Opinionated Judge: MORE PIFF REVIEWS

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

MORE PIFF REVIEWS

A version of this post appears in the Portland Observer here: http://portlandobserver.com/news/2014/feb/19/favorities-watch/

The Portland International Film Festival is in the final stretch and, as of this writing, I've seen 17 films since my last post. Here are the ones you can still see in the festival's final days, along with three more of my favorites to watch for in hopes of a theatrical or DVD release (and my ratings on a 10-point scale):

One of my favorite films of the festival was "Aftermath" (9), a powerful Holocaust story that apparently was quite controversial when it was released in Poland. Inspired by a true story of a Polish town, the film involves two brothers, the older of whom is returning home for the first time since immigrating to Chicago 25 years before. Franciszek's return has been occasioned by the fact that his brother Jozef's wife has suddenly left the village and moved to the U.S. with the couple's two children and won't say why. Upon his arrival, Franciszek finds that Jozef (and he, by extension) are the target of some hostility in the town. With some digging, he traces the hostility to Jozef's actions in unearthing some Jewish headstones that were repurposed for paving after the town's Jewish cemetery was destroyed during World War II.

It turns out that the headstones are just the tip of the iceberg that Franciszek encounters, and part of the achievement of this film is how genuinely successful it is at unfolding a very suspenseful tale of literally buried secrets. Significantly, the film does a better job than most Holocaust films at depicting how great evil may reverberate on unwitting successive generations. What drives the two men (one of whom seems to be anti-Semitic himself) to pursue the truth, how each reacts to the successive discoveries, and the reactions of the townspeople all are depicted with stark psychological realism. Full of devastating insights. (Plays again on Feb. 23)

"Ernest and Celestine" (8) is the best children's film I have seen at the festival, which inevitably means it offers much for adults to enjoy also. It's the charming story of a mouse, Celestine, and her friendship with a bear, Ernest. In the world of this delightfully animated film (based on a series of French children's books and justly nominated for an Academy Award), bears and mice live in separate worlds, above and below ground, nursing age-old antipathy with urban legends about each other. Celestine and Ernest have artistic souls, which contributes to their outsider status in each culture, and also provides a basis for them to bond. Of course, as outsiders, they also share a willingness to carve a path outside of convention, which lends a revelatory quality to the world they create for themselves. It's not a new theme, but it is very well executed here. And something about listening to their dialogue in French makes it all the more delightful. (Plays again on Feb.23)

The central enterprise of "The Great Passage" (6.5) is the arduous task of creating an ambitious dictionary (for which the film itself is named) during the period of change in which books are fading in significance and online resources are on the rise.

The film spans a period of 13 years, beginning in 1995, and charts the progress of the project along with the parallel maturation of a bookish young man at the center of the story, Majime. Shy and socially awkward and working in the sales department of a large Japanese book company, he is tapped to replace the main editor in the company's dictionary department when the man resigns to care for his ailing wife. Majime (whose name means "diligent") naturally exhibits the painstaking care and love of words needed to be inspired by the project of creating a "living dictionary" that incorporates modern words and slang. The work and the support he receives from the small department of misfits he works with also assist him in his own work of coming out of his shell (just barely) and learning to communicate enough to woo the quiet chef he meets through his landlady.

"The Great Passage" proceeds at the pace you might expect from people who love words and dictionaries, but it is a gently comic story with interesting characters that feels distinctly grounded in Japanese culture. (Plays again on Feb. 19)

"American Dreams in China" (7), though a bit uneven, offers a window into China's perception of how the Chinese are treated by the U.S. and also a Chinese perspective on the U.S. itself.

Wildly popular in China, this film from Hong Kong has been dubbed "the Chinese Social Network." It tells the story of three young men who meet at university, bond over their dreams of studying in the U.S., and end up founding a hugely successful corporation that tutors students in English and coaches them on what they need to obtain a U.S. visa. The U.S. actors in the film are distractingly awful and the plotting sometimes feels clumsy, but in the end I wondered if my perceptions as to the latter might in part reflect some cultural differences; ultimately the film sells its distinctly Chinese perspective on U.S-Chinese relations. (Plays again on Feb. 20)

"The Snow on the Pines" (6.5) is primarily interesting for what it may signal about a shift in Iranian society. It lacks the complexity that I have so admired about other Iranian films (including "The Last Step," discussed below). By Western standards, its story of a woman who discovers that her husband has been cheating on her is fairly well-worn territory. But for an Iranian film to focus entirely on the woman's experience, including her burgeoning interest in a man not her husband, feels pretty remarkable -- indeed, I was having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that this film actually won awards in Iran. Apparently it took a couple of years to get the film past Iranian censors, but things must be shifting if this film can garner critical interest in mainstream Iranian cinema. (Plays again on Feb. 20)

"Thy Womb" (5) offers the opportunity to observe the culture of one of the Philippines Muslim provinces, the island community of Tawi Tawi, but doesn't provide the narrative structure to help non-Filipino audiences understand what they are seeing.

The story revolves around a middle-aged fisherman and his wife, Shaleha, a midwife who has never been able to conceive. Shaleha decides, finally, to help her husband find a second wife. We don't learn enough about their culture to get a sense of why she would make such a choice and to interpret the other complications of the plot, as the two have a loving relationship and it's not even clear that he understands how this decision will end up affecting her. There also is intermittent violence in the film that is entirely unexplained. It's beautifully filmed and often arresting to watch, but leaves a lot of questions unanswered, having offered the audience no tools to answer them. (Plays again on Feb. 20)
Three of my favorite films have ended their festival run, but are so good that I recommend keeping an eye out for a theatrical or DVD release:

"Metro Manila" (10), a British film set in the Philippines, is my favorite film at the festival so far. It won an Audience Award at Sundance and was Britain's submission for the Academy Award for best foreign language film; it deserves to be among the nominees since it is better than the four that I have seen.

It's the third film of its talented writer director, Sean Ellis, who wrote the screenplay in English and shot the film in Tagalog, with the help of his strong Filipino cast. It's a brilliantly plotted, beautifully acted, suspenseful and moving story of a couple who leave their farm to seek a better life in Manila and encounter the worst of humanity there. I can't think of a more satisfying thriller, and it also has a really important story to tell. I expect to write a longer review of this one, which is a strong contender for my own list of the best films of 2014.

"The Last Step" (10), which finished its PIFF run on Monday, may have dimmer commercial prospects in the U.S. but is also quite wonderful, in its own way.

Inspired by Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and James Joyce's "The Dead," it explores relationships between a husband, a wife, and their mutual friend, veering back and forth in time. It is clear early in the film that the husband has died, and the action changes time periods frequently, shifting before and after his death. The shifts are filmed without any fade-outs or clues, which is disorienting at first but ends up giving the film a sort of metaphysical quality, blurring the lines of time and space in a manner that mirrors the spiritual world and captures subtleties in the relationships that might not otherwise be perceptible.

Iran continues to produce particularly dazzling films; I'm anxious to see this one again because its riches can't be absorbed fully with just one viewing.

"Ida" (9) is the last of the three strong Polish films I saw at PIFF this year and may have a shot at a limited U.S. release, as it deals with World War II themes that Americans respond to and has won awards at several international film festivals.

Set in 1962 and shot beautifully in black-and-white, it tells the compelling story of a lovely young orphan who has spent her life in a rural convent. About to take her vows as a nun, she is instructed by her mother superior to visit an aunt in Warsaw that she didn't know she had, and once there she learns things about her family and identity that she never suspected. The aunt is a beautiful and hard-drinking judge who earned her reputation as "Red Wanda" for prosecuting state enemies. The two women are a study in contrasts, and embark on a journey to find what became of the younger woman's parents during the war. It's a compelling story, told with restraint and care.

Next week: my own list of the best films of 2013, just in time for the Academy Awards.

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2014-MICROREVIEWS

BELLE (7) is a bit clumsy in its execution, but still moved me with its story of a biracial woman (scornfully termed "mulatto") living a relatively privileged life as the niece of a powerful jurist in England in the late 18th century. It's inspired by an actual woman, depicted in a remarkable painting as nearly coequal with her white cousin. I identified with many of the identity conflicts experienced by her character; this work of fiction, though imperfect, contains some power bits of truth.
MONUMENTS MEN (4) is pretty lame. You don't actually learn anything very interesting about the operation to recover art and save architecture during World War II; rather, the film consists of a series of photo ops and canned dialogue exchanges, to the accompaniment of a score that feels like a stock WWII soundtrack.

2013--MOVIES I'VE SEEN

42 (7) is clumsy in its depiction of the racism endured by Jackie Robinson, putting words in the mouths of the characters that contain a bit too much current perspective. The subject is so compelling, however, that the film moves and inspires; even a clumsy retelling is a worthy one.
56-UP (7.5) is the latest installment of a documentary that has tracked a diverse group of Brits every seven years since they were seven years old. I've followed it since "28 Up" and, beyond caring about the people involved (or the approximation of them onscreen), I find that the film provides helpful windows into human experience generally--how and why we evolve, the qualities of good relationships, the variables of opportunity and privilege that can chane the course of one's destiny, and the beauty of human resilience.
A BAND CALLED DEATH (7) is a heartfelt documentary about three African American boys in Detroit and the proto-punk music they produced back in the 1970s. The brothers and their family are so genuine, and the brothers so talented, that you can't help but cheer them on as they tell their improbable tale. And that tale raises familiar questions about how societal perceptions keep us from seeing talent when it doesn't come in the packages we expect.
BARBARA (7) tells its story of a self-contained East German woman living under constant Stasi surveillance in a manner as restrained as its heroine. It portrays with subtlety the toll that being on the outside takes on one's soul and, though the forms Barbara's resistance takes aren't the dramatic kind that most films favor, she is, in her way, quite inspiring.
BEFORE MIDNIGHT (8) picks up 19 years after the lead couple met and fell in love in "Before Sunrise" and 9 years after they reconnected in "Before Sunset." Its picture of romance is, consequently, more seasoned, more complicated, and much deeper. It's nearly all talk, like the prior films, but captures very well how love may grow to be mixed with anger and resentments that accumulate over time. It asks the right questions and, even if these two may exasperate you, their experience of love and anger resonates.
BLESS ME, ULTIMA (8) - Although I haven't read the beloved book, I was impressed with the obvious reverence this film shows to New Mexican culture and spirituality. A Hollywood studio would have overblown the magical elements and hammered obvious messages into the plot; instead, in this adaptation by African-American writer-director Carl Franklin, the spiritual elements are portrayed with gentleness, the changes in a sensitive young boy are conveyed with believable subtlety, and the wisdom of the curandera is honored, plus it benefits from the work of a cast of mostly unknown Latinos. Brava to bringing a neglected American story to the big screen!
ENOUGH SAID (8.5) is the rare romantic comedy that is, for the most part, honest about what romance looks like between flawed human beings. Writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a master at capturing moments when the characters are not really at their best--selfish, insecure, unkind--in a way that allows you to still like them and to recognize yourself. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini are surprisingly well-matched in what turned out to be one of his last films; I can't think of a movie where rooting for a couple seemed as complicated and therefore genuine as it often does in real life.
FILL THE VOID (8), directed by a woman who joined the Hasidic community in Tel Aviv after growing up in New York, is an insider's view of that insular world. Its plot involves a young woman who struggles against pressure to marry her brother-in-law after her sister dies in childbirth, but who does not struggle against the role assigned to her as a woman in the community. It was a worthy challenge for me as a feminist to make the deep dive that the film invites into a community with values different than mine and to resist the temptation to judge--but the film repaid that effort with a nuanced look into issues of authenticity and devotion, love and duty that are every bit as sticky in my culture, where we arrange our marriages with arguably more freedom.
FRANCES HA (7.5) is a delight--a funny, rich-but-not-weighty look at a woman whose development has arrested in her late 20s. The territory is familiar, for sure, but this treatment feels notably fresh and winsome, full of tiny moments that will make you remember your own least-shining moments with a smile. It's also a rare film about friendship between two young women in which boyfriends and sex are viewed from the lens of how they affect the friendship; it's a knowing look at how central and how simultaneously deep and shallow such relationships can be.
GIRL RISING (4.5) is beautifully filmed, but squanders the attention it brings to the plight of girls in the developing world by focusing on too many stories but not telling any of them well enough to open up much understanding. The depictions only scratch the surface and seem designed to make audiences feel good about themselves without requiring them to inquire very deeply into the implications of what they are seeing.
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN (7) seems to be a disappointment to admirers of Salman Rushdie's epic novel and, though Rushdie himself adapted it for the screen, it does have the clumsy feel at times of trying to do too many things at once. That said, I loved its rich, messy glimpses into Indian/Pakistani history and culture and left hungry for more. Not Deepa Mehta's best film (that distinction belongs to "Water"), but definitely worth a look.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (6,5) benefits from Joss Whedon's breezy touch with the material, setting, and cast, especially Amy Acker, who is a stunning Beatrice. The dialogue fairly crackles, especially early on in the exchanges between Beatrice and Benedick. This story, with its prudish emphasis on female chastity and easy grace for brutish male behavior, is an uncomfortable fit for a modern setting--but the film is best enjoyed as bubbly exercise in style and wordplay.
MUD (5.5) has its moments, most involving its child lead, who is compelling and watchable; the rest of the cast and the film's groundedness in its Southern context is interesting too. But in the end, there isn't enough story here, nor is Matthew McConnaughey's character (Mud) interesting enough, to sustain the momentum.
NO PLACE ON EARTH (6) tells a particularly remarkable Holocaust story of a Jewish family in the Ukraine who survived by hiding in an extensive and deep cave for months. This documentary film relies on recreations and interviews and some of the story seems clumsily focused on the American spelunker who brought the story to light--but it's an amazing story worth watching, even though the film isn't as effective as it might have been in different hands.
PRISONERS (6) sustains intensity and suspense and features good-enough performances. But like the director's other films, it is weighed down by a plot that is too convoluted and unravels at the end, and though it hammers some themes (religion; violence begetting violence; how all the characters are imprisoned in some way), the film doesn't really offer insights about those topics sufficient to justify the depths it requires you to plumb.
RENOIR (7.5) depicts the last days of the celebrated painter and the artistic origins of the filmmaker son, and the young woman who inspired them both. It's gorgeously filmed and evocative, and enriches your understanding of all three artists.
ROOM 237 (4.5) is a talky geek-fest of speculation from several people who have scrutinized every frame of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" looking for hidden meanings. I went about halfway there--but these people (who don't seem otherwise to have much of a life) go a bit overboard, so be warned.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (6) is another playful re-visioning of the venerable classic and is perfectly watchable and often amusing. But it has a certain generic quality to it; J.J. Abrams hasn't managed to capture a quality of sincerity that characterized the original series.
STOKER (3.5) is the first English-language film by the Korean director of "Oldboy." I wish I could say it shared that film's energy and originality. Instead, it's all style in service of a pointless and turgid story.
THE BLING RING (5.5) is weirdly interesting, in the way it is weirdly interesting to overhear a parent belittle a child--but similarly, I would not call it entertaining or enriching. Sofia Coppola's true story faithfully follows the facts as laid out in a Vanity Fair article about well-off teens who burgled L.A. celebs out of $3 million dollars of loot that they (sickenly) probably barely missed, and she gets the craft and details right. However, the film doesn't offer a vantage point from which to view these events with insight; any reflections the story provokes about these materialistic kids, their negligent parents, and celebrity culture are up to you to supply.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP (3.5) is a vanity project--a venerable cast distractingly plays characters who are 15-20 years younger than they are in real life, and the moral dilemmas are all ginned up to promote their (or, at least, director Redford's) credibility as liberal icons. To make matters worse, Shia LeBeouf is positively unendurable as a stereotypically rapid report who we are supposed to believe is smarter than the FBI but who asks nothing but obvious questions. I didn't believe one second of this film.
THE COUNSELOR (2) is pretty unredeemably awful, despite a talented cast who give it their all. Cormac McCarthy's dialogue (written for the screen) is insufferably self-indulgent; if you are going to write dialogue that no one would say, at least make it entertaining or purposeful. And the film is chock full of pointless elements: Why does Javier Bardem have yet another crazy haircut? Why does literally everyone call the main character "counselor," as though there is some significance to the fact that he is a lawyer, when that fact is completely insignificant to the plot?
THE GREAT GATSY (5) is worth seeing for the flash (which sometimes is fun in a disembodied sort of way), but not because it works. Director Luhrmann goes overboard with the visual effects and seems to have missed the point of the source material entirely. It's like Gatsby told by . . . Gatsby.
THE HEAT (7.5) has turned me into a die-hard Melissa McCarthy fan. Plot-wise, it mines old territory--buddy-cops who are opposites drive each other crazy but ultimately come to appreciate each other--and it is sometimes sloppy. But I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed watching a large woman shown to really good advantage; she is attractive and smart and winning and hilarious, and I could watch her all day. Better yet, a lot of the humor is so FEMALE, playing on the professional barriers women face, rivalries between women, the thin lines women are given to walk with men and in their families. Watching McCarthy convincingly rag on tiny Bullock (who is quite fun here too) about her wardrobe choices and show her up with men was deeply satisfying.
THE KINGS OF SUMMER (3.5) is an over-hyped indie film that thinks it's a charming coming-of-age story; I found it to be lazy, substituting snarkiness for original humor and improvised montages for character development. The two entitled teens at the center of the story rebel by disappearing for an entire month to live in an improbably well-equipped ramshackle house that they supposedly built themselves, and their generically ethnic sidekick is employed only to look strange and spout non sequiturs. Note to the director and screenwriter: grow up before making a coming-of-age film.
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES (5) manages to remain interesting but doesn't bear scrutiny. Its dilemmas feel manufactured, its characters' motivations fuzzy. Director Derek Cianfrance has talent, but needs to spend some time learning about human nature if he is going to play around with such ambitious themes.
THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST (7) isn't wholly successful (the romantic subplot doesn't work), but it manages to grapple credibly with the experience of Middle Eastern Muslims straddling between their culture and U.S. culture. The film is anchored by a terrific lead performance by Riz Ahmed, who manages to hold your sympathy even when he behaves in ways you may find misguided and scary.
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (2) plays like a vanity project for director-star Ben Stiller, with not one moment of authenticity. It completely misses the point of its source material, setting up a series of non-problems for the hero to solve and resolving the story of a regular guy by turning him into the kind of cartoonish superhero he dreams of.
THE SPECTACULAR NOW (6.5) has moments of remarkable authenticity for a teen romance; its leads actually look, talk, and act like teenagers and make you ache in all the right ways as you watch the film's depiction of innocence and sincerity mixed with foolishness and unwitting immaturity. The film squanders some of that authenticity with narrative shortcuts and clumsy plotting toward the end and could have benefitted from better writing and directing--but it's worth watching for some wonderful moments and good performances, particularly from Shailene Woodley (definitely one to watch).
THIS IS THE END (6.5), for all its sloppiness and raunchiness, strikes some pretty hilarious notes in riffing on the Christian view of the end times and on celebrity culture. In this apocalypse, most of Hollywood is left behind in the Rapture, and Seth Rogan and his fellow man-children weather the aftermath in James Franco's ridiculously opulent but poorly-stocked home--and let's just say it doesn't bring out the best in any of them. Be prepared for some very naughty language and behavior, but if that doesn't put you off, you are in for a lot of belly laughs.
TO THE WONDER (8) seems to have disappointed and/or irritated a lot of folks, but I found it lovely and rich and resonant. It helps not to view it looking for much in the way of plot or character development; director Malick's approach is more indirect and metaphysical. In a sense, the central relationships reflect vicissitudes common to all relationships, and the struggles of the priest are deep questions with which true seekers often struggle. We are invited to the wonder.
WARM BODIES (7.5) is a surprisingly charming and imaginative spin on the Romeo and Julet story, in which the star-crossed lovers are a zombie and a human. Nicholas Hoult totally sells his smitten zombie (who can't remember any more of his name than "R") and the story unfolds with genuine pathos and humor. I felt actual anxiety about how things would work themselves out--and let me just say, this little film is so endearingly hopeful about the human capacity for love and transformation that it totally won me over.
WEST OF MEMPHIS (8) - There really is no good answer to the question of why three men have served 18 years in an Arkansas prison for a murder they certainly did not commit, but the least the rest of us can do is to spend a couple of hours trying to wrap our minds around it, which this film equips us to do. For judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement, it is a cautionary tale that should make our blood run cold, culminating in a "resolution" that filled me with disgust and fury.
WORLD WAR Z (7) is the smartest, most entertaining, most genuinely thrilling summer blockbuster I've seen so far this year. Unburdened by any information about the film's problematic production history or the novel that inspired the film (which sounds pretty different than the film turned out to be), I was free to admire the film's cleverness, which exceeds that of most summer fare. And, it scared the crap out of me!

2012--MOVIES I'VE SEEN

2 DAYS IN NEW YORK
A LATE QUARTET (7) offers several wonderful performances--especially by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, and Catherine Keener--in a story about a string quartet whose 25 years of apparent harmony turns out to be more fragile than anyone realized. Though not deeply resonant, its observations of human nature are astute and it offers an interesting window into the realm of world-class musicians.
A ROYAL AFFAIR (9) is more than just a romantic costume drama; it compellingly mines the complexity of pre-Enlightenment Danish politics for insights that seem quite currently relevant. Three compelling lead characters--a troubled king, a lonely and idealistic young queen, and a commoner with the charisma and ambition to seize an opportunity to make more change than the power structure will stand for--make for a fascinating study of what makes revolutions so dangerous and how simple it can be to manipulate people into propping up their oppressors.
ABU, SON OF ADAM (4.5) is a sweet story of a Muslim couple who dreams of a pilgrimage to Mecca and is willing to sacrifice everything to get there. The display of simple, sacrifical faith is affecting, but the film leaves some plot strands unaddressed and the subtitles are grammatically incorrect and missing punctuation.
AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (7.5) places in context the work of the provocative artist and architect of the "Bird's Nest" venue from the Beijing Olympics so that we in the West can begin to understand his courage and cultural significance, and also grasp the mob tactics of the Chinese government in silencing him and others who speak out against the accepted version of the truth about life in China. It provides a worthy education, though certainly a sobering one.
ALMANYA--WELCOME TO GERMANY (7.5) is a buoyant look at one Turkish family whose patriarch was part of the wave of Turkish guest workers to immigrate to Germany in the early 1960s. I willingly surrendered to its joyous celebration of this slice of immigrant experience and the riches possible in understanding one's roots.
AMOUR (9.5) is a profound film about how a well-to-do elderly couple copes with her physical and mental decline. It depicts love, not infatuation or obsession or sex--and it unsparingly depicts aging and death in all their relentlessness, without platitudes or cliches. In these ways, it rises above most other films about romance and about older folks; it is so observant and so unflinchingly truthful that it makes you wince--but it also shows (without undue explanation) what love really looks like.
ANNA KARENINA (7.5) is quite an intelligent adaptation of the novel. Though I don't share director Joe Wright's love of Keira Knightley, she actually does reasonably well here at capturing Anna's flaws, which (along with good work from the rest of the cast and an excellent screenplay by Tom Stoppard) makes the tragedy of the story suitably complex. And though the overall effect is more chilly and literary than heartbreaking, Wright and Stoppard have made some brilliant choices with the staging that reinforce the artificiality of imperialist Russian cultural norms.
ANY DAY NOW (8) could have gone very wrong--it's a polemical film about a gay couple in 1979 West Hollywood who attempt to get legal custody of a boy with Downs Syndrome after his drug-addled mother lands in jail. But the film manages to maintain an insightfully realistic tone about aspects of the story I wouldn't trust to most filmmakers--including shortcomings of the legal system, how vulnerable one is living in the closet, and a gay relationship that isn't mainly played for laughs. And the two leads are great, especially Alan Cumming, whose ferocious drag queen is positively beautiful.
ARBITRAGE
ARGO
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (10) imparts of a vision of ultimate truth that crackles with urgency, courage, and originality. Without idealizing them, the poor and disenfranchised are portrayed with dignity and reverence for their role in the universe. In this world, a child receives gifts of love from a neglectful father far more precious than what many children (myself included) have received from more outwardly acceptable parents; real women who exist beyond fashion are depicted with genuine respect for their wisdom and beauty; and a fierce little black girl absorbs and speaks ultimate truth. It's a work of art.
BERNIE (8.5) is the funniest film I have seen in a looong time. It's a stranger-than-fiction east Texas story told by people who know what they are talking about, including the director (Richard Linklater) and Matthew McConnaughey, who I usually don't like but who is an absolute scream here as a hot dog prosecutor out to get Jack Black for murder. This is Black's best work since "High Fidelity" and the cast of actual east Texas locals narrating the action from their memory of the events must be seen to be believed. Besides being really funny, this film has some pretty interesting observations to make about human behavior--and shows you can make a hilarious film that also has something to say.
BEYOND THE ROAD (6.5) is an enjoyable road movie that may make you yearn to travel the Uruguayan coastline. It follows the journey of a young Argentine banker and a lovely Belgian vagaband, and captures the desultory nature of youthful journeying (especially if those youth happen to have some resources and beauty to smooth the way).
BLUE LIKE JAZZ (3)--I didn't believe one minute of this movie; its depictions of both the evangelical world and the secular Reed College world were cartoonish, the acting and directing wooden. I'd love to see more films that realistically depict a struggle for authentic faith, but this film doesn't come close.
BRAVE (6) features some lovely animation--most notably, the heroine's amazing mane of red curls--but the story is pretty thin. It feels like the filmmakers missed opportunities to ground the story in a more specific time and place and create a more believable conflict between the protagonist and her mother and the life that's expected of her.
BREATHING (7.5), an Austrian film that was honored at Cannes, follows a juvenile delinquent's struggles toward an adult identity. The film takes its time to lay the groundword for crucial revelations about the main character's past and the experiences that have shaped his view ofthe world.
BULLY (6.5) is not as successful as, say, "The Invisible War" in marshalling its evidence and focusing its message about the prevalence of bullying and the signs that it is a system failure. That said, the stories the filmmaker chose and the inside-school access he got (primarily from a school which thinks it cares about addressing bullying but is doing a poor job of doing that) illustrate very well that bullying is primarily about adults failing kids.
CHICO & RITA (7.5) is a beautifully rendered animated homage to Cuba and its music. Although its story of star-crossed lovers sometimes lacks resonance, the music is rich and soulful, and the animated renderings of Havana and New York and Cuban jazz being played and danced to are lovely, rich, and soulful.
CHRONICLE
CLOUD ATLAS (7.5) is absorbing and ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable, if a bit uneven. It may help to be unaffected by attachment to the book on which it is based, which I understand conveys the themes with more subtlety and grandeur than displayed here. For me, the transitions and connections between six interlocking stories in different times were seamless and often inventive, and the film's themes of recurring oppression and resurgence in human history were moving enough, even though not probed very deeply..
CLOWN: THE MOVIE (5) is a Danish film that ups the ante of dirtiness past what U.S. censors would allow. Funnier than "The Hangover," but really, really depraved.
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS (3) is supposed to be charming, but is full of witless dialogue and precious looks and expects us to care about four young and privileged college girls smugly spouting their empty thoughts. Nothing leads anywhere, and the director is far too self-satisfied.
DARK HORSE
DARK SHADOWS (6) doesn't break new ground and Johnny Depp's true love is miscast and uninteresting. But his droll performance brings everything up a notch; it's solid summer entertainment.
DJANGO UNCHAINED (10) breaks ground in some significant ways: it depicts the brutality of American slavery in a way that we really haven't seen; it gives us the catharsis of a black hero; and, in asking the question (stated ironically by a slaveholder) why the black slaves don't simply rise up and kill the whites and devising a freedman superhero to do that, the film also demonstrates the real answer to the question--that is, the system of oppression ensured that an uprising was not possible. Yes, Tarentino loves spaghetti Westerns and blaxploitation films and packs his films with great dialogue and reverential nods to film history--but he is also doing something profound with this film. I left quite sobered, in just the right ways--and I was blown away by the thought that he found a way to get a bunch of Americans to spend nearly three hours looking at aspects of our relatively recent past that we have been refusing to face for a long time.
EXTRATERRESTRIAL (2.5) is a muddled Spanish film that uses alien spaceships landing in Madrid as the occasion for a sitcom-worthy romantic triangle. It seems to be aiming for comedy, but ends up being a misfire because nobody's motivations make sense and it's not very funny.
FLIGHT (5) settles into a death spiral after an exciting opening plane crash sequence--and given the film's idiotic handling of its legal and psychological elements, I lost confidence in the credibility of those early scenes too. Denzel Washington and the rest of the cast do their work well, but the director and the screenwriter should not have undertaken an addiction story without acquiring some basic sense of human nature. I can't imagine why they thought it would be a good idea to make such a manipulative and uninspired morality play.
FRANKENWEENIE
FRIENDS WITH KIDS (4.5) - Only in Hollywood is it a news flash that love is a better basis for marrying someone than whether you think they are hot. Still, this movie is a pleasant enough way to pass the time.
HELLO I MUST BE GOING
HOLY MOTORS (8) transcends all expectations of plot and meaning. Instead, for two hours, you are lost in a film with constantly shifting characters and story, all told with the most painstaking attention to every detail. It's a lot of intention with no real discernable objective, and it's exhausting, and baffling--and compelling, and impossible to forget.
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (6.5) is filled with fine performances and often feels like a fascinating window into the Roosevelt household and also King George and Queen Elizabeth. However, the screenplay suffers from a failure to deal adequately with the emotions and ethical questions stirred up by the story arc of FDR's special friend, Daisy--not to mention all the other women in his world.
I, ANNA (5.5) benefits from the acting skills of Charlotte Rampling as a troubled woman and Gabriel Byrne as the cop who is investigating a murder and her. However, as film noir, it feels very by-the-numbers and, though it maintains suspense for much of the film, it does so by manipulation and characterization that strains plausibility.
IN THE FAMILY (9) is long, but it rewards patience and surpasses typical Hollywood fare in every respect. The work of a first-time writer- director, Patrick Wang, who is a stage actor and dramaturg, it is a plain-spoken, deliberate depiction of an Asian-American Tennessean (played by Wang) grappling with the aftermath of his partner's death and a custody fight over the boy they viewed as his son but the law doesn't. No shortcuts, no polemics, no manipulation; Wang understands the importance of everyday life and the power of telling the truth. The emotional pay-offs in the last hour of the film are all earned, and the story even includes a lawyer demonstrating how to be a true change-agent and a way to view the limits of the law with both realism and visionary imagination. I think I felt the earth move a little; you will too.
JACK REACHER (3) is an example of one of my pet peeves: a film whose plot development largely depends on a supposedly smart woman (here, a defense attorney) behaving like an idiot--including strutting through a man's world in tight dresses with her cleavage spilling over and asking bad guys to explain their motives when they are within reach of killing her. The men who made this film clearly have no concept of how a beautiful and intelligent woman might behave--but they also don't know how to create a genuinely suspenseful plot or a compelling hero. There are a couple of fun fights and a good car chase, though.
KILLER JOE
KILLING THEM SOFTLY (6) gets points for style and dialogue and performances--Brad Pitt is having a ball and is surrounded by a suitably scuzzy array of criminals (all of them men). But the constant references to the American economic collapse don't really serve any purpose except to make you think there might be one there--sort of like the interesting dialogue that mostly doesn't really lead anywhere. The Kiwi director has talent; I wonder if he will mature into an artist with something to say.
LAS ACACIAS (7.5) from Argentina justly won a best first feature prize at Cannes. This plainspoken film conveys the tedium of a long road trip and how limited tools for communication can yet be enough to establish connection--and amazingly, somehow it inspires attentiveness rather than boredom.
LAWLESS
LES MISERABLES (7.5) - There is much to admire here: this version really brings out some of the best themes of its source material, including a sense of how human evolution depends on the sacrifices of prior generations, and director Tom Hooper's choice to have the actors sing live during filming evokes some very moving performances (none more than Anne Hathaway's show-stopping rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream," which on its own ups my score for the whole film). Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, and the two child actors are quite wonderful as well. But however serviceable he is as an actor, Hugh Jackman's heavy vibrato is distractingly wrong for this music; his voice, and the film itself at times, feel ponderous rather than impactful.
LIFE OF PI (7.5) lacks the visionary impact of the novel, but is nevertheless a worthy and carefully constructed film adaptation. Director Ang Lee wisely chooses to focus on telling parts of the story that film is best suited for, by concentrating on creating a vibrant and shimmering physical reality for Pi. As for Pi's inner life, Lee makes good choices for hinting at treasures the book conveys more profoundly.
LOOPER
MEN IN BLACK III (6) doesn't really have a reason for being beyond cashing in on the franchise--but it is pleasant enough, with a mildly interesting sojourn back in time to younger versions of the heroes.
MONSIEUR LAZHAR (10) received a lot of Canadian film awards and an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. The story involves an Algerian refugee to Montreal who is hired to take over a sixth grade class after the beloved teacher commits suicide. It is an extraordinarily nuanced and perceptive study in how careless we often are in our judgments and how studiously we avoid addressing the whole truth. Watching this good man show his students the way through their suffering is deeply inspiring.
MOONRISE KINGDOM (8.5) is another worthy example of Wes Anderson's pecular vision, this time in a story of misfit 12-year-olds who fall in love and dare to carry their fantastical ambitions to fruition. This is possible because they are living on an island full of unfulfilled and ineffectual adults (amusingly realized by Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Bruce Willis, and Jason Schwartzman) but also because they live in Wes Anderson's world. It's not at the top of my Wes Anderson list, but it gave me lots to smile at and savor, including nearly ever detail of every scene and a wonderful staging of Benjamin Britten's "Noah's Ark." Wonderfully weird.
MORGEN (2.5), a Romanian film about a quiet, slow-thinking security guard who finds the will to help a Kurdish immigrant cross the border into Hungary, contains in the first five minutes an interesting metaphor for the senselessness of borders. After that, it drifts.
MY SISTER'S SISTER (7) is buoyed by wonderful, natural performances from the three leads and the director's easy, authentic hand. The plot is a bit manipulative, but I didn't care at all because the film feels true in some other ways--in the little moments of indecision and foolishness and longing and risk-taking that make up real human experience.
NATURAL SELECTION (5) intermittently works as a film about real folks clinging foolishly to principle and, in one case, breaking free; a solid performance by the female lead, who goes on a quest to find her comatose husband's son via sperm donation, was good enough to keep me watching and almost made me believe what was happening at times. But not quite--the clumsy script and lesser performances got in the way.
OKA! (3) is a muddled mess--the narrative is poorly developed and often confusing, with loose threads everywhere, cartoon villains, and stock scenes of native ingenuity. It's only worth seeing for a window into Central African culture.
OSLO, AUGUST 31
PARANORMAN (6) puts beautiful animation in the service of a story that is clunky, predictable, and uninspired. The best part of the movie occurred in the first 30 minutes when the charming main character is introduced.
PESCADOR
PITCH PERFECT" (6) isn't notable for an inventive story or clever screenplay--but it is worth seeing for snappy vocal arrangements and an amusing comedic performance by Rebel Wilson. It made me miss singing.
POSTCARD (8) counts the cost of war in a simple and sometimes theatrical style that recals the golden age of Japanese cinema and is a wonderful window into Japanese culture. The ceremonies used to mark departures to and returns from war; the purposefully restrained manner of handling deep emotions, punctuated by more dramatic displays of pathos; the deference to custom and family duty and elders; the simplicity and struggle of life in a small fishing village--all are depicted here in a really intriguing and sometimes lightly comic way.
PREMIUM RUSH (6.5) is good late-summer fun--lots of action involving bikes zipping through Manhattan traffic to keep you distracted from the fact that the plot doesn't really make sense. And Joseph Gordon Levitt never disappoints.
PROMETHEUS (2) should be called "Stupid People in Space"--the entire story depends on people doing ridiculously stupid things for reasons that make no sense. Don't let the solid cast and Ridley Scott's involvement fool you into thinking this film is worth seeing.
PROMISED LAND (3.5) has the feeling of a screenplay with an agenda--and indeed, Matt Damon, who co-wrote it with John Krasinski, has said that they wanted to depict an aspect of current American identity, and shopped around for an issue that would highlight it (settling on corporate efforts to persuade farmers to allow drilling for natural gas on their land). I like both actors and the rest of the cast, but the film feels manipulative and dishonest. It would have been better to find an honest story and let that story speak important truth.
QUARTET (5) - Like so many films about senior citizens, I didn't believe a minute of this because all the conflicts and struggles are set-ups easily solved. There are lots of older folks who have lived long and interesting lives with actual conflicts, and surely it would be possible to make a film about them--but instead, what we get is inoffensive but sadly inauthentic.
RESTORATION (8) tells the story of a man who must put his life and his Tel Aviv antique furniture business back together after the death of his partner. All of the relationships and performances are suitably complex, and the director takes his time to reveal, quite skillfully, the essential character of each of the three leads as well as the dead partner. The film, and particularly the lead performance, are marvelously nuanced and full of hidden treasure.
ROBOT & FRANK
ROSE (9) depicts a bit of Polish history that will probably be unknown to U.S. audiences, involving the beginnings of life under the Soviets for a community that became an ethnic minority. Although the film depicts quite a bit of violence against women, it is an amazingly moving and effective examination of an important and little-understood part of the war's aftermath.
RUBY SPARKS (8) tells the story of a young writer (Paul Dano, very well cast) who emerges from a long battle with writer's block when he writes his dream girl (Zoe Kazan) into actual existence. It's refreshing to see such an original idea executed so well, and Kazan (who wrote the screenplay) uses her story to muse lightly about relationships and how they work to pleasing effect. A romantic comedy with an actual point worth making--how refreshing!
RUST AND BONE (8) is an intriguing character study of beauty and beast, of two broken souls who almost wordlessly guide each other to healing and their higher selves. The glorious Marion Cotillard glistens as a whale wrangler who is felled by one of her beasts and then guided to healing by a visceral fighter whose mixture of brutish physicality and instinctive kindness is just what she needs to recover her will to rebuild her life. It is a rare example of a film that takes the time to build a complex and elemental connection between characters without assuming or explaining it.
SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED
SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN (3) thinks it's a romantic comedy--but it's really a bland and obvious exercise in which the plot elements feel like chess pieces being mechanically moved around the board--make that checkers pieces, not as complicated. Pleasant in a mindless sort of way but otherwise a waste of time.
SAVAGES
SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN (10) richly deserves its Oscar nomination for best documentary feature--it's the thoroughly inspiring story of Rodriquez, a Mexican American musician who recorded two brilliant folk rock albums in the early 1970s and then disappeared into obscurity when they didn't find commercial success, unaware that he went on to literally become a rock star in South Africa. The true story of how Rodriquez learned of all this decades later is far stranger than fiction, not least because he turns out to be a heroic person, a living example of how light overcomes darkness. Though he was exploited and forgotten here, the beauty and truth of his music inspired resistance to apartheid and oppression while he lived a life of simplicity and quiet integrity. And the music is phenomenal.
SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS (6.5) is the work of Irish director Martin McDonagh (who wrote the play "Pillowman" and directed "In Bruges," which I slightly prefer to this film). McDonagh is talented at witty masculine dialogue set in a context of ridiculous violence, and he knows how to evoke good comic performances (here, Christopher Walken is especially great). This film doesn't add up to much and, though the characters comically acknowledge that the film treats women merely as sex objects and targets for bullets and insults, it is not really forgiveable--but the film is fun while it lasts.
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (5) deserves an 8 for performances but a 2 for the screenplay and direction. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing and Bradley Cooper surprisingly good (though neither deserves an Oscar) for their portrayal of two very troubled souls, and director David O. Russell again (as in "The Fighter" and other films) displays great skill at directing believable chaos to comic effect. But his (and the screenplay's) refusal to deal realistically with mental illness (as with family dysfunction in "The Fighter") feels exploitative and damaging. Come on, Russell--this shit is real.
SISTER (6.5) is the rather bleak story of a middle-school aged boy who scraps together a living for himself and his older sister by petty thefts from a posh ski resort high above their humble apartment. The kid is compellingly played and the film has an observant cinema verite' style but is work to watch with no major emotional pay-offs.
SKYFALL (6.5) is a worthy addition to the Bond canon, speaking as a casual fan with no deep attachments. Daniel Craig is my favorite bond, and I liked the shift in technology,the new Q, and Javier Bardem as a fun villain enough to ignore the plot-holes (which escalate toward the end).
SLEEPWALK WITH ME (5.5) is a lot like director and star Mike Birbiglia's humor: mildly amusing and emotionally stunted.
SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (6.5) - The repackaging of a familiar story here doesn't really bear any scrutiny--but the film is visually arresting and consistently engaging. Just don't think too hard about Charlize Theron worrying that Kristin Stewart might be prettier than she is.
SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO (7.5) is about an idealistic middle-aged couple who have occasion to wonder how well they are living their ideals. Unlike typical Hollywood fare, the film really sits with that question and defly conveys how the ethical choices and opinions of even very good people shift when they feel themselves to be aggrieved.
SOUND OF MY VOICE (7) takes a young couple on a mission to expose a cult leader and, using a smart screenplay, provokes questions about the nature of belief and of power. It's helped by two strong female leads, one of whom co-wrote that smart screenplay.
STEP UP REVOLUTION (4) aims for its target audience of dance fans, no more and no less. Fun dance sequences, but nothing moving or earth-shattering, and not worth the 3D. And the story and acting? Forget it.
TAKE THIS WALTZ (7.5) benefits from a brave and nuanced performance by Michelle Williams, who once again creates an amazingly complete portrait of a young woman's discontent, confusion, whimsy, longing, and folly. It also benefits from careful direction by Sarah Polley, who seems interested in reflecting on spaces where our longings and impulses and unconsciousness lead us astray.
THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN (6) is best at creating a believable psychology for Spiderman's development--a skinny adolescent's transformation into a stuntman with crazy powers--and benefits from good performances all around. It's a summer popcorn film, of course, so don't think too hard.
THE ANGELS' SHARE (6) fails to cohere in terms of plot; it is at first a grittily realistic portrait of petty criminals caught in a lifestyle for which their bad choices are only partly to blame, and then it morphs into a comedic crime caper. That said, it has some pleasures to offer, even if in some cases they aren't really earned.
THE AVENGERS (6.5) fares much better than any of the individual films starrring these characters (except, perhaps, the first "Ironman"). Although the story makes no sense (as usual), its chief fun is watching the superheroes spar and (sort of) work together. Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is the most interesting, but really all of them are likeable, especially in relation to each other, though Tom Hiddleston's Loki is too silly to be genuinely threatening.
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE (3) may appeal to fans of its eponymous subjects (performance artists whose mutual love and need for attention spurred a years-long project to transform themselves into each other using a series of identical plastic surgeries). But the film's coherence is undercut by its efforts to be as quirky as its subjects, and it fails to give their art sufficient context to make it compelling to the rest of the world.
THE BOURNE LEGACY
THE CAMPAIGN
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE (10) ought to be required viewing, especially for those of us involved in the legal system. It very carefully unpacks the story of how five black and Hispanic teenage boys ended up being wrongfully convicted (in the press and in court) of brutally raping a white woman jogger based solely on coerced confessions. It is hard to sit through but offers extremely important insights into our criminal justice system, how human beings work, and race in America. Attention must be paid.
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
THE DEEP BLUE SEA (6), like most of Terrence Davies's other films, is a darling of film critics but leftme cold. Rachel Weisz plays (quite well) a woman who leaves her kindly older husband for a younger, callower model after the latter shows her the joys of passion (though he's not that into her) in post-war London. Lots of agony and swelling music ensues.
THE DICTATOR (6.5) is much better than I expected--with some really sharp political humor that kept me laughing throughout, though of course this is by no means a subtle or classy piece of work. It's my favorite of Sasha Baron Cohen's films.
THE FAIRY (7) is a charming French comedy that displays the French gift for whimsy a la Jacque Tati and "The Triplets of Belleville." It follows the exploits of a stringy hotel clerk and the homely woman (a self-dubbed fairy) who wins his heart, and features several inventive dance numbers, a fanciful backrub, a comic depiction of chilbirth, and acrobatic feats on a scooter.
THE FLAT (8) is the work of an Israeli filmmaker documenting the task of clearing out his German immigrant grandmother's Tel Aviv apartment following her death. It turns out that in her 70 years living in Tel Aviv, she kept a lot of secrets, including a friendship with a Nazi officer that continued after the war. The film plays like a mystery story--and one of the central mysteries is why no one in the family, including her daughter (the filmmaker's mother) ever asked her about her past. A fascinating exploration of how human beings control what they see and know, and of the mysteries of the human heart.
THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD (8) tells, clearly and without artifice, the story of a modern-day family in a small Albanian village, caught in a blood feud with another family. It displays in very specific, cringe-inducing detail how a society functions without the rule of law as we know it here in the U.S., and also depicts a generational struggle with insights that apply beyond this very particular time and place.
THE FRONT LINE (5.5) - What makes this Korean war movie interesting is the setting--a rocky hillside scarred with trenches and foxholes notable only because of its strategic location near the disputed border between North and South Korea--and also the history it depicts about the end of that war. The sight of the carnage depicted here, experienced by people living in such close quarters, fighting what is essentially a civil war, is a fairly potent visual lesson in war's futility.
THE HOBBIT (6.5) gets a higher rating than I would otherwise give it because of Gollum alone; Andy Serkis continues to intrigue and inspire with his originality. But you have to sit through a lot of overinflated battle scenes strung together by a pretty thin story to get there. Loved the theme song, though, and the technical elements are fine.
THE HUNGER GAMES (6.5) feels like it contains a lot of really interesting ideas that you'd have to read the book to get--and I am not convinced that is because the ideas are too complicated to convey on film. That said, it's an entertaining take on an interesting idea, though a tad slick.
THE IMPOSTER
THE INTOUCHABLES (5.5) is a huge blockbuster in France, which I find interesting and a bit disturbing. It reduces what might be an interesting story of a wealthy white paraplegic and the African immigrant who becomes his caregiver to goofy vignettes without ever telling anything of substance about the African character. Like "The Help," it's inoffensive and occasionally charming but is so loosely based on truth and so broadly sidesteps the issue of race that it seems to minimize issues that really plague the culture it depicts.
THE ISLAND PRESIDENT (7.5) is a well-constructed examination of a remarkable man: Mohammed Nasheed, a courageous activist who helped bring democracy to the Maldives and then, as its first democratically elected president, takes up the fight to keep his homeland from disappearing under the sea due to global warming. It is the kind of movie one is glad to have seen because of how rich it is with information that we should know but don't. Watching it is truly heartbreaking though; this man's life and the lives of his people are just filled with problems whose solutions are unreachable due to the greed of powerful interests (including ours).
THE KID WITH THE BIKE (8.5) captures a child's response to abandonment, the lengths he goes to in order to try to hang onto a relationship with a parent who has failed him, and his utter inability to discern which, if any, adults are worthy of his trust. The point here is observation, not entertainment, and if you're up for that, this film is worthy of attention.
THE LIFE OF FISH (7), about a young man's return visit to his home town in Chile after ten years abroad, depicts small moments of regret and longing that surely are cataclysmic to the characters, but make for a story that ultimately seems a little slight. However, the film is so emotionally resonant and so beautifully acted and directed that it is far more satisfying than most Hollywood fare.
THE MASTER (7) is beautifully filmed and contains some compelling performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Adams. Writer-Director Paul Thomas Anderson evidently has meditated deeply on the meaning of post-World War II America, on the nature of cult movements like Scientology (whose evolution influenced this depiction), and on what types of power might have been available in the 1950s to a highly intelligent American woman. He also has presented an interesting battle of wills between two crude and childish men. Unfortunately, it is all rather aimless, making me wonder what Anderson has against having more of a point.
THE PERILS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER (4) suffers from that annoying Hollywood tendency to pass off a faux version of human struggle as deep and poignant. Some of the performances are watchable, but no amount of good acting can authenticate a world where no one in an entire high school appears to be overweight or have acne or be poor, not even the supposed misfits around whom the story centers. And don't even get me started on the treatment of suicide and sexual abuse..
THE RAID: REDEMPTION (6.5) is a really impressive Indonesian martial arts film, packed full of amazing fight scenes and non-stop action. The plot is minimal, but it at least exists, and the fight choreography is relentless and convincing.
THE SALT OF LIFE (3) is an exceedingly slight exercise in self-pity by the director of the more delightful "Mid-August Lunch." Here he is harassed by his demanding, spendthrift mother, taken for granted by his wife and daughter, and overlooked by all the gorgeous younger women he would like to sleep with. Rome looks nice, at least.
THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY (7), a wonderful children's fantasy about borrowers (tiny people who live in the crevices beneath the world of full-sized and always-dangerous "beings") contains enough lush beauty to satisfy many adults, especially if you are a fan of Japanese anime'.
THE SESSIONS (7) offers two very good and thoughtful performances--by John Hawkes as a man in an iron lung and Helen Hunt as the surrogate he hires to assist him in finding a sexual life--and an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be in a body and to experience physical intimacy. Its director and screenwriter seems, however, to have settled for a rather shallow vision, wrapping up the story too neatly and settling for the depicting merely the novelty of the situation instead of probing the deeper questions the story invites.
THE SOUND OF NOISE (7.5), a Swedish film about a group of rogue percussionists out to make a musical point, is wonderful, subversive fun. It contains a wonderful metaphor for the way in which outsiders often contain the means of bringing to life what is true beneath the bland and even brutal surface for which most people settle.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN-PART 2 (1) left me incredulous; how is it possible for a film to be this terrible and yet take itself so seriously? There is a quality of intention that infuses everything about this movie, from the abysmal acting to the over-styled costumes to the goofy special effects. But to what end?
TURN ME ON, DAMMIT (6) could use a better English title; it's a mostly delightful teen comedy about a Norwegian 15-year-old who is frustrated with her small town and fixated on her sexual urges. Though a bit more explicit than what we see in the states, it is also more realistic and even more innocent and interesting than teen sex comedies here.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (6.5) mines a parent's nightmare (your son is a psychopath) to turn it into an often compelling horror story. It's very well executed and tense, though a relentless downer.
WRECK-IT RALPH (7.5) creates a world for arcade characters that is amazingly detailed and filled with in-jokes that don't require you to be a gamer to understand. It has lots of fun with mixing different game genres and eras and features wonderful vocal performances by John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, and Jane Lynch.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
ZERO DARK THIRTY (6.5) suffers from lack of perspective. Like Kathryn Bigelow's last film, "The Hurt Locker," this one is well-executed as far as it goes, but left me frustrated with Bigelow's failure to grapple with the themes she stirs up. Instead she seems to be relying on the fact that American audiences will assume that a film about the search for Osama Bin Laden is weighty and important and will not notice that the film doesn't actually deliver on that assumption.

2010--MOVIES I'VE SEEN

127 Hours (6)
12th and Delaware (7)
35 Shots of Rum (6)
A Prophet (7)
Ajami (7)
Alice in Wonderland (6.5)
Animal Kingdom (10)
Another Year (8)
Anton Chekhov's The Duel (6)
Biutiful (10)
Black Swan (4)
Blue Valentine (7)
Bluebeard (7)
Breath Made Visible (8)
Cairo Time (5.5)
Catfish (7)
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (10)
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (7)
Cyrus (4)
Daddy Longlegs (8)
Despicable Me (3.5)
Down Terrace (8)
Easy A (5.5)
Enemies of the People (8)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (7.5)
Fair Game (7)
Farewell (7)
Fish Tank (9.5)
For Colored Girls (1)
Freedom Riders (8)
Garbage Dreams (6)
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (9)
Get Low (6)
Good Hair (7.5)
Google Baby (8)
Greenberg (7)
Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss (5)
Heartbreaker (4.5)
Hereafter (3.5)
How to Fold a Flag (6)
How to Train Your Dragon (10)
Human Resources Manager (4)
I Am Love (8)
In A Better World (6)
In My Mind (8)
Inception (7)
Inside Job (9)
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (8)
John Rabe (6)
Kawasaki's Rose (6)
Kings of Pastry (7)
La Pivellina (7)
Last Train Home (9)
Let It Rain (8)
Life During Wartime (7)
Looking for Eric (4)
Made in Dagenham (5.5)
Marwencol (8.5)
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (3.5)
Micmacs (8)
Mid-August Lunch (7)
Mother (4)
Mother and Child (1)
My Dog Tulip (6)
Never Let Me Go (3)
No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson (8.5)
Nobody to Watch Over Me (3)
Nora's Will (4)
North Face (6)
Nothing Personal (9)
Nowhere Boy (5)
October Country (6)
Ondine (2)
Please Give (7)
Prodigal Sons (9)
Protector (9)
Rabbit Hole (6)
Raw Faith (10)
Red (3)
Reporter (7.5)
Restrepo (6.5)
Salt (6)
Shameless (5)
Shutter Island (7.5)
Solitary Man (1)
Soul Kitchen (5)
Spider (short) (8)
Splice (-2)
Stonewall Uprising (7)
Strange Powers: Stephen Merritt and the Magnetic Fields (5)
Strongman (2.5)
Sweetgrass (9)
Tamara Drewes (2)
Terribly Happy (3)
The American (6.5)
The Eclipse (5)
The Father of My Children (8)
The Fighter (8)
The Ghost Writer (3)
The Girl On the Train (5)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (5)
The Good The Bad The Weird (6)
The Illusionist (6.5)
The Inheritors (8)
The King's Speech (10)
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers (10)
The Oath (4)
The Other Guys (6)
The Poodle Trainer (6)
The Secret In Their Eyes (6.5)
The Secret of Kells (8)
The Shock Doctrine (5)
The Social Network (6.5)
The Space You Leave (5.5)
The Square (3.5)
The Thorn In the Heart (5)
The Tillman Story (9)
The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (9.5)
The Tourist (1)
The Town (7)
The Way Back (4)
The Wild Hunt (1)
The Window (2)
Tiny Furniture (8)
Toy Story 3 in 3D (10)
True Grit (10)
Twilight Saga: The Eclipse (1)
Vincere (9)
Waking Sleeping Beauty (6.5)
Waste Land (9.5)
Welcome (8.5)
Winnebago Man (4.5)
Winter's Bone (10)

2009--MOVIES I'VE SEEN

(Untitled) (3.5)
24 City (8)
500 Days of Summer (4)
A Perfect Getaway (5.5)
A Serious Man (9.5)
A Single Man (10)
A Town Called Panic (10)
A Woman in Berlin (9.5)
Adoration (4.5)
Adventureland (6)
Afghan Star (6)
Amreeka (5.5)
An Education (4)
Angels and Demons (3)
Anvil!: The Story of Anvil (6)
Art & Copy (7)
As Simple As That (8)
Avatar (7.5)
Away We Go (5.5)
Bitch Academy (5)
Bright Star (10)
Broken Embraces (8)
Cape No. 7 (1)
Carmen Meets Borat (6.5)
Che (7.5)
Cherry Blossoms (8)
Coco Before Chanel (6.5)
Cold Souls (5)
Coraline (6)
Crazy Heart (6.5)
Crossing (3)
Departures (3)
District 9 (4.5)
Duplicity (7)
Eldorado (8)
Empty Nest (5)
Every Little Step (6.5)
Extract (3.5)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (9.5)
Five Minutes of Heaven (8)
Flame and Citron (4.5)
Gomorrah (6)
Goodbye Solo (7)
Home (6)
Humpday (8)
I Love You, Man (5.5)
Il Divo (6.5)
In the Loop (9)
Inglourious Bastards (10)
Invictus (6.5)
Julie & Julia (6)
Karamazovs (10)
Katyn (3)
Kisses (6)
Lady Kul el-Arab (6)
Lorna's Silence (6)
Lymelife (4)
Ma Bar (6)
Me and Orson Welles (6.5)
Mechanical Love (7)
Mermaid (6)
Michael Jackson's This is It (7.5)
Moon (5.5)
More Than A Game (6)
Nine (6)
Of Time and the City (3)
Outrage (7.5)
Papers (4)
Paranormal Activity (5)
Police, Adjective (7.5)
Ponyo (7)
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (10)
Public Enemies (7)
Red Cliff (6)
Revanche (5)
Rough Aunties (2)
Rudo y Cursi (3)
Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie (9)
Say My Name (4.5)
Seraphine (5.5)
Shall We Kiss? (6)
Sherlock Holmes (6.5)
Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech (8.5)
Sin Nombre (6)
Smile 'Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story (8)
Star Trek (7)
State of Play (6.5)
Still Walking (7.5)
Storm (6)
Sugar (6.5)
Summer Hours (6)
Sunshine Cleaning (5)
Terra Nova (2)
Tetro (6)
The Baader Meinhof Complex (7)
The Beaches of Agnes (7.5)
The Blind Side (4.5)
The Book of Eli (5)
The Chaser (3)
The Class (10)
The Cove (10)
The Damned United (7.5)
The Friend (9)
The Garden (7)
The Hangover (1)
The Hurt Locker (6)
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (3.5)
The Informant! (6.5)
The International (2)
The Kinda Sutra (7)
The Last Station (7.5)
The Lovely Bones (3)
The Men Who Stare At Goats (5.5)
The Messenger (7.5)
The Necessities of Life (10)
The Princess and the Frog (5.5)
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (5.5)
The Queen and I (7)
The Road (5.5)
The September Issue (5.5)
The Soloist (3)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (4)
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (4)
The Way We Get By (7.5)
The Wedding Song (9)
The Yes Men Fix The World (7.5)
The Young Victoria (7)
Thirst (4)
Tokyo Sonata (1)
Tokyo! (7)
Treeless Mountain (9)
Tricks (7)
Trucker (6)
Two Lovers (7)
Unmistaken Child (10)
Up in the Air (8)
Upstream Battle (7)
Valentino: The Last Emperor (6.5)
Watchmen (5)
We Live In Public (6)
Whip It (5.5)
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (7.5)
Zombieland (6)

2011--MOVIES I'VE SEEN

50/50 (7.5) is improbably refreshing for a movie about a young man's bout with cancer. I love how it captures the surreal mundaneness of a serious illness, the small indignities, how jarring it is to find out what your relationships are really made of.
7 DAYS IN SLOW MOTION (3) is a sometimes entertaining but incompetent film about privileged Indian youngsters who want to make a movie.
A BETTER LIFE (7.5) is the kind of film we need right now. Its story of the experience of an undocumented immigrant is gently, compassionately,and truthfully told.
A FAMILY (8) - a Danish film about a family, and especially a beloved daughter, grappling with the last illness of a powerful patriarch. Painful but very moving and true.
A SEPARATION (9.5) is a pretty exhausting film to watch--but that is because the director has achieved the feat of holding this intense and emotionally truthful story in a nearly perfect state of tension. It contains a wealth of insight into Iranian culture, but also into how humans behave under pressure.
AMIGO (5), John Sayles' latest, is not the film I'd like to see about the Phillipine-American war. The characters are too stock and the storytelling too clumsy and didactic.
AN ENCOUNTER WITH SIMONE WEIL (6.5) is not wholly successful, but is still a fascinating look at the life of the French philosopher who believed that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
ANOTHER EARTH (7) is clumsy in spots and not wholly successful--but it aspires to so much more than most films do in terms of the complexity of the ideas that it (along with its co-writer and star Brit Marling) manages at times to be quite compelling.
BARBERSHOP PUNK (3.5) - this documentary about corporate efforts to control free expression is undone by its talking-heads format and otherwise fails to illuminate.
BARNEY'S VERSION (5) never gives you a reason to care about the title character and doesn't really seem to have an animating idea. Plus, the women characters mostly don't make sense.
BEGINNERS (9.5) is not a didactic "issue" film. But it tells its story of an emotionally-blocked son grieving the death of his late-blooming gay dad and his parents' long, sad marriage so tenderly and truthfully that it moves deeply and teaches wisely.
BEING ELMO (9) - The creator of Elmo is a black dude! This documentary about Kevin Clash confirms everything I've been saying and working for: that everyone should be just who they most joyously are. This story will inspire just about anyone.
BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK (10) depicts a New York style photographer who happens also to embody all the virtues promoted by the world's great spiritual traditions.
BLACK BREAD (5) tells a Spanish Civil War story through the eyes of a 10-year-old--but it's overwrought and muddled; you're better off seeing "Pan's Labyrinth."
BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD (8) is an often mesmerizing exploration of Fischer's unique personality and the significance of his achievements, while pondering his essential mystery..
BOY (8) - a delightful foray into a Maori boy's zestful experience of life, and the long-lost dad whose return home fuels his fantasies.
BRIDESMAIDS (6.5) is actually really a hoot--not a great film, but a good laugh.
BUCK (9), a heartfelt documentary about a cowboy whose instinct and love of horses taught him to heal and be healed, contains as many life lessons as you are prepared to absorb. This non-horse person absorbed plenty--and I felt like I was watching a kindred soul.
BULLHEAD (4.5) generated quite a bit of interest in Europe and an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film but, aside from an interesting lead performance, is more flash than substance. A meat-industry mob story whose main character is hopped upon steroids, it fails to link up its story strands into a compelling whole.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (3.5) is surprisingly uninspired and even dull. The story was thin and the muddled nostalgic elements (including the annoyingly implausible female love interest who is, inexplicably, his military superior and the African American dude who is implausibly part of his 1940s gang) distracting.
CARANCHO (2.5) features the wonderful Ricardo Darin, but even he can't save this thriller; it is so full of noise and car crashes that it actually feels assaultive.
CEDAR RAPIDS (6.5) looked annoying from the previews but, as it turns out, is quite funny and at times even delightful.
CERTIFIED COPY (7.5) - a conversation between a British author and a French antique dealer becomes an occasion for reflection on the nature of art and authenticity. Juliette Binoche is luminous.
CIRCO (7) takes you on the road with a family of circus performers in Mexico; it's an absorbing look at a dying way of life.
CIRCUMSTANCE (6), a film about a romance between two Iranian teenage girls, doesn't really do justice to its important subject matter; the plotting is too leaden and simplistic and the film's fantasy sequences tend toward prurience. But making the film itself was itself a feat (it was filmed in Lebanon with a cast of Iranian expats) and it does have good moments, especially scenes with the two girls.
COLD WEATHER (5) is yet another movie by a young director who has some skill and who critics fawn over but who doesn't seem to have anything to say.
CONAN O'BRIAN CAN'T STOP (5.5) is a strangely unpleasant experience and not particularly illuminating. And I'm a fan.
CONTAGION (7.5) is worth seeing, though not for entertainment. It's a skillful disaster thriller that plays it straight and factual, rather than extreme and absurd (like such films as "The Day After Tomorrow").
COWBOYS & ALIENS (3.5) is a thoroughly idiotic film that combines two disparate genres for no apparent purpose other than to stuff one movie with the cliches of both. Not even Daniel Craig can save it.
DIARY (6) juxtaposes images of war with images of ordinary life in the west, to appropriately jarring effect, though it is too personal to be particularly illuminating.
DRIVE (7.5) ‎works best as a style piece; best not to think about the stockness of the plot and the pallid motivations of the characters. Forgive the often over-intrusive soundtrack and admire instead the film's precise and careful homage to '70s driver movies that might star Steve McQueen; the carefully staged, efficient action sequences; the interesting supportive performances, especially by Bryan Cranston and Christina Hendrickx; and Ryan Gosling, who makes laconic more intense and interesting than, well, Steve McQueen.
EASTERN PLAYS (5), a Bulgarian film about disaffected youth, is worth seeing as a window into Eastern European culture but, ultimately, drifted and left me feeling disaffected.
EVEN THE RAIN (8) is polemical, but in the best sense; it is genuinely gripping and moving, and depicts truths we should not dismiss as overdramatized.
EVERYBODY'S NUTS (7) is a short film about oil contaminating the groundwater in the San Joaquin valley; in its contemplative way, it shows how injustice can persist for so long that it becomes mundane.
FRIGHT NIGHT 3D (3) is yet another summer movie without any real reason to exist. It's not the least bit scary, or inventive, or (least of all) original. In fact, the most interesting thing was the closing credits.
GAINSBOURG: A HEROIC LIFE (6) has some admirable moments of invention and awakened my curiosity about an icon of French popular culture (Serge Gainsbourg)--but it sure wears thin over time. Maybe it's too similar to its subject in that way.
GUILTY PLEASURES (3.5) wastes an opportunity to mine the cult of Harlequin romances for some insight into what is really behind our cultural expectations of love and romance, and instead exploits its subjects for moments of entertainment.
HANNA (7) is so visually stunning and inventive and riveting that it is easy to forgive its plot holes and the fact that it doesn't particularly lead anywhere. It's just so much fun.
HIGHER GROUND (8)- Vera Farmiga, one of our most gifted actresses, directs and stars in this story about a woman who marries young and becomes involved with the Jesus people movement in the 70s. The brand of religion depicted here will seem foreign to many, but for me it is quite familiar, and I love the authenticity of her struggle and the place she ends up, which feels to me like faith.
HOW TO DIE IN OREGON (10) helps us, with great empathy and care, sit with the stories of people who have chosen to make use of Oregon's death with dignity law.
HUGO 3D (6) is quite visually stunning--I only wish Scorsese had found a story as compelling as the visuals, or found the magic in the story he had. Because the story never drew me in, it all seemed a rather mechanical exercise.
I SAW THE DEVIL (2) is just well-produced torture porn with no redeeming ideas or purpose.
IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT (9) is a thoughtful and wonderfully balanced exploration of the extremes of environmental activism, which succeeds in leaving you "still confused, but at a higher level."
IF I WANT TO WHISTLE, I WHISTLE (5) starts out strong as a realistic picture of a troubled juvenile offender, but deteriorates into melodrama.
IN TIME (2.5) squanders its semi-intriguing premise (a world where time literally is money and the rich--of course--hoard it while the poor are left to drop dead in their prime). The Bonnie-and-Clyde duo at its center have no real purpose; there are no children or unattractive people anywhere in sight; and everyone--even the poor--looks ridiculously hot and well-coiffed. It's less engaging than a video game.
INCENDIES (2) - a Canadian thriller about family secrets whose big revelations feel forced and manipulative.
J. EDGAR (5) - I appreciate the effort to place Hoover's actions in the context of his most significant personal relationships (including a possibly homosexual love interest). However, like so many of his other historical films, Clint Eastwood's biopic about the FBI's founder displays little insight and never achieves a convincing point of view.
JANE EYRE (10) doesn't disappoint; aided by the two wonderful performances at its center, it captures all the beloved novel's smoldering passion, grief, and valor.
KATALIN VARGA (8) - Beautiful, chilling, and spare; a powerful depiction of destruction wrought by a series of acts of punishment and vengeance.
L'AMOUR FOU (5) seemed misnamed to me. There's really no love on view, crazy or otherwise--just empty acquisition.
LAST REPORT ON ANNA (3) - a completely unbelievable telling of a true story about an exiled Hungarian dissident.
LIFE, ABOVE ALL (8) - Here is your chance to see a movie that truly depicts the lives of Africans without some white Westerner as the protagonist/savior. There are an estimated 1.9 million AIDS orphans in South Africa alone and, given that our country has the means to alleviate far more of that suffering than it does, the least we could do is sit with a very well-told story about a 12-year-old who faces hard truths better than most adults in her world or mine.
LIMITLESS (2) is built on the odious and clearly unexamined premise that a drug that suddenly teaches a failed writer (at least a handsome white male one) to use the unused portions of his brain would immediately equip him to determine how to make huge amounts of money, shag scores of beautiful women, and fight off bandits like Bruce Lee.
LOUDER THAN A BOMB (8) - an inspiring look at a Chicago slam poetry competition by the same name that draws students from scores of high schools all over the city.
LOVE CRIME (4), about two corporate power women, is a totally mechanical exercise, but at least it has Kristin Scott Thomas. She is fun to watch even in the most underwritten roles.
MARGIN CALL (7) is a well-crafted fictional story revolving around the class of Wall Street investment bankers who we have to thank for the mess the world is in. It's a good film, but I had some trouble caring about what happened to any of the characters.
MEEK'S CUTOFF (9.5) is more enriching than it is entertaining; in fact, I imagine some folks will find it a slog. But it is a haunting and attentive observance of human nature, the dynamics of power, and what life was really like, especially for women, on the pioneer trail.
MELANCHOLIA (6.5), which contrasts two sisters' differing approaches to crippling depression and the end of the planet, is visually stunning and never lost my interest. But I can't quite connect with director Lars Von Trier's nihilistic world view.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL (6) is good, silly fun--totally lacking in substance, but doesn't purport to offer any. Just some ripping action, a few smiles, and a pleasant diversion.
MONEYBALL (8) could perhaps have done a better job of showing how the undervalued players who became part of the paradigm-shifting winning strategy of the general manager of the Oakland A's actually had skills that were much more valuable than anyone had thought. That said, the film is a fascinating depiction of how a system--even, or especially, one that relies heavily on statistics--can drastically undervalue people who don't fit into the dominant paradigm, and how difficult it is to go against an entrenched system, even when you are right. It's also just a hoot to watch Brad Pitt's crackling performance.
MY PERESTROIKA (7) is an interesting documentary window into 5 Russians' experience of the changes in their country in the past 35 years. Their openness is encouraging and serves the film well, though I found myself wishing for a bit more shaping by the filmmaker.
MY TEHRAN FOR SALE (7) - filmed in secret in Iran, and offers a penetrating window into a world of artists and others forced to live double lives in their own country.
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN (8) features Michelle Williams in the best female performance of the year. It's quite a nuanced look at Marilyn Monroe's outsized personality and the business of movies--and Williams doesn't set a foot wrong. I give her a 10; she's miraculous.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (8) is an unexpectedly probing meditation on the importance of looking deeply for the truths we don't want to see. Challenging and deeply moving.
OF GODS AND MEN (8) - a meditative French film based on the true story of a group of monks caught in sectarian violence in Algeria; a moving depiction of faith in action.
PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (7.5) offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of this bastion of traditional journalism and makes a good case for its importance to an informed public.
POETRY (7) - a film from South Korea that ultimately is worth the work of attending to its slow rhythms, offering some worthy insights via an older woman's efforts to make sense of grief and oppression.
POM WONDERFUL'S GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD (5.5) - Morgan Spurlock is genial and fun, but he just didn't have enough of a concept behind this film to make it worthwhile.
POTICHE (6) - a stylized, comedic jab at French society starring Catherine Deneuve that didn't bring more me more than an occasional smile
PROJECT NIM (8) mines the painful story of a chimp who spent his early years as a subject of human study and then was discarded, finding illuminating examples of well-intentioned cruelty and appalling arrogance.
RANGO (7) is too complex to hold most children's interest, but is an admirably careful and clever riff on spaghetti Westerns that a lot of adults will love.
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1) teaches yet again that humans have not yet evolved enough to make an intelligent movie about an ape uprising--though as a species, we seem driven to keep attempting to do so every few years. I wish Hollywood would just check with me next time before spending millions more dollars embarrassing us. Seriously, I have this vision of a theater full of apes watching these movies and laughing their asses off.
RUSSIAN LESSONS (7) - an effective expose' of the Putin government's successful propaganda effort to blame the Russian/Georgian war on the Georgians.
SARAH'S KEY (6) sheds light on the little-known French role in the Holocaust, but the film lacks the depth and emotional intelligence to deal in a satisfying way with the complex themes it dredges up. The big pay-off scenes at the end mostly just felt manipulative, though Kristin Scott Thomas, as usual, brings everyone up a notch.
SHAME (9.5) is that rare film that depicts human failure and suffering insightfully, without explaining it away or oversimplifying the reasons for it. An extraordinarily insightful film about a sex addict and his train wreck of a sister, "Shame" is not for everyone, but worth the journey for those who are willing to enter the darkness. I valued the opportunity to bear witness, and to feel deep compassion for such brokenness.
SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (2.5) failed even to meet my low expectations. Even Robert Downey, Jr. seems bored; the story makes no sense, the action sequences are muddy, and I didn't care about any of it.
SHOLEM ALEICHIM (7.5) is a fascinating and well-constructed documentary about the Yiddish Mark Twain, a prolific storyteller and humorist who created a host of characters, including Tevye the Dairyman, who became the basis for "Fiddler on the Roof." The film deftly uses scores of old photos to conjure the lost way of life of Eastern European Jews, and a host of learned and articulate Yiddish scholars place in context the writer's important contributions to preserving and cataloging a culture that was threatened and eventually disappeared. Really fascinating stuff.
SON OF BABYLON (4) - a somewhat half-baked depiction of the journey of a boy and his grandmother in post-Saddam Hussein to find the boy's father.
SOURCE CODE (7.5) - I wish more action films were this interesting and trippy. I'm not sure it all makes sense, but I wanted to go everywhere this movie took me, and it lights on some interesting ideas.
STEAM OF LIFE (4) listens in on naked Finnish men telling their tales of woe in saunas, and can't seem to find a way to make it as interesting as I would have hoped.
TAKE SHELTER (6) is overrated by the critics. I didn't really buy the multi-layered meanings the director tried to foist on an otherwise interesting and often insightful depiction of marital love and mental illness, and it finally lost me completely in the last five minutes.
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU (7), if you look at it from the right angle, does a crackling job with some very interesting spiritual themes. How and why is it possible for one to impact one's life's direction?
THE ARBOR (8) - uses a mix of documentary and drama to tell an extremely complicated family story.
THE ARTIST (7.5) - I genuinely admired this film as a careful homage to the silent film era. Its leads are wonderfully evocative and it made me think more than I have before about the distinct craft that went into silent pictures and the ways they drew cultures together. I only wish the story had gone deep enough to move and draw me in.
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975" (8.5): There are little reminders all around us of all the stories of African Americans to which we have not bothered to pay attention. Where's the biopic about Angela Davis or Stokely Carmichael or Bayard Rustin? For now, this film offers a riveting compellation of footage by a group of Swedish journalists who sought to capture the black power movement. Their outsider perspective is very illuminating and uncannily relevant to current events.
THE BOY MIR: TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN (8) offers an insightful and unusually intimate ten-year look into the lives of an Afghan family and, especially, a winning boy whose dreams of being "a teacher, or a president" are crowded out by the demands of survival under the Taliban.
THE COLORS OF THE MOUNTAIN (7) is set in a small mountain village in Colombia but might be anywhere in Latin America or the world where small-town people (and children) are caught between rebel and government forces.
THE COMPANY MEN (5.5) wastes a good cast on a story that ends up feeling sterile and lacks the courage of its convictions.
THE CONSPIRATOR (4) bungles the telling of a story that deserved to be told, with its clumsy and heavy-handed dialogue, unconvincing sets and costumes, and obnoxious cinematography.
THE DEBT (4) is all plot and no point--the cast is good but the big plot reveal feels anti-climactic and contrived.
THE DESCENDENTS (8) deals with family problems in a refreshingly complex way, without trying to solve or explain away everything. George Clooney changes only in believable ways; the kids who play his daughters are refreshingly realistic; and there are some good riffs on the nuances of Hawaiian culture that made me smile.
THE DOUBLE HOUR (3.5) - an Italian film that is ripe for a Hollywood remake, but only because it is the type of bauble that audiences seem to love and I find empty and irritating.
THE FIRST BEAUTIFUL THING (7.5) is the kind of touching family comedy that rarely comes off in American films--but this story of an Italian mother who generates chaos and optimism in equal measure is charming from beginning to end.
THE FIRST GRADER (5) - the filmmakers seem to have passed up the chance to tell the more interesting stories here, and settled for an entertaining but simplistic version of this tale of an 84-year-old Kenyan man who seeks to take the government up on its offer of free education.
THE FUTURE (7) - Although I don't think it is wholly successful, I like Miranda July's unique voice and I think she has some interesting observations to make about how the prospect of commitment--to a plan or an ambition or a relationship or to oneself--can send people into a tailspin.
THE GUARD (8) is easily my favorite comedy of the year as of late summer. A droll and profane Irish spin on the cop-buddy film, it gives the excellent Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle the chance to trade quotable lines in a beautiful, quirky Connemara village and to paint a surprisingly nuanced picture of law enforcement.
THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA (6.5) is a worthy exploration of the lives of children who are migrant farm workers, though its message is a bit muddled by its mixed agendas.
THE HEDGEHOG (9.5) is a lovely, subtle, intimate film about a person whose beauty is missed by nearly everyone. At least two characters experience believable transformations, and the film's central love story is genuine, truthful, and quite moving. Why go see such relatively shallow and false films as "The Debt" or "The Help" (which are hanging on in theaters much longer than they deserve to) when you can experience something this exquisite?
THE HELP (4.5) struck me as the conversation that Hollywood believes we as a culture are ready to have about race. I give the filmmakers props for making more than the usual effort to depict the recent experience of blacks in the South--but unfortunately they softened it too much and did not really depict how systemic the problems were, and white people are unlikely to see themselves in this film. Fortunately Viola Davis is there to elevate the material.
THE IDES OF MARCH (6) struck me as rather empty and procedural; I didn't care for a minute about any of it. It seems like there ought to be a way to convey how empty politics can be without telling an empty story.
THE INTERRUPTERS (8.5) follows three "violence interrupters" whose work with CeaseFire in Chicago seeks to curb gang violence by treating violence as an epidemic whose spread must be stopped by arresting the behavior that spreads it.
THE LIGHT THIEF (7.5) - Featuring beautiful cinematography and haunting Kyrgyz music, the film offers not only an arresting view of Kyrgyz culture but also some real insights into the mechanics of oppression, couched in a powerful metaphor.
THE MAN WHO WILL COME (6) depicts a particularly tragic part of World War II history through the eyes of a compelling child heroine--but I'm not sure why I needed to see these particular atrocities.
THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED (5) never rises above the caliber of a decent TV movie--but its muddled heart is in the right place and it is moving in its way.
THE NAMES OF LOVE (8), a French romantic comedy with a buoyant performance by Sara Forestier at its center, is everything Hollywood romances are not: sweet, funny, and deftly skimming over some pretty weighty themes. Escapist fun that has something to say!
THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER (6.5) has beauty and intrigue, and a noteworthy performance by Lambert Wilson, but it all doesn't add up to much in the end.
THE TREE OF LIFE (10) is to film what reading William Blake is to poetry--challenging, profound,and mind-blowing. It also presents a perspective that spans the particular (down to pores and molecules and the thoughts we voice only to God and just barely to ourselves) to universe-level imagination and breadth.
THE WHISTLEBLOWER (2) -- a terrible, lazy political thriller about a woman who uncovered a sex trafficking ring; this film does more harm than good to an important topic.
THE WHITE MEADOWS (10) - a mesmerizing Iranian film that seems to be a parable about the brutality that can follow from collective thinking, gorgeously shot on a stark, salty sea.
THE WOODMANS (9) - a fascinating documentary exploration of the family of Francesca Woodman, whose black-and-white photos still resound in the art world 30 years after her suicide. Her artist parents might simply interest you, or they might scare you.
THE WOODS (1) is an exercise in wasted talent in the service of a sort of anti-cleverness; it's beautifully filmed, but has absolutely no ideas animating it.
THOR (1) is unforgivably awful. It's like the filmmakers threw a bunch of disconnected movie cliches up in the air and then produced them in the random order that they came down.
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (6) is just not my cup of tea. The plot is complicated to the point of being opaque, and I don't actually think it all adds up, but by the time the math was done I didn't care. It was like watching someone take apart a grandfather clock--which I suppose some people would find fascinating, but not me.
TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1 (3) is about a subtle as pig Latin in conveying such messages as "good sex hurts" and "even a demon spawn's life is worth more than the mother's."
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (3) - a frustratingly opaque exploration of a man's last days as he receives baffling visitations from the spirit world.
UNKNOWN (4.5) is ultimately more silly than thrilling; it becomes unintentionally funny as the big plot revelations pile on in the last third.
WAR HORSE (5) is typical Spielbergian excess--emotionally and visually manipulative, bloated in scale, with no expense spared on effects and talent, hammering every theme with no trace of subtlety. But damn if he didn't suck me in in the last half hour. It's like the film version of a McMansion--yet some part of you has to admire it.
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (4) is a lot of sparkly, well-dressed hooey, watchable but utterly devoid of insight.
WE BOUGHT A ZOO (3.5) - If I had known that the writer of "27 Dresses" was behind the screenplay, I probably would not have given this movie a chance, even with Matt Damon involved. He is always watchable, but otherwise this is a pointless exercise, at best pleasant and at worst gratingly sunny, and none of its supposed triumphs is earned.
WEEKEND (6.5) is a little overrated by critics, mostly because there is such a dearth of films that treat gay relationships as fitting squarely into the context of all relationships that this one stands out. Still, though I appreciated its authenticity, it was a little floaty and mumbly for my taste.
WHEN WE LEAVE (3.5) aims to depict the huge culture clashes at play for a Turkish immigrant woman in Germany who brings shame to her family by leaving her abusive husband, but it lacks the insight to make sense of the Muslim characters and ends up feeling manipulative.
WIN WIN (6.5) definitely has sweetness, humor, and moments of authenticity--but writer-director Thomas McCarthy needs a better script editor. He has a knack for creating winning characters and setting up a good story--but his films since "The Station Agent" maddeningly skim the surface and miss opportunities to plumb the depths of the interesting themes he's devised.
YOUNG ADULT (6.5) falls a little flat, though Charlize Theron does surprisingly good work with a pretty loathsome character (a beautiful, unhappy woman who has never stopped being a mean girl). The film as a whole feels pretty slight, and it evokes more knowing smiles than laughs--but it definitely gets the details right.