Les Miserables (2012)

I dreamed a dream that Russell Crowe hadn't butchered "Stars," my favorite song from the musical "Les Miserables." Okay, not fair...he didn't butcher it. He underperformed it. Because he had to. Because vocally, he doesn't have the presence to command that song.

My quibbles with "Les Miz" are picky and mostly small, as you will see when I have the chance to post a full review. The truth is, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I cried on five separate occasions during the movie, damn near fully breaking down on two of those five occasions.

Since you might be wondering what I thought right now, here are five quick reactions to the film to hold you off until I have time to write my proper review:

1. Give Anne Hathaway her Oscar, now. Just engrave it. Along with Daniel Day-Lewis for "Lincoln," you can start carving the names in now to save time for later. Her on-screen, in close-up performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" was the single most painful performance of a musical number I think I have ever seen in a film musical in my entire life. (And yes, it was one of the two times when I cried generously.)

2. Russell Crowe wasn't capable of handling Javert. He came close most of the time in the acting aspect of his performance, but never near vocally with the singing. "Stars," one of the very best songs in a show filled with great songs, was thin and frankly pathetic. Tom Hooper could not have done more to make it majestic visually, but Crowe was bunting a number that simply must be delivered as a home run. Crowe's singing consistently threw me out of the moment.

3. Hugh Jackman is as fantastic as you would hope he'd be. And the addition of other Broadway singers like Aaron Tviet gave the film some nice balance against the actors trying to sing like Crowe and Amanda Seyfried. But the real find in this film is Eddie Redmayne, simply stunning as Marius. In a just world, he'd be up for an Oscar nomination alongside Jackman and Hathaway. He carried the second half of a very long film.

4. There were times when the camera work was a little odd, a bit conspicuous. I am still digesting the moments when dutch angles and handheld shots were used in ways I would not have expected them. And while I'm talking about the technical aspect of the film, did anyone else find the orchestrations a little thin and the vocals laying awfully low in the sound mixing at times?

5. Why could I not shake "Sweeney Todd" whenever the innkeeper and his wife were on screen? Same actors, obviously. But for some reason, those scenes in "Les Miz" just didn't join up with the tone of the rest of it the way I wished they had. I can't figure it out yet. You need some comic relief in a film so depressingly sad that you'll have swollen eyes by the end of it, but did those few scenes with Borat and Tim Burton's baby mama provide enough relief for you?

I'll let you know when I have my full review. But I will say in closing here that I really, really liked the film, and it definitely deserves a Best Picture Oscar nomination. But from what I've seen so far this year, I think I'd put it at about #3 on my list of favorites.

Flight (2012)

With "Flight," director Robert Zemeckis abandons his career path of creepy half-animated, half-live-ish movies and returns to what he does better, which is using his technical wizardry as support for live human beings on screen. He picked a fine one in Denzel Washington, and the great challenge of "Flight" is in getting an audience to root for a man who is despicable in virtually every way.

"Flight" is an excellent film, though my inability to sympathize with Washington's character remained a thorn in my side throughout the film.

I'll post a full review of "Flight" here soon.

This is 40 (2012)

Judd Apatow's latest, a sort-of sequel to "Knocked Up," is so uproariously funny in its first 15 minutes to a viewer like me at the exact age of its main characters, that it fails to keep up over a two hour-plus running time, though it's not for lack of at least a dozen of the funniest lines of dialogue you'll hear in a movie this year.

Check back for my full review.

Django Unchained (2012)

Don't think for a second that you will find a film at the cineplex right now more bursting with almost everything that a film can contain than "Django Unchained." Quentin Tarantino's latest indulgence is one of the funniest movies of the year, and also one of the most violent. It also features meticulous production values in its revisionist exploration of 19th Century American history. And it's as much of a revenge film as Westerns like "The Searchers" ever were, comfortably sharing screen time dedicated to this emotion with time spent on unapologetic melodrama.


In short, "Django Unchained" is a lot of a whole bunch of things. Which, if I'm being honest, makes it something of a hot mess. Thrilling, shocking, gut-bursting and eye-burning cinemania from the sick mind of film's emperor of B-grade pastiche, it's that rare bird in the movie world: the "messy masterpiece." If there's a movie out there with more flaws than this one that is also as much fun, I'd like to know what it is.

I'm going to shortchange my post on plot summary, other than to quickly remind the uniformed reader that the film centers around a freed slave named Django (the "D" is silent, thank you) played by Jamie Foxx. Django and his wife (Kerry Washington) were sold separately as slaves, and in a stroke of good fortune, a bounty hunter in disguise as a dentist named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) comes upon Django and frees him in exchange for help locating one of the next men on his list. As reward, Schultz promises Django his assistance in locating his wife and obtaining revenge against the man who owns her. And that man, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a grade-A son-of-a-bitch.

As with most of his films, the star of "Django Unchained" is probably Tarantino's original screenplay, coupled with his uncanny knack for found object song scores, this time forcing Jim Croce to rub elbows with Rick Ross in a sonic palate that makes little sense anywhere else but in a Tarantino film. Once again, Tarantino demonstrates that to break the rules, one must know them well, and "Django Unchained" is overloaded with faithful references not only to the spaghetti Western genre but to specific films within it (such as the origin of the film's title and the theft of the title song playing over the opening credits). In some ways, it's a fleshed-out manifestation of a fetish crazy Quentin has been scratching at through his Kill Bill films (which saw the genre crossing swords with the samurai film) and his last feature, "Inglorious Basterds" (which scattered its elements amidst World War II-dressed revenge fantasy). 

A go-big-or-go-home spirit permeates the film, subsequently inspiring some fantastic performances. For my money, chief among them is Samuel L. Jackson's work as Candie's house slave Stephen, who is either a piece of shit in the eyes of his fellow black men as an Uncle Tom sell-out, or the smartest black character in the film, using the impression of loyalty for leverage. Perhaps he's both. But Jackson plays in him as a controlled psychotic, infusing his character with moments of slapstick, rage and sympathy. Stephen just might be Jackson's most outrageous work for Tarantino, and maybe at all, "Snakes on a Plane" notwithstanding.

As Candie, DiCaprio is a close second playing a type that feels a little unusual in a typical Tarantino film: the villain who we simply hate as opposed to loving to hate. Few of Candie's lines end with jokes; his racist venom is seemingly absolute. DiCaprio seems to relish in the opportunity to add such a slimeball to his repertoire. His performance was probably deserving of an Oscar nomination.

Instead, that accolade went to Waltz, and while I would be lying if I said I wasn't thoroughly entertained by him at every turn, I find it hard in retrospect to clearly delineate his work here from his Oscar-winning performance as Col. Hanz Landa in "Basterds." Most of his line reads felt about the same, I thought; only the accent was changed. It's a performance that worked so well for Tarantino before that it must have been worthy of an encore, but I think I'd stop short of rewarding the work twice in a year filled with so many strong performances, even from within this one movie.


To some degree, "Django Unchained"'s biggest flaws are directly related to the joyous arrogance of its writer and director, who knows full well that his fan boys and girls will hang on his every word and luxuriate in the unfolding of his every masochistic and politically incorrect whim. Hell, I buy. I've come to decide that Tarantino is to film what Prince is to the world of popular music. He's an unquestionable genius with a scary-deep mastery of his craft who eschews the advice of any close confidants (read: an editor) in a slightly vainglorious quest for preserving his authorial voice and vision. Few of Tarantino's recent efforts have been properly edited. If he feels it would entertain, he simply leaves it in, continuity be damned. And so while it's fairly easy to figure out where cuts could have been made to streamline a story and smooth out a standard dramatic narrative arc, to slice out those scenes feels as painful to us in retrospect as it probably does to him.

I'll put it another way: Tarantino disregards narrative balance. 

So we accept the mess, and revel in the entertainment it brings us. But let's not forget that a mess is still a mess. "Django Unchained" attacks too many moods, rarely blending them. Extended sequences of the film master a solitary mood, only to give way to another. A scene involving the KKK feels like a "Blazing Saddles" outtake. Django's late-reel efforts to meet up with his wife unfold as high melodrama. And the film's ridiculously bloody conclusion is, well, excessive. I suspect that most audience will pick up on all of these tones but will struggle to experience any two of these emotions in tandem, thus rendering Tarantino's treatment a bull-in-a-china-shop technique.

"Django Unchained," for as insanely clever as it is, is filled with some head-scratching decisions, and I don't want to spoil key plot points by discussing those here (but feel free to chat me up about them on Facebook or by posting to this blog). The film seems to end twice, and in typical Tarantino fashion, it's too long. And then for every WTF is an OMG, such as a great if brief appearance by 80's TV star Don Johnson as a plantation owner to meet the prerequisite that a Tarantino film must, in its efforts to save the cinematic world from the mundane, not only resurrect the career of a former big-deal actor but, in fact, reverse the very essence of his or her pop culture status and fortunes.

I could go on and on about "Django Unchained" - the good, the bad and the ugly (to steal from a spaghetti western not as overcooked). Ultimately, I'm still convinced that my obsession over discussing Tarantino's movies is testament that they are truly strong films. I am not surprised by how many people are walking out of the theatre raving about how much they loved it. But sooner or later, I'm looking for something that nears perfect. I thought "Inglorious Basterds" came mighty close. This one, honestly, is a step back. But it's a hilarious step backward, a bloody spur spiraling lazily, gouging its sharp teeth into the shin of anyone who believes that a movie this long should contain more subtext and less self-indulgence. 

★ ★ ★

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Arguably the biggest problem to overcome while watching "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is reconciling one's age as a viewer against the experience of watching the film. If you are no older than in your mid-20s, the movie is quite possibly the new "Breakfast Club" for your generation (with the appropriate seriousness of modern middle-class ennui). If you're older than that, you can still enjoy the movie, but you have to be willing to push aside your encyclopedic knowledge of teen film cliches and adolescent movie tropes, because you will notice every one of them in this movie.

Author Stephen Chbosky has adapted his own novel - itself a weak attempt at a "Catcher in the Rye" for a new generation - into...well, a John Hughes-inspired film for a new generation. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that I first read "The Catcher in the Rye" when I was 30. For some reason, it had fallen through the cracks in my reading experiences, and by the time I got around to it, I found it highly overrated. So when I picked up "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" when it first became popular, I found it to be almost a copycat attempt to accomplish what "Catcher" was going for. Needless to say, I wasn't terribly impressed.

Still, I entered into the film with an open mind, and I'm glad I did. I was open to the possibility that the story was better on a movie screen than on pages (hey, it can happen, contrary to the "the book was better than the movie" inevitability). But in the early stages of viewing, I remained troubled by what a nearly 40-year-old man would see, which is a bunch of cliches and get-over-it-already teen angst.

But then, as if a switch went off, I reached a moment in the film where the teenager still lurking somewhere inside of me rose to the surface, and then as if by magic, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" clicked for me, and in truth, I was very moved.

Part of why "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" works - cliches be damned - is because its three leads are so believable and engaging. Logan Lerman is Charlie, the film's central character and its damaged goods (though that argument has competition from a handful of other characters). Charlie, as in the novel, is telling his story through letters that he is writing to an unidentified friend. He tells his friend about how hard it's been to adapt to high school and hints at some rough times in his past that have contributed to keeping him on the fringes at school. And he talks about his two closest friends, both seniors who have taken him under their wings.

Those friends are Sam (Emma Watson, so lovely here that you'll forget about Hermione for a few hours) and Patrick (Ezra Miller, who previously scared the shit of me in "We Need to Talk About Kevin"). It seems odd at first that two seniors would take to a freshman, but they seem to relish in their efforts to expose Charlie to both the goods and bads of their involved adolescent world. Without them, Charlie would likely be locked in his room, curled into the fetal position on his bed. That is, unless you include his admiring interactions with his English teacher (Paul Rudd), who slips Charlie copies of his favorite books to read.

But Charlie gets out, thanks to his friends. He is clearly not always comfortable. He falls in love, hard, with someone he shouldn't love (you can guess who). He's exposed to drinking and recreational drugs. He's made to put his inherent tolerance as an outsider himself to good use upon discovering that one of his close friends is gay. Because I don't want to spoil the way the film weaves these details in to the plot and given that most are already very expected and well-worn paths being explored, I'll just say: "insert teen angst here."

Without tapping in to your inner-teenager, your eyes will probably roll with just how messed up Charlie's life reveals itself to be. I was headed down that road myself. But then upon hearing one of the film's perhaps more obvious lines concerning teenage life, I was thrown into a time machine. That line, spoken by Charlie during an outing with Sam and Patrick, goes like this:

"Right now we are alive and I swear in this moment, we are infinite."

And in that moment, I remembered how it felt to feel like you had your whole life ahead of you - that you were capable of just about anything. And I started to feel crushed for how the mental demons Charlie struggled with were preventing him, at least until that moment, from feeling that sense of wide-open hope. And then I started thinking about students I've had in class who have dealt with such unimaginable, such adult despair that they didn't even feel like kids to me.

And that was where my head needed to be.

Our teenage years are like a hero's quest for true love an acceptance. We don't know yet what it really means to love another person, and we don't know what it means to love ourselves.  When Chbosky adapted his own novel to the screenplay he would direct himself, he invariably brought this theme to the surface. It is, even nestled in a pile of teen movie cliches, truth. And like they always say, sometimes cliches are cliches because they are the truth. If "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is a good movie, it is because the film gets these feelings painfully and authentically right. Its moments of humor are organic, and its pain is real. And having worked with teenagers for over a decade, I can say that this is truly a film about teenagers right now.

When Charlie questions his inability to understand love, he is told that "we accept the love we think we deserve," advice he returns to Sam later in the film after wrestling with who she is going to be to him in his life. That one line pretty much sums up the movie, though I will do you a favor and allow you to discover just how that is the case by convincing you that you should check out the film for yourself.

But when you watch it, be a teenager again if you are not one currently. And remind yourself of when you felt like you too were from "the island of misfit toys." Remember how much you wanted for your future and how worried you were about what you were capable of getting. And then remember how the smaller moments - the ones where you were doing something slightly exciting with your very closest friends - were the greatest moments of your life.

★ ★ ★

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)

Like a geriatric, British version of "The Big Chill," the handful of characters in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" have found themselves at a crossroads in the presence of one another and are forced to make choices. And also like "The Big Chill," this film is populated with fantastic and reliable actors elevating their material above what it was probably capable of without them.

But for some reason, the sum of some pretty wonderful parts that comprise "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" left me a bit, well, chilled.  It's a highly pleasant and charming little entertainment that passes the time but doesn't really say as much as you think it could say or entertain you quite as much as you expect it will, given the pedigrees of its craftsmen.

For various reasons, seven senior citizen Brits have made the decision to leave England and retire to a resort in India called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. There, their retirements will be much more affordable. The cost of living will be more manageable on their fixed incomes. Even necessary medical procedures will be more do-able. They choose this retirement resort in Jaipur in part because the brochure selling it is a sham, making it look far better than the real thing upon arrival.

The group of newly-acquainted traveling companions includes a recent widow (Judi Dench) who is too agile to completely settle in to retirement and will seek employment in India, a crabby and unhappy married couple (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton), a retired judge (Tom Wilkinson) who spent some important years of his younger life in India and seizes the opportunity to put that past into perspective and two seniors (Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie) who are looking for December romances, one hoping for something more permanent than the other. And because no British Old People Movie is complete without Maggie Smith, she joins them as a racist crank attempting to swallow her Briton pride to procure a much-needed hip replacement on the cheap in India, if only she can find a white doctor there to do it.

When the group arrives, they are met by Sonny (Dev Patel, of "Slumdog Millionaire"), the son of the hotel's former owner. Sonny does everything in his power to smokescreen the hotel's ramshackle reality with a welcome-to-India song and dance, but the elders are predictably disapproving, disappointed, and uncertain. And so begins a co-mingling of separate character story lines intersecting with one another as each character attempts to acclimate him/herself with the exotic locale, their over-billed accommodations, and each other. And, for a chance to see how the Indians live, we also follow Sonny's personal life and witness how his mother disapproves of his romance with a calling center employee and wants him to ditch the hotel and move back in with her so that she can find him a more suitable wife.

Since this film has been out for a while now, I flipped through a dozen or so reviews of the movie after seeing the film myself and before writing this review. I was not surprised to find my feelings of "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" confirmed by virtually every critic I read. None of them saw in this film a four-star movie, and none of them thought it was a bad movie. All of them felt the acting was fantastic and that the cast assembled by director John Madden ("Shakespeare in Love") elevated the material to a higher level. All of them also acknowledged that the film was mostly predictable but had a number of lovely, touching and warmly funny moments. Many of them also mentioned that the audience for a film such as this one is under-served by the film industry and that film goers who share ages with these characters would likely be pleased with the movie.

I try not to rely on the opinions of others when I review films myself, but I find it difficult to bring anything new to this particular conversation. I agree with absolutely every comment I've collected in the paragraph above. I found this movie to be as pleasant as a flavorful cup of tea, with all of the predictability of how that tea is going to taste.

The worst thing I can say about it is that it was predictable. I knew that the hotel wasn't going to be as great as they thought it would be. I knew that Maggie Smith's racist character would have to have a change of heart and eventually be subtly charmed by the locals. I knew that the married couple would bicker for two hours.

So for me, the joys in viewing "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" came in witnessing actors exploring the range of their gifts as performers. I was delighted to see the tough-as-nails Dench in a role that allowed her to be vulnerable, even shaken. And the film's best scenes involved Wilkinson's character, who provided the film with a history and a soul and explored the shame of mistakes not reconciled when a person is at a certain age and still holding onto regret.

I could take or leave almost everything else. Not having been to India, I didn't see anything in Madden's delivery of the country or its people that I haven't already seen in some other film set in the country. And most egregiously, I found Patel's portrayal of the hotel owner to be a caricature of an annoyance, one step above Punjab in "Annie," if I'm being honest. His every move was a crazy cartoon version of a young person from India. I think Patel is a talented young man, but he got the tone completely wrong on this one. It was painful to watch.

Lately it seems that I've watched a number of films that simply were not made for me as an audience member. I am too young - in theory - for this movie. For certain, I am not its target audience. I was too old for "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." And "This is 40," which I just saw yesterday, is almost exactly where I am in my life at this very moment. But I think I'm learning the trick of appreciating a movie for what it sets out to do and understanding who it's for. And from that perspective, "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" is certainly a success of a movie if its aim is to provide a well-crafted and pleasant diversion to older audiences looking to see a few of their issues being bandied about in a rich and colorful foreign location. I wouldn't personally call it "best," or even all that "exotic," but my stay at this hotel was - however predictable at times - painless and sometimes even enjoyable.

★ ★ 1/2

Pitch Perfect (2012)

To be really critical of a movie like "Pitch Perfect" is, I think, to miss the point, which is that there are times when you just want to have fun watching a movie. And so instead of spending my time dissecting a film like this for its simple plot filled with dead-ends and underdeveloped ideas or comparing it to the existing stories it unashamedly rips off (New York Daily News' Elizabeth Weitzman brilliantly calls out its mashing up of "Glee," "Bring it On," and the food-poisoning scene from "Bridesmaids"), I'm going to judge the movie the way I always force myself to judge a movie, which is to answer one simple question: How well did this film accomplish what it appears to have set out to accomplish?

The trick is, of course, to decide what you think a film was trying to accomplish. Judging from the way "Pitch Perfect" was assembled, I don't suspect they were going for Oscar nominations. With that in mind, I deduced that the film was intended to make me laugh and, as a lover of music and, in particular, a cappella, to make me want to listen to the musical numbers repeatedly. Mission accomplished on both counts, which means that ultimately, I have to say I enjoyed "Pitch Perfect" enough to give it my stamp of approval. Still, the critic in me can't help but notice all of the missed opportunities with the film, ultimately making it something solidly fun, rather than great.

The world of a cappella singing - a world I personally participated in when I was in college, too - is merely a backdrop here for grouping some interesting young characters together here. Edgy new Barden College undergrad Beca (Anna Kendrick, who I fell in love with in her Oscar-nominated performance in "Up in the Air") gets a free ride at Barden because her dad teaches there, but all she wants to do is head to L.A. and be the next David Guetta (a famous DJ/producer, for you uninformed).

Encouraged to experience campus life, Beca discovers that Barden is host to not even two but four duelling a cappella groups on campus, chief among them the "bad boys of a cappella," The Treblemakers, and their female rivals, The Barden Bellas, a group too unhip to generate any interest from Beca at the college activities fair but one she will ultimately join when one of its leaders overhears her singing in a dorm shower.

Once in the Bellas, we quickly learn that Beca's knowledge of current trends and what's cool puts her on the outside looking in; under the direction of the uptight Aubrey (Anna Camp), the Bellas continue to hammer away at the same old musical program, hoping for a year when they'll perfect it at Nationals. (Why it goes wrong in their most recent attempt is one of the film's earliest moments of gross-out hilarity.)

Becca's DJ-ing sensibilities start to make inroads in the thinking of some of the group's more persuadable members, chief among them Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), a saucy handful and loose canon who has nicknamed herself to steal the joy from any "skinny bitches" who would come up with such a moniker for her behind her back. Before long, the girls are learning how to mix snippets of other tunes in with their full-length offerings, creating the template for what will eventually lead to their success.

While what I've explained so far might make it seem as though a person interested in vocal music would get an in-depth exploration of that world, let me assure you that I've already explained everything, and the world of a cappella is far better explored on NBC's "The Sing-Off" than it is here. In fact, "Pitch Perfect" is content with every cliche imaginable, from the auditions scene to the one nerdy kid who's secretly amazing but isn't allowed into the group to the rap-battle-styled jockeying for inner-group alpha supremacy to the regionals-sectionals-nationals competition scenes. All present here. All by the book.

And yet somehow, it doesn't matter. A genuinely sweet (though completely predictable) romance begins to bloom between Beca and the charming Jesse (Skylar Astin), the newest star of The Treblemakers and a "Breakfast Club" devotee. A clever "West Side Story"-inspired sing-off happens one evening in which the four groups play a clever game of finish-the-phrase with pop tunes, Beca's first real chance to prove her worth and one of the film's sassiest and most purely fun moments.

Director Jason Moore comes to the film from the Broadway stage, having been nominated for a Tony for directing "Avenue Q." So it's no surprise that "Pitch Perfect" is probably at its most enjoyable during the film's musical numbers. Moore is not yet experienced enough to do much to elevate the thin writing of Kay Cannon, a TV writer with a short resume.

And yet what's fun about "Pitch Perfect" is that it's clearly the kind of film where if you loved it the first time, you can find yourself watching it over and over again, quickly learning how to quote from it and exchanging favorite lines and moments with friends. My daughter, for example, has already watched the film three times, and at my sister's house, the film has played virtually on a loop for the past three weeks. For better or for worse, it's the kind of film where you can just jump in wherever you find it (once you've seen the whole thing) and enjoy it for a few minutes. Everyone needs a few movies like that.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some unforgivable plot holes in "Pitch Perfect," as well as other missed opportunities, like the woeful under-use of Ben Platt as Benji, the nerd looking for his big break in The Treblemakers who eventually gets his one song, even though Platt is the finest singer out of all of the film's cast members. My wife and I recently saw Platt starring as Elder Cunningham in the Chicago production of "The Book of Mormon" and thought he was the best thing about a show full of best things, so amazing that he actually bests the work of original Broadway star Josh Gad. So selfishly, I was sad that I didn't get to hear Platt sing more in the film.

In the end, "Pitch Perfect" lives up to its title sporadically if not ultimately. It's good, but not great. But it because a surprise hit this year, and I suspect it's the kind of movie I'll add to my DVD and CD shelves and enjoy many, many times, a clear trifle of a movie but one that accomplishes its goal of just making you smile for a little while.

★ ★ ★

Bad 25 (2012)

People sometimes forget that Spike Lee is as accomplished of a documentarian as he is a feature film director. His non-fiction snapshots of the black American experience, such as "4 Little Girls" and the Emmy-winning Hurricane Katrina exploration "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" belong in any conversation of Lee's greatest work alongside his narrative and fictional accounts of black life in the U.S.

Lately, Lee's documentary work has been appearing on the small screen, most recently this past Thanksgiving with an airing of "Bad 25," a look back at the making of and stories behind the collection of songs that made up Michael Jackson's landmark album "Bad," released in 1987 (hence the "25" in the title, to mark the release's anniversary).

Spike and Mike go back a ways, most notably when Lee was tapped to direct Jackson's "short film" (he never - we learn in the film - referred to them as "music videos") for "They Don't Care About Us," an angry, machine-gun punctuated rhythmic track from Jackson's "HIStory" double-disc. And while Lee's vision and cinematic voice was perfect for realizing that particular track, it's a bit odd to have to say that his work here on "Bad 25" bears little of his auteur character. Maybe it's because the film aired on television (after premiering at some film festivals), but I couldn't shake the sense that I was just watching an extended version of a VH-1 "Behind the Music" episode, just assembled by someone with a lot more class.

TV previews for the airing of the documentary stated that "Bad 25" would be a track-by-track look at the "Bad" album, and I'd read previously that Lee chose to explore the tracks out of sequence, placing "Man in the Mirror" at the end of the film for obvious dramatic and emotional impact as the film concludes powerfully with many of today's top stars (Kanye West, Mariah Carey) and Jackson insiders reflecting on the loss of Michael with an obvious pain that can still bring them to silent tears even years after his passing.

But there are still gaps. Stevie Wonder, for example, is particularly absent from the proceedings, even though he famously duets with Jackson on "Just Good Friends." Yes, that track is one of "Bad's least memorable cuts, but it was still the merging of two musical giants and Jackson's obvious attempt to trump the work he did with Paul McCartney on "Thriller." And considering that every move in making "Bad" was a thinly-veiled attempt to top "Thriller," it seemed like a moment that should have been included and wasn't. Since Lee sells himself as such a Jackson connoisseur, the omission is glaring.

At least bits and pieces of 10 other tracks from "Bad" are explored in "Bad 25," often centering more around the creation of the short films for the tracks than the tracks themselves, and allowing Lee to bring in the likes of Martin Scorsese for interviews. It's still somewhat mind-blowing to think that Scorsese, king of the gritty New York film, would have agreed to direct the short film for "Bad." But it also makes sense that Jackson would select Scorsese to legitimize what amounted largely to an ode to "West Side Story," and it's touching to watch Scorsese reflect on Jackson with such fondness and even a detectible sense of awe.

Many of the most magical elements of "Bad" are merely dropped in for quick references rather than being explored in satisfying detail, such as the mind-blowing choreography of "the lean" in the "Smooth Criminal" video. And there was never enough footage in "Bad 25" that got inside of Michael's head in terms of why he created a particular song or what it was all for or about. As a huge Jackson fan, I certainly relished those moments when Lee actually had access to footage of Jackson explaining anything in that kind of depth.

The underlying foundation of Jacksonian history explored at least in subtext throughout "Bad 25" is that "Thriller" was Jackson's greatest work, never to be topped. But I never enjoyed "Thriller" from start to finish the way I enjoyed "Bad" (or even "Dangerous," for that matter), and I appreciated the sense I got from this film that I'm not alone in that thinking. Yes, the best tracks on "Thriller" are probably the best MJ tracks ever ("Billy Jean" chief among them). But my favorite Jackson song has always been "Smooth Criminal," and I enjoyed the footage of a nonplussed Quincy Jones expressing his confusion over just what it was that Michael saw in the track, because it didn't do much for him.

"Thriller" clearly set the sales benchmark, but "Bad 25" reminds us of the chart history set by its follow-up, the first record to spawn five Billboard number one singles. An unbelievable nine of the album's 11 songs were released as commercial singles, seven of them charting in the Top 20. Surely "Bad"'s ultimate appeal likes in Jackson's quixotic quest to best himself.

"Bad 25" comes off as more worshipful than candid, a thrilling reminder to hardcore fans of the magic but not quite satisfying enough in terms of shedding new light on the whys of this era, finding contentment instead on reliving the whats. And yet, having said this, I liked that fact that Lee chose to focus squarely on the genius of this one-of-a-kind legend, ignoring almost completely any of the tabloid-esque debates about Jackson other than to acknowledge how he faced them himself with the great "Bad" track "Leave Me Alone."

I loved every minute of "Bad 25" because I miss Michael Jackson terribly and could feel that Spike Lee does, too. I just wanted more. But then I guess that's how I'm left with Michael now for the rest of my days, always wanting more...

★ ★ ★

New Year's Eve (2011)

Yes, I watched "New Year's Eve," even in the middle of my 2012 holiday movie-watching frenzy. In my defense, it was on HBO and I was folding laundry while I watched it, my wife sitting near me wrapping Christmas presents. And I can confirm what you already know - that neither of us missed a moment of this lame film's plot even as we tended to our chores.

"New Year's Eve" follows in the template of "Valentine's Day," made the year prior and also by director Garry Marshall, who once made popular romantic comedies and dramas I enjoyed very much ("Beaches," "Pretty Woman," "Frankie and Johnny," "The Other Sister") and now seems content to corral the largest A-lists casts one can assemble and pick a holiday as a theme for the actors to work with. I say "theme" instead of "plot" on purpose, because there is no plot.

The most unsufferable thing about "New Year's Eve" and movies like it (I have to confess that I have not seen "Valentine's Day" and now most likely would not bother to) is that what the creators pass off as "plot" is the concept that over a half-dozen little story lines will take place simultaneously and then, at the end, we'll find out that there are actually connections between various characters from those stories that seemed, up until then, disconnected. Someone will suddenly be revealed as someone else's daughter, or the love of their life that they gave up, or whatever.

Directors in the past - most notably Robert Altman - have had great creative successes with the sprawling character format, weaving together mini-plots into some great meaning by the end. But Marshall seems to believe that the enjoyment for the audience, the payoff if you will, will come just in learning how the characters are connected. Frankly, it's insulting.

Even more insulting is the sense that each actor who appears in the film was paid for a day's work and given no more than 10 pages of script. None of them invest anything close to what they are capable of because the paycheck for an afternoon of a cameo appearance in a schlock romantic comedy doesn't compel them to excel, and, in their defense, none are likely given the kind of backstories and time to prepare for their roles afforded them in other situations.

As such, "New Year's Eve" has the shimmer of pedigree by virtue of its unbelievable cast. It's a miserable film starring some of Hollywood's best, their Oscars clinking into each other off-camera. DeNiro, Halle Berry and Hilary Swank. Then, you stir in some more huge and reliable stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Duhamel, Sarah Jessica Parker. And for pop culture relevancy, you add in some big names from the worlds of television (Lea Michele, Katherine Heigl, Alyssa Milano, Seth Myers, Sofia Vergara, Ashton Kutcher, Jake T. Austin) and the music business (Jon Bon Jovi, Ludacris, Joey McIntyre).

That's an impressive list of names! But the list of names is the only thing that impresses.

Normally I take time to recap the plot. I won't bother here. Like I said, there's not much of one to speak of. The closest moments of genuine cinematic interest come from DeNiro's few scenes as a dying man preparing for transfer to hospice, Halle Berry as a lonely soldier's wife and nurse, and shockingly, the film's most lively turn from my-how-he's-growing-up Zac Efron as a young bicycle courier attempting to make all of Michelle Pfeiffer's bucket list items come true in exchange for a set of tickets to the hottest New Year's Eve party in New York City.

Even amid the sub-par everything, some of the film's big names - Heigel and Duhamel chief among them - manage to stick out in the worst possible way with some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time, which is saying a lot considering the fact that no one here was required to be on his or her game.

There is, perhaps, some redeeming value in "New Year's Eve," however. Lea Michele and Jon Bon Jovi sing a little. Efron shows off his dance moves. And the time I spent folding laundry did not pass in silence.

I suppose I will at least entertain a glance at the cast list when Marshall comes out with his next film, just to see who else he is able to coax into a few hours of work to edit into a pastiche of rom-com crap. I'm throwing in my vote for "Labor Day," a Studs Terkel-lite look at how hard famous people pretending to be blue collar workers have slaved away for the chance to consume a can of cheap beer at the dunes on a sunny, early September Monday in southwestern Michigan.

 1/2 ★

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

The depths of the stunning art-house film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" are matched only by those of the rising waters flooding "The Bathtub," a small and impoverished Delta subsection of New Orleans facing Hurricane Katrina.

Though I'll make an attempt, I expect to find myself unable to accurately describe this film of brilliant contrasts. It is a small-budgeted, provincially-shot film of huge emotional scope, and its story is simultaneously as verite as a film can be but with complex (and somewhat confusing) flourishes of the supernatural. And it centers around a relationship between a father and his daughter that is more complex than any family relationship I've seen in a film in quite some time. For all of the things I loved about this film, it's that relationship that gave this movie it's power in my opinion - the thing that kept me so moved and invested and the reason I'd watch the movie again.

The main character of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is 6-year-old Hushpuppy, a spunky and curious little girl who lives with her father Wink in a tin-roof shack seemingly at the edge of the world, but certainly at the very edge of the United States. By all accounts, Hushpuppy (stunningly played by inevitable award-grabber Quvenzhane Wallis) is the focus of the film, but to me, the film is almost more about how Wink (a raw and powerful Dwight Henry) handles his parenting responsibilities in the midst of a crisis.

A huge storm is coming, and word is traveling around the Bathtub, though Wink is one of a core group of its residents who greets the news with indifference and is perhaps even indignant toward the prospect of packing up his belongings and his daughter and evacuating, despite mandatory orders from government officials to do so. It's not that his belongings are plentiful, either. Like their neighbors, Wink's possessions are a menagerie of found items, used and discarded former props in the lives of people financially secure enough to discard them for the latest models. Nothing is wasted in the Bathtub. Oil drums are bound together to make boats, and Hushpuppy reserves a particular fondness for a Michael Jordan jersey, surely a lucky find among the unwanted items that have floated downstream.

The storm does come, of course, and Wink and Hushpuppy stay put. Both are shockingly confident in their abilities to withstand the hurricane, and it's in this arrogance that the film takes off. Hushpuppy narrates the story; Wallis' voiceover work is confident and even cocky in contrast with her youthful delivery. She talks about being remembered years after she's gone. She believes in herself and her dad.

Her dad, though, is not only fighting to keep them alive as the waters rise. He's also fighting to parent his daughter as best he can, though he suffers moments of self-betrayal in which it appears that he has the inclination to kill his own child, or at least abuse her. To a viewer like me, there does appear to be some abuse, at least psychological abuse. But this is why I love the movie - Hushpuppy doesn't receive her dad's words and actions as abusive. And indeed, for every moment where Wink seems like he belongs in the pantheon of worst fathers ever depicted on film, there is a scene that reminds us that all they have is each other and that he really is a loving father in his own, individual way.

Wink is also fighting a mysterious illness, and it seems like every move he makes is calculated to prepare his daughter for life without him. The Bathtub is all they know - so close to the earth that Hushpuppy believes she can communicate with its animal inhabitants. She seems fit to survive, and Wink intends to help her by teaching her how to hand fish and pumping up her confidence with macho bravado, forcing her in one memorable scene to shout back to him on his command: "I'm da man!"

I mentioned a supernatural element earlier, and I'd be lying if I said that this aspect of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" was as clear to me as the film's other aspects. There was a moment when I even wondered if perhaps the film would be better off without "the aurochs," large boar-like creatures of ancient origins that roam the Bathtub and come snout-to-face with Hushpuppy, who in her earth mother-in-training-influence has the ability to calmly interact with them. But in hindsight, I like this element of the film tremendously. I like how open to interpretation it is. I like how a film of cold, horrible, impoverished reality is injected with shots of earthy magic as scene through the eyes of an intrepid, creative child. Calling to mind "Where the Wild Things Are," I was left feeling that the wild rumpus starts with Hushpuppy.

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott rightfully connects themes of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" to those found in last year's "Tree of Life." I hadn't considered that before but love the connection, though I feel that this film is far more accessible in its grounded communication of those themes of childhood spirituality than is Terrence Malick's much more obtuse and poetic masterpiece of last year. What the two films certainly share in common is a sense that the filmmaking was carefully staged and thought through, that the viewing of the film was only the beginning of a journey, not a complete journey unto itself.

This is what the best movies do. They prepare your mind and spirit for self-exploration of the human condition. They act as a secular sort of Jesus' parables in that they are ultimately short stories planted in your brain that you call upon again and again over time to make sense of other things. Ben Zeitlin, the film's young director making his feature film debut here, is a craftsman to watch, an inspired artist who understands what film can do regardless of one's budget.

I have only scratched the surface here in sharing with you what "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is and what it means. The film is a kind of miracle. It's been a fantastic year for studio films this year, whereas in other recent years only the smaller, independent films seemed to remember that the magic of movies isn't always what you see on screen while you're watching it, but what you take home after you're done. I have many movies from 2012 left to see, but so far, "Beast of the Southern Wild" is the finest small-budged, independent film of the year.

★ ★ ★ ★

Magic Mike (2012)

I was a good husband the other night and, in the safety of my own living room, sat down to watch "Magic Mike" with my wife. She'd had a long day. She needed a break. So why not watch the hunky, more-man-than-I'll-ever-be Alcide as a stripper? Ever dutiful, I sat next to her clutching a napkin to catch the drool that might fall from the corners of her mouth.

But something happened as we watched "Magic Mike." It wasn't really the movie I thought it was going to be. Yes, it was certainly racy. But while I squirmed a few times, I was never as uncomfortable as I expected to be. Nor was the film as funny as I thought it would be or as dramatically satisfying as I thought it would be. Some things did live up to my expectations - particularly how good Matthew McConaughey was and how bad Channing Tatum's acting still is despite his ability to fool people with what is clearly an awe-inspiring physique.

The sum of all of "Magic Mike"'s parts, then, seems to come down to one word: "interesting." Which means I didn't love it, but I definitely didn't hate it, either. It's a solid film that is clearly derivative of so many other movies thematically, and veers wildly between moments of balls-out (almost literally) entertainment and emotionally under-performing narrative.

Since the film is already out for home viewing, I probably don't need to elaborate much on the film's plot, which is the now-famous story about how Channing Tatum - while shooting a film for director Steven Soderbergh - shared with his director tales of his adventures pre-Hollywood as a young male stripper, leading to the epiphany of turning Tatum's past into a film. Tatum served as a creative consultant and producer for the film in addition to its star (and probably ghost co-writer), which means that he taught a handful of hunky hard bodies how to work it on the stage. I'm not sure how good of a teacher Tatum was, because his strip performances are so memorable and magnetic and Soderbergh gives so little screen time to any of his co-stars that it was hard to tell.

The emotional center of "Magic Mike" in my opinion is not the budding romance between Mike (Tatum) and a girl named Brooke (Cody Horn) who predictably turns up her nose at his line of work, but between Mike and her brother, Adam, played convincingly by Alex Pettyfer. Mike calls Adam "The Kid." The two meet on a construction site, Mike's day job to earn extra money and keep one foot near the door of his dream to design custom furniture. The Kid is unprepared on his first day, innocent and even a little obnoxious. It's hard to tell how there could possibly be any connection to Mike for him, but soon enough, Mike is helping to get Adam into a night club, then backstage. Adam promises to do whatever is asked of him to make a little extra money. He's just beginning to figure out what Mike really does for a living.

Mike becomes The Kid's big brother in virtually every way possible, even as he slowly starts to romance the disapproving Brooke. The Kid is thrown to the wolves - check that, the cougars - when Mike and his boss Dallas (the deliciously slimy and just-a-bit-too-old former stripper-turned-strip joint-owner played with zeal by McConaughey) shove him onstage to replace an ailing stripper, the song "Like a Virgin" pumping unironically through the sound system as he timidly removes his clothes "like an 8-year-old" to the nonetheless delighted young women sitting down front.

Of course The Kid gets too comfortable in his new-found lifestyle and accepts side work peddling ecstasy and other drugs for the nightclub's bouncer, Tobias (played by how-in-the-hell-did-he-get-in-this-movie Gabriel Iglesias, the rotund stand-up comic and former winner of "Last Comic Standing"). Before long, and probably more to impress his sister than to help a guy who we're not even sure is his real friend, Mike is bailing Adam out of just about every possible situation: puling him out of near-overdoses and spending thousands of dollars to bail him out of drug deal debts.

The remaining characters in "Magic Mike" are so thinly developed that they're almost invisible, merely abdominal window dressing for the film's best scenes, which I'm slightly embarrassed as a guy to say are definitely the nightclub/stripping scenes. Cable TV stars Matt Bomer ("White Collar") and Joe Manganiello ("True Blood") are riveting, hunky specimens given nothing to do when not flanking Tatum onstage during "It's Raining Men."

I wanted to know a little more about some of these other guys, and one of the disappointments for me with "Magic Mike" was that the film quite simply never set out to sell me what I wanted to buy. I suppose I was looking for a naughtier version of "The Full Monty," a film that had me caring much more about a larger number of men, none of them even close to the Adonis-like level of fitness of any of this film's stars. Those men, I cared for. These guys, not so much. I am jealous as hell of them, their bodies and their pull over women. But I wasn't made to care about them.

The under-use of some decent actors further exposes the limitations of Channing Tatum. Here's a guy who's had arguably the best year of anyone in Hollywood, and folks have been saying that this his is best performance yet. I am inclined to agree, but this immediate compliment carries with it a long-term caveat of negative consequences, because Tatum is not much of an actor. What he very clearly is is a performer. And as Alison Willmore of Movieline points out in her review of the film, there is a difference between the two.

You cannot understate just how magnetic Tatum is during those scenes when he's on stage stripping, his hip-hop-inspired grinds punctuated with an athleticism worthy of the men's U.S. gymnastics team. But Tatum is as good as I think he's going to get here because he's playing himself. Whenever he's asked to be dramatic and "act," he makes faces that suggest he's trying to pass a kidney stone without letting on. If he can make a career out of playing athletes and soldiers, I think his star will continue to shine brightly. But I'll have to see a performance to change my mind about the fact that this, right now, is his shining moment.

Matthew McConaughey, on the other hand, is as good as I hoped he'd be. His Dallas is a grimy trouser snake-charmer, a sweaty-yet-sexy middle-aged man, the apparent brother to Tom Cruise's Stacee Jaxx in "Rock of Ages," a film released within weeks of this one. Dallas' motivational speeches-dipped-in-protein powder give "Magic Mike" the film's only real humor, and McConaughey is the master of getting close to another man physically without the slightest betrayal of heterosexuality (not that there's anything wrong with that).

If the subject matter of "Magic Mike" seems very uncharacteristic of Soderbergh, the delivery is not. The film constantly employs hard cuts at odd and sometimes unsuspecting moments, at times even cutting conversations off as they are happening. There are moments of interesting, moody lighting. In fact, the lighting is one of the elements of the film that stood out for me: perfectly theatrical in the nightclub scenes and strangely washed and filtered - almost painterly - in some of the film's outdoor scenes. I wasn't sure what to make of the California glow Soderbergh conspicuously imposed on his Florida landscape, but at least it kept me interested.

When you strip "Magic Mike" down to its essentials (pun most certainly intended), you're left with a series of interesting contradictions.

You've got Channing Tatum, the unbelievable performer making women (and let's face it, many men) swoon with the rotation of his hips or a flash of his inhumanly hard ass battling Tatum the thespian-in-training no longer in the comfort zone of it-sucks-anyway Nicholas Sparks territory.

You have a movie that works best when it's the story of a friendship between two young men who want better for their lives but settle for what works vs. the more standard narrative of the cautionary tale of a dubious line of work, more brilliantly realized in films as recent as "The Wrestler."

You have an opportunity for pure sexual escapist fantasy for audiences dipped in a story with truly dark themes, causing moments of estrogen-spiking euphoria to be followed by head-scratching scenes where hottie Mike is trying too hard to win over a girl whose every facial expression mimics McKayla Moroney, the gymnast who's "unimpressed." Ladies, you will want to watch this movie with your hormone-balancing drug of choice in one hand and your mood-balancing drug of choice in the other.

"Magic Mike" loses a bit of its luster for me when it settles into the well-tread debate over whether or not a person is what he does for a living. Mike's sense of self-loathing is very real but has been handled much better in many other films. And the self-destructive path his younger protege is on provides tonal contrast to the wild excitement of the movie's performance scenes that could have been better balanced by a deeper connection between the two young men in the script.

In the end, I suspect that the only thing most people will remember about "Magic Mike" is the nightclub scenes. And rightfully so. I'd be lying if I didn't admit to humming a few bars of Ginuwine's "Pony" this morning while toweling off my back fat after a shower. There's certainly a place in this world for "Showgirls" with boys. But maybe I was just looking for a little bit more. Or maybe the inadequacy I felt while watching the film was not in its execution, but rather in myself and my own doughy physique as I sat there holding that throw pillow over my lap, my napkin ready to wipe my wife's mouth...

★ ★ 1/2

Life of Pi (2012)

SPOILER ALERT!: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS A FEW MORE PLOT DETAILS THAN MANY OF MY REVIEWS. THEY WON'T RUIN YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE FILM, AND I DON'T GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY. BUT IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE NOVEL, YOU MIGHT CHOOSE TO SEE THE FILM FIRST.

"I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality."

This is Piscine ("Pi") Molitor Patel (named after his uncle's favorite swimming pool in Paris) talking to two Japanese investigators near the end of Yann Martel's breathtaking 2001 novel, "Life of Pi." The two men are attempting to piece together why it was that a Japanese freighter called the Tsimtsum went down somewhere in the Pacific in 1977 en route to Canada from India. Pi, quite possibly the ship's only survivor, has lost his parents and brother, and has washed up on the shores of Mexico after a 227-day ordeal that is difficult to believe. In fact, the officials aren't buying it.

"The world isn't just the way it is," Pi tells them, cryptically. "It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?"

Long considered to be an unfilmable novel in equal measures due to its interweaving story of a solitary boy adrift at sea and its thick theology - not to mention its status as a beloved work of literature that fans would react harshly to getting screwed up - director Ang Lee took up what had to be one of the greatest cinematic challenges of recent years, and attacked it using an unlikely weapon: 3-D. The result is a film that has me wrestling with how I feel about it, though not for the same reasons I wrestled with Martel's novel. Whereas the book was a love letter to the power of telling stories and discovering one's spirituality, the film is a technological wonder, a cinematic painting of such beauty that its very strengths become, to some extent, its weaknesses.

To make "Life of Pi" work as a movie, screenwriter David Magee constructs an interview to bookend the narrative and occasionally interrupt it, in which a middle-aged Pi (Ifran Khan) is sitting down with a Canadian writer (Rafe Spall) in Patel's home. The writer is looking for a good story, and met a man in a cafe who told him that Patel's story would "make him believe in God." This information, by the way, is cribbed from Martel's author's note in the novel and used for the film. It's a significant phrase cleverly worked into the film in this fashion.

And so the conversation which in the novel takes place at the end between Pi and the Japanese investigators instead takes place between Pi and the writer, though Pi references his conversation with the investigators. As he did in the novel, the film Pi Patel follows the telling of his incredible story with a second version of it when the investigators refuse to believe what they've heard. In the film, Patel tells his second version to the writer in the film's most unimaginative scene, opting not to dramatize it, Lee's camera fixed on Khan against a white background that reminded me of the opening shot of "The Graduate."

Both versions end with Pi asking the listener: "Which story do you prefer?" It's a vexing question, really. One that conjures to mind the point Tim O'Brien so powerfully makes in "The Things They Carried." But while Martel is able to tap into a powerful spiritual place and reveal the very darkness of humanity in this penultimate moment of his story, Lee's attempt falters. Part of this is because of how that moment is filmed, but most of the reason why is a result of the film's Achilles heel: its shockingly light tone.

I should go back. For those of you who have not read "Life of Pi," do yourselves a favor and download it to your e-readers or add it to your Amazon wish lists. In the meantime, I will fill you in.

Pi Patel lives in Pondicherry, India with his parents and brother, Ravi. His father owns a zoo in town, and due to rising political uncertainty in India has decided to pack up his family and move to Canada. The family boards the previously-mentioned Japanese freighter with many of the zoo's animals, which Pi's father will care for on the journey and sell in North America for better money than he'd get in India.

The Patel family is Hindu, but Pi's father doesn't rely on religion, and his mother clings to it more because it reminds her of her own family than because it spiritually grounds her. But Pi is different, taking to his faith so abundantly that one religion is not enough for him. He soon learns of Christ and accepts Christianity, then Allah and Islam. Before long, Pi is a genuflecting, Mecca-facing Catho-Muslim-du asking his parents to be baptized. His father tries to convince Pi that believing in too many things at the same time is as good as believing in nothing, but Pi won't hear of it.

Pi's juggling of three religions delivers some of the novel's lighter moments, and Lee handily delivers on them. But Lee ends up bringing a similarly light tough to other aspects of "Life of Pi" that needed far darker grounding.

When the freighter is flooding in a storm, Pi escapes to a lifeboat. A screaming zebra leaps off deck and lands in the hull of the lifeboat, breaking a leg. Come morning, Pi discovers that he is not only keeping the company of the zebra, but a hyena as well.

And there is another passenger, one that makes life a lot more fragile for Pi. His name is Richard Parker (so named due to a clerical error, we learn). Richard Parker is a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Pi had been taught from a young age how seriously to take a tiger. So how could he share a lifeboat with one?

Adrift at sea, Pi witnesses the horrors of the circle of life right there in front of him on the boat. The hyena emerges to attack the zebra. Pi's favorite orangutan, Orange Juice, turns up in the water to join them, only to be attacked by the hyena shortly thereafter. And before long, Richard Parker emerges to assert his dominance over them all, sending Pi scrambling to a makeshift sidecar he's tethered to the boat, created from oars, life jackets and a life preserver.

I don't want to reveal every detail of the plot, but suffice it to say that Pi has to learn to live with Richard Parker and considers along the way a variety of options to deal with him that run the gamut from trying to kill him to trying to train him. The book, no surprise, delves into the psychology behind his options in much better detail.

When Pi and Richard Parker do reach land, it's a deserted island populated by meerkats, where things are not what they seem, and even more difficult to believe. Their stay there is brief, and the two set out to see again, this time by choice, until they meet the shores of Mexico just as both of them appear very close to death.

The novel is divided into three parts, with the second being Pi's time at sea. This middle section accounts for two-thirds of the book's pages. Lee's translation to film is almost identical, and maybe it shouldn't be. As with the novel, Lee focuses on Pi's childhood and his discovery of his unique faith in painstaking detail, postponing the dramatics of the shipwreck for quite some time. The result, to some extent, feels like a movie mash-up between "The Namesake" and "Cast Away."

It is certainly a challenge to keep the audience interested in a film that gives us almost no dialogue for the bulk of its running time, that focuses primarily on one man's survival. Certainly the aforementioned "Cast Away" managed because of the outstanding work done by Tom Hanks in that film's lead role. But Ang Lee chooses a different approach. He relies on visuals.

I suppose I've buried this very important detail late into my review, but it's no less important. As a self-appointed 3-D hater, I can gladly add "Life of Pi" to a very short list of films for which 3-D enhances the experience, as opposed to simply adding gimmickry to it. James Cameron, of course, did so with "Avatar." Last year, Martin Scorsese did it with "Hugo," though of these three films, "Hugo" works the best without 3-D, too, if you ask me.  And now, we can add Ang Lee to a very short list of directors who successfully made a 3-D version of a film truly better than its 2-D counterpart.

The visuals in "Life of Pi" are simply stunning. Breathtaking. The star of the film. But that is so much the case that I think it contributed in the end to my inability to connect as fully to "Life of Pi" as I was hoping to. Because where the novel is a deeply organic spiritual journey, the film is unable to rise above the wonder of its digital accomplishments. The tiger, Richard Parker, is exhibit A. You will be stunned by how life-like he is. Rarely will you find yourself thrown from accepting he is real. But in moments when their surroundings are painted sunrises, glowing ocean surfaces and vibrant greenery, the film reaches a level of beauty that covers up the darkness and torment of the story.

Lee's technical wizardry is almost too ostentatiously displayed, from the way names are revealed in the opening credits to moments when a cut-out of Pi is superimposed in the foreground over a scene on the lifeboat taking place in the background of the screen. I can't say I've seen a movie that looks this stunning in a long, long time. But I'm sad to say that for me, there was something plastic about it.

This brings me back to the alternate story Pi tells at the end. In the book, it's harrowing. Once you figure out what Martel is doing, you are haunted by it. You are equally haunted by the graphic details of animals killing animals and deeply gutted for Pi when he cries out in anguish as he is forced to eschew his vegetarian ways and kill fish and other animals to survive.

Ang Lee goes for the PG version, and in doing so, the film "Life of Pi" has little of the darkness of the book. Yes, we see that Pi lives through hellish conditions. But we don't see any of it. I became most aware of this problem with the film when, in a packed theater, I sat in horror as the audience around me laughed heartily at a scene where Pi is attempting to train Richard Parker. Was there something wrong with the audience? Or did Lee make a serious miscalculation in tone to allow viewers to relax for even a moment at the sight of a 16-year-old, emaciated boy attempting to train a tiger with a sharpened stick?

So in the end, when the writer is asked which version of Pi's story he prefers, the line feels like a bit of a cheap trick in the movie, whereas the novel's darker grounding gave the moment devastating resonance. This moment was never meant to be one of those "you mean to tell me that everything that just happened wasn't real?" moments. "Life of Pi" is not the final episode of "Roseanne." I walked into "Life of Pi" wanting to be moved to tears. That never happened.

"Life of Pi" is too lighthearted about its spirituality. Too PG to be intense. Too beautiful to be terrifying. Too digital to feel organic. And yet, just as Pi Patel's religions contradict each other, so too is Ang Lee's film one that simply should not be missed. And one of the rare films deserving of your extra dollars for a 3-D experience.  And who knows, you might be moved in ways I hoped I'd be.


★ ★ ★

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

I hate winter.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I can explain why I did not hate "Rise of the Guardians" as much as some of the other critics appear to have hated it. And I think it's because the one thing the film managed to do to me was make me like the most unlikely of characters: Jack Frost.

In an unfortunately predictable script by pedigreed playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (based on the children's books by William Joyce), "Rise of the Guardians" is the essentially the story of how Jack Frost redeems himself, evolving from an ice-throwing prankster with a name not known by children who nonetheless enjoy his handiwork to a full-fledged, Avengers-like hero who has, at the urging of Santa, "found his center."

Santa (called "North" in this film and voiced inexplicably with a Russian accent by Alec Baldwin), is the one who reminds Jack (a compelling Chris Pine) that the work of the legendary Guardians revolves around protecting the goodness of childhood and the spirit of children. He tells Jack that his job as Santa is to maintain a sense of wonder in children. He is joined by Bunny (of the Easter variety, voiced by Hugh Jackman, who is given license to go full-blown Aussie with it), Tooth (of the fairy variety, voiced by Isla Fisher), and Sandy (the sandman, who is both mute and perhaps the most exciting and loveable of all the film's characters).

Jack's problem is that he's all about mischief. In one of the film's moments of true adult-reaching depth, North realizes that although the other Guardians are charged with the protection of children the world over, they are too busy to actually spend time with them. Only Jack, as it turns out, has spent any time near them and with them to observe their natures and behaviors.

But for all of Jack's understanding of kids, he suffers one terrible problem. They don't know his name. And consequently, he is invisible to them. This makes it difficult for the Guardians to understand why the Moon would assign Jack Frost to join them as their newest member.

Jack is forced to figure out his calling quickly, just as the other Guardians are faced with accepting his membership in an instant when Pitch (Black, the boogey man, voiced by Jude Law and drawn quite similarly to Disney's Hades in "Hercules") arrives. Pitch instills fear into the children, turning Sandy's dreams into nightmares and extinguishing the lights on North's globe one by one, the lights that indicate each believing child on the planet. As Pitch replaces beliefs with terror, he vanquishes Sandy's sweet dreams (and Sandy himself) with black dust stallions. He imprisons the Tooth Fairy's "baby teeth," her army of hummingbird-like helpers. And finally, he attempts to forge an alliance with Jack: two under-appreciated forces of nature, neither known fully enough to kids to be able to appear before them.

Despite Lindsey-Abaire's frequent injections of heart and depth, "Rise of the Guardians" defaults to an ending one can see coming from far away, which includes a redemption of Jack that is strangely touching even as it is predictable. The interplay between the other Guardians is mostly annoying. Only Jack is worth following. Fortunately, Jack Frost is central to the plot and the storytelling.

Director Peter Ramsey, a veteran of movie art departments making his feature film debut shepherds crisp, imaginative animation that makes Jack an alluring, Peter Pan-like figure. I could measure the film's success in this endeavor by my son's obsession with Jack Frost since we saw the film. He has spent the last two days searching the house for something he can turn into Frost's staff, used to turn things to ice and temporary collateral damage in the film's penultimate confrontation between Frost and Pitch.

Another problem with "Rise of the Guardians," in addition to the predictable path its story takes and the annoying interplay of most of its main characters, is the speed with which the film flies by. Certainly this is exciting to kids in the audience, but whether it's Santa's sleigh, a kid on a sled at Jack's icy mercy, or swirls of black sand circling the air at Pitch's command, the pace rarely breaths. Even the film's score, composed by the always lovely Alexandre Desplat, surges to uncharacteristic levels of mania. What's sad about all of this is how stunning some of the film's images are, particularly those that involve sand. But the film never pauses enough for us to appreciate or enjoy them.

Ultimately, "Rise of the Guardians" tips gingerly into my "like" column thanks in part to a genuinely affecting back story for Jack Frost, who of course finds "his center" by the end of the film. It's an uneven film of predictable plotting and manic animation with multiple moments of fleeting but resonant emotional depth. I ended up caring nothing for Santa, the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, though I became an instant fan of Santa's elves, portrayed here as walking triangles. ("They don't really do anything," North admits in one hilarious moment. "We just let everyone think they do." The line goes something to this effect.)

On the way home from the movie theater, my kids asked me a question that pretty much sums up the whole experience. "Daddy, is Jack Frost real?" my son asked. "Is Santa real?" I replied. "Of course," he answered. "Well, then..."

★ ★ 1/2

Argo (2012)

A rare treat of a thriller that excites without the use of special effects, "Argo" embraces the cliche "edge-of-your-seat" and turns it into two hours of film-viewing reality.

The third film in an increasingly-confident directorial portfolio by Oscar-winning screenwriter and popular actor Ben Affleck, "Argo" is funnier than audiences might expect, as wonderfully acted as one could hope for, and more tense than you can imagine. It also boasts a story of more than slight ridiculousness. Implausible, really, if only it weren't true.

On Nov. 4, 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran is sieged by revolutionaries. Six Americans working at the embassy manage to escape and seek shelter in the Canadian embassy.

Against the backdrop of President Carter's tentative handling of the Iran crisis, in walks Tony Mendez (Affleck), a CIA employee with a track record for rescuing people out of the most precarious of situations. With little time to come up with a plan to rescue the Americans, not to mention decreasing support from the White House and a CIA chief played by Bryan Cranston, Mendez concocts a ridiculous escape plan, one that he couldn't be more serious in proposing.

With the help of Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) and a makeup artist named John Chambers (John Goodman), Mendez procures an unproduced film script called "Argo," a science fiction B-grade film. Mendez believes that he could fly into Iran posing as a film producer scouting for desert locations to shoot scenes for "Argo" and, in the process, can reach the Canadian embassy and sneak the self-imprisoned Americans out by training them to assume identities as members of his filming crew.

Naturally, the idea is ridiculous, yet with a little push, Mendez pursues it anyway. He relies on the razzle-dazzle international image of Hollywood to at least temporarily win over skeptical Iranian soldiers he encounters along the way, sometimes even handing them doctored film posters which they accept like prized souvenirs. He makes it to the Canadian embassy and, under the protection of its kindhearted ambassador (Victor Garber), fights with the Americans to convince them that his insane idea is the only way out.

Again, this really happened. "Based on a true story." And one of the best things about "Argo" in a sea of great things is the way Affleck meticulously recreates the time period. Heading into 1980, Affleck populates "Argo" with stock footage of Carter on the television, porn-star mustaches, feathered hair, brown clothes, wide collars and boxy glasses. Almost to a detail, everything looks just as it should be, just as it might have happened. It isn't hard to imagine the film's art direction as first in line when the film awaits its inevitable award nominations this winter.

There's a chance the acting won't be overlooked, either. In fact, it's fantastic from top to bottom. As Mendez, Affleck gives his richest performance in quite some time. Arkin smaller but instrumental role as the film producer could end up getting him his first nomination since winning supporting actor for "Little Miss Sunshine." Goodman, scarily bloated and unhealthy-looking, is dryly funny and calmly wise in a film filled with panic. Garber and Cranston are, each in his own way, riveting. Kyle Chandler is effective as the secretary of defense, and dammit, Chris Messina delivers here in a way that reaffirms that he deserves to be a star.

Aside from the production values and the acting, the most memorable thing about "Argo" is its intensity, and Affleck knows just how to make a heart beat so strongly that it seems ready to leap from one's chest, only to ebb the intensity and then gradually build it minutes later to an eclipsing height. The palpable thrill of watching "Argo" is certainly what every horror film director longs to achieve and rarely manages, and though Affleck frequently overplays the use of extreme close-up shots to signal intensity, he succeeds wildly when it comes to thrills.

If there's a drawback to "Argo" - the slightest hint of imperfection - it comes with the realization that as a director, Affleck does little to demonstrate any calling cards of an authorial style. After his first two films used Boston as a backdrop the way Woody Allen used New York City, Affleck began to carve a signature niche for himself in just two films. "Argo" shares in common with both "Gone Baby Gone" and "The Town" a sense of capturing action and tense suspense in a way that makes it palpable to the audience, and that's a good thing.

But aside from the plentiful satisfaction that "Argo" is expertly handled by a crowd-pleaser of a director, there's little in its style to make someone say: "This is a Ben Affleck film." Those who are not snobby about their films will have no problem with this fact, of course. And someone like me, so excited about Affleck's growing confidence behind the lens with his third-consecutive Oscar-quality film, is now looking for a signature stamp. I wouldn't say it's here, yet. But what is here is enough confidence to indicate that Affleck is starting to figure out just who he is as a director.

If "Argo" is any indication, watching Affleck figure himself out will be our pleasure.

★ ★ ★ 1/2

Lincoln (2012)

Though I found myself surprised by how affected I was by "War Horse," Steven Spielberg's last live-action film, it received harsh and, in retrospect, justified criticism for playing like a "Spielberg's greatest hits," a movie packed with everything from meticulously-staged and period-accurate battle scenes to twilight silhouettes of a hero against a bright orange sky, all buried under what could be composer John Williams' most emotionally manipulative and dramatically intrusive score. 

So how does the most commercially successful director in the history of film follow that up? With the stunning "Lincoln," a film that on paper would seem like another in a line of obvious Spielberg choices but one that surprises in almost every aspect imaginable. In fact, just about anything you can think of as a classic Spielbergian film maneuver is approached in a fresh and arresting way. It is a talky film from a master of action. A war film that shows little war. A panoramic story that zooms in to such a small amount of time that it is unexpected and even shocking.

Aided by thorough research, fresh approaches to directorial choices and transcendent performances, "Lincoln" belongs in the Spielberg firmament and is easily his best work since "Munich."

I decided not to read much about "Lincoln" before attending an advance screening of the film, so I suspect that one of the things that surprised me most about it won't be a surprise to most audiences once the film is released, particularly not if you are about to read the next few sentences. But I entered the film not knowing specifically what Spielberg's scope would be in terms of storytelling. I figured the movie would only cover his presidency and nothing of his life before that time. I was wrong. It's even more narrow than that.

In what I now consider a stroke of genius, Spielberg zooms in on only one month of Lincoln's presidency - January, 1865 - for two hours of the film's 2:25 running time, its final 20 minutes covering Feb. 1 through to his assassination on April 15. In doing so, "Lincoln" essentially covers only one issue of the Lincoln presidency: the fight to pass the 13th Amendment guaranteeing the freedom of all slaves.

The film's plot reveals a genuine Catch 22 before that phrase existed. Should Lincoln follow through with a potential peace deal with the Confederacy before the amendment to the Constitution goes to a vote, or should the amendment get passed before an end to the war is brokered, even if it means a high number of additional casualties? Does success in one of these endeavors kill prospects in the other if they are executed in the wrong order? In "Lincoln," we watch the president work through this problem, and Spielberg uses Lincoln's decision-making process on this one issue as a microcosm for his entire presidency and, in fact, his very character.

The film's script, filled with elaborately-crafted orations by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, maneuvers between three ongoing snapshots of our 16th president: Lincoln's personal decision making and power brokering, the debate in the House of Representatives over the proposed amendment, and Lincoln's personal relationships with his family.

The scenes in the House chambers, while certainly lacking in physical action, are quite possibly the film's most entertaining moments, and often the most explosive.This has a lot to do with the fiery spirit of abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, played with such conviction and ferocity by Tommy Lee Jones that he nearly steals the picture from a mind-blowing performance (but one that is muted by comparison) by Daniel Day-Lewis as the president. Jones has such a way with Kushner's sometimes verbose theatricality that you start to miss him when he's off-screen.

In the House chambers, Stevens squares off against Fernando Wood (Lee Pace) and those who are trying to kill the 13th Amendment in the House (which had already passed in the Senate). Meanwhile, Lincoln is shown working with members of his cabinet to devise a plan to win over enough votes. His chief confidante and critic is Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn), and he balances Seward's concerns with a request by Francis Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), a former cabinet member for Andrew Jackson and father of one of Lincoln's cabinet members with a strong opinion about how to end the war.

Some of the film's most powerful scenes are the ones that happen away from its political war games, and they are both economical and effective in helping viewers to understand more about Lincoln, the man. Sally Field plays First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in that slightly over-the-top Sally Field kind of way, but it works here (it really, really works!) because Mary famously ends up going mad and Field lays that groundwork nicely, referencing the early death of one of their boys. Their oldest, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a stoic but relatively thankless role), wants to enlist but his parents cannot bear the thought of losing another son. And some of the film's most touching moments involve quiet exchanges between Lincoln and his youngest, Tad (Gulliver McGrath). I was particularly reminded of the baptism scene in "The Godfather" as Lincoln is seen reading a book with Tad in the White House while the fateful vote is being taken at the Capitol building.


Both Stevens and Lincoln are seen in candid moments where they appear to be compromising their beliefs and values, though these apparent lapses in judgment are truthfully no more than political moves that seem to be necessary to achieve a much larger, noble goal. Lincoln, for example, is a man of the highest moral character in the minds of most of us students of American history, but in "Lincoln" we find him assembling a team of fly-by-night and relatively reckless lobbyists (played with zeal by John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a seemingly "True Grit"-inspired turn by James Spader) who are charged with securing the last remaining votes necessary to pass the Amendment, and appear to do so by any means necessary with Lincoln's turn-a-blind-eye permission. Stevens, meanwhile, finds himself needing to strategize his use of words at the potential expense of both his beliefs and his image to achieve a greater good.

Indeed, if "Lincoln" could be boiled down to one word, that word would be "compromise." In a post-screening interview, Spielberg told the audience that he did not intend to make "Lincoln" as a statement on our government's current inability to work across the aisle together, adding that the first draft of this script began in 1999 after he met "Team of Rivals" author Doris Kearns Goodwin and expressed interest in the movie rights to her book. But it's hard to watch "Lincoln" and not see the writing on these otherwise dark walls. Hey, boys and girls, let me tell you a story of a time when men who disagreed figured out how to compromise because it was imperative that they did so. In that sense, "Lincoln" is dripping with irony and in-this-moment relevance and almost makes you more angry about what we're dealing with now.


Spielberg called "Lincoln" his "most performance-based movie ever," and I had to think about that for a minute because I can't think of a film of his without wonderful performances in it. But the success of "Lincoln" lies solely with its actors because with the exception of the film's opening battle sequence, the movie lacks the element of movement that is traditional in mainstream film narrative, and that which is certainly standard in Spielberg films. There is no question that audiences who don't enjoy listening to speeches and relishing acting performances will think less of this movie that I did, but if acting's your thing, I challenge you to find a performance of any consequence to the plot of this film that isn't worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Naturally, the greatest performance of them all is courtesy of Day-Lewis as the president. Of course, it's hard to think of a bad Daniel Day-Lewis performance, but wait until you see this. He is President Lincoln. The transformation is unbelievable, and the names of Spielberg's makeup team might as well be engraved on an Oscar statue right now. But Day-Lewis's physical transformation is as much under his own power as it is the technical team's. He captures Lincoln's poor posture, arms too long and heavy for his frame, and shuffle of a walk. And though the voice he chose is drawing some criticism, I thought it felt right. Based on their research, Spielberg and Day-Lewis choose to avoid what Spielberg refers to as the "Epcot version" of Lincoln, opting instead for a reedy and higher-pitched mid-western tenor. Though we've never heard a recording of Abe's voice, this acting choice simply works.

As I've mentioned a few times, one of the reasons why I am so moved and blown away by "Lincoln" is because here is the work of a director with 26 previous feature-length films to his credit who has a true auteur's style of approaching his craft, and in my mind, if he doesn't abandon it here, he largely dismisses it. He not only preferences talk over action and lasers in on a narrow narrative scope when grand storytelling is his typical approach, but he uses other members of his famous creative team in fresh and effective ways.

Most noticeable to me was the restraint of John Williams' music. It's as if Spielberg is reacting directly here to the criticism surrounding "War Horse," because Williams' work here often lays quite low in the sound mix and is frequently reduced to simple piano work, returning the score to supporting status when perhaps it last had a leading role. It is understated and wholly effective.

So, too, is the dark palate of mastermind cinematographer, the great Janusz Kaminski, who lends to the film's meticulous period authenticity with oil lamp and candle-lit interiors, emphasizing drab blues and browns. Combined with Spielberg's surprisingly claustrophobic and frequently tight shot framing, Kaminski rarely allows the audience a panoramic view of any interior room of the White House. Instead, even as light pours outside its windows, Lincoln is seen huddling over a dim light source in darkened interiors in his attempts to read. Both Spielberg and Kaminski dramatically reduce the grandeur of Washington's most famous buildings, and in doing so intimately put the focus on the men inhabiting them. It is a brilliant move, because only Lincoln himself emerges with that level of grandeur because of it.

I could go on at length about the various decisions Spielberg made, dissecting them and comparing and contrasting them to his earlier works. But I've already gone on too long and said too much, though I promise that I cannot ruin the viewing experience for you, as this is a movie you truly must see for yourself. As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to watching "Lincoln" again when it hits theatres to see if Spielberg made any last-minute alterations to the cut I saw. I also want to more deeply focus on the film's subtleties, such as the way he uses the black actors in the film, relegated to the wings but constantly a presence, gentle reminders to Lincoln of what he is fighting for.

If "Lincoln" has an agenda, it is one that most audiences will agree with. But Spielberg avoids the sentimentality typically associated with his films and, in his expert hands, navigates the story's inevitable conclusion in an appropriate manner.

I have spent days now thinking about how "Lincoln" appears on the surface to be a classic Spielberg project. It's one of his "histories." (Like Shakespeare, Spielberg works can be divided into categories, sharing histories and adding action/thrillers and science fiction/fantasy as his other major genres.) It is as well-researched and authentic as any historical film he's ever made, down to the details of portraying the president as a perpetual storyteller, sometimes even attempting a laugh or garnering the impatience of his audience. But in so many more ways, I'm constantly reminded of how "Lincoln" is different from a typical Spielberg film. And for a director more than 40 years in to film making, my stove pipe hat is off to him.


★ ★ ★ ★