Checks, Lies, and Audiotape.

[Ugh. It seems corporate ne’er-do-wells at Archer Daniels Midland conspired to erase this whole review just as I pressed publish. Here we go again…]

Give Steven Soderbergh credit: He’s astonishingly prolific — This is his second film of the year, after The Girlfriend Experience. He’s as at home in the arthouse (Sex, Lies, & Videotape; Kafka) as he is in the multiplex (Oceans 11, 12, 13.) He’s clearly animated by an interest in politics and a strong social conscience (Traffic, K Street, Erin Brockovich, Che 1 & 2.) When he’s on, he’s really on. (The Limey, Out of Sight.) And he’s not afraid to take stylistic risks to see what comes of them. (Solaris, Full Frontal, Bubble.)

The Informant!, a strange embellishment on the real-life story of whistleblower Mark Whitacre and the ADM scandals, shares many of these Soderberghian qualities. A merging of sorts of his indie and mainstream bodies of work, The Informant! also isn’t afraid to go out on a limb and try new things. But alas, partly because of those risks, the film doesn’t really hang together, and feels more like an experiment than an entertainment. It’s not a bad movie by any means, but it sadly never really lives up to the Coenesque promise of that exclamation mark in the title. I’d say, Netflix it.

On the interesting side, Soderbergh has dolloped everything in this movie with a sickly, buttery orange-yellow sheen, as if this entire ADM-run universe has been dipped and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But other stylistic ventures go less well. Matt Damon’s Whitacre is saddled with an in-head voiceover — we hear what he’s thinking — that pays considerable dividends in the final act, but often results in a lot of pointless meandering on the way there. (Like all of us, Whitacre’s mind tends to wander, and he tends to go about porsches, birds, and sundry other randomness at various times.) And, in the Big Mistake department, Soderbergh has farmed out the score to 70’s maestro Marvin Hamlisch, and the incessantly perky, bells-and-horns retro sound he’s come up with feels both tonally off and is consistently distracting. It is, in a word, corny.

The thing is, it’s not entirely clear The Informant! even needed all this flair. As the film begins, Mark Whitacre (Damon) rhapsodizes to his son about the many splendiferous virtues of corn — it’s in everything, it binds us, surrounds us, permeates us. And putting it there is ADM, “Supermarket to the World,” where Whitacre works as a biochemist and the youngest vice-president in the company’s history. Life is good, profits are made, the corn flows. But the view from the top gets shaken up a bit when some Japanese competitors of ADM ostensibly try to extort the company using a lysine-eating virus. And when a friendly FBI agent (Scott Bakula) arrives on the scene to investigate this corporate crime, Whitacre — propelled by his wife (Melanie Lynskey of Heavenly Creatures) into a burst of conscience — furtively tells him of even more sordid goings-on in the ADM empire: price-fixing. Soon, with Whitacre as their Inside Man, the FBI are on the case, trying to unravel this criminal corporate conspiracy and get ADM’s Masters of the Universe to compromise themselves on tape. One big problem, tho’: Whitacre. To their dismay, the Feds soon discover that their mole — who learned everything he needed to know about espionage from Michael Crichton movies — is not only a risky asset, but a compulsive liar, one that’s been keeping some very big cards close to the vest. Sometimes, it’s not even clear if that boy is right in the head.

To play Whitacre, Matt Damon has gone through a pretty substantial physical transformation here. He’s gained thirty pounds of paunch and topped it off with a Ned Flanders moustache and a bad Shatner hairpiece. (Not that I’d advocate that he — or anybody — get on the Christian Bale method-actor binge-and-purge bandwagon, but he probably should’ve done something similar to make Robert DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd even remotely plausible.) Even notwithstanding the corn-fed “young John Bolton” look he’s taken on, however, this part suits Damon. His inherent likability dovetails nicely with the congenial aw-shucks Midwestern blandness that Whitacre uses both as a shield and a key weapon in his arsenal of misdirection.

Damon aside, one of the minor pleasures of The Informant! is getting to see a bevy of character actors play against type. (The exception being Bakula, who once again is the still, calm center of the world. Then again, few do fundamentally decent as well as Quantum Leap‘s Sam Beckett.) Joel McHale of Talk Soup — soon, no doubt, to be Joel McHale of Community — is both deadly serious and believably earnest as Bakula’s partner. The Kurgan, a.k.a. Clancy Brown, exudes a ruthless professional mien as ADM’s top corporate lawyer — It’s his intelligence, rather than his bulk, that is sinister and frightening this time. Funnyman Patton Oswalt shows up in the later-going as an FBI accountant and plays it laudably straight and dull. And, perhaps most surprising, Buster Bluth (Tony Hale) also shows up in the third act and manages to come off as hypercompetent. (No small feat — every time he appeared on screen, my brain still went “Hey brother!“)

This, I think, speaks to yet another of Soderbergh’s strengths as a director — he’s clearly good with actors, and gives them the freedom to take the same types of risks that he does. The Informant! never really coheres, true, but I’d much rather see a talented director like Soderbergh continue to stretch himself and experiment, rather than bask in his safe, tried-and-tested wheelhouse. In the end, The Informant! probably counts as an amiable misfire, but those will happen. Stil, so long as Soderbergh keeps making movies, I’ll likely keep watching them…perhaps with some ADM-enhanced popcorn on hand.

Lest Ye Be Judged.

For completion’s sake, two comedies I caught over Labor Day weekend and have already almost forgotten about: Mike Judge’s Extract and Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad. One is generally optimistic and humane towards its fellow man, the other misanthropic and downright grim. Alas, neither, in the end, turned out to be particularly funny. If you’re looking for a good laugh at the theater right now, I still stand by In the Loop.

Of the two, it’s probably more surprising — and disappointing — that Mike Judge’s Extract turned out so pedestrian. As most everyone knows, Office Space is a certifiable classic, and however you feel about Beavis & Butthead, the basically straight-to-video Idiocracy was reasonably clever about bringing that duo’s schtick to its logical endpoint. (Idiocracy is also uneven, but its highs — the opening, the Wal-Mart greeter gag, etc. — are much higher than those to be had here.) At any rate, perhaps because of the Idiocracy snafu — there was really no good reason for Fox to bury it like they did — Judge seems to be playing it far too safe here. Extract mostly just feels like leftover vignettes from King of the Hill scripts, perhaps ones that were slightly too risque for television.

It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what’s wrong here (as it always is with funny), but perhaps it’s this: Office Space is much-beloved because it’s involves situations that anyone who’s spent any amount of time in cubicle life (or, per Jennifer Aniston’s “flair,” in food service) could identify with. Ok, most of us have never pulled the Superman III con, but who hasn’t been tsk-tsked for lack-of-TPS cover sheets, or wanted to go yard on a hiccuping fax machine? The humor of Office Space revolved around the penny-ante frustrations of work life, like getting stuck in traffic or losing your stapler, and in that sense it feels — almost — universal.

I had assumed going in that Extract would be the Office Space of the factory floor, but it isn’t. For one, it mainly revolves around the trials and tribulations of Jason Bateman’s factory owner — a small businessman, basically — and all the folks on the floor (including Judge himself) are mostly secondary characters, however sympathetically drawn. But, more to the point, Extract doesn’t really rely on workday nuisances for its humor like Office Space. Instead, it revolves around increasingly outlandish situations like, say, sorta accidentally buying your wife a sweet but lunk-headed gigolo (Dustin Milligan) while zonked out on ketamine. I can’t say I’ve ever worked in a factory, but I can’t imagine gigolos, femme fatale drifters (Mila Kunis), or even horrifying Rube Goldberg disasters resulting in testicular detachment play much of a day-to-day role in things.

And, divorced from that everyday humor that Judge does so well, Extract just feels episodic and throwaway. The funniest scene in the movie involves Bateman’s getting stoned out of his gourd with absolutely the wrong guy — let’s just say he’s slightly aggro — and even that goes on for too long. (Also, I missed Pineapple Express, but I get the sense that this very same joke was half the movie.) I didn’t mind throwing money at Extract in the end — after what happened to Idiocracy, Mike Judge probably deserves it. But I can’t really recommend the film either — there’s just not much there there.

Speaking of one-joke movies, and this probably counts as very big spoiler, Bobcat Goldthwait’s mordant squirmathon World’s Greatest Dad — which I caught with my priest on Labor Day (think Orgrimmar, not the Vatican) — is basically an extended riff on the “Teen Suicide: Don’t Do It,” “I love my dead gay son!” antics of Heathers. I didn’t loathe World’s Greatest Dad like my friend — he walked out around the eighty minute mark — but, again, there’s just not enough here to sustain a full movie.

The single-parent dad in question is Lance Clayton (Robin Williams), a failed writer laboring in (and loathing) obscurity as a poetry teacher at a private high school. In danger of losing both his job — nobody much cares about poetry anymore — and his surreptitious girlfriend Claire, the school’s art teacher (an appealing, if chirpy, Alexie Gilmore), Lance’s biggest problem these days is just trying to raise his really wayward son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara). Kyle is…well, Kyle is a douchebag, pure and simple. The kid has no redeeming qualities whatsoever — He terrorizes his father into submission on all manner of issues, and nobody can stand him, except for one long-suffering friend (Evan Martin) with his own problems at home. And that just about sums up Lance Clayton’s life, until an deadly (and embarrassing) accident — think David Carradine or Michael Hutchence — presents some horrible new opportunities…

The film’s big credit here is Robin Williams, who gives one of his better performances in recent years. To my mind, Williams can be hit-or-miss. He’s often excellent when he finds a role that balances comedy and drama (The World According to Garp, Dead Poet’s Society, The Fisher King, Good Will Hunting), but deteriorates rapidly if the script pushes him too far in either direction. (On one hand, abominations like Patch Adams or Mrs. Doubtfire; on the other, one-note performances like Insomnia and One Hour Photo.) Here, Goldthwait serves Williams well, and vice versa — The only thing that makes WGD work at all is Williams’ often surprisingly nuanced performance. (His reaction to “Parenting is the toughest job you’ll ever love” still makes me laugh every time I see the trailer.)

That being said, World’s Greatest Dad ends up being mostly a one-note film. (Part of the problem is the set-up: The movie is driven by a Big Lie, and so, just as you always end up waiting for the couple to get (back) together in a standard-issue rom-com, a lot of the time here is spent just waiting for the other shoe to drop.) I admired WGD‘s intentions — Get past the kink and the misanthropy, and the movie is an pretty timely riff on the blatant white-washing that often attends our public mourning rituals. But, in the end, it’s not particularly funny, and it beats its one dead horse so thoroughly that WGD loses steam well before its final act. Next time, Dad, cut to the chase.

State of Play.

Some folks in this film would probably call me a right bleedin’ tosser (and much, much worse) for starting off this post as such. But Armando Iannucci’s hilarious In the Loop, which I caught Sunday morning, has only one real flaw — It feels like it’s coming out a few years too late. This faux-documentary-style disquisition into Britain and America’s joint lead-up to war in the Middle East, and the shrewd, venal bureaucrats who got us there, can’t help but feel very 2003. (Which is not to say Washington politics is now a beacon of optimism and good faith in the Obama era, only that the political zeitgeist has shifted some since the events depicted here.)

But, that one small caveat aside — and to be fair, In the Loop is apparently based on a British TV show (The Thick of It) that was more timely (and is going in the Netflix queue) — this is a gut-bustingly funny film. I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard in a theater. (Alas, it was probably 21 Grams, and that was for all the wrong reasons.) True, given that this is a sharp-edged, basically anti-Dubya political satire that goes out of its way to reward pop-culture geekery (Frodo, Ron Weasley, and the White Stripes are all used as epithets at one point or another), I’m probably as close to a target audience for this sort of movie that’s out there. Nevertheless, if your sense of humor runs anywhere from squirmathons like The Office UK or Curb Your Enthusiasm to sardonic political comedies like The Candidate or Bob Roberts to the current-events commentaries of Stewart and Colbert, this movie is a must-see. (And if you don’t find hyperarticulate Scotsman Peter Capaldi spewing forth rococo profanities funny just yet, you probably will after watching In the Loop.)

Iannucci’s film begins with another day in the life of Malcolm Tucker (Capaldi), the tough-as-nails, take-no-guff director of communications at 10 Downing St. (Think Rahm Emanuel, but funny.) This particular morning, Tucker quickly becomes enraged by the latest slip-up by the seemingly ineffectual Minister for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, best recognized in America from the Pirates sequels.) To wit, Foster responded to a direct press question about an impending Mideast conflict by blurting out that “war is unforeseeable.” This is not “following the line,” as Tucker puts it, but after a stern rebuke, the Minister — and his communications team, new guy Toby (Chris Addison) and competent veteran Judy (Gina McKee) — only compound the error. Foster gets completely lost in the thicket at a follow-up press avail, and soon manages to mangle his way through to an even more unwieldy soundbite: “To walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict.” (Tucker’s livid response to this policy breach: “You sound like a f**in’ Nazi Julie Andrews.“)

Nonetheless, this sort of Zen pronunciamento is exactly the sort of thing the big boys in Washington want more of, even if no one (least of all Foster) seems to know what exactly he was driving at. Soon both the Hawks (represented by a Rumsfeldian David Rasche) and the Doves (mainly State Dept. deputy Mimi Kennedy and peacenik general James Gandolfini) think they’ve found an ace-in-the-hole in the confused minister. Meanwhile, this being Washington, a town that’s “like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns,” there’s another tier of shenanigans brewing under the principals. State Dept. aide Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky) has penned a career-killing memorandum — soon acronymed, in DC fashion as “PWIP PIP” — that outlines the few pros and many cons of the imminent war. And Foster’s new man Toby has managed to inadvertently leak the real name of the War Committee to his friend at CNN — naturally, it was the committee with the most boring-sounding title.

Throw in a few more byzantine political subplots — more aides, committees, leaks, and whatnot — and simmer, and you have what amounts to the smartest, funniest political satire I’ve seen in a good long while. This is also clearly a movie that will reward repeat viewing, and I could see In the Loop someday being quoted as often and as lovingly in certain circles as The Big Lebowski. It may not be everyone’s cup of bile, I suppose, but if you’re generally a reader of this site, I’m guessing you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I did. So, if this movie is still playing in your area, go check it out…or brave the unholy wrath and frightening verbiage of Mr. Tucker. War may be “unforeseeable” — your enjoyment of In the Loop is not.

Your Lonely Souls.

After Friday’s Basterds came a Saturday morning expedition to Sophie Barthes’ minor-key Cold Souls. I was sold on this film as soon as I heard about the sci-fi premise — once again there’s some weird science for sale in and around New York City — and it’s worth a rental at least, particularly if you’re a fan of Paul Giamatti. But Cold Souls also feels vaguely underwritten: The ideas it puts in play are more interesting than the execution, and it’s hard not to think of the movie as just another well-meaning but flawed act of Existential Schlub Theater, a la Charlie Kaufmann’s Synecdoche, New York.

So what’s the score here? Well, world-renowned screen thespian Paul Giamatti (Paul Giamatti) has lately been pouring his heart andsoul into a Broadway production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and it’s killing him even worse than that John Adams gig back in the day — he lies awake nights, brain and stomach churning. So, after being clued into a New Yorker story about a Roosevelt Island firm that temporarily stores souls, Paul takes the plunge. Without even telling his wife (Emily Watson, bestowing her indie imprimatur), he takes a cable car over to yonder island, listens to the sales pitch from the eminently reasonable Dr. Flintstein (David Straithairn), and gets his chickpea-sized soul (or at least 95% of it) extracted from his person.

As you might expect, this has some strange side effects — The soulless Paul, for example, is completely impervious to the charms of a cute bunny (I mean that literally, although the extremely underused Lauren Ambrose doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on him either.) He’s also now a terrible actor — Without his broken soul propelling him along a dark and agonizing path, Giamatti’s Vanya flies over Russian pathos and lands somewhere in the Borscht Belt. But, when Paul heads back to Roosevelt Island to get his soul back…well, his complication has developed a little complication. For it turns out there is a brisk black market going on in the soul business, and Giamatti’s personal chickpea has been sent via mule (Dina Korzun) to St. Petersburg, where it’s being used by a beautiful Russian soap star (Katheryn Winnick) who now believes herself in possession of Al Pacino’s actorly chops. (Al Pacino has a soul?) Meanwhile, the avuncular Dr. Flintstein suggests, perhaps Giamatti could just pick a soul out of the black market catalog…word is Russian poets are going cheap these days…

There’s a lot to admire in Barthes’ Souls — It’s nothing if not clever throughout, and there are definitely a few chuckles to be had. Every member of the cast here is pretty darned good, particularly Giamatti and Watson, who manage to make a compelling, multi-dimensional marriage come across with very few lines. And I admired that the movie had thought through some of the second-level ramifications of a soul commodities business — black markets, for example.

All that being said, Cold Souls ultimately feels like something of a non-starter. As with The Brothers Bloom, a third act in Russia feels meandering and purposeless. The glimpses we do eventually get of people’s soul-landscape — a sort of Mark Romanek afterworld of out-of-focus children and creepy oldsters — are, frankly, less interesting than the ideas that were already put into play. And there’s just not much there there. In the end, the movie is better at the set-up than the follow-through. Cold Souls is worth watching on IFC some day, but, like poor Paul Giamatti after the operation, it ends up feeling curiously hollow.

Swatting at Nazis.

A weekend chock-full of movies on this end, beginning with a Friday night outing to Quentin Tarantino’s striking, rambling Inglourious Basterds. I’ve been down on pretty much everything QT has done over the past decade — Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Kill Bill, Vol. 2, Death Proof — but Basterds at last feels like a movie by the writer-director who gave us Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and the underappreciated Jackie Brown. To be honest, it’s hard to say whether Tarantino has finally reversed his decade-long slide into his own solipsistic, homage-heavy universe (which is the three-dollar way of describing his recent tendency to disappear up his own ass), or — more likely — that QT’s riffing on European film as much as 70’s exploitation flicks here makes this movie feel broader than the last few forays. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, Basterds works, and it is a welcome return-to-form.

Perhaps part of the reason I enjoyed the film was that I went in with egregiously low expectations. Particularly with Hostel director Eli Roth skulking about the premises — he’s Donny Donowitz, a.k.a. the “Bear Jew,” a Boston-born basterd who likes to go yahd on Nazi skulls with his Louisville Slugger — I went in thinking that this movie would basically be two and a half hours of grisly torture porn — or , in other words, the ear scene from Reservoir Dogs over and over again, made “ok” because the victims are Nazis. But Inglourious Basterds is both broader and more subtle than that. Yes, there’s some of that going on — particularly in Chapter 2 — but it’s handled much more expertly than I feared. (Nor are the victims in question just cartoon Nazis out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but multi-dimensional individuals in a huge spot of trouble.)

And, in any case, the Basterds are really a small part of the film as a whole. Borrowing liberally from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at the start, the movie begins in 1941 France with the interrogation of a French farmer (Denis Menochet) who may or may not be harboring his Jewish neighbors. His interlocutor is the courtly SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christophe Waltz, a bit over-the-top but probably a shoo-in for a Supporting Actor nod) who, in a wide-ranging conversation about milk, hawks, pipes, and paperwork, methodically picks apart the poor dairy farmer like a boy pinning down a butterfly. Then, we meet the Basterds, the elite unit of Jewish soldiers — led by “Aldo the Apache” Raine (Brad Pitt, also playing it broad) — who are kicking ass and taking manes all across Europe. Their dastardly exploits have even caught the attention of the German High Command — including the Fuhrer himself (Martin Wuttke), who wants them dead, like, yesterday. (Speaking of which, the early scenes in the FHQ, with Hitler throwing a tantrum over the Basterds, felt a lot like how I’d imagine a WWII-era Captain America film might pan out.)

Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), meanwhile, is more interested in getting his newest propaganda film — A Nation’s Pride, about the Sgt. York-like heroics of one German sniper (Daniel Bruhl) — the grand opening it deserves in Nazi-occupied Paris. To that end, and on the advice of said sniper (who’s a bit smitten with the proprietor), he looks to book the premiere at a theater run by a melancholy French beauty named Emmanuelle Mimieux (Melanie Laurent). But Emmanuelle, it turns out, is in fact named Shoshanna — we met her earlier in the film — and she more than most has a score to settle with these godawful Nazis. And, like Herr Goebbels, she knows a thing or two about using the cinema to make a dramatic statement…

I haven’t even mentioned the German actress/double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), or the dashing British film critic-turned-lieutenant, Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), or Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), the expert Nazi-killer sprung by the Basterds for bad behavior, or military mastermind Gen. Ed Fenech (Mike Myers, distracting but getting to live out his Peter Sellers dream some more), the man with a plan to knock out the German High Command in one fell swoop. Yes, this film is a truly baroque creation. It’s more a collection of loosely-related setpieces, to be honest, and some work better than others (A vignette involving a rendezvous-gone-south in a basement pub is a masterpiece of slowly-ratcheting suspense; the scene where Shoshanna is forced to eat dinner with a gaggle of Nazis feels ten minutes too long.)

Although most of the speaking here is conducted in French, German, or really-bad Italian (it’s all lovely to listen to, by the way — the musicality of QT’s dialogue definitely carries over into other languages), this is a Tarantino movie through and through. We have the long, meandering conversations punctuated by staccato bursts of violence. (See also: Any other Tarantino film.) We have the throwback homage-ridden score (Mostly Morricone, but David Bowie’s “Cat People” shows up in a truly odd spot.) We have the random digressions on “Pop Culture According to QT.” (There’s an extended riff on King Kong here that momentarily took me out of the film.) We have an obvious lapse into foot fetishism (the Cinderella scene, which, imho, doesn’t make much sense given what happens later.) There are, of course, several Mexican standoffs. It’s all very Tarantino, alright.

And we have the powerful ending, which I won’t give away in detail here. [Warning: This rest of this review is spoilerish.] As several characters say in Chapter 5, “the shoe’s on the other foot now.” And it is — After the tension-wracked first chapter, Basterds completely inverts the usual Cat-and-Maus relationship inherent to almost all movies of this genre. The political economy of IB is hardly what you’d call Zen, and if “turn the other cheek” is your moral touchstone, then the ending is deplorable in many ways. (Even Tarantino seems to think so, given that we the audience have basically the same reaction to Basterds as the Nazis do to A Nation’s Pride.) That being said, it’s a weirdly and undeniably intoxicating thing to see the Jewish Basterds being the guys holding the guns for once, and to witness their disembodied, cackling Avenging Angel exult in a vengeance long denied.

After all its Eurocinema-meets-The Dirty Dozen twists-and-turns, Inglourious Basterds ends up being a sort of a Leni Riefenstahl film for the Jews. And, well, propaganda it may be, but you don’t have to be a Tarantino-level foot fetishist to find it at least somewhat refreshing, even exhilarating, to see that boot on the other heel for once.

Only a Prawn in Their Game.

Neil Blomkamp’s inventive genre mishmash District 9 is a strange and compelling critter alright. On its surface, just as 1988’s Alien Nation was basically a sci-fi revamp of In the Heat of the Night, this is first and foremost the central “E.T.s as undesirables” conceit of Alien Nation as filtered through the sad story of South Africa’s real-life District Six.

Here, the aliens in question — having arrived in a stalled ship under horrifying refugee conditions and been deemed “Prawns” by the disgusted human population — are festering in a slum outside Johannesburg, where they are mostly starving, causing trouble, indulging drug addictions (in their case, cat food), and/or getting exploited by the local (Nigerian) criminal element. Our protagonist in this tale — after you see him at work, you wouldn’t really call him “our hero” — is one Wikus van der Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copley), a eager-to-please bureaucrat for Multi-National United (MNU), who on account of family connections is tasked with supervising the relocation of District 9 to what amounts to a tented concentration camp, farther away from humankind. (Wikus’ other appointed task: to acquire for the Halliburton-like MNU as much alien-tech as possible for the multinational’s very profitable weapons division.)

But there’s more to District 9 than just a socially-conscious apartheid fable (and describing it as follows will give away some mild spoilers.) The head of the film, its first forty minutes or so, feels like a Paul Greengrass movie such as Bloody Sunday: a grim, gripping tale of social and political injustice (and, as per the Bournes, powerful and sinister multinationals) told in naturalistic, faux-documentary style. But the thorax of District 9 delves deeper into old-school David Cronenberg territory, with all the gooey orifices, transformational anxiety, and throbbing gristle that usually portends. (There’s a touch of Blomkamp’s mentor, the Dead Alive-era Peter Jackson, here as well — particularly in those ruthless energy weapons.) And, by the time we get to the abdomen, we’re suddenly watching a George Miller or Jim Cameron-style actioner, with more than enough visceral excitement to keep the antennae twitching.

All stitched together, District 9 is quite a remarkable feat of summer sensation. In the end, I’m pretty sure I enjoyed the more self-contained experiences of Moon and The Hurt Locker more. And I might quibble here and there with Blomkamp’s execution — the lapses back to documentary-style talking heads at times feels like cheap and easy exposition, and cute kid plot-devices are cute kid plot-devices no matter the species involved. But, unlike Terminator: Salvation and (I presume) its Hasbro-minded competition this summer, Blomkamp’s District 9 actually manages to deftly recombine familiar sci-fi elements into something that feels new and original. In short, it’s the clever, gory, mildly thought-provoking, and indisputably kick-ass action thrill-ride genre fans have been waiting for all season.

Space Oddity.

Granted I tend to be a sucker for these sorts of films, which are far too rare nowadays. (If you don’t count Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is kind of its own rare beast, the only recent, halfway-decent ones I can think of offhand would be Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca and Shane Carruth’s Primer.) Nevertheless, I found Duncan Jones’ low-key, hard-sci-fi rumination Moon to be really, really great — exactly the sort of small-budget “big think” science fiction production that it feels like you used to see a lot more of back in the day. (Silent Running, Outland, even stuff like Capricorn One and Soylent Green.)

Not much stuff blows up real good in Moon, which seems to have irked a few critics out there — Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it “agonizingly, deadeningly, coma-inducingly, they-could-bury-you-alive-accidentally boring.” and Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor argued “It just may be the most boring movie ever made – period.” (Note: don’t click through to those reviews if you know nothing about the movie — they gave away a key plot point, which I knew going in, but which is probably best left as a surprise.)

But, frankly, those guys are bonkers — I don’t normally say this of critics, because, obviously aesthetic opinions will always differ. But I can’t believe, particularly in this economy, these guys are actually still paid to write about film. (In his review, Rainer also says 2001 is “the greatest boring movie ever made,” which suggests, to say the least, that we come at the hard sci-fi genre quite differently.) Well, whatever. Sure, I probably saw this film under ideal conditions for the subject matter — by myself at the 11:45pm showing — but I was riveted by it. And if you’re a science fiction fan (or a fan of Sam Rockwell, who’s showcased here to great effect), Moon is a must-see.

If I’m talking more about the critics than the movie here, it’s because Moon feels like a film it’s best to know very little about going in. I will say this: In what seems like the near-future, some sort of miracle energy source has been discovered in the sunlight encased within lunar rock. As such astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is finishing up a three-year solo stint on the far side of the moon, monitoring four big lunar harvesters for some Big Energy Company. With no one to keep him company but Gertie, the resident HAL 9000-like AI (Kevin Spacey), and the very-occasional time-delayed message from his wife and daughter, Sam is getting dangerously close to cracking out of sheer loneliness. (If you ever played old Infocom games, you’ll remember the occasional warning: “Talking to yourself is a sign of impending mental collapse.” — If so, Sam here is in a heap of trouble. Let’s just say the protein pills clearly aren’t working so hot.)

In any event, one day (or is it night?) Sam, suffering from delusions at this point, inadvertently wrecks his moon jeep while making his rounds. He awakens in the base several hours — or days — later, being tended by Gertie. But how did he get back from the accident? Why is Gertie now keeping him on lockdown? (Very possible answer: He’s “got to keep the loonies on the path.”) And who’s that rascally robot talking to when Sam’s back is turned — or is he still just hearing voices?

If this sounds like I am Legend with a robot instead of a dog, well, it starts out that way. But, soon, Sam finds himself facing one of those classic science fiction quandaries, and the mind games begin in earnest. What I found particularly impressive about Moon is that never once does Sam seem to do anything just to move the plot forward — everything here seems surprisingly well thought-out. I only have one minor complaint, and that is, at the very end, [Spoiler — Highlight to read…and see the movie first!] why send the harvester to knock out the jamming tower as Sam-Prime is leaving the station? I know he’s trying to help out Sam-Prime-Prime and every iteration thereafter, but doesn’t it ruin all the secrecy the Sams have been trying to establish for the past hour, and won’t it assuredly be fixed by the repair guys who just showed up?

That quibble aside, Moon is a rare treat for hard sci-fi fans, and suggests there’s a lot more to Duncan Jones than just “David Bowie’s kid.” If you get a chance, definitely check it out. (And remember: There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it’s all dark.)

Hurts so Good.

Last of the past weekend’s offerings was Kathryn Bigelow’s lean, gripping The Hurt Locker. A taut, minimalist “men-in-combat” thriller that immediately goes up on the top shelf of Iraq flicks next to HBO’s Generation Kill (and, if you’re counting Gulf War I, Three Kings), The Hurt Locker is also that rare thing in the summer of Terminator: Salvation, Transformers, and GI Joe: a war movie for grown-ups. Very highly recommended.

As The Hurt Locker opens, we meet a three-man Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team out of Bravo Company doing what they do best: locating, examining, and disposing of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in the streets of Baghdad. Even on a run-of-the-mill call like this, and despite the jaunty banter among team members — the temperature is rising, the tension is thick, and the situation is life-or-death. For the IED in question could blow at any moment and take out everybody around…or it could be triggered by any one of the onlookers gathered, perhaps innocuously, perhaps not, to watch the soldiers work. Well, in this particular case of somebody-setting-us-up-the-bomb, things happen to go terribly awry. And, only six weeks out from the end of Bravo Company’s deployment, a crucial spot opens up on this EOD team.

Enter Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), an amiable, reckless, possibly suicidal fellow who, not unlike Harry Tuttle, “came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there’s trouble, a man alone.” (It’s this same devil-may-care attitude and notable lack of self-protective instinct, presumably, that eventually got him reassigned to zombie-stricken London.) Particularly showing up as he does so close to Bravo Company’s ship-out date, James’ cowboy moxie in the field causes huge headaches for his teammates (Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty), who even at one point contemplate fragging the guy. But, just as Jimmy McNulty is startlingly good po-lice despite his many disastrous personal foibles, Staff Sgt. James turns out to be surprisingly in his element whenever the situation deteriorates. And, amid the alleyways, warehouses, dust, and rubble of the Emerald City, the situation tends to deteriorate pretty much constantly.

The Hurt Locker isn’t really a commentary on our Iraq excursion like other movies in the genre we’ve seen of late. (Grace is Gone, Lions for Lambs) Like Generation Kill, it aims mainly to recreate the visceral experience of the war by getting us into the headspace of the men on the front lines. Inasmuch as there is a wider moral to this tale, it’s found in the epigram — “war is a drug” — taken from Chris Hedges’ War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. Or, if you’d prefer, the same point is found in the first ten minutes of Apocalypse Now: “When I was home after my first tour, it was worse…I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said ‘yes’ to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.“

Scratch a little deeper, tho’, and you can find glimmers of a wider critique of the Iraq fiasco in Bigelow’s film — indeed, you could argue that these moments have more force because they’re so throwaway. After a Iraqi cabbie breaks a cordon, stares down the EOD team for unclear reasons, and is summarily carried away after finally backing down, James quips, “Well, if he wasn’t an insurgent, he sure is one now.” Later, David Morse briefly appears as some high-ranking muckety-muck akin to Godfather who has little regard for Geneva niceties, and Ralph Fiennes and Jason Flemyng also show up as British operatives looking to make some easy quid as bounty hunters on the side.

These small moments notwithstanding, The Hurt Locker is mostly apolitical, focusing mainly on the men (and it’s just men here) who find themselves deep in the midst of the suck. And, on that level, it’s a rousing success. In all honesty, the film cheats a bit by giving this EOD team a wider set of experiences than I think is probably likely — at various points they are forced into sniper and resource extraction missions by the course of events. But, that’s a quibble — for the most part Hurt Locker is as tense a thriller as I’ve seen in years.

Bigelow understands intuitively what far too many action directors these days miss: It’s not the size of the explosion or the volume of bullets fired that determine the quality of an action flick, but the slow, remorseless buildup to the potentially deadly events. In vignette after vignette, The Hurt Locker ratchets up the suspense by degrees, until you find yourself — like the EOD team we’re following — living out each moment in a heightened state of tension, endlessly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s an impressive moviemaking feat, and it helps to make The Hurt Locker one of the best films of the year.

Teenage Wasteland.

Second on the weekend bill was David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment of the series (and Yates’ second directorial outing after 2007’s Order of the Phoenix.) On one hand, this year at Hogwarts is a deftly-made piece of work, and probably the most accomplished and filmic of the Potter movies (tho’ I still prefer Goblet of Fire overall.) But, on the other hand, Yates and the assembled cast are just gathering steam right as the source material is petering out. I racked my brains before the movie trying to remember anything about Half-Blood Prince the novel, and basically came up with the ending, “Slughorn,” “Harry’s Potions book,” and “Dumbledore drinks the crap.” These four things do not a movie make, particularly not a 150 minute movie like this one. You can pad it out with Quidditch and/or various adenoidal episodes on the Big Three’s part, but Half-Blood Prince — the movie like the tome — still feels somewhat overlong, unnecessary, and redundant.

Part 6 of the Harry Potter saga starts in media res — so much so that it feels like Yates & co. have basically given up on the non-readers — with a trio of the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters openly attacking London Muggles in broad daylight. Yes, it’s gotten that bad. But the potential Chosen One (Daniel Radcliffe) has his mind on other matters at the moment — mainly, getting to know the cute waitress at the local station cafe once her shift ends. Alas for Harry, Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) apparates into the scene and bigfoots that plan relatively quickly — Instead, he enlists young Potter in an scheme to entice former Prof. Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) back into the Hogwarts fold. (Slughorn is an inveterate namedropper, and thus susceptible to Harry’s influence. That being said, the dance of seduction here all seems a bit more unsavory when viewed rather than read.)

Anyway, soon Harry — and Slughorn — and the rest of the gang have all returned to Hogwarts (with the exception of those schoolboys in disgrace, the Weasley twins, who are now making a mint in Diagon Alley.) But the darkness all around has now seeped even into Fortress Dumbledore — students become bewitched, various assassination attempts go awry, and the scion of Slytherin in particular, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), seems to be under more strain than usual. Perhaps worse still for the gang, the trickle of teenage sensuality seen in Goblet and Order has swollen to a torrent, and Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) are now in the full hormone-fueled throes of adolescence. Honestly, after all the pregnant looks, strange urges, and attempted snoggings in the first hour, I half-expected Harry to whip out an ID named “McLovin'” and try to score some butterbeer.

The kids all acquit themselves well enough given the modicum of plot this time around. Still, with all due respect to the teens, the secret weapon of the Potterverse on film remains the long and growing list of distinguished British thespians on hand. From the starting cast (Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, David Bradley, Mark Williams and Julie Walters) to the later pick-ups (Michael Gambon, David Thewlis, Helen McCrory, Evanna Lynch), Half-Blood Prince is stocked to the gills with well-done character turns. The only person who noticeably stuck out as bad was Helena Bonham Carter — She’s wayyy over the top (again) and may be refining her Queen of Hearts here. (I also would’ve liked to have seen He Who Must Not Be Named at some point over the film, but I suspect he’ll be back for the next two installments.)

That being said, the best thing about Half-Blood Prince is probably Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn. At first, he just seemed to be doing a slightly toned-down variation of his “snip, snip, slice, slice” cameo in Brazil. But Broadbent manages to infuse the character with a melancholy I never took away from his more glad-handing, Falstaffian persona in the book. This should’ve been the “Half-Blood Prince’s” movie, really (or Dumbledore’s, for that matter) — but, particularly given the notable absence of the high adventure or puzzle-solving plot dynamics of earlier Potter tales, it’s Broadbent’s haunted sense of regret here that leaves a mark after the credits roll.

The Other Side of Summer.

Well, I may not have cable or home-internet yet. But, on the bright side, I have settled into my new home multiplex (look, ma, stadium seating!) only a short bike ride away, and have started catching up on my recent flicks. First up on a three-picture bill this past weekend, Marc Webb’s heartfelt yet surprisingly jagged “romantic” comedy, (500) Days of Summer. This won’t be a film for everyone — It’s often too cute or clever by half, and I’ll concede that it probably reeks of forced Little Miss Sunshine or Juno-style indie cachet to people who don’t roll with it. I can envision a lot of folks — particularly those fortunate souls who’ve never been on the wrong end of a bad break-up — finding it boring and/or hating it.

But I’m not one of those people. For me this definitely goes on the Garden State “vaguely-guilty pleasure” pile. (500) Days of Summer tells such a particular and yet relatable story that I readily fell for it. Like our unfortunate protagonist, I was willing to think the best of Summer, and forgive its obvious flaws, once I’d chosen to succumb to its charms. It’d be hard to sum up (500) Days better or more succinctly than the tagline at the official site: “Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t.” If this has ever happened to you, and lordy has it happened to me, I suspect you’ll enjoy 500 Days of Summer quite a bit as well.

(500) Days tips its doomed-romance hand right away, opening with a Fargoesque gag about the film’s provenance: “Note: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental…Especially you, Jenny Beckman. B***h.” From there, we briefly glimpse our star-crossed lovers on day 488 of their 500-day story, before venturing back to Day 1. Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a would-be architect slumming it as a writer of greeting cards. Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is the boss’s comely new assistant. Tom has spent a lifetime listening to mopey acts like The Smiths, New Order, and Joy Division (check), and has convinced himself that there is a One out there for him, somewhere amid this sea of despond. (And when he meets her, it’ll be Fate! There’ll be a Light that Never Goes Out!) Summer, meanwhile, is a child from a broken home, one who long ago gave up on capital-L Love, and now she prides herself on keeping a distance from everything and everyone around her. Did I mention this will end badly?

Nonetheless, Tom falls head-over-heels for Summer, and, going with the flow, she reciprocates his affections, even though she warns him she wants nothing “serious.” Weeks and months go by — They shop for records, they indulge their IKEA nesting instinct, they reveal intimate details to each other. But all the while Tom is falling deeper in passion, Summer is skating along the surface of things. The problem is, Tom can’t see it because he’s living out his own romantic reverie (and because the object of his affection is played by the adorable Deschanel), but Summer is actually kinda awful. She’s a bit of a poseur. She’s a relentless Debbie Downer. She’s needlessly and almost unwittingly cruel, in the way that madly self-absorbed women often tend to be. And, really, how can you trust a gal whose favorite Beatle is Ringo? (Not that Tom wasn’t warned. Early on, he asks his best friend (Geoffrey Arend, most recognizable as the wacked-out college kid from Super Troopers), “Why is it that pretty girls think they can treat everybody like crap and get away with it?” The obvious answer: “Centuries of reinforcement.“)

If you’re sensing a certain amount of raw post-traumatic breakup disorder pique issuing forth from (500) Days, it’s definitely there. (Co-screenwriter Scott Neustadter has been admitting in interviews that this film was basically therapy for him after a particularly virulent dumping.) But, with two to five crappy, by-the-numbers romantic comedies coming out a weekend, I find it a bit refreshing to see a closer-to-real-life alternative for once. Thing is, this isn’t really a romantic comedy at all, so much as a story of a guy who once felt like Han Solo when ’round a certain girl (check), now digging in the dirt, trying to figure out how he ended up in such a godforsaken hole. And, in that regard — I’ve lived down there, so don’t go there — I definitely warmed to it.

The film’s got problems, for sure — There’s a half-baked voiceover (by Leslie Nielsen) that fades in and out whenever a point needs to be hammered on. There are a lot of scenes out of Indie Screenwriting 101 — the hipster karaoke date, the Howard Beale breakdown at work, the 7-11 trip in the Lebowski bathrobe. But, like I said, you either go along with things like, say, Tom’s confessor being his preternaturally mature 12-year-old sister (Chloe Moretz), or you check out. For me, I went along with the ride. The worst thing you can say about (500) Days of Summer in the end is that it’s Annie Hall-lite. (And, funnily enough, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has already been in Miller’s Crossing-lite with Brick.) Well, to my mind, there are worse things in the world than rehashing Annie Hall for a few hours. Getting dumped, for example.