The Oncoming Hope

Canadian indie band Stars once sang that when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. I can think of no better way to convey the shocking final 15 minutes of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.

When you watch the film, you'll marvel at how fresh it feels. Following a credits sequence that hits you in the face with "angry-dancing", we're introduced to the social world of a Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Then, as now, the outstanding existential threat is gentrification.

Spike Lee chooses to face character complications head-on, and no one's free of scrutiny. Giancarlo Esposito's "Buggin' Out" , the film's would-be Malcolm X, swings easily from overblown concern at the lack of black faces on the wall of Sal's Pizzeria to inviting universal ridicule when a cyclist scuffs his Air Jordans. Lee's camera treats his affectations unkindly, the upward zoom adding extra heft to his already comical hairstyle. Even so, much like Falstaff, this thoughtless dilettante sets the film's tragedies in motion.

Sal, our pizzeria owner, professes love for the people of Bed-Stuy, citing his pride that the young adults in the neighborhood grew up on his pizza. Nonetheless, he does not hesitate to call them "animals" and "niggers" when the mood takes him. And yet, there's little doubt that he loves the people he serves, even as a deep-seated disrespect for them wins out over his seemingly better nature.

Disrespect really is the order of the day here: whether you're Mookie, Tina, Radio Raheem, Sal, or even Sal's useless sons, how you deal with disrespect defines your character (at least up to a point). Mookie does nothing for so long that his big act almost feels like a triumph. Raheem hides behind his music, and when that's disrespected, he explodes. Sal's deep-seated racism comes to the fore. He's not an anti-social racist like his son, but guilty of ugly prejudice none the less.

The exception is the Greek chorus. They constantly comment but never act. They are less characters than narrators, involved less with the specific lives of the neighborhood than in defining the shapes of the setting. Lee treats them to some of the most beautiful videography in film history as they lounge under umbrellas against a wall painted the brightest red ever seen outside a Tarantino film.

I don't want to linger on the ending; if you haven't seen the movie, you need to experience it for yourself. I will say this, however: la plus ça change, la plus la même chose.

By the time Detective Chang jabs a fifth chopstick into Van Gogh's brain, we're not just covering our eyes, we're wondering why. The senseless act perfectly mirrors the senselessness of the story: Chang's trying to find out who put out a hit on him, but when he begins his chopstick dance, we already know the answer to that question and so does Chang.

This scene, like so many others in Nicolas Winding Refn's disaster of a movie, made the impossible possible: falling asleep while a man's limb is severed, falling asleep when a sword passes through a woman's body, falling asleep while Ryan Gosling just stands there, waiting.

Oh god, the standing and waiting. A better actor might have sold this role, but while facing all his ethical turmoil (I assume that's what he's facing--it might be a particularly disappointing bout of constipation) he never achieves anything more than blankness.

So thank goodness for Kristin Scott Thomas. She swoops in, a bundle of bleach and poison, bringing the only forward movement to a story that really doesn't need to move forward at all, and should have been terminated at the outset.

Utterly against type, she takes her character to a level of malevolence unseen since Jackie Weaver in Animal Kingdom (a movie you should not miss, if you haven't seen it already).

I don't know what to do when there's a single performance that shines like a diamond in a pile of shit. Is she objectively good, or is she better only in comparison? I've heard early clamors from the Twitterati for an Oscar nom for Thomas, and I find the thought strangely distasteful. Isn't the performance a failure when it's not in keeping with the rest of the movie?

I really shouldn't complain. At least she brought some entertainment to the whole dour business.

Silver Linings Playbook earns its ending in a way few movies do, let alone recent ones. The film concentrates on something that's usually treated as a simple waypoint in other movie journeys: finding a way to peek your head out from behind the Sisyphean boulder, even when all the signs suggest you should continue to hide. The boulder causes continuous crushing pain, but at least it's pain you're familiar with.

And speaking of crushing pain, do not be mistaken; the first 30 minutes of the movie are profoundly uncomfortable. You will be squirming in your chair, especially when "the incident" is revealed, the moment that lands Patrick Solitano Jr. in the mental hospital.

Patrick (and who knew there was an actor hiding inside Bradley Cooper?) gets out of mental hospital, only to land in a more abstract prison. He suffers from dreams he can't let go, he's oppressed by his parents, he's written off so often that when anyone shows him kindness, he can't even recognize it (and notice that these moments are when he's most explosive).

When he meets Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany, the real fireworks happen (and not the good kind). They need each other's help, but it's dark and desperate - Pat can't see beyond his own need to reconnect with his estranged wife, and Tiffany never loses sight of her own needs for even a second (take THAT manic pixie dream girl meme). She's not gonna put up with his blindsided bullshit, and if that's the side of himself he brings to work, she doesn't hesitate to manipulate him outright.

It's a complex situation with no easy solutions, and would have been a disaster without Jennifer Lawrence's nuanced performance. Also stay tuned for Robert De Niro, who actually acts for the first time in thirty years (and he's just as terrific as you remember him being).

Mental illness is often treated as a plague upon other people - an affliction for the weak or the mutated or the poorly raised. But when it comes down to it, who hasn't felt the atmosphere become so tight, so oppressive, that you feel like space is literally closing in? When you can't see anything inside your head, let alone outside of it? We write those moments off, "I was stressed," "I haven't gotten enough sleep lately," but as soon as a doctor puts a name to someone else's bad moment, we cease to treat it as a natural part of human experience, but as an unforgivable failing.

At the end of the day, you still have to live, you still have to function. But that isn't easy, and Silver Linings Playbook doesn't pretend it is. Go see it. It deserves all it's Oscar noms (and if there's a God in the academy, it will win Best Picture).

Every review I've read of Les Miserables compares it to the musical that birthed it, which feels slightly like comparing Texas to Louisiana without any mention of the rest of the United States, let alone the world. So I'm gonna be the nerd who talks about the book, which only seems fair since, at the end of the day, the movie is a translation to a new medium, just as the musical was a translation from a novel, which in turn was translated and mistranslated from the original French.

What we're seeing on screen, ultimately, is the videotape of the videotape of the videotape. They've taken the original text and carved it up into strangely shaped pieces, excising character and context and leaving in the glossy bits. This approach worked fine for Mamma Mia (disagree in the comments) because at least Mamma Mia was a fun romp. Oscarbait Les Miserables is a series of soul-destroying set-pieces grounded in not even an iota of human agency.

It finds a humanity with its side characters (Thenardiers, Enjolras, many other nameless revolutionaries) that it never matches with the leads. There goes Anne Hathaway's snotty nostril, there goes the ever-pinkening bags under Hugh Jackman's eyes, and Cosette? Oh Cosette. I never knew you (though I knew you so well in the novel).

What frustrates me most is how little this film paid attention to the prime rule of film - economy in storytelling. Now, economy doesn't simply mean cutting out portions of the text, it means that you boil the story down to the essentials.

Character Slaughter

At the end of the film, here's what I'd have thought of the characters if I hadn't read the novel:

1. Jean Valjean is a Panglossian do-gooder whose relentless commitment to "morality" has no foundation in reality (which couldn't be further from his character in the novel, who's deeply conflicted at all turns. If you remember, when Jean Valjean goes to the battlements, he's undecided whether to save Marius or to kill him).

2. Marius is the shallowest romantic on the planet (this hurts, because Novel Marius was my first great love, the literary reflection of my idealistic/suffering 12-year old self). Seriously, what a wet wanker is FilmMusical!Marius.

3. Cosette? WHAT COSETTE? All I see is an OBJECT who is barely even half of a person (In the novel, she gets her own book for a reason. She's the optimistic striver who is tired of being an object, and makes choices. CHOICES). This hurts even more because Amanda Seyfried sounded TERRIFIC. Couldn't you give her a role, you guys?

Les Miserables as a Film

There's plenty of commentary elsewhere on Les Miserables filmic failures (oh those closeups. What really burns me is that Tom Hooper actually had multiple cameras on each actor, AND STILL CHOSE THESE DAMNED CLOSEUPS. Like, "Guys, forget the plot. What we really need now is an establishing shot of Eddie Redmayne's nasal freckles.").

Guys, this burns me to say. I really looked forward to the movie, and am sad that it isn't something I can rewatch over and over. But quite frankly, by the time we hit Valjean's seventh song, I was ready for him to die, and die swiftly (and don't get me started on Russell Crowe's "singing").

I've seen the musical, and I don't remember it being such an poorly thought out adaptation of the novel. But perhaps this is a reflection of the rule of Chicago - you can't just film the damn stage musical, you have to alter it to fit the new medium.

Oncoming Hope out. Play nicely in the comments.

There's no way to discuss this without talking about the ending. In other words, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Let me start by saying that I loved Skyfall. I can comfortably state that it's one of the top two Bond films (I'm unable to declare it better than Goldeneye without seeing that old favorite again). Skyfall finds the perfect balance between acknowledging the tropes that make Bond such a treasured film commodity and acknowledging their quaintness.

But the problem, as the film so ably points out, is that Bond (and the whole of MI6) can't be judged by its activity in the past, but must be judged by the needs of the present. As a result, it becomes impossible to ignore that Skyfall gives us the most regressive gender politics since the Sean Connery era.

Two female characters are bedded and disposed of (quite literally in one case) with zero fanfare or sentiment. One is LITERALLY TOLD TO SHUT UP by her male colleague during a court proceeding. Meanwhile, in series regular territory, we're back to having a posh toff male heading up MI6, while our clever and highly competent field agent suddenly reveals her life's aspiration to be "sexy secretary". That's zero for five, Skyfall.

Let's start with Eve, who inspired this post. She spends the entire film being punished for a small mistake she makes under M's orders, while Bond goes around screwing up so badly that he can't even pass the physical fitness exam. Even worse, despite saving Bond's (and everyone's) lives twice in the interim, she somehow decides that she's not competent to be a field agent, simply based on a throwaway comment from Bond. The kiss of death? It turns out that she not only decides to be a secretary, she's actually gonna be that secretary (you remember the one. In fifty years of Bond films, she's notable for alternating "sexy" and "nagging" and "why don't you ever return my calls?".

To be honest, if she started the film as a secretary who went out into the field and then decided she wanted to stay behind the desk, I might have hand-waved it. But to invite the audience to smile knowingly as a capable agent surrenders her power to a man who was once her equal palls.

And why the hell did she end up shaving Bond? Is she his wife? Fail.

The head of the government inquiry may have been a touch long-winded, but her points were neither hysterical nor invalid. And as any student of the British government knows, long-windedness is not an affectation, but an expectation. Mallory's flippant shutdown of her right to speak (she's the fucking head of the inquiry!) is both against the way government inquiries work, and just flat offensive. And also, the audience is supposed to laugh. Women talking too much! Hilarious!

The whole Séverine subplot was incredibly bizarre. Bond finds her both traumatized and full of fear from being sold first into sex slavery and then to Silva, and nonetheless chooses to have her by sneaking up on her in the shower. Of course, James Bond is basically male privilege made flesh, but come on dude, she's TERRIFIED. She doesn't want your dick. Also, if he was so desperately taken with her, one would think he'd have slightly more of a reaction to her death-by-dick-measuring-contest. But la-di-da.

M comes closest to success, but we've spent enough time with her to know her pretty well (remember her fantastic introduction in Goldeneye?) Nonetheless, she dies pretty stupidly. She has no facility with a gun, knows it, but still sits out as a target, despite a wonderful escape route? Sure, she set off some exploding chandeliers, but what was the plan here? She's the head of the MI6, not some domestic terrorist. So we not only get Mallory accusing her of incompetence, she proves him right. M, who never makes a false step, makes a series of them in Skyfall. So she dies, freeing Bond of the only female who can stand up to him in every regard.

After the women are handily put in their places, Skyfall leaves us with the image of Bond and Mallory talking shop, drinking whisky and smirking about a job terribly done (guys, the head of MI6 is dead! I don't know how you define a job gone horribly wrong, but I am PRETTY SURE THAT'S ONE OF THEM). Mallory failed to track Silva despite Q's technical wizardry, and he still ends up boss. All the women end up dead or demoted, and the men get promoted.

I haven't even discussed the queerification of Silva ("Sure, he's killed a lot of people and blown up buildings, but what's really horrifying is that he might be homosexual!"), but that may be a topic for another day.

So long and thanks in advance for your polite, well-reasoned comments.

As Hurricane Sandy (known to some of you as FRANKENSTORM and to the more pedantic of you as THE METEOROLOGIST'S MONSTER) swaddles the Eastern seaboard with an extremely wet blanket, my thoughts turn to fictional New York weatherpocalypses past. These are their stories. DUN DUN.

1. The Day After Tomorrow

My greatest Frankenstorm pleasure (apart from a couple of extra "work-from-home" PJ days) derives from a lingering memory of a bunch of Oxbridge holier-than-thous snickering through a screening of The Day After Tomorrow at an environmental agency I once worked at.

"New York city shalt not be graced by a hurricanous monstrosity in any reality!" they exhaled, along with hearty fumes of red wine and superiority.

Now I'm not going to pretend that The Day After Tomorrow offers a portrait of anything approaching reality, but complaining about a lack of verisimilitude in a Roland Emmerich film is a bit like complaining that an orange tastes of citrus. What The Day After Tomorrow DOES give us, in order of priority, is a shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal (at a time when he still belonged to the indie kids), and amazing special effects shots of the New York Public Library drowned in a snow-pocalypse (Brangelina aint got NOTHIN' on weather-related portmanteaus...).

2. AI: Artificial Intelligence

Because it's never quite obvious that the weatherpocalypse has already happened long before the start of the movie, AI's controversial coda hits you in the face like a sickly sweet rhubarb pie. When I first saw the movie, I was the classic "love the movie, hate the ending" viewer, until I watched it a second time and suddenly got it.

Setting plays an important role here, implying that Kubrick's overall intent was something closer to Tree of Life than to his usual bleakness. It's the the crisis of human existence boiled down to its most fundamental battle: the creations of man vs. the creations of nature. And the beauty of AI is that it's impossible to figure out exactly who's winning between those dueling spawns, though humankind clearly lost. Poor David clings to the last vestige of what once defined humanity, until even that's lost.

3. Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes was a great obsession of mine as a kid (that includes all the offshoots, even the tv show, which inspired my first fanfiction, written as a lonely 10 year old in Jakarta, Indonesia). I haven't revisited the classic films since my tweens (I watched them so many times I can still see every scene in head), and as my mind developed, I came to realize that the films are microcosms of mankind's worst tendencies, especially the first film.

Planet of the Apes basically amounts to a wet dream for xenophobes, operating on the premise that as white men become the minority, the new colored overlords are barbaric murderers, concerned only with the downfall of the white men. (I'll take this opportunity to point out that the human women left in this particular white supremacist nightmare fantasy land LITERALLY HAVE NO VOICE).

But none of that dulls the impact of the incredible reveal at the end of the film, the only scene left from Rod Serling's original script for the movie. Taylor and Nova finally make it to the Forbidden Zone, only to find out that the "alien planet" he's landed on is, in fact, post-apocalyptic Earth. We don't know the exact circumstances that led to our Great Lady's semi-burial, but it's a decent guess that the climate had a fair bit of impact in the 700 years since Taylor and his fellow astronauts left Earth.

Conclusion

Weatherpocalypses fast and slow have long been a Hollywood obsession, so there are FAR more films that I haven't even touched upon. What are your favorites, whether New York or not?

Christopher Nolan movies mean many things: angsty heroes with dead lovers, action scenes that whiz by so fast they leave you upside down, and plotlines that require devoted attention lest they become incomprehensible.

Enter Insomnia. There's a dynamic, interesting female lead (notably still alive!), a plot that owes more to careful characterization and mood-building than twists and turns, and most notably, a single action scene that isn't even part of the film's climax.

Nolan places us in the infinite sunshine of an Alaskan summer. I mention the setting because it means as much to the movie as the characters actions, weaving itself into every scene in surprising ways. Al Pacino's Will Dormer goes for days without sleep; is it because of the endless sunlight, or something else? Watch the way the sunshine breaks into particular scenes, even as he goes mad trying to block it out.

Hilary Swank's character, who starts out idealizing Dormer, quickly realizes something's amiss. She's patient in playing her hand, but you can see she's ready to at any given moment. Robin Williams plays the third in this triangle; he couches his murderous character with such a "man-next-door" sensibility that we're constantly forced to question whether he might actually be one of the good guys. Saying more would spoil the film.

Insomnia's a thriller that follows none of the traditional thriller beats; we know exactly who all the guilty parties are from the beginning of the film. What's more unusual is that they know as well. Circumstances force them all to dance around each other in perfect balance, electrons and protons, held apart by forces none could have foreseen. This dance provides more than enough tension to keep our interest. And so it happens that Nolan's most engaging movie is the one with the least action.

Have you guys seen it? What are your thoughts?

Guys, I am filled with FEELINGS. Yann Martel's Life of Pi moved me like in ways that few novels have before or since. And by the looks of it, the movie will have the same effect. Despite my general distaste for films of the third dimension, I trust Ang Lee to find beauty, even in the uncanny valley. We might even end up with a movie about Indians that doesn't completely fetishize India! Shock horror!

Watch the trailer and tell me your thoughts:

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but somehow missed.

Tarantino fans treat Jackie Brown as the ugly little stepsister in his oeuvre, and critics seem to ignore it altogether, even though it's Tarantino's most effective homage to the art of filmmaking. One can assume it's ignored because it's the least "Tarantino-esque" of his films; you've got the wit, you've got the experimental story telling, you've got the references to genre b-films, but it's more of a human story.

The story's framed as a simple heist, but the gangster elements merely provide a skeleton for Tarantino to hang a much more complicated story about unrequited love, loyalty, and the tension between love, greed and fear.

Emotions are important. The characters who make it through the film have the good sense to either love Jackie or fear Ordell, and often both. The "fearless" characters end up with bullets in their brains; Louis, with his post-prison haze, Melanie, with her failure to connect with the real world, Ordell, with his general sense that nothing in the world actually affects him.

Tarantino sets the story up as a delicate conflict between three teams: Louis, Ordell and his concumbines, the ATF agents, and Jackie and Max (the bail bondsman played to perfection by Robert Forster).

Much of the rising action in the film comes from the steady disintegration of these partnerships. In each case, Tarantino provides us with moments of hope that he brutally strips away, most tragically with Jackie and Max.

You can't create this kind of story without a powerhouse acting talent, and the cast meets the challenge. So much of the film is conveyed through fleeting expressions; blink, and you'll miss important character moments.

Even if you haven't seen the run of seventies' films that made Pam Grier a star (I haven't), Jackie Brown provides a perfect showcase for why she's idolized by so many. Robert de Niro plays completely against type as an inept dumbass who sleepwalks through the world until anger breaks him free. Samuel L. Jackson steals the show with a surprisingly restrained performance.

Have you seen Jackie Brown? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but somehow missed.

As film fans mourned the recent passing of groundbreaking screenwriter Nora Ephron, I realized it was time to watch Sleepless in Seattle, her most successful film (granted, "most successful" is a matter of degrees with a filmography like hers). I'm sorry I haven't watched it until now; I fell of my chair laughing in certain scenes, and cried big giant monkey tears at least three times in the movie.

I tend to avoid romantic comedies like the plague, for the simple reason that I tend to love them a little too much, which creates such a cognitive dissonance with my feminist and intellectual bona fides that my brain simply shuts down (I'm not kidding. I once was forced to watch a Katherine Heigl romcom on a plane. It pains me to say I loved it. (Seriously, Romcoms On A Motha-------- Plane. THE HORROR).

Sleepless in Seattle clearly rises miles high above the genre, setting an example that was never replicated in Hollywood (there are some French romcoms that live up to it, but, of course, they're in French). I've written previously about my love for Serendipity, which shares a certain approach with SiS; they take the fundamental implausibility of the genre and build it into the plot.

What could be more ridiculous than a Baltimore news reporter stalking a lonely father in Seattle? Frankly, with a tagline like that, it's impossible to believe that the movie wouldn't be a complete trainwreck. But it works, for a few reasons.

1. The Double A-Plot Structure: Most movies have one A-plot and a number of side plots, and they all come together at the end of the film. Sleepless instead tells two distinct stories, allowing neither to fall completely into ridicule. Of course, Meg Ryan's story skirts much closer to the edge of believability, which brings us to the next point.

2. Meg Ryan's Performance: Holy shit, is she good in this movie. She's channeling a young Nicole Kidman, with a wide-eyed intensity to match. Unlike other romcom heroines, she's extremely confident. Her bad decisions aren't a result of a lack of self-esteem, but of a deep-seated unhappiness that she barely seems aware of. The script conveys this economically; when she tells Bill Pullman it's not him, it's her, we know that's actually true. It is her, and that's ok. She ends things and takes a stupid chance because life has disappointed her. And that's one of the most realistic character choices I've seen in a mainstream movie.

3. Tom Hanks' Performance: I cannot even speak about it. Total perfection. Where Annie's disappointment drives her character forward, Sam moves with his anger, which has warped him so badly that he can't love anyone. I'm not convinced that changes by the end of the movie, which is why the film ends where it does.

The ending truly is remarkable in so many ways. Throughout the film, I kept wondering, "Is it just me, or is Sam a terrible father?" He belittles Jonah constantly, ignoring his emotional needs. So when he reunites with Jonah, he actually realizes he's been a bad father. And without anyone explicitly having to say that he's become completely self-absorbed after his wife's death, it's acknowledged, bringing the character's story around full circle.

That's what's great about the film; it's more than just fluff. There are very serious undercurrents bubbling to the surface, which is rare in the romantic comedy genre. The romance, while highly compelling, provides a platform for stories about human weakness.

It's no secret to those that know me that Les Miserables is one of my favorite novels of all time (I guess I just have a thing for socially conscious doorstoppers about poverty, nobility, revolution and the ultimate impossibility of redemption).

Of course, due to that doorstopper-iness (tots a word), it's basically un-filmable. So I'm more than a little interested in seeing the movie musical version. Though the trailer focuses on Fantine, what strikes me most is how this is the role Hugh Jackman was born to play.

Amanda Seyfried seems perfect for Cosette, and Hathaway's singing is more than competent. As for the boy? Marius was my first great love, and I've long given up on any movie portrayal matching the image in my head. At least Eddie Redmayne has the requisite intensity.

Share your thoughts below!

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT

To be honest, I didn't even know about it ::fails::. For many reasons that are now obvious, it's not considered one of Sidney Lumet's great films, despite a fantastic performance by Al Pacino.

I found out about the film through The Savage City, T.J. English's fantastic account of police corruption and race riots in the 1960's and 70's. Frank Serpico's a minor character in the book, but his importance to changing the culture of the NYPD cannot be over-stated (in fact, the real-life impact of his actions are weirdly understated in the film).

THOUGHTS

The movie covers the 12ish years of Frank Serpico's life with the NYPD, from the clean shaven days to the full-blown hippie madness.

Serpico's shown as a paragon of virtue in his professional life, though we're given little context as to where his ideals come from. Certain scenes clearly inspired the original Life on Mars series, but somehow the idealism of the protagonist makes more sense in that more fantastical scenario. What gives Serpico the strength to maintain his virtue even when his sanity's at stake?

The film's tight focus on Serpico's greatest moments of stress gives Pacino about 90 minutes of Oscar material. I can't help but think how the film would have benefited from a slightly broader scope. We play ample witness to corruption within the police departments, but we're not shown how scary the '70s really was in NYC. The problem isn't just that policemen were corrupt; the entire politics of the city created a patronage system where entire populations turned to crime as a substitute for their self-worth.

I fully recognize that some of my issues with the film may have to do with the datedness of certain details, but it also seems like a case where Lumet's commitment to "issue-raising" takes precedence over making a deeper study of the setting. Also, Tony Roberts. Can't take that guy seriously. Which is definitely the Woodster's fault.

All that said, the film has many pleasures. Lumet gives New York so much attention that Woody Allen might be jealous. The West Village doesn't look like that anymore, and we can be sure that it never will again. Look at Dumbo, for godssake!

And now, a tour of Al Pacino's ridiculous outfits (Frank Serpico, ever the egoist, claims that Pacino doesn't nearly do justice to his "forward-thinking fashions):

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but didn't.

Now, you may feel that Practical Magic may not be a gap that necessarily needs to be filled, but I suspect it's more of a personal gap. No movie classic, it has nonetheless hovered in my brain as something I know I'd love (I loved all supernatural shows on the WB...even Charmed). And guess what? I did.

As if there was any chance of failure, with a cast that not only includes Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, but Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing and Aidan Quinn. And of course a terribly homely European named Goran Visjnic.

I'll be honest, I expected a sort of "quirky romantic comedy," so I was pleasantly surprised at the dark undertones present from the start, and how quickly things veered completely off the rails. Well done, Bullman (seriously, can we have more Nicole Kidman/ Sandra Bullock movies? I'm overcome by the CHARMINGNESS of it all).

If you're on the fence about seeing this, I can only recommend this scene of total insanity (and coconuts):

THOUGHTS

The intro pretty much sums up the entire film: "La la la, I know the music's exceptionally jaunty, but really, there's quite a serious curse that killed your family," said Mother Goose-witch. "There may be no males, but you can have all the sweets you want! Da ha!"

There can never be anything more delightful than Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest trading barbs in strange Southern accents, like a cantankerous old married couple that can cut you down with a yeehaw spell. They spark wonderful conversations like this:

"Oh good, we can take them to the summer solstice!"

"Fine, but I don't want them dancing naked under the full moon."

"As you remember, nudity is completely optional!"

There was this great period in the mid-90s where children weren't always portrayed as cloying, but actually a bit intelligent, and sort of interesting in their own right. I miss those days. I also miss the days when said children morph into insanely hot Sandra Bullocks.

]

The movie's not perfect, by any means. But I forgive everything for this piece of dialogue:

"She just keeps going through all these guys!"

"One day, a guy will go straight through her."

[Cue Nicole Kidman's character, weeping into her ovaries.]

Practical Magic reminds me that another thing the 90s had was Faith Hill, teaching pop-country fans everywhere about centripetal motion and perpetual bliss. Which explains why the movie sometimes feels like an extended remake of one Amy Grant video you may recall:

In more serious news, Nicole Kidman's a remorseless psychopath, which is kind of a nice twist for this sort of movie to take. I sincerely love how Sandra Bullock plays the bookish, uptight sister, while Nicole Kidman plays the wild one. We forget today, but Kidman once made quite a career as a firecracker before she became a "serious actress."

Favorite thing in the entire movie: Bath salts that transmit Joni Mitchell through the air! Ok, I wouldn't turn that down. Nicole Kidman, why don't you know the lyrics to your magical crystals?

Overall Verdict: Some kind of plot happens, but really, who cares? It's a fun romp that takes some unexpected twists, and Sandra Bullock is utterly charming. It's a shame she hasn't made more movies over the years. But I guess she's ruling the film world in her own way, which is pretty awesome too. Also, it passes the Bechdel test, again and again. If only more movies would realize that female relationships don't revolve entirely around men...

Over at Women In Hollywood, a fantastic blog on women in the movies, Melissa Silverstein wonders whether there's potential to hire a female director now that Gary Ross has stepped down/been pushed out/whatever.

We all know the state of female directors in mainstream movies (be honest, can you name more than one off the top of your head?). Nonetheless, it would be fantastic to see a triumph of female strength like The Hunger Games be helmed by, well, a woman.

So I'd like to open the floor to you, dear reader. Make your case for the perfect director for Catching Fire and Mockingjay (yes, you can nominate a different director for each).

I'll get the ball rolling: my vote goes firmly to Jane Campion. I recently saw The Piano for the first time, and have been haunted its portrayal of brutal violence (I won't spoil it for you here, but it's probably the first thing anyone thinks of when they think of this film). Campion masterfully gives voice to a woman who has none but her instrument.

Katniss is similar to Ada McGrath in many ways. She may not be mute, but she remains totally insignificant, a bit player on the universal stage, but retains her humanity despite circumstances that conspire to destroy it entirely.

We can only imagine what Campion would have done with the first movie, but we can hope (against hope) that she becomes involved at some stage.

Runner-up: Mary Harron, who directed American Psycho.

And the floor's open!

Experiencing a tv show or movie a week later than everyone else has its advantages. You meet a work after the hype cycle deflates.

In the case of The Hunger Games, the early reviews tempered my (admittedly stratospheric) expectations. End result: true love was ever in my favor.

Unfortunately, the hype cycle didn't totally pass me by. In fact, I was more than a little flummoxed to see so much attention paid to something that I personally adore. It's not like when a band goes mainstream, as they've usually changed their sound by the time that happens. A TV show either reboots or evolves. A novel (or film), on the other hand, remains in-state forever (George Lucas notwithstanding).

Being a lifetime geek-of-all-trades, I'm not so accustomed to so much attention being paid to something I love for what it is. These circumstances must surround every over-hyped event, but it's the first time it's happened with something I love.

And I'm still surprised how much ugliness that attention inspires. The racism around the casting of Rue and Cinna, the misogyny from even the most blue-striped reviewers, the total lack of interest in understanding why a phenomenon becomes a phenomenon. The whole "I don't care what statistics you show me, I don't want to read this book, therefore it must be a romance, read by evil female tweens."

It's difficult to engage with the speakers of these words, because all evidence to the contrary exists in the text. Rue's dark-skinned, the story's a brutal dystopian action thriller, and Katniss is a goddamn superhero who's only interested in romance as a tool to help her win this most gory of reality shows. Again, all in the text (and by text, I mean both the movie and the novel).

I'm not saying you have to like the Hunger Games. Plenty of people hated the novels, for legitimate reasons (too much violence and brutality, mainly). But if, as a reviewer, you choose to attack the fans rather than explicate why it's a good or bad movie, I wish that you find a swarm of tracker-jackers in your bed.

Finally, after reading so much carping about world-building, about neutered violence, about Twilight for some reason I've yet to understand, I'm left with just one question. Does anyone really have a problem with staring at Jennifer Lawrence's face for 2.5 hours?

John Cazale starred in five films, all nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and three winners. As batting averages go, not even his fiancée before his early death, Meryl Streep, can boast of such a hot ratio (had they had the chance to procreate, one can but assume that their kids would have like 30 Academy Awards by the age of 20).

But I come not to praise Cazale in totality, I come to talk of Fredo, perhaps the most important character in the Corleone family, who sets all kinds of events in motion.

He sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of his family, with none of the charm of Michael, the brains of Vito, the certainty of Connie, or even the brute force of Sonny. In pretty much every way possible, Fredo's pathetic.

His conviction that he's not such a loser, and his many attempts to mask that basic fact, are what make him such a compelling character. We know that his death is the ultimate result of his total weakness, and we still almost forgive him for it.

For as Fredo becomes more helpless, Michael becomes more brutal. Fredo's punished, ultimately, for putting himself first. But what does Michael do? He claims to act in defense of the family, but as time goes on, that justification rings more and more hollow. Michael, too, acts only in his own regard, in defense of his own pride.

In one moment, Fredo loses his life, but Michael loses everything else. Poor Fredo, despite being a complete waste of a human being, nonetheless precipitates Michael's total conversion to darkness.

I have but one thing to say: David Cronenberg directing a novel by Don Delillo. I know, right? I haven't actually read Cosmopolis, but unlike most of his work, it sounds like there's nary a baseball to be seen:

It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end. The booming times of market optimism -- when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments -- are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine. Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol's funeral, and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors -- experts on security, technology, currency, finance, and a few sexual partners -- as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future. (via Goodreads)

So not even a little topical, then.

I've often thought that Delillo's as un-filmable as David Foster Wallace, but I'm not against people trying. And if anyone can put a fresh (and weird) spin on the (already weird)novel, it's Cronenberg. Then again, it's got R-Patz in it, who's mostly proved to be box office poison outside of a pair of YA series. But it's also got Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche and Paul Giamatti?

Enjoy the trailer, at any rate!

This post was intended to resurrect my long dormant Filling the Gaps series, but as sometimes (often) happens, a film moves me to consider more than its parts, or even the sum of its parts.

In She's Gotta Have It, Spike Lee provides us with a time capsule of a time when independent African-American film burst into the mainstream, providing hope for a whole new type of cinematic experience, only to surrender to racial stereotyping, insidious in the works of Tyler Perry, and backward in the case of The Help.

Spike Lee cannot have predicted the consequences of this film. In creating an almost Woody Allen-esque psychological portrait or urbane, educated, professional African-Americans in Brooklyn, he exposed Brooklyn to the masses. Now guess who can't afford to live in Brooklyn Heights anymore? Middle-class African-Americans. He set out to show America that there's a place in where blacks aren't gangbangers or drug dealers, but poets, artists, dancers and philosophers. It worked.

For someone who's living smack in the middle of the one-mile radius in which Lee filmed, his loving panoramas of Fort Greene, the Brooklyn Bridge and Jay Street provide a view into what now seems like a parallel universe. There are no white people on the streets of She's Gotta Have It. There are few black people in DUMBO today.

So in between all the grand moments of "hey, that's my street!" and "hey, that's my office!", and "hey, the waterfront doesn't have boats anymore!", watching this film also created a pyschological unease. That was 1986. This is 2012. In just over 25 years, Brooklyn has seen one of the most dramatic demographic shifts of anywhere in the country.

But since Lee could never have known what would follow, it leaves us to look at the movie itself, which is as brilliant, moving, and as ahead of its time as so many have stated. He claims he didn't set out to create a feminist film, and yet that's what we're left with. Nola and her many lovers, never disguising her lifestyle to any of them, unwilling to apologize for taking pleasure in her sexuality.

Each lover approaches Nola's lifestyle as a "disease," a mental ailment that she needs to cured of, for a woman that doesn't want to settle down must surely be unnatural. Of course, this is a comedy, so each man's approach to curing her is markedly different. The one who seems most sympathetic throughout the movie does punish her most brutally in the film, in a manner that I'm not convinced fits into the movie.

If you haven't seen She's Gotta Have It, make sure you do. It's a wonderful film for many reasons, not least it's gender and racial politics. It's also incredibly funny.

"Songs From District 12 and Beyond" takes a powerful risk by inviting our hate long before the movie even opens. I don't suppose that I've ever given much thought to how The Hunger Games ought to be soundtracked, but I am perfectly comfortable saying that indie-folk strays far from the mark.

The fact that Taylor Swift was brought in to do the theme song should have been more than adequate warning, but I really want to know what chemically-induced confusion led to this thought process:

"Badassery! Grittiness! Violence! Death! Angst! Terror! I know what will complete this puzzle...COUNTRY FOLK!"

I am not knocking any one of these artists. I am long on record with my love of the Decemberists, the Civil Wars, the Arcade Fire and Neko Case. Glen Hansard wrote my wedding song, for godssake. My disappointment isn't about them, it's about the fact that they're being used to soundtrack one of the most VIOLENTLY DRAMATIC novels I've ever read.

I'm not saying we need Nine Inch Nails but...ok Trent Reznor would be more appropriate.

Anyway, here's the full tracklist:

1 Taylor Swift (Feat. The Civil Wars) – “Safe & Sound”
2 Taylor Swift – “Eyes Wide Open”
3 Arcade Fire – “Abraham’s Daughter”
4 Kid Cudi – “The Ruler & The Killer”
5 Miranda Lambert (Feat. Pistol Annies) – “Run Daddy Run”
6 The Civil Wars – “Kingdom Come”
7 The Decemberists – “One Engine”
8 Glen Hansard – “Take the Heartland”
9 The Low Anthem – “Lover is Childlike”
10 Punch Brothers – “Dark Days”
11 Secret Sisters – “Tomorrow Will Be Kinder”
12 Birdy – “Just a Game”
13 Ella Mae Bowen – “Oh Come & Sing”
14 Jayme Dee – “Rules”
15 Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Reaping Day”
16 Neko Case – “Give Me Something I’ll Remember”

Play along in the comments!

The Newsweek Oscar roundtable proves, yet again, that Clooney really is the most awesome person in Hollywood. Or Viola Davis is. I'm not really sure. After this short video, I'm in love with both of them, and hope they run off and start a production company that fixes all the lowest-common-denominator ills of the movie business.

The interviewer asks a simple question: why is this Viola Davis' first major role? Maybe he wasn't expecting the answer, but I'll tell you one thing: Charlize Theron definitely wasn't expecting that answer (though it pains me to say it...Charlize, I love you, but shut up now.)

Viola responds politely, and then Clooney starts rattling the sabre. He doesn't say anything we don't all know, but it's nice to know that one of the most influential stars in the world is not only aware, but has a strong opinion (though unlike Viola Davis, for instance, George Clooney has the luxury of directing and producing his own ideal films.)

George Clooney has certainly earned his stripes, but it's difficult to imagine a black female actor ever having that much clout in today's industry. Viola Davis puts it best: "I'm a 46-year-old black woman who doesn't look like Halle Berry, and Hally Berry's having a hard time."