We Need to Talk About We Need to Talk About Kevin

So this is the second time in recent memory that I went into a movie expecting a sociological investigation of character and motivation and got a horror flick. We Need to Talk About Kevin takes as its subject the unspeakable nightmare of a mass killing at a high school, and tries for about 50% of the movie to delve into the question it's almost impossible not to ask: Where were the parents? The other 50%? Straight-up The Bad Seed.

Because the film jumbles the chronology of the life of the main character, Tilda Swinton's Eva, Kevin's mother, it gestures towards replicating the psychological upset of trauma. This is one of the hyper-stylized directorial choices that work. Many do not. I was not a fan, for example, of the filmstrip-esque rendering of Kevin's unplanned conception, on a cellular level, or of the hackneyed and obvious trope of Eva washing her hands of red substances--tomato sauce, paint, hamster blood. We get it. She feels responsible for the deaths. However, I didn't feel the film's argument about Eva's complicity in Kevin's crime was completely earned, or completely baked. Blaming the mother is a slippery slope, especially if her frustration with her newborn over interrupting a life of bohemian travel and New York City fabulousness is represented as both selfish and unavoidable.

In fact, several explanations are put forward to "explain" Kevin's behavior along with Eva's verbal  and physical expression of her resentment: undiagnosed autism and pure sociopathy. Did Kevin kill his classmates and brag about it because his mother never bonded with him? Because she physically abused him? Or are some people just born bad? The movie seems more interested in a screechy soundtrack and playing hide and seek with the audience than seriously investigating this question.

And the thing is, it's an important question. I know that every perpetrator of a massacre is different: It is naive and ignorant to equate Charles Whitman with Seung-Hui Cho with Jared Lee Loughner with James Holmes. But asking serious questions, and positing serious answers, about what contributes to this type of psychopathology through fiction can, ideally and hopefully, give us a way to interrupt its development. We do need to talk about Kevin, just not in a sensational or lazy way.

The Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking, or, Shut the Hell Up, Michel Negroponte

I left New York yesterday with a lot of reluctance and a copy of Jupiter's Wife from the Jonathan Alexandratos Movies You've Never Heard Of Collection. I snagged it because the subject of the documentary--a homeless woman in Central Park who claims to be the wife of Jupiter, but also is remarkably articulate and well-read amongst all the crazy--sounded intriguing. I did not select it because I was interested in what narrative director and voiceover narrator, Michel Negroponte, might impose over Maggie's own voice and story. Too bad it ended up shaking out to about 60% the former, 40% the latter.

The elements of the documentary that follow Maggie as she and her pack of dogs navigate the city, charm powerful strangers (including the director, but also a wealthy Upper East Side maven), and reveal a past both groundbreaking and heartbreaking, are pretty fabulous. And I understand that it was Negroponte who does the legwork to fill in the blanks of the "haunting real-life mystery" of Maggie's actual past, so he probably deserves a substantial presence in the film. But what bothered me was the way he seemed to co-author Maggie's understanding and articulation of her present.

As evidenced by the film's title, Maggie is fascinated by Roman mythology, and her disease (probably schizophrenia) partially manifests through layering the stories of the gods over figures and events in her own life that are, for various reasons, intolerable to her. This palimpsest is, as to be expected, incomplete and incoherent as a personal system of meaning. But almost as if to force this desperate and disordered psychic strategy into a stable narrative, Negroponte extends the metaphor through his voiceover, and connects different elements and people in Maggie's life to other elements of Roman mythology (deeming Central Park "Avernus," for example) in a way that felt not just obtrusive but proprietary and unethical. Maggie's way of understanding her world, distorted and delusional as it may be, is and should remain hers alone. Negroponte stumbled, quite literally, across this compelling figure and chose not to let the film follow where she might lead (as chaotic, but also as beautiful, as that might have been), but instead shaped the movie into a mystery he would solve, which necessitates casting Maggie as a puzzle, not a damaged human being.

This to me is worse than another documentarian pet peeve--the propensity to know what story you're going to tell before you start to tell it. (Looking at you, Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock). Even if I agree with the ultimate argument made by such films (still looking at Moore and Spurlock), one of the things I love about documenatries is the way a director's sense of discovery and possibility can become a joint experience with the audience. You know, I don't think anyone was shocked to learn that McDonald's is bad for you, though watching Spurlock prove that was undeniably entertaining.

I think an instructive point of comparison for Jupiter's Wife is my man Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. The latter film also features Herzog serendipitously discovering a subject fascinating in his bizarreness, Tim Treadwell, a frustrated and lost man who compulsively films himself living amongst wild grizzly bears in Alaska, with which he imagines a mystical communion. Herzog maintains a strong presence in the film, narrating and documenting his intersection with Treadwell's life. But he never tries to explain or appropriate his subject's personal mythology (which makes about as much sense as thinking you're married to Jupiter--trust me). Instead, his narration becomes a conversation with his absent subject, an invitation to the audience to take Treadwell seriously as an autonomous individual worthy of respect despite his self-destructive mania, modeled through Herzog's baffled but curious and compassionate commentary. Jupiter's Wife would have benefited from the same sort of approach. Why can't Werner Herzog just direct everything?

Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Poto and Cabengo as a Reason I’m Not Screwed

By Jonathan Alexandratos

I think I am what I watch.[1]  I mean, not in some terrible way where every degeneracy that projects onto my retinas instantly translates into my next action.[2]  It’s just that: people tell me that they can tell what I’m reading by what I’ve written in a given week.  There are certain stylistic similarities that transfer, subconsciously.[3]  I sometimes wonder if, in the best case, I’m original simply because all of the various components I’ve absorbed have intermingled to the point where no one can discern any individual element, only the odd-looking whole, much like the communal face cloth in my old college dorm.  In the worst case, my A-B-C stands for “Always Be Citing.”[4]

Recently I watched a film by Jean-Pierre Gorin (a director I’ve loved ever since I saw My Crasy Life, perhaps his best work) entitled Poto and Cabengo which got me thinking about all this.  The documentary, released in 1980, observed Grace and Virginia Kennedy, two identical 6-year-old twins, as they communicated in pure idioglossia.  In other words, they spoke in a language they invented.  All the time.  And somehow managed to avoid being in a sequel to The Shining.[5]

The twins were raised in a strangely bi-lingual house.  Their mother spoke a mix of English and German.  Gerlish?  Engman?  Their father spoke English only.  The live-in, maternal grandmother, though, just spoke German.  So the Kennedy twins – who called each other Poto and Cabengo, resulting in the title of the film – grew up surrounded by a bit of, well, creative linguistics.   There were 16 variations, between the girls, for the word “potato.”  “Potatah” was one.  “Putatrah” was another.  And so on.  Since the language was purely oral, variations were easier.[6]  It was also quick-paced and staccato.  Sounds pretty cool, right?  Well, the twins’ doctors thought they were retarded.  So there was that.

And that, to me, is the part of the film that holds up the biggest and most telling mirror to our society.  Were these twins guilty of something we don’t just always do, only perhaps to a lesser extent?  I’ve carried on conversations using random words, simply relying on tones to convey meaning, but that’s still an extreme case.[7]  We’re inventing and reinventing language all the time, and it seems like it’s based on little more than just what sounds awesome.  Rad.  Gnarly.  Delightful.  Like whatever will get us chicks.

Now, in fairness, the doctors in this documentary also indicated the twins had reduced motor function, but it sure seemed as though the fulcrum of their pro-mentally-handicapped argument was the fact that they kinda spoke like Ewoks.[8]  So, with that, I return to my opening statement:

I think I am what I watch.  But I think we all are.  Poto and Cabengo merely represented an exaggerated version of that statement.  I’m not ready to proclaim originality dead, but I’m ready to wonder if, all along, “originality” hasn’t meant what we thought it did.  Maybe originality isn’t an entirely new idea.  Maybe it’s just the cleverest use of a bunch of old ideas.  Like whomever is the keenest wielder of the Glue Gun of Invention is original.  After all, Poto and Cabengo, as Gorin aptly notes, didn’t create their own language.  Even in the “potato” example offered above, one can see that the twins’ “Potatah” is not far removed from our “Potato.”  Yet, the language that Poto and Cabengo spoke still bore the stamp of originality.

Gorin goes out of his way, in fact, to show the audience, in a brief 73 minutes, the individuality and conformity of Poto and Cabengo.  There are a number of sequences where the screen goes black, and all you have is the audio of the twins speaking.  One article postulated that Gorin didn’t have any footage for those scenes, so they were black in forced recognition of his failure as a filmmaker.  But that has to sell short Gorin’s expertise.  He’s a guy that uses the very small to illuminate the very large.  People as community, perhaps a slight ode to his Marxist upbringing.  He and Jean-Luc Godard split because of this.[9]  No, Gorin knew, I’d wager, what he was doing when he made this sound, the sound of both new and old, take center stage in Poto and Cabengo. 

Is my dilemma, then, so bad?  Maybe, by Poto and Cabengo standards, I might still preserve my individuality, in light of the fact that my surroundings are constantly echoed in my day-to-day operations.[10]  Gorin went on a fact-finding mission.  It may have, initially, been to find out more about the Kennedy twins.  It ended up being about us all.  Now hang on, Worf’s about to totally stab this guy with a Bat’leth and I really need to watch…

---

[1] One reason why I can’t watch too many Klingon episodes of Star Trek.

[2]Unless we’re talking about footnoting.  In which case, yes.*

                  *Or if we’re talking about sales on frozen tacquitos.

[3] Hear that David Foster Wallace!?  All this is happening SUBCONSCIOUSLY.

[4] Citation needed.

[5] Though, we only did make it to year 6…

[6] No one needed a definitive way to write anything.

[7] Little experiments where you say a sentence like “Fishbowl suckerpunch cola,” but, tonally, you’re saying “I love you.”  It’s fun to do on the subway.  You tend to get your own car after a while.

[8] Yes, yes, I know.  There weren’t Ewoks in 1980.  Ah, let’s just take a second to appreciate that, shall we?

[9] He and Jean-Luc Picard?  Still cool.

[10] Great.  Now on to why I have to make everything I see into a narcissistic quest to “find out more about myself.”

A Little Bit of Heaven, A Whole Lot of Crap: A rant against bad illness movies

I even find the poster annoying.

Now, regular readers know that I am an unreconstructed Sparksian, so it was probably no surprise that I would be perversely attracted to A Little Bit of Heaven. This mess of syrupy fluff seemed to promise the same blend of romance and melodrama (romodrama?) that Sparks adaptations sign, seal, and deliver. Kate Hudson, who has been on a precipitous downward slide since Almost Famous, plays a young, hip girl who gets diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer. At the very best I was hoping for a glassful of Sweet November with a pinch of 50/50. What I got was a double-shot of dumbed-down dreck.

I knew that the road was going to be rocky when a) a cute kid; b) a cute dog; c) a sassy gay best friend; and d) pointless voiceover narration were all introduced in the first three minutes. And it's not a totally great sign when they try to establish Hudson's character, Marley, as a with-it, sex positive girl by having her make a booty call, land an ad account for condoms, and say out loud "I'm really fun" (because she seems really intolerable) in the first five minutes. Plus, the film criminally misuses both Peter Dinklage (I shit you not--his character is where the title comes from) and Gael Garcia Bernal's mouth. But look, I rented the death porn movie--I'll accept the soundtrack doing the bulk of the emotional work of the story, I'll even accept Whoopi Goldberg playing God in Marley's anesthesia-induced vision, and her undergoing Samantha Jones chemo (you still have enough energy to go out drinking). But what bothers me about this movie is more systemic than specific.

My problem is when films use illness as a convenient entre into another recognizable narrative--be it a love plot, a redemption plot, whatever. The thing about serious illness is that it disrupts narrative. It explodes any and all sense of logic or cohesion or cause and effect that make people who look to stories for meaning (i.e., humans) comfortable. In this way, sickness graphically demonstrates the way our bodies and minds and worlds are in a constant (and at times heartbreaking) state of dynamic conversation with each other. And texts (movies, books, plays) are in a unique position to literalize and explore how being life-threateningly ill intensifies and exposes that relationship, both for the suffering body and for the people who love that body. Movies like A Little Bit of Heaven play it way too safe, which is fairly insulting to people who are ill, people who care about people who are ill, and people who believe in art's power to honestly and bravely investigate what it means to be human.  

Man on a Ledge

I resisted seeing Man on a Ledge in the theater for one main reason…Sam Worthington’s mullet.  I’m guessing it was for Clash of the Titans: Yes, We Made a Second One of These but that doesn’t excuse it. 

Man on a Ledge has a pretty good cast but sadly that didn’t really help. One stand out for me was Elizabeth Banks.  I don’t often like her but I liked her in this.  She was slightly broken but determined to not only clear her name but help this guy off a ledge.  Worthington could never quite shake his accent but was otherwise fine.  Ed Burns basically took up space and Ed Harris was a caricature of a corporate bad guy who also needed a haircut.  Anthony Mackie was criminally underused and I forgot until just now that Kyra Sedgwick was even in it.  However, Jamie Bell did dish out a few quick dance moves.  Seeing him dance again only made me want to see him in Step-Up: UK or some such.  Of course they’d feel the need to stick Russell Brand in it too but he could play the host of a dance competition show on which Jamie Bell competes.  Nigel Lythgoe could produce the movie and Adam Shankman would, of course, direct.  Oooh!  It could even be a Billy Elliot sequel... Step Up, Billy Elliot!  Billy, now older and out of ballet and into jazz and hip hop enters a dance competition to save his small village from destruction.  I’d totally go see that.

Where was I?  Oh!  Man on a Ledge.  So the actual movie I watched (and not the one I just came up with) had a good idea for a story (guy tries to prove his innocence by threatening to jump off a building) but ended up being pretty predictable and not at all possible.  The pacing was bad and really dragged on a bit too long towards the end.  Actually it would have been a great episode of a television show like Person of Interest.  OK, Ben from Lost would get Sam Worthington’s number and Jesus would have to go save him by shooting a bunch of bad guys in the knees. Meanwhile, Taraji Henson would figure it all out in less than an hour and all would be well.

Technically it wasn't an awful movie.  It was a rental from that cheap, red kiosk and I was entertained for the most part. So I think if we could break Man on a Ledge up for parts and sell it off, we’d have some pretty great entertainment on our hands.  

Carnage

 

Have you seen the trailer for Carnage?  It’s pretty great.   

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I rented it this weekend and was not disappointed.  Based on the play, God of Carnage by Yazmina Reza, the film was pretty darn great.  I make no apologies for being a fan of director Roman Polanski’s work.  No, I’m not a fan of his personal life but the dude can direct.  I would have loved to see the London production starring Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig (fabulous in Matt LeBlanc’s show Episodes), Janet McTeer and Ken Stott.  In fact as much as I liked the movie, I’m betting I would have loved the stage production.

The story is this: Two couples meet to discuss the recent event of one couple’s son hitting the other’s with a big stick.  That’s basically it. There’s lots of humor, stress and aggression (plus most of the adjectives used in the trailer).  The conversation switches between the boys, cobbler, and an abandoned hamster. There’s a constantly buzzing cell phone, beautiful tulips and vomit.  It’s pretty great.  Couple turns on couple, spouse against spouse and sex against sex.  It’s terribly satisfying to see these folks attempt to get through one conversation. 

As a viewer I found myself really involved in the story.  At varying points in the film I wanted to slap each one of them.  It's incredible how each character's worst quality comes out in the span of a very short time yet the film doesn't feel forced.  The interplay between the four characters is incredible.  I would think that actors would fight tooth and nail to be able to play these two couples.  There’s tons of development in the span of the film (a short 80 minutes), which is almost impossible to do.  It could have been mishandled and rushed but Polanski did it just right.  Oh, also I need to give a shout-out to the film’s composer, Alexandre Desplat.  I’m one of those weirdos that notices a movie’s score and Desplat hasn’t failed me yet.  His music grabbed me in the opening sequence (the incident between the boys) and was stellar.  Add to it Polanski's direction in keeping the camera far away while slowly moving in to the action and I was sold from the first minute.

 

Nat and I Take On Alec Guinness

Over at Docs on Films, Natalie and I watched Kind Hearts and Coronets, a film which was described to us as a "black comedy." Though we were not amused, we have hatched a genius scheme that will make us as rich and powerful as the Weinsteins. Check out our chat, and get in on the ground floor as an investor.

Straw Dogs gave me nightmares

Literally. Vivid, disturbing, grateful-the-cat-woke-me-up-before-they-got-worse nightmares. Clearly the remake (never seen the original--more on that later) got under my skin, or at least under my conscious. But I still haven't worked out how I feel about it. I *think* it's terrible for men and women. Probably. Possibly? If anyone's seen it, please let me know so we can discuss. I need to talk it out.

The 2011 version follows Cyclops and Blue Crush, er, James Marsden and Kate Bosworth, as they return to her small hometown in Mississippi. Amy's become a moderately famous actress, and David her screenwriting husband. He, and more importantly, his particular performance of masculinity, is immediately put in conversation and competition with Amy's former boyfriend Charlie (Erik the Vampire) and his merry band of good ole boys. The film is not subtle in its portrayal of this conflict. Marsden's David wears glasses and soft and natural fabrics, likes classical music and chess, and is a writer working on a script about the siege of Stalingrad who skips rope for exercise. Charlie is a carpenter, a hunter, a former football player and, thanks to Alexander Sarsgard bringing his body to the role, a giant who is absolutely ripped.

I think it matters that I primarily described David through things he has and Charlie through things he does. The division between the two characters' masculinity is so mind/body--and the phallic symbols are used early and often as well--as to be almost cartoonish. That is, until the violence starts. Even though that's a bit cartoonish as well, but that doesn't make it any less brutal or terrifying when the battle the film has been casting as inevitable, well, inevitably erupts, first on Amy's body, and then on their home. Who wins this confrontation, and how it is won, seems to be where the argument about the "right" kind of man to be is made.

When Charlie and his friends surround David and Amy's house through a pretty weakly fleshed-out subplot involving a scenery-chewing James Woods (is there any other kind?), David's academic interests become practically valuable, and he inhabits an easy confidence as he defends his wife and home that is very appealing, and also very upsetting in its appeal. If we are to abhor Charlie's brutality, what happens to David when he appropriates it so successfully, even for the "right reasons"? Is the film suggesting that all men are inherently capable of and skilled at violence, and that is not only true but right? And what of conflating Charlie's brand of manliness with a Southern regional identity? These are intriguing questions to ask, and I don't think the film was cognizant enough of the seriousness and importance of the claims it was making, and that was disappointing.

I wonder if the original, which was directed by Sam Peckinpah and came out in 1971, is more careful with its subject matter. I think the time period, when masculinity, particularly the "new man" was very much in flux, might have better served the plot. Additionally, the setting is an American coming to England rather than a Californian coming to the deep South, which I think could invoke and play with the Yankee cowboy stereotype in all sorts of interesting ways--it was directed by Peckinpah, after all. Can't wait for its number to come up on the 1001 blog!

The Iron Lady is sort of about Margaret Thatcher

But mainly, it's a film in which Meryl Streep does her best (and it is quite good) impression of what could be any elderly woman suffering from dementia and mourning her husband through magical thinking.

I rented The Iron Lady with equal parts trepidation and anticipation--I'm by no means an expert on the first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister in UK history, but what I do know (union-buster, foe of liberal social programs, friend of Ronnie) I didn't particularly like. However, I was curious to see what a female director would do with her undeniably feminist story. When I told my dad I was watching the biopic, he told me that a British friend of his calls her "Maggie Thatcher the Milk Snatcher" for her cancellation of a program that gave free milk to needy schoolchildren. So when the film opened with an aged and infirm Thatcher buying a pint of milk and complaining about the price, I thought, "oooh, it's going to be clever." That's the last time I thought that.

The bulk of the film follows its subject as she totters around her flat, battles a fading memory, and converses with both the hallucination of her dead husband (a predictably excellent Jim Broadbent) and her living care-taker daughter, both of whom it is revealed through flashbacks felt abandoned and neglected because of her career. The fact that said "career" was being the Prime Minister of friggin' Britain is strangely only casually touched upon through a mix of news footage and flashbacks. Her "greatest hits" (her rise to power in the male-dominated Conservative party, the "troubles" in Northern Ireland and the IRA terrorist campaign, of which she was a target, The Falklands War, the fall of the Berlin Wall) are all represented, but the mixed chronology and brevity with which they're presented make Thatcher seem oddly passive during her time in power, which, no matter how you feel about her, seems like a radical misinterpretation of her governing style.

I guess biopics have a formula for a reason, and deviating too far from that expected narrative structure, as this film does by staging the vast majority of the action in Thatcher's apartment, in the present, drains the story of its historical resonance. Streep, with a strong assist from a fabulous pair of false teeth, does her usual chameleon-like immersion into a character, but said character fails to convey power; only pathos. I'm not sure if the film meant to de-fang Thatcher and leave the audience with an impression of her as an ultimately impotent has-been, but that's what it did. And that seems like at best a misguided attempt at cinematic experimentation, and at worst, a tone-deaf low blow.

At the Movies with Steve: The Muppets

So my dad is in town for the weekend to watch the Final Four. In the meantime, we'll be watching some movies, and trust me, his commentary is not to be missed. So, without further ado, my dad's take on The Muppets, which he had never seen.

After the introduction of Jason Segal and Amy Adams's characters: "They've been dating for ten years? Yikes."

After the opening musical number: "Is there a lot of singing in this? Great. Gonzo is in it later, right?"

After I informed him that a song from the film won the Best Original Song Oscar: "Well that says a lot. Let's make ravioli."

After the cameo of Alan Arkin as a tour guide: "Is that Alan Arkin? Did you ever see The Heart is a Lonely Hunter where he plays some deaf guy? That was depressing."

After the appearance of Kermit's 80s robot: "Who is the voice for that? It sounds like George's secretary on Seinfeld."

During a lull in the action: "You know who was a good host on 'The Muppet Show'? John Denver."

After a succession of cameos including Selena Gomez, John Krasinski, and Neil Patrick Harris: "I'm sure this is what happens to celebrities before they turn up on Dancing with the Stars."

After the montage of Miss Piggy in Paris: "That's probably not Paris, but I wish I were in Paris. Let's have some more wine."

After I informed dad that Rashida Jones was the offspring of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton: "Well, she's very attractive."

Ten minutes later, when Rashida Jones again turns up on screen: "She's really quite attractive."

After Fozzie Bear debuts his "fart shoes": "That's funny. Might be a guy thing, but it's funny."

Out of nowhere, after Whoopi Goldberg shows up on screen: "Ah, Caryn Johnson."

As I'm quietly weeping during Kermit's rendition of "The Rainbow Connection": "Kermit is left-handed . . . just like all the cool people in the world." (Dad is left-handed.)

Dad's take on the movie: Funnier than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Young Adult: I Wanted to Love It But Didn't

Screenwriter Diablo Cody's 2009 black comedy/horror mash-up Jennifer's Body currently posts an anemic 43% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics called it mediocre, disgustingly smug, and a disappointing studio product--and those were the ones who liked it. I happen to think it's the sort of progressive horror film that deserves to be spoken of in the same company as Rosemary's Baby, and is, in its way, more original and important than her mega-hit Juno. So I've got to say, I picked up her 2011 collaboration with director Jason Reitman, Young Adult, with quite high expectations. So I really didn't expect to be more disturbed, scared, and ultimately disappointed after watching it than I was after viewing a movie about a cheerleader who was murdered in a demonic sacrifice, and then possessed by a flesh-eating succubus.

Initially, YA seems to be merely a demonstration of how difficult it is for a woman to wear a Seth Rogen suit. The protagonist of this film romanticizes adolescence by conflating it with freedom, overuses mind-altering substances, wears age-inappropriate t-shirts, and resists emotional maturation in career and personal relationships. In movies like Knocked Up, Old School, and Role Models, or even non-Apatovian fare like Grosse Pointe Blank and Beautiful Girls, such characters are ultimately comedic and in their way, heroic. But when it's a chick and not a dude hitting the sauce, or on an old high school flame, we usually run into the Taming of the Shrew comeuppance plot covered by My Best Friend's Wedding and Sweet Home Alabama. Rather than affably charming and lovable, these women are meant to be pitied by an audience who knows more than they do about their own lives, and reformed by and through a humiliating realization of their own instrospective shortcomings. I don't always have a problem with this plot--I mean, you can say the same thing happens in Austen's Emma--but I didn't expect it from Cody.

Charlize Theron's Mavis does undergo public mortification and an epiphanic coming to consciousness of the self-loathing and self-deceit that Cody writes into her character--Mavis demonstrates pathological hair-pulling disorder and an impulse to disguise her real body through fake boobs, fake hair, and compulsive manicuring, along with her self-diagnosed alcoholism and childish fantasy fulfillment through the YA novels she ghost writes. There's even a handy trauma to glibly "explain" her arrested development and misguided belief that her high school boyfriend still loves her, despite his obvious happiness with his marriage and new baby.

I was pretty bored by this narrative arc while watching, and it would be one thing if that were the end of it. But the film takes a, to me, unexpected and shocking turn in the last few scenes that left me equal parts skeptical, unsettled, and confused. Not to give anything too crucial away, but after Mavis seems to realize the toxicity of her own immaturity, she has a conversation that corroborates every lie she has been telling herself about her own importance and worth. A woman confesses her abiding admiration for and jealousy of the way Mavis, the popular girl in high school, escaped their small town and small lives. Mavis concludes the film if anything more smug and deluded than she began it. I honestly don't know if this is a ballsy inversion of the comeuppance plot, or a clumsy betrayal of the film's own values. Either way, its disjointed story, lazy dialogue, and uneven performances just left me feeling icky. Diablo Cody has shown in her previous two films a real facility for the way power and gender intersect--at least in high school. If anyone's seen The United States of Tara, I'd love to hear if she dodges some of Young Adult's missteps.

WTF, Academy?: A Review of Take Shelter

Want to see the best horror movie of 2011, and a film that is, at the very least, stronger than The Help, Midnight in Paris, and Moneyball? Visit your local Redbox or Neflix queue and check out Take Shelter. Please. I'm seriously begging. I need to talk to someone about this compelling, terrifying, moving, and masterful film.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols has taken the concept of pathetic fallacy and pushed it to its very limits. His movie follows Curtis (Michael Shannon in a brilliant, sophisticated, complicated performance that takes Brad Pitt's Billy Beane and eats it for breakfast) as he descends into delusional paranoia. Maybe. Curtis's persistent and unsettling dreams about coming storms literalize how the subconscious speaks to us in code. Whether a real natural disaster is looming or not, Curtis's fears about a devastating tornado are symbolic for the way life can deliver catastrophes with very little warning. His daughter, Hannah, is now deaf but wasn't always, giving credence to his psyche's realization that there are some disasters you cannot prepare for.

Shannon's totemic face is this film's anchor as the audience becomes more and more uncertain as to what is dream and what is waking life, what is fantasy and what is reality. In a movie season where psychological disorders have become shorthand for social commentary (Melancholia, The Beaver, It's Kind of a Funny Story), Take Shelter explores and explodes the way a human mind can reflect and distort its environment in order to conform to expectations both reasonable and not. Curtis knows he must protect and provide for his family (daughter Hannah and wife Sam, played by Jessica Chastain, of course) in a way his distant father and mentally ill mother never could. For him, that means bankrupting himself in order to finance a tornado shelter that could withstand an apocalypse or two, and brushing aside his fears that he might be going crazy. Up until the last, brilliant, scene of this film, I had no idea whether his bunker would be a) necessary; b) a mark of his madness; or c) a tomb. I'm still not entirely sure. In the way the film interrogates the modern relationship between the sociopolitical and the individual, I'm reminded of both Jonathan Franzen and The Social Network, another, to my mind, unconventional horror flick.

Take Shelter is a cinematic cousin to my other favorite movie of 2011, The Tree of Life. Both films show a natural world beautiful in (and because of) its awesome power and disinterested cruelty. However the former takes seriously the implications of this world on individual human minds. Shelter is something, therefore, that is not a given, but a privilege that must be seized--violently if necessary.

I'm still shaken by this movie, and especially by Michael Shannon's tour de force performance, and not just because I have recurrent nightmares about tornadoes too. They nominated Shannon for Revolutionary Road and overlooked him for this? For real?

So You Don't Have To: I watched A Better Life

This year's obligatory WTF Oscar nomination went to Demian Bichir for Best Actor in A Better Life. (I was hoping that the "performance no one saw" nod would be awarded to Dominic Cooper for The Devil's Double, but it was not to be.)

So what are you missing if you missed Bichir in A Better Life? An admittedly excellent performance in a movie that never really rises above a Crash-esque sentimental social tract. Bichir plays Carlos, an illegal immigrant barely holding onto either his small home in East L.A. or his son Luis, who is an American citizen by birth, and increasingly seduced by the power and riches promised by life in a gang. Carlos has a chance to make more money and spend more time with Luis, whom he desperately loves, by buying his partner's landscaping truck, tools, and clients, but he's afraid that the higher profile will put him in greater danger of deportation. With a few small surprises and one big one, all the bad things you can imagine that would result from such a premise pretty much do. A Better Life will make you cry, but you won't feel good about yourself in the morning.

Director Chris Weitz was half responsible for another, better, film that mined the dynamic between fathers and sons, About a Boy, and can keep the credit for The Twilight Saga: New Moon all to himself. He is undoubtedly a competent filmmaker, and he manages to shoot East L.A., Beverly Hills, and quite a few Southland sites in between, with a gorgeous crispness that unfortunately only adds to the saccharine didacticism of the movie. A perfunctory scene with an NGO representative in which the draconian and labyrinthine nature of our country's immigration laws are dispassionately outlined does the same.

But the big question: Does Bichir deserve the nomination? He's unquestionably a lot better than the material. He doesn't go for the easy emotional outpouring, except when the script really gives him no choice. However, I can't help but think his nod was a way for the Academy to pat themselves on the back for paying attention to (through the painless route of watching a film) the impossible choices that many men and women who live in Hollywood's home turf face daily. So what to say at the Oscar party? Bichir was good, but better in the criminally overlooked Che, and the nomination should have gone to Ryan Gosling.

For Your Consideration: Ryan Gosling

He does have a lean and hungry look, wouldn't you say?

Just in general. But also for Best Actor for Ides of March. Though I haven't seen the complete slew of films Gosling appeared in this awards season, I was mightily impressed by his turn in the Clooney-directed political drama.

The movie itself is compelling, but uneven. It has that feel of a film adapted from a play (as it was--the original drama is called Farragut North), with all the attendant strengths and weaknesses that tend to accompany such projects. So we get the dizzying pleasure of a two-man scene between Gosling's political operative, Stephen Myers, and the candidate's campaign from which he was recently fired, Clooney's Mike Morris, in which they basically play poker with each other's lives. I've always admired Clooney for taking roles that simultaneously acknowledge that he is a hyper-evolved examplar of humanity and expose the cracks that form beneath men who were seemingly born powerful and good looking. Gosling takes a similar tack here, and more than holds his own against George the Mighty.

The film also has more excellent actors than it knows what to do with, which doesn't sound like a problem, but it is. And the plot itself swerves towards the sensational and melodramatic in a way not entirely earned. However, none of this is Gosling's fault, and watching his character evolve, and I use that word intentionally, into a creature best suited to survive in its chosen environment is mesmerizing. He does it almost entirely through the way he holds his face and the way he speaks. It's something to see, and I think it's a performance deserving of a nomination. The film itself is a mix between The Candidate and The Godfather, and I think Gosling lives up to the major stars that anchored both of those films. Plus, he'll probably show up to the ceremony in a tux, and that would be enjoyable in and of itself.

Attack the Block makes alien invasion movies new again

Attack the Block is a genius combination of Men in Black and Shaun of the Dead, with a dash of Boyz 'n the Hood and Pineapple Express to taste. Much like Shaun (with which its director and producer were intimately involved), it takes a familiar genre--in this case, the alien invasion plot--and ironically tweaks it to comic and poignant effect. The film follows a gang of teenage thugs in South London defending their housing project and friends from a herd of blind, fur-covered, alien quadrupeds with phosphorescent fangs and outstanding athletic ability. As teenaged Moses and his crew, which eventually grows to include a young woman they mugged earlier in the evening, fight off the invaders and elude the untrustworthy and dubious police, we all get, to paraphrase one of the characters, too much madness to put in one text.

Signs was lauded for putting an alien invasion in tight focus--looking only at the effect of extra-terrestrial visitation on one family rather than the global scope taken by films like War of the Worlds or Independence Day. Attack the Block uses this same strategy, but rather than feeling claustrophobic, it manages to infuse larger arguments about race and class in contemporary London into a plot that also includes bloodthirsty aliens, stoned and sword-wielding tweens, Nick Frost, and one tricked-out Super Soaker. The movie is funny, suspenseful, and surprisingly uplifting--and don't be dissuaded if you have to use the subtitles at first to comprehend the thick accents of the principals. It's worth the effort.

alisa's 2011 Film Favorites

If I went with Tracy's categories then I'd pretty much be duplicating her list save for a couple of things.  So here's a bit of a different list:



Movie I bought the day it went on sale on DVD/Blu-ray: HANNA.  I couldn't wait to watch it again and enjoyed it as much the second time as I did the first.  Super 8 was a close second for this as were Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2.  I'm so tight with my money that I rarely buy a movie the day it comes out.  Usually I'll wait a bit and it'll go down in price.  If you wait a year you may even spot it in the $5 bin at Walmart.  It's not often I buy something so that I can have it in my possession on the Tuesday it arrives in stores.  I did with Hanna.  I almost did with Super 8 (I was a week late with that one.)  I was lucky that with HP7.2 it was on sale on black Friday at Best Buy.  Now I'm waiting for them to release a super Blu-ray collection of the HP movies.  I know they have it bundled but I want a special one with a cuddly Dobby toy inside.

Movie I most wanted to live myself: Midnight in Paris.  Corey Stoll was AH-MAZING as Papa.  And honestly, who wouldn't want to sit in a Paris cafe and listen to Dali go on and on about a rhinoceros.  I can't decide, though, if I'd want to be with the actual artists of the time or the actors playing those artists.  Shameful as it may be...I think I'd much prefer to be with the actors Woody chose.








Movie I least want to live in myself but still loved: Drive.  It had quite an impact on me when I saw it.  Sadly I saw it alone and had no one to discuss it with.  I immediately got online when I got home and wanted to see what other people were saying.  I loved it but I felt wrong about loving it.  Turns out not everyone loved it but it didn't have an effect on my loving it.  I feel like I'm talking in a bit of a roundabout way.  It's violent and upsetting but incredibly well done and Gosling was as talented as usual. 

Movie that most reminded me of why I love going to the movies: Super 8.  I do have to say that Hugo was a very close second.  It was beautiful to watch and should only be watched on a large screen.  But Super 8 was more emotional for me.  It brought me back to seeing ET in the movie theater when I was a little kid.  In fact it reminded me of seeing most of Spielberg's movies in the theaters.  I guess that's what JJ was going for and it worked.

Movie that I love for solely personal reasons and was actually a good movie: 50/50.  I have a few movies that I've loved for personal reasons but they weren't necessarily good movies.  50/50 was a good movie.  The subject matter hit close to home and helped me deal with some stuff.  That's pretty cool.  Aren't most movies supposed to evoke emotions?  It was so well made, acted, etc. and I appreciated how they approached a touchy subject matter.  I'm sure there are other movies I felt emotionally attached too as well but 50/50 was a standout.






Movie that most brought back my childhood: The Muppets.  Oh how I loved The Muppets.  It was simple and perfect and fun and sweet.  It was exactly what a movie about getting the Muppets back together should have been.  It harkened back to Muppet movies of the past but still felt right for this time.  It had fun cameos and a solid leading (human) cast. This is one that I'll buy the day it goes on sale.








Movie that I saw the most times in the theater (and loved it the same each and every time): Bridesmaids.  Seriously.  I could watch that scene where Wiig drives her car back and forth trying to get Chris O'Dowd's attention over and over and over again.  In fact the next time I'm feeling a bit blue I may skip right to that scene.  It puts a smile on my face and makes me giggle.  I hope they don't do a sequel to it.  They don't need to.  It didn't work with Hangover 2.  But they probably will.  My only hope is that everyone comes back and Wiig gets to script it again with writing partner Annie Mumolo.  It could have been the female Hangover and I know people refer to it that way but it wasn't.  Oh and I saw Harry Potter parts 1 and 2 twice each.  I saw Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows two times too and that was fun.






Movie in two parts that I'm desperate to watch back-to-back: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 and part 2.  I'm convinced that part 1 will rise to the occasion when partnered directly with the second half.  I won't know until I do it and I don't know when I will be able to sit down and spend over 4 hours with the final installments of Harry Potter.  But when I do I will let you know.  I'm in the minority because I didn't dislike part 1 at all.  It's a hard one to put on screen because it's slow going and mostly just the three kids on the run.







Movie that I'm beyond proud that I followed from beginning to end: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  I haven't posted about it yet but I will tomorrow.  It was so very great.  The acting was insanely good.  The look and feel of it just SCREAMED cold war.  It was smart and restrained and genius.  I'm sorry it didn't get a wide release yet and people aren't putting it on their best of lists.  The acting in it was astounding.

tracy's 2011 Film Favorites

Oh, how I love a good list. And seeing how it's nearly the end of 2011, lists are in abundance.
Because I live in a tiny town on the prairie, I haven't been able to see as many of the year's finest films as I'd like. For example, I've only seen two Michael Fassbenders and a shameful single Gosling. So rather than compile a "Best Of" list (see here and here for selections from two of my favorite critics), I've catalogued some of my favorite flicks that might indeed be among the best movies the year had to offer, but are memorable to me for other reasons. Happy New Year!
 

Favorite movie about the economy that's about the economy: There seems to be something about the global financial meltdown that has captured the imaginations of directors from Brett Ratner to Jason Reitman. I was really impressed with J.C. Chandor's Margin Call, which traces a really bad twenty-four hours in the life of an investment firm based on Lehman Brothers. Though it suffers a bit from too-many-endings syndrome, this film is smartly shot, scored, and scripted like a horror movie, which in a lot of ways, this crisis is. It stars always awesome Zachary Quinto, Jeremy Irons, and Stanley Tucci, and recently awesome again Kevin Spacey. Additionally, this is the first feature-length film from Chandor, who wrote and directed. Talented little bleeder.



Favorite movie about the economy that's not about the economy: Like the Vietnam War (and unlike the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan), the economic crisis has probably affected you or someone you know quite directly. Warrior is in some ways a pretty typical sports movie (though the sport is MMA), but the motivations of the two fighters are directly tied to the country's un/underemployment problem, as well as the struggles of returning veterans, and their families when they don't return. It stars it-boy Tom Hardy and future Tom Buchanan Joel Edgerton, as well as Nick Nolte as "not a train wreck Nick Nolte." Alisa reviewed it here.




 
Favorite nostalgia-drenched film from a noted auteur: It was a tight race, with J.J.'s Super 8 and Scorsese's Hugo giving strong showings, but I'm going with Woody's Midnight in Paris, if only because I think that's *exactly* what it would be like to hang out with Hemingway. It stars Owen Wilson as Woody Allen, Rachel McAdams as the shrewish Allen girl, and too many fun cameos to list here.






Favorite movie I liked that no one else did: Though the feministas were furious and beat it bloody with the undeniably better Bridesmaids baton, I quite enjoyed What's Your Number? It stars the still criminally unfamous Anna Faris and Captain America.









Favorite gritty reboot: For your consideration: Andy Serkis for Best Supporting Actor in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And, despite the Franco factor, I though this film was clever, provocative, and knew how to shoot a balls-to-the-wall CGI-enhanced action sequence. In addition to Gollum and Franco, it's also got Draco Malfoy.








Favorite novel adaptation (contemporary): Well, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 of course! It stars D-Rad, Ru-Grin, E-Wat, and a host of British thespians, including the perpetually crush-worthy Alan Rickman.










Favorite novel adaptation (classic): The forbidden love! The dark and tormented Byronic hero! The madwoman in the attic! The FASSBENDER! It has to be Jane Eyre. Though Fassbender's presence should be enough, it also stars Mia Wasikowska and Dame Judi Dench.










Favorite novel adaptation (graphic): Yeah, he didn't wear the helmet, but I quite liked Thor. I enjoyed the light and unpretentious touch and, of course, the upcoming Avengers implications. It stars Kirk's Dad, Erik the Vampire's Dad, and the Black Swan.









Favorite indie darling: When enough people tell you to see Weekend, you start to believe them. I'm glad I did, and now I'm joining the chorus. It's like Before Sunrise, except with more sex, more drugs, and two hot dudes instead of one hot dude and one hot chick. And it streams, so you really have no excuse. It stars no one you've ever heard of, unless you're a lot hipper than me.