizza, triple cheeseburgers, and bacon sandwiches with fried chicken breasts for buns (google “KFC Double Down” if you think I’m joking). Cloudy isn’t exactly Food, Inc., but its social commentary runs deep — perhaps too subtly to register consciously with its young audience, but it just might start some interesting conversations.

As Flint’s food-creating machine gradually runs out of control, the air around it congeals into a culinary-industrial complex of gastronomic insanity, and huge, mutated food runs amok. This leads into some truly twisted sequences (one character gets eaten alive by a sentient roast chicken — but don’t worry, he comes back, much improved by the experience), which no doubt took some guts to put into a family-oriented movie. It’s all handled with a light, comic touch, however, and together with some spectacular action sequences (a chase through a spaghetti tornado!), it turns Cloudy into what is arguably the most imaginative disaster movie ever made (and I never thought I’d use those words in the same sentence).

The bacon, my friends, is blowin' in the wind.

Adding to all this are some talented, surprising casting choices — Al Roker, Lauren Graham, Andy Samberg, and Mr. T all disappear into some fascinating roles — and some standard Hollywood tropes that are used to great effect (the inimitable Anna Faris plays a deceptively ditzy weathergirl, while James Caan plays Flint’s distant, working-class father). Beneath all the hamming-it-up and the joke-a-second pace of the slapstick, though, are some serious messages for the modern world. Food, unused, is trash. Technology, uncontrolled, is master.

Towards the end of the film is a sight gag that will probably remain with me forever. When the meteorological chaos first begins, a citizen of Swallow Falls uses the opportunity to smash a storefront window and loot a TV. As soon as he runs off, though, a sentient, robotic television (long story) walks in and “loots” a human customer. At that moment, I probably laughed harder than I ever have.

Mainly so I wouldn’t cry.

Jason Bateman of Arrested Development stars as Joel, the owner of a company that produces (wait for it…) various extracts for cooking use — vanilla, almond, mint, etc. — and is in contact with General Mills regarding a possible buyout. When a worker on the line (Clifton Collins, Jr., Star Trek) loses a testicle, he stands to potentially get a huge cash settlement out of the company, which stands to leave Joel bankrupt and also attracts the interest of a peripatetic grifter named Cindy (Mila Kunis, That 70’s Show). Meanwhile, Joel has to break up an affair between his wife (Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live) and an overzealous gigolo who is happy to work for free (Dustin Milligan, 90210).

Can anyone tell me why forklift pallets are always painted blue?

If it sounds bloated and aimless, congratulations, you win the prize. Judge is really making two different movies here — one is a heist picture and one is the story of a man rebuilding his marriage — and he never really manages to integrate them in any meaningful way. Extract feels like a lengthy episode of a sitcom: it tells two simultaneous stories, and they occasionally overlap, but they never really manage to intertwine — and, in true sitcom fashion, everything goes back to normal at the end. If he had chosen a single story and focused on it, Extract might have been a madcap farce or a unique rom-com; as it is, it’s just bland and lifeless.

It should surprise no one that the movie never really develops anything in the way of thrust. It just kind of shambles along, taking the characters from one incident to the next, never really getting to the point, or even knowing what the point is. Many of the roles feel miscast (Wiig is one of the funniest things about SNL, but here she’s stuck in a dull, “straight” role; Ben Affleck shows up, but never does anything funny), most of the sequences are pointless (jokes about pot smoking and racism that are ten years too late to be relevant, anyone?) and the visuals are uninspired (which is particularly frustrating, knowing that this same man was responsible for the fascinating dystopian landscapes of Idiocracy).

In some ways, the whole thing feels like a less-funny rehash of Office Space – the workplace drama, the focus on altered states of consciousness, the forced moments of truth, and the implicit misogyny are all present. Whereas Office Space was ultimately sympathetic to its white-collar team, however, Extract comes off as holding its blue-collar workers in considerable contempt. Jokes about how all poor white people are racists and never clean their houses seem downright mean-spirited, particularly since we know that the creator of King of the Hill can be sympathetic to America’s working class when he chooses to do so. This is indicative of the fundamental problem, though: when a comedy confuses ugly stereotypes with genuine humor, you can bet that — whatever else you may say about it — it’s a lazily made film. Extract feels like a slapped-together pilot for a sitcom that would presumably get dumped into some lonely Tuesday night slot — if it made it into production at all.

We’ve all heard of writer/director Quentin Tarantino, from his early days working as a video store clerk to his successful independent feature, Reservoir Dogs. Highly controversial in his presentation of violence, language, and race, he has developed a rare fanbase over the years that draws from everyday moviegoers to hardened cineastes. Tarantino’s blend of pulp, dialogue, and homage to other films are his defining characteristics.

Inglorious Basterds, easily one of his most accessible films to date, is set during World War II in “Nazi-occupied France”. The titular heroes are a group of Jewish-American soliders led by Aldo “The Apache Raine (Brad Pitt). Raine gets his nick-name from his habit of scalping Nazis. The Basterds are charged with the duty of reaking havoc among  the German ranks, which they do with glee.

The film starts with a fantastic scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film, introducing us to the protagonist, villain, and length of scenes. Tarantino has described Inglorious Basterds as a World War II spaghetti-western, and this is evidenced here. It also has one of the best references to The Searchers that I’ve ever seen.

Inglorious Basterds is broken up into 5 separate chapters, complete with title cards. With the way that each chapter feels like only one long scene, I think the title cards were a smart move, creating the rhythm of the film.

One element that I highly appreciate from this film is the wide range of international actors in the film hailing from France, Austria, Spain, and especially, Germany. (Take that, Valkyrie) Tarantino’s use of subtitles in the film was also a good move. The liberties that he took with that, noticed more in the opening scene, were quite humorous.

I was surprised at how little screen-time the Basterds received overall, focusing more on Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) and Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) The praise goes to Waltz for his chilling and nonchalant performance as Landa, “The Jew Hunter”. Expecting the film to be heavily wallow in the gratutious actions of the Basterds (which are shown on screen), I was more involved in the story than I expected to be.

It takes a while to get there, but the ending is thrilling to say the least. Tarantino could have taken the film several different ways, and kept me guessing until the fade to black. The final shot is as close to Tarantino’s trunk as you can get without actually having a trunk.

ib_picture

The film is centered around a meeting between Ponyo, a little girl of aquatic origins, and Sosuke, a little boy who lives with his mother and father on a cliff overlooking the sea. Ponyo escapes from her underwater family, curious to see the land above. Her father  (voiced by Liam Neeson) is desperate to take Ponyo home, for fear that she will destroy the balance between water and land by becoming human.

At its core the story is fairly simple as far as fairy tales go, but in typical Miyazaki fashion, the world that his characters inhabit is considerably more complex.

One thing that surprised me the most about the film was the balance between a sense of dread at the surrounding tragedy and a giddy feeling watching Ponyo experience the world that she so desperately wants to be a part of.

In fact, I was so involved in Ponyo’s exploits, that there were moments in the film where I had to stop and remember what was at stake in the story. This is the power of animation. I highly doubt that Ponyo would work as well as a live-action film.

Sitting down in the theater, I was surprised that there were so many children in the audience, and I’m curious what their overall reaction was to the film. Did they enjoy it, was it too metaphysical, or as I would like to imagine, was the premise of the film easily accessible to people of all ages? I would love to see some answers from movie-going parents.

As for me, I’m going to go watch some more Miyazaki films.

The problem with the character in question is that he/she is simply a straight man (or straight woman, I guess) — the lone sane character whose job it is to react to a crazy world — and a straight man is only as funny as the action around him (or her). Imagine if Zeppo Marx had tried to embark on a solo career, and you’ll see the potential for problems here.

Post Grad is problematic from the beginning, because it treats Bledel as its only selling point — she’s the only actor, and the only name, on the poster. Never mind that the cast also features Carol Burnett and Michael Keaton; this movie stars Bledel, and only Bledel. And hey, she’s even playing that character you know and love from Gilmore Girls: that girl who always does the right thing and dreams of working in the world of publishing (okay, she wants to be a book publisher, not a journalist, but does anyone really care?). What could go wrong?

Well, the script, mainly. There’s really nothing here to hate, but there’s just nothing interesting, either. She graduates from school and doesn’t get that dream job she was counting on, so she moves back in with her parents. This is the part where the back of the DVD case usually says, “hilarity ensues,” but it’s my sad duty to report to you that hilarity does not, in fact, ensue. First-time feature writer Kelly Fremon has no idea where to take the story after that, so we’re treated to the usual romantic comedy clichés, plus a some out-of-left-field subplots involving stolen belt buckles and a soapbox derby that never go anywhere and undoubtedly should have been left on the cutting room floor.

The main plot turns out to be the standard-issue romantic-comedy-where-a-career-obsessed-female-learns-that-what-she-really-needs-is-a-man plot, and while director Vicky Jenson (Shrek, Shark Tale) is kind enough to spare us a race to the airport, there’s not much else worth praising about it. Carol Burnett never does anything worthy of her legacy, Michael Keaton never puts on a bat suit, and that annoying little kid drives into a lake for some reason.

It’s not exactly a pleasure to tell you that this movie’s bad. It’s not an ambitious film, so it’s not really a colossal failure; it just isn’t very funny. If there had been a better editor in charge, it’s easy to imagine that it could have been genuinely entertaining (is it just me or does it look like an entire subplot about Bledel’s bitter rival getting her comeuppance got cut out?). As it is, it’s 90 minutes of bland sitcom blah-ness, minus the laugh track,  plus some pretty shameful product placements (they should have just changed the title to Eskimo Pie and Apple Computer Present: Post Grad, and been done with it). It’s not edgy enough for its intended audience (which I assume is college kids), and it’s not bland enough for their parents.

Meh.

The 1950s were, of course, the heyday of the genre, and the aliens, without any obvious variation, represented either the fear of Russian Communism (The Thing from Another World!) or the fear of the fear of Russian Communism (Invasion of the Body Snatchers). As that fear waned, so, too, did the genre (aside from the occasional hippy-dippy counterpoint like Close Encounters of the Third Kind). The ‘80s and ‘90s were unsurprisingly short on alien movies (aside from Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, which accurately captured the spirit of its time by being grinningly, unashamedly stupid).

As fear slowly came back into vogue in the 21^st Century, however, various directors attempted to revive the genre by tapping into it. Steven Spielberg attempted this with War of the Worlds, which tried to paint the aliens as 9/11-esque terrorists; Scott Derrickson attempted to scare us with environmental destruction in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Sadly, both felt a bit warmed-over (it probably didn’t help that they were both remakes of sorts), and neither one came at all close to tapping into something culturally relevant.

The point that was missed with these, I think, is that real-world aliens are now rarely, if ever, sources of fear. The Cold War is long over, having left the so-called Second World in the dust. The only “Worlds” that remain are the First and Third — those of us who were fortunate enough to grow up with capitalism, and those who shoulder its concealed costs. (Marx was correct when he surmised that all of history was a dialectic struggle; he was laughably off the mark in imagining this would cease with the rise of Communism.) History has left our species divided, neither side knowing how to help (or even reach out to) the other. Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” (whatever else you may say about it) has decayed into nothing more than a rotting pile of complacency and vague guilt.

District 9, the new alien-themed film from director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson (director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Heavenly Creatures and Dead Alive) is probably the first film to truly understand this. Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, the film has overtones of apartheid, but ends up being about something even bigger: the intersection of two worlds “alien” to one another, the lack of easy answers for the problems inherent therein, and a stoic sadness for what’s left.

In District 9, the aliens aren’t invaders, they’re refugees. Their ship arrives in Johannesburg for no apparent reason other than a lack of anywhere else to go, and the hordes of aliens inside are impoverished and living in their own filth. With the government clueless and lacking the resources to do anything, the job of housing the aliens (derogatorily called “prawns”) is handed off to the for-profit sector, specifically a corporation named MNU. The prawns are quickly herded into a ghetto of corrugated steel shacks and banned from most of the human city. Their ghetto quickly devolves into a slum, the prawns continue to be exploited equally by MNU and Nigerian militias, and soon the humans want them out.

This is where the film begins. We’re introduced to Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copely), an MNU paper-pusher who has been promoted to head of the prawn relocation program. He begins to hand out the eviction notices to the prawns, in a mockumentary-style sequence that’s borrowed as much from The Office as anything.

Blomkamp isn’t really out to make the next great mockumentary – this angle is merely an attempt to give the proceedings a bluntness and callousness that they wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s also profoundly — and strikingly — unfunny, meaning that the humorous release of tension that Office fans are accustomed to is completely absent, making the film’s first act an extremely uncomfortable one. After setting this tone, Blomkamp more-or-less abandons this approach (a decision that is initially jarring, but turns out to be the right one, as it allows him to “humanize” his characters, if you’ll pardon the expression). The stoic first act leads into a middle that’s equal parts Melvin van Peebles and Franz Kafka; then the third act explodes into all-out war (complete with Jackson’s signature love for splatter). The film is an extremely uncomfortable one to watch, as ignorance leads to mistrust, mistrust leads to abuse, and abuse leads to the inevitable violence. It’d be virtually unwatchable for all but the most cynical and bloodthirsty, were it not for a solid moral core.

At the center of everything here is the brief intersection of two lives: that of van der Merwe, and that of prawn who goes by Christopher Johnson. Neither character is particularly likeable; van der Merwe is a weaselly demagogue and Johnson is an illegal weapons dealer. Both men are deeply evil, but both are also mere victims of the world they live in — cogs in the great machine. Their forced cooperation leads to something much smaller and quieter than anything around them, but also much more real and much more lasting. It is in these moments that the film finds its redemption.

The global system presents its participants with no viable alternatives but to abuse and exploit others. Some exploit others legally (via the corporate machine), and some do so illegally (via militias and the black market), but the end result is the same: misery, destruction, hatred. The only hope available to those that would seek it is in the same place it’s always been: sacrifice, friendship, love. That stuff never makes the headlines, and often it’s barely visible amid the war and deception, but it’s the only hope the universe has ever had for positive change.

On the one hand, District 9 is a difficult film to recommend to everyone. Not only is it extremely violent and gory; it’s bleak, cynical, and depressing. It is, however, likely to be one of the most important films of the year, and it’s filled with plenty of redemption for those willing to look for it. Furthermore, Jackson and Blomkamp have successfully brought the alien flick into the 21^st Century — and in the process, they’ve created a film so culturally relevant that it simply cries out to be seen. Put simply, this is the voice of those who are miserable in their oppression, and of those who are miserably carrying out the oppression — and it’s packaged in a form that just might be the only way these voices will ever be heard.

The movie stars Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans as Duke and Ripcord, two military boys with maxed-out stats who are given the task of transporting a new prototype weapon.  They are attacked on the way to the rendezvous point by an unknown enemy with bigger guns, then are saved by a secret military faction known as G.I. Joe. The Joes, led by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid) are the best of the best and take on the military jobs that nobody else can. Long story short, our two heroes join the Joes after proving themselves in training simulations .

On the baddie side of things we have McCullen (played by former Dr. Who Christopher Eccleston) a weapons dealer who wants to test out his green stuff on Paris and take over the world with his organization called M.A.R.S.  On McCullen’s payroll are The Doctor (an unrecognizable Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an evil scientist with hidden higher aspirations, The Baroness (Sienna Miller), a sexy sadist who has a history with Duke and more leather outfits than there are cast members, and finally, the ninja who only wears white,  Storm Shadow (Byung-Hun Lee). Together with their army of brainwashed  soldiers, they will take over the world unless our good ol’ Joes can save the day.

The movie was very fun to watch. Whether you’re a fan of G.I. Joe or just high-octane summer action flicks, there’s enough cool stuff here to keep you smiling. The movie is filled with action, explosions and Baroness cleavage, but they manage to squeeze in back story periodically throughout the movie so that we can care about the pretty people on screen. The dialog is full of cheese that might make you wince, but you’ll be having too much fun to let it bother you. Director Stephen Sommers has upped Michael Bay in several ways here. While Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen contained plenty of explosions and eye candy to boot, it was held back by overstaying its welcome with a dragging third act, and adding one teaspoon middle school humor for every cup of cool robot-action.

G.I. Joe is the kind of movie where you don’t need to completely turn your brain off, and it doesn’t insult your intelligence, but reminds you what summer action movies based on five-inch toys should be. If you’re able to sit back, grab some popcorn and enjoy the spectacle then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

But, since I know you’re all waiting for me to tell you why, I can tell you in three words (though I’m afraid they’ll seem terribly unoriginal): Fast Food Nation, the damning exposé of the food industry published by Eric Schlosser in 2001. Or, more accurately, a review of it. In fact, I can still pinpoint the single sentence in the review that pushed me into veggie-dom: “The problem starts, to oversimplify a tad, when cattle are fed excrement, the corpses of dead cats and dogs, and animal blood.” I was in high school at the time, and frankly, had never thought particularly hard about where my food was coming from before that moment (I had been far too busy establishing my identity, so that the adult world could crush it a few years later). That sentence was enough to get me to give up meat — and give it up hard — for a long time.

I eventually “came around” for a number of reasons (I have a lean, muscular build that requires a lot of protein; I realized that being choosy about my food was essentially First-World elitism; I couldn’t reconcile rejection of certain types of food with my religious convictions; etc.; etc.), and in a sense, I consider the “veggie” chapter of my life to be closed. But, in a much more accurate sense, the vegetarian identity has been subsumed and incorporated into (what I’d like to think of as) a more mature, developed me — and one that’s hopefully able to see a bit more nuance in the world. I reacted to the aforementioned book review with disgust and revulsion; it wasn’t until my freshman year of college — after I had given up the diet — that I finally got around to reading Schlosser’s book in its entirety, and my reaction then was something different: anger, pathos. These were problems, but not the kind that I could simply run away from; after all, the only reason to be aware of problems is so that we can work to effect change. Whether you like it or not, once Charlton Heston finishes shouting “Soylent Green is people!”, someone in the crowd has to respond with “Perhaps, but we all still need to eat.”

That is what, I hope, filmgoers will take home from Food, Inc., a new, similarly-themed documentary from Robert Kenner. Kenner interviews Schlosser extensively for the film, and his intention is a similar one: to throw back the iron curtain protecting the food industry from public scrutiny. For anyone who doesn’t know, the factory farms and processing plants that produce most of our food are ugly, dirty, and dangerous places where both animals and people are routinely abused, and they’re all owned by an oligopoly of ruthless corporations who have the U.S. government nestled quite comfortably in their pocket. Their stranglehold on the market has produced some of the cheapest food the world has ever seen — but it’s food with a “hidden” price tag that takes an enormous toll on our environment, our health, and our society.

Kenner’s documentary is an unblinking look at these realities, heavy on facts and broad in scope. His pace can be dizzying at times as he jumps from the grocery store to the farm to the feedlot to the halls of Congress, but this ultimately proves necessary as his goal is to educate the Amercian public — a public that has been trained by the fast food industry to demand everything quickly and cheaply — about realities that many of them would rather not know about. The film is a brisk 90 minutes, and in this time we see all of the following (and more):

• The insides of a plant that produces “ammoniated meat product,” which is claimed to be a component of 75% of the hamburger patties on the market;
• Seed and chemical company Monsanto’s quest to sue their own customers into oblivion;
• The meat processing industry’s active and deliberate hiring of illegal immigrants, while the authorities turn a blind eye in exchange for a few token arrests;
• The insides of a modern chicken coop, where the air is nearly unbreathable and the prematurely fat chickens hobble around on nearly useless legs;
• Barbara Kowalcyk, activist and mother of a two-year-old child who died from eating a contaminated Jack in the Box hamburger.

It’s moments like the last one in particular that make the film seem, on its surface, a bit emotionally manipulative; but on the other hand, you can’t argue with facts. Children die from food poisoning every year, and putting a human face on it is hardly an underhanded tactic. At the same time, though, it’s hard to deny that Food, Inc. tends to aim for, if you’ll pardon the expression, the gut — attempting to disgust you first and make you think second.

It also comes across as a bit one-sided. Part of this is admittedly not its fault — as is acknowledged on-screen throughout, nearly all of the food companies being criticized declined to comment. Part of the blame, however, rests squarely on Kenner’s shoulders.  He’s determined to push organic farming, and in so doing, he glosses over some of the organic movement’s more glaring problems. For instance: that the runoff from fields of organic crops is often as bad as the runoff from feedlots. Or that organic food is often trucked farther than conventionally farmed food, thus giving it an even bigger carbon footprint. Or that there’s never been any evidence that organic food is any more nutritious. Or that if all the world’s farming operations were converted to organic methods, more than two billion people would starve, right off the bat.

But, as I’ve said, I’ve been pondering these questions for a long time, and there was definitely a time in my life when I thought the way Kenner does. However, if we’re truly going to solve the world’s food problems, it will be a long, arduous process with no easy answer (much like it will be to solve the world’s energy and healthcare problems — for whatever that’s worth). The “solution,” if I can use so crass a term, is undoubtedly going to be a myriad of small solutions, which we’ll have to enact, as a species, one step at a time. Discovering and enacting solutions must begin with fact-finding and debate — and these are the very things that the food industry wants to silence. This is where Food, Inc.’s importance lies. Kenner has said in interviews that he spent a large chunk of his production budget fighting legal actions by the food companies that wanted to silence him, and he even reports in the film that the state of Colorado is considering legislation that would make it a felony to publish a photo of a feedlot(!!!). When this sort of might-makes-right censorship is being imposed, films like Food, Inc. (and books like Fast Food Nation) are both miracles and necessities. After all, food is quite literally what the human body is made of; if people don’t have the right to know what materials they’re using to build their own bodies, then exactly what rights do they have?

In a sense, Food hasn’t earned the four-and-a-half star rating I’ve given it, but in this case, its sheer importance trumps whatever quibbles I might have with its form and content. To a degree, it’s light on sustainable answers, but it ends with one nearly everyone can get behind: “If you say grace, ask for food that will be healthy for us and our environment.” Well, amen.

The Way We Get By is a fantastic documentary by writer/director Aron Gaudet. It is about three older people and what they’ve gone through in the last five years as the self-appointed welcoming committee for American troops as they return to native soil. The film is predominately set in the Bangor Airport in Bangor, Maine, and the homes of the welcomers.

The Way We Get By is a short documentary that was made for the long-running PBS television series P.O.V. It’s a film about nothing, and yet, everything. By that I mean that the stories don’t seem to be as heavily influenced by the director as other documentaries might be. And the many themes that come across in the film (loss, loneliness, family, spirit, etc.) are universal themes.

The style presented in the documentary keeps these stories fresh and interesting. There’s an amazing rhythm from story to story that keeps it going. One style in particular reminded me of David Lynch’s on-going Interview Project, which centers around individual stories. The similarity lies in the edit, where the interviewee’s audio track is dubbed over a different shot, trying to capture the right emotion for what is being said.

Each person in The Way We Get By is a dear soul, and I instantly connected with William, Joan, and Gerald on an emotional level. There’s so much pathos here. Heck, the preview itself had me tearing up. I found one line from Gerald to be especially poignant. When asked why he was doing what he was doing, he replied, “Be nice to somebody and that makes you feel nicer. That’s the only way you can deal with it.”

I loved seeing the different attitudes and opinions of the greeters as well. I love how these people, even the ones who don’t support the war, are there to support the troops regardless of their stance. That in mind, I wouldn’t call The Way We Get By an anti-war film. Rather, I think anti-loss would be a more fitting term.

For those of you who don’t know. Bruno is one of three bizarre characters that Sasha played on is HBO show Da Ali G Show. Even if you didn’t see 2006’s Borat, you surely heard about it from someone who did. The movie seemed to push the boundaries of that poor “R” rating, stretching it quite thin. It’s a study in shock. I think he wants to see how far we’ll let him go. And while I laughed at Borat, it was the kind of laughing I do while looking around to make sure my mom isn’t anywhere around. Jokes that involve Borat poking fun at women’s rights, destroying an old couples antique shop, and running through a hotel naked with his obese manager. The things being said and done will are quite offensive yet humorous. I had an idea of what to expect with Bruno…but it still didn’t prepare me.

The first five minutes of the movie consist of Bruno and his lover ( A tiny Asian man) using household objects to spice up their lovemaking. By this point I was smirking a bit at how ludicrous the whole scene was, but this wasn’t even the tip of the thong-wearing iceberg. Bruno gets fired from his fashion show after screwing it up due to a wardrobe malfunction with a suit made entirely of Velcro. With nobody at his side other than his obsessed assistant’s assistant, who would follow Bruno to the ends of the earth, he makes his way to America to become a celebrity. And let the gags begin!

It seems Sasha was set to find all the people who weren’t offended by his first movie, and hit them here. The gags go from having Paula Abdul sit on Mexican people as furniture, coming on to a pastor, trying to seduce Ron Paul, adopting a black child and then going on a Jerry Springer-esque show to get the all-black audience riled up, venturing to Arkansas and fooling a bunch of hillbillies into thinking they were going to see men fight each other only to find them kissing and undressing each other. I’ve given the super simplified synopsis’s of all of these gags but in the end, it’s as simple as that. And I’ve only listed a few here.

My issue with this movie isn’t that it wasn’t funny. I laughed very loudly several times but while leaving the theater I didn’t feel like I’d gained anything or even enjoyed myself that much. The cost of the laughs are what gets me. There is a particular scene where Bruno is interviewing parents to have their babies model with his own. As he explains the criteria to the parents the things they’re willing to do to have their babies model is horrifying. He even tells one mother that the baby will be dressed as Hitler tossing a Jewish baby into an oven, and that her baby will have to loose ten pounds in a week, AND that they might have to use liposuction…the mother agrees to all this. In the end it’s sad that he digs for the most loathsome, depraved, morally vacant parts of our funny bone and shakes it until it bleeds. I felt a bit ashamed to have even smirked at some of the things I did.

I’ve never walked out of a movie and I don’t think I ever will as I have a very high tolerance level, but I can’t recommend this movie to anyone unless they absolutely loved Borat, in which case it would be right up your alley. It’s about five times as eye-opening, which means I was squinting about half the time. While there was a scene where I laughed so hard I cried, I still believe that there is something deeper to comedy than a man twirling his genitals around on screen repeatedly.

In Moon, the surface of the titular satellite — a harsh, barren wasteland — swallows the screen and consumes the thoughts of director Duncan Jones. What was once a triumphant symbol of the boundless achievement potential of mankind has here become a haunting metaphor for loneliness, disassociation and Marxist alienation. The premise Jones presents us with is simple: the earth has run out of energy, and the moon has been found to possess an isotope that can supply as much as 70% of its power. Lunar Industries, LLC, a for-profit organization, has established a base on its dark side in order to extract it. The base has a crew of one — and each crew member signs on to three full years of solitude.

Moon is a small, claustrophobic film with relatively modest ambitions (especially given its genre), and the story unfolds so perfectly and delicately that I’m terribly scared of giving anything away by summarizing it (much of the story’s power relies on an element of mystery). The outside world is never seen (not counting an television ad for Lunar Industries that opens the film), and we are with crewman Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) throughout the hour-and-a-half running time (giving the film, depending on how you count, a cast of one). We catch up with him just as he’s weeks away from completing his tour of duty, and we stay with him as he’s forced to come to terms with truths that are not entirely comfortable.

Like most independent films, Moon has an extremely tiny budget — about $5 million U.S. — but like the best independent films, it allows this to work for it. The moon base Sam inhabits is a squalid, disorganized shack that puts the lie to whatever utopian visions others might have for the future. The lunar vehicles roving the moon’s surface outside are represented by models, not the whiz-bang computer graphics that almost any other director would have chosen to use. These are ugly, drab things without any flash — machines of industry, harsh realities and nothing more. Moon, in a sense, is a beautifully shot film — but still, you won’t find any eye candy here.

This is appropriate, because Moon is a film that, like the best science fiction, isn’t really about “the future.” It’s about humanity — past, future, present — and the economic reality that one human being is always stepping on another in order to make a buck — no “advancement” comes without a price. It’s quite telling that the film’s one non-human character, a robot named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) turns out to be its most “human” character. Jones has taken the now-archetypical character of HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and stood it on its head — a clever stylistic decision, certainly, but also a thought-provoking one. The evolutionary process and human spirit that are so worshipped in Kubrick’s film are here shown to lead in circles and to dead ends — not because of evil or error, but simply because that is their nature. As we as a species strive to “advance” — economically, technologically, etc. — it seems we always end up paying a price with part of our humanity — in every sense of the word. There is much to ponder in Moon — much that I wish I could probe into — but to go into it here would do the film a disservice. See it for yourself, and then decide exactly what “humanity” is.

Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the much-loved graphic novel of the same name, was released theatrically on Friday. Having not read the graphic novel, all I knew about the film going in was what I saw in the previews.

The opening credits sequence in Watchmen sucked me into the film, and I was hooked for the first thirty minutes. Through the historical montage, complete with living photographs and revisionist events, I felt like I had a decent grasp of the universe that Watchmen took place in. It’s a rare feat to accomplish this with such a sweeping story. That said, there were times when the multiple narratives felt disjointed and episodic. And while the film is largely about The Watchmen themselves, I would have liked to see more in regards to the societal look on things

There was also a lot of pop music that was included in the film, ranging from Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The integration of the music with the visuals worked well for a while, but soon became more of a distraction than a complementation of the film.

Watchmen is an ensemble piece at heart, housing a horde of different characters, but the two that interested me the most were Rorschach, played perfectly by Jackie Earle Haley, and Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), who comes across as Clark Kent with Batman’s toys. In some ways I would consider him to be the main character of the film, although there wasn’t much of a resolution for him at the end of the film.

Billy Crudup also made an appearance in the film as Dr. Manhattan, the God-like character in the film. His personal dilemmas and choices were a much-needed intellectual boost in the film, resulting in a cool ending. And while the character of Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) wasn’t in the film nearly enough, what glimpses we saw of him were intriguing to say the least. I would love to read Watchmen if only to learn more about him.

Sadly, however, director Zack Snyder tends to put more emphasis on “graphic” than “novel”. Starting out as a serious, gritty epic, I was surprised at the change in tone partway through the film and Snyder’s self-referential winks and personal fetishes. (At least there weren’t any drugs in the film.)

I’m certainly not opposed to violence in film if the story calls for it and is used well. But to quote Alfred Hitchcock, “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.” And on a similar note, Roger Ebert wrote in his review of The Winslow Boy that, “Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing.” Whatever happened to suspense, subtlety, and the imagination? There are better ways to show violence in a film. And in the case of Rorschach’s back-story, some well-placed shadows would have been far more effective, stylistically and emotionally, and would have fit with his film noir presence.

As an extra tidbit, I noticed a similarity between 300 (Also directed by Snyder) and Watchmen. The former ends with Dilios telling the story of the 300 Spartans in the oral tradition of story telling, while Watchmen ends in a similar way, but with the written tradition. Perhaps Snyder’s next film will end with a typewriter…or maybe I’ve just been a communications major too long.

In any case, Watchmen, while having some interesting characters, cool visuals, and a promising story, fails to tell that story well. Instead of getting a developed character-driven epic about humanity, we’re left with an adolescent storyteller infatuated with gratuitous sex and violence. And we’re left wanting more.

Starting with teachers at a high school in Paris introducing themselves before the school year begins, director Laurent Cantet sets the mood and setting for the rest of the film. The Class rarely steps outside of the building, showing us what happens within the confines of the classroom.

The Class, based on François Bégaudeau’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, is about Bégaudeau (played by himself in the film) teaching French to a culturally diverse class in a Paris high school. It deals with important issues that pertain to teaching and interacting with people coming from different cultures and backgrounds. In several scenes Bégaudeau has to explain what certain words and idioms that he uses mean because the students aren’t familiar with them.

Stylistically, The Class falls into the cinéma vérité camp, adopting a distinctive documentary feel. The majority of the film takes place within the classroom, and is intimately filmed. It’s as if the camera is hovering around the classroom capturing spontaneous moments as they happen. Aside from meetings with the student boards and parents, there isn’t much background for the students given; what you see is what you get. There are a lot of close-ups in the film, reminding me of the style of director John Cassavetes.

François Bégaudeau (as François Marin) addresses the class

Staying during the closing credits, I had a short conversation with an older couple that were seated a few rows in front of me about the film. The husband is a teacher, and they were wondering what my take on the film was, and more importantly, Bégaudeau’s teaching method. We talked about the cultural problems that he had to deal with and how he genuinely wanted his students to succeed.

That said, however, I appreciate how the filmmakers didn’t make Bégaudeau out to be the perfect teacher. For example, he’s been teaching there for four years and should have more control over his classroom; the students run the class more than they should. The moments when he does connect with the students, however, are beautiful. I think he would be more at home in an organic setting rather than the traditional one that he’s currently in.

In some ways The Class can be compared to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Both films deal with a culture clash that takes place in an environment where people are forced into contact with each other. The Class succeeds in showing us what can happen when various cultures come together under the same roof. It raises a lot of questions about education, culture, and communication, leaving the viewer to struggle with the answers as the credits roll.

In other words, a delicate balance has to be struck: being scary in a kids’ movie is arguably a good thing, but be too scary, or — God forbid — violent or gory, and your movie will be doomed forever to the DVD collections of ironic hipsters. (Last year’s The Spiderwick Chronicles — an inexplicably PG-rated terror-fest with a body count well into the dozens (as well as, even more frighteningly, more than one Freddie Highmore) — is arguably on its way to this fate already.) If anyone understands this, though, it just might be stop-motion auteur Henry Selick. While he’s been relatively inactive as a director as of late, he directed 1993’s Tim Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as the similarly themed James and the Giant Peach. Ignoring Monkeybone (a colossal flop, circa 2001), he has a pretty good track record. His latest, Coraline, is no exception: it’s engaging (and frightening) from start to finish.

There’s probably good reason for this. As tricky as the creation of a children’s horror pic may be, it’s also got a built-in requisite that makes for far more effective terror: namely, subtlety. In other words, the eviscerations that have been part and parcel of horror since the late 1960s aren’t an option, so instead of disgusting people, you have to actually, y’know, scare them. (Spiderwick missed the memo on that one, and…well, you know.) Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the very first scene of Coraline, which comprises one of the most subversively violent images I’ve seen on screen in a long time: two hands made entirely of needles slice open and disembowel a child, then turn its skin inside out.

Oops, did I say child? No, of course it’s not a child — that would never get past the censors. It’s actually a doll, and its “bowels,” of course, are just cotton stuffing. But thanks to Selick’s camera — which remains in close-up on the doll, and never reveals the identity of the needleworker — it’s a decidedly unsettling image, one whose horror just barely registers in the back of your mind. The rest of the film plays out this way as well, never resorting to cheap jump scares or crashing, Psycho-style violins, but simply pretending to play nice, all the while all letting its horror slowly sink its (needle-shaped) claws into you — until it’s too late to get away.

Of course, this is appropriate for the material at hand as well, which is based on a bit of young adult fiction by British author Neil Gaiman. The plot concerns a young girl with an unusual name and the voice of Dakota Fanning (whose ubiquity of late is a bit strange, but isn’t nearly as obnoxious as Freddie Highmore’s — oops, there I go again) whose parents have dragged her along (as parents are wont to do) on a residential move to a creepy apartment complex. Upset with her newfound lack of friends, her parents’ same old lack of time, and pretty much everything else, she begins to imagine a better world — and then opens a mysterious spare door in the house and discovers that it does, in fact, exist. Her “other” parents have time to cook for her and play hide-and-seek, her “other” neighbors put on dazzling shows every night, and the “other” version of the annoying boy from next door doesn’t ever speak. And, unsettlingly, they all have buttons sewn on for eyes.

Everyone see where this is going?

Even if it’s a bit on the obvious side, though, Selick makes it work. Coraline’s initial dilemmas are easy to sympathize with — we’ve all been there at some point in our lives, I think — and it’s hard not to want her dream world to be real. Selick is such a master of his craft, though, that it’s quite obvious to the subconscious that there’s something evil at work here. Part of this is the use of stop-motion, which has an otherworldly jerkiness to it that gives everything a twisted subtext. The film is also in 3D, but Selick never uses the technique simply to impress or dazzle; rather, the effects are played up quite subtly at seemingly mundane moments (a four-poster bed here, a sewing kit there) to make the film unsettling on a gut level.

Unfortunately, Selick builds up the terror so flawlessly that the climax and denouement are a bit of a letdown — Coraline’s victory boils down to a videogame-style quest that’s over far too quickly to be compelling, and the last twenty minutes hew too closely to the book to be effective on the big screen — but this is really just testament to the flawlessness of the film’s first two acts. And even when the film stumbles narratively, it still manages to dazzle aurally, with the eccentrically disturbing score of French composer Bruno Coulais (not to mention an excellent song by creepy-but-kid-oriented band They Might Be Giants) and Selick’s always-impressive animation. The character models and motions at play here are the sort that can only be made by human hands, and the resulting art is so deeply affecting that it truly makes you wonder why, exactly, we’re all so infatuated with computer animation.

But in the end, what will stick with you here is simply how much truth there is to the central coming-of-age story. It’s quite easy, when you’re young, to imagine that the world exists for you and you alone; with such an outlook, it’s entirely understandable if you feel frustration with anyone and anything that fails to meet your needs and entertain you. Coraline learns here that the essence of maturity is, in some sense, coming to realize that when anything is good, true, or beautiful, it’s that way only because someone has worked excruciatingly hard to make it that way (with the corollary being, of course, that she has to do her fair share). Selick makes no effort to sugarcoat this, and in fact, the happy ending here is (intentionally) a bit of a letdown. Our heroine never manages to create anything quite as wonderful as the fantasy that she initially gets sucked into — a fact that is, of course, as it should be.

Like the best children’s entertainment, (last year’s City of Ember being a good example), Coraline refuses to feed kids easy answers, and is likely to leave you with a powerful sting of sadness and disillusionment. This, together with the more frightening parts, makes it hard to recommend for the youngest children, but older kids will find much to think about here — as will, I think, their parents.

Before its release, I lamented what a shame it would be if director Joe Wright’s new film The Soloist became a slimy sob story complete with incessant screaming at life’s hard knocks and a mopey climax.  The premise does sound rather conventional: Struggling news reporter meets homeless, mentally ill, musical genius and uses the press to bring the musician’s story to the public eye.

Well, The Soloist’s story made me sob, but not for the reasons I feared it might. The film tells the story of an oddly calculated friendship between two very different men, but it doesn’t pretend for an instant that doing your best to help a troubled person can cure mental illness or that music, however powerful, can cause a permanent turnaround for a wayward life.

On the contrary, The Soloist is one of the most mature films of its kind, tackling issues of mental illness, homelessness, and human responsibility with sensitivity and tact.  The true story of Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez and cellist Nathaniel Ayers, the film is honest, true to itself, and never tries to be something it’s not.

Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers

Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) first encounters Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) playing a two-stringed violin in a park beneath a looming statue of Ludwig Van Beethoven.  Ayers is disheveled, dragging a shopping cart full of all his earthly belongings, and wears a yellow visor emblazoned with the names of classical composers.  Lopez initiates conversation, but Nathaniel turns away, talking rapidly in his light voice about many things, but always mentioning Beethoven.  It’s always Beethoven with Nathaniel and it’s clear to Lopez that he isn’t entirely sane.

Lopez is fascinated by this chance encounter and due to a dearth of column subjects, composes a piece about his introduction to Nathaniel Ayers.  He gets him connected with the Lamp Community for the homeless in Los Angeles and eventually finds an apartment where Nathaniel can have private cello lessons and practice in relative peace.

En route to an orchestra rehearsal

But Nathaniel’s mental illness is ever-present.  When confronted with the complete silence of a new apartment, the voices in his head shout, scolding him and telling him that he is “of no consequence.”  A tasteful selection of flashbacks show the genesis of his affliction, from the early whisperings heard during his childhood in a grimy New York basement to the unbearable cacophony during his short stint at The Juilliard School.

Nathaniel wants Steve in his life one moment and wants him out the next.  His mind is in a state of constant indecision, but Lopez’s personal life follows much of the same path.  He’s in an on-and-off relationship with a co-worker that produced a child 20 years earlier and he’s caught in a cycle of selfishness that can’t seem to be stopped.

Foxx’s performance is volatile but subtle; he’s not begging for awards, but it is a very fine piece of acting, obviously crafted with much thought.  This delicacy momentarily makes even his afflicted character a joy to watch and it comes as a surprise when he explodes with rage at the beginning of the film’s final act.

Trying out the new cello

The moments when the film soars are the ones that invoke pleasantly arranged classical music, but don’t worry: These invocations of Beethoven and Bach will not grate on the ears of classical music lovers who have grown tired of hearing the same classical pieces unendingly repeated in film after film.  You’ll find no tinkly “Fur Elise” or droning “Moonlight Sonata” in this film.  You will, however, find a moment like this: Lopez and Ayers are standing on the sidewalk of a busy Los Angeles underpass; Lopez has just brought him a donated cello. Nathaniel begins to play the cello part of a Beethoven symphony.  The sounds of the street are cancelled out and we hear only the cello; we see only his fingers on the strings, his eyes glazed with passionate intensity.   Without immediate notice, the orchestra slips into the soundtrack to accompany the soloist and the passion tucked away in the dark for so long is finally pushed into the magnificent light of day.

As if the spiritual intensity of this moment weren’t enough, the camera quickly pulls away from the two men and, in one swift and blissful move, soars into the sky above Los Angeles.  In an instant, we’ve been transported into Nathaniel’s psyche as his soul soars above the confines of his illness and into the clouds.  It is a moment of pure, unadulterated grace.

Joe Wright has a knack for moments like this. His directorial vision breathes needed life into Susannah Grant’s mediocre screenplay.  The sound design and editing style at times feels like an experimental film, a brave move for a major studio release.  But Wright isn’t pretentious—he’s imbued the subject matter with pathos and poise enough that his creativity doesn’t seem stilted.

The film gets distracted with ham-fisted politics when the characters don’t take the forefront, but the politics don’t hinder us from seeing that both Steve and Nathaniel constantly hold in view the possibility of new, better life.  Neither of them achieves this completely by the film’s end; it remains a dim possibility either because of political red tape or the shame of unwise personal choices.

But the darkness doesn’t have to abide … and this elegiac, somber film more than proves the matchless worth of a steadfast spirit of hope.

The first five minutes of director Mark Webb’s (500) Days of Summer, a concise and entertaining treatise on young love, are immediately transporting.  There is a narrator, there are attractive (but not fake looking) leading characters, the music is zippy, and Webb introduces his leading players as if they were walking in a narrative music video.  It’s a beautiful amalgamation that can’t help but prompt an ear-to-ear smile.   (500) Days’ narrator has booming voice with commanding presence.  The story gets even more interesting directly following this masterful introduction when he makes the audience a promise: “This is not a love story.”

So, in the spirit of the film, I’ll put an embargo on the word “love” from here on out. It’s just one of the ways this story is atypical – a boy-meets-girl story the likes of which we haven’t seen before and one that is completely necessary in order to publicly state the romantic inclinations of millions of postmodern 20-somethings.

Joseph Gordon Levitt (Mysterious Skin, The Lookout) stars as Tom, a puppy-dog faced twenty-something slogging the days away in a greeting card company cubicle.   He’s almost falling asleep at a round-table meeting one morning when he sees her: Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the new girl – an improbably cute young woman with a timeless fashion sense straight out of Godard’s Masculin, féminin and bewitching blue eyes that flash with more mystery than sex appeal.  The initial attraction is awkward, but both of them realize that there just might be something there.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel

Tom and Summer’s perspective on relationships differ vastly.  He is a capital-R romantic and gets his definition of relational intimacy from listening to too much British pop music and completely misreading The Graduate when he was a pre-teen.  Summer is, in short, a goddess.  Since her teen years she’s been making men do double-takes on buses and busy streets.  She’s been around the dating block and is at the point where she doesn’t believe in that precarious L-word at all.  She’s honest about it with Tom, too, and this honesty is one of Tom’s favorite things about her even though it often hurts.

They meet again.

She and him hate words like boyfriend or girlfriend because, really, no one knows what they mean.  They’ve realized that there are no clear definitions for any of these matters and that to define them would be juvenile.  Despite this, it seems like they might be made for each other.  They’re sleeping together regularly and having the fun times that only people who share a special bond can have.  Summer has even begun telling Tom things that she’s never told anyone else.  What else is Tom supposed to think?

It may all sound familiar, but the film has something most romantic comedies lack – structure.  (500) Days of Summer refers to the 500 days that Tom and Summer developed their relationship and the movie skips back and forth from their relational ups and downs, each event informing another whether it be Day 58 or Day 398.  The whole story is told strictly from Tom’s perspective and we see firsthand how his expectations for what a relationship should look like clash with the (sometimes) bleak reality of what ultimately comes to fruition.

The bewitching Deschanel

Still, whether its Day 169 or Day 427, Tom and Summer never really know what they want out of being together.  Is it companionship?  Is it sex?  Or is it simply someone to scream “PENIS” with in the park at the top of your lungs?  Perhaps its all three. The reason why they’re constantly floundering in indecision is clear: their definition of what it means to be together has been skewed not by bad experiences with other companions but by sitcoms, pop songs, greeting cards, and romantic comedies.  All Tom wants is a bit of emotional honesty and that’s something that can only rarely be found.

Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are radiant as Tom and Summer, although its possible that Deschanel will never give a better performance than she did in David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls.  Even so, the script lets the actress keep her undeniable quirkiness and even makes room for her to sing a song – a blessing for fans of She & Him who can’t get enough of her singing voice.  Levitt and Deschanel make an attractive couple for sure, but it also helps that they look like real people.

Director Mark Webb (far right) and his two stars

Following the screening I attended, director Marc Webb described the style of the movie as “kitchen-sink.”  There’s no better way to describe it.  There are nods to Truffaut and Bergman, a musical sequence complete with an animated bluebird, characters sometimes break the fourth wall, and the poppy soundtrack seems to dictate the film’s movements and not vice versa.

I’m tempted to say that the script’s problems are rendered null by the end of the film.  I found two character’s particularly annoying – the clichés of “smart little kid” and “crazy sidekick friend” are a bit overused – but the charm of the leads and the unexpected ending made me forget these.   Beginning to end, the movie presses forward with an earned amount of whimsy and is void of the self-conscious Indie culture references that plagued Juno and riddle the screenplay of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

There’s a lot of hope at the end of this film – it will leave audiences with a smile – but the last five minutes offer a promise of happiness that seems different from the happiness strived for in the first 90.   This unexpected twist is just one of the many things that make (500) Days of Summer an experience-laden ode to those disorienting times when happiness seems just within your grasp and the work that must be done to finally claim it as your own.  Like When Harry Met Sally and Annie Hall, I think (500) Days of Summer will be sticking around for a while.

– Tenacious D

Anvil!: The Story of Anvil opens with a bit of on-screen text that’s every bit as subtle as the first few bars of Sabbath’s “Iron Man”: “In the summer of 1984, Anvil toured the world with the biggest bands in rock: Scorpions, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake. All of them went on to sell millions of records around the world. All of them, except one.”

As you might have guessed, the “except one” here is Anvil, a Toronto-based outfit frequently credited with laying the groundwork for thrash, as well as other heavy metal trends of the 80’s and 90’s — but also one that never made a dime off of their music, and never received any degree of recognition outside of the most dedicated of heavy metal fans.

And here’s the kicker: they’re still around.

“Still around,” as in, still together as a band, still performing regularly, and still kicking out an album every so often. Their only reasonably well-selling album, Metal on Metal, was released more than a quarter-century ago, and yet the creative core of the band, drummer Robb Reiner and vocalist/guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow (now both in their 50’s), continue to chase their dreams of conquering the charts and becoming rock stars — and documentary filmmaker Sacha Gervasi (who used to be a roadie for the band) is here to tell their story.

After some brief interviews with Lemmy of Motörhead, Slash of Guns ‘n Roses and Velvet Revolver, and Lars Ulrich of Metallica, all of them testifying to what a huge influence Anvil was on their music, we get a cold dose of reality. The middle-aged Reiner takes us on a tour through his current place of employment: a minimum-wage-paying catering service. The idealized metal portraits that open the film are abruptly replaced with the drabness of everyday life in the poor end of the suburbs, as well as candid interviews with the two men’s long-suffering wives, sisters, brothers, and parents. What we’re left with is a sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-heartbreaking meditation on being stuck in perpetual adolescence and what happens to a dream deferred.

I wouldn’t be the first (and I certainly won’t be the last) to compare the film to This is Spinal Tap, the classic “mockumentary” released (ominously) in 1984 and directed (even more ominously) by Rob Reiner (who is, of course, no relation to Anvil’s drummer). The earlier film mocked 1980’s metal mercilessly, and, of course, 1980’s metal (with its infantile fixation on sex and violence) was certainly a deserving target. But however laugh-out-loud funny the film was, its true strength was in its humanization of its characters. Every scene felt real, and every member of the fictional band (no matter how moronic) was wholly realized and completely sympathetic. And in many ways, Anvil! manages to do something similar — an accomplishment which comes off as both a little bit easier and a little bit harder.

Easier because Kudlow and Reiner really are real people (duh). Harder because they’re fifty-year-old men still pursuing a teenage dream that — at least in some sense — passed them by a long time ago. In truth, Anvil! plays like a sad, twisted sequel to Spinal Tap (sort of like Return to Oz, if you’ll allow me to reach a little). The band who embodies every cliché of 80’s metal is now old and forgotten, having been dealt a raw deal by life and left in the dust by changing musical trends. While Spinal Tap was a comedy with occasional tragic moments, Anvil! comes off as more of a tragedy with occasional comic moments. An as we watch the band embark on a disastrous tour of Europe and struggle through recording their thirteenth album, it becomes clear just how badly they yearned for the life they never received.

It’s also far more meaningful than your average rockumentary. Anvil! is a film that appreciates its subject band, but it doesn’t exist simply to enshrine them, or simply to make money off of their fans (it can’t, seeing as Anvil fans are few and far between). Nor is it t overly concerned with capturing concert footage (most of the shows take place in seedy dives where it would be impossible to get decent footage anyway), and it’s certainly not here to blow in-band conflict out of proportion (take that, Some Kind of Monster). What it does do is depict a side of music-making rarely seen in the mass media: failure. The vast majority of musical acts that begin with dreams of stardom lead to absolutely nothing, and Anvil is merely one of them.

Toward the end of the film, Reiner’s brother sums it up fairly succinctly: “He chose this. He would rather live a life of poverty than a life of mediocrity.” And indeed, that’s what seems to have occurred. In a sense, you probably have to be a metalhead to fully appreciate Anvil! — I’ve never fully understood the subculture myself, and there were certainly moments when I wanted to tell everyone onscreen to get an education and wash their hair (at least once, guys). But in a more profound sense, Anvil! really is a must-see for anyone aspiring to be an art-maker of any sort, simply because it forces you to stare straight down the barrel of disappointment. The vast majority of people who attempt anything simply fail at it, deservedly or not. If you have a dream, the odds are wholly on the side of it not coming true.

And yet, that’s no reason to stop trying.

Like This is Spinal Tap, Anvil! ends on an uplifting note with a triumphant concert in Japan. The similarity is almost definitely intended, and as with Reiner’s film, the moment transcends whatever crushing disappointments may have come before it. Music is made, people become connected to one another, and for one brief, perfect moment, the band captures a glimpse of their lifelong dream. It worked in Spinal Tap, and it works here, because the yearning for beauty — in whatever form it may come — is a universal one. And yes, moments of beauty are still worth working for, whatever the odds of failure may be.

The importance of Anvil! has been overstated a bit in much of the mainstream press, which, for the most part, is still controlled by Baby Boomers, and still fetishizes rock ‘n roll to a slightly embarrassing degree. In truth, Anvil! is probably not the undisputed classic that Spinal Tap is, and it certainly has somewhat less to say. But when I say its importance has been overstated “a bit,” I mean just that — a bit. What the film lacks in raw emotional power, it makes up for in pure substance. Anvil! is an unblinking look into the face of the lives that get left behind when the money-making establishment runs off to chase after the latest trends — and that, in and of itself, is a rare enough thing to merit a thoughtful viewing.