Author: Mary Beth

In theaters.

Have the purists who self-righteously reject the idea of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero actually read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, or are they just working off the pop-culture image of a wiry, effete man with a magnifying glass stuck to his face? And regardless, why must anyone treat Doyle’s stories as sacrosanct? They’re pulp (influential pulp, but pulp nonetheless) featuring a flat, static protagonist—a protagonist who is described, by the way, as an expert at boxing and fencing and who also ably dispatches his foes with a cane and riding crop. So I really don’t see why anyone should be annoyed by Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes getting into a few fistfights in between deductive reasoning.

If you want to bent out of shape about the movie’s lack of fidelity to its source material, the better target would be the affectionate, congenial relationship between Holmes and Watson. In Doyle’s stories, Holmes is perpetually rude and condescending, treating Watson less as a friend than as a tiresome lackey. When I read the stories as a kid, I never understood why Watson would put up with Holmes, but their friendly rapport is the best thing about director Guy Ritchie’s new movie. As Watson, Jude Law gives his most charming performance in a decade, and Downey is as charismatic as always. Together they have great chemistry, making the movie far funnier and more entertaining than it would be otherwise. Screw fidelity—the truly un-Doylian elements of Sherlock Holmes are the only things that make it worth watching.

In theaters.

It seems churlish to complain that The Princess and the Frog is rather preachy, considering that its sermon is remarkably similar to one I’ve been delivering since I was about twelve years old. I agree, of course, that aspiring to be a princess, passively wishing on stars and dreaming of princes sweeping in to save the day, warps a girl’s priorities and undermines her own resourcefulness and individuality, but to hear that from Disney—well, let’s just say the messenger warps the message. The movie cuttingly parodies princess culture, lampooning a spoiled little girl who laps up fairy tales and demands countless poufy dresses like those of her bejeweled idols, but the hypocrisy is hard to take. Have the filmmakers ever visited the Disney Store? Who do they think their audience is? They’re doing more than biting the hand that feeds; they’re spitting on it, in a way that often feels hypocritical and occasionally feels cruel.

Maybe that’s not fair, but the movie makes it hard to ignore the metatextual Disney themes when it goes so far as to directly evoke and reject elements of such classics as Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty. That kind of thing creates a sense of smugness that weighs down what is otherwise a charming, if slight, bit of fairy tale rehabilitation. Set in a sweetly romanticized Jazz Age New Orleans, The Princess and the Frog is beautiful in its way, with a few genuinely lovely moments, but its baggage weighs it down. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a mediocrity—it’s better than that, and the traditional cel animation is worth celebrating—but this isn’t one for the pantheon.

In theaters.

My opinion often shifts on reflection. I think it’s important to acknowledge an initial experience—that immediate, visceral reaction—but as meaningful as that is, it’s not the only thing that matters. No doubt some cynics believe that those who don’t hold onto their first opinion are just allowing others to influence them—and certainly that’s part of it, though it needn’t be a bad thing—but I think the process of evaluating how one feels about something is more complicated than that. It takes time, and in that time, the ground inevitable shifts, sometimes merely settling, othertimes shaking cataclysmically.

Up in the Air hasn’t suffered a cataclysmic reversal, but it definitely has fallen in my estimation the longer I’ve thought about it, sorting through what I liked and what I didn’t, sifting through irrelevant personal tangents and more meaningful critiques. I’ve rewritten this damn introduction multiple times, to the point where it seemed dishonest not to acknowledge that I’ve done so. And in the end, the movie just doesn’t sit right with me.

On DVD.

When I was nineteen years old, I spent a couple of weeks traveling by rail around Europe, some of that time with three other college girls, some of it with a male acquaintance (a companion of convenience, not romance—we could barely tolerate each other), and some of it on my own. Those days were some of the best of my life. I saw a production of Puccini’s La bohème in Rome and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at Notre Dame. I cried in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà and Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac. I walked along snow-covered streets in Vienna and pebbly beaches in Nice. I learned how to read train tables, how to bargain in street markets, and how to drink a shot of tequila.

It was enormous fun—a grand adventure—but more important than that, more important than everything I learned about art and architecture and music, was the resourcefulness that trip taught me, the independence, the self-confidence. This is not to say that I believed myself to be invulnerable—to the contrary, there were times when I was confused and scared, and with reason—but despite that, because of that, I learned to trust myself. I learned how to be brave and how to fake it when I wasn’t. I learned how to find my own way when no one was around to hold my hand. I treasure the memory of that time. As cheesy as it might sound, those two weeks helped make me who I am today.

So Taken breaks my heart. It’s a well-crafted but painfully alarmist thriller about a father trying to save his teenage daughter from the sex traffickers who have kidnapped her from the luxurious Paris apartment where she was vacationing with a friend. Daddy hadn’t wanted his little princess to go in the first place—too dangerous—but Mommy insisted, and look what happened, Daddy was right, the world is too dangerous for girls on their own. Watching Taken, I imagine hyper-vigilant parents taking its lessons to heart and forbidding their daughters from studying or traveling abroad, denying them the kind of opportunity I had, and I want to scream with frustration.

In theaters.

The documentary La Danse opens not with ballerinas but with a series of static shots of the innards of the building in which they rehearse and perform: coiled wires, cracked plaster, sturdy columns. Eventually Frederick Wiseman’s camera moves on, intermittently, to the dancers, but the same coolly observational aesthetic remains as the film cuts about the Palais Garnier. It’s as though an alien has floated down to study the Paris Opera Ballet, indiscriminately taking in everything from the dancers, choreographers, and artistic director to the costume makers, cafeteria cashiers, fundraisers, maintenance workers, and even the beekeeper (?) who manages the hives (?) on the roof.

As bizarre and unexpected as the beekeeping sequence is, it does seem to suggest Wiseman’s outlook on his subject: that it is abuzz with disparate activity that nonetheless builds toward a single goal. That’s a romantic notion rendered with paradoxical dispassion—and I don’t find it particularly convincing, if that’s even what the directed intended. Regardless, the effect is both mesmerizing and frustrating.