Inside Out (2015)

After a dip in quality – “Monsters University” was only cute – Pixar returns with their very best effort yet: An instant classic that resets the bar in how stories can be told to and of children, and for adults. “Inside Out” – directed by Pete Docter, who made “Up” – is joyous, funny, and heart-crushing. The death of a beloved character: I wept. (Michael Giacchino’s score pushed me.) Plot: We follow the emotions -– joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger -- inside the mind of a pre-teen girl as she moves from Minnesota to San Francisco -- all the hope, wonder, turmoil, and disappointment. I had a major move at 12. “Inside” hit me. Docter and his writers dare focus on the theme that Walt Disney hid in his own films: Heartbreak is as central to our childhood as happiness. They are intertwined. We bounce from inside our girl’s head to the outside world, and then into the brains of side characters: Parents, a teacher, a dog! – and Docter dazzles us again. It’s Pixar gold: The animation and voice talent (Amy Poehler!) is superb. But this gem has a vibrant life that takes hold of our heads, and our hearts. And shatters. A+

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

(EDITED 20 May 2015. A second viewing has me even more enthralled with this movie. But some a huge correction to the below: It is without doubt the same Max Rockatansky in this film as Mel Gibson played. That's clear up front, and elsewhere. Which makes the lead of Charlize Theron's road Warrior Trucker all the more amazing. And the first appearance of The Wives is one of the great rug pulls of modern cinema. The first shot seems contrived and sexist, wet ladies in the desert, wearing gauze, maybe. College guys next to me whistled. Within moments they cringed and winced at the rage these ladies held. That's powerful film-making. I never touched on the wild religious implications of the film, the sick promise of Immortan Joe to his followers that if they die for him, Valhalla (heaven) awaits. Massive part of the story. It hits current wars of this day. Just epic. I don't know George Miller, only a few months younger my father, pulled this off. He has just crushed every young filmmaker working today. Epic. That certain Jedi film coming out later this year has a huge mountain to climb. A sequel.reboot has just set a new standard for action films, and how woman are to be seen on screen. Forever. And the energy on screen -- the feeling that anything can happen -- i just have to applaud.)


Days on, I’m still pumped with awe. I don’t know where to begin or if I’ll ever get everything I feel right now. “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the most daring, subversive summer action film to hit cinemas in years. God love George Miller. 

This is THE film we need now. In its jaw-dropping spectacle. Its energy. Its anger.

From trailers and posters galore, we expect rising Hollywood star Tom Hardy (“The DarkKnight Rises”) to take on the iconic Australian role of ex-cop Max Rockatansky played frighteningly wild-eyed, fierece by Mel Gibson 40 odd years ago and run with it. 

Hero. Savior. Bad ass driver and gunslinger. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

During a frenzied pre-credits opening salvo, hero Max is taken hostage, bound and masked, and in drops the true lead of this film -- the new Road Warrior for our time -- Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. One-armed, armed, and driving a steam-punk tractor trailer straight out of hell and into freedom. Or hope. Or any place, but from where she came. 

This is an action film with women at the core. Not since “Alien” have we seen such a display. Theron makes Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley seem tame. Here, strong, blood, divisive, kick-ass women in a near-future world take back control of their lives and their world -- killed by men -- with ferocious force. Max has to keep up. This could have been called “Mad Women.” (Unlike “Alien,” Miller uses scant clothing to again burn genre.)

And the action -– the entire film is one chase with so little dialogue, you begin to forget to question if anyone can talk – has no peer. In an age where whole hours of something like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is wall-to-wall CGI and impersonal robots and immortal heroes, Miller drops in real vehicles and teams of stuntmen and women and smashes everything together decadent glee. He smashes trucks through cars. Drops bikes off mountains. Throws tanks into a tornado, and lets them fall. He kills characters we have instantly fallen in love with minutes ago. 

Every frame of “Fury” is madness, glorious madness that feels as alive and pulsing as the first “Mad Max” in 1979, a film that plays like it had to be made or its director –- Miller –- might lose his f’n mind. 

(This also recalls the gonzo mad independent Australian films of the 1970s, such as “The Cars that Ate Paris,” where narrative coherence is slain by glorious visual chaos. And, yes, John Seale’s digital, handheld cinematography is Oscar worthy, inches from bloodied cheeks and oil-spewing motors. Also Oscar worthy: Nicholas Holt, breaking out from boring X-Men and childish movie star roles to play a crazed man riddled with tumors and a desire to die horrifically, so he can be reborn whole.) 

Before I get ahead of myself: We are back in the post-nuclear apocalypse desert of the “Road Warrior” and “Thunderdome,” although I don’t think “Fury” is exactly a sequel or a reboot from the previous films. It’s never specifically said that this Max is the same Max of the previous trilogy. His flashbacks -– violent, haunted acid trips of a man long past sanity -– match nothing told before. Miller has us work for info. He drops us in the middle of the action and makes us chase down the back stories, the detailed horrors of this world. 

One viewing is not enough. Furiosa’s task at the start of the film is to steal gasoline for her master, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the villain in “Mad Max,” but a fully different character). Joe is an obese tumor-stricken old man wearing a plastic muscle suit that bulks him to Hulk-size, with a horrifying oxygen mask of plastic, rubber, and animal teeth for a face. He is the leader of a desert cult that worships him as a god, and as he controls all water, food, fuel, and the blood supply, he will not be questioned. 

He also keeps five young women as sex slaves to breed his children. It is they who are Furiosa’s cargo as the film opens, she defying the order to steal petro as she carries these women to the “green place” of her lost youth. Within Joe’s tower cave, his “wives” have scrawled defiant phrases: “We are not your property!” 

The chase is set when Joe decides otherwise and sets out to get his “women” back, no matter who he has to kill to do so. (Even his underlings question his sanity.) That the “wives” are introduced as one-note barely-dressed supermodels is a tantalizing FU from Miller and his writers. In the sands, away from men, finding more women warriors and mentors, these young “hotties” explode in murderous revolt. Max can barely keep up. 

Oscar winner Theron rules the film with quiet intensity. Our action star for 2015. Hardy is her acting equal as a man lost and in desperate need of saving by these women before he loses his last thread of humanity. Epic does not do “Fury” justice. It is vital viewing as action spectacle and comment on our sexist age. 

I can’t think of another Hollywood summer film that has so upended my expectations to glorious effect. Miller has just writ the end of our male-dominated Marvel and D.C. summer era. Those films are made by business. This was made by burning need. A+

From Russia with Love (1963) and The November Man (2014)

Sean Connery-era classic Bond “From Russia With Love” (1963) is unapologetically mean, early 1960s fun and danger, crude indeed, the absolute best of the 007 series as our hero knowingly enters a trap to snatch a top secret Enigma-code like device from the Russians. 

Except it’s not the Russians setting the trap, its SPECTRE, the terrorist group led by an unseen Blofed and fronted by a blonde thug (Robert Shaw) who seems to embody a Hitler Youth fantasy and a madwoman fascist (Lotte Lenya) with a steel-toe kick. Connery nails the film without lifting an eyebrow or breaking a sweat. His train car tussle with Shaw is one of the best fight scenes ever, and “Russia” only gets better with a boat chase, a helicopter terror hunt, and a finale inside a hotel room. It’s perfect cool. 

Now, later Bond man Pierce Brosnan goes all wrong in the forgettable, drab “The November Man” (2014) as a professional assassin who trains his protégé to never fall in love and birth children, and then secretly… well, you know. Right? I mean, here’s a spy film where you can guess every next spy-plot twist and sit back and watch it. Yawning. Brosnan is too good for this.

Russia: A November: C-

Nightcrawler (2014)

Imagine a dead serious “Network” written in the darkest pit of humanity, all humor strangled by an utter lack of empathy, with the journalism game run by any dick with a camera. That’s “Nightcrawler.” Jake Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a petty thief who one night finds his calling: Filming accidents, murders, house fires, and drive-bys, the fresher the gore the better for a top TV news slot. His “employer” is LA’s lowest-rated station, a bottom feeder with the mantra of fear sells. His “boss” is the vampire-hour editor (Renee Russo) who knows her middle age means job death. Bloom speaks in Internet PR babble, product comments, and tweets, using a deflated voice and spouting his love of accounting. He vibes Leo Bloom from “The Producers,” if Bloom had no soul. (Not Joyce Bloom.) Looking starved with bulging eyes, Gyllenhaal is a monster of success as he places civilians and police in harm’s way for a sell. Director/writer Dan Gilroy never judges, he shows us a mirror of journalism endlessly sinking in its race to hit ratings and print money, where cameras are as dangerous as guns. This is the world “Network” warned us about. A-

The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

“What are you … doing?” That’s what evil alien Ronan (Lee Pace) asks of Han Solo-type hero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) toward the end of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” a funny, thrilling action film from Marvel Studios that is self-aware and comes packed with the kind of rock-heavy soundtrack not heard since 1980s heydays. “Footloose” is named-checked. “Cherry Bomb” is played. This is as fuck-it gonzo flippant as Marvel’s “Captain America 2” was dead serious against Bush/Obama NSA insanity. Earth-born Quill goes by Star-Lord, a thief who gets mixed up in a universe-stretching battle Skywalker-style after he nabs a device that looks like a baseball, joining other thieves and fighters –- including a walking tree (Vin Diesel) and his raccoon pal (Bradley Cooper) –- along the way. Director/writer James Gunn serves epic gut-busting comedy first, superhero tales second. “Why would you to save the galaxy?,” asks Rocket the Raccoon. “Because I live in the galaxy!,” is the genius reply. Everything about “Guardians” is perfect, right up to the credits stinger that winks at Marvel’s once abysmal track record of movie making. Pratt is fast becoming a major film star, having played lead voice in another 2014 favorite, “The Lego Movie.” A

The Fisher King (1991)

Damn it. Robin Williams is dead. When I heard the awful news, I knew “The Fisher King” was the first film I wanted to watch, honoring the man. This is his greatest performance as Parry, a former academic who suffers a mental collapse after the murder of his wife, and lives homeless on the New York streets. The unstable gunman was set off by a shock jock radio host (Jeff Bridges) who decries yuppies on air, but lives in a NYC flat as lifeless as the moon. The main action of Terry Gilliam’s pitch-black drama/comedy takes place three years after when Parry saves Jack from suicide. Jack, realizing Parry’s downfall, commits to “saving” Parry. Serving his own ego. Dig the 15-minute midsection where Parry –- taken in by Jack -- woos his dream woman (Amanda Plummer) at dinner then walks her home, only to suffer a breakdown, pleading, “Let me have this,” to his demons. What follows is Williams’ finest moment. Also dig Williams’ perfectly told tale of a lonely, turmoil-stricken king. It’s a heartbreaking moment that now ought to leave any person in tears. Bridges, in the lead role, is excellent as always. A full daft feast. A

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

This is a rebooted series miles above the original run of flicks that ruled cinemas 40 year back. A rare, dark, thinking person’s treat in the middle of summer, more interested in sparking hot debate and making audience squirm than serving up empty CGI fireworks. Seriously, put aside the Oscar-worthy 3-D motion capture effects –- all shot in forest and a city, not a sound stage –- and watch this story. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” picks up 10 years after 2011’s “Rise,” dumping its human cast (James Franco, bye) as we follow the primate survivors (Andy Serkis, you are a god) post bloody revolt and mass pandemic. This is the last encounter of ape and struggling humans –- led by an uncorked panicking Gary Oldman -- as the latter delve into the apes’ forest, to restart an electric dam. Any chance of interspecies peace is crushed under lingering wounds of the “old” world, and we enter a dark, new dystopian future the previous films merely hinted at. Director Matt Reeves has created a razor sharp sequel that, yes, may be inevitable, but it can still shock, too -- check an onscreen murder of a youth. Serkis is flat out amazing. A-

Locke (2014)

“Locke” is a movie-making stunt that wins its dare. Writer-director Steven Knight (he penned “Eastern Promises”) has fashioned a real-time thriller that follows a construction engineer –- played by Tom Hardy -– fighting to keep all he owns and loves as he drives 90 minutes from Birmingham to London to witness the premature birth of his third child. No guns involved. The damage is emotional. The pending child is the product of a one-night stand. The mother is frantic. Hardy’s Ivan Locke -– we only see him inside his BMW, interacting by phone –- declares himself in control and refuses panic. But he must inform his wife of his transgression, assure his two sons all is well, and track the status of his massive work project -– a skyscraper concrete pouring -– that costs untold millions. Tense and without a wasted second, “Locke” booms loud on Hardy’s fierce performance as a man whose hubris is as destructive as negligence, a trait worn by his dead father who produced Ivan out of wedlock. Knight traps us tight inside that BMW with Locke as his life shreds as the minutes tick by, the most valiant action righting one’s life errors. However futile. Seemingly small, “Locke” is epic. A

The Raid 2 (2014)

Gareth Evans’ “TheRaid” had a thin plot: A SWAT team invades a Jakarta apartment tower to snatch a drug lord. Leading the charge: Rookie cop and to-be pop Iko Uwais with master hand-to-hand combatant skills and razor instincts. The close-quarters bloody violence astounded. “The Raid 2” goes city-wide and huge as Uwais is sent to prison by his bosses, tasked with befriending the son (Arifin Putra) of a crime kingpin (Tio Pakusadewo) to bring both down post-release. The job drags for years as Uwais enters the mob and learns that the son is out to get dad’s top spot via betrayal. Evans spins a well-known “Infernal Affairs”-like plot with epic kinetic force: He kills off near anyone from film one and ups the action to shockingly good effect with a car chase that tops any in years and a prison riot/fight that is a death ballet. Ditto fights set at a nightclub and kitchen. Welsh-native Evans just keeps raising the bar like an unhinged Tarantino. In a plot that eerily picks on the restaurant scene from the “Godfather,” the director/writer really shines. Uwais is spectacular as the silent hero. The Part 3 insider set up is more than welcome. A

2013: Best and Worst

Oscars are handed out and I realize I never did my Best/Worst of 2013. Oops. But who can blame me? I live in the sticks. If it’s “art house” good, I see it in March. Maybe. With my tardiness, I’m skipping a formal numbered Top 10, bottom 5. Brevity is key now.

The Best

No film floored me in 2013 quite like “12 Years a Slave,” a real American horror/history story. It is the truth to the lies of that other Oscar winner of American lies, “Gone with the Wind.” A must see.

Yet, I had no better time in a theater last year than “Gravity,” an amazing piece of film-making. And it has an equal companion, “All is Lost.” A woman adrift in space, a man lost at sea. Each facing hopelessness. These films are odd, perfect twins that hit me perfectly square in the chest and head, and why not as I turn 40. They are my No. 1 choices, tied.

Call “12 Years” a very close second. It certainly is the most vital film of 2013.

The rest from 4 down: Romantic drama “Her” -- again about a lonely man, notice a theme here? -- and family documentary “Stories We Tell.” Each told new stories with power. 

Trilogy closer “Before Midnight” seemed to spool out as a captured reality, while “American Hustle” and “Wolf of Wall Street” played two wild games of comedy from too-strange real events set in New York.

I also loved the Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Issac Davis just another cool cat.

Closing out at No. 10, another tale at sea,“Captain Phillips,” with Tom Hanks, also staring down death while soaking wet, but desperate to be alone. 

Is this list complete? No. It will change many times. For now, it will do.

The Worst

No film pissed me off more in 2013 than “A Good Day to Die Hard,” an abomination on the 1988 classic action film. That film played for humanity among all the fireworks. “AGDTDH” is soul-dead garbage. 

Four more grating entries: “The Lone Ranger,” “The Host,” “Percy Jackson 2,” and “Fifth Estate.” 

Again, sure to change. But I doubt “AGDTDH” will be bottomed.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

I don’t want to know anyone who doesn’t walk out of “12 Years a Slave” a crushed soul rebuilt from the ground up by the final and finally at-last hopeful moments of this true horror tale that is deft enough to show beautiful –- stunningly so -- landscapes amid recreations of terrifying acts of inhumanity that were the start of this great (and terrible) nation. 

These shots are clear: As they degrade the lives of those they see as less than themselves, the allegedly greatest of our kind –- rich, educated, and privileged beyond measure -– bring ruin to their own lives with the heinous need to control and take all treasure. 

Brit-born filmmaker Steve McQueen (“Shame”) has done what few American directors have dare tried: Tell the brutal story of slavery in the United States with unblinking detail and absolute you-are-there authority. 

This is the anti-“Gone with the Wind,” with its Southern celebration and happy slaves, and certainly the anti-let-us-have-fun-revenge-flick “Django Unchained,” which I like less and less the more I recall my two, one too many, viewings of it. 

Solomon Northup was a born free African-American in 1840s New York, a musician and engineer, until he was kidnapped and sold into bondage below the Northern line into death, rape, and forced labor that should shock anyone with a hair of decency. 

Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Children of Men”) plays Solomon, a man who must deny his own greatness and abilities, essentially his outright normalcy as a human, lest he be murdered or worse -- and yes there are worse fates -- by his white masters who will not see anyone of color as their equal. 

Solomon does this for 12 grueling years, his longest stretch as “property” of a sadistic drunkard (Michael Fassbender, a regular in McQueen’s films) who is abusive to all around him, including his own wife (Sarah Paulson) who can equal her husband’s acidic temper. 

This is an age when a black slave could be killed for learning to read or write, an act I cannot even muster in my head as a reality. But McQueen shows us many disturbing realities – including a brutal whipping that Solomon is forced to take part in – as every day, and as much a part of the American spirit as apple pie, George Washington and fireworks. 

To deny this, to ignore it, to wish it away as a past that should be forgotten and “get over it,” -– and I heard that a lot in Alabama and here in Virginia from racist cunts who then turn around and celebrate the rah-rah-rah spirit of the Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy, or what their university did in 1881 -- is a great as sin as those who meted out this disaster of inhumanity. 

Ejiofor truly, sorry this sounds cliché, this film has robbed me of most words, astounds in the lead role. I have been a fan of his for years, and now just stand in awe. He plays a freeman forced into not just slavery and near unspeakable cruelty an acting chore, a sick live stage act that lasts some 4,400 days, an educated, bright, angry, hopeful man who must show near none of those traits. 

That’s what sticks with me. Burying oneself as dead although you are yet alive, and long to see your wife and children, and parents, etc. 

In one bravo scene, three quarters, McQueen dishes out a scene that pulls no punches: Ejiofor as Northup looks out into the sky of his “home” and then directly into the camera at the audience, daring us to not just continue in his harrowing story but to never forget his suffering and the untold numbers of his fellow slave captives in an American that only called itself free, but in a blatant knowing lie, a wink as the rich and powerful killed hundreds of thousands, or more, of people of color, all for greed, and wealth, and land. 

The final moments, and this is no spoiler that Solomon lives, where he apologies –- apologies –- to his family for missing out on their lives, just laid waste to me. Can you imagine? I simply cannot, and have no words. McQueen and company have left me near silent. 

(Note: As with “The Butler,” a host of big names pop by for cameos, Brad Pitt among them, but these roles are mostly commoners, owners, bigots, and others, and the cameos do not stick in the crawl as, say, John Cusack does as Richard damn Nixon. OK, stop, hold on, Pitt almost grinds and pops too much a saint-like liberal progressive.)

Lest we need proof this story must be told, loud and in every corner, lest it ever be forgotten, a darling of the right-wing conservative movement has written a review of “12” –- without seeing the film, and stating he has no intention to -– saying McQueen and the film are too “harsh” on slavery, which has economic merit and can actually be healthy…. That such thought still carries cultural weight today is truly paralyzing. 

And makes “12” all the more vital. (If you can, read the book source. STAT.) A

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George Romero’s low-budget, non-Hollywood horror classic “Night of the Living Dead” is as shocking and brilliant and subversive as near any film ever made. It’s no midnight fright flick test-marketed to hit Farmville, USA, and score big bucks and TV play. This is why American Cinema rules, and why the best of the lot are almost always outside the kingdom’s gates. These creators who have no master also have no notes to follow, or stocks to please. 

Yes, Romero has made the modern Bible version of the zombie film, the capstone by which all others build upon, emulate, and fall short. The plot is basic –- even for its time -- following a small group of people trapped in a farm house as zombies (referred to as “ghouls”) attack from outside, first a handful, then a dozen, then a horde. Among the heroes are a woman (Judith O’Dea) who just watched her brother fall to an attack and will soon see him again, and a man named Ben (Duane Jones) who happens to be passing through town. 

Ben is African American, and a professor. Think about that. In 1968. Such an idea must have smoked Hollywood’s mind then, and owners of cinemas, too. No way “Dead” played south of the Mason-Dixie line. Not during American then. Hell, not now in some parts. Not when Ben is giving orders and slugging anyone who dare crosses him. 

So, take “Night” as allegory of a sick nation being turned upright, shocked out of its “Keep America White” brain dead coast of hate. Or take it as a freakishly brilliant “man’s got to do what a man’s got to do …” heroics of any horror story, brilliantly told. I fell the first way. You chose your path. 

Too, Romero lays out his graphic violence in stark back-and-white imagery that still sends a shudder. So many film rules die here, because Romero could kill them. Dig that little girl. Dig the first attack in a cemetery as a lone figure drifts in and out of the frame, barely in focus, like a dream. 

This is a ticking time bomb of survival, and when the sun rises and light blows out every shadow, Romero drops the hammer. See, I had not seen this movie until just now. (Go on, mock. I deserve it.) I watched stunned, convinced halfway through I found a new Top 10 Favorite, and dead certain at the very end. Genius. A+

Vertigo (1958)

In 2012 Sight & Sound magazine named Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” as the greatest film ever made. I though, no, “Strangers on a Train” is better, even just for Hitchcock. Then I re-watched this detective tale again and just got fully sucked in. I was hit with instant amnesia as I watched Saint Jimmy Stewart as cop John “Scottie” Ferguson near fall to his death catching a suspect, quit the force in fear, and then fall, romantically so, for the likely mentally unstable and suicidal wife (Kim Novak) of a college pal (Tom Helmore). The case has Scottie following the woman through San Francisco out to an ancient forest and then a monastery. It ends badly. One hour to go. It’s gorgeously shot and paced, and carried by hits of failed rom-com for Scotttie, sexual tension, and the absolute best film score ever made, courtesy Bernard Herrmann. But what struck me this viewing: Watch the film, pause in awe, and then re-play it your mind from the viewpoint of Novak’s eyes, and witness every damn single scene explode in a new, thrilling light that swoons and slashes. This indeed is Hitchcock’s greatest film, the mind fuck supreme. Fall for it again. A+

Gravity (2013)

“Gravity” is exhilarating, the most damn entertaining, breathless film this year. The promos promise an outer space-set drama about two astronauts (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) caught adrift in space after a freak debris incident, their shuttle destroyed and crew members dead. It is that and a survivalist-horror film drenched in the gut-punch notion that surviving in space means having to continue to face life’s cruelties on Earth. The lean plot is near required as director Alfonso Cuaron (“Children of Men”) plunges us into a 90-minute shocker that could break with too much filler. Among his sharpest onscreen moves: Simultaneously pitching “Gravity” as a near-wordless silent film of old, but shining new and large with spectacular, game-changing CGI, cinematography, and sound. He casts us adrift above the Earth, awed with wonder at our home and shocked by the absolute black void of space, and then miraculously takes us inside our hero’s space helmet with not a single edit. Bullock rips into her role -– raw, wounded, and shell-shocked –- deserves every award coming her way. As does Cuaron and co-writer/son Jonas who spin a perfect final scene uplifting in every sense of the word as it literally inverts the title. A+

Before Midnight (2013)

During a summer heavy on superheroes and angry robots, “Before Midnight” is a miracle dose of meds against overindulgence. This is the third chapter in the “Before” series -– “Before Sunrise” came in 1995, “Before Sunset” nine years later -– that follows American writer Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and a French activist Celine (Julie Delpy). In 1995, they met on a train; in 2004, they fell in love; and here they as parents and a couple face head on and bite into each other over the hurdles and sacrifices of love and commitment. That they do this while vacationing in splendid Greece is called on even by the couple, as they also comment on the prior films as books as pretentious talkers. The film is all talk, loving and harsh, with actual adults using adult words about the things that matter -– career wars, regretted missed moments of parenting –- and it’s a sad commentary that such a film is rare. The dialogue pulsates as if every man and woman on screen barely knows what they will say next. Electric. Delpy, Hawke, and director Richard Linklater have collaborated on all three films, creating a treasured trilogy of films about all of us. Amazing. A

Frances Ha and Stories We Tell (both 2013)

Two recent art-house hit films came my way that focus on women, with females in partial control (directing, producing, writing) behind the camera. Films about women by women are too rare. I wish they would flood cinemas as do superhero flicks. Imagine having to choose which female-directed film you will see this weekend. Enough dreaming, onward…

Greta Gerwig co-wrote and is in every scene of “Frances Ha,” a black-and-white comedy/drama/ love letter to French films about a New Yorker facing a gasping dance career, the looming age of 30, and an emotional bounce after her BFF and roommate moves on to live with a fiancé. Directed and co-written by Gerwig’s real-life squeeze, Noah Baumbach, famous for “Squid and the Whale,” one expects quirks and awkward laughs with the drama, and we are served: Frances is a conversation assassin at social gatherings, and at one point -– deep in debt -– foolishly decides to jet to Paris for two days, only to take sleeping pills for jet lag and snooze trough half the trip. That’s truly hilarious, and I laughed heartily. The simple story rocks and soothes as it follows Frances getting on her feet again, but feels equally forced when the screenplay tosses in coincidences and run-ins, especially at a party I won’t even delve into. Frances (the “Ha” part you’ll learn at the end) is all the more wonderful for having no super powers. No matter how dire she needs them. B

“Stories We Tell” is –- halfway through the year -– my favorite film of 2013. Actress-turned-director Sarah Polley (“The Sweet Hereafter”) turns her eyes and camera on her own family as she asks the question we all do, “Where do I come from?” The answers are surprising and I will not divulge one moment of this gem, for watching “Stories” blind, with no knowledge of what is to come, is flat out the best time I’ve had at the movies this year. The film really is Polley speaking to her parents, siblings, and family friends, and about her own birth and her dead-from-cancer mother. With great assist from her father, Michael, a former actor who serves as narrator, Polley pulls back family stories like a series of curtains, each one leading to a new revelation or truth, entire histories of joys, mistakes, hurts, happy or foggy memories. It’s a reminder that our greatest stories are not -– and here Polley turns the cameras on herself and her editors -– found in cinemas or novels, but at the dinner table, across from parents, siblings, and friends. An exceptional watch that will even make you want to re-visit home. A

Holy Motors (2012)

Well into 2013, and I finally found my gem of 2012, the mind-fuck cinematic glory I cannot shake. “Holy Motors” cannot be broken down or glossed over. My attempt will fail. It’s about acting and role-playing not just of movies, but in life, the roles we carry happily or reluctantly -– familial, professional, artistic, or criminal. The film centers on a man known as Oscar (Denis Lavant) who rides in the back of a limousine where he takes on a slew of successive personas: A beggar woman, a deformed lunatic, a dejected father, and so on, as the film leaps film genres and lives, all in Paris, all in one day. The man even kills himself -– his others -- twice. What is French writer/ director Leos Carax going for? I have no idea, nor any idea who “Oscar” really is. This is a trek as crazily impenetrable the second go-round as the first. That’s what I want in a film, to get lost in the unknown. The purposefully bizzaro finale is a blatant scoff at any who dare try and crack the mystery. And, yes, there is a better 2012 male lead performance over Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln.” Mr. Lavant. A

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

“The Wizard of Oz” is the absolute Hollywood classic. Every fantasy film starts here. The story is simple: A Kansas farm girl is knocked unconscious during a storm and -– it’s a dream -- but let’s say she is taken by a twister to a Technicolor land of witches, scarecrows, tin men, wizards, and Munchkins, far from her sepia-toned world of dirt. To get back home, the girl must steal the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West, played in the greatest villain turn ever by Margaret Hamilton. Judy Garland is the girl, Dorothy, who within 10 minutes sings “Over the Rainbow” and makes us forget the world’s problems. Check the date on this post and deny thinking this week we all wanted to be someplace else, escape our world. It’s the childhood film that gets better watching as an adult. At 70+ years, this is go-to film of optimism, not a drop of cynicism or snark, where everything can go right if you have friends, and you can be home again if only you click your heels thrice. Yes, it’s wishful thinking. Garland OD’d. But we need a bit of “Oz” and often, even the Flying Monkeys. A+

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

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.