Ain't Them Bodies Saints (***1/2)

AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS
Written and Directed by David Lowery

***1/2

The evolution of the American Western in cinema is a fascinating one. Once the jewel of all Hollywood genres, it was marked by plots outlining black & white moralities. In the 1960's, the movies became more cynical, the thrill of cowboy action was replaced by science fiction, and the Western has been a niche genre ever since. When a Western strikes with audiences these days (does anyone remember the last time that happened?) it's usually for gimmicky reasons. But in 2007, three films came out - the Coens' No Country For Old Men, Andrew Dominick's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood - that changed the spectrum of the Western. The Wild West was no longer seen as a thrill ride where white and black hats faced off, but instead showcased a nightmarish, barren landscape filled with greed and danger. David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a continuation of that tradition.

Lee Daniels' The Butler (**1/2)

LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER
Directed by Lee Daniels

Lee Daniels is a filmmaker of high ideals and low taste, and he enjoys making the two things clash violently in his films. What usually follows are sloppy stories, interesting casting decisions, and more times than not, a movie that is more fun to talk about then to watch. Precious was his big crossover hit, a harrowing story of inner-city poverty, that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director. His follow-up, The Paperboy seemed to take any drop of sincerity that Precious had and totally disregard it. Paperboy was a movie about dirty, sweaty people with dark souls and even darker secrets. It seemed preoccupied with being a showcase for these despicable characters, had particularly carnal performances from its cast - which included Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, and John Cusack - and seemed completely cynical. But now, with The Butler, Daniels tries his hand at the esteemed Civil Rights drama, perhaps the most sincere of all cinema's sub-genres. It's a combination that is quite interesting indeed.

Elysium (**)

ELYSIUM
Written and Directed by Neill Blomkamp

**

There is a sincerity within Elysium that's hard to fault. It really wants to be about something - socioeconomic classes, South African apartheid, brutal federal government - but has a bit of a lazy way of being about it. It wants to be hard-hitting and sharp, filling the audience with rage at all of the injustice and how goddamn unfair everything is. But the template with which Elysium tries to make us feel all that injustice is hackneyed and uninteresting, a standard Hollywood action movie with all of its pieces moving in highly predictable ways. It wants to make you feel uncomfortable about the way of life presented, but makes damn sure that you don't feel uncomfortable with your viewing experience, with all of the good guys and bad guys ending up exactly where you want them to be. It wants it both ways, to be edgy and safe. This is material that could have really been challenging, but it settles for being something that wants to make everyone smile.

Prince Avalanche (***)

PRINCE AVALANCHE
Written for the Screen and Directed by David Gordon Green

***

There was once a time, before Pineapple Express and The Sitter and Your Highness, that David Gordon Green was one of the most interesting independent filmmakers in America. From George Washington to All The Real Girls, he was the master of the contemporary, ethereal Southern Gothic which has now inspired films by Lee Daniels and Jeff Nichols. But then he cashed in with Pineapple Express, and rightfully so. That was a successful stoner comedy, with great comedic performances from James Franco and Danny McBride (McBride and Green have a long relationship making projects together, and it's safe to say that McBride has been the most responsible for any monetary success Green has ever had), and I thought at the time that Green, ever the visual maestro, deserved a nice paying gig. But that was 2008 and it seems like it's been a long time since the formerly prolific filmmaker had made anything challenging.

The Spectacular Now (**)

THE SPECTACULAR NOW
Directed by James Ponsoldt

**

Before my screening for The Spectacular Now, one of the film's screenwriters, Michael H. Weber, gave a brief introduction in which he spoke of the film as something that he and his co-writer, Scott Neustadter, saw as a blatant reaction to what was happening with high school movies. They wanted to deviate away from the vampires and witches that have plagued the teenaged romances of today's cinemas. Weber and Neustadter also wrote (500) Days of Summer, one of the best romantic comedies in several decades, but where Summer made expert use of several visual gimmicks - and a star-turning performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt - The Spectacular Now tries to run almost exclusively on sincerity, a tried-and-true tale of the ne'er-do-well finding his way. Gone are the bells and whistles, and hello are the melodramatic soliloquies.

Blue Jasmine (***1/2)

BLUE JASMINE
Written and Directed by Woody Allen

***1/2

Coming up with a story for a movie every year for nearly forty-five years is enough to tax even the most gifted idea man, so it's no wonder Woody Allen has borrowed some from time to time. If anything, he's proven himself to be quite gifted at adaptation. Stardust Memories was a pleasantly sardonic recreation of Fellini's 8 1/2, and Match Point was a pointedly severe vision of George Stevens' brilliant 1951 melodrama A Place in the Sun. That he's able to borrow so heavily without ever betraying his trademark style - or without crediting anyone else on his screenplay - is another testament to just how brilliant a screenwriter and filmmaker Woody is. Blue Jasmine has pretty heavy illusions to the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire in both theme and structure, but Woody is able to take the baroque Williams and translate it in that lovably simplistic Woody way. The result is his best film since 1999's Sweet and Lowdown.

The Act of Killing (****)

THE ACT OF KILLING
Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer

****

Every once in a while, it's nice to get a reminder how lucky we are to be part of Western democracies, where we're governed by institutions that allow for freedom of speech and the freedom to choose our beliefs and political affiliations. As The Act of Killing shows, there are many places that are not nearly as lucky. The film takes a sharp look at Indonesia and its stringent history for exterminating "communists". In the 1960's, Indonesia's path toward overcoming dictatorship was paved with vicious mass killings acted out by hired "gangsters". Those suspected of being communists were taken in, interrogated and almost always killed - killed in viciously creative ways, with all of the gangsters relishing the chance to act out scenes they saw in Hollywood movies. But specific people are targeted, ethnic Chinese living in the country are extorted, forced to pay officers or else they will be taken and killed by the gangsters as well.

Only God Forgives (*)

ONLY GOD FORGIVES
Written and Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

*

Nicolas Winding Refn's follow-up to 2011's Drive is stuffed with more violence, more neon, more flying limbs and more ruckus. Every year at the Cannes Film Festival, there's a big name film that's served up on a platter and sacrificed ruthlessly by some of the harshest, most severe movie snobs in the world. The premiere of Only God Forgives at the prestigious festival was met with boos, a bunch of walkouts, and a smattering of reviews meant to make Refn go hiding in a cave. It's a ritual that seems gratuitous, and the strongest venom is almost always saved for big name filmmakers (remember how they tore apart Fernando Merielles for Blindness?), but even with all that, the films that they pick on are almost always as bad as they're claimed to be. Only God Forgives may be one of the most correctly heckled films in the history of the festival.

The Hunt (****)

THE HUNT
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg

****

I'm not sure any group of people are better at making uncomfortable films than the Danish. Led by Lars von Trier, their films generally explore topics that most people would rather just believe don't exist. In the 1990's, Thomas Vinterberg and von Trier worked together to create the Dogme Manifesto, a cinematic declaration to make purely unfiltered movies without all of the frills that draw the film business away from reality. The first and best film from this movement was The Celebration, written and directed by Vinterberg. The Dogme group didn't last long, and its fair to wonder if it was more gimmick then substance, but these Danish filmmakers continued to tell these stories, albeit with greater means, making audiences squirm as they explore darker and darker material. The Hunt is a continuation of that tradition, and it's probably Vinterberg's best film since Celebration.

Fruitvale Station (***1/2)

FRUITVALE STATION
Written and Directed by Ryan Coogler

Fruitvale Station is the kind of movie made if you want to be outraged in a post-George Zimmerman world. With the controversial "not guilty" verdict coming down just a day after Fruitvale's premiere, the cynic inside of me felt like The Weinstein Company may have been the only liberal-agenda'd organization happy with the controversial jury decision (obviously, I'm being facetious). There's no way the filmmakers or the Weinsteins could have known that history would be so fated and play such a sorrowful note of timing, but this is the world that we live in and this is the vacuum in which Fruitvale will likely be viewed. It's not totally fair, but it's something that is so apparent in any theater screening this film that it almost has to be a talking point as you head out of the theater. If this were a piece of fiction, it would have felt eerily prescient. But its base in fact only leaves us with a rather bleak reality filled with a pattern of racially-charged violence.

I guess I should warn now that this review contains what may be seen as major spoilers. It's hard to discuss the film otherwise. It was a big news story in 2008, so I assume most people already know the story (I was actually totally ignorant of it and found out - you guessed it - by reading a review), but if you don't know the details and don't want to know, I'd turn away now. 

Pacific Rim (**)

PACIFIC RIM
Directed by Guillermo del Toro

**

Pacific Rim is about as good as I'd figured it would be (not very) and as dumb as I'd hoped it would be (epically). It's completely aware of what it has to do as a movie, totally knowledgable of the films of yonder that paved the way, and executes its plan while making its ancestors proud. It's a physical light show, devoid of meaning but overflowing in testosterone. It is also completely empty, armed with characters slightly less flimsy than cardboard and a screenplay that actually makes you think: "Yeah, that was alright but they way they did it in Independence Day was better". It's a movie for America, and its also a movie for the world, shamelessly pumped with global iconography hoping to snag as many international moviegoers as possible, but enough arrogance to realize that it is absolutely a Hollywood movie.

The Way, Way Back (***)

THE WAY, WAY BACK
Written and Directed by Nat Faxon & Jim Rash

***

I think we've all been part of a terrible vacation - they always seem to happen at some beach house, the heat adding to the discomfort - surrounded by people you don't want to be around, pretending to have fun. Vacations are supposed to be times of absolute relaxation and endless exuberance, so when it ceases to be enjoyable, it's twice the burden. This is the plight of Duncan (Liam James), a 14-year-old loner with the usual social awkwardness particular to young teenage boys. His summer from Hell is on a beach in the Hamptons, where he's placed in an unbelievably charming coming-of-age story, torn between two men who are two completely different types of childish.

This is the End (***)

THIS IS THE END
Written and Directed by Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen

***

This is the End seems like the epitome of comedic success. You make enough hit movie comedies and you too can be given $32 million to make a movie with all of your friends, not even give them character names - don't even write much of a script, really, just improvise! - and ponder the destruction of the universe while going as far and over the top with dick and fart jokes as you possibly can. It all seems very..... ponderous. But much to my surprise, the film is actually much more of a structured story then its production process would allow you to believe, and while this group of actors would seem to be giving themselves a reason to hang out with each other for thirty days, they all bring their comedic A-game cumulating in one of the funniest movies of the year.

Much Ado About Nothing (***1/2)

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Written for the Screen and Directed by Joss Whedon

***1/2

If Much Ado About Nothing does anything for the image of pop filmmaker Joss Whedon, it surely extends the range of fanboy-ism that is so synonymous with his image. Filmmakers have re-done Shakespeare often, and will probably continue to do so for many centuries, but very few times do these adaptations stick. Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all time, but his words are so archaic that it sometimes seems impossible to perform them without drowning in staunch prestige. More often then not, films related to Shakespeare's themes (not straight recreations) develop better on the silver screen - see Ten Things I Hate About You's spin on Taming of the Shrew, or even West Side Story's modernization of Romeo and Juliet. Only Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet and Orson Welles' Othello ever felt like truly cinematic experiences while still committing to the Bard's words.* (see below) Whedon's Much Ado might be headed into that category.

The Bling Ring (**)

THE BLING RING
Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola

**

This year's new Sofia Coppola movie dissects celebrity through an unfamiliar prism. In other words, this year's new Sofia Coppola movie is a lot like every other Sofia Coppola movie. I imagine that growing up with Francis Ford Coppola as your father can give you a pretty twisted vision of the Hollywood scene (after all, is there any other career like Papa Coppola? Universally considered a master but hasn't made a movie worth watching for three decades?), and it would definitely give you a unique perspective while growing up. There's always been an obsession with fame in all of her movies, and an equal obsession in pointing out its not-so-flattering qualities. The Bling Ring is another example of her telling this story, but its very far from her best attempt.