My 2012 Top 10 Movies

MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2012

10. Savages – This is not a pick I’m prepared to defend. I miss California and somehow this movie capture a lot of people I knew there and miss. 

9. 21 Jump Street – Probably would have rated higher if I got any of the self-referential material from the TV show. In my advancing years, it comes as a relief that I’m still too young to remember it.

8. The Campaign – You had me at Philipino tilt-a-whirl operators are the backbone of this nation.

7. Ted – You had me at Family Guy meets Flash Gordon

6. Marvel’s Avengers –Weinstein may have all the power, but Marvel has all of our money.

5. The Grey – Hear me out. Yes it’s Liam Neeson fighting wolves with his bare hands. But there’s something personal in it, like everything Liam Neeson’s done since his wife died, and this being the purest expression of that anguish. Under the hood, the film is secretly an extended pre-suicide metaphor, which upon reflection raises deeply troubling questions about what it’s trying to say. It’s visually beautiful too. A movie that stays with you for days. Let me put it this way: Roger Ebert walked out of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT movie he was so disturbed by the memory of this movie.

4. The Dark Knight Rises – So it didn’t quite match its predecessor. Nevertheless, Nolan managed to remake Batman as the most important work yet on the nature of terrorism in a liberal society, and he did so while satisfying its legion of comic fanboys and the much deeper ranks of cheap thrill seekers.

3. Django Unchained – I saw this movie with a largely African-American audience which was boisterously and very vocally engaged from the first scene. It added a lot to the experience. This should probably be several slots lower otherwise.

2. Skyfall – Connery is still the Bond archetype, but Craig is in the best Bond movies

1. Lincoln – Teddy Roosevelt’s still my #1. But Lincoln may have just stepped over Washington into second. 

Best Picture, Biggest Snub, Worst Nomination

* Denotes Worst Nomination Nominee

BEST PICTURE

Amour* - the only action in this movie is the struggle between its Frenchness and its indomitable boredom. France surrenders in the end, as one might expect. However, I submit that a crack team of Gurkas could execute a perfect double-envelopment on this movie’s boredom and still end up waving a white flag.

Argo – A pleasantly watchable film of no lasting significance

Beasts of the Southern Wild * - The late Christopher Hitchens said of jokes about George W. Bush’s intelligence that they are “the jokes that stupid people tell themselves.” I saw him tell this to a Bill Maher audience and they were devastated, because they all thought of themselves as smart, they all respected Hitchens, and they all liked “W is dumb” jokes. So I choose my words carefully at the risk of offending people I like. This is the movie that stupid people think is brilliant. But the setting is interesting.

Django Unchained – Let’s just keep on righting historical injustices with brutal violence, wisecracks, and carefully crafted Tarantino scenes. Next stop, Soviet-induced Ukranian famine!

Les Misérables – Automatic popular musical nomination. The movie’s OK, the musical sucks. The best characters all get killed off too quickly, the uninteresting twits survive, the good songs don’t last long enough, and the bad songs go on too long.

Life of Pi – Objectively a very good movie. Subjectively, it didn’t speak to me.

Lincoln – I walked out of the movie ready to name my first born Abraham/Lincoln Kahrl. So, yeah, I liked it.

Silver Linings Playbook * - To the surprise of everyone the year’s passably watchable chick flick is inexplicably nominated for not one but 8 Academy Awards.

Zero Dark Thirty – Plays out more like a re-enactment or police procedural than a movie. Well made, but critically lacking in character development.

WILL WIN: Lincoln.  The only real contender that I would be comfortable with winning otherwise would be Life of Pi.

SHOULD WIN: Lincoln. To be fair, Lincoln has its warts. It botches the opening and the ending, especially the assassination. But everything in between is an all-time classic.

BIGGEST SNUB:

Skyfall – The pitch-perfect Bond in every way except one. Strong Bond, great villain, great song, great opening, irreversible things happen, it looks great…the only misstep was the afterthought love interest.

BIGGEST SNUB NOMINATIONS:

This was a particularly tone-deaf year for Hollywood, but I’ve narrowed it down to the biggest snubs of the snubs:

Javier Bardem – Skyfall

Katherine Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Joe Carnahan & Ian Mackenzie Jeffers – The Grey

Samuel L. Jackson – Django Unchained

Skyfall

BIGGEST SNUB: Javier Bardem. Best Bond villain ever. Best thing in anything this year.

WORST NOMINATIONS:

Amour

Amy Adams – The Master

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Silver Linings Playbook (Let’s just bundle up the bulk of the nominations)

WORST NOMINATION: Silver Linings Playbook

Amour has a scene with 30 seconds of the maid vacuuming. It’s one of the more action-packed scenes.

As for Amy Adams…at one point in my high school football career, the coaches experimented by switching me from corner to linebacker against a wing-t team with two 300-lbs guards. Predictably blown up by one of these behemoths, I ended up landing next to the tackled running back. The stadium announcer regrettably added, “Justin Kahrl also in on the tackle.” The point is, sometimes you don’t want recognition for landing next to someone else’s success.

Beasts of the Southern Wild has that setting I guess.

But the biggest disgrace is the surfeit of nominations thrown at Silver Linings Playbook. 8 nominations. 8. You know what else got 8 nominations? CASABLANCA!

There are two possibilities here:

The first is reverse sexism. Men are aware to the point of pride that their guilty pleasures are not art. Is it possible that enough women confuse chick flicks for art that this happened? Is that a thing? I mean, the Nolan Batman trilogy has way more to say than Silver Linings Playbook and yet it can’t even sniff a Best Picture.

The other possibility is that current Hollywood kingpin Harvey Weinstein produced both Argo and Silver Linings Playbook and decided to cock-slap America in the face by forcing everyone to pretend that his bubblicious is kobe beef…twice.

2013 Oscars Preview: Acting Awards

MERYL STREEP AWARD FOR BEST ACTRESS

Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty – a toned down version of what should have been the ultimate sultaness of twat who helped kill Bin Laden. The script swung for the fences but, for me, Chastain stops at second.

Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook – Bradley Cooper doesn’t see it for two hours, but for Hollywood, it was love at first sight.

Emmanuelle Riva – Amour – A miserable dying French woman so awful that the audience cheers when her husband smothers her, because at least something happened.

Quvenzhané Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild – Does a good job of fitting into the movie’s best character…the setting

Naomi Watts - The Impossible – Rounds out a list desperately in need of someone kind of famous

WILL WIN: Jennifer Lawrence – Another year, another weak crop of Best Actress nominations strongly suggesting that Hollywood has some issues writing strong female leads. Lawrence and Watts are nominated because a few stars have to be included. I guess the smart money is on Lawrence over Chastain, but my gut tells me that the voters will lean toward the obscure. I would have guessed Riva, but since they went to online voting this year, I suspect her core constituency won't come through.

SHOULD WIN: Noomi Rapace, Prometheus

SNUB: Noomi Rapace, Prometheus – Didn’t see that coming did you! Look, this is a weak year for this category. Prometheus is not a stellar film, but Rapace is utterly convincing at everything from bright-eyed sci-fi archaeologist to self-alien-abortion. This is the Snow White we were missing in Snow Whites A & B.

DDL (DANIEL DAY LEWIS) AWARD FOR BEST ACTOR

Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook – A solid  neurotic nominated for reasons of cementing his star status

Daniel Day-Lewis  -  Lincoln – This award is named after him for an ever-longer list of reasons, including transforming into Abraham Fucking Lincoln.

Hugh Jackman - Les Misérables  - It’s a character in a musical, but he works really hard to make it something better

Joaquin Phoenix - The Master – a claustrophobically unlikable character played to perfection

Denzel Washington – Flight – Doing the character he does best in a dying mainstream drama genre

WILL WIN: Daniel Day-Lewis. We have to keep feeding him awards or he’ll go back to cobbling. Or maybe they should give it to my deserving doppleganger, Phoenix, so that he doesn't go homeless rapper on us again. It was just so awkward answering his fan's questions about what the hell happened on Letterman.

SHOULD WIN: Denzel Washington. This was Courage Under Fire Denzel. I love Courage Under Fire Denzel. Denzel ended up getting his trophy for the forgettable Training Day and flopping in could-have-been roles like American Gangster, but this is what he does best – a deeply flawed and very human character who is both instantly likable and in turns equally detestable.

BIGGEST SNUB: Jared Gilman, Moonrise Kingdom. This was a very adult, intellectual movie about a pre-teen. This pre-teen is asked to carry almost every scene in this adult, intellectual world, and he accomplishes that. I know he’s not the draw that Bradley Cooper is - I had to look up his name - but Jared Gilman deserved to be acknowledged, certainly more so than the girl from Beasts.

THE PSH (PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN) AWARD FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Alan Arkin – Argo – The guy that Hollywood loves plays that Hollywood guy who saves the hostages

Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook* - Present.

Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master – Not his best work, but the award is named after him

Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln – Hamming it up as a radical abolitionist

Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained – Still good, but not Inglorious Basterds good.

WILL WIN: Alan Arkin. I don’t know why they love him, but they do.

SHOULD WIN:  Javier Bardem – Skyfall. Of this group, I would pick Jones.

BIGGEST SNUBS: Javier Bardem – Skyfall, Samuel L. Jackson – Django Unchained, Eddie Redmayne – Les Miserables

Traditionally this is a crowded category and this year is no exception. Bardem was the best thing in anything this year. Jackson’s Uncle Tommiest was more deserving thanWaltz, who seemed a little out of place in a Western and included in part to redeem Germany after what happened in Inglorious Basterds (i.e. the Holocaust aka Irredeemable). As for Redmayne, he takes on the biggest ninny in the illustrious, maudlin history of musical ninnies…and makes him palatable.

HELENA BONHAM CARTER AWARD FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams - The Master* - She was so outclassed by Phoenix and PSH that this nomination has to be uncomfortable for her

Sally Field – Lincoln – Just as crazy and irascible as Mrs. Lincoln should be

Anne Hathaway - Les Misérables – Underlines that the best thing in this musical dies way too early

Helen Hunt - The Sessions – I was not aware that this was a film. 

Jacki Weaver* - Silver Linings Playbook – I’m beginning to think Harvey Weinstein rigged the online voting.

WILL WIN: Anne Hathaway. After that vagina incident, everyone’s got to be at least a little bit curious.

SHOULD WIN: Anne Hathaway. It’s a lot closer between her and Field than Vegas is likely to give you odds for, but still she deserves it.

BIGGEST SNUB: Dame Judy Dench – Skyfall. Alright, Silver Linings Playbook, I will see you one Jacki Weaver and raise you Dame Judy Dench. All in. 

Oscars Preview Part 1: Writing, Directing, and Niche Features

* Denotes "Worst Nomination" Nominee

DIRECTING

Amour - Michael Haneke*

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Benh Zeitlin*

Life of Pi - Ang Lee

Lincoln - Steven Spielberg

Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell*

WILL WIN: Ang Lee – Life of Pi. The most deserving of those not named Spielberg. Justly termed a “visual epic,” Life of Pi should win something.

SHOULD WIN: Steven Spielberg – No one has confused me for a Spielberg fan, but quietly over the past few years he’s mellowed from his blunt messaging and "Just Give Me the Damn Trophy" subject matter. Perhaps he’s said what he has to say and can now just go back to making movies. Regardless, Lincoln is the best and most important of these movies and it's not close.

BIGGEST SNUBS: Katherine Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty, Christopher Nolan – the whole Batman Series, Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained

What’s most silly about these snubs is that they could easily replace the three indulgent actual nominations I've marked as "worst nomination" nominees. They’re all much more important directors who made much superior films, both in dollar and artistic terms. 

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Brave

Frankenweenie

ParaNorman

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Wreck-It Ralph

WILL WIN: Wreck-It Ralph. Pixar made this category happen, and now that Pixar’s dying we have to live with the consequences.

SHOULD WIN: Frankenweenie. There is a chance greater than zero that this is a Burton masterpiece that will someday be regarded as an overlooked work of genius.

BIGGEST SNUB: Silver Linings Playbook. 

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

5 Broken Cameras – (i.e. the one about nonviolent resistance to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank)

The Gatekeepers – (i.e. the one about 5 Israeli Shin Beit chiefs calling out Israel’s current course as untenable)

How to Survive a Plague – (i.e. the one where the 80’s New York gay community lobbies the government to get an AIDS cure, gets the cure, it turns out it’s not a cure, then gets another cure).

The Invisible War – (i.e. the harrowing one about rape in the US military)

Searching for Sugar Man – (i.e. it’s complicated, but it involves South Africa and Motown)

WILL WIN: How to Survive a Plague 

SHOULD WIN: Searching for Sugar Man. I found the most effective “push” film masquerading as a documentary to be The Invisible War, which is terrific at marching you out of it ready to go to the barricade. And in terms of its craft, Searching for Sugar Man is probably the least of these films. But the story it has to tell is so charming. If you know me, you know I laugh a lot but rarely smile. About 2/3’s of the way through the movie, I realized I’d been smiling for a half hour. It kept going like that.

WRITING - Adapted Screenplay

Argo by Chris Terrio

*Beasts of the Southern Wild by Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin

Life of Pi by David Magee

Lincoln by Tony Kushner

* Silver Linings Playbook by David O. Russell

WILL WIN: Argo

SHOULD WIN: Lincoln

BIGGEST SNUB: Christopher Nolan – The Dark Knight Rises; Joe Carnahan & Ian Mackenzie Jeffers – The Grey

There is a scene in Silver Linings Playbook where Bradley Cooper’s brother, unprompted, and seconds after being introduced, begins listing the ways in which his life is good and Cooper’s is bad. It is the worst written scene of the year. To make matters worse, we’re then asked to LIKE this same brother through his actions the rest of the movie. Of all the bizarre enthusiasm for Silver Linings Playbook, this is the strangest.

WRITING - Original Screenplay

Amour by Michael Haneke

Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino

Flight by John Gatins

Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

Zero Dark Thirty by Mark Boal*

WILL WIN: Tarantino

SHOULD WIN: Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

BIGGEST SNUB: Rian Johnson – Looper

2012 Film in Review: Some Positives

Best Idea, Poorly Executed:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Missing: Matching tone to title.

Alex Cross – Missing: a lead that isn’t Tyler Perry

Casa de mi Padre – Missing: More Anchorman Will Farrell (shows up about 2/3’s through)

Lawless – Missing: More Tom Hardy, more Gary Oldman, less Shia the Boof.

This Means War – Missing: Everything except the cast.

WINNER: This Means War

Honestly, I don’t know if I could come up with a better pitch for a movie. Two spies compete for the same girl’s affections. The cast is a top-5 salary actress (Reese Witherspoon), Captain Kirk Redux, and Christopher Nolan’s Big-Shot Rob, Tom Hardy. Release it for Valentine’s Day. It’s difficult to see what could go wrong. Except everything else! The movie is not funny or romantic. The bad boy wins, the good guy loses, the girl is miserable to be around so we can’t tell why they’re competing over her.

Best/Worst Laughably Bad Action Movie:

Act of Valor

Battleship

Dredd

WORST: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

BEST: Lockout

It’s hard to really say, in this genre, what good is and what bad is. Dredd has 90 minutes of shooting. Is that good? Is that bad? Act of Valor is a Navy Seals commercial voiced-over with poetry so bad that it has to be real. Battleship has 30 minutes of Navy commercial, 10 minutes of board game advertisement, Tim Riggins, Pearl Harbor’s redemption, a legitimate double-amputee war hero who seems more at home on the screen than Brooklyn Decker…and not enough Liam Neeson. I mean, that’s a really strong entry right – for good or for ill?

So I’m splitting this new category up into what is clearly the worst, laugh-at-how-bad-it-is of the movies, and then the guilty pleasure bad action movie that is secretly good.

Ghost Rider 2 is laugh-out loud bad. I’ll just stop at “drunken motorcycle monks riding through Romania.”

On the other hand, Lockout has no business having as good a character as Guy Pearce plays. So the plot has holes bigger than Manti Te’o’s story. (If you don’t like that one, Notre Dame fans, then I can change it to ‘the plot has holes bigger than the freeway lanes Alabama’s offensive line was opening in the National Championship game.’) It doesn’t matter, because someone who should be writing for Justified wrote Guy Pearce’s dialogue and it flat out rocks.

The Year in Concept Chick Flick:

The Vow – Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams…eventually they were going to do a chick flick together.

This Means War – Two spies, one girl, no entertainment.

The Lucky One – Zack Efron is in the military. Stop laughing. He finds picture of a girl, keeps it as a good luck charm, awkwardly stalks her three years later. She’s OK with it because she finds him attractive.

The Five-Year Engagement – Apatow-lite: less funny, more scripted, and less incisive.

Hope Springs – The date movie for boomers.

Silver Linings Playbook – Love resolves a man’s brain chemistry-induced emotional problems.

Playing for Keeps – Leonidas is a washed up soccer player and dead beat dad. THIS IS NOT SPARTA!

MOST PASSABLY WATCHABLE CHICK FLICK: Silver Linings Playbook

Movies That Didn’t Make My Top 10, But Are Still Worth Watching if They’re On Cable:

Argo – This is an average movie. Which I enjoyed. But all this talk of it being a “throwback to a past era of film-making” is newspeak for “it’s really kind of slow, but we’ve all been ordered by the powers that be to like this movie.”

Chronicle – I thought this would really hit home if I were a troubled teen.

The Dictator

Frankenweenie – Maybe we’re too used to Tim Burton. This, to me, was some of his finest work, it’s just that we’ve seen him do it so many times before.

Men in Black 3

Project X – The party we all wish our friend had thrown

Prometheus

Looper – It was very hard to leave this out of my top 10, but too much of my recollection is occupied by the turn to the lame “creepy kid” dynamic of the final act. The most devastating late-movie addition since Chris Tucker ruined The Fifth Element.

MOVIES I WANT TO LIKE MORE THAN I DID:

Hyde Park on Hudson

Lawless

The Master

Moonrise Kingdom

This is 40

2012 Film Special Achievement Awards

DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS PART 3

Special Achievement Award for Excessive Cleavage:

Rosamund Pike – Jack Reacher

“Clean up on Act 3 – Ms. Pike’s boobs have spilled all over this action movie.” Ms. Pike’s character starts out a successful lawyer who wins her cases with pluck and boobs. As her character arcs into investigations, her arcs get more screen space; apparently it takes more boob to be a detective than a lawyer. Perhaps it’s a good thing, then, that Tom Cruise denies her a turn as an action star too or goodness knows how she would use those things to defeat the creepy Russian Bond-villain. Leave that to bad Bond films. It’s almost like Cruise has something to prove. Oh, right, that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9Pft7HoB8

Special Achievement Award for Scriptorial Ignorance:

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – drinking the well water

I’m an understanding guy. When Ewan Macgreggor foils a terrorist assassination by hitting the gunman with his fishing fly, I don’t wonder (for too long), “Wouldn’t the guy just take a second shot?” But I can’t imagine the writer of this film spent much time in “the Yemen.” In the film, charitable villagers hand Macgreggor and Emily Blunt a jar of well-water which they drink and, because of the temperature, they realize that their salmon run project will work. Let me tell you something – if someone gives you a jar of well-water in Yemen, don’t drink it. Odds are, if you manage to choke down the brackish silt you’ve been “gifted,” the only revelation you’re likely to receive is typhoid.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT FOR EMBARRASSED TO SAY I WAS ENTERTAINED:

Step Up: Revolution

Which is more preposterous – the notion that dance can change the world, or the possibility of on-the-fly throwing together a guerilla flash-mob dance campaign so good that people everywhere openly applaud the extraordinary inconvenience these dances cause. Has anyone seen a flash-mob youtube video? IT DOESN’T WORK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPwhOHQNS4

The step up: revolution is on youtube and it is a clumsy, awkward failure.

Anyways, I am embarrassed to say that for the dance parts I saw on that trans-Atlantic flight I was on, I was entertained. I accept man card demerits humbly.

Continuing Adventures in Dubious 2012 Film Achievement

Feb 16

(Semi-)Annual Dubious Achievement Awards Part 2:

Silliest Happy Ending:

WINNER: Argo

RUNNER UP: Les Miserables

Let’s start with Les Miserables. In heaven, everyone killed off in the June Rebellion is going to the barricade again? What’s the message here? That their spirit of liberte lived on in the still-more-soul crushing, continent-wide rebellion of 1848? That sounds kind of hell-ish. Or perhaps they went on to hold a revolution in heaven? Is Les Mis secretly a Paradise Lost prequel? If you’re going to have a musical/movie called “The Miserable Ones” then end it where it belongs: THE JACKBOOT OF DESPOTISM ON THEIR THROATS! Still, Les Mis is bound by its source material. 

No such excuses for Argo. Argo is a perfectly fine movie, until it ends with Jimmy Carter declaring a retro-active “Mission Accomplished” RE: the Iranian hostage crisis. Desert What-Now? 

KING OF QUEENS AWARD FOR LEAST BELIEVABLE MOVIE ROMANCE:

WINNER: Selma Hayek & the original king – Here Comes the Boom

RUNNER UP: Halle Berry and Tom Hanks – Cloud Atlas

Return of the KING! In all seriousness, how and why Tom Hanks and Halle Berry end up baby-making in Cloud Atlas is utter nonsense and richly deserving of this award. But the whole movie is silly enough to ignore, so if future creole speaking tribesman and space cadet hottie want to start a family, perhaps we can just suppose that memes about beauty in that era had changed.

Here Comes the Boom, however, distills the concept in its purest form. Ridiculously gorgeous Selma Hayek, whose character is literally named “Beautiful Flowers,” is also a talented and caring teacher at your local school. Scrappy, tubby King of Queens teaches biology, gets his act together, makes a bunch of immigrants US citizens, and fights in the MMA, saving his school from bankruptcy. Selma Hayek, of course, plays no narrative function other than to be extremely attractive (Jimmy?…Jimmy…pass that mission accomplished sign over).

Let’s just say what we’re all thinking: Biology? The King of Queens teaches biology? This school has bigger problems. Everyone knows, the gym teacher is the one who thinks he can do MMA. The King of Queens can teach gym. The biology teacher is the one who smells slightly of formaldehyde and took his job to justify wearing a lab smock in public. The biology teacher is the one who holds bake sales and car washes to save the school.

Helen Mirren Award for Least Believable Female Ass-Kicker:

TIE:

Lily Collins – Snow White A

Kristen Stewart – Snow White B

I’ve long since been beaten to the punch with the obvious observation that the evil queen in both movies is hotter than Snow White, raising the issue of whether the mirror is broken or just the casting department. Lily Collins has a unibrow and the best I can say is that her attractiveness rivals her acting credentials. If the message was that there is something other than physical beauty that the mirror is measuring, it’s too subtle for this mind. Kristen Stewart is more understandably cast to try to draw presumed Twilight fans in, but is similarly not obscenely attractive, innocent, or talented. In general, she looks like that red-eyed slouch in the corner of a freshman college party who has either smoked too much weed or spent the last half hour crying because she lost her virginity to someone who wouldn’t even stay the night. Or both. Her “inspiring” battle speech in this movie would send the troops at Anzio sprinting back out into the breakers.

This raises the more curious issue of why both try to turn Snow White into an action hero, one Robin Hood and the other Joan of Arc. The effort to modernize fairy tales to make the women stronger is a perfectly worthwhile endeavor. But Snow White seems particularly difficult to pull this off in without deliberately aping the genre. Snow White is supposed to be the picture of innocence and purity. It is these traits, her vulnerability, and ultimately her beauty, which bend the male world to her deliverance.  So when she’s running her sword through some foe’s entrails, clad in chain mail and grit, something of the spirit of Snow White is lost.

If you insist on going this route, and not making a parody, then Snow White has to redefine purity, some transcendent nymph or goddess huntress figure akin to Athena or Diana. Just something interesting. Not a callow, 100-pound waif who can barely lift her fake sword. Not only is neither Snow White particularly attractive, neither looks like she can fight either. What’s the point of changing the story to make Snow White stronger if she still looks like the old Snow White…if a little homelier?

The Star Wars Episodes 1-3 Award for Colossal Disappointment

WINNER: Killing Them Softly

RUNNER UP: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit is what it is – stretched into three movies to make money. The Hobbit as a book is a motley of World War 1 era politics and the wandering plotline of the Beowulf epic. The thing that stood out to me in this rendering was the question: is it just the movie that’s about Zionism or was the book too? I mean, 12 dwarves returning to their lost homeland? Ring any bells? Then again, the dwarves lost their kingdom because of their love of gold? So is this an anti-semitic story about Zionism? Is it that weird, English form of anti-semitism where they just sort of disdain Jewish people rather than hate them?

For my money, the biggest disappointment of the year was Killing Them Softly. James Gandolfini is still wondering what his garishly pointless character was doing in the movie. Because it has artsy touches and half a movie of Brad Pitt, reviewers were at pains to say nice things, usually floatsam like “stylish” and jetsam like “trading in pleasures of a rarified sort.” The message from reviewers is, “You won’t enjoy this movie, but I did. I am superior to you.” I did not enjoy this movie. I thought it was indulgent nonsense.

Worst Remake:

The Amazing Spider Man

Total Recall

WINNER: Total Recall

I love the original Total Recall, but it’s not Shakespeare. They barely changed anything. I’m not hanging on the edge of my seat waiting for whoever is playing Sharon Stone’s character to scream, “YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE THIS FUCKING PLANET.” Isn’t a Total Recall remake the perfect opportunity to undo the first movie by changing what’s the reality and what’s the dream?

As for Spider Man, there’s nothing wrong with the movie other than that WE JUST HAD A SPIDER MAN series. Marvel couldn’t keep one of their top characters on the sideline no matter how bad Spider Man 3 was. Who are we to argue? Marvel has taken the industry over and remade it on the comic book model; perhaps they can just as successfully constantly regenerate the character with little down time as they do in the paper copy industry.

(Semi-)Annual Dubious Achievement Awards Part 1

(Semi)-Annual Dubious Achievement Awards Part 1

Nicholas Cage Award for Most Egregious Sell-Out:

Nicholas Cage – Ghostrider 2

Johnny Depp – Dark Shadows

Eddie Murphy – 1000 Words

The Rock – Journey 2

SURPRISE WINNER: George Lucas– Star Wars Rights Sold to Disney

This is like the Usual Suspects of egregious sell-outs, except Depp, who usually plays Hunter S. Thompson instead. Depp presumably shows up whenever Tim Burton calls without asking questions. Nicholas Cage loses out in his own award only because he was contractually obligated to sell-out by making the first Ghostrider. One wonders if Cage making a series of movies about having sold his soul to the devil is semi-autobiographical. The Rock’s agent seems to insist on throwing him at kid’s movies until he finds his inner- Kindergarten Cop. Eddie Murphy is definitely making a strong play to put his name on this award but no one saw 1000 Words…it’s not a sellout if you’re not making money.

Nothing can compare to selling off Star Wars to the Disney Borg. Indeed, Lucas’s failings as a story teller had damaged the brand with its core customers even as they landed it right back in the child-to-pre-teen wheelhouse he needed to create a new generation of fans. But selling his baby is a startling admission that perhaps Lucas was never that enamored with the empire he created, that he didn’t love it as much as its fans did. 

I admit to being tempted at the thought of professional screenwriters (i.e. not George Lucas) being allowed to write a Star Wars movie (instead of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy7QMYpElD0). On balance, though, Disney chews up everything pure and creative that it touches in its relentless drive for strong quarterly results. I’m a filmgoer, not a Disney investor. We might get a good Star Wars movie out of this. More likely we’ll get a lot of 2-hour ads for children’s toys. For a preview of where this is headed…

Most Worrying Development:

Brave – Is Pixar done?

Brave isn’t a bad children’s movie. It’s just not a good one. It’s on par with everything else out there. That’s a problem. Pixar, pre-Disney, was clicking on the face of a digitally animated God. Brave seems only to have been made to indulge a talented animator’s fascination with rendering hair movement. Nothing else in it is special. Star Wars fans…you’ve been warned.

Least Necessary Sequel (non-children’s film):

American Reunion

The Expendables 2

Paranormal Activity 4

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

Taken 2

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Wrath of the Titans

WINNER: The Bourne Legacy

Can you believe they’re still making Universal Soldier movies?

Most of these movies are middling action franchises trying to squeeze out a few more bucks, which we can all understand. Special desperation points go to American Reunion, which, to make the timing work, places the characters as attending their 13^th high school reunion. Is this an event that has ever been held?

The Bourne decision seems the most desperate. What purpose could there be in resuscitating the US Government’s stubborn insistence on creating new super soldiers that it must betray and fail to kill when everyone on both sides of the betrayal had moved on with their career? The only thing I could think of was that Jeremy Renner’s agent wanted to call him “the next Matt Damon,” by putting him in this role. Instead, it makes him “The poor-man’s Matt Damon,” which I guess is a selling point, but I wouldn’t put it on a business card. I do like the idea of a Team America World Police Jeremy Renner puppet also saying, “Matt Damon,” instead of Jeremy Renner.

What we have to look forward to:

The Bourne Serenity – i.e. the one where the government doesn’t try to betray and kill its best agent

The Bourne Actuary – i.e. the one where the government creates a super race of accountants and clerical workers that it must then betray and kill

The Bourne Rhinoplasty – i.e. the one where they explain why Matt Damon isn’t in the movie through the magic of plastic surgery. Still with the government betraying and killing, like it do.

The Bourne Celibacy – i.e. the one where Bourne doesn’t stumble upon a fairly attractive, emotionally vulnerable female love interest who, through a series of coincidences, finds herself helping him escape betrayal and death at government hands.

The Bourne Diplomacy – i.e. the one where a super-race of diplomats resolves the world’s intractable political and ethnic disputes through the magic of dialogue, mutual respect, and a few good cocktail parties. Only to be betrayed and killed by the government.

The Bourne Redundancy – I think they already made this one. It was called The Bourne Legacy, Haywire, and/or Safehouse. Perhaps at some point the government won’t send its best agent on a mission that requires betrayal and murder. Perhaps it will learn from its mistakes and not betray its agents. Wouldn't it make sense to just betray lesser, easily killed agents?

JACK BLACK AWARD (ADAM SANDLER AWARD?) FOR SHOCKINGLY UNFUNNY COMEDY:

Casa de mi Padre

Dark Shadows

That’s My Boy

This Means War

The Three Stooges

WINNER: Casa de mi Padre

My Spanish is good enough to know this movie isn’t funny in Spanish. My Spanish is bad enough to know this movie isn’t funny in English.

WHY YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE SUCKS: The Hunger Games

My last quarter at UCLA, I walked into a final a few minutes early to find the previous test wrapping up. What I’d walked into was a sociology final and the questions were written on the board – they were questions that especially earnest 2nd years debate at parties about the effect of television on society. I looked at the clock and saw maybe 10 minutes to go, and felt confident that I could have turned in an A- essay without ever having taken the class. It wouldn’t have been insightful, but at least it would be readable. Having known a few graders in my time, points come easy if you can just string coherent sentences together.

I hoped the teaching assistant having to read all the carping dreck about celebrity culture had a sense of humor about the whole endeavor. Perhaps some hipster as jaded about his degree as he was about the world. Perhaps he majored in philosophy and picked up girls with clever lines like, “So once I have my doctorate, I can think deep thoughts about being poor.”

But perhaps not. Perhaps they took it all so seriously. Perhaps they found veined within all that undergraduate prose and misplaced references to class readings some essential ore of truth, yearning to be loosed from the mortar of these young minds. And then this laboring soul of a PhD entered the labor market and found no purchase for their Sociology degree. But, because they could edit, they got a job reviewing scripts at a film studio and green-lit the script of The Hunger Games.

This movie is based on a popular novel series, and stars instant supernova Jennifer Lawrence. Those are the positives. Then there’s the movie. The introduction is half the movie, and nothing happens. Did you notice how long my intro to this movie review was? Imagine it multiplied over 142 minutes.

Woody Harrelson is channeling a non-humorous version of his Kingpin character. Everyone else is devoid of any personality. The other actors are generic teen nobodies who can’t pull the lowbrow melodrama up to epic status and are a few years away from being the people in the background of the latest workout video.

Finally the competition begins and Jennifer Lawrence manages to kill other children in suspiciously non-violent, shaky-camera ways. There appears to be some kind of unexplained solidarity hand gesture most likely pulled from the novel or pushed to the editing room floor. Eventually they release some mildly scary dogs to chase the protagonists to a flaccid anti-climax. The competition ends with Jennifer Lawrence generally too classy for this tweenlight material.

This movie grossed over 400 million dollars for no entertainment value and the threat of more to come. Released at roughly the same time, the much better written and more entertaining Lockout made 14 million dollars. If there’s any solace to be taken from such injustice, one hopes that at least one Sociology PhD made some money this year.

2013 Oscars Preview: The Year in Silly Movie Titles

The Year in Silly Movie Titles

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS AWARD FOR FILM TITLE PROBABLY BETTER IN YOUR IMAGINATION THAN IN PRACTICE:

1. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

2. Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

3. Space Dogs 3D

4. Fat Kid Rules the World

5. Fullmetal Alchemist

It’s worth pausing here to note what a wasted opportunity Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was in stumbling down the Cowboys vs. Aliens path to mediocrity. First you throw out a movie title crafted specifically to lodge itself in every man’s pre-teen id by combining two dissilimar cool things (Ninja Pirates). Then, to assure everyone that this isn’t straight-to-video camp, you come up with an over-serious plot, joylessly trudging a faceless hero from station to station of the hero-with-a-thousand-faces. If Hollywood is unwilling to sink 100 million into something over-the-top and creative, (Crank: Insanely High Voltage!) at least give something called “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” to Michael Bay, who has the balls to treat this kind of material with the sensitivity and subtlety it deserves.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR FORGETTING TO REPLACE THE WORKING TITLE:

Man on a Ledge

LEAST INTERESTING-SOUNDING FILM OF THE YEAR:

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

2. Planet of Snail

3. Watching TV with the Red Chinese

MOST POMPOUS TITLE:

Art Is…The Permanent Revolution

Best Inadvertent Porn Titles

1. Here Comes the Boom

2. Rock of Ages

3. Frankenweenie

4. The Dark Knight Rises

5. Big Miracle

6. Hit and Run

7. Magic Mike*

7. Premium Rush

8. Trouble with the Curve

9. One For the Money

10. The Master

*Disqualified because, my female friends inform me, this is pornography. Apparently if you make soft core pornography for women, you can put it in real movie theaters? Is that in the FCC rule book? As the Supreme Court justice famously commented, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.” I doubt he or any other straight male saw this film, and thus it got wide release.