2013 in Reviews: The Best

Yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly, rice and soy sauce, ham and cheese. All things require balance. (Also, I appear to have food on the brain. But let that go.) To balance my picks for 2013's worst movies, here's my list of some of the best.

A caveat: several of the year's most highly acclaimed films never came to theaters in my area, so I haven't seen Upstream Color, Before Midnight, or 12 Years a Slave yet -- I anticipate all of them would have made this list otherwise.

10) Warm Bodies. On the one hand, it's a fairly standard young adult romance: the isolated loner meets the sheltered sweetheart and they realize they have more in common than they first expected. On the other hand, it gives me a chance to use the phrase "zomromcom." Nicholas Hoult's tortured "R" has a funny, snappy inner monologue and John Malkovich gives a surprisingly restrained performance as Julie's father. It's not going to change the world, but it's a sweet little film that tries for more than it had to, and it's a refreshing change of pace from the insistent doom-and-gloom of most zombie flicks. *** out of ****

9) Much Ado About Nothing. I'm a big fan of Whedon's. This adaptation of Shakespeare's play is problematic in some respects, particularly its retention of the virginity plot, which just doesn't play well in 2013. Nevertheless, the film is slick and elegant and the two lead performances are quite engaging. It's also encouraging evidence that, in an era of megabudget blockbusters (one of which Whedon directed), the art of filmmaking on a small scale is still alive and thriving. *** out of ****

8) Stoker. Brutal, disturbing, and beautiful. Park Chan-wook, of Oldboy fame, delivers another stunningly sumptuous visual feast with his trademark attention to (literally) gory detail. The performances are top-notch. It's not for everyone (a scene with pruning shears was almost too much for me), but as a Gothic drama directed with precise, gorgeous vision, it's hella good. *** out of ****

7) The World's End. It's not as good as Shaun of the Dead, but it's got a lot of the same quirky charm that that film had. Like Shaun, it veers between the mundane and the bizarro, but Simon Pegg and his ensemble give funny, solid performances that keep the film grounded. *** out of ****

6) Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The second Hunger Games movie improves in a lot of ways on the first. No more shakicam! The first hour and a half is the most interesting part of the film for me in its satire of media consumption culture, while the games themselves feel a little rushed. The performances throughout are strong and the visuals -- especially in IMAX -- are stunning. ***1/2 of ****

5) Frozen. I was less immediately enamored with Frozen than I was with Brave (like Merida, I have crazy curly red hair), but both are significant in their challenges to the traditional Princess Romance plot. In Brave, Merida rejected a suitor altogether and the plot centered on her relationship with her mother instead. In Frozen, the two young women do end up with romances (spoilers, I guess?) but the progress towards the Happily Ever After ending is constantly checked and confronted in interesting ways. The animation is, as usual, sumptuously gorgeous. ***1/2 out of ****

4) Mud. After movies like Reign of Fire and Failure to Launch, my idea of Matthew McConaughey was as a good-looking man who had charisma but wasn't a terribly good actor. The past couple of years have changed my mind. His performance in Mud, like Killer Joe and Magic Mike, is gutsy, raw, and compelling. The film itself is by turns sweet and sad, much like coming-of-age itself. ***1/2 out of ****

3) Pacific Rim. It may have underperformed at the box office, but for all its flaws Pacific Rim does an amazing job at conveying the director's love of film, and inspiring that sense of joy in the audience. Visually beautiful with plenty of callbacks to the wacky creature features of yesteryear. It isn't very complex, character-wise, but this movie isn't about that: it's about watching giant robots beat the crap out of giant sea monsters. This is everything I want out of an action movie, with an extra helping of fun. ***1/2 out of ****

2) Gravity. It's a very simple, direct story: People get lost in space. People try to survive. See what happens. Neil deGrasse Tyson gave it a serious fact-checking, but Alfonso Cuarón's vision is a still a feast for the eyes. Hands-down THE best use of 3D I've ever encountered. I also appreciate the almost singular focus on a female character in a major action movie, unencumbered by being someone else's love-interest or sidekick -- it doesn't happen often. Gravity might play it simple on the story front, but as sheer filmic pleasure, it's hard to beat. **** out of ****

1) The Wolf of Wall Street.  A lot of people seem to think Scorsese's latest film glamorizes Wall Street greed. I don't see it that way. Sure, there is plenty of excess on the screen, but it's played as hollow and sordid, the empty enjoyments of shallow people without souls. Over the course of the film's three hours viewers come to understand that Jordan Belfort is a desperate, disgusting man who doesn't care who he hurts in his pursuit of wealth, not an aspirational idol. The dialogue, written by Sopranos alum Terence Winter, crackles and even though the film is long, it never drags -- a major directorial feat. DiCaprio as usual gives an amazing performance. **** out of ****

2013 in Reviews: The Worst

It's that time of year again, folks, the time when we look back on the year and ask ourselves, "Why were there so many shitty movies this year? And why did I see so many of them?"  In keeping with the spirit of the season, I present my list of the ten worst films of 2013.

10) Star Trek: Into Darkness. I really enjoyed J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot in 2009. It had a fast-paced, fast-talking energy that I appreciated, and (lens flares aside) presented some of the best visuals of that year. Unfortunately, Into Darkness suffers from the law of diminishing returns. I liked it well enough while I was watching it, but the more I thought about it, the less it made any sense. Here is a movie that opens with Kirk explicitly and cavalierly violating the Prime Directive for no discernible reason, followed only minutes later by a scene that's supposed to be intensely emotional because of Kirk's responsibility not to -- you guessed it -- violate the Prime Directive. The movie only really works because of the strength of the performances: Simon Pegg is delightful as Mr. Scott, and Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan is a menacing blend of intelligence, calm, and brutality. Unfortunately, the story is lackluster and full of plot holes as big as the Enterprise herself. **1/2 out of ****

9) Iron Man 3. A close runner-up in the "plot holes the size of Manhattan" category, Iron Man 3 disappointed me on a variety of levels. I actually wasn't upset about the film's tinkering with the Mandarin backstory; Ben Kingsley's half-menacing, half-drunken idiot performance was the highlight of the movie for me. But I was unable to suspend disbelief about the film's central big-bad premise, and this sense of absurdity only escalated as the film went on. The film was very flashy, but ultimately as empty as Tony Stark's one million Iron Man suits. *1/2 out of ****

8) Oblivion. The title says it all: only a few months after I saw this movie and I remembered so little about it that I had to refer to imdb to jog my memory. Alien invasions, Tom Cruise, clones...yawn. The film has some beautiful visuals, but the story is a ludicrous mishmash of elements and never has much of an impact. * out of ****

7) Elysium. I love Matt Damon, but I hated basically everything about this movie. The plot simply doesn't make sense, the characters are thinly sketched and act with no discernibly human motivation, and what is meant to be a huge emotional payoff at the end comes across as a hollow triumph. I enjoyed director Neill Blomkamp's District 9, but this failed to live up to that movie's promise. * out of ****

6) Olympus Has Fallen. This is one of two DC-takeover films this year, and although this one boasts the better pedigree, with director Antoine Fuqua (of Training Day) behind the wheel, it just wasn't much fun. I don't hold disaster movies to the same standard as I expect from Quality Entertainment, but it's unforgivable for a disaster flick to be dull. The action clips along, but the plot is ludicrous and the performances surprisingly dour. The movie simmers with anger and a surprising amount of violence, but it fails to deliver any real thrills. * out of ****

5) Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. I have a very high tolerance for the filmic absurd. I unironically enjoyed Shark Night and will watch Prince of Persia whenever it's on TNT. Nevertheless, despite its promise of goofy fantasy schlock, Hansel and Gretel felt overlong at 88 minutes. There are a few laughs -- Hansel is diabetic thanks to his childhood candy ordeal -- but the story in general takes itself too seriously, and the gory violence feels over the top. * out of ****

4) The Host. I watched this on a transatlantic flight, and even as a captive audience I had a hard time finishing the film. The story is paper-thin, the acting melodramatic and often unintentionally hilarious. Given that Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame is the genius behind this mess, it shouldn't surprise that it's a bloated, ponderous "love story," hyperactively handwringing over The Big Questions in Life while failing to deliver any emotional validity or genuine feeling. * out of ****

3) Safe Haven. This was another captive-audience choice, as it was the only movie played (TWICE) on a recent flight from London. I have never enjoyed Nicholas Sparks' brand of sentimental schmaltz, and this film delivers as expected. Whether it's the overwrought, melodramatic story full of incomprehensible and laughable moments (there's a dead-wife ghost!) or the banal, saccharine performances, watching this film felt like drowning in cheap "maple" syrup: too sweet, too thick, and taking way too long. * out of ****

2) After Earth. The third Big Space Adventure of 2013 also failed to deliver. I shouldn't be surprised at this, of course; I haven't enjoyed an M. Night Shyamalan movie since 2004's The Village (and even that, I hated the ending of). After Earth, for all the trailer's promises of action-packed chases and space explosions, is that worst of combinations: preachy and boring. It insists on the message of its tagline: "Danger is real. Fear is a choice." (Biological autonomic responses be damned!) I wish boredom had been a choice. 1/2 out of ****

1) Now You See Me. I didn't have a lot of hope for this when I saw the trailer, but I enjoy watching Woody Harrelson, so I gave this a shot. This is probably the film that I felt most insulted my intelligence this year. Supposedly a movie about a group of magicians performing the ultimate con, the story is full of more holes than a lace hanky. This movie's logic asks you to accept that a group of people attending a magic show would suddenly find surprise sums of money in their bank accounts, stolen from someone present at the show, and that they would all a) accept that this had actually happened and wasn't a prank, and b) be able to keep the money. Worse still, it reveals a surprise "twist" at the end that was never hinted at at all and doesn't actually work in the logic of the story. It's the kind of tacked-on twist that makes M. Night Shyamalan's movies look subtle. When we finished this movie, my husband and I looked at each other and said we wished we had those two hours of our lives back. ZERO out of ****

And there you have it! What movies were your least favorites of 2013?

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

I am probably not the most objective judge of the Hobbit movies. I grew up on Tolkien's books, and I am not ashamed of admitting that I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in cinemas 9 times. Simply to see Middle Earth onscreen will always be a pleasure for me.

Much of that pleasure is present in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (H2 for short), the second installation in the Hobbit trilogy. I can't help but think that if the Lord of the Rings trilogy hadn't come first that these films would be being hailed as the standard-setters in fantasy filmmaking, because there really is nothing else like them, even now, more than a decade after The Fellowship of the Ring hit theatres.

The thing that Peter Jackson is arguably best at is a sense of scale. Middle Earth is huge, and Jackson's swooping camera movements and wide pan shots emphasize how small individuals are in this massive world of Tolkien's imagination. I saw this film twice, once in 35mm and once in HFR 3D, and while I'm usually a skeptic of 3D films, I have to admit the effect actually made a real contribution to the movie's impact. I know that plenty of people have complained about the HFR, and it does take some adjusting; actions move smoothly, details are crisp. Once my eyes became accustomed to it, however, I appreciated the lack of blur in the fast-paced, ever-moving sweeping shots that Jackson is so fond of. When I saw H2 in 35mm, many of the action shots seemed to pass in a blur. In HFR, every hair on the spiders and every scale on Smaug was crisp and clear, making these monsters even more terrifying. The 3D also contributed; Jackson's camera motions are notorious for their drunken, helter-skelter sweeping through the scene, and in 3D I felt even more like I was flying through Dol Guldur or swooping down a tunnel with Smaug.

The action has been considerably ramped up, both in quantity and scale, from the first film. While I actually really loved the opening of Unexpected Journey and its focus on Hobbiton and Bilbo's dismay at meeting all these unruly Dwarves, many other people hated what they perceived as slow pacing. That isn't really a problem here, although those who haven't read the books may think the Beorn excursion dead weight that doesn't contribute to the forward motion of the story. (They would be wrong, of course.) The action setpieces are here in full force, and several of them are quite inventive, such as the barrel escape from Mirkwood. Bilbo's confrontation with the Mirkwood spiders made me squirm in my seat, and I may or may not have squealed once. (I did. I totally did.)

In fact, for me there is almost too much action. The reason I love Jackson's original Lord of the Rings trilogy isn't its action scenes -- although the battle of Helm's Deep will remain one of the greatest battle scenes ever committed to film -- but its heart. He was comfortable taking a break from the epic to focus on moments of intimate emotion, such as Boromir's death scene in Fellowship or Sam's heartbreaking inspirational speech in The Two Towers. When Jackson is content to linger on his actors' performances in these new films, there are some real moments of beauty. Ian McKellen's Gandalf can't help but dominate the screen when he's present -- he could be reading the menu at Pizza Hut and make it sound apocalyptic. Martin Freeman remains my favorite actor in this trilogy, although he is sorely underused; for a movie about THE Hobbit he isn't onscreen as much as you'd expect. When he is, though, his performance continues to be pitch-perfect. Freeman brings exactly the right blend of pluckiness and timidity that I would hope for from Bilbo Baggins. His interactions with Smaug, voiced by his Sherlock costar Benedict Cumberbatch, are incontestably the best scenes in the film.

The trouble is that there aren't enough of these personal moments, and characters tend to get lost in the onslaught of action. Even excellent confrontations, like the scenes near the end when Smaug and the dwarves face off, are drawn out too long. This movie would be better about 20-30 minutes shorter. And there are no emotional gut-punches like there are in the original trilogy. Jackson tries, with his addition of Tauriel and her (completely unnecessary) love triangle or his expansion of Bard the bargeman's backstory as an unwilling political dissident. These character touches are nice, but they don't carry the weight of the stories in Lord of the Rings. 

Perhaps that is somewhat inevitable: although the events in The Hobbit would eventually be ret-conned into The Lord of the Rings, the scale of the events is smaller. We're not looking at the extinction of Middle Earth here; we're talking about a very small band of people trying to reclaim their homeland. While that shouldn't be dismissed as a story not worth telling, it can be more difficult to feel like the weight of the world relies on this group's success. Jackson begins to suggest in H2 the larger importance of getting Smaug out of the Lonely Mountain with scenes involving Gandalf investigating the potential rise of Sauron, but for people unfamiliar with the source material, it might not be very clear yet. And Thorin Oakenshield is -- as he was in the book -- an unrelenting douchebag. The Hobbit films seem to want him to be another Aragorn, a king in search of his kingdom, but while I like Richard Armitage, he isn't Viggo Mortensen, and Thorin has few of Aragorn's redeeming characteristics.

Nevertheless, while the characterization leaves a lot to be desired, technically, the film is beautiful. There are scenes here that made my jaw drop; the aforementioned spiders, the first time Bilbo enters Smaug's hoard room, and a gorgeous moment when Smaug, covered in gold, pirouettes through the night sky scattering drops of light around him. Enjoyed simply as a feast for the eyes, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug delivers. As an adaptation of Tolkien's short novel, it has some great moments, but it's too long in general and too focused on action scenes in particular.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

There is a scene near the end of Catching Fire that encapsulates, for me, why the Hunger Games movies have been successful so far: a close-up of Jennifer Lawrence's face as emotions flash across it, conveyed by a crinkle of a frown, a twist of the lip, a widening of the eye. Serious emotional complexity presents itself to us in a matter of seconds. Jennifer Lawrence has a powerful screen presence, all the more remarkable given that she's only 23.

It's been interesting to watch these first two films, because they've been the first really successful action movies I can think of in quite a while to focus so centrally on a female protagonist. The other franchise that springs to mind is Alien and Sigourney Weaver's ass-kicking Ripley. That also was a sci-fi/fantasy story, and I wonder if one reason that stories like Alien and The Hunger Games are more palatable to society at large is precisely because they take place in an alternate reality. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to have an intelligent, resourceful, emotionally complex female character onscreen with bigger problems than finding/keeping a boyfriend. (You're damn right that was a dig at Twilight.)

The romance angle was the weakest part of the first film, and it's similarly underdeveloped here. Liam Hemsworth's Gale is a very pretty man, but that's about the only trait he appears to have, and why Katniss should be so attached to him remains a mystery to me. Her relationship with Peeta is more complicated. The first hour of the film is the best part, as Katniss and Peeta realize that although they may have left the arena behind, they haven't escaped it: they are part of a media machine that will keep going, as Haymitch sadly tells them, until they die. This revelation helps to explain Haymitch's angry alcoholism: in addition to having to watch District 12's tributes die every year, he's paraded around with the other "victors" in an unending pageant commemorating something despicable, and he can't refuse to be. No wonder he likes his whiskey.

The social satire isn't exactly subtle here, but then again, most satire isn't. The skewering of society's strange desire to feast on the details of strangers' personal lives and to watch them live out their lives onscreen is more aggressive than in the first film. So is its critique of our tendency to use entertainment to escape unpleasantness in our real lives.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Games master, embodies this criticism. His Heavensbee is enigmatic: at one moment advising President Snow to increase the horrific violence towards the districts with a soft-spoken delight, and the next having what seems to be a heartfelt, sympathetic conversation with Katniss. Smug, quietly intense, wearing a perpetual look of amusement, Heavensbee comes across as having has his own secrets (which, of course, he has). He voices the film's most literal criticism of our media obsessions: what better way to sow fear and resentment, he asks Snow, than nonstop coverage of violence interlaced with relentless attention to the frivolous details of a celebrity wedding?
Everyone is wound tighter in this film as fissures in the media machine begin to appear. Elizabeth Banks's Effie Trinket has an increasingly difficult time keeping her cheery facade uncracked as she watches the children she's come to have a real affection for be summoned to the slaughter again. Effie's manic cheerfulness is edgier here, the product of a woman who has been confronted with the real ugliness of the world that she is a part of and is trying to cope with that cognitive dissonance, and Banks's portrayal makes Effie much more sympathetic than I expected her to be. Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman is equally manic: his grin is wider this time around, his laugh louder, his gestures broader, but beneath the purple eyebrows there is panic in his eyes as he realizes his world of flashy TV interviews is undergoing a paradigm shift.

The irony of all this, of course, is that we are watching a critique of people who delight in watching a pageant of people they don't know kill and be killed...while we do precisely the same thing. It's difficult to say whether the film is aware of the contradiction; there certainly isn't the level of meta-commentary as there was, for example, in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Despite its many strengths, Catching Fire has some significant weaknesses. Perhaps most disturbingly to me, the film is very, very white. It has characters of color, but they're desperately undercharacterized. In fairness, most of the characters other than the main protagonists are also sketched quite faintly, and this is perhaps an unavoidable flaw in the games structure of the story: how do you adequately characterize and humanize 24 people at once? And given that most of them are destined to be quick cannon fodder, would you even want to?

Regardless of the story's inherent character limitations, I have to believe racial diversity could be better implemented than it is. Although Lenny Kravitz's Cinna looks at Katniss with sympathetic eyes (lined in effortlessly cool gold liner), there's not much more to him than that onscreen. Jeffrey Wright's Beetee fares even worse, which is double shame because Wright is a fine actor and manages a great deal with what little he's given. There is also a black female tribute who makes a brief appearance -- Enobarbia? -- but her characterization doesn't extend beyond her filed teeth, which she flashes at Katniss during training.

This trend continues the disturbing absence of racial diversity in big-screen action movies. I'm particularly confused by the lack of representation here given the first film's choice to make Rue a black character. Compared to most of the games cohort, Rue had a significant amount of screentime, and she was a sympathetic and more fully drawn character. Why was it so hard to give the characters of color some detail the second time around?

There's significantly less person-to-person violence shown onscreen in Catching Fire than there was in the first film, and part of me feels like it's a cop-out. The first film's use of violence struck me as disturbing in a thought-provoking way; watching children murder each other provokes intense dissonance. Children aren't supposed to do this. Children aren't supposed to like doing this. Granted, "children killing each other is bad" isn't going to win the Nobel Prize for Deep Thought any time soon, but I felt that there was more to the violence than that. Those children who took delight in the killing were bullies; their viciousness had simply been allowed a greater outlet than is usually accepted in society. Raised from birth to be tributes, the "careers" have been immersed in a culture that privileges their brutality, tells them they are superior to everyone else, encourages self-centeredness at others' expense as the ultimate virtue...uncomfortably familiar things from our own culture. When all the violence occurs offscreen, it's too easy to distance the protagonists from it, rather than seeing them as complicit in it, however unintentionally.

Overall, the games feel rushed. I would have liked to have seen more of the arena, and in particular its peculiar psychological effects on the tributes. After the slower, more exploratory pace of the first part, the games seem hurried, and characters who have the potential to be very interesting don't get the screentime they need or deserve.

Sad Stories of the Death of Kings: RICHARD II

Like many Americans, I suspect, my first experience with David Tennant's acting was his role as the stunningly insane Barty Crouch, Jr., in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Since then I have come to love him as my Doctor (the Tenth and best) in Doctor Who, and yesterday, thanks to the wonders of technology, I was able to watch him mesmerize as Richard II in a live cinema broadcast from the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

This was my first experience with a live-beamed performance, and it didn't disappoint. The RSC is known for the quality and care of its productions, and -- aside from this summer's terribly misguided production of Hamlet starring Jonathan Slinger -- I've never seen anything there that wasn't visually stunning. The stage and lighting design for Richard II are gorgeous. Using projection on long hanging strands of fine chain, the stage comes alive as the interior of Westminster Abbey, the hills of Gloucestershire, and the dank interior of Richard's final prison. (Oh, yeah, spoiler alert...) At the same time, the chain gives the images a slightly indefinite quality, making them a little hazy and always just out of reach, not quite real...perfect for the equally delicate energy that Tennant gives his Richard.

The most observable benefit to watching a live cinema broadcast over attending the play live is that the camera can show close-ups of the actors' faces. Unless you're able to spring for the really expensive seats, you're not likely to catch the nuances of expression and gesture watching a play live that you can get from a broadcast performance, and although the camera does control your gaze in a way that live theatre doesn't, I'm glad that I got to see these performers up close, because the cast is universally strong and give powerhouse performances.

The star here is, of course, David Tennant. Clad in long white robes and flowing auburn hair, he's fairly obviously Christ-like, the martyred lamb Richard believes himself to be. Tennant brings the same nervous energy and edginess to Richard as is observable in his Doctor. At the same time, he shows a restraint that honestly I wasn't sure he was capable of. I've seen other amazing Richards. Most recently, Ben Whishaw, whom I'm loved since I saw his debut performance as Hamlet straight out of RADA, astonished me with his delicately fey and frail Richard in the BBC's sumptuous The Hollow Crown. Most actors seem to choose the dainty route for Richard, and Tennant certainly has some of that vulnerability, particularly in his wide-eyed stares and twitching smiles.

Unlike Whishaw, however, Tennant's Richard has an undercurrent of more manic energy that gives a stronger pathos to some of his soliloquies, particularly towards the end of the play as his life unravels. This energy never tips him into Barty Crouch territory, though, instead giving the impression of a king who constantly walks the knife-edge between disregard for the rules to which he doesn't believe a king is bound and vulnerability to the same worries that plague us all: whether he is feared, whether he is respected, whether he is loved. Tennant's combination of skittish, almost childlike energy, pompous haughtiness, and raw emotional vulnerability makes his Richard the obvious center of the play. I found it impossible to take my eyes off him, even when he shared the stage with others.

To so dominate the stage with this cast is a real feat. Jane Lapotaire, as the Duchess of Gloucester, sets the tone for the production early in the play despite being only in one scene. She veers from collapsing into tears for her murdered husband to demanding vengeance on his murderers to confusion as to what her role is now that her beloved husband is dead. She is absolutely heart-breaking.

Michael Pennington's John of Gaunt brought tears to my eyes with his dying rage at the "wasteful king" who refuses to heed him; sacrilegious though it might be, I think I found his Gaunt even better than Patrick Stewart's in The Hollow Crown. He plays the famous "sceptred isle" speech as someone who has lost so much -- his son, his king, his health, his sanity -- that he has nothing left to lose. Oliver Ford Davies brings unexpected comedy to his role as the Duke of York, emphasizing just how unfit he is to be the king in absentia that Richard asks him to be. He also brings to the forefront the emotional turmoil and confusion that must beset a man torn between loyalty to God's minister on earth and recognition that that minister is not doing the job God sent him to do. 

I will definitely jump at the chance to see live broadcasts of this kind again; at just £13 for a student ticket at Odeon, it's an excellent value for a wonderful experience.

On the Raggedy Edge: GRAVITY

When I first saw the trailer for Gravity, I turned to my husband and said "I don't see how that movie could be more than two minutes long." How could a person disconnected from any life support systems and drifting in open space possibly survive?

Clocking in at a brisk 91 minutes, Gravity runs full-tilt for almost the entire time in answering that question. It is the sort of movie that is best if you don't know too many plot details, so I will try not to give too much away. It is sufficient to say that the film is stunningly beautiful. If you went only to see the visuals, it would be worth the price of admission. 

It's also surprisingly feminist. There is no inherent reason why Dr. Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) would have to be female. To make her so is a gutsy choice, considering the still-prevalent Hollywood notion that a woman can't anchor a box office success (despite what The Hunger Games suggested with its numbers). It is also an encouraging one; here is a film in which we are limited almost entirely to a single female "focalizer" character through whose point of view we observe the story's events. At times, director Alfonso Cuarón's camera even presents the viewer with shots directly from Stone's point-of-view: we see what she sees.

In other words, Bullock's Dr. Ryan Stone is a subject, not an object. Despite sharing the screen with George Clooney, God of Sex Appeal, she is not subjected to that problematic "male gaze" that objectifies women as primarily sex objects even when they're supposed to be intelligent, important characters. As a case in point: consider actress Alice Eve's Carol Marcus being displayed in her underwear for no good reason in Star Trek: Into Darkness. There are two scenes in which Stone is shown in skimpy clothes, but they don't come across as being there simply to show off Bullock's body. (Admittedly, "real" astronauts wear be-tubed long underwear and adult diapers under their spacesuits rather than tank tops and tiny gym shorts, so Stone's apparel is unrealistic, but I can forgive that if only for being spared the sight of Sandra Bullock in Depends.)

I was also genuinely surprised by Bullock in this movie. I've never had a problem with her as an actress, but I've also never thought of her as particularly talented; amiable, sure, but not terribly nuanced. My opinion of her has been completely changed with her performance here. Carrying a movie almost entirely on one's shoulders is something very few actresses are required to do, and Bullock pulls it off. She projects convincing vulnerability and heartbreak, but also steely determination and clear-headedness when it is called for. If she doesn't get an Oscar nomination for Gravity there's no justice in the world.

The word "jaw-dropping" is thrown around a lot; just this afternoon, I saw a sign for "jaw-dropping specials" on produce at the grocery store. I don't think that's appropriate, any more than it is generally so for the movies it's applied to (sorry, Transformers), but it is here. During several scenes my jaw literally hung agape, as I clutched my seat and squirmed and crossed my fingers that things would work. As I watched I was reminded of Ang Lee's Life of Pi; although the two films have very little else in common, I experienced the same sense of visual wonder in Life of Pi that I did in Gravity. I felt in both movies as though I were seeing things that I had never seen before, things that weren't of this world (as indeed, in Gravity they aren't). I have a feeling that images from this movie will stick with me for a long, long time.

Gravity is the only movie I can recall since Avatar -- a laughably inferior product -- in which the 3D seems integral to the film, and seeing it without it would lessen the effect. Cough up the extra money for a 3D ticket, Real3D if you can get it, and sit as close to the screen as possible. Don't check your phone (it's rude anyway). Don't look away. As one of the characters says, it'll be a hell of a ride.

These Are Not the Hammer: THOR 2: THE DARK WORLD

I'll be honest. Way back in 2011, when I heard there was a Thor movie coming out, I didn't expect to like it very much. Thor has always been kind of a dweeb in the (admittedly few) comic books I've read, and how could it possibly be interesting to watch a being who's essentially a thunder god crush some enemies? Wouldn't that be the shortest movie ever? 

After I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised. Granted, part of that was no doubt thanks to director Kenneth Branagh's ability to frame a scene beautifully:

Nice aesthetics, Branagh.

And Chris Hemsworth's surprisingly nuanced performance of what could've been a simple meathead role:

Just look at all that nuance.

And the production design's attention to presenting a world of suitably epic scale:

Really epic, am I right?

Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Um, mostly.

I liked a lot about Thor, much more than I expected to. My only major beef with the film was that they underused Natalie Portman's abilities and her character, Dr. Jane Foster. Fortunately, this time around that issue is addressed!

This was the gif you were looking for, admit it.

My apprehensions about its treatment of female characters aside, I was really excited to see Thor 2 because although Branagh is no longer at the helm, new director Alan Taylor has directed some of my very favorite episodes of Mad Men, including "The Hall of the Mountain King." He has a polished, sharp sense of visual style, and even though Mad Men isn't exactly full of gods throwing hammers (although MOUNTAIN KING, you guys) Taylor has also directed a fair number of excellent Game of Thrones episodes, which are much more in line with the Thor feel.

Taylor doesn't disappoint. The action feels suitably epic and is visually as stunning as in the first film -- perhaps even a little more so. An aerial chase scene through Asgard is particularly beautiful, although as with all things surrounding that realm, it feels a little unreal in the best way possible. The film's climax, which I will not give away here, makes use of the multiple realms of Yggdrasil to provide both disorienting action and a touch of humor. Although it runs a full two hours, the film is well-paced (better so than the first Thor, which did drag in places) and I didn't even check my watch once. Mostly because my watch is actually a cellphone because I kill batteries and I don't check my phone in theatres because that's rude, but just go with it as a metonym for my not being bored, okay?

There's actually a fair bit of humor here, which is appreciated; one of the problems I have with Man of Steel and Nolan's Batman trilogy is their persistently dour take on the world. That wouldn't work in a movie world where Earth is literally part of a big universe-tree helmed by attractive blonde people, and fortunately, the people behind the Thor franchise seem to understand this. The tone that Joss Whedon set in The Avengers continues here, with some very large-scale action and Epic Statements accompanied by slapstick moments and visual laughs. At one point in the film it almost becomes a buddy-cop flick starring Thor and Loki conspiring together, and this is my favorite sequence of the entire movie.

The chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston is actually much more sparkling than that between Hemsworth and Natalie Portman (again, much like the first film). Of the two men, Tom Hiddleston is the superior actor, and his expressions are wonderfully nuanced to convey glee and outrage simultaneously. Watching him is delightful. Hemsworth and Hiddleston play off each other well, though; Thor is the embodiment of blonde earnestness and Loki always, visibly, has 20 schemes going in his head at once. Their scenes together, although not frequent enough for my tastes (like Loki, satisfaction isn't in my nature, I guess), are supremely enjoyable.

Of course, we're supposed to care about the Romance between Thor and Jane because this is a Love Story etc. etc. There are a few cute moments between Thor and Jane, but in general I'm still unconvinced about the two of them together. However, the filmmakers have done a great deal better this time around with Jane Foster's character. In the first film she really didn't do much other than run Thor over a few times and talk romantically over a rooftop fire. She had basically nothing to do with the film's central story or its climax.

I was worried after seeing the trailer that this would be yet another plot where the female character is a maiden-in-distress and serves only to catalyze the hero into action. It is and it isn't. A crucial part of the plot involves Jane in distress. However, Jane is also an important part of the film's save-the-world climax, and as much more than mere inspiration to the hero. Yet she's no superwoman; she needs the help of her friends and colleagues and her space-boyfriend. Too often being a "Strong Woman" in the movies means trusting no one and needing no one; having no empathy and just Punching all the Things. In Thor 2 Jane plays a critical role in saving the world, with the help of Darcy and the (batshit and often-pantsless) Erik Selvig, and her actions are perfectly in line with her character and her skill set as an astrophysicist.

Even Rene Russo's Queen Frigga is given a little badassery. We still don't have a Wonder Woman or a Black Widow movie adaptation yet, and we probably won't for awhile, but this type of flick is visibly getting closer to having fully realized female characters who are smart and capable, as well as occasionally a little in trouble with Epic Evils. Buffy would be proud.