The Worst Films of 2013 - By Lon Harris

 This article first appeared on our legacy site PassMeThePopcorn (Now Defunct)

 

By Lon Harris

 
Lon Harris shares his list of the low points in the year of film in 2013.
 

#10: WORLD WAR Z

 
I have not read the novel that inspired this troubled Marc Forster production (is there any other kind?), but I can only assume that it has some kind of narrative structure. Things happen that cause other things to happen, and thus a story progresses in some kind of logical fashion. Beginnings, middles and ends and all that. Maybe a few characters who seem like they almost resemble actual living people are introduced, they make decisions that impact their eventual fates, maybe we learn a little something about them and even, by extension, ourselves in the process. That sort of stuff.
 
Woirld War Z has no time for any of that, though I’m not sure what else it was doing, either. Brad Pitt sort of rambles around the world getting into scrapes that all end the same way (zombies!), and then things just sort of work themselves out.
Also, the notion of a mass of zombies moving in unison, in the style of a single organism, is a good one, and could have looked pretty spectacular, I should think. But, save for that iconic one-sheet image of zombies piling up a wall like ants, which doesn’t even make a huge impact in the film, “World War Z” does nothing with it.
 

 
If it hadn’t made half a billion dollars worldwide, I’d almost hope it might do something to slow the glut of lame zombie movies with which we’ve been stuck for years now.
 

#9: OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

 
My issues with Oz The Great and Powerful don’t really center around the story, which is forgettable but not atrocious, and does manage to cleverly tie up everything and set the stage of “Wizard of Oz” neatly.
 

 
The problem here is that, at no point did I believe any of the human beings were actually standing in the merry old land of Oz. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” came out in 1988, and I had an easier time believing Bob Hoskins was really tooling down the main Toontown drag than I did thinking James Franco was actually skipping down the Yellow Brick Road.
So tragic that Sam Raimi – one of the greats of contemporary inventive DIY guerrilla-style filmmaking – retreated behind a bank of monitors, putting together a formulaic, bubble-gum theme park attraction that couldn’t feel further away from the quirky, charmingly hand-made Oz of the classic film.
 

#8: AFTER EARTH

 
I know Will Smith was involved, and that automatically got projects fast-tracked in 2013 Hollywood, but it’s hard to imagine anyone thought “After Earth” was conceptually sound. There are SO MANY problems with this just as a pitch!
– There are only two main characters, and no antagonist, and no one is ever on screen together
– The film is structured as an action film but there’s almost no action
– A feature-length film will be entirely dependent on the acting chops and charisma of Jaden Smith
 

 
– Despite being called “After Earth” and being set on an abandoned Earth, the fact that the characters are on Earth doesn’t matter and never comes up
– The plot requires the main character to eliminate all emotional response, which not only is impossible to do but makes him a totally unsympathetic blank figure.
– At one point, there is a dramatic scene between our hero and a computer-generated hawk.
 

 

#7: THE LORDS OF SALEM

 
I love Zombie’s odes to ’70s grindhouse – “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects” – but when he aims for more mainstream-style horror, say with his “Halloween” reboot, it typically misses the mark. But “Lords of Salem” is his weakest outing yet, an incoherent, plodding and surprisingly sloppy attempt to re-imagine “Rosemary’s Baby” but without any of the symbolic heft or mounting terror.
 
Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, plays a totally uninteresting DJ who is possessed by a coven of witches harkening back to the infamous Salem Witch Trial era. That’s not a quick summary of the film’s main action – it’s a complete list of everything that happens. (“Possession” itself in the film largely consists of Ms. Zombie writhing around on the floor, moaning, and having odd, frequently sexual visions of witch rituals.
 

 
Zombie struggled to find distribution for the movie, and at the screening I attended at SXSW, said to the audience beforehand “Some of you will like this, and others are going to hate it.” He seemed oddly ambivalent about the whole thing, maybe realizing the idea was not fully baked only after the project was completed?
 
[I should also note, the film implies that Salem really was overrun with witches a few hundred years ago, thus making the Puritans disgraceful, cruel, inhuman behavior correct and called for. That’s some truly vile revisionist history there… Why not make a movie in which the grown men who tortured and murdered innocent young girls are the bad guys?]
 

#6: THE SWEENEY

 
This update of the 1970s British TV cop drama compiles every known cop movie cliche into one blisteringly insipid mess. I never need to see another film in which the brash, impulsive but also always-correct-when-it-counts cop/unit breaking all the rules and getting chewed out by The Chief. The presence of respected actors like Ray Winstone and Damian Lewis, trying their best with hopeless material, only highlights how tired these old routines really are.
 
Let’s also talk about the woeful action sequences. We have a bank heist turned shootout in London’s Trafalgar Square so obviously inspired by Michael Mann’s “Heat,” it’s practically Sweded. Unlike Mann’s original, the action mechanics of the shootout make no sense here – the good guys are able to block incoming gunfire with absolutely any physical piece of matter. At one point, portly Ray Winstone is able to dodge an onslaught of bullets behind a tiny metal ladder. Surely ONE of those bad boys would have managed to get through! Come on! There’s even a car chase on a very thin, narrow road that’s only the width of a single car. Where’s the drama in that? What are you even going to do if you catch up to that other car? Bump it?
 
[I’d also add that there’s a sub-plot in which the fetching Hayley Atwell’s character (age 31) is having an extra-martial affair with Ray Winstone’s character (age 56) which is not just unrealistic, but downright distasteful.]
 

 

#5: GI JOE: RETALIATION

 

Hard to believe that, out of the two contemporary “GI Joe” movies, the lame Stephen Sommers entry comes out ahead, but here we are. Jon Chu’s follow-up gives us all the bored, phoned-in performances, offensively inane anti-humor and bloated, ugly spectacle we’ve come to expect from toy brand tie-in movies, but with the added benefit of being totally incomprehensible.
 
It felt at times that I was watching two different “GI Joe” movies that had no intention of ever really coming together – sort of like the “Godfather II” of the series, I suppose. I’m not sure if the ninjas ever got around to influencing the more traditional soldier plot line; I’d pretty much checked out by then.
 

 
[Final note: Why does Bruce Willis continue to make movies when he clearly hates them so much? I know they pay him a lot of money to star in action movies, but he could make a lot of money with his own brand of applesauce, too, or by opening a Hollywood weed dispensary. I feel like he’d rather do absolutely anything else than star in an action movie, at this point, based on his performances in films like this one.]
 

#4: THE CANYONS

 
OK, so the hilariously awful disaster zone that is “The Canyons” is largely going to be blamed on Lindsey Lohan, and she definitely deserves some of the blame. She’s so wooden and distant here, it’s like she’s getting a Viking funeral. I kept waiting for someone in a horned helmet to shoot a flaming arrow into her. The character’s so zonked out and vacant, it took me like 45 minutes before I realized she’s the protagonist.
 

 
The plot – such as it is – concerns Lohan’s Tara, who is dating Christian (porn star James Deen), a trust fund scumbag using his family’s money to make terrible no-budget horror movies. Tara has been secretly having an affair with Ryan, an old flame who also happens to be the star of Christian’s latest bad movie. Christian finds out about the affair and sort of messes with everyone, but not in a way that is compelling.
 
There’s just no sense of why writer Bret Easton Ellis or director Paul Schrader (who used Kickstarter to raise funds for “The Canyons”) wanted to tell this meandering, dull story about these assholes. The film opens with a montage of condemned, abandoned former movie theaters throughout Los Angeles, so I thought – even if it didn’t work – the movie would be some kind of commentary on the end of the film business, or the end of movies as a communal, social activity. But then the film itself is barely about the film industry.
 
Also, from just a technical/professionalism standpoint, the movie reminds me of something you’d expect students to submit to a 24-hour film festival. It looks like Schrader shot it on an iPhone, the dialogue is both highly theatrical and bland, and the story has no momentum.
 

 

#3: UPSIDE DOWN

 
The set-up for this remarkably stupid sci-fi romance is that there are two planets orbiting directly side-by-side, facing one another. One is made up of poor, exploited workers and the other their wealthy capitalist masters. (They keep saying “up there” or “down here,” even though “up” and “down” don’t have a lot of meaning when you’re talking about planets. Everyone would feel like the other planet was “up there.”)
 
Anyway, it’s forbidden and physically impossible to go to the other planet from your planet, because everyone’s tied by their own gravity field to their own planet. Nonetheless, two very dull, uninteresting people – a poor orphan from “down here” (Jim Sturgess) and a rich girl from “up there” (Kirsten Dunst) – fall in love, and he becomes determined to use any means necessary to sneak to the upper planet to romance her.
 

 
The “up there/down there” stuff never stops seeming counter-intuitive and silly. (In particular, it has a really irksome tendency to assume that all the characters in this fantasy world would find the whole “double gravity” concept really weird and fascinating, just like we the viewers do, even though they have lived in this reality all their lives. Would people really drink anti-gravity cocktails from upside-down martini glasses? That seems inconvenient.)
 
But the film’s biggest problem is that it spends so much time establishing the double gravity rules and physics, it forgets to make the actual couple that’s in love compelling or relatable in any way. At heart, the movie’s a romance, but I didn’t give two shits about this couple. (Plus Kirsten Dunst’s character also has amnesia, so she’s impossible to invest in because she’s not even 100% sure who she is!)
 

#2: Movie 43

 
A surprising number of celebrities take part in this atrocious bathroom comedy anthology from Peter Farrelly. The stories are supposedly part of an insane pitch a desperate screenwriter (Dennis Quaid) makes to studio executive Greg Kinnear, but the film even gives up on this bookend conceit about halfway through, largely out of embarrassment. (For real!)
 
I think part of the reason these sketches seem SO awkward and painful is that they’re over-relying on the shock value of seeing these celebrities doing/saying stupid, “edgy” things (except for the scene where it’s supposed to be funny because they’re celebrities playing superheroes.) In some cases, such as the Halle Berry/Stephen Merchant “Truth or Dare” sketch, there actually AREN’T jokes other than the humiliation they put Halle Berry through.
 

 

There’s no real theme or coherent idea aside from “dick and poop jokes.” (The bookend thing is insane and adds nothing.) And nothing is relevant. The superhero parody ignores the last 50 years of actual superhero shows and films. The Apple parody focuses on a stupid product with no real-world relevance that’s based on the iPod, not even the iPhone. Also, inherent in the notion of a film anthology with multiple directors is that the individual segments will have a unique style or sensibility. These all feel like anonymously made Internet sketches.
 

#1: BAD MILO

 

Sadly, the final SXSW film I saw was not only “worst of the fest,” but one of the lamest and least funny comedies I have ever seen. It was just called “Milo” then but it’s being released as “Bad Milo.” The basic premise is that a regular guy (played by Ken Marino) starts having horrible digestive problems brought about by stress. (Lots of pooping and farting.)
He later discovers that he has a demon he calls Milo living in his colon andMilo occasionally escapes his bowels and goes to seek vengeance on people who are causing our hero (whose name I forget) stress.
 
It’s literally an entire movie of shit and fart jokes. I would say “it’s 100 minutes of shit and fart jokes,” but I walked out after about an hour.
 
But check out the CAST!
– Ken Marino
– Gillian Jacobs (from “Community”)
– Stephen Root
– Peter Stormare
– Patrick Warburton
– Toby Huss

 

 
It’s unfathomable to me that all of these people would sign on to a movie whose sole joke is “a guy has to shit and fart a lot.” Seriously, there are no jokes other than “ha ha that guy is covered in shit” or “now he has to shit again” or “oh my god the monster is now covered in his shit” or “the monster is going up his ass! lolololololol!” Even at 13, I didn’t find shit and farting this funny, and after about 15 minutes, I hit poop joke fatigue.

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Man of Steel - Movie Review by Lon Harris

 This review originally appeared on our legacy site PassMeThePopcorn 

In their “Phase 1” movies, Marvel carefully kept the action on a reasonable scale. “Iron Man,” “Thor” and “Captain America” all feel like event movies, but you can also feel them holding back, not showing you EVERYTHING these characters can do and every HUGE scenario and fight they could be involved in. They were made by filmmakers and a studio who knew that “Avengers” and sequels were coming.

 

"Man of Steel” – to its credit – doesn’t do any of that. I’d dare to say the closing 45 minutes of the movie are as epic, grandiose, over-the-top and impressive as anything in “The Avengers.”

I’ve read numerous comparisons between the close of this film and Michael Bay movies, but this assertion is ludicrous, saying more about critics who don’t really pay attention to visual effects sequences than the films themselves. Michael Bay action scenes are consistently incoherent and aesthetically unappealing, even ugly. “Man of Steel” is, by comparison, very pretty, and makes even the destruction of entire planets and globe-spanning fistfights clear, intense and easy to follow. Only the ambition and size of the sequences bares comparison with Bay.

 

I’m not sure if that bodes well for a “Justice League” movie or even more Metropolis-set follow-ups. Sort of feels like “where do we go from here?” will become a concern. How do you do more with Superman than having him flatten a city while facing off against an equally super-powered villain?

 

Action beats aside, there’s a lot to like about the movie. It really emphasizes the science-fiction aspect of the Superman legend, setting it immediately apart from the previous films and allowing for impressive, creative sets and designs throughout.

 

The complex Kryptonian back story, which always weighed down the Donner/Lester versions, is handled skillfully and efficiently, getting us to an Earth where there’s a Superman very quickly. (Handling a lot of the Ma and Pa Kent stuff in flashback works particularly well here, establishing both a young and mature Kal-El simultaneously to cut down as much as possible on familiar exposition.)

 

Henry Cavill lacks the charisma of Christopher Reeve (and isn’t given any screen time to establish Clark Kent as an adult), but definitely looks the part and makes for a much more compelling, convincing Superman than Brandon Routh. In fact, all the performances here are solid. I dare say, without Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent and Michael Shannon as General Zod, the movie would not work half as well.

 

There are definitely some big storytelling gaps. We jump very quickly from setting up this version of Superman and the DC Universe into the main conflict of the film (the arrival/invasion of Zod), and it’s obvious that the rest of the film would have bigger stakes and be more exciting if we felt more connected to Clark Kent and Lois Lane as people. (Costner’s Pa Kent is the most relate-able, 3-dimensional character in the film, which is probably not a good thing.)

 

I’ve seen a lot of comparisons, as well, between the movie as a “video game cutscene.” Again, I’m not sure these reviewers are reacting to the action itself or the visual effects (which are largely stellar), but to the lack of well-drawn characters. Save Costner’s Pa Kent, the heroic characters in “Man of Steel” are ciphers.

 

Many of these people have names we recognize (like “Perry White”), but not much else going for them. Lois Lane acts more like a savvy investigative journalist than in the Margot Kidder interpretation, but still doesn’t get to do much apart from getting saved a lot and falling in love with an alien she hardly knows. Reliable actors like Richard Schiff, Christopher Meloni and Harry Lennix fill out the supporting cast, but never rise above the level of crudely-sketched types. Even evil Kryptoanian Faora-Ul (Antje Traue), the character that inspired the terrific villain Ursa in the Donner/Lester movies, shows up here assisting Zod, but she’s a total blank – nothing more than Zod’s second-in-command.

Over and over again, Snyder falls back on the fact that Superman is so iconic, and that all we need to see is a red cape and that S insignia to know who and what we’re dealing with, as a crutch. If you somehow didn’t already know a lot about Superman and what he stands for, you’d have a very hard time caring about the outcome of these events.

 

When it comes down to it, “Man of Steel” is a very good Superman movie. Just not a very good movie.

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Best Films of 2012 - By Lon Harris

 This article first appeared on our legacy site PassMeThePopcorn (Now Defunct)

By Lon Harris

 
Continuing our series of posts featuring the BEST of 2012. PassMeThePopcorn.com contributor Lon Harris shares his TOP TEN FILMS OF 2012.
 
THE RUNNERS-UP
…in no particular order
 

 
Bachelorette, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Jeff Who Lives at Home, The Cabin in the Woods, The Queen of Versailles, Wreck-It Ralph, Skyfall

 
FILMS I HAVEN’T YET SEEN
…THAT MIGHT BE WORTHY
 

 
Bear in mind, I may at some future point knock something off the list in favor of The Life of Pi, Amour, The Turin Horse, Paranorman or some other brilliant 2012 film I didn’t get around to during the year proper.

 
GREAT 2011 FILMS I SAW
…IN 2012
 

 
Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Kill List would both be on here if they were 2012 films instead of 2011.
 

 
AND NOW, THE ACTUAL TOP 10
 
 

 

#10: End of Watch

directed by DAVID AYER
 
David Ayer’s police thriller is the best use of the “found footage” conceit to date, making expert use of documentary-style “you are there” visuals without being manacled to them.

As with “Training Day,” he unfortunately gives in to the temptation to pump up the action towards the end, and what starts off as a tense, character-driven thriller kind of loses its way in the transition to a Hollywood cop movie formula. But unlike “Training Day,” which skips the rails pretty early on, “End of Watch” only gets big and shootout-y and over-the-top late in the game, after it has had time to really make you care about these characters and fully explore their world.

The handheld/documentary style gives the relationship between partners Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena an intimacy that most “guy” movies would be afraid to give male relationships PLUS it makes all the “cop” scenes immediate and intense. Ayer even does a good job scripting a “mystery” for the cops to solve that nevertheless builds in a way that feels logical and natural. These aren’t regular joes who one day wake up and decide to become Michael Bay “Bad Boys”-style heroes. They just keep taking calls and situations just sort of unfold. It’s pretty damn involving.
 

 

 

 

#9: This Is 40

directed by JUDD APATOW
 
I’ve always been lukewarm on Judd Apatow’s films as a director. (As a producer, too, but let’s stay on topic.) His movies always have funny characters and moments, but also tend to be overlong, self-indulgent and somewhat relentlessly, single-mindedly, repetitively focused on the protagonist’s tiresome neuroses. By the end, I’ve given up on caring whether Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler figure it all out and get the girl. I’m sick of them and their shallow, narcissistic problems.

But in “This is 40,” Apatow finally broadens his gaze and takes on a larger and more emotionally resonant topic than his usual “stoner guy who’s afraid to commit.” It’s a sort-of sequel to “Knocked Up,” but it’s really more reminiscent (though maybe not quite as accomplished) as Woody Allen’s great ensemble relationship dramedies – “Hannah and Her Sisters” comes immediately to mind. Rather than zeroing in on Paul Rudd’s mid-life crisis, we also get the perspective of his wife (played brilliantly by Apatow’s wife, Leslie Mann, in one of my favorite 2012 performances) and their two daughters. Plus we get some insight into Rudd’s father (Albert Brooks) and Mann’s father (John Lithgow, who really should be used like this in more film comedies.)

Maybe because the central idea behind “This is 40” is not particularly high-concept and kind of lean (“a married couple turns 40 at around the same time”), Apatow feels more free to spend time getting to explore what’s happening with the secondary characters. Or maybe it’s because this is already a spin-off of another movie, so he has a vested interest in growing out this particular universe of people. But the whole ensemble feels more rich and fleshed out, and the movie feels less self-congratulatory and navel-gazing as a result. It’s still probably a few scenes too long, but that’s basically his style at this point.

 

 

 

 

#8: Moonrise Kingdom

directed by WES ANDERSON
 
Wes Anderson’s best since “Royal Tenenbaums,” and likely to be one of the movies that – looking back on the entirety of his career – defines his style and voice. It also feels like a bit of a bookend film with “Rushmore.” That was a movie about a brilliant, rebellious, lonely kid who fixates on an unattainable older woman. “Moonrise” instead is about a similar kid actually connecting with someone else his own age. Both movies are about the implications this sort of pure, innocent young love has on the lonely, frustrated adults who are witnesses to it.

The film is constantly being described as “very Wes Anderson-y,” and it is, with all the expected trappings. It’s funny, it’s dark, there are slow-motion sequences set to classic songs, there are scenes with kids in exquisitely appointed bedrooms listening to classical music on tiny toy record players. But it’s also a big step into fantasy/fairy tale territory as well. All his Anderson’s have an element of whimsy to them – the Tenenbaums house was certainly unlike most NYC homes – but “Moonrise” takes place in an entirely parallel reality. I very much appreciated Anderson’s apparent decision to do away with rules and just completely untether himself from realism in favor of comic invention.

That’s on top of amazing cinematography, a really fun weird unexpected role for Bob Balaban, the best role Bruce Willis has had in years, an as-expected great soundtrack, a metric shit-ton of great child performances… I’d totally see it again right now.

 

 

 

 

#7: Safety Not Guaranteed

directed by COLIN TREVORROW
 
Most time travel films (including this year’s staggeringly overrated “Looper“) look at the mind-twisting implications of the act itself. What would it be like to meet your future self? Would small changes in the past dissolve the space-time continuum? “Safety Not Guaranteed” may be the first time travel film solely focus on the WHY? question. What is it about visiting the past that fascinates us so? What would it take to drive someone to risk everything and jump into a time machine?

Even calling it a “time travel film” implies some element of heady sci-fi trippiness that isn’t really there. Instead, director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly have turned out a rather ingenious, very funny indie comedy with some sci-fi elements sneaking around in the margins. They’ve also crafted perhaps the best possible use of actress Aubrey Plaza, who gets the chance to explore and expand on the blasé, snarky persona she has honed over 5 seasons on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Plaza has not one but two great foils in “Safety”: brash journalist Jeff (Jake Johnson) and eccentric possible-time-machine-creator Kenneth (Mark Duplass), whom she and Jeff are investigating for a story.

What surprised me most about “Safety Not Guaranteed” is how Trevorrow and Connolly take such a ludicrous premise, that in other hands would have been a bundle of twee cutesy indie quirk, and found an underlying story that’s so heartfelt and sincere. (The script is based on a jokey classified ad looking for a time travel companion that appeared in a 1997 issue of “Backwoods Home Magazine. Imagine turning THAT into a movie that has genuine emotional heft. No easy task.)

 

 

 

#6: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

directed by PETER JACKSON
 
First off, I’m ranking “The Hobbit” as a movie, not a treatise on the future of how many frames we want to see projected each second. I saw it in HFR 3D and enjoyed it – noticing some peculiarities along the way, but generally adjusting to the picture after about 10 minutes – but will surely also enjoy subsequent 2D viewings at a more traditional frame rate.

OK, so now on to the film, which I found to be a largely-delightful return to Peter Jackson’s Middle-Earth, reminiscent in many ways of his terrific Lord of the Rings trilogy opener, “Fellowship of the Ring.”

But what I found so surprising and charming about “The Hobbit” is the shift in tone, from melancholy to exuberance. The Lord of the Rings films are (rightfully) obsessed with the fading away of the old world, of Middle-Earth itself, along with a constant sense of impending doom. “The Hobbit,” taking place 60 years earlier, when only the faintest signs of the coming disaster visible, is more lighthearted and whimsical. You feel like you’re seeing the same world brought to life but with a different sensibility, and it has seemingly brought out Jackson’s more skewed, wacky side, which is a real relief after the stifling, airless “Lovely Bones” and “King Kong.”

Once again, Middle-Earth has been realized gorgeously, the action sequences are intense and exciting, and the animation on Gollum keeps improving with every new film. I’m now significantly more excited for Parts 2 and 3 than I was a few weeks ago.

 

 

 

#5: Seven Psychopaths

directed by MARTIN MCDONAGH
 
The year’s most underrated film, and one I’d wager will live on in the memories of film fans long after a lot of 2012′s ‘prestige’ titles have become half-recalled footnotes. (“Silver Linings What-book?”) As he did in 2008′s wonderful “In Bruges,” writer/director Martin McDonagh uses funny banter and genre trappings to kind of lure you in before switching everything around and getting thoughtful. But this new film is less character-driven and more heady, even surreal, than “In Bruges,” and arguably is even better for it.

Without spoiling too much, I’ll say “Seven Psychopaths” is both a canny examination of how smart people think about movies, and a deconstruction of the violent, hyper-stylized B-movie explosion kicked off by guys like Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie 2 decades ago. I feel like a lot of movies now do crazy things – and get super-meta and self-aware – to try to subvert audience expectations, but very few of them are as daring and audacious, and ultimately successful, as this film.

To say too much more would be mean-spirited and unfair, but I can say that lot of the success of “Seven Psychopaths” is the ridiculously extensive and impeccable cast. Not only the main trio of Colin Farrell (who is at his best in McDonagh’s movies), Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell, and their nemesis Woody Harrelson, but also guys like Harry Dean Stanton, Željko Ivanek, Tom Waits and Michael Stuhlbarg showing up in small roles.

 

 

 

#4: Holy Motors

directed by LEOS CARAX
 
In “Holy Motors,” a man named Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is driven around in a limousine all day, stopping for ‘appointments’ in which he dressed up as a variety of characters and then plays out dramatic scenarios with other people. Many of these scenarios take the form of familiar movie genres. For example, in one appointment, he dresses up as a gangster and attacks a fellow gangster. In another, he plays a dying man being comforted by a beloved niece. In another, he puts on a motion-capture suit and acts out both an action sequence and a love scene. And on and on, through numerous appointments in the course of a single day.

It would be easy to get obsessed with “what it all means,” and it’s impossible not to try to put together the pieces of Monsieur Oscar’s day in the hopes of arriving at The Point. Is it a commentary on the life of an actor, endlessly putting on and taking off different disguises, giving away little pieces of ones self each time? Is it about life itself as a kind of performance, that each of us is really ‘playing roles’ depending on who we’re around and our circumstances? Is it about the universality of experience, that we all see ourselves as individuals but really are playing out the same interpersonal dramas and crises that people all over the world have experienced for hundreds of years? Maybe all of these things?

But it’s worth stepping back from this discussion for a moment and realizing how DIFFICULT it is to make a movie this entertaining over the course of 2 hours that makes so little “sense.” Writer/director Leos Carax masterfully makes each sequence and assignment compelling – even exhilarating – on its own terms. Even when it’s near-impossible to wrap your head around what’s happening, you can’t stop watching and wondering what’s coming next.

 

 

 
 

#3: Django Unchained

directed by QUENTIN TARANTINO
 
“Django” is another tremendous achievement for Quentin Tarantino, who at this point is on a par with the Coens as the contemporary American filmmaker with the strongest overall track record. I’m tempted to say it’s not quite as good as “Inglourious Basterds” and “Pulp Fiction.” In particular, I felt like the movie has a huge, dramatic, near-perfect climax… and then goes on for about 3-4 extraneous sequences that aren’t really as clever or exhilarating as what has come before.

But this is a minor quibble. The bulk of the film is a marvel – brutal, funny, unpredictable, exciting and, as always with Tarantino, utterly faithful to its predecessors (Westerns in general, but specifically spaghetti westerns, as well as the Italian pseudo-documentary “Addio Zio Tom”) while remaining fresh and modern.

And HOLY SHIT, the main three performances! Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio are basically perfect. I can’t think of a single false moment from any of them. Giving Foxx almost no dialogue turns out to be a pretty brilliant maneuver – he’s usually so reliant on his comic delivery, even in dramatic fare like Collateral or Ray – and here there’s none of that. It’s all glares, glances and body language. Plus, DiCaprio’s delight in getting to play against type, and be a colorful villain, is palpable every moment he’s on screen. He disappears into this role in a way he’s never done for me in anything I’ve seen him in.
 

 

 

#2: The Master

directed by PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
 
I can’t help but think that a lot of the problems and issues people had with PT Anderson’s sprawling post-war travelogue/drama is that it was sold as an alternate history of Scientology. That’s such a tantalizing prospect, it was maybe hard to accept that the movie wasn’t so much interested in L. Ron Hubbard’s life or the inner workings of cults or just what happens in that “Celebrity Center” off Franklin. When you go in thinking you’re going to blow the lid off of Xenu, and instead get a sprawling-yet-oddly-intimate look at an off-kilter friendship between two broken people… well, maybe Buyer’s Remorse sets in.

But what PTA accomplishes here is no small feat. Freddie Quell (a superlative Joquin Phoenix). Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Peggy Dodd (an underrated Amy Adams) are fascinating, idiosyncratic and genuinely original creations, and though a lot of their motives and inner demons remain ambiguous at the end of the film, we do develop a sense of kinship and camaraderie – of shared experience – with all of them. As he did in the similarly-divisive “There Will Be Blood,” Anderson holds up individuals on the fringe of mainstream, polite society, individuals who occasionally behave like deviants, and demands that his audience come to know them, sympathize with them and even accept them.

We don’t get to know Scientology any better than when we started, and we don’t get to follow anyone on a traditional narrative arc. There’s no beginning, middle and end of Freddie’s strange journey inward. Instead, we’re simply spending 2.5 hours seeing the world from his perspective, and then it’s up to us to decide what – if anything – it all means. That’s what it feels like when a movie treats you like an adult, an experience that was far too rare in 2012 cinema, or American movies from any year, really.

 

 

 

#1: Lincoln

directed by STEVEN SPIELBERG
 
Once every decade or so, Steven Spielberg will make an impeccable, detailed, thoughtful look back at a specific historical event or period in history, and just put every other contemporary American filmmaker to shame. Then he goes back to his usual styles: above-average sci-fi and schmaltz. “Lincoln” is arguably his best-ever historical drama – there’s less emotional weight than something like “Schindler’s List,” but then again, this is the leaner and arguably smarter effort, and one of the most effective and entertaining inside looks at the American political process I can recall.

The performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is, of course, transformative and completely stellar and has stolen most of the headlines, but this is really an ensemble effort, with Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn and James Spader also giving standout, career-highlight performances. It’s also a home run for oft-maligned cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, whose obsession with backlighting in this case lends an iconic quality to these characters, even when the on-screen action might be otherwise mundane.

Perhaps most surprising about “Lincoln,” considering its pedigree, is how matter-of-fact and forthright it is about the passage of the 13th Amendment. You go in expecting a lot of soaring rhetoric about the chains of bondage and the natural state of human freedom, but instead we follow the actual legislative action of passing the amendment with an almost journalistic, play-by-play zeal.

A lot of the credit here must go to screenwriter Tony Kushner, who takes the day-to-day bureaucratic work of these 19th Century politicians in Washington and finds the humanity lurking underneath. (Aaron Sorkin did a similarly mesmerizing job of this in “The Social Network” a few years back.) In fact, the political wheelings and dealings are so compelling and dramatic – even funny! – it’s almost disappointing when we step away from the sphere of government and check in with Lincoln’s personal life and family drama (though Sally Field does nice work as Mary Todd.)

 

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