When it comes to girls' toys, it's not 'pink vs blue'. It's 'pink vs normal'.

The problem isn't just that 'boys stuff is always blue and girls' stuff is always pink'.  Because, as anyone who has walked through a toy store knows, that's not actually the case.  When you go to buy Legos or board games or the like, you generally have two choices.  You have the regular version of a given toy with whatever colors the creators decided to use and then you have the 'pink version' of that same toy.  This is actually far more troubling than merely offering a 'boy-friendly' version and a 'girl-friendly' version of these otherwise mainstream toys.  And, slight digression, this only happens with stereotypically 'boy friendly' products.  You don't see blue-tinted variations on make-up kits or doll sets, which in turn hurts younger boys who might want to play with dolls (that's a whole different essay).  You have the 'normal' version vs. the 'girl version'.  What this obviously tells girls (and parents, natch) is that it is 'not normal' for them to want to play with Legos, doctor kits, tool-sets, or seemingly mainstream board games.  No, that's not how 'it's always been' done.  And while that may currently be 'normal', it sure as hell isn't right.

Scott Mendelson     

2011 year-end wrap-up part VI: The 'Best' films of the year.

Here is the sixth (and probably final) essay detailing the year in film.  This time, it's the best of the best.  Of course 'best' is a subjective term, so you might want to consider these my 'favorites'.  Despite what everyone likes to whine about at the end of every year, 2011 was in fact one of the better years in a good long time.  Maybe it was the effects of the 2007 WGA strike wearing off, maybe it was just dumb luck, but on the whole, movies, especially mainstream movies, were pretty on-spot more often than they weren't.  But just as important, most of the year-end Oscar bait was actually quite good, so this is a year where I don't have to half-heartedly apologize for having a list filled with movies nobody saw and mainstream pictures that no one admits to liking. Even if it took 1/3 of the year to really get cooking, 2011 was an uncommonly solid year for all forms of cinematic entertainment.  And of course, there are at least a few films that might have made the cut if they hadn't come out so close to the end of the year (mainly A Separation, Shame, and Pariah).  But they merely become contenders for the 2012 Black Book award (IE - great films that you saw too late to include in your best-of list, named after  Paul Verhoeven's fantastic 2006 World War II thriller that I saw in mid-2007).  And thus, without further ado, here are the very 'best' films of 2011.  As always, the list will be alphabetical order, with a final paragraph at the end for my very favorite film.


50/50
This was a complete and total surprise, one that I wish I had seen earlier in its release so that I might have been able to give it the proper attention.  Unfairly written off as a Judd Apatow-wannabe comedy purely due the appearance of Seth Rogen, this fantastic comedic drama from director Jonathan Levine and writer Will Reiser is a loosely non-fiction telling of Reiser's diagnosis with cancer and how it affected him and those around him.  I can't speak to the medical accuracy of every onscreen moment, but the film feels bitterly real and it is never less than emotionally honest.  Joseph Gordon Levitt reaffirms that he is one of the better actors of his generation, and he is surrounded by a wonderful supporting cast (Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Phillip Baker Hall, etc).  The picture is relatively restrained, dealing with its subject matter with a morbidly comic touch, which makes the emotional pay-offs all the more powerful.  The movie is raw when it needs to be, cynical when it has to be, and just a bit uplifting when it has earned it.  It also contains one of the biggest emotional gut-punches of the year, arguably the most moving scene involving a book since Carl found his wife's scrapbook in Up.

A Better Life
This fine and observant drama from Chris Weitz (plus writers Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon) basically plays out like a loose variation on The Bicycle Thief set on the streets of East Los Angeles.  It is a character study of a single Mexican day-laborer and his attempts to rise up the theoretical economic ladder while keeping his son from straying off course. Demián Bichir delivers one of the best performances by any actor this year.  Without getting into the politics of legal and illegal immigration, this is a powerful and provocative little drama that has justifiably stayed with critics since its release in May.

Bridesmaids (review)
First let's point out what Paul Feig's Bridesmaids is not.  It's not "Hangover for girls".  Despite it's single (one/01) moment of bathroom humor, it is not a gross-out comedy or a raunch-fest.  It's an uncommonly observant character study of one seemingly normal woman basically staving off a nervous breakdown as she attempts to participate in the wedding of her best friend.  Kristen Wiig (who also wrote the screenplay with Mumolo) gives a fantastic lead performance that damn-sure should result in an Oscar nomination, as she anchors the film and keeps it from descending into farce.  Melissa McCarthy delivers most of the bawdy punchlines and makes her theoretically clownish supporting character into more than just a caricature.  Rose Byrne does subtle work here, presenting a character who is perfect on the outside but has her own set of self-esteem issues that bubble up.  And Chris O'Dowd is the best romantic foil of the year, arguably the 'perfect would-be boyfriend' but capable of error and willing to hold a grudge if the reason is just.  Regardless of what boundaries it did or did not break, Bridesmaids is the best comedy of the year and a finely tuned portrait of one woman trying to come to terms with her failures.

Captain America: The First Avengers (review)
Inside a needless prologue and a rather terrible epilogue (via studio-mandate) are about 105 minutes of near-super heroic perfection.  Joe Johnston's dynamite action-adventure picture finally gives Steve Rogers the cinematic treatment he has long deserved.  Chris Evans delivers a genuine portrait of America at its best: unquestionably decent and open-hearted, willing to fight but not itching to kill.  It's a bravura star turn that helps make this the best Marvel Studios movie ever and perhaps the best film based on a Marvel character outside of maybe X2: X-Men United. Stanley Tucci does a supporting turn every bit as grounded and sympathetic as Gary Oldman's work in The Dark Knight, while Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, and Hayley Atwell (as the year's coolest 'love interest') deliver top-notch support.  Johnston's splendid World War II action picture uses nostalgia in a tricky fashion, making us yearn for a time when America was unquestionably good and an absolute moral authority. With great acting, strong writing, and terrific action, Captain America is a comic book adventure that ennobles the sub-genre.  Chris Evans as Steve Roges does more than just save the world from the Red Skull.  His most super-powered feat is finally making me excited for The Avengers next summer.          

The Descendants (review)
Alaxender Payne returns with a bit of a switch.  While most of his films have been dark comedies about seemingly light subjects, this George Clooney vehicle tells a dark and somber story with a light touch.  Clooney sinks his teeth into a great role, as a man who finds out that his wife was cheating on him right after she ends up in a life-threatening coma, and Shailene Woodley (already solid on The Secret Life of the American Teenager) becomes a movie star as his resentful but empathetic older daughter.  The film gives terrific material to Judy Greer and Matthew Lillard, as it asks whether 'doing the right thing' is really the right thing when it threatens the happiness of others around you.  This is just a terrific little drama that hits almost all of the right notes.

Fast Five (review)
The fifth time is inexplicably the charm as this fourth sequel (and third entry from director Justin Lin) in an otherwise unremarkable series blasted off the summer season with uncommonly high style.  The stunts are all practical, the locations are gorgeous, and the action sequences are all the more eye-popping for being able to believe your eyes.  More importantly, the caper plot actually works, as the 'franchise all-stars' of the previous Fast/Furious pictures all team up to rob a drug kingpin while evading a US Marshall played with pure overacting gusto by Dwayne Johnson.  No one will accuse this film of being high art, but the emotional stakes are established just well enough to matter when the action heats up (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Jordanna Brewster sell the material as much as they need to).  Unlike so many sequels in long-running sequels, this one doesn't ignore every prior sequel but uses the character histories to add a rich emotional subtext to this fifth film.  The events of the prior films are not only referenced this time around, but they actually matter in regards to how the characters act and the choices they make.  This is a top-notch action picture and, along with another film on this list, will hopefully mark a return to big-budget action pictures involving mortal Earthbound heroes performing very real acts of daring do right before our very eyes.

Hugo (review)
Keeping in mind that I don't think Scorsese necessarily walks on water, this is probably my favorite Martin Scorsese film since... I dunno... Bringing Out the Dead?  Which I suppose is a backwards way of saying I enjoyed Hugo more than The Departed, The Aviator, and Gangs of New York.  The first act is slow-going, but Martin Scorsese and writer John Logan's loving plea for film preservation absolutely kills in the last 2/3.  This was one of several films about nostalgia, although it differed from the others in that it concerns a once-great artist who wants to forget his former glories because he can't reconcile them with his disappointing present.  With fine turns by Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz (I can think of no better child actor currently working), Ben Kingsley, and Christopher Lee among others, this enchanting and shattering family adventure film also boasts the finest live-action 3D you are likely to see for a long time.

Margin Call
This film was arguably the Video On Demand success story of the year, and it's easy to see why.  It's a great film detailing the last 24 hours before the utter collapse of a Lehman Brothers-type financial firm whose chief qualities - terrific acting and finely-tuned dialogue - play just as well at home as on a big screen.  It features a host of wonderful actors (Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, etc) in terrific character turns for a story that has obvious social relevance.  Fictionalized as it may be, the film works as a chillingly plausible 'as it happened' account of the bankruptcy that kick-started the current financial crisis. This is simply a terrific drama that is as delicious as it is nutritious.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (review)
Along with Fast Five, this dynamite action thriller may help revive the art of practical magic.  Brad Bird's live-action debut may not have much emotional renascence and the script may have a few holes here and there, but it does have unmatched showmanship that takes you back to a time when the very idea of action sequences were magical in and of itself.  The sheer quality and imagination of the action sequences on display, the sheer thrill of how real they all seem to be, and the looks of sheer horror on the faces of the actors who have to perform them, reminds us, once again, how wonderful it is when you can believe what you're seeing.  Tom Cruise re-establishes himself as a preeminent entertainer, as he jumps, climbs, and runs (and runs and runs!) to remind you why he was once the biggest star on the planet.  He may be a little crazy, but damned if he's not absolutely determined to give you your money's worth even if you're paying $20 per IMAX ticket.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the best action thriller of the year and one of the most purely entertaining movie-going experiences of 2011.      

The Muppets (review)
In a weird and surprising way, this would-be exercise in childhood nostalgia operates as a rebuttal to the constant need to revive and relive the entertainment properties of our youth.  Oh sure, we still love the Muppets, but must our kids also worship them as we did?  The film isn't so sure, and that self-doubt gives the picture an air of pathos behind the surface-pleasure delights.   It operates not just as a joyous and hilarious celebration of Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the gang, but also a fond farewell and most-fitting finale (if need be) to these iconic entertainers who never really got that 'one last show'.  With James Bobin, Jason Segel, and Nicholas Stoller's celebration of all things Muppet, the film gives us a chance to finally make our peace with Jim Henson's unexpected passing just over 20 years ago.  This film is the closest we'll ever get to be able to thank Mr. Henson in person.

Rango (review)
Gore Verbinski's visually dazzling and endlessly inventive ode to film noir and the spaghetti western is unlike any cartoon you've ever seen.  Johnny Depp gives his best performance since, I dunno, the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, and you can feel the obvious attention being lavished on this labor of love for all involved.  It's basically Chinatown in the old west with anthropomorphic animals, but the construction is so breathlessly exciting and funny that it stands on its own as a wonderfully quirky piece of adult entertainment that is nonetheless appropriate for (most) kids.

Take Shelter
Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain deliver two of the year's very best performances in Jeff Nichol's devastatingly intense slow-burn drama.  The film concerns a family man who is suddenly besot by visions telling him to build a giant shelter to protect his family from an oncoming storm, but it's really a powerfully subtle and observant study of mental illness and how economic difficulties can prevent families from dealing with critical problems before they implode.  Shannon barely rises above a whisper and is all the more engrossing because of it, while Chastain (in the best of her seven 2011 performances) takes what could have been a stock 'supportive wife' character and invests her with a character arc and poignancy all her own.  This is just an awesomely compelling drama that is every bit as intense as the most gripping thriller.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (review)
This terrifically engaging and openly mournful period-piece espionage thriller operates on several levels.  It is an acting treat, with a terrific lead performance by Gary Oldman, with several fine supporting turns by Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Mark Strong.  It works as a pinpoint precise spy thriller, where even the most rapt viewer will have to use their little grey cells to put the puzzle together along with Mr. Smiley.  And, on a darker note, it is a condemnation of a generation that spent their lives protecting and stealing arbitrary pieces of now-irrelevant information, regardless of the collateral damage.  Tomas Alfredson's drama uses its period-piece setting to reflect every so poorly on the present.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (review)
Tilda Swinton gives one of her very best performance in this horrifying and haunting drama about the pain caused when your own child doesn't love you.  This devastating picture can be read on multiple levels, depending on whether you choose to take the climactic events at face value or as some kind of righteously-indignant fantasy that justifies a mother's inexplicable inability to connect with her own offspring.  However you read it, it is a painfully intense and gripping film that will leave you scarred.

Young Adult (review)      
This partially inspired an essay about how audiences judge complex and potentially unsympathetic female characters differently than their male counterparts, and the film's box office failure and likely Oscar shutout more-or-less proved me correct.  Jason Reitman directs from the best script of Diablo Cody's short career, crafting a dark and uncommonly sympathetic portrayal of the kind of person who would have been the stock villain in a more conventional 'chick flick'.  Charlize Theron turns in another great leading turn as a genuine female anti-hero in the kind of complex character drama usually reserved for the Paul Giamattis and Phillip Seymour Hoffmans of the world.  Like so many other films this year, it is a commentary on nostalgia, as its embittered lead returns to her home town to try to recapture her glory days of high school by stealing back her old boyfriend.  Cody, Reitman and the team never justify Mavis's actions, nor do those actions exist in a vacuum.  It is a sometimes painful but always funny and authentic little slice of life that also features exceptional supporting work from Patton Oswalt.  Like Bridesmaids, it may count as some kind of 'progress', but it stands first as a terrific film on its own merits.

And now, at last, my absolute favorite film of 2011...

Kung Fu Panda 2 (review)
On the surface, this unexpectedly terrific sequel is a dynamic action film, a riotously low-key comedy, and a rare sequel that respects the journeys its characters took in the previous film and expands upon their world rather than replaying the first adventure.  On a purely visual level, the film is an absolute treasure trove of gorgeous sights of 'old-world' China that reminds us just how much visual splendor we take for granted in modern animated films.  But beyond the pitch-perfect action, witty and moving character beats, and eye-candy on display is a somber and reflective tale of, ironically enough, letting go of the past.  In a year when so many films good and bad are dealing with characters who are stuck in the past, Kung Fu Panda 2 is about accepting and letting go of the scars of the past.  Written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger  and directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, this moving character journey pits Jack Black's Po against a Gary Oldman's tortured peacock Shen who continues to do evil because he can't confront the initial horrors that he committed as a child.

The film unblinkingly deals with heavy issues in a way that's taken for granted at Pixar, and it tells a terribly sad story in a surprisingly lively fashion, with minimum onscreen bloodshed.  There are moments of unexpected emotional power and unexpected grace, as characters (like Dustin Hoffman's wise but dryly sarcastic teacher and James Hong's endlessly loving father) we have only begun to know become characters we have grown to love.  This is the second film in what is supposed to be a six part saga.  Seeing how well the universe is expanded and developed, and seeing exactly where the series plans to go from here (the cliffhanger is a stunning good news/bad news twist), this is the one ongoing franchise that I desperately want to see be continued until its natural end.  For being a near-perfect sequel and a near-perfect film, for giving me a new franchise to become truly excited about as Harry Potter and Batman end or head toward their finale, for being the most unexpectedly satisfying cinematic experience of the year, Kung Fu Panda 2 is my favorite film of 2011.

And that's a wrap on the whole 'year in movies' lists.  I may do one more if time allows discussing the various trends both good and bad. But if time does not allow, here ends the year that is 2011.  Overall, it was the best year in cinema for at least as long as I've been writing, highlighted by a resurgence in the adult-focused, star-driven, mid-budget genre picture.  Anyway, share your thoughts below.  For the prior year-end wrap-up lists, go here, here, here, here, and here.  Happy New Year to everyone!

Scott Mendelson

2011 year-end wrap-up part V: The Runner-Ups

This is the fifth of several year-end essays detailing the year in film.  I'm cheating quite a bit here, as I originally did not plan on writing a 'runner-up' list.  But, upon reflection, I realized that I had ten films that were really quite good but nonetheless didn't make my absolute best-of list.  One could argue that writing about more films possibly dilutes the impact of the eventual 'best-of' list, but at the end of the day, I saw a lot of really good movies this year, and I see no reason not to celebrate as many of them as I can get away with.  So now, in alphabetical order, the ten 'runner-ups' of the year.  And yes, I'm stealing three of these from the earlier 'good films you missed' list, because I damn-well would have reserved them for a runner-up list if I knew I was going to have time to write one.  In their place I added one (Winnie the Pooh) that didn't get its proper glory.

Cedar Rapids
This was among my favorite films of the year for the first half of 2011, so it's a testament to how strong the rest of the year was that this didn't quite make the final cut.  Regardless, this wonderfully charming, witty, and openly moral character comedy absolutely merits discovery.  Ed Helms gives a terrific star turn as an isolated country bumpkin, so entrenched in his small corner of small-town USA that a trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa feels like a bender in Las Vegas.  Director Miguel Arteta and writer Phil Johnston's surprisingly warm comedy never goes for the crass joke and never allows its characters to go over-the-top.  Anne Heche is allowed a three-dimensionality somewhat rare in female supporting characters.  Even John C. Reilly, as the token goofball, is allowed moments of humanity and genuine pathos.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II (review)

I can only imagine how much better this series finale would have played for me had I not read the books.  If I had not seen the major emotional beats coming, had I not been expecting certain major deaths, had I not missed the major portions from the book that were not included in the film, would I have loved it as much as I expected it to?  I cannot say, but I will say that the film improved on a second viewing, that the awful 3D hurt the theatrical experience, and that most of my carping revolves around not what is in the film but what is not.  Judging purely by what is in the film, it is a splendidly emotional and sprawling finale, with a massive battle that never becomes bigger than the personal stakes of our main characters and major beats for nearly every minor supporting character.  Alan Rickman gets one of the finest scenes of his career, in a performance that in a more 'prestigious' picture would make him an Oscar front-runner.  It may not be the best Harry Potter film in the series, and it may not quite have achieved the levels of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but by any rational standard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II is a wonderful and powerful piece of fantastical fiction.    

The Lincoln Lawyer (review)
I've talked here and there about how 2011 was a great year for mid-budget adult-centric genre fare, and this top-notch legal thriller was a shining example.  Matthew McConaughey delivers a wonderful star turn in this old-fashioned, star-filled legal thriller that was so good and so successful that it spawned a sequel and a television series.  Yes, the film tips its hand a bit too early, but what fun it was watching actors like Marissa Tomei, William H. Macy, Michael Pena, and a number of others digging their teeth into this genre material.  It's perhaps 'merely' a pulpy legal thriller, but by god it's an awfully good one.   

Martha Marcy May Marlene
This is the awkward part when I explain why a film that made a number of 'best-of' lists only ends up on my 'runner ups' list.  The answer is simply that it was merely a really good movie, if not quite a great one.  The lead performance by Elizabeth Olsen is being justifiably heralded, and John Hawkes shines yet again.  If the 'cult' material felt a little old-hat for a viewer that has actually seen a number of television movies about the subject, the sheer artistry and moody craftsmanship on display makes up for it.  This isn't the first film to deal with a young woman escaping from a religious cult.  But it is one of the best.

Moneyball (review)
Anchored by strong turns from Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, this terrifically engaging and low-key drama is at its best when it focuses on Billy Beane's single-minded quest to use statistics in a relatively new way in order to craft a winning ball club.  It only falters when it includes moments of his family life in what felt like a pandering attempt to make him 'relatable' to audiences who aren't sports junkies.  But when it keeps its eye on the ball, it's a fine and thoughtful light drama that never inflates its importance or the importance of the story it's telling.

Puss In Boots (review)
This film is the kind of movie that made me want to do a 'runner-up' list.  It's not even the best Dreamworks cartoon of the year, but its unexpected quality makes me incredibly excited about the future of Dreamworks Animation.  What would have been a quick cash-in spin-off is a gloriously exciting, exceptionally witty, and often just-plain weird fairy-tale adventure that is absolutely beautiful to look at.  It's a film by and arguably for cat lovers, and it's the first movie that my four-year old daughter absolutely loved.  It may have been motivated by commerce, but it's absolutely a work of art.

War Horse (review)
This one gets better the longer it lingers in my mind.  Yes, I'm not a big horse junkie and I can't say I was all that teary eyed during the moments of horse drama.  But hidden beneath this 'boy and his horse' fable is a brutally unflinching look at the madness and carnage that was World War I, delivered in a brutally violent but bloodless fashion that makes it not only a pretty great movie, but an educational one as well.  Spielberg may been knocked for the melodrama, but he also deserves credit for the horrifying and somber moments as well, and the fact that this works as a true anti-war picture if only by virtue of refusing to explain or justify why so many young men (and horses) were sent off to die.  That a film as good as War Horse ranks in the upper-middle of Spielberg's filmography is a sign of how impressive his nearly-40 year run has been.  And he's not anywhere close to finished.

Warrior (review)

This terrifically acted and thoughtfully written family drama is one of the best 'underdog sports' movies ever made.  Yes, Nick Nolte deserves an Oscar nomination and yes Tom Hardy is ferociously compelling as one of two brothers who hash out years of family bitterness in the lead-up to a MMA tournament, but the rest of the package is superb as well.  The characters, every single one of them, feel absolutely human and three-dimensional, and seemingly stock characters like Joel Edgerton's sympathetic wife (Jennifer Morrison) and a sympathetic school principal (Kevin Dunn) are given intelligence and opinions of their own that makes the film feel that much more real.  As odd as it may be to praise a film like Warrior for its dialogue, the sheer quality of the conversations that take place in this film (where adults discuss their problems and their feelings like adults) is what makes it more than just a well-acted TappOut movie.

Win/Win
Paul Giamatti shines in this thoughtful little drama about a struggling lawyer who commits a genuine wrongdoing in order to keep his business afloat and his family in the dark about his financial problems.  The plot thickens when the old man he has agreed to become a guardian for (Burt Young) is visited by his seemingly homeless nephew and the young man ends up taking up residence with the family.  Amy Ryan and Alex Shaffer deliver solid supporting turns in this pretty terrific movie that, yet again, probably deserved a wide release.

X-Men: First Class (review)
This is one of the best comic book films ever made, and a sterling comeback effort for the maligned X-Men franchise.  Using the prequel format as a way to play around with continuity, Matthew Vaugn and Jane Goldman fashion this 60s-set drama as a old-school 007 caper, with Kevin Bacon threatening the world with nuclear armageddon using the classic 'pit two countries against each other and clean up the mess' scheme that suddenly came back into fashion this year.  Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are dynamite leads as the young Magneto and Professor X, respectively, and the emphasis of character over action makes this a gloriously engaging and often intelligent piece of pop entertainment.  So why is it only on the 'runner up' list?  Alas, a second viewing highlighted the seams of a rushed-production and the exclusion of any gender/race commentary in this 1960s fable was even more glaring the second time around.  It's still a terrific movie, but there is obvious room for improvement the next time around and there is another comic book adventure that I enjoyed even more this year.   

Okay, no more stalling.  The next list will absolutely be the best-of 2011 list.  As always, share your comments below.

Scott Mendelson

2011 year-end wrap-up part IV: The year's worst films.

This is the fourth of several year-end wrap essays detailing the year in film.  This time, it's time to document the worst of the worst in cinema for the 2011 movie year.  Of course, while most critics make a point to try to seek out the allegedly best in cinema in any given year, not quite as much effort is made to track down every would-be stinker.  As such, I've tried to highlight truly terrible films that either 'damn well should have been good' or represent something greater than itself via its artistic failure.  Anyway, without further pretentious ado, here are the nine worst films in alphabetical order, followed by the absolute worst picture in 2011.

The Art of Getting By

This film so slavishly followed that indie formula I'm always whining about ('brooding young man solves his problems/comes of age with help of a selfless hottie') to such a degree that with just a bit of tweaking, it could have been a Z.A.Z.-style parody.  Emma Roberts again plays the endlessly helpful and forgiving prize to be won for the second time in under a year, after the comparably superior It's Kind of a Funny Story (that one at least had strong dramatic work from Zach Galifianakis and Viola Davis).  All of the cliches are firmly in place, the story has nothing of importance to say, and an extended cameo by Michael Angarano elicits guffaws in the same manner as Clive Owen showing up as 'not-James Bond' in The Pink Panter 2, albeit unintentional in this case.  In short, The Art of Getting By (and, natch, the equally revolting though lower-profile Waiting For Forever) is the kind of film that makes independent cinema look bad.

Cowboys and Aliens
And now we have a film that makes big-budget blockbuster film making look terrible too.  In a year when production budgets generally drifted downward to reflect slightly lowered ticket sales, Cowboys and Aliens spent $160 million to look about as impressive as an Asylum Entertainment picture.  This seemingly amusing idea, a hybrid of alien-invasion drama and a classical western, instead becomes a textbook case of how everything can go wrong with a would-be franchise starter.  Daniel Craig has not a drop of charisma or sympathy, proving yet again that the very elements that make him an interesting 007 (his cold, brutish, steely persona) kill his worth as a traditional heroic leading man. Olivia Wilde has nothing interesting to do for 80% of the film other than to look pretty and be protected from harm, yet her inclusion in the story saps precious running time and leaves lead Craig without a real purpose in the finale of the picture.  And the script is so harebrained that it makes Harrison Ford into a paternalistic hero while forgetting that he was introduced as a murderous villain (he kills a man in his first scene).  Oh, and Ford sleepwalks through the picture in a manner that would make Marlon Brando envious.  The aliens provide no technical interest, while the film doesn't even try to play its 'cowboys team up with Native Americans to vanquish common foe' angle for any social relevance or historical irony.  Without anything resembling substance, no characters worth caring about after (spoiler) Clancy Brown dies in the second act, and no action sequences worth giving a damn about, Cowboys and Aliens is an epic failure on nearly every artistic and commercial level.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (review)
If this were a bigger picture or a more socially important film, it would probably be 'the worst film of the year'.  It is a visually hideous and narratively drab would-be horror/film noir hybrid that succeeds as neither.  Despite the best efforts of lead Brandon Routh and Taye Diggs (plus Peter Stormare acting as badly as he can), the film remains one of the most lifeless and out-and-out boring films I have ever seen in a theater.  It's filled with unending exposition, some terrible special effects (you'll be amazed how not impressive and scary the 'final threat' is), and poorly framed action.  It has a visual scope that, with its extreme close-ups and important action occurring just off-frame appears fit for an Android phone.  This one raised the bar in two ways - A) It's the closest I've ever come to willingly walking out of a movie before it ended and B) It's the only movie that was so dull that I eventually moved to the highest row in a nearly empty theater so I could check my email while I waited for it to conclude.  I'm not proud of that, how's that for a pull-quote?

Fright Night

It could be argued that I am judging this dull, visually ugly, and relatively dumb horror film on a harsher scale because it is a prime example of what's wrong with arbitrary remakes.  It has neither the courage to update the 1985 original film nor go off on its own tangent.  A lot of good actors (Colin Ferrell, Toni Collette, Anton Yelchin, David Tennant, Imogen Poots, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) go down with the ship in this painfully uninspired botch that neither amuses or terrifies.  The very novelty of the first film is irrelevant in the age of Google and/or Amazon, making this update absolutely needless.  That it was remade purely because someone somewhere thought there was marquee value in a film that few outside horror fans from the 1980s remember is paramount cynicism.  That it was converted into bar-none the most hideous and genuinely unwatchable 3D you've ever seen only highlights how creatively bankrupt the whole process was.

Limitless

Irony of ironies, Limitless represents one of the most positive trends of the year while also being one of its worst films.  The picture was an old-fashioned star-driven and concept-driven thriller that cost just $27 million to produce and ended up grossing $168 million worldwide.  It was just one of many low-cost, high-return adult-driven genre pictures that signaled a certain realization amongst the studios that not every film had to cost $85 million and that adult-driven genre films could be profitable if they cost under $50 million to make.  Unfortunately, Limitless is pretty terrible. For a film about a guy who becomes the world's smartest man, Limitless is uncommonly stupid.  The film expects us to sympathize with a man (Bradley Cooper, cast somewhat to stereotype) who uses the gift of ultimate knowledge not to solve the world's problems or even further his own artistic ambitions, but merely to make tons of money in the investment game.  Moreover, the film has Eddie making a number of stupid decisions (borrowing money from the Russian mob, not trying to get more 'smart pills' until he's almost out, etc) which result in the violent deaths of several completely innocent bystanders.  Without going into details, the film ends with him getting away with everything all the while not resolving the tiny issue of whether or not Eddie murdered an innocent woman while in a drug-induced haze.  Limitless is both uncommonly stupid and uncomfortably immoral.

Passion Play (review)
This was a blink-and-you miss it art-house stinker that I only happened to see because the press screening was right next-door to where I was seeing the All-Media of Thor later in the evening.  Mickey Rourke gives another 'retract that Oscar nod' performance as a selfish, pathetic cartoon of a 1940s hard-boiled cliche.  Yet the film asks us to sympathize with his machinations and absolutely buy the romance between him and Megan Fox even as he plots to betray her.  May/December romances are one thing, but Mickey Rourke is not only 34 years older than Fox but looks like a villain from Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy.  Fox does what she can with a badly written part, and one can hardly blame her for poor acting in a film so botched that Bill Murray's cameo barely counts as entertainment.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (review)

First of all, when you spend an entire marketing campaign basically telling paying customers that they were wrong to lay down their money to watch the last two Pirates of the Caribbean films (while also implicitly insulting those who liked them), and then you go and make a film that makes the bloated but ambitious and enthralling At World's End look like Return of the King, you don't deserve any mercy.  This was an amazingly cynical (and tragically successful) money grab, betting that fans of the prior Pirates of the Caribbean films didn't care about story, character, and artistic merit, but rather merely showed up to watch Johnny Depp clown around as Jack Sparrow.  The film looked ugly and cheap even in 2D, so I can't imagine how hideous the 3D versions looked.  Spending $250 million on a film that resembled a $50 million TV pilot for The Continuing Adventures of Jack Sparrow, the film contained not one interesting new character, not one impressive action sequence, not one remotely interesting narrative thread, and not one iota of social relevance or topicality.  Geoffrey Rush looked miserable and you can see the flop sweat on Johnny Depp's face.  The original Gore Verbinski trilogy was artful, imaginative, and inspired even at its most bloated.  This Rob Marshall entry should finally make audiences realize that the vastly overrated Chicago was a fluke.  This is an awful, shamefully hideous motion picture.   

Red State (review)
This was the tragic case of Kevin Smith playing well-outside his sandbox and falling on his face.  This sloppy, visually hazy, often incoherent would-be horror film fails in nearly every plausible fashion.  It wastes countless good actors (among them, John Goodman and Melissa Leo) and seems to lack even basic filmmaking competence.  Whatever topical relevance it may have had comes ten years too late.  Whatever mastery of genre Kevin Smith attempted to display comes off as amateurish, resembling the very worst in direct-to-DVD horror.   With complete artistic freedom and a subject close to his heart, Smith botches the entire project, artistically and ideologically, substituting substance for rambling 'tell, don't show' monologues and a climax that feels like Smith ran out of money before the final pages could be shot.  I am neither Smith's biggest fan nor his biggest defender, but this is easily his worst film to date.  May it remain so...

Scream 4 (review)
Arguably The Roommate was the worst horror thriller of the year, one of the first studio features that offers almost nothing resembling a 'movie' (character, plot, moments of excitement or horror, etc).  But Scream 4 hurt far more.  Just so no one thinks I'm picking on Emma Roberts, she has arguably the one genuinely interesting scene in this otherwise complete tragedy.  Proof that Wes Craven may in fact be finished as a horror director of relevance, this fourth entry is sloppy, disjointed, and painfully aware of its own needlessness.  Not content to merely be lousy, it rubs the audience's faces in their decision to view it.  It is an attack on remakes and would-be torture porn that fails to achieve the token artistic goals of even most of the films making up those respective sub-genres.  It has all the authenticity of a 70 year old director and 46 year old writer trying to replicate 'how kids today interact with each other'.  It pertains to be a Scream film for the new age of horror while merely replicating the first film's hack-and-slash violence.  It tarnishes the franchise, makes one (incorrectly) wonder if they were too hard on Scream 3, and exists purely to arrogantly comment on how pointless and relentlessly mediocre it really is.

And now, the very worst film of 2011.

Crazy, Stupid Love (review)

Before I get into this, I should point out, in the name of mercy, that I quite enjoyed Dan Fogelman and John Requa's I Love You, Phillip Morris...  

When I'm discussing bad or mediocre films that arguably aren't worth getting worked up about, I often say that the film is 'harmless', 'not hateful', or 'not evil'.  Crazy, Stupid Love is arguably evil in its wanton misogyny and low view of women.  And it is arguably quite harmful in that its 'insights' about relationships and romance have been given approval by so many adult critics and pundits purely because the lead characters aren't teenagers.  Say what you will about the Twilight series or the almost comical sexism of the Transformers pictures, but they are endlessly debated, analyzed, and pontificated about.  They are not accepted at face value or treated as gospel.  Crazy, Stupid Love got away with, nay received critical huzzahs for, presenting adult women as helpless to resist the charms of any dime-store pick-up artist, unable to engage in a one-night stand without having a nervous breakdown in a public and professional setting, still under the moral control of their fathers, but ultimately blameless for the real moral mistakes they might make.  It presented 'never taking no for an answer' not as a useful tool in the stalker handbook, but as a genuine path to finding 'true love'.  It talked of 'soul mates' like it was a science, god help any girl who might disagree with random guy's declaration of love.  It presented situations lacking in anything resembling realism and passed them off as 'genuine'.  It presented moronic and adolescent romantic advice as 'wisdom'.  Never-mind that it's not funny, not moving, and sophomoric in its construction, the stamp of approval that this film received by the critical community makes Crazy, Stupid Love arguably the most dangerous and harmful film of 2011. 

And that's it for now.  As always, share your thoughts below.  Tomorrow will of course be the 'best/favorite' films of 2011.

Scott Mendelson

2011 year-end wrap-up part III: Good films you missed.

This is the third of several year-end wrap essays detailing the year in film.  This time, it's about highlighting the good or great films that slipped under the radar somehow.  Some got rave reviews and wide releases but stiffed at the box office while some never made it out of limited release.  All are worth tracking down and all are, with one exception I will point out, now available on DVD/Blu Ray/download/etc.  And nearly all of them are not hardcore independent films, but seemingly mainstream dramas and comedies that would have likely merited a wide release even a few years ago.  Once again, these will be in alphabetical order. 

13 Assassins (review)
Like pretty much all Magnolia titles in the last few years, the majority of the film's initial profits came from their OnDemand services, with Takashi Miike's truly epic samurai drama receiving on a token theatrical release in a few major cities.  No matter where you see this one, it's a surprisingly compelling shades-of-grey morality play.  At its core, it's about the morality of committing murder, political assassination no-less, in the name of dispatching a regional ruler who may be too evil to eventually wear the crown.  For the first two thirds it is a character study and a classic samurai drama.  But the entire last third of the picture unleashes one of the longest and most impressive non-stop action sequences I've ever seen.  If for no other reason than it's last 40 minutes, 13 Assassins is a must-see action picture.

Attack the Block
If you read any blogs that travel in the 'geek circles', this may be the most talked-about movie that nobody saw this year.  The film premiered early in the year to rave reviews from the Faracis and McWeenys of the world, but it's token limited release from Sony Screen Gems on July 29th, a weekend with six new releases.  Needless to say, it died and never really expanded.  Is the film as gloriously awesome as you may have read elsewhere?  Not quite. It doesn't break much new ground, but it does what it intends to do very well.  The young kids are all quite good and the aliens they encounter are all the scarier for their sparse use.  This is just a rock-solid genre entry that is just different enough to be memorable and just good enough to be a must-see.

Beautiful Boy
This one took it on the chin for being the first, but far less talked-out, film involving troubled youth from this year.  It's not as good as We Need to Talk About Kevin, but it's also a more clinical and arguably more 'realistic' variation on a similar story.  It's slow, quiet, and almost painfully objective, but it leads up to a finale that packs a surprising punch.  Michael Sheen and Maria Bello do good work as grief-stricken parents trying to cope with their son's murder/suicide shooting spree.  And if the casting of Kyle Gallner earns unintentional laughs as an example of sledgehammer-obvious typecasting, it should be noted that he delivers an emotionally compelling extended cameo.

Everything Must Go
This is a classic example of something that was inexplicably platformed when it could have been a modest success with a wide release.  Will Ferrell shines as an alcoholic who has lost his job and been locked out of his house by his about-to-be ex-wife after dramatically falling off the wagon.  The majority of the film concerns his attempts to unload all of his personal property in a yard sale, which brings him into contact with a few token colorful characters, including Rebecca Hall who refreshingly is not cast as a love interest.  But everyone plays it straight and the film feels authentic and human-level.  Writer/director Dan Rush's debut won't set anyone's hair on fire, but it's the sort of solid, low-key, compelling character drama that we don't see nearly enough of outside of the Oscar season.  It's just a darn good movie.

The Guard
In a less competitive season, Brendan Gleeson's delightful star turn would have been considered an awards contender.  Regardless of statues awarded, The Guard is a charming and quirky police comedy that nonetheless respects the seriousness of its situation enough to make its drama work.  Gleeson delivers a career-peak turn as his somewhat unorthodox Irish cop teams up with a FBI agent (Don Cheadle) to deal with drug runners.  Cheadle is loser here than he's been in awhile, and the rest of the film works as an amusing and thoughtful little gem that only occasionally flirts with becoming a thriller.

MissRepresentation
This one could have made the year-end best-of list if not for a few missteps.  The film, which premiered at Sundance and then aired on the OWN network in October, is a mostly all-encompassing look at how the media portrays and discusses women both in entertainment and journalism.  Overall, it's a sobering wake-up call to the uninformed and a stiff reminder to those in the know about how little progress the media and culture at large has made about how they portray and advertise to women of all walks of life (the film makes a strong case, as I have long believed, that we've actually regressed quite a bit).  But the film loses major points for some out-of-context clips (Going the Distance is not a traditional rom-com as its discussed in the film) and a lengthy moment where the film uses Mad Men clips as examples of mass-media preaching the 1950s/1960s patriarchal gender roles without noting that said show is an explicit critique of such.  And, Sucker Punch is a commentary on, not an example of, the whole 'fighting f**k toy' archetype. Nonetheless, the film is a mostly terrific capsule of how and why the media at-large preaches that girls and women should only value their appearance and their worth as child-bearers.

The Skin I Live In

This genuinely engrossing and ultimately disturbing little thriller is important if only for the glorious reunion of Antonio Banderas and director Pedro Almodóvar.  But aside from momentous occasions, the film is one of the better pure thrillers of 2011, and one of two great star turns from Banderas (the other being the unexpectedly delightful Puss In Boots, natch).  I'm not nearly enough of a  Almodóvar nut to judge this one within the pantheon of his other pictures, but I do know that The Skin I Live In deserves a look when it eventually arrives on DVD and the like.

Super
There has been a sub-genre of late that basically involves regular people deciding to become costumed crime fighters.  Kick Ass and Defender tried their hands at it last year, and this year's entry is James Gunn's Super.  But what sets this one apart, messy as it sometimes gets, is that it's not a superhero story at all.  It's a tale of religious and spiritual redemption.  Starring Rainn Wilson as a man who is inspired by a religious vision to go after people who do bad things, he ends up in a comic book store and wearing a costume purely because that's how super-heroism is filtered in today's culture (in another place or time, he might have ended up dressed like a samurai).  The film's selling point is watching Wilson commit painfully realistic violence against genuine criminals and petty annoyances (such as people who cut in line).  But the movie is no glorification of vigilante violence, and it builds up to a surprisingly moving climax involving Liv Tyler, as Wilson's wife who fell off the drug wagon and left him for a local dealer (Kevin Bacon).  Unlike most other comic book super hero stories, this one feels painfully personal, a therapeutic statement of grief arguably stemming from Gunn's own divorce.  It's powerful stuff.

Terri
It's no secret that I loathe the whole sub-genre of 'sensitive and mostly handsome young man deals with his personal problems and comes of age with the help of a selfless hottie' that has invaded independent cinema over the last 5-10 years.  But this one is the polar opposite, as the title character (Jacob Wysocki) is not a matinee idol and the girl he yearns for (Olivia Crocicchia) is neither an out-of-this-world knock out nor a solution to his problems.  John C. Reilly gives another great supporting turn as the empathetic school principal who doesn't have all the answers but is willing to fail until he makes progress.  The film feels real and the level of 'breakthrough' is life size and plausible.  This is one of the better examples of the whole 'young man comes of age' genre since Thumbsucker (whose director, Mike Mills, is justifiably earning raves this year for Beginners).

Tree of Life
I'm slightly cheating, but the box office figures ($12 million) seem to imply that most moviegoers missed this epic and sprawling portrait of a 1950s family.  I didn't find it as over-the-moon compelling as some critics, but it is absolutely a must-see picture. Terrence Malick's drama threatens to cross over into self-parody at times, but the strong performances of Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Hunter McCracken feel the focus on the family at its center.  Yes, the second half isn't nearly as compelling as the first half.  Yes, Sean Penn's scenes are so disconnected that it reminds one of Bela Legosi in Plan Nine From Outer Space.  But this is a good movie with an inordinate amount of great moments.

Trust (review)

Most people don't know that A) David Schwimmer directs a lot of television and B) David Schwimmer spends a lot of time overseeing and volunteering in the realm of rape-crisis.  Thus it may be a surprise that David Schwimmer has directed a nearly-terrific drama about a seemingly normal family trying to cope when their fifteen year old daughter is sexually assaulted by a man she met online.  While the first international trailer suggested Eye For An Eye-type fear mongering, the final film is a somber, quiet, and quite realistic.  The film doesn't pretend that there is a sex predator lurking in every corner of the Internet, nor does it pretend that the idea of such violence being perpetrated is all that shocking.  Trust is not about every family, merely about one specific family.  There are a few minor hiccups along the way, but it's probably as good of a film as we're likely to see about this sensitive subject.  Couple that with one of Clive Owen's best performances, a should-be star-making performance by Liana Liberato, and yet another solid turn by Viola Davis (as, yes, the empathetic therapist), and you have a film that will probably improve with age.  Yes, it will surely air on Lifetime at some point.  If only every 'Lifetime movie' were as good as Trust...


Winnie the Pooh (review)
This delightfully charming and unexpectedly inventive little cartoon felt as cozy as a warm blanket just out of the dryer.  Director Stephen J. Anderson earned the plaudits that he damn-well should have received for Meet the Robinsons back in 2007, but the film died at the box office anyway.  Simply put, this is Winnie the Pooh as you remember him, and it's warm and simply quality turned my daughter into a Pooh fan, possibly for life.

And that's it for now.  What great films did I miss?  Well, the deluge of year-end stuff means I invariably missed a few big Oscar films (Shame, Pariah, A Separation) and there are certainly allegedly worthy pictures that I missed throughout the year, try as I did to catch them all.  What are your thoughts on my picks, and what are your unsung heroes of the film year that was 2011?

Scott Mendelson 

Weekend Box Office (12/26/11): MI4 tops and War Horse makes strong Xmas day show as 10,000 movies get small piece of Christmas pie.

 Oh god, what a crowded and complicated weekend this was.  You had three major movies opening on Wednesday, one of which had been in IMAX release five days earlier and one had been racking up bucks all over Europe since October.  You had one major release on Friday and two biggies right on Christmas Day, plus a smattering of limited releases and wide expansions all throughout the weekend.  Topping the box office was the wide release of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (review), which earned $29 million over the Friday-to-Sunday portion, with $61.3 million between the Wedneday-Monday six day wide opening.  Combined with five days of IMAX-exclusive grosses ($17 million), and the fourth entry in the franchise has a solid $78 million all-told.  Those aren't insane numbers, especially when you consider that the original Mission: Impossible grossed a then-record $74 million in six days way back in 1996 and the next two sequels did $91 million and $57 million (the latter off a normal non-holiday weekend) in their first six days, but Paramount knew it was sacrificing opening weekend might in exchange for long-term play-ability.  It should be noted that aside from a few outliers (Interview With the Vampire, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds) and the first three Mission: Impossible films, Cruise's opening weekends generally fall in the $25 million range, whereby they usually slowly crawl to $100-130 million.  So while the the pure $29 million Fri-Sun number is a bit below the prior M:I entries, it's actually at the high end of Cruise's opening weekend scale.          

By debuting the film in IMAX first, Paramount correctly assured itself that Mission Impossible IV would be the film that everyone was talking about going into the Christmas break, and now it will be the one everyone talks about heading into New Year's and the relatively dead January as well.  The film was also a monster overseas, earning $140 million overseas (which is about what the film cost to make, natch), for a robust $218 million worldwide total in just over a week in play.  It is a strange thing to refer to a film earning $80 million in eleven days as 'slow but steady', but that is the play here.  The film earned far more on Sunday ($13 million) and Monday ($16 million) than it did throughout the last several days of the week, meaning it is indeed earning strong word of mouth and should easily top the next two frames.  The Brad Bird action thriller was arguably an experiment in actually platforming a wide-release would-be blockbuster, and so far the results are an unmitigated success.  We are sure to see a flurry of 'Tom Cruise is BACK!' articles, but the truth is that he never left.  Valkyrie and Knight and Day should never have been expected to do blockbuster numbers (no matter how overbudget they were), and Lions For Lambs was a would-be prestige picture.  Tom Cruise films have always made money based on the promise that Tom Cruise movies are generally of a certain high quality.  In short, if he runs, they will come.  

The next big high profile release was Sony's $90 million remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (review).  This one also dropped on Wednesday, and it's earned $27 million since then.  It's not a horrible debut, although the pure Fri-Sun number ($12 million) is pretty weak when you factor in the alleged interest factor.  Like so many overpriced would-be franchise starters, this one will need foreign grosses to save its butt and/or justify a sequel.  The David Fincher film was ambitious in theory, the first R-rated 'by adults and for adults' franchise-starter since at least The Matrix, the film may have merely fallen victim to audiences not wanting to spend 160 minutes (!!!) in a theater seeing a very similar remake of a foreign film they watched at home just last year.  I'm sure the press lavishing attention on the alleged ultra-violence (not so) and moments of explicit sexual violence (yeah, that part's true) didn't help either.  As I've said before, if you're targeting adults, especially adult women (many of whom read the original books), try not to schedule your film on a very family-centric holiday weekend.  How many busy mothers really had time over the Christmas break to take in a 2.5 hour thriller that was advertised as being 'the feel bad film of Christmas' (also not true, that honor goes to In the Land of Blood and Honey).

Where the film goes from here is an open question.  Sony will tell you that adults will slowly come out of the woodwork over the next ten days or so, and that could very-well be true.  Despite my misgivings about the picture, I would love for their to be a breakout genre franchise that is purely for adults, so I have been rooting for its box office success.  But again, this is as clear a case against 'unnecessary remakes' as we've seen in recent years, at a cost of $90 million to remake a film that cost $13 million the first time.  And it's yet another strike against Daniel Craig, who has seen one expensive and high-profile project after another flop on his watch in the last three years. A fine actor he may be, but at some point studios will have to realize that he holds about as much drawing power as would-be 007 Clive Owen.  Oh wait... my mistake, the relative apparent failure of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is obviously the fault of newcomer Mara Rooney (who is the only thing worth seeing in the film, natch).  Because it's always the girl's fault, right?  Anyway, point being, this was supposed to be one of the big films of the season, and if not for the film's ill-advised Oscar hopes, it would have absolutely killed in mid-February, such as Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Shutter Island.  Aside from perhaps Mara, the film was never going to be an Oscar film, so scheduling it as such may have killed the franchise.

Next up is The Adventures of Tintin (review) which opened on Wednesday with a $24 million six-day gross.  That's actually pretty decent, especially when you consider that the film made a whopping $2.3 million on Wednesday.  The $130 million motion-capture adventure picture is based on a very popular European comic book series dating way back to the 1929.  The character is relatively unknown in America, which is why the film has been in wide release in Europe since October.  And how is it doing there?  Oh, it did about $200 million before it opened in America, giving it a current worldwide total of $263 million.  So yeah, Paramount would have liked some US dollars here, but domestic is just icing on the cake for this one.  The only Friday wide release was Cameron Crowe's would-be comeback vehicle We Bought A Zoo.  The Matt Damon family-drama grossed $15.6 million over its first four days.  That's not spectacular, but A) the film cost just $50 million, B) it's already halfway to out-grossing every prior Cameron Crowe film save for its two Tom Cruise vehicles (Vanilla Sky at $100 million and Jerry Maguire at $153 million), and C) it's a Fox film, meaning it will probably do $80 million overseas when all is said and done.

Now we get to Christmas day, where the real sensation of the weekend debuted, as The Darkest Hour shocked America by grossing $20 million in one day and nearly taking the weekend crow... sorry, I can't finish that with a straight face.  Summit Entertainment's 3D aliens invade Russia thriller seemed like counter-programming, but it's really just the kind of thing you save for January or anytime when there really isn't anything better to see.  The $30 million film earned $5.5 million in two days, and I imagine much of that came from professional critics who had to see the picture on Christmas day due to it being withheld from press.  The real news was the $15 million two-day gross of Steven Spielberg's War Horse (review).  The would-be Oscar contender and the second of two Spielberg films to open over Christmas weekend (what did YOU do with your holiday weekend?) earned enough in two days to come in seventh over the four day weekend.  War Horse is shaping up to be the family film of choice over the end of the year and, at a cost of just $70 million, should be a pretty big hit for Disney/Dreamworks and yet another feather in the cap of Mr. Spielberg.

There are two more limited debuts and some holdovers.  Debuting on Friday was Angelina Jolie's In the Land of Blood and Honey (review), which is a Bosnian-language erotic drama involving the 1992-1995 genocide.  So yeah, exactly the kind of thing that people race out to see.  Anyway, good intentions (and a very flawed movie) aside, the film earned just $27,800 on its three screens.  Come what may, Film District had to know they were doomed once they allowed Jolie to only release the subtitled version into theaters and not the alleged alternate English-language version.  Again, good intentions, but no box office potential.  The other major debut, on Christmas Day, was the high-profile 9/11 grief drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  The Tom Hanks/Sandra Bullock film was the last major Oscar-bait film to be screened and was a pretty big question mark right up to its release, only to earn wildly mixed reviews.  Anyway, the film earned an okay $137,000 on six screens over its first two days.  

In holdover news, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows ($90 million) and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($56 million) are both trailing their respective predecessors, but neither are a wash (again, Alvin 3 is Fox so it'll probably do $300 million overseas). But both could end their respective franchises, especially in the case of 'won't get any cheaper' Sherlock Holmes.  If audiences aren't thrilled about Moriarty, they certainly aren't going to care about another 'Sherlock Holmes vs. the random murderer!' third installment.  Among the Oscar bait holdovers, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (review) and The Artist (review) are both  over the $2 million hump, while The Descendants (review) is at $33 million and Hugo (review) sits with $44 million.  Alas, Young Adult (review) is a victim of overcrowding as the film, which arguably would have been a bigger hit as a stand-out quality dramedy outside of awards season, sits with just $8 million (although the film only cost $12 million to produce).

Ok, enough for this weekend.  Join us for the final weekend of the year for limited release news and the like.

Scott Mendelson    

Merry Christmas to all Mendelson's Memos readers. Pleas enjoy perhaps the finest opening scene of any Christmas movie ever:

2011 year-end wrap-up part II: The Overrated.

 This is the second of several year-end wrap essays detailing the year in film.  This time, we're dealing with 'overrated' films.  Here is the hardest one to write, merely because it's simply a list pointing out why ten films you all loved are actually either not-that-great or actually pretty terrible.  Most are what I would consider 'bad movies' that are being hailed elsewhere as greats, while a few are merely mediocre movies that are inexplicably being given a critical pass in most circles.  Again, if you've been reading me this year you'll probably be able to guess a few of these.  As always, these will be in alphabetical order. 

The Adventures of Tintin (review)
As I said the night I saw this picture, I cannot and will not begrudge anyone who enjoyed this Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson action adventure film more than I.  And that still remains the case.  But despite the top-notch animation (I'm actually a fan of motion-capture technology) and one all-time great action sequence in the third act, the film suffers from a fatal lack of interesting characters.  Jamie Bell's Tintin is a blank slate onscreen, Daniel Craig's villain is relatively rote, and there are almost no colorful supporting characters to pick up the slack.  Andy Serkis's Captain Haddock is the only character with depth.  Truth be told, any film involving humans where the most entertaining character is a dog surely deserves a gentle knock for not bothering to develop the humans.  Perhaps I expected too much from two of the finest 'big' directors of my lifetime, but this is a relatively unengaging trifle that skates by on its technical merits and one absolutely superb set piece.  It lacks the old-school swing for the fences zeal of Jackson's truly awesome King Kong, or even Steven Spielberg's flawed-but-impressive War Horse.  If you enjoyed it as much as I wanted to, then you have not my scorn but my envy.

The Artist (review/essay)
The probable best picture winner is basically a 1920s-style silent film.  It offers no commentary on the art form nor insight about its time period.  It is one of several major films this season that deal with nostalgia and how we deal with the glory days of our would-be peak years.  Yet this picture, charming as it occasionally is, offers no wisdom or constructive commentary on its subject matter, and it exists as testament to the whole 'gosh, everything was better back in the day' nostalgia that is infecting mainstream entertainment at all levels of production.  Viewed apart from its (perhaps unintentional) implications of our current culture, it is a feather-light trifle of a picture, some that, had it been actually been produced in the time period when it takes place, would have been a solidly B-level (if that) silent picture.

Drive (review/essay/essay)
For better or worse, I became the poster child this year as 'critics who hate Drive'.  As I've written several times, the film is a relatively lousy action drama.  Only the supporting characters (Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston) and the paper-thin coating of 'cool' give it anything resembling a spark of life past the admittedly terrific opening scene.  Ironically, the refreshingly specific Jewishness of the two villains inspired the year's dumbest lawsuit, but I digress (as a Jew, I want more Jewish villains!). The two dull-as-dishwater leads (Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan) are supposed to be among the most romantic couples of the year, yet they have so little chemistry or even dialogue together that it's not unreasonable to presume that much of their courtship is in "Driver's" imagination.  It is yet another 'boy's adventure' where we are supposed to romanticize with a violent psychopath purely because he's handsome and has token feelings of lust for a pretty girl who happens to be in his midst.  It is not exciting, it is not romantic, and it is not artful enough to justify the absence of any other entertainment value.  It is, quite simply, a glorified straight-to-DVD thriller (complete with extended scenes of characters doing next to nothing in complete silence to pad out the running time) that somehow got hailed as the future of action cinema.  And if you take Albert Brook's expository monologue at face value,  Nicolas Winding Refn knows he's pranking the critics. 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (review)
If the original Swedish film had not been subtitled and contained moments of somewhat sensational violence, it would have been correctly written off as a solid but unremarkable B-movie thriller with an interesting supporting character in Lisbeth Salander.  But, as Robert Rodriguez will tell you, subtitles do a funny thing to audiences, making them find art where only pulp exists and deeper meaning where only thriller mechanics can be found.  But this big-budget remake by David Fincher actually manages to diminish whatever appeal the original film (or the original book too, I suppose) had.  Drained of any real suspense and with much of the infamous violence toned down, the film comes off like a bloated and drained-of-all-life episode of Criminal Minds.  Rooney Mara is sensational as Lisbeth Salander, and the film is engaging whenever she is onscreen.  But she is truly a supporting player, with token story changes that make her feel even more at the service of her male companion that in the original.  Rooney Mara's performance is certainly worth watching, and the character is fun to watch (if not the pioneering feminist icon she has been held up as).  But the rest of the film is a drab and outright boring mystery thriller that fails to thrill and a mystery that, thanks to boneheaded casting choices, would have been solved by any television sleuth (Adrien Monk, Olivia Benson, David Rossi, Bobby Goren, etc) before the second commercial break.


Hanna (review)
Joe Wright earned my ire by trashing Sucker Punch while promoting HIS ass-kicking female action picture, which is both bad form and fraudulent since the theoretical prurient appeal of watching Saorise Ronan (in top form, as always) ruthlessly dispatching foes pretty much proves one of the big points Snyder was trying to make.  There is much to admire in this pulpy and often brutal re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood, including a single-take action sequence involving Eric Banna and Cate Blanchett reminding me why she was my #1 celebrity crush in high school (yes, she's terrific, but that goes without saying at this point).  But the film is so detached and cold that there is no real viewer investment in any of the major characters and the film comes off as a pure exercise in style.  If anything, you'll feel bad for the many innocents who get slaughtered as young Ronan's Hanna makes her way across Europe to track down Blanchett.  Moreover, the film often feels hollow and empty behind the stylish visuals, making it almost as junky as the b-movie action pictures that Wright is clearly trying to upstage.

The Ides of March

This film is a classic case of 'telling instead of showing', as the entire film hinges on the idea that Ryan Golsing's high-level political operative is a master of the game and a wide-eyed innocent, neither of which are on display in this half-hearted political drama.  There is no more political insight in this George Clooney-helmed picture that can be found in a mediocre episode of The West Wing, and the overriding narrative becomes a sexed-up and dumbed-down variation on Primary Colors.  Whatever insights Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman bring to the table (oh what a film it would be if they were the main characters...), the second half degenerates into a moronic 'Uh oh, the hot girl is going to wreck everything!' melodrama that has as much relevance to today's political climate as The Lion King.  Oh, and this is the second major film this year where Marissa Tomei's primary purpose is to be humiliated for attempting to act like an adult in a sea of overgrown children (the other one is... spoiler alert, on a different list).

Like Crazy
This film is a classic example of how alleged independent cinema is often treated differently than mainstream cinema of a similar nature.  This romantic drama, told in a not-entirely linear narrative, deals with the ups and downs of a young couple (Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin) and theoretically highlighted the ickier, more complicated parts of a long term relationship.  But the execution feels so much like a standard indie romantic drama that it threatens to tip into self-parody (there is another film this year that fell headfirst into that pool, but that's a later list).  Purely on the strength of a decent performance, a British accent, and the idea that critics often fall over themselves to praise any attractive young woman who comes out of the indie scene, Felicity Jones is now 'the next big thing'.  I hope she lives up to the hype and I am a fan of Yelchin (he stole The Beaver from Mel Gibson earlier this year), but this film offers little in the way of insight.  If this film had been a wide release with a major star at its center (say, the neither better nor worse One Day with Anne Hathaway), it wouldn't have gotten a second glance or would have been eviscerated.  It's not a horrible film, and it's certainly not an evil or hateful picture, but it's a shining example of how independent cinema is often graded on a curve compared to similar genre entries that happen to be studio pictures.
 

 Midnight In Paris
Yes, the 20 minutes or so set in 1920s Paris were charming, fun, and offer a helping on insight.  Corey Stoll gives a break-out turn as Hemingway just as Law and Order: Los Angeles (where his character was affectionately referred to as 'Thumb') was cashing-in.  But the surrounding picture is exactly the sort of badly-written and generically contrived romantic comedy that would have been crucified if it starred Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston.  Woody Allen writes Owen Wilson's would-be in-laws as simplistic cartoons, using their conservative political views as cheap fodder for alleged comedy (Kurt Fuller played this role to far funnier and richer effect on the unjustly cancelled Better With You).  Rachel McAdams is forced to play the simplistically villainous 'wrong woman' and Michael Sheen's character is mocked and condemned for being proud of his obvious intelligence.  Owen Wilson tries his best to wring sympathy out of a character who's biggest problem is the possibility that he might have to take script-doctor gigs to make extra money.  His ridiculous whining about a situation that he could easily fix is an epic drama of pointless self-pity (free tip - when you're rich and have no dependents, it's that much easier to indulge most of your pursuits).  The film eventually has more to say about nostalgia for theoretical perfection than the likes of The Artist.  But pretty much all of the substance and entertainment value is crammed into one specific portion of the film, leaving the rest to wither like the one-note romantic comedy-that makes romantic comedies look bad- it is.  Just like Home Alone (the popularity of which hinged mostly on the climactic Wet Bandit stand-off), the charms of the 1920s segments cannot make up for an almost painfully trite shell which surrounds it.


Source Code (review)
It seems almost petty to pick on this ambitious bit of science fiction, as Duncan Jones surely meant no ill intent in its construction and it's an honest attempt to create an original science-fiction thriller.  But once you get past the first reel, which sets up the Quantum Leap/Seven Days-ish premise, the rest of the film is a giant waiting game, as we watch the same eight minutes or so over and over again, knowing that nothing of major consequence is going to happen until the last reel.  While I'm not sure there was any way around that problem, the film also loses major points for basically inventing new rules right at the last minute for a relatively unearned (and arguably kinda-creepy) 'happy ending'.  I will gladly await whatever Jones follows this up with, but Source Code has fine performances in service of a hamstrung narrative and a giant cheat of an ending. 

Super 8 (review)
The film was supposed to be 'the great original picture that saved us from a summer of mediocrity'.  Problem is, the summer started out quite strong and J.J. Abrams's Super 8 wasn't all that good.  Fashioned as an homage to Steven Spielberg, the film comes off as someone else doing a spin on the prototypical Steven Spielberg film that never actually existed.  Sure Spielberg directed ET and produced The Goonies, but he was also producing (directing?) Poltergeist and directing Empire of the Sun and The Colorful Purple during that same period.  But the film itself, powered by a hazy glow of alleged nostalgia, fails both as a character drama and as a supernatural thriller.  The supporting kids aren't developed in the least, the film pulls out an unseen dead mother purely for cheap emotion, and the lone female character (Elle Fanning) spends the entire film as merely the romantic object and the entire third act as a damsel in distress (even The Goonies had two females, one of which was not the least bit romanticized).  And the film absolutely falls apart in the third act with a dramatic arc that makes no sense as it's clearly the lead's father (Kyle Chandler) who is emotionally wrecked by Mrs. Lamb's death, not his son.  This was a film with no other purpose than to mimic the template of a handful of 80s would-be classics (I'm not the world's biggest fan of The Goonies) purely as a technical exercise.  This isn't the work of Steven Spielberg, it's the work of Señor Spielbergo.

And that's a wrap.  Now have your say, which I'm sure will have many of you calling me an idiot and/or a bully, which is the price one pays for doing an 'overrated' list in the first place (good - lots of traffic  bad - lots of name calling).  Next up, the 'Good films you missed', which is a list of ten good or great films that slipped under the radar.  And yes, I do enjoy highlighting the good movies far more than highlighting the whiffs, but everything has its place.

Scott Mendelson