Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters

Back in the 1990s, in Southern California, movies were preceded not only by trailers for future films but ads for the Los Angeles Times. I think there must have been some exchange agreement with the papers and the theaters, as an advertising tradeoff. Since the internet took off as the main source of info about show times and theater locations, the ad revenue dropped and the newspaper stopped being advertised in front of every movie playing in So Cal. In the ten years before they disappeared, the paper promoted it's unique position as the Company Town paper by making the ads focus on the movie business. Many of the ads had nice bits of info about movie making and some of the personalities involved. In celebration of the past, as a service to any of my readers from other parts of the world or from more recent times, I am including these snippets in my reviews for the rest of the year. In honor of today's film, you got the LA Times movie ad featuring some special effects using guns, and bows and arrows. This is especially appropriate given the nature of today's movie.




The Red Band Trailer that you see above, was the deciding point for me in seeing this film. Prior to this trailer, the movie looked like some CGI action flick that had a weird subject and a silly point of view. Once I saw the trailer, I did not really change my mind but I did add on to my expectation, violent blood splatter and reckless disembowelment. Once I knew that was coming I was on board. Sunday mornings decapitating witches and eviscerating them as they fly through the forest, yeah, that's more like my cup of tea. In all truth, it is not as gruesome as it might have been, and the CGI takes the edge off a lot of the gore, but for a stupid idea with a stupid script it pretty much lived up to my low hopes.

The idea of taking a fairy tale and turning it into the basis of an action film is not new. Heck, last year we had "Snow White and the Huntsman" and twenty five years ago there was "The Company of Wolves". The difference here is that it is all being played for laughs. Nothing is supposed to be serious, from the narration to the weaponry of the leads, to the obvious tip off of a 3D promotional tag. The very opening of the film takes a shot at a long gone cultural reference, pictures of missing children on a milk carton. Of course they are bottles of milk, the pictures are drawings and they are tied onto each individual bottle. If the script could have kept up with that tone a little more, this movie would work a lot better and be more fun. As it is, not too long after it gets started, it begins to take itself too seriously. Sometimes that is the story, which involves white witches and black witches in a struggle for dominance. Sometimes it is the characters who are not given enough to say and are reacting more than attacking. This movie needs a big shot of Bruce Campbell to make it work, instead we get Jeremy Renner. Renner is a real actor, slumming in a piece of schlock, probably for a change of pace and a nice paycheck. An while he is amusing, he simply does not have the comic persona a piece of silliness like this needs.

I do think I made a mistake in not seeing this in 3D. Usually, 3D is an unnecessary addition to a movie that needs something to pump it up. Here it probably is justified by the pieces of bloody body parts that would come flying off the screen. The sprays of CGI blood would probably be more enjoyably over the top in a third dimension. The slo mo shots of arrows, axes and other weapons would be more savory and memorable in 3D. I think I would definitely have enjoyed the resolution of the curse of hungering for things that crawl in the earth a little more. That scene did have one shot that helped Renner establish a bit more comic potential, but that trait is never developed fully and Hansel simply comes across as grumpy most of the time. The truth is there is not much logic in any of it. Characters come in and out of the story, they act for reasons that are never clear, and the witches have no personalities except the one played by Famke Janssen. Most of her performance is growling scowling CGI rendered witch talk. There is just not enough character to care one way or the other.Gemma Arteton is a slight personality with an even slighter character to play in Gretel. Again, there is not any real need to look at this as a measure of ability for any of these actors, the script and film making treat them as figurines to be played with and moved through the story to get to the next action shot.

By all means go and see this if you have a screening in 3D and money burning a hole in your pocket. It won't hurt you or insult you, but it won't make your juices flow much either. There is potential for great pulp stupidity in this film, but it can't quite catch fire like all the  witches need to do in the story. There are things about it that could work, but I don't have the energy or need to talk about them. This is just another filler until better stuff shows up, move along.

Mama

After we saw this movie this morning, Amanda and I had a discussion about the horror films we had seen recently. We usually are willing to go, and usually sorry we went, or at least disappointed. This morning has not broken the trend. We both agreed that the last time we saw horror films that worked for us was "The Crazies" and "Drag Me to Hell." Both of those are a couple of years old now, and we are still plugging along hoping for something that will give us a shiver and be glad that the lights are on. "Mama" starts off with great promise but ultimately fails to deliver.

The opening of this movie is maybe the best set up for a horror film I can remember in a dozen years or so. Before any ghosts or spirits make an appearance, we are horrified to see the desperate acts of a man at the end of his rope. Too often this story plays out in the real world and it is not an entertaining one. The anguish that the man feels can never justify what has happened but there is a sense of understanding of the emotional turmoil a person can go through. The little girl who plays the three year old Victoria in the story is just perfect. It is hard to say if she is a good actor, but in the part she delivers the right kind of innocence and trust and anxiety all at the same time. The sequence ends with the arrival of our apparition and everything has hooked us in for a strong horror experience. When the story picks up five years later, there is another very creepy sequence with the discovery of the two sisters and their return to the world. After this, things begin to fall apart.

It is a cliche to say less is more, especially in a horror film. Everyone is aware that the visualization of the evil spirit or monster can almost never live up to the imagination that we have been working on. Short shots in shadows and quick glimpses in a mirror or across a doorway are usually good for making the audience anxious and a little bit scared. Unfortunately, we need more for the story to pay off. Sometimes, like in the film "The Others" or "The Sixth Sense", the ideas get really good and surprising and they work to frighten us. Most of the time we end up with something like this, where the horror images are the focus of the last third of the story and they are a let down. A previously, nearly invisible antagonist becomes visible and then there is a confrontation that just does not work.

One of the reasons that the frights don't work as well here is that the audience has become jaded by CGI effects. The artists who put this material together can visualize almost anything, and as a consequence they do. When those images are so removed from anything bordering on "realistic", the image simply becomes a grotesque cartoon. That's what happens here, the spirit appears and then we get a chase film featuring a dark version of an animated nightmare. Slasher movies have a edge on ghost stories because when the fright comes it feels real. I think a ghost story can get away with being dismissed if it can achieve a level of believability. Unfortunately, "Mama" just can't do this. The unrealistic nightmare story of a movie like "Phantasm", feels more real despite the fact that it does not take place in an ordinary universe. Look, there are two or three good jumps, and a disturbingly real looking fall down a staircase, but the payoff feels weak.

Story does in these movies as well. There is always a complicated explanation and then a sequence of revelations that tell us what kind of result to expect. "Mama" has some nightmare visualizations that never amount to anything. The Uncle has a vision of his dead brother, which forces him out of his hospital bed to investigate. Once he arrives at the scene that he envisioned, nothing happens. The psychiatrist in the story is freaked out enough to stop his session in the comfortable home where the developing family is living, but he is not so perturbed as to refrain from going into the woods alone, into a spooky house in search of a ghost, in the dark. The vengeful spirit is pursuing a secret agenda. The psychiatrist find a key part of the puzzle from a government clerk who helped him earlier with other information. Unfortunately, instead of a creepy story being revealed in a mundane file drawer in an office building, the director (and co-screenwriter) chooses to try to amp it up by hiding this key piece of physical evidence in a warehouse that looks like it was lit by the same interior decorator of Hannibal Lecter's cell. It is also so cavernous that I would not be surprised if the Arc of the Covenant wasn't also hidden there.

Jessica Chastain's character Annabelle is the most real person in the story. She is ambivalent about participating in the recovery of the girls. She resents the life changes it imposes on her and sometimes she is just a bitch to her boyfriend. Yet she is also a woman who can empathize with two frightened little girls. We can see a potential for a loving relationship and that part of the story works. The idea that jealousy in a spirit might provoke danger is an interesting one, but it is not consistently followed. The spirit here acts in ways that are capricious and have nothing to do with the back story. The resolution makes no sense and the creep factor was gone twenty minutes before the story was over. There are a couple of scares but nothing to make me say, "I Remember Mama".

Bond Memorabilia from USC Four Years Ago

The weekend we went to the Bond Festival and got to see Barbara Broccoli, Michael Wilson, Marc Foster, Tom Mankewitz, Richard Kiel, and Maude Adams, we also stopped by this lobby display in the cinema building on campus.

DIRECTOR/WRITER MICHAEL WINNER DEAD AT AGE 77 - Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s

DIRECTOR/WRITER MICHAEL WINNER DEAD AT AGE 77 - Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s

Somewhere Charles Bronson is getting ready for his next great action film.

The Last Stand

Trying to save a little time this evening because we had another engagement, so just a quick video blog on this film.

Top Ten Moments I Experienced in Movies in 2012

Let's face it, not all movies are worthy of two hours of our attention, where as some are deserving of even more time. It is often the brief moments in a film that redeem it or that make us remember the rest of the film fondly. I selected ten moments from movies this year that reached up and slapped me. They are sometimes poignant, sometimes harsh and sometime hysterical. Here are ten moments to remember 2012 by.

10. The U.S.S. Missouri makes a guest appearance in Battleship. 

I know that the movie was crap. I also am aware that it is widely despised. I however may be one of the few who overlooked it's shortcomings and enjoyed it for the popcorn junk snack it was. The one part that worked for me was when the old-timers launch the Missouri back into battle. Of course it is impossible, but the AC/DC music, the shots of Big Mo, turning into the ocean, and the real heroes of WW2 jumping to duty gave me a rush of patriotic adrenaline which made me happy.

9. The Hunger Games: Katniss Salutes Rue and District 11

This is the point of the story where Katniss goes from a competitor trying to survive, to a real icon of a revolution. Her brief alliance with Rue and the honor that she shows her, stirs the residents of District 11 to a mild riot. Just the sort of thing the games are supposed to prevent. This is the match that lights up the rest of the stories and makes the material rise emotionally. It brought a tear to my soft-hearted eye and made me care a lot more about the stuff that was going on on the screen.

8. Prometheus: Dr. Shaw Gives Herself a C-Section

This was the most tense and horrifying scene in the movie. This is the only moment that Prometheus rises to the level of the original Alien. We are terrified by the concept that our own bodies can harbor the dangers we most fear, and it takes an act of incredible will for Elizabeth Shaw to take the action she does. The scene is gory, suspenseful and the one truly scary moment in a film that needed more moments like this.

7. The Grey: Liam Neeson Stands Up to A Wolf by Getting Ready to Punch It

If you have ever seen the inspirational poster of the mouse flipping off the eagle as it is about to get torn to shreds, you will understand the impact of this moment. Neeson's character is not going to go quietly into the night. He is going to kick and scream and fight for every moment of life he can get. Whether it could ever work is beside the point. What matters here is that his character is going to try anything he can think of to keep living. This deeply philosophical story is summarized nicely by the deceptive idea that this is an action picture where Liam punches wolves. The real question is whether or not we should bother? This film answers that question very clearly.

6. The Dark Knight Rises: Batman Re-Appears After Eight Years of Hiding

The moment we waited for in the movie. Batman comes out of hibernation and begins to fight for Gotham again. The surrounding areas during a police chase all go dark, and then, to the pounding score, Batman drives out of the darkness on the Batpod, to run down the criminals who just invaded Wall Street. Like the moment from the Michael Keaton Batman film, when he opens his safe and reveals Batman's costume, we suck in our breath and wait for the fireworks to begin. It is a signal that our story is about to take off.

5. The Avengers: Hulk Smash Puny God

Sometimes the super intelligent industrialist, the heroic warrior, the Norse demi-god, and all the SHIELD agents just over think their approach. The Hulk just gets right to the point and we all laugh our asses off and applaud. This is a moment of genius, like Indy pulling his gun and shooting the swordsman, the direct approach is often the most effective.

4. Django Unchained: Dr. Schultz is simply done with Calvin Candy

 Christoph Waltz's character has outwitted a hundred idiots in his career.  He has used cleverness and language to move successfully into his career as a bounty hunter. He is even as gracious as he can be when he gets outwitted. He is simply not going to knuckle under to a stupid request to be treated as a civilized person, by the lowly scum of DiCaprio's Calvin Candy. Even though they have achieved their goal and could safely leave by giving in, Schultz simply draws a line in the sand, and the fireworks that result are the orgy of violence we have waited for through the whole movie.

3. SKYFALL: 007 Has Two Great Moments in One Movie

OK, maybe it is a cheat, but It is my favorite movie of the year and I did not put these at the top, so indulge me a little. In the pre-title action sequence, Bond makes a daring leap from a back hoe that is collapsing on top of an escaping train car. As he jumps into the passenger car, he takes a moment to pay attention to his stylish appearance. Like Connery pulling off a wetsuit to reveal a tuxedo, or Roger Moore straightening his tie after flicking a bad guy off a building, this was a moment straight from the hearts of 007 lovers everywhere.

As a fan of James Bond since I was seven or eight, there are many iconic moments, characters and gadgets that I recall with great adoration. In closing the second act and beginning the third in Skyfall, the film makers bring back an old ally in a reveal that frankly gave me a little too much of a charge. Thankfully the only body excretion was a tear.

 

2. Piranha 3DD: The Greatest Line in 2012 (Maybe in Movie History)

This is not a great film, but I was entertained. I will never be able to erase from my memory (nor do I want to) this terrific piece of dialogue.

 

1. Les Misérables: I Dreamed a Dream

There were a lot of things I did not enjoy about Les Miz, but all of them are forgiven because we got Anne Hatheway doing the key song from the play. If she is not the Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actress, I may never watch the awards again.

 

 

 

Gangster Squad

I selected the trailer above because it still has a brief clip in it that makes reference to a shootout in the Chinese Theater, a scene that was removed from the film and caused this movie to be moved to January after the Aurora CO. shooting. I understand the sentiment but it seemed to be a little overdone to me. The film probably is a good fit for a January release when action fans are starved for a little love. The trailer makes it very clear that this is an action popcorn film and not really an attempt to make a classic crime film. The idea of machine gun shootouts on the streets of L.A. is clearly an invention of a creative mind. The story of how the LAPD kept organized crime to a minimum in the city has been covered before by better films like L.A. Confidential and Mullholland Falls. This is basically a pulp version of that tale and fidelity to the actual history goes right out the window.

There is not really any originality to the story or the film making. The plot is basically "The Untouchables" transferred to the West Coast, and instead of Robert DeNiro chewing the scenery, we get Sean Penn.  Of course in the DePalma film, we got some interesting character development and some actors who had charisma in spades. Here there are cryptic references to the characters past but almost no follow through on why any of that matters. Josh Brolin is a good tough guy but he has no personal development in the film, just the back story that is created for his character. Ryan Gosling I suppose is a stand in for Sean Connery, but with a love interest and lacking 30 years of gravitas to back it up. From the pregnant wife to the doomed members of the squad, and even the death of an innocent bystander, everything about this movie is predictable. There are some attempts to put a California Dream spin on the story, and that may be the right way to go, but anytime there is something that resembles a theme being raised, it is immediately overtaken by a shootout of some sort. The California Paradise idea is a good one because this was the land of opportunity after the war. Thousands were flocking to the Southland, to take advantage of  wide open spaces and the fantastic weather. That criminals would be among the immigrants is not surprising. What is a surprise is that the only hint that this criminal intrusion into SoCal was having was dead kids and kidnapped wanna be starlets. The details of the rackets are not explored, we just get histrionics from Penn's Mickey Cohen.

My parents were part of that wave of immigrants. They came out here in 1947, and got started in the entertainment business like so many others. The nightclubs and bars and hot spots shown in the film, all have a very authentic feel to them. My daughter took the train into Union Station for a year after she graduated from but continued to work at USC, and it still looks like the 1940s. Clifton's cafeteria is used as a set, and they probably did not have to do much more than take the newspapers out of the racks to make it look like it belongs in the era. I'm pretty sure the scene in the Mexican restaurant was shot at El Cholo, and it looks exactly the same. All the old neighborhoods of East L.A. and Pasadena, as well as large sections of the Fairfax district, still resemble the suburban paradise that vets were looking for.  It looked to me like the Chinatown sequence was done on a soundstage, but the reproduction from the long standing main square in the area was tip top. Some of the daytime shots of the city, with large sections of empty hillsides are clearly CGI, those spots were being filled in with new homes when I was a kid. While there may be a few blank spots here and there, the crowded hillsides don't resemble the spacious vistas of the late 40s and early 50s. The clothes, and cars and general language of the film are all accurate and it is a big draw for the audience. Those of us raised on the film noir of Hollywood, lust for the days when men wore hats that made them look sharp instead of like shlumps. Women dressed up when they went out, and all the nightspots were decorated with neon and deco themes. The vision of a gangster wielding a machine gun harkens back to Hollywood's heyday of Warner Brothers gangster films, populated by Cagney, Bogart and Robinson. The film makers know this is what we are looking for, but it happens so often in this movie that each time feels less dramatic. By the climax of the film, it is just one more shootout in a nostalgic location with the weapons used more in the movies than in real life. There was one shot of a bad guy with a Tommy gun in each of his hands. This owes more to John Woo than Howard Hawks. I think because so many locations harken back to those days, and they are iconic from movies or collective memory, we will continue to get films set in this city, but at that time period.

Brolin is stoic and determined, Gosling is wain and smouldering, and Sean Penn is over the top. Robert Patrick gets the best scenes and lines, but he is not in the story as much as Connery's old timer was in "The Untouchables". Emma Stone is really very pretty, but she and Gosling don't have the chemistry that they had in last years, "Crazy, Stupid, Love". Her part feels tacked on and underdeveloped. The other guys on the Gangster Squad, could have had something to do that might have made the story more profound, but every time an idea pokes it's head up, the shooting starts again. Michael Pena is in this movie for no reason, and Giovani Ribisi and Anthony Mackie, get only a little time to register. I always love the disclaimer at the end of a movie that says this is a work of fiction and it is not based on any person or location. That's silly, the LAPD headquarters building is named after the Police Chief played by Nick Nolte here. They slip in a reference to a more recent chief by having Darryl Gates as his driver and the guy Parker uses to bring in Brolin's character. I know they want to avoid lawsuits, but when the movie is all based on Location (LA) and real people (Mickey Cohen and Chief Parker), it is ridiculous to deny a link.

I liked this movie pretty well for what it is; a slam bang action piece with a cool setting. They overdo the shootouts and violence. The characters are not given much chance to develop past their archetypes. The city looks great and the music is good (even the segments copped from Ennio Morricone's score for "The Untouchables"). There are no story surprises and very little tension. There are plot-holes galore, but don't worry about it because the plot is just a chance to play cops and robbers in a cool setting. No one except the set dresser, art directors, costumers and make up people will be looking at this with a huge amount of pride. There is nothing embarrassing here, there is just a lack of something to care about or any originality. If you do go to see it, stick around for the credits. They play over some beautiful postcards of Southern California from that era, and you get a sense of how well they nailed the look, without getting much else right.

"It's A Major Award"

OK, maybe not a major award but it is an nice acknowledgement from one of the blog pages that I frequent. Nick over at the Cinematic Katzenjamer included me in his first annual Awards poll on his site. I guess I was a big enough pest in his posting sections to qualify as a know it all. The category I was in was "Most Likely to Teach You Something". Old guys like me acquire bits and pieces of information if we live long enough and then we are lucky to pass it on.  Fortunately, I have found some folks on line who share my interest in movies, both good and bad. What is nice is that I tied in this category with a guy who's web site is a lot more organized than mine is (and I suspect he has a lot more breadth than I do in some genres). I'm sure I benefited from the support of my readers and those on Nick's site that I have been lucky enough to add something to their knowledge. I am in awe of the effort that all these other folks put into their blog pages. If I had the skill and time, I'd wish my site was half as cool as Public Transportation Snob, Fog's Movie Reviews or the CinematicKatzenjamer. Still let me thank all of you that have supported me and this project. Let's have a great 2013.

Texas Chainsaw 3D

OK, you know there is no reason for you to see this if it does not interest you in the first place. Decent human beings and discerning movie goers will wisely stay away. This review will simply be for those depraved horror fans and goremeisters who wonder whether there is anything here for them to lap up. If you fall into either of those categories, there is a small amount of consolation for you here. All others should wait for a more varied horror film down the road. I will say that the trailer for the "Evil Dead" remake played with this, and although it was not the sick red band version that I saw on line, it still looks like something worthy.

I usually do not read reviews on other sites before I see a movie, because I want the impressions that I share to be mine. In this case I have made an exception and there is a reason that I mention this. "Fog's Movie Reviews" posted his evaluation yesterday, and I knew I was going to see this today regardless of what he said. In the talk back section one of his reader's mentioned a set of standards that his father uses for judging movies like this. I thought it was a sweet set of criteria to use, so I am going to borrow it and use it here to talk about my reaction the the film. His first standard is "Was it A Jumper?", how many times did it make you jump in your seat? Texas Chainsaw has several moments that attempt to get us to leap up out of fright. From my own personal reaction it worked 2 and 1/2 times. The first jump was not in a suspense scene at all, and it introduces an extra character to the story. I think it works because it was so out of context. The second jump I had, was right in context, I knew it was coming and it worked anyway. Looking into a dark area in a creepy basement, you know something is coming out of there, and it does, but like I said I bit and jumped a little. They go back to that well a couple of more times but do not get me to go with them. I added the 1/2 because even though the third shot did not get a jump, it was a slight intake of breath, and again, I knew it was coming.

The second question is “How’s the gore?” or is there a lot of gore? Is it realistic, or comedic?There was a fair amount of gore in the film. It is after all "Texas Chainsaw". The problem that I had was that the gore is not used in a suspenseful manner or for comedic effect. It usually occurs separate from the plot or the attacks on the victims. For example, it gives nothing away for me to tell you that at one point, "Leatherface" is clipping the fingers off of one of his victims, in the kitchen sink. The victim is already dead, we cut right to the shot and there was not dramatic intent, it was simply a gratuitous bit of gore, it served no point except to gross out the audience. If that is OK with you, then the gore quotient is probably high enough. At the very end, there is a pretty good sequence with a fight and the chainsaw and a giant meat grinder. This is the one place where the gore served a story point and satisfies a desire of the audience for an emotional reaction connected to the visceral.

The third criteria offered up by "Spikors" Dad is “How stupid is it?” How foolish is the comedy, or how horrible are the decisions that are made? There really is no comedy in the film. Not a single laugh to release tension and only a couple of laughs because the movie is so stupid. I don't like spoilers and I always try to avoid describing too much of the movie. I will simply say that there is a line that comes from our main heroine in that final sequence, when a secondary villain confronts our main antagonist, that is laugh out loud stupid. The movie tries to play both ends against the audience and this line shows a switch in  point of view that epitomizes why remakes are often problematic. When doing a movie like this, stick to the essentials and don't try so hard to set up an emotional backstory that will justify your sequel. There is plenty of stupidity preceding that line however, which makes all of the characters deserving of being carved up. Cops don't act like cops, rednecks treat everyone as if they are expendable, and characters lose their loyalty toward their friends because the story calls for it. I did like that some characters do change your original view of them before they are snuffed out, but I don't think this device is going to work for the main characters.

The best part of the movie was the opening summary of the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which completely explains the events of the first film in the series in about three minutes during the credits. Everything that follows the truck death of the Sawyer brother from the original film, begins the process of trying to change the point of the movie. This seems inherently stupid when you already have a premise that works. I don't want to know what happened to Hannibal Lecter as a child to turn him into a monster, I want to know how he is going to act once he is that monster. I want to see how the victims are chosen, how they fight and how they die or escape. A pathological horror film is fine, but mixing it with a gore fest and then adding on characters that behave stupidly or inconsistently does not work well. Look, I did not hate the movie. It was actually pretty well made and directed. The script betrays all of the actors and the audience and that is the main downfall of this flick. The 3D is actually a good justification for seeing this. Chainsaws being thrust in your face is a lot more satisfying than watching the emotional turnaround of a horror franchise like this. 

The Traditional Top Ten List for 2012

Everyone has their criteria for deciding the best of the previous year. Not everyone explains the criteria they use. Some judge by quality of workmanship, others by their own personal enthusiasm, and some do an aggregation of  positives as a way of figuring out the top of the heap. My personal film going is not exhaustive enough to be definitive as to the best of the year. I get around to plenty of films, but many of the quality films slip under the timeline at the end of the year, or they played for limited times during the year and I missed them when they came out. For the last seven years, I have caught up with several Academy Award nominees at the AMC Best Picture Showcase, so although they did not make it into the yearly tally, I did get to see them in a theater. This year I saw sixty two new films that came out in 2012. In addition, I went to twenty other films, the ten at the BPS and another ten which were special screenings of classics. If I just used that as my standard, the best film I saw this year in theaters was Casablanca. So I limit my choices to ones that were originally released in the calendar year. While it is fun to challenge others and to be challenged to defend your own assessment of a single movie, I use my end of the year list for sharing with others my personal enthusiasms. I do not pretend that all of my choices are award worthy or superior to the things others might like. My list is "my list" of the movies I responded to the most positively during the year and at the end when comparing all of those responses. I hope you enjoy and feel free to post your own lists in the reply section.

10. Wreck It Ralph

I think animation is one of the great artistic mediums for people to work and to touch others. I have frequented animation festivals at different times in my life, and of course by personal library is stocked with Disney fare and Looney Tunes. Wreck it Ralph is a fresh story, set in a world I am not familiar with but one that I understand. The voice work was excellent and the design of the film was cotton candy amazing. I struggled a bit in choosing this over "ParaNorman", which is equally well designed. Ralph wins out because the story seems a little more coherent to me and it is accessible to everyone. ParaNorman might be a little creepy for smaller children.

9. Django Unchained

The last film I saw in the last year, was Quentin Tarantino's riff on the spaghetti western. It has a wicked sense of humor, and a grim view of the "peculiar institution" which was the focus of the civil war. All of this was accompanied by the florid violence and witty dialogue that  have become trademarks of a Tarantino film. He makes movies for people who geek out over movies, so in essence he makes them for me. Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz do the buddy movie with a vengeance. Leonardo DiCaprio is a late arrival in the film, but brings considerable talent to making his character a loathsome piece of crap that we can hardly wait to get smacked down. 

8. Paul Williams Still Alive

I was most aware of Paul Williams film music, but I knew he had a huge body of pop hits to go along with the movie work. When I was younger, he was everywhere: on TV, in Movies, doing concerts and acting. Somewhere along the way he virtually disappeared. As the title implies, he is still alive, and as a matter of fact was President of ASCAP, the music rights group for composers. He simply stopped being the attention seeking celebrity he had been for most of his career. A week before I saw the film, he made an appearance at a screening of Phantom of the Paradise and did some Q and A. I stayed and got a chance to shake his hand. At the documentary premier, he also did a Q and A and was equally charming. I enjoyed the film immensely, and while it may not be a traditional documentary, it was strengthened by the choices the director made and of course by the subject himself.

7. Lincoln

I had a little trouble with the story the film tells. I thought it focused on an odd period of time and an event that was less interesting than other episodes in the President's life. In fact the selection of the Constitutional Amendment as the fulcrum for the story actually reduces Lincoln's prominence in the film. Never the less, the performances are staggeringly good and Spielberg does his usual excellent job at making a film that matters. It was a movie that I admired more than I loved, but it was definitely one that is high quality and will bear repeating down the road.

6. Silver Linings Playbook

Another end of year addition to the quality list. The ads make it look more comedic than it was, and the romance is truer than you might expect. There are three great performances in the film and the depiction of someone with bi-polar addictive personality is harrowing. This is a movie that one can enjoy more afterwards than during, because several scenes are uncomfortably realistic and sad. Oh, and it has football in it.

5. The Grey

The earliest release on my list, this is a film that opened a year ago and may have slipped by the attention of the usual critics groups and Awards organizations. Liam Neeson stars in an action based mediation on what is valuable in life and where do we get the will to go on. Because it was promoted as an action film, many may be unaware about how deep the spirituality is in this movie. It is also a sharp, thrilling piece of entertainment. The title refers not only to the wolves that stalk our protagonists, but to the cloudy arenas in which we make our daily decisions. It is sad but also very moving.

4. Frankenweenie

I like Tim Burton style, even though I have not always liked Tim Burton movies. His roots as an animator have always pervaded his live action work. Here he is basically an animator again and it shows that this is his true medium. I have nothing but praise for this movie. Yes it is sentimental and it drips with all the Gothic imagery that Burton brings to the table. Unlike Dark Shadows earlier, here you have a real story and there is an emotional core to it. I must have seen the trailers fifty times during the lead up to this, and I thought I would be burned out on just the idea. Once the movie starts, the magic takes over and I remember why I love movies so much. All it takes is a boy and his dog.

3. Looper

This movie starts out with all kinds of things that I usually hate. A fictionalized world where criminals lead lives that are over the top and have no consequences to them. Sin City is one of the most annoying films I ever saw and this had every indication that it was going that direction. At some point however, there is a shift, the science fiction element in the story, forces us into a deeper look at the main character and the main character takes a deeper look at himself. This movie ends up going in a very different direction and I was really impressed by the way the story telling pulled us through some moral dilemmas and some exciting action set pieces as well. What started out as a piece of pop crap actually turned out to have something to say to us and to say it in a very interesting manner.

2. ARGO

In my opinion, the best picture favorite at the Academy Awards, and the best made drama of the year. ARGO takes a real historical event and turns it into a gripping suspense film, despite the fact that the audience is likely to know the outcome before they even step into the theater. The art direction, costumes and make up for this movie do not go over the top in making the late seventies a time period for mocking. Instead, they set the scene for a reliving in an honest way of a breathtaking piece of espionage success in the midst of what to that point was one of the biggest disasters in American Foreign relations. Good people doing their jobs are victims and they act in an heroic manner. They are rescued by other good people doing their jobs in a creative and dramatic fashion. As a bonus, Hollywood film production gets a short historical review with a realistic depiction of how the business worked at the time. By the way, all of the actors are very good and the ensemble performances by the six who escaped being taken hostage by the Iranians is noteworthy for the subltelty of their work.

1. SKYFALL

This will not be a surprise to anyone who knows me. I am a Bond fanatic and so it might be expected that 007 would put in an appearance. He does, but he does so not simply out of loyalty to the character. This is simply a terrific film. The story manages to update Bond and connect him to his roots all at the same time. It has the most spectacular action sequences of any film released this year and some rock solid performances. I got to participate in a blog-a-thon leading up to the release of this movie and the whole experience is the shining highlight of the last six months.. Even if you have never been a big fan of Bond, you will almost certainly enjoy this film. I saw it twice on opening day (including the midnight advance screening) and I have watched it twice more since then. It may only be up for one award at Academy time (Adele impresses me a lot), but this is a movie people will see over and over again for the next fifty years. I don't know who goes back and watched "The Hurt Locker", "Crash", or "The King's Speech", but everyone can watch a Bond film and enjoy it repeatedly. This is admittedly a selfish choice for the top of the list, but it is my list after all.

Django Unchained

If you don't like Quentin Tarantino films, you will definitely not like this. This is essentially a remix of movie ideas sampled, and arranged by Tarantino to please himself and his audience. There is excessive violence, clever dialogue, and a mix of original characters being brought to a boil by the master of classy trashy cinema. I have always counted myself among the legions of fans who look forward to the next Tarantino extravaganza. I enjoy repartee and tension and humor all being mixed together by someone who has an ear for interesting ways of speaking. From his very first film, scenes he has written and directed have crackled with verbal exchanges that are often on mundane topics but never sound dull. In "Django Unchained", that verbal fencing is contrasted by the juxtaposition of elegant and proper language as spoken by a German immigrant to whom English is not native, and the barely literate (oftentimes illiterate) grunting, shouting and sloppy native use of language by domestic speakers.

"Reservoir Dogs" and "Pu;p Fiction" were riffs on modern American gangster films. "Kill Bill 1 and 2" are pastiche kung fu cinema from the Asian markets of the 70s and 80s. "Inglorious Basterds" was a World War 2 adventure story told through revisionist history. It is therefore no surprise that "Django Unchained" represents the spaghetti westerns of the 60s crossed with the black exploitation films of the 70s. The unusual story being told is cloaked in many of the touchstones of those eras. There is the smart outsider, who manages to beat everyone he comes up against, usually people you are happy to see him outwit. There is the wronged individual seeking vengeance in a single minded fashion. Finally, Tarantino throws in the oppressed black man against the white establishment as a way of challenging the conventions that guide the thinking of mainstream audiences. All of this is done with a flare for dramatic changes in fortune and mixed with a music track that is not in keeping with the setting but is entirely evocative of our cinematic memory.

In praise of the film, I'll start with the music selections. Everybody knows that in addition to the shots and stories and characters he sponged up as a young man, Tarantino has an ear for music. He finds cues and passages and whole songs that reflect the mood he wants us to feel or the memory that we need to have in the back of our mind. Ennio Morricone compositions are not a major twist, after all, this is a spaghetti western. So when the Morricone cue shows up, those of us who, like Tarantino, grew up on Sergio Leone films, will smile as we see The Man With No Name crossing a desert or facing down a band of evil doers. I may have mentioned this in a recent post but It bears noting here; Johnny Cash lives! I hear his music being used in trailers and films constantly. The reason Cash is used so much is that his voice, and the themes of so many of his songs, immediately evoke the lonely oppression of a man by the forces of the world. The chained slaves in sparse clothing being exposed to the elements under harsh conditions is underlined by the sonorous notes of Cash's voice. "Django" also uses a pop hero of the early 70's to bring in the beatitudes and despair of those times. Jim Croce died when I was a sophomore in high school, and I remember crying when news of his plane crash spread across the campus. He was not the biggest pop star of the time, but he was on the threshold of greatness and he had a handful of big hits that everyone could enjoy. The theme song from the race car movie "The Last American Hero" was Croce's "Ive Got a Name". The melancholy tone with the defiant lyrics works just right in the scene it is used in for this film. It should not work, but Tarantino senses that it would and he goes with his instinct instead of his common sense. Then there are a series of more contemporary songs and riffs from rap and R & B, that fit the themes of the movie. I can't name them all but the work a lot more effectively than they did in "The Man with the Iron Fists" a couple of months ago. Their use was more judicious and well timed.

Tarantino has a stock company of actors that he takes full advantage of. Somewhere in time, Michael Parks and Don Johnson, imprinted on Quentin and they seem to be muses for his retro visions. Michael Bowen and Dennis Christopher are not names that most people will recognize, but Bowen has been in at least three previous Tarantino films. Christopher is a welcome note from a late seventies film that undoubtedly impressed Tarantino. Samuel Jackson was built to deliver lines that include the "N" word and the use of the phrase "Mother ......". The background cast is well matched for the white trash roles they are placed in. M.C. Gainey is always a welcome presence and around our house Walton Goggins is a star. As for the leads, they are all as expected excellent. Jamie Fox is not given much range, but he glowers like crazy and the physicality of the role fits him like the short jacket and suede hat he wears in the last third of the picture. Leonardo DiCaprio is new to the Tarantino world, but I suspect he will be back because he oozes reptilian Southern Charm with an effete but cruel manner that is reminiscent of Christoph Waltz performance in "Basterds". Waltz himself is partially transformed. He is more culturally enlightened, and morally complex than his character in the earlier movie, but comparing him to that standard is unfair. Most of the amusing dialogue in the film does once again stream from his lips, which makes him the most interesting of the characters although he is really a supporting character to Fox.

There are no scenes as dramatically tense as the farmhouse introduction in "Inglorious Basterds" or as insanely over the top tense as the basement bar scene. The truth is Tarantino shot his three way showdown wad in that scene in that basement. So instead of the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" faceoff we got there, here we get a more standard confrontation between Waltz's Dr. Schultz and DiCaprio's plantation owner Candie. The violence that ensues here is every bit as brutal and more so as the WWII picture. There are some very clever moments of dialogue for Waltz as he resolves his taking of criminals for bounty. Fox gets a chance to mimic and enhance a Waltz scene from earlier in the film when it appears that he has been thoroughly defeated. I felt a little like the love story that motivates Fox was under developed but that the hate story between his Django and just about everybody else was well done. Slavery is treated as the abomination that it was, and the vicious nature of human beings is exposed in a very unflattering manner. Some things are hard to watch, and that may be a good thing because it reminds us that we are all just a couple of steps away from being primate animals.

There are some sharp comedic bits in the film, and places where it hurts to laugh. There are also some simply silly moments of laughter, as evidenced by the trademark on top of Dr. Schultz wagon. The mixture of genres and tones by Tarantino has resulted in some calling him more of a DJ rather than a director. I can completely see that analogy. At the moment, "Django Unchained" ranks as a middling effort from my point of view. It never quite achieves the heights that "Inglorious Basterds" reached and it is not as obsessively referential as the "Kill Bill" movies were. All of his films would stand near the top of any list of entertaining movies, so to be in the middle of a very strong list is not something to be ashamed of. If you like Tarantino, you will like this. If he irritates you, this is not the film that will relieve you of that condition. I just hope he keeps turning out entertainment on a regular basis. We need film makers who want the audience to care about movies and be able to remember them.

Jack Reacher

Since the earliest days of movies, stars have been fascinating to audiences. Fan magazines have been packed with pictures, stories and interviews featuring their favorite actors. In the Golden Age of Hollywood, those stories were carefully managed and negative info about the stars rarely made the headlines. There were occasional exceptions like the trials of Fatty Arbuckle and Errol Flynn, but for the most part, private lives were often kept private. We live in different times now a days. There is a 24 hour media cycle and everything ends up on line at some point. Tom Cruise has been maybe the biggest star in Hollywood films for most of the last thirty years, and his dirty laundry is often exhibited and speculated over. Frankly, I don't give a damn. His religious views, marriage, sex life are of no importance to me. I care about his films, their production development, business decisions and his performances in those movies. Everything else can pound sand as far as I'm concerned. Tom Cruise is a "MOVIE STAR" and he makes films that for the most part work.

After the debacle of "Rock of Ages", Cruise is back in familiar territory with Jack Reacher. This is a criminal procedural with a heavy action bent and a good measure of vengeance film thrown in. I have not read any of the books the movie is based on, but after seeing this I am very likely to become a fan. This is a great idea for a character. In essence, Reacher is a modern day Lone Ranger. He is an outsider with skills and a willingness to pursue justice, even if it means he has to go outside the lines to do so. This will allow the character to work in different scenarios, settings and with different casts of characters on a regular basis. I heard some of the criticism of his casting last year, Cruise being 5'7" and the character in the books being 6'5". As he has proven repeatedly in his career, Cruise is usually up to the challenge when it comes to physicality. His devotion to staying physically capable of doing these roles is obvious by his build and the lack of obvious aging in his face and body. I don't think he needed to loom over the other characters in this story to be intimidating.

The story gets a little convoluted at times. The ultimate source of the motivation is as out there as the pharmaceutical company conspiracy that turned out to be the motivation in "The Fugitive" twenty years ago. It's one of those "huh?" moments, that ultimately does not matter. We can follow how Reacher's character strung out the facts, looked at events and then made inferences. There is a lot more deductive reasoning in this movie than there was in the Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes films. The action in this movie also makes a lot more sense. There are a couple of very well staged fight sequences, and an excellent car chase scene. The car chase will remind anyone who saw films in the 70s of movies they probably loved as well. The chase is reminiscent of the car chase scenes in "Bullet", "The French Connection", and "The Seven Ups". I still have not caught up with "Drive" from last year, but I suspect it features some of the same kinds of real world stunts and a actor who looks believable behind the wheel. Cruise sells this character especially well when he drives that Chevelle SS though Pittsburgh, chasing down bad guys while simultaneously being chased by the cops.

As far as I'm concerned, now that Clint Eastwood is semi retired and Gene Hackman is permanently retired, there is no better actor on screen than Robert Duvall. He gets to put in a short appearance in this film, but he shows up at the right moments and leaves the exact kind of impression you want from a character such as he plays here. Rosamund Pike is a beautiful woman who plays intelligence very well in this part. While she does end up being the damsel in distress, before that happens she is a fierce character that Reacher plays against and she adds a good deal to the quality of the film. I think Richard Jenkins is one of the great character actors working today, but he needs more parts that take advantage of his gifts. His role in this film was not distinctive enough for him to be filling it. None of the bad guys gets much chance to make an impression. Werner Herzog, is creepy, but that is mostly the script and the makeup that sells this character.

The backstory that Reacher tells concerning the original suspect in the crime is also chilling. There was one line that I thought introduced a bit of political bullshit into the film, but it had nothing to do with the story itself so I quickly forgot it. This is the film that will fill the action void until all the shoot em ups open in January. It is actually a pretty smart mystery, that introduces us to a unique new film character. I enjoyed the hell out of this film and I want to spend more time with Jack Reacher, especially if he is played by a professional like Tom Cruise. This looked like a pretty modestly produced film. There are not a bunch of special effects shots or big set pieces. We get good actors selling a solid story, that involves a good amount of physical brutality. That shouts "Merry Christmas" to me.

Les Misérables

Every year since I was first married, we have made it a point to go out after Christmas activities at home and see a movie. That first year, we went despite my parents protestations to see a movie at 10:00 at night. 1980's film was "First Family" a truly terrible comedy starring my favorite TV star Bob Newhart. Over the years our selection has been a bit more careful. Some of our holiday selections seemed to fit with the mood or spirit of the day; for example "Phantom of the Opera". Other choices flew in the face of the holiday, I guess a kind of counter programming, like "I Am Legend". Last year we saw the Spielberg film "War Horse" on Christmas Day, and it was a solid mixture of drama and hope for the holiday. Lat summer, when we saw the trailer for Les Misérables, and it proclaimed that it was opening on Christmas, it seems our fate was set. The haunting singing of Anne Hathaway in the piece provoke tears within the short time span of the promo. I have never made a secret of my sentimentality and this movie was tapping into it before I even knew what was happening.

I've never seen Les Misérables on stage. Although it has been a popular musical for nearly thirty years, it was not something that I sought out. I have seen the 1935 film version of the story, so I had a passing familiarity with the plot. Anyone who has watched TV or You Tube in the last few years has heard "I Dreamed A Dream", as it was the song that Susan Boyle sang that got her all that attention. It is a lovely song and it works for the film, but it is only one of maybe three songs from the film that seems complete. Having grown up on musicals made for films, I am used to songs having a beginning and an end and they occur in a context or story. It is true that "Phantom" uses the same sing through style as this film, I found that much easier to make sense of and enjoy. Way too often, the movement in the story here consists of people singing the script, without melody or chorus. Instead of finding it engaging, I found it off putting. My guess is that had I been more familiar with the music and the story, I would have embraced it more fully. I'm sad to say I'm not as enthusiastic as I would like to be.

The movie is shot (or at least it was presented in) an aspect ratio that feels a little cramped. It looked like a straight 1:85 framing, which is fairly standard, but is not typical of big screen films with sweeping backgrounds and soaring camera shots. There are so many close ups to allow the performers to connect with the songs that it literally gets right in your face with the melodramatic events taking place on screen. Hugh Jackman sings his heart out and his voice is strong and moving, but we get caught up looking in his eyes so often that other characters seem to be unnecessary in the scenes he is in. Hathaway is spectacular in voice and look. The tragic arc of her story seems so quick to me however that the fall has less of the emotional depth to it than I was expecting. Russel Crowe may not be a professional singer, but he acquitted himself admirably here, he was certainly not the embarrassment that Pierce Brosnan was in "Mama Mia" a couple of years ago. Crowe also gets the close up treatment, and in his case, the method seemed to work better because he was using his eyes more than his voice to convey the character's feelings.

The last third of the picture introduces a new story line and moves the characters we have been following to the background. These new characters never get much of a chance to develop, they are icons of "heroic student", "intellectually awakened rich boy", and "plucky but tragic street urchin". There is a love story that seems to develop almost entirely off screen, so that when characters act in a manner that suggests that their love is the only thing that matters, it is a little hard for me to go with. The one character that stands out is a conflicted romantic rival for Cossette, the little girl grown up and in love. Eponine is also a little girls grown up but she gets the big song in the last part of the film and while it does produce goosebumps, that is mostly due to the performance and not the story of her sacrifice.

I enjoyed the movie immensely, but I never felt the passion in the 2 hours and forty minutes watching it, that I felt in the minute and a half of the teaser trailer. That is an emotional letdown. The film is beautiful to look at, despite the often ugly parts of life it shows us. The performers are all top notch, and some of their voices deserve awards just for the sounds that they produced. More than any other musical of this sort, I felt the stage origins of the film. The key songs attempting to finish an act in a rousing way, the spotlight song for a featured performer, the scene and setting of events for dramatic effect all seemed to shout "THEATER" to me. I do enjoy the theatrical experience, but i wanted a more cinematic experience with this movie. I wanted to be taken into the story, and I wanted to care about the characters. I simply felt I was watching them go through the story, as performers rather than actors. It was a good film with some flaws that took me out of the experience. Maybe a second shot will improve my reaction to it, but for now, muted praise rather than glorious enthusiasm.

Silver Linings Playbook

This was a film that looked "indie" from the first time I saw the trailer. In truth it it fairly mainstream, with a story line that would fit in alongside most of today's romantic comedies. The main differences are the things that separate and bring together our two main characters. Both Bradley Cooper's Pat and Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany are afflicted by deep emotional problems . They have the kinds of mental illnesses that are treatable, but require a discipline that each of them has difficulty mastering.  We get to know these characters in a traditional way, with a traditional story arc, but the dialogue, complications and settings are what make it unique. With one minor reservation, I bought the story and the outcome, but the reservation is an important one that might effect another persons willingness to go along for the ride.

It probably will sound petty, but my concern has to do with the accuracy of the way mental illness is depicted here. In the first half of the film, it is harrowing, and frightening and incredibly honest. The way Pat is obsessed with his former wife and the delusions that he suffers from are shown in vivid detail. It is too easy to imagine what a nightmare it would be to have a family member so close to going over the edge at any minute. Pat's family is subjected to abuse, embarrassment and fear as a result of his outbursts. His mother legitimately worries that he could end up institutionalized, and she has taken on the responsibility of making sure he gets back into the world. His father is also concerned but seems to be distracted by his own mental health issues. Pat Sr. is played by Robert DeNiro in a performance that reminds us that he is indeed a talented actor, even though he has been coasting for years in a variety of product. His facial expressions and world weary voice, combined with a calm mania, show us that the roots of mental illness may indeed be genetic. This will probably be a performance recognized at awards time in the supporting category. DeNiro is not flashy in the role, he is just real and emotional enough to make us care, despite his obvious failings.

Bradley Cooper has been a pretty boy movie star for several years now. Here, he gets the chance to work some acting chops that he has shown in other roles, but which now bring him forward as a true dramatic actor and not simply a leading man. The expressions on his face reveal his yearning for his old life and his wife, but they also share the underlying anger and aggression that frightened her off in the first place. The script tells us what he did to get into this position, but even better, it allows him to show us where he is at any given time. In the fist part of the film, all of this rings true. When the story starts to play out the conventions, he still does a good job, it is the script that weakens the film. There is progress made in the story for both of our leads, but that progress seems like it was earned a little too easily given what we see from each of them. Jennifer Lawrence is in the third movie I have seen her in this year, and she does her best acting in this film. She is so believable as the wounded widow with disturbing social tendencies, that it is a little hard to believe the story arc develops as quickly as it does once the dance competition is on the horizon. Again, the fault is in the conventional arc of the story, not in the performance itself.

Other than the "too pat" changes in their mental stability, the story is a winner. Each of these people has to find the ability to trust the other and discover the strength to face their problems. There is a dance competition which becomes Tiffany's main focus and for which Pat has to be cajoled into caring about. Pat has to confront his father's fanaticism about the Eagles Football team, and his own obsession with his wife. Most of these issues come together like any straight rom-com, simultaneous and with the greatest chance to disrupt the blossoming romance as possible. Each protagonist has failings that they then have to own up to in order to gain the final acceptance that we want all along. While traditional in structure, the devices are different. They involve gambling, ballroom dancing and dysfunctional relatives. In addition to Pat's Dad, Tiffany's sister and brother in-law have mental issues to be resolved. Even Pat's therapist has his own problems that become an obstacle over the course of the film. The creativity of these issues and the way the characters play them out are what make this movie special.

The music was exceptionally good in the background. The score fit well with the story and the popular music selections worked as devices to bring characters together or remind us of the circumstances. I heard a Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash duet in one scene. Johnny Cash was a great musician, and it seems right to me that we hear so much more of his music now in films than when he was alive. Chris Tucker comes out of nowhere and injects some fun into the proceedings in a way that makes Cooper and Lawrence's development a little more believable. In the end, you know that the story is not going to pull the Ernest Hemingway plot development that so enrages Pat early on. Instead, we are going to get the ending that his character would have written if he was the author of  A Farewell to Arms. It may not be cutting edge indie film making, but it is romantic and satisfying.

The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey

When my kids were three and five, I'm afraid I doomed them to life as geeks. I read them a chapter a night of "The Hobbit" and they were hooked. Twelve years ago we anticipated the release of the "Lord of the Rings" films and watched each one, enthralled by the detail that Peter Jackson managed to get on screen. That sprawling work covered a canvas of three films and nearly twelve hours once the special editions of the films were made available. Everyone knew that if it was possible with all the legal entanglements, a version of "The Hobbit" would be coming our way. What we did not know is that Jackson planned on making a book that was less than a third as long as the "Ring" series into a three part epic on the same scale. I think many fans were a bit nervous about this. It seems to be an over reach and a money grab, two things that a lot of fans would be turned off by. The film was also shot using an advanced 48 frame per second technique that has been both praised and trashed, and it was also shot in 3D. So a lot of things can go wrong.  I made a conscious choice to seek out a standard format version of the film because I did not want all of the bells and whistles to interfere with the story and the experience.

Last month for "Skyfall", I went to the midnight preview showing with my youngest, last night I saw "The Hobbit" with my firstborn. Her sister was not feeling well and skipped going with us, but Allison has been waiting for this since she was five and she was not going to wait any longer. I am glad to report that both of us liked the results quite well. She is a bit more enthusiastic than I was, but I have only minor issues, that for many fans will not really be a problem at all. Ultimately, I think it would be interesting for Jackson to reverse engineer the film and instead of expanding it for "Special Edition", he releases a two and a half hour, streamlined version of the film that sticks very closely to the original book. The material that fills the movie is often interesting, and it fills in information about characters and background history, but it is not essential for the story.

The first thing that is very noticeably about this film is that it is being closely tied in to the earlier set of films. Even though the events we are seeing are supposed to have happened sixty years prior to "LOTR", characters that were a part of that series are introduced into this storyline. The two sentences that make reference to the Necromancer, who we later discover is a renewed version of Sauron, are turned into a side plot that will continue to crop up in the rest of the story. The character of Thorin Oakenshield is given an elaborate background and a continuing plot line that involves orcs seeking revenge. This gives rise to more chase based elements in the film than were present in the book. It works for keeping the action in the film going, but it changes the tone of the story from a simpler quest, to a broader ongoing battle. Again, it feels like this is all being set up as a prequel to LOTR, and not the story of Bilbo Baggins adventure. Despite the length of the movie, because of this change, events often feel rushed. The leisurely but hazardous journey to the Lonely Mountain, becomes a series of escapes not from situations that the Dwarfs, Hobbit, and Wizard fall into, but the machinations of a deeper power. This works well for all the fans that want the epic nature of the other films, it diminishes much of the charm of the book, which was essentially a children's story to begin with.

For an illustration of what is lost, although we got a lengthy visit and meal at Bilbo's hobbit hole in the first hour of the film, most of the Dwarves remain nothing more than the visual caricatures that they are designed as. There are no long conversations on horseback, or around the campfire that give us a chance to be familiar with the individuals of the company. Two of the other thirteen get a scene of two to show what is important about them or how they fit into the story. The rest remain a chartering collection of types that can be moved around without much planning or consequence as to which is which. I can say that the casting of Bilbo himself is practically perfect. Martin Freeman has a humble everyman quality that radiates comfort. He is also witty and brave when we least expect it. In the final fifteen minutes of the film, his version of Bilbo gets to stand out quite a bit more and we can see the potential that Gandalf saw from the beginning. The game of riddles that he plays with Gollum, works out because he has just the right amount of fear and pluckiness to pull it off. The film stops at a pause in the adventures, not at a complete story. Once the whole series of films are available, I suspect that the movie will feel a bit different. I enjoyed what I experienced, but it was not the atmosphere of adventure that I expected. The solemn nature of the group and the background story, push this film to be something different.

I have read some brutal criticism of the movie in it's 48 fps format. That while the format works wonders for some scenes, it renders other cheap and artificial. The standard screening that I saw had none of those problems. All of the epic outdoor scenery of New Zealand is used to suggest Middle Earth, again in spectacular fashion.   There was substantially greater use of CGI in this film than in the older movies. Most of the orc characters are clearly not actors in costume and make up. Although the scale is often the same, I think some sense of personality is lost as a result. The actors playing the fourteen members of the company, are real. The antagonists they face are often not and the tension is lessened a bit as a result. I will be visiting Middle Earth again as part of the holiday season. My impressions may change somewhat, but as for the moment, I can recommend the film to fans of the LOTR series wholeheartedly, yet my endorsement for fans of "The Hobbit" is slightly more muted.

We get only a couple of shots that hint at Smaug, the dragon who is the real antagonist of the story. This seems strange since ultimately, this is what the quest is all about, dislodging him from under the mountain. Allison and I disagree as to how the final two films will distribute the story. She is expecting a longer trek to the Lonely Mountain. I on the other hand, believe the confrontation and banter with Smaug will be the focus of the next film. We have a year to find out, in the meanwhile, there is plenty to keep you occupied during Bilbo's "Unsuspected Journey".

Red Dawn

Having been a big fan of the original "Red Dawn" when it first came out, there was pretty much no need for me to go see this. The context of the original revolves around heightened tensions during the Cold War. While it was unlikely that conventional warfare would come to the U.S., at least the idea was plausible and the international situation provided a real sense of "what if?". The opening credits of this film do play upon a number of American vulnerabilities, mostly economic, and the continuing belligerence of the North Koreans. Of course most people know that when this movie was completed three years ago, the enemy in the film was China. Somewhere in the marketing department, it was decided that the Chinese as antagonists would limit the appeal of the movie in international markets. So, CGI and some re-shoots, render the Asian invaders Korean instead of Chinese. A scenario that is even less plausible and sort of shoots the "what if?' factor in the foot.

I won't spend too much time on the storytelling issues that undermine this movie. They tend to be glaring and it is not really the point of the movie. The original was a piece of rah-rah Americanism, at the height of Cold War paranoia during the 1980s. This version keeps the story in America, but moves it from the mid-west to the Spokane area. maybe the Koreans needed the lumber instead of the wheat fields, there is really no reason for this alteration or location. The idea of an insurgency against invaders, ought to have some dramatic parallels since the U.S. has been fighting such resistance in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The main character, a veteran of Iraq, has a couple of lines that deal with this but that is all. The original involved a conflicted Cuban Officer working with the Russians, in a reversed position. We spend almost no time in the enemy camp. There is no discussion of politics or strategy or history. Whether you likes the original John Milius script or not, it clearly had a point of view. This rendering has no point of view other than to stage action sequences. There is a hint of building an internal resistance but it is mostly just that, a hint. This movie is not interested in bigger ideas, it wants to make cool action scenes and develop a traditional set of romantic stories against this background. Blow stuff up and look cool doing so, that's it.

So how well do they do the action scenes and the blowing up of stuff? It is just competent enough to be satisfying from an action point of view, but it is not really memorable. There are a few ideas repeated from the original film, but it takes the "Wolverines" about ten minutes to go from scared teens to dedicated insurgents. They get access to equalizing explosives within a couple of minutes of their actually engaging the enemy, and then it is all, bang, bang, bang. The only attack that I can recall just a few hours after seeing the movie was the skateboard delivery system in one sequence. That one worked alright. The others were just part of the usual cacophony of background explosions. There are a couple of chase sequences that indulge in the dreaded shaky cam experience, thankfully those episodes are relatively brief. In the last quarter of the film, there is a traditional infiltration action sequence that was serviceable but again not memorable.

The 1984 version of "Red Dawn" was not a deep character study, but you at least knew who the characters were before they were sacrificed in the story. Here you get characters dying, but you barely have any idea of their existence prior to their death. There are two exceptions toward the end of the movie, but at that point it is really moot, we have been reduced to Cowboys and Indians in the backyard. The teens in the original had to fight the elements and were nearly starving. Here, they move in and out of town freely and I am not sure why they thrill to grabbing a whole bunch of food from Subway, except it was probably a product placement deal. The citizens of occupied Spokane are still going to fast food places, so why the "Wolverines" can't side up to a five dollar footlong is never really explained. The strategy of the invading Koreans is not explained, and the need for the secret communication system that resisted their own weapon is underdeveloped. The outside American forces are injected into the story, not as lost soldiers but rather, draftees sent on a mission.

Chris Helmsworth has gone on to bigger and better films since this. He does however have the two best lines in the movie. One I won't repeat right here, it was a little crude (Although my wife thinks it would make a good bumper sticker). The other may be a real saying of our military personnel, but it was the first time I remember hearing it. As a Marine, visiting home when the invasion starts, he brings the locals a lot of knowhow. He also is free with the platitudes. The line that I am caring with me after this movie is pretty simple, "Marines don't die, they just go to hell and regroup". That's the best line in the movie, and if it is not enough to interest you in seeing this, then by all means skip it. There will be something else with explosions coming along to entertain you soon.