Vanishing on 7th Street (2011)

Hayden Christensen is on the run in the horror/thriller “Vanishing on 7^th Street.” He runs not from cops or crooks, nor space aliens. He runs from a dark cloud that vaporizes all life that it touches. George Lucas with more “Star Wars” prequel ideas? No. More biblical plaque a la “Exodus.” The Roanoke (N.C.) mystery plays a hand. No matter, director Brad Anderson (“Casper”) never tells us. We’re in Detroit at night when thousands of people disappear during a power outage. Only a tiny handful remain: Christensen’s TV news reporter and some stragglers (Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo) and a child. They bicker, fret, and flee the dark. God is invoked, but the majority of plot is set inside a bar. A church sits down the street. The mystery is a doubled-edged sword that leads to a WTF ending with plot holes wide open: The city falls into absolute blot-out-the-sun dark, but the moon shines bright. How? In horror, details matter. Christensen plays well against an endless void. It’s all uphill after Teen Vadar. B-

The Innkeepers (2011)

“The Innkeepers” harkens back to old-school horror, the slow, slow, slow drop into the macabre and death, the full-on the lingering question that settles over the viewer hours later: “Did I see what happen actually happen?” We’re inside an on old New England inn with a history of mishaps, deaths, and renovations, but time has not been kind. The place faces shuttering. Two employees (Pat Healy and Sara Paxton) are on duty, and both are wink-wink ghost hunters. They’re there to make some cash, but mostly get ghosts on tape. The tenants are few and odd, including an actress (Kelly McGillis of “Witness”). Slowly, ever so slowly, writer/director Ti West sinks us into the story of these, um college slackers with clichés of spooky stories, a dark and dank basement, slamming doors, midnight mirages, and  a suicide upstairs, plus locked doors and creaky stairs. He keeps on sinking us downward, these old tricks spun jokingly, nastily, anew until we are as frazzled as the heroes locked up with the desire of horror maybe trumping anything real. A tiny budget, mostly unknown actors, and a simple plot go a long way. B+

Abduction (2011)

No one gets abducted in “Abduction,” but for a “Bourne Identity” Junior knock-off staring the scowling werewolf from “Twilight,” I guess the title “Who’s My Daddy?” would not drag in the non-teenage fans, huh? It’s almost unfair to dub “Abduction” a “Bourne” knock-off, it’s a boot-licking mash note that name drops Matt Damon. The plot: High school misfit Nathan Parker (Taylor Lautner) learns from a missing children website that he is not quite himself. Just as Nathan confronts his “parents” (Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello), goons storm the suburban home. Guns blaze! Mom down! Dad down! Boy on the run, with a gal (Lilly Collins of “Mirror, Mirror”) in tow! See, Serbian terrorists set up the very website knowing that one day Nathan would visit it and flee right into their insidious trap to outsmart Nathan’s real father, a brilliant ex-CIA agent. Whew! Why not a Craig’s List ad? John Singleton directs on snooze, his “Boyz ’N the Hood” days long gone. Lautner acts listlessly here as he does in “Twilight.” Suspense? Zero. Unintended laughs? A villain warns, “There’s a bomb in the oven!” and our heroes run to check the oven! Hilarious. C-

Margaret (2011)

There’s a book yet to be written about the making of “Margaret,” a drama about a Manhattan teen (Anna Paquin) who witnesses, and is undeniably partially responsible for, a NYC bus accident that leaves a woman dead. Seventeen, naïve, and obsessed with all things teen girls are -- clothes, thinking of college, avoiding some boys and chasing others –- the incident throws her world into frantic discord. The more she thinks she’s trying to help, the deeper she sinks, and more conflicted she becomes about morality, adults, the justice system, and what constitutes “fairness.” The film was shot back in 2005 with a 2006 release date penned in, but various woes and legal stops finally landed “Margaret” in a few U.S. cinemas in late 2011. Director/writer Kenneth Longergan has made one hell of a film so wide, big, dark, and brilliant –- as is New York -– multiple viewings are required. It’s a sprawling majestic novel on film, with Paquin again proving her amazing talent from “Piano.” The film runs 2 hours 30 minutes. A longer cut played on one NYC screen in 2012, and I have it on DVD now. I expect it to be on my 2012 Top 10 List. A

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Conan the Barbarian has it rough in “Conan the Barbarian,” the new remake of the 1982 blockbuster. Toward the end of this sword-and-sandals tale, Conan sneaks into a castle, crawls through rancid water, and fights several large goons and a giant octopus thingy. All to rescue a Damsel In Distress. When Conan finally arrives at the castle’s keep, he realizes the bad guys have left with the DID. Oops. Poor guy never has it easy: The first scene has Conan as a fetus (!) dodging a sword. Really. This is fodder for hilarious, self-aware kitsch a la “Flash Gordon,” but it’s just loud and dumb, with a murky climax that must have been unwatchable in 3D. TV actor Jason Momoa takes over the lead from Arnold Schwarzenegger, a harsh task, and he can’t sell lines like, “I live, I love, I slay, and I am content.” Maybe no one outside of Monty Python could spin that junk. Rose McGowan plays a witch, maybe bonking evil daddy, and well knows she’s in an unintended satire. No one else does. Morgan Freeman narrates for no clear reason. Hope he got paid well. C-

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

A lonely, maladjusted, and overly imaginative young girl arrives at her new home: A rural estate with a foreboding castle-like design and elaborately creepy gardens. Problems compound, from a distracted parent to supernatural creatures that only feign friendliness, and no adult believes the girl because she is lonely, maladjusted, and overly imaginative. Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”? Yes, and its weak-sister “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” which boasts del Toro as co-writer. So many repetitions abound I wondered if this loose remake of a 1973 TV movie was an abandoned first stab at a “Pan’s” screenplay, farmed out to a new directing/writing team. Bailee Madison (“Just Go With It”) is the girl, and she’s a young queen with a reason to scream: The rat-like trolls here want her teeth, and soul. The moody atmosphere makes up for the déjà vu vibe, but the real wet blanket is our adult leads, a sleep-walking Guy Pearce as dad, and a stiff Katie Holmes as the girlfriend, each acting as if they’d rather be in “Pan’s Labyrinth.” C+

Alien Armageddon (2011)

“Alien Armageddon” is one a series of independent micro-budgeted flicks with bit-part actors as leads, Mac-laptop-made special effects, and a biblical spin to a well-worn tale: The aliens attack Earth and cook up an evil plot against humanity genre, with the survivors – here, a shop-owner mom (Katharine McEwan) and a murderous cowboy (Don Scribner) included – fighting back. Seen anything like this before? The wholesale cheap sets and locations, and vagueness of a big picture ironically work as writer/director Neil Johnson is open for surprises awesome (are the aliens of God?) and unnecessary (a WTF lesbian scene). It’s an ugly flick, for sure, but it’s more curious about what THEY are, versus normal Hollywood dribble such as “Cowboys& Aliens” or “Battle: Los Angeles,” the latter of which this film was once titled. Be warned: This is not a film to eat by, or for women who are pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant. B-

The Killer Elite (2011)

In “The Killer Elite,” Jason Statham is another badass with a temper, a gun, and a mission. Upfront: This is one of those “based on a true story” stories that screams bullshit! as the action spreads around the globe, double-crosses pile up, and Statham as assassin-for-hire Danny Bryce endures punishment so grim and commits stunts so brazen, they would kill all Three Stooges and Ethan Hunt. Story: A gravely ill sheikh strong arms Danny into offing the three Brit SAS agents who killed his brave sons, leaving pops with a sad-sack brat so nancy, he makes Fredo Corleone glower like, well, Jason Statham. If Danny says no, Poppa Sheik kills Robert De Niro, or rather a spry old spy played by Robert De Niro. The acting is aces, and the action all wrought iron hard curves and twists, but FML, newcomer writer Matt Sherring and director Gary McKendry go all tit-tit, blanching at violence, and mere seconds later dive into their next set-piece where Stathom rips apart packs of men. Brain drivel mediocre. Clive Owen -– stealing the film -- co-stars as an ugly spook who we only think is a villain. Alas, all bullshit. B-

Pina (2011)

Ignorance truly is bliss. I knew nothing of the documentary film “Pina,” or Pina Bausch, the avant-garde choreographer and subject of this brilliant movie/eulogy, when I entered the theater. What a wonderful education. Bausch was a German-born contemporary dance performer/ instructor/artist/feminist/chain-smoker who died weeks after agreeing to let director Wim Wenders (you know him, right?) make a 3D documentary of her work. She died and then the film died, but her dancers/followers/disciples resurrected the latter to honor the former. An Easter miracle. This is one of the films of 2011, documentary category and overall, shot in glorious big-screen 3D, which I sadly missed out on. 

Wenders starts his film on stages and dance studios within literal film frames, and then takes us out onto the streets, industrial parks, public swimming pools, EL trains, parks, and mountains of Pina’s home country, her dancers, young and old, performing works that touch on love, nature, water, and violence, the movement onscreen and the music so new and thrilling to these naïve eyes and ears, so energetic and beautiful, I was spell bound. He skips the boring this-than-that-happened of most bio-docs and lets Pina’s art speak for her as we watch men and women contort their bodies in unspeakable ways, out of tribute, love and joy. 

The best/most disturbing sequence has a pack of men picking/ jabbing/clutching a woman, it’s harrowing to behold, but amazing: Pina showing how sexist, condescending men openly treat women as a meat product or a car, an object to be bought. No heart. And yet Pina’s heart still beats damn strong. A must watch and listen. A

A Dangerous Method (2011)

When David Cronenberg -- master of exploding head psychological atom bombs, and violence mixed with sex – said he was making “A Dangerous Method,” the ménage a trois between pioneer head-shrinks Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, I was stoked. I wanted envelopes torched, singed paper ashes blown in the faces of prudes. So count me wanting, put out, so to speak. Except for a few wha? spanking scenes, “Dangerous” is all talk, and I should not be surprised, as this was once called “Talking Cure.” Our focus is on Spielrein, German Jew, wealthy, and hysterically mad, put in the care of Jung (Michael Fassbender), the protégé of master head doc Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Sabina bends Jung’s tight-starched collar, and Freud feuds, and Word War I dawns, and Jung’s last scene has him going like Michael Corleone’s last scene in “Godfather, Part II,” lawn chair and all. No burning desire, no passion. Talk. Knightly’s accent grinds, and Mortensen’s Freud has all the zing of Ask Jeeves, so it’s Fassbender’s show, and he’s damn good, but a notch below “Shame,” the 2011 sex-obsessed flick that’s all dangerous method. B-

A Separation (2011)

“A Separation” follows two families in modern Iran, at war with and amongst each other, boxed in by iron-clad rules of a sick, empty theocracy. Writer/director Asghar Farhadi makes us a participant in his first, bold scene: A young, devoted married couple nonetheless seeks a divorce, spouting their arguments directly into the camera. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to raise their daughter in a free nation, while Nader (Peyman Moaadi) insists they stay, to care for his Alzheimer’s stricken father. “He doesn’t know who you are,” she pleads. “But I do,” he says. Within a minute, Farhadi makes his cast fully universal, as he nails the staggering toll of Alzheimer’s on any family. Simin moves out, forcing Nader to hire a caretaker for his father. That hire will cost everyone involved greatly as deceits and fears abound. In brilliant, wordless cutaways, Farhadi uses the pained faces of two girls to show a nation of lost, exasperated adults so fully separated by religion, sex, class, economy, and have and have not, they and it will never move forward. American Christians, take note. Screenplay, cast, camera work, the very feel and noise of Tehran, and that finale ... all flawless. A

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011)

“Being Elmo.” A movie about Elmo? Not quite. But the man whose hand, voice and soul inhibits the wildly popular “Sesame Street” character worshipped, revered and awed by college-age youth and under, down to preschool. Kevin Clash is his name, and this feel-good documentary tells the tale of the African-American Muppeteer, the first to work for Jim Henson, from shit-poor upbringing to Oprah’s couch fame. Director Constance Marks goes for uplifting, as light as “Street,” and as cuddly as Elmo himself. She eschews hurt and pain: Clash’s childhood years of being bullied is glossed over, he is divorced before we even realize he’s married, and his daughter is back in good grace before we see her all-too-apparent unhappiness. Softball? Yes. But Clash is (portrayed as) such a kind human being, and shy – he becomes alive only through Elmo or his other puppet creations – it’s impossible to resist. When he interacts with a child whose dying wish is to meet Elmo, it’s a heart breaker, you can see the responsibility wash over Clash. Makes a guy want to hug Elmo. B+

50/50 (2011)

“50/50” dares to make a raunchy comedy about a 27-year-old man facing the Big C. Its odds are far better than the film’s title. Seattle radio producer Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is OCC about health and the planet: I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I recycle, he says. Yet, his doctor has grim news: A tumor on his spine means a half-shot at living. Mom (Angelica Houston) frets. Girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) reels away. Best pal (Seth Rogan) sees cancer as a means to pity sex and pot. Based on a true story (writer Will Reiser is Adam), “50” has plenty of drama (a fellow cancer patient dies, Adam’s father has dementia) to balance the rude humor and drugs. JGL and Rogen have fine moments together, as when Adam shaves his head, yet the latter’s Kyle is such a depraved misogynist that it begs the question: How are these men friends? If Kyle ever breaks his man-child streak and weeps for Adam, we never know. That sucks. As a preteen, a best pal had cancer. It profoundly affected me. Levitt rules as self-assured, in-control Adam is reduced to tears, reaching for his mom as possible death awaits. B+

Tower Heist (2011)

With “Tower Heist,” director Brett Ratner has quite the timely revenge story: Employees at a high-end NYC apartment building (Trump Tower, actually) seek payback when the owner (Alan Alda) turns out to be a Ponzi-pushing Madoff maggot. The plan: Steal $20 million in stolen loot said to be hidden in Money Bags’ penthouse during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Our Mad-as-Hell Occupy heroes are played by Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, and Gabourey Sidibe, and their tempers are righteous: Why not strike back at the Wall Street pricks who steal from us every day? Yet all piss and blood get lost amid subpar “Ocean’s 11” shenanigans. Problems abound: The one-trick pony is predictable, we’re never sure who’s in on the Robin Hoodery as characters appear and disappear nonsensically, and either bad editing or worse writing (or both) kills scene after scene. Eddie Murphy (who concocted the story years ago with a nastier streak) owns the film as a local spitfire, loose-cannon crook brought in for the job. Too-stiff Ratner foolishly drops Murphy for long periods to focus on Stiller’s “Parents/Fockers” goof. (Remember when Stiller had balls?) Talk about robbery. B-

My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Playing Marilyn Monroe is no small feat. She’s the definitive Hollywood icon of sex and tragedy, 40-plus years after her death. Yet, Michelle Williams nails the part with astounding skill, and not just of Marilyn Monroe, but the way Marilyn played “Marilyn” for cameras, for hangers-on, and adoring, endless fans. A role that seemingly even confused herself, according to the screenplay. The lyric “I’m not broken but you can see the cracks,” from U2, comes to mind. In 1957, Monroe arrived in England to make a film with Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh, eerily good), and the screen goddess created an instant clash with her wayward, unreliable off-screen ways. The “My” in the tile is Colin Clark, a young assistant director who befriends, and so much more, the star. A guy named Eddie Redmayne plays him. True story? Don’t know. If the real Colin lied in his books, he didn’t fib big, because he and Marilyn don’t go there. This is Williams’ film. It’s dull whenever she’s not onscreen. It’s a drama and a morality tale, so, yes, drugs are bad. Williams is a pure goddess on screen. Bravo, miss. B+

Shame (2011)

“Shame.” Call me crazy, but it’s all about the liquids inside us. Poison. The bodily fluid liquid Shame in all of us. A weight, a black hole, a soul crusher. The bodily fluids must be purged, at all costs. They. Must. As demons are exorcised, memories are downed in drugs and booze. Liquids purged. This crazy-daring-disturbing-beautiful art flick, from Brit director Steve McQueen (not the dead Hollywood star of the 1960s, but a young black Brit artist) follows Brandon, an Irish-born, American-raised 30-ish man in New York City. Some dub him a sex addict. Maybe. He certainly relentlessly, ceaselessly, and carelessly picks up sex partners where ever he can find them, or pays for the pleasure for quick encounters. And if no woman is available, porn via Web or magazine will do, and he can masturbate out the semen from his body. His rage, his demon. Men will do, too, to help get that liquid anchor out. What past he leads?

Rising star of 2011 Michael Fassbender, quickly becoming a favorite actor, should have landed an Oscar nomination for his Brandon, a tortured, lonely, angry soul, long past dead inside, who – in the long, wordless climax (I mean that many ways) – cannot fathom intimacy or love or a relationship, and during a three-way, looks as tortured as a man undergoing water-boarding. His one shot at intimacy, an actual relationship, is a full disaster, he calls the woman boring and denounces love, and fails in bed, sexually. It’s all about release, nothing more. There is no love in this world. Not here.

Brandon’s cold, hard, life, all the sex and porn, leftover take-out, and relentlessly repeated classical music played as white noise is thrown a devastating loop when his equally mentally unstable sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up in his shower, unexpected. Uninvited. Unwanted. Unbounded. She longs for a connection to Brandon. His openness at her nudity and she at his, hints at a dark, horrible childhood. Never explained. We don’t need to know, and maybe would be too horrified to know the truth. Their first run-in onscreen, I thought she was his ex-wife. I said dark and disturbing, and I meant it. Few films ever go this dark.

If Brandon ejaculated out his pain through sex, masturbation, or any stimulant, Sissy is a cutter. Blood. A long series of scars mark her wrists and arms, and she wants to lose more blood. And she will in the end. Pints. The whole movie is liquids -- blood, semen, music, fast-moving subway cars, and rain, never stopping, spinning in an endless circle, down a bottomless drain. Even the music is liquid. Always moving, flowing.

The final scenes mimic the first scenes. McQueen’s film is epic, and cold and small, and amazing, full of sex and nudity. That climatic three-way starts out explicit and erotic as hell, as porn, and then turns painful as Brandon shows nothing but misery, a cold, hard punch to audience-mandated expectations for such a NC-17 sex film. This is eroticism turned ugly, anti-erotic. If the screenplay, by McQueen and Abi Morgan (who wrote the lesser “Iron Lady”) is slight on details, McQueen’s camera – the cinematography is beautiful, and in ultra-wide screen – tells us so much more. Watch how, when Brandon and Sissy talk, the camera is behind them, their faces, eyes, expressions cut off. Cold. Only when they fight, scream, yell, and he attacks her, him fully naked, do we see their faces. As dark as this film goes, I want a re-watch. STAT.

Fassbender bares it all, literally. The rage inside him is barely contained, and when he stares down a woman, his flirtation by eye, masks something far darker. That’s acting. Art. Beauty, Danger. Sex. And ... bottomless doom. The character of Brandon barely speaks. Mulligan, she of “An Education” and “Drive,” will not not speak, and lays out a tortured version of “New York, New York,” so dark, so long, so painful and hopeless, I’m not certain what we saw on screen was reality within the film, but her singing/talking directly to her hardened, hard-on brother, how the cold, dark, big city -- life itself -- will kill them in the end. Brandon cries at the moment, by his sister’s beauty and pain, and is horrified to see that kind of liquid, a tear, come from inside him. Pulsating rage follows.

Do not trust anyone says this film is dead and cold; it is about death and coldness, and sex, in all its glory, and pain and misery and Shame. And always about liquids, bodily fluids, escaping from the body, and the pain of an unexplained past. Pure fucking genius. Bravo, Mr. McQueen, and Mr. Fassbender.A

The Iron Lady (2011)

In “The Iron Lady,” a biopic about Britain’s MP Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep embodies the loved/hated prime minister with a voice and movements that are amazing to witness. The actress is more than a worthy Oscar winner here, for she is Atlas, hoisting a terrible film upon her shoulders. Director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Abi Morgan dedicate heaps of time to an Alzheimer’s-stricken Thatcher as she talks to her dead husband (Jim Broadbent), who mucks about as if Peter Pan. The undeniably fascinating life of Thatcher, from World War II-era teenager to leader of a superpower, is all rushed flashbacks, snippets with bold-font headlines, half-explanations, and historical characters that run by. The dementia scenes turn into a bad “Ghost” rehash as onscreen Thatcher literally packs a suitcase for dead hubby so he can go off into the light. What utter nonsense. Streep, thankfully, makes every scene she is in shine, from Parliament debates to her vicious and regretted attack of a second-in-command, to the sad elderly years. Nostalgic conservatives will cheer the speeches, cruel liberals will mock the woman chasing her ghost husband because he’s shoeless. B-

Jack and Jill (2011)

“This must never be seen.” Al Pacino says this at the end of “Jack and Jill,” a degrading Adam Sandler flick that has the “SNL” vet playing twins, one Jack, one Jill, with Pacino (!) lusting for the latter. Sandler does drag as Jill and also as Jack in drag as Jill. That’s the plot. So, yes, Pacino continues his late-career burnout by playing himself in a way that can only be called turkey bacon. It’s beyond ham. He raps an onscreen Dunkin’ Dounts commercial, and it’s awful sad. At least Katie Holmes looks embarrassed as Jack’s autotron wife. Not Al. Sandler has been making brain-fuck films for years, to bore us and get rich quickly, and his self-satisfied smirk shows how much he cares. He spends 80 minutes mocking Jill as an overweight, sweaty, techno-clueless, socially inept wreck of shrill Jewish stereotypes, before going life-lesson soft, asking us to fall in love with her (him) as a person. I don’t know which is worse, that Sandler thinks he’s creating message movies, his constant product hawking, or that he thinks diarrhea is still funny. D

Dream House (2011)

I saw an early trailer of “Dream House” that gave nearly the entire film away. What the ad didn’t spoil: This supernatural, “Oh, shit, we moved into a massacre house” film crashes at the one hour mark, leaving even the great Rachel Weisz acting shrill and lost. Pushing ahead spoiler-free: Daniel Craig plays Will Atenton, a book editor ditching NYC for the rural dream house with his wife (Weisz) and daughters. Pfft. Seems “family murdered” was left out of the realty ad. Directed by Jim Sheridan, with a solid cast of names, this not-horrifying “American Horror Story” story should rock and shock. It fails. “Dream” goes dead flat after that one-hour-mark reveal resets the plot, and then drops an endless series of awful gotch’yas. Worst offense, other than the writing and editing: The great Naomi Watts is wasted in a “helpless woman” role beneath her station. PSA hint: If your train-mate on the way to your new house is Elias Koteas, go the hell back to work. Stay there. C

My Oscar Takes

As of this writing, the Oscars are over. The winner chosen. Here are my takes on the final nine, some quite worthy of a nomination, but others ... Not. Why the Academy went beyond five, I find just lame ...

The Artist
Director/writer Michel Hazanavicius’ much-celebrated “silent” black-and-white comedy-drama “The Artist” is a high-wire act of cinematic love that pays homage to and plays with the earliest movies. The plot: Boisterous star of 1920s action films George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) falls hard from celebrity as “Talkies” become Hollywood’s mantra, ironically sweeping the starlet (Bérénice Bejo) he discovered to fame. Hazanavicius trumps expectations throughout, putting Valentin in a nightmare world of “sound” where glasses clink and dogs bark, but our hero has no voice. Sly jokes abound, too: A grammatical error in a dialogue card nudges a scene into hilarity. The lack of vocals forces us to focus on the faces and gestures of the actors, the artists on screen and appreciate their craft: Dujardin, Bejo, James Cromwell, and John Goodman. Dujardin and Bejo’s onscreen chemistry is priceless, and their final scene packs two surprises: The long-lost glory of dance in movies, and the real fear why Valentin feels he has no voice in America. Rare is the moment when “Artist” is truly silent, for it packs a stellar score using music new and old to serve as a substitute for voices, a narration of orchestra and ’20s jazz. Also, best dog ever. A

The Descendants
Alexander Payne’s awesome “The Descendants” pulls the rug out from our under feet in a quick minute as we open on a beautiful woman water skiing. Cut to black. A narrator tells us the woman – his wife -- lies in a coma following a boat crash. This story should be happy. We are in Hawaii, paradise to us in the mainland U.S. But Matt King won’t have it. “Paradise can go fuck itself,” he says in a voice over. George Clooney is Matt. Perfect performance. Bitter and angry, full of new-found reality. Every scene is perfectly written and plays between genres. Payne and his co-screenwriters, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, follow it with a brutal scene as Matt rips into the friend with full-on rage and fear – “Did she love him?” There are three dozen such perfect scenes, quiet, wordless scenes, too. Clooney may well win the Oscar as a heartbroken, newly awakened man who must forgive, but cannot save, his wife. He deserves it. A

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a feel-good 9/11 movie. It opens with a body falling pretty-like from the World Trade Center, and ends with a similar motif, intercut with a boy on a swing. It’s made with Oscar in mind with Stephen Daldry (“The Reader”) behind the camera, and Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Viola Davis on screen. The boy is Oskar Schell, a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome (he claims the tests were inconclusive) grieving the death of his beloved father (Hanks). One day Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet and sees it as a last gift from dad, who used scavenger hunts to bring the boy out of his shell. Schell. Get it? So the boy hunts, seeking an answer as to why dad died that Worst Day. The story is intriguing, but halfway I near bolted. Oskar clearly is in desperate need of psychological care – he fears everything and self-tortures his own body -- but the movie treats his illness as a quirky plot device, worsened by clueless, impossible-to-exist adults. As Oskar, newcomer Thomas Horn shines with majestic soul, but that doesn’t make anything here OK. A feel-good 9/11 movie is not quirky, it’s insulting. The grade is for the boy. C-

The Help
“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary. Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting as a maid and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters (conservative Santorum-loving assholes) consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all. But, really, Emma Stone as the lead?1?B-

Hugo
Leave it to Martin Scorsese to not just set a new high bar for children’s films, but all 3D movies. “Hugo” is a – superlative! -- masterpiece, a tale of an orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) in love with machines, cinema and stories, living in a Parisian train station as a clock master. The film itself glows with a boundless joy of movies and books beloved by Scorsese, making his best film in years, and his brightest, most wide-eyed adventure in ... forever. Hugo – this will upset Fox viewers – is poor, and steals food and drink to survive. (Call Newt!) That thievery puts him at odds with a short-fused toy shop owner named Georges Melies, who you well know if you know cinema. The plot kicks into glorious gear when Georges (Ben Kingsley) confiscates a notepad from Hugo, not knowing it once belonged to the boy’s dead father (Jude Law). I will say nothing more of the plot, watch and enjoy. Everything in “Hugo” – from the scenery and special effects to the actors and words -- is for proudly childish dreamers of all ages, all the ones who ever held a film camera or took pen to paper and thought, “What world can I create today?” Amazing from start to finish. A

Midnight in Paris
“Midnight in Paris” is a delight. A reminder that Woody Allen is one of the best movie writers/directors out there no matter how creepy he is off camera. This is a comedy about a struggling American novelist (Owen Wilson) who becomes lost – figuratively and literally – in Paris’ nighttime streets, the lights and spirits of deceased artists, musicians and writers lulling him in utopia. Then he gets lost – in time – when a 1920s taxi, every night at midnight, whisks him away to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway, what Owen’s Gil considers the greatest era for artisans in history. This just isn’t a new classic Allen comedy, it’s a tweak at nostalgia fever by both Tea Party Americans who long for the founding days of America, and daydreaming liberals who think art was somehow more pure 100 years ago. Both are wrong. “Midnight” is near perfect. A

Moneyball
It's 2001 and Oakland Athletics’ GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is coming off a post-season crushing by the Yankees. Co-written by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zallian, “Moneyball” is about any passion or business – pizza-making, movie-making, banking or professional sport – steam-rolled by Big Money, all the joy and unknowns crushed under consumer surveys and greed. The baseball scenes are almost beside the point as Beane never watches the games. That said, the tumults of an imploded 11-0 lead make for damn fine filmmaking by director Bennet Miller, who made “Capote.” Yeah, the ending goes long in the bottom of the ninth, but it is painless. I cannot say enough how much I dug Pitt’s performance, and Jonah Hill is brilliant as a numbers geek, who knew? A-

Tree of Life
On my first viewing of “Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s epic drama of God’s creation of the universe, one Texas family during the 1950s, and such small potatoes as life and death, it took me more than a week to even form words to describe a reaction. This is my pick for the Best Movie of 2011, i cannot say more, if you wish to know more, search this blog. No more words can be made. Sorry. Seriously, one of the all-time great works of art. A+

War Horse
Steven Spielberg's “War Horse” is an unabashedly, unapologetic and amazing big-screen World War I drama about a boy-turned-man and his horse that recalls a 1950s Techicolor epic long gone from cinemas, but with an important distinction, there is no glorification of war here. The horse of the title is conscripted to serve in battle, and Spielberg is grandiose and sentimental about it, and John Williams’ old-fashioned score pulls out the full orchestra, and whips and pulls for every emotion, but when Joey -- the War Horse -- is running shell-shocked and horrified through a godless battlefield, ripping through barbed wire, cut to pieces, the guy who made “E.T.” reduced me once again to blubber. Awesome, no other words. A