The Butler

Surely we all know that the words "inspired by a true story" are themselves a kind of fiction when it comes to the movies. And yet many of us take things in movies as though they were courtroom documents, or "as trustworthy as the world almanac," to quote Bette Davis's character in All About Eve. Movies, of course, are master manipulators. That's one of their basic charms, and I generally don't hold their fudging against them in the slightest. But Hollywood's penchant for revising history does mean that viewers have to be able to separate fact from fiction, and it's rather bewildering that some people continue to accept movies as reliable sources. When it comes to details, they usually aren't. They're product designed to elicit emotions from our hearts and minds and money from our wallets. But in terms of getting the mood of a period and having it register in our minds, movies can be quite powerful and accurate. It is in this way that I think The Butler generally succeeds, especially where it lacks in getting certain details right. (This is to say that the screenwriters of The Butler deliberately altered things for their own dramatic purposes; not that they were bad historians.)

The Butler is hugely entertaining for what it is: a big movie with big emotions that tells a sweeping narrative of the last fifty years of American public life, looking specifically at the Civil Rights movement and a humble butler who serves seven U.S. presidents. His name in the movie is Cecil Gaines (the real man was named Eugene Allen), and he's played by Forest Whitaker. Whitaker plays Cecil with grace and patience. Enough grace and patience that his son sort of rebels, joining with the ranks of Martin Luther King and then later the Black Panthers because he feels that immediate action--not quiet reserve--is needed to facilitate cultural change.

Just a few mythbusters and then I'll move away from my "based on a true story" rant. Eugene Allen had one son, not two, and his son was neither a civil rights activist like the elder son in the movie nor a Vietnam vet like the younger one. Allen also started working at the Whitehouse earlier than the movie claims (but not as a butler, and not as head butler until 1981, five years before his retirement in 1986, which is one of the few correct claims the movie makes.) One of the most calculating changes that the filmmakers make comes in the son, Louis, who happens to be present during virtually every significant moment in the Civil Rights movement, including the Freedom Riders bus ride through Alabama (the one where they're attacked by a seething mob of KKK and non-KKK racist nutjobs) and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Then he even becomes a Black Panther (briefly). It seemed too Forrest Gump-ish to me. (Forrest, you remember, seemed to witness an incredulous number of cultural and historical moments.)

The film very obviously tries to juxtapose Cecil Gaines--who does what is expected of him very well, and considers this a subtle contribution to the march for equality--and his son Louis--who's fed up with being subservient to snooty white racists and wants change. It allows the movie to have some kick to it, even if this kind of plotting feels too convenient. Moreover, the differences between the two men really put Forest Whitaker in the background of his own movie. His is not the face I see as I think about The Butler. I see Louis, I see the cartoonish representations of the U.S. Presidents (from Eisenhower to Reagan, but skipping Ford and Carter), and I see Oprah.  (There is, however, real passion and command inside of Forest Whitaker, and he's able to get some of that out in the second half of the movie.) Given the film's colorful array of characters, it's really an unfair disadvantage.

Those presidents are something else. Robin Williams plays Eisenhower; James Marsden, JFK; Liev Schreiber, LBJ, John Cusack, Nixon; and Alan Rickman, Reagan. (Jane Fonda also makes a cameo appearance as Nancy Reagan.) They're quite an impressive group of actors, and even if their impressions don't always work, they're fascinatingly gauche and/or dead-on. Marsden is surprisingly good as JFK; Rickman really nails Reagan; and Cusack is creepily off-kilter yet somehow right as Nixon. (There's also the added pleasure of seeing LBJ scream at his subjects while on the toilet, with the bathroom door wide open.)

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the performance of Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines, Cecil's devoted wife. Oprah's performance is wonderful, and makes you wish she did more movies. Gloria is a boozing but still loving wife, and Oprah's performance brings a lot of humor to the movie that it desperately needs. The Butler isn't a downer (although it's infuriating at times to see how awful black people were treated at this time, and may still be treated today in certain circles), but it is more than a bit self-important. Oprah, who often comes off as self-important when she's giving away free cars to every person in her audience, here appears grounded and real in a way that is vital to the success of this movie. She's also a great balance to the measured, polite character of Cecil. Gloria doesn't care about pleasing people. Yet she's not brash or obnoxious, and her support of her husband is quite touching at times.

Viewers are likely to walk away from The Butler with a sugar-coated lie in their heads. Now that we've got a black president, it's all good. Racism against black people in America is over. (The movie doesn't do anything to counter this.) And what's more, The Butler has spent two hours showing us the general failings of U.S. presidents, only to rejoice in a kind of enchanted, unrealistic way at the election of a black one. President Obama's election was a big deal, of course, in a symbolic way, but the reality of being a president is a lot more complicated and unflattering for anyone who's tasked with the job. (And for the record, it's always been this way. Presidents rarely get something done quickly, for better or worse.) The Butler isn't interested in showing us that. I'm content with the movie as it is, but I worry that some of its sloppiness will eventually be used in classrooms as pure fact.

The Wolf of Wall Street

A strange mixture of brilliant and repulsive. You don't so much see The Wolf of Wall Street as you experience it. It's like looking into the heart of decay, only it's encrusted with jewels and wrapped in money. I had the same problem last year with Killer Joe. It was one heck of a movie, but I felt ashamed to even admit that I liked it. Is it wrong to enjoy depravity on the big screen? Even a little? Is it a sign of our own moral corruption that we might award accolades to a movie like director Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, which some have dared to call a great film? Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, "Though Raging Bull must still go down as Martin Scorsese's greatest achievement, The Wolf of Wall Street makes the race for No. 2 a lot more interesting." Robert Kojder of the website What Culture concludes, "It's impossible not to become absolutely immersed."

Perhaps J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader sums it up best: "Scorsese's helpless attraction to the very behavior he wants to indict becomes the movie's serrated edge." (All of these quotes were accessed via Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn't exactly an arduous task.) The critics don't all agree of course. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal didn't like it, and neither did Stephanie Zacharek of Village Voice, calling the film "too much of a bad thing."

I find myself in a weird middle ground. I don't feel that The Wolf of Wall Street is a great film that will forever be remembered in the annals of American cinema. (Then again, it might be.) But I also didn't hate it. I very much enjoyed the movie, and was rarely if ever bored (which is saying a lot because it's three hours long and I usually get restless after two). I'm fascinated by people who think wealth and stuff will make them happy, perhaps because I have to fight this belief myself sometimes. (Don't we all?) There must be an element of schadenfreude at work here: I'm glued to the screen for three hours watching a heartless S.O.B. steal from lower-middle-class schlubs, abuse Quaaludes like they're going off the market (oh, wait, they already were!), take Penicillin shots every time he sleeps with a prostitute, and treat his family like pawns in his narcissistic little game, and all the while I'm hoping for the big payoff: the fall. That's the appeal of movies: they rise up, and then they fall, and it's a glorious smashing effect full of broken shards of glass and bloody palms and dust settling over the fallen anti-hero's decadent, decaying corpse.

Here's the gist of the plot: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a slick New Yorker with dollar signs in his eyes who starts a successful stock trading company from the ground up. Jordan is ever the slick salesman (a character trait that recurs throughout DiCaprio's oeuvre), and he turns the penny-stock-trading schmucks who work for him into first-class brokers who could make a man buy his own pen from them. Belfort's schemes aren't exactly legal, which gets him in trouble with the SEC and the FBI. And along the way, Belfort becomes addicted to drugs, sex, and the overall celebration of excess. What's a guy to do when he has so much money that transferring it to a Swiss bank account takes six separate trips for five separate people with stacks of bills taped to their bodies?

So basically, it's an ultimate American success story. In America, if you really want to, you can do this. And Jordan Belfort did and got caught, but then he served his measly 22 months and became a motivational speaker and wrote two books. (The script by Terence Winter is based on one of them, of the same name.)

But we're in it for the fall. And boy does Jordan Belfort fall! When leads his considerable staff in some kind of tribal chant (taught him by his mentor, who's played by Matthew McConaughey, in a cameo appearance), where they beat their chests and hum this creepy guttural mantra. It's a money-lover's war chant, and it takes this whole money-laundering thing into an almost prehistoric realm: We haven't changed, but the stuff we chase after has. And the toys are shinier and more expensive. (And those Quaaludes, man! Oh the Quaaludes!)

There's not much more to say about this movie. It's incredibly well-made and it really is brilliant in a sick sort of way. But you've been warned: it's like staring at death, or perhaps a mirror (if you want to take Belfort as an exaggeration of every person that ever valued stuff too much). And there are a lot of scenes depicting drug abuse and sex. So bear that in mind before you head to the theater. With Jonah Hill (whose character I genuinely loathed), Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin (who gives a memorable performance as the president of a Swiss bank), Cristin Milioti, and Christine Ebersole. ★★★

Mud

Grit with heart. Mud feels very Mark Twainish: it takes place in De Witt, Arkansas, along the Mississippi River, and the two boys at the heart of this film could be Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: one wants to view the world with romantic eyes--despite the fact that his parents are splitting up--and the other is a realist, an orphan being raised by his uncle. Their names are Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), and they spend their free time roaming the river and exploring all the little islands that populate it. (Twain made these islands central sites of adventure in his books, and they were indeed very much a part of his own childhood.)

On one of these islands, the boys run into Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a man on the run. He becomes endearing to them, and they help him rebuild a junked up boat by procuring spare parts from various junkyards across town. But the police and some bounty hunters are looking for Mud, and there's a girl named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) who's waiting in a motel room for word from him so that they can run away together.

We're never exactly sure how much of Mud's story is being left out, and yet there's really nothing embellished about him. He speaks plainly. The problem is his own perceptions: Is he unable to see that Juniper isn't all she's cracked up to be? The mission of reuniting two lovers fills Ellis with a particular sense of purpose, seeing as his own parents' marriage is falling apart, and he's scorned in love by a girl himself. (The movie doesn't offer much in the way of good female role models: women are mostly disappointing in Mud.)

But the story is a powerful one, and the performances of McConaughey and the two young men are compelling. Writer-director Jeff Nichols eyes them with compassion without turning Mud into something sentimental. And he doesn't cheapen it by going for easy solutions to the various conflicts that arise. The characters in Mud feel very much a part of the world Nichols has created, or more accurately, procured: he adds to the mystique and the mythos of American life on the Mississippi. It's a wonderful film, and one of the most underrated this year.

With Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson, Ray McKinnon, Michael Shannon, Joe Don Baker, and Bonnie Sturdivant. ★★★½

20 Feet From Stardom

What an exuberant movie. 20 Feet From Stardom makes you feel like music is the only thing in the world that really matters. It's a triumphant, glory-hallelujah kind of documentary, and probably the movie I've been looking forward to the most this year, ever since I happened to catch an interview with Merry Clayton on Fresh Air. The reason I even know who Merry Clayton is is because I'm a huge fan of the movie Maid to Order, a 1987 comedy starring Ally Sheedy as a spoiled brat who gets turned into a maid working for an eccentric L.A. music producer and his equally loony wife. One of their other staff members is an ex-girl group singer played by Merry Clayton, and she even sings a couple songs during the course of the movie.

The part was, as it turns out, more than a little autobiographical for Merry Clayton and some of the other background singers like Darlene Love (who really was forced to clean houses at one point in her life, despite being a stunning talent). That's what 20 Feet From Stardom is about: the journey of these women (mostly black), who had more talent than could be borne, and were in some ways screwed over by the music industry. But this isn't a downbeat or a complaining film. The ladies are realistic about the fact that for many of them stardom was ever only on the periphery. But they're also very direct about wanting that success and regretting that it didn't happen.

It is truly wonderful--and long overdue--to discover how much Clayton and Love and a number of other girls had to do with the success of some of the great songs of the 60s, 70s and 80s. (And many if them are still working today, albeit more sporadically, as jobs for singers have diminished over time.) Merry Clayton's the gut-wrenchingly powerful female voice you hear on the Rolling Stones' song "Gimme Shelter." Darlene Love can be heard first on "He's A Rebel," although she wasn't credited for it at the time. Claudia Lennear sang background with Ike and Tina Turner. Lynn Mabry with the Talking Heads. Lisa Fischer has toured with the Stones since 1989. Judith Hill sang with Michael Jackson. There are many others mentioned, some perhaps too briefly, but overall you get the feeling that the music industry has kept these jewels hidden from the world. And yet sometimes the impression is that it just wasn't in the cards for them.

This is perhaps a blessing in disguise.

Tata Vega puts it best: "I probably wouldn't be sitting in this chair talking to you right now, because I would have [overdosed] somewhere."

20 Feet From Stardom explores the elusive, heart-breaking, exuberant, ephemeral nature of fame, and the richer, more life-giving nature of the power of music, which for some is the thing that really matters. It's an apt reminder--because so many people are hungry to be famous--that superstardom isn't going to solve anyone's problems, and isn't necessarily the definition of true success. Sometimes it shuts down the talent and emphasizes things that aren't really important.

Directed by Morgan Neville. Featuring Owen, Maxine, and Julia Waters, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Bette Midler, Chris Botti, Sheryl Crow, Lou Adler, Patti Austin, Gloria Jones, Jo Lawry, Janice Pendarvis, Stevvi Alexander, and David Lasley. ★★★½

The World's End

Third go-round for director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (the first two being Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). The World's End, like its predecessors, is the product of nostalgia for pop culture. Where Shaun poked loving fun at zombie movies and Hot Fuzz at buddy cop flicks, World's End takes as its genre of choice the pod people of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Stepford Wives, etc.

Pegg plays Gary King, a ne'er-do-well who decides to reunite his buddies and return to their hometown to visit all twelve of its pubs--a feat known as the Golden Mile--only to find that his buddies have moved on with their lives, leaving him snugly ensconced in the past. But against their better judgment, they acquiesce, and find themselves back in their cozy, boring hometown of Newton Haven, a small village presumably near London. But something has changed: the people seem different. (I think you know where this is going.)

As fans of this team may by now expect, this is an exuberantly funny send-up, with the usual not-that-subtle social commentary that Wright and Pegg (who co-wrote the script) like to insert into their movies. But above all, it's fun, a quality that's lacking in too many movies these days. So while the themes aren't as fresh the third time around, and the jokes and even some of the filmmaking techniques (like those little montage scenes so characteristic of Wright's work) are more obvious, more tried and true, The World's End delivers an entertaining celebration of ridiculousness that fans of this particular genre should find enthralling. And the beams of light that emanate from the faces of the mind-controlled-robot-pod-people-things create quite an effect, not to mention the almost brilliant but just insane enough to be hilarious philosophical debate at the climax of the movie (between our heroes and whomever is the king of these mind-controlled-robot-pod-people-things--his voice being supplied by Bill Nighy.)

Martin Freeman, ever the amicable chum, joins the cast, as well as Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Pierce Brosnan, and David Bradley. ★★★ 

Much Ado About Nothing

A charming concoction from director Joss Whedon, who shot this contemporary-looking take on Shakespeare's enchanting comedy at his own home in Santa Monica. It's in black-and-white, and the language of the original play is preserved (to the best of my knowledge), which in itself is a tricky undertaking, but the cast layers the movie with real feeling and heart. This version of Much Ado About Nothing strips away the possibility of diminishing Shakespeare's words, for the production is simple yet elegant, and the clever, passionate, amusing, dialogue emerges as the star of the show. And Joss Whedon's own brand of subtle humor, which always feels natural rather than embellished, adds to the pleasure of the writing (why mess with greatness?) and the performances of a cast of TV actors, all of whom do fine work. A truly worthwhile experience. The cast includes the wonderful Amy Acker as Beatrice, Alexis Denisof as Benedick, Reed Diamond as Don Pedro, Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, Clark Gregg as Leonato, Fran Kranz as Claudio, Sean Maher as Don John, Jillian Morgese as Hero, Spencer Treat Clark as Borachio, Ashley Johnson as Margaret, and Riki Lindhome as Conrade. ★★★

American Hustle

Watching American Hustle is like watching three different train wrecks happen at once, and yet there is an element of control involved that would distinguish it from an actual train wreck. First and foremost, it's a comic film that yearns to have been made in the late 70s, which is when it's set. The period detail is as conspicuous as the hair of the women in the movie, from the carefully chosen music to the glossy retro Columbia Pictures logo that plays at the beginning of the movie. That's part of the trouble: American Hustle feels too manufactured, and as such the story falters a lot. The script by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell (he also directed) is self-consciously a crime-comedy. Movies of this kind from the actual 70s weren't self-conscious. They just were. You begin to miss this element in American Hustle, because it always feels like a put-on.

But there are redeeming qualities, such as the magnificent cast: Christian Bale as a con artist with a deluxe comb-over and a striking little gut that compliments his even more striking fashion sense; Amy Adams as his mistress/cohort, a gal who affects an English accent in order to dupe clients; Bradley Cooper as a cop who's looking to get a promotion; Jennifer Lawrence as Bale's hard-drinking, hilariously out-of-control wife, who has a big nest of hair atop her head; and Jeremy Renner, a naive, well-intentioned mayor from New Jersey, who unwittingly becomes part of the cop's plan to entrap a bunch of politicians and mobsters.

David O. Russell's brand of comedy is hard to take sometimes. He's big on letting his characters ramble their way to a point, and you really miss clever, quick, flashy dialogue when that happens. On the other hand, there are some pretty funny lines in American Hustle, and many of them fall out of Lawrence's mouth like little flecks of verbal dynamite. Half the time you aren't aware of how funny they are, and just how loopy her character is. She really colors the film.

Bale is appropriately pathetic-looking as a lifelong scammer, he of the hyper-real performance. (I'm quite prepared to believe that he put on weight so he could have a real belly.) The movie doesn't take him too seriously, but it also doesn't completely dismiss him, which feels like loyalty on its own terms. Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, is always some degree of Bradley Cooper. (His character wears curlers at night, which is a good example of how the film can be uproariously funny when it wants to be.) They do play off each other well.

The overall results for me, were mixed. There were moments I laughed loud and long, and moments where I felt bored by what seemed like deliberate chaos. It's a whirlwind of a movie, and admittedly a well-made one. Linus Sandgren was the director of photography. His work is solid: American Hustle has panache and charm and sexy camera angles to spare. But there is something hollow inside of it, like director David Russell was grasping at becoming the next Coppola or Scorcese, and not quite hard enough. With Elisabeth Röhm, Robert De Niro, Jack Huston, Louis C.K., Alessandro Nivola, and Colleen Camp. ★★½

Hannah Arendt

When German-Jewish writer Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was sent to Jerusalem to cover the trial of Nazi colonel Adolf Eichmann, she was struck by the sheer banality of the man. To Arendt, Eichmann was a cog in a system designed for the purpose of committing unspeakable acts of evil with methodical, almost bureaucratic estrangement from conscience or morality.

As a biopic, Hannah Arendt is a masterpiece, starting with the performance of Barbara Sukowa as the indomitable Arendt. Sukowa plays her with dignity and restraint but also passion and vigor. The shitstorm that this woman seemingly brings on herself for speaking her mind and not backing down on her principles is quite fascinating to watch. Once Arendt's piece on the trial is published in The New Yorker, friends turn on her, colleagues asked her to resign, Israeli government men threaten her, and the hate mail comes in at a breathless rate.

Director Margarethe von Trotta (who wrote the screenplay with Pam Katz) manages to capture the sort of rambunctious intellectual life of the expatriate Jews living in New York (some of them victims of the death camps themselves, all of them displaced but embracing their new life in the States). There are lots of impassioned conversations over wine and cigarettes, switching from German to English and back to German again. Despite even the criticism of those closest to her, Arendt never backs down from her belief that Eichmann should be tried as a man, not a representation for an idea. It's a complicated thought once you consider the emotional wallop of six million souls lost to that particular idea. But this is a smart movie that has the courage to present its hero and her ideas without laundering them.

The supporting cast is equally good: Janet McTeer as the writer Mary McCarthy (she's a hoot), Nicholas Woodeson as New Yorker editor Bill Shawn, Axel Milberg as Arendt's devoted husband (also an intellectual), Julia Jentsch as her assistant, Ulrich Noethen, Michael Degen, Harvey Friedman, Megan Gay, and Klaus Pohl as philosopher Martin Heidegger, who taught Arendt how to think, and who apparently let her down in a profound way when he expressed accord with Hitler. ★★★½

12 Years A Slave

12 Years A Slave is the most intense movie about slavery that I've ever seen. It's based on the experience of Solomon Northup (played with real power and restraint by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man living in Saratoga, New York with his wife and two children. Northrup is kidnapped and sent to Georgia where he serves multiple masters, ranging from passively kind but cowardly (Benedict Cumberbatch) to downright sadomasochistic (Michael Fassbender).

This film adaptation of Northup's experiences really puts his plight into perspective. You might say he'd been living an easy life up until his captivity, but seeing how the plantations work off the sweat and soul-crushing of other black people transforms him. And then there's the sheer ugly moral ambiguity of being a slave: do you run and abandon your fellow slaves? Do you put the ones who've been subjected to particular cruelty and torture out of their misery? Can you ever trust any white people, ever again? I found myself wanting Django to appear and slaughter all the slave owners, and as slowly and painfully as they had tortured their slaves.

But there's a problem for me with 12 Years a Slave: it's a harrowing, torturous movie, full of lashings and abuses that feel too real to watch. Obviously--they really did happen, and they really were horrifying. Sometimes the camera stops and lingers, forcing us to watch the lashings over and over, or poor Solomon being hanged, but low enough to the ground that he can just barely touch the muddy earth with his feet and keep his neck from breaking. It's like we're marinating in the awfulness of slavery. Is this punishment? Is this "good for us?" Is this real cinema, transcending the superficial limits of entertainment and instead treating us to some kind of moral cleansing? I'm not sure.

Thankfully, the performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor keeps the movie from turning into a total exercise in despair. As the years drag on, Solomon somehow manages to keep his wits about him, and he uses his intellect to stave off some of the abuse that others around him incur. (There is one scene where he beats the shit out of some trashy overseer, played by Paul Dano, and you don't want him to stop. You want him to beat the man into the ground and then start on the next person he sees with the same indignant ferocity.)

But it does mean that 12 Years a Slave often leaves the realm of 'entertainment' for the realm of 'message movie.' This is director Steve McQueen's attempt to demonstrate for us the horrors of slavery. And it is in turn horrific. Is it appropriately horrific? I suppose it is, in the way Schindler's List is appropriately horrific. It's not something I ever need to see again, but I'd refer anyone who wants to have some kind of visceral experience of slavery and how evil it is to this movie. This is a good companion (or should I say contrast?) to Gone With the Wind, with its decidedly rosier appreciation of the South pre- and post-Civil War.

And yes, I cried when he was reunited with his family. It was, again, very intense. Not for the easily disturbed.

With Lupita Nyong'o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt (who co-produced), Adepero Oduye, Paul Giamatti, Garret Dillahunt, Scoot McNairy, Alfre Woodard, and Chris Chalk. Beautiful cinematography by Sean Bobbitt, although the subject matter makes it hard to admire his occasional shots of the loveliness of moss hanging from trees on the banks of lazy Southern rivers. The very landscape feels tainted. Screenplay by John Ridley. ★★½

Frances Ha

Frances Ha is a delight, alternately heartbreaking and funny, about one of the worst things in the whole world: people in their 20s. There are moments and lines of dialogue in writer-director Noah Baumbach's script that are so subtly clever you have only a vague idea that they might be little hidden diamonds awaiting re-discovery.

The titular character, Frances, is played with daffy aplomb by the lovely, tall, tentative looking Greta Gerwig (the 'Ha' is short for her last name, Halladay). Frances is a girl who, for all intents and purposes, cannot get her shit together. She has no filter on her speech, and she doesn't have a knack for reading social cues. Frances lives in New York with her best friend from college, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), but Sophie wants to move to an apartment in Tribeca and Frances can't afford it. Also, Sophie has a boyfriend nicknamed Patch (Patrick Heusinger), and they make fun of him but Sophie likes him more than she's willing to let on. Frances meanwhile, is in a stilted relationship that's on its last leg. She's also struggling to maintain her dream of being a professional dancer, as the company she's aspiring to has only admitted her as an apprentice.

Yes, there's a point in Frances Ha where you think: this may be the most depressing movie I've chosen to watch in a long time. And it's in black-and-white. Is there anything more disgustingly hipster than a black-and-white movie about New York City in 2013?  But it's not! It's a movie that makes you feel that even in the worst of circumstances, even when you're such a total screw-up that you seem to be clueless to your own self-sabotaging, there is hope. Things can get better. I really loved it. The performances were lovely, and it was nice to see a movie that didn't treat its down-on-her-luck heroine with contempt. (There are moments when you want to cry for Frances, or smack her, or both. But you always root for her.)

With Charlotte d'Amboise (who I think resembles Betty Buckley), Michael Zegen, Adam Driver, Michael Esper, Grace Grummer, Josh Hamilton, Justine Lupe, Maya Kazan, and Britta Phillips. 86 min. ★★★½

Dear Mr. Watterson

Dear Mr. Watterson is a highly personal documentary directed by Joel Allen Schroeder, virtually a lifelong reader and fan of the popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which was created by Bill Watterson. I have read very little of Calvin and Hobbes--and was generally not that interested in doing so based on what little exposure I did have to the strip--and I was worried that Dear Mr. Watterson would be a gushy fanboy's exercise in hero worship. It is, to a large degree. Schroeder takes us to his childhood home in Wisconsin and shows us his old bedroom, describing the wall that was once covered from floor to ceiling in Calvin and Hobbes clippings. But his documentary thankfully goes beyond that singular worship, touching on the wonderfully fascinating nature of creativity itself, as well as the apparently controversial decisions of Bill Watterson, who retired the strip after 10 years (a decidedly short run for a comic strip, since Blondie has been in print for over eighty years).

Watterson became something of a recluse in 1995 after issuing the final entry of his comic strip. He also refused to let his work into the hands of merchandising companies, thus barring devotees from ever owning a Calvin and Hobbes stuffed animal, Calvin and Hobbes lunch box, Calvin and Hobbes coffee cup, bottle opener, leg warmer, sweat band, card deck, purse, underwear, etc. (Some of the people who contributed to the documentary were clearly emotionally traumatized by this decision to deprive them of such products.) But despite its rather fanboy-esque theme, Dear Mr. Watterson is a fairly engaging and intriguing documentary. That's due in part because of the quality the guests who speak eloquently of Calvin and Hobbes' impact on the industry. It's also bolstered by the fervent admiration of the devoted readers who grew up with this "little" comic book character with a big love for exploring and imagining the world. (The cartoonist's wit and skill are well-showcased.)

There's also some talk of the divide between high and low art--I suppose comic strip fans want their comics to be considered on the same level as opera?--but I say: embrace the lowness of low art. Don't try and re-define the parameters of high art to include all the things that are not in fact high. That's the whole point of low art: it fulfills us in different ways than opera and things like that. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

But the problem with this movie is that it's not really interesting enough to be a documentary. There's little at stake. Perhaps an encounter with the man himself would have livened things up. I kept thinking, "I wish someone would make a documentary about Debbie Harry like this." But then I changed my mind. Not if it's just fan worship. Only if there's a real story to tell. Documentaries are stories just like narrative film, and the good ones don't forget that. This one feels like it needed to be re-imagined. ★★

Spring Breakers

Can I have my 90 minutes back? I think this movie was a critique of vapid materialism and wasted prosperity, but it showcased what it critiqued with such obsessive, pornographic enjoyment that it left me feeling cold and ready for it all to end. (Some have praised it for being hiply ironic. It's really just stupid, and oh so poorly written, though admittedly well-made.) For those of you who felt MTV's annual televised spring break programming needed some narrative and a little Bonnie and Clyde thrown in for good measure. Directed by Harmony Korine. With James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine. ★

Enough Said

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener has a knack for creating vivid characters whose worlds feel bigger than the movie we're watching. In Enough Said, which is a finely crafted romantic comedy, the romance isn't the only thing going on in the movie. Holofcener wants us to see the myriad relationships of her characters, as well as the many problems, most of which are not clearly resolved, that exist in them.

As Eva, a masseuse whose daughter is about to go off to college, Julia Louis Dreyfus is wonderful. When I saw she was playing the lead in this movie, I thought: Why isn't she in more movies? I've always adored her performances in shows like Seinfeld, Arrested Development and Veep. She's great in Enough Said. Dreyfus has always been able to make use of the full range of her acting abilities, even in sitcoms, but here she's not obliged to be funny all the time. We get to see the vulnerable side to her.

And as her unexpected love interest, Albert, James Gandolfini has the coolness of a Robert De Niro mixed with his own brand of laid-back comedy. Albert's in the same boat as Eva, unhappily counting the days til his daughter moves to New York to study interior design. Their similar circumstances of course contribute to their romance, but (SPOILER), things are complicated by Eva's realization that her latest client, a poet named Marianne, played by the wonderful Catherine Keener, is Albert's ex-wife. And she hasn't exactly been silent about her negative opinion of him.

The writing in Enough Said is clever but wouldn't have worked with just anyone. It's remarkable how much the actors are able to do with it. Holofcener's is the kind of conversational dialogue that can either sound brilliant or puzzling, depending on how it's said. This cast--which also includes the wonderful Toni Collette (as Eva's best friend), and Ben Falcone--knows how to make the comedy effortlessly funny and natural.

As with all of Holofcener's films, the serious grows out of the funny in an organic way. You feel like you're watching something of real life, which is alternately refreshing and uncomfortable. Enough Said has its moments of "eww...is this really happening" cringe-worthiness. But I say this mostly as a compliment to Nicole Holofcener, who is perhaps the best writer of realistic comedy-dramas we have right now. She's an actor's writer (and director), always giving rich material to her performers.

With Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson, and Tavi Gevinson. 93 minutes. ★★★

The Fifth Estate

With The Social Network and now The Fifth Estate we're seeing the emergence of a new subgenre: the 21st century tech thriller. Of course, there were other techy thrillers before, like The Net. (Remember? Sandra Bullock's identity stolen via dial-up internet.) The Fifth Estate is about Julian Assange, the Australian creator of Wiki Leaks. In 2010, Assange became the source of great controversy when he leaked classified U.S. documents (including Afghan war logs and diplomatic communications). With all the hubbub about Edward Snowden's high-profile whistle-blowing this year, one can only imagine that he will soon get a techy thriller of his own, especially if The Fifth Estate does well at the box office (though we were an admittedly small audience in the theater tonight).

The Fifth Estate is an absorbing movie from start to finish: Benedict Cumberbatch possesses the necessary qualities to portray a high-strung mad genius. He's done it before as Sherlock, and his take on Assange isn't all that different from the opiom-charged London sleuth with more than a little contempt for the average citizen. Daniel Bruhl, as Assange's right hand man, and the moral conscience of the Wiki Leaks organization, is the Dr. Watson of the movie. He's also the film's best asset aside from Cumberbatch's wonderfully intense, electric personality: Bruhl's character is a serious but likable young man with a beard that makes him look like a German hipster teddy bear (that's supposed to be a compliment) and a valiant personal mission to maintain Assange's moral integrity. For those among us who find Cumberbatch's Assange fascinating but aloof, Bruhl gives us a hero to root for. Without him, this movie would not be as sympathetic, and without Cumberbatch, it wouldn't be as edgy.

We must credit the writer--Josh Singer, who based the script on two books, one of them by Daniel Berg (Bruhl's character)--with conjuring up a screenplay that's intelligent without being confusing. This is a (mostly) lucidly written film that gives us a good, dramatic story without all the jargon that often hinders movies about the Digital Age. Instead, both Singer and director Bill Condon focus on the moral imperatives at the heart of this story: freedom of speech and freedom of information.

But we're also privy to the moral mission of the U.S. government, which is understandably in a tizzy, concerned about not only the embarrassment of leaked diplomatic memos but also the potential harm that could come to various informants across the globe. (And of course, the allegations of improper military conduct look rather unflattering.) Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci play the State Department heads that are trying to clamp down on the information war, all the while aware that they're fighting a losing battle. Both of these actors carry the confidence of old pros, and they're fun to watch.

The Fifth Estate is a solid piece of Hollywood intrigue. I can't speak for the veracity of the film as far as the actual Assange story goes, but I hope none of us trusts in the absolutism of the movies when it comes to history. But who cares if Julian Assange himself has already criticized the film, for whatever reason? This is a fun, enthralling movie that has quickly tapped into the minefield of 21st century geopolitics. The world of The Fifth Estate is overwhelmingly immediate: we're left with the feeling that we've just watched two hours of a documentary, even if the film isn't totally accurate. It's a rousing champion of free speech, and a compelling portrait of how even the highest moral missions can be complicated by the egotistical delusions of grandeur of a passionate rebel.

With Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, and Alicia Vikander. 128 minutes. ★★★

Runner, Runner

For those of you who thought Ben Affleck's run of crappy movies was officially over, fear not. Runner, Runner is about as bad as they come. It's a series of implausible events that demand more of the viewer's patience and suspension of disbelief than is reasonable. The plot involves a Princeton student (Justin Timberlake) who gambles away his savings online in an attempt to pay for grad school. But when he learns that the online poker website cheated him, he flies to Costa Rica to confront the site's owner (Ben Affleck). That seems reasonable, right? (Am I only the one who found this in and of itself ridiculous?) He says, "I could have gone to the forums and accused you of cheating, but I didn't." Good logic so far. Affleck, who plays a sleazy super-millionaire with the right amount of arrogant faux-charm, thanks Timberlake for being so considerate and offers him a high-paying job, then proceeds to make him his patsy. Meanwhile, our easily duped hero encounters an ambitious FBI agent (Anthony Mackie) who wants him to assist the government in nailing Affleck. The plot is so obscure yet so familiar that there's nothing to hold one's interest. Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who rely too much on bad poker lingo. (Their non-poker lingo is confusingly written too.) They have a real knack for creating cardboard characters whose names you won't be able to remember. Also, it's difficult to believe that Justin Timberlake could intimidate anyone when he goes about plotting his revenge. Run, run away from this movie. Directed by Brad Furman. With John Heard, Gemma Arterton, and Yul Vazquez. ★

Gravity

Gravity is a little, big outer-space movie with broad emotions and what may be strangely conflicting aspirations: it attempts to give us a tense, terrifying space movie without a big slimy alien or any other sensationalistic monster. It's just Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and outer space, with technology and the elements serving as the primary antagonists.

The opening scene of Gravity recreates the kind of enjoyably cornball banter (between the astronauts and 'Houston') you hear in those old space movies of the 1950s. That banter sets the tone for a movie that explores the traumatic jump from the (admittedly false) sense of security the astronauts feel to the utter helplessness they experience for the rest of the film. If nothing else, you can rest assured that at barely 90 minutes, Gravity is a mercifully short exercise in constant stress and anxiety.

Most of the time I was internally screaming at Sandra Bullock, who makes a desperate attempt to survive when she becomes detached from the security of the spacecraft during a routine repair mission. At the risk of spoiling a basic plot element, it's kind of like that movie Open Water, except in space. There's also a kind of Blair Witch Project element at work too: she's talking to herself much of the time, sometimes to a vague personage on the radio and sometimes not.

The movie has a big noble theme that it pounds away at, letting its Oscar aspirations show more than just a little: Sandra Bullock's character, who has endured a terrible personal tragedy back on earth, is faced with the choice of survival or surrender. She reckons with her own mortality and the value of truly living in spite of the risks involved. Then of course there's that scene where she barks like a dog, but I'll refrain from describing it in any more detail. I just hope that's the scene they play at Oscar time, if she's nominated.

One of the best things about Gravity is how the director--Alfonso Cuarón--builds a scene with deliberate pacing and allows something truly unsettling to develop. You don't generally see such movies anymore. (That same slow pacing is one of the things I like best about Alien.) The music (by Steven Price) casts a dreadful, ominous pall over the film, and the visuals overpower you as they're meant to do: you're lost in this vacuum with Sandra and George, wondering who is minding the store. It's the ultimate depiction of vulnerability.

Gravity is, in the end, about a kind of rebirth after being knocked down on a grand scale. It's the kind of obvious and easy lesson that most ambitious movies are reduced to in order to get a wide release from studios. Some will call this profound, and in a way, I suppose it is. Perhaps movies are trying to come out of their cynical phase, finally. Maybe I should be more receptive to this message. And yet, I can't help feeling that this is just Sandra Bullock's version of Robinson Crusoe (or Cast Away).

The admittedly spectacular visuals do give the film a sense of spellbinding grandeur (although seeing it in 3-D didn't seem that important to me), and Gravity is a successful movie in its own way. But it leaves you feeling excruciatingly tense. For me, it was often a matter of endurance rather than enjoyment. Clooney gives the film its only respite: his character is laid-back, philosophical in a very easy way, and clearly there to play off Bullock's tense, beaten-down tragic figure. The actors are both good. Written by the director and his son, Jonás Cuarón. ★★½

Don Jon

The people sitting next to my friend and me walked out of Don Jon about thirty minutes into the movie. And why shouldn't they? Don Jon is about a self-absorbed d-bag from New Jerey (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who's a master of hooking up with women, but who admittedly prefers porn to actual physical contact. He and his buddies rate the girls at the club on a scale of one to ten, and when they spot Scarlet Johansson at the bar, all of them agree she's a "dime." Scarlet plays Barbara Sugarman (the name conjures up all kinds of licentious possibilities), a somewhat pampered girl who knows what she wants and how she can manipulate guys into giving it to her. She and Jon eventually become a couple, but he can't stop looking at porn, and when Barbara finds it on his computer, she's disgusted and breaks up with him.

If you're easily offended by crude language or nudity, Don Jon isn't your movie. As Jon describes his daily habit of trolling the internet for new XXX videos, we're met with a constant montage of images of girls from the web (most of the time just their faces, but sometimes more), and it's admittedly uncomfortable to see in a movie theater. (Porn isn't glamorous, and it isn't dignified. There's something shameful about seeing it even under these conditions.)

But Don Jon isn't about titillating the viewer. We're in the head of a guy who has become so detached from reality that he can't "lose himself" with another human being anymore. He has to go to porn. (The movie also makes some coy observations about women losing themselves in romantic comedies, their version of porn.) There are also some deliciously apt observations about the American family today, a family that's been beat into submissive silence by the booming television and the cell phones. (Jon's sister barely utters a word in any scene she's in: she's always texting, and his father has positioned his seat at the dinner table so he can watch football while he eats.)

There's something very unique about the character of Don Jon, and something very typical at the same time. I think he represents the current young American male: aggressively macho, high on his own sent, and too distracted and too hooked--whatever the drug of choice--to know how much he desperately wants real human interaction. The scenes of Jon at confession--being assigned a certain number of Hail Marys and Lord's Prayers depending on the number of times he's given into temptation--manage to be both hilariously and heartbreakingly believable.

In the end, it comes down to that same old story: boy meets girl, boy can't stop looking at porn, girl breaks up with boy, Julianne Moore sleeps with boy so he can find salvation. I do love Julianne Moore, but I feel that she has been doing this kind of thing for quite a long time. Moore plays a woman whom Jon meets at a night class, and with whom he learns to see more in a woman than just the degree of sexual pleasure she can afford him. She's wonderful--a voice of sanity amidst the cacophony.

It's hard to remember the last time an actor has so lost himself inside a character like this. Joseph Gordon-Levitt becomes the ultimate Guido (he also wrote and directed the film, and with a refreshing amount of imagination). It's almost miraculous that you could feel sympathy for him, since he resembles those idiots from the Jersey Shore, but you do. You really do. Gordon-Levitt has fashioned quite an impressive "romantic comedy," especially because it so honestly hits at some of the nerves being ignored almost everywhere else. With Tony Danza, Glenne Headley, Brie Larson, Rob Brown, and Jeremy Luke. Anne Hathaway and Channing Tatum have cameos as the actors in the romantic comedy that Jon and Barbara watch. ★★★

The Way, Way Back

The Way Way Back feels like a missed opportunity at times. It tries to be a profound comedy-drama, but its simple story works against those ambitions, for the better. (Simplicity is so underrated that even the simple movie is trying to complicate itself.) This is an enjoyable comedy-drama that's full of interesting characters, but they never develop beyond the predictable. There's pouty teenager Duncan (Liam James), stuck at a New England beach town with his mother (Toni Collette) and her asinine boyfriend (Steve Carell). Then there's Susanna, a chronically annoyed teenager who lives next door with her mom (played by Allison Janney, who's funny but tries too hard to be endearingly obnoxious) and her little brother, whose lazy eye is a point of amusement for his mother.

The film is about Duncan's finding acceptance. He takes to wandering the town and eventually wanders into a water park run by Sam Rockwell and Maya Rudolph. Rockwell's Owen is a man-child who doesn't take anything seriously. But he tries too hard to be funny, and you feel the effort in every line. (He still manages to be likable much of the time.) Rudolph's part feels under-written. She has what amounts to a glorified cameo, and when she gets annoyed with Owen for being so immature, it's never addressed. She just gets over it and that's that.

I found much of The Way Way Back to be charming and refreshing. The film represents for me a conundrum. It's mostly well-acted, and the cast is appealing, as is the story. (That ending was wonderfully understated and really made up for the stupid water-slide-passing moment.) But I kept wondering why on earth Toni Collete was dating Carell's character--who's such an obvious jerk-- in the first place. She provides some shoddy reasoning: "he said it was too late, we were already in this together." It's the kind of dumb movie-writing that is all to easily relied upon when a writer is running out of credible ideas. With AnnaSophia Robb, Amanda Peet, Rob Corddry, Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, Robert Capron, and River Alexander. Directed and written by Fason and Rash. ★★★

Elysium

A real stinker from the writer-director of District 9, Neill Blomkamp. In that film, aliens and humans co-habitated in a dystopian futuristic Earth. In Elysium, the world is just as dystopian and just as cruddy: decimated (presumably) by nuclear war and ravaged by disease and overpopulation (as contradictory as that may sound), the humans co-habitate with computers, which in some cases have become a part of their own bodies. The wealthy have long since gotten the hell off of Earth, retreating to a man-made outer-space habitat called Elysium (borrowing its name from Greek mythology, the heaven for the people who had connections), where they sip cocktails and swim in their own private pools, and are instantly healed of any ailment by sliding into a glass scanning device called a Medbank. (The film relies on some clumsy captions to set up this story rather than tell it to us visually.)

The people of earth are drab and haggard looking, while the residents of Elysium look like Harvard Business School alums at a business casual brunch. Jodie Foster plays the defense secretary--for our purposes she's sort of the head of Elysium--adorned in smart pantsuits and dresses, and she's like the corrupt politician who's slightly more corrupt than everyone else around her. Foster employs a semi-British accent to sound evil in a sophisticated, calm way. If she's not careful, she may become our next Katharine Hepburn: overpraised and overloaded with awards just for showing up in a film. Here she does lend the film a kind of sickly charm, but her coy vindictiveness is lost in a movie that is ever so carefully contrived.

You can feel the plot connections sliding into place before they happen: every relationship, every bad line that's infused with a kind of self-conscious would-be lyricism. Matt Damon, who plays Max, the main character, keeps having flashbacks of his friendship with Frey (Alice Braga), a friendship that apparently dissolved over time but that is semi-rekindled as he attempts his journey to Elysium. He's been exposed to an extreme--and soon-to-be-fatal--level of radiation at work, so his only chance of survival is one of Elysium's coveted Medbanks. But Frey, now a nurse, wants him to take her young daughter with him because she's dying of leukemia.

The whole time I was criticizing the movie because its protagonist seemed bent on such a self-centered mission, Neill Blomkamp was waiting with a dying kid to make it all right: she's there to make his mission selfless and human and poignant. When our hero is facing possible death, he tells her mother, "tell your daughter I liked her hippo story." Earlier, when the little girl told told him said story, he wasn't interested in talking to her. He couldn't save her, and he didn't want to get involved. But you see, Blomkamp put that scene in there for later use: he could rely on it to pull at our heart strings in the eleventh hour.

Those of you who like grim dystopian stories will probably find Elysium to be your cup of tea. It certainly grabs at a lot of ideas, such as the coming computer takeover, and the possibility that we might make our world unlivable. But there's very little in Elysium to give you hope or pride in our kind. They're either rogue criminals or bland preppies hoarding all the health cards. Elysium is a sci-fi thriller for those who think this is the only kind of story worth telling. And when it comes to a sense of story, why bother with anything original? The usual will do. This is the kind of pre-packaged movie that makes you feel the studio system is either full of contempt for its audience or full of apathy. Possibly it's both.

With Sharlto Copley, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and William Fichtner. 110 min. ★½

The To Do List

-->

In The To Do List, Aubrey Plaza plays a recent high school graduate named Brandy. She’s the valedictorian, the “nerd”, the girl who knows when to use “whom” and not “who” but has almost no sexual knowledge. After graduation her best friends drag her to a party where she gets drunk and makes out with a ripped guitar-playing college student with stringy blond hair (Scott Porter). But when the night ends in humiliation, Brandy makes a list of every sexual act she can think of and commits to doing each one over the summer. Ever emboldened by a well-thought-out checklist, Brandy embarks on a sexual quest.

The To Do List is a pernicious piece of propaganda designed to re-inflict the horrors of 90s fashion and music on an unsuspecting audience. It’s set in the summer of 1993. My guess is that writer-director Maggie Carey was a teenager in the 90s, so this is her love letter to that bygone era of Sarah MacLachlan, Hillary Clinton, Janine Garofalo, and baggy clothes. (Brandy idolizes the former First Lady, while her conservative father, who’s terrified of discussing sex with his two daughters, reads Rush Limbaugh.)

While there were funny parts in The To Do List, the film’s brazen attempt to be shocking left me feeling slightly disturbed. I felt that my inner-puritan had suddenly and without warning been awakened and mobilized. When it comes to sexual activity, Brandy doesn’t beat around the bush. She goes for what she wants with a kind of scientific rapaciousness: Brandy’s not interested in intimacy. She’s interested in experience. Perhaps because her two friends (played by Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat and Sarah Steele) are constantly goading her about her chaste existence, Brandy feels left out of the party, like a kind of sexual freak who can’t even kiss a guy correctly.

Aubrey Plaza has this quality that runs throughout her performances in the delightful show Parks and Recreation as well as in her previous movie, Safety Not Guaranteed: she’s the unaffected hipster. Nothing can penetrate the wall she puts up to guard herself from other people. It’s one of the funniest things about her character on Parks, but it’s also the reason she’s not the lead character. In The To Do List, she’s still milking that quality, but the film seems determined to fix it. After an hour-and-a-half of Brandy’s sexual quest, she suddenly decides that sex can be a big deal, but it isn’t always, and shouldn’t have to be. That’s a wonderfully convenient mixed message for youth in 1993 or 2013. With the onset of AIDS a full-blown pandemic in the early 90s, you’d expect perhaps a little more responsibility from a movie so invested in sex.

But, much like the sitcoms of the 90s (Friends and Seinfeld come to mind), this movie lives in a world without AIDS or any other negative consequences from irresponsible sexual activity. (There is a scene where Brandy requests that her latest sexual partner wear a condom so as to avoid AIDS or pregnancy, but it’s delivered in a kind of mock-serious tone that seems disingenuous.) Then Brandy complains that all guys want is sex. This after she has forcefully taken the lead in every one of her sexual encounters over the past few months.

And at the end, when you’re hit over the head with the movie’s ambiguous message, you may feel as manipulated as the dumb guys Brandy’s been using for her “research.” A raunch movie that tries to make some kind of loosey-goosey statement about sex feels like a cop-out both as a raunch movie and as a kind of responsible social commentary.

With  Johnny Simmons as Cameron, the boy who likes Brandy, Bill Hader as the losery guy who runs a public swimming pool, Rachel Bilson as Brandy’s nymphomaniac of a sister, Andy Samberg, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Donald Glover as three of Brandy’s other conquests, and Connie Britton and Clark Gregg as Brandy’s parents. ★½