Holy Motors (2012)

Director: Leos Carax

 It is not too difficult to appreciate this film, or to admire this film, or to enjoy this film, but understanding what it all means it is a different story. There is a lot going, and deciphering every single thing about this film may prove impossible on a first viewing. But when looking at the film overall, it's quite simple. We see an actor do rides around a limousine over the course of a single day doing nine different "appointments". He acts as an old lady begging in the street, he performs on a motion capture stage, he plays a father picking up his daughter from a party, he plays a sewer creature who kidnaps a model, he plays an old man on the verge of death, etc. The odd thing about these "appointments" is that there are no cameras or audience around, at least not visibly. He is performing these acts in the real world. The film hints that digital cameras are so small now, that they are invisible.

The film is a remarkably unique film in that every one of the "acts" Denis Lavant's character performs performs are executed to perfection. While the film does make sense as a whole, it's certain that director Leos Carax also wanted the opportunity to tackle all sorts of genres in one movie (it's his first film in 13 years, so he has a lot of catching up to do). He tackles these familiar genres because these genres are the "typical" entertainment we have in our lives, and because we are always performing for the omniscient camera, these genres become our reality. The digitalization of not just cinema, but of everything in our culture, has made it so in our constant performance for the camera we have lost our sense of identity. Our identity has slipped away behind the veneer of technology and the ways we choose to portray ourselves to the world. With its unique ambiguous structure, Holy Motors shows that truth in identity is slipping away from all of us in our increasingly technology-dependent world. Through it's multiple "episodes" Holy Motors is a mystifying, powerful, sensational, and thought-provoking film that tells us much about who we are and where we're going.

Grade: A

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Director: Peter Jackson

Now if you're a fan of the first Lord of the Rings trilogy then you're certain to find some enjoyment in returning to Middle Earth, as I did. The world of Middle Earth is as rich as ever. But The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is certainly not the ideal introduction to this world and the story of the ring. It's a movie in which the stakes are not very high, especially when compared to Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins has a strong character arc, the theme of taking back the homeland is also well established, but as of now there's no existential threat to the world as a whole, at least not to justify the extremely long running time. But at the same time it's difficult to judge the film because the movie is written almost as a miniseries. It's clear that Peter Jackson knew he was going to two more three hour long movies and so he took his time and included every side adventure from the book and much more that was never in the book.

The movie is the first of three movies, and unlike the fairly cinematic ending of The Fellowship of the Ring, the end of the The Hobbit feels very much like the ending of an important episode of TV. While I enjoyed the movie, the eventual three-part structure makes the movie hard to truly criticize because there's so much more. Certain scenes in the movie are meant to introduce a certain concept and then are not talked about it again, which would be a blatant flaw in any other movie but in this one you can't fault the film because obviously it will be brought up in the later films. If you don't compare it to the previous trilogy, this is a very satisfactory first film, though much of it could have been streamlined and cut out. But if the film was streamlined and only scenes that were important to the direct plot, the movie would not quite have felt like a part of Lord of the Rings, which is a series known as epic fantasy. Instead we've got the beginning of what I'm sure is going to end up an epic, but it just isn't quite there yet.

Grade: B-

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season Two (2001)

Creator: Larry David

The chain reaction humor, the miscommunications, the victim of circumstance, all those elements that were at play in the first season of the show are once again on full display here in the second. In some cases they're refined and done even better, but most importantly there are some stakes that are introduced. Larry pitches a TV show with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and his actions during the show actually have consequences for how those pitch meetings go, which is to say not well. There is real damage done to his career and personal relationships. Now the show is still very episodic, as the TV show pitch plot comes and goes, and there's not much of a serial narrative.

The show still is a joy to watch just because it's quite expertly plotted, though the structure is a little familiar now, and so we're pretty sure that the odd thing that happened to Larry in the beginning of the episode is going to come back to bite him in the ass later on. One particular episode that stood out was the episode with Shaquille O'Neal. That episode was special because it introduces a new experience in Larry's life. We've been seeing the same side of him for the whole show but that episode we see a different side, a side that is satisfied with the worlds reaction to him. He finds himself in a situation in which he doesn't have to deal with people anymore, and he loves it. I definitely hope for more adventurous episodes like that one in the future. It's a hilarious show that I think has the potential to be even better.

Grade: B

My Favorite Television Shows of 2012

The greats continued to be the greats this year. Only two of the ten shows I mention in this post are new shows (and one of them isn't even coming back for another season). So it's basically an opportunity to continue to shower praise on the shows I've already praised so much already. As always, I haven't seen every show, though one particular show I feel that I may have liked quite a bit had I gotten to it is Treme. Maybe next year.

Homeland: Season Two (2012)

Creators: Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa

 It was in the first half of this season when I proclaimed Homeland to be the next Breaking Bad. I said this mostly due to the unpredictability of the plot, and I'm not talking about the unpredictability of what things will happen, but of when things will happen. Like Breaking Bad, this is a show in which you eagerly anticipate every single episode with bated breath because you have no idea what crazy plot twist will occur on any given night. Also like Breaking Bad, our main character is a fascinating and original character who is brilliant yet deeply flawed. By the end of this season though it's clear that Carrie is not the the only "main" character of the show, because Brody is given an even larger presence this season than the first. Damian Lewis puts in a performance just as good as Claire Danes, as he plays a man stuck between a rock and a hard place, carrying secrets upon secrets. In the first season Carrie lost her mind due to bipolar disorder, this season Brody also loses his mind but it was due to the overwhelming amount of mental stress placed on him by all the secrets he was carrying.

As compelling as the show is though, it did falter a bit this season in expanding the story and becoming almost 24-like in it's convenient plot points. It didn't quite retain the intimacy and subdued storytelling of the first season, and so the plot sometimes overwhelmed the characters and themes. Even throughout this 24 phase the show was still exciting and suspenseful, so there was never a point where I started to dislike the show, but there were moments where it turned into the show that I fear may turn into someday, one that you love but still accept the flaws of. But then the show regained its footing with a superb finale in which personal conflicts rose once again and secrets starting piling up. It set the stage for a third season that could go anywhere, and since the writers of this show are clearly talented, this gives me optimism that this newfound freedom from plot will turn out to be good for all of us.

Grade: B+

Miss Bala (2012)

Director: Gerardo Naranjo

What this movie accomplishes basically makes it an "issue" movie. It's about the consequences of the Mexican Drug War that has taken hundreds of lives and scared thousands more. Issue movies can be tiresome if not done well because no one likes being preached or lectured to. Miss Bala avoids this problem fairly well (but not completely in my opinion) by focusing on one innocent character and her horrific experiences as she is dragged unwillingly into this war. With this it shows us the consequences the drug war has had on the innocent and how it has ruined and affected the lives of so many innocent people. It's not a revolutionary subject but nonetheless an important one and the fact that the film has seen worldwide attention (it played at Cannes 2011) is a wonderful thing.

The main character of the film who is dragged into the war is a woman whose goal is to get into a beauty pageant. It's a bit cliche and contrived to make the main character a good-looking girl who just wants to look good, but I can't blame Naranjo too much because he was apparently influenced by a real-life story in which a beauty pageant contestant was found to be involved with the cartels. It's also a testament to Naranjo's filmmaking that the movie does not feel as cliche as it could have been. He shies away from easy emotions and instead opts for some truly visceral filmmaking in some tense sequences and some beautiful patient long shots that display the despair and hopelessness of the situation. Naranjo captures the predicament of this girl using her own perspective, including showing us her point of view during shootouts, which puts the audience in the exact same situation as her. Even though the main character is a beauty pageant contestant, the film still succeeds in showing that the victims of the cartels are people just like you and me and that's exactly what a film like this wants to do.

Grade: B

The Imposter (2012)

Director: Bart Layton

Coming into this film I had never heard of this story about a man who steals the identity of a missing child, and that I think improved by experience of this film quite a bit. Director Bart Layton takes a fairly  fascinating story about manipulation and manipulates it in his own way resulting in an absolutely wild ride of a documentary filled with twists and turns. Layton controls the audiences reactions in the film very effectively using things like manipulating interviews with subjects and making it seem like the interview subjects know just as much as the audience. It's also no secret that this guy is not actually the missing child this family has been looking for, which creates unbearable tension during early sequences in which the man meets this family. We know this guy is going to be revealed eventually, but we don't know when and we don't know how and that keeps the audience on its toes at all times. And I'm not even going to mention some of the later twists that come out of nowhere.

The Imposter is not just a great sensory experience (the first time you see it at least), but not a bad intellectual one as well. At first the film is an example of the extreme power of confirmation bias, not accepting something that may be against your preconceived beliefs. We see such an extreme form of confirmation bias in that a parent doesn't even recognize her own son. But in the final act of the film things get a little more muddled and unfortunately the movie brings up a point (I won't spoil it) that I thought was astonishing while watching, but in retrospect is the only example of Layton going a little overboard when it comes to manipulating the audience. That brings up the fact that the film is astonishing when you're watching the first time without knowing any of the story, but thinking back about the story (and maybe a second viewing) diminishes the impact just a bit. Ultimately I can't imagine anyone not having an extremely engaging experience with this documentary that asks us all question about truth, lies, assumptions, and manipulations.

Grade: B

Lincoln (2012)

Director: Steven Spielberg

 The title of this film makes it seem like it will be a full-fledged biopic of Abraham Lincoln's life, from the cradle to the grave, and reportedly that's what the filmmakers, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, did plan on in the beginning (he's one of my favorite historical figures so I would have been fine with that too). But instead, we get a film titled Lincoln that almost completely takes place within the time span of a few weeks in January 1865. The decision to center on just those few weeks during the battle to pass the 13th Amendment in the House of Representatives turns out to be a brilliant move. Lincoln is not a scattered biopic about a man, but a film about a specific moment in time that serves as a perfect example of the kind of man Lincoln was. The passing of the 13th Amendment shows us the self-interested world Lincoln occupied, and how he managed to the reality of the world and his own ideals together to actually achieve his goals while preserving the Union. It essentially looks at the main conflict of all politicians, which is to achieve the personal ideals each of them have while occupying a place within a group of people who all have so many various goals in mind.

But this is not just a fantastic film about Lincoln, because by showing us Lincoln's pragmatic nature Lincoln also turns out to be one of the best films I've seen about the nature of politics and democracy. The film may be centered on Civil War-era politics, but it is a film that applies to the politics in any part of the world at any time. Spielberg and Kushner aren't afraid to be remarkably honest about the often dark nature of politics. It's not a cynical movie about how everything is corrupt because we do see success, but it's also not naive about how that success was achieved. The passing of the 13th Amendment was a great accomplishment, but we see the not-quite-ethical tactics used and deals made by the men of the era that ended up aiding in the abolishment of slavery. Many have accused Spielberg in the past, myself included, of being too sentimental and naive in many of his dramas, but with Lincoln Spielberg has uncharacteristically made a procedural that is more grounded in its approach. Especially when compared to last year's overly sentimental crowd pleaser War Horse, Lincoln is a film that is not afraid to get down and dirty and look at the unflattering ways great things happen. Lincoln the man is a genius not because he believed in a higher ideal and inspired everyone around him to take a stand, but he we see that he was a genius because he was a pragmatist who knew how the world worked and knew how to get things done. Lincoln is a great film precisely because it does not show him as a saint, but as a great politician with a heart.

Grade: A-

Killing Them Softly (2012)

Director: Andrew Dominik

The first thing to know about this film is that this is not really a film meant to entertain you, at least not in the conventional genre sort of way. It's technically a gangster film, but even fans of the gangster genre probably will be surprised (putting it gently) by this film. This is a political film about the Great Recession of 2008. I'm not saying that the subtext of this film is political, because the political elements are right there on the surface. Many critics complained that the movie made the political commentary way too obvious and hits the audience on the head, but I think director Andrew Dominik intended on first and foremost making the film as an allegory for our times, and not just a gangster film with subtle political commentary. But I do admit there may be other, and probably better, ways to do that besides inundating the sound mix with Obama and McCain campaign speeches on the radio or television. At the same time, that inundation is successful in making the audience always have the political edge at the forefront of their mind. This way we can make the connections that so much of the film stands in for different parts of our government and financial system, which is pretty important because the gangster story would not be engaging on its own without any of the political commentary.

The 2008 setting gives the film the right mood for this to happen as well. In the movie we've got criminals who put a hit out on a couple of guys who stole some money, and most of the movie is about the game that has to be played in trying to make sure the right people or the right message is sent out when it comes to punishing the people who stole. It's a smart allegory for the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and how difficult it was to punish the Wall Street-types who were responsible for the collapse. The allegory is quite an impressive feat considering that the book Dominik adapted the movie from was written back in the 1970's, way before the 2008 recession. While ultimately the gangster story feels a bit slight and not quite as powerful as it could have been (though the gangster genre sets quite a high standard), Dominik crafts some spectacular scenes, including the creative opening credits, the brilliantly tense stick-up job at the center of the movie, and a great dope-smoking scene. Coming off the amazing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford it's hard not to feel that Killing Them Softly is a bit of a step down, but Killing Them Softly is still a fantastic display of Dominik's talents on its own right.

Grade: B

The Civil War (1990)

Director: Ken Burns

History can be just as compelling as any subject, fact or fiction. Besides the great storytelling that can be inherent in history, there is the bonus of knowing that the story you're watching has certainly happened therefore you can never accuse a story about history of being "unrealistic". When we see the many Civil War anecdotes that Ken Burns tells us during this almost 11 hour long documentary minseries, we don't question their authenticity, we just take in the emotions and ideas expressed through those stories. It makes those stories that much more effective. This expansive and ambitious documentary series is great accomplishment just on the basis of of its scope. We get the history of a grand event that has had a large impact on the world today, and multiple smaller stories that take us into the real America during the Civil War. It's an extensively researched and detailed series that took five years to finish, one year longer than the Civil War itself.

Burns' trademark classical documentary style that has been copied so much now is in full use, but despite the fact that we've seen so much of this "conventional" style in the 20 years after this film, the style rarely inhibits the film. Getting actors to recite letters, or using slow motion zooms on photographs accomplish the goals of Burns. He gets you into the world and connects you emotionally to the soldiers, the politicians, and ordinary people involved through the melancholic and humorous stories told by either the actors or talking head historians (very few appearances by them I must add). The grand scope and long length of the film enable Burns to not just tell the whole story event-by-event of the Civil War from start to finish, but also take many digressions along the way by looking at issues like women in the war, sanitation issues, and pardons for deserters. Not every digression is interesting though, and if I could change one thing it would be to add more about the political issues going on during the war rather than soldier life. Though the film can once in a while seem like a dull moving textbook, we also get somethings that textbooks overlook. These are the smaller stories, the moments and unimportant individuals who lived during this enormous conflict that created, as Abraham Lincoln called it, a new birth of freedom.

Grade: B+

Rosetta (1999)

Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

 It is a rare and impressive thing when a filmmaker can craft an intimate and personal film while also bringing with it such broad social and political implications. The film is an uncompromising look at a 17-year-old girl who lives in a small trailer with her good-for-nothing mother trying to find a job. She's a girl who is desperate for any sort of job, but she's also a principled human being who just wants to have a normal life. Her desire for a job has to do with money, but it's also about being a normal member of society, and that's what gives this film added poignancy. The Dardenne brothers use their typical handheld jittery up-close camerawork, always following our main character, and frequently in tight close-ups. It gives this deeply personal look at a life in motion even more intimacy, but at the same time it manages to also be about the larger issue of the difficulty that those on the fringes of society have in entering into society.

One of the reasons I will cherish and remember this film for a long time is because it's not an idealistic film like so many others are, it's not a contrarian movie about the ills of society. The film does not take a stance against the idea of modern society, instead it just says that society needs to do more to help those who want to enter modern society. It's a very pragmatic movie and not one with high-minded ideas, and that's a very unique stand to take in intellectual art. Rosetta is essentially a film about the lack of social mobility, and the difficulties people have in obtaining an honest living. It's telling that Rosetta refuses to do any illegal jobs in this film, because she is a person with respect and principles, a quality very deserving of entering society. She does have to engage in a personal betrayal later in the film though, which is not illegal, but certainly only hurts her social life. That betrayal shines a light on the how obtaining even honest work can be a very anti-personal endeavor, because in this economic system personal relationships must be second to money and success. What's more amazing is that none of these messages are said out loud, everything is implied. It's a movie that shows you the life of one person on the fringes of society and forces you to make your own conclusions about why this girl is having so much difficulty. It manages to be political by way of being personal.

Grade: A

The Wire: Season Five (2008)

Creator: David Simon

Lets get this out of the way first, if I had to rank each season of The Wire I would pick season four as the best and season five as the worst. But even the worst season of this show is better than almost anything on television right now. That just goes to show how great this series is, and why it's justified when people say that this show is the best ever. This final season had a few goals. The first was to bring in the institution of journalism in the world of The Wire, a profession that creator David Simon knows a whole lot about since he was a Baltimore Sun reporter before he started the show. The media is an appropriate focus for the shows final season because the media is the middleman between the people and the governmental institutions and what keeps the people from knowing about the failures of those institutions. Simon shows us why the media is as guilty as all those other institutions when it comes to the question of why nothing ever changes. The media is just another cog in the machine, being oiled by the same forces of surface-level achievement and personal success.

The second thing the season did was to give us another Hamsterdam-like solution and then shoot it down. This time we see that even when we have good people in office, getting resources to where they belong can be difficult, and so we observe what kind of drastic things need to happen in order for those resources to come. We see McNulty invent a ridiculous fake serial killer in Baltimore, but it's quite tragic how serious he needs to make it and how he needs to sacrifice his whole career in order to get the resources to fix the real problems. That reflects a theme that The Wire has advanced over and over again: The individual gets devoured by the institution. Doesn't matter if the individual does the right thing or the wrong thing, they will get devoured. It all also ties into the lies that fund all of these institutions. The newspaper gets a chance to win Pulitzer's because of a reporters exaggerations and lies the same way the police department exaggerates stats to fake success and maintain funding. The third and final thing this season does was to meticulously craft and conclude the stories of all these characters in a way that ends in mostly the same way it all started. That's the conclusion that Simon wants and that's what he shows. Despite all the strong idealistic individuals, everything is cyclical, and everything stays the same. The game is the game, and the game will always stay the game.

Grade: A

Life of Pi (2012)

Director: Ang Lee

 Almost never does a great book turn into a great movie, and why should they? Books and movie are two different mediums, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Yann Martel's novel is in my opinion, a masterpiece. It's a poignant and thought-provoking treatise on religion and spirituality in the modern world. A faithful film adaptation of a masterpiece novel such as this will almost always be of lesser quality, just as a book adaptation of an inherently cinematic film (like 2001: A Space Odyssey) will not be as good as the film. This is all to say that I don't believe Life of Pi is as good as the book but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie or a bad adaptation, quite the contrary actually. The fact that Ang Lee actually filmed this novel is an impressive enough achievement on its own, and not only did he put it on screen, he did so in fantastical and magnificent fashion. The film is littered with spellbinding images of the ocean and mostly realistically rendered CGI animals. The vast expanse of the never-ending ocean is created beautifully and illustrates the serenity of loneliness that Pi feels out by himself stranded in the Pacific Ocean. The 3D also adds to the experience (a rarity) and is a valuable tool when it comes to capturing life on a small lifeboat.

The visual experience of the film is the most impressive thing Lee has done with this adaptation, emphasizing the beauty of the world around Pi, an important factor when it comes to how exactly Pi gets the resolve to actually survive the long and difficult ordeal. The book and the movie both are really all about how we choose to live (or survive) this difficult world, and why faith and religion is the answer for so many people around the world. The "twist" ending isn't really a twist as much as it is a revelation of what the story is really about, which is the choice between a life of beauty and purpose or a life of brutality and death. I'm not sure the film makes this analogy as clear as it could have been, the film does seem a bit more preoccupied with the survival aspect of the story rather than the religious aspects. But nonetheless, those religious aspects that made the book so great are certainly there if you want to find them. While the power of the film is a bit muted for me personally because I've experienced this story before, this really is the best faithful adaptation of the book that could have ever been made.

Grade: A-

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

Director: Terence Davies

 With a runtime of less than 85 minutes it is astonishing how much this autobiographical work about a British family in the 1940's and 1950's actually accomplishes. It is in essence a portrait of a family (many of the shots are framed like family portraits), and Terence Davies gives us a complete portrait spanning decades in just 85 minutes. It seems like this movie should be a three hour epic, but Davies uses breathtaking efficiency, giving us a kaleidoscopically structured film that emulates the act of memory itself. The temporal structure of the film is hard to make out, but it all comes together in your own mind as a whole and lets you form your judgements yourself. The ephemeral efficiency of the film represents a truly unique masterclass in filmmaking by Davies. He gives us scenes that vary quite a bit when it comes to when they take place (in the first half at least), that tell us all we need to know about how this family of three worked. We learn how their now-dead very strict father's relationship was with each of the three children and their mother, how the children deal with his death, and how they continue on with their own adult lives.

The film really is completely unromantic and quite literally colorless. The colors are all dark, drab, and quite boring, representing a fairly mundane lifestyle that is only slightly cheered up by some group singing, usually in a pub. The music in the film is as important as any other aspect. Important music can live long in our memories, and so in the film the music tells us much about the character and how they lived their lives. For the characters themselves music is shown as a respite from all the bitterness and hardship that exists in Davies' depiction of post-war Britain. This is not a lavish Britain in which elegance pours over, this is a working class Britain hurt and ravaged by the memories of a war that came to their own doorsteps. Davies showcases this family, inspired by his own, as one of the many working class families of that time period that underwent what many families go through: pain, heartbreak, death, love, happiness, and regret. This impressionistic portrait of a family succeeds in such powerful fashion in showing what it really means to be a family, and how those complicated feelings we have towards our sometimes unreasonable family members always seem to inevitably come back to love.

Grade: A