Giallo

31 Days of Horror, Day 10

One of the reasons I spend all October reviewing horror movies is because I need to focus if I'm going to find good horror flicks that I've never seen.  When the mood strikes me to watch a horror movie during the rest of the year, my natural instinct is to find something godawful and laugh through it.  October is different.  I try to watch famous movies or styles that I wouldn't ordinarily check out.  This year, I realized that I had never seen a Dario Argento film.  That's kind of weird, right?  Well, I thought it was high time to put that wrong right, and I took up Netflix's suggestion to watch Giallo.

Giallo begins, like so many horror films, with a woman being victimized.  After partying in a club, an international model decides that she should walk back to her hotel.  All alone.  At night.  In a large city.  In a country where she doesn't speak the language.  Because international models wander off alone after a night of partying all the damn time.  Thankfully, this obvious rape setup is just a bit of misdirection.  When she feels threatened, the model hails a cab.  Unfortunately, the cabbie happens to be a serial killer who likes to torture, disfigure and kill beautiful people.  Whoops.  The next night, Celine (Elsa Patakay), another model, falls for the same trick as she left work to meet up with her sister, Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner).  The next morning, Linda tries to report Celine's tardiness to the police, but is rebuffed because you have to wait X amount of hours to qualify as a missing persons case.  The police also won't help her because they're fairly certain that Celine was just out late, getting her booster shot of Vitamin Bone.

Yeah, that's the reaction I gave myself after I typed it.  But then I high-fived myself.  I'm a contradiction.

The local cops decide to cut Linda a break and introduce her to Inspector Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody).  Enzo is the kind of detective that is so bad-ass that he gets a most of the police department's basement to himself; he doesn't have a partner, because he "doesn't exactly do things by the book"; he is apparently given free reign to solve whatever cases tickle his fancy; and he is apparently all the manpower needed to track down a serial killer, because he's the only one working this series of disappearances and murders.

"I'm so relieved that my survival is dependent on just one man!"

When Linda explains the situation to Enzo, she mentions that they were on the phone when Celine got in a cab and they lost the connection.  Enzo, being a sensible rogue cop, realizes that this fits his killer's MO.  So what does he do?  Tell Linda that he's on the case, pat her on the head, and point her out the door?  No.  He tells Linda --- that's Linda, the civilian, mind you --- that Celine has probably been kidnapped by a psycho killer who is going to be torturing her for the next few days, leading up to murder. 

"She'll probably look like this when it's over, but with less...face."

In what sort of world does a police officer tell anyone outside of the police about the inner workings of a case?  The sort of world where the same police officer takes that same civilian and lets her be his partner for the rest of the movie.  What.  The.  Hell.  Is this a Batman movie?  Is she going to be named Robin by the end of this?  Because that's probably what this movie needs; to get past the stupid, it's going to need a whole lot of ridiculousness.

Okay, that's a good start.  What's next?

The acting in Giallo is pretty inconsistent.  Adrien Brody plays both the detective and the killer (he's credited as Byron Deidra, which is an anagram of his name).  As the detective, Brody was pretty good, although his character was very cliched and spoke exclusively in movie-tough-guy-ese.  As the killer, he was pretty terrible.  The character was awful, sure, but it wasn't helped by the fact that Brody went cartoony to play the part.  And while his bad guy makeup and costume were just plain bad, I will admit that I didn't realize Body was playing both parts; I did, however, wonder how someone so terrible could have gotten the main villain part.

Adrien Brody, as the older brother from The Goonies

Emmanuelle Seigner is not very impressive here, either.  Again, a large part of that is thanks to her character being ridiculous, but Seigner is also guilty of practically sleepwalking through this film.  Elsa Patakay was better, but that's because she was a victim and was forced to show at least one emotion while on camera.

ACTING!

Okay, so I wasn't impressed by the acting in Giallo.  Perhaps the direction of horror master Dario Argento helped balance that a little?  I'll remove the suspense of that statement; Argento's direction does not help this movie.  I was disappointed that my first experience with Dario Argento had to be such a bland and uninteresting effort.  This is a poorly-paced movie for a horror/thriller.  There are only a few kills in the entire film, and most of the gore comes from photos of previous murders.  The editing is also noticeably bad.  There is no way for the audience to know how much times has passed between scenes, and that quickly becomes a problem.  We also can't tell how many people the killer has murdered; Enzo claims only four or five, but the killer has also been at large for several months --- and yet, the killer appears to be picking up girls every few days in this movie.  Perhaps the biggest problem with Giallo is the portrayal of the killer.  Never mind the back story and jaundiced skin, I just want to point out the makeup. It looks like someone used papier-mâché instead of makeup on Adrien Brody. 

I've seen more frightening Scooby-Doo villains.  He looks like a rejected member of an all-zombie E-Street Band.  An experienced director should be able to realize how awful this main villain is, which is why this movie is so disappointing.  I've seen some reviews that mention Argento has disowned Giallo because the producers re-cut it behind his back, but I seriously doubt anyone could drastically improve this film, regardless of the cut.

"Maybe I should have kept suing to keep this movie from ever releasing..."

There is very little gore, a low body count, a laughable villain, and poor editing in Giallo.  Is it bad enough to be good, at least?  Well, if you watch this movie, you will be laughing at it, but not enough to justify investing your time in it.  Yes, the killer is incomprehensibly weird.  Yes, he photographs his victims, uploads the images on his computer, uses a magnifying glass to enlarge the pictures (um, there's a zooming tool on your computer, dude), and masturbates, all while sucking on a pacifier.  Yes, Adrien Brody is awfully jowl-ly (jowl-ful?) as the killer. And yes, the back story explaining how Enzo became a cop is one of the dumbest you will encounter.  But that doesn't make this consistently fun to laugh at.  There are little things here and there that inspire snickers, like the nightclub that apparently specialized in 120-watt lighting or the cabbie who does the world's worst job of trailing a car, but they're not really funny; they are just signs of sloppiness. 

Even when I felt inclined to be charitable towards Giallo, it bent over backwards to do something irritating.  In the last act of the movie, there is a goofy-ass twist that was made even sillier by Seigner's wooden performance.  It boils down to this (SPOILER ALERT: you should not watch this movie): the killer dies before anyone can find Celine, so Linda blames Enzo for her sister's death.  Then cut to a parking garage, where the killer has stashed a bound and gagged Celine in the back of a hatchback --- so anyone walking by could see the body in the back --- and there appears to be a ton of blood pooling beneath the car.  A security guard notices the blood pool and hears Celine's grunts and --- cut to end credits. 

"...aaand CUT!  Should we roll credits here, or before the story can finish?"

So the hero and the sister don't know where the victim is, or if she's alive when the movie ends.  And the movie ends with these two partners being mad at each other.  And the ending is obviously not supposed to be a downer ending, because we don't find Celine in a remote location where she will starve to death, never to be found --- she is literally seconds away from being found by a security guard when the movie throws in the towel!  If you're going to quit so easily, Giallo, you should have done it an hour-plus earlier.

In case you were wondering what "Giallo" means, it's Italian for "yellow."  It is also used to describe the pulp books and movies made in Italy in the 60s and 70s that focused on crime and exploitative horror, which often used yellow covers to stand out.  Dario Argento is best known for his giallo movies.  Not this one, certainly, but others.  Oh, and "Giallo" also refers to the killer's jaundiced skin.  What a dumb movie.

Midnight in Paris

I grew up with stupid comedies.  I love early Steve Martin and Mel Brooks, I can't help enjoying the nonstop barrage of movies like Airplane! or Top Secret!, and I have an unwavering love for the first Ace Ventura, despite the butt-talking.  I blame my dad for exposing my young mind to such perfectly crafted stupidity, but let's be honest --- I probably would have found my way to these movies without his help.  Not surprisingly, I grew up enjoying early Woody Allen films like Sleeper and Bananas, as well.  And, after those...well, there's pretty large gap.  I've never been able to endure the earnest awkwardness of Annie Hall (I think I've started it about six times and never made it more than thirty minutes in).  Someone told me that The Purple Rose of Cairo was amazing --- and it is clever, I'll agree --- but I certainly wasn't prepared for a Woody Allen movie that wasn't peppered with jokes.  Every time Allen releases a film (approximately every 4-8 months, from what I can tell), I always hear comments from Woody's apologists, saying "It's his best movie since ____," but I typically have never felt like watching the referenced movie, much less something with Jason Biggs in it.  Nevertheless, I did break from tradition and see Midnight in Paris.  And, to all the haters of the Woody Allen subgenre out there: the Allen apologists are right on this one.

Gil (Owen Wilson) is on a vacation in Paris with his fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and it's pretty obvious that they're not a great couple.  On paper, they should work; Gil is a successful Hollywood screenwriter and she...well, I'm not sure if she has a profession, but she appears to be wealthy, pretty and sociable --- a solid pairing for Hollywood brown-nosing.  Gil isn't satisfied, though.  He has taken time off work to write his first novel, and it's not going as well as he would have liked.  He's hoping to be inspired by the city of Paris, where so many of his idols lived and loved in the 1920s; Inez just hopes he will snap out of it so they can move to Malibu.  But no, Gil wants to drink in the romance of the city.  As luck would have it, the pair accidentally encounter some of Inez's friends, Paul (Michael Sheen) and Carol (Nina Arianda), and Gil's romantic Paris getaway becomes a group tour, where Paul narrates the history and meaning of everything they see.  Paul's knowledge and accuracy are questionable at best, but Carol and Inez fawn over him.  Annoyed by Paul's powerfully distilled blowhard-edness, Gil decides to spend some time on his own in Paris.

"And here's to you shutting the hell up"

He finds himself alone and drunk in an alley when the clock strikes midnight.  A car pulls up to the curb and the occupants invite him inside.  Being drunk, Gil doesn't notice how odd everyone is dressed until he finds himself at a party, introduced to Zelda (Alison Pill) and Scott (Tom Hiddleston) , arguably the poster boy for romantic writers obsessed with Paris.  And they are exactly as he always imagined they would be!

Specifically, Gil imagined they would be also play  Sex Bob-omb's drummer and Loki

Following the Fitzgeralds to another party, Gil meets and befriends Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), who agrees to take Gil's novel to Gertrude Stein for an opinion.  But when he leaves the bar, he has returned to the present day.  If you were faced with a present where you feel unaccomplished and unhappy, and a "golden age" where you can interact with your idols, which would you pick?  Understandably, Gil starts living for the time he can spend in the past.  That's not particularly healthy, though.

Worst breakup speech ever: "I'm from the future..."

First things first, I must admit that I've never been to Paris, so I don't know how accurately Woody Allen is portraying the city.  I will say that Midnight in Paris does a good job capturing the romantic and exciting allure of the city; I don't know how much of that is rooted in reality, anyway.  At this point in his career, Woody Allen has been a legitimate film legend for at least thirty years, so he can fill his cast with just about any actor he wants and use them on an unabashedly nostalgic project.  On so many levels, Midnight in Paris should not work.  Owen Wilson has to be sympathetic, yet flawed, instead of smarmy and slightly more likable than some other jerk, which is his typical range; nostalgia can make for some poignant moments, but there's a fine line between that and quaintness; the story is pining for an age that most audiences have a limited knowledge of (at best) in a city that most audiences have never been.  The fact that Midnight in Paris works --- and is good, to boot --- is nothing short of astounding.

A big reason for this film's success comes from the actors.  I have never liked Owen Wilson much; I can enjoy him in Wes Anderson films, but I find him annoying in everything else.  Here, though, you're not supposed to completely like him --- and I can do that!  This is definitely the most complicated part I have seen Wilson play, and I thought he pulled it off with charm.  The intentionally unlikable characters (Rachel McAdams and her parents, played by Mimi Kennedy and the often kooky Kurt Fuller) were exactly what they were supposed to be; you were never supposed to like them even a little bit, but they were realistic enough to remind you of someone.  I also loved how convincingly Michael Sheen played a confident know-it-all; I think Sheen is underrated in America, but he delivered a lot of good lines in a style that was perfect for a habitual bullshitter.  For me, though, this is a film made by the bit parts.  There are so many actors --- good actors, too --- who had small roles, playing historical parts, and they were all very entertaining.  I'm not an F. Scott Fitzgerald fiend, but I was instantly able to recognize Scott and Zelda in this movie and it felt right to me.  Similarly, I absolutely loved every moment that included Adrien Brody's Salvador Dali impression and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein.

I also loved every mention of rhinoceroses

Marion Cotillard was typically lovely, although it is probably difficult to convincingly play a muse; Cotillard's American career continues to mature, as this is yet another atypical leading lady role that she has taken on of late.  Corey Stoll's work as Hemingway was equally impressive; for an actor I had never even heard of to turn in such a bad-ass manly performance was a treat.

Whatever comes out of his mouth can double as a Dos Equis or Old Spice commercial

I also liked Léa Seydoux as the local French gal; it wasn't an especially difficult role, but she was certainly adequate.  There are a few other notable appearances --- Mrs. France, Carla Bruni, has a fairly easy part and Oliver Rabourdin gets to play Gauguin --- but nothing as scene-stealing as what I've already mentioned.

With so many good acting performances, it should not be surprising that I liked Woody Allen's direction.  When he has a good script, Allen can coax out some remarkable performances from actors that typically get out-acted by Jackie Chan.

"To be fair, that was only twice..."

The whole film was extremely clever, and Allen took full advantage by laying visual breadcrumbs for the audience to pick up (or overlook), with regards to certain subplots.  Of course, since Allen directed Midnight in Paris, that means he also wrote it, so that whole "clever" thing goes double here.  I have a passing knowledge of Paris and its expatriates in the 1920s and even some knowledge of the Moulin Rouge-era; I certainly did not catch or appreciate every reference Allen includes in his script and direction, but I knew enough to be impressed by what I understood.  Even if you are oblivious to Gil's "golden age," this is still a very entertaining film; the characters are vibrant and strange and generally enjoyable.  More important than any of that, though, is the overall message.  In a year when so many movies (Hugo, The Artist, Super 8, etc.) have bent over backwards to give the glorious past a friendly handjob, Woody Allen (who has had his share of nostalgic flicks) made a movie that acknowledges that impulse, but then turns that into a forward-facing vision.  I found that incredibly refreshing and that's part of why this film left me with a silly grin on my face.

It is easy to enter into Midnight in Paris with some misconceptions.  It has elements of a romantic comedy; it could have slapstick humor in it, given the writer/director and cast; it could be a snooty Francophilic tribute; it could be yet another underwhelming film from an aging talent.  If you like France or French things, I think you will love this movie.  If you don't give a rat's ass about France, you will probably find it amusingly clever.  If you wish they had never changed the name back from American Fries, then you probably can't read, anyway.  This is easily one of the most well-written movies of 2011 and a welcome reminder of just how good Woody Allen can be.

Brian's Best and Worst of 2011

It is, once again, almost time for the Oscars!  While I am not the biggest fan of the Academy Awards, I do like having some sort of quality barometer in Hollywood, even one that is skewed, political, and often rewards career achievements instead of current ones.  Since so many high-profile films come out at the end of the year, looking to cash in on Christmas vacationers and still make year-end best-of lists, I never get a chance to watch the most critically acclaimed films before the year's end.  But...if Hollywood can wait until the end of February to rate the last year of cinema, so can I, right?  I know, I know...what a jerk I am, stealing Hollywood's thunder!

I don't like doing Top Ten lists, though.  That's too cut-and-dry, and it completely ignores all the truly awful stuff I run across every year.  I like to break the year down into several best and worst categories, and "best" and "worst" are probably more accurately defined as "most favorite" and "most hated" by me.

So exactly what films did I watch in time to consider for this list?

Abduction.  The Artist.  Battle: Los Angeles.  Black Death.  Blitz.  Captain America: The First Avenger.  The Code.  Conan the Barbarian.  Contagion.  Cowboys & Aliens.  The Descendants.  Drive.  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  Faces in the Crowd.  Fast Five.  Fright Flick.  Fright Night.  Green Lantern.  Hanna.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  The Help.  Hobo With a Shotgun.  Horrible Bosses.  Hugo.  I Saw the Devil.  The Ides of March.  Insidious.  Ironclad.  Kill the Irishman.  Killer Elite.  Limitless.  The Mechanic.  Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.  Midnight in Paris.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.  Moneyball.  Ong Bak 3.  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  Red State.  The Resident.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Season of the Witch.  Shark Night 3D.  Source Code.  Sucker Punch.  Super 8.  Take Me Home Tonight.  13 Assassins.  Thor.  Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The Tree of Life.  Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.  War Horse.  The Ward.  Warrior.  X-Men: First Class.

I wasn't able to review all of these in time for the Oscars, but I did watch them.  There are some noteworthy absences from that list, though.  Here are some of the movies I wanted to see, but failed to in time:

The Adjustment Bureau, A Dangerous Method, 50/50, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Guard, Hesher, Shame, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,  and most of the stupid comedies of the year.

Let's start of with some of the more overlooked moments in film this year, shall we?

Best Bit Character
You know those roles that are very amusing, but aren't substantial enough to actually be called "supporting"?  I love those!  They are sadly undervalued in modern cinema, but not by me.  While I was amused by the Blue F'n Lights in Super 8, I have to give credit to Adrien Brody for his Salvador Dali impression in Midnight in Paris.

And for flicking off Owen Wilson

I normally dislike Brody, but his oddly-enunciated, rhinoceros-obsessed few minutes onscreen amused the hell out of me.  As an added bonus, from what little I know about Dali at the time, the impression seemed pretty accurate.

Best Supporting Actress
This is typically a tough category for me.  I don't watch many "chick flicks," and the films I choose to watch usually don't have well-developed female characters.  This year, though, I found a handful of actresses impressive.  Elle Fanning (Super 8) and Saiorse Ronan (Hanna) were both surprisingly mature, and Octavia Spencer was the prototypical sassy black woman in The Help, which is naturally pretty awesome to watch.  However, my favorite supporting performance this year was definitely Shailene Woodley in The Descendants.

Note: embed flattering photo here

I think she did the best job with the most complex character, at least from the movies I caught.  Granted, that character was a bitchy, rebellious teenager (not exactly avant garde), but I thought she handled the role perfectly.

Worst Supporting Actress
I'm going to go with Marianne Faithfull in Faces in the Crowd.  What makes her any worse than, say, anyone in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, or Melissa Leo's horribly over-the-top performance in Red State?  Well, like the prison food mentioned in The Blues Brothers, they're all pretty bad.  Faithfull just had the least believable character --- a deaf therapist that gives no indication that she is deaf whatsoever --- out of the group.  Plus, she provides some of the worst exposition I saw on film this year.

Best Supporting Actor
There were, as always, a lot of supporting actor roles that stuck out to me this year.  Colin Farrell (Fright Night) and Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class) were pretty bad-ass in some potentially silly roles.  Tom Hardy (Warrior) and Paul Giamatti (The Ides of March) gave surprisingly powerful dramatic performances.  Andy Serkis (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) once again gave a spectacular motion-capture performance.  My favorite supporting performance by far, though, definitely belonged to Albert Brooks in Drive.  He was just so deliciously merciless --- he is definitely my favorite villain of the year.

Not the tools of the trade you might expect from Brooks

Worst Supporting Actor
As tempted as I am to crown Tom Felton for being terrible in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this is a prize that was won with teamwork.  My winner for Worst Supporting Actor is the supporting cast of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  I don't care if you want to focus on Ken Jeong's idiotic character or John Turturro's embarrassing cash-in role, John Malkovich's bewildering presence, or if you just hate Kevin Dunn's "why hasn't he been stepped on already?" turn as Mr. Witwicky --- this movie sucked, and there were simply too many awful performances to not win this award.

A well-placed Autobot foot could have made this so much better

On a related note, Patrick Dempsey is a crappy evil villain, especially when you compare him to giant killer robots.

Best Actress
There wasn't much competition for this, given the films I watched.  Even without any other real contenders, Viola Davis was excellent in The Help.

As manipulative as the film is (and I would qualify it as "very"), Davis did a great job balancing contradicting emotional extremes.  The only reason The Help is up for a Best Picture Academy Award this year is thanks to its excellent acting, and Davis was the film's anchor.

Worst Actress
This was a tight race.  As deserving as Tiffany and Debbie Gibson were in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Lily Collins was even worse in Abduction.  And as terrible as Collins and her eyebrows were, they cannot compare to the hatred I have in my heart for Emily Browning in Sucker Punch.  The whole movie was handled poorly, but Browning was on screen the most, and alternated between a pouty face and a vacant stare. 

Go to Brian's movie jail.  Do not collect go, do not collect $200

I honestly don't know if anyone could have salvaged the train wreck that was Sucker Punch, but it takes a unique talent to confuse and anger me while playing a rape victim.

Best Actor
I went through most of 2011's films without witnessing an excellent lead acting performance, but that has changed over the last month.  I thought Min-Sik Choi was positively chilling in I Saw the Devil.  I loved Ryan Gosling's extremely peculiar work in Drive.  I loved George Clooney's subtle and complex work in The Descendants.  The performance that I enjoyed the most this year, though, was Brad Pitt in Moneyball.

This is a film that could have easily been deadly dull (to non-statistical nuts like me), but Pitt carried it with consistently good timing and a whole lot of staring and looking worried.  Was it a better performance than Clooney's or Jean Dujardin in The Artist?  Maybe not.  But I responded more to his character than anyone other this year.  Besides, my beloved Cubs will be atrocious in 2012, so I need to enjoy baseball any way I can.

Worst Actor
This race boils down to who I hated more this year: Shia LaBeouf in Trannies 3 or Taylor Lautner in Abduction.  Man, this is a tough one!  Shia was insufferable as an entitled dick in T3, but Lautner was offensively bad.  I think Lautner barely squeaks this one out, but only because he can be out-acted by shadow puppets.

This is his "reading" face

Best Director
I'm going to go with the only director that truly impressed me with his style and competence this year: Nicolas Winding Refn, for Drive.  The only other director that even came close for ballsiness and frame composition was Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), but Refn embraced noir, awkwardness, and extreme violence and made it all work in a taut thriller.

Worst Director
Part of me wants to go with John Singleton for doing absolutely nothing right in Abduction.  Another part of me wants to slap David R. Ellis for not changing his style for Shark Night 3D, despite its PG-13 rating.  But those are just two very small parts of me; 98% of me hates Zack Snyder for Sucker Punch.  My dislike for his recent work is almost Biblical; I wish I could salt the proverbial earth of Snyder's career.  As gorgeous as his films look, Sucker Punch was a confused, soulless rape fantasy, poorly disguised as some sort of extended "girl power" metaphor.  How do you screw up having dragons, steam-powered soldiers, and gundams?  Watch Sucker Punch.  No, wait...don't.

Biggest Disappointment
Runner-up goes to John Carpenter's return to directing, The Ward.  Too bad it was terrible.  I was prepared for that, though, because Carpenter has had his share of misses over the last thirty or forty years.  I was most disappointed by Green Lantern.  It had a lot of promise --- and the space scenes were actually pretty cool --- but the story was horribawful.  I didn't need this to be good to have fun with it, but I would have appreciated less boredom and fewer stupid humans.

Biggest Surprise
I had a few mild surprises this year.  Marcus Nispel made a decent flick for a change (Conan the Barbarian).  Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a clearly unnecessary film, wasn't terrible.  I didn't vomit bile when watching Matthew Lillard in The Descendants.  I would be a liar, though, if I said there was any bigger surprise than the extended Discovery Channel acid trip during The Tree of Life.

Love it or hate it, you cannot honestly tell me that you expected that movie to make that choice at that time.  I'm pretty sure I spent most of this sequence with a confused look and my mouth half open.

Bottom 5 Movies
I could pick on the made-to-suck horror movies I watched this year (Fright Flick and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid), but I didn't expect them to be anything close to good.  These five are bad and have earned my ire.
5. The Ward - Have you ever wanted to watch a really bad version of Identity?  Have you ever wanted to watch a movie like that while feeling sorry for the director?  Well, do I have a movie for you!  You want to know how bad this movie is?  Here's the best scene in the entire film:

4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Here's what it takes to make an awesome Transformers movie: have giant robots fight each other.  It doesn't have to be smart.  It doesn't have to do anything except look cool and have a simple plot.  Somehow, that message never reached Michael Bay.  There were too many humans, too many "jokes," and too many interchangeable robots in this clusterfuck of a blockbuster.  And the Witwicky family still refused to die!  The only reason I can imagine anyone liking Trannies 3 is for putting Rosie Huntington-Whitely in high definition.  Well guess what, teenagers?  She's an underwear model.  You don't have to watch this movie to ogle her, there's a great big internet just waiting for you!

3. Season of the Witch - I don't know what the worst thing about this movie is.  It could be the fact that Nic Cage actually underacted, given how ridiculous the story is.

Stunning, I know

Maybe it is the hilarious parallels it invites to classic films.  Both are good reasons, but I think the biggest one is the complete lack of witches in this movie.  Not even zombie monks could save this.

2. Abduction - I've already touched upon how inept this movie is, but this is truly one of the worst movies I have seen that was widely released.  The hair clogging your shower has more talent than Taylor Lautner.

1. Sucker Punch - Despite looking like it should be made of the dreams of horny teenage boys, this was drab, dull, and rapey.  Maybe that's your cup of tea.  If it is, I assume you are already in prison for committing violent acts against humanity and good taste in general.

More like a donkey punch

Top 10 Movies
10. Hugo -I have a soft spot in my heart for characters that are struggling to find their place in the world, and I believe in the magic of cinema, so Hugo was right up my alley.  Scorsese's direction, while fun to look at (even in 3D), pandered a bit too much toward young children for my tastes, but it was still touching and adorable.

9. Hobo With a Shotgun - Rarely does a movie meet my every expectation.  Hobo... delivered on the promise of its title and added Robocop-quality acting and Troma levels of violence.  Sadly, it was snubbed by the academy this year.  I wonder why?

8. The Artist - Jean Dujardin is charming and is a gifted physical actor.  Who needs to hear him speak?  Along with that talent, director Michel Hazanavicius made an extremely clever film with superb cinematography and (not terribly subtle) symbolism.  It was cute, it was different, but it didn't strike any particular emotional chords within me.

7. Midnight In Paris - I didn't expect to enjoy this one, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Instead of wallowing in nostalgia, like so many acclaimed films this year (Super 8, The Artist, Hugo), Woody Allen made a film that realized the folly in Golden Age thinking.  I imagine that your appreciation for the film only deepens with your own knowledge of the art and literature scene in 1920s Paris, but even if you are clueless, the supporting cast is extremely enjoyable.  And every word out of Corey Stoll's mouth is pure gold.

Have you ever shot a charging lion?

6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Eight movies in ten years, and all of them were good.  I'm going to miss the Harry Potter series, but this last chapter paid off the setups of the past few films nicely.  It could have been more visually imaginative, and there were a literal ton of characters in the film to pay attention to, but this was a quality send-off to an excellent series.  Plus, it didn't have, like, six endings, like Lord of the Rings.

5. X-Men: First Class - Given the debacles that were X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I didn't have high hopes for this one.  Thankfully, Matthew Vaughn saved my favorite comic franchise from movie production hell.  The real credit goes to Michael Fassbender's awesome performance as Magneto.  We need more of that, and soon.

Michael Fassbender face IS...Magneto's Crotch

4. The Descendants - A possibly gut-wrenching concept gets a whole lot easier to handle and more interesting through Alexander Payne's treatment and George Clooney's excellent performance.  It's about as uplifting a film as you're going to see from a movie about death and infidelity.

3. Moneyball - This movie simply should not have been fun or interesting to watch at all.  On paper, it sounds as entertaining as balancing your checkbook, but I was drawn into Moneyball.  I enjoyed Brad Pitt's Robert Redford impression and actually liked Jonah Hill for once (I disagree with his nominations, though).  What I liked most about this movie was its sense of timing, which I suppose means that I liked its editing.  Whatever.  This is a sports movie that can appeal to the non-sports fan because the heroes don't play sports.  That's brilliant!

2. I Saw the Devil - It's hard to find a genuinely disturbing horror movie, so I like the acknowledge them when I find 'em.  Taking the typical premise (bad guy kills my people, I must take the law into my own hands!) to a logical but somewhat surprising end, Jee-Woon Kim crafted a brutal and unnerving film.  I like it when heroes are not heroic, and this movie delivered.

Pretty.  Disturbing.

1. Drive -By far, this was the most peculiar and enjoyable film I saw all year.  It was weird, it was painfully awkward, it was violent, and it was oddly touching.  Better than all that, it was suspenseful.  As awkward and unrecognizable as the Driver was as a human, there is a simple sweetness underneath that amazing scorpion jacket.  Of course, his character is also a psycho waiting to erupt, but that's the price you pay for being so damn cool.

Predators

When I learned that Robert Rodriguez was making a new Predator movie, I was pretty excited.  Rodriguez is a guy that knows how to make an amusing action movie that doesn't take itself too seriously (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City, etc.), and I think that is exactly what this franchise needs.  Sure, the original Predator was awesome, but let's not look at it with rose-colored glasses; the movie is essentially a live-action G.I. Joe sci-fi flick, drenched in steroids.  Predator 2 wasn't great, and neither were the Alien vs. Predator movies.  Sure, why not make another Predator?  The past twenty years has only dropped expectations for the series, so there's almost no risk and I trust Rodriguez.  What's that?  Rodriguez is only producing this movie, handing over the director's chair to Nimrod Antal?  Oh.  I don't know how I feel about that.

Okay, imagine that you wake up and you are falling.  Not off your bed, but out of an airplane.  What do you do?  Soil yourself?  Well, that's a given.  Don't worry, your parachute will open without your help.  If your next move is to prepare to shoot anything you see, welcome to Predators.  That's pretty much how the film starts, with several people landing confused in a jungle, armed to the teeth.  Royce (Adrien Brody) is a mercenary, Isabelle (Alice Braga) is a sniper, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo) is a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) is a Russian soldier, Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien) is Yakuza, and Mombasa (Mahershalhashbaz Ali) is an African death dealer.  Heavy hitters, each and every one of them.  There is also Stans (Walton Goggins), a death row inmate with a fondness for cocaine and rape.  And there's Edwin (Topher Grace), a doctor.  If you have "one of these things is not like the other" in your head, you're not alone.  What are the chances that Edwin has a secret?

Opting for strength in numbers in an unfamiliar jungle, an uneasy truce is formed between these hardened killers (and Edwin) and they head to high ground, trying to learn their location.  The initial signs are bad; from personal experience, they acknowledge that they are not in Asia or Africa, which basically leaves the Amazon as the sole likely possibility.  But the sun doesn't seem to be moving and the wind is coming from all directions, neither of which makes any sense.  Oh, but wait...they get to high ground, see a bunch of suns and moons and realize that they are probably not in the Amazon, or even Earth.  That's when the hunt begins.  First, we get some Predadogs (Predator + dogs) chasing the group.

YOU let it lick your face.

These ugly, horned, lion-sized things take a beating and most of the group's ammunition; after the group has killed a few, the Predadogs are called back with the sound of a horn.  Royce realizes that the group is being hunted and decides to hunt the hunters; they follow the Predadog tracks back to the Predator base camp, where they find hundreds of hunting trophies, including many human skulls.  They also find a Predator tied up to a post, presumably for punishment of some kind; this is their first look at the enemy.  Here's a quick rundown on Predators for the uninitiated.  They have:

• dreadlocks, which seems an odd choice for an entire species
• a mouth that looks suspiciously like a female body part, but with pincers
• laser-targeted energy cannons
• cool masks that are often customized with bones and other morbid stuff
• large, retractable knives located in their body armor
• cloaking technology, for near-invisibility
• a fondness for hunting dangerous animals

A little later, they learn even more about the Predators when they encounter Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a man who has survived on Planet Predator alone for quite some time.  After that, it's basically a hunt or be hunted scenario, as the group tries to kill their way to freedom and maybe a way off the planet.

This movie is an interesting blend of stupid and cool.  On the one hand, "Killers From Around the Globe" is a pretty lame theme for the characters, but the cast is varied in appearance and acting skills, so it actually works decently well.  And I was impressed by the order in which the characters died; it was not the typical "least famous dies first" routine.  The title alludes to many things, including the fairly obvious (there is more than one Predator in this movie) and an homage (Predators is what Aliens was to Alien --- or it wants to be, anyway).  The title also refers to the humans, because they are all killers; that last one made me roll my eyes when I heard it mentioned in the movie, but at least its not too pretentious.  We get to see a few different types of Predators in this film, which is an interesting and untapped concept.  We also get Predadogs, which are significantly less cool. 

The acting is about what you would expect from a cast chosen (at least partially) by ethnicity.  Most of the actors have bit parts with little dialogue and no character development.  That's fine.  Movies like this need cannon fodder.  That left the bulk of the acting to Adrien Brody, who did a pretty good job bulking up for the role.  He was a pretty good solider, even if his character was clearly designed to have the illusion of depth --- "Ooh, he quoted Hemmingway!  There's more to this character than we thought!"  Alice Braga was fine as the mandatory conscience of the group, but it was a thankless role and was a little annoying.  Topher Grace's character was obviously designed to have a not-too-subtle secret, but he was still pretty entertaining, especially in the lulls between action scenes.  SPOILER: Okay, so Topher is a serial killer.  Couldn't they have thrown in a red herring, like he's a mercy-killing battlefield doctor, or an abortionist, or something?  Any explanation for his presence on Planet Predator would have been appreciated.  Laurence Fishburne and Walton Goggins also add some spice as clearly unstable people.

Overall, this isn't a bad time.  Nimrod Antal does a solid job directing, even if the plot is occasionally ludicrous and predictable.  The Predators get fleshed out a little more as characters and we see some more of their technology, which is not as interesting as it sounds.  This is definitely the best-acted film in the series (aside from Jesse Ventura in the original), too.  It doesn't quite succeed in matching the awesomeness of the original.  The filmmakers made a big deal about the "s" in the title, and frequently pointed out how James Cameron's Aliens was a very different, but equally awesome, movie than Ridley Scott's Alien.  These guys missed the point of that comparison, though; Alien is a suspense/horror movie, while Aliens is a flat-out action movie.  They are different genres, not just different movies.  Predator is possibly the most testosterone-infused movie ever made, and Predators is a slightly smarter, less muscular version of that.  It's not bad.  It's just playing the same game as the superior original, which makes it somewhat predictable.  That said, I think the door is left open to a truly awesome sequel, so I suppose this film served its purpose of reinvigorating this franchise.

Splice

The mad scientist character is one that is often underused in modern cinema.  Aside from Dr. Evil, I don't know if I have seen any movies released in the past decade that feature a scientist making clearly bad decisions to advance science.  Thankfully, Splice fills that gap nicely.  So, if you've been yearning to yell at your TV screen because the otherwise intelligent characters are doing some obviously stupid things, this might be the movie for you.

Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are brilliant scientists and boyfriend/girlfriend.  Their research experiments in gene splicing have led to a fully lab-created being with all sorts of chemical perks, like the increased production of special enzymes.  That might not sound exciting, but consider this: these creatures (dubbed Fred and Ginger by the team) look like 35-pound maggots.  Are you hungry yet?  Well, hold onto that feeling; Clive and Elsa have been instructed by their financier that they need to turn this advancement into a product, pronto, so they need to find how to extract particular proteins from their super-maggots.  That means their job for the next few years is to shift through maggot poop until they find what they're looking for.  Or, Clive and Elsa could do what any research scientist would do and ignore their hard-to-come-by financing and go ahead into splicing human genes with their multi-species super maggots.  That's an idea that surely won't come back and bite them in the ass.  The idea was initially just to see if they could fertilize an egg with this new DNA splice, but then they decide to watch it gestate, with the agreement to terminate the fetus before birth.  Thankfully, this does not become an abortion-themed film.  The funny thing about growing a part-human super maggot is that you don't know how long it takes the fetus to come to term, so the creature is born, and presto!  This is what it looks like (well, in plush form, anyway):

Tastes like chicken?

With a little love and encouragement, this little chicken tender eventually morphs into something that resembles a bald French model, although with literal chicken legs and a tail, complete with retractable stinger.  The rest of the film asks how much this creature, whom they name Dren (Delphine Chaneac), is human and how much it is...other. Here's a hint: more "other" than "human."

Splice is a rare breed, a film that blends science fiction and horror, although it spends a great deal more time on the sci-fi than the scares.  It also has the benefit of good acting.  I'm not one to gush over Adrien Brody (I'm sorry, Daniel Day Lewis deserved his Oscar) and while I like Sarah Polley, she's not an amazing performer.  However, director/co-writer Vincenzo Natali does such a good job with this script that both actors have characters with varied (and logical) emotions and character arcs.  The movie starts as a peek inside an experiment that will obviously go horribly wrong, but it soon delves into the characters' ideas of love, parenting, and responsibility.  It's hard to say just how good Delphine Chaneac is as the experiment, partially because Dren chirps instead of speaking, and partially because Dren is played by others for about half of the movie --- remember, she grows and evolves from super maggot size.  Still, I thought she was very expressive, even if those expressions were pretty basic.  Oftentimes, movies like this rely too heavily on the CGI to lend the monster characters depth, but I was very impressed with the use of CGI here; it always looked good, and it did a great job blending the computer effects with the live actors playing the part.

The movie is not perfect, though.  The ending borrows too heavily from B-list horror movies, like Jeepers Creepers 2, after spending most of the movie making a pretty compelling on an emotional and psychological level.  Sarah Polley's character makes so many crazy choices in the first half of the film that I wanted to fast forward to the credits to see if her character's full name was "Bat-Shit Crazy Elsa;" in the film's defense, her actions are explained later, but in the moment I was flabbergasted by her stupidity.  I'm not used to seeing female characters as the incredibly short-sighted mad scientist in movies, but she captured that in an exasperatingly believable fashion.  You might also think that Adrien Brody dresses like a jackass in this film.  You would be right.

I'm okay with all that.  The parts of the movie that made me uncomfortable were definitely the sex scenes that involve Dren.  That's right, the part human-part monster has sex scenes, and they are plural.  Yeah.  Eww.  One is even a disturbing, but thankfully not graphic, rape scene.  These scenes are not long, and they are not too vulgar, but they are definitely awkward.  It's too bad that they are included in the film, because they are pretty shocking and definitely the most memorable scenes.

As weird and uncomfortable as the sex is, I have to admit that this movie did a great job surprising me.  And that's not even including the cross-species sex.  I loved that the issue of whether or not they should be messing with human genes is never really a factor in this movie.  I also really enjoyed the basic psychology used in the film, with Brody starting out as the gruff disciplinarian and moving toward more sympathy and Polley being the affectionate mother early on.  But guess what?  Many girls spend their puberty years hating their mother figures, but only Dren has a stinger.  Sucks to be you, Sarah Polley.  This film also has one of my favorite mother-daughter moments in movie history; after telling Dren that her mother thought that makeup debased women, Elsa then says, "But who doesn't want to be debased every once in a while?"  I wanted to high five someone after that, but was sadly watching it solo.  So, I clapped.  Because that's how you high five yourself.  Well, that's an awkward admission.  But not as awkward as sex scenes with Dren.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Roald Dahl and Wes Anderson...in retrospect, it's hard to believe it took this long for those two names to be connected.  Dahl, the author of so many delightful, dark, and subversive children's books, seems to have delighted in writing legitimate literature for the young and the old.  In his books, adults were often evil, and the world is full of evil, so it always seemed fantastic when things went right.  Wes Anderson is perhaps the youngest genius director working in Hollywood right now.  His films don't always work (I'm looking at you, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), but they are always worth watching.  As the writer and director of his movies, Anderson pays an amazing amount of attention to detail in all his films, so much so that re-watching his movies can often be a revelatory experience.  Anderson doesn't like telling safe or typical stories, so him basing a script on a Dahl book is a natural fit.

The first thing you will notice about this movie is the animation.  Anderson wanted to capture the look and feel of the original King Kong, so stop-motion animation was used.  However, unlike the claymation-style animation from Gumby or the original Clash of the Titans, this animation looks absolutely painstaking.  The hairs on each animal move.  Not all at the same time, or even in the same direction.  They move naturally, which is extremely difficult to achieve through artificial means.  The characters are far more expressive than you would think possible with this technology.  The animation style changes, from the ultra-detailed work of the close shots to fast and loose two-dimensional shots used to pass time quickly and show off the cartooniness of the story.  Nowadays, Pixar studios have the animation market cornered with their terrific computer animated films.  The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a welcome reminder that animation comes in many shapes and forms, and can be just as amazing as the best that technology has to offer --- or even better.

That's just the animation, though.  What about the story?  This is the tale of Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney), a former chicken thief turned family man.  Mr. Fox has sworn off the risky life of chicken thievery to please his wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), and provide for his son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman).  The movie conveniently skips over the twelve years where Mr. Fox kept to the straight and narrow and focuses on when he eventually starts stealing again.  There are three mean farmers near the Fox household.  Fox plunders them systematically until they decide to fight back.  This movie doesn't pull its punches with the mean humans; they have might and machines, and are willing to use them.  Fox's home is torn apart and the entire neighborhood is ruined, making Fox and his entire community homeless.  That doesn't mean that Fox stops fighting, of course.

Wes Anderson adds quite a bit to Dahl's original story, partly to make it feature-length and partly to fit into his unique cinematic vision.  The most notable change is the number of children, from four in the book to one in the movie.  This sets up Fox's somewhat odd son, Ash, for a rivalry with his cousin, the athletic Kristofferson; Mr. Fox seems underwhelmed by Ash, while openly applauding Kristofferson.  Then again, it wouldn't be a Wes Anderson movie without a strained father/son relationship, would it?

The voice acting here is fine, overall, but could be better.  Clooney is excellent as Mr. Fox.  Willem Dafoe is very entertaining as Fox's animal nemesis, the rat.  Bill Murray does a good job with Mr. Badger; not good enough to cancel out Garfield, but still pretty good.  Overall, though, it probably would have been better with voice actors.  As it is, the cast is a blend of Anderson's friends, coworkers, and actors that he likes.  That means that Adrien Brody, Brian Cox, Owen Wilson, director Garth Jennings, musician Jarvis Cocker, and Wes Anderson himself all make small contributions to the voice cast.  Anderson earns loyalty from his actors unlike any other director today; that is why so many of the same actors work with him, picture after picture, even if their part is minute.  That works wonders in an ensemble movie.  This is animated, though, and that affection does not always show through.  While the voice acting could have been better, it certainly could have been much, much worse (I'm thinking of Shark Tale as an example).  The movie circles around Clooney's character, so that makes a lot of the shortcomings inconsequential; it's called The Fantastic Mr. Fox, not An Animal Ensemble featuring Mr. Fox, after all.

From a visual standpoint, this movie is superb.  From a directorial standpoint, this movie is pretty awesome.  But the story...well, it is ambitious, but doesn't quite hit a home run.  Anderson's script calls attention to the anthropomorphic aspects of the characters, pointing out some of their odd behaviors, all while reemphasizing the fact that these animals are, in fact, animals.  It's not quite metafilm, but it's close.  The movie likes to step back and point out some of the oddities of animals acting like people, and that quality of self-awareness, while often funny, detracts from the story . It sometimes felt like Mr. Fox was giving me the old wink-wink-nudge-nudge, letting me know that animals don't really act like this.  This isn't overt stuff, like Jimmy Fallon mugging the camera, but I noticed it.  Anderson also takes the time to show the consequences of Mr. Fox's actions; Fox's selfishness (or wildness, I suppose) threatens the lives of his friends and family in the short- and long-term, makes his son feel inadequate, and might ruin his marriage.  This is theoretically fine, but a little heavy-handed in practice.  Do I need a realistic marital argument in a children's film about foxes?  No, but I admit that it was written well.  The fact that it was written, though, just feels like a case of wrong time, wrong place.