Arthur Christmas

This movie was not on my Must List. There was SO MUCH coming out this week in particular that I wasn't going to be bothered with a holiday kids movie. It looked cute, but the teaser didn't grab me, and I could probably catch it on television eventually. But when people started seeing it, they were saying how clever and funny it was, and then I remembered that Aardman was involved, so I gave it a go, and I'm SO glad I did. If you're looking for a family film and you've already seen The Muppets, and maybe you'd like to see something with a similar kind of dry humor that you might associate with Harry Potter or Doctor Who, I humbly submit Arthur Christmas for your consideration.


I had intended to use a picture of Arthur, GrandSanta, and Bryony in the oldschool sleigh, but this picture pushed my "awwwww" button so hard, I was compelled to use it instead.

We start with the little girl in the picture above. She's writing a letter to Santa, and she has all kinds of questions about how Santa-ing works. At least one of her questions is answered in a shot of a series of framed photographs in a corridor at Christmas headquarters. No, the Santa she's writing to is not the same person as Saint Nicholas. He was the original, but the title has passed down, father to son, to the current Santa (voiced by Jim Broadbent). We also learn that Santa doesn't actually read the letters that are sent to him. That job is delegated to the Mail Room, which is where we find Arthur (James McAvoy), Santa's younger son, who is the biggest fan of Christmas EVER. He writes a very sweet reply to the little girl, assuring her that Santa is very much real, and keeping the drawing she sent pinned to the wall behind his desk.

Arthur's older brother is Steve (Hugh Laurie), who is pretty much the brains of the operation. He's taken Christmas Eve into the 21st Century, making present drops a well oiled machine, run by thousands of elves, with Santa only placing one ceremonial present in each town where their huge spaceship of a sleigh stops. I love the little ninja action of the elves and that everyone in the operation has a smartphone with GPS and naughty/nice gauge. :P So everything's going swimmingly, and they return to the North Pole to have Christmas dinner, celebrate another "Mission Accomplished" (yes, there's a Bush-era-esque banner), and get some well-earned rest.

Except there's a problem. There's a present still undelivered. Which means a child got missed. And what a coincidence - it's the little girl we met in the beginning. Arthur is very upset - she's going to wake up and think Santa doesn't care about her! Or doesn't exist! Steve assures him that they'll messenger the package and she'll get it in five days, but that's not good enough for Arthur - it will ruin the magic! Steve says there's not another way - they can't take the super-sleigh back out, because it just traveled 7 million miles or summat in one night. And his feeling is that it's not a big deal if only one child out of all those millions is missed - it's only a tiny margin of error, after all. The rest of the film is Arthur's quest to deliver this present and preserve the magic of Christmas for this one child, with the help of GrandSanta (Bill Nighy) and a gift wrap elf named Bryony.

There are a lot of great little details. One of my favorite things is Bryony and her bow porn - she's loaded her smartphone with pictures of bows like you or I would load an iPhone with pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch. Not that I have done any such thing, and how DARE you insinuate such a thing! And I looooooooved GrandSanta and his efforts to prove that Christmas can be done without all this newfangled-ry. And the newfangled-ry itself is quite a clever commentary on how crazy the commercial aspect of Christmas has become.

This movie - the basic story, anyway - reminded me a lot of the Book of Mormon musical, and I'm not sure I can explain why without going into spoilers. For those of you who've seen the musical, though, Arthur is totally the Elder Cunningham and Steve the Elder Price; the journeys of their characters are very similar. "I'll be the candle" may be my favorite line from any film this year. My favorite image, though, is of the four generations of Santa, peeking through the closet door at a sight none of them has ever seen - the look on a child's face on Christmas morning.

LOVED this movie, and it was the perfect thing to see to put me in the holiday spirit. I hope many of you get a chance to see it and that it does the same for you. If you do Christmas, of course. :-)

The Muppets

Alrighty, here we go. The Muppets. Bottom line. Absolutely back to the spirit of the classic Muppet movies and the television show. If you have any lingering affection for these creatures at all, you will enjoy it. I have a couple of quibbles, but the joy here is far too large to be undone.

There. If you plan to see it, that's all you need. Read nothing. Watch no clips. Just let the joy wash over you, then come back. You know, if you want. No one's making you, jeez!

And now, if you've seen it already, here's a closer look.



You know the story. Even if you'd never seen a trailer or read anything else about it, you could have guessed without much difficulty. The Muppet Studios in LA are about to be torn down by an evil oil magnate unless the Muppets can raise the $10 million needed to keep it. So they decide to put on a show - a telethon to raise the money. It all starts, however, with a man named Gary and his muppet brother Walter.

Walter is the Muppets' biggest fan. He grew up watching the show and the movies, and Kermit and the gang were his refuge when the world wasn't so kind to him. It's not easy bein' felt, yo. So when Walter gets a chance to go on a trip to Hollywood and visit the old Muppet Studio, it's the greatest day of his life. What he doesn't know until he gets there is that the studio has fallen on hard times. No one is there now except an old guide giving $5 tours, almost all the attractions are closed, and everything is in a serious state of disrepair and disuse. He sneaks into Kermit's old office and overhears a plan to turn the studios into a Muppet Museum, but that's just a cover. The greasy Tex Richman plans to tear everything down and dig for oil.

Walter is deeply upset - he screams for like five minutes - and he's determined to Do Something. He and Gary, along with Gary's lady friend Mary, find Kermit's house (or mansion, rather) and give him the bad news. Kermit is saddened but doesn't really know what can be done. He sings The Most Heartbreaking Song in the History of Time ("Pictures in My Head"), whose title I can't even type without tearing up. If you have ever had people who were once incredibly important to you and who you couldn't imagine drifting away from, only to find that eventually that's exactly what happens, this song was designed to make you cry like a crying crier who cries. I thought the transition into this song was a little weird and abrupt, but forgot all about it when the song started. Definitely the best of the new songs.

Kermit thinks it'll be impossible to get the gang back together, but Walter tells him he should at least try. So they hit the road (and eventually travel by map LOL) and track everyone down. Along the way, the usual Muppet story absurdities crop up - e.g., Gonzo and Scooter are doing pretty dang well, so couldn't they afford to pony up some money and at least put a dent in that $10 million? Who cares - we're going to put on a show, dangit! When they've gotten everyone back but Miss Piggy, Kermit shows a strange reluctance to go and find her.

And here's where the movie hit the biggest snag for me. I have always been a huge Kermit/Piggy fan. You might say they were the first couple I ever "shipped," and their romance has always been one of my favorite parts of the show and the movies. A love so powerful it transcended not only species but animal grouping, it was always fraught with conflict (mainly, I think, because she expended so much more energy on their relationship than he did). But it was just ... meant to be, you know? I'm fine with them having drifted apart, and I appreciate that they were genuinely trying to explore their relationship and make it feel real and textured. But the way the two characters are written here is just weird and doesn't feel like them at all. It's like it was written by someone who doesn't quite get what made them tick - like a Harmonian trying to write Ron/Hermione. Well, not quite that bad, but it just felt off, and that was kind of disappointing. I did mostly love the scene where they're walking the streets of Paris - she in a beret and he in a turtleneck, like they tripped and fell into a Jean-Luc Godard film. But again, the writing is not quite there. Perhaps it would have been a bit better if we'd seen flashbacks to what drove them apart instead of all the telling. I don't know. Minor quibble, I guess, but it felt major because it had to do with my favorite aspect of the movies/show.

BUUUUT, back to the good stuff. Kermit and the gang manage to get two hours of broadcast time for their telethon, even though everyone has told them they're not relevant and no one cares about them anymore. But they need a celebrity host, and no matter how many eighties stars Kermit calls (the only people in his Rolodex) no one is interested. They get desperate and decide to try and plead with Tex Richman, but he does an awesomely bad rap number about how that's not going to happen, and to top it off, he's not only going to take the theater, he's going to take the brand name and all the character names and start his own muppet show, with edgier muppets - to cater to the more cynical world they all now live in.

But hope is not lost, and in typical Muppet fashion, everything comes together at the last minute. I loved that the theater was empty at first, but that it filled up over the course of the two hours as people realized how much the Muppets had meant to them over the years. What I loved more was that people in my audience started singing along with the songs. Notably, the theme song ("It's time to play the music! It's time to light the lights!") and the One, the Only, don't pretend you don't know it's the Ultimate Heart-Tugger "The Rainbow Connection." If I thought I'd cried all my tears at "Pictures in My Head," I was so wrong. There are some wildly funny musical moments, too, such as the barber shop quartet singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl also has a cameo early in the film) and and Camilla and the chicken chorus doing CeeLo's ... I guess it would be "Cluck You." ;-)

I loved the message in the end, which, like all messages in Muppet movies, is pretty standard stuff but good to hear anyway. And the moment at the end, when Kermit opens the theater door, genuinely took me by surprise. And of course brought back ALL THE CREYS.

There are some excellent cameos, most of which I won't spoil, but - hey, you're not supposed to be reading this until you've seen it anyway! My favorite is Emily Blunt, giving a nod to her Devil Wears Prada character as Miss Piggy's assistant. Oh, and HELLO THERE, MICKEY ROONEY! He was a muppet before there were Muppets, don't you think? Loved all the throwbacks to old Muppet numbers (great use of "Mahna Mahna") and covers of famous songs, and I liked most of the new songs, too. I already mentioned "Pictures in My Head" and the lolarious Tex Richman Rap, but there's also "Me Party," which in addition to being a great disco sendup, is like the story of my life - pretty much every day is a Me Party. :P And there's a great Serious Character-Building Song called "Man or Muppet" (Jim Parsons, FTW!).

It's not perfect, even for a Muppet movie, but it's close enough. It's good to know that the world hasn't gone so far into the cynical that the Muppets can't bring us back to a place where genuine sweetness trumps trash and hipster ironic commentary.

The Descendants

Alexander Payne hasn't made a feature film since 2004's Sideways, which many consider his best (though About Schmidt gets the crown, as far as moi is concerned). And while his latest film, The Descendants, doesn't quite rise (though it comes close) to the excellence of either of those films - again, as far as moi is concerned - it is probably the likeliest of his films to date to get some serious Oscar ground, especially as regards its star, George Clooney.


The Descendants

You know the basic story if you've seen the trailer. George Clooney plays Matt King, a lawyer in Hawaii, and Matt's wife Elizabeth is in a coma after a boating accident. Oh yeah, and she was also cheating on him - a fact he doesn't learn until after it's too late to confront her about it. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to tell you this, because we learn it very early on - Elizabeth is not going to come out of her coma, and according to the instructions set down in her will, the doctors can only care for her in that state for a short while. So it's time for Matt to get in touch with family and friends and begin a long and painful goodbye. And the knowledge that she'd been having an affair makes it all the more excruciating. Add into this mix Matt and Elizabeth's two daughters, 17 year old Alex and 10 year old Scottie. Alex, played by the remarkable Shailene Woodley, is a wild child, frequently indulging in booze and older men, but she's actually surprisingly pulled together considering all this. Scottie is out of control in her own way, often getting into trouble for her smart (and occasionally foul) mouth.

Matt is, at first glance, the stereotypical "too busy to emotionally connect" male, but Clooney's portrayal and the writing of the character win you over very quickly. I particularly love his line about thinking a parent with means should give their children enough money to do something, but not enough for them to do nothing. This is significant to the B story, because Matt is the trustee for his family's ancestral land (his family's line traces back to Kamehameha I, hence the movie's title) - one of the increasingly few untouched bits of paradise in the state. He's under pressure from not only his family but the entire state of Hawaii to do the right thing with the land. The family wants to sell, because the sale will make them a lot of money and it's an incredibly complicated process to keep the land. Most of the rest of the state think it would unconscionable to sell. The family wants to somewhat compromise by taking the option that, while paying less than other bids, will at least keep the money in Hawaii. But Matt's more immediate family matters understandably overshadow this decision for most of the film.

The movie itself is nothing incredibly new. It reminded me a bit of Terms of Endearment in the way it handled family comedy/drama and hospital bedside tragedy. It doesn't weave the comedy and drama together as successfully as it might have. In fact, it feels like the second act is almost a different movie entirely, bringing the levity that the first and third acts make necessary. The movie has some really extraordinary moments of emotional frankness. That's partly the writing - I especially love the moment where Matt has an extended scene of yelling and cursing at his comatose wife for her infidelity before chastising his daughter for doing the same thing later. But where the movie really shines is in the superb performances, pretty much across the board.

Shailene Woodley is fantastic as the older daughter, Alex. Her reaction to hearing the news about her mother is absolutely heart-shattering and her chemistry with her screen dad, Clooney, makes some of the movie's greatest moments. Amara Miller, as Scottie, is your typical movie kid for a lot of the film, but she gets some great moments, especially toward the end. I don't think I need to tell those of you who know me well how much the whole situation of most of this movie affected me, and I don't think any moment in this movie broke me more than when they break the news to Scottie, much later in the film. Judy Greer, I'm glad to see, has finally broken out of the "quirky/evil best friend in a rom-com" hell and gotten to do some great things lately, and her role as the wife of the Other Man is really wonderful, especially her final scene. Beau Bridges plays a character that MUST have been a straight-up homage to his brother's most memorable character, The Dude. And Robert Forster is rather amazing in the couple of scenes he's in, playing Matt's father-in-law. And I kind of loved Nick Krause as Alex's hilarious stoner boyfriend. He brought humor where it was desperately needed, but even he has a serious side.

But the star of the show, and not just in billing terms, is George Clooney. I was intrigued before seeing this by the idea of him playing a husband and father, as Clooney has eschewed anything resembling that lifestyle in his own personal life. This is the kind of character you've seen dozens of actors play in other movies. Another director, fifteen years ago, would have cast Tom Hanks. Sixty or seventy years ago, it would have been Jimmy Stewart. It certainly wouldn't have been Clark Cable or Cary Grant, the easiest parallels for Clooney that come to my mind. We've just never seen him play this kind of character. He's not the warmest or most successful of fathers in the beginning, but there's a real connection with his kids and a desire to do what his wife would have wanted, even though she doesn't particularly deserve it except in a "she's dying, cut her some slack" kind of way, that makes him a sort of hero over the course of the movie. And when he makes his big decision at the end of the film, and there are people who object strongly (and with a lot of passive aggression, I might add), I wanted to badly to jump into the screen and tell them to [BADWORD] off, because in that two hours of storytelling, this character gained my trust and I felt that whatever decision he made, after the journey he'd been on, was going to be the right one.

It's not perfect, but I loved loved loved this movie. I'm not sure I could see it again soon, because hoo boy is it emotional, but I highly recommend it. It's rated R, but it's barely an R (for language and, I'm almost positive, nothing else). It's getting serious buzz as an Oscar frontrunner, but I have a feeling that may disappear next week when The Artist steals everyone's hearts.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil

Man, I'm behind on movie reviews! I saw Tucker and Dale vs Evil nearly a week ago, and I've GOT to get something down about it before this weekend's crop of releases! Oh, fall movie season, you wear me out!

This movie is going to be available on DVD and for download soon, I think before the month is out, and if you can stand gore and like something a little different in your horror now and again (plus ALAN TUDYK OMG), I cannot say enough good things about it. I will, however, say a few good things here for posterity.



Tucker and Dale vs Evil is not a conventional horror film by any means. It's a spoof, but it's not even a conventional spoof. What it's specifically spoofing is the "hillbilly horror" subgenre, occasionally (depending on the film) known as "Hicksploitation." But if you think this movie is another case of dumb kids go out into the sticks and have bad things happen to them at the hands of scary inbred rednecks ... well, you'd only be partially right. Because what this is, and what makes it so dang clever, is a truly brilliant twist on that whole setup.

A bunch of college kids (I can't even remember how many now, six or seven?) go to the woods for some camping. At the same time, country bumpkin BFFs Tucker and Dale are on their way to their new vacation home, which looks like the setting for chainsaw murder and mayhem (complete with ominous news clippings about missing persons and found bodies), but which Tucker and Dale see as paradise. On their way there, they stop for gasoline and supplies and see our young "heroes." Dale is immediately taken with Allison, but his inept attempts to flirt with her (and his bucolic appearance, of course) convince the group that he and Tucker are crazy murdering hicks. This prejudice is helped along by the "leader" of the group, Chad (who reminded me forcibly of a young Tom Cruise, only with 100% more douchebaggery), who is especially prejudiced against rural folks since his biological parents were the victims of killer hillbillies (I think his story is the event that's in all the clippings at Tucker and Dale's cabin).

It couldn't be more clear, meanwhile, that Tucker and Dale are as sweet as can be. They get to their cabin and they're all excited about how they're going to fix it up. That evening, they go fishing, and they happen to be near where the kids are going skinny dipping. Allison sees them and, startled, falls into the water, hitting her head on the way down. Dale jumps in and saves her, pulling her into his and Tucker's boat, but what the kids see is their friend, in her underwear, being dragged off by the scary hillbillies.

Dale takes care of Allison at the cabin while Tucker does some man-chores outside the house, and though Allison is scared at first when she wakes up, she immediately realizes that she's safe and starts to bond with Dale (having been raised on a farm herself and hence an appreciator of rural life). She also reveals that she's majoring in psychology, specializing in communication, because she believes that most problems are caused by people not listening to each other and jumping to conclusions - an idea that sadly bears fruit in the fate of her friends.

Oh yes, her friends. Because while she's chilling with Dale in the cabin, the rest of the group have become convinced that they are characters in a hillbilly horror movie. Misunderstanding after misunderstanding ensues, and the kids end up accidentally killing themselves all around Tucker and Dale's cabin. The men are seriously befuddled by the chain of events and can only conclude that these kids are part of some suicide cult. They try to explain and make things right, but the more they try, the more accidental carnage piles up due to the kids persistently misinterpreting Tucker and Dale's motives.

What kills me about the whole story is that I've seen countless horror movies with dumb kids in them - kids who take unnecessary risks, kids who have positively life-threatening curiosity about strange noises and the like, and kids who recklessly poke a situation they don't understand until you're almost gleeful to see it bite them in the ass. I read a comment from a critic who said something I very much agree with - that a movie about people so annoying and horrible that you can't wait to see them chopped up is not horror. I'd say it's more like gladiator-style bloodlust. This movie seems to agree, and it doesn't feel the least bit bad for throwing dumb, prejudiced teens into woodchippers and practically shrugging its shoulders and saying "Hey, hate destroys, man."

The teen actors in this (or actors pretending to be college-age, to be more accurate) are about what you'd expect, though Katrina Bowden who plays Allie turns out to be better than most "pretty-face" heroines. But Alan Tudyk (Tucker) and especially Tyler Labine (Dale) own this movie, as well they should. I heard someone on my way out of the theater explaining to a friend that Labine was "like Larry the Cable Guy, only a good actor." That sums it up rather nicely. (No offense to Larry - he's a comedian, though, not an actor. I'm sure he'd agree.)

I won't spoil any more of it, but this is an absolute gem of horror comedy and closes on a comic rather than a horrific note. It is ridiculously gory, so if that's absolutely not your thing, you might want to stay away. For my part, I love it to pieces and can't wait to own it. Thankfully, I won't have to wait too much longer.

50/50

I hate tear-jerker movies. Oh, occasionally I'll be in the mood for one, but I always hate myself afterward. Nearly every tear-jerker that has ever been made is a revolting piece of manipulation. You're not crying because you're feeling something; you're crying because the music cues and the sentimental dialogue are telling you you're *supposed* to be feeling something. You're one of Pavlov's dogs, essentially.

50/50, however, is a tear-jerker that I absolutely love. I make no apologies for the blubbering I did during this movie, because every bit of it was earned through clever writing, solid storytelling and characterization, and incredible acting.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a guy who takes excellent care of himself and never takes chances with his body. He doesn't smoke, he doesn't do drugs, he runs regularly, and he doesn't even cross the street without permission from the crosswalk light. He works hard at his job and is supportive of his girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard). He's been having some pain in his back and night sweats, so he goes to the doctor. Guess what? He's got a rare form of cancer, and it's in such a position near his spine that they'd rather not operate unless they have no choice.

What follows is how he and the people around him deal with this situation. His girlfriend vows to take care of him, but she's not terribly good at it. His mother is like any mother would be, but she's perhaps a little more smothering than average because she's also having to deal with her husband's Alzheimer's. As one character puts it later, she has a husband who can't talk to her and a son who won't talk to her. Adam's best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) is supporting but occasionally takes advantage of his friend's misfortune for his own gain (though not really in a deplorable way). Into the mix comes Katherine (Anna Kendrick), Adam's assigned therapist who is actually younger than he is and still a little awkward in her connection to her patients (of which Adam is only the third).

The movie is best categorized as a comedy, and there are a lot of laughs (many of them rather crude), but everything in this movie feels absolutely real. There's a great scene where Adam is going in for his first chemotherapy session and looks around him at all the other cancer patients, clearly thinking "Is this going to be me?". His scenes with two fellow patients he does his chemo with are a highlight as well, and when one of them dies, it's an absolute heartbreak. There's no cloying setup to prepare you for it either; it's just out-of-the-blue, the way death almost always is. The most crushing scene by far, though, is when Adam is about to go in for a procedure and starts to realize he may not live through it. I don't know that I've ever wanted to step into a movie screen and hug a character harder than I did here.

This is a seriously fantastic movie. Near perfect, actually. Some viewers might be put off by the language, I suppose, but there are few movies nowadays that are more genuine about topics that turn lesser movies into fake, weepy schmaltz.

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris

You probably either *are* a Woody Allen person or you're *not*. His films, for the most part, have a very distinct voice and a distinct style. The opening credits are all in the same familiar font, perfectly and simply underscoring this fact. I consider myself on his side of the fence, even though I tend to admire his films more than I love them. I love pieces of Annie Hall (Marshall McLuhan, FTW!), I love the look and the sound of Manhattan (because it's such a travelogue of New York), and I love the themes in Crimes and Misdemeanors. But his films have largely left me cold, emotionally, with the glaring exception of Sweet and Lowdown.

Midnight in Paris feels both like an atypical Woody Allen film and at the same time is very typical of his work. There is the central character, a neurotic writer, who would have been played by Woody himself twenty or thirty years ago. The central character clashes intellectually with the mundane and pedantic people whose company he is forced to endure. And the whole story takes place in a great city and is as much a love song to that city as a story in its own right. That city used to be New York in all his films, but he has branched out lately. I don't think he quite *got* London well enough to pull this off in Match Point, but he certainly seems to *get* Paris (at least, from what I understand - I've never been *sniff*). But there is an optimism and sentimentality in Midnight that I have never really associated with Woody's films, and it's kind of refreshing.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a successful screenwriter in Hollywood who is vacationing in Paris with his fiancee, Inez (played by the flawless Rachel McAdams). The two of them and Inez's mother are pretty much piggybacking on her father's business trip, and we see instantly that Inez and her family are not where Gil needs to be, for the sake of his sanity, not to mention his creative impulses. They are frequently joined on their tourist ramblings by an old college professor of Inez's, Paul (Michael Sheen) and his wife Carol, because Paul is in town getting ready to start lecturing at La Sorbonne. Paul is an "expert" on everything, frequently corrects tour guides, and is the kind of person that we all have known and have frequently wanted to throttle into non-existence. Old HP ship debaters will no doubt call to mind at least one or two names among our former opponents that fit this bill.

Though Gil makes a respectable living churning out movie scripts and this is something he's quite good at, he's dissatisfied. He's written a novel, but he's afraid to show it to anyone. Inez suggests he show it to Paul, but obviously Gil would rather spork his own eyes out than let Paul anywhere near it. Inez sort of pokes fun at the book, making Gil tell everyone about the main character who works in a nostalgia shop, which everyone but Gil thinks is trite and hilarious. This kind of stings Gil, on whom the book character is quite obviously based.

One evening after dinner, Gil goes for a walk on his own and gets a bit lost. He sits on some steps and after a while a car pulls up. Not just any car - a 1920s model Peugeot. Several people are inside and a man beckons him to come along with them. Gil is reluctant, because who are these people?, but goes along for the ride. They soon arrive at a party and a woman introduces herself to Gil as Zelda. They are soon joined by her husband, Scott Fitzgerald. At this point, I'm thinking (and perhaps so is Gil) that this is a rich people theme party, where everyone has come dressed as their favorite writer or something and for some reason everyone is staying in character. But no. This is actually Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. And Cole Porter is playing the piano. They go to a bat and Gil meets Ernest Hemingway. Gil has somehow traveled back in time to 1920s Paris, his idea of Paris's Golden Age and the place and time where he would have most loved to live, and is hobnobbing with the artistic giants who have inspired him. But when he leaves a place by himself, he leaves the 1920s behind and goes back to his own world.

He tries to show all this to Inez the next night, but he doesn't quite understand how the magic works yet, so she doesn't see anything special. She leaves, rolling her eyes madly at him, and the clock strikes midnight, which Gil realizes is the key. The car comes along again and takes him to meet Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). Ernest Hemingway, who he'd met the night before, promised to introduce him to her and ask her to read his manuscript and give him feedback. Hemingway wouldn't read the book himself, telling Gil "I hate it ... If it's bad I'll hate it because it's bad. If it's good, I'll hate it because I'm jealous." Stein is going to read the book later, but she reads the first sentence or two aloud, and we see that Gil is a gifted writer. His talent catches the attention of a woman named Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who is having an affair with Pablo Picasso. Gil and Adriana talk and there is an obvious connection between them, and over the course of several more visits to the past, Gil realizes that he's falling in love with her and she with him.

And then comes the most perfect scene in the film. Gil tries to engineer things with Adriana that ought to have happened (and probably would have) naturally, but as they pause on the street, a carriage approaches and stops, beckoning them to come along, much like the Peugeot has stopped for Gil each night. It drops them off at Maxim's restaurant. In the 19th century, Belle Epoque. Adriana's idea of Paris's Golden Age. You guys, I seriously cried from the magic.

I won't spoil the rest of it - I've gone on quite long enough already - but it ends fairly happily, in a way that many will probably expect. This has been out a while, and I was a bit surprised it was still in theaters this past weekend when I went. I don't know whether this will be your cup of tea or not - lately I haven't been too confident in my radar. But if you have a warm sigh in your heart for Paris or are a nostalgic or romantic person, I could not recommend this more highly.

Easy A, or Hester Prynne Goes to High School

Easy A is a movie I wish I'd written. I don't mean that in an "I could have pooped out a better script than that" way; I genuinely wish I had written something as clever and heartfelt and, for a genre that nowadays is either smug and superior or dumb and offensive, a breath of fresh air.

"We've had nine classes together since Kindergarten... ten if you count Religion of Other Cultures, which you didn't because you called it science fiction and refused to go."

It feels too easy to say "If you liked Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You, you'll like this movie." I do think Easy A bears a resemblance to both those films, notably as another modern take on a literary classic (in this case, Nathaniel Hawthorne's short novel The Scarlet Letter). But in a way I find it more satisfying than either of them. Yes, even more than Clueless, which has been the standard bearer for cute and smarter-than-you'd-think teen comedies lo these (*gulp*) fifteen years. What Easy A brings to the table are some surprisingly nuanced performances and a knack for the dynamics of high school that is frankly unnerving.

Here are the basics of the plot. Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone, in what is sure to be a breakout role) is an average high school chick, practically invisible to boys. To avoid an uncomfortable camping weekend with her best friend and said friend's naturist parents, she makes up a college guy out of thin air and says she has a date with him that weekend. After her actual boring weekend at home, she forgets about her lie until the friend asks her how the date went. Through a series of unfortunate accidents in tale-spinning, she "confesses" to having slept with her sockpuppet boyfriend. She is overheard by her ultra-conservative classmate, Marianne (Amanda Bynes, in her last role before bizarrely "retiring" from acting at age 24). Marianne starts the rumor mill a-spinning, and pretty soon Olive has a Reputation. There's an almost chilling scene in which Olive walks the hall after the rumor spreads, and the reaction of the two genders could not be more telling, and it makes me sad that slut shaming is still a thing in this day and age. With her perceived virtue essentially in the toilet, then, she agrees to pretend to have sex with a gay friend of hers, so that he can get a reprieve from the homophobic bullies who are plaguing him. Things spiral from there, and soon she's practically running a service, selling her pretend sex favors to various guys for various reasons.

There's a good bit of homage to great teen movies of yore, particularly those of John Hughes, and there's a self-awareness that just works, as if the movie itself is saying to you that it wants to be as good as those other movies, while humbly aw-shucks-ing that it never will be. This is mostly achieved by Olive's webcam narration, and Emma Stone reminded me oddly of Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - only more coherent and less scatterbrained. I've been a fan of Emma Stone's for a few years now - I guess since Superbad - and I sincerely think this movie could put her on the map in a big way. I've heard musings about her possible Oscar chances, which might sound ridiculous, but I'll go ahead and say that she's at least going to the Golden Globes. She's really incredible, and it's a strangely empowering female role. On the surface, Olive is sacrificing her good name, moving herself down the social ladder so that several boys can move up. But it's not really like that at all. Olive takes charge of her sexuality, without even having sex. She owns it and doesn't let what people will think of her dictate what she does (or falsely admits doing). Because, at the end of the day, it's nobody's business but her own. The whole controversy surrounding her is ridiculous, and every lie she tells is another riff in an epic joke.

Also, as a person of faith, I was pleasantly surprised at the portrayal of the school's little Christian clique. The prayer circle especially tickled me, because what a lot of Christians call "prayer requests" are really just gossip and group judgment sessions.

Performance-wise, in addition to the awesome Emma Stone, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are wonderful as Olive's groovy and totally cool parents. Thomas Haden Church is pretty great as Olive's favorite teacher. Lisa Kudrow is delightful as the school guidance counselor who has serious issues of her own. And there are some really outstanding little parts, especially for Olive's, ah, clients. The script really explores sexual politics in fascinating ways, especially with a couple of guys who illustrate that a lot of times it's not the fact that a guy is a nerd that makes him unattractive. Sometimes the guy is just a jerk.

If you haven't already seen this, I highly recommend it. I think it has more to say about young adulthood and gender roles than just about any of its contemporaries.

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Micmacs à tire-larigot

After Le Magnifique was part 2 in what turned out to be a French double-feature. The new film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet.


Micmacs à tire-larigot

I'm afraid I was nodding off for a bit during this film. Not at all a reflection on the movie itself, just the late hour. As it is, however, I don't feel confident going into a lot of detail.

The film centers around a man named Bazil, whose father was killed by a land mine and who himself was hit in the head by a stray bullet. He choses to leave the bullet in, because taking it out might put him in a vegetative state, but leaving it in means that if he experiences too much stress he could die.

Soon, with the help of a ragtag group of quirky homeless geniuses, he is taking down the weapons company that made the land mine that killed his father and the company that made the bullet that resides in his head. It's a revenge flick, but not a bloody one. The entire climax is an exercise in awesome, but the real gem is the section just after that, where they take the heads of these two companies to receive their real punishment. In the Middle East. Or so they think. Best use of YouTube ever.

BNAT 11 - [VINTAGE] Le Magnifique

Next up, we had a change in pace. We saw trailers for James Tont Operazione U.N.O., Maniac Cop 2 (I must see this!), and Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. And the actual feature was so over the top and hilarious right from the start that it took me a minute to realize that it wasn't another trailer.


Le Magnifique

In the opening minutes of this film, we witness a man in a phone booth being eaten by a shark. That alone would have been enough to win me over. The over-the-top spy movie sort-of-spoof is entertaining as all get-out, but it possibly would have grown tiresome after a while. Once we realize, however, that all the super-spy silliness is the imagination of a fiction writer, the movie becomes something else.

François Merlin writes potboiler spy novels about Bob St. Clair, who is his wish fulfillment self-insertion character. He has a frustrating life, struggling to make ends meet and wishing he could write something that's actually good instead of all the, as he considers it, trash. Many of the characters in his real life show up as characters in his novels. His publisher and other "enemies" turn up as villains, which St. Clair either lazily dispenses with or, in the case of the publisher/supervillain, struggles to overcome repeatedly over the course of several novels. And his beautiful upstairs neighbor Christine appears in his latest book as his love interest (and, if memory serves, fellow spy).

What's cool about this film is watching Merlin deal with his real life problems in the pages of his novels. For example, Christine thinks his books are fascinating from a sociological standpoint, because she's interested in why people (including herself) are so compelled by such tripe. This kind of hurts Merlin's pride, even though he agrees about their quality, because he wants to be a real writer and genuinely impress her (and probably in part because he identifies with St. Clair in a way, however ridiculously he is portrayed). His back-and-forth about whether to write St. Clair as the perfect, suave superspy or make him a bumbling idiot comes and goes, depending on his confidence in what Christine thinks of him.

Jean-Paul Belmondo is fantastic (and fantastically gorgeous) here in the dual role of Merlin and St. Clair. And you dudes can enjoy the charms of a young Jacqueline Bisset. And loads of making fun of spy movies and writers. This was one of my favorite cracktastic vintage titles these many BNATs.

Suck It, Day 22 - My Best Friend is a Vampire

Before he was Greg House's best friend, before he was even a member of the Dead Poets Society, Robert Sean Leonard was a teenage vampire.


My Best Friend is a Vampire

Jeremy Capello is your average high school kid. Daydreaming about girls, shooting the crap with his best friend Ralph, etc. Until he delivers a bag of groceries to an abandoned old house in the neighborhood, where a beautiful woman just moved in. She invites Jeremy back, and Jeremy is thinking he's really got it going on. His friend encourages him to go, even though he ultimately has some misgivings, and the woman turns Jeremy into a vampire.

This is a movie that starts out pretty cool. There's some excellent location shooting in Houston, TX. And I like the idea of vampirism as simply another kind of lifestyle, one that has some serious adjustments. I can even tolerate the heavy-handed metaphor with the vampire hunters persecuting something they don't understand. The movie falls apart in the end, though, and the last scenes are especially painful.

If you're a fan of RSL, though, the first half is pretty watchable. This isn't a ground breaker, but it's kind of fun in its own way.

Suck It, Day 20 - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (movie and series)

Since the dawn of man, the vampires have walked among us, killing, feeding... The only one with the strength or skill to stop their heinous evil is the slayer -- she who bears the birthmark, the mark of the coven. Trained by the watcher, one slayer dies, and the next is chosen.


Buffy the Vampire Slayer (movie and television show)

You can't talk vampires without mentioning the name of Joss Whedon, the guy who wrote a pretty good script that became a not-so-great movie but inspired him to do a stake-TASTIC television show. I pride myself on the fact that, before it became cool to quote Joss, my college roommates and I used to quote this movie all the time. "Nice ensemble; what a homeless." ... "Excuse much, rude or anything?" ... and just imagine two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank saying "Ugh, get out of my facial."

There had been tons of vampire movies about teenagers, but none quite like this. There have been vampire slayers and hunters, most notably Van Helsing, but none who were destined from birth to do it, given special powers to help them do it. Not to mention forced to do it alone. The quote at the top of the post is from the opening narration at the movie, but it very closely resembles the voice-over that opened each Buffy episode of the first season. In fact, for all its high-school-movie cheese, the movie remarkably resembles the first season of Whedon's show. Aside from the regular vampires, there was an ominous Master Vampire who Buffy has dreams about, is psychically connected to, and is not immediately ready to fight. There are other echoes of the movie in the television show as well. From the superficial (Buffy as a cheerleader) to the stylistic (martial arts fighting style) to the relationships between certain characters (Buffy's watcher being annoyed with her, but recognizing her as special, more special perhaps than any of the others before her).

I do have an immense fondness for the movie, but you won't get any argument from me that the television show was leaps and bounds more satisfying and richly conceived. The "high school is hell" theme was a brilliant one, and the idea that the Hellmouth attracted not just vampires but all sorts of hellish creatures gave the show a wealth of sources for villainy - a witchy mom, praying mantis lady, hyena-students, zombies, the fishy swim team, the coma kid who makes everyone's nightmares come true, the Inca mummy girl, the evil robot stepfather, eggs that hatch arachnoid babies, Faith, the Mayor, the alternate universe where vampires rule Sunnydale, the Initiative, Adam, the creepy voice-stealing Gentlemen, Glory the god from hell, the demon who makes everyone sing and dance, the super-geek trio, a very mean and nasty preacher named Caleb, and the First Evil. Among LOTS of others. And the way evil intersected with these characters' lives and their relationships was (mostly) extremely well done. Never more so than when the supernatural took a complete back seat to reality after a tragic event in season five.

I'm one of the rare fans who pretty much likes all the seasons, even later ones. (I was least enamored of S4.) And there are several standout episodes.

"Nightmares" - Everyone's nightmares start coming true, and while some of them are scary and some rather funny, a few are rather poignant, such as Giles's fear of Buffy's death due to his failure, plus Buffy's fear that her parents' divorce is all her fault.

"Passion" - Great use of narration with Angelus here, and his revenge against a certain character is truly cruel on a lot of levels.

"I Only Have Eyes For You" - The ghost of a former student forces various people to reenact his murder-suicide, including Buffy and Angel. The role reversal at the end is especially interesting.

"Helpless" - (I thought this was called "Eighteen," but apparently not.) My favorite episode ever and one that tests and ultimately strengthens Buffy's relationship with Giles. Last scene ("father's love") kills me.

"The Zeppo" - Xander gets very few opportunities to really shine, but this episode belongs to him, while everyone else prepares for the apocalypse in the background and, for his protection, relegates him to a non-participant, allowing him to have his own deadly adventure.

"Hush" - Stupid Whedon tricks are rarely stupid, and this mostly silent episode is a real slice of genius.

"The Body" - Yeah. Just ... yeah.

"The Gift" - Nearly as emotional as "The Body," for different reasons. And oh man, Giles's scene with Ben is a thing of beauty.

"Once More, With Feeling" - Duh. It's on everyone's faves list. Everyone does a great job here with the song and dance thing, but standouts are Tony Head, James Marsters, and Amber Benson. And of course the Spuffy-lover in me digs the end. :P

"Normal Again" - The supergeeks send a demon to make Buffy believe that everything she knows is pretend. This was pretty clever, I thought, especially given Buffy's revelation that she had been taken to a mental institution when she first started seeing vampires. And the ambiguous ending is just brilliant.

"Grave" - Oh, Xander.

"Dirty Girls" - First appearance of Caleb (Nathan Fillion) and the point where "shit just got real," as they say. A lot of S7 blends together with all the Potentials and training and research and whatnot, but this was a rare standout.

*******

Here's a fairly epic compilation of all seven seasons of the show, but be warned - 'TIS SPOILERY!

Suck It! Day 19 - The Fearless Vampire Killers

[Note: I put this on my list well before its director was recently arrested in Zurich. It's a pretty fantastic movie, and I see no reason I shouldn't write about it and about Mr. Polanski as a filmmaker and an actor. However, my opinions about him as a man and as a criminal are, I observe, unpopular at best and most likely unwelcome; and as such, I have no interest in discussing them in this post.]


The Fearless Vampire Killers, or:
Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck

After the huge success of his psychological thriller Repulsion, Roman Polanski shifted gears completely and did a film that perhaps has more of himself in it than anything else he made. His work as a whole is generally seen as quite dark, and often bleak, but The Fearless Vampire Killers is a much sillier and fun Polanski than we're used to.

We begin with Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran) and his apprentice Alfred (played by Polanski himself), riding toward Transylvania, on the hunt for vampires. They stop at an inn in a small town - Abronsius having barely survived the cold ride. They meet the innkeeper's daughter Sarah (Sharon Tate), who frequently occupies their supposedly private bathroom to indulge in bubble baths and who the clumsy and shy Alfred falls in love with. This particular part of the story would repeat itself in real life as Polanski and Tate began a romance on the set which would eventually lead to their marriage.

Our heroes, the vampire killers, however, turn out to be very inept indeed. Far from eradicating a vampire problem, they in fact make it worse, and end up responsible for spreading the evil to the rest of the world.

Critics seem to measure this film, as a horror-comedy, on the Young Frankenstein scale, where it quite obviously falls short, as there are precious few films as perfect as that one. However, The Fearless Vampire Killers is great silly fun, with a slightly more subued comedic sensibility. No less funny, though, just perhaps in a different way.

Perhaps I'd feel differently about it if it weren't so absolutely gorgeous-looking, with sumptuous colors and sets and costumes. You'd think you were watching Doctor Zhivago. It definitely has a Russian fairy-tale quality to it, especially with the wintry setting, and I think that actually contributes to the humor. It's as if the movie is trying to be an epic, but much like its bumbling heroes, it falls quite short of its romantic ideals and makes you laugh at it instead. Which is, in the case of this film, the point.

Suck It! Day 14 - From Dusk Till Dawn

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino bring you maybe the grodiest vampire movie of all time. With a tattooed George Clooney.


From Dusk Till Dawn

This movie is actually two movies, if you ask me. The first half is about Seth (George Clooney) and Richie (Quentin Tarantino), two brothers on the lam with the loot from their latest bank robbery, on their way to Mexico. They blow up a convenience store and take a father and his two teenage children hostage so they have a front until they cross the border and meet their contact. Director Robert Rodriguez (and his screenwriter, Tarantino) spend a lot of time here, getting to know these characters. And by the way, can I just say that there are very few people I find less threatening than George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino? Maybe it's just all the years since this film came out in 1996 and all the roles we've seen Clooney play, but it's quite strange to see him play a mean, badass criminal with a potty mouth.

And just when you've forgotten to ask "wait, wasn't there supposed to be some vampires in this thing?" the gang arrives at the biker bar I will not name because I hate the "T" word that is used to indicate breasts. The bar looks like a pretty rough and rowdy place - or perhaps your average Saturday night out in Austin. But when Salma Hayek takes the stage with her snake, things take a sudden - and I mean SUDDEN - turn. A suddenness that would not have been possible without that hour of a totally different movie.

The second half of the film is a fun house ride of blood, viscera, and severed limbs. I was somewhat surprised to find out that Tom Savini (who has an acting role in the film) was not involved with the gore effects. It's pretty gory nonetheless. Most memorable to me is the guitar made out of parts - the body is a human torso and the neck is a leg. While the bar patrons are being picked off one by one by the strippers and bartenders (among them Danny "Machete" Trejo), all of whom are vampires, the crowd whittles down considerably. There's a fun little scene where the survivors at that point go through the rules and what can kill a vampire, wondering at the same time if what they know is really true or if they've just gotten made-up lore from movies. A preacher (Harvey Keitel), who's lost his faith because of the death of his wife, regains it in the face of this nightmare, and soon it's down to Clooney, Keitel, and the two kids (the daughter played by Juliette Lewis). There's a pretty wicked showdown, and I love the last shot of the film - as everyone goes their separate ways, we pan back to reveal what's at the back of the biker bar. A mostly sunken ancient Aztec temple, which seems to have been the vampires' haven for hundreds of years, and where the wreckage of centuries of victims sits rotting.

Here's one of the trailers, which surprisingly includes Clooney dropping the f-bomb twice (must be a red-band trailer), but really gives you the feel for the two halves of the movie.

A Serious Man

A Serious Man

When you watch a film by Joel and Ethan Coen, you know you're watching a work of art. Every frame of their films is beautiful and full of detail, even when you're only looking at an actor's face in front of a blank wall. Even their not-so-monumental films are worth seeing, if just for their fascinating experiments with style.

I'm not sure how this film will stack up against the rest of the year - there's still so much to come (and I'm literally counting down the days to Precious) - but A Serious Man feels like the sparse feel of No Country for Old Men paired with the absurdity of Fargo. With the quality of both of those films. Certainly one of the best of the year.

Larry Gopnick doesn't have too complicated a life, but he soon gets the trials of Job heaped on him. It starts with a student who requests that his grade be changed from an F to a passing grade and spirals into you wouldn't even believe what. And just when it seems that things are starting to look up again in the final scene, there are hints at even worse trials to come. Trials we never find out about because the movie fades out and the credits roll, leaving the new trials to our imagination because they could probably be a whole movie unto themselves.

There's a little vignette at the beginning of the film, entirely in Yiddish, that seems to have nothing to do with the rest of it. This is a matter of no small consequence to the many critics who have reviewed this film. For my part, I link it to the first scene with Larry, where he tells his failing student that you have to get the math in order to get the physics. The story about the Schrodinger's cat is anecdotal; if you don't understand the math, you can't understand the physics. I think the Yiddish-language vignette is the math to the rest of the movie's physics. Both seem to be meditations on how we (or more particularly, the Jewish characters of the film) deal with Fortune or the things that befall us.

Speaking of which, yes, this is a pretty heavily Jewish-centric film. But I don't think it's alienating to people who are not Jewish, and I feel that, as a non-Jew, I can state that with some authority. There seemed to be several Jewish people in the audience I saw the film with, and I could observe that they were amused by nuances and layers that people less familiar with that culture likely missed. I'm okay with that, and I think the movie works accepting that that will be the case. These characters, like the characters in most of the Coens' work, speak their own cultural language, but in this case, I think you can understand the "physics" without fully understanding the "math."

The Informant!

Lies beget lies, and perhaps few people alive today know that better than Mark Whitacre, former President of the BioProducts Division of Archer Daniels Midland, a company that produces some of that stuff you can't pronounce in the ingredient listings of food you eat every day. Whitacre became an informant for the FBI and ratted out his colleagues (and himself) regarding an enormous price-fixing scheme, but the more the story unfolded, more of Whitacre's own additional criminal behavior revealed itself.

Right off the bat, I have to say that this is one of the more brilliant bits of screenwriting (mad props to Scott Z. Burns) that I've seen - not just this year, but frankly this decade or more. At first I thought I'd missed something or misunderstood the beginning, because we don't find out about ADM's real shenanigans until the scene where Mark actually tells the FBI. Usually in stories like this, we see the informant or whoever find out about dubious behavior or business practices, fret about it, and finally decide either to tell the authorities or not tell them. But here, you see something that you think might be the beginnings of something like this, and Mark fretting about it, but when he talks to the FBI he presents them with brand new information that we've never even gotten a hint of. And this happens over and over again; it's how the entire movie works regarding the Mark character. You think you know what's going on, you think you've reached the bottom of the hole, and then suddenly Mark opens a trap door and has even further to fall. I think this film must be even better on a second viewing, because knowing how deep the hole really goes would really inform how we see this character and how his story is told.

And the story itself, while it could have been a very straightforward story of business and personal corruption, is instead played for humor and fun. Instead of getting bogged down in details that wouldn't really help us understand this situation any better but would instead slow the movie way down, screenwriter Burns peppers just about every scene with Mark's random inner monologuing. He'll be talking to someone in the office and his mind will wander and start telling us about how polar bears cover their noses to camouflage themselves when they fish. It's endearing and funny, but totally irrelevant to the story. But as the story goes on and Mark gets further and further into a hole, we get less and less of that, and the content and tone of the inner monologue starts changing. He starts to coach himself on which lie to tell, which avenue to pursue, and eventually there's nothing left. He can't lie anymore. It's over.

The trailers and ads, while enjoyable, sell this movie way short. You'd think it was about this bumbling spy wannabe who frustrates the real professionals at every turn with his incompetence. Mark Whitacre is very smart, even about the secret agent stuff. There's a cool moment with a hidden camera where he plops himself right in front of the line of sight. The agents think he's just ignorant, but he soon moves, and then invites someone else who was out of the shot to another, more comfortable chair that just happens to be in the camera's view so that the agents can see everyone. He only sat in front of the camera to see, as close as he could, what the agents were seeing and to make sure everyone was visible in the shot. There's some funny naive stuff, too - the line from the trailers ("you don't have to narrate the tapes") isn't there, but the behavior that likely prompted it is. The first day he walks in with the wire, saying "entrance breached" as he walks through the automatic door and greeting everyone loudly and deliberately by name and by title, is priceless.

The cast is uniformly great, starting with possibly the best work Matt Damon has done to date. This is way more than gaining thirty pounds and putting on a fake nose ("the nose plays" - sorry, Ocean's 13 tangent) and a swirly rug. It's little things like the way he smiles as Mark, very different from the toothy brilliantine grin we're used to seeing from Damon. There are all kinds of layers in this character, which are periodically and systematically peeled back. Mark Whitacre is trying to be at least two different people, but is never - probably not even at the very end - truly himself. The extra weight and shlubby clothes might make this seem an over-the-top character, but it's actually quite subtle, and I've never been more impressed with one of Matt Damon's performances than I was with this.

Scott Bakula is perhaps the second most noteworthy performance in the piece, as FBI Special Agent Brian Shephard. He and his partner Bob (played remarkably well by stand up comic and "Soup" host Joel McHale) get attached to Mark; they carry a family picture around with them to remind them that he's a human being. They become very invested in his well-being, even after he bungles things by telling people things he shouldn't tell them, and even when the lies start coming out. But when Mark hits the bottom of the bullshit barrel, Brian is visibly hurt and betrayed.

Melanie Lynskey is wonderful as well, playing Mark's longsuffering wife Ginger, who in real life is still with Mark, even after his nine-year prison sentence (three times the punishment given to the people he informed on). And the rest of the cast is filled with familiar faces (such as Ocean's vet Eddie Jemison and Tom "Biff Tannen" Wilson - man, I bet he still gets that everywhere he goes ... I wonder if people still ask him to say "make like a tree and get outta here").

Special mention must be made of the fabulous - excuse me, that should be FABULOUS - score by Marvin Hamlisch, who hasn't written a film score in something like thirteen years (The Mirror Has Two Faces being his most recent until now). The man wrote the score for the musical "A Chorus Line." He adapted all that great Joplin ragtime music for The Sting. And he gave us misty water-colored memories of "The Way We Were." He is a bona fide legend, and this score is not just another score on his resume - it's right up there with his career bests. It's kitschy and cute, like a score you'd hear in a 1960s romantic comedy. And it's amazingly detailed. There's a moment when Mark is doing one of his inner monologues, and he makes a very short, offhand comment about Mexico. For just a couple of seconds, for just a blink after the Mexico comment, the theme that's been playing goes mariachi-style, and before you can say "Hah!" it reverts back as Mark continues his random musings.

I feel I ought to say something about Soderbergh here, but I'm not sure what. I'm not good at talking technical, and I know very little about the actual craft of directing. Soderbergh's record tends to stand side-by-side with each new film of his that you watch, and you tend to see each one in the context of what came before. This allows his admirers to defend him when he's being what other critics call "self-indulgent." That's such a carelessly used term, I think. What it really means regarding Soderbergh is that he makes the movies he wants to make the way he wants to make them. That used to be called daring and independent, but now I guess that's a dirty word if you feel out of the loop with his films. I'll concede that some of his films are less accessible than others (*cough*CHE*cough*), but if you don't "get" The Informant! I just feel sad for you. Because the only important thing to "get" is that it's fun. That Soderbergh is having fun. From the explanation point in the title (whee!) to the adorable score to Mark ruminating on the health dangers of being blotchy, it's an utter delight.

"Hell is a teenage girl."

Jennifer's Body

This one has been dividing viewers left and right. Personally, on a bottom line level, I enjoyed it but found it a bit too ambitious for its own good. It's also so much of a genre stew that it doesn't really give you a taste of any of the particular ingredients. But then again that may be the whole point of the film.

This is a horror movie, to be sure, but not the kind you're used to. It's not particularly scary, but this is more the sort of film we used to see from David Cronenberg, along the lines of The Brood or The Fly. There's a definite sense of "body horror," hence the title. But there are a lot of other teen movie elements, too, particularly in the co-dependent relationship between Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried). Needy (an endearment for "Anita") tells us early on that people don't understand what a hottie like Jennifer is doing being friends with a nerd like her, but that they've been friends since sandbox days. Now, it's been a while since I was in high school, but even I know it doesn't work that way. Next to no toddler or elementary school friendships survive the transition to high school, especially when the two people are as socially different as Jennifer and Needy. Of course, Jennifer isn't really Needy's friend. Needy is the type of friend that lots of popular girls keep around to make them feel better about themselves. And sadly Needy still apparently believes the sandbox sentimentality, since the whole story is being told in flashback. In fact, what she does in the end is clearly for Jennifer's sake.

I like that the characters in the film never feel like stereotypes. The teens, that is. Needy is ostensibly a "nerd," but she's fairly socially functional. She's not dowdy, despite the glasses, and she goes to clubs and fools around with her boyfriend. She's cool, but a stark contrast to Jennifer, who by the way is not the stereotypical "hot chick" either. A lot of people have slammed the "Cody-speak" of the movie, and I agree that sometimes the desperately hip dialogue gets to be too much (would "move on dot org" really be part of a teen girl's lexicon?). But I also can't help observing that most of it is given to Megan Fox, and rather than making her seem cool, I think it rather undermines her, giving credence to Needy's later claim that Jennifer is no longer "socially relevant." Happy accident or brilliant subversion by screenwriter Diablo Cody? You decide. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Adam Brody and his indie rock band are a great element, but we don't see nearly enough of them. I do love the fact that they position themselves as heroes to the little town and have the bad taste to make it look like they're helping them (by donating a very small part of the profits on their single) when really they are just using them much like they used Jennifer. And the commentary on how they'll never make it big without making a sacrifice to Satan, because in reality they're just like all the other prettyboy indie rock bands trying to catch a break, is hilariously self-aware.

I never quite understood, and I'm fairly sure the movie never explains it to us, the psychic connection Needy has with Jennifer. We first see it in the beginning, when Needy knows Jennifer has arrived at her house before her boyfriend even hears anything. It's the most pronounced in a rather brilliantly cut-together scene of Needy and Chip having sex while newly demonic Jennifer is seducing and murdering goth kid Colin (played by Seyfried's fellow Veronica Mars alum, Kyle "Beaver" Gallner). Needy is somehow aware that something horrible is happening where Jennifer is, and she reacts with horror, which her boyfriend interprets as a pleased response to his efforts. I suppose what bothers me about it the most is that this connection is somehow malfunctioning while Jennifer is being sacrificed to Satan and Jennifer has to actually sit down and tell Needy everything that happened. I mean, I'm glad to find out what happened, and I can see where Cody would want to hold that back until later in the film, but it's just so randomly plopped in and expositiony that it feels really wrong.

Overall, this is an enjoyable movie. I don't ask for a horror movie to be that artistic or to even make that much sense, but I do think it was trying for something that it doesn't quite achieve. Still, I couldn't help being mesmerized by it, much like Jennifer and the rock band with the "salty" lead singer.

The stuff that dreams are made of.

I've been reading some rather cold reviews of Nora Ephron's latest movie, Julie & Julia, and they're annoying me for some reason. Granted, the movie has its flaws, and I don't think it can help the fact that 1950s Paris is just way more enchanting and fascinating than turn-of-the-millennium Queens (or that Julia Child, who spent several years learning how to cook and working her typing and cooking fingers to the bone on that marvelous cookbook is a more compelling subject than Julie Powell, who spent one year cooking someone else's recipes and getting the kind of online attention that most bloggers of any subject can only dream of after so relatively short a time). <-- Was that the most long-winded parenthetical afterthought or WHAT?!

But I'm a hopeless sucker for "living your dream" stories, especially when they're apparently true stories, and MOST especially when they're about budding writers - a company I fancy myself a part of. And, even if she isn't that likable, I couldn't help pulling for Powell, living the life of a nobody in New York City and feeling the thrill of getting comments and people interested in her project. There was more than one occasion during the movie where I found myself saying "Hey, that's me!" I'm rather thankful, though, that I don't yet have a set of "ritual cobb salad lunch" friends.

And I loved the fact that they included the very real circumstance of Julia Child finding out about Powell's blog and not being flattered or impressed in the slightest, and even being a little put out by it. And that, ultimately, that didn't matter and didn't diminish Powell's affection for her hero one iota.

I like movies like this, the ones that remind you how frickin' GREAT it feels to know what you want and to go for it, even without knowing if you'll succeed or not. To do something because you enjoy it, not because it's someone else's idea of what your "real life" is supposed to be. Movies that make you literally want to go out and buy a cookbook and see if you can cook beef bourguignon. Cheesy or not, I love it when I go to a movie and leave the theater walking a little differently, taking deeper breaths, and holding my head a little higher. Movies SHOULD do that. Not all of them have to lift you up, of course, but any movie that makes you a different person leaving the theater than you were when you walked in is a success in my book.

I suppose at this point, critics of Julie & Julia would say they have nothing against any of this either, and that the problems in the film lie elsewhere. I won't argue that (though I do disagree with some points I've seen made, which rather enthusiastically miss what I see as the point). But, if nothing else, Meryl Streep's ebullient portrayal of Julia is well worth sitting through whatever other problems you might have with the storytelling or characters. I don't think joie de vivre has ever been so perfectly captured.


Enchanté, Mrs. Child.