Rocky (1975)

“Rocky” is near religion to me. No, it is religion. I grew up in Philly, and Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, was our god. These were not just “movies” to us kids back then. They were documents of our home. Rocky was one of us. Enough sentimentality, onto the film itself: Rocky is 30, piss poor, working for a “second rate loan shark” in Kensington, boxing on the side to make a couple bucks. He hates his life. Then he’s plucked from his rut to box Heavyweight Champ Apollo Creed for a set-up, bullshit New Year’s Day 1976 fight to marks the U.S.’s 200^th anniversary. The fight is fixed. Rocky does not stand a chance, and knows it. He cares not. He wants to prove to himself, his shy pet shop girlfriend Adrian (Talia Shire), and anyone who is ignorant of where Kensington is, that he matters, that he can go the distance, as he says. It’s hilarious that conservatives see “Rocky” as their film, when in fact this story is about the people left out of the American dream, pushed and punched around a boxing ring in a match where the rich always win. Always. One of my favorites. A+

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Leave it to Joss Whedon, creator of the self-aware “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” film and TV series, to turn the horror genre on its bloody head, with a film inside a film that blasts apart the decades-old pattern of character types, predestined deaths, third-act disasters, and tired climaxes that can be graphed to the last “gotch’ya.” With “The Cabin in the Woods,” Whedon and co-screenwriter Drew Goddard (who directed) show us the masters behind the genre movie curtain as a subterranean set of directors, writers, and technicians punching buttons and giving orders to ensure that every horror cliché appears. That in itself provides more than half the laughs. Who knew every dumb college-age dope move in, say, “Friday the 13^th” was so essential? Is it scary? No. Should it be? Maybe. The skewering of other’s attempts at scary more than makes up for any lack of fright. Chris Hemsworth -– before “Thor” -- leads the college-age side as the “jock,” while Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins lead the control side, riffing as if they are in a serious Aaron Sorkin production by Tarantino. Beware Merman! B+

Ruby Sparks (2012)

Paul Dano, the blood in “There Will Be Blood,” is a novelist who hit big at 19 and crashed by 29, sidelined by writer’s block, insecurities that befuddle his family, and no girlfriend on the horizon in “Ruby Sparks.” For a guy named “voice of his generation,” Calvin Weir-Fields is a pipsqueak. Then one day, the perfect woman (Zoe Kazan) walks right into his life, and introduces herself as the too-perfectly-named titular character. She’s his dream girl. Literally. He dreamt her up as a writing exercise, and now she’s cooking eggs, screaming happily at zombie flicks, and meeting the family. Smart, hilarious, dark, and able to stand within the long shadow of another cinematic gem, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” this indy film was written by Ms. Kazan for herself and real-life squeeze Dano, and it’s not just a career play, but a scorching satire on artistic ego, What Men Want, and the stark difference between wishing for a devoted girlfriend and getting exactly that. Kazan, granddaughter of Elia, takes a blowtorch to every boring, submissive rom-com female stereotype with her writing and acting, both radiant. Bravo! A-

Lawless (2012)

If you watch the 1930s-set backwoods gangster flick “Lawless” and don’t know better, and you’d be a major idiot not to know better, you might think tiny, mountainous Franklin County, Va., is over the hill and through the woods and one covered bridge over from big bad Windy City Chicago. Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter (and rock god) Nick Cave, who previously collaborated on the excellent “The Proposition” and the very good “The Road,” likely believe so.

But I digress, as I always do with the details. 

The duo has taken the wonderfully titled non-fiction family-history novel “The Wettest County in the World” by (my proximity) local author Matt Bondurant and drably re-titled it as “Lawless.” It follows a backwoods trio of Bondurant brothers (Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, and Jason Clarke) who moonlight as moonshiners, selling the vile-looking homemade hooch during the days of Prohibition. Sure enough, things go wrong. In the span of just a few weeks, a (1) former go-go dancer, (2) infamous mob boss, and (3) corrupt federal agent -– all from Chicago, all on separate missions in life -– end up in wee Rocky Mount, and onto the brothers, they respectively, 1) Land a job at the family diner/gas station, 2) Sniff out killer booze to sell back home, and 3) Terrorize the siblings with endlessly wicked means of unlawful law enforcement. The newcomers are played by 1) Jessica Chastain, 2) Gary Oldman, and 3) Guy Pearce. 

The Rocky Mount and Chicago depicted here each must have one only dirt road going out, and it meets in the middle, and provide light-speed travel a la “Star Trek.” Hell, today in real life, it takes roughly 12 hours to get from Rocky Mount to Chicago. Here, pre-Interstate, pre-cruise control, it is magically faster. How fast is to get to Philadelphia? Does the title refer to liquor running, or the rules of physics, time, and distance?

But no matter these logic lapses, nor the cliché dialogue, “Lawless” floats and sinks on the acting. I’ll focus on the guys as the women (Mia Wasikowska also co-stars as a love interest) are only allowed to look “purty” and be supportive to their menfolk. Tom “Bane” Hardy grunts most of his scenes to ill-advised comic effect, while Clarke howls madly with his slimly written character. LeBeouf, former son of Indiana Jones, gives his best as a wimpy runt who must become a hardened man, but his character arc is foolish in the end. Oldman’s nasty scenes are a mere but oh-so-welcome series of cameos.

It’s –- shocker -- Pearce that near kills this film. “Proposition,” “Memento” and “L.A. Confidential” are each new classics, and he excels in all. Here, he overacts himself right out of the movie as a sissy snot named Rakes, channeling Dennis Hopper playing Dame Edna playing an endlessly psychotic version of super-agent-man Elliot Ness with a subscription to GQ for Sadists. Sporting ridiculously greased and parted hair, and shaved eyebrows, Rakes fears blood, and yet –- it is inferred -– gets his thrills raping crippled boys after he murders them in the woods. In a gangster flick in the New York of Mars by David Lynch on full-tilt “Wild at Heart” craziness, his character would stick out as a ridiculous clown. Here? Please.

Oh, one piece of divine greatness: Legendary bluegrass singer and Southwestern Virginia native Ralph Stanley covers the Velvet Underground’s “White Light /White Heat” at film’s end, and it’s an absolutely riveting, soul crushing performance that deserves a far better movie to precede it. For that matter, the entire music score, led by the genius Cave, elevates the movie, especially a breath-taking church singing which hits the soul dead center with pure joy-of-God beauty that can uplift an agnostic. The film misses. C

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a harsh, hopeful, tragic, and bold drama/fantasy unlike any film I have ever seen. It’s divisive film, too, not just a love it or hate tale, but one fully embraced or entirely repelled. This is no easy watch. We follow a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis) living -– barely scraping by, really -- with her father, Wink (another newcomer, Dwight Henry), in the shocking squalor of a direly impoverished fishing commune at the southernmost tip of Louisiana. This community -– located on a remote island, with homes built of parts from other houses, trailers, trucks, and laundry dryers, and off a dirt road -– is not just living off the margin of society, it’s off the page. Unrecorded. 

Distrustful of technology, government, and the modern amenities I’m sucking dry just typing this sentence, the group lives by its own rules. They wish to live alone, to fish and party, the latter often to extreme. Their homes are trashed, the children unwashed, food is eaten raw, and booze is plentiful. Judge them if you wish, they have no concern for our titles, names, or finger-wagging judgments. Yet, every person is family, no matter their age or skin color. The community is iron tight, and cares for one another deeply. Then a hurricane barges in and floods the make-shift town, drowning some, and sending others to retreat to the “outside” world. Those that remain survive on a make-shift trailer/boat. 

Life will get more difficult for all, especially Hushpuppy. Wink and some other men attempt to blow a hole in a nearby levee as they want to reclaim their homes from high water, and bury their dead mates as well as their livestock. The dangerous and darkly comical action brings the community satisfaction, but briefly. Federal officials move in, mandating an evacuation. 

It’s telling that screenwriters Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin neither condemn nor condone the invading authorities as it’s a near relief to see Hushpuppy delivered from such astounding -– to our spoiled mainstream American sensibilities -– poverty. The Bathtub residents, most of them, of course, flee. To our horror, and a bit of relief, too.

There’s another tick: Wink is dying. I can only guess from septicemia fueled by long-term alcohol poisoning as the man has a profound drinking problem that sends him away for days. Then Hushpuppy -– wiser than her years, and accustomed to inch-by-inch survival -- is left on her own to cook, clean, and care for several pigs, chickens, and dogs. She talks to her absent mother, and also chillingly imagines as only a lonely child can, prehistoric beasts breaking free of the Antarctic ice and coming to kill her. (A story of Climate Change has sent her into paranoia.) These beasts for all intent and purposes are real to not just Hushpuppy, but our eyes as well, and in the final scenes we witness their wrath. 

As with the harshest tale of childhood from Dickens and Twain, “Beasts” puts a child through a meat grinder that is difficult to stomach. It's telling that her most safe, secure moments come later on a floating house of, shall we call it ill repute? See, there I go judging. That is not the place for such an act. Alibar and Zeitlin pull no punches. And Hushpuppy's struggle feels desperately real. The documentary vibe comes from the film being shot on location with handheld 16-mm cameras, using all nonprofessional actors. 

Wallis and Henry are unknown to us, so we have no perceived baggage from other films, and they are amazing to watch. Their every action, cruel and kind, feel captured. Not scripted. Early in the film, Wink strikes the girl, and every one in the theater flinched hard. Hushpuppy retaliates by punching her father in the heart, wishing aloud his death, and he collapses, and the audience flinched again, harder. This is not Disney, not by a mile. In a just world our leads would each carry an Oscar home this coming season.

It’s a shocking, enlightening film to witness, with a final scene that leaves us gulping. I have read so many critical stabs at the film for being light in story, but I never minded that. This fictional tale is a record of a tumultuous life of one amazing girl who puts her ears to the chests of animals and family to hear their heartbeats, and fears the end of the world. She could be the girl next door, in any neighborhood in America. But she exists in a place no cameras or politicians go, an America never discussed at, say, a multi-billion dollar political National Convention. It’s a film difficult to shake, upsetting to the core, and hopeful, and funny, too. I  look forward to going back to re-experience this story. A

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Director Guy Ritchie’s 2009 “Sherlock Holmes,” with Yank actor Robert Downey Jr. playing the Brit detective, was an entertaining farce that tripped too far into the superhero arena. The Ritchie-directed sequel “Game of Shadows” gallops full force into silly Hollywood cliches with “top this” action pieces minced into slow-mo chunks of film that may irritate even the most Ritalin-deprived viewer. A third-act chase through a forest sticks out as the sorest thumb, smashed by Ritchie’s antic edits. Ditch the deerstalker hat and get this Sherlock a cape as Holmes’ pipe, careful contemplations, and witty word play are for the most part dumped in lieu of a 007-worthy plot involving arch-nemesis Moriarty (a ho-hum Jared Harris) as the instigator of a 1890s European war that plays out too broadly and with inane clues (to the winery!) that reek weak. Worse, great actress Noomi Rapace (the Swedish “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Prometheus”) is stuck glaring in silence as Downey along with Jude Law as Watson ham up literature’s oldest bro-mance, making this outing shrivel under the shadow of greater Holmes adaptations, including the stellar BBC modern-day-set mind-fuck “Sherlock.” C

Exam (2010)

Eight adults sit at desks in a small, gray, cube-like room and for 80 minutes must battle with wits and then more physicals means for a job at a mysterious bio-tech company in “Exam.” Very independent and consistently smart, “Exam” was co-written and directed by Brit Stuart Hazeldine and feels like an off-off-Broadway play as the film never leaves its one room. An unnamed man (Colin Salmon) lays out the task: “There is only one question,” and the recruits must figure out what it is. The last man or woman standing gets the job. It’s not just any job, either, as the firm likely has a cure for a virus that has rocked England to its knees. Among the recruits –- all named for their ethnicity or hair color -– is narcissistic White (Luke Mably), devoted Christian Black (Chuk Iwuji), ex-Special Forces loon Brown (Jimi Mistry), and head-shrinker Dark (Adar Beck). Reaching the One Question pull up dozens: Who among the eight is a plant, has the virus, or is desperate enough to kill? Taunt and exciting, “Exam” ingeniously turns Gen-Y yuppies into biblical savages, fighting for the favor not of God, but a CEO perhaps as powerful. Or wholly not. A-