The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Controlled, featuring great performances, and nihilistic, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE is one of the best films ever made. From scene composition to shots that don't scream out their originality, from "we don't need no stinkin' badges" to mythical obsessions centering around fate, it's a great film
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: ★★★★

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Despite liking the Swedish version and liking the novel quite a bit, I found myself completely enraptured with David Fincher's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Bound to be overlooked and under-appreciated is his direction, which is so apparent in every single scene, and, in the Swedish version, only carried a tone. Fincher's version is obsessive, like the book, and the character of Lisbeth Salander. Rooney Mara especially gives one of 2011's best performance as Salander, making me forget Noomi Rapace ever made me wince. This is a great film though, modern in its embrace of dirty, modern living consisting of cigarettes, cokes and ramen, but buried in what the cost of an obsession is, and what the end result is. A great film.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: ★★★★

The Night of the Hunter

The first time I saw Charles Laughton's THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, I remember a sense of bafflement after it. What to make of it? It references nothing (accidentally so, German Expressionism), but, truly, purely, is a work of originality. Seeping between fairytale imagery, animal life, shadows, civil war songs, and Robert Mitchum's towering presence is great filmmaking intertwining everything together. Out of nowhere, shot in a swoop, Mitchum's Preacher enters the lives of two children with a dead father, a teddy bear filled with cash he stole, and a ditzy mother. He takes advantage of them, seeking the stolen money after hearing of it from the father when they were jailed together. H-A-T-E written on his left hand, L-O-V-E written on his right, Mitchum gives one of cinema's best performances, singing, killing, and in shadows all the time. The film is such a mystery though, its imagery, camera movements, sensations could have only come out of Laughton's head. His only film, it's a masterpiece: a work of all-out expression depicting good and evil.
The Night of the Hunter: ★★★★

Big Wednesday

BIG WEDNESDAY is a brutal film, depicting the so-called coming of age of three young men who've buried themselves in drugs and surfing in the late 60's. John Milius, the overt, conservative director of the film isn't allowed for any of his silly ruminations of life to seep into the film. Rather, true life takes over, and cinematic gestures that depict the war are overcome by our perception of the war. Poetically told over the course of the Vietnam War, BIG WEDNESDAY perfectly fits a building tension into its storyline. Through the use of bigger and bigger surfing waves, until the ultimate big wednesday waves, the film takes its immoral and cruel characters and plows them through the mud. But what BIG WEDNESDAY gets right is what it's like to feel an oncoming sense of reason to madness. Instead, that reason never comes, and you see that what you've experienced is just populated with you being an asshole and fucking up a lot in anticipation for a cleansing event. Violent and gross, BIG WEDNESDAY watches the deterioration of people, the break-up of friends, mistakes, and beautifully shot waves. It's one of the best films ever made about youth and its myth.
Big Wednesday: ★★★★

Touching the Void

TOUCHING THE VOID is a documentary that re-stages a mountain climb of Simon Yates and Joe Simpson in the Andes in 1985. While on that climb up an untraversed mountainside, Joe Simpson was lost to the cold, and Simon returned believing him dead. Miraculously though, based on luck and skill, Simpson made his way out of a crevice he fell in with a broken leg, and made his way all the way down the mountain. The film uses two actors to re-stage the events, which are harrowing, but what makes the film really shocking is Joe and Simon's voiceover narration. The men, much older, have a perspective on the events, a clear-headed, intense way of telling the story. TOUCHING THE VOID is extremely intense, despite the audience knowing the outcome, but the sheer unlikelihood of Simpson's survival, and the mental processes that take place on the mountain are riveting. Directed by Kevin Macdonald, TOUCHING THE VOID also has a clear sense of timing. The photography is also beautiful, and, unlike a counterpart, 127 HOURS, the film has no clutter: its just Simpson and Yates telling us about the worst week of their lives.
Touching the Void: ★★★★

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

A lot of respect has to go towards Tsui Hark, the director of DETECTIVE DEE. A quasi-historical film rooted in absolute craziness, there's still some control over the wealth of ideas at play. In the film, Detective Dee is brought out of prison to help the empress solve a series of spontaneous combustions. Originally jailed for having spoken out against the empress, Dee's freedom is ensured by the high priest who is also a bad-ass samurai. The high priest is also a deer. So begins the creativity, but, really, every set piece is a work of great imagination: a towering buddha tower that overlooks the vast city: complete with old-age pirate ships, odd bearded elders, and a lush palace. Spurring itself with the fires that combust the victims of the Dee's case, and populated with transfigurations of the face, the deer samurai, poison darts, exiles, morality, and a great idea in every single scene, DETECTIVE DEE is a melting pot of colorful cinematic vegetables. It's weird, but it grows on you from being just weird to being pretty poignant. The end scene is moving, but its sentimentality doesn't come out of nowhere. A good film.
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame: ★★★

All That Heaven Allows

Douglas Sirk as a filmmaker is a master. His colors, tones, direction, staging, is all flawless. His stories are daring too, soaked in sap, but so wonderfully handled, that such a thing can be embraced. ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS burrows into the culture of the 1950's, and of a widow living alone who falls in love with her gardener. Cary (Jane Wyman), the widow, is well-off, sees her over-schooled children almost every weekend, and only has to deal with the snide remarks of a cruel neighbor. She's a member of a higher class, but that position is broken after the death of her husband. Instead, she has to look out for herself, and that's not popular at the tea parties. Unhappy with a myriad of suitors, Cary finds her gardener to be most alluring. Ron (Rock Hudson), the gardener, is a sort of pure environmentalist. He has a friend who reads Walden every day, but he's never read it because to read it would be to be ordered by Thoreau. Ron's a man of that tradition though, he thinks purely for himself, and has little influences. He becomes enamored with Cary, and they end up falling in love: Cary swept off her feet and into a woodside cabin. She becomes afraid of how everything will look to the public, and Sirk handles the middle section of the film as a social commentary on the wrongheadedness of judging high class members. In resolution though, Cary makes many failures, and then rectifies them. This is the boldest part of the film to first admit that Cary could make such failures, but has the power to rectify them. This is so much more worthwhile than tales that paint the woman as infallible, for isn't that just as myth-like? Sirk's film is beautiful and vast.
All That Heaven Allows: ★★★★

Passion of Anna

Told elegiacally, Ingmar Bergman's PASSION OF ANNA could easily be seen as a minor work, for it doesn't have anything new to say, but I see it as a perfected version of earlier ideas. In the film, Andreas (Max Von Sydow) is a reclusive loner who works and thinks. He meets two women, Anna (Liv Ullmann) and Eva (Bibi Andersson). He sleeps with Eva, who, by doing this, proves herself to be a deceptive woman, for right afterwords, Andreas goes to be photographed by her husband Ellis. He is warned of Anna, who he is beginning a lax relationship with, but thinks little of it. Anna, however, is a widow. Her husband and son were killed in a car crash, she claims. Andreas takes a masculine role in her life, and their relationship from acquaintances to lovers highly resembles Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Also at play though is the idea of deception, and people who are pretending to be one thing when they are another, and even the idea that those people surrounding them know that they are being deceptive but let it go. PASSION OF ANNA is clean and colorful, one of Bergman's first films in color. It's dreamy and a little off-putting, but ultimately rewarding in its collage of assembled ideas. The end is a marvel.
Passion of Anna: ★★★1/2

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Not that one should take an action movie too seriously, or, especially, a Mission Impossible movie, but there should be some level of plausibility. I'm not talking about whether Tom Cruise can swing around the Burj Khalifa and walk around afterwords without a scratch, no, I can buy that. What I couldn't buy though, was the cartoonish fashion that MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL caked itself in. Brad Bird, a director of animated films for Pixar must have approached the film in this fashion, and in some of the action scenes this works. But Bird has no sense for what characters are like outside of being funny in a Pixar movie. Without being able to discern a colorful animated character from a colorful real-life character, Bird falters. For, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, in between its clunky, over-apparent chase scenes, is populated by downright weird dialogue. There's a congratulatory drink with the boys after the film seems to be over where everyone smiles and talks about how great they are, there's a shitty subplot with Paula Patton and Cruise's flirtation and then a throwaway subplot involving Jeremy Renner. But, like a cartoon, any problem or shocking twist that occurs within the film, eventually evens out like a bad sitcom never wanting to change the structure. There's flirtation with change, but no actual change. Instead, Bird supplies a few good scenes that should lace the film together, but don't because in the grand scheme of things, they just aren't that cool, and when all the characters get together at the end to convince (?) us that it was, it looks pretty stupid. Over-lauded, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL is a mess of bad screenwriting and misled direction. The only thing that does work is Tom Cruise, who despite his offscreen antics is really, most importantly, a movie star.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: ★★1/2

The Myth of the American Sleepover

THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER is an attempt at authenticity. In showing the so-called teenaged experience, David Robert Mitchell treads slippery territory. For, always when showing an experience that's supposed to be specific to a certain group of people at a certain time, what you really end up getting is the experience of David Robert Mitchell's. Nevertheless, there's a lot of things in the film that ended up authentic regardless, which sadly accentuates the film's delusions, which, considering the knowledge at work, must just be dishonesty. What works though is Mitchell's dialogue, and the staging of that dialogue between the teens. There's also a lot of dubiety in age (he even has twin 23 year-olds play 14 year-old), no shying away from the amount of drugs done (which still, frankly, isn't realistically enough), and a lot of authentic material circling around glances, smirks, and movements. Deluded though, is the films sense of danger and stakes. In Mitchell's film, the night is a fantasy world where everyone can walk around (nobody walks in real-life by the way) and never have to worry about parents or other meddlesome adults. This makes for an unrealistic setting, and despite the nostalgia / etherial feelings that are obviously being attempted, it undermines the authenticity of the rest. However, the characters are all solid, and there's a lot of suspense that builds around what'll happen. Unsureness is the film's strength, but it also seems to be a flaw of the directors that leads to the film's major weaknesses.
The Myth of the American Teenager: ★★★

Amélie

AMÉLIE is soaked in whimsical cuteness, caked in stylish gestures, and yet, it's the reason I almost disliked the film. Telling the story of young Amélie, a waitress who was kept indoors as a child because she was erroneously thought to have a heart condition, and has thus become a socially awkward cultural-oddity, in between every interesting character or creative setting is some unrealistic jolt into Amélie's specific take on the world. She wonders how many orgasms people in Paris are having at the moment. In this film, it seems cute or weirdly funny because Amélie gives a grand smile at the end of the statement, but really, it's only weird, and even desperate. For a long time, and the film is long, moments of actually intensity or interest are drowned by an excess of style. Furthermore, the whole film relies on the performance of Audrey Tautou as Amélie. If you buy into her cuteness then you'll love the film, but if she's occasionally irritatingly weird, then you'll feel as I do: divided. For despite the film's problems, it assembles a group of interesting characters who grow on you within the 2 and a half hour duration. The romance at the center, is also well handled, and I found myself wanting Amélie to get with her man despite my divided feelings towards the character. Ultimately, AMÉLIE is problematic, but a fun time.
Amélie: ★★1/2

Man on Fire

MAN ON FIRE is a thrilling, unapologetic, two-part action film from Tony Scott, who blossomed into a great director at the dawn of the 21st century. MAN ON FIRE, while not reaching the brilliance and balance of UNSTOPPABLE or DEJA VU, at least hints at the brilliance to come. MAN ON FIRE centers around a quasi-true story of a bodyguard who tracks down the kidnappers and thus, kidnapping rings, in Mexico. Intentionally or not, a very Christian theme seeps into the movie when, in the first part of the film, Creasy (Denzel Washington) the bodyguard attempts to shoot himself and the bullet fails. Taking this as a sign that he's meant to do something, Creasy stays on his current, throwaway job for a man of his skills, and befriends the girl he's looking after, Pita (Dakota Fanning). Living only for this connection, Creasy is devastated when she is kidnapped and killed in a following ransom-deal gone wrong. Committed to killing everyone involved, and seeing that action as the reason the bullet didn't kill him from earlier, Creasy goes around Mexico shooting up places because he has nothing to lose. Scott's camera tricks, lighting, and pace come into great use here in contrast to the first part of the film which develops the characters more than any generic action film. There's some real contradiction, though, in the second half, which does the movie good, and makes for kinetic fun. The last scene, especially, is well staged and finely executed by melding all of the things that worked about the film from earlier into a few shots. MAN ON FIRE has its flaws, like why the unstoppable Creasy of the second half of the film was unable to save Pita in the first half, or a couple of too-over-the-top sequences that actually burden the film, but overall these flaws pale in front of the film's strengths. Also, the film has been attacked for the sadistic nature of a seemingly human character in the second half, but I would argue that Creasy's sadism is very human and the reaction any father would have to the kidnapping and killing of their daughter. As we learn in the film too, that's the relationship the two have. This is great fun, and occasionally emotionally powerful.
Man on Fire: ★★★1/2

Looking for Richard

Largely successful on the part of Al Pacino, LOOKING FOR RICHARD is a foray into the actor's ideas about Shakespeare. Overlong and uneven, the film shies away from expert opinions on Shakespeare and instead tries to tackle about two questions that it doesn't fully answer. The first is 'What is Richard III about?' The second is 'Can American actors pull off Shakespeare'? The answers to these questions are 'look it up on wikipedia' and 'yes', but Pacino looks into the questions over the course of 2 + hours. Annoyingly unknowing, but obviously knowing this to thus show what the play is about, LOOKING FOR RICHARD never really succeeds at explaining what the play is about because it does so in confusing rambles by Pacino that oversimplify the play, but does however convince us that American actors can pull of Shakespeare because no shit sherlock, of course they can and any notion otherwise is just born out of wrongheaded british pretension that doesn't take into account that the speakers in Shakespeare's time would sound like inner-city people in present-day America. Pacino never goes this deep though, and his scattery film shows this also. I wouldn't say, however, that I disliked LOOKING FOR RICHARD. Many people will, especially due to the length and the lack of substance within that length, but, for me, being used to long films, I found Pacino to be extremely likable despite the film that surrounds it. Still, however, this is not technically a good film at all.
Looking for Richard: ★★

The Hours

Perhaps due to my reaction to Stephen Daldry's THE READER, I was not hopeful for his earlier, 2002 film, THE HOURS. THE READER was one of the worst films I've ever seen. It still resonates in my mind how much I actively hated it. So many films like THE BOUNTY HUNTER or Katherine Heigl movies I despise, but they eventually subside in my mind. Not Daldry's films. THE HOURS, like THE READER is a work of terrible direction. I place all blame on Daldry, who I would name as one of the worst directors alive, especially because he is so wrongly lauded. With THE HOURS, Daldry takes three lives of three women and likens them to a book nobody's (or at least, few seeing this film) read: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The first story is that of Virginia Woolf herself, played in a pure, waspy impression not performance by Nicole Kidman. In it, the camerawork is most seductively dank, but the story is a pure impression, a pure 'this is what Woolf looked like' kind of depth. The second story takes place in the late 50's. A mother (insufferable Julianne Moore) considers suicide after reading Mrs. Dalloway. Sadly though, her husband is extremely likeable, the child is unrealistically knowledgable and fakey, and the camerawork, as it is in many of the so-called emotional bits of the film is invaded by grating, manipulative music that isn't a step away from Superbowl commercial sentimentality. Most unlikeable here is the selfishness of the mother. She doesn't come across as independent, but as a sad bi-product of feminism: misplaced selfishness and misinterpretation of independence in the form of self absorption. She leaves her children and husband to live her own "fruitful" life, which seems so full of the knowledge that she abandoned her family. The third story takes place in modern times. Meryl Streep plays a sad lesbian who's arranging a party and seems happy but isn't (as it is in Mrs. Dalloway). She feels none of the constraints of Moore or Kidman's character, but she is just as mopey. Daldry at least convinced me here that people will never be happy with what they get if they're meant to be unhappy. What an anti-feminist statement, unintentionally of course. Gratingly, Daldry plows every scene into our faces with an overuse of music and a poor sense of morality and art. He dilutes everything to simplistic terms, emotion and art both. Every actor is so actorly and over-directed, that they become fake and obvious, pure oscar bait actually. It's the kind of acting where it's so obviously fake and, well, acted, that it seems like good acting. This is a terrible film.
The Hours: ★

Bronson

BRONSON is an odd film at first, opening with an in-your-face narration by Charlie Bronson (Tom Hardy), his bald, mustached face biliously moving about in jolts. Bronson's sort of irritating as he begins to tell his tale before a large, audience, but we learn that this is the point of the film. Bronson was touted by the papers of London as Britain's Most Dangerous Criminal. This, Bronson is, despite having been in solitary confinement for over 90% of his jail time. Still though, Bronson is an obvious character, more intrigued with how he can turn his violent impulses into fame than stop those impulses. His speechifying all over the film is a comment on this, for, it is who Bronson wishes he could be, when instead he's just a freak show of iron fists and incessant workouts. Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, who directed 2011's DRIVE as well as VALHALLA RISING, BRONSON is a more minor effort, a little uneven and occasionally, self-admittedly unimportant and uninteresting. Fight scenes with Bronson are great, and Hardy plays the guy well, but the whole film isn't filled with what is the most interesting part of the character. Rather, a lot of the film is filled with uninteresting summary. The film is short, but it should have been even shorter for pure punchiness. Instead, the film is sort of languorous, and Bronson becomes grating when he's not doing something interesting like beating up guards. Even though this may be part of a point that Bronson's only real talents lay in beating the crap out of people, it doesn't make for a very entertaining film.
Bronson: ★★

Hugo

Martin Scorsese's HUGO is a film that arrived with much fret among his loyal followers. For Scorsese to make a children's film, especially a very mainstream one, was seen as a betrayal, a trifle, a bore. And yet, HUGO is one of his most personal films and one of his cleanest. Basically told in two halves, HUGO is about a young orphan named Hugo (Asa Butterfield) who literally lives within the clockwork of a Paris train station. Taught by his drunk and absent uncle how to mind the clocks, the authorities below just assume Hugo's uncle continues to care for the clocks, rather than Hugo. His father dead in a tragic fire, Hugo clings to an automaton his father and he were attempting to repair. Chased around in comical relieves by Sacha Baron Cohen, and stealing from a host of colorful train regulars, Hugo begins lightly, with fun and gorgeous 3D from Scorsese. This first half concerns itself with Hugo and his life in the train station, how he loses his father's notes on the automaton, and is chased around. Then however, there is a big reveal. Along with Isabelle (Chloe Grace-Moretz), the daughter of the ornery toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley), Hugo deciphers clues about the automaton, and connects with Isabelle over the enchantments of the cinema. Very present here is a sense of old vs. new, and in finality: the union of the two to create what is modern. Scorsese's camerawork, and the look of the film: its embrace of animation and CGI, serves to accentuate this simplistic but joyful message. Cleanly balanced, and cleanly told, HUGO looks safe on the surface, but is really a step into foreign territory for Scorsese. It's a joy, though, that the film is so good despite this, and that, in fact, it's one of Scorsese's best in a while.
Hugo: ★★★★

Hunger

HUNGER is a powerful film, practically silent except for a long, twenty minute take of a debate. Conveying the story of Bobby Sands, and IRA prisoner in the 90's and the hunger strike he started while in prison, artful grossness is exemplified by artist turned director Steve McQueen. McQueen directs smartly, and apart from his images and his politics lie a strong performance and buried humanity. HUNGER follows three stories (not stringently, as many multiple-character dramas do, but with convenience). The first is of a duo of IRA prisoners, one who is seemingly reluctant in what he's partaking in. For, the prisoners are defiant and rebellious, caking the walls of their cells with their own shit and dousing their piss under the doorways into the hallway. The reluctant prisoner is not belittled by a decision or by explanation, but shown. We sense his fear. What has he gotten himself into? This is the ultimate battleground. The second story surrounds the daily toils of a prison guard. He seems motivated by macho sensibilities and misplaced fears around prisoners. The way his story goes is unexpected, gross, and overtly sad. The third and central story is that of Bobby Sands, who is played greatly by Michael Fassbender. Sands partakes in all of the protests, and as a sort of ringleader, he is usually the most volatile prisoner. However, at some point, Sands determines that his protests are minor, and that only a great statement will last. He thus decides to enter a hunger strike. He will begin with himself, and two weeks after he starts, another prisoner will stop eating. Sands' descent, and Fassbender's loss of thirty-five pounds for the role is astonishing. More daring though is the 20 minute talking scene, which is between Bobby Sands and a priest. They discuss suicide, and whether Sands' killing himself makes sense if it is for a cause, because he will never be able to see the fruits of his efforts. Later though, as Sands dies, is one of the best sequences of the film, in which Sands recollects an event that he used in the conversation with the priest to justify his actions. In his tale, Sands said that as a cross country runner, he discovered with other boys a dying boy in a lake. He says that he did what had to be done, and killed the boy, putting him out of his misery. Everyone else knew it had to be done and wished to, but were unable to gather the courage. Sands' tale is left to be a mystery. Whether it happened or not is unclear. Despite this though, Sands is still dead, and all that remains of him are some artful shots of shit on a wall.
Hunger: ★★★★