Zero Dark Thirty - 2012 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke
Director:  Kathryn Bigelow

Films steeped in history where one character knows he or she is right and the rest of the characters don't believe him or her are problematic.  We know whether the character is right or wrong, but that doesn't make his or her convictions about the rightness or wrongness of the claim any more dubious or certain.  People guess right all the time.  This is even more problematic when the 'history' we're talking about happened a year before the film's release.

Zero Dark Thirty would be an incredible film if I didn't know the story, but since I know the story, the tension is gone.  It's a stunning piece of film craft (and indeed, of US propaganda), and I got to study the film craft, because I wasn't distracted by the story.

The Marinovich Project - 2011 - 4 Stars

Subject:  NFL quarterback Todd Marinovich's rise and fall (and rise)

Director:  John Dorsey, Andrew Stephan

People tend to think of athletes who failed to live up to their potential as contempible.  Chuck Klosterman wrote a fascinating piece about Ralph Sampson, who was a good-not-great NBA player who still managed to disappoint people with how not-great he ended up being.  Marinovich's story seems to be indeed that he got lost in other people's narrative of what he was expected to do.   I'm not sure about the craft of the documentary, but it was an interesting choice having Marinovich on the beach telling his life story.

It wouldn't be a 30 for 30 without a subconscious jab at the NCAA - amazing how responsible it seems to be for messing up careers.

Computer Chess - 2013 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Patrick Riester, Wiley Wiggins
Director:  Andrew Bujalski

To what extent should we give credit to a film for getting the 'look' of a thing right?  Sure, all the early 80s haircuts and nerd mannerisms are in place in Computer Chess.  The black and whiteness of the film helps establish this feel (chess is also a game only in black and white, get it?).  However, Computer Chess can't really decide if it's a lo-fi comedy or a fictional examination of the people who would make computers play chess against one another in the early 1980s.  Are these people risible or compelling?  Furthermore, Computer Chess merely sketches the characters and expects us to fill in the gaps - I suppose part of the issue is that people who would program computers to play chess are not ultimately either that interesting or risible.

The Act Of Killing - 2013 - 4 Stars

Subject:  Indonesians involved in 1965 slaughter of Communist revolutionaries re-enact their roles for a movie

Director:  Joshua Oppenheimer

The Act Of Killing examines gigantic questions - the effect of conscience on one's health and happiness, the role and power of art in human socieities, the ways in which art and life are linked, the combinaton of allure and revulsion with which humanity responds to violence, the extent to which winners write history, how corruption in its modern and archaic senses are inextricably linked.  The fact that one film tackles all of these things (and indeed offers few answers) is an incredible achievement.  I can either write 20 more words about it or 2000, and indeed, 20 should suffice for now.  

I suspect in a few years this will stand as one of the great documentaries of our time - I rate it 4 stars because I find it hard to rate documentaries as highly as narrative films (the lumpiness inherent to the genre sometimes makes for confused viewing).

Not Fade Away - 2012 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  John Magaro, James Gandolfini
Director:  David Chase

There's a point in Not Fade Away where I was disgusted.  I thought David Chase had made a simpering, yay-me, yay-us, thinly veiled memoir pic.  And about the goddamn mid 1960s, a period in time I could not be less interested in.  He had done such an effective job of convincing me of this that I had forgotten this was made by David Chase.  Indeed, I shouldn't've been worried at all.

There's a clue in the movie about how the movie's going to end, but it's still a ballsy choice.  I sure hope this thing made its money back, because I want to see what David Chase can do if he's turned away from memoir-type pictures.

Margin Call - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany
Director:  J.C. Chandor

Note:  Minor Spoilers Ahead

Margin Call is probably the overall best film I've seen about high finance.  Stories about high finance that also peddle in morals always have two problems:  being super-rich always looks really awesome in movies, and the montage where our protagonist learns how to cheat people out of money looks fun instead of soul-destroying.  Margin Call avoids the stylish montage and flaunting the trappings of the hyper-rich.  It contains speeches, but doesn't pound you over the head with its points.  This is a movie for Adults - sadly, too few of these are made.

I want to rate this film higher because of my appreciation of its craft, but it's not a very exciting movie.  The characters aren't sharply drawn, which is part of the point.  The camera work is functional - again, part of the point, no whiz-bang effects.  I doubt anyone decides to study finance because they saw Margin Call when they were young.

Frances Ha - 2013 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner
Director:  Noah Baumbach

Female friendships seem both more natural and more daunting than male ones.  They can be more intimate and therefore more fleeting.  Things that seem true when people are in the same environment (like college) change when people enter actual society - what we expect out of a career, in relationships, etc. changes significantly.  Or maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but that's what's depicted on-screen in Frances Ha.

Gerwig stars (and co-wrote) as a would-be modern dancer trying to make a living off that in New York City.  Her performance, and indeed, all the performances are excellent.  The film makes the point that when you lie to your best friend it's often because you're lying to yourself, too - it's not meant to be hurtful.

The End Of Summer - 1961 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Ganjiro Nakamura, Setsuko Hara
Director:  Yasujiro Ozu

I was tempted to start this entry with something remarkably crude about people who don't like Ozu (creating a natural juxtaposition with Ozu's obsession regarding social graces), but there's no call for that, is there?  Ozu is a masterful director, but his films are certainly not for everyone.

This film feels very un-Ozu, as it opens on neon signs and the first scene is set in a bar.  Eventually we get rolling with a complicated family relationship (one which, were I presented with pictures and names, I don't think I'd be able to sort out who's who - there's even a point in the movie where Ozu puts in a scene of blatant exposition involving some side characters making sure we know how everyone's related).  It's hard to know what's the foreground and background in Ozu films - times in Japan are changing.  The modes of dress among old and young are different.  The ways in which people go about their business are also different.  We see how these things affect the way the characters interact with one another.

There's a bit of (surprising) hamfistedness here, but in all, it's another wonderful examination of how everyday people live.

This Is The End - 2013 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel
Director:  Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

Note:  Minor Spoilers Ahead, Plus A Long Mini-Essay With Spoilers

How much of the Apatow/Feig type oeuvre would you have to have seen to find this film funny, I wondered?  It stars the actors who've tended to dominate comedy films over the last 5 to 10 years, playing exaggerated versions of themselves while making references to their acting resumes.  Whatever the case, the movie worked on me, and I wasn't sure it would.  What could have been a meta-film was played remarkably straight - I don't think anyone says at any point 'This is like a movie!' or something asinine like that.  Besides an extended parody to The Exorcist (spoiled in the commercials), direct allusions to other movies either weren't there or went over my head.  The laughs diminish as the plot winds down, but isn't that always the way?  Whoever manages to do the reverse in comedy will be a millionaire.

MINI ESSAY ABOUT THE MEANING OF THIS FILM VIS-A-VIS FUTURE FILMS

One thing this movie plays with is the idea that the Apatow/Feig genre seems to feature lazy characterization in general - that as bro hangout type movies, the characters aren't well defined as anything except for versions of the actor that the actor has already portrayed.  I'm not sure I believe this - I think Seth Rogen's character in Funny People is actually well-acted and quite un-Seth Rogen-y at points - but certainly there's something to this idea.

A caveat to the proceeding:  I haven't seen much of James Franco's dramatic work.  I saw Spiderman and Freaks and Geeks, but besides Pineapple Express (which I've only seen half of), I don't consider Franco under the Apatow umbrella.

This film is an apotheosis of sorts.  For one, it nicely seems to preclude other films starring these actors as themselves - I mean, obviously retconning wouldn't be out of place in this genre, but the film ends with the world in ruins.  However, it puts the image of these people 'playing themselves' into our minds.  I don't think it will take away from their future dramatic performances, whatever they may be, but I think their comedy performances may be affected.  Where can they go with characterization from here?  What kind of fake job and life can they invent for a Seth Rogen surrogate to be embodied by his amiable yet hilarious-to-anger stoner?  I guess to some degree it doesn't matter - Rogen is 31 and aging out of this genre, or so one would think.  Regardless, by playing themselves as wealthy Hollywood types, the actors do distance themselves from the audience somewhat (although one could argue that with the preponderance of TMZ-type revelations and WTF-style interviews, a certain audience is much closer to these people than they might otherwise be despite the gap in income and/or success).

However, the one thing that seems to keep these people alive comedically, as well as the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost combination, regardless of their wealth and fame, is a love of cinema.  I saw a stand-up comic's performance and everything was basically about his life as a stand-up comedian - things he saw in hotels and on planes, people he met at bars, things that happened when he went to perform somewhere.   The material was good but not 100% relatable - everything he said felt like a performance, nothing seemed all that vital.  The beauty of the bottomless chasm that is cinema's navel is that one only needs to retain one's inner fanboy to remain vital in a culture where Movies are king.  One can be rich and famous but as long as the characters one portrays on screen are still quoting movies and the films themselves are using movies as cultural currency, they work.  I think.  We'll see.

Bernie - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine
Director:  Richard Linklater

Hollywood's portrayal of small-town folks has often been a concern for this blog.  Despite seeming to be the exact sort of person that would enjoy it, I abhor condescension on screen, and I don't like the way rural areas of the United States are typically depicted:  either full of eccentrics, bumpkins, or both.  Now while Bernie's full of both eccentrics and bumpkins, there isn't anyone there to try to teach them to be better or different.

Jack Black's portrayal of a Southern churchgoing (assistant) funeral director is excellent - he too stops from playing the character with a wink to the audience.  The personality is naturally a ham, so there is no need to add more.  A complicated film - at bottom, it seems to be about what social obligations mean in a town where everyone knows everyone.

Premium Rush - 2012 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon
Director:  David Koepp

Somehow it's become de rigueur that any action film in a large city involves large parts of it on fire or blowing up.  Whether it's a catharsis for the attacks of September 11th, 2001 or some inborn desire to see harmless chaos, I don't really care - I do know that it's fundamentally boring and uncinematic.  Here's a better story:  the adrenaline rush of the mundane coupled with a loopy story.

Premium Rush has all sorts of plot problems - it even falls into the trap of ensuring that our protagonist is a genius who has chosen to live his life a certain way - but when a film has several great action setpieces, who cares?   The film loses steam in its final third as we wind our way to the conclusion, but more movies should be like this.  I don't want to blow cities up, I want to see their hidden thrills, licit or otherwise - on this scale, Premium Rush is a smashing success.

The Loneliest Planet - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Hani Furstenberg, Gael Garcia Bernal
Director:  Julia Loktev

Films like The Loneliest Planet exist in the imagination.  As such, they offer few answers.  And they're sort of a chore to watch, too, because to get the mind into this state of contemplation is not easy - the plot and characterization needs to be spare.  The characters are blank slates on which we project our cultural expectations.  They don't even necessarily talk much, because talking is the quickest way to ruin this state of contemplation.

However, films like this grow better as they fulminate and coalesce in the mind; their power grows the more one thinks about them.  I don't think all films should be more like this, but I think fans of film should make sure to seek out a movie like this every so often to readjust one's expectations of what a film can do.