Well, this is just odd. A 2011 Spanish sort-of version of A.I. or D.A.R.Y.L. where a man, Alex, returns to his hometown to program a special robot, the S.I.-9. We soon learn that he’s been gone for ten years, since he abandoned his girlfriend, Marta, who is now married to his brother, David, who have a precocious ten-year-old daughter named Eva.

There’s residual sexual tension between bro and now-sis-in-law, which is complicated by Eva’s strong attraction to Alex, which deepens as Alex surreptitiously uses her to program his new S.I.-9.

In this world, apparently, AI is programmed by asking a bunch of word association-type questions, and plugging the recorded answers into some CGI effects. It’s goofy, just go with it.

Actually, the whole plot is quite flimsy and doesn’t bear a whole lot of scrutiny, but that’s okay. As with Snowpiercer, once you get past the initial conceit, there’s an entertaining story here, with some tension, a few feels, and the occasional twist and turn.

Some of the CGI less than stellar, though I think they did some clever stuff with the S.I.-9 itself. I think it was someone in a robot suit (there’s a telltale thickness to the robot, which doesn’t yet have skin or hair), and then I’m guessing they CGIed out the suit at certain joints. (Actually, I just looked it up and that’s exactly what they did.)

There’s a hit-and-miss robot cat. And a few (though not many) shots that are crowded with varieties of robots.

But you don’t expect great CGI from a Spanish movie—or any European film—do you? What’s noteworthy is how the humanoid robots communicate their robot-ness. In particular Lluis Homar plays a robot who cooks, cleans, and offers emotional support. However, he is not “free”. Alex even orders him to turn down his emotions at one point. To level six. From eight.

Homar is just excellent. He doesn’t do The Robot, either the dance or the overly artificial stiff movements time-honored among hacks; there’s just enough stiffness and “unnatural” approaches to things, along with juuuuuust enough flatness in his voice for him to seem off. He won some awards for it. Like, three.

The acting is all around good: I don’t know Marta Etura or Alberto Ammann, who played Eva’s parents, and Claudia Vega (who played Eva) is a newcomer, but they were all quite good. Playing Alex was Daniel Bruhl, who’s been in all kinds of Hollywood films, like A Most Wanted Man, The Bourne Ultimatum, Inglorious Basterds, and he plays Baron Zemo in the upcoming Captain America Flick.

And I think the acting and drama are why this works. (Duh?) The movie propels itself on emotion, which allows you to overlook the fantastic nature of the story. Sort of like a Ray Bradbury thing.

We were pleased. The Boy actually picked this because the trailers make it look sort of like a horror flick (it wasn’t) where you didn’t know what was going to happen (we didn’t).

This is the first of two films about 1971 we’re expecting this month, and this one is about an English soldier trapped behind enemy lines in Northern Ireland. Jack O’Connell, whom we just recently saw play an all-American hero in Unbroken, plays a single dad/new English soldier whose first mission is a home raid in Belfast.

A weak commanding officer emboldens angry Catholic rioters and before you know it, our hero has been left behind when the rest of his unit flees the chaos.

What ensues is a representative of what you might call the “survival night” genre, like The Warriors or Escape from New York. Jack (Gary, in the movie) has to sneak through the darkness, trying to suss out friends from enemies, and find a way back to his unit before the various interests kidnap and/or kill him.

We liked it, but not that much. Expectations were rather high going in: It had a 99% critic RT score; literally one critic did not like it. (It’s up to two, now.) On top of that, this is the sort of thing we generally like, The Boy in particular.

But it’s just okay. Even good. Nowhere near great. Even allowing for the fact that, with the Irish accents, every now and again you’d pray for subtitles. The character development is good, but the action is sort of flat. Frosh director Yann Demange seems more comfortable with the former than the latter.

The ending is too long, but it is, I suspect, why the critics loved it. It’s a movie about white terrorists where the English are villainous.

I wouldn’t discourage people from seeing it, but I’d only recommend it reservedly.

It is said that the Academy members watch about five minutes of whatever foreign language film screener they feel like and vote on that, which may be true, but before they even have the chance to ignore the movies, the screening committee has to select them.

The screening committee and I seldom see eye-to-eye.

Such is the case with Timbuktu. This is the story of people living in and around the titular city in Mali who are Muslims, but who have recently been placed under some sort of super-Islam, possibly Sharia. The sub-Saharan world is largely dysfunctional, and what we have here is a story of a bunch of thugs breaking the few things that do.

The main story concerns a goat-herder and his little family living outside Timbuktu. The arab schmuck who seems be chief enforcer of the jackassery likes to come around when the goat-herder’s away to try, in his own pathetic way, to attract the goat-herder’s wife. She’s neither fooled nor impressed.

Meanwhile, there’s defiance, as a fishmonger woman refuses to put on gloves—we’re just outside the Sahara, recall—and people play music, which is apparently forbidden, even if it’s to Allah. Maybe. The stormtroopers in charge of enforcing things have to radio in, “Well, they’re doing this, is that okay?”

But weirdly mixed in with the defiance is a kind of feeble acquiescence to things. The fishmonger allows herself—insists, even—to be hauled off. The music lovers quietly submit to their fates in front of friends and family.

I don’t know. It’s…odd. It’s dystopic. It’s not bad. It’s far from great, though. We don’t learn enough about any of the characters. It may be that the flow of events is perfectly logical in Mali but we couldn’t figure out how the ending, in particular, made sense.

It’s shot well enough. The first five minutes are as good as any other first five minutes, we guessed.

Mostly we just came out of this one scratching our heads.

I saw this little YouTube video that Angelina Jolie put up about how she had a disease—chicken pox, I think—and that’s why she wasn’t doing publicity for her freshman film, Unbroken, based on the book of the same name. Kinda sad. Once in a lifetime event and all that.

What does this have to do with the movie? Not much. But then, I can’t really figure out much about the reaction to this movie, which is a solid hero-endures-hellish-conditions type flick.

Jack O’Connell plays Louis Zamperini, a delinquent whose brother gets him straight by getting him into track. After a surprise top showing (8th place) at the ‘36 Olympics, he was looking forward to the ’40 Olympics when something comes up to put a kosh on that idea.

That something? World War II.

I’m joking here, of course, but WWII looms so large in our national memory, it’s almost funny to realize that, at the time, a lot of people didn’t see it coming. (Sort of like the next big war you’re pretending won’t happen.)

Anyway, Zamperini ends up a bombardier which, as I understand it, wasn’t the deadliest place to be in a plane—I think the tailgunners had that honor—but it was pretty close. Sure enough, his plane crashes at sea and he and his crew ends up adrift for a month and a half!

Good news, bad news, when they’re finally rescued, but by the Japanese.

Well, we all know what monsters the Japanese were in WWII, and how they felt about POWs, and Unbroken spends the bulk of its time showing Zamperini enduring some truly remarkable and horrible things. It’s much like 12 Years A Slave, in that regard, so it’s a fair bet that if you didn’t like that or wouldn’t watch that, you’ll not care much for this, either.

The movie has a shockingly low 51% from Critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and only breeches the 70s for audiences, but it doesn’t (to me) seem to be any less worthy a film than Slave. So I can only figure a few things: It wasn’t the right person being tortured (a sorta-white guy—in the ’30s, Italians were only sorta white), it wasn’t the right people torturing (non-white guys), and I think, at least for the popular vote, a lot of people expected it to be more like the book, which I think spends a lot of time on his PTSD and religion-aided recovery.

But it’s already over 2 hours, although the length works pretty well with the theme of endurance. We feel Zamperini’s struggles without being bored. Overall, a very solid flick, with (I think) strong Eastwood influences. There’s not a lot of emotionalism or sentiment. Stuff happens. People endure.

I wouldn’t say it’s a great movie, which I think is part of why it’s been judged harshly. It is a great story and a much beloved book, so I think expectations were high. Jack O’Connell (of the highly praised ’71) is great as Zamperini. And there are some great moments in it.

The Boy liked it as well.

Science has yet to create a device that can measure the length of time between The Barbarienne never having heard of Penguins of Madagascar and it being the defining movie of her generation! I had zero interest in seeing it after hearing that the original cast was largely not in it, and it’s somehow regarded as a “spinoff”, not quite connected to the series…hell, I don’t know.

Well, I guess they largely used the movie voices of the penguins rather than the TV voices, and decided to extra-special stick it to John DiMaggio, who defined the belching Rico character on the series (and who is the beloved voice of Bender from “Futurama” and Jake from “Adventure Time”). The new characters are all face actors, like John Malkovich, Peter Stormare and Benefract Cumberdink.

The only one that made me smile was Werner Herzog, playing himself making a documentary of the Penguins.

There’s sadly not a lot to smile about here. When the penguins first showed up in Madagascar, they seemed as hackneyed as only a riff on a 40-year-old TV show could. The Penguins TV series actually developed the characters a bit more and made the whole thing more interesting. Here, they’re back to their devil-may-care mission-based nonsense, where everything just sort of randomly works out for them.

I didn’t hate it. I was bored. The story arc is so tired, you could feel like they didn’t even try. The Barb liked it all right, though she didn’t rank it very high, and it seems to have made no lasting impression.

With $132M budget, this film ended up being a $50M+ write-off for the studio. Call it DiMaggio’s revenge.

We knew going in that this Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper vehicle was going to bad. But The Boy likes him some J-Law and even bad movies can have redeeming qualities, or at least be unintentionally funny. And it can be amusing to hear The Boy rant about bad filmmaking. (He still bitches about In Time. Less so about Carrie.)

But when we left the movie he said, “That movie actually made me feel bad.”

This is probably the worst thing one can say about a movie, that it makes you feel bad. Not unsettled, or challenged, or even sad or depressed, but just bad.

You probably won’t have that reaction, but this is almost the antithesis of Aftermath, that tragic case of the movie whose stars died midway through production. In this case, director Susannah Bier (Love Is All  You Need) spent a year-and-a-half in post-production trying to save the film. The result is a mess that lacks even Aftermath’s sense of promise. It’s like there was never anything good here to begin with—a situation that probably isn’t true, given everyone involved.

Ultimately, this feels like one of those Jackie Collins/Judith Krantz-based ‘70s TV miniseries, where the matriarch of a large empire tells her backstory of the man she loved and lost, all the while destroying those around her. (And, actually, on checking out the book this is based on, that’s almost exactly what the book is like, though we’re missing a lot of important elements here.)

From what I can gather, Lawrence and Cooper are both the protagonists and villains of this story. They have a plan to grow their Smokey Mountain-based lumbermill while fighting off the government’s plans to open up a national park. Various indiscretions result in them having to kill certain people, and it all ends in tears and flames.

So, there’s your first problem: In most of their movies, Lawrence and Cooper are heroes. Even when they’re not super-powered (Raven, Rocket Raccoon, Eddie Morra), they’re high-powered (Katniss, Chris Kyle), or at least extraordinarily decent (Ree from Winter’s Bone, Norah, Phil, Doug).

I think, in retrospect, they’re supposed to be essentially evil here. After all, they’re cutting down trees, killing folks who get in their way, overextending their credit… Again, checking against descriptions of the source material, this isn’t in doubt. They’re supposed to be ruthless.

The movie doesn’t show them that way, unfortunately.

For example, Serena is an orphan, with her whole family having been burned to death in a fire only she escaped. Well, look, tell me you’re the only survivor of a fire, and I’ll assume you set it. I’m just suspicious that way, at least of women-who-are-the-equal-of-any-man heroines of these sorts of romances. And I don’t know, but I have that impression from people who have read the book.

The movie has Serena describe the fire in a way that is horrible, but makes her sympathetic. In fact, it creates a kind of sympathy for her rather bizarre character. At every turn, when the story has the chance to showcase the protagonists’ corruption, it chickens out and gives us a way to think better of the characters than they deserve. Comeuppance time, and instead of a cathartic sense of justice being served, it’s just sad.

It seems like Bier wanted to create a tragic love story from what should have been a nigh camp exposition of evil. (I can see why The Boy would feel bad come to think of it.)

And if that weren’t bad enough—and it was, believe me—every aspect of the movie is similarly misshapen. The Boy railed against the editing. Editing, of course, makes scenes awkward and actors look like dorks. Which highlights the fact that the best part of this movie are the awful, awful lines Jennifer Lawrence must recite.

This movie was her idea, by the way, if I’m not mistaken. She probably wanted a break from the largely heroic/good-girl type characters she’s been playing. (So far, even though she’s playing super-villain Mystique, she’s playing her as a far more sympathetic character than the deliciously cruel and sadistic Rebecca Romijn.)

Filmed in Prague, the cinematography is often beautiful when it’s of the landscape, and otherwise completely pedestrian. The music starts out like it’s going to rock your socks off with that hard bluegrass guitar, and then just sort of peters out. (The Boy even noticed the long stretches of sudden soundtrack silence. This may be a side-effect of the extended post-production.)

Finally, in a move that I am comfortable attributing entirely to Bier, Serena and George’s relationship is largely expressed in terms of awkward sex scenes that manage to be neither expository nor erotic. Much like All You Need Is Love, they pretty much wreck up what little tone the movie has.

I can’t even recommend it for hardcore Lawrence fans. Only for the morbidly curious.

Included the expansive category of “foreign language films that are better than Ida” comes Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem, the story of a woman trying—for years—to get a divorce from her husband. (If I understand correctly, until last year, only a religious council could grant a divorce.)

Here’s a thought-provoking topic. But before we get into that, let’s note that this is a very good, and in some ways very typical Israeli film. First, it’s clearly shot on a shoestring budget. The whole thing takes place in a small courtroom—and when I say “courtroom”, I mean something that looks like a converted high school coat closet—except for a couple of scenes which take place in the tiny rooms adjoining the courtroom.

Second, it’s populated with an amusing and interesting array of characters, richly drawn, all within the confines of these tiny spaces.

Third, it tackles a serious subject—divorce—with an undeniably Jewish humans-are-flawed sense of humor which means, despite what you might think, this two hour movie about divorce delivers more laughs than Kevin James’ last couple of films.

This movie is, at heart, a mystery. We don’t know why Viviane wants the divorce. We don’t know why Elisha won’t grant it. Over two hours we get a picture of the two that reveals bits-and-pieces, and raises the question “Whose business is it anyway?”

And there’s the rub: In America, of course, we have “no-fault” divorce, which is great for individual freedom, but pretty rotten for the institution of marriage. Should it be enough for a person to say, “No, I can’t live with that other person”? Or should there have to be some reason, some specific terrible act or pattern of neglect?

The rabbis here need cause. They’re already inclined to say “Go home and make it work” which is wiser than it might seem to us these days. But “My husband is stubborn” isn’t really going to cut it. We see some other marriages, too, in the form of witnesses. They’re not perfect, not by a long shot, but they seem to be doing okay. (Maybe. Who knows, really?)

Anyway, the movie takes on the challenge, and doesn’t flinch. Nor does it judge, especially, although Elisha ultimately comes off worse than Viviane, who was probably too young (15) to get married in the first place. But we have sympathy all around, for our fellow humans trying to get by.

Terrific performance by Ronit Elkabetz, whom I haven’t seen since 2007’s The Band’s Visit. Her co-star in that film, Sasson Gabai, who played the crusty Arab that didn’t get her, plays her husband’s counsel/brother here.

Ronit also directed with her brother Shlomi.

This picture cleaned up at the Israeli Film Academy Awards, though it lost the Golden Globe and was not even nominated for an Oscar.

When the critics were going gaga over The Secret of the Kells, I was somewhat dismissive: I liked the little movie (78 minutes!) but I thought they were just showing their hipster cred by preferring the simple animation which (as I noted at the time) was very much like “Samurai Jack”. Just about five years later and we’re so inundated with rich, vibrant CGI—even in bad animated movies—something like Song of the Sea comes along, and its simplicity is refreshing.

The story concerns an angry young boy who blames his little sister for the death of their mother. The two live with their father in a lighthouse, with the father mostly moping around, except one night a year—his daughter’s birthday, and the anniversary of his wife’s death—where he goes to mope in a bar in town.

But the daughter isn’t quite normal, and her love of the sea ultimately frightens her grandmother so much, she convinces the father to let her keep them in town. This proves to be harmful to the girl and the brother is convinced she has to get back to the sea in order to live, and to save…well, everything.

So, road picture!

In keeping with the Gaelic themes of Secret of the Kells, there are magical forces at work here.

It’s a good story. There’s a strong emotional element, between brother and sister, between husband and wife, and between mother and children across three generations. It has a kind of epic feel to it, but stays very close to the main characters at all times, so it connects well.

I have not seen Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya yet, and I’m sure I’ll like it. But I don’t think it’ll take the crown of Best Animated Feature for 2014.

Brendan Gleeson and Fionnula Flanagan play the lighthouse keeper and his mother respectively, reprising their relationship from The Guard.

When does Superman sleep? I mean, say you’re out there, putting in a 16-18 hour day, saving Lois, stopping runaway trains, thwarting evil geniuses, and you get home, and lie down. Eight hours later you wake up and some maniacs have flown airplanes into some buildings, or a tsunami has killed a couple hundred thousand people, or maybe taken out a nuclear reactor.

When do you sleep? How do you sleep? When Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man put the “with great power comes great responsibility” line into the pop culture, I thought it would be interesting to have a story about a regular person who slowly becomes a superhero, focusing on the physiological and psychological effects it would have. (Right now, superheroes are basically our version of the Greek gods. All the power, but otherwise just like us in their trivial ways.)

American Sniper is as close as we may get to a movie about what would really happen to someone who got superpowers.

Our hero is Chris Kyle, who comes from an upbringing where his dad tells him there’s three kinds of people: wolves, sheep and sheepdogs. Wolves are bad, and he ain’t raising no sheep. It’s in one of these father-son moments that Kyle discovers his superpower: killing things from far away.

By the way, these early scenes of father-son bonding: the stern patriarch, the gun lessons, the hunting, are by far the most shocking thing about American Sniper. In my lifetime, these scenes would be the backstory of a racist or a serial killer, not a hero. I suspect this jarred a bunch of people right out of their seats and into the lobby for jujubes.

As far as superpowers go, though, “killing things from far away” is not a very useful one, at least not until September 11th, 2001. Then the ability to kill from far away becomes synonymous with saving hundreds of lives. And Kyle—the sheepdog, remember—takes his responsibility seriously and goes to fight. Then he comes home.

But here’s the catch: The war is still going on, and he’s not there helping out. When does Superman sleep? In this case, he doesn’t sleep, not well or for long, and before you know it, Kyle’s back overseas, saving lives by killing. (This is the messy part of reality you don’t see much in superhero movies, which makes things Dark Knight profoundly silly.)

Not only that, there’s not one but two super-villains around killing troops and innocent civilians: The Butcher of Baghdad and Iraqi Chris Kyle. The Butcher was a guy who went around butchering people who weren’t sufficiently anti-American. The guy I’m calling Iraqi Chris Kyle was just that: An excellent sniper raining hell on American troops.

But despite this comic heroic analogy, American Sniper resembles movies more like The Hurt Locker than Lone Survivor: Though much of it takes place on the front, a whole lot takes place back home. The toll that the being home takes on Kyle is not dissimilar to the toll that Kyle being at war takes on his wife.

I guess that’s the odd thing about this “war” movie: The drama comes from his time at home. And it’s all done very well indeed. You care about this guy as a person, and supporting players are imbued with an uncharacteristic (for a war film) depth and reality (perhaps because they are based on real people).

But for all that, the scenes of Taya were the ones that just tore me up. This story—of a kind of jaded and heartbroken modern woman who is won over, maybe even transformed by a simple love—is really the centerpiece of the movie. First she doesn’t believe he’s for real, then she falls in love, then she loses him to war, then when he comes back, she still has lost him to the war, a cycle repeated over and over again.

Poignant stuff. Being a superhero has consequences beyond catching Lois when she gets shoved off the top of the Daily Planet building.

It’s expected to hear talk of Eastwood retiring—though I wonder how much stock to put in that, given that he had two movies this year (the underrated Jersey Boys being the other). If he does retire, he could do worse than to go out on this film, which will break the top 200 all time box office (adjusted for inflation). I don’t think it’ll pass Hunger Games or Guardians of the Galaxy, but it could. Not too shabby. (BEFORE POST UPDATE: Actually, it’s looking like it will be the #1 box office film of 2014.)

Bradley Cooper does a great job as Kyle (we’ve noted here that he can really act when he wants to and has a demanding role), and Sienna Miller (whose work I’ve seen but never much noticed) broke my heart as I noted. It won’t win any significant Oscars, of course.

The Boy loved it, and the Flower liked it, though added (as she almost always does), “It was no Gran Torino”. I’d put it in my top ten for 2014, but not my top five.

And we learn something: Being a superhero in real life is hard, and when you die, you don’t get to come back for the sequel.

OK, that’s my review. Now about the kerfuffle.

As always happens when I’m the last to see a movie, when I finally do get to see it, I think “What the hell movie did YOU watch?” Seriously, the assessments on both sides of the trumped-up, fake-outrage-y argument are way off.

Clint Eastwood is about the story. He’s not really political (empty chair gag notwithstanding), he’s not trying to make a statement, he’s just telling a story. It borders on insane to say, for example, that Million Dollar Baby is pro-Euthanasia. There’s a particular story there, and we’re given to empathize and understand why it happens in a particular case. Generalizing from a fictional story to real-world policy shows a detachment from reality.

The idea that there’s anything pro-war or glorifying about this is nonsense: This movie shows the awfulness of war. To the extent that there’s anything good about it, it’s that people can rise above the terrible things they must do and still be decent.

At the same time, it’s not rational to say Chris Kyle, was not a victim of the war. He clearly was, with a bad case of PTSD and survivor’s guilt. And ultimately the war claims him, long after he’s out of it. (Assuming genuine PTSD on the part of his killer and not some other insanity or evil.)

Kyle is a guy with a bigger mission than you or I. Just like the Machine Gun Preacher, he’s someone who took responsibility for something huge. I’m sorry if that makes you feel inadequate. But if everyone could do it, we wouldn’t call it “heroism”.

The film was popular in Iraq, if controversial, it really should be pretty uncontroversial here.

Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain are back! What, you didn’t know they were gone? You didn’t know who they were, even? Well, let me put you some knowledge: The two collaborated on the wonderful Hava Nagila some years ago, and have now put together an entertaining and stirring documentary on the Israeli Air Force at the dawn of that countries creation.

The Boy and I loved this. The story of Israel is one of the great underdog stories of all time, as a bunch of scrappy, beat-up Jews managed to reclaim their ancestral homeland outnumbered by orders of magnitude by a virulent mix of ancient enemies mixed with a virulent progressive philosophy (Muslims inspired by Naziism).

The story begins when the British, sympathetic to the Jews’ plight post-WWII but not so sympathetic as wanting to alienate all the oilarabs in the Middle East punt the question of the Jewish homeland to the UN. The UN reaches the pinnacle of its existence by voting to give the Jews their homeland back, and then doing nothing as the surrounding Muslim nations plan to invade once the British withdraw.

In anticipation of the attack, the future Israelis scramble to assemble an air force. The US has tons of planes just rotting, but—despite having voted for the homeland—immediately bans the export of all weapons to Palestine. Then a funny thing happens: A lot of air force pilots, mostly of Jewish descent but not particularly religious and very American, decide the Jews have been kicked around enough, and join the struggle.

Since the U.S. Air Force—and this is particularly awesome—has a “buy a plane on the cheap” plan for former pilots, one of them buys a dozen and sets up a fake cargo company that hops around the world to avoid detection of their real motives. There’s a particular joy in hearing all these 90-year-old vets recount their world travels as handsome young flyboys in Panama, Rome and finally…Czechoslovakia.

The Czechs are eager to help the Israelis, or at least eager to sell them abandoned Messerschmitt 109 fighters. Or, to be even more precise, sell them flying jalopies cobbled together from 109s and whatever spare parts (including bomber engines) they had lying around.

As the Arab invasion begins, the Israelis have three of these planes, and about half-an-hour training.

It’s just a great story of heroism, luck (both good and bad), and questions of purpose and meaning (especially for the secular Jews who find themselves key to Israel’s survival). Grossman and Sartain tell the story in a almost-too-short 90 minutes, alternating between showing us the interviewees, some stock footage and some recreations.

On the three-point scale:

1. Importance of topic: Awesomely important.

2. Delivery: Simple, straightforward, but not dry. The mix of approaches keeps us interested. The stories are like the ones your grandfather would tell, only cooler and with a point.

3. Bias: It’s a one-sided story. Pro-Israel. Pro Air Force. Pro-Israeli Air Force. Personally, I don’t see any need for “balance” here. From the moment of its inception, the Arabs have hated the notion of Jews having a right to exist in their own country. They were never interested in peace, and the fact that tiny little Israel kicks their asses at every turn delights me.

Bonus points for Surprise Pee-Wee Herman, whose father was one of the original pilots.

There is this heartfelt moment in the new Disney superhero cartoon, Big Hero 6, where two characters have an emotional talk about what has happened and how things are going to play in the future. At the end of this, I leaned into The Boy and whispered, “And that’s why you have to die!”

15 seconds later, the character was dead.

Peak superhero, people. The tropes are so well ironed out they’re virtually incapable of surprising. But, hey, the Western dominated films for at least 40 years, so I guess we could have 25 more years of this.

So, as far as these sorts of movies go, this is a good example of one. Our hero is an orphan living with his aunt who teams up with a medical robot and some nerdy friends to avenge a crime. The supporting team is pretty one-dimensional, but at least they have a dimension. The lead kid’s fine. It’s all pretty affable with some passable action and good humor.

Beymax? The medical robot pressed into service as a crime-fighter? Pretty much perfect. No point in arguing it. In a future world of hyper-geniuses too dumb to have invented fire extinguishers, Beymax stands out as actually reasonably believable (and adorable) technology.

Sanfransokyo is nice, too, and not New York, which is nice.

The other outstanding aspect of this film is the character movement. CGI “actors” went through several phases: First they didn’t move at all, except in stilted Frankensteinian lurches, looking creepy. Next they exaggerated minor motions, breathing with their shoulders and waving their hands like drunken Italian stereotypes. Then it was kind of (traditional) cartoony affair, with the exaggerations feeling a little more artistic and less a product of technology.

Here, it’s completely natural. It’s comic at times, of course, but it’s the comic of a Buster Keaton instead of a Bugs Bunny.

Well, look, I’m an animation geek (and a computer geek). This stuff impresses me. It vanishes quickly as we get spoiled, but I’m calling it: This is another perfect aspect of the film.

There’s a nice touch in the beginning whereby you’re set up for a really traditional villain/hero thing, but it quickly becomes apparent the villain isn’t who you’re supposed to think it is. (And thank God for that, as it’s an eye-rollingly tired cliché.) At the same time, it’s not really a surprise when you learn who the real villain is, because who else could it be?

The means of defeating The Big Bad was good, too, I thought, not one of these typical “Well, they fight until the scene is over” scenarios that superhero movies do. The villain has a weakness that’s inherent in his power, and they figure it out. (I hope knowing that the villain is defeated isn’t a spoiler. Also, you are an alien if it is.)

There’s nothing wrong with it. The Boy was tempted to class it as “one of those movies that an alien would make if he came to earth and tried to pretend to be human” but that’s not fair. It is good, it’s just utterly by-the-numbers.

The Barb, of course, loved it. I liked it okay.

I also liked the short at the front of the film. It may win an Oscar.

A two-hour and twenty-minute French-Canadian film about a trashy single mom and her violent son filmed in a sort of squeeze box that looks like an iPhone video? Sign us up!

Heh.

So, yeah, there was a certain trepidation in seeing 24-year-old writer/director Xavier Dolan’s intimate film of struggle and drama, but when we walked out The Boy—The Boy!—pronounced it in his Top 5 for 2014. (Said list was previously at Top 4, so hard-pressed was he to recall truly outstanding films from last year.)

Yeah, it’s good. It’s not for everyone for a variety of reasons, but all-in-all, it’s an amazing achievement.

The setup is simple: Widowed mom Die (“dee”) Després gets called down to juvie to pick up her son, who has set the cafeteria on fire and injured a kid, and the institution will no longer care for him. She loses her job as a result (at least partly, there’s more going on there), and must simultaneously figure out how to get money and homeschool her wild child.

Going on welfare is straight out, interestingly, just as it was in 2 Days, 1 Night. It’s almost as if some people—even in socialist paradises!—inherently realize how destructive it is to the soul to not work for one’s own keep.

Anyway, Steve is no run-of-the-mill wild child, what with his penchant for setting things on fire, smashing things, groping inappropriately, and so on. Fortunately, Die’s neighbor Kyla is a teacher on sabbatical who is amenable to helping her and Steve out.

Kyla has her own issues, which she never actually discusses in the film, but which can be deduced fairly easily. There’s a distinct tension between her and her emotionless husband, and she’s distant from her young daughter.

The free-spirited (and even chaotic) Després clan is a sort of remedy for the buttoned-down Kyla, who seems fragile but who is actually fairly broad-minded. Steve and Die trade shocking foul-mouthed barbs over the dinner table and escalate their emotions pretty quickly, and de-escalate them almost as quickly.

So, right off the bat, one of my first worries about Mommy—that it would be boring—never comes to pass. All three main characters are interesting in their own ways, and where Steve and Die’s vulgarity could be tiring, there is genuine affection and good character underneath. Die’s apparent trashiness belies an interesting backstory, and she’s actually both acutely aware of her age (the actress herself is 54) and (at least it seemed to me) still mourning her husband, even though her philosophy doesn’t really allow for moping.

One of the movie’s other great achievements is making Steve likable. In the first few minutes, he’s described as having committed a horrible crime, one for which his mom reflexively defends him—not by proclaiming his innocence but by blaming the victim. I mean, you don’t want to say Steve is a monster, but the movie doesn’t soft-pedal the severity of his problems.

It’s so much the case that you have a sense of doom from the start, which the movie more-or-less encourages.

Dolan rather impressively uses his 1:1 screen ratio (they call it 1:1, but that should be a square, and this was very clearly a “portrait mode” rectangle) to create a claustrophobic, intimate feeling and at two points in the film to create huge emotional moments. And I mean, moments of real joy and heartache, which is rare enough at any aspect ratio.

The first time, he literally shows you what he’s doing, as if it were Steve himself breaking free. The second time takes place in Die’s head, and is one of the most heartbreaking montages I’ve ever seen, and it had passed before I realized what he had done. Very adept, but perhaps something he’s been mulling since he filmed I Killed My Mother, his autobiographical debut film five years ago.

Yeah, I’m impressed.

The only thing that seemed gratuitous to me is that this is a semi-futuristic film: The idea is that the health law has been amended such that a parent has the legal and moral right to commit a troubled child to an institution, with no third party confirmation. (I didn’t know that wasn’t already possible.)

Anyway, the acting was tremendous: Anne Dorval is utterly convincing as Die, and Suzanne Clemént is moving as Kyla. Their ease together may be due to the fact that they were both also in I Killed My Mother. But, whatever, along with Antoine Olivier-Pilon, and the portrait shot, it often feels more like we’re eavesdropping/spying than watching a movie.

I did not recognize Patrick Huard, Starbuck himself, as Paul, so humorless was he.

Obviously, this isn’t a film for everyone, because, you know, there’s a big old dysfunction right in the middle of proceedings. Despite that, there’s a lot of hopefulness here, a lot of fun, a lot of melodrama amongst the actual drama and, like I said before, The Boy puts it in his top 5 for 2014, which is a pretty respectable recommendation for any such drama.

We went in semi-blind to this Austalian caper flick, Son of a Gun, and the opening moments were somewhat ominous. Young JR (Brenton Thwaites, Oculus, Maleficent) is being incarcerated, and going through the various humiliating rituals for his six month stint (which should be three with time off for good behavior). He quickly falls afoul of a jail gang that wants to rape him, against the advice of long timer Brendan (Ewan McGregor), and is rescued from a brutalization by Brendan and his gang.

Such rescue comes at a price, however, and before you know it JR has wandered into an extended edition of Grand Theft Auto.

The point, however, is that Son of a Gun is a caper flick, which isn’t obvious from any of the material I saw. Caper flicks are hard. In America, it’s pretty much relegated to magic, whether figuratively (as in Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13) or literally (as in Now You See Me). Your anti-heroes are pretty much straight-up heroic. Maybe not perfect, but not really true anti-heroes by a long shot.

This flick, then is kind of a breath of fresh air. It’s gritty without wallowing in squalor. It has its dark side, but doesn’t let that get in the way of the fun, and even features a romance you want to root for. McGregor’s Brendan is not completely without honor, but he’s still a pretty bad dude.

It’s a nice balance. It doesn’t go too far into the goofy. It does encourage you to overlook things, as these films almost invariably must, being about thieves, but it doesn’t insult your intelligence in doing so.

Likable performances from McGregor and Thwaites, Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair, Anna Karenina) as The Skirt, Jacek Komen (Defiance, Children of Men) as The Boss, and Damon Herriman (J. Edgar) as The Weasel.

We were really happy to have caught this: It didn’t get a big release and doesn’t even appear on Box Office Mojo at the moment.

Based on a book by American author Stephen Amidon, Human Capital (Il capitale umano) tells the story of a hit-and-run on a bicyclist. Not really, but you’d kind of get that impression from the trailers and capsules.

This is actually a semi-Rashomon type story, where we see the accident from a distance, and then experience the surrounding events from the perspectives of Dino (Fabrizio Bentvoglio), a grasping middle-class real estate agent, Carla (Valerie Bruni Tedeschi), the wife of a rich financial-type guy, and Serena (Matilde Gioli), Dino’s daughter.

It’s not really a Rashomon because while perspective gives us a new story with new details that change our perspective, they don’t really contradict each other. In fact, if there’s a key theme to this story, it’s that nobody knows what’s going on with other peoples’ lives.

Dino starts the ball rolling: His daughter (Serena) is dating the son of the rich financial guy (Carla’s husband, Giovanni), and he sees in a passing amiability the opportunity to make it big by investing with Giovanni—something he really can’t afford to do.

Dino is successful, and he thinks his success is proof of his intelligence. The funny thing to me about this was that even if an investment like the one Dino made was successful, he’d still be screwed because it’s illiquid.

Our second perspective is that of Carla’s. She’s kind of aimless until she comes across a dilapidated theater, and gets it in her head to refurbish and reopen it. Her happiness is as tied up with her husband’s fortune as Dino’s is, but she’s perhaps even less aware of how quickly things can go sour. Giovanni is an indulgent but not attentive husband, and her frantic day filling is relieved at the prospect of having something meaningful to do.

The third story is Serena’s, and it is the one that provides the key to the mysteries and the stories’ ultimate resolutions. Dino’s awareness of her seems to not extend beyond her relationship with Massimiliano, Giovani’s son, which is also true of Carla (who is no more aware of her son’s life). If Dino is motivated solely by money, and Carla by art or perhaps fame, Serena’s motivation is love. If there is a ray of hope in this movie, it comes from her, even when her story doesn’t go so well.

Although generally well received, the complaints I’ve seen have regarded the murkiness of the theme. My take on that is: So much the better. As a condemnation of capitalism, this would be stupid. As a story about people whose lives intersect in various ways, it’s fine melodrama.

Speaking of hard to recommend movies, there’s this hot mess of a film that landed in a political brouhaha. The Interview, a collaboration between long-time cohorts Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen.

A lot of people wanted to support this film one week, only to retract that support the next week when Rogen made an unflattering statement about American Sniper. Or America, depending on how you wanted to interpret it. I chose not to interpret it at all.

I wanted to see it in the theater on principle, but it was only out in that brief window and it was one of those weeks where I couldn’t get out. In normal circumstances, I would’ve caught it at the bargain theater. As it is, I watched it on Netflix. I don’t usually review stuff I see on Netflix, but this is a movie of some unusual interest.

The premise is simple: A shallow entertainment superstar (James Franco) and his wanna-be-better-than-that producer (Seth Rogen) get tapped by the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, to do a softball interview in NoKo. The CIA decides this is their perfect chance to kill the little runt, so they put some effort into teaching the two how it should go.

Franco’s character Skylark is so dumb and so gullible, that he actually finds himself under the sway of Un, a situation that infuriates the more level-headed Rogen, when he’s not pursuing the hot Korean PR officer (the very lovely Diana Bang). Ultimately this resolves to a pro-America and pro-West sentiment which, weirdly, is almost shocking.

But then, the whole thing is more than a little weird and uncomfortable and I found myself more interested in why that was so, than I was in the actual movie.

The team’s previous outing, This Is The End, is weird and uncomfortable, too, but it also works somehow. Maybe because of the sort of fantasy element to the whole thing, or maybe because in that film, everyone was lampooning themselves. There’s something rather endearing in a story about a group of rich actors who realize, come Judgment Day, they’re mostly going right to Hell. And, hey, it’s the End of the World, so the dark, broody camerawork works to achieve a funhouse effect.

But in The Interview the same type of camerawork is used, and it sits on the movie like a shroud. This is a screwball comedy shot in the style of a serious spy thriller. It reminds me, at its best, of the cinematography in Network, which this film sometimes shuffles embarrassingly around, and other times lampshades (e.g. when Rogen explains that Franco, the media, is being manipulated by Un.)

It doesn’t help that, as far as I know, in real life, nobody outside of North Korea is actually fooled by Un’s antics. (Dennis Rodman and Michael Moore maybe pretend to be.) So the big message is, well, it’s dopey.

But the big problem is that great satire, like Network, teases your credulity, by playing things absolutely straight. Part of the game is getting your audience to go along with you as far as you can stretch them before they just reject your premise outright. (The obvious example being Swift’s A Modest Proposal. You can see someone saying “You’re making sense…you’re making sense…you’re making sense…wait, eat the what?”

The Interview absolutely refuses to treat its audience with any sort of respect in that regard. It’s as though they’re worried if they go five minutes without a dick joke, you’ll lose interest in the film, without seeing how the tonal shifts both destroy the film’s credibility on the one hand, and make the jokes fall flat on the other.

Now, that maybe wasn’t a wrong choice, though nota bene that most of the other projects the two have worked on together (Funny People, Superbad, Knocked Up) don’t have that problem. Interestingly enough, one that does is The Green Hornet, which would fit with the idea that there’s a lack of conviction in the subject matter.

I’m criticising here, but it’s not completely unredeemed. It has a strange bravura to it, like the best aspects of This Is The End. Some of the jokes work. Diana Bang is really cute. The ending is an interesting kind of twist.

A lot of people praise the Rogen/Franco chemistry, but I often found it grating here. There’s a lot of graphic violence at the end, which will alienate a few people who might otherwise enjoy it. When I found myself asking “Who would like this?” I kept coming back to the answer “me”. Dark, broody, satirical, over-the-top gore.

So why didn’t I like it more?

It’s not like I was expecting Mr. Smith Goes To Washington from the Oscar-nominated Russian movie Leviathan (левиафан for those of you with your Cyrillic goggles on), but I was sort of expecting something a little more akin to Twelve, where layers of self-interest are peeled back and a perverse outcome is arrived at as the best solution for the screwed-up world Russians live in.

But no: Leviathan is utterly bleak. There is no hope. Hope is mocked.

We liked it.

When the story opens, Kolia is talking with pal Dimi about an upcoming hearing: The Mayor has decided to take over his land, and Kolia is resistant, given that he built the house on his land and runs his business there, and The Mayor is offering him about 1/6th of what he considers fair value.

My capsule from the trailer was “Russian guy doesn’t know he’s living in Russia”. But, whatever, Kolia seems to think he has property rights, and so he and Dimi have a scheme to extort the mayor so he can keep his place or at least get a good price for it.

At the only point where it looks like Kolia might have a chance, the story is instantly derailed with a melodrama involving Lilya, Kolia’s pretty young wife. In fact, I started to get a little annoyed with the movie, thinking it had gone off base with this story, but it all ties together in the most horrible, cynical way imaginable.

There are no heroes in this story: Everyone knows what’s going on. They’re apathetic or complicit (or both). There’s cowardice and betrayal. Faint glimmers of decency are swallowed almost as quickly as they appear.

One’s soul cries out for a theme, a metaphor, or an understanding of some kind here, and Leviathan seems to tell us that in this modern reinterpretation of Job, the state is God, the Enemy and the Leviathan.

The ending is so dark, it makes you think Russia should be burned down and paved over with something nice, like Hell.

Beautifully shot, compellingly acted, and soul-crushingly realistic, Leviathan is a fine film I wouldn’t recommend easily to anyone.

And I in no way feel smug about living in America, where this kind of thing happens all the time, and gets not so much as a mention in the papers.

If I had to sum up Zero Motivation, I’d probably call it “M*A*S*H but with hot incompetent secretaries and without anti-war pretentiousness.” That kind of captures the feel, though tells you little about the actual movie.

Israel has a kind of half-hearted conscription mandating two years of service to 18 year olds—although one of the exemptions (at least these days) is “low motivation”, which perhaps explains the title of this movie. But with any draft, you get a lot of people who really shouldn’t be there, and when you’re drafting 18-year-old girls, no one could be surprised that you’re going to get some who are worse than worthless (from an organizational standpoint).

Zero Motivation is really the story of two friends, Zohar and Daffi, who are essentially experts at loafing. Zohar is the queen of Minesweeper, while Daffi (whose title is something like “Chief Shredding Officer”) principally occupies herself by sneaking naps and writing letters to command about wanting to be relocated to Tel Aviv. (The girls are in a camp in the middle of the desert.)

The movie is divided into three stories: The first concerns Daffi’s training of her replacement, a girl she’s sure has been sent to replace her so she can be transferred to Tel Aviv. The second concerns Zohar’s efforts to lose her virginity. The third follows Daffi in her scheme to relocate to Tel Aviv by virtue of going through officer’s training.

Writer/director Talya Lavie keeps the proceedings light, over all, even when it touches on serious subjects. Ultimately, this is a movie about two girls and their friendship, and it could’ve worked similarly in a university environment or even a large enough corporation. There is less disrespect for the military than there was in M*A*S*H, or there would be in virtually any modern similarly placed American story. (I think because it’s much harder to make the argument that Israel “opts in” to wars.)

Anyway, it made me laugh to beat the band. Nicely plotted, doesn’t take itself too seriously, but treats its characters with respect. Zohar is played by Dana Ivgy (of the moving Next To Her), Nelly Tagar (who had a tiny role in the dark Footnote) plays Daffi, and the two have a natural chemistry as if they’re really close friends. (The movie does, in fact, pass the Bechdel test.)

Two other standout performances: First, Shani Klein, as the long suffering IC of the girls, who longs to make them into an effective bureaucratic force, and to have a real military career. This was Klein’s first role, making it all the more impressive how she sort of channeled her inner Major Houlihan. Second, the impossibly named Tamara Klingon, who plays the hard-nosed Russian suddenly possessed by a wan, but vengeful, spirit. (Or is she?)

The Boy enjoyed it, though perhaps not as much as I did. The Flower, who still has some trouble with subtitles did enjoy it though, which is a good indicator of how fun it was.

It got a very limited release, but is well worth seeing. You’d never know this was Lavie’s freshman effort.

Marion Cotillard has a bad case of ennui. Real bad. So bad that she had to spend four months in the funny farm getting semi-un-ennui-ed (constructions like this is why robots will never speak English) only to find on the eve of returning to work, that her co-workers have opted to have her position eliminated rather than lose their year-end bonus.

She has 2 Days, 1 Night (or Deux jour, une nuit in the original, apparently inaccessible French) to reverse that vote!

Usually, when I say “I know, right? French!” in these reviews. I’m referring to some sort of sexual deviance that has been normalized by our frisky Gallic pals, but in this case, let us ponder the situation of a heroine who has been collecting a paycheck for doing nothing for four months, but for whom we are supposed to root, as she goes to inflict hardship on each of her co-workers, both emotionally and financially, after a four month period where her absence was already presumably a problem.

I know, right? French! Or more accurately, Belgian, but French Belgian, not the cool Flemish Belgian.

It’s a testament to the Dardenne brothers (The Kid With A Bike) that this works at all.

@uncommentari once mentioned, in reference to some of the more difficult movies The Boy and I see, some puzzlement over the fact that we seem to enjoy these experiences, many of which cannot be considered pleasant. Well, sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t, depending on the skill of the participants, the purpose of the unpleasantness, and the attitude of the execution.

For example, some horror movies are just unpleasant because it’s easier to be unpleasant than scary and they don’t really know the difference. I don’t want to go see Haneke (The White Ribbon, Amour) movies because his goal seems to be punishing the audience. (Not enlighten or cause to empathize, but just punish.)

This is not the most unpleasant of film experiences but, let me tell you, you will feel all 90 minutes of it, as Sandra (Cotillard) drags herself across the countryside from family to family, humiliated and depressed the whole way.

It works, though, because Sandra isn’t looking for pity. Ultimately she’s just asking her co-workers to fire her to her face, which is something you should be able to do, if you’re going to be voting to fire people. It’s hard, but it has a heroic character to it as, let’s face it, she hasn’t really shaken her ennui, popping Xanax like Tic-Tacs.

But she has a character arc, Hollywood-ized up a bit, and you do end up liking her. (Cotillard has an extra barrier to deal with in my case, since people have been gushing about her since La Vie En Rose, which was really unpleasant.) I wondered if perhaps the Dardennes had actually told everyone else to dial back the acting, since this is the Marion Show, and even though her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione, The Kid on a Bike) is constantly around, he’s just very low key.

I could understand “keeping it together”, of course, but he never seems to look like he’s suppressing any emotion, just that he’s—well, he comes off sort of dumb, somehow. Your mileage may vary.

The other actors are fine and the ending is satisfying (though perhaps not with the same resonance to an American), and I ultimately walked away from this pondering the socialist/Cotillard balance of our critic class. ‘cause ultimately, they love this film, even though it’s a pretty damning indictment of socialism.

Sure, you could say the evil capitalist (a solar panel manufacturer) forced his employees to make an inhuman choice, but it’s actually pretty clear by the end that it was necessary to cut costs, and Sandra’s four month paid vacation made it clear that 16 people could do the job as well as 17.

Which, duh.

But a running theme throughout the movie is that people don’t want to be on the dole. It’s shameful. It’s degrading. The big threat for Sandra and Manu is that they’ll have to move back to whatever the Belgian equivalent of The Projects is.

And these are all skilled laborers. Welding is mentioned at one point, though I’m not sure it’s what they all do. But these skilled laborers are agonizing over 1,000€, which means they’re all torturing themselves over the equivalent of $300-$600 (after taxes, which are obscene in Belgium).

Meanwhile, a bunch of them do stuff “on the black”, presumably working illegally, doing things like repairing cars or stocking shelves or whatever. The Dardennes may think they’re being critical of capitalism, but they’re honest enough to just tell the story and let you think and feel what you want.

My initial thought was that management that forces workers to choose between co-workers and bonuses (a real thing) are terrible management (and the movie paints considerable ambiguity on the who-did-what-to-whom plot points) but then I thought, well, why not force workers to make the hard choices that have to be made?

Especially in socialist countries where “management” is painted as the enemy of “labor” (as if they were different), I can see a certain value in forcing childish we-should-all-be-hired-forever-with-pay-raises-and-ponies to make the hard calls.

Fortunately, all that is incidental to the real story, which is about Sandra. And which is good.

But not easy to watch.

I’ve always known of Alan Turing as “the father of modern computing”—the guy who first described certain things in certain ways which have proven to be useful, certainly. The recent Weinstein movie about Turing, The Imitation Game, suggests that he invented “Turing machines”, and those are just another name for computers, which is the sort gross inaccuracy you expect from a Hollywood film about a gay genius.

I had some reticence about seeing this film, because I was worried they were going to turn a story about a gay computer guy (there are many) into a story about a gay guy who worked on computers. Which, frankly, it’s a trivialization of anyone to reduce them to their sexuality.

They do do this, actually, but do it so well, you’ll hardly notice it’s being done.

This is a slickly made pseudo-biopic centered primarily around Turing’s work at Bletchley Park, where the German code was cracked in WWII. It’s taut, dramatic, fun to watch, and wholly fictional both in terms of details and big story elements.

Turing’s contributions are exaggerated. . His social eccentricities are turned into severe liabilities (they weren’t). He’s presented as a loner (he wasn’t). He’s presented as a man pining for a lost childhood love (maybe?), so much so that he names his computer after him (it wasn’t). He’s blackmailed into silence by a Soviet spy over his homosexuality (who knows?). He’s punched (he wasn’t) by the very hetero guy for making a statement about hiding intelligence (never his call). They present him as having killed himself (experts disagree) during court-mandated hormone treatment (it had ended over a year prior to his death) which crippled him intellectually (it didn’t).

He’s outed as a homosexual when cops come to investigate a robbery of his house (never happened) on a neighbor’s noise complaint (not a thing) which he didn’t report because of his homosexuality. That was a stretch.

The producers have said people get hung up over accuracy, when they’re not going for accuracy, they’re just trying to present to the audience what it was like to be Alan. I disagree: they’ve made a composite gay-experience guy and put him in Turing’s body.

Like I said, though, this largely works, dramatically, even if it feels overly slick at times. Where it rang false was in their portrayal Commander Denniston, who ran Bletchley park for the first years of the war. He’s sort of the stock “angry dean” character of college comedies, the closest people in Hollywood seem to come to understanding military types. I can believe that Denniston didn’t get the nerds in Hut 8; I can’t believe that he would do anything to jeopardize the war effort, just because (as the movie has it) he didn’t like someone. That’s not how non-emotionality-based-organizations work.

Not that I’d expect anyone in a Hollywood “idea room” to get that.

It’s sort of like when a character is expected to let his brother die rather than let out information, and he cries and complains about it. That just doesn’t seem very British to me. At least, not the British of WWII. But those guys are mostly not around any more, and a movie has to be made for the audience that’s here, right?

Yes, I’m being highly critical, but I say to you: We liked it. It’s a good movie. You’re probably not gonna care about this stuff. I really didn’t much until after the movie.

Benedict Cumberbatch is fine, as always. Keira Knightly passes for a homely computer nerd. That evil Lannister guy is the evil Commander. The always great Mark Strong (The Guard, Green Lantern, Zero Dark Thirty) has a great role as a presumably entirely fictitious MI6 agent who acts as a sort of deus ex machina.

It is, as @juleslalaland has noted, a fine season for actors in projects that don’t rise to the same level of skill.

This is only the fourth woman-on-a-journey movie we’ve seen in the past year, and only the third that involved actual walking, but this is the first one to feature naked Reese Witherspoon. The other three were On My Way with Catherine Deneuve (she drove), Redwood Highway with Shirley Knight, and Tracks with Mia Wasikowska. It’s the last that has the most in common with Wild, and not just because Mia also got naked.

In Tracks—based on a true story, like Wild—a woman walks across the desert because she’s troubled, to some degree or another. Tracks is interesting despite not going into the details much. Wild is the opposite: The whole thing is a search for “why"s.

Why does she have to do this? Why did she do all those drugs and have all that anonymous sex? Why is Reese Witherspoon still playing teens and 20-somethings?

The Boy, who wouldn’t know Ms. Witherspoon from any other big turn-of-the-century actress (having only seen her in Mud) leaned in at one point to say "She’s, like, in her thirties or something, right?” during one of the scenes where she was playing a college student. (I think she’s gotten better looking with age, but she doesn’t look young.)

It’s important because the age at which one has this sort of life crisis pretty dramatically impacts how we feel about the character. The movie’s flashbacks are kind of confusing because they’re not in order and they completely omit certain things, like Cheryl’s marriage, except in terms of the wreckage she’s made of it.

But the other thing the Boy whispered to me, early on, was something like “I’m not hating my life choices,” which is fairly high praise given that this is the sort of movie that could be awful. In fact from the trailers, it could hardly not be awful, since they cast it as sort of an Eat, Pray, Love thing where an awful woman finds excuses for being awful, and finds it’s mostly other awful people’s fault.

(N.B., I’m guessing since I wouldn’t go see Eat, Pray, Love with your eyeballs.)

Still, it works. Mostly.

Why? I think because it’s mostly free of bullshit. There are times when our heroine seems to blame her bad behavior on her mother’s death, e.g., but in the end she seems to find—well, I don’t know, maybe the ending is bullshit, but I guess it worked for her.

This brings me back to Tracks, which works because the journey is the point. This is true of Wild as well, even though there’s all this supporting material. And, frankly, it works because Witherspoon is good. But this has always been in her wheelhouse: Good-hearted characters who are flawed, even highly flawed, but still appealing.

She has to carry the movie, and pretty much does. Laura Dern has really the only other serious role in the movie as her mother, and the two play off each other as mother-and-daughter perfectly (despite only being less than ten years apart *kaff*). This part works very well, because we see Cheryl at her worst in a lot of ways, but in a way that is more relatable, perhaps, than the drug addiction/promiscuity thing.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

Screenwriter Nick Hornby (About A Boy, An Education) and director Jean-Marc Valleé (Dallas Buyer’s Club) have done a good job here, as did producer Reese Witherspoon in sponsoring a project that showcased her talents.

“They’ll know you’re coming,” the Russian mob boss says to Keanu Reeves, who is planning an all out assault on the well-guarded safe house containing the mob boss’s son.

“It won’t matter,” says John Wick, the slayer of boogie men, ne plus ultra assassin supreme, all ‘round badass who just wants to go straight, you guys, but they killed his puppy.

And indeed it doesn’t in John Wick, the story of John Wick, a guy who is really good at killing stuff. The reported body count is 84. It might be more. It’s hard to tell in all the excitement.

This is the sort of man-vs-mob movie that every action hero does occasionally and Liam Neeson does two or three times a ye—oh, look, Taken 3 is out. Anyway, I think this is a first for Keanu, who’s normally paired off against robots or unicorns or samurai or what-not. Well, I think so: I haven’t seen Keanu in a movie since The Lake House.

There’s not really much to say about a movie like this, except that if you like this sort of movie, you’ll probably like this instance of this sort of movie. The freshman effort by stuntman Chad Stahelski is stylish, fast-paced, with great fight choreography and a lot of fun touches. Screenwriter Derek Kolstad, whose last big feature had Steve Austin playing Tommy Wick (brothers?) creates an underworld mythology where everyone knows who John Wick is.

Everyone except the boss’s kid, played by “Game Of Thrones” Alfie Allen, that is, who starts the whole ball rolling. Wick almost immediately figures it out with the help of local chop-shop impresario, John Leguizamo. Mob boss (Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’s Michael Nyqvist, who’s an actor I’m coming to like more and more, the more I see him) tries to quell things in between trying to kill Wick.

Other supporting players include Willem Dafoe as a hitman, Adriane Palicki (who played Wonder Woman in the attempted reboot),  Iane McShane as a saloon keeper, and Bridget Moynahan as the disembodied voice of the late Mrs. Wick. I mean, really, she’s barely in the film but she gets pretty high billing.

I liked it. The Boy is hard to get to this kind of movie, because it’s a fine line between stupid and clever and all that, so I ended up sneaking in the last showing of this while he was otherwise occupied. (I think he would’ve liked it.)

But as someone who went to most of the Schwarzenegger movies in the ’80s and quite a few of the clones, I can say this was in the same ballpark, but really a lot better than most of those.

The Flower is particularly reticent to see any films involving fairy tales, owing to, shall we say, strong opinions on the topic. But when I told her that Into The Woods included the oft-omitted portion of Cinderella wherein the evil stepsisters mutilate their feet (in order to be able to fit into the golden shoe) and they also have their eyes plucked out, she was much pleased and averred she might be interested after all.

And that’s the sort of musical this is. A Stephen Sondheim musical. You know, like Sweeney Todd, though without the cannibalism somehow. It was a bit edgier 30 years ago, when post-Disney fairy tales and folklore were making a literary resurgence (or so it seemed to me at the time).

The story combines a number of fairy tales: A baker and his wife, barren, make a deal with a witch to collect four items from the woods in exchange for a child: A red cloak, a milky white cow, hair as gold as corn and a golden slipper. This puts them on a collision course with Red Riding Hood, Jack (of the Beanstalk), Rapunzel and Cinderella.

It’s remarkable to note, at first, how faithful to the source material the first act is, despite tying all the stories together. (The character of The Mysterious Man, from the stage version, has been removed, with The Baker basically taking his parts, from what I can tell. Snow White is also written out.) It’s also remarkable to note how tightly plotted it all is, with the characters motivations and actions leading logically one to the next. On top of that, the initial theme (the bittersweet character of growing up) is both very fitting and nicely done.

It hits the fan in the second act, of course, when the Happily Ever After turns out to be fraught with consequences, disappointments, and blamestorming.

It’s not great. It’s good, though. The clever parts, the plot, the machinery of the story, if you will, hang together admirably well—one wishes we could see more of this sort of attention to detail in all movies—but the emotional parts make sense without being very moving. That’s not quite fair: The emotional parts work great on the back-burner; you can see why the people act how they do, for the most part, and you can empathize with it.

But the arias where they express their feelings, which are often the high points of opera/musical theater, didn’t really work, at least not for me. Interestingly enough, I had a similar reaction to Burton’s interpretation of Sweeney Todd, where I didn’t find the stage presentation to be lacking at all emotionally.

The cast is good. Well, dramatically. Well, let’s say they’re better than Les Miserables. And let us also concede that casting movie musicals is just like casting animation: Actors are selected for their perceived drawing power, not any musical ability.

Meryl Streep takes the Bernadette Peters Witch role, which both reduces the musicality of the part and takes some of the “wow” out when she transforms from an old hag to a—well, not an old hag. But at least she’s the only cast member of Mamma Mia! here.

Emily Blunt (the Baker’s Wife) survives her role. Barely. Johnny Depp’s (The Wolf) role is mercifully short. James Corden (The Baker) is fresh off pretending to sing in One Chance. Tracey Ullman (Jack’s Mom) was the only one whose singing voice I could actually identify. Oh, and Anna Kendrick looked and sounded like she maybe could’ve been Cinderella on stage.

Dramatically, they’re all fine, even Ms. Streep, whose affected style is actually appropriate in this circumstance. But just like Le Miz, you’re gonna wanna not listen to the original cast in the vicinity of this.

The Boy and I enjoyed it. We didn’t have any particular attachment to the original, though. I could see it again if The Flower decided she wanted to see it. But I can’t help feeling a great opportunity was missed here.

Dan Gilroy’s first directorial effort is a Michael-Mann-ish looking film called Nightcrawler. Hungry Jake Gyllenhaal ends up shooting video footage for the ambitious Rene Russo and becomes increasingly obsessed with getting amazing shots, even if he has to fake them. Ultimately this drags him into a murder plot.

I haven’t seen this film yet. This is the sort of film I’d probably not go to see if not for the glowing ratings. As I mentioned, it looks very Mann-ish, and I am not a Mann man. Also, it’s big claim to fame is that it’s a thriller. And we are probably having worse luck with so-called “thrillers” than with horror movies.

I think they use “thriller” to sell any drama, no matter how plodding, if any aspect of the resolution is in doubt.

But Gilroy wrote Tarsem’s The Fall, which is his best film by a long shot, in no small part because of the story the effects could be hung on. He also wrote The Bourne Legacy, among other things. But in all his previous work as just-a-writer, he probably didn’t have much clout. But this baby is his.

And it’s being showered with awards. So it’s gotta be good, right?

Right?

[later…]

Actually, yeah, it’s really good. And the trailers are both weirdly spoiler-y and completely misleading in ways that I can’t describe without spoiling it. My summary, above, based on the trailer grossly misrepresents the actual shape of things. Heh.

Gyllenhaal is just great. The supporting crew is very good: Riz Ahmed as the sidekick, Bill Paxton in a smaller, sweet role as a competitor and Rene Russo. Rene Russo is especially good as an aging news director seeing her salvation in Gyllenhaal. Also, given that I praise French women for looking their age, I’m should praise Russo as well: She looks her age, and if she’s had work done, I don’t see it—but she looks good. Which is all the more remarkable given her character is one who’s a little desperate, cynical and bitter.

But ultimately, Gyllenhaal has to power the movie and he does.

So, will you like it? Well, it’s dark, darkly comic, cynical, a directly scathing indictment of news media and by extension an indirectly scathing indictment of society, tense, suspenseful and horrifying.

Once I got a handle on the kind of story it was, I had a strong idea how it was going to end—and I could list some similar films, but that could spoil it, and a lot of people will be surprised by how it turns out.

It was a lot of fun. But remember, I have odd ideas about what’s “fun”. The Flower also really enjoyed it—but her sense of humor is a lot like mine. The Boy was a little cooler toward it, though he definitely liked it, and very much appreciated the suspense. He nitpicked the climax a bit; he felt it was a little unrealistic, that I can’t tell you without a spoiler.

I thought maybe it was unrealistic for a different reason, that I can tell you about without spoiling: The police are called to Western Avenue and 3rd Street, which is about 3 miles from the Rampart Station—a big LAPD station in LA. I used to live in that area and when I called the cops, they would be there in seconds.

So I thought the movie showed them taking too long to get there, and it looked like they weren’t even the ones who had been called. In other words, they maybe just moseyed in on accident. Minor point, at best. But the sort of thing that you could expect from me watching a movie taking place in L.A. (which adds to the fun for me, of course).

The Flower and I would probably put it in our top 10, while The Boy said it was more a top 20—which I think is more a statement on where he felt it belonged rather than being able to name 19 better other movies.

It’s been an odd year: There’ve been very many good, even very good movies, but not so many great ones. I suspect our assessment for the Best of 2014 will be very documentary heavy.

Still, this was a good film to close the year out on.

There’s some old-fashioned sleight-of-hand huckstering going on with this new Iranian flick A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. What I saw in various places was “the first Iranian vampire movie”. But in other places I’m seeing “the first Iranian vampire western.” Big diff.

Although I see nothing of the Western in here.

There is boatloads of style in this beautifully shot black-and-white tale of a hapless guy who ends up on the wrong side of a loan shark/drug dealer’s attempt to collect a debt his heroin-addict father incurred, and then ends up the lucky recipient of said dealer’s wealth when a hungry girl vampire kills him.

This isn’t one of those vampire movies where the vampire only kills bad guys, though. We puzzled over it afterward and the only commonality between her victims were that they were all male.

Of course, as I’ve noted for other movies, some ideas that are popular in American culture have a lot more force in others. Whatever the state of women in America, for example, Persian women could tell them a thing or two about oppression. The problem being an American can’t always relate to the emotional impact they’re meant to have.

You know, so maybe it’s nothing in particular that she only kills men. And threatens boys. I dunno.

Anyway, it’s a sort of love story between our living hero and our undead heroine, though one quite obviously fraught with certain issues (that are never addressed). In the end, the hero comes to realize that she’s a murderer, but never that she’s a vampire. Or does he? I don’t know how he could have, really.

In the end, the three of us were split. The Boy did not care for it. It was too static and the characterization was weak. I can’t really argue with that, but I kind of liked it anyway. I felt there was enough characterization and motion in the plot to make it worthwhile, though no where at the level of, say, Let The Right One In.

The Flower? She loved it. She’s developed a strong sense of aesthetics and really enjoyed it on that level. Also, vampires are cool, and chick vampires doubly so, I’m sure.

The Girl is played by Sheila Vand (Argo, “State of Affairs”) sort of like a French noir heroine. The Boy is played by Arash Marandi. The Boy’s father is played by Marshall Manesh, whom The Flower recognized as playing a cab driver on “How I Met Your Mother” and who was also the doctor in The Big Lebowski, and who’s one of those guys in a ton of things. He gets to stretch his acting chops.

Mozhan Marno (The Stoning of Soraya M, “House of Cards”) plays a prostitute, while Dominic Rains (“General Hospital”) plays the thug. Rains and Manesh were in the short version of this film, made a few years ago with the future star of Shirin In Love.

You may notice that all these actors are in a lot of American shows and movies. Punchline: it’s not really an Iranian film. It’s an American film starring a bunch of Persians. Shot in California. Heh.

Which is cool. Especially because I kept thinking, “Man, Iran looks a lot like California.”

Back in post-war France, a crazy Frenchman by the name of Paul Grimault decided to make the first French animated feature, and started work on a wild tale called Le roi et l’oiseau, literally, “The King and the Bird”. Then something bad happened. Funding got cut, people fought over the rights, the unfinished film got released, and for the next two decades Grimault and writer Jacques Prévert struggled to get control of it.

Since his 1988 appearance in the movie Scrooged, Bill Murray has made a career out of being the curmudgeon who is redeemed by the third act through repetition, ghosts, elephants, Scarlett Johannson or whatever. And he just gets better and better at it. Seriously, check out his performance in the daring, yet nigh unwatchable, The Razor’s Edge (1984)—which movie he agreed to do Ghostbusters in order to get the green light on, and which basically killed his career—and compare to his work in later films, and it’s impressive how good he’s gotten.

Later films like St. Vincent, in which Murray plays a crotchety old man who’s broke and drunk and a whoremonger (said whore being pregnant Russian-accented Naomi Watts). Our story begins after Vin (Murray) smashes his fence after driving home drunk, with him waking up the next morning to find his property being smashed by the careless movers of his new neighbors. Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) is a recent divorcee who works as a technician in a hospital, and often ends up not being able to get home in time to take care of her son Oliver (newcomer Jaeden Lieberher).

Vin sees an opportunity to make some cash and offers to sit for the desperate Maggie.

Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

Murray is great. Better than many of his highly praised performances in recent years. He’s found the perfect notes between antagonism and despair, and even has some moments of genuine joy. He’s got a perfect co-star in Lieberher, too, who’s savvy without being obnoxious. Actually, of all the characters, Oliver’s the most likable and probably the sanest and most Christian (or perhaps I should say “small-c christian”).

For a youngster, he’s quite capable of hitting subtle notes.

The supporting crew is good, as you would expect. Chris O’Dowd (Calvary, Thor 2) as the hip-but-not-too-hip Catholic priest is a standout.

For all the familiarity of the story, there are enough twists-and-turns to keep you guessing. Writer/director Theodore Melfi also hits the right notes, by neither making Vin a complete reprobate nor a crusty-but-benign cliché. (Melfi, interestingly, has only directed one prior feature, back in 1999, with Kimberly Quinn—who plays a nurse/administrator in St. Vincent—as the star, and his co-writer.)

Quinn is a producer on this film, as is Don Cheadle!

I really enjoyed this film. I got choked up at the end.

The kids, interestingly, were not as moved. They both enjoyed it, but neither was amazed. (Or, as The Boy might say, “It didn’t roxxor my boxxors.”)

I put this in the category of films, like Chef and Beyond The Lights, which have formulas but which are really quite hard to do well, and which raise the boundaries of expectations for their genre.

There’s a point in Foxcatcher—the climax of the movie, of sorts—where I thought to myself, “Oh, crap, I remember when that happened!”

This sometimes happens in “based on a true story” movies. You weren’t really paying attention when they were news, then suddenly the clown car crashes into the sour cream tanker and you go, “Oh, hell, yeah, I had forgotten about the great sour cream/clown pileup on the I-5.”

Foxcatcher is the story of John E. DuPont’s attempt to make his family estate (the eponymous Foxcatcher Estate) the seat of U.S. Olympic Wrestling. To this end he enlists the help of a couple of gold-medal winning wrestling brothers, Mark and David Schultz.

It all works out beautifully, of course, and the US goes on to dominate wrestling in the next 10 Olympics.

Heh.

As if!

DuPont is, shall we say, a little bit off. Weird under the best of circumstances, living in the long shadow of his famous family, in their massive estate with only his disapproving mother as a companion. He makes patriotic gestures, tries to set up himself up as a leader of a team in a field he has no real expertise in, and engineers minor accomplishments to try to measure up.

That’s him at his best. At his worst, he’s capricious, manic or depressive, spacey, dazed, drug-addled, violent, dissociated and just plain discomfiting.

At first, he can only lure Mark Schultz to his Valley Forge home, the younger and dimmer member of the team. Schultz, despite being an Olympic gold medalist, has poor prospects in life, delivering truly awful motivational speeches for 20 bucks a pop at local grade schools. To put it in perspective, when DuPont asks him to name his price, he says $25K/year, because it’s the most money he could imagine.

Du Pont and Mark bond pretty quickly, and this is followed by a series of feel-good photoshoots and PR stunts about how they’re the future of wrestling. (Just in case you thought the media hasn’t always been bought and paid for.) Du Pont gets Mark into drugs, which is just a bad idea on a lot of levels, and soon the two have a conflict that can’t be smoothed over with cocaine and cut-rate trophies.

David is persuaded to join the team, presumably with a much larger sum of money, but this creates even more tensions.

It’s kind of dry. The sense The Boy and I got was that there was this desire to adhere to the facts in the actual story, which while admirable, can derail the sort of dramatic buildup that makes a good narrative.

Outstanding acting from the three principals, all of whom are playing against type: Channing Tatum plays Mark, and while Tatum is certainly no stranger to playing an athlete, Mark Schultz is not someone with a lot of charisma or social skills. (Schultz co-wrote the book that inspired this.)

Mark Ruffalo—and this may sound odd—plays a normal guy. For as long as I can remember him, which goes back to 2000’s You Can Count On Me, he’s been playing mopes, Sad Sacks and losers, down-on-their-luck and not likely to get a break.

I mean, fercryinoutloud, when he’s in a superhero movie, who does he play? Bruce Banner. The Sylvia Plath of alter egos.

In this, Ruffalo plays the sensible brother. Good natured, not overawed by money, with a strong sense of doing what’s right by his family. He helps Mark out, but encourages him to take the opportunity with Du Pont—to spread his wings and try to succeed on his own. (Mark, for his part, harbors some serious resentment.)

I mean, I guess it’s not necessarily a hard role, but you don’t see Ruffalo do it much. If ever. Most of his mannerisms are different, too, though later on, when things get stressful, you seem some of the classic Ruffalo hands-through-the-hair moves.

As John “Golden Eagle” du Pont, Steve Carell is bound to get a lot of attention for his role as the weird, dangerous billionaire who is completely flummoxed at the notion that someone might actually not have a price. And he is good. You’ll barely recognize him at first, although, much like Ruffalo, certain Carell-isms come to the fore from time-to-time.

It’s good work but is it good enough to sustain a whole movie? Well, sure, but not always a compelling one. Bennett Miller’s previous work (Capote, Moneyball), also based on true stories, was more entertaining, I think (and also less rigorous with the facts).

We didn’t hate it. We sort of liked it. But it’s 2 hours of tension, really, which isn’t great entertainment.

At last we have a triple-A CGI-animated movie that is gloriously Mexican in its art design and setting in The Book of Life!

The good news is: It’s gorgeous.

The bad news is: Otherwise, it sucks.

OK, sucks is probably a little harsh. But political correctness went to war with Mexican culture and the audience lost.

The story is that of two daring boys, one from a powerful military family, and one from a family with a long bullfighting tradition, who love the same girl. She goes off to a nunnery (or whatever) in Spain (or wherever) for years after a prank she pulls, and in her absence the two boys grow into men and burnish their resumes in the hopes of impressing her when she gets back.

¿Quién es más macho?

What could be more Mexican, sí?

Perro…but…no, wait, perro is “dog”, I mean “pero”. But. Pero grande.

The prank the girl pulls is to free the pigs because they’re so cute, but they go on a rampage, endangering people and destroying the village.

Aw…come on. Really? How “first world problem” is that? It’s not “hey, chica, people are gonna starve to death ‘cause you let out all the food”, it’s “save the piggies!”

It gets worse, though: Our hero is Manolo, the bullfighter. Of course. Because the other kid, Joaquin is a nasty military guy, and even though he keeps the village safe year after year, and even though his father apparently died doing the same, military is icky and yucky and not sexy like bullfighting.

Oh, and of course, bullfighting? That’s monstrous. Except how Manolo does it, because he doesn’t kill the bulls. This relies so heavily on ignorance, it’s just sad. After a bullfight, killing the bull is a mercy. But, of course, if they actually took a stand on bullfighting, they couldn’t include it in the movie, so they do this stupid half-measure that just increases the ignorance in the world.

’cause you know the kids seeing this are going to take away this dumb notion that bullfighting would be just peachy if they didn’t kill the bull.

But, okay, I’m overlooking all this stuff, and the second act gets a little better.

Wait, I forgot to mention the framing story. And the framing framing story. Basically, the good goddess La Muerte and the evil god Xibalba have made a bet for the fate of the happy land of the dead, which is a grande fiesta of remembered people. If Maria picks Manolo then La Muerte wins, but if she picks Joaquin Xilbalba gets the happy land of the dead, and La Muerte is consigned to the the other underworld, where everyone is forgotten and sad.

Whoa, guilt trip much?

Actually, I liked this part of it. At least it felt somewhat authentic. The framing framing story involves a bunch of school kids being told this story.

Now, it must be said, the happy underworld is breathtaking, a truly glorious realization of the whole “Dia de los Muertos” aesthetic. Back when Burton did Alice, I dinged it for not reaching the stylistic level of American McGee’s Alice, and one could make a similar comparison between The Book of Life and Tim Schafer’s Grim Fandango. But there’s no shortcomings here, not in the art design.

It all comes down to a sloppy battle at the end, as all things must, I guess.

Typical stunt casting. ’cause when you think Mexican, you think Channing Tatum. He’s the military guy, I think. There’s Diego Luna and Zoe Saldana…I picked out Ron Perlman and Hector Elizondo. The former does a lot of fine voice work and the latter has just always been very distinctive.

The Barb liked it, though, and the RT is high (around 80%); she ranks the last four movies in this order: The Book of Life, Rio 2, The Boxtrolls and How To Train Your Dragon 2.

So, there you go. Beautiful but kind of boring. And the kid liked it.

OK, this is the third “live” Rifftrax I’ve seen—though never live live, which would be cool, just to see it at the same time, to say nothing of being in the audience—and I was literally in tears by the time it was over.

And! Super-bonus! I’m pretty sure you’ll actually buy this one over at Rifftrax in a couple months!

The film being riffed this time was the 1959 Mexican “classic” Santa Claus which, you know, if you’re going to make a Christmas Movie, maybe don’t put “Santa Claus” in the title, because as far as I know, that’s never been anything but disastrous.

In this mess of a flick, Santa watches Earth from his castle in space through his giant telescope (next to which is a giant mouth that’s ‘70s porn-style nightmare fuel), as we see a variety of kids suffering through the holiday season. The two main kids are a girl so poor she can’t afford a doll, and a boy who’s super-rich but who never sees his parents.

There are also some hooligans tempted into evil shenanigans by ol’ Pitch himself! Well, okay, not the Pitch, but some manner of lesser demon who’s sent by Satan (in the form of a giant bonfire) to Earth in order to stop Santa from making his Christmas rounds, after which Satan will take over the world!

Yeah, I’m a little murky on the theology, too. I’m guessing it’s some sort of Mexican variant on Catholicism. Fortunately, Santa has Merlin on his side, some invisibility dust and a bag of roofie—er, sleeping powder.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 tradition was to riff bad movies. In most cases, not just bad, but so bad as to be virtually disowned by its creators. This made them cheap to license—when MST3K actually did that, and when they weren’t actually in the public domain. And while I’ve often thought Citizen Kane would be a ripe target, I have to admit this is so wonderful in part because it barely resembles a movie.

It gives you just enough to hang on to, but puzzles you enough with its various twists and turns, that when the guys say something to capture the sheer insanity of the moment, I haven’t even mentioned the whole “It’s A Small World” sweat shop musical number featuring children from around the world that makes up the opening.

And the cherry on top is it’s dubbed, which is hilarious in all but the best circumstances.

So, by all means, check this one out for Craig’s sake! It’s for sale, even!

Stop-motion animation is sort of a weird beast these days. It is, as always, a time-consuming, labor-intensive process (a fact brilliantly riffed on at the end of the movie). But it’s not a smooth visual, to the point where when Aardman and Sony collaborated on their software to make Flushed Away, choppiness was built-in in order to simulate that look. It’s kind of weird.

The implication of the ending bit is that this movie was done by hand, but however it was done, it’s occasionally distractingly choppy, in between some strong art design. This is the 4th movie from Laika, who also did The Corpse Bride, Coraline and Paranorman, which may have been similarly distracting in parts, though I don’t recall noting that at the time.

The choppiness sort of works as a metaphor for the whole movie: There’s a lot to admire here, even if overall it seems a little wanting.

The Boxtrolls is the tale of some shy, cowardly trolls who live under a city, coming up only at night to fetch the city’s broken, discarded machinery, which they take to their little underground city to repair.

Among the trolls is a human boy who doesn’t know he’s human, but who ends up going to the overworld to save his people from the evil troll exterminator. The Exterminator plans to wipe out the trolls completely and forever, which will help him achieve his great ambition to join the elite of the city and their opulent cheese tasting parties.

You know, just once I’d like to see a story about monsters where the monsters aren’t the good guys.

Anyway, he meets an obnoxious girl, the daughter of one of the elites, and discovers the nefarious plan of the Bad Guy to Do Bad Things to the Poor Box Trolls. It’s been noted that the story parallels that of the Nazis and Jews in WWII but I actually didn’t think of it that way. Despite watching (literally) five or six Holocaust themed movies a year, I don’t automatically go Godwin. And I think the deal with Hitler is that while he was horrible in terms of scope and efficiency, he pretty much ran the usual despot playbook.

I mean, the idea that someone would demonize a productive and beneficial part of society in an attempt to gain power for himself? When does that not happen?

So…it’s not great. It’s easily the worst of the four Laika films (which could arguably ranked in the order they came out, though we could debate whether Coraline was better than The Corpse Bride). The story doesn’t really hold up. The trolls are kind of hard to distinguish one from the next, which is kind of interesting because they’re more distinct than, say Despicable Me’s minions, but the minions by-and-large seem to have more character.

All the characters are kind of forgettable somehow. Oh, except the evil dude’s (Ben Kingsley) henchmen played by Nick Frost (The World’s End) and Richard Ayoade (“The IT Crowd”), who are increasingly dubious that they are, in fact, in the service of good in this story. The thoughtful-if-brutish henchman is kind of clichéd by now but is still appealing.

The movie gets better as it goes along. By the end I was fairly engaged, though there was a by-the-numbers feel to it in most regards.

However, one way this movie shines struck me almost instantly and made me wish it had been better overall: It’s remarkably boy oriented. That’s a pretty rare thing. The trolls are mechanically oriented, for example, and the troll-boy, Eggs, eats the Boxtrolls diet: grubs and the like. Winnie, the girl, is interesting and the daughter of an elite, but definitely not a princess.

Good score by Dario Marinelli (Atonement, Anna Karenina, Quartet).

The Boy saw this with his girlfriend which, as he says, eliminates his ability to comment meaningfully on it.

I saw this with The Barb who liked it okay. It was no Rio 2, but it beat out How To Train Your Dragon 2.

This is an odd little film. Financed by some Japanese guys and initially released a couple of years ago, it floats around getting not much attention.

Which is kind of odd, since it shows people recovering (at least partially) from dementia and Alzheimer’s.

The document follows John Roderman over a period of six months where he works in an old folks home and interviews people with memory problems. He asks them the titular question, and when they say they don’t, he gives them his name tag and lets them read it. Then he talks over some stuff with them, and asks them his name again after about 5 minutes at which point they’ve forgotten it.

Over the course of six months, they’re given a treatment which is too simple to be believed: They read a passage or two aloud, and then they do some simple math, also while saying what they’re doing. This, the theory goes, draws blood into particular areas of the brain. (They explain this to the patients, too.)

If this sounds familiar to you, you may have encountered something like “Brain Age” for the Nintendo DS. Ryuta Kawashima, the creator of “Brain Age”, is behind this treatment. You may have also heard (I have) that there’s no scientific evidence to support these theories.

Of course, I’m familiar with valid therapies being pronounced unscientific, so it was interesting to me to see the six month period, at the end of which, the patients are very much improved indeed. This (still) isn’t scientific proof, but it’s very damn convincing.

One of the patients was able to remember John’s name, but all of them we saw reconnected with their families. One was able to knit again. They all became more social and more like their former selves (as described).

Of course there’s not much money to be made in such a simple thing. John goes from a minor role as an interviewer to doing the test administration (“helpers”, I think they’re called, but I don’t remember very well—oh, no!) and, frankly, I think I could both rig up the exercise and administer it just from watching the movie.

So, you can see why there’s not much interest. An easy, cheap cure for dementia or Alzheimer’s? Who needs it!

I thought it was interesting that it would work, though. If it can be fixed by exercise, which it seems to be, but then is further boosted by the people doing the things they did before they got sick, that suggests to me that there must be some sort of trigger event that starts the cycle going downward. It could be something really simple, too, like a spike in blood sugar or an ordinary illness.

It suggests that certain rituals people do may be prophylactic against this sort memory loss, too.

This is amazingly good news and important if true as they say.

Three-point breakdown:

1. The topic is obviously important. People aren’t getting less susceptible to these conditions. Or any younger.

2. The style is very simple. It has a home movie feel, despite having two directors. Roderman—I kind of wanted to punch him at first. But then it really became clear that he’s got a kind of Mr. Rogers thing going: He’s not talking down to old people, he’s just very gentle and sweet-natured.

3. Slant? Well, obviously this presents this technique as working. Can I guarantee it’s not edited to elide failures, or present the results as more dramatic than they are? I cannot. I’d like to hope not.

This film has no entry in IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes or Box Office Mojo.

The reviews on Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks are deservedly mixed, and The Boy and I were semi-reluctant viewers of this tale of an old lady who takes dance lessons from a con man. But not all 2-star movies are 2-star movies for the same reasons.

The worst, of course, might be called the staid 2-starrers. They plod along with no particular aspiration, leaving you vaguely unsatisfied, even if you found them largely unobjectionable. Then there are the ones that have aspects that are very good, or even brilliant, which come crashing against some technical failure or other, which can be frustrating but at least interesting and engaging, when they’re not driving you nuts.

Six Dance Lessons is the latter sort of film. It’s in such a panic to be a movie that makes an Important Social Statement, it trips all over itself in the beginning, and then ends with the subtlety of a political commercial.

In between, though, there are some moments of earned emotion payoff, as Gena Rowlands and Cheyenne Jackson spar and get to know each other. These parts were really good. I mean, the acting is good all the way through, enough so that, in the beginning, when the writing/direction rushes you through the early parts of their relationship, you can still be won over.

But in the middle, the writing calms down a bit, and the characters (now more comfortable with each other) are allowed to relate in a more natural way. This, unfortunately, sets you up for the climax, which (despite all evidence to the contrary) indicates the movie doesn’t really take place in 2014. Or the writer wasn’t aware that Roe vs. Wade passed in 1973. Or more likely this was written a while back.

I’m struggling here, but not as much as writer Richard Alfieri (The Sisters) had to to get in his one-two yay-Roe/yay-gay-marriage punch.

There’s some awful bigotry in it, as well. There’s a half-hearted pointing out of said bigotry but you can tell the writer and director feel it’s justified bigotry, which is how everyone feels about their own prejudices, of course.

Despite all this, we kind of liked it, The Boy more than I, but I notice he’s less sensitive to clunky character development. But we both felt the better story was subordinated to shoehorn the message in.

I don’t want to blame director Arthur Allan Seidelman, king of the After School Special, for this. But he seems the likely culprit.

Rita Moreno, Jackie Weaver and Julian Sands have nice supporting roles.

If you’re completely sympatico or reasonably thick-skinned it’s worth checking out.

Can you say “allegory”? I knew that you could!

The Babadook is an Australian horror flick that’s got the good buzz, and said buzz is fairly well deserved: This is a simple but stylish horror flick with not a few things in common with the last horror flick we saw, Scream At The Devil.

A woman in labor is being driven to the hospital by her husband when they get into a horrible accident that kills him. Seven years later, Amelia is a harried, depressed single mom raising a serious handful of a boy, Sam. She’s never gotten over her husband’s death, and her son, desperate for her attention and to fill the masculine role, swears to protect her with his litany of weapons and traps, and some parlor magic (illusions) to boot.

Our story begins in earnest when the two find a child’s book called “The Babadook” which is filled with a menacing ghastly story about a creature that, the more you deny it, the stronger it gets.

And, let me put my name in the hat for “Father of the Year” because I would totally read this horrifying popup book to my kids at bedtime.

Anyway, the Babadook begins to move from the pages to real life in an increasingly menacing fashion, about in accordance with Amelia’s grasp on reality slipping. The interesting thing about this movie, in horror terms, is that you’re never really sure if the babadook is going to get them, or Amelia’s going to get them. Hmmm—perhaps like The Shining?

Actually, yeah, that’s a pretty close comparison. Where The Shining hauntings are a manifestation of Jack Torrance’s alcoholism, The Babadook’s babadook is a manifestation of Amelia’s inability to deal with her husband’s passing. (There are some theories that there is no babadook at all and it’s all Amelia. That’s a bit far.)

I actually had a problem with this: It’s just so, so literal. I was all “Hey, ‘The Telltale Heart’ just called to say ‘Dial back the allegory a notch!’”

The Boy really liked it, as has everyone I’ve talked to. I did, too. I just was a little taken aback by the obviousness of it. Though, in fairness, while the allegory is obvious, the details are up for considerable debate.

Solid direction. Writer/director Jennifer Kent avoids cheap shocks and gore, making it work on a more emotional level. The Boy said there was music, because it stopped abruptly at certain horror points, but I would’ve said there was no music at all, especially when you’d most expect it, which I thought was a brave choice. (There’s a music credit, Jed Kurzel, so there’s music somewhere in there.)

Essie Davis (The Matrix Reloaded, Charlotte’s Web) and Noah Wiseman are good in their roles as mother and son. Wiseman has a particularly tough role, and I’m inclined to credit the director with a big part of his success: His character has to undergo a transition between obnoxious monster child to brave warrior, but it’s not that his character actually changes, but the way we perceive it. Barbara West was also quite good as the sympathetic neighbor.

Worth checking out.

The tagline for Aftermath proclaims “A dark comedy about one man’s overreaction!”.

No, it’s not.

It’s not a dark comedy, although there are some darkly funny parts to it. It’s not about “one man’s overreaction”. Well, probably not. I guess it depends on who you think One Man is. The implication is that it’s Anthony Michael Hall but—well, let me describe the story, and you decide.

Tom (Hall) is a successful contractor/douchebag living the good life with his hot wife Rebecca (Elizabeth Rohm, “Law & Order”) when his foreman, Matt (Jamie Harrold, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), who is as unhappy with his life (with less hot wife, Lily Rabe, “American Horror Story”, “Law & Order”, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) as Tom is happy with his, has trouble with one of his crew, the menacingly fat Chris Penn (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”).

I don’t remember what Penn’s character name is, and he’s not listed in the IMDB credits. He died during the shooting of this film, and there were rumors that his scenes were taken out of this film—rumors that seem impossible given that he is the film’s antagonist. (I actually can’t find the character name anywhere!)

One thing leads to another and Penn ends up assaulting Matt in front of Tom one Friday afternoon. Penn has the idea that he’s going to be Tom’s #1 guy if he can dispatch Matt, and we get the idea he’s not too particular about the definition of “dispatch”.

Tom, of course, thinks this is nuts and fires Penn. As Penn tells his pal, Eric (Frank Whaley, “Law & Order”, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), it’ll all be cool Monday morning. Keep in mind that Penn is not meant to be insane, but presumably part of a culture where felonious assault is just a thing, you know?

It turns out not to be cool Monday, especially given that Matt has vanished.

Of course, Tom tells the cops about it when they ask. But this really pisses Penn off. And Eric, who’s thinking they should go back to their criminaling ways. But Penn wants to go legit, even if that means killing people.

OK, I may have that muddled. What’s clear is that Penn is a menace, and responds to things with extreme violence, so maybe he’s the guy in the movie tagline who’s over-reacting.

Tom has a few avenues open to him: The cops are curiously unhelpful. To the point where I began to think some sort of Witness Relocation Program issue was at stake. Tom also has a buddy (Leo Burmeister, “Law and Order”) who happens to be a sheriff and who’s investigating stuff for him.

The Sheriff (that’s his name in the credits) tips Tom off to minor thug, King (Tony Danza, “Who’s The Boss: Criminal Intent Unit”) so he can get some “home protection” and the enterprising King sees an opportunity to get some cash by menacing Penn. So he and his mook Darrell (Federico Castellucio, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) go to give a warning to Penn, who easily outweighs both of them put together.

This ultimately works out poorly for all, including lesser, wheelchair bound mook, Clark (Clark Middleton, “Law & Order”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”.) Also Rebecca. And Tom. And Penn.

Actually, everyone.

You have to feel bad for writer/director Thomas Farone, who seems like he had a good story and a stylish approach to telling it, but when your antagonist dies midway through the shoot, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Then, when you’re trying to fix things, another actor dies (Leo Burmeister), you can hardly be blamed for trying for “baffling” over…well, I’m not even sure what your options are at that point.

Penn makes a sudden exit from the film. The Sheriff ends up vanishing. We never do find out what happened to Matt, though I thought there was an implication that maybe his wife killed him. Matt and his wife have a daughter, apparently, though she never appears past the opening sequence. Frank Whaley turns out to be tougher than Anthony Michael Hall, which is some sort of weird Brat Pack Nerd Showdown gone wrong.

I just don’t know.

We didn’t hate it. It was disappointing and frustrating, and it’s entirely possible if it had been finished we’d have absolutely hated it. It opens with the end, which turns out to be the actual end of the story, not the pre-climactic moment where things turn around, so you end up feeling like you’ve been played a bit.

Tom’s self-description is pretty awful, but he never lives up to it in the actual movie: He busts some chops—which a contractor pretty much has to do—but it’s clear he’s living the good life because he’s worked hard. He’s quite taken with himself, but his actions in the film are clearly more centered around protecting his pregnant wife then, say, ego, obsession or stubbornness (cf. the Kevin Bacon/James Wan revenge flick Death Sentence).

It’s almost an anti-revenge flick, really: Where you sort of expect from the title and the tagline that this is going to be about taking revenge, what you have is a guy who’s desperately trying to stop bad things before they happen.

The Boy was particularly frustrated by the sense of something really quality trying to get out of the muddle. Though he didn’t get the whole comic-book thing. (The scene transitions are done as though you’re reading panels in a comic book. Which also seems to peter out at points.)

The funny thing is that we were trying to figure out when the movie took place. There are no cell phones at first—they turn up about 30-40 minutes into it, and they’re not smart phones. Also the monitors are all fat CRTs. I guessed early 2000s, but it turns out this wasn’t an attempt to make a period piece, it’s just that the film was mostly shot in 2005!

An oddity. But hard to recommend.

It happens every so often where I just can’t figure out ratings. I get, for example, that most people don’t like black comedy and so I hold films like Drop Dead Gorgeous and Very Bad Things in much higher esteem than most. And it’s usually not a problem to figure out the critic/audience split, since critics and audiences have differences—usually well known and stereotype-reinforcing differences.

Viva La Liberta is a puzzler then.

It gets a thumbs down from critics but a fairly strong thumbs up from audiences. The disparity is wider than the Oscar-winning La Grand Belleza, and flipped, with audiences being warm while critics went ga-ga. (That one I understand.)

I don’t know. Maybe it’s a political thing. Everyone in Europe’s a socialist, but some are more socialist than others, I guess.

Viva La Liberta is the “Prince and the Pauper”, or perhaps Dave, updated for modern times as Tom Servilio (the lead in Bellezza) plays an Italian MP, the leader of the “opposition party” which is flagging and not living up to its early ambitions. On the verge of a complete rout, the MP vanishes leaving only a note that he’ll be back.

Desperate for damage control, the political operatives end up seeking out the MP’s crazy twin brother, who is a philosopher/poet/nut who speaks his mind and has plenty of practice imitating his brother.

Naturally, he’s a wild success, managing to turn a losing campaign into a winning one, just by being honest and enthusiastic. This lovely (and well-worn) narrative conceit suffers a bit when you realize that Crazy Bro isn’t really saying anything substantive when he talks.

But what are you going to do? If he said something substantive, he’d doubtless end up alienating some portion of the audience. And it’s not really the point. The story is really about the two brothers and their journey.

Well, sort of, and perhaps this is the somewhat weak part: The crazy brother is more of  a plot device than a character. He’s a sort of Italian paragon, a lover of poetry and romance and emotion, and he’s also crazy—or at least the world views him that way. The movie implies heavily that he’s the sane one in a world gone mad.

The MP brother finds himself in a completely different life which is at least as agreeable as his former life, though much simpler. A backstory involving the twins and an old girlfriend is hinted at, a story that ended badly and split the three apart decades ago.

By the end, the movie even begins to play fast-and-loose with the whole twins thing. I mean, the closing scene teases heavily as to who is who, and even whether there were two of these guys at all. That’s probably a bit of a reach, but the end is a definite tease.

The Boy and I really enjoyed it, though are expectations were somewhat lowered by the harsh reviews. It was light and cute, funny and sweet, and not really as dark or cynical as a movie like this might be expected to be. (Could that be why the critics didn’t like it?)

And, if nothing else, Toni Servilio is just a great actor.

Here’s a pretty good, if slightly unfocused-feeling, documentary on Aubrey de Grey and Bill Andrews, two guys who are trying to defeat Death. Well, not really Death-with-a-capital-D but death as a natural end to the human body. Aging, in other words.

Now, the first thing you’d expect from guys trying to defeat death is a weird sex/family life.

What, you wouldn’t? I would. A normal sex life with normal progeny would hardly preclude research into immortality, but I would just expect the people most obsessed with it to be ones who hadn’t really gotten the hang of how the species achieves immortality (i.e., through family and children).

I’d also expect them to be materialistic, since a materialist believes he IS his body.

Well, check, check and checkity-check!

But before we get to this, let’s look at the theories of these interesting guys who may come up with some very cool stuff.

Andrews is all about the telomeres. As I understand it, telomeres are the protective ends of chromosomes (analogous to shoelace aglets in Andrews’ telling), a sort of repetitive buffer that keeps the chromosome duplicating properly and from getting messed up. Problem is, with each division, a little bit comes off the end of the telomeres and when they’re gone your chromosomes end up like so much gunk.

(The spell-checker wants to turn “telomeres” to “omelettes” and “aglets” to “eaglets”.)

The Science used to be settled (by Nobel winning physiologist Alexis Carrel) that human cells, taken out of the body, would continue to divide and reproduce forever. An American scientist, Leonard Hayflick, discovered that, no, in fact the number of times cells divide is very limited indeed. (Hayflick has not won the Nobel.)

I don’t know why I brought that Nobel stuff up. Except, maybe if you want to get the big bucks and awards, it doesn’t hurt to give people good news. (Actually, Carrel got his award for advances in vascular suturing, and rather boldly testified to witnessing an apparently miraculous cure at Lourdes.)

The movie interviews Hayflick, who seems to regard the whole immortality movement as distasteful, and Andrews (and probably de Grey) as snake oil salesmen. (Hayflick, it should be noted, is long married with five children and, implied by the movie, at least somewhat attentively Jewish.)

Anyway, Andrews is all about telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens telomeres. Sounds cool, right? It might be, although the shortening of telomeres might be the body’s defense against cancer. (As you age, your cells need to replicate less, so restricting their ability to do so might prevent cancer even if it causes cancer.) On the other hand, some argue that telomerase might increase your resistance to cancer.

Which, the engineer in me says, brings up the question of why the shortening of telomeres occurs at all, and why we aren’t flush with telomerase. It might just be a side-effect of other processes that we can safely ignore. Or not.

Meanwhile, de Grey is one of the people who thinks telomerase is carcinogenic, and his theory involves undoing the damage to cells done by…well, life. The movie doesn’t outright list the seven types of cell damage he theorizes but, broadly, he’s looking damage intrinsic to the cell (like mutations), damage internal to the cell (like crap accumulating) and, I guess, damage done by external factors, including damage the cell does to other cells.

Well, you gotta admit that “a magic prescription for telomerase” is a lot easier to grasp and market than de Grey’s plan which involves all kinds of stuff, including nanotechnology that doesn’t exist yet.

It’s also kind of interesting that the problems/solutions are practically orthogonal. Telomeres aren’t a factor in de Grey’s philosophy and Andrews doesn’t talk about damage (at least in this movie). I guess if you’re replacing the cell (a la Andrews) you don’t have to care about the junk in an old cell (presuming it dies) while if you’re repairing the damage to a cell, it doesn’t need to reproduce? (I’ve read the two philosophies are in opposition, but I don’t see that as necessarily true.)

The movie doesn’t go much into details like this, which is probably fine. It starts with a “booyah” story about successfully lengthening a mouse’s life in 2011, but it should be noted that this is pretty much the only success mentioned.

Andrews and de Grey themselves are pretty fit, I guess. With the amount that de Grey seems to drink and the thickness to his speech, I thought “This guy seems like a high functioning alcoholic”, but he’s able to ace Andrews out on most of the aging tests they take. (Though he digs for worms on his push-ups.)

The two are affable competitors, going to the same gerontology clinic, and filling out their forms with “Main complaint: Aging has not been cured” and such.

This movie was filmed over the course of several years, it seems, during which time several people important to the two principals die, in the usual way.

Andrews is a super-marathoner who tries (twice) and fails (twice, IMO) to run 130ish miles up in the Himalayas. (In fact, I think he sort-of marries his girlfriend in the Buddhist temple we saw in this movie.) When I say he fails, I mean, the first time he completely fails to complete the course.

In the second case, after a lot of braggadocio about how he’s going to beat this race just like he’s going to cure aging, he gets about 2/3ds of the way through and gets a massive blister (and probably some other cardio/respiratory problems) and gives up. After some unspecified amount of time lying on a bed and seeing a doctor, his girlfriend convinces him to carry on and he does.

Personally, I don’t think you’ve completed a course with the original intention if you took a couple hours break in the middle. Not that I’m taking the accomplishment away from him: Regular super-marathons are an amazing (and amazingly stupid physiologically, if I understand it correctly) thing, much less ones at 5 miles up.

But, man, what a metaphor: A race which is, perhaps, impossible for his body to complete, that he swears he’ll complete, and he does, sorta, if we allow for some goalpost moving.

On the other side, de Grey likes to go out into semi-secluded areas (like, covered with brush but near enough to a road that the cars passing by move the brush) and canoodle naked with his (much older) wife. Later, when he moves to California (of course) to open up the SENS Institute, his wife stays back in England and he hangs with his two younger girlfriends.

Andrews has a passion for not dying. He’d doubtless like to help his (Alzheimer’s afflicted) father, as well. Meanwhile, de Grey says there’s absolutely nothing personal about his quest, which is why he goes to the gerontology clinic to compare personal notes with Andrews.

Honestly, de Grey struck me as seriously damaged.

So, on the three-point-scale:

1. Subject matter: Good and important, I suppose, though somewhat conflicted about what the story was.

2. Presentation: Entertaining. Good interviews. Light on the science.

3. Slant. Well, something like this is almost always going to make you sympathetic, right? And it is. Is it biased toward these guys being successful? I don’t think so.

About the only time I kind of rolled my eyes at the treatment of the subject matter was a debate between de Grey and Some English Dude, in the classic style of Debates Meant To Settle Things. This was not focused on “Is it possible?” but “Is it Right and Good?” The contra-side was laughably bad. We should not seek immortality, the argument went, because the world is such a terrible place on the verge of crisis upon crisis.

Neo-Malthusian crap, in other words, as if the accumulation of experience could not possibly be of benefit to solving these problems.

Not that de Grey’s rebuttal, as shown, was any great shakes. “We don’t know” and “Future generations will despise us for not pursuing this…” Meh. He’s on solid ground when he says that if you’re anti-immortality, you must believe that it’s good for people to grow old or you must believe that there’s a time when people should die, even if they’re healthy.

There’s no decent argument against longevity any more than there’s a decent argument for the evils of “climate change”. To make either argument is to say that the way things are RIGHT NOW is how they should always be. Of course, those people are free to off themselves at 60 (about the expected lifespan of a pre-industrial person who made it to adulthood).

Nothing is resolved. We are not really enlightened. But it’s still an interesting film. The Boy was reasonably pleased, if not enthused.

Cure aging or die trying, they proclaim! Well, yes, those are the options.

A lot of people, in dismissing this movie, have sniffed, “Well, it’s about actors, and who cares about actors?”

This is very shortsighted and narrow-minded indeed, and I hasten to remind everyone that actors are very much like human beings, and we can learn much from their struggles.

There’s gotta be something very close to irony in the fact that people will watch all kinds of movies about killers, pedophiles, gangsters, and the worst scum known to man, but get their hackles up when there’s a movie about actors. (All those other characters are played by actors, y’know?) And, for all the self-congratulatory encomiums actors give each other, when they make movies about themselves, they’re almost always about what a messed up lot they are.

I don’t know. It can be endearing, I think, and I think that’s the case here in Inarritu’s (21 Grams, Babel) Birdman, the tale of an actor (Michael Keaton) who gave up an easy paycheck to pursue art, and face-planted. Now nearing what may be the end of his career, he’s sunk everything into his own Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”.

Of course, many actors end up in a defining role that they can never escape, but in the case of Riggan Thomson, his meal-ticket superhero Birdman doesn’t only haunt his career, it lives inside his head in constant criticism of everything the guy does.

His life is, of course, a big ol’ mess. His girlfriend/co-star is pregnant (maybe), his estranged daughter/assistant hates him, his ex-wife actually seems to love him but knows better than to get mixed up with him again, and worst of all his male co-star can’t act. Strike that, worst of all, when a freak accident takes his co-star out, his other female co-star recommends her husband to take his place, and the unstable, arrogant jerk may be a better actor than he is—with a better understanding of the material!

His agent seems to be the only guy who really has a handle on him.

The icing on the cake? Riggan is convinced he caused the freak accident that took out his co-star, and is given to frequent bouts of telekinetic tantrums.

I had my doubts about this going in. I’m not a big fan of Babel—I didn’t really get it, and felt that this film might end up being pretentiously ponderous, or maybe ponderously pretentious, but it’s not at all ponderous.

I could say that it might’ve been interesting, actually, to make the characters themselves less interesting and focus on the struggle of trying to get a Broadway show on, but nobody does that sort of thing any more.

And while it’s fair to call it a “character study”, that doesn’t really do it justice. Much like Whiplash, despite a relatively sedate setting, there is quite a bit of suspense and excitement in this film: Will Riggan “sell out”? Will the play be successful? Will it be any good? Will Riggan be any good? Will Mike do something crazy to screw it up? Will Riggan do something crazy to try to get attention? Is the whole thing just rigged against our heroes in the first place?

And what the hell is going on with the whole Birdman thing, anyway?

I was deeply concerned, by the third act, about what would happen to Riggan. Even though his messes seemed entirely self-made, I wanted him to be redeemed even though he was an actor. I think we can all agree that this is a considerable accomplishment on Inarritu and Keaton’s part.

Except at the beginning and the end, this movie has no cuts, a la Rope. The Flower spotted a few of the tricks used to create that effect but what was interesting to me was that: 1) The constant tracking and tight shots made everything feel intimate; 2) No cuts is way less jarring than rapid-fire mega-cuts. Honestly, we were well into the first act before I noticed that’s what was going on, whereas (for me, anyway) constant rapid cuts call attention to themselves and away from the actual story.

Obviously the acting is good. Keaton is still Keaton, 30 years past Night Shift. Norton is always great (well, maybe not in that romcom he did with Jenna Elfman). Naomi Watts and Emma Stone put in heartfelt, memorable performances as well. You’ll forget Andrea Riseborough (Never Let Me Go, Shadow Dancer) has an English accent.

The big surprise is Zach Galifianakis, who has lost weight and looks absolutely nothing like himself (as we know him) despite, well, being just a skinnier version of himself. I mean, he didn’t shave his beard or put on an accent or even dress remarkably different. He just acted. And, I guess, he acted far differently, staying away from his comedic ticks and mostly keeping his voice out of that “I’m so whiny it’s funny” range.

The music is entirely ambient, mostly a guy playing drums (sometimes in oddly inappropriate places) and a stagey orchestral pit kind of thing.

The Flower, who is increasingly selective about her moviegoing, approved. The Boy gets a peculiarly satisfied air when we see multiple high-quality movies back-to-back, and since we had just seen Whiplash, he was feeling pretty good.

If you’re not allergic to actors, and stories about actors, we all recommend.

Tanks! For the memories! OK, dumb pun out of the way, Fury is the latest film written and directed by David Ayer (End of Watch). Ayer also co-wrote and directed (and regretted) the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Sabotage, but now he’s back in the saddle with this tale of a WWII tank crew captained by Brad Pitt.

Ayer is excellent at creating movies about male relationships, and Fury is a tour-de-force of war-forged brotherhood, as this squad of men have fought together in this crappy old American tank for years.

The story is that, at the end of the war, a tank crew are part of the final push toward Berlin and, as the movie opens, they’ve lost one of their team. The replacement they get isn’t just young, but not even combat trained—just a warm body that the Army has thrown into the mix.

This is, essentially, a road picture, probably moreso than a war movie. It’s a series of vignettes showing how the new kid becomes one of the team as the tank moves from place to place, less about any tactical or strategic goal. As such it’s very good. (End of Watch had a similar form, as I recall.)

I heard some people sort of dismissing it over moral ambiguity but I actually didn’t find it to be particularly ambiguous. The stakes are high, so just as a brief hesitation can result in innocent deaths, one can’t really apply non-wartime rules (particularly regarding the sanctity of life) to the situations the crew comes across.

Or, maybe I’m just a monster.

Anyway, I get the idea that Ayer throws these situations out there not for us to judge, but to get us into the mindset, which builds toward the Desperate Act of Heroism in the third act. You gotta understand the mindset, the bond, the Band of Brothers thing, for it to make sense.

Emotionally, I mean. As a practical matter the third act is kind of goofy. Ayer overplays his hand by showing us a massive battalion of super-Nazis with anti-tank weapons, against Our Boys and their one, badly damaged tank.

I didn’t mind that much. It wasn’t really the point, and if you could get past the improbability of it all, it’s good, gripping action with characters that have been well established by that point. And, much like End of Watch, it’s Manly.

I’m cool with that. We’re lucky to get an unapologetically Manly picture in any given year.

Acting is good. It’s probably my favorite (recent) Brad Pitt role. Shia LaBeouf is in it, and I didn’t even recognize him. He’s not in his typical typecasted role as a weenie, and he can act, I think, given a reason to. Michael Pena (End of Watch, American Hustle) and Jon Bernthal (the World’s Worst Best Friend from “The Walking Dead”) make up the cruder element of the crew. Logan Lerman (Perks of Being a Wallflower, 3:10 to Yuma) plays the kid.

Anamaria Vinca (of the harrowing 4 Months, Three Weeks, Two Days) plays guardian to a young fraulein Alicia von Rittberg (Barbara) during the very weird and tense “romantic interlude” vignette.

It’s good. Entertaining without being glib. Enough gore (some would say too much) to keep it from being a romp but not so much (in the post-Saving Private Ryan sense) that it rubs your nose in it. A little over-the-top heroism.

Definitely worth seeing. Maybe not up to End of Watch standards (although The Boy didn’t recall Watch being that great and claimed to like this better), but far better than the regrettable Sabotage. And by far better, I mean, Ayer admits to regretting doing that as a “work-for-hire” thing.

To which I say: Good. He has a unique voice. Let’s hope he keeps using it.

I query The Flower regularly about what movies she wants to go see, because she often facilitates our movie sojourns, and she told me in no uncertain terms she was not particularly interested in the latest Hunger Game movies.

She apparently liked the survival stuff. Not a big fan of the revolution stuff.

But then her friends (who have read the books) decided they were going to go see it, and they live downtown, so she needed me to drive her 20 miles to Burbank’s media district where there are three AMC theaters (helpfully named AMC 6, AMC 8 and AMC 16), tickets are $12 at least, and, oh, yeah, let’s go opening weekend to one of the biggest movies of the year.

I pointed out to The Boy this how normal people go to the movies, when they go. It ended up being a five hour deal, since we had to get there early, there were huge lines and traffic everywhere, and the whole thing cost about $60 for the three of us.

The Boy and I wouldn’t have gone but there was no way for us to see a different movie at our regular theater and still do the drop off/pick up thing.

Our verdict? It was all right. The three of us are completely outside this phenomenon, as we are most of the big movie phenomena. I mean, we’ll go see (some of) them, but for us, it’s just another movie. Not to get all hipster or nothing, but you probably haven’t even heard of our favorite movies in any given year.

Unless you read this blog, of course.

Anyway, the story picks up where the last one left off, with Katniss finding herself in District 13 in an underground bunker where the Revolution is being planned by Julianne Moore and the late Seymour Philip Hoffman.

I sooo wanted to hear Julianne Moore say “Our Hunger Game champions and proud we are of all of them” but that would’ve been in appropriate.

The deal is that the Revolution needs a face and, if you need a face to rile people into action, you could do worse than Jennifer Lawrence’s. Never mind, once again, that these people have the technology do make anyone’s face do whatever they want, because that would completely obviate the plot. But it’s especially funny here given all the digital video processing that goes on.

Since we all basically liked it though none of us were wild about it—either going in or after, just like the other movies—it’s kind of interesting to ponder why this was generally less well received.

The Flower liked the actual Hunger Games in the original. (Yeah, I have a strict “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to” policy.) What she liked about this one was that it was different, rather than just rehashing the previous two movies.

I heard some complain about the acting being too low key. Except for a couple of shots it looked like maybe they digitally inserted Hoffman (or a body double) in—oh, the irony—I found it to be about right. I like Lawrence better with each film and am convinced she is the anti-Kirsten Stewart foretold by The Prophecy.

And the burden is heavy on her. She has to badly act at times, but then she has to convince you she’s sincere at the most obvious (and even corny) moments. Essentially, her unchecked passions are what powers the Revolution. (Well, whaddayawant? It’s a book for teen girls.)

I think people are feeling used by the “split the last book” thing. I guess it all does feel a bit like a set up for the next (and final) film. But if the next one knocks it out of the park, why bitch? I don’t know, maybe wait till the next one comes out. You can watch ‘em back to back and pretend you’re watching an (abridged) Peter Jackson flick!

I kid. I kid because I hate Peter Jackson.

Anyway, no strong feelings one way or the other here. I guess you wouldn’t want to see this without seeing the other two, and by that point you know whether you want to see a third one. I mean, it’s different, but not so different as to swing you over to the “yea” or “nay” column if you’re not there already.

I’d wait till I could see it at the bargain theater, though.

I’ll take “movies we’re not in the demographic to see for $500, Alex”.

The Homesman, a Western with Tommy Lee Jones, was playing and seemed like a promising candidate for a weeknight show, but it had this high critic/low audience split and was described as something like “a feminist rebuke of Westerns”.

Ugh.

But there was this other movie, about a black singer whose rise to fame is accompanied by a suicide attempt, from which she is rescued by a cop, and the ensuing love story. This is something I’d say couldn’t possibly be good—or at least of no interest to The Boy and I—but it had a high 90s from critics and audiences alike (at the time; currently it’s down to mid 80s), so off we went.

And it’s good! Not only is it good, we really liked it.

It’s also very sweet, and almost quaint at times, in its portrayal of the girl-who-just-wants-to-sing and the boy-who-wants-to-change-the-community. Naturally, the critics have to ding it as “formulaic”, but even so it got through to their coal black hearts. I don’t know: I haven’t seen it in a while, maybe since Judy Garland days. Or maybe that’s just the last time I saw a memorable form of it.

Gina Prince-Bythwood (Love and Baskteball) wrote and directed and manages to grab you from the opening scene. I’m not even sure how it works, exactly. You have a shrewish Minnie Driver (looking great, I might add) doing a classic stage mom thing, both putting her daughter at the center of her world and forcing her into a mold for success. (Gypsy, much?) And the recipient of this energy is a young Noni (played heart-breakingly by newcomer India Jean-Jacques).

Next thing you know it, young Noni is all grown up and played by the gorgeous Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Odd Thomas, Belle), about to break out after playing second fiddle to the greasy rapper Kid Screwdriver (or whatever, played by Machine Gun Kelly), her beautiful voice hidden behind a bunch of autotuned crap in a crappy hip hop piece of crap.

Along comes the Denzel-esque Nate Parker (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Non-Stop) to save her life and her soul, with about two hours of romantic drama ups and downs.

The acting is solid, and the direction sure, but formula or no, if this sort of thing is easy to do, I sure don’t see it being done well very often. I think part of this is that the recent mainstream romances I’ve seen have taken romcom pandering to the nth degree, being nearly unwatchable for men. Hell, I’m still scarred from The Notebook.

Part of what sustains it is that the characters are strong and likable. Even if their aspirations are beyond what most of us have, you can relate to it. You can see where the conflicts between will arise.

I don’t know: Like I said, I’m gunshy on female-oriented movies these days. It’s almost like they set out to alienate males.

So, even though this takes nearly two hours, there’s only a slight lull near the end of the third act, but even this pays off well. I got genuinely choked up at the beginning of the movie, and at the end.

The only really tired cliché, I thought, was the whole “struggle against your parents to find your own identity” thing. It’s central to the story here and not just an easy punt for “how do we give this the feels” (as The Boy would put it).

Anyway, we both liked it and were very pleasantly surprised. It hasn’t done gangbusters at the box office, though. Go figger.

Every year around this time, a lot of my so-called “friends” in the Midwest and North perpetuate this hoax called “snow”. They post pictures of it on treetops, in their driveways, even make “snowmen”.

But I’ve been on set: I know it’s just soap.

Still I can play along, and nobody plays the joke better than the Swedes. And nobody’s ever played it better than in Force Majeure.

Force Majeure takes place in a resort deep in the French Alps, where a Swedish family has come on vacation. We can tell, right away, from the awkwardness with which the wife speaks, that the family’s in a fragile state, with her feeling neglected. The husband feels it as well, but is better at ignoring it and pretending everything’s fine.

As part of making the resort viable, there are periodical explosions in the mountains to control avalanches. And our story really kicks into gear when one of these avalanches heads out of control toward the family. This ensuing events end up stressing the family to the breaking point.

It probably says something about Sweden that this is listed, at least in part, as a comedy.

Well, I laughed.

Some call it black comedy but it’s not the wholesome sort of black comedy where people die. Instead, it’s people’s illusions that die, which is far, far worse. At the same time, there’s an oddly upbeat end to it all, as if our illusions could be as easily built as they are destroyed.

Although the director has joked that he was trying to drive up divorce rates in Sweden, this doesn’t stand so much as an argument against marriage as it is a testament toward behaving better. At least I took it that way: Significant attention was spent on the kids in the family who are aware of the tenuousness of their parents’ relationship and live in fear of them breaking up.

These kinds of dysfunctional family films are not for everyone (I find them very hit and miss) and they tend to have a strained, tense feeling throughout. Force Majeure doubles down on this by introducing an air of contagion to the proceedings, as our main couple’s problems spread to their friends and even acquaintances.

And then it triples down by filming this exotic resort in a positively alien manner. Sometimes, it’s just a couple people surrounded by pure white. Often there’s a fog settled over the whole valley. Just to screw with us, at one point the kids fly a drone in the night sky, and it looks more realistic than the hotel. The whole thing is ridiculously beautiful.

The only actor we recognized was the guy who plays Tormund Giantsbane on “Game of Thrones”, as the friend of the family. The actress playing the wife is apparently his “medspillerske” in real life, which is a word I cannot find a translation for. I thought the lead was Peter Sarsgaard. I’m still not convinced they’re different people.

But the acting is good, in that Swedish way, which apparently means really low-key right up until it’s not.

Anyway, I can see why critics would like it more than audiences, but if you’re open to this kind of drama/comedy, it’s entertaining and oddly thought provoking.

Wow. Just wow. This kid, this Damien Chazelle at 29 has decided to write and direct his first movie, and to make it one of the best films of the year. Maybe the best.

Back at UCLA, there was this girl, a classic California girl named Maureen, who came into the music department, all sunshine and smiles, tan and blonde, a Bruin cheerleader on the side. Within three months, it had reduced her to a pallid, nervous, hair-falling-out wreck of a human being. I think she transferred to chemistry/pre-med because it was so much less stressful.

When a similar anecdote is mentioned here (in passing), I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. But then I laughed like crazy when Fletcher had a casual, friendly chat with new recruit Andrew before their first rehearsal. Hard enough that The Boy leaned in to ask me what he was missing.

Well, you just have to know those kinds of people. Every music school has to have at least one, it seems.

This is the story of a jazz drummer (Andrew) who’s driven to be great, and a teacher (Fletcher) who’s driven to create greatness, and the many clashes they have over the course of a year or so. There is so much suspense, and so many great twists and turns in this film, it puts to shame most of the thrillers we’ve seen.

It hits close enough to home that I probably can’t be trusted, but The (largely a-musical) Boy also was really impressed. Paul Reiser and (relative newcomer) Melissa Benoist do a fine job in supporting roles as Andrew’s father and girlfriend, respectively, but this really comes down to a movie about Andrew and Fletcher.

Andrew is played by Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now, Divergent) and Fletcher is played by J. K. Simmons, who’s been doing great work for 20 years, but just tears up this role. Talks of Oscar are neither far-fetched nor unwarranted here. You’re never really sure who Fletcher is until the very end of the movie, and Simmons (aided by Chazelle’s script) makes any number of possibilities plausible.

I liked the music though it’s not really my kind of music. I tend to think modern jazz self-indulgent. “Oh, look at me, I’m in 7/12 time!” Get over yourself, I say.

Nah, it’s good. And it’s perfect for the story.

Chazelle, besides writing a tight script, keeps the direction tight, too. Intense, tight, nail-biting, and some would probably say “over the top”, but I can only assume they don’t know musicians.

What else is there to say? It’s a shoo-in to make the year-end “best” lists.

There’s a certain rollercoaster that can come as a hazard of the socially connected world.

“Oh, hey, Shari Shattuck’s on Twitter! Loved her in Body Chemistry 3! I’ll follow her.”
“Well, she’s been retired for a while, wonder if she’s been raising kids or stage act—”
“Oh, she followed me back! How nice!”
“Look at this: She’s got a new movie coming out called Scream at the Devil. Groovy.”
“Wow, that trailer—that’s a surprisingly cool trailer. I’ll tweet that.”
“She RTed my tweet! Neat.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing this.”
“Crap. What if I don’t like it?”
“Remember Sturgeon’s Law. And for horror movies, it’s more like 95%.”
“Uh oh. Written, produced and directed by her husband.”
“Who’s only done two other movies I’ve never heard of.”
*sweats*

Thus ends Act I of “A Nice Guy Goes To The Movies”.

Act II Spoiler: It’s pretty good.

*sigh of relief*

Actually, there are parts that are great, but more on that in a bit.

Scream at the Devil is the story of a woman (Shattuck) trying to repair her marriage after a severe breakup/mental breakdown, as she and her husband move into an isolated home (that looks like it might be in the Montrose area) far, far away from working cell phones and expensive locations and extras.

What follows is a sort of Rosemary’s Baby meets Repulsion, as Mirium, our heroine, starts to go-crazy-or-does-she? imagining demonic presences while she refuses her medicine and rages at her husband.`

A movie like this rests on a few things. First, and most obviously, the acting. Happily, Shattuck is more than up to the task. She is, by turns, vulnerable, agonized, bitchy, furious, haunted, grieving, determined, and just downright crazy.

Second, less obviously, is style. When you think about it, the plot here (as in Repulsion or Black Swan) is “woman goes crazy”. Not a lot to hang your hat on. But Joe Stachura (Mr. Shattuck, if you will) sells it, and sells it with full conviction, using a full raft of camera angles, cuts and moves. There are a couple of great dutch angles in here, for example, sincerely and effectively done which give a nice unsettled air to things.

I’m assuming this was very low budget, but the cinematography and overall energy does yeoman’s work in hiding that. In fact, if there’s a fault here, it’s that the director oversells certain things, leaving me to think at times, “Something sinister is going down…but I have no idea what!”

So, you have these great elements, what keeps this movie from being great? Well, what keeps most movies from being great?

Suspense, of course. Or rather, lack thereof.

In the case of horror movies, the most common culprit (I believe) is the desire for the “shocking twist”. The temptation is to straddle the fence on what’s going on (real horror, or a Scooby Doo tearaway mask) so that you can surprise people at the end.

Not to continually trash Something Wicked, but it’s a near perfect example of trying to create tension by presenting three simultaneous “plausible” explanations for the story, lying to the audience, all in an attempt to create a surprise ending.

There’s an interesting side-effect to the crazy/possessed dichotomy here: Shattuck is convincing enough as crazy, you end up having a sympathy for her (and her husband, played by Eric Etebari) that’s more appropriate for a more serious film. But the movie whipsaws between this and literal presentations of demonic presences, which means:

1) She’s either crazy beyond hope.
2) She’s possessed beyond hope.

But the audience has to have hope for there to be suspense.

This might be one place where being low-budget tripped things up: A rather odd couple in the form of Tony Todd and Kiko Ellsworth show up very near the end, as a couple of police detectives. These scenes are rather stilted, except for the chemistry between Shattuck and Todd (whom we’ve occasionally seen misused, as in the Final Destination series and The Graves).

But it suggested a potential avenue for hope, if there had a been a second storyline involving them trying to unravel the crazy-or-possessed mystery. Instead, they, too, end up as swept up in the events as Mirium.

The odd assortment of creepy neighbors and service people (again reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby) was also weird and stilted, but it’s supposed to be, and is rather effective in setting the tone here.

But the Boy pronounced it “solid” and solid it was, and we would definitely queue up to see more from this husband-and-wife team.

Oh, one thing, though: When the movie’s over, just roll the credits, okay? If you feel you must, you can put a “The End” or a “Fin” in, though, note you’re making a commentary. Never, ever put an ambiguous ending title in: Not “The End?”, not “The End…or is it?”, and for Heaven’s sake, not “The Beginning”.

We all saw the movie. If there’s more to the story potentially (and there’s always potentially more), we all know it. Spelling it out is just plain hokey.

Anyway, check it out: Overall, it’s lots of fun.

On the last possible day they could do it without breaking an agreement Stalin made in Tehran in 1943, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. This was August 9th, the day the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. About three weeks later, Japan surrendered, and the Soviets had visions of occupying (and doubtless annexing or splitting Germany-style) some of the Japanese Islands, like Hokkaido. They were largely thwarted in their ambitions.

Giovanni’s Island, an animated film out of Japan, tells the tale of one place where they weren’t.

Shikotan is a small island north of Hokkaido, and our story begins in 1945 after the surrender, and young Junpei and Kanta’s grandfather is describing the depredations about to be visited upon them by the invading American horde. Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife, kinda stuff.

Instead of the Americans, though, it’s the Russians. And they steal everything. I presume they raped everything, too, but this is a kid’s movie, so nothing of that sort is shown.

On the other hand Grave of the Fireflies is also a kid’s movie, so keep that in mind going in. This is not quite at that level. If memory serves, Fireflies is near constant tragedy, whereas this has strong elements of the positive aspects of a “coming of age” story.

For example, the Russian commandant who takes over the island (and Junpei and Kanta’s house) has a young daughter, Tanya, who evolves a relationship with Junpei. The Japanese and the Russian kids end up learning each others’ folk songs. While Junpei’s family lives in the adjoining stable to their old house, Tanya and the boys share a toy railroad track.

The railroad is the theme of the story: Giovanni’s Island is a science-fiction story the boys father read to them, and they are named after the two main characters of that story. (Well, sorta: Junpei is as close as you can get to Giovanni. And Kanta is…Capone or something.) This story has to something to do with trains, and the boys are obsessed with them. (They’ve never seen one. They live on a rural island.)

Things take a turn for the worse when the Russians decide to clear the island of the pesky Japanese and the boys take it on themselves to find their captured father.

But it’s a good story, strangely bittersweet, and very Japanese. (But not Studio Ghibli.)

The Boy approved.

I found myself trapped downtown for a while and, as I often do, I wandered into a movie theater. And, when I wander into a movie theater not “my own”, I marvel at how much it costs, and am not even the least surprised that people don’t go to the movies any more. (One ticket was fifteen dollars! For a matinee!)

And, as often happens, I see a movie I wouldn’t normally see at all, in this case Ouija, a movie that ranked only slightly higher on RT than the tragically awful Something Wicked. This is the story of a girl who plays with a Ouija board thus ensuring her doom, and that of all her friends.

As it so often does.

This is typical of the modern, slickly produced, PG-13 horror flick, Well shot, reasonably well acted, with good looking principles, a few startle shots, a twist, and a ridiculous stinger. It makes a few typical horror movie mistakes, in particular a sloppiness in “the rules” that makes it seem like things are happening just because the plot needs to advance.

Probably the most interesting thing about this film is one rather unusual mistake it makes, which I will endeavor to explain.

Genre films have certain conventions which are typically both limiting and necessary in order for the genre to hold up. For example, a mystery by nature downplays the terribleness of the crimes, because the crimes aren’t the point. The point is the solving of the mystery. This is particularly necessary of the murder mystery serial, where the detective encounters corpse after corpse. Jessica Fletcher must be as perky after seeing her 200th corpse as she was after seeing her first.

Horror films come in different varieties with different conventions. Ouija may have had pretensions about being something else, but it’s essentially a slow-moving Ten Little Indians (speaking of murder mysteries) as each character gets knocked off by an evil spirit.

But it’s vital for this kind of horror film to shake off deaths quickly. Dwelling on the deaths of characters who, after all, exist entirely to be killed to demonstrate the growing menace takes all the fun out of it.

Friday The 13th, while not a great (nor even passable) series, typically handled this by hiding the deaths from the other characters. Other horror movies will spread the deaths around between characters who don’t interact. And some approach the problem by not killing outright, but just threatening.

Ouija opens, after an initial flashback-type scene involving three of the characters as pre-teens, with one of the characters killing herself (after being possessed by an evil spirit). I didn’t check my watch, but it seemed like the movie’s characters spent close to the next 30 minutes grieving over the dead girl.

I mean, seriously, it could’ve gone into some sort of After School Special territory, so much time was spent on grieving characters.

That’s neither fun, nor scary, but just sad. Then, when the next girl dies, there’s no real reason for it, no narrative logic for why she gets picked, and why only her, it’s just a standard issue “non-main character dies” beat.

The Boy (who wasn’t with me) would probably call this a “problem with the tone”.

This, combined with a sort of sloppy metaphysics, infrequent and not particularly novel horror PG-13 effects, and an unfortunate stinger, adds up to a largely forgettable flick. Not bad, exactly, just aggressively inoffensive.

Lin Shaye, who’s practically become a latter day Vincent Price, has a short role in this.

Other than that, utterly unremarkable.

As the Allies were beating back Jerry on the European front, the Nutzis hatched a plan to delay the inevitable invasion of Germany by blowing up, super-villain style, Paris when the Allies tried to retake it.

And it really was a supervillain thing: The strategic value of destroying Paris (and killing over a million people) was actually pretty minimal, and the motivation seems to have been sheer Hitlerian insane rage, at least as portrayed here.

The actual history is rather murky. We know that some sort of plan was in the works, from all the explosives found wired to monuments and structures all over the city. And we know that General Choltitz didn’t blow up Paris because, hey, it’s still there. But why this mass murderer changed his mind is a mystery.

In Cyril Gely’s play “Diplomatie”, he boils the situation down into a single long night when the Swedish consul Nordlinger sneaks into Choltitz’ hotel-based office (via a secret passage designed for a French noble’s dalliances) to convince him not to push the plunger.

I knew about 15 minutes in that this almost had to have been based on a play, confined as it was to two guys in one room, talking, and this is the sort of thing I really enjoy when it’s done well, so I have a bias here. But The Boy also liked it.

It works because there’s an arc here: Nordlinger is clearly motivated, and willing to push whatever buttons he can find on Choltitz, while Choltitz appears to have no buttons to be pressed. But, as they do their little dance, you get tensions, resolution, and even character development, all based around a high stakes situation—really, all you need for good drama.

Some nice twists and turns, too. All in under 90 minutes!

Perennially evil dude Niels Arestrup (You Will Be My Son, War Horse) plays the evil German dude well, even as he evolves into a maybe slightly less evil German dude. Andre Dussollier (A Very Long Engagement, Tell No One) plays the Swedish consul/voice of reason with a deceptive sentimentality, under which lies determination, desperation, a hardness that suggests a level of threat. You can sense that he’d kill Choltitz if doing so wouldn’t seal Paris’ fate.

Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum, The Handmaid’s Tale) directs and keeps it from feeling confined by its theatrical roots.

Worth checking out.

The funny—well, funny odd—thing about the last “live” Rifftrax Godzilla was that, despite being packed wall-to-wall with laughs, the movie itself was so bad, it sort of brought me down. That was a big-budget flick, and it was supposed to be good, or at least not as disastrously bad as it was. It was supposed to be exciting or campy or, you know, something.

Now, Anaconda? Unless you’re prone to believing Siskel & Ebert (two thumbs up! 3 ½ stars!), there’s virtually no chance of being disappointed by this film. As a result, while there are probably fewer laughs in the RiffTrax version of this versus Godzilla, I actually enjoyed it more overall.

What? It’s not that weird. Look at Manos: The Hands of Fate on MST3K: Most people agree that’s a hard, hard film to watch, even depressing. Takes a lot of laughs to counterbalance that.

Jon Voight is probably the savior of this film. (Siskel and Ebert thought—not making this up—he should get an Oscar.) He’s so ridiculously over the top, with his inexplicable accent and this combination of being outright evil with saving everyone’s life is weirdly compelling.

There are a few lulls in the Rifftrax here, but mostly it builds to fast-and-furious end.

Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson definitely built up a good rapport on the last years of MST3K and on The Film Crew, which gives the proceedings a smooth feel. Even though the jokes are pre-scripted, there’s a comfort level and camaraderie that adds another layer of fun.

Also, you can’t buy this one either.

If you like movie riffing, or if you’ve never tried it, it’s definitely a cool experience to get together with a couple hundred strangers and laugh your butt of. Check it out!

After the War of Independence, people were a bit on edge in Israel. An IDF officer by the name of Meir Tobianski (spelled with an “o” on Wikipedia, but a “u” here) worked at a British-owned power station (lots of people pulled double-duty back then, serving both in a civilian and a military capacity) fulfilled a simple request from his (British) boss that would ultimately be construed as an act of treason.

This was the story behind the fourth (and sadly final) film of the IFF The Boy and I were able to get to. It’s played out very simply and low-key, virtually daring you to get sentimental over it, but the nature of the story (and the quality of acting) is such that you can’t help but be moved.

The Boy and I both liked it, but I pointed out that I’d have liked to see Hitchcock do the same story: This is sort of The Wrong Man meets Rear Window, with a couple of guys chasing across the countryside trying to save Tobianski, while the zealous and ambitious Intelligence officer pressures three other officers to convict him in a Drumhead court martial.

Then there’s the whole young wife-trying-to-clear-her-husband’s-name angle, the son, the mistrust of the British, and so on.

So it could’ve been great. As it stands, it’s almost a “dramatic re-enactment” more than anything. I’m not surprised the director’s most recent work is a documentary.

One nice touch is Tobiansky’s wife waiting for him in a theater where The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is playing. It probably literally happened that way, but the contrast of whimsy-induced paranoia against actual paranoia is poetic.

All brought in comfortably under an hour-and-a-half.

So our IFF went four-for-four this year, and we didn’t even get to the most hyped movie of the season, The Dove Flyer, about the eradication of the Jews from Iraq.

A twenty-something woman, Chelli, takes care of her brain-injured younger sister Gabby (who’s also in her 20s) in the Israeli Film Next To Her. Chelli also has a job so she leaves Gabby locked in the apartment alone all day, only to come home and find her sister banging her head on the floor amidst whatever destruction she’s wrought during the day.

A social worker insists she send Gabby to a daycare, which reveals an interesting dynamic: As burdened as Chelli is by having to take care of Gabby, she’s also a little jealous when Gabby turns out to really like the daycare.

Things get even more complicated when Chelli finds a boyfriend who, while initially unimpressive, turns out to be a stand up guy who’s remarkably good with Gabby.

Here’s the thing: This is the most authentic representation of a brain injured kid I’ve ever seen. Gabby’s behavior matches about 90-95% that of The Enigma. The Enigma fortunately doesn’t bang her head against hard objects, and she isn’t overtly sexual like Gabby, but the running around naked, the biting her own hand, even the sense of humor was similar.

So, this was a very hard movie to watch. I actually asked The Boy if he wanted to leave, since The Enigma tends to yell in a way that gives him headaches, but he was okay. (Gabby actually yells much less in the movie.)

We stuck it out, though, and it’s a fine, if ultimately tragic (on a number of levels) tale of sororal love, as Chelli tries to build a life around Gaby, while being suspicious of the possibility that Gaby might want to build a life beyond her.

Dana Ivgy (Jaffa, Or) is simply outstanding as Gabby. Playing a role like this is so easy to get wrong: The nature of the brain injury means having to give up a lot of the actors’ usual tools like talking, having appropriate emotional responses, and looking at other actors. Ivgy is uncanny in her portrayal and very effective as an actress.

Liron Ben Shlush as Chelli is also excellent. She loves her sister, but has a wide range of reactions to Gabby’s injuries. Sweet, at times, near murderous at others. Shlush also wrote the script, making me think she has some first-hand experience to draw on.

Bold, hard roles for both of them. The other actors, whom I don’t really know, were also quite good, especially the hapless boyfriend, Zohar, and the World’s Worst Mother.

This is the first feature directed by Asaf Koram, who edited God’s Neighbors and Jaffa, and he’s to be commended: He fits a great story into a tight 90 minutes, with just a few locations. The packed house I saw it in roundly applauded.

After the delightful Going of Age comedy Hunting Elephants, our next IFF film was Suicide, a noir-ish myster/thriller that actually is mysterious and thrilling, told in parallel timelines (as is the fashion these days).

When the movie opens, an attractive woman is setting a dead man and a business on fire. It turns out the dead man is her husband, and the cop’s ruling is, you guessed it, suicide. The “current” timeline has to do with a quirky police detective (Dror Keir, who played Meir The Librarian in the excellent 2010 Israeli film Matchmaker), interrogating the wife (Mali Levi, about whom much ado was made regarding co-starring with Brad Pitt in World War Z, said role never materializing), and trying to suss out a truth nobody wants him to learn.

I’ve commented regularly on the quality of the characterization of Israeli films, and this film is an interesting example of what I mean: In this kind of film (noir) the characters do not emote in any big ways. Their lives are threatened; they’re in races against time; they have to lie in front of a bunch of rabbis—and at no time are we allowed to see what they’re thinking and feeling.

A lot of times, as a result, the characterizations of these sorts of films end up flat, resorting to archetypes. The gangster, the hardboiled detective, the cynical cop, the moll, and so on. Not so here. The story moves along two timelines: the post-fire timeline, and the timeline leading up to the fire, where we see a picture of a man in financial trouble to the mob, the wife who seems to be passionately in love with him, the brutal gangster with a code, and a situation where even the peripheral characters all have backstories ultimately explaining their roles in the drama.

On the other hand, it’s so tightly constructed, and the characters drawn so strongly, that the mystery is pretty well obvious by the time of the reveal, with the only real mystery being in the details. What’s funny about that is that the police detective is putting it all together at the climactic moment, and you’re sitting there (or I was, anyway) thinking, “Man, this guy is slow!”

Of course, the detective has none of the back info we have, so it’s perfectly appropriate but it’s kind of funny from a narrative standpoint to have the audience be aware of everything while the detective is still just piecing things together.

Good film. We both liked. The Boy noted that family was a theme pervading the movie, which is true, and also very unusual for noir. The IFF scored two for two at this point.

The 28th Israel Film Fest has begun! And you know what that means!

Or maybe you don’t, so let me learn you something: Five years ago, The Boy and I went to see the New Zealand crime thriller Out of the Blue starring Karl Urban, only to discover that it was in fact not from New Zealand, not a crime thriller, and had nobody in it we’d ever heard of. Instead it was Out of the Blue, an Israeli film about the amusing antics of some resourceful junk men.

Since then, we’ve grown to really look forward to the IFF, seeing more of the films each year in the (short) time allotted.

One of the chief characteristics of the IFF films is that they tend to develop strong, interesting characters, and this year is no different, though from what we’ve seen so far, there’s also been an uptick in the technical quality, and we’ve even seen a few recognizable actors.

This year got off to a rip-roaring start with Hunting Elephants. If there are “coming of age” tales, there are also “going of age” tales. Slices of life stories involving old people out for one last hurrah before going gentle into that good night, like the ‘70s Art Carney, George Burns (who lived for another 20+ years, heh) and Lee Strasberg flick Going In Style. Or last year’s Stand Up Guys.

In Hunting Elephants, we see young Yonatan left at the bank with his night watchman/security chief father, when a mishap ends the father’s life in a sort of darkly comic fashion. Well, this doesn’t help his mother out at all, obviously, and with nowhere else to turn, she dumps Yoni off at the old folks home her estranged father-in-law lives in.

And he’s not a pleasant old fellow, oh, no. The details of his backstory come out over the course of the movie, and they’re really not particularly flattering. (This is a particularly interesting feature of Israeli films: Whereas in American films, characters are often redeemed through “it was all a misunderstanding”, in the IFF films, the characters are redeemed through action, and often not only don’t apologize but practically cling to their old sins.)

Grandpa was a special forces guy during the Liberation, and as little use as he had for his son, he doesn’t have much more interest in his grandson. But, of course, he doesn’t kick the kid out either, or we wouldn’t have a picture.

Grandpa’s pal Nick was in the same service, a doddering, blind old dude, with an interest in the ladies suited to a much younger man, who generally serves as the driver on the gang’s capers.

The third senior in the gang is a fading English actor, brother-in-law to Grandpa, who wants conservatorship over Grandma (his sister, who’s in a coma) but Grandpa refuses to let her leave his side. Which, while romantic, turns out to have many not-so-romantic layers.

Well, for whatever reason, everybody needs money so a bank must be robbed. In particular, the bank where Yoni’s father was head of security, since Yoni still knows a few tricks. And it doesn’t hurt that the creepy bank manager is putting the moves (successfully) on Yoni’s mother—who, also rather creepily, is kind of into it.

So, no groundbreaking setups here, but it’s all done with such a great touch: Almost non-stop laughs, even in the face of tragedy (how Jewish is that?), great acting, fine directing and camerawork with a few inspired shots, good music—just a fun film with lots and lots of character oozing out of every plot point.

Also, the one weakness these “going of age” movies tend to have is that they peter out at the end, when (customarily) the characters start dying, but this movie actually picks up speed and throws a few more twists at you.

Originally, the fading English actor was to be played by John Cleese, which would’ve been amazing, but the role was taken over by Patrick Stewart, who is absolutely flawless. He mixes just the right level of comedy and pathos, enough for us to laugh with him (and occasionally at him, but empathetically). I think this is my favorite role of his.

But all the acting is solid: Sasson Gabai (who stood out in The Band’s Visit) is Grandpa Eli, Moshe Ivgy (Out of the Blue) is creepy bank manager, Moni Moshonev as Nick, newcomer Gil Blank is Yoni, Yael Abecassis (Live and Become) is mom, and, oh yeah, Patrick freakin’ Stewart!

Fun and recommended. And half-in-English for the subtitle-curious.

The problem with labeling something “mystery/thriller” is that people are expecting something mysterious and/or thrilling, usually both, depending on how they parse the (“/”) slash. Of course, it’s only a problem if you’re not mysterious and thrilling, but it can be a problem even if you never meant to be mysterious or thrilling.

Such is the case with the new Aussie movie, Felony., directed by TV veteran Matthew Saville and written by Joel Edgerton (best known as an actor: Zero Dark Thirty, Animal Kingdom).

Felony is a straight-up cop drama featuring Edgerton as a hero cop who celebrates a collar by getting drunk with his cop pals, using his cop privilege to get around drunky checkpoints, and then hitting a kid with his car.

Jai Courtney (A Good Day To Die Hard, Jack Reacher) is the rookie boy scout who suspects right away something is up, despite grizzled veteran Tom Wilkinson “handling things” so as to keep the blue wall smooth and impenetrable.

We’re not breaking any new ground here. But that’s okay, really. Less okay, at least as far as staying awake goes, is that its tense, low-key, powder-keg-about-to-go-off feel never really pays off. I mean, one isn’t required to have a big blowout to resolve a drama, but if you choose to go that direction, you’d probably better have some other theme that you’re banging on so that the movie has some resonance, as they call it.

Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens. Which is also something you can do, if you’re pouring on the style.

I’m reminded somehow of fledgling songwriters, who are desperate to do something other than one of the four-or-five dominant chord pop-music progressions. Sometimes they’ll do something that sounds bad, but this movie is more like refusing to play out the final chords because they’re clichéd.

Maybe that’s off base. I don’t know. It didn’t grab us, The Boy probably even less than me.

Our bias here, though, is (at least in part) a not great love of cop drama tropes. I have a thing—and it’s been a while since I’ve talked about one of my things—about cops following the law.

In short: I think they oughtta.

In fact, I think they oughtta be Boy Scouts, meticulous followers of the law, both professionally and personally. They have the monopoly on force, locally speaking, and they’re charged with using that force to protect the public, with The Law being the framework in which they act.

I think, for example, that they should scrupulously follow traffic laws, instead of that weird thing they do now where they drive too slowly looking for people to pull over, then suddenly drive too fast because they’re bored or whatever and are going to go hunting somewhere else.

Never mind the whole lying under oath or on reports, hitting suspects, and above all covering for the crimes their fellow cops commit. The latter being the very definition of corruption which, as far as I can tell, they all do (or at least tolerate).

I hate the pop culture trope of “cops are people, too”, because while they of course are, they shouldn’t be while they’re on duty. They’re supposed to be better than the rest of us. That’s why we trust them with guns and cars and so on.

So, when our premise begins with “hero cop has a few too many and can’t be arsed to get anyone to drive him home”, I’m lacking a certain amount of sympathy. And when the support for covering things up is, “Well, we’ve gotta arrest all these guys selling controlled substances to people who want to buy them,” I’ve got a pretty dim view of that, too.

Good acting. Direction and writing is fine, at least in the details, while not really grabbing either of us. It’s an okay movie, if you’re in the mood for a cop drama. It is, however, devoid of both mystery and thrills, so don’t be fooled.

Raphael Lemkin’s life would make the basis of a really good episode of the “Twilight Zone”. As a young man, he studied this habit humans have of wiping out—or trying to—entire tribes of fellow humans. And he noted that this was a Bad Thing, and perhaps should be condemned.

After an Armenian victim of such a pogrom sought out the Turkish architect of same and killed him, Lemkin would plead to the Europeans to criminalize such “acts of barbarity” such that it would effectively intimidate those who had such inclinations. They rejected him on the basis of, “Well, of course Turks are barbarians. That couldn’t possibly happen in Europe.”

Then the camera pulls back and it’s Hitler saying that, and you’re a Pole of Jewish descent. In the ‘30s.

Dah-duh-duh-DUH-DUH-DUH!!

Watchers of the Sky is a movie in part about Lemkin, who marketed the concept of genocide-as-a-crime to a bunch of dubious world leaders, and his cultural heirs, especially Benjamin Ferencz, Samantha Power and Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

It is wholly depressing and not for the reasons you might imagine.

Lemkin’s story is actually pretty amazing: After inventing the word “genocide”, he actually manages to foster an environment (with Ferencz) where people not only think it’s a bad thing, but are actually even a little bit embarrassed to have committed it. He starts them on the way to criminalizing it, even.

That’s kind of impressive. I mean, if you’re coming from a world where of course you’d kill the Jews, or the Armenians, or the *kaff* Kurds, even getting insincere agreement that genocide is wrong is quite a feat.

Depressing, though, because the same people who recognize that genocide is something that people do, and need to be deterred from doing through harsh punishment, absolutely fail to recognize that nobody wants to start a war to save anyone else.

I mean, I’m pro-America and all that, but FDR specifically avoided saying we were going to war to save the Jews, and maybe he was just projecting his own antisemitism or cynicism or what-have-you on the American people, or maybe we wouldn’t have been all gung-ho about going to war to stop genocide.

Although, in retrospect, it seems like we might have, given our horror over the Holocaust, it’s kind of funny that, at a time when our armed services asks the least of the rest of us, we are more reluctant than ever to use their bravery to do good in the world.

Wait, “funny” isn’t the word. It’s more “dysfunctional”. Too many of us believe we couldn’t possibly be a force for good in the world. We wrecked up the world to begin with, or something.

Madeline Albright sums it up, however unintentionally: Given a word, “genocide”, and a worldwide resolution to prevent it, when asked about the situation in Rwanda she calls it “a definitional problem”. And so Hutu butcher Tutsi with machetes day in and day out because, politically, Bill Clinton can’t get involved. (“End of history”, don’t you know.)

George W Bush might or might not have done anything about Darfur, but since that massacre started after the Democrat Congress took over on an anti-war platform, it seems unlikely they would have given him the power to act.

Which leaves the current guy, under whose reign the Darfur genocide has proceeded apace. Moreno-Ocampo finally gets the world to agree that the guy killing all those people (I think it’s Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, but one genocidal maniac looks the same as an another to me) should be tried on genocide aaaand…nothing happens.

Well, a lot of tiny countries with no skin in the game agree that he should be brought up on charges. But he just says, “I don’t recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court. What’re you gonna do about it?” And that’s pretty much it. Unless the USA gets involved.

Team America: World Police!

Which—and I may have gotten some mixed messages here—is a bad thing, right? We’re not supposed to be the World Police, right? I guess as long as we do what everyone else says, we’re okay.

I was not unimpressed by Samantha Power’s early career, and she seems to have a good heart, but I really couldn’t reconcile the boldness of her earlier actions with the sort of wan declarations she makes from her post as UN Ambassador.

That was depressing, too. She’d dealt with plenty of monsters before getting that post, why can’t she recognize them for what they are now?

The Boy pointed out that Soghomon Tehlirian had done more than the UN by assassinating Talaat Pasha. Which, when you think about it, sort of suggests an easy, if not politically popular, solution.

By the way, I did a little research after the movie and discovered that Lemkin hadn’t been shot down in the ’20s because “we’re European, not savage Turks”, or at least not that I could find. Instead, he had been the Polish ambassador to the League of Nations in 1933, and was shot down specifically to avoid offending the Hitler and the Germans.

It says it all. On Blake’s Three Point Documentary Scale:

1. Obviously a worthy an important subject.

2. The handling was competent, if not spectacular. A good mix of interviews with stock footage, and historical events with current events.

3. The tilt? Well, it’s hard to tilt wrong with genocide. (“I’m for it!”) But there was a tilt; toward the idea that one can use the mechanisms of civil society to stop international criminals who do not respect it. But the only reason cops can stop anything in civil society is because they have overwhelming force and they’re willing to use it.

I didn’t get, for example, on this last point why it would’ve been impossible for these little countries to take action. Do they have no armies whatsoever? We’re talking the Sudan and Chad, not Moscow. Why couldn’t they go in?

I don’t know.

I sort of walked away feeling that we need a universal 2nd amendment, frankly. “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the preservation of a free world…”

I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with you people. I try to understand you, but I just don’t. Hollywood makes a feel-good flick about a down-on-his-luck guy who achieves fame and glory through being an amazing opera singer, and you’re just not happy about it. You don’t go see it. If you do go see it, you’re picking nits about accents and singing postures and God knows what else.

It’s like I can’t even trust you to rate a film, collectively.

If not for the insistence of @JulesLaLaLand, I would not have gone to see this movie, given its tepid mid-‘60s ratings on Tomatoes. But, man, that chick can nag. I swear, I’m not sure how the President hasn’t personally gone down to Mexico to free Sergeant Tahmooressi, given her advocacy of that particular issue. (Hi, Jules! *waves*)

But, as I point out, I don’t understand a lot of things.

This is a feel-good movie centered around the not-so-feel-good life of Paul Potts, who went from abused and bullied kid who loved opera, to an abused and bullied adult who loved opera. And, while the movie is called “One Chance”, it in fact shows a man who has had (and taken) many chances. Which is why it works, really.

For all the beatings he took, for his shyness, for a guy who was a 30-year-old virgin, here is someone who took whatever chances he could get away with, even if it meant entering a town talent show (to get the money to train in Italy), or approaching a non-local girl on the Internet, or just being a good cell phone salesman.

It’s not nothing. We see Paul as a man who struggles to do well, even if the world seems to want to crush him. He finds a way. And sometimes he fails, which can be even harder than having the crap beaten out of you.

And this movie definitely smooths out the rough edges. Check out Potts’ Britain’s Got Talent performance if you’ve never seen it—although maybe not until after you’ve seen the movie; let’s discuss that in a bit—and you can see Potts’ face is one wracked with pain. It’s not just shyness, either, it’s the face of someone who’s suffered a lot of actual, physical pain.

The movie does a good job of reminding us of the Potts’ struggles with the thugs in his town, without letting it dominate the proceedings.

There’s a pretty typical Hollywoodization here—which is not bad, really. The real thing would’ve been unpleasant, I think: We’re not, as moviegoers, as resilient as Mr. Potts. James Corden is stocky (and even fat; he may have put on some weight for this) but he’s basically a handsome fellow, and he plays Potts with sensitivity and warmth.

Alexandra Roach, as Julz, is a dead ringer for Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl, and makes a great counterpart to James in what has to be one of my favorite cinematic love stories in recent memory.

Julie Walters (when is she not great?) plays Mother Potts, and Colm Meaney plays grumpy old steel-mill-working opera-hating dad. We get a Hollywoodization of Dad and Paul’s relationship, too, and I suspect it may not have resolved as neatly as shown, but it was the resolution we wanted to see.

The guy who played Pavarotti was excellent. I thought it was Pavarotti. No, I did not remember Pavarotti had died. But Simon Cowell was in it, too. I mean, not that Cowell’s dead, as far as I know, but it looked like they used archival footage of “Britain’s Got Talent” (I don’t know why they wouldn’t, and I re-viewed that clip, and the movie, if it recreated it, did an amazing job, down to Amanda Holden’s tear. Amanda Holden is not credited, either.)

I guess I’m reduced to arguing that they had archival footage of Pavarotti dissing this poor unknown. Heh. Look, I’m just saying character actor Stanley Townsend did a great job. Or they reanimated Luicano. Either way.

Anyway, it’s a breezy watch, fun and funny, moving in parts, but I think I’d recommend watching it first, then going back and watching the “Britain’s Got Talent” clip after. I think maybe the issue some people are having is they remember the incident, and have all kinds of opinions about it, and so are less interested in this being a movie unto itself.

The Boy pronounced this Welsh/Irish horror film (The Canal) from Tim Kavanagh “solid”, adding that he was disappointed they went for the “twist ending tax break”. He’s established that the only reason horror movies tack on these stingers is due to government programs that provide funds for them.

It took me a few seconds to realize he was kidding, since this film has Irish and Welsh government money in it, and since he’s recently expressed a desire to be the next Uwe Boll. (“I could make crappy movies with tax breaks!”)

Anyway, it is a solid film, though I found it less engaging then he did, which is interesting, since it’s about a man obsessed, which is kind of my thing: David and Claire move into an old house, and after a few years David (a film archivist) discovers that it was the site of a grisly murder. A series of murders, even.

He also discovers his wife is cheating on him, and when she turns up missing, the suspicion naturally falls on him. But he begins to suspect the malevolent forces lurking in the house: Forces which are now after his son, the nanny, himself, and so on.

The movie has a lot of style, with a judicious use of jump cuts that both speeds things along and creates an unsettling effect. For me, one problem was that it also would do a montage of a film projector, and the noise was literally painful. Same thing as Purgatorio, and again, not the theater, as the rest of the dialog and ambient noises were fine, and even a bit on the quiet side.

In fact, I think part of the problem with coercing The Flower into the theaters these days, is that the volume hurts her ears. Mine, too, to a lesser extent, but I’m finally getting deaf enough to catch up to my peers who broke their eardrums listening to that loud music on their Walkmans.

For me, the film really kicked into gear at the end of the second act, when David has sent his son off with his nanny to a nearby hotel to be safe, only to discover they’re not safe. There’s some good suspense there, and the the lower key threats established earlier on start to pay off.

Anyway, I’m going to SPOIL the movie a bit hereafter. So if you don’t want SPOILERS, STOP READING NOW.

You hear me? I don’t want any lawsuits over SPOILERS!

By reading further, you have agreed to the Terms of Service of this website. (Not really. Can you imagine?) I’m also throwing in a mild Frozen and Something Wicked spoiler.

There are only two outcomes to a story like this, and of course the movie’s going to try to convince you that it’s one outcome, only to reveal it’s the other outcome at the climax. This is unsurprising, at best, and disappointing at worst, since a lot of times the movie just outright lies to you to convince you that they’re going to take path A instead of path B.

Sort of like the whole Frozen deal, really. The movie shows one thing to the audience that makes no sense except as a way to deceive the audience. It’s not Something Wicked bad here—few things are—but I pointed out a few places that the movie outright lied to us that The Boy had missed.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO FILMMAKERS: It’s fine (expected, even) for characters to lie to each other. It’s fine for them to lie directly to the audience (though, as in No Country For Old Men, people will often believe what they’re told even if you show them something contradictory). It’s even fine to show something that just plain didn’t happen, if it’s from the liar/crazy person’s perspective.

What you can’t do is show characters acting falsely when no one is watching, because then you’re just lying to the audience (Frozen). Also, when the character is not the narrator, you can’t show scenes that reinforce the narrator’s bias (falsity or insanity) while pretending that it’s not from the false narrator’s bias.

I mean, you can, of course, ‘cause you’re the Man In The Chair, and ain’t nobody can tell you what to do, except, I guess, The Studio, The Producer, and The Producer’s wife, and also his girlfriend that he made you hire to be the lead. Lots of people can tell you what to do, other than me. I’m just the sap who goes to see your movies.

But let’s say you’re making a movie about Bigfoot, and Bigfoot is going around eating all the pudding cups. It’s fine if your obsessed character sees Bigfoot right-and-left. He’s obsessed. We don’t expect him to be reliable. It’s fine if he sees Bigfoot attacking other people even if there’s no Bigfoot there, because again, he’s obsessed.

But if you have a character tramping through the woods alone, eating a pudding cup, and she sees Bigfoot come up to her, and Bigfoot takes her pudding cup and eats it, you can’t then say “Well, it turned out it was obsessed guy all along! There never was any Bigfoot.”

Unless, I guess, you Scooby-Doo it away and have the obsessed guy wearing a Bigfoot outfit. But you can’t show Bigfoot when obsessed guy isn’t around, ’cause it’s you lying to the audience, not the character.

Whether or not this movie actually does that is, I guess, debatable. I think it does. It felt like a cheat.

But in the final analysis, the stinger throws the whole climax into question, as (by tax law, apparently) it must. The movie resolves one way, but the stinger says, “Or is it?” Bleaargh.

Good acting from a bunch of people I’ve never heard of before. The music was kind of all over the place. Some of it quite good and others a little out of place. Camerawork and editing top-notch.

So, it’s still a solid film that’s quite effective in parts, even as it cribs from a great many other movies. I just felt a little gypped.

The main mistake I made in going to see La chambre bleue (The Blue Room) is forgetting that The Boy cannot follow mystery/thrillers when they’re in a foreign language. Early on, I figured this was just a reading skill issue. The subtitles go by fast and thick, usually, when there’s a lot of plotting involved. (They just vanish to me after about 30 seconds so I usually can’t even remember if a film had subtitles a week after seeing it.)

Yeah, he had no clue what was going on. Which is okay, I guess. It’s not great. It’s not bad, either. Critics are piling on the love with a 90% RT while audiences—keeping in mind that we’re talking people who’d go see a subtitled French mystery in the first place—give it a more modest 68%. I’d incline more toward the audience score, I think.

It’s a brooding little film that takes place in flashbacks as Our Hero relates to the police the details of an affair he had with a Strange Woman Who Was Most Certainly Not His Wife. When we start, we just know that Something Has Transpired that is worthy of police attention; the details don’t come out until later.

Needless to say, it all ends in tears.

The points of interest revolve around the fact that Julien (Our Hero) is lying to the police in small, visible ways that are understandable but that also might conceal a larger part in the crimes committed, and that we are left to our own devices to suss out the motivations and feelings of the characters.

This, I believe, is what makes the critics like it, and audiences react less warmly.

Meanwhile, the movie resolves absolutely nothing. The events play out mostly in flashback, then there’s a trial, a verdict, and absolutely no indication of whether justice is reached, or what’s going on with the characters internally.

This, I believe, is also what makes the critics like it, and alienates the audience.

I don’t know. It’s a thing. To leave up the story resolution to the viewer. It’s arty. I kind of came out thinking that justice had not been done, but in fact, the guilty party had been allowed to skate free. I can’t really back it up, though. I see means, motive and opportunity for the true (in my mind) criminal but truth be told, there are many possible stories that may have happened here.

I didn’t find this particularly satisfying. I’m not a big fan of movies that are all denouement, as this one is, in the final analysis. But I didn’t hate it either. I did find it engaging. The acting is subtle but not pretentious.

Lotta Gallic noses and genitals.

Directed by and starring Matthew Amalric (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Rabbi’s Cat), and starring newcomer Stéphanie Cléau as The Lover and Léa Drucker as The Wife.

There is a Spanish horror movie out this year called Purgatorio. Then there’s this documentary which has the full title of Purgatorio: A Journey into the Heart of the Border. But if  you, e.g., Google “Purgatorio”, you’ll see this movie marked as a horror/thriller/suspense film. It’s not. It’s a documentary. You can tell the difference, because this has the picture of the guy scaling he wall.

So, on the three-point documentary test, how does this fare?

Subject matter: Meh. The U.S. Mexican border is actually not inherently any more important or interesting than any other border, or your front door, or any other boundary between two things. There’s a certain interest created if there’s a contrast between the things the boundary is separating but the boundary itself, unless it’s, like, The Wall, has no inherent interest.

Treatment: Some good camerawork. Otherwise, the writing and topic development is about at the level of a 14-year-old girl. Utterly emotional transposition of near random imagery. Makes “Imagine” look like a detailed, well thought out blueprint for a highly advanced civilization.

Bias: Close to 100%. Only accidentally not 100%.

In Purgatorio, writer/director Rodrigo Reyes gives us 80 minutes of emotional outpourings centered around the U.S./Mexican border as if The Border were original sin. I’m not making this up. The movie begins with an actual (non-Christian, natch) Genesis story of how the great humans were until they discovered the concept of private property.

The movie ends with a big paean to how great it will be when everyone is dead. Preferably by a quick death, but whatever. Just so long as everyone ends up dead.

After the intro, a couple of fence jumpers are interviewed at the border. This looked potentially interesting. “Perhaps,” I thought, “we’ll follow these people as they cross the border.”

Hah. Fat chance. Instead we get a series of vignettes, starting with a disappointed monologue from the filmmaker that he could only find one victim on the border. (He calls this “a weird streak of luck”.) You kind of know you’re in trouble when the director laments not being able to show you enough corpses.

From there, we get vignettes: a drug addict, a cop funeral, testimony from a woman whose family beaten by friends of the dead cops, A guy bowling. A nuclear missile silo. A river canyon. (Rio Grande?) A halfway-house/shelter. An American who cleans up the litter and also obscures the coyote trails, making it harder for the illegals to cross. Kids reciting the names of (their favorite?) weapons. Dogs being euthanized. A staged shootout in Tombstone.

What’s it all mean? Well, the only thing I can figure is that Reyes means to indict The Border for all the ills in Mexico. As if the USA was a pool of awesomeness that only the US/Mexican border keeps from flowing south. As if we didn’t have police deaths, drug deaths, poverty, or euthanized dogs in America.

As if, also, this litany of the awfulness of Mexicans was a good argument for opening the border.

Seriously. In my heart, I’m an Open Borders Guy. But, good lord, open borders people make the worst arguments. In this situation, it’s not even an argument. It’s just a big, emotional demonization of the whole concept of borders, which (naturally) only concerns one border in the whole wide world.

Canadian/US border? Not evil. Or not worthy of mention. Mexican/Guatemalan border? Apparently also not a problem. Nope: The sum total of evil in the world stems from the US/Mexican border.

Now, narrowness of focus can be a good thing, and there’s nothing wrong with making a personal statement, but this whole treatment goes back to the 14-year-old girl thing. “OMG! This country…protects its borders…and people die of poverty!” There’s no depth. No understanding. In fact, not even an attempt to understand, just emotion.

The American who cleans up the litter gets to monologue a bit about how enforcing the border isn’t cruel, but it’s all ARF ARF ARF Ginger to Reyes, who engages with it not at all and gives it no weight. (Sort of like his treatment of the “Why not stay and make Mexico better?”)

There’s a scene in Michael Moore’s career-launching Roger and Me at the end where a woman is selling rabbits for “Pets or Meat”, and Moore films her killing, cleaning and skinning a rabbit. It’s a heavy-handed metaphor for…I dunno…corporations feasting on people or some damn thing.

It’s disgusting. There’s no point to it except to shock and disgust. But at least it’s for an artistic (if utterly propagandic) purpose.

Reyes shows dogs being injected with killing poisons. Films them dying. Films them freshly killed. Films being shoveled into an cremator of some kind. (I assume that’s what it is.)

It pissed me off. This facility kills 20,000 dogs a year, which is pretty horrifying. But millions of dogs are euthanized in America. What’s the purpose of showing it?

I guess this goes to the heart of this misanthropic diary entry. People are bad, everything’s bad, the only possible hope is letting everyone into America, which will never happen.

The music is awful, too. It’s primarily one note on a clarinet that’s delivered in increasing volume until it hurts your ears. You could blame the theater for being too loud, but there’s nothing else at this volume in the entire film.

Not really a movie. More an admonition against putting cameras in the hands of Highly Upset People.

“Copenhagen” is kind of a generic name for a movie. Is it about tobacco? Denmark? That Danny Kaye song? Who knows?

Having seen it, I can tell you it’s none of those things. Though it does take place in Denmark, and makes a pretty good travelogue for that fair city.

This is the story of William, a major league jerk who has traveled to Copenhagen with his pal, Jeremy, in order to find his grandfather. Jeremy, unfortunately, has brought his girlfriend along. This puts William in a bad mood: He doesn’t like her; it was supposed to be a guy’s trip; the impression we get also is that William has delayed this trip, for some reason, on Jeremy’s behalf (perhaps) for ten years—maybe so that they could do it together? And now, his fianceé’s presence is putting a damper on the proceedings.

Not the least because William wants to tomcat around. He’s really, really a jerk. Which, of course, is no barrier to appealing to the fairer sex. Things take a turn for the jerkier when William hits on Jeremy’s fianceé. This leads to Jeremy and fiancee splitting for London, leaving the Jerk to jerk around Jerkenhagen.

Actually, that’s not fair. Copenhagen does not seem especially jerky.

A young waitress spills coffee on his documentation, which Jerkstein hasn’t made any copies of, and which erases his grandfather’s address. But she saw it enough to read the address. And by twists and jerks, this movie turns into a buddie/road picture with William The Jerk and Effy The Fair.

You might think I’m exaggerating the jerkiness here, but I’m not. It’s important because William The Jerk begins to have feelings for Effy The Fair. Real ones. She brings an energy to his existence that he seems barely aware can exist, not just showing him around the city but, essentially, showing him that he doesn’t have to be a jerk all the damn time.

I’m not sure how you say “kleines problem” in Danish, but there is a little problem here, and that is that Effy is young. Younger than William. Young enough to give William second thoughts about being with her physically.

Younger than that, even. No, still younger.

Surprisingly this movie works: I think this is precisely because it is not Lolita. Effy is a young girl, but she’s not precocious. She acts her age the whole time. It’s just that William is so incredibly immature—and also, one suspects, deprived of that stretch of childhood that Effy is in—that she’s practically someone he can look up to.

And Effy, who never knew her father and was raised by a single mother who has trouble holding on to her jerky boyfriends, well, that’s almost too clichéd for words, but cliché because it’s sadly true.

This aspect is kind of depressing, because it’s just so common. Broken families are so much the norm, we don’t even call them that anymore. Normal, intact, nuclear families are fodder for horror films now. (Oh, they look normal…)

Anyway, the Boy and I liked it. Good characters. Believable situations (sadly). Adequate resolution wherein the characters evolve, and we see them in a new light. Solid drama.

Freshman feature from writer/director Mark Raso. Starring Gethin Anthony (known to me only as Reny Baratheon from “Game of Thrones”, and the only person in the film I knew) as The Jerk, and Frederikke Dahl Hansen, who pulled off playing younger quite expertly.

If Gone Girl shows us anything,it’s that Ben Affleck is up to the task of wearing a big rubber mask with bat ears on his head and growling on poorly lit sets. I mean, seriously, who are these people who think playing The Batman is such a challenge? And Hollywoodland was eight years ago, for crying out loud, and an excellent performance.

Anyway, I’m really glad David Fincher has gone back to directing thrillers. Se7en, The Game, Fight Club and Panic Room is just an amazing streak of top-notch thrillers. Panic Room gets no love, I think, because it’s just a thriller, without the depth of Fight Club, which it had just followed.

But I say, if it’s so freaking easy to make “just a thriller” why do we have so many boring movies? (And here, poetically if not ironically, we have an excellent thriller nearly torpedoed in its desire to be more.)

Since Panic Room, Fincher directed the broody, slow-paced mystery Zodiac, the broody, slow-paced fantasy Benjamin Button, and the broody slow-paced thriller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Seriously, the guy has a hard time bringing a film in under 2:30 any more, and while I wasn’t exactly bored in these films, none of them seemed to me have the energy of his ‘90s flicks.

Gone Girl, I’m happy to say, is a much better overall experience. The first act is a mystery, with a lot of suspense and twists-and-turns. The second act is more on the thriller side, resolving the mysteries of the first act in a kind of fun and wicked way.

The third act is a completely preposterous, misanthropic, malignant excuse to shoehorn in a larger, sillier message about marriage. I mean, really, it’s goofier than any episode of “Columbo” or “Murder, She Wrote”, but in the service of something really nasty, that you’re meant to take earnestly.

We all liked it, but that third act broke our suspension of disbelief more than seeing Justin Long in a walrus suit. I can’t tell you about it here without major spoilers, and the movie is still fun, both in getting to that third act and even the presentation of the preposterous circumstances of said act.

Although, the “message” means the movie doesn’t really end, and if you can make it out of the theater lobby without realizing how the implications of the endings couldn’t possibly work out, then you’re better at shutting off your brain than I am. (It reminds me of Mystic River’s ending in its awfulness, though Mystic River’s end was just evil, not entirely implausible.)

Anyway, the acting in this is just great. Fincher’s choice of Affleck is no less than perfect. There’s a scene where Nick (Affleck) is being prepped to go on a cable news show by his lawyer Tanner Bolt (I’m so white, I didn’t realize it was Tyler Perry) and when Bolt is questioning him, and he comes off as too glib, he throws a gummi bear at him.

Can it be that this has never happened to Affleck? It certainly should have, some time in the ’90s.

Carrie Coon plays Nick’s sister Margo, and for a woman with a relatively light CV, she’s just amazing. Absolutely natural as a devoted, loving sister who would do just about anything for her brother. The always excellent Kim Dickens (“Deadwood”, The Blind Side) does a great job as the dogged detective who’s trying to get to the truth.

Rosamund Pike, who I’ve enjoyed since seeing her in 2005 play back-to-back in Pride and Prejudice and (shortly thereafter) Doom, plays Amy, the perfect girlfriend/less-than-perfect wife here. After relatively less interesting roles in Jack Reacher and The World’s End, I bet she enjoyed this. It’s a challenging role and she aces it.

I can’t ever fault the acting Fincher gets out of his players, even in his least interesting (to me) films. What’s more, he seems to be able to make a movie with celebrities without you sitting there the whole time thinking, “Hey, it’s Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden!” The one possible exception in this film is NPH himself, Neal Patrick Harris.

Don’t get me wrong: He’s perfect for the role here as Amy’s stalker-or-is-he? and he pulls off the role easily. But his initial appearance (in a photo) got a laugh from the crowd. He’s just very recognizable, presumably after the whole “How I Met Your Mother” thing. Like I said, he plays the role very well, even with that hurdle to clear.

It’s something likely to fade over time. Sort of how my kids ignore me when I laugh because somebody from some long ago TV show turns up in a film.

Anyway, a fine, fine film.

Except the third act. The third act is terrible. Not in execution, of course, but content. Hated it. Hated it enough to where, even a week later, it’s kind of still pissing us off. (I actually haven’t mentioned it, but The Boy brought it up two or three times.)

Fincher and author Gillian Flynn have some sort of HBO series going, so good for them. I have a feeling I’m not going to like it though.

September seems a little early to start the now traditional holiday parade of dysfunctional family dramas, but writer/director Craig Johnson gets a jump on things with his tale of suicidal siblings who destroy other people’s lives when they’re not destroying their own.

Hilarious.

It’s not as grim as it sounds, thank the Lord, and actually has a fairly positive sorta-pro-family message, as well as a fair amount of laughs, among the really low lows.

In the opening, Milo (Bill Hader) is killing himself in a bathtub, but screws it up and the hospital winds up calling his estranged sister Maggie (Kristen Wiig) to let her know. The call interrupts her attempt to kill herself, fortunately, and the two end up at Maggie’s house, rekindling their relationship.

Maggie’s other big relationship is with her fiancee, Lance, played by now archetypal average guy/everyman Luke Wilson. Wilson is an incomparably decent guy, whose attraction to Kristen Wiig is a little unclear, except that, by all appearances, he seems to love her in a very normal way that includes navigating her moods and not holding her outbursts against her.

Wiig is as awful to him as a girlfriend can be, and the movie teases that awful conceit of presenting him as somehow unworthy because he likes wall climbing and toe shoes. Also, he treats Milo and Maggie’s mom (played by the always delightful Joanna Gleason, who manages to be as delightful as she is by implication horrid) with common courtesy.

But this works because the movie just toys with the idea: Milo and Maggie are dysfunctional, not Lance. The movie as a whole works, I think, because there’s little attempt to justify the awful mess these two make out of their lives. It’s more about how they support each other, even when they’ve brought their lives down around their ears.

I think dysfunctional stories are often autobiographical, and the authors are thus inclined to justify the characters’ awfulness, but it’s always—always!—easier to identify with the characters when the movie just shows the awful behaviour without judging or justifying.

It’s interesting to have a movie which makes the argument “You shouldn’t kill yourself because your siblings are counting on you to save them” against suicide, but again, that works: When the twins are apart and alone, suicide seems like a reasonable answer, but when they’re together, they at least share that level of responsibility—toward each other.

The trick is to not drive each other apart with their awfulness, though.

Hader and Wiig have great chemistry, of course (see Adventureland, where they play husband and wife), and manage to squeeze a lot of laughs out of their dark circumstances. (I would not be surprised to learn that the funnier scenes were improvised.)

The acting is good all around. Ty Burrell (The Hulk, Peabody and Sherman) plays a sleazy teacher/writer. Boyd Holbrook (A Walk Among The Tombstones, Gone Girl) plays a sleazy SCUBA instructor. Yeah, there’s a lot of sleaze in this movie. Hey, dysfunctional family dramas—they’re about 90% sleazy.

Mark Heyman (Black Swan) co-wrote the script with the director.

We’re not actually inclined to like these films, really, but The Boy and I did, for the strong characters, for the lack of “cheap outs” (“I had a bad childhood, so I’m entitled to be bad now!”), and for putting the “fun” back in “dysfunction”.

A young woman in the ‘70s walks across the Australian Outback with her dog and some camels.

I tell you, the whole concept of “high-concept” has some merit.

Just think of all the questions this raises: Why is she walking? What’s with the camels? What kind of dog is it? Why the Outback?

None of these questions are particularly answered in Tracks, but that’s okay, because the answers are sort of like “Why not?”,  "Camels are cool!“, "A good dog!” and “Well, we’re in Australia, where else you gonna walk?”

It’s probably a testament to Robyn Davidson’s story, as interpreted by director John Curran and writer Marion Nelson, that the answers really don’t matter much. If a woman wants to take a bunch of camels across the desert alone, why shouldn’t she?

And, really, if you’ve met people, why wouldn’t you want to cross the desert alone?

Anyway, it’s a long trek, of about 2,000 miles, much of it completely water-less. Also, it’s the mid-’70s, when a mile went a lot further. For long stretches, Davidson is completely alone (except for dog and camels), while for other stretches she’s being harassed by National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan, who nearly botches her trip by trying to secretly photograph an aboriginal ritual.

She also has a stretch where she’s accompanied by an aborigine, with whom she strikes up a friendship based on, I think, neither of them being able to understand the other. There’s also a brief stop at a house that’s about as far in the middle of nowhere as is possible, and is remarkable for looking like it could’ve been straight-up in the middle of the MidWest of the US.

Amazingly, it all works, without being boring. We learn a bit about Davidson’s past, but really it’s just an adventure story/personal journey, and I sort of think the background information, while interesting, isn’t the point. (How can the background information of a personal journey story not be the point? Well, because the point of the journey is to come to terms with it, whatever it is, such that what it actually is, isn’t very important. That’s hard to follow but worth it.)

Mia Wasikowska does a fine job as Davidson. Adam Driver also looks the part as Smolan. Actually, the two look just dead on like the people they’re portraying. It’s not a high-octane adrenaline-fueled thrill ride, but it’s a solid adventure film, in the mold of Kon-Tiki.

The Boy and I approved.

This is one of these movies that doesn’t fit neatly into a particular paradigm. Some of the posters for Horns make it look like a straight-up horror movie, while some of the trailers look a little more nuanced. So, what is it actually?

Essentially, Horns is a mystery mixed in with a fantasy fable, about a young man named Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) who is being subjected to incredible scrutiny by his community and local news media because, well, he killed his girlfriend.

Allegedly.

Very, very allegedly, though it looks bad indeed, and doesn’t help that Ig can’t remember the night too well.

So, there’s the mystery.

But in the course of all that focused hate, a newspaper compares Ig to the Devil, and he wakes up after a drunken tryst with—you guessed it—horns. And not just benign, everyday horns, but horns which are, essentially, a manifestation of a satanic presence. In his presence, people are inclined to reveal their unbridled ids, and to ask his permission as to whether or not they should act on them.

So, there’s the fantasy/fable part. Which is kind of neat, because it plays into the mystery aspect. On the one hand, the horns allow Ig to extract information that he otherwise couldn’t from people; on the other, if Ig is innocent, why would he sprout horns? It ain’t exactly a halo.

By the third act, the movie shifts gears and goes into actual horror territory, including a rather over-the-top climactic scene with some serious gore, snakes, and somewhat dubious CGI.

The Boy and I really liked it. The Flower could not be induced to come, but we might take her to see it because we think she’d enjoy it. It’s an unusual sort of film, but it made me want to read the book (by Joe Hill).

Alexandre Aja (Mirrors, Pirahna 3D) wrote the script and directed.

Daniel Radcliffe does a damn good American accent, even if he is once again playing a beleaguered young fellow with mysterious powers and an unnatural relationship with snakes. Even though he has the weird child-actor-all-grown-up look, he’s filled out a bit, and he can act.

Juno Temple (Killer Joe, Maleficent) is entirely plausible as the ethereal beauty who may be Ig’s angelic faithful soulmate, or may be a dirty whore. Heather Graham has a small gem of a role as a remarkably evil waitress. James Remar and Kathleen Quinlan play possibly the worst parents ever, or maybe just the most honest.

Max Minghella (The Internship, The Social Network) is the faithful friend and Joe Anderson (The Grey, A Single Shot) plays the unreliable big brother. David Morse plays the girlfriend’s father. Kelli Garner is the hot mess who pines for Ig.

What I’m getting at is, it’s good acting. Interesting and entertaining story. Mostly a mystery, though with some serious gore at the end. Oh, it’s also, essentially, a love story.

Critics are not liking it much, and when we saw it the audience ratings (which have now been retracted on RT, presumably in advance of a wide release) were equally indifferent/negative. The Boy and I enjoyed the hell (heh) out of it.

This makes an interesting comparison with the (much more serious) Calvary, in that when Ig is walking around in his horns, he finds out how truly awful the entire town is. It also makes an interesting comparison with Faust (I’m thinking of the 1926 version because that’s the one I’ve most recently seen), in that Ig is given a certain power, but with a righteous cause.

The question is, will it tempt him away from that righteous cause? Actually, the funniest scene in the movie is him abusing his power in a way it’s hard to disapprove of, as it involves the media. Or at least, it’s hard for me to disapprove but that probably just means I’m very corruptible. (If only someone would try, dammit!)

Anyway, this seems like a rather bold choice of movie to make. Like I said, it’s not neatly in any genre, but it perhaps enough pop-appeal to hit it big. No idea, really. (And with boxofficemojo.com having been absorbed into IMDB, I may never know.)

It opens wide this Halloween. We saw it earlier because…I don’t know…Academy Award consideration? (Our theater does that a lot. We saw Two Faces Of January months ago and it just now got released.)

But if you’re open to a fantasy love story and not put off by gore, this could be the movie for you.

Liam Neeson doesn’t know who you are. But he will find you, and he will kill you. Or so they say on that there Internet the kids are all hopped up on. I don’t know how all these 60-ish guys do it. I work out, but after garotting a few guys and shooting some others, or just running ‘em down in my car, I’m worn out for the night.

Not Liam, though. In A Walk Among The Tombstones, Neeson plays an ex-cop (now unlicensed PI) who gets roped into helping a drug trafficker whose wife has been kidnapped and very possibly killed.

In fact, someone is targeting the wives of drug traffickers all over the city. (New York City, of course. That’s where we keep the serial killers. Well, there and Miami.)

Now, I always thought you didn’t mess with drug traffickers because, y’know, they’ll kill you. But our kidnapper/killer/crazy people manage to easily defeat the nonexistent security and just as easily extract money from our drug guys, who are strong family men, apparently.

Seriously, as part of the Liam Neeson action canon, this is a fine entry. Besides the action scenes, which are fairly spare but well done, there’s actually a story here and a nice relationship story between Liam and a little black orphan (no, really!), which I enjoyed even as I felt it was sorta cheesy.

It’s another one of these movies that takes place in the ’90s, in this case just pre-Y2K, which is sort of a thing these days. The Lawrence Block novel on which it is based was released in the early ’90s, so go figure. (Maybe the director wanted to bring it forward, but ubiquitous smart phones would have changed things too much, so he brought it forward as far as he could without screwing up the story.)

The Boy and the Flower both enjoyed it, as did I. Veteran writer Scott Frank did a fine job of directing here, and we look forward to seeing more from him in the future.

There is only one way a movie about a man who turns another man into a walrus (against his will) can go wrong, and that’s by being boring. As such, Kevin Smith’s new movie Tusk, is a success. But even more, this is an entertaining flick that straddles the line between horror and comedy in a way few movies do successfully.

The story concerns Wallace (oh, yeah, Wal-Lace), a podcaster whose gimmick is that he travels the continent in search of interesting stories that he describes to his partner Teddy, who is agoraphobic or doesn’t like to travel or something. They call their show the Not-See Party. (Smith understands the podcast world pretty well, I’d judge.)

Wallace has journeyed to Canada to interview a handicapped kid he’s been making fun of, but when he shows up, the kid has selfishly committed suicide, leaving Wallace without a story. A chance sighting of a flyer leads him to the home of Howard Howe, who may possibly be The Most Interesting Man in the World.

But behind Howe’s oddly affable exterior lurks a sinister desire to turn a man into a walrus.

This is not just preposterous, it virtually dares you to take it seriously. And Smith never loses his sense of humor about the proceedings; but he also dares you to not take it seriously. Wallace is a real person—a jerk, to be sure, given to cheating on his girlfriend Ally, but in no way deserving of his fate. Ally and Teddy aren’t exactly great, either, but their concern is genuine when they go to look for the missing Wallace, and down to the final scene which is both hilarious and touching.

Dark comedy, obviously. It reminds of many other movies, of course: It could almost stand as a parody of Silence of the Lambs, and it recalls The Human Centipede (without the gratuitous grossness). But the movie it most feels like to me is Motel Hell, which similarly straddles the line between sincere, campy and satirical.

The most instructive comparison is probably between this and Centipede. Both are body-horror type films, and as I’ve noted with regard to The Human Centipede, it used to be that this sort of mad scientist revolved around said mad scientist never accomplishing the desired goal. That’s important because the dread is way more potent than the actualization, which is gross, unpleasant and (in the case of Centipede) frankly goofy.

Smith does an excellent job of creating the dread, as well as a few moments of genuine horror, which is perhaps a bit surprising coming from the guy famous for things like Clerks (although Dogma has its startling moments). There seems to be a consensus (insofar as these things go) that this part of the film is well done.

When confronted with the reality of the, uh, werewalrus, though, about half the audience bails (critics and commoners alike). I kind of think people are taking themselves too seriously, though. “I couldn’t possibly enjoy a movie about a man turned into a walrus!”

Again, the only sin is to be boring, which is actually really easy to do: If you disrespect your characters, if you go for too many goofy jokes (rather than just letting the absurdity/horror of the situation speak for itself), if you just go too long—these are the landmines of the, uh, human-walrus hybrid film.

Smith steers through the minefield in his own idiosyncratic way, keeping his movie in the 90-100 minute range, and balancing the absurdity and horror with the human elements.

He does have one weakness: The long monologue (or sometimes dialogue) with a tight shot of the speaker(s), straight on looking at the camera. He does this effectively a couple of times here, and then a couple of other times less so, as with the Quebecois detective Guy Lapointe describing his encounter with Howe, and then again later with a long dialogue between Lapointe and Howe (pretending not to be Howe).

These word-storms actually manage the horror/comedy thing well at first (sort of like Gremlins Phoebe Cates’ hilarious/horrifying monologue about why her family doesn’t celebrate Christmas), then they go long, then they get absurd again, but then they go too long.

In a movie about a guy turned into a walrus, this is a pretty minor complaint.

Michael Parks (“Twin Peaks”, We Are What We Are, Planet Terror/Deathproof) does an excellent job as Howe, as does Justin Long as Wallace. Genesis Rodriguez (Identity Theft, Big Hero 6) and Haley Joel Osmont (really!) play the concerned girlfriend and friend, respectively. Johnny Depp plays the French-Canadian detective (the kids did not recognize him). Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn, and Depp’s kid Lily-Rose Melody have cute roles as Canadian convenience store clerks. Even Mrs. Smith (Jennifer Schwalbach) has a short role as a waitress.

A lot of Canadian/American humor. We all liked it. Even weeks later we find ourselves chuckling over parts of it. There are a couple of really nice shots in here, too, which is always nice to see from the guy who revived “set the camera down and talk” as an art form.

This film does demand that you suspend your belief, of course, and you probably know if you’re up for that. Weeks later, we still find ourselves chuckling over it, and The Flower has taken to using it as a new barometer. (“Gone Girl was pretty good, but you know what would’ve made it better? A walrus.”)

EXTENDED SPECIAL BLOGGER’S CUT MATERIAL:

I’m going to add some insider stuff and some personal stuff, so if you want to geek out a bit with me here, read on.

You know, I always like Kevin Smith movies, even as I disagree (often vehemently) with whatever the underlying message is. Like, is a guy really supposed to roll with it when he finds out his girl has lied about her (as it turns out) extensive sex life (Clerks, Chasing Amy)? Is God’s main message to Man really just not to believe very much in anything (Dogma)?

I can forgive Jersey Girl’s “Make this one big gesture to prove you love me or all is lost” thing because that’s a standard Hollywood trope.

But they’re fun, funny, and distinctive (an important thing). They’re also short and not boring. I feel like I could comfortably say, “Well, they’re entertaining, but not masterpieces” but then I think back to all the movies in that category from the ‘90s that get watched and re-watched and emerge as new classics.

The Big Lebowski, for example, had a meager $17M box office when it was released. And Groundhog Day, now a beloved classic, was received with the critical warmth of a golf clap, and finished somewhere between Free Willy and Demolition Man at the box office.

Re-watchability is a big deal.

Anyway, Tusk came about as a result of a podcast where Smith and hetero-life-partner Scott Mosier, wherein they came across an actual ad by a man who wanted to exchange rent in his house for someone willing to dress up as a walrus for about 2 hours a day. You can hear them actually map out the plot, almost as filmed, here. And here them talk about the box office failure here.

Though, as noted on the second podcast, with a $3M budget, there was no chance of losing money. Smith’s attitude is instructive; he wishes it did better, but he has a laundry list of how it was great for him.

It will still make a lot more at the box office than Life of Crime, unless that gets a much bigger release somehow, but it won’t make as much as Motel Hell, even without adjusting for inflation.

But I can’t see how this doesn’t get a place in the cult horror pantheon next to that film.

You know, I’ve been pretty game about the whole Atlas Shrugged thing. I sat through the first one, mostly without laughing, and I appreciated the great strides in quality made in the second one. These are movies that I have to go out of my way to see, too. (A trip to a regular theater runs a good $40-$60 instead of my usual $22. Color me completely unsurprised that people aren’t going to the movies.)

And I knew—I knew—that a movie that was bothering to kick-start $500K (the craft services tab of your average low-budget flick) wasn’t going to make good on the promises of Ayn Rand’s dystopic future.

And I haven’t even read the book.

Which is okay, because Part 3 is more of a book report than a movie, sorry to say. Every cheap tactic you can think of is used to compress the story into what must have been a meager budget. And it’s not that it’s bad, really, it’s that it’s not entirely there. Which is a shame on a number of levels.

The new actors (they’re replaced again from part 1 and part 2) are good: Laura Regan is even warmer and more appealing in this role than Samantha Mathis and Taylor Schilling, and she has some genuine chemistry with Kristoffer Polaha, who plays John Galt (replacing D.B. Sweeney and Paul Johannson, who had very minor roles in the previous films).

But the rest of the cast phones it in, and I mean that literally. Rob Morrow plays Henry Rearden, Dagny’s love interest in the previous film, but his big scene here is a mutual break-up over the phone. (Love, like business, is something that entails no obligations on the parties involved beyond initial agreements, if I understand correctly.)

I like Morrow a lot; would’ve liked to actually see him in this film. Greg Germann who has been playing weasels since at least “Ally McBeal” (and possibly “Ned and Stacey”), plays Dagny’s brother. What a great choice. He even has a few lines. Peter Mackenzie has probably the most substantial role after Dagny and John, as “Head of State Thompson”.

I had some trouble with that. What is “Head of State”? Are they trying to say “President” without saying “President”? Did that come up in the previous films? It didn’t bug me then, but it did here.

Anyway, the voice over is provided by an actual returning cast member, Jeff Yagher, who plays Jeff Allen. No, I don’t know who “Jeff Allen” was in the movie. To me, the story, as I can piece it together from the movies, boils down to a power struggle between Productive Giants and Tyrants, with a love quadrangle between Dagny and, alternately, John, Henry and Francisco, and the big character arc is Dagny’s as she is ultimately moved from fighting to her death to save her father’s railroad (still makes me laugh—railroad!) to “going Galt”.

So, the big climax in this movie is set up beautifully: The heart of her rail operation is this bridge. Galt has predicted this bridge will collapse due to government regulation/incompetence. She says she won’t let that happen.

Obviously, obviously, obviously: The Bridge Is The Thing. The movie should revolve around the fate of that bridge. The climax of the movie should be a 10 minute desperate struggle to save the bridge from, I dunno, explosive railway regulators. Whatever.

Instead, we get a still picture of a collapsed bridge and a narration saying, “Yep, it collapsed.”

I mentioned in the first movie how off-putting the philosophy itself is. And, by the way, I’m not saying that I understand Objectivism; I’m just going by what the movie presents. The second movie beat out the first by focusing on cannily accurate description of government overreach, and less on the revulsion toward altruism. It also cleverly wove actual current events into the story, where they fit seamlessly.

But where Rand excelled in her understanding of governments, she was seriously lacking in her understanding of humans, which apparently was based rated on the Autism Spectrum Disorder scale.

The Boy noted that Galt’s Gulch was peculiarly unfree: You couldn’t give food away, you had to charge for it. He made the point that, essentially, he just wants his stuff to be his, to sell or to give away as he saw fit. Indeed, that’s freedom, in the end.

And to get into the magic machine room (the perpetual motion machine room), you have to take an oath: “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

The contradictions in this are inherent in the movie itself though it never notices them, leading me to believe they’re in the source material. The whole movie revolves around the tragedy caused by constantly grasping government; yes, it deals with it primarily in terms of individual sacrifice, but the apocalyptic scenario it paints is horrifying because other people matter.

We identify with Dagny (sorta) because she’s competent and good at what she does; but the gravity of the catastrophe that unfolds is because millions will starve without her.

The spoken philosophy is practically an embrace of the cartoonish notion of businesses as profit-seeking narcissists, even as the exposition demonstrates that greatness is greatness because of the beneficial aspect of free economic exchange.

To say nothing of the fact taht the whole premise of the story is deeply 20th-century late industrialism: We still have industrial giants, but we are powered by millions of little Galts. There’s a great story to be told there about how they, too, will “go Galt” in the right circumstances.

This trilogy probably isn’t the movie series anybody wanted, and if we judge it by its own philosophy, there’s little reason for a disinterested moviegoer to go see any of them. But there were a few Randians in the audience whose opinion seemed to be “Well, the book was better.”

We went to see the posthumous release of James Gandolfini’s last (?) film but ended up seeing Brittany Murphy’s last (?) film, a five-year-old why-are-they-releasing-it-now horror flick called Something Wicked.

The Flower was so appalled, it took me weeks to talk her into seeing another movie.

Solid horror movies are pretty rare. A lot of horror movies work well up to a point. The vast majority of horror movies do something well. It’s not uncommon for a horror movie to set up a good atmosphere, for example, or an interesting premise. Most can manage a few cheap (but effective) shocks through (say) tight editing, and a few manage moments of suspense or boast a really fine performance.

These are all things missing from Something Wicked. Even its 90 minute runtime feels long and sloppy due to the editing, which does the acting no favors. Murphy does all right, I guess, but it’s not like there’s a lot to work with. I’m guessing the other actors actually can act, since most of them have pretty extensive credits.

The lead, Shantel VanSanten comes off particularly poorly, though this is doubtless due to the nature of the material, which can’t really make up its mind what her role should be.

That’s ‘cause it’s actually a big ol’ cheat. In the desperate attempt to fool the audience with a “twist”, the movie just lies to you from the first important scene—which, by the way, I spotted as it was happening.

That would be fine—I assume most people wouldn’t see it coming, because it was really stupid, and you’d have to watch a lot of horror movies to pick up on it—but then the movie wants to set up a ghost story, for the cheap shock factor. And when I say cheap shock factor, I mean lone-girl-spooked-in-swimming-pool-goes-to-take-a-shower. (Because what girl doesn’t respond to the threat of physical danger while scantily clad by getting naked in a publicly accessible yet more secluded place?)

Basically, the climax of the movie manages to both be completely absurd and totally unsurprising, punctuated by moments that are actually laugh-out-loud funny. Not enough of those to be in the so-bad-it’s-good territory, unfortunately, but—well, at one point, while staring down the barrell of a gun he’s just been shot with, a character says:

“Babe…have you gone crazy?”

As I said, it took weeks to get The Flower back into a theater, and I may never get her into another horror movie, since it’s not really her thing to begin with.

Felt bad, though. There were two potentially good movies here, if they had picked one and stuck with it, instead of trying to Scooby Doo it up and give us a twist ending, and in the process invalidating every single plot point and possible moment of suspense. Even Scooby Doo doesn’t do that any more.

Speaking of which, have you watched the latest Scooby Doo series, Scooby Doo, Mystery Incorporated? It ran for two seasons in 2010 and with a clearly planned and executed story arc. Ridiculously well done with an amazing cast and tons of in-jokes.

You should go watch that.

We went to see James Gandolfini’s final (?) film, The Drop and (due to traffic) ended up seeing Brittany Murphy’s final (?) film, Something Wicked. It’s probably uncontroversial to suggest that Gandolfini got the better deal.

Newcomer Michael R. Roskam directs Dennis Lehane’s screenplay, based on Lehane’s short story, a tale of a hardworking bartender named Bob (Tom Hardy), who finds himself in a tough spot when the bar he works in, run by his dubious cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), is robbed.

The owners of the bar, as it turns out, are Chechen mobsters, who acquired the bar from Cousin Marv a few years back after he had a run of bad luck. It’s a smallish amount of money, a few thousand dollars, but the Mob doesn’t take kindly to losing even small amounts of money, which means Cousin Marv (and perhaps by extension, Bob) is on the hook. And, as is always the case with the mob, it’s not so much the money as it is the principle.

On top of which, one bar is chosen at random to hold all the Mob’s ill-gotten gains, and the robbery may be the set up for an even bigger robbery.

Bob sort of floats through all this, seeming positively naive about things, and dealing with his own issue: To wit, a puppy found in a woman’s garbage can, that he must raise and train, only to discover the original owner wants to blackmail him over it. (As in, “Give me a lot of money or I’ll go to the police and get my dog back, at which point I’ll torture it to death.”)

So, Bob’s our hero, and we sort of see him through the eyes of the dog owner’s ex-girlfriend, Nadia (Noomi Rapace), and as the movie unfolds, we learn about the history of Marv, Bob, Nadia and Nadia’s ex (played by Matthias Schoenarts, of Veerhoven’s Black Book).

By the way, Schoenarts is Belgian and Rapace, of course, she of the dragon tattoo, is Swedish, which means half our cast of Brooklynites is furrin’. They do a good job with their accents (especially when compared to A Walk Among The Tombstones, which made me wonder if New Yorker actors were in short supply).

Anyway, it’s a good little story, with some well-done suspense moments and character development. Given the story, the ending was obvious, I thought, but necessarily so. That is, if it hadn’t ended the way it did, the rest of the story really wouldn’t have held together. This is a good thing.

The denouement between Bob and Nadia is very Lehane-y. I have mixed feelings about his view of male-female relationships, I confess. (Mystic River disgusted me, for example.)

Great performances all around. Fine direction. The Boy and I approved.

It was interesting, after seeing so many movies of Palestinians turned to serve the Israeli Shin Bet, to see a documentary on The Green Prince, who surely must have inspired these stories.

In some ways, though, this documentary presents a cleaner narrative than any of the movies we’ve seen, which is also pretty interesting. Our Palestinian protagonist is Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father is a high-ranking member of Hamas—though apparently the non-terrorist wing of Hamas.

The astounding thing about Yousef’s story is that he is steeped in anti-Israeli propaganda his whole life, but upon being arrested and witnessing Hamas’ actions in jail versus his treatment at the hands of his captors, he begins to realize that it actually is propaganda. The Israelis aren’t the bad guys.

This is magnified by Hamas’ terror rampage against civilians.

So, here’s the real life drama of a guy who doesn’t want to betray his country, especially doesn’t want to betray his own father and family, but still has the integrity to see things as they really are.

Ironically, perhaps, the worst Israeli bashing comes from his handler, Gonen Ben Yitzhak. Much like in the movies, Yitzhak has a lot of issues with Shin Bet tactics in Palestine. This is understandable, given that he had to deal with the issue of betrayal, himself, though in his case, the betrayal was of Yousef.

At the same time, it’s hard to fault the organization trying to (and often succeeding in) thwarting Hamas’ despicable tactics.

On the three-point documentary Blake scale:

1) The material is good and interesting.

2) It’s well presented, though sparing. This isn’t a big-budget documentary with a lot of fancy recreations. There’s one overhead shot of a guy getting into a van on a deserted road that’s used several times.

3) Bias. None that I detected, except sympathy for the human beings involved. It doesn’t really try to change minds on the nature of the conflict. It lets Yitzhak have his say about the Shin Bet. It also points out that the psychotic fixation Palestinians have on the Israelis makes them extremely gullible, as when the morons tramping around a funeral with RPGs accidentally fire one off. The smoke hasn’t cleared before the Palestinians are convinced that it was a nefarious Jewish plot.

And as incompetent as these Palestinian terror groups are, there’s always fodder to suspect The Jews.

At one point during the offbeat indie-ish film Frank, things began to feel so real that I suspected it was based on a true story. I later learned that it was. And still later, I learned that it actually wasn’t, although it was based on certain real events.

This is a credit to director Lenny Abrahamson, and to writers Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan (who collaborated on The Men Who Stare At Goats), who have taken a preposterous tale about a man spending all his time in a giant paper maché head fronting a difficult avant-garde band, and making it feel realistic.

Our story begins when Jon (Domhnall Gleeson, who was a Weasely in the Harry Potter flicks, but has been in a bunch of stuff, like Calvary, Anna Karenina, Dredd, True Grit) happens to be on the scene when the keyboardist for Soronprfbs (Frank’s band) goes nuts and runs off into the sea.

Jon ends up being the keyboardist.

This leads to Jon spending a year or so recording an album with Soronprfbs, ultimately supporting them with an inheritance. Meanwhile, he’s blogging and tweeting the experience, and gaining fans for his hard-to-pronounce band, while fighting off the white-hot hatred of Jon’s girlfriend, Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal, looking all of her 37 years while returning to her roots as a weird bohemian artist chick type).

This movie, in so many ways, felt like an early ‘70s flick. It has an almost magical realism feel to it, except that nothing magical really happens, unless you count suicide and insanity as magical things. Frank has a guru quality, such that people are attracted to his talent and his words of wisdom, even as he demonstrates a certain detachment from reality.

I think that’s probably it: The wise man who is detached from reality and ultimately destroyed by it was a big ’70s theme, I think. (Can I think of any movies like that offhand? Apparently not. Tommy? Those Lindsay Anderson flicks?) Honestly, as a plot, I’ve always found it creepy and heavily influenced by drug culture. But that’s just my take.

Frank avoids this nonsense, mostly. He’s a talented guy, but fragile and weird. He’s nice to Jon in a way the others are not, and it is really an exercise for the viewer to decide whether or not this relationship is a good thing. Jon means well, but he’s more taken by Frank’s talent than he is aware of Frank’s shortcomings.

You could say that the movie has a tonal shift in the third act, but that’s not really true. It’s true that the first two acts are fairly light-hearted (with darkly comic overtones), while the final act is a lot less comic, but the events are rather incidental: The first two acts are funny for their fish-out-of-water character, for the (always tenuous) isolation of the characters from reality, but it’s not like you don’t see the train coming at you—hell, from the first scene.

I actually think that’s a big part of why this works: Jon wants to bring Frank and his amazing talent to a wide audience who will then appreciate him (and make Jon a rock star, not incidentally) without seeing that Frank’s very nature makes that nigh impossible. Even if we side with Jon, and less with the pissy bandmates, it’s not like we can avoid the obvious fact that a man is wearing an enormous paper mache head.

Just as the initial part of the movie doesn’t get zany for the sake of zaniness, the closing act doesn’t get dark for the sake of darkness. In fact, the movie just destroys a beloved trope of artists—the tortured genius.

Well, that gets it a few points right there from me. The Boy and I both greatly enjoyed. A brisk hour-and-a-half story with a good narrative and strong characters, which will be seen by very few people.

But, hey, it’s got about twice the box office of Life of Crime!

We are not usually in the demo for teen romances, so it took a long, long time for us to get around to seeing The Fault In Our Stars, which combines romance with tragedy. Indeed, the film had been out for over three months before I talked the kids into it, pointing out that the reviews were good and three months is a hell of a long time for any film to be playing.

It is good, despite many opportunities to be bad.

Consider: You have Hazel (Shailene Woodley, The Descendants, The Spectacular Now), a teenage girl with terminal but indefinitely suspended cancer who meets recovered one-legged conquer-the-world teenage boy Gus (newcomer Ansel Elgort, Carrie, Divergent), and the two fall in love despite Hazel’s determination to prevent that (to spare Gus’s feelings).

You have the opening that tells you this is not like all those other bullshit cancer stories, a make-a-wish style meeting with a great author (Willem Defoe), a visit to the Anne Frank museum, jaded teenager contempt/concern for parental units (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell)…I mean, you can see how disastrous this could be, right?

And yet it’s not.

It’s touching without being mawkish. It’s romantic without being romanticized. It doesn’t flinch from the awful details of cancer (and it’s horrific treatments) nor does it wallow in those things. It also kind of flips the script in the second act in a way that changes perspective on the whole story.

I’m inclined to credit newcomer director Josh Boone, and screenwriters Scott Neustader and Michael H. Weber (who co-wrote The Spectacular Now and 500 Days of Summer) with this careful threading of delicate subject matter.

The acting is excellent as well. Woodley can act, as demonstrated in Spectacular, and I didn’t want to punch Elgort in the face, which is often the case for the “charming hero” in these teen movies. I didn’t even want to punch the comic-relief best-pal Isaac (Naked Brother Nat Wolff).

I had much the same reaction to this film as I did to The Spectacular Now, come to think of it, though I think this is a better film. In particular, as a teen movie, the kids are way less cartoonish than they are in the John Hughes-era films. Hell, not just the kids—the parents, everyone. Even Willem Dafoe’s ridiculously hot assistant Lotte Verbeek (“The Borgias”, “Outlander”) turns out to be kinder and have more depth than the role “foil-of-the-crotchety-writer” might suggest.

The shallowest character, actually, in the movie is the leader of the support group where Hazel and Gus (what about those names, by the way, are kids actually being named “Hazel” and “Gus” these days?), who is a guy (played by comedian Mike Birbiglia) who has parlayed his beating of cancer into a lifetime of living in his mother’s basement and doing a Christian outreach at the cancer support group.

Yeah, I rolled my eyes a little at that, but the character is well done, and it’s not like we don’t see most middle-aged (now called “young”) men as slackers these days.

Anyway, I and The Boy—not at all the target audience—liked it a lot, as did The Flower—who really should be the target audience by demographics, but isn’t by interest. Definitely worth checking out even if you’re not into this sort of thing, generally.

John Michael McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson, writer/director and star of The Guard, respectively are back. Back in Ireland. And Ireland’s not doing so well in Calvary.

In the build-up to seeing this, most of my time was fixing the boy’s pronunciation of “Calvary”. If you’ve never said it, but you’ve said “cavalry” a lot, it’s actually kind of hard. I remember seeing “Calvary” on a church when I was young and thinking “Hey, they spelled it wrong…?” (I figured that wasn’t really likely.)

Anyway, for you heathens, Calvary is the place where Jesus was crucified. (Also known as Golgotha, I guess because when you transliterate a word from ancient Middle Eastern languages, anything is possible!) And the little town where Gleeson is priest is in serious need of salvation, let me tell you.

This is a really, really fine movie, in contention for year’s best. The story is this: Gleeson is one of two priests in this rural Irish community, and while sitting in confession, a man comes in and describes his brutalization at the hands of a Catholic priest. Gleeson comes up with every reasonable way to help the guy, but nothing can be done really, since the molestor is long dead.

And so, the penitent (who isn’t, really) tells Father James (Gleeson) that he’s going to kill him. Precisely because Father James is innocent. Next Sunday.

Of course, it’s a small town, and Father James has a good idea who it is (though we, the audience, don’t) and the movie takes place in the week from the confession to the following Sunday. In that week, we meet the corrupt and sinful people of the town.

And boy, are they sinful.

We start with a simple domestic violence case—a woman with a black eye—and it just gets worse and worse. And, you know, people are sinful, that’s kind of the premise of Christianity (and all religions at least nod toward the corrupt nature of Man) but these people are not just sinful, they’re blasphemous and shameless.

I don’t mean they’re blasphemous in the sense of run-of-the-mill abuse of scripture. You know how a certain kind of atheist is more obsessed than any religious person with your belief in God? I mean, some atheists just don’t believe in God, and you don’t really hear about it. But some, they’re obsessed with disabusing you of any notions regarding the mere possibility of the divine.

That’s the kind of blasphemy you find in Calvary. It’s not the agnostic indifference to God but antagonism toward Him.

This never ends well.

On the one hand, this movie evokes the story of Saint Patrick going among the barbarian Irish and trying to convince them of a way of life that isn’t nasty, brutish and short, where passions are restrained to the benefit of society, with the promise of greater things to come.

On the other, the other priest, Father Leary (David Wilmot, The Guard, Anna Karenina) represents the worst of what The Church has become. He’s not a molester or anything (thank God) but when it turns out that a black man may have caused that aforementioned black eye, he cautions Father James to be aware of cultural differences and sensitivities.

As if the concept of sin didn’t apply. As if getting along was more important than being righteous. Saint Patrick obviously didn’t convert the heathens by saying “Yeah, just go ahead and do whatever you were doing.”  (Given that we saw this movie shortly after the Rotherham story broke, it probably felt more evil than the narrative alone meant it to be.)

In perhaps a direct nod to St. Pat (I’m far from expert on this stuff), Father Leary is far more concerned with the money he can get from a local well-to-do fellow than he is with saving the hollow man’s soul.

James, by contrast, is practically the Dirty Harry of Catholicism, doing whatever he can to steer people the right way, in a manner that doesn’t always please his superiors. Only, unlike Harry Callahan, he’s not much of a hero to the people, either. (Who wants to be saved from his own sin, after all?)

Kelly Reilly, who’s legally obliged to be in 25% of all feature films, apparently, plays Gleeson’s suicidal daughter. Chris O’Dowd (The Guard), Aiden Gillen (“Littlefinger” from “Game of Thrones”), Dylan Moran (the douchey David from Shaun of the Dead), Isaach De Bankole and Marie-Josee Croze (both of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and the great M. Emmet Walsh (he’s still alive!) round out the cast.

M. Emmet Walsh’s role is an interesting one. He’s known only as The Writer, and he sits in his little cabin writing and listening to Hoagy Carmichael records (which maybe was a big Brit/Aussie thing, given that it turns up in Tracks, too), and asks Father James for a gun so he can kill himself when the time comes, i.e., before he’s too infirm to take care of himself.

As I was watching this, I was sort of tallying off the deadly sins. The Writer is anticipating the (no longer canonical) deadly sin of acedia, which I believe originated in monasteries and is characterized by extreme boredom—a listlessness leading to despair and perhaps ultimately suicide, the sin of Not Loving God Enough, if you will. (I believe that became sloth.)

But it seems like most everyone here commits most every sin. Sorta like life. There’s no food gluttony that I recall, but consumption to excess? Oh, my. Is there anything else these days? There’s not much else in the movie.

The other thing might be envy. I’ll have to review it and think about it, but I could almost sense envy for Father James beneath the outward contempt that people had for him. The notion of a man being godly, and further devoting his life to an archaic institution? How can the modern man not be contemptuous of that—and also a little envious.

Anyway, you get the idea. It’s that kind of movie that makes you think about stuff. Even though I saw the ending coming from…well, the opening scene of the movie…I didn’t mind. It had to end the way it ended, and the coda was, if not upbeat, then redemptive.

The Boy and I both liked it a lot and, as mentioned, consider it a top-runner for our Best of the Year.

After some initial pleasantries, Dinesh D’Souza’s latest documentary, America: Imagine A World Without Her, shows General George Washington leading a charge into battle (as he often did), then being struck dead by a sniper’s bullet.

And me, your movie-going cynic, your urbane sophisticate, your student of rhetoric and propaganda, well, I got a little choked up by that.

I guess I’m a patriot after all. Who knew?

I sort of thought that America would be a sort of alt-history kind of movie, a little more fantasy than documentary, but it’s actually a stone cold work of non-fiction, less speculative than its wildly successful predecessor 2016. (And, actually, this movie starts with a kind of “I told you so” as D’Souza outlines his predictions from 2016 that came true—which shows you what I know, given how dubious I was over said predictions.)

Largely, however, this movie just engages five of the biggest criticisms against the United States. It addresses the ones that are just false, and contextualizes the ones that have some basis in truth. It doesn’t do a lot of “tu quoque”, which is sort of my favorite defense: The USA is bad compared to what?

There wasn’t a lot I didn’t know here, but I learned a few things that gave me a different, and I think interesting, perspective on some historical events.

The five topics covered are Native Americans, Slavery, stealing territory from Mexico, being imperialist, and being exploitative generally (via capitalism). Turns out D’Souza is for all those things!

No, of course not, that’d be silly.  But that is about the depth of the complaints against this film.

You know, if the world were a cool place, you could get a rebuttal from…well, anyone who disagreed. But we won’t see that. Mostly it’ll just be ignored. After all, they ignored the last one, and it was one of the highest grossing documentaries ever. This one may not be the #1 documentary this year, what with Disney’s Bears.

It’s a shame: You sometimes think with all this talk about “wanting to have conversations”, there’d be more attempts to actually have conversations.

But some people can only enjoy modern affluence by running it down, and particularly running down those who continue to promote the values that make it possible. So I doubt the persuasive value of movies like this.

Good doc, though: Quickly, on the three-point BMR (blake’s movie reviews) scale: It’s a worthy topic, well-presented, that wears its bias on its sleeve. D’Souza is on his way to becoming a political prisoner, so it’ll be interesting to see what he does next.

Well, I’m confused. When this sequel to (what else) How To Train Your Dragon first emerged, I was pretty sure it hadn’t gotten good reviews from audiences or critics. Not bad ones, but just marginally acceptable ones. I checked again right before taking the Barbarienne to see it and the RT score was 92/92!

But having seen it? Meh.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, exactly. Or there is, but…well, it’s weird. It’s not as funny as the first one, now that I think about it. But let me start from the beginning:

HTTYD2 starts about five years after the first installation, which is cool. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is grown-up (still going by “Hiccup”, though, of course), and looking at a marriage with Astrid (America Ferrara) and, less enthusiastically, toward being the chief in place of his father, Stoick (Gerard Butler).

Hiccup is more into exploring, however, and this creates a tension between him and his father, who’s come around to having a lot of respect for the boy. This part is also good.

This reveals the new menace and antagonists for this film. This part feels a little familiar, but, okay.

Then—and this is in the trailer—Hiccup finds…his mother. That’s when things get weird.

I’m not going to go into detail because, like I said, this has rather high ratings, with some people considering it better than the first, but for me this had two problems that got increasingly problematic and kept me from engaging very seriously with this.

First, the story ends up being very, very similar to the previous film. In fact, it’s close enough to the first one to where you have to wonder—hell, you have to conclude that the Vikings in the first film had it right: All dragons should be destroyed.

I mean, obviously, you’re not supposed to come to that conclusion, but, as we frequently note here at the Bitmaelstrom, a lot of these kidflix are based on premises that don’t bear close scrutiny and can’t really withstand much in the way of deep development.

It doesn’t mean a movie’s gonna be bad, and if we’re being fair, kidflix have a better track record for sequels than just about anything. But this movie really dares you to overlook the problems suggested by rubbing your nose in them.

Especially with the second major problem: The introduction of Hiccup’s mother (Cate Blanchett) into the storyline. Now, I know that there’s a series of books on which this based, sorta, but I’m guessing this is just some serious retconning: Unplanned changes to history in order to come up with interesting material for a sequel.

The weird thing is that it’s not done badly in and of itself: The scenes with Valka (his mother) and Stoick and Hiccup are emotionally affecting in a deeper way than (e.g.) the first movie dared to go. Or most kid movies. Maybe because it’s not entirely appropriate?

Appropriate or not, here, it’s really…weird. It raises a whole bunch of questions it can’t possibly answer satisfactorily. And it ties into the first problem about the nature of the dragons.

It just didn’t add up, not at all. So, even though effectively done, it didn’t feel earned. What’s the word for that? Kitsch?

This is compounded by a major character death toward the end of the movie that feels really cheap, like the the death had to happen for narrative reasons, when it would’ve been much more interesting (if more challenging) to deal with the story without the death.

I don’t know. People like it. A lot, even. Heck, The Barb liked it, and that’s all that matters. Intriguingly, she liked Rio 2 better, and she didn’t like Rio 2 very much. (Apparently, birds trump dragons. Who knew?)

Kit Harrington, of the “Game of Thrones” series, has a kind of interesting role as a caddish rogue, but it never really gets developed.

So, I don’t get it. Unless people are still impressed by extensive “whoosh” scenes where people ride around on dragons in “thrilling” fashion, I can’t figure out why people dig this and I don’t.

Frank Dawson is skimming the money from his housing projects and Ordell and Louis know it, but can’t prove it. So to extract money from the corrupt developer, they decide to get a little bit of extra leverage by kidnapping his wife, Mickey.

Frank is too busy ignoring his son, Bo, and diddling his mistress, Melanie, to notice. When Louis and Ordell make him aware of his plight, it takes very little persuasion from Melanie to convince Frank not to negotiate with the kidnappers: win-win, either way, right? Louis and Ordell, meanwhile, are struggling to keep Mickey reasonably safe while they shelter her in the house of neo-Nazi Richard.

The first thing you’ve gotta be grateful for when someone adapts a crime story, particularly one by Elmore Leonard (3:10 to Yuma) is that you can follow it, and this one you mostly can. I couldn’t quite figure out how Ordell sussed out Melanie’s plans, nor did I exactly buy the relationship between Mickey and Louis.

But the bigger mystery is how a movie with Jennifer Aniston (Mickey), Tim Robbins (Frank), Mos Def (Ordell) and Isla Fisher (Melanie) ends up with under 50 theaters for its opening. Maybe it’s ‘cause of John Hawkes, who plays Louis, who is restricted to independent films (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Winter’s Bone) by law, apparently.

I mean, it’s not great, sure. But it’s good. It’s fun. It’s dark, but not overly so. Writer/director Daniel Schecter moves things along at a pace that allows you to appreciate the cleverness and gloss over the silliness.

So I guess it’s the Leonard thing. People who go see films based on Leonard’s work have expectations. I guess those expectations were met by ’90s films like Jackie Brown and Get Shorty, both of which are probably over-rated.

Guessing. I’ve only ever seen the 3:10 to Yuma flicks, and John Frankenheimer’s ugly and unpleasant 52 Pickup. (The latter film along with the even worse film The Men’s Club, released the same year, left me with a life-long aversion to Roy Scheider films.)

I don’t know who makes these decisions. After a summer when Lucy is still in the top 10 in its 9th week, this movie (in its second week) is sandwiched between Land Ho! and Snowpiercer which are both in their third months! In fact, those two films are picking up theaters while this one languishes after a not-even half-hearted attempt to market it.

Did you hear of it beforehand? I didn’t. It was just playing and not awful (though the popular RT score has dropped from the 60s into the 40s since it first came out).

Anyway, it’s fun, short, dark, and maybe too cute for some. Good acting, especially from Aniston (not in Rachel mode) and Hawkes (who’s always good). Mos Def and Tim Robbins are doing their things: It’s not a reach for either of them, with Def seeming only slightly more sleazy than he did in Begin Again and Robbins having perfected the Evil Republican caricature years ago. (Of course, the character’s party is never mentioned out loud but you know what template Robbins is drawing from.) Mark Boone Junior is amusingly loathsome as the Nazi.

I was struck by how long-in-the-tooth Isla looked in this. She’s 38, but the lighting really revealed a heavily applied makeup. Perhaps that was a deliberate choice; I know I’ve never thought in the past, upon seeing Fisher, “She’s getting long in the tooth.” Aniston, 45, looks great. Like a woman in her 40s, but not one mutilating herself in an attempt to look like a woman in her 20s.

So, maybe it’s deliberate, to keep the audience from identifying too much with Melanie. On the other hand, Melanie is far-and-away the most evil character in the story, so I’m not sure that was ever an issue. (Actually, given that the movie takes place in 1978, they’re all too old for their roles.)

I spotted two things in Life of Crime that struck me as anachronistic: At one point the smarmy country-club confrère play amusingly by Will Forte (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2, Nebraska) is about to dial 9-1-1. And at another point Aniston talks to Robbins about “quality time”. Those things were ’80s in my world, but 9-1-1 has a long history and the first recorded use of “quality time” is in the ’70s, so maybe both things were in the original book, written in ’78.

Anyway, details aside, The Boy and I liked it.

I did not go see the 1998 Emmerich/Devlin Godzilla in the theaters. And when I put it on the cable many years later, I got immediately distracted, and only looked at it glancingly to think, “Well, now, this isn’t very good at all.”

I never put my finger on why. The idea didn’t seem too bad. Make Godzilla nimbler and more reptilian in movement, and don’t scale it up so that it’s crushing model buildings under foot, rather have it dodging in between New York’s skyscrapers. Have Godzilla be (SPOILER!!!!) pregnant, for example. None of these are bad ideas, per se.

Having now sat through the entire feature in a theater, I can sum it up in three words:

Oh. My. God.

This movie is so bad, it was hard to watch even with the Rifftrax guys (Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy’s always lovable baritone) letting the jokes fly fast and furious.

It’s not that the ideas, as I mentioned, were bad: It’s that they’re mishandled at every turn. For example, making Matthew Broderick your “action hero” could work, because it’s not like anyone’s going to be punching out Godzilla, or pulling out a minigun to take him one-on-one.

But making Matthew Broderick your hero when he’s doing the exact same mugging he does in Ferris Beuller? That’s catastrophic.

Unleashing the possibility of dozens of Godzillas? Kinda cool. Using that to rehash scenes out of Jurassic Park? Oh, so lame. Especially after the 6th or 7th time someone tries to stop these little velocizillas by bolting a door, having witnessed all previous attempts not even slow them down.

Feisty love-interest for Broderick? Good. Sociopathic love-interest with virtually no redeeming qualities? Not so good. Even if he did end up marrying Sarah Jessica Parker in real life.

Hank Azaria and Mary Pitillo presage “Jersey Shore” with their, ahem, broadly drawn characters. Harry Shearer practically reprising his Simpsons character, Kent Brockman.

The parade of French clichés that is Jean Reno.

The CGI was state of the art for 1998, and it’s unbearably bad now. I mean, the old ‘50s movies with the rubber suits holds up better. (I think one of the reasons Jurassic Park still largely works is the practical effects.) So even the effects don’t help save this thing, even with the kind of cool ideas about how Godzilla should move and act. (Also, he’s ridiculously nimble: Dodging missiles right and left.)

Honestly, you have to go back to Coleman Francis or Manos: The Hands of Fate (or maybe The Doomsday Machine) to find a film as unwatchable as this. Sometimes I think watching these things is like having a baby: Incredibly painful but when it’s all over, you had a lot of laughs (and a sore abdomen), so you forget until the next time.

I should talk more about the riffing, but it’s always hard to encapsulate these things. This is really, really funny. Really, really, really funny. The main problem with MST3K is that there would be lulls: There would be long stretches of rapid fire humor, and then things would slow down a bit, and sometimes too much.

There are a few breathing points here. But not a lot. Not all the jokes land but maybe 90% or more do, which is damn good. Well, the Boy may have missed a few more, since he knows nothing of the ’90s, doesn’t know who Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane or Sarah Jessica Parker is, and so on.

It’s fun to watch in a theater, too, because the audience roars.

The next Rifftrax “live” show is Anaconda, which is a truly terrible film, but I think I actually managed to watch that on TV after it came out. It’s kind of a compelling bad as I recall, with a good part of the time you going, “What the hell is Jon Voight doing with his voice?”

Anyway, the 1998 Godzilla needs Rifftrax to survive. NEEDS IT! Otherwise, it only has the distinction of not being the worst film Devlin/Emmerich ever made.

I am willing to speculate, somewhat tentatively, that I prefer the Duplass brothers as actors and producers to directors. The Boy and I have seen three of the boys’ movies (Baghead, Cyrus, and Jeff, Who Lives At Home), only missing their most recent (The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, I think it was called) probably because, well, something more promising was playing.

In fact, I think it might have been the delightful Safety Not Guaranteed, which they produced and in which Mark (the acting brother) had a role. Actually, Jay also acts, but I think Mark acts more and Jay directs more. I don’t know. They do a lot of everything.

The key thing about them, though, is that their projects have a distinct style. Their stuff always screams “independent film”. Also “low-budget” but “independent”, because they don’t really do exploitation stuff—even Baghead, ostensibly a slasher flick—was more a character study than kin to Friday the 13th.

So, what makes a Duplass brothers film? Well, it’s going to be low-key. It’s going to have a starkly realistic feel, and if there’s a non-realistic aspect to it, that’s going to create a certain mystery that causes you to doubt whether or not the non-realistic aspect is really real…or not. Heh.

There’s gonna be a lot of acting. Not hammy stuff. Not showy stuff at all, in fact. But a whole lot of subtle exchanges and character dynamics never fully expressed in words.

It’s gonna be short. It may not feel short, however, because of the low-key thing.

And so we come to The One I Love, directed by newcomer Charlie McDowell and written by newcomer Justin Lader, the mysterious story of a couple (Mark Duplass, Elizabeth Moss) sent to a get-away-from-it-all-and-repair-your-marriage spot by their therapist (Ted Danson).

Things start out pretty well. Then they get weird. Then they get really weird.

The movie is powered entirely by Duplass and Moss, and typifies (to the extreme) what I mean by “a lot of acting”. Duplass performs well, and Elizabeth Moss (who I guess is a TV person, a regular on “Mad Men” and “West Wing”) holds her own next to him. The range of emotions and intentions and character developments that they must communicate is very impressive indeed, and also necessarily constrained by the situation.

Which you’ll notice I’m not describing in any way.

Because that would spoil it.

It’s a fun film. It’s not, as I was somewhat worried, an icky psychodrama, as movies around marital difficulties can be. The movie doesn’t really try to solve their problems so much as raise the ultimate question of what it actually means to be in a relationship with someone. There’s a light touch to this, a bit of a thriller-ish aspect, even.

The Boy and The Flower both enjoyed, and agreed that one of the reasons it worked was that it didn’t try to explain too much. It simply set up the rules, dropped a few clues, and let the drama play out, as the correct focus of the film.

As I say, I think I liked it (and Safety Not Guaranteed) better than the Duplass written and directed films, perhaps because the touch of fantasy/mystery/suspense in this and Safety make a more compelling hook to engage with.

Directed by newcomer Charlie McDowell and written by Justin Lader, whom we hope to see more of in the future.

A boy grows from age six to age 18 in Richard Linklater’s slice-of-life film Boyhood. The hook? The film was actually filmed over twelve years, with the same actor (Ellar Coltrane) in the lead role.

Two main observations:

1. Two-and-a-half hours is a long time for a “slice-of-life” picture.
2. The gimmick is surprisingly effective, and actually transcends mere gimmickry by the end of the film.

That said, you have to be able to get past point one to enjoy point two. Mason (Coltrane) is a young man whose parents have split up, and when the movie starts, his dad has been away long enough to prompt his mom to wonder if Mason really remembers that much about him.

Dad’s obsessed with his non-existent music career and struggling against settling down, which is maybe something he should have thought of before having two kids. Mason’s sister Samantha (the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater) is truly awful, manipulating her mother and being mean to her brother.

The story arc, such as it is, is powered mostly by Mom’s drive to make herself a better life, getting an education, a degree, and ultimately teaching in college. This ability to make that life is almost completely scuttled by her complete inability to pick a decent man to be her husband.

Mason is pretty much on the periphery of the action, with these things affecting his life. As such, the movie’s emotional impact comes from a kind of emotional pointillism: Little things that build up over the course of the 2:40 minutes, like getting a note from a girl who says she likes you, or learning how to do something well.

It’s kind of a sad thing to see this cheery little kid grow into a sullen, muted teenager, but I guess that’s what happens (if not always, then a lot). Remember those old ‘50s teen movies, where the kids were all spirited and, well, maybe a little wild, with their surfboards and sock hops, but basically good-humored, whether hanging 10 in Hawaii or fighting The Blob in Pennsylvania?

I miss those days, even though they were well over before I was born. But I think I would’ve preferred the average teen to be more like Tommy Kirk than James Dean. (After all, when everyone’s James Dean, then nobody is. Or something.)

We liked it, The Boy and I, length and all. I think, however, this is one that would have a much harder time holding one’s attention outside the theater. It’s too low key. There are some scary moments. There are a few funny moments, as well, though not nearly enough. (At least, I’d like to think of a distillation of life having a lot more humor in it.)

Mostly, though, it powers through on little dramas, and a kind of accumulation of sentiment. You see the kid grow up, and that’s an entirely different experience from seeing one actor play a character at one age, and another playing a character at another age.

We have not seen Linklater’s Before… series of films, though they must have a similar effect, being filmed with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy at three different and widely separated points in time. We did enjoy Bernie, however.

This is probably a bit more demanding than Linklater’s other films, overall, and definitely not for everyone, but it can be rewarding if you invest in it.

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan are back! Or maybe I should say Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are back! Steve would doubtless prefer the former. In this sequel to 2011’s The Trip, which is both a movie and a TV series, Brydon (whose name I consistently spelled wrong in my earlier review) and Coogan are travelling all over Italy, eating fine food and doing impressions.

The funny thing about the last movie is that while we weren’t bowled over, we were constantly referencing that film later on, especially the Michael Caine impressions. “She was only fif-teen years old!” and stuff like that.

It kind of stuck with us, me and even The Boy.

This one is actually even less accessible in a lot of ways. I enjoyed it, not as much as the previous film, but way more than The Boy and The Flower, for whom a lot of the references were completely lost. Brydon does a great Gore Vidal, for example, but my kids have never even heard of Vidal. (So sue me; I don’t think he’s going be much of a significant historical/literary figure.)

Needless to say, it didn’t go over big with them, but I rather liked it. Like Coogan’s previous efforts, there is a kind of “in-joke” feeling to it, with Coogan and Brydon playing characters roughly based on themselves, but also very clearly not playing themselves.

Brydon makes a wry reference to being “affable”, in one of the funnier bits, where he’s kind of obnoxiously insisting on his affability, which (immense as it is) is not as great as people think it is.

The switch in this film is that Coogan comes off as the likable guy trying to make things right with his family while Brydon becomes increasingly boorish and caddish. Obviously, he’s not really playing himself, but perhaps venting a bit about being typecast.

Another thing which I thought was odd was that, in the first movie, Brydon’s impressions seemed far better than Coogan’s, really running circles around him. This time, Coogan seems more on the ball, with Brydon attempting to constantly be the center of attension, but Coogan’s stuff seeming to get more of the character of the person being imitated.

This is, like, serious theater nerd-ery here. Just like the last one, I could only recommend it guardedly, to people who like the inside-y, is-it-real-or-not actor shenanigans. And even then, I would recommend it somewhat less vigorously than the previous one.

In a world where…the Dude is the wisest man in all the land…One Man must…

Or something like that. Jeff Bridges has been trying to get his movie made for 20 years, apparently having filmed a home-movie version with his father and his brother Beau’s kids a few decades back. So, I suppose we have The Hunger Games to thank for this teen-dystopic-future-drama.

In this future world, the population lives on an isolated plateau, protected from all harm, protected from competition, feelings, discomfort, with everything decided for them by a central planning committee. In other words, it’s the end game of “soft” socialism.

Not that this is ever overtly expressed, of course. (Can you imagine?) But, really, the idea is that there’s a completely safe, pre-planned world, free of chaos, with job security and 24/7 monitoring combined with rules for everything, and that seems to be the way our world is going.

Except for the “free of chaos” part, but eventually pharmaceuticals will get up to snuff.

The monkey in the wrench here is that the society (for some unexplained reason) feels a need to preserve history, and this is done through a quasi-mystical telepathic process. Our hero is this generation’s designated receiver, and Jeff Bridges himself is the eponymous Giver.

The problem is, the rules don’t apply to The Giver: He is simultaneously subjected to the history of Man while being weaned off his Ritalin (or whatever), and thus exposed to all sorts of emotions and alien enthusiasm toward life. He also exposes his friends and “family” to it.

I put “family” in quotes because it’s an interesting construct here: It looks like a family, with a mother and father and a little sister, but the mother and father aren’t married, and the children aren’t produced by their union. This means that their first loyalties are to the community. (Remember, if you see something, say something!)

It’s not exactly spelled out but I don’t think anyone has sex in this world. Babies are made through artificial insemination or possibly in vitro, then implanted into women who are designated breeders, and on birth, immediately removed from the breeders and given to other families to raise-ish.

School is coordinated by the central authority and everyone is designated the job they’re best for by their 18th year.

There’s a kind of naive sincerity to the proceedings that make this all work. I’ve gone on rants before about sci-fi dystopias that kind of fail their initial premise, i.e., they haven’t really created much of a dystopia. Or more accurately, while the trade-offs are there, every society has trade-offs and you have to make the case for why this particular trade-off is bad enough to be called “dystopic”. (Especially against the backdrop of our current world.)

In this case, I kept feeling like “Well, yeah, a lot of people would trade a lot of things for a world where they had complete security.” If not feeling emotion freed you from the bad ones, a lot of people would make that trade. If being designated for a particular role meant you had a job for life, a lot of people would make that trade.

So, the world looks so perfect and well-ordered, that you can see the appeal, but when The Receiver is experiencing real emotions for the first time, you (and he) begin to realize what was lost. And then, when he gets a taste of the chaos and pain caused by real emotions, you can at least understand the logic that went behind creating this world in the first place.

Good acting from Jeff Bridges, who does his usual “just enough to not evoke all those other roles” things he does, where you know it’s him but you’re not confusing it with Rooster Cogburn or The Dude or whoever. Meryl Streep is…well, she’s Streeping it up here. Brenton Thwaites (whose name I spelled wrong in the review of Oculus) does a fine job as Jonas. Odeya Rush, who was in last year’s Jim Mickle/Nick Damici cannibal horror collaboration We Are What We Are, evokes a young Amy Irving.

The supporting players also do a fine job: Alexander Skarsgard is the father, Cameron Monaghan plays the friend (whose emotions seem a little less well-checked to me than others’), little Emma Tremblay, already a veteran of dystopias with last year’s Elysium, plays the little sister. The now middle-aged Katie Holmes plays the mother. (I mention that she’s middle-aged because I’m sure that’ll blow somebody’s mind. I never watched that show she was on so it means nothing to me.)

It’s not all beer-and-soma, though: The fact that everyone’s walking around with muted emotions means that the acting is very often subtle, and the drama has to come from the situation rather than the acting at least for most characters through most of the movie.

It’s also short, barely over an hour-and-a-half, so it doesn’t hit the kind of epic feel of a Hunger Games, and a lot of stuff had to be condensed, I’m quite sure. We all really liked it, though: The Boy and The Flower as well as I.

It’s not a challenge to figure out why critics hate this film while audiences are much more favorable to it (32/67 rating on RT). First, it is, essentially a trashing of central command-and-control type societies. They can (sorta) work, the movie argues, if you give up your memory, your feelings, your humanity. Indeed, the people of this society can be seen as the sort of perfect people who make up socialist’s dream societies, all focused on the goals the community has decided for them. They have literally immanentized the eschaton.

But probably more powerful and direct offense comes in the community’s selective retention process for babies. This involves technicians measuring infants along various metrics, and deciding which ones live and which ones die. The society’s lies allow people to believe that such babies (and old people, for that matter) are “released”, where “release” is like Logan’s Run’s Sanctuary, or The Island’s, uh, Island.

This is pretty powerful stuff watching babies being killed. Maybe you can avoid the connection between that and abortion, particularly selective abortion where Down’s kids and the like are “released”, but I couldn’t.

I’m guessing the critics couldn’t either, and thus the very low score.

Nonetheless, it is a good film, about on a par with the even more overlooked How I Live Now, which I realized I can’t link to because I still haven’t written the review.

It didn’t do gangbusters at the box office, either, so we may not be seeing a sequel. The book had two or three. If you’re in the mood for some teen dystopia, though, it’s worth a watch.

The Barbarienne liked this sequel to, I dunno, some other movie we saw a while back. You could read that review and it would serve for this film, too.

Utterly forgettable. The Barb had seen this a month or two ago on Netflix (“Why pay for it when you can watch it for free at home!”) and she kept saying things like “Oh, remember that guy from the original? And that one?”

No. Nope. Nuh-uh. Don’t remember it much at all.

I vaguely remember there being music in the previous film. I think there was also music in this one.

Jesse Eisenberg! He’s in this, and back. He’s actually kinda doing a voice here; he doesn’t sound like the same dick he plays in all his films. He’s vested Blu with a little more quiet strength, as opposed to strained neurotic.

Miguel Ferrer and Andy Garcia add their voices to the menagerie of instantly forgettable characters. I think the rest of the crew is back, like…uh….Anne Hathaway as the female macaw and…Leslie Mann as the bird wrangler.

The plot? Um. Men are incompetent boobs that are only saved by their hyper-competent girlfriend/wives.

No, wait, Jermaine Clement is back as the evil…I have literally forgotten. Was he a bird? Or an evil human? I think he was a bird. He must’ve been because he was doing bird Shakespeare. He’s still good but he’s sharing screen villain time with a human antagonist who wants to destroy the Amazon Rain Forest.

For the past 30 years, I’ve been hearing about how we’re destroying the Amazon rain forest. Over 2 million acres are still standing.

I remember when men used to be able to do things.

I digress. I digressed a lot in the movie. Even the animation didn’t hold my attention. There are some bright spots there but the movie is just so relentlessly politically correct, in never comes within 2 million square miles of anything remotely interesting.

Bruno Mars has a kind of cute role as a feathered Lothario, though he’s just as incompetent as the rest of the men, when you get down to it. The original score almost grabbed me a couple of times, but it’s almost like this movie is basically an excuse to sell soundtracks on iTunes, and there really wasn’t time for traditional scoring that might add some depth.

Rita Moreno has a little role as “Aunt Mimi”.

Yeah, I’m reaching for things to say about it. I can’t really remember it. The eight-year-olds I know liked it, but not a whole bunch.

I hereby make this (highly dubious) announcement: We have hit peak superhero movie. It’s all downhill from here on out, and the death knell is Guardians of the Galaxy. Not because this isn’t a good movie, it is: One of the best superhero movies to-date, though overrated. And not even overrated necessarily on its own merits, but in the sense of the “Marvel can do whatever it wants!” message being promulgated. More on that in a moment.

But first, our movie: Guardians of the Galaxy is the story of a boy kidnapped from Earth by aliens who goes on to become a petty outlaw that goes by the name of Star Lord, a pretentious moniker nobody seems to know but himself.

One of his jobs results in him getting stuck with a particularly powerful artifact (along the lines of the Tesseract that was in a lot of the other movies and the Aether from the second Thor film), which in turn leads him to cross paths with a bunch of people who initially want to kill or capture him: The barbarian dude, the hot green daughter of the evil emperor, the wiseguy raccoon and his companion giant tree pal.

And, really, if reading any of the above slows you down, you haven’t been going to the movies lately.

Despite the fate of the universe being in the balance, the proceedings are light and lively, and mostly not bogged down in their own CGI, which is interesting because it’s pretty much all CGI. This is a space opera, essentially, like Star Wars or any of its many clones, but with more of that cool-nerd vibe that all the kids are into today.

And it’s funny.

The Flower liked it. The Boy also liked it, even though he finds the fights in these things dopey; he thought they kept them within the bounds of good taste.

I could go see it again. I’d take the Barbarienne, but there is some stuff that might scare her. (She couldn’t make it through Thor 2.)

Solid cast: Chris Pratt, whom the Flower recognized from “Parks and Recreation” and whom we know best as Emmett Brikowski from the Lego movie, plays Star Lord affably enough. Zoe Saldana seems to need a minimum amount of makeup to look like a hot alien chick. I assume her skin’s not really green, but she does look in serious need of a sandwich. Wrestler Dave Bautista makes a good barbarian. Bradley Cooper is stunt cast as the raccoon, though he’s doing a voice sorta. (I kept thinking it should be Bruce Willis.) Vin Diesel reprises his role as the Iron Giant, er, Giant Tree.

Other notable smaller roles include Glenn Close as some sort of leader/functionary, Benecio Del Toro as some sorta creepy guy, Michael Rooker (famous for playing a creepy guy on the “Walking Dead”) playing a creepy pirate guy, Karen Gillan (we just saw her in Oculus, and she has a series coming up this fall called “Selfie”), and John C. Reilly as Everyman.

It’s probably good idea to point out that if you set your movie in space, and people go to this super-advanced universe completely alien to Earth, and they find John C. Reilly, there? Well, you might as well have set it at the corner 7-11.

I’m kidding. Sort of. But sort of not: Nothing says “NOT REALLY SPACE” like John C. Reilly.

Oh, and Gregg Henry. Fine character actor. Been playing a dick since at least Body Double. Plays a dick here.

It’s all slick and fun and breezes by to a ‘70s/80s soundtrack, including even a few songs I’ve heard, like “Fooled Around and Fell In Love”. Writer/Director James Gunn, who did a fairly decent body-horror film back in 2006 called Slither, is to be commended.

All in all, though, I think it’s all downhill from here. I probably shouldn’t be trusted, since I was pretty sure this was going to be the next Howard The Duck (who has a cameo at the end of the movie), but this feels like a sea change. Even as the #1 film of the year, it’s just barely going to crack the all-time Top 200.

And the tonal balance it strikes is precarious, indeed. If all superhero movies (as the Ace of Spades suggests) ultimately become Batman movies, it’s because the danger of falling into camp is very high indeed. And nobody gets that better than The Batman, at once the grimmest of heroes (though not nearly as grim as he’s been made out in the movies) but also the one with the campiest history. (As has been noted, the problem with the ’60s TV series wasn’t that it wasn’t faithful to the comic book, just that it was faithful to elements and time periods of the comics fans wanted to forget.)

Gunn manages the comedy/drama/silliness well. Others will not be so successful. Widening gyre, center not holding, and what not.

None of which means you shouldn’t enjoy this. But I’m thinking you probably won’t remember it for long either, except, years from now, when “Daredevil vs. Batman” comes out, and Robin starts helping Batman on with his pink cowl. You’ll think “I remember when superhero movies didn’t suck” and then “Blake said this would happen.”

The cool thing, is that if it ever happens at all, I can take credit for being right. And if it doesn’t, I’ll just pretend I didn’t write this.

Michel Gondry is one of the most idiosyncratic directors working today, with a style as unmistakable (even moreso perhaps) than Wes Anderson or Tim Burton. The first film of his that I saw was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I did not like much. His subsequent films (Science of Sleep, Be Kind, Rewind, The Green Hornet), which I liked more, have largely not been as well received.

I get this: There is an uncanny polish to ESotSM, a clear message, clearly delivered. It is, by all measures, a better film than the others. But it’s not so much Gondry’s message, in my opinion, as writer/producer Charlie Kaufman’s, whose fingerprints can be found on the grotesque Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation. (which I did not see after realizing it was by the same guys who did BJM and ESotSM).

This is important in understanding my take on Gondry’s latest film, Mood Indigo, because I prefer Gondry’s characteristic imperfections over what are generally considered better movies. You know, you don’t come to me looking for sympathetic opinions on Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese films, whatever their technical merits. (Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever spelled Scorsese’s name right up until now.)

Meanwhile, there’s a sort of childish romanticism to Gondry that appeals to me, and Mood Indigo is chock full of it. Not that it’s all happy. Oh, no, not at all: The source material is a French (?) novel from the ‘40s (?) called Froth on the Daydream. (Yeah, you can look it up if you want to know for sure. What am I? Google?)

The basic outline is simple enough: Wealthy and creative Colin meets quirky and beautiful Chloe and the two hit it off in their quirky, creative and wealthily beautiful way. But their happily-ever-after is clouded by Chloe contracting a disease (a water-lily on the lung) for which the only treatment is to be surrounded by flowers.

Their happy-go-lucky existence is slowly destroyed by the disease and, since this is Gondry, the beautifully creative ways their happiness expressed itself in their actual physical existence become equally dark and oppressive as their situation worsens.

With the exception of The Green Hornet, which is more-or-less bound by genre conventions, one never really knows how Gondry’s films will end. The Boy and I were both taken aback by the ending here which is…well, it’s just not what we expected. I suspect it will turn many people off.

Great characters: Besides Colin and Chloe, there is Colin’s pal Chick, who is obsessed (to the point of financial ruin) with the writings (and other artifacts) of one Jean-Sol Partre. (It’s somehow reassuring to realize that Marxist Existentialism was being roundly mocked even at its height.) Chick’s obsession is so thorough that he squanders his opportunities to marry the beautiful Alise.

The other main character is Colin’s man-servant, who is more a chef/major-domo as well as a sidekick (except when Colin is being his sidekick). The faithful Nicolas must be thrown out by a well-meaning Colin, so dedicated is he to his friend’s well-being.

Everyone focuses on Gondry’s whimsy but as you, Dear Reader, may know, I consider all art to be artifice, so to me the whimsy is as natural as a superhero movie or a romantic-comedy or any straight-up drama, even when they try so hard to be “realistic” they remove all dramatic interest. The main thing is that the characters are “real”, and so we care what happens to them. If they seem “extreme” or if the physics of their world don’t seem to match ours doesn’t really matter. (At least not to me. Some folks can’t relate, or don’t care to.)

The Boy and I really liked it. We might have even loved it, though it is in some (narrative) ways a difficult film to say you “loved”.

Romain Durais, who’s kind of the French actor of the year for us (Chinese Puzzle, Populaire) plays Colin. Perennial Casa ‘strom favorite Audrey Tatou (Chinese Puzzle, Priceless) is Chloe. Gad Elmaleh (Priceless, The Valet) is Chick. Omar Sy (The Intouchables, and a small part in X-Men: Days of Future Past) is Nicolas.

If you’re a Gondry fan, you’ll probably like this. If you’re not, you probably won’t. Either way, you won’t forget it.

The Rotten Tomatoes score for Zach Braff’s newest film is a cold critical 40 up against a reasonably warm 76 for the audience. I mention this because I probably can’t be trusted with regard to this film.

Braff plays Adam, a down-on-his-luck actor who’s supported by his wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) while his dad (Mandy Patinkin) pays for his two kids (Joey King of Crazy Stupid Love, and Pierce Gagnon of Looper) to go to an ultra-orthodox Jewish school. So orthodox that when we first meet Grace (King), she’s explaining to her father how she plans to shave her head so that only her husband finds her attractive.

It wouldn’t work, he explains, because she’s so beautiful, she’d even be beautiful bald. Grace doesn’t show it, but she turns away from her dad to smile.

By contrast, Adam and his father have a much more antagonistic relationship. Gabe (Patinkin) views Adam as a serious disappointment, having married a half-Jewess who he then has support him while he does the (very occasional) commercial. His father speaks of fondness about his brother, Noah, a genius (we’re told) who’s also a serious loser and perhaps an even bigger disappointment than Adam, who maybe never had that much potential to squander. Noah doesn’t even speak to Gabe any more.

Gabe, however, is dying. This leaves Adam has to wrestle with his life, his marriage, his kids education, his brother and his relationship with God and his fellow Jews all at once.

Well, look: Dialogues between a dying father and his son about life’s challenges and disappointments, along with an absentee sibling? A little too close to home for me to be “objective” about. It felt real, and familiar, to me, and I liked the respectful way it contrasted the challenges facing the incoming middle-agers with those of their parents. Some of them are the same: Balancing work, love and child-rearing.

But then there’s that embrace of childish things, which older generations eschewed as part of growing up, and younger ones cling to longer and longer while not growing up. It helps that Adam is likable, concerned and well-meaning, as well as willing to change. He’s indicted by his lack of awareness of his wife’s situation, and to a degree even his kid’s situations, despite being more genial toward them.

I think there’s a message there: Liking your kids and showing them affection is not the same as raising your kids.

And God’s there, too, which may have been off-putting to the critics. God takes Adam’s own form (and Adam was made in God’s image, right?) but an idealized form, that of a superhero image of himself he had as a child. There’s a suggestion that getting right with God—even before tackling the whole religion thing—is important.

I liked it quite a bit. It’s about small things, really. Little choices. Growing up without growing old.

The kids were not as taken with it as I was, though they both liked it as well. I was not surprised that they weren’t as moved as I was. But it’s one reason that when I write these things, I tell you my mood: It matters a whole lot. A movie that seems mildly interesting at one point in your life can feel suddenly profound at another.

After his critically acclaimed musical Once, director John Carney did a few other projects that apparently didn’t get much notice (Zonad?), and he now returns to the musical well with Begin Again, which is sort of like Once, minus the Irish, so you can understand what the people are saying.

I saw Once, but not in the theater, which is often like not seeing it at all for me (see my upcoming Rifftrax: Godzilla review, e.g.). I think I had a hard time understanding what they were saying and with the low-budget audio and film quality I got distracted, so I barely remember it. It’s supposed to be great.

Begin Again isn’t supposed to be as good but I liked it a lot more, as did The Boy, or The Boy did insofar as he could remember seeing Once, which he was pretty confident he hadn’t. On the other hand, I remembered him hating it, which is why I didn’t recommend going to see Begin Again.

But we gambled and won on this tale of broken-hearted songwriter Gretta (Keira Knightly, looking unusually appealing) who crosses path with a washed-up and broken-hearted music producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo, looking Ruffolish), who hears in her song the sort of music that inspired him to become a washed-up broken-hearted music producer in the first place.

Wait, no, just a music producer. And a successful one once, before some domestic troubles with his wife (Catherine Keener, looking Keen) caused him to be alienated from his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld, looking Steining, okay, I’ll stop now).

The broke Dan decides to make an album with Gretta on the streets of New York City—a truly awful idea musically, but a good cinematic gimmick—with no money and by calling in a lot of favors. In doing so, he reconnects with his long-lost mojo and gives Gretta a chance to reconnect with her cad of a boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine).

Meanwhile, there’s a distinct attraction building between the Dan and Gretta, that both largely give a wide berth, but which might burst through at any moment, adding a weird Hollywood ending to an otherwise unique indie-feeling film.

Not saying it does or doesn’t. No spoilers.

It’s not really a movie with much of a plot, but neither does it need much: “Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl trashes boy” and its gender-complement do the trick. The movie relies on conveying the emotions of the characters as they decide what’s important to them in life, primarily through music and montage.

And it works! Surprisingly well. I know this because The Boy approved, and he is largely immune to music. Ultimately, it boils down to Carney’s light touch. He’s not worried about the narrative; he just lets the music and the episodic nature of the performances build a story about repairing broken hearts.

Obviously this would work less well if the cast wasn’t up to it, but they all do a fine job, including potential the stunt-casting roles for Levine, Cee Lo Green and Mos Def. James Corden, whom I last recall seeing in The History Boys, has a good turn as Gretta’s best platonic pal.

And the music is good.

Finally! After nearly twenty years! A chance to see Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale on the big screen!

Wait, who? What? Why do we care? Erich Rohmer was a French filmmaker (who passed in 2010), part of the La Nouvelle Vague of the ‘50s and ’60s who, well, has his fans, but also a great many detractors even among those whom you might consider likely supporters.

Basically, he’s a guy who directs talky, non-plot-driven films, and this one was part of a four film series of “seasons”, that may be thematically connected but not by characters or stories (I think).

So, why do we care? Well, it’s the middle of the week in a rather uninspired summer, in a year that’s generally been hard to find obvious movie choices.

The first thing I noticed about it was that the title card was off. I can’t remember what it said (“Summer Tale”?) but it was something not very idiomatic English. The next thing that became very apparent was that Messr. Rohmer has a distinct type.

The story is about young Gaspard (Melville Poupaud, The Broken) who’s moping cluelessly around Brittany (I believe; it’s somewhere on the beach in the north of France) while his not-girlfriend is tooling around Spain with her sister and his boyfriend, and maybe some other guys. He’s about to start a boring engineering job in a few weeks, so this is his last vacation before he joins the real world, or at least as close as France gets to the real world.

He meets perky waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet, Pauline at the Beach, another Rohmer film from a time when it wasn’t considered creepy to ogle 15-year-olds in skimpy bikinis), a doctor of some squishy social science, who is waiting on her boyfriend to come back from wherever he is. The two strike up a friendship that is decidedly sexual (without actually involving sex).

Margot doesn’t think much of Gaspard’s non-girlfriend, so she fixes him up with Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon) and the two hit it off. Solene’s deal, though, is that if they’re going to have a relationship, they’re going to have a relationship, with clear boundaries and no half-in/half-out nonsense.

Gaspard’s okay with is, which mysteriously pisses Margot off. She claims to be disappointed he’s so easily swayed by Solene’s crude aggression—and when I say “crude”, here, I just mean “non-crazy"—or maybe just pissed off that he’s less interested in her. I think they may even make out at this point, I can’t really recall.

Just when it looks like Gaspard’s going to get something going, his non-girlfriend Lena (Aurelia Nolin) shows up and throws a monkey wrench into his plans.

So sort of like a French "Three’s Company”.

Anyway, if Margot is coquettish, Lena is just outright nuts. Presumably dramatically more attractive than the other two (I can’t really see it but I think that’s the implication), she’s barely interested in Gaspard. Well, at first. Then she’s super-into him. Then she’s pissed off at him for thinking she’s into him, and dumps him. Then she’s back, screwing with his plans again.

This is basically your movie, then. The hopelessly beta Gaspard being buffeted around by women.

It’s not unpleasant. I mean, if it’s not your sort of thing—long walks through the countryside and boat rdies off northern France—this isn’t going to change your mind about talky movies. (Like My Dinner With Andre might, for example.) But the characters are likable, really, even if you want to slap Gaspard around a little bit.

Young people are kind of clueless, especially about romance. That’s why we used to marry ’em off at 13.

But the point is, Gaspard is clueless in exactly the way young men tend to be clueless. He’s attracted to Margot, but she’s taken (despite the mixed signals). He’s attracted to, but somewhat intimidated by Solene. And he idealizes, to an absurd degree, Lina. To the extent where he’ll let her mess up his life with her capriciousness. I can’t really fault the accuracy here.

Still, it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to ignite your toes. Unless, perhaps, you share Rohmer’s taste in women: elfin, small-breasted women with good child-bearing hips. You know how, about 5 minutes into a Russ Meyer film, an alert viewer will think, “Good heavens, I believe the director has a taste for inordinately large mammary glands?” Well, by the time Solene shows up, I began to suspect a similar preference (if not exactly fetish). In fact, I did a little research after seeing this movie, to confirm this and, yes, this was the sort of body type Mr. Rohmer preferred, I feel confident in saying.

Nothing wrong with it. Just amusing. Dream-girl Lina has slightly larger breasts (though still not large) than the other two, and I wasn’t sure if that was a coincidence or meant to be a marker of her greater beauty.

You know, the most remarkable thing about this film may be that Rohmer was in his mid-to-late 70s when he made it, and yet he had a keen memory (or eye) for the behavior of people 50 years his junior.

The Boy liked it. And I think we both liked that it wasn’t depressing or nihilistic, unlike what we commonly associated with French New Wave. Just don’t expect a lot of fireworks.

How fitting that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last role (ruling out the heavily CGIed Hunger Game sequels) should be done entirely in a German accent. Actually, I don’t know that it’s fitting at all. It is rather fitting, however, that he plays a fat, pasty, stressed-out, wheezing, heavy-drinking, fatty-food eating, chain-smoking workaholic.

Method acting, man. It is to actors what airplanes are to rock stars.

But then, maybe Hoffman’s condition had nothing to do with this role, and he was just making poor lifestyle choices in general. He does not look healthy, no sir, not at all.

Whatever the truth, we can safely assess that the critic adoration of A Most Wanted Man is greatly influenced by PSH shuffling off his mortal coil. It’s a good performance, sure; he seldom turned in a bad one. But it’s not his best.

The story (which takes place in Germany) revolves around Hoffman’s (illegal per German law) surveillance of a potential terrorist, a Chechen who has fled Russia and seems to be trying to hook up with a philanthropist doctor who may be funnelling some of his charity money to terrorist groups in the Middle East. Bachmann (Hoffman’s character) and his hot, yet probably murderous assistant Ima Frey (Nina Hoss, Barbara) have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, but they lack definitive evidence, and their ambition is to turn Karpov (the terrorist, played by Grigory Dobrygin, or should I say Григорий Добрыгин) and possibly the doctor as well. (And at this point, I’m out on the foreign actors names. The doctor may have been the guy from The Kite Runner, I don’t know.)

Bachmann is battling a dickish local intel guy, the bitchy and possibly evil CIA agent (Robin Wright), and Karpov’s lawyer, Annabel (the shall-we-say-lightly-accented Rachel McAdams), who’s kind of got a thing for this Chechen, who cleans up real nice by the end of the film. Bachmann extorts possibly evil banker Willem Defoe, both through family history and his obvious attraction to Annabel, and ultimately Annabel herself becomes part of his ridiculously circuitous plan.

John Le Carré wrote the screenplay based on his novel and executive produced, and does this guy hate America or what? He seems to hate Germans as well, but he really hates America.

That may be the other reason that the critics loved this movie. You don’t have to hate America to enjoy it, mostly, but there’s a scene with Bachmann and Sullivan (Wright) are arguing about extraordinary rendition. Bachmann asks why she doesn’t just grab Karpov off the street and she replies, defensively, “We don’t do that anymore.”

Take that W!

Sure we don’t. And I’m sure the Germans never did, or at least stopped. And I’m sure we don’t outsource that sort of thing for deniability, either. Nosiree.

I dunno. I think if a move wants to be a smart spy thriller, it shouldn’t have seasoned agents having a debate that sounds like it would be at home on MSNBC.

And Bachmann doesn’t retort with the “No, now you just drone them” which would be the obvious response to an attempt to assert moral superiority, but not one that would reflect well on the current administration. And spy thrillers need well-delineated good guys and bad guys as badly as cowboy movies did, even if they necessarily draw the lines differently.

Bachmann is clearly our hero, by the way, but he’s sort of an accidentally comical figure. At one point, he kidnaps Annabel to do convince her to help him persuade Karpov to do what he wants. But here’s the dumb thing: Because he’s the good guy, and what he wants Karpov to do really is the right thing, and Karpov really seems to want to do that, and Bachmann knows this, one is left wondering why he didn’t just call Annabel on the phone and talk to her rather than, you know, throw a bag over her head and yank her off the street.

Personally, I’d think that sort of action would be counter-productive. One might be less inclined to believe that someone had your best intentions at heart after such an action. I can only assume this scene exists to demonstrate the moral ambiguities involved in spy work, but in a guardedly apolitical way. (In other words, spying raises challenging issues, but you should by no means consider those if they mean you might find sympathy with Bush or lose it with Obama.)

But I don’t expect even-handedness, or even a nod toward the sort of cohesion a little common sense would provide from the hack who wrote The Constant Gardener. So, overall, I thought it was acceptable as movie fare.

The Boy also thought it was decent, though he didn’t like the pacing. True, the movie had a lot of potentially tense scenes that played out rather straightforwardly, and was rather sparing with the suspense. The effect was a little dulling.

It was at least easier to follow than the last Le Carre effort, at least.

If you’ve been following along with the reviews, you may have noticed that one of my pastimes is observing the discrepancies between critic and audience reactions, courtesy of the Rotten Tomatoes website. A severe audience/critic split where the audience approves and the critics do not usually indicates Christian or patriotic themes, or possibly a Transformers movie.

We don’t always side with the audience over the critics. One of the effects of going to see a ton of movies is acquiring a taste for some of the more esoteric aspects of the art. We don’t have anything much invested in any particular film, so we might appreciate something that might actually piss us off if it were our one chance to see a movie for a few months. (And I always try to note the difference here between “interesting” and “good”.)

Sometimes, though, we just come out of films thinking What the hell is wrong with people?

Which brings us to Le Chef. We’d seen the trailers with interest: It looked like a silly French farce based around cooking. Fun, not serious—not even as serious as the relatively light-hearted Chef.

Then it comes out and the RT score is brutal 47% critics, 59% audiences. Well, hell. Who wants to go see something like that. But on a recommendation from a friend, and given a lack of other appealing options, we decided to roll the dice. And you know what?

Le Chef is a silly French farce, based around cooking. Fun, not serious and just exactly what it said on the tin.

The plot is sort of Ratatouille meets Chef, with once great chef Alexandre LaGarde (Jean Reno) having lost his mojo, and waking up in a world where he’s in danger of losing one of his stars, doesn’t understand molecular cuisine, has a terrible relationship with his All-But-Dissertation daughter, and sleeps alone, so consumed is he with running his restaurant and doing his TV show.

Meanwhile Jacky (Michaël Youn) is bursting with energy, opinion and talent, and a devotee of LaGarde who can’t hold a job down because he’s so opinionated about food. But pregnant wife Beatrice (Raphaëlle Agogué) insists he do something to prepare for their coming child, so he ends up painting and cleaning windows at an old folks home.

Jacky being Jacky, he finds himself correcting the kitchen in the home, and soon becomes popular there, but it doesn’t last. LaGarde loses all his support staff as his weaselly boss prepares to fire him (from his own restaurant named LaGarde, even) and wants him to okay icky chemicals in his name-brand frozen foods. When LaGarde comes to taste Jacky’s cooking while visiting the home, and recognizes the recipe as his own (from 1997!), he lures Jacky to his place (at no pay, of course).

It’s frothy light, barely ever in danger of crashing into serious feelings, and it’s (of course) rather predictable, because there are only a few ways to end a story like this and keep it the lighthearted comedy it always intended to be.

So why be hatin’? I’m actually not sure. Critics attacked the American Chef for being well-worn and predictable as well, but I would bet money we won’t see another quality family-friendly comedy/drama like it for the rest of the year. Similarly, critics attack this Le Chef for being predictable and its obvious farce, but it’s funny and I can’t recall the last French farce I saw like it.

Girl on a Bicycle maybe. It was fun and (intriguingly) hated even more by critics than this—though also dramatically better liked by audiences. In The House was very dark. Populaire was fun and frothy at first, but turned heavier and more sexual as it went on. So, I guess if you went back to Paris-Manhattan, that would be about right.

Maybe if all these films were frothy confections it would be tiring, but like Chef, I bet we see exactly zero French films for the rest of the year that have no greater ambition than to make you laugh and tell a pleasant enough story so you don’t feel scummy for laughing.

Some of the humor is broad in the extreme. At one point, Jacky and LaGarde go under cover as a Japanese husband and wife to check out molecular cuisine at their competitor’s place. And the Spanish molecular cuisine specialist is a goof.

But I’m really working hard to try to understand the animosity. Maybe French film fans are just too snobby to laugh at silly stuff. If so, that’s a shame: The audience that would like this most—general film audiences, not “French film fans"—will never go see it.

The reviews on this Icelandic travelogue were not great but, come on: Stella Gets Her Groove Back, only with two old dudes tramping around a volcanic island! How can you pass that up? And, over time, the ratings on this film have gradually gone up.

The premise is simple enough: Lecherous and wildly inappropriate doctor Mitch corrals pal and former in-law Colin, into a trip to Iceland. Colin’s just suffered a breakup, and seems a bit buttoned-down (Australian, but more what Americans would see as stereotypically English), especially next to Mitch (Texan or some other belligerent form of Southerner), enough so that he turns Mitch down.

Mitch has already bought the tickets and paid for the trip, though, because he knew Colin would say no.

And there’s your set up. Young filmmakers Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens have made themselves a nice little film, which manages to be funny without being shallow, and awkward without being disrespectful.

The movie is powered by the unusual chemistry between Earl Lynn Nelson (Mitch) and Paul EenHoorn (Colin). Colin is normal, mopey, even boring. Mitch is loud and a pain in the ass, but adventurous in a way that makes life fun. (Nelson is a cousin of Stephens, while I think Paul Eenhoorn has more experience and worked with Katz on a previous project. But they both feel like people you’ve known your whole life.)

Sort of like a Scandinavian, sexagenarian version of The Trip, dialogue and plot-points are interspersed with shots of geysers and food.

It’s a brisk hour-and-a-half, that is perhaps a little too brisk. It sort of feels like it ends right before the second act crisis. Like you’re just getting warmed up and…it’s over!

Well, Katz and Stephens were trying to make a movie with no money, and they did a pretty damn good job. It reminds me of Short Term 12, though I’m guessing Short’s million dollar budget far outstripped Land Ho! (which may not have cracked six digits). But what I’m getting at is that a lot of these low (and ultra-low) budget guys are zeroing in on essential elements of storytelling the big guys just gloss over. For example: characterization.

There’s a general freeness to the film to that works to its advantage: Shots you wouldn’t normally see in a modern movie, like a sudden zoom. Or a segment filmed like you would a horror movie.

The Boy and The Flower were both pretty pleased; even if it’s not great or epic or high drama, Land Ho! is a hard film not to like.

Well, this is kind of a weird one. Trolling for a movie on a Tuesday night (I think it was Tuesday) and this movie Amish shows up on the schedule of our local Laemmle. No description. Can’t find out anything about it. Director Richard Gabai.

Wait, Richard Gabai?

The same Richard Gabai who starred in Dinosaur Island and Assault of the Party Nerds? The very same Richard Gabai who starred in dozens of ‘80s and ’90s Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski flicks that kept us up late at nights before the Internet allowed us to watch anything at any time?

That Richard Gabai?

Aw, hell yeah, I’m in.

Well, who knew? It was actually a movie for the Lifetime Movie Channel. This was a showing for the cast and crew. That’s always fun because I can look at all the tiny people.

Honestly? Well, we enjoyed it! The Boy wasn’t enthusiastic, but added it wasn’t the sort of movie where you sat there regretting the choices that brought you to this juncture in your life. It’s charming and it’s sometimes funny, and I liked that (given the constraints) it was reasonably respectful of the Amish.

The acting was hit-and-miss, but as I point out in that review of The Graves, in low-budget flicks that’s very often a matter of editing and pacing. This had a definite TV-movie pacing, with some awkward fade-outs to commercial breaks. (They don’t seem so awkward on TV, but they stick out in a theater.) There were a few scenes that seemed like awkward line readings that probably could’ve done with some re-takes.

Beyond that, well, this is, essentially, a Romance novel, and we are most assuredly not the target audience. The premise is that Hannah (AJ Michalka of Super 8) and three of her Amish peers are running off to L.A. for their…uh…crap…I forget what it’s called. The thing where they go spend a few weeks not being Amish, to decide if they want to be Amish for the rest of their lives.

As a sidenote, I just want to say that, if this is a real thing (and none of the Amish people I’ve run into have ever mentioned it), I have a lot of respect for it on the one hand. Treat your kids like adults and let them make their own decisions. Right on.

That said, what a stupid idea to throw teenagers into the Sodom and Gomorrah of modern life and expect any of them to come back. Even hard-working Amish kids (maybe especially them) are going to be tempted by the life of ease presented by modern day technology, loose morals and Barack Obama. (Bam! Just turned this into insightful political commentary! Take that A.O. Scott!)

Back to the movie: Hannah’s friends adapt quickly to the “English” way of life, while she does the good girl thing for most of the trip until a sensitive and non-threatening DJ, Josh (Jesse McCartney, a well-established voice actor), catches her eye.

He shows her the world, at least the world of Southern-California-when-you’re-on-vacation-and-not-having-to-make-money which, it must be admitted, is pretty damn nice. Well, pretty soon, she’s comparing her modern life to the one back in the 18th century, and the modern life is looking pretty good, especially since she’s been doing all her mother’s work since her mother passed away.

The movie makes a few feints at looking at some really heavy issues before glossing over them for a completely pander-y ending.

Eh, I give it points for making the feints. But I presume everyone watching these movies knows exactly how they want the movie to end, as does everyone making them. I mean, if you’re looking at the movie realistically, the main character sells out her sister to get her happy ending. But that’s kind of like faulting the plumber in a porno for neglecting a house’s infrastructure.

A few parts were casually amusing, though: For example, why would Pennsylvania Amish send their kids across the country to L.A., rather than to New York? (Obviously because they were from a section of Pennsylvania located in the Santa Clarita valley.)

The Amish “kids” are all way too old for their field trip, which is a standard Hollywood trope, so no big deal there. But they are varying degrees of successful in pulling off the Amish part. Michalka’s all right, for example. Her boyfriend, played Jean-Luc Bilodeau (Pirahna 3DD), is perhaps a little exaggeratedly stiff, but it mostly works, as his character seems to be struggling with his role in life.

Actually, all the Amish men, including the great Ron Ely (back after a 15 year hiatus!), come off a little stiff at times. Brian Krause (as Hannah’s father) probably finds the best balance between formal, stern and wooden. Bonus points for not doing the “thee” and “thou” thing.

Then there are Hannah’s two friends, Mary and Sarah, played by Alyson Stoner (“The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”) and Aurelia Scheppers, respectively. Stoner played the Tomboyish Max on “Zack and Cody”, though she’s blossomed since then. And while her character is handled somewhat ham-handedly to advance a few plot points, she’s fairly convincing as Amish.

Scheppers (who was in the audience, I believe) I know nothing of, but her film credits have her as “Beach Babe”, “Hot Tub Hottie” and perhaps most tellingly, “Venus Vavoom” and “Aphrodite”. You get the idea. It’s like casting Megan Fox as a nun.

It’s not really about acting—there’s nothing about her behavior that seems out-of-place—but the glowing makeup, the perfectly tweezed and arched eyebrows, and the glossy hair didn’t exactly say “Amish” to me. I’m going to guess the target demo would prefer that to the kind of stocky, pasty, unibrowed look of actual Amish women.

But as I say, these were points of amusement more than scorn. It’s a fine TV movie, with only a few slow spots, and if Gabai can get his sci-fi flick with Christopher Lloyd movie going, I’ll be sure to check it out.

You don’t even have to get to the “Real” in the title to know that a movie called Heaven Is For Real is going to have a classic critics-hate/audiences-love kind of split, and sure enough, this movie currently sits at 46/72 on Rotten Tomatoes (far milder than the 15/85 split for God’s Not Dead).

Interesting to note that this is the third (and most successful/mainstream) top 30 movie this year on the topic of Christianity. That’s kind of cool, though it would be cooler if the movie and its message (right there in the title) were uncontroversial.

I don’t say this as a believer; I say it as a sane person. If a child tells you he’s gone to Heaven, well, that’s what he’s telling you. If you find that convincing enough to write a book about and talk about, well, that’s also nothing for people to get hysterical about.

But, alas, we don’t live in sane times. A person can suggest that increasing poverty in the name of fairness is a good thing, and be elected President, or write a bestselling book no one reads. But suggest there actually, factually is something that a whole bunch of people at least pay lip service to, and everybody’s gotta have an opinion.

I, actually, do not gotta have one. I particularly don’t when I go to the movies. (Or I try not to. You can judge how successful I am.) I’m looking for the story, and this is a good (though not flawless) one. I think it’d make an interesting double-feature with the Belgian film Broken Circle Breakdown which dealt with similar themes from an a-religious (but not a-spiritual standpoint).

The story is that of a good-hearted, unassuming pastor/tradesman/family man Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) and his hot wife (Mary Reilly, who we’ve seen a lot recently in Chinese Puzzle and also A Single Shot, though for some reason my review doesn’t mention her) and their beautiful family out in God’s Country (Nebraska), living a great life (though hard-pressed for cash) when their son gets seriously ill.

The community rallies around Todd and Colton (newcomer Conor Corum) with prayers and such, but of course the problem comes when he gets well. And then starts talking about Heaven. Like, the real Heaven. In great detail. With details that he could not know otherwise (at least his father perceives it as such).

Which goes back to my original point: My kid comes to me and tells me about Heaven, I’m going to think that’s pretty cool. (Which is why they won’t make a movie about me.) Todd, on the other hand, experiences a kind of existential crisis. And even more, so does most of the town, to the point where the Burpo’s viability is threatened.

This tension is what makes a good movie. They all believe in Jesus and Heaven in theory but they aren’t going to say His name too loudly or deal in concrete representations of the afterlife.

It’d be easy to say that they’re hypocritical, but I think it’s more accurate to say that people’s faith goes on autopilot. It’s easy to water down faith into a dogma—hell, people do that with politics, which is just gross—or into abstract principles that can be debated in a sterile fashion with no connection to real life (people do that with politics, too, of course).

Experiencing faith as a constant matter, having it inform everything you do, living, breathing, wrestling with it: That’s hard. (And the theme of one of my favorite films, Machine Gun Preacher.)

What’s also hard is telling the truth. And that’s the other big struggle: Colton has a simple faith based on personal experience, and it moves his father greatly, but testifying to that is embarrassing, awkward, and it makes people uncomfortable.

You don’t have to be religious for that message to resonate: The ability to see the truth and then to fearlessly report what we see is the greatest struggle of our lives. (I think art critics have a particularly hard time with this.)

It’s not a perfect movie by a long shot. Writer/Director Randall Wallace (Secretariat, We Were Soldiers) lets it go slack a bit at the beginning of the second act. We’re not sure what direction the movie’s going to go, and it feels like he isn’t either. (The problem may be that the drama of the first act is so heavy, there’s no way to recapture the momentum after it’s resolved.)

And the characters—well, I didn’t fully understand them. Maybe they’re more archetypal to small-town Christians, but I didn’t always get their motivations.

Other than that, though, a solid flick. The Boy and The Flower both liked it a lot, with The Boy much preferring it over God’s Not Dead. The Flower, meanwhile, preferred that more parable influenced story to this based-on-a-true story.

Kinnear is completely cleansed of his early career smarminess, which is important here. Kelly Reilly is becoming one of my favorite actresses, fitting into whatever role as if she were born to it. (And this role is diametrically opposed to her shallow, self-centered Chinese Puzzle role.) Thomas Haden Church and Margo Martindale do good work, too.

Casa ‘strom sides with the audience, once again.

Speaking of Stanley Kubrick, The Boy and The Flower had never seen The Shining, so when the local second-run theater had it as a late-night Friday showing, I offered to take them down to see it. The Flower had some babysitting to do at the last minute so it turned out just to be the two of us.

Late night showings can be a mixed bag, since few there are interested in avoiding spoilers or being quiet, but after about 5 or 6 false starts where the sound didn’t play, we were on our way. We did not need the extra 20-30 minutes tacked on to the 2:24 minute runtime—back from when 2:24 was a really long-ass movie, especially a horror flick—but it’s remarkable how well this nearly 35 year old ghost story holds up.

I mean, seriously,  you can count the number of horror movies that remain truly effective after 35 years on the fingers of one six-fingered, mutant hand. (OK, it’s not quite that bad, but it’s not good.)

Here’s the peculiar thing: Kubrick’s film is basically a funhouse horror flick combined with a very restrained slasher. It’s only in the last half-hour that we find Jack Torrance running around The Overlook with his axe. Up till then, it’s all shocks and scary images—all atmosphere.

What’s fascinating is that the shocks and the scary imagery by-and-large still work. Like Nosferatu, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and even Nightmare on Elm Street (and, of course, I’m referring to the Murnau, Siegel and Craven versions, respectively), they still pack a visceral punch, especially when viewed on the big screen. And in the case of The Shining, in particular, even when they’ve been parodied endlessly for the past 20 years.

The performances are awesome. They’ll make you laugh, they’re so good. For what feels essentially like an epic, there are only about a dozen people in this film, and the half-dozen or so with lines are near perfect. Everybody knows about Jack, of course. His performance was instantly iconic. And little Danny Lloyd (now in his 40s) also became an instant cinematic standard (despite or perhaps because this was basically his only role).

On a second viewing—I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen this since it came out, and I was the only one in the audience who was old enough to have done so, it seemed—I found Shelley Duvall’s performance very nuanced. It’s easy to think she’s just being a backdrop for Jack’s lunacy, but she actually balances being kind of annoyingly weak with plausibly finding strength when she needs it with being on edge, etc.

Scatman Crothers plays Dick Halloran, the first of 47 magic negros found in the works of Stephen King. I always liked Crothers but that may be because he played the voice of Hong Kong Phooey and Meadowlark Lemon. (I always assumed, with a name like “Scatman” he was a singer, and he was, but I’ve still never heard him sing outside of The Aristocats.)

Anne Jackson is great in her little scene as Danny’s doctor, and someone who thinks very little of domestic abuse, indeed. (Back in 1980, we just called it “wife beating”.) And Joe Turkel, who would go on to play the prototypical Evil Corporate CEO in Blade Runner, is ridiculously creepy as Lloyd the Bartender (a role originally to be played by Harry Dean Stanton, who bowed out because of scheduling conflicts with Alien).

The music, as such, is very effective, too. The “classical” stuff works but most of the atmosphere is fleetingly melodic electronic synth buzzes (not to mention the electronified “Dies Irae” that serves as the title music) which, dated as they are, are still spine-tingling.

It doesn’t all work. There are a number of scenes, particularly in the beginning of the film, that are ridiculously expository, at least in modern terms. They come off a bit hokey.

A number of the ending shots don’t work either: The furry with his butt hanging out is a kind of “Huh?” moment: It’s actually set up thematically by the hotel’s roaring ‘20s history but it’s not really supported by much else. And the Gold Room filled with cobweb-covered skeletons is cheesey amusement park level stuff.

I remember the ending favorably but while I still liked that it didn’t have a Big Showdown, I’m not sure that it was up to the level of the rest of it.

Also, why was Jack reading the January 1978 issue of Playgirl in the lobby while waiting for his bosses? The ’70s were weird, man. Probably the most horrifying thing about this to modern viewers will be Wendy exposing Danny to secondhand smoke.

The outdoor shot of the parking lot (the Timberline Hotel in Oregon, though most of the movie was shot on a sound stage in England) was basically wall-to-wall ugly cars. The ’70s was hard on automobile aesthetics.

The Boy really liked it which, again, for a horror movie from 35 years ago, is really saying something.

I, personally, get a perverse pleasure out of this being the best adaptation of one of Stephen King’s horror stories, and he absolutely hates it, to the extent of having shepherded a not-great TV remake in the ’90s. I think because King is Torrance, and his book (which actually turned me off King) is more sympathetic toward him. (There’s one scene in the movie where you have a moment of pity for him: When he has a nightmare of what’s to come.)

The movie is more from Danny’s perspective: Jack is scary, as all good fathers are (no matter how much we love them), and he’s scariest when he’s being good. He lies. He cheats. He plots. As a metaphor for alcoholism, it’s great.

Here’s something I noticed this time: The Hotel never actually does anything that we see. Danny suffers at the hand of a “crazy lady” in Room 237, but we don’t see it. And Grady lets Jack out of the freezer so he can terrorize his family—but we don’t see that either.

The only damage done in the film we can verify is done by Jack, and he could have hurt Danny. (Wendy fumbled considerably with the latch on the freezer, meaning Jack could’ve busted out.)

Although I’m generally disinclined toward movies that pull out “Scooby-Doo” endings (where there were never any ghosts, just some dink with a mask and a projector), I’m inclined to side with Kubrick for most of his choices both in terms of narrative and characterization.

Anyway, good times. Next up on the revival calendar: Taking The Flower to see The Big Lebowski.

I never had much use for Roger Ebert’s movie reviews much less his politics, so I wasn’t super keen on seeing Life Itself, a documentary of his life and final days. I was amused by the whopping 97% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes: A film about a film critic? Must be awesome!

But the audience gives it a hearty 91% as well, and even with that being skewed toward fans, it’s a strong rating. And this is a good movie, a heart-warming portrayal of a flawed, but interesting character that Siskel and Ebert would’ve both given thumbs-up to.

I should warn you: of all the movies I’ve seen in the past decade, this is the least popcorn-appropriate.

Ebert had cancer from dental treatments received as a child. (My mom had a similar thing for acne, and makes routine trips to the dermatologist to get melanomas removed. Maybe the ‘40s and ’50s were a little too gung-ho on the radiation, eh?) A few years back, his jaw had to be removed, and the reconstruction failed (and nearly killed him) so in his last years, he just had a mouth flap.

That was hard for me to see. He was upbeat, even in these final days, viewing death as just another part of life. And it was interesting to discover that his approach to dealing with his cancer was in part due to being hurt by Siskel’s approach to his cancer. Siskel kept it quiet until very late, surprising everyone. So Ebert decided he would tell everybody what was happening along the way.

You know what? Both approaches are valid. Siskel wanted to spend his last year enjoying the company of his wife and children without his death hanging over their heads. Ebert didn’t want anyone to be shocked or unprepared.

Although there’s a lot more to this movie than Siskel & Ebert, their relationship was my favorite part of the film. Antagonistic, even openly hostile at times, the two grew to be genuine friends, and this is detailed through outtakes of their popular TV show.

They showed two classic TV moments I personally remember prominently: One was their appearance on the Tonight Show where Carson asks them about bad movies that are out, and Ebert says he can’t recommend The Three Amigos with Chevy Chase sitting on the couch next to him. Ebert is very gracious and complimentary toward Chase, and Chase handles it with his usual aplomb. (That is, kinda like a dick, but also fairly funny when doing material from the ’70s.)

But the more interesting moment came in an episode of their where they reviewed both Full Metal Jacket and Benji, The Hunted. Siskel gets his knickers in a twist because Ebert doesn’t like FMJ, then gets into a bigger snit because he gives a thumbs up to BTH. Ebert doesn’t phrase his defense well, in my opinion, but he raises the valid point that movies must be judged on what they are, not in comparison to arbitrary other works.

Joe Camp did good work with Benji (including one of Chevy Chase’s best movies, Oh, Heavenly Dog!) and he made good family flicks. He’ll never achieve the towering greatness of Stanley Kubrick, but you’re not always in the mood to see elevators full of blood.

In the end, using the Bitmaeltrom Three-Point Documentary Scale:

1. Ebert, in the end, is a worthy subject for a documentary. He did interesting things and believed passionately in what he did. He loved his family and they loved him back, and he made a contribution to the industry.

2. Steve James (Prefontaine, “Hoop Dreams”) directs largely by getting out of the way and letting the material speak for itself. There’s a lot to be said for that style when you have an interesting subject and lots of good primary material, as well as a lot of good interviews to draw on.

3. The spin. Well, look, it’s a bit of a hagiography. That’s okay, I think, though I imagine there are some filmmakers who wouldn’t agree. Ebert might not, come to think of it.

But that’s okay, too, because this isn’t “Siskel and Ebert at the Movies” and I’ve never cared for “thumbs down” or “thumbs up” ratings. (This is actually a point raised by other film critics here.) I’ve always preferred Joe Bob Briggs style reviews where he might talk for the entire thing about how awful a film is, give it zero stars and then end his review with “Check it out.” (He even used to offer t-shirts to people who could sit through certain movies to the end.)

The Boy really enjoyed it, too, and he didn’t know anything about Ebert or the time-periods in question, so that says something.

Bitmaelstrom says “Check it out.”

The problem, of late, has been the sheer lack of agreement between critics and audiences about what’s worth seeing. As mentioned previously, the Swedish WWII film (The Last Sentence) was beloved by critics but not so much audiences. But the alternative (at our local) was a French WWII film also beloved by critics, but not so much audiences. We could trek down to the backup theater to see Radio Free Albemuth, which was based on a Philip K. Dick story, utterly despised by critics, with audiences favorable to it, but just barely. (And also without any of the usual signals, like “Christian”, to suggest why critics would hate it.)

Both the kids had seen and disliked the movie poster for Snowpiercer, generic as it was, but audiences were okay with it and critics were gaga so I just dragged The Boy to see it.

And he loved it!

I…also liked it, though not as much as he did. There was a discrepancy in our brain-disengagement process that accounts for the difference. Let me explain the premise:

In an attempt to fight Global Warming (I know, I know), the countries of the world inject a chemical into the atmosphere, but they screw it up and actually end up freezing the world and killing everyone.

Ha!

However, there’s a train. Yes, a train. And it travels around the world. Once circuit a year. It’s a super-fast self-contained ecosystem containing all the world’s remaining life. When the movie starts, we’re in the back of the train where the poor people live on something suspiciously Soylent Green-ish, oppressed by Nazi-esque soldiers and mob enforcers and Tilda Swinton, with Chris Evans and the kid from Billy Elliot (grown now, sorta) plot with John Hurt to invade the front part of the train where Ed Harris rules all.

So, it’s Elysium-on-a-train. And I’m pretty sure that’s why the critics liked it. Because it’s an allegory of the evil 1% oppressing the rest of the world.

I found this incredibly amusing because the train is a terrible allegory for a free market economy—there’s no movement or trade at all to speak of—and a perfect allegory for a centrally controlled “sustainable” society. The train is a perfect Progressive paradise: the upper class go to nice schools, live drugged/sexed-up adolescence, then go on to fulfill their various roles in the society.

And yet, pursuing any allegorical angle very far is the road to madness. Joon-ho Bong (The Host (2006), Mother (2009)) is operating on a different level. It’s, like, a Korean thing, reminding me after a fashion of Ki-Duk Kim (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring, 3 Iron) in the sense that you’ll go wrong if you’re being too literal. The narrative is a kind of poetry.

And this works in some not entirely explicable fashion. Perhaps because the narrative is strongly constructed from a dramatic standpoint, with real plot points and (perhaps somewhat clichéd) characters and foreshadowing and so on. That’s what The Boy enthused about. Lately, he says, there have been a lot of what he considers “fake” movies, where they look like movies and have a lot of explosions and happening things, but they don’t really hang together well.

So, there’s a poetic logic to the proceedings that make it entertaining and engaging.

But that’s the only kind of logic there is in this film. For example, the whole tension of the film comes from the people in the back of the train wanting to escape to the more forward cars of the train, but there’s literally no reason for there to be any poor people on the train in the first place. I mean, I got to the point where I half-expected to see them get to the engine room where burly men would be shoveling heaps of babies into the burner. (There is a very, very tenuous contrivance for having created this lower class, but it’s fever-dream conspiracy level stuff.)

Then there are the various horrors they encounter which, frankly, are kind of silly, since the alternative was death. And there are battle scenes. I mean, big confrontations. In train cars.

Bong has brought along two of his repertory players, Kang-Ho Song and Ah-Sung Ko (who played feuding brother and sister in The Host), who are drug-addicted lovers/psychics/engineers (well, he’s the engineer, she’s the psychic), who help the band of adventurers get through the doors on their way to the front of the train.

And they speak Korean. Kang-Ho Song speaks it all the time. Ah-Sung Ko speaks English sometimes. And they have a translating machine. Which they use sometimes. Other times, the characters appear to be reading the subtitles.

So, look, if you can’t get past the sheer nonsense of it, you’re not going to enjoy it.

The ending is…well, very final. Happy? Unhappy? Beats me. It didn’t seem to matter much. It was just the ending. Don’t judge.

There’s really no distilling this down. As a straight adventure film, it’s kind of a fun ‘70s-style dystopia with that unique Korean flavor. But don’t go looking for science, engineering, logic…or anything like that.

So, what was Sweden doing during World War II? Haven’t you always wondered? I mean, sure, they were neutral, but how did they…uh…how did they…

Eh, who cares.

Actually, the trailers on The Last Sentence (Dom över död man, in Swedish, literally “Judgment of a Dead Man”) looked fabulous: This is the story of Torgny Segerstedt, who poked Hitler in the eye from his newspaper in Stockholm, against the wishes of his publisher, his Prime Minister, and, well, Hermann Goering wasn’t crazy about it either.

Doesn’t that sound awesome? A guy who stood up to Hitler? Those Nazis were bad guys. They’d kill you just as soon as look at you.

But the Tomatoes were dubious: Critics like (77%) but audiences don’t (47%). Now, as I explain to The Boy, it’s not always bad when critics like something audiences don’t. Critics are more likely to be film fans, and have an appreciation for things that general audiences aren’t going to care for.

In the case of The Last Sentence, however, what it means is that, rather than focusing on the heroic struggle of a single man to stand up to Hitler despite the pressure of his country, the movie is primarily about Segerstedt’s dysfunctional relationship with his wife and other women.

You know how, when I review a French movie, there’s almost always a point where I say something like “I know: French, right?”?

The happiest people in this movie are dead.

I know: Swedish, right?

Segerstedt’s haunted by his dead mother, and as people die in the movie, they come to haunt him and debate him in his darkest hours (which is most of them), and they’re just as perky in death as they were morose in life.

I don’t know. It’s beautifully shot in stark black-and-white. Well acted. The characters seem realistic enough. But the struggle with Hitler is so clearly the central focus of Segerstedt’s life, it’s a shame they didn’t make it the focus of the movie.

I have successfully avoided musical biopics for years now, for reasons I can’t really explain. I love movies. I love music. You’d think I’d love movies about people who made music. And the thing is, I don’t dislike them when I see them. But I’ve developed an aversion for the genre, I think due to:

1. Biopics in general compress a human being’s life.
2. Musicals are full of music. 
3. Musical biopics are therefore ripe for pandering at the expense of a real human being’s life.

Evil haunted mirror is evil! Or so is the premise of Oculus, a horror movie by Mike Flanagan.

This time, the evil mirror’s victims are Tim and Kaylie Russell. Tim is just getting out of the looney bin, having been straightened out by a mental health care professional, who has him convniced that his father went nuts and killed his mother, and then Tim killed him in self-defense.

Not (ha ha) some evil haunted mirror what is evil.

I mean, can you imagine?

Of course, the instant he gets out of Crazytown, his loving sister is there to tell him that, in fact, Evil Haunted Mirror is on the loose, and doesn’t he remember they swore to destroy it?!

Anyway, that’s your set up. The story is told in parallel with the historical story, with mom and dad going crazier and crazier, and the climaxes of the two stories synchronizing at the same time.

Good atmosphere. The characters are likable, so you feel for them as they go through their hardships. There’s a good build up to the end without a reliance on cheap, schlocky shocks.

The acting is good: Karen Gillan (“Doctor Who” and the bizarrely funny “NTSF:SD:SUV”) powers the movie as the obsessive Kaylie, determined to outsmart the mirror at its own game. Brendon Thwaite (Maleficent) is the brother who’s fighting her but slowly being won over. Katie Sackhoff (“Battlestar Galactica”, “24”) is sympathetic as the mother, and Rory Cochrane (Argo, “24” also!) plays the brooding father with just the right hint of Jack Nicholson/Jack Torrance.

The Boy was really pleased.

Me? Not so much. But since the reason why could be considered spoiler-y, don’t read on if you don’t wanna be spoiled.

OK? You stop reading now!

Don’t wanna hear any whining. (As if anyone comments these days.)

So, in short:

Not my kind of horror movie. Because the villain is the Evil Haunted Mirror, it has to have powers that make the whole game rigged. Of course, all movies are rigged, and horror movies doubly so, but when I clue in to that, I tend to lose interest. Just like any decent fantasy film, a truly great horror movie has to have some pretty strict rules.

And, to its credit, this movie sets up some rules, and appears to play by them, but ultimately the truth is, once you come under the Evil Haunted Mirror’s influence, it’s game over: It can make you experience whatever It wants, and you’re cooked.

The resolution is reasonably well done, too, but again, not my thing.

Also, there’s a lot of kids-in-peril stuff, which isn’t something I find fun. (It doesn’t rule it out, and this movie does a good job with it, but it raises my demands on a movie.)

But, as I say: A taste thing. And even with all my reservations: not bad.

As near as I can tell, manager/PR agent Shep Gordon was really, really nice to Mike Meyers at a time when Mike Meyers really, really needed someone to be nice to him, and so Meyers decided to make a movie about him. This leads us to a couple of conclusions, one surprising, and one not so much.

The not-so-surprising conclusion: Decent people are so rare in Hollywood, the few there are seem like nearly divine characters.

The surprising conclusion: Mike Meyers (with an assist from Beth Aala) can make himself a fun documentary, with a lot of creative use of archival footage, photoshop and sharp editing.

It’s a fun story, too: Gordon, after being summarily driven off on his first day as a juvie hall social worker, winds up crashing at the Hollywood Landmark Hotel, where a few musicians happened to be staying. Musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Musicians in need of weed that Shep happened to have.

Hendrix says he should be a manager. Who should he manage? Well, how about this “Alice Cooper” guy? They’re not doing so well. Then, the cops start busting the hotel for drugs, and before you know it ol’ Shep has to become a real manager. Which, of course, he has no clue about.

Life is funny.

Gordon’s clever, though, and he understands how the media works, and how sex, violence and gaining the ire of parents is the key to success when marketing to kids. Some of his early attempts are hilarious failures, but ultimately he hits on some stunts that work and launches Cooper on his international career as the first shock/horror/goth/whatever star.

He employs subtler, though no less effective tactics, with Anne Murray.

This would’ve been a fun movie just with stories about his musical career, but Gordon notices something at the height of his career: Fame seems to get people killed. People he thinks of as family.

This sets him on a quest for something larger, something deeper, something to put his career into perspective. This is kind of interesting: The clichés of Hollywood fame are death-by-excess on the one hand, or dropping out on the other, but Shep seems to manage to maintain and grow his career while doing other things.

He manages more people. He produces movies for a stretch. He falls in with the Dalai Lama. He invents the “celebrity chef”. He makes his home in Hawaii a little oasis for people who need to get away from it all. He evolves a philosophy to try to make everyone a winner, rather than a narcissistic pursuit of self-aggrandizement and destruction of his enemies.

And he’s rather successful as a result.

So, yeah, fun movie. Seems like a cool dude.

And yet, even the Supermensch can’t have it all: The most endearing aspect of the film is how Shep, a notorious womanizer, longs for a family of his own more than anything. In the twilight of his career (and life), his only regret was that he worked so much he never made enough time for a family. There’s something charming about this megamillionaire super-agent wistfully musing that “there’s still time”.

And it might be a good reminder to all the women who listen to the “you can have it all” nonsense: Nobody can have it all. Not even—or maybe especially even—the most successful men on earth.

But you can have a lot of fun, make a lot of friends, and get some respect.

I enjoyed it; The Boy loved it. He likes stories of people who go out and live their lives balls out and never stop taking on new challenges. And Shep’s one of those people.

It’s almost like they’re daring us not to go see these movies. First, we got another superhero movie. Next, we got a reboot/crossover where the prequel (X-Men: First Class) encounters the future version of itself. And just to rub it all in, it’s a freaking time-travel story.

Goddamn if it doesn’t work, though, with the competent (alleged pederast) Bryan Singer back at the X-Men helm.

The story starts in a bleak future where the mutants have been all but wiped out by these adaptive robots (called Sentinels) that figure out their mutations, adapt to them and then figure out how to counter them. The only way the survivors have managed to last is through mutant Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who can send someone’s consciousness a few days back in the past—long enough to pre-empt the adaptive robots’ victories.

I’m not sure how robots can adapt to something they never encounter (since it never happens, what with the time travel and all) but adapt they do, with only a few surviving mutants facing ultimate extinction: Storm, Wolverine, Dr. X and Magneto, as well as a few others who haven’t yet starred in their own movies.

Dr. X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen, still alive! and actually looking pretty good) have reconciled at this late date, with Magneto realizing the error of his ways, since it was his conversion of Mystique in X-Men: First Class that lead her down the dark path which ultimately leads to the creation of the Sentinels.

The evil genius Trask, played by the always wonderful Peter Dinklage, is the creator of the Sentinels—and, actually, if this movie has a serious narrative flaw, it’s that it’s hard to see that he doesn’t have a damn good point about the Mutant Menace.

Anyway, the plot is that they have to send someone back in time to prevent the events that result in their ultimate doom, and since the time travel process is so traumatic (when you’re going THAT far back), they have to send someone who can regenerate really fast. That’d be Wolverine, if you’re not up on your mutants. And because regenerating your body is just like regenerating your mind, I guess.

The continuity within the movie works okay, given the issues that arise with time travel, but I kept feeling like there was a serious loss of inter-movie continuity. Like, I think the same event that results in the creation of the Sentinels results in Mystique’s death, but she was in the original three X-Men movies.

Also, Wolverine doesn’t have his adamantine skeletal structure yet, though the only consequence of that is that his claws aren’t very useful. Somehow, though, I thought the implication of previous movies was that he had gotten them well before the ‘70s (when this movie largely takes place).

It doesn’t particularly matter much in Singer’s hands: There’s good suspense, action, comic book logic, fine acting across the board, and so on. The ending didn’t annoy me too much, though it had the character of a “It was all just a dream” ending, pertaining to the previous five films.

I gotta wonder where they’re going to go next or if they’re just going to reboot or what. Or maybe give the whole franchise a rest for a while. I kid! If you had a money printing machine, you’d run it day and night, too. In fact, the next movie should be out in two years, and it’s going to be called Apocalypse.)

There’s also an annoying bit early on where they enlist a super-speed mutant named QuickSilver to help them free Magneto, and it quickly becomes apparent that, if they keep him along, they can pretty much do whatever needs to be done without any further fuss, so naturally they leave him behind for no good reason other than his powers are too powerful for the plot to sustain.

Say what you will about The French, they understand women. Having said that, I must endeavour to explain it in the context of For A Woman without sounding like a misogynous bastard.

For A Woman takes place shortly after World War II: Michel and Lena are living in their little apartment, happily married Communists, with Michel running a haberdashery and Lena bored and frustrated by her lack of employment (which Michel is rather against) when suddenly Michel’s brother Jean shows up.

After a happy reunion, Jean is…well, opaque. How is it possible that he survived? The family was split up during the war, with Jean being trapped inside a Nazi camp in Russia while the parents were in Germany and Michel was in France. (I think I have that right. Point is: They were split up.)

Jean also seems to have connections. When Michel opens up his own haberdashery, Jean is able to come up with three boxcars full of unused fabric (diverted during the war but then forgotten) for the taking, giving the new business a real boost.

There’s a certain wry humor to the proceedings: Michel’s big fear is that Jean has fled the Soviet Union, which is just too reactionary for Michel’s taste. In fact, Jean is more than happy to knock down Michel’s idealized support for the USSR (as one who putatively escaped it), and Michel is more than happy to dismiss this counter-revolutionary talk.

So, is Jean a Soviet spy or a defector or something else?

I’d like to say that I called it early on and guessed exactly what he was and why he was there, though the film shook my smugness a little bit once or twice. And, in fairness, I figured it out based on feeling like we were supposed to like Jean and none of the obvious solutions made him very likable.

By the way, the movie is bookended by a story taking place in the late ‘80s and into the early ’90s between Michel’s daughters, and at the end of Michel’s life. And he remains unrepentant Communist to the end of his days, enraged by the end of the Soviet Union.

I think this is based on a true story, and of course there are many real people who are like that. (Some of them even on the Internet!)

So, what’s all this about women? Well, Lena and Michel are happy, basically, though Lena less so, both because she has little to do (and housework in post-war Europe was not easy), and while she loves Michel, he’s boring. He’s a businessman. He’s staid. He’s unmysterious. He adores her more than anything but she doesn’t reciprocate, not to the same degree.

Oh, also? He saved her from the concentration camp by pretending she was his fiancee, and literally carrying her across country to save her life.

So, yeah, that might endear you to a guy, huh?

But when Jean shows up, he’s everything Michel is not: Mysterious, dangerous, magnetic, sympathetic, and Lena is mistrustful of him, but definitely attracted. It is to the movie’s credit, and a believable characterization, that she doesn’t just jump into bed with him. At the same time, the attraction between them grows dangerously, threatening Lena and Michel’s life together.

I couldn’t help but note to myself “Dude saved your life. Can you really be unfaithful to him?” But of course the answer is: Sure. When Lena says “I could never cheat on Michel”, her uber-Communist gal-pal who’s cheating on her husband with a much younger stud-of-the-people, says “All women can cheat.”

Actually, as big a mess as said gal-pal is, she also seems to have the best understanding of women, when she says she wants both men, because both men satisfy different needs (implying the same of Lena, and perhaps all women).

Writer/director Diane Kurys is said to have based this story on her own parents’ lives and, secondarily, the effect it had on her life, and (perhaps surprisingly) this is a remarkably gentle and compassionate film. It both indicts her mother for her actions but not harshly so, demonstrating an understanding that nothing in life is that simple.

But if guys are going to take a message away from this, it probably should be: Dude, it doesn’t matter if you save her life, if she’s not into you, she’s not into you.

The Boy and I rather liked it. We weren’t crazy about the framing story, as it seemed to drag the story down a bit, but we could see why it was there.

The principles are fine actors: Benoît Magimel, who looked familiar but I can’t think of anything I’ve seen him in, plays Michel. Nicolas Duvauchelle (The Well-Digger’s Daughter) plays Jean. The regally beautiful Mélanie Thierry (Babylon A.D.) plays Lena.

It’s a little heavy, of course, and sad in places, but it’s not dreary or morbid, and mixes in a fair amount of suspense, mystery, romance and eroticism that makes it a good watch.

Tom Cruise plays a weatherman forced to live out the same day over and over again during an alien invasion of Earth in Edge of Tomorrow.

I may have mixed that up a little.

Edge of Tomorrow is a sci-fi action movie that takes the plot of Ivan Retiman’s revered romcom Groundhog Day and says, “What if living out the same day over and over again allowed you to save the world!”? It’s actually not that big a stretch from the original, though this movie has very little in common beyond this gimmick and some of the circumstances that arise from the situation.

Also, out of necessity, the power to reset the day has severe limitations, else you’d have no possibility of tension for the third act.

What’s most surprising about this film, actually, is that it’s very, very good. In spite of being a big budget action flick. In spite of being a time-travel movie. In spite of starring Tom Cruise.

I kid. Cruise is generally fine as an action hero. Usually he’s doing the same role, though, so he doesn’t stretch his acting chops much, of which he seems to have at least some modicum (see Rain Man, Magnolia).

One of the ways this movie exceeds expectations is by giving Cruise a deeper role. At the beginning of the film, he’s a glib, abject coward lacking any sort of morality. This turns into a more traditional action hero role later on, but the character arc makes this feel satisfying, giving us a sense of how real life military men go from being average joes to hardened warriors.

In addition, his character changes much the way Bill Murray’s does in Groundhog Day, in the sense that he gains a depth of feeling for characters who don’t really know or like him. What’s more, despite the virtually mandatory save-the-world motif, director Doug Liman keeps things tight and light, with the action mostly being local rather than awash in ruins of cities and what-not.

Frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie (Valkyrie, Jack Reacher) co-wrote the script with frequent Liman collaborators Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, and whatever the reason, this seems to have worked out extraordinarily well.

The Flower liked it, though she felt the denouement was cheap. I could see her point and I saw it coming, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure it was going to play out the way it did, so I was relatively happy with it.

The Boy also liked, and was pleased with the relatively small amount of goofy action/war tropes, like the super-moves performed by Emily Blunt, who seems to have an uncanny ability to fight the aliens—an ability which, once you learn what’s going on, does not in fact make any sense.

But there’s a lot about this movie that doesn’t make sense if you think about it, or is at least unanswered. To a degree this is handled by keeping things moving enough to where you don’t have a lot of time to think about it, which is common enough these days. Better, though, is that it doesn’t try too hard to offer an explanation. The movie gives you just enough of a back story to give you the hook, but not so much that you start thinking, “Well, if that’s the case, then why don’t they just blah blah blah?”

Movies are not the best vehicle for presenting plausible alien invasions.

Brendan Gleeson and Bill Paxton have small but fun supporting roles.