by Matt Smith

Had I known going into Haywire that not only was I getting a Steven Soderbergh action movie, but it was also going to be a 70s “B” action movie, I’d have been even more psyched up than I was already. Starring Gina Carano, whose real-world mixed martial arts credentials have been much written about, the film is a thriller which, despite being detached, cold, and ultimately difficult to worm your way into, turns out to be, especially as far as recent Soderbergh films are concerned, extremely accessible.

I’ll discuss the action set pieces later, but of primary importance is the aesthetic design that permeates the film and creates an odd hybrid of Ocean’s-style visuals and Traffic-like color coding of time with the low-key color palettes and audio design of Che and The Girlfriend Experience. If this is the year that Soderbergh calls it quits, it appears he’s going all-in, utilizing as many tricks and tropes he’s developed over the past two decades and nudging them ever so slightly into new directions.

Visually, Haywire is unassuming and straightforward, with all eyes focused on Carano’s Mallory Kane, who is quite impressive as a physical form, and really looks like a traditional action star, unlike some of the more recent women who have dabbled in the genre. Standing at 5’8” and with a muscular build, it’s nice to see Carano rollicking around in cafés and hotel rooms with the big names filling out the rest of the cast.

Soderbergh reportedly wanted to make this film so he could work with Carano, which is not entirely unheard of for the director, who has plenty of experience in picking non-actors depending on what project he is currently working on, from extras to stars. Much like his previous work with Sasha Grey, Soderbergh here employs someone with a tenuous real-life relationship to the subject matter and pulls a performance out of them that is satisfying not so much because of their acting chops, but for the way in which it constantly forces the audience to re-establish an understanding of the character. Whether it is Carano’s MMA experience that constantly brings attention to the film’s action or Grey’s status as a performer in adult films that lends some authenticity to her character’s sense of overwhelming loneliness, the result is the same: it’s an interesting performance because of who they are and what the film is trying to make us see.

The film’s plot is a bit convoluted, and takes some sussing out, but the gist is that Mallory Kane works for a private contracting company that takes jobs from the government. Her boss, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), attempts to frame her for the murder of a hostage she was initially sent to rescue in Barcelona, but she escapes and tracks down the men involved in the conspiracy so she can be cleared of fugitive status. That’s pretty much it, though there are some twists and turns, and some shady figures who we never really figure out exactly where they stand, though they seem to be on Mallory’s side for the time being.

The script, by Lem Dobbs, who also collaborated with Soderbergh on Kafka and The Limey is pretty strong, though it suffers from what can sometimes be his penchant for trying to be too minimalist. There are long stretches of the film in which nothing much seems to be happening, and a lot of exposition, and while Soderbergh handles these scenes nicely, it does get to be a bit much, and the film can seem like its pace is dragging a bit, especially compared to other recent action films. This isn’t entirely to the film’s detriment, however, as it lends an urgency to the action when it does ramp up, allowing us to bask in the one-on-one fistfights that occur and the striking audio design in those scenes.

The pacing, even the convoluted storytelling, is certainly reminiscent of 70s “B” movies, calling to mind some of the terrific work achieved by Jack Hill and the Republic Pictures cohorts that oversaw the careers of great “B” talent like Pam Grier and Sid Haig. It is also vaguely reminiscent, in the pared-down and thoroughly no-frills aspect of its filmmaking, of Soderbergh’s own Out Of Sight, which was itself a riff on the exploitation genre and probably the best adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s descriptive pulp aesthetics, which are employed differently, though no less effectively, than in Jackie Brown or Justified.

Soderbergh employs a realistic aesthetic for sounds in Haywire, and I got the sense that attempting to utilize location-based sound in the film’s fight sequences may have been his main interest in tackling the project. At first it’s disorienting, muffled, and, well, odd. The music drops out entirely (even picking up sometimes during lulls in the fights before dropping back out again) and all we are left with are the sounds of bodies on bodies, huffing and puffing, and smashing into and breaking things. A punch sounds like a punch and not like a Mac truck slamming into a wall, and footsteps sound like footsteps. That this general aesthetic is employed throughout the film, privileging music and dialogue, is interesting, but to not even have music during the fights is even more revealing and amazing.

I personally appreciated the minimalist yet still engaging set pieces, which saw Mallory getting into pretty strict kickboxing territory with her opponents, only occasionally using a gun as a method of taking them down. Carano’s natural athleticism also reminded me of another “B” movie that I saw last year: Bail Enforcers. While that movie was lacking on some levels, what it did have as its greatest assets were several fight scenes which relied on the film’s star, Trish Stratus, to do the heavy lifting. It was refreshing to see real people working in a way that pointed out their natural strengths, especially compared with the Hollywood acrobatics of a Cruise or a Jolie. In Haywire, the focus is almost entirely on Carano, whether it’s in the film’s knockdown dragout centerpiece with Michael Fassbender, or the extensive chase scene that sees Mallory Kane traversing the skyline to escape the police. The film is, at its core, its essence, about Carano’s body physically interacting with other bodies and her environment.

Take, as my last example, the final such sequence, in which Mallory takes out Kenneth once and for all.  Kenneth, now in hiding, is taking a walk along the beach and admiring the sun over the water when suddenly we see her appear in the frame over his shoulder.  She is sprinting toward him and jumps him from behind, both of them crashing into the waves.  Crawling out of the surf, she again runs at him and delivers a blow to the face.  After many punches and slams against the jutting rocks, Kenneth becomes trapped (how, I’ll leave for you to see), and after giving Mallory some information about the rest of the scheme, is left to his fate.  Here we have a scene which revolves entirely around bodies and environment: Carano, McGregor, the beach.  Each one is a different dynamic, and Soderbergh pulls them each into a specific relationship with the others.  It’s aesthetically amazing.

The result of all this is that Soderbergh has crafted an unconventional action thriller that surprised and delighted me, even as several people walked out of the theater–perhaps because things were moving slower than they could take, or because it didn’t have the audible “oomph” so many action movies artificially inundate us with. But the film’s ability to breathe and take in the artistry of fight sequences, of two bodies interacting with one another in violent ballet, was much to its advantage as far as I’m concerned.

4 out of 5 stars

by Matt Smith

Every year I go through the same process. I watch a ton of movies and I love about half of them. Others are stronger than other, some are terrible, and some I like simply because they made me laugh or they interested me in some other small way. A shot or an idea, or just a mood. I can never whittle it down to just ten films. The concept of a “Top Ten” is as alien to me as the star ratings I give to films on this site: abstract at best, totally subjective and wholly inadequate. But here I am anyway, disclosing a “Top Ten,” or in this case Fifteen, because we all know that those “almosts” really are just things I couldn’t spare to not shove in someone’s face and scream, “HERE, WATCH THESE!!!”

Before getting into the list proper, I do want to give a shoutout to an “almost almost,” which I caught recently on Netflix but haven’t had the proper time to absorb and transmute and completely dwell on. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is the first feature from Zeina Durra, a graduate of NYU’s MFA Film program. This small wonder of a film was a great discovery for me, and the fact that it’s streaming on Netflix, with little or no fanfare is bizarre to me. Elodie Bouchez, who is mostly known for her work in The Dreamlife of Angels, plays a French Muslim artist meandering through some situations in New York with her new Hispanic-American boyfriend and, at least what we would call a “plot” never really happens. Instead, the film is imbued with the deadpan delivery and style of a Whit Stillman film about disaffected New Yorkers, but with a multicultural spin. This film is currently streaming, and I highly recommend it.

I would also like to add that, as of the time of this list’s creation, I had not seen several films which I have since seen or am still awaiting the chance to see. This list includes: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, A Dangerous Method, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Shame, Take Shelter, Le Quattro Volte, My Week With Marilyn, Moneyball, The Descendents, and Warhorse.

Now, without further delay, my real-deal, 100% authentic “Top Ten Films of 2011 (Plus 5 More!)” list.

1) Drive
After leaving the theater from Drive, my mind was racing. I was energized, alert, utterly affected. That feeling generally hits me once a year in the cinema, and in that instant I know that the movie I just watched had changed me somehow, indescribably, ephemerally, profoundly. Nicolas Winding Refn’s action-thrill riff on fairytales (and not the other way around, and the first of two such films on my list this year) is an experience of a lifetime for me, and that feeling I had when walking out into the early Fall night after Drive will never be replicated.  As I’ve stated elsewhere, the heart of this film lies in the supporting roles. Not to sell stars Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan short (they’re terrific, electric, pitch-perfect), but Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks damn near walk off with the movie from right under their noses. And then there’s Ron Perlman’s gangster/pizzeria owner and Christina Hendricks’s Blanche, who meets an awful fate in a motel bathroom. Gosling’s performance is subdued and introverted, but there is always the hint of rage burning beneath his eyes once the story starts revving up.  It is my favorite performance of the year, and, in a year in which Gosling did more than his fair share of heavy lifting, the best Gosling performance of the year.  There are so many indelible moments in this movie that it’s hard for me to choose just one to highlight, but I suppose if you force my hand it would have to be the brilliant calm-before-the-storm kiss in the elevator right before an explosion of ultraviolent brutality. Breathtaking, beautiful and oh so much more. Best film I’ve seen all year. Gets me going all the time just thinking about it.

2) Young Adult
I think this is the best work from either Diablo Cody or Jason Reitman. It’s human, dark, depressing, and very funny. Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron make an unlikely but appealing pair of leads that keep things moving in some interesting directions. Their scenes are priceless in a year that hasn’t been too kind for pairs of normal, everyday people as main characters. Oswalt’s Matt Freehauf is charming and hilarious, keeping us guessing just enough about his character that we’re surprised when he finally hooks up with Mavis and it looks like they’re both going to be on the way to a healing moment that so often ruins movies like this for me. Instead, Mavis hears the wrong thing at the wrong time and remains completely unchanged, ditching her hometown, her old high school sweetheart and even her newfound friend Matt because she realizes she really is just so much better than other people. That’s kind of a refreshing outlook in and of itself, despite how depressingly accurate and uncomfortable it can be to watch for those of us who identify with someone who spent their twenties escaping their hometown where nothing happens and no one does anything only to sort of rekindle some love affair with the notion of moving back. Thank god I didn’t, because it would probably have ended up a lot like this, no matter how unsavory Mavis’ actions may be. A great character study with many great moments, all of them adding up to a completely satisfying whole.

3) Drive Angry 3D
Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry was one of the most fun experiences I had in any movie this past year. It’s kitsch and gore and “so bad it’s good” done exactly the right way, with Nicolas Cage giving his all in a performance that has become increasingly typical for him over the past decade, but with just the right amount of insanity that has become so rare (for another example, check out Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans). He plays Milton, a man who literally breaks out of Hell within the first five minutes of the film in order to save his granddaughter (and only surviving family member) from the clutches of a cult intent on sacrificing her to unleash Hell on Earth. If that premise doesn’t put your butt in front of a TV to watch this thing right now, then there’s nothing I can do for you. Even if you end up hating the movie, the story alone should get you to watch it once. Luckily, it’s actually entertaining as all hell, and goes off in directions that you don’t even see coming as the story ramps up and other characters get involved: a troubled twenty-something hottie played by genre stalwart Amber Heard, and a demon looking to drag Milton back to the fiery depths. It’s a car movie, an occult movie, and an exploitation flick all wrapped up in one bad ass 3D package, and I loved every single minute of it.

4) Bridesmaids
Kristen Wiig’s first official vehicle after spending the past six years stealing every scene in other films, Bridesmaids is a raunchy, foul-mouthed surprise for 2011, which was fairly bland as far as comedies are concerned. In fact, with the exception of the `excellent Cedar Rapids, I haven’t had the urge to watch a single full-on comedy again after seeing it. A story about friendship and loyalty, as well as about growing the eff up and realizing that not everything revolves around you, Wiig’s first time out as a star knocks it fairly well out of the park, and it took in the box office receipts to prove it. What makes a movie like this work (and is something that I’ve enjoyed about all of the comedies produced under Judd Apatow’s banner) is that the characters, no matter how outlandish, are generally enjoyable people. And you can tell everyone had a good time working on the movie. I also enjoy a good poop joke, and Bridesmaids has one that goes on and on and on. Kind of glorious.

5) Hugo
Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s young adult novel is the best children’s film this year, and a great achievement for the director, who steps way out of his comfort zone as far as characters and story go and delivers a love letter to the cinema. Tackling a story that prominently features silent cinema and Georges Meliés in particular may seem like a no-brainer for a Scorsese project, but when I first found out he was directing, I was more than a bit surprised. The entire story revolves around children, and the subject matter is fairly light, though some adult themes do peek around the corner now and then (death and the concept of death hangs very heavy in some scenes). The use of 3D is subtle and amazing and truly expands the image in a way that serves the same immediate purpose as the use of deep focus. Asa Butterfield and Chloë Moretz are a great pair of leads, and Ben Kingsley gets a turn in some young makeup for once in a truly inspired (if a bit heavy on details for some viewers who are already familiar with the material) history lesson of cinema’s origins. It’s not Scorsese’s finest work, but it’s a strong film in a year that had a fair number of really good family films that finally got outside of the “pop-culture reference merely for mom and dad’s sanity” box.

6) The Skin I Live In
The new film from Spain’s most celebrated filmmaker, Pedro Almodóvar, has garnered the most mixed reviews of any of his films as I can remember. Some people hate it, and others love it. I fall into the latter camp. The Skin I Live In is a dark and twisted ride that somehow manages to hit all of the Almodóvar beats even though the story is so different from what we’ve seen from him before. Following a mad scientist who is mourning the loss of his wife and daughter, and who is desperately clinging to a dark secret of vengeance, the film is filled with a sense of sadness that can only come from Almodóvar.  It’s fitting that he chose this project to rejoin with star Antonio Banderas, as the subject matter is sort of like an extreme extension of their earlier work, particularly in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, which from what I can remember garnered a similar mixed response. Following a mad scientist as he experiments on a patient who we think all along is his wife (until a stunning revelation pulled off with a single masterful dissolve) halfway through the film, The Skin I Live In is many things, but boring and predictable is not one of them. The final shot is haunting, full of anxiety, multiple possibilities, and, most importantly, total uncertainty.

7) Another Earth
Brit Marling’s screenplay for this amazing, small in scope but big on ideas science fiction is made of small moments, intimate, moving, and full of beauty and grace (something which I found too few of in that much bigger film that actually used grace as one of its guiding tools). In the present day a second Earth appears above our own, a mirror image of the world and, as revealed with masterful precision and profundity, containing presumably mirror images of ourselves. Directed by first timer (and Marling creative partner) Mike Cahill, the film features moments that would make Stanislaw Lem proud, and is full of absolutely gorgeous cinematography, shot on what seems to be mid-grade consumer digital in some scenes. I won’t go into the plot (please see my review if you wish to read more about the film), but it takes us to some unexpected places, all of which lead to a final shot that is full of power and open for interpretation. An absolutely terrific film that I can’t wait to revisit.

8) The Future
Writer/director Miranda July’s second feature The Future is another film that dabbles in science fiction, and not in a way totally dissimilar to that of Another Earth. Starting out as a quietly quirky comedy about a couple in their mid-30s struggling with the smothering prospect of adopting a cat that could be with them for “up to five years,” the film quickly becomes a treatise on the choices we could all make at any moment which determine our fates, eventually fracturing its own story into several different elements and possible futures that are all tethered to narration delivered by their potential new adoptee, patiently awaiting their return to the shelter before he is put to sleep. July’s previous film, Me You and Everyone We Know was a favorite of mine, but like my colleague, I think The Future surpasses even that film’s achievement of successfully delivering a complex plot structure and even more complex (some might say “too quirky”) characters than we are given here. The loss of some of that quirkiness is ultimately this film’s blessing, though it isn’t gone entirely. July has some wonderfully loopy dance pieces, and her partner, played wonderfully by Hamish Linklater, ends up going door to door trying to get people in Los Angeles to buy trees to plant on their property. It’s a charming, intricately made puzzle of a movie that I’m sure will only gain in reputation over the years, from one of our most original and thrilling American artists and filmmakers.

9) Rango / Winnie The Pooh
I’ve decided to pair these up (and cheat the system a bit) because I really can’t decide which one I liked more. Rango is that rare film that comes out of nowhere and is weird wild and wonderful in ways that you could never imagine. What truly amazes me about the film is that the animation is flawless. Absolutely amazing CGI. And it’s never overly cutesy or caricatured, and its humor never falls to the level of simple pop-culture references that (thankfully) seem to have been left behind by the studios who have gotten around to making pure animated entertainment for adults and children again. Speaking of which, Winnie the Pooh, which I reviewed in full earlier this year, is a terrific piece of filmmaking. The hand-drawn (approximately) animation is gorgeous and fluid, and the characterizations are spot on for what the Pooh gang should be. Not only that, but in theatrical release, the film was accompanied by a terrific short, which I am glad to see Disney bringing back into vogue, but which really should happen before every movie. See these two films and reinvigorate your love of the animated feature. They are both so great it’s ridiculous.

10) Hanna
I loved Joe Wright’s amazing feminist take on the fairy tale from the very first scene, in which Hanna is hunting a deer in a snow covered forest. It’s an action movie full of magic and wonder, and a heroine who, despite her young age, is as compelling as anything we’ve seen from her grown up, studio tent-pole cohorts. Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, The Lovely Bones) gives a great performance that never betrays her character’s believability–Hanna is a stone-cold killer trained to assassinate a clandestine government operative who is out to kill her father and take her back to the lab for study. Hanna is full of terrific action set pieces, including a show-stopping sequence in a shipping yard and a great single-take fight in a parking garage which gives Eric Bana’s character a chance to show off just how he was able to train Hanna to be such a bad ass after long stretches of the movie being devoted to his activities taking place off screen. Chock full of great moments, the film is tied together by a ruthless and breathtaking soundtrack by The Chemical Brothers, who perfectly marry their electronic sensibilities with those of a traditional film score. Since its theatrical release I have watched this film a couple of times on Blu Ray, and it remains just as strong each time.

Five More Worth Your Time

A Lonely Place To Die
Director Julian Gilbey imbues the first three quarters of the film with a sense of urgency and danger that has become, sadly, a rare component of the thriller genre.  He is a climber himself, and he gets the perils of mountaineering, using that knowledge to craft a rather intense experience.  Starring Melissa George in a terrific performance as one of a group of climbers who find a Romanian girl buried underground while on holiday, A Lonely Place to Die is well worth the time of any genre fan.  It won top honors at ActionFest 2011, and has been well received by audiences and critics alike.  The final act of the film derails ever so slightly as it becomes a more traditional chase thriller, abandoning the Scottish highlands for the streets of a small town, but the great imagery stays in place, though much more human in scale.  The film was shot on location, with George doing her fair share of the climbing and stunt work, and it is gorgeous and picturesque.  I particularly liked that there was no CGI.  As Gilbey himself put it, those are really people dangling off of the rock faces.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
This re-imagining/re-adaptation/remake (or whatever you want to call it) of Stieg Larsson’s literary phenom and previous Swedish adaptations would be redundant under the control of most creative talent in Hollywood, but like last year’s Let Me In, the project found a team able to pull it off and make a stand-alone, utterly fascinating new take on the well-known source material. News of the remake came out very early on, and it wasn’t until David Fincher was announced as director that I became interested at all. The casting had me even more intrigued. Daniel Craig, an actor I rather like but who often gets cast in action-oriented roles, would play Blomkvist, and Rooney Mara, a relative newcomer who I had seen and recognized but had overall been unfamiliar with, would play Salander, a role which had heretofore been synonymous with Swedish actress Noomi Rapace. The result is a surprisingly strong work that may, in time, prove to be the better film than even Neils Arden Oplev’s superb adaptation of the first book. It’s not perfect, and there is a sense for fans that they have definitely seen all of this before (and read and re-read), but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing. A first-rate film from one of America’s great filmmakers.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Speaking of re-makes, Tomas Alfredson’s first English language feature tackles the mother of all Cold War spy novels–and a towering achievement of British television (watch the 1979 Alec Guinness vehicle now)–and does so very well indeed. Gary Oldman’s Smiley is a pensive, pent-up sort of man, an emblem of the traditional British reserved personality fighting for some semblance of honor in an era which sees his country slowly begin to step out of the world’s spotlight. There are plenty of moments I love in this cold, grey, almost Scandinavian take on British intelligence (I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a hint of Wallander in this film’s Smiley), and despite its two hour run-time, I’ll be damned if I can even remember what might be missing from the five hour mini-series version. The film is an amazing example of economical technique.

Melancholia
A much more focused (and much more downbeat) take on the cosmic implications of life on Earth than Terence Malick’s bloated and whispery Tree of Life, Lars von Trier, the enfant terrible of the European art cinema, has created an astonishingly immersive and totally accurate depiction of clinical depression. The film is split into two halves, one for each of a pair of sisters, portrayed by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Opening on the night of Justine’s (Dunst) wedding, Melancholia details the strained relationship of these two sisters as the world slowly comes to an end. Bookended by two sequences of cosmic destruction, Trier’s movie doesn’t seem to be able to imagine a world that continues its existence, because the universe is uncaring, life on Earth is likely all we will ever know even if it should by some chance exist somewhere else in the universe, and we’re all pretty terrible creatures to one another anyway. Dunst gives a fearless performance, open and honest, and Gainsbourg, the denier of truth here, is thankfully not asked to endure the previous horrors she faced for the director. A stunning achievement in every possible way, a tortured (some would say tortuous) melodrama, and one of the most astounding films of the year.

Red State
I saw Kevin Smith’s truly independently financed and distributed Red State during its stop in Atlanta last spring, and even then I thought it was fantastic. This is something totally different than what we’ve ever seen from Smith before, part comedy, part horror flick, and part police action film, Red State’s critics have constantly berated it for lacking an identity, for trying too much, and for not being very good. But it is good, and it does try to do too much, but I think that works to its advantage as an experiment during this, according to Smith, last leg of a career that has been spent peddling amazing (or merely good, and sometimes not so good) slacker comedies. See it for Michael Parks’ amazing performance as the leader of a Westboro Baptist Church-like cult that is hellbent on spreading the Lord’s gospel truths even if it means you blow out the heathens’ brains.

By Eric Plaag

As you might guess, Matt Smith’s tastes and mine differ a bit, so we don’t always agree about what makes a good movie or which ones are the best ones. I guess that’s a good reason for us to do a film review blog together — it wouldn’t be very interesting if we agreed with each other all the time.

As it turns out, we don’t necessarily agree on how a Top Ten Films list should be presented, either. Yes, we were able to work out some general ground rules — pick the ten best films we saw in 2011, plus another five that weren’t quite the best but were still very good, and then make sure to list the noteworthy films we haven’t had time or opportunity to see yet but think might have had a chance to make it onto our lists if we had seen them. But when it comes to listing those top ten, well, Matt and I fundamentally disagree as to how they should be ranked/presented. Matt has threatened to pull an Ebert and list his top ten alphabetically, but I think he may have said that just to get under my skin. We shall see.

In any case, here are the Top Ten Films I Saw in 2011, ranked in countdown fashion, preceded by five films that were very, very good but not quite worthy of a slot in the top ten. Each entry contains a condensed version of my review of the film. Where applicable, a link to the longer original review is also provided.

For the record, I have not yet seen Tabloid, Drive, Another Earth, Melancholia, A Separation, War Horse, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Adventures of Tintin, Terri, Trust, or the eagerly awaited General Orders No. 9, so please — no complaints about what the hell is wrong with me that those films aren’t on the list.

That said, we’d both love to hear your reactions to our lists. Feel free to comment at the bottom of our respective columns. We’ll read your thoughts and, where appropriate, respond with ours.

Five that just weren’t quite good enough but that you should see nonetheless

Hugo

Martin Scorsese’s visual feast that chronicles the films of groundbreaking silent-era auteur Georges Meliés was pitched as a kid’s film, but it is far, far more than that. Following the exploits of young Hugo Cabret, an orphan living in a Paris train station, Hugo allows us to glimpse the boy’s discoveries about the cinematic past with a wondrous, mesmerizing glee. While the film’s comic moments were occasionally a bit trite and its action sequences sometimes too contrived, Hugo nevertheless makes the inquisitive, appreciative viewer yearn for the magic and mystery of early films while also reminding us that even the most damaged among us have dreams that can be resurrected in spite of our present circumstances.

Contagion

Director Steven Soderbergh leads us through the horrors of a pandemic marked not by flesh-eating bacteria or zombie-inducing monkeys or even a government conspiracy to kill off some target population somewhere on the planet, but instead by the casual contact we engage in all the time with door knobs and commonly exchanged objects. What Soderbergh has created is a film as insidious and methodical in its progression as the outbreak it tracks, and he ingeniously follows events from a detached perspective that leaves plenty of functional ambiguity about the motives and ethics of some of its key characters. Like no other outbreak film I can think of, Contagion shows us realistically the unexpected but essential ways in which society at large and our local communities would break down under such a threat, forcing us to choose between taking great personal risk to help each other or doing everything necessary to protect those we love from the horrors of mob mentality. In this sense, we begin to understand just how tenuous and fragile a thing the social contract always is.

Original Review

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II

J. K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter novels), Steve Kloves (screenplay), and director David Yates must have brushed up on their Joseph Campbell, because they sure do get this one right. I certainly didn’t anticipate it going in, but Deathly Hallows, Part II (and the whole Potter franchise) should now officially be required viewing for anyone who wants to learn how to do the hero cycle correctly. As one would expect of a finale, Deathly Hallows, Part II answers a host of unanswered questions about the real loyalties of many of its secondary players, and along the way, Yates aptly captures the seriousness and urgency of Harry’s steadily darker path, thereby creating a tone that has almost entirely left behind the playfulness of Harry’s earlier days at Hogwarts and culminates in this final entry, which brings full circle the necessity of Harry’s desperate and at times hopeless journey to confront the ultimate evil. This finale struggles at times in trying too hard to wrap up some of those loose ends, but as a whole it stands exactly where it should in the hero cycle, forcing us to see the deep-seated psychological pain and despair in Harry and the other characters with a clarity that makes the franchise more than just a series of exciting romps in the mind candy jar.

Original Review

Beginners

This quirky dramedy from writer and director Mike Mills focuses on Oliver (Ewan McGregor) as he mourns the passing of his recently out-of-the-closet father (Christopher Plummer) and tries to navigate a new relationship with French actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent), who is herself dealing with a different kind of grief about her own father. Presented in a series of disjointed but somehow seamless flashbacks, Oliver’s reminiscences about his mother and father are the real emotional grist of the film, and Oliver’s imaginings about the Zen-like support of Arthur, his father’s orphaned Jack Russell, ground the film with a knowing playfulness that prevents things from ever veering too far into the extravagances of pathos. As Oliver inventories the damage he has suffered through the whole of his life, Beginners tiptoes carefully through its own emotional minefield, allowing us to feel sympathetic to all of its characters, in spite of the dislikeable things they do along the way, and root for them as they begin to heal.

Somewhere

Easily the film that was most difficult for me to exclude from my Top Ten, Somewhere is writer and director Sofia Coppola’s return to the bizarre universe of celebrity life where there never seems to be a sense of home. The film follows Hollywood action star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) and the transformation that must occur when he learns that his ex-wife is dumping their tween daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) into his lap while his ex goes off to “find herself.” What might have seemed a burden to any other man in Johnny’s situation is utter salvation to Johnny, culminating in his realization that in a world filled with fake boobs, easy women, and empty gestures, Cleo is not just his daughter. She is his spiritual soulmate. Cleo gently nudges Johnny back to a point where he can finally answer the nagging question that remains unanswered in so many of his pressers: “Who is Johnny Marco?” Through gestures large and small — a meticulously planned gourmet breakfast, a day spent together by the pool, an underwater tea party — Cleo reminds a man utterly lost at sea that home still lies out there, and that she is waiting for him to return.

The Top Ten Films I Saw in 2011

10. Red State

Writer and director Kevin Smith opens this recent homage to all things Tarantino with a quease-inducing set-up: Three high school boys (Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun) get the bright idea that hooking up for a foursome with older woman Sarah Cooper (Melissa Leo) would be a helluva lot of fun. After a boozy collision with a car in which the local sheriff (Stephen Root) is getting head from his gay lover, they settle in for “the devil’s work” at the woman’s trailer, only to discover that Sarah has other plans for the boys. When they awaken from their ruffied stupor, they find themselves bound and gagged, stuffed into the basement holding pen of the nearby Five Points Church, a gay-hating, Westboro Baptist-like congregation run by the very righteously vindictive Pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). What follows is one of the strangest but most fascinating showdowns I have ever seen on film, featuring a standoff with the local ATF agent (John Goodman), a chaotic shootout, and what very well may be an intervention from the Almighty Himself. Smith’s writing and direction may be at its best here, and Parks deserves an Oscar nomination for his pitch-perfect performance, but I’ll be shocked if it happens.

Original Review

9. Jane Eyre

Director Cary Fukunaga offers a mostly faithful rendition of the Bronte classic, but what stands out in this version — unlike, for example, Zeffirelli’s 1996 version with Charlotte Gainsbourg — is not only the palpable brutality of how Jane (Mia Wasikowska) is repeatedly mistreated by relatives and the English social system alike, but also the relative poise and compassion with which Jane endures her various trials. Not only does Wasikowska’s Jane play out with deft precision and subtlety the socially bold role Bronte invented, but Wasikowska also brings to the part a certain heroic commitment to preserving her human side in a way that those actresses playing Jane’s earlier incarnations did not. Mr. Rochester speaks frequently of Jane’s direct gaze, of course, but in Wasikowska’s glances there is an intensity of purpose and self-assurance that is absent from earlier romantic attempts at portraying Jane as a strong-willed girl who becomes pliable in the hands of an older man. Here, in Wasikowska’s portrayal, we finally understand the complexity of Jane’s moral vision and her fierce determination to be with Mr. Rochester not as his paramour but only as someone who meets him on equal footing.

8. Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Oh, Werner Herzog, how I do love thee. Only you could end a documentary not by contemplating the meaning of the 32,000-year-old cave paintings that are the subject of your passionate cinematic treat but instead by focusing on a collection of radioactive, albino crocodiles housed nearby. And yet, somehow, you get away with it. Exploring these remarkable primitive works of art at France’s Chauvet caverns that are more than twice as old as any found elsewhere in the world, Herzog uses the recent innovations in 3D imaging technology to make the cave’s astonishing two-dimensional animals come to life with movement, allowing the play of light upon the walls and their layered outlines to amplify the sense of their motion. We feel as if we are there with Herzog, even as we sit in cushy theater seats several thousand miles away. The climax of the film is a roughly seven-minute sequence near the film’s end showing the most impressive features of the cave in astounding detail, all of it with no narration and only the accompaniment of music and the steady beat of a human heart. Some may choose to dismiss Herzog as a nut, or a fraud, or at the very least a man too much in love with his own enthusiastic, voracious mind. I disagree, because I know exactly how his questions about those paintings and those crocodiles played upon my psyche, my fears about how small I am in the grand scale of things, and my insecurities about finding meaning in my personal experience vis-à-vis the rest of the human condition. Those crocodiles will be in my subconscious for a long time. And Werner Herzog is a certifiable genius.

Original Review

7. Hanna

Director Joe Wright’s action thriller about a teenage killing machine may be the most pleasant surprise of the year. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has spent most of her life living in the wilderness with her putative father (Eric Bana), a rogue assassin with an ax to grind with his former handler (Cate Blanchett). Hanna, we learn, was specifically bred to be devoid of any sense of those things that make us human (compassion, pity, vulnerability to pain), but the genius of this film is that she’s the most humanizing force we see during the entire story. There is something about her dedication to both fairness and truth in the midst of mayhem and viciousness that still leaves me wondering where she has been all of my moviegoing life. In many respects, Hanna is the antithesis of her strong female lead cousins in countless big-budget, “GrrrlPower” action flicks, and that alone makes her role and this movie utterly refreshing. Unleashed upon the world to do her father’s dirty work, Hanna thrives not on murderous stoicism but instead on the fleeting moments of human connection she makes as she confronts the real world for the first time. Through these experiences, Hanna learns that there is much more at risk in trying to stay alive than anything her alleged father ever taught her. Living life, in fact, soon becomes far more precious to Hanna than merely being alive. When her nemesis finally forces Hanna to confront her mortality, Hanna’s survival depends less on her formidable skills as a killer than it does on her appeal to an appreciative understanding of this sanctity of life. That’s a story worth telling.

6. Submarine

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), the fifteen-year-old, awkward narrator at the center of writer Richard Ayoade’s directorial debut, may be my favorite character in all the films I saw this year, if only because I know that what he tells us about his various excruciating disappointments is exactly true. Obsessively in love with his edgy, more popular classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige), Oliver is shocked when she returns his affections, even if she initially does so in the name of revenge against an ex. What Ayoade gets right, though, is his choice to focus not on yet another teen romance but instead on the kinds of baggage and fears that really shape our expectations, no matter how old we are. As Oliver and Jordana navigate the pressures of the depression of Oliver’s father (Noah Taylor), the threat posed to his parents’ marriage by the return of Oliver’s mother’s old boyfriend, and the devastatingly brave ways in which Jordana’s family tries to stand up to her mother’s terminal cancer, Oliver learns that love isn’t about romantic gestures or secret sex or even truly understanding one’s partner. It’s about being allies and having each other’s backs. No matter what. A fine soundtrack from Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys only underscores the quirky but somehow deeply satisfying feeling of living inside Oliver’s world of hopeless vulnerability.

5. The Future

In writer and director Miranda July’s latest film, Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) are a couple who are stuck in a rut. As they struggle to come to terms with the existential dilemmas and disappointments of mid-life, time also tortures them in a micro sense. The film opens with the explanation that Sophie and Jason have rescued the film’s narrator, Paw Paw, an older stray cat suffering from renal failure and a broken front foot, but they must wait several weeks for the cat to heal before they can retrieve it from the humane society. The uncertainties Sophie and Jason have about Paw Paw, though, speak volumes about their fears about one another. They have become lost and do not yet know it. When Sophie’s malaise leads her to sleep with Marshall (David Warshofsky), an older man with a young daughter, Sophie must finally confront Jason about her choice, triggering a gorgeous but heartbreaking journey into magical realism that is pitch-perfect true to the otherworldly, floating confusion that we all experience when we walk in either Jason’s or Sophie’s shoes. Some folks have been viciously critical about Paw Paw’s narration of this film, but without this frame and the weightiness of Paw Paw’s words, there would not be any sense of the rippling consequences that our choices and our selfishness have beyond the immediate and obvious. This, of course, is July’s point, that everything is connected, that the world is speaking to us in codes and signs, and that when we don’t know how to listen, we end up doing irreparable harm, even if it is unintentional.

Original Review

4. Martha Marcy May Marlene

Writer-director Sean Durkin’s psychological thriller opens on a farm setting in the Catskills, which the viewer quickly deduces is more Manson-style commune than the high-end hipster organic community co-op it at first appears to be. Here, in the predawn hours, we see Marcy May (Elizabeth Olsen) slip out of the house with a small backpack, then eventually call her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), identifying herself as Martha and begging to be picked up and taken away. What follows is a haunting and deeply disturbing narrative that seamlessly slips in and out of Martha’s nightmares, memories, and building madness to reveal a present that she tries always to keep one step ahead of the frightening past she has left behind. At the center of Martha’s terror is Patrick (John Hawkes), the head of the commune who is the type of charismatic figure who can persuade young women with only a hint of his smile to change their names from Martha to Marcy May, then talk them into letting him rape them, then manipulate them into helping him rape others. His performance of “Marcy’s Song” during the community meeting on the day after he has “cleansed” Martha may be one of the most fascinating but skin-crawling moments on film ever, if only because — just for a second — you might find yourself falling in love with him, too. The fine performances aside, what really makes this movie work is Durkin’s direction and the stunning cinematography from Jody Lee Lipes. This is a film that lets you sit with its characters and contemplate them, even when the silences are uncomfortable. Martha Marcy May Marlene features no gore, nothing that is so viscerally disturbing that it is difficult to watch as it occurs. And yet its rhythms and imagery are so frightening, so harrowing, that I do not know whether I could watch it again any time soon.

Original Review

3. Take Shelter

Director Sean Nichols offers the story of Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), an Ohio gravel excavator who lives a conventional but difficult middle class life with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and hearing-impaired young daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). Curtis’s sense of hope and well-being is plagued by apocalyptic dreams that he at first wants to dismiss as just vivid nightmares. Starlings play out terrifying murmurations in the sky before him. Strange rain falls from the sky. Twisters appear on the horizon. Soon, these tropes appear as waking visions. He dares not tell his wife, though, and his faint efforts to secure advice from his best friend and co-worker result only in strained awkwardness. Why? Because Curtis carries the stigma of knowing that his schizophrenic mother once abandoned him in public as a young boy, and he insists he will not let this happen to him, that he will not leave when the illness finally strikes him. His only true solace comes from his commitment to renovating and expanding the backyard tornado shelter, a project that gives him a haven in which to consider the implications of his illness and a hope that he will be able to save his wife and daughter from the apocalypse he nevertheless knows with certainty is coming. Take Shelter is a visually stunning, hauntingly choreographed fever dream on madness and love, insularity and insight. When Curtis stands before his friends and his community and warns them as only a fire and brimstone preacher might that “There is a storm a-comin’,” you will find it difficult not to recoil from him just as they do. But there is a storm a-coming, and when the credits finally roll, you will realize that you weren’t prepared for the indelible impression that Take Shelter will leave behind on your psyche.

Original Review

2. Blue Valentine

Director Derek Cianfrance’s first major feature finds Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) in a situation that has chosen them far more than the other way around. Love in the real world is usually like that. Cindy is a nurse who desperately wants to be a doctor, even though her job and her family and her baggage seem always to be in the way. Dean is a high school dropout who flits from one job to another with a carefree demeanor that masks his malaise and his need to drink before he shows up on the job. At first glance, one might not think to put these two disparate people together, and yet it is the first glance that does exactly that. Be warned, though: There are no clear good guys or bad guys in this relationship, just people who don’t know how they got here from there, with a young daughter trapped between them, in spite of their best and most noble intentions. It’s a rare accomplishment in movies like this to allow the audience to still love them both, even as the people around them appear to choose sides. As subtle as it is immersed in the raw beauty of hand-held jaggedness, Blue Valentine moves effortlessly between Cindy and Dean’s life together now and the moments after they met six years earlier. The effect is something like stepping into the punch-drunk confusion of the characters, who endure the disorientation of standing outside themselves and watching helplessly as their lives unravel, even as they replay the past, searching for the wrong turn. To call Cianfrance’s film a love story, as the trailers all seem to imply, does it a gross disservice. When his story finishes with you without actually ending, you may find yourself questioning every small, careless moment of your own present relationship, pondering the damage you have done and hoping it’s not as grave as you fear.

Original Review

1. The Tree of Life

Doing so seems like a colossal task, but if I were to condense the action of this film into a single sentence, it might go something like this: The Tree of Life is director Terrence Malick’s story of one afternoon in the deeply anguished mind of Jack (Sean Penn), a fifty-something industrial executive who spends that afternoon at work, the anniversary of his brother’s death, mulling how his understanding of the past and loss and memories and unspoken words have shaped him and led him to this moment now, a point when his fractured and in many ways unconsummated relationships with family and partner and self stand on the precipice. That’s what happens, I guess, but it’s not what this film is about.

So, what is The Tree of Life about? “There are two ways through life,” a voiceover from Jack’s mother (Jessica Chastain) tells us at the beginning of the film. “The way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.” Jack’s father (Brad Pitt, in an Oscar-worthy performance) disagrees. “Your mother’s naïve,” he tells young Jack (Hunter McCracken). “It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world….The world is run by trickery. You wanna succeed, you can’t be too good.” You may be tempted to read this paradox, as many misguided reviewers have, as Malick’s thesis, as an assertion that Jack’s mom’s way is right and his father’s way is wrong, but this posing of opposites is not the frame of Malick’s argument. No, Malick’s opening salvo is a dual hypothesis for you — and for the grown-up version of Jack — to test as you are bathed in shockingly beautiful, maddeningly lush images and sounds and glimpses of thought, memory, and imagining. The weight of what will surely be remembered as Malick’s cinematic masterpiece lies, therefore, in its small moments, in the precision with which Malick understands the hillocks and valleys of this emotional and psychological terrain. In this sense, Malick’s film is really about the symbiotic, yin/yang necessity of the coexistence of beauty and violence in everything we encounter, the persistent dilemma we face as human beings about how to live a life of love when so much around us argues against this choice. Malick understands that his story is not about the easy questions of morality or how to make sure good will conquer evil. He cares only about the mechanics and the consequences, as well as the ways in which we can best understand both.

Audiences at first may be perplexed by the long but startling sequences of the creation of the universe, galaxy, and planet that dominate the first act, as well as by a brief cameo from a pack of CGI dinosaurs. Its final sequence, an imagined crossing over in which opposites are reconciled and inconsolable losses are transformed into resolute joys, may be equally puzzling to some viewers who may misread it through the unfortunate but horribly inaccurate lens of religious (or at least spiritual) proselytizing. But if you can set aside these kinds of preconceptions and let The Tree of Life wash over you, then the fullness of this koan will finally come ‘round and grab hold of your soul, as tends to happen with koans, one way or another. In that moment, The Tree of Life will defy you to keep wearing that polished composure you work so hard at perfecting for everyone else, and you will be forever glad for it.

This is what a perfect film looks like.

Original Review

by Matt Smith and Eric Plaag

This month’s edition (we’re lagging a couple of months, we know) of TheSplitScreen discussion takes us into the movies about movies genre, with the recently released Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese. Based on a book by Brian Selznick (The Adventures of Hugo Cabret), Hugo tells the story of an orphan living in the Paris train station. The son of a watch maker and a born tinkerer himself, he is trying to complete the restoration of an automaton that he began with his father, and for which he is stealing wheels and cogs piece by piece from a toy shop in the station. There’s a lot to talk about here, as it’s also the first foray for one of the world’s most-honored directors into 3-D, and has been highly anticipated because of the lagging audience and industry interest in the format.

The film’s plot finds Hugo befriending a young girl, and discovering the secret of the bitter old man who runs the toy shop. He is Georges Meliés, the pioneer of cinema who made over 500 films in his lifetime and he has been hiding away thinking the world has forgotten him and his work, completely separating his new life from the cinema. Hugo uncovers the secret all while evading a comically menacing station inspector, and we bear witness to several of the side stories developing with some of the other shop owners. It’s a film for children and families that has been garnering a lot of positive praise, but does it work as a family film? That will be one of the issues we attempt to get to the bottom of today.

MATT: The thing I really like about this is that Martin Scorsese totally pulled off a kid’s movie. I was wary of it at first (though really excited at the news), but then I remembered that this is the same guy who has done some really emotional work with a child actor before in Kundun. While that was most certainly an adult drama, it’s important to note that the work with the child seems to have really informed his approach here, and the children, Hugo (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), are quite amazing as actors. This may have to do with the pedigree of child actor involved–Butterfield and Moretz are Hollywood heavyweights at this point, having turned in some terrific performances over the past few years–but I think it would be a disservice to the film to discount Scorsese’s involvement. He’s not particularly known for working closely with an actor to craft the character, but that’s mostly due to the fact that his films often seem to have such wonderfully realized characters at the outset, working from strong source material (The Age of Innocence, The Last Temptation of Christ) or from a strong script by frequent collaborators, among them John Logan, Nicholas Pillegi, and Paul Schrader, without whom we might not even have a predetermined notion of what a “Martin Scorsese Picture” is or should be.

Moving away from acting a bit, I think it’s also worth noting that he is also likely the one working director who has a deep knowledge of classical cinema. For that reason Hugo is a perfect project for him. The films of Georges Meliés are beloved within the film world, and in Hugo he not only gets to reconstruct them as well as use them in a wonderful montage at the end, but he gets to go on some terrific little journeys into the birth of cinema. While many people may take umbrage with the fact that he continues to expound the (likely) myth that audiences leapt out of the way at the sight of an oncoming train, I love those moments of Hugo because it brings to life the mythology and reverence that children formulate about the cinema themselves. It is both astonishing and silly to a child that adults would think like that about a film, but as adults we lose a bit of that astonishment. What I’m trying to get at here is that the cinema is supposed to be magical, and in his own way, Scorsese invokes that as often as possible, so it is fitting that Meliés turns out to be the subject of a Scorsese film.

ERIC: While there is much that I admire about Hugo, I’m not so sure I’d agree that it works as a kids’ movie. In fact, if anything, the film seemed to me to be conflicted between wanting to be a children’s film on some level (perhaps marketing?), and trafficking in surprisingly adult emotions, themes, and revelations. In this respect, it reminded me a great deal of another movie about movies that features a child at its core: Cinema Paradiso. In some ways, Hugo relies on the same conventions, as we see in the relationship between the watchmaker and Hugo, which in the beginning is a virtual analog of the early dynamic between Alfredo and Salvatore, as well as in Hugo’s heartbreaking discovery that so much of Meliés’s creativity and magic has been lost or nearly lost to the ravages of time and disappointment, which is not unlike the devastation Salvatore feels when he returns as an adult to find that the theater is to be demolished in the name of the same kind of “progress” that rendered Meliés’s work no longer attractive to audiences. I fear that the watchmaker’s emotions are ones that will not resonate with ten-year-olds who do not yet really know what it means to have one’s dreams destroyed by others, nor will those of the station inspector Gustav, who has also known heartbreak of the cruelest kind. To most kids, they will both seem to be only crotchety or cruel old men who play as the film’s bad guys. But that’s not what they are. Like Hugo and Isabelle both, these and many of the other characters who populate Hugo are broken, in desperate need of finding something magical in their lives. This is why I was deeply moved by what I think is one of the finest scenes in the film, when Gustav and the florist finally speak to one another and turn not to flirtation but promptly to the agonies of the Great War. It is not a comic sequence, as the scene’s set-up seems to suggest is coming. Instead, it culminates in a profound moment of recognition between these two severely damaged people. There aren’t many kids or even young adults I know who would understand such a passing but vital reference to Verdun, which is presented to us as if it were common knowledge soaked into our collective social unconscious just as it was in post-war France.

Indeed, this is one of the problems of Hugo: It relies on associations that will make culturally aware adults laugh out loud or muse wistfully or swallow back emotion, while the children in the audience won’t get it at all. One impressive sequence in the film focuses on Hugo’s oddly prescient nightmare in which he is the cause of the infamous Gare Montparnasse train accident in 1895. The picture is a famous one — a huge train engine hanging out of the front window of the station from the concourse above — but most children won’t know it. My thirteen-year-old son, who I like to think is very well read, knew the image only because it used to hang on the wall in my kitchen — my touchstone for whether a day had really been as terrible as I might think at the end of it. Similarly, the long sequence in which Gustav is hunting for Hugo, and the boy must hang from the station clock face Harold Lloyd-style, is meaningful to youngster viewers only because the audience has already seen Hugo and Isabelle watching the same scene at the movie house earlier in the film. In Hugo there are countless similar nods to the glorious early years of captured images, whether they be purely cinematic or generally photographic ones, and I’m not sure most adults, let alone most kids, could catch them all.

All of this begs the question, of course, of who it is that Scorsese is speaking to. As I marveled at the haunting beauty of this film and its sequences, I realized that these “in” references are not unlike that great moment in Tarsem Singh’s The Fall — another magnificent and important movie about moviemaking (and most decidedly not a children’s movie) — when the young Alexandria catches a glimpse of the inverted projection of a horse as its light passes from outside through a keyhole and appears on the wall beside her. A child revels in such delights by seeing them as miracles, while the adult with a knowledge of how a lens works finds humor and an odd sort of comfort in Alexandria’s subsequent gasp. In short, I consistently found myself thinking that Scorsese was trying to remind me and adults like me about the magic and invention and…well…love that goes into this fabulous art of filmmaking. I feel as though he is wanting us to feel wondrous again, just as Hugo and Isabelle are in their discoveries throughout the film, for exactly the reason you suggest, Matt — it’s easy as we get older to forget what that feels like. But then there comes that long montage and backstory on Meliés near the end of the film. I found it fascinating and thoroughly entertaining, but I could certainly understand that many children might feel as if they were sitting through a Film Studies 101 lecture. Part of this may be because older folks will understand, for example, the hard work and brilliant imagination that went into the stop-action sequences that are broken down in this montage (the one with the skeletons in particular); Scorsese can afford to skip some of the details, knowing that we old people will connect the dots. Kids who have grown up in a purely digital world, though, might not get how labor intensive this kind of filmmaking would have been, and why it was therefore so amazing, and Scorsese doesn’t (and can’t, really) dwell on that point for long for fear of derailing the film. But remember — this is a culture that now teaches digital photography courses in schools without ever talking about aperture, shutter speed, or other essential photographic terms. Understanding those miracles — and recognizing their magic — is no longer so self-evident as we might assume it to be.

And that raises the question of why Hugo is presented to us in 3D. I’m curious what you thought about this choice, Matt, and whether this technological innovation serves to add any “magic” to the Hugo story in the same ways that Meliés’s discoveries so clearly did.

MATT: Before delving into the whys and wherefores of 3D, I must respectfully disagree with you. This is indeed a children’s film, and just because the constant references to other films are there does not seem to lose the audience. Scorsese (and Jim Jarmusch and Brian De Palma and Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers and and and and) includes moments which reference other films, in particular the French New Wave and Italian Neo-realism, all the time. I don’t think that just because one may not get the reference does not mean that the film doesn’t know who it is speaking to, and one of the really great things I found in Hugo is that it seems to present something for everyone, from the train image you mentioned, to the silent film production methodology, down to the human and “adult” emotions evoked by the characters. I don’t read it nearly as much as a gap in Scorsese’s judgement to skimp on details where adult audiences might be concerned as much as a way for him to spark the same intrigue with those strange images that I first encountered as a child, and which led me to where I am now. There is something wondrous, I feel, for a child to be struck by something they know nothing about, and then become curious enough to find out more about it, like attending a magic show and then purchasing all manner of how-to books and decks of cards.

As for the 3D, I genuinely enjoyed its deployment by Scorsese, who is one of maybe three filmmakers to have used it in a way that I felt added something to the film (the other two will be on my year-end list, so no need to bring them up in-depth here). I think the choice to go in 3D is probably mostly from the studio at the production contract level. The format was still all the rage last year when the production started coming together, after all. But I still find it striking that Scorsese was able to use it to open up the image, and didn’t use it as a gimmick at all, even when it could have been very easy to do so (the famous train film, the final shot of The Great Train Robbery with the cowboy firing the gun directly at the screen). The depth he achieves, with some computer assistance during the breathtaking opening trek through the train station’s mechanical clock faces, is staggering and completely unlike anything we’ve seen before, even from James Cameron’s Avatar, which was very pretty, but still retained a forced-perspective viewfinder method where half the image was usually out of focus and illegible. Here I’m reminded more of the deep-focus photography that was all the rage in Welles and Renoir films, and which gave the image a vibrancy and a life that was more than just the characters sitting in front of you on the screen. There is a real world in that celluloid projected on the screen.

I would also like to think that Scorsese was excited to try the format because, while we don’t think about him as such, he has always been interested in advanced techniques behind the camera, whether in sound design or the expressionistic use of new lenses, and even some CGI. With Hugo it seems like he got the sense of being a kid again himself, and watching him use his trademark extended tracking shots combined with the image depth provided by the 3D was a distinct pleasure I got from the film. Much like Meliés, I think Scorsese was simply interested in tinkering around and seeing what he could do with it, and it worked out pretty magically.

While I did think the final third of the film got a little too Film History 101, as you put it, I also think that this is something that no one ever puts right out there in front of an audience. The cinema expects its audience to be cognizant of its history, but rarely are they. What is so great about this film and Selznick’s book, is that it makes that history explicitly cinematic itself, and brings the magic that went into the wonderful silent films made during and after Meliés’ time to life unlike any time before. I gasped audibly when the real films and not the recreations were shown at the end of the film, not only because I had forgotten how gorgeous they truly are, but because they were also presented in the multi-dimensional format, converted digitally, but in a way that was unobtrusive. Instead of being offended that they had been converted, I found it more than appropriate, especially considering that it fit so well with the visual motifs of the 3D found throughout Hugo.

I, too, liked the moment between Gustav and the florist (Emily Mortimer, one of my favorite actresses), and the conversation about Verdun was handled in a way that I fear will only further iterate what I found to be great about the movie (including the 3D, and the references to other films): Scorsese’s direction, and the script by John Logan, display a light touch in what they use as exposition. I, for one, want filmmakers to act like the audience knows everything about what’s going on in their films. Not to get off on a tangent, but one of my favorite films from the previous decade, Spartan, operates in much the same way. It does not pander to the lowest common denominator as so much writing does for films these days, and really only gives you enough information to keep the story moving and give the audience just enough to follow it. And each time I watch it, the dialogue is richer, more meaningful and more intriguing than the previous. Not because it is initially sparse and bereft of information, but because it seems to be that way, and then the next time you learn a little more that maybe you hadn’t caught onto before. The reference to Verdun is that same thing.

ERIC: I’m glad you brought up that opening steady-cam shot through the train station, which really is magnificent. I’m not sure that shot benefits in an immediate, obvious, and tangible way from 3D, however. It’s marvelous all on its own, for the wealth of detail we are able to pick up as we fly past the stunning architecture and the myriad lives taking place beneath and beside us on our visual journey. I’m also glad you mentioned the “deep focus” characteristics of this shot–a trick of filmmaking I have admired since Orson Welles first perfected it. But it does raise intriguing questions about how genuine this steady-cam experience is to what most of us ever see or could see in the real world. The human eye does not engage in deep focus, and certainly as we move through our real-world environments, the objects to our immediate left and right are not just as crisply focused as the objects several hundred yards in the distance. Presented to us in the flat-screen, two-dimensional environment of the theater, there is something acutely fantastical about this kind of heightened optical illusion, even as it amazes, and strangely, I’m not sure it did anything to make me feel as if I were “really” in a Parisian train station. The additional layer of 3D imagery (which is still presented in a two-dimensional format that is designed to fool the eye into thinking otherwise) doesn’t take away this awareness of the fantasy. If anything, to the discerning viewer, it only amplifies the sensation, and not just because the 3D glasses are (still) such a pain in the ass.

Then again, cinema has always been about fooling the eye with the fantastical, and that’s part of what Scorsese celebrates throughout this film by urging us to learn about those remarkable innovations of the past. Whether it was the early, flip book-style “movies” one viewed through the Kinetoscope at the arcade or the nickelodeon’s films that relied on stop-action tricks and other special effects, it’s all been about tricking the eye with a certain number of frames per second and the illusion of persistence of vision. But as Wertheimer demonstrated nearly a hundred years ago, the eye is not a camera. Now that digital is shooting at 48 frames per second with a flicker (or, more accurately, refresh) rate that obliterates any strobing effect, it’s becoming more and more difficult to tell the difference between the digitally-simulated, two-dimensional world of the 3D film and that place where the rest of us actually live. The fact that it looks so clear, pristine, and vivid doesn’t help matters, and I worry whether Scorsese undermines his love letter to the cinematic past by embracing a technology that only amplifies the misguided notion that the old ways are sort of quaint but passé, like knickers and horse-drawn carriages. A colleague of mine who teaches film at a university in the southeast recently told me that he can’t get his students to come to the teched-out theater on campus for screenings. They’d rather stream the assigned films to their iPhones and watch them while they’re sitting through another class’s boring lecture or riding the bus to school or waiting for their steak and cheese to arrive at the table. It seems to me that it’s difficult for a modern audience to appreciate the history of cinema or the technological innovations that have gone into it if they’re watching a film about that subject on a 3.5″ screen with brightness and contrast settings that would blind someone sitting in the dark.

All of this is more a philosophical problem for film and filmmakers (and viewers who care, I guess) than it is a problem for Scorsese’s Hugo. For much of the film, in fact, I wasn’t really aware of the 3D elements, and maybe this is a good thing. The vibrancy of color was much more striking to me to the point that I wondered about the degree to which Scorsese may have digitally “colored” Hugo in much the same way that Meliés once did his films with hand tinting, as his muse waxes poetic about at one point late in the movie. This, more than any 3D effects, is what made me marvel at Hugo’s visual appeal, especially in the shots of Paris at night, which anyone who has been to Paris would say did not look “real” but nevertheless captured how the city feels at night, especially when glimpsed from Montmartre or any other place on high in the city. And this, really, is Sorsese’s accomplishment, just as it was with Meliés or any of those other early cinematic geniuses–they make us believe that their invented worlds feel real, even if we can see the ways in which they are not.

So, does Hugo work in the ways that it intends? You’re absolutely right that the cinema likes to think that its patrons know its history, but they rarely do, and I’m not sure what to do about that. I was horrified to find out recently that several of my wife’s younger (i.e., 20ish) colleagues had not ever heard of Alfred Hitchcock. These are not dumb people. They go to school, and they do well in school, and they are curious, movie-watching folks who are persistent about wanting to do a movie night with us. They like movies. But as representatives of their generation–and of the educated among their generation–the fact that Hitchcock’s name does not bring immediate, visceral memories into their brains is antithetical to the idea that our culture knows its cinematic past. My film professor friend has had similar experiences. His best students can name a bevy of kitschy 80s films that they’ve seen dozens of times, but to them, these are the “old movies.” Most of them have never even heard of Meliés and have no concept of a silent film accompanied by a live orchestra.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the question you pose–do we want our filmmakers to keep going on in a way that presumes that we (or at least some of us) know the touchstones that they rely upon both narratively and visually, even if most of the viewing audience does not? Maybe this is always the question that art must ask of itself, given its reliance upon allusive material to generate its deepest levels of meaning. I remember reading Shakespeare for the first time as a fifth grader and being startled by how many explanatory footnotes there were. Is this what we have to look forward to in future screenings of classic films–a supplemental “viewer’s guide” with time code notational references? I, too, would prefer not to see our films pander to the lowest common denominator, but those are the folks who buy access to movies in bulk. So, there must soon be either a negotiated middle ground, or we will witness the moment at which film finally bifurcates into pablum for the masses and good stuff for the film-literate, with little in between. Maybe we are already there. But if Scorsese is trying to bridge that gap with Hugo–which I think he is–I’m not sure he’s completely successful in actually bridging the gap as opposed to presenting something appealing to parties on both sides of the gap. How many will leave Hugo with an urge to go learn more about Meliés? How many will even realize he was a real person? How many will like Hugo simply because it is entertaining and dramatic and a little heroic, and not because of the reasons you and I like it? Or think of it this way: Imagine if a first-time or even second-time director without Scorsese’s pedigree had bought the film rights to Selznick’s book and presented a proposal to make this movie that celebrates the history of film in a powerful, haunting way. It never would have happened because the studios never would have taken the risk. The dollar rules all, and in my opinion, that puts any artistic integrity here under the microscope of whether the art exists for art’s sake or primarily to turn a profit. It is a surprisingly small step from a new recording of Mozart’s Requiem to a “Hooked on Classics” recording of the same piece. I’m not saying that Scorsese has crossed that line, but it sure feels as if that line is somewhere nearby, and I find that scary.

MATT: The debate about film as an art form stretches back to the days of Meliés, and I think we’re so far beyond it now that it’s not really worth dredging back up. As a commercial medium, it is only under attack because of some sort of imagined “threat” to it, one that I don’t think affects Hugo’s execution at all. The bifurcation exists, has always existed, and is indistinguishable in every art form. It is the same thing with literature. And that includes the way genre is often treated by so-called “serious” readers. High brow readers are perfectly willing to accept Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and (more recently) pulp authors like Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler. These authors operated outside of what is generally considered the literary work of fiction, yet they are lauded because they have somehow “transcended” the genre which gave birth to them–a distinction that is insulting to what their achievements within the genre actually were. Scorsese is a popular filmmaker, not a niche director like Guy Maddin or even Jim Jarmusch, and as such he is the embodiment of the struggle that has always existed between commercialism and art. Let us not forget that this is the man who has ushered the mafia and gangster film into the modern era, made at least one (though in my estimation two) of the greatest concert documentaries of all time, and who is a pretty decent historian of the cinema in his own right. It’s not that we need to footnotes to enjoy the work, but if you’re interested, they’re there and you can dig up what you want.

But all of this is a digression from what is at stake here: you ask about how well Hugo actually operates as a document which will provide the impetus for viewers to track down their own information. I think it works well in this regard, but also have no problem with it if it doesn’t. It is not the work of art’s station to make an audience understand it. It just is. The viewer of Hugo will get whatever they want out of it, and that will be that, just as I am able to find some value in 70s shlock exploitation or a new guilty pleasure Michael Bay film. The fact that I am more informed that someone else as to exactly why I might like this or that, it does not make the impulse or the emotion behind it any different. It is as such with all art. Your wife’s colleagues may have never heard of Alfred Hitchcock, but they have now, thanks to her exposure. Until this past year I had never seen anything by Otto Preminger or given a fair shake to Robert Bresson (I had never sat through the entirety of one of his films, finding myself bored and unable to deal with it), but now I have. Everything works in this way.

What I take away from Hugo is that we have been given an entertaining film that packs a whole lot of information, both in its dialogue and characterization as well as its visuals, into a two hour running time. It is Scorsese’s love letter to silent film, to the medium that has been so wondrous and kind and loving to its fans. I think the 3D works because it is unobtrusive, and most of the time you don’t notice it, but that does not necessarily mean that the film has not been enriched by its use in any way. Is 3D necessary for the enjoyment of any movie? With the possible exception of genre and/or gimmick movies or something like Herzog’s amazing use of it in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, no, it’s not. But it is used in Hugo in a manner entirely different from the much-lauded use that James Cameron squeezed out of it in his previous efforts, and I think much more fully realized.

I like Hugo immensely. I think it’s a children’s film of uncommon depth and realization. Much more akin to something like Danny Boyle’s Millions, another emotionally complex and entertaining tale that is light years ahead of the typical family fare that normally consists of useless adaptations (and I use that words very loosely) of Journey to the Center of the Earth or the absolutely brain-dead comedies (I can provide a very long list if you wish) which are commonly produced from children’s literature, mostly live-action, but also some animated fare as well, which I won’t even begin to get into.

ERIC: I think we will have to agree to disagree about whether the film-as-art-form discussion is still worth having. There are plenty of art forms that have commercial hucksters operating on the fringes, and I think it’s still important to know and highlight the difference. You’ve seen some of the photography in the shows and commercial galleries we’ve wandered through together over the years, and I think you’d agree that there’s a big difference between over-produced digital images of kittens or stock tourist sites selling for $500 a crack and photographic images (digital or darkroom) selling for the same price that make you stop, think, and marvel about the image. The same is true about cinema. You’re entitled to your Michael Bay guilty pleasures, and there’s nothing wrong with that — I certainly have mine, too. But as a discerning viewer with a well-honed sense of taste, you’re never going to praise Michael Bay as high art or anything worthy of your higher faculties. I’m not so sure that most moviegoers can make this distinction, and if Hugo blurs that line even as it tries to emphasize the difference, then I see that as an artistic misstep on Scorsese’s part. As for your genre-transcending writers, artists, and filmmakers, these are folks who took material that was always treated as schlock and elevated it to an art form by expressing something meaningful through the work. I don’t see it as insulting to recognize them as such. It is not genre that determines artistic value, as you seem to suggest, but what the artist does with the genre. Scorsese is an artist not because he transcended the mafia/gangster genre but because he created compelling, believable, stunning films about the subject. Similarly, I’ve never bought in to the cop out that art “just is” and doesn’t have a responsibility to convey meaning. Art that fails to communicate is masturbation, even if it cloaks itself in an air of profundity.

What I think we can agree on about Hugo is this: Scorsese has created an entertaining, moving, thought-provoking love letter to silent cinema, one that lots of folks should see, whether they are interested in the history of early filmmaking or are simply looking for an adventurous, although on occasion too cute, story about young people rediscovering the magic that the adults around them have become too cynical to remember. Like you, I enjoyed Hugo immensely, too, and I admire much of what it is doing, although perhaps for different reasons than you do. Yes, it is light years ahead of the standard family fare, but I expected as much from one of the greatest directors of our time. I guess where we differ is on the question of where Scorsese’s bar should have been set with this film and the opportunities it offered him. I don’t think he accomplished all that he could have, and that disappoints me. At a time when our culture is losing touch with the medium of film and its rich history, as well as shifting all of its mediated interactions into individualized experiences rather than ones that are culturally shared, leaving us as a veritable Babel of cultural references, I can think of no more important work than a director like Scorsese taking this opportunity to wake up everyone to what they’ve been missing. Instead, after seeing Hugo, I fear that he is (mostly) shouting into the wind and doing so in a language that few will truly understand.

by Matt Smith

After I left my hometown for college, I never moved back in with my parents. Sure, I went back for one or two summers and various breaks now and then, but I broke free. I got out of the suffocating small town I had wanted to leave ever since I was younger. And it wasn’t even the smallest town I’d ever lived. I don’t ever want to live in a small town again. There are times when I get the urge to see what everyone I knew back then are up to. I’m glad that I rarely actually venture that way, and that I keep up with a handful of people who still in some way mean something to my life. After experiencing Young Adult, the new film from director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody after their much-lauded collaboration on Juno, I feel that maybe I shouldn’t dwell so much on anything in my past.

My friend Ashley (who insists I point out possesses “a keen cinematic intellect”) commented on Facebook recently that Young Adult was “94 of the most uncomfortable minutes of [her] life.” I agree. This is not to say that it’s not a good film. In fact, Diablo Cody’s script is incredibly strong, and I can be fairly certain that this is the best work that Jason Reitman has done as a director. I will get into a lot of discussions about how I’m crazy from friends who liked Up In The Air more. Whatever.

Young Adult follows Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a ghostwriter on a previously popular young adult book series who is in a rut. Her series is being cancelled, she is depressed, she probably drinks far too much, and she lives in an apartment with her small dog, passed out until late in the morning from the night before, sometimes with a stranger in the bed. One morning while trying to complete the final book in the series, she awakens to an e-mail from her high school flame Buddy announcing the birth of his daughter. With life not going so well in Minneapolis, Mavis decides to go back to her hometown and try to rekindle her relationship with Buddy (Patrick Wilson), her soul mate, and abscond with him back to the city.

The problem is that Buddy is happily married, and has a new baby to take care of. Any sane person can see that. But Mavis is unstable, and doesn’t think too clearly. Possibly delusional.

On her first night back in town she runs into Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who was beaten severely in high school by a bunch of jocks and now walks on a crutch. Matt lives with his sister, Sandra (Collette Wolfe), making aged bourbon in his garage (complete with names like “Mos Eisley Reserve”) and recombining the parts of different action figures into new creations in his bedroom. In many ways he is the equal to Mavis, but without the delusion. He is a kindred spirit because he too lives a life where he doesn’t feel fulfilled and is bitter about the hand dealt him.

After getting drunk together, Mavis tells Matt about her designs to get Buddy back, and Matt immediately tries to ward her off. He’s happily married, he tells her. He has a new kid. All to no avail. Mavis wants her man, and she goes about getting him any way she can. When Mavis shows up in the restaurant where Matt works having a drink with Buddy, he inserts himself into the situation and reiterates his opinion about what she is doing. Buddy seems like he’s clueless as to what’s going on, but much later reveals that he knows Mavis is unstable, and that he didn’t even want to invite her to the baby’s naming ceremony but was forced to by his wife, who felt sorry for Mavis.

There are many wonderful scenes in which Mavis and Matt commiserate over their troubles. And their dialogue is wonderful. When a night out with Buddy at a concert for his wife’s all-mothers rock band at the local bar goes bad, she shows up at Matt’s house asking him if he wants to go get hammered. “Let’s go to the woods out back of the high school. Grab some of that Star Wars juice.” Later in this same scene she cuts to the bone, showing her bitchiness in what we notice has become her typical passive aggressive way, attacking Matt when he begins to make her see the light.

Any conventional narrative would see Mavis undergo a series of revelations about her past life and see her reconcile the insanity of her actions with the reality of a world in which she is not the center of everything. She would recognize she is a total bitch, crazy and delusional, and attempt to overcome the awful person she has become. This is not that film. Mavis talks to the wrong person at just the wrong time and instantly reverts back to the big ball of crazy she was before, completely reaffirmed and reconstituted. She is bigger than her small town, and she is so much better than everyone who lives there. Mavis returns to Minneapolis without having bagged her boy, but a hundred times worse than she was before.

Charlize Theron’s performance is as brave here as anything she has done previously, including her award winning turn in Monster. Mavis Gary is a creation that has the ability to be charming and alluring yet still possess a biting wit that can completely emotionally decimate anyone she wishes. When she finally goes off at the naming party for Buddy’s daughter it is a thing of truly awful beauty. Discomforting, disquieting, hilarious and dark dark dark.

Likewise, Oswalt is kind of amazing in his own right. Despite the character playing to his stage identity (nerdy, insecure about his weight and appearance, and viciously perceptive), he imbues him with a sadness that is only occasionally hinted at in his standup. He is a perfect counterpoint to Theron, who is stunningly beautiful, and who also gives us a look at her real layer, minus makeup in some scenes, and just like the girl everyone knows who never quite grew up. They have great chemistry together onscreen, and though their sex scene could have been played for laughs, the truly brave revelation of it is that they are both playing damaged souls who have reached the only logical conclusion. They don’t connect beyond superficial misery, and there is never any real hope of a lasting relationship. All around brave turns for this unlikely pair of leads.

I mentioned previously that I think this is the best script Diablo Cody has ever written. I stand by that. Unlike Juno, the hip dialogue is toned down quite a bit, and though there are certainly quirky moments that have become her signature, they are tethered expressly to character. The evolution of her abilities as a storyteller to convey information through character can be traced through Jennifer’s Body, where Megan Fox plays a monstrous prototype of the Mavis character, and the emotionally dysfunctional Showtime series The United States of Tara. She doesn’t exactly give us role models, but she gives us interesting female leads that have just gotten better and better, culminating here with Theron’s fearless performance.

Jason Reitman, with three previous features under his belt, also delivers his typically assured and understated direction, but he seems more focused here than ever. While both Thank You For Smoking and Up In The Air seemed to wander off the rails and give us some narrative looseness from time to time, and Juno felt more like he was developing his own style in tandem with Cody, he has tightened the reigns here and given us a film that turns out to be a devastating character study. He knows exactly how to shoot his actors and gets them to trust him, and the result is that he delivers one of the best films of 2011, hands down.

I have not meant to suggest that I identify personally with Mavis. But I do have my moments of doubt and longings for things that might have been. And I also possess the same self-centered better-than syndrome that seems to affect anyone who has ever escaped a small town trying to pursue their dreams. What is so uncomfortable for me (and likely my friend Ashley) about bearing witness to Mavis’ little adventure is that there is a little bit of her in me. Just like her return to Minneapolis at the end of the film, I feel reaffirmed every time I go back home from visiting my family. I don’t have the same level of malicious hatred for everyone and everything there that she does, but given a similar life in which things had gone exactly as I’d wanted before undergoing a professional failing like the canceling of my book series or a divorce, who knows how I might feel.

Young Adult is an amazing film. To do my job as a critic and deliver hyperbolic platitudes, it must be said that this film fits squarely into my definition of a tour de force. I love everything about this movie, and the more I think about it, the more I admire it. See it, experience the discomfort, and then return to your own reality, whatever that may be.

5 stars out of 5

By Eric Plaag

In writer and director Miranda July’s latest film The Future, Sophie (Miranda July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) are a couple who are stuck in a rut. Time, it seems, is not on their side. They are both in their late thirties, locked into careers that are floundering or purposeless, and worried about what happens when they turn 40 five years hence, because “after 50, the rest is just loose change.” Sophie, who teaches dance to children, seems broken when she sees her younger, prettier, and hipper colleagues posting new dance routines on a YouTube-like website, hoping to be discovered or at least generate a million hits. Confronted about when she’s going to do something worthwhile, she can only explain that she’s been “gearing up to do something really incredible after fifteen years.”

While Sophie and Jason are afflicted with these existential dilemmas of mid-life, time also tortures them in a micro sense. The film opens with the explanation that Sophie and Jason have rescued the film’s narrator, Paw Paw, an older stray cat suffering from renal failure and a broken front foot, but they must wait several weeks for the cat to heal before they can retrieve it from the humane society. Paw Paw is anxious to go with them, to escape “the darkness that is not appropriate to talk about” and finally realize her identity as “cat which is belonging to you.” Hanging over the entire enterprise is the clinic’s warning that Sophie and Jason must come to get Paw Paw on the day she is ready to go home, or the doctors will euthanize her. Paw Paw does not understand this. She only sees hope for the first time in a very, very long time, watching the clock hour by hour and “waiting for my real life to begin.” Sophie and Jason do not permit the possibility, either, even though Jason seems uncertain about having a cat at all, and Sophie seems unsure of a commitment that may very well stretch to as much as five years.

As one might expect from July, whose previous Me and You and Everyone We Know is one of the most fascinating and intricate narratives I’ve ever seen on screen, the uncertainties Sophie and Jason have about Paw Paw speak volumes about their fears about one another. They are the kind of couple who still quibble playfully over their superpowers, as when Sophie insists early in the film that she can turn on the faucet with her mind, and Jason swears that he can stop time. But they have become lost and do not yet know it. They have been together four years, which seems to Jason a very long time, even though they are unmarried and the adoption of Paw Paw seems to be a monumental decision akin to having a child. Jason has forgotten how to listen to Sophie, we learn, and Sophie has lost track of how to be truthful about the hard things. When Jason meets Joe (the late Joe Putterlik) through a Craigslist ad for a 1980s-era Conair hair dryer, Joe explains that his sixty-year marriage to his wife was “very hard at the beginning,” and that sometimes they did cruel things to one another. Jason objects, asserting that he and Sophie didn’t have troubles at the beginning. “Well,” Joe notes, “the problem is you’re just in the middle of the beginning.”

Sure enough, the trouble soon starts. In an effort to find his path in life, Jason quits his job, swearing that he will “be alert and…notice everything” as he seeks a sign about what he should do next, only to land in a situation far more miserable and demoralizing than the last. Sophie, meanwhile, immerses herself in a “30 dances in 30 days” video plan that she believes will finally push her out of her doldrums, even though she can’t bear the sight of herself on camera. Her misery leads to one of the small, circumstantial moments of irreversible, monumental choice that are common in July’s work and, indeed, in life. Within days, Sophie is sleeping with Marshall (David Warshofsky), an older man with a young daughter, someone whom the audience knows does not fit her at all, even though Sophie wants to believe otherwise. When the moment comes that Sophie must finally confront Jason about her choice, he begs her for just a moment to compose himself. She goes on anyway, and Jason does the only thing he can do to survive — he stops time.

What follows is a gorgeous but heartbreaking journey into magical realism that is pitch-perfect true to the otherworldly, floating confusion that we all experience when we walk in either Jason’s or Sophie’s shoes. As Jason tries to hold time back with his hand, the full moon begins to speak to him through the window. Jason begs for reassurance that he can let go: “If it’s going to work out, could you give me some sort of indication?” But the moon, personified by Joe’s voice, offers the same kind of empty solace we have all experienced at such times: “I don’t know anything. I’m just a rock in the sky.” I can think of few moments in film more emotionally haunting than watching Jason trying to restart time by using his hands to push the tides back into action. Likewise, Sophie’s agonizing, middle-of-the-night dance is at once both an immersion in self-revelation and an effort to hide her sins from all the world so that no one can see. Some may bristle at July’s quirkiness and the convoluted, sometimes circular ways that she gets at meaning and resolution through both her writing and direction, but her courage as a performance artist translates very well to screen. It sure would be nice if there were more folks making movies who were willing to so boldly place their vulnerabilities before us for consideration without ever dithering in self-absorption or wallowing in self-pity.

It would be unfair to say how it all works out or who gets hurt in the end. If you are going into this seeking the kind of uplifting, we-are-all-connected bliss of July’s Me and You, though, be warned now that this is a different movie with a different tone and a different set of outcomes, one that builds on the profound truths and startling enigmas of the earlier film in a much more mature and less gimmicky fashion. Some folks have been viciously critical about Paw Paw’s narration of this film, but without this frame and the weightiness of Paw Paw’s words, there would not be any sense of the rippling consequences that our choices and our selfishness have beyond the immediate and obvious. This, of course, is July’s point, that everything is connected, that the world is speaking to us in codes and signs, and that when we don’t know how to listen, we end up doing irreparable harm, even if it is unintentional. The Future is also about the maddening vagaries of time, both imagined and experienced, and how, as Paw Paw tells us, the only thing we can ever be certain of is that it “goes on and on and on.”

DVD, 5 out of 5 stars

by Matt Smith

I don’t necessarily always do this, but: Spoilers Ahead. In this review I extensively discuss key plot points, character traits and much much more, including the altered ending. If you are one of the five people left on the planet who has not read the novels or seen the original Swedish-language adaptations, you are hereby forewarned. For the rest of you, read on.

It’s a testament to Stieg Larsson’s storytelling capability that a new film version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the multi-million copy bestseller that has taken the world by storm over the past couple of years, still seems fresh and exciting, and most importantly, not merely like a retread of that old familiar material. The story of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist’s investigation into the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, the beloved niece of millionaire industrialist Henrik Vanger, is well known by now. The twists and turns of the plot, the richly drawn and morally complex characters, and the emotional roller coaster of vengeance and the satisfying feeling that comes at the end of any great work of whodunit fiction, however, is still there to enrapture an audience, and leave us wanting more. The promise of a posthumously discovered fourth book in Larsson’s series (presumed to be the fifth of six planned novels featuring the characters) is just one more instance of proof that the story has a rabid fan base that can be quite insatiable. I count myself in that lot. Larsson’s books represent that rare instance when truly great novels cross over into popular culture, and though the result may be that a lot of people who are not so versed in the traditions of various genres now strut around like the rooster in a hen house, that does not stop the books from being what they are: infallibly entertaining. They are one of the great storytelling feats of our time.

But the first book is by far the strongest. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a multilayered mystery novel of the first order, and because its story is self contained (unlike the sequels, which are sprawling and unwieldy, and possibly unadaptable in any context that could convey their real beauty, as evidenced by the Swedish film adaptations), it is ideal for transference to the big screen.

In 2009 the entire series was adapted in Sweden, with extended versions of the films being shown on television in a mini-series format. The first film, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was directed by Neils Arden Oplev, who did an excellent job. The film was as entertaining and thrilling as the books, and expertly crafted. The film also had the good fortune of having Noomi Rapace, an actress not known outside of Sweden, who would play Lisbeth Salander. She was Salander, end of story. In fact, Rapace was so good in the role that I was skeptical that anyone else could pull it off. And though the second and third films (directed by Daniel Alfredson) were a slight disappointment, if only because they couldn’t maintain the thrilling heights of Tattoo with such a complex and unwieldy story, her performance was flawless, and the first film was one of the best films of the year.

Which brings us to the American film version, with a big budget, big stars, and a major director, hot on the heels of the Swedish film’s release a mere year and a half ago in the U.S. David Fincher’s direction has been rightly described as cold and distant, removed from the emotion of the subject just enough so the audience can examine it, even when dealing with subject matter which does not necessarily require such an approach. Here, I am pleased to report, that this style is much appreciated, giving some of the investigative sequences more of the feel of a procedural. Appropriate, since Fincher has directed the finest example of that genre in the past decade: Zodiac. But The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is not a rehash of his previous work, as I feared it might seem when I initially heard he was taking on the project. “Oh, great, Fincher’s gonna go make a dark serial killer picture again now that he got his ‘prestige projects’ out of the way.” Wrong wrong wrong wrong.

What the intervening films between 2007’s Zodiac and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo have apparently done for him is help him understand how to shoot emotional characters within his style. For all the flaws I personally found in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network, at least they were distinguished by the audience’s ability to get into the characters a little more. In Zodiac we feel the fear of Robert Graysmith’s journey into the basement of a strange house as he searches for the killer in the same objective way as the barrage of information has been laid out before us, but in The Social Network we feel some of the anger coming from Mark Zuckerberg in the confrontations with the plaintiffs over their lawsuit because we have been given scenes which develop that anger, the outrage becomes a real emotion. The difference is slight, but it’s there.

The emotions in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo are actually so well developed that it becomes the most striking divergence from the novel. Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth is still the same old damaged goods we get in the books, pierced and tatted, all leather and black and chrome, but her relationship with Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) gets a much-needed injection of emotion and longing after so many iterations in the past couple of years. It doesn’t transform the character of Salander in any significant way as much as rework the dynamic of Lisbeth’s work/love affair with Mikael, and not even that noticeably. In actuality it’s a small change, and it adds a layer of emotional understanding to the character–a warrior fighting against the men who have held her back her whole life, in politics and personal endeavors–making Lisbeth’s turn toward Blomkvist human and relatable. He is, after all, one of the only men in her life that has not passed some sort of unfair judgement on her. Blomkvist is not her knight in shining armor, though the ending does let us know that Lisbeth has made some sort of breakthrough with him and the final scene is just as crushing for her emotionally as her rape at the hands of Bjurman, if only because she had finally let someone in a bit, and that had now gone to pieces.

Rooney Mara fully inhabits the role of Salander, and there was no constant thought in my mind about Rapace’s fantastic performance. I can fairly say that she gave her all, and I was willing to take it in. Mara is, simply put, breathtaking. And different in small ways, which seems to be the theme for this adaptation. Her attitude is more New York punk than Scandinavian in origin, and maybe that will bug people, but the nice touches of this slight intangible change in her attitude are manifest on screen in her dress, body language and the more aggressive tattoos and the real-life piercings Mara got for the role. One of her t-shirts reads “Fuck you you fucking fucks,” which has been a favorite saying of mine for years. Asperger’s aside, Lisbeth is the punk I think we have in all of us, and the moral hacker and attacker we wish we all had in there as well. I think the New York punk attitude shift actually affects the whole film, with even the film’s aesthetics reflecting the harsher attitude toward the men who hate women that the novel is so amazingly deft at conveying, but due to some restraint on the part of Oplev and the Swedish producers, had been played down a bit in the original. This is not to say that the treatment of Lisbeth at the hands of Bjurman or the outrage at the serial killer, Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgard), was not conveyed, but that Fincher is willing to let the darker impulses of the story come to the fore much like Larsson was. The books, and now this film version of them, do not shy away from the ugly underbelly of its content. In many ways it’s now a real shame that the book wasn’t published in English under its original title.

When Blomkvist and Salander finally get together to work on the investigation, I was quickly reminded of how perfect Fincher is for this type of film. In the key scene between them as far as I’m concerned, Blomkvist pitches the idea to Lisbeth, and she is at first hesitant, unsure of his intentions with her, and given her past with male authority figures, this is not surprising. But he plays it cool, and explains everything methodically, which is exactly what she understands and can relate to, and then very bluntly tells her, “I want you to help me catch a killer of women.” The incensed rage each character has at the crimes committed over the past forty years by this killer is what draws them together, and is the cue to Lisbeth that Blomkvist can be trusted, at least on the level of assisting him in his investigation if nothing else. She knows he’s a womanizer because she did his background check for Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), but she also knows that he has a great moral character as well, and has been in the midst of a struggle with a corporate magnate engaged in all manner of illegal activities for the past year or so. Blomkvist and Salander are both anti-bullies, anti-evil, anti-corruption.

Their sexual relationship is of some concern to several reviewers, and rightly so. Here you have a devout feminist in author Larsson weaving a yarn about two anti-woman-hating individuals who stand up against the objectification of women, but who still fulfill standard male sexual fantasies. Blomkvist is an exceptional lover, and Salander willingly succumbs to his charms once he’s broken through her defenses. And did I mention that she’s at least bi-sexual? I prefer to think of it, however, in much the same way Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillan present it. Salander is aggressive in her choice to sleep with Blomkvist, and she doesn’t just jump right in on it. No matter how much lurid sexual content we are given involving her, Lisbeth’s relationship with Mikael has an organic feel to it at least, and, owing a bit to the modification of their involvement with one another, is realistic because Blomkvist is not really a womanizer. If anything he has been in a stable relationship with his editor and lover (and married woman) Erika Berger (Robin Wright) for some time, with the complete blessing of her husband, who thankfully never shows up in the film versions. But I digress.

One final thing that this film gets right is its look and feel. The focus of the story is on the men who hate women, and the righteous vengeance Salander and Blomkvist take on them. It opens with Henrik Vanger receiving the latest pressed flower from the person he believes is Harriet’s killer, and immediately cuts to an oil-slick and pitch black opening title sequence over which the much-publicized and lauded (and fantastic) cover of Led Zepplin’s “Immigrant Song” by Trent Reznor and Karen O is played. The song is as much a trademark of Fincher’s film version as the nudity on the film’s promotional materials. It’s a harsher, darker, and sleeker (visually) world than we’ve seen before. While the titles are a bit too reminiscent of a Bond opening for their own good,

As with Zodiac, Fincher shows he is comfortable handling vast amounts of story information, and very little actually gets left out. An impressive feat that is also pulled off due to his collaboration with Steven Zaillan, a screenwriter who is usually quite adept at synthesizing elaborate literary narratives into a manageable tangle of plot threads and believable characterizations. But this is not to sidestep Fincher’s interests in the area of the procedural genre, particularly its methodical and antiseptic presentation of facts, which has pervaded his work from Seven thru The Social Network, which is as much a procedural as anything else he’s ever directed. The complex nature of Larsson’s material requires a director fully capable of taking something and running with it, because the final third of the story comes together fast, and a lot of information must be conveyed very quickly.

The changed ending will have fans talking. Lisbeth, after playing chess with her former state-appointed advocate, who suffers a stroke early on, tells him that she has “made a friend,” and she is “happy,” both of which are not statements one would previously imagined Salander uttering, but which make perfect sense within the context of the film Fincher has made. She then goes out and purchases a leather jacket for him, similar to one that she has seen him wearing in a photograph when he was younger. When she arrives to the Millenium magazine offices to deliver it to him, she sees him walk out and put his arm around Berger, and they get into a taxi together. Lisbeth throws the wrapped jacket into the garbage, gets back on her bike, and rides off. Her new friend, the source of her newfound happiness, has betrayed her like everyone else. I like this ending because it more thoroughly justifies the coming animosity she exhibits toward Mikael at the beginning of the coming sequels. Plus, it’s such a subtle change that it shouldn’t really bother anyone anyway.

In many ways The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is exactly what I wanted, but it’s difficult to view objectively because I passionately love the source material so much. The Salander/Blomkvist crusade is one of the more amazing literary creations in recent memory, and it should go without saying that it works well on the screen. But that love does not deny the facts: I’ve seen this movie before. No matter how expertly directed, acted, and entertaining it is, there remains a sense that we are simply going through the motions. Still, I highly recommend it, and love Mara in the role of Salander because she really does take it to a different place than Rapace’s interpretation, which would have been difficult to top if played exactly the same and come off more as caricature.

4 out of 5 stars

Hey guys, I’ve been spending the past couple of months playing catch-up to 2011 before our year end “Best of” lists come out, and have seen a TON of films in that small span. Here is a smattering of things I either enjoyed in full or in part, but nothing that I didn’t find in any way appealing. More on those in the near-ish future.

Beautiful Boy
Michael Sheen and Maria Bello turn in some powerful and emotional performances as a pair of parents whose kid shoots up his school and then kills himself. The movie is pretty jarring, and the actual situation of the son’s murder-suicide takes place in the first five minutes, off screen. We are plunged in with the parents, who find out when the audience does what their son did. Never sensationalized or overly sentimentalized. It’s capably directed and the performances are top-notch, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been there, done that. After Gus van Sant’s emotionally scarring Elephant, and a similar exploration of the pain of the loss of one’s child in last year’s Rabbit Hole, the whole thing just seems like an exercise for the cast and crew, albeit it a very good one. I like Maria Bello a whole lot, and it’s a shame she doesn’t get more high profile work. Hopefully this performance will get her some big offers.

The Debt
The latest film from John Madden, the director of Shakespeare in Love, is a thriller about a team of Mossad agents sent to extract the Butcher of Birkenau in East Germany when he is discovered working under a false identity as a clinician and bring him to trial in Israel. What I like about the film is that its story is largely told in an extended flashback, during which we get to know the characters and begin to understand the complicated relationships which play out during the “contemporary” sequences (these take place in 1997, making the characters the correct age and thus the story’s events plausible). Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren are reliably fantastic, and there’s a nice turn from Sam Worthington that seems to be channeling a real performance for once. I don’t want to get into the details of the story, but as with any decent thriller there is always a point where the plan gets mucked up and has to be corrected. That is the same here. I really enjoyed this one.

Hesher
A movie that has so much going for it until its final shot. A mixed up kid lives in his grandmother’s house with his father (Rainn Wilson), who is deep in a depression and refusing to come to terms with the loss of his wife. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the eponymous Hesher, a force of nature who does whatever he wants and gets his aggression out through destruction. In his initial appearance, Hesher appears out the doorway of a house undergoing renovation and snatches the kid up and pulls him inside, out of the sight of a police officer, before throwing a makeshift bomb out the window at the cop and fleeing the scene in his black panel van with heavy metal music wailing out the windows. Natalie Portman shows up as a potential love interest for the much younger kid (those pangs of first love!) and a one-time slam-partner for Hesher, but doesn’t really have much else to do. Funny, crude, somewhat violent and vulgar, and a whole lot of fun, but the end kind of ruins the mood. And I hate that last shot.

Page One: Inside the New York Times
This is a pretty terrific documentary about how the New York Times, one of America’s premiere newspapers (as if you didn’t know), has been coping with the so-called death of print media for the last decade. One of my favorite films of the year, it is a truly amazing film that compels us to consider the role of media in all of our lives, and focuses for an extended period on David Carr, their media reporter, and a damned interesting figure in his own right. It’s a fairly straightforward film, but it goes about its subject with great intent and amazing execution.

The Mechanic
Simon West makes a good action movie again. Thank god. Jason Statham fans will already be all over this, but aside from his standard shtick he doesn’t do a whole lot that’s new. What made me finally sit down and give this some time (other than the fact I picked up the Blu Ray for cheap a while back) is that Ben Foster is one of the best working actors in Hollywood right now, sharing the same space in my “must-see” list with the likes of Michael Shannon and Garrett Dillahunt. Foster is great as an assassin learning the ropes from Statham, and the ending is quite good in its own right. It’s a fairly standard action film, but fans of the genre or the stars should be in good spirits at the end, and Foster is worth checking out all by his lonesome.

The Muppets
I’ve been looking forward to this iteration of Jim Henson’s beloved creations since it was announced Jason Segel was writing the script after his run-in with the company making Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I’m happy to report that, while it’s nothing revolutionary, it does take the initial series and feature film and make a striking addition to the characters’ legacy. The music is quite good, and the few nostalgia pieces they do take out and dust off are utilized for something other than just “hey, remember this?” moments. Segel’s brother is obsessed with the Muppets, and they journey to Muppet studios in Hollywood so he can meet them (during Segel’s romantic vacation with his girlfriend). Along the way there are song-and-dance numbers, the rekindling of old flames, and plenty of cheesy, corn-filled Muppet humor. I had a big fat smile on my face the whole time, and it was nice to see the gang back in their original semblance of glory instead of tacked into a version of some famous story once more (The Muppet Wizard of Oz anyone?).

Jane Eyre
A picturesque, realistic, and thoroughly exquisite adaptation of the Charlotte Bronté novel. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender as Jane and Rochester are very, very good. I know it’s another stuffy chamber piece based on a classic of the English drawing room school, but it’s really not. Jane Eyre is a tortuous love affair and a tragedy of human existence, gorgeously photographed and well directed. I’ve been a fan of this book since I was forced to read it in high school (a recent voluntary revisitation has confirmed this fandom), and this is probably my favorite adaptation of it. Sensual, moving, and–have I mentioned gorgeous yet? In all seriousness, this take on the story works on many levels, and as Eric mentioned in his essay on female heroism earlier in the year, the return to Rochester at the end at long last seems to stem from the “complex moral vision” that Jane has and follows in her life, and the film is all the more rich for it.

Friends With Benefits
The second of the no emotional attachments we’re just going to have sex rom-coms this year (I’ve still not seen Ivan Reitman’s No Strings Attached, due in large part to my distaste for Ashton Kutcher), Friends With Benefits is actually a pretty charming and fairly funny film. Justin Timberlake plays fairly broad comedy much better than I’d anticipated. Fresh off of some horrible relationships, Dylan and Jamie meet professionally and decide that it would be great to sleep with one another and not let all of the emotional gobbledygook get in the way. Predictably, their plan doesn’t exactly work, and they fall for each other. Still, the film does some nice things with its well-worn premise and formulaic plotting, and despite a couple of scenes that contain those detestable modern fads known as flash mobs, it works. There’s also a nice supporting turn from Woody Harrelson, who I genuinely love, as a gay sports writer at GQ. I don’t have much to say about this movie, actually, other than I liked it very generally, and it definitely has its moments. Get it from Netflix, settle in with a beer with your special lady (or guy) friend, and enjoy. Pretty good time.

It’s been almost 16 years, but Eric got his first start as a movie reviewer writing for a local newspaper called The Manchester Cricket on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Much as now, he did not get paid, but his reviews appeared twice a month on average (“When there’s space,” his editor insisted) until Eric eventually moved away from that town. His crowning achievement was when he correctly picked the winners of all six of the major awards for the 1996 Oscars. To celebrate the olden, golden days, TheSplitScreen will occasionally run a reprint of one of Eric’s old reviews in this space. This week, to put you all in the Christmas spirit, we check in on what Eric said about Oliver Stone’s Nixon. This review first appeared on January 26, 1996.

By Eric Plaag

Those who saw Oliver Stone’s JFK will find it easy to imagine what Nixon must be like. Surely, Nixon will be blamed for more than just a third-rate burglary. Stone has developed a nasty reputation for bending the facts to suit his drama, and he’s not done much to counter that perception.

Sure enough, he does it again with Nixon. Our late President had a role in attempts to kill Castro, Stone suggests, and he may have unwittingly had something to do with the deaths of both Kennedys. Ultimately, though, this movie is not about conspiracy theories. Rather, it is a character study of epic proportions, worthy of the respect reserved for any Shakespearian tragedy.

Nixon is not an easy film to watch. Running just over three hours, the film takes us through Nixon’s final months as President, with frequent and sometimes jarring flashbacks to significant events in his life (as in JFK, good editing makes the picture a cinematic feast for the eyes). Accompanying this effective chaos is Anthony Hopkins’s mesmerizing performance as a seemingly schizophrenic and paranoid Nixon who speaks of himself in the third person. Though the image of Hannibal Lecter is difficult to shake at first, Hopkins nevertheless portrays a frighteningly accurate Nixon who elicits from us — dare I say it? — sympathy.

There is something heroic about Nixon as Stone perceives him, and his tragic flaw — his overzealousness in mistrusting everyone — is captured perfectly. Nixon’s suspicions define his success. They allow him to weed out those who liked “having Nixon to kick around.” But they also lead to his humbling failure, for it is his White House tapes, his effort to have record of what everyone ever said within the inner sanctum, that finally doom his presidency.

Stone’s film is served well by an outstanding supporting cast. Relative unknown Joan Allen, as a harried and too-forgiving Pat Nixon, holds her own against Hopkins, and Paul Sorvino’s guttural turn as Kissinger is better than Kissinger himself. Other fine performances from James Woods (H.R. Haldeman), David Hyde Pierce (John Dean), and Bob Hoskins (J. Edgar Hoover) allow the picture to accomplish a startling suggestion of truth, even if the details aren’t always accurate.

Finally, it comes back to this, this notion of truth in Stone’s filmmaking. As I left the theater, one patron said to me, “I hate documentaries that lie.” While there are certainly untruths in this picture — “composites” and “reasonable speculations,” Stone calls them — the viewer must remember that Nixon is not a documentary. It is drama. Like Shakespeare, Stone has taken an historical situation and dramatized it in an effort to bring us closer to the humanity of the characters. We will never know the “real” Hamlet, and getting to know the “real” Nixon is just as unlikely. But Stone does bring us the Nixon that we imagine, a desperately lonely and frightened man who, as Kissinger says late in the movie, “had the defects of his qualities.” Taken as tragedy, as the historical drama Stone intends it to be, Nixon is a stellar film.

5 out 5 stars

By Eric Plaag

Road to Nowhere

If the Aqua Teens were right, and the frat boy’s mantra is, “Dude, my father owns a dealership,” then Road to Nowhere–the long-awaited return of director Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop) with a script from Steven Gaydos–proves that the hipster’s corollary is, “Hey, man, I’m making a movie.” With a promising opening that features an unseen murder, Road to Nowhere follows director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) as he shoots a true crime film dedicated to solving the unsolved. When Haven casts unknown actress Laurel Graham (Shannyn Sossamon) as femme fatale Velma Duran, numerous eyewitnesses to Duran’s life comment on the unsettling resemblance between the two women. Haven, meanwhile, begins to fall for his leading lady, underscoring one of the film’s numerous tortured clichés. Complicating matters is the fact that Rafe Tachen (Cliff De Young), Velma’s partner in crime, is supposed to have died in a plane crash into a nearby lake, but his regular presence as someone still alive outside the production of the film and who influences the actions of those working on the production raises the first questions about where the lines of reality and imagined reality blur. The attentions paid by the actor in Tachen’s role (also De Young) to the young Miss Graham only serve to confuse Haven as his production spins out of control. This, ultimately, is Road to Nowhere’s only riff, a faint doppelganger of Lynchian-style imaginings whose most burning question about the film within the film seems to be, “Is it live, or is it Betamax?” After all the fatuous acting finally deflates in the film’s final scene, viewers are left only with the realization that some hipsters never outgrow their desire to seem deep simply by remaining unintelligible.

DVD, 1 out of 5 stars

Pontypool

It really is a fabulous set-up: Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a former shock jock banished to a backwater radio station in a small Ontario town comes to work one morning after a disturbing encounter with a local resident who pounds on his car window, utters some gibberish, then disappears into the dawn’s blinding snowstorm. Moments after Mazzy goes on the air, frantic calls from local residents come in, suggesting that something terrible is happening in town, something that causes residents to become disoriented, act like a hungry horde, then mutilate their fellow residents. Trapped in the basement broadcast studio at a former church, Mazzy, station manager Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle), and technical assistant Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly) must decipher the mediated clues delivered to them from the outside world to determine whether this is an elaborate hoax or the beginning of a deadly outbreak. The sudden arrival of Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak), who may be both the cause of the outbreak and an infected person himself, only contributes to the chaos. And sadly, this is what Pontypool becomes in its final act. Priding itself on its apparent discovery of the synchronicities of the world and the power of language to elicit subconscious responses in human beings, Pontypool and its director Bruce McDonald turn the final third into a masturbatory exercise in linguistics, aurality, and enunciation. Pontypool’s makers would suggest that this negative review contains the very virus that ails the human race. I can assure you, however, that reversing the linguistics here to suggest that this is actually a good film will not do anything to make it a better one.

DVD, 2 out of 5 stars

Duck, You Sucker (1971)

I know it was 1971, but you have to respect a western that starts out by quoting Mao about the revolution being an act of violence, not a social dinner, then shows a man peeing on an anthill while thunderheads loom in the distant sky. Auspicious, to say the least. And in many respects, Duck, You Sucker, lives up to all that bombast. The second in a trilogy of Zapata westerns from Sergio Leone, this underappreciated epic follows the exploits of Mexican outlaw Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) and his reluctant partner, the former IRA explosives expert and expatriate, John Mallory (James Coburn). Although Juan is in it strictly for the money, a series of surprising coincidences results in his being named “the great, grand, glorious hero of the Revolution,” and not just once, but twice. John knows what happens to revolutionary heroes, though, especially those who rely on the loyalty of others, and as their fortunes turn and the two are secretly betrayed, John repeatedly tests Juan’s commitment to him. Duck, You Sucker may not be a great western, and it runs a little long in the tooth at times. But it is certainly a very good film that raises intriguing questions about loyalty, the meaning of revolution, and the real consequences of massive political and social upheaval. Leone was right that the victims of any violent change are always the people, not the system, and Duck, You Sucker poignantly illustrates this point, as well as the absurdities that inevitably accompany any revolutionary struggle.

DVD, 3 out of 5 stars

The Bad Seed (1956)

Based on William March’s 1954 novel and a subsequent Maxwell Anderson play of the same name, The Bad Seed tells the story of Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack), a young, bright, pretty, and viciously evil little girl who loves her pigtails and neatly pressed dresses. Her mother Christine (Nancy Kelly) is wise to the evil that lurks within her daughter, but she spends much of her days trying to shield Rhoda from the prying eyes of suspicious neighbors and authorities while also convincing her husband (William Hopper) that all is suburban bliss within Rhoda’s world when he is away on business. The gig is finally up, though, when the grieving mother (played with a startling edginess by Eileen Heckart) of Rhoda’s schoolmate Claude Daigle accuses of Rhoda of drowning Claude in order to steal back the penmanship award that Rhoda believes she should have won instead of Claude. Rhoda knows exactly how to solve such problems, however, and as the body count rises, we learn the terrible secret behind Rhoda’s psychopathic tendencies. Director Mervyn LeRoy and Warner Brothers studio went to great lengths to hype and protect The Bad Seed‘s secret, so I won’t spill it here, but be warned that this is only part of the film’s final twist. Eli Roth promises that a remake on steroids is in the works, and I can’t wait to see if his version lives up to this deliciously original take on the bad little girl we all loved to hate when we were kids.

DVD, 4 out of 5 stars