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+