BEST & WORST FILMS OF 2009

It was a year when genre movies trumped “important” prestige films. The best “important” one is number #4 on my list, and it doesn’t conduct itself as a message-laden film – it thrills and exhilarates then respects you to extract the message. Certainly there are a few other important films that deserve a place in the canon of 2009 releases. How do I list these anyway? My method is, the closer you get to number #1, the more exhilarating the movie was to me. In some years the real important movies are the ones that entertain the hell out of you. These are the eternal classics:

BEST OF 2009

1. Paranormal Activity – If you think like I do then you will agree that “The Shining” and “The Exorcist” are on Tier One as the greatest horror films ever made. “Paranormal” can now take the lead at the top of Tier Two. Taking place entirely inside a San Diego home where one boyfriend records infinitely with his video camera toy and a girlfriend haunted by the unknown, the film slowly creeps on you until it builds to unrelieved terror. As a result, the loudest screams in a movie theater you’ve heard in years if you were lucky enough to see this in a packed house. The fact that the best film of the year was principally made for $11,000 goes to say that if you live long enough you will eventually find something to surprise you. Yet there certainly must be a reason why the film rattles your nervous system so effectively. It has a way of tapping into fears that you thought were long dormant, and then extrapolating them. In a word: Primal.

2. Inglorious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino, giving good name to agonizing suspense as well as to stylistic homage, compiled a perfect cast for an awesome assembly of characters in this boyhood fantasy of American G.I.’s kicking Nazi ass in a fictional WWII. The opening sequence between Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz, the best villain Q.T. has ever created) and the French farmer is the best written sequence this year or perhaps in many years. Never before has there been a movie character that has used ingratiating qualities to such powerful, ironically menacing effect.

3. Observe and Report – Black comedy comparable to Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” by some others compared to “Taxi Driver,” one of those films you can’t see its greatness until you’ve seen it two, three, maybe five or six times. As long as you believe that a comedy isn’t required to have likeable characters then you will be knocked punch-drunk by Seth Rogen’s bi-polar mall cop. Here’s a guy who honestly and truly believes that his anti-social behavior is social normalcy. Second endorsement: Tarantino praised it as one of his faves of the year.

4. The Hurt Locker – Authentically filmed in the shrapnel littered conditions of the Middle East, the mesmerizing Jeremy Renner is the leader of a bomb disposal team in Baghdad. The title is symbolic of Renner’s obsession with mementos of his past assignments, but the film digs deeper into his paradoxical compulsion to risk-take for the sake of risk-taking – he’s a field operative who thrives on the adrenaline. The most haunting final shot at the movies this year. Kathryn Bigelow will likely become the first woman to ever win the Best Director Oscar.

5. Bruno –Sacha Baron Cohen is the preeminent avante-garde performer of our time, battery-ramming his character into real world encounters and eliciting shocked reactions from onlookers. It’s not the plot that’s important, it’s the anything goes quasi-documentary method that is which here veers into what should be called borderline documentary. By turns outrageous and side-splitting, then fascinating and intolerable, this is perhaps the only comedy that could be seen as a puke-your-guts-out rollercoaster ride and ask for seconds.

6. Departures – This Japanese film touched my heart more than any other this year, containing scenes that I am forever grateful for. While it initially stirred me upon my first viewing, I had no idea how much I really loved it until I reviewed the similarly themed but vacuous “My Sister’s Keeper” two months later. Failed cellist Diago (Masahiro Motoki, gentle and superb) is a nokanshi, a man who performs ceremonial washing of corpses before their burial. It remains uplifting and spiriting even despite its cadaverous theme possibly because it honors and cherishes the memory of the dead, while soothing the hearts of the living.

7. Up in the Air – George Clooney as a termination specialist who travels nearly every day of the year, embracing his roaming lifestyle. He meets Vera Farmiga, also a woman of non-commitments. Jason Reitman (“Thank You for Smoking,” “Juno”) is once again the director of a smart, devious comedy that this time taking us all over the map, both literally and thematically.

8. Public Enemies – Underrated. Contains some of the most ironically beautiful and evocative cinematography of the year, while seducing you into the art deco texture of the 1930’s. Christian Bale is a stiff as the agent on pursuit, but Johnny Depp as John Dillinger is the embodiment of criminal cool, a bank robber who saw recklessness and exhilaration as one and the same.

9. Precious – For those few people out there who thought “Juno” was too insincere and irresponsible (I don’t know how you could, it’s only a comedy) here’s an honest heartbreaking reel: a portrait of an obese 16-year old Harlem girl who becomes a mother to two children. Gabourey Sidibe turns the title morose inward character into a revelation, but one of the year’s great performances belongs to Mo’Nique who channels short-fuse fury as the abusive, oppressive mother.

10. Invictus – A Nelson Mandela biopic could have existed without giving us the marketing hook of rugby, but still, the two have been honorably integrated. And Morgan Freeman delivers one of his great performances. But highest praise to director Clint Eastwood’s awe-inspiring location shooting.




Overlooked:

Julia – Is she the best living actress today? Tilda Swinton is a pitiless, self-absorbed alcoholic-cum-tramp who commits the hefty crime of kidnap-and-ransom which snowballs into multiple heftier crimes. The year’s best under-the-radar thriller, although it is more of a human wreckage character study. In a sane world she would win the Best Actress Oscar. Erick Zonca, the director, also deserves to be taken seriously. This film reminds one of the Coen's first film "Blood Simple."

Milestones:

Best Documentary: “Tyson”

Best Animated Film: “Fantastic Mr. Fox”

Best Actor and Supporting Actor: Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker” and Christoph Waltz in “Inglorious Basterds”

Best Actress and Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton in “Julia” and Mo’Nique in “Precious”

Best Cameo: Harrison Ford in “Bruno”

Most Surprising Robert DeNiro caliber classic performance: Seth Rogen in “Observe and Report”

Best Montage: “Observe and Report” exhibiting Rogen’s off-medication nihilism followed by the beatdown of hooligan skateboarders.

Best Artistic use of Black & White: The opening sequence in “Antichrist”

Best Musical Interlude: “(500) Days of Summer”

Best Love Scene: Drew Barrymore directed the underwater tableau in “Whip It”

Best Sex Scene: The Korean vampire movie “Thirst” by Chan-Wook Park

Twenty dick jokes too many: “Funny People”

Two Hundred Eyebrow Twitches too many: Kristen Stewart in “New Moon”

Worst Films of the Year:

1. Miss March – So smutty and juvenile it makes you almost wonder for a moment if Playboy has ever been sexy.

2. Flame & Citron – Danish film replete with the most idiotic WWII clichés in ages. A blockbuster in its native country, this marks proof that the Danish are capable of having just as much bad taste as Americans when it comes to overhyped and shallow action spectacle. Then it takes itself so damn seriously.

3. 17 Again – Pervasively stupid. Characters adamantly act without thinking. Characters react slow when introduced to new surroundings. Characters demonstrate absent memories outside of a two-minute time span. Zac Efron is a "star" but so what.
4. Management – Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn comedy that loses its sense of priority. To makes us laugh, to make insightful human observations.
5. Away We Go – John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are a couple with a baby on the way and obnoxious supporting characters along the way, against director Sam Mendes’ washed-out color palette. The most literate movie on this worst list, yet so dreary it’s soul-crushing.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Sherlock Holmes plunges you into the plot without warming you up or seducing you into 1890’s London, slapping together shots incoherently until you don’t care what is happening. Instead of sleuthing and puzzle-solving, the audience is treated to a reckless action scene. The dialogue is also zippy and breathless (and incoherent), and Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role as Sherlock even mumbles his words in an early scene where he insults Jude Law’s female companion (Law plays Dr. John Watson). While actors certainly appear debonair they are nevertheless surrounded by a sloppy production.

Worth mentioning right away is that there are precisely four good scenes in the movie, and surprisingly, three of those are action scenes. Dame Irene (Rachel McAdams) is swinging from a meat hook on one scene in a charnel house and Sherlock Action Hero has to set her free in time before she gets shredded by blades. That was a highlight, and that is not to sound sarcastic. It really is a good scene.

Also good moments are a scene featuring a runaway boat sinking into the bay, and a climactic scene jousting on the rafters. If you haven’t figured it out by now, let’s make it clear that Sherlock Holmes has been made into an Action Hero for this generation leaving the cleverness of sleuthing to past adaptations. Certainly there is a little bit of sleuthing, and the finale where he puts the pieces together is exuberantly executed. But did we really need to see Holmes in a boxing match? The snap and crackle direction by Guy Ritchie (“Snatch”) predisposes that it must be so.

That’s really for the Ritchie fans that enjoy his overblown theatrics, but for keen viewers, the Ritchie overall style is frenetic and chaotic (the mere snap and crackle editing is saved for shots of bone-breaking). Ritchie doesn’t care if you brew over the mystery of the film, he just wants to smash excess at your senses. As for the mystery, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) has been executed by hanging but continues to terrorize London from beyond the grave. Death, you see, has only made him stronger. But Sherlock figures that Blackwood must have been getting help from somewhere other than from his gift of Black Magic.

But sometimes a superfast pace just makes time stand still. What’s lost is fresh Holmes and Watkins camaraderie. McAdams is adrift in randomly shuffled scenes. The Hans Zimmer score is endless lightning, it also never stops to breath. Although Zimmer does echo notes from Ennio Morricone’s score from “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Moreover, what is lost is any satisfying sense of cleverness.

In a production overrun with bombast, what you will nonetheless recognize is the set design of the film which is meticulous in detail. The film’s display of 1890’s London looks as real as the history books. It’s the actors who are contemporary, and the action and style that is ultra-modern. For those readers looking for nothing but sheer entertainment, why are you bothering to look anywhere else but “Avatar” for this holiday season?

Click Here to go to official Sherlock Holmes website

Grade: C

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

Even shots of beauty have a tinge of off-putting perversity in Terry Gilliam’s world. Gilliam wants to crush and decimate the idea of a fairy tale with his latest The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The film will more likely be remembered as Heath Ledger’s final film. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in as substitute for Ledger’s non-completed scenes which are mostly the fantasy ones, sometimes masquerading in disguise or aided by CGI to fill in for Ledger’s character.

“Parnassus” is an original idea by Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown that revolves around a travelling stage show. Once you go backstage, you fall into a magical alternate world that’s like an id extension of the Candyland game. It’s a place where Gilliam, like he did in “Brazil” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” unleashes his whacked surrealist imagination.

Yet Gilliam finds it necessary to open the movie with a demonstration of cruel and mean behavior as a couple of drunks attempt to trash the stage of Parnassus’ (Christopher Plummer, in white goatee). Other travelling players include Percy (Vern Troyer) as the midget who deploys wisecracks. Anton (Andrew Garfield) and Valentina (Lily Cole) are the hormonal teenagers. New to the pack, Tony (Ledger) is an amnesiac who joins the gang until he can figure out where he can from and why he stumbled.

What can be said when Ledger has more charisma than anybody in the troupe, even Parnassus himself, who is the dullest of dullest of eponymous characters? This is in no way a demonstration of Ledger’s greatest acting (“Brokeback Mountain” and “The Dark Knight” are proof of his endurance), but in a movie replete with magic tricks, Ledger’s star burns brightest.

You never want to be a part of the ordinary scenes as these guys travel through London. The dialogue is garble, often nonsensical or grandiose. “He doesn’t want to rule the world. He wants the world to rule itself.” Gilliam’s visual sense is more cluttered than ever – it’s oppressive, assaultive. If “Parnassus” is worth bothering to look at it is for some of its technical work (in the fantasy sequences only), not story. In brief, it is a shiftless story about making improvements to the road show, figuring out the meaning of self-identity and escaping from Tom Waits (He plays the Devil).

In regards to technical work, what you will get in the fantasy sequences are such things as mammoth staircases, funny-acting mirrors and men on elongated stilts. His neatest trick, with Depp in foreground, is an oily onyx river that morphs into a snake’s head. What poisons the film ultimately however is Gilliam’s unceasing misanthropy. This is his third bad movie in a row.

Click here to go to Doctor Parnassus official site

Grade: C-

AVATAR

The visual spectacle of Avatar is so cool that it almost becomes an overload of cool. Every shot in James Cameron’s blue world extravaganza is magnificent from left to right, packing it in, never giving into visual short-shrift. His storytelling efforts are also ambitious and extensive. But when it comes to storytelling, they are indeed efforts.

The screenplay duties by Cameron on his “Titanic” were much bolder and streamlined than they are here even if the Billy Zane character was a two-dimensional louse in a tux. In “Avatar” two villains exist, Stephen Lang merciless honcho Colonel Miles Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi’s wormy mission director Parker Selfridge who is a nod to Paul Reiser’s character in Cameron’s “Aliens.” Besides being a far too single-minded and intractable, these are good villains.

This is the year 2154 (the human stuff, the technology feels like it), and earthlings have stationed in Pandora where mineral unobtainium must be extracted to save Earth’s energy crisis. The hero of the picture is Sam Worthington as paraplegic Jake Sully, a still enlisted Marine, who enters the Avatar program headed by Sigourney Weaver as a Ph.D. In a sensory deprivation tank, human consciousness is linked with a cloned Na’vi, a blue alien species whose characteristics include towering height, green-yellow eyes, and facilitated with spring-powered legs.

As a clone, Jake can now run and climb and do everything he used to be able to do (when he wakes up he’s a paraplegic in a tank again). As an avatar, Jake can now assimilate himself with the Na’vi people and learn from them. His first Na’vi he meets is Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who saves his life and then introduces Jake to her people. The Na’vi are knowing that Jake’s appearance is an avatar.

What’s peculiar is that the blue people want Jake around so they can learn as much about him and he wants to learn about them. Something that Cameron fails to give us a sound and convincing motive. The script has references to “schools” where the two species integrated and failed to come to a satisfying cooperation. But the Na’vi are content in their perspective that the white man is evil. It’s true, the white man only wants the Na’vi to relocate so they can drill in their sacred land. This sets up current event overtones on what our U.S. military is doing in sections in the Middle East.

Cameron wants you to be aware of the intolerant prejudices happening today, and while it could have been cleanly inserted into his plot with subtlety, he gets bogged down in it all. Dr. Grace is the sounding board of reason, and yet while argumentative with Colonel Quaritch and Parker Selfridge, they are unsympathetic to such Na’vi social traditions and beliefs. They are going to plow the land no matter what, in fact, they decide the blow it up. What unnerved me, taking me out of the story, was that the humans become a wrecking team with no harvesting crew to collect the precious minerals after they’ve just blown up a Na’vi sanctuary.

For two-thirds of the movie you wonder where are the rest of the Na’vi people (is there only one tribe?), and when they all do come together you fail to get a sense of all its’ people as once collective force. In all that time however, you are wowed constantly by the green plant life and hybrid animals that pop in and out of the screen in persuasive realistic detail. Academic viewers will hypothesize how this and that was done with CGI, but Cameron must be today’s maestro on CGI. “Avatar” contains the best special effects in years with people and landscapes in exceptionally realistic composite shots.

“Avatar” doesn’t always work as a cohesive and tight-wired story, yet for its splendor and imagination it works as sheer entertainment. As I hinted before, there is so much cool stuff that you can for a few minutes get tired of the cool stuff on the occasions where the action doesn’t support the story. Worthington, who is like a tougher meathead version of Ewan McGregor, has enough gravitas to keep you emotionally invested. Saldana is an interesting, multi-layered character as a Na’vi until she evolves into a clichéd character. And in the closing scenes, one of the villains doesn’t get a proper comeuppance. Now I’m starting a litany. Let’s repeat that “Avatar” works as sheer entertainment and keep it at that.


Note: I reviewed “Avatar” in 3-D IMAX, and while I got tired of 3D glasses dangling on my nose, I have to admit the format was awesome. All the characters and landscapes are in full plush three-dimensional presentation. I plan on seeing it again in 2-D.

Go to the official website at http://www.avatarmovie.com/

Grade: B+

CRAZY HEART

The road, one must assume, has got to be a great and exciting place for a musician. But when you’re 57 and travelling on the road, and alone… well it is just that. Lonely and dissatisfying. Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake, a one-time popular country singer and boozer in Crazy Heart. He is more ashamed about his real given name than he is about his drinking. He drinks all day before his performances, sometime taking place at a bowling alley in the southwest. If he can, he will have a drink during his performance.

This is the kind of movie designed to get Jeff Bridges (a deserved) Best Actor Oscar nomination, a movie that reminds us of his considerable talent and range. He takes the stage as comfortably as Jeff Lebowski moseyed along swiping other peoples’ carpets. He loves the microphone, he just happens to love drinking better. But he doesn’t come off stupefying drunk everyday, so his addiction is unknown to him. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Jean, is a reporter who falls for his grizzled poet ways. Jean starts off interviewing Blake for the papers, and then soon enough Blake is babysitting her kid and staying over.

Many of the other actors are good (nods to Robert Duvall and Paul Herman) but the surprise is Colin Farrell, whom I can’t tell is actually good at singing or not. He gets away on his self-confidence – a projection of good acting. His character Tommy Sweet was an understudy, an opener, for Bad Blake years ago. Now Tommy is the superstar, perhaps because his mug looks good on record albums. Tommy makes attempts to cut Blake a break, but Blake is too proud to accept his graciousness but nevertheless takes on an opening act in Arizona which can re-jump his career.

Thanks to Tommy Sweet, the cantankerous Blake gets a chance to write songs again as another rebound. As you can guess, Blake gets a multitude of second chances but there are obstacles, a crisis or two that comes that are all caused, and self-inflicted, by Blake himself.

“Crazy Heart” is a movie where we observe a character slowly coveting a real life again that had been non-existent for years, and then slowly letting it slip out from under him. What good is life if you don’t have someone to share it with? That comes to Bad Blake at age 57. Gyllenhaal is always effective as the sensual girl who gives bad guys a second chance, she might be the only actress alive who can act with her cheekbones alone. But if you use the “honeymoon is over” metaphor, then you see a young woman asking credibly if Blake is really right for her. Watching her lose patience in their relationship is one of those things you can’t tear your eyes away from.

Somehow, you want more intimate exchanges between them in the second half. In a pivotal scene that raises Jean’s eyebrows, Blake on his bad leg scuttles through a shopping mall looking for a lost little boy. The culmination of this incident is realistically handled, an episode without a false note. It also closes on a moment as to why Bridges might not only be nominated for Best Actor, but might actually win if Morgan Freeman doesn’t.

The cutting could have been more spiky, and you certainly wish the movie rolled along faster – the directing by Scott Cooper is a little weak in third act as its slack and yet takes its shortcuts to reach its denouement. With all that said, you don’t have to be a fan of country music to find the crossover appeal of “Crazy Heart,” a film about mature relationships and professional exhaustion on the road.

The other movie out right now, “Up in the Air,” features George Clooney as a spry, tireless traveler. Bridges is tired and exhausted man, and uninterested in the news when the doctor said he has to change his eating and drinking habits. This is indeed a very full-bodied and uncompromised character portrait done by a tremendous actor.

Go to the official site at http://www.foxsearchlight.com/crazyheart/
Grade: B+

THE LOVELY BONES

The reason why The Lovely Bones as a film connects emotionally with you is because of actress Saoirse Ronan as young teen Susie Salmon. And this occurs in a film studded with other well-known actors such as Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci who himself does his first non-clichéd performance in at least a decade (he’s that bald, hardnosed and snobby character actor). The young Ronan is a 15-year old actress who was nominated for “Atonement,” an overrated film I do not care to remember strongly. After “Lovely Bones,” I care to remember both her and the film strongly.

Set in suburban Pennsylvania in 1973, Susie is just a normal girl just beginning that phase of teenage life where passages of interest start to happen. The stuff before is just dollhouse stuff. She loves bicycling. She loves playing with her camera. She loves boys, particularly one. Father and mother (Wahlberg and Weisz) are variably supportive of her, and the sister (Rose McIver) is naturally competitive.

The pedigree source material is Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel from 2002. This is the story of a young teen whose life is tragically cut short, before Susie ever experienced her first kiss – and she was close to achieving that. With Ronan’s open-face and expressive eyes, you feel connected (and protective) over her within the first few frames. That makes the tragedy all the more wrenching. She falls into the hands of an unassuming neighbor who is a serial killer. He is played by Tucci, who is so absorbed in character, that you think you were looking at actor Peter Stormare.

In the aftermath, we see Susie stuck in confusion between Earth and Heaven. For a few breathless moments, Susie is disoriented what has happened to her (the murder takes place off-screen), and we’re enrapt in her fragility of how she will brace with the concept that she is now a spirit. She can’t let go of the life behind her, and in subtle moments, makes ghostly reappearances in her family’s home. She observes that Dad cannot forget or give up, Mom is stuck in depression, and a sister she feels the need to be protective over. She wants want Dad wants: her murderer.

Ghostly images, as conceived by Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”), are so evocative that it sends shivers up your spine. But as Susie settles in the afterlife, it becomes a playground. The heaven’s gate, if you may, is Jackson’s creation and liberal adaptation from the book, and it has a fantastic Oz-quality. These visuals work because they feel invoked by Susie’s own subconscious, it’s her childlike creations. Jackson works up an extraordinary rhythm with these scenes, it’s like when music is so lush that you are carried away on air.

It’s unfortunate that Jackson breaks up this rhythm, with distracting business with Sarandon’s character, a grandmother who smokes up a storm and overloads the washing machine, as seen in a useless montage. Sarandon has never been a nuisance before, but the entire character is an unnecessary plot device. As the grieving parents, Wahlberg’s character is a much more convincing portrait than Weisz’s – she is a mom that can’t hack it so she walks out on the family.

Further unnecessary plot contrivances involve a beating by a baseball bat and penultimate natural justice that reeks of contrivance. There is a break-in however into George Harvey’s home, the serial killer, which is orchestrated with breathless suspense. There are other moments where characters can feel Susie somehow hovering amongst them. Susie, a girl whose essence illuminates the traits of innocence, benevolence and harmony.

For some reason the Academy does not promote girls who are 15-years old as Best Actress. They are shoehorned into that other category called Best Supporting Actress, even if Saoirse Ronan is the central heart of the film. If that shall be the case, then Ronan will be undervalued. Rest assured though that we will likely see much more of this talented and natural young actress in the future.

Go to the official site http://www.lovelybones.com/

Grade: B+

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS?

When you have this kind of poster, and this kind of match-up of tailor-made stars, and this kind of fish out of water premise, you deduce naturally that Did You Hear About the Morgans? is this Christmas’ romantic comedy offering. If you’ve been indoors all-month long and haven’t done your holiday shopping, then perhaps you haven’t seen the poster. To sum it up, Hugh Grant looks befuddled and Sarah Jessica Parker looks inconvenienced.

The Morgans are a separated New York married couple and heading towards divorce. Paul made a mistake, you see, that Meryl cannot forget. Paul wants her back and beckons her to join him for dinner. Afterwards they witness a murder where the hitman negligently sticks his head out on the balcony so he can be seen. Now these two have to enter the Witness Protection Program which will require them to adapt to rural Wyoming lifestyle.

By requirement, the Morgans now go by the surname Fosters which is an inconvenience, for certain, but worse the two of them are not allowed to make phone calls back home or use the internet. These are federal protection rules, or whatever, administered by Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, who play a U.S. Marshall and a deputy respectively. Elliott and Steenburgen are long-time married, and so they serve as surrogate therapists to the Morgans, err, the Fosters meantime in their stay.

As a performer, Grant has always had a gift for depicting delicate discomfort. He underplays his discomfort here, ever so slightly squirming in the tenseness of his face, and yet redeemably speaks cordially and gratefully to his hosts Elliott and Steenburgen. The stuttering Brit from “Love Actually” and “Music and Lyrics” is still on display here, finding notes of forced politeness among an unwanted setting.

On the other hand, Parker is neurotic with a lack of modulation. This is an actress always high-pitched, and either whiny or flustered. Really, this is not far different from her latter years “Sex and the City” episodes. This strident neuroticism is certainly what the script called for, and it is permissible to say that Parker has a knack for playing these kind of New Yorkers. The kind that have never left their own zip code.

What Marc Lawrence (the writer-director “Music and Lyrics”) has done is adhere to the Fish Out of Water formula but designed characters who instead of outright complaining make efforts to not only make friends with the Marshall and his wife but to behave courteously among the rural folk (They are rude New Yorkers trying not to be so rude.) In private Grant and Parker bicker and banter but when outdoors – here are some of the broad segments – they learn to jog in fresh air, shoot a rifle, ride horseback and run from bears.

Several consecutive episodes got me laughing although there was this nagging sensation that I wasn’t completely satisfied. No it wasn’t the occasional pokey pacing that got me. It was the idea that this is a packaged romantic comedy and the romance part didn’t do it for me. I didn’t care if the two of them resolved their issues or not (although the scene where Grant recites his own original poetry as a riff on his wedding vows was charming). Perhaps Paul and Meryl are convincing New York types, but just not convincing together. Forget the romance, but I’ll endorse this as a halfway decent comedy of two New Yorkers dislocated in horse country.

Grade: C+

INVICTUS

By judging the advertising sheet for Invictus you would think that the film belongs to Matt Damon and rugby. Yet the film really belongs to Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, shaping the richest and most indelible portrait of the South African president put on film.

When you are in the hands of director Clint Eastwood, whom is as active and agile as any filmmaker today ("Gran Torino" was his preceding effort, a box office hit), you can count on a class act. This is not to say that the film is skimpy with the on-the-field action. Rugby is a fierce contact sport where the players shred it up with body-punishing bruises as a result.

Setting us authentically in specific time and locations, it begins with the release of Mandela from prison on February 11, 1990 at the cessation of Apartheid. Mandela has been elected President, and his opening duties is to bridge whites and blacks together within his own offices (the whites remain on the job as political advisors and counsels).

Mandela makes it very clear to the country that the past is past. British persecution of Africans is a terrible memory but, as Mandela informs, the nation cannot heal until everyone can live peacefully integrated.

The Springbok rugby team representing South Africa is virtually all white except for one sole black. Damon, as Captain Francois Pienaar, is in the meantime struggling to inspire his teammates to lift themselves from a losing record. The team is nearly disbanded by a board of black officials who feel it is time to get rid of a white-dominated organization.

Then Mandela steps in, with a rousing and humanistic speech, as to why the rugby team must remain in place. Blacks and whites spectators integrated at the stadium will unite as one collective people.

Many sports themed films have superficially boasted as to why athletics can bring people together, but Eastwood and his screenwriter Anthony Peckham make a definitive case based on that very idea that blacks and whites can cheer as one for the Springbok, thus diminishing the racial barriers. Mandela defines himself as a great rugby fan, and when he's not encouraging other world nations to open trading and promoting human rights campaigns (sketched in, but fairly dramatized), he is attending rugby matches and watching road games on television. It is Captain Francois' honor to join Mandela for an afternoon of tea where both men exchange pleasantries and gestures of admiration for one another.

It could be interpreted by the viewer that Mandela's gentlemanly manners that inspire Captain Francois to push his team into a winning franchise. A Captain must lead by example, and what Francois does from that moment on is approach every obstacle with a sense of pride and dignity.

Teammates make slow but gradual adjustments, and in their changing attitudes and enlivened respect for the fans, they start to win. What the team doesn't like is Mandela and his administration's new requirement for the players to participate in youth mentoring and welfare programs.

This leads to perhaps the most emotionally moving and transcendent sequence of the film where the Springbok arrive by bus and are enthusiastically greeted by a huddle of underprivileged kids with a yearning to play rugby. Captain Francois' team morale actually enhances, their reservations subsided, immersing themselves in the task of engaging children who have had less than adequate outlets to partake in athletics.

It is one of many examples where Eastwood has pushed his ambitiousness to the limit to provide his audience with awe-inspiring footage, revealing he cares about immersing us in the authenticity of his locations.

"Invictus" is a film that plays on a large canvas, as Eastwood generously employs aerial or ground level panoramas in exceptional locations which accumulatively grants the audience a rich visual education of South Africa.

But the film will most obviously be admired for Freeman's great work. Freeman takes a historical figure and doesn't do a rah-rah showboat, but instead draws us in to the subtle and nuanced compassion of Mandela. In this particular case, you feel like you are getting an honest portrait of leadership and benevolence.

That said, you only get a thin perception of the people who worked around Mandela. And while Damon is sturdy both physically and sturdy with his accent (he never sounds like he is reciting his lines, unlike the belabored Leonardo DiCaprio in "Blood Diamond"), the actor is limited to conveying the character's broadest appeal.

But this is a contemplative way of saying that Freeman is allowed to dominate the film in which he surely does. The rugby field play is heart-thumping, but it is Freeman's words that are most stirring.

Go to the official movie site at http://invictusmovie.warnerbros.com/


Grade: A-

UP IN THE AIR

Up in the Air is another winner for George Clooney, the consummate movie star who brings his usual top-flight brand of intelligence to every project he chooses. Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, a downsizing specialist that corporations hire to conduct clean, preventive-retaliation layoffs. Ryan is pleased to spend most of his life up in the air remarking that he is in reach to claim ten million flyer miles. In another observation of himself, he only spent 43 days home in Omaha in the past year. “To know me is to travel with me” is one of his zingy lines. He travels light, both literally and figuratively. No family baggage in other words.

What Clooney does so easily is project this dominant superiority complex which makes it effortless for him to fire people for a living. This attribute allows him a certain detachment from the rest of the human race – those who are dumped are saps, they are beneath him. As another travelling professional, Alex (Vera Farmiga) is a female equal with the noticeable masculine name. When they first meet at a hotel bar, Alex senses Ryan’s play at seduction and throws a bunch of witty verbal obstacles at him. No problem for Ryan as he suavely rises to the occasion by using his persuasive speaking skills (he also lectures at seminars) to seduce Alex – a transcontinental affair begins.

Back home things are changing at the company when a fresh out of graduate school efficiency expert named Natalie (Anna Kendrick) convinces boss Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman) to use computer interfaces to fire people. This would eliminate the need to fly Ryan and other employees to company on-site locations. This also gets rid of airfare and hotel costs as Natalie makes Craig see it. Ryan debates a multitude of reasons why human interface is needed in the hatchet business. His next tour of duty could be his last, and he is asked to take Natalie under his wing to train her, if not, orientate her to the business. Perhaps convince her that all her proposed ideas are wrong.

At this point, you think that the film will propose that this is going to be a battle of wills between Ryan and Natalie, as on the road they try both his way and her way. Ryan is outright the stronger and more forceful one in this relationship. What occurs are transitional scenes of Ryan proving to Natalie what a tough business it really is (in several instances there are clipped montages of employees suffering the indignity of being let go). Which opens up the plot hole: Couldn’t Craig and the rest of the executives foresee that Natalie’s new strategic plan was going to backfire? You wonder if you are going to get a scene of a laid-off employee going ballistic and throwing the computer monitor across the room.

“Up in the Air” is the kind of movie you love anyway despite of one glaring flaw. It’s a relationship comedy, a cold technology replacing humanity comedy, and a socio-economic comedy that offers much human insight and observation. It is also nevertheless about the Ryan Bingham type that can roam freely without being tied down, and Clooney is nuts-and-bolts perfect as the roamer who fails to see the need for commitment. On the road, Natalie gets devastating news via text message, and Ryan, observing that she is looking for consolation, offers to her dryly “It feels like getting fired by a computer, doesn’t it?” Clooney’s delivery is not kind. He is rubbing it in.

Returning to the romance angle, Clooney and Farmiga have lots of spark and heat. You must remember Farmiga as the police psychiatrist in “The Departed.” She exudes maturity, brains and allure in every scene. While we’re at it, let’s remind ourselves that this is the Clooney we know from “Out of Sight” or “Ocean’s 11,” the guy who exudes charm and panache. In any movie of this kind of contemporary candor, you have to expect complications to come up and not make things so easy, cookie-cutter for these two and the script summons an essential twist. What happens between the two of them is subtle, and disquieting to say the least.

We also have director Jason Reitman (“Thank You for Smoking,” “Juno”) to thank for bringing such sharp and intelligence entertainment to the screen. He makes the movie crisp and snappy, and he has a gift for shooting skylines. And no movie with Danny McBride could possibly disappoint. He shows up for two-thirds of the movie as a Styrofoam cut-out, leaving us in anticipation of when he is going to appear. When he does (Ryan meets him in Milwaukee) McBride delivers another off-key, and surprisingly poignant performance, that catches us by surprise. “Up in the Air” takes us all over the map and does it satisfyingly and memorably.

Go to the official site at http://www.theupintheairmovie.com/
Grade: A-

BROTHERS

Brothers strains for an accessible way to teach the audience something about PTSD, that disorder that has plagued soldiers coming home from Iraq. The main crux of the movie is a carefully positioned moral crisis. Tobey Maguire is the soldier presumed dead in Afghanistan. Jake Gyllenhaal is the ex-con brother who watches over Maguire’s wife, Natalie Portman. Physical sparks happen between Gyllenhaal and Portman, and then, guilt and finger-pointing.

Every scene of the movie is designed so it builds to the point that a featured actor has an outburst, or an implosive spurt of tears, or an agonized look on their face by the end of the scene. While the chemistry is initially cold, a scene on an ice-rink with amped-up groovy music informs us that Gyllenhaal and Portman are falling for each other. They vow to keep things non-physical, for perhaps the time-being, and Gyllenhaal remodels her kitchen.

In regards to the scenes in Afghanistan, things crash dramatically when Maguire and a fellow soldier are taken prisoner by Taliban fighters. The two prisoners are placed down in a hole where they are starved. To prompt audience reaction as to how cruel the Taliban is, an executioner caps a plug in another Afghani, and it is so merciless and cold that the movie is trying to get you into shivers. But all I could think is: Why did they shoot that man other than so the movie to conveniently dictate that the Taliban is cruel?

The Taliban do other cruel things to the prisoners, but it’s Maguire, as Captain Sam Cahill, who crosses over to show us how bug-eyed and crazy he is capable of looking. If the movie doesn’t exactly wrench your emotions, you are marginally concerned as to whether he will get to return home or not. If Sam ever does reunite with his daughters, they might run the other way and not recognize daddy (actors love the range of doing light to dark transformations where they are unrecognizable in the latter). Gyllenhaal, as Uncle Tommy, is maturing into a fine man with no ex-con stink on him anymore (after two months) except that he’s attracted to his brother’s wife Grace (Portman) which by definition is a dangerous attraction.

As directed by Jim Sheridan (“My Left Foot” his career highlight), he concentrates to extraneous lengths to give his actors dramatic lighting, often blocking his actors so that they walk into a ray of light in a quasi-dramatic epiphany. None of the actors are as spectacular as some Oscar forecasters would lead you to suggest, but Maguire has got enough of that deadly thousand yard stare that might spook you enough into goosebumps. He makes you believe that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a common problem among vets, but by this point, a movie that goes more into the long effects of PTSD is what needs to be made.

Grade: C

FANTASTIC MR. FOX

The first reassurance of Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it is very much in the tone and spirit of filmmaker Wes Anderson’s other films. This is the coolest animated film of the year, one of the reasons it dazzles is the fact that stop-motion animation is so rare. But when stop-motion is done well it feels like the fanciest art form out there. Anderson isn’t going for fancy though (but he achieves it anyway with his impeccable craft), he’s going for hip.

Working with clean dolly shots and pans that must have been excruciatingly difficult to pull off, Anderson attains the same droll picture-frame exuberance that he brought off in “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” This time he is adapting a Roald Dahl’s 1970’s children’s book. Dahl was also the author behind “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” It feels as if Anderson is in love with this story, unlike Spike Jonze with his lumbering “Where the Wild Things Are.”

Mr. and Mrs. Fox are voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep, but you come out of it
remembering the vocal intonations of Clooney more than Streep, and more than his co-stars Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray. Clooney is as authoritative and in-charge of his character as, in say, “Up in the Air.” In the film, Mr. Fox is for a short period satisfied with his upscale condo, i.e., a hole in a stout tree. But restless, he soon has a problem with the greedy human world, and steals chickens from the local slaughterhouses which offend the industrial presidents. Now the humans want to demolish the fox community and take prisoners.

The tireless filmmaker in Anderson digs deep (literally in one eye-popping sequence) to up the ante on children’s films and gives his voice actors lots of Tenenbaum-esque dialogue that is never dumbed-down and yet accessible. Mr. Fox has a depressed kid named Ash (Schwartzman) who is constantly upstaged by a cousin named Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). Ash, who could have been voiced by Luke Wilson if it wasn’t Schwartzman, wants to be a hero like his father, Kristofferson is naturally prompt in responding to heroism. Mrs. Fox harangues Mr. Fox for being too madcap and irresponsible. When asked why he has the compulsion to steal poultry Mr. Fox explains, “Because I’m a wild animal.”

You could get all caught up in checklisting the usual Wes Anderson motifs, but it’s the touches, the fancy touches, that brings delight to a very big-screen tale. Particularly beautiful are the orange skies (who needs blue?), the frizzy chemical smoke, and the textured hairs on the animals that bristle so lifelike. The climax is so Wallace and Gromit, but the ending resolution, inside a supermarket, is so… so… wow! How did Anderson pull off that scene with such grace and precision?

Go to the official site at http://www.fantasticmrfoxmovie.com/

Grade: B+

THE ROAD

As a master of playing characters with a good and evil duality, Viggo Mortensen is the only actor in the world that could have played the father in The Road. Although the father isn’t exactly evil, he is a good man that has disposed his better virtues because he believes it is better for his son’s and his own chances for survival. On an ash incinerated earth, a little boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) gradually exceeds the faith of his own doubting father and matures beyond his age. In a life that feels as if it is not worth living, the boy in his transcendence finds a connection between the embrace of what’s left of humankind and the dream of a better future.

The world catastrophe that has scorched the earth is undefined in both the novel by Cormac McCarthy and in the movie, but what remains is the constant panic of unavailable food and bands of cannibals and slave-herders. Something I closely observed is that two major grueling scenes in the book were left out of the movie, and if you’ve read the book you should be able to detect which are those two scenes. Such details are something I paid extra close attention to since McCarthy’s work is my favorite novel of the last ten years. It is a novel of unceasing adrenaline and immediacy, a novel of simple human poetry and complex earth-nature and destruction poetry.

What the filmmakers can’t (and no filmmaker can) is capture and translate an author’s idiosyncratic language, McCarthy’s symphony of words. Still, a movie can exist independently on its own terms and be successful. What John Hillcoat’s (“The Proposition”) movie has is some the best demolished and destroyed cities visuals you will find in an apocalyptic setting, some shots were staggeringly accurate to how I pictured them in the book. Moreover, the one weakness in McCarthy’s book was the final exchange by man and wife (as seen in flashback), but Mortensen and Charlize Theron bring amazing vitality to that scene.

Midway through the movie Robert Duvall makes a haggard, withered Old Man who is found on the road by father and son, who squabble over whether to divide their rations to feed this old man. First-timers to this story might find Duvall mesmerizing in his disintegrating but dignified appearance. Somehow though I find that Duvall is simply too intellectual and arch over the material – the same words in the dialogue are used in the book but Duvall is too in control of them, too “whole” of a man and not as withered as he appears. If you read McCarthy, it is one of the most haunting passages you will ever read in a novel.

Often the tone and manners of the movie disagrees with me. The visceral nature of the book made it feel like the most ultimate nightmare marathon of all-time, the endless ticking urgency that the characters must keep moving to stay alive. The movie has schmaltzy exchanges and show-stopping sentiment that is misused, and the music score is too pushy and tear-inducing.
Then there’s the matter of the boy (Smit-McPhee). He’s sticky sweet and unhardened. It didn’t help that he’s about 12 and the boy in the book sounds 9 (that’s my judgment call). I don’t know who I feel worst for: the actor who will be chopped down critically by viewers, or the viewers that will have to endure his performance. All I can say is that Viggo’s tremendous performance, the grinding down of his character, compensates all of the movie’s other faults.

On its own terms away from comparisons, “The Road” is watchable if you like post-apocalyptic fables. I shouldn’t guess audience reaction, and yet I offer theory that audiences will be moved by the film. I say read the book first, but ultimately, everybody should acquaint themselves with this story. There is a reason why “The Road” is published in more languages worldwide than any modern book.

As for me, I was constantly curious and intrigued every moment in the way in how it was going to be “adapted,” tickled and enticed by every choice and decision the director was making. I guess that’s what happens when it is my favorite book that I’ve read twice. I know it well enough to say that the end of the book is poetry and the end of the movie feels flat by comparison. There I go again after I had promised not to make anymore comparisons.

Go to the official site at http://www.theroad-movie.com/
GRADE: B-

NINJA ASSASSIN

Rain is a Korean pop star in a martial art flick where bodies are sliced in half by swords and throwing stars in Ninja Assassin, a movie likely to please its genre fans on the basis of its slick looks and propulsive action. As Raizo, Rain makes for a ripped, dexterous action star, one who sheds conceit in favor of being a little humble and self-effacing. Naomi Harris is a forensics expert for Europol, and while her occupation never feels pertinent to the plot you are engaged by her resilient hang-in-there presence.

But let’s stick to the fundamentals. You mostly come to this movie for the action scenes. On those terms this is an entertaining exploitation flick that gives you lots of splatter, bloody geysers, mutilations and less concern for restraint. The movie contains cool training sequences and many requisite action combat sequences (some of it filmed in too many obscured shadows), including one of those action chases through a high-rise parking garage where the hero hops from hood to hood. Further appealing are those high-flying leaps by Rain, assisted by CGI (computer generated images). Also CGI are the blood squirts spraying the camera lens as well as close-up shots of festering wounds.

The hyperactive bloodletting is not as original as some of you may think. It has existed in such ’70’s kung fu flicks like “Five Fingers of Death,” and was brought to a peak by the House of Blue Leaves sequences in “Kill Bill Vol. 1.” But “Ninja” wants to utilize CGI in order to achieve new heights in excessiveness. If you get wicked chuckles from a scene of a man being sliced in half down the middle, then you’d be giddy to the extremes by “The Machine Girl,” a Japanese import made a couple of years ago that really pushes the grindhouse limits (it is available on Netflix). For decapitations and eviscerations, it is the ultimate in exploitation schlock.

Bloodshed aside, every action movies needs leveraged with a human interest plot. “Ninja” finds two parallel sensitive stories to balance the carnage, both stories interconnecting. In the past, Raizo in his youth is forced by a secret society into a training camp which molds ninja killers. His first sweetheart is also a forced student, but killed cold-blooded within the camp in front of all the entire school for being too inconsequential. The present story, in a flash-forward in time, demands that Raizo gets revenge against Lord Ozuno (Sho Kosugi) as well as secondhand baddie Takeshi (Rick Yune). Raizo also has to evade German agents, but you feel that this is shoe-horned into the plot, just so the movie has something to take up time.

“Ninja Assassin” is an efficient example of today’s Far East whizzy action spectacles made in mind for broader American consumption. The early scenes of blooming love between young Raizo and the girl have an appeal, but besides those brief moments, the film is short on sex appeal except for a mysterious beautiful stranger at a laundermat that demands a double-take. And Harris as the forensics expert is there to play the good-looking professional. The humor is understated, even poking fun at the genre conventions: a character looks dead, oh my god, the suspense is she dead or not? Raizo takes a quick look and dryly observes, “She will be okay,” in the most hunky-dory delivery imaginable.

That said nothing here is groundbreaking, but if any of this drives your interest then you might be wowed by the climactic action sequence that takes place inside a traditional style Japanese house. Your jaw might drop a second time, not in wow but in disbelief, when you see a Special Operatives squad that machine-guns the outside of the house long after there are any targets that are worth the bother to shoot.

GRADE: B-

OLD DOGS

John Travolta and Robin Williams are middle-aged bachelors in Old Dogs, one of them comfortable with it the other one not. Both of them run a sports marketing firm, and they’re trying to close a deal with the Japanese. This is one of those movies in which the Travolta character Charlie tells a long-winded “comic” story to break the ice at a meeting, in which the Japanese heads are stolid and not amused, but then break into sudden uproarious laughter when they get the Chili Palmer-like punchline. Williams, as Dan (for one scene known as Tan Dan, whoops, I gave away a joke), is the passive straight man who prides himself in distinguished presentation. Williams, of course, can’t resist himself and has several scenes where he gets himself into a slapstick tizzy.

These two men get their lives upside-down when they are coaxed into taking care of two young 7-year old twins. The twins are a boy and girl, how about that for variety? Neither of these men are properly equipped for fatherhood which results in canned would-be hilarity, and as a sign of these two acquainting with the kids they let them watch “Friday the 13th Part III.” In public, Charlie or Dan are repeatedly viewed as either a gay couple or as two grandparents (a wearying running gag). Dan has more at stake from the start: if he succeeds as a father-type he can possibly get foxy momma Vicki (Kelly Preston) to fall in love with him after she finishes her two-week jail sentence, a sentence she picked up for harmless environmental protest. Let’s also mention that Dan fathered these children seven years ago but just learned about it.

I laughed up a storm, during one scene and one scene only, towards the end where Charlie and Dan have made a decision to venture to Japan (Seth Green was their AWOL employee, now they got to fill in). While there to do a PowerPoint or High-Def Video presentation, Dan hits the wrong button on his computer and video pops up of his two sparkling happy children and he gets teary-eyed about abandoning them. There must have been five hundred people in the theater, but I was the only one laughing at this shameless and utterly contrived tear-jerking moment.

As for the rest, manufactured comedy segments include “Prison Rules” Ultimate Frisbee, child-proofing the house, a medication pill-box switch-up, golf course hi-jinks, biting attacks by penguins and a malfunctioning jetpack. Do Travolta and Williams recognize their fallibility? That’s a question that is interpretative in a myriad number of ways. Travolta, ceaselessly jokey and jaunty as the incorrigible bachelor with a bag of anecdotes, is like a one-man glee club. Williams, while portraying uptight, is never more comfortable when he does a crazy old man dance.

These two get support by Matt Dillon, Ann-Margaret, Justin Long, Lori Loughlin, Rita Wilson and the late Bernie Mac, who all show up in small roles where they are at first cheerful, then lose their temper. Except Bernie Mac, who is groovy nearly all the way until he gets a tear in his eye (those kids do the darndest things to melt your heart). I smirked during some moments, broader audiences will eat it all up wholeheartedly.

GRADE: C-

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

If you are an emotion junkie, like I am, you go to the movies hoping for something to trigger a body shuddering physiological response. If you enjoy being scared Paranormal Activity is an experience of such raw unbridled sensation that it nothing less than staggering. The fact however that it is labeled as a scary movie shouldn’t stop you from underestimating, and admiring, its ferocious and meticulous artistry. This testament of course comes from someone who doesn’t mind the shaky-cam as long as it is done well. If you take in consideration the techniques consisting of a time-coded clock that speeds ahead to crucial incidents, the use of the jump cut, and the modulation of sound design then you are aware that vérité shaky-cam style can be a meticulous art.

The branding of scary movie doesn’t do justice here because “Paranormal” is one of the most terrifying movies ever made. In this low-budget landmark (production cost $11,000), Micah and Katie, boyfriend and girlfriend, start filming and investigating the unknown spooks in their San Diego two-deck house. For some unknown reason I had tears in my eyes at one point that I cannot explain. I’m sure it wasn’t cries of sorrows so can it be something else?

When it comes down to it the less you know about the movie going in the better. But what can be said is that Micah is one of those annoying guys that always has to have the video camera on and thinks, to diminishing rational judgment, that he can solve on his own the problems plaguing his house. I know there will be some viewers that will not want to watch simply because Micah is annoying. Micah is grating in that particular way where his girl is yelling at him to turn off the damn camera but he insists in recording everything (the camcorder is his new toy). But isn’t it plausible to say that there are individuals on this Earth that are such overreaching know-it-alls that think their way is always the best way?

You need Micah to have his video camera on all the time, otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie (you can tell that "Paranormal" owes something to “The Blair Witch Project,” but trust me in that it surpasses that indie in every comparable way). So correctly is his character pitched that Micah feels plausibly human, the kind you believe would have the obsessive-compulsive need to not only run the camcorder at all time, but the need and know-how to dictate and control his girlfriend Katie. As a contrast, Katie is a compelling self-prescribed victim. When the two of them invite a psychic over to their house, Katie is receptive to all of his professional opinions while Micah is rude and dismissive of the suggested course of action. With little sensitivity in his character he never considers that he may possibly be antagonizing the phenomena that is invading their sanctuary space by his relentless actions.

In a way, Micah is as much an external conflict as… the rest of what is mysteriously happening in the movie. Micah keeps the camera turned on to document visual proof while also analyzing audio wave dials on playback which he reviews every morning. He reads specialist books on the paranormal. He surfs the internet and finds articles that relate to similar incidents that occurred back in the ’60’s. He verbalizes every new piece of information while Katie wants to know little, as less as possible.

Who knows who made the film officially since there are no opening or closing technical credits, only ominous title cards (you can surf the internet if you want the truth). The movie is presented as found footage that has been restructured in the form of a video diary. At its best moments, the camera is mounted on a tripod at night to film, in wide-angle shots, of the two of them sleeping. The video blog typography informs us that it is “Night #1” or “Night #3,” or “Night #17” and beyond. What occurs after dark is by turns gripping, goose-bumping, nerve-rattling, and ultimately, such a powerhouse that it made me scream louder than I have in ten years at the movies.

"Paranormal" may not be the most terrifying movie since “The Exorcist” but if it’s not than it is certainly within range of comparison. If you are one of those rare disaffected cases that doesn’t jump out of your seat for anything that isn’t Freddy Krueger, that you can at least acknowledge proof of ingenious sound design as an effective instrument to the art of filmmaking. But anything that provokes and elicits such a wide range of basic human responses – laughs, anxiousness, tears of fright, tears of nervousness, curiosity of the unknown, squeals of terror, encounters with the unknown – certainly qualifies as art. In that respect, "Paranormal" is a horror film masterpiece.

Go to the official site at http://www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/


GRADE: A+

THE INVENTION OF LYING

Somebody should do a remake of THE INVENTION OF LYING real soon. What is here is a great idea for a comedy. Yet with this end result the concept is much more brave than the screenplay execution which reaches its peak early and never ups the stakes. The movie is the invention, err creation, of Ricky Gervais who also stars. Gervais is a sweet, shy fellow as Mark Bellison who to his detriment is spineless. Jennifer Garner is the unattainable, err hard to attain, love object in his life. Character arc dictates that Bellison must become less spineless to attain the things in life he wants.

Now how about this for concept. In an alternate reality that mirrors our own only in physical urban landscape the notion of lying does not exist. Nobody has ever not told the truth or been absolutely forthright in what they are thinking. Bellison arrives for his first date with the unattainable Anna (Garner) and she tells him that he has no chance, this is probably the last date, that she is only going out with him out of politeness. When Bellison loses his job as a screenwriter of overly honest and earnest history films (his domain our stories about the 13th century), everybody at the office informs him that they are glad he’s gone.

When the insignificant and ineffectual chub is unable to pay the rent, he tells the first lie that man has ever told so he can hang on above poverty level – an exhilarating special-effects rush to the head is employed to kick-start this impulse. Then he realizes he can exploit this device to trick beautiful women to pay attention to him, trick the games tables at casinos, and trick deadbeats at the local pub that he is a pirate, a lion tamer and the inventor of the bicycle among other things.

An early storytelling mistake utilizes a montage showing Bellison fixing up local people who have been saddled with problems – this is a movie that should be exploiting verbal wit and not music montages. Back to essentials: After a slip of the tongue, Bellison must make up big, big lies. By mishap, Bellison becomes the new Moses to the people of the world and tells him he can talk to the Man in the Sky. But personal self-actualization demands that Bellison get the girl, become the most famous screenwriter, and convince the world that he is a better man than his adversary played by Rob Lowe. You know, the guy with the perfect profile.

Gervais is known as an entertainer who falls back on self-deprecating humor, but throughout this particular effort, it unremittingly feels like a self-pity act. This constant mode is either endearing or annoying depending on what kind of audience member you are. But what it comes down to is Gervais getting over his poor self-image and becoming content with himself, all at the expense of a great story idea that should have way more fun with its concept. LYING might make you wish that Gervais would sell his story ideas to someone like Mike Judge who would run with this material like a renegade.

GRADE: C

COUPLES RETREAT

Hard work must have been spent in the opening credit sequence of COUPLES RETREAT which is an archival montage of couples in love in the past century, including strung together scratchy black & white clips. An easy sap in the audience will sigh at these moments. If you’re cynical, note the rest of the movie isn’t some kind of ironic anti-love statement as you might predict, actually, it’s pro-marriage – at least in its facile intent. Four couples fly to a place called Eden, that might be recognized as Bora Bora to some luxury-endowed vacationers, to go through Couples Skill Building classes and marital therapist sessions.

The comic angle of the movie is that these couples unravel while on holiday until husband and wife start taking verbal rips at each other – and then, in theory, make-up again. The earliest scenes are the snappiest, veering briefly onto that rare commodity of what you can call fresh comedy. PowerPoint presentation that is indelicate yet tactful, a friend’s request for borrowed money to buy a cool motorcycle just to impress his new girl, a toddler mistaking the use of a furnishing store display toilet.

How about the stars showcase? Vince Vaughn (his “Wedding Crashers” character wouldn’t recognize the new Vaughn) is a conscientious father of two, with Malin Akerman (“The Heartbreak Kid”) as his pretty but overspent wife. Jon Favreau and Kristen Bell would be an attractive married couple if they weren’t always desperately searching for new partners. Faizon Love is the porky-fat black guy emotionally caught between his divorced ex-wife and his new raunchy girlfriend. They’re all corralled by Jason Batemen and Kristen Bell, the well-groomed and overly dogmatic couple, to join them on a paradise getaway with the purpose of strengthening marital bond.

Throw in some pro forma conflicts between each couple and then you have, well, conflict. The best casting decision in the supporting roles were selecting John Michael Higgins and Ken Jeong as therapists (if you’re a movie buff, you know these guys). The worst casting decision was selecting Jean Reno (“The Professional”) as the inane couples’ guru and instructor. Nothing however is more overworked than the shark attack scene or the scene with a hunky but lascivious yoga instructor who as we learn wouldn’t mind stealing a wife, or perhaps, all of them.

Considerably a reunion of sorts it certainly is for Vaughn and Favreau, who are alumni of the ’90’s Los Angeles dating scene semi-classic “Swingers,” who actually co-wrote the movie together but allowed Peter Billingsley to direct (his second feature). Who would have guessed that in this reunion that, Vaughn is the cool-headed one and Favreau is the leering eye jerk? Actually, it makes sense that these guys scripted it this way, they’re having a lark playing against type. While their chummy-hostility is occasionally worth a chortle or two, hence coughed laughter, their clashed arguments about infidelity and “happy endings” can put a ruin on the idea of romantic comedy. If you hate romantic comedy, then you’ll wish that these two will just do some beer-swilling already.

When the dialogue does work, between any of the characters, it has a borderline self-aware jest that works until it teeters too far into sitcom territory. You come to realize that this sitcom level entertainment that just so happens to have attractive background scenery. COUPLES RETREAT is occasionally watchable sitcom-y junk, that asks itself to get by with its one-liners and ribald body language, but it never comes close to a summit of respectability. And finally noted, you may not be entirely convinced – at least in one case – that one of the couples looks believably married. Can you agree on which one? Forget romantic comedy generics, let’s root for a break-up.

GRADE: C

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Movies about isolated, withdrawn and misunderstood kids can either affect similarly young kids in the audience that feel that way or they can affect adults that are able to look about twenty or thirty years or so and understand what it was like creating a fantasy adventure on their own in order to escape reality. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, based on a 1963 children’s book remembered by one or two previous generations, is a movie about a misunderstood kid in need of adventure as well about Things. The Things, as in talking feral creatures, of an island cut off from everything else.

Max (Max Records) is the 9-year old kid who puts his scribble on everything, like one of those autographing kids trying to scream out “I was here.” He likes to play in the snow, he likes to run after the dog, he likes to build his little fortresses in his room. And he wants somebody to join in on him. Catherine Keener plays the mom, and she’s one of those good moms that wants to encourage her son. But sometimes it’s like enough already, adults need to play their way too, and when mom brings home a new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) it drives Max to insane jealousy. He is no longer the number one attention-getter.

After biting mom – which he feels tears and regret – he runs off away from the world and onto a raft that carries him over the dark sea onto the Things island. Max has a crash meeting with these F/X creatures and then convinces them he is King. Finally Max has a clan of people who will listen to him and do what he wants. Voices are supplied by Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara… but the only voice that really stands out instantly recognizable is James Gandolfini who is the grouch Thing.

Assimilating with the creatures diminishes Max’s loneliness, and without being said, there could be no other place for Max to so happily exist. He is the all-powerful King, right, and nothing can backfire? But the lesson here is that you must keep your ego in check no matter what you’re age or your class title happens to be. There really isn’t much else to the movie other than the island being a cutesy therapy healer for Max, who must learn that while a holiday soothes the spirit he nevertheless has to return to a family back home that loves him. Reminiscing, I am still endeared by a childhood favorites like “The Neverending Story” (1984) or “Labyrinth” (1986), both are similar lost in an imaginary fantasy world movies. But those were movies of unending adventure and relentless surprises.

Long stretches pass in the story where there is no external conflict, as nothing is unsettling until civil unrest amongst the Things gets out of hand. After you are impressed with the textures and designs of the creatures, there isn’t much else variety in terms of things to look at. You’re in a non-descript forest and then a desert region that all looks the same. Spike Jonze, taking a break from sophisticated head-spinners like “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” implements his usual trademark verité dazzle. The wildly untamed camera that jets and bumps around can be momentarily eye-popping.

Some movies prick you up and keep you alert. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is the kind of movie that makes you want to watch while spread out on the couch, lying sideways, and take it in like the little nibble comfort food it is. For that 1963 generation, nostalgia is fleeting.

GRADE: C+

A SERIOUS MAN

A SERIOUS MAN is not going to be considered a traditional entry in the Joel and Ethan Coen canon by some, and for certain there will be fans that are going to consider that a problem. Many followers dig them for their comedies that register rollicking surrealism, offbeat humor, and screwball nuttiness. If you’re one of those people that like the Coen Brothers for that, and nothing but that, you’re probably not going to like their latest work. There, it has been said so don’t say I didn’t tell you so. But if you’re one of these cinema connoisseurs always curious about the personal depths of idiosyncratic filmmakers (please read on), you might be the choice audience for this very peculiar film, which can be described as a very rare acquired taste.

The opening pre-credit prologue set a hundred years or something prior, which is disconnected from the rest of the film, is awful and nonsensical – the worst scene the Coens’ have ever directed (it's supposed to be a Yiddish folktale). Once the film finds a clean slate, the Coens’ are up to their necks in honoring, and satirizing, Jewish heritage in 1967 midwest suburbs. Adults are thriving orthodox followers or moral cowards, but the indifferent neighborhood of kids just wanna have fun. At Hebrew school, a boy’s transistor radio with Jefferson Airplane rock music is taken away from a school authority. This is the real start of the movie. It is soon followed by a student foreigner who tries to bribe his professor, only to supersede the situation with blackmail.

None of the actors are recognizable, as never has a Coen Brothers feature been so absent of stars (even their debut film “Blood Simple” had M. Emmet Walsh and Dan Hedaya). Theater actors and rarely seen character actors fill out the entire cast. Lead actor Michael Stuhlbarg, as professor Larry Gopnik, is a dull spineless mope until it dawns on you what a revelation the actor is to the part – he’s dull and spineless, but he’s a man who is desperate enough to want to ascend his failures. He is a serious, but brilliant man who wants to taste something from life that he can’t quite reach.

Throughout the movie, Larry is pitted against a litany of terrible plights and misfortunes: the agony of X-ray results, infringement of property lines, an upcoming tenure hearing that rings of looming disappointment, a car accident, an uncooperative TV antennae, and worst, news that his wife is leaving him for a neighbor Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed, a show-stopping ballsy performance). Sy is astonishingly ingratiating, barging into Larry’s home and offering his wisdom.

This is a very dry comedy, and you haven’t a clue on what dry comedy is, then you can see A SERIOUS MAN and learn as to what that’s like. Around the edges, a buzz of new problems always perpetuates, often with Larry adopting new problems against his willing. Sometimes the new problems come via external forces and sometimes it is family. Larry has a very loafish brother played by Richard Kind, likely the most recognizable face in the cast where you might think aloud “Where have I seen him?” Larry, on top of all his misery, has to cater to his unfortunate brother’s embarrassing secret that’s worthy of social ostracizing. In-between are visits to his lawyer and visits to his rabbi. It is part of the Coen deadpan humor that when he gets his rabbi counseling, it’s of a futile nature.

Even an erudite critic like me sometimes forgets about the Coens’ “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” which was their previous entry on the theme of the little man who gets stomped on. The Coens’ put you through the grinder, along with Larry, with their newest work which arrives at what initially feels like a frustrating and detached final punchline. That’s until you step back and consider that it’s Mother Nature intervening and dictating Larry’s destiny, a destiny where there is no way out but just to accept the fate that has been put in front of him. The black joke is that Larry will go down as the guy who gave way more than he ever received.

Food for thought is heavy in “A Serious Man,” and if you’re perceptive you can appreciate that it is personal for the Coens’ who have decorated their film with memories of their childhood atmosphere put right up on the screen. But I admit that I wouldn’t mind a light meal next time from the Coens’.

GRADE: B

2012

Tremendous special effects duke it out with stupid characterizations in 2012, a movie less concerned with Mayan theology than with putting on a thrill ride featuring 1,001 close calls. Massive destruction is caught with wide-angle shots and aerial shots that were made with seamless composites by a heavily geared special effects team, of course, director Roland Emmerich of “Independence Day” fame as the commandant. What Emmerich is a master of is composing fragment shots of debris and wreckage flying at the camera. Armageddon-disaster movie is his specialty, so is staging an ensemble of movie stars who narrowly dodge record-breaking earthquakes and volcanic eruptions with poise and ease.

Matters of enjoyment come down to how much you can tolerate ham-fisted dialogue and impossible contrived situations. When the end of the world is near, for instance, do you really risk your life and the lives of others to collect your poodle? Or how about planes taking off on broken asphalt runway? Emmerich, who brings tsunami disaster to India with the same large scale pluck as he does turning Los Angeles and Yellowstone Park into a ferocious volcano, is happy to go ’round the world to depict catastrophe. He also goes to China to introduce us to Buddhists and their wisdom, but there, he supplies them trite lines of pseudo-wisdom.

As the representing common man, John Cusack plays a family man fortuitous enough to break the odds, travelling from Los Angeles to China, specifically to a Far East haven, with what is either genius or luck. Only a few hundred-thousand on the entire planet have a ticket to board “the ship,” the only exodus available. The ticket-holders are the rich, the ones that could afford to live on while everyone else worth less than a billion dollars will not be spared. Danny Glover as the President of the United States chooses to accept his exit with timeliness, imparting compassion for the citizens doomed.

Big chunks of the film are preposterously entertaining, and anybody remotely impressed by special effects will not be bored. Did I mention Woody Harrelson plays a bearded nutjob deejay who isn’t so much a nutjob after his predictions come true at Yellowstone? Did I mention that Chiwetel Ejiofor as the head scientist and Thandie Newton as the first daughter of the United States are the most attractive, and brainiest two of the film? Or how about Oliver Platt as the dispassionate chief of staff who doesn’t care much if his mother perishes? The dialogue for this genre, as corny as it is, has improved since the “Airport” and “Towering Inferno” disaster movie days of the ’70’s. Staying relational and in-the-moment, it can be simplistic and broad dialogue but at least it is always conscious of its surroundings.

The film has its share of oversights and peculiarities. In the Los Angeles destruction scenes, we get loads of shots of buildings and vehicles battered to smithereens but there are never any people in the shots. When Cusack’s plane flies overhead the whole earth is collapsing but Emmerich forgot to put human bodies in there. I suppose that’s cleaner for the family audience. At 2 hours and 37 minutes, the insinuation that billions of people will be doomed but can be swallowed easier when there are less people in the frame. Cusack also drives miraculously fast through non-traffic Los Angeles, a city with a clichéd amount of palm trees. I also chuckled aloud during all the references to Wisconsin, particularly when two former out-of-shape Wisconsin people who look like they have built a steady diet on McDonald’s food could seem to afford a beachfront in pricey Manhattan Beach.

Aboard the ship in the conclusion, some of the survivors don’t look like rich people but rather an average looking cast of extras who appear like they came from the middle class, but that observation is a judgment call. Also an oversight on how there seems to be twenty men to every female – in Stanley Kubrick’s disaster black comedy “Dr. Strangelove” the president is consulted that to rebuild the human species after Armageddon there should be ten females to every male. Talk about expanded screenplay wit for a 1964 classic.

2012 is what it is. I found the disaster stuff fun for awhile until I could no longer tolerate its banality. Despite that, I was never bored (just annoyed). But if you are going to see 2012 now or later, see it now on the big screen where the big scale disaster pieces can be enjoyed to its maximum.

GRADE: C+