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Nymphomaniac Part 1 (2014) - F

The film offended me.  Not by the explicit sex scenes.  But by its ridiculousness, by the idea that this pretentious silly thing is being presented as serious art.

The protagonist's behavior is not realistic.  It's is a misogynyst's personal fantasy version of a woman.  The film intercuts her absurd behavior with silly dialogue.  It's sophomoric; it's badly done.  Von Trier's films are usually solid-sounding concepts, that play out as slow and pointless things.  This one takes the cake though.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) - B+

The presence of Mark Duplass indicates that this might be a mumblecore movie.  Or if not, one of the recent films that have a foot in mumblecore (they're loose and casual in style and pace) but doesn't suffer from low production values.  In fact, it is one of the latter.

The story has something oblique to do with love and companionship, and self-delusion.  The performances make it work.  Aubrey Plaza is especially good as a smart, quiet, semi-vulnerable young woman coming of age.  Mark Duplass and Jake Johnson are each very good in this also.  All in all it's a pretty good way to spend 85 minutes.

Submarine (2010) - B+

This bears a definite resemblance to Wes Anderson's more energetic and imaginative films.  If you liked "Rushmore" or "The Life Aquatic", you'll dig this.  (Conversely I suppose that if you didn't, you won't).  But it doesn't just imitate; it takes further.

I did.  It's genuinely funny and inventive, not only in the writing but also in the filmmaking technique.  This was written and directed by Richard Ayoade, a character actor whom you might have seen doing some deadpan nerd characters in UK and US films; he shows a very large talent here.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - D+

This is Wes Anderson's latest film, and it reminds one of his previous (better) films in some ways - it's got the cartoonish art deco look that he's becoming known for going on in full force, and it's got an air of cartoonish whimsy, and like some of this films there's an air of "old world meets new world".  But it reminded me more of someone else's movies, in the way that it mimicks old movies (and books) in a detailed way that could have passed for loving, but then undercuts everything that it's doing with an oppressive air of cynicism and "now watch me pee in the punch bowl" and "WTF, who cares" - I had to sit and think where I'd seen this approach before, and it did come to me - the Coen brothers.

The sad thing is, Anderson could have made a real, poignant movie here if he had wanted to.  The story supports one, and parts of this are written well and tug at the heartstrings.  But only for a few minutes at a time.  The movie instead chooses to focus on trying to make fun of such an old-fashioned thing as drama, or intrigue.

He also could have made a reasonable funny movie here.  Some of the performers are very funny (especially Ralph Fiennes) and some of their lines are very funny.  But as a comedy, this goes on way too long on one note - snooze inducing - and also suffers from numerous grotesque scenes that detract from any sustained comedic mood.

So what he made here is a big heaping ornate bowl of nothing.  Just as the Coen Brothers tend to do.  I'm disappointed in this guy ... that's two bad ones in a row.  One ("Moonrise Kingdom") that was a reworked Jean-Luc Godard movie, and this one that seems to aspire to be the Coens.  Wes, my advice - please just be yourself.

Hunger (2009) - D

With all the hype right now surrounding "12 Years A Slave" and it's Oscar triumph, I decided to check out Steve McQueen's first film, despite my dislike of his other two.  "Hunger" got a lot of positive attention when it came out, particularly for Michael Fassbinder's performance.  The movie is about Bobby Sands of the IRA and his hunger strike.  In it, Fassbinder literally wastes away (under a doctor's supervision) so as to show us a malnourished body in full glory.

Which is a freak show conceit.  Something really unnecessary in my book.  What pornography is to sex, McQueen's films are to human misery.  It amplifies it, and then thrusts it into your face.

As a film, this is all about that freakshow performance, and self-conscious artiness.  Impressive wordless sequences, well-photographed.   An extremely long dialogue scene (ten minutes or so) delivered by two actors shown from a single-camera shot without a cut. This isn't a drama, it's a still-life portriat that invites us to reflect on the anger of the hunger strikers, and the way that anger manifested itself turned inwards.  In bones protruding from skin, and lesions and blood sores.

This guy's films just aren't for me.  He's a director (Michael Haneke is another) who is going to keep putting out technically well-made films that garner attention from critics, and occasionally incite social dialogue, but which I will never enjoy.  His whole trip is to dwell on human misery, not in a naturalistic way but in a way that celebrates the extremes of human behavior.  At core it's obvious to me that he's sadistic and that he entered the world of film so as to satisfy his core urge of making us all want to wince and gag.

In Secret (2014) - A-

It's been said that the trailer spoils this movie, so I won't post it.  Suffice it to say that the story occurs in 19th Century France (though it's in English - American and British actors), and is not a happy one.

In fact the subject matter is extremely bleak, and has been attempted by Hollywood on a handful of occasions - though not within the last 30 years, interestingly.  I think it's better done here than in other more celebrated films.  I was immersed in the bad life choices made by the characters.  Which is what movies do best - to make you feel an experience, sometimes something unpleasant.

This film recreates the look and feel of its time beautifully.  It's well-cast and perfectly made.  People tend to take movies of this time for granted, as commodities rather than as art.  IMO if Francois Truffaut had directed this 30 years ago - and this does have a timeless quality to it, such that had he done so, it would have looked like this - people would have taken it as particularly important.  It's impressive.  I know that I'm saying even less than usual about this film, in perhaps a vain attempt not to spoil the story's content, but the sum total of what I want to communicate is : A).  It's a wonderfully made film, and B).  If you're in the mood for a small dose of culture, by all means this is worth taking in.

About Last Night (2014) - D

I'm not going to paste a link to the trailer in with this review.  I don't want to promote it.  In a perfect world Al Sharpton would be out in front of a theater right now demanding that Hollywood stop foisting crap like this on black moviegoers.

This film is a cookie-cutter "modern romance" film targeted to black couples and designed to get them into theater seats.  It's actually an adaptation of a David Mamet play (or depending on how you look at it, a remake of the 1986 adaption), but had I not known that I wouldn't have guessed that this had any connection to anything resembling real art.  It comes off like another contrived, cynical, and vapid "black comedy" and suffers from the same syndromes that have been affecting a large proportion of these films over the last 15 years or so.

My biggest beef with many of these films (I see this a lot, starting with "The Best Man" back in 1999, which I really hated) is this : It presents its young black characters as successful in life to varying degrees, working white-collar jobs and having plenty of disposable income, but they barely work at their jobs as far as we see in the film, and don't take those jobs seriously.  In this film, one guy quits his job and upends his desk in a fit of immaturity because he can't loan credit to a friend.  (After which he loans his savings to the friend's business).  Both male characters are seen coming in to work late and/or hung over.  It's made clear through various dialogue that they are much more concerned with their sex lives than with their jobs; at one point a call to a client is terminated so that they can discuss how each made out the night before.  The female characters, while not as nonchalant about their jobs, smoke pot casually and don't appear to be having much stress in their lives except for their sexual/romantic involvements.

I don't get it.  I don't see why there is an appetite for images of black people doing well, but not having to work or live responsibly.  Again, this has been bothering me for 15 years now; I've sat through innumerable examples.  Black kids who see these films are going to get a skewed picture of what life is, and on some level assume that it's their job to graduate from college, after which they go into a world in which the most stressful thing they'll probably go through will be deciding whether to have sex with a supervisor or not.  And any white people who know black people mostly through movie images are being shown images of them as entitled brats.

If I had to guess at the reason that these images have become so exaggerated in these movies, I'd say that it's largely just laziness - imitation of other movies.  I swear, it started with "The Best Man" and it's kept going from there.  It's rare in any black-targeted comedy that I see an African-American person behave in a focused manner towards their job.  More often we see the trappings of wealth and privilege, but the character acts like a buffoon, or just an entitled creep.  If someone were actively trying to plant harmful imagery into the minds of young black Americans, they couldn't do it much more effectively than it's being done.

My other complaints with this movie that are particular to many if not all black comedies are :
1.   Ridiculous ghetto behavior presented as normal.  Yeah, sometimes it's funny. But if it's not a particularly funny scene, how about behavior that seems real.
2.  A focus on sexual mechanics that is abnormal.  It's not a black romantic comedy until we see the inevitable scene of the women talking about the men's penises, and laughing.  An "ain't it the truth, child" laugh.
3.   Can we stop calling women the b-word quite so much?  Do you think that it gives your film some kind of hip edge?

Anyway, the romance elements in the film weren't horrible.  It was generally watchable.  It helped that Joy Bryant has such a nice face.  If I have to look at someone's face for the length of a mediocre movie, she's a good choice.  And Regina Hall was funny in a few scenes.  Kevin Hart was not at his best, and Michael Early was in the movie.  On the whole, it's another piece of crap movie that we'll all forget about in a few weeks.

August : Osage County (2013) - B

Well, this one's a bit different from its trailer.  You might think it to be one of those "older women sitting at a table telling people the truth about their lives in a direct, and funny, manner - and everybody learns from it, and acknowledges those truths" movies.  (If that is a genre).  It's really more of a Tennessee Williams-styled "family as a circle of hell" movie.  Nobody's happy, everybody's deeply messed up, and the only way forward seems to be to detach from everyone else.

Beyond the unhappiness and malaise, this brought Tennessee Williams (kids, he was like Tyler Perry, except more damaged, and out of the closet) to mind for another reason - it's got a stage play feel to it.  The dialogue doesn't aim for realism, it aims for the big dramatic moments that in real life most people eschew (but that some people do enjoy going through once in a while, admittedly.  Hand up).  And we don't flash back at all, we just see the characters in the here and now, steadily building towards a dramatic climax or three.

The story is serviceable, the dialogue has its moments.  What makes this worth watching are the performances, from a strong cast.  Everyone is quite good in their parts.  I liked Juliette Nicholson and Juliette Lewis as two of the family sisters; I always enjoy Chris Cooper in movies.  And the movie is carried by Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.

Now, you would expect Streep to be great - and she is.  Just tremendous, as befits the greatest actress to have worked movies.  You may or may not expect great acting out of Julia Roberts, but she does give it to you here.  This is her best dramatic part IMO.

On the whole, the film's no picnic and it's nothing that we haven't seen before, but it's a chance to see some strong female performances.  

Downfall/Oscars Videos

Let this be a resting place for Hitler's thoughts on the 2014 Oscars ...

As well as the fit that he threw last year when "Argo" won ...

Pirate Radio (2009) - A-

Seen in a longer form in England as "The Boat That Rocked", this is the American cut of the film.  It's a comedy-drama about a "pirate radio" boat off the coast of England in the 1960's; the BBC didn't play "rock" music, so some enterprising souls set up boats with transmitters to beam it in.  The tone of the movie resembles "Animal House" - anti-authoritarian comedy, with lapses in taste - and I think this movie compares quite favorably with that predecessor.  It's funny, it's wildly colorful.

And what makes it REALLY good is the actors and the way they pull you into these characters' worlds.  Philip Seymore Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, and Bill Nighy here are each not only great, but absolute forces of nature.  They inhabit their characters, and we enjoy living in their world.  This is an underappreciated gem of a movie.

  

Boogie Nights (1997) - A+

I always asserted that this was a great movie, but it caught a lot of grief in its day.  "Unoriginal" ... "Incoherent, Badly Structured" ... "Wants to be Altman/Scorsese/Tarantino" ... "Exploitative, Sleazy".

Baloney!  This is a series of classic scenes, that don't have obvious precedent anywhere else.  It's wildly entertaining.  But you know what?  You either like it or you don't.  If you don't want to see Wahlberg's prosthetic penis hanging out, fair enough.  But don't try to tell me this isn't a great film.

Doubt (2008) - A

This is classic movie making.  There's a dramatic story.  And a host of great performances.

Meryl Streep and Philip Seymore Hoffman are HEAVYWEIGHTS.  Watching their characters go toe-to-toe in this is unlike anything else.  It's just great.  There's really not much more to say about it.  Steep.  Hoffman.  Check it out.

Happiness (1998) - A

This is strong meat.  I hated it on first viewing - actively hated it.  It flies in the face of our conditioning, in small ways and big ways.

This is a detached (asexual?) view of sexual behavior.  It was made by a writer/director who likes to immerse his audience in darkness and to upset them.  In this singular instance, concept and style came together for him into a film that is unlike any other, and broadened the vocabulary of movie art.

We watch a bunch of people chase "happiness", which to them with their societal conditioning means hard orgasms.  One is an idealistic woman who puts herself into vulnerable positions, looking for lovers that she can "help".  One is a hardened woman losing her ability to feel.  One is an obscene caller who drinks heavily and whose days center around masturbation.  And one is a pedophile, who drugs and rapes his sons' friends.

The pedophile angle dominates the film, because it's the plot thread that's unlike anything before it in movies.  It's capable of angering or sickening viewers, particularly if they interpret it as attempt at dark comedy.  Really, it's a cold hard look at pedophilia - unflinching.  If you can stand to really think about this, you realize that some people are born that way, born cursed - it's a dysfunction, not a choice.  And their "happiness" can cause pain and suffering on a magnitude beyond the other sad stories in this film.

The ending is disturbing, as well.  You're going to either uncomfortably laugh or you're going to get angry; maybe both.  This film is imperfect in that the pace is slower than it needs to be.  But it does fulfill the primary function of art : it makes us see the world in a different way.  And in this case, a way that is inarguably true, that most of us can't generally stand to look at.

Synecdoche, New York (2008) - B+

This is incredibly - I'm not using the word loosely - dense, layered, intellectually flashy, and downbeat.  It's impressionistic art about a sad life and about inherent lack of meaning, which are the same topics that Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard used to work at in film to great fanfare - though this is more affecting, I think.  It's made at least somewhat palatable to mass tastes by an awesome cast and by the screenwriter's panache.  This is art, and not pleasant art.  These are real-world nightmares.

To attempt a very quick summary - Philip Seymore Hoffman (perfectly cast here) is a theater director in upscale New York.  His wife and child leave, and he becomes increasingly detached from reality  The film's slight surrealism reflects his point of view, particularly in how time ceases to have much meaning to him after their departure.  He is awarded a McArthur grant, and sets about creating a type of self-reflective living play in a large warehouse space.  This effort continues over many years; he throws himself into it looking for meaning in life and for the lost connections to daughter and idealized wife.  Many actors involve themselves and the whole effort spirals into itself; he spends his days walking down a street giving notes to an actor who's playing him, and who is giving notes to another actor.  The women in his life become doppelgangers and stand ins for one another.

This is wildly imaginative.  If you decode it, there's nothing but sadness inside.  This kind of thing worked for Tennessee Williams I suppose ... it's not my favorite kind of art.  But the level of ambition here is staggering.

Watching this in the wake of Philip Seymore Hoffman's death makes it all the more affecting.  In a way he was living chunks of this film out.

Labor Day (2014) - C

This film gave me exactly what I expected from its trailer.  The good and the bad of it are all foreshadowed there.

The good side of this movie is that it's relatively WEIRD.  The setup keeps the whole thing off-kilter, for a romance movie, which keeps some dramatic tension simmering.  The movie is strange enough that you won't yawn while watching it; you'll probably appreciate that it's different from the hundreds of other romantic movies that you've seen or been exposed to.  Also, it's a plus to have Josh Brolin in this role which he's perfect for.  Kate Winslet I'm less convinced by.  It seems to me that this story would work better with a plainer woman in her role; Kate's too good-looking to believe in her falling hard for some guy that she barely knows.

The bad side of the movie is the woman's choice to endanger her son, and the way she falls so hard for a guy she barely knows.  I suppose that people do make those choices in life.  But I think that such people's lives look different from the portrayal here.  They look much more pedestrian and less grand.  Any woman as vulnerable and careless as Winslet's character is here would quickly be a magnet for every moderately good-looking meth-head in her town.  Some dude would have been sleeping on the couch long before Brolin strolls into this movie.

So, in the end, it's a movie and it manages to involve and to entertain, if not to enlighten or to represent.  I give it a C.  

What Masie Knew (2013) - A+

What movies do best is immersion - making you feel someone else's experience.  Here, you're immersed in a young girl's view of her life.  Her parents do not put her welfare above theirs, and you feel it.  There's no big traumatic event here.  Just a series of demonstrations, and some need on the girl's part for an emotional safe haven.

This is adapted from an 1898 book by Henry James, into a modern setting.  It's well-paced, and it's tastefully made.  The performances are strong, and the visuals nice.

I've got a bad habit of writing many more words about the films that I don't like than the ones that I do.  I don't know what more to say about this one, without starting to spoil plot details.  Immersive, tasteful, makes you feel and understand someone else's experience.  That's the deal here.  I give it an A+.  It's on Netflix, by the way.

About Time (2013) - A

The conceit here is that the central character's father informs him that the males in their family - i.e. themselves - can travel backwards in time and relive it.  Which enables them to reshape events or even chunks of their lives that they're unsatisfied with, back as far as to some checkpoint that they don't want to cross and invalidate (i.e. the birth of a child).  The protagonist uses this ability in large part to shape his relationship with Rachel McAdams.  Now, you might be saying "I remember this basic setup from 20 years ago, when it was called 'Groundhog Day'".  Indeed, this is a similar setup.  But this is a very different film.  "Groundhog Day" was ostensibly comedic on the outside, but fairly dark and depressed on the inside.  This film is less overtly comedic, and quite warm and life-affirming on the inside.

Positive warm gooey feelings about what life is or can be are what makes this film special.  We've all heard as many feel-good maxims as we can stand about how life is a gift, appreciate each day as if it were your last, etc. etc.  They bounce off us and generally fail to move us.  By inventing a slightly complex story involving time travel, and then investing us into the characters, the filmmakers here are able to illustrate these persepctives in a new way, that can get straight to your heart, even if you're a relatively jaded individual like me.

I do think that this film will be wildly popular if and when people get exposed to it, and will probably gain a following through the years.  It's a great film, a great experience.  Rating : A.

Kill Your Darlings (2013) - A

This film is a somewhat imagined or fictionalized version of something that really happened.  Future Beat Generation authors Alan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs were all part of the same social circle circa 1944 at Columbia University.  In the center of that circle was mutual friend Lucian Carr, who exhorted them towards creating their art.  Within the year Carr murdered a gay admirer, ostensibly in self-defense, and pulled the three authors into his manufactured defense.

So, this film's got everything that it needs to work well.  The milleau is inherently interesting.  The personalities, the characters involved with this story are very interesting.  And a murder occurring in the middle of a group of young idealistic college-age men, to their disbelief, definitely qualifies as strong dramatic tension.  I knew going into this film that it'd manage to be interesting, if nothing else.

It is, and it's also beautifully made.  The recreation of early 1940's New York looks great, appropriately dank, and wildly colorful.  The performances here are extremely good - Ben Foster, Jack Huston, and Dane DeHaan are each great in this film as Burroughs, Kerouac, and Carr respectively.  Daniel Radcliffe, i.e. Harry Potter, whose Alan Ginsburg is the central character in the film, gives an outstanding performance.  I didn't doubt that he could act, but I'm surprised at how well he did act this chcracter, who is quite different from himself - it's a great performance.

The movie is thoroughly interesting.  I suppose that it would be less so to someone who didn't know who these guys were and what they went on to be - though it'd still be a reasonably compelling drama.  To me, the film's a strong A.     

Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) - A-

Steven Spielberg, while chairing the Cannes jury that gave this film last year's top honors, said "we were absolutely spellbound by the brilliance of the performances, by those amazing young actresses".  I'll agree with that.

This French film, 3 hours long and rated NC-17 for explicit sex scenes, is adapted from an erotic graphic novel.  But, it may as well have been adapted from a celebrated work of literature.  It's got a depth of feeling and a sensitivity to its characters that qualifies it as high art.

The story is about one young woman, or maybe girl is the more precise term here - she's in high school, and her age is not specified - entering into a romantic and sexual relationship with a slightly older woman.  And then the relationship plays itself out, as most do. There's nothing especially startling or shocking about the story.  The film is notable not for what happens, but for how effectively it pulls us into it and makes us feel it.

Adele Exarchopoulos is outstanding, I would say amazing, in the lead role here.  She's a striking young woman and those looks are used to great effect by a director who was arguably abusive ... who had her so immersed in the role that not only tears flow in one scene, but also running snot from her nose.  (Which he then ordered the other actress to lick up ... which she did not).  This performance really deserved an Oscar; surprisingly she wasn't even nominated.

The film is defined to many by its sex scenes, which are under criticism for being extraneous, and for resembling male-fantasy pornography more than they resemble actual encounters between woman.  Both criticisms are well-placed.  The sex scenes are ridiculous, and will make some viewers uncomfortable with the movie.  But to me they don't distract much from the great film that surrounds them.  Rating : A-.

Blue Jasmine (2013) - C-

As far as Woody Allen's films go, this one's middle of the pack - if that.  What struck me about it was how relentlessly old-fashioned it is; it plays out like a 1940's film.  The characters are there to play roles in some drama, not to exist as fully-formed human beings.  And the psychological underpinnings of their behavior are not examined - they just do this, and do that.

Usually his films more resemble ones from the past 40 years.  Now, that's not a kiss of death.  An old-fashioned movie can be entertaining, or enlightening.  But this is neither.  There's nothing much going on here - just a hackneyed story, which has little relevance to modern life.  It compares very unfavorably with a more vital recent work of his, such as "Whatever Works".  And, compares unfavorably with just about any other movie that you could pick off a marquee.  The pleasures here are slim, and arguably not of sufficient quantity that it's worth one's time to sit through this.

As to Cate Blanchett's performance here, which is being hyped, it galls me that people are going on about it.  She is doing a full-on imitation of the actress Judy Davis, herself best known for her work with Allen.  Why he didn't want to use Davis herself in this part, we can only guess.  Instead we get Blanchett doing a hammy version of her.  Rating : C-.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - A+

This one had to grow on me.  I kept thinking about it, after my first viewing.  I've seen it 3 times since then; I've come to believe that it's the most important film made in 2013, and is Scorsese's best film after "Goodfellas".

The story here is nothing new - it's as old as time.  This is the story of self-destructiveness, celebrated by the participants.  It shocked people back in 1931 with "The Public Enemy" and in 1932 with "Scarface".  And, I suppose it's still the case that when told with panache and without more peppering of "this is bad" cues and narration that people are used to seeing in movies, apparently this story can still offend a fair amount of viewers.

This is called immersion; it's what movies are best able to do.  You can see and feel an experience without living it.  Here you're immersed in the world of someone who is empty inside, and consequently goes on a doomed ride through life replete with drug abuse, sexual hijinks, and general lack of ethical behavior.  Other people get hurt.  And the whole thing ends badly.

Huge props to Martin Scorsese - at age 71! - for the quality of that immersion.  This is stylistically beautiful.  But more impressively, it's powerful.  IMO, more powerful than other celebrated stories of self-destruction such as "Raging Bull" or "Taxi Driver" that people eventually learned to appreciate.

You have to buckle in for this one.  It's long, and it doesn't let up.  One could argue that this would have made a better miniseries than movie - that's it's difficult to take in all at once.  But that's what they (Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter) wanted to do here.  To make a great big movie overflowing at the seams.  It's well-written throughout, it's got great performances by DiCaprio and Hill, and it's a masterful creation.  Rating : A+.

Philomena (2013) - A

I got much more than I had bargained for when I stepped in to this movie.  From the trailer, I expected a zany little indie film, something about a road trip to America undertaken by an older woman and a journalist.  What I ended up seeing was a film that is indeed funny and entertaining, but is also about profound subjects - separation from children, abuse of power, faith and doubt.

It's a perfectly constructed film.  It's thoroughly engaging and easy to watch, but full of depth.  You can't not like it.  You can't not be moved by it.  Rating : A.

American Hustle (2013) - A-

This is a fine movie, but you should know what you're dealing with.  It's not the quick-moving film that its Led Zeppelin-infused trailer promises.  It's got the plot zig-zags and the pleasant anything-goes style of its predecessor, "Silver Linings Playbook", but not the pacing.  This film aspires to a 1970's art house vibe - Robert Altman's films, Sidney Lumet's films.  And that's the way it plays.

If you're up for that, the film's a blast.  There are a bunch of colorful characters in play, and you can never quite tell what's going to happen next.  Jeremy Renner and Jennifer Lawrence are good in this; Christian Bale and Amy Adams are great.  They shine here.  As always you can see his inner turmoil, and you can see the wheels spinning in her head.  I watched this movie three times, primarily to watch Adams and Bale.

When all is said and done, this is a romance film, and a very good one.  Rating : A-.

Nebraska (2013) - A-

There are a couple of things about this movie that work against it.  First, it moves slowly.  Not Terence Malik slowly, or Michaelangelo Antonioni slowly - nothing that severe.  But a bit more slowly than some people like for their popular entertainment to move.

Secondly, it is somewhat patronizing towards middle America, no two ways about it.  However, it manages to be funny enough, and poetic enough, that you'll probably forgive its sins.

The star of this film isn't really Bruce Dern, or Will Forte.  Or June Squibb, who takes a great part here and makes a name for herself.  They're all quite fine at what they do.  But the star here is the director, Alexander Payne.  He's developing a real mastery of the art form.  And some of the funny shots here, the David Lynch-styled and framed moments, of men sitting in bunches staring at televisions without communicating are going to become iconic.  Again, poetic.  Rating : A-. 

Captain Phillips (2013) - B+

This is classic movie making.  It's got an interesting setting - a big ship.  It's got an interesting conflict, between pirates and the ship's crew, with elements of strategy in it.  And it's got a pretty great Tom Hanks performance in it - one of his most memorable ones, and a nice performance by Barkhad Abdi in it as well.

This movie is, if not perfect, engaging and interesting.  And with elements of social relevance tugging at you subtly as you watch it.  Rating : B+.

12 Years A Slave (2013) - B-

I'll admit, I didn't expect to like this film.  Steve McQueen's previous film, "Shame", was one of the worst I've sat through in years.  It was ostensibly about sex addiction, but it seemed clear to me that the real point of it was for McQueen to inflict pain on his audience and to make them feel uncomfortable.  I've seen "Hunger" subsequently, and dislike it also.  His interest is not in realism, not in surrealism, but in sadism.  When I heard that he was making a film about American slavery, I was pretty sure that it would be a tough watch, Mel Gibson-type stuff.  And pretty sure that I wouldn't like it.

Do I like it?  Yes and no. The screenplay is brilliant, particularly for the first 30 minutes or so.  It brings the sickness of slavery up into your face, from different angles.  If you want to see something that will viscerally affect you, this is your movie.  I felt my head throbbing the first time that I watched it, real physical discomfort.  The second time that I watched it, I was wincing rather than holding my head, and I was able to appreciate what a great job John Ridley did adapting this.

(It does slow down a bit after that first thirty minutes, as it sticks to Northop's book.  This is a period piece, not popular entertainment).

The cinematography is extremely sharp, and beautiful.  The performances are very good.  Chiwetel Eijofor carries the movie well.  Michael Fassbinder and Paul Dano are quite good in their roles as an owner and an overseer whose sicknesses and insecurities are inflicted upon the slaves.  I tip my hat to those guys, and Paul Giamatti also, for throwing themselves into such horrible roles with gusto.  If I had a Hollywood career going, I would have stayed ten miles away from playing any of their parts.

(Lupita N'yong'o is not so impressive; she won an Oscar for being whipped and crying in one scene.  She may or may not be able to act; if she can, she didn't show it here).

My beef with this film is the director.  McQueen was the wrong man to put this together.  He does some of the material justice - his desire to throw horrible behavior into our faces mostly meshes with Ridley's script.  But he inflicts the trappings of S&M onto the material.  He fetishizes captivity and darkness.  He overdoes Patsy's whipping.  Worst of all, he gives us a standing-on-tiptoes-for-hours near-lynching scene so unrealistic that it takes the viewer out of the movie.  I am sure that another director could have made a better movie here. 

Dallas Buyer's Club (2013) - C-

This is an entertaining enough movie, and for one obvious reason - the performances.  Matthew McConaughey is great as Ron Woodruff, a rough-hewn guy who contacts AIDS and subsequently channels his energy into selling "alternative medicines" that are not FDA approved, through semi-clandestine means.  Jared Leto is even better as his transgender business partner - Leto gives a fantastic performance.  Jennifer Garner is in this also - likeable, as always.

After the movie finishes slicing and dicing its path past you, you might look back and think - what did I just watch?  What was really accomplished?  Were the FDA really the bad guys here?  Did this script just manipulate the living heck out of a fairly minor story - inflate a real-life event to "movie proportions"?  And then you might like it less.

But the performances are worth watching.  Rating : C-.

Gravity (2013) - C-

Maybe high expectations were part of the reason that I disliked this movie - I had heard that it was a stunning game-changer of a film.  Or, maybe I was just in a bad mood after paying IMAX prices to see it.  Perhaps if this had been an unheralded film that I took in at a $2 theater I would have liked it more.  As it stands, I was sorely disappointed.

Space is big - I know that.  Things are moving in orbital patterns out there - I knew that too.  And, gravity is relative to where you are.  I didn't learn anything new here.  The visual effects are well and good, but they're undercut by a corny and story and some unbelievable "only in the movies" events.  Which undercuts the realism of the effects.  Casting George Clooney and Sandra Bullock doesn't help matters as far as I'm concerned; it distracts from any serious purpose here.  He's long since become a cure for sleeplessness, and she's a talented woman but a walking primer on plastic surgery.

I had been told that this was a "2001 : A Space Odyssey" for the next generation.  But I'll tell you what, you'd have to drop a LOT of acid for this cornball movie to have that type of an effect on you.  Rating : C-.   

Her (2013) - D+

I was psyched for this movie.  After all, Spike Jonze usually makes interesting movies.  It stars Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Scarlet Johannson's voice ... each of those is a selling point to me.  And it deals with a lot of my favorite themes - what consciousness is, what reality is, what sexuality is.  I was up for this one.

Unfortunately, the movie is a big bowl of nothingness.  The performances are fine - Phoenix is excellent actually.  (Playing Spike Jonze).  The pace is slow, but not terribly so.  But NOTHING HAPPENS.  (Is it a spoiler to tell you that nothing happens?  That there's a terrible absence of dramatic conflict?  I don't think so).  It's just one huge anti-climax.

My recommendation here is to save the money you would have spent on a ticket and apply it to almost any novel by Philip K. Dick, who writes largely about these same themes.  But with energy and vision, which are lacking here.  Rating : D+.

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