Spy and Pitch Perfect 2 (both 2015)

Next time a guy says women aren’t funny, punch the motherless bastard in the face. 

In “Spy,” Melissa McCarthy re-teams with her “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat” director/writer Paul Fieg for a spoof/nod to 007 antics as McCarthy plays a CIA desk jockey who takes the field – and a few lives – tracking down a stolen nuke. The plot here, as in “Heat,” is distractingly laid back. That’s OK. I came to see McCarthy. Here’s the joke: She starts off her mission puking on the bad guy she just killed, but before long she’s dropping the “F” bomb and cracking skulls open. Fat loner cat jokes? She throws then back with fire as fellow spy Jason Statham torches his tough guy persona as a jackass who fumbles every single move he makes. She needs no man to save her. 

In “Pitch Perfect 2,” Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson return as college a cappella singers who have to fight their way back to the spotlight after a disastrously hairy performance. Co-star Elizabeth Banks takes on director duties, and her comedy might suffer from too many side plots, but it’s knowing and funny as it openly mocks sequel “come backs” and career students.

Spy: A- Pitch: B

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+

Ida (2014)

Polish-made “Ida” is quiet, brief at 80 minutes, and shot in a square black and white format that predates widescreen thrills, with only two main characters, mostly in a car. But it’s powerful, and settles in slowly. Agata Trzebuchowska is Anna, a young woman living inside a nunnery, about to take the oath that will “marry” her to Christ. Before commitment, Anna visits her only living relative, an aunt (Agata Kulesza) who only just now has acknowledged the relation. Wanda, drunken, aloof, a Stalinist judge on her way down, tells Anna three truths: Her name is really Ida, her parents were murdered in World War II, and she is Jewish. The words rock Anna-now-Ida, who commits to finding the graves of her family to bless them. In the name of Christ. Shredding road-trip cliché, “Ida” is emotional and harsh, without judgment or cruelty. The ending is beautifully realized as Ida finds balance between the life she ought to have had, the life she was given, and the life she wants. Pawel Pawlikowski films his characters at the very bottom of the frame with a vast sky or ceiling looming above, as if the weight of the world is crushing everyone. A-

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is a mystery with no answer. It’s 1900 Australia and a group of girls from an elite finishing school leave for a picnic at Hanging Rock, a chunk of mountain with a near-supernatural magnetism. It looms as a god, setting visitors in a daze. Watches stop. People sleep. Four girls wonder for no reason but curiosity. Three disappear, one returns panicked. The vanished girls drop the perfect façade of the school and town into hysteria, order and etiquette shattering. People don’t fear the girls’ deaths, they fear their “violation.” The unknown expands. Weir uses glowing cinematography and pan-flute music to portray the perfection that we all desire to build us for the fall. Life is unanswerable, we cannot escape it reciting poetry or meeting dinner time. The only innocent free girl throws herself to death. The grand head mistress (Rachel Roberts) loses her glory to reality, her fate leads back to that Rock. Honestly, “Picnic” is perfect, as defined as what we are not shown, by as what we are. It is art that cannot be explained or crunched into a few sentences, it must be seen. On repeat. Endlessly fascinating. A+

Belle (2014)

“Belle” is inspired by history, a 1770s Scottish painting of a half-black woman named Dido Elizabeth Belle on equal level with her Anglo cousin. The posing thumped historic, with the slave trade going on full hell tilt. “Belle” leans standard fictional Brit family drama cum courtroom thriller hoopla, thought it scores marks for telling that Britain and America built their empires on slavery. Fact. Story: Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is raised by distant, but wealthy relatives (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson) when life already was bleak for women –- zero rights. Her obstacles are fierce. Nonetheless, she finds suitors, one an anti-slavery proponent (Sam Reid). Meanwhile, Wilkinson’s high-court judge hears a case on slave cargo and insurance. His decision could topple the sick practice and bring economic ruin. (No more free labor.) Belle obsesses on the case. She swipes evidence, dressed in a hooded robe that had me thinking “Jedi.” Heroic Reid shouts so many truth and justice speeches, I thought, “He’d make a great Superman!” Miscast Tom Felton doesn’t help as a snarling bigot. Is he aware he’s no longer playing Malfoy? Amma Asante’s drama is problematic, yes. Look past that. B

The Lunchbox (2014)

Now here’s a pure wake-up shot to my spoiled American self: A romantic comedy/drama from India that never sinks to Hollywood love clichés (love, sunset, no problems) and shows me lives and customs I never knew before. In Mumbai, there’s a whole industry of delivery men who collect lunch boxes from homes and bike the cargoes of food to the city’s vast web of office buildings, from wife’s kitchen to husband’s desk. We see that trade at the opening of “The Lunchbox,” which hinges on the joke that one woman’s (Nimrat Kaur) cooking efforts mistakenly land on the desk of a widower (Irrfan Khan) who longs for homemade food, for connection. Her actual husband? He’s too busy to notice her talent and likely philandering. Wife and widower bond through handwritten notes left in the food tins, each searching for emotion, and what better instigator than food? Writer/director Ritesh Batra never pushes expected romantic tropes, and layers her film with a stark realism of a city tripping over itself to quickly grow capitalist, but where being orphaned as a child carries social stigma into adulthood. The ending is perfection. A-

The Frozen Ground (2013)

“The Frozen Ground” got me burning mad. Nicolas Cage as cop. John Cusack as serial killer. Shot and chopped up young women. Alaska. True story. 1980s. The whole murky grisly movie works OT to condemn violence against and the objectification of women ... And yet writer/director Scott Walker’s camera stares nose close at Disney Princess Vanessa Hudgen’s stripper ass as she stage grinds. Because one can’t make a film about strippers and hookers being slaughtered by a loser kook without a little T&A stage action. At least if everyone behind the camera is male. Maybe only women should make films about cruel ways men treat women. Especially talking fact. Plot: Cusack’s Robert Hansen has 20 girls in the grave, but Hudgens’ (“Spring Breakers”) prostitute/stripper has escaped and can ID him. Her lone hero is Cage’s cop, who works so hard on the job, his family is neglected. Nothing on screen differs from an episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” so we only have stunt casting to cheer. Cusack underplays. So does Cage. The less said about 50 Cent’s pimp, the better. Recalling the victims to pop music: Ugly bad move. D+

Pitch Perfect (2012)

College a cappella comedy “Pitch Perfect” stands among many a film, from “Mean Girls” to a thousand comedies where the cool outsider joins the team of almost-winners (losers) and puts them over the top for a finale guaranteed to leave you grinning. Certainly, though, “Perfect” has to be the first movie about an a cappella group, although I can’t tell if a cappella equals glee clubs or not. Anna Kendrick -- who seems to de-age every year -- plays cool DJ music masher Becca who ends up joining an all-female singing group, because damn it, she loves music. The group is run by a princess (Anna Camp) destined for a drubbing. The group is stuck in tradition, and they need Becca, who can make music from a cup bopped on wood. They get it. Duh. I liked the music and the way Australian comic Rebel Wilson steals every scene with just a shrug. What I did not like: The cruel Asian stereotypes that I hope are ironic toss-backs to those ’80s John Hughes films (“Sixteen Candles”) that endorsed Asian racism. (God bless John Hughes. RIP.) I’ll be a ca-optimistic. B

Blue Jasmine and Philomena (both 2013)

In “Blue Jasmine” and “Philomena,” Best Actress Oscar nominees Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench respectively play very different women in life-altering upheavals. Tip of the hat to Ms. Blanchett as best of the duo. 

In Woody Allen’s pitch black satire/drama “Jasmine,” Blanchett is a NYC high-society Wall Street wife who sees her diamond dreams bust after hubby (Alec Baldwin) is jailed Madoff style by the FBI, and his womanizing ways uncovered. 

A high chip even among the 1 percent, Jasmine – not her given name – crashes to earth and the San Francisco apartment of her sister (Sally Hawkins), who bags groceries for a living and squeaks by with a mechanic boyfriend (Bobby Canavale) and a handyman ex-husband (Andrew Dice Clay) with a righteous -- and rightful -- ax to grind. 

Jasmine, on her way down, suffered a nervous breakdown and now drifts off, pops pills, and cries over the indignity of a paycheck. Allen – working on multiple levels – shows a woman who has lost her grasp of reality and yet has always been deep down delusional and a chronic liar, faking her way up to Park Avenue, and perfectly fine with the deceit and lies of Wall Street, as long as she herself remains untouched. 

How very Ayn Rand. 

That the lower end of America offers no more comfort seems to break Jasmine. (With all of Allen’s own contradictions, one wonders if he’s ever turned such a cutting knife on himself. I can’t say.) 

This is solid, darkly funny work from the man who gave us the sweet trippy “Midnight in Paris.” The man writes marvelous women, and truly scummy men –- Baldwin is wretchedly conceited, and I mean that as a compliment. 

Dench plays the title character in “Philomena,” a woman devout to God, but carrying a life of heartbreak after the Irish Catholic Church damned her for having an out of wedlock baby as a teenager, and giving -– selling for cash –- that baby 50 years ago. (If she aborted, then what?) 

Philomena desperately wants to see that grown son, and worries he is sick or homeless. An out-of-work journalist turned government PR hack (Steve Coogan, who co-wrote the screenplay) takes on Philomena as a snide expose to bust the Vatican, which as a left-wing atheist snob, he loathes. 

Philomena, for her part, is near a mirror of the sister in “Jasmine,” scrapping by, prone to junk TV and books. Not a 1 percenter. Conversely, one could easily see Jasmine hitch onto Coogan’s vulgarly rich writer. 

Director Stephen Fears sends the duo to America, where the son was taken decades ago and lets the old lady and the uppity writer needle each other movie style. The result is cute and fuzzy: Philomena talks endlessly, journo rolls his eyes; she won’t open the hotel door, he panics. 

But it’s a solid true-story that, yes, rips the church and GOP anti-everything conservatism -– justly so -– but also shows that life can be enriched by forgiveness more so than wealth or talent. Whether you go for God or not. Dench is amazing. Right and left busted, church faithful and not, as well. Fair game.

Jasmine: A- Philomena: B+

Notorious (1946)

His dames typically died harsh, and he had crazy Mommy Issues. But Alfred Hitchcock’s run of films is unchallenged. Dig “Notorious.” Made just after WWII and before the arrival of Better Dead Than Red! American patriotism crushed free thought, this plays damn smart if you look between the Hayes’ Code lines. Here, a CIA agent (Cary Grant) forces the American daughter (Ingrid Bergman) of a Nazi spy to romance another SS Bootlicker (Claude Rains) to get any secrets he has cooking. And that he does: Atomic bomb deeds. Straight plot. Melodrama. Suspense. The title is a twisted joke: Grant’s bosses sit and damn Bergman as unwomanly and quite expendable whether she gets the goods or not, for she likes sex and liquor, her notoriety. Never mind these men, Grant included, enjoy skirts and booze. (Look for the lady at the party who knows Grant.) Hitchcock lays American hypocrisy flat with a stealth punch. How can we look these men in the eye? On Grant, we cannot. He is consistently shown from behind, his face a mystery for long stretches until he finally sees the damage his spy gaming has wrought. The final scene is ambiguous and pure Hitchcock genius. A

Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski has done far more film-wise to make apartments the living embodiment of psychological hell on Earth than anyone alive, and saying his low-budget English-language debut “Repulsion” stands above “Tenant” or “Rosemary’s Baby” is one massive compliment. Catherine Denevue plays Carol, a manicurist living with her aloof sister in London, zombie shuffling to and from work, staring at sidewalk cracks, and from her bedroom to the loo, staring at the razor of sister’s (married) sugar daddy. She glazes out, does not talk, and fears the leers or touch of any man. In quick succession, a suitor comes on strong and her sister leaves for vacation, acts that push Carol off her ledge into shocking hallucinations and depraved acts. Carol has a past that purges out at the finale as we learn her hellish torture is not over by half. Polanski works with brimstone, fear, and one hell of an actress, laying the way for the nightmares of “Baby,” his horror masterpiece of stifled women. Sick irony or inevitable that Polanski had his own misogynistic demons to spew years later? A near-unbearable must-watch classic that left me gasping, and spawned the recent dark daughter of “Black Swan.” A+

Identity Theft and The Heat (both 2013)

It’s awesome to see Melissa McCarthy becoming a box-office star. Here are two of her recent releases I just caught, nicely paired…

“Identity Theft” mashes neat freak and slob road-trip comedy “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” to numbers geek meets vulgar conman “Producers,” and hopes for gold. We get copper. You can guess the roles McCarthy and co-star Jason Bateman each go for. Plot: Bateman’s mega-nerd has his identity stolen by a freakish woman (McCarthy) in Florida, leaving him poor, jailed, and near fired. At the suggestion of police –- nothing here is plausible –- he goes to extradite the woman back to Denver. Again, nonsense. So, bat shit crazy thief Diana (McCarthy) makes our hero’s life hell with boorishness, screaming fits, a sexual romp with a trucker, and more. Bateman’s Sandy -– yes, we girl’s name jokes -– implodes under the hellfire of crassness until … he comes to appreciate Diana for who she really is, a victim worth loving. Look, I laughed to hell many times, especially when McCarthy puts on a shunned wife act, but when the movie goes for big tears with a syrupy ending, I cringed. The film does not deserve it, nor does the audience. Why can’t Diane just stay crass? Also, the violent bounty hunters ... why? C+

“The Heat” pairs her McCarthy against Sandra Bullock, a better foil than Bateman, as two LEOs out to capture a drug lord in a female-heavy spin on “Lethal Weapon.” The plot is inconsequential as director Paul Fieg (“Bridesmaids”) lets the genre staple of mismatched, bickering cops rule the film. McCarthy is a Boston cop with a gift for Riggs-like man-handling, while Bullock as a tight-wad FBI agent is more Joe Friday in “Dragnet.” How the women size one another up, bicker, and then get drunk together is goofy ’80s hilarious, and just when the relationship skates too close to tears, we get riffs on runaway cats and a gory CPR scene to puke by. McCarthy is more interesting with her cop storing an arsenal in her refrigerator, sexually using needy men, and making mincemeat of a john (Tony Hale, marvelously dweeby) cheating on his wife. It’s a role and film many women may cheer: A satire that turns macho man theatrics on their head. To think the studio was scared of financing this. Twits. Of the men, Tom “Biff” Wilson knocks off laughs easily as a “42-year-old” police chief. that said, over length hurts. 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

The Rain People (1969)

Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People” is a low-budget, outside-the-system film at its best: Brave, as uncomfortable as any harsh truth, and against the set codes of American-GOP-approved rules. It’s a must-watch companion to fellow “F.U.” road picture “Easy Rider” as it follows a conflicted housewife named Natalie (Shirley Knight, raw with emotion) as she runs away from home in -– of all things -– a station wagon. Natalie is newly pregnant and scared of the responsibility. She is consumed by how to carry on, or not. Coppola wisely allows Natalie to stay conflicted, notably speaking of herself in the third person. She -– purposefully unwise -– picks up a hitchhiker, a college footballer dropout (James Caan, excellent) waylaid by a devastating injury to his brain. The two wonder mostly, finding an America beautiful and patriotic, and yet corrupt and uncaring. Deeply poignant, beautifully written, and often purposefully infuriating, “Rain” provides a shot of truth about the lies we tell ourselves and others, boasting of false joy or denying our lost happiness. The movie’s stark ending is as harsh as life’s crueler turns, as it must be. Awesome credit: A guy named George Lucas is listed as production assistant. “Rain” deserves more celebration. A

Spring Breakers (2013)

Harmony Korine’s purposefully delirious drama/horror/satire “Spring Breakers” is shocking, but not for any onscreen debauchery, but how bright and shiny, and dull it is, and how much it strives to be “Girls Gone Wild” meets “Natural Born Killers.” Circa 1994. The story: Four college girls (led by Disney princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, plus Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) head to Florida and plunge into binge drinking, drugs, sex acts, and scooter racing without helmets. When they land in jail, a redneck drug dealer (James Franco) “saves” and woos the group with guns, piano skills, and love of “Scarface.” After Gomez as a Christian named “Faith” (fancy that, eh?) bolts for home, the other three turn pink-masked gangbanger. Really. Korine spills ironic observations about youth obsessions with sex, gun culture, and celebrity, and our affinity to get bored, no matter where or what we are. But he’s working from a sketchy 30-page culture thesis triple spaced to 90, with scenes and sounds (guns!) repeated without end. Boiled down: Korine’s only real trick is getting two Mickey Mouse stars to go Mickey and Mallory for faux shock value. To break taboos? Or filmgoers’ patience? Franco, btw, is madly genius. C+

Brave (2012)

In Pixar’s “Brave,” red-haired and wild Merida is a Scottish lass who must make that terrible choice that seemingly every other Disney Princess has ever faced: Marrying for duty, not for love. She is no wallflower longing for Prince Charming, though, but a huntress who climbs tall mountains that lord over her Highlands home. When iron-willed mother (Emma Thompson) pushes our heroine to choose a suitor, she bolts. “Brave” is, wonderfully, the first Pixar film to focus on a female lead, but it’s also, sadly and oddly, the first of its films to bear a heavy, unmistakable thumbprint from new parent company Disney. From the princess angle to the heavy lessons, the DNA here is as old as “Snow White.” The plot fully kicks off when runaway Merida encounters a witch who promises to “change” her mother with a spell. What trouble magic brings I will not say, but its resolution is so simple and straight forward, I kept waiting for another shoe, any shoe, to drop. More Hesitant than “Brave.” In true Pixar fashion, the animation stuns, and the voice cast (Kelly Mcdonald plays Merida) is flawlessly chosen for talent, not name. B

Hysteria (2012)

“Hysteria” is a mostly daring, often hilarious satire, more commentary on history, than actual deed-for-deed, word-for-word history. In 1880s London, the city’s poor are loathed and considered trash by the rich. To help or mingle with them is status quo cultural sin. Women, damn. Women are thought to suffer from hysterical delusions, and if they speak out too loudly, demand change, and a right to their own (gasp!) body, then they face institutionalization. 

More than a handful of good ol’ U.S. Republicans will recognize these traits as the glory days of all humanity. The Romney-Ryan ticket approves, certainly. (Add in blatant hatred of homosexuals.) Indeed, “Hysteria” shows a time best forgotten. Or satirized. Not re-lived.

The big tongue-in-cheek focus lays on the invention of the portable electric massager that gave any woman a right to her own pleasure. We follow a young doctor (Hugh Dancy) who is vile enough to not only wish to help the poor, but recognize the science of germs, who is tossed from job after job for his beliefs. 

So, he bounces into the employ of a physician (Jonathan Pryce) who treats hysteria, the catch-all phrase for the female symptoms I described above, you know, dissatisfaction. Here the film turns riotously funny because the “treatment” at this time means literally having a doctor manually massage a female client to climax, for her to be relived of “unwanted” thought. Hilariously, the endless workload distresses Dancy’s Mortimer Granville to near disability, or what we call carpal tunnel syndrome. More hilariously: Watch how the older female clients of the physician practically rip apart Granville with their eyes. Enter the vibrator, which our hero doctor sees in another device worked on by a rich (and very liberal) friend. 

The old physician, by the way, has two daughters: One demure and colorless, by force, the other, headstrong, willful, and ready for a fight. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the latter. Yes, trouble brews. When Mortimer foolishly calls her a “socialist” for wanting to help the poor, leaving her own privilege behind, the audience nodded knowingly.

The brew goes flat -- dare I say limp? -- at the end, though. The climax of courtroom speeches and declarations of love is old, and far too Hollywood, umm, rigid for an English film made about breaking boundaries. That grinds loud and old. But I could not help but dig watching the way “Hysteria” parallels our own time, and how far some of us want to go back. We need another shakeup, STAT. B+

Haywire (2012)

Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” exists for one reason: To show mixed-martial arts fighter Gina Carano kick the snot out of such Hollywood heartthrobs as Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, and Ewan McGregor. She does this exceedingly well. The fight scenes are fast, feel brazenly real, and contain none of the CGI’d wirework gunk that turns most female vigilante flicks into fetishized trash. I’m looking at you, “Underworld.” When Tatum pummels Carano in the opening scene, the sight is shocking. Carrano gives back, brutally. Alas, the action is all that’s worth noting as the story (by Lem Dobbs, who wrote Soderbergh’s “Limey”) is a merry-go-round of betrayals so outlandishly unbelievable and confusing, I gave up tracking details and dialogue. Speaking of, and I pray I never meet Carano, but her delivery is tepid, with at least half her words red-flagged as post- production re-recording. She has a tough screen presence, but so much of this film is awkward talk that it feels long at 93 minutes. In a sequel, Carano must fight Liam Neeson. Fact. 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

Melancholia (2011)

Ditching the 200-word limit count here, this film deserves the attention…

“Melancholia” is about nothing less than the shocking, smothering power of depression on the human psyche and the end of all life on Earth as know it, and writer/director Lars von Trier welcomes that end with open arms.

“The Earth is evil. … Nobody will miss it,” he says, through the mouth of his “heroine,” Justine, played marvelously and bravely by Kirsten Dunst.

This film – shocking, maddening, infuriating, heartbreaking and brilliant even when it derails off the tracks in spectacular fashion – is the twisted sister of “Tree of Life,” 2011’s other film about the universe, God, and a shattered family.

Important note: von Trier does not believe in God. Sub-note: This is not a date film.

Von Trier opens with the end of the Earth, as a massive planet -- previously hidden behind the sun -- coined by the press as Melancholia makes its way toward Earth, drifting, and then smashing our planet into bits.

Between scenes of cosmic death, he shows us Justine and her family in their final moments, both in reality, and inside their scarred souls and minds, as they face annihilation. The chunk of film – on first viewing -- is inexplicable and scored loud to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.”

(A second viewing is a must, and a revelation. On the big screen. With big sound.)

We then flashback months to an equally massive disaster, Justine’s wedding, as she and her new husband (Alexander Skarsgard) arrive at a reception at her sister’s rural mansion. She looks to the night sky and sees a red star, and also – in her mind – death and hopelessness. Justine truly believes herself to be, and her world crumbles.

The reception spirals out of control as the bride drifts into a deep depressed state, one her broken family knows too well, and commits heinous acts as a way to bring on the end, her end, full tilt. Sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) can only attempt to help. Weeks later Justine moves in with Claire and her husband (Kiefer Sutherland, never better as a self-righteous prick).

Similar to Melancholia smashing Earth, Justine’s arrival lays ruin to the family of wife, husband and young son.

Unsettling and uncomfortable from first to last frame, this plays as von Trier’s most personal film, his ode to his own depression. His Justine is unaffected by the pending doom of Melancholia, for her world already has ended. Justine grows strong as her sister falls to despair.

Von Trier – having previously made the grim as hell but wildly imaginative “Breaking the Waves” and “Dancer in the Dark” -- is a madman for sure, a complete jerk by all accounts, and a cretin. But he’s a master filmmaker. Who says Vincent van Gogh was cordial?

The scope of this small epic comes into orbit of the giant Terrence Malick epic “Tree of Life,” touches it. The films would make a perfect double of much majesty, and not a small bit of artistic madness. Von Trier was off his meds when he made this, and was at Cannes.

Von Trier’s miracle move is to make a nightmarish wedding reception seem like the end of the world, only to show us the end of the world, and he makes every moment – even the ugliest ones – a work of artistic beauty.

As for Dunst, she of the recent “Spider-Man” films, she shines bright as a woman so smothered in darkness, so weakened she can barely rise from bed.

In the end, you will want to cheer von Trier, or punch him in the face, but you will react. Strongly. That, folks, is what art is supposed to do.

And “Melancholia” is art. A