Coriolanus - 2012 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler
Director:  Ralph Fiennes

It's difficult to rate Shakespeare films - so long as they are not staged ineptly, the scripts are probably gonna be pretty good.  Coriolanus is a 21st century update of the Shakespeare tragedy, and the 21st century nature doesn't seem to take away its power.  Comparing it to the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, for instance - that film plays up its modernity, setting its soliloquies in commercial setting; this one never really revels in its updatedness.

One negative is that it's difficult to properly parse the relationship between Coriolanus and his wife and mother - whether scenes between them were cut out (I doubt this, though alas I've never read the play) or the modern staging takes away from the bond he and his mother have, I'm not sure, but I felt like that central relationship was not fully addressed.  Either that or I was just distracted by Coriolanus's war scenes and tempestuous rows and had no patience for the quieter talking scenes.

Prince Avalanche - 2013 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch
Director:  David Gordon Green

I heard an interview with the leads of this film on NPR when it was released, and one of the reasons for it being set in the 1980s was to ensure that cell phones didn't ruin its central conceit - two guys largely cut off from the trappings of civilization.  Great - but Rudd's character seems like your prototypical film protagonist these days.  He's decidedly not a man-child, but he has other issues with accepting his lot.  His natural daffiness is at odds with his character's emphasis on self-sufficiency.  Overall it's a good little movie, but one unfortunate, obvious montage struck it down to a 3 star film.

The Twelve Chairs - 1970 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Ron Moody, Frank Langella
Director:  Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks films don't often have tonal issues - they are usually straight comedies.  Perhaps this film is also a straight comedy, but the film functions as a mismatched buddy comedy where we don't know enough about either person to say how mismatched they are.  I love Mel Brooks and I like what he's trying to do here, but either the humor is too old-fashioned or the film doesn't succeed at what it's trying to do.  There are still some solid scenes, but ultimately it feels like a mish-mash.  And I like using the word 'but' to contrast the beginning of the sentence with the end.

The Raid: Redemption - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim
Director:  Gareth Evans

One of the virtues of a great action film is lack of exposition - I always admired Predator's ability to get us right into the chopper with Arnold, Jesse, Carl, and all the rest in less than five minutes.  The Raid: Redemption doesn't quite achieve that level of elegance, but it's awful close.  What follows that tiny bloodless beginning is a smorgasboard of punches, kicks, stabs, and gunshots.  All manner of death and dismemberment are on display.  The film throws in some exposition midway through and it becomes a bit of a grind at the end - likely a product of the lack of character development at the beginning.  Still, American action films should take a hint - your movie doesn't need to be 150 minutes to be awesome.

This is an Indonesian film - make sure you see this before you see An Act Of Killing, or you'll think Indonesia is filled with bloodthirsty monsters.

Cosmopolis - 2012 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon
Director:  David Cronenberg

Cosmopolis is an ideas movie, so even though it has way too many ideas, I love it anyway.  Featuring Pattinson as a brooding financial wunderkind eking through Manhattan traffic in his limousine, the film manages to be visually interesting and does not induce claustrophobia.  I imagine the novel's ideas are more fully fleshed out, but as an 100 minute discourse on our techno-dystopia and how the whims of a few affect the bottom lines of many, you can't do much worse.  I also have an affinity for films who suggest infinities outside of themselves - this one sprawls out in all directions.

The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp - 1943 - 4½ Stars

Actors:  Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr
Director:  Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

I imagine this film is adapted from a novel, and one of the trickiest things about adapting novels to film is showing character changes.  A novel takes days to read, in which the characters stew about in your mind - they coalesce and evanesce.  Here you've got less than three hours to show the journey of a man from early manhood to old age - how do you make the shifts in his life not seem forced?

Blimp... has some masterful montages and monologues that help it tell this story.  Very little in the plot seems contrived - this is to say that at no point do you think 'the story has to go here' and then it does.  We don't know where it's necessarily headed, and if you're telling someone's life story (fictional or actual), that's the best job you can do.

The Comedy - 2012 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim
Director:  Rick Alverson

Most of what I've heard about this film beforehand is that the title 'The Comedy' is misleading, but it's actually pretty accurate.  This isn't to say that The Comedy is funny, because it's not (nor is it anti-comedy, despite the Tim and Eric starring roles), but it could be - it's more an examination of comedy.  What if someone was trying to be funny, only he didn't find himself funny, nor did he have an audience for his humor?  That's The Comedy.

There's no real arc to the film so it's hard for me to rate it any better than this.  It's sort of an anti-Samsara - we need to get Heidecker's character into a theater so he can check that one out, and maybe riff on it a bit.  To a degree, it's a film that doesn't need to be watched, just explained to other people; it may be better as a concept than an actual piece of art. On the other hand, a non-watcher would miss out on Heidecker's performance, which is quite good.