Sherlock Jr.

SHERLOCK JR. stars Buster Keaton as an aspiring detective who also manages the local movie theater's projector. At the opening of the film, we are warned by a title card that attempting to juggle two things at once never ends up well. Keaton's serious man is in love, and when he goes to his love interest's house to court her, he is framed for stealing a watch by the town bully. Keaton mopes back to his movie theater to work after being told by his girl that she never wants to see him again. He falls asleep at the projector, and in a scene that probably inspired Woody Allen's PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO half a century later, Keaton literally walks into the film. There is a similar predicament in the film's world: a pearl necklace has been stolen. But in the world of movies, Keaton's serious man is no mere aspiring detective, but the best in the world: Sherlock Jr. He comes to the house where a similar bully has stolen the pearls, but now he has finesse, and in a series of hilarious, witty, ingenious scenes, Sherlock Jr. figures everything out inexplicably. This is all followed by a chase scene, and as Sherlock Jr. solves the case, we see the mirrored world of what went wrong in reality beside what wen right in the film. Keaton's serious man finally awakens from his sleep, and awakes to a wonderful surprise in time to give one last joke to the audience. The comedy within SHERLOCK JR. is wonderful and inspired, but I would argue that it is not Keaton's finest film, as some tend to argue, for it is a little too convenient. It's still a great film, but not the greatest.

Sherlock Jr.: ★★★1/2

X2: X-Men United

Overlong and playful, X2 teases and hints but never fully delivers. Within a mythological / allegorical tale of mutants who are rejected by society, director Bryan Singer meshes these two themes and the result is awkward. With lines like "Have you ever tried not being a mutant" that allude to gay rights, and the competition of ideology between the two lead mutants Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan) its hard to not think of X2 as an allegorical film. But then there are so many mindless action sequences that pale in comparison to modern day action film climaxes of explosions, that the film can only be seen as a goofy extravaganza. X-MEN was a decent film because it presented a certain mystery about its characters and their motives, and by its end, I was excited for its sequel, because so much of X-MEN's faults lay within its necessity to set everything up. X2 should be exciting, but within the film, it alludes to a better film, a better version of X2 that was never made. In X2, the strange Mystique (a shape shifter played recognizably by Rebecca Romijn) breaks into a lab and beats everyone up. The reaction of the Professor X led mutants is along the lines of 'hot damn' and Magneto lazily says that nobody has any idea how great she is. Here I agree with Magneto [A sentence that makes no sense out of context]. We, the audience, really don't know how awesome Mystique is because we're only getting to see a portion of what she does. This is what the whole film is like, which is 132 minutes long and drags terribly. Without any central figure, a lame villain, and uneven storytelling, X2 becomes a major disappointment.
X2: ★★

X-Men: First Class

Like most mythologies, X-Men takes an awkward, but specifically describable path. In a necessity to keep interesting or cool characters around, ages are fudged, explanations for agelessness are explained at length, and "the later years" of characters are often over explained. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS attempts to show us the early lives of the X-Men from the original trilogy. However, these mutants are more interesting and played by better actors at a young age than they were in the original trilogy of films. James McAvoy as Professor X and the radiant Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique bring a special poignancy to the film with their relationship, Michael Fassbender as Magneto is solid, and the rest of the mutants are populated by competent teenage-looking actors who could have been in a modern day THE BREAKFAST CLUB (and made a better film out of it too). But it is not just the actor-power that assists X-MEN: FIRST CLASS to be the finest X-Men film and one of the better superhero films of, say, this year. It is instead the way that the film embraces how silly its subject is. It never asks us to take it seriously, and that allows for the audience to take some, selective lines seriously, rather than every supposedly prophetic word to come out of Magneto's mouth. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS should spawn a number of films following it's story. It's more interesting, populated by gleeful actors, and gloriously goofy.
X-Men: First Class: ★★★1/2

Let Me In

LET ME IN is completely unnecessary. It is an American remake of the great Swedish film, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, and in the case of the remake, we get a film that is much, much worse. It is almost a copy of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, except the director of this American version is simply not as good a director as the Swedish one. There's a tonality and texture to films, and LET ME IN lacks the flair that the Swedish film had. Both films tell of a young 12 year old (here played by THE ROAD's Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is abused by bullies at school, and practically invisible to his parents. One night, playing in the courtyard by an apartment complex, the boy meets his neighbor, who just happens to be a vampire. Here, the 12-year-old-girl-vampire Abby is played by a radiant Chloe Moretz, who is probably the only good thing about the film. In this stupider version, we learn that her caretaker Thomas (an underused Richard Jenkins) was her best friend when they were both 12 and Abby was bitten. Abby is still 12 and Thomas is old, and now Abby has her eye on the young boy. This adds a terrible creepiness to the film, and undermines the effect of the Swedish version. The makers of LET ME IN have seen the Swedish version, and in an attempt to copy the eeriness of that film, it employs clichéd or copied dialogue that would never be said in real life, gaping mouths, and obvious, instructive music to illustrate the enigmatic nature it believes it possesses. This film exhibits a faux profundity, for every scene is so over-attired and intentional that scenes become cluttered and brief. LET ME IN is also remarkably dark in tonal color, and only from seeing the Swedish film was I able to comprehend what was going on. The film tries to be too weird and eery, and unlike the Swedish film, has no poetic value, so these eery scenes just become discomforting.
Let Me In: ★★

Nanook of the North

1920 in the Arctic, and Robert Flaherty, an explorer, has made a film about the Inuit people. He returns to the States, and his film negative is lost in a fire. Determined to not let his work go to waste, Flaherty returns to the Hudson Bay, handpicks the most popular Inuit around named Nanook, gets a few women and children to act as his family, and sets out to make a documentary about them. Flaherty is known as the "father of documentaries." With NANOOK OF THE NORTH he has a contrivance. It is a film that was staged, and yet its starkness makes it have the feeling of realism. Nanook and his counterparts live a primitive existence: this is fact. In one breathtaking scene, Nanook looks for a seal underneath the ice to kill. He knows that seals come up out of the water to take a breath every twenty minutes, and he has found the inch-wide hole that they use to breath. He waits above it with his harpoon, with only a few seconds to attack the great beast. Exhibiting man's struggle against nature, Nanook spears the seal and tugs and tugs as he wraps his end of rope around his body. If the seal beats him, and takes off, overpowers him, then Nanook will die. He will fall underneath the ice, plunge in, and drown. Here we see the worth of this film. Although Flaherty only arranged things so that he would be able to film a scene like this, the territory and the seal are not in on the contrivances or desires of the director. Nanook must actually defeat the seal, or die. Another breathtaking scene shows Nanook and his "family" as they build an igloo. They do so in under an hour. It is astounding to see this film. I imagine that Nanook and the Inuits like him are not very different from some of the earliest people on earth: utilizing primitive tools and their vast knowledge of the world they inhabit to survive against the elements.
Nanook of the North: ★★★1/2

The Trailer as an Art

They are now. Fashioned over to appear as short films, they now put older trailers to shame. Consider the trailers for BIUTIFUL, THE TREE OF LIFE, TAKE SHELTER, HARRY POTTER 7P2, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

True Blood

Essentially a mythology mixed with quasi-intellectual / half-assed musings on politics, TRUE BLOOD escalates with tension, unplanned goofiness, and wonderful character actors. Centering upon the story of small town Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) who falls for a 200 year old vampire named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), TRUE BLOOD is easily described as TWILIGHT for adults. With season sustaining serial killers or malevolent villains, the series is better than guilty-pleasure schlock in its realization of the power of an anti-hero. Embodied primarily by Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård as Eric Northman as well as the great Evan Rachel Wood as a playgirl queen, a gay vampire played by DODGEBALL's Stephen Root, and as the King of Mississippi, Denis O'Hare. This flair that each character has is as reminiscent of STAR WARS as any mythology must ultimately be. Like STAR WARS in its wide range of created creatures (werewolves, vampires, "shifters", and fairies) and also like it in the way that you would root for Darth Vader on a bad day, and Luke Skywalker on a good day. It is this element that TRUE BLOOD captures while it fails on the level of political comparisons between unique situations, and in this element it thrives and becomes fun rather than goofy or self-important. Although TRUE BLOOD by its end of Season 3 became too much like Ross & Rachel of FRIENDS and too intentionally frustrating for its own good, this flaw was apparent in only the Season 3 finale, and should not fault the series as a bloody whole.
True Blood: ★★★1/2