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