A Christmas Carol & The Ox-Bow Incident

A Christmas Carol

This Christmas Eve, the Ellermann family sat down for the animated Disney version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman. The film uses the same uncanny valley – courting mocap animation technology as The Polar Express, though a few more years of sophistication have made this outing easier to swallow.

The film itself is a faithful adaptation of the novel, and it doesn't stint on the book's horrific elements. A Christmas Carol isn't a saccharine story, but the tale of a man who's shown the incredible damage he's wreaked upon those around him, as well as the consequences of that damage. By turns sad and scary, it earns its resolution. When Scrooge finally sees the light, we revel with him because the film has shown us just how dark his soul had become.

This version of A Christmas Carol is a winner.

The Ox-Bow Incident

Because I have poor judgment, I fired up The Ox-Bow Incident to kick off my Christmas vacation. Och, what a depressing film.

Here's the setup: Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan are just in from the range, drinking whiskey in a dusty saloon and looking for fun in a Western village with precious little of it on offer. When an angry cowhand rides up with a tale of murder and rustlin', the people of the village whip themselves up into a lynching frenzy which they call a posse. Afraid suspicion might shift to themselves, Fonda and Morgan join up against their own misgivings. All well and good, until the group finds some likely suspects. Then we're in a morality play.

And some play it is. The film, screened in 1943, feels like an angry postwar drama, full of cynicism and hard judgments of hard people. Fonda and Morgan make for fascinating protagonists, men we wouldn't consider entirely good, yet just good enough to sense how things are going and to feel repulsed by it.

This is not light stuff, and The Ox-Bow Incident treats it seriously. I appreciated its mature approach to the subject matter, its challenging position, and its resolution. I just wouldn't choose it as a film to usher in Holiday cheer.

Short Takes: December 20th, 2013

Monsters University

I loved Monsters University.  It's delightful, funny, beautiful to look at, and heartwarming. It captivated my family, which ranges in age from 7 to 45, and it's the first prequel I've seen in a very long time that doesn't feel like it's just putting the pieces in place for the movie that inspired it.

The Iron Lady

This just in: Meryl Streep is really good at acting. I spent the 90 or so minutes of The Iron Lady feeling like Margaret Thatcher was in the room with me.

Unfortunately, it seemed like she was there only to show me a "greatest hits” reel of her life. The Iron Lady skips along Thatcher's biography like it's in a hurry to get to the end, when I'd have appreciated a deeper examination of one particularly illuminating period of her life. The Iron Lady and the Miner's Strike, for example, or The Iron Lady and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As it was, The Iron Lady gave me a sense of who Thatcher was, but it really didn't tell me how she ticked. That's a film I'd have found much more engrossing.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a perfect movie. It's well-shot, elegantly constructed, finely performed, and satisfying on every level.

It's so well shot that it'd benefit from a scene-by-scene analysis of its use of framing, lighting, and depth of field to tell its story and illuminate its characters. It's so elegantly constructed that every element of the script fits together like an elegant watch. It's so finely performed that you'll believe in the heroes right down to your boots, and you'll come away hating Lee Marvin so much that you'll actually have trouble rooting for him in films where he's the hero. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance works, and it works in every way. If you love movies, you need to see this one.

Looper

Looper is basically The Terminator, with Bruce Willis playing the T-1000, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Kyle Reese, and the wonderful Emily Blunt as Sarah Connor. Looper's twist is that the T-1000 is a later version of Reese.

I'm ok with that. It's a good formula, and Looper executes it well. Bruce Willis is as convincing an action star as ever, the multitalented Gordon-Levitt excels at putting a human face on the most despicable of characters, and I don't think Emily Blunt has ever been bad in anything. Rian Johnson's writing is clever as always, and Looper is a good time at the movies.

Recently Seen: 1 NOV 13

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

Ugh, what a joyless slog.  Benedict Cumberbatch plays a military genius who doesn’t know that complex plans almost always fail.  Chris Pine plays a Skipper who really needs to get Division Officer and Department Head jobs under his belt so he can learn (a) how a ship actually runs, and (b) how to lead a vessel that’s part of a larger organization.  Zachary Quinto does a fine Spock and the rest of the actors do what they can with what they’re given, but they aren’t given much.

Lost, this time around, is the joy of Star Trek.  The real shame, however, is that the film doesn’t trade that joy for proper, meaty darkness, but for a by-the-numbers “things get really bad, and then – fistfight!” actioner.

This puts me in a strange place as a fan.  I was all set to hate the first film of the rebooted series, but wound up loving it.  I was all set to love the second, but wound up hating it.  Will NuTrek truly subvert Trek canon and make the odd-numbered movies the good ones?

ZERO DARK THIRTY

Solid spy picture built on, y’know, actual spying.  We all know the ending, yet this film imbued it with real tension.  Worth the rental.

DREDD

Well, I’ve seen two Karl Urban movies over the last few months.  I’m glad one of them was good.  Dredd was way more fun than I expected.  Urban does great work acting through, vice around, the mask.  Olivia Thirlby sells her role as the rookie, and cable favorites Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) and Wood Harris (The Wire) create outstanding villains.  The movie rocks right along, and it shows that “grimngritty” doesn’t have to be dull.

Dredd deserved to be a hit.

END OF WATCH  (Mild spoilers.  If you’re spoilerphobic, just take my word for it and see this film.)

End of Watch is a great movie.  A buddy cop movie in which the cops start out as buddies (instead of making us sit through the tedium of watching them bond), End of Watch sells us by making the two leads people we enjoy spending time with.  Because the film gives the audience time to get to know these people and begin to bond with them as only movie audiences can, we find ourselves that much more invested as their lives get progressively more difficult.

My favorite thing about this movie?  I kept waiting for the twist in which the Lieutenant was actually on the take or somebody doublecrossed the hero cops or the rot in the system got exposed.  When that twist didn’t come (hey, I warned you about spoilers), End of Watch left us with basically good people doing a hard job in a dangerous place.  That, friends, is a recipe for great drama.

MODERN TIMES

Hey, if you haven’t seen Modern Times, you need to get on that right away.  Perhaps Charlie Chaplin’s greatest film, Modern Times is timelessly funny and ever-relevant.

When we talk about classic films, the kinds of movies people will still be watching three and four hundred years from now, Modern Times absolutely makes that list.  It’s funny, it’s brilliant, and it’s serious.  See this film.

PARA NORMAN

My family loved this movie.  My wife loved this movie.  I was distracted that evening, so couldn’t really get into it.  I’m adding the movie here for my own tracking purposes.

THE LORAX

If there’s one thing I love, it’s being preached at by some multibillion entertainment company.  I particularly love it when that company is preaching against the evils of capitalism.  Preach it, oh Universal Pictures!  Paint the capitalist villains as Southerners and West Virginians, because surely “those kind of people” must seem very backward to the decisionmakers in Universal City!  Give me all $70 million of your production budget’s worth of “profit is evil” goodness!

Or, on second thought, take a hike.

Recently Seen - 8SEP2013

Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey

This documentary tells the story of Arnel Pineda, a small-time Manila singer who lands the job of frontman for arena-rock band Journey.  It's basically a feel-good movie about a good guy whose wildest dreams come true, but it doesn't hesitate to show that Pineda's success doesn't just happen: before being plucked from obscurity, he sang for decades in various tribute bands on the international circuit, honing his craft so he was ready when the big call came.  Vanessa and I both loved it, and it has motivated me to listen to Journey's recent releases with Pineda at lead vocals.  I'll tell you what - these records are good!  Particularly recommended for Journey fans and people who spend a lot of time in cover-band bars in Bahrain.
 
We Have a Pope

What if the cardinal who is elected Pope realizes, just a little too late, that he isn't the man for the job?  Nanni Moretti (of the utterly fantastic The Son's Room) worked this scenario with We Have a Pope a couple of years before Pope Benedict's retirement, and he came up with a story a little sad, a little funny, and altogether convincing.  While not as powerful as The Son's Room, We Have a Pope is a successful film.

Chronicle

Three teenaged boys get superpowers and deal with them like the irresponsible kids they are.  Except, that is, for the depressed victim of bullies both young and old.  He behaves in ways completely unpredictable, and of which Peter Parker would not approve.  This makes Chronicle a depressing, heart-rending story of a boy who has grown so used to being a victim that he makes one of himself.  While Chronicle competently tells the story it sets out to share, I don't think I need ever see it again.  The world can be depressing enough as it is.

Les Miserables

Russell Crowe is sub-community-theater bad in the role of Inspector Javert, like "Hit pause and let me sing this number just to wash out the bad taste" bad.  Jackman is uneven.  Eddie Redmayne and Samantha Barks, as Marius and Eponine, steal the show.  The aesthetic is, well, miserable.  I should've taken my wife's advice and passed on the whole thing.

Shaolin Soccer

An idealistic young monk harnesses the power of Shaolin Kung Fu to form a soccer team and defeat Team Evil.  If you aren't hooked by that description alone, there's something wrong with you.

Follow Me, Boys!

This Disney story, of which Mr. Holland's Opus is basically a remake, puts Fred MacMurray in the role of Boy Scout leader who puts off his dream of becoming a lawyer to focus his time on running a Scout troop and basically being a good guy.  Notable for a fun performance from Lillian Gish, the pleasure of watching MacMurray (who can play evil about as well as anyone - see Double Indemnity) go 100% wholesome, and a terrific performance from a very young Kurt Russell.  Yes, Follow Me, Boys! has some structural problems, but as a Scout troop committee chairman, I'm a sucker for the subject matter.

Short Takes

Headhunters

This Norwegian thriller pits an full-time corporate recruiter and part-time art thief against a very angry and implacable would-be victim, Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.  It's taught, surprising, and altogether effective - this movie literally had me on the edge of my seat.

The Dictator

There's a comic bit in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator involving a severed head, a henchman with rather vague loyalties, and remarkably bad taste.  A masterpiece of timing, the bit took me from incredulous disgust to full-throated laughter to intellectual admiration, all in the stretch of about five minutes.  If I lost you at "severed head," so will the movie.  If I piqued your interest, invest ten minutes: that's all you need to decide whether this film is for you.

Moonrise Kingdom

This seems like the film for which the word "charming" was invented.  Moonrise Kingdom is about basically good people trying to behave basically well, and I found myself rooting for everyone.  The production design is pleasingly eye-catching, the locales beautiful (this one was filmed near my current home in Newport, RI), and the story engaging.  I loved it.

The Expendables 2

The Expendables 2: better than the first, with better action choreography and a more comprehensible sense of the battlespace. Filled with 'splosions, gunfire, and bad jokes, this movie won me over when it devoted a good five minutes to what was essentially one long Chuck Norris joke, punctuated by Chuck Norris telling an actual Chuck Norris joke.

Recently Seen - 4JUL13

I expect to return to writing more thorough reviews when I go back to the airline in the spring.  'Til then, here's another brief rundown of what I've been watching.

Iron Man 3

Much better than the series' second installment, Iron Man 3 features clever dialogue and unexpectedly wonderful turn by Ben Kingsley, whom I thought was taking an easy paycheck until I actually saw the film.

Lockout

Guy Pearce as Kurt Russell in Escape from Space.  That's actually pretty high praise.

Life of Pi

The best movie I've seen in some time, Life of Pi manages not only to film an unfilmable novel, but to create something magical of its own.  I wish I'd seen this one on the big screen in 3D.

Hour of the Gun

A fine telling of the Wyatt Earp Story.  Picking up moments before the gunfight at the OK Corral, it offers James Garner and Jason Robards as as fine a Wyatt & Doc as you'll ever see.

Jazz on a Summer's Day

I live in Newport.  I love jazz.  I fell asleep during this film.

World War Z

Despite a few extraordinary sequences, this film suffers from inexplicably slow pacing.  Recommended only for zombie completists.

The Visitor

A fine, carefully crafted film featuring a remarkable performance from star Richard Jenkins.  Well worth your time.

Recently Seen - 30APR13

Folks, I doubt I'll have any time for recreational writing for about another year or so.  Nevertheless, for my own records, here's what I've been watching:

Biutiful

Just two hours of agonizing pain.  This movie was recommended to me by a dear friend whom I think must be mad at me for some reason.

Despicable Me

Everyone in my family loved this movie but me.  I just couldn't find a reason to care about the protagonist.

Brave

A beautiful, entertaining, tear-jerking success.  If my younger kids didn't find the bear so terrifying, I'd purchase the Blu-Ray.

The Woman in Black

A competent ghost story with an unsatisfying ending, The Woman in Black really knows how to deliver the atmosphere.

Henry Rollins: Live at Luna Park

I've discovered that I like the idea of Henry Rollins more than I actually like watching Henry Rollins.

The Trip

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon drive around Northern England and give each other a hard time. My wife and I both laughed merrily throughout this movie while simultaneously enjoying its underlying pathos.  A gem.

The Pace is Slowing

Constant reader,

This blog's pace is going to slow down for a year or so. I've landed a full-ride scholarship to go back to grad school; grad students do not have as much time to see, consider, and write about movies as do airline pilots.

If you enjoy reading my thoughts on film, I invite you to like the Netflix Junkie Facebook page. Through it, I'll let you know when I've had a moment to jot something down.

Thank you, and have a great day.

--Alex

BTW, Premium Rush is a solid action thriller with a likeable protagonist, an interesting milieu, and terrific stuntwork.  It's worth a rental!

Recently Seen

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days continues in the successful vein of the very good Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  Greg Heffley continues to try to make a go of adolescent life, though he struggles with concepts like honesty and selflessness that seem, to him, to come naturally to everyone else.  His is the struggle of ego and id translated for the pre-teen set.  Oh, and this is very important: made laugh-out-loud funny.

Microcosmos delivers a mesmerizing documentary about icky bugs.  Showing life on their scale with no narration and a wonderful score, the film just us the majesty of an animal kingdom right beneath our feet.  At least, it tries to.  While I admired the effort, I just couldn't get past the fact that bugs are icky.

The Crimson Rivers gives us Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel in a buddy cop murder mystery.  Reno's the famous detective brought in from Paris to solve a particularly gruesome murder, which Cassel's the impetuous young chief from a nearby ville.  Can this mismatched pair catch the killer and, perhaps, become friends?  Well, naturally, but it's the execution that matters.  Reno and Cassel are both fun to watch, there are some well-done fistfights, and I didn't see the twist coming.

Coriolanus

You don't see Coriolanus at many Shakespeare repertory theaters. It's a tough play about a hard man, the fickle masses, and one woman's insatiable drive for glory in a culture that will allow her to achieve it only through the men she controls.

Caius Martius is a patrician and a General of the Roman Republic. At home in the (relative) meritocracy of the Roman Army and a formidable battler, he wins a great victory over the hated Volscians at the Battle of Coriolae. Lauded in Rome and awarded the honorific "Coriolanus," his family sees this as his moment to stand for Consul.  But he can't do the things that politicians do. He can't pretend to be one of the people, whom he sees as a fickle, unwashed mass - there to be led or bullied. He has so completely absorbed the martial virtues that he can't stand to trumpet his victories or show his battle scars for the approval of the citizenry. In short, he's unfit to be Consul. When the entrenched politicians who see him as a threat perceive this, they mercilessly destroy his political career. The rest, well, it's tragedy for some and triumph for others. But it isn't nice and it isn't funny and it isn't pretty - not the stuff to pull in the fickle, unwashed masses who only turn up for yet another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

So bravo to Ralph Fiennes for tackling one of the more challenging plays in this, his directorial debut. Taking a page from the theatrical tradition of transposing Shakespeare's plays to any number of historical and cultural settings, he sets his Coriolanus in the Balkans of not so very long ago. He casts 300's Gerard Butler as the Volscian leader, the omnipresent (and best-ever Hannibal Lecter) Brian Cox as Senator and family friend Menenius, James Nesbitt (delightful in the BBC's Jekyll and a standout in the first Hobbit movie) as an enemy politician, and the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain (who took my breath away in Tree of Life) as his wife. Most critically and successfully of all, he landed Vanessa Redgrave to play Volumnia, his mother and a woman so hungry for glory that she'll chew through every man in her family to get it and call it love.

Redgrave is Coriolanus's secret weapon, delivering the definitive performance of the role in modern film. In a cast filled with actors varying from promising to respectable to noted to outstanding, Redgrave is great. By "great," I mean Great. Her Volumnia is a masterpiece of ambition and calculation, Roman virtue and matronly control. And, yes, even of love. Fiennes, to his credit, lets her run. He demonstrates the self-confidence to embrace a performance that outshines his own very good one and, in the process, creates something magical.

Is Coriolanus perfect? Nothing is. The film's battles and knife fights are incomprehensible and could have benefitted from the touch of an editor with more experience in the action genre (An IMdB search tells me that editor Nicolas Gaster did the outstanding Moon and the indulgent MirrorMask, among many other credits stretching back to 1977, but he appears to have no major action credits to his name.). But that's about the only glove I can lay on it. When that's all I've got, you're doing ok.

I've always respected Ralph Fiennes as an actor. With Coriolanus, he debuts as a director and interpreter of Shakespeare worthy of note. I look forward to his next effort.

The Dark Knight Rises

I saw The Dark Knight Rises while staying home with a sick child.  Consequently, I saw it in two sessions while my little one slept.  I spent the film’s entire 2.5-hour running time with my finger on the volume control.

The problem, at least with the film’s BluRay release, lies in the sound mixing.  The gunfire and explosions are so loud in comparison with the dialogue that I felt it was giving me a choice between waking my son during the action sequences or understanding the dialogue during the rest.  If you live in an apartment or share space with people who don’t wish their living room to sound like Armageddon, be warned.

On to the movie.  The Dark Knight Rises asks the filmic question: what if the Occupy people get their wish?  Its answer: French Revolution 2.  Despotism.  Kangaroo Courts.  Chaos.  Only the rich, working anonymously and unfettered from the rule of law, can protect the cringing middle class from the depredations of the fickle mob.

I’m not even a hippie, and I could see that message as if it were carefully painted in Sterno on an icy bridge in the middle of the night and set afire because some rich guy thought it would look cool.

Ok, but is the film any good?  Well, it does move along at a speedy clip, the freakishly beautiful Anne Hathaway actually made me forget about Michelle Pfeiffer for a good two hours, the rest of the cast turns in respectable performances in none-too-demanding roles, and lots of stuff blows up real good.  In other words, you get what you paid for.

Just keep your finger on that volume button.

The Adventures of TinTin

The Adventures of TinTin is a wonderful movie.

This animated adventure, filmed with a motion capture technique that keeps us just this side of the uncanny valley, features ‘splosions, chases, floods, storms at sea, pirates, more ‘splosions, elaborate and exhilarating chases, a massive flood, a great mystery, and gun battles in which all of TinTin’s adversaries seem to forget how to aim at just the right moment..  What more do you want?

Here’s the setup: TinTin, an investigative reporter, finds himself in the middle of a mystery.  He has, unwittingly, purchased that most dangerous of all objects: a Maguffin.  Problem is, he’s unsure exactly what the Maguffin is and why anyone would want it, much less kill for it. 

The Maguffin, of course, is just a reason to get TinTin on the road to adventure, just as Maguffins have in the past and, one assumes, they will again.  The joy of TinTin lies in the road itself, in the delightfully idiosyncratic characters our protagonist meets there, and in the flawless execution of the film’s elaborate set pieces. 

Though created with 3D in mind, the film looks beautiful on an iPad, its voice acting is first rate, and its story blends just the right amounts of danger and levity.  I can’t wait for the sequel.

War Horse

The problem with War Horse is right there in the title. It isn't Person in a War who Owns a Horse or People, War, and Horses. It's War Horse. It is, quite literally, a movie about a horse which finds itself in a war - WWI, to be precise.

The problem is that horses lack moral agency. They can't grow.  They can't choose to become better horses. They can only react to their experiences. Consequently, they make for lousy cinematic protagonists. In this film, the horse passes from owner to owner, from Englishman to German to Frenchman and back again, but so what? We don't spend enough time with the various owners to invest in them and it's impossible to invest deeply in a horse.

So that leaves us watching the film as a technical exercise. Oh, it's horrible. The zoom-in after zoom-in on the faces of various players while saccharine-sweet orchestral music swells and swells and swells. The compositions and set pieces that recall a technicolor version of How Green Was My Valley, had that movie been nigh-unendurable. The screenplay that sets up one overblown cliffhanger after another for a horse that is, in the end, just a horse.

Unquestionably, Steven Spielberg ranks among the finest American film makers. Even the best, however, can fail occasionally. War Horse represents such a failure. I just don't know if it's possible to make a compelling film about a creature that lacks self-awareness.

Recently Seen

I'm in the middle of moving from Florida to Rhode Island, so my writing time's rather limited.  Here are some short notes and redirects concerning the films I've seen recently.

Castaway on the Moon

When he was writing for chud.com, my friend Alex Riviello reviewed Castaway on the Moon. He did so well that, rather than write up a new review of my own, I'll just point you to his. Read it, then queue up the movie. I bet you'll be glad you did.

Sir Arne's Treasure

Ed Gonzales of 'Slant Magazine' wrote a nice piece on Sir Arne's Treasure. The film didn't quite work for me, as I found the pacing arduous. Nevertheless, it's one of the great achievements of early Swedish film; it merits an introduction.

Take Shelter

Take Shelter is a film a bout a good man, a family man, slowly coming apart under the assault of mental illness. I found its subject matter so painful and it's execution so slow that I couldn't make it past the 45-minute mark.

Here's setup: Michael Shannon is a skilled laborer with a house in the country, a committed wife (Jessica Chastain), a daughter, a dog, and the trappings of a respectable, middle class country life. Then the dreams kick in: dreams of disasters to come, of pets turning on their masters, of the world falling apart. He begins to react to these dreams, kicking the dog out of the house and getting to work on the cold-war relic fallout shelter in the back yard. His wife is worried. His friends are worried. He's worried.

And that's about where I hit the eject button. I'm a family man, a few rungs up the socioeconomic ladder from Shannon's character, but definitely on that ladder. I found myself empathizing with Shannon's fears and their consequences too much, such that Take Shelter was a painful, vice entertaining, experience.

Perhaps I'd have stuck with the film had it been a faster-paced.  Take Shelter is meditative, however. The net effect was like watching a slow-motion car wreck involving people who were uncomfortably similar to oneself.

BKO: Bangkok Knockout

They have universal health care in Thailand, don't they?

I mean, they must. How else can one explain the utter disregard for personal safety exhibited by the cast of BKO: Bangkok Knockout? And I'm not just talking about the injuries they must have sustained while making the picture - they must have gotten on a first-name basis with their orthopedic surgeons just to get good enough at stuntwork to land their roles.

BKO: Bangkok Knockout, you see, is an extraordinary stunt picture. Though its plot is just another rehash of The Most Dangerous Game (with a whole team, as opposed to just one guy, in the crosshairs) and its acting is weak, its stunt work will remind you of the golden age of Hong Kong thrillers, when guys like Jackie Chan would stage an entire fight sequence on a moving bus crashing through a shantytown. This picture has cage fu, car fu, motorcycle fu, sword fu, chick fu, and even dude on fire swinging a burning axe fu. It's very nicely staged and photographed, with long takes and simple shots that show off the remarkable choreography of the various battles, as well as the athleticism and daring of the performers. Further, it rocks right along, with brisk pacing and just enough of a storyline to actually make you care who lives and who dies.

First credit goes to director Pana Rittikrai, who worked as the stunt coordinator on Ong Bak: Muy Thai Warrior, the action supervisor on Chocolate, and the director of Ong Bak 2 & 3.  The man has learned his craft, and he applies his lessons like a master in Bangkok Knockout.  He works with a fearless, first-rate team that literally risk life and limb to create one thrilling stunt sequence after another.  Together with the remainder of the crew, they create a film that delivers everything you could want in a Thai martial arts picture. I just hope it's cast didn't have to spend too much time recovering - I want a sequel!

The Grey

In The Grey, Liam Neeson plays a rifleman at North Slope oil operation. His job: shoot the large, fearsome wolves of Northern Alaska before they attack men out working on the equipment. For reasons that will be explained later in the film, he is deeply depressed and contemplating suicide.

On a charter flight from the North Slope down to Anchorage, his plane goes down. It falls to Neeson to rally the survivors and lead them first to shelter, then to home. This will pose challenge enough, until the wolves show up.  Now Neeson, without his rifle, must fight them for the survival of his pack.

What follows is an exciting, action-packed hour and a half of survivalist, wolf-battlin' action in the Frozen North. Neeson has both the acting and action chops to hold the film together, the set-pieces are both gripping and understandable, and the whole thing works. Will it provoke deep thought and long conversations? No. But it's a pleasant diversion and can make 90 minutes of your flight back in coach whiz right by.

Another Earth

Another Earth is an intimate drama with a science-fiction hook. The drama: a young woman's released from jail after killing a man's family through a drunken driving accident. She tries to make amends. The hook: a parallel Earth, from a sliver of the multiverse very like our own, appears in the sky the night of the accident. It floats there, out in space, the physical manifestation of the fantasies of those who dwell in the world of might-have-been.

The film, co-written by star Brit Marling, works on the level of intimate drama alone. The tragic thing about many DUI arrests and fatalities is that the culprits aren't evil: they're often just regular people who exercised poor judgement on a given night. Marling's just-released convict falls under this category. She's consumed with guilt and depression and wants to make amends. The man, sensitively played by William Mapother, wallows in depression and alcohol and needs someone to help him pull himself together.

At this point, you probably think you know what's going to happen.  You're about half right. The other half is the enigma posed by that new planet in the sky, that other Earth. Is it a world where the accident never happened? Would you go there, if you could? What might you find?

All this is handled delicately, sensitively, and much better than I'd anticipated. The second-act reveal plays much more provocatively than I'd expected, leading my wife and me to enjoy a long conversation exploring whether, if we were in the the man's shoes, we could ever forgive. We concluded that we could not, but I'll leave it for you to discover what he concludes and what that means.

Don't see Another Earth in installments or while doing chores. This a film about mood, and it needs time and space to create a mood in you. If you give it the attention it deserves, I'm confident that you'll find it worth your time.

Midnight in Paris

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Paris, and those who have never been. Woody Allen loves Paris, and Midnight in Paris is his song.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a Hollywood writer who gets paid decent money to crank out stuff like Cheaper by The Dozen 2, but really wants to create serious literature. He's in Paris with his odious fiancée and her odious parents. He wants to move there, as any reasonable person would, and she's horrified by the idea.  {IMPORTANT NOTE: If your significant other can't see her/himself living in Paris, run.  Run as fast as you can.}  But here's the twist: he doesn't just want to live in Paris: he wants to live in the Paris of the imagination of a college-prep high schooler. This is a man who has read A Moveable Feast so many times that he wills himself a seat at the table. Literally. The Fitzgeralds are delightful. Hemingway introduces him to Stein, who likes his work. He's ecstatic, and that's even before Marion Cotillard shows up. Suddenly, Odious Fiancée seems very far away, indeed.

And now we're in the love letter to a city, a time, and the very idea of cities and times and possibilities that may, just may, lie within our grasp. It's capital R Romantic stuff, and Woody makes it sing. Though the film has a jarring propensity to name-check just about everyone in A Moveable Feast, we forgive it because it's so earnest, so Romantic, so in love with its time and its people and its possibilities, and so beautiful. Paris, past and present, looks absolutely charming.   It glimmers in the rain and it holds manifold and wonderful possibilities.  Its denizens look like just the sorts of a people an imaginative man would hope to meet.

Me - I love Paris. I love the way city lights look when reflected on wet cobblestones. I love possibilities. And I love my wife's dog-eared copy of A Moveable Feast.  Midnight in Paris hit me right between the eyes. If you love Paris, I bet it'll work for you, too.

The Magic Serpent

Here's a review from my 12-yr-old kaiju fan, Ian:

The Magic Serpent is a lame movie based on an old Japanese legend. it is full of ripoffs.  The main antagonist is a ripoff of Toho’s Manda, the giant spider is a ripoff of  Toho’s giant spider Kumonga, and the eagle monster is a ripoff of Ookondoru.  The only monster that wasn’t a ripoff was the toad.  The roars of the monsters were all recycled Toho roars. The Manda-like monster has Godzilla’s roar, the eagle has Mothra’s roar, and the toad has Rodan’s roar.  The spider dosen’t roar.  Don’t rent this.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

[NOTE: In this entry, I’m going to make some generalizations about Japanese culture.  I spend a fair amount of time in Japan and believe that I’ve learned enough to get away with this.  I am, however, an outsider and always will be.  I could very well be dead wrong.]

Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary by David Gelb, is about a man who may be the world’s greatest sushi chef.  More, it’s an examination of what makes Japanese so culture so wonderful and so constricting.

In Western culture, we revere the concept of the Renaissance Man, the well-rounded individual.  In Japanese culture, they revere the expert, the man who devotes his life to one thing and, with a Zen-like focus, does that thing as well as it can be done.  Jiro Ono is such a man.  82 years old, he first apprenticed in a sushi restaurant at the age of 9.  He works nearly every day, literally dreams of fabulous new sushi at night, and owns a restaurant that serves $300 meals and boasts a 3-star Michelin rating (the highest possible).  His elder son is his #2 and will, one day, take over the restaurant.  His younger son owns a branch in a different part of town.  They are gifted sushi chefs in their own right.

That focus, that lifelong drive for perfection in one thing, has made relatively tiny Japan a world leader in science, culture, and industry.  It has also led to an incredibly restrictive, hierarchical Japanese culture in which Jiro’s sons, regardless of their ability and effort, will never be regarded as the equals of their father.  The best that they can hope for is to achieve the rank of “not-disappointments,” and one of Jiro Dreams of Sushi’s triumphs is its ability to share with us their pride in their own achievements and their knowledge that, no matter what, they’ll never quite measure up to the Old Man.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi gives us all this, taking us inside these people’s world from a culinary, technical, and personal perspective.  It does so with an empathetic, engaged touch and a respect for its subjects.  While I lack the palate to justify a $300 sushi dinner, I came away from this film with a profound respect for those who do and for those who can prepare food that’s worth the price.  Jiro Dreams of Sushi succeeds as a personal and professional exploration of perfection, and I found it entrancing.  This is one of the best films I saw in 2012.

The Skin I Live In

The Skin I Live In is a full-blown gothic horror movie by Pedro Almodóvar.

I’m just gonna let that sink in a moment.

Almodóvar’s films invariably place among the best movies of any given year.  He tells carefully constructed and observed stories with humanity and an impeccable eye for composition.  Films like Volver and All About My Mother offer not just an evening’s entertainment, but full-blown aesthetic experiences.

And here, in The Skin I Live In, he gives us a full-blown aesthetic experience that’s also a ‘mad scientist’ movie. 

Antonio Banderas, reminding us that he was an actor before he became a personality, plays the mad scientist - mad in both senses of the word.  His faithful assistant (and Almodóvar regular), Marisa Paredes, enables and supports him as only a faithful assistant in a mad scientist movie can.  The nature of his madness I’ll leave for you to discover.

The really interesting part of all this, however, is what Almodóvar does with Banderas’s madness.  He uses it to investigate and question our sense of self, of sexuality, of our relationships with the most important people in our lives.  What are they founded upon?  Are they malleable?  If so, how much?

And he does all this with the thoughtful, compassionate gaze and impeccable eye for beauty that marks all his work.  He takes a ‘mad scientist’ movie and turns it into something different, better, more.  He makes us think, and he makes us really see, and he gives us beauty at 24 frames per second.

Pedro Almodóvar can do no wrong.  The Skin I Live In marks yet another fine example.

Margin Call

Margin Call takes place in 2008, on the night before the global financial system went into free fall. It begins with an analyst in a major financial firm's Risk Management department smelling a rat, snowballs into late-night and early-morning meetings of increasingly powerful and terrified members of the firm, and culminates in the run that was the next day's market activity. It's terrifying stuff, way more terrifying than any number of dudes in any number of masks chasing any number of college kids through the night.

It's also annoyingly writerly. Many of the characters get big speeches, and those speeches nearly always sound more like the finger-wagging of hippie writers than the misgivings of mathematicians. Whenever Margin Call pulled me into its world through its spot-on set design and world class performances, it pulled me right back out again when some character started moaning about how he could have been building bridges instead of getting rich.

Nevertheless, the film's sense of mounting dread giving way to panic was effective; and its snappy editing and kinetic (for a film that felt like a stage adaptation) photography kept things moving along. Margin Call caught me up in its narrative in spite of its preachiness. Further, even though I knew how it was going to end, I wanted to know how it was going to end. Overall, I call this one as a good film. But I'd rather see the play.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

{Blogger doesn't do captions very well.  If it did, the caption for this photo would be "C'mon, look at that lighting!"}

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Crazy, Stupid, Love is a romantic comedy that didn't make me laugh, but did charm me and provided a sweet, pleasant time at the movies. It's a nice movie, populated with basically good people mostly trying to do the right thing, and it benefits from a tight script that hits all the right notes.

Here's the setup: Steve Carrel, not challenging himself in a typical Steve Carrel role, asks wife Julianne Moore what she wants for dessert. Her reply: "A divorce." And away we go. Carrel and Moore both try to adapt to their new lives. Their kids experience dramas of their own, sometimes only tangentially related to that of their parents. They're all trying to figure this love thing out, as are the people they meet and the people they meet.

And so we rock through an entertaining hour and half during which Carrel gets lessons from pickup artist Ryan Gosling, who seems to have moved on from life-sized sex dolls; Moore agonizes over whether she should reunite with the star of the movie; and Marisa Tomei shows up to prove, once again, that there are no small roles.

It all works, largely due to an enormously likable cast including, in addition to the above, welcome presences Kevin Bacon and Emma Stone. More critically, it works due to a gem of a screenplay by Dan Fogelman. This is a screenplay that has been written, rewritten, edited and lathed into smooth perfection, with reveals and reversals timed just right, characters that feel like they have lives outside the confines of their scenes, and just enough unreality to keep things at a comic distance. This movie made me feel like I was being entertained by pros who knew exactly what they were doing and who were very good at their respective jobs.

So, there you have it: Crazy, Stupid, Love is a romantic comedy that's reasonably romantic, reasonably comedic, and altogether successful. It's a great way to spend some time on the couch with the one you love.