High production much like Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It even sports Anthony Hopkins. But it lacks Coppola’s panache and sense of humor, and Benicio del Toro is one dull, brooding werewolf.
The Wolfman – 2 Stars
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Hot Tub Time Machine – 2 stars
A bro-mance that is actually a menage-a-trois. John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry go back to the ski lodge of their youth, are transported to 1986, and proceed to do unfunny and boring stuff (often involving their bodily fluids) in the hopes of getting back to the future. Cusack looks like a hostage.
Shutter Island – 1 star
Relentless, way too slick and patently absurd. The film gave me a vicious headache and I soon felt like the rat (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the maze of the insane asylum.
Martin Scorsese begs us to ask – is DiCaprio crazy or isn’t he?
You won’t care. You’ll do most anything to make it stop.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – 1 star
Scary and interesting only up and until three things happen: you see the CGI little gnomes who are causing the trouble (they look ridiculous); Katie Holmes bashes your sensibilities into submission with her leaden acting; and you realize there is no adequate backstory for why the house is haunted by CGI gnomes. It just is.
I confess, I got punked. I saw Guillermo del Toro’s name associated with the picture. He directed The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth and Cronos , which were spooky, atmospheric and rich.
Alas, the movie says Guillermo del Toro presents, not Guillermo del Toro directs.
50/50 – 2.5 Stars
Joseph Gordon Levitt gets a grim cancer diagnosis and is supported by Seth Rogen, who plays the standard best friend role (much as he did in Funny People), only now, he’s a stoner trying to get his friend to use the cancer to get women. Rogen can be funny but he better branch out. He’s got one persona and it is wearing very thin.
There is also a love connection with his cancer support therapist Anna Kendrick that is all too paint-by-numbers with its concerns about the ethics of falling in love with a patient and the inevitable breakthrough. And there is an overbearing mom played with little imagination by Angelica Huston.
What is memorable about the picture is Gordon Levitt, who manages to convey the loneliness, confusion and other-worldliness of a possible premature death sentence with force and subtlety. He’s almost worth the watch alone.
Margin Call – 5 Stars
J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year) gives us a taut, intelligent, crisp story of one NY investment house which realizes (credibly, at least for movie purposes) that the economic crash/conflagration of 2008 is not only going to happen, but it is happening, however subtly. As a result, we get to see the reaction of and impact upon the firm’s silky Gordon Gekko-like chairman (Jeremy Irons); the executives who sold him on the mortgage-based investment policy that brought the firm to the brink of ruin (a harsh looking Demi Moore, made all the more brittle by her counterpart, the Dorian Grayish Simon Baker); the traders (Kevin Spacey, who I would say steals this movie except for the fact that Paul Bettany as his no. 2 is every bit as good); and the lower-level young risk analysts (Zachary Quinto and Penn Badgley) who reveal the threat and then serve as wide-eyed witnesses to the first rumblings of the financial earthquake. The film never misses a beat as it propels the story (which unfolds in a 24 hour period) while offering great characters in an ensemble piece loaded with dialogue that is thoughtfully cynical but never showy.
Chandor’s byzantine world of finance is neither sexy or diabolical, and the cogs are just performing their jobs in a system whose caprice they often fail to understand. As the trading floor manager, and the closest thing the film comes to a moral voice, Spacey sees the inevitability of the resolution but he cannot resist it; the system won’t let him. There are no villains, and thankfully, no simplistic Oliver Stone-esque sermons. The characters are the audience, and they, like us, do not lash themselves to the wheel as the ship goes down. They survive, take stock and move on.
By far the best film of 2011.
The Trip – 4 Stars
Michael Winterbottom’s road movie stars Steve Coogan (as himself), who is assigned to review restaurants in the English countryside. The trip was supposed to be a romantic one with a girlfriend, but she dumped him, and his last-minute traveling companion is fellow comic Rob Brydon. The duo match wits and more importantly, impersonations. The banter is astonishingly sharp, urbane and funny.
Rise of The Planet of the Apes – 3.5 Stars
It’s exciting and the special effects are masterful (though I miss Roddy McDowell and Kim Novak in ape makeup).
Two complaints. First, James Franco is not scientist material. He’s stoner and hiker, not thinker. Second, how the hell is San Francisco harboring more apes than Madagascar?
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Young Adult – 4 Stars
A departure for Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno. While Juno was whipsmart and clever, it was often too much so, veering into the Aaron Sorkinland of “oh, what I would have liked to have said.”
Young Adult is more grounded and real. While the protagonist (Charlize Theron) is a prom queen frozen in the time of her glory, Cody does not use her for a series of comebacks and big rhetorical finishes or for being taken down a peg. Theron is as she was, returning to her home town to reign once more, and in the process, reclaim her high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson). But there are no grudges to be fixed or comeuppances to be delivered. The queen is home, but her prior reign is largely in her mind, and the kingdom did not miss her.
In Jason Reitman’s hands, as always, the film is assured, alternately somber (Theron’s life in Minneapolis and her return to her strip mall dotted home town differ mainly in the fact that in the big city, she lives in a high rise, away from the masses) and awkward (the small town does not welcome Theron’s glamour; sports bars do not accommodate slinky and seductive). Theron and Patton Oswalt (as a crippled high school nerd who runs into Theron during her quest) shine, and their earnest interactions reveal Cody’s maturity as a writer.
One scene in particular comes to mind — they are drinking at a bar, and Oswalt sees some guys playing pool and he moans. I immediately figured, here we go. Old high school tormentors. But now he has the queen in his corner. But instead, a guy wheels over in his wheelchair, a cheery and upbeat disabled townie who Oswalt dislikes for being cheery and upbeat.
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – 3.5 stars
Better than the first movie, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law have given their easy banter a deeper root, and the villain Moriarty (Jared Harris) is seductive and superior. You actually believe feel Holmes is over-matched. Best, Stephen Fry has been enlisted as Holmes’ older brother and his scenes are hilarious.
The plot is also interesting and intricate, developing with appropriate twists and turns, and the special effects (you can’t go wrong with an armaments factory) are dizzying.
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