THE LOWERY MOVIE JOURNAL

Death Wish. B+

2012-01-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Now here is a Charles Bronson movie that kicks ass, that completely expresses what this great actor is all about. The star, the title, the premise...they all lead one to believe this will be the ultimate macho movie, the kind you invite your friends over to see, cheer on, and be wowed. A word of advice: picking a movie to see with friends? Don't pick Death Wish. It's deceiving, a dead-serious, devastating, and highly realistic portrait of what a family man turned vigilante might actually look like in real life. An example of the film's purpose: three savage delinquents (one happens to be a really young Jeff Goldblum) assault and kill Bronson's wife. An ordinary movie would show him getting revenge on them, but here they don't show up again. The movie isn't about revenge, but about a man dealing with his loss in a more generalized way: taking out all criminals. Bronson, as usual, plays it cool, speaking little, occasionally smirking, and always in control. I'm not sure if Bronson is making any sort of statement about the idea of machoism with this movie. Might he be turning against it, showing the real nature of violence and the absurdity of the macho hero? Or might he be glorifying him by showing his full cause and effect? This is what the macho hero really is. Take it or leave it. It's hard to say for sure.

The Mechanic. C+

2012-01-27T20:54:00.001-08:00

I like Charles Bronson as an action hero, except that to me he's really more of a realist in disguise. I would put him below Eastwood, but certainly above Steve McQueen as far as macho movie stars are concerned. The Mechanic is a pretty good example of what makes Bronson distinct, which is that he plays characters that defy the logic of action cinema. That is to say, when the car explodes, he might be in it (a car does actually explode at the end of The Mechanic, but by then Bronson's already made his message pat). Bronson is excellent here, playing a real hit man, not a movie star with a gun who hits his opponents with his eyes shut. We see this in a really nice opening scene that goes on for quite some time in depicting Bronson's character preparing a kill. It's not just having good aim and the right weapon. It's the planning, the strategy, the little details that make the hit man as much a tactician as a good shot. The Mechanic gets this right. Unfortunately, as it goes on, it unfolds more and more into a generic action picture with a long climax straight from a James Bond movie. There's a somewhat big reveal near the end that ultimately casts a shadow over the whole film. Everyone and everything suddenly inhabits a sense of tastelessness where the only real path to go down is death. I liked Bronson, but I think he deserved a better movie than this. You may recall last year when a remake, also titled The Mechanic, was released, with Jason Statham in the lead. Haven't seen it, but can't imagine it being an improvement over this, especially considering that Bronson is the main reason to see the original, and Jason Statham is no Charles Bronson.

Bridesmaids. B

2012-01-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

It's hard not to be a fan of Bridesmaids. The script is so good, and it's got some terrific performances. And while it's been likened to The Hangover only with females, it's really, with the exception of a few scenes, a social commentary on our passive aggressive tendencies. It's about social behavior during big occasions, about what happens when social norms aren't followed. Don't let this sound like a self-important preacher feature. This social exploration is exactly what makes Bridesmaids the funniest movie of 2011. The chief reason to see the film is the relationship between Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne, two of the bridesmaids selected for the big wedding of their best friend. Wiig is loose, friendly, and spiraling out of control. Byrne is one of those gorgeous rich women who has everything, is strongly opinionated, and treats everyone very sweetly. The two characters hate each other, yet rather than confronting each other on it, they, understandably, allow it to build up to an inevitable explosion. Bridesmaids is best when it's funny, but unfortunately I felt that it lost interest in being a comedy about halfway through to focus on Wiig's character. Really the movie seems to be about her falling low, to the bottom, and then slowly making it back up. In the end it makes for an overly dramatic, overly long movie. And really there's almost as much dramatic content as there is comedy. The latter works okay. Gladly the former is quite splendid and sharp.

Troy. B

2012-01-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Troy is clearly trying to be a great action movie, but it also attempts to reasonably follow The Iliad, and because that's such a great story, the film works. If you're unfamiliar with the story, the movie might come across as a surprise in that there's no army (the Greeks are fighting the Trojans) to root for, and no hero to truly side with. Like Homer's poem, the film presents all the main players as flawed individuals. Hector, the Trojan prince, is the most sympathetic. But one of the many failures of the film is that it doesn't show the mistakes made by Hector during the war, thus diminishing the moral complications of the final showdown between him and Achilles. It does however strongly emphasize his brother Paris as a weakling who acknowledges his cowardice and always tries to do the best thing. He's a strange character here because he makes such a rash decision early on (stealing Helen, the wife of a Spartan king), and then seems to try to redeem himself for the rest of the movie. Homer is less forgiving than Hollywood. Brad Pitt does a good job with the physical aspects of Achilles, but he comes up short in portraying his inner battles, though this could just as easily be attributed to the limitations of David Benioff's screenplay. From a narrative standpoint, the film is a mess, largely due to all the characters trying to get time around the massive battle sequences. 165 minutes is a long time, but not long enough for this material. Also, because The Iliad ends inconclusively (the rest of the Trojan war is related in The Odyssey), the film version completes the war (this is where the Trojan horse comes in) but does so in a hurried fashion. It's clearly just tacked on to satisfy the need for closure. The movie isn't a failure in dealing with the story and characters, but it struggles mightily. But it fares much better from a visual standpoint, which is where director Wolfgang Peterson puts most of his energy. The battles and the one-on-one combat are splendidly shot, more poetic than chaotic. The style incorporated by Peterson is more classical, avoiding the slow motion and CGI blood that give in to. I particularly enjoyed the showdown between Achilles and Hector, which rivaled the legendary sword dual from Rob Roy. As a whole the movie's quite good, but I feel the studio compromised Peterson's full vision, giving him a liberal running time that still couldn't cover this material. I hear the director's cut is closer to what this film was original meant to be.

Videodrome. B

2012-01-14T15:18:00.000-08:00

Objectively I suppose Videodrome is pretty great, but from a personal standpoint it's not the best of early Cronenberg (i.e The Fly, The Dead Zone). The movie is a wild original, too complicated to explain. Think a prophetic piece about the world's obsession with television done Cronenberg style. At times the movie seems more interested in chaos than coherence, and the James Woods character developing physically (in a monstrous sort of way) rather than emotionally. But it all makes for a movie that's really pretty explosive, not to mention relevant. Only someone as smart and daring as Cronenberg could come up with it.

Disturbia. B

2012-01-13T15:14:00.000-08:00

Shia LaBeouf's character in Disturbia has a trash heap of a bedroom, and that clutter seems invade the movie itself as it climbs towards its climax. What ever happened to the tidy, tight ending in thrillers? Take Disturbia's main inspiration, Rear Window, and note how that film opts out of a big bang finish in exchange for a quietly suspenseful close. If Disturbia had followed the tradition of that movie as it wound down rather than modern horror flicks, then it would be more worthy of being mentioned along side Hitchcock's classic. Besides its failure to close properly, Disturbia is a fantastic movie. The script originally came into the hands of Steven Spielberg, who then asked D.J. Caruso if he was interested. Seeing elements of the classic thriller and the 80s John Hughes teen comedies, Caruso and screenwriters Carl Ellsworth and Christopher Landon deliver just that. This is a smart, intelligent, and surprisingly scary movie that certainly borrows from Hitch's film, but also has some good ideas of its own. LaBeouf, right at the beginning of what looked to be a career as a huge movie star (it hasn't quite gone as planned), is Kale, a kid placed under house arrest for punching his teacher (it's a favor, the judge tells him). So, unlike James Stewart, who was confined to a wheelchair in Rear Window, Kale has a bit more freedom to roam around. He can even go outside, as long as he doesn't exit the front yard. Kale's mom is at work during the day, so most of the time Kale, his friend Ronnie, and his hot new neighbor Ashley have the house to themselves. Well, I assume you know where things go from there. Disturbia could have made many mistakes, but it mainly steers clear of them. At one point I thought it would go into The Stepfather territory, but luckily it never does. LaBeouf is great here, playing someone likable, complicated, technically adroit, and, shall we say, hesitantly aggressive. Disturbia is a great entertainment, miles better than most teen thrillers. Sure, it draws a lot from an old masterpiece, but there's nothing wrong with that as long as its used to expand into new territory. Disturbia does just that.

The Best Movies of 2011...

2012-01-11T22:37:00.000-08:00

Here's my belated list of the best movies of 2011, one of the more low key years for movies in recent times-and also one of the finest. I really felt spoiled by the amount of good movies from good directors that came out this year-and I haven't even seen everything yet. It's a year refreshingly devoid of typical big Oscar movies. Voters are left with a large handful of strange little movies to deal with (and the one that puts on the biggest show for the audience is silent and in black and white). We had already been dealt Moneyball, Take Shelter, Drive, J. Edgar, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Hugo, Melancholia, Young Adult, and The Descendants (among many others). But it was a week in late December when Mission Impossible, Tintin, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all opened early, and then on Friday The Artist, A Dangerous Method, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, all arrived, that I realized this was a special year for cinema. I suppose if there was one word to describe this year's best films, it would be original. Look even at some of the Summer's big blockbusters: Thor, Super 8, Captain America, The Green Lantern, and Cowboys and Aliens. Granted, three are superhero films, but all five are non-sequels. As far as the big mainstream releases earlier in the year, I found a lot of original and decent material: The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Unknown, Sanctum, Paul, Rango, The Lincoln Lawyer, Source Code, and Hanna. This is all good stuff, the latter two titles close to great. There were lousy sequels, but also some of the best in years, like Fast Five, X-Men, and Harry Potter, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (which I actually haven't seen but year is amazing). At times I felt like there was too much this year. Anyway, here are the top 10 films of 2011:

10. Cave of Forgotten Dreams/ Certified Copy. Prehistoric men were pretty good artists, as seen in this great and unusual documentary from Werner Herzog. If you see it, you'll also see that in a way they were creating cinema with their drawings, which ultimately made me all the more grateful for this wonderful medium. With some other great movies from the year, 2011 in a way gave us a tour of the cinema's history. One could say it starts in the cave. Certified Copy is simultaneously simple and complicated, a conversation throughout the countryside and city between a woman and a writer that slowly becomes a sneaky mind game from writer director Abbas Kiaostami.

9. Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. The Mission: Impossible series got way cooler with Ghost Protocol, a movie that really wowed me. I know the Dubai sequence will go down in history, but I'm still shocked at how much I loved this movie overall. I guess when seeking answers, one can really only turn to Brad Bird.

8. Hugo. This movie is so fun to watch, yet Scorsese is after so much more than just visual magnificence. Thankfully he keeps the plot simple, making a very busy movie come across as smooth and effortless.

7. Midnight in Paris. Best Woody Allen movie since... Manhattan Murder Mystery? A long career, but also pretty shaky, especially in recent years. Allen sneaks up on us here with a true original that also maintains his signature wit, cynicism, and romantic idealism. Owen Wilson does the best job of being Woody Allen since he stopped acting.

6. The Mill and the Cross. The most visually beguiling movie of the year, the most interesting movie in years, the one that will have you talking most-if you've got the nerve to actually pay attention.

5. A Dangerous Method. The new Cronenberg film worked nicely, a different project for the director, yet, like Hugo, something he seems to have been working towards his whole career. Yet it's not a grand statement kind of movie, but rather one that maintains the efficiency of a lot of his recent pictures. Thematically it's all Cronenberg, yet visually he takes a step into the shadows, making the moments when he decides to come out all the more chilling.

4. The Artist. I loved this so much more than expected I would. I expected a lark, and got something more, something should keep my mind on this movie for a long time to come.

3. Moneyball. Masterful. Bennet Miller is a director to watch, making biographical dramas more than just history lessons. Aaron Sorkin helped with the screenplay, which has the same zip as The Social Network last year. But I liked this more, partly because I like baseball so much more than I like Facebook. Anyone can enjoy this, but to get the most out of it, one must have pretty deep baseball knowledge.

2. The Tree of Life. Two Brad Pitt movies in a row? What a year for the guy.

1. Drive. I had difficulty selecting my favorite movie of the year. It was Drive for a long time, but the more films I saw this year the more I realized how much I liked them all about equally. I know a lot of people are picking Drive, so I figure I might as well join them. I can't wait to see it again when it comes out on video, and then I'll really know how much I like it. But for now I'll have to rely on that electrifying experience I had in the theater on the first day of October, 2011.

Honorable mention: Of Gods and Men, Hanna.

The Artist. A

2012-01-10T10:41:00.000-08:00

Watching the black and white, silent, gloriously 35 mm The Artist in a darkened theater is to be taken back to the days before talkies when cinema was, in a way, in its purest state. A movie in its most literal sense is a moving picture, the process of taking hundreds of stills on a screen and putting them in motion. The sound is a gimmick, or at least it was. Now sound, the shrill wind, the crunch of a leaf, the biting dialogue of Tarantino, is crucial. At the time of George Valentin, the hero Michel Hazanavicius's film, it was a way to sell more tickets, forcing actors and directors to change their idea of art. For Valentin, played by frequent Hazanavicius collaborator Jean Dujardin, the rise of sound meant the fall of a movie star. No drugs, alcohol, or corruption. Just pride, and jealousy of a new rising actress, Peppy Miller, whose fame was attributed to a chance run in with Valentin. You may be thinking Anne Baxter in All About Eve, but Hazanavicius wisely steers clear of that territory and portrays the beautiful Miller as a sympathetic girl who only wants to boost her career and be liked by Valentin. I was surprised at the originality of this. The story is familiar, but Hazanavicius's method of going about it is quite original and unexpected. And visually the movie is a marvel, teeming with comic gags and inventive tricks, as when Valentin faces a shadow on a wall, a miniature scene from an old adventure movie, or a haunting dream in which sound enters as a force as frightening as a plague. I suppose in the end I was genuinely surprised at how Hazanavicius looked beyond the novelty of making a silent picture and ambitiously sought to make a really good movie-perhaps better than most silent films from 80 years ago. I think it's wonderful that audiences have the opportunity to take in Hugo and then The Artist on the same day. A kid watching Hugo might not have previously known what a silent film was and been curious to see one. Young man, The Artist is here, waiting. And who knows, maybe there are a few lucky kids who might actually propose just that.

Primal Fear. B

2012-01-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

The first movie I saw for 2012 was Primal Fear, a film I've wanted to see since I realized Edward Norton was an actor worth reckoning with. Plus, people always seem to mention it when talking about his great performances. Besides that, I knew really nothing about the movie going into it. As a whole I liked it. There was no love or even admiration for the film (it's dark, gritty, and even nasty at times), but to its credit it managed to alter the tradition of the court room drama without raising its opinion of itself. This film is low down, a game really, but happily a very skillfully played one. Norton is only in supporting role here as an alter boy, 19, accused of murdering a popular archbishop in Chicago. Richard Gere plays a defense attorney who takes on the boy's case pro bono. I suppose he wants attention, though eventually he begins to feel the boy is truly innocent. Laura Linney is the prosecutor to whom Gere is attracted to amidst their competition. She and Gere have some nice scenes together that sizzle with dislike and hidden desire. Francis McDormand is also taking part in things as Norton's psychiatrist, and it is she who first discovers some secrets to his character that lead up to movie's big bang finale. I liked the characters in the movie, mainly because none of them were glorified. Gere isn't quite sleazy, but he's also far from a white knight. Throughout the movie he's trying to play Linney, and in the end it's he who's been played. Primal Fear does a good job of playing with formula only to reveal it's really more of an anti-courtroom drama. For a 130 minute movie, it flew by.

Hugo. A-

2012-01-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Hugo is arguably Martin Scorsese's finest release since Goodfellas. It's also not as unlikely a choice for him as people say, considering that its subject is something so close to his overall obsession with this medium. Any Scorsese devotee knows that the films he cherishes most are the ones he saw in his youth, thus creating the connection of childhood and cinema and the spell the two have on each other. The character Hugo's experiences with movies probably mirrored Scorsese's own childhood. And then one of the central themes of the movie, the preservation of film, (wisely left out of the advertisements) is Scorsese's greatest interest next to filmmaking. In a way, Hugo feels like the culmination of memories and a life's work for Scorsese, a fitting capstone to a career if he chose to suddenly retire. No movie has felt more alive this year, with Scorsese operating on a rich canvas where there is always something interesting happening. Yet what I personally admired about it was that there's so much going on all the time, yet there's not much of a plot to keep the viewer engaged. We don't find this type of cinema much anymore. It seems to be a requisite for a movie to always keep the story front and center. Yet Scorsese opts for something more challenging, and to no surprise the result is more rewarding. With Hugo, Scorsese has made the type of movie he would fall in love with as a kid. May there be enough open young minds today for same effect to occur and take its shape.

A Dangerous Method. A

2012-01-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

It's easy to eat up David Cronenberg's new movie, A Dangerous Method, as a student of psycho-analysis or as a student of cinema. The movie pays close attention to the details of the mind through its characters, Carl Jung, his patient Sabina Spielrein, and Sigmund Freud, and it's also a showcase of narrative efficiency and both basic and artful composition. The film, as typical with a Cronenberg picture, runs for only 99 minutes, yet, as also a staple in the director's work, tackles substantial material. The marriage between the two would result in a mess in lesser hands, but Cronenberg is a master of exactly what to include in a film to make it effective without dragging. A Dangerous Method is a particularly interesting project for Cronenberg, a film that in a way is a complete expression of all of his cinematic endeavors. We see elements of the physically bizarre found in his early horror films as well as the use of the unexpected to puncture a pedestrian scene. We see Cronenberg's fascination with the mind, the relation of the inner and outer, we see his ability to avoid blueprint plot tricks, and, as I said, we get a great taste of his orderly, efficient style. It's also filled with great performances. Michael Fassbender and Kiera Knightley occupy much of the screen, often in the same scene, and then to complete the story there's Viggo Mortensen (best actor around?) as Freud. The movie isn't about any particular character, and there's not a major arc that propels the story. It's more of a quiet exercise in sophistication, a study of what makes relationships between people soar and fizzle. But like most Cronenberg movies, it's difficult to say exactly what A Dangerous Method is about, because his style and creative instinct do not allow for the usual storytelling templates the enter his sphere. Only one who has seen Cronenberg, and hopefully understands him, should seek out. It's a movie no one but Cronenberg could make, and a movie really only for Cronenberg fans to really feast on.

The Adventures of Tintin. B+

2011-12-26T15:57:00.001-08:00

I wouldn't expect those who aren't familiar with the Herge comics to find The Adventures of Tintin to be a very good movie. One foreign to the source material would likely see the film as a bland, overloaded action picture that's fun to look at. Yet a reader of the comics would see the details and the humor and immediately know that Steven Spielberg and his team of writers get Tintin. This is a movie devoted to its source, firmly intent on not disappointing the true fans. So often a movie adaptation leaves out segments and/or adds problematic content not from its source, yet Spielberg seems set on getting everything right. And despite a few action scenes not found in the comics, he stays very close to the stories he chose for the film. The central source here is The Secret of the Unicorn, one of my personal favorite Tintin adventures. Spielberg uses that tale mainly for the narrative, and then puts in pieces from other adventures for the action scenes. Some say Tintin has too much action, and I could see why after watching the film. Yet the comics have a fair amount of action scenes, too, only they end much quicker on the page than on the screen. Reading an action scene in Tintin is like a brief excursion from the story, yet in the film Spielberg seems to build his narrative around the fights and the chases. For the first half he has a great balance of smooth, brief bits of action mixed with the intrigue of the plot. But after an escape from a large ship, Spielberg suddenly seems concerned with nothing but loud action pieces. They're elaborate, with Spielberg taking full advantage of the possibilities of performance capture animation, but they're also a bit of a grind. The final single-shot stunt Spielberg inserts in the film should have been wowing, but the movie has pummeled the viewer with so much chaos that it's hard to really care about it. That being said, everything works in the film. It feels very close to the perfect Tintin movie, especially when you then go back and flip through the comics again. But I'd recommend those who don't know Tintin to do that first before seeing the film. It's the difference between mediocrity and enormous fun.

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. A-

2011-12-23T17:26:00.000-08:00

So often people come away from a movie saying it has a lot of action, but they rarely say it has good action. Because the action sequence has lost much of the spice of the old days in exchange for blandness, moviegoers now see action, regardless of its quality, as a good. People no longer seem to care if action is composed with any grace or care. Nobody except nitpicking critics complained that The Dark Knight had generally poor action sequences. People simply see it as a means to jolt their senses, to get them going, to keep them watching. So why does the new Mission: Impossible film stand miles above any action movie in recent years when its plot is pretty conventional? Because Brad Bird, who made a great action movie in The Incredibles (and also showed his guns a bit in The Iron Giant) recognizes action scenes as a craft, not a cheap path to an adrenaline rush. So we don't leave the theatre saying, wow, that movie had a lot of action (though it does), but rather in awe of a stunning Dubai sequence or an inventive moving car garage battle. That is to say, we remember the action scenes, the details, and exactly why they made our pulses race. One of the cheapest tricks these days is the explosion, which is an extremely bland technique (it's really just filling the screen with fire and loud noises) used to, in a way, shake the ground beneath the viewer. Ghost Protocol has one big explosion, and it ends almost as soon as it begins. See, Bird doesn't want to waste time on action formula. He wants to invent, to make a mainstream movie the way they used to be made. Namely, to make it more than disposable entertainment. I'm a big fan of the Mission: Impossible movies. They're a great fit for Tom Cruise, and they also have all had interesting directors for each mission. Ghost Protocol is my favorite by far. It's not just an action movie, but an action spectacle.

Hanna. A-

2011-12-22T15:56:00.001-08:00

Joe Wright is one of the more exciting directors around today, and I think he'll only get better. His debut, the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, was fantastic on its own terms (though weak compared to the masterful TV series from the 90s), his next, Atonement, was even better, a brilliant and tragic love story (its mix of the great old Hollywood war epics and subdued aura was perfect) that wrapped things up in a tidy two hours when it could have dragged for three, then he took a misstep with The Soloist (it's a film about good performances and emotion, really not a challenge for Wright), and then this year he wanders into new territory with a razor sharp thriller, Hanna. I immediately loved it. Saorise Ronan, who was so young and unlikable in Atonement, unleashes her badass side as a trained assassin raised in the wilderness by her father, Eric Bana. Hanna is a bit awkward, too, because she has no real clue of society's standards. So when she finally is allowed to leave the snowy woods and enter the real world, she really is a bit like an alien. There's a big plot going on here that I won't elaborate on except that this is essentially a cat and mouse game taken to a new level by Wright. It has great kinetic energy, thanks to the director's fluid camera, an electric score by the Chemical Brothers, and the intensity of Ronan's performance. Cate Blanchett is the other central player, a CIA operative obsessed with tracking down Hanna. She's the sort of person who becomes crazed by her need for perfection, pictured brilliantly by a scene where she brushes her teeth so intensely that her gums start to bleed. Hanna is uncompromising, audacious, and truly an original from Wright. As a side note, it also gives pro-life advocates another reason to convince pro-choicers to oppose abortion, if you can believe it.

The Invention of Lying. C

2011-12-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

Ricky Gervais deserves applause for an attempt at bringing a creative idea to the screen, yet the praise doesn't really go beyond that. The high concept here is that it is in man's nature to only speak the truth, which includes speaking your mind at all times. It gets pretty harsh, but in this world things have always been such, so the people are quite used to it. Gervais plays his typical sad-sack, lonely single man looking for love who suddenly becomes universally famous for lying-only no one knows it. Gervais uses this for comic purposes and also to delve into some issues about life after death. But though he attempts to go after some big questions, Gervais answers them shallowly, creating an awkward mess of a movie that confuses the viewer as to when it's meant to be funny. The main sell for the film is its concept, but it wasn't as great as it sounds. Just imagine a movie where everyone says those horrible things that they think but never dare to utter. It's fun at first, but gets old far too soon. And besides that, this is a pretty formulaic romantic comedy that even dares to end with one of those wedding scenes that has been used countless times, from Shrek to Made of Honor. I had hoped Gervais would have known better.

The Furies. A

2011-12-18T15:28:00.000-08:00

The Furies, both the film and the place, seem like something from the mind of John Steinbeck. It's an enormous ranch owned by a the corrupt T.C Jeffords (Walter Huston, in his final role), and it's an incredible film from the director Anthony Mann. Jeffords is a classic character, so in love with his ranch that it turns him evil. He's a great character because he's not just the overseer, but a tough cowboy who at the beginning of the film is seen rescuing a baby cow from a sea of mud. His persona has made its way into his daughter's blood, too. She's Vance, played by a devilish Barbara Stanwyck. The movie has a lot going on in its running time of just under two hours. There are the Mexicans, portrayed sympathetically, who claim that some of Jeffords' land is their own. Then there's the banker, played by Wendall Corey, who also claims to own some of the land. Finally there's the woman, Judith Anderson, who Jeffords brings in to marry. She's sly, but honest. She admits that in order to be comfortable, money really does help. Vance hates her, and the conflict leads to one of the most memorable sequences of all time. Vance takes a pair of scissors and throws them at Anderson's face, tearing up her skin and producing a surprising amount of blood for a film released in 1950. Vance then runs to the Mexicans' hideout on the mountain (she's very close to an amigo, Juan, in their family). Jeffords then leads a group of men after her and a brilliant gunfight ensues, complete with massive boulders being rolled off the mountain by the Mexicans. They eventually agree to stop fighting, and then Jeffords makes a surprising order for Juan to be hanged. Each of these three scenes, the scissors attack, the gunfight, and the hanging, are all relevant to the tension Mann has been building up. He uses action the same way as Michael Mann (no relation) does. Not for its own sake, but because it fits into the conflict. The Furies is a fascinating Western, unlike any of its time. In an interview, Mann's daughter pointed out that in the classic Westerns, the hero had the white hat and the villain had the black hat. Good and evil were two very separate things. Here, it's more complicated. The good guys are not all good and the bad guys are not all bad. What really makes this a killer film though is Stanwyck, whose Vance is driven by an intense hatred so rarely seen in female characters. Wendall Corey says that her problem is that she loves to hate. Her other is the Furies, a place that in the end is a haunting, endless land that can drive man to madness. Hatred and the Furies, a nasty combination.

Bad Teacher. B+

2011-12-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

After writing about the detritus that's The Change-Up, I'd like to turn to one of the better comedies of the year, Bad Teacher. True, it has neither the cleverness of School of Rock nor the audacity of Bad Santa, but at least avoids the trap of post-Hangover comedies and makes an attempt to have some sort of lasting impact. I think in the long run it will be seen as one of Cameron Diaz' better comedies. Though it's mostly a one-joke routine, I was constantly amused by Bad Teacher, which examines what happens when a woman with no real ethical life is put into a politically correct, educational environment, namely middle school. The film is loaded with middle school cliches, mainly from the teaching staff, yet it has fun contrasting the familiarity with Diaz' antics, as well as an original turn by Justin Timberlake, a sub who wins the hearts of two rival teachers. In an age when the black comedy is virtually non-existent in the mainstream world, Bad Teacher is refreshingly dark and unsentimental. It doesn't try to change Diaz' character, but rather shows that, unlike the most comedies, people don't always change, that they are who they are. At times we see a more human, sympathetic side to her character, yet compared to a more normal person, her behavior is still despicable. And in the end it makes for a really sold comedy that's funny, entertaining, and pretty original, too.

The Change-Up. D-

2011-12-09T19:30:00.001-08:00

The problem with The Change-Up is that it seems to use vulgarity for its own sake rather than to amuse the audience. It tries to stretch the limit not to be a funnier movie but because it wants to be looked upon as the comedy that dared to do this or that. It also presents a society in which men and women are quite unpleasant creatures, one that definitely represents the few rather than the many. A body-swap comedy that sticks to tradition, The Change-Up is an unpleasant and even disturbing comedy, one that can't even be enjoyed if you're looking for a stupid laugh. Surely Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, and Olivia Wilde, all good actors, were aware that they were making a bad movie. Though in all likelihood, this revelation did not occur until shooting was complete. The Change-Up actually has a few laughs, and they're pretty good ones. But too often the film reminded me just how lousy it really is, and just how reprehensible its characters are. Did Jason Bateman really like the father he played, a man with a good job, a wife and three kids who also happens to be profane and starved for sex? The only problem is that the movie treats all of these things as one package that is his character. That's the way he is, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I'm not even bothering with the sentimental stuff. Might we have on our hands the worst movie of 2011?

Umberto D. A-

2011-12-08T16:01:00.000-08:00

Umberto D. isn't a great title but it is pretty great film. The director is Vittorio de Sica, whose name is synonymous with Italian neorealism, a term foreign to most. The bleak world of his films then come as no surprise. He was one of the great Italian directors, along with Rosellini, Pasolini, Fellini, and Antonioni. His most accessible and famous film is The Bicycle Thief, which personally prefer. But objectively, Umberto D. is every bit as good as the former, and also equally heartbreaking. Like the Bicycle Thief, it's made up of sparse parts that would look mundane from a distance. But De Sica's film is a long close-up into the lives of a few people, and his understanding of them makes it a remarkably accurate representation of human nature when deprived of human needs. It's a slow and somber piece, and the great thing about it is that de Sica's audience is really universal. Rich or poor, young or old, it's a film for all to understand. The movie isn't so much about the pain and brutality of life, but rather its frustrations and disappointments. There are scenes of great power, and scenes that are so small and quiet as to make you think you're seeing something real. The central relationships in the film are between an aging man named Umberto, his faithful dog, and the servant in his apartment building. The man and the servant are masterfully developed, while the dog is lovable without being overly cute. Umberto D. is actually a pretty stellar family film if you're looking for something to provoke conversation and an awakening of just how challenging life can become. It's not a movie just for those stuck-up film geeks, but for everyone. Most of the great Italian directors did not have that gift of making a film accessible for all viewers. De Sica was an exception, for he understood all beings of all ages, even dogs.

The Mill and the Cross. A

2011-12-05T17:34:00.000-08:00

The Mill and the Cross is not an immersive viewing experience. Though visually magnificent, it is not a film that hypnotically takes you into its world. Rather it's a movie to be seen from a distance and scrutinized to discern its extreme detail and weaving narrative-much like looking at an artwork in a museum. And alas, Lech Majewski's film is indeed based off Pieter Bruegel's painting The Way to Calvary. Bruegel's piece is a detailed reworking of Christ's crucification, bringing the setting to Flanders and filling the landscape with mystery, subtlety, and awe. Majewski then sets out to bring various lives of the 500 people in the painting to life as well as well present the actual Bruegel (played marvelously by Rutger Hauer) in the foreground of all the action. At a time when crucifixions were of prevalence, Bruegel sees a parallel between his time and the time of Christ. Majewski takes liberation in weaving in his own narratives as well, but he does it in subtle ways as to keep the events in the film a mystery until the end. But be warned, this is not a film with a plot or with characters to relate to (though Majewski does do a good job of bringing out real emotions in tragic situations). In fact, its main draw is its original visual methods, which cannot be described, but when seen will not be forgotten. Majewski uses blue screen, paintings, real locations, and CGI to create an unprecedented visual feast. At the center of the film is the mill, a massive structure built upon a rock that, according to Bruegel, represents God. And Majewski shoots it as such, creating complicated, at times nauseating compositions of the mill to generate its magnificence. The Mill and the Cross is one of the strangest movies you will ever see, but also one of the most visually beguiling, thoughtful, and original. There is nothing else like it. Here is one of the year's finest.

The Joneses. B

2011-12-03T00:36:00.000-08:00

I've sort of wanted to see The Joneses since it came out last year. But it's a significant movie that's insignificant, if that makes sense. In other words, it's pretty important, but nothing you really need to put on your must-see list. Still, there's something very enticing about the premise, which is why I finally sat down to see it, if only for some light viewing as a break from some hefty reading. I liked it. It takes a fantastic idea and turns it into a very watchable film. If things are foggy so far, I'll briefly relate what's going on here: The Joneses are that perfect family, husband, wife, two kids (played by Demi Moore, David Duchovny, Amber Heard, and Ben Hollingswerth), lots of money, good looks, and charisma. However, we soon learn it's all a hoax. They work for a company and pretend to be the ideal family so that everyone will love them and do what they can to be like them. It's a consumerism game. Their job is to promote products so that everyone around them will buy them. This is a good piece of satire, but more I think a good story. The consumerism messages are of vital importance, for sure, but they were also obvious and not for me. I know people like The Joneses. I would not recommend this movie to them. It would be an insult. But what if they saw it by chance? Surely they would get the urge to roll up their pants, get some dirt on their knees, and live a little. The Joneses does a good job of recognizing that it's not just a satire, but also a movie. It's biting but it also slowly abandons its juicy ways as the story goes on. I actually preferred this direction. A message about the dangers of too many material goods is fine, but it can only go so far. Writer/director Derrick Borte sees he also has a feel-good entertainment brewing amidst the things he's trying to convey. He puts all his tools to good use, and produces a movie that I am very happy to recommend.

Marty. B+

2011-11-28T16:40:00.000-08:00

The simplistic style of Marty is common in modern cinema, but back in 1955 it was a rarity. The movie is in fact so understated that I sort of got lost in it and was genuinely shocked when it ended. It was such a surprise to see the guy meet the girl and then end with him calling her back. It's not that we don't know what the resolution will be, but rather it's that the resolution doesn't even occur. Pretty much unheard of in the old black and white romance dramas. Most of the credit for Marty goes to screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (Network), whose keen understanding of people in challenging circumstances brings the movie a raw honesty with just enough sentimentality. The film is ultimately a feel-good story that's full of good messages and definitely for all ages. It really took flight upon its release, becoming the first film to win the Palm d'Or and the Best Picture Oscar in the same year (however, the competition was not great, 1955 being a pretty weak year for movies). But Marty isn't really talked about much today simply because there's nothing significant about it. If not for its awards success it would probably be forgotten. But gladly it's still around, and makes for as pleasant a surprise today as it did when it was first released.

The American. B+

2011-11-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

Influenced heavily by Westerns and seventies European thrillers, Anton Corbijn's The American is a surprising mainstream release, even with George Clooney in the title role. The film came out Labor Day weekend last year and won the weekend box office due to Clooney's presence and that the film was promoted as a thriller ruled by action and white knuckle suspense. It's no surprise that The American pretty much vanished from the box office after that first weekend. But I liked it. I don't need a thriller to move quickly to be gripping. The slow, gloomy approach that Corbijn takes really allows for tension to build while also quietly developing his characters (the central ones here are Clooney, a priest, and a prostitute with whom he forms a romantic bond). Shot in Italy, Corbijn is clearly interested in the scenery, as there are numerous sweeping shots of Clooney driving through the country, much like the ones Leone used in his Spaghetti Westerns. As for Clooney's character, there's not a whole lot of depth to be had, but there doesn't need to be. Think Shane in Europe and the mystery surrounding Clooney's American becomes appealing and even haunting. While certainly derivative, The American never comes across as a stock piece of work. It's just too simple and stark a film to not be seen on its own and without reverting to cinema history. The film has a accumulated a decent following, and I would include myself among them.

Limitless. B

2011-11-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

There are few people who could not be convinced to give Limitless a try, and even fewer who would not be entertained by it. It's a rousing, flashy, well-acted, fun time at the movies. There's something very captivating and alluring about the initial premise of a man who takes a pill allowing him to use his entire brain (according to the film, we only use 20 percent of it). The potential for crafting a dynamite story out of this is great, and Limitless mostly delivers. It does everything it needs to do while keeping a wide audience in mind. True, perhaps it substitutes some potentially profound ideas for action scenes, but at least those scenes are flashy and full of life. There's one riveting chase sequence in Central Park that makes great use of its surroundings, including some massive rocks any New Yorker will be familiar with. I liked all the movie's stars, especially Bradley Cooper as the lead, and Robert De Niro, who, with this and Stone, has regained a bit of lost respect. And I liked that the film did not preach about drugs when it could have. The entire film seems to be leading to a cheesy statement about the dangers of addiction, yet it ultimately shoves these matters aside, and rightly so. Such a flashy package barely has the right to teach a lesson. We have Requiem for a Dream for that. One must admit that that in the end it'll be the plot of the movie that's remembered more than the film itself. People may say, "remember Limitless?" "Yeah, that's the one where the guy takes the pill and gets really smart." And it'll end there. But it's fun while it lasts.

Kiss Me Deadly. A

2011-11-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

One film noir you won't ever forget is Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich's angry, pessimistic, and exhilarating masterwork. It's a movie that doesn't just live on, but burns in the memory, images and scenes sizzling with the power to haunt. Ralph Meeker stars as Mike Hammer, an investigator for divorce cases who picks up the wrong woman just before her death and proceeds on a spiraling descent into madness as he tries to find out more about her and her mysterious words: "remember me." There's a sprawling quality to Aldrich's film, a sinister tone where everything is out of control. People are running around trying to figure things out, but nothing is making sense. Aldrich's world is inhabited by unsympathetic characters who live in shadows, only for themselves, and only for this world. The one decent man in the story, a car mechanic friend of Mike's, gets killed. Mike is the classic mean anti-hero, a savage man whose fancy apartment and nice suits don't disguise his inner, warped self. His character is best summed in a scene in which he traps a man's hand in a drawer in order to get an important key. We see a closeup of Mike as he tortures the man, his eyes wide, his mouth curved in a mean little smile. In short, we can't feel bad for Hammer when the game is up and he's "lost" at sea.

The Adjustment Bureau. C+

2011-11-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

The opening encounter with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt is perfect, the kind of dialogue between two adults we don't see much in mainstream Hollywood fair anymore. In fact the next hour or so of The Adjustment Bureau is excellent because the plot is slowly simmering while the characters are cementing themselves in our minds. But then when the story turns full throttle, the film becomes a bit of a hokey mess, an obvious and tedious exercise in science and intrigue. Instead of our pulses being pounded, they are deadened by writer-director George Nolfi's lackluster effort. That being said, the leads are fantastic, both individually and in the chemistry they share. Blunt especially is impressive. She has the beauty of the typical lead actress, yet she also has the grace that most lack. She radiates the screen, and Damon's sturdy, unobtrusive work compliments her greatly. The Adjustment Bureau is a disappointment in that it's a science fiction story from Philip K. Dick that's ultimately not very good, but it's at times a joy due to the romantic side of the plot. And while it's far more silly than impressive, the film can boast the fact that logically it works. That, unlike, say, Source Code, it never leaves the audience scratching their heads and wondering how that narrative blunder worked its way into the script.

Blow Out vs. Blow Up

2011-11-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

Michelangelo Antonioni got it started with Blow Up, a 1966 mystery set in London, thus his first film without subtitles. 15 years later, Brian De Palma, the legend who makes great movies from great movies, made Blow Out from Antonioni's picture. It's a mystery too, and while Blow Up was about a photographer who thinks he has shot a murder, De Palma's film concerns a movie sound man who thinks he may have recorded a murder. Blow Out is great, but it's really just a straight up, albeit complicated, thriller that contains some dazzling moments of cinema thanks to De Palma's virtuoso compositions. Blow Up by contrast is a strikingly simple movie that takes two hours but could be summed up in ten seconds. Antonioni takes a leisurely route through his protagonists life before setting up the plot, which ends up really just being a device for a brilliant character study. David Hemmings plays the fashion photographer, David Bailey, who's getting fed up with his models. One day he goes to a park and begins snapping pictures of a couple who may be fighting or may be in love-it's hard to tell. The woman notices him and chases him and demands the pictures. Immediately we're interested because she must be up to something if she is so set on getting the film (she even tries to bite his hand to get the camera). Played by Vanessa Redgrave, the woman shows up again in pursuit of the pictures and ends up getting a role of film-only it's the wrong one. Bailey blows up the real pictures and pieces them together and after scrutinizing them discovers a man hiding in the bushes with a gun. I won't reveal more. There's a very odd scene late in the movie where Bailey goes looking for the woman. He finds her on a sidewalk looking in a window, and then in a terrific piece of construction she disappears. Did David imagine her? What exactly is his state of mind? Blow Up is pure fascination, while Blow Out is mainly pure entertainment. Both are impeccably crafted movies that sound similar but could hardly be more different in style. These would make a good double feature if you wanted to study different kinds of direction, or if you just wanted a excellent cinematic excursion.

Double Indemnity. A

2011-11-11T16:12:00.001-08:00

In terms of cooking up the ideal plot and keeping it moving with unremitting suspense, Double Indemnity is pretty much perfect. And that's essentially what spells the film's greatness. This is something new that happens in nearly every scene to advance the story along. Sometimes it's for the narrative's sake and sometimes it's for pure suspense. I saw Double Indemnity for the second time last night as part of Chris Vognar's Noir Series, a followup to the 70s series from earlier in the year. It's a monthly event and Indemnity was the kick-off film, a perfect choice really, as it's the perfect representation of this style of movie. When the elements of film noir are added up, Double Indemnity pretty much matches the sum. And it has the perfect people to produce such an exquisite product. Billy Wilder, who, with his German roots can literally be seen as one of the fathers of noir, directs, and Raymond Chandler helped with the script from the book by the great James M. Cain. And then the cast is like seasoning to a perfect dish, with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the lead and the incomparable Edward G. Robinson anchoring the story in the background. The film has no rough edges, no logic mishaps, or extraneous elements. It isn't my favorite noir because the category is so hard to define (In a Lonely Place would top my list, but that's more of a romance with noir elements), but in terms of fitting all the requirements, Double Indemnity has no equal.

Wedding Crashers. B-

2011-11-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

I think Owen Wilson might be my favorite comedic actor. Vince Vaughn-not so much. These two are the duo that crash the weddings, and while they have chemistry and rely on each other throughout the film, I think the main enjoyment I got from this movie was from the former comedian. The initial set-up for the movie is pretty clever, but its ultimate path is a bit worn down. Though it's not a specified genre, this is a comedy in the wealthy home film, which has been done countless times before (i.e Meet the Parents and its sequels, Dan in Real Life, the Family Stone). These movies are primarily set at some rich dad's house, and usually involve one of his children romantically involved with an outsider. This is what Wedding Crashers does, and though it's all pretty familiar, it's still entertaining. Yes, it has the family football game that we saw in Meet the Parents, the obligatory dinner scenes, and the an obvious conclusion, but it also has Wilson, who makes all his scenes worthwhile. It also has quite a few really hilarious moments, plus an extended cameo by Will Ferrell near the end that sort of saved the sliding film. Wedding Crashers is a safe bet if you're looking for a funny motion picture. And that's a good thing, because the laughs a comedy provides is often relative to one's attitude and preferences. This one is pretty much guaranteed to get the job done.

Thief. A

2011-11-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before the role the sky plays in Michael Mann movies. It turns out that his interest in it goes all the way back to his astoundingly assured and steadily brilliant debut, Thief. After an opening heist that has the intensity found in all Mann's work, he gives us a scene of tranquility. It's early morning and James Caan's character sits down on a bench next to a presumably homeless man. Mann shoots the scene from behind the bench, and we only see their sillouettes facing the sky. It looks magnificent and then the man says: "Look at that. That's the sky chief. Ain't that sky chief something?" In Mann's world, which is very real, the sky is peace, this "other place" his characters are trying to reach. We see this also with the ocean, which is found in this and much of Mann's other work. These images suggest a sense of longing. Something that may never be obtained. Michael Mann has made films in three different decades: Thief is in his first, the eighties, in which he also made The Keep and Manhunter. These three films have are sort setting the template for his most complete decade, the nineties, when he made two great films, The Last of the Mohicans, and Heat, and one nearly great one, The Insider. Then in the 2000s his interests shifted in terms of style. Yet he was till motivated by history, man, and machoism. The latter can be found in Thief, which may be the most perfect debut of any director. The film shows tremendous control and intelligence, yet it's visceral and really exciting, too. Mann's films have always been very commercial products because he loves what the general audience loves. Yet you'll find cinephiles and even scholars look at Mann's work very enthusiastically because of how layered it is. And the cool thing about Mann is that he didn't need to develop as a storyteller. He became a better stylist, but as seen in Thief, the other elements are all there.

Drag Me to Hell-A Year Later

2011-10-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

Surely seeing Drag Me to Hell is a new Halloween tradition for me. I saw it this time last year for the first time and fell in love with it. Now a year later I think it's one of the most effective horror films of all time. This is pure greatness we're dealing with here. The effect was similar the second time around. I was giddy and laughing and horrified and really able to forget, at least for a while, the Rangers' game seven loss to St. Louis in the World Series. A few observations: the film is very funny, but it isn't a horror comedy. Raimi really has a great sense of moving forward with the narrative. He often shocks the viewer with unique and creative situations, often concerning mouths, and then moves on as if nothing had happened. It gives the movie a natural feel and shows Raimi as a master rather than a veteran trying too hard to prove he can still make a good scary movie. Some of the best parts of the film are the ones that aren't meant to be frightening. Take Raimi's depiction of the bank office, how it's run, and the people who work in it. Everything about it is so real. Raimi puts a lot of stock into this bank. After all, the film's plot unfolds around an old lady who is refused a much-needed loan. And perhaps the movie's best scene takes place at the boyfriend's wealthy parents' house. I won't mention the details, but it's all dead on perfect. One can't help but feel bad for the girl in the film. She's so human and understandable, not like the typical dumb females that occupy so many horror films. Bottom line: Drag Me to Hell equals being dragged to heaven. Movie heaven.

Halloween. A

2011-10-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

It would have been too obvious to see John Carpenter's Halloween for the first time on Halloween night. Instead I saw it a good 12 days in advance of the holiday, which turned out to be a great decision. A holiday like Christmas is all about anticipation, planning, shopping, and having parties before the actual day itself. But the only real way to plan for Halloween is to start getting scared early. Carpenter's masterpiece is a good way to get the spook fest under way. It's not a real surprise that this is Carpenter's best film. I'm a fan of nearly all his work, but this is the only one that's without flaws. It's also his only real horror/suspense movie. After this Carpenter really got into the monster, supernatural, and action genres. Perhaps he read Pauline Kael's scathing review of Halloween in which she mentioned with negativity that he had seen too many Hitchcock films. But really I think Carpenter is someone who just likes to explore new grounds. He wouldn't touch the sequel to Halloween because he had made that movie and probably wanted something new. Three years later he had churned out Escape from New York, The Thing, and Christine-all great and all very different. Kael surely had no response to that. Even Hitchcock stuck to the same genre for his lengthy career. If Carpenter had stuck with pure suspense, he probably still would have a great legacy, maybe even similar to Hitchcock. Halloween is a very professional piece of work. Carpenter, with a fantastic cast (I loved Jamie Lee Curtis in her debut-similar to Bacall in To Have and Have Not), a screenplay he wrote with producer Debra Hill, his own amazing score, and his taut direction, essentially carries on a tradition that started with Psycho: to create a genuinely frightening film in which violence plays a key role. Yet what makes Psycho and Halloween the two great horror films (despite all the other classics, none of them really compare to those two) is that they use the violence so sparingly so that when it occurs it really is shocking. Most horror films relish violence and get soaked in it. These two embrace it and keep quite dry. And then of course without relying on violence, Halloween has plenty of room to play with the audience, which it does exceedingly well. Another great strength of the film is that it gets the viewer scared during daylight, a feat in and of itself, and a vital mood setter for the evening scenes to come later. Essentially, Carpenter has us frightened the whole way through.

The Mist. B

2011-10-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

The Mist is one of the better Stephen King film adaptations. Unfortunately, "better" could have been replaced by "best" if not for director Frank Darabont's portentous approach to the movie. Darabont isn't a stranger to adapting King, previously helming The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Yet while those were some of King's more dramatic narratives, The Mist is really straight up horror. Rather than following the tradition of the genre, Darabont turns to his Shawshank roots, abandons the source material, and makes The Mist something far more serious than it has a right to be. But there's still plenty of Stephen King greatness to be had, and though the stupidity Darabont infuses in the film towards the end cannot be forgiven, he still does a great job with the rest of the movie. The close knit community plays a large part in most of King's work, and it's no exception here. A mysterious mist supposedly carrying something deadly traps a group of people in a grocery store. They're all from the same small town so they know each other, which is nice. Also nice is that there's plenty of food to go around. Not so nice is what's lurking out in the mist. If you don't know anything about the story, you're in for a shock. The movie is frightening and uncompromising. The case could be made that Darabont made the feel-bad movie of the decade. The Mist can be seen as modern day version of The Birds. Darabont's direction is similar to Hitchock's in that he's focused as much on telling a story as he in scaring the audience. But while The Birds had a perfectly ambiguous closing, The Mist is set on an explanation and a bitter close. A shame, because when the rest of the movie is comparable to The Birds you know it's doing something right.

Night Moves. A

2011-10-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

Arthur Penn's best film, Night Moves, is a nearly perfect one. The movie came out in 1975 when detective thrillers were generally elaborate and convoluted and consequently aggravating. The problem was that the characters never seemed very fleshed out (Chinatown excluded), while the plots were beyond comprehension. Then you see a film like Night Moves and can't help but rejoice in the suspense of its plot and the quiet, slow way it goes about developing it. At times it seems as if the movie has completely abandoned its story to focus on the characters, but then you realize that all of the seemingly random details are in connection to the film's big reveal. Gene Hackman, in arguably his golden era as an actor, is the investigator hired by a wealthy actress to find her missing daughter. The movie's set-up plays a lot like the old film noirs of the forties (you'll see echoes of The Maltese Falcon in several places), but it quickly changes into something far different, something very natural and real. Penn develops Hackman's character to its fullest and simultaneously uses his investigative skills to explore a variety of other people, all interesting and unique. If one were to see the beginning and the end of Night Moves they might assume it was just another wild seventies thriller. But it's what Penn does in the middle that puts the movie in a distinct class. This is one of the great films, like Chinatown, though perhaps better. Any lover of the classics can't pass this one up.

Big Trouble in Little China. C-

2011-10-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

Big Trouble in Little China isn't a good movie, and in its failure shows the major weakness of John Carpenter: he doesn't really understand the craft of character. He gets just about everything else, but often fails to give us fully developed characters. When the movie is otherwise good we often overlook this flaw. But when he comes up short, it is painfully obvious. Big Trouble in Little China is like that. The movie is a scam. Carpenter has made a cheap 80s video game, complete with silly effects, a laughable story, creatures designed to be exploded, and a central character without a brain. How does he survive without one? He doesn't need to, because it's a video game. The movie does have a star, Kurt Russell, and a young kid might find delight in it the same way he would relish watching his friend fight through the levels of the latest computer game. But for older viewers, it's a serious bore. Carpenter simply never gives us a reason to keep watching.

Rango. A-

2011-10-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

Rango is one of my favorite movies of 2011. Filmed with real actors and then converted digitally, the animation is breathtaking, as good as anything I've seen. The film is a Western, but at heart more of a lover of Westerns and classic cinema. There are some obvious references as well as some sneaky, clever ones. One character screams to a hawk flying away: you son of a--! Then we hear the hawk screech, blocking out the profanity. An ingenious homage to The Good the Bad and the Ugly. The movie takes a plot similar to Chinatown and makes it accessible to kids with a wide array of fun, realistic creatures, led by Johnny Depp's chameleon, Rango. He's an imaginative, lonely, unsure hero who, after a nasty spill out of his owner's car, winds up in a small town just like the ones in classic Western movies. The movie takes plenty of liberties and really doesn't make an effort to please the youngsters. They will likely be scared and confused and too little to understand the humor. The film was naturally advertised as family entertainment and naturally did well on its opening weekend (in fact, it brought the box office to life after a dismal first two months of the year), but I can't imagine the kids left the multiplex enthusiastically. The parents were probably a bit disappointed that Rango wasn't really for children, but also likely beaming on the insides at the sheer intelligence of the movie. Here is a film that celebrates cleverness, wit, craftsmanship, and the movies.

Animal Kingdom. A

2011-10-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

Animal Kingdom is the best movie I never saw last year. The best movie of 2010 was and still is The Ghost Writer, but David Michod's debut feature isn't far behind. Here is the type of small crime movie I love where the criminals are so close to society yet so far from it. In The Godfather, the Corelones were essentially in another world. I saw the movie right after I got back from an exhausting Ultimate practice. I didn't have the energy to do my homework due the next day. Animal Kingdom reinvigorated me and I was able to do the homework just fine. Michod, working from fact-based events, tells the story of a small time crime family headed by an evil mom destined to become something of a legend. Played by Jackie Weaver (she got an Oscar nod for the role), she sits atop her clan and watches with a seemingly innocent air about her. She shows affection more often than anger, love more than hate. Yet we knows she's a vile wretch beneath, and when her sinister ugliness appears, her character takes full shape. The central character is a seventeen year old boy, J, who moves into the crime family after his mom dies from a drug overdose. He's leaving a hard life and entering a harder one. J's conflicted situation (following his family or his conscience) is somewhat familiar. But what makes Animal Kingdom so good are the supporting characters. Jackie Weaver's mom, of course, and Ben Mendelsohn as J's vicious uncle. I also really liked Guy Pierce, playing one of the most admirable movie cops since Louis Jouvet's Inspector Antoine in Quai des Orfevres. Animal Kingdom is relentless yet so restrained. It's violent but not bloody. It's psychological and character-driven, yet is also concerned about telling a really good story. I can't believe I missed this last year.

Drive. A

2011-10-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

I'd really like to see Drive again before I officially declare its greatness. But for now I'll have to settle with it being the best movie I've seen this year. In an unusually dynamite September, Drive is the coolest option for moviegoers right now. Really, it's the coolest option all year. I'm not a huge fan of this method of recommendation, but if you dig a movie like The Professional then you'll probably love Drive. Or if you love Michael Mann, particularly Thief, Manhunter, and Collateral, then Drive is for you. Like Mann's Manhunter, it's a bit over-directed by Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson). But that's not to say the direction is poor. In fact, Refn's eye for visual structure and ear for music and sound (like Mann) brought him a directing prize at Cannes. Since that festival, Drive has been building up steam, gathering followers, and in some circles getting called a new classic. The construction of the movie is unique, starting off with a brilliant traditional Hollywood suspense scene, then wandering into a romantic, and very silent world before its penetrating and very bloody extended third act. The prevalence of extreme violence in movies these days leads one to believe that there's little room for original or innovative use of carnage. Yet Drive manages to shock us with blood in ways we haven't seen before. It's often said that a movie has too much style and not enough substance. Drive has plenty of both. Yes, I still need to see it again, but I doubt I'll see a better film this year.

Badlands. A

2011-10-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

The root of the American flavor that's so strong in the works of Terence Malick can be found in Badlands, a road movie that's like a trek through Americana. Badlands isn't so much a representation of classic American ideals (it would be a disgrace if it were) but rather a portrait of a changing landscape. It's the 1950s, but Malick is more interested in that general period of the fifties to the seventies than a specific era. It's the time when young men rebelled and girls began to ignore social norms that started in the fifties and intensified through the next twenty years. The movie starts in a small South Dakota town and relates the adventures of greaser named Kit, played by Martin Sheen, and a fifteen year old school girl named Holly (Sissy Spacek). They meet, fall in love, and go on the run when Kit shoots Holly's dad. These two characters are really interesting. Kit isn't a creation of Malick's, but a rip off of James Dean. This is Malick's intent, as there are at least four references to Dean throughout the film. The best comes when we see him wandering in the fields, his rifle across his shoulders like Christ's crucifixion. There's a famous still shot from Giant of a cut scene in which Dean does the same thing with his gun. But it's not just the references. Kit walks, talks, and acts like Dean, only without the same moral ambiguity. The strange thing about Kit is that he's created a world for himself in which right and wrong simply do not exist. People just do things. He lives in the moment, chooses chance over reason, and takes nothing very seriously. Holly is smart and intelligent, so why does she go off with such a wild and unpredictable fellow? There are two reasons: one, he's James Dean, and running away with him would be fulfilling the fantasies of all the high school girls. Two, her mother is dead, and her father doesn't show enough love. He's too concerned with her well-being and her education. Kit shows her some of the first real love of her life, and as Holly says, she'd rather spend a week in love than a life alone. Malick captures all of this with the maturity of an academic and the beauty of a romantic. The film is always moving. For Kit and Holly, time doesn't seem to exist. Holly is swept into Kit's world where he has power over everything and everyone. Malick wisely disrupts this fantasy with a dose of reality, but we don't feel sad by the ending because no one can ignore society's rules and live by their own.

Unknown. B

2011-09-25T21:56:00.000-07:00

The movie that Jaume Collet-Serra directed before Unknown was Orphan, which I liked. Unknown is even better. It has its variety of problems (which can only be expected from mainstream thrillers these days), but it's also well crafted and a good deal of fun, too. This is the second mystery for Liam Neeson set in Europe where all kinds of surprising secrets are revealed about his character. The set-up for Unknown is made pretty clear in the film's trailer: a professor, Dr. Harris (Neeson) and his wife (January Jones, well used as a classic Hitchcock blonde even if her acting is even worse than in X-Men) are going to Berlin for a conference. They get to the hotel, Harris discovers a suitcase got left at the airport, goes alone in a taxi to get it, and is subsequently involved in a dangerous car wreck. He wakes up in the hospital days later and rushes off to the conference only to find that his wife doesn't recognize him, that she has a different husband, and that maybe he isn't Dr. Harris after all. This sets up for a Jason Bourne-style adventure, but Collet-Serra's approach is more cool and quiet, which nicely fits Neeson's persona. There's some action, but the film never relies on it to keep the viewer involved. As in Taken, Neeson is perfect as the laid back gentleman thrown into world he knows well but hasn't visited in a while. The rest of the cast is excellent, too, especially Bruno Ganz, the Swiss actor best known for playing Hitler in Downfall. One doesn't watch a movie like Unknown without expecting some sort of twist at the end. I was anticipating a disaster and got something, that, while not perfect, worked well enough. Perhaps the best part about it is that it doesn't contradict the rest of the film. In other words, it explains certain elements of Neeson's character that we see in pieces throughout the story. Neeson seems to enjoy doing this European adventures. He fits into them really well, and his presence makes them better movies. I'm all for more of them in the future.

The Far Country. B+

2011-09-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

My enthusiasm for James Stewart as a Western hero is not on the same level as it is for Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Picturing Wayne or Eastwood in Western garb is perfectly natural, as if they wore these clothes in every day life. But with Stewart it looks more like a costume. He's too familiar to us in other roles that when we picture him he's often in a suit and tie. In film Stewart was the complicated American citizen, not a Western hero. Still, he's obviously at home in the Western, as evidenced in The Far Country, a juicy little frontier tale from Anthony Mann. Mann of course was Stewart's main collaborator with the Western, and after the very normal Winchester 73, I was happily surprised at just how far The Far Country strays from normalcy. Stewart is an anti-hero, a cattleman with as few scruples as Eastwood in his Westerns. When we learn that Stewart has killed some men, we expect, based on the characters he tends to play, an explanation to justify his actions. But there aren't any, really. He's just a rugged man of the west, who has no qualms about taking the life of another. So in a way, The Far Country is out to destroy the myth of the wild West and show it as something harsher and more realistic. While this is the main strength of Mann's film, it's also a good movie because it tells a story that doesn't just use recycled elements from previous Westerns. It avoids the genre's overused vendetta theme and settles for a plot we can actually fathom occurring in real life. The movie is in color, yet perhaps it would have been better served in black and white. There's a slight artificial look to it, maybe caused by the faded images and lack of texture. It's not a film pleasing or striking to the eye. But for one of the old traditional Westerns, it's actually pretty new age, perhaps more for the McCabe and Mrs. Miller group than the Red River group.

Bigger than Life. A

2011-09-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

The fifties are a pretty interesting time for examination, not for social or political reasons but for the dissection of the American family. There's certainly an idealized version of the family during this time, one that can pretty much be summed up in an episode of Father Knows Best. This model of the family has been ridiculed by many as simply not true, yet I think there's a lot of accuracy to it. Families really were prime and proper in the fifties, and the rituals, mother cooking in the kitchen, father coming home from the office and hanging his fedora on the hat rack, and little Billy leaving his train set to go say hi, are not fallacious. However, what is often overlooked in the classic advertisements of this life, such as Father Knows Best, are the complications nagging at man since his origin. It's not as if they suddenly vanished in the fifties. No, they were as present as ever, only concealed to make the surface as smooth as possible. Perhaps it was caution from the war, or maybe a social thing, as suburban families all tried to fit in the same circle and keep dark secrets locked up to avoid humiliation. This can clearly be seen in Far From Heaven. This leads me to Nicholas Ray's dazzling take on the model family from this time period, Bigger than Life. It's been said that the movie tries to tear apart the idea of the family, yet in my mind it's merely deconstructing the myth of it and showing that all was not well with the dad, that the mom had doubts, and most importantly, that the son was much deeper and more complex than he's often displayed. It's admittedly a strange movie though, because Ray's method for the demythologization of the family comes in the form of a drug that the father takes to treat a terrible illness. At first it makes him feel bright and happy, but then he begins to overuse it and his mind becomes warped. Ray isn't suggesting that these are bad people or that the goodness of the family did not exist. He's merely saying that unfortunate things did occur and the sheltered lifestyle the families adopted left them incapable of dealing with them. The solution was to hide them away in order to keep things right. Bigger than Life came out after Rebel Without a Cause, but it can be seen in a way as a predecessor to it. The young boy, Richie, can be seen as a young James Dean, the connection being made by Ray with the signature red jacket both characters play. Bigger than Life is a fantastic film to look at, a technicolor spectacle filled rich images and vivid detail. The cast is stellar too, led by James Mason and including Walter Matthau, Barbara Rush, and Christopher Olsen. It's just an all around good movie, and hey, it's Nicholas Ray, so not a big surprise.

Thieves' Highway. A-

2011-09-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Jules Dassin's final American movie, Thieves' Highway, is everything that Raoul Walsh's They Drive by Night should have been. While Walsh's misguided disaster took the social drama and the film noir genres and let each occupy half of the film, Dassin melds them together, creating a movie both riveting and believable. There aren't any major names in the cast, which works in the film's favor because of how real it tries to be. Richard Conte is the American who returns from the war to find his truck-driving father disabled as a result of a produce dealer's iniquitous foul play. Conte then takes up his father's old profession with money and revenge on his mind. The movie unfolds like a first-rate thriller. The dishonest dealer, played by a great Lee J. Cobb, is sort of like the mobster, and Conte is the rugged anti-hero boiling with repressed anger. Like They Drive by Night, the movie also captures lower class American truck drivers who will do anything to get a load. Dassin could compose a good shot like few could, which leads to the film's most devastating scene. A good man has just crashed his truck down a hill and died in the ensuing explosion. Dassin shoots from a distance as we see the burning truck and hundreds of apples rolling down the hill. It's a haunting image, symbolic of the film's theme of the downward spiral caused by man's fury. The tension is enormous in this film, building up constantly and climaxing in a scene at a restaurant booth that calls to mind a similar set-up from Mystic River. The movie seems destined for a tragic close (in deep contrast from the highly enthusiastic, idyllic opening scene), but either at Dassin's or the studio's wish, it never reaches it. And this, unfortunately, is the film's big flaw. It's not that I wanted a dark and pessemsitic finish, but just a believable one. Still, after the letdown of They Drive by Night, I was pretty thrilled at how much Theives' Highway gets right.

Autumn and Cinema

2011-09-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

Wait, it's already Fall movie season? The Summer movie period has ended, yet I can't say good riddance. Contrary to some, I actually thought this was a really fun Summer for movies. I generally ask for three or four really fantastic Summer movies, and 2011 provided. Not only that, but the movies I had high expectations for delivered on every account. Those were mainly Super 8, Captain America, and X-Men. All period pieces and all made by directors who know that movies are things that people really do like to hold on to. If you add to the mix the amazing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, then that's quite a summer. I never saw Thor, but I'm guessing I would have really liked that, too. And then of course there was Tree of Life and Midnight and Paris, two perfectly placed Summer movies that really celebrated our existence. The other big surprise of the Summer was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which I regretfully have not seen despite its great reviews and box office success. But all that's past. Now we're into September, which is looking to be quite a month. Today Warrior and Contagion were released. I hear they're good but I don't know when I'll see them. The month gets stronger with Drive (Can't wait), Moneyball, and Jim Sheridan's Dream House.

Okay, here's what else I'm eager for: Take Shelter, The Ides of March (what a cast), In Time, The Rum Diary, J Edgar, Melancholia, A Dangerous Method, The Artist, The Lady, Carnage, and of course, The Adventures of Tintin and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

One quick note: two of the worlds most respected filmmakers, Spielberg and Scorsese, both have movies coming out this fall that happen to be for children (Spielberg actually has two, as War Horse, which no one seems very excited about, comes out a week after Tintin. Spielberg fans rejoice! You can see his two new films in a span of 8 days). 2009 had the same deal with Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson both directing kid movies, Where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'm really hopeful for Spielberg's interpretation of Tintin, but I'm rather dubious about Scorsese's Hugo. It will probably be pretty magical, but I'm having trouble working up any kind of excitement for it. Also, on another note, Cameron Crowe, Alexander Payne, and Jason Reitman all have movies coming out this fall/winter. I don't care much about them now, but I'm sure the inevitable critical raves will get me out of the house to see at least one of them.

The Abyss. B+

2011-08-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

I saw The Abyss with my brother in a small, closed in space on an old VHS played through a 22 inch television. For a movie whose claustrophobia is something to relish, the setting was ideal. The movie itself was more impressive than it was good, and while I left it with the sense that I was glad I'd seen it, it didn't give me anything to hold on to and embrace. I feel like Cameron never quite knew what he wanted the movie to be. It was as if his concern with the technical aspects of the film invaded his mind, leaving little room for story. The Abyss starts out as an extremely realistic, almost docudrama underwater adventure. Then Cameron's love of traditional Hollywood entertainment seeped through when a couple of crew members are vilified to add some excitement. And then of course there's the underwater aliens that are impressive to look at but never fully realized. That being said, the movie is an incredible technical achievement, and because amazing set pieces and special effects are Cameron's trademark, the movie is still a vast success. It almost makes it more enjoyable to know that the production was disaster (bad conditions, over-budgeted, and behind schedule-combined with the director's fastidious perfectionism) and then to see Cameron's vision have such a smooth transition to the screen. Cameron loves producing different versions of his movies, not to declare any of them "the official product," but simply to give the audience as many options as possible. I saw the original cut of The Abyss, which was actually the one Cameron wanted for its theatrical release. A few years later he released a longer cut, which I hear is better and really cleans up some of the mess involving the aliens. Could a good movie really be a great one, just a longer cut away?

Detour. C

2011-08-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

Detour is the most famous Poverty Row movie ever made, recognized by a number of excellent individuals and organizations as an important landmark from the classic era. It's poorly made (though it puts what it has to decent enough use), acted by people no one knows about, and full of images that are too dark or too light and cinematic tricks an amateur would use in a production with friends. What I'm curious about is why the movie has survived. It seems as if people have gone to accepting it, to liking it, to worshiping it. I haven't seen many of the Poverty Row films, so maybe it's an issue of relativity. It looks terrible next to They Live By Night, but beside the B movies of its time, maybe it's a masterpiece. The story, one of a poor musician who hitchhikes his way into a pot of boiling water, is actually pretty decent. I even got shivers up my spine when we learn that the hero has accidentally picked up a dame who seems to be capable of scratching a man to death. Yet there's really not much to the plot, and the movie barely survives its meager running time. When it was over I was left with the impression that I had seen an okay B noir. If I hadn't known about its legacy, I would forget it. But because this movie caught a break with time, I'll always remember it, not because of its quality, but for its luck.

Deliverance. B+

2011-08-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

You know when the big hunky badass with a leather vest and a bow and arrow is injured and helpless that Deliverance is not trying to follow conventional adventure movie formulas. Here's a movie I didn't necessarily like, but that left me nevertheless riveted and in admiration of the film's craft. It's directed by the legendary John Boorman (Excalibur, Point Blank). It has great pacing, interesting characters, beautiful cinematography, great excitement, and almost agonizing tension. And it's very realistic the way the disasters unfold. It seems perfectly natural and not at all contrived. Deliverance seems to be anti-Hollywood adventure movie in that it doesn't let anyone get off easy. Yet it also acknowledges the almost super-human strength and endurance man can receive when the situation begs for it. This is evident when Jon Voight's character climbs those steep, daunting cliffs. For backpackers or serious outdoorsmen, I think, like 127 Hours, Deliverance is essential viewing. Even if we know that disaster is always a possibility, there's something about seeing it happen in really well-made film that makes it stick in our head and all the more cautious and concerned with safety.

East of Eden. A

2011-08-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

John Steinbeck's sprawling masterpiece was a bit grab bag of a novel, with no real direction except geographically-east to west. The famous 1955 adaptation with James Dean cuts out the entire first half of the book (it's a pretty hefty tome, about 600 very full pages) and deals mainly with the character Cal (Dean) the loose cannon but loving son of Adam Trask, whose compelling history, going back to civil war days in Connecticut, is only referenced sporadically in the film. And references are the way East of Eden manages to tell most of Steinbeck's massive story in such a short amount of time. The book took its time developing every character and moving through a span of about fifty years. Much of this history, especially Adam's relationship with his wife turned whoremaster, is developed through conversations about the past. But Steinbeck's novel is still so substantial a work that the movie, because it's a movie, pales in comparison. One of the most important characters from the book, Adam's servant, Lee, is left out entirely, and the satanic evil of Adam's wife is toned down quite a bit, too. Still, the movie manages to get across some of the book's important themes, most notably the consequences of love's absence, and also nicely develops the biblical parallels. It's also impeccably acted, not just by Dean but Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, and Burl Ives. I first saw East of Eden about three years ago, and its main impact was that I realized how good an actor Dean was. I've spent the last few weeks reading Steinbeck's novel, loving it, and all the time looking forward to seeing the movie again. Now that I have, my appreciation for it has been strengthened. Knowing what went on before the movie begins makes it all the more powerful. Thus it's to the viewer's detriment to not have read the book prior to seeing the film.

River's Edge. A-

2011-08-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

Often when a movie presents a bleak person or society of people it does so to ultimately offer hope for redemption and a better way of life. That's not the case with River's Edge, a truly relentless excursion into urban dwellers' drug-riddled, often violent lives in the eighties. These people aren't criminals, just normal lower class citizens who live in a fantasy where the things that make their lives so messed up are disguised by drugs and a certain freedom to do whatever they want. The kids do drugs, go to school, do more drugs, go home, fight with their families, go out with friends, and get so wound up in this madness that killing someone becomes a definite possibility. It's actually a reality at the beginning of the film, as a kid named Samson has just murdered his girlfriend down by a grassy river edge. He's not reluctant to show his, shall we say, achievement, to best friends Layne (Crispin Glover) and Matt (Keanu Reeves). Eventually a whole gang of high school friends know about the body, but their reaction is not one of shock as much as it is one of confusion, as their troubled lives leave them incapable of properly dealing with this tragedy. Matt, perhaps the most sensitive of the film's characters, is afraid and feels a need to get the police involved. Layne, a riveting person played with explosive enthusiasm by Glover, is taken over by loyalty to Samson, who he has known most of his life. Perhaps the most disturbing truth in River's Edge is the power of influence. Dennis Hopper (he and Keanu Reeves would get together again for Speed a few years later) plays an older fellow who hides out with his drugs and a sex doll that is his only company. People like him influenced Matt's mother, who influences Matt, who influences Matt's little brother, who is already using drugs and guns at age 12. What a sad future he seems destined to have. River's Edge does no try to fix these people, but just acknowledges them. And it also doesn't try to vilify these people. It still sees them as human beings. Matt and his brother are still brothers, friends are still friends, families are still families. In making all the right moves, River's Edge becomes a film that earns as many viewers as possible. It doesn't just show us a life that is so far yet so close to our own homes, but it makes us thankful that we have enough sanity not to get involved in it.

On Dangerous Ground. B

2011-08-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

If the goal of On Dangerous Ground is to tell a complete story with as much economy and brevity as possible then it is nearly a perfect movie. But I'm sure that wasn't Nicholas Ray's point in making the movie. I generally don't mind a short film, but I feel like for its weighty material, On Dangerous Ground was far too short. It's 81 minutes, it tells two pretty distinct stories, each one getting about forty minutes each. The second half of the movie deals with a naturally slow psychological pattern of human relationships, but it lacks the time to let it play out realistically. On the flip-side, Ray would have needed a a movie of epic proportions to fully tell the story of the man behind the film's plot, so maybe going to an opposite extreme was the next best option. There's no plot to open the film with, which gives Ray a good chance to introduce Robert Ryan's Wilson, a troubled cop who can't stand his job or the people involved in it on both sides of the law. His generally pissed off demeanor and tendency to answer questions with silence surely inspired Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Ray's goal in this first part is first to establish Wilson as a character on the verge of going out of control, and second to show how the cops would gather, listen to the chief's orders, get their tip cards, and go out in groups to find criminals. After Wilson begins to take out his frustration physically on suspects (his character has a lot in common with Bogart's from In a Lonely Place), he's sent out to the snowy mountains to find a murderer, and more importantly, to be released from the confines of the city and collect himself. While his pursuit of the killer is important, it's Wilson's encounter with his blind sister (Ida Lupino) that is really what the movie is about. Ray creates an I need you and you need me scenario, as these two people, united by a crime (once again, Ray's favorite theme) save each other from their tormenting demons. This movie could have been great, but that doesn't mean there aren't great things about it. Robert Ryan for one is incredible here. What a performance, given mostly by facial expressions and an occasional terse line of dialogue. I'd only ever seen Ryan in The Wild Bunch before this, which coincidentally came after reading a fantastic piece on his underrated screen presence by Manhola Dargis in The New York Times.

Cowboys and Aliens. B

2011-08-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

The aliens arrive and the cowboys don't seem incredibly shocked that creatures from outer space have invaded their land. They don't seem to care what they are, only that they've snatched loved ones and must get them back. The cowboys are not horrified the way they should be. They simply organize a standard posse and pursue the invaders the way they would a dangerous outlaw, and go about their business as usual. And so does Jon Favreau go about his business, never really embracing the novelty of this genre mash-up, but simply making a very sharp sci-fi Western that doesn't surprise but doesn't compromise, either. It's clear that beneath this movie its makers are cackling at their creation, but the film still takes itself very seriously. The whole ride is fun and never dull, but this might partly be due to something shocking we keep waiting for and never get. This is risk-free summer fun, and it's also as badass as a PG-13 blockbuster will ever get. Daniel Craig gets everything right as the film's hero, and though his presence as a corrupt rancher is slightly unnerving, Harrison Ford is pretty stellar, too. And after Megan Fox insulted the Western dame in last Summer's Jonah Hex, Olivia Wilde gets things back on track as a mysterious smoking hot babe with all kinds of secrets. When Wilde emerges from a fire and when guts splatter from shot up aliens I could sense the screenwriters' eagerness to make this a dark and relentless experience. But you can almost see studio supervision hanging over their shoulders, reminding them that this is a premiere summer film, meaning that boundaries cannot be crossed. So considering this restriction, the movie works pretty well as a whole. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it, and I liked everything I saw. But I also left it feeling that perhaps an opportunity was missed with this one. I was entertained, but not invigorated.

High and Low. A-

2011-08-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

It's unclear at first what Akira Kurosawa's interests and goals are in High and Low, for he changes the movie drastically half way through. It begins as a dramatic moral thriller about a shoe company executive, Gondo, forced to decide if his dreams of a great business should trump the life of young kidnapped boy. The kidnapper intends it to be Gondo's son, but, in a classic gaffe, accidentally snatches the wrong kid. Unaware at first, Gondo and his wife are prepared to give up anything for their son's safe return. Yet when they find out their son is safe and that his young friend is the unlucky victim, Gondo suddenly is reluctant to give up the money the kidnapper his demanding. The first hour of the film takes place in Gondo's house, and I began to wonder if the entire movie would be in that one, claustrophobic location. But then Gondo decides to cooperate with the kidnapper (the plan is to throw the money off a train in a brilliantly constructed sequence) and here the movie could go back into Gondo's personal life and how his sacrifice affects his entrepreneurial pursuits. But instead Kurosawa turns to the police and scrutinizes the process of them tracking down the kidnapper. It becomes a masterpiece of detective fiction, no longer a personal story but a richly detailed inspection of a police case. Dispersed throughout the remaining hour of the film is the continuation of Gondo's story, and I suppose in the end it is about him. The only problem is that it seems more keen on solving the case than watching Gondo's dilemma unfold. And if there's a weakness to High and Low it's that it doesn't have the focus of Kurosawa's best films. Here's a director with as many great pictures as anyone, and if there's a distinct quality to his body of work it's that his movies all have a strong sense of identity. High and Low is maybe his most uneven project because it wants to be a great detective movie and a moral drama but never smoothly merges the two together. Still, the risks Kurosawa takes are really interesting, and while it may diminish some of the dramatic effects, the craft of the film is unquestionably impressive.

Orphan. C+

2011-08-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

There's a troubling twist at the end of Orphan that trumps nearly every horror movie surprise ending since Psycho. The twist itself almost transcends disturbing, but what may be worse than being surprised by it is knowing about it before the movie even starts. This was my experience as I went into Orphan. Someone had told me around the time the movie came out two summers ago about the stunner ending, and thus my perspective was changed completely while I viewed the film. If you've seen the movie, think about it and imagine knowing about the twist the whole way through. Think about when little Esther goes to her parents' room during a storm and curls up next to dad, then think about the end, and suddenly the movie gets really unsettling. There will be a lot of people who find that Orphan is morally reprehensible, but the repugnance that surrounds the film can only be excused because this is a horror picture, and this genre has no limitations. I really did enjoy most of this movie, but as it went along it got increasingly obvious, partly because I knew the twist, and also because it's stamped with familiarity. But the first hour or so worked really well because it took its time, didn't try to be too scary, and made sure to get the message across that something is terribly wrong!

They Live By Night. A

2011-08-18T00:05:00.000-07:00

His most ardent fans have called him Nicholas "the cinema" Ray, which is a little like Steinbeck referring to East of Eden as "the first book." Pretentious to some, yes, but not a big deal as long as the genius and his work is worthy of it. Ray was an adventuresome, curious filmmaker driven by passion, booze, and the idea of exploring to create something that no one had ever seen before. He wore an eyepatch in his later years, which, along with his thick white hair mess is a literal and figurative representation of a man who lived it to the end. Yet for such a radical, mischievous eye, Ray liked tender stories dominated by love, which leads to a theme prevalent in his best work: using events that break the pattern of normal life (usually crime) to join a man and a woman together only to have them broken apart by that which united them in the first place. Ray's masterpiece, In a Lonely Place, exemplified such an idea, and it can also be seen in his astonishingly potent debut, They Live By Night. The movie could be praised as perhaps the finest first feature for any director, but really it's just a great film in general. It stars Farley Granger, a terribly underrated actor, as a young man with a good heart who suffers from bad influences. He's in cahoots with a couple of thieves, and at the start of the film they've just broken out of prison. Granger soon falls for the daughter of a friend, who shares his sentiments, and struggles to escape his life of crime. Their romance is destined to fall apart, but before it does Ray creates a love story road movie parable that almost too impressively encapsulates young love and its bitter terminus. These two people are so eager to be a couple that they jump off a bus and are married by a man who does weddings quick and cheap with a batch of second-rate rings, two employed witnesses, and an organ. Ray shoots the movie with haunting compositions as well as a series of innovative helicopter shots that suggest that someone, maybe God, is watching Granger and making sure he doesn't get away. His mistakes eye him, follow him, and destroy him.

Poltergeist. C-

2011-08-08T17:45:00.001-07:00

I started out kind of loving Poltergeist, then about fifty minutes in, I got the strange feeling that I would sort of hate it. The movie sets up to be a splendid little ghost story. Though he didn't direct, Steven Spielberg, acting as producer and c0-writer, is clearly behind the small town suburbia setting and the common family being invaded by a supernatural force. Ghosts are haunting the Freeling family (headed by Craig T. Nelson, looking a lot like a heftier Richard Dreyfus), and their young daughter seems to be able to communicate with them through a TV screen. It's a wonderfully creepy image, seeing her crouched in front of the tube, almost like a possessed demon-child. But instead of keeping things at that, chilling and frightening and slowly building up the tension, Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper (has there ever been a more disappointing collaboration?) turn Poltergeist into a special effects horror flick more along the lines of The Thing than Paranormal Activity. So if both of those movies are good, then why does it matter if it resembles one or the other? Mainly because Poltergeist had the chance to be a superior ghost story and instead settled for the B movie bliss embraced by The Thing while being limited by a PG rating. But more regrettable is that not only does the movie fail to scare us, but it doesn't even seem to try. I'm glad it opted to stay away from the obvious gotcha moments that plague so many horror films, but that's still no excuse for how loud this movie gets. I was particularly irritated by the ending, partly because I was ready for the movie to stop and it just went on, and because in its over-bloated final scare, Spielberg and Hooper become children who do not understand that there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. The only difference is that for them, they're indulging in too much of a bad thing.

Wait Until Dark. B+

2011-08-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

I think the best thing about Wait Until Dark is that it doesn't wear its time period on its sleeve, and thus doesn't feel dated. Certain movies from the 1960s suffer a great deal these days, but Wait Until Dark, from a play by Frederick Knott, rarely wanders into the obscure, wild, pretentious and unpredictable areas that so many thrillers from the time did. It has a smooth, tight plot in which a blind woman must defeat evil men (two ignorant, one vicious) who invade her apartment trying to find a stash of heroin hidden in its walls. Their scheme is not to terrorize, but to deceive. Taking full advantage of our heroine's lack of sight, they intrude in her apartment and essentially act out a game they created to get information as to the location of the drugs. I won't reveal more because to do so would spoil the real pleasure of the movie. It's very psychological, from the standpoints of both the blind woman and the villains, and clever, too. And that leads to the film's problem: by trying to be too clever it ignores logical escapes that the blind lady could make. But considering how many holes there could have been in a story like this, the plot for the most part comes together nicely. It's not the most convincing movie ever made, no, but it's a highlight among thrillers and certainly one to look up to.

In a Lonely Place. A

2011-08-02T17:03:00.000-07:00

Some of the best movies in the world are tragedies, and a lot of the ones I personally love would make you cry if you saw them. I can't think of a sadder movie than In a Lonely Place. Noirs aren't supposed to make you cry, they're supposed to make you sigh in relief that you aren't mixed up in one in your own life. But In a Lonely Place isn't really a noir, but a romance that is fueled and ultimately exhausted by a murder. Just before he really started looking old and beaten and bald, Humphrey Bogart took on maybe his best role in this perfect film. His co-star is Gloria Grahame and the director is Nicholas Ray, the stylish creator of a lot of great dramas, noirs, and Westerns. Beloved by many, especially Godard and Truffaut, Ray is the kind of director you seek out film by film and see with each one the mark of a master. In a Lonely Place is set in California where old movie legends and studio stalwarts are dying out but still determined to scrape by at the top. It's at the time when someone like Ray would have started to take things over. Bogart is a screenwriter named Steele who "hasn't had a hit since before the war," but is still hard at work and at the start of the film preparing to adapt a novel that hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson calls "an epic." Steele invites Mildred to her apartment for a reading of the story, is bored by her young, guileless behavior, and sends her out the door. Morning, a knock on the door, Steele is escorted to the police, and is informed that Mildred has been murdered. Steele has a good heart but a violent temperament (he says it's artistic), which is why the cops suspect he may be guilty. Steele, despite his tendency to express his anger physically, is likable and, we hope, innocent. But unlike the wrong man films of Hitchcock, we're not quite sure the suspect did not commit the crime. That's the beauty of Steele's character, but it's not the great beauty of Ray's film. What makes this movie transcend all the wrong man, mystery noirs ever made is that it makes the murder investigation seem to be the front and center of the story and then suddenly introduces Gloria Grahame and makes us almost forget that it happened. The famous line, "I was born when you kissed, me, I died when you left me, I lived a few weeks when you loved me," is exactly what the movie is about. It's a beautiful line and In a Lonely Place is a beautiful film, haunting, brilliant, sad, and real.

There was a Father. A-

2011-08-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

Ozu's There Was a Father seems to have four main goals to accomplish in its brief running time of 87 minutes: to show a father's love for his son, to question the nature of sacrifice, to stress the importance of education, and to avoid the war as much as possible. That the movie, in its slow, insightful style, meets these goals successfully without ever feeling rushed is a result of Ozu's well-placed camera, some wonderful Japanese actors, and perhaps one of the tidiest scripts ever written. Ozu beautifully shoots the film with a series of still shots that let the action play out. The editing is minimal, as Ozu's concerns seem mainly with realism and not letting cuts and cinematic gymnastics (a line I love from Scarface cinematographer John Alonzo) interfere with the dialogue and the story. The father is the most important figure in the film, and there's a deeply complex question at the heart of his seemingly heroic and loving actions. At the beginning of the film, the father, a successful school teacher, takes his students on a field trip during which one kid drowns in a boating accident. Torn and distressed, the father retires from teaching and focuses solely on his son's education (there was a mother, but she died). His father seems to sacrifice everything so his son can be successful, yet it seems that may not be his only concern. What he really seems to be doing is punishing himself for the terrible accident that he wasn't responsible for, but that he takes the blame for nonetheless. The question, then, is whether guilt or love governs his actions? Regardless, the film is quite moving, and in my mind would make a good introductory to a film course studying great foreign directors. Or, anyone interested in Ozu may want to seek this film out first before moving onto his more substantial masterpieces, Early Summers and Tokyo Story.

Captain America. B+

2011-07-31T18:17:00.001-07:00

This was fun. One critic pointed out this is the best of any recent comic books movies because, among other things, Steve Rogers is responsible and heroic before he even becomes a hero. He has no attitude problems that he needs to sort out before becoming a savior, no trust to earn or respect to gain. This can't be said about most of the superheroes who have come to the big screen in the last few years. Rogers' only problem is that he's a little weakling, a shrimp with with not an ounce of muscle or strength, not to mention a host of health problems. When he becomes Captain America (the previews give you a good idea of the transformation, a result of a nifty scientific procedure), Rogers doesn't have anything to learn or prove. His physical condition kept him being a hero. Fast and strong, he becomes a representation of the kind of solider America has always advertised. Captain America is a comic book superhero, but because he doesn't actually have powers like Spiderman or Fantastic Four, he's more like really cool action hero, making this movie is actually closer to a great old school war picture than a superhero flick. There's so much that worked so well in this movie, but I left it feeling some of the action was rushed and hackneyed. After Rogers gets his suit and shield, the movie pummels us with a montage of guns, fighting, and explosions that felt unnecessary. With a daring rescue sequence, a train invasion, a motorcycle chase, and the final battle, Captain America has a little too much action that all moves too fast. These sequences were all pretty cool and original, but they didn't slow down enough to relish just what was happening on screen. That motorcycle chase could have tried to outdo the one in The Last Crusade, but instead it seems to just accept its mediocrity. However, I can say that when Rogers turns buff, there's a great pursuit of an impostor through New York culminating with an underwater sequence that was seriously awesome. Joe Johnston made this movie, and his mark is deeply felt. He made The Rocketeer in 1991, as well as Jumanji (stupid, but I know I used to like it), October Sky, which I need to see again, Hidalgo, a fantastic adventure movie, and then one of his best films, The Wolfman, dark and wonderful, released just last year. One of Johnston's greatest interests seems to be to get it right, which is why he was a perfect choice to direct Captain America. This is one of the most enjoyable movie Summers I can recall, and Captain America ensured that it will be one of the most memorable, too.

Quai des Orfevres. A-

2011-07-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

I love Henri George Clouzot movies, and while his 1947 Quai des Orfevres doesn't match his finest films, it's still an outstanding piece in his small, brilliant body of work. The story is great, with the only flaw being that the mystery itself isn't quite as interesting as the characters wrapped up in it. Yet we don't mind too much, for the police inspector assigned the case is one of the most memorable detectives I can recall. His mere presence makes reminds us that the quality of the detective's logic and deduction isn't as important as an expressive face, a thoughtful outlook on life (much more satisfying than the emotionally scarred cops who occupy so many modern police procedurals) and an actor who can make it all work. Louis Jouvet is Inspector Antoine, and it's he who elevates the material to something close to great. I also loved Simone Renant as the devoted, beautiful blonde caught up in the case. Not treacherous, but human. Without revealing the story, there is one objective problem in it: why does Jenny not hear about the gun wound? If you've seen the movie, you'll understand. If not, it's no spoiler.

Sweet Smell of Success. A

2011-07-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

I urge anyone, everyone, to buy the Criterion edition of Sweet Smell of Success (it's a beautiful thing to own, from the exquisite cover art, seamless transfer, to a host of useful bonus features, and finally to the film itself) and see it as many times as possible until you feel you've mastered its many complexities. I saw the movie twice in two days and fell in love with it. I've seen four movies this year that provided a sense of real buzz and a reminder of what a love affair with a piece of cinema entails. Scarlet Street, The Tree of Life, Apocalypto, and this. The movie is at once comprehensible and complex, a result of a simple story made very complicated by human nature's quest for success, love, and protection of our most precious associations. Tony Curtis' Sidney Falco is a press agent and friend of the formidable and eerily influential New York gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster as a dark, unsympathetic soul with a single prize in life: his little sister, the beautiful, delicate, and naive Susan. On his desk, where one would expect to find a picture of his wife, there's a framed shot of Susan. He's so obsessed and selfish for her that when a young Jazz guitarist named Steve Dallas engages in a relationship with Susan, J.J. turns to Falco to break it off. The movie is swift and exciting, full of rich detail and noirsh compositions from the legendary James Wong Howe. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Sweet Smell of Success is a brutal and exhilarating up-close-and-personal look at the hot-shot New York press and squalid, disreputable men that fill its positions. The beauty of the film is that it comes across as deeply realistic when in fact its script is teeming with exaggerated dialogue used to emphasize ideas about the media rather than get truly accurate representation of it. Read these lines, play them in your head, and imagine them in a movie: "What does this mean?" "Integrity. A pocketful of firecrackers waitin for a match." "Sidney, this you're giving out with. You poor it over waffles, not J.J. Hunsecker." "Gentlemen, I'm tasting my favorite new perfume: success." "I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic." And my personal favorite: "He's got the scruples of a guinea pig and morals of a gangster." These characters fire lines like these at each other the entire movie. It's a pleasure in and of itself the hear such inventive use of dialogue. More importantly, it suggests a life, a type of behavior that's at once fascinating and terribly unnerving.

Where the Sidewalk Ends. B

2011-07-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

It's hard not to see Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends and declare it insubstantial and weak next to Laura (both movies feature Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney). But just because it doesn't compare to a great film doesn't mean it's a bad one. On the contrary, this is perfectly suitable stuff for noir fans, though if you're trying to hook someone on the genre with this, they'll probably say, "So, what's the big deal with these noirs, anyway?" Im admittedly not a huge Dana Andrews fan, and my reasoning isn't entirely subjective. In the movie, there is no question that his character, a detective named Dixon, is in full monochrome mode, and Andrews eats it up. The result is one of the most uninteresting detectives noir has ever known. Dixon does not seem to know a world where there is light, humor, and happiness. He is always straight-faced and solemn. His mouth is a thin, curved line that is rarely broken. And when it is, it is usually to express anger towards his friends or enemies, who are actually one and same. You would hope that the presence of Gene Tierney would loosen him up a bit, release some of the resentment and frustration and longing boiling up inside him. But I suppose because of his personality and the plot itself, this is not possible. Throughout the movie, Dixon is trying to conceal an accidental murder he committed when he beats up a shady war hero. The conflict isn't so much Dixon working to hide his guilt, but trying to decide the right thing to do. It's a pretty interesting movie, but the problem is it's lacking any real interesting or colorful characters (this was the great strength of Laura), and more importantly, speculation on an idea. Love, obsession, regret. The movie touches on these, but it never lingers on them.

Don Juan Demarco. B-

2011-07-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

Marlon Brando uses his legend, not his gift for acting, in Don Juan Demarco, a cheerful and diverting fantasy that goes nowhere except for a sort of strange kind of pleasantville. Brando seems completely disengaged with the part of a soon-to-be-retired psychiatrist treating a patient who claims to be Don Juan himself. The complexity that drives Brando's finest characters to timelessness is completely absent here. Like the psychiatrist, he seems just about ready to call it quits. He's an overweight, surprisingly dull doctor who rediscovers the magic of love by listening to the supposed Don Juan's life story. Old folks may get a kick out of his late burst of enthusiasm. Younger viewers will probably groan. Brando doesn't tarnish his career with this role, but he certainly embarrasses it. Gladly, it's not a one man show, as Jeremy Leven's film also has Johnny Depp in the title role, and Depp brings real fervor and enthusiasm and romantic charisma to the legendary Don Juan. Much of the movie is told in flashbacks, as Depp relates his adventures and discovery of the beauty and enchantment of the female-the cause of his legend. Now, you might ask what drew me to this particular film, which, despite its solid cast (Faye Dunaway also has a role as Brando's wife), is a real oddity and rarely even brought up any more. The answer lies in a First Things article by David Bentley Hart titled A Splendid Wickedness. The article, which has the generous length of a fine piece in The New Yorker, explores Don Juan, his origin, development through literature, and ultimate demise in the eyes of the public. The quintessential roué, Don Juan is rarely mentioned, let alone heard of in today's society. Hart states the obvious that this could be due to the fact that Juan is no longer a shocking character due to the casual state in which sexual pleasure is held these days. But there's more, argues Hart. The real reason Juan has vanished is because the degradation of sensual pleasure in modern society. There's beauty to be found in sensual pleasure, a poetic sense of awe and adoration that Don Juan's promiscuity exemplified. This does not condone Juan for his actions. It merely means that he managed to create a collage of pleasure and beauty. He respected his copious lovers, adored them for the satisfaction they gave him and the beauty they represented. He was a complete sinner and never once tried to turn back. He didn't just surrender to hell, but he jumped into its fires in full force. That sense of awe regarding pleasure has been lost. Juan's idea of sensuality was like a field rich with green grass, large tress and flowers. Today, sensuality is like a paved road with potholes. I think what I liked about this movie was that in its flashbacks it brought to life Juan's idea of sensuality, that it's more that just a play thing. Sure, he's more of a romantic swashbuckler type here than the original legend makes him out to be. But the ideas are still there. In one scene Don Juan cannot get himself to love another woman because he's already devoted to another. He wants to, but he has too much respect and love in his heart. He does end up conceding to the other woman, but not without that hesitation. It shows he had a heart. A terrible heart, but a heart nonetheless. Don Juan Demarco is a strange fantasy, wildly uneven and terribly obvious. But to its credit it does manage to produce the truth about the greatness of Don Juan-even if it does not intend to.

The Virgin Suicides. A-

2011-07-23T18:21:00.000-07:00

If you dismiss the ending, which should be taken more symbolically than literally, The Virgin Suicides, directed by Soffia Coppola in her debut behind the camera, is a mostly normal high school melodrama. The premise is irresistible and the style deeply nostalgic for the pre-technology days of high school. Set in seventies suburbia, the story relates the problems faced by five teenaged sisters struggling to maintain normalcy in a cage built by their restrictive, conservative Catholic parents. The mom isn't nearly as bad as the Jesus lover mother from Carrie, (this bears a lot of resemblance to De Palma's 1976 classic), but she's still creepy in the way she tries to control her daughters' lives and rope them into her circle of morals and keep them there. The dad, played nicely by James Woods, is a friendly, easy going guy who clearly doesn't have the same issues with post-modern society as his wife does, but is still just as controlled by her as the daughters are. But while he takes a seat to her and her authority, the daughters, particularly the recalcitrant Lux (Kirsten Dunst), rebel. Yet the movie, though an angry one, never spills over in its depiction of frustration, longing, and teen angst. It's the mark of Soffia Coppola, who can handle a dramatic scene quite naturally, as long as she's not acting in it. While the movie's dramatic elements produce a powerful effect, I think what I liked most about The Virgin Suicides is Coppola's attention to the more basic elements of the narrative. That is to say, those scenes concerning not so much teen love and its results but the details within the days of suburbia. The awkward party in the basement, the young boy invited over for dinner, the group of kids hanging out in their clubhouse, and the father eagerly showing off his plane models. Perfectly excited and perfectly oblivious. The movie has a strange, darkly funny ending that, as I said, can be seen as warning of sorts more than a conclusion to the story. The movie was a little full of itself by the end, but its note was just haunting enough to fit in with the dark tone set throughout the picture. This would make a fine companion to Donnie Darko.

2011 First Half

2011-07-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

The two best movies of the first half of 2011 (through June) are The Tree of Life and Midnight in Paris, two movies that actually work really well together, as long as you see the former proceeding the latter. The Tree of Life earned a second viewing from me (and easily could a third, fourth, and fifth). It's a movie that really amazes me, the kind you can't get out of your head even if there's nothing specific about it that's swirling in it. Another big surprise this year was Super 8 and X-Men: First Class, two exquisite summer blockbusters. Though it's plot didn't quite add up to a logical conclusion, Source Code provided the kind of intelligence and discreet excitement the public needed counteract the onslaught of silly entertainments thrown at moviegoers throughout the year. A siege Western as critic called it, or a profound, religious experience, Of Gods and Men, like Tree of Life, shows new ways that a movie can concern God. It's really good. I'll close out the first half highlights with Fast Five, a movie that was too wild and extreme to be anything but awesome.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. A

2011-07-21T14:22:00.001-07:00

The last of the Harry Potter films is such a well-made, perfected piece of work. It's a step above the already visually gloomy and enchanting Half Blood Prince. It really is beguiling. In brief, I felt that Lord Voldermort was twice as menacing as he was in any of the other movies, partly because he was given more screen time, and also due to his impending domination of both wizards and muggles. But there's an odd paradox at work because while Voldemort's army is growing stronger, he himself is growing weaker as Harry and his friends destroy each horcrux. Still, he's terrifying until the end and suddenly in position to join the ranks of the greatest movie villains. What I also loved about the movie was Alexandre Desplat's score, which managed, with its low-key, melancholy notes, to be moving without pandering to the audience's emotions. Perhaps this is why Desplat is a great composer, and why someone like Michael Giacchino struggles at times. Desplat also does a beautiful job of quietly incorporating John Williams' original theme music into his own pieces throughout the film. It's a suitable nod to a great composer's work, and a beautiful method of evoking memories of all the Potter films, telling us through sounds that this is the last one. And I couldn't have been happier that the music selection for the film's final scene was from The Sorcerer's Stone, sort of suggesting that as different as many of the Potter movies are from one another, they're still a firm one by the end.

Mirage. D

2011-07-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

Back when Mirage came out in the sixties, I assume it was the equivalent of what a popcorn movie is today. Then there wasn't really such thing as an action movie, so the next best thing to entertain mass audiences was the thriller. The wilder and hyperbolic the plot would have been like excess in action and mayhem. Since there was no Transformers back in the sixties, I suppose movies like Mirage were the next best thing. Gregory Peck plays Stillwell, an accountant who has suffered a strange case of amnesia in which he cannot remember the last two years of his life. Frightened and perplexed, he visits a psychiatrist, who dismisses his case before he even figures out what it actually is. Desperate, Stillwell hires a detective, played by Walter Matthau, to help solve his dilemma. Matthau's detective is an amateur sleuth trying to make it with his own agency. Stillwell is his first case, and it shows. Matthau is really wasted here. It's as if the filmmakers thought that just having a detective present was enough to make the movie more interesting. No need for him to knowledgeable, funny, or even useful. But the real problem here is Peck, who seems clueless as to how to handle Stillwell. Peck has a naturally calm demeanor, a quiet intensity and an air of extreme intelligence, which is why he was so good in To Kill a Mockingbird. But here, as in Hitchcock's Spellbound, he is incapable of playing a character on the edge because of that natural tendency to lay low, stay calm, and rationalize at all times. He's an extreme miscast, a selling point to make the poster look like the movie's worth seeing. As Mirage trudges along, Stillwell starts to be chased by mysterious villains with guns and cold faces. Stillwell is ever moving, obviously leading up to a major revelation. But the problem is that the film doesn't leave enough solid clues to make us interested. Instead it piles on all the answers in the final fifteen minutes, making the rest of the movie a pointless, aggravating bore. And as for those chases, clearly thrown in just to make the movie exciting, I was watching them and wishing desperately for a James Bond movie. This movie should have taken a lesson from Bond. A lesson on humor, action, and intrigue. Instead it stands dead and soulless. It's a Michael Bay film, the Transformers movie of the sixties.

They Drive By Night. C

2011-07-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Watching the first half of They Drive By Night (from a book by A.I Bezzerides), I felt like I was seeing a clash between The Grapes of Wrath and Wages of Fear. It's a social issues American drama about lower class truck drivers transporting fruit for such miniscule wages that one character can't even have a real family due to expenses. The era, the drive to do anything to make a buck, and the unabated American spirit recall Grapes of Wrath (closer to Ford's overall optimistic adaptation than John Steinbeck's tragically anti-American novel). The movie stresses the danger of the truck driving profession, hence the Wages of Fear reminder. Bogart plays Paul Fabrini, but since the movie came out in 1940, he was forced to ride shotgun to George Raft's Joe, an honest, trustworthy common man. These guys are brothers, sharing the same truck and splitting the drive time and meager earnings. The first half of this film was great and I hoped it would just keep getting better. Instead it inexplicably shifts its mood, setting, and characters completely and becomes nothing less than a B noir. Bogart vanishes from the screen, replaced by Ida Lupino (this film made her famous), a femme fatale who gets Joe wrapped up in a silly murder. There's nothing terribly wrong with what the movie becomes, except that it's not at all what I wanted to see. I wanted to see that truck driver story develop, but instead we get essentially a double feature, two very different movies packed in 95 minutes. Admittedly the transition from social drama to noir is a smooth one. Director Raoul Walsh skillfully introduces new characters and settings to fit the story he was telling in the first half. But once he gets in full noir mode, the movie becomes a silly, rushed pile of rubbish, a real laughing matter. What a skillfully made letdown this was.

Potter Week.

2011-07-13T15:33:00.000-07:00

It's been Harry Potter Week, as my siblings and I have celebrated the end of a cinematic tradition by, among other things, watching all the Harry Potter films leading up to Deathly Hallows part II. I'll come out and say that I love this series, something I've always known but that has been strengthened by seeing all the movies back-to-back. In a way the world that is myself and the movies I see and love is built around the Potter films. Every year or other year since 2001, one of the main anticipations in the cinematic world for myself was the arrival of the next Harry Potter movie. And never did any of them disappoint my expectations, a result of both my hyper-excitement and the fact that these are outstanding pieces of cinema on their own terms. Each film has been crafted with eager, creative minds, calloused, sweaty fingers working meticulously on sets, costumes, and computers, and respect-not adoration, save perhaps the first two installments-for the source material. This has been a series of good decisions, from Alfonso Cauron's sagacious interpretation of Prisoner of Azkaban (he really changed the series and made it what it is today), to the burning of the Weasley house in Half Blood Prince, to the splitting of the final film into two parts. I've seen all the movies many times, but viewing them all consecutively this past week has been nothing short of terrific. It's been a pleasure not just seeing the characters develop and change and the actors grow stronger, but also to see the ways in which the films differ from one another visually. The quidditch pitch was so bright, lush, and green in The Sorcerer's Stone, yet when we see it again in Half Blood Prince, it's patchy and infiltrated by weeds. As far as the movies themselves, I, like many, prefer The Prisoner of Azkaban. It's perhaps the most cinematically rewarding chapter in the series, but I love it also because of the sentimental value it provides. 2004 was one of the best years of my life, and one of my fondest memories of it was the aching anticipating of the third Harry Potter movie. I watched the trailers repeatedly prior to its release. I'll never forget that Summer morning on June 4th when my brother took us all to see it. I'm also deeply fond of seeing The Goblet of Fire at midnight with my brother Nate, sister Rebecca, and friend Matt. I believe it was the first time I attended a midnight screening. The other highlight for me is probably The Half Blood Prince back in 2009. That was a great summer, bolstered by just how surprisingly fantastic the latest Potter movie turned out to be. It's my second favorite in the series, confirmed yesterday with my fourth viewing of it. It's not sad that tomorrow at midnight spells the beginning of the end. I'm happy that it's here because I want to see it become a whole. Overall it's pretty amazing how long this series has lasted. We've been spoiled to death by it. But the most important thing of all is the books. Make sure you read them first.

X-Men: First Class. A-

2011-07-10T15:45:00.001-07:00

In this new X-Men movie, the idea to go back, as the trailers say, "before he was Professor X, before he was Magneto," proves to be a great one indeed. Wolverine's a pretty fun hero, but there's no question that the greatest and most interesting characters in the X-Men universe are Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr. They're the ones who sort of represent what makes X-Men unique, what adds that philosophical spin that most superhero movies are devoid of. And really, just hearing them call each other "old friend" piques the viewer's interest. What really did happen? X-Men: First Class tells us just that, but that's not really what makes it such a good movie. Really this is just a lean, well-built machine that understands storytelling, the craft of developing characters without feeling obvious, and that good acting is just as vital in a superhero film as it is in a dramatic piece. Any history geek with the slightest interest in comic books will swoon over the story that Bryan Singer and Sheldon Turner have come up with. It attempts to show how mutants were heavily involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The villain, Sebastian Shaw, has plans for world war III in his hopes to destroy the human race and let mutants rule. Charles Xavier is of course for trying to make mutants compatible with humans, and at his side is Erik, who will eventually adopt Shaw's disposition. I found the movie to be deeply involving, a step above what constitutes summer entertainment. Perhaps it strays a bit too far into the idea of an outcast, depicted through mutants, accepting themselves, and maybe January Jones' acting abilities don't earn her the amount of screen time she gets as Emma Frost. But it's hard to find too much the movie does wrong, and when you put them up to the ample areas where it succeeds, they don't really mean a thing.

Apocalypto. A

2011-07-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

A person can't sit down to Apocalypto and leave it without the impression that it is the film of a great director. Mel Gibson loves history, and combined with perhaps the greatest understanding of the visceral next to Michael Mann of any director alive, he's capable of putting together great movies. I just finished watching Apocalypto and it is a masterpiece. Gibson, who wrote the screenplay with Farhad Safinia, has made a deeply historical horror movie that specializes in the bizarre, the crooked minds of ancient tribes (those studying the Mayans owe it to themselves to see the film), action, blood, and survival. After a lengthy opening scene full crude macho dialogue (a reminder that these tribes had men that weren't as strange and obscure as legend makes them to be and also a hint of Gibson's theme relating to modern America) that seems like it's straight out of a Hollywood buddy camping trip movie, and a warm introduction to the traditional "good" tribe, the movie becomes almost devoid of dialogue and turns into a surreal nightmare. The tribe is attacked by Mayans and the survivors are taken to their city, a hostile, horrific place rich with culture, violence, and insanity. Gibson, as expected, really gets into the horrors of human sacrifice integral to Mayan culture, though just when the films hero, Jaguar Paw, is about to be killed, a solar eclipse occurs and prompts his release. Thus begins perhaps the most exhilarating 45 minutes of cinema I've ever seen. It's a chase between a group of ruthless Mayan tribesmen and Jaguar Paw that goes deep into the jungle and like the jungle, seems to go on forever. Jaguar Paw has already been shot prior to the chase, and he has gone hours and hours without food or water. Yet he isn't just compelled to go on, to outrun his adversaries. He seems to become something more than a man during this sequence, not just because his life is at stake, but because the future of the tribe, of the jungle itself, rests on his shoulders. As he forges on, simultaneously dispatching the advancing Mayans, we get the sense he cannot be stopped. Apcoalypto is a restless, eager film, and Gibson is like a ferocious beast, tame enough to stress detail and drama, but still a beast, thriving on violence. The movie has a surprise ending that at first seemed superfluous, but ends up actually fitting into Gibson's overall scheme. You'll have to see it to find out and understand.

Bringing Up Baby. B+

2011-07-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

In classic screwball comedies, the general plot is rarely considered to be of much consequence. It's what occurs within the plot that determines if the movie's any good. What makes Bringing Up Baby somewhat of a departure from the usual screwball romp is that, while the antics and chaos within the story seem familiar, the set-up is entirely unique. Cary Grant isn't a reporter, but a paleontologist seeking the final bone for his brontosaurus skeleton. And while his female counterpart (Katherine Hepburn) is a typically reckless and impetuous rich girl, her mysterious possession of a massive tame leopard makes the movie a complete original. A real doozy. The leopard is what drives the movie, what makes it such an absurd and amusing experience. And the thing is the film's hardly romantic at all. Hepburn's character has secret plans to marry Grant, but he's so preoccupied with escaping her and the terrible situation she's put him in that even if he liked her, love wouldn't be on his mind. This movie is a very busy one, and I almost wish that it had left out what little love story it has and just focused on all the bedlam. But it's a common truth that there's a code to these movies, a formula rooted in them that can't really be dug out. So when Grant and Hepburn end up together at the end, it feels almost like director Howard Hawks is following an obligatory conclusion. I know it's screwball, but I didn't buy the closing one bit. But I suppose that there can be some satisfaction in knowing that these two vastly different characters may in fact need each other to balance their lives out. Bringing Up Baby may be a screwball lover's paradise. To me it's just a trifle, but an excellent one at that.

Manhattan Murder Mystery. A-

2011-07-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

I suppose anyone looking for a good mystery double feature would be all set with Blue Velvet and then Woody Allen's wonderful Manhattan Murder Mystery. Clearly paying homage to classic thriller/mysteries (I saw a lot of Rear Window in it myself), the film is Allen's solution to the dragging, dull career lifestyle of city dwellers. Find out that your neighbor may be a killer, and your boredom with the routines of life will be cured. It's great to see the characters in the movie (Allen, his wife, Dianne Keaton, and their friends, played by Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston) run from their everyday lives and play amateur sleuth with as much fervor and excitement as they do here. Manhattan Murder Mystery is for pure enjoyment, more along the lines of Midnight in Paris than Annie Hall. But even when Allen isn't at his most philosophical, he's still good for a parade of insults, complaints, and criticisms, which, if your sense of humor is in tune with his, will come across as both insightful and hilarious. I found myself laughing frequently in the film, but I was also intrigued by what's surprisingly a superb mystery. There's a scene near the climax involving tape recorders that is as clever as anything found in the greatest Agatha Christie stories. Good Woody Allen emits a sense of pure joy in the viewer that few movies could ever hope to produce. Though it's playful fare, Manhattan Murder Mystery gave the classic Woody Allen effect.

Blue Velvet. A-

2011-07-03T16:34:00.000-07:00

David Lynch isn't up to his usual tricks in Blue Velvet, and the result is a refreshingly ordinary youth sleuth detective yarn-at least by his standards. Blue Velvet does have its fair share of oddities, some of which disturb as much as they surprise, but by and large I was surprised at just how normal the movie is. The story is like a clash between the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and a hard boiled, pulpy noir from the forties. A kid, Jeffery, living in a classic suburban American town in the fifties (at least I presume it's that decade, though it could be from the sixties or even the eighties), has finished his first year of college and is home for a long, hot summer with nothing much to do but throw rocks in a field. It's there that he stumbles upon "the ear," which by now is one of the most famous crime discoveries in the history of movies. A righteous, polite, clean-cut student, Jeffery immediately takes his find (I like how there's a paper bag just sitting there, like it's waiting to be used for that purpose) to a detective who immediately brings a team to the field to scout out the place. While Jeffery seems to be the type who doesn't go looking for trouble, his curiosity, mixed with boredom, takes him deep into the heart of the case. Soon he's several steps ahead of the cops, thanks in part to the detective's daughter (Laura Dern), who gives Jeffery some important initial info, reluctantly participates in his dangerous escapades, and forms a romance with him. Though Lynch is great at the almost fantastical depictions of old school America (Mulholland Drive), one expects him to take Blue Velvet into a more surreal nightmarish world and have it become something truly horrifying-like he did in Mulholland Dr. But besides one long, winding scene with Dennis Hopper's psychotic villain, the movie stays pretty normal. Lynch seems almost more concerned with just paying respect to history and cinema rather than doing that and then putting his own spin on his inspired world.

In the Mouth of Madness. C

2011-06-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

In the Mouth of Madness. It's as if Stephen King took an idea for a novel he never wrote and handed it to John Carpenter to make what he could of it. The result is a problematic movie that struggles because there's not someone like King to guide it once the story gets in motion. Instead of taking advantage of an enticing premise, the movie resorts to a feast of Carpenter's trademark strange, startling, and at times horrific monsters. To its credit the movie delivers in this area (one of the characters tears himself apart like paper-one of the coolest visual images I've ever seen), though an acclaimed veteran at the time (1995), one would not expect less from Carpenter. Sam Neill is the movie's star, and he effectively portrays an investigator trying to track down a missing writer of popular horror stories. His name is Sutter Cane (it's difficult to imagine a more appropriate name), and his books seem to be influencing people in the real world, making them do terrible things from the novels themselves. Neill travels to a quiet, perfect little town in his quest for Cane, and it's there that the movie should have become brilliant, but instead gets out of hand. And we really wish this story had come from Stephen King.

The Right Stuff. A

2011-06-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Besides its obvious historical importance, The Right Stuff seems to be about men longing to fulfill their personal ambition of greatness. Not greatness in the eye of the public, but personal greatness that amounts to them being satisfied by their success. This comes through clearly in the best scene right at the end of the movie. Most of the pilots, having found their success (though one could say Dennis Quaid's Gordon Cooper isn't quite there yet), are sitting back at a celebratory Texas barbeque and watching a sensuous dancer glide around a stage, light like a bird, reflecting the feeling of the men. They sit back with their wives and, exchanging smiling glances with one another, suggest a complete contentment and sense of accomplishment. Director Philip Kaufman intercuts this scene with one of pilot Chuck Yeager testing a new hybrid rocket and risking his life to set a new altitude record. An accident occurs and he just escapes the jet, burned, bleeding, and suddenly a part of the group NASA pilots who have also risked their lives in their quest for personal fulfillment. The title relates to what it takes to get this done, and the movie shows us with great spirit, enthusiasm, fervor. I suppose the best thing about The Right Stuff is how little it surrenders to formula. The way the movie relates the stress of the pilots' wives felt a little obvious, and there are a few speeches that almost seem mandatory in fact-based drama, but for the most part this is a really fresh movie with new ideas and an intrepid approach that makes art and history one and the same. The cast is teeming with great actors, including a surprising turn by Levon Helm (who narrates, minimally, as well). But the first name that should spring to mind when this movie comes up is Kaufman, who took Tom Wolfe's book and turned in a script that, while not original, was fully his own. Kaufman directs with the audacity of Mann or Scorsese, embarking on a fearless three hour excursion that makes history like his own textbook. The Right Stuff was seen as one of the great American films in its early years, and I believe it still deserves such an honorable recognition. There are certain movies to show a foreigner that exemplify the American spirit, why America is great. Foreign Correspondent definitely comes to mind. But if I had to pick one, it would probably be this one.

Assault on Precinct 13. A-

2011-06-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

I've been watching quite a few John Carpenter movies lately to strengthen my knowledge of his work. The only films of his I'd previously visited were Escape from New York, seen almost without sound so my parents wouldn't hear my watching it late one night, and The Thing, as part of my quest to see IMDB's 250 list. Though some would argue that the 2005 remake is a better film, I absolutely loved Carpenter's original Precinct 13. The characters are fantastic and the action hits hard, but how about that thumping, penetrating score that Carpenter composed himself? I'm not one to love soundtracks from 70s movies, but this one worked wonders. It's simple like a Clint Eastwood score, and like Eastwood, Carpenter has a perfect ear for matching music with content. Assault on Precinct 13 is essentially a modern day Western in which a group of terrifyingly angry rebels attack an old police station soon to be shut down forever. And of course this occurs on the night that newly promoted cop Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is in charge of the station with only a few hours before it closes permanently. There are some other contrivances, such as a prison bus stopping at the closest prison to tend to a sick convict. Guess which is closest? This is early, early John Carpenter, before Halloween or even The Fog. While Halloween may be his most crucial work, I can't help but feel this is one of his best films, and surely a major influence on later action movies, and maybe even zombie flicks, too. After all, the gang members, with no real value of life, just sort of ramble into the station almost as if it's a sacrificial ceremony. They are not afraid to die. The result looks a little like a zombie movie.

Contact. B+

2011-06-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

In spite of its contained tenor, or perhaps due to it, Robert Zemeckis' Contact is as in love with science fiction as any film I've seen. And as quiet and talky as the movie is, it still couldn't resist using the classic mad scientist prototype to reveal a key solution, or develop the story with Hitler communicating with aliens, or finish with a massive bang in outer space. Contact wants to be a big movie, important in the same way that 2001 or Close Encounters are. While its ambitions are transparent, the movie works because the questions it asks are simply handled with honesty and intelligence. Yet its sense of ambiguity keeps the movie from hitting us over the head with its ideas. The movie relates the quest of a scientist, played by Jodie Foster (it sounds dubious, but Foster pulls it off, especially with those large, thick-rimmed glasses), to find and communicate with extra terrestrial beings. Her passion and devotion pays off when she and her team of stalwarts receive strange signals from what seem to be aliens. The news of possible alien communication quickly goes viral, as soon the whole world seems to be a part of the discovery. I would have preferred a smaller approach without all the media and public involvement, but I suppose Zemeckis is after accuracy. If we really did get an alien message, the public's enthusiasm and anger would be nothing short of what this movie presents. Other than science, Contact is about religion. Or at least it tries to be. The movie can be applauded for even bothering to bring up God, but that doesn't hide the fact that it doesn't really go anywhere with its theology. Matthew McConaughey plays Foster's love interest and the main source of the movie's hazy religious queries. The most insightful thing he says about God is that just because one can't prove something doesn't mean it isn't true. He uses this idea when speaking to Foster, a skeptic, asking her if she can prove she loves her dad. My two main problems with the movie are that it doesn't (or can't) tackle its questions in depth, and that it goes on for too long and in the process becomes much weaker than anyone could anticipate due to how solid the first two hours are. In the final twenty minutes the movie tries to become too big while simultaneously getting very sentimental. Maybe that's why a movie that could have been great isn't really talked about anymore.

X2: A

2011-06-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

It's almost as if Bryan Singer was waiting to bring out the goods, offering a tasty hors d'oeuvre with the first X-Men and then, after watering our mouths, bringing a full on main course worthy of prizes and honor. X2 exceeds the original in every way. It's more fun, it has great, unobtrusive humor, its action is minimal yet outstanding, its characters are more understood, and most importantly it challenges the viewer with its intelligence. It's easily one of the best superhero movies ever made, fully creating something new rather than recalling a thing better from the past. Seeing the movie again, I was struck that I was not only seeing X-Men's The Empire Strikes Back, but a movie that is actually close to being that film's equal.

X-Men. C+

2011-06-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

I sat down to the first two installments of the X-Men series again recently. It had been a while since I'd seen either one, and it seemed a good idea to regain some mutant knowledge before going into Matthew Vaughn's addition to the franchise. I recall really liking the first X-Men, but that recollection is based on a memory of a 12 year old who loved pretty much everything he saw. Now I feel it's a little bit dated, a little bit rushed, and maybe just not as cool as we all thought it was years ago. The X-Men universe is so vast and rich with characters and their histories that it's difficult to make a good movie that introduces this world in a mere 104 minutes. Either there's going to be too much backstory and introduction and not enough plot or the exact opposite. The movie settles with the former, and while it's not a bad choice, there's no denying that the film lacks the substance and ideas to make it worth seeing again. Once you know the characters, X-Men is somewhat pointless. And with CGI still in development, the special effects seemed amateur compared to what we're spoiled with (and bombarded with) today. Still, there's a lot of nice touches in the movie that sort of spell the potential of the series. I love the scene Professor X sits in his car and manipulates the mind of Sabertooth (who, by the way, is another problem with this film) to tell Magneto to relinquish his hold on some police officers. And Mystique is used nicely too, taking full advantage of her shape-shifting abilities. But as a whole this is mostly a long intro to a group of beloved characters. While it doesn't necessarily make for a good movie, it sets the stage for what is unquestionably a great one.

Hereafter. B+

2011-06-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

I'm hardly a proponent of the uninspired spiritual dimension that many have cited as the strength and vital point of Hereafter. Like the visions one of the characters has after a tsunami nearly takes her life, the questions raised about the state of a person after death are blurred and murky, silly and shallow rather than moving and provocative. And I really think the story that writer Peter Morgan has going on here is stupid and contrived, an indication that his historical works (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) are his power and that he has no right to tackling this material. The movie somewhat shatters his intelligence. Yet through all this Clint Eastwood has still managed to make a good movie. It's a deeply sentimental film, yet Eastwood pulls back in nearly every instance in which the movie could have become cloying. His sense of restraint is key to the success of many of his best movies. He knows when to let an actor let loose, but he rarely if ever lets them. His movies are often described as tender, which is exactly what Hereafter is. There are three stories being told here, but I wish it just told one, Matt Damon's, in which a psychic tries to escape his gift by calling it a curse. Damon is a real master at the low key stuff, so it makes sense why he may now be an Eastwood regular. The scenes with Damon, set in San Francisco, are as good as anything he or Eastwood has ever committed to a movie. Hereafter is actually worth seeing more for the humanity it's infused with rather than the dead spirituality it seems so concerned with. It's worth seeing to witness how emotion should be handled in a movie. I never become annoyed, I never rolled my eyes, because all the performances are so tame and controlled. Of course, the movie gets completely out of hand in the final twenty minutes, a real disappointment and a departure from the subtle approach Eastwood and Morgan had been taking for so much of the film. Essentially it stops being a French film and becomes a Hollywood one. The ending really does that retarded poster justice.

Mona Lisa. B

2011-06-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

Neil Jordan's early noir Mona Lisa is about understated performances, hidden suspense, mood, and place. In a sense it's taking noir back to its roots, recalling classics like Dassin's Night and the City. It makes London, particularly its squalid elements, as much a character as Bob Hoskins' George, a lowly driver for a high class call girl. Jordan essentially pulls London inside out, revealing it as a tragic city, just as he reveals George as a sad, pathetic man looking for anything to dignify his soul. So when his call girl asks him to find an old friend from her days in London's street prostitution, George promptly sets out to find her. His motives also are connected to his subtle respect, admiration, and maybe even love for this expensive call girl, who may be the most human prostitute in the movies besides Giulietta Masina in Fellini's 1957 Nights of Cabiria. As in the best noirs, a cunning businessman comes into play, here it being Michael Caine as George's employer. He wants George to find out the details of the wealthy man George's call girl regularly visits. There's also great support from Robbie Coltrane as George's good friend Thomas. Mona Lisa is a perfect example of noir done right because it becomes noir rather than making us see it as noir. It's a very secretive film in the way it hides its noir elements, making it a noir by keen observance rather than mere sight. The only departure from the classics is its incredibly light-hearted ending, that may be too tidy for some, but worked fine for me. It's nice to see a movie that is sad in every way close with the sense that things can turn out if you get on the right track and stay there.

The Trouble with Harry. A

2011-06-12T13:54:00.000-07:00

As Hitchcock's camera moves from one scenic spot to another at the start of The Trouble with Harry, capturing still-shots of the gorgeous New England autumn trees, the vast hillside speckled with red and yellow leaves, and the clear blue sky, we get the sense that this will be more of a tranquil experience than the tension-heavy suspense stories he's renowned for. And indeed, the movie is a complete delight, creating an idyllic world where it seems everything is okay, even the bad things. And sure enough, as a kid, then just about everyone else in the cozy little community stumbles across a dead man named Harry in the countryside, the reaction is one complete indifference. The conflict is not that somebody has died, but what to do with that person who has died. The how and why come into play later on, as well. The screenplay by John Michael Haynes, a frequent Hitchcock collaborator, is heavy on the repartee, the absurd, and the feel good sentiments. It's a great script that feels very British even though Haynes was an American. Also great is the music by the incomparable Bernard Hermann, the first of several key scores he did with Hitchcock. In many respects this a perfect movie. It's economically told but full of detail. It doesn't waste a single scene. There are a great many characters, all memorable and wonderfully played by a group of gifted actors. The ones you'll recognize most are Shirley MacLaine in her first role, and the great Edmund Gwenn, who's probably most known as owning the movie's greatest Santa Claus performance in the old Miracle on 34th Street. The Trouble with Harry is easily Hitchock's lightest mystery (I'm excluding his screwball comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith since that was so far off the track for him), but it doesn't come as a surprise that he chose to make such a funny picture. For a great number of his movies are periodically funny, indicative of the director's outstanding sense of humor amidst his macabre interests. And one more thing: the movie looks amazing. Shot in technicolor, the film takes full advantage of its beautiful locations. It looked so good that if it were shot in black and white I probably wouldn't like it as much.

Super 8. A-

2011-06-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

With the internet it's almost impossible to not see a movie without knowing a little about advanced word from the press saying whether the movie's any good or not. While one might find it hard to resist Ebert's wednesday night review of a film, or some other favorite critic's early take, it's best to see a movie with a mind purified of others' objective or subjective opinions. While I usually fail at this, I did manage to withhold from any early response to J.J Abram's latest, Super 8. It was just me and the movie, exactly the way it should be. I saw it with three of my sisters and we all loved it. It's about a group of kids in 1979 making a movie on an old super 8 camera for a film competition. It's summer and they've managed to sneak out of their homes to film a key night scene by a railroad. Because of "production values," they shoot the scene just as a train is speeding by. It's magic, it's perfect, and then a truck appears on the track facing the train and the next thing the kids know is they're running for their lives as the train is destroyed around them. Super 8 is the movie of the summer, so good is so many ways. It's sort of like a sci-fi version of Let Me In, also a passion project made by Abrams' friend from childhood, Matt Reeves. Super 8 is concerned primarily with this group of kids and how various conflicts impact their lives and their relationships with one another and with their parents. They're at the perfect age; old enough to impart feelings of loyalty, betrayal, and love, but young enough to jump down a massive hole without considering the consequences. The movie is also an exciting adventure, a mystery that had me genuinely surprised by the end. Abrams is too clever to let the audience know what he's doing as the movie goes along. There's nothing really wrong with the film, except for a dull score by Michael Giacchino and at times a clear sense of desired effect. For the most part the movie is a wonderful experience, primarily because Abrams is so good at so many different aspects of making movies. I mentioned the importance of seeing a movie free of the influence of another's viewpoint mainly because Super 8 is a perfect example of why this is a deal. It's the kind of movie that you need to decide for yourself how good or how terrible it is. How does it make you feel?

The Screening Room: Network

2011-06-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to make it to Chris Vognar's 70's movies series at the Magnolia ever since it was announced that the program would commence in February with Taxi Driver. But a combination of work, putting things off (in this case reserving a seat) and the wide appeal of seeing these classic movies on the big screen has to Dallas folk has (every showing has been sold out) kept me home on those Thursday nights. After being severely disappointed that the May showing of Chinatown was fully booked (even though the screening was still a week away), I made sure to reserve seats two weeks in advance for Network in June. Needless to say, I got my seats. The experience was quite amazing. After a somewhat hazardous journey into Dallas, I arrived to a packed theater full of folks (mostly older people who saw Network when it originally came out, though there were a good deal of youthful cinephiles present, too), in spite of the Mavericks game taking place just miles away. This irony was a running joke throughout the evening. Vognar started the screening with a lecture on the film, mainly discussing the prophetic realism of Paddy Chayefsky's biting screenplay. He also stressed the powerful and overlooked performance of Beatrice Straight in the film. After departing to his seat, Vognar then shouted out that an added bonus to the evening was that the movie was being shown on an original 35 mm print. This may have been the best aspect of the experience, for while a digital projection would have looked pure and crisp, the gritty images of the old print was like a time warp back to the seventies. I'd seen Network before, and while a second viewing brought out facets of the movie I hadn't previously noticed, the only real thing the movie affirmed was that I didn't love it. It is great, and Vognar was correct in his praise of Beatrice Straight, but as a whole there's more admiration than love here. Still, I don't deny that this is an essential classic, a movie that will last forever. After the movie ended, Vognar added some more thoughts on the film, mainly piggybacking his earlier statements, deepened by a fresh viewing of the movie. Ensuing this was a lively Q&A session with the audience, many of whom seemed eager and thrilled to get their points across. Then one lady, in a thick Texas drawl, asked if there was a chance of getting the Mavs game on the big screen, and we all called it a night. The next and final screening will be Jaws in July. I want to see this on the big screen more than anything, but I'll more than likely be partying with my siblings as we await the midnight screening of Harry Potter. But no worries, as Vognar hinted that there will probably be another series in the fall. I hope there will be. He's done a great thing with this.

Good Night and Good Luck. A-

2011-06-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Good Night and Good Luck is somewhat of an heroic achievement. It really means something to George Clooney (he co-wrote, directed, and acts in the film), the subject matter itself matters, it has something excellent to say, and it gives us one of the best heroes the movies have seen in years. Clooney is tackling the battle between TV newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and Joseph McCarthy following the Senator's controversial pursuit to destroy Communism. Murrow infuses his programs with hard data, prudence, and intrepid accusations, all presented in a very professional, composed, manner. His cigarette, the smoke drifting across the screen, and signature line, good night, and good luck, contributes to the composure he manifests on air. The admirable Murrow knows that America wants entertainment when they turn on their TV after a hard day's work. Yet he also sees television as a vital means to promote important ideas and spread them nationally. Murrow doesn't want fame or money. He simply wants to bring intelligence into the commercially polluted minds of the people, to do what he believes is right, and to attack without compromise. And that's really what the movie is about. There's plenty going on with the specific issues of McCarthy, as well as a Clooney's own agenda related to contemporary politics, Bush, and terrorism, but really this is Murrow's film. And in the role, Strathairn gives a classic, understated performance, not affirmative of his talent, but a reminder that he's one of the best actors around. Good Night and Good Luck is a very spare film, taking place almost entirely in newsrooms and offices and shot without flair in traditional black and white. Before style become an accepted substitution for substance, movies like this were made. Its throwback approach is very welcome. In closing, the film departs from its main issues and shows the relationship between business and intelligent investigative TV journalism. In a speech at an awards dinner, Murrow offers hope for smart television. It is true that money usually trumps all, but in the end it is still the people who decide what they watch. It just depends on whether they wish to feed their brains or decay them.

Jonah Hex. C

2011-06-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

At only 82 minutes (including credits), Jonah Hex rushes through its material, but it's such a familiar story that we're sort of thankful for it. Here's a film that you can pretty much say you've seen by watching the trailer. It's composed of about the same number of scenes one would expect from a normal two hour Western, except that they are all incredibly brief. Make the point and move on, seems to be the philosophy of screenwriters Neveldine/Taylor (the Crank movies). And this is quite a blessing, for Jonah Hex is not the sort of film one desires to linger with. It's a get in get out picture if there ever was one. Josh Brolin invests a lot in this character, which is understandable because Hex is a classic Western gunslinger much in the vein of Clint Eastwood in Outlaw Josey Wales. Anyone who has a love for the anti-hero cowboy would relish the role of Hex, who sort of takes revenge to another level in this. So Brolin probably took the heavy scar makeup and the hot, dirty costumes with a shrug of indifference. A role like this does not come up often. I'm sure John Malkovich, who plays the villain, had similar reasons for working on the movie. As for Megan Fox, her motives are a little more ambiguous (though her poor acting chops, which in turn relates to a tough sell for serious roles, probably contributed to her appearing in this). She really barely acts at all. Her minimal dialogue is more of a faint mumble, and her character is a complete mystery. I think she only has about four scenes in all. This is based off a DC comic book that first saw print back in 1971, so it comes as no surprise that there is a supernatural element in the film. Hex, because he almost died, can communicate with the dead. He also has some other strange occult experiences, one of which involves a bird flying from his mouth that turns out to be a pretty frightening shot. The only thing that really surprised me about Jonah Hex was the villain, Turnball. He has a deep hatred for the U.S. government, and actually plans on destroying it with weapons of mass destruction. This makes Hex's pursuit of him more than just a personal vendetta. It's a patriotic gesture.

The Last of the Mohicans-revisited.

2011-06-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

I sat down to Last of the Mohicans for the fourth time the other night, but for the first time seeing it as a Michael Mann movie. One thing I noticed in particular was just how simple the film really is, relating both to the plot and the characters. The dialogue is sparse, the battle sequences plenty. Mann has made a very pure movie, more concerned with romance than history, and deeply intent on evoking feeling and emotion. There's a lot of macho mania going on here, too. Rather than trying to encompass the full extent of the French and Indian War, Mann decides to further train his love for the bad ass. His movie brings to mind Miami Vice, in which Mann stripped down the action movie to the bare minimum. While that movie went so far to be traditional that it essentially transcended the term, Mohicans stays a little closer to being exactly what it is. It's a wonderfully cinematic experience, a young boy's dream and an older man's passage back to the time when guns and swords were like a way of life. If I ever have a son, I will show this to him when he is very young and just let him experience it for himself. The movie is pretty kid-friendly, and whatever violence there is will be seen as just plain cool rather than a cause for haunting dreams. Barring some unexpected disaster, my son will fall in love with this movie at a very young age, and when he is older, will thank me for showing it to him. That's the point of Last of the Mohicans. It is a romance, and it forms a romance that really lasts. I adore this movie more than ever. The words Mann and masterpiece frequently go together for me, and this film is no exception. One quick note: I've stated that the late Pete Postlethwaite plays the villain, Magua. But as I watched the movie again I realized that it definitely was not Postlethwaite, but Wes Studi, an actual Cherokee. But in a scene involving the meeting between the French and the English, I noticed an English soldier in the background who looked just like Postlethwaite. He doesn't say a word, but his massive nose had me convinced it was him. I looked it up later and sure enough, it was Pete Postlethwaite. What an irony. I had the right actor, just the wrong character. Also, I mentioned how the movie isn't as detail oriented as some of Mann's other films in terms of its historical content. In an interview with The Guardian, Mann actually expressed some regret about that. I think at that time his obsession with history hadn't quite blossomed to the point of meticulous exploration. But he still made a great movie.

Mildred Pierce. B+

2011-06-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

After seeing Michael Curtiz' 1945 version of Mildred Pierce, I can imagine the new mini series directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet would be pretty fascinating. But it took me long enough to see this 111 minute version, so I don't expect to sit down to the new five hour installment anytime soon. As for the movie itself, I liked it. It's a woman's picture, barely a noir, but enough so to add some bite to its melodramatic ambience. Joan Crawford is Mildred, a gorgeous housewife who apparently is responsible for the murder we see in the opening shots of the film. After initially framing a good friend for the death, Mildred winds up confessing to the crime once the police indicate a growing suspicion that she may be lying. The story then flashes back a few years, and this is really where we'll be for most of the movie. Mildred divorces her husband and becomes a waitress (to the chagrin of her oldest daughter, Veeda). Once she's learned the ropes of the job, her ambition takes over and she starts up her own restaurant business. Soon she's one of the most successful woman in California. One of the great pleasures of the movie is to see Mildred's character progress. She's a real force, like bulldozer destroying obstacles and expanding what she creates. To Mildred, there's no such thing as having too much of a good thing. Mildred's new husband, the one who is murdered at the start of the movie, is a charming businessman named Monte Beragon. A likable fellow who gets worse as the story goes on, Monte really is the reason Mildred's success crumbles. He has a way of capturing the minds of woman, including Veeda, a real witch with a terrible way of approaching life. Mildred Pierce is more of a feminist picture than a woman's picture. It really makes the female a driving force in society, and could actually be seen as a perfect model of why feminism advanced over the years. It's a good movie with great performances and a lot of complexion beneath it.

The Family Stone. C

2011-05-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

The Family Stone is a liberal fairy tale doused with elements of extreme sincerity. Infused with a fervent Christmas spirit, the movie brings together a deeply modern family for the holidays at the parents' cozy Connecticut home blanketed with fresh snow. But the postcard set-up fizzles quickly, as this Christmas is filled with tension and stress, starting with the arrival of one of the son's fiance, an uptight, traditional businesswoman, played, naturally, by Sarah Jessica Parker. There's also a tragic secret that's slowly making its way around the house, which adds a bitter edge to the film. While some would argue it brings a sense of pathos and realism to the story, I believe this particular element works to the detriment of the film. It doesn't successfully balance the underlying solemnity with the copious romantic tie-ups. This is the wrong type of movie for being as serious as it is. But while it's laying on the drama, it becomes more and more of, as I said, a fairy tale. Despite writer-director Thomas Bezucha's obvious strong effort, he fails to harness to the aspects of a winning dramedy. Still, in spite of the misguided approach, there's a good deal to admire about the movie. The cast manages to make the characters likable even when some don't have the right to be, and certain scenes nail the difficulty and awkwardness and humor of opposites confined in the same space. The movie's ultimate message is that the conservative must comply with the progressive, so, depending on who you are, you'll leave the film feeling uplifted or slightly irritated.

Manhunter. A-

2011-05-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Michael Mann's Manhunter is about as good as it could have been. The reason neither it nor Red Dragon aren't great isn't really because of their flaws, but because the story from the Thomas A. Harris novel just isn't very good. That being said, I really did love this movie because of the aura that Mann permeates throughout it. It's been noted that he hadn't quite fostered his visual methods. There can be a fine line between pretension and visual art, and Mann comes close to crossing it here. But it hardly matters because at least this movie has style. Obviously there's no Edward Norton and no Anthony Hopkins, but it still makes good use of what it can get. William Peterson is hardly an equivalent of Ed Norton, but he still masters the complex character of Will Graham and makes us take him seriously enough rather than resorting to typical 80's camp. Brian Cox is a good actor, but he never really sank into the role of Lector, mainly because he gets even less screen time than Hopkins got in Red Dragon. What makes this such a haunting film is not just that the killer is part of society, but that Graham doesn't really want the job. Yes, he's determined to solve the case, but that's part of his nature. When he has a job, he does it. But what he really wants is to be at his house on the beach with his wife and kid. He wants security, he wants sanity. There's something incredibly engrossing in the way he goes around the crime scenes speaking quietly and firmly through a tape recorder. We see a genius who doesn't want to be a genius, but has no choice. One major improvement in this version is the way in which Graham's back story is revealed. In Red Dragon it was just an opening sequence, an easy route that gets the facts down for the viewer right away. In Manhunter, Mann, as obsessed with the minds of his characters as he is with visual images, takes a more delicate approach. He tells us Graham's history rather than showing us through a series of scenes that work really well dramatically. The part in the grocery store between Graham and his son was particularly well done, both in the lines and how they were delivered. One more plus here is that the ending is more classical and straightforward than Red Dragon's foolish surprise finish. Manhunter is Michael Mann telling the world he means business, that he's not just a stylist but a director with a keen focus on the emotional and thematic elements of a narrative.

All Good Things. C+

2011-05-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

Why does All Good Things feel like its goal is to race to the finish line? Why does a movie so compelling and full of strange characters seem to wish for a hasty conclusion? There must be more to it. In fact, I know there is because director Andrew Jarecki reportedly shots hours and hours of footage of the people the film is based on. But just when the movie gets interesting, Jarecki seems to lose his passion for telling the story. Gladly the first half of the movie works wonders. We know from the beginning there is trouble brewing with the young David Marks (Ryan Gosling), whose disturbed life could be the direct result of his overbearing dad (Frank Langella). Not only is he responsible for David's witnessing of his mother's tragic suicide, but he has expectations as the the direction of his son's life and will not to capitulate to alternate plans. Yet although he has his problems, David is a man of considerable charisma, so when he helps Katie (Kirsten Dunst) with a leaking pipe, he's all but won her over. Jarecki tracks the evolution of their relationship with lots of home-video style footage and non-linear narrative techniques. In the first hour he does just about everything right, telling a great deal about these characters with minimal time. He makes us understand Katie, fear David, and wonder what ignites the flame inside him that causes him to murder his wife. Because we know that this is a true story of an unsolved missing persons case. Based on David's uneven persona in the first hour, we sort of assume there is a strange inner-hatred boiling inside him that culminates in the murder of Katie. But maybe that's not the case, as the final forty minutes of the movie suggest. The only problem is that Jarecki really loses track of his story during that time. What was a fascinating romantic mystery becomes a tedious excursion. We feel the movie rushing along and get the sense that Jarecki is just piling on the different facts and characters so he can go home. That's not how good movies are made. He hasn't made a bad one here, and the first half is almost great. But whether he intended it or not, or whether the studio wanted a shorter version, All Good Things cannot create such a strong buildup, slide the way it does, and expect people to like it.

Summer and Movies

2011-05-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

Ah, summer movie season is here, at last. Anything to help erase the awful memory of the detritus that was last summer's movie season. Wow, summer 2010 was so terrible, full of one major disappointment after another. And really, there just wasn't a lot to get excited about in the first place. But 2011 is different. 2011 has the makings of a classic summer for film, with enough smoking hot titles to make May, June, July, and August all months of insane anticipation. I'm particularly eager for June, the month where cool movies without enormous buzz or the sequel factor often sneak it. This June is no exception. Here's my ten picks that have me electrified with excitement.

10. Thor. The buzz for this movie has been terrible until the last few weeks, when it's suddenly started drawing comparisons to Shakespeare. Oh, right, Kenneth Branagh is directing. It took a while, but now I'm officially excited.

9. Bad Teacher. The red band trailer was really funny. There's a lot of great looking comedies coming out. I'll take this one.

8. X-Men: First Class. X-Men has sort of lost my interest ever since Bryan Singer left the series. But with Matthew Vaughn at the helm here, expect great things comparable to what Singer achieved with the first two installments.

7. Cowboys and Aliens. We're, meaning myself and everyone else in America, really eager to see this movie. Harrison Ford as the sheriff, and Daniel Craig as the drifter with a laser gun. Can't go wrong there.

6. The Green Lantern. Another superhero flick that looks genuinely in love with its source material. I'm not too familiar with the character, but I really like everything I'm seeing, especially in the just-released trailer.

5. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Michael Bay's trilogy come to an end here. I think he's made a great movie, not just compared to Revenge of the Fallen, but I mean a really a great movie. I love NASA, and think that all right strings have been pulled here.

4. Rise of the Apes. Since I saw the original last December, I'm sort of ecstatic about anything concerning these apes. I'm worried that it will be this Summer's Predators (a movie I really was excited about, but ending up not liking a whole lot), but I'll still take my chances on loving it.

3 The Tree of Life/ St. Nick. Terrence Malick returns June 3rd. My brother's first feature, St. Nick, arrives in Texas May 13th (according to the Dallas Morning News Summer Movie Preview). I saw it during its festival run two years ago and thought it was quite a gem. These two movies may end up being more similar than you think. The Tree of Life has a good chance of being Malick's most commercial release yet. I'm really eager to see what he does with the dinosaurs. I expect he'll try to evince their grandiose beauty in the same way he would a river or an insect.

2. Captain America. I rejoice at this film's imminent release because Captain America has always been one of the coolest superheroes out there. I loved the trailer, and expect to be head over heels in love with this film. I love it's WWII setting, and love that Joe Johnston, one of the best mainstream Hollywood directors out there, is at the helm of it all.

1. Super 8. I wasn't even around when E.T. and Close Encounters came out, and still Super 8 has me feeling nostalgic. This may be the most personal of the big summer movies. J.J. Abrams didn't just direct the movie, but he wrote the screenplay. With Spielberg at his side, one can't expect too many wrong moves here. I'll be there at midnight for sure.

2 Fast 2 Furious. B-

2011-05-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

Paul Walker is zipping down the freeway when he suddenly does a 180 degree turn and continues on in reverse at the same speed. Why does he do it? Because he knows how to. These are skilled drivers in these Fast and Furious movies, and they make it a very good time. Still, this may be the most unsophisticated movie ever made that isn't an exploitation flick. There is not a single line of intelligence, and really not any that indicate that these are human beings. But the movie delivers the goods that it advertises, and by accepting its utter stupidity, one can sit through it and actually have a pretty good time. This sequel isn't as good as the first one mainly because it doesn't have Vin Diesel, whose replacement, Tyrese Gibson, is pathetic as Paul Walker's counterpart. These two are former buddies who now hate each other, but are forced to unite in an undercover case to bring down a vicious drug dealer. The plot comes up terribly short in originality, while the villain, played by Cole Hauser, lacks the eccentricities and charm to be a memorable drug lord. But the stunts here are amazing, and any of the scenes with the cars are pretty great pieces of moviemaking. I'm doing good here-or not. I've seen two of the Fast and Furious movies in my attempt to catch up on the series. But the first two were a year a part. In that case I won't see Fast Five (I hear it's a masterpiece of sorts) till 2014. I really need to pick up the pace.

The Keep. B

2011-05-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Keep is quintessential B movie pulp except that it's more intelligent than most since it was written by (and directed) by Michael Mann. Mann loves studying people, both in groups and individually. He cares about their motivations, what they're thinking right now each and every second they're on screen. It's hard to really tell who The Keep is about since there are really three people who pretty equally share the movie's running time of 95 minutes. It starts out being about a Nazi captain, played by Jurgen Prochnow. He has just taken over a Romanian citadel that contains a strange supernatural force unbeknownst to him. When it kills two of his soldiers who were attempting to steal inlayed luminescent crosses, a Jewish historian (Ian McKellen) is summoned to find out more about the mysteries of the keep. Around the same time, a lone drifter (Scott Glenn) arrives from Greece on a motorcycle and proceeds to fall in love with the historian's daughter as well as destroy the monster within the keep. Glenn makes for the least interesting character, clearly a Western archetype with strange supernatural abilities of his own. Prochnow and McKellen are surprisingly deep, though. They're both searching for different types of power, yet ultimately sacrifice these desires in exchange for an upright conscience. It's a glimmer of the morality that always sneaks through the seams of Mann's movies. This is old Michael Mann, not as good as his later work, no, but undeniably still Michael Mann. In this movie he seems more like an obsessed history/sci-fi nerd than a director motivated by crimes of the world and of the heart. And like some of his later work, he struggles a bit with the romance. But the movie proves that Mann's a born visual filmmaker. Though his narrative strengths arrived later, his style is deeply felt here. His love of the sky, his love of producing color when it's most difficult to find, and his complex compositions, beautiful mosaics that evoke a pureness he can only find in nature or cities, things innocent in and of themselves. You can see glimpses here of why he became our greatest director.

Scream. B+

2011-04-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Scream has the power to give nightmares, so despite its tendency to be categorized in the parody genre, it's still a bona fide horror picture. Telling a story of people who have seen far too many scary movies, Wes Craven's film mixes genius and formula while being fully self-aware of the choices it makes in trying to scare us. I was deeply fond of, and equally terrified, of Scream for the first hour or so. It's pretty magnificent what Craven manages to pull off, even if the movie does peter out with a boring finish, and consequently doesn't leave us as frightened as we should be. Scream is deeply in tune with the extensive horror genre, and while it could be said that Craven is poking fun at even his own films, I think he's equally concerned with making a really good movie. Or perhaps more concerned in doing so, for while he's definitely making a commentary on fright flicks, he's also put together a really strong story and a group of characters who are a lot more complex than you'd ever expect. Neve Campbell's Sidney appears to be a direct twin of Nancy from Craven's own A Nightmare on Elm Street, but she turns out to be an intelligent teenager, haunted by the death of her mother, and uncertain as to who she can trust. Then there's the reporter, played by Courtney Cox, who, along with her stalwart cameraman (W. Earl Brown), is glued to the story of the killer because she thinks it will help make a name for herself and her new book. And then there's the teenagers from Sidney's school who like to analyze the situation based on classic horror movies (they reference real films, even some of Craven's own). I'm part of the right demographic for Scream, but I proceed the generation that seems to worship it (the people who saw Scream 4, not because they wanted to see a good movie, but for the purpose of nostalgia). They're the people who were in high school when the movie was released back in 1996. I was only four. While the movie's strengths may seem slightly diminished due to the current rapid state of classic horror movie remakes, Scream was still fresh and inventive. And surprisingly scary as hell. The clever balance of true terror and parody is on full display in the scenes when the killer is running around with his knife. How can someone be so creepy and clever and yet so stupid? Note the the "garage door" scene, or any other for that matter. Craven is playing with us here. He's poking fun at the killer, yet simultaneously making the situation full of suspense. that's part of the genius of Scream.

True Romance. B

2011-04-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

True Romance is a good movie with moments of greatness dispersed throughout it. The two main stars are Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, two actors that aren't household names, but still energetic and charismatic (especially Slater, whose destiny in Hollywood may have been to deliver Tarantino's avant-garde dialogue). But what I loved about the movie was the supporting cast, Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, Val Kilmer, James Gandolfini, and Samuel L. Jackson, all of whom have very small but integral roles, both in terms of the the story and the success of the film. These supporting players are chiefly tools for Tarantino dialogue explosions, so it's no secret that they provide those moments of greatness I mentioned. Tony Scott directed the movie, but one can't really classify it as a Tony Scott film because one, he steers clear of his trademark visual style, and two, it has a screenplay by Tarantino, which is really the only reason the movie is any good. I think anyone could have directed Tarantino's script and the result would have been pretty much the same. One thing I really liked about True Romance that was not Tarantinian was the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, which is a significant departure from his usual obtrusive scores. There's a scene in the movie where Slater and Arquette go out for pie to discuss the movie they have just seen. True Romance probably won't make you want to go out for pie and talk about it, but it still manages to provide distinction and flavor to a story that's pretty generic. If Tarantino hadn't written the script, it would probably be one of Tony Scott's worst movies.

Casablanca. A

2011-04-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

Does any year seem like a more classic sounding year for Hollywood than 1942? Is any actor more classic than Bogart? Is any director more classic than Michael Curtiz, one of the most prolific filmmakers in the first 50 years of cinema's history? Is any story more classic than a romance at the dawn of World War II with nazis, a love triangle, and a homely nighttime cafe where tensions collide like opposing tidal waves? Is any character more classic than Rick Blaine, the cynical hero of the film? Is any supporting character more classic than Captain Renault, played by the incomparable Claude Raines? Is any ending more classic than the mighty one here, which contains three of the most classic lines in the movies and a moral decision that trumps even the one made by Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, released the previous year? Is any movie song more classic than As Time Goes By? And is any title more classic than Casablanca, simple and elegant, perfectly juxtaposed with the endless complications throughout the film? The truth is nothing speaks timeless classic like this movie. Even the most classic movie critic (if not the brightest) Leonard Maltin calls it the best American movie of all time. And even Bogart dons the trench coat and fedora at the end. Is any look more classic than that? I first saw Casablanca in 2007, a few days after learning that it wasn't a John Wayne western (I'm still not sure how that idea ever got in my head), and because I was unaware of the impact the film had on many generations, it didn't really have an impact on me. But over the years as I learned more about movies, I learned more about Casablanca, to the point where I felt I had seen it many, many times. But nothing compares to actually seeing it again, which I did recently, and loved more than I thought I ever would. Roger Ebert said that no movie captures the romance of going to the movies than The Third Man. While that's true, I think Casablanca is more deserving of such a rich, gratifying compliment. Greatness lives on here.

Red Dragon. B-

2011-04-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

Maybe Zodiac is what keeps me from loving these Hannibal Lector movies because next to it they seem even more generic than they actually are. It's true that Lector is a classic villain, but it takes more than that for a movie to be great . In Red Dragon, Anthony Hopkins is up to his usual psychological machinations and almost as memorable as he was in Lambs. But the rest of the movie was a disappointment. Edward Norton makes for a compelling former FBI agent on the track of a killer who has murdered two families and is apparently just getting started. But once the killer is revealed to be a disturbed man who thinks he is a dragon when his murderous side invades his weak, taciturn persona, the movie got boring. Lector disappears for the most part and the story puts too much focus on the killer. Played by Ralph Fiennes, he's portrayed as a haunted psychopath whose relentlessly abusive youth turned him into a monster we should feel sympathy for. But then the movie pulls the rug from under us with a completely contradictory, not to mention cliched, ending. So, what exactly should we feel about this killer who gets so much attention in the film? The good news is that Norton brings a quiet, dramatic energy to his role that's fittingly low-key, in contrast to Fiennes and Hopkins. He creates a character motivated by his obsession, yet constrained because of the guilt he feels for leaving his family for the work he had quit. I was hoping for a great movie in Red Dragon in comparison to its compelling but average predecessors. Unfortunately it's in about the same league as those movies, which isn't a bad thing, but still a bit of a letdown. Or maybe they're all great, and I just love Zodiac too much.

Commando. A-

2011-04-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

Commando seems to be a nearly perfect piece of action filmmaking, but would it be considered so if Schwarzenegger wasn't in the lead? He doesn't elevate the material, but merely enhances it. This movie doesn't just cover the basics of macho excellence, but exceeds them through the complete watchability of Schwarzenegger's great performance. I enjoyed Commando more than any other of his films save Terminator 2. Not only is it built for the larger than life persona and physique of Schwarzenegger, but also for the other side of the mythic qualities of his roles: his sense of obligation. There's often moral questions at stake in the roles he chooses, as well as an underlying tender and very slight sentimentality. In Commando he plays a former Colonel named Matrix (an ideal name for him, isn't it?), whose daughter is kidnapped by vicious men who will give her back only upon his assassinating the president in Val Verde (a fictional country, I believe). In a riveting sequence, Matrix escapes from the plane to Val Verde by breaking the neck of his captor and jumping from the bottom of the plane into a swamp just as the aircraft is taking off. We're thinking, wow, this guy's awesome, and then it just keeps getting better. After an airport action scene rife with stunts and incredibly dangerous use of firearms, Matrix begins to piece together locations that lead him to his daughter. My main complaint with the movie is the female lead character, played by Rae Dawn Chong, whose performance is terrible even for an 80's action flick. Her role in the movie is strange because she makes a terrible sidekick for Matrix and doesn't really show signs that she's in love with him until the end. Aside from that, and the villain Bennett's overdose of confidence during a final duel, I loved the film. People say that Die Hard started a whole new genre of action moviemaking, but I'd say Commando deserves that credit. Not to mention it's a better movie.