The Tree of Life
Directed by: Terrence Malick
Written by: Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, and Sean Penn

You always look at nature a little differently after you see a Terrence Malick film.  This is a man that you suspect has spent a great deal of time wandering through its various forms, envisioning ways to capture its essence.  Of course, all of us outside his friends, family and colleagues can ever do is suspect.  Malick creates his films, and then stays out of the spotlight.

The Tree of Life, his latest meditation on nature by way of the Big Bang, won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and the one who was there promoting it was Brad Pitt.  In a way this is fitting since he and Sean Penn are all the marketing team behind this movie will have to promote it with.  It’s likely that countless Americans will attend this film to see Pitt and then be outraged.

This wouldn’t be the first time Malick has deliberately deceived audiences with his casting.  Those who saw The Thin Red Line were expecting George Clooney and got Jim Caviezel.  People expecting Brad Pitt spouting off clever dialogue with sensitive male bravado won’t be prepared for the 15 minute detour into the mysteries of the universe toward the beginning of the movie.  Those who have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey will be more at home.

In The Tree of Life, there is “The way of nature and the way of grace,” as Jessica Chastain says in voice-over at the beginning.  This saying is Malick’s thesis, one that helps give those seemingly meaningless sequences their purpose.  The first one is the way of nature, taking us through the Big Bang, the warring of the volcanoes and the seas, the dinosaurs, and back to the present.  Another at the end of the film is a surreal walk toward heaven.

All of the actors in this movie are playing symbols, more so than in any movie in recent memory.  Though they are secondary, they all do an extraordinary job injecting their characters with feeling.  Jessica Chastain and Hunter McCracken are two newcomers to keep an eye on.  The philosophical voice-overs and the utterly pristine imagery still give this mother and son room to work their way into your heart.

You will feel a full spectrum of emotions in this movie, from sorrow to joy and everything in between.  This is one of the few movies about life that is actually successful in conveying its entirety because it does not attempt to answer any of life’s questions.  Time will tell if critics and audiences accept it as a classic on the level of 2001, but I have a feeling they will.

In Malick’s other work, you can sense a deliberateness at work.  The Tree of Life can now make those films seem a bit stifling in that regard.  Reports from the editing room say that Malick actually put the final version of the film together there instead of having it all pieced out.  This element of spontaneity gives a sense of discovery to it.  There’s no telling where it’s going, which is a compliment of the highest order.

The bulk of the movie is set in the 1950s in Texas, where the director grew up.  In a way it is a deeply personal film, reflecting not just an auteur’s warring perceptions of creation, but also putting it into the context of his own experiences.  There are dreams, memories, and theories at work in this film, things that it reflects in every frame of its being.  It is about the oldest son’s (and this director’s) inner war with his own nature and grace, his father and mother.

A scene in the O’Brien family’s backyard has father and son planting a small tree while the mother watches on.  She tells her son that he will grow up before the tree.  That may be true, but as the countless others that he and his brothers climb throughout the movie show, what they have planted will continue to grow and grow for generations.

Grade: A

The Help
Directed by: Tate Taylor
Written by: Tate Taylor (screenplay), Kathryn Stockett (novel)
Starring: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Bryce Dallas Howard

More than anything- its Civil Rights message, its 60s send-back, its self-awareness of both- Tate Taylor’s film adaptation of The Help is more proof that female-driven movies outside the rom-com purgatory are infiltrating the mainstream.   That is the edgiest thing about it by far. As many critics have already remarked, it is a fairly safe movie.  It tackles racism in Jackson, Mississippi in the time period surrounding the assassination of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy.

Like AMC’s Mad Men, it dresses its stars (or the white ones at least) in irresistibly colorful dresses and tortures their hair into ridiculously smoothed-out contortions.  Unlike that show, it is aware of when it takes place.  This script, written by the director Tate Taylor, anticipates everything it’s going to throw at you.

Moments of scandal, such as when the primped-up antagonist Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) announces her plan to require the “Colored Help” to have separate bathrooms, arrive with slight pauses to procure your “gasp.”  At times it’s like a laugh-track network sitcom, only with soap-opera preaching and tear cues.

That being said, this movie does allow for a wonderful showcase of acting talent.  Viola Davis delivers a towering performance as Aibileen, the first woman to speak out to the young reporter and Jackson native Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone).  Davis brings such gravity to the movie that without her, it may have been a disaster.  Her eyes radiate unbearable sadness and loss, which she eventually conveys verbally in her interviews with Skeeter.

Stone continues her white-hot career with a role that takes her away from comedy.  She gets to play for the occasional laugh (as do most cast members), but she’s nowhere near the firebrand she is in movies like Easy A or Zombieland.  She proves here that she is capable of being a serious performer, but she also shows that she is better at comedy… at least for now.

Skeeter and Aibileen team up with Minny (Octavia Spencer), an even more fed-up maid, to show people what it’s like from the help’s point of view.  The script effectively gets us on the side of these three women and makes us want them to succeed.  Bryce Dallas Howard is a fantastic performer who was given a one-dimensional monster to play against such sympathetic characters.

This story would’ve been better with more complex antagonists.  Allison Janney plays Skeeter’s ailing mother Charlotte.  There is a flashback scene where she recalls firing long-time maid Constantine (Cicely Tyson) just because high-society snobs were looking down at her leniency with her.  Charlotte and that fired servant share a look of such complexity as a door shuts between them that it deserved its own movie.

It’s surprising that even this version of the movie was made, though.  A two-and-a-half hour message movie that is largely conversation is a tough sell, or it would be if Kathryn Stockett’s original novel hadn’t done so well.  Tate Taylor doesn’t direct the movie as much as he lets the story play out through the script.  The movie is visually interesting mostly because of the costume design, and Taylor does very few interesting things with the camera to aid in the story he’s trying to tell.

Everything about this movie is well-intentioned.  Even if it’s too over-polished to be completely moving, cracks of emotion surface thanks to the fantastic acting from Davis, Spencer, Janney, and Jessica Chastain.  Chastain, who was nearly wordless but still brilliant in The Tree of Life, is an emotionally rambunctious and chatty woman named Celia.  She was poor before she married into money, and is thus cast out of the Hilly’s elitist social circle like the maids and, ultimately, Skeeter.

The common thread of finding one’s place in a world so fraught with hatred is the thread that connects these women.  Their desire to change an ugly moral code buried beneath glamor and excess is an engaging premise.  In the end, though, The Help partially succumbs to its own aesthetic glamor and overwrought emotional excess.

Grade: C+

Moneyball
Directed by: Bennett Miller
Written by: Steven Zaillian & Aaron Sorkin (screenplay)
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Chris Pratt

Moneyball is a movie preordained to be an Oscar contender simply by the marketing.  Brad Pitt is in a sports movie, and he’s at his Brad Pittiest.  The odds are in this movie’s favor to be a contender, though, not to win (yet).

Billy Beane (Pitt) would not like that.  He is a man who needs to have the last word, to win the last game.  As the manager of The Oakland A’s, one of the poorest teams in professional baseball, he’s willing to grapple with a new strategy: play by the numbers, not the players.  Along with Yale economics alum Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), they shift the focus of recruiting new players to computer-generated results to acquire overlooked players on the cheap.

It is in the conversations between Beane and Brand that Moneyball lays the groundwork for its secret agenda.  People will be naturally drawn to a sports movie where Brad Pitt smirks on the poster.  Like Paul Giamatti in this year’s Win Win, it draws in an audience with expectations about sports movies and its star, then largely dismantles them.  Sure, Pitt smirks and schemes like he often does, but screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin take more cues from The Social Network (which Sorkin wrote) than Ocean’s 11.

Moneyball is about the method behind baseball, not baseball.  Underneath the drive to win big is a much sadder portrait of the outsourcing of a human game to the whims of computers.  Although it is not as pessimistic as The Social Network, it still shows outcasts turning the tables on “the system” and then becoming it.  Billy Beane is much more confident and charismatic than Mark Zuckerberg as well as divorced husband with a daughter he loves.  Brand, however, is the one that shows him the mathematical way.  His quiet demeanor, the way he sits in a room of older recruiters and the coach (Philip Seymour Hoffman in a reserved backseat role) with field experience and waits his turn to use his stats to dismantle, is fairly unsettling.

People who saw last year’s Cyrus could see layers of depth in Jonah Hill that had yet to be explored in his many Judd Apatow-produced comedy roles.  He does the most daring thing with this role: he makes Brand a completely boring, uninteresting person.  By being forced to look at him side-by-side with Pitt’s grandiose movie star turn as Beane, you actually get a larger-than-life sense of what their relationship may have been like.

Director Bennett Miller approaches Moneyball with a mixed vision and with mixed results.  He wants to emphasize Pitt, as most would, but he also wants to create a moody, visually sleek film.  David Fincher he is not, but there are some terrifically lit baseball montages.  For the most part though, he lets this be a Sorkin talkie, which is wise but much less thrilling than the end-result in The Social Network.

All that talking leaves little room for baseball.  The camera often looms through the little-seen corridors within the stadium.  It’s filmed like a dark labyrinth of a Secret Society that we’re being granted temporary access to.  This may be the most advantageous thing about Moneyball outside of its sly vision; another reason why it is good, but not one of the reasons it will be nominated for awards.

Grade: B-

War Horse
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Lee Hall and Richard Curtis (screenplay), Michael Morpurgo (novel)
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson and Niels Arestrup

In his second movie of 2011 (released only a few days after The Adventures of Tintin), Steven Spielberg has made one of the most quietly beautiful films of the year and his career.  War Horse may lack the grand narrative spectacle that follows much of his other work, Tintin included, but its imagery is truly captivating.

From the pensive beginning and ending on the same British farm to the desecrated terrain of World War I battlefields, Spielberg films War Horse with the kind of steady hand that only experience can bring.  Instead of embracing new motion capture animation technology like he did with Tintin, here he meticulously recreates explosive battles without using special effects.  As if that weren’t enough, he has placed a horse at the center of his story, and it does not talk like it might in an animated film.

War Horse is at its best when it brilliantly uses that horse as a narrative transition tool.  Right when it appears that it will accompany its trainer Albert (Jeremy Irvine) onto the war, it is taken away and he is left behind.  From there it switches owners rather rapidly, Black Beauty style.  This creates a portrait of the war from many different perspectives, though it noticeably skimps on developing the people when the horse is in the hands of the Germans.

Though it ignores the Germans more than any other side, Spielberg does show abuse by the French when the horse finds itself in the care of an old farmer (Niels Arestrup) and his ill granddaughter.  The French army storms in not long after these pensive people grow attached to the horses (the main brown horse has a bulky black counterpart through much of it) and takes the animals as well as many of their supplies.  While in the army’s care, they are forced to haul artillery, which physically destroys many of the other horses.

In the film’s most exciting sequence, the horse flees across a battlefield away from that hellish segment as John Williams’ score cheers it on.  However, it becomes snared in barbed wire and effectively pinned in the mud.  After the smoke clears from that battle, both sides look through binoculars and other visual aids and discover it is trapped.  One soldier from each side ventures out to free the horse.  It is here that the horse’s seemingly God-like power to unite opposing forces emerges.

The horse of Spielberg’s film has an almost mythic power to endure and provoke goodness in those it comes across.  It plays out like a grand parable, so the cheesiness in the conclusion almost makes sense.  That being said, Spielberg definitely takes more stylistic risks than he does narrative ones.  Gone are the jaw-droppingly gory battlefields of Saving Private Ryan and replaced by implied or bloodless killing.

Because what little combat the horse sees is bloodless if still somewhat intense, it shows Spielberg’s substantially greater attachment to the second World War and its atrocities.  War Horse brings to mind just how few films there are about World War I.  Though its largely the structuring of the screenplay written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis that provokes this, war is spoken of negatively and then takes a back seat.

As the horse plows through insurmountable odds it was preordained to overcome, War Horse becomes harder to admire than its excellent beginnings.  Spielberg abandons the narrative structure to flash back to the boy both while he stays behind on the farm and eventually marches off to war.  Irvine’s performance is solid even if his character is hopelessly uninteresting and cheesy, though the excellent supporting company of Emily Watson and David Thewlis do not hurt one bit.

Despite those quite substantial speed bumps, War Horse ends up showing Spielberg’s versatility more than anything.  The sweeping images of a horse in motion will never cease to be beautiful, and in the end, that is the most important tool at his disposal.

Grade: C+

Best Picture

Nominees: War Horse, The Tree of Life, Moneyball, The Artist, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help

Will Win: The Artist.  It’s a cute gimmick that should’ve been a short film, but I was sold on it winning as soon as people started bringing up that if it won it’d be the first silent to film to win since the actual Silent Era.  Blah blah blah.

Should Win: The Tree of Life was the most ambitious and beautiful film to be released last year, though it was lucky to score a nomination.  I also wouldn’t mind seeing Hugo take top honors.  It does what The Artist tried to do so much better.

Left out: Melancholia, A Dangerous Method, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Certified Copy and Young Adult are all more worthy than most of the nominees.

Best Director

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

Will Win: Michel Hazanavicius.  I’m expecting The Artist to clean up in these major categories.  Scorsese or Payne could pull an upset here, though.

Should Win: Malick.  Did you guys know I enjoyed The Tree of Life?

Left Out: There are a ton here.  David Cronenberg for A Dangerous Method, Lars von Trier for Melancholia, Tomas Alfredson for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Steven Soderbergh for Contagion, Raúl Ruiz for Mysteries of Lisbon, Kelly Reichardt for Meek’s Cutoff, Abbas Kiarostami for Certified Copy, Lee Chang-dong for Poetry, David Fincher for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Clint Eastwood for J. Edgar.

Best Original Screenplay

Nominees: Michel Hazanavicius- The Artist, J.C. Chandor- Margin Call, Woody Allen- Midnight in Paris, Annie Mumalo and Kristen Wiig- Bridesmaids and Asghar Farhadi- A Seperation.

Will Win: For the sake of not picking The Artist again, I’m going to go out on a limb and bet on Midnight in Paris.  It will be overlooked in all other categories, but for some reason I feel the Academy will honor Allen here as the strength of many of his films is in the sharp dialogue.

Should Win: Of the nominees, I would also say Allen deserves it the most.  Midnight in Paris was a wonderful surprise this summer, and he deserves all the acclaim he’s getting for it.  I would not be upset if J.C. Chandor took the award either, though, as Margin Call was a remarkable debut.

Left Out: Diablo Cody staked dark new territory in Young Adult, and I don’t think the Academy could reconcile that with the warm and fuzzy work of Juno, the movie that won her this award in 2008.  I’d also add in Abbas Kiarostami for Certified Copy, Miranda July for The Future, Dustin Lance Black for J. Edgar, Jonathan Raymond for Meek’s Cutoff, Lars von Trier for Melancholia and the team (Will Gluck, Keith Merryman and David A. Newman) behind the surprisingly witty summer flick Friends With Benefits.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Nominees: Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian- Moneyball, John Logan- Hugo, Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash- The Descendants, Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Clooney & Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon- The Ides of March

Will Win: Sorkin is still fresh off his win last year for The Social Network, but him and Steve Zaillian are going to take this award for Moneyball.  Look for Payne and co. to upset, though.

Should Win: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a twisty, brilliantly complex film.  O’Connor and Straughan deserve this award head and shoulders above the rest of the competition.

Left Out: Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of his own play for A Dangerous Method was nearly perfect.  Carolyn S. Briggs also did a wonderful job of adapting her own book with Tim Metcalfe for the very underrated Higher Ground.  Also, Zaillian deserved a nomination for The Girl With Dragon Tattoo even more so than his share on Moneyball.

Best Actor

Nominees: Brad Pitt- Moneyball, Jean Dujardin- The Artist, George Clooney- The Descendants, Gary Oldman- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Demián Bichir- A Better Life

Will Win: Jean Dujardin.  The press has made it a Pitt/Clooney bromance duel, so I think they may cancel each other out and make way for the French outsider, even if the  fabricated scandal of sexism attempts to hurt his chances.

Should Win: Oldman’s performance in Tinker Tailor is a restrained but nonetheless incredible performance.  This is, incredibly, his first Oscar nomination, though an upset win is pretty much out of the question.

Left Out: I never thought Leonardo DiCaprio would be underrated, but his incredible work in J. Edgar certainly is.  Also add in Michael Fassbender in either Dangerous Method or Shame, Andy Serkis in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Tom Hardy in Warrior.  

Best Actress

Nominees: Meryl Streep- The Iron Lady, Rooney Mara- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Glenn Close- Albert Nobbs, Viola Davis- The Help and Michelle Williams- My Week With Marilyn.

Will Win: Viola Davis.  Though Streep is long overdue, I think The Help is going to get rewarded both here and in the Supporting Actress category.

Should Win: Of these nominees, Streep.  The Iron Lady is cowardly in its avoidance of Margaret Thatcher’s controversial tenure as Prime Minister, but Streep is in top form.  Rooney Mara is also worthy for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander.

Left out: Kirsten Dunst gave the best performance of 2011 in Melancholia.  I’d also place Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy, Charlize Theron in Young Adult, Yun Jeong-hie in Poetry and Vera Farmiga in Higher Ground in there.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees: Max von Sydow- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Kenneth Branagh- My Week With Marilyn, Jonah Hill- Moneyball, Christopher Plummer- Beginners and Nick Nolte- Warrior.

Will Win: Plummer is a pretty solid bet to take this award, as countless praise has already been lauded on him and he has the elderly “career achievement” thing in his favor.  It helps that he’s good in the movie, too.

Should Win: Plummer is far and away the best thing about Beginners, and this category is probably the weakest one this year.

Left Out: Ben Kingsley’s role in Hugo is the biggest omission here.  Other than that, I’d add in Viggo Mortensen in A Dangerous Method, John Hawkes in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Kevin Spacey in Margin Call, Michael Parks in Red State, Albert Brooks in Drive and Rob Brydon for The Trip.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominees: Jessica Chastain- The Help, Octavia Spencer- The Help, Melissa McCarthy- Bridesmaids, Bérénice Bejo- The Artist and Janet McTeer- Albert Nobbs.

Will Win: Spencer.  Her character is little more than a sassy caricature, but then again that’s pretty much The Help in a nutshell.  The Academy will pat themselves on the back for supporting a “social issue” drama and call it good.

Should Win: Either of the Mc’s would have my vote in this category.  McTeer is by far the best thing about Albert Nobbs, and McCarthy is a welcome comedic presence in this cramped, dull category.

Left Out: Keira Knightley was too much for voters and many viewers to handle in A Dangerous Method, but I thought she was terrific.  I’d also add in Carey Mulligan for Shame, Jennifer Ehle in Contagion, Charlotte Gainsbourg in Melancholia, Shailene Woodley for The Descendants and Jessica Chastain for Tree of Life instead of The Help.

For the sake of not rambling, I’ll just list my predictions in the remaining categories

Cinematography- Emmanuel Lubezki- The Tree of Life

Animated Feature- Rango

Costume Design: Michael O’Connor- Jane Eyre

Art Direction: Dante Ferretti- Hugo

Editing: Thelma Schoonmaker- Hugo

Foreign Language Film: A Separation

Documentary: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Makeup: Albert Nobbs

Original Score: Ludovic Bource- The Artist

Original Song: “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets

Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Sound Editing: Hugo

Sound Mixing: Hugo

Midnight in Paris
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written by: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, and Corey Stoll

Finally, the first movie of the summer that deserves the label “art.”  Woody Allen continues his stroll through Europe with this weird, touching, and hilarious trip through the streets of Paris.  Midnight in Paris was the opener of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, mostly because it’s everything the French love: funny, beautiful, and set in France.

Allen’s career has been an almost definitive representation of the “on-again, off-again” method of filmmaking.  He cranks out movies like nobody’s business, and many of them are masterpieces.  Some of them, especially recently, have been almost universal flops.  He is at his best when he takes the usual characters- neurotic artist, muse, pretentious academic- and puts them in something that isn’t about them.

Character types are not the only thing Allen is famous for.  He connects with his real-world settings like few other directors do.  The cities he falls in love with are just as much characters as the people he places in them.

His latest film is a love letter to the City of Love; much as Manhattan fetishized the Big Apple, Allen begins Midnight in Paris with an extended montage of the city’s more common attractions as well as miscellaneous street corners and cafes.  We go from day and sunshine toward rain and night, which gives the sequence meaning outside of its beauty.  This movie is about acceptance and changing perceptions; night and downpours do not mean bad things are coming.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, the latest on-screen avatar of Woody Allen.  Wilson fares much better than Larry David did from the unfortunate if well-intentioned endeavor in Whatever Works.  Gil shows the Allen neurosis with a spot of writer’s block.  He wants to branch off from writing screenplays and into writing novels.  You can deduce that Allen also wanted to do this, so he just wrote a screenplay where his on-screen representation does it for him.

Meta moments like this are used as a point of humor in Midnight in Paris, but eventually emerge as a point of the movie much like this year’s Scream 4.  Gil comes to revelations at the same point the audience does.  He longs for the Paris of the 1920s, and when he gets his wish he comes to find that the people in that era long for a different Golden Age.

If Paris marks a return to greatness for Allen, it also marks a departure into the weird.  Gil’s desire to escape his apathetic fiance (Rachel McAdams), her unbearable friend (Michael Sheen), and materialistic, Republican parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy) actually takes him to the different periods in Paris’ history.

A collective “Who’s Who” of American and European art pop up, from Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salvador Dalí.  Along with these come cameos from several venerable Hollywood performers to portray them.  These artists are not the point; it’s the muses that he focuses on in many of his films.  Here that role is played by Marion Cotillard, who supersedes McAdams’ role as the overbearing fiance to become a true inspiration to Gil.

Usually the term “muse” means not just that the character is female, but also takes the backseat.  Not so here, or in many other Woody Allen films.  He has written many great parts for women, and they are typically the most interesting roles in the film.  Penélope Cruz won an Oscar for her incendiary portrayal in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Diane Keaton can be credited for matching the Allen neurotic blow for blow in many of his films.

Cotillard does great things in the role of Adriana, but sadly Rachel McAdams is mostly an afterthought and treats her character as such.  Most of what she does happens while Gil is off with Adriana and famous artists, so you never really forge a connection with her.  It rarely hurts the film but those looking for McAdams to take on a true Woody Allen character will have to wait for another pairing.

As this director and the fictional writer first pose an interest in being born in a different era, they eventually emerge with the knowledge that the past is glorified, and the present vilified.  The sincerity of this film is almost disarming, especially since it comes from one of the quickest wits and biggest cynics in film history.  Allen remains a romantic, though, both in his love of humanity and in the sprawling cities they inhabit.  He makes good art in beautiful cities about people making good art in beautiful cities.

Grade: B+

Michael Fassbender is one of the most talented actors to emerge in recent years.  Since his breakout role in Steve McQueen’s Hunger, he has gone on an acting rampage with some of the most talented directors in the world, including David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino.  He often plays characters who you normally would not sympathize with, but his tremendous range and emotional depth make it nearly impossible.  Oscar recently snubbed him for his performances in Shame and A Dangerous Method, though he hopefully has plenty of time to wow them and a wider audience in the coming years.

Hunger- Fassbender storms into the frame about 20 minutes into this brutal look at an Irish Republican Army’s hunger strike under the reign of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.  He brings the movie to vicious life as Bobby Sands, whose rebel spirit and ultimate sacrifice are the movie’s subject more than its political undertones.  The grimy, shit-covered walls of their prison look medieval, and Fassbender’s emaciated figure is not a special effects marvel.  It’s one of the best physical and emotional performances in years.

A Dangerous Method- Dr. Carl Jung could’ve been a villain, but Fassbender plays him as a deeply conflicted, ultimately pathetic everyman.  Along with Sigmund Freud, he layed the foundations for modern day psychoanalysis.  As it turns out, he also had kinky sex with his patient, the brilliant but hysterical doctor Sabina Spielren.  The way Fassbender unleashes his animalistic desires with her only to go home to his docile wife and their comfortable residence on a Swiss lake shows him and director David Cronenberg at the peak of their powers. 

Shame- Not to be outdone for his kinky, fully clothed performance as Dr. Jung, Fassbender bears/bares it all in his second collaboration with Steve McQueen.  He plays the sex addict known simply as Brandon, whose life is illustrated through his sexual interactions with women and his intrusive, flamboyant sister (Carey Mulligan).  The film itself is an exercise in misery for misery’s sake, but the acting is extraordinary, with Fassbender creating another physically and emotionally devastating portrait for McQueen.  This movie also could’ve been called Hunger. 

Fish Tank- Fassbender is a supporting character in Andrea Arnold’s explosive Fish Tank, but he steals every scene he’s in.  Connor at first appears to be a man who can finally bring the vicious Mia and her boozing mother together.  Then, he cheats on the mom with the daughter, which sets the already fuming narrative ablaze.  Fassbender again injects charm into a character who could’ve been pure sleaze.  As a result, it’s a somewhat complex portrait of a man at the mercy of his sexual whims who tries to reconcile it by being the nice guy.

X-Men: First Class- Without Fassbender’s take on Magneto, this X-Men would’ve been lost among the other summer wreckage.  Thanks to him and the inventive direction of Matthew Vaughn, though, it was a summer action movie with an explosive, tormented character at its center.  Fassbender captures this soon-to-be supervillain’s rage and pain, making us see how he became a monster even if we ultimately don’t sympathize with him.

Other notable performances: Inglourious Basterds, Haywire and Jane Eyre

The Godfather (Part 1 & 2)- You’d be hard pressed to find a set of films more iconic and lengthy than these two. You’d also probably be hard pressed to set aside 5 and ½ hours to watch them. Together they are, perhaps, even more an American institution than the Super Bowl itself. Filled with violence, action and family drama, they beautifully bring together something the game will never achieve: grace. Stylistically and technically cinema has never been more definitive than it is here under Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful direction. 

Amadeus- Chances are the public is going to spend a good portion of time rolling their eyes when Madonna performs at the half-time show, but no one is going to be suggesting they play a little Mozart. If you happen to, then we’ve got your film. Amadeus — written by the play of the same name’s playwright — is a 3 hour film of grand and lavish ambition, but thrives on the finer, hidden touches to show its prowess. Most of the story is fictitious; caricaturizing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his rival Antonio Salieri destroy one another in the most bizarre, vulgar and lavish films of its time.

Carlos- You’ll have to start this 5 1/2 hour epic before the Super Bowl just to finish it before midnight.  Oliver Assayas’ bloody chronicle of the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal is a brilliantly paced look at the globalization of terror.  With more than 8 languages spoken including English, Russian and French, Assayas’ uncompromised vision is fueled by idealism rather than action set pieces, though the more than hour-long sequence where Carlos and his gang take over an OPEC meeting is masterful action filmmaking. 

Fanny & Alexander- Many consider Fanny & Alexander Ingmar Bergman’s magnum opus.  Depending on which version you watch (theatrical or made for TV), you’ll either be in for a 3 hour journey into the adolescent mind of Alexander or one that spans nearly 4 and a half.  To make sure you overshadow the Super Bowl, we recommend the latter.  Either version is time well spent, with Bergman doing some of the finest storytelling of his expansive, almost unprecedented career.  From the brightly colored dinners of the first half to the prison-like quality of Alexander’s life when he has an authoritarian new step-father, Bergman captures atmosphere just as well as the story. 

Dogville- This 3 hour attack on Christian charity and America certainly has a much more limited audience than the all-American version of football, but  those willing to approach Dogville with an open mind will find a talented auteur working at the top of his game.  Lars von Trier’s game is provocation, and though he notoriously has never been state side, this deeply political film resonates long before its bloody conclusion.  Shot on a nearly empty sound stage, the cast and the audience is called on to imagine the town, which sounds unbearable.  Von Trier and Nicole Kidman pull it off, though, and the results are thrilling and, well, provocative. 

Lolita- There’s an endless supply of winded Kubrick films you could watch instead of the big game, but only one stands apart. Lolita runs a little over 2 and ½ hours long and follows a middle-aged professor who marries a widowed and sexually starved woman to get closer to her 14-year-old whom he has fallen in love with. Provocative, controversial and sexy, it has everything the big game has been missing since wardrobe malfunctions have gone out of style.

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Hugo
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: John Logan (screenplay), Brian Selznick (book)
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen

Hugo would be a good place to start in a film history class.  Not only does it glide through the early history of silent movies, but it also utilizes the latest digital filmmaking technology in doing so.  Martin Scorsese has created a film worthy of the 3D technology that is infecting every big Hollywood blockbuster, and he has done it by using it not as a showy gimmick, but as a storytelling tool.

Here, that third dimension immerses us in the movie’s world, drawing us into an opening sequence that transforms from turning clock gears to an overview of Paris, into a train station and finally back into the walls full of clock gears as the young boy Hugo (Asa Butterfield) zooms through these tunnels with make-shift abandon.  In one of the most finely filmed sequences of the year, Scorsese keeps track of him with a clever tracking shot that simply pans as he turns corners.  If this had been converted to 3D instead of filmed that way, you’d already have whiplash.

Through its more than 2 hour running time, Hugo never disorients or confuses.  Much of it takes place inside that Parisian train station, where Hugo lives with his uncle after his father’s untimely death.  Hiding from the train station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), he keeps the clocks working while his uncle goes out drinking.  He has another goal, though.  His father left behind an automaton, a miniature replica of a human made of gears.  Hugo ventures out to steal the remaining gears and find the heart-shaped key to make it work.

This mechanical replica of a human is a encapsulation of the movie’s theme: that everyone is a machine with a purpose.  Hugo takes to the train station’s main floor in search of missing parts, which puts him contact with a grumpy store owner (Ben Kingsley) and his adopted goddaughter (Chloë Grace Moretz).

While trying to snatch an object one day when the shop owner appears to have dozed off, Hugo is snatched up, and his notebook/manual for repairing the automaton is taken.  From here, Scorsese gently bobs and weaves his 3D camera through the rest of the story, which mostly focuses on Hugo’s kinship with the goddaughter Isabelle and their discovery of the automaton’s secrets as well as the birth of cinema.

Those two plot points converge in an endless flurry of fantastic imagery.  The shop owner is revealed to be the famous silent filmmaker George Méliès, who has exiled himself from his passion after many of his films were lost.  Kingsley gives his finest performance in years as that larger-than-life cinema icon, reducing him to a commoner and then exploring his crippling failure and, in the end, his redemption through Hugo.

Hugo‘s greatest success is in blending that history with a fantastically accessible tale of youthful adventure.  Scorsese connects deeply with this material even though it’s a very distinct departure from most of his work, working with the two terrific child actors to capture their emotional extremes without condescending to them or the audience.  Redemption, a major theme in many of his prominent, extremely violent films, is on the outskirts here.  Hugo is a boy in search of purpose, and finds it in fixing things.  He spends many of his hours turning the gears of a giant clock, until he discovers his new friend.

With Isabelle and Méliès, Hugo finds the world of cinema his father had told him about.  The finest sequences of Hugo are those flashbacks to the filming of old silent films.  Bathed in color and admiration, Scorsese fondly pays homage in these scenes to an era that has never stopped mattering.  This movie matters not only because of its history lessons, though.

3D is an extremely divisive technology since its rekindling under James Cameron.  Whether that kindling lit fire to an art form or shed new light on its digital possibilities is up for passionate debate.  What is clear is that both sides have examples to back up their arguments, from disastrous disaster movies like Sanctum or wonderfully immersive  experiences like this.  Hugo is an artist capturing the essence of childhood in the medium he has helped make great, at the birth of that then-new art form.

Grade: A-

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Directed by: Stephen Daldry
Written by: Eric Roth (screenplay), Jonathan Safran Foer (book)
Starring: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Max von Sydow

The opening image of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is of a man falling to his death, with papers behind him that fade into the title; its closing image is of a boy swinging upward on a swing, triumphant.  It freezes on this image, asking the audience to pause and share in that triumph.  This is hard to do for many reasons, but mostly because that man who was falling to his death wasn’t doing so because he wanted to.  He is falling from the Twin Towers, and it is Septermber 11th, as the movie and its director, Stephen Daldry, will remind you of several times.

Oskar (Thomas Horn), the troubled boy at the film’s center, torments himself endlessly with the messages his father (Tom Hanks) left on their answering machine while he was trapped in the World Trade Center on what Oskar calls “The Worst Day.”  After finally working up the courage to enter his father’s room, he searches the top shelf, knocking over a blue vase in the process.  Inside that vase is a key whose mysteries occupy the remainder of the narrative.

In his search for the key’s lock, Oskar hopes to cling to his father through this last mystery.  The two’s relationship was chock-full of riddles, which are shown in flashbacks along with all the 9/11 footage.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is not simply a story haunted by those events, but one that confronts those horrific images in order to add value and sentimentality to itself.  As Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote in her review, “This is how kitsch works.”

If anything, this film serves to show the depths with which a major studio is willing to sink to score Oscar gold.  Oskar’s quest for meaning when there is none is tragic, made even more so by his apparent mild Asberger’s (the film never states directly whether he has it).  Though I did not read the book, I do know it certainly wasn’t able to use those 9/11 images as a direct link for sympathy.  As Oskar’s mother Linda (Sandra Bullock) turns around while her husband is on the phone and sees those burning towers not a minute after they were shown on archive news footage, it’s apparent the movie’s search for meaning is very different than Oskar’s.

After finding that the envelope the key came in has “Black” written on it, Oskar is convinced that it must be the last name of a person.  There are 472 Blacks in the phone book, and he takes to the city’s Five Buroughs to track them down.  Accompanying him on part of that journey is a man known simply as The Renter (Max von Sydow), a mute tenant of Oskar’s grandmother.  Oskar’s probing questions trouble the secretive man, who communicates using only a pen and notebook paper or the words “Yes” and “No” tattooed on his hands. Von Sydow plays The Renter with deep gravitas, but it is by no means an Oscar-worthy portrayal.

Everything about this movie is deliberately and skillfully crafted (with Oscar gold clearly in mind).  Stephen Daldry’s direction gives vibrant life to the traumatized New York City streets, often overcrowding them or draining them of anyone but Oskar. He gives generous close-ups to the performers, particularly Ms. Bullock and Viola Davis (who plays the first person on Oskar’s list), so that he can capture their tears and gift them to the audience as some sort of catharsis.

Relief never comes, though, even if it does to these characters.  The film is chock-full of manipulative sadism, on full display in a jaw-droppingly over-the-top sequence where Oskar plays the answering machine messages to The Renter.  He scribbles out pleas to stop, and Daldry is there to catch every look of agony in melodramatic close-up.  Emotion pours into almost every scene even if Oskar has a hard time expressing it.

Daldry uses his tremendous skill to fill in those awkward gaps.  This skill, however, ultimately goes to show that the movie’s exploitation was no accident.  Unlike many films let loose by the Hollywood studios, this movie’s greatest sin is not its mindlessness but its knowing.

Grade: D