Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (High Expectations, Maybe Diminished Results)

 As has been pointed out to me a few times over the course of last year, I didn't review a number of movies that I had been open about looking forward to. In some instances, like Nymphomaniac, I never got around to watching them. When I do, we'll see what happens, review-wise. What happened with many of them was that I watched a movie I was really looking forward to, spent some time digesting it, and realized I just wasn't interested in writing about them. There are a few exceptions - and I will include links when we get to them - but by and large there wasn't much to add to the general consensus. That, or I really didn't want to rain on the parade of folks who really loved some of the films I'm about to cover.

 Bear in mind that it's not that I hated them, but rather that I wasn't blown away by any of them. A few were pleasant surprises, or technically impressive, but I've struggled with recommending any of them strongly. However, it didn't seem fair to recap 2014 and not mention a few of the most anticipated movies, particularly when two of them were nominated for Best Picture.

 On that note, let's start with Boyhood, which I'm not going to pretend isn't a very impressive achievement for Richard Linklater. That said, I think we all know the talking points about how long it took to shoot and the uncertainty about what direction (if any) the story was headed during that time. And yes, it's quite a feat to stick with it for that long, creating a mini-fiction version of the 7 Up series. Some of the transitions in time are quite clever, and it retains much of Linklater's signature "talking about stuff" dialogue that, when done right, is a fine variation on naturalism. When it's done wrong, well, then you have Waking Life. But Boyhood isn't about monologue-ing its way through Life, The Universe, and Everything - it's about the micro moments of growing up, avoiding the easy traps of movies about adolescence. And I give him a lot of credit for that. Linklater manages to keep the Philosophy 101 crap out of Ellar Coltrane's mouth until just before he gets to college.

 And that's about where I'm going to run out of nice things to say about Boyhood, because the movie didn't do a whole lot for the Cap'n. Maybe it was the choices of music at the beginning: a litany of "it's 2002!" that starts with Coldplay's "Yellow," continues with The Hives "Hate to Say I Told You So," and sneaks in Britney Spears before closing with Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up the Sun." I got it - it's 2002. Yup, got it. In Linklater's defense, the choices in music to indicate what year we're in becomes more subtle - it's almost easy to miss Gotye playing in the background at the bar in Austin - but to open the film, I found it off-putting. It actually sticks out more than the "campaigning for Obama" scene or the "what's wrong with the war in Iraq" bowling alley monologue from Ethan Hawke.

 When I watch a Richard Linklater movie, to be honest, I'm expecting a bit of aimlessness - there's less of it than you think in Dazed and Confused, but much of what he excels at is just spending time with people. It's exactly why the Before films work so well; even if they are scripted, it feels spontaneous. Boyhood has a lot of that, but at nearly three hours, I got the impression that he really wasn't sure how or when to end Mason (Coltrane)'s story. Maybe he enjoyed watching the young man that Coltrane grew into, but there are four or five points in the last forty five minutes of Boyhood that would have been more thematically appropriate than when the film does end. Is it in keeping with the "small moments?" Maybe, but considering that Boyhood just tapers off instead of making this ride feel like it was worth taking left me disinterested.

 It has been suggested that because I'm not a parent that I can't really "understand" Boyhood - or, at least, that was the implicit part of a conversation I had with a stranger who liked it more than I did because he saw his son growing up through the movie. While I understand his position, the counter-argument is that I shouldn't have to be able to directly relate with the film in order to enjoy it. I've never been an assistant hotel manager, or been to deep space, or been a hitman whose wife died, but I can relate to and enjoy films with those protagonists. I will say that Boyhood lacks a certain experiential quality to growing up that The Tree of Life has, at least for me. That may very well be an apples to oranges comparison, but there are small moments in The Tree of Life that stirred memories of being young in a way that Boyhood never did.

 Maybe that's not the point of Boyhood - maybe it's more of a "meta" project that condenses something like Michael Apted's "Up" series into a more manageable time frame. It is, in many ways, a spiritual successor to the Before films, which follow a relationship over the course of 18 years. That said, I think that Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight work better as films than Boyhood does. For every fine performance: Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are both great as Mason's biological parents, there's a wonky performance like Marco Perella as the stereotypically abusive, drunk stepfather. For a film that relishes in small moments, that lacks a real narrative arc, having Arquette marry her teacher, then leave him, become a teacher and then marry her student is less about poetic irony and more groan inducing. Sorry, that's just how I felt about it. I did enjoy Lorelei Linklater as Samantha, Mason's sister, who manages to make an impression despite never having much to do.

 The acclaim for Boyhood has, as far as I can tell, been part and parcel with the admittedly very impressive willingness of Richard Linklater to slowly make a movie for more than a decade. You do literally watch Coltrane grow up over the course of the film, and you watch everyone around him change, too. In that regard, yes, I find Boyhood to be admirable, but I don't know that I really liked it.

 While we're on the subject of "admirable," - and I suppose that will be most of this post - I never really warmed to Gone Girl, despite David Fincher's exhaustive attention to detail. I have a very hard time making the case that Gone Girl isn't a very well made film, or that structurally it's not successful, but like Boyhood, I was underwhelmed when it ended. I haven't read Gillian Flynn's novel, and I know she made some changes in the process of adaptation. If I understand correctly, the ending is a little more cynical, but the ending wasn't really my point of contention with Gone Girl.

 (By necessity, the following paragraphs are going to SPOIL the major twist of the book / film, so tread cautiously if you know nothing about the story)

 If I had to pinpoint the problem, it's actually more of the middle, when we know what's really going on, yet the film seems to lag, dragging the parallel arcs of Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) out while he defends himself from a well orchestrated plan to assign guilt for her death and she makes mistake after mistake while in hiding. The beginning, when you don't know what's happening with any certainty, as Nick is still basically a blank slate and we're learning everything from Amy's diary entries / flashbacks, is riveting stuff. Our only real insight into Nick is through Amy, and it bleeds over (no pun intended) to the way we perceive him during the investigation into her disappearance.

 And then Gone Girl makes a hard right turn, revealing that we've been listening to an unreliable narrator who then tells us that everything we thought about Nick and Amy's relationship is designed to tighten the proverbial noose around his neck. But that's not the problem - actually, it's a great twist to introduce mid-movie, because now it's a question of whether the person we thought we couldn't trust and the person we thought we could are capable of meeting two very different agendas. So why, then, is the middle of Gone Girl so lethargic? I'm not certain that it's because Amy's story in hiding is much less interesting after she reveals her real plan, or that I just didn't buy that she could plan all of this and then allow hubris to drive her to desperation. What happens with Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) serves only to show us what Amy is truly capable of when she feels she has no other option, but isn't it clear how far she'll go when we know that Nick really didn't kill her?

 The other problem, and one I still haven't been able to reconcile after watching the film again, is that we don't really know Nick. What we know about him is primarily from how Amy portrays him in her manufactured "diary," which means that even the "meet cute" and wooing parts could be total fictions. We know he was cheating on Amy with Andi (Emily Ratajkowski), and that his sister Margo (Carrie Coon) loves him, but doesn't necessarily trust him. Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) has her doubts, but Officer James Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) is positive he's guilty. Celebrity lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry) doesn't care - he likes the challenge and the media attention. But Nick? Well, we spend the lion's share of Gone Girl with him and I still don't have a reading on the character.

 Despite the obvious joke to be made, I don't blame that on Ben Affleck the actor. I think that he and Coon have some great scenes together, and that he does his best to give Nick a fighting chance when the deck is stacked against him. But I don't believe that the way the film ends is something he'd acquiesce to so easily, implied threat or no. It reminded me of the end of Proxy, which tells a similar tale of people desperate for attention. I also didn't like Proxy. And even if Gone Girl is a better made film, I'm still on the fence about whether that mean I should forgive its bloated running time in service of a great beginning, clever twist, and bleak ending. I do like that Fincher tells you almost immediately about Amy's relationship with her husband, just by showing you the board games in Margo and Nick's bar. Attention to detail runs rampant, Affleck's growing biceps aside (hello, Batman), but structurally, Gone Girl doesn't seem to sustain itself. So can I admire its construction without necessarily being crazy about it? I guess that's how it's going to be for the time being...

  The Cap'n wrote at length about Christopher Nolan's Interstellar a few months ago, and much of what I said still stands. Here's a piece of the review, as it transitioned from the positives of Nolan's scope to the failings of its emotional core:

 "If I'm being honest, I would have liked more of the exploring the other planets instead of the part of Interstellar that you don't necessarily get from the trailers: the back and forth between Coop (McConaughey) in space and his family on Earth. Instead of focusing on relativity and black holes, we have to keep jumping back home to see that Murph stills hasn't forgiven her father and now she's grown up and is Jessica Chastain. Murph is working with Professor Brand (Michael Caine0 on how to save everybody on Earth because they haven't heard from the ship in 23-ish years (2 years to Saturn plus another 21 thanks to a disastrous turn of events on the first world they land on). It's here that the Nolan brothers introduce the theme of Interstellar that isn't about exploration: that love may be a tangible concept that transcends dimensions and we just don't understand it yet. Oddly enough, the internet's least favorite person (Anne Hathaway) delivers the best monologue about it, but it leads Interstellar down a path I maybe could have done without. The space exploration was so much more interesting, and the Earth plot isn't."

 One of the other things I did between watching Interstellar the first and second times was to sit down with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which only exacerbates how foolish the climax of Nolan's film is compared with Kubrick's. Coop literally explains everything as it's happening in the "other" dimension, which seems even more ridiculous when compared to what happens to Dave (Keir Dullea) when he reaches "Jupiter and Beyond." I'm not saying that Interstellar needed to be as opaque as the end of 2001, or that Nolan was wrong to appeal to a wider audience, but when it's abundantly clear what sort of movie you're trying to emulate, you have to understand that fairly or not, you're going to be held to that standard. Interstellar's moment of cosmic transcendence is almost comical when held up against 2001.

 Still, I probably have a more favorable opinion of Interstellar than Boyhood or Gone Girl. Maybe it's the apologist in me, or maybe it's a subconscious reaction to the "Christopher Nolan is teh suxorz" kneejerk internet reception to his films. I don't find any of his films perfect, but I have enjoyed almost all of them, the lone exception being Insomnia, and only because I saw the original first. Even within Interstellar is the desire to reach for something greater, to bring a mass audience to something they don't see much in theatres anymore, and that's appreciated. It didn't necessarily work this time, and didn't connect with audiences (it clearly didn't connect with his peers, or whoever qualifies as "Academy Voters") but if this is what qualifies as a notable failure for Christopher Nolan, I can live with that. Would it be a bad idea to go back to something smaller, intimate? I don't even mean Memento; The Prestige is comparatively scaled back when put against Inception or The Dark Knight Rises. We'll see what Nolan has in store next time.

 "Next Time" seems to be an oft repeated phrase for Terry Gilliam fans like the Cap'n: every movie since 12 Monkeys has been pretty to very good, but falls somewhere short of the far he set so high with Brazil. And it's not just comparing everything to Brazil, because I think Time Bandits and The Fisher King are also among the most interesting work he's done, post-Python. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas comes the closest to his mad, glory days, but The Brothers Grimm, Tideland, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus all feel like there was a great movie in there somewhere, but it didn't quite make it to the finish line. Some from interference, one from an untimely death, and I'm not really sure what to make of Tideland. I always look forward to a new Gilliam film, and always hope that this time "they" - whoever "they" are - left him alone and we get a pure, undiluted experience.

 Which brings us to The Zero Theorem, the first of two movies on this list that I suspect you didn't even know came out in 2014. Like many Gilliam films, I heard about it the year before, waited patiently, and eventually it did have a (limited) release / VOD, and then mostly disappeared. That's not a value judgment on The Zero Theorem (we'll get to that), but what seems, increasingly, to be the case with how his work is going to disseminate from here on out (up next: another stab at The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which may or may not have benefitted from the decade of being abandoned). If you've seen any of the reviews for The Zero Theorem, you've probably noticed that it's been compared to Brazil, and not always favorably.

 The comparisons are not unfair: The Zero Theorem deals with a man very much in his own world, Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz), who refers to himself as "we," or "us" works for Mancom in service of his own agenda. Qohen believes he's waiting for his "call" - in this case, a literal phone call to the apartment he's made out of an abandoned church. In the meantime, he tolerates Joby (David Thewlis), who can't quite seem to remember his name and is an exemplary representative of all "middle management." Speaking of which, Management (Matt Damon) has his eye on Qohen for a high level programming project, one which resembles a video game but is designed to solve mathematical problems. Management wants Qohen to help him solve the titular theorem, with or without the assistance of Joby, Management's son, Bob (Lucas Hedges), and Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry), a woman he meets at a party that might have other hobbies. To keep Qohen on track, Mancom allows him to work from home, as long as he consults Dr. Shrink-Rom (Twilda Swinton), a program designed to monitor his mental state as he pursues the impossible task at hand.

 For the record, I've really just given you the set up of The Zero Theorem, a film stuffed to the gills with visual metaphors, which is always just one step away from collapsing entirely under its own weight. Once you get used to the barrage of information - Gilliam takes the concept of micro-news and runs wild with it - the film can be pleasantly entertaining, but it never feels cohesive. I never got a sense of what point Gilliam was really trying to make, but rather he was quite interested in dissecting the way that media and religion and business operate now. Some of the smaller gags, like "The Church of Batman the Redeemer," are quite funny, even if they add nothing substantive to the story. Of course, it's possible that the story itself isn't especially interesting, as we have little doubt of what Qohen will do by the end of the film. Also, once we're introduced to the virtual reality "fantasy" zone that Bainsley brings Qohen into, it's not hard to figure out where everything is going for the idiosyncratic, mostly misanthropic protagonist. Everyone seems game in the cast, and Gilliam's production design is, as always, a feast of details in every direction. But by the end, there's a sort of sensory overload coupled with, "oh, that's the point?" that just doesn't quite work. The Zero Theorem is an almost, but ultimately misses its mark, whatever it was aiming for.

 There is little doubt that The Zero Theorem is a Terry Gilliam film; his stamp as an auteur is unmistakable at this point. Such is true with Wes Anderson, whose distinct style draws praise and groans alike from audience, and who in 2014 doubled down on his cinematic "signature". When I reviewed The Grand Budapest Hotel earlier this year, I closed the write up by saying:

"I will openly admit to a giddy sensation during the beginning of The Grand Budapest Hotel, as I often have when seeing a Wes Anderson film for the first time. As the film went on, I alternated between admiration for the technical aspects of the Auteur and realizing that I was more impressed with the story than I actually enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, this is not a film that's a chore to watch, nor does it ever drag, but The Grand Budapest Hotel didn't grab me in the same way that some of Anderson's films do. I would be hard pressed to call this a "lesser" film in his catalog, but I can see why it might end up being another dividing line, as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was. I concede that, for the moment, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a (very entertaining) exercise in form over function. Is it possible that changes the next time I see it (and I will)? Quite possibly. The Cap'n is predisposed to follow Wes Anderson down the rabbit hole - less so his imitators - but it's hard to argue that this is not his most "Wes Anderson"-y film to date, for better or for worse."

 Technically speaking, framing your film for three different aspect ratios is an impressive achievement, but it still surprises me to see The Grand Budapest Hotel alongside the likes of Birdman or Boyhood in the Academy Award nominations. To reiterate: it's not a bad film, and I enjoyed watching it most of the time, but I would hardly put it at the top of any list of Anderson's films. The Grand Budapest Hotel is an exquisite trifle, which might be an oxymoron, but I have a hard time making the case that it is in any way exemplary of the best films of last year. While I do know quite a few people who love it, I also know several people who saw it, said "Oh, so this is just what he does now," and moved on. I don't suspect they - or I - will stop watching Wes Anderson films, or even looking forward to them, but my enthusiasm is slightly muted in a way it wasn't before I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 In the realms of enthusiasm, you will perhaps find the Cap'n no more anticipatory of one with the words "a David Cronenberg film." Despite the fact that he's been mostly in "adaptation" mode since eXistenZ, I haven't seen one from A History of Violence to Cosmopolis that wasn't worth sitting with, digesting, and having conversations about. Even when I didn't love one - as was the case with A Dangerous Method - it sparked conversation and made me want to write about the film. I'm in the minority who really enjoyed Cosmopolis, and have had a number of great discussions about its relative merits with people who truly hated it. So it must be telling that I spent most of 2014 sitting silently on Maps to the Stars. As far as I can tell, the screenplay by novelist Bruce Wagner isn't based on anything, but it has a certain "lived in" approach because of its subject matter.

 Many fans of Cronenberg have lamented his shift away from "body horror" in the last decade, although I'm not sure it's entirely accurate. Yes, we're long past the days of the New Flesh, but I think Cronenberg has moved from exaggerated, external forms of "body horror" and internalized it. One doesn't make a film about Freud and Jung without at least spending some time on the way the mind affects the body. That said, people miss the "gonzo" days of Cronenberg films, and Maps to the Stars isn't going to change that much. That said, there is a fair degree of body scarring, immolation, drowning imagery, and implied incest in his ode to Tinseltown. There's also something I can't recall ever having seen before in a Cronenberg film: ghosts. Maps to the Stars is weird, and that's what I've been telling friends since I watched it. Sometimes because there's not much else to it. It was described to me as "David Cronenberg's Arrested Development," which is probably not inaccurate, but don't go in expecting comedy.

 Cosmopolis alumni Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon appear in Maps to the Stars, albeit in smaller roles, one as a driver for Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) and the other as the apparition of actress Clarice Taggart, who haunts her daughter Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore). Havana is lobbying for the role of Clarice Taggart in a biopic, even though in Hollywood she's seen mostly as washed up. Covered head to toe, Agatha's presence in Hollywood is less clear - she arrives from Florida and explains to Jerome Fontana (Pattinson) that she struck up a friendship with a celebrity over Twitter (it's the only "playing themselves" cameo, and I wouldn't dare spoil it) and is here to work. Jerome has a screenplay - who doesn't? - and also works small parts on TV shows. Agatha likes him, but he's a bit superficial. Meanwhile, and seemingly unrelated, we have the Weiss family: New Age Guru to the stars Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), manager mother Christina Weiss (Olivia Williams), and child star Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird). Stafford hawks his inspirational books on TV and is also a Yoga instructor / Masseuse to Havana, while Christina tries to negotiate her son's latest sequel while assuring producers his drinking problem is long over with.

 How the three storylines converge becomes apparent fairly early on, especially once the aforementioned celebrity cameo hands off Agatha to Havana as a personal assistant and Stafford and Christina find out about her. Meanwhile, there are all sorts of moments of drug use and self doubt and threesomes with directors, interrupted by ghosts. Havana has her mother instilling doubt into her every move, and Benjie is inexplicably haunted by Cammy (Kiara Glasco), a girl he visited in the hospital for publicity. There are reasons for their hauntings, mostly tied to Cronenberg's dueling fire / water visual metaphors, although it's less important to how the film is than the very real threat that Agatha poses to the Weiss family. It takes most of Maps to the Stars to get around to why she's really in town, and her connection to Benjie and the vacant lot she frequents when not at work.

 By the end, plenty of cyclical imagery and thematic elements have come and gone, with a few accidental murders, and while I suppose it was worth watching, I'm not sure about much else. One must tread cautiously when using the word "weird," let alone "weird for David Cronenberg," but Maps to the Stars is definitely not like his usual output. I find myself on the fence about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, because while not as aggressively stylized as Cosmopolis, Maps to the Stars does share its "go ahead, try to empathize with any of these people" ethos. Is the self-immolation of a major character supposed to be tragic or funny? The dodgy CGI doesn't help if it's meant to be the former. There's some semblance of comedy in Maps to the Stars, although it's rarely funny. Actually, tonally the film is all over the place, and not to its benefit. Perhaps I've avoided discussing Maps to the Stars because I'm not sure what to say about it. As a result, it's hard to recommend it to anyone other than die-hard Cronenberg fans, and what they make of it is anybody's guess.

 Coming up next, the Cap'n will reflect back on what turned out to be a very impressive year for science fiction, and then we'll move into the final stretch before the Best of 2014. Stay tuned...

Blogorium Review: Interstellar

 Christopher Nolan really does seem to be swinging for the fences with Interstellar, a very ambitious science fiction tale of human exploration beyond the reaches of our own galaxy. To push the baseball metaphor a little further, let's imagine that he's stepping to the plate with bases loaded, hoping to hit a grand slam and end the game in dramatic fashion. Instead of knocking it out of the park, Nolan ends up bouncing the ball off of the top row, resulting in a ground rule double. Two runners still score, and overall he's done a good job for everyone involved, but it's not the statement victory everybody was hoping for. Whether that's a bad thing or not is up to what expectations you bring when you sit down to watch Interstellar.

 This is going to be a review with SPOILERS because that can't be helped. Nolan's mostly cryptic trailers tell you very little about what transpires during Interstellar, and while I enjoyed the film overall, two of my biggest problems with the film happen during the third act, and neither of them are addressed at all in the advertising campaign. I would advise you to go in knowing as little as possible, so be aware that past this point I will be discussing Interstellar in its entirety.

 To quickly cover the basics, Interstellar is the story of Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a test pilot who crashed or had some sort of incident at one point that prevented him from being an astronaut. Luckily for the engineer, he also had a farm he could work on, where he lives with his father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow) and two children, Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murphy (MacKenzie Foy).

(For the record, Cooper goes by "Coop" and Murphy by "Murph," because I guess monosyllabic names work better in this family).

 Mom's out of the picture because we're in the near future, where dust storms have wiped out all but the most rudimentary technology and almost all plants are dead. Coop's farm is growing corn, one of the last holdouts from the new dustbowl (Okra goes early into the movie, which from where I'm sitting is no big problem). There's not a lot of discussion in the film about how this happens, and Interstellar is strictly middle-America and space, so don't ask about what densely populated cities are doing. Nolan and his brother Jonathan keep the script focused specifically on the Earth being unsustainable, but since we've abandoned wasting money on space exploration, what can we do?

 Nolan does a pretty good job of setting up the world of the future without showing too much: the beginning of the film is presented like a PBS documentary, with lots of "talking head" shots of old timers telling us what it was like when things changed. At least one of them was way more famous than I'd expected to appear at the beginning of the movie, but it turned out she was a sneaky third version of a character we'd be meeting later. They cover all sorts of things you wouldn't think of but would probably be doing if there was an inch of dust over everything all of the time, like put your dishes out on the table upside down (maybe there are no cabinets in the Midwest?). It gets the job done pretty well.

 It's a sparse world that Coop and company live in - other than lots and lots of corn, you don't really see anybody. There are no animals in the film at all, and the town he lives near seems pretty deserted early in the movie. I can't remember seeing any other students at Tom and Murph's school; only the principal and Murph's teacher, who asks Coop to tell her the Moon landing was a hoax (the Room 237'ers win in the future and textbooks are rewritten to talk us out of believing space exploration existed). The only crowd you ever really see is at a baseball game (see what I did there? hint: first paragraph), where John Lithgow complains that popcorn isn't something you should have at a baseball game. He wants hot dogs. Well guess what, corn farmer, you should be grateful people are buying your product - you know, the only available one. The players are wearing Yankees hats, but I don't know if they're supposed to be that Yankees or just some local guys. It doesn't matter, because the game is interrupted by a huge dust storm. There's not crying in baseball, and also no finishing the game because of dust delays.

 Coop brings down a drone because he's a mischievous sort, but a strange magnetic incident in the house (Murph calls it her "ghost") leads them to a secret NASA facility where his old mentor, Professor Brand (Michael Caine) is working on humanity's last chance: a ship capable of travelling through a wormhole near Saturn. How or why the wormhole got there is mentioned, but not speculated on, but NASA sent twelve astronauts into another galaxy in the hopes of finding a new home for humans. Three signals (Dr.'s Mann, Edmonds, and Miller) have come back indicating likely candidates, so Brand wants Coop to fly the ship into the wormhole and investigate. The crew of the Endurance also includes Romilly (David Gyasi), Doyle (Wes Bentley), Brand's daughter (Anne Hathaway), and TARS (Bill Irwin), a robot on loan from what's left of the military. One of the first things TARS does during takeoff it to make a joke about shooting Coop out of the airlock, just in case you didn't think Nolan was aware that Interstellar is often reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 That, it turns out, is not a bad thing, at least for the first half of Interstellar. Once we get into space, Nolan stretches out a little bit for some big time spectacle filmmaking, and if you thought you needed to see Gravity on a big screen, Interstellar demands the largest one you can find. Also, one with comfortable chairs, because with the trailers and ads and everything else, you're looking at a three hour minimum investment. But for a lot of the movie, it's worth it. We've seen the vastness of space before, but Nolan's choice to keep the camera attached to the ship most of the time (like we see it in actual NASA footage*) adds a verisimilitude to the proceedings that helps sell the science fiction elements. McConaughey's folksy twang and a more dialed-back than usual Anne Hathaway also help in that regard. They're scientists, but they aren't science types, if that makes sense. They understand the consequences of their actions and have to weigh the adverse effects of their decisions while soaking in the fact they're in another galaxy.

 If I'm being honest, I would have liked more of the exploring the other planets instead of the part of Interstellar that you don't necessarily get from the trailers: the back and forth between Coop in space and his family on Earth. Instead of focusing on relativity and black holes, we have to keep jumping back home to see that Murph stills hasn't forgiven her father and now she's grown up and is Jessica Chastain (Tom is now Casey Affleck disguised as Ben Affleck in Argo). Murph is working with Professor Brand on how to save everybody on Earth because they haven't heard from the ship in 23-ish years (2 years to Saturn plus another 21 thanks to a disastrous turn of events on the first world they land on). It's here that the Nolan brothers introduce the theme of Interstellar that isn't about exploration: that love may be a tangible concept that transcends dimensions and we just don't understand it yet. Oddly enough, the internet's least favorite person (Anne Hathaway) delivers the best monologue about it, but it leads Interstellar down a path I maybe could have done without. The space exploration was so much more interesting, and the Earth plot isn't.

 Since we've moved to the "gripe" stage, it would be nice, just once, for writers to drop the well worn science fiction trope of "scientist from the previous mission goes insane and nearly ruins the mission." It nearly derailed Sunshine, an otherwise sober, intelligent movie that drastically shifts into a slasher film near the very end, complete with its own Freddy Krueger. The Nolans don't do anything quite so drastic, but it's clear from the moment that Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) wakes up from cryo-sleep that he's not selling Coop, Brand, or Romilly an honest bill of goods about his planet or his agenda. Not only is it predictable what he's eventually going to do, but the "turn" is almost comical as he leads Coop out to the middle of nowhere for a fistfight. Instead of, oh, I don't know, appealing to the team that losing one of the four remaining scientists tasked with keeping the human race alive is detrimental to all of them.

 This works to a certain lack of logic that is, I must admit, typically when you think carefully about Christopher Nolan films, from the Batman series to Inception, or even back to Memento. After an impassioned speech by Brand about why they should fly to Edmonds' planet instead of Mann's (they only have enough fuel to pursue one of the remaining leads), Cooper and Romilly reasonably determine that Mann's reports are better than Edmonds'. If we were to approach the same reasoning to Cooper's decision to go back to Earth on the off chance that he can disprove the "Plan A can never work" argument that conveniently surfaces right after they've revived Mann, there's no way the other three would allow him to go back through the wormhole. Ignoring the convenient timing of Murph's message, we already know that there's no guarantee of when Cooper would be returning to Earth, or even if there's enough time to come up with a plan to save humanity.

 This brings us to the second part of Interstellar that I can't quite give a pass to: after Mann tries to steal the ship and blows up part of it when he tries to open the airlock without docking, Cooper pulls off a near impossible feat of docking while the wheel is spinning (think of a sped-up version of 2001) and decides to send Brand to Edmond's planet using the black hole's gravitation to slingshot her (remember, not enough fuel). This means that Cooper and TARS have to pilot the other two shuttles and sacrifice themselves by being sucked into the black hole, where we've been continually told is a singularity they really would love to know more about. Invariably, Coop is sucked into the singularity and finds himself outside of the ship, floating in a strange, multidimensional space. Upon further investigation, he realizes he's behind the shelf in Murph's bedroom, and that (wait for it) he can slightly effect physical space around her throughout her timeline. Yes, Coop is his daughter's "ghost," and if he can communicate with her, he'll be able to save humanity where Professor Brand failed.

 I wouldn't have so much of a problem with this part of Interstellar were it not for the point when TARS chimes in over the radio and Coop begins explaining what's happening and what he's going to do. Like, out loud, literally explaining to the audience exactly what they're seeing, it's implications, and how he can communicate with grown up Murph (through a watch he left behind, using Morse Code). Nolan takes all of the ambiguity out of the sequence, and flat out tells us (through Coop) that humans evolve to the point where we can see beyond all dimensions and create the wormhole to save ourselves. I'm not spoiling anything because that's what McConaughey says, almost verbatim. At the outset of the "ghost" section, I really thought "he's not going in this direction, is he?" but by the end, when even the cheap seats are being spoon fed the plot, it was almost too much.

 And had Interstellar not regained some of its footing at the very end, when Nolan successfully pulls at the heartstrings (at least for the Grinch-like Cap'n), there's a strong possibility I would have come out hating this movie. The emotional manipulation is transparent at the end, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't, but Nolan finds a way to make Cooper meeting the old version of Murphy (Ellen Burstyn, who I did not recognize at all**) poignant enough that I could overlook the Saturn space station that looked like Elysium, dumb baseball callback, and implausible ending where Coop steals a spaceship to go find Brand. Looking back on it, I'm not sure why I'm okay with that, because when you apply logic to it, that's a really stupid way to end a movie that tries hard not to be dumb, scientifically. But that's how Christopher Nolan films are, I guess: they're fun to watch, offer astounding visual spectacle, and make about as much sense as Bazooka Joe gum in retrospect.

 The acting is solid all around, and if you're one of those people who inexplicably hate Anne Hathaway, this is not going to be on your "Exhibit A" YouTube videos. On the other hand, if you aren't down with the McConaughnissance, you'll find plenty of "all right, all right, all right" in his sometimes mumbled dialogue. I thought he was fine, but something about his drawl is always going to invite the "he's just stoned" reaction, and this won't change that. Jessica Chastain has a lot of screen time in the second half, but Murph is such a cipher of a character that she doesn't have anything to work with. Casey Affleck gets even less, and he registers about as much as Wes Bentley, who has half as much screen time and dies (hey, I said SPOILERS a long time ago). Nolan sneaks in a bunch of well known actors in small roles, well beyond the "oh, I forgot Matt Damon was in this!": David Oyelowo (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) is Murph's principal, William Devane (Payback) is a member of NASA, and for no discernible reason, Topher Grace (Predators) just appears as Murph's friend late in the film. I guess he's the doctor that she mentions can look at Tom's kids (dust clouds, as it turns out, are bad on the lungs), but he's just suddenly there, and you think, "wait, is that Topher Grace?" Yep, it is. He's in Interstellar. Who knew?

 This isn't really a negative review, but I guess it's not quite positive, either. In his filmography, I'm inclined to put Interstellar somewhere in the middle, above Insomnia but not quite near Memento. Visually, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, but if you have persistent issues with Nolan (as much of the internet and some of the critical community do), this isn't going to win you over. All of his highs and lows are on display, and it depends on how you weigh them whether that's enough to make Interstellar worth three hours of your time. It falls short of 2001, the film it's trying to come closest to, but I give Nolan a lot of credit for trying to make a movie about ideas, even if some of them are hoary or clumsily handled. This is mass audience entertainment that isn't just going to the lowest common denominator (*coughrobotdinosaurscough*), so that counts for something.

 At this point in his career, I imagine most of you know where you fall in the Christopher Nolan spectrum. Through no clear action of his own, he's become a very divisive filmmaker, in part because in a world of increasingly skimpy Hollywood output, he's afforded carte blanche as a filmmaker and every new movie he makes is treated like an event. This seems to magnify both the positives and negatives inherent in his style of filmmaking, and reactions are equal parts "that was great!" and "the emperor has no clothes!" which enter the echo chamber of the internet and are magnified. I don't know that I would have devoted this much time to a review that was this mixed if there wasn't something to Interstellar worth talking about, good or bad. Believe me, there are films I could have reviewed that you'd probably be very surprised to hear I wasn't crazy about (Boyhood, Gone Girl), but that I'm just not sure I have much to add to the discussion. With this film, at least Nolan gave me something to talk about.

 Interstellar isn't the best science fiction film I've seen this year, but 2014 has been a surprisingly fertile year for great science fiction. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you should probably see this over Ouija, but I haven't seen Ouija so I could be totally wrong. No, wait, I couldn't. For all of it's faults, there's no way that Interstellar is not way better than Ouija. Cheap shot at Ouija? Easy target? Probably, but I don't know if Interstellar holds its own against something like Snowpiercer, but it was made with a different size audience in mind***. It may not win the game in a grandiose fashion, but Christopher Nolan delivers another solid, mostly impressive film. For some people, that's not going to be enough, but for most it's better by a long shot than most of what passes for "crowd pleasing" movies.




 * Unless that is also faked - thanks, future textbook editors. You just gave conspiracy theorists years worth of material...
** All the more confusing, because you can totally tell it's Ellen Burstyn in the "documentary" footage at the beginning. You just don't know she's Murph at that point.
*** Or not, but I guess we'll never know since the Weinstein's sat on Snowpiercer after trying to cut it to pieces, and then half-heartedly dropped it in a few theatres.

Cap'n Howdy Presents his 2012 Recap: The Middle

 The middle section of this recap of 2012 is the largest, and perhaps trickiest to deal with for the Cap'n. It's not as though I didn't enjoy many of these films, and most of them come recommended for one reason or the other, with some reservations. I have a good reason why the bottom of the middle include movies that are a marked improvement over the worst films I saw (which I'll explain), and the top of the list are movies that almost made the cut of my favorites. In fact, several of them may be on your "favorite" list, but I had to draw the line somewhere, and despite REALLY enjoying all of them, there's just a little something that keeps them from being among the very best I saw.

 But that doesn't necessarily explain why it's so tricky writing about the middle section. You'll find that many of the movies on here are films I didn't write reviews for, mostly because I didn't have much to say about them at the time. Lots of them are all right, but nothing special, and I just didn't think I could add anything to the discussion about them, which leaves me with the task of doing so now. So this is going to be the longest of the recaps, likely with the fewest links to original reviews. That's your warning; grab a bite to eat, a cup of coffee, and let's sit down and look at 2012 from The Middle.

 As I said, all of these films are recommended, mostly as something you could rent if you felt curious about the directors, cast, writers, or stories. They aren't films you need to run out and see right now - that's the next list - but on their own these films could provide an evening's entertainment that won't drive you into a Resident Evil induced rage.

 Starting at the bottom of the middle:

 Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie - Tim Burton continues along his path of "things you recognize, re-imagined by a director you really used to like" by adapting the long running gothic soap opera Dark Shadows and his own short film, Frankenweenie, but this time it's stop-motion animated and three times as long.

Are you ready for the shocker? I actually liked Dark Shadows more than Frankenweenie. Nobody else did, but Dark Shadows isn't nearly as horrible as I expected it to be, and instead of nonstop jokes about the 1970s, it's a surprisingly atmospheric and violent meditation on family ties. That said, it has too many characters, superfluous cameos that really don't move the plot forward (Alice Cooper, I'm looking at you), and while it's better than I was prepared for, that doesn't mean it's even close to the best Tim Burton is capable of. I suppose after being disappointed by Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride, the idea of a marginally entertaining Tim Burton film was refreshing. That said, everybody else seems to hate it, so be warned.

 Frankenweenie could be better if Burton could figure out how to stretch a 30 minute short film into a full narrative, but he didn't. Basically the structure of the original Frankenweenie has been elongated and stitched together with a clever pastiche of Joe Dante-esque "monsters run amok" - including the best (and possibly only) Bambi Meets Godzilla reference I can remember. Unfortunately, the first forty five minutes drag so much that it's more of a relief than a delight when the reanimated pets wreak havoc all over New Holland. I will say it was nice to (hear) Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and Winona Ryder return to the Burton-verse, but ultimately Frankenweenie overstays its welcome before it has the chance to be any fun.

To Rome with Love - This is pretty much "mid-grade" Woody Allen - it's judged more harshly because of how great Midnight in Paris was, but To Rome with Love is nowhere near as bad as Small Time Crooks, Anything Else, or Curse of the Jade Scorpion. It's just a pretty good anthology film with all of the baggage that accompanies that genre: some good stories, one that's just okay, and one outright dud.

 My favorite of the four sections involves Jesse Eisenberg having a chance encounter with Alec Baldwin while the latter is visiting his old neighborhood. Both are architects, and Eisenberg invites Baldwin to join him for coffee with girlfriend Greta Gerwig. You've probably seen the trailer and know that Ellen Page shows up as Gerwig's friend, a notorious boyfriend stealer, and Baldwin is immediately aware of what's going to happen. What makes it successful is realizing that Baldwin's character isn't actually there for most of the story - he exists as a sort of Jiminy Cricket for Eisenberg, interacting with everybody only in his imagination.

 To Rome with Love has its moments, but most of the segments are slow to start (the Allison Pill / Woody Allen in particular is unbearable at the outset) but are salvaged by images like an opera singer who can only perform while in the shower. Only the section with Penelope Cruz never goes anywhere, but it's a mostly amiable effort by the prolific Allen.

Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era -This is a pretty short documentary focused on the "Big Three" of Scream Queens: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer, and Brinke Stevens. If you don't know who they are then I can assure you this documentary won't be of much interest to you, but if you're a fan of Night of the Demons, Slumber Party Massacre, Return of the Living Dead or Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, then you'll have fun watching this. You get to know all three of them before, during, and after their runs as the faces (among other parts) of horror flicks in the 1980s. It is, at times, a little aimless in direction, but Stevens, Bauer, and Quigley are such entertaining subjects that it's worth checking out.

 The Woman in Black - A pretty good horror movie that works best by avoiding jump scares, but don't really reinvent the wheel. I will admit to being creeped out after watching the film alone and trying to sleep in an empty house.

 Absentia

 Some Guy Who Kills People

  Side By Side - This is a well made documentary about 35mm film vs digital film, hosted and narrated by Keanu Reeves, who manages to talk to the big names in digital and conventional filmmaking. Like who? Well, James Cameron, David Lynch, Steven Soderbergh, George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez, Christopher Nolan, Walter Murch, the Wachowski siblings, and Martin Scorsese, just to name a few. It's quite comprehensive and I wish I had enjoyed it more than I did. I enjoyed the debate, even if it leans heavily on the "digital" side of the argument, but I tended to drift while Side By Side explained how film is developed, edited, how cameras work, and what color timing is. While it makes perfect sense to explain it to audiences who don't know, it held me back from really getting into the film early on.

 V/H/S - This is a highly divisive combination of the anthology and "found footage" subgenres of horror, and if you have reservations about the latter or you get motion sickness from it, I'd go ahead and pass. The first and last segments are my favorites, with the others falling between "that was okay" and "I could do without that," and it's probably longer than it needs to be, but I liked it. Be warned, there are a lot of people who really hate this movie.

 The Expendables 2 - A more successful sequel than I think any of us were expecting, in large part because the narrative is streamlined to a "revenge" film. It benefits greatly from having Jean-Claude Van Damme as the villain, but is offset by the cameos from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris being mostly one-liners referencing their films, including a "Chuck Norris Fact" from the man himself. I guess the groan inducing nature of that is worth putting up with because The Expendables 2 is a better movie than The Expendables.

 Savages

  Cloud Atlas - So... I appreciate what the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer were trying to do. Adapting David Mitchell's Russian Nesting Egg of a novel into a movie that is, essentially, about recurring motifs (emotionally, historically, and experientially) and not totally dropping the ball deserves some level of admiration, and the nearly three hour film tries hard to keep it together for most of its running time.

 I can admire it, and appreciate it, but I don't think it was that successful. I'm not certain I liked it, although I wouldn't say I disliked it or outright hated it. I'm still on the fence. After a while, the decision to have the cast play multiple characters (of varying ethnicity and, eventually, gender) ceased to be effective and instead became distracting. I didn't want to be able to identify Hugh Grant immediately every time he showed up in the film, but sure enough that's what ended up happening, especially during his turn as "Hugh Grant plays Michael Caine." Ultimately the film gets hung up on that gimmick, even though I'd like to believe that it's not an intentional case of gimmickry. Why it's necessary makes sense, from a narrative and tonal standpoint, but it just doesn't gel. Or it didn't for me.  

 Killing Them Softly - There's a great crime movie in Andrew Domink's adaptation of George Higgin's Cogan's Trade, but along the way in adapting it, the director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford had an idea that just hamstrings the whole project. I can understand why Dominik saw parallels between the novel and the 2008 financial crisis - it concerns mob gambling being disrupted by corruption on the part of its higher ups - but by integrating those parallels into the film, he nearly ruins the entire movie.

 Brad Pitt is great as the hitman who comes in to clean up the mess made by two lowlife fuck ups played by Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy (who are also great) after they rob a game run by Ray Liotta, who once held up one of his own games and then bragged about it after the fact. Richard Jenkins is very good as the middle-man between Pitt and the faceless mob decision makers, who are so cowardly they can't even convey what it is they want the killer to do, and James Gandolfini has a nice smaller role as a hitman so destroyed by alcoholism and his divorce that he won't leave his hotel room. Most of the actual story is really compelling and I enjoyed it, but then EVERY SINGLE TIME a television or radio is on, we have to listen to news coverage of the financial crisis, usually with Bush or Obama making speeches about the impending bailout. If that's not heavy-handed enough (and its omnipresence is frustrating to say the least), the film opens and closes by reminding you that Obama is running for President and then wins, which is coupled with a dismissive commentary about the politics of "Change." Why? To be honest, I'm not sure, because the ultimate payoff of the final conversation between Pitt and Jenkins doesn't need this ham-handed political commentary. It's a shame, because otherwise I think I would really dig Killing Them Softly.

 This is 40 - Judd Apatow's latest film has the least plot of any of his directorial efforts, and that has to be saying something. It's less of a movie than a chunk of the lives of characters we kinda knew from Knocked Up (hence the "Sort of Sequel" tagline), devoted to the fact that both protagonists are turning 40 in the same week. They are having financial trouble but go on vacation, they fight, they have tenuous relationships with their parents, they have daughters trying to figure out their place in the world, and jobs that aren't going the way they planned. None of this necessarily pays off in any way, and while Apatow finds room for Jason Segel, Chris O'Dowd, Lena Dunham, Megan Fox, John Lithgow, Albert Brooks, Robert Smigel, Melissa McCarthy, and Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day, neither Seth Rogen or Katherine Heigl's characters appear or, unless I missed it in passing, are even mentioned, even though both films end in a hospital and involve a surprise pregnancy (SPOILER).

 Despite the aimless nature of This is 40, it is an oddly appealing film, in no small part because of Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd. The film definitely leans more in the Funny People side of Apatow's films than the Knocked Up category, but if you don't mind spending a little over two hours watching people live fictionalized versions of the writer / director's experiences, there's a good time to be had.

 The Silver Linings Playbook - This is probably my least favorite David O. Russell movie, and I don't mean that as a sleight to The Silver Linings Playbook. Unfortunately, when the standard is set by Flirting with Disaster, I Heart Huckabees, and Three Kings, a movie as predictable as The Silver Linings Playbook is going to pale in comparison. And yet, despite the fact that you can watch the trailer and know exactly where the story is going to go, I did really enjoy the journey. The actors make most of the difference, although it doesn't hurt that all of them are playing characters with moderate to severe emotional issues.

 It's a funny movie in an uncomfortable way, especially in the awkward ways that Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence's characters try to navigate their emotional baggage, and that helps overcome the predictability. That, and it's also nice to see Robert DeNiro and Chris Tucker in a good movie for the first time in a while. I don't quite agree with the Academy Award nominations for acting, because while I liked The Silver Linings Playbook, I guess I didn't think it was anything more than just pretty good. Not great, but fun. 

 Indie Game: The Movie

  Prometheus - What I really enjoy about Prometheus is constantly being off-set by the truly stupid character beats and story turns, and while I am intrigued by a lot of the ideas in the film, the decision to introduce plot points for the express purpose of "saving them for the inevitable sequel" drives me nuts. Believe me, I've written about this before.

 By the same token, Prometheus is one of the few movies from 2012 that I've seen more than once this year (many of the others are on this list, oddly, although at least two will show up in the "Best Of"). I've watched the film in theaters, with the commentaries on (Ridley Scott's and the John Spaihts / Damon Lindelof bicker-fest), the deleted scenes and I watched The Furious Gods: The Making of Prometheus - all four hours of it. I mulled over Scott's decision to explicitly connect the Alien and Blade Runner universes, I've re-examined why characters made the idiotic decisions they made, and read the original draft of the screenplay.

 Somewhere in there, one can piece together where Prometheus went right and where it went very wrong, and I guess that makes it all the more frustrating. When Prometheus is firing on all cylinders, I'm blown away by Scott's vision and world construction. But so many inexplicably stupid things happen that I just can't overlook that it makes it hard to commit to the film, and no amount of appendices to the film itself can change that fact.

 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Speaking of appendices, can I suggest that for a movie called The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is actually mostly absent (or at least not a factor in any way) for most of the story? I actually liked The Hobbit, but often find myself telling people "it's not as bad as you've heard," which is never a good way to entice someone with reservations.

 The truth is that the negativity towards The Hobbit IS hyperbolic, and the film is nowhere as bad as you've probably heard. It's not perfect though, and I suppose that's the standard Peter Jackson is being held to. With the rose-tinted memory we have of The Lord of the Rings films and the misgivings about turning one book into three movies (not to mention the anti-Jackson backlash in the wake of King Kong and The Lovely Bones), as soon as critics and the internet smelled blood, they pounced. The Hobbit is... leisurely, to say the least. Not un-enjoyably so, but languidly paced nonetheless. Jackson tries very hard to make a small story a larger part of the Lord of the Rings narrative, and in doing so adds a LOT to the film that's either mentioned in passing or not mentioned at all in the book.

 I resisted writing a review because I didn't see the film in 48fps and was tired of reading about the experience from people who had, and there didn't seem to be much to say that hadn't already been covered ad nauseum elsewhere. For me, An Unexpected Journey was a lot like The Fellowship of the Ring, in good and bad ways, but overall it was a trip worth taking. Maybe all of the digressions weren't necessary, but I liked Radagast the Brown and the White Council. The Game of Riddles was fantastic, and Martin Freeman had a good go at Bilbo, even if he barely factors into his own story. So yeah, it's not what I guess everybody expected, but it's not the worst thing ever. Sorry if you genuinely hated The Hobbit, because I don't quite get where that would come from. It misses perfection, but it's unrealistic to expect that considering the extenuating circumstances.

 The Dark Knight Rises - I thought it was a fitting end to Christopher Nolan's interpretation of the Batman mythos. People really seem to hate this movie, at least if the internet is to be believed. In the link you can find some discussion of "plot holes" in The Dark Knight Rises, and why they don't matter thematically. I'd also add that Anne Hathaway was a great Catwoman and I wasn't expected the film to have so much humor early on. It was appreciated - including the hilariously bad remixing of Bane's dialogue on the plane, which makes him sound like he's speaking from a different room.

 Lawless - I really liked Lawless. The Proposition is still my favorite John Hillcoat movie, but Lawless is no slouch. Read the review to see the little things that endeared the film to me, and please don't let the presence of Shia LeBeouf keep you away. His character is quite appropriate to how you're likely to view him as a person, and you'll get to see Guy Pearce beat the ever loving shit out of him.

 Seven Psychopaths - Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) writes and directs a movie that ends up being about itself. It's a mixture of Adaptation and 8 1/2, filtered through the lens of movies about criminals and hitmen. Like In Bruges, it's frequently quite funny, often violent, and gleefully inappropriate. We laughed quite a lot during an employee screening, but I must admit I haven't seen it again yet. I want to, but the memory is fading, and like Lawless, while I really did like Seven Psychopaths, I prefer McDonagh's In Bruges more.

 The Man with the Iron Fists -  Not much I want to add here, other than I saw it again (twice) after writing the initial review. It's probably fair to mention that if you don't REALLY like kung-fu movies and the Wu-Tang Clan, The Man with the Iron Fists might not be your cup of tea. I mean, it might be, but I was pre-disposed to want to see a RZA movie, and it doesn't surprise me at all that for the most part I was satisfied with the end result.

 Wreck-It Ralph - Confession time: I'm not a huge video game nerd. I caught probably half of the "easter eggs" in Wreck-It Ralph - most notably a random Metal Gear Solid joke - but the good news is that you don't HAVE to be encyclopedic in your knowledge of arcade games from the 80s and 90s to have a good time watching the film. I think I was more surprised by Sarah Silverman than John C. Reilly, because she's very much against type in Wreck-It Ralph, and it works in a way I wasn't expecting. In fact, most of the film really works, including the reveal of the villain, which I honestly did not see coming. Impressive, Disney, most impressive.

 Haywire - I didn't get around to seeing Magic Mike in 2012 (I'll rectify that, I promise), so Steven Soderbergh's action movie gets the nod near the top of the "almost" list. The review pretty much covers why.

 John Dies at the End -This is a faithful adaptation of David Wong's novel by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), at least for the first half. The film gets to about the halfway point in the book, and then realizes it has thirty minutes to wrap up the rest of the story, so liberties are taken. Honestly, I didn't mind them, because I knew what was being condensed and most of the spirit is kept intact.

 That said, I totally understand why people who haven't read John Dies at the End don't like the movie. There's a sense of context that's missing from the film as it hurtles towards its conclusion that further confuses the comedy / horror tone and probably loses a lot of people. If you haven't read the book, I wouldn't watch the movie at all. You're going to hate it because of how it collapses in the last thirty minutes. If you have read the book, know Coscarelli mostly made sensible changes (not going to Vegas, diminishing Amy's role in the overall story, dropping certain elements of Korrok's plan), and made at least one I don't really understand (changing Molly's name), and two I don't know how I feel about (no Fred Durst and John's band doesn't sound nearly as bad as I thought it would). I dig John Dies at the End, and if it ever happens, I'd watch This Book (Movie?) is Filled with Spiders, although with what they had to do on a low budget here, I can't imagine that ever happening. That's a shame.

 21 Jump Street - I don't think I've laughed that hard or that consistently at another comedy this year. I was not expecting this movie to be good in the first place, let alone as funny as it is. For some reason, "Korean Jesus don't have time for your problems" pops up at work in conversation regularly.

 I'll be back soon with the cream of the crop, and because I've given up on trying to put it in order, you can expect a structure similar to this one. Are you excited?

Retro Review: Batman (1989)

 Independently of the impending release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, I had the urge to watch Tim Burton's 1989 reinvention of Batman last week. It's been a while since I watched what amounted to the first major re-launch of the Dark Knight on screens since the 1960s, and despite the fact that I've written at some length about Batman Returns (here, for example), there were certain lingering assumptions I'd made about the film that I wanted to test.

 One of the arguments I've long held (and one that appears in the Batman Returns review) is that Burton's first go-round with Bruce Wayne was filtered by studio involvement, including the prominence of a Prince-heavy soundtrack that doesn't really match Danny Elfman's score. I also contended that Michael Keaton was overshadowed throughout most of the film by Jack Nicholson's iconic take on the Joker, and that as a result the sequel represented a more "pure" expression of director and material. It's an easy position to take when you haven't watched Batman in its entirety for several years, so does that judgment hold up after revisiting the film?

 Well, I think I let memory dictate a lot of what I thought to be true about Batman. It is true that making Jack Napier (and by extension, the Joker) the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents elevates his role in Batman's origin story (thus allowing a "you created me, I created you" motif), and that Nicholson dominates every scene he's in, even ones with legendary scenery chewer Jack Palance ("You... are my numbah one guy!"). However, I allowed memory to disproportionately increase Nicholson's screen time, so it was a bit surprising how much of the first half of the film is devoted to Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) and Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) trying in vain to track down something, anything about the mysterious Batman. We're introduced to Bruce Wayne through them, accidentally at that, and in more than one way - they go to Wayne Manor in order to track down Commissioner Gordon (Pat Hingle), District Attorney Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams), the Mayor (Lee Wallace) and get them on the record about the vigilante terrorizing criminals.

 What's interesting is that Burton and screenwriters Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren set up Batman as the more important component of the Wayne / Dark Knight dynamic, but then devote most of the screen time to Michael Keaton with the mask off. Yes, the film begins with Batman in action (after a clever misdirection regarding whether we're starting with the origin story up front) and then shifts largely to Wayne and Vale, interrupted by the Joker's romantic advances. Unless you count the final showdown in Gotham Cathedral, the interactions between this unorthodox love triangle are split evenly between Batman (in the art museum) and Bruce (in Vale's apartment). While the art museum sequence is more visually dynamic, the Wayne / Joker showdown has more character resonance.

 The museum sequence is, for the record, the first of two (and only two, unless you count the closing credits) Prince songs that appear in the film. Despite my lingering memories of "Batdance," "Party Man" and "Trust" are the only songs featured in Batman in their entirety, and both are linked to the Joker, who dances along, making them diegetic to the world. So let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Joker is a big Prince fan. So much so that he has Prince songs you've never heard before that are, in one form or fashion, very appropriate in the scenes they appear. If we accept that the Danny Elfman score represents Bruce Wayne / Batman and the Prince songs are expressions of the Joker, I can overlook the apparent clash of styles. Also, while I don't love the way Nicholson gyrates to "Trust" in particular, it is a good fit for his attitude and style.

 I also found myself more fond of Keaton as Batman than as Wayne (even though the lack of a strong chin and smaller frame make him look like a skinny guy in a suit). Maybe it's that Wayne, while being in a LOT of the movie, doesn't register much as a character until the inevitable flashback to the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne (which happens more than an hour into the film). In fact, Bruce Wayne doesn't have much to do other than look intense or deep in thought between his charming introduction to Knox and Vale and when he unleashes on the Joker ("You want to get nuts? Let's get nuts!") and is blindsided by the clown's reply ("You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?").

 But watching the film again, Batman himself isn't all that interesting - he's not a lot more than the sum of his "wonderful toys." The fight scenes aren't very memorably, his movement is a little awkward (watch him sneaking around Axis Chemicals or even when he lands on the rooftop in the beginning of the film) and without his grappling hook, Batman doesn't even defeat the Joker or save Vicki Vale at the end of the film. He's thwarted by his nemesis and left dangling as the Clown Prince of Crime escapes in a helicopter. The most impressive detective work done by the Dark Knight happens offscreen, as Wayne and Alfred crack the secret chemical reaction that causes Gotham's beauty products to become lethal (and effectively so - those frozen death grins stick with you).

 Additionally, I like how Billy Dee William's Harvey Dent is introduced in such a way that never indicates he'll ever become Two Face. He's just the District Attorney of Gotham City, trying to nail Carl Grissom and to contend with the new threat of the Joker.

 Still, Batman is not particularly the ineffective setup to a better sequel for Burton and Keaton. I found myself frequently engrossed by the film, by the world and art design of Anton Furst, and it was a strong reminder of when a Danny Elfman theme really stuck with you. I've been trying not to compare Burton's Batman to the Nolan films (in particular Nicholson to Ledger), but I do think that Batman is more successful in relaunching Batman the icon than Batman Begins is. Batman Begins is a great Bruce Wayne story, but Batman does a better job at balancing the necessity of the myth that Wayne must become. It doesn't always balance the two as well, but then again neither does Batman Begins. I can't help but wonder what Batman would be like if the necessity of linking Wayne to Napier hadn't been in place, or if the film had focused more on characters on the outside experiencing the vigilante (as much of the first forty five minutes is), but the film still works. It still entertains, and I'm amazed how dark this "family friendly" movie is, considering I saw it when I was ten.

Four Questions Raised by The Dark Knight Rises (and why they don't really matter)

 IMPORTANT SPOILER NOTE: This entire piece is predicated on readers having seen The Dark Knight Rises, because it spoils practically all the major plot points including twists involving characters and the end of the film. If you've seen the film or have no desire to see The Dark Knight Rises but are curious, please continue. If you haven't seen the film and plan to, please wait. I'll still be here when you get back.

 I was not aware that as a member of the online reviewing community that I was supposed to hate Christopher Nolan and everything he makes. Whoops. As someone who enjoyed Following, Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception (only Insomnia doesn't really do anything for me), I guess I failed the "Christopher Nolan is overrated and he's a sloppy filmmaker and I hate him and he sucks and people who like him are slobbering fanboys etc" demographic. My bad guys, I didn't get the memo.

 From the negative reviews of The Dark Knight Rises, I can tell that people who didn't like the movie REALLY didn't like it, but I have to say that I once again disagree with you. I don't think it's a consistent a film as The Dark Knight, but I found it engaging, emotionally fulfilling, and a fitting closer to Nolan's version of Batman. Whether or not it reflects your particular interpretation of what Batman should be, I think that the film succeeds in closing the larger story Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer were trying to tell using Bruce Wayne.

  That said, I can understand that some of the negative reactions to The Dark Knight Rises (and Christopher Nolan's filmmaking style in general) are based in legitimate complaints about logic lapses, continuity gaffes, and plot holes. I totally get why people are pulling their hair out that the majority of audiences don't seem bothered by these problems when they could (and should) derail most movies. Rather than providing an expanded thesis for why it doesn't matter to The Dark Knight Rises, my central argument is this: certain logical inconsistencies are forgivable in a film that succeeds thematically and emotionally. Also, I'm going to point you in the direction of Red Letter Media's Half in the Bag. Their review of the film succinctly covers why The Dark Knight Rises overcomes normally crippling problems, even if I get why many online critics can't abide by that.

 So here are four perfectly fair questions raised by scenes in The Dark Knight Rises that don't have answers to speak of, and why most people never even think twice about them. I'm going to try to explain what the problems are resulting from the questions, how the film doesn't acknowledge them, and why they are ultimately irrelevant to the success of The Dark Knight Rises. They aren't the only issues that could be raised, but they are four tied directly to the way Nolan constructs the story I imagine infuriates some viewers.

 1. Why does the chase scene following the Stock Exchange hostage crisis turn from day to night in eight minutes?

 The Problem: So Bane and his mercenaries attack the New York Gotham City Stock Exchange* and initiate a program using Bruce Wayne's fingerprints to make a series of bad trades, bankrupting Wayne Enterprises. As the police surround the stock exchange, it's clearly daylight outside, and at best could be argued to be dusk. Unless Gotham's stock exchange closes later than the New York Stock Exchange (4pm) or the sun sets earlier in October (identified during the Gotham Knights football game that happens shortly thereafter), it's hard to argue that Gotham City went from daylight to pitch black in the 8 minutes it takes to run the program executing the trades.

 Why It Doesn't Matter: Nolan gets away with this lapse in continuity and editing because most of the chase scene between the police and motorcyclists happens in a tunnel, thus allowing Batman to sneak up on the cyclists with the Batpod using his power shortage device introduced earlier in the film. In fact, two policemen (a veteran and a rookie) are surprised that the lights go out, and the older cop sees Batman and tells his partner, "Son, you're in for a show tonight!"

 Because Batman is so associated with darkness and the subsequent GCPD police chase of Batman (allowing Bane to escape) is more dynamic at night than in daylight, it's acceptable in visual terms to cheat the sunset during the tunnel sequence so that when Batman emerges from the other side, the news footage Selina Kyle and Jim Gordon see (separately) is at night. The image of the lone Batpod on the highway pursued by red and blue lights is a more lasting image.

 The sequence culminates with Batman appearing to be trapped in a dark tunnel downtown, where acting Commissioner Foley and John Blake believe they have him trapped. The dark alleyway disguises the Bat, Wayne's new vehicle, allowing for the surprise reveal that transitions from the chase to Batman's rescue of Selina Kyle from Daggett's thugs (including Bane). So the transitional lapse, while noticeable, is forgivable because it provides a more dynamic and exciting chase sequence in short order.

 2. Why does Bane drop everything he's doing in the midst of an elaborate plan to ruin Gotham city to fly halfway around the world to drop Bruce Wayne in the prison he grew up in?

 The Problem: After Bane cracks Batman's mask, breaks his back, and then walks away, Selina Kyle leaves the sewers and the camera fades to black. It fades in on Blake seeing Kyle try to skip town and he catches her at the airport. After unsuccessfully trying to convince her the police could protect her from Bane, Blake admits he was looking for Bruce Wayne, and when he asks if Bane killed him, Selina responds "I'm not sure."

 The film then cuts to a series of images, partially blurred, of someone being carried over rocks in harsh sunlight, before Bruce Wayne wakes up in a prison cell with Bane leaning over him. Bane informs Wayne that he is "home" and that Bruce will suffer here, watching the mercenary manipulate Gotham City into destroying itself before he finishes Ra's al Ghul's mission from Batman Begins. But was it worth the effort to abandon overseeing the construction projects in the sewers to fly from Gotham City to India (where location shooting for the prison took place) just to drop off Bruce Wayne next to a TV screen? It's implied he's paying two of the prison elders (one of which is the doctor responsible for Bane wearing a mask) to keep Wayne alive, but was the effort necessary?

 Why It Doesn't Matter: Taking Wayne to the prison in the middle of a dastardly master plan seems like an impossible task, until you remember that before Wayne entered the sewers with Selina Kyle, Miranda Tate suggested they could "take my plane and fly anywhere," which Bruce replies to by saying "not tonight." That explains how Bane smuggled Bruce Wayne out of Gotham City and flew across the country. They "how" is less important than the "why" - Bane's punishment of Wayne is "more severe" because it mirrors his own exile, his own sense of loss and being unable to protect the people most important to him.

 It also removes Bruce Wayne completely from his comfort zone: not only has he been wiped out financially and lost Alfred's support (and presence), but now he finds himself physically incapacitated and spiritually broken. It also thematically ties into the opening of Batman Begins, where Bruce Wayne is introduced in another foreign prison, that time by choice. He was figuratively "rescued" from that "hell" by Ra's al Ghul, who invites him to the League of Shadows, so being exiled to another kind of "hell" by someone excommunicated by the League is dramatically appropriate. His ultimate escape from the hole is the final transformative act that brings Batman to the point where he's capable of overcoming Bane, so while it functions as a lapse in story structure, thematically the sidestep is appropriate and necessary to live up to the title The Dark Knight Rises.

 3. How does Bruce Wayne climb out of the prison well, and more importantly, how does a man with no money and no contacts get back into a heavily patrolled city with one entrance and frozen waterways without being noticed?

 The Problem: It's established early in The Dark Knight Rises that Bruce Wayne has been physically incapacitated from his activity in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. A visit to a doctor in Gotham Central Hospital (played by Reno 911's Thomas Lennon) ends with the information that Wayne has no cartilage in his knees, lingering shoulder damage, scar tissue, and minor brain damage from repeated concussions. The doctor indicates that he "cannot clear you to go Heli-skiing" before Wayne sneaks off to visit the injured Gordon. Wayne has to put on a knee brace that allows him to use his left leg without a cane, but there's not reason to believe that after Bane broke his back that they did not also remove the brace while stripping Wayne out of the batsuit.

 So you have Bruce Wayne with a protruding vertebrae, two knees without cartilage, and whatever additional damage from his fight with Bane (a visible opening on his forehead, broken nose, and bleeding lip), lying on his back in a prison at the bottom of a massive hole. The only way out is to climb up to a small walkway and then leap to another stone. If you miss, the rope holding you up does further damage to your back, not to mention the force with which you crash into the walls of the opening.

 After Wayne's back is adjusted - which I'm going to overlook to avoid making this section even longer, but let's say that it's dubious at best - and he hangs by rope for a week or so (long enough to go from five-o'clock shadow to scraggly beard) until he can walk, he immediately tries to scale the exit and fails. So he begins an intense exercise regiment, tries again, and fails. Only the third time, after he chooses to "fear death" and not use the rope, does he succeed. But how does a man with no cartilage in his knees pull off a combination of advanced rock climbing and leaping to escape?

 Moreover, when he escapes, how does he get from India (?) to Gotham City when it's been established he has no money and all of his friends are trapped under Bane's thumb. Furthermore, how does he even get INTO Gotham City when we only see one FEMA truck cross the bridge during the four months Wayne is imprisoned and there's no way to cross by water as the river is frozen over. It's established how difficult to cross the ice because Gotham citizens who choose "exile" over "death" in court (presided by the Scarecrow) are forced to venture out and face falling into the freezing waters. So the idea Wayne could cross that way is even more remote, yet he shows up to talk to Selina Kyle 23 hours before the nuclear bomb is about to detonate.

 Why It Doesn't Matter: This seems like an insurmountable problem, but the truth of the matter is that none of this is relevant to the narrative or the themes of The Dark Knight Rises. Escaping from the hole in the ground is a continuation of the "well" leitmotif from Batman Begins (complete with a flashback / dream of Thomas Wayne being lowered down to help young Bruce and asking "why do we fall?") and ties into to the title. Again, this is a film about the Dark Knight Rising, so it's emotionally satisfying to see Bruce Wayne save himself from his failure, even if the final moment before his leap includes a silly appearance by frightened bats swirling around him. Sure, he shouldn't be able to do it, but he does, and we as an audience cheer for the hero to overcome his lowest possible point.

 As to the "how" of Wayne getting back to Gotham City, I hate to say it, but it's not important. It's that he gets back, that he's able to forgive Selina and ask for her help, and that despite having the opportunity to escape, he returns to save his city from Bane. His appearance justifies the statement that he hasn't given Gotham "everything", "not yet." The logic of how he got there isn't as important thematically as being there, as being willing to sacrifice everything - including his own life - to protect the people of Gotham City.

 4. If Lucius Fox had more than one "Bat", then why didn't Bane find it while pillaging the Applied Sciences armory and use it against Batman when he returned?

 The Problem: So when Lucius Fox introduces the "Bat" to Bruce Wayne early in the film, he indicates that "yes, Mr. Wayne, it does come in black" and mentions that the auto-pilot doesn't work. He asks Bruce to work on the auto-pilot, and it becomes a running joke / plot point that it doesn't work, necessitating Batman to fly the bomb over the harbor and (presumably) being killed because he can't eject.

 But wait! At the end of the film, not only is there another "Bat" in the Applied Sciences armory - meaning that Fox didn't just paint the prototype black - and Fox is asking about what he could have done to fix the auto-pilot. So if there was another "Bat" in the armory, the same armory that Bane broke into and used to his own advantage throughout his occupation of Gotham City, how is it that no one ever found the other "Bat"? One can't even argue that they found it but couldn't fly it, because none of Bane's mercenaries would know how to use the Tumbler initially either (clearly they didn't know their Tumblers had Batpods or they might have used them in the final chase scene). Having another "Bat" would have removed Batman's aerial advantage and seriously complicated the final battle, so it might have benefited Bane to look a little harder.

 Why It Doesn't Matter:  Bane didn't find the second "Bat" because... well, I don't know. The psychological advantage of Batman having "superior air power" provides the audience two moments to be thrilled: 1) when Batman frees the GCPD from the sewers using the "Bat" and 2) when the "Bat" deactivates the cannon on a Tumbler as the GCPD are advancing on Town Hall, where Bane and the Blackgate inmates are waiting for a massive showdown. It also allows for the "Bat" to escape from missiles in a manner not dissimilar to Iron Man in The Avengers.Two "Bat"s would necessarily complicate the final chase scene, would remove Bane from his element as a ground-based brawler (who else would fly it?) and would be less interesting in the "beat the clock" detonation finale.

  Now, why introduce a second "Bat" at all?

 Okay, this is a bit trickier, because the reveal of the second "Bat" is tied into the final "twist" in The Dark Knight Rises. The scene only exists because we the audience need to know that Bruce Wayne DID fix the auto-pilot and therefore could have ejected before the bomb went off (despite the suggestive editing that made it look like he didn't). That way Bruce could theoretically have survived, replaced the Bat signal, amended his will so that Blake found the Bat-Cave, and the mansion would be a children's home (thematic tie-in to the beginning of the film). It holds up logically about as much as Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle finding the exact cafe that Alfred went to in Italy and sitting at exactly the right table so that they would see each other. It's a dramatic device used entirely for the benefit of the audience, not for the internal logic of the film.

 I hope this helps explain why The Dark Knight Rises manages

 * This is a minor point, but it does speak to things that drive Nolan detractors crazy: no one in the production of The Dark Knight Rises makes any effort to disguise landmarks associated with New York City and Pittsburgh, PA, where filming partially took place. The Broad Street subway tunnel entrance is visible in a number of shots prior to and following the motorcycle escape by Bane, and the Saks Fifth Avenue is also on prominent display during the truck chase during the climax of the film. Meanwhile, no change was made to the sign on Heinz Field (digitally or otherwise), where the Pittsburgh Steelers play. The Steelers and former coach Bill Cowher appear as the Gotham Knights, and it's easy to pick out Ben Rothlisberger and other players during the National Anthem. Hines Ward appears to be playing himself during the kick-off return, as the name on his jersey hasn't changed. I guess it's possible that the crew thought comic book fans also didn't watch football, but this is an odd lapse of suspension of disbelief.