The Raven (2012) and Me and Orson Welles (2009)

Two famously eccentric American artists who burnt fast and hot get the fictional film treatment in “The Raven” –- with writer/poet Edgar Allan Poe playing super sleuth over a series of murders related to his writings –- and “Me and Orson Welles” -– with the actor/director as scoundrel muse to a plucky “High School Musical” hero. 

As Poe, John Cusack does that arched-eyebrow John Cusack thing he always does, and he’s flat out wrong in the role. The plot is a grisly rehash of “Se7en” stitched onto a carbon copy of Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes,” with a villain that’s dull as rag paper. Worse bit: Poe is shown playing with a pet raccoon. Director James McTeigue thinks he’s still filming “V for Vendetta.” Fawkes that. 

“Me” focuses on a teen drama protégé (Zac Efron) as he cons his way into a gig at the Mercury Theatre for the renowned staging of “Julius Caesar.” Christian McKay plays Welles as madman, genius, romantic, cad, screw-up, and artist, and brilliantly crushes every scene, but with “Tiger Beat” poster boy Efron in the lead pining for a smirking bored Claire Danes, the film sinks. 

Poe and Welles would torch these films. Raven: C- Welles: C+

Time Lock (1996)

“Time Lock” is the kind of awful where you laugh not at what’s on screen –- OK, I did a bit of that -– but at yourself for foolishly waiting for something good to occur, a hint of brains from the folks in the credits. No doing. 

First: There is no time lock in “Time Lock.” Rather, we’re in the “‘Die Hard’ on a …” genre, where the unlikely hero (comedian Arye Gross) is a computer hacker sent to a space asteroid prison that’s taken over by a ninja-type (Jeffrey Meek) out to free his criminal mentor (Jeff Speakman). Robert Munic directs with a sledgehammer, every scene garishly louder than it needs to be, and every actor off his leash to just go nuts and make it look good because no one wants to waste film. Gross cracks jokes, flails arms, and does tricks. Magic, I mean. Not sex acts. 

A WTF scene: Our hero sets ninja guy on fire -- fully engulfed -– and in the next scene the dude has not a hair out of place. I thought of “Highlander.” Even for 1990s low-brow sci-fi fluff, “Time Lock” is a time killer. D

Jumanji (1995)

I disliked “Jumanji” when I saw it in theaters. I cannot recall why: Too much newbie CGI, or just an irritation with Robin Williams running loony? But with this second viewing, I like its goofy innocence. 

The story: Orphans Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce) arrive in a New England town with their aunt (Bebe Neuwirth), a woman who can renovate an entire derelict mansion in one day. Sorry. That is not the plot. 

This is: The children find a centuries-old bored game called “Jumanji” in the attic, begin to play it, and out comes jungle beasts and bugs, and a bushy man (Robin Williams) who once was a boy in that same house, trapped in the game for decades. The rest of Joe Johnston’s film follows the trio -– Dunst, Pierce, and Williams -– keeping the board game’s animals, vines, and raging waters in control. 

It’s a playful film, not afraid to break the fourth wall, and let kids in on the joke of goofy fun. I cringed again at David Allan Grier’s policeman, all big eyes. It rubs wrong. I may have been wrong in 1995. B+

Highlander (1986) and Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991)

Has there ever been a fantasy franchise with such a genius hook more crapped from the beginning than “Highlander”? I love the premise: A 16^th century Scottish warrior is killed in battle, but arises from the grave whole and healed for he is Immortal, an ubermensch race known only to their own kind. They are determined to kill one another until only one is left. 

In the original, hero Connor McCloud (Christopher Lambert) learns of his powers, lives for centuries, relocates to New York, and finally must battle Clancy Brown as Kurgan, which means He Who Cannot Enunciate. 

The plot is good, but the cheap dialogue and director Russell Mulcahy’s relentlessly vulgar metal-band rock video antics are blinding. This bargain-bin Michael Bay never lets his actors or story breathe being too busy shattering glass and blowing up water. Sean Connery as an Egyptian-turned-Spaniard mentor living in Scotland is some kind of painful joke, and the man is dressed like a bed pillow. But it’s all watchable. 

Not so DOA sequel “Quickening,” a cinematic cluster-fuck from the start that rewrites the Immortals as time-traveling aliens in a story too baffling to explain. Michael Ironside looks ashamed as the villain. 

Original: C+ The sequel: F

Amour (2012)

Michael Haneke’s “Amour” is the painfully grim picture of Parisian octogenarians struck helpless as the wife suffers a series of strokes and tumbles into the purgatory of dementia, lost under a thick sheet of ice. 

Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), the wife, was a piano teacher. In the first scenes, her eyes and spirit vibrate with light as she and her husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant) attend the concert of her former pupil. It’s at breakfast she has her first spell. Her eyes go vacant. I saw that vacancy in the eyes of my grandmothers. This film crushed me. Georges, the husband, cares for Anne every moment, feedings and diapers. Strain breaks him. Guilt shames him. He stretches his love over the widening chasm between himself and her. 

Haneke has made a film about love and honor that defies, but cannot overcome an ultimate horror -- joyful love turned to torture as one half of a beautiful whole withers. No hope. Only an absence of help, cure, or god to end the misery. Our leads are amazing, creating a fully realized couple surrounded by an apartment brimming of a shared life. Riva was robbed a Best Actress Oscar. An exceptional work. A

The Impossible (2012)

“The Impossible” follows a family dragged low by one of history’s greatest disasters: The 2004 tsunami that killed 300,000 people in Southeast Asia. Director Juan Bayona and Sergio Sánchez (both of  “Orphanage”) make this true story horrifying real as they place us inside the deadly wave with the characters as they fight not to be drowned, crushed, or impaled. 

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts -– both fantastic -- head the wealthy Brit family and when disaster hits, parents are separated. Mom with an older boy, dad with two younger sons. Mom is sickeningly wounded. Dad is sickeningly worried. Bayona and Sánchez make their ordeal personal, like the family swept up in Wouk’s “Winds of War.” 

But wait. The real family in this tragedy was Spanish -- not WASP -- and every major character we follow in this tragedy is WASP. The indigenous locals? Side characters. Helpers. Magic negroes, to be bluntly nasty. 

Great as this film is, these diversions choke like a swallowed stone. The movie studio trusted a Spanish team behind the camera, but not in front. Yes, movies (“Argo”) constantly shuffle ethnicities, but here with so many nonwhites killed, getting past that hump is … impossible. B

The Untouchables (1987) and Gangster Squad (2013)

Double bill: Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” with Elliot Ness versus Al Capone, and “Gangster Squad,” with L.A. cops against Mickey Cohen. Both are true cops-and-mobs stories repainted with Hollywood final blowout action scenes. Why allow Frank Nitti his suicide when Ness can toss him off a building? “Squad” plays looser with truth. 

Such is film. Facts hit the floor faster than bodies. In 200 words, my take downs on these mob take-down films.

“Untouchables” –- also based on the rah-rah TV show – follows Eagle Scout/U.S. Treasury agent Ness (Kevin Costner) as he brings in three like-minded heroes (Sean Connery as wise old cop, Andy Garcia as hothead cop, and Charles Martin Smith as nerd cop) to nail Robert De Niro’s Capone. Smart casting and smart-looking film. 

It smells of Chicago and spent bullets. De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet put us in gorgeous locales -– trains station, courthouses, and filthy red alleyways. Dialogue pops like spent lead: Connery barking about knives at a “gun party” is classic. 

I was 13 in ’87 and this became my Instant Favorite Film. The violence, male bravado, scope, and that shoot-out on the stairs. It’s a stellar cops-and-gangsters fantasy for… teenage boys. I’m wiser now, and the red-blood love has waned. This is a sloppy-ass film riddled with dubious continuity errors -– moving corpses, that wondering elevator in the assassination scene, a terrible voice dub throughout, and logic tossed aside in a courtroom finale. Too many scenes make me cringe. 

Was De Palma so in love with his own (admittedly great) style, he forgot the importance of details? Hell if I know. Costner is too fantastic to care. B+

“Squad” whiffs fake as “Untouchables” feels immersed in Chicago lore. You can smell the wet paint. I read Ellroy. Call me biased. Josh Brolin is WWII Army Special Forces vet John O’Mara, now a cop assigned to stop New York-bred Cohen (Sean Penn) from becoming the West Coast Capone.

O’Mara is very Ness to the point I believe writer Will Beall watched “Untouchables” on repeat. Lines are lifted whole. O’Mara also has his three heroes: Robert Patrick as wise old cop, Ryan Gosling as hothead cop, and Giovanni Ribisi as nerd cop. Toss in retro-progression with Anthony Mackie as a black patrolman and Michael Pena as a Hispanic flatfoot named Navidad. (Cringe.) 

Plot: O’Mara’s guys shoot the shit out of Cohen’s guys, who do the same back. Penn is comically spittle-tossing evil, his performance falls into hysterics. I laughed my ass off when a ridiculously dickensesque shoeshiner gets whacked. I gather director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) wasn’t going for giggles among the blood and rape. 

As Ness says, “You aren’t from Chicago.” Do not pretend. C

2012: Best and Worst

This is my Best (and Worst) of 2012 List so far. Most of the award-worthy bait still has not yet found its way to where I live even at this late posting. Or I just have missed many contenders. Such is life. This list will be updated when I see films wonderful (or terrible). Yes, I am bending the rules of a year-end list. But it’s my list. Such is life.

Updated: 24 February 2013
Updated: 14 May 2013

The best

1. Holy Motors. A film that defies explanation as a man dons several personas, jumping acting roles as we jump life roles. The mystery is what I love about film: Getting amazingly, irretrievably lost.
2. Lincoln. Steven Spielberg foregoes biopic clichés and shows us the 16th president in his final months, forcing a re-birth of our nation’s soul even as it dooms his own life.

3. The Master. Paul Thomas Anderson’s delivers another watch-on-repeat drama. Here, he takes on the obsession of human control.

4. (Tie) Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild. One beautiful life ends, another begins. Heartbreaking and unshakable female leads.

5. Argo. Timely, urgent, funny, and mostly-true, Ben Affleck’s masterpiece can stand tall with the greatest 1970s thrillers.
6. Zero Dark Thirty. Kathryn Bigelow’s film is a dead-serious take of our grim reality: How far do we go to fight the good fight?

7. Margaret: Director’s Cut. This new version of a little-seen 2011 film played one cinema in 2012. A shame for a new classic.

8. The Sessions. This somber story about a disabled writer seeking sexual fulfillment never plays the “weeper” card. But you will weep.

9. Frankenweenie. Tim Burton returns to his strange roots of dark satire in this stop-motion gem about a boy and his dead dog.

10. Flight. Denzel Washington is amazing as a pilot whose midair miracle uncovers a life full of deceit and addiction.

The worst

5. Moonrise Kingdom. I know it’s loved, and Oscar-nominated. Me, I’m done with Wes Anderson’s repetitive hipster cool bullshit.

4. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Nicolas Cage pisses CGI fire in his second trip as the flame-skulled biker. This is his career.

3. Freelancers. 50 Cent plays the Worst Cop Ever, working for Worstest Cop Ever Robert De Niro, in another career low.

2. Rock of Ages. Actors as diverse as Tom Cruise and Paul Gaimatti sing remixed rock hits as if cast in “Glee”’s worst episode.

1. Total Recall. In a year stuffed with so-called reboots, this was the most useless, a trip back to Philip K. Dick’s short story too insipid to use the brilliant text, instead aping the 1990 satirical action classic.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal scored Oscars but little box office traction with 2009’s Iraq-set “Hurt Locker.” In “Zero Dark Thirty,” they go bigger and bolder by following the CIA and then SEAL Team Six as they hunt and eventually kill Osama bin Laden. 

This is an openly controversial film. It invites scorn and bravado, as does any good piece of journalism. And this is a hard-hitting news piece a la spy/war film. A fantastic, bewildering, white-knuckle thriller, hard to easily grasp on a first viewing, but mesmerizing. In short, one of the year's best, most complex films. A must see.

After we hear 911 calls from that terrible Tuesday over a black screen, we delve for 40-some minutes into the capture and torture or an apparent terrorist at the hands of CIA operatives, as well as the back office paperwork and myriad details of the largest manhunt in U.S. history. The torture scenes hit hard. Our government denies torture ever took place. Nothing happened. I tend to trust the film. Torture happened. The detainee -- one of scores of captured men seen put through various acts of distress -- cracks a peep about a courier for bin Laden. From there a tiny, illusive thread is tracked for a decade by Mia (Jessica Chastain), a CIA field agent who has no other mission in life but to find the Al Qaeda leader. 

Leads dead-end, attacks rock London and elsewhere, colleagues are killed, and Mia is targeted by would-be assassins. It makes her more determined. Mia is an enigma, her inner character only partially revealed via child-made drawings on a wall and a daring taunt tossed at Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini), where she declares herself the “mother fucker” who found the mastermind of 3,000 deaths. She also makes a crack at him over lunch, and constantly hounds her supervisors. She is one rocking red head. Angry.

The backlash against this film is insanely grotesque. Many liberals want a neon sign damning torture as bad. Poor dears. Conservatives just hate the idea bin Laden went down on Obama’s watch. Jack asses. Both are off-base, lost between ignorance and delusion, and not a little denial. 

The last hour, where bin Laden -– barely seen -- meets his end, is flat-out riveting in its stark matter-of-fact rawness. Like the great book “No Easy Day” by SEAL Team Six member Mark Owen, “Zero” somberly lays out the cards of today’s reality. Here, flatly stated, no holds barred, it says we torture to get intel, and then we act on it. To save the day, or so we hope. Sure Bush, Cheney, and our current government call it, what, “enhanced interrogation techniques”? A quick note: As with any film, dramatic license is taken, most especially during this climatic raid of the bin Laden compound -- see, Bigelow and Boal have their SEALS talk -- talk! -- inside the chopper as they approach their target, and then on the ground -- shouting and what not -- and that stuff never happens. Silence, always. Any one remotely familiar with Army tactics knows that. Paint ball war enthusiasts know that. You shout, talk, yell, you might as well draw a hand flare to bring on enemy fire. It is a small, but significant deviation.

“Hurt Locker” and every film ever made, including “Lincoln” take dramatic license, add a flare, a chase, a drink, a conversation. It is drama. That does not take away from the case of the film, the depths America goes, and likely has gone in the past, but never debated. Damn sure in World War II, enemy combatants I am sure were ... interrogated to the fullest extent. 

And how does that stack against the terrorists? Have we sunk to their level? Recall the days when Saddam in Iraq caught our airmen, he was beaten and tortured. The U.S. balked. Now we do that, and call it patriotic duty to God. I know people in the Army who have looked me square in the face and say they witnessed it, and it works. Do they not lie, I ask. To get out of the pain? Sure, they say. But you compare the different lies to find the truth. Morality, mercy has no bearing. This is the way it is for them, no questions.

If Iran or Syria did these acts to our troops, bombs would fall. Rage would flame across America. Fact. Hell, yes, it's disturbing to see here, the shit and piss, the man stuffed in a box like laundry. The food games. The dog walk scene. They ought to make any sane viewer cringe, to hate the action on screen. Boal and Bigelow do not allow us to flinch, and we are forced to watch, and see it eat up the perpetrators, and they allow us to maybe, just maybe, see -- most disturbingly -- into the mindset that it is worth the price. 

They do not judge, or comment, or place in mock-shocked characters. They want the anger, the debate. The critics be damned, let them foam. And what happens? They get investigated. They. Get. Investigated. By our Congress. To squash any talk on torture. It is a sick ironic twist of our new American values.

As with “Lincoln,” this is a vital film that transcends Hollywood entertainment. It’s a mirror of our grim reality. And Mia -– based on a real CIA agent, but also fictionalized and combined with the actions of others like her -– is our best hope of a good future. Chastain carries the film on her back, her final scene tearing the lid open on her greatness as the leading actress of her generation. yes, she is an agent, but she is no super spy. She does not pop a gun, kick butt, or go James Bond. Her weapons is her brain, her determination, he eye for detail and language, and a laptop. The new weapon of our day, the laptop.

Bigelow is making the best war films of our time. She is tackling the effects of violence on our warriors and nation, not mindless gun porn. Wonderfully ironic as our military finally allows women into combat, and conservatives blanch hard about old-time values: A

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Is there a better actress right now of the under-30 set than Jennifer Lawrence? She co-leads “Silver Linings Playbook,” a damn good comedy/drama about two troubled adults making a connection over -– of all things -– ballroom dancing. David Russell directs and wrote the screenplay (based on a book), and similar to his hit “Fighter,” rests the story on wondrous and maddening families. The lead is Bradley Cooper, giving a jaw-dropper performance unlike anything before, as Pat, a man near-disabled by bipolar disorder. Back home with his over-protective mom (Jacki Weaver) and over-bearing/OCC father (Robert De Niro), Pat crosses paths, via friends, with Tiffany (Lawrence), a young widow with her own set of issues, mainly sexual. Their relationship begins toxic, but there’s a romantic spark, they each have leapt over the cliff of sanity. If the finale is awkwardly, overly upbeat, refer back to the title: In a “Lord of the Flies” reality, we crave stories with silver linings. De Niro, after a long bout of sell-out performances, is marvelous. Lawrence (“Hunger Games” and “Winter’s Bone”) is the reason to see “Silver.” She’s 21, playing a slightly older unstable woman, flawlessly upstaging her co-stars. A-

Snow White and the Huntsmen (2012)

Irony has a queen: “Twilight” Sulk Queen Kristen Stewart plays a woman more fare than Charlize Theron in “Snow White and The Huntsman.” The former is, of course, the orphaned princess whose life is ruined by her evil step-momma (Theron). This version skews toward horror with director Rupert Sanders laying on the foreboding atmosphere thick as Tim Burton in “Sleepy Hollow,” before it jumps into a WTF war film of castle storming. Snow White as Aragorn? Yep. Every time my cinematic soul jumped at a great visual or beloved actor –- Bob Hoskins! –- it was dashed by the banality of ripped ideas from other movies. A beefcake love triangle for our heroine, with the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) versus a prince (Sam Clafin) begs the question: Who thought that was a good idea? Neither man sparkles in sunlight. Theron oozes darkest evil, roaring over everyone as a sickly twisted feminist from hell. Best bit: The magic mirror on the wall is merely a warped delusion of her sick mind. Stewart is uninspiring and flat, her suddenly-a-bad-ass-warrior let’s-kick-ass “Braveheart” speech is a snicker. The second Snow White dud of 2012. C-

Hotel Transylvania (2012)

Sony Animation’s CGI farce “Hotel Transylvania” is light on plot and heavily features crap Auto-Tune music at the end that ought to make any sane person’s soul flinch, but its love for all tall tales of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Wolfman are infectious. It also helps that the film is marvelous looking, with every corner of the screen filled with fantastical, horrifying, and hilarious pop-art bright creatures. 

The story: Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) tries all in his power to keep his 118-year-old (teen years for a vampire) daughter safe in his castle, away from harm. The castle doubles as a hotel, a monster’s reprieve from the outside world of scary humans. Shocker, then, when a college-aged kid on a backpack adventure stumbles into the place and catches the daughter’s (Selena Gomez) eye. What’s a count to do? This is PG, so killing is moot. 

The alternatives fill up the story, which runs dry. But I was busy eyeing how characters move, bounce off each other, and fall apart in the case of Frankenstein. B

Paths of Glory (1957)

“Paths of Glory” is Stanley Kubrick’s dramatization of a doomed French army attack on a German-held hill during World War I, and the immoral trial that follows where three soldiers are accused of cowardice. Or, rather, not sacrificing themselves for country, God, and their general’s careers. Kirk Douglas plays the defense attorney turned Army colonel who survives the ill-planned attack and will damn himself rather than see one of his soldiers die for false pride. This is pitch-black, dead serious satire, a liberal’s film from the go as it eviscerates the essence of war and the military brass that strategize in palaces while their men die in muddy trenches. Kubrick’s direction is tight and powerful, there’s not a wasted scene in this razor-sharp film. His long tracking shots along endless trenches are breath-killing claustrophobic, nailing what must be the true fear of battle, where doomed men debate how they will go out: bomb, bullet, or knife. A scene where a sociopathic general berates to a soldier, “there’s no such thing as shell shock,” slices hard. American hero Patton did that. This film is no fantasy, but depicts a true, terrible story. A+

Dark City (1998) and The Matrix (1999)

Funny how some movies seem separated at birth, perfect soul mates for a perfect double bill. Especially two sci-fi films that deal with a loner hero realizing his existence within a false reality and hunted by men dressed in black. That’s the basic plots behind “Dark City,” and “The Matrix,” the latter of which was filmed on the same sets as the former and released a year apart. Some die-hard conspiracy buffs insist “Matrix” ripped off “Dark City.” No. I see them as two pieces of inspired, similar art that we’re lucky to have.

“City” is from director/writer Alex Proyas, who was following the charcoal-colored theme of his tragic actioner “Crow.” Here, a man (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a hotel bathtub with no idea where he is or – more vital – who he is. A ribbon-sliced body of a woman lies nearby, but he saves a dying goldfish before fleeing the room. This is a wondrously strange tale exactly modeled after 1950s film noirs with the burg of the title stylized after some ’30s hyper-drugged-out German architectural nightmare. There’s a dame (Jennifer Connelly), a weary detective (William Hurt), and a group of pale men and one boy dressed in black coats with strange powers. These creeps are called “Strangers,” and exist below the city. Did I mention the disfigured mad scientist? He’s here. German indeed. Not to say this is that kind of film. Not Nazis. Further out. Crazy wonderful sinister fun, it's a must watch for artistic candy, sharp story, heavily stylized acting, and the way it gooses with one’s own memory. As the scientist, a creepy Kiefer Sutherland recalls Peter Lorre, whose countless monsters/killers belong to this world. A

“Matrix” is the box office smash that launched a sci-fi subgenre. You know the story: Thomas Anderson, cubicle drone by day and computer hacker by night, is recruited by a Zen-guru resistance leader (Laurence Fishburne) who says the world around them is a mirage, that Anderson lives inside a stream of 1s and 0s. The real world is barren, most of humanity slave power pods to AI robotic overlords. Directed and written by Andy and Larry (now Lana) Wachowski, “Matrix” is a generational hallmark film, the “Star Wars” of our then-dawning 21^st century, with an anti-authority alien tone lit green that is cliché now, but mind-shattering then. Bullet time, people. The fights as Thomas -– now Neo, a Jesus-Christ-by-way-of-William-Gibson-by-way-of-John-Woo savior -- takes on a cop/anti-virus named Smith (Hugo Weaving, hammering the Queen’s English into servitude) still rock. As Neo, Keanu Reeves finally has the perfect arena for his seemingly human blankness, playing the canvas for which all hope will be painted. He’s never been better, more exactly right. The sequels were ponderous, but this remains a thrill of cinema reimagined by two visionaries. Incredible. A+