Bill Dunmyer

Why is this Awards Season So Strange?

2012-01-20T21:30:00.002-05:00

There seems to be consensus around one thing right now: this awards seasonis awfully strange.

Typically there are two or three movies that win most of theBest Picture awards. But this year, the awards have been all over the place.“Hugo” won one of the early awards but has failed to win any others. “TheArtist” looked like it might turn into an awards darling, but that hasn’tpanned out. “The Tree of Life” topped many critics’ lists but has barely wonany awards. “The Help” and “War Horse” were on many Top 10 lists, but towardsthe bottom. And that’s just to name a few of the films.

What is going on? Were the English-language films of 2011 sobad that none of them has been able to generate much enthusiasm? My answer tothat question is a resounding No. One thing is for sure: 2011 was a good yearfor English-language cinema. Not a great year but definitely a good one.

The problem, as I see it, has not been with the films. Ithas been with the nominating committees. The nominations have almostexclusively gone to middle-tier films.

In my view, the top tier of 2011 has been almost completelyignored in this awards season. I’m sensing a strange fear on the part ofawards-granting bodies to nominate trenchant, deep works of art. With a fewexceptions, these groups have overwhelmingly turned their attention toworks of entertainment. Instead of “Best Film of 2011,”these awards should be renamed “Most Entertaining Movie of 2011.”

Am I really the only person who thinks “Drive” (thehypnotic, heart-breaking, spectacularly original neo-noir near-masterpiecestarring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan) was one of the best films of theyear?

When “Drive” was released in the early fall, it was greetedwith almost universal acclaim. It also packed in audiences. It must have hadsome of the best per-screen averages of the year, nearly selling out whereverit played. I saw it in a theater with about 1,000 seats, and it was nearly soldout.

Ditto for “Martha, Marcy May, Marlene.” When it was releasedabout a month after “Drive,” it triggered almost as much enthusiasm. Here weretwo phenomenally original works of art that really got under your skin andhaunted almost everyone who saw them. Was anyone haunted by “The Descendants”?I was moderately entertained by “The Descendants.”

Elizabeth Olsen’s performance in “Martha,” furthermore, wasspoken about as the best screen debut in years. Then awards time comes aroundand no one nominates her! Was her performance considered too scary? Herdepiction of mental illness too much like our state of mind? Do we want ourscreen performances and our films only to be entertaining nowadays? That’s allwe want from cinema?

Critics, who have a responsibility for reminding nominatorsabout the major artistic achievements of the year, made nary a peep when Olsenappeared on no nominating lists. I did not see one article expressing disgustover this.

I could go on. What happened to “Beginners,” thefilm starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer that warmed (and froze) somany hearts during the summer? Sure, Plummer’s great, artistically richperformance has been remembered, but what of the film itself? The nominatingcommittees didn’t think “Beginners” was at least as good as “The Descendants”?

In my book, “The Descendants” was not much more than a goodpilot for a TV show – a show that would run on NBC, not HBO. Move over“Parenthood.” “Beginners” penetrated far deeper into the soul of its charactersand had about 1,000 times more originality, I would say. Would many seriouscinephiles really disagree with me there?

Who’s getting put on thesenominating committees? People who only enjoy popcorn movies? Or are theycinephiles who have become frightened to nominate major works of art? Hassomeone convinced them that the nominations should be dumbed down?

What saddens me mostis that there are so many American moviegoers who rely on the awards season todraw their attention to worthy films. Most intelligent moviegoers will not gosee 150 movies a year, like I do. They will see some films throughout the year,but mostly they will wait for awards season and then go see a bunch. They goto see the films that win a lot of nominations.

This mechanism has worked quite well for the past 40 or soyears. But if awards-granting bodies lose their nerve, what will we end upwith? We’ll have the bulk of our smartest moviegoers getting sent to seemediocre films, which will lead to bitterness. It will also lead them tothink that smart movies don’t exist anymore, which is completely untrue!

This mistaken notion has started tocirculate. Talk to most smart Americans, and they demonstrate more enthusiasmfor premium-cable TV shows (such as the awesomely good “Breaking Bad”) than forcinema. What a terribly disturbing development.

Top 15 Films of 2011

2012-01-18T07:50:00.002-05:00

This year for some reason it was particularly difficult for me to see all the late-year releases. It's never taken me until mid-January to get it done. But I finally did it! At long last, here is my list of Top 15 Films of 2011.

1. UncleBoonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

2. Drive

3. Incendies

4. Martha,Marcy May, Marlene

5. Beginners

6. Meek’sCutoff

7. Hugo

8. Weekend

9. Sarah’sKey

10. AnotherEarth

11. TheFuture

12. ASeparation

13. Trust

14. TheHelp

15. TheAdjustment Bureau

Honorable Mentions for Being Artistically Ambitious, ifFlawed in Delivery (in no particular order):

• ExtremelyLoud and Incredibly Close

• Margaret

• TheTree of Life

• Bellflower

• HigherGround

• Hesher

• TheSkin I Live In

• Shame

• WeNeed to Talk About Kevin

Honorable Mentions for Being Thoroughly Entertaining andFull of Movie-Making Passion:

• Warrior

• MissionImpossible: Ghost Protocol

• Moneyball

• CrazyStupid Love

• Bridesmaids

• Thor

• TheGreen Hornet

• CountryStrong

• TheArtist

• Midnightin Paris

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Very Good but Not Great

2012-01-02T19:33:00.000-05:00

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" has manyspecial qualities, and it is a beautiful story. But something is off. A littlesomething about the direction was off right from the beginning, and it neverreally righted itself.

Director Stephen Daldry ("Billy Elliott,""The Hours") just seemed unable to find his footing and clue intothis family's experience well enough. But he got very close to somethingamazing.

The main character (who is on-screen about 90% of the time)is a Manhattan boy with Asperger's trying to process his grief after hisbeloved father's death in the World Trade Center on 9/11. The idea of trying tolook at 9/11 through the eyes of a child who lost a parent is brilliant andprofoundly humane, and we have Jonathan Safran Foer to thank for that (theauthor of the novel on which the film is based). To give that child Asperger'sis also inspired. Foer is nothing if not ambitious as an artist.

First-time actor Thomas Horn, as the boy, does a good job,but there's a touch of phoniness and excessive sentiment to the portrayal. Toooften I felt like I was watching an actor trying to pretend he had Asperger's.It just didn't feel real enough to really take off as a film, especially giventhe fact that the film is almost overly fixated on the boy.

Tom Hanks does a good job as the father, but he's killed offvery early in the film. And he's a smidge too sentimental in his portrayal,too. The great Max Von Sydow does what he can as the boy's grandfather, but hischaracter never speaks! Sandra Bullock is pretty flat as the boy's somewhatdistant mother.

There were some raw and brutal moments, such as when the boytells his mother that he wishes it was she who was in the World Trade Centerthat day, and not his father. Another is when the boy shows his grandfatherphotos from the Internet of people plummeting from the Towers. The boy istrying to make out if one of the falling bodies was his father.

But the film has no idea what to do with moments like that.They just get dropped in our laps, and then the movie moves onto somethingelse. There's an odd unfinished quality to the film, and paradoxically anovercooked feeling to it.

It is certainly worth seeing, and the film hopefully willfind a sizable audience. Its flaws are unmistakable, but so are its sublime anddevastating moments, such as when the boy draws a picture of a man fallingupward from the ground to the top of the Towers. Wrapping one's mind and heartaround this boy's grief is enough to make you feel at times that you arebreaking into pieces. We have all thought a lot about those who died in theTowers. Thank you, Jonathan Foer, for helping us direct some attention to thethousands of children who lost a parent that day. This film pays loving tributeto those children.

Pariah: Well-Told Coming-Out Story

2012-01-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

"Pariah," from first-time writer/director DeeRees, doesn't break much artistic ground. It tells the same gay/lesbiancoming-out story that we've seen a million times. But it's told particularlywell and from within a black urban context, which I don't believe has been donebefore.

It also goes a bit deeper into the hearts and minds of thehomophobic parents than typically is done, which was great. Unfortunately, itonly scratches those surfaces. Kim Wayans, who of course has a long history incomedy, shows she has major dramatic talent, playing the homophobic mother ofthe main character. The cast is universally good, but Wayans is the stand-out.

The main character is a black teenage girl in Brooklyn goingthrough the coming-out process. She has fully come out to herself as a lesbian,and she has even found her way into a lesbian circle of friends. She evenfrequents a women's night club. But she hasn't told Mom or Dad about any ofthis, both of whom are homophobic. Mom is particularly venomous in her hatredof gays and lesbians. You can see that Dad, a detective in the NYPD, in hisheart of hearts is not a bigot.

Thrown into the mix to complicate things a little bit is abisexual girl eager to have lesbian experiences to explore herself. But shetosses lesbians aside like useless candy wrappers after she's had her fun.

If I were going to give Dee Rees advice, I would say this:

Ms. Rees, in "Pariah" you started digging into theparent characters with some real psychological and artistic depth. I encourageyou to go more deeply in that direction. I think your true gifts as an artistlie there. I would give anything to see a sequel where you explore whathappened to that mother and what she's really fighting. You hint that herhusband is beginning to stray, but I think there's more in there. Help us seeit.

Remember when that great schoolteacher tells Alike that shecould "go deeper" with her poetry? You could go deeper with yourfilms. I know you could.

Iron Lady: Great Performance But Not Great Film

2011-12-31T21:58:00.002-05:00

Meryl Streep's performance as Margaret Thatcher is awesometo behold. (When is Streep less than magnificent?) But "The IronLady" has some problems as a film. It's not bad, but it isn't great.

The movie, directed by Phyllida Lloyd ("MammaMia"), spends entirely too much time in the present day, following thesenile Thatcher around her apartment as she putters, looks through memorabilia,and hallucinates that her dead husband is still living with her. (Theeighty-something Thatcher is still alive but rarely appears in public.) Thesesequences are affecting in the beautiful, mournful opening to the film. Butover and over again, Lloyd interrupts the dramatic action of the film to bringus back to the disoriented old lady ambling around the house.

It's hard to understand what Lloyd found so fascinatingabout this footage. My companions and I agreed that the far more interestingsequences were of the young Thatcher struggling to overcome class and genderdiscrimination to rise to power in England. If Lloyd and screenwriter AbiMorgan (who, incidentally, also co-wrote another film in current release,"Shame," starring Michael Fassbender) had focused in more onThatcher's youth and heyday as Prime Minister, "The Iron Lady"would have been vastly more engaging.

As it stands, "The Iron Lady" is quitesuperficial. At times one senses an almost ghoulish desire on the part of thecreative team to denigrate the arch-conservative Thatcher. She was ultra-toughin her attacks on the British Left in the 1980s, but now she's demented andalone. No one loves her. Was Lloyd happy to depict the arch-nemesis of the Leftas a woman with little to no family or friends? If so, I find this disgracefuland not the work of an artist. Even though I disagree with many of Thatcher'spolicies, I find her an immensely interesting figure -- far more significant than the rather shallow Phyllida Lloyd.

The most thought-provoking line from the movie shows the elderly Thatcher expressing her disappointment with the 21st century: "It used to be about trying to do something; now it's all about trying to be someone."

War Horse: Effective Entertainment, but Predictable

2011-12-27T20:50:00.000-05:00

After seeing "Munich" (2005), I felt that StevenSpielberg was (finally) becoming a major filmmaker, graduating fromentertainment and moving on to the realm of art. But it hasn't panned out."War Horse" confirms that Spielberg isn't much interested in art.He's an entertainer through and through. That's what he was put here to do.

This is fine. He should stick to what excites him. The sadthing is that even his skills at entertainment are declining. "WarHorse" is an effective entertainment, but you can predict every move it'sgoing to make. It operates within such a conventional formula that there'slittle real excitement.

The story focuses on a lower-class English teenager (playedfairly well by newcomer Jeremy Irvine) who develops a deep relationship with ayoung thoroughbred that his father buys at auction. Quite early in the film,World War I breaks out (1914), and the family is forced to sell the horse tothe British Army. The bulk of the film follows the horse's travails on variousfront lines.

The boy eventually enlists in the Army. The drama then movesto the question of whether the horse and boy are going to find each other onthe battlefield. Along the way, the horse encounters an array of German,French, and English folk, some of whom go out of their way to protect thehorse. The screenplay bends over backwards to portray the Germans as kind andhumane. This was a nice touch, but not really surprising anymore. American andBritish storywriters have been doing this for about 20 years now.

It is all lovely to behold, and one cannot help but getcarried up by it. I do believe that animals and humans can share deep,surprising, and authentic bonds. But "War Horse" never moves beyondthe predictable. It ultimately coddles its audience and never gives it much tothink about. After you've wiped away the tears and felt the warm afterglowdissipate, you go back to the challenging world, not having grown at all."War Horse" is just a very good Hallmark greeting card.

Shame: Harrowing Tale of Human Misery

2011-12-03T21:15:00.001-05:00

British artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen is a greatcinematographer, a superb editor, and a talented lighting/sound engineer. As astoryteller, he's not so great. But he's learning.

"Shame," McQueen's second feature film (after2008's "Hunger"), is a harrowing look at human misery. The maincharacter, played very well by Michael Fassbender, on the surface looks great.He's fit, handsome, sexy, well-educated, and prosperous. He gets any woman orman he wants and enjoys the life of the 21st-century Manhattan playboy.

But inside, something is terribly wrong. His sex drive is socompulsive that it threatens to capsize his life. When his boss discovers thathis work computer is filled to overflowing with pornography, the first sign ofimbalance appears. Also disturbing is his near-constant masturbation and sexwith strangers.

When we meet his sister (played beautifully by CareyMulligan), we see that trouble runs in the family. The script never indicateswhat happened in their childhoods, but these siblings are clearly haunted bysomething.

There has been much press about the sexual explicitness of"Shame" and the full-frontal nudity of Fassbender. I'm happy toreport that this has been greatly exaggerated. Fassbender does very littlefull-frontal and doesn't do many butt shots either. This is not a titillatingfilm at all. It is a depiction of human frailty and suffering. I'm embarrassedto make reference to Fassbender's private parts. But the press has been soobsessed with this that I felt obliged to do some truth-telling with regard toit.

It's quite a depressing statement about American culturetoday that critics have so fixated on the nudity in this film."Shame" may not be a great film, but it's certainly not soft-coreporn! I feel sorry for the morons who will see this movie hoping fortitillation. They will get the shock of their lives.

-- unfinished –

Ride With the Devil: Ang Lee's Worst Film

2011-12-02T21:10:00.001-05:00

Every great director has one or two misfires. The Civil Wardrama "Ride With the Devil" (1999) is Ang Lee's, and it's a doozy.

Thephotography is gorgeous at times; it captures the panoramic majesty of theAmerican countryside. But everything else falls flat. The story is dull, thecasting is spectacularly off, the actors were coached unbelievably badly, theediting is flaccid, the music is pedestrian, and the costumes and hair aredownright laughable. Lee gives almost all the young male characters very longhair, making them look like girls. It's quite silly.

Lee took a lot of risks with this film. He did not want tomake a standard Western. This courage is admirable, but his judgment goes wrongat almost every turn.

Chief among the disasters is the casting of Tobey Maguire inthe lead role. I've never been a big fan of Maguire. His range is among thesmallest of any big-name actor in American cinema today. All he seems capableof portraying is gentle, doe-eyed boys. His voice is so soft and high that youwonder if he ever experienced puberty. I like the idea of trying to build aWestern around a girl-like male character. On paper it sounds interesting andinnovative. But Lee was not able to make it work at all.

His direction of almost all the actors was disastrous, andthere are many of them -- far too many. Skeet Ulrich and Simon Baker are almostas bad as Maguire. Jonathan Rhys Meyers parades around like he's doing animitation of Mick Jagger circa 1968. Jewel, making her acting debut, isbizarrely anachronistic, reeking more of 1990 than 1860. Only Jeffrey Wright,playing the one black character, knows what he's doing.

Lee seems to have wanted to make a real effort to reach outto younger audiences. But filling his cast with Brat Pack youngsters isn't the wayto go about that. He demonstrates here a real difficulty directing youngeractors.

The film Lee made before this was "The Ice Storm" (1997). After it was "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000). What a stunningcontrast there is between those two near-masterpieces and this goofy, boring dud.

Crisis: Bergman's First Film

2011-11-24T12:52:00.001-05:00

What a thrill to finally see Ingmar Bergman's directorialdebut, "Crisis" (1946). Why did it take me so many years to track it down?Bergman is considered by most cinephiles (myself included) to be one of thebest filmmakers of all time. And he would probably win the most votes forabsolute best of all time. Yet I've never even heard of his early films, muchless seen them! Boggles the mind.

"Crisis" isn't hard to find in the US today, thanks tothe Criterion Collection, which has done an incredible job in the last 25 yearsof rescuing the world's greatest films from celluloid disintegration. Someoneplease give the Criterion founders a Nobel Prize. And thanks to Netflix formaking Criterion DVDs available for rent. I hear that the entire CriterionCollection is also now available for streaming on Hulu's subscription service.Life is so good sometimes that I feel like I'm going to burst.

"Crisis," I have to say, is more a feat ofscreenwriting than of direction. Bergman is known as a director, but he shouldalso be known as a screenwriter. He wrote most of his films, perhaps even allof them, including "Crisis." It has the look and feel of a standard1940s melodrama, complete with cheap movie music that swells up at emotionalmoments the way it does in classics of the era such as "StellaDallas" or "Mildred Pierce."

But oh how the script breaks with the 1940s mold. It startsoff in a fairly ordinary fashion, with a charming girl being raised in acharming small town and being courted by a charming doctor. Then a couple ofodd plot turns brings the girl to the big city (presumably Stockholm), andslowly but surely the story gets darker.

I replayed several scenes to drink in the rich, obliquedialogue that hinted at deep icebergs of desire and confusion inside each of thecharacters. How many times is dialogue so packed with poetry and meaning thatyou have to play it again and again just to wrap your mind around it? I haven'tdone that in years.

Rather than melodrama, I'd describe "Crisis" aspsychodrama. It's not a masterpiece, but it shows the young Bergman (he wasn'teven 30 when he made the film!) bursting out of the gate and already gallopingin the directions that would make him a worldwide legend a dozen years later. Icannot wait to explore more of his early films.

50/50: Charming but Mediocre

2011-11-04T23:42:00.002-04:00

Director Jonathan Levine's previous film, "TheWackness" (2008), was imperfect but highly ambitious and full of unique,intelligent content. He also showed himself capable of directing one of thegreatest screen actors in the world, Ben Kingsley.

With "50/50," Levine takes a big step forwardcommercially but a huge step back artistically. From working with Ben Kingsleyto writing Hallmark greeting cards.

"50/50" is a charming but mediocre dramedystarring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in one of his flimsiest and least interestingperformances. Seth Rogen plays the sidekick. Even Rogen is charming but bland.It's quite a dubious directorial achievement to have even Seth Rogen come outlooking middle of the road.

"50/50" isn't so much a movie as an audition.Levine, it seems, is trying to prove to the Hollywood studios that he can betrusted with big-money projects. Read: he can do mildly charming pablum as goodas the next guy.

If this was Levine's goal, then he achieved it. He proved hecan direct mediocre scripts and bring out mediocre performances and do it in away that the TV-addled masses at the suburban multiplex will enjoy. Entertainus with familiar themes and familiar content. Do not challenge us. Warm up theleft-overs from thousands of previous multiplex experiences. Dress up thefamiliar for us, and make us feel cozy. Movies for the Kardashians and theirilk.

What saddens me is that Levine is capable of so much morethan earning a big paycheck. "The Wackness" may not have earned muchmoney, but it earned something. And it will be remembered. People will bewatching it a decade from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now. It's apiece of work that will last. "50/50" is already forgotten.

For the record, if anyone cares, Levitt (why does Levittkeep choosing projects that are beneath him?) plays a twentysomething who getsa surprise diagnosis: he has a huge malignant tumor growing fast around hislower spine. He has a flighty, self-absorbed girlfriend on whom he cannot rely,so he relies more and more on his charming, scruffy, straight-talking buddy(Rogen).

There are charming and heart-warming moments, and when is itnot enjoyable to watch Levitt on screen? But everything is completelypredictable. Anjelica Huston is a godsend, swooping in from time to time toprovide some real acting, playing Levitt's mother. And Anna Kendrick does awonderful job as Levitt's inexperienced therapist. Would that Huston andKendrick had had more screen time and more characterization. Would thatfirst-time screenwriter Will Reiser had had the slightest bit of artisticambition. And would that Levine had had more on his mind than proving he couldcreate cotton candy for the philistine masses. It's always depressing to watchreal artists descend into sewers of conformity because they want to make millions.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: Best Directorial Debut of 2011 So Far

2011-10-28T22:21:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I dubbed 2011 the Year of Brash New IndieTalent because of the impressive string of films coming out from first- andsecond-time directors, such as Mike Mills ("Beginners"), Miranda July("The Future"), Mike Cahill ("Another Earth"), David Schwimmer ("Trust"), and EvanGlodell ("Bellflower").

Add to the list Sean Durkin, whose stunning first film,"Martha Marcy May Marlene," was just released in New York.

Where the hell did this young man come from, and who taughthim to direct? He has the skill and artistic depth of a man twice his age. (Heappears not to be yet 30.) "Martha Marcy May Marlene" isbreathtaking, with a bravura debut performance from Elizabeth Olsen (the OlsenTwins' younger sister). I'm as excited about this film as I was about"Drive" a month ago.

The film is a portrait of borderline-madness. Olsen plays ayoung woman who is slightly off in everything she does. At times she revels inher maverick, outcast status; at other times she is racked with anguish over itand frightened by what she might be capable of and the dangerous forces sheattracts.

She has just escaped from a commune run by a CharlesManson-type figure, played with eerie, magnetic calm by John Hawkes. So good(and Oscar-nominated) in "Winter's Bone" last year, Hawkes here iseven better. One can sense that Hawkes is beginning to trust his unique giftsas an actor.

The woman's escape from the commune occurs early in thefilm, so her experiences there are told for the most part in flashback.Intercut with the flashbacks (the editing is superb) are her experiences tryingto re-establish with her somewhat estranged older sister, played solidly by SarahPaulson. The interaction between the sisters is spot-on. Durkin is so good atcapturing family dynamics between adult siblings, who at once know so much andso little about each other. He also captures the rivalry mixed with deep lovethat is so common among adult siblings.

Gradually, Durkin reveals more details about what transpiredat the commune, with several creepy surprises and one horrifying shockerrevealed toward the end. One comes to realize how much danger this young womanhas gotten into and how much danger she is still in. The final scene hints ateven more violence to come.

Underneath all the drama is a quiet, delicate explorationof a lost soul who cannot manage the whirlwind inside her or the terriblecrosscurrents blowing through her life. At times, Durkin's vision contains someof the greatest psychological insight that I've ever seen in the cinema. Hewins my vote for Greatest Directorial Debut of 2011 so far. That says alot, as this year has seen a number of great debuts.

The weaknesses in "Martha Marcy May Marlene" liein the fact that it mostly only hints at insights. It's more of asketch than a fully developed painting. Durkin never really digs into any of the wonderfulveins that he taps. He taps a vein here and then moves on to tap another onethere. I think he would develop more as an artist if he mustered the courage togo beyond hinting at things. His directorial skill is phenomenal. He is agenius behind the camera and in the coaching of actors. But I think he has somemore development to do as a screenwriter and storyteller.

Despite some weaknesses, "Martha Marcy MayMarlene" is a must-see and a smashing achievement on many levels.

Predictions: The film is a bit too radical and raw to garnerOscar nominations for Best Picture or Best Director (despite deserving them).But Elizabeth Olsen will eke out a nomination as Best Actress for severalreasons.

1) Her performance is so good it gives one goosebumps. 2)Debut performances from young people always excite Oscar voters -- rememberJennifer Lawrence last year. 3) Olsen is sexy and pretty -- remember JenniferLawrence last year. 4) Last but certainly not least, she has a name withmass-market cachet that will cause her nomination to become a worldwide newsstory.

But, alas, she won't win. Oscar voters like to acknowledgedebut performances, but they don't vote for them as winners very often --remember Jennifer Lawrence last year.

Family Plot (1976): Hitchcock's Last Film

2011-10-20T20:53:00.001-04:00

What a mediocrity. It's shocking that Alfred Hitchcock wentout on such a lame, superficial note. "Family Plot" was his last film, and it was far beneath him. It's hard to believe that this is the same man who directed "Psycho" (1960).

In "Family Plot," Barbara Harris (who also starred in "FreakyFriday" that year) plays a fake psychic trying to track down the bastardson of a rich woman. She and her boyfriend (a wacky, funny performance fromBruce Dern) stumble into some mild danger. It turns out the bastard son(William Devane), who doesn't realize that he has links to an aristocratic family,is a criminal.

He and his wife (a bland, whiny Karen Black) specialize inkidnapping semi-prominent people (a bishop, for example) to gain ransom money.It's all very light-hearted, and it plays like a 1970s TV show. Frequently I thought I was watching an old episode of "McMillan and Wife." It's notterrible, and there are some cool moments. But for the most part, this isdevoid of artistry and isn't even very much fun. Not recommended.

Just FYI -- Other films that came out in 1976: The remakesof "King Kong" and "A Star is Born," "Carrie,""The Omen," "Taxi Driver," "Marathon Man,""Network," "All the President's Men," and"Rocky," which won the Oscar for Best Picture. I would have voted for"Network" as Best Picture -- it was also nominated. But"Rocky" was a fine choice.

Take Shelter: Haunting but Thin

2011-10-15T08:45:00.000-04:00

"Take Shelter" is a quiet, slow-moving, sometimesboring and repetitious tale of a working-class man in the rural midwest (playedwell by Michael Shannon) who is haunted by dreams and visions that seem to bepremonitions of planetary doom.

The visions are captured well, at least initially. Some ofthem are terrifying. And Shannon and Jessica Chastain do a fine job bringingthis working-class couple to life in an authentic way. But the script goesnowhere. It's one vision after another, and they do get repetitious after ahalf-hour.

Filmmaker Jeff Nichols (his second feature film) definitelyhas talent, but here he has crafted a film that is a long Act 1. No Act 2. It'sall set-up and no conclusion. There is a lame pseudo-conclusion in the lastfive minutes that seems to have been thrown together because all his friendstold him the script had no ending.

When I say it has no ending, I mean that it has no organicone -- one that emerges naturally out of the story. Add Nichols' name to thelong list of younger filmmakers today who don't know how to write second acts.I'm not sure if it's the music-video culture that has done this, or theepidemic of ADD, or the disappearance of novels from filmmaking culture.

Call it the Sofia Coppola school of filmmaking. Conjure up avision of a world, describe it to us with great use of music along the way, andthen it's over. Scripts without any story arc. Is it postmodern or justold-fashioned lazy story-writing?

I have seen very recently, in only the last year, a rebellionagainst this story-less approach. The most exciting new filmmakers of 2011(Mike Cahill of "Another Earth," Evan Glodell of"Bellflower," David Schwimmer of "Trust," to name a few)have an intense interest in stories. Here's hoping that their approach takeshold in the film schools.

One could even add Nicolas Refn of "Drive" to thatlist, even though he's been directing films for more than 10 years now."Drive" is so fresh and new and such a departure for him that itreally represents a new beginning. It also is likely to become a touchstone andenduring inspiration for legions of 21-year-old filmmakers. I hope it helps setthe tone for artistic young filmmakers in the 2010s.

But bottom line: the reason "Take Shelter" didn'twork for me is that I got very bored after a half-hour. The slack pace andrepetitiousness became unbearable. I'd also say that the film ultimately is shallow.

Follies: This is Broadway

2011-10-09T10:40:00.001-04:00

Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical, "Follies," hasfinally gotten the production it deserves. Jan Maxwell, Bernadette Peters, and about a dozen other Broadway veterans (plus Elaine Paige, the titaness of London musical theater) bring"Follies" to dazzling life at the Marquis Theatre in this brand-newproduction.

This is the hot Broadway ticket for fall 2011, and it ain'tno jukebox musical for brainless tourists. This is true Broadway, with songs and storylines that have depth and meaning.

Sondheim's musical is not perfect; "Follies" hasits flaws. But there are about 25 moments that are nothing short of greatness.Sondheim's innovative genius and his deep love of musical theater is on regaldisplay here. This production is not to be missed by true fans of musicaltheater. It's the thinking person's musical (i.e., true Broadway).

Jan Maxwell and Bernadette Peters are in peak form. Peoplewill be talking about these performances for decades. I am also reasonablycertain that "Follies" is going to clean up at the next Tonys.

Drei (Three)

2011-10-06T21:47:00.001-04:00

The art-house just keeps shining in 2011. Thank God, becauseHollywood has been awful for the most part this year. "Drei" (Three)is the next wonderful film on the art-house circuit.

From Germany's Tom Tykwer, one of the most originalfilmmakers in the world (you've GOT to see his under-rated 2006 film"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer"), comes an exploration of modernrelationships, particularly with regard to bisexuality. More and more peopleare exploring bisexuality, and Tykwer is right there exploring this quintessential 21st-century development.

There's no doubt in my mind that in the year 2100 mostpeople in the Western world will consider themselves bisexual. People perhapswill look back at "Drei" as a harbinger of this. Tykwer is a true artist,in the sense that he has his finger on the pulse of evolution. He senses wherewe are going, and that's what interests him. In many ways, I think of artistsas people several decades ahead of the rest of the population, sendingus postcards from the future. This is certainly the case with Tykwer.

***********************

In "Drei" we meet a happy, well-educatedheterosexual couple approaching the age of 40. One is successful in the artsand the other in science. (One of the exhilarating aspects of "Drei"is how it captures the excitement of 21st-century science, particularlybiology.) By pure happenstance, the husband and wife on separate occasions both make the acquaintanceof a male scientist, and each strikes up a friendship with him. Quite quickly, the wife starts having an affair with him. But the big surprise is that the husband, despite having been straight his whole life, starts falling for this man as well.

Pretty soon this scientist, without realizing it, is having an affair with a woman and the woman's husband! For quite a long time, none of the three realizes the bizarre triangle that has formed.

Eventually, the truth is revealed. The scene where the threeindividuals simultaneously learn the truth is powerful. You can see theearth-shattering humiliation and confusion in all three characters. Just tryingto contemplate the breadth of what each must have been thinkingand feeling in that moment stretches the mind and heart.

It's especially interesting to contemplate what was happeningfor the husband. He was the only one going through an evolution of hissexual orientation. (The scientist had long ago established a bisexual lifestyle.) Unfortuantely, Tykwer glosses over this a bit. In fact,each character is reticent and doesn't say much about what is going on in theirminds. We have to rely on the actors' faces to glean clues about the innerlives of the characters.

One nicely written scene involves the husband trying tofigure out how to describe himself after the intensity of his same-sexattraction becomes clear. He gets tongue-tied trying to use the word"gay" to describe himself in a way that's quite affecting. One canreally feel for him.

I won't reveal the ending, but it is interesting. The filmslightly cops out in the end, presenting the characters as so open-minded as tobe unrealistic. But still, there is so much food for thought in"Drei." The direction, furthermore, is expert.Tykwer directs with near-effortless charm and cogency. Every scene zips alongelegantly and with real heart. The editing, cinematography, and writing are so good sometimes that it gives one goosebumps. This film is a joy.

Weekend

2011-10-05T06:55:00.002-04:00

"Weekend" is a remarkable little film from Englandshot on a shoestring budget that has far more power than most movies with 100times its budget. It tells the story of two intelligent gay men just enteringmiddle age who meet in a club one night and have a fairly perfunctory one-nightstand.

Slowly but surely in the morning, as the drunken hazedeparts, they realize that they really like each other. A dinner that eveningconfirms it. They stay up nearly all night, talking non-stop.

Actors Tom Cullen and Chris New are so real that at timesyou think you're watching a documentary. Anyone who has ever had a one-nightstand will recognize the odd mixture of intimacy and remoteness on the morningafter that Cullen and New bring to life so perfectly. It's also beautiful towatch the gradual blossoming of feelings of love.

Because of a plot detail that I won't reveal, the fledglingrelationship runs into a massive challenge right away. Watching characters dealwith this is captivating, especially given the fact that the script is so fineand so true to life.

Writer/director Andrew Haigh, heretofore a complete unknown,pulls off some kind of miracle and creates one of the most beautiful stories oftroubled love that I really have ever seen. Gay men will be especially taken upby the story, and the film is certain to become something of a gay classic. Butanyone who cares about the human heart will be moved by "Weekend."

It would be fascinating to have a roundtable discussionafter a screening of "Weekend" to hear from straight men, lesbiansand others about the aspects of themselves that they saw in the story. I wouldespecially like to hear from straight men about what they felt was behind theresistance to relationships shown by Chris New's character.

"Weekend" continues the remarkable winning streakthat we've had with art-house releases in 2011, especially from new filmmakers.Thank heavens for indie filmmakers; they have rescued 2011.

Drive: Best English-Language Film of 2011 So Far

2011-09-25T06:47:00.000-04:00

"Drive," from Danish-American filmmaker NicolasRefn, is a spectacularly creative, gorgeously filmed, brilliantly actednear-masterpiece of neo-noir. Finally, an English-language film in 2011 thatgives one goosebumps.

Adding to the excitement is the fact that the director hasbeen known up to now as a purveyor of silly exploitation cinema. Imagine adirector making "Conan the Barbarian" one year and "TheHours" the next. That's the kind of hairpin turn that Refn has pulled off.Typically a filmmaker is either an art director or a genre director. Refnrefuses to choose between them, which is thrilling.

In this sense, Refn calls to mind Quentin Tarantino. Butwhereas Tarantino seems mostly to be having goofy fun, Refn is dark and heavy.

"Drive" is set in Los Angeles, capturing the dark underbelly of that infinitely interesting city. Thepenetration into the heart of L.A. is reminiscent of David Lynch's"Mulholland Drive," a film that might have been to some degree amodel for "Drive." The similarity in the titles is perhapsdeliberate. Seeing the two films at a late-night double feature in Los Angeleswould no doubt be dazzling. After the screening, one could drive through L.A.in a convertible in the dead of night, drinking in the city's mysterious power.Cinephile paradise. (I am one of the rare New Yorkers who has a greatappreciation for L.A.)

*****************************************

In "Drive," Ryan Gosling plays a man who by dayworks in the movies as a stunt driver and by night works as a getaway driverfor big-time criminals. In the film's gripping opening sequence, we watch asGosling's character struggles to elude police when a heist unravels. Refn isuniquely able to capture danger and make the audience feel it in their bones.

The man falls for his neighbor (played with deep, quietfeeling by Carey Mulligan). She is raising her five-year-old son on her ownwhile her husband finishes a prison sentence. One of the tenderest aspects ofthe film is the relationship that builds between Gosling's character and theboy. Refn films this beautifully.

A secret to the film's success is how well itcaptures the vulnerability of the boy and the strong protective feelings triggered in Gosling's character. I was shaken on severaloccasions contemplating the fate of this boy and wanting to protect him myself.I'm sure every man in the audience will feel his fatherly heartstrings tuggedin this way.

Things become very complicated when the boy's Dad getsout of prison and comes home. An even more difficult round of complications ensues when Goslingand the ex-con end up in a heist together, which then ends tragically and with amysterious double-cross. The second half of the film centers on Gosling's trying to get to the root of the double-cross. But his biggest concernis protecting the boy and his mother, who become endangered.

The kingpins behind the double-cross are ruthless (one of them is spectacularly well played by Albert Brooks), and Refnpulls no punches in the depiction of their ferocity. The film becomes in theend ultra-violent. At times, the violence goes over the top, giving the film a cartoon-ish aspect. But for the most part, the film stays grounded totell its brutal, tragic story.

Predictions: "Drive" will score a Best Picture andBest Director Oscar nomination and win at least one of them. "Drive" will also becomea classic, watched over and over for decades. In fact, I think it will become a touchstone, defining 2011 in many people's memories. You will be telling yourgrandchildren that you saw "Drive" in its original release. They willfind this very cool.

Warrior: Surprisingly Good

2011-09-11T07:00:00.006-04:00

I was expecting "Warrior," the new film set in the world of Mixed Martial Arts (Extreme Fighting), to be good trash. Dumb testosterone-fueled fun. But instead it was an intelligent, heart-wrenching drama that's more about feelings than muscles. This is no dumb beefcake movie. There are definite weaknesses, but overall this is one of the better and more emotionally fulfilling movies of the late summer. I feel it might even become something of a classic, particularly among working-class men.

Joel Edgerton, an actor I had never heard of until now, does quite a good job playing a married schoolteacher on the cusp of middle age struggling to make ends meet. He decides to start fighting again to earn some extra money. He had done this as a young man, so it doesn't take too much work for him to get back into shape. Once back in the ring (or back in the cage), he does much better than he thought he would. Meanwhile, he has to deal with the disapproval of both his wife and his boss, who puts him on suspension without pay.

By coincidence, his estranged brother has also decided to re-enter the ring. The brother is played by Tom Hardy, another actor I'd never heard of. Hardy is someone to watch. His performance gave me chills on almost 10 occasions. Nick Nolte plays their father, in a performance that's so good I suspect Nolte might get an Oscar nomination. -- unfinished

Little Dogmas

2011-08-28T06:59:00.006-04:00

When artistic people approach age 30, their views typically start to harden. The 20s are about exploring and figuring out what you believe, trying on new ideas the way one tries on different shirts. You attempt to see the world from different perspectives. Everything is questioned; nothing is believed.

But as you start to come to conclusions, you develop little dogmas. You take sides and dig your heels in. You become a bit of an ideologue. Your adult identity begins to take shape based on the dogmas you hold. You become a partisan of this or that ideological position or this or that artistic approach.

Usually a handful of artworks play a major role in determining your artistic sensibilities, and these become your touchstones, your holy relics. As you go through your 30s, you measure new art against these touchstones to assess value. If a new work of art imitates your holy relic, then it is good. If it does not, then it is bad. Artistic criticism becomes a form of worship of one’s holy relics, and in a sense a form of self-worship.

You begin resisting change. The only things of value are things that retain the qualities of your sacred cows. To be good, artwork has to resemble the art you favored around age 30 – the artwork that helped you define your adult self.

**************************************

This started to happen to me as I approached 30. But I noticed it before the process completed, and I struggled mightily against it. I was determined to resist the formation of my own little dogmas. I would take positions of course, but I would not let my views harden to the point where I could not question them. Every position would remain tentative. I also wanted to keep growing with the world, instead of be frozen in the era of my youth. (Postmodern philosophy, I must admit, helped me figure out this approach.)

One could say that this is a defining characteristic in my cinematic sensibility. But hopefully not a dogma! Many critics seem to prefer the films that came out when they were young. They go to see new movies, but they seem always to be disappointed by them. They keep comparing new movies to the films they loved as a young intellectual (their holy relics) and being disappointed.

My cinema passion, on the other hand, centers on the new. I certainly still love to watch the films of yesterday, especially the films I fell in love with when I was in the all-important formative years from 18-25. But my passion really comes alive when I see a film that was just made, with the smell of newness all over it. I crave art that surprises me and shows me a new way to look at the world – films that reinvent cinema for a new century.

This is by no means a cult of youth, however. Younger people tend to produce art with more originality. But this is not because they’re young; it’s because their minds are open. And those minds can stay open. A mind doesn’t have to start closing at 30.

Look at Pedro Almodovar. He burst on the scene in the 1980s with ferocious originality, reaching something of a zenith with “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988). The danger he faced after that was embalming himself, producing endless copies of “Women on the Verge.”

Instead he stayed open, looking at the world in new ways and coming up with yet more artistic breakthroughs. I remember being startled while watching “Talk to Her” (2002), stunned by its originality. Here was a filmmaker in his 50s who could have become a worshipped relic but instead continued to take risks and recreate himself again and again. “Talk to Her” was like no other film ever made. It had the kind of deep newness you typically only see in the films of talented twentysomethings. For a middle-aged, well-established director to keep growing inspired me to the depths. Pedro Almodovar is a model for how artistic souls can age without becoming frozen.

If there’s one thing that summarizes my approach to cinema, it is this. I hope to encourage the cinephiles of today and tomorrow to resist the formation of little dogmas. Keep your minds open. Stay open to your own new ideas and the ideas of others. Don’t tune out the young; they often have their finger on the pulse of the next phase of evolution. They don’t always have this. Many young people are shallow, meretricious trend-followers. But not all of them are. Remember how open-minded and creative you were at age 21. You weren't the last one of that breed. Be open to hearing the voices of tomorrow. Embrace change. The world renews itself every 20 years. The true soul of an artist thrives on this. Remember the idea: A mausoleum is no place for an artist.

Sarah's Key

2011-08-21T11:21:00.003-04:00

If you're like me, you've grown weary of Holocaust movies in the last few years. When filmmakers run out of ideas nowadays, they make yet another Holocaust movie. They know they can provide an orgy of grief for the viewer without even putting in much effort. Cheap, easy torture-porn.

We've become so familiar with these predictable movies that I bet most of us could direct one in our sleep -- and cry through one in our sleep. I especially resent the use of children in assembly-line Holocaust films. That is emotional manipulation of the most ghoulish kind.

Given the importance of this subject matter, I think its cheapening as a movie theme is disturbing. Thus I almost walked out of "Sarah's Key" after 15 minutes. I had actually not known the film was about the Holocaust and certainly didn't know it focused on children. But I'm very happy that I didn't leave because "Sarah's Key" is no assembly-line movie. It's about more than the Holocaust, too. It's really about us today. All of us, but particularly the French, as they come out of denial about the number of French citizens who actively aided the German program of Jewish extermination.

***************************

Kristin Scott Thomas, continuing her remarkable transformation into a French-speaking actress, plays an American journalist living in Paris with her French husband. They are moving into the apartment where he and his parents grew up. While tracing the history of the apartment, she stumbles on some disturbing information. When the family moved into the apartment in 1942, it was vacant. But who were the previous tenants, and what happened to them?

The story is told on two tracks with cross-cutting between them. On one track is the present-day woman trying to uncover a lost history. On the other is the Jewish family who got evicted from the apartment in 1942. Gradually, more and more information about the family's plight is revealed, with special focus on Sarah, one of two children in the family. I won't reveal the details about the eponymous key, but I can say that it may break your heart like nothing ever has. – unfinished

Bellflower: Tense Indie Drama

2011-08-14T07:05:00.012-04:00

"Bellflower" is a tense indie drama filmed in a thrillingly original and heartfelt way. With this film, first-time writer/ director Evan Glodell (who also plays the lead character) has catapulted himself to the big leagues. An overnight star.

Two thousand eleven is turning out to be the year of new talent. Established directors are for the most part in a funk. Nothing they do is turning out well. But brash new indie talents are picking up the slack.

In addition to Glodell, there is Mike Cahill, first-time director of "Another Earth." Both of these young men are discovering fresh, new approaches to cinema but remain committed to telling stories about people. In one sense they're highly innovative, and in another they're remarkably old-fashioned. They get this balance perfectly right.

Mike Mills and Miranda July ("Beginners" and "The Future," respectively) are also part of this Class of 2011. Their recent films can be described in exactly the same terms. David Schwimmer is another noteworthy new talent. Best known for his acting (especially on the sitcom "Friends"), he has begun to branch out into film direction. In 2011, he released "Trust," his second feature film. Like the films of Glodell, Cahill, et al., "Trust" hones in on its characters' inner struggles. (The film, incidentally, stars Clive Owen and Catherine Keener and got far less attention than it deserved.)

It makes sense to dub 2011 The Year of Brash New Indie Talent.

********************

Returning to "Bellflower," it is a low-budget, hand-crafted film telling the story of two best friends who migrate to Los Angeles from Wisconsin and gradually lose their moral anchor. In some senses, it reminded me of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" (1965) insofar as it depicts a life slowly coming apart.

The film is at times so realistic that you think you're watching a documentary. Especially impressive was the acting performance of newcomer Jessie Wiseman, who plays the unfaithful girlfriend of the main character. If Hollywood has any guts, they'll nominate Wiseman for Best Supporting Actress. It's hard to believe this is her first film. She is as comfortable in front of a camera as an actress with 20 years' experience.

Glodell's direction is rock-solid. In every scene, he knows exactly what he wants -- and what he wants is spot-on. The cinematography and editing were also spectacularly good. Cinematographer Joel Hodge is a genius with the camera. Over and over, the photography in "Bellflower" took my breath away.

This doesn't mean the film is perfect. It does have some substantial weaknesses. After a while, the tension in the story starts to seem fabricated. Rather than organically emerging out of the characters' lives, it seems at times to be phony, more of a plot device than anything else. But Glodell gets very close to a major artistic achievement here. For one's first film to be this good, that's a sign that one is immensely talented. I am thrilled at the idea of watching Glodell grow as a filmmaker in the decade ahead.

A big thank you to distributor Oscilloscope for giving this unique gem a chance to be seen by audiences. What would we do without companies like Oscilloscope?

Mysteries of Lisbon: The Most Sleep-Inducing Film of All Time

2011-08-13T07:19:00.004-04:00

"Mysteries of Lisbon" is the slowest, most sleep-inducing film I've ever seen. It was painful at times to try to stay awake through its interminable four hours.

It's not even that interesting. If it had been better directed and edited, I think I still would have been disappointed by it. It astonishes me that this bourgeois soap opera is being raved about by some top-notch critics.

It is beautiful to look at; that's for sure. But films have to be way more than visually beautiful. They must have something to say. This film has little to say. It is soap opera given a high bourgeois treatment by a director (Chilean director Raul Ruiz) who loves mainstream 19th-century fiction.

If Mr. Ruiz had any interest in the 21st century, he might be an interesting artist for us today. But he doesn't. He wants to go back in time to 1820 -- and he should. If he had anything fresh and interesting to say about the 19th century, that would be something. But he doesn't even have that. As an artist, he's embalmed.

Top 10 Films of 2011 So Far

2011-08-08T10:48:00.013-04:00

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, from Thailand's genius filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul

2. Incendies (Fires), gripping, heart-breaking drama from Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve set mostly in the Middle East. His first film to make it to the world stage. Welcome to the major leagues, Monsieur Villeneuve.

3. Beginners, starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer, directed by Mike Mills in only his second feature film

4. Meek's Cutoff, from writer/ director Kelly Reichardt starring Michelle Williams

5. Another Earth, from director Mike Cahill in his feature-film debut

6. The Future, from pioneering writer/ director/ actress Miranda July

7. Trust, second feature film from director David Schwimmer (yes, the same man who played Ross on "Friends")

8. The Adjustment Bureau, from first-time director George Nolfi starring Matt Damon

9. Thor

10. The Green Hornet

Gun Hill Road: Sensitive Human Drama Set in the Bronx

2011-08-07T06:25:00.007-04:00

"Gun Hill Road" is the debut feature film from writer /director Rashaad Ernesto Green, a Bronx native and graduate of NYU. Filmed on location in the Bronx, it tells the story of an extremely macho ex-con (played adequately by Esai Morales) getting out of prison and returning home. His wife has fallen in love with another man, and his son has become more like a girl than a boy.

The film proves that Green has a gift for clear, straightforward story-telling. He also shows a unique cultural understanding, able to see the world through the eyes of both a middle-aged straight man and a transgender teenager.

Green also has an eye for talent. His discovery of Harmony Santana, who plays the transgender teen, is perhaps the most significant aspect of the "Gun Hill" project. I found myself in awe on at least five occasions watching Santana bring this character to life. His/her acting at times will take your breath away. I even suspect Santana might get an Oscar nomination. This is a major new talent.

I hope Santana's arrival ushers in a new age for transgender actors, who would be uniquely able to bring both male and female characters to life. Trans actors don't have to play trans characters all the time. They can play "regular" men and women, too. I also hope Santana's arrival helps the culture at large get over trans-phobia. Transgender people have been part of the human race since the dawn of our species. Nothing new. Get over it, people.

Now for the weaknesses. "Gun Hill Road" may have non-traditional subject matter, but its style is extremely traditional. Green follows the conventions of mainstream story-telling so closely that the film often feels pedestrian, like a TV Movie of the Week about transgender issues. I appreciate Green's bravery in taking on a challenging subject and shooting the film in the Bronx. But why make the story so simple and the filmmaking technique so ordinary? Does Green want to work in cinema or television? It appears like it might be the latter. This is fine, but then his projects should not be shown in cinemas. They belong on the little screen.

"Gun Hill Road" may get awards for acting, but I doubt it will be nominated for any filmmaking awards. It's still worth seeing though.

The Future: Unique, Tender, and Beautiful

2011-07-31T08:03:00.009-04:00

"The Future" is a remarkable little film from the highly unique writer/ director/ actor Miranda July. By coincidence, July's husband, Mike Mills, also has a top-notch movie in current release: "Beginners," starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer.

It's official: Indie film has a new power couple.

The central narrative of "The Future" concerns the break-up of a relationship. July plays the woman; Hamish Linklater plays the man. But what really makes the film special are the sub-themes, which are woven in exquisitely. The editing of "The Future" is masterful.

One sub-theme involves the Linklater character, who has occasional visits with an old man. Initially, one thinks that this is just a depiction of a charming cross-generational friendship. But gradually it appears that this old man might be the Linklater character 40 years in the future. Is he visiting someone or catching glimpses of his own future?

This sweet old man also appears in voice-over as a sort of guardian angel helping the Linklater character learn to control his gift for stopping time. The stoppage of time, which is not treated completely literally, brings a nice touch of science fiction to the film. It reminded me of another indie film in current release, "Another Earth" (also highly worth seeing), which has a much more pronounced element of science fiction.

Another sub-theme concerns an injured stray cat that the couple finds and brings to a clinic. July tries to bring us into the mind of the cat by letting us hear the kinds of things it might be thinking. July herself delivers the interior monologue of the cat with the use of a voice-distortion program.

Especially heart-breaking are the passages when the cat expresses his near-constant survival terror living outdoors. When July and Linklater visit him in the clinic, he purrs for the first time in his life and tells us what this feels like.

I won't reveal what happens to the cat, but I'll just say that July pulls no punches. The brutal life experience of this cat gives the film a bracing and realistic edge. July may warmly poke fun at her characters' foibles (she is a goofball comedienne par excellence), but she also doesn't shy away from looking into the abyss. There's a dark undercurrent to "The Future." When you think about your future, there surely will be plenty of laughs along the way and plenty of love. But there's also something big, black and scary at the end of everybody's road.

Tree of Life: Overblown and Ponderous

2011-05-29T07:01:00.004-04:00

“The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s new film, is hugely bloated and ponderous. Rarely have I seen a film so filled with over-statement. It pains me to say, but it seems that Malick, who has had a god-like reputation since his 1978 film “Days of Heaven,” is running out of ideas.

Instead of original ideas, what “Tree of Life” has is spectacular visuals and sound. The cinematography of four-time Oscar nominee Emmanuel Lubezki is spectacular but in the way an IMAX film is. In the past few years, there have been about 10 films made to show off the power of IMAX. A nature photographer, for example, leads a camera crew on a visual exploration of world-renowned coral reefs. These could perhaps better be described as TV specials than films.

“Tree of Life” appears designed to give IMAX vehicles a run for their money. The ideas are slim at best, at times even laughable. But the kaleidoscopic visuals of “Tree of Life” do amaze. I was particularly taken with the editing of the visuals and sound. There were about a dozen different visual tracks that “Tree of Life” operates on, and the cross-cutting between them gave me goose bumps a number of times. I’d even go so far as to say that the editor is the standout here. As good as the cinematography is, it really has been done before. The editing, however, establishes a rhythm that is truly innovative. Frequently the editing takes on the innovative power and bold rhythm/anti-rhythm of 20th-century classical music.

There is a story at the center of “Tree of Life.” It takes a while to establish itself, but it eventually gets firmly grounded. A boy in an upper-middle-class Texas family struggles in the 1950s to deal with his domineering father (Brad Pitt) and finds comfort in the loving relationships he has with his mother and two brothers. Presumably, the boy is a stand-in at least to some degree for Malick himself, who spent his adolescence in Texas in the 1950s.

The point of the film, as I see it, is to draw correspondences between different levels of creation. The cosmic (formation of galaxies), the planetary (formation of species and ecosystems), and the human (formation of individuals and families). The problem is that this has been done hundreds of times before – and better. Compared to, say, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Tree of Life” is vapid and derivative. At times, “Tree of Life” seems like the Disney version of a Stanley Kubrick film.

“Tree of Life” is worth seeing, but if I had been on the Cannes jury I would not have voted to give it the top prize. (It took top prize at the Cannes festival that just ended a few weeks ago.) If you are looking for a film that wrestles in a truly innovative way with cosmic correspondences and the grand sweep of evolution, see the 2010 Cannes winner, "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives."

Limitless: Shallow But Enjoyable

2011-05-07T09:40:00.003-04:00

“Limitless” is a shallow but enjoyable, stylishly directed thriller about a thirtysomething fellow (played reasonably well by Bradley Cooper) who becomes addicted to a mysterious new drug that super-powers the brain.

He becomes a day-trading millionaire within a month, discovering secrets to investing that no one else has figured out. He reads books at the speed of light and remembers everything. He becomes cultured overnight and attracts every super-model in New York. Livin’ large.

The trouble is that the drug sometimes causes your conscious mind to turn off, and you become something like pure id, capable of all manner of violence.

You can also never go off it. People fall apart as soon as their stash runs out. Some die in weeks. In their last days, they go on a mad search for more pills, willing to kill to get more. Anyone with a supply thus must live in a bunker, constantly surrounded by bodyguards.

We watch as he struggles to protect his stash and then survive his first bout of withdrawal when the supply runs out. A few subplots keep things interesting. One involves the man’s down-to-earth girlfriend (played by the always-magnetic Abbie Cornish) and the other his new boss, a Wall Street titan played by Robert De Niro.

But the film never really goes anywhere. Ultimately it doesn’t have much to say about addiction or the 21st-century desire for limitlessness. There’s a good set-up with no real payoff. If you asked the screenwriter or the director what the film was ultimately about, they’d probably have trouble replying.

This is the fourth film from director Neil Burger, “The Illusionist” (starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti) being the best known of his previous efforts. He is the kind of director who cares more about the look of a film than anything else. He’s got a great eye but not a great mind. There’s a very long list now of directors who really only know about cinematography. It’s no surprise that Burger got his start at MTV. This kind of filmmaker produces what are essentially glorified music videos. The story is rudimentary; what matters is that it looks cool. And "Limitless" definitely looks cool.

The Conspirator -- As Plain as Its Title

2011-05-05T05:54:00.001-04:00

Robert Redford’s latest film, “The Conspirator,” is as plain as its title. It’s a morally earnest but artistically thin look at the trial that followed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. John Wilkes Booth, the trigger man, was killed trying to avoid capture, but a half-dozen or so other young men were taken into custody and tried as co-conspirators.

In a fact of history that I had actually not known, the mother of one of the conspirators was tried as well. It was alleged that she aided and abetted the plot by, among other things, allowing her boarding house to be used as command central. The Washington establishment, the film suggests, set up what was essentially a mock trial, preventing lawyers from mounting a legitimate defense. The female defendant, Mary Surratt (played well by Robin Wright), especially appears to have been railroaded.

It’s hard to understand what Redford found so compelling about this material. The film serves as a reminder about the need to protect the civil rights of the accused even during times of national crisis. But is that it? Redford essentially gives Surratt her day in court 150 years after the fact. I’m sure her descendants appreciate the homage to her and what she suffered. But it doesn’t exactly make for riveting drama. Redford keeps his focus strictly on the trial and the legal issues such that none of the characters emerges as a complex person. It’s not so much a work of art as a civics lesson.

“The Conspirator” holds one’s interest. It’s not a bad film. It’s noble and well acted. The script is just too simple and one-dimensional.

Hanna: Fairly Good Thriller

2011-04-30T20:51:00.008-04:00

“Hanna” could have been so good. Director Joe Wright (“Atonement”) had many good elements in place, including a great cast led by Irish phenom Saoirse Ronan (pronounced ser-shee) and Cate Blanchett in one of the creepiest villainess-in-high-heels performances ever.

But Wright drowns the film in chase sequences every 10 minutes, with each chase looking and sounding the same. Wright pulled electronic group Chemical Brothers out of semi-retirement to write music for the chase scenes, and the results are astoundingly bad – and monotonous. At the 2011 Razzie Awards, “Hanna” deserves a special honor for Worst Use of Music in a Film.

In addition to the 1990s-style soundtrack, there are other elements in the film that reek of clumsy 90s nostalgia. My jaw kept dropping throughout the movie because at every point when a hackneyed 90s element appeared, it seemed that Wright thought he was being very hip and new. It’s almost as if Wright fell into a coma in 1995 and woke up in 2010, having missed the last 15 years.

"Hanna" is an action thriller with a bit of espionage and science fiction thrown in. A teenage girl named Hanna (Ronan) is being raised by her father (Eric Bana) in a remote Arctic forest area, where she undergoes rigorous survivalist training, including martial arts. There is a mysterious connection to a senior CIA officer (Blanchett) that only gradually is explained. The girl tries to re-enter society, but she is chased by Blanchett and her colorful band of assassins.

In between the chase scenes, there are some hilarious bits with an English family to whom Hanna attaches herself, especially another teenager brilliantly played by Jessica Barden. Wright (who made Ronan a star with “Atonement”) has a real gift for directing teenage actors.

When all the mysteries are finally revealed, they are fairly satisfying. But at heart this is just an action thriller. It can’t be called a work of art. With more consistently successful direction, it could have been a dazzling work of pulp fiction (if Danny Boyle had directed, perhaps). As it is, it’s a moderately enjoyable entertainment.

Trust: Brave Exploration of Humanity at Its Most Despicable

2011-04-29T21:16:00.015-04:00

“Trust" is a brutal story about a 14-year-old girl raped by a middle-aged Internet predator. It was directed by David Schwimmer. When I saw the name of the director, I said to myself: “There must be two David Schwimmers.”

No. This is that David Schwimmer: Ross from the wildly popular TV sitcom “Friends.” He turned himself into a film director, which is news in and of itself, but he also chose the most challenging subject matter imaginable on which to build his directorial reputation. This is impressively gutsy. I am also happy to report that Schwimmer delivers, demonstrating that he is one of the most talented new directors in Hollywood.

Schwimmer's breakthrough is reminiscent of what we've seen from Ben Affleck in the last few years. Like Schwimmer, Affleck was very famous but not taken seriously. Almost everyone with a brain surely snickered when they heard that Affleck wanted to direct a serious film. Lo and behold, his first film, "Gone Baby Gone," was a tremendous achievement (on my Top 10 list of 2007).

Cher also comes to mind. In interviews, she reported being in a movie theater in 1983 shortly before the opening of "Silkwood." A trailer for the movie came on. When her name appeared on screen, everyone in the theater laughed. A month or so later, no one was laughing when she received an Oscar nomination for her performance. Mark Wahlberg also comes to mind. He brilliantly succeeded in the 1990s at turning himself into someone other than Marky Mark. One could also go back to Marilyn Monroe's struggle to be taken seriously as an actress after she had become known as a blonde bombshell.

It's tough to live down a reputation as a pop celebrity. Not many have done it. Add David Schwimmer to the short list of those who've tried and succeeded.

***************************************************

“Trust” is no masterpiece, but it’s a brave, purposeful work that explores humanity at its most despicable and magically leaves you in an ennobled place. It is not torture porn; in fact, there’s not a gratuitous moment in the film. But it is unflinching. You don't see everything that happens to the girl, but you see -- and hear -- much of it. If you have difficulty looking at tragedy in the face, this is not the film for you.

"Trust" is not sensationalistic at all. It was produced out of grief and the yearning to heal. I don’t know if Mr. Schwimmer has experienced anything as horrific as what is depicted in “Trust,” but he’s got an extraordinary empathy toward all the characters in the story, particularly the girl and her father.

An outstanding teenage actress named Liana Liberato, in only her second feature film, plays the main character, Annie, a very pretty but awkward, shy girl who falls in love with her Internet chat-buddy, who she initially thinks is a high-school boy.

Her parents are played by Catherine Keener and Clive Owen, who gives a heart-wrenching performance as a dad blaming himself for not protecting his daughter. The first half of the film is about the girl; the second half is about her father. The film finds new ways to explore how the families of rape victims are sometimes almost as torn apart by the experience as the victims themselves.

It also nicely examines the contours of this from a distinctively male point of view. Until this, I'd never really thought about what the father of a teenage rape victim must go through. I have Mr. Schwimmer to thank for helping me see this better -- and screenwriters Andy Bellin and Robert Festinger.

"Trust" is recommended for anyone who values serious drama and wants to combat one of the worst -- and most commonplace -- tragedies of our time. We owe it to our kids to see this film.

Meek's Cutoff: Genuine Work of Art

2011-04-23T13:30:00.015-04:00

Kelly Reichardt’s new film, “Meek’s Cutoff,” is a stark, tough meditation on being lost and not knowing whom to trust. It also reflects on the collision of cultures, particularly in the context of colonial conquest. These themes certainly aren’t new, but Ms. Reichardt distinguishes herself by exploring them in an unusually complex way. It’s not just two cultures colliding, but 25 or so, maybe even 50. Also, there are not just two camps mistrusting each other, but several.

Another interesting complexity is that the film in a way draws up for question what it means to feel lost. Walking out of the theater, I found myself thinking about this in some new ways. What triggers in people the feeling of being lost? What makes it go away? When people feel it, they often say, “I don’t know where I am,” which calls to mind that ancient Buddhist maxim: “Everywhere you go, there you are.”

While the complexities are a pleasure and the film is strong, “Meek’s Cutoff” doesn’t bowl one over. It has a haunting quality, and it will surely make numerous Top 20 lists at the end of the year. But I don’t suspect it will make many Top 5 lists. Ms. Reichardt is a unique and courageous artist, and we’re lucky to have her. She refuses to court the mainstream or kowtow to trends. Commercial considerations seem to play absolutely no role in her work. Only artistic considerations matter to her. This is enormously appreciated in these times of shallow commercialism. But there’s something underwhelming about her work. Her ultra-minimalist style frequently feels thin. She’s a genuine cinematic auteur, but not a great one. At least not yet.

Many of the great cinematic artists of our time are minimalist. Since about 1960, that has been one of the predominant methods for reaching higher artistic ground. But where, say, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's minimalism feels most often like a feast, Kelly Reichardt's often comes across like starvation. Minimalism as anorexia.

**************************************

“Meek’s Cutoff” is set in 1840s North America. Three white American families are seeking to settle in the west, but it’s not turning out as they had hoped. They are in a vast barren part of the Oregon territory that seems to have no end, and food and water are scarce. They have put their faith in a fellow white American named Stephen Meek (very well played by Bruce Greenwood), but they may have succumbed to the naive belief that all white Americans look out for each other.

When Meek's cutoff leads them nowhere, they begin to suspect that he's in cahoots with either the British or the Natives to prevent Americans from settling in the region. When the film opens, they have been wandering in the arid near-desert for five weeks already. The would-be settlers are staring into the face of death and wondering if their last act on Earth should be to hang Meek. But how can they be sure of his intentions?

Then they capture a lone Indian, and everything gets more interesting. The Indian (played beautifully by a professional stuntman named Rod Rondeaux) seems not to understand any English, and none of them understands his language. They impress him into servitude, asking to be led to water. Meek is unremittingly hostile to the Indian, saying that Indians are murderous and cunning. Is Meek protecting the settlers or trying to prevent the Indian from rescuing them?

--unfinished—

Miral: Mediocre Work of Politics

2011-04-17T07:58:00.003-04:00

“Miral,” the new film from writer-director Julian Schnabel, is more a work of politics than a work of art, and it’s not that interesting even as a work of politics. It presents a very basic pro-Palestinian point of view that skirts all the really tough issues that make the Israeli/Palestinian struggle so intractable. I’m not sure what value there is in over-simplifying Middle Eastern politics and making what is essentially a TV movie based on these matters.

“Miral” is put together reasonably well. Schnabel (whose previous films were “Before Night Falls” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) appears to have decided early on to create a very simple movie, and he maintains careful focus on delivering that objective. Freida Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) does an adequate job playing the eponymous lead character, who grows up mostly in an orphanage and gets involved in the “intifada” movement in the late 1980s. This of course puts her on a collision course with the Israeli Police.

An example of the film’s laughable over-simplifications concerns the 1967 Six-Day War. The war, first of all, is never explained, but the aftermath is discussed. The Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank that followed the war is presented as simple aggression on the part of Israel. There is no mention of the endless violence waged on Israel from that territory in the years leading up to the war or the use of that area as a staging ground for an invasion of Israel. I’m no pro-Israel zealot, but let’s at least be fair when critiquing their military actions. Characterizing Israel as a pure aggressor is ridiculous. It's as ridiculous as believing the Palestinians are all terrorists.

As a work of art, “Miral” is a huge disappointment. As a work of politics, it is also a letdown. But it does work as a simple drama, and there are moments of genuine emotion. Surprisingly, the most interesting passages concern the personal ordeals suffered by Miral’s mother, who killed herself when Miral was a young girl. I suspect that Schnabel the artist was drawn more to the mother's story. But Schnabel the (mediocre) politician unfortunately took the dominant role for this project.

With all the film's ordinariness, there still is something inspiring about a Jewish filmmaker trying to look at things from a pro-Palestinian perspective. Imagine a movie made in the 1980s by a white filmmaker in South Africa championing the black movement there. Even if the film were mediocre, one would be moved. In that sense there is something special about “Miral.”

Quattro Volte: Banal Nature Documentary

2011-04-16T19:28:00.005-04:00

“Le Quattro Volte” is a wordless nature documentary that is captivating for about 30 minutes. Director Michelangelo Frammartino (his second feature film) photographs an old man tending goats in a small Italian village where life has not changed much in 500 years. Frammartino is as much interested in the goats as the man, and the director does a remarkable job demonstrating the similarity between humans and other animals. The shepherd and his flock constitute Part 1 of the film.

Part 2 concerns the burning of wood to make charcoal. We watch as the local men build huge burning devices and fill them with freshly cut wood. The resulting charcoal is then brought to the houses of the village, where it is burned. Smoke then comes out the village chimneys, adding soot to the air. The soot then accumulates on village floors and windowsills. This refers back to Part 1, where we saw the elderly shepherd collecting soot from the floor of the local church.

All of this doesn’t add up to much. Frammartino is a great cinematographer, but his ideas don’t amount to much more than warmed-over Buddhism or modern eco-awareness about the interconnectedness of life forms. Ultimately, ‘Quattro Volte’ (which can be translated as "The Four Stages" or "The Four Turns") doesn’t offer much more than you’d get from an episode of “Nature” on PBS.

Add Frammartino’s name to the ever-growing list of cinematographers masquerading as filmmakers. There is a worldwide epidemic causing cinematographers to believe they have what it takes to be directors, simply because they are good at cinematography. Someone explain to these men (and so far they are all men) that filmmaking is not just about cinematography! This problem seems particularly pronounced in Italy right now. Last year we had the brainless but beautifully photographed “I Am Love” from Luca Guadagnino. In 2011, we have the similarly vacuous but sumptuously photographed “Quattro Volte.” Michelangelo Antonioni must be turning over in his grave.

Adjustment Bureau: Thrilling Directorial Debut

2011-04-09T23:10:00.006-04:00

“The Adjustment Bureau” is a surprisingly effective, well-written, crisply edited Hitchcockian thriller that also works as a love story, with great chemistry between lead actor Matt Damon and co-star Emily Blunt. Additionally, there is a mystical dimension, which also works. These disparate elements come together so well because of the immense talent of first-time director George Nolfi. Take note of Nolfi’s name; you will be hearing much more of him in the years ahead.

Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, “Adjustment Bureau” tells the story of a young politician with Kennedy-esque charisma (Damon) who stumbles upon a frightening secret of the universe on his way to work one day. I won’t give the details away, but I will say that it involves supernatural beings who give him a strange commandment. He is told that he must break off all relations with the beautiful young artist (Blunt) who swept him off his feet just days before. He of course wants to know why he should do this, which leads to more interesting cosmic revelations.

At this point the movie could have drifted in an academic direction, dwelling on philosophical and spiritual questions. But some pretty terrific drama takes over instead. The politician refuses to do as he’s told, and let’s just say that all hell breaks loose. (All heaven breaks loose?)

Movies with great set-ups like this typically have lame payoffs, but “Adjustment Bureau” even has a great ending. Its value shouldn’t be overstated, but this is a mainstream movie that goes well beyond the typical formulas. It doesn’t challenge mainstream audiences very much, but it operates at a much higher quality level than 90% of the movies coming out of the major studios right now. In fact, "Adjustment Bureau" is so good that I give it a good chance of snagging an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the film, however, is that it signals the arrival of a major new American director. George Nolfi, I cannot wait to see what you do next.

Uncle Boonmee: First Truly Great Film of the 2010s

2011-03-26T06:35:00.022-04:00

“I loved it -- very strange and very beautiful.” I heard a young man saying this to his companions with ecstasy in his voice as he walked out of a nearly sold-out screening of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" last night in Manhattan. I had pretty much the same response. “Uncle Boonmee” has flaws, but it is also uniquely moving and an artistic achievement of the highest order.

The film, which won top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, was written and directed by Thailand’s resident genius Apichatpong Weerasethakul. (It is said that his friends call him Joe. I will refer to him as AW.)

Cannes continues to set itself apart as one of the greatest artistic organizations in the world. That a world-renowned festival would champion a film as radical as “Uncle Boonmee” is remarkable. Somehow the philistines have not been able to take over that festival, as they have taken over just about everything else in the world. The barbarians are at the gate, but true cinephiles so far have been able to keep them out of the Cannes castle. This is very encouraging.

*************************

Being highly avant-garde, “Uncle Boonmee” will no doubt be looked at differently by everyone who sees it. In fact, every person will surely see it from numerous perspectives. In the first hour, I saw the film as a celebration of traditional peasant culture. Intellectuals typically spurn rural culture quite vehemently. AW pushes against that tendency by going out to the middle of the Thai jungle and hiring a group of peasants essentially to play themselves.

He gives them scenarios to enact that mix traditional Buddhist culture with classic peasant folklore, including ghost stories and fables about princesses and talking catfish. But there is also a bizarre storyline having to do with mysterious creatures with red eyes. This seemed way out of step with the rest of the film. The little bit of explanation that is given about these ape-like animals (from a man who becomes one of them) is that they are a new species mysteriously appearing on the earth.

I wondered gravely for a while about this outlandish element that AW had introduced. Was he going off the deep end? Would UFOs enter the film next? But in time what I saw in this use of weird creatures was AW expanding his palette dramatically -- breathtakingly. Instead of just contemplating life as it is lived today by humans and other animals, his vision expanded to encompass life forms from the future as well. The dramatic span of life was on AW's mind -- not just the past and the present, but also the distant future. AW was contemplating life itself, including the open-endedness and unknowability of evolution.

This breadth of vision captivated me in a way that a work of art never has before. I had never looked at life in quite this way. When I say that "Uncle Boonmee" is a major artistic achievement, I mean that it showed me a new way to think and feel about life. It also did it in ways that are radically original.

AW, having a limitless artistic imagination, even added something profound in the last 10 minutes. Just when you feel the film couldn't get any broader, AW expands his vision yet again. Throughout the film, we had been thinking about organisms in different time periods. At the end, AW suddenly presents the main characters as so complex that each cannot be thought of as just one thing. If you look inside just one organism, he seemed to say, there is as much multiplicity as when you look across hundreds of millions of organisms in different evolutionary epochs. If you want to see the vast expanse of evolution, just look inside yourself.

I won't reveal how AW does this, but I can say that it made my audience audibly gasp. It also made the last 10 minutes of the film exhilarating. For some reason, it also made me start to cry.

But what of the flaws? There are several. "Uncle Boonmee" is so slow paced that it can become boring in spots. AW was also working with such low-quality equipment that the picture can be quite muddy. In general, the film has a sloppy look to it. I sensed that AW couldn't afford to hire a crew to do the kind of immaculate set decoration, lighting, and costumes that made his last film, "Syndromes and a Century," (which was on my top 10 list of 2007) so visually arresting. "Uncle Boonmee" is a feast of ideas and feelings, but visually it's pretty disappointing.

The cinematography is also surprisingly dull. AW is known as a master of mise-en-scene, but here it seemed that the peasants he was working with were composing his shots. Often it seemed he did little more than set the camera on a tripod and turn it on. The visual composition of shots was at times so flat as to be sleep-inducing. Combined with the slow pacing, this sometimes felt like Chinese water torture.

It almost seemed like AW was deeply inspired when he conceived the film, but not so inspired during the shoot. It's got to be both. The cinematography's got to give you goose bumps, not just the ideas at the root of the story.

But uninspired cinematography cannot sink "Uncle Boonmee." It is one of the greatest films of not just the year, but also the decade. It is the first truly great film of the 2010s. Thank you, Cannes, for ensuring that this film got a worldwide audience.

Rango: Mediocre Family Entertainment

2011-03-20T12:13:00.003-04:00

"Rango" is the latest in what now seems like an endless parade of mediocre animated entertainments for family-friendly audiences. This one has a few brief moments of philosophical depth, but overwhelmingly it just wants to entertain. And it cannot even do that very well. "WALL-E" this ain't.

Johnny Depp provides the voice of the eponymous main character, a lizard who has spent his life as a household pet. Separated accidentally from his owner, he finds himself wandering in the desert. There he finds a tiny town of rodents and reptiles struggling to survive in the midst of a brutal drought.

Due to his remarkable gift of gab, Rango is named the sheriff of the town and leads them on a quest to figure out who's been stealing the water.

"Rango" tries to be an adventure, a comedy, and a romance, and it fails on every front.

Jane Eyre: Another Casualty of Poor Editing

2011-03-20T10:56:00.011-04:00

Just a couple of weeks ago, I lamented the sleep-inducing editing job that killed Lee Chang-dong's new film, "Poetry." Lo and behold, the very next film I see is also seriously weakened by a talentless editor. That film is Cary Fukunaga's new adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre."

It breaks a cinephile's heart to see yet another film poorly handled by an editor. When will this stop? We have so many talented directors today who keep turning their films over to editors who have no idea what they're doing. Adding to the insanity is the fact that America's top critics remain silent on the issue. Am I the only cinephile left in America who even notices editing and understands the essential role it plays in bringing films to life? When every scene is five times longer than it needs to be, it's almost impossible to remain engaged with a film after about a half-hour.

There is much to enjoy in the film, however. Cary Fukunaga is a great new director whose last film, "Sin Nombre," was one of the treasures of 2009. It's great to see him continuing to develop his craft. Let's hope that this experience with "Jane Eyre" teaches him a lesson about the importance of choosing his editor carefully.

Fukunaga's approach is highly austere, which I appreciate. There's a lot of humor in the verbal jousting between Jane and Rochester, but neither actor ever laughs. Sometimes the austerity becomes overly stiff, but for the most part Fukunaga's under-stated approach is a delight. Mia Wasikowska, coming off her big-time successes with "The Kids Are All Right" and "Alice in Wonderland," plays Jane with an emphasis on quiet dignity, intelligence, and plain looks. [unfinished]

Poetry: Destroyed by Bad Editing

2011-03-05T10:17:00.003-05:00

“Poetry,” the new film from South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, should have been wonderful, but it is destroyed by a terrible editing job. Almost every scene is five times longer than necessary, creating a maddening feeling of languor, and extraneous material also clouds the focus of the film. There is a masterful, melancholy film somewhere deep inside the 100 or so hours that Mr. Lee shot for this project. But the editor had no idea how to whittle down the footage to find that film.

Bad editing is so common nowadays. Yet prominent critics never complain about it. We will only get better editing if we start demanding it. If critics remain silent, filmmakers will never know that there is a problem. This gives me a feeling of doom because there is no sign that top critics have noticed all the weak editing on movie screens today.

“Poetry” tells the story of a lower-middle-class, semi-educated grandmother who’s been discarded by just about everybody in her life. Her teenage grandson has been left in her care in a tiny one-bedroom apartment for reasons that aren’t explained. She tries to provide parenting, but the boy basically ignores her – just like everyone else does. Yun Jeong-hie, who was a big star in the 1970s, plays the grandmother in a gentle, slightly over-sweet way.

This lonely old woman has two main things going on in her life. She is taking a poetry class for the first time, trying to see life in new ways so that she can write her first poem. She has also just received news that her self-absorbed grandson has committed a horrific crime. She is given the opportunity to sweep the crime under the rug if she can come up with a huge sum of money. Even if she does decide to do this, there is the problem of coming up with the money. She is juggling several huge dilemmas when what she really wants to do is write a poem about birds, trees and flowers. One scene captures her denial particularly well. When she is first told about the crime, she goes into something like catatonic shock. Then she silently gets up right in the middle of the meeting when people are speaking, walks outside, and starts marveling at the flowers.

Struggles with denial, aging, loneliness, grand-parenting, and learning to see life in new ways toward the end of one’s life is terrific subject matter. But it’s almost too much. When a movie is in so many places, it’s especially urgent that the editor know what he’s doing. Sadly, that was not the case here. What we end up with is something like a rough draft of a masterful film, more than a finished product. Maybe in 10 years a brash young filmmaker can remake this film and do a better job. This is one film that is worth remaking.

Two Bette Davis Gems from 1937

2011-02-21T10:37:00.008-05:00

A few friends and I are doing a Bette Davis retrospective, slowly working our way through all of Davis’s films from the 1930s and 1940s. The biggest surprise so far is two relatively unknown films she did in 1937: “Marked Woman” and “Kid Galahad.” Both are available from Netflix in pristine DVD pressings. They are an absolute delight and come highly recommended. They aren’t great works of art, but they’re two of the best traditional melodramas you’ll ever see.

The films have some similarity. In both, Davis plays a young woman from a lower-class background struggling to make a living in the criminal underground. “Marked Woman” is particularly daring, in that she plays a prostitute battling the mob kingpin for whom she works. It’s a stark and tough work, conveying the sense that if one is born on the wrong side of the tracks, one is probably doomed to stay there the rest of one’s life. The director was Lloyd Bacon, who also directed “42nd Street” a few years earlier.

“Kid Galahad” is class-conscious but not quite so darkly. Davis plays sidekick to a crooked boxing promoter (Edward G. Robinson), and both are lower-class young people trying to survive as best they can. Robinson’s character is presented forthrightly as the child of immigrants. There is one long scene where he talks to his mother in fluent Italian, and there aren’t any subtitles. This was a joy to see in a mainstream Hollywood movie. I can’t imagine how much it must have meant to Italian audiences of that era.

Davis’s character falls in love with the new boxer they are promoting, whom she dubs Kid Galahad. Twenty-three-year-old Wayne Morris positively melts the screen as the boxer. In one of the most touching and non-actorly performances I've ever seen, the largely untrained Morris plays the character from his heart. His physical beauty (Rudy Valentino good looks and an Olympian body) is matched by his homespun kindness. You can feel Bette Davis falling in love with Morris in every scene they have together. Michael Curtiz, who would in later years bring us “Casablanca” and “Mildred Pierce," among many other films, directed "Kid Galahad."

Coincidentally, Humphrey Bogart has a supporting role in both "Marked Woman" and "Kid Galahad," as does Jane Bryan.

If you haven’t seen a movie from Hollywood's golden era in a while, these are two titles that will surely not disappoint.

Note on Davis: Nineteen thirty-seven was the year Bette Davis hit her stride. She first caught attention in 1934 for her Oscar-nominated tour de force in "Of Human Bondage" opposite Leslie Howard. She followed that up by winning the first of her two Oscars in 1935 for "Dangerous." By 1937, she was soaring, becoming a major box-office attraction. In 1938, she won her second and final Oscar for "Jezebel." It's hard to believe that an actor of her stature would only win two Oscars (out of 11 total nominations). But then again, Meryl Streep has only won two (out of a total 16 nominations).

Revisiting 1983's "Videodrome"

2011-02-20T10:55:00.010-05:00

I saw “Videodrome” when it originally opened in early 1983. I was 18 and in my first semester of college.

While watching the movie all those years ago, I sensed that a good portion of it was going over my head. As one of the characters in the film says, “It has a philosophy.” I felt “Videodrome” and generally the work of writer/director David Cronenberg had a philosophy that I wasn’t intellectually developed enough to understand.

Well, now I’m developed enough, and revisiting the film almost 30 years later was for the most part a letdown.

Cronenberg did have some ideas when he put “Videodrome” together -- but not many. Mostly the film is just an entertainment, and a silly one at that. Cronenberg has had a number of phases in his unique artistic career, and during the 1980s he was interested in science fiction and horror of the cheesiest sort. “Videodrome” in many aspects is prime cheese. The cheap gore effects and ultra-cheap sets are as laughable today as they were in 1983, and many of the plot developments also produce chuckles. Initially, I thought the use of junk horror, junk sci-fi, and sado-masochistic softcore porn were ironic. But now I believe that Cronenberg just found these things fun. I certainly don’t begrudge an artist the pleasure of immersing in B-movie cheese and softcore porn, but it doesn’t interest me greatly. Shallow fun is fun, but it’s not interesting.

But what of the philosophical elements I detected in the film when I first saw it? They are there, but they’re minor. The film can be thought of as a slightly humorous meditation on the anxiety felt by many in the late 70s and early 80s about the ever-increasing amount of television people were watching. This was the time when people were beginning to have a TV in every room in the house. Many people couldn’t fall asleep without the comforting glow and white noise of the TV screen.

On a personal note: I was impacted by this anxiety, so much so that I decided in 1985 to eliminate TV from my life. I have never had a TV in my home since. (In the last couple years, I’ve taken to watching some TV shows on the computer. But I’ve not had an actual television since 1985.)

This anxiety about life lived in front of the TV grew more intense when video-recording technology suddenly appeared. In one of the fastest adoptions of new technology in human history, in the space of about one year every household above the poverty line got a machine to record TV shows onto videotape. This allowed ordinary people to watch pretty much whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Hollywood also recorded much of its content onto videocassette, and VCR rental shops opened up everywhere. There was so much video content available that one wondered if people would ever leave their houses again. Let’s also not forget that the early 80s is when MTV appeared, leading many teenagers to spend entire weekends in front of the television. (I was one of those teenagers.)

There was also a terrible anxiety about the proliferation of unsavory material. Ultra-violent horror movies were immensely popular at the time. This genre even got its own name: slasher movies. (I was a huge fan of slasher movies, incidentally.) Hardcore pornography also became more accessible than ever, being as easy to rent as a copy of “Friday the 13th.” Many asked, what would be next? Snuff TV? It certainly seemed possible in the wake of “Faces of Death,” a popular shockumentary that included footage of actual killings of animals and some footage of human carnage taken at the scene of highway accidents.

“Videodrome” tapped into these anxieties – but also exploited them. Here are the basic outlines of the film’s plot:

• The main character (played by James Woods) is co-owner of a small TV station that broadcasts softcore porn and slasher movies.

• One day he happens upon a partially scrambled video signal that appears to contain footage of actual torture and murder. There are no credits. The transmissions just open with the title “Videodrome.”

• Shortly after viewing Videodrome, the man begins to hallucinate that televisions and videocassettes are coming to life. He also hallucinates that there is a gaping hole in his abdomen, resembling the slot where one inserts a videotape. (He’s a VCR, get it?)

• He contacts a “media prophet” who uses the (laughable) pseudonym Brian O’Blivion, where he learns that the Videodrome signal induces a brain tumor to grow in the viewer. He also learns that he was exposed to the signal intentionally, as part of a master plan to rid North America of the kind of people who would watch snuff TV. The masterminds then take over this man’s mind and get him to assassinate their enemies.

• Then he is killed by a television. (Yes, a television comes alive and shoots him. It looks as ridiculous as it sounds.) At this point, the film spins even more ludicrously out of control. The man’s body dies, but he takes new form as “the video word made flesh.” In the last 10 minutes, he several times spouts the slogan, “Long live the new flesh.” Then the film is over.

• Oops, I forgot the softcore porn. The man gets a new girlfriend (played by Deborah Harry), and they explore S/M sex while watching Videodrome. As a form of foreplay, he pierces her earlobe with a long needle. She also turns herself on by burning her breast with a lit cigarette. Did Cronenberg find this interesting on some level? Perhaps. But I think really he just found it to be a turn-on. Much of the film is just titillation.

Is “Videodrome” a serious work of art? I would say no. One open question remains, however. I know that Cronenberg studied Literature and has had major interest in the work of William Burroughs. (Cronenberg made a film version of Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” in 1991.) I haven’t read much of Burroughs’ work, but what I do know of it reminds me of “Videodrome.” There is a chance that “Videodrome” is to some degree a homage to Burroughs, or inspired at least in part by Burroughs. A careful look at “Videodrome” from that perspective might prove illuminating. But one shouldn’t have to read other material to appreciate a film. Each work of art stands on its own. Standing on its own, “Videodrome” doesn’t add up to much more than goofy, B-movie fun -- and not much fun at that. Regarding Burroughs: I suspect that even after one did a thorough investigation of the Burroughs connection, one would still conclude that "Videodrome" was only a minor achievement.

Weinstein Company Finally Has a Blockbuster

2011-02-18T15:18:00.005-05:00

The Weinstein Company, which has been struggling with one failed release after another since it was founded in 2005, finally has a blockbuster on its hands. And it's the most unlikely blockbuster of the season: "The King's Speech."

Who would have expected a British costume drama set in the 1930s to reach $100 million at the U.S. box office? If it wins the Oscar for Best Picture, which seems increasingly likely, it could go as high as $175 million. That's just in the United States. The global take could be double that.

How does an art-house distributor make that happen? I think it's pure luck. No one would have predicted that this movie would take off like it has. I couldn't be happier for the Weinstein brothers, who have been investing for several years in great films that inexplicably went nowhere at the box office. After years of hard work and no doubt excruciating extensions of credit, they finally get a money-maker. Pay some bills, gentlemen, and buy yourselves something nice. You more than deserve it. Thank you for nurturing American film culture so generously as you do. This cinephile is forever in your debt.

Dogtooth: Surprisingly Avant-Garde For an Oscar Nominee

2011-02-17T16:43:00.005-05:00

It’s a real surprise that “Dogtooth” is nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. The Academy typically ignores avant-garde film, but for some reason “Dogtooth” made the cut this year. Nothing is so unpredictable (incomprehensible?) lately as the Academy’s Foreign-Language category.

“Dogtooth” has a stunningly original and radical look and feel. It looks more interesting than it actually is, however. I found myself entranced by the innovative cinematography and art direction much more than I was by the story. Being highly avant-garde, the film could be interpreted in many different ways. I saw it primarily as a parody of the bourgeois family, particularly anxiety about the molding and protecting of adolescents.

“Dogtooth,” which was made in Greece by a young writer/director named Giorgos Lanthimos, tells the story of a family that has isolated itself from the rest of the world. Only the father leaves the compound each day to go to work. He appears to be a middle manager in an ordinary factory. Mom and the three teenage kids, never leave the grounds. It appears that the teenagers have actually never left. They are home-schooled, with bizarre lessons teaching them the wrong words for things. At dinner, one child asks for the salt shaker by saying, “Mom, can you please pass the telephone?” They are taught to be terrified by the outside world, including any animals that invade the back yard.

They also have their sexuality strangely molded. The father periodically brings home a young woman to have sex with his son. He and this young woman methodically go through intercourse as if it’s a lesson at school. There are hints that this is to help shape the boy's sexual orientation.

The extremely flat surface of the film is gradually broken as the oldest child starts to bridle under the constant restraints imposed by her parents. One fascinating expression of this comes in a wild improvised dance she performs before the family after dinner one night. This tension builds into a dramatic and slightly gruesome final sequence the details of which I won’t reveal.

“Dogtooth” is engaging and creative. It certainly signals the arrival of a brash new talent in European cinema, and the Cannes Film Festival is to be praised for bringing attention to Lanthimos. (“Dogtooth” won the 2009 festival’s top prize in the Un Certain Regard category, which focuses on the avant-garde.) But at this point I’d say that Lanthimos only shows promise. He’s got to work on more profound story concepts. He’s got a brilliant visual eye, but cinema isn’t only a visual medium. It’s first and foremost a story-telling medium. If he doesn’t improve in this area, he will only be a glorified music-video director.

Another Year: Another Mike Leigh Film

2011-02-17T11:20:00.007-05:00

“Another Year” is very much another Mike Leigh film. All his films have had value (starting with 1988’s “High Hopes”), but none has been stellar. That’s a perfect description of “Another Year.” It’s worth seeing, but don’t expect too much. The best thing it has going for it is a knockout supporting performance from Lesley Manville as a lonely, uneducated woman with a drinking problem and an almost complete inability to manage life. The performance does go a bit over the top. But in its more under-stated moments, Manville’s work is astounding. It’s a scandal that her performance hasn’t gotten more press in the United States. (She is shown above knocking back some wine.)

The main characters in “Another Year” are two saintly ex-flower children around age 60 who have a perfect marriage and are completely devoid of ego or vanity. They’re so darn easy-going and at peace with life. She (played adequately by Ruth Sheen) has an extreme over-bite that would make other women feel insecure. Yet Gerri is completely at peace with her flawed looks. As often the case in a Leigh film, the characters are less like real people and more like vehicles through which the filmmaker can praise or condemn social currents of the day. Leigh seems to be using the main characters here to advertise how much he thinks today's culture is inferior to that of the late 1960s. How Leigh misses the days of the flower children! He is arguably the most nostalgic filmmaker of our time.

As an example of their saintliness, this couple provides comfort to countless strays, broken middle-aged people who drown in addiction and loneliness. Here the central destroyed person is Mary (Manville). But there is also the obese, heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking Ken, who has a crush on Mary. Actor Peter Wight throws himself into the role of Ken with such abandon that I feared the actor would have a heart attack on screen. It is frightening to watch. There is also the near-catatonic Ronnie and his belligerent, speed-addicted son who picks fights with everyone who looks at him. Leigh’s victims are usually as cartoon-like as his heroes, but Manville breaks through the cartoon to get at something authentically human about her troubled character. The other supporting actors probably would have been able to do the same, if they had received more screen time.

When thinking of Leigh’s body of work, I’m reminded of something I once heard said of John Steinbeck: “Steinbeck was not a first-rate novelist, but he was a great second-rate novelist.” To me, Leigh is a very good second-rate filmmaker (much like Clint Eastwood, who has directed only one or two truly great films). There is always some value in his films, but invariably there’s also a healthy serving of treacle, polemic, or obviousness. I wish Leigh didn’t have quite so many axes to grind, and I wish he didn’t see art as a bastard form of social commentary. If Leigh more has the heart of a journalist than an artist, then he should be doing journalism.

Biutiful: Pointless Exercise in Depiction of Misery

2011-02-06T07:34:00.013-05:00

“Biutiful” has the look and feel of a major work of art but none of the content. It’s the kind of film that a former artist would produce, someone who used to create genuine art and now can only churn out hollow imitations of it. The window dressing of art is there (great cinematography, acting, editing), but the substance (a great story) is not.

Director and co-writer Alejandro Inarritu (“Babel,” “21 Grams”) seems to be drifting in the same direction as a lot of filmmakers around the world today: they want to be cinematographers, not filmmakers. They focus on the look of a film, not the content. Someone has to remind them that films are not just compilations of great-looking shots.

Javier Bardem does a superb job in “Biutiful,” more than deserving his Oscar nomination as Best Actor. But the film does not deserve its nomination as Best Foreign-Language Film. The nominations and wins in the Foreign-Language Film category have been so incomprehensible the past few years that it is reasonable to suspect that corruption has crept in. Are foreign producers having to buy their way into that category?

“Biutiful” is set in a seedy corner of Barcelona where illegal immigrants from Africa and China live in cramped squalor. Bardem plays a lower-class Spaniard who functions as a sort of assistant manager for an operation that includes about 50 illegals who make and sell handbags. His family lives in squalor, too. Every scene in “Biutiful” depicts squalid conditions. Inarritu at times seems to be vying for an award for Most Miserable Depiction of Miserable Conditions. His love affair with squalor is a bit strange.

When the main character is not struggling to keep his workers safe from starvation and deportation, he is trying to provide a normal family life for his two young children. His wife is a basket case, suffering from a host of addictions and what appears to be a touch of mental illness. She occasionally endangers the children, so Bardem’s character is trying to raise them on his own.

Get ready, there’s even more misery in this man’s life: he’s just been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. So he’s also dying! He’s also purchased faulty heaters for his Chinese workers, causing them to be poisoned! The mounting misery starts to become almost funny.

What is Inarritu trying to say with this cavalcade of disaster? I know almost nothing about Inarritu, only that he was raised in Mexico City. But my hunch is that he was raised in relative luxury, seeing desperate poverty all around him. This kind of bipolar upbringing sometimes can produce a deep guilt on the part of the children of the upper classes, where their vision gets as unbalanced as the social environment. When such individuals become artists, they often over-champion the poor and become over-fixated on squalor and penury. Sadly, all the emotion they feel about poverty seldom generates a coherent engagement with the issue. They produce work that is a dense knot of emotion with no real purpose. That’s what “Biutiful” is: a pointless exercise in the depiction of misery.

Green Hornet: This Year’s “Kick-Ass”

2011-01-29T13:16:00.007-05:00

Just when the comic-book genre desperately needed freshening up, we got “Kick-Ass” in 2010 (which was on my Top 10 list for the year). Now in early 2011, we get “The Green Hornet.” That’s one helluva one-two punch, succeeding in revitalizing the genre.

Well, these films have the potential to revitalize the genre. If no one goes to see them, their power of course will only be latent. “Kick-Ass” was bizarrely ignored, and now “Green Hornet” is showing signs of being similarly overlooked. Could it be that this pick-me-up for the genre came too late? Audiences have already tired of any film reminiscent of comic books? This would be a grim prospect indeed. For those rare individuals who still care about this genre, do yourself a favor and see “Green Hornet” before it’s gone. It is witty, unpredictable, and a royal good time. It could use a little cutting in the second half, which is disappointing. But this is a small weakness.

Seth Rogen, who co-wrote the screenplay, appears to be the creative force behind the movie. He plays the lead character, a spoiled, super-rich overgrown boy doing nothing with his life. He and one of his servants (a brilliant Jay Chou speaking in a thick Chinese accent) dream up the Green Hornet persona as a sort of frat-house lark. But they end up taking it quite seriously, setting their sights on the mob leader causing the city to become a cesspool of corruption and murder.

Christoph Waltz, in his first American film since winning the Oscar for “Inglourious Basterds,” is hilarious as the mob kingpin. Once again Waltz comes close to stealing a movie in which he has a supporting role. Cameron Diaz doesn’t have much to do as the researcher helping the Hornet plan his next moves, but she adds to the fun. It's nice to see a female character in this genre be more than a love interest.

Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) directs with astonishing vigor and humor. With “Green Hornet,” he shows that he has the skills to helm major popcorn movies and pepper them with a million 21st-century accents. Gondry could become a leaner, funnier Christopher Nolan. I wait with bated breath to see what he directs next.

Country Strong: Conventional but Wonderful

2011-01-29T09:09:00.010-05:00

"Country Strong" is not a great film, but it's a wonderful movie. Sure, it's a television-level script directed like a TV movie. Sure, it's at times schmaltzy and conventional as all get out. But like great country music, "Country Strong" is both superficial and in touch with deep wellsprings of feeling. It may be over-simplified, but it's also profoundly in touch with the kinds of things everyone struggles with in life. Young writer/director Shana Feste will never be mistaken for an intellectual and probably will never win Oscars (or even be nominated), but she demonstrates a Spielberg-esque mastery of conventional filmmaking that could catapult her to the big leagues. She is a filmmaker to watch.

Gwyneth Paltrow, in one of the biggest casting surprises in years, does a wonderful job playing a country-music superstar just beginning to show signs of age. She not only does well with the singing, more importantly, Paltrow brings the whole character to life in a compelling and seemingly effortless way. It's impressive that at this stage in her career Paltrow would stretch herself in exciting new ways. Also surprising is the casting of Leighton Meester as Paltrow's young rival. How does one go from "Gossip Girl" to country music and pull both of them off? All indications are that Meester will have a huge career in the movies. She's a natural.

Rounding out the cast are singer/actor Tim McGraw ("The Blind Side"), playing Paltrow's husband and manager, and up-and-coming actor Garrett Hedlund ("Troy," "Four Brothers") as Paltrow's May-December boyfriend.

At the start of the movie, we meet the childless Kelly Canter (Paltrow) as she's getting out of rehab. Months earlier she had some sort of breakdown in public that jeopardizes her career, and her husband (McGraw) is trying to orchestrate a few comeback performances. She wants the young singer she met in rehab (Hedlund) to be her opening act; her husband wants a young female singer (Meester) to open. A battle builds between them over this.

Gradually, we learn more about this complex marriage. Feste does a great job conveying how much they love each other but also reveals the difficulties they have. Feste especially has a gift for exploring the ocean of feelings that can occur in the bedroom. Nothing can cut you in half like a lover turning his head when you try to kiss him. In many ways this marriage is over. But in many other ways it's as strong as ever. What does one do in that situation? Get divorced? Keep the marriage but have affairs? Is a sexless marriage with real love worth saving?

One of the major sub-plots concerns the development of Canter's young rival, Chiles Stanton (Meester). At first, she's intensely insecure and almost incapable of singing on stage, but with a little coaching from Hedlund her performances begin to soar. One of the most beautiful moments in the film is when Stanton starts to realize that she has touched an audience of thousands. She is at first almost knocked over by their applause, not understanding it. But slowly it dawns on her what is really going on. This scene has such tenderness and delicacy that it reduced me and many of those around me to tears.

Another sub-plot centers on Canter's alcoholism, which is severe. We watch her go through several painful relapses, which do become tiresome cinematically. Finally, there's a huge melodrama at the end that goes way over the top, weakening the film. But my companion and I walked out remembering the wonderful parts of the movie and the great music. This made us feel like we were walking on air. Sometimes it's a non-intellectual movie that hits the spot like nothing else can.

True Grit: Well-Made Minor Entertainment

2011-01-17T09:20:00.008-05:00

The Coen Brothers' "True Grit" is a very well made minor entertainment. Based on what the Coens have said in interviews, the movie was not intended as a remake of the 1969 film of the same name starring John Wayne, but rather as a new adaptation of the original novel by Charles Portis.

They have produced a very old-fashioned, superficial Western about a teenage girl who sets out on a quest to bring her father's murderer to justice. What sets it apart is its wittiness, even occasional zaniness. The girl seeks the assistance of two men who are 1885's equivalent of the Odd Couple. Rooster Cogburn is the slovenly, hard-drinking one; La Boeuf, pronounced, hilariously, "le beef," is the immaculate, conservative square. (Interestingly, Portis's novel and Neil Simon's play, "The Odd Couple," both appeared in 1968.) Jeff Bridges, as Cogburn, and Matt Damon, as La Boeuf, both approach the roles in a light, comical fashion, only occasionally suggesting deeper aspects to their characters.

Hailee Steinfeld, as the girl, is essentially the straight man, giving Bridges and Damon room to ham it up a bit. Steinfeld, only about 13 at the time of filming, exhibits the precocious strength and verbal dexterity of a young Jodie Foster or Tatum O'Neil, commanding the screen with almost as much aplomb as her well-experienced adult co-stars. Josh Brolin, playing the murderer they are tracking, has little screen time and doesn't offer much to the story. He tries to ham it up as well, but it doesn't come off as well.

The story is majestically filmed, with a traditionally sumptuous, epic-movie score, but there's something hollow about "True Grit." It's nice to see old-fashioned Hollywood craft in the service of an old-fashioned Western, but one doesn't leave the theater thinking about much. In a sense, this makes it the perfect movie for our time. It's big entertainment with little to think about. That about sums up 2010 in terms of moviegoers' tastes, no? Give me a big, beautiful nothing, and I'm happy.

Top 15 Films of 2010

2011-01-16T08:32:00.074-05:00

Two thousand ten was not a great year at the movies, but it wasn't terrible. Below are the 15 best films I saw in the year, plus a handful of honorable mentions.

Winter's Bone
Blue Valentine
Agora
Please Give
The Kids Are All Right
Kick-Ass
Brotherhood (from Denmark)
Inception
Fair Game
The King’s Speech (from England)
Mother and Child
Daybreakers
Rabbit Hole
White Material (from France)
The Ghost Writer (from England)

Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):
A Prophet (from France)
Somewhere
Jack Goes Boating
City Island
The Town
Solitary Man
Mademoiselle Chambon (from France)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (from England)
Prince of Broadway
Black Swan

Trash Humpers

Worst Movie of the Year: I’m Still Here (aka The Joaquin Phoenix Reality Show) -- candidate for Worst of the Decade

************************************

Breaking with tradition, I'm going to discuss these films in chronological order based on when they were released. Let's walk through 2010, starting in January...

Winter

The winter of 2010, like most winters, saw very few good films open. But there was "Daybreakers" (no. 12), starring Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, which came out in January and was sadly overlooked by serious critics, presumably because it was a vampire movie. If "Let the Right One In" can be taken seriously, why can't "Daybreakers"? Here we had a fresh, fairly deep script brought to the screen in dazzling fashion by the Spierig Brothers, two young men born and raised in Germany who have Danny Boyle's cinematic instincts. Let's not forget that Boyle once did a zombie movie ("28 Days Later"), and a great one at that.

February had one gem, "A Prophet" (honorable mention) from French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, about a young Arab struggling to survive in a French prison. The film is over-long and loses a lot of its focus, but its first half is a masterpiece. There is also an unforgettable, goosebump-inducing lead performance from Tahar Rahim, who is just getting started in the world of acting. He has all the talent of a young Marlon Brando, but none of the ego it seems. If there were any justice, Rahim would get an Oscar nomination. Because of the film's weak second half, I couldn't make it one of my Top 15. But it more than warrants honorable mention. Everyone needs to see at least the first half of this remarkable film.

Spring

April

As usual, everything began to pick up in the spring. April brought us "Kick-Ass," (no. 6) a brilliantly innovative twist on the comic-book genre with a mesmerizing supporting performance from a profanity-spewing 12-year-old, Chloe Moretz. As a director, the British-born Matthew Vaughn had previously looked like a mediocre clone of the mediocre Guy Ritchie ("Layer Cake," anyone?), but with "Kick-Ass" Vaughn becomes one of the most exciting and iconoclastic filmmakers to watch in the decade ahead.

April also gave us Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" (no. 15), starring Ewan McGregor as a man hired to help Britain's prime minister write his memoirs. The young man gradually transforms into a detective, struggling to put together the pieces of a dark, dangerous puzzle. The film makes despicable veiled allegations about Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, but it cannot be denied that "The Ghost Writer" is a great entertainment for grown-ups. Polanski shows that he hasn't lost his magical movie-making touch. From the French New Wave ("Repulsion"), to a stunning leap into American filmmaking ("Rosemary's Baby"), to a masterpiece of 1970s neo-noir ("Chinatown"), to a unique range of choices in the 1980s and 90s, to an Oscar winner in 2002 ("The Pianist"), and now a crisp re-invention of the political thriller. Polanski's longevity and creative fountain of youth inspire awe.

The inventive, almost indescribable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" (honorable mention) also hit our shores in early spring. From England's underground street artist Banksy comes one of the most unusual documentaries ever made. It has a slow and repetitious start, but the final half-hour dazzles. One realizes that Banksy is the Andy Warhol of our time.

June

June was a veritable gold mine. First there was "Agora" (no. 3). Given that writer/director Alejandro Amenabar's last film, "The Sea Inside" (2004) with Javier Bardem, was a global art-house sensation and won the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his film before that, "The Others" (2001), was a mainstream blockbuster, one would have thought "Agora" would get some attention. But almost no one noticed it, even though it was superb, was filmed in English, and had a well-known Anglo-American Oscar winner, Rachel Weisz, leading the cast. I formally dub "Agora" the Most Under-Rated Film of 2010.

"Agora" tells the story of Hypatia, the real-life 4th-century philosopher caught up in the turmoil surrounding the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity. She was eventually executed, allegedly with the support of the rapidly expanding Church. The film is a fascinating study of a period in history that transformed the world forever, with three major religions chafing against one another: Greco-Roman Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity. It boggles the mind to imagine how life would be different today had the Christians not taken power at that time. Would most of us be worshipping Zeus? But far from just a scholarly study, "Agora" is passionate and alive, telling its tale through the eyes of real people. Weisz's Hypatia pulsates with life, and a great love story is told about the slave (played beautifully by newcomer Max Minghella) who adores her. Put "Agora" on your Netflix queue forthwith.

"Please Give" (no. 4), from writer/director Nicole Holofcener, also graced movie screens in June. The film, which got nowhere near the attention it deserved, is a meditation on death and living. It looks squarely into the face of death but is also the funniest film in years, reminiscent of Woody Allen's "Annie Hall." Especially side-splitting is the send-up of irascible old people. Ann Guilbert, playing a 90-year-old, had me and everyone else in my theater rolling in the aisles. A beautiful counterpoint to Guilbert was Sarah Steele's insightful and touching portrayal of self-absorbed youth. Amanda Peet also does some very interesting work portraying a woman on the verge of middle age who is still struggling to be a pretty girl. The huge wonderful cast includes Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, and Rebecca Hall.

"Mother and Child" (no. 11), from writer/director Rodrigo Garcia with a terrific ensemble cast led by Annette Bening and Naomi Watts, was another June surprise. The Colombian-born Garcia, who is the creator of the HBO show "In Treatment," suffers from an obsession with psychoanalysis. Every scene he writes is reminiscent of a therapy session. This makes his work often feel more like daytime television than cinema. But he also has a lot to say that is of major importance, and "Mother and Child" contains ideas you won't see explored anywhere else.

June's bounty continued with three films deserving honorable mention: "Mademoiselle Chambon," "Solitary Man," with Michael Douglas in a fearless lead performance, and "City Island," starring the under-rated and under-utilized Andy Garcia.

"Mademoiselle Chambon," set in a small city in France, introduces us to a middle-aged carpenter who is a good family man without any needs of his own. Dutifully providing for his wife and child for so long, he has drifted into something like auto-pilot, forgetting that he ever had dreams. When he meets his son's new schoolteacher, a charming friendship develops. He offers to help her with some repairs in her apartment, and gradually deeper feelings grow. Watching this semi-educated man experience surprising feelings that he can't articulate was at times cinema gold. Equally touching was Sandrine Kiberlain's performance as the schoolteacher, a woman in her 30s starting to realize that she might never have a family of her own. "Mademoiselle Chambon" may not be complex, but it's a treasure.

"Solitary Man" is a hard-to-categorize movie from the hard-to-categorize filmmaking team of David Levien and Brian Koppelman. Their writing credits include "Walking Tall" (2004), a vehicle for ex-wrestler Dwayne Johnson, and Steven Soderbergh's highly avant-garde "The Girlfriend Experience" (one of the unnoticed gems of 2009). "Solitary Man" tells the story of a sociopath (Michael Douglas) who pushes everyone he loves out of his life without realizing what he's doing. It's a dark, troubling film that oddly has the surface tone of a comedy. Stylistically the film is confused, but the content is unique and important. Levien and Koppelman show themselves to be thinking outside the box, but their filmmaking skills do not yet match their ambitions. Hopefully in the decade ahead they will learn how to bring their ideas to cinematic life in a more compelling way.

"City Island" brought us the rare pleasure of seeing Andy Garcia on screen. I was fully expecting that Garcia would be nominated for an Oscar for his work in "City Island," but alas, no prominent critics have been talking about this film lately. "City Island" is also noteworthy for its fresh, unique take on New York City. It is set and filmed on the eponymous island, which sits in the Long Island Sound, connected to the Bronx only by a bridge. Writer/director Raymond de Felitta has that rare gift, a la Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, of capturing a culture on film. With an odd mixture of Bronx and New England, City Island is like nowhere else on earth. The film starts off masterfully but gets cutesy as it goes. I hope in the years ahead that Felitta toughens up his scripts and stops trying to court the mainstream. He's got a real gift and could develop into a considerable artist.

Summer

July

Typically one thinks of summer as the time of popcorn blockbusters, but increasingly it is also a time for serious films. After June's extraordinary crop, July brought us the no.1 film of the year, "Winter's Bone," and two other wonders: "The Kids Are All Right" and "Inception."

You don't just watch "Winter's Bone" (no. 1); it seeps into your soul. It's not a perfect film, but at most times it is absolutely stellar. Welcome to the upper echelon of American filmmakers, Debra Granik. It is no surprise that the film won top prize at Sundance when it played there in January 2010. Sundance, Robert Redford's extraordinary brainchild, continues to astound in its ability to discover masterpieces and near-masterpieces and help them find an audience.

If Granik is the breakthrough American director of the year, 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence is the breakthrough American actor of the year. She plays a teenage girl in a still-forested corner of Missouri (think Appalachia), where people live in houses that are essentially log cabins. Her father has just disappeared, and she is left to fend for herself and take care of her young siblings and catatonic mother. She goes out on a trek to find Dad, stumbling inadvertently into the dangerous secret world of rural drug addiction.

Shot completely on location in the deep woods with a cast that appears to include many locals, "Winter's Bone" is profoundly authentic. You feel magically transported to the Ozark Mountains. The sounds, the smells, the music, the trees, the wildlife, the quiet. But the story is also fascinating. Granik has work to do in developing her sense of editing, but other than that she is a nearly perfect director. If "Winter's Bone," Debra Granik, and Jennifer Lawrence are not all nominated for Oscars, the Academy will need to hang its head in shame.

Lisa Cholodenko's delicious dramedy about the nuclear family, "The Kids Are All Right" (no. 5), opened in July as well. It is almost a revelation to watch Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) interact as a couple, shading almost everything they say with that weird melange of love, rivalry, and projection that is the hallmark of family life. When they interact with their teenage children (played in a gently under-stated way by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson), it is the same. Rarely has family neurosis been depicted so accurately and affectionately. The film does unfortunately have the worst, most pedestrian movie title of the year. But put that out of your mind and focus on the film. You won't be disappointed.

Christopher Nolan's "Inception" (no. 8), also released in July, was a gigantic, overstuffed monster of an entertainment, much like his previous film, "The Dark Knight" (2008). To watch it is to be taken up in a whirlwind. Unlike, say, Stanley Kubrick's "2001," "Inception" does not add up to more than the sum of its parts. At bottom, it is just an entertainment, intended to amaze more than enlighten. Nolan has some things in common with Kubrick, but the filmmaker he better resembles is James Cameron. Nolan is the brainier version of Cameron, if you will.

But what a full-throttle entertainment "Inception" is, with a hypnotic and scary supporting performance from Marion Cotillard. Will Cotillard get a Best Supporting Actress nomination? I hope so. Nolan clearly realized that Cotillard was bringing something special to the film, given the number of times Edith Piaf is heard on the soundtrack. (Cotillard won the Lead Actress Oscar in 2007 for her earth-shaking portrayal of Piaf in "La Vie en Rose.") "Inception" must be seen on a huge screen with a thunderous sound system. Nolan takes sound effects to new vertiginous heights. If you missed your opportunity to see it in a giant theater, well, that's a pity.

July also stood out as the month when Harmony Korine's filthy and downright nauseating "Trash Humpers" (honorable mention) slithered into theaters. Just when you thought he would start toning it down to curry favor with American critics and get more fans, Korine, who I believe is a genius, brings us "Trash Humpers," his most radical project yet. The film is a failure, but it's the most interesting failure since Richard Kelly, another genius, gave us "Southland Tales" in 2007. In these profoundly unoriginal times, it's heady tonic to encounter Korine's creativity. How many American filmmakers today can you say are one of a kind, completely unlike anything that has ever come before?

"Trash Humpers" could be interpreted in a million different ways, as is the case with all avant-garde art. But I saw the film as a cross between horror and satire, with Korine depicting humanity (or at least a subset of humanity) as a worm-like species traveling in packs and randomly vandalizing everything around them. Korine fitted the actors with gruesome masks to accentuate their otherness. The middle part of "Trash Humpers" is unwatchably bad, but the film deserves special recognition for its ferocious originality. It also cannot be forgotten that "Trash Humpers" has masterpiece moments. Korine continues to amaze as the early-21st-century's poet of the unimaginable. If Rimbaud and Baudelaire were alive today, they'd be huge Korine fans.

August

August, not surprisingly, was thin, but one art-house release was a gem: "Brotherhood" (no. 7), the debut feature film from Danish writer/director Nicolo Donato. "Brotherhood" is a window into the present-day neo-Nazi movement. It is a bit predictable and melodramatic at times, but there's no denying the film's power and humanity. Lead actor David Dencik, playing a young neo-Nazi struggling with his emerging homosexuality, is so good and so complex that he deserves Oscar consideration. The film takes seriously the attractiveness of Nazism for young men who lack a sense of family and belonging. Deep fraternal bonds make it all the more wrenching when these young men have to decide how to handle the news that two of their brothers have fallen in love. A twist at the end adds interesting, if slightly melodramatic, complexity. Donato ends the film by raising some troubling questions about the gay movement. He seems to suggest that anti-Nazi fervor can sometimes become Nazi-like.

"Prince of Broadway," another art-house film released in August, deserves honorable mention. Written and directed by Sean Baker, "Prince of Broadway" chronicles the hardscrabble life of poor immigrants in New York City. The main character is an illegal immigrant who ekes out a meager income selling counterfeit luxury items. His life is turned upside-down when a former girlfriend hands him a baby and then runs away. "He's your son!" This is a great launching point for a story, but it never really goes anywhere. There's no Act 2. Despite its flaws, "Prince of Broadway" is important and must be supported. We desperately need more hand-made films like it and more filmmakers like Baker who are willing to forgo a life of riches to tell authentic stories about the poor. Bravo to Lee Daniels, Oscar-nominated director of "Precious," for helping to get "Prince" distributed. And bravo to the Independent Spirit Awards for nominating Baker for their John Cassavetes Award. Shame on you, dear reader, if you still don't know who Sean Baker (or John Cassavetes) is.

September

September is supposed to be a time when serious films come out of the woodwork. But in 2010 this didn't turn out to be the case. Only two films released in September deserve recognition, and only as honorable mentions: "The Town" and "Jack Goes Boating."

"The Town" (honorable mention), second film from director Ben Affleck (after his near-masterpiece, "Gone Baby Gone," in 2007), is a sturdy grown-up drama. It's not great, but in a year when mainstream Hollywood produced almost no movies for grown-ups, "The Town" stands out. Affleck proves that he's got the skill to have a major career as a mainstream director. He also acts here, playing a bank robber who lives in a working-class area of Boston. Affleck plays the role as a tough guy with heart in a colorful but melancholy way that you might expect in a Scorsese film. He establishes an improbable romance with a woman he briefly takes hostage during a heist (played by the lovely and intelligent Rebecca Hall). Thrown into the mix are Affleck's fellow bank robbers. One member of the gang is played magnetically if a bit one-dimensionally by Jeremy Renner ("The Hurt Locker"). Rounding out the supporting cast is Jon Hamm ("Mad Men") as a square but determined FBI man. Also nice is a small bit by Blake Lively ("Gossip Girl") as Affleck's tough-talking ex-girlfriend. There's a lot to enjoy in "The Town."

Released about the same time was the bizarrely overlooked "Jack Goes Boating" (honorable mention), Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut. It is imperfect, but "Jack Goes Boating" is one of the most ambitious and interesting films of the year. One thing I love is that it's about ordinary people. Hoffman plays a limousine driver with a sixth-grade education, the kind of man you see everywhere in New York. Playing his best friend is John Ortiz, who is so good that for a while he was generating Oscar buzz. Hoffman's character is sent on a blind date with a woman as socially inept as he is (beautifully played by Amy Ryan). Initially you think the movie will be the standard parody of super-dorks and idiot savants. But gradually the film gets deeper and more complex, culminating in a sequence depicting romantic implosion that is among the rawest ever filmed. Sometimes the extreme originality of the film comes across arch and once or twice even weird. It doesn't all come together elegantly. But at its best, "Jack Goes Boating" is a feast for the mind and heart. Let's pray that Hoffman continues to direct.

Sadly, September also brought us the worst film of the year: "I'm Still Here," starring Joaquin Phoenix. Imagine Anna Nicole Smith's reality TV show released as a feature film. That's what "I'm Still Here" resembles. If it can be imagined, Phoenix is even less interesting than Smith -- and more infantile. Phoenix appears to have the IQ of a doorknob. He's a blithering idiot from the first frame to the last. He doesn't say a single thing that's even coherent. He just sort of whines and moans. Casey Affleck is credited with direction, but Affleck simply followed Phoenix around for a while with a video camera and then assembled the footage. "I'm Still Here" is one of the five or six worst films I've ever seen. It is almost impossible to stay awake through it. It may sound unduly punishing, but a part of me hopes that Phoenix isn't able to get an acting job ever again. This film is that bad.

Fall

November

Fall got off to a terrible start, with October a complete bust. But round about Thanksgiving, some major films began to appear.

First there was "White Material" (no. 14), from writer/director Claire Denis starring Isabelle Huppert. The editing is not superb, with one too many slack periods, and some of the ideas are sketchy. But fascinating issues are raised by the film. It tells the story of a woman struggling to hold onto her coffee plantation in Africa during a time of armed rebellion. Part of Denis's objective seems to be to establish a new vantage point from which to critique colonialism. Most focus on the natives and how they were victimized. Denis focuses on the European perpetrators. They were warped by colonialism as well, she suggests, and their descendants many generations later still suffer from numerous perversions and distortions stemming from it. "White Material" contains unique subject matter gorgeously filmed. There's also the majestic presence of Huppert, one of the most talented and complex actresses in cinema today. America has Meryl Streep. England has Helen Mirren. And France has Isabelle Huppert.

"The King's Speech" (no. 10) also made November delightful. This film is put together so well by director Tom Hooper and has such a splendid lead performance from Colin Firth that some may mistake it for more than it is. "The King's Speech" is a television-level story lifted by great acting, glistening vocabulary, and divine sets and costumes. Firth plays Prince Albert, who ascended the British throne at the start of World War II. He and his devoted wife (warmly played by Helena Bonham Carter) have been in a years-long struggle to cure Albert of his stammer. They finally come upon an unorthodox speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), who focuses as much on Albert's self-esteem as his speech. The man gradually becomes a close confidant of Albert's and then an adviser throughout his reign. One of the many joys of this charming film is the extraordinary experience of seeing Firth, Carter and Rush on the screen at the same time. I sometimes felt I had died and gone to acting heaven. I predict that Mr. Firth will be going back to his Los Angeles hotel room on the night of February 27, 2011 with an Oscar statuette in his hand.

"Fair Game" (no. 9), starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, also hit screens in November, but I appear to be the only person who noticed. American moviegoers and critics continue to ignore films that have anything to do with present-day political matters. What kind of ostriches have we become, wanting to stick our heads in the sand? "Fair Game" dramatizes events surrounding the 2003 "outing" of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame (Watts) by senior officials in the White House, ending her career in espionage and exposing her family and her contacts around the world to grave danger. By all accounts, this was done to punish Plame's husband (Penn), who at the time was an outspoken critic of what he claimed was the Bush Administration's false statements about Middle Eastern intelligence. (This critique of course got newfound currency several years later, when the U.S. invasion of Iraq could turn up no weapons of mass destruction.) Not only is the film important, it is also gripping. Director Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith") marshals all his skills in the espionage genre to produce an edge-of-your-seat thriller that should not be missed.

December

December was surprisingly underwhelming. There were several serious works of art, but only one of them, "Blue Valentine," was a grand slam. "Rabbit Hole" got on base but didn't quite score. "Somewhere" and "Black Swan" deserve honorable mention but ultimately were only pop flies. "True Grit" was such a minor entertainment that it doesn't even warrant honorable mention.

"Blue Valentine" wins my vote for second-best film of 2010. It took my breath away on almost every level. The story was complex and unique, the direction masterful as well as innovative, and the acting almost frighteningly powerful and committed. Writer/director Derek Cianfrance, in only his second feature film, catapults himself into the major leagues of American filmmaking. Thank you to Sundance for helping get this film discovered, and kudos to The Weinstein Company for taking the financial risk to market and distribute it.

"Blue Valentine" is a tough film to watch at times. It depicts in ultra-realistic fashion the disappearance of romantic love. The film is the best exploration of a relationship falling apart that I've ever seen. Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play their characters in two different phases of life. One is when they're young, nubile and trim; the other is when they've lost control of their diets and grown puffy and haggard. Gosling and Williams do an astonishing job transforming their bodies to convey the dramatic devolution in these people's lives.

Exquisite cross-cutting between the time periods adds an extra level of cinematic poetry. The editing somehow seems to breathe along with the characters and the story. Rarely have I seen an artistic team (director, editor, actors) so in sync with each other and so in sync with the characters and story. Only here and there is there a shrill moment or a bit of film-school pretentiousness. The youthfulness of the filmmaking style will only once or twice remind you of MTV. Cianfrance (pronounced SEE-in-france) here provides a master class on directing, and Williams and Gosling do the same with regard to acting. If they are not all three nominated for Oscars, it will be a travesty.

"Rabbit Hole" (no. 13) is not the powerhouse drama I was hoping it would be, but it is a special, deeply humane film. Led by Nicole Kidman, the cast is superb. (Kidman also produced the film.) The material is also great. The problem was in the direction from John Cameron Mitchell, best known for the stage show "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." Mitchell may understand stage drama, but he appears not to have an instinct for cinema. There was an inert quality to "Rabbit Hole" that I couldn't put my finger on. Then I realized what it was: the camera never moved. Mitchell is simply not a film director. He's a stage and cabaret director and an acting coach.

Putting the underwhelming direction aside, "Rabbit Hole" still has much to admire and be moved by. It explores the emotional complexities of trying to put one's life back together after a life-shattering tragedy. Here the catastrophe is the accidental death of a toddler. (Kidman plays the mother.) What I particularly like is that the author, David Lindsay-Abaire, made the tragedy a car accident, allowing him to add a character: the teenage boy who was behind the wheel at the time of the accident (played magically well by newcomer Miles Teller). Kidman and Mitchell understood the power and uniqueness of this material. I wish they had had a better sense of how to use the power of cinema to bring it alive more fully on screen.

The final noteworthy films of December were "Black Swan" and "Somewhere" (honorable mentions), from Darren Aronofsky and Sofia Coppola, respectively. I consider these to be failed films, but they're noteworthy for what they aspired to be. "Black Swan" wanted to be ballet. By this I mean that it did not want to pay tribute to the classical ballet simply by being about that art form. It tried to be that art form -- a fusion of film and ballet. I became annoyed early on in the film, when the characters were such grotesque archetypes and the drama so florid and over the top. But then I realized what that style reminded me of: 19th-century ballet (and opera as well). While the film didn't work for me, I found Aronofsky's idea a bold and exciting one. It's great to see a well-known American director continuing to challenge himself and explore new artistic ideas. Bravo, Mr. Aronofsky. (And your 2006 film, "The Fountain," will someday be recognized as the masterpiece it is.)

"Somewhere" was not quite as innovative, but it does show Sofia Coppola continuing to resist mainstream movie-making and continually finding a way to get her artistic meditations onto screens in cities across the world. That's cause for celebration. "Somewhere" takes a look at American royalty: movie stars in southern California. The main character is a young, divorced movie star with a daughter about 12 years old. Coppola gives us a view of the kind of ennui that grows when all one's desires can be fulfilled at a moment's notice. At times, Coppola's silent pictures (tableaux, if you will) of this state of fevered limbo are sublime.

The weakness is that Coppola doesn't really have anywhere to go with what she's presented. She creates a superb window on a world but has no Act 2. It's like Coppola is starting to produce half-movies. Her last film, "Marie Antoinette," also had this quality of being all dressed up with nowhere to go. Another way of looking at it is that Coppola is these days envisioning 40-minute shorts. Because there's no market for shorts (a major structural problem in cinema today), she has to provide 60 minutes of filler to get the short shown. I yield to no one in my appreciation for shorts, but they aren't feature-length films. Feature films, at least in my estimation, require a second act. Still, it's great to have an artist of Coppola's caliber among us. I would go see any of her films, even if they're shorts masquerading as feature films.

***********************************

The Year as a Whole

Stepping back from all of this, what can we say about 2010 as a whole? One thing that jumps out is that June and July were surprisingly bountiful when it comes to quality films, especially June. Last year, "The Hurt Locker" came out in June. Do we have a movement afoot? Are specialty distributors losing their addiction to the fall? It's too soon to tell, but it's a noteworthy development that should be monitored in the years ahead.

Cinephiles should take note and beware of seasonal blinders. There's a deep habit in America of seasonal adjustment of one's taste. From May-August, we expect only popcorn movies. Because of this, people tend to tune out anything that breaks that pattern. If quality films appear, people just ignore them.

I'm convinced that they don't realize they're doing this. "The Hurt Locker" stayed in a few theaters in Manhattan all throughout the late spring and early summer last year. And all my friends, even those whom one would describe as cinephiles, said later in the year that they'd never heard of it. When it dominated the awards season, all my friends in New York seemed perplexed. "When did that come out?" they kept asking me. Mind you, when "The Hurt Locker" was released in New York it got a torrent of publicity. It was definitely not under the radar. In fact, it had been getting press long before its release because it was winning so many festival awards. But it came out at a time of year when Americans just don't focus on serious movies. Everyone just tuned it out. The same thing happened this year with "Winter's Bone," "Please Give," "Agora," "Mother and Child," "Solitary Man," and "City Island."

This is definitely concerning. Will Americans ever remove their seasonal blinders, or is quality cinema doomed to be ignored if it's not released in the fall? It would be a terrible shame if we kept ignoring the great releases that are now frequently coming our way in the spring and summer.

[In 2011, incidentally, this pattern of an ever-widening window for quality releases has continued. We are now having the best January in living memory. They aren't major works of art, but the mainstream movies "The Green Hornet" and "Country Strong" are getting unfairly ignored because no one expects any new movies to be released in January. The first month of the year is no longer a dead zone for new movies.]

Another significant development is a decline in quality. I rate films on a scale of one to 10, and I keep track throughout the year. At the end of the year, I go through my list of eights, nines, and tens to come up with my Top 15 for the year. Nines and tens obviously make the cut, but there aren't always many of them. I save the 10 rating for masterpieces, and there aren't more than three or four of those per decade. (I haven't given out a 10 rating since December 2006, for Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain.") Usually though there's at least one 9 per year. Not so this year. I didn't give a single 9 out in 2010.

Here's the really disturbing part: I didn't have enough eights in 2010 to fill out the Top 15. I had to dip into my sevens. That's a first. I've never had a film I ranked a 7 make it to my Top 15 list for the year. This continues a trend first noticed in 2009. Two thousand seven and 2008 saw some fantastic films get made; 2009 and 2010 in the aggregate were much more disappointing.

Serious critics generally agree on this, incidentally. I'm not the only one talking about it. But there's no agreement on why this is happening. My view is that it's the fault of audiences. Moviegoers in 2007-08 ignored a mind-boggling number of quality films. In 2007, when I compiled my list of Most Under-Rated Films of the Year, there were almost 40 titles on it. By mid-2008 this pattern at the box office was clear to all. Americans were now only interested in popcorn movies.

Producers cannot keep investing millions in films that have no chance even of breaking even, so they shifted the money according to audience tastes. Moviegoers always get what they want. They wanted a decline in seriousness and a decline in quality, and they got it. They got better popcorn movies than ever, but they got almost no grown-up films. Why? Because they refused to go see grown-up movies.

There might be some light at the end of the tunnel though. If you look at box-office figures for January 2011, you see a surprising number of people going to Oscar-nominated films. It was getting so bad in America that no one was even interested in films nominated for Oscars. I'm sensing a turnaround this Oscar season. "The King's Speech" is approaching $100 million. "True Grit," a sober, slow, old-fashioned Western, looks like it will hit $175 million. "Black Swan" is huge as well. Suddenly from out of nowhere, adults in America are flocking to Oscar films again.

Perhaps the popcorn mania of the 2000s is waning. After a decade of reliving adolescence, adults may be needing to feel like grown-ups again. Let's hope this trend continues. Here's to a great 2011.

Rabbit Hole: Fascinating Material Not Fully Brought to Life On Screen

2011-01-15T07:44:00.005-05:00

“Rabbit Hole” is not the powerhouse drama I was hoping it would be, but it is a special, deeply humane film. Led by Nicole Kidman, the cast is superb. Especially rich are the performances from Kidman herself and the supporting work from Dianne Wiest (when is Wiest not outstanding?) and young newcomer Miles Teller, in his feature-film debut.

The problem is in the direction. Kidman, who produced the film, chose John Cameron Mitchell to direct, which I think was a mistake. Mitchell, the creative force behind the stage musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” may understand stage plays, but he appears not to have an instinct for cinema. Kidman’s choice was no doubt guided by the fact that “Rabbit Hole” was originally written as a play. The 2006 Broadway production garnered a raft of Tony nominations, including Best Play, and Cynthia Nixon (of “Sex and the City” fame) won as Best Lead Actress. The play, written by David Lindsay-Abaire, also won the Pulitzer Prize.

It can be quite intimidating for a film producer, especially an inexperienced one like Kidman, to approach material that has won the Pulitzer. This is of course made worse by the fact that almost no filmmaker has ever succeeded in turning a great stage play into a sterling film. (Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Mike Nichols’ “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” are the only two major successes that come to mind.)

Mitchell’s directorial approach involved three steps. 1) Coach the actors brilliantly. 2) Set up cameras and lighting/sound equipment around a sound stage. 3) When the actors are ready, turn the cameras on. This is not cinema. There was an inert quality to “Rabbit Hole” that I couldn’t put my finger on. Then I realized what it was: the camera never moved. Mitchell is not a film director. He’s a stage and cabaret director.

Putting the underwhelming direction aside, “Rabbit Hole” still has much to admire and be moved by. It tries to capture the emotional complexities of putting one’s life back together after a life-shattering tragedy. Here the catastrophe is the accidental death of a toddler. The characters suffering through it are the toddler’s mother (Kidman), father (Aaron Eckhart), grandmother (Wiest), and aunt (Tammy Blanchard). What I particularly like is that Abaire made the tragedy a car accident, allowing him to add a character: the teenage boy (Teller) behind the wheel. The film is at its best when Kidman and Teller begin their impossibly difficult and almost holy process of meeting each other. The generation gap between them only makes this more interesting.

Kidman and Mitchell understood beautifully the power and uniqueness of this material. I wish they had had a better sense of how to use the power of cinema to bring it alive more fully on screen.

Blue Valentine: Second-Best Film of 2010

2011-01-02T09:23:00.009-05:00

Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine,” starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, is a small miracle. It is the second-best film of 2010 that I have seen so far, after Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone.” Every year, a film is released at the tail end of the year that shakes things up, forcing many people to edit their Top 10 lists. This year’s late-December surprise is “Blue Valentine.”

Generally, times are bleak for American film. Audiences, even urban audiences, are only interested in popcorn movies. With the audience for artistic projects down to almost nothing, it's almost impossible for artistic films to get made. Simple economics: if a film is almost sure to lose money, who is going to invest a couple million dollars in it?

But miracles do happen, and in 2010 not one but two young American filmmakers, Cianfrance and Granik, burst upon the scene with fresh, thoughtful and soulful works of art. Thank you, Sundance Film Festival, for helping get these films discovered, and kudos to Roadside Attractions and The Weinstein Company for taking the financial risk to market and distribute them. Everyone involved with these films deserves some kind of national medal.

“Blue Valentine” is a tough film to watch at times. My advice: don’t see it with your partner if you are having relationship problems. It depicts in frighteningly realistic fashion the process whereby romantic love disappears, a subject that terrifies most couples. The film is the best exploration of a relationship falling apart that I’ve ever seen. This is not to say that the film is perfect -- it is not. But it is a major achievement.

Cianfrance (pronounced SEE-in-france) here provides a master class on directing, and Williams and Gosling do the same with regard to acting. If Williams and Gosling are not both nominated for Oscars, it will be a travesty. They play their characters in two very different phases of life. One is when they’re young, nubile and trim; the other is when they’ve lost control of their diets and grown puffy and haggard. There’s only about five years’ difference in time between these periods, but it feels more like 20. Gosling and Williams do an astonishing job transforming their bodies to convey the dramatic, almost scary devolution in these people’s lives.

There is exquisite cross-cutting between the time periods, the editing adding an extra level of cinematic poetry. One example is how Cianfrance handles the moment the characters first meet. He first shows us the male character’s perspective and later tells it from the female’s vantage point. The deftness of the cutting is such that we don’t see this retelling coming. It surprises the viewer and yet also emerges organically out of the story. The editing somehow seems to breathe along with the characters and the story. Rarely have I seen an artistic team (director, editor, actors) so in sync with each other and with the characters and story. Only here and there is there a shrill moment or a little film-school pretentiousness. The youthfulness of the filmmaking style will only once or twice remind you of MTV.

As a culture, we like to think that love never dies. If relationships do fall apart, we like to have someone or something to blame. Someone was irresponsible, or abusive, or unfaithful. Cianfrance doesn’t take the easy way out by creating a bad guy. There’s no obvious reason why this couple’s love disappears over time, but there’s no way to deny that this is what happened. This makes “Blue Valentine” all the harder to watch because we sense it could happen to us. By forcing us to look at some of life’s toughest and most mysterious truths, “Blue Valentine” aims at a high artistic level. By succeeding almost across the board, it is a must-see.

Postscript: Because of the brouhaha over the film’s rating, I was expecting a steamy film. Not so. The fact that the film originally got an NC-17 rating appears to be due to a scene involving simulated oral sex. This scene is very tasteful, and the actors are for the most part clothed. I’m not at all surprised that The Weinstein Company was able to get the rating reduced to R without any cutting. Apparently the ratings board believes that vaginal intercourse can be depicted with extreme explicitness but any hint of oral stimulation of genitals ist verboten. A ridiculous double standard. If you’re looking for soft-core porn, you won’t find it in “Blue Valentine.” The poster makes the film look a lot steamier than it is.

Somewhere: Poem About Boredom That Itself is Boring

2010-12-27T18:55:00.004-05:00

Sofia Coppola’s new film, “Somewhere,” is a poem about boredom that itself is boring much of the time. There are moments of exceptional beauty and tenderness, but these are outnumbered by the moments of tedium and repetitiousness.

Just as in her last film, “Marie Antoinette” (2006), Coppola envisions a world that would serve as a compelling backdrop for a story. In the previous film it was Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. Here it’s the world of 21st-century royalty (movie stars). But in both cases, Coppola only provides the backdrop. The viewer is taken up by the director's impressive visual imagination for about 30 minutes and then expects a story to start developing. In both cases, the viewer’s hopes are dashed.

Ms. Coppola showed a lot of promise with "Lost in Translation," one of my Top 10 films of 2003. But since then, she's had trouble. If she doesn't start producing meatier films, I think her days as a filmmaker are numbered.

But then again, perhaps her father will bankroll any idea she comes up with. And let’s face it, Francis Coppola is out of story ideas, too. His last two films, “Youth Without Youth” in 2007 and “Tetro” in 2009, both were visually ravishing but seriously problematic in the story department. Someone has to remind the Coppolas that painting pretty pictures is not filmmaking. Cinema is about stories. The Coppolas have drifted someplace else. Let’s call that place Somewhere.

The Fighter: Fun But Shallow

2010-12-19T13:17:00.007-05:00

“The Fighter,” from director David O. Russell, is shallow and over-long with a surprisingly dull lead performance from Mark Wahlberg. Melissa Leo and Christian Bale more than make up for Wahlberg’s flatness by giving highly comic, over-the-top supporting performances. But even here, everything about the work is superficial. Fun but shallow.

Russell first showed promise in the 1990s with such films as “Flirting with Disaster” and “Three Kings.” In 2004, he wrote and directed the breathtakingly original and philosophically astute “I Heart Huckabees,” which never got the acclaim it deserved. Now after an extended break, Russell brings us “The Fighter,” representing a real step back for him artistically. It appears that Russell wants to become a commercial filmmaker. I certainly understand the need to pay the rent and put one’s kids through college, but I’m not sure producing vacuous work is the only way to earn a living in the movies. Russell is capable of so much more than what is seen on the screen in “The Fighter.” Even the title is bland, for heaven’s sake.

The film tells the story of Dicky and Micky, half-brothers from Lowell, Massachusetts, a depressed former mill town near Boston. Dicky Ecklund (played by Bale) was a minor sensation in the boxing world in the late 1970s, going toe to toe with Sugar Ray Leonard in a notable 1978 bout. After being crowned “The Pride of Lowell,” Ecklund drifted into crack addiction, becoming somewhat renowned in that area as well after a 1995 documentary about the ravages of crack ran on HBO (“High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell”).

Micky Ward (Wahlberg) followed his brother into boxing, going pro in the mid-1980s and then staging a comeback in the late 90s. Ward’s bouts were named Fight of the Year three years in a row by Ring magazine (2001, 2002, and 2003). Now 45, Ward is retired.

The film focuses on the mid-1990s, when Ecklund was knee-deep in crack and Ward was contemplating a comeback, which was in part inspired by his new girlfriend (played adequately by Amy Adams).

Russell has a lot of fun sending up the florid accents and big hair of working-class Lowell, but other than an affectionate parody of that culture, which Wahlberg himself is from, “The Fighter” has little content. This is nothing more than a TV movie with talented actors. Everyone will be mildly entertained by “The Fighter,” but I don’t suspect anyone will be moved by it in a meaningful way.

The King's Speech -- Great Acting Adds Heft to Charming but Slight Film

2010-11-28T16:38:00.005-05:00

“The King’s Speech” is a delightful trifle. It is put together so well by director Tom Hooper and has such a splendid and humane lead performance from Colin Firth that some may mistake it for more than it is. It’s a television-level story tarted up with glistening vocabulary, great sets and costumes, and solid direction. You can polish a piece of glass until it shines brilliantly, but that doesn’t make it a diamond. (I was not exactly surprised when I learned that Hooper is a television director trying his hand at cinema.)

Firth plays Prince Albert, who ascended the British throne just a few years before the start of World War II. We meet him several years before this, when his father, King George V, was in his dotage. Albert and his devoted wife (beautifully and warmly played by Helena Bonham Carter) have been in a years-long struggle to cure Albert of his near-constant stammer. They finally come upon an unorthodox, peculiar speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush, injecting much humor into the role) who becomes a close confidant and aide to Albert all through his reign.

One of the many joys of this enjoyable little film is the extraordinary experience of seeing Firth, Carter and Rush on the screen at the same time. I sometimes felt I had died and gone to acting heaven. Hooper apparently coached them to bring out the humility and warmth of their characters, rather than the stoicism and scholarship that actors typically exude when they play royalty. This was much appreciated.

But it cannot be denied that the story doesn’t go much beyond a celebration of self-esteem. Great acting it may be, but, as a film, great art it is not.

Fair Game: Great Movie for Grown-Ups

2010-11-28T10:44:00.002-05:00

“Fair Game” is a movie for grown-ups. That of course means that no one will go see it. Since the 21st century began, adults have completely lost interest in films made for grown-ups. They only want to see movies made for children and teenagers. If there’s no adolescent quality to the movie, adults won’t touch it.

This is sad because “Fair Game” is one of the best American films of the year, and watching it is a thrilling experience. It tells the true story of Valerie Plame, the covert CIA officer whose life was endangered when her cover was blown by senior officials in the Bush Administration. The film is intelligent and serious but also fast-moving and dramatic. Naomi Watts portrays Ms. Plame, and Sean Penn plays her husband. Both provide under-stated, highly realistic performances that bring the Plame family to life in a vibrant way. The film gets slightly preachy at the end, but for the most part it is level-headed and fair, letting the facts speak for themselves.

Part of why “Fair Game” works so well is that the director, Doug Liman, is an expert in edge-of-your-seat drama. His previous films include “The Bourne Identity” (2002) and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (2005). Here he brings all those entertainment talents to bear on a serious drama. The selection of Liman as director was an inspired choice on the part of the producers.

In addition to learning about the political ruthlessness of Washington, the viewer of “Fair Game” gets an unprecedented lesson in how the CIA functions. This is not only important, it surprisingly also is gripping cinema. I’ve always wondered what it must be like to work there, and what kinds of secrecy people live under. As an example, Plame’s family (her husband and her parents) know that she works at the CIA, but that’s all they know. They have no idea what she actually does. When she goes on international travel, which is often, she lies to her husband and says she’s going to a city in the United States. Her friends are even more in the dark. They think she works at a venture capital outfit. When Plame is “outed” in the national media, it is fascinating to watch her friends confront her with their jaws hanging open. “Valerie, it says in the paper that you work for the CIA.” One of them also asks in a frightened voice, “Have you killed people?” Plame comes clean about being a CIA officer for almost 20 years, but does not give them any more information.

Another aspect of the CIA life that is particularly tough is the knowledge that if your cover is blown, your entire family is in danger. As the mother of two small children, Plame knows this better than anyone. “Fair Game” doesn’t get emotionally manipulative with regard to Plame’s children, but it reminds us many times that Plame is a mother. Their safety cuts to the heart of what makes this Washington “scandal” so disturbing. “Fair Game” is must-see viewing for anyone who cares about current events and anyone who enjoys great movies.

127 Hours: Underwhelming Drama in a Cave

2010-11-27T16:10:00.010-05:00

“127 Hours,” starring James Franco as Aron Ralston, the rock climber who amputated his own forearm during a climbing accident, would have worked better as an HBO Special. As a feature film, it’s underwhelming. There’s simply not enough content. Even the title is thin.

The accident occurs about 20 minutes into the film, and Ralston frees himself only at the tail end of the movie. So for the vast majority of the screen time, we’re down at the bottom of the canyon with Ralston, watching him conserve water, talk to his video camera, urinate, try to chip away at the boulder, etc. It holds one’s interest but is not exactly captivating cinema. Ralston’s realizations in the cave are also not particularly revelatory. He realizes that his parents mean a lot to him, as an example, and that he wishes he had a girlfriend. One would have thought that something more profound would have happened to him down there as he felt the winds of death approach.

It’s a bit surprising that a filmmaker as talented and successful as Danny Boyle would be attracted to this material. He seems too big for it. “Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) was such a global smash and such a magnet for awards, including the Best Picture Oscar, that I suspect Boyle was able to take on just about any project he wanted afterward. Yet he chose something as small as “127 Hours.” Puzzling. Perhaps he was contractually committed to "127 Hours" before "Slumdog" became such a sensation?

Also surprising was the choice of Franco for the lead. When one actor occupies 99% of the screen time, most of the time on his own, you need an actor of uncommon power. Franco is perfectly competent, but he doesn’t have the power to give you goose bumps. He simply cannot cut deeply enough. Pardon the pun. A better choice might have been Cillian Murphy, an actor whom Boyle himself discovered. (Murphy played the lead in Boyle's 2002 horror film, "28 Days Later.")

“127 Hours” is an engaging entertainment that is satisfying but not memorable. Boyle should be taking on more challenging projects than this and working with more powerful actors.

White Material: Imperfect, But Much to Marvel At

2010-11-25T05:27:00.004-05:00

“White Material,” the new film from Claire Denis starring Isabelle Huppert, is ambitious and intelligent, but it is also slack at times, inducing yawns one too many times. Ms. Denis’s sense of editing is not superb here. The screenplay also doesn’t dig that deeply into its characters. Fascinating issues are raised but in a sketchy fashion. Ms. Denis stands at some distance from her characters, seeming to look at them from afar rather than in close-up. The actors also at times seem puzzled by their characters, which can be quite annoying.

“White Material” tells the story of a woman of French descent (Huppert) struggling to hold onto her coffee plantation in Africa during a time of social unrest and armed rebellion. At times, the rebellion seems driven by lingering hostility toward European colonials and the African elites that supported them. At other times, it seems propelled by a rage for vandalism with no ideology whatsoever behind it. An army of hungry orphans comes together and roams the countryside almost indiscriminately terrorizing those they encounter.

A rebel leader (played by Isaach de Bankole, who also appeared in Denis’s first film, “Chocolat,” from 1988) gets separated from his troops and wanders through the outback alone, becoming the subject of much mythical storytelling like a latter-day Che Guevara. But he doesn’t have much of a role in the film. It almost seemed that Denis wanted to give Bankole a role and threw his character together haphazardly. He appears here and there throughout the film in a rather pointless fashion.

But the rebellion is not the focus of the film. Most screen time is devoted to the plantation owner (Huppert) and her family, and they are surprisingly strange. You’ve never seen the descendants of European colonials depicted like this. Part of Denis’s objective seems to be a critique of the whole enterprise of colonialism and its lingering after-effects. The disease of colonialism, she suggests, claimed victims all around, not just the locals. The colonial perpetrators themselves were warped by it as well, and their descendants many generations later are still suffering from many of those perversions and distortions.

Huppert’s character power-walks around the countryside as if she’s the queen. When the social situation gets dangerous, she seems blithely oblivious, as if the locals never even enter her consciousness. She is so used to being in a privileged social position that her mind can’t even conceive of anyone hurting her or her family. Her blitheness initially comes across as courageous but gradually appears delusional. When Denis introduces us to the lady’s family, we see more examples of how the descendants of colonialists have lost their bearings.

The film ends with an explosion of violence that is at times horrifying, much of it chaotic and inexplicable. There are so many layers of bitterness and hostility that you cannot keep track of who is angry at whom. When law and order break down, you get a bizarre cauldron of anti-social rage. At times, Denis depicts this trenchantly and effectively. Other times, it seems like sloppy filmmaking. When Huppert violently turns on a member of her own family, the film particularly comes off the rails.

But there is much to appreciate here. “White Material” is flawed, but it probes some fascinating issues that I don't believe any other filmmaker, black or white, has ever explored. It also is gorgeously filmed, with the majestic screen presence of Huppert, one of the best actresses in cinema today. Huppert continues to astound in her selection of projects. Given her fame, she could easily be cashing in and getting the big-money roles. Instead, she only takes roles in films that are challenging and that have something to say artistically. Her primary goal, as far one can tell, is not to use her gifts to get rich but to use them to help us see life from new perspectives. She is a consummate artist, the French Sean Penn, if you will.

Laura: Over-Rated B Movie

2010-11-21T17:46:00.010-05:00

I finally saw "Laura" from 1944. I've only been wanting to see it for 25 years. I enjoyed it, but it's hardly the classic it's often described as these days. The reputation it has acquired in the past few decades strikes me as completely overblown. I'd describe "Laura" as a very good B picture. It's superficial and formulaic. But it's put together so well that it's a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment. It moves along at a brisk pace, which is particularly refreshing given that no one in America seems to know how to edit films anymore.

"Laura" earned Otto Preminger his first Oscar nomination as Best Director. (He lost to Leo McCarey for "Going My Way," the sleep-inducing film starring Bing Crosby that inexplicably dominated the Oscars that year.) "Laura" did not get a Best Picture nomination, and I'm glad of that. But it did garner several smaller nominations, including for art direction, screenplay, and supporting actor (Clifton Webb). The only Oscar it won was for Best Cinematography, which strikes me as undeserved. I can see it receiving the nomination, but not to be named the greatest achievement in cinematography for the year. It must have been one helluva bad year for cinematography.

Gene Tierney plays the eponymous heroine in a charming but vapid way. The same can be said for Dana Andrews, a B actor if ever there was one, who plays a detective trying to solve a murder. There is a delightful plot twist in the middle of the film, where a murdered character suddenly reappears, saying she had been away for the weekend. So who is the person at the morgue? It's great fun trying to figure it out. But when the puzzle is finally solved, it's a bit anti-climactic.

"Laura" is recommended as a fun, crisp entertainment to enjoy on a lazy evening. It's available on Netflix-on-demand for instant viewing. Let the movie night begin!

Enter the Void: Gaspar the Nazi is Back

2010-11-21T06:51:00.003-05:00

After an eight-year break from movie-making, Gaspar the Nazi is back. Gaspar Noe, the world’s most homophobic filmmaker, is back with a film, “Enter the Void,” that once again depicts gay men as subhuman and describes anal sex in bizarrely detailed fashion. (Noe’s repulsion/fascination with anality would surely prick up Freud’s ears. You know what they say about homophobes.)

It is serious cause for concern that a filmmaker with almost overt Nazi-type viewpoints toward minorities would continue to get funding to produce films and for those films to get worldwide distribution. The Sundance Film Festival this year even showcased his work! There is something disturbing even about reviewing Noe’s work. It gives him legitimacy. But if his films continue to get shown and taken seriously by reputable outfits like Sundance and IFC Films, the U.S. distributor of Noe’s new film, then reviewers are going to have to at least comment on his work. But it does seem that Sundance and IFC Films have some explaining to do. Why would they continue to support this filmmaker and take his work seriously? Furthermore, where’s the global outcry against his work?

***************************************

“Enter the Void” isn’t as terrible as Noe’s previous film, “Irreversible” (2002). Noe still has an axe to grind against gay men, but he is learning how to make films. He also doesn’t peddle the homophobia quite so relentlessly this time. “Enter the Void” does hold one’s interest and does have an effective story. There also are some innovations with art direction and cinematography that have value. But these innovations are minor.

“Enter the Void” tells the story of a brother and sister who were orphaned at a young age. They are both now about 21, and the boy has moved to Tokyo. His sister has just arrived in the city for what appears to be an extended visit. The boy has drifted into heavy drug use and spends the whole first part of the film hallucinating. Noe does a fairly good job capturing the hallucinatory state. In fact, the entire film has a hallucinatory feel.

A tragedy befalls our youngster hero in the early part of the film, and flashbacks then provide us with answers as to how it happened. Of course, a gay man turns out to be responsible for the downfall of this lost but essentially wholesome straight boy. The film seems to pose this question: How will wholesome straight people ever survive in a world being taken over by “dirty” gay men? The word dirty is used in the film to describe gay men, followed by a detailed description of fecal material being involved in gay sex. The implication is that men become gay because they are attracted to fecal material. (Reminder: the gay bar that Noe imagines in “Irreversible” is called The Rectum. Where do you begin to do a psychoanalysis of a person like this? What is Noe struggling with inside himself and then projecting onto gay men?)

The film deepens when flashbacks are used to explain how the brother and sister were orphaned. These sequences are heart wrenching. They are a bit predictable and emotionally manipulative, but they create a deep emotional connection between the brother and sister characters, giving the film much more resonance than would otherwise have been the case. Noe proves effective as well in working with child actors.

Gradually the film turns its attention to the sister, and we watch as she gets work in Tokyo as a stripper. She also becomes the concubine of the man who owns the strip club. This leads to an unplanned pregnancy and an abortion filmed in lurid detail. Maybe Noe will focus his next film on the evils of abortion. I can’t wait for that. Noe appears to be as fascinated by dead fetuses as he is by fecal material and men’s rectums. What an artistic imagination.

The Social Network: Is Facebook Really That Interesting?

2010-11-18T04:55:00.006-05:00

“The Social Network,” the new film from music-video helmsman turned film director David Fincher (Madonna’s “Vogue” video, “Fight Club,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), is a moderately enjoyable entertainment about moderately interesting subject matter. It tells the story of the creation of Facebook, today’s most popular social-networking website, by a group of Harvard undergrads in 2003-4.

Sure, Facebook is astoundingly popular, with approximately 500 million members, but is the social-networking phenomenon really that interesting? Cell phones are even more popular. Do we envision movies about the development of cell phones? Full disclosure: your reviewer has a Facebook page and posts status updates on it two or three times a month. I also glance at my friends’ status updates to keep abreast of their life developments. What’s so interesting about that? People posting tidbits about themselves to stay connected with each other in between phone calls. Seems pretty ordinary to me.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (of “West Wing” fame) appears to think the creation of Facebook is fascinating, given that he devoted countless hours to adapting a screenplay from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book, “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.” But oddly enough, nothing in the script indicates what Sorkin finds so interesting. It’s a rather dull, by-the-numbers script, following the hackneyed conventions of its genre. To suss out the tabloid level of Mezrich’s journalism, all you have to do is look at the subtitle of his book: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius! (There’s no sex, by the way. It appears that this was simply thrown in to sell the book.)

The film’s opening sequence, with rapid-fire dialogue between Facebook visionary and former Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend at the time, gives the impression that the movie is going to be a complex drama with multiple layers of social criticism. Not so. The movie quickly turns into a standard melodrama about a creative team coming together and then falling apart. “The Social Network” would fit right in on The Lifetime Channel or TBS. The deepest point the film makes is that Zuckerberg was socially alienated.

Zuckerberg is the lead character, played adequately by Jesse Eisenberg (“Zombieland,” “Adventureland”). Also featured are several of Zuckerberg’s Harvard cohorts, including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). Zuckerberg eventually comes into contact with Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster (a supporting role played dazzlingly by Justin Timberlake), who encourages the team to dream bigger. Predictably, the bond between Zuckerberg and Parker makes Saverin jealous. A considerable amount of time is spent contrasting the business strategies of Saverin and Parker. Saverin wants to court advertisers; Parker wants to court venture capitalists. I kept asking myself, Who cares about commercial strategies? Often “The Social Network” felt more like a feature article in the Wall Street Journal than a film.

In addition to the overall thinness of the material, there is the problem of dramatic structure. Fincher tells the story largely in flashback. As an example, a scene will depict a legal deposition, with Saverin’s legal team peppering Zuckerberg with questions. A painfully hackneyed editing approach is then used to cross-cut between the legal interrogation and flashbacks of the events being discussed. It’s hard to believe that a major filmmaker like Fincher would employ a technique so ordinary. It was so conventional as to be yawn-inducing within the first half-hour. This approach to dramatic structure also eliminated the possibility of surprise because the viewer knows from the start where the characters are going to end up: in a legal dispute. It also is amazing how many scenes of legal depositions there are in the film. Lawyers sitting around a table are not exactly the stuff of great drama.

And “The Social Network” is not great cinema. It lies limp on the screen for the most part, coming most alive at the rare times when Timberlake is on screen. When will Timberlake get the lead role he deserves?

Howl: Morally Important But Predictable Exploration of a Young Allen Ginsberg

2010-10-10T18:34:00.005-04:00

"Howl," starring James Franco as a young Allen Ginsberg, is more of a sketch than a fully developed work of art. It doesn't dig very deep, but it does capture nicely some of the essence of what made Ginsberg's poem "Howl" (1956) a masterpiece and such a lightning rod for controversy.

It also effectively and warmly explores some of the life challenges that propelled the young man from New Jersey to write such explosive and iconoclastic poetry. Chief among these, the film suggests, was the fact that Ginsberg had fallen in love with a man, his college roommate, Jack Kerouac, who himself would go on to become a literary star.

Much of the howling that the poem depicts, it would seem, was that of gay men trying to find ways to resist the oppression that strangled them morning, noon and night. "Howl" (the film) to a large degree presents Ginsberg as a courageous pioneer and grandfather of the modern gay rights movement.

In this way, the film is both moving and predictable. We've seen this kind of heroic treatment a million times before. Far more interesting would have been a consideration of the negative traits of Ginsberg alongside the courageous. Hagiography is so easy to do that I'm not sure a filmmaker of Rob Epstein's caliber should lower himself to traffic in it. (Epstein won an Oscar for 1984's "The Times of Harvey Milk," one of the greatest documentaries of all time.)

Ginsberg himself would surely have preferred a more balanced treatment. In a set of personal conversations I had with Ginsberg in 1987, he said: "I'm an asshole and a coward just like everybody else."

Porcupine Tree Live at Radio City Music Hall: Sonic Monsters

2010-09-25T00:26:00.014-04:00

Porcupine Tree, the 20-year-old Progressive Rock band from England that is just now attracting a big following in the U.S., played the venerable and gorgeous Radio City Music Hall on September 24 to an enthusiastic, near-sell-out crowd of mostly white males in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Rush fans from New Jersey were particularly well represented.

The three-hour show started off with a soft acoustic set and slowly grew to a tidal wave of sound and imagery. Porcupine Tree is a band that takes video seriously as an art form. Throughout the entire second half of the show, the back wall of the stage functioned as a gigantic video screen, displaying haunting and intelligent visual art that resembled more cinema than video. The video broadened the live experience tremendously and in a way that somehow didn't overpower the music. The experience was still primarily sonic.

And what a sonic experience Porcupine Tree is. They're not musical geniuses by any stretch. (No one will mistake lead songwriter Steven Wilson for Jimmy Page.) They are sometimes quite exceptional, however. At their best, Porcupine Tree builds walls of sound that are crushing in their impact and swirling guitar-and-keyboard rhythms that take on the quality of tornadoes. They get so heavy at times that their style is often described as Progressive Metal instead of Progressive Rock.

Yet the band also has a pronounced soft side, which they are determined to keep on the front burner. Most of the band's fans probably favor the heavy numbers, but the band is as committed to soft ballads as sonic monsters.

---unfinished--

Jack Goes Boating: Ambitious But Imperfect

2010-09-19T20:20:00.016-04:00

Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, "Jack Goes Boating," is a very odd film. I applaud Hoffman heartily for having the courage to be unusual at a time when originality is hated by audiences from coast to coast. We also need to thank Overture Films for their gutsiness in distributing a film that so goes against the grain of these moronic times at the movies. (A time when millions of people think "Avatar" was the greatest achievement in cinema in 2009.)

One of the things I love about "Jack Goes Boating" is that it's about ordinary people struggling with the things ordinary people struggle with. It's so authentic. Hoffman plays a limousine driver with about a seventh-grade education, the kind of man you see everywhere in New York. The kind of man who drives movie stars around all day. The kind of man no movie star ever notices. Hoffman notices.

Playing his best friend and fellow limo driver is John Ortiz, who is so good that he may get a considerable number of Supporting Actor nominations at the end of the year. He even may win a few. While Hoffman gets top billing, the story is almost as much about Ortiz' character, who battles with love and loneliness as much as Hoffman's character.

As the film starts, Ortiz and his girlfriend (Daphne Rubin-Vega) have set Hoffman up with Connie (beautifully played by Amy Ryan), a woman as socially inept and awkward as Hoffman's character. Initially you think the film is going to be the standard parody of extreme dorks and idiot savants. Gradually though, almost without you realizing it, the film gets deeper and more complex. In the last 20 minutes, you end up with one of the most raw and trenchant sequences depicting romantic implosion as you're likely ever to see. I was even reminded of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" From light comedy to Virginia Woolf -- how's that for surprising shifts in tone and content?!

The problem is that sometimes the extreme originality comes across arch and downright weird. It doesn't flow effortlessly at every moment. When it's at its best, "Jack Goes Boating" is an absolute feast for the mind and heart. It may not be perfect, but it's one of the most ambitious and interesting films of the year. There are still Americans making movies that are works of art! This is cause for great celebration.

"Jack Goes Boating" stands alongside "Winter's Bone" as the most artistic American films of 2010 thus far. Being artistic of course means they'll be the two films that generate the least interest among American audiences. In 2010, no one has any interest in artistic cinema. Big, stupid entertainments are all anyone's interested in at the movies today. (Another viewing of "The Expendables" anyone?) Thank heavens for directors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Debra Granik. They remind us that not everyone in America has become an entertainment-addicted philistine choking on bubblegum.

The American -- Gorgeous Cinematography, Thin Story

2010-09-12T09:07:00.005-04:00

It should be no surprise that a music-video director would produce a film as beautiful and thin as "The American." It's also no shock that it would be almost wordless. In his second feature film (after "Control," about 1980s new wave band Joy Division), Anton Corbijn brings us "The American," the story of a lonely, melancholy hit man wandering around exotic locales in Europe.

Given his profession, the main character (played quite well by George Clooney) has trouble trusting people. Whenever a beautiful woman captures his heart, he wonders if she's a paid agent setting him up to be killed. Sometimes she is. Sometimes she's an innocent who herself gets caught in the cross-hairs. This is a tough way to live.

Unfortunately, the film has little to say about it. It's depicted fairly well, with lots of wordless, evocative imagery. The cinematography is masterful from start to finish. The film does not dig very deep, however. Like any music-video director, Corbijn just hints at things. In the hands of a more talented director and with an actual screenwriter involved in the project, "The American" might have been a major achievement.

As it stands, "The American" is a mid-tier achievement. It does raise some interesting questions, and its intentions are intelligent and serious. Clooney and the top-notch supporting cast, which includes several European character actors we don't often see on American screens, are a joy to watch. The cinematography also takes one's breath away over and over. "The American" has many strong aspects. Would that it had a more fully baked story.

Winter's Bone: Breakthrough American Film of 2010

2010-07-17T08:44:00.008-04:00

"Winter's Bone" is one of the best films I've seen thus far in 2010. You don't just watch this film; it seeps into your soul. It's not a perfect film, but at times it is absolutely stellar. Welcome to the upper echelon of American filmmakers, Debra Granik. Considering that this is only Granik's second film, her achievement is all the more stunning.

The speed of her artistic ascent is perhaps at least in part due to the fact that Ms. Granik is not that young. She entered the world of filmmaking as an adult and is now in her later 40s. In the years before she picked up a camera, Granik clearly was thinking deeply about life and developing an exceptional artistic voice. It is cause for celebration that she finally got the courage to get behind the camera and that someone gave her enough money to do it. We owe her investors a debt of gratitude.

Likewise, we have the Sundance Film Festival to thank. They gave "Winter's Bone" their Grand Jury Prize earlier this year, which no doubt helped the film attract a distributor.

If Granik is the breakthrough American director of the year, the 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence (pictured above), who plays the lead character, is the breakthrough American actor of the year. I am reasonably confident that Ms. Lawrence will in six months' time be celebrating her first Oscar nomination.

She plays a teenage girl in a deeply rural corner of Missouri (think Appalachia), where people live in the forest and have houses that are essentially log cabins. Her father has recently disappeared. She is left to fend for herself and take care of her young siblings and catatonic mother. She has to find Dad or she will lose her house. So she goes out on a trek to find out what happened to him, stumbling inadvertently into something very dangerous.

Shot completely on location in the deep woods with a cast that appears to include many locals, "Winter's Bone" is profoundly authentic. You feel transported to the Ozark Mountains. The sounds, the smells, the music, the trees, the ruggedness, the wildlife, the quiet. Debra Granik is a master of ethnographic cinema, capturing on film the feel of the place where her story is set.

She has a gift also for story development, which is so rare these days. She knows a good story when she sees one. But there is room for improvement in her ability to move the story along. There are several passages in "Winter's Bone" that are a bit inert, where the film kind of collapses. It them comes roaring back to life five or 10 minutes later, but there are too many such dead pockets. Granik has work to do in developing her sense of editing. Other than that she is a nearly perfect director.

I look forward to my opportunity to see the deeply soulful, tough, frightening and compassionate "Winter's Bone" a second time.

Trash Humpers: Most Interesting Failed Project of 2010

2010-05-11T22:17:00.007-04:00

Harmony Korine is not backing down. Just when you thought he'd start toning it down to curry favor with American critics, who at this point just ignore him, Korine brings us "Trash Humpers," his most radical project yet.

"Trash Humpers" is a failure, but it's the most interesting failure since Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" (2007). In these profoundly unoriginal times (I am beginning to wonder if even the concept of originality is disappearing from the American mental landscape), it's heady tonic indeed to encounter Harmony Korine's creativity. How many American filmmakers today can you say are one of a kind, completely unlike anything that has come before?

The best parts of "Trash Humpers" are the first half-hour and last 10 minutes. In between is some of the most random, shallow, repetitious, infantile, unwatchably bad cinema you'll ever see. However, I appreciate Korine's courage in taking extreme risks by including footage like this. American culture desperately needs more filmmakers willing to take risks. It behooves everyone who cares about American culture to see "Trash Humpers" in a theater or rent it on DVD. We need to send a message with our dollars that we value courageous, extreme art even when it is not a complete success.

"Trash Humpers" could be interpreted in a million different ways, as of course is the case with all avant-garde art. I saw the most interesting parts of the film as a cross between horror and satire, with Korine depicting humanity (or at least a subset of humanity) as a worm-like or vermin-like species traveling in packs, randomly vandalizing and humping everything around them. A recurring image is of them humping large plastic trash cans. This was such an important part of Korine's vision that he made it the title of the project. I found the vandalism sequences much more engaging and disturbing than the copulation with trashcans, which gradually became more silly and repetitious than anything else.

Most interesting of all was that Korine fitted the four main actors (one of whom was Korine himself, it appears) with gruesome masks, making them appear like a different species. He also develops a new approach to cinematography such that everything was blurry. This enhanced the feeling that this subhuman race was so disgusting that it was difficult to look at them. The camera itself seemed to be squinting, both drawn to and repelled by what it was capturing.

I couldn't quite make out what Korine did to get this effect. At times it appeared he had first shot the footage on a cheap videocamera and played it back on a cheap TV. Then he set up another videocamera to film the images flickering on the TV monitor. Footage of footage. I found this experimentation with form for the most part creative, innovative, and conducive to further reflection on the film's repulsive and strange content.

At times, however, Korine self-consciously made it seem like we were watching a very old VHS tape, complete with some passages that appeared to go in rewind. I didn't find this homage to VHS either innovative or interesting. I am surprised that Korine would stoop so low as to traffic in nostalgia. But mercifully these faux-rewinding sequences were few and far between.

Other radical aspects of the film/video include a complete break with narrative and a near-complete break with dialogue. What we get is a series of vignettes strung together in pretty much random order, with little to no dialogue in each. Korine is conveying an overall impression rather than telling a story. Surprisingly, when dialogue was used, the film was at its weakest. I wish Korine had remained wordless throughout. The horror aspects would have been conveyed more effectively without dialogue.

Exit Through the Gift Shop: Street Art Finally Hits the Screen

2010-05-02T10:49:00.001-04:00

"Exit Through the Gift Shop," the first and probably last film by underground street-artist Banksy, has a smashing last half-hour, but you have to swim through a lot of rather dull footage to get there. The film is a modest achievement, but it does provide some much-needed documentation of the street-art movement of the last 20 years.

The film began as a project of a semi-educated and apparently semi-retarded man by the name of Thierry Guetta. There's a fine line between eccentric and developmentally disabled, and Guetta skirts that line.

At some point in his young adulthood, Guetta began aimlessly filming just about everything he experienced. Wandering around with a videocamera, he started filming one of his relatives, a street-artist in Paris. Pretty soon, Guetta had recorded thousands of hours of footage of street artists around the world, but he had no capacity to edit the material in a meaningful way. He never even looked at the footage after he recorded it.

Eventually he crosses paths with Banksy, the Andy Warhol of street art, and the two collaborate on several projects that nearly get both of them arrested. I won't give away any more of the film, as the most interesting parts have to do with how the project changed hands, going from a Guetta to a Banksy project. All I can say is, thank heavens for Banksy, who deserves his reputation as the deepest and most intelligent of the street artists. There is a brilliant turning of the tables at the end, involving, of all people, Madonna. The ending is worth waiting for.

Ghost Writer: Smart, Stylish Thriller for Grown-Ups

2010-04-27T23:35:00.006-04:00

"Ghost Writer" is a skillfully directed, Hitchcockian political thriller. It follows a very standard formula, but Roman Polanski lifts everything to a higher level through his extraordinarily assured and beautiful direction.

The editing is often languid, draining some of the life out of the film. I also object to the scurrilous insinuations about Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and especially about his wife. Polanski appears to have gotten seduced in recent years by a particularly paranoid faction of the loony left, which at times makes the film laughable.

But there's no denying the filmmaking skill here. And it's a pleasure to see a reasonably intelligent film made exclusively for well-educated adults. Someone is still making movies for grown-ups!

While watching the film, I was often reminded of Polanski's 1974 masterpiece, "Chinatown." Though the films are very different (and "Chinatown" is vastly better), there are numerous parallels that offer interesting food for thought. As an example, both movies depict an ordinary man (in this case a hard-working ghost writer played by Ewan McGregor) caught up in a world of intrigue and danger that he barely understands.

Open Letter to NY Times: More Artists, Fewer Pop Celebs

2010-04-18T17:15:00.005-04:00

Is the NY Times becoming increasingly like USA Today? Two artists are profiled on page one of the Arts section in today's NY Times (Sun, Apr 18). Whom did they choose to profile? Courtney Love and Demi Moore. Isn't it a massive stretch even to call these two women artists? Do these women produce interesting works of art worth front-page coverage in the premier artistic newspaper in the nation?

Where are the front-page profiles of serious actresses such as Samantha Morton, Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Nina Hoss? These women consistently put artistic depth and quality first when they choose projects. Isn't that exactly what makes them perfect for a NY Times profile? Instead we get a profile of a shallow pop celeb like Demi Moore.

What about fascinating filmmakers like Karen Moncrieff ("Blue Car" and "The Dead Girl"), Laurie Collyer ("Sherrybaby"), Zoe Cassavetes ("Broken English"), Sophie Barthes ("Cold Souls"), Lynne Ramsay ("Ratcatcher" and "Morvern Callar"), and Tamara Jenkins ("The Savages")? Courtney Love is more interesting than these women? What is happening to American culture when even at the NY Times serious cinema artists don't register on the radar? The more brainless and pop-confectionary someone's work is, the more we're interested in them?

It would seem to me that the reporters and editors at the Times would see it as their responsibility to draw attention to significant artists. Instead, they draw more attention to pop celebs who already get wall-to-wall coverage in trashy tabloids. Is the Times now aspiring to be the print version of 'Entertainment Tonight'?

In all the other arts (such as dance, painting, and classical music), the Times skews toward the deep and intelligent. Have the Arts editors at the paper forgotten that intelligent films are still being made? They are getting made; it's just that everyone in America is overlooking them. Apparently this now includes the Arts editors at the Times.

The Runaways: Worst Film of 2010 So Far

2010-04-17T18:31:00.001-04:00

"The Runaways" wins my vote for Worst Film of 2010 so far. First-time screenwriter/ director Floria Sigismundi (yes, that really is her name), who has mostly done music videos, demonstrates an almost complete lack of filmmaking talent. The shallowness of "The Runaways" is almost frightening.

Dakota Fanning is the star, playing Cherie Currie, lead singer of the short-lived and fairly uninteresting mid-1970s rock band The Runaways. Ms. Currie, who is still alive, wrote a memoir, "Neon Angel," upon which the film is based. I haven't read it, but I'm guessing, based on the film, that it's got all the depth you'd expect from a book by the Pussycat Dolls.

Ms. Fanning tries to act, even though she is given almost no dialogue or dramatic situations to work with; not so for Kristen Stewart, who sleepwalks along the margins of the movie, playing Joan Jett, founder of the band.

Sigismundi appeared to be excited by the project because it gave her the opportunity to play with 1970s costumes and hairstyles. Like me, she was a teenager in that epoch. I yield to no one in my appreciation for 70s rock culture, in which I was deeply involved. (I discovered rock in 1976, when at the age of 12 I first heard KISS.) But if all one appreciates is that epoch's clothing and hair, then one doesn't have a clue as to what it was about.

Sigismundi also seems to have been excited about filming girl-on-girl eroticism. I certainly like the idea of doing some long-overdue truth-telling about the extent of bisexuality among rock fans, but Sigismundi takes a shallow approach to that as well. Not once do we see the characters reflecting on what they're experiencing as they explore bisexuality. In fact, that's a good way to summarize Sigismundi's approach to filmmaking: she depicts a world where no one thinks. I presume this is because she herself barely ever thinks. Keep that hairstyle cool and that head empty.

Greenberg: Great Protagonist, No Story

2010-04-10T22:00:00.004-04:00

Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg" is only 107 minutes long, but it seems to go on forever. The first 30 minutes are hilarious, but then the film starts repeating itself -- over and over and over. The lead character (played by Ben Stiller) is a brilliant creation, but Baumbach didn't come up with a compelling story to build around the character. After a half-hour of watching his quirkiness and irascibility, the novelty wears off. I kept waiting for Act 2 to begin, and it never did.

Morvern Callar: Haunting, But a Bit Rudderless

2010-03-27T20:54:00.007-04:00

"Morvern Callar" (2002), the second feature film from British writer/director Lynne Ramsay (after 1999's heart-breaking and unfairly overlooked "Ratcatcher"), is an enigmatic film with almost no dialogue. It tells the story of a twenty-something supermarket clerk (played by the always intriguing Samantha Morton) who skates along the surfaces of life, going from party to party. Ramsay's artistic goals are hard to pinpoint, but one of them here seems to be a fairly scathing indictment of 1990s British youth culture.

Morton's character, named Morvern Callar, is a girl from a lower-middle-class background living in a small town in Scotland. She has a pleasant demeanor but little to say. She only hangs around with people her age, and their favorite pastime is all-night raves where drugs and alcohol flow liberally. Let's just say that reading books is the last thing on the minds of these 23-year-olds. Their greatest happiness is a feeling of oblivion. Ramsay may not like ravers very much, but she certainly gets them. The depiction of aimless youth is better here than I've probably seen anywhere.

The problem is that it doesn't make for very compelling viewing. Boring people don't often make arresting protagonists. Ramsay also doesn't push her agenda with much intensity. She starts to seem as bored with the film as the characters are bored with life. I like the basic idea of the project very much, and there is a haunting quality to the filmmaking, just like there was with "Ratcatcher." But Ramsay got stalled in the story development, never fully baking her ideas. "Callar" has a sketchy, fragmentary quality that isn't very engaging.

There is one story thread that tightens up substantially at the tail end of the film involving a spectacular attempt at plagiarism and a dead boyfriend. The film would have been stronger had Ramsay focused on this more. She seemed determined to drain the movie of as much story as possible, when there were several threads begging for development.

There's no mistaking, however, that Lynne Ramsay is a talented, original, intelligent and genuinely artistic filmmaker. Even a weaker piece of work from her has more value in it than the mountain of prefabricated entertainment product being churned out in America today. Cinephiles the world over owe it to themselves to cross paths with Ramsay's work. I'm very disappointed that Ramsay has had trouble getting a third film together. I wait with bated breath for her return to filmmaking.

Piano Teacher: Not a Masterpiece, But Interesting and Compelling

2010-02-20T16:02:00.009-05:00

Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which took second prize at Cannes in 2001, tells the story of a woman who is a tyrannical piano instructor by day and a denizen of porn stores by night. She is also a masochist, begging her handsome and talented new student to hit, strangle and dominate her.

Haneke's direction is firm, formally excellent, visually gorgeous, and pitiless in its depiction of human frailty. Many sequences in the film are so arresting and blunt that they are almost frightening.

I love the basic idea of the film, which is to probe into the layers of disappointment and hope that lead ordinary people to mistreat one another and invest erotic attraction with antagonism. But Haneke doesn't go very deep in his exploration, and neither does Isabelle Huppert, the lead actress. They remain fairly aloof from the main character's suffering and desire. Thus we don't go too much further than watching from across the room as she jousts with those around her.

When the jousting becomes sexual, the film becomes particularly tedious. Watching sado-masochists do their business is about as engaging as watching someone urinate on himself. I kept waiting for more depth in this slightly overlong film (2 hours and 10 minutes) and was left somewhat dissatisfied. Yet the strengths of "The Piano Teacher" are numerous and significant enough that any serious cinephile will find plenty to marvel at here.

Haneke reminds me of his fellow European auteur Lars von Trier. Neither is a great artist, but both consistently probe human weakness in unique and powerful ways. I consider them two of the most important and genuinely artistic filmmakers working today.

(Haneke's most recent film, "The White Ribbon," incidentally, is not to be missed. It will likely be thought of in years to come as his best film. It took the top prize at Cannes and is now the frontrunner to win the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film of 2009.)

Top 10 Films of 2009

2010-01-06T12:54:00.008-05:00

Here are my Top 10 films of 2009, with several Honorable Mentions as well. It was generally a bad year for American film, but there were a handful of gems.

1. The Hurt Locker (one of the 10 best films of the decade -- Kathryn Bigelow joins ranks of world's top filmmakers)

2. The White Ribbon (brilliant, troubling film from Austria's Michael Haneke that won top prize at Cannes)

3. A Woman in Berlin (from Germany -- most criminally overlooked film of the year)

4. Crazy Heart (small, tremendously authentic film with great performances from Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall, plus best soundtrack of the year)

5. Where the Wild Things Are (most under-rated mainstream film of the year -- and second-best soundtrack of year)

6. The Headless Woman (challenging, uncompromising film from Argentina about bourgeois corruption)

7. Cold Souls (U.S./Russian comedy with deep undercurrent of sadness starring Paul Giamatti and stellar supporting cast)

8. Funny People (much more tragedy than comedy with brave, pitch-black, Oscar-caliber performance from Adam Sandler -- yes, it needed better editing, but it also had extraordinary elements)

9. Star Trek (much more than just a popcorn movie -- director J.J. Abrams demonstrates Spielberg-esque talents)

10. Humpday (wildly original and daring handmade film undermining 20th-century notions of sexual orientation)

Honorable Mentions: The Messenger, The Princess and the Frog, Avatar, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, Sin Nombre, The Girlfriend Experience, Bright Star, District 9, An Education, The Limits of Control, The Road, Precious, Passing Strange: The Movie, Antichrist, Lorna's Silence, The Soloist, Public Enemies, Two Lovers.

The White Ribbon: Magnificent and Troubling

2009-12-30T19:29:00.010-05:00

The brilliant and scalding "The White Ribbon" is the second-best film of 2009, after "The Hurt Locker."

The film, from controversial director Michael Haneke, won the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and I can certainly see why. It proves that Cannes is still an artistic organization of the highest order, perhaps the world's greatest defender of artistic cinema.

"White Ribbon" is a quietly brutal evisceration of traditional German culture set in a fictional village on the eve of World War I. The (fictional) local schoolteacher narrates the film as an old man, probably from the vantage point of 1955 or so, when all Germans and Austrians were trying to figure out how their culture could have produced one of the most evil socio-political movements in human history. (Although few people seem to remember that what the Spaniards, English, and French did to exterminate Native Americans and then enslave Africans was even worse. It just happened a longer time ago.)

The film brings the schoolteacher's memories to life, and we watch the strange goings-on in his village. Some terrible things occur, the details of which I'll leave out. Let's just say that several people, including a few children, get seriously hurt. The acts of violence are just the tip of the iceberg, however. Just about every relationship between human beings is shot through with hostility and brutality. The way parents, especially fathers, for example, terrorize their children is shocking. The way a man degrades his former mistress is one of the most quietly mean scenes I've ever seen in a film. Humiliation is the main weapon villagers use to stomp on each other.

Victims rarely fight back. They seek revenge by doing things like attacking the children of their persecutors. It is unspeakably awful. What is so fascinating is the pervasive web of emotional mutilation. These are not isolated instances; they are expressions of a social system. This is Haneke's brilliance. He has found a way to imagine a society built on day-to-day sadism and militaristic hierarchy, and it is believable. "White Ribbon" is so true to life that it almost seems like a documentary. Haneke does an astonishing job with the actors, many of them children, who give wondrously naturalistic performances.

"White Ribbon" calls to mind another German-language film, "The Lives of Others" (2006), which skillfully imagined the poisonous society of Communist East Germany. I suspect that Haneke took inspiration from that near-masterpiece, wanting to do something similar for early-20th-century German society, which was responsible for producing Prussian militarism and then Nazism.

Haneke almost perfectly achieves his goal. The only weakness in "The White Ribbon" is that it occasionally drags unnecessarily. A few nips and tucks would have improved it. At times also it is so unremittingly hostile to traditional German culture, that it comes across as a bit one-sided and unfair. I suspect that German villagers such as the ones Haneke imagined had some good qualities. Here most of them are depicted as complete monsters. That can't have been the entire story.

But even with these drawbacks, "White Ribbon" is a magnificent film that will stimulate minds and break hearts for decades to come. It will also no doubt inspire countless young people to become filmmakers. This will be the last film I see this decade. How fantastic to end a decade with such a true work of art, especially after being pounded week after week in 2009 by American films that aspire to nothing but box-office returns.

Nine: Fun, Sexy and Opulent, But Something Missing

2009-12-28T21:38:00.010-05:00

"Nine," Rob Marshall's second big-screen adaptation of a Broadway musical (after the Oscar-winning "Chicago"), is fun, and there are some great musical numbers. But there is something missing overall. As an example, Marshall did little more than put the camera on a tripod and turn it on to film the musical numbers. I've rarely seen such uninspired cinematography. Oddly, a film about directing movies has little directorial passion of its own.

The superstar cast seemed to put all their energy into learning to sing and dance, and they do a fine job musically. But most of them forgot about acting. Only Marion Cotillard succeeds at bringing a real character to life. Daniel Day-Lewis never fully comes alive as Guido Contini, an Italian movie director struggling with a massive case of writer's block.

The musical, which is based on Federico Fellini's classic film "8 1/2," depicts a Fellini-like director trying to write a screenplay that is long overdue. The cast and crew are being assembled, all eager to work with the much-heralded genius, but he cannot write a word of dialogue. Instead of writing, he daydreams about the women in his life. His mind is like a stage, and one-by-one he welcomes each woman to that stage to express herself. But in between there is so little story and character development, that the film takes on the quality of a string of disconnected music videos. The stand-out numbers are Kate Hudson's and Fergie's, but neither of these actresses is given any character to work with.

If I had been Marshall, I would have gone back to Fellini's film for inspiration and used that as a guide to dig deeper into the characters. If the stage musical had thin dialogue and characterization, then I would have enriched it with additional script development. Marshall didn't look for character depth; all his concern was on the musical numbers.

All in all, I'd say that any fan of musical theater will get plenty of enjoyment out of "Nine," but I'm sure most will consider "Chicago" or "Dreamgirls" much better film adaptations of Broadway shows.

Crazy Heart: Second-Best American Film of 2009

2009-12-23T03:29:00.003-05:00

I love Christmastime, when mainstream theaters suddenly get filled with thoughtful, unique films for grown-ups. I especially love it when small films come from out of nowhere and have the potential to rocket to the front of the Oscar race. This year's Christmas surprise is "Crazy Heart," from first-time writer/director Scott Cooper in one of the most exciting filmmaking debuts in years.

"Crazy Heart" is not a masterpiece. But in a year when American films were horrendously cautious, focused on currying favor with the most mindless critics and audiences, "Crazy Heart" stands out for at least having some artistry.

Jeff Bridges, in one of the best and most authentic performances of the year, plays Bad Blake, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking bluesman long forgotten by the mainstream. He struggles to make ends meet by playing holes in the wall across the Southwest. In the opening sequence, Blake is reduced to performing in a bowling alley. By curtain time, he is so drunk he can barely stand up. The handful of fifty- and sixtysomethings in the audience are enthusiastic anyway. The crowds may be small, the venues shabby, and the frontman drunk, but everyone knows they're hearing the best country-blues left in a bland, suburbanized America filled with cookie-cutter franchises. If there's one thing Bad Blake is not, it's a franchisee. Amen to that.

One could say the same thing about Jeff Bridges himself. Let's hope this is Bridges' Oscar year at last. It's been a long time coming. Perfectly coiffed movie stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt get all the attention, but Bridges has put out vastly more interesting material than they have for 25 years running.

I also hope Scott Cooper gets an Oscar nod as Best Director. But I'm not hopeful, as the directors' wing is notoriously averse to heralding newcomers. While we're at it, let's say a prayer that the deeply soulful and original Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall receive Supporting Actress/Actor nominations. Based upon the Golden Globes' near-complete dismissal of "Crazy Heart," I'm not hopeful about that either.

Ms. Gyllenhaal here plays a single mother struggling to become an independent journalist. Romantic embers begin to glow almost immediately when she meets Blake to conduct an interview in a broken-down motel. Duvall, playing one of Blake's only long-time friends, as usual gets deep into the fiber of his character's being. (Duvall also was mesmerizing this year in a short but indelible sequence in "The Road" -- another film way too heavy for the mainstream this year. Should 2009 be dubbed the Year of the American Idiot?)

"Crazy Heart" drifts a bit into soap opera at the end, but it still stands out as one of the best films of the year. I rank it the second-best American film of 2009, after "Hurt Locker." It also contains the greatest music I've heard in a film since "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" If "Crazy Heart" does not at least win some awards for music, I might hang myself.

Avatar: Imaginative Concept, Spectacular Visuals, Thin Story

2009-12-21T21:09:00.006-05:00

"Avatar" is a futuristic feast for the eyes that envisions a magical faraway world. But the film, from "Titanic" director James Cameron, has a documentary tone too often, feeling like an episode of PBS's "Nova" series. The story is also so simple and formulaic that it's hard to get excited when the drama finally heats up. Excessive length (2 hours and 40 mins) doesn't help either.

But there's still an enchanting quality to "Avatar," making it impossible not to recommend it. And the heartfelt warning about the need to protect Earth's last rainforests is stirring and urgent, if a bit overly obvious.

Sam Worthington, a relatively unknown Australian actor, plays a macho Marine caught up in a special mission to a distant planet called Pandora (great name), where humanoid creatures called Na'vi have begun interacting with Earthlings, some even learning English. A fascinating technology, the details of which I won't reveal, allows Worthington and a few other Earthlings to become Na'vi and explore Pandora from their perspective. Sigourney Weaver (from Cameron's "Aliens" film) is refreshingly cantankerous as the lead scientist on the mission. Worthington's love interest, a Na'vi princess, is played wonderfully by Zoe Saldana.

The central drama concerns a businessman (Giovanni Ribisi) struggling to extract minerals from Pandora and paying a platoon of Marines to assist him. Worthington gets caught between the scientists who love Pandora and the businessman who sees the planet as a resource to be plundered and its inhabitants worthless savages. You can already see the simplistic good-guys-versus-bad-guys structure to the story. The interesting question is which side Worthington's character is going to take.

I wish Cameron had dug deeper into Worthington's dilemma. The film would have been immeasurably deepened by getting into his head more. Cameron is so busy exploring the flora and fauna of Pandora that he forgets that movies are about people. But it shouldn't be too surprising, as Cameron has never been a first-rate filmmaker. I'd call him a very good second-rate filmmaker, and "Avatar" is a very good second-rate film.