Red Lights (2012)

There’s gotta be a porn film with this title, “Red Lights.” But this isn’t that kind of film. We’re talking psychics here, supernatural, reality, and con jobs. Sigourney Weaver plays a brilliant but (naturally) under-funded university researcher of the paranormal who has spent her career unmasking psychics as frauds. Her assistant researcher and driver is a brilliant geek named Tom (Cillian Murphy, taking a break from “Batman” movies). The duo gets antsy when a blind psychic (Robert De Niro) turns up after a 30-year absence, ready to go public again. When Weaver’s character suddenly dies, Tom goes off the deep end of obsession to crush De Niro’s charmer. Writer/director Rodrigo Cortes (“Buried”) spins a creepy and interesting tale for a while, but as the thriller lurches on, it becomes a comedy soup. Tom getting into a shoving match with another professor (Toby Jones) had me giggling hard. I fell for red herrings I created entirely in my own mind. Score for Cortes. The final scenes, though, are so bug-fuck crazy stupid (I won’t spoil) that I tuned out, again laughing myself silly. I wonder if Cortes saw that coming? C+

Hitchcock (2012)

I adore and fear Hitchcock. The filmmaker. “Hitchcock,” the new movie about the filmmaker? Not one bit. See, this is pitched as a behind-the-scenes tale of the making of the classic “Psycho.” You know, the mother of all slasher films. And, yes, we do get some of the writing, casting talks, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh stuck in a shower with ol’ Hitch with a knife scaring the piss out of her. Those are snippets of the story. Moments. And Anthony Hopkins excels in them as Hitchcock, covered in fat makeup to play the big guy. When he “conducts” an audience reaction to the shower scene, outside a screening room, I was in movie heaven. But most of the film focuses on Hitchcock’s marriage, with his wife (Helen Mirren) nagging his ass 24/7 about avoiding snacks. God help me, it was like visiting my parents. More so, the missus launches a flirtatious affair with a Hollywood screenwriter (Danny Houston) and Hitchcock frets and fumes, and talks to the ghost of Ed Gein, the killer who inspired Norman Bates, and I wanted to slash apart this soap opera that muddies a mad genius/artist as a poor old befuddled geezer. C+

Frankenweenie (2012)

I welcomed the Tim Burton-directed stop-motion “Frankenweenie” with a wide smile of spooked childlike wonder. For years now, Burton has been missing as a filmmaker. He has made many movies -– “Planet of the Apes” and “Dark Shadows” -- but none steeped in the dark satire and deep loneliness he displayed in “Edward Scissorhands.” This harkens back to early Burton, and is a remake of his infamous 1984 live-action short, ingenuously reimagined. Young Victor Frankenstein is a loner whose best friend is Sparky, his pet dog. Victor pops a homerun during a parent-forced youth baseball outing. Sparky runs for the ball, and is fatally hit by a car. Victor is devastated, and soon goes the way of his namesake by bringing Sparky back to life via an electric storm and a lab that is every bit a grade-school salute to James Whale. What comes next is where Burton flies high: Victor’s spooky classmates each has a dead pet they want to see given new life, and this freak show takes off as hilarious and sly introduction of monster mash-ups for the quirky young. Shot in black-and-white, this is the Burton I love. A

Ted (2012)

My wife has come home many times to find me watching the so-bad-it’s-brilliant 1980 sci-fi cheese-fest “Flash Gordon.” So I laughed to an embarrassing degree while watching “Ted,” the raunchy comedy about a 35-year-old man named John (Mark Wahlberg) who lives with his toking, swearing, fornicating stuffed teddy bear (voiced by “Family Guy” patriarch Seth McFarlane, who also directed and co-wrote) from childhood. Ted and John constantly watch “Flash,” always stoned, and that drives John’s successful live-in girlfriend (Mina Kunis) off the rails. It’s me or the bear, she says, in a film first. Other film firsts: A hilarious Sam Jones celebration, a scene where Wahlberg calls in a teddy-bear theft to 911, and a new classic bit where the former Marky Mark commits to a room-wrecker fistfight that rivals “Fight Club.” As with “Family Guy,” McFarlane tosses non-stop crude and cruel jokes and pop culture winks, and half stick, the other half miss, and all are juvenile. Yes, he skates the thin line of racist/sexist/homophobic, and satirizing the same. Your tolerance may bend. Mine did not. Best treat: Watching Wahlberg play opposite a fuzzy wuzzy CGI bear that wasn’t even there. B+

Fantastic Four (2005)

“Fantastic Four” is a sucker punch to the face and heart of every true four-color-ink-for-blood comic book geek who knew growing up that the exploits of Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and the Thing, was the coolest monthly read: A blood-and-marriage family of super-powered heroes with screw-loose hang-ups and arch-enemies. At least the plot follows the book. Five astronaut-types are blasted with cosmic rays while on a science mission, each person spouting outsize powers close fit to their personality: The ability to contort one’s body into any shape, invisibility, control of fire, and a moving, raging man of stone. The fifth wheel is the billionaire boss Victor Von Doom, destined to go evil with a name like that, except he turns into a metallic maniac, not a giant shitting asshole. Here’s a movie with 50 years of comic history as resource and director Tim Story (“Taxi”) kills it from the start. Bland, listless, with no sense of wonder, horror, or the fantastic. The cast is dull with Ioan Gruffudd as Mr. Fantastic and Julian McMahon as Dr. Doom. Questions linger: Would I notice had they switched roles midway through? Not likely. C-

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

“The Bourne Legacy” is an apology of a movie. After three films as the Robert Ludlum-created 007 agent on steroids Jason Bourne, unlikely bad-ass Matt Damon passed on a fourth film after his director of Parts 2 and 3, Paul Greengrass, sneered at another go-round. That did not stop the studio. The film’s tagline shouts “There Was Never Just One” in a faux shocker as, duh, we all knew that already. So, enter Jeremy Renner (“Hurt Locker”) as Aaron Cross, another super super-agent who finds himself, very Bourne like, hunted by the dastardly CIA suits out to cover their own asses for reasons to complex to explain. That’s the problem right there: It’s the same story, down to the terrified female pal (Rachel Weisz). Director/writer Tony Gilroy (he wrote the previous films) tosses in countless references to Damon/Bourne in CNN shots, photos, shouted oaths, and –- in a ridiculous scene -– a carved signature under a bunk bed, not much as a tissue connector, but regret. “We miss Matt, too!” Forget the tired chase plot and the blank ending, if the movie wants to hook back up with the ex, why care about the new guy? C-

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), in 3D High Frame Rate

When I first saw “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” I did so in the 2D, normal 24-fames-per-second format. Movie geek that I am, I sought out the much-debated 3D, 48-fps version that Peter Jackson insists is the definitive version. The 48 verdict: Incredible. Damn the naysayers. I have seen hundreds of films in a cinema, but I have never felt as if I could reach into the onscreen fantastical world before me, and what better film to do that with than a Tolkien story? Even one embellished and stretched thin and loud as it is here, part one of a new trilogy. Skin, swords, wizard beards and hats, and even Hobbit pottery appear real. The 3D work amplifies the perspective. Of course, this was my second viewing, I knew what was coming. Would I be so positive on my first go-round, unsure of the “Journey” ahead? I cannot say. I can say: The action and special effects have zero blur, including the jaw-dropper “riddle” face-off with Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Gollum (Andy Serkis). I hated the lethargic pace more, and the fully unnecessary “LOTR” alumni reunions more so, but what a visual delight! The B- advances to B for this version.

Anna Karenina (2012)

I’ve not read Tolstoy’s phone-book thick novel “Anna Karenina,” but I know how Russian love stories end. Not well. The same holds true for Joe Wright’s Brit-heavy adaptation with Keira Knightley (they also did “Atonement” together) as the title aristocrat who rips late 19^th century rules and has an affair with an army officer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to the anger of her bureaucrat husband (Jude Law). This is a wild-card visual beauty that plays on the Shakespeare adage that, “All the world’s a stage...” Much of the movie is set inside a theater with the characters moving from the stage out into the audience and up through rafters and balconies, sets changing around them. Scenes set at a farm where true love and hard work abound are shot with no artifice. Yes, Wright is saying the wealthy are fake, while the people of the land are true. Pretentious? I dug it. It’s the love triangle that disappoints: Taylor-Johnson -– looking like he should be playing live guitar at the vegetarian restaurant three doors down from the theater I was at –- is miscast as the officer who women swoon for. The scandalous romance, then, pales beside the sets and music. B-

Iron Sky (2012)

“Iron Sky” has the greatest story pitch ever: Nazis from the dark side of the moon attack Earth using flying saucers. How crazy cool is that? Much of this Finnish-German-Austrian B-flick -– special effects, political satire aimed at American bravado and U.N. incompetence -- is hilarious fun, but there’s so much more that falls flat like a bad sci-fi version of “Springtime for Hitler” from “Producers.” Put bluntly, the trailer is better than the movie, the latter fumbled by flat acting and ugly stereotypes, as in all black youth pack Glocks. The gravest error: Great actor Udo Kier (“Suspiria”) plays the Fuhrer II, does nothing but die halfway in, replaced by a C-grade henchman. Why!?! The lead characters are a Nazi schoolmarm with clue zero; a black astronaut turned white by drugs; and a Sarah Palin clone as president who decorates the Oval Office with dead polar bears. Palin jokes were funny in 2009. Never funny: A Nazi scientist made to look like Einstein, a Jew who fled Hitler’s grip. “Sky” thinks its guns are as big as Tarantino’s “Basterds” and “Django” history remixes, but these barrels fire blanks. So much promise wasted. C+

Django Unchained (2012)

In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/ripoff “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and does not blink -– a black man is ripped apart by dogs as whites standby cackling, and the “N” word is used as verb, noun, adjective, and an exclamation. I winched, blanched, and shut my eyes at the violence, and the images of African-Americans forced into chains and depraved medieval torture equipment. 

Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting? Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination -- even fictional and heightened -- of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. But, hell, I say “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe America as some kind of utopian Candy Land. It was all good. The South was happy. I hate that film. Tarantino must as well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong. Conservatives hate this film because it dares show America -– of 150 years ago -- as a moral cesspool no better than Nazi Germany. Leftists such as Spike Lee hate it because they didn't think of this film, cathartic in twisted ways, first. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, and go see “Lincoln.” These films would make a wild double bill. 

Speaking of Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz) seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, a long overdue F.U. to Southern Whites, and their modern GOP apologists who use patriotism as a weapon of hate. 

There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2 hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot cowards they were and are, but the scene is overlong and kills an otherwise tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.

Further, his main characters are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his ass around as a slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic. 

In “Basterds,” Tarantino staged a key scene around a dinner and ratcheted the tension so tight, just as my heart was about to explode, his mayhem onscreen exploded. Here, during the big dinner scene, the air lets out, the talk drags on for 20 minutes, then the carnage hits. Then more talk. Then more carnage. Then more talk. Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page. 

So many grand ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s leadership as the Cinema God. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn good as a hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. But that death is cheap, quick, and with no deep wit.

But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do but react -- scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a bad ass woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and damn hardy, I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.

I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie. It screams genius, daring, red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard), and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -– but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.

Tarantino spends so much time making homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a bent-back man who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty hunter. I would have watched another our of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe. Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure.

After taking on fantasy Jewish revenge on Hitler, and now putting an African-American in a saddle with guns blasting racist Southerners, one has to wonder where QT will go next: A grindhouse take on Jesus? Or back to gangster-types? Tarantino still remains the most-surprising American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open. B

Les Miserables (2012)

The big-screen adaptation of the tragedy/musical “Les Miserables” is everything every N.Y. film critic has said: Bombastic, sentimental, and manipulative; it tosses out tragedies like candy at a parade and has a story arc that could rival the Bible, but -- so what? Have they read Victor Hugo’s novel? The contrivances that drive its plot are halved here, and still may produce viewer whiplash. Hugh Jackman plays the Job-like French peasant Jean Valjean who finds faith and wealth after serving a grueling 19-year prison sentence for stealing bread, and sees raising the child of a doomed street woman named Fantine (Anne Hathaway) as his God-ordered duty. Meanwhile, he dodges an obsessive police inspector (Russell Crowe) hell-bent on law and order. Directed by Tom Hooper (“King’s Speech”), “Mes” proudly defies cynicism, and my cynical-self fell for it, especially the actors who sing on and to the camera with none of the lip-syncing shit that makes most musicals a chore. Crowe may be a blank, but Hathaway gives a performance that left me rattled. Jackman, too. Yes, it oozes excess at every turn, but Hugo would happily hum along. I did. B+

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Walt Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” takes a nod and a rip from Pixar gem “Toy Story” and takes us inside the world of arcade games, where characters see the slide of a quarter as a call to work, and party when no one is looking. Oh, flattery. Story: Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the human wrecking ball villain of the 1980s game “Fix It Felix Jr.,” but he longs to be the hero. Ralph commits a no-no and crosses wires for his chance at glory, first to a shoot-’em-up alien game, then over to a racing game called “Sugar Rush.” Much mayhem ensues as Ralph wrecks. He can’t help himself. Now, this is not Pixar. It’s run-of-the-mill Disney. So, the score already is lower. The wit and heart, too. But this is flat-out great fun. The “Felix” game is so exactly rendered Atari retro-style, the characters blink when they move, I thought it was a real title from 30 years ago. It’s not. That and the ridiculously hilarious side characters (Alan Tudyk as a kooky king) make me game to play again. The myriad shrill corporate promos … not so much. B+

Lincoln (2012)

“I could write shorter sermons, but when I get started I’m too lazy to stop,” said Abraham Lincoln, 150 years ago and quoting a rhetorical preacher.  

What better motive to be brief: Working from a screenplay by Tony Kushner (“Angles in America”), Steven Spielberg’s near-miraculous masterpiece “Lincoln” isn’t a full-life bio-pic of the 16^th president, but a careful, smart study of the man’s final months in office as he tried to end the Civil War and pass the 13^th amendment fully abolishing slavery, fearful his Emancipation Proclamation will fall useless once the nation re-unites. 

“Lincoln” –- at its most basic -- may be about legislation, yet it plays out as the most nail-biting, and, yes, funny thriller of our time, for no reason more so than this is about the true, ugly birth of America, where all men are created equal. (Women waited longer for equality; the gay population still waits its turn, Kushner makes apparent.) 

Leaving behind old tricks and sentimental streaks found even in “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg has made a time-capsule story where the fights inside smoky rooms seem like found-footage from 1865. With our nation again deeply divided over everything from budgets to gun control, “Lincoln” almost seems a warped, darkly ironic mirror and wake-up call for today.  

His own miracle maker, Daniel Day-Lewis brings Lincoln to life in astonishing detail –- high voice, striking bouts of anger and compassion, an endless tenacity for jokes and asides that charm some men and drive others mad. Day-Lewis again has topped himself, even with his volcanic performance in “There Will Be Blood.” 

This is no liberal party, though: There’s a scene where Day-Lweis as Lincoln is placed across from famed abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), and the latter barks, “It’s called leadership, you should try it for a change.” That is a blistering order to Obama. (And, yes, the movie nails that it was Democrats in the oh-so-wrong here, reluctant to see slavery fall, whilst Republicans -- liberal ones -- fought to end it. Dems were conservatives back then. Irony.)

The acting all around is the best of the year, the cast inspired by the script, the ideals on screen by Kushner? Who knows. Enjoy it. This good a cast is rare. Jones and Sally Field (as Mary Todd) are equal to Day-Lewis at every turn to the point when husband and wife rip each other over son Willie’s death, the audience -– I –- felt as if I were a eavesdropper. 

Even 10 minutes too long past a poignant stopping point, this is -- for now -- the Best Film of 2012, worthy of a long sermon and national viewing and consideration. And here I stop, not too lazy. A

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal 1937 children’s book “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” is concise, funny, and light in spirit, which I cannot say for director/writer Peter Jackson and his team from the famed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in their adaptation of the newly titled “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” There is no “Back Again” here, and there shall not be for two movies, and six (!) more hours. 

This toss-in-the-kitchen-sink trilogy opener stops just shy of three hours as it spells out in detail how Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman, playing the young version of Ian Holm, who appears as well) came into possession of the powerful ring –- the Ring -– that sets in motion the 2001-2003 films and 1954-1955 books fans know so well. 

First thing out of the way: I saw “Hobbit” in 2D and regular frame rate, not the 3D and 48 frames-per-second rate that has garnered much press. Second: I read the book so long ago I cannot recall it in my memory. I judge by hunches and –- God help me -– the Web. 

Movie wise, “Hobbit” is split as Tolkein’s greatest and most troubled character, Gollum, the schizophrenic villain/victim who owned and lost the preciousss golden circle to Bilbo, who decades later will hand it over to nephew Frodo, and you know the rest. Team Jackson –- including co-writer Gillermo del Toro -– take not just the “Hobbit” book, but myriad side-stories, prefixes, appendices, and shopping lists written by Tolkein and knit out a story that is jovial, eye-popping in wonder, and maddeningly dull and repetitive to the point of tedium. Even during the big CGI action sequences. 

(There’s a fist-fight between two black-rock mountains (!) that is impressive, bizarre, laugh-out-loud ridiculous, overlong by half, and in the end, useful as a lecture on thermodynamics.) 

I could not repeat all the plot tentacles to save my soul, except this quick sketch: Homebody Hobbit Bilbo is thrust into joining 13 dwarves (led by Richard Armitage as the dreamiest “GQ” dwarf ever) as they set out to kill the dragon that took their mountain homeland decades ago. The instigator of this hunt is the wise Moses-like wizard Gandalf, again played by Ian McKellan. The troupe is hunted by trolls, a vengeance-seeking one-armed orc, and wolves. Llittle of this is in the book, but thrown in by Jackson, who seems set on making a simple fable into something far darker and massively important. 

I know that’s nit-picking. Changes were made to the “LOTR” trilogy, especially the loss of the vital “Scouring of the Shire” finale, but so much of this movie is filler created solely because the filmmakers have the budget and technology, not because it serves this story. 

As with prequels, characters are re-introduced wholesale to goose memories. In almost every instance, these are time-killers. We don’t need Elijah Wood as Frodo. Nor Holm as old Bilbo. Cate Blanchett’s elf queen, so majestically introduced in “Fellowship of the Ring,” stumbles into this film with such little fanfare, one can’t imagine her importance. Same with Christopher Lee’s Sauramon, parked in a chair and practically giving away his whole game plan of evil to come later on. Ditto Gollum and his long slow intro, now redundant I suppose. I'm muffing some of the details here, but the point stands -- especially if this film is viewed as a true prequel.

See, Jackson is making these as a man looking back, nostalgic for every morsel he can scrape, not a man looking forward with this chapter and its two coming successors as predecessors to what befalls Bilbo, Gandalf, and all our beloved characters. 

All gripes aside, I have hope for “Hobbit” parts 2 and 3. Freeman -- Watson in BBC’s “Sherlock” -- turns in a star-making reading of Bilbo, a man (Halfling?) who finds his worth far from home. He’s funny, irritating but sincerely so, curious, bold, and thorough, a wonderful homage to Holm’s take. 

When Bilbo and Gollum meet –- toward the end -– the scene crackles and brings “Hobbit” to Must Watch status. (Andy Serkis as Gollum again shine as the MVP of this series. As well, the CGI work to bring this foul creature to life is still the best use of computers in a life-action film, ever.) As Bilbo holds a sword to the neck of a seething, panicking creature, Jackson and all the wizards behind this tale put us in the hot seat. We know striking down Gollum will prevent much agony later, and I thought, “Push it through.” Knowing full well that won’t happen. 

It’s a twisty definitive, solid moment in a film full of holes, not the Hobbit kind. B-