Category: Movies

In theaters.

So this is embarrassing. I spent the past week buried in a freelance project, and Sunday night, when Sean suggested that we both take a break from occupational overachievement and go to the movies, did I suggest that we check out one of the many Oscar nominees I haven’t seen—The Fighter or The Illusionist or, god help me, Blue Valentine? No. No, I did not. Instead, I immediately proposed that we go watch Jason Statham shoot people while being unflappably cool in what I knew to be a thoroughly mediocre B-movie. I’m not proud of this, but I can’t say I regret it.

In theaters.

At first, the subject of The King’s Speech seems embarrassingly trivial. With World War II looming, soon to give rise to all manner of suffering and pain and death, this is a movie about a ludicrously privileged man fighting a speech impediment, a figurehead trying to become the very best figurehead he can be. Unchallenging, relentlessly pleasant, it screams “middlebrow.”

And yet, somehow, it finds its way to something meaningful. Colin Firth delivers a masterful performance as the ludicrously privileged king in question, revealing the vulnerable man underneath the stiff formality, but The King’s Speech accomplishes more than simple humanization. It directly confronts the fact that the king is a figurehead—powerless, seemingly pointless. Underneath the pleasantries, this is a movie about what it means to be a figurehead, what makes a good one, and why it might not be so trivial a position as cynical snobs like, oh, me might believe. The King’s Speech might not be edgy, but it’s more provocative than I first credited.

In theaters.

I am officially reversing my stance on Westerns. Previously, I’ve been dismissive of what I perceived as an inherently archaic genre celebrating “the violent, lawless wilderness breached by the noble forces of civilization.” Even Westerns that rejected that model seemed trapped in the paradigm, like Dances With Wolves, which reverses the polarity but is, in many ways, just as simplistic. The brilliant, prematurely canceled TV series Deadwood—with its much more complicated, nuanced view of the conflicts between “wilderness” and “civilization”—made me reconsider, but I eventually judged it the exception that proves the rule. But True Grit has finally convinced me that it’s quite possible to tell a Western without that problematic wilderness/civilization binary overwhelming the drama.

The nineteenth-century frontier setting in True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen’s new movie, is entirely traditional—it’s a place of adventure, danger, and possibilities—but there’s not the sense of it being a place of darkness in contrast to light elsewhere (or vice versa). Maybe I overestimated the weight of the baggage from decades of Westerns past—or maybe I’m underestimating it now—but Grit feels alive and free in a way I hadn’t expected from the genre. I’m happy to be wrong.

In theaters.

My brother didn’t much care for Black Swan. He said the characters were less archetypal than one-dimensional, the story just a string of tired clichés, and the tone a discordant mess of ostentatiously Serious Drama and stereotypical horror tropes. I myself enjoyed the hell out the movie, but I couldn’t disagree with any of that—except, perhaps, the last part. The tone never struck me as discordant because I never took Black Swan seriously. If director Darren Aronofsky wanted his ballet extravaganza to say something meaningful and insightful about art or perfectionism or gender binaries—and I suppose he did—I don’t think he succeeded in that. But so what? I don’t care about his intention. Regardless of what it what it was meant to be, Black Swan is an absolutely decadent melodrama, amped up to a shriekingly high pitch, resplendent with all of Aronofsky’s mesmerizing cinematic style. That’s enough for me.

In theaters.

I’ve heard numerous people snidely describe Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final installment of the Harry Potter series, as one long chase scene, but that description actually implies more sustained intensity than either the book or the movie (at least Part 1) actually has. Sure, there are suspenseful sequences, but most of the time, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are neither chasing anyone nor being chased themselves. Instead, they’re in hiding, bickering endlessly as they wander about the wilds of Britain. 

That fitful pacing, with its odd spasms and drifts, didn’t bother me much on the page, but it’s glaringly, hilariously obvious on screen. All the beautiful, extended landscape shots just reinforce how little is going on, and the squabbles among the central trio feel overdone and melodramatic, to put it mildly. This is not a movie that could stand on its own without the full weight of the series behind it—but then again, it doesn’t have to be. As a vehicle for cameos from alumni of the previous films, it works well enough, and screenwriter Steve Kloves adroitly sets up the final showdown of Part 2. Even those long landscape shots, extraneous though they might be, truly are beautiful.

More than anything, though, Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is an opportunity to re-experience the book and showcase the young actors who have improved so much over the course of the series. If you’re a sentimental enough fan to appreciate it on those grounds, you’ll probably like it. If you’re not, you won’t. And if you’re somehow not familiar with the series (who are you?), you won’t get anything out of it at all. (Incidentally, because I am incredulous of the idea that someone could be both interested in this movie and ignorant of its source material, I’m going to discuss what would, in another situation, be considered spoilers. Recently awakened coma patients, consider yourself warned!)

In theaters.

The title is misleading—deliberately, ironically so, I suspect—because Facebook, the now ubiquitous social networking site, is not the subject of The Social Network. The network at the heart of the docudrama is much more traditional: the volatile relationships among a small group of bright, privileged young men, none of whom come across particularly well.

Given voice by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, known for his stylized, rapid-fire dialogue, the founders of Facebook and their rivals are articulate and crude, brilliant and oblivious, arrogant and insecure, occasionally charming and nearly always nastily misogynistic. In other words, they are immediately recognizable. Anyone who has ever attended college knows guys like this. I don’t know how accurate the history is, but there’s definitely some kind of truth here.

In theaters, theoretically, but easier to find on alternative platforms (Xbox LIVE, Amazon Video on Demand, etc.).

Somewhere along the line, I saw a preview for Centurion and decided I wanted to see it. I’d liked several of the relatively unknown actors in other movies (Michael Fassbender in Inglourious Basterds, for example) and was excited at the opportunity to watch them again. I’d heard interesting things about director Neil Marshall but had never checked out his break-out movie, The Descent, because horror really isn’t my thing, and a historical epic like Centurion looked more palatable. The preview’s sweeping panoramic shots of the wilds of Britain looked dramatic and gorgeous, totally the kind of thing I would love to experience on a big screen. I wasn’t expecting any kind of masterpiece, but it all looked exciting and fun. I added Centurion to my mental “to see” list.

And then, after the movie premiered, it was nearly impossible to find—and living in New York, I’m used to being able to see anything, both as soon as it’s released and weeks after. I eventually discovered that Centurion is one of those movies being released on various electronic platforms simultaneously with its theatrical release and that theaters are responding to this innovation by choosing not to show it at all. By the time I learned that, purely because I hate having even my most idle wishes thwarted, my desire to see Centurion had ramped up exponentially, so Sean and I ended up watching it On Demand (for significantly less than it would have cost to attend a theater, incidentally), and … it was okay. Completely … okay. And now I feel sort of silly about the whole deal.

On DVD and streaming on Netflix.

Clearly, I’ve played way too much Fallout 3 in my time because I could barely watch Zombieland without shrieking at the characters, who didn’t seem to have my hard-won expertise at surviving under post-apocalyptic conditions. “Shouldn’t you be foraging through that abandoned grocery store?” I’d cry. “Don’t just trash the place.” I’d shake my head in frustration when they wasted ammunition with celebratory shots in the air, and I never could handle the way they’d saunter blithely into an unfamiliar building instead of methodically scoping it out and clearing it. “These people deserve to die,” I’d grumble.

I’m not usually this insistent on practicality in suspense movies. (I rather liked Red Eye, for example, only recognizing after the fact how many flat-out idiotic mistakes Rachel McAdams makes in attempting to escape psycho Cillian Murphy.) But Zombieland pulls a bait-and-switch. The opening narration is all about our protagonist’s rules for surviving among the undead, and I was excited about this cinematic Zombie Survival Guide. Tips! But then it turns out that the movie isn’t so much about how to defeat zombies as it is about the value of community and how No Man Is an Island, et cetera, et cetera, and weirdly, this annoyed me no end. What’s more, the serious themes don’t gibe with the flip tone, making for a scattershot film, reveling in gross-out slapstick one minute and trying to do something semi-heartfelt the next. I couldn’t keep up with the record-skip mood shifts.

In theaters.

Like many people, I’ve tired of Michael Cera’s whiny, wavering, painfully awkward persona. It was cute back when he was on Arrested Development, but he’s not an adorable kid anymore, and the schtick has gotten very old. When I see that little-boy-lost face, hear that whimpering little voice, I want to throttle him and shout that it’s time to grow the hell up already.

Exasperated as I am with Cera, I wasn’t overly optimistic about his new movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but to my considerable amusement, telling his character to grow the hell up turns out to be the whole point of the movie. Every time I rolled my eyes at Scott, virtually all the other characters rolled their eyes at him, too—a very gratifying development indeed.

But there’s more to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World than eye rolling. Director Edgar Wright (who also cowrote the screenplay adapting Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of graphic novels) got his start working with Simon Pegg, directing the cult TV show Spaced and the brilliantly satiric movies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and with those collaborations, he’s developed a wonderful sense of style, an ability to craft action sequences that are both thrilling and hilarious. That talent serves him well with Pilgrim, which constantly references the aesthetic of O’Malley’s graphic novels as well as countless old video games while still functioning as a exuberant, glossy movie. Thematically, it doesn’t quite come together—the metaphors are hopelessly mixed—but it’s delightful to watch, definitely more fun than your average action comedy.