(Movies discussed in this post: Like Crazy, Weekend, Crazy Stupid Love, Friends With Benefits, No Strings Attached.)

When it comes to movie romances, there are basically two kinds — real and unreal. Happy and sad. Bullshit and not-bullshit.

Or, to put it in Julia Roberts terminology — some movies are Runaway Bride, and some movies are Closer.

(The vast majority of movies are Runaway Bride.)

All real romances are sad, even if they end happily. Because pain is part of the process. My Best Friend’s Wedding is one of the best romantic comedies in the past couple decades because it acknowledges that. Ditto When Harry Met Sally and The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, which somewhat operate under the romantic comedy umbrella — the meet cutes, the uplifting endings. But there’s none of that standard manipulation, and as they unfold, they allow the audience to be genuinely unsure of how they’ll turn out. Shouldn’t all romances be like this? Because in real life, you never know. These are movies about real people, and guess what? Real people are sad sometimes. Often times, a lot of the time. Deal with it.

Some bullshit romances are sad, too — think Love & Other Drugs, which stranded winning leads Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal in a movie that went from a solid upper (naked romping and Viagra) to a flaccid downer (disease-of-the-week blahs). Think of the utterly forgettable Robert Pattinson vehicle Remember Me, which awkwardly and unconvincingly adds 9/11 to the Sparks formula. These weepy movies may think that a tragic conclusion makes them “real,” but they’re not. They’re just Valentine’s Day with a bad ending. Still bullshit.

Now, I know the conventional romantic comedies have their place in this world. Especially when they’re done reasonably well, like Pretty Woman or Love Actually. It’s just that, well — if these movies were ever even remotely realistic, they are growing less so.

Luckily, some filmmakers still get it right. 2009′s utterly fantastic anti-romcom (500) Days Of Summer (if you haven’t seen it, I hate you) deconstructed young love in the 21st century, and the recent release Like Crazy follows in that tradition — taking a hard look at the ways love has changed in this modern era. These are movies that know we aren’t playing by the same old rules anymore. By the same token, Andrew Haigh’s wonderful Weekend applies the Before Sunrise formula to a same-sex pairing — with sublime results.

Which makes me wonder: is there even room for a movie that follows in the standard romantic comedy formula, in a world that has seen Before Sunset and (500) Days Of Summer? ‘Cause honestly, Hollywood. It’s getting harder and harder to buy your Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler-starring fairy tales anymore. How long is this going to go on?

The jig is up.

I’ve avoided almost everything you might call “a romantic comedy” for years now. I realize that there’s a (diminishing) market for such shenanigans, but moreso than any other genre, the romcom operates on such a tired series of cliches, and what’s worse: they tend to make both men and women look like idiots. Perhaps their greatest crime is the obligatory Big Misunderstanding, when the guy or girl should just say how they feel and end the movie, but instead they run off and make someone chase them through an airport and train station, wasting about 20 minutes of the audience’s time in the process (even though we all know exactly what’s going to happen). Has there ever been a truly exciting “chase scene” in a romantic comedy? It doesn’t matter how many cutesy touches are added, like the Stern Woman At The Gate Who Won’t Let You Through — but oh wait she will, because you explained everything in an awkward, sappy speech and she totally feels you? Any screenwriter or director staging such a scene is fighting a losing battle against four thousand movies we’ve seen before, each of which followed the exact same pattern.This year’s Crazy Stupid Love found a happy medium between realism and romcom, thanks in large part to the characters portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Their seduction scene sizzled thanks to great chemistry (and an assist from Dirty Dancing) in the movie’s strongest sequence. The storyline involving Steve Carell as a divorced dad undergoing a makeover from suave Gosling also worked well; unfortunately, the script added a few complications too many, and ended with a schmaltzy kid-makes-a-heartfelt-speech scene. Blech. Surely Crazy Stupid Love is worth checking out, and mercifully breaks some rules — but for my money, still veers a little too far into the aforementioned “BS” territory, especially in the messy finale.

What’s a filmmaker to do? Can romcoms shed the cliched shackles of the past and modernize? Maybe. Hollywood’s standard, generic romantic comedies are desperately trying to catch up to the 21st century, at least. Unfortunately, this usually means adding raunchier humor and some sort of technology, but otherwise still abiding the terrible romcom cliches that didn’t work decades ago when they were invented. (Witness Anna Faris and Chris Evans in What’s Your Number?, or better yet — don’t. I sure didn’t.) No fewer than two movies in 2011 attempted to be “hip” and “with it” by addressing a “fuck buddy” storyline — No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits. With varying success.

The more engaging of the two is Friends With Benefits, largely because it has two likable leads in Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis (whereas No Strings Attached has the winning Natalie Portman… and the less-winning Ashton Kutcher). Directed by Easy A‘s Will Gluck, it dealt with such 21st century topics as blogging, flash mobs, and premarital sex with a fizzy flair. For awhile, anyway. Unfortunately, the latter half gets bogged down by subplots involving Alzheimer’s and the typical “instead of sharing how I’m feeling, I’m going to pretend I’m fine and make you hunt me down later” miscommunication. Yawn! And yes, the grand finale involves a flash mob, a misbegotten attempt at being current that really just dates the movie. Luckily, Mila and Justin save it with their sexy banter. By an inch.No Strings Attached, on the other hand, has some good zingers from writer Elizabeth Meriwether, tossed by decent comic relief sidekicks Mindy Kahling, Kevin Kline, and others. But as I mentioned, it also has Ashton Kutcher — and I just can’t get behind any movie that has Natalie Portman falling head-over-heels for Ashton Kutcher. (Unless, maybe, she was Black Swan batshit crazy. Unfortunately, there are no swans attached.) Both of these “fuck buddies in love” comedies end up being too traditionally romcom-esque for their own good, and each falls apart under the weight of the expectations dictated by the genre. Alas, they can’t all be Before Sunrise.

Which brings us to Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, perhaps the only true crossover gay romance there is to date. (The audience I saw it with was, to my surprise, mostly heterosexual pairings — in Chelsea, no less!) It concerns Brits Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New), strangers who meet in a gay bar, go home together, and proceed to spend the rest of the weekend in each other’s company. I won’t elaborate on the plot, because there isn’t one. Like Before Sunset, it’s basically a series of conversations that reveal intimate details about both characters, and also slowly hint that they are falling for each other. It’s ultra-realistic in every moment — even the climactic rushing-to-the-train-station-before-it’s-too-late scene smacks of truth. That’s quite a feat.

And best of all, perhaps, is the film’s meta-commentary — Glen is an artist who complains that straight audiences have no interest in gay art. Given the positive critical reception of Weekend, Haight may have proven Glen wrong with this one; though this story certainly doesn’t ignore or make irrelevant its characters’ sexuality, there is plenty for both gay and straight audiences to appreciate in this universal romance. It’s the kind of love story the 21st century really needs, bittersweet, ambiguous ending and all.

Ditto Like Crazy, which straddles the line between romance and heartbreak almost the whole way through. It’s painful to watch — perfect for cinematic masochists like me — because the emotions at play are complex and there are no easy answers. This isn’t your standard romantic comedy, where all a character has to do is say “I love you” and you can cue the flash mob-assisted happy ending. “I love you” comes early and often — but this one is as much about falling apart as it is falling love, and how those things happen despite the best of intentions and the strongest of feelings. It’s like Blue Valentine Junior.

The story follows Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin). She’s British, he’s American. They’re both in school in LA — but she’s due back in the UK all-too-soon. During a romantic getaway to Catalina, Anna decides, to hell with rules! She’ll just stay in the States on an expired visa.

Not a great idea.

Like Crazy does not follow a traditional structure. Anna and Jacob come together and are torn apart several times, sometimes by their own doing, and sometimes by outside forces. Each of them has dalliances with distractingly hot “others” played by Charlie Bewley and Oscar nominee (and upcoming Hunger Games star) Jennifer Lawrence. But it doesn’t matter, because the shadow of “the one that got away” is always looming.

What co-writer/director Drake Doremus knows is that love isn’t all you need; not in the 21st century, anyway. There’s a constant struggle within Jacob and Anna — what’s best for them as individuals doesn’t always gel with what’s best for them as a couple. The customs obstacle is only one of many they face on the road to “happily ever after,” which movies as smart as Like Crazy and Weekend know doesn’t exist in such certain terms.

A novel approach: both films allow the audience to feel conflicted about whether we even want these two to stay together — and whether the magic of their early love can ever be recaptured. To be with the one they love (or at least like a whole lot), Weekend‘s Glen and Like Crazy‘s Anna each need to sacrifice their personal career goals. Is it worth it? Can modern love even work, or are we just chasing something of the past? Is romance ever anything more than fleeting? Might these people be happier in safer, more geographically convenient relationships? Or is true love worth sacrificing everything for?

It’s that emotional messiness that gives the best romances of this modern age their truth. They’re few and far between, but as the romantic comedies of Hollywood drift further and further from actual experience, indie gems like Weekend and Like Crazy are the antidote. Weekend is all-natural and talky like Before Sunset, while Like Crazy is stylish and even a little precious with its music and cinematography a la (500) Days Of Summer. All four are essential viewing for those of us who’ve grown tired of Hollywood bullshitting us about modern love.

Weekend: I could watch this Friday night and still want to see it again on Saturday and Sunday.

Like Crazy: You’d be, like, crazy to miss it!

Crazy Stupid Love: You wouldn’t be crazy to miss it, but at least it’s not stupid.

Friends With Benefits: See it with a friend. Or a date. You might get lucky.

No Strings Attached: If only Ashton Kutcher were not attached. What a mood-killer!

And if you haven’t seen Before Sunset and (500) Days Of Summer by now, I don’t even want to talk about it. You are dead to me.

(For the record, I liked both of these movies more than I thought I would based on their trailers.)

Now that we’ve seen Harry Potter defeat Voldemort on the big screen, and Twilight has one more terrible cinematic endeavor to taunt us with, the film industry is looking for the next franchise to drive young’uns and tweens into a spending frenzy.

The answer they’re hoping for is: The Hunger Games.

I myself have never read a Harry Potter book, though I admire J.K. Rowling’s inventiveness, at least. Judging by the very good film adaptations, I also applaud the way she allowed the series to evolve and grow darker as the protagonists aged, when she might have just let them all be kiddie stories. Kudos.

Nor would I ever be caught dead (or undead) anywhere near a Stephenie Meyer book, lest I sparkle. These books I have less esteem for, based partially on the disturbing anti-feminist subtext, but mainly on the stupid notion that vampires can go out in the sunlight. What is the point of vampires that can out during daytime? They’re supposed to have limitations! Not just be amazing, broody superheroes prone to taking their shirts off. This whole idea is so stupid that I just can’t abide Twi-Hards. If you have willfully read more than 20 pages of a Twilight book or sat through more than one of the movies, I automatically deem you stupid. Sorry.

However, based on good word-of-mouth, I did manage to pick up a copy of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The word-of-mouth came from more reliable sources than those who would recommend Twilight; people who would always qualify it with: “Well, the writing isn’t that good, and the story is pretty silly, and there’s this weird, vaguely Mormon propaganda…” Stop there, that’s more than enough reason to pass, thank you.

The Hunger Games is actually a reasonably well-written book with an intriguing storyline and a strong storyline. Best of all, it’s surprisingly dark for a young adult novel. When I heard the premise — 24 teens are put in an arena in which they must fight to the death on television — I thought for sure the author would find a way to not actually kill off all (or even most) of the young characters. But nope! She actually kills them off in inventive, brutal, and totally gripping ways.

It’s unfortunate that Twilight even need be mentioned in the same breath as The Hunger Games. Sure, they’re both franchises based on young adult novels starring pretty young people, and neither of them is high art. (Though Hunger Games, with its impoverished society and commentary on reality TV, has quite a bit more on its mind, at least.) But the people who made the ostensibly-crappy Twilight movies were not untalented filmmakers — including Bill Condon and Catherine Hardwicke. I can’t say why, exactly, the movies then turned out to be such drivel, because I only saw the first one on DVD, and the only pleasure I got from it was rewinding the scene where Edward speeds through the forest at a laughable speed over and over again. But there’s a critical consensus: these are not good movies.

I am, however, anticipating The Hunger Games films, even though I am slightly worried that they’ll be just as bad as Twilight. The director is Gary Ross, who made the pretty good Pleasantville and the schmaltzy, unworthy Oscar-nominee Seabiscuit. Hmm. They did well by casting Academy Award-nominee Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss — she’s a perfect choice. And as Peeta, Josh Hutcherson held his own in The Kids Are All Right, in a cast that included Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and Mia Wasikowska. No easy feat. I can’t say much for Liam Hemsworth as Gale, except to say that he didn’t make the Nicholas Sparks-written Miley Cyrus vehicle The Last Song any worse than it was already going to be. (Yes, I saw it.) And hey — the supporting cast included Wes Bentley, Elizabeth Bentley, Woody Harrelson, and Stanley Tucci! Not too shabby.

So I’m looking forward to feasting on The Hunger Games. I’m optimistic. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a Hung-Hard (or whatever moniker fans of the series is using), since I haven’t yet read the second two books in the series (having heard mixed reviews). But I probably will.

And hey, wouldn’t it be great if for once, artistic merit and the zeitgeist could exist in the same movie? Let’s all say a silent prayer that the Hunger Games films are more Harry Potter than Bella Swan.

The trailer, at least, bodes well:

Don’t you think?

(Movies discussed in this post: War Horse, Attack The Block, X-Men: First Class, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Paul, Super 8, The Adventures Of Tintin.)

From The Artist to Midnight In Paris to Hugo and a number of others, 2011 is a big year for nostalgia for all sorts of mainly things — but mainly, for old movies. Hugo and The Artist display it most blatantly, but it’s everywhere — take the romanticized look at growing up in the 50′s (not to mention nostalgia for the creation of Earth) in The Tree Of Life, or the paranoid Towering-Inferno-meets-21st-century-paranoia star-killer Contagion, or the retro heroics of Captain America: The First Avenger, or the 80′s kitschiness evoked by Drive, or the surprising success of a prequel to a campy 60′s movie, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Even the latest Mission: Impossible embraced a silliness that felt borrowed from old spy TV series rather than John Woo-style theatrics.

And because of it, you can hear audiences breathing a collective sigh of relief: “Oh, thank God. We’re allowed to have fun at the movies again.”

I’d argue, though, that no movie this year was as big of a nod back to the Way Things Were than Steven Spielberg’s War Horse — not that some didn’t try. But with Spielberg, it’s effortless. He’s been borrowing from the past since his career began, while also defining the present and future of cinema. I’m not about to take us all through a big ol’ Amblin gush-fest here (though I could). Let’s just say it like this: when it comes to filmmaking, the man knows his shit.His latest epic is War Horse, adapted from the children’s story (and a subsequent play) that is about exactly two things: 1) war, and 2) a horse. If either of these two words appeal to you, you will probably find something to like in War Horse.

The story begins with young Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine), who may have been cast primarily for the way his eyes sparkle when very bright fake sunlight bounces off them. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he was blinded during the making of this movie. Albert becomes obsessed with a newborn colt he names Joey, whom his father purchases with more money than they’ve currently got for no apparent reason. War Horse asks you to accept right away that Joey is a special miracle horse and everyone around him can tell. If you cannot accept that, please exit this auditorium and proceed into the one showing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.The opening half hour of War Horse is a little bizarre in its strict adherence to old-school moviemaking. You never for a moment believe that this is a real farm somewhere in England; these scenes are strangely lit and look quite fake, and since the peerless Janusz Kaminski is the cinematographer, we must believe that this is done intentionally. It’s the sort of set design and lighting that probably would have worked back in the 40′s in black-and-white, but in a 2011 release, it’s jarring. The tone, too, is almost cloyingly nicey-nice, to the extent that it makes the first Babe film look edgy. (There’s even a feisty duck to peck at the bad guys!) You half-expect Joey to burst into song while he plows the field.

Fortunately, he doesn’t. The film picks up steam once Joey is separated from Albert and War Horse becomes an anthology of various lives touched (or, more often, decimated) by the war. It strikes a curious balance between very adult drama in the battle scenes (they’re bloodless, but still brutal) and a more childish tale of the Brave Horse Who Could — this is Saving Private Ryan by way of Black Beauty. War Horse never quite seems to know exactly which audience it’s aiming for, but once it gets past that gawky, overlong opening sequence, it nevertheless works.Nobody stages spectacle quite like Spielberg, and he delivers here in a few jaw-dropping action sequences (some given away in the trailer). It’s unfathomable to imagine how he managed to shoot this without ever obviously resorting to CG horses. Everything looks amazingly real (which is unfortunately undercut be the aforementioned artificiality of the farm set). There’s buzz about Andy Serkis getting a Best Actor nod for his portrayal of a chimpanzee in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, but I’d just as soon nominate the horse who plays Joey.

There are a lot of terrific one-off dramatic scenes, too — the brilliant moment when one German and one English soldier form a truce in order to save Joey from some barbed wire is about as good as any character-based moment Spielberg has ever delivered, and in what might be my favorite vignette, two young German brother-soldiers go AWOL with Joey. In such moments, Spielberg does not hold back on the senseless horrors of war, even if the violence we actually witness is minimal. The impact is felt. As cutesy as War Horse can be in certain moments, it also cuts deep when it aims to.Back at USC, I took a class on the cinematic stylings of Steven Spielberg, and if I had been allowed an unlimited budget to make a final project that displayed everything I learned, War Horse would be my thesis. This is the epitome of Spielberg movies, one that encompasses nearly all of his tropes. Boy searching for approval from his flawed but well-intentioned father? Strong mother figure? Innocence lost? The horrors of war? Man versus beast? Beast versus technology? Nearly every theme the man has ever touched on, he touches again here.

Spielberg has been criticized at times for being emotionally manipulative. But all movies are. The only time it’s a problem is when there’s an attempt that doesn’t work. War Horse is perhaps his most earnest film yet, and that’s saying something. It’s so straight-faced, it’s naked — and at first, you might feel embarrassed for it, perhaps even encourage it to cover up before everyone starts laughing. “Quick, War Horse, put on some cynicism! Wink at the audience! Let them know you’re not really that sentimental! How about a fart?” But the war horse does not fart.There are moments of humor, but all the while War Horse has its heart proudly displayed on its white-socked hoof — in a way that may be shocking to modern audiences. Particularly in its final scene, the film is awash with cinematography reminiscent of revered filmmakers past, most noticeably John Ford — but the real pastiche here is the film’s old-fashioned tone. The movie’s subject is World War I, and if not for the technical wizardry, you might think it had been made sometime around World War II for all its straight-forwardness. They simply don’t make movies like this anymore, mainly because they think jaded 21st century audiences won’t accept them. I might have agreed, except the audience I saw War Horse with seemed to enjoy themselves quite a bit. They were totally into it. How you’ll respond to this film likely to depends on how you generally respond to Spielberg, because — for better or worse, love him or hate him — War Horse is the ultimate Steven Spielberg movie.

But if War Horse seems to be Steven Spielberg’s self-conscious effort to make the ultimate Steven Spielberg movie, he’s not the only who tried last year. It was not nostalgia for the John Ford aesthetic, but rather nostalgia for the Steven Spielberg aesthetic that led J.J. Abrams to make Super 8, which knowingly and intentionally recalls films like Poltergeist, E.T., The Goonies, and Jurassic Park to tell the tale of a small town plagued by… something.The opening scenes of the film recapture that old Spielberg magic, at least in a superficial way, as they introduce the young gang of misfits who band together make a movie the old-fashioned way — on an old Super 8 camera, natch. (Back in my review of Hugo and other 2011 films centered on wayward youths, I mentioned that such misfits either tended to find an unlikely adult role model or team up to fight aliens. These were the two most pervasive courses of action for young misanthropes in 2011 — and this, of course, is an example of the latter.) The young cast is full of remarkable finds like Joel Courtney, Ryan Lee, and Ryan Griffiths, plus the better-known Elle Fanning, who is marvelous. It’s not often you see a blockbuster in which the characters are more interesting than the movie built around them, and their banter is more entertaining than the action set pieces. But in Super 8, that’s exactly what we get. I’m not exactly complaining.

A few early suspense sequences come off quite well, if a bit too derivative of similar scenes in the first two Jurassic Parks. They invoke Spielberg’s famous Jaws rule — what you don’t see is scarier than any mechanical or CGI monster. Unfortunately, Abrams abandons this in the film’s flawed final act, unwisely shifting gears from Jaws and Jurassic Park to the more family-friendly tone of E.T. and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. (There’s a reason Jaws didn’t end with the Brody family frolicking with the misunderstood Great White at Sea World, J.J.). It’s actually quite like Spielberg to flub his finales in otherwise great movies (see War Of The Worlds, A.I., and Minority Report, to name a few), but I seriously doubt this homage was intentional.Which is why I’m glad 2011 offered us another kids-versus-aliens movie in Attack The Block, the movie Super 8 only wishes it could be. Attack The Block doesn’t winkingly credit Spielberg for any of its thrills or chills, but it’s actually a much better example of the kind of movie he was making back in his late 70′s/early 80′s heyday. (Though it owes more to the Spielberg-produced Gremlins than any of his directorial efforts.) The film’s premise is genius: extra-terrestrial monsters descend upon London, but all we witness of this is what happens in the projects, when the neighborhood hoodlums have to contend with the fanged space beasties. (We’re meant to believe that things turned out quite differently for the posh kids who had to contend with said creatures. You just don’t fuck with these kids.)

Attack The Block gets a number of things quite right — first of all, not all the kids survive, which establishes some real stakes for these characters. Also, the creature design manages to be both campy and terrifying, as is the tone of the entire movie. As they’re introduced, the street punks are menacing and indiscernible (it takes awhile to get a handle on who’s who), but gradually the film gives these characters layers and backstories of their own, allowing us to root for them. There’s a bit of social commentary on how the rich treat the poor, but mostly, Attack The Block is just pure popcorn-munching monster-movie goodness. What’s most impressive is that the film, written and directed by Joe Cornish, was made for only $13 million (and unfortunately has not made its money back). Though it does not actively convey any sense of nostalgia, Attack The Block does harken back to the spirit of the 80′s with its humor and low-budget special effects — Aliens and Tremors may come to mind while watching it, and that’s a very good thing.

Less successfully aping the Spielberg ouvre is Paul, a nutty but obviously overpriced comedy that throws just about everything at the screen, hoping something will stick. Not much does — particularly the expensive-looking action set pieces, which Universal almost certainly regrets. The story follows two British geeks (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) as they encounter a wisecracking extra-terrestrial named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen). In fact, the alien is exactly like Seth Rogen in every way, except green and thinner and marginally less attractive. (The CGI isn’t very convincing, which is only the first in a laundry list of problems.) The film primarily relies on space-related TV and movie references for humor, such as the scene where Paul is on a conference call with — you guessed it! — Steven Spielberg. Apparently, just about every movie ever made about aliens was Paul’s idea. Say it with me now: “Womp. Womp.” (Paul doesn’t merely rip off E.T. and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind for jokes, but also cribs actual shots from Spielberg movies, too.)

A number of skilled talented comedic actors appear — Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Jane Lynch, and Jason Bateman, to name a few, along with Sigourney Weaver (get it?). They’re all doing their own schtick, which works… sometimes. Not shockingly, Kristen Wiig comes away looking the funniest, since she’s playing a Jesus freak who unravels once Paul tells her there is no God. There’s a hilarious scene in which she smokes pot for the first time and rapidly and exaggeratedly experiences every common side effect; of course, this has nothing to do with the overall premise of the movie, suggesting that a spin-off featuring this character would have been better than this movie. Paul just seems desperate to get a laugh wherever it can, without much concern for a story. The British humor doesn’t mesh well with the high-concept Men In Black stuff, and Seth Rogen merely being Seth Rogen, replaced by a CGI creature, is not inherently funny. The fact that the alien is named Paul gives you an idea of just how clever this movie is. Is Paul really the funniest name they could come up with? Is that supposed to be hilarious? Apparently, somebody thought so.One of the best things Paul has going for it is its collection of misfits against the esgablishment. Did Steven Spielberg invent the kids-banding-together-against-the-elements movie, or merely capitalize on it? Probably the latter, but nowadays such films are so common, it’s hard to really pinpoint where Spielberg ends and other filmmakers begin. And since Spielberg executive produces so many of the movies that ape him (including Super 8) it’s especially hard to tell who’s feeding off who. We watch most modern blockbusters now without really feeling his influence, but can you imagine X-Men: First Class, for example, existing without Spielberg’s early works as a precursor?

X-Men: First Class gives the franchise a jolt back to life by giving us a glimpse back at the mutants’ roots, introducing several of the characters we met in Bryan Singer’s films as youths. The series showed signs of exhaustion with Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand and particularly X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so setting the story back in the 60′s during the Cuban Missile Crisis was exactly the breath of fresh air it needed. It doesn’t hurt that A-list actors like Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, and Jennifer Lawrence were called upon to play the mutants; the 1960′s time period allows for an extra level of old-school James Bond kitschiness that serves the story well (especially in January Jones’ Bond girl-wooden performance). It’s a curious dose of nostalgia that we didn’t know we needed in these movies — the cinematic equivalent of checking out a spouse or close friend’s baby pictures. Our reaction is, “Aww, look at those mutants! They were so cuuute when they were kids!”Where X-Men: First Class really misses the mark is in its social commentary, which has always been an inherent part of the X-Men universe (with the mutants standing in for any minority that has been oppressed, most evidently displayed via Bryan Singer’s gay analogy in X2). Considering that this film is set during the emerging African-American Civil Rights movement, amongst other milestones, it could easily have used that historical background to provide a more allegorical exploration of the mutants’ “otherness.” What a missed opportunity! Hopefully the next X-Men film corrects this oversight and weaves social upheaval into the storyline — hmm. X-Men at Woodstock, anyone? It would have elevated the film from B-level summer entertainment to something a little greater.

It’s a bit unfortunate that X-Men: First Class has so much story to tell, because not all of it gets the fleshing out it needs. The younger characters like Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) get painted in fairly broad strokes (those played by lesser-known actors, even moreso), and at least one of them undergoes a major character transformation at the end that doesn’t feel in the least bit earned. As in his previous film Kick-Ass, director Matthew Vaughn seems a little too busy zipping around from set piece to set piece to worry about how his characters might actually feel about what’s happening to them. What should be rich and complex on an emotional level feels rather surface-y instead, though there’s more to like than dislike. Plus, there’s at least one truly excellent action sequence when the young mutants are attacked by the bad guys — and don’t all survive. X-Men: First Class might have been a stronger film to hone in on these teen characters and let the story be theirs, more in the vein of Harry Potter. Though I have mixed feelings about any suggestion that results in less of Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy in a movie.

And speaking of Harry Potter — fortunately, we didn’t need X-Men: First Class to emulate it, because here we got the real thing. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 seems to possess its fair share of that old Spielberg wizardry (as do the seven films that came before it). It’s no coincidence that Spielberg was at one point attached to direct the first Harry Potter; it begs the question, would the world even know Harry Potter without Steven Spielberg? Certainly, the frustrations of a child (or child-like creature) against authority have come through in a number of his films, from E.T. to A.I. and so much in between; War Horse, too, tugs heartstrings by pitting an innocent horse against a big, bad tanks, amongst other cruelties. See, unlike X-Men: First Class, the Harry Potter films have always managed to strike just the right balance between sentiment and spectacle, as most of Spielberg’s do, too. It’s a balance that so few other filmmakers get right.

The final film in the series is one of its best — though somewhere in the middle, they started to blur together into one very long movie, with plot elements incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t well-versed in J.K. Rowling’s novels. That didn’t make the adaptations less enjoyable, though, and Deathly Hallows provides a satisfying conclusion. The series’ strongest conceit has always been the Spielberg-like wonderment of seeing relatable young children up against the most dire of circumstances; after a decade, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are as familiar to us as our favorite characters in a long-running TV series, and fortunately all three of these child actors grew into capable adult performers as well. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint all pull out the stops for this last entry, having carefully crafted each of these characters over the years into something special.I could retroactively criticize, if I wanted to, the eight-film franchise’s pacing, or the way information was parsed out between all the movies. But why bother? These movies are what they are, and each one delivers enough on its own terms to warrant its existence. Maybe I wish they’d all been more individually distinct, as Alfonso Cuaron’s The Prisoner Of Azkaban was, even if just so I could remember which events happened in which movie. I can’t. Episodes 4 through 6 are a blur for me, dawdling the way Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers did as we bide time before the big showdown. And what a showdown it was! (Though I found the lack of focus on other Hogwarts students disturbing, since presumably many of them died. No one besides the lead characters is shown reacting to all the chaos and destruction, or the climactic victory. But this certainly isn’t the first movie to suggest the deaths of scores of people without explicitly showing any.)

What I wish director David Yates (and J.K. Rowling, for that matter) had learned from Spielberg is that putting younger actors in old age makeup for a coda to an epic story almost never works out quite properly. It was the weak sentimental link in Saving Private Ryan, and it’s an unfortunately awful end to an otherwise very good Harry Potter movie. I know the book ends this way, too — but at least in a book you can imagine that the characters actually look the ages they’re supposed to be, and not merely as convincing as your average high school production of Fiddler On The Roof. Also perplexing — Harry’s attraction to Ron’s sister Ginny and the fact that Hermione ends up with Ron. Did this really work in the books? Because it in the movies, it’s incredibly obvious that Harry and Hermione are meant to have sex and then babies, because they clearly have chemistry (whereas neither of Weasleys manages a drop of it with their supposed soul mates). I can’t for the life of me see what Harry Potter, savior of the world and magician extraordinaire, finds attractive about Ginny; in my mind, he and Hermione totally start having an affair right after that terrible epilogue.

Of course, part of the appeal of this final Harry Potter film was our nostalgia at having watched these kids grow up; as filmgoers, we were these children’s collective parents, only instead of “baby’s first step,” we witnessed “baby’s first ‘stupefy!’” and so on. In my review of the few acceptable blockbusters of year (find it here), I intentionally neglected to mention both Harry Potter and X-Men: First Class because they seemed thematically closer to Super 8 and Attack The Block and I knew I’d discuss them separately. “Nostalgia” has quickly shaped up to be the cinematic buzzword of the year and certainly it’s found within all of these movies one way or another. Originality is an endangered species in Hollywood, which is nothing new in 2011; but now more than ever it’s alarming how many movies are looking back instead of forward. Take a look at the most likely Best Picture contenders so far — The Artist, Hugo, The Help, War Horse, and The Descendants. The only one set in present day and made in a modern style is The Descendants, and even that has a non-starter of a subplot about the ancestry of the protagonist’s family.

Which brings us right back to Spielberg, who released not one but two films within days of each other in 2011. In many ways, they couldn’t be more different; in most ways, they couldn’t be more the same.The Adventures Of Tintin is Spielberg’s first foray into motion-capture animation (or animation of any kind, for that matter). In every other way, it is absolutely a Spielberg movie — a globe-trotting adventure story that recalls Raiders Of The Lost Ark in tone, and a tale of a plucky young lad and his curiously intelligent animal sidekick (hey, remember War Horse?). Both The Adventures Of Tintin and War Horse are family-friendly (the former moreso than the latter), but while War Horse stubbornly bucks modernity in favor of over-the-top pastiche of very old movies, The Adventures Of Tintin is an advancement toward the (possible) future of movies. Which may not be a good thing.

The story hardly matters. Based on a beloved comic book character mostly unknown here in the States, it stars the voice of Jamie Bell as Tintin and Daniel Craig as the cookie-cutter sinister villain, plus the cute pup Snowy (a total scene-stealer). Beyond that, Andy Serkis voices the drunken sea captain Haddock — the closest thing we get to a fully-developed character in this movie. (I was going to say “three-dimensional,” but since the film is presented in 3D, I guess that’s confusing.) The plot is the typical treasure hunt nonsense so many adventure movies are, and the film’s pacing is pretty much nonstop action. It’s been lauded for one extremely long take in which the “camera” zooms from one character to another in the midst of a big action set piece, but to that I say, so what? One “take” in an animated film is considerably less impressive than the same thing done in live action. You simply draw it that way. Am I on the record about 3D yet? I don’t much like it. The Adventures Of Tintin is actually the first 3D feature I’ve seen since Avatar, so I was curious as to how I’d take to it. And after the initial razzle-dazzle of the first few minutes (“Ooh! It’s like the characters are coming right out at me!”), I mostly find it as much a distraction as it is an enhancement. I always feel like I’m just sitting right up in front of a TV screen. I’m also not a fan of motion-capture animation, which I find pointless. If you’re struggling so much to make the animated characters look real, why not just shoot real people? It seems like a lot of effort for naught.

Sure, there are a number of moments in The Adventures Of Tintin that would have been exorbitantly expensive to shoot in live action, but none that couldn’t have achieved roughly the same effect done the traditional way. The Adventures Of Tintin sold me on neither motion-capture nor 3D, and I will happily continue to watch live-action movies in two dimensions from now on. (Sorry!) The problem audiences have with motion-capture is often referred to as “the uncanny valley,” because it looks so real but not quite real that our brains get confused and reject the whole idea altogether. Maybe that’s part of it, but my main problem with The Adventures Of Tintin has nothing to do with either 3D or motion-capture: it’s the fact that nothing in this story has any weight to it, and nothing seems to matter. The action feels madcap and random, the characters are thin to the point of being transparent. Spielberg could have taken a helping of War Horse‘s overcooked sentimentality and included at least one scene here where we care about somebody, but I had about as much attachment to Tintin and company as I have to a Super Mario Brother. The Adventures Of Tintin is a lot like a video game, which works for some. But not me, unfortunately. I spent most of my two hours fascinated by Tintin’s snazzy CG haircut and not much else, and wondering if maybe Spielberg wasn’t hitting the anti-alcohol message a bit too squarely on the head. The only character arc to speak of is Haddock getting sober, which feels like a weird choice for this movie. At times, it feels like most expensive after-school special ever — in 3D!

As it turns out, I like my Spielberg the old-fashioned way, erring on the side of too much emotions rather than too little. Accept no substitutes.

Attack The Block: Shoulda been a blockbuster.

War Horse: Giddyup!

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2: It took awhile to get here, but it was worth the journey.

X-Men: First Class: Maybe not quite first class, but even second-class X-Men will do.

Super 8: Not totally super, but a few moments of old movie magic make it worthwhile.

The Adventures Of Tintin: It’s one continuous two-hour long special effect.

Paul: Only for those really craving a close encounter with a CGI Seth Rogen.

(Films discussed in this post: Trespass, Boy Wonder, A Separation, Passion Play, Tuesday After Christmas, The Trip, The Double, The Beaver.)

This is my 100th post in this blog, and coincidentally, this post also marks 100 reviews of 2011 films. As you’ll see, I’ve saved some of the most obscure for last.

Every year there are hundreds of films that fly off the radar. There are a number of different levels of visibility for a movie; some, you’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss hearing about, which covers most major studio releases. Then there are the indies that the majority of mainstream viewers won’t have heard about, but most film-savvy people will — we’re talking the Take Shelters, Martha Marcy May Marlenes, and Bellflowers of this world. There are a couple levels even below that, too — the ones only the really film-savvy will have seen or heard of, like The Arbor and Poetry. And then it keeps going, to films that were screened at festivals but not picked up for distribution, or shot and never released, until it’s a film that only you have heard of, because you made it up in your own mind.

Typically a film is lesser-known due to one of two factors — either it’s great but a tough sell to mainstream audiences — maybe too dark, too esoteric, too foreign — AKA too “good.”

Or? It’s godawful and thus an even tougher sell. Here is a smattering of 2011′s “under the radar” offerings.The Trip stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as actors named Steve and Rob — they’re playing themselves, or at least, an exaggerated version of themselves. (Or maybe not so exaggerated?) Steve is the pompous lothario of the duo, while Rob is a goof, happily devoted to his wife. Steve rather condescendingly asks Rob to come along on a “trip” to try out some restaurants for a magazine article; he does, and that’s the extent of the plot. The rest of the movie is dialogue. Yes, dialogue — that’s when two or more characters speak to each other. In most modern movies these days, it is uncommon to actually have characters speak to each other conversationally, unless it’s exposition or lines like “Get out of here, man, she’s gonna blow!” The Trip is refreshingly old-fashioned that way.

The Trip begins as a comedy, mostly at Coogan’s expense, though there is a running joke about Brydon’s pretty bad celebrity impressions, too. Gradually, though, it becomes a pretty sad meditation on what happens to not-too-famous actors as they get older and their stardust fades a little. There are some very funny moments — mostly in that sly, underhanded way of British humor, rather than the broad strokes of Hollywood movies — but The Trip is also an emotive, surprisingly effective character study directed by Michael Winterbottom. It’s too low-key a film to have made much of a splash at the box office, but it’s absolutely worth checking out (currently streaming on Netflix).A more mixed affair is The Beaver, starring Mel Gibson. “Subtle” and “Mel Gibson” don’t often belong in the same sentence anymore, but The Beaver came and went without much fanfare, raking in under $1 million at the box office. That’s not surprising despite the star power, considering how offbeat and occasionally dark it is. Directed by Jodie Foster, the film was most notable because Gibson plays Walter Black — a self-destructive, depressed alcoholic (sound familiar?) who copes with his downward spiral in a very different method than making bigoted comments to cops and using the most hilarious sexist slur ever: “sugar tits.”

The story is as follows: Walter finds a beaver puppet in a trash dumpster, puts it on, and suddenly his hand takes on a life of its own — known as “The Beaver,” the puppet speaks in an Australian accent (Gibson’s actual accent — brilliant) and orders him to fix his life. He returns to his frustrated wife (Jodie Foster) and teenage son (Anton Yelchin) a changed man, albeit a changed man who has a smart-ass beaver permanently affixed to one of his appendages. His family is willing to go along with this for awhile, and even Gibson’s career (conveniently, at a toy company) improves thanks to the Beaver. But time passes, and Walter shows no signs of returning to his old self. Then the film takes a rather dark turn.

A side story also follows Walter’s son Porter, troubled by his dad’s increasingly erratic behavior, who has been accepting cash in exchange for writing papers for his peers. Then Norah (The Hunger Games‘ Katniss, Jennifer Lawrence), the smartest girl in school, approaches him with the mother of all writing assignments — she needs help with her valedictorian speech. Naturally, this leads to romance and then plenty of drama; it’s a nice, nuanced adolescent love story, better-written than most (and reuniting Yelchin and Lawrence, who were also lovebirds in Like Crazy). Unfortunately, the film spends about half its running time on this subplot, and yet it really has nothing to do with the Beaver. It’s an unfortunate misstep in the screenplay.

The Beaver is an interesting movie with strong dialogue, engaging characters, and an off-kilter premise that actually works. You can see how it might have become a more mainstream-friendly comedy, with the Beaver teaching Walter valuable life lessons and perhaps becoming part of the family. Instead, this film raises some more disturbing questions in our minds about mental illness — the Beaver may be instructing Walter to turn his life around, but is it also destroying the actual human being he used to be? (You could look at it as a metaphor for pharmaceuticals, but it doesn’t quite run with that.) Eventually the Beaver becomes a “thing” as Walter appears on talk shows and his toy beaver catches on in consumer America, and that’s when the film loses its grip on the real story. The Beaver is hit or miss, but admirable for its novel premise.“Novel premise” isn’t an accusation you’ll throw at Trespass, however. You wouldn’t expect a movie directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage to be “under the radar.” But alas, Trespass is. Do you remember seeing the trailers? Billboards? TV spots? Nic and Nicole on Leno touting this thriller? No? Well, good — ’cause it didn’t happen. The film was dumped in theaters for a mere two weeks, where it earned less than $25,000 — not too good on a budget that adds three zeroes to that figure ($35 million). You have to try really hard to make a movie that fails that abysmally. But Joel Schumacher has had a lot of practice leading up to this.

The film is a home invasion thriller in the vein of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, except it’s actually funny (unintentionally). It stars Kidman and Cage as Kyle and Sarah, a couple whose marriage is apparently on the rocks for undisclosed reasons. They live in a big, beautiful house; Kyle works too much (something to do with diamonds) and Sarah is the sort of wife who puts on a sexy black dress and new underwear to make dinner. Their daughter Avery (Liana Libreto) is that typical movie teenager who really wants to go to a party, but can’t, because it interferes with dinner. That’s the first of many implausible events in Trespass — what self-respecting teenager throws a wild party that begins before dinner time? It’s still daylight when Avery gets to this party. (She sneaks out, of course.)That’s about when a crack team of four masked robbers storms in waving guns, demanding access to a safe that presumably contains a bunch of diamonds. To explain all the twists and turns that happen thereafter would be impossible, since Trespass constantly, ludicrously lurches from one “surprise” to the next by basically adding a “just kidding!” to all the information we learned before. We are teased with the possibility that Sarah may have had an affair with one of the bad guys (oopsie!), until — “just kidding!” — it turns out that he’s just a crazy home security employee who hasn’t taken his medication today. That thief is played by Cam Gigandet, whose mask is more see-through than the others. After all, the only reason to cast Cam Gigandet in a movie is that he’s pretty. If he’s wearing a mask, you can’t tell that he’s pretty. Also, it makes it easier for Sarah to recognize him through the mask, which makes us wonder what is the point of the mask at all?

Never mind such minor questions of logic. Trespass has far greater problems to contend with. Let’s start with the casting. Gigandet makes a highly unlikely sociopath, but this character undergoes such a complete 180 that he probably wouldn’t have made any sense no matter who was playing the role. Kidman does what she can, which means convincingly freak out each and every time someone grabs her by the hair and points a gun in her face (probably upwards of a dozen). The real gaffe is our leading man, Nicolas Cage, who is meant to be playing the Everyman. But these days, casting Nicolas Cage as a normal person is an egregious mistake. Here are some  movies Nicolas Cage has starred in lately — Kick-Ass, Ghost Rider, Drive Angry, Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans. These are not films which required him to be subdued or relatable. In fact, partway through shooting Cage forced production to shut down because he changed his mind and wanted to play the villain; that didn’t happen, of course, but Cage seems to have decided to play the villain anyway based on how loud and insane Kyle gets.Meanwhile, Ben Mendelsohn — so good as a ruthless sociopath in Animal Kingdom — here is given the unforgiving task of playing a criminal who essentially is Nicolas Cage. We already have Nicolas Cage doing his manic Nicolas Cage-isms even though he’s supposed to be playing a mild-mannered businessman, so now poor Mendelsohn playing the criminal has to out-Nic-Cage Nicolas Cage — which only seems to push Nicolas Cage to go even further over the top. They’re constantly one-upping each other, and it isn’t pretty. (It is pretty funny, however.)

Oh, if only I had the hours required to write about each and every senseless moment in Trespass. Why does the female thief Petal wander off, strip to her underwear, and watch the family’s home movies? Why does the screenplay constantly waste time getting daughter Avery away from the house if she’s only going to get captured again? Why bother with that silliness about Jonah being obsessed with Sarah, and apparently telling his brother they slept together? So many questions! Trespass is easily one of the worst movies of 2011, and not coincidentally, also one of the most entertaining. It’s very nearly in the same class as Showgirls and Catwoman — movies you can’t help but laugh at for their ineptitude. It’s streaming on Netflix, and I can’t recommend it more highly.Another 2011 needlessly dumped into theaters is The Double, featuring the unlikely (and not terribly appealing) teaming of Richard Gere with Topher Grace. The elder is Paul, a retired CIA operative and the world’s foremost expert on a Soviet assassin named Cassius; the younger is Ben, an FBI agent who wrote his thesis about said killer. Yikes. The fact that this movie is about the Cold War and not Iraq or Afghanistan already signals that the script has probably been kicking around since, I dunno, 1985? And there is no attempt to make it feel any more relevant to 2011 than one of those Tom Clancy movies from the 90′s. (In a flashback to 1988, both Richard Gere and Martin Sheen look exactly the same as in 2011 — even the makeup people were too lazy to bother with chronology!)

Of course, all that might be forgivable if the movie were entertaining, but no one, including the director and stars, seems to have any interest in the material whatsoever. The score works overtime to create a mood of suspense that no one else attempts to match. Worse, the film’s trailer gives away the big twist, normally saved for the end of the movie — perhaps they figured we would have seen it coming anyway — so we get the big reveal before the half-hour mark, killing any and all suspense The Double might have built otherwise. (Which is probably none, to be honest.) Paul is Cassius! Cue gasps from the audience — or are those snores? The Double tries to throw in one more twist before the end credits roll, but by this point, there is no point in caring who is on what side or why. Only True Blood‘s Stephen Moyer looks like he’s having even a little fun as a sneering, incarcerated Soviet — but he dies early, and then the fun’s over. As a thriller, The Double is also easily one of the worst of 2011′s theatrical offerings, minus the camp value of Trespass.

For campy fun and ineptitude combined, look no further than Mitch Glazer’s romantic crime drama Passion Play. It’s a love story between Mickey Rourke and Megan Fox — hilarious already, right? But oh, it gets better.(See?)

Passion Play is the story of jazz musician Nate, a recovering heroin junkie, who gets into some trouble for having inadvertently screwed gangster Happy Shannon’s wife. Now Happy wants Nate dead. Fortunately for Nate, he happens upon a circus freak named Lily Luster. She has wings. Yes, wings. Bird-like, angel-like, take your pick. These wings fold down to a conveniently small size in the many shots of Lily that don’t involve bad CGI effects, but there’s also plenty of hottie-with-wings action. Anyway, Nate and Lily fall for each other — because apparently a winged Megan Fox has standards low enough to go for a busted junkie like Mickey Rourke — but Nate is using her to try to cut a deal with Happy Shannon, trading her unique talents for his life. I guess. Oh, by the way, Happy is played by Bill Murray, who probably agreed to do this movie because he thought it was an outrageous comedy.

With a story like that, Passion Play is too ridiculous to not be at least a little entertaining. The “outdoor” locations rarely look real, let alone the magic wings. Not surprisingly, Passion Play grossed less than $4,000 in a very limited release in theaters and now finds its home on Netflix Watch Instantly, where it can be observed and mocked for free. Don’t get me wrong — Passion Play is not necessarily an advisable cinematic undertaking. Unlike big-budget shlock like Trespass and the lifeless The Double, it actually does feel like someone here was trying very hard to make a gritty, hard-hitting film (there’s sex, drug use, heavy profanity, and nudity — and wings!). And that’s a little sad, really. Who in their right mind thought this was a viable idea for a serious adult drama? Well, you could ask pointless questions, or you could go along on this side, strange ride. Whichever you choose, I won’t judge you.

The little-seen Boy Wonder is more competently executed, well enough to get a glowing recommendation from Roger Ebert, for one. Written and directed by Michael Morrissey, it’s the story of Sean Donovan (Caleb Steinmeyer), who loses his mother in a violent crime as a child and then grows up with a thirst for vengeance. In other words, it’s a lot like the stories of Batman or Spider-Man, only without the inherited millions or radioactive spider.

Actually, Boy Wonder is a more down-to-earth tale about an average guy attempting to play hero, which we’ve seen a lot of in movies lately, but it’s not so cartoonish as Kick-Ass. It’s more like Neil Jordan’s The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, except here we aren’t quite as sympathetic to Sean’s plight. The Brave One allowed us to root for the comeuppance of New York City’s low-life thugs, and there’s some of that in Boy Wonder, too, but mostly Sean just seems too messed up for us to take any pleasure in his pain infliction. It might be interesting for a movie to examine the mental health of a wannabe vigilante, but Boy Wonder doesn’t quite go there. It saddles Sean with a bland foil in homicide detective Teresa Ames (Zulay Henao), who pieces together clues as bodies of bad guys start piling up. Steinmeyer’s performance is strong and the story does hold our interest, but Boy Wonder comes up a bit short in the end, without really pushing the boundaries of what we’ve seen before.

Many of the above were rightfully panned by critics and ignored by audiences, while The Trip‘s cult-size appeal didn’t exactly make it a blockbuster. So what does it take to get an “under the radar” film seen by the masses? (Besides a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, that is?) Well, the Romanian film Tuesday, After Christmas wouldn’t know, even if, on the surface, it shares a lot with the Oscar-nominated A Separation.

Like A Separation, Tuesday, After Christmas is a foreign film dealing with marital strife using a natural, un-self conscious style of filmmaking. Unlike A Separation, it is deathly boring. The protagonist, Paul, is cheating on his wife Adriana with a dental hygienist named Raluca. Eventually, he decides to tell his wife. She’s upset. That’s all. Not to be too dismissive of the film — there are a few well-acted and tense dramatic scenes, particularly toward the end of the film. But along the way, we are subjected to interminable scenes depicting everyday life. Do we really need to hear lengthy debates about what every character is getting every other character for Christmas? Do we really need to sit through an entire dentist appointment? Do we really need to meet a bunch of supporting characters we never hear from again? Like many recent Romanian films, Tuesday, After Christmas takes a neo-realistic approach to its subject matter, using long takes that are impressively well-acted. But still boring.

Tuesday, After Christmas is about 20 minutes of great movie, leaving about 70 minutes that are expendable (it feels more like three hours). Many critics have praised the film and even compared it to a “thriller,” which is the most ridiculous and pretentious claim I’ve ever heard. Tuesday, After Christmas is as much of a thriller as watching a pot, waiting for it to boil. Yes, the film is “realistic,” but why is that such a virtue? The story has been told a thousand times, without anything new added here, and the characters generate little reason to care what happens either way. You could film a leaky faucet for two hours and it’d be “realistic,” but it wouldn’t be very good. It makes you wish the gang of thieves from Trespass would barge in and show everyone what conflict is. (Or maybe the husband could just don a beaver hand puppet.)

In comparison to the lifeless Tuesday, After Christmas,  A Separation comes as a delightful surprise — or at least it would have been, if it wasn’t already one of 2011′s most acclaimed films before I saw it. A Separation is nominated for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards — and it may very well win — as well as a more surprising achievement as Best Original Screenplay nominee. (It’s pretty uncommon for any stark, low-key drama to get a nod here, let alone one in a foreign language.) There is little consensus in the critical community this year on what 2011′s best offerings are, but A Separation is the one film that everyone seems to agree on. Myself included.

Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, it is not so much the story of a husband and wife’s separation as it is the story of what happens, in part, as a result of it — a tragic event in which nobody is truly at fault, yet everybody is quick to point a finger. Peyman Maadi plays Nader, the husband, who is dutifully caring for his elderly father even though he can’t remember his own son (or anything else, for that matter). Nader’s wife Simin (Leila Hatami) seeks a divorce because she wishes to take her daughter out of Iran, somewhere that’s a bit less restrictive in its values. Nader wants to stay —and the judge sides with him. Thus, a separation. (Nader will soon find himself unexpectedly agreeing with his wife’s frustrations, however.)A third key character is Razieh (Sareh Bayat), who takes a job as housekeeper when Simin moves out. Her duties include taking care of Nader’s father, a task she finds overwhelming for a variety of reasons. Before the story is over, Razieh’s hot-headed husband (Shahab Hosseini) will also have a large role to play, as will Simin and Nader’s unhappy 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director’s daughter). I won’t spoil what happens, but these five people find themselves pitted against one another in a complex he said/she said scenario that has potentially devastating consequences for multiple parties.

Now, all this might be reasonably interesting in an American film, but what really makes A Separation worth watching is the access it allows us into Iranian customs, particularly regarding their justice system. These characters are as easy to relate to as any in a American film, their lives not very different from ours, and yet there are differences between cultures that raise the stakes in this story higher than they would be if it were set in the western world. A Seperation is no thriller, either, but it knows how to ratchet up suspense in measured doses; it knows when to reveal something, and when to save it for later. The third act in particular is spellbinding, and yet it is absolutely always 100% grounded in reality. The flesh-and-blood characters linger in the mind long after it’s over.

So kudos to A Separation for its deserved acclaim. For rising out of the cinematic trenches and capturing the Academy’s attention, when so many other quality films could not (and yet, The Help and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close could).

And kudos to me, for wrapping up my series of 100 movie reviews for the year 2011!

A Separation: See it, and be separate from this film no longer.

The Trip: Worth the trip.

The Beaver: Just weird enough to be watchable.

Boy Wonder: Like a second-rate sidekick to better vigilante movies — but in a pinch, it’ll do.

Tuesday, After Christmas: Ho-ho-ho-hum.

Trespass: Cinematic schadenfreude at its finest.

Passion Play: Megan Fox with wings. Need I say more?

The Double: Twice as lame as any other movie I saw this year.

Event movies are rare these days. Most films that studios would have you believe are “events” are anything but — sheep in wolves’ clothing. They hardly give us a reason to go to the theater at all, let alone line up opening night.

The Hunger Games, however, is an event. Certainly 2012′s first, and unless you count the final installment of Harry Potter —which, by the eighth film in the franchise, held very little surprise for its audience, since we all knew exactly what to expect — it is the first true Event Movie to come along since… oh, Inception, maybe? Avatar? (As a rule, I don’t think straight-off sequels really count as Events, unless there’s something truly novel about them — a la The Dark Knight with the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. In addition to drawing crowds, an Event Movie needs to have a palpable excitement surrounding it, an expectation on the audience’s part for the film to deliver, have an impact. The Transformer movies may be huge, but no one expects or even desires much from them. They play, minds shut off, and eyes glaze over.)

Not the case with The Hunger Games.

Based on the massively popular YA books, the series has now transcended any pretense of being “young adult” since so many actual adults have read them. Harry Potter never quite escaped its roots as a children’s book in the public eye — it is about a boy wizard, after all — and the Twilight books were deemed acceptable only for teen girls and dopey women who think like them. But thanks to its stark violence and the competence of its overall conceit, The Hunger Games needn’t really be viewed through that prism. As a sci-fi parable, it’s as valid a vision of the future as 1984 or A Clockwork Orange. Will it become such a classic? We’ll see.

Suzanne Collins’ novel is deceptively thoughtful, giving us ample food for thought but not necessarily instructing us to do that thinking. This jaunt through the thirteen districts of Panem can be as meaningful or as hollow as you like, based on how carefully you choose to read between the lines; it has the capability to be viewed as nothing more than a slick piece of entertainment, and it is certainly that. But there is a richer subtext to be drawn out, too, amidst its crafty simplicity. I’m not claiming its messages are anything groundbreaking, but it has a hell of a lot more on its mind than your average blockbuster, particularly one aimed at teens.

And now, here is the movie.

The Twilight comparisons are inevitable, so forgive me. But my biggest fear when I heard about The Hunger Games movie was that it’d be dumbed down for a “Team Jacob” audience, an army of young women who seem curiously satisfied with wooden acting, corny special effects, and an overall disregard for thinking. (Any thinking at all, really, pokes so many holes in Twilight that the films evaporate before your very eyes — like a vampire when it steps into the sunlight. Oh, wait…) And if that’s good enough for the Twi-Hards, why make The Hunger Games any better?

Well, because it is better — pure and simple. As a story. As a series of books. And, praise the Lord, as a movie.

I won’t waste too much time summarizing the intricate plot, which can be found elsewhere. But for those who don’t know, Katniss Everdeen is a resident of the impoverished District 12 of Panem, which holds the Hunger Games every year — broadcasting a brutal fight-to-the-death of 24 teens on TV until one lone victor remains. When her sister is chosen as this year’s female tribute, Katniss volunteers in her place, joining the baker Peeta, who once showed her an act of mercy and has been harboring a crush on her ever since. The two are briefly trained, then left in a forest-like “arena” to fend for themselves while the world watches. The film, directed by Pleasantville‘s Gary Ross, is predictably faithful to the book, as such adaptations of massively popular young adult novels tend to be. (Whatever you do, don’t upset the fans!) Any discrepancies between them are superficial. Unless you’re a real stickler for every word of Collins’ prose, nothing will be missed.

But the book and movie have curiously different strengths and weaknesses. One minor criticism I might lodge at the first novel is that the reality TV angle seems almost incidental. It may be necessary for many elements of the plot to make sense — and for the parable to work as well as it does as a commentary upon modern times — but there was always a slight disconnect between the no-frills dystopia of the Districts and the idea of a bloodthirsty audience of privileged folk watching the tributes’ every move on TV. In the books, Panem feels rather low-tech compared to sci-fi societies in other works. It didn’t really feel like there were cameras present in the arena. With a few tweaks, the whole TV angle could be eliminated and the games might be a mere fight to the death in an arena, unsupervised and untelevised. We, the readers, had a hard time grasping, who, precisely, the audience was. Who, exactly, was watching. The depictions of characters from the Capitol were always a bit thinly sketched.

The film, however, expands our time spent with characters from the Capitol, and it’s one of the highlights — we get an array of colorful extras comprising its citizens. Everyone in the audience looks like Lady Gaga or Nicki Minaj. This is one of the perks of cinema, allowing visuals to impart information in a single frame that might take hundreds of words to convey in writing. Key to the first half of this film’s success, Stanley Tucci takes a role that, in the  book, was more or less unmemorable and makes it integral to this story, the glue between the savage games and their gaudy, spoiled observers. As TV personality Caesar Flickerman, he’s our window into how all this agony and carnage is repackaged into entertainment, and it echoes what we’ve actually seen on our own TV screens — real-life meltdowns edited, scored, and advertised for our viewing pleasure. Here, and not so much in the book, the Hunger Games feel like a pretty close cousin to The Real Housewives and American Idol and Survivor. And dammit, they look pretty compelling. If such a thing really was on TV, do you think it’d possible to not watch? Here the film is at its savviest.As social commentary, the movie is perhaps even more successful than the book at feeling so very relevant, so very now. It jumps right into the story, depicting District 12 as a bleak, desaturated place where everyone is on edge always, speaking hurriedly and quietly. Gary Ross evokes a Paul Greengrass/Alfonso Cuaron style of filmmaking (rapid cuts, handheld camera), adeptly conveying an unsettling sense of urgency. The mood is nothing if not tense; right away, we understand he’s not doing any Twilight-style fucking around for the sake of an insipid audience. These early scenes are actually where Ross shines most — in contrast to the book, which is most gripping once the games begin.

The script effectively sets up all the information we’ll need in a proportionally-prolonged training sequence. Katniss becomes the “Girl on Fire” (which unfortunately doesn’t look quite as awesome as it was described by Collins); the scene in which she fires an arrow at her sponsors is a delightful doozy. (Any future Oscar campaigns for this film should pull the photo of Katniss’ sour curtsy with the text “Thank You For Your Consideration.”) Woody Harrelson provides some welcome comic relief as Haymitch, and ditto Elizabeth Banks as Effie. Lenny Kravitz’s Cinna is warm but mostly unnecessary; Wes Bentley and Donald Sutherland as Seneca Crane and President Snow, respectively, are given beefed-up roles with scenes not found in the book, including one terrific scene with Snow explaining why they allow a single survivor — the power of hope. But overall, it’s a problem.

In the novel, we were stuck with Katniss, experiencing the games as she did. She explained a good number of rules to us as they happened — gifts from sponsors, the ways Crane and company manipulate the arena to make the games more interesting (such as shooting fireballs at Katniss). We also were witness to her keen strategizing. By contrast, the movie finds it necessary to keep cutting away from the arena to explain how and why it’s all happening, making the actual games less immersive. Do we need all these glimpses behind the scenes? I don’t think so. It’s that timeless Hitchcockian rule — the shark in Jaws — that the unknown is more frightening than what is depicted. The Hunger Games doesn’t allow us to wonder or guess what’s happening enough. Too often, it just tells us.

Perhaps Ross and company needed a device to explain a few of the trickier plot elements to moviegoers unfamiliar with the books — but did he really? I can’t help but feel most of these added cutaways from the arena are a mistake, eating up valuable screen time that would have been better spent stranded in the woods with our diminishing number of contenders. While nearly every event in the novel is also present in the film, it feels like a few episodes get short shrift — the alliance with Rue, the time spent with Peeta — perhaps unavoidably, given the number of characters who must be axed both literally and figuratively. Still, it seems perhaps a bit of a compromise was made to give screen time to the more established actors, while the mostly unknown teen actors make less of an impression. It feels unbalanced somehow.

Cinna, Effie, President Snow, Caesar, Seneca — they made fine characters in the first book, each serving a purpose. But then they disappeared. The real stars of the Hunger Games were the contestants — some more sympathetic than others, but Collins never let us forget that they were all ultimately just children fighting for their lives. Foxface, Glimmer, Thresh, Clove, Rue, Cato — they stick with you, as brief as most of their appearances are. It’s that time spent in the arena that makes The Hunger Games such a page-turner as we think, well, surely Collins isn’t going to kill off all these characters. Not sweet little Rue, right? There must be a loophole!

The movie doesn’t quite allow enough time for all this dread to sink in, for the one-by-one nature of the killings to have such an impact. One of few true missteps in the movie is the script’s tendency to vilify most of the other players, turning them into sneering, sadistic teen stereotypes — thereby making it “okay” for Katniss to kill them. The whole point of the book is that it wasn’t okay, and each demise had a tremendous underlying sadness. Katniss felt true remorse at what she had to do to survive, and that’s a lot of what made the games portion of the novel so thrilling. Here, unfortunately, it’s where the Hunger Games movie falters. Is this just a necessary evil for any PG-13 film aimed at a reasonably young audience? Maybe.

Is it even possible for a film to build up these characters as efficiently (albeit succinctly) as the novel does? Perhaps not, but the film’s later scenes unfortunately don’t quite have the same intensity and emotional impact as those gripping early ones. The climax, though faithful to the novel, feels somewhat stagey and rushed — like perhaps Ross is sticking a bit too close to the source material without really reimagining it for film. Maybe the ferocious “mutts” of the book — constructed out of the dead bodies of fallen players — would have been too gruesome for a PG-13 film, but the kid-friendly beasties here aren’t so effective. This is the only moment when The Hunger Games really betrays its roots as a story aimed at a young adult audience; where we can feel Ross compromising for a PG-13 rating. It may be asking too much for The Hunger Games to have the heft of, say, Children Of Men, but the story certainly has that kind of potential. Here, many of the more action-packed scenes don’t have quite the finesse you’d hope for — and unlike the book, throughout, Katniss and Peeta’s survival feels a bit too telegraphed.

All these are minor detractions from what is otherwise a pretty excellent book-to-film adaptation, given the circumstances. So let’s talk about what truly does work here — how about the casting? Jennifer Lawrence was a clever choice for the role of Katniss, since she already played (and was Oscar-nominated for) such a similar role in Winter’s Bone. She’s utterly believable in her physical prowess, equal parts frightened girl in over her head and badass action heroine. (Credit Suzanne Collins for writing such a strong young female character in the first place. Did you hear that, Stephenie Meyer?) The chief problem amongst many, many problems with Twilight is that the plot depends on two strapping supernatural lads to fall head over heels for Bella Swan, and yet there’s nothing at all compelling about her. She just stands there and watches everyone fight over her. She’s not driving her own story.

But The Hunger Games‘ Katniss Everdeen is a true heroine with an interior life of her own. Like Bella, she’s caught in a love triangle, but that’s not where her character starts and ends. Romance is the last thing on Katniss’ mind — survival is her M.O., and only so she can take care of her less-capable mother and little sister. Katniss is a selfless provider, resourceful and calculating, who only finds herself “in love” as a means of survival, a way to win the Hunger Games. In reading the book, sometimes you wish Katniss might lighten up and have some fun every once in awhile. Shacking up with Peeta isn’t all that bad, is it? Couldn’t she enjoy it a little? But Katniss is no Bella Swan. She doesn’t take pleasure in the opulence that greets her when she volunteers for the Games; the clothes, the television appearances, the makeover. We almost wish she would, so we could, too. But then she wouldn’t be a heroine worth following.

I’m not sure if the film expertly conveys the degree to which Katniss’ romance with Peeta is contrived for the sake of her survival; having read the book, I knew going in. Will the rest of the audience? Here, again, is the problem with seeing too much “behind the curtain”; all that time spent with Seneca Crane and company pulls us out of identifying solely with Katniss. We can’t quite get into her head in those crucial later scenes — we don’t see her mind craftily working out how playing “star-crossed lover” with Peeta might just ensure her a trip home. Katniss’ thoughts are so integral in Collins’ book, and yet, without some kind of tacky voice over, it’s impossible to translate that to film. You can’t fault Jennifer Lawrence, but you do wish the film had found a way to showcase Katniss’ conflicting feelings a bit more. The Hunger Games knows it has a lot of story to tell, and once it gets to the arena, it zooms through it.

On the other hand, Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta is this film’s secret weapon, coming across as an even stronger figure than he was in the novel — the true heart of this story. He’s the real deal, perhaps because what he’s playing is so much purer — he truly is smitten with Katniss. (It doesn’t hurt that he can actually act, unlike a certain teen werewolf we might mention.) It makes the series’ “love traingle” all but invisible in this first installment — not only because Gale hardly figures into this movie, but also because he is played by Liam Hemsworth in this franchise’s one casting misstep. Hemsworth sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the other denizens of District 12 — he’s too polished, too pretty, like Hayden Christensen trying to convince us he’s gonna be Darth Vader. He just doesn’t belong here. And maybe, in the sequels, when he’s given more to do, he’ll do it capably — but here, he’s given nothing.

If the film had to do so much cutting away from the arena, I wish it had let us see the games through Gale’s eyes more; these cutaways now have no point of view, but it would have been nice to see Gale watching Katniss on TV obsessively, rooting for the girl he so obviously has a thing for. The moments in which Tucci and Toby Jones comment on the action wouldn’t have felt so blatantly “here’s us explaining things to the people who haven’t read the books!”-ish if viewed through Gale’s eyes, and it would have given him something to do in this movie. As is, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would be on Team Gale. As portrayed by Liam Hemsworth, he’s a total blank.But ultimately, these are minor quibbles with something that could easily have been so watered down and bland. So Twilight. The Hunger Games showcases strong storytelling all around, a teen movie in which neither the teens nor the movie are dumbed down. And it leaves you with something to think about. It’s a film I am eager to revisit now that my expectations carried over from the book are quelled — will it hold up to a second viewing? I think so; I expect it to improve, actually.

And already, my belly rumbles for the next one.

Yum.

I, like the majority of the western world, saw The Hunger Games on opening weekend. It had been nearly a year since I’d read Suzanne Collins’ book and I hadn’t yet started on the sequels. (I’m doing that now — and at the moment, I’m on Team Finnick. Sorry, Peeta! This is subject to change, though.)

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, though I came away with slightly mixed feelings because the anticipation had been so great. Mostly, I was just relieved that it was so, so much better than that damn Twilight. (You’d think, sometime after passing the billion-dollar mark at the box office, they might actually try and make them at least a little bit good. But then again, why bother?) I came away feeling like I needed to see it one more time to be certain of my opinion.

And now I’ve done that.

Now, many of you may not know that one of my (many) pseudo-careers is giving notes on ailing screenplays, in hopes of improving them so that they A) get made; B) don’t suck if/when they do. By now I’ve provided my services on something like 400 scripts, most of which will never see the light of day (because they’re terrible). But it still irks me when a movie is made already, and it’s too late to make those tweaks that improve it exponentially. I just can’t understand why every studio doesn’t send their multi-million dollar projects to me before making such a gamble! Don’t they know I could make them flawless?

Such is the case with The Hunger Games, which I reviewed favorably upon first viewing — but with reservations. I had to see it again, now knowing what to expect, to see how it held up after I’ve had some time to process. The results? Predictable. A few moments came off better the second time; the first half of the film is excellent — nearly perfect, by my estimation. (Particularly those early scenes in District 12, which actually improve upon the impact of the book.) And, unfortunately, a few of the book’s more powerful moments are a bit lacking in the film version.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games is a terrific piece of entertainment — the rare blockbuster that actually deserves the scores of millions it’s raking in. Kudos to everyone involved, particularly the strong cast led by Jennifer lawrence and Josh Hutcherson — both of whom impressed me even more on the second go-round. I also appreciated James Newton Howard’s score more this time. But you know what made it even better? Imagining that the film had already been improved in exactly five ways, according to my “notes.” They’re reasonably small changes, but they would have had an enormous effect on the movie as a whole. And it would have made double the money it’s making now, and swept the Oscars, and then everyone would have thanked me in their speeches. Oh well.

Of course, it’s too late now. And of course, no one likes a 7th-inning quarterback, or whatever. But here are my suggestions for how to rewrite The Hunger Games movie anyway.

Bon appetit.

FIVE WAYS TO MAKE THE HUNGER GAMES FLAWLESS

1. Katniss needs to feel truly betrayed by Peeta upon seeing that he formed an alliance with the Careers.

Even in Suzanne Collins’ book, I don’t think readers ever bought that Peeta had formed an alliance with the Careers. Peeta’s too likable for that; rather, it was obvious (to us) that it was a strategic move to keep Katniss alive. But Katniss didn’t know that. Peeta is something of a smooth operator in front of the cameras, so it’s easy to see why she might jump to the conclusion that he’s been playing her all along. The movie doesn’t make such a big deal of this development, but it should have. Seeing as we can’t read Katniss’ thoughts the way we do in the novel, we need them visualized and externalized and made more cinematic.

It’s simple, really. To sell this, Peeta might even have to be cruel to Katniss in front of the Careers, taunting her up in that tree — which would have had the unfortunate effect of actually hurting her. (Maybe Peeta even thinks she’s in on the joke her, underestimating Katniss’ defensiveness.) And it would have been equally easy to show Katniss feeling betrayed — even by merely giving Peeta the finger from up in her perch to let us know how she really feels. Instead, the movie undersells this moment, making it less satisfying when it turns out Peeta’s been on Team Katniss all along, trying to help her survive by placing himself in danger with this precarious alliance with the Careers.

Also, the dialogue in the cave near the end of the film — which, as is, comes across as a little ho-hum compared to how this relationship played out in the book — would have been helped if there was more of a sense of competition between Katniss and Peeta earlier. The cave scene would have been a good time to show us the cameras again, and let us know that these two (Katniss, especially) are playing it up for the audience. As is, it was pretty hard to tell how much of this was genuine and how much of it was all for the Games.

2. Katniss’ tracker jacker hallucination needs to provide more insight into her subconscious, especially through an appearance by Gale.

I was initially impressed by the trippy sequence that follows Katniss getting stung by the tracker jackers. She stumbles through the woods, hallucinating an appearance by Cesar before flashing back to her father’s death and her mother’s subsequent catatonia. This works fine, except The Hunger Games already adequately explained this backstory back when Katniss demands her mother “not check out again” for Prim’s sake. Seeing it visualized in this way isn’t redundant, yet there were other elements of this story that could have been better utilized here.

Why not provide information we don’t already have? Stuff that would be hard to visualize if it weren’t a fantasy sequence? Two primary elements spring to mind — Katniss’ bond with Rue, which in the novel comes about because she reminds her of her sister. This doesn’t really come across in the film adaptation, but imagine if Katniss hallucinated that Prim was in the arena taking care of her, and then gradually it was revealed that it was actually Rue who’d been tending to her for the past two days. Then her sudden affinity for with Rue might have had a whole lot more emotional impact.But even more importantly, why wasn’t Gale a part of this fantasy? In the book, Katniss frequently tries to guess what Gale must be thinking while watching the Games, constantly hoping that her fake relationship with Peeta isn’t hurting the boy she kinda-loves back home. It’s of paramount important to Katniss in the book; it’s not in the movie at all. Of course, we can’t have our heroine wandering around the arena, muttering to herself about how this all looks to Gale. That’s why the hallucination is the perfect opportunity to keep Gale alive in the story and let us know he’s still on Katniss’ mind.

This could have gone down any number of ways — perhaps, in her confusion about Peeta’s apparent betrayal, Katniss thinks it’s Gale who’s telling her to run. Cutting back and forth between Peeta and Gale here would’ve been a good way to visualize Katniss’ conflicting romantic feelings for the studs of District 12, confusing one for the other and running from Peeta because she’s not sure that he’s not trying to kill her. Katniss spent much of her childhood in the woods with Gale, so it makes perfect sense that he’d appear to her now as a “guide” in this altered state. Ultimately, this fantasy scene just seems like a missed opportunity to give us something fresher and more complex. And it would’ve actually given Liam Hemsworth something to do besides stand around, looking like he got really lost on the way to the J. Crew catalog shoot.

Which reminds me…

3. Gale needs to do something. (Anything.)

In the movie, as in the book, Gale is absent from most of the action. And that’s fine by me, because Gale sucks. It’s like Liam Hemsworth is acting in the Miley Cyrus version of this movie, and no one told him this isn’t Twilight; this is an actual movie. But I’ll cut Hemsworth some slack now, because it isn’t totally his fault; the problem is that Gale is 100% useless in the Hunger Games movie, and if he was going to be in it at all, he should have done something substantial, however brief or small. Or anything, really. Anything at all.

Here’s my suggestion — he should have refused to watch the Hunger Games. It’s perfectly set up in the beginning, remember? Gale says that if people stopped watching, there’d be no Games. But then the movie does nothing with it. So Gale should have been defiant and refused to watch at all, maybe even condemning his fellow District 12-ers for doing so, thus buying into the Capitol’s propaganda. A couple brief scenes might see his fellow citizens buzzing about something that’s going on in the Games — Katniss doing surprisingly well, or getting injured, or maybe her romance with Peeta — and still, Gale refuses to watch. (Until the very end, with the berries — but more on that later.) It’d require a mere minute or so of screen time, but would’ve been an actual arc for his character, one that falls in line with who he’s supposed to be — someone who, like Katniss, is fed up with the Capitol’s games (Hunger and otherwise). Instead, he’s just a blank slate; a place-holder for a character until Catching Fire, I guess. So if you’re on Team Gale after seeing this movie, just don’t even talk to me.

4. Immerse us in the arena through Katniss’ POV. Don’t telegraph everything by constantly cutting to the control room.

The novel takes place entirely from Katniss’ first-person point of view, as novels tend to do. The movie veers away from that, wisely in some cases — particularly in two conversations between President Snow and Seneca. (Resulting in delicious lines such as: “I like you. Be careful.”) It was a necessary departure from the novel, and it filled in a few details we didn’t get in the book — particularly by showing what the control room is actually like. This is good — at first. But the longer it goes on, the less it works. Toward the end, such departures from the arena mostly exist to give us information we don’t really need.

I’m on the fence about the uprising in Rue’s district, following her death. It’s a little sudden, isn’t it? I’d have preferred them to wait for the berries — but whatever. Why, though, must we see the Muttations as a hologram before they appear in the arena? On the whole, we should experience the horrors of the arena as Katniss does. It would have been much more suspenseful (and Hitchcockian!) to hear the fearsome sounds of the beasts before we ever laid eyes on them. (Also — they should have been scarier. Less like real dogs. But I digress.) At a certain point, Ross should have stopped cutting away from the arena and totally immersed us in the Hunger Games just as the tributes are, letting us wonder what the Gameskeepers were cooking up rather than constantly telegraphing it ahead of time. Pretty much everything we needed to see about the control room could have come before the Games began, or shortly after. It’s a bit jarring being pulled out of them so often, and our emotional investment in the tributes’ story suffers as a result.

5. Highlight the theme of “change,” particularly in the climactic moment with the berries.

Not to get too Obama about it, but ultimately, The Hunger Games is all about change. The Capitol is a regime that squashes any opposition, and the citizens of Panem live in fear of ever voicing their protest. Until Katniss comes along to challenge that. Does that totally come across in the movie? Almost… but not really.

If there’s one thing that flat-out doesn’t quite work in Gary Ross’ movie, it’s that climax with the berries. Upon the Gamekeeper’s cruel revocation of the rule allowing both tributes to live, Katniss decides she’s had enough and takes a gamble — betting that if the Gamekeepers have to decide between two victors and zero, they’ll choose to let both Peeta and Katniss out of the arena. And they do. In Catching Fire, we learn that this moment set off a revolution in several districts — why? Because up until now, no tribute had ever publicly questioned the fate the Capitol chose for them. They all played by the rules of the Games and either won or died. So Katniss’ trick with the berries needed to feel like a true act of defiance, the kind of thing that really could spark a rebellion. Instead, it just feels like a random idea she has in the moment, not one she’s all that committed to. It certainly doesn’t have the emotional payoff it should.

How to remedy this? Well, it’s all set up in the beginning — first with Gale, who suggests that people should defy the Capitol by refusing to watch the Games. In this scene, it’s Katniss who doesn’t believe change is possible. Even more significant is that first bonding moment between Katniss and Peeta, the night before the Games. Peeta says he doesn’t want the Games to change him; he doesn’t want to be the Capitol’s pawn. Katniss says she can’t afford to think like that. (But, in the end, she does.) This is all flawless.

The problem is, once we get into the arena, that whole theme is pretty much forgotten. There’s no discussion of the injustice of all of this, watching these kids get killed off one by one. Maybe Ross & co. thought it went without saying, but it doesn’t quite. A bit of dialogue between Rue and Katniss might have helped; especially something connected to Prim. Katniss might have said something along the lines of: “A girl your age shouldn’t have to be here,” with Rue replying, “None of us should.” Even that minor spotlight on the tragedy underlying all this killing would have given Rue’s death more punch, and reminded us that, yes, there is something more at stake than any of these characters’ lives. These Games will go on and on forever, killing off 23 innocent teens every years, until someone takes a stand. That call to action isn’t felt once the Games begin — which is a bit of a shame, since that’s what the sequels are all about, anyway.

Another misstep comes right before Cloves’ death scene — the worst moment in this movie. As they fight to death near the Cornucopia, Clove cruelly taunts Katniss about Rue’s death. (It’s unclear how she even knows what went down; she wasn’t there.) In essence, this makes Clove a cardboard-cutout moustache-twirling villain, and goes against what the movie should be about. None of these kids want to kill each other. They’re forced to. That’s the whole point! How much more impact would this scene have if, instead, Clove was crying and apologizing to Katniss — and, at the same time, trying to brutally, fatally slit her throat? The Hunger Games should have portrayed her as just a girl, like Katniss, doing what she must to survive. (And in that case, Thresh coming and killing Clove to save Katniss would have been even more devastating.)

The film tried to make up for it in that final battle with Cato — and, upon second viewing, it was half-successful. Again, though: it needed to highlight the theme of “change.” What’s the real difference between Katniss and the Careers? They’ve been raised to go to the Games —they’ve spent their whole lives preparing to either kill or be killed. That’s pretty tragic. The weight of that doesn’t quite hit home in the movie, but those last words from Cato should have been what gave Katniss the idea to rebel against the Capitol in the first place. In the end, she watches Cato, like so many others, die horribly because the Capitol says so, and she knows this will never change unless she does something about it. That’s what makes Katniss our heroine — the girl who, after 74 years of Hunger Games, finally makes a difference. She doesn’t just accept her role in this the way the Careers do, and that leads the rest of Panem, eventually, to follow suit.

So what needed to happen with those berries? Well, we needed to be reminded of what Peeta said before the Games began. Katniss needed to tell him that this is the moment in which he proves that he’s not just another pawn. Reminding him that thousands are watching. And if ever there was a moment to cut to the rest of Panem — hello! This is it! This moment supposedly sets off everything that happens in the sequel, so why don’t we see anyone watching? This would have been a great time to cut to Gale, see how he feels about Katniss standing up to the Capitol. We needed to feel the stakes here and believe that the Capitol might actually let Katniss and Peeta die — and then see the public reacting to this, troubled.

It needed to be huge. It wasn’t.

There. Those are reasonably easy fixes, right? And before we’re done, three smaller things that jumped out at me this second time around:

Nitpick #1: When Katniss sang the song as Rue was dying, why didn’t the mockingjays start “singing” along? This would have been cool and beautiful, and also, helped make more sense of why the mockingjay becomes a symbol of the revolution later. The mockingjay pin actually never figures into the Games at all, and it needed to. Once we learn Cinna has pinned it to Katniss’ jacket, I’m pretty sure we never see it or hear of it again. Why was it not mentioned by Rue?

Nitpick #2: The first half of the film made a big deal out of Peeta’s strength, and then never did anything with it. Okay, fine — except in that climax, when Katniss and Peeta are outrunning the Muttations, it’s Katniss who climbs onto the Cornucopia first, and she pulls him up. It should have been the other way around! Let Peeta show off those muscles, yo!

Nitpick #3: When they’re in the cave, Peeta and Katniss hear an announcement that all of the tributes are in desperate need of something. We know Peeta needs medicine, but what do the rest of them need? This would be the perfect moment to cut away to the other tributes and show that they’re all suffering — maybe one is starving, another is dehydrated, someone else injured — whatever. For a movie called The Hunger Games, the film downplays the physical demands of the competition. In training, we’re told most of the tributes will die from natural causes, but that’s not actually true in this Games, is it?

Okay, I’m done now. Like I said, I really like The Hunger Games. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered “fixing” the screenplay for a movie that’s already been made, would I?

Still, let’s hope these sorts of issues are worked out for Catching Fire, and the screenplay is worked over just a little more carefully. If I could give just a few words of advice to the makers of The Hunger Games for the next installment?

“I like you. Be careful.”

As a kid, I got excited for summer movie season, because it brought sequels, superheroes, dinosaurs — that kind of thing. But the past few summers haven’t given us more than one or two blockbusters worth getting riled up about. These days, my event movies tend to be much smaller in scale, featuring powerhouse acting in favor of explosions and Oscar buzz in lieu of box office clout.

For a guy like me, fall is the new summer, because that’s when all the Academy Award hopefuls roll out. It’s starting already, with Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (which opened last weekend), and something at least mildly tantalizing opening just about every weekend until the new year. Yay!

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you how Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained just might be strong Oscar contenders, because of duh. A big movie-musical adaptation of Les Miserables? Also pretty obvious. And, quite frankly, I’m not that excited about another Tolkien trilogy, so rule out The Hobbit also.

Instead, here in no particular order are the seven films I’m looking forward to that haven’t received as much hype. The general public is probably still unaware of most of these, all of which I hope are pleasant surprises that dominate Oscar season (if they are actually as good as they look).

My 7 Most Anticipated (And Least Obvious) Fall Movies

1. Not Fade Away

Not Fade Away, about a fictional rock band in the 60’s, has nothing to do with organized crime, but it’s The Sopranos creator David Chase’s feature debut, co-stars James Gandolfini, is set in New Jersey, and features music from Steven Van Zandt (AKA Silvio). For Sopranos fans, that may be more than enough. For everyone else, it’ll probably just be a good movie.2. The Impossible

Let’s set aside the cynical observation that this film, about the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed an estimated 228,000 people along the Indian Ocean, is centered around a Caucasian family, even though the vast majority of those actually affected by the catastrophe were Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Indian, or Thai. The film is Spanish-produced and highlights a tragedy that most of us know less about than we probably should, compared to other disasters of this century. The trailer is reasonably uplifting, considering, and the tsunami scenes look pretty damn awesome/terrifying. The buzz out of Toronto is good, meaning this may be a good place to find some future Oscar nominees in visual effects and acting (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts).

3. Silver Linings Playbook

I liked but didn’t love The Fighter, David O. Russell’s 2010 boxing drama starring Mark Wahlberg, for which Melissa Leo and Christian Bale won Oscars. But Silver Linings Playbook seems more in the vein of Russell’s earlier films like I Heart Huckabees, starring the intriguing romantic pairing of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. It’s Cooper’s chance to prove that he can deliver on a smaller, more respectable scale, outside of a big broad studio comedy, and it co-stars Animal Kingdom’s delightful Jackie Weaver (whose deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar went to Leo).

4. The Paperboy

Can Zac Efron act? We’re about to find out. Nicole Kidman is back in full-on To Die For mode as a femme fatale who seduces a younger man in Lee Daniels’ follow-up to Precious, co-starring Matthew McConaughey (having a big year in good movies, for once), along with John Cusack and, um, Macy Gray. While I found Precious a bit too dreary and disjointed to be an unequivocal fan, The Paperboy looks like plenty of pulpy, sexy, trashy fun, a la the campy 1998 erotic thriller Wild Things. And even if the movie sucks, surely some will see it just for Efron in his white briefs, slow-dancing with Nicole Kidman in the rain…

5. The Details 

There is some debate as to whether The Details will get a theatrical or on-demand release, but let’s hope for the best either way. It stars Tobey Maguire as a “cheating, cat-killing liar” (Laura Linney’s character’s words) in a role reminiscent of Election, in which an actor known for playing affable nice guys portrays a smug jerk who goes up against a high-strung Type A goodie-goodie, then quickly unravels. It’s directed by Jacob Aaron Estes, whose last film was the phenomenal, underseen Mean Creek, and it co-stars Kerry Washington, Ray Liotta, Elizabeth Banks, and lots of raccoons. This kind of sardonic suburban dramedy is right up my alley.6. Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is probably the highest-profile film on this list, but I couldn’t leave it off. I’m midway through David Mitchell’s epic novel, featuring six stories set in disparate centuries like a series of Russian nesting dolls (a character in each story reads, views, or discusses the story told in the last segment). It’s a movie so ambitious, it took three visionary directors to make it — the Wachowskis (of The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (of Run Lola Run). I refuse to watch the lengthy trailer until I’ve finished the book, but it features Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, and more, each playing multiple characters of varying ages, genders, and ethnicities. I really want this to be good — and yet, it’s such a sprawling, complicated story, it’s easy to see how it could all go horribly awry. Here’s to hopin’.7. The Sessions 

“Heartwarming” isn’t really my favorite adjective when it comes to describing movies. Nor is “feel-good” — I’d rather feel terrible! When it comes to Oscar season, I want to be borderline suicidal when walking out of a movie theater. But The Sessions won the Audience Award at Sundance, and generally, the audience at Sundance knows what they’re talking about. So I’m going to assume that this film, about a 38-year-old paralyzed man who asks a priest to help him lose his virginity, isn’t quite as cutesy and tepid as the trailer makes it look. I can’t get too excited about William H. Macy or Helen Hunt these days, but it is nice to see frequent supporting player John Hawkes carry a film for once. I have my reservations about this one, but I’m cautiously optimistic based on the good buzz.

Honorable mentions that I’m anticipating (but were still a bit too obvious for this list) include Skyfall, the new James Bond directed by American Beauty’s Sam Mendes (!); Rian Johnson’s sci-fi trip Looper, starring Bruce Willis a weird-looking Joseph Gordon-Levitt; Argo, Ben Affleck’s real movie about a fake movie; and Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s first film as an Academy Award-winning director, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, starring Jessica Chastain and Joel Edgerton.

What’s your most anticipated release?*

Bradley Cooper first became a household name in The Hangover, and ever since, has almost exclusively played jerks. He’s good at that. I’m not even sure the characters are written as jerks, but somehow, Cooper always manages to play them that way.

Cooper first came to my attention, though, as a supporting player on Alias. He didn’t often have much to do on the show, but I always liked him because he was vulnerable and charming and all the things Bradley Cooper isn’t, really, in his movies. I’ve always suspected he had more charisma than the movies he’s in were letting on, and it turns out, I was right.

If there’s any justice in the world (which there often isn’t, when it comes to Oscars), Bradley Cooper will get a Best Actor nod for his role in Silver Linings Playbook. And I even kinda think he should win (if only because Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is just too predictably astounding).

That Silver Linings Playbook is such an offbeat movie shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the director’s work ― Spanking The Monkey and I Heart Huckabees amongst the titles. But David O. Russell captured the mainstream’s attention with The Fighter (which he didn’t write), and it seemed like he might be angling for a similarly widespread appeal with Silver Linings Playbook (which he did write).

That’s only kind of true. Silver Linings Playbook has many elements that mainstream audiences can enjoy ― a touching romance, broad family comedy, familiar stars. If I were to describe the plot, parts of it would sound sickeningly saccharine and oh-so-predictable. Case in point: the climax comes down to both a dance competition and a big football game. In its broadest strokes, Silver Linings Playbook is as conventional as they come. But as written and directed by David O. Russell, few scenes play out the way you’d expect in a more paint-by-numbers movie; this Playbook zigs when you think it’ll zag. I know the trailer makes it look awfully trite, but trust me. In my mind, Silver Linings Playbook is one of the brightest and sharpest character studies of the year.

Bradley Cooper plays Pat, recently released from nine months in the cuckoo’s nest. He returns home and, gradually, we realize his parents aren’t the most stable people, either ― superstitious father Pat Sr. has major OCD, his mother Dolores is a kooky doormat (albeit a chipper one fond of baking “homemades”). Dad’s played by Robert De Niro, his best performance in ages; Mom’s performed by Animal Kingdom Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver, who I adore. We’ve seen characters like these before, yet both performers bring just enough of an element of surprise that they feel fresh and lively.

The screenplay is smart enough to let us feel uneasy around Pat. He’s been taken out of the hospital against his doctor’s advice; his delusions about getting back with his estranged wife are actually creepy. (She cheated on him, sending him on that downward spiral in the first place.) Pat has a few outbursts that leave us unnerved. We sense he could blow at any second. We’re not sure whether or not to trust him or fear his downfall. But as played by Cooper, he’s also a good-hearted guy we can see trying his best against some emotional instability that isn’t really his fault. In short, he’s human.

The real story begins once Pat shows up for a dinner with friends (Julia Stiles and John Ortiz) and meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who’s in the midst of a crisis of her own. Her cop husband has just been killed on the job, and she’s settled into a deep depression that occasionally leads her to behave in a sexually aggressive manner. The two bond over which meds they’ve taken in a terrifically awkward dinner scene. Like Pat, we’re not sure we can exactly trust Tiffany ― we only gradually warm up to these characters, who are prickly at first. In the meantime, they’re still awfully compelling.

What follows is a story that, on paper, sounds as bad as anything in Valentine’s Day ― filled with the kind of deceptions and misunderstandings that make us groan in a standard romantic comedy. But in Silver Linings Playbook, nothing that happens feels dictated by the wishes of a screenwriter (or, worse, the studio); these are actually choices we believe these characters would make, even (or especially) when they’re ill-advised. Unlike most romantic comedies (a genre I wouldn’t place Silver Linings Playbook in, despite some familiar tropes), the final act has several moments of genuine suspense. And even though the story generally goes about where you think it will, the detours it makes along the way are unpredictable and refreshing.The direction in Silver Linings Playbook is unconventional itself, with a rough-around-the-edges quality that probably makes it feel more daring than it is. It’s not a particularly edgy story, but it has that anything-could-happen aura of a good indie. Best of all, it makes no apologies for its protagonists’ flaws, and both have plenty ― few studio movies would allow their romantic leads to be so warts-and-all for so long. There are no false, obvious bids for likability. You take these ones as they come.

Jennifer Lawrence is the Oscar favorite here ― paired with favorable reviews for her performance in The Hunger Games, she almost certainly will be nominated (and has a decent shot at a win). If he’s nominated, Bradley Cooper will face off against Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln and isn’t likely to emerge victorious; perhaps Robert De Niro will repeat The Fighter’s success in the Supporting Actor category, though. It’s also the kind of feel-good movie that could be a major Best Picture contender, and hopefully will.

Certainly it’s one of my favorite films of the year, a movie I had almost zero problems with. (I’m not sure Chris Tucker’s character adds anything, but let’s not nitpick here.) I only wish more movies were made like this ― if every filmmaker could find this balance between fresh and formulaic.

Then again, maybe just this one is enough.*

It’s Oscar time!

As usual, the Academy Awards are poised to make some very wrong decisions this year. So as usual, I am prematurely correcting them by releasing my Top Ten of the year.

That year is 2012, of course — real film critics release such lists at the end of December or beginning of January, but since I have numerous other obligations, you get it in late February, once I’ve had a chance to catch up with nearly all eligible films.

It was, overall, a good year for cinema — not the best in recent memory, but better than the past couple of years, on the whole. Women facing great obstacles factored largely into my faves this year, and a surprising three of my picks are in French. (But no other languages — sorry, rest of the world.)

You can find my full-length review by clicking on the title of the movie. Bon appetit!

HardintheCity’s Top 10 Films of 2012:

10. GIRL WALK // ALL DAY

My #10 slot tends to be my “I recommend this, but…” spot, and this year I’m cheating even more than usual. Girl Walk // All Day is not actually a 2012 film, nor was it given a proper theatrical release. In fact, the entire thing can (and should) be watched online. (Legally!) You have no excuse not to watch it immediately.

Jacob Krupnick’s film is essentially a lengthy music video set to Girl Talk’s album All Day, which itself “borrows” music from huge artists like Rihanna and U2 and Lady Gaga. Rights? Who needs right to anything in the age of the internet? Well, nobody, as long as you’re not making any money. Anne Marsen, Dai Omiya, and John Doyle carry the movie on the spirit of their moves alone — not so much technically polished as compulsively watchable — and you never know just what’s going to happen next. I just couldn’t turn it off.

So what makes this different than any YouTube video of a flash mob? I’ll tell you: I don’t know. I can only go with my gut, in that it feels like a film rather than some silly clip that’s been put up online. It’s full-length, for one thing, and for another there’s a lot more thought put into the craft and the execution than most things you’ll find on the internet. And yet it has the same fun “let’s put it on a show!” / do-it-yourself / handmade quality as the best of what the internet has to offer. In the future, I reckon, more films will be like this, so I may as well start putting them on my Top 10 now.

And yet, if anyone still has a problem with this pick, then I will happily substitute my #11 film of the year, Pitch Perfect, a surprisingly sharp and hilarious film that also uses mash up culture to great effect. So there.

9. AMOUR

Fun! Laughter! Dancing! Joy! Those are things you will never find in a Michael Haneke movie. (Even when it’s called Funny Games.) Amour is no exception. It is, however, a departure from his more confrontational body of work that preceded this slow and steady meditation on growing old and dying. Did I mention it’s not a comedy?

Plenty of films are about love, but few tackle this end of it. Decades after riding off into the sunset together, or however it is they met, any couple that grows old together will face some version of this story. Neither Georges nor Anne is as quick or spry as they used to be; they’ve stopped looking forward, and are looking back. Then one of them suffers a stroke and becomes greatly disabled, both mentally and physically — but not completely, because that’d be too easy. Emmanuelle Riva’s astonishing performance makes us guess how much of Anne is present in every scene, and how much of her mind has wandered far, far away. For a character who can hardly move, her performance is quite physical — even when it’s just her face doing the heavy lifting.

In Amour, Haneke gets the chance to be something he almost never is — subtle — and is a better filmmaker for it. That isn’t to say he completely loses his relish for punishing the audience, but here it feels earned, because Amour is no crueler than life is. Unlike its title, Amour is merciless and not easy to cozy up to, but its power lingers long after it’s over. Like being haunted by a loved one.

8. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

At last! 2012 was the year Joss Whedon finally emerged as a filmmaking force to be reckoned with, and yes, The Avengers was quite good — especially compared to your average superhero movie (if still not quite on par with the very best, like The Dark Knight). It had a few Whedon signature touches of banter and humor, and yet, for a full dose of what fans love about the geek auteur, there’s an even better bet — The Cabin In The Woods, which he co-wrote with former Buffy The Vampire Slayer scribe Drew Goddard. It is, of course, no straight-up slice-and-dice affair, as anyone unfamiliar with Whedon’s genre send-ups would expect from the generic title. Instead, it’s the cleverest and most meta horror movie since Kevin Williamson’s Scream. What Scream did for slasher flicks, The Cabin In The Woods does for the rest of the horror genre.

The Cabin In The Woods doesn’t work quite as well within its genre as Scream does, at functioning both as a truly scary horror piece while also making sly commentary on over-familiar tropes. The genre conventions of The Cabin In The Woods are, well, generic, but thankfully there’s a lot more going on than just that. The third act in particular is to die for, but what cuts even deeper is what the film has to say about human nature — why do we watch horror movies? What does that say about us? Why do we want to see the same types of people die, over and over and over?

This the ultimate valentine to the horror genre, which is why many critics and horror fans fell for it, but it’s to Whedon’s credit that the film doesn’t settle for just a couple of winks and nudges, but also goes for the jugular thematically. The most callous scene has a major character about to meet a gruesome end, unnoticed, as a party rages around the image on a TV monitor — a sly response to the way we, too, often feel nothing when stereotypical horror heroines meet their maker. The last scene is a winking “fuck you” to the audience, but not a mean-spirited one; to reference a very different auteur whose work is also present in this list, The Cabin In The Woods basically makes the same point Michael Haneke has made numerous times, but actually has a little fun doing so. And so do we. Is that so wrong? Well, if so, we’re likely to be punished for it…

7. HOLY MOTORS

A fitting segue from The Cabin In The Woods, Holy Motors is as much a commentary on cinema as Whedon and Goddard’s horror film — it’s just a little less blatant about what it’s trying to say. I was tempted to include the ambitious and occasionally haunting Cloud Atlas in my list, even though the film had its share of awkward misfire moments — particularly with some distracting casting choices which have actors like Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Jim Sturgess playing characters of various races, genders, and ethnicities that they really have no business embodying. A much more successful endeavor on this front is Holy Motors, featuring Denis Levant inhabiting the skin of an assortment of quirky creations — a creepy and vaguely monstrous sewer-dweller, a scuzzy assassin, a harried father, and the actor who is assigned to play all these roles in various locations throughout Paris. Essentially, it’s a series of short films tied together by a loose narrative; then again, not really.

There’s no real way to take Holy Motors at face value — trying to figure out the “plot” is a worthless endeavor, like applying real-world rules to a David Lynch movie. Holy Motors follows a dream-like logic where there are sometimes life-and-death consequences to actions, sometimes not; no two segments are alike, either in tone or in how we perceive the world that’s been created for us. It’s all artificial, and Holy Motors is pretty direct about that — but every movie is artificial, after all. Holy Motors is a bizarre meditation on the way cinema has the power to move us, manipulate us, and make us marvel even if we don’t have the faintest idea what the hell is happening. Its protagonist, a kind of actor who seems to drag the emotional weight of every role he’s ever played around with him, might be an allegory for performers, or perhaps for storytellers — Holy Motors is broad enough that you can read almost anything into it.

The film is too bizarre (and French) for many mainstream filmgoers, but for serious cineastes, it’s a treat. Leos Carax has packed it with references that almost no one seems to get, and that’s fine. The nuttier the better, in this case. The final few minutes of Holy Motors go so absurdly off the rails that it’s almost like Carax just didn’t know how to top all the craziness that came before; in the future, I’ll probably watch it like I’d watch Paris Je T’aime, returning to my favorite bits more often than the film as a whole. This little wonder contains several of the most mesmerizing and memorable moments I saw all year — an ill-fated duet with Kylie Minogue, a fashion shoot that takes an oddball turn, an abrupt musical intermission, and especially a haunting “sex” scene involving motion capture suits. They’re more satisfying individually than the film is as a whole, and I can’t wait to rewatch them.

6. LOOPER

Science fiction tends to imagine brave new worlds that say something about the here and now — at least, they should. But most of Hollywood’s recent sci-fi offerings give us predictable story beats and zero food for thought. Looper is different — not because its premise is so much more original than, say, the hokey Justin Timberlake vehicle In Time, but because it was clearly made without any adherence to formula or genre conventions. Here is the rare movie that doesn’t feel like it’s on autopilot; rather, it unfolds in ways that are truly surprising and feel wholly organic to these characters and this world.

For a futuristic story, Looper spends an awful lot of time on a rustic Kansas farm. And for all its big ideas, what it really boils down to is surprisingly intimate and small-scale — a mother’s love. A lot of care was taken to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like a young Bruce Willis, which I’m not sure was necessary — Gordon-Levitt’s performance alone sells it. Looper has several visual moments that catch the audience off guard, but it’s more notable for the emotional undercurrent that gives it a real pulse. It’s like a Sundance movie dressed up in Hollywood clothes; that low-budget indie that just so happens to take place in a dystopian future — more specifically, a dystopian future that doesn’t feel so far removed from our not-so-utopian present.

Time travel doesn’t often make sense in movies, and if you think about it too hard, perhaps Looper doesn’t either. But what it does have is a sense of originality and innovation absent in the works of all other filmmakers — hints of Kubrick and Tarantino, amongst others. If we could time-travel to the future, I bet we’d see that writer/director Rian Johnson is a filmmaking force to be reckoned with.

5. MAGIC MIKE

Take away the stripping — I know, no one wants that, but just go with it for a sec — and Magic Mike is a sobering look at the youth of America, the ones that don’t follow the straight-and-narrow path of a higher education followed by 9-to-5 mediocrity. You don’t need to take your clothes off for a living to relate to that.

Now put the stripping back in, and you have a rollicking good time that is also smarter than any film based on Channing Tatum’s life should be. Steven Soderbergh doesn’t shy away from the sex appeal that drove women and gays in droves to see Magic Mike opening weekend; the stripping sequences are great fun to watch, thanks in large part to the surprising skill and charisma of Channing Tatum. I’ll admit, I wrote him off long ago, but in 2012 he proved himself a talented performer, so I’m delighted to be wrong. He is, in fact, actually quite good here as the stripper with a heart of gold — a role that, with weaker writing and acting, could have been truly wince-worthy. (The whole ensemble is pretty solid, especially a standout Matthew McConaughey, who neatly parodies his real-life status as Hollywood’s resident ladykiller.)

To the surprise of many, Magic Mike is a bit of a tragedy — about creative people who are victims of an economic downturn, and about what happens to people who pay the bills with their body. It doesn’t dig as deep as Black Swan or The Wrestler on that subject, and for some, perhaps, the more dramatic elements of the story felt a bit inert. They came for a rain of men, not a storm of drama. But, fittingly for a movie about stripping, Magic Mike is all about money — the side jobs these guys perform to stay afloat, the price of living it up in your twenties. “I’m not my lifestyle!” Mike says in self-defense to his love interest, but of course, we all are — and all the sexy boys of Magic Mike become victims of their lifestyle one way or another, whether it’s drugs or debt or plain ol’ narcissism. Mike’s just the only who’s starting to realize it.

Magic Mike takes place in Tampa — what better place to explore the underbelly of the American dream? Isn’t that dream as much of a striptease as a lap dance from a guy in a G-string? Stripping might be harmless, but it’s a gateway drug to browner pastures, and respectable people don’t look on it kindly. Dallas, Mike, and the rest are ultimately disposable — one-night-only fantasies for women at bachelorette party or on their birthdays. They’re dressed up as firemen, cowboys, police… all those generic fantasies. Sex is a powerful and lucrative commodity — the good girl played by Cody Horn is both tempted and repelled by Mike, speaking to the conflicting sexual interests within us. For the audience, a night with Magic Mike is just a horny splurge, and indulgence, but for them, it’s life. Magic Mike gets us hot and bothered and all worked up, then pulls back the curtain and shows us what happens when these fantasy figures go home after a hard night’s work, or age a decade or two. What happens when the singles stop coming?

4. RUST AND BONE

Attraction doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes you fall for a movie the same way you fall for a person — you just happen to find each other in the right time and place, and something unplanned happens. That’s what happened to me with Rust And Bone, a film I wasn’t expecting much of and saw primarily because Marion Cotillard was getting solid awards season buzz for her performance. I knew very little about what I was getting into, and that ended up being a good thing.

Rust And Bone is by far the sexiest movie about a woman whose legs get eaten off by an orca. The special effect of excising Cotillard’s lower limbs are shockingly convincing, as is her performance — it’s a shame the Oscars couldn’t make room for her, though it was a particularly strong year for Best Actress candidates. Matthis Schoenaerts is equally strong as the film’s protagonist, a rather obtuse security guard and underground fighter who never seems to foresee the consequences of his actions. If Rust And Bone is a romance at all — I wouldn’t call it one, exactly — then it’s a very adult one, with two characters who behave like flesh-and-blood 21st century people rather than cliches operating according to a script. The film has no singular plot, but meanders pleasantly as we get to know these two characters without a clear sense of where they’re going. The film’s climax was a true surprise, but then, the whole movie was.

There’s not one thing I can easily point to that’s brilliant in Rust And Bone; you either fall for it or you don’t, and I doubt any further analysis would change anyone’s mind about it. It’s about chemistry. On paper, the synopsis sounds pretty maudlin. But Jacques Audiard makes it all so plausible and lived-in that I found myself totally falling for it, which happens sometimes. Attraction doesn’t always make sense.

3. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Speaking of movies that don’t work so well on paper… Silver Linings Playbook constantly flirts with being ordinary, and yet somehow narrowly misses it at every turn. It’s the first film to receive acting nominations in all four categories in ages, and they’re all deserved — the marvelous Jacki Weaver may be slightly underused, but even the minor characters have their own lives happening in the margins. They don’t feel merely functional.

That’s particularly true of the standout leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Cooper unleashes a leading man charm he must’ve been saving for the right movie, while Lawrence is a live wire who feels like she could wander into any movie and be the best thing in it. They’re both compulsively watchable, and when they come together it’s like two trains constantly threatening to wreck, consistently missing each other by inches.

Silver Linings Playbook has a wonderful energy. It’s always marching forward, never stopping on one detail long enough for us to catch up and get bored waiting for the next beat. David O. Russell’s script is sharp and nimble, his direction maybe even a little moreso, but it’s the chemistry of the ensemble that feels just right. (The original plan was to make it with Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel in the lead roles — I shudder to think.) I wouldn’t call Silver Linings Playbook a monumental film or even a must-see; it’s probably a bit too slight to take Best Picture, even with all of Harvey Weinstein’s might on its side. Yet it’s also nice to see a lighter movie made as well as all those heavy ones; if only all comedies had this much skill behind and in front of the camera.

2. THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Impossible is not a film for the cynical. It wears its heart on its sleeve, and in a Spielbergian way, cares more about hope than it does about darkness and depravity. Yet, also like Spielberg, director Juan Antonio Bayona isn’t afraid to immerse us in chaos and confusion when need be, and it’s a visual spectacle on par with some of Spielberg’s most breathless sequences, like War Of The Worlds’ initial alien attack or the Omaha Beach opening of Saving Private Ryan.

Naomi Watts cements her status as one of Hollywood’s most fearless actresses as she is twisted and turned and slammed by a giant tsunami, an electrifying sequence that outdoes pretty much any disaster movie sequence that came before it (rivaled only by Titanic, perhaps). The fact that was done practically on a budget of $45 million or so is mind-blowing. That’s not Naomi against a green screen, and you can tell.

After a hard-hitting opening, the film follows two surviving members of the happy family literally ripped apart — we don’t know whether or not the rest have survived until much later — and it isn’t afraid to get sentimental. Nor is it afraid to get reasonably dark, as when an adolescent boy advises his mother that they leave behind a crying child because he might slow them down. It faces the stark realities of an unimaginably catastrophic situation, with excellent performances all around (Naomi, Tom Holland, and Ewan McGregor). What’s truly remarkable, though, is the way Bayona stages that fucking tsunami — definitely the most breathless sequence I’ve experienced in a movie in years. It’s a shame this film didn’t quite break out the way it should have — with a stronger marketing push, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it win Best Picture. Perhaps my #2 slot is a fitting consolation prize?

1. ZERO DARK THIRTY

In my original review, I predicted Zero Dark Thirty for Best Picture and Kathryn Bigelow making history as the only woman to ever win Best Director twice.

Oops. Back then, I didn’t anticipate the weird backlash the film received regarding its depiction of torture, and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with why the film hasn’t been embraced as it probably should be; especially in a year that features a film so similar in many (superficial) ways as a Best Picture front-runner. Homeland, after all, has been handed just about every conceivable television award this past year, and yet it depicts far more torture than Zero Dark Thirty even hints at. (Rumor has it both edgy female protagonists are based on the same real-life CIA agent.) Why is Zero Dark Thirty held up to such a hypocritical, impossible standard of veracity, when Argo literally invents its entire third act? (Oh, don’t answer that, I already know why.)

Apparently, the film about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden is a controversial one. Who knew? Perhaps I (and Sony) should have anticipated more unease from the general public. Great and important films aren’t always recognized right away, after all, and the topics explored by Zero Dark Thirty are still fresh. (Meanwhile, everyone’s had time to get over a hostage situation from the 70′s.) Maybe I was more prepared to confront them. For me, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the few definitive films of this century so far, in large part because it deals with the most defining event of it.

Jessica Chastain’s Maya is a fascinating portrait of obsession. She’s a perfectionist. The fact that she’s a woman makes this a little more interesting, but ultimately doesn’t matter. Some have said they didn’t understand Maya’s motivation enough, but that’s ludicrous. Her motivation is 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history — and a very recent one. We didn’t need to lose someone personally in New York that day to feel the effects, despair and fear and an overwhelming vulnerability. Neither did Maya. She would have already been working for the CIA at that point (we’re told she was recruited out of high school), so it is literally her job to answer the questions all of America is asking. Why wouldn’t she do her job to the best of her ability? What could possibly be a stronger motivation than the deaths of thousands of innocent people?

Some may have wanted Osama bin Laden dead out of vengeance; others might just feel safer knowing he’s not in the world. Mark Boal’s Zero Dark Thirty script is smart enough to to not tell us what exactly Maya wants. By keeping her backstory almost nonexistent, she becomes a stand-in for all of us, seeking answers or retribution or catharsis and some kind of closure. And does she get them? Well… did we?

Clearly I was wrong about Kathryn Bigelow’s lock on Best Director — that snub is just a shame. This is clearly her best work. It’s a near-flawless film on every level. I was also almost certainly wrong about Zero Dark Thirty winning Best Picture, but perhaps it’s just too important a film to take home such a populist prize. The fact that it’s stirred so much debate is only a testament to its quality, but controversy doesn’t win awards. At least, not Oscars.

Argo is bullshit. It’s fine if you like bullshit, just know that that’s what it is. It’s a slick thriller that, I guess, is “prestigious” enough for the Academy because it takes place in Iran? It’s really just Speed in a turban. Zero Dark Thirty, on the other hand, is actually about something — some of the most significant events of the past dozen years. It portrays these things not only tensely and entertainingly, but honestly and accurately. But to borrow a phrase from another movie: “You can’t handle the truth!” A lot of people can’t, apparently.

But I can.

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(Originally published at JustinPlusSeven on January 10, 2013.)

You, dear reader, have the honor of reading this in the future, after the Oscar nominations have been announced.

But I am writing from this from the near past, before we know which five contenders are fighting it out in each category.

Of course, some are shoo-ins; there are only a very small handful of slots that are anybody’s guess at this point, including one in Best Supporting Actress that could really go to anybody and a bit of confusion in Best Supporting Actor as well. Best Actor and Actress, meanwhile, are mainly both six-person races that must be whittled down. Who will be sacrificed ― Bradley Cooper, John Hawkes, or Joaquin Phoenix? Emmanuelle Riva, Quvenzhane Wallis, or Marion Cotillard?

(You future readers are probably laughing at me, because instead, it was an unexpected sweep by the casts of What To Expect When You’re Expecting, Battleship, and The Odd Life of Timothy Green in all major categories.)

Either way, the performers that actually are nominated doesn’t affect the ones I believe should be. There are many years that I vehemently disagree with the nominees and even the winners. Last year snubbed a couple of the best performances at nomination time, Michael Fassbender in Shame and Albert Finney in Drive, then gave another Oscar to (the admittedly fabulous) Meryl Streep for one of the most atrocious movies she’s ever been in. But I digress. This year has been much kinder, and there are very few potential nominees I don’t think should be in the running. In fact, in some of these races my own picks look a lot like the Academy’s, which makes me feel awfully pedestrian. Can it be that the Oscars actually get it right, once in a blue moon?

Well, it’s a little early to start that kind of talk. I’m still speaking from the past.

No matter what the Academy says today, here’s what I say. And what I say is better, because I’m not 3,000 old people. I’m just me.

Here are my Not-Oscars for the Best Performances of 2012! (The winner is at the top, then they’re in descending order of how much I like them.)

BEST ACTRESS

Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Marion Cotillard, Rust And Bone
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Honorable Mentions: Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks; Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister’s Sister

Every year there’s one performance that grabs me like none of the rest, and this year it’s Naomi Watts. A large part of it is the movie itself, which does such wonders in making the audience feel every twist and turn of being swept up in a killer tsunami. There aren’t many actresses who’d be willing to go the extremes the role requires — it isn’t just CGI, she’s actually in a water tank holding on for dear life, screaming her lungs out. Yet Naomi often likes to put herself in miserable cinematic situations, for whatever reason, and still I am blown away by her commitment to this role. She really runs the gamut of emotions here.

Any other year, though, I might have picked Jessica Chastain. Divine Jessica Chastain, whose performance in Zero Dark Thirty at first seems kind of weak, until you realize that’s just the character she’s playing. Over the course of a decade, Maya goes from dedicated but naïve CIA operative to a force to be reckoned with, yet Chastain never goes broad or over the top in playing a girl who can not only hang with the boys, but outwork them. It’s that last scene, though, that cements this as one of the defining performances of the year. Since she’s still a relative newcomer, I can’t wait to see more Jessica Chastain in coming years.

Also, kudos to Katniss! Jennifer Lawrence nicely bridged the gap between teen worship and Academy cred this year, turning in solid work in The Hunger Games (take that, K-Stew) and then topping it in Silver Linings Playbook. Her Tiffany is a joy to watch, and somehow manages to steal scenes even when acting opposite a bunch of actors who all have their crazy dialed up to 10 (Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Chris Tucker). It’s also rare to find a screen female who can admit to extremely slutty acts on-screen and then defy being defined by that in the audience’s mind. In a way, it’s a more impressive feat of girl power than anything in The Hunger Games.

And I’m not even done with the female performances I’m truly wild about, because I also would love to see Marion Cotillard rewarded for her work as an amputee and so much more. Cotillard’s utterly convincing portrayal of a whale trainer who has lost her legs is matched by flawless CGI, reason enough to nominate her. But she’s also a full-blooded character who conveys vulnerability without ever having to speak it. It’s a must-see performance.

Last but not least, Emmanuelle Riva. Sometimes the stillest and quietest performances are the greatest of all, and she sells every single frame she’s in as Amour‘s dying wife. The old woman on her deathbed is a great cinematic cliché, yet Riva does things you’ve never seen with her performance.

This is the rare year when all five of my favorites could end up being the Academy nominees. I also have to give a little love to Honorable Mentions Rosemarie DeWitt, who lights up every film she’s in, and Zoe Kazan, who wrote herself a surprisingly good role in Ruby Sparks and then acted the hell out of it.

BEST ACTOR

Denis Lavant, Holy Motors
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Matthis Schoenaerts, Rust And Bone
Tom Holland, The Impossible

Honorable Mentions: John Hawkes, The Sessions; Channing Tatum, Magic Mike

The year’s Best Actor race has had a predictable outcome ever since we got our first glimpse at Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln. And yes, he’s astounding. I’m probably unfairly suffering from some Meryl Streep-esque “But he’s always amazing!” fatigue by not choosing him for my top slot, but I just can’t. It’s too predictable. (As amazing as his disappearance into an American icon is.)

Anyway, Denis Lavant has an arguably trickier role in Holy Motors ― actually, several of them. He plays a number of wildly different characters, from a barbarian sewer-dweller who occasionally bites off people’s extremities to the presumed husband and father to a clan of chimpanzees. (Don’t ask.) In between, he strings it together with a believable (if fantastical) portrayal of a weary “actor” who’d love nothing more than to stop pretending to be other people. If the reward for the year’s Best Performance in a Movie was actually for Most Performances in a Movie, it would probably go to Lavant. (Even in the same year Cloud Atlas was released.)

I also have to give some love to Bradley Cooper, whose career-changing performance in Silver Linings Playbook was endearing in a way he hasn’t been since Alias. Just watch — he’ll get all sorts of other roles offered to him now, whether the Oscar noms favor him or not.

Matthias Schoenaerts, on the other hand, has scarcely been mentioned in any conversation about the Academy Awards, with all the love on Marion Cotillard with the more physically demanding role. Yet Schoenaerts complements her perfectly in a performance I found startlingly believable. His character, Alain, is basically a self-involved prick more often than not; obtuse, but without a mean bone in his body. It’s a rare sort of character to see on screen, but an easy one to find in real life. Schoenaerts exhibits real movie star charisma in the role — a Tom Hardy-like appeal. Here’s hoping we see more of him, whether in French cinema or a crossover role.

And The Impossible‘s Tom Holland, the true protagonist of that movie, wonderfully portrays a character who goes from selfish in his survival of a tsunami to rescuer of those in need. It’s not the sort of arc screenwriters usually give a child, but Holland pulls it off quite nicely.

Honorable Mention-wise, I have to mention John Hawkes, who does what he can to make The Sessions less treacly (quite a task), and Channing Tatum, who proved he can act this year not just in Magic Mike, but also a surprisingly funny turn in 21 Jump Street. Who knew?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Sally Field, Lincoln
Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Emily Blunt, Looper

Honorable Mentions: Amy Adams, The Master; Jennifer Ehle, Zero Dark Thirty

I hate to side with the masses, but Anne Hathaway was pretty transcendent in the otherwise botched Les Mis, to the extent that the movie goes downhill once she dies — which is unfortunately less than an hour into it. She shows up most of her castmates, disappears for two hours, and then shows back up to right the ship and bring us home. She essentially saves the movie. If that isn’t a star turn I don’t know what it is.

Also, how much fun was Sally Field in Lincoln? She’s Hathaway’s only real competition in this category, and she injects some humor and surprise into Spielberg’s otherwise stately and staid presidential drama. Never underestimate the power of a hissy fit.

Jacki Weaver is the least buzzed-about of the major performers in Silver Linings Playbook, since she’s also the least crazy ― it’s bipolar vs. depressed vs. OCD vs. happiness. But since I love me some Jacki Weaver (from my favorite performance of 2010 in Animal Kingdom), I can’t not love her in it as she makes her “crabby-snakes and homemades” (whatever those are) and puts a happy face on her family’s constant manic turmoil. She’s the comparatively normal glue that holds all this crazy together.

And then there’s Helen Hunt’s T&A (and V, technically). You may never have asked to see this much Helen Hunt, but here it is. It’s a cliché to say that her emotional nakedness in the role matches her, you know, actually naked nakedness, but it’s true. She weaves a lot of complexity into a role that could’ve been brash and much simpler, to the extent that her “sessions” with John Hawkes are really the only thing that ground the movie.

And how about that Emily Blunt? Her Looper performance isn’t generating any awards season heat, but in a movie featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis trying to out-Bruce Willis each other, someone has to hold it together emotionally, and Emily does just that. She’s surprisingly convincing as a Kansas farm girl and goes above and beyond in conveying her devotion to her unusual son.

As for my Honorable Mentions — Amy Adams felt underused in The Master, but she held her own with the boys, and Jennifer Ehle made a reasonably small part in Zero Dark Thirty more memorable than it might have been, as the woman who didn’t find Osama, but was a casualty along the way.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
Eddie Redmayne, Les Miserables
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Ezra Miller, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

Honorable Mentions: Ewan McGregor, The Impossible; Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook

Alright, alright, alright! 2012 may be remembered as the year Matthew McConaughey stopped being a joke and started being a real actor. He turned in solid work in Bernie and Killer Joe, but he also brought a level of professionalism to the rowdy crew in Magic Mike, showing up lookers like Channing Tatum, Matthew Bomer, and Alex Pettyfer. It’s like he’s saying, “See, boys, this is how you do it for two decades and counting.” If taking your clothes off works for the girls, isn’t it about time it won the boys an Oscar nod, too?

Next to Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne was Les Miserables‘ other saving grace. The movie felt like amateur night at the Broadway movie-musical karaoke bar, but Redmayne was one of few who could sing and act simultaneously. If there were more justice in the world, he’d have an Oscar nod to match Hathaway’s.

A not-so-unheralded actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, towered in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, a movie I expected to enjoy more than I did. But that’s because I couldn’t get into Joaquin Phoenix’s character, while Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd was just about everything you could want from a master. I mean, he screams “Pig fuck!” at a stranger, which for me, personally, is the most quotable line of the year.

And though he’s made a career out of parodying his former glory of late, Robert De Niro does good work in a comeback to actually acting as the OCD father who can only express himself through sports. There are a number of slyly funny moments, as when he shows his son his lucky handkerchief in such a manner that you know he’s trying to avoid the inevitable discussion about how a handkerchief could possibly help a football team win.

Ezra Miller, meanwhile, is the scene-stealer in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, which is one part ordinary high school movie, one part extraordinary high school movie. The best bits of it tend to feature Miller as the jolly outcast, the sort of gay character we need to see more of. (And less of the bitchy gay friend, please.) The movie would be almost nothing without him.

In the Honorable Mention category, let’s have a shout-out for Ewan McGregor, who has less screen time than Naomi in The Impossible but acts the shit out of one scene, and yes, the lovable grump Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, the kind of role that would have won basically anyone who played him an Oscar. Better thank your agent, TLJ.

BEST DIRECTOR

Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Juan Antonio Bayona, The Impossible
Rian Johnson, Looper
Leos Carax, Holy Motors
Tom Tykwer, Andy & Lana Wachowski, Cloud Atlas

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty
Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard, The Cabin In The Woods
Rian Johnson, Looper
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
Sergio G. Sánchez, The Impossible

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Tony Kushner, Lincoln
Kay Cannon, Pitch Perfect
Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier, Oslo, August 31st
Jacques Audiard & Thomas Bidegain, Rust And Bone

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Cloud Atlas
Alexandre Desplat, Zero Dark Thirty
Nathan Johnson, Looper

ALL 2012 RANKINGS

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. The Impossible
3. Silver Linings Playbook
4. Rust And Bone
5. Magic Mike
6. Looper
7. Holy Motors
8. The Cabin In The Woods
9. Amour
10.Girl Walk // All Day
11.Pitch Perfect
12.Lincoln
13.Oslo, August 31st
14.Django Unchained
15.Cloud Atlas
16.Ruby Sparks
17.Arbitrage
18.Skyfall
19.Bernie
20.The Master
21.The Imposter
22.Your Sister’s Sister
23.The Avengers
24.Flight
25.Chronicle
26.The Grey
27.The Dark Knight Rises
28.The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
29.21 Jump Street
30.Savages
31.Compliance
32.Beasts of the Southern Wild
33.The Hunger Games
34.The Sound of My Voice
35.Klown
36.The Queen Of Versailles
37.Argo
38.Haywire
39.Les Miserables
40.The Sessions
41.Friends With Kids
42.Bachelorette
43.Safety Not Guaranteed
44.Take This Waltz
45.Sleepless Night
46.Moonrise Kingdom
47.Prometheus
48.Killer Joe
49.Life Of Pi
50.Headhunters
51.The Deep Blue Sea
52.Ted
53.American Reunion
54.The Snowtown Murders
55.Promised Land
56.Lola Versus
57.The Raid: Redemption
58.Jeff Who Lives At Home
59.The Paperboy
60.Cosmopolis
61.The Bourne Legacy
62.Mirror Mirror
63.The Loneliest Planet
64.The Amazing Spider-Man
65.Snow White And The Huntsman

Hey, Academy, are you paying attention?

But of course you are! Here’s a movie featuring a whole bunch of last year’s Oscar nominees, including several past Oscar winners, made by a guy who’s made two Oscar favorites in the last three years. (And now one more.) Basically, there was no way in hell American Hustle wouldn’t be a part of the Oscar conversation this year. And it is.

American Hustle is the partially true story of the controversial Abscam operation carried out by the FBI against some high-ranking politicians, mainly by accident (or so this movie says). Except it’s not really that story, because the Abscam hijinks are actually David O. Russell and co-writer Eric Singer’s excuse to explore a variety of swindlers, colorful characters all, who hustle in a variety of different ways. (The script’s original, even more fitting title was American Bullshit.)

The plot is a little twisty-turny, but as you might expect from the man who recently made The Fighter, a boxing movie that was not so much about boxing, and Silver Linings Playbook, a movie that mixed gambling and romance and mental illness into a wholly unique concoction, American Hustle is much more interested in the relationships between these characters than it is in the plot or politics of what happened. And I’m all for that — we’ve seen enough movies about clever swindles, which tend to hinge on one clever third act “gotcha” and little else. But we’ve never seen an ensemble quite like this.Amy Adams plays Sydney, who falls hard for the paunchy but charismatic Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), whose “elaborate” comb-over is the star of the film’s very first scene. (Several key characters are shown taking great pains with their ‘do — yes, even these people’s hair is bullshit.) Irving makes a living by screwing people he considers “bad” out of their money; when Sydney finds out, she’s oddly intrigued, and decides she can prove to be a valuable asset in the operation, thanks mostly in part to an ability to take on a pretty good British accent. But ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) enters the equation and shakes things up, setting his sights on taking down a possibly-corrupt New Jersey mayor and finding that their scheme keeps taking them higher and higher up the ladder. The movie begins as a love triangle, evolves into a love rectangle, then turns into a love pentagon… and so on. The reasonably late addition of Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Irving’s loose canon firecracker of a wife, to the mix, really shakes things up.

Where the story goes doesn’t much matter. This is a movie featuring five supremely talented actors (Oscar nominees all); they’re dressed up in outrageous 70s clothes with their own “elaborate” hairstyles, and they all seem to be having a good time. For once, Amy Adams gets a lead role rather than a supporting one — more predictable casting would have seen her take the Jennifer Lawrence role and vice versa, but it works. The two women share an exceptional scene in the restroom of a casino, one of the film’s many standout moments that has nothing whatsoever to do with moving the plot forward, and everything to do with showcasing intriguing dialogue spouted from the mouths of these dynamic, beloved performers.

Each character is a bullshit artist in their own way. Everybody’s using what assets they have to scam the others, whether it be sex (Sydney), the law (Richie), smarts (Irving), or a man’s love for his child (Rosalyn) — in fact, the most genuine character on screen is probably the “corrupt” politician, Mayor Carmine Polito. (He and his wife, played by an unrecognizable Elisabeth Rohm, feel like they wandered over from a Sopranos dinner party.) Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn is, in some ways, the film’s most fascinating (and least seen) character, who only makes an impact in the second half of the film — she has the film’s funniest lines in a showy performance that’s sure to nab her an Oscar nod (and quite possibly win her another). “Thank God for me!” Rosalyn says at one point; Lawrence should probably thank God for Russell.

American Hustle very much feels like David O. Russell “doing” the 70s — in particular, Scorsese influences are all over the place. (A cameo from Robert De Niro playing a mobster sure doesn’t hurt.) As in his previous films, Russell’s directorial flourishes are far from invisible, but they make otherwise standard fare more interesting than it might otherwise. (It’ll make a fabulous double feature with Boogie Nights.) The movie’s tangents and indulgences tend to be its most delightful moments, while the actual story gives us less to chew on. (There’s a nifty sequence where Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper dance 70s-style, and another with Jennifer Lawrence doing a radical sing-along to Wings’ “Live And Let Die.” Necessary? No. Fun? Yes!)

Something about the film as a whole feels rather inconsequential. The Abscam story isn’t all that monumental as told here — it’s a crazy whim that spiraled out of control, and quite possibly never should have happened in the first place. Maybe the fact that nearly everyone is manipulating everyone else makes it hard to find any one character to really grasp onto — we’re constantly guessing at whether these people have genuine feelings for one another, or whether they’re just playing each other. The film shifts its focus between different relationships at different points in the movie, so we get fascinating moments between Adams and Cooper, Adams and Bale, Bale and Renner, Bale and Lawrence — with none of these exactly emerging as the focal point of the movie. Even Adams and Bale get lost for what feels like long stretches.

It’s a movie to see primarily for the performances, which have already divided critics. Lawrence again plays a character who feels a little older than the actress is herself, but for me, it totally worked. She’s the movie’s best bet for an Oscar. The Best Actor race is too crowded for Bale this year, though he’s good, too — though I question his casting a bit. Even with some weight gain and a gnarly comb-over, the man is maybe more attractive than he should be; why not just cast a legitimately beer-gutted actor? Amy Adams should find herself up for Best Actress after four Supporting Actress nominations under her belt, but she’ll likely be edged out to make room for the older vets (Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench). I really enjoyed Bradley Cooper’s wacky take on an FBI agent who should probably not be in a position of power of any kind; then again, Cooper and Lawrence seem to be acting in a movie that’s slightly funnier than the one Renner, Adams, and Bale are in. Believe it or not, it’s Louis C.K. as DiMaso’s FBI higher-up who ends up being the straight man in this crowd in American Hustle‘s most underplayed performance. (I’m not sure the role totally works, but it has its moments.)

I seriously enjoyed American Hustle. It’s hard to find much to say about it. It’s a mess, but it’s a whole lot of fun — not so much a story as it as a movie. The hair, the costumes, the performances, the camera angles, the music — it all feels self-conscious. You’ll never forget you’re watching a film. But do you need to?

American Hustle is about a group of con artists getting together to put on a show and captivate their audience, wrestling a few dollars out of them in the process. David O. Russell and company are mainly just playing around here, and even so, the film is one of the fixtures of awards season buzz. So who’s conning who here?

At the end of the day, movies are just lies we pay Hollywood to tell us, to make us feel better for a little while. David O. Russell is likely aware that in America, Hollywood is the biggest bullshitter of all. And like Irving Rosenfeld, and a good many other Americans, he’s totally okay with making his living as a hustler.

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(Films discussed in this post: Blue Is The Warmest Color, The Heat, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Drinking Buddies, Enough Said, The Invisible Woman.)Women are so hot right now.

Again.

Or… still.

No matter how many female-driven movies make a splash at the box office, Hollywood never seems to learn its lesson. Sure, the top-grossing movie of the year, for now, is Iron Man 3, and Man Of Steel is also in the top five. (That’s two with “man” in the title.) Then again, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire could very well end up trumping Iron Man 3 as 2013′s ultimate financial victor, and that movie is nothing without its heroine, Katniss Everdeen, and the equally formidable actress who plays her. (And let’s take a moment to remember that even Iron Man 3 gave Pepper Potts a fiery kick-ass moment near the end.)

And then there’s Gravity, one of the year’s other biggest success stories, which is carried almost entirely by one woman — Sandra Bullock, in a role that, like Lawrence’s, is very physical. Both Bullock and Lawrence are likely to see themselves back in the Oscar lineup this year (Lawrence for American Hustle rather than Catching Fire), but unfortunately, both Actress races are relatively thin this year, with only two or three solid, surefire contenders in each. Compare that to Best Actor, a category which could easily have ten or more deserving nominees this year, all quite deserving. (Best Supporting Actor, however, is this year’s weakest race of all.)

It’s still a rather male-dominated year at the movies, with lots of fairly masculine films out there, per usual — including so many of the awards contenders (12 Years A Slave, Captain Phillips, All Is Lost, Dallas Buyers Club, Nebraska, Inside Llewyn Davis). It’s still a man’s world, as far as Hollywood goes — but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a number of bright spots for the ladies in 2013.

Let’s start with the biggest. No one predicted the sequel to The Hunger Games to disappoint at the box office, as the series has proven to appeal to the same demographic as Twilight without becoming the butt of nearly so many jokes. (It doesn’t hurt that Katniss Everdeen isn’t a loverlorn wet blanket, incapable of extracting herself from danger.) Critics have generally responded warmly to the series, in particular the latest installment, which brings the second of Suzanne Collins’ YA books to life in pretty straightforward fashion. This one kicks in a year after the original, as the 75th annual Hunger Games are gearing up. That brings a Quarter Quell, meaning things will be shaken up. How so? The Games are to pit prior victors against each other. It’s the best of the best in a fight to the death.

Catching Fire is an improvement on the first film in practically every way, thanks in large part to a boosted budget. The stakes are higher with Katniss now competing against the other district’s champs, and the arena is more lethal this time around. Yes, the film is essentially a beat-by-beat retread of the original, and the ending — as in the book — leaves room for a lot of questions about the logic of the master plan behind it all. It suffers from Harry Potter syndrome, which may leave non-readers a little cold with such a faithful adaptation. But I’ve read these books, so I was perfectly happy.

What the film does have is appealing new characters, mostly in Katniss and Peeta’s charismatic competitors-turned-allies Joanna (Jena Malone) and Finnick (Sam Claflin). Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta has a couple charming moments, even if he doesn’t register as a major factor this time around, and even Gale (Liam Hemsworth) manages to be marginally less useless. But it’s Jennifer Lawrence’s phenomenal work that continues to elevate the Hunger Games movies above all comparable teen fare. It’s the year’s second-best blockbuster, and like Gravity, it’s all centered around a smart, capable woman who doesn’t need a brawny stud to save her. (Well, maybe once or twice.) In another year, there might even be a push for Lawrence to nab a Best Actress nomination for her work here, since the film rests on her capable shoulders nearly as much as Gravity rests on Bullock’s. But Lawrence already has an Oscar nod on the way and the series isn’t considered substantial enough for the Academy, so worldwide stardom and untold millions will have to suffice for poor Jennifer Lawrence.This is mainly notable because 2013 was a pretty big dud in the blockbuster department otherwise, with a long string of disappointments over the summer. (Iron Man 3 being one of few true exceptions.) It was also a reasonably lame year for comedies, with the male-driven Grown-Ups 2, The Internship, Delivery Man, and The Hangover III failing to provide many laughs. (The fame-skewing boys’ club in This Is The End fared a little better.) The female-driven Bridesmaids knocked everyone’s socks off a couple summers ago by proving women could be raunchy and financially viable, but Hollywood can only learn so much so fast. There are successful female-driven movies every few years, at least, yet it seems like it’s news whenever another one hits.

But the aptly-titled The Heat did — another instance of women catching fire this year. It’s the year’s highest-grossing comedy (followed by the surprisingly decent We’re The Millers), coming from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig. But The Heat is a very different animal than Bridesmaids, focusing on a feisty cop paired with a straight-laced FBI agent. It’s a classic buddy-cop setup, the only novelty being that these two are women. Melissa McCarthy is foul-mouthed and funny in a stronger role than her hustler in the so-so Identity Thief; Sandra Bullock essentially reprises her Miss Congeniality role. (Between this and Gravity, 2013 is a very good year to be Sandy.) The Heat isn’t a remarkable comedy, but both leads are giving it their all, and it doesn’t make many allowances for the fact that it’s about women instead of men (though there is lots of talk about dick-shooting).

The year also saw the buzzy release of a very different story of female bonding — Blue Is The Warmest Color, most notable for its explicit, minutes-long depictions of lesbian sex (and there are several of them). Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, the film follows a high school student named Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) — I mean literally follows, as the camera essentially stalks her, lingering obsessively as she eats, sleeps, showers, masturbates, and wanders around — so it’s no wonder we get an eyeful of her sex life, too. The movie is voyeuristic about more than just the sex, giving us an immersive view of Adele that is rare (the French title translates to The Life Of Adele, and it does seem like we’re catching a glimpse at virtually every aspect of her existence). That’s a blessing and a bit of a curse, since the movie runs three hours — maybe we didn’t need quite such a thorough examination of this fairly average young girl.

Blue Is The Warmest Color takes its sweet time getting to the heart of the story, which is Adele’s attraction to a blue-haired stranger she encounters on the street. She’ll later meet this women when she dares to venture to a lesbian bar, finding that the older, cooler Emma (Léa Seydoux) returns her affection. At one point, the film takes a rather large leap forward in time, and that’s where Kechiche loses focus a bit — we’ve gotten to know Adele so intimately that it feels strange to suddenly miss so much, and narratively, there doesn’t seem to be a real need for such an extreme time jump. (The same events could have happened in a more truncated fashion.)

Both actresses are quite exceptional, and the film has a mesmerizing attention to detail that few others do, but it also indulges itself with long, ultimately inconsequential scenes that drag more and more as the film goes on. Adele is a fascinating character whose non-Emma romances tend to involve men; the film never seems that interested in explaining her sexual orientation, which allows for a more complex reading. Blue Is The Warmest Color certainly stretches beyond the usual coming-of-age tropes; for whatever reason, Adele finds herself captivated by Emma and lets that relationship become her entire world. A few later scenes go further over-the-top than the more believable and intimate first half, particularly when Adele and Emma meet for a drink late in the film and practically get it on right there in public.

The movie is filled with scenes of rich dialogue, occasionally too heady and on-the-nose, but it’s always well-acted. (Adele’s early romance with Jérémie Laheurte’s Thomas is as compelling as the film’s central love affair.) The actresses shared the Palme d’Or with their director (who they’ve notably spoken out against in the press, thanks to those graphic lesbian sex scenes), and Exarchopoulos could be a dark horse contender in the Best Actress race if voters decide to throw an ingenue into the mix. (The current favorites have all won before.) It’s certainly not unheard of for a French-language performer to find herself in the running — last year, Emmanuelle Riva had a solid shot at a win, and Marion Cotillard did win for La Vie En Rose. The film totally hinges on Exarchopoulos, and she gives a thoroughly natural performance of the sort that’s hard to pull off. It’s one of the year’s best, to be sure. Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said is another female-driven film getting some awards season buzz — though the awards buzz is primarily centered around Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener’s male co-star, since the dearly departed James Gandolfini is the film’s best shot at some Oscar love. It’s not just a sentimental thing — the Best Supporting Actor category this year is thin and Gandolfini is pretty great in Enough Said, showing romantic lead potential that we haven’t seen in Tony Soprano. The movie is a smart romantic comedy for adults, with great work from Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a warm and likable film. (It’s also the only film mentioned here so far that is actually made by a woman.)

And let’s take a moment to acknowledge Drinking Buddies, Joe Swanberg’s largely improvised dramedy about two friends who work together at a brewery. Both are in relationships when we meet them, but that doesn’t stop us from wondering whether or not their simmering buddy chemistry means they should be together. (They, eventually, wonder too.) The film’s lead is Olivia Wilde, showing chops and warmth she isn’t often allowed to display in bigger studio movies we’ve seen her in, with Jake Johnson providing a suitably scruffy love interest for Wilde’s boozy, self-destructive temptress. Anna Kendrick plays Johnson’s girlfriend, once again making the most of what could be a throwaway role. The film has an easy, breezy, natural quality that’s similar to Enough Said. It’s as refreshing as a cold beer on a summer’s day.

And finally, there’s another woman who throws herself a little too hard into her relationship, Blue Is The Warmest Color-style. Did you know Charles Dickens had a secret lover? I didn’t, but then again, I didn’t know much about Charles Dickens at all, except that he was paid by the word. I resented him for that, since it made Oliver Twist longer than it had any right to be. (At least, that’s how I felt in eighth grade.) I knew some of the broader strokes of Dickens’ life, but I knew nothing about Nelly Ternan — and neither did anybody else, apparently. Hence the fllm’s potentially misleading title, The Invisible Woman.

No, The Invisible Woman is not about Charles Dickens’ little-known, illicit romance with Sue Storm of Marvel’s Fantastic Four — though somebody please, make that movie — but a reference to the fact that in prim and proper 19th century England, Nelly had to keep gossip about her relationship at bay or face a horrible sullying of her reputation. She was a single woman, but Dickens wasn’t a single man, and a sex life of any kind outside of marriage was considered a major scandal for a woman. So what happens when following your heart means pretending you don’t exist?

The Invisible Woman gives a voice and a face to Charles Dickens’ mistress, who is simply beside herself with longing for the man. (Who knew anyone could find Charles Dickens so… sexy?) Nelly is played by Felicity Jones, a terrific actress who hasn’t exactly broken out in a major way yet, but probably will after she appears in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. (She’s half of one of the best romances of the past few years, Like Crazy.) The Invisible Woman depicts Nelly as an 18-year-old ingenue as well as a considerably older woman, still struggling with the fallout of her romance with Dickens and endeavoring to keep it a secret from her current husband. Dickens is charmingly played b Ralph Fiennes (also the director of this film), portrayed as the biggest celebrity in England at this time (as he would be). There are echoes of modern-day celebrity life, with gossip rags and swarming mobs of fans clamoring for a handshake or an autograph. Next to Dickens’ fame, Nelly looks and feels quite invisible, indeed.

Fiennes’ grasp on the material is strong, and all the below-the-line work is top-notch. (Special shout-out to the cinematography, editing, and costumes.) Jones carries the movie, believably portraying a naive young girl and a rather embittered married lady. (Not every actress can age up so convincingly.) It’s a perfectly fine film, yet not exactly a remarkable one, even if everyone involved seems to have done their job right. Perhaps there just isn’t quite enough meat to this true-life story — for all Nelly’s fast-walking across the beach (her preferred coping mechanism), her haunted past doesn’t seem all that tortuous. As famous lovers go, Dickens is a pretty sweet one. (Witness the gentlest sex scene of all time, so demure that you can’t even tell if they’re about to do it, are doing it, or have just done it.)

There is one true revelation in The Invisible Woman — a performance that stands out even amongst the heftier performances of Felicity Jones and Ralph Fiennes. It’s Joanna Scanlan. Who? you may ask. Scanlan plays Catherine, Dickens’ wife, who puts up with a lot from her husband. She’s the movie’s most fascinating character, even with relatively little screen time, as her reaction is far and away different than most contemporary wives’ would be. It’s not a high-profile enough role to garner her an Oscar nomination this year, but it’s certainly one of my favorite supporting performances this year.

The Invisible Woman is set for release on December 25, but no one’s talking about it despite the fact that it has all the right elements for Oscar bait. (An actor-turned-director, a period piece, a famous historical figure, sumptuous costumes, and so on.) You could say that, at this point in the Oscar race, The Invisible Woman is very invisible indeed.

None of the women in these movies are likely to make a showing in the Academy Award nominations, even if they’ve made their impact at the box office or in other prizes. Along with other deserving actresses who will almost certainly be overlooked by the Oscars — including Frances Ha‘s Greta Gerwig, Short Term 12‘s Brie Larson, Fruitvale Station’s Melonie Diaz, and Before Midnight‘s Julie Delpy — they are the invisible women of 2013 in the eyes of the Academy. But they deserve better.*

Hollywood is obsessed with money, I say.

Duh, you think in response.

But hear me out.

In 2013, Hollywood was particularly obsessed with money. Not just with making money, but with telling stories about making — and losing — money. In my Top Ten list last year, I named Zero Dark Thirty my favorite film of the year; it’s a movie that serves as a symbol of America’s search for catharsis after 9/11.

And now, in 2013, we have Hollywood’s response to a very different national crisis — the recession from several years back that’s still taking its toll on our economy. It’s a subject that has woven its way into the fabric of many, many films this year — so many that explore what America stands for, strives to be, fails to be, and is.

Of course, lots of films from any era use money as a major motivator for its characters — particularly action and drama. Yet in examining my ten favorite films from the past year, as well as several others, I couldn’t help but notice a connective tissue. It’s like all the filmmakers in the world got together and decided to make on giant meta-movie that was all about the cracks and crevices marring our American dream.

Not all of them are good. Not even close. The past year gave us two very similar stories of our nation’s leaders in crisis — Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. Neither set the world on fire — just Washington, D.C., har har — but they’re emblematic of 2013′s cinematic mood. Escape From Tomorrow is a nightmare vision of the Happiest Place On Earth. Gangster Squad depicts the senseless violence, greed, and corruption of some of Los Angeles’ darkest days. Parkland is another take on the assassination of one of our most beloved presidents. Even Lone Survivor, a mostly rah-rah tale of American bravado, perhaps accidentally sheds light on questions about the wisdom of what we’ve been doing over in the Middle East.

Oz The Great And Powerful is the story of an American man who swindles the denizens of a fairyland and convinces them he’s a worthy leader. We’re The Millers is a comedy about a bunch of misfits mimicking a perfect American nuclear family. Identity Thief is a comedy about a very sad woman taking money that doesn’t belong to her in hopes of filling the void in her soul. The East is about an extremist group that takes revenge on American corporations guilty of actions that they’ll never be punished for in a court of law.

These are not the best movies of the year. Some of them are very bad, actually. They’re just a handful of titles that had such themes on their minds, though the better films I’ll discuss below are more provocative. Ask many film fans, and they’ll claim that 2013 was a very good year, cinematically; awards season is an embarrassment of riches, with the focus actually placed on very good, very deserving films for once.

So. Here are 2013′s best films, y’all.

(Click on the film title to read my original review.)

10. THE GREAT BEAUTY (LA GRANDE BELLEZZA)

While my list this year is largely America-centric, one foreign film I saw late in the game did manage to find its way into my year-end kudos, and that’s La Grande Bellezza, released as The Great Beauty here in the U.S.

Last year’s list had the brilliantly bizarre Holy Motors in the mix, and The Great Beauty is a worthy successor — though a slightly more cohesive one. Whereas Holy Motors was essentially a series of loosely connected vignettes, The Great Beauty does tell a singular story — though it, too, is vividly heightened with only a tenuous attempt at an anchoring plot.

Though The Great Beauty is specifically about life in Rome, it also bears many similarities to 2013′s crop of American movies. It’s about life as a non-stop party, even if several of these partygoers are starting to feel like they’re too old for this shit. There’s a scene in which our protagonist Jep encounters a less-privileged man, asking him what his plans for the night are. A little dinner and TV with his spouse, the man replies. Jep thinks that sounds nice — luxurious, even. But that’s not Jep’s life. Jep wouldn’t know an ordinary existence if it slapped him across the face.

Co-writer and director Paolo Sorrentino delivers the year’s most purely cinematic effort, with breathtaking images that are simultaneously dazzling and disorienting. It’s an overabundance of arresting scenes, so that days after seeing it, you might suddenly remember a mesmerizing moment you’d forgotten merely because there were already so many others caught in your brain. The Great Beauty is best viewed as a wild ride through Roman decline with a host of tantalizing surprises along the way. It took me some time to figure out just how to respond to The Great Beauty; now I’m certain that it’s one of the year’s most striking films, one I’m eager to revisit to take it all in again.

The Great Beauty isn’t an American movie, but like many domestic films this year, it taps into “rich people problems” — the boredom and blase attitude that can arise out of a too-easy life. Clocking in at well over two hours, the film is as much about excess as Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, with similarly exhilarating sequences of raunchy behavior. (It’s not quite as sordid as what Jordan Belfort did, though — The Great Beauty actually makes a lot of this look fun.) We’re not the only ones dealing with a troubled economy, societal decline, and the questionable priorities of religious leaders — and we’re definitely not the only ones drinking and dancing the night away to forget it all.

9. FRANCES HA

The only way you’d catch Frances Halladay occupying Wall Street is if someone else convinced her to — that would probably be her best friend Sophie. (“We’re the same person with different hair,” Frances says, unaware that Sophie has ceased to feel the same way.) But Frances is very much a product of Right Now in America. She’s yet another broke twenty-something who expected things to fall much more easily into her lap, and now has no idea how to reconcile her broken dreams with a hard reality.

Frances bounces around between a number of different apartments, paying less and less rent each time. She dreams of being a dancer, but everyone around her seems aware that she just isn’t cut out for that. (Frances, of course, is entirely unaware.) Frances thinks she’s poor, though she is reminded at one point that she’s still a lot more privileged than an actual poor person; but that doesn’t matter much when you’re barely scraping by in New York City. At one point, she decides to blow her remaining cash on a spontaneous weekend getaway to Paris, just because — and then sleeps through half the trip. Frances watches as her best friend drifts away in favor of a better life with a stable job and a doting, well-to-do fiance; meanwhile, Frances is a twenty-seven-year-old still stuck in that awkward post-college lurch, living paycheck to paycheck when she can even get a paycheck, which isn’t always.

In the same way that being broke is always in the back of a broke person’s mind, nearly every scene in this movie has something to do with money, but Frances Ha doesn’t strive to be topical — it’s only about post-recession America if you choose to view it that way. The film is shot in lovely, low-key black-and-white, and that, along with its ease and charm, evoke old school Woody Allen; it’s a delightful throwback while at the same time feeling entirely contemporary, which is an odd but enchanting mix. Inside Llewyn Davis and (to a lesser extent) Her also depict creative misfits struggling to find their place in a world that doesn’t seem to need them. Both are very good movies, but in the end, Frances Ha won me over because I found its down-on-her-luck outcast so very endearing — thanks in large part to co-writer Greta Gerwig’s alluring performance.

I’m not sure you’d really want to spend time in the company of grumpy, self-righteous Llewyn Davis (unless he agreed to sing for you), but how can you not want to hang out with Frances Halladay? Often praised for her warm and approachable indie naturalism, Gerwig makes Frances wholly relatable to millennials. By the end of her journey, I had the feeling that Frances and I were practically the same person — just with different hair.

8. THE BLING RING

The kids aren’t all right. That much is obvious in Sophia Coppola’s adaptation of a crazy-but-true tale of the Calabasas teenagers who easily robbed celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, and Paris Hilton for months before being caught. And in case it isn’t immediately obvious: these kids weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. It’s just that their targets were so vain and over-privileged that it never occurred to them that they could be the victims of such crimes.

This past year saw several different films about unlikely, unlucky lawbreakers, from the bodybuilders who kidnap one of their personal training clients for extortion in Pain And Gain to the foursome of bikini babe college girls who go on a crime spree in the surreal Spring Breakers. Sofia Coppola is a better storyteller than either Michael Bay or Harmony Korine, however; those films dealt more explicitly with the American dream, the obsession with staying young and hot (and hopefully rich) forever. Coppola’s focus, on the other hand, is trained on celebrity culture and social media; it may, in fact, be too savvy in how it depicts how obsessed these teens are with gossip rags and Facebook selfies. Is it too soon for a send-up of 2009 pop culture? Some audiences were underwhelmed; these are likely the same people who tweeted about how they didn’t “get” The Bling Ring before idly clicking over to Perez Hilton.

What makes The Bling Ring so fascinating is how little separation there is between the stars and those who are obsessed with them. Lindsay Lohan got in trouble for drunk driving and stealing, just as these kids do; Audrina Partridge’s fame is a byproduct of her wealth and privilege, not something she earned with talent and hard work. It’s not like the Bling Ring targeted Meryl Streep and Al Pacino — they went after the flashy, accessible stars whose whereabouts could be traced on the internet, the celebrities who leave a wake of senseless chatter and blinding flashes wherever they go. On the BluRay, there’s a special feature with Paris Hilton chiding these kids for their vanity and materialism as she takes us through a tour of her house, showing off her excessive goods. It’s hard to feel sorry for the “victims” of these crimes when they’ve barely earned this stuff themselves.

Anyone who claims to believe Spring Breakers is one of the year’s best films totally mystifies me — Korine’s film beats you over the head with repetitive scenes and banal voice-over dialogue, then James Franco arrives as a character based on a minor celebrity, imploring us to “look at his shit.” That’s fine, I guess, but I’d rather look at Paris Hilton’s shit. (Though I do give the edge to Spring Breakers’ Britney Spears sing-alongs over The Bling Ring‘s M.I.A.)

Like several of my favorite films from 2013, this one is very much of this time. In its own way, The Bling Ring is every bit as astute as The Social Network in depicting how young people live now; it’s also a lot of fucking fun to be taken “shopping” in celebrity homes, with plenty of time spent ogling the merchandise. Coppola makes us complicit in these crimes — we get off on the vicarious thrill of ransacking celebrity cribs, wishing we were there ourselves. It’s like an extra-naughty reality show, and our schadenfreude toward a certain brand of celebrity allows us not to feel any guilt. We’re voyeurs, too — but in this day and age, it’s all but impossible not to be. The Bling Ring is one of the best modern movies about celebrity, because the real stars are in the periphery. It’s actually about the people who worship stars — about us — without whom there would be no stars at all.

7. AMERICAN HUSTLE

This film is bullshit. Normally that’d be an insult, but bullshit is all American Hustle is trying to be. The original title of the script was American Bullshit, after all, and in it, everybody’s a hustler. David O. Russell collects an all-star cast of the hottest actors working right now, most of whom have worked with him before. Between them, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper have been nominated for… well, more Oscars than I care to count. (Add Robert De Niro, who makes a cameo here, and it’s definitely too many.) And surely there will be a few more nods added to the list once this year’s nominations are announced.

In addition to movies about the financial end of the American dream, 2013 has also been a big year for scorned wives. Two other movies in contention for my Top 10 were Blue Jasmine and Side Effects — movies that, on the surface, have little in common. Both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara played wives of swindlers whose lives of luxury came to a crashing halt when their hubby got busted; both women sought a particularly nasty form of revenge. And let’s not forget Naomi, the gorgeous Long Island housewife in The Wolf Of Wall Street, who could easily be American Hustle‘s Rosalyn’s BFF. Jennifer Lawrence plays the kooky spouse of Bale’s Irving Rosenfeld, a seemingly dim-witted housewife who reveals more complicated layers late in the film. Love her or hate her in this movie, Lawrence is a total scene-stealer with some of the film’s funniest lines, particularly a riff about a “science oven.” But every character is given a moment to shine — an absolute must in a film stuffed with this much big-name talent.

American Hustle has met its share of critics, to which I say, To each their own. They complain that the film is overlong and more interested in splashy dialogue and showy costumes than an overarching plot, and I don’t disagree. American Hustle is like GoodFellas in drag, with David O. Russell heating up Martin Scorsese’s leftovers in his science oven. It’s kind of funny coming in the same year that Scorsese himself released GoodFellas‘ younger, fatter cousin. It’s like Scorsese and Russell went shopping and discovered a really great thrift store together, and Scorsese was like, “You be seventies and I’ll be eighties… now what can we do with all this?”

Both films have been dubbed as comedies, yet neither really is; both are quite funny in places, and both celebrate scandal and ultimately reward their characters’ bad behavior with not-so-tragic endings. But not really. They’re satires of the American way, and while The Wolf Of Wall Street has taken the brunt of the flack, American Hustle presents even less of a downside to being a swindling douche bag. Irving Rosenfeld and Jordan Belfort think their victims are stupid losers, “bad people” who deserve to be hustled away from their money; in American Hustle, the lawbreakers and law-enforcers are equally corrupt, so why take sides? Both films leave our final judgments of these characters up to us. If you think bad guys in America are always punished for lying, cheating, stealing, and so on, then I’m sorry, but you’ve been hustled.

In the end, American Hustle is less interested in storytelling than movie-making. It’s a bunch of talented, attractive people who got together to play — and when it’s this much fun to watch, I’m totally on board with that.

6. NEBRASKA

Everyone in America dreams of being a millionaire — that goal is ingrained in our culture, even (or especially) in the most rundown town in the Midwest. And if you don’t even have to work to earn your massive fortune, all the better!

Movies like American Hustle, The Bling Ring, Pain And Gain, Spring Breakers, and so on depict amoral people stealing to advance to the good life. Nebraska‘s Woody Grant isn’t so unscrupulous, but when he gets a piece of mail informing him that he’s got a million dollars waiting for him in the Cornhusker State, he jumps at the opportunity to finally upgrade from nobody to somebody.

Woody’s an old codger who probably spent more of his life drinking than working; he’s showing signs of dementia, though he’s not yet lost every one of his marbles. He’s got a squawking spouse (June Squibb, yet another scene-stealing wife of 2013) who’s probably right to constantly complain about him, and he definitely hasn’t been the ideal father to his two grown sons. Winning a million dollars is Woody’s last chance to prove himself to all the people who’ve long since stopped paying attention — he’s got a small handful of years left, at best, and he wants to go out on a high note. Woody really only needs a fraction of a million dollars to fulfill his modest ambition to own a brand new truck, but of course, his journey to Nebraska is not actually about that — something his son David knows, too. Woody and David are embroiled in a fight for Woody’s dignity, which isn’t easy when the looney old man is only half-there most of the time.

Woody’s dreams are decidedly smaller than the lavish longings of The Bling Ring or Spring Breakers, but at the core is the same desire to “better than.” It’s just that the folks he’s trying to be better than aren’t that well-off to begin with. Nebraska is filmed in black-and-white to reflect a lack of variety and options where Woody hails from, and where he is now — a shiny new truck is the only way to introduce a little pizzazz to his existence, and when news of Woody’s supposed good fortune spread, greed roils within many of his old friends and family members, proving that no American life is too squalid to resist the siren’s call of a dollar sign. (And who would have guessed that in the year 2013, two of my year-end picks would be in black-and-white?)

Like the Coen brothers, Alexander Payne has been accused of taking a condescending attitude toward his characters, and there are a few members of Woody’s family that come off as more cartoonish than complicated. (I wouldn’t argue that they’re unrealistic, though.) This could be a problem, except Payne and screenwriter Bob Nelson imbue Woody with such depth and humanity, never once allowing us to pity him even when he’s the subject of ridicule. This is thanks in large part to Bruce Dern’s career-capping performance, a truly remarkable achievement that easily could have been overplayed. Even if early scenes play Woody’s pain more for laughs than tears, ultimately it leads to one of the most emotionally rich and satisfying payoffs of the year. It’s Payne’s best film in ages.

5. THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

From Nebraska we move on to another story about fathers and sons that received far less attention. This one isn’t about one particular father or one particular son — there are several sets of fathers, biological or otherwise, focused upon in Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines, and the scope is even wider. You could say that this is a film about all fathers and all sons.

Though there are a few plum roles for women, including Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne as mothers in duress, The Place Beyond The Pines is clearly focused on multiple generations of males in a story that spans nearly two decades. In the opening segment, we meet a stunt motorcyclist aptly named Handsome Luke (played by Handsome Ryan Gosling) who learns that a casual relationship he’s all but forgotten spawned a young son, who is now being provided for by the mother’s new beau; Luke himself doesn’t have the means to take care of mother and child, but feels compelled to try anyway.

Unfortunately, that means turning to a life of crime, a choice that has long-reaching repercussions for multiple characters in this story — some of whom he’ll never even meet. There’s a police officer named Avery (played by Bradley Cooper) who happens to be the officer on duty when one of Luke’s bank robberies goes awry. What happens that day will change each man’s life in drastic ways and continue to impact their families for years to come. The Place Beyond The Pines has a novelistic structure that may, upon first viewing, be jarring to some, focusing on different characters at different times. But as both Avery and Luke’s sons approach adulthood late in the film, we see the cyclical nature of fatherhood — and how one man’s actions can shape the destiny of his loved ones long after he’s gone. Thus a shot of Luke’s son at age 17, riding his bike down a winding road, unaware that his father once rode his motorcycle down this very same road, is one of the most poignant cinematic moments of the year, in my humble opinion.

Handsome Luke is another American in the movies this year trying to make a living he didn’t earn; his intentions are noble, but his methods are flawed. Unlike many of this year’s cinematic swindlers, he and his loved ones are punished when he tries to take a shortcut to that financially secure happy ending we all dream about. Luke never had a father; then he strikes up a vaguely paternal relationship with an auto mechanic who introduces the idea of robbing banks. Luke is trying to provide for his son, not realizing that this very decision will lead that child to grow up without him. And thus the cycle continues. Sometimes what we think is the answer to all our troubles is really where the trouble begins…

4. BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Alongside Nebraska and The Place Beyond The Pines, the third entry in the most unlikely trilogy of all time also has a father-son conflict driving the movie, though it takes a while for that to surface. Before Midnight opens with Jesse, now in his forties, dropping son Hank off at a Greek airport. It’s hard for Jesse to see Hank go, because while Jesse lives it up in France with his longtime partner Celine (they’re not married), his son must return to Jesse’s ex-wife in Chicago and grow up largely fatherless. That’s the price of true love.

Before Sunrise was a romantic fantasy about strangers meeting cute in Vienna and giving in to red-hot passion. Before Sunset was about their somewhat unlikely reunion almost a decade later, how old flames can be rekindled quickly because, perhaps, they never really burnt out in the first place. Before Midnight takes kismet out of the equation — there’s no chance meeting here. Jesse and Celine have been together for nine years now, raising adorable twin girls. They’re summering in Greece with their daughters, Jesse’s son, and friends representing several generations. But now this summer is nearly over.

As the title suggests, Before Midnight grows darker than its predecessors. Jesse has realized his dream of falling in love with a European beauty and writing novels for a living. He may not live in America anymore, but it’s a pretty perfect approximation of the American dream (minus the bitter ex-wife, of course). For Celine, though, life is not quite so dreamy — she loves her daughters and Jesse’s son, and she still loves Jesse, but she’s nowhere near the place she thought she’d be in life, and Jesse’s domestic paradise means a sacrifice of her individuality and career aspirations, which Celine is slowly growing to resent. As in the prior two films, Jesse and Celine walk-and-talk about a wide variety of topics relating to gender politics, their feelings for one another, and life itself; but then they argue and get truly nasty with one another, baring ugly truths (unlike the first two movies).

There’s one long dinner scene with multiple generations of lovers — Jesse and Celine are no longer the cute young romantics, but fall somewhere in the middle, and we catch a glimpse at how love works for varying age groups. The film’s final act is a show-stopping fight scene that perfectly encapsulates a real lovers’ spat; they bicker and make up and then bicker again. They say things they don’t mean, or maybe they really do mean them. They question whether or not their love is worth the struggle and sacrifice. In short, the honeymoon is over.

Before Midnight is the perfect movie for anyone who ever questioned two characters riding off into the sunset toward a supposed happily-ever-after — and asked, “Yeah, but then what?” Jesse and Celine were once perfect romantic foils, but no two people can sustain such harmony and bliss forever. Richard Linklater, along with his co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (who put much of themselves into these scripts), explore and challenge the idea that two people would, could, and should spend their lives together. They have just about everything they could want, yet it isn’t quite enough. They yearn for more.

When Jesse first hints that he’d be happier if Celine picked up her life and moved to America so they could be closer to Hank, she posits that this is the day that will break them apart, the beginning of the end for them. Is it? Before Midnight may or may not be the final chapter for one of our favorite on-screen couples. We watch in suspense to see whether or not these two will kiss and make up before midnight strikes and finds them separated. Linklater forces us to confront a number of tough questions, starting with: If not even these two can make it work, how is there any hope for the rest of us?

3. GRAVITY

If movies had a common thread in 2013 besides money and the American dream, they were all about survival.

Yes, okay, lots of movies from lots of years also hit on this basic theme, but this year especially. From the biggest domestic moneymaker of the year, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, to Best Actor hopefuls like Captain Phillips and All Is Lost and Dallas Buyers Club, there were so many films about people trying to get by on their own, facing obstacles large and small (mostly large, though). There’s even one called Lone Survivor.

Spoiler alert: Gravity could also be called Lone Survivor, since Sandra Bullock’s only real co-star abandons her early in the movie. Gravity wasn’t the highest-grossing film of the year, or even in the Top 5, but it’s the movie 2013 will be remembered by. It’s the buzziest event movie since James Cameron’s Avatar, with a similar emphasis on spectacle; the Best Picture race this year will echo 2009′s, when the 3D behemoth from outer space squared off against a lesser-seen but more grounded story of earthly duress, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. (Steve McQueen was never married to Alfonso Cuaron, though.) Following that formula, 12 Years A Slave is a (slightly) more likely victor, but Gravity will hold up far better than Avatar did, because for all the razzle and dazzle, it’s a poignant story about death and rebirth and survival. And, you know, trying not to float off into space.

Instead of another story about fathers and sons, Alfonso Cuaron delivers a tale about mother and daughter, though we never meet that daughter (she dies before the movie begins). Perhaps his unconventional approach to filmmaking gave Cuaron the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted with this story — how else to explain a big studio action film carried almost solely by one actress? (She is, at least, a very bankable actress.) Cuaron has again proven himself one of Hollywood’s most innovative visionaries, delivering that rare, perfect blend of art and commerce. (Inception was the most recent such film.) Gravity is a one-of-a-kind immersive experience, a rare beacon of hope in a year that delivered dud after dud in the blockbuster department otherwise. Hollywood is certainly paying attention, though it remains to be seen whether it will learn a lesson.

Unlike most of my favorites from 2013, Gravity is not really about money or the American dream, except on a meta level — it sure made a lot of money, so we can only hope that, like Ryan Stone, movies like this one will fight and beat the odds and survive the dark wasteland that normally sucks up well-intentioned gems like this. Because I’d rather float off into space and die than sit through most of the films that were released last summer. Studios should stop wasting money on big, expensive junk no one wants and spend a little less on stories people actually want to tell, the stories we want to be told.

But that’s not a free pass to go and make Gravity 2, you guys. Just… don’t go there.

2. 12 YEARS A SLAVE

Thanks in large part to Gravity, it’s been a decent year for women on the big screen — though the Best Actress race is still pretty lackluster compared to the boys’ club. It’s also a strong year for black filmmakers, with the release of buzzy dramas like Fruitvale Station (directed by Ryan Coogler) and Lee Daniels’ The Butler (directed by Lee Daniels, if you couldn’t tell). What’s going on? Movies about women and minorities? Diversity in Hollywood? Somebody pinch me!

The Butler is a massive hit, raking in over $167 million worldwide. Fruitvale Station is a more modest success (but a better film). The year’s ultimate triumph, however, could likely be Best Picture hopeful 12 Years A Slave, which has received about as unanimously positive critical response as you can get. (There will always be a handful of naysayers.) It hasn’t earned nearly as much as The Butler (around $50 million worldwide to date), but it’s already been heralded as the definitive movie on American slavery, Oscar or no. Already it has made its mark.

So here’s where it all began, more or less. We are a capitalist nation. The American dream has always piggybacked on someone else’s nightmare — in this case, Africans and their descendants who were shipped over to do the bidding of white men. More than 150 years ago, a real man named Solomon Northup was drugged, waking up to an unimaginable horror — he was now the property of a slave trader, and as property, he could be beaten, tormented, even killed without consequence. We all know all about slavery, of course, and have since we were very young — but at a distance. 12 Years A Slave puts those injustices front and center, in our faces, and leaves them there for uncomfortably long moments. We are not allowed to look away, because director Steve McQueen knows: if we could, we would.

But 12 Years A Slave is no parlor trick. It’s not supposed to be punishment. And it certainly doesn’t provide any catharsis. It’s a potent reminder. If The Place Beyond The Pines depicts how a father’s actions can have devastating effects on his son, then 12 Years A Slave is about how our founding fathers’ actions can carry over multiple centuries, creating problems we’re still dealing with as a nation. (The Butler and Fruitvale Station address such problems in different eras.) America’s first black president is in office, something that would have been unthinkable in Solomon Northup’s time, and that’s progress. Maybe someday we’ll be free of the shackles of the past, but we’re not there yet. 12 Years A Slave is only partially about how far we’ve come; it’s also about how far we have yet to go.

But I didn’t enjoy 12 Years A Slave because it was a didactic history lesson, or because it made me think about slavery in a new light. (It won’t make you think about slavery in a new way; the point is to think about it at all.) I love this movie because it’s a great story well-told. Every aspect of the filmmaking is vital and beautiful, from the propulsive score by Hans Zimmer to the astounding cinematography by Sean Bobbitt and, of course, McQueen’s distinctive directorial flourishes, decried as “too artsy” by some. For me, they’re just artsy enough. 12 Years A Slave has some of the year’s boldest scenes, some of which can be hard to watch — an extended whipping scene, and one with Solomon hanging from a noose while daily life at the plantation goes on around him indifferently. But McQueen is no sadist. 12 Years A Slave does not take the Michael Haneke approach to entertainment. There are many quietly beautiful moments; and though much of the discourse 12 Years A Slave inspires is made very obvious, there’s also a lot to think about that isn’t so blatant.

No other film this year is filled with so many magnificent performances. Lupita Nyong’o is a revelation as the unforgettable Patsey, who almost threatens to steal the movie from Solomon. (Another suffering slave woman, played by Adepero Oduye, also makes an impact.) Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, and Benedict Cumberbatch play slave owners with varying degrees of evil in their hearts; none are mere monsters, though Fassbender gets damn close. Of course, it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor who carries the movie with a largely understated performance; Solomon is an intelligent, thoughtful, and educated man who must hide all of these qualities in order to survive, but we can always read his thought process on Ejiofor’s expressive face. When first realizing his terrifying reversal of fortune, we experience his personal horror vicariously as he thinks, I’m not supposed to be here. It’s only later that he thinks: But nobody is. 

We, the audience, identify with Solomon the everyman, and thus undergo the same experience. It’s not necessarily a pleasant journey, but it is a beautiful one. Should a movie about slavery be so pretty? I don’t mind, because McQueen is so brutally honest about ugliness, too. Solomon Northup probably never imagined his story would resonate 160 years after it was first published, just as his enslavers never considered the impact their actions might have after a century or more. Slavery may be a thing of the past in America, but exploiting the weak so the wealthy can prosper? Yeah, about that…

1. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

In a year during which so many movies were about America’s relationship to wealth and power, here is the movie that is most about that — if only because it is the longest.

Martin Scorsese is not fucking around with The Wolf Of Wall Street. The man is in his seventies and chose this movie to deliver some of the most explicit scenes of his career. Here we have a candlestick poking out of a major movie star’s anus; here we have that same major movie star blowing drugs into an attractive naked woman’s rectum. So, it’s settled then: this is, in every way, a movie about assholes.

America is still hurting from the recession, even if we’re pretending it’s fine. It’s not fine. Frances Halladay can’t pay her rent, handsome motorcyclists have turned to robbing banks to provide for their families, elderly men are attempting to walk from Montana to Nebraska to claim bogus prizes — even Paris Hilton isn’t safe from criminals who want a taste of the 1%. And then here’s this jerk Jordan Belfort, wastefully wrecking his yacht, his Lamborghini, and his helicopter. What a fucking asshole.

It’s a wonder, then, that as played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jordan Belfort still comes across as so winning. Even after all that, you almost, almost, almost want to party with him. (But you’d be sure and have a DD.) The self-proclaimed “Wolf Of Wall Street” lives up to his name, with modest beginnings in penny stocks that eventually have him making nearly a million dollars a week. (Fucker.)

Jordan has a hot wife — no, yeah, duh, but I mean, extremely hot — and a ginormous house. He has a horde of followers who would all fall on their swords for him. He bangs hot ladies all over town, drops thousands of dollars on every meal, and throws the wildest parties since Jay Gatsby. (Who, coincidentally, was also portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio this year.) So, do you want to help me strangle this motherfucker or what?

If you’re one of The Wolf Of Wall Street‘s many critics, the answer is probably yes. The film has proven controversial, mostly because some people need a tidy moral literally spelled out for them at the end of the movie. (How about an end title card that reads: “The makers of this movie do not endorse drug use, prostitution, or screwing innocent people out of their hard-earned income, mmkay?”)

That is, in large part, why The Wolf Of Wall Street is my favorite movie of 2013. I tend to root for the underdog, which often means taking a hard stance in favor of divisive films. (See also my previous #1s, which include Crash, United 93, and Zero Dark Thirty.) Last year, Zero Dark Thirty was trumped by Argo — fucking Argo! — because of a stupid debate about whether or not the film endorsed torture. It didn’t. The film depicted torture, without anyone wagging their finger directly to camera and explaining, “This is bad!” Much in the same way, some are up in arms about how The Wolf Of Wall Street glorifies the illegal doings of stock brokers, because the film itself doesn’t declare a judgment. The Wolf Of Wall Street endorses such behavior the same way Taxi Driver endorses assassinations, Cape Fear endorses biting people’s faces off during sex, and The Aviator endorses dating Katherine Hepburn. Which is to say: not at all.

Don’t like The Wolf Of Wall Street because it’s an overlong, excessive mess of a movie? Fine by me. It’s not for everyone. But to condemn the film because it doesn’t condemn its characters is just madness. The story may take place in the eighties and nineties, but the film is very much about the here and now — the enormous greed of a small number of people that eventually proved toxic to every single American. How dare anyone expect Martin Scorsese to punish the people in his movie, when in real life, these people have not been punished? It would be dishonest — and though this movie is by and large about dishonesty, it is not dishonest.

The Wolf Of Wall Street gives us barely a glimpse at anyone who isn’t living the high life. We don’t meet any of Jordan Belfort’s victims — but presumably, neither does he. And we don’t need to see any of that, because look around — we see it every day, everywhere we go. The American dream has gotten out of hand, and caused a lot of damage in its wake. That’s how we live in now, and it’s silly to expect that a movie will provide catharsis when the real world has not.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is one big, crazy movie — the kind of movie many doubted Scorsese still had in him. It replaces his trademark violence with raunchy sex and quaaludes galore, but it’s the same ol’ Scorsese. God bless him. The movie is so much fun it’s almost too much fun, by design — certain scenes go on and on, but they’re magnetic. Leonardo DiCaprio gives the performance of his career (and let me remind you, it’s a hell of a career); he’s supported by solid work from Kyle Chandler, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, and plenty more, but this is DiCaprio’s show, and he owns it.

This is the movie that put the theme of the year into focus for me — and once I saw it, it was impossible to unsee how many other films dealt with these ideas. And get this: the best movie of the year is the perfect companion piece to the year’s best TV show, Breaking Bad, which also bowed out in 2013. That’s a series about a man whose greed got the better of him, costing so many people so much; both The Wolf Of Wall Street and Breaking Bad‘s best episode, “Ozymandias,” use the big bad dad grabbing his tiny tot and rushing off to the car while mom screams in agony as their climactic moment.

In its own way, The Wolf Of Wall Street is as much about the post-millennial strife we’ve faced as a nation as United 93 or Zero Dark Thirty; neither of those films sugar-coated the hard truth, and this doesn’t either. Good for you, Scorsese. Bad for us. It’s not a filmmaker’s job to punish Wall Street for its sins; it was ours. If we wanted it done, we should’ve done it ourselves. Some tried, but most of us did nothing.

Don’t ask a movie to do what you cannot. If you don’t like the world The Wolf Of Wall Street depicts, that’s too bad, because it’s the world you’re living in. This is America in 2013, exaggerated ever-so-slightly to fit the big screen. It is, unfortunately, not just a movie.

The Top 10 Films Of 2012

The Top 10 Films Of 2011

The Top 10 Films Of 2010

The Top 10 Films Of 2009

The Top 10 Films Of 2008

*

It’s the morning of the Oscar nominations, and I’m not upset.

This is weird. All the films I wanted to see nominated for Best Picture are. All the actors I hoped to see receive nominations for this year’s performances were. Compare and contrast to last year’s fatal omission of Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director, or 2011′s Oscar season, in which none of my ten favorite films were nominated for Best Picture — but Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was. This year, on the other hand, five of my own picks for Best Picture overlap with Academy’s. Three of my four favorite performances were recognized. All of the films from the Best Director nominees were in my Top 10.

What the fuck is going on here?

Yeah, it was a good year for movies, and thankfully, it’s a good year at the Oscars. It’s only natural that some of my favorite films aren’t represented as much as I may like, and you know what? I’m pretty okay with that.

Still, I think I can do the Academy a little better. So now it’s time for the really important awards — my picks for the films and performances that deserve more recognition than they got. Here are 2013′s Not-Oscars!

(As usual, I pick a winner and then list my four other “nominees” in descending order based on how much I liked them. Check out last year’s Not-Oscars here.)

BEST ACTRESS

Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue Is The Warmest Color
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha

Honorable Mentions: Brie Larson, Short Term 12; Amy Adams, American Hustle

Cate Blanchett is the favorite to win and has been ever since the release of Blue Jasmine, and deservedly so — the role of a broken, vodka-guzzling socialite grieving for her dearly departed husband and dearly departed lifestyle (not necessarily in that order) is a perfect showcase for a performer, blending comedy and tragedy expertly, and it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job with the part. It’s one of the roles she’ll be remembered for.

Meanwhile, young Adele Exarchopoulos carries Blue Is The Warmest Color, as the film’s French title The Life Of Adele suggests. The movie is about every aspect of this young girl’s life, and she eats, showers, and has sex with equal gusto in an incredibly natural performance. She’s remarkably expressive for such a young actress, and if the rumors are to be believed, she put up with quite a lot of duress thanks to the film’s director, including some very long sex scenes.

If Blue Is The Warmest Color rests almost entirely on Exarchopoulos’ shoulders, Gravity rests even moreso on Sandra Bullock’s; the screenplay lets her down with a clunky bit of dialogue or two, but that doesn’t undermine Sandy’s remarkable feat as an action heroine who’s still as capable, with a mix of strength and vulnerability, as she was in Speed almost two decades ago. One of the year’s most beautiful scenes is her Ryan Stone howling along with a Chinese stranger via radio — and despite the massive amount of visual effects, Bullock had a lot of physical work to do to master this part.

And how about indie darling Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the perfect part for her winsome indie charms in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha? She may not exactly be the millennial female Woody Allen yet, but Lena Dunham better watch her back all the same.

My 2013 winner, though, is easy — Before Midnight‘s Julie Delpy, stepping into the role of Celine for the third (and final?) time. In the past two films, Celine was a smart, thoughtful, independent woman; she’s too fully realized to be written off as a mere manic pixie dream girl, but she was in many ways the perfect woman. It was to see why Ethan Hawke’s Jesse fell for her. Before Midnight presents a new challenge for the actress — Celine is less secure, revealing a fragility and bitterness that were only hinted at in earlier incarnations. Delpy deftly shifts from the “old” Celine we (and Jesse) know and love to reveal a darker shade to the character that is still so relatable. (And she performs a large part of the third act topless, so there’s that.)

BEST ACTOR

Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years A Slave
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

Honorable Mentions: Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station; Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips

It’s by far the best year for Best Actor in recent memory, with at least ten performances that deserve Academy recognition. The biggest performance of the year has to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Wolf Of Wall Street — he’s brash and bold like we’ve never seen him before, and funnier, too. His quaalude overdose is a masterpiece of excruciating physical comedy, and he delivers some of the year’s best monologues to boot. After plenty of solid performances over the past couple decades, it’s maybe the performance that finally signals him as one of his generation’s best actors.

Then there’s Chiwetel Ejiofor, who guides us through the hell of a free man finding himself suddenly enslaved. In a big, brash drama, this is a surprisingly understated performance, since Solomon knows he can’t give away the fact that he’s smarter than his masters without suffering even worse consequences. This was the toughest category by far for me to pick a winner in, since Dern, DiCaprio, and Ejiofor were all about equal in my eyes.

Oscar Isaac has the advantage of singing beautiful folk music to win audiences over, and his voice is indeed lovely; his turn as the titular Llewyn Davis is prickly enough that we’re never allowed to feel sorry for the down-trodden musician — instead, we realize that his bad luck is a mixture of misfortune and bad behavior. Hopefully, enough people took notice of this largely unknown actor for us to see much more of him in the future.

And, of course, there’s Matthew McConaughey, in the midst of a massive career renaissance that no one saw coming, turning in unforgettable performances in a wide array of movies over the past two years. Dallas Buyers Club is the centerpiece, as he portrays a straight man afflicted with the last disease he’d ever admit to having. McConaughey lost a ton of weight in the role (and has been uncomfortably skinny-looking in a number of his other appearances over the past year), but he also resists the urge to sentimentalize Ron Woodruff as some actors may have; like Isaac, he doesn’t give a damn if he’s likable in the role or not.

But my favorite is Bruce Dern’s crazy old coot in Nebraska, because he is the movie. It’s a tribute to Dern as well as the screenplay that we can never tell just how “with it” Woody Grant is — he seems to simultaneously believe that he won his phony millions while somewhere, at the back of his mind, knowing it’s too good to be true. It’s a role that could have been cutesy or precious, but instead it’s just pitch-perfect all the way through, allowing us to laugh at, critique, and feel for Woody all at once. DiCaprio and Ejiofor hopefully still have many great performances in them, but this one feels like Dern’s crowning achievement after a long career.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years A Slave
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Joanna Scanlan, The Invisible Woman
June Squibb, Nebraska
Margot Robbie, The Wolf Of Wall Street

Honorable Mentions: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine; Sarah Paulson, 12 Years A Slave

The Jennifer Lawrence backlash is beginning. She can ask her fellow Oscar-winner from last year, Anne Hathaway, how to deal with that. Some are calling her scene-stealing performance in American Hustle the best part of the movie; some think she was just plain awful. It’s pretty obvious which side of the fence I’m on — I found every moment Lawrence was on screen a delight. Yes, it’s the sort of big, brassy, ditsy performance that award-givers love to honor — see Oscar-winners like Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny or Mira Sorino in Mighty Aphrodite, both of which were controversial picks. But there are two scenes that show Lawrence is more than just a hairdo — when Rosalyn tears up and claims that change is hard for her while, under the surface, implying that her new beau should go rough up her old one — and ohhh, lordy, that bathroom scene.

Next there’s Joanna Scanlan, who beefs up an underserved part in The Invisible Woman with her expressive face. She’s the plump, put-upon wife of Charles Dickens, who gradually realizes her famous hubby is in love with a younger, prettier woman. We’re left to guess how she feels about it until the film’s best scene, when Mrs. Dickens confronts the young woman and presents her with a birthday gift. It’s the kind of supporting performance that makes you wish the movie was all about her.

And how about June Squibb, who played Jack Nicholson’s dumpy wife in Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt a decade ago, and now shows up in a much livelier part in his Nebraska? While Will Forte plays the serious straight man and Bruce Dern touches our hearts with his senility, Squibb injects a welcome dose of energetic comedy to lighten the mood — she even flashes the grave of a deceased paramour at one point. Yeah, these may be cheap laughs in a way, but they’re still good ones.

Last in this lineup of scene-stealing wives is Margot Robbie of The Wolf Of Wall Street. Like Lawrence, she’s aided greatly by a fabulous wardrobe and a juicy script, and some may think she’s just a pretty face. But in a largely amoral film, she’s the closest thing to a sympathetic character we get, and over time we really do feel for her, particularly in her dramatic final confrontation with DiCaprio. Really, though, she’s here because she’s in what might be my favorite scene in a movie this year — yep, the “no panties” scene.

But none of these supporting actresses had quite the impact Lupita N’yongo did in 12 Years A Slave. Like them, she’s a scene-stealer, but she’s far from comic relief. Solomon Northup is such a dignified and reserved character, Steve McQueen’s film needs Patsey to be his counterpoint — and as much sympathy as we have for Solomon, it ends up being Patsey who we really feel for. We see Patsey suffer more than any other character, and Nyong’o sells every moment with fear, fury, despair, or whatever the scene calls for. It’s impossible to take your eyes off her for a moment, even when she’s being brutally whipped and you really want to look away. In a film populated by well-known actors like Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Michael Fassbender, Paul Giamatti, and Benedict Cumberbatch, the largely unknown Lupita Nyong’o gives the performance that’s burned in our brains.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
James Gandolfini, Enough Said
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years A Slave
Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12
Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines

Honorable Mentions: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips; Bradley Cooper, American Hustle

Best Supporting Actor is the weakest race this year, yet somehow the Oscars still overlooked the marvelous James Gandolfini, who passed away last year, leaving behind a legacy as Tony Soprano. Given the tough-guy roles he’s ordinarily known for, Gandolfini is an unlikely romantic comedy hero, but he sure as hell pulls it off in Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, which finds the burly actor courting Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a comedy about taking a second stab at love in middle age. The Sopranos allowed Gandolfini to show off all kinds of gifts, though menace is certainly at the forefront of our minds. So his warmth and charm in this role is a nice way to cap off his career, though it’s a shame we won’t get to see more of him in movies like this.

Meanwhile, Michael Fassbender takes a page from Tony Soprano by playing the villain of 12 Years A Slave. He’s a drunk, he’s a rapist, and he’s a slave owner — so, yeah, not a very nice guy. Edwin Epps is outsmarted by Solomon Northup because Edwin can’t fathom that a slave could be smarter than him; together with his spiteful wife (played by an equally good Sarah Paulson), these two rain down an almost unbearable level of fear and torment on their human property. Yet what makes Fassbender’s performance so special is that there’s a hint of humanity buried underneath it, so we can’t merely write off Epps as a bad guy. He’s a coward and a bully and a brute, but he’s not uncomplicated. Through Fassbender, we understand how these people justified their atrocious actions, even if by modern standards they are nowhere near justifiable anymore.

A lesser-seen and lesser-known performance comes from Keith Stanfield, the young actor who plays Marcus in Short Term 12. It’s a film filled with terrific, understated performances, but Stanfield might have the trickiest role in Marcus, an angry young teenager with no place else to go. We can sense the rage within, as well as a deep well of sadness and betrayal, but Stanfield keeps us on edge wondering if — or when — Marcus will finally snap and do someone in this movie harm. One moment, we’re crying for him, the next we’re afraid he’s done something terrible. There are many poignant moments in Short Term 12, but the unlikely tearjerker is Marcus’ haircut scene.

And then there’s Ryan Gosling, who in 2013 starred in the overblown Gangster Squad and Nicholas Winding Refn’s surprisingly underwhelming Drive follow-up Only God Forgives. At least one of his roles lived up to its potential — the motorcycle-riding bank robber Handsome Luke in The Place Beyond The Pines. Like Margot Robbie, Gosling’s performance is helped by his character’s sense of style. His clothes are a moody hipster’s wet dream, and let’s face it — this is Ryan Gosling, bleached blonde and tatted up on a motorcycle. How could he not be cool? We’ve seen Gosling play the stoic type with rage and violence bubbling just under the surface in several previous roles, so his turn in The Place Beyond The Pines isn’t exactly a revelation. But in a lackluster year for supporting males, Handsome Luke is one of the characters who stayed with me.

This year, Best Supporting Actor the only one of these categories in which my pick will likely line up with the Academy’s. That will almost surely be Jared Leto, whose turn in Dallas Buyers Club is a total transformation within and without. To play the transgender Rayon, Leto doesn’t just put on a wig and some lipstick and call it a day, as many other actors might have. We believe that he believes he’s a woman, and Let fully commits to the femininity without ever winking at the audience. Rayon is a larger-than-life character both in the movie and outside of it, so yes, this is the kind of performance that the Academy likes to reward even when it isn’t done well. In this case, it is. Dallas Buyers Club is more notable for its two towering male performances than it is as a stand-alone movie; it’s a movie about the AIDS epidemic of the eighties that quite possibly under-represents the gay end of the equation, so that point of view is almost entirely up to Leto. Fortunately for us (and him), he nails it.

BEST DIRECTOR

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years A Slave
Martin Scorsese, The Wolf Of Wall Street
Richard Linklater, Before Midnight
Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond The Pines

My five favorite directors line up exactly with my five favorite films — but not exactly in the same order. Alfonso Cuaron’s triumph with Gravity was innovative in so many ways — it was a pretty big risk that fortunately paid off. And Steve McQueen had quite a task ahead of him when he set out to make a slave epic that dealt so brutally with those horrors, which gives him the edge over an old pro like Martin Scorsese, whose bloated (but fabulous) The Wolf Of Wall Street cost a lot of money and looks like it. I have to give props to Richard Linklater, who films walk-and-talks so expertly, using incredibly long takes that must’ve been a major challenge. And Derek Cianfrance manages to lend an epic scope to The Place Beyond The Pines, a story that in other hands could feel much smaller.BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

12 Years A Slave — John Ridley
The Wolf Of Wall Street — Terrence Winter
Before Midnight — Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, & Julie Delpy
Short Term 12 — Destin Cretton
Blue Is The Warmest Color — Ghalia Lacroix and Abdellatif Kechiche

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Frances Ha — Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig
The Place Beyond The Pines — Derek Cianfrance & Ben Coccio and Darius Marder
American Hustle — David O. Russell and Eric Singer
Side Effects — Scott Z. Burns
Nebraska — Bob Nelson

Though Hollywood sure loves to make movies based on pre-existing material, for once, it was a better year for Original Screenplays than Adapted ones. I don’t necessarily like the Academy’s rules for dividing them — how is Before Midnight an adapted screenplay? What was it adapted from? — I did follow them here, because otherwise it’s just too confusing. Academy nominees Dallas Buyers Club and American Hustle, for example, are both based on real events, which doesn’t make them exactly “original,” but they also both made up a lot of the characters we see on screen. (Jared Leto’s Rayon? Not a real person.) So they’re kind of original, but kind of adapted. Whatever, they’re all pretty good.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Great Beauty
12 Years A Slave
The Wolf Of Wall Street
Gravity
Her

BEST SCORE

All Is Lost — Alexander Ebert
The Place Beyond The Pines — Mike Patton
Only God Forgives — Cliff Martinez
Gravity — Steven Price
12 Years A Slave — Hans Zimmer

BEST DRIVING

Ryan Gosling, The Place Beyond The Pines

WORST DRIVING

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street

BEST FIGHT (VERBAL)

Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight

BEST FIGHT (PHYSICAL)

Ryan Gosling & Vithaya Pansringarm, Only God Forgives

BEST TWIST

Side Effects

BEST MUSICAL NUMBER

I’m So Excited

WEIRDEST MUSICAL NUMBER

Spring Breakers

BEST KISS

Jennifer Lawrence & Amy Adams, American Hustle

BEST DRUNK

Bruce Dern, Nebraska & Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

WORST DRUNK

Colin Ferrell, Saving Mr. Banks

BEST STRUGGLING ARTIST

Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Lea Seydoux, Blue Is The Warmest Color
Keith Stanfield, Short Term 12
Ernst Umhauer, In The House

BEST SCENE-STEALING WIFE

Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Margot Robbie, The Wolf Of Wall Street
June Squibb, Nebraska
Joanna Scanlan, The Invisible Woman
Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels’ The Butler

BEST HUSTLER

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Alec Baldwin, Blue Jasmine
Channing Tatum, Side Effects
Tom Hanks, Saving Mr. Banks

BEST LONER

Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Robert Redford, All Is Lost
Joaquin Phoenix, Her
Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis
Mark Wahlberg, Lone Survivor

BIGGEST BITCH

Kristin Scott Thomas, Only God Forgives
Sarah Paulson, 12 Years A Slave
Meryl Streep, August Osage County
Julia Roberts, August Osage County
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks

BEST DOUBLE FEATURE

Blue Jasmine & Side Effects
The Wolf Of Wall Street & The Great Beauty
Frances Ha & Inside Llewyn Davis
Captain Phillips & All Is Lost
Saving Mr. Banks & Escape From Tomorrow

*

2013 ROSTER

1. The Wolf Of Wall Street
2. 12 Years A Slave
3. Gravity
4. Before Midnight
5. The Place Beyond The Pines
6. Nebraska
7. American Hustle
8. The Bling Ring
Frances Ha
10.The Great Beauty
11.Side Effects
12.Short Term 12
13.Her
14.Blue Jasmine
15.Blue Is The Warmest Color
16.The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
17.Inside Llewyn Davis
18.Drinking Buddies
19.Captain Phillips
20.All Is Lost
21.Dallas Buyers Club
22.Enough Said
23.Mud
24.Stories We Tell
25.Fruitvale Station
26.The Past
27.The East
28.The Invisible Woman
29.The Spectacular Now
30.The World’s End
31.This Is The End
32.In The House
33.Much Ado About Nothing
34.Stoker
35.Prisoners
36.I’m So Excited
37.The English Teacher
38.Disconnect
39.August Osage County
40.Lone Survivor
41.Gimme The Loot
42.The Way Way Back
43.The Call
44.The Conjuring
45.Lovelace
46.Lee Daniels’ The Butler
47.Thor: The Dark World
48.Philomena
49.Saving Mr. Banks
50.Upstream Color
51.Only God Forgives
52.Pain and Gain
53.C.O.G.
54.Iron Man 3
55.Trance
56.We’re The Millers
57.Prince Avalanche
58.White House Down
59.Identity Thief
60.The Kings Of Summer
61.Oz The Great And Powerful
62.The Great Gatsby
63.Spring Breakers
64.Jobs
65.Computer Chess
66.Parkland
67.Post Tenebras Lux
68.The Canyons
69.Gangster Squad
70.Escape From Tomorrow

*

Happy New Year!

This little blog of mine has existed for a little over three years now, and you know what? The more I blog, the more I realize what ignorant freaks the human race can be, thanks to the magic of Google.

Google has helped a handful of people find my blog for perfectly relevant reason — they come seeking Looking or Comeback recaps, comparisons of Black Swan to Birdman, or an explanation of what the hell Enemy is about. Just as often, however, it brings assorted masturbators and perverts to my photo gallery, seeking all sorts of unsavory things. (Some of which they may find on HardintheCity, some of which they may not.)

A lot of Google searches are your basic filth, while plenty are completely nonsensical and defy logic. I’m growing more and more certain that extraterrestrials are studying us through Google, but have not quite managed to get a grip on English syntax yet.

Here are my favorite Google searches from the past year — some hilarious, some creepy, and some utterly baffling.

“lady from breaking bad”

There are several to choose from. Skyler? Marie? Lydia? Andrea? Gretchen? Maybe even little Holly…? You probably mean Skyler. Anna Gunn has an Emmy, so learn her fucking name.

“bug and salud skylars boobs”

Skyler’s boobs in “Bug” and “Salud”? Awesome. Please don’t bother me with Skyler’s boobs from any other episodes of Breaking Bad in which Skyler’s boobs were inferior.

“did holly get killed to’hajiilee”

No! Breaking Bad‘s precious baby Holly is alive and well. Breaking Bad may have been bleak at times, but it wasn’t that bleak. What show were you watching?

“breaking bad jesse died”

No. He didn’t.

“breaking bad that scene walter say: im not in danger i am the danger”

Eh, close enough.

“breaking bad why was skyler heavier”

Well… she wasn’t! That’s just the warped standards of beauty Hollywood imposes on actresses making anyone who is actually human being-sized look like a rhino in comparison. I’m glad you asked! Aren’t you?

“christina hendricks hefty”

Rude.

“christina hendricks groped”

Who did she grope? Oh, wait, you probably meant Christina Hendricks being groped, didn’t you?

“christina hendricks gagged”

Boy, Google really has it out for Christina Hendricks.

“madmen season 2 when joan sits on bed and takes bra strap off”

I do have a picture of this very moment, which occurred in Season 2, Episode 8, “A Night To Remember,” my third favorite Mad Men moment of all time.

“what happens to chauncey in mad men”

Good question. We will probably never know. Poor Chauncey.

“hbo looking scene”

Any scene from Looking? Any scene at all?

“patrick patrick (jonathan groff)”

Typing it twice won’t help with your vague search.

“looking in the mirror, grindr guy”

Pretty much every guy on Grindr is looking in the mirror. Oh, but I think this was referring to the TV show Looking.

“comeback lisa kudrow love paulie g”

I’m pretty sure this is not the case. In fact, the only person who would think that is Paulie G…

“is the comeback renewed”

I hope so!

“buffy et le scooby gang”

Do they not translate “Scooby gang” when it’s aired abroad? It sounds so much sexier in French!

“what does the black principal on buffy do wrong”

He Googles senseless questions about defunct TV shows that are vaguely racist. No, wait… that was you.

“orange is the new black prison guard matthew mccoughnehay”

Matthew McConaughey is a little too busy winning Oscars to play a bit part in a Netflix show. And none of the prison guards look anything like Matthew McConaughey. So… what?

“albert brooks naked”

Because who doesn’t sit around and idly think about Albert Brooks in the buff?

“adam arkin naked”

The only person I can seriously believe Googled this was Adam Arkin.

“rhea perlman nude”

Seriously? Danny DeVito, is that you?

“viola davis naked nude”

No results yet, but at this rate it’s bound to happen on How To Get Away With Murder before long.

“robert de niro nude”

Too bad Google wasn’t around back in De Niro’s heyday, he wasn’t a bad-looking fellow back then. Are you looking for vintage-era De Niro nudes, or current ones? It makes a big difference.

“free naked pictures of stacy keach.”

Naturally, yes, they would be free. I can’t imagine anyone going into business trying to make money off of Stacy Keach nudes. Then again, someone out there is obviously into it…

“lena dunham fucking”

Watch an episode of Girls. Any episode of Girls! You’ll get what you came for.

“anna kendrick naked and having sex”

Do not bother me with pictures of Anna Kendrick naked and merely going about her day-to-day business, nor any pictures of Anna Kendrick having sex fully clothed. She must be naked and having sex. Mmkay?

“james franco giving blow job”

The man does a lot of things, but that’s one thing he probably doesn’t do. (Probably.)

“michael fassbender gay orgy”

Dream on.

“how many movies has channing tatum nude in”

Never enough!

“naked channing tatum,alex pettyfer and steven soderbergh”

Channing Tatum and Alex Pettyfer? Yep, they were pretty naked in Magic Mike. But was Steven Soderbergh naked while directing it? I don’t think so!

“james deen dick”

It’s probably harder to find pictures of James Deen without his penis visible.

“ix brad pitt still a sex symbol”

Well, it’s not like an official title that they revoke at a certain age. That’s just up to interpretation!

“was heather orourke blood sacrificed”

I don’t think so… um, why do you ask?

“all photos of uma thurman”

That’s a lot of photos.

“every jurassic park pictures”

Enjoy your extensive Google search for every single image of one of the most popular movies of all time!

“the craziest pictures”

Of…?

“train leaving a station 1895″

You must be looking for the 1895 short Arrival Of A Train At La Ciotat, one of the first films ever shown in theaters, which caused its audience to run and flee because they thought the train was real. Train Leaving A Station was the higher-budgeted sequel, which flopped hard in 1903 despite bigger stars and state-of-the-art special effects.

“a kiki is a party”

Well, it was… back in 2012…

“words liberice would say”

The man seemed fairly eloquent, so I imagine there are a lot of words Liberace might say. Care to narrow it down a little?

“the talking in the beginning of lady gagas marry the night”

Also known as “dialogue.”

“what did girl say to the aurochs?”

I don’t know, what did the girl say to the aurochs? Wait, was that not the beginning of a joke?

“britney spears fucked by man”

Which type of man were you hoping for? A Justin Timberlake type, or more of a Kevin Federline?

“britini sphere fucking hard”

Not even close.

“brity spaers fucking pic.com”

Nope!

“britni spars hard fucking”

Still no.

“hard fucking image of britny spears”

One thing I have learned through Google searches of my site? People are really not into soft, gentle fucking images of Britney Spears. Hard only!

“zero dark thirty naked”

You know, that scene where, after killing Osama bin Laden, Jessica Chastain strips naked and takes a nice, long, hot shower? Hmm? Right, no, that didn’t happen.

“argo nude”

What is it about hot-button, Oscar-nominated thrillers set in the Middle East that has everyone so worked up? Are you looking for naked shots of Ben Affleck? Try Gone Girl. If you are looking for naked shots of the Iranian hostages, I cannot help you.

“matt bomer and his naked”

…Emotions? You were attempting to Google “matt bomer and his naked emotions,” am I right?

“anglee fuck photo”

I assume you do not mean Ang Lee, director of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Life Of Pi.

“hot boobs touching scenes of kristen wiig from bridesmaid”

Are there hot boobs-touching scenes in Bridesmaids? Are they in the deleted scenes? I’ll need to get back to you on this, because I don’t recall.

“different movies of lovers having sex”

Those same old movies of lovers having sex are starting to get old. Let’s have some different ones for a change!

“new best fucking movie”

That best fucking movie from five minutes ago? So over it! So ready for a new best fucking movie, please!

“naked porn sex naked or porn or sex”

Not picky. That’s good.

“any fucking movie for hard”

Any fucking movie. Any fucking movie at all!

“what is best fucking film in 2013″

You are a year late, but here is my best of 2013. Surely that’s what you’re looking for.

“good songs for hard fucking”

If the music is so essential, you are doing it wrong.

“busty blond teacher took off her”

Took off her what? Favorite jacket? The suspense is killing Google!

“girls gooone wildp”

The number of one-handed typers who find my site is simply astonishing.

“white girl afro porn -black”

You seem confused about what you really want.

“white girl juicy come out”

It’s best not to think about any of the things this might mean.

“elisabeth naked”

Which Elisabeth do you mean? No matter how naked she may be, this Elisabeth has a last name and she’d probably prefer that you use it!

“porn stars frontal nudity”

A good way to filter out all those shy, demure porn stars who just won’t do full frontal.

“bare butt whore”

Whores who are shy about their asses being uncovered are the woooorst!

“bare ass boogie”

Is this a new “Macarena”-style dance number I should be on board with? I’m hoping not.

“uncut latin cocks”

This is what happens when you recap a show that has episode titles like “Looking For Uncut.” You find out that a lot of people on Google are also looking for uncut.

“grizzly beer”

Try again.

“sheronstonehard”

I’ve heard of death rattles… was this a death Google?

“learn to off bra panty”

Are you trying to Google how to remove a bra and panties? If you have to Google this, I’m pretty sure you will never have any use for these skills. Sorry!

“what is nude sex”

Thank you for providing your answer in the form of a question, but this is not Jeopardy. How old are you? Go ask your parents.

“dermot mulroney is smoking”

Oooh, I’m gonna tell!

“stranger by the lake cum”

Yes, actually, this movie does have some of that.

“is quentin tarantino a good fuck?”

Probably! Report back with your findings.

“does netflix have lovelace”

You know what might be a better site to search for this? Netflix!

“is lovelace on netflix”

See above.

“lovelace is it on netflx”

Really?

“katniss and finnick having sex”

I’m right there with you, but there are no pictures because it didn’t happen. Team Finnick all the way!

“jennifer lawrence hot in a silver lining playbook”

Make sure to specify that it’s just one singular silver lining playbook. We don’t have time to sift through all those playbooks, people.

“jennifer lawrence wolf of wall street”

You’re either thinking of American Hustle or Margot Robbie. Given the similarities between these characters, I will let this one slide.

“the wolf of wall street sick of waring panties”

A three-hour movie about the financial collapse of America, and this is your takeaway.

“margot robbie no panties”

They didn’t show it in the movie, so what makes you think Googling it will magically come up with some full-frontal Robbie?

“margot robbie legs open”

There we go. You’re welcome.

“wolf of wallstreet: wife with no panties”

The inevitable sequel.

“no country for the old man”

Is that supposed to be the No Country For Old Men prequel?

“deborah kara unger 2014 calendar”

I, too, make sure to get my official Deborah Kara Unger calendar every year.

“raped hard”

For those moments when those a soft and gentle rape just will not do.

“sarah michelle gellar nip”

Regular Buffy perv.

“sarah michelle gellar leather”

Bondage Buffy perv.

“sarah michelle gellar barefoot”

Foot fetish Buffy perv.

“sarah michelle gellar face”

Face perv? Googling “sarah michelle gellar” is going to bring up pictures of her face even without that specification. What did you think, it would just come up with a bunch of images of her elbow?

“sarah michelle gellar oops”

Hmm. Not sure.

“kesha mouth”

Yeah, I’d wager that most pictures of Ke$ha probably include her mouth.

“sela ward hard”

When you find a picture of Sela Ward with a boner, you let me know.

“the avengers not a great plan”

A team of heroes with the most extraordinary powers on Earth? Seems like a decent plan to me!

“what pants did scarlett johansson wear in winter soldier”

I’m pretty sure they just spray-painted her legs black.

“enemy what the fuck”

My thoughts exactly.

“what the hell is enemy about”

See above.

“blueberries meaning enemy”

So it wasn’t just me who picked up on some significance with the blueberries, then?

“enemy movie mother blueberries”

Yeah, maybe the mother has something to do with that, too.

“that movie called enemy with jake in it i didn’t get the ending”

After seeing the way you use Google, it’s obvious that you aren’t the brightest crayon in the box. I’m surprised you can even type. Cool that you and “Jake” are on a first-name basis, though!

“the one i love ending fake sophie bacon”

Ahh, some more food-related confusion about the end of a 2014 doppelganger movie.

“victims in horror movies who didn’t deserve to die”

Here you go!

“blonde girls that survive horror movies”

Has this ever happened?

“horror movies with blonde teens in highschool”

Yeah, you know… that horror movie! Like… with that blonde girl? I think maybe she’s in high school…? Come on, you know the one!

“is the ending of like crazy sad or happy?”

Because there are only two kinds of endings, right? 1) Sad. 2) Happy. There are no gray areas in cinema.

“conflict in before sunset between jesse and celine”

The whole movie is a conflict between Jesse and Celine. That is literally the only thing in the entire movie.

“thesis statement for django unchined”

Why, hello, there, film student who waited until the last possible moment to write his paper!

“main comedy elements of silver lining playbook”

Film student who waited until the last possible moment to write his paper, is that you again?

“zac efron plot twist”

Uh, which Zac Efron movie has a plot twist? 17 Again? High School Musical? Hairspray? Neighbors?

“edward norton’s erection”

How explicit!

“birdman 2014 erection”

Oh, right, Edward Norton’s erection in Birdman.

“birdman is riggan dead at the end”

That is open to interpretation.

“in birdman does riggan lose his nose”

That is not open to interpretation. They very clearly state what happens. He shoots off his nose.

“who can explain the ending of the michael keaton ‘bird man’ movie?”

Nobody! Please stop asking!

“titanic movie scenes”

You know what part of Titanic I really liked? The scenes!

“titanic 1997 ending”

It sinks.

“titanic movie heroine nude sketch hd”

She has a name. It’s Rose, dumbass.

“titanic jack & rose in car”

Subtle. But you really wanted to Google “Jack and Rose fucking,” didn’t you?

“titanic jack and rose not together”

Seventeen years later, still not over it.

“titanic fail”

Yes, sure, you could categorize that whole “hitting an iceberg” thing as a “fail.” An “epic fail,” even.

“dicaprio gives one of the boldest performances in his movie career”

Does he? In what? I’m seriously curious, because you could make an argument for “boldest performance” in just about any one of his movies!

“philip seymour hoffman as j. edgar hoover”

Wrong.

“gone girl mocks media”

Yes! It does! Very astute.

“gone girl don’t fuck with women”

That’s a pretty good way to sum up the theme of the film.

“nicole kidman fucking in dog town”

It’s Dogville, actually — there are only about a dozen people, it’s hardly a whole town. And for the record, she was being subjected to rape, not “fucking.”

“kate winslet c grade rape”

Do rapes get graded now? Who grades them, and what are the criteria? I would think the person being raped would pretty much give out nothing but “F”s, on principle. And why does Kate Winslet get a totally average rape? I feel like a Kate Winslet rape would get either an “A” or an “F,” nothing in between.

“is thomas horn gay”

Kinda seems that way, may be too early to tell.

“is the boy from movie extremely loud and incredibly close okay in real life”

I was wondering this myself, and I seriously doubt it.

“bruce wayne story”

It’s called Batman. 

“in spider man what is the green lizards name”

You gotta love Googlers who phrase things like they’re having an actual conversation. “Pray tell, where might I find the name of that charming lizard chap from the Spider-Man pictures?”

“storm coming up batman”

I guess this is reasonably close to “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne.” This is like a really bad translated version that gives away that he’s Batman.

“women of flash gordon naked porn”

Is this a thing? If this is a thing, I don’t want to know about it.

“redhead teen stepchild porn”

I’m not sure “redheaded stepchild” is meant to be a sexy term. Usually it’s pejorative.

“raped with sex machines”

Weird.

“nude sexual enjoyment”

Not to be confused with clothed sexual enjoyment, or various forms of nude enjoyment that are decidedly not sexual, or nude sexual misery.

“men grabbing each others crotch”

So you’re looking for PG-rated porn, then? Ohhhkay…

“verry hard & best fuck”

When non-English-speaking people try to Google in English.

“the most fuking movi film”

There are lots of very fucking movie-films, but which is the most fucking movie-film of them all?

“sex in motion”

Not a necrophiliac. That’s good!

“cleavage body swap”

Uh-oh, sounds like they’re running out of body swap ideas in Hollywood. Is this like Freaky Friday, except instead of a full body switch, Lindsay Lohan has Jamie Lee Curtis’ breasts and Jamie Lee Curtis has Lindsay Lohan’s breasts?

“oops i did it again schoolgirl”

Wrong Britney video, asshole.

“britney spears oops not again dance”

If you are gay, why don’t you know that Britney Spears did not record a song called “Oops, Not Again!” The proper title is “Oops I Did It Again.” And if you are not gay, why are you Googling Britney Spears dances?

“witch scratching”

What’s this?

“teen screams its to hard”

Hmm. Nope. Not going to go there.

“naughty america hot”

Does the Statue of Liberty have nudes?

“the best of oriental volume 2 fucking”

Good thing they added the “fucking,” because I was thinking we meant Oriental rugs. It’s also probably time to change this series to “best of Asian volume 2 fucking,” right? I mean, it’s 2015.

“fucking moviefullynaked”

I seriously don’t understand all the searches for “fully naked.” Is it really that hard to find fucking movies with nudity? How often have you seen a sex scene and thought, “Man, this would be really hot, if only she wasn’t wearing that fedora…”

“tree of life movie”

Good thing you specified Tree Of Life the movie. Otherwise your search might’ve taken you to Tree Of Life: The Ride.

“movies on netflix with male frontal”

Perhaps that $7.99 per month would best be spent on some other website subscription…

“hot blonde girls that play in movies”

There may be one or two of these in Hollywood.

“naked naked sex”

When naked sex just won’t do. This sex needs to be naked naked.

“les miserables sex”

You know what porn needs more of? Women selling their teeth and hair before they do it! I mean, if you are jacking off to Les Miserables, then I don’t know what to tell you.

“twister film sex”

Now you’re trying to masturbate to Twister? Is it Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, or the flying cow that got you going? There is nothing even close to sex in Twister. Nothing!

“the awkward pictures of beyonce”

She will cut you.

“movie about people with doubles when comet passes”

It’s called Coherence. You’re welcome!

“love.crack.smoking”

So do many of the people who find my website. Is that why you put periods in between words in Google?

“sexy fuck me dude”

Don’t just fuck me, dude. Sexy fuck me.

“find magic mike”

This is actually a good idea for a sexier version of “Where’s Waldo?”

“margaret thatcher deficiencies”

You mean the woman, or the biopic The Iron Lady? Either way, yes, tons of deficiencies.

“hitler studio”

It’s time to rename that studio.

“ryan phillippe scream”

Ryan Philippe was I Know What You Did Last Summer, not Scream.

“hate ny want to move to california”

We’ve all been there, everybody’s doing it!

“bad ass christmas song”

Here you go.

“i am bad here”

I’d rather you be bad wherever you are then bad here.

“daddy knocked me out to fuck me hard sex films”

Ah, my favorite shelf at any video store! A truly underrated genre.

“horny and lust for real true sibling”

Turn on your privacy settings.

“hot naked harmless rape”

Much like “fun, consequence-free manslaughter” or “frivolous, mutually beneficial burglary,” this is not really a thing.

“i hate jake gyllenhaal”

I’m sorry you feel that way.

“george c scott was difficult”

Still holding that grudge, eh?

“pl travers was a bitch”

Agreed. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one with that takeaway from Saving Mr. Banks.

“was p.l. travers a bitch?”

Yes.

“was p l travers really a bitch”

Yes!

“why was p l travers such a bitch”

There is literally an entire movie devoted to this question, and yet it seems this person Googled this after watching it rather than before.

“pl travers was acted like a bitch”

Yeah, we covered this, except with better English.

“i dont like rihanna becuase she like hitler”

Because she’s like Hitler? Or because she likes Hitler? Either way, this is news to me, and it’s not good.

“rihanna fucked hard and crying seriously”

No crocodile tears during sex, RiRi. We want real tears.

“sister is horny on christmas day to fuck brother and dad on film”

Ho, ho, ho! Nothing says “happy holidays” like a whole lotta incest!

“fucking birthday cakes”

A strange fetish I don’t care to learn more about.

“fuck cake”

I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.

“toaster strudel boy looks like kerstin dundts”

You couldn’t have spelled Kirsten Dunst’s name any more phonetically. Anyway, I had no idea who this was, but when I Googled this myself, I discovered that it’s actually true:

‘Til next time, Google.

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How to review a movie like Mother?

Honestly, it’s probably best not to try… but here goes.

Darren Aronofsky’s films usually inspire debate. From the manic dread of Requiem For A Dream to the time-tripping earnestness of The Fountain to the gonzo horror-art of Black Swan, Aronofsky goes for broke in his filmography, taking huge artistic risks. A lot of cinephiles adore him for it — myself included. Some find his films too heavy-handed… a little much.

By most metrics, Black Swan is his biggest success thus far — raking in overs $300 million worldwide, admired by critics and audiences, a Best Picture nomination and an Oscar for Natalie Portman. There are plenty of people who didn’t care for Black Swan, my favorite film of 2010, and I get that. Because it’s art. Not many films are made these days, truly, as art — those that are are made on such a small scale, the general public never hears about them.

But the general public has heard about Mother, hasn’t it? And like the best art, it is provoking some very strong opinions.

If you don’t like any other Darren Aronofsky movies, there’s almost no hope you’ll love Mother. It doubles, then triples, then quadruples down on all the things his harshest critics lambast him for. It’s somewhat obscure, but not subtle. (The official title is mother!, after all.) And even if you adored Requiem For A Dream or Black Swan, that’s no guarantee you’ll have the same goodwill toward Mother. For some Aronofsky fans, this is a bridge too far into this auteur’s brand of grandiose intensity, a film that marries his two most love-it-or-hate titles, The Fountain and Black Swan. Like The Fountain, Mother explores a relationship between a man and a woman in a very unconventional fashion. Like Black Swan, it strands us in a tormented young woman’s point of view. However much you liked or did not like The Fountain and Black Swan, multiply it by ten, and there’s my prediction of how you’ll feel about Mother. Mother is probably best categorized as a horror film, though it’s a far cry from Annabelle or It. Like recent indie horror hits like It Follows, The Babadook, and Get Out, there’s more on Mother‘s mind than thrills and chills. Much more. A lot of horror films are allegories; very few are only allegories. But that’s what Mother is. There’s no way to take the story at face value — to believe its characters are real, relatable people, or that the situation they find themselves in is literally happening. In its simple set-up, Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem play a couple living in an idyllic, isolated house, with no hints of any neighbors nearby. They soon find their domestic paradise intruded upon, first by a man claiming to be a doctor (Ed Harris), and next by his mischievous wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). None of these characters have names, which is a good tip-off that there’s more to what’s happening than meets the eye.

It’s understandable why filmgoers expecting a studio horror-thriller would be put off by Mother. First of all, making sense of it requires work. Very little of what happens in the film is logical, and the characters don’t behave quite like real people would in such circumstances. (Because they’re not.) Aronofsky has been pretty straightforward regarding what Mother is “about,” while leaving room for alternate interpretations. Mother is art. The artist has his intent. And, as in all works of art, other elements from the author’s psyche find their way in, too — maybe consciously, maybe not. Mother is all allegory, but thinking it’s all one allegory is a boring interpretations. The film works on many levels at once, commenting upon the past, present, and future of human existence, both real and imagined. You might leave the theater asking, “Was it about the Bible? Or climate change? Or fame? Or the subjugation of women?” The answer is yes.I doubt that any one single interpretation of Mother justifies all its disparate parts. Rather, it’s a film of ideas, and these ideas may differ from scene to scene. I already likened one other 2017 movie to an “art project” — David Lowry’s A Ghost Story, which in many ways is a very similar film. (It is also equally likely to alienate filmgoers who prefer not to have to think about what they’re seeing.) Both Mother and A Ghost Story take place almost entirely within one house. Both have a jarring approach to the passage of time. Both focus in on an unnamed male and an unnamed female, though there are occasional intruders into each story. Both movies are made to provoke thought in willing viewers — complex and esoteric thoughts about life, love, mortality, and plenty more. Neither film is specific to its protagonists — because neither film has real characters, per se. These films work less as stories about individuals, and more as ruminations on mankind itself. Is that ambitious, or pretentious? Yes.

Mother is a film I’ll need to watch it again, multiple times, to sort through all the many thoughts I had while watching it. I’ll have to grapple with it a while before I know how I truly feel about it. That makes it a success. The rapid-fire pace of the internet has taken a lot of the art out of moviegoing; everything is love it or hate it, the best or the worst, rotten or fresh, “liked” or unliked… and word travels fast. Mother has a fascinating “F” Cinemascore and has stirred up so much ire amongst its potential fan base. I think that’s great. I see plenty of films meant to provoke such reactions, but most people don’t. They see The Fate Of The Furious and It and Beauty And The Beast. (I see some of those, too.) Most people don’t have a chance to get riled up about a m0vie that was made to infuriate them anymore. You have to seek that experience out, and most don’t. But this weekend, I’m seeing so many real reactions to this film. I find that encouraging.Yes, plenty are attempting to dismiss the movie as “awful.” But what was awful, Mother-haters? The performances? The visual effects? The cinematography? It’s fair to challenge these elements of the filmmaking, but they’re too purposeful to write-off as merely “bad.” Most Mother-haters would probably agree that on a technical level, it’s largely a well-made film. What a lot of people mean by “it sucks,” in Mother‘s case, is that the experience of watching it challenged them, and they did not enjoy being challenged. You can walk into a museum and look at a painting and call it terrible, if you wish, but what you really mean is that you didn’t like it, and the reason you didn’t like it is because of an emotional response. Some movies are terrible, abjectly failing at what they set out to do. But Mother knows exactly what it’s doing — the CinemaScore “F” proves it. Even for those who hated every minute of it, Mother will linger in the mind. It won’t be forgotten. Its themes may come back to those who saw it in unexpected moments. Fans of the film will continue challenging critics, and hopefully draw out debate. I love that people found Mother to be really, truly excruciating — because it’s a response. Mother won’t be seen far and wide by mainstream moviegoers, despite its sizeable release, but even the viewership it’s achieved thus far is impressive, for any work of art. It’s an antidote to the big screen binkys that dominate the box office — another Star Wars, another Spider-Man, another live-action Disney cartoon. Mother doesn’t play by the rules today’s moviegoers have been trained to abide. It isn’t neat, or safe, and it won’t remind you of anything from your childhood. Your Netflix queue won’t be able to predict whether or not it’s “for you.” (Well, maybe if you’ve given low scores to every other Darren Aronofsky movie.) It doesn’t care for tomatoes — fresh, rotten, or otherwise.

That isn’t to say it’s not valid to absolutely, positively fucking loathe this movie with every fiber of your being. But to do so honestly, you’ll have to grapple with Mother, and at least some of what it’s trying to say. It is a film meant to remind the frog that he’s sitting in a pot of boiling water, though most frogs prefer not to be reminded. Let’s discuss.

Aronofsky’s Mother is a cinematic expression of “giving zero fucks,” an exceptionally weird film by any standard. It may be an intentional joke, on his part, that so many who deride Mother for “bad storytelling” literally worship this exact same story. (Does that one make sense?) The ire audiences have for Mother comes as no surprise in a year like 2017 — it is a film made outside of the bubble, no matter which bubble you’re in. Most movies this strange and surreal are elusive, as in the works of David Lynch. By contrast, Mother is in your face — willfully, defiantly challenging, but not the kind of movie you need to “figure out.” There’s no puzzle to be solved, no key to understanding it better. The more you know about Mother, the more questions it will raise. The more I review it, the more I need to keep on reviewing it. So I might as well stop now.

Mother is a work of art, meant to provoke strong reactions and incite debate. So far, it’s working.

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