Category: Movies

On DVD and streaming on Netflix.

Much to my amusement, the movie’s English subtitles conspicuously neglect to translate the title card. That is, of course, because the book that English-speaking readers know as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was first published in Sweden as Män som hatar kvinnor—literally, Men Who Hate Women. Sure, American publishers have been known to replace quirky, distinctive non-English titles with dull, generic titles, but in this case, I think they did author Stieg Larsson a favor. Men Who Hate Women is a hilariously unsubtle and thus hilariously appropriate label for the grim, plodding work—or at least the Swedish film adaptation of it. (The inevitable American version is in production now.) I admit, I haven’t read the wildly successful book or its two sequels, but having seen the movie (which is, to my knowledge, scrupulously faithful to Larsson’s bestseller), I don’t feel any need to do so.

In theaters.

The echoes of the Bourne movies are impossible to miss. Preternaturally gifted assassin protagonist—check. Assassin goes rogue—check. Shadowy puppet-masters attempt to determine just what the titular assassin is up to—check. Assassin may have grudging allies among the puppet-masters—check. Highly choreographed on-location action scenes—check. Explosions, gun fights, and improbable leaps from one moving vehicle to another—check, check, check. Evelyn Salt might be more likely to use a maxipad to staunch blood flow from a bullet wound (which is actually kind of hilarious and awesome), but other than that, she and Jason Bourne are essentially the same character, right down to the chiseled physique, stoic demeanor, and ninja-like reflexes.

But despite the glaring similarities between Salt and Bournes Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum, Salt doesn’t begin to measure up to its predecessors. It’s not a problem of execution, though: Salt might be a knock-off, but it’s not a cheap knock-off. Angelina Jolie was born to play superhuman roles like this, and she’s backed up by a great supporting cast, including Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and August Diehl. Director Phillip Noyce is no Paul Greengrass, but he’s talented enough to keep the energy up and pull off a few rollickingly good sequences.

No, the problem with Salt is in the fundamentals, past the look-alike plots into the storytelling itself. The Bourne movies might not be cinéma vérité, but they take place in a recognizable contemporary world. Salt, by contrast, is utter nonsense—worse, dated nonsense, like someone awkwardly dolled up a forgotten McCarthy-era screenplay in modern-day garb and CGI. And why the hell would anyone want to do that?

In theaters.

The remorseless sense of detail is what first captures your attention. Set in the Missouri Ozarks, based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, who calls that area home, Winter’s Bone inhabits a world of bare trees and stray dogs, lined faces and tumbledown shacks. The impoverished rural community where heroine Ree Dolly lives is not the kind of locale that usually turns up on movie screens, so at first, that setting is all you can see. But once you acclimate, the story’s mythic arc becomes visible—strong and tense and enormously compelling.

Woodrell’s work is sometimes described as “country noir” (the subtitle of one of his books is, in fact, “A Country Noir”), but that doesn’t seem quite right here. Tonally speaking, Winter’s Bone is less criminal underworld and more hellish Underworld. Like Orpheus, Ree plunges down, ignoring all advice against doing so, resolute in the way of one who believes she has no other choice, because she is on a mission to find someone lost. Ree’s quest is not romantic, not even particularly affectionate (at least not toward the man she seeks), but she holds to it doggedly. She is an epic hero in a painfully realistic world.

In theaters.

Sean wanted to see magic and explosions in addition to dark dreamscapes this past weekend, so we spent a lot of time at the movie theater. I wasn’t nearly as excited about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as I was about Inception, but I can compromise. Besides, the preview reminded me a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean, for which I have perhaps too soft a spot, so I figured, what the hell. Broad, campy performance at the center; arch, knowing humor; grand but goofy special effects—I can be into that.

Unfortunately for me, I was too optimistic. Oh, sure, Nicolas Cage is game, giving his kooky all, and that’s fun enough, but the movie itself is shambling and lifeless. Six people share credit for the screenplay, and it shows. The movie is packed with tacked-on character motivations and poorly conceived backstory, and the previews give away all the best special effects, so even that bright spot has been aggressively dimmed. Pirates, I think, is dumb in a fun, clever, energetic way; Sorcerer is dumb in a dumb way, which isn’t much fun at all.

In theaters.

Is this how writer-director Christopher Nolan dreams? My own dreams are chaotic, flotsam-and-jetsam ordeals, so the systematic, clockwork dreams of Nolan’s Inception leave me puzzled, not so much because of their complexity but because of their weirdly antiseptic, rational nature. Like an android’s explanation of love, the movie is coolly fascinating, compelling in its own odd way, yet fundamentally flawed: It isn’t wrong, per se, but neither is it whole. I spent a couple days turning Nolan’s movie over in my mind, trying to figure out why it left me intrigued but utterly unmoved, and I finally concluded that it’s that seemingly alien quality that keeps Inception at a remove. Straightforward narratives have no place in dreams. By hewing to one, Inception makes itself a mere curiosity.

In theaters.

The story is remarkably straightforward, with barely half a dozen characters, no subplots to speak of, no meta-narratives or endless riffs on pop culture. The ostensibly villainous hero might disguise the movie’s nature, but underneath that, Despicable Me is retelling the simplest of fables: It is a tale about the power of love to make us better people.

Such fables can come across as naive. As one who once wrote an essay lambasting the message of the classic Beatles’ song “All You Need Is Love,” I know that well (and, for the record, I stand by that essay). But I think the slickly animated Despicable Me manages to avoid insufferable rosiness. The details in the story’s arc feel specific and true, and the protagonist’s incremental transformation feels earned in its own fairy-tale sort of way.

In theaters.

When Brooke mentioned she might like to see a Bollywood movie during her visit, I was delighted. I hadn’t seen one of those Hindi-language musical extravaganzas since a binge back in grad school, but I knew one of the theaters in Times Square nearly always features a single Bollywood film on its roster, so we went there—not knowing anything about the movie in question—to check it out.

As Bollywood roulette goes, we could have done far worse. I Hate Luv Storys [sic] is a harmless little modern-day romance—not half as clever as it thinks it is, but sweet, with its heart in the right place. Much of the humor involves tweaking Bollywood conventions, so Brooke and I would have gotten more out of that if we were better acquainted with the genre (it took me ages to place the several references to Devdas), yet the meta-ness of it all wasn’t as much of an obstacle as I feared. A climactic dash to the airport, for example, is a rom-com cliché in any language.

In theaters.

In the finale to the first season of Mad Men, in an already classic scene (seriously, Google “mad men carousel” and you get more than 70,000 pages), Don Draper describes the allure of nostalgia in a pitch for an ad campaign for Kodak’s new carousel slide projector:

Nostalgia—it’s delicate but potent. … In Greek, nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. … It takes us to a place where we ache to go again … around and around and back home again to a place where we know we are loved.

It’s a gorgeous scene, in part because it reclaims the idea of nostalgia as something beautiful. In contemporary culture, the word has been sullied by its association with dumb reality programming about washed-up sitcom stars and uninspired remakes of 1980s kids’ shows. Too often, nostalgia is something cheap to sneer at, but in that scene on Mad Men, it’s precious again—an idealization, yes, but something comforting and good, something childlike in the best sense, something that can bring out the best in us. And yet it’s a painful beauty. As Don delivers the pitch, he uses the slide projector to show slides of his own family in happy times—times that are slipping away from him. The sense of impermanence and fragility gives the scene another layer of poignancy, as does the needling thought that part of the reason Don’s wife and children are slipping away is the fact that he wants to see them only as a frozen, crystalline ideal; he’s not equipped to meet them where they are, to relate to them as changing and imperfect people, as a changing and imperfect person himself.

In an odd way, that conception of nostalgia—as something but beautiful but sharp-edged—informs the dramatic arc of Toy Story 3, the culmination of a series that has a long history of dealing with heavy themes in a light, delicate way. In the first movie, Buzz Lightyear’s existential crisis is central to the story; the theme of the second is not just that it’s better to have loved and lost but also that loss is inevitable. The movies easily work as cute, clever children’s flicks, but the underlying emotional resonance is what makes them special.

Toy Story 3 follows in that tradition with typical humor and insight. It sprawls more than its predecessors—more characters, more action—but when it collects itself for the final punch, it’s as good as anything the incomparable Pixar has ever done. I was skeptical of the idea of a third Toy Story movie (and I’m still nervous about the upcoming sequels to Cars and Monsters Inc.), but the studio handles it beautifully. Toy Story 3 is a delightful movie in its own right and a tender farewell to its much-loved characters.

In theaters.

Note: Technically, this post indulges in some spoilers, but as the movie in question is based on historical fact, I didn’t see the point in being coy. Plus, to write about what I wanted to write about, I had to get into a few major plot points. Be forewarned.

Despite being one of the highest grossing films in the history of Spain, Agora (which features an English-speaking cast) is showing on fewer than a handful of screens in the United States, and given its subject matter, it’s not difficult to figure out why. The movie is at the very least deeply skeptical of religion in general and Christianity in particular, and that’s not exactly a welcome perspective in this country.

Yet it’s not a malicious movie. It has more nuance than I expected, and with Rachel Weisz’s luminous, compassionate performance at its center, it could never be hateful. Agora won’t ever be a blockbuster here, but surely this compelling, provocative film could find more of an audience—more than just a few theaters’ worth—given a chance.

In theaters.

Looking back on what I wrote about the first Iron Man, I feel a bit like a killjoy. Plenty of people whose opinions I respect greatly (Sean, for example) adored the movie, and although this might not always be apparent, I don’t enjoy stomping all over things that other people love, especially when I love those people.

I wouldn’t take a word back, though. For better or worse, that post honestly and accurately describes my experience with the blockbuster. Certain elements I enjoyed—Robert Downey Jr.’s performance chief among them—but other elements troubled me so much that the whole movie darkened with them. This is, no doubt, what my Uncle George would describe as my “overthinking things,” but I don’t concede the point. If something isn’t worth thinking about, why bother with it at all?

So here I am, sad but resolute, preparing to dive into Iron Man 2. Sean, I’m sorry. Uncle George, you may commence the eye-rolling.