Notes from the Underground

Hello again. Excuse me as I begin to wipe the cobwebs off this little corner of the Internet. Today, I have at long last renewed my domain for Panned Review. When the domain lapsed in July, I was unable to renew it because Google’s process is deep and mysterious, like a Christopher Nolan movie. And like Nolan, I would try to explain it to you better, only I don’t fully understand it myself. At any rate, it was not a simple one-click solution. In the midst of this, my feelings about writing movie reviews were all a-flutter, partly due to personal reasons, partly because trying to write movie reviews for fun can be a challenge when you teach English full time, and there are papers to grade and books to read. On the other hand, I’ve gotten to contribute a few pieces to another blog, Filmview, run by my friend Konstantinos Pappis. So the question loomed: Should I continue this long-running blog or not? For now, the answer is yes. I’m also happy to say that a new project is in the works: a podcast. More information about that when it’s available. For now, I’m enclosing some mini-reviews of movies I’ve seen this year but never wrote about.

Atomic Blonde – Those who say a female James Bond is out of the question are quickly proved wrong by this fast-moving, neon-enameled comic book of a movie, in some ways a companion to John Wick. In both films, the action scenes are extremely well-choreographed and the tension is almost always punctuated by some little bit of humor. Atomic Blonde is ultimately a unique and fascinating movie all on its own, even if the premise (an American spy facing off with Russians in Germany during the end of the Cold War) has already been trod endlessly. Charlize Theron delivers a convincing performance as Lorraine, a mysterious woman whose allegiance is never clear to us. Theron’s performance is icy and sharp, yet vulnerable, a combination that few Bond actors have ever been able to master, and James McAvoy makes for a worthy love interest/villain. But what strikes me most about Atomic Blonde is that it’s one of the most visually interesting movies I’ve seen in a long time. I found myself tuning out the dialogue (some of which was too functional and technical at times) because I was so fascinated by the images. And of course, it’s awash in 80s references, from the music to the costumes, and resembles, in its most exciting moments, a music video right out of the the early days of MTV. Directed by David Leitch. Also starring John Goodman.

Kong: Skull Island – Kong: Skull Island feels like it was made by people who obsessively watched Apocalypse Now, mining it for inspiration, but their commitment to showing the audience a good time is such a welcome thing that the film's ostentatious references to Vietnam movies hardly bothered me. Especially when so few movies like this (take note, Jurassic World) feel interesting or have any personality. Skull Island takes place in the 70s, so its strikingly ethnically diverse cast feels almost anachronistic. This motley group of scientists, soldiers, and other hangers-on embarks on a doomed expedition to the ends of the earth: Skull Island. The island is essentially concealed inside a dangerous hurricane-force atmosphere. And it's home to an ancient indigenous tribe and a variety of ghastly prehistoric monsters, not to mention the great King Kong. Kong once again feels like a lovable beast, one we truly care about, and while the film’s overstuffed Vietnam commentary may be somewhat forced and obvious, it sure does make for a colorful entertainment. Samuel L. Jackson plays a bomb-crazy colonel with the usual ideas about colonialism; Brie Larson is a war photographer, Tom Hiddleston a rogue adventurer, and John Goodman a government wonk. With John C. Reilly, who's genuinely touching as a WW2 soldier who's been stranded on Skull Island for 30 years, a godlike prize for the natives. It's a hodgepodge that works. Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

Mother! – Darren Aronofksy is not a director after my own heart. I disliked Black Swan immensely, and I found Mother! pretty insufferable too. Jennifer Lawrence plays the young wife of a struggling poet, (Javier Bardem). This once happy couple lives in a beautiful country estate, the home Bardem’s character grew up in, apparently. They’re expecting a baby, and Lawrence’s character is wrapped up in redecorating the whole house, which is a bit of a fixer-upper. That’s when their domestic tranquility is shattered by the appearance of a strange couple, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer. The movie descends into a kind of domestic nightmare as increasingly bizarre things happen and the wife feels alienated from her husband, whose commitment to hospitality borders on the pathological. It’s a surreal experience, one that may titillate some viewers with all its literary references (to the Bible, Dante’s Inferno, among others, and its more general pap about the artist’s struggle). But Jennifer Lawrence spends the entire film reacting in horror to the admittedly horrible things happening to her; I much prefer Lawrence when she’s strong or funny (like her deliciously arch performance in the otherwise middling American Hustle). Mother! is also a maddeningly ugly film, visually speaking, a far cry from the rapturous beauty of the film below.

Suspiria (1977) – I’ve already reviewed Suspiria, but I must take a moment to rave about the experience of seeing it this October on the big screen, at Jacksonville’s own Sun-Ray Cinema. Before the movie began, we were treated to a brief intro by star Jessica Harper herself, which she recorded as a little gift to the fans. I’ve never considered myself a devotee of Suspiria, because the film’s plot is so haphazard. But seeing its garish colors on that massive screen turned me into a believer. The point of Suspiria is that it’s a chaotic, nightmarish experience, a frenetic symphony of artistic terror. Dario Argento doesn’t have the time, the patience, or the desire to nail every detail of the plot together, and why should he when he’s capturing a film this beautiful and terrifying? The horrifying double murder, minutes after the opening credits, is one of the prime examples: We never know where the threat is coming from, or what the threat is capable of. And the unreal, dazzlingly ornate set designs, which are more like the acid trips of an art major than actual movie sets, reinforce the feeling of otherworldliness. Suspiria has energy and vitality and spookiness to spare, and I’m so happy I got to see it with an audience.

Wind River – A surprisingly effective mystery-thriller, set in a desolate, snow-encased town in the Wyoming wilderness. Elizabeth Olsen plays a hotshot FBI agent who teams up with a somber, intuitive tracker (Jeremy Renner) to investigate a very cold case – the rape and gruesome murder of a young Native American woman, whose body was found deep in the mountains. Wind River becomes less about whodunit and more about the ways a place can be so hard and harsh that its conditions wear on your very soul. And yet, Wind River never feels like an inhuman film. The characters that populate it are interesting and all too human, only they’ve been living in isolation too long. The film takes a surprising turn at the end, revealing to us everything that happened, via flashback. It feels jarring at first, but director Taylor Sheridan’s focus is on the people, not the scintillating, pulpy surface story. That’s what makes Wind River such a satisfying movie. The standoff scene, between Olsen, several other agents, and a handful of methy bad guys, is tense and well-constructed. And Jeremy Renner, as always, lends a certain anchor-like presence. I can never not enjoy him in a movie.

Sleeping Beauty Ethics

If you could start your life over on a new planet, even if it meant going into hibernation and sleeping through 120 years to do so, would you? That’s the premise of Passengers, a new science fiction thriller which borrows from classics of the genre but reduces everything to the basics: a big, expensive ship, some pretty advanced robots, two humans in love, and a race against time. But instead of fighting aliens or evil corporations, they’re fighting technology, and not a malicious technology, but a malfunctioning technology. In reducing the science fiction drama to such a simply structured story, Passengers does what few of its ilk remember to do: it breathes. This is a movie that allows us to soak in the peculiar, mind-bending grandeur of being alone in outer space. But the film has a much bigger problem: its creepy Sleeping-Beauty ethics. (More on that later.)

That sense of the vastness of space permeates the great sci-fi movies, like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris and Alien: the power of these films lies in their ability to make us feel like we’re there, partaking in the trippy mysteries of the cosmos. So often, contemporary movies are afraid to invoke such feelings of awe and mystery. Instead, they hurl shiny, fast-moving images at us like we’re infants, easily entertained and just as easily bored, always subduable under the tyranny of the next, shinier, newer object. But Passengers has the patience to linger, and so we spend a lot of time alone with Jim Preston, the mechanic-hero played by Chris Pratt, and the first of the passengers to be wrested from hibernation. 

Jim comes off as a loner, someone predestined to leave Earth behind and spend the rest of his life alone on a spacecraft. He’s supposed to be the kind of guy nobody will miss, but of course, the movie must then convince us that he’s utterly missable, especially to Aurora, the fellow passenger (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who, while asleep, catches his eye (in a none-too-subtle reference to the “Sleeping Beauty” tale). When Jim watches her video interview, which he unearths through the passenger log, he's smitten. (Loneliness is a factor, but then again, she is being played by Jennifer Lawrence.) 

We see Aurora, a writer, explain her reason for leaving everything behind for a new, unknown planet being colonized by earthlings. She will travel 120 years, observe and write about this exciting new colony, and then return to earth in another century, having aged nary a year. It’s the story no other journalist will have, assuming journalism still exists in 250 years. (I’d be afraid that the world as we know it will have completely died out by then.) 

This greatest-scoop-ever is a clever gimmick to tempt a smart young woman into an otherwise ridiculous scenario. And these characters aren’t particularly well-developed. Aurora utters writerly pap such as, “I think we tell each other stories to know we’re not alone.” And Jim, when he realizes his predicament, telegraphs it for us: “I woke up too soon!” It sounds almost like the smarmy little kid in Home Alone who declares, “I made my family disappear,” only minus the smirking. 

Much like Jack Nicholson's character holed up in that big spooky hotel in The Shining, Jim cannot handle the isolation. (He's alone for over a year, and grows out his beard so that he resembles Kurt Russell in The Thing). The movie smartly revels in the knave-like scumminess of Jim's decision to wake Aurora, condemning her to his own fate and stealing her life, just so he won't be alone anymore. But then the movie goes out of its way to defend Jim, to endorse his love for her as somehow truer than the horribleness of this betrayal, and moreover, it tries to convince Aurora that she ought to surrender to love. Sleeping Beauty, rescued by this modern-day prince, ought to be grateful. She's awake, after all. 

Passengers would have been a terrific movie if not for this troubling development. Perhaps director Morten Tyldum fancies himself a romantic, although the scenario he and screenwriter Jon Spaights provide us is more on the level of Overboard, that 1987 romantic comedy where Kurt Russell convinces the amnesia-afflicted Goldie Hawn that she’s his wife and the mother of his unruly brood of boys, all for revenge. (I do love Overboard, but it's a problematic movie.) Ah, the timeless theme of men ruining the lives of women for their own gain; and the women, they may put up a good fight at first, but these movies always wear them down in the end. Surrender is inevitable. 

So, if you turn off your ethics, Passengers is an entertaining secondhand science fiction movie, bolstered by the presence of two of our most appealing young stars. And it’s effective and well-made, too. That’s the shame of it, that a movie can get so much right technically but proffer such disturbing views of the world. 

With Laurence Fishburne, giving the film some class as one of the briefly revived crew members, and Michael Sheen, giving the film some levity as the charming bartender-robot.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1

In this review, I’m assuming you’re somewhat familiar with the overall plot of The Hunger Games series, so while I do discuss plot points, I’m not going to bother explaining all the rules of the franchise’s milieu.

The trouble with movies like Mockingjay Part I is that they demand so little of the film medium. They’re not interested in being good movies, merely filmed readings of the novels, visual valentines to the devoted readers of the book series who want to expand their excitement and their experience of the fantasy. Harry Potter wasn’t content to be a well-told book series or even a film series. It eventually became a whole world unto itself at Islands of Adventure. And Hunger Games may one day have to follow in HP’s footsteps to give the fans what they truly want. Perhaps a Hunger Games-themed paintball park? No one is interested in adapting the series in a way that feels truly cinematic, although director Francis Lawrence does make some efforts with Mockingjay. But the movie is ultimately tethered to the book series in a way that ensures it will be a boring set-up for the finale. And viewers may likely find themselves restless with disinterest, but unwilling to criticize the movie since it’s part of a larger whole. How can we really even rate a movie like this, when it’s incomplete?

Even the great Jennifer Lawrence isn’t enough to save this movie. It’s partly her very quick rise as a respected actress—an ascendance that actually started before The Hunger Games—that has made her performance as Katniss Everdeen seem labored and gradually too familiar, too repetitive. Jennifer Lawrence already had an Academy Award nomination under her belt by the time she made the first Hunger Games (for the unsettling, murky meth-noir Winter’s Bone). Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other actors who were Oscar nominees before they were stars of hugely popular young adult movie franchises. Now that Lawrence has won an Oscar (for 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook) and a third nomination (for last year’s American Hustle), her presence in Mockingjay Part I—the first half of the conclusion to The Hunger Games—is a little bit like a 22-year-old being stuck at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. The other grown-ups have legally recognized her adulthood, but they’re still treating her like a child. Of course, Lawrence has obligations to fulfill, and this series is her bread and butter. But Mockingjay Part I is a real yawn of a movie, and for people who look forward to what Lawrence can do on the screen, it represents a dull speed bump for an actress who has shown such promise.

It’s especially hard to watch an actress as good as Jennifer Lawrence be so inactive. Katniss Everdeen never felt more passive than in this movie. She sits, she waits, she reacts. She’s occasionally enlisted to shoot propaganda videos to rally the districts, which are fighting a losing battle against the Capital. She waits for news of her beloved Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who’s a prisoner of the Capital being used as a puppet to denounce the civil war between the districts and the Capital as radical and self-destructive. The alleged love triangle between Katniss and Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) has no momentum, especially since Peeta is seen through a glass screen for most of the film. (And how crummy is it to be Gale at this point? Always doing things for the woman he knows will never love him back the way he wants her to.) She chats with the leaders of her district—Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman—about strategy. She chats with Woody Harrelson (her alcoholic mentor). She chats with Elizabeth Banks. But none of the conversation, none of the characterization, adds up or amounts to much.

There’s also not much of a strong villain presence. The only really tangible bad guy is the face of the cold, ominous President Snow (Donald Sutherland) who’s mostly seen on big TV screens and thus needs desperately to be petting a white cat on his lap. He’s too larger-than-life to feel very threatening, and the movie drones on vaguely about the Capital in a way that never make the threats of the Capital seem real or genuinely tense. Even the big scenes—such as an air raid by Capital bombers—fails to show us the weight or the impact of the struggle. We see lots of terrified district folks running for shelter as the building around them shakes. But we don’t see the bombers and the scene is rendered ineffectual. It’s stagey in the worst way, like when the actors in a play look out the window and report on what they see since we the audience cannot actually see it. Moore and Hoffman are stern and unfeeling and dull as the leaders, always vaguely unaffected by the many setbacks and tragedies going on around them, and too noble to be capable of any real feeling.

I haven’t read any of the Hunger Games books. I saw the first film, but skipped Catching Fire. About fifteen minutes into Mockingjay, I was wishing I had skipped it too and waited for the finale, which is sure to be more entertaining (one hopes). This silly trend of expanding the final entry of series into two movies is peculiar and, I think, antithetical to movies and what they are. (Studios, of course, cannot pass up an opportunity to squeeze as much money as they can out of their pet franchises.) Even fans of the series seemed largely underwhelmed by this installment. The theater wasn’t even crowded. (Granted, it was the middle of the afternoon.) And nobody seemed excited. When I went to the final Twilight movie on opening night, half the fun was observing the audience. Those fans were having the time of their lives. The movie was a bummer—although entertaining for what it was—but the fans’ energy made it worth seeing. This latest Hunger Games entry felt lifeless.

The film is technically well-made. The director, Francis Lawrence, makes an effort to give the movie some visual feeling. In an early scene, we see Katniss emerging from a circular hallway into a large bunker, and the shot is kind of elegant. Many of the scenes in Mockingjay are visually tied together in a way you don’t expect from this kind of series. And the movie doesn’t pound you over the head with ending after ending. (I suspect that will come with Part 2). No, this film’s problem is that it’s a place-holder, and there’s so much being withheld that it’s hard to care. Even the one big advancement in the film’s plot (involving Peeta’s eventual release from the Capital) feels too little too late.

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

Silver Linings Playbook

Does anyone remember that whole sub-genre of movies about the normal guy meeting the kooky girl who changed his life by encouraging him to live life to the fullest? Goldie Hawn did a couple of those kooky girl movies, and Geena Davis won an Oscar for play one of them in The Accidental Tourist. Well, writer-director David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook is sort of like those movies, if both the guy and the girl were playing kooky characters.

(Take note of some very mild spoilers in this paragraph.) Bradley Cooper plays the lead, a former teacher named Patrick, who at the beginning of the movie is getting released from a mental institute after spending eight months in court-ordered therapy. Patrick was sent there because of a violent outburst involving his wife and another man. Now he's been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, but refuses to take his medicine because it makes him foggy, and bloated. He finds a fellow misfit in Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence), a very young widow whose husband died during an act of Good Samaritan-ship.

Patrick is living with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) in his Philadelphia hometown, trying to improve himself so his wife Nikki will take him back. He's deluded himself into believing she will take him back, and experiences moments of paranoia and rage. (For example, he freaks out any time he happens to hear the song that was played at their wedding.) Tiffany turns out to be the best thing for Patrick: she goads him into pairing up with her for a dance competition (in exchange for which she will pass along a letter from Patrick to Nikki, as Nikki currently has a restraining order against him). Their off-kilter relationship works, for them, and for the movie. Yes, Silver Linings Playbook stops short of being original. It resurrects too many staples of the formulaic romantic comedy, such as the character's carefully-contrived weaknesses coming back at the end to throw a little doubt on the outcome of the dance competition, or the dance competition itself, which seems like a pretty standard conflict for a movie like this.

But what makes Silver Linings Playbook stand out is the performances of its cast. Cooper, who I must admit tends to get on my nerves, is believable and sympathetic in this movie. Jennifer Lawrence, who everyone knows is extremely talented, does a fine job in this movie. It's one of the few strong female roles I've seen this year, in fact. De Niro and Weaver work well together as the parents, well-meaning but a but clueless as to how they can help their son's mental health issues.

There's one major flaw. In several scenes, the characters start screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Russell should have put a stop to this. It doesn't work. It turns up the viciousness and quickly, transgressively, enters into the real of histrionics. Fortunately, there's a sharp sense of humor that generally saves the day. It's another good, not great movie.

With Chris Tucker (who has some amusing bits as Pat's friend from the mental institute), Julia Stiles, Anupam Kher (who's very funny as Pat's therapist), Shea Whigham, John Ortiz, and Paul Herman. 120 min. ★★½

The Hunger Games

In The Hunger Games, there are 12 districts of a larger country which must endure a yearly punishment where their rebellious deeds are "remembered" (so they will never rebel again) in a contest called "The Hunger Games." A boy and a girl from each district (that's 24 adolescents) must fight to the death in the wilderness. That means one winner, and 23 dead. Enter our heroine, Katniss, played by Jennifer Lawrence (not so far from the character she played in Winter's Bone).

I haven't read the books. Not planning to read the books. In fact, I felt predisposed to dislike The Hunger Games, because it's the latest book-to-movie series obsession. But, to my surprise, I enjoyed it.  It's an engrossing adventure, with a good adult supporting cast that includes Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks (barely recognizable under piles of make-up and gaudy-looking attire), and Donald Sutherland.

People will likely be scratching their heads about a story in which children are pitted against one another and turned into beasts, but the movie shies away, perhaps a little too much, from the dehumanizing effects of the Hunger Games. They were trying desperately to ensure a PG-13 rating, I'm sure, but in the process I think the point of the story is rendered more than a bit murky. We, the audience, are supposed to be indicted for our role as spectators getting our kicks out of violence. This is merely an amped-up version of those Gladiator fights from the Roman days, you see. The Hunger Games are telecast for all to watch (there are cameras everywhere, hidden even within the trees), and each player receives a tracking implant that lets the government monitor his or her every move.

It's much more rewarding to think of this movie as mindless entertainment than to try and tease out a moral message or some kind of Orwellian warning about the future. All of its ideas are rehashes of other people's ideas, simply put into the world of juvenile fiction, a world which is highly profitable, as even adults are getting into these books. The movies themselves will serve as a nice summing up for those of us who aren't planning to read them.

The Hunger Games's futuristic leanings may be designed to elicit deep contemplation, but they don't. The movie's too tame for that. While I wasn't exactly drooling for more violence (there was certainly a lot implied, so they could have turned this into a real bloodbath had they wanted to), the tameness has a way of luring you back into the complacency which the movie is, I think, trying to rail against. The future is for the spectators. They don't care about kids turning into monsters, killing each other. They want only to be entertained. Oh, but it comes at a price, a high, high price! This is the inner-monologue we're supposed to be having as we watch The Hunger Games, and then I suppose we're supposed to walk out of the theater with the realization that the future is now.

It was interesting to see how the movie (and presumably the book as well) recycled the decadent fashions of years past. You see spectators sporting colorful hair, done up in elaborate and unique fashions, and the clothes are equally loud and garish looking. Apparently everyone in the future (at least, in the big cities), is going to be a metrosexual. The poor folks still look like good old-fashioned working class, adorned in drab-looking, practical clothes. The Proletariat never get the fashion forward. They feel all too real and of the moment, which was probably the intention.

Also, the technology is fun to think about--lots of fancy computer screens flashing everywhere, and some impressive developments in the genetic manipulation of the natural world (often used to give the government a more active role in the creepy fight-to-the-death game that ensues for most of the movie).

The world of futuristic fiction is a strange one. There are so many ways an idea can go wrong when one is trying to depict the future. You look at 2001: A Space Odyssey and you see how inaccurate were their imaginings of what technology would be like in 2001. In fact, the set-up to this kind of movie can really kill it. You might start to giggle or possibly frown if you think too much into the futuristic world carved out for the drama of The Hunger Games. But it delivers enough suspense to be a fun movie, and there are enough moments of drama to make the main characters real and sympathetic, despite the situation that continues to dehumanize them.


Also starring Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, and Lenny Kravitz. Written by Suzanne Collins, Billy Ray, and director Gary Ross.

Winter's Bone

Ozark noir. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year-old Rhee, who's forced to look after her kid brother and sister because her father is a convicted meth maker, and her mom is "sick." (She doesn't talk, for reasons we don't know.) When a bail bondsman informs Rhee that their house will be taken from them if her father doesn't show for his upcoming court appearance, she resolves to track him down. For just about the rest of the movie she visits a string of cousins and half-cousins and other distant relatives (she half-jokes, "we all share blood one way or another") who are all pretty much devoted to the lofty career opportunities provided by making, selling, and taking Methamphetamines.

I suppose the reason I was dissatisfied with this film is because I expected it to be a more absorbing mystery, something spellbinding. Winter's Bone is a much more deliberately paced thriller. It offers subtle enjoyments. The characters are imbued with a gritty, weather-worn rural quality. The actors seem plucked from the Arkansas mountains to perform their parts. Very few people are painted in black and white colors. Because everyone is so morally ambiguous, you're never sure who to trust or to root for, except the girl. Lawrence carries the picture mightily well. She's easy to root for, being the plucky, resourceful type, and possibly the only non-drug addict in the movie.

Winter's Bone has a rustic gloominess which gives the viewer a sense of dread and foreboding. We don't ever know what to expect. However, I found a lot of the searching for clues repetitive, and only minimally rewarding. There's a lot of build up to a climax that somehow feels anti-climactic. Perhaps it was the trash junkie in me that was waiting for a shootout ala L.A. Confidential or something as terrifically suspenseful as last year's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Winter's Bone is hard and realistic, but a bit too measured and stable, especially considering the instability of the characters' myriad situations.

Directed by Debra Granik. With John Hawkes, Lauren Sweetser, Garret Dillahunt, Dale Dickey,  Isaiah Stone, Ashlee Thompson, Tate Taylor, and Sheryl Lee.

The Beaver

In The Beaver, which is directed by and co-starring the wonderful Jodie Foster, we watch Mel Gibson suffer some kind of nervous breakdown onscreen, and Foster, as his devoted wife, somehow doesn't crack, too much, under all the pressure. Gibson plays Walter Black, the executive of a toy manufacturer who suddenly just stops functioning. Something clicks inside him, something inexplicable, and he's no longer the Walter that his employees, his colleague (played by the elegant Cherry Jones), his wife, or his two sons (Anton Yelchin and Riley Thomas Stewart) knew.

As an eccentric form of coping, Walter adorns a beaver puppet on his hand, and from that point on speaks "through" the puppet (using his Australian accent for the beaver). This brings back to life the old Walter in a new way, but on the other hand, the puppet is weird, and Walter's wife wonders how long this "therapy" will continue.

Meanwhile, Walter's teenage son Porter doesn't get on well with his dad. He didn't before the beaver thing started, and he certainly doesn't now. Porter supplements his income by writing papers for other high schoolers (and charging 200 dollars a pop). He's desperately trying to keep track of all his father's weird habits so he can teach himself to eschew them. With all the money he's saving, he can try and travel in an effort to separate himself from his painful memories.

But what is the true source of the pain? The movie is sort of vague in that department. Obviously Walter changed dramatically and this affected everyone in his life. But why did he change? And how do you classify the change? And how do you fix the change? The Beaver lets these merciless questions linger in the air as its story unfolds, and gradually you stop asking why and accept the realities. I think that's what Jodie Foster and the screenwriter, Kyle Killen, were trying to get across from the start: that most of the time explanations are elusive, and in the end they don't change much anyway.


The movie dances between abject horror and dark comedy at all times. You may be on the verge of tears as The Beaver tugs ruthlessly at your heartstrings, milking you the way certain movies do (soft music swells, and a touching image conjures up memories of your own inner-pain). But the movie, I think, critiques our tendency to be taken in by overly sentimental movies just as much as it tries to take us in, to elicit tears and sympathy from us like an old woman who knows how to look pathetic in order to garner pity.

It seems like some wryly funny comic wind buffets the lowest moments of the characters, whether it's Walter or his wife or his teenage son. When Walter is trying to commit suicide, he bungles it badly, and we've really no choice but to laugh at this poor, pathetic man, who's so screwed up he can't even hang himself correctly.

I liked The Beaver a lot, and I wasn't sure I would. It seemed so eccentric. But Jodie Foster has helped create something worthwhile in this movie. It doesn't seek to answer the problems of life for us, but instead, it has the tenacity to demonstrate how truly disturbed our worlds can become, and then reminds us not to expect too many answers too soon, if ever.

Also starring Jennifer Lawrence. Playing exclusively at 5 Pointes Theatre.

X-Men: First Class

A friend of mine accused me of being out of sync with popular culture because I expressed a lack of desire to see Thor. I had an equally strong feeling of malaise when it came to the new X-Men movie, particularly because I remember seeing X2 a number of years ago and being bored out of my mind. X-Men: First Class was better than I expected, but not by much. The characters were fairly interesting, but the movie suppressed any of the humorous aspects of its plot. Every time it let loose for a moment to be light and let you laugh at the weirdness of its characters, it seemed like the director was pulling on the reins, reminding everyone that this is a serious freaking superhero movie, people.

The dialogue was rather mechanical. But most of the audience seemed conditioned to it, so hardly anyone laughed at how ludicrous some of it was. More ludicrous still was the movie's attempt to engage with recent political history, inserting X-Men into the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. (Who knew it was mutants that averted World War III?)

Meanwhile, the coming attractions were ominous and depressing: nothing but wretched apocalyptic superhero movies all summer, as though turning off your brain is the only option at the movies between May and September. It's so unfortunate that the good movies are shoved into one tiny part of the calendar. There are always surprises, but they are the exceptions. X-Men: First Class was okay for what it was, but after a while it's all the same, and you keep wondering why people are still paying to see this stuff over and over again? The 2009 Star Trek was much better.

Popular culture includes, but is not limited to, mindless superhero fodder. Unfortunately, it seems like the only thing studios are willing to risk any money on during the summer. We're at the mercy of people who care about money much more than they care about the movies. It's like we're supposed to feel lucky X-Men was mediocre. But should we be content to settle for mediocrity and elevate it to a status of greatness simply because it's not quite as bad as the rest of the drivel out there?

Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Lucas Till, Caleb Jones. Directed by Matthew Vaughn.