Margin Call, J.C. Chandor (2011)

Wow, this got so many raves, and it's such a dog. I use the term advisedly, to ruthlessly mock the writers of this film for trying to pass off a cancerous chocolate lab as a metaphor for the American economy.

The script is relentlessly pedantic, all the performances seem drowned in valium, the pace -- ironically, since this is supposed to be about spectacularly dramatic events -- is grindingly glacial. I apologize for the adverbs.

The Guard, John Michael McDonagh (2011)

So what's this all this, then? Sort of an Irish Hal Hartley movie, you might say. Makes not much sense as a whole, but the parts are fun: the mood is engaging, there are some craic flights of dialogue here and there, and the whole thing moves along briskly enough, so sure.

Interesting to sit down with Wendy to watch this. The first murder makes her gasp and I realize it's not even registering for me as an act of violence, since this is a comedy at heart. I wonder how many murders I've seen on the screen.

The Sea and Cake, The Moonlight Butterfly (2011)

Some people get excited when their favorite bands try new things -- they're showing their versatility! they're growing! -- but I am not one of those people. I want my favorite bands to provide a steady supply of new songs that sound exactly like, but different from, the songs I already love. These gentlemen understand that, and they have my gratitude.

The Future, Miranda July (2011)

Jesus, between this and Beginners, I'm starting to wonder whether I need to personally go out to Los Angeles and slap everybody. I adored You and Me and Everyone We Know, and I think Miranda July's a delight in every way, but here's a deadly example of how quirky can very quickly render out as tedious.

Or maybe -- here's the relentless fear -- I'm just getting too old? Have had my fill of quirky? I can in fact well imagine seeing this in 1988 alongside, say, Betty Blue, and experiencing it as soul-scouring. Was I blind then or am I deaf now?

Ach, that's all nonsense talk. If I'm old, I'm old enough to know that daddy things go in cycles, the way that Kanye West is just ampin' like Michael, and what we have here is Stranger than Paradise for the new ones same as Jarmusch put Godard in Sandusky for us. No harm, no harm! But no joy. I was glad the cat died; it was creeping me out.

Must be said: As ever with July, the details persist: I completely buy the kid digging a foxhole in the backyard, and answering, when queried about where she'll pee, "I'll do it here. Like a soldier." Also a plus is that no one is rich. And also I loved the guy who put the old blowdryer on Craigslist. Actually, I'm realizing now that I enjoyed the first 45 minutes a lot more than the second.

Young Adult, Jason Reitman (2011)

This thing makes Juno look like a Disney movie. Charlize Theron turns in an amazing performance -- really, when you think about it, a performance in many ways more demanding than the one she did for Monster -- as a terrified and terrifying former prom queen approaching adulthood on the asymptote. I'm not going to go into the plot here because if you have any sense you're going to see this yourself and if you don't then what good would it do. Diablo Cody's script is lean and sharp. She doesn't oversell or fake a single moment, and when she does write big furniture-chewing set pieces, they feel as utterly convincing and sickeningly inevitable as Aeschylus. The fact that all this takes place in a town that could pretty much pass for my hometown maybe twisted the knives even more vigorously for me, but this'll stab you no matter where you're from and/or wish you weren't.

War Horse, Steven Spielberg (2011)

There's nothing new or unusual about an artist taking a chaotic, terrifying, inexplicable historical episode and seeking to make some sense of it by overlaying it with a cathartic narrative, but whew, Spielberg takes the cake! He doesn't overlay, he positively smothers! This isn't a movie about the insane mechanized apparatus of death that was WWI using the story of a single horse as a vehicle; it's a movie about a beautiful, brilliant, heroic horse who happened to have lived through WWI. This movie's sense of history is so bizarrely out of whack, it spends literally no time on the questions of who's fighting and why; its only concern is the fate of the relationship between a farm boy and his horse.

There may be a kind of willful myopia in play here. We know Spielberg isn't ignorant of history, so if he's ignoring it, might that be a deliberate decision? Does the strangely old-fashioned lighting of the early and late bookend scenes offer a clue? I haven't seen such heroic and artificial sunsets since Gone with the Wind, I don't think. Is this, like Scorsese's Hugo, less a movie about history than a movie about movies? I'm probably fishing in a puddle.

Beginners, Mike Mills (2011)

This begins slowly, wistfully, bittersweetly, and immediately seizes my attention, but it takes less than an hour for me to start wishing that everyone involved would suddenly come down with the bubonic plague. The main characters here are, purportedly, horribly damaged and in pain. Self-hatred, self-doubt, self-denial! Plus cancer! Your natural inclination is to feel sorry for these beautiful and tragic people, but they do their very best to thwart your instincts by being the most insufferable bunch of self-involved moony whiners LA has ever seen, and that's saying something. The tone here reminds me of S. Coppola's Lost in Translation. The stylish weltschmerz. Every space -- exterior or interior -- just-so beautiful. My creeping horrified realization that no one on the screen ever has to think about money.

Page One: Inside the New York Times, Andrew Rossi (2011)

No one with any interest in current events could fail to understand that information moves differently now than it did ten years ago, or ten months ago, or maybe even ten minutes ago. These changes have put obvious and well-documented pressure on "legacy media" companies like the Times. In July of 2002, NYT was trading at $50 a share; this past July it was at about $8 a share.

But you know all that. This movie goes over that territory, but where it really shines is in its depiction not of the Times as a company, but the Times as a collection of individuals. There are scenes where people gather around someone's desk and hash out what the ethical course of action is vis a vis some situation that's just arisen. People have principled disagreements, come to conclusions, act on them, and move forward. I found such moments heartening. Whatever else you want to say about the media, the Times, our desperate age, etc., you can't help but come away from this feeling like these people are truly acting in good faith and truly on a mission for good. They're probably doomed.

Win Win, Thomas McCarthy (2011)

Quirky premise and great cast laid low by a script so plodding I couldn't get through 45 minutes. Life's too short, etc.

Hugo, Martin Scorsese (2011)

Since the opening ten minutes suggest that CGI is going to be the star here, far more than character or plot, I resigned myself to enjoying some eye candy and settled in with my Milk Duds. After about an hour of sepia-honeyed faux Belle Epoque visuals, though, the movie's agenda changes again. Scorsese is one clever guy. You gradually realize that this whole enterprise is basically an excuse for the maestro to champion his pet (and very worthy!) causes of film preservation and film history awareness. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before. There are plenty of movies for kids that have broad social lessons to impart -- be nice to people different than you, consumerism is a sickness, take care of the environment, etc. -- but "ensure that cinema history is preserved"? That's some special special pleading! I'm more than sympathetic to the cause, though, so it's all good with me. C+ as a movie, but A- as a PSA.

Hanna, Joe Wright (2011)

The plot here is wholly borrowed -- three parts Bourne Identity; one part La Femme Nikita -- so we'll grade on style points alone, and we'll give a solid B+. Wright usually takes assignments my mom would call "classy," and his obvious geeky thrill in  slumming in the action genre is a little irritating. Still, he gets great performances out of his principals -- the albino sprite to the left, plus Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett -- and only at the movie's very end does he allow himself / force us to wallow in an arty and hyperextended symbolist set piece. Completely forgettable but fairly entertaining.

Inside Job, Charles Ferguson (2010)

If you read the New York Times and watch Frontline you already know most of this stuff, but this is nonetheless a sleek and efficient summary to force your libertarian uncle to watch, should you require a means of explaining to him in 108 minutes just why those damned hippies camped out on Wall Street are so irked. I particularly enjoyed Ferguson's invasion of the business schools at Harvard and Columbia, where economics professors are routinely paid huge sums to say nice things about deregulation but piously opine that they are immune to conflict of interest issues. The professors' ensuing dudgeons are pathetic to watch; incredibly, I end up feeling more sympathetic toward the tasteless Cristal-swilling johns downtown, who at least wear their avarice right on their shiny thousand-dollar sleeves.

Ketchup

These endless summer days I ingest culture faster than I can process it. In addition to a lot of material about PTSD, which I'm reading for a writing project, this is what's been passing in front of my eyeballs. 

White Material, Claire Denis (2009). Denis goes back to Africa. Isabelle Hupert makes me nervous. The politics here are a mess, totally confused. A good example of how sloppy thinking likes to masquerade as ambiguity. But it's Claire Denis, so of course we must still love it.

Somewhere, Sofia Coppola (2010). Just letting the camera keep running on a lifeless scene doesn't make it Cassavetes. This is a deeply boring movie.

Another Year, Mike Leigh (2010). Another heartbreaker from Mike Leigh. It's not really a story so much as it is a kind of temporal vitrine, in which are displayed a half-dozen fully-realized characters, interacting with each other and trying to be alive.

True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen (2010). Lacks the Coen whimsy of Fargo, etc. and also the Coen fatedness of No Country for Old Men. Fine, but neither here nor there.

F for Fake, Orson Welles (1973). Sloppy, self-indulgent, self-important, gimmicky, dull. And that's coming from someone who's genuinely interested in and who has great patience for this theme. Poor old fucker.

American Experience: Stonewall Uprising, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner (2010). Nice doc. Lots of fascinating footage of Village life in the 60's.

The Fighter, David O. Russell (2010). Stolid family drama, worth seeing. Has the kind of genuineness and moral seriousness of purpose you rarely see at the multiplex these days. It's about a hundred times less interesting than, say, Raging Bull, but I think contemporary audiences are so incredibly grateful when they're not pandered to, they wind up thinking something like this is art for the ages.

Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Jonathan Shay (1994). Perfect idea, poorly executed with slack, repetitive prose and a lot of unnecessary self-dealing.

Speed the Plow, David Mamet (1988). Dialogue perfection. Perfect dramatic efficiency.

Still Life: A Documentary, Emily Mann (1982). Really lively, allusive, slippery drama about the collision of eros and thanatos in the post-war life of a Vietnam veteran.

Lethal Warriors, David Philipps (2010). Philipps didn't ask for this job; he was a sports writer in Colorado Springs when the "Band of Brothers" started coming back from Iraq and killing each other and others. Philipps does an admirable job of stepping up and becoming a real reporter, covering some of the saddest stories of the war. Good, thorough, clear reporting. See also the Frontline episode, The Wounded Platoon.

Louie, Louis C.K. (2010-). Makes Seinfeld look like Happy Days.

The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni (1975). Oh, it's horribly pretentious and aimless and even sometimes irresponsible, but it's also of course gorgeous and dizzying poetry. I had to go get my camera to take pictures of it. Then I had to spend an hour planning a trip to Andalusia. 

The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann (1924). Been clambering up this Alp since May. Certainly skimmed some of the later Settembrini discourses, but I genuinely enjoyed almost all of these 700 pages. Took extensive notes elsewhere. This is utterly worth your time. Read it while you're young. What's it about? It's about a young man who decides -- the verb is too strong -- to absent himself from history.

Port of Shadows, Marcel Carné (1938). Oh, France. Merci pour Michèle Morgan.

X Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn (2011)

I love this stuff. Serious questions -- should we celebrate our differences, or seek to transcend them? are we controlled by history or do we control it? -- are explored seriously, plus there are awesome action sequences. Summer blockbuster perfection.

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen (2011)

Every time, I swear I'll not be swindled out of my $7.50 again, and every time, I falter and fail and curse myself. The premise is charming, the people are beautiful, the light is gorgeous, but the dialogue is so stilted it makes me cringe. It's like Allen has his hand up inside all the actors, flapping their mouths open and shut while he voices variations on the same half-dozen cliches he's been using for the past twenty years.

"Are you coming to the dinner with my parents at Le Cirque?"

"No, I really need to work on my novel."

"Why can't you be happy and enjoy yourself for once?"

Etc. It's exhausting! And the characters from literary and art history are even worse. Gertrude Stein really has nothing more interesting to say than, "I read your novel, it needs more passion?"

Thank God Allen's at least moved from London to Paris; I almost hung myself in the theater restroom after Match Point.

Adrian Brody playing Salvador Dali gets the photo because he is the only actor in this entire film who seems to be enjoying himself. Everyone else trudges through their scenes talking like they're reading off cue cards. I bet $20 that Allen was annoyed with Brody's performance for being too ad-libby. 

Bridesmaids, Paul Feig (2011)

Well, it's more a calculation than a revolution, but it's not all bad. Women get almost all the screen time and absolutely all the jokes, and many of those jokes are genuinely funny. On the other hand, the movie does nothing to undermine, much less undo, the standard assumption of this genre, namely that the two valid paths of fulfillment open to women are cookery and marriage. The moment at the end where the cop/boyfriend takes Wiig into custody by putting her in the back seat of his patrol car pretty much sums it up: the law triumphs, and the dude drives.

Biutiful, Alejandro González Iñárritu (2010)

A dignified drama, directed with grace and acted with integrity, but doesn't it kind of tip over the edge into bummer-porn at some point? I am not afraid of depressing movies, but this one's relentless hectoring of its hero brought me to the point of wishing he'd fight back by having at least one good thing happen to him, maybe finding a few coins in a gutter or something?

Ketchup

Zeitoun, Dave Eggers (2009). Eggers tells the story of a remarkable family in a very easy-going and simple voice.

Animal Kingdom, David Michôd (2010). Stark, crisp, finally melodramatic.

Restrepo, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington (2010). They should show this as a curtain-raiser before every war movie. War isn't hell, or glory, or dramatic; it's tedious, confusing, and random.

The Town, Ben Affleck (2010). I've never much cared for Affleck, but this is twice now that he's turned in some really fine work as a director.

Howl, Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman (2010). Wow, totally unwatchable! I made it up to the part where they're on drugs and everything turns into an undersea cartoon or something.

Exit Through the Gift Shop, Banksy (2010). Sly and fun.

Friday Night Lights (2006-). Has there ever been a more emotionally manipulative show? This thing constantly makes me cry, even though there are precious few characters I really have any sympathy with. It's weird.

The Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998). I got weirdly hooked on this for a while there. Shandling is on the one hand hard to watch and on the other I can't turn away.

Four Lions, Chris Morris (2010). This seemed like a bad idea. I had to check. It was.

The Next Three Days, Paul Haggis (2010). This was tight and gripping. Haggis knows what he's doing.

The American, Anton Corbjin (2010). Lifeless.

The Social Network, David Fincher (2010). Eh.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Stanley Kubrick (1964). Every other year or so.

Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg (2010). Very nicely done.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Jean-Francois Richet (2008).

Mesrine: Public Enemy #1, Jean-Francois Richet (2008).

The French are so easily seduced by even the most caricatured image of the outlaw. Richet thinks he's showing us Mesrine's pathos but all that really comes across is how much he worships the man. Still, this is super entertaining and great to look at.

The Way Back, Peter Weir (2010). Almost absurdly epic. Absolutely worth the afternoon.

Colonel Chabert, Honore de Balzac (1832). Superb.

Salt, Phillip Noyce (2010). I can't remember anything about this now.

Cold Souls, Sophie Barthes (2009). Anything with Paul Giamatti is worth a look, in this case only barely.

The Tourist, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2010). 

The Green Hornet, Michel Gondry (2011).

Two incoherent and atrocious payday films from relatively interesting directors. It's almost like they're trying to be as contemptuous of you for watching this dreck as they can be.

Fair Game, Doug Liman (2010). This is the dramatization of the Plame affair and one of the best films I've seen about the Bush administration's post-9/11 rush to judgment. Naomi Watts and Sean Penn are both terrific. Highly recommended. 

Even the Rain, Icíar Bollaín (2010). Nice conceit, nice try, but it turns out a muddle.

Etc. etc. etc.

Stone, John Curran (2010)

Good example of how interesting movies can slip under the radar with mediocre reviews because they're too quiet, too slow. Anyone capable of sitting through late Paul Schrader and taking it seriously will find this more than satisfying. The only false note is that DeNiro's supposedly an Episcopalian. Bullshit. He's a stone cold Calvinist.

Ketchup

The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro (1995). Limpid prose kept me reading all 9000 pages, but there's not much there there.

Youth in Revolt, Miguel Arteta (2009).
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Edgar Wright (2010).
Cleverish enough, I guess. I like this Michael Cera fine, but why can't the protagonist in these things ever be a girl?

Specimen Days, Michael Cunningham (2005). Cunningham's a lovely writer sentence by sentence. The concept seemed too high-concept for me at first, but I grew into it and wound up enjoying this a great deal.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (2010). One of the last great showbiz workaholics.

The Decalogue, Krzysztof Kieślowski (1988). If you've seen it, you know. If you haven't, you should.

Style Wars, Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant (1983). Terrific, fascinating documentary about the rise of graffiti and hip hop culture. Amazing to see NYC in the early 80's and realize how much time has gone by. Provided me with at least one long-sought source for a sample I'd wondered about: "You only specialize in one thing, you can't call yourself the all-out king."

Foul Play, Colin Higgins (1978). Second only to Seems Like Old Times on my list of Hawn/Chase childhood favorites. One of those 70's flicks that's simultaneously total fluff and highly clever.

The Informers, Juan Gabriel Vasquez (2004). There was no reason not to like this, but for some reason I couldn't engage with it.

Spies of the Balkans, Alan Furst (2010)
The Arms Maker of Berlin, Dan Fesperman (2009)
WWII espionage fiction: My annual holiday indulgence. A return to form for Furst, who seemed to me to be phoning it in the last few times. I blame Fesperman for not being Furst, but that's of course unfair.

The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko (2010). This isn't perfect, but it's very good, and it gives me a lot of hope. A reasonably serious and insightful story about a family of two moms and two kids going through a crisis of confidence, written and directed by an out Lesbian. Some might say that the achievement of the movie is that it doesn't even matter that the parents are gay, that it's just a story about a family crisis. That's only about half true. The parents' Lesbianism is integral to the story, but it doesn't determine the story. To me, this seems like a tremendous achievement; the piece neither claims special status for the couple nor asserts that this couple is just like any other. The view of human sexuality on offer here is also refreshing. It ain't Foucault, but it's way more sophisticated than the permanent adolescence Hollywood usually peddles in the bedroom.