Updates Coming

Lots of (hopefully) exciting content is on the way!  Musings and Stuff is coming back with a non-threatening vengeance after an unexpected break.  Excitement underway:

Meryl vs. Oprah?

• Oscar season beginning-- what Telluride, Toronto and Venice coming soon, we continue onward to another awards season.  Today's unexpected announcement: Meryl Streep going Supporting for her role in August: Osage County.  Will Streep go up against Oprah in Lee Daniels' The Butler?  Anyone else hoping Uma Thurman gets awards traction for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac for an encore of Oprah/Uma Oscar jokes....
• Reviews-- lots coming up including: The Way, Way Back, We're the Millers, Fill the Void, Elysium and Ain't Them Bodies Saints.
• and more...

Celebrate the wonder and brutality of the cinema with Musings and Stuff...

21 and Over

There's the murmur of a nugget of something to 21 and Over, the latest I-just-want-to-party, boys will be boys childishness in the reunion of three high school friends as they're about to complete college with the realization that times have changed and things aren't quite the same as they used to be.  A facet of coming of age that's inherently believable when your best friends start to grow up.  It's a slight nugget of something that's hardly tapped into for this is but another in the canon of R-rated frat boy comedies where thoughtfulness has little place-- pitched as a junior league Hangover by way of Superbad, which in concept isn't terrible, just highly unoriginal.  The film is further hedged into reductive territory as it was written and directed by The Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and commences as three former besties join the celebrate the drunken cornerstone of ones twenty-first birthday, setting out on an epic night of depravity.  As a high concept that's all well and good, and as many a youth can attest with the blurred specters of entitling the rights that age bequeaths, not an terrible setup for raucous shenanigans.  21 and Over aims for an all in good fun night for the ages, however, must it be so racist, sexist and homophobic in the process.

Miller (Miles Teller) meets up with old school pal Casey (Skylar Astin) at a Pacific Northwest college town in order to celebrate the ritual of getting hammered with newly of age birthday boy Jeff Chang (Justin Chon.)  Miller is the most gregarious of the group-- that friend from high school who's still relieving those glory years without wanting to remove himself from the party, whereas Casey has grown into a junior executive, primed for a successful future and far removed from the silly shenanigans of the past.  It's worth nothing that Teller and Astin are both charming and engaging young actors and both are nearly able to somewhat transcend the drab predictability of 21 and Over's frat boy formula fun house. 

Teller, who spits his dialogue out like a pervy screwball comedy hero, in particular deserves some sort of special praise for managing to come across somewhat likable despite the obnoxious and endless foul that said dialogue consists of reads a true find.  A young actor that first made an impression as the sensitive, but troubled teenager in Rabbit Hole, and who is no stranger to sodden underachieving teenage drudge as evident in last years found footage party flick Project X clearly deserves a stronger outfit than this.  And Astin, who appeared in last falls hit Pitch Perfect, manages an even-keeled finesse to his boy next door wannabe yuppie character expresses a study alertness that's equally deserving of something stronger.  Like most frat-guy odyssey pictures, it's a particularly shallow place for anyone of color, or female, or not a straight white guy, and it's a shame that Chon is given the shaft of a character that's disturbingly and offensively, a punchline.  Still, as in movies of like this, we all just want to party, right?

Trouble is that Jeff, a straight-A student with medical school ambitions has a huge interview early the next day and his strict, judgmental father is hard pressed to let his old high school pals take him out.  As the script goes, and as boys will be boys go, it takes little coaxing and soon their off and running-- bar hopping, carousing, reminiscing and getting into a whole lick of trouble, all in the hopes of getting away with a little murder before all goes back to normal with Jeff safely and soberly at his early morning interview.  Along the way, the three come to realize that, as they wan down their college years, that perhaps they aren't as close as they thought they were.  Of course, that takes a backseat as Jeff starts urinating and vomiting on the lucky bar patrons (mostly female) in his path.  Jeff becomes thoroughly smashed and nearly unconscious for most of the film as the boys begin their epic Dude, Where's My Car?-riffed journey to get the boy home; a location in which no one knows.

And so 21 and Over travails a well-trodden path of debauchery, as Miller and Casey, dragging their passed out friend, around scour the pits of genre conventions.  Along the way, there's the obligatory debasing of women-- in this case a sorority made up of Latina women, needless destruction and customary dated stereotyping that's disguised as humor.  There's also a dark undercurrent of sideline character behavior that drags the wannabe happy-go-lucky film into a dark and atonal inappropriate place-- as in why does Jeff carry a gun?  If there's were a thoughtful dissection of coming of age, that would be another subject, but this a party-all-night exaggeration of youth and it feels equally offensive in tantamount to the racism, sexism and homophobia on display.  Worst offense of all is that none of which is particularly funny.

While it may prove a moo point to beat a dumb, forgettable film such as this, there's something fishier here and in so many films of its ilk that present straight while males in situations that are loathsome, and often criminal, only to be left with the heartening message that they're not so bad after all-- just boys being boys goofing around-- their hearts are made with gold.  All the while Jeff, their curiously suspect Asian friend, gets dragged around the mud, thrown out of buildings and paraded around for constant comic amusement, as do the peripheral women (save for one, whose existence is all but to redeem one of the golden, straight white boys.)  As there must be, there's room for dated homophobia as well.  This is especially ugly and sordid in the rare moments of the film where Miller and Casey are subject to a ripely deserved comeuppance that's just a prolonged set piece to make a groaning nod at straight male insecurity.

21 and Over would be a different film (not necessarily a better one, mind you, but a different one) had for instance Chon exchanged parts with either Teller or Astin, or if one of the straight white guys/heroes been homosexual, or if there was perhaps a fourth, maybe female friend invited to be part of the mix.  It's the ugly insistence of the regimented frat guy value system that films like 21 and Over (and its dubious predecessor The Hangover) that marks the genre disarmingly exclusive and how it feels neutered and botched from rightly feeling like the coming of age of anyone.  There's nothing inherently wrong with an R-rated raunchy comedy, but there is something wrong when they all look and sound the same, and the laughs aren't there, but no one is allowed in on the joke to begin with.  D+

Warm Bodies

Wrought from the pre-packaged clutches of the teen-lit market informed by The Twilight Saga comes Warm Bodies, a slight, but pleasing riff on the bad boy/good girl template.  In this setting, vampires are replaced by zombies as the misunderstood creatures of the underworld, and posits a star-crossed romance between undead and very much alive-- to make things easier to digest, both parties are portrayed in awfully pretty human form.  And while a cynic may recoil that such a film may only come to be due to the billion dollar Twilight fortune, writer-director Jonathon Levine, of 50/50 and The Wackness fame, has fashioned a fairly witty and affectionate little oddity that transcends mere clone status, as the films best moments matches the well-traveled metaphor of adolescent arrested development as apocalyptic nightmare with sensitivity and visual astuteness.  Warm Bodies, with its wink-wink self awareness, unapologetic filing of genre past is mostly good-humored and blessedly not as self-serious as it could have been is sort of a girly, twirly version of the Walking Dead, but one that meets Nicholas Sparks. with a dash of John Hughes spliced in, and while hardly original (it's based on the novel by Isaac Marion), there's a dash of a pulse and slight affection for this undead variant of Romeo & Juliet.

Set in an indiscriminate time and place, we meet R (Nicholas Hoult), a strangely articulate and thoughtfully minded young zombie-- he wanders aimlessly alongside his like-minded stragglers, at an abandoned airport.  And while he speaks nothing but in vague gestures and grunts, there's something different about him than the zombies of the George Romero universe.  He thinks, he wishes, he pines-- he's also hungry, but the consuming of human flesh and brains conflicts him.  And while as the films narrator, he's particularly unreliable-- unable to recall what events lead to his present day ennui-- he can't remember his human past, nor even his name (he thinks it starts with a R), he's our undead hero, and a striking notch above the lifeless Edward, what with his vacant stares and sparkling skin.  The one point that Warm Bodies digs into, fairly on the nose, is R's humanity, and that even in monster form, he's really just a variation of the outsider-- the depressed goth punk kid that has trouble fitting in.

Things start to change when during a routine raid for human brains, R meets Julie (Teresa Palmer), a pretty and spunky blonde human avenger.  The moment may have been cuddlier, had it not been offset by R's slaughtering of Julie's boyfriend, Perry (Dave Franco), whose brain gives him memories and the highest spark of life for R.  Because those memories are perfectly ripe for young love, and nicely calibrated by Levine's pop styling, R chooses to save Julie, in the hopes that she will see past the whole undead thing and stuff like that.  Things are a little more challenging considering he ate her boyfriend's brain, but the mechanics of young love work in mysterious ways, and the film decides that they and by extension all of us, can just move on from such things.  What does work is the artful little montages that frame the budding relationship between R and Julie-- as she gets closer to him, he starts to be just a bit more human after all.  His speech and movement improve-- he given gets a lone heartbeat.  Warm Bodies supposes that the cure to it all is but love and affection.

Just when one suspects the film may succumb to saccharine, there's a greater battle ahead for and because of R and Julie's romance.  As in almost all of teen-lit, genre pop-- our lovers can't just sail onto the sunset.  It turns that the true villains of Warm Bodies aren't the lifeless zombies that wander about, but an even more lethal zombie specimen, comprised of older zombies left to root in the form of their own skeletons.  The revolution, a small affair even by made-on-the-cheap genre film standards, bring the humans and "cured" zombies together in the hopes of a strangely utopian future.  The plot straggles around a bit too much, especially as it gears closer to its slightly ungainly conclusion, but even with its seeming rules-made-up-on-the-spot structure, the leads make an appealing duo.  Hoult, all grown from About a Boy, is an attractive fit with Palmer, and both tackle with sometimes wooden dialogue with an irony that makes Warm Bodies just about, well, a warm diversion.  B

Mama

There's a square elegance to Mama, Andy Muschietti's minor spooks in the night horror show which he adapted from his 2008 short film, as well as a pleasing, albeit highly derivative aura from this less is more mystery.  And while the story-- essentially a bargain basement pillaging of sharper films-- putters out into banality, there's a nicely calibrated tickle of scares and twitches that teases through the first two-thirds of the film.  Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabele Nélisse) are two young girls with a horrific backstory-- their father, on the heels of financial collapse has a breakdown, goes on a killing spree and kidnaps his young children, holding them in a creepy woodsy cabin until his life is taken.  The two girls grow feral-- raised, seemingly by a ghostly guardian, referred to as "Mama."  Mama was produced by Guillermo del Toro, and while this film is slight in regards to the his modern suspense track-- mastered by the classier Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone-- it makes sense that del Toro would back Muschietti's less is more approach, marked with its uniquely designed villain.  It's a shame, then that "Mama." as a villain is one that sadly loses its allure as the tease wears on.  As a result, Mama, the film suffers the same fate.

The story begins introducing Annabel (Jessica Chastain) and Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) fives years after the children-- Lucas' nieces have disappeared.  Annabel and Lucas are a boho punk couple-- she, first introduced relieved at the negative results of a pregnancy test, is in a rock band, he is an artist, tormented himself in the tragic events of that past-- he continues to search for his family.  Naturally, to the duress of Annabel, the girls are found-- wild and unresponsive-- and the movie charts the makings of its dysfunctional family.  The mystery-- and the greatest moments of Mama-- belong in that tease that "Mama,"-- an eternally jealous, unstable thing seems to have followed them.  The film asserts typical bumps in the night stabs of suspense, most of which are quite liberally stolen from superior films-- but they mostly work, as Muschietti masters a polished and stately look matched with a nicely shock-proof sound design.

There's an early sequence of nicely bent mystery and playfulness-- one that feels like the work of a young Spielberg-- in an elongated shot of happy Lilly tugging and coyly playing with "Mama." The trick is we only see one side of the shot, but it invites the audience to suggest that "Mama" is a villain of terror and humanity-- a quirky quality that gives the film its slightest uptick.  It certainly also helps to have an actress like Chastain front and center, who in a black punkette wig and fake tats still manages to finesse soul and poise in her first for-the-pay junky movie.  She bridges further humanity and imbues Annabel with a tangible central conflict in a character lacking maternal nature thrust into this scary new role-- there's a slight metaphor that the film wants to hit home.

I do wish Mama had a more satisfying conclusion-- the film is better as a tease than as a reveal.  Yet even with a premise, one that's just as preposterous as say, Ringu or The Others, that elicits enough gentle stabs at the chest, it's still an unfortunate thriller that's all dressed up with no place to go.  C+   

John Dies at the End

They come from time to time.  Little novelties of cinema with that aching yearning to be loved, not just loved but worshiped, endlessly quoted with the hope of making fanboys foam at the mouth and to come to the utter defense of.  Films that have a need to achieve a must-have cult fantasy.  Sometimes, of course, that can work despite whatever challenges, either in early reviews or dismal box office numbers...for example Donnie Darko achieved a status few films ever will because the demographic that remained loyal and true to it will likely stay in that bubble of fandom forever.  Sometimes, naturally, it can be a films undoing, and have a stink of desperation.  A mixed, muted, somewhere in the middle reaction will likely be the fate of John Dies at the End, an irony-infused oddity that seeks lust and and nerdy salivation in every turn, but falls short of all-encompassing worship because the story itself-- an amalgam of horror freak shows, fun house effects and droll teen comedy one liners-- is rather half baked, incoherent and seemingly making up its own rules on the spot.  Without even the slightest of sincerity and everything left in quotation marks, it would be easy to reduce John Dies at the End as wannabe, too-cool-for-its-own-good indie, but there's a light charm to it, an inventive sense of play, and genuine charisma in the group of performers.  Writer/director Don Coscarelli has been here before-- he's last feature was Bubba Ho-Tep, a funnily titled bit of absurdity that coasted on its oddball premise and its leading man Bruce Campbell as filler-- and in that regard John Dies at the End may well be a step forward in his seeming quest for eternal geek appreciation.

Dave, played by Chase Williamson-- a handsome smart-alec whose like the slacker, indie-grunge version of Topher Grace-- is a strange young man, with an even stranger pastime/job, or whatever.  Given the power the see dead things, move into various dimensions and given an astute awareness of things to come, mind reading, and various other supernatural-like abilities, all of which is accredited to a magical drug called "soy sauce" that chose him or whatsit, Dave is constantly at odds, but his ironic bent and merciless wit keep him, and the movie, from ever going to deep.  Dave is trying to sell his story, or just merely tell it, or trying to rationalize it in the form of recanting the how of his gifts to journalist Arnie Blondestone (played by Paul Giamatti.)  A flashback, a puzzlement and recurring nightmare, John Dies at the End pleads its case for eternal cult worship as the film shifts from clever readings to cheesy, tongue and check splatter violence to inventively low-brow effects.  The problem lies in a story that fails to truly grasp anything much at all.  We learn that Dave inherited his gifts and burdens from the titular John (Rob Mayes), a high school mate who got into "the sauce" after a meeting with a mysterious soothsayer.  What leads in an intense recollection of some otherworldly gobbledegook of apocalyptic proportions, all of which staged with a smirky grin, and cast aside more often than not by nonsensical oddball tangents-- oh look, a dog driving a truck, or a bratwurst working as a mobile phone.

One could discredit John Dies at the End on storyboarding logic, but there's a few guilty pleasures that make the film, if not the eternal cult fantasy it wishes to be than a pleasurable and a mostly agreeable slight of hand.  Williamson and Mayes are charming performers, and their off-kilter touches and clever line readings are, if nothing else, than nicely calibrated in such nonsense.  Giamatti, who works as audience skeptic, works as nifty piece of stunt casting, giving a slight nudge of gravitas to a work of immense cheese, and finally, Coscrelli is certainly a cheerfully anarchic filmmaker, one with an inventive sense of play and mayhem, only needing a structure to refine it.  There's a slight smidgeon of joy and chaos to the frantic sequences of madness, it just feels as thought John Dies at the End sputters out before it can reach the punchline.  B-

West of Memphis

Many documentaries have the power to instill rage in us-- that raw power of a story outside ourselves that strikes a certain anger and fervency.  Very few documentaries have a power to actually evoke change.  While certainly Morgan Spurlock's fast food uprising Super Size Me prompted McDonalds to disavow their Super Size meals, the eternal power of cinema may be the primary influence in the call for change for the West Memphis Three.  In 1993, three teenagers from West Memphis, Arkansas-- Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley-- were charged with the heinous murder of three eight-year-old boys.  Despite a severe lack of evidence, cries of misconduct during the investigation and further more during the trail, the only tangible piece that put these three young men behind bars was a controversial, and believed to heavily coerced confession by Misskelley, a high school drop out deemed by his own father, "retarded." The crime, dubbed the Robin Hood Hills Murder, has generated a heavy dose of controversy since it occurred, and through the investigation and trial process there was a certain call to arms to the stumped detectives that justice must be served.  What was found was three young men, all of whom condemned as others in their world, who might fit the bill.  West of Memphis, Amy Berg's avid and insightful documentary chronicles the past and the present, bringing about an astute primer study for those unaware of the case, and a deeper, more thoughtful perspective for those already deeply immersed in the unfolding human drama that enveloped in the Paradise Lost trilogy.

The Paradise Lost film themselves can be held assuredly responsible for bringing about the strange events and questioning the guilt of the young men being held accountable for it.  Since of course, there's been a further outpouring.  Of facts, DNA evidence, testimony, recanting of information and enough back and forth bedlam to drive anyone mad.  What stems clearly and most authoritatively is that nothing equals up and the horrific crime at the center is still essentially unsolved, despite nearly twenty years of time spent in prison (Echols on death row.)  One can make the argument, perhaps a well sounded one, that West of Memphis may be treadling on the repetitive, especially since the third installment of Paradise Lost is itself only a year old (and a 2011 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature), but Berg, under the scrupulous supervision of producer Peter Jackson mount their offering with a clear-eyed and even-keeled analysis, fringed with an astute and straight-forward artfulness that navigates this tricky study with an assured confidence and a detailed prism of the complex narrative that's seeming continually unfolding.

The boys themselves were picked as easy targets, as Echols states they, "were poor white trash."  Echols himself, a depressed goth kid living squarely in the Bible Belt, who speaks with an eloquence and sober refrain perhaps only instilled after half a lifetime of confinement, acknowledges his otherness.  As a young punker who didn't fit in, and one with a few sinister jabs at authority, and a light criminal record to boot, it must have seen like candy to the investigators, stumbled and perhaps aware of their own frailties, when the crime became entangled with superstition and allusions of occult involvement.  Never mind the fact that the three teenagers could never be placed at the time of the crime, and numerous measures were either forgotten, misguided or fumbled-- a crime like this needs a suspect, and that may have been all that was key to the West Memphis Police Department.  A similar story unfolded at the center of another 2012 documentary involving mistakenly incarcerated teens in Central Park Five, prompting a further delving into possibly how many kids have had their lives shattered by a mishap of identity.  Not all can get Hollywood backs like the West Memphis Three, the one thing that stings West of Memphis the film is the plugging away by the distracting sights of famous faces-- Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins and producer Peter Jackson all commit to on-camera PR work.

However, what does hold is everlasting appeal and power of this case, and as four movies, countless books, articles and etc. unfurl, it continues to be ever changing.  A document of fluid and on going history, and a case of trial and errors.  Just as the three teenagers themselves were branded as culprits due to image, Paradise Lost made a similar assumption of one of the victim's stepfathers named John Mark Byers-- a sinister looking Southern Bible Belter, neglecting-- just as everyone else another choice in Terry Hobbs, West of Memphis' assumption of the real killer due to recently re-examined DNA evidence and a hodgepodge of stories that don't add up.  The victory of the films puzzle resolves in the three teenagers, lives ruined and soiled in prison, were granted freedom on a peculiar stance of time served due to new evidence, without being exonerated.

What's left, and what's puzzling and what may indeed take a few more movies to unravel in this ever-changing case is that grand stance of finality and closure.  Until then, Berg's West of Memphis must settle for being a hell of good film.  B+

Movie 43

Whatever the hellish impetus of Movie 43, a random collection of gross out short films cobbled together courtesy of twelve filmmakers and an A-list, it was apparently lost in translation en route to the screen.  Perhaps inspired, in a way, as a response or an ultimate say in toiletry humor by way of past, more delicate, omnibus films like Paris, Je Táime or as a sort of lurid extrapolation of the ongoing parody of whatever craze that steamed from the original Scary Movie.  It matters little, since this ugly, cynically-scoped whatever of a movie-- a ninety-minute train wreck filled with sub-MadTV quality sketches that dubiously attempts to out gross-out the confines of good taste-- accomplishes but memorable achievement in becoming the ultimate bamboozle and time waster of its audience.  While movie stars degrade themselves with half commitment to the witless, nonsensical material provided by folks like Peter Farrelly, Griffin Dunne and Brett Ratner, we wait for the punchline.  And either by design, the ultimate punk or something, it never comes.  In fact each pointless, humorless and irritating short comes and goes without any sort of meaning, purpose or laughter.

And so we meander through the unholy hell of Movie 43.  Kate Winslet goes on a blind date with Hugh Jackman, a seemingly perfect suitor-- except for the fact that he has testicles resting upon his neck.  And Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber play parents who home school their teenage child and seek to impart the "normal" horrors of adolescence by messing him up psychological and sexually.  Oh, and Anna Faris and Chris Pratt play a budding young couple who decide to add scatological "fun" to their romance, just as another young couple played by Keiran Culkin and Emma Stone swap naughty wordplay over a supermarket microphone-- admittedly the best installment, but that's akin to finding the cute one in a litter of rabid dogs.  Or perhaps Richard Gere's segment involving an iPod-like device in the shape of a naked female that's under fire due to mangled male organs promises more ensuing hilarity?  Or a half-witted speed dating short featuring superheroes that finds Justin Long kissing a boy for comic effect?  Or Chloe Grace Moretz having her period in a room full of moronic men?  Or Gerard Butler as a balls-obsessed leprechaun, perhaps?  Or Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant engaging in a one-ups-man-ship game of truth or dare during a first date that ends with a penis face tattoo and plastic surgery?  Or, Terrence Howard as a basketball coach for an all-African American team in the yesteryear and his motivational musings of impending victory, might be the ultimate play as it uses the films addiction to penises in a racially offensive manor?  All inspired...this may be longest ninety minutes in cinematic history.

The cynicism, and the recoil may rest in not just the shorts themselves are lame, scatter-brained and so earnestly made out of shock value, but just in how benign and listless they are to be begin with.  That said, the asinine banality may have sat a bit better had Movie 43 chosen not to frame itself with the ugly and nearly spiteful incision of a movie pitch itself.  The connective tissue that binds these sordid, wannabe outrageous vignettes is staged as the ultimate prank itself, a firm middle finger squarely in the air the audience members, as Dennis Quaid sells hapless movie executive Greg Kinnear his nasty ditties.  It transpires into further sequences of insipidness.  I offer a request: that the A-list cast-- all of whom must have surely lost some horrible bets in the past-- will bathe and atone from this joyless endeavor, as film executives at distributor Relatively Media should ever kindly burn the negatives, and that audiences in search of a stupid good time stay home at tune into reality television.  That's all.  F

Gangster Squad

In Gangster Squad, director Ruben Fleischer's noir wannabe send up of the gangster genre that was once the bread and butter of distributor Warner Bros., Sean Penn plays Mickey Cohen, a nefarious mob leader.  Played with a twitchy menace, with an over-the-top bombast that all but begs to be called into comparison with Al Pacino's manic screeching in Scarface, Penn utilizes all his actorly grace notes into a gleeful cartoonish creation.  As a sadistic overload with all intent of taking over 1940s Los Angeles, his Cohen is something straight out of Dick Tracy, with an all knowing wrinkle and tongue in cheek nod so unreserved and mannered he may as well be twirling a mustache and patting a black cat as he cuts into his dialogue.  He's clearly having a ball, acting without a net nor the slightest bit of directorial cues, which may have been fine if the film surrounding this display of showmanship, had settled on a tone or a cue of it's own.  The film, written by former cop Will Beall, instead wants to have it both ways-- at once a cartoon full of the cacophony of machine gun blitzes along with a L.A. Confidential-lite morality tale of corruption all set in the glamor of high-end showbiz window dressings.  Without a net of its own, Gangster Squad turns silly and sour, and as a true disservice to any cartoon entertainment, becomes, seemingly against all odds, dull.

The film was originally set for release last September but was pulled out of respect to the horrific tragedy in Aurora, Colorado due to its excessive violence and a first cut sequence of a melee taking place inside a movie theater.  Reshot and retooled for our convenience, it likely wouldn't have mattered much of a lick since Gangster Squad leaves only the slightest bit of a taste, edging into near irrelevance as quickly as its unraveling.  Fleischer, director of horror comedy Zombieland, certainly has a flair, but not the resolve to coalesce Gangster Squad into a film that matters.

Our hero, Sgt. John O'Mara (played by Josh Brolin, with an indignant seriousness) is portrayed as one of the few honest cops of the LAPD, circa 1949.  Under corruption in a town ruled by Cohen's nefarious efforts, O'Mara is obsessed with bringing him down, going so far as seeking guerrilla-like missions.  The smidgeon of a backstory is provided in that he's a WWII vet, perhaps still looming to bring down the big bad even as the war as past, as his pregnant wife and quaint lifestyle isn't enough to settle his adrenaline.  Another war vet is viewed at first as amusing counterpoint in the freewheeling Sgt. Jerry Wooters (played by Ryan Gosling in a twee accent and introduced as comedic jig), whose withdrawn nonchalance to the excessive violence is only sparked after he hooks up with Cohen's gal Grace (Emma Stone-- a tad too nice and girl next door-ish for a gangster's moll) and finds himself as well as she in apparent danger.

In a riff on nearly every B-action movie of the 80s, a team is secretly assembled-- headed by O'Mara in an effort to take on Cohen and his gang and make Los Angeles safe again.   This golden era A-Team includes a tech expert (Giovanni Ribisi), a gun-slinging novelty (Robert Patrick), his immigrant protege (Michael Pena) and the always welcome Anthony Mackie, for, well the movie doesn't quite explain.  The squad goes to great (and needlessly violent) measures, encompassing the films silliest problem as the good guy team starts to question their efforts and ponder if their actions are any better than the real villains.  That matters little as both detectives and gangsters are saddled with such a pedestrian script that makes all parties seem relatively dim, each discovering clues as screenplay dictates in what shrewd investigators or bad guys should realize long before.  Without insight or scope or dimension, the actors are all seemingly left to their own devices, and it's true that the alpha cast all appears to be a different films, left directionless by Fleischer to delight in their own disparate actorly delights.

At least the films looks good in its ridiculousness, as cinematographer Dion Beebe (no stranger to theatrical eye candy, as evident by his Oscar-winning lensing of Memoirs of a Geisha or to astute LA-driven crime dramas, as in Collateral) lustfully and colorfully brings bits of zest and texture to the surface only film.  Same is said to the artful production designers and costumers who stage old school elegance and fun set pieces with an aplomb that's missing from the page.  Sadly, even as mere window dressing, Gangster Squad can't quite quell its own insipidness, as it nears parody towards its predictably bloody and uninvolving conclusion.  D

Rust & Bone

The twirly melodrama of Rust & Bone, directed and co-written by Jacques Audiard, is fascinated by the severed limbs and broken psyches of it's main characters.  Audiard, through his last French hits A Prophet and The Beat That My Heart Skipped has emerged as one of the freshest and most direct of international auteurs with his swishy, yet fluid, nearing on poetic strikes with the camera-- coupled with a mature, yet even handed take on human drama.  Rust & Bone is notable mostly in its flourishes-- immerse but beautifully wrought camera work, the near fetishistic look at his actors pained and broken body parts, the silly bit of slight transcendence while a Katy Perry song plays in the background-- here's a case where you have a film, made with abundant sincerity, graced with actors willing and certainly capable of exposing nakedly personal portraits; a film unsentimental until it isn't, un-romantic until it isn't, bewitching but at arms length-- a bold cinematic curiosity that never quite reaches into ones soul.  What's left is a marvelously well-crafted and well performed film that never quite reaches the sum of its parts, perhaps because they weren't as well filled as they could have or should have been in the first place.

When the film debuted at last summer's Cannes Film Festival, it seemed to ignite a media firestorm for it's actress Marion Cotillard.  The Oscar-honored French beauty, the same who's nearly become a Hollywood movie star returning to her native land for a hard hitting film from one of her countryman's most newly respected.  The content of the film seemed secondary-- other than the fact that the famous lady was playing a whale trainer at a Sea World-like aquatic park who loses both her legs in a freak killer whale accident.  Behind that hubbub is a subtle and beguiling performance that holds because of what Cotillard keeps from us; that mystery and sense of wonder.  Aside from a few shrieks of "What has happened" shock, her Stephanie is creation of both the enchanting actress and the filmmakers is one that never asks nor pleas for sympathy and one that has no need for the typical rounds of disability anguish.  All dare to make her unlikable even at times, but mostly just human.

Perhaps the other major surprise at first sight of Rust & Bone is that Cotillard's tale was merely one part, or perhaps even a little less than that if running time math matters any.  Before the accident, Stephanie meets Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), a hulking brute, while she's teasing and inciting barroom fights as a local club where he is a bouncer.  Ali's bruises are first met as emotional, not that he will share them, as he along with his young, estranged son move in with his sister, of whom he has a contentious relationship with, until the once amateur boxer finds an easier source of income in kicking the crap out of guys in backyard melees.  Schoenaerts matches Cotillard round for round as the two take up an unlikely friendship, one that leads to emotional and spiritual healing, but not in the way one may expect.  Both characters are at odds with their lives, if not with each other-- the find a small salvage in the arms of one another perhaps if nothing else because they've both become stagnate and estranged in themselves.  Audiard puts aside any easily digestible sense of courtship as the two become bed mates, and invariably turned on their bruised bodies.  It's a movie still through and through-- legs or not and scenes with muted make-up, Cotillard is still breathless, and with bruises and black-eyes, Schoenaerts still a catch.

There's brief respites of the ethereal, especially when Ali takes Stephanie out in the ocean for the first time, and a gracious rapport between the actors, but their afflictions, as well as their emotions feel strangely aloof.  And as Rust & Bone edges on, the film becomes more improbable, reaching to an additional third act tragedy until it reaches an even more improbable glimpse of a happy ending.  Audiard's filmmaking is seductive, and alternately alluring and electric, but in the end there's precious little to linger on aside from the beauty of it's leading actors.  B 

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty, a terse and pulsating enactment of the hunt for Osama bin Ladin, comes from the Academy Award winning team of The Hurt Locker-- director Kathryn Bigelow and scribe Mark Boal.  After the triumph of the little movie that could (and did, waging a mighty and gripping sword that sparked a media spitfire in its David vs. Goliath side-story in its defeat of the megalithic Avatar to claim its top statues) comes an even more unnerving and ambitious film, one of such magnitude it chronicles on the most sensational of American stories of all time.  Made with an intimacy, intelligence and swirling, often searing, sense of truth, Zero Dark Thirty marks one of the most significant and bold endeavors that mainstream Hollywood has tackled since the heady, director driven days of 1970s.  As Bigelow swerves through requisite bits of mission protocol and the daily chilliness of the CIA agents and operatives working-- anguishing and obsessing-- what marks Zero Dark Thirty is a marvel of cinematic journalism.  What may or may not amount to one-hundred percent accuracy feels riveting, achingly researched and accurate in tone of the mindsets of the individuals pursuant of the greatest manhunt in history.  And as in The Hurt Locker, Bigelow and Boal leave the political grandstanding at bay, focusing on the task, the mission, the goal without sermonizing, leaving its audience enthralled, puzzled, mystified by unquestionable intelligence and craft, moved by the audacious efforts of the nameless, faceless people working tirelessly without a safety net for American security and justice, and perhaps a bit removed, not from the magnificent detailing but the service of procedure.

The first sequence of Zero Dark Thirty, years before the eventual capture of bin Laden in May of 2011, is one of the, perhaps now infamous torture scenes.  A brutish agent is in a game of good cop/bad cop with a young man in pursuit of answers that he's not receiving.  The sequence itself is shot with a nearly disconnected nonchalance-- perhaps similar to the feeling of a tough guy agent whose well practiced in the methods of such, including waterboarding.  Bigelow and Boal are neither indulgent nor gratuitous in the showcase, and like everything else in the film, leave the audience to ponder for themselves the moral consequences.  The agent, Dan, played by Jason Clarke, who we later learn is quite well practiced in such methods of inquiry is accompanied by a masked operative, who in a neat bit of subversion is named Maya, and played with a strong fury and innately stern femininity by Jessica Chastain.  The provocative nature of torture devices, a clear and hot blooded issue that cements the film a certain controversy in the light of various statements made by well-positioned senators adds a layer of timely intrigue to Zero Dark Thirty, but the meaning behind them, as service to the film itself, prove a remarkable testament to Bigelow and Boal, who film the sequences with a rawness, but nearly essential probing in the nature of politics and safety.  To say the least, none of which are sensed as glamorous nor needlessly violent for the sake of violence itself.

The greatest measure of Zero Dark Thirty is that Maya is the guiding light and glue of the mission, and the determined and thrillingly mighty performance by Chastain gives the film its deepest human connection.  On the onset, the seemingly very girly and nearly fragile actress, best known for the massive heap of films that a lit her name in 2011, namely The Tree of Life and her Oscar-nominated work in The Help.  Maya is a totally different creation altogether-- a strong, sterling piece of work, one that would have likely dumbfounded by the mightiest and bravest of soldiers, male or female, Chastain maintains a poise and a pose-- often all at once-- as the films treks her obsession with not just finding bin Ladin, but more importantly, being right.  Given nary a backstory, nor a flicker of an outer life-- the most significant bit of information we learn from Maya herself is that she's single, and likely has no friends-- matters not, as Maya, constantly living in the shadows of the world, and in consistent danger and her obsession, determination and guile are all that really matter.  While Chastain is front and center, she's surrounded by an ace and immense cast of supporting players, some of whom played by familiar faces (James Gandolfini, Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Edgar Ramariez, Mark Strong and many more provide vital pop-ins, all largely unsung for the meaning of the work) in an ensemble cast that boasts bountifully.  But it's Chastain that draws us in, as she blows through Zero Dark Thirty imbuing Maya with a smartest person in the room bravado, but in her case, she not just sells it, but justifies it, even in a few rabble-rousing lines of dialogue that might have proved an error or hooky from someone who hadn't earned audience plaudits, but respect as well.  Another female CIA agent who works closely with Maya is Jessica, played with an amiable and delightful charm by Jennifer Ehle, who becomes central in one of the films most chilling and devastating scenes.  It's a credit to the actors that Zero Dark Thirty feels so lived in and credible, nearly as much so as to the journalistic integrity displayed by Mark Boal.

As in The Hurt Locker, the more austere younger cousin to Zero Dark Thirty, what drives the characters is the near obsession of finality, bridging danger and ingenuity with a sort of person hooked on an adrenaline rush.  Maya plots and thinks and reacts and yells at the boys who think little of the dicey chances she predicts, and at times the workmanlike, behind the scenes navigating of Zero Dark Thirty becomes a bit confusing.  Fast paced with multiple characters coming and going at all turns, keeping track of who's who and what's where the progress that lay ahead is a bit jarring from time to time.  It hardly matters so much, however, as Bigelow's fluid and spectacular control is directed from the open-- a staggering, in the dark, beginning in which we hear 9/11 responses first hand.  She moves with a swiftness and a directness that's remarkably controlled once we get to the thrilling climax-- a cleverly shot and nerve-inducing sequence that matters nil that we all know the eventual outcome.

If there is a fault, it may lie in that the zig-zaging from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Washington D.C. and single Easter egg of Obama appearing briefly on a television screen-- addressing America's stern anti-torture vein, no less-- it's that the nonstop steadfastness of Zero Dark Thirty is quite swift, even at it's estimate two-and-a-half-hour plus running time, that the human drama is made of small fragments.  The film may have the heart of the a very special episode of a television procedural drama, but Bigelow and Boal make up in ambition and directness, and the unerring desire to move things ahead.  The slightest moment of reflection is saved for the singular and nearly beatific final shot-- a prime, and for the only time a tight close of an emotional Maya, fraught with a seeming sense of not just relief and a need for release, but also a quietly poetic moment of "What now?" as her service as come to an end.  A-

Promised Land

The gentle everyman rhythms of Matt Damon work well for him in the plainly righteous message picture Promised Land.  Damon at the age 42 typically uses his likable, aw shucks demeanor to clue audiences into his character and that all-encompassing nice guy approachability is his center as a movie star, whether playing characters verging on psychotic (like The Talented Mr. Ripley), superhero-ic (the Bourne films) or the quirkily warped (like The Informant!); in the truest sense he's likely the heir apparent to 21st century movie stars to perhaps Tom Hanks during his '90s heyday or Jimmy Stewart.  In Promised Land, Gus Van Sant's latest film, with a screenplay by Damon, co-star John Krasinski, and a story credit to Dave Eggers, Damon's handsomely boyish face and frame is a bit more weathered, his age slowly creeping in, and it serves his character well, especially since the film, more small-boned morality play than great cinema, needs the seasoned pros to sell something that on the surface is so utterly corny, with a narrative that was well dated even back in the days when Frank Capra was extolling similar iterations of wholesome American values.

Damon plays Steve Butler, a mid-level traveling salesman for a natural gas company.  In toe with his ball-busting partner Sue (Frances McDormand, one of America's best at selling even the most hokum of dialogue), they go from small farm town to the next leasing properties in order to drill, exciting poorer citizens with hopes of a large payday.  Steve, a small town farm boy in his youth, speaks plainly and directly, priding himself with straightforward honesty and charm, without big city tricks or bells and whistles.  He's such a good salesman, he believes his pitch himself and that he's a helpful ambassador to struggling, disenfranchised Americans.  The dangers, and thus the message, of Promised Land, gets out of the way fairly early on-- that with the process of the drilling, called "fracking"-- a potentially dangerous and controversial environmental issue.  Steve, no stranger to semantics, holds his ground and firmly believes in the honesty and faith of not just what he's selling, but the corporate world larger than him.  That notion is the one major miss of Promised Land, where Steve's naivete, essential for coaxing the drama and in moving the character and the plot forward.  Damon seems to savvy for that, but like any good salesman, spins it as well as one can, retaining he's easy-going, nice guy persona.  Steve, himself, as he begins to question, even reminds himself, "I'm the good guy."

As the town is divided over what direction they should take-- Hal Holbrook plays an esteemed small town gentry who fears what his community will come to if too many people agree to drilling-- and decides to hold a formal vote.  Steve and Sue become nervous upon the arrival of an environmental activist (played by Krasinski) who stirs trouble by canvassing the town with slogans and a pinched bravado.  At this point in the film, the bigger dramatic question looms...could Matt Damon be playing the villain here?  Of course not, he, as well as the film keep reminding us, that "he's a good guy," and Krasinski's environ-douche Dustin is such a cad from the onset, that just can't be possible.  Never mind all of that, however, for the plainly stated virtues of Promised Land, which does a decent enough job of taking a snapshot of a topical subject matter that isn't as viably discussed as much as it should, and, better yet, for keeping it at arms length as to not read as didactic as it surely could have.  Cynically, the film can be read as a pet project, write off for movie stars in pursuit of charity work, or a film that will, no doubt, further push the well-greased argument that the media is speared by the liberal elite.  Van Sant debunks that with a small and earthy straightforwardness, so much so, that even the climatic Capra moment where our hero does the noble thing and the emotional violins strum along, it registers with the simplest of beats.

But that's also a bit of a shortcoming as the tiny play is at times so muted it barely registers a pulse.  A grating subplot where Steve and Dustin pine for a local school teacher (Rosemarie DeWitt) further pulls the film away; a shame considering the warmth a performer like DeWitt imbues is one that the film could have taken advantage of wisely had the stridency of formula not stood in the way.  Similarly, most of the characters outside of Steve and Sue reads far too easily and, perhaps even a tad offensive.  Most residents come off as ignorant rubes, following like cattle to whomever has the fanciest speak, and others including the character portrayed by Holbrook as mere ciphers for the films messaging.  While the film is nearly defiant in it's lack of vanity, Promised Land still adheres to the staples of the message picture, one that even the even the finest messages can't quite hurdle.

The presence of Matt Damon, as guide, advocate and movie star, is likely the only legitimate reason a film like this could have gotten off the ground, and how it could be given an Oscar-qualifying release by Focus Features, and why, I have little doubt, anyone will turn up to actually watch it to begin with.  He sells well and earnestly with integrity and quiet compassion.  And while Damon may well be our generations Jimmy Stewart, there's really no denying that Steve Butler will come any near Mr. Smith in the pantheon of American cinemas great nice guys.  B-

Anna Karenina

When a filmmaker chooses to adapt one of those often made (and remade) classic pieces of literature that some may have a passing familiarity of whilst trying to get out of directly reading in high school, there comes the same set of challenges.  Trying to clear the cobwebs of times long ago and bringing something new and exciting and relative to the stuffy tales of yore.  The best of the old Merchant Ivory films were a clear gold standard in dusting off the good taste and good for you vein of the classics.  A more recent choice example could be Joe Wright's messier and spirited redoing of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, which felt like a valentine to the old values, but rid itself the middlebrow bourgeosie.  Joe Wright continues his re-working of the classics with Anna Karenina, a stately, handsome boldly alert adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy novel, a continuation of his work with corset muse Keira Knightley after Pride and Prejudice and Atonement.  It's a solid place for Wright, whose modern, genre efforts The Soloist and Hanna were mixed at best.  The best, and also the worst, thing Wright has done with Anna Karenina is in his unique quest to keep the action flowing.  He sets is all on a stage, letting the artifice and theatricality flow and linger with the hopes of it fully coming alive to contemporary filmgoers.

The conceit-- strange and often beautifully rendered, actually kind of works as the story gets started.  The choreography and the stage is mounted so over the top, you half expect the cast to break out in song.  The story, set in the higher echelons of society in 19th century Russia is a doomed romantic tragedy, and the theatricality often works in the mirroring that the private scandals and heartbreaks of its characters were put on display as a mere form of idle gossip and entertainment-- sound familiar?  Wright and his team of stylists-- many he's worked with before-- continue to deliver bold period details to their art.  Sarah Greenwood's production design of moving set pieces is at times bewildering in it's construction and wonder.  Jacqueline Durran's costume designs are opulent, large and immense.  Seamus McGarvey's cinematography is often to beautiful to withhold; playful in besotted times; fragile when the story turns melodramatic.  Dario Marianelli's score is classical, but tuneful, a perfect fit for twisty artistry.  It's easy to get lost in Anna Karenina in its superficiality, for unfortunately the film is but skin depth, with a story and arc that plays more like an episode of Gossip Girl than an epic romantic tragedy.

Anna (Knightley) is a dutiful wife and mother, a member of the St. Petersberg elite thanks to her husband (Jude Law; a terrific cuckold- a change of pace for the one cinematic seducer) and a ravishingly charming socialite.  The plague of her high society days are when she meets Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a young, handsome man instantly enraptured by her.  The two famously begin a romance, but the film comes to sudden limp once the two embrace one another.  The conquest and the pursuit are where Wright's project exceeds, especially in the grand theatrical sequences of the dance halls, where Anna tries to resist temptation and the great artifice on display reaches its eye candy climax.  The biggest problem with Wright's Anna however, is that Vronsky, as depicted and portrayed by the wan and sulky Taylor-Johnson, is such a cold fish, the question arises as to what drew her in at all.  And for the great deal of risk, histrionics and over-flowing of emotion to come on her part, in Wright's version, she would be better of with her distancing, but stable husband and provider.  Knightley is a bewitching Anna, and comes into nearly full maturation in her parade of classic heroine, unearthing the charm, wit and poise of a woman always nearly on the verge of hysteria.

And while the deduction of Anna Karenina is a pity, especially in it's latter and unfortunately weaker half, there's a richness to the spectacle that reads that a great film could probably have been achieved.  Either if the on-the-stage conceit been maximized to the fullest of its convictions, and not just in easier stretches of surface exposition, or if the story had been tightened.  Many of the supporting characters-- some of whom played by luminaries like Olivia Williams, Emily Watson, Matthew Macfadyen and Kelly Macdonald-- feel are the more extraneous; I'd keep Alicia Vikander, whose enthused Kitty is a notable bright spot in a underdeveloped part.  However, be it by ego of Joe Wright, or a whittled down screenplay by Tom Stoppard, Anna Karenina is only at its sharpest when the stakes are at their most banal.  C

Jack Reacher

It should be said with some consternation, that be is as it may, the film Jack Reacher reads a little differently than it might have a eight days ago.  Of course, for a genre feature with little interest in the real world whatsoever, one should probably just get over it and try and enjoy the ride, an intermittently bumpy one, but not without some mild pleasure to be sure, and forgo that a film revolving around a sniper who guns down five innocent strangers without any thought of real life tragedy.  Based on a series of successful detective novels by Lee Child, Jack Reacher, the title character, is a sort of modern Dirty Harry-type, a vigilante, a former army police officer, who has noir tales will always fashion, take the law in their own hands in the pursuit of justice.  The Jack in the books is described as an imposing 6'4 badass, whose chilly authority and mighty mass so to speak gets the job done.  The film casts Tom Cruise, and even though unfamiliar with the source material may feel inclined to call the casting suspect.  Cruise, a capable actor under the right tutelage, has a way of chipping away his boy scout persona within the confines of ace filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann and Oliver Stone, but his mystery man Jack Reacher feels more like posturing than anything else.

Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed Jack Reacher (he previously scripted the Cruise vehicle Valkyre), and received well earned bona fides for his Academy Award winning screenplay to The Usual Suspects, one of the best crime thrillers of the past two decades, that it seems like a letdown that he would even pursue a mystery tale with so little mystery in itself.  A man is charged with the horrific and seemingly random shooting with a cavalcade of evidence point in his direction-- he's directive is to "get Jack Reacher."  Neither a friend or really an ally at least from the start, Cruise sashays into the scene, full of corny one-liners that may have been dated back in 40's era noir, and becomes the head investigator.  Aided and goaded by junior defense attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike), a pretty lady with daddy issues, going head to head against her father (played by Richard Jenkins) and against popular opinion, as one presumes (except the audience, who has witnessed the opening sequence of Jack Reacher) this dude is guilty as sin.

The action, or story points as it goes, kick in, as Reacher begins his kicking butt stuff, with Cruise caught in a one versus five showdown.  The trouble is, despite the faux tough guy dialogue and demeanor, Cruise still embodies the same angelic boy scout role he's played for years.  Worse yet, the scene seems to reek of certain vanity as well.  There's a few nice effects in the cool and icily filmed chiller (beautifully photographed by Caleb Deschanel) including a terrific (and nearly silent) chase scene part way through, a cleverly bent villain turn by Werner Herzog and a nice reunion of sorts between Cruise and his Days of Thunder co-star Robert DuVall, but Jack Reacher is mostly a meandering, easily reductive slice of junk food, strangely offered for holiday counter-programming.

This is 40

Leslie Mann, wife of Judd Apatow, is nearly extraordinary in This is 40, a peaks and valleys scenes from a marriage comedy-drama.  Funny, frank, alluring and earthy, her character, Debbie, is the easiest, yet most complicated aspect of Apatow's latest.  The startling thing-- a bit more telling coming off the breakaway woman power, Apatow-backed Bridesmaids, is that for the first time in one of the filmmakers own features, a woman is granted the freedom, luxury and balls to be just as dirty and messed up as her male counterparts.  For some of the flack Mr. Apatow has received since his style and humor became a brand name, some of which valid or not, verging on the misogynistic or homophobic, he has always been an adept showman and capturing real world frustrations and awkwardness and tenderly allowing the audience to both freely laugh at and with his characters.  At his strongest, he's achieved catharsis through humiliation, at his weakest, he's appeared a tad self-serious and perhaps overly pompous.  This is 40, his fourth feature film, travels the gambit so to speak from the highs of The 40-Year Virgin to the dragging, lost in translation mixture of thematic material in his last offering, Funny People.  Mann, thankfully, is the saving grace, tenderly imbuing womanly grace and a comedians gift of the absurd, settling the film as it travels a something interminably long running length exceeding two hours.

Billed as a "sort of sequel" to Apatow's 2007's hit Knocked Up, we revisit characters Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Mann) for the contentious week of their lives as both are setting to turn the big 4-0.  Both react to their growing pains in different ways.  She prefers to lie about her age, sneaking cigarettes in between fights with her husband and latching plans to better her and family's life for the better-- rid of junk food and electronics.  Pete is more content sneaking his iPad in the bathroom and sneaking cupcakes when no one's around.  It proves a family affair as Apatow and Mann's own children Maude and Iris continue their roles in Knocked Up as the couples children, themselves experiencing their own growing pains.  One of the more affable and frustrating to This is 40 is that in many ways Apatow presents his film both as family album and perhaps free therapy.  Many of his film regulars-- Jason Segal, Charlyne Yi, and Bridesmaids alum Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd and Annie Mumolo, as does the Apatow-produced Girls phenom Lena Dunham stop by to say hello, while the marital strife-- the more engaging material-- floats in between.  There's a nice caveat of Apatow that he goes out of his way to keep gainful employment to the talent he admires, but there really needed to be some trimming to This is 40, which verges on over-indulgence from time to time.

Pity, since the relationship between Pete and Debbie is full of fine, raw material.  It helps that Rudd and Mann have such a warm, flowing chemistry to one another.  And it helps even more that there's a genuine love story at their center-- they're just at odds on how to live with one another and continue to like each other.  There's a few typical movie screen battles, over sex and money and work and their own messed up parental figures-- John Lithgow plays Debbie's absentee father and a delicious Albert Brooks plays Pete's mooching mensch of a pop-- but there's a finely details pathos in their battle of words.  While This is 40 is entirely laugh out loud, it's is amusing more times than not, and thankfully, isn't dragged down by an overwrought cloud of self seriousness of which plagued Funny People; Apatow has always been best at freely associative banter, hidden behind a shield of self-doubt.

And that brings me back to Mann, who is totally in control of the film from the first take.  She readily exposes her less than attractive characteristics and rides the film in many ways feels like a valentine to her.  Whether in exposing sequences that reveal Debbie's insecurity of her age (presented to the hilt in an awkward exchange at the gynecologists office), rage over Pete's waning affection, efforts to control her family, or frolicking in a silly nighttime excursion with Desi (Megan Fox), the hottie she employs at her small boutique shop, Mann maneuvers the jokes and the pathos with ease.  The best exchange in the entire film is when Debbie and Pete sojourn to a short, pot-fueled holiday where they lovingly express how they would off on another.  She offers to quietly poison the cupcakes he sneaks out, while tenderly loving his last days.  Mann manages to sweet sell this with mixed components of warmth, lust and remorse.  That feels like the heart of This is 40, but it's a nice, if slightly disposable, trinket of film for the most part.  I sense in a few years time, it might not be a bad idea for Apatow and team to check in with again.  B

Django Unchained

The unveiling of a new Quentin Tarantino film seems akin to that of what a space launch might have been as enthusiasts tend to salivate eagerly for first contact.  It's nearly hard to believe that the once-upon-a-generation has been toiling away at it now for twenty years, as Django Unchained, his eighth feature debuts on the anniversary of Reservoir Dogs.  In the space, the cinematic language and molding that Tarantino has invented-- re-sculpted and transcribed from his on cinephilia as the narrative of video store clerk to iconoclast would go-- has vitalized modern American cinema.  It's that penchant for language, for words strewn about casually but mightily, matched with the wiz bang eye for spectacle and genre mash-ups that allure the fans of the past while connecting the fans of today.  Within single and broader strokes, Tarantino, with that eye and sense that everything can be learned and cultivated through the prism of a movie screen, always supplies his baggage and his fandom to his work, unleashing a new generation to terms like "spaghetti western" and "grindhouse."  That his exploits have grown past novelty, and his own filmmaking powers and gifts have improved and delighted through the years is the violent, yet succulent gift left for his audience.

The first notable thing about Django Unchained, a revenge flick set in the Deep South a few years before the Civil War, is the inevitable comparisons it shares with his his last feature, Inglourious Basterds.  Both set in turbulent, oppressive time frames, and both designed as revisionist-history fairy tales.  Perhaps Tarantino had such a blast rewriting the past as he presented a murdered in cold blood Hitler, he wanted to go back further-- Django Unchained is ultimately a tale of former slave who gets to get a whole lot of white dudes.  However, the comparisons end in tone, execution and refinement.  Basterds through its bombast and at-times comic absurdity with an elegant refinement and sprawling characterizations, some moving, some ridiculously anachronistic, but underlined with a sensitivity to its subjects and the period.  In Inglourious Basterds bests stretches, Tarantino achieved an artful humanism to his grisly non-factual show.  Django, on the other hand, is messier and grind-ier, tackling slavery with the same transgressive aplomb, but with a seemingly unfinished veneer.  It's both a simpler revenge fantasy and more daring in it's broadly comedic strokes.

Django (Jamie Foxx) begins his revenge fantasy in the opening bout as he's rescued while miserly navigating through a chain gang.  The mystery savior is Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a former German dentist-turned American bounty hunter.  He needs help in identifying three nasty men, who happened to Django's former owners.  The first sequence, a delicately worded elongated one is striking in its Tarantino-isms, and especially in setting up the first confrontational and assaulting tone.  As Django is sold to Dr. Schultz, who informs of his abolitionist ways, shoots the white leaders of the chain gang and unearths the other members to do as they will and head to safer territories, as he embarks on a journeyman quest with Django, eventually becoming his mentor in the killing and cashing-in business.  The upfront and grisly depiction of slavery is a daring do for Tarantino, but also one for Hollywood-- there's a through line, if one wants to see it-- from Birth of a Nation to Django Unchained; it's in the eyes of the beholder if that's a good thing or not.

Tarantino reverts his tale into a buddy film between the Dr. Schultz and Django, with the promise that once their job is done, the ex-dentist (with a tooth-laden atop his bunker to boot) will free him.  Instead, Django becomes a natural shoot, and comes closer to partner in the bounty hunter game.  An early sequence reveals the nastiness of the period with, one assumes, an accuracy of spirit, if not tone, as Django, liberated with the thrills of dressing himself and riding horseback side by side a white man, setting the South into a flurry with each step.  The first stop is to bigwig plantation owner Big Daddy (Don Johnson) where the first bounties are conveniently hanging around.  Django makes such an impression, that the duo are quickly thwarted into the night by a group lead by Big Daddy in an early incarnation of Klan members.  Tarantino uses this as mileage to lump around with the films strangest joke about the members arguing over the inadequate masks before meeting eventual slaughter.

Django Unchained finally rests out the films real plot in a dialogue where Django reveals he has a wife, and his mission is to rescue her and run off as free; Schultz agrees to help.  Her name is Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and is owned by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the Hans Landa of the Deep South.  The centerpiece scene of Django Unchained lies at Candyland, Candie's grand plantation, and one of which that lies on the conviction and fortitude and multi-layered capacities that defines the film, but more importantly what it could have been.  The scene in question, is a long one, one consisting only of dialogue, the directors forte.  The key players have gathered for a dinner, each with their own agenda, and each seemingly unwitting of the others or the hands being dealt.  Django and Schultz are trying to convince the sale of a black male fighter from Candie (with the hopeful extension of Broomhila, quietly serving behind), Candie, all grandiosity with flowery language and oddly incestuous puppy eyes at his sister, is in for the greed or the pleasure, finding himself smitten by Django's fortitude and charisma.  As counterpoint, it's Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie's in house possession, and an interesting case study in himself, who becomes the smartest man in the room.

What evolves is a pure Tarantino medley of violence, but what's missing the emotive current that bridges these characters together, or to the audience.  For all the actorly precision and grandstanding around, there's little on terms of performance.  Waltz and DiCaprio billow colorfully and madly to the rafters (DiCaprio, for instance, is the loosest and most free associative he's been in his entire career, relishing the ham provided and calling out the hope that a great character actor may actually exist bellow his movie star glow) while Foxx projects consistent bad-assery but the main characters are surprisingly rote and one-note by design, neither granted nor advised to flesh out the meaty patches of dialogue.  Washington is sadly just window dressing, itself a nagging transgression.  It's Jackson who has the most interesting character, one of a not-quite freed man, who is given license to behaving above the simpler subjects.  His loyalty and psychology could be a movie in its own, but the bombast takes over the quiet shades of character as Django Unchained unravels its simple tale of fantasy revenge.

But there is something different about Django Unchained that's harder to finger.  It appears shapeless, lost in itself and perhaps a bit hurried.  For a film with a nearly three hour run time, the climax is a race to the finish.  It's not that the film drags necessarily, but it's messy and perhaps a bit unsure of itself, despite all the bravado.  I'm no doubt sure there's a great movie in here somewhere, there's glimmers of one all over the place, but this ain't it.  C

Hyde Park on Hudson

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

It's been nearly a decade since filmmaker Peter Jackson last ventured into Middle Earth, and since the concluding of his billion dollar epic franchise The Lord of the Rings, and the bounty of Academy Awards earned for its conclusion, The Return of the King (which won eleven- every category in which it was up for), the cinematic universe for the famously rotund (now svelte) Kiwi has been decidedly earthbound.  Following the grand Tolkien trilogy with King Kong (2005), which many accused of being heavily bloated and self serious, one with a running time that was nearly twice as that of the original film, and further so with his adaptation of The Lovely Bones (2009), there was a aura of perhaps the director, who began his career his low budget horror and the enchantingly morbid Heavenly Creatures had lost his touch.  For The Lord of the Rings was a majestic and mighty piece of entertainment, presented with such lush visuals that it felt like a child running loose in a candy store of adventure and possibility, high on the adrenaline of movie magic.  The great feat of his three films were that they could appeal, not just to the Tolkien fan club, or the cinephile who could rejoice movie-making wizardry, but nearly everyone who could embrace high order cinema of fun and splendor.  Could something of the like ever be replicated, and even so, should it?

Jackson tries to answer that prickly question with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the prequel chapter to The Lord of the Rings' dense and mythic trilogy.  While Lord of the Rings handles a rich and ever expansive universe, The Hobbit, as a source, is a fairly light one with a straight-forward tale told nearly with the swiftness of a prologue of what Tolkien would conjure.  The film has made more than a few headlines in the fan boy culture in the realm of the controversial.  First, with the decision of expanding The Hobbit into three parts-- a tall order considering the volume of the text itself.  Second, with the divisive visual unveiling of The Hobbit's novelty in being presented in 48 frames per second, double that what movies are typically presented in meaning in laments terms that the audience is getting twice the information per frame, which has presented issues in it's own right from early reports of nausea, to the less than thrilling spectacle view of Middle Earth.  The richest pre-screening caveat may have been when Jackson usurped the directorial reins from Guillermo Del Toro (who still retains a screenplay credit), returning to the franchise helm that made him king.

To be fair, Jackson has retained the sheen and glow of Middle Earth, recapturing the magnitude and awe-inspiring visual effects that made The Lord of the Rings the David Lean gold standard in fantasy storytelling.  The beauty and wonder and the pure wizardry of the magicians of Weta Digital Effects remains firmly intact.  The problem lies, as most of them do, with the difficulties and rigors of the business of sequels and prequels to past marvels.  The relevancy and unexpected charm seems missing, and Jackson incorporates a more business-minded method to the very expected journey of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  What's more the film, clocking in at nearly three hour, has the reek and feel of over-bloated indulgence versus the brisk, nearly click pace set by the similarly timed first ventures of the franchise.  And while The Lord of the Rings set a lofty mantle for the wow-inspiring, jaw-dropping set pieces when it first was unveiled, there's a sad thought of been there-done that, that prevents the magic from every really taking flight.

Set sixty years before The Fellowship of the Ring, The Hobbit introduces us to a young Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a tightly wound ninny of a hobbit who enjoys simple Shire-time solitude, that is until Gandalf (Ian McKellen), the impish wizard, sparks and awakens a sense of adventure and quest opportunity for the nervous little man.  The Hobbit opens with a prologue, and continues to prologuize for quite some time.  Firstly as general backstory to the quest that awakes, and secondly as way to reintroduce the older Bilbo, played once again by Ian Holm, as he begins to tell our tale proper.  One of the best bits of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey play up the nostalgia factor as familiar faces from the past pop by to drop off blessings.  Elvish royalty Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and the ethereal Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) are always welcome back.  As ia McKellen, who serves as our delectable Middle Earth tour guide, charting the great English tradition of elegantly vamping franchise material.  He serves as The Hobbit's most invaluable player.  The quest offered to young, dallying Bilbo is a part of a mission to join a dwarf army to reclaim their once prosperous land that was robbed of them.  It's easy enough to follow, and certainly not required in a three-film by three-hour course plan.  But there's obvious padding along the way that the filmmakers (as well as the nervy studio execs in search of harvesting ever more dollars) will mask for story.  Nearly a hour encompasses that of a dwarf party which consists of not one, but two musical numbers, for instance.

Even as the quest in underway, our adventurers are swept in battle after battle with orcs, trolls, goblins and mountainy shape shifters-- there's a current that while the tale is lined with a visual finesse and refinement, there's little by way of story.  The dwarfs themselves are fairly indistinguishable, save for the tragic once-king, Thorin (Richard Armitrage), that that great sense of character so readily defined in The Lord of the Rings is taken a back seat to spectacle; Freeman, however, is a charmingly befuddled presence as the reluctant hero.

Throughout the nearly three hours of the first chapter, there's startlingly little story to cling to, except for one bravura sequence where Jackson the storyteller comes back and Jackson, the accountant, retires.  It's one that's heavily steeped, further more, into the lure and nostalgia of the first set of films, but a triumphant aside that sharpens the divide of art versus commerce.  A trapped Bilbo encounters Gollum (once again majestically and eerily played with a potent mixture of state of arts craftsmanship and pathos-inspired mania by Andy Serkis), and consists mainly of clever wordplay and delightful exchanges as the deranged and demented hobbit, still in awe and under the scope of the ring that will prove more compromising in later chapters.  It's the easiest and most unexpected portion of The Hobbit to grab onto, and a late in the day deal breaker for the road that lies ahead.

Otherwise, we, as expected audience members must shake ourselves from a film, one that's certainly in no ways bad, or bad for us, with the slight discomfort from jetting around our movie theater seat after three hours, with the unsettling reaction that, honestly, nothing really happened.  B-

Blancanieves

Blancanieves is the official foreign language selection from Spain, a revisionist take on the Snow White staple, it self already presented with such American works as Snow White & the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror this past year.  The differentiation, or what may be more closely read as the what The Artist hath brought, and more importantly is that film's massive awards and international pedigree, is that Blancanieves brings about the novelty of being a black and white silent picture.  And while derivative in content and context, there's certainly a novelty and charm that runs through director Pablo Berger's take on the Grimm tale that's bouncy and spirited and affirms that ones connection to fairy tales can be translated almost anywhere and anyway.  It's likely the closest in spirit in contrast the American products, primed as star vehicles and smug genre readings, and the most formally respective.  Instead of a kingdom in far far away, Blancanieves imagines the fair maiden an orphaned heir to a prime lineage of bullfighters, her father being one of the greatest, and in a nice way frees the heroine from eventual martyrdom.

Antonio Vallalta (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) is a prized bullfighter and king of the ring, admired by many and loved by his beautiful and dutiful, and very pregnant queen.  A freak accident leaves Antonio paralyzed and the distress prompts his bride to kick the bucket during child birth.  The charge in every great fairy tale is the entrance of the villain, in this case Encarna (Maribel Verdu, of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Pan's Labyrinth fame), as the deceitful nurse taking care of Antonio.  She's an altogether different take on the Evil Queen, one not of magical gifts, but of duplicitous power and all imposing glares.  The silence allows Verdu to play up and over accentuate every gesture with a purposeful pose.  Her vanity has no ends, and, of course, wants nothing to do with the young child left in the shadows or to potentially cast herself off the side of luxury.

Carmen (played by Sofia Oria as a child and Macarena Garcia in adulthood) is first shipped to live a fanciful childhood with her grandmother, forever longing for her father to come.  A tragedy sends her to father and Encarna, who's held the once triumphant bullfighter to sequestered quarters in full invalid confines.  She insists Carmen makes no contact with dad and quickly enlists her to partake in arduous chores, signifying alpha control and odious contempt at all cost.  The impish and inquisitive girl breaks these rules and starts engaging with a genuine relationship with her father, who in efforts of both humility and bedazzlement teaches Carmen the ways of his trade.  The story continues, much as the story dictates, with the similar bits of further paternal abandonment, Evil Queen business and the entrance of the dwarfs, themselves a pint-sized calf-fighting traveling act.  Blancanieves travels the same wobbly steps its supposed to, and at times drags a bit more than it should considering the acquaintance any filmgoers will have with its tale, but still manages a few charming sights and performances along the way.  The rhythmic and delightfully tuneful score plays its cues a bit too sharply from time to time, but sets the mood nicely as does colorfully gray costumes by Paca Delgado (on ace year with this and Les Miserables) and inventive camera work by Kiko de la Rica.  B