2011 Films: #23

#23 Young Adult


There's a part of me that thinks Diablo Cody has a little bit of the Woody Allen thing going on in that oftentimes the lead character in his films is a projection of himself, or part of himself, anyway. Since Annie Hall, Woody-lite has been played by Jason Bigg, Larry David (equally Jewish and neurotic) and most recently Owen Wilson. That said, Cody herself was not a pregnant teen (Juno) or a possessed cheerleader (Jennifer's Body), but YA feels like it could have a few twinges of autobiography in it.

Like Cody, Charlize Theron's Mavis Gary is a divorced writer living in Minneapolis. She generally smokes and drinks her way to passing out face-first alongside her purse dog. Her most successful venture to date is a young adult book series in the vain of Sweet Valley High. Finding herself unmotivated and ducking deadlines, she returns to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota for a mini-retreat. Cody's script, like Juno, holds nothing back in waging war on small town Minnesota, but whereas in Juno it was kitsch, here it is just mean-spirited. Much of that comes from Mavis' queen bee outlook; she is less than thrilled to be home. Pounding shots at a local watering hole, she runs into ex-classmate Matt Freehauf (an excellent Patton Oswalt), who walks with a cane due to a high school incident. Since Mavis is still stuck in high school, she blows him off completely at first before realizing she can use his help in achieving her ulterior motive--winning back her high school sweetheart Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). Never mind that he is married with a child--when you're as important as Mavis Gary is to the Mercury community, you can get whatever you want.

Or so she thinks. Theron is absolutely acerbic and brutal to the point of cringing, but more importantly she makes Mavis' inability to move on from the past feel believable. Patrick Wilson is great as a guy who inadvertently lets his ex in more than he means to, and Elisabeth Reaser is cute to the point of making you want to vomit as his wife; she plays drums in a band of all mothers called Nipple Confusion. And Patton Oswalt's Matt provides the voice of reason and harsh reality to Mavis' delusions and as such, the scenes between Oswalt and Theron are far and away the best. This is the second team-up for Cody and director Jason Reitman, and they again prove formidable, giving the audience a dark and often hilarious look at a woman who doesn't even realize she is unraveling. Even if she does--she's not about to admit it.

Happy Valen times!

2011 Films: #24

#24 Margin Call

In the wee hours of the morning sometime in 2008, Peter Sullivan (Heroes Zachary Quinto, this time sans  Spock ears or the ability to telekinetically cut people's foreheads) takes the USB drive given to him by his fired boss Eric(Stanley Tucci) and opens the report that he had been working on leading up to his termination. What Sullivan discovers is terrifying--the firm is on track to sink big time if their trading continues at its current rate and they will owe much more than they are worth. Yes, this is a dramatization of the hours leading up to the 2008 financial crisis; yes, this takes place at a mortgage securities firm; and yes, by dumbing it down for those of us who know less than nothing about finance, it makes a hard and confusing topic not only understandable, but kind of exciting as well.

From the minute Sullivan figures out the implications, the clock starts ticking to get out fast and save their futures/asses. The news is so huge that it gets all the way to Sullivan's boss's boss's boss's boss in a matter of an hour or less. He calls his buddy Seth (Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley) and his supervisor Will (creepy albino priest vengeful angel Paul Bettany) back in so that they can give him a second opinion. They proceed to hit the panic button and in comes Will's boss Sam (Kevin Spacey) and Sam's boss Jared (Simon Baker) and eventually, via helicopter, everyone's boss John (Jeremy Irons). No one is quite ready to dole out the blame, nor are they ready to give up their Grey Goose and Porsche convertible lifestyles. While Will and the youngsters go off to track down Eric at his Brooklyn home in an attempt to re-hire him, the higher-ups buckle down and try to plot their escape plan. Most conflicted is the veteran Sam, who knows that John and Jared are essentially asking him to put together a fire sale of worthless properties. First-timer J.C. Chandor nails the nuances, partially because his father worked at Merill Lynch for 30 some-odd years. There are some truly amazing shots of New York from their world above the plebes, and while John eats his world-class breakfast just like any other morning, Sarah (Demi Moore) gazes out onto the skyline as if it was a series of giant glass and metal dominoes. The movie falters a little in that it has an emergency board meeting or two too many; it resonates most in the one-on-one conversations. The cast is great (Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons? Come on!) and the dialogue generally flows. Margin Call is interesting, but more than that, it is important. Audiences will feel conflicted. On the one hand, we get a close look at the selfish pricks that allowed this to happen and chucked us into this mess. And on the other hand, we get to see that these selfish pricks are also quite human.

2011 Films: #25

#25 Super 8


In a year of love letters to old cinema (The Artist, Hugo), director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg released Super 8. Unlike the other two, this romanticizes the Kodak Super 8 camera and film technology, released in the late 1960s. Abrams, who also wrote the film, remembers fondly making his very first films on his parents Super 8.  "There's something about looking at analog movies that is infinitely more powerful than digital," he said in an interview leading up to the release of the film. Super 8, in both influence and actual involvement, feels very Spielberg-ian. It's got the "where the hell are the parents?" childhood adventure vibe of the Goonies and the otherworldly obsession of ET/Close Encounters/War of the Worlds. Make no mistake--it's and  Abrams' project, but it has Spielberg all over it.

Super 8 is set in Ohio in 1979 and follows a group of kids trying to make a Super 8 horror film to submit to a film fest in Cleveland. Our main adolescent protagonists are Joe (Joel Courtney), a wide-eyed wanderer with his heart on his sleeve; Charles (Riley Griffiths), the bossy film director; Alice (Elle Fanning), the muse and all-around boyhood crush; and the lovable goofball Cary (Ryan Lee). Joe's mother has just been killed in a crash and his father (Friday Night Lights' Kyle Chandler) is a sheriff who has absolutely no idea how to deal with their mutual grief. Joe, on the other hand, finds a distraction in the form of helping on the film (meant to be a short piece on zombies), and drooling over Alice. The night they go to shoot the movie, they end up capturing a nasty train crash, full of awesome explosions and train cars stacking on train cars. Little do they know, they've uncovered a bizarre army conspiracy.

The movie had some fantastic sequences, and the kids kept up a good and often believable chemistry. The dialogue between them was fun as well, using 70s kids slang like "mint" But when the dust settles on the conspiracy plot, it feels contrived and though its meant to tug at the heartstrings, it ultimately doesn't. Still, a worthwhile flick that fit perfectly into the summer blockbuster genre.

2011 Film: #26

#26 Mission Impossible: "Protocolo Fantasma"


I saw this film while on vacation in Barcelona. There were posters everywhere on the subway with above Spanish title. I made up a chant. It was in the style of a "Let's! Go! Red!" It went like this:

PROTO COLO FANTASMA!
PROTO COLO FANTASMA!
PROTO COLO FANTASMA!

The friends I was staying with awoke to the sounds of this chant in front of their bedroom at around 1:30 pm on New Year's Day. I make an awesome houseguest.

Upon its release and review, Protocolo Fantasma immediately received the "best of the franchise" tag. I am inclined to agree; even with Phillip Seymour Hoffman's star turn as the badass Owen Davian, the JJ Abrams-helmed MI3 is not quite as good as this one. International super agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) starts the film in Moscow prison. When one of their top agents gets axed, the IMF, led by Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton), sets up and springs Ethan from prison in a rather sweet action sequence. From there, the newly formed IMF squad tries to infiltrate the Kremlin (of course) and capture files on code name Colbalt, a would-be nuclear terrorist. A bomb goes off, everything goes to crap, and the trio escapes. They are blamed for the attack and thus have to institute "protocolo fantasma" (ghost protocol), meaning go completely off the grid. They are joined apprehensively by new IMF intelligence agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and follow the Cobalt trail to Dubai. MI4:PF is directed by Brad Bird, an animation veteran who directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille and his vision and experience lend themselves well to much of the big, crazy action in Dubai. There are of course plenty of almost-deaths--most notably the incredibly rad running-down-the-skyscraper stunt that Mr. Cruise performed himself--and plenty of IMF gadgets and gizmos that keep them ahead of the game. Dubai is a giant, futuristic city, perfect for an action flick of enormous magnitude. Total escapist fun.

Top 25 coming up soon!

2011 Film: #28 and #27

#28 A Dangerous Method

This is one of those films that proves why I am not quite in "real film critic" territory--one critic in the Twin Cities had it as his #1 of the year. It's a movie I respect the hell out of, absolutely, but it did not do as much as I had hoped for me considering its unquestionable pedigree. Director David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises, the cult favorite Crash) has a flair for the dark and psychological, so the pairing feels wine and cheese-like in how obvious it is. The film follows pyschoanalyst Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender, ubiquitous in 2011) in the very beginning stages of his work, observing and working on a "talking cure" for Sabrina (Keira Knightley) and forming a relationship with eventual mentor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen in his third team-up with Cronenberg). Sabrina is prone to strange, almost possessed attacks of bad memories, and Knightley--who should have gotten an Oscar nod for this one--physically nails it, shuddering, spittling, and sticking out her lower mandible like an upset orangutan. Sabrina and Jung's relationship becomes dangerously complex in the process, and as a result, Jung seeks the help of Freud in one of the film's many effective voiceover during letter-writing sections. Mortensen is highly entertaining as a booze-swilling, cigar-smoking Freud and eventually becomes interested in helping Sabrina as well, thus leading to a dangerously complex relationship between he and Jung. There are some very well-thought out shots and costumes, but the highlights in this slowish film are the three lead performances, with a great Fassbender rounding out the trio as a man stuck between his feelings and his professional morality.

#27 Rise of the Planet of the Apes

With his work in Apes and Tintin, Andy Serkis has gone on to prove he once again belongs in a category of his own. He is the King Midas of motion-capture technology. In the Lord of the Rings series, he brought pathos to an unlikeable character, and in King Kong, he found a way to humanize the legendary creature. Ditto goes for his performance as Caesar in the Planet of the Apes re-boot. A good friend of mine worked as assistant to director Rupert Wyatt, whose only previous credit for a feature was a crime drama called The Escapist. Here, he helmed a good reimagining of the series, whose previous claim to fame was possibly the best line of all time in Charlton Heston's "Get your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty ape (recycled in this one, awesome)." James Franco is Will Rodman, a scientist who watches a young ape show remarkable results after receiving a new drug and then go off the wall. This ape's son (Serkis) is hiding in the wings and rather than kill him like his boss has requested, Will brings him home to his father (John Lithgow), who is living with Alzheimer's and takes an immediate shine to the ape, naming him Caesar. Things are copacetic until a neighborhood incident gets the authorities called on Caesar, and he is forced into a primate sanctuary. Caesar struggles to fit in with the established apes and deals with the abusive, idiot sons of the sanctuary owner, especially Dodge (Tom Felton, better known for playing Draco Malfoy). The plans for an uprising begin. The film is a lot of fun to watch, but I can't say enough about Serkis as Caesar. He captures perfectly the confusion, fear and eventual rage that come with adolescence. He makes Caesar relatable, almost human.

2011 Films: #30(35) & 29

This is where it gets a little difficult. Everything from here on out (and to be fair, from about #35 on down), I enjoyed. So it gets a little bit like ranking Starburst flavors-all are delicious, and though strawberry is the inferior of the fruity chewables, I would choose it over, say, a handful of jujubees.

I am going to push this next one back to #35. I swear it will be the last time. So now
#34 Adjustment Bureau
#33 Everything Must Go
#32 A Better Life
#31 In Time
#30 Attack the Block


#35 Hesher


Joseph-Gordon-Levitt is a joy to behold as Hesher (known as Metalhead in Japan), the angry loner with the long hair who works his way into the lives of T.J. (Devin Burchu) and his widower father Paul (Rainn Wilson). All we know about Hesher is that he squats at abandoned house and lives in a van, smokes like a chimney, dislikes wearing shirts and often pants, has given himself several tattoos and is novice pyromaniac. T.J., clearly not dealing well with his grief, throws a rock through the window of a house where Hesher is squatting. Hesher gets pissed, so T.J. lets Hesher crash at their house. Paul is far too catatonic to protest, and his grandmother is far too old to. Hesher, smoking cigarettes, farting, walking around in tighty-whities, brings new life into the house, whether they want him to or not. It's sort of unclear most of the time whether he wants to or not either; there are times when he appears to be looking out for T.J.'s best interests and time where he seems to get off on screwing him over. Natalie Portman (who also produced) plays Nicole, the quirky crush with thick librarian glasses that befriends and comes between the unlikely duo. The movie is worth watching for Gordon-Levitt alone, but it was a little disappointing and a little too deceptively serious. The Portman subplot is predictable and kind of unnecessary, and the supporting cast offers little. Hesher's biggest problem is how uneven it is in tone. It's too serious to be comedy and too outrageous to be taken seriously. When Levitt is at his best though-lighting shit on fire, cursing and mumbling, giving deadpan deliveries-the movies tagline rings hilariously true: "Sometimes life gives you the middle finger, sometimes it gives you Hesher."

#29 Thor 


With the exceptions of Halle Berry's Catwoman, Ben Affleck's Daredevil, and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, superhero movies have been synonymous with box-office and often critical success. Hollywood put together a smart long-term, buzz-creating plan when they created solo films for individual members of the Avengers over the last few years. Iron Man and the Hulk were joined by Captain America (didn't see it) and Thor as members of team Avenger to get their own blockbuster. Thor, helmed by Shakespeare aficionado Kenneth Branagh, was fun and boisterous, full of intergalactic Scandinavian bravado. Chris Hemsworth made for a perfect hero, a walking piece of sheetrock with long blond hair. On the distant planet Asgard, Thor and his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) both are vying to be heir to Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Together, they wage war against the ruthless frost giants. When Thor gets too aggro for his own good, Odin checks him and sends he and Mjolnir (his hammer, duh) rocketing down to earth for a taste of the common life. There, three scientists (Stellan Skarsgaard, Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings) discover him and take him for observation. Thor of course is bent on getting back his hammer and returning via space portal to Asgard to take back the throne from his scheming brother, but best believe there is plenty of ridiculousness (and punching) along the way as he tries to blend into life on earth. Fun stuff.

2011 Films: #32-31

#32 In Time


In the not-so-distant future, time has replaced money as currency. Every human has this rad-looking green digital clock on their wrists that ticks down as their "accounts" get lower and lower. The human model has been genetically enhanced so that no one will age physically past 25. The scientific advances are one part population control and one part social Darwinism. Will, saving all his time to spend on his mother (Olivia Wilde)'s birthday, is out at the bar with his pal (Big Bang's Johnny Galecki) when a man with over a century left on his clock comes in and starts flashing his time carelessly as if it were a Rolex watch. This garners the attention of the timekeepers (cops) fronted by Raymond (Cilian Murphy) and they give chase but Will and the man escape. After he wakes up in the morning, Will realizes the century has been transferred to him (people can share time by pressing wrists together...that could have been better thought-out by the filmmakers) and the man is dead. You guessed it-Will's accused of killing him and goes on the lam, becoming involved eventually with rich prick Phillipe Weis(Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser) and one of his daughters (Amanda Seyfried). I thought that the concept of In Time put a cool twist on the "clock is ticking" chase/action genre. Things were kind of corny (wrist-sharing, Olivia Wilde as Justin Timberlake's mother, cheesy "that coffee cost me four minutes?" reminders) but also kind of clever (the boomerang sound made when time is passed between people, Kartheiser introducing his wife and daughters who all look exactly the same, the paying out of time to enter wealthier "zones"). Better than you might think.

#31 Attack the Block


You ever notice how every time an alien blockbuster comes out, the CGI aliens always have the same cone-like head, bony composition, E.T. fingers? Not the case in Attack the Block, a strangely fresh and clever take on an alien invasion. First-time director (and British person) Joe Cornish imagines up what an alien attack might look like in East London in a horror/sci-fi/comedy mash-up. We dive right into the action with Moses (John Boyega) and his four teenage friends holding up a nurse (Jodie Whittaker) at knife-point. She gives them her purse and they celebrate in their hybrid cockney Brit ghettospeak ("innit" and "fam" used almost interchangeably) when out of nowhere, a meteor looking thing slams into a car and smashes it to pieces. Out from the wreckage comes a grotesque something or other that looks like a giant white dog with sharp teeth and it slashes Moses across the face. Moses exacts revenge, and he and his cronies carry the thing's carcass around the East End like a giant rotting trophy until they bring it to weed kingpin Ron (Nick Frost) for safekeeping. Before too long, the creature is joined by multiple similar creatures that come careening down to earth, but rather than white, they are covered in black fur and green-glowing sets of fangs. Moses and his crew grab everything they can (samurai sword, knife, bottle rockets and firecrackers) and ready themselves to defend their block. At times a little gory, Attack the Block is more fun than anything else, just as much for trying to decipher the high-wired teenagers and their ghettospeak than it is to watch them in attack mode.