Hitchock (2012)

If you're a fan of the "master of suspense," it will be hard not to enjoy "Hitchcock," a broadly-toned look at the famed director's creation of his horror masterpiece, "Psycho." Movie-goers who have seen "Psycho" at least twice are most likely to give into the charms of this often clever and sometimes flat biopic. Come for the fantastic performances (led by Anthony Hopkins as the director) and stay for the recognizable sets and costumes, meticulously recreated to match the 1960 film.

This is one of those movies that I was just plain entertained by, whether or not it was a "great movie." It's also the kind of film I could see myself watching again. I've been working hard to see as much as possible lately, so I'll get back to you with a full review. 

Amour (2012)

While I was impressed with Austrian director Michael Hanecke's 2009 film "The White Ribbon," the film left me emotionally cold. The film justifiably received an Oscar nomination for its stunning black and white cinematography and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, but I found myself more interested in it than invested with it. I haven't seen much of Hanecke's work, but I do know that he is a very well-respected European filmmaker and that the opinion I hold about his previous film is not uncommon, as he is criticized for some degree of emotional detachment.

"Amour" will change all of that.

There is no better title for Hanecke's latest than simply, "Love." It's the story of an elderly couple dealing with physical deterioration. It's an exploration of what-do-we-do-nows and why-is-this-happening-to-us-es. And yes, it is horribly depressing.

But "Amour" is also soul-shakingly moving and emotional, thanks in no small part to the work of Emmanuella Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the married Anne and Georges. In a perfect world, both would be nominated for Oscars, and I suspect that at least Riva, in the more obviously crafty of the two performances, has a good shot at one.

For two hours, Hanecke keeps us cooped up in the couple's apartment as Georges' love for Anne is challenged but never fully tested after she suffers a stroke. "Amour" is not the kind of film you'll be able to watch over and over again, but if you think you love someone, it's also not the kind of film you should let escape your viewing priorities simply because of its painful subject matter.

A stunner.

I will post a more complete review here soon.

Rust and Bone (2012)

Marion Cotillard, or as I like to call her, La Streep Francais, continues her parade of bafflingly good performances in "De rouille et d'os," or "Rust and Bone." Playing a killer whale trainer whose livelihood (and in some ways, her life) is cut short by a freak accident on the job, Cotillard's Stephanie fights to gain mobility, confidence and self-respect with the aid of a hunky but down-on-his-luck wanderer played by the magnetic Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts (last year's "Bullhead").

Directed by Jacques Audiard, who took my breath away with his last feature, "Un Prophete (A Prophet)," is not just a pity party about an able-bodied person learning to cope with a stunning new handicap. It's about redemption, maybe more for Schoenaerts' Ali than for Stephanie. And in the hands of Audiard, it is a stunning film of power with many excellent visual moments and a memorable score and soundtrack.

Expect to hear Cotillard's name called during the Oscar nomination announcements, and expect a full review from me as soon as I get a chance!

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. 

★ ★ ★