The Arbor

Just a few articles ago I was mentioning the saying of 'the only way to critique a movie is to make another movie'. The utter piece of garbage, AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE, is all about taking the emphasis and awarding it to one person. This, in my opinion, ruined that film, because the whole movie relied on how much you liked Spalding Gray or not, and, in my opinion, he was a put-on. THE ARBOR, however, is essentially focused upon a single person, but doesn't allow that person to dominate the film. The film takes its title from the play of the same name that Andrea Dunbar, a 15 year-old at the time, wrote. Andrea Dunbar becomes an enigmatic figure over the course of the film, and we see her effect on the rest of her family, and how her play, "The Arbor", was one that was centered on herself, and that conceit ruined her descendants. Dunbar died at an early age, but had three children, each belonging to a separate father. One child, Lorraine, was born to Andrea and a Pakistani man. Early in the film, we see reenactments of the play, and Andrea's dismay that she got together with a "Paki". This self-important trifle though, causes Andrea to hate her daughter, Lorraine. The rest of the kids were well loved, and in one scene where Lorraine explains to them the horrors her mother inflicted upon her (basically by not even loving her), they shrug them off and say things like "I won't never hear a word against my mum." But the way that Andrea Dunbar's successes and failures were not just concentrated on herself make the film profound. Another major aspect of the film is the way that it was constructed. Nobody seen in the film is a representation of their real self. It is an actress playing Lorraine Dunbar, but the words leaving her mouth are the actual recorded words of Lorraine, collected over the course of years by the director, Clio Bernhard. This is a radical new way to approach a documentary, but it was in danger of jeopardizing the film by shifting focus. The fact that it doesn't do this is a tribute to the film, and it's one of the most engrossing tales told in a documentary in 2011.

★★★1/2 out of Five

Flatliners

Slowly, I've been making my way through Joel Schumacher's films. This is by no means an intentional quest, but one that usually becomes revived through interest in specific actors. For, Schumacher must have some sort of magnetic presence in real life, some quality that convinces great actors to star in his horrid little films. Schumacher's been on a decline commercially. FLATLINERS, upon its release in 1990, was the #1 movie at the box office, but his last two films were practically unreleased, yet 2011's TRESPASS still starred Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage. FLATLINERS features a cast of young actors who've reached much higher prominence now. Kiefer Sutherland heads the group of medical students as Nelson. Among his posse of students are Kevin Bacon as David, a reluctantly involved student, Oliver Platt as Randy, who inexplicably exists in the film for nothing happens to his character, William Baldwin as Joe, who records the women he sleeps with unbeknownst to them, and Julia Roberts as Rachel. Nelson comes up with the idea to delve into the science of death. He plans to, with these friends, stop their hearts and keep themselves effectively dead for one minute, then two minutes, then three, in order for them to experience death firsthand, and, presumably, unlock its secrets. This flimsy premise is supported, however, by a group of med students who are better at reviving the dead than anyone in the history of movies other than Jesus Christ. Further endangering an already weak plot is the add-on that each student who undergoes the experience, is revived with their sins haunting them. For David, its a black girl he bullied in grade school, for Joe, the women he's terrorized, and for Nelson, a boy he killed in an accident. What's odd here though, is the total disregard for cohesion. For, the acts of the men on those they've supposedly wronged, are all just as flimsy as the premise they support. David says it himself in the film, but its a quickly disregarded thought. What's at play here are notions exemplified to something that's supposed to resemble reality, or a good story. Beyond this, the film is oddly paced, proving to be very repetitive, and overwrought.

★★ out of Five

And Everything Is Going Fine

I've heard the saying that a great filmmaker can make a movie about anything and it could be good, but AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE leads me to believe that this saying is either false, or, Steven Soderbergh isn't a great director. I've liked many of Soderbergh's films, and his talents are on display here, but the film is the definition of indulgences. In a time when so many good films are accused of having excesses (like Lars von Trier's shots in MELANCHOLIA), this is a film without any of von Trier's gloss, but all the indulgence in the world. For, Soderbergh here uses stock footage of monologuist Spalding Gray's interviews and shows, to create a final film for the man, a quasi-tribute that ends up just being a piece that shows nothing but an admiration. Soderbergh's editing of the hundreds of hours of footage is impressive, and done quite well, but the major edit this film needed was to cut every bit involving Gray. Gray, who committed suicide in 2004, uses a self-important droning on about his life to fill up the stage. Monologuing in general takes the focus away from the audience having a good time, to the performer having a good time, but as I watched the film, I became convinced that Gray not only did not care for his audience, but he used them as an outlet for his incessant whining. Gray's stories are all boring and long, he cannot go long without insulting himself, but he also cannot go long without praising himself. In short, I found Spalding Gray to have little to say of any importance. Furthermore, I found him to be an idiot, and couldn't stand an 89 minute movie of just an idiot talking. What I refer to in terms of indulgence is that Gray's excesses are all that he acts in, and that Soderbergh's tribute to the man is just as needlessly in unquestioned admiration.

★ out of Five

The Hunger Games

THE HUNGER GAMES is a well made and entertaining film. These advantages come from the direction of Gary Ross, who adorns the futuristic world with some great sets and tones, and Jennifer Lawrence, who already proved her talent in WINTER'S BONE, but manages to prove herself even more here. The story focuses on an extremely implausible premise: it's the near future and after an apocalyptic event, a scarce world has been broken into 12 districts. The poorer ones revolted against the rulers years ago, and so now all of the districts are forced to offer up the "tribute" of one young man and one young woman between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight in the "Hunger Games". The battle is to the death, and one person comes out alive. How such a convoluted form of quasi-supression came about is anyone's guess, or, perhaps revealed in a later portion of the series. (I will admit right here in this mixed review that perhaps many of the film's weaknesses lay in the fact that I don't know what the following books reveal). Nevertheless, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) lives in district 12. At the selection ceremony for the hunger games, her sister is chosen, so Katniss volunteers herself to order to save her sister. She, and a boy named Peeta, are sent to the hunger games. For the rest of the film, we are glided by Ross through the pre-game preparations which include an entertainingly hammed-up Woody Harrelson as their mentor. Once the duo are finally in the games, the film manages a depressing story rather well. What I object to is the message of the film, even though the film is done pretty well. For a story about the oppression of authoritative figures, it uses a pretty flimsy, and frankly ludicrous, excuse for why nobody revolts. The idea that a guaranteed essential yearly sacrifice would quell the masses is sort of ridiculous, and the film itself shows District 11 going apeshit after one of their players is killed. Also, the film seems to say that the futuristic dystopia is a broken one, for the solution conjured up by the rulers, is sick. But if this is true, then the film looks down at you for watching it. It looks down at you for taking pleasure out of the deaths of the children who die in the hunger games. Most of these deaths are minimized by bad metaphors about hope and easy ways to make people the bad guy, but the film is paradoxically something that wants to be read because it's of such "importance" and its "allegories" are so "startling", and something that if you read, you're part of the problem, or someone who's just a step away from taking pleasure out of child-deaths in the future. And yet, the film is so well done, that I can't help but at least hope that some of these weaknesses or clarified in the future films. This one however, is a depressing piece of cynicism. I'm all for cynicism, but when it's created by thoughts that are poorly formed, it just serves to undermine itself.

★★ out of Five

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

It's so appropriate that after seeing the somewhat underwhelming ATTACK THE BLOCK, another film would take some of the weaknesses of that film, and improve upon them. It's sort of like the saying that the only way to critique a film is to make another film. In ATTACK THE BLOCK, there's a certain disposal of characters that I found an uneven counterpart to the tone of the rest of the film. In TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL, however, there's a gleeful and gruesome disposal of characters that's so germane to the rest of the film, that I was far from bothered. In the film, which is very oddly politically correct, Tucker & Dale are on their way to their vacation home, a gross shack in the middle of the woods. On their way, they encounter a group of college kids. Dale prods Tucker to go and talk to one of the girls, but the duo are stereotypical looking hillbillies, and when Tucker goes up to the college kids wielding a scythe, less than the standard amount of teeth, and a creepy laugh, the college kids freak out, yelling at him to back off. But in truth, Dale and Tucker are some mild characters, only wishing to have a few beers, play a few board games, and hang out at their vacation home. Later that night, the boys are out fishing, and spot the college girl, Allison (Katrina Bowden), from earlier, stripping down to go swimming. She sees them, becomes startled, falls, and knocks herself out. When the boys rescue her, and yell to the college kids across the lake that "we got yer girl!", they college kids assume that Tucker & Dale have kidnapped her, and what follows is a series of miscommunications between the two groups, all based off of the college kids' presumptions that Tucker and Dale are dangerous hillbillies. What ensues is actually pretty damn funny, and the film doesn't lose its form even in the final scenes. Bowden is a little bit unconvincing in an unconvincing role, but she forgivably continues to play "the hot chick" among well written scripts.

★★★ out of Five

Cold Weather

From the mumblecore director Aaron Katz, I expected a film that was purely like the first thirty minutes or so of this film. In other words, I expected a mumblecore film. But Katz goes in a different direction in COLD WEATHER, using the strength of mumblecore in order to enhance a drama. In the first thirty minutes of this film, we watch Doug, a forensic science major, taking a job at an ice factory. "They have ice factories?" his sister Gail asks. "Yeah, where did you think those ice packets came from?" Doug says. Exchanges like this populate most of the film, as Doug lends fellow worker and DJer, Carlos, some Sherlock Holmes books, and meets up with an ex-girlfriend Rachel. Doug hangs out a lot for the opening of the film, and nothing really happens except that Doug is established as a down-on-his-luck loser who hasn't grown up yet. But then, asleep at his sister's, Carlos barges in, fresh off of a new Sherlock Holmes story, but frantically telling Doug that Rachel's gone missing. Not really missing, but didn't show up to a gig of his when she'd said she would. He went to her hotel room, found nothing, but was disconcerted. "You know about this kind of thing," he tells Doug. "What?" "Mysteries." Then the film becomes tense. Doug searches and searches, using his forensic background less than Holmes-like hunches and techniques. Carlos follows him around, and a weak idea about what's going on begins to form. But whether Rachel is found or not, or whether the motives behind her disappearance or found or not, nothing in Doug's life will change. That becomes very clear, and Katz's early illustrations of Doug's mundane and declining life, help to accentuate this as his techniques become even a little silly. But COLD WEATHER is immensely appealing, and Doug becomes likable in spite of himself.

★★★★ out of Five

Man on Wire

Here's a documentary of great restraint. It doesn't show us background, it doesn't clutter its story with excesses, or, for a film prominently about the twin towers, anything obvious about that. The film presents us with Phillipe Petit, a French high-wire walker. Alternating between the beginning of Petit's career and the event that defined him, the film lets Petit tell most of the story. He's quite animated, using an actual curtain in the room as a prop at times, and practically jumping out of his seat. Assisting us in an illustration of Petit's prime achievement are those who helped him plan it. They're all similarly entertaining, but more restrained than the passionate Petit. One half of the film tells of Petit's early achievements: he walked between the spires of Notre Dame, upon a bridge in Sydney. These achievements, shown in old black and whites and film footage, are astonishing. There's a quiet, serene, beauty to Petit, who, so passionate as he explains his life, has a look of great concentration and masterful prowess when he's on the high wire. He's described as walking on clouds, and he appears to, rather, walk in the sky. Petit, however, becomes enamored with the construction of the world trade center in New York City. He sees the buildings as something practically built for him, and this bug grows in him from a dream to great, extensive, elaborately explained planning. Petit had to figure out where to rig the wire, how to get it from one tower to another, how to surpass guards, security, workers, and then, of course, survive. But the achievement is depicted with a great serenity, which reflects on the same sort of realization that the towers no longer exist, but Petit does. When the scene finally comes where Petit walks on the wire, it is nothing less than stunning.

★★★★ out of Five

Game Change

I liked this film a lot, and I was surprised that I did. For many of the recent films produced about political issues, too much obviousness is thrown about, and too many things that we already knew. This film didn't change my view that documentaries suit this issue a lot better, but it's so much better than films in its same sub-genre like the slog, RECOUNT, that it succeeded on the basis of being entertaining, truthful, and expanding on a subject, rather than re-iterating it. From the points of view of advisors Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) and Nicole Wallace (the ever-increasing in talent Sarah Paulson) to John McCain's doomed 2008 bid for the presidency, we see the decision from the Republican point of view in the selection of the disastrous Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential candidate. Now, from anyone who has seen a 10 second clip of Palin, she's obviously a fool, but what the film depicts is that it was A) A lack of prepping and checking on Palin surprised the advisors when she turned into a total disaster B) Not only was she disastrous, but she became enamored with her own fame and began to disobey the advisors and C) It was still a sympathetic thing to watch someone be proved an idiot. Much of the film's entertaining nature is furthered by the relationship Palin was showed to have with her advisors. In my favorite scene of the entire film, Nicole Wallace, who refused to work with Palin any more mid-campaign, starts crying in front of Schmidt, saying that she just couldn't even vote. A lot of GAME CHANGE's success also comes from a quality that many good documentaries have, which is containing something that is unarguable to its own case. Even Steve Schmidt, in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" admitted that the film was extremely accurate in its depiction. Julianne Moore is also very good in her portrayal of Palin, and its less an impersonation than an interpretation. The whole cast is great, and that helps the film from slogging in what could have been more mundane bits.

★★★ out of Five

The Confession

Originally a web series on Hulu, THE CONFESSION was broken up into ten parts that would stream weekly on the site. It was created by Kiefer Sutherland, and stars Sutherland and John Hurt. Both of these actors worked on Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA in the same year, and both men really do carry a sibilant fear in their voices. At the beginning of THE CONFESSION, Sutherland's "confessor" arrives at a mostly empty church, and enters the confessional as a girl sings "Silent Night". He's a hit-man, but one who spares those he feel 'deserve to live'. He tells Hurt's Father, and he is immediately against the confession, proclaiming that he'd heard of confessions like this in the seminary, but never experienced one, and wasn't about to start. The confessor won't let him off the hook though, threatening to murder everyone in the church if the Father doesn't sit and listen. What follows is a sometimes clichéd storyline with a somewhat predictable and abrupt twist. Sutherland is always effective in the role, one that really is a derivative of the same kind of roles he's always played. Especially his soft spoken but intense murmurs abruptly shifting to yelling, is put to frequent use. The film is by no means bad, but it's just too standard for its own premise, meaning, the payoff isn't really worth it. I'm not against the simplifications of religion or killing or father-son relationships, because so many real people talk about those issues or consider them in simplistic ways, but that Sutherland's vessel wasn't extremely compelling or strong is what made this no good.

★★ out of Five

Tuesday, After Christmas

I reluctantly began to watch TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS on Netflix Instant last night. The quality was very poor, something that's sadly become common for Netflix's Instant watch selections. I almost prefer the DVDs now. But when the film started, in a long, seven-minute take, I became captivated. There on a bed lay two completely naked people, talking for a while, and eventually rising. Directed by Romanian New Wave director Radu Muntean, the film considers the eventual confession that we know Paul (Dragos Bucuri) will have to make to his wife, Adriana (Mirela Oprisor). Married in real life, Paul and Adriana have a marriage that seems pretty normal as they go about mundane activities, but from the first, long take, we immediately learn of Paul's infidelity. Unlike most childish ruminations on adultery, Raluca (Maria Popistasu) and Paul's relationship is not one that is there merely to fulfill Paul's sexual desires. Rather, he's in love, and tries to go about a dignified way in bringing about the inevitable choice between her or his wife. Muntean's film is slow but real, and every actor in it feels like a real human being. The dialogue is not bogged down by pop culture references, which only to serve to prove that this is a creature living in the same time period as us, but stripped down to the basics of shopping for christmas, and talking on the phone about plans of when to pick the kid up. Popistasu especially has the right iterations and drawn out sentences that fit people today, and Paul's slow considerations of what he should do and how he should do it make the film extremely tense. Every time Paul walks into a room with his wife, there's a searing suspense over whether she's figured him out or not. When she finally discovers the truth, the film switches from being a tense, well crafted drama to an utterly compelling, raw shocker. Adriana and her reactions to Paul are perfectly toned, and the end of the film, which might seem abrupt, really just leaves all the questions that should be left open, open. What's also amazing is that Paul's future is so unclear. His future with Raluca could turn out just as badly as his with Adriana, and that's a possibility left very open. TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS is a real pleasure. It's intense, it's real, and it's left open to question.

★★★★ out of Five

What Happened to Originality? Lamenting over booms of the last few years.

Obviously every year in film is not the same. I'm somewhere around my 77th film of 2011, and, even though I've to date seen 95 in 2010, 2010 seemed to have much better movies. More noticeably though, are various booms that genres have had in various years. 2008 and 2009 were extremely strong years for animated films, giving us WALTZ WITH BASHIR, WALL-E, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, and PONYO. It was almost customary for the Pixar movie that came out to inevitably win the Oscar for Best Animated Film. This seemed as if it were to change, but then, this past year in 2011, what did we have other than RANGO? The Pixar submission wasn't much, and there wasn't anything for inventiveness anywhere else. In 2010, I found myself watching documentary after documentary. Some weren't great, like THE ART OF THE STEAL, but even films like that were passionate and intriguing in their own way. But consider the great films that came out in 2010 like CATFISH, which has been seeming better and better every time I reconsider it. There was MARWENCOL, a sad and weird rumination on art. INSIDE JOB was clean and relevant, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP was another weird consideration of what art was in 2011, the ballsy RESTREPO. And there are still even more documentaries from 2010 that still intrigue me, and stew in my Netflix Queue. In 2011, what was there? I have yet to see two that I have high hopes for, Werner Herzog's INTO THE ABYSS and the acclaimed THE INTERRUPTERS, but from what I've seen, only Herzog's CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS belonged in the company of the caliber of documentaries from 2010. These booms of documentaries or animated films show something I lament, that we get so close to breaking through, and then we falter.

Weekend

A mix between mumblecore in its weak production values and Richard Linklater's MY DINNER WITH ANDRE-esque weak BEFORE SUNSET films, Andrew Haigh's WEEKEND is essentially a two person drama. This is set off by Russell (Tom Cullen), who finds Glen (Chris New) at a gay bar. They have sex, and in the morning Russell makes coffee and Glen has him talk about their experience together on a tape recorder. Already what should have been a one-night stand has lasted longer than either men thought it would, and, inevitably, the two spend most of the following weekend together. Both seem to live pretty mundane lives. Russell's a lifeguard who smokes a ton of weed, and Glen's an "artist" who talks in a "have you ever noticed ___" style. What WEEKEND exemplifies though, is what its kind of approach requires in order to be good. The sex-talk and habits shown are interesting, but they are far from deep. They only explain, or show, what their lives are like, but what do I care if they prove my presumptions? I mentioned earlier BEFORE SUNSET, a boring film, because it doesn't really have anything important to say. It sort of meanders about in a similar fashion as WEEKEND (which, if you didn't get it from that comparison, is also boring). I also mentioned above, one of my favorite films, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. It's even more intensely just a conversation, but what's discussed is interesting and intelligent. There's no real intelligence in WEEKEND, just a highly tuned sense of recognition. There's some sweetness to the film eventually, but the whole thing is just mired in uninteresting dialogue and mumblecore-esque placements of bad camera movements.

★★ out of Five

Young Adult

Jason Reitman is coming off a big success making YOUNG ADULT, for his previous film was UP IN THE AIR, which exemplified the director's talent for using a blend of comedy and melancholy. Actually, all of Reitman's films have just been getting better and better instead of suffering from the success of a previous entry in the director's oeuvre. YOUNG ADULT, however, is his first backtrack. Teaming up with the writer for his 2007 hit JUNO, Reitman has arranged a film that doesn't have quite the blend that his previous films have had. Diablo Cody's script, and Reitman's approach, is very different here too. Starring Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, a thirty-seven year old writer of young adult novels, Mavis begins to come under the delusion that, if she wanted to, she could return to her old town of Mercury and steal back her high school boyfriend. In those days, Mavis was the queen bee, the prom queen, and ultimately, peaking. Now she lives in the city, and can say she's a writer the same way a doctorate of music can call himself a doctor. There's a couple of problems with Mavis' scheme though. Primarily, Buddy, the old flame, is now married and has a newborn. But Mavis, who is drunk for pretty much the entire movie, is so completely deluded that she believes he still wants her. Theron conveys this belief well, and her performance is the crutch that YOUNG ADULT's sometimes shoddy ideas have to lean on. She teams up with a fat nerd named Matt who she knew from highschool, and even though he's very pleasantly played by Patton Oswalt, he's basically just another list item of reasons why Mavis is obviously on a decline. Most of the film is pretty entertaining, and even the end is sort of shamelessly stubborn about who the character is. Despite the fact that Mavis never changes in the entire movie, it still feels like immature writing, like nothing more than a cynical statement to be made, without any depth. Perhaps the point is that there are really bitches like Mavis out there, but from the start of the film to the end of the film, I already sort of knew that, and all YOUNG ADULT did was be marginally entertaining in the middle. It's no great success of a film, but, because Reitman's such a good director, there's some funny little in-jokes, and Theron's performance is pretty great.

★★★ out of Five

Attack the Block

Right after ATTACK THE BLOCK was over, I felt as if it was not unlike any other zombie / disaster movie. I am so discouraged by any film that slowly kills its characters off one by one, but does it artfully. Years ago, I watched every single FRIDAY THE 13th, HELLRAISER, HALLOWEEN, and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie in a row. It took months, but I saw them all, and after being so completely conditioned to the way those movies work, when I see films like ZOMBIELAND or THE CRAZIES, I see them working in the exact same fashion. ATTACK THE BLOCK seemed as if it was keeping off of this track, but, like another film that should have been good but fell prey to the easy and unnerving bump-everybody-off-in-ten-minutes formula known as SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the film began to fall off the rails. But it has been a week since I've seen ATTACK THE BLOCK, and now I appreciate it more. The film follows a band of British ghetto stragglers. At first they're extremely unlikeable, mugging a nurse for just a few bucks, and then going to a weed inventory. But slowly there's a certain innocence that arises, and with it comes empathy. At the head of the gang is Moses (John Boyega), and then four members. After mugging the nurse, they're interrupted by a meteor that plummets into a neighboring car. Moses goes to investigate, and he's attack by a monster. The gang hunt it down and kill it, but they're soon being chased all around town by creatures, aliens, they presume, whose teeth glow a gross green and look like gorillas. As the film progresses we care more and more for the gang, and we see how they're all really just protecting each other. When the end comes, and a few people are dead, there's an injustice that's exemplified by those deaths. There's some of the problems of SHAUN OF THE DEAD present, and really some of that film's style seeps into ATTACK THE BLOCK when it's unwelcome. But the flair in ATTACK THE BLOCK that's lent by the gang is undeniably charming, and all in all, this is a fun film.

Attack the Block: ★★ 1/2 out of Five

The Artist

       Immediately after seeing THE ARTIST I was confused. I am less so now, but I still feel as if the film is ultimately disingenuous. For one thing, the film was marketed brilliantly to be some piece of high art, a treat, or a foray into high art for the layman that, hell, the whole family could enjoy. But THE ARTIST was made by Michel Hazanavicius, who, with Jean Dujardin, the star and Academy Award winning actor of this film, previously made spoof films. These films were called OSS 117, a spoof on 007, James Bond, twisting it all to fit 117 (Dujardin) who was a brash, prick of a spy. They're silly films. Good, but, really, silly. How would we all feel about Martin Scorsese and HUGO if, previous to that he'd just come off of Scary Movie 5? Now, OSS 117 is a hell of a lot better than the Scary Movie films, but they exist in the same realm, and Hazanavicius was no French auteur.
      Beyond this, I am confused by the style of THE ARTIST. Again, the film is marketed as being a silent movie. But this is no replica of a silent film. In fact, within THE ARTIST, we can view Dujardin's George Valentin viewing four or five different films. One of them actually resembles a silent film of the 20's, depicting Valentin running from a cast of jolty bandits. Then, there's the film that THE ARTIST starts with, establishing that Valentin is a star. The film looks like it was made circa 1961, now the turn of the silents to the talkies era. The lightning surrounding Dujardin's head as he's electrocuted resembles movie-lighting of '61 almost exactly. In other films that we see Valentin watching, there's even more confusing aesthetics. What, I ask, is THE ARTIST trying to do? Is it replicating silent films? Is it a tribute? Which is it?
      Dujardin, deserving of his Best Actor award, is admittedly pretty terrific as George Valentin. Despite Hazanavicius' directing and confusion over what movie he's making and from what era causing some of the scenes to resemble the parody of the OSS 117 movies, Dujardin brings real charm to his character, and every scene with him in it is a good one. Less amusing is Berenice Bejo (Hazanavicius' wife) as an up and coming actress with a ridiculous name, Peppy Miller, that a Frenchman would think Americans would like. But Valentin's artistic desire to stay with the silents is charming, even when he loses most of the spotlight to Peppy. The end of the film is good, and so are so many of the scenes, but I feel as if so much of the film is either ignorant of silent film, or is trying to convince us to like it by pretending to be something it's not. It's still entertaining, it's still fun, Dujardin is still great, the music is still good, the directing, although occasionally odd, is still overall good, but it's no great film, and it's not what it pretends to be.

★★★ out of Five

Melancholia

The second movie of 2011 to have some breathtaking images of a planet in the Earth sky, MELANCHOLIA fulfilled everything that ANOTHER EARTH promised. In Lars von Trier's downer, we get an operatic vision of the apocalypse. The film is broken up into three parts. The first part, a prologue, depicts the destruction of the Earth is ultra slow motion, but also places all of the characters on the lawn of a grand estate in their finest attire, as if they were about to bow upon an opera stage. In the background pounds Wagner's prelude to Tristan und Isolde. Clearly, von Trier is setting up something grandiose. The next part is called JUSTINE, and follows the eponymous newlywed bride (Kirsten Dunst) as she arrives and endures her wedding reception. She is clearly depressed, but Dunst evokes this in a brilliantly nuanced performance. This whole first part reminded me of James Joyce's short story, The Dead, as Justine has to do a great put-on for everyone at the reception. Her desperation is harrowing, and this portion of MELANCHOLIA seems to be the real apocalypse, the real melancholia. In the last part, CLAIRE, we follow Justine's eponymous sister as she cares for her in full-on depression. Kiefer Sutherland lends some stunning scenes to Charlotte Gainsbourg's Claire, who, like Justine in the earlier part, has to pretend to be happy at the estate. More prominently focused on in CLAIRE is the planet Melancholia, which may or may not crash into the Earth. Sutherland and Gainsbourg's exchanges are breathtaking as they fret in various ways. But this film is a real triumph. It earns every indulgent scene it has with another scene of nuance. It's deeply sad, but through its performances, buts a very human face on ideas and acts that would have otherwise seemed like cynical whining.

★★★★ out of Five

The Village

Nearly a universally regarded M. Night Shyamalan failure, THE VILLAGE has gained a terrible reputation, primarily for having a twist ending that was far from satisfactory. I disagree. What do we expect out of the twist ending? How can you not be satisfied by one is what I'm really asking. Someone who asks for a different ending, or a different reality, is asking for a different film. I've always gone along with a twist, despite how shocking or not shocking some are. But A) A 2 minute bit at the end shouldn't change the 118 at the beginning that were pretty good and B) If that's how it is, that's how it is. In THE VILLAGE, I even appreciated the twist, and thought that it was earned and pleasing. The film tells of an odd clan of 19th century villagers living exclusively within the village. Nobody trespasses into the woods, and there's a weird offbeat color sensibility that all the townspeople share. Shyamalan sets up a nice tone of dark dread, as animal skins begin to turn up, and everyone begins to fear a presence from the woods, and whisper of "Those Who Are Not Spoken Of" (who, incidentally, are spoken of quite a bit). Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) is at the head of a new generation in the village, who are increasingly interested in convincing the group of elders (Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Brendan Gleeson) to allow them to venture into the woods to reach other towns. Lucius and a blind girl named Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) start to flirt with marriage, and as this progresses, the village idiot (Adrien Brody) becomes increasingly agitated. From the start of the film, though, it becomes clear that someone will eventually leave the village, and we'll eventually learn what's up with the jumpy village. The payoff is fine, I wasn't bothered by it, and if you are, I would implore looking at the earlier bits of the film, which are entertainingly directed in a lively fashion. Greatly assisting Shyamalan here is his cast and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins. Both lend a perfect amount of creepiness to the film.

★★★ out of Five

Project X

Coming into PROJECT X, my expectations were set for a good hour and a half of complete and total crap. The film had been panned by critics, and I couldn't see Judd Apatow's crowd coming up with anything resembling authenticity. What I got instead though, was a film that had the same disease as CHRONICLE. Both films attempt to show a slice of teenage highschooler life in 2012. Both succeed at that, but, because they have to be billed so that people will want to go and see them, there's an edge to them. For CHRONICLE, that edge was that one kid went batshit and blew the fucking shit out of the town. For PROJECT X, which begins as a movie about a kid's birthday party, the edge is that the party blows the fucking shit out of the town. I can see where these movies would be without their edges, they would be wallowing in indie netflix-instant-watch land. They would simply be entertaining movies that have defined what it's like to be a teenager in 2012. That's why it's such a shame that both films miserably fail. PROJECT X, for example, shows some real authenticity with the way everybody talks, how much everyone drinks, and how fun and out of hand the party gets. Once everybody's on ecstasy at the party, it's hard to keep your mind on how consequences will come. But the way that the filmmakers have captured what these parties are "like" is pretty damn masterful. And then, they have to go and ruin it all with a flair that is so Apatow it makes me sick: the delusion that a lot of beer makes any model-crazy-hot-babe screw any tub of lard curly haired jew. That's the problem with Apatow films: they're a fantasy, and on top of that, they just add insanity to what would have otherwise been a good film. Once a midget breaks through the sunroof of a car and drives it into the pool, once a crazy guy takes a flamethrower to the neighborhood, once you add a title-card that tries to convince us the movie actually happened, your movie blows. For a film that is purely about the goings-on of a party, why add more to that? There's so much needless fantasy awarded on top of the party-holders, a trio of nerdos who, by chance, get their party to go crazy good. It's just another entry of sighs in 2012.

★★ out of Five

Thor

Outrageously made in ludicrous colors, villains, battle scenes, and dialogue, THOR represents the best of the Marvel movies that have graced the past three or four years of AVENGERS-prep films. Beginning with an admittedly stunted Natalie Portman as a researcher in New Mexico who runs over the hero with her car in a running joke that the movie embraces, we can see some fun being had with the whole story. After he's run over, we get an extremely long flashback of what landed the Nordic warrior in such a place, seeing that he's been banished for basically acting a brawny fool, and disobeying the King, his father, Odin. Odin has banished Thor, but at the same time, his sneaky brother begins to leer up the ladder. This brother relationship is the entire strength of the film, depicting a semi-complex relationship between Thor and Loki. Loki is destined to never be in a position like Thor's, but desires it greatly, and his plotting is the whole kink in Odin's plan to make Thor learn humility. During his banishment, Thor is stripped of all powers, and spends a lot of time making a fool of himself but not knowing that around the Natalie Portman headed researchers. It turns out, Portman's researcher is searching for a bond between worlds that Thor can easily summon with his hammer, and so, of course, the two become involved. What's surprising about THOR though is that it's as good as it is. It has fun, instead of pounding you over the head with how important it is, or how dire the situation is. There's maybe a 30 second blip of that, but the rest is dedicated to having fun, which is what superhero movies should have been about all along. Thor is a boor at first, without a doubt, but he's a likable one, due to a performance from a hunky Chis Hemsworth that's a million times better than any of his hunky actor counterparts.

★★★ out of Five

Bill Cunningham New York

At first I found myself dulled by BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. It has all of the trademarks of the recent documentary that I had thought had been stomped out by 2010's explosion of great documentaries. But this film proved me wrong, and I saw the same old formula applied to making a documentary. The craft seems to be to first find a good and interesting subject. Good, now you've got an interesting subject, now there's no need to exert any effort on making a good and interesting film! And so I was dulled. Most of the storytelling in BILL CUNNINGHAM seems to be from the standpoint of watching Cunningham, an 80 year old (at the time of the film's making) fashion photographer for the New York Times, go about his work. In boring shots of a giddy Cunningham swooping like a mad bird to capture the women on the streets, we slowly learn of Cunningham's life, which, it turns out, is wholly devoted to his craft. Like most great artists in fact, Cunningham only considers his art to be a craft, and spends every day all day working on his columns. He knows his stuff, and is a fine photographer. Cunningham and his personality actually seeped into me more than the film ever could have. The man is to be admired as he lives for his pleasure. He has no kitchen, has never had a relationship, and doesn't seem to have any close friends whom he converses with on any regular basis. Instead he works methodically and well, like an old man of the land. But can I really forgive the documentary, which is so timid as to actually tell Cunningham he doesn't have to answer two of their only questions of the whole film? I suppose I have to, for I loved Cunningham so much, and liked how he grew on me as the film carried on.

★★★ out of Five

Steve

STEVE is a short film starring the radiant Keira Knightley, whose been gaining momentum for a bid at the Oscars this year with ANNA KARANINA, and Colin Firth, whose established himself as one of those A-list actors who is just about as charming as George Clooney. Neither of these talent actors, however, find anything much to work with in the nicely shot, but pretentiously understated and uneven short film. Instead there's just a lot of uneven tonality, and a couple of scenes with dialogue that's too vague to mean anything.
But like another film reviewed on here recently (ANOTHER EARTH), STEVE is just too timid to delve into anything that it suggests might be happening. Steve (Firth), a jittery downstairs neighbor comes up to bother a warring couple (Knightley and Tom Mison), and increasingly his complaints become more ridiculous or unhinged. But whatever is actually wrong with Steve, or how everyone chooses to deal with it is evidently up to the audience, which is a pretty poor cop-out device.

★ out of Five

Another Earth

With a cover that boasts the best shot in the entire film, and really, the only good shot in the entire film, ANOTHER EARTH is a film that, from its title, should be about this other earth. Hell, the main character, Rhoda (Brit Marling who also co-wrote the film), is a past astrophysicist, but she never really lingers on the other Earth except for the fact that, what, it's a given? Rhoda, after partying one night, hears on the radio while driving home of the discovery of the other Earth, brilliantly dubbed "Earth 2". Searching the skies, while driving, for the apparition, she crashes into another car, killing the wife and son of a music composer named John. John is sent into a coma for four years, and Rhoda is sent to jail for four years. Upon her release, she seeks John out, who is now living in his house alone and dejected. She attempts to confess to him who she is, but chickens out and ends up being his maid. The two start up a relationship however, and things grow more complicated. All this time, Rhoda is supposedly dreaming of Earth 2, and a chance to visit it, for we learn that it is almost an exact copy of our own Earth, but that some events may differ on it. This gives Rhoda the hope that perhaps the accident she caused on this Earth, didn't occur on the other one. But thoughts like this just detract from the relationship between Rhoda and John. In one scene, John throws her out of the house, and when she comes back, we see them talk for thirty seconds or so in darkness, as if even now the filmmakers are afraid to delve very deep. Actually, Earth 2 is just one big, vague conceit. The film ends without us ever really delving into that either, and so that just leaves us to think that ANOTHER EARTH is just about the act of thinking about a second chance. But the way the film ends suggests that there is a payoff, we just don't get to see it because it would be too complicated a scene for Director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling to write together. It makes the whole film a big disappointment, because it never follows through on anything.

★★ out of Five

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Directed by Jim Jarmusch, GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI is about an inner-city black man named Ghost Dog who lives his life by the way of the samurai. He lives on top of a building with a horde of carrier pigeons, works as a hit-man for the mob who demands pay on the first day of autumn, and only communicates with these employers via the pigeons. Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) only talks to a little girl at the park, and a Haitian ice cream man with whom he cannot communicate. The separation between cultures though, is seemingly transcended by fate. Ghost Dog, for instance, follows an ancient method that no longer really exists. His Italian mafia employers, according to Ghost Dog, follow a similarly dying way. Disenfranchised by the world, apparently, Ghost Dog follows this way anyway. There's this weirdness to the entire film, and really, for me, it didn't chock up to a single narrative, but to a series of very good or very interesting and well thought out ideas. In one scene for instance, the gangster who employs Ghost Dog has to explain the oddities of his hit-man to the boss. "What kind of name is that?" says one of the gangsters. "They all got names like that, comes from rappers," says one of the others, before mentioning him as some nigger, and then following that by quoting some Flavor Flav line. But at the heart of GHOST DOG is a lot of conflicting culture and history, sprinkled with acts of violence in the middle.

★★★★ out of Five

Spider

David Cronenberg's foray into drama ever since, I think, this became a possibility for him, has been rife with great films. EASTERN PROMISES, which was the first film of his I saw, stood as one of the best films I'd ever seen at the time (which was, admittedly, very early in my exposure to cinema). But after watching many of his other dramatic films of this period, I have found that each pleased me more than the last. The same is true, now, for SPIDER, a film about a schizophrenic man attempting to uncover his past. The man, who goes by Spider (Ralph Fiennes), is now living in a sort of halfway home. There's a couple of other oddballs around, an an elderly matron figure. Spider takes long meandering walks about town, puts weird little webs around his room made of string, and generally doesn't say anything very intelligible. In flashbacks we see Spider as a child, under two parents whom he thinks are unhappy and dislike each other. What's astonishing about SPIDER is the craft at work, and the deviousness of Cronenberg's direction as we see the craziness of Spider's mind, and how small notions of his grow to control his life. It's these small notions, these small ideas about the way things are, that ultimately decide who Spider will be, and how he will act. Keeping all of these ideas on a pillar, or, on a level at which we can take them seriously, are Ralph Fiennes' performance, a creepy Gabriel Byrne as his father, and Cronenberg's sad, dirty cities.

★★★★★ out of Five

Déjà Vu

Tony Scott's films are so poorly received it's criminal. Critics and audiences get too hung up on the plausibility of things that happen in his films, or the level of violence or style that Scott ascends to. Such is true from a really entertaining film of his, MAN ON FIRE, which, according to most reviews, descends into an unrealistic and insane level of violence. In DEJA VU though, there's a lot that's open to nitpicking. Hell, the film has time travel in it, and that's one of the easiest things to dissect as utter bullshit. But that's not the point of a Tony Scott film. The essence of his films to allow yourself to be taken on a ride. All of his films are extremely entertaining, but especially the ones existing in the digital age, are extremely specific. They're filled with small moments, small fancies of editing that work dastardly well in the moment, and even, I think, on the bigger scale. Like a mosaic, it's made up of a lot of little perfections, but when you step back, it still makes for a pretty damn good picture. DEJA VU centers on a device that allows Denzel Washington's ATF agent, Doug, to look back into the future four and a half days. Through an odd little suited made up of multiple monitors and a few geeks, Doug falls in love with a victim of a ferry bombing. Attempting to use the technology to discover the bomber, Doug becomes obsessed with the victim, a 30 year old woman burned alive named Claire (Paula Patton). Doug knows that Claire is doomed, but becomes obsessed with the idea that she may not be. The way that Scott creates literally multiple planes of action, one in the past and one in the future, is astounding. There's one great scene where he has to use special goggles to track the bomber in the past, but also has to use one of his eyes to drive in traffic. DEJA VU is a hell of a lot of fun, a masterful action film.

★★★★ out of Five

Parents

It's obvious from the general look of Bob Ballaban's PARENTS that the 50's are trying to be emulated as much as possible. What instead incurs, due to an art direction, and directorial decision making that inputs queasy music to queasy shots of oily faces, is a bilious experience. Then again, how could nausea not be induced when you're making a film about cannibalism? For, you see, the 'parents' of the red splatter title lettering are cannibals, and induce constant fear into their wide-eyed, disappointed looking son, Michael. Michael begins to suspect his parents of doing weird things at night, for when he wakes up in the morning they have monster-sized slices of simmering meat on plates in front of him. This teasing with the horror genre begins in such odd ways though, and the film doesn't feel well thought out. Why, only now, at age ten does Michael suspect his parents? Wouldn't such activity in the house just be normality for him? Furthermore, Michael's fear of his parents for such a long time seems irrational and out of place. It's as if his real parents have died and these are the insane aunt and uncle guardians. And god, the look of this is horrid. The oily faces just drown the film in a languorousness that seems to reflect how little its events matter. I hated this film from the very first shot to the premise to the actors. I was nauseated, bored, annoyed, and confused.

★ out of Five

Hobo with a Shotgun, and the limits of cinema

I'd seen this film recently, but last night I saw it again. My interest in the film was re-invigorated by a trailer for the new Danny Trejo movie, BADASS, which is about a senior citizen who beats the shit out of people as a vigilante. MACHETE, another Trejo vessel, was spawned by a fake trailer, as was HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. What all these films have in common is 1) a sense of intentional trashiness and 2) vigilanteism. However, I saw HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN as something that stood completely on its own, as an anomaly of the "rules of Hollywood", or whatever you want to call the conduct laws when you're making movies nowadays. What HOBO does is make me think that the days of any limits are coming to an end. In the film, Rutger Hauer plays a homeless man with crazed eyes and a vestige of morality, which causes him to care for a prostitute being beat up by the sons of The Drake, the King of ScumTown, where he's dropped off by a train. Hauer's Hobo quickly tries to clean up the place, adopting a shotgun to demand order. But unlike MACHETE, or any other number of films, HOBO ends with more cynicism that it began with. ScumTown becomes a devouring creature. A Sodom and Gommorah setting, filled with two of the most disgusting scenes I'll ever see. But the film doesn't turn away from anything, and that's a theme that should be effusing into the modern cinema. There are far too often too many films that play with a subject, and then retract into conventionalism.

Outrage

Takeshi "Beat" Kitano's OUTRAGE plays like a response to the misinformed archetype of the cool American gangsters that has been so pervasive in recent, bad, American cinema. It has no illusions about living the life, for everyone who's involved in the film is buried under constant fear. How do you know who to pledge allegiance to when the strongest, toughest man in the room changes every six minutes, when severing your fingers with a blunt knife to express apology is laughed at? There are a lot of characters in OUTRAGE, each one of them singling themselves out how they would have to in the real world of the yakuza (the Japanese form of the mafia). At the beginning of the film, I was admittedly confused at who everyone was, but then I came to know each and every one of them. Of course, I would look at the screen, and recognize Otomo, for instance. How could I forget him? He just used a drill to take Murase's gums out! But this is a great strength of OUTRAGE, and it furthers that notion of singling yourself out, to the necessary reality of a changed allegiance, and then the process of making yourself blend in. You kill a man one day and he was the enemy, now he was the new boss' friend and your head's got a target on it. Beyond this, OUTRAGE is kinetic, surprising, and carries a sublime sense of dread. It's a ton of fun, but doesn't let you forget the glamour its breaking down. Kitano's due to come out with OUTRAGE 2 this year, so that he can make sure that you know, anyone who lived at the end of the first one, is no true survivor.

★★★★ out of Five

Take Shelter

From Jeff Nichols, who directed a film I enjoyed quite a bit, SHOTGUN STORIES, is TAKE SHELTER, a psychological drama starring a couple of people from his last film. Notably, Michael Shannon gives a riveting performance of madness, or what might be madness, from the perspective of a man who sees that he has all the signs of going crazy, but finds it hard to accept such a thing. It begins with dreams of storms, and then of his dog attacking him, his neighbors, his friends. He feels an impending doom, hears thunder when there isn't a cloud in the sky, smells fluid near his house. In preparation, he begins to build a shelter, taking money out of his family's account frivolously for the pure purpose of building the storm shelter. His best friend begins to question him, his wife (Jessica Chastain) cries as she watches his descent and knows where it's all going. Even his deaf daughter knows something's up, but he goes crazy anyway. What I admired about TAKE SHELTER other than Shannon's performance and some very decent cinematography, was that Shannon's character can see all the signs of impending insanity, and yet he acts as if this weren't so. I think that we all trust ourselves to a great extent, and that Shannon's character under such scrutiny just adamantly cannot accept such a fact. The end of the film changes this too, and although I liked the twist at the end, I feel as if it was a bit of a cheat to liven the film up. Nevertheless, the film as-is was enjoyable, despite a few scenes or directorial decisions that felt forced.

★★★ out of Five

Bug

My only previous exposure to the work of William Friedkin was THE EXORCIST, and I thought that was crap, but, watching BUG, all I could think was that it was the perfect movie for the man who made THE EXORCIST to make. For one thing, THE EXORCIST suffers from a sense of horror that was so in-your-face: loud and ludicrous, that I was bored. BUG, though, takes horror from a bubbling undercurrent higher and higher until it's in your face. For Friedkin's EXORCIST to not really "get" horror, and for BUG to get it, I was overwhelmingly pleased. It plays like a midnight movie, slow going and with a tone that feels like you're hanging out. But with its ease comes annoying phone calls, knocks on the door, visitors, and the original tone is shaken up. Agnes (Ashley Judd) wants to just pass out after a line of coke (don't we all?) but she's haunted by the ghosts of her past. She lost her son years ago, has an abusive husband who's just gotten out of jail even though "he wasn't supposed to get out this time." And then Peter comes into the picture. Michael Shannon, more like, his crazed eyes held in by the muscles surrounding them. Peter's soft spoken, even frail, and Agnes jumps on the opportunity until Peter starts to tell her about his life. He seems crazy...but is he? It's Michael Shannon, so probably yes, but Friedkin handles the situation as if it's ambiguous for most of the film, until the inevitable happens. It's like a good book. You knew the ending was coming the whole time, you just didn't want to believe it, and when it comes...

★★★★ out of Five

The Keep

It's difficult for me to say so, but I didn't like THE KEEP very much at all. It's about a citadel called The Keep protected by a couple of Jewish priests in the 1940's. One day, they're invaded by the Nazis, who stay over night against the warnings of the townspeople, release a demon, and reap the consequences while blaming the Jews for Nazi-soldier deaths. In terms of imagery, THE KEEP is fantastic. And, what else would you expect from Michael Mann? But in terms of story, THE KEEP feels incomplete and brisk. There's some imagery and even some of Mann's ideas that I love here, but the film itself just falls apart in so many different ways. There's even a theme, or a character, that I adore, a stranger coming out of the town mist with eyes that light up to a white nothingness.

It feels Lynchian, and perhaps that's because it is, but whenever Mann throws us a bone like two shadows coming out of a cave of nothingness, the stranger, or the town enveloped in mist and bodies, he fucks it up with a scene that's too long or doesn't make any sense. Vagueness used as a tool should rub anybody the wrong way. The only redeeming factor I can come up with for the film, one that makes me want to write a review just focusing on the fantastic imagery, is that apparently a Director's Cut lies hidden in the depths of Hollywood. That could be great, for there's so much greatness here that just begs to be released, but stays buried like the demon in the Keep.

★★ out of Five

Hell and Back Again

It takes a while for HELL AND BACK AGAIN to get started, but when it does it's really a fine film. Switching between scenes of wartime in Afghanistan and struggling at home, the film tells of Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris, shot in the leg rendering him a cripple comparative to his athletic, militant stature previously. In Afghanistan, we see Harris and his crew as a slew of foreigners, trying their best in a bad situation. Interestingly, we see Harris' good intentions go bad. In one scene, the soldiers are moving around things in the city, which seems like tedious work, and I got a little bored. But HELL AND BACK AGAIN works like a sick joke, and then we see a crowd of townspeople come into play, lamenting that the soldiers ruined all their wheat when they were moving things around, broke their furniture, stole their houses for the purposes of...protecting them. In this half of the film, we see that the soldiers are losing the battle because they are fighting for no one. The townspeople don't want their help. And the soldier's idea of helping, is the townspeople's idea of meddling. On top of this idea, is that life in Afghanistan is extremely stressful because now that the townspeople aren't helping, there's little to fall back on or rely on. Shooting could start at any minute, but at home, there's just the tediousness of physical therapy, and a myriad of doctor's appointments. Another quality of HELL AND BACK AGAIN that I deeply admire is the editing and filming of the Afghanistan scenes. They're kinetic and daring, and can be best described by referencing another war documentary, RESTREPO.

★★★ out of Five

How to Train Your Dragon

I remember being wary of this film when it came out a couple of years ago. Dreamworks, the company that made this film, has never been a champion of animated films, and whenever I looked at their SHREK movies, I saw a descending quality. I would like to say that "Imagine my surprise, but HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON was just as good as everyone said it was", but I feel as if it were merely run of the mill, acceptable, but containing some of the major problems of animated films and children's films in general. The film is about a tribe (?) of vikings living on an island, who are incessantly at war with dragons. The whole point of life in the village seems to be to grow up strong so that you can kill dragons for glory. One viking however (now, how many kid's movies start like this?) is different. His name is Hiccup, he's the son of the clanleader, and he's gratingly voiced by Jay Baruchel, who has been disappearing from the public eye quicker and quicker, thank god. Hiccup works with the blacksmith, but is a village-wide failure of a viking. One day however, he sets off a cannon that ensnares the vicious, and previously unseen NightFury, a dragon whose flames never miss, and who has never been seen. Hiccup is overjoyed, and begins to pull down his knife to slay the dragon, but as he is in a Dreamworks animated movie, is completely unable to kill the dragon, befriends it, and changes everyone's mind about dragons. The thing that I found unappealing about the film is that the idea that these vikings and dragons have been killing each other for centuries is shied away from, for the film's tone is tepid. Worse though, is that this tone doesn't make me believe that that would be possible at all, and because of that, everything that happens in the film held no high stakes. Whenever a dragon shot its fire at someone, they brushed it off like they'd just shot ash at them. Especially in contrast to PRINCESS MONONOKE, there's nothing daring about this film. Sure, it's entertaining, but isn't it what we contrast good animated movies to when we're saying "Miyazaki's film was so much better because it didn't..." do exactly what HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON does.

★★ out of Five

Recent TV (for Journal-like Purposes)

I'm currently enjoying a flood of animated shows, most of them suggested to me by a friend. "Harvey Birdman", "Home Movies", and "Archer" have been filling up most of the time that should have been spent watching movies. One of the major problems engrained in television is the format, which is why movies are so much better. When you watch a film, it's got one chance to knock you out and that's it, and with a tv show, it has to make its point in every individual episode. Watching tv in the way that I do now (3 seasons in a week on Netflix), I feel as if I'm just getting barraged with the same fact. In "Family Guy", a show that I watch a lot for no reason except that it fills the silence of my room, every episode convinces me that these people are idiots. In "The X-Files", which I actually enjoy, every episode has to show Agents Mulder and Scully arguing on different sides of the fence. Because of this, I'm finding television to be sort of annoying, and I can't wait until I break away from it, and return home to movies. Maybe I'm starting that process here, but so many opportunities to watch films have been squelched by hours upon hours of tv.