The 14th Annual SF IndieFest runs February 9th-23rd at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Check out the official site for further film details.

A man named Gerhard writes and narrates his instructions to a prostitute as to how he wants their time together to go. “Your caresses should be tender and shy,” he says. “I want you to put it in your mouth. It won’t take long.” His preferences continue including how she can yell at him or fall asleep beside him as long as she showers afterwards, sits in his lap soaking wet and lets him call her Lydia.

Gerhard returning home to his wife where the two await the arrival of their adult son and daughter. Their son, Bernhard, discovers the note beforehand and doesn’t show.

But their daughter Lydia does.

“I should have known.”

Bernhard (Christoph Luser) had followed his father (Fritz Hörtenhuber) to the prostitute and afterwards retrieved the letter from her. He’s taken aback, understandably, but doesn’t quite know what to do. When he finally arrives home to attend a family session for Gerhard’s alcoholism he presents the note to his dad for an explanation. Gerhard leaves, saying nothing with his voice but everything with his eyes, and the letter gets shared with Lydia (Daniela Golpashin) and their mother.

What follows are the multiple threads of the four family members over the next twenty four hours as they each struggle to understand the revelation. While Gerhard ponders turning himself in or picking up a shotgun his wife gives in to a shocked resignation and acceptance. Bernhard meanwhile tries to make amends with Lydia over the guilt he feels for not recognizing their reality sooner. They find a tin of photos in their dad’s shed, and it’s filled with pictures of her as a child in random states of undress.

Bernhard found it the first time when he was just a boy, but in a misguided and heartbreaking act of jealousy did nothing about it. He was jealous because he had been cut out of the photos. (Shades of Todd Solondz’ soul crushing but hilarious Happiness there.) Now he wonders if he could have prevented possible tragedies if he had spoken earlier.

The revelation at the core of Still Life (aka Stillleben) is almost unimaginable, and it would be easy to take the story down some melodramatic paths. Co-writer/director Sebastian Meise wisely and beautifully avoids that trap though and relies on his actors to deliver the story with honest humanity. How would you possibly deal with the discovery that your father harbored sexual thoughts and desires for one of your siblings? Or for you? It’s almost impossible to comprehend, but the cast makes it a wrenching reality.

Much of the communication between them (and with viewers) is accomplished with little to no dialogue. Anger, fear, sadness and more emanate from their eyes as if mere words could never do justice to the emotions they’re feeling. Hörtenhuber in particular moves between guilt, shame and loss without saying a word, and the effect is an all encompassing sadness.

The topic is one that could have easily descended into a salacious movie of the week, but it deserves and receives a far more sober and affecting approach here.

Still Life screens Thursday, February 16, at 9:30PM.

The 14th Annual SF IndieFest runs February 9th-23rd at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Check out the official site for further film details.

The 14th Annual SF IndieFest runs February 9th-23rd at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Check out the official site for further film details.

Two Russian ghosts, brothers tired of a life that is really no life at all, decide a change of corporeality is in order. After consulting with an oracle they begin to follow the Way of Saint James, a path that should lead them to the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. Once there their bland, boring and restless existence will be exchanged for new physical bodies. The journey will be made mostly by foot, but occasionally they’ll take advantage of a horse and a wheelchair as they travel through inhospitable lands filled with odd characters and creatures.

That summation is accurate in its details, but it’s a lie in one very specific regard. Ghosts seeking to leave the afterlife, a surreal quest for humanity, and an absurd collection of oddities along the way seem to promise an interesting and engaging entertainment. Sadly, Finnisterrae is neither of those things.

“Wait.”

Writer/director Sergio Caballero certainly fills his film with alternately beautiful, fun and enticing visuals starting with the ghosts themselves. The phantom duo are represented by men wearing white sheets with large, black ovals where their eyes would be. It’s immediately comical and enhanced by the thick Russian voices emanating from beneath the fabric, but it’s far from the film’s only absurdity.

The live horse is intermittently replaced with an intentionally fake one. They pass through a “Forest of Words” where the trees all sport a pair of human ears, the better to hear the constant chatter echoing amidst the foliage presumably. An opera-singing hippie chick replete with a cape and extraneous dunlap offers directions and ill-advised barter to the two spirits. Another tree’s knothole offers a disgusting video-feed within.

And let’s not forget the stripper ghost in knee-high socks who entertains one of the brothers in split screen while the other sits unattended and under the weather on the other side. Seriously, don’t forget the stripper because she’s the film’s biggest highlight.

Some of the ideas and images would kill in a sketch show where they’d be focused and pointed, but here they seem to exist as throwaways or parts of a whole that never coalesces. Life, death and the meaning behind our time on earth are clearly the topics of the day, but any observations made about them feel so slight as to be accidental.

The film also drops the ball at a couple moments that promise to offer some kind of engagement. We’re led to an exchange or interaction only to see the screen go black with an interstitial that tells viewers what happened… but we don’t get to see it. It’s unclear if it’s a narrative or budgetary decision, but it lessens the effect regardless.

The film doesn’t really work as anything more than a collection of individual moments and frames, but with a running time under eighty minutes that could have still counted as a minor success. A film can miss the mark on the whole but succeed on a piecemeal basis, but unfortunately these handful of interesting ideas appear so intermittently that they’re swallowed up by the film’s  ponderous pace never to be recalled. Except for the stripper in the bed sheet of course. You’ll remember that one.

Finisterrae screens on Sunday, February 12 at 9:30PM.

The 14th Annual SF IndieFest runs February 9th-23rd at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Check out the official site for further film details.

The average movie run time is somewhere around the ninety minute mark. (I have no stats to back that statement up, but it feels about right.) There are several reasons for this, but the two most common probably have as much to do with the short attention span of audiences as it does the desire of studios and theaters to fit more screenings in per day. To those I would add that most movies don’t need more than two hours to tell their story.

But some do. Think Schindler’s List, The Godfather Part II, and JFK. These are big movies telling big stories, and they show that sometimes a film needs a longer canvas.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is not one of those films. Which is unfortunate, because in every regard other than time management this is a fairly fascinating and engaging character drama.

“There’s good people and bad. You can never tell. If it comes to it, you have to be ruthless. And shoot them right between the eyes.”

Three cars make their way slowly across a vast and hilly plain at dusk. They come to a rest and several men exit and gather nearby. Two of them are in handcuffs, suspects in a murder, while the rest are on-hand to ensure the victim’s corpse is recovered and justice is served.

Or are they?

Several of policemen, soldiers and laymen seem utterly disinterested in the matter at hand. Geography, gossip and the number of times their fellow officers take a pee break seem to be more important than the murder suspect crammed into the seat between them. The prosecutor and doctor repeatedly return to a conversation about a woman who may or may not have killed herself while others get into a heated argument about buffalo yogurt.

That’s not to say there aren’t bigger questions to be found. The confessed murderer, Kenan (Firat Tanis), is mostly silent as he tries and fails to lead them to the body. Presumably it’s because the hills, trees, and small fountains look too similar in the dark, but could there be another reason he can’t quite find the right spot? Why is no one concerned when a second man confesses? What’s up with the dead man enjoying the cup of tea?

But as the evening sets in and makes its long trek toward morning it becomes clear the characters’ interest in the mundane is matched by the entirety of writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s film. Larger issues both practical and philosophical are teased sporadically throughout, but the overriding concern remains the smaller stories between characters. Those larger concerns are left to linger, and instead we see the inherent good and bad in how these people treat, judge and interact with their friends and neighbors. The developing discussion between Nusret (Taner Birsel) the prosecutor and Dr. Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) about the woman actually becomes the most telling and engaging thread across the more than two and a half hour running time.

That damn two and a half hour running time.

The film’s length seems to exist in directly inverse proportion to the size of the stories being told. We see the relationships between characters, including the distinctions  that exist due to their individual cultures and daily lives, and learn what makes many of them tick. But these small discoveries are spread across a seemingly endless chronological landscape. Ceylan never moves his camera at a speed faster than snail, and we’re treated to long, static shots with little in the way of relevant action.

Granted, the film looks beautiful even as it threatens to eat up the next three days of your life. The opening hour takes place almost exclusively at night and sees many of its scenes lit solely with automobile headlights, but they look stunning. Some scenes take on a dreamlike quality as well including one where the group is welcomed into a home to rest and are served tea by an ethereally attractive and silent woman.

Ceylan’s film is telling of the society and people that make up the mostly rural Turkish region, and his characters are an intriguing blend of personalities. The ways in which they interact with each other and with the more mundane aspects of a bureaucracy are revealing, and even at over 150 minutes they never bore. Just imagine if they didn’t have to share the screen with an extra hour of filler…

The Upside: Beautiful nighttime cinematography; enough intriguing scenes and exchanges to fill a 90 minute movie.

The Downside: Overly long for the tale(s) being told.

On the Side: One of the plot keywords IMDB uses for this film is “Dead body in a car trunk.” There are 26 other films that also use it.

The promise of Iron Sky is a great and wondrous one. It’s Moon Nazis. Moon Nazis, people. Swirl it around in your mind for a moment. Those two words alone should put enough fuel in the car to get it to the theater, but with a concept like a Fourth Reich hiding on the dark side of the moon, the movie can only take one of two paths. Sadly, all too sadly, it takes a wrong turn and ends up riding the highway all the way into the city dump at the end of it. Stupid, cheap and aiming above its IQ, this movie is the bad kind of garbage.

It goes without saying that there’s a good kind. Some of the best spoof movies have fallen under that category. Like all tones, there are right and wrong ways to handle them, and although director Timo Vuorensola‘s long-awaited sci-fi explosion of bizarre alternate history starts off with decent overacting and wacky antics, it forgets its B-Movie roots halfway through. That’s its fatal mistake.

Not that it was headed for greatness early on, but it was at least headed for the kind of mild enjoyability that makes bad movies worth watching. Udo Kier is Kortzfleisch, the new dictator. Julia Dietze is the Earth Expert and schoolteacher, Renate Richter, who’s convinced that the Nazi way is the way of peace. Götz Otto is Klaus Adler, the next in line to rule with an impotent anger. Christopher Kirby is James Washington, the black astronaut who shocks the Moon Nazis and threatens to disrupt their invasion plans.

It sounds excellently ridiculous. Too bad it’s no good.

To its credit, the team behind it clearly knows the better movies that came before it. The Great Dictator is a plot point, and there’s a reference to the iconic alien hand syndrome of Dr. Strangelove. It’s a limp, poorly played reference, but it’s there. That’s something. Unfortunately, it’s not enough. While the absurdity is piled medium high, and a handful of the gags work beautifully, the movie gets so weighed down by a lost focus and its attempted poor man’s political theater that the jokes get fewer, farther between, and facile.

It should have been a huge tip off when the President of 2018 is a Sarah Palin mock-off (Stephanie Paul) that the movie’s “relevant” comedy would be too easy and too blunt. It’s so on the nose that they should have gotten a mortgage on the left nostril. When it’s Nazis on the Moon, the jokes come with a lightheartedness that mostly works. Kortzfleisch keeps eating candies, Richter is sucked out toward space solely to strip her down to her underwear, and something else probably happens that’s decently funny.

When it’s strident political commentary, the production comes off like a small child repeating a joke it heard on the nightly news. Plus, that small child just happens to have written the joke on a hammer and is swinging it repeatedly at your face.

Simply put, when it nods to Dr. Strangelove, things are at least okay. When it tries to be Dr. Strangelove, things go horribly, horribly, wrong.

Beyond getting stuck on a tired, one-note joke for its second half, the movie is plagued by being average. It never swings for the fences. Had it been offensively bad, it might still have been entertaining. As it stands, it’s so bland that shrugging seems like it would be giving it too much credit.

To be fair, it’s a few lightyears ahead of what the Asylum puts out, but it’s still far from enjoyable. Kirby is a generic hero who has no ups when he’s trying to go over the top. Dietze is stronger as the hot Nazi (a Hot-zi?) and the true lead of the film. Its successes are usually tied to her, and she’s funny even though she’s not given much to work with. However, it’s unsurprisingly Udo Kier who steals scenes like it was his job. Trivially, it’s awesome that he was both in Melancholia and this within the span of a year, but he is the only actor here who truly 1) gets how dumb all of this is and 2) plays along with a straight face.

Is it cheap? Sort of. The CGI is up-to-date, which gives it a visual boost, and there are plenty of large set pieces complete with explosions and people running in the streets. They probably pale in comparison to the difficulty of putting a black man in whiteface and a Nazi uniform and parading him on the daylight avenues of New York City, but they’re sufficient in giving the movie a strange air of credibility.

What’s cheap is the script.

Frankly, there aren’t enough jokes and there aren’t enough jokes that work. If there were a stronger plot, it could take some of the burden, but it doesn’t grow much beyond “There are Nazis on the moon, and they are going to attack.” At the same time, even with the high concept, the damned thing is overly complicated. It shifts from one group of characters to the next, trying hard to find which one is consistently funny, and no one is to be found. There are elements worth a giggle – Washington turning into an albino hobo warning people about the Moon Nazis attacking for example – but the overall result is incredibly, disappointingly flaccid.

What’s worse is the completely misguided swerve into intelligent humor. The script just isn’t smart enough for it, and cramming lame political snipes  into a movie that’s already established itself as throwaway zany fun with an army that goose steps in low gravity makes it even more obvious that the joke writers didn’t get their own punchlines. The clown shouldn’t try high satire, especially if the clown isn’t that funny to begin with.

It’s impossible not to have hopes dashed here. It’s a hell of a premise that was given a half-assed treatment, and that’s always uniquely tragic. At the end of the day, with an idea like Moon Nazis, everyone should be cheering for it to excel. Unfortunately, this is the movie equivalent of the baseball team that gets an ace pitcher only to lose all of its games. So much promise, so little delivery.

Unless of course that delivery is headed toward the town dump.

Complete Berlinale Coverage

On a hillside overlooking the beaches of Normandy, American soldiers surround a Korean and a Japanese man wearing Nazi uniforms. This is the second-most intriguing image of Mai-wei, the WWII epic from writer/director Je-gyu Kang. What’s even more fascinating is that the image is drawn directly from real life. How they got there (and into Hitler’s army no less) is a story told while trudging through the freezing mountains of Russia and the hot open plains of Korea.

It’s an enormous movie, told through a decade as two competitive marathon runners – Jun-shik Kim (Dong-gun Jang) and Tatsuo Hasegawa (Jo Odagiri) – begin as alienated enemies and become friends through the brittle evolution of battle.

Certainly its most striking achievements are the extended, highly-choreographed war scenes that steal the breath right out of your lungs. The visual style is an angrier version of Saving Private Ryan, but instead of beginning with Normandy, Mai-wei ends with it, and instead of having a few huge battles, Mai-wei has a solid half-dozen.

Make no mistake; it’s a movie that slams your head into the wall without giving you a helmet.

To the movie’s credit, everything is turned up to eleven. Its depiction of war is unrelenting and raw. At times, it can be overpowering with the camera equally interested in the landscape of explosions as it is the microscopic detail of dirt lifting off the ground and resettling after a man’s blood-drained face slams to the earth for the final time.

It’s violence made beautiful, but the visuals are robust purely because they hold steady as bullets rip through flesh or tanks roll too-slowly over legs and torsos.

All of it is packaged in the context of a war fought by slaves – a frustrating situation where each man loses his freedom and control of his own destiny. More than just citizens conscripted for service, Jun-shik Kim, as a Korean man living under Japanese rule, is forced alongside his friends to fight for a country he doesn’t even belong to. That group is an unsurprisingly ragtag group led by the heroic Kim and his congenial best friend Jong-Dae (In-Kwon Kim). Why is unsurprising? Because the other aspect of the movie’s tone is how broad and cliched it is. Je-gyu Kang does brilliantly when the war is raging, but he has no patience or economy to turn the volume down for everything else. Just as the violence is bombastic, each moment of triumph is met with a sweeping score and an over-the-top semi-slow-mo style just in case the audience couldn’t catch that it was an important scene. The problem? He makes every scene “important” which leaves no room for the calm reality of real life.

The worst offense comes when the soldiers play a too-smiling game of soccer on the Normandy beach after a hard day of setting up blockades and waiting to be shot in the head. It’s the Korean War Movie answer to Top Gun‘s volleyball scene.

Besides the massive dose of sugar this movie didn’t need, everything else is above and beyond excellent. The sports movie aspect, complete with its own cheese, is a fantastic element that puts the two leads on display as competitors who need each other to get better. Fortunately, the movie is also complex enough to realize both the frivolousness of grown men playing a game and the incredible necessity of engaging in something social and aggressive without people being killed. War makes their marathon aspirations both petty and vital. It’s enough to bring every small act into greater focus, and Je-gyu Kang and company never lose sight of that.

Dong-gun Jang and Jo Odagiri are both massive stars in the world of Asian cinema, and they are more than capable here, but the story is the real star. At its heart is the mystery of how two men from East Asia found their way far beyond the western front, and the lifeblood is the continual examination and re-examination of what war does to change good men. For some, it will erase their souls. For others it will fulfill a sense of duty. For most, it will wipe them off the face of the planet.

As hammy as some of its scenes are, Mai-wei is limber and nuanced when it comes to illustrating the break downs and epiphanies that occur when you’ve lost most of your men fighting off ten tanks only to see forty more crest the hill.

Thankfully, the sweetness and hand-holding is left out of the action. If war is hell, this movie is the ninth circle.

That’s important, because the cost of war is high and real, and the production here both understand and honor that. Unfortunately, the movie falls well short of being a masterpiece. With its too-obvious flashbacks to remind the audience of elements that echo each other, and a healthy slice of cheese added to certain segments, the enormity of the powerless (and perhaps pointless) situation that everyone finds themselves in is diminished to a size small enough to fit on the spoon we’re being fed with.

That’s a shame, but it’s still a damned fine movie that is, at times, physically affecting and philosophically challenging. Plus, even if that were stripped away, it’s a classic story about friendship, dedication and sacrifice that’s told on a gorgeous grand scale.

Perfect Sense is a bad, misleading, and laughable title. With the premise and that eye-rolling title, you’d expect it to be a shoddy romantic comedy, one about people coming to love each other when all else goes to hell. “When everyone’s losing their senses, we’re doing something that makes…Perfect Sense! Get it?” Yes, all around cringe-worthy, but, thankfully, the actual film is not.

Set in the magical and wet land of Glasgow, director David Mackenzie‘s chronicles both the multiple destructions and reconstructions of the world and a relationship. Michael (Ewan McGregor) is a charming and scruffy cook who’s lucky enough to have someone who looks like Susan, played by Eva Green, live right next door to his workplace. Both being the two good-looking people that they are, the obvious consequences come about: they fall in love, just as an epidemic begins to eat away at the world.

It’s no real shock in saying the epidemic is a subtext for the transitions that Michael and Susan go through. A relationship involves adaptation, as would an epidemic which diminishes our five sense: smell, taste, touch, sound, and sight. Mackenzie conveys the grand-scale world effects and the love and turmoil between Michael and Susan with a fair amount of subtlety.

Michael and Susan are self-proclaimed and proud assholes, meaning there’s not a large deal of difficult-to-bare bogus sentimentality. Even after the first time the couple sleep together, one of them is kicking the other out of bed, and not because they did anything wrong. They’re relatable cold individuals, not naive romantics.

By the end, they do grow to become romantics, and it’s earned. Green and McGregor are both lovable and seriously flawed as Michael and Susan. When their relationship is going smoothly, it’s impossible not to crack a smile. For the lesser joyous moments between the two, it’s uncomfortable and slightly heart-wrenching.

Mackenzie handles all the emotions with intimacy. As for the grand scale epidemic, it’s shown with a similar amount of realism. How would the world respond to losing their senses? Not as if they’re in a Roland Emmerich movie, but in the way you’d expect them to: by adapting. Despite the absurd premise, Perfect Sense is surprisingly grounded and, at times, poignant.

The Upside: Ewan McGregor and Eva Green are excellent; is effectively sweet and tragic; approaches human’s ability to adapt in both broad and small ways; features a suitably bittersweet ending.

The Downside: There’s a narration crosses the point of grating at times, despite its attempt to show there’s plenty of other beautiful and sad stories going on elsewhere in the world making for an admirable storytelling choice; one loss of sense scene is more comical than horrifying, but maybe that’s the point.

On The Side: Thank God there’s no major “We gotta find a cure!” subplot.

It seems there’s a pervading opinion that children’s entertainment doesn’t have to be good. Any criticism of a work of art intended for the younger members of our society is almost immediately met with cries of “oh come on, it’s just for kids.” It’s a strange form of hypocrisy given that most parents almost always want the best for their kids, except, apparently, when it comes to films. Films seem to get a pass no matter how shitty they may be. But if your kid’s sick and needs a doctor, you want the best possible doctor to treat them. It’s an unfathomable double standard. There should be no shame in demanding better films for youngsters, and, unfortunately, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is not one of those better films.

The film centers on Journey to the Center of the Earth lead Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), who receives a coded message that he randomly decides must be from his long lost grandfather. Despite his hatred for his mother’s new guy, The Rock, the two team up to break the code, which says that Jules Verne’s writing about a place called The Mysterious Island was fact and not fiction. The island exists and so Sean and The Rock take off for the island of Palau to find the so-called mysterious island. They team up with helicopter pilot for hire Luiz Guzman and his pretty daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), who just happens to be about Sean’s age, crash land on the island and find Sean’s grandfather (Michael Caine), who hates The Rock for no reason at all. But they soon discover that the island is a ticking time bomb and they have to find a way off it before it’s too late.

Journey 2 picks up with virtually no mention of Brendan Fraser, who I’m fairly certain was a big part of the first film. Luckily, the sequel is blessed with the presence of Michael Caine, a fantastic actor with no idea what he’s doing in this film. Caine decides to be a complete asshole to The Rock from the moment they meet. There’s some debate as to the cause of this, though it appeared to me as if Caine was a dick to The Rock because he was Sean’s stepfather. Apparently the film wants kids to know that step-parents aren’t real parents and should be hated and have their authority undermined at every turn. In fact, during one of the more mentally painful scenes of the film, Caine actually says the words “you’re not his real dad” as if biological parents are the only ones who should be obeyed. Way to go, Warner Bros., nice moral values you’re espousing for America’s youth!

The film’s near-constant use of CG is frankly terrible, giving the viewer absolutely no sense that the actors were ever riding giant bees or interacting with the graphically created world in any way. For a film that supposedly cost almost $80m to make, it should have at least halfway decent effects. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. As if the CG wasn’t bad enough, the 3D just makes it worse. 3D already separates elements on to different planes which only serves to enhance the unrealistic effectl there’s no dimensionality and having live and CG elements separated out onto different planes just makes it all the more obvious that the CG stuff isn’t real.

To illustrate how woefully inept and irrational the screenplay is, allow me to describe a scene from late in the second act. The Rock has pulled out his scientific gobbledygook to explain how the island is sinking and will be completely underwater in a few days. As the group travels across the island headed for their only means of escape, they find that the volcano that’s recently started erupting is shooting flakes of pure gold in the air. Obssessed with the idea of bringing home pure gold, Sean demands that the group head towards the volcano. The Rock explains that this detour will take them several days out of their way. Sean takes this to mean that The Rock doesn’t want him to have any fun and Michael Caine joins in arguing that Sean should be able to do what he wants. NO ONE SEEMS TO REMEMBER THAT THE ENTIRE FUCKING ISLAND WILL BE UNDERWATER AND THEY WILL ALL DIE IF THEY TAKE A TWO DAY JOURNEY TO GET GOLD FROM THE DAMN VOLCANO! It’s such a frustrating scene to watch, you just want to yell at the screen, or better yet, at the screenwriter for insulting our intelligence like that. And not just the intelligence of the adults in the audience – this is a pretty basic plot hole that the average decently intelligent 7-year-old could grasp.

This film is a pathetic mess of awful CG, ridiculously illogical plot points, and questionable morals that is frankly insulting to adults and kids alike. It manages to to stay somewhat watchable thanks to The Rock’s charisma and sheer force of will, coupled with Luiz Guzman, whose befuddled one-liners as the good-natured fool provide the only genuine laughs not caused by the amazing control The Rock has over his pectoral muscles. Sean and the girl end up together mainly because the script says they’re supposed to and not because of any character arcs or developments which give reason for them to like each other. There are plenty of films aimed at children that don’t assume the children in question are dumb and it’s not asking too much to expect a film to be good regardless of its intended audience. Journey 2 is a failure on nearly every level.

The Upside: The Rock’s charisma and pec-popping, Luiz Guzman’s goofy playfulness.

The Downside: Everything else, especially the CG and Michael Caine’s poorly constructed character.

On the Side: While Journey 2 is supposedly a sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, the book entitled The Mysterious Island was actually a sequel to Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

If Hollywood has taught us anything about the CIA it’s that those bastards really can’t be trusted. The exception to the rule is that the lower the character is on the agency’s totem pole the more honorable and good they’ll most likely be. They’re naive idealists who have yet to be molded by the big, bad world into heartless, morally bankrupt pricks motivated by warped patriotism and self interest.

Which brings us to Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), a low level agent stationed at the same, boring post for the last twelve months. He’s a “housekeeper” at a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, and every day he waits for a coded call alerting him to the imminent arrival of an incoming “guest.” The call finally comes when Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) mysteriously turns himself into the local US embassy after a decade on the run as an ex-agent turned traitor and killer. He’s moved to the safe house and immediately interrogated via water-boarding and harsh language.

But when the inaccurately named safe house is attacked by a gaggle of heavily armed men Weston finds himself tasked with his guest’s safety and on the run from killers both foreign and domestic. The result is a film that offers no surprises in its story or character arcs but still manages to thrill with some stellar action sequences and two talented and charismatic leads. (That’s right. Two.)

“I like this, you and me figuring shit out. Like the Hardy Boys.”

Safe House introduces its two main characters nicely and offers a glimpse into their respective worlds before they collide, but it’s from that point forward that David Guggenheim‘s script loses much of its luster. Weston’s driven to prove himself to superiors who doubt he can handle the situation, but what are the odds he’ll succeed? Frost is trying to escape his captor and pursuers, but is he really as bad as we’ve been led to believe? And who is the real traitor(s) at the CIA? If you still don’t know more than ten minutes after Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, and Sam Shepard appear onscreen then you really need to watch more movies.

It would be worse if the story and twists were dumb and insulting, but that’s not the case here as instead they’re simply uninspired and unsurprising. There’s no effort story-wise to stand out in the genre or offer anything beyond the predictable.

Thankfully, the film has two other elements at play to make up for that lack of creativity. One is a pair of very likeable lead actors. The other is an absolutely thrilling action aesthetic.

Reynolds has found himself in a bit of a slump in recent years and unable to lock onto a role that takes advantage of both his physicality (those abs!) and comedic abilities. Most of his more memorable performances have come in smaller films like Adventureland and The Nines while attempts at action-oriented spectacle (like Green Lantern and Wolverine) have fallen flat. He proves here though that he can handle a sympathetic performance that delivers in brief dramatic scenes and humorous exchanges with Washington while at the same time being a very believable action hero.

Washington (aka “the black Dorian Gray”) meanwhile plays a role that he can almost sleepwalk through at this point. The wise, weathered, and occasionally wicked old pro who’s misunderstood and/or under-estimated by those around him…this is Washington’s most frequently visited wheelhouse. But even if the character doesn’t feel fresh the actor still shines. He can play tired and beaten down, but when he comes to life the screen can’t help but respond in kind.

While the story and character beats are lifeless and dull the action ones are frequent and pretty damn memorable. From a gunfight and car chase near the beginning to some fairly brutal hand to hand combat later on the action scenes are impressive things of beauty. Fair warning though, much of the film is shot in the Bourne or Tony Scott styles meaning lots of cuts and a good amount of shaky cam. With the exception of one early fight I found all of it to be exciting and easy to follow. The film is definitely high energy, and the down-times rarely last long before the next bullet or body is sent flying.

This is director Daniel Espinosa‘s Hollywood debut after catching international attention with his Swedish hit Snabba Cash (aka Easy Money) two years ago. Too often a hotshot director from foreign lands is wooed to America only to completely lose themselves within the Hollywood factory. Think Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (who went from The Lives of Others to The Tourist), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (from The City of Lost Children to Alien Resurrection), or Oliver Hirschbiegel (from Downfall to The Invasion). Happily for both Espinosa and audiences, he’s avoided a similar fate and has instead delivered a fun and energetic thriller.

Safe House never even tries to surprise or outwit the audience and instead offers up the exact revelations and outcomes they expect. That would be enough to sink most films, but Espinosa’s eye for action and the personalities and presence of his two leads overcome the script’s deficiencies handily. We know exactly how things are going to end, but the joy (and some seriously cool action) is in the journey.

The Upside: Washington and Reynolds are charismatic and have great chemistry together; some spectacular action scenes including a car chase, gun fights and brawls; French girlfriend is quite pleasing to the eye.

The Downside: Just about every story and character beat is predictable and obvious; one very smart and capable character makes one ridiculously stupid move.

On the Side: Say what you will about Ryan Reynolds, but the list of actors reportedly considered for the role proves it could have been far worse…think Sam Worthington, Shia LaBeouf, James McAvoy, Taylor Kitsch, Garrett Hedlund, Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, or Jake Gyllenhaal.

Leo (Channing Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams), in many ways, have the ideal life. They are hopelessly in love, happily married, and living in an urban, pseudo-bohemian hipster paradise. She’s an artist, and he runs his own recording studio. One romantically snowy night, the two share a moment in a parked car…an ill-advised decision. A truck plows into them and sends Paige into a coma. When she awakes, she finds her anxiety-riddled husband sitting at her bedside. The trouble is that she can’t remember that they are married or even who he is at all. She is suffering from a severe form of retrograde amnesia in which she can only remember events up the point shortly before she moved to the big city and met Leo. Suddenly her parents, with whom she hadn’t spoken during the course of her relationship with Leo, show up, insisting to take her back home. Leo hopes against hope that his wife will regain her memory of him, their love, and their life together before it all disappears for good.

No critic should ever close his mind to any film simply on the principle that it resides outside of their particular tastes. However, in the interest of full disclosure, romance films (of both the r0m-com and rom-dram varieties) are far from my preferred genre. What tends to balance the scales of objectivity is that I recognize my bias and endeavor to therefore cut these films an added measure of slack as a result.  All I really ask is that the film to at least earnestly attempt to connect with me emotionally without pandering to my tear ducts. For most of its run, Michael Sucsy‘s The Vow did exactly what I asked of it. It was surprisingly heartfelt and emotionally weighty…before it slowly remembered it was a Hollywood rom-dram and reverted to the woeful tropes there contained.

Essentially what The Vow does is to take Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and run it through the studio machine in order to unburden it of much of its complexity. However, it does find a kernel of undeniable sincerity in its stripped down, slightly rearranged form. Instead of a film about two people at the end of a cancerous relationship that started off well willingly removing the memory of said relationship from their consciousness (a la Eternal Sunshine), we get the  arguably more tragic depiction of a blossoming, almost unnaturally strong relationship besieged by cruel fate. It doesn’t force you to digest the more complex questions about the nature of love and predestination, but it does present one very tragic story, based on actual events, that plays like a love-sick version of the tale of Job.

Tatum plays a man experiencing his own personal hell. He’s had the great fortune of finding a true love that completely defines and fulfills him only to have it ripped away from him. Every day he has to try to convince his own wife that she, at one time, loved him all the while existing with a woman who now sees him as a stranger and avoids his touch at every turn. He tries every trigger he can think of, recreating every previously endearing facet of their relationship, in the hopes that the haze will lift and she will be the woman he married again. He has to watch helplessly as she is emotionally manipulated by her parents who are using her amnesia as an opportunity to gloss over the incident that made her come to the city in the first place. And through all of it, he must reconcile his desperation and pain with the fact that this is not her fault and that he must be supportive.

My heart ached for this guy, and much of the credit for that emotional resonance is due to Tatum himself. I can’t say this guy has ever ranked among my favorite actors, or even among actors I particularly enjoy, but I was thoroughly impressed with him in The Vow. He occupies the role with such quiet agony and genuine passion. He manages to sell us on his everyday Joe persona, despite the numerous superfluous shots of his Ken doll abdomen, and yet he displays a disciplined actor’s understanding of goals and expectations, navigating the various levels of the role with great skill. He sits in every emotionally vital moment and fights for every inch of ground he gains with his amnesic beloved. It may just because I am also happily married, and the thought of my wife forgetting me entirely is too much for me to bear, but it crushed me to watch him clutch desperately to his feelings for her even as they ravaged him inside.

Where the movie started to lose me however, and where I feel much of its potential is squandered, is in McAdams’ character. I completely understand that someone suffering from a memory loss such as hers would be living in their own nightmarish situation, constantly confused and even frightened of the foreign people, places, and routines that used to define who they were. I get that this story is as emotionally decimating for her as it is for him. What I don’t understand is why she actively resists Tatum as if he were some sort of troll. They work into the script that she used to be an entirely different person before she met him, and before a certain event changed her perception of her family and her own identity. But until we find out what that event is, we are left with the staggering, black-and-white personality about-face which she seems all too happy to embrace. It makes us wonder how one event could have made her voluntarily leave this life in the first place and whether the car accident at the beginning of the film was the first she had survived. Her grasp of her own self-concept seems so tenuous that we wonder how long it would have been before she had simply lost interest in Leo and forgot about him even without the accident. I mean for crying out loud, she is afraid to go into her own art studio, to acknowledge that could have ever wanted to be an artist at any point in her life. She seems so disgusted by everything to which she used to be attracted as a result of only losing four years of her memory that it muddies the character.

I could have, however, forgiven this issue of character definition if that were The Vow‘s only problem. But as the film moves into its final two acts, all the popular conventions start cropping up like weeds in a garden. There is a love triangle involving Paige’s ex-fiance, there is a scene of Leo playing the guitar to show he’s sad and one of him taking in a stray cat to show that he’s lonely, and there is the pointed condemnation of the upper-class (rich guys = jerks). None of these things feel especially well-earned, in particular the “softer side of Leo” moments which only reiterated what Tatum’s performance had already clearly communicated. Not only that, but we’d also gotten a ham-fisted voice-over narration at the beginning, and again at the end, spelling out exactly how we should be feeling about what we were already seeing on screen. It’s something I really hate in movies of all genres; thanks Mr. Screenwriter, but I don’t need emotional subtitling.

***SPOILER ALERT***

But the worst contrivance is the plot device about the menus on which the couple wrote their titular vows; the reading of which finally makes Paige realize she really did love her husband once. Never mind the mountains of evidence in support of that hypothesis littering the film. The vows are written on the menu for a place called, and I shit you not, Cafe Mnemonic. Yup, as in Cafe Thing That Helps You Remember Stuff. Forget the fact that it’s a terrible, terrible name for an actual cafe, unless the owner were a die-hard Keanu Reeves fan, it’s a plot device so convenient it should be open 24/7 and offer unleaded as well as diesel.

***END SPOILER***

The Upside: All in all, The Vow is a decent rom-dram that could have been exceptional if not for its reliance on convention and weak story elements. Tatum gives one of the best performances of his career, which is not a sentence I expected to write.

The Downside: It shoots itself in the foot with overbearing super-text and uncomfortably familiar tropes.

On the Side: The woman on which this story is based never regained her memory, but remained with her husband.

Madonna’s second directorial effort W.E. has been greeted by a torrent of negativity, with critics assailing her revisionist portrait of the illicit romance between King Edward VIII and the American divorcée Wallis Simpson to the tune of a 14% on the all-powerful Tomatometer. If it’s not quite the unholy mess that the reviews have promised, there’s no question that this is a sloppy, hubristic affair. It looks pretty, with style and eloquence to spare, but it’s perilously over-directed. Apparently the Material Girl never met a random cross-cut, outsized camera movement, or other unneeded flourish that she didn’t like.

That penchant for pristine visuals at any cost is just part of what detracts from the terrific performance by Andrea Riseborough as Simpson, which could have provided the core of a great picture. The British actress has beauty and intelligence to spare, the sort of charismatic movie star screen presence that carries you through the slowest moments. You want to watch her. Unfortunately, Madonna only lets you do so for half of the movie’s rather trying two hours. The rest of the time, we’re stuck with an unnecessary 1998-set corollary to the 1930s-set main action. There, lonely American Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) obsesses over Wallis and Edward, spending all her time at a Sotheby’s auction of their estate.

So we are treated to endless scenes in which Cornish stands still with her eyes shut tied to a tame romance between Wally and security guard Evgeni (Oscar Isaac) and a lot of stupefying ruminations on the broader meaning of the Edward-Simpson romance. The contemporary stuff is so superfluous, and does so little to enhance the meat of the picture, that one wonders if Madonna (who co-wrote the screenplay) intended it as some sort of self-reflexive portrait of her own interest in the real narrative. Otherwise, it’s just pure filler.

The story of the relationship of Edward (James D’Arcy) and Wallis, which spurred a crisis in Britain because of her divorces (among other reasons) and eventually caused Edward’s abdication from the throne, is a fascinating, multilayered one. There’s a fine movie still to be made about it. Madonna’s simply isn’t it.

Further, the filmmaker loses ample credibility by treating her protagonists as martyrs, whitewashing Edward’s almost-certain Nazi sympathizing and other less savory traits. Madonna has compared herself to Simpson, so the unabashed admiration makes sense, but let’s be honest here: Framing a woman who’s most notable for getting married three times as some sort of misunderstood feminist icon is a big stretch.

The Upside: Andrea Riseborough is great and the movie is filled with sumptuous, refined visuals.

The Downside: The 1998-set scenes are completely unnecessary and Madonna over-directs, adding a wealth of superfluous flourishes such as unneeded pans, aggressive camera movements, slow motion and more over-stylized touches. Further, the film stretches credibility in its treatment of the historical characters.

On the Side: The King’s Speech offers a more effectively crafted, honest-seeming treatment of the same events.

Writer-director Oren Moverman’s terrific feature debut, The Messenger, was about trying not to deal with grief, while his character-driven “cop” drama, Rampart, is about attempting to not deal with everything. The lead of the film, Dave Brown, rejects change in a major time of change. Despite Moverman using his latest film to track a far more morally corrupted character than he previously dealt with in Messenger, he still shows the same measure of empathy, making Rampart a fascinating character study.

The film follows Woody Harrelson‘s Dave Brown, as he confronts both a new time and a new way of life. Brown, a former soldier who sees himself as something of a man’s man, is unwilling to get with the times. With the true-life Rampart scandals serving as motivation, the LAPD is making major changes – ones that Brown won’t (or can’t) go along with. The cop is a sickly, paranoia-driven enigma who (forgive the cheesy as all hell expression) plays by his own nonexistent rules. Dave is stubborn, racist, fearful, and believes that he’s someone important enough to be spied on. He’s a real bastard.

Harrelson, in a tremendous performance, makes one feel something for this narcissistic bastard, though. The character’s pain and fears are easily grasped and understood. The only part of Brown’s life that he doesn’t think is in ruins is his family, which he couldn’t be more wrong about. Everything Dave touches turns to turmoil. He causes physical pain with his work and emotional pain with his family. Whether Dave knows he’s a terrible cop is unknown, but he doesn’t know he’s a bad father. He wants to keep his two lives separate, but they’re both in the same state. How both his family and work life got to that place of damage is left unanswered, as well are most of the questions the film poses.

Even stylistically Moverman always allows the camera to reflect Dave Brown’s state of mind, albeit to varying effects. With the possible exception of one scene, the camera is never on a tripod, is always on the move, and even the color palette is as overbearing as Brown. When the camera isn’t up close and abrasive, it’s at a far distance, representing Dave’s paranoia. While Moverman was more observant with The Messenger, the director took a more aggressive and dirty approach to capturing Brown, and sometimes that style becomes too apparent. However, even when some Moverman’s camerawork doesn’t hit the mark, at least he’s always taking admirable chances.

I’ve seen Rampart three times now, and it’s a film that gets progressively richer. The first viewing made me have admiration for Moverman’s intentions, while not being all-around satisfied. But it wasn’t until my third viewing where I was completely sucked into the filmmaker’s very flawed, but powerful portrait of a seriously damaged, both internally and externally, man.

The Upside: Woody Harrelson gives a tremendous performance; Moverman doesn’t use any trite genre conventions; many questions are thankfully left answered; a memorably atmospheric score; delivers an emotional and thought-provoking punch.

The Downside: Some of the camerawork, which generally paints Dave’s view of the world perfectly, calls attention to itself once or twice.

On The Side: Dave Brown is not the most corrupt cop you’ll ever see, but he’s unquestionably one of the most human.

The realm of 18th century France is a dusty one. Period dramas, especially lofty costume dramas, are so numerous that you can barely toss a powdered wig without hitting one. With Farewell, My Queen (Les Adieux à la Reine), writer/director Benoît Jacquot tears off the wig, pulls down the drapes and sets fire to both.

The wonderfully un-stuffy film stars and is told through the eyes of Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who acts as a cipher for the manic last few days of Marie Antoinette’s (Diane Kruger) reign in the late 1700s. It’s Laborde’s story, meaning it’s the story of a voyeur who watches from doorjambs as the business of being extravagantly wealthy and powerful becomes not only meaningless, but fatal.

The vantage point is a bold angle that comes with its own set of challenges. Instead of following the leader, it makes Versailles an insular cocoon where rumors float down candle-lit hallways on sleepless nights and the people trapped by their own excess are revealed more through reaction than action. Yes, it’s a challenge, but it’s one that Jacquot and company handle with something close to greatness.

If the perspective is one reason this film bucks the period trend, its pacing and aggressive nature are real reasons to praise it. This is no dry wheeze where polite society hems and yawns through subtext and things unspoken. It’s direct. It’s nasty. Beyond forcing the main perspective and anchor into the lower class, it pivots off of a vision of perfection that is rarely seen. Opulence is hard to take seriously when it demands that dozens of loudly-dressed patrons shuffle-run down the hall in order to appear poised and proper like statues who have always stood in the place where the King and Queen are about to emerge.

It’s a desperate awkwardness born from trying to force things to appear a certain way. Instead of being played for laughs, it’s more often played for pity.

On the acting front, Seydoux makes it all look easy. She’s cunning and clever, but she’s appropriately weighed down by her station. She has the intricate task of existing not as a true main character, but as the character that’s onscreen the most. Even though she’s a constant presence, the story seems to happen around her as she observes and acts accordingly. It’s a steamy essence that she brings to everything, and her crisp slyness rings throughout.

However, even with stunted screen time, it’s Kruger that radiates the most here. She’s so strong a force that Antoinette is in every room and thought without being seen. Kruger doesn’t play her as an uncaring hammer – she creates a monarch that’s sometimes childlike and fearful behind the shrewd wielding of her influence and position.

When the two are together, there’s a strand of tension tied tightly between them, and they (and all women in the film) seem to play each conversation as if a fight or a passionate kiss is about to erupt. That subtle, semi-violent sexuality hangs on the coattails of each scene – used for both titillation, drama and insecurity.

Sadly, the movie falls off its pedestal for two reasons. For one, Jacquot (and/or his cinematographer Romain Winding) approach the camera work like a fidgeting little child tugging on his mother’s dress in church. It’s as if they received a shot-style-of-the-day calendar and just had to use it. The best segments come when the director calms down and lets the dialogue move on its own. The lack of cohesion is irritating, but why it shifts back and forth from steady to handheld is baffling. No matter the answer, it injures the overall product and gives the appearance that Jacquot had the camera move simply because he didn’t know what else to do while people were engrossed in long bouts of talking.

For two, a handful of the scenes feel staged and overly produced. There’s a false-feeling choreography to some of it that tends to value a poetic movement of people over something that would feel more natural – especially considering how organic the core of the story emerges.

The damage is there, but the movie is still a fantastic piece of period work that doesn’t follow any of the rules that make costume dramas so drab and dull. It’s innovative without being crudely rebellious, and the acting on display is formidable and incendiary. It goes without saying that the production design, make-up and costuming is strong – that’s the very least a film like this can do. What’s really magical about Farewell, My Queen is that it gives the audience something to do other than stare at the scenery. It’s thrilling. A rare example of something antique feeling genuinely brand new.

Complete Berlinale Coverage

You may have heard the song “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang (“I said a hip hop, a hippie, a hippie to the hip hop”), but what you might not know is this song helped hip hop break into the mainstream and helped a genre that, up until that point had been brushed off as a fad, start to take root in our musical history. Even though the group was changing the face (and sound) of the music industry, The Sugarhill Gang found themselves on top of the charts with barely a dime to their name. While this is not the first time we have heard stories of talent swindled by shady and greedy record executives, the story of the Sugarhill Gang is not just about losing money, it is about having their name and the true identity of the band member’s themselves stolen from them.

The Sugarhill Gang was originally made up of Wonder Mike (Michael Wright), Master Gee (Guy O’Brien), and Big Bank Hank (Henry Jackson), a trio that was put together by Sylvia Robinson who, along with her husband Joe Robinson, ran Sugar Hill Records and released the group’s first single, “Rapper’s Delight.” While the track climbed the charts and the fame and popularity of The Sugarhill Gang grew, the three members continued to find themselves broke as the Robinsons got richer.

Eventually Wonder Mike and Master Gee had enough of being stuck in a situation that was clearly making those “in charge” rich while they were left with almost nothing and left the group (and the music industry) while Jackson stayed. After the exit of O’Brien, the Robinson’s son, Joey Jr., began performing as Master Gee and not only began claiming he was the original Master Gee, he went so far as to copyright The Sugarhill Gang’s name and Wonder Mike and Master Gee’s individual names as well. I Want My Name Back follows Wright and O’Brien as they work to get back into the industry and find themselves faced with legal issues and threats that they are not who they claim to be.

Told through interviews with various legends and names in the industry, I Want My Name Back shows Wright and O’Brien as they try to not only move forward with their careers (and their names), but also attempt to right musical history. The film works in not only telling the true history of one of the industry’s most noted hip hop groups, but does so in a way that is almost baffling as it shows how blatantly some have tried to rewrite that history. While director Roger Paradiso is a bit bumpy in his documentary style, I Want My Name Back succeeds in taking viewers through the group’s first meeting and shows how everything that happened after that moment not only changed the face of hip hop, but these artist’s lives as well.

Part cautionary tale, part inspirational story, I Want My Name Back proves that talent and creativity can end up meaning very little in a business that works to sell (more than create) music, but those who create music out of their love of the art may end up being truly richer in the end.

The Upside: An interesting, frustrating and important look at the true birth of hip hop and who actually created the rhymes that brought rap to the mainstream while never losing the positive and hopeful message of the original Sugarhill Gang.

The Downside: Filmed in a slightly awkward documentary style with quick cuts between interviews and on screen information, along an almost monotone narration from former Sugar Hill Records employee Tony Rome, the style ended up being more distracting than helpful when attempting to move the story along.

On The Side: Adding insult to injury, while Wright and O’Brien each wrote their rhymes in “Rapper’s Delight,” Jackson’s verses were stolen from Grandmaster Caz (known then as Casanova Fly) as proven from his opening verse in the song stating, “I’m the C-A-S-A-N-O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y.” Not to mention the fact that the track itself sampled (and did not originally pay credit to) “Good Times” by Chic.

People love a good scary story and some of the oldest tales on record are stories of ghosts, spirits, and specters cursed to walk the earth haunting the living and wreaking havoc as revenge for some terrible wrong they suffered while alive. Told well, these stories can make spine-tingling and terrifying films. The Woman in Black is a classic ghost story made with style and filled with tense atmosphere and chilling imagery.

Daniel Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps, a down-on-his-luck young barrister who has been devastated by the death of his wife during the birth of his son. His work has continued to suffer and his law firm gives him what is essentially his last shot, wrapping up the legal affairs of an elderly widow who has recently died in a small town out in the countryside. Kipps takes the job, having no other options, and travels to Crythin to settle the affairs of one Alice Drablow, who just so happened to live in a huge old mansion called Eel Marsh House, located on a small island accessible from only one road and only when the tide is low enough to cross it. Kipps is immediately struck by the severe xenophobia of the townspeople. They are clearly living in fear, but of what Arthur won’t know until he spends a night in Eel Marsh and first encounters the Woman in Black.

The first scene that features the titular ghost is perhaps the most unnerving of all. Three little girls sit in a finished attic having tea time with their dolls, while shots of invisible tea being poured into china cups in slow motion turn to close-ups of the porcelain dolls’ faces. The girls are laughing and playing, yet they and suddenly stop on a dime, as if a bell has rung and it’s dinner time. Only instead of heading downstairs, the girls drop their cups and step on their dolls as they walk trance-like towards the three windows set into the wall of the attic. We see them each unlock their individual window simultaneously as if choreographed. In the reverse shot we see the Woman in Black  in the corner of the room like a silent, motionless puppet master. Powerless to stop them, the audience can only watch as the girls step onto the ledge and jump to their inevitable deaths. It’s truly disturbing and sets the perfect tone for the rest of the film.

The Woman in Black is part of the recent resurgence of venerable British studio, Hammer Films. Hammer made their mark in the 60s and 70s by casting Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in films about the classic Universal monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and their ilk. While those were certainly some of the most recognizable of their productions, Hammer also did plenty of general horror films, lots of vampire and werewolf films that weren’t necessarily based on anything except the generally established mythology. The Woman in Black is a film that calls back to the heyday of Hammer Films as a period peace set in a small, sleepy British town besieged by an unspeakable evil. It’s a great way to continue the legacy of one of the finest horror movie studios to ever roll film.

Though the film is a solid work, there is potential carryover from its star’s most well-known franchise that sometimes proves distracting; Radcliffe just looks so young that it seemed odd to picture him as a father and husband. His short stature when compared to other actors in scenes and his baby face give him the youthful appearance of a kid playing dress-up. However, physical attributes aside, and whether or not you buy him as an adult are relatively minor issues in the grand scheme of the film, downplayed by Radcliffe’s performance in the lead role. He plays both curious and scared with equal aplomb and any thoughts of his previous character from his most famous role are banished in the first few scenes. He anchors the film, unraveling the events of the past while enduring most of the jump scares.

The Woman in Black plays like a Gothic fairytale, the type of urban legend you might hear around a fire at summer camp as a kid. The story is well-told, the characters are well-acted, and the chills are well-earned. Radcliffe is surprisingly good, and the film’s supporting cast is bolstered by Ciarin Hinds, who is fantastic as always. While there may be one too many jump scares for the film’s own good, they never feel cheap or like director James Watkins was screaming “boo!” at the audience. The film feels respectful to the Hammer legacy, while also breaking new ground for the classic British studio. Ultimately, The Woman in Black s an entertaining ghost story with a fair bit of old-fashioned flair.

The Upside: Creepy atmosphere and solid chills coupled with a well-told story make for an entertaining film.

The Downside: There seems to be a slight over-reliance on jump scares, even though they were mostly well-done. There are slight believability issues with Radcliffe in his role.

On the Side: The film is based on a 1983 novel by Susan Hill. It was turned into a stage play soon thereafter and saw a previous filmed incarnation as a TV movie in 1989.

I love sushi. Not just the taste, but the overall experience. For me, sushi is an event – there is ceremony, pageantry, and tradition that I love and respect but know is beyond me historically. It is the only eating experience that, when I receive what will always be a rather expensive bill, I’m not even sort of guilty. To me, that would be the equivalent of feeling bad for paying to see fine art, or an amazing live show.

In many ways I consider myself a sushi purist; I avoid rolls with sauces and tempura-covered-whatever, and you can kindly spare me the cream cheese. Nigiri and sashimi are my presentations of choice, and I never stray. One of the vital things, to me, about the sushi experience is giving deference to the sushi chef. When I was in Japan many years ago in a hole-in-the-wall sushi restaurant with six seats, I was set straight by the not-so-jolly chef behind the immaculately clean counter. Everything was made clear via pantomime, but I gathered quickly what sushi etiquette was all about. He did not offer soy sauce, or wasabi, and I wasn’t allowed to point at anything  in request. He took my cash before seating me, and began serving whatever he so desired – and it was heavenly. Before I stood to leave he raised his eyebrows inquisitively – I enthusiastically nodded my thanks, at which point he produced a barely-friendly grunt and stepped away through the kitchen door.

A master sushi chef reads you, and deciphers your palate. He knows just how much salt, sweet, and hot to combine in that small, single-bite piece of art. To me, there is no greater experience in cuisine – and Jiro Ono is the pinnacle of what that experience can be. David Gelb‘s Jiro Dreams of Sushi is much more than a documentary about food – it is the story of a deeply cherished career that colors a generation of men in one family, with the uneasy prospect that our treatment of the finite resource that is fish may ensure that the tradition of creating shokunin (the master sushi chef) will die with the dwindling catches.

Jiro Ono is eighty-five, the oldest chef to have been awarded the coveted Michelin Guide’s three star rating, all from his simple, ten seat sushi restaurant in a Tokyo subway station. In a career where apprenticeships commonly last many decades and competition between restaurants is fierce, Jiro’s seventy-five year legacy of striving for perfection is impressive. In the long shadow of Jiro stands his eldest son, Yoshikazu. While his younger brother, Takashi, was able to depart Tokyo and start his own sushi restaurant, tradition dictates that Yoshikazu succeed his father and carry on his legacy – a legacy which Jiro feels he still has much to improve upon.

The care shown the food, from close relationships with expert vendors in the famous Japanese fish markets, to Jiro’s precise instructions and preparation once the ingredients have reached his kitchen, are interesting on their own. This very well could simply be a film about the delicacy and expertise with which Jiro, his son, and the young apprentices that work for them prepare what is considered the best sushi in the world. What elevates the film, however, is what his passion meant in the scheme of his relationships, and the source of his drive. Jiro departed home at nine, developing a fierce drive to succeed and a love for his craft. This love made him a stranger to the two boys that would eventually follow in their father’s footsteps.

Yoshikazu and Jiro have a very unique dynamic; one that plays out on the screen in subtle but powerful ways. A self-admitted absentee father, there are small cracks of what seem like regret dominated by a clear pride in what he built, and his expectations of what Yoshikazu will accomplish once he is gone. Yoshikazu clearly respects and reveres his father, but there is a looming cloud in what Jiro’s passing might mean for his future. Many Japanese restaurants live and die by the reputation and presence of their founders; it is established early on that not only will Yoshikazu be expected to hold to the exceptionally high standards of his father, but greatly surpass his skills to create a name for himself. It’s almost sad as a viewer knowing that the fifty-plus year old Yoshikazu would have to prove himself at all, being every bit the master sushi chef himself.

Touched on in a delicate but firm manner, is the subject of over-fishing. The family reflects on the worrisome changes in the commercialization of the fishing industry, and the diminishing returns they are seeing in their own as a result. While the Japanese are often painted as indifferent and often aggressive  with their relationship to the sea and its resources, Jiro, his sons, and the vendors they entrust with their reputation for greatness all communicate a sense of urgency in promoting moderation and sustainable fishing practices.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi sits atop my viewing list thus far here at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. It’s beautiful, insightful, will absolutely make you hungry, and has a a depth and character that is undeniable. David Gelb has a winner.

The Upside: Visually pleasing, very personal, and well edited – Gelb lets Jiro and those around him tell the story with their craft as much as their words.

The Downside: It’s highly unlikely I’ll be in Ginza anytime soon. This is an incredible bummer.

On the Side: The greatest drunken (legal) crime you can commit, past perhaps taking your pants off and crying at a party, is eating convenience store sushi. Be kind to yourself.

Dustin Hucks writes for Film School Rejects, has written for Ain’t it Cool News, Hit Fix, and can additionally be found at the Metacafe Entertainment Network.

Found footage films are often called (by me at least) the new 3D for a few reasons. They’re clearly enjoying a surge similar to the one enjoyed by 3D films for the past couple years. They’re cropping up in a handful of different genres. They’re almost never an integral or relevant element of the film’s narrative.

And most filmmakers who employ the technique have no goddamn clue how to make it work.

Which brings us to the fun albeit cliched and otherwise entertaining Chronicle.

“The camera needs to stay on for our investigation.”

Andrew (Dane DeHaan) is somewhat of an outcast at school, but the bullying and harassment is still a welcome relief from the abusive father and mother on her cancerous deathbed at home. His cousin, Matt (Alex Russell), is one of the few bright spots as he makes an effort to hang out with Andrew and help him assimilate into high school. Both of them rank far down on the pecking order though when compared with Steve (Michael B. Jordan) who just may be the most popular kid in school. The three of them bond one drunken and curious night when they discover a cave in the woods with a mysterious object inside. Lights, sparks and general confusion give way to the three teens discovering some startling new abilities.

They can manipulate physical objects with their mind. In short, their telekinesis eventually leads to being able to lift, throw and crush items as big as a car. And once they discover that their own bodies are simply objects they begin to master the art of flight as well. But with great power comes, well, you know, and a reflexive act of aggression by Andrew leads to the boys setting ground rules. Don’t use the powers in public, don’t use them on living creatures and don’t use them when you’re angry.

It doesn’t take someone who’s actually seen the movie to see what’s coming next, and soon Andrew’s sadness and rage mix to volatile and deadly effect.

Chronicle is essentially a Carrie-inspired, teenage riff on M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable complete with high school dramas and a catering toward shorter attention spans. We’re witness to an origin story of both hero and potential villain and an ideological clash of comic book proportions.

The first two thirds feature a surprising amount of character work, and even if the results are predictable and lacking in any degree of originality the effort is still a pleasant surprise. The three leads all do well in their roles and show real personality in scenes both comedic and dramatic even if their characters don’t always act the way you’d expect. I can buy that none of them rush out and start saving lives, but one leaf blower gag aside there aren’t even any Zapped-style moments of bikini tops popping off or cameras floating into the girls’ locker room. That may just be the most unbelievable aspect of the entire film.

There’s a brief scene at a party where the possibility is teased that the story is going to buck cliches with a fresh and bold turn of events, but it’s quickly dropped in favor the obvious. But as unoriginal as the script events are they lead nicely into a third act that entertains and excites with larger scale action, well crafted special effects and a darker edge that’s both welcome and appreciated. At ninety minutes the movie never drags or bores, and once the big battle begins time flies alongside the characters and miscellaneous objects onscreen.

Were this a standard, gimmick-free film the review could essentially end here, but for some reason director Josh Trank and writer Max Landis decided their debut feature should be in the found footage format. Some films manage to make that into a naturally explained positive, with Rec being the finest example. That film featured a news crew filming and lighting the way with a camera, so it made sense as well as heightened several of the film’s scares.

Chronicle‘s use of the format accomplishes nothing aside from annoyance and a very clear disregard for logic. Andrew decides early on to film the events, and the script’s one cool trick is how it gets around the use of his camera through several scenes. But there’s also a girl who exists for no reason aside from having another camera in the mix as she shows up periodically filming everything for no good reason. She even pulls a Cloverfield by occasionally focusing the camera on Matt while helicopters are crashing around them or they’re being thrown through the air. And don’t get me started on the number of times edits are made to the video but the audio stays continuously in sync.

Nitpicking at its execution aside, there’s no real purpose for the found footage angle. Who assembled the footage from all of these disparate sources (including security cameras, cell phones and police car cams) and why? It doesn’t fit the “police evidence” explanation used by the Paranormal Activity films, and it’s not presented as a record compiled by a specific individual. The only purpose it serves is to the title.

It’s a minor shame the film went that route as the characters, narrative and overall execution are all part of an otherwise enjoyable piece of popcorn entertainment. It’s fantastic to see new filmmakers working with a small budget turn out a product that’s as exciting and fun as Chronicle, but I just wish they had resisted the urge to pander to trends. See the movie, shrug off the ill conceived found footage aspect and you’ll have a good time at the movies.

The Upside: Fun and creative effects; third act is exciting and filled with aggressive action.

The Downside: Found footage angle is pointless and at times nonsensical; script is predictable and offers no surprises with its characters; no footage of trio discovering their ability seems odd.

On the Side: Max Landis is currently writing a script based on a book by Max Brooks for a film that will be directed by Jason Reitman and most likely star Colin Hanks. (This is not true, but someone should make it happen.)

We are told early on in Big Miracle that “everybody loves whales!” It’s both an excuse and a rallying cry and, had Ken Kwapis‘ film stuck with its first moniker, it would have also been the title of his latest film. Someone apparently had the foresight to slay that terrible name, but it’s still managed to worm its way into the finished feature, where it’s pronounced earnestly, practically begging for its audience to nod and say, “yep, it’s true – just everybody loves whales.” Strangely enough, it’s that tossed-aside title that sums up Big Miracle quite neatly – earnest, insane, and conducive to crowd participation and (positive) involvement.

The film ostensibly centers on local television reporter Adam Carlson (John Krasinski), who has been tasked with spending time in various locales around the state in order to craft colorful pieces about Alaskan life. Adam is just about to finish his stint in Barrow, which is a good thing, as material is running scarily thin (his latest piece is about the town’s sole Mexican restaurant, a spot that, bizarrely enough, becomes of the film’s primary locations). While attempting to gather more material with his best pal, Inuit tweenager Nathan (while how the odd couple became pals is never explained, their bromance is actually sort of sweet), Adam stumbles upon the biggest story of his career – a family of whales trapped in the growing ice, miles from open sea, in desperate need of some kind of rescue. Adam’s inevitable news piece on the situation steadily gathers interest across the country, and soon tiny Barrow is deluged with all manner of people looking to get in on the action (oh, and maybe to save the whales).

While that story may sound simple enough, Big Miracle is about twenty times more complicated and convoluted than it initially reads. Barrow becomes ground zero for an ungodly amount of people and interests – best exemplified by the film’s leading ladies, who show up to serve as both love interests to Adam and as representatives of diametrically opposed interests in the context of the whales. Drew Barrymore plays her usual brand of cockeyed optimist, Greenpeace zealot Rachel Kramer, who continually appears to be the one person genuinely concerned with the actual well-being of whales, while Kristen Bell‘s Jill Jerard is a big-haired television reporter from Los Angeles who just wants to land a good story.

In addition to the environmentalists and the journalists, Big Miracle is also overrun with big oil, the government at large, the local Inuit population, the military, the town’s inhabitants, and even a couple of out-of-state yokels who show up to save the day on their own terms. Despite the built-in drama of animals and peril and the dueling interests of a whole cast of nutbars, Big Miracle is virtually without conflict. Of course, there is the appearance of conflict – will big bad oilman J.W. McGraw (Ted Danson) do the right thing, will the Inuits back off from their plan to harvest the whales, will those cute little schoolchildren who are repeatedly shown watching the entire thing unfold via television ever recover from such drama? Go ahead and guess. But amidst the film’s adherence to tossing together people, places, ideas, philosophies, and plans and mistaking the whole stew for an actually well-crafted movie, Big Miracle accomplishes something wholly unexpected – it is almost unfathomably entertaining and engaging. It’s ludicrous and more than a bit strange, but it’s also very sweet, quite well-intentioned, and consistently charming. It may even be deserving of that oft-used slice of poster art: “crowd-pleasing.”

Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Big Miracle could make even less sense than it already does (which is to say, not a whole damn lot), because the film is (incredibly enough) based on a true story. Even more incredibly enough, Big Miracle actually sticks to a number of facts while telling its true story; “Operation Breakthrough” did take place in 1988, three whales were trapped in the Beaufort Sea, a barge was initially dispatched from Prudhoe Bay to break the ice, and Soviet Union icebreakers were called in to assist (in reality, two icebreakers were involved). See? There is some truth amidst the vast sea of insanity that Big Miracle swims in.

The Upside: Watchable to the point of compulsion, Big Miracle manages to hit just about every emotional trigger an audience could possibly possess without any real sense of stakes or conflict. By and large, it’s entertaining, predictable, and easy.

The Downside: Goshwhaleit, the film’s downside is pretty much exactly the same as its upside. Sheesh.

On the Side: Stick around for the credits to see proof positive that one of the film’s most hard to buy sub-plots is legitimately based on fact.

Editor’s note: This review was originally published as part of our SXSW 2011 coverage on March 15, 2011. But, just like another stand-out horror flick from that festival (look down!), we’re bumping this baby back up to remind all of you dear readers that the film is finally hitting limited theaters this Friday, February 3.

Some films send their characters to hell and back, but few do so with the genre-bending, mind-fucking intensity of Kill List. Equal parts drama, thriller, and horror, the movie takes both characters and viewers on a hellish descent down the bloody rabbit hole with stops along the way for mystery, murder, and flesh-busting madness.

Jay (Neil Maskell) has been out of work for eight months, and his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) is not about to let him forget it. They fight constantly about finances pausing periodically to assure their young son that mommy and daddy still love each other before returning to the fray. Jay’s friend Gal (Michael Smiley) comes over for dinner along with his new girlfriend, Fiona (Emma Fryer), and the four spend a raucous night of laughs and alcohol punctuated with an ugly and awkward outburst between the feuding couple.

It should be noted that Jay’s past career was that of a hit-man, and when Gal offers him the opportunity to get back into the game he jumps at the chance. The two of them partner up on an assignment for a mysterious client who slowly doles out their targets one at a time. As the hits progress so does Jay’s increasing blood-lust and desire to inflict pain, and soon the act of killing becomes less of a job and more an act of sadistic righteousness.

Trust me when I say that you have never seen a hammer used as effectively, cruelly, and beautifully as you will here. Seriously, prepare to wince.

Writer/director Ben Wheatley‘s follow-up to his blackly comic and violent debut, Down Terrace, is three films in one. And all three work in perfect unison. What starts as a domestic drama grows into a violent hit-man thriller before finally morphing into…something else. There’s no twist here, but the third act explodes into such pure, unrestrained madness that going into it blind is the preferred method of entry.

There are some laughs to be found between the two friends and a sweetness apparent between Jay and his son, but this is far from lightweight entertainment. Domestic clashes and increasingly messy murders are soon eclipsed by an insane third act that among other delights features a scene in a tunnel that rivals the best horror films for sheer tension and terror.

Wheatley’s script playfully places odd but brief bits throughout the film’s first two acts when everything else is relatively normal. Fiona visits the bathroom during the dinner party, removes a mirror from the wall, and carves a strange symbol onto the back before replacing it. One of targets on Jay’s hit list seems to recognize him with a smile before he’s shot dead while another tells him “thank you” after each bloody blow. Viewers are as in the dark as Jay himself, but the answers are right around the corner. By way of that terrifying tunnel and some freaky woods…

In addition to the darkly intentional script and atmospheric direction the movie’s success is due in large part to the two lead performances. Maskell moves flawlessly from a man forced to endure verbal emasculation by his wife to someone who rediscovers the lost joy of mutilation and torture. (The journey between them isn’t as long of one as you’d think.) He also finds humanity in his character through several scenes with his son. Smiley is also quite good and provides most of the film’s limited humor through his warmth and wit.

Kill List is sure to lose some folks in the ambitious and surprising home stretch, but if you stay with it and place your trust in Wheatley’s blood-stained hands the reward is a twisted ride towards some intense and unsettling entertainment.

The Upside: Fantastic structure; strong performances; script weaves small mysteries throughout first two-thirds before everything goes to hell (in a good way (for the viewers, not the characters)); musical score ratchets up the tension.

The Downside: May be too ambiguous at times for some viewers.

Editor’s note: This review was originally published as part of our SXSW 2011 coverage on March 17, 2011. We’re bumping this baby back up to remind all of you dear readers that the film is finally hitting limited theaters this Friday, February 3.

Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) do not have what you might call glamorous jobs. They manage the front desk at the oldest hotel in town that just happens to be closing its doors forever. These unflappable, amateur paranormal investigators decide that their last hurrah will involve drinking beer and capturing definitive proof that this tiny little inn is indeed haunted. But when a washed up actress-turned psychic checks into the hotel, she becomes convinced that the novel little pastime these two share may end up being their undoing. I don’t know, I’ve had worse jobs.

I really enjoyed The Innkeepers. It’s a very basic horror film that actually benefits as much from its comedic elements as it does its frights. The crux of the film is the relationship between Sara Paxton and Pat Healy who play the desk clerks at the failed Yankee Peddler Inn. I had a blast with these two wannabe ghost hunters. Their dry back-and-forth fosters some fantastic laughs. The dialogue batted between them is very genuine which is both a compliment and a criticism; it’s genuine to a fault. Occasionally, though not often, the lines ring true but un-cinematic in a way that makes them flat and dull. It’s a strange thing for which to fault a writer but it gave the film an almost made-for-TV quality at times that undermines both the effective comedic moments and the horrific moments.

What I appreciated wholeheartedly about the horror elements of the film is the antithetical position taken toward jump scares. There are some surprising moments that catch you off guard, but no frame is constructed in such a way as to allow specters to leap between you and the action on screen in a cheap effort to confuse or startle with legitimate fright. Director Ti West wears his sardonic perspective on jump scares on his sleeve as he incorporates playful jabs at the horrendously trite convention. The final shot of the movie is not only a call back to an earlier gag, but rather a mouthpiece for West’s firm position against jump scares. On the contrary, the scares in The Innkeepers are rooted in visually haunting imagery that is thankfully on screen long enough to be appreciated and not coupled with clangs, bangs, and shrieks. There are images that will unnerve you in both their content and the time they are allowed to occupy your perception. I won’t say more for fear of spoilers.

The one carryover from House of the Devil that manages to find purchase in The Innkeepers is the extensive manner in which Ti West photographs his sets. Much like the house in House of the Devil, the inn in The Innkeepers seems to expand ad infinitum as every hallway, every closed door, and every tunnel in the basement becomes its own apparition. The cinematography, much like in House of the Devil, adopts methods to keep the inn itself visually interesting. One particular shot that worked remarkably well involved a girl running from the start of one hallway to the end of another. With the way in which it’s framed, it looks like she’s running along the edge of an enormous ‘V’ and is wonderfully disorienting.

The one qualm I have with the way The Innkeepers is shot is the lighting. It’s almost as if the lighting designer cranked up the set lights in order to replicate the appearance of fluorescent bulbs. It makes the film look washed out and contributes to that previously mentioned made-for-TV quality. What was so phenomenal about House of the Devil is the way in which the house felt sinister from the moment she walked in, which is what garnered a sense of foreboding that carried the audience through a minimalist plot. Much of that was due to how it was shot, but also how it was lit; shadowy and mysterious. And while I’m aware that a good portion of The Innkeepers takes place during the day whereas House of the Devil was almost entirely shot at night, I just wish the daylight scenes didn’t look so bland.

The Upside: Genuinely funny at times, terribly frightening when it needs to be and bold enough to reject jump scares.

The Downside: Some of the dialogue is naturalistic to the point of being overly ordinary and the lighting design leaves much to be desired.

Film is a powerful medium, and the best ones can make you feel strongly one way or the other about fictional characters and their make-believe lives. These people exist only on the screen, and yet we can feel joy, fear, love, hatred and so much more for them as if they were living and breathing beside us. Most movies never accomplish this feat.

And Sleeping Beauty is no different.

Instead Julia Leigh‘s debut film manages something decidedly unique. The lead character is passive, bland and as emotionally inspiring as a wash cloth, but the actress who plays her? You just may find yourself feeling bad, embarrassed and fearful for her.

Lucy (Emily Browning) is a college student like many others. She attends class during the day and at night works in a restaurant or office and occasionally volunteers for paid medical experiments. Sure, some nights she heads to swanky bars to do lines of coke with Asian women in the bathroom, but mostly she works hard. It never seems to be enough though as she’s always behind in her rent and at risk of being booted out by her roommates.

Until she responds to an ad for a silver service waitress to work private parties. The interview is brief but invasive, and it comes with two warnings. Don’t make a career of this. And indiscretion will not be tolerated.

“Your vagina will never be penetrated. Your vagina is a temple.”

After an interview that includes being felt up in her underwear Lucy reports for her first assignment. She strips down to her lacy underthings and joins a group of women in pointless lingerie. (When the breasts, vagina and ass are visible what’s the point in wearing any strips of fabric at all?) They serve dinner and drinks to a group of grey-haired men (and one probable old lesbian), and Lucy is sent home cash in hand. If it sounds sexy I apologize… think the party scenes from Eyes Wide Shut but with far less attractive women and you’ll have an idea how dull it actually is.

Easy money for playing a scantily clad waitress, but the woman in charge calls her and ups the ante for her next job. Clara (Rachael Blake) invites Lucy to her house and offers her a drugged cup of tea to knock her out for the next few hours. If she agrees, her unconscious and nude form will be placed in a luxurious bed to sleep it off… while a high-paying client gets to do anything he wants to her.

Except penetration of course.

That’s the film’s first act, and what follows are a series of creepy and odd interludes featuring old men stripping down to their wrinkly and sagging birthday suits before climbing into bed with the equally nude Lucy. Some caress her, others berate her, and so it goes. None of the men offer up enough to be considered as real characters in their own right aside from their obvious sadness, desire or anger. Lucy, and by extension Browning, is nothing more than a prop in these scenes, and while that makes some sense in the context of these men’s needs it’s difficult to justify and come to terms with poor Browning’s situation.

In between we’re introduced to Lucy’s friend (?) Birdman, who may be agoraphobic and/or deathly ill. It’s difficult to tell. It’s clear he loves her, but her reciprocity is in doubt. Lucy’s a blank slate through so much of the movie whether she’s unconscious or not, and her muted emotions combined with illogical actions keep her distant from the viewer. She runs around earning money for rent, but then burns the cash. She signs on for abuses she never comprehends and swallows drugs before their effects have been explained. Her aimlessness translates into pointlessness for the viewer.

The film’s best scene also happens to be the only one where Lucy shows real humanity. It’s a tender moment on a train where she sees a woman sleeping in her seat against the window. Lucy moves beside her to watch and perhaps see what she herself looks like while in that bedroom of perversions, and when she notices a small bit of drool on the woman’s lips she wipes it gently away. It’s a curiosity, kindness and awareness sadly missing from the rest of the film.

Browning does a fine job with what she’s given, but it’s hard to tell exactly since the film has little interest in emotion or personality. She’s an attractive young woman so there’s no negative risk to showing off her body which she does frequently and explicitly. Clearly she saw something in the script and director that didn’t quite translate to the screen, but between this and Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch I hope her agent has since advised her to stop signing on to misguided films about gender politics.

There’s nothing wrong with a damaged character trying to mute the world through narcotics and a blissfully unaware participation in sexual perversity, but some degree of back story and motivation are needed to create something and someone truly compelling. The closest Lucy offers to a history is a brief mention of an alcoholic mother and the revelation that some guy at some time wanted to marry her. She’s detached from reality in an uninteresting and flat way which means everything that happens to her may as well be happening to a beautiful yet inanimate marble statue.

The Upside: Emily Browning is a porcelain beauty.

The Downside: Emily Browning apparently lost a bet; passive lead character; script asks uninteresting questions with no answers and teases relevance; slow pacing may turn off some viewers.

On the Side: Mia Wasikowska was originally cast in the role of ‘Lucy’ but dropped out to do Jane Eyre instead.