2011 Round-Up

Annual Round-Up: 2011 Edition

I don’t get to see many movies in the theater.  Consequently, I don’t feel that I can write anything approaching a definitive “Best Of” list for 2011.  I can, however, share with you the best films among those I saw, big screen or small.  Here they are.

The Best:

#5.  Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  Fast-paced, funny, exotic, and exciting, Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol is everything a spy action-thriller should be.  Its superspies and supervillains are appropriately super, its action sequences are breathtakingly exciting, and the whole thing hangs together with a sense of adventure and fun that had my whole group smiling as we walked out the door.

#4.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II.  The final episode of the Harry Potter series ties it all together.  The story twists often enough to keep us in suspense, the characters get the finales they deserve, and the entire franchise comes out as among the most successful long-form cinematic stories ever told. The Harry Potter films have had their ups and downs, but this one ends the series on a high note.

#3.  Hugo.  A film of technical audacity, Hugo succeeds from its first image, a swooping flyover of a near-fantastical version of Paris.  Its use of 3D technology is assured and masterful, and it tells a touching story while bathing us in aesthetic joy.  This is a delightful, wonderful film, and I can’t wait ‘til my children are old enough to see it for themselves.

#2.  13 Assassins.  Everything a movie should be, 13 Assassins is a perfect film.  It’s a “men on a mission” picture that deserves comparison with The Seven Samurai, with beautifully composed shots, thoughtful editing and sound design, well-realized characters, and gallons and gallons of Kensington Gore.

#1.  The Tree of Life.  Audacious, thoughtful, brilliant, and utterly moving, The Tree of Life is the most philosophically ambitious film I’ve seen since The Fountain.  Meant for big screens and bigger speakers,The Tree of Life is a quiet and introspective film about meditations on the meaning of life.  How does one reconcile “big screens and bigger speakers” with “quiet and introspective?”  Terrence Malick finds a way and in so doing draws his audience into his meditative place.  Of all the new releases we saw this year, this is the one that had my wife and me up talking well past midnight.  Bravo.

The Worst:

#1 and Only:  Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  I had a “Bottom 5 Worst Films” list ready to go.  On further consideration, however, numbers 2-5 were The Magnificent Ambersons compared to Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  This is a rock ‘em sock ‘em robot movie that put my three boys, all hepped up on Twizzlers and soda, to sleep.  I say again: this is a film about battlin’ bots that puts little boys to sleep.  So never mind that the characters are horrid, the story ridiculous, the action sequences incomprehensible, and the entire production put together by people who, apparently, actively hate us.  Transformers: Dark of the Moon is painfully, agonizingly, apocalyptically dull.  Not only is this the worst film I’ve seen this year, it’s the worst film I’ve seen since Transformers.  I’m glad I missed the second one.  I’ll be sure to miss the next.

Drive

Drive is confused.  Nevertheless, it works on the surface and provides an engrossing hour and a half at the movies.

Drive’s core story purports to be the parable of the turtle and the scorpion.  You know the story: Scorpion asks Turtle for a ride across the river.  Turtle says, “No.  When we’re halfway across, you’ll sting me.”  Scorpion replies, “Think about it: if I sting you, we both die.  What would be the point of that?”  Turtle sees Scorpion’s logic and tell him to climb aboard.  Halfway across the river, Scorpion stings Turtle.  As they’re both drowning, Turtle says, “Why did you sting me?”  Scorpion replies, “You knew what I was when you agreed to carry me.”

In the film, Ryan Gosling’s driver wears a satin jacket with a scorpion embroidered on the back.  Toward the end of the narrative, he tells one of his adversaries, “If you carry a scorpion, you’re going to get stung” (or something to that effect).  Problem is, his adversaries don’t even know who he is until it’s too late.  The parable doesn’t hold, because Drive’s real point is “don’t mess with scorpions.”

Ok, so something got lost between drafts.  Nevertheless, Drive succeeds because it features an interesting lead, supporting characters with surprising subtlety, and a sufficiently complex plot to keep us on our toes until the closing credits.

Ryan Gosling plays Driver, a character similar to Alain Delon’s Jef Costello in Le Samourai and George Clooney’s Jack in The American.  An introvert with a gift and a passion for his work, he says little and controls his face and body language.  This makes him a cool, yet blank, slate: a projection screen for the aspirations and/or desires of the audience.  When he notices the disturbingly skinny Carey Mulligan, he toys with making the single greatest mistake a character like him can make: he connects.  You probably think you know where this is going, and you may well be right.  However, it still works because Mulligan’s character isn’t just another damsel to distress.  She’s a fully realized human being, perhaps more fully realized than our protagonist; and so are the people to whom she’s connected, and to whom they’re connected.  Even the villains fascinate us with their back stories and their agendas, a fascination facilitated by remarkably unique, yet effective, casting.

Soon enough, these characters find themselves embroiled in a well-executed story of trust, doubt, and revelation that engages our imagination and helps us forget that we’ve seen this protagonist’s character arc before and we know how it’s going to end. 

The result? Though it’s little mixed up on its central parable, Drive delivers a tale well told in an immersive world.  You could do much, much worse.

Pontypool

Pontypool does great stuff for nearly its entire running time.  It kinda blows it right there at the end, but you’ve got to give this picture credit for how much it gets right.

Stephen McHattie plays Grant Mazzie, a has-been shock jock relegated to reading the school closings listing at a third-rate AM station in the sticks somewhere outside of Ontario.  He has a deep, gravelly voice, perfect for radio; and a tired, weathered face, perfect for film.

Mazzie is settling in at his new gig when the first reports of something very disturbing start trickling in.  There’s a gun battle at a nearby lake.  A mob surrounds a doctor’s office.  People start killing each other in particularly nasty ways.  Everything’s quiet in the church basement where radio station’s studio is tucked away, but it sounds like the end of the world out there.  What’s going on?

Pontypool nails this.  McHattie gives a virtuoso performance as a man going from depressed, angry, and a little drunk to skeptical, worried, then scared.  Lisa Houle and Georgina Reilly, as his engineer and assistant, respectively, give him people to bounce off, to fight, to work with, but it’s his show.  His reaction to the offscreen threat makes it real, and it shows us how the anticipation of horror can be scarier than horror itself.

It’s at the end there, when the revelations and realizations hit, that Pontypool falls apart.  But right up ‘til then, when it’s all mystery and dread, this movie is fantastic.  Pontypool may be a qualified winner, but it’s a winner nonetheless.

Special Treatment

Isabelle Huppert is an aging prostitute who specializes in fantasy fulfillment for an upscale Parisian clientele.  Bouli Lanners is an aging psychoanalyst who specializes in sitting out of his upscale Parisian patients’ sight lines and saying nearly nothing at all.  Their ennui is palpable, and Special Treatment underlines it with a score that seems to have been written entirely in a minor key and played by a cellist whose dog just died.

Great.  An hour and a half of ennui among the Parisian professional class.  If I wanted 90 minutes of ennui, I’d have lunch with coworkers from my former (office) job.  At least they told jokes.

Yes, the characters’ lives intersect in unexpected ways.  Yes, they grow and develop.  And, yes, Special Treatment does everything it wants to do.  What I wanted it to do, however, was entertain me.  That was not included in the special.

The Guard

I enjoyed The Guard.  I think I’d have enjoyed it more if I were Irish, because the picture’s many jokes seem calibrated for the Irish audience.  Nevertheless, how can anyone object to spending an hour and a half with Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle (CDNW), and Mark Strong?

Gleeson plays a rumpled, pleasantly corrupt local sergeant of the Garde in a village in the Irish countryside.  When FBI special agent Cheadle comes to town to stop a trio of drug smugglers (including the omnipresent Mr. Strong), we get a redemption tale and a fish out of water comedy and a buddy cop movie, all in one.

But why would you want to watch a redemption tale / fish out of water comedy / buddy cop movie, anyway?  Two reasons: #1, you will probably never go to Galloway, Ireland, so this is the closest you’re ever going to get.  #2, the dialogue is so well written and so well performed that you’ll enjoy listening to it for an hour and a half.  You may not laugh out loud (particularly if you aren’t Irish), but you’ll nod and smile and have a pleasant time.

I’ll take good dialogue and a pleasant time any day of the week.  I’d see The Guard 2 with a smile on my face.

Moneyball

When I heard that Moneyball was in production, I thought it would fail.  How do you take a book about statistical analysis and turn it into a narrative film?

Moneyball succeeds by changing focus from the book.  The book, as I said, is about statistical analysis and uses one team’s experiment with it to educate the reader.  The movie is about Billy Beane, the manager of said team, his journey, and how his grasp of the potential of statistical analysis changed his sport, his team, and his life.

Brad Pitt plays Beane as smart and savvy, yet insecure.  He’s a baseball guy, but he’s so totally a product of his lifelong immersion in the sport that he’s a baseball guy only.  When he spots an influential whiz kid (Jonah Hill) in an opposing manager’s office, he understands the value of a completely different perspective.  It’s a perspective so different that betting on it could cost him his career.  There’s your drama.  There’s your movie. 

Now, I like baseball.  I go to several games per year, I follow the Nationals in the Post, and believe that Marconi invented radio specifically to give the world the magic that is Vin Scully.  But you don’t have to like baseball to like this movie.  You have to like scrappy underdogs, you have to like things that don’t go boom, and you have to like Brad Pitt.  I like all three, and I like this picture.  I want to see it again as soon as I can.  

Tai Chi Master

Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh in a wuxia film directed by Yuen Woo-Ping.

If you’re me, those words were all it took to get Tai Chi Master (1993) in your queue.  If you aren’t me and those names don’t ring a bell, let me explain.  Jet Li is a former Chinese national wushu champion and a no-kidding master of two styles of northern Chinese kung fu.  He made his first film in 1982, at the age of 19, and has been working steadily ever since.  His best film, Fearless (2006), combines first-rate action with a retelling of the Buddha’s journey in a manner both ambitious and profoundly successful.  Michelle Yeoh’s background is in ballet and choreography, and she's applied her training to a string of successful martial arts and action films dating from 1984.  While best known in the West for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, she’s best known to me for jumping a motorcycle onto the roof of a moving train in Police Story III (alternately titled Supercop), thus making her the only stuntperson in history to upstage Jackie Chan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTv7HXqqqXA

Yuen Woo-ping, the film’s director, has directed and/or choreographed some of the most memorable martial arts films ever made, including Drunkenmaster, the Kill Bill movies, and Kung Fu Hustle.  Folks, this is the A Team.

And the A Team delivers.  With Tai Chi Master, they create not just an action film, but a testament to the remarkable athletic feats we humans are capable of achieving.  Yes, the film relies on wires and hidden trampolines and creative editing to make its characters appear superhuman, but those wires are attached to real people bouncing off real trampolines and making it all look, if not exactly natural, then credible.  I marveled at these performers’ flexibility, speed, endurance, and grace.  I loved how Yuen shot them, I enjoyed the complexity of their choreographed fights, and I lost track of time for the hour and a half it took for Tai Chi Master to tell its story of medieval China.

Jet Li.  Michelle Yeoh.  Yuen Woo-ping.  They’re as good as human beings can be at what they do, and Tai Chi Master showcases them beautifully.  Enjoy.

Contagion

I used to work at a place that did professional wargaming.  Not the kind with little paper chits and 20-sided dice, but the kind in which we got a bunch of smart and capable people in a room, threw them a scenario, and analyzed how they did (or didn’t) work together to deal with the situation.  Contagion feels like a dramatization of one of those wargames.

The scenario: a highly contagious, deadly virus comes out of Macau, borne abroad by several of the thousands of international travelers who pass through in a given week.  It propagates around the world exponentially.  Player #1: you’re an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization.  Player #2: you’re the head of the CDC.  Player #3: Homeland security.  Player #4: a suburban city councilwoman at the American center of the epidemic.  Go.

Does it work in the film?  Yeah.  Likeable stars like Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Lawrence Fishburne put faces to dilemmas, helping us humanize the scope of the epidemic and empathize with their respective ethical and professional challenges.  The stories weave together fluidly, each informing the others and catching us up in their combined narrative.  The film rockets along and never feels like the dull procedural it could have become.  Contagion challenged and fascinated me, making me feel like I was back in the room of one of those wargames, moving things along and learning from the process.

Grim as the film’s subject matter surely is, I found it to be intellectually and emotionally satisfying.  I walked out thinking, “That’s how it could really play out.  Nice work.”  I haven’t changed my mind, even if I have changed my habits: I’m washing my hands more.

Step Brothers

Step Brothers is a one-joke movie.  Fortunately, it’s a funny joke.

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play 40-ish men who never really matured past the age of, oh, 13.  They live at home and act like children.  When their parents meet, marry, and move in together, they have to learn to get along. 

You could build a funny movie about spoiled kids becoming brothers with child actors, but the hook here is watching schlubby, middle-aged guys exhibit these behaviors.  A couple of kids climbing into a treehouse to hang out and gripe about their goody-two-shoes sibling could be amusing, but watching grown men do it is downright hilarious.

Is it shallow?  Yeah.  Is it formulaic?  Yeah.  Is it funny?  Well, yeah.  Go figure.

Observe and Report

I’m pretty sure Observe and Report is a comedy.  It’s billed as one, and it stars comedian Seth Rogen.  But it isn’t funny.  It’s disturbing.

In the film, Rogen plays a functionally psychotic head of security at a shopping mall.  He’s unstable and violent, but appears to have found a niche in which he can mask the former and occasionally indulge the latter.  Over the course of the film, events disturb his balance and he spirals down into a full-blown psychotic episode.

Observe and Report plays this for laughs, but it isn’t funny.  Rogen’s character is, by turns, pathetic and repulsive.  The people he hurts stay hurt.  The people he intimidates stay afraid.  Nothing about this is good, and nothing ends well.  This is a disturbing, scary, deeply weird film, and nothing at all like what I expected.  Perhaps the joke was on me.

Make Way for Tomorrow

I was on board Make Way for Tomorrow, an American precursor to the superior Tokyo Story, for roughly half the movie.  Then, one of the leads make a decision so stupid that he lost me, killed my disbelief, and tuned me out.  Once that happened, I saw for what it was: a one-note movie that plays its note on a title card before the story even begins. 

Here’s the setup: an older couple (roughly 70, which in the world of this film is absolutely ancient) calls their adult children home.  This is not a happy reunion, however.  They’ve invited them to announce to that they’ve lost their home and need to move in with somebody.  The kids are displeased.

Ok, I know where this is going and so do you: it’s right there in the title.  Besides, you’ve seen King Lear and Tokyo Story (What? You haven’t seen Tokyo Story?  Why are you wasting time reading this blog when you could be doing that?  Go on now, shoo.  I’ll be here when you’re finished.).  You know how this works out.

The rest of the film is, essentially, a slog to the bitter end.  But there’s a moment, about halfway through, when a friend presents the man of the couple an opportunity on a silver platter with a couple of mints and a lovely flower in a little vase.  The man waves away the opportunity because he’s an idiot.  This made me so mad, so incredulous, that I stopped seeing him as a man and started seeing him as a cardboard cutout with “pathetic” scrawled upon it in magic marker.  I wondered why the “opportunity” scene was even included.  And then I was done.

Make Way for Tomorrow is technically competent and decently performed, but it failed to make me believe.  What a disappointment.

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life made me glad I sprang for an enormous tv and a good stereo.  I can’t imagine seeing this film on a computer screen.  This film trades on awe, and awe requires big picture and big sound.  I think the studio will put this back in theaters for awards season.  If you don’t have an enormous tv and a good stereo, take advantage of the theater’s setup and see this film properly.

Sean Penn’s a successful architect in his early 50s.  It’s his deceased brother’s birthday.  He goes about his day, but he’s lost in thought, reflecting on his childhood, his brother, his family, and life.  That’s it – that’s the whole story.

But it’s powerful and it’s beautiful and it’s absolutely effective, and it’s so because director Terence Malick captures the perspective of childhood as seen through the lens of recollection.  He uses vignettes and camera angles and selective audio to approximate how children see and adults remember.  He weaves it with a meditation on life, and the meaning of life, that put me in a profound, meditative state and took me on its journey.

I didn’t cry during   The Tree of Life.  I didn’t laugh.  Nothing blew up.  But this film moved me, its marriage of music and imagery touched me, and the experience felt like the most profound time I’ve had at the movies since Woman in the Dunes.

See this film.  Soak it in.  When you do, go large.

Green Lantern

I kinda liked Green Lantern.  It struck me as goofy fun.  All the goofy fun in the world, however, can’t mask its profound distastefulness.

Here’s the deal: Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, a test pilot with deep-seated insecurities who gets selected to be Flashlight Guy, er, Green Lantern, a space-cop who can use Lantern Power to focus his will into stuff like really big machine guns.  After bilging out of Space Cop Academy, he returns to Earth.  Once home, he’s confronted with Capital E Eeevil, overcomes his insecurities, and saves the day.  On the face of it, this makes for a good time at the movies.  My kindergartner enjoyed it, and I rocked along relatively happily.

But I can’t see how any self-respecting nerd can support Green Lantern.  As played by Ryan Reynolds, Hal Jordan is that jock you probably hated in high school.  He’s good looking and in great shape and has a ridiculously hot girlfriend whom he neglects.  As if that weren’t enough, he has an awesome car, the ability to lose his job without freaking out, and Space Cop powers.  But that’s not so bad.  Here’s the killer: his nemesis is you.  His nemesis is Chess Club Guy, the nerd with the crush on Ridiculously Hot Girl.

{Aside: it just kills me that it always comes back to Ridiculously Hot Girl.  By whining about the fact that he’s invisible to Ridiculously Hot Girl, Chess Club Guy marginalizes all the Chess Club Girls.  In a sense, he’s marginalizing his own analogue and, thus, himself.  I hear you, Evolutionary Scientist Guy: Ridiculous Hotness often comes down to symmetry of feature, perfect averageness, and physical fitness, thus suggesting a good reproductive choice.  Nevertheless, the self-loathing inherent in the envy of the one whom Ridiculously Hot Girl finds attractive strikes me as both unjust and uncomfortable.}

So, what are we supposed to do?  Root for the Alpha Beta over the Tri Lamb?  Cheer Ryan Reynolds because he finally gets in touch with his inner Ted McGinley? Not going to happen.  The best we can do is quiet our misgivings and enjoy the pretty pictures.

And plot our revenge.  Mu ha ha.

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol had me at the opening credits.  I’d forgotten that Brad Bird directed this film, and seeing his name flash on the screen assured me that I was in for a good time.

You see, Brad Bird directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille.  The Incredibles is the greatest superhero movie ever made, and Ratatouille moved me to stand and applaud when its credits rolled, something I’ve done exactly once.  This guy knows what he’s doing and it shows in this, his first live-action feature.

The Mission: Impossible movies imagine what James Bond would be like if he weren’t a sociopath.  Tom Cruise, as secret agent Ethan Hunt, can actually make and sustain friendships, lead people, and present himself as more than a collection of top-shelf stuff he read about in men’s lifestyle magazines.  This gives us an “in” to his character that the 007 movies simply can’t deliver.  This matters, because it overcomes the fact that this spy thriller is just another entry in the “stop a madman out to destroy the world / corner the market on X / extort ONE MILLION DOLLARS from the UN” genre.  We like Ethan in a way that we simply can’t like Bond.  We like his team, which includes recently omnipresent Doctor Who alumnus Simon Pegg.  We like his boss.  By God, we like the Impossible Missions Force, whose self-destructing messaging systems sometimes need a little whack to, y’know, actually self-destruct.  So we’re on board when things get rough.

And rough they get, giving Bird a reason to deliver breathtaking action set-pieces.  I’ve flown over Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower a zillion times, but it took this film to bring home its awesome height.  I’ve been in sandstorms, but the sandstorm here felt more dangerous and more awesome than any I’ve actually experienced.  As a film buff, I’ve seen more stunt fights in industrial settings than I can remember; but I’ve never seen a stunt fight like the one this delivers in its climax.

A friend of mine recently said that Brad Bird should get a Bond film.  I say that Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol is as good as spy action-thrillers get, and better than any Bond film I can readily recall.  Brad Bird hasn’t just raised the bar.  He’s built a better bar, taller and stronger and cooler and just plain more fun than the bars that have gone before.

I can’t praise Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol enough.  Brad Bird knows what he’s doing.

PS  … except for that last scene, which looked like it was filmed on different stock and tied everything up far too neatly.  Hey, people who follow this kind of thing: was this a reshoot thing?  I just don’t understand how you do two hours of excellence, only to go mundane at the wrap.  Thoughts?

Hugo

In the first ten minutes of Hugo, Martin Scorsese delivers a breathtaking flight above the wintry streets of beautiful Paris, through the crowds at a downtown railway station, and into the very workings of the beautiful clocks that keep the people in the station on time.  Further, he introduces the ragamuffin boy Hugo, our hero, wins our sympathy for him, and dazzles us with the beauty of his photography and vision.

And then he gives us the opening credits.  Basically, the first ten minutes of Hugo is Martin Scorsese saying, “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the best there is.”

He’s right, of course.  He is the best there is, and he uses his mastery of his craft to tell us a story (of the plucky young Hugo and his adventures in the railway station), experiment with and expand 3D technology, and proclaim his love for film, both aesthetically and technically.

He’s aided by the kind of cast a Scorsese can command: Christopher Lee as a bookshop owner who reveals hidden depths, Sacha Baron Cohen as the Station Inspector, Emily Mortimer as the flower vendor who’s the glint in his eye, and Jude Law as, in a sense, the soul of the picture.  And that’s just the supporting cast!  In the lead, we find the remarkable young Asa Butterfield as the titular Hugo, Chloë Grace Moretz (whom I’m beginning to see as the next Jodie Foster) as an educated young girl who yearns for adventure, and Sir Ben Kingsley in one of his most evocative roles since Death and the Maiden.

Right around here, I usually summarize the plot to help you decided whether the story’s for you.  Not this time.  The story’s good, and it’ll capture your imagination, but Hugo is for you simply because it’s beautiful.  It provokes a feeling of aesthetic wonder, a joy that mankind is capable of creating such visions and experiences, a shared delight in the possibilities of film as a medium.  I loved Hugo and consider it among the best films of the year.  I think you’ll love it, too.

Hulk

When the climax of your superhero movie comes down to two guys talking on a darkened stage, you know you have something special.

In The Hulk, Ang Lee has created a film that replicates the feeling of reading a comic book.  Its compositions deliberately recall the printed page.  Its wipes and transitions suggest the exuberance of a penciller in creative ecstasy.  Its villain kill qualifies among the top three villain kills of all time.

And yet, all that seems almost beside the point.  The Hulk is a film about emotions and their repression, and nothing engenders so much of both as family.  Bruce Banner’s family is about as dysfunctional as it gets, and he has coped with the ensuing trauma through repression and emotional distance.  As played by the extraordinary Eric Bana, he’s a coiled spring.  When he finally releases, when he lets go, it’s as chaotic and cathartic as an argument at Christmastime.

Ok, so hang on: is this a movie about an uptight guy who learns to get in touch with his emotions, or is it a movie about a giant green monster who breaks stuff?  I understand your confusion: I think audiences went in looking for the latter and felt similarly confused when confronted with the former.  But don’t get angry (I don’t think I’d like you when you’re angry): just dig The Hulk for what it is – a movie about an uptight guy who learns to get in touch with his emotions by turning into a giant green monster and breaking stuff.  By the time you get to those two guys on that darkened stage, you’ll have grooved on both tracks long enough to feel at home.  And when of those two guys literally starts chewing the scenery, you’ll be ready.

Alien

Oh, Alien is so good.

Here’s a movie that takes its time in the setup, and it pays huge dividends in the second and third acts.  When the crew members of the space cargo ship Nostromo awaken to a distress call from an alien world, we get to know them.  We get to know their ship and its layout.  These things matter, because the Nostromo’s world is one that has been lived in for quite some time, and we need to feel that it’s commonplace, that these are ordinary Joes doing an ordinary job.

Because when Hell breaks loose, we’ve become keyed up and ready.  When people start dying, we know who they are and have become invested in their fates.  When the alien’s acid blood starts eating through decking, we know what that means and can figure just how close the ship is coming to catastrophic hull breach.

This leads me to wonder: why is this so hard?  Why do so many filmmakers not seem to understand that the key to narrative film, even genre-type horror and science fiction, lies in the characters and their environment?  If we don’t believe in the characters and their world, we won’t believe in their predicaments or their heroism.  If we don’t believe in the characters, all we have is light and sound. 

Alien believes in its characters, and it makes us believe.  That’s what makes the film so effective, so scary, to this very day.  When many of the films we know have passed out of memory, audiences will still watch Alien.  If they’re smart, so will filmmakers.  This film has much to teach them.

Captain America

Captain America failed to capture my imagination.  It never made me feel like I was watching people, even extraordinary people, in dangerous situations.  It made me feel like I was watching characters go through the motions of yet another ‘origin story’ that really served as a prelude to the big Avengers movie the studio has planned for next year.  Its perils didn’t feel organic, its villain struck me as silly (The villain’s someone called Red Skull, who’s a really evil Nazi because – what? – regular Nazis aren’t evil enough?), and Captain America’s “super-special good guy team” just looked goofy.

Hey, I like star Chris Evans, who was the best thing about the Fantastic Four movies and Sunshine.  I like Hugo Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci; and Hayley Atwell is easy on the eyes.  But I never believed in what I saw, and it wasn’t long before Captain America had me looking at my watch.  I hope The Avengers will surprise me with something wonderful.  Based on what I saw in Iron Man 2, Thor, and now this, I’m not holding my breath.

The Leopard

In The Leopard, Burt Lancaster delivers perhaps a career-best performance as Prince Don Fabrizio Salina, a giant among the Sicilian nobility of the 1860s.  The world is changing around the prince, who adapts as best he can.  But that’s not interesting.  What’s interesting is how the Salina adapts to not just the greater world of 1860s Italy, but to his realization that his moment, and the moment of all he holds dear, is passing.  It’s beautiful and powerful and some stuff even blows up.  I don’t know what more you could want in a movie.

Prince Salina bears the mantle of his great house, rules his corner of the island, and arranges the lives of his family to ensure the survival of his legacy.  This isn’t easy, as the island boils with revolution and capitalism challenges feudalism in all the ways that matter.  When the most promising member of the next generation (who isn’t a direct descendant) falls in love with a rich but common girl of the town, how can the Prince both adapt today and make way for tomorrow?

He can do so with vigor, style, and a take-charge intelligence that Lancaster conveys with absolute authority. Alain Delon plays the scion and Claudia Cardinale the commoner, and one finds it difficult to imagine a fitter actor to play their better, their mentor, and (in a sense) their rival.  You’ll see this film and it’ll dazzle you with its costumes and sets and scenery and, well, Sicilian – ness, but you’ll take away Lancaster as the The Leopard, perhaps the last feudal lord in Europe.  He’s a little frustrated, a little sad, a little resigned, but he’s nowhere near out of tricks and he’ll amaze and impress you.

If you think of Burt Lancaster only as “the guy from those old pirate movies,” think again.  Watch this film and stand by to be impressed.

PS  In a nifty little coincidence, I’m posting this from the balcony of a hotel room in Sicily, where cool breezes blow across the cedars and the blood oranges hang ripely in the trees.  This is a magnificent island.

Spider-Man 3

Warning!  Spoiler Ahead!

Here’s the problem with Spider-Man 3: at the end of the film, Peter Parker and Harry Osborn, in their Spider-Man and (new nemesis) Green Goblin costumes respectively, team up to fight the big, scary villains.  They’re old friends in great danger, yet they’re having a ball.  They fall into sync.  They help each other out.  They’re a couple of guys we’d love to spend an hour and a half with.  In other words, Spider-Man 3’s climax shows us what we’ve been missing, thus making us feel like we’ve been missing out.  Spider-Man was fun.  Spider-Man 2 was fun.  Spider-Man 3 doesn’t get fun until the last twenty minutes.  By then, it’s too late.

Spider-Man mastermind Sam Raimi set out to make a relationship movie in this, his third installment in the franchise.  Unfortunately, it’s the kind of relationship movie that makes you want to throw your remote at the screen and yell at these people to just go grab a beer and talk to each other.  If they’d done that, they’d have been much happier much sooner, and so would we.

Spider-Man 2

Many critics call Spider-Man 2 the best superhero movie.  I think that distinction belongs to The Incredibles, but I can see their point.

When the film opens, Spider-Man has been web slinging for a while.  He's also been trying to hold down a job, go to school, and be there for his friends, but he’s a juggler with too many balls and not enough hands.  Fighting crime is a full-time job, and he’s no millionaire playboy.  Something’s gotta give.

And so goes the maturation of Peter Parker.  He’s found his calling, but he hasn't found his balance.  What results is a work of surprising maturity, balancing the requirements of the ‘spectacular blockbuster’ with those of a carefully told story about growing up and out, about learning how to be a man.

So, how does Spider-Man 2 do in the ‘spectacular blockbuster’ department?  Very well, thank you.  The film has a very cool, very cinematic villain in Doctor Octopus, played by Alfred Molina.  Doctor Octopus is attached to enormous cybernetic arms, and the film brings them to life with a masterful combination of practical and computer-generated effects.  We believe in this contraption, and in the menace it represents, and this helps bring the film to life.  Of course, it doesn't hurt that the film continues the tradition of hiring world-class actors to play its villains.  Molina can do charm with the best of them, but he can also do a version of sneering contempt that’ll make you recoil.

So yeah, I can see why so many critics are in love with this film.  It’s thrilling and cool and rewarding, and it succeeds in every way.  I love it, too.  it isn't The Incredibles, a legitimate classic, but it belongs in the same sentence.

Spider-Man

Spider-Man ranks among the best superhero movies ever made.

You know how it goes: nerdy high schooler Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider, develops super powers, and fights bad guys.   It’s an origin story, like so many others, but Spider-Man’s theme, that with great power comes great responsibility, resonates because it’s a lesson that we all must learn, over and over again.  Spider-Man, as a character, has abilities that make him strong and fast and agile, as well as give him the ability to do neat stuff in involving lots of very tall buildings (Pity the poor, nerdy high schooler who gets bitten by a radioactive spider in Barstow.).  But it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’ll use these abilities responsibly.  In fact, he behaves like a child, with disastrous consequences.  And how many times has each of us done that?  How many times have we taken our unique gifts and used them irresponsibly or in service of our own narrow self-interest?  How has that usually worked out?  That’s part of Spider-Man’s appeal: we don’t need to be nerdy, or a high-schooler, or a New Yorker to relate to this character.  We look at Peter Parker, at Spider-Man, and we see a fanciful version of ourselves as we are and as we aspire to be.  That’s pretty good stuff for a superhero movie.

Thematics aside, Spider-Man also succeeds as pure entertainment.  Star Tobey Maguire nails the role, bringing just the right combination of gee-whiz excitement over his transformation and insecurity as he develops into a man.  Perhaps more importantly, he conveys how much Peter Parker enjoys being Spider-Man.  Sure, he must have looped much of his in-mask dialogue, but his wahoos and shouts of joy as he swings from building to building feel like the authentic whoops of a young man having a ball.  Willem Dafoe, as the villain, proves yet again that he ranks among his generation’s finest actors.  His reading of an easy cliché, “We’ll meet again, Spider Man,” belongs at the top of Villainy’s Greatest Hits.  He goes big and broad, and just the right amount of over the top, without devolving into silliness. 

This isn’t a two-man show, however.  J.K. Simmons, playing Parker’s boss and newspaper editor, made my family laugh out loud as scenery-chewing comic relief.  Kirsten Dunst and James Franco, as our hero’s would-be girlfriend and only slightly baked best friend, respectively, ground Peter and help us get an “in” to the story.  The Chin, well, he does his thing.  It really is a magnificent chin.

But hey, these are professional actors.  They’re supposed to be good.  What makes Spider-Man good is that sense of joy, that fun we get as we swing with Peter Parker through the canyons of Manhattan, thrilled at our abilities and finding our place in the world.  There aren’t enough movies about joy and responsibility out there.  Even if there were, Spider-Man would be the best of them.  I just plain loved it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is so bad it sapped my will to write about movies for over a month.  It turned my lifelong enthusiasm for the medium into a flaccid, faded memory of itself.  It drove me to bypass all the great films in my Instant queue in favor of old episodes of ’Doctor Who.’  It’s a horror; an abomination.  It ranks among the very worst movies ever made.  I’d sit through five sequels to Bollywood’s Krrish before I’d even let my neighbor across the street play this horror on his TV.

How bad is it?

It’s so bad that, about 45 minutes in, my three boys fell asleep on the couch while watching it.  Just let that sink in for a moment: here’s a loud movie about cars and robots and explosions that bored three healthy American boys.  It’s so bad that I, who sat through The Expendables, couldn’t sit through the action set pieces and, instead, found all manner of chores to accomplish around the house (Bathroom towel rack mounting – check.).

This movie is so bad that even thinking of it in any kind of a critical manner makes my head ache.  All I want to do is heap scorn upon it, sneer at those who made it, and never see it again.

So, yeah, this isn’t a review.  It’s a screed.  But some movies don’t deserve reviews and screeds are all they get.  Tranformers: Dark of the Moon, you’re an affront to the very notion of narrative film.  You have no artistic, aesthetic, or even prurient value.  You’re a cynical, worthless, boring embarrassment of a movie that I’m ashamed to have ever tried to screen for my kids.  Shame on you, and shame on me for renting you.

Now, begone and never be heard from again.

X-Men: First Class

Holy cow.  X-Men: First Class is actually good!

Some background: I never got into superhero comics.  Everything I know about the X-Men I’ve learned from going to the movies.  Consequently, my last exposure to the X-Men universe was through the odious Wolverine.  When I went in to this one, my expectations were low.

Here’s the setup: it’s the Kennedy Administration.  A dude with groovy brain powers recruits a coldblooded revenge killer to join Team Good.  As one may imagine, things do not work out as groovy brain guy might have preferred. 

The film hangs a pretty good story on that frame, helped along by fun period work, seamless effects, well-directed action set pieces, and the revelation that the amazing young actress from Winter’s Bone looks great naked.

The consensus among my filmgoing friends is that X-Men: First Class is average, at best.  I don’t get it.  I had more fun at this film than any other superhero film released this year.