Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part Three: It's Getting Better All the Time)

 Let's kick off this chapter of the "Great Recap of Twenty Fourteen" with the movie that went from being in every headline in December to being the punching bag of January: The Interview.

 I really do find it quite amusing that the negative reaction to the film seems to be based - at least, critically - on the fact that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's comedy about assassinating Kim Jong Un starring Rogen and Franco isn't a biting enough satire of the media or of politics. This, coupled with the somewhat ridiculous overreaction of everybody feeling like they need to see The Interview (because, y'know, 'Murica) emboldened the normally lazy Golden Raspberry Awards to stop just penciling in "Adam Sandler Movie" as their "Worst Picture" and to put The Interview right out front as their leading Razzie nominee. Why? Because people are still paying attention to The Interview, for reasons that are extremely fortuitous to Sony.

 Perhaps you buy into the conspiracy theory that Sony was worried nobody would see The Interview so they put together an outlandish and complicated "hacking" scheme to ensure everyone would want to see the newest Seth Rogen / Evan Goldberg movie. As conspiracy theories go, it's got some legs, because people I know for a fact would never go see Pineapple Express have said to me that they feel they have to see The Interview ('Murica!). The disappointment, I'm guessing, is all in the expectation, because The Interview is exactly what I expected when I saw the trailer and thought "eh, I'll probably rent it." At the time I was laboring under the illusion that Inherent Vice would make good on its promise to be in theatres "just in time for Christmas," so I didn't really give credence to making The Interview our annual Christmas outing.

 To be fair, we still didn't go see The Interview - we saw a movie you'll see much higher on this list - I watched it on demand on Christmas Eve. And, yup, it's a dumb comedy where Franco plays a borderline incompetent guy and Rogen is the straight man. It's a little too long, the beginning meanders way too much, but when it gets funny (shortly after Lizzy Caplan enters the film), things maintain a consistent clip of laughs until the rather violent ending. Trade out Lizzy Caplan's name with Danny McBride, and I think I just distilled Pineapple Express into a review. Or This is the End, which landed in a comparable position in last year's recap. I like them both, but they're not my favorite comedies, and like many entries in the post-Apatow Era, they all share certain pros and cons. There's an over-reliance on improvisation (find one of them that doesn't have a "Line-o-Rama" in the supplements), a ham fisted "we're friends but now we aren't but we will be again by the end" character arc, and a reliance on pop culture references over jokes. In Rogen and Goldberg's case, at least post-2009, this also includes the "wow, that escalated fast" move to extreme violence in the third act.

 This is not to say that The Interview doesn't work, because when it's firing on all cylinders, it's very funny. Don't think that I didn't laugh; I did, but I chuckled a lot, too. It was nice to see  seemingly pointless yet continued allusions to The Lord of the Rings pay off in a way I didn't even think about until Dave Skylark (Franco) points it out to Aaron Rapaport (Rogen) near the end. It almost offset the overdone "honeydick" jokes or Skylark's obsession about whether Kim Jong Un (Randall Park) has a butthole or not. Make no mistake about it, if there is bodily humor to be mined, Rogen and Goldberg found a way to write it into the script, including an appropriately timed shart during the titular event.  But this is not some scathing takedown of media obsession or a penetrating look into the myth of North Korea's leader. This is a dumb comedy that uses easy jokes with relatively good results, and says as much about the media as Rogen and Goldberg had to say about underage drinking, marijuana laws, or the Book of Revelations. And that's it. Not the worst movie of the year, and not anywhere near the best. If you liked Superbad, Pineapple Express, or This is the End, odds are you'll enjoy The Interview. If you didn't, I don't care how patriotic you're feeling, this is not going to be two hours well spent. In this case, track record says everything.

 While we're on the subject of "track record," you'll notice that Magic in the Moonlight follows Blue Jasmine in the "what's Woody Allen releasing this year?" filmography. If you've been keeping up with Allen, at least with respect to the movies he's making, you'll know that since his "return" to making movies people want to watch (let's start with Match Point), there's been a pattern of "really good to great one" followed by "pretty good one that you'll forget he made until someone brings it up." Like Scoop. Remember Scoop? It came out after Match Point, and is an amusing movie about Scarlett Johannson talking to a ghost and solving a murder mystery. It's okay if you only remembered Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the much better movie he made with Johannson and Penelope Cruz two year's later (I'm not sure anyone other than the Cap'n remembers Cassandra's Dream). After Vicky Cristina Barcelona came Whatever Works followed, the not very well regarded "Larry David as Woody Allen surrogate," which I liked a lot more than You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger. Midnight in Paris was followed by To Rome With Love, and so on. Ergo, Magic in the Moonlight is a perfectly pleasant, but at best is a trifle. That's not to say that a trifle can't be enjoyable on its own merits, particularly one whose stars are Colin Firth and Emma Stone.

 Magic in the Moonlight is another of Allen's "European" films, this one centered squarely in his favorite period: the roaring twenties. Wei Ling Soo (Firth), is probably not as well known by his given name, Stanley, but his "mystical magic of the Orient" still packs theaters. Stanley also fancies himself a renowned debunker of fraudulent "spiritualists," and when his old friend and fellow magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) pays a visit, it quickly turns to Sophie Baker (Stone). Sophie and her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) have been making the rounds in France, providing advice from beyond the grave via the younger Baker's "gifts," and a family Howard is close to appear to be her next "mark"s, so to speak. Stanley can't resist the opportunity to expose her, but the unassuming Sophie may be more than he bargained for. In fact, she might even be the real deal...

 If there's something holding Magic in the Moonlight back from being more than just charming, it's that Stanley is, even to the end, an irredeemable egomaniac. When he's right, he lords it over other characters, but when he's wrong, he still finds a way to make it about magnanimous he is to admit he was mistaken (see the press conference he holds when he finally accepts Sophie as legitimate). It's a romantic comedy where you'd much rather Sophie end up with the "Baxter": the ukulele serenading wet blanket Brice Catlidge (Hamish Linklater), only because Stanley is so full of himself that he firmly believes he's doing Sophie a favor by suggesting they marry. It isn't, I suppose, that he's wrong, but he's so insufferable throughout the film that I scarcely felt like he deserved Sophie, a free spirit who loosens him up, only to make him less appealing. That said, much of the film looks marvelous, as Allen soaks in the French countryside and revels in the hot jazz, clothes, and cars of the era. Magic in the Moonlight is a fun movie to watch, but not one you'll be thinking about for long after. Then again, there's something to be said for well made fluff, even if the taste doesn't linger.

 On the more biting end of that spectrum, I would suppose, is Frank. I've already reviewed it, and depending on your taste for deliberately avant garde music or comedies with a serious dark side (and not always in a way that's funny), it may or may not be to your tastes. Michael Fassbender is something to see, however, acting for most of the movie from behind an oversized paper mache mask. Here's a snippet of the original review:

 "Were I you, I wouldn't go into Frank expecting a comedy, because while it is often funny (or at the very least, amusing), there's a dark undercurrent to the film. The original keyboardist isn't the only person involved in the band that gives up on living, and the contentious atmosphere never softens. While it's frequently an interesting movie to watch, Frank keeps you at a distance until the very end. The last scene brings about some sense of setting things right, but on its own terms, and in the meantime it's hard to find a character to sympathize with. Jon (Domhall Gleeson) transitions from affable to duplicitous not long after they arrive at the cabin, and the other chief option, Frank, is a mystery until late into the film."

 If you don't mind, I'd like to take a moment to address some films which would generally fall under the "kids' movies" umbrella. As you may or may not know, I am still a fan of much of it, but don't watch nearly as many as I used to. In fact, if we don't include the two-and-a-half I'm about to mention, you could argue that the only other children's movie I saw in 2014 was A Talking Cat?!?!?, and it's better that we not discuss that. Still, I did manage to catch Disney's first animated Marvel movie, one of their live action musicals, and a non-Disney movie that should, for all intents and purposes, just be a giant commercial. Surprisingly, then, it's The Lego Movie that I was the most pleased with.

I give much of the credit for this to directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (22 Jump Street), who managed to take a film that should have just been shameless advertising (look at the title, for crying out loud) and make it a fun and often very funny movie that sneaks in some pathos at the end. It even tugged at the heartstrings of this crusty old Cap'n. A first rate voice cast doesn't hurt, and The Lego Movie boast Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Charlie Day, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, and tons of cameos from the likes of Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Jake Johnson, Cobie Smulders, Keegan-Michael Key, Jorma Taccone, Billy Dee Williams, and Jump Street alums Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum and Dave Franco. The writing is snappy, the plot is breathlessly paced, and the CGI convincingly replicates Lego. And I didn't even really want to buy Lego sets afterwards, which is good because I know how expensive they are.

 Oh, and of course there's the song. You know the one. About how conformity is awesome and everything is cool when you do what you're told. What? Am I changing the words or something? That seems like the gist of it. Anyway, you have it in your heads again, unless you haven't seen The Lego Movie, in which case you didn't know that song your friends' kids were singing was from The Lego Movie. So here, watch this.

 Like another Marvel film that came out this year, I hadn't really heard of the source material for Big Hero 6, but I feel I can't be blamed for that, as it comes from the same collective who brought the Disney Channel Ben 10 Alien something or other. No actual offense intended, but other than briefly encountering Ben 10 merchandise at a toy store, I have no connection whatsoever to it. This has little bearing on Big Hero 6, which is still a pretty entertaining movie despite following the "superhero / team origin story" to the letter.

 To wit: Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a young slacker with a gift for making robots, but his lack of direction worries his brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney). Tadashi takes his brother to the institute he studies at, one for young inventors like Go Go (Jamie Chung), Wasabi (Damon Wayans, Jr.), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), and Fred (T.J. Miller), under the tutelage of Professor Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell). Tadashi is working on Baymax (Scott Adsit), an inflatable robot designed to provide medical care, and Hiro decides to apply himself. Then, after an encounter with businessman Allister Krei (Alan Tudyk) at a convention ends in tragedy, Hiro loses his brother and finds solace in Baymax. They work together as a team to solve a murder mystery, there's betrayal, hurt feelings, and the surprise identity of the villain.

 And yet, despite the fact that you can guess exactly where Big Hero 6 is going every single step of the way, the film manages to be frequently amusing and engaging. Perhaps it's the jumbled near-future world of San Fransokyo, or the design of the characters as hero. Or maybe it's just Baymax, who is easily worth watching the film for. I can't attest to its originality or any novelty in storytelling, but sometimes when you do something familiar well enough, it can carry you through. Considering that one of my favorite movies of this year falls directly into that category, I can't therefore hold it against Big Hero 6, but it's middle-tier Disney / Pixar, and certainly not something I would choose over the likes of Wreck-It Ralph in the future.

 Serviceable is perhaps an unfair way to characterize Disney's Into the Woods, because it damns a perfectly fun Steven Sondheim adaptation with faint praise. I'm trying very hard to separate the film from the stage production, because while I understand the need for many of the changes, it doesn't make me miss the narrator's presence in the second "act" any less. What Rob Marshall (Chicago) chose to do instead makes sense in its own way, and creates a nice cyclical tone to the fairy tale presentation, but the film is decidedly less "meta" than its source. Still, everyone in the cast gives it their all (with the exception, perhaps, of a totally superfluous Johnny Depp cameo as the Big Bad Wolf, which amounts to "Johnny Depp with prosthetic whiskers") and it's always visually engaging. Meryl Streep might not be by Witch (that's staying with Bernadette Peters), but I can't act as though she doesn't do a fine job. James Corden and Emily Blunt make a fine pair as the Baker and his Wife, and Anna Kendrick is fitfully fretful as Cinderella being chased by her Prince Charming (Chris Pine, who I didn't realize could sing). MacKenzie Mauzy and Billy Magnussen make less of an impression as Rapunzel and her Prince, but it's more than compensated for by Daniel Huttlestone and Lilla Crawford as Jack and Little Red Riding Hood. It may not be my Into the Woods, but it's certainly a good starting point for younger audiences, even if Disney tried very hard to pretend it wasn't a musical in the advertising.

 Rather than repost my earlier Godzilla review (with bonus Godzilla on Monster Island coverage), I'll link to the original and include the following excerpt, in case you're fatigued from Into the Woods paragraph-ness:

 "But in all seriousness Godzilla 2014 is pretty good stuff. I give it some grief but generally speaking the monster fights at the end are worth the price of admission. I liked that Edwards decided to show most of the MUTO mayhem from the perspective of the people on the ground, where they lose sight of monsters in the dust or are falling from a carrier plane and can see part of Godzilla as the descend through the clouds. It's a good visual hook for the film and does convey the sense of carnage better than the obvious miniatures in Godzilla on Monster Island. Although those miniatures are pretty funny looking and are actually being smashed (or being burned with a flamethrower, in the case of tanks) I did chuckle every time Strathairn said "Godzilla," which wasn't nearly as often as I'd hoped.. In most ways, the newer film has the better budget and conveys the power and size of Godzilla better, but it also doesn't have Space Cockroaches."

Likewise, I'll provide you with the original review of Cheap Thrills, and tantalize you with this portion, wherein the Cap'n makes an unusual comparison to, uh, A Serbian Film:


"I'm intentionally not telling you how crazy things get because not knowing what's going to happen or how far down the rabbit hole [the characters] are willing to go is part of the fun of watching Cheap Thrills. Like Ti West's The House of the Devil, there is a sense early on that something bad is always about to happen, but [...] (r)ather than simply shoving our faces in the ugly side of humanity for 87 minutes, E.L. Katz makes sure there's also comedy peppered throughout [...] (there's a sequence of events late in the film involving a meat cleaver and an iron that shouldn't be as funny as it is, but a well disguised reveal makes the laughter more hearty).

 Black comedies are notoriously tricky to get right, but Katz threads the needle very well with Cheap Thrills, and does it without ever making what happens seem outside of the realm of possibility. Other than one challenge I can't imagine anyone have time to make up on the fly, everything in the film matches the verisimilitude with which it's presented, which is all the more impressive. Cheap Thrills is a great movie to watch with friends who don't mind a little twisted in their cinema, and you won't have to clean vomit up off of the floor (maybe). I don't think you can say the same about A Serbian Film, so I think I know which one I'd pick."

 And on that note, we'll make an uncomfortable left turn to discuss the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor I've long admired who left sooner than I'd like. If there's any upside (and really, there isn't), there were at least a few finished films in the can we could enjoy, and I saw two of the three this year: A Most Wanted Man and God's Pocket. (I'm going to have to watch the first two Hunger Games movies if I want to see his final films*).

 I knew about the former but not the latter, in large part because A Most Wanted Man comes from Anton Corbijn (Control, The American) and is based on a John le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Constant Gardener) novel, which would imply a stripped down narrative presented in a low key fashion. Which, in fact, it is, sometimes to its detriment. The film follows Günther Bachmann (Hoffman), a spy operating a small operation in Post 9/11 Hamburg, as he picks up on and tries to intercept Chechen refugee Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) who sneaks into Germany. The US and German authorities are interested in this undocumented Muslim, but Gunther's interest is piqued when it becomes clear he's not radicalized, but is looking to claim the fortune of his father, a Russian general.

Gunther allows Issa to contact immigration lawyer Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), and through her, the bank where his inheritance is being kept. The manager, Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe), is resistant, but Günther convinces both of them that they can use Issa's money to definitively prove that Islamic philanthropist Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi) is funneling cash into terrorist cells. It's an uncomfortable bargain, but Tommy agrees, Annabel has no choice, and Issa is none the wiser. The only person who concerns Günther more than the German authorities is Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright), a representative from the CIA who is more than aware of his previous failure, the one that landed him in Hamburg, constantly begging for more time from the locals.

 After it becomes clear in A Most Wanted Man what Issa is really after, much of the tension tied up with the "post 9/11" setting drains away, and Corbijn's film becomes strictly a character study of a man who has been down on his luck too many times. It barely sustains itself, narratively, and like many Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the ending is decidedly anti-climactic. This is not to say it isn't satisfying or appropriate, or that it shouldn't be inevitable for Günther, but it does rob the film of a certain quality. I enjoyed watching A Most Wanted Man, but not quite as much as I'd hoped. Hoffman is fantastic: sullen, slouched over like a man who knows failure all too well, for whom even sitting up is laborious. Once you work out his accent, it's a real wonder to watch Hoffman work. Wright, Dafoe, and McAdams are also very good in not particularly showy roles. I wouldn't hesitate recommending A Most Wanted Man, but don't be surprised if you feel a bit like Günther when it's all over.

 God's Pocket doesn't stray much further from the concept of "loser noir," if we're talking strictly from a protagonist's point of view. The passion project of John Slattery (Mad Men), who adapted Peter Dexter's novel (with Alex Metcalf) and directed, it's tonally akin to a film like The Drop - which I'll be reviewing in a future part of this series. Hoffman again plays a man accustomed to being browbeaten, not merely for his lot in life, but because of where he's from. Or, to be more specific, where he's not from.

 Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman) lives in the small community of God's Pocket, Pennsylvania, but he's not from there. That's a problem, because the working class of God's Pocket only give any credence to people who grew up there, so while Mickey is married to local gal Jeanie (Christina Hendricks) and delivers meat (that might be stolen) to restaurants around town, he's not of them. He's just there, and if you really ask anybody, Mickey has his father-in-law to thank for the business in the first place. His stepson, Leon (Caleb Landy Jones), is a real piece of work, and when he mouths off one time too many at work, he ends up on the wrong side of the pipe. The workers tell the cops it was an accident, and Jeanie goes catatonic, convinced of foul play and delusional about her son.

 Money for the funeral is going to be tricky, and Mickey knows that Smilin' Jack Moran (Eddie Marsan) either gets his full payment, or else. (The "or else," by the way, turns out to be a cruel and darkly humorous turn late in the film.) His only real friend in town is Arthur Capezio (John Turturro), a small link in the mob chain that Mickey sometimes finds himself involved in. But things do not go so well for Mickey and Arthur, and the death of Leon draws the attention of local newspaper columnist and "man of the people" Richard Shellburn (Richard Jenkins). A barely functioning alcoholic, Shellburn can't resist Jeanie, and the shell-shocked housewife is easy prey for a guy two steps removed from greatness.

 The story comes colliding together over the course of a few days, between Leon's death and his funeral, and carries over just a bit to include Shellburn saying just a little too much about the people of God's Pocket. And then, for good measure, there's an amusing epilogue which may or may not be a happy ending. I had heard that people felt "cheated" that God's Pocket wasn't a dark comedy, which perhaps it was billed as, but instead a character study that grows increasingly desperate. Yes, there are some (mostly) morbidly funny parts, but Coen-esque is not how I'd characterize Slattery's film. That said, if you come in with expectations properly in check, you're really going to enjoy God's Pocket, even if you're just an outsider, like Mickey.

 Finally, I'd like to mention that while I get why so many people are raving about The Skeleton Twins, it seems to the Cap'n like the film gets along largely on the charisma of its leads: Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Like St. Vincent, it's a story that's been told so many times that you can see the beats coming a mile away. Take two estranged siblings with a hinted at difficult childhood, reconnect after one or both attempt suicide, and drop the outsider sibling back hometown. There's a rekindling of a torrid love affair from long ago, a marriage that isn't as solid as it would appear, and maybe some other infidelity to boot. Hell, there's even a scene where the titular siblings are mad at each other, but overcome it and rekindle their bond by lip synching to Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," and you know how I feel about Starship.

 And yet, it's hard to deny that despite some rote, dare I say eye-rolling moments that seem to come along with every film like this from, I don't know, Garden State onward, The Skeleton Twins is worth seeing for Hader and Wiig. It isn't just that they're playing against type - this film just barely qualifies as "comedy" - but that their real life friendship from years together on SNL bleeds onto the screen, making it very believable to buy them as brother and sister. There's a moment in the dentist's office where Maggie (Wiig) works that feels like improvisation. Maggie and Milo (Hader) collapse into uncontrollable laughter, and it's a genuine moment that helps The Skeleton Twins overcome its more predictable tendencies.

 There are a few other good characters in the film: Luke Wilson plays Lance, Maggie's "how did they end up together husband," who despite his role in the story manages to come out as a decent, honest guy who tries to include Milo into their dynamic. Ty Burrell has the second most substantive role as Rich, Milo's former English teacher who has issues of his own, and whose relationship with his former student is a serious sticking point for Maggie. Of course, she has her own issues with monogamy, and the current object of her obsessive infidelity is Billy (Boyd Holbrook), her scuba instructor. Joanna Gleeson has a cameo as Maggie and Milo's mother, and it gives some hint into their dysfunctional family history. But by and large, this is Wiig and Hader's show, and they're certainly worth the price of admission. Bear in mind that The Skeleton Twins is often a very dark movie, one that addresses suicide frequently throughout the film, so don't expect to chuckle your way through the film. We're not talking Heathers, here. Actually, IMDB lists Frank as a "similar" film, and now that I think about it, that's appropriate.

 Next time we'll take a look at some of the bigger releases of 2014 that I was really looking forward to seeing, and maybe didn't end up being so thrilled with. They're ones I get asked about a lot, so we'll take a look and figure out the whys and hows soon...



 * This is not to say I won't or wouldn't have otherwise, just that I haven't seen them yet. People I know and whose opinions I generally trust have vouched for them. I just haven't gotten around to it, yet.

Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part One: The Less Worse, I Guess)

 It's fair to say that you might see the first few movies on this list and say "really, _____ made it on your 'Worst' list, but that didn't?" That's fair, I suppose; I could hide behind the veil of "subjectivity" and argue that this is my list, not yours, but the name of the blog isn't "General Cranpire's Den of Filmduggery" (note to Cranpire - that's a great title and you should use it, post-haste), so that should be obvious who the opinions belong to. Spoiler Alert: The Highest Bidder! But yes, okay, it's under a weird criteria that I determined where to stop the "worst of" without including one of last year's Liam Neeson movies (not the one where he fights vampires, I assume strictly from the title). That's how I roll, kids.


 So it makes sense to just get Non-Stop out of the way, and by that I mean mostly just link to my review from earlier this year. It was short enough to sandwich in with Bye Bye Birdie and Die, Monster Die!, so while I didn't hate it, clearly the movie didn't make much of an impression, review-wise: but, looking back at it, it's way longer than needs to be in a recap. This section of the review does seem to sum things up pretty well:

"It's almost ridiculous enough to recommend in and of itself, but the fact that the first half or so is also a decent game of "cat and mouse" works in its favor. In the "Liam Neeson, man of action" genre, it falls somewhere between Taken and Taken 2 - neither as enjoyable stupid as the former, nor as inane and redundant as the second [...] If you're inclined to enjoy movies like this, or saw the poster and said "I'll rent that," you're better off watching Non-Stop than, say, Drive Hard. If you're more predisposed towards, say, Neeson in The Grey, this is not going to be your cup of tea, but if you liked Flightplan... well, um, you liked Flightplan. Congratulations?"

 Fading Gigolo is a movie I'm guessing most of you didn't see, because it came out not long after last year's "is Woody Allen a pedophile or not" row that was everywhere between the Golden Globes and the Oscars but was pretty much gone by the time Magic in the Moonlight came out (a movie I'll be discussing in another part of the recap). At this point I'm going to stop talking about that, because I learned what a bad idea it is to mention the words "Woody Allen" or "Roman Polanski" and "controversy" on the internet. But yes, Woody Allen is in Fading Gigolo. He did not direct it - John Turturro did, along with writing and starring as the titular character, Fioravante. He's a florist, and his friend Murray (Allen) just lost his bookstore and needs money. Fioravante agrees to become an escort with Murray as his manager, in the service of eventually fulfilling the fantasy of Murray's dermatologist (Sharon Stone) and her friend (Sofia Vergara) to have a three-way.

 That's probably enough of a movie right there, but Turturro also includes an entirely separate plot about an Orthodox Jewish woman named Avigal (Vanessa Paradis) who Fioravante falls in love with, much to the chagrin of Dovi (Liev Schreiber), a community police officer. At some point, a council of Rabbis get involved, and it plays out like a bizarro version of being confronted by the mob, complete with Murray needing his lawyer (Bob Balaban) to save him from charges of being a pimp. It's a mostly harmless and sometimes amusing movie, even sweet sometimes, but not something that stuck with me for very long afterward. There's a better movie with John Turturro that will be showing up later in the recaps, so stay tuned for that.

 While we're on the subject of "better movies," I feel like there's a better movie somewhere in Alexandre Aja's Horns. Maybe it got lost in the editing, or maybe it's just inherent in the adaptation of Joe Hill's novel, but the finished product just don't quite work. It's as though Aja made a bitterly funny, black comedy, and also made a more generic, teen-friendly story of good and evil, and then smashed them together at the worst possible junctures. For the opening twenty minutes of Horns, you're probably going to think the movie is great: it has a wicked mean streak, Daniel Radcliffe is spot on as a guy everyone thinks is a murderer, that embraces the horns he grows and the power that comes with it. The way people react, first telling him their darkest fantasies and then acting on them when he says they should, is often hilarious.

 And then we hit the first of what turn out to be several, lengthy, flashbacks, giving us the backstory of Ig (Radcliffe) and Merrin (Juno Temple), leading up to her death - the one everyone assumes Ig is responsible for. Everyone, including his family - played by James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joe Anderson - is positive he did it and that he's lying, with the exception of his friend, Lee (Max Minghella). The "whodunit" is pretty easy to work out for yourself, even if Aja, Hill, and screenwriter Keith Bunin throw in a number of red herrings. I bet, without telling you anything else, you can guess who the real killer is. That's not the problem, so much as the flashbacks that put the mystery together. There's a massive tonal shift from black comedy to slightly tragic story of temptation and of good and evil (on a biblical scale), and for some reason, ne'er the twain shall meet in Horns.

 I can understand how it might have worked in Hill's novel - which I haven't yet read, but plan to - but as a film, the structure of the story is at times jarring and disruptive. Maybe there was no way to properly balance the two in a film, because Horns alternates between wicked and bland, between clever and obvious, without ever finding a good middle ground. There are some fantastic moments sprinkled throughout the film, and the cast is game for anything, playing both the best and worst versions of themselves as they encounter "evil" Ig, but Horns gets away from them. It's never quite the movie that it could be, so I'm left feeling ambivalent with the end result.

 Speaking of ambivalent, here's a good time to mention Bad Words, a movie people seemed to like a lot more than I did. While it's true that I liked Horrible Bosses 2 less than Bad Words, Jason Bateman is jerk instead of beleaguered everyman was not novelty enough to win me over what is essentially a one-note joke. If Bateman hadn't directed the film and the star was, oh, let's say Billy Bob Thornton, I somehow doubt anyone would even be talking about this, another film in the "bad" series of comedies. (For the record, that review is probably NSFW, just based on the first sentence).

  The best thing I can say about Automata is that it's a better version of I, Robot than I, Robot is. Actually, there are a lot of things to like about the film, which is not-so loosely based on I, Robot, but for some reason the film as a whole is underwhelming. There's little doubt in my mind that the film is trying to skirt by under the radar without people noticing the similarities to Alex Proyas', kinda loud, kinda dumb Big Willie Style / Shia LeBouf CGI action fest, including scaling back to rules of robotics from three to two (and changing one of them to suit the narrative - that robots can't self repair). It's a visual feast, for what I have to imagine was not a large budget (director and co-writer Gabe Ibáñez shot the film in Bulgaria).

 Stop me if you've heard this before: in the future, there's been a catastrophic global weather shift, which caused most of Earth to be irradiated. People live in cramped cities, with some living in zeppelin-like housing units. Robots help humanity, although they've so permeated the culture that they're considered just as useless as any of the other trash (shades of Elysium, if you remember that movie from, you know, last year). Cop Sean Wallace (Dylan McDermott) finds one repairing itself, and blows it away, causing the ROC Robotics Corporation to send insurance adjuster Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas) to investigate. What he finds could change the ROC corporation forever, as well as endanger his boss, Robert Bold (Robert Forster) and his wife Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) and their unborn son.

 And what does he discover (SPOILER???): that the robots are evolving, some past the point where they require humans at all. But they just want to be free, man. This doesn't sound familiar or anything, so I'm not going to belabor the comparisons to I, Robot any more. You get it. It's a more visually stylish, more sober approach to the story, after Jacq is rescued by the robots (one voiced by Melanie Griffith, who is also another character in the film, and one voice by Javier Bardem, although I didn't realize that until I saw his name in the credits). The ending is kind of predictable, but it feels like there's more at stake than in I, Robot, and that violent ends can and will come to any character.

 So why didn't I like it more? That is an excellent question, and I'm not convinced I can give you a good answer. Despite the fact that it does almost everything I, Robot does, but better, in part by giving is a Neill Blomkamp sheen or grime and decay over everything, there's something strangely inert about Automata. I can't quite put my finger on it, but instead of being invested, I found myself distanced, at times bored. It wasn't that you can see where the movie is going a mile away - that can be said of Horns, too, which is at least partly a fun ride - but that despite all of the effort into making the film look great, Ibáñez never quite makes the humans interesting. Banderas certainly gives it his all, but neither he nor the robots are all that gripping as characters. It's a very nice film to look at, and has a lot of things I would recommend about it, but I hesitate to recommend it over any of the better science fiction films released in 2014. And there were a lot, as you'll see when we get near the top of my list.

 There's a degree to which I enjoyed Batman: Assault on Arkham, one of the better DC Animated films that I've seen in a while. Despite the misleading title (this is, make no mistake, a Suicide Squad movie that Batman pops up in periodically), it's fast paced, sporadically funny, surprisingly violent, and pushes the PG-13 as far as they can with animated sideboob. Being that it's a Suicide Squad story - one tied to the Arkham games, and specifically Origins - the death toll is quite high, including many of the main characters. Unless you're a massive DC fan, you probably won't know many more characters beyond Harley Quinn and Deadshot. Maybe Captain Boomerang, and if you didn't, yes, that's a real thing. It has the odd distinction of having Kevin Conroy as Batman but not Mark Hamill as the Joker (although Troy Baker does a fine job) - also odd because Conroy isn't the voice of Batman in Arkham Origins, which ends with the setup for this movie. It's short, and I'm struggling to remember much more than a few offhand references to The Dark Knight and using the layout of the asylum you'll immediately recognize from the first game. So, uh, recommended?

 On that decisive note, we'll leave it here for now, but there's more. Next time, I'll move a little farther up the list, to mixed-positives that you might want to check out (with some caveats), although I have the feeling that one of them might be more contentious than anything included in this section. Until then...

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: Blue Jasmine

 Woody Allen has been making a movie every year for a while now, and while consistency has never been his strong suit, that's always something to look forward to. Sometimes he makes great ones (Midnight in Paris, Match Point), sometimes he makes popular ones (Scoop, Vicky Cristina Barcelona), sometimes just okay ones (From Paris with Love), and sometimes you get the rotten egg (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger). Of course, every now and then he makes the one only I like (Whatever Works), but I'm happy to say that Blue Jasmine is one of the really good ones. It might even be one of the great ones, in large part because of Cate Blanchett, playing a woman in the middle of a mental breakdown with serious denial issues.

 Jasmine Francis (Blanchett) was married to Hal (Alec Baldwin) and lived the life of a socialite in New York. Hal was an investment manager, but he was also not-so-secretly running a serious Ponzi scheme, and when he got caught, couldn't take the heat and killed himself in prison. With no support and with all of her assets seized, Jasmine reluctantly moves to San Francisco to live with her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Jasmine and Ginger aren't actually related (both were adopted), and Jasmine only barely spoke to her much poorer, "lower class" sister when Ginger was married to Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), but she's out of options. By the same token, Ginger's always been a little jealous of Jasmine, the "pretty one," who was always more successful, so it's a tenuous situation. It also means her new boyfriend, the sweet but tempermental Chili (Bobby Cannavale) can't move in as planned.

 Oh, by the way, Jasmine isn't her name - it's Jeanette, but she changed it because she liked the color. Like much of her life, Jasmine deludes herself into believing it's actually her name and that her mother gave it to her, but she also has some serious mental stability issues. Throughout the film, as Allen jumps backwards and forwards in time to fill in the gaps of how their lives collapsed, he'll often cut back to Jasmine repeating dialogue from the flashback to herself, out loud. People nearby often don't know how to react, and the woman sitting next to Jasmine on the plane to San Francisco gets more than anybody ever wanted to hear just for asking "were you talking to me?"

 Augie is still in the picture, and the reason his marriage with Ginger broke up is the same reason he doesn't trust Jasmine moving in with her: Hal tricked Augie into giving him lottery winnings to invest, largely upon Jasmine's insistence, and they lost everything. Ginger might have also seen Hal with another woman, but she can't be sure and won't tell her, even when Augie says he would. Ginger seems happier with Chili, but Jasmine is more disgusted with him than she was with Augie, and works to split them up. Uncertain of what she's supposed to do (other than drink to keep the depression, anxiety, and trauma at bay), Jasmine takes a job as a receptionist for dentist Dr. Flicker (Michael Stuhlbarg) so she can pay to take computer classes in order to be able to become an interior decorator on an online course. Meanwhile, she insists she was oblivious to Hal's illegalities, even as the flashbacks continue to fill in the pieces.

 Things begin to look up when Jasmine drags Ginger to a party and they each meet new men: Ginger meets Al (Louis C.K.), a nice guy who sets up stereo equipment, and Jasmine meets Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), a diplomat with expensive tastes and political ambitions. But, as seems to be the case with the sisters, not everybody is being entirely honest at the beginning of these budding relationships, although it might surprise you who isn't and why. Everybody seems nice (well, except Jasmine) and everybody means well, but it's not always so easy to just be honest with themselves or each other.

 If I'm making Blue Jasmine out to sound terribly serious, I don't mean to. It's actually a very funny movie, if tinged with a dark undertone. Much of the humor comes from the oblivious, deluded Jasmine, who struggles to maintain her superiority over Ginger and everyone else early in the film, and the flashbacks which make it abundantly clear how open Hal is about the fact that he's ripping people off (there are a number of scenes where he's scheming with his lawyers to keep things appearing to be above board). Blanchett and Hawkins are an excellent study in contrast: the former a complex, nuanced performance in maintaining a facade while falling to pieces mentally, and the latter a woman disrupted, torn between the life she enjoys and wanting to please someone she looks up to.

 Added to that is a surprisingly sweet turn from Andrew Dice Clay, as the sincere but beleaguered Augie, who wants to do right by Ginger but can't stand what Jasmine and Hal did. Louis C.K. is only briefly in the movie, but plays a less sardonic verison of his character from Louie. Bobby Cannavale's Chili is, even during violent outbursts, a man madly in love with Ginger that doesn't understand why Jasmine can't just let them be happy. I was also quite taken with Sarsgaard, who plays a mostly materialistic character until one scene late in the film where his reaction to Blanchett will remind Allen fans of the best kinds of Woody blow ups. Alec Baldwin is stuck with the sleazy part, and he does it well, but his purpose in the flashbacks is largely to get us to the last revelation, the one that really put Jasmine where she is mentally.

 If Midnight in Paris was too whimsical for you, I think Blue Jasmine might be the best mix of sweet and sour Woody Allen we've had in a while. You'll laugh, and marvel at Blanchett's performance, which is at times mesmerizing, and by the end be impressed at the sleight of hand. It's been a while since I saw an Allen film that surprised me at the very end, and credit where it's due for structuring the film in such a way that even I wasn't quite sure where it was headed - other than "not well." Blue Jasmine comes highly recommended, for casual viewers but also for dedicated Woody Allen fans. You never know what's coming next, but at least there's another candidate to join the great ones in the meantime.

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?

A Few Thoughts on the Academy Awards Nominations

 And we're off! Some of you might protest that "awards season" begins with The Golden Globes, but I don't watch the show and don't consider any stamp of approval that The Hollywood Foreign Press Association to be worth much of anything. The SAG Awards, the BAFTAs, the DGA, and something I'm sure I'm forgetting are worth looking into in passing, but the Cap'n actually only bothers watching one awards show - the Super Bowl of awards shows, The Academy Awards.

 Like the Super Bowl, it sometimes takes patience to slog through - it's an "insider"'s event, often testing the interest of casual viewers despite its continued effort to be "hip" or "edgy." The abject failure of last years Oscars telecast, one that temporarily set audiences against James Franco and politely look away from Anne Hathaway, is honestly just a continued step in the direction towards more streamlined, less bloated, but less entertaining programming. That the Academy turned back to 1990s standby Billy Crystal is an indication that they really don't understand why people hated last year's show (personally, I kinda liked it) - let's get that guy everybody liked from twenty years ago!

 That's not a slight against Billy Crystal, by the way - the best hosts are consummate showmen (and women) like Crystal, Bob Hope, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, Ellen Degeneres, and Hugh Jackman. All were involved in very entertaining Oscar shows. Jon Stewart was less successful, as were David Letterman and Chris Rock. But it's not all on the host - the elimination of nearly all of the "Best Songs" from the show was a bad idea, as was the skipping as quickly as possible through technical awards and last year's inexplicable decision to cut down the "major" awards (acting, directing, screenplay, editing, picture) to a bare minimum. In its place, shorter and less relevant montages, more inane scripted "banter" by presenters, and longer commercial breaks.

 Yikes. I didn't mean for this to get into Academy Awards bashing because, like the Super Bowl, I've been tuning in regularly for years now. I'm always hoping for something lively (the Hugh Jackman one, in particular, was a lot of fun to watch) but one can never tell. Sometimes the nominees can give us a clue of where it might be headed, so let's take a look at some of the categories, shall we?

 Disclaimer: Speculating on who will win or why is not my specialty any more. When I was younger, I pontificated endlessly about the logistics and politics of award shows, but at this point, I concede that I can't predict with any more accuracy than the average March Madness bracket pool in your office. That's where Neil comes in handy, so I might ask him to throw in his thoughts this weekend.


 Best Picture

 The Artist
 The Descendants
 The Help
  Hugo
  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
  Midnight in Paris
  War Horse
  Moneyball
  The Tree of Life

 Okay, so I haven't seen more than half of the nine nominees. I want to see Hugo, The Descendants, and Moneyball. I plan on seeing The Artist this weekend. I honestly have no interest in The Help and War Horse, and haven't heard a kind word about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close until this announcement. And I read the book, so it was a shame to see it savaged by critics.

 Neil might be able to confirm this, but The Artist has the "hot hand" after the Golden Globes, so if it starts picking up wins, I guess that's the favored bet this year.

 Best Director

 Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
 Alexander Payne - The Descendants
 Martin Scorsese - Hugo
 Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life
 Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris

 Damn. That's a lineup, with only one name I don't recognize immediately. That name is also attached to The Artist, which is red hot.

 Best Original Screenplay

 Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
 Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo - Bridesmaids
 J.C. Chandor - Margin Call
 Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris
 Asghar Farhadi - A Separation

 It would be great to see Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo win for Bridesmaids, but there's that movie The Artist again... I'm sensing a trend here.

 Best Adapted Screenplay

 Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash - The Descendants
 John Logan - Hugo
 George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon - The Ides of March
 Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (story by Stan Chervin) - Moneyball
 Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

  Ummmm... well, I've only seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It had a great script and great acting...

 Best Animated Picture

 A Cat in Paris
 Chico and Rita
 Kung Fu Panda 2 
 Puss in Boots
 Rango

I brought this up because Pixar's Cars 2, a pretty much dismissed sequel, is shut out. In its place? Puss in Boots? Nothing against Kung Fu Panda 2, which I haven't seen, but I heard that it didn't quite live up to the first film's breath of fresh air. Even Rango, while critically well received, was frequently returned to a store I used to work at because its mostly adult themes were lost on kids. Adults didn't seem all that thrilled with its "Chinatown for kids" story, but I'm still interested. I can't speak for the first two films, but if one of them doesn't win, I guess Rango gets it.

 Best Cinematography

 Guillame Schiffman - The Artist
 Jeff Cronenweth - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
 Robert Richardson - Hugo
 Janusz Kaminski - War Horse
 Emmanuel Lubezki - The Tree of Life

 I think you know what I'd pick. You read the review. That said, there's The Artist again...

 Best Editing

 Anne Sophie-Bion and Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
 Kevin Tent - The Descendants
 Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
 Thelma Schoonmaker - Hugo
 Christopher Tellefsen - Moneyball

 Hrm. The Artist, anyone?

 I'm not going to say I'm surprised not to see Drive (too many confused people), Melancholia (too many people who hate Lars von Trier), The Guard (too Irish), or any of the other films on my best or near best of list. It seems that not being a blockbuster (or being a remake) derailed most of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's attention. I'm a little boggled by some of the acting nominations, which I chose to leave out but are easy to find. This year, aside from the omnipresence of The Artist, I have no clue. None at all. I turn it over to Neil, sometime in the near future.