Way, Way Up There

Out of the clear blue sky comes Up in the Air, a film of glorious humor, shattering heartbreak, and extraordinary profundity. The film takes the form of a swinging Cary Grant rom-com from the 1950s, then twists its basic construction into a powerful statement about human connection, then twists it again into a tale of isolation in a harsh, frightening world. We live in a world that has evolved (more appropriately, devolved) into a culture of thoroughly knowledgeable shut-ins. For some, their only connection to the world around them is through their business colleagues, or their snarky bosses...or their iPhones. We suddenly have the ability to become universally connected to the whole world without ever actually communicating with anyone. We don't even have to leave home -- we don't even need to have a home, strictly speaking, to stay connected in this technological age. And yet this is a time of great hardship for many, a time of inner fear and professional paranoia. Our economy has given birth to unfathomable innovations, and then that economy has imploded, leaving us in a state of perpetual fear of the system that seemed to usher in such a brave new world. Never has a film so presciently tapped into the immediate anxieties of the current culture...until now. Up in the Air is the defining film of its generation.

Ryan Bingham fires people for a living. He is a "corporate downsizer," the guy sent by his massive corporation to handle the dirty job of eliminating personnel by engaging his subjects with a cool, smooth, gentle charm. George Clooney, reigning King of Cinematic Suave, plays Ryan with full knowledge that this character is the psychic extension of the actor's own real-life image...at least the one perpetuated by the media. Here is a gorgeous single man who travels the world with plenty of casual smiles and momentary flings but no long-lasting connections. He loves his free-wheeling lifestyle and has no need or desire for permanent intimacy. Up in the Air's purpose is to systematically dissect this man to discover how and why he reached such a cold, distant satisfaction, and Clooney, at the center of the picture and in nearly every scene, shows a daring courage to tackle this role that seemed destined to be filled by the Oscar-winner. It is his most extraordinary performance.

Time and again, Ryan must deliver what, in this dreary economic climate, is likely the worst news his subjects could hear: that their services are no longer needed, that their paychecks will no longer be deposited into their bank accounts. This charming demolition is Ryan's business, and as a result, he is himself a rootless journeyman, a man with plenty of financial security but no real home, a man who interacts with many but connects with very few. To hear the character speak, it seems like a godsend. "I'm not isolated, I'm surrounded," he says, in a soundbite played in nearly all of the film's ads, and we see what kind of character he is: the rogue charmer who thinks he lives by the ideal secret code.


In a 50s-era Cary Grant picture, the secret code would be the bottom line, the hook that connects us through the entire film. In the 80s and into the 90s, Ryan would hit a roadblock and be forced to choose between his bittersweet satisfaction and true happiness with the love of his life. In Up in the Air, the terrain is far rockier, and in the year's most powerfully nuanced screenplay, a new watermark has been set for human complexity in the movies. The script, based on Walter Kirn's 2001 novel and written for the screen by Sheldon Turner and the film's director, Jason Reitman, presents Ryan with two unique challenges. Both, perhaps unsurprisingly, are women. The first is Natalie (Anna Kendrick), the new spitfire pixie who has recently taken Ryan's company by storm. Natalie is a go-getter who has devised a new, more efficient way of firing people involving web-cams and cold scripting -- a method which, in essence, eliminates the need for a guy like Ryan. The second challenge is Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow professional traveler whom Ryan meets in one city, and then another, and then another, until they find themselves in a kind-of, sort-of relationship.


Natalie has devised a cold system but is not a cold person. Alex has formed the same kind of icy detachment Ryan has. In Natalie Ryan sees a "younger model" threatening to eliminate his job, and by extension, his life. In Alex he sees a kindred spirit, a person who might make life away from the rush of airport terminals and the comfortable disconnectedness of constant travel seem like a life worth pursuing. How these characters connect and interact, how each of their uniquely rich personalities naturally bounce off of and influence one another, is breathtaking. Of each character's individual path I should not reveal anything, other than to say the film builds our expectations, pays them off, and then pulls the rug right out from under us just when we settle in. The awakening is not a rude one, however, but a refreshing startle that allows us to rethink the entire film and each of its characters.


Reitman directs Up in the Air with the natural style and inimitable confidence of an industry giant who knows exactly what he wants and knows precisely how to achieve it. His command of the script, the frame, and all the life that jumps from the script into the frame, is remarkable. The film's opening sequence is a vivid orchestra of energetic images set to Rolfe Kent's luminous nervous-tick of a score (reminiscent of Jon Brion's work in Punch-Drunk Love) as we see Ryan's life in one feverish montage of potent close-ups and whirling camerawork. And then the camera gets intimate and the script reaches deep, achieving some of the most indelible character moments of any film this year. The tender and true emotional power these characters reach combined with the images Reitman captures sends the young filmmaker skyrocketing to the top tier of American directors. He has now delivered two consecutive masterworks (Juno was the first), and in this one he pulls out the big guns, tackling not merely the intricacies of the human spirit but the relevance of contemporary American anxieties.

Up in the Air is a piece of cinema that taps almost psychically into the struggles and fears of current American culture. Ryan is the representation of isolated America. We have embraced this Brave New World to the detriment of our socialization. Times are tough so we focus more on work...and that work keeps us from what matters most, and in some cases displaces it. Ryan is rich, beautiful, and powerful, and Ryan is bankrupt, lonely, and homeless. He is a man of his generation: lost in a sea of detachment, traveling the world but experiencing nothing, searching for the flight that might take him somewhere meaningful. Maybe, one day, he will find it.

Sherlock

Fun. Lots of fun. Dark, grimy, hammer-you-in-the-face fun.

Sherlock Holmes is the perfect embodiment of a "Christmas Day" movie -- "Christmas Day" in this case being the Holiday version of "summer," meaning that season in which the big tentpole releases make big cash by entertaining the masses. It is nothing more and nothing less than a rollicking fun ride. Not as good as Iron Man, but made in the same cheeky spirit, with the same blend of witty humor and CG-heavy mega-action, and with the same inimitable leading man: Robert Downey Jr.

Downey is, plain and simple, the reason this movie got made. Even though he is obviously not British, the actor carries with him the perfect cockneyed swagger and sly comic timing to create a Sherlock Holmes who is simultaneously enjoyable as an homage to the legendary sleuth and as a off-kilter comic send-up of same. It's hard to think of anyone else who could play this character with the same charm and whimsy of Downey...almost impossible, actually, because he works so spectacularly well.

Directed by style-heavy purveyor of incomprehensible British gangster flicks, Guy Ritchie, this new version of Sherlock is a bombastic action-comedy that uses the master detective's brilliant deductive skills as clever narrative tricks and upgrades the detective's physical prowess so that he can kick ass while he solves capers. The conceit could have easily collapsed in disaster, and indeed this film -- presumably the first in yet another lucrative franchise for Downey -- at times has difficulty carrying the weight of its fast-talking stars, its CG-laden action set-pieces, and its labyrinthine plot all at once. But somehow the enterprise comes together, and the film carries on as high-octane entertainment with a generous dose of cool wit.

Ritchie purists who hold films like Snatch or Revolver in some sort of grand esteem may balk at the prospect of their favorite filmmaker "selling out" to direct a watered-down, PG-13 studio picture. But in truth, Sherlock Holmes is Ritchie's best film since his feature debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998. The director has always been a supremely entertaining stylist but an almost purposefully-perplexing writer, crafting screenplays so inscrutable that it sometimes induces a headache. He seems to fit more naturally into the shoes of a big-studio action director, where he can exercise his stylistic muscles into a film's visual palette (i.e. Sherlock's blend of bleached film stock and clever, adrenaline-pumping action) while leaving the writing to other close collaborators. For their part, Sherlock's writers -- Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg -- cobble together a mix of Doyle-isms and new material to craft a script that is equally heavy on exposition and action...not a perfect mixture, but serviceable enough as the first in this series.

I haven't even bothered to discuss the plot, because...why? For this version of Sherlock Holmes, it's not about the story itself but the manner in which the story is told. And for the record, it is told with great humor and panache. Downey is the ideal Sherlock. Jude Law is a perfect twist on Dr. Watson, and his exchanges with Downey are so charming they give life to the film's not-so-hidden subtext that many have discussed: that this is really a love story between Holmes and Watson. Rachel McAdams plays the obligatory spunky love interest, but she does not play her character as such -- she brings her own set of pathos to the table and kicks ass right alongside her male counterparts. These actors work together, and Ritchie corrals them in a lumbering package of humor and thrills. It's elementary, my dear: a new franchise is born.

Bad-Ass Lieutenant

Werner Herzog is a mad genius who makes films about mad geniuses. This is the man who brought us Aguirre, The Wrath of God, about the maniacal conquistador who went on an insane search for El Dorado; Fitzcarraldo, about the man who dreamed of hauling a riverboat over a mountain so he could build an opera house in the jungle; and Grizzly Man, one of the most vividly haunting documentaries in recent years, dissecting the oddly engaging story of Timothy Treadwell, who made a home with grizzly bears in Alaska.

Herzog's latest film is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a gonzo reimagining...or whimsical extension of...or vividly iconoclastic kindred installment to...Abel Ferrera's original Bad Lieutenant, the 1992 masterpiece about the irredeemable cop (Harvey Keitel) who went in search of redemption. Herzog's film is the second masterpiece made under the Bad Lieutenant name, succeeding because it doesn't merely attempt to retell or update the events of the original film, but to make another film altogether, using the raw notion of a cop sliding into his own private hell as its only inspiration and then spinning a tale of hysterical delirium. It is often harrowing, even more often hilarious, and always vividly, frighteningly riveting.

The film takes place in a Big Easy still reeling from the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, and the setting only aids the growing sense of chaotic grime. New Orleans' dreary melting pot of cultures and its state of post-tragedy unrest feeds into the burgeoning cycle of psychological anarchy of its central protagonist, Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), and McDonagh, in turn, does his part to feed the beast, perpetuating all manners and all levels of crime in the city he has sworn to protect.

McDonagh is a decorated cop who is promoted to Lieutenant on the heels of a debilitating back injury which leaves our "hero" in such excruciating pain that when the Vicodin stops working, cocaine becomes a logical substitute. McDonagh gradually slips from reality and becomes an individual profusely reliant on creating bad situations and then finding an unlawful way out. He uses contacts both on the police force and within New Orleans' vast network of seedy criminals to buy and sell drugs of all kinds while also getting into deep trouble with an underground bookie, using his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes) as bait in a life-threatening situation involving top-level mob bosses...and the twisted mayhem doesn't end there. He snorts. He murders. He rapes. And sometimes he positions himself to do one of those things, but is too stoned to follow through.

McDonagh loses his grip while in the midst of the harrowing, long-term investigation of five murdered drug dealers from Senegal and their connections to the local kingpin, Big Fate (Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner). The film is sly in the way it operates more or less as a standard police procedural for its first act, then depicts McDonagh's gradual descent into hell, where eventually we can't be sure that anything we see is accurate, or even that it occurs at all. McDonagh becomes a psychological dirigible, gliding through the remnants of his tortured reality. The only thing that hinges him to the real world is his drive to solve his case, but in the meanwhile he occupies himself by committing his own string of heinous crimes and even associating himself with his supposed enemies.

And yes, as has been widely discussed, he sees visions of iguanas. He becomes consumed by them. What do the iguanas mean? Does it matter? Students of Herzog will know that the wacko German auteur has long been obsessed with photographing animals and famously putting them in his films as odd tangents that may or may not mean anything to the film in question. Here, McDonagh's nagging visions of iguanas is Herzog's most appropriate use of animal photography, fusing his own strange fixation with the deteriorating mental state of his protagonist. And now, if you haven't already clicked away after reading a paragraph-long dissection of iguana photography, let's move on.

Cage delivers his most viscerally brilliant performance in years as McDonagh, who becomes one of the most imposing madcap anti-heroes the cinema has seen in a long time. His work is perfectly captured by Herzog, who values lunacy and uses it as the basis for his art. Their creation is a singular work of zany brilliance, not so much about seeking redemption as it is about falling completely out of touch with a world in which redemption is possible. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a ridiculously entertaining, vividly engrossing depiction of a man's descent into madness, made by the cinema's foremost authority on mad men.

If You Think the Poster is Bland...

...just wait until you see the movie.

It is very difficult to build a successful "Love Triangle" movie, and It's Complicated doesn't work simply because it fails to figure out the right formula. It has a formula, alright -- the same formula writer-producer-director Nancy Meyers usually works in. Successful, independent, single woman doesn't need to be completed by any man but really, really wants a man to complete her, and then she gets involved with the Bad Boy even as the Nice Guy stands just off to the side. Meyers is usually charged with telling insipid stories about rich people with impossibly beautiful homes and lifestyles who can afford to mope cutely about relationships. I have always defended Meyers because there is usually savvy truth in her screenplays that speaks beyond the surface gloss, and her stories exude warmth and charm unlike many other romantic comedies out there. In the case of It's Complicated, I might be inclined to join the gallery of haters.

No, it is not a bad movie. There are plenty of funny moments, great one-liners, and strong performances from Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. And the conceit, of a divorced couple reconnecting to have a torrid affair with one another, is priceless. But between the lines, Meyers has some big fish to fry here, trying to make points about the reinvigorated livelihood of middle-aged women, the dormant sexuality between divorced couples, and the arrested development of family dynamics as a result of divorce. It amounts, when all is said and done, to a bit much for a movie that wants to also be a saucy fun time.

For a while it sort of is saucy fun, but the test of a Meyers film's effectiveness is how clearly its underlying ideas are explored. Something's Gotta Give worked brilliantly because it toyed with the notions of the emotional artist and the nature of love among aging souls. The laughs were great, but you could still feel the sadness. It's Complicated is a little too sunshine-y for its own good, its points overstated and its titular complications too simple and transparent. Sure, Streep's overtly-successful bakery owner yearns to be loved, and sure, Baldwin's jerky cad is hilarious and appealing, and sure, Steve Martin's mild-mannered architect is a kinder, gentler, smarter choice (Martin, by the way, is the film's greatest sacrifice, toning down his brilliant energy and playing a bland nice guy who barely gets to flex his comic or dramatic muscles beyond a calm middle ground). It is makes sense...a little too much sense. And we can't really feel the pull of the love triangle because Meyers' screenplay is too front-loaded with the sexy-funny Streep-Baldwin affair to really establish Martin as much of a character.

Meyers is a talented romantic comedy writer, and later in her career she is developing some interesting insights. Great stories are often personal, but distance provides the right perspective, and It's Complicated feels a little too close to home, like this story is too fresh for Meyers to adequately communicate it to an audience. Beyond the surface plot of a divorced couple's affair are the underlying notions of a couple who isn't right for each other, but isn't finished with one another. We also get ideas of fully grown siblings who never got a chance to grieve their parents' split, who revert to a childlike state when they are forced to deal with their parents as a romantic entity once again. It's just too much to cram into a frothy studio comedy, and it accentuates the glaring problems many have with Meyers, like the gleaming white teeth and the ridiculously rich locales and the cinematography that almost shines in the corners of the screen. It's Complicated is the visual equivalent of a fabric softener commercial, with a screenplay that combines goofy surface ideas with more interesting, serious intentions. It is complicated...way too complicated to work.

Nine

Based on pedigree alone, Nine was all but anointed of the eventual 10 Best Picture nominees at this year's Oscar ceremony. Then the film got released. Now it is all but deadin every way, from its box-office haul to that once-certain B.P. nod. Why?

Because the film kinda sucks.

The film is the latest in the line of flashy Broadway musical adaptations, following most directly in the footsteps of Chicago and Dreamgirls. It is directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall and written by Michael Tolkin and the late, ever-so-great Anthony Minghella. The screenplay falters because, despite its history, this material is not ripe for musical adaptation. Sure, Nine has been produced as a musical in countless venues in more than one country for years, but the songs are not notable, the story is not particularly engaging, and the spirit is completely in opposition to the nature of the musical. Nine, which is inspired by Federico Fellini's legendary masterpiece, 8 1/2, is the story of a selfish artist in professional stasis and psychological turmoil, and it is played as a flashy, triumphant musical with huge numbers and glitzy costumes. Sorry, doesn't work.

The cast, as usual, is impressive. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido Contini, celebrated Italian auteur who is suffering from a creative block. Contini -- or Anselmi, as he was named in Fellini's film -- was always intended as a psychic stand-in for Fellini himself. He never meets any deadlines, is a chronic lothario, and never, ever has a finished screenplay for his cast and crew to work from. But where Fellini developed great art from his artistic turmoil, the musical version of Guido seems like a mopey, pretentious cad who doesn't deserve our attention. The great Day-Lewis' portrayal is serviceable but not successful, and not just because his singing voice is distractingly reminiscent of Count Dracula. The character is just not lovable, and his plight isn't appealing as a song-and-dance.

Rounding out the cast are the women in Guido's life: Marion Cotillard plays his wife, Penelope Cruz his mistress, Nicole Kidman his muse, Sophia Loren his mother, Judi Dench his costume desginer, Kate Hudson a flirtatious American reporter, and Fergie the voluptuous town whore who helped form Guido's world view. The actresses are all talented and all game, but their material is simply D.O.A. Most of the songs are boring downers -- the only two to strike any sort of musical or cinematic stride are Hudson's "Cinema Italiano" and Fergie's "Be Italian," both big, lively, well-performed numbers that most accurately exude what the film is really about. Cotillard is fabulous, especially in her last soul-bearing number, and Cruz makes the most of her fluffy mistress character, but none of the actresses are given much to do other than show up, sing their song, and disappear. All musicals must overcome the struggle that their plots are intended to string the big showcase musical numbers together, but Nine really feels like anything in between the songs is lame filler. And in this case, most of the songs are lame filler as well.

Rob Marshall has developed a pretty successful film career for himself, but watching Nine, it became clear to me that he is a gifted stylist, but not really a director. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, but that is thanks mostly to the gifts of cinematographer Dion Beebe, editors Claire Simpson an Wyatt Smith, and production designer John Myhre. Marshall stages and choreographs the lavish musical numbers well, but that is because he cops to the same proscenium-based style he that worked well for him in Chicago, a style that is entertaining but not fulfilling. In Chicago, the created conceit that the songs took place in Roxie's bruised mind worked well in the context of the film. In Nine, some of the numbers take place in Guido's head, but others clearly do not, yet they are still staged on some fictitious plane we are just intended to buy. The material isn't engaging enough and the songs not pleasing enough for us to make that kind of leap.

The musical motion picture has experienced a well-deserved revival in the last decade, but Nine is easily the weakest entry into that canon. Not every Broadway show can be successfully adapted into a film, and not every classic film should be adapted into a Broadway show. Nine is a prime example of both.

Indie Spirit Noms are Quite Precious

Indie Spirit noms were announced...always news, but not all that exciting. Take a look at the major categories, with some analysis to follow:

BEST FEATURE
(500) Days of Summer
Amreeka
Precious
Sin Nombre
The Last Station

NOTE: Every year the Spirits are typically as predictable in the "Best Feature" category as the Oscars are in the "Best Picture" category, and this year the Spirits may be even more predictable than the Oscars. It's the Precious show, period. And really, as many problems as I have with Precious, there is not much to argue against it, at least with this group of nominees. (500) Days is mighty clever and much more enjoyable than Precious, and Sin Nombre better emdobies what Film Independent is all about, but neither of those films -- or, for that matter, Precious -- should really be nominated, in my opinion. But for the Spirits, this will be Precious' year, which, for better or worse, is probably the final nail in the film's Oscar coffin. Destined to be nominated...and lose.

BEST DIRECTOR
The Coen Brothers, A Serious Man
Lee Daniels, Precious
Cary Fukunaga, Sin Nombre
James Grey, Two Lovers
Michael Hoffman, The Last Station

NOTE: A tougher category. Precious might win Best Feature, but that doesn't mean Lee Daniels takes home Best Director. Could be the Coens, but they are receiving the Altman award, so...maybe James Grey, whose Two Lovers has received oodles of praise (unwarranted, in my opinion...the film seems like a pale American impression of a great French film, but a lot of people love it, so I digress...).

BEST FIRST FEATURE
A Single Man
Crazy Heart
Easier With Practice
The Messenger
Paranormal Activity

NOTE: Without a doubt, this award should go to Oren Moverman, whose The Messenger is one of the most powerful and revelatory films of 2009. A sleeper is Paranormal Activity, but I still contend that it is not quite a movie.

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
(Given to the best feature made for under $500,000; award given to the writer, director, and producer)
Big Fan
Humpday
The New Year Parade
Treeless Mountain
Zero Bridge

NOTE: My guess would be Big Fan, the directorial debut of The Wrestler writer Robert Siegel, but you never know...

BEST SCREENPLAY
Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Michael Hoffman, The Last Station
Lee Toland Krieger, The Vicious Kind
Greg Mottola, Adventureland
Scott Neustader, Michael H. Weber, (500) Days of Summer

NOTE: Probably Neustader and Weber for (500) Days, which is a very creative piece of writing. But The Messenger deserves serious consideration, and I would submit that Mottola's work on Adventureland is a much more interesting screenplay than (500) Days.

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Sophie Barthes, Cold Souls
Scott Cooper, Crazy Heart
Cherien Dabis, Amreeka
Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious
Tom Ford, David Scearce, A Single Man

NOTE: Fletcher might walk away with this one for writing the eventual Best Feature winner.

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Maria Bello for Downloading Nancy
Helen Mirren for The Last Station
Gwentyth Paltrow for Two Lovers
Gabby Sidibe for Precious
Nisreen Faour for Amreeka

NOTE: Sidibe. Done.

BEST MALE LEAD
Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart
Colin Firth for A Single Man
Joseph Gordon Levitt for 500 Days Of Summer
Souleymane Sy Savane for Goodbye Solo
Adam Scott for The Vicious Kind

NOTE: Bridges. Done.

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Dina Korzun for Cold Souls
Mo'Nique for Precious
Samantha Morton for The Messenger
Natalie Press for Fifty Dead Men Walking
Mia Wasikowska for That Evening Sun

NOTE: Mo'Nique. Done.

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Jemaine Clement for Gentleman Broncos
Woody Harrelson for The Messenger
Cristian McKay for Me And Orson Welles
Ramon McKinnon for That Evening Sun
Christopher Plummer for The Last Station

NOTE: Harrelson. Done.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Roger Deakins for A Serious Man
Adriano Goldman for Sin Nombre
Anne Misawa for Treeless Mountain
Andrij Parekh for Cold Souls
Peter Zeitlinger for Bad Lieutenant

NOTE: Most likely Deakins.

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Anvil!
Food Inc
More Than a Game
October Country
Which Way Home

NOTE: Tough one. Probably Anvil!, but the category is wide open. I would guess More than a Game is the only nominee without a chance of winning.

BEST FOREIGN FILM
A Prophet
An Education
Everlasting Moments
Mother
The Maid

NOTE: An Education is a wonderful film and will likely run off with this one.

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD
(Given to one film’s director, casting director, and ensemble cast)
A Serious Man

NOTE: Well-deserved. Nothing else to say. A fine choice for this year.

A lot of this year's nominees aren't very exciting, which is fitting for a year that wasn't very exciting overall. But the Spirits are always fun....tons of fun. March 5 can't come soon enough.

Indie Extravaganza: The Spirits are Coming...

With the Independent Spirit Award nominations released (analysis forthcoming) and the ceremony less than two months away, it's time to take notice of some recent indie sensations. Some of them received love from the Spirits, some did not. But here are five films -- all recently released on DVD -- that have helped shape the year in indie cinema.



Twilight lovers, eat your lover's brooding heart out! From Park Chan-wook, director of Old Boy, already a legend in the edgy-foreign-indie scene, comes Thirst, and this is a vampire movie. Bold, inventive, endlessly entertaining yet thoughtful and unnerving, this is the kind of movie that would suck the sparkly life out of Edward Cullen.

Thirst is a love story -- the most twisted and appealing love story of the year, in fact, a film that dissects the nature of ravenous desire and feared temptation unlike any other film you've ever seen. A respected priest chooses to undergo an
experimental procedure to cure disease, flatlines, but comes back to life with a curious affliction: his overwhelming desire -- and indeed, the only thing that can keep his disease in check -- is drinking human blood. With this new thirst for comes a thirst for passion, which leads the priest to a childhood crush who becomes his star-crossed lover. The journey this couple treks is one of the wildest, most vividly potent psycho-sexual-emotional journeys to grace screens in 2009. It is about desire. It is about sin. It is about guilt. It is about love. It is, very simply, about thirst.



I was one of Half Nelson's few naysayers. For me, the film never played with the kind of brutal reality it so desperately wanted to. But filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck showed tremendous ability and promise, and they have taken another step forward with Sugar.

It is not quite a great film, in part because it allows its subject -- the fleeting roller-coaster rides of human drive and hope -- plays ping-pong with the audience in an infuriating way. But the filmmaking is strong. Boden and Fleck are one of the most exciting indie duos in the business, and their story, told with the authenticity of a docudrama, is a wonderful twist on the traditional sports formula. Sugar is that rare baseball picture that sheds light on one of the millions of big-league prospects who come to America and find themselves lost when they don't immediately skyrocket to the MLB.

Sin Nombre just landed an Indie Spirit nominations for Best Feature, Director, and Cinematography, and has become one of 2009's foreign-language indie darlings. It...sort of makes good on its reputation.

The film's story, of hopeful individuals riding atop a train in an effort to cross the border into America, is important and revelatory. Its central character relationship, between the trusting young Honduran woman trying to cross the border with her family and the reckless Mexican hood on the run from his fellow gang members, is an engrossing way to navigate this material. But writer-director Cary Fukunaga, a young American, knows the right information but seems unsure of how his story should unfold. All the right pieces are in place, but the screenplay never offers any real catharsis for its pained characters, and never reveals anything that makes this material more compelling. Fukunaga is telling a downbeat story that only gets more downbeat -- which is allowed -- but in this film, the incessant barrage of one dominant tone without nuance becomes wearisome. As a director, Fukunaga shows good promise and tells an insightful tale, but his own screenplay sometimes stands in the way of Sin Nombre becoming a transcendant picture.

Jim Jarmusch has always been a tone poet, and never has the term "tone poem" been more accurately applicable to any film in recent memory than Jarmusch's latest, The Limits of Control.

The film tells the story of a loner on a mission. What that mission is, we don't really know until the end, when all is revealed (or at least, as much as any Jarmusch film is willing to reveal). Isaach De Bankole plays the Lone Man, and Jarmusch with cinematographer Christopher Doyle studies the actor's cinema-perfect face with beautiful precision -- it is, after all, all we have to go on in this story, where literally nothing happens of any great significance -- but that is sort of the point. The Lone Man travels to various exotic locales, meets with a revolving door of famous cameos (among them Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Bill Murray) who exchange lofty bits of dialogue about the structure and meaning of existence, then exchange cryptic match-boxes with our hero before vanishing.

We study the Lone Man's actions -- he observes great art, does Tai Chi every morning, always orders two espressos in separate cups, and never allows his stone-faced focus to waver. Jarmusch (Broken Flowers, Coffee and Cigarettes, Ghost Dog, among many others), indie cinema's preeminent purveyor of films almost solely about film form, makes The Limits of Control a direct reflection of his lead character -- stoic, repetitious, and focused with intensity. The conceit is always pretentious, occasionally off-putting, but oftentimes oddly engrossing, as Jarmusch sets about to create a film about uncertainty and obfuscation, and he undoubtedly succeeds. The film is iced with Jarmusch's most gorgeous directorial work to date, and the hiring of master D.P. Doyle further extends the hypnotic film's visual grasp.

Another indie darling of the year, the buzz on this leadup-to-war satire has reached such a fever pitch that one is tempted to enter the screening room expecting the next Dr. Strangelove. My advice: leaven your expectations and you will have an enjoyable experience. No, In the Loop is not the next Dr. Strangelove, and it is not even the most savvily funny and intellectually probing dissection of our modern culture this year, but it is a smart and funny film with a few laugh-out-loud moments and several other witty chuckles.

Armando Iannucci, a mainstay of British TV, develops a wide array of interesting characters in his story of governmental P.R. run amok, and the result is such an entertaining experience that I'm disappointed I find myself posing counter-arguments to the trend of "it's one of the year's best" pronouncements. Maybe it was a case of diminished expectations, or maybe this just isn't quite my cup of tea, but In the Loop seems funny-but-flimsy, savvy-but-slight.

Avatar

By now it is a given that Avatar is a phenomenon unlike anything we've seen since...well, James Cameron's last film -- you know, that one with Kate, Leo, and the boat. Anything that I or any other critic out there writes about the film must now consider the context that we are witnessing the only legitimate challenger to Titanic's heretofore unprecedented box office success. Perhaps it is some sort of cosmic symmetry that it is made by the same man.

Now, to the film on its merits. Simply put, Avatar is everything it has been built up to be and more...and yet I cannot quite say it is an unmitigated masterpiece. This is the very definition of a "game changer," a movie that will forever change the face of filmmaking for years -- likely decades -- to come. The kind of technology James Cameron has developed at Peter Jackson's Weta Studios (which, if you haven't noticed, has set its own new standards for digital effects in this decade and cannot, in my estimation, be matched in the next) is truly groundbreaking, that word that often gets tossed around in the critical community but never actually applies...but it does in the case of Avatar. Funny, in a year where Robert Zemeckis once again tried and failed to generate any excitement about 3-D motion capture technology, Cameron comes back from his 12-year absence to perfect 3-D motion capture in a way no one ever quite thought possible. Everything is seamless, from the faces to the general weight and movement of the characters to -- if you can believe it -- even the eyes. The eyes, in fact, are the film's visual highlight -- which is saying something for a film that stretches the term "visual highlights" to unforeseen places.

All that...yet the film doesn't quite reach the highest echelon. The reason, strangely enough, lies in what is otherwise yet another of the film's strengths: its screenplay. Avatar's script, written by Cameron several years ago and presumably tweaked and perfected time and again in the years since, is actually a challenging science fiction piece teeming with fascinating ideas about love, acceptance, and the war between nature and humankind. It is not unlike The Matrix in its virtuoso thematic structure that further elevates its unparalleled visual prowess. Yet Cameron's story is plagued by that nagging predilection he has battled for decades as a writer: the filmmaker's tendency to choose simplified, over-the-top villainy and macho chest-thumping over the his more nuanced view of humanity.

The story is set in the year 2154, when a group of eager scientists -- along with the U.S. military -- are in the process of exploring Pandora, a distant planet that possesses mass quantities of a particular mineral (its name: "unobtanium," which, let's be honest, is a little too clever for its own good) that Earth desperately wants. The goal of the scientists, led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), is to permeate the culture of Pandora's indigenous people, the Na'vi, through Augustine's "Avatar Project." Participants lie in hibernation chambers while their Avatars, which fully resemble the Na'vi people, attempt to integrate into the culture, learning about the Na'vi and teaching them about humans, in an attempt to peacefully co-exist. The military's objectives are less nuanced, as you might imagine; led by the ridiculously growling Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), U.S. forces intend to occupy Pandora, forcefully impose our will upon the Na'vi, and bulldoze their planet -- which flourishes with beautiful forests and rare vegetation -- to use as we see fit.

The Na'vi are a lean, athletic people who stand ten feet tall, with beautiful blue skin and glowing eyes who have a psychic bond with nature and animals, speak in their own complex language (which Cameron, in a very Tolkien-esque move, devised himself), and are bound together through their sort-of Deity-slash-lifeforce, Eywa. They mean Earth no harm, and would rather be left entirely alone, but might be more accepting of the open-armed, open-minded approach Augustine and her team of scientists bring to their explorations. However, the military and its corporate backers wrest control away from the geeky scientist group, imposing a grave threat to which the Na'vi do not react kindly.

At the center of the story is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair-bound former Marine whose heroic twin brother was killed in battle, and who enlists in Augustine's Avatar project by cutting a hush-hush deal with the military that he will "get his legs back" via spinal surgery in exchange for delivering crucial intel to the growling Col. Quaritch. Of course, once Jake experiences life on Pandora (where, through his Avatar, he can run, jump, and do everything he wishes he could as a human), his view of the Na'vi and their precious land changes. Not only does he acclimate to the unique culture, he also falls in love, with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, in the most astonishing digital performance the cinema has ever seen), a beautiful Na'vi warrior who exposes Jake to a world he never knew.

The conflicts are much more complex than one might imagine going into the defining blockbuster of its time. The love story between Jake and Neytiri is charming and compelling, much as Titanic's love story was. And embedded within the screenplay are rich ideas about valuing the environment, cherishing our natural resources, and caring for all people over corporate greed and military strong-arming. The script's challenging notes are hit with ease, and we get a sense that Cameron has been meticulously honing his ideas as the culture has evolved over the past two decades. It is strange, then, that his depiction of the film's villains, specifically the barking Col. Quaritch, is so flat, one-note, and distractingly overwrought. Sure, this is an epic whose story is told in broad, powerful strokes, but the characterizations of the film's villains becomes tedious at best and damaging at worst. Cameron's screenplay hiccups are not helped by Stephen Lang's performance as Quaritch, which goes beyond scenery-chewing and reaches a film-destroying level. In one of the biggest, most groundbreaking films of all time, its overall quality is markedly diminished by one of the worst screen performances in history. That's right -- no lie.

Even amid the lame portrayals and heinous acting from Lang, Avatar is an undeniably remarkable experience from beginning to end, from its extraordinary technical achievement to its compelling ideas to the good work from many of the other actors, from Weaver's tough-yet-sensitive scientist to Worthington's wounded hero and especially Saldana's Neytiri, who is a mind-boggling achievement in every capacity. Saldana should absolutely receive an Oscar nomination for her work...and should probably win, which would be the first time in history a motion capture performance won an Academy Award.

And not even Lang's acting can get in the way of Avatar's awe-inspiring third act, which demonstrates that Cameron is the world's foremost action director. He builds action and suspense in a way that stands head and shoulders above every other director in the business, and even integrates his writing skills into wordless action scenes, building three-act structures around his epic battles, taking each sequence to the next level, keeping us surprised and on the edge of our seat until the very end.

There is a lot to discuss about Avatar. Even this rambling review has barely scratched the surface. It is a grand, powerful epic, and a spectacular technical achievement, and the very definition of an Event Movie. You must see it, you must experience it, you must digest it, and you must savor the moment. Even as an imperfect film, Avatar is amazing.

The Real Hurt Locker

Earlier this year, The Hurt Locker took the film-loving world by storm with its brilliant, startling, edge-of-your-seat thrills and its eye-opening look into the hearts and psyches of the modern soldier. In an almost cosmic stroke of cinematic kismet, here, five months later, is a brilliant companion piece. The Messenger tells the story of what likely takes place after those soldiers in Hurt Locker return "home," even though nothing feels like home to them other than the battlefield. And in the beauty of its painstaking observation, The Messenger may well be the best film about the modern American soldier ever made.

No film has ever come close to capturing the powerful nuances of a soldier's wounded mindset like this film. That authenticity comes courtesy of Oren Moverman, a combat veteran of the Israeli army, who draws on his experience and observations to deliver a film that so carefully realizes its characters that it is nearly impossible to come away unmoved. Moverman previously wrote Jesus's Son, about a recovering addict who discovers new life, and co-wrote the beyond-brilliant revolutionary I'm Not There, often dismissed as "the Bob Dylan biopic," but is one of the most vivid filmic creations of recent years. The Messenger is oh-so-different than anything Moverman has done before, most likely because this is Moverman's directorial debut, and as the film unfolds we see the filmmaker's voice developing with each flickering frame.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) has just returned from Iraq. After being wounded on the battlefield, he's been sent home to serve out the last three months of his tour. He is assigned as a "messenger," the unfortunate soul who must pay a visit to deceased soldiers' Next of Kin and deliver the "regret to inform" speech. As one might suspect, there is a very spare, robotic standard speech that the messenger is supposed to deliver. The mission is to knock on the door, identify the "N.O.K.," and rattle off the spiel. No touching, no empathizing, no emotion. Do the job and walk away. Simple...right?

Of course it is not at all simple, yet The Messenger doesn't belabor that point, or overdramatize it. Will is not inclined to follow the script, nor does it come naturally for him to deliver the message and walk away unfazed. He is surely suppressing emotions, as many soldiers are, and he lives by a very methodical code, once again, like most soldiers do. Yet there is a crack of emotion that breaks through, a weary, uncertain crack in the armor that allows him to do something unheard of in his current line of duty: care.

Will's guide in his new job is Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson, in another in his string of great 2009 roles, although this one might win him an Oscar), who knows the script and delivers it with perfection every time. Unlike Will, Tony has no battlefield experience to draw on, and he therefore might have an easier time compartmentalizing his emotions. His soldierly nature is pristine and unbreakable, but he allows himself to open up in the best and worst of ways in his journey with Will.

Every new experience is a new battlefield for Will and Tony. Make no mistake: showing up at the door of a stranger and handing them the worst news of their life is an extraordinary war, albeit not of the conventional variety. And each new assignment unveils something completely unexpected. The emotions of each "regret to inform" sequence are as potent as any typical battle sequence, and Moverman allows us to feel each and every wound. What we discover is that we can never truly understand anyone's story, and all we can do is show the smallest bit of empathy, and allow grieving souls to express their pain. It is not "soldierly," strictly speaking, for Moverman to suggest that we can have compassion, but it is undeniably true.

Will eventually becomes drawn to one of his subjects, a newly-widowed mother (Samantha Morton) who handles the bad news with a great deal more dignity than one might expect. Her story is profoundly complex, as is Will's, and perhaps the complications and obstacles in each of their lives can bring them together, not out of flowery love or emotional grandstanding, but simple, painful need. That is the unexpected wallop of The Messenger: the stories that break us apart and bring us together are all driven by need. We need love, companionship, solace, and comfort. There are different battles along the way, each of which comes with a new set of scars...but need very often directs our course. And if there is anything that can help us begin to empathize with others, it is that simple fact.

It's small, but it sure is Mammoth

You won't easily find Mammoth. It recently opened in New York City for a limited run. There is currently no upcoming DVD release date, but in the coming months, you might find it at Blockbuster or on Netflix. For the masses, your best chance to view the film is if you have cable -- you should be able to view it On Demand for less than the price of a typical megaplex ticket.

My advice: do whatever it takes.

Mammoth is the story of parents who are separated from their children. Some of them are rich Americans who feel disconnected from their own reality. Some of them are poor foreigners who are forced away from their reality by the pain of necessity. Their stories are the same, and yet totally different. And this film is the complex dissection of their similarities and differences, their consistensies and contradictions.

Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams play Leo and Ellen, who live in New York with their only daughter. Leo is the mastermind behind a massively successful online gaming website and Ellen is an ever-on-the-clock ER doctor. Their daughter is more or less raised by Gloria (Marife Necesito), her live-in nanny, who herself has two sons living without her...in their home in the Philippines. Gloria left her children by necessity; Leo and Ellen do it by choice. Yet there are complexities in the stories of the two American parents. Sure, Ellen could choose to stay home since her husband clearly makes millions through his gaming site, but she works in a demanding profession and touches every aspect of human emotion almost every night on the job. She wants to feel that joy, that pain, that life. Leo goes on a trip to Thailand to make a huge business deal and abandons his business meetings to have an "authentic experience." He meets a local prostitute and pays her not for sex, but to simply be his companion, and then to promise she will not ever sell her body again. He wants to touch something he feels is out of reach; he wants to feel "real" people in "real" circumstances with "real" pain. He wants to buy reality.

Complexities abound at every turn. Leo and Ellen clearly love their daughter and one another, but have been conditioned -- be it via their upbringing or education or the tempting pull of American hubris -- to be controlled by their ultra-modern, ultra-hip, ultra-rich lifestyle, which dictates they stay entirely focused on their work, which in turn dictates they disconnect from the family they love, and thus from the world around them. Gloria talks to her sons on the phone and tells them she is working for them...but also tells them she will not see them until they are fully grown. Her separation provides them with some money but deprives them of the ever-important parental presence. And the Thai prostitute, Cookie (Rum Srinikornchot), accepts Leo's offer but knows she will not, cannot follow through -- she has her own family to support, and no matter how Leo tries to fully experience life though Cookie's eyes, he will never be able to understand how differently his culture values life, people, and possessions than Cookie's culture. Or Gloria's culture. Or any number of other cultures. The differences abound from one culture to the next, from one person to the next...and yet we are all human and we are all striving to achieve the same things. The same, yet different. That is the defining beauty of Mammoth.

Lukas Moodysson, the Swedish filmmaker whose previous films include Together and Lilya 4-Ever, is the writer and director of Mammoth, and his first English-language picture is one of his most complex and subtle. The film is a globe-spanning narrative, not unlike Babel, but what separates Mammoth -- indeed, what elevates it above other similar-themed pictures -- is that it doesn't depend on grand catastrophes to link its characters, doesn't use melodrama and startling events as a dramatic crutch. The characters are drawn, their lives set in motion, and the stories that unfold are entirely dependent on the believable, at times seemingly insignificant choices each character makes. And from these choices, these decisions, these indications of each character's fears, desires, and limitations, we see how big the world is...and how small.

Should Some Works Stay On the Page...?

Make no mistake: I am not a proponent of comparing film adaptations to their literary inspirations. It is a foolish task from top to bottom. A book is a book and a film is a film, and whether one is based on the other doesn't much matter; both can exist on their own, and stand alone as individual pieces of art, to be parsed and evaluated on their own merits.

It is with that in mind that I posit this seemingly contradictory argument: The Road should have never been adapted into a film.

Directed by the very talented John Hillcoat, who dealt with similarly raw, spare material in his great 2006 film, The Proposition, The Road is based on the already-legendary Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name -- you know, the novel that won the Pultizer Prize and is widely recognized as the best book of the last decade. Prestige never went into my belief that the book shouldn't have been adapted. Pulitzer Prize winners have been brilliantly adapted before and they will be brilliantly adapted again. I am even willing to admit that Hillcoat is the perfect filmmaker for this adaptation and that he does as well with this adaptation as anyone ever could have. But based on results, the film doesn't work.

Why? Very simply, I didn't buy it. The atmosphere feels forced and the characters seem like they are acting their hearts out without creating believable characters. Viggo Mortensen plays a father and young Kodi-Smit McPhee plays his son. This two-person family unit roams a post-apocalyptic America, trying to survive amid harsh, spare, hopeless circumstances. How the world became so ashen is not discussed and is not necessary; the heart of this story is how this father and son rely on one another to survive, most of the time coming up against danger after danger, from spontaneous brush fires to cannibalistic cultists, and occasionally coming upon a breakthrough, as when they discover an abandoned underground shelter stocked with non-perishables of all sorts. That underground shelter is a glorious discovery in the profoundly dirty world of this film. No one is better than Hillcoat at creating nasty, barren muck on the screen, and if nothing else can be said for The Road, it is this: Spam has never looked so appetizing.

Mortensen is a wonderful actor, and he musters all his hope-slash-cynicism to play a man on his last legs, living in a world on its last legs, and attempting to find any last shred of hope that his son might be able to build a future on. As the son, McPhee is bright-eyed and engaging. Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall are solid in extended cameos. But these characters feel less like living, breathing human beings and more like pawns on the Apocalypse Game Board, literary creations that don't feel three-dimensional on the big screen.

Of the story and its visualization, Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall do what they can, but it is difficult to realize catastrophic apocalypse in a believable way -- too difficult, in the final analysis, for this filmmaking team to fully pull off. The emotion occasionally hits hard but mainly feels like by-the-numbers survivalist storytelling. And the canvas, which is especially important to a film like this, feels staged and unreal in my view. Where The Proposition felt vividly, powerfully real, The Road feels like lots of ash and wreckage was placed on a soundstage, even if most of it actually wasn't.

No, I don't think anyone should be stopped from optioning novels for the big screen -- ever. But for some reason, The Road seems like a story best left in the imagination, where the enormity of its disastrous scope and the power of its intimate story can play out without any stagey trapping.

Nelson Mandela Can't Possibly Be This Boring

Invictus fails, very simply, because it is an ill-conceived bore. I am not taking issue with traditional sports films or traditional political biopics -- both have the ability to entertain and inspire in very special ways. But not this film, which is an uneasy mis-mash of both genres, made with some skill but absolutely no verve by Clint Eastwood, who very plainly had no clue how to make this screenplay interesting.

It has been an interesting decade for Eastwood, who remains and will always remain one of the top three (really, top two, alongside Lord Scorsese) most revered American directors. In the 2000s, Eastwood started with a limp old-guy dramedy, Space Cowboys, and an interesting thriller, Blood Work. He then proceeded to go on the longest string of critical and Academy acclaim of his storied career, hitting a directorial high with Mystic River and then coming out of nowhere to win Best Picture and Best Director for Million Dollar Baby (Mystic might have done the same, but fell victim to the Lord of the Rings juggernaut). He followed that up with his WWII double-dip, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, then an old-fashioned melodrama in Changeling and a modern-day Dirty Harry flick in Gran Torino. In terms of accolades, the decade has been a success. But look again at the majority of Eastwood's work this decade and most of it comes up limp -- way limp. Mystic and Baby both hold up, as does Iwo Jima on a lesser scale. And he got the good Jolie performance in Changeling, even if the film itself was an embarrassing soap opera. After that, Flags of Our Fathers is such a colossal miscalculation it's mind-boggling, and Gran Torino is a simplified, overwrought, unintentionally hilarious disaster. Invictus falls into the latter category, a well-meaning docudrama that gets lost in an expository boondoggle and can't even manage to be as entertaining as a History Channel special on the same subject.

The story is very prestigious, and along with Eastwood's name being attached to the project, it is one of the chief reasons this film has become Oscar bait. After spending two-and-a-half decades in prison, Nelson Mandela emerges to be elected president of South Africa, and facing the seemingly impossible task of uniting people of all colors and creeds, attempts to inspire South Africa's national rugby team, the Springboks, into winning the World Cup. The true-life story is indeed a wonderful, inspiring tale. One would think it would translate into a much more interesting film than Invictus ends up being.

Morgan Freeman plays Mandela, in a cosmic matching of actor and role that should be an automatic Oscar winner, and it is a testament to how underwhelming the film is that Freeman will be nominated but not win the Oscar. His performance is solid and workmanlike, but not extraordinary. The screenplay, by Anthony Peckham (who must feel more at ease writing rollicking action-comedy, since his work on Sherlock Holmes is more successful), simply does not allow for a fully engaging portrayal by anyone, even a great actor like Freeman playing a legendary character like Mandela. Matt Damon pumped himself up to play the Springboks' captain, Francois Pienaar, but left his charisma in the weight room. Once again, a workmanlike performance that barely registers on the scale of engaging human emotion.

Peckham's screenplay attempts to blend the South African political upheaval with the drama of the struggling rugby team, but the story never gels into anything other than a TV Movie of the Week. As a director, most of the blame must fall on Eastwood, who fails to add any clarity or shape to the already weak material, and who seriously has no business directing a sports movie. On the basis of Invictus' rugby scenes, I feel confident in stating that Eastwood doesn't seem to understand rugby and, further, he doesn't know how to film on-the-field action. There is no compelling drama in the film until the final moments of the "Big Game," but that's only because, even as poorly as Eastwood and Co. has explained the intricacies of the game, almost everyone can get excited about "One Last Shot."

Invictus is a disheartening missed opportunity given its wonderful true-to-life inspiration, and it ends Eastwood's topsy-turvy decade with a glaring thud.