Haywire

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1506999/

Friday, January 20, 2011, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

I think that boxing is one of the dumbest sports in the world, and wrestling is about at the same IQ level but has the added detraction of being largely staged and injected with stupid story lines and unnecessary drama. That dislike has also spilled into martial arts, although there are exceptions (for example, I enjoy watching martial artists demonstrate their board/cement/baseball bat breaking abilities, and I often love karate and kung fu movies). Since I don't follow MMA, I wasn't familiar with Gina Carano, and I was pleasantly surprised to find her to be much more pleasantly proportioned than many female fighters, and yet no less capable.

In the film, Carano plays Mallory, who works for a private company that contracts to the U.S. government for all kinds of nasty top-secret jobs that no one else wants or is qualified to take. She had recently been called to Barcelona on a hostage rescue mission, and then no sooner had she returned home than she was out again to Dublin as a favor to British MI6. But things went all kinds of crazy on that job, and she found herself on the wrong side of the law and a target of the police and other government contractors. To clear her name, she's got to stay alive, outwitting or outfighting those coming after her, while she tries to figure out who's got it in for her.

I prefer going into movies knowing as little about them as possible, so Haywire had a lot of surprises in store for me. The overwhelming impression that I'd gotten from others was that it is wall-to-wall action, but I didn't find that to be the case. There are lots of fight scenes, and most of them are pretty amazing, but there's also quite a bit more downtime and a more intricate plot than I had expected. When Carano is fighting, it's incredible. She also makes for impressive eye candy, and the scenes in which she's both gorgeous and deadly are by themselves worth the price of admission. But acting is definitely not her strong suit, and her delivery of dialogue is much less convincing than her delivery of kicks and punches.

Fortunately, Carano isn't required to carry the acting load on her own. Hers was the only name I'd heard in connection with the film, but I was quite surprised to learn of the extensive, well-credentialed supporting cast which included the likes of Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, and Channing Tatum. For the most part, they played their parts well, and when something didn't work it was often more the fault of the weak screenplay (written by Lem Dobbs, who doesn't have any other credited films in the last decade) than the actors inhabiting it.

I think that ultimately the film tries to be too smart for its own good. The best parts were the dumb action sequences, and the weakest were those that got bogged down with plot and dialogue. It's a fun movie, but I think it would have been a lot better with a little less conversation and a little more action. Or maybe a lot more action.

The Iron Lady

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1007029/

Monday, January 16, 2011, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

Meryl Streep is an incredible actress and is superb at playing fictional characters, but she takes it to another level when portraying real people. She completely transformed her appearance when playing Julia Child in Julie & Julia, and she outdid herself once again as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. It's a real shame that her talent was wasted on an otherwise disappointing film.

Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) was born into a relatively modest life. Her parents ran a grocery in a small town in which her father also served as mayor. She had to work hard for everything she got, and had the added difficulty of being a woman in a world in which the term "male-dominated" is a pretty significant understatement. And when she made it to the top of the British political system, she was faced with civil unrest, attacks on British territory, and the persistent threat of Soviet aggression. She was famous for sticking to her guns and refusing to compromise on important issues, and was willing to make tough decisions when the need arose. She held her nation together through tough times, and had a hand in the end of the Cold War.

You'd think that with such a resume, a biography would focus on her political accomplishments and struggles, and on the events that led her into that life. And yet The Iron Lady spends most of its time on a point in her life about two decades after stepping down as prime minister. Her husband Dennis (portrayed by Jim Broadbent) had been dead for about eight years, and since he died in 2003 then that would set the film in the year 2011. At this time, Thatcher is old and frail and often senile. She can still see and talk to her dead husband, tends to get confused when she's around real people. What we do learn about the great accomplishments of her life comes in the form of flashbacks, often instigated by an only-in-her-mind exchange with Dennis.

I'm utterly shocked by the direction they chose to take the film. We only get momentary glimpses of the powerful, world-changing woman that she once was, interspersed among scenes showing her current state of failing mind and failing body. Meryl Streep was at the top of her game and her portrayal of Thatcher absolutely deserves the award victories and nominations she's already received and those that are still to come. But I came away feeling cheated by their insistence on looking at the frailty and vulnerability of her current state rather than what she had once been. Someone who is only momentarily distracted might completely miss the fact that she helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union, but it's made quite clear that Dennis couldn't make toast without burning it, and couldn't eat it without slathering it with butter.

To put it bluntly, the film borders on being offensive and embarrassing. I'm not saying that it doesn't accurately portray her current state, but to so completely minimize her accomplishments and underscore her weakness does a disservice to both the Mrs. Thatcher and to the audience.

Contraband

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1524137/

Sunday, January 15, 2011, Alamo Drafthouse Ritz

I really don't understand Mark Wahlberg's movie selection process. In the past few years, he's done some great films like The Fighter, The Departed, and Invincible, some perfectly adequate movies like Shooter and The Italian Job, and some absolutely horrible movies like The Happening and Rock Star. I didn't expect Contraband to be great, but I'd hoped it would still be worth watching. Too bad that wasn't the case.

Once upon a time, Chris and Kate Farraday (Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale) were an elite smuggling team able to get just about anything past customs. But after having a couple of kids, it was time to settle down and go straight. Kate became a stay-at-home mom, and Chris started his own company installing security alarms. There were still plenty of bad people who wanted to bring bad stuff into the country, but they just had to find other people to do it. Kate's younger brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) decided to try his hand at it, but when border security agents got a little too close to his boat he dumped the cocaine overboard. This kept him out of jail, but didn't endear him to Tim (Giovanni Ribisi) who had hired him to do the job. Tim put Andy into the hospital and made it clear that if Andy didn't come up with the cocaine or its street value in cash, he'd be going to the morgue, and then Tim would come after his family.

Chris had done plenty of work for Tim in the past and tried to reason with him, but the best deal he could get was two weeks to come up with the coke or the cash. Chris wasn't about to be a drug runner, so he decided to go with counterfeit. As luck would have it, he just happened to have an in with the crew of a cargo ship that was just about to leave for Panama, where he knew a guy who could create "supernotes" that were virtually indistinguishable from legitimate currency. They'd have to work fast, since apparently the ship was only going to be in port in Panama for about four hours before turning right back around to get them back home in time for the deadline, but it was their only shot.

Your ability to enjoy Contraband is probably directly related to your ability to switch off your brain. It is full of logic holes and stupid plot points, but it's also got a decent amount of action, so it can be fun if you try not to think about it too much. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at doing that, so the utter stupidity of the film hit me with full force while I was watching it. Like Tim's insistence on continuing to intimidate Kate and the boys while Chris and Andy were doing the job for him. Like how incredibly convenient it was that a ship full of people he knew was ready to take him right where he needed to go right within his very tight time constraints, and how convenient it was that the counterfeiter had no problem coming up with a whole van full of supernotes at the drop of a hat. Like how the thousands of shipping containers would be unloaded and replaced (and the ship refueled and resupplied) in a four hour window. And those are just problems I can mention without spoiling anything.

Since it's simply not possible to miss the absurdity of the story, you'd think that they would put in enough other content to try to overcome that, but I didn't really find that to be the case. It's not boring per se, but there are only a few scenes where there might be enough action to forget how stupid it is. There's also not much in the way of comedy or interesting dialogue, so it's pretty much a one-trick pony that doesn't even do that trick very well.

The Divide

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535616/

Saturday, January 14, 2011, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

Michael Biehn has been in a number of great films, including The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Tombstone, and a number of others of varied quality. When The Divide came to Austin, the Alamo Drafthouse invited Biehn to introduce it, during which time he gave away a lot of the important plot points and spoiled large portions of the film. But as it turns out, the movie really isn't worth seeing, so perhaps it's better to have him tell you want happens than to watch it for yourself.

The film opens with a city (presumably New York) devastated by a massive explosion, probably from some kind of nuclear device. Mickey (Biehn) had been a firefighter during 9/11, and that experience forever changed his life. He gave up being a firefighter to become a building superintendent, and he lived his life under the assumption that it was only a matter of time until the next big thing hit. So as a haggard survivalist, he turned the building's basement into a bunker where he would be able to ride out whatever might come in relative comfort while the rest of the world was destroyed around him. But he hadn't expected he'd have to share that space with about nine of the other building's residents who managed to make their way in before he sealed the door.

For someone so certain of an impending violent end to civilization, he stocked his bunker in a rather unusual way. He had a supply of food and water, although it had been intended for just one man and would be a stretch to sustain ten people until the radiation subsided enough to make it safe to go outside. And yet despite his solo intentions, he had plenty of mattresses for everyone to sleep on (which they made an effort to point out, and yet no effort to explain). He had a gasoline generator, although it was employed in a pretty uneconomical manner to operate a refrigerator and big screen TV. He had lockers and walkie-talkies and plenty of cigarettes, but no guns.

Almost instantly, factions arose within the bunker. Certainly seeing the world they knew come to an end didn't put them in a great mental state to start with, and cabin fever, hunger, and boredom set in very quickly. It also didn't help much that they fell under attack pretty early on by a group of soldier-scientists who set up some kind of laboratory right outside their door in a plot line that was never explained and never addressed again. But a complete lack of any form of logic is one of the defining characteristics of the movie, and because it's about two hours long they have a lot of time to fill with things that don't make sense and people you don't care about.

The film is ultimately more psychological thriller than horror, and deals more with the breakdown of civilization in this closed, high-pressure environment. But merely having characters lose their minds and do irrational and impolite things doesn't really make for much of a thriller. And although they were brought together by a nuclear blast that leveled the city, it really doesn't really fit in the post-apocalyptic category either. If it is necessary to try to classify The Divide, I'd say it best fits in the "not worth watching" category.

Pariah

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233334/

Saturday, January 14, 2011, Regal Arbor Cinema

I know that it's a subject that I rant about frequently, but I absolutely hate movie trailers. There's never been a case in which seeing a trailer for a movie before seeing the movie has improved my experience, but there have been many cases in which the trailer has detracted from the film or convinced me to not see it. Pariah is yet another great movie with a horrible trailer, and it really prevented me from experiencing the full effect of the film.

Alike (played by Adepero Oduye) is a smart high school student and aspiring writer. Her name is pronounced uh-leek-ay, but everyone except her father Arthur (Charles Parnell) just calls her Li. She's also a lesbian, wears mannish clothes, and tries to do whatever she can to avoid looking "girly". She and her best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) frequent lesbian night clubs, and she doesn't do anything to hide her orientation at school, but she hasn't come out to her family and she's in the habit of changing her clothes after she leaves home in the morning and before she returns at night.

Although Alike's parents have their suspicions, they're grasping at whatever straws they can to hold out hope that she's straight. Her father is a police detective who becomes aggressive if anyone even hints that she might be gay, and he tries to spend as much time as possible away from home to avoid interacting with her. Her mother Audrey (Kim Wayans) is a devout churchgoing woman who is also in denial and tries to buy her cute outfits and force her to spend less time with Laura and more time with Bina (Aasha Davis), the daughter of a coworker and fellow congregation member.

Had I not seen the trailer ahead of time and had it spoil some of the most significant scenes for me, I probably would have been a lot more devastated by this movie than I was. It's relatively short, but it packs in a lot of emotions like fear and denial and anger and inadequacy. Part of the film's power comes from the great performances, but it also stems from the realization that her parents are concerned more about how her lesbianism will reflect on them. Her father becomes enraged if anyone even broaches the subject with him, and her mother seems more concerned about Alike's appearance than her feelings.

The roles are all played expertly, but I was prevented from becoming truly engrossed in the story because I had (based on the trailer) a pretty good idea how it was going to end. It's a movie that is definitely worth seeing, but I'd recommend trying not to learn much about it before diving in.

Carnage

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1692486/

Saturday, January 14, 2011, Regal Arbor Cinema

I can't imagine what it must be like to grow up as a kid in today's world. When I was a kid, I played on dangerous playground equipment and in homemade tree houses. I rode in the back of station wagons and pickup trucks without being restrained in any way. And with entertainment like The Karate Kid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I spent a lot of time fighting with friends. It was all in fun, but occasionally someone would get hurt by a punch or kick that landed just a little too hard. But today's idiotic “zero tolerance” policies seem like a way of immersing children in the police state culture before they get a chance to have fun or make mistakes they can learn from.

Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) and Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) are just these kinds of overprotective parents, with the added bonus that they're very concerned about how the behavior of their children reflects on their image. When their sons Ethan and Zachary get into an altercation, it's imperative that they (the parents, with no sign of the children) get together and discuss it. When Penelope and Michael invited Nancy and Alan to their apartment, they thought it would be a relatively quick ordeal to craft a statement that both parties could agree on. When the film begins, they're just finishing that statement and Nancy and Alan are about to leave. And they're still just about to leave for the next hour and a half.

Their interaction starts off in an excessively civilized way, with everyone going far out of their way to be more polite and sophisticated than they really are (with the possible exception of Penelope, who at least believes that she's as refined as the image she's trying to present). Penelope and Michael live in the kind of apartment that may be nice to look at, but that would be horrible to live in. The coffee table littered with art books is front and center, the walls are lined with decorative sculptures and at least one well-lit but completely empty frame, and the television is high up in the corner right next to the window, with none of the furniture really facing it.

Nancy and Alan make their way out the door several times, and yet they always seem to be drawn back in for some reason. First, it's for coffee and cobbler. Then it's for more coffee. Then it's a phone call that Alan can't take in the elevator because there's no reception. And then it's the arguing. As they day wears on and the alcohol comes out, the politeness and civility is dropped and their real personalities are exposed.

The film is based on a play, and that really comes through in its direction. With the exception of bookends shot at the nearby park where the fight occurred, the whole movie takes place in Penelope and Michael's apartment (or in the hall just in front of it), and mostly just in the living room. But they make good use of that space and the film doesn't really feel constrained in any way. It's a good "pressure cooker" kind of environment, but they find increasingly interesting (and funny) ways to vent that pressure.

John C. Reilly is a great choice for Michael because his comedy experience really comes through, but so does the more heartfelt performances from recent films like Cyrus and Terri. Christoph Waltz also gives a great performance, although his is the only character that doesn't really undergo any significant transition in the film. He starts off as a disinterested, self-involved jerk and stays that way throughout the movie, whereas it takes time for the others to drop their personas and devolve to his level. Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster also do well enough in their roles, although in many ways it feels that they're playing more supporting roles than starring even if everyone has roughly the same amount of screen time and dialogue.

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie's comedy. Although I was initially concerned about the "sophisticated" humor which is only mildly funny and won't get more than polite laughs, I was happy to see that as the walls are broken down between them, their interactions get funnier. It's still not going to go toe-to-toe with the best pure comedies, but there's enough substance layered underneath to make it a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

2011 Movies and Television in Review

It's safe to say that I watched more movies and television in 2011 than any year that came before it. This was only the second year that I meticulously tracked the number of movies I saw in a theater, and the first year that I tracked movies I saw out of the theater, and also all of the television shows I watched. But even without hard data from years past, I can confidently say that I blew the bloody doors off any other year so far. What follows is a set of eleven lists that I've put together about my year's movie and television experiences.

Statistics about My Movie Watching in 2011

• I had a total of 513 movies or movie-related experiences in or associated with a movie theater (as compared with 512 in 2010, so I beat my previous best there by one). That's some pretty vague language, and the vast majority of the time it refers to movies watched in a movie theater. There were a handful of cases in which it refers to movies not watched within the walls of a theater but nevertheless in some way run by a theater (e.g., the Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow), and there were some things that I watched in a movie theater that weren't strictly speaking movies (e.g., collections of shorts).
  
  
• Of the 513 theater-related movie-ish things I saw in 2011, 445 of those were associated with the Alamo Drafthouse (as compared with 453 in 2010, but I blame Weird Wednesday's time change and Austin Film Festival's not showing any movies at Lake Creek for the discrepancy). 230 of those were at the Ritz location, 129 at South Lamar, 56 at Lake Creek, 27 at the Village, and 3 Rolling Roadshow presentations. I love the Alamo Drafthouse.
  
  
• I saw a total of 1125 movies that were in no way affiliated with a movie theater (mostly at home and at the office while getting some work done). 497 were on Netflix Watch Instantly, 340 on Amazon Instant Video, 223 on DVD or Blu-Ray, 56 on television, 7 on Hulu, and 2 downloaded (through completely legal means -- I did not watch any content obtained through less-than-legal methods).
  
  
• I saw 698 television episodes in 2011, and I think that the only thing I watched live was the 2011 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on the 4th of July. I watched 410 episodes on Hulu, 156 on Amazon Instant Video, 103 via cable TV (102 of which were time-shifted using TiVo), 17 on DVD, and the rest on TV network websites (again, all through completely legal means). If you count each half-hour episode as a quarter of a film and each hour-long episode as a half of a film, then this works out to being the equivalent of 201 movies.
  
  
• If you add all the movies I saw in-theater and those I saw not-in-theater, it adds up to 1638. If you also throw in television (with each half hour considered a quarter of a movie), the total comes to 1839.
  
  
• Of the 1638 total movies I saw in 2011, 1452 of them were movies I'd never seen before (368 in the theater, 1084 otherwise). Only 186 movies were ones I had seen before (and some of those were repeat viewings of movies I'd first seen in 2011).
  
  
• There was not a single day in 2011 on which I didn't watch at least one movie. There were some days on which I watched only one, but there were others on which I saw as many as eight. I've never seen more than five movies in a theater on the same day (although I've done that on many occasions), but I'd love to break that. On average I saw 1.41 movies per day in the theater, and it goes up to 4.49 movies per day if you add in those seen not-in-theater.
  
  
• During the dates of August 7 and December 21, I saw at least one movie in a theater every single day. During that 137-day stretch, I saw 269 in-theater movies. All but four of those days (all of which were during Austin Film Festival) included at least one movie in an Alamo Drafthouse, including a streak of 75 days in a row with at least one movie in an Alamo Drafthouse.
  
  
• Although it doesn't really count as movies or television, I listened to a lot of audiobooks over the year, primarily in the car or while eating. I kept track of them, too, and over the course of the year, I finished 54 audiobooks, but four of those were short stories so they shouldn't really count, leaving an even 50. Many of them were excellent, but my favorite was Ready Player One by Ernie Cline.
  
  
• I didn't keep track of a number of online-only content that I consumed, like YouTube videos and podcasts (video and audio). But there was a lot of that, too.
  
  

The Best Overall New Movies I Saw in 2011

According to Box Office Mojo, there were 591 movies whose first theatrical release (excluding film festivals) was in 2011. Although there are many movies on this list that I didn't see, of those that I did see, I consider the following to be the best:

1. I Saw the Devil
2. The Yellow Sea
3. Attack the Block
4. The Artist
5. The Skin I Live In
6. Midnight in Paris
7. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
8. The Guard
9. 13 Assassins
10. Drive

Note that although The Yellow Sea is not listed as a 2011 movie on Box Office Mojo, it played for a week at the Alamo Drafthouse, so I nevertheless consider it eligible for this list.

The Best New Wide Release Movies I Saw in 2011

Also according to Box Office Mojo, there were 146 movies that are considered "wide releases" (i.e., those that people virtually anywhere in the U.S. should have a reasonable chance of being able to see in a theater). Constraining myself to these "mainstream" movies, I consider the following to be the best:

1. Midnight in Paris
2. Drive
3. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
4. 50/50
5. The Debt
6. Bridesmaids
7. Captain America: The First Avenger
8. Paul
9. Arthur Christmas
10. The Muppets

The Worst New Movies I Saw in 2011

I am (at least for the most part) not a masochist. I tend to avoid movies that I expect I will hate. But for one reason or another, I saw a lot of movies that were much worse than I had expected. My list of the new movies I saw and most hated this year include:

1. Enter the Void
2. Knuckle
3. The Sitter
4. Apollo 18
5. Footloose
6. Paranormal Activity 3
7. Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
8. Real Steel
9. Ip Man 2
10. The Adventures of Tintin

If you include movies that I fortunately missed in the theater but then for some reason stupidly decided to watch in some other form, then The Change-Up and Zookeeper would also appear on that list, and I'd probably put them both between Knuckle and The Sitter.

The Most Overrated New Movies I Saw in 2011

There were some movies that everyone except me seemed to love, but that I did not. In some cases, I hated them, and in others, I just didn't share the same undying affection that everyone else had. The most notable of those include:

1. Enter the Void
2. The Adventures of Tintin
3. Bellflower
4. Margaret
5. Meek's Cutoff
6. Another Earth
7. Hugo
8. Source Code
9. Kill List
10. Project Nim

Movies I Unintentionally Missed in 2011

For the most part, when a movie was playing in the area that I wanted to see, I made the effort to go see it. However, there are a number of films that I would have liked to see but didn't get the chance for one reason or another. I don't expect that they're all great films, but I still want to see them at some point. They include (in alphabetical order, since I don't have any other way of raking them):

• A Separation
• Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
• Carnage
• Clown
• Corman's World
• Michael
• Pariah
• Texas Killing Fields
• We Need to Talk About Kevin
• The Woman

Movies I Intentionally Missed in 2011

Even though I see a lot of movies, I am nonetheless somewhat picky when it comes to seeking out films to watch, and I'm probably more likely to dismiss a mainstream movie that looks bad than one that's less well known. The highest-grossing movies I chose not to see this year include:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
2. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
3. The Hangover Part 2
4. Pirates of the Caribbean Part 4: On Stranger Tides
5. The Fast and the Furious Part 5: Fast Five
6. Cars 2
7. Thor
8. Hop
9. Just Go With It
10. Alvin and the Chipmunks Part 3: Chipwrecked

Note that this list is films I didn't see in any form. There are a number of films that I was smart enough to skip in the theater but stupid enough to watch when they were released in some other form later (usually via Amazon Instant Video), and they include:

1. Rio
2. The Smurfs
3. Rango
4. Bad Teacher
5. Gnomeo and Juliet

The Best As-Yet-Unreleased Movies I Saw in 2011

I had the opportunity to see a number of great movies last year that haven't yet been officially released (mostly at film festivals). The I think are most worth checking out when they are eventually released include:

1. You're Next
2. Sleep Tight
3. A Boy and His Samurai
4. Headhunters
5. Rabies
6. Some Guy Who Kills People
7. Revenge: A Love Story
8. Bullhead
9. Summerland
10. My Sucky Teen Romance

The Best "Old" Movies I Saw for the First Time in 2011

One of the things I tried to do this year was to right a number of wrongs in the form of classic movies I'd never seen before (and for the purposes of this list, "classic" is anything other than new releases). There are still some big movies on my to-do list, but I got to experience a lot of really great older films. It would have been impossible for me to narrow it down to a top ten, and it was hard enough getting it to twenty. Those films are (in alphabetical order so I don't have to try to rank them):

• Amélie
• The Apartment
• The Conversation
• Diabolique
• Duck Soup
• The Front Page
• The General
• The Great Dictator
• Harvey
• Ikiru
• The Isle
• Life Is Beautiful
• The Night of the Hunter
• The Orphanage
• [REC]
• The Reluctant Astronaut
• Roman Holiday
• Rope
• Smokey and the Bandit
• Taxi Driver

My Favorite Theatrical Experiences in 2011

One of the great things about living in Austin, Texas is the Alamo Drafthouse. They have an incredible passion for movies and incredible ways of sharing that passion with others. That is infectious, and sometimes leads to great non-Drafthouse experiences. Some of the best movie experiences I've had in a theater (or associated with a theater) this year include:

1. All of Fantastic Fest. An amazing eight days of some of the most amazing horror, sci-fi, martial arts, and generally awesome films.
   
   
2. The Planet of the Apes marathon. All five original Planet of the Apes movies back to back (the latter four of which I'd never seen before), with a special themed menu (lots of banana-related food). Plus, I won a Mondo Planet of the Apes poster.
   
   
3. The Party Down marathon. All twenty episodes of the amazing Starz TV series with the creators (Rob Thomas, Dan Etheridge, and John Enbom) and most of the cast (including Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Lizzy Caplan, Martin Starr, and Ryan Hansen) in attendance. For movie accounting purposes, I counted each ten-episode season as a single movie.
   
   
4. The Dawn of the Dead Mondo Mystery Screening. The original Dawn of the Dead film presented by Mondo. We were told to meet at a local church, were loaded onto buses and rushed with a police escort to the Highland Mall, where we were attacked by hundreds of zombies while running into the mall. George Romero introduced the film, and at the end we got an amazing poster. Plus, the movie is even more awesome than you'd expect projected in 35mm on the big screen.
   
   
5. The original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, presented at the Junction House where it was originally filmed. Several cast members (Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danziger, and Kim Henkel) were in attendance. I bought a special VIP ticket that included a meal inside the Junction House before the film started, and I got to eat a steak in the bone room from the movie.
   
   
6. Aliens on Ice. The Old Murder House theater acted out an extremely low-budget version of James Cameron's Aliens at the Chaparral Ice Rink. Hilarious actors capturing the essence of a great film while desperately trying to keep their legs under them.
   
   
7. The Oscar Nominees marathon. All ten movies nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for best picture (split across two Sundays with five movies each day). There wasn't any special fanfare or menu around this, but it's hard to beat for amazing density of great films.
   
   
8. A pair of films with the legendary Hollywood stuntman turned director, Hal Needham. I started the day with Mr. Needham presenting his amazing, little-known film The Villain, and then that evening sat in the Ritz balcony for Smokey and the Bandit, preceded by a video detailing Mr. Needham's extremely impressive accomplishments in and out of film, and followed by an equally impressive Q&A session. Following the film, I bought a signed copy of his book Stuntman!, which I highly recommend as a great read.
   
   
9. A trio of films by the amazing director William Lustig, with Mr. Lustig in attendance. We first saw the 1980 horror Maniac!, followed by the Terror Tuesday presentation of Maniac Cop 2. The experience was capped off perfectly by the next day's Weird Wednesday screening of Vigilante.
   
   
10. The inaugural screening of Video Hate Squad, the Drafthouse series screening movies only released on VHS (and yes, it's projected from a VCR onto the big screen). For the first movie of the series, they chose the amazing 1987 war/action film Deadly Prey, which thrilled everyone in the audience. And then they surprised everyone at the end by bringing out stars Ted Prior and David Campbell for an incredible Q&A.

My Favorite Television from 2011

Since I also watched a lot of television in 2011, it only seems fitting to share the best new shows I discovered last year. By far, I watched more episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report than anything else, but some of the great new discoveries I made were:

1. The League – A hilarious show about a group of people in a fantasy football league. You don't have to like sports to love this show.
   
   
2. Breaking Bad – I've only seen the first season so far, but I intend to dive into the next three in the very near future, so don't spoil anything for me.
   
   
3. The Ricky Gervais Show and An Idiot Abroad – A pair of Ricky Gervais shows in which he and Stephen Merchant poke fun at Karl Pilkington, with hilarious results.
   
   
4. Dead Set – A very short British series about a zombie outbreak and how it affects those on the set of the UK smash hit TV series Big Brother.
   
   
5. Man Stroke Woman – Yet another British show, this one is a series of very short comedy sketches by a cast including Nick Frost. And by the way, in the UK "stroke" is the word they use for "forward slash", so the Americanized version of the title is "Man/Woman", which isn't quite as suggestive as the British title makes it sound.

War Horse

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568911/

Friday, December 30, 2011, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek

When writing a review, I always do my best to avoid revealing anything that could spoil the experience of someone who hasn't yet seen the movie. Most of the time, I can explain what I liked and/or didn't like about a film in vague or generic enough terms to get the point across without spoiling anything. However, in the case of War Horse, I'm not sure that's true. Adequately describing why I didn't like the film will require a discussion of details that may not be fully learned until the end of the movie. Although I'll try to avoid specifics, even the generic reasons are probably spoilery in nature, so don't read this review unless you've already seen the movie, don't plan to see it at all, or don't care about possibly learning too much in advance.

Albert Narracott (played by Jeremy Irvine) was in love with his horse Joey from the moment he first laid eyes upon him. Albert's dad Ted bought Joey in a moment of unbridled drunken stupidity that almost cost them the family farm, but Albert managed to train Joey to accept a plow and to use it to plant the south field that was so rocky as to have been previously considered unusable. With the promise of a bigger harvest the farm was saved, but that was only a temporary stay because the crop was later ruined by a big storm. And once again, just when all seemed lost, the family farm was saved by the Germans and their decision to invade other parts of Europe. Much to Albert's dismay, Ted sold Joey to a soldier for use in the war. The soldier promised to bring Joey back to Albert if at all possible, but the odds weren't good.

There really are a tremendous number of problems with this movie. The first is the portrayal of the Narracott's landlord Mr. Lyons as an evil man when in actuality he was more than reasonable. Ted bought Joey in a bidding war against Mr. Lyons despite the fact that it was a thoroughbred (and therefore more suitable for racing than farm work), and despite the fact that it left him without enough money to pay their rent. By all rights, Mr. Lyons could have evicted them right away, but he gave them a break and a chance to make it up to them. That doesn't sound like a particularly evil man to me.

Of course, the biggest issues with the horse-themed drama is that the horse did nothing of any significance, and Albert's love for the horse didn't really play a huge part in the movie. Joey wasn't a war hero because he did nothing to save anyone but himself and serve his own interests. In fact, I'd consider him to be a traitor because he spent a lot more time in the service of the German army than on the side of the British. He was stubborn, and that stubbornness got him into trouble late in the film because if he had allowed humans to teach him a particularly skill (which multiple people tried to teach on separate occasions), he may have avoided the predicament altogether. And once in the predicament, it seems completely unreasonable that humans would have risked their lives to save him, when those same humans had been mercilessly killing horses left and right at the first sign that their usefulness was coming to an end and they might start to slow them down.

I have many other serious complaints about the film, but I don't feel the need to continue bashing much further. It is, from start to finish, an inane series of emotional ploys lacking any form of intelligence or reason. I didn't hate War Horse as much as I see absolutely no value in it, and it's certainly not worth investing the two and a half hours it takes to watch the movie.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1340800/

Thursday, December 29, 2011, Regal Arbor Cinema

I like a good spy thriller, and the trailer for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy suggests that it's based on a book that redefined the genre. That must have really been the case, because I'm not aware of any conventional definition for "thriller" that describes anything in the movie.

A man known only as "Control" (played by John Hurt) is the head of the British intelligence service during the cold war. He has reason to suspect that one of his top spies is actually a double agent: a mole feeding secrets to the Russians that place other British spies, and possibly even the British empire itself, in grave danger. When he has the opportunity to run a mission in Hungary to try to determine the identity of the mole, things go bad and his agent is shot.

Control is forced to resign from the service over the debacle. But just because the Hungarian mission failed doesn't mean there isn't a mole, and recently retired agent John Smiley (Gary Oldman) finds himself charged with conducting the investigation. It is believed that one of the top four spies in the service was playing both sides, and Smiley needs to figure out who it is before any further damage is done to the service and the British people.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has a lot of extreme close-ups and people talking directly into the camera, but moves very slowly and doesn't have much in the way of action or tension. The end is also much less creative than I'd hoped it would be, and the "suspect everyone" mentality that you have to have going into any kind of mystery movie prevented any sense of surprise when the truth was revealed.

The film isn't actively bad, but it just didn't do anything for me. I think that the trailer sets the wrong expectations, as it implies there will be quite a bit more action, and the elements it portrays often have a significantly different tone in the movie. Perhaps if I'd seen the movie without having watched the trailer at least a dozen times, I would have come away from it feeling differently.

A Dangerous Method

IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571222/

Thursday, December 29, 2011, Regal Arbor Cinema

Keira Knightley is a pretty girl, but despite her proclivity towards films with nude scenes, I've always found her much more attractive with her clothes on than off. She once again demonstrates that in A Dangerous Method, where her clothed figure benefits significantly from a corset, creating an even greater contrast from her unclothed form.

Knightley plays Sabina Spielrein, an intelligent and insightful Russian woman with aspirations of becoming a doctor, but that's definitely not going to happen in her current form. When we first see her, she's being driven to a Swiss mental hospital with her body writhing and face contorted. She's placed under the care of Dr. Carl Jung (played by Michael Fassbender), who has recently read a paper by the Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and decided to try to employ the techniques it recommends in Sabina's treatment. Despite the embarrassing nature of some of the questions, she's very open and honest, and before long she's more or less back to normal. Impressed with her personality and intellect, Dr. Jung asks her to assist him with other patients, and she's a natural. There's clearly an attraction between them, but Jung is devoted to his wife, so nothing will come of it.

Dr. Jung was couldn't wait to share his results with Freud, who was in turn happy to hear of another having success with his methods. Overwhelmed at his own hospital, Freud referred one of his patients to Dr. Jung, and soon Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) arrived at Jung's Zurich hospital. Otto was a sex addict and a polygamist, and he wasn't as interested in receiving treatment as he was in evangelizing his beliefs. He was pretty persuasive, and his constant advocation of free love made it difficult for Dr. Jung to ignore his attraction to Sabina.

What struck me most about A Dangerous Method is simply how boring it is, which is very unusual indeed for a film directed by David Cronenberg. It tries to be an intelligent biopic, but there really isn't enough substance to make it intellectually stimulating. It's a period piece from a time period in which I have little interest, and it deals with the subject of psychology, which I find similarly dull. But even if I were into the topic, I suspect that I'd find its treatment in the film to be too shallow. Perhaps Freud was really as single-minded and completely unwilling to consider alternative forms of treatment as Mortensen portrayed him (and I'd be much more willing to blame the writing than Mortensen's acting skill or Cronenberg's direction), but I can't believe that he would have attained such popularity with such a stubborn attitude.

To give credit where it is due, Keria Knightley provided a very convincing physical performance in her early scenes in the movie. Her stuttering and her facial and body contortions appeared quite genuine (at least to someone without a lot of firsthand experience with them), although her voice acting did leave something to be desired. She was supposedly portraying a Russian woman speaking perfect German, although she was actually speaking English, and a lot of the time it surprisingly Scottish.

A Dangerous Method is about what I came to expect from the trailer. I'm sure there are those who love it, but it simply had nothing at all for me.