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Midnight in Paris – 1 star

February 25, 2012
1 star, 2011, Comedy, Drama
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The movie starts off trying your patience with an overlong introduction of clarinet music and scenes of modern Paris. We are then introduced to American screenwriter Owen Wilson and his nagging, dispiriting fiancee, Rachel McAdams. Wilson is nervous and nasally and a noodge. McAdams is flat out hostile to Wilson. The idea that these two would ever be engaged is absurd. I kid you not, McAdams says to Wilson, “You always take the side of the help.” So, Wilson is married to a monster, doesn’t seem to know it, and yet, Allen wants us to care about him.

Worse, McAdams travels with her ugly American parents, who are (gasp) Republicans, distrustful of the French and country club obnoxious.

Allen makes the modern so unpleasant you can’t wait for Wilson to be transported to the 1920s. Sadly, we have to go to the 1920s with Wilson. And he’s doing Woody Allen, but whinier. He meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, and Gertrude Stein says, “I was just telling Pablo . . .”

The greats are condescending, self-satisfied characters and they lord their superiority over all. Allen does the same thing, hiding it in his puny, nebbish persona, so his portrayal of them makes sense.

This movie is terrible. Perhaps Allen can still make a good picture. Match Point (2005) was a revelation and Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) was charming, but he’s about done, and the nomination of this movie as best picture is ridiculous. The nomination as best screenplay is an affront. Perhaps Allen’s digs at Bush and The Tea Party explain it, but if not, and the Academy wanted to give him an unwarranted accolade, isn’t that why the Irving Thalberg award was created?

Some gems: “How long have you been dating Picasso. I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

Hemingway: “Have you ever shot a charging lion . . . Who wants to fight!”

“I wouldn’t call my babbling poetic, though I was on a roll there.”

“500 francs for a Matisse? I wouldn’t mind getting five or six.”

“The present is unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying.”

Yeesh.

There are some funny moments when Wilson lapses into Seinfeldian chatter and the folks from the 1920s look at him funny. Adrien Brody is a hoot as Dali. The movie is also very pretty.

That’s not enough, notwithstanding the Academy and a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Adjustment Bureau – 1 star

February 21, 2012
1 star, 2011, Drama
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Matt Damon is a candidate for Senate in New York, pretty much a carbon copy of George Clooney’s presidential candidate in The Ides of March – smart, iconoclastic, liberal, not the kind of guy to admit he wouldn’t support the death penalty for the murderer of his wife. He finds his true love (Emily Blunt) before a big speech and then on a bus, and there is a real connection. But his path leads to higher things than true love. Sooooooooo . . . .

A bunch of angels (Anthony Mackie, John Slattery and eventually, ponderously, Terence Stamp) in ridiculous fedoras do all in their power to keep Damon away from Blunt and “on his plan.” And their power is impressive, except when it is not. So, they can freeze time and inject an idea into the mind of Damon’s campaign manager, but when Damon and Blunt are close, the best they can do is jam land lines and ensure that a cab won’t stop for Damon.

A decent premise (true love conquers all, even angels who have us on a predestined course) is destroyed by failure to let us in on the rules of what angels can do and cannot do (apparently, their powers are weakened near water, ala’ the aliens in Signs). Worse, the “Mad Men” hats the angels wear are actually powerful. They can open doors. Not in the “a well dressed man can get the right doors opened” way but in a “wearing this hat can get doors of teleportation to open.” And before you can say Ben Braddock, Damon is interrupting Blunt’s wedding.

Image result for Matt Damon The Adjustment Bureau hat

“How do I look in this? Really.”

Avoid.

The Woman in Black – 4 stars

February 10, 2012
2012, 4 stars, Scary
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I took my daughter and her friends to see this chiller. Daniel Radcliffe graduated from Hogwarts and has attained a position as a turn-of- the-century barrister in England. He’s recently widowed and is tasked with the unenviable assignment of winding up the estate of a recently deceased woman in the English countryside. The moment he gets in to town, he starts seeing creepy things and children start dying.

The plot is thin but serviceable, Radcliffe has some range (his recent stint hosting Saturday Night, Live was very good) and he’s helped by Ciaran Hinds, but most importantly, this movie scared the crap out of me.  There is one creepy and/or jarring visual after another, a constant sense of dread, and many inventive ways to get your skin to crawl.  The Woman in Black is half ghost story, half haunted house ride.   Best of all, no gore porn torture, just good, clean spooky fun.  More of a ride than a film. We had a blast.

Winter’s Bone – 4 stars

February 6, 2012
2010, 4 stars, Drama
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Winter's Bone (DVD) - Walmart.com

A rough, gritty picture about a girl (Jennifer Lawrence) living a bleak life in the hills of Missouri.  Her father is a crank processor who put up the family land for bond and has gone missing.  Accordingly, it is up to his daughter to navigate the familial bonds and brutal reality of her surroundings to find him and convince him to appear for trial.  Her journey takes us to the core of a back hills and backwards society that in many ways echoes the distrustful, independent and dangerous world of Walter Hill’s The Long Riders, although the setting is modern day.  The film also echoes James Foley’s At Close Range, giving an insight into a foreign criminal world in our rural midst.  Gripping and authentic, and Lawrence gives one of those assured performances that portends stardom.

The Town – 3.75 stars

February 6, 2012
2010, 3 stars, Crime/Mystery
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Ben Affleck’s follow-up to Gone Baby Gone finds him sticking with his roots, again setting the film in a desolate part of Boston. But there is nothing to heavy here, just a crackling, straightforward crime caper, part Heat and part The Departed, with a few nice twists, solid performances and Don Draper as the dogged FBI agent on the trail of a Boston robbery squad. No great shakes, but efficient, smooth and entertaining. Best, Affleck smartly plays the lead as monochromatic, keeping his lifting to a minimum.  Bonus:  Blake Lively plays trashy and she carries it off!

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – 1 star

February 6, 2012
1 star, 2011, Scary
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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

February 6, 2012
2 stars, 2011, Comedy, Drama
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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

February 6, 2012
2011, 5 stars, Drama
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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.