Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It.

Now I may not yet, or ever, possess the longevity of Old Spock. But in my thirty-four years on the third planet near Sol, I’m old enough to have witnessed some memorable happenings in the world of sci-fi. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. And for many years, before universes proliferated and comic-book-guyish, cosplay-level fandom went mainstream and upmarket, a long, simmering, and sometimes even strangely bitter rivalry between the Star Wars and Star Trek people. (I would count myself among the former — I lived out there, so don’t go there. But that don’t mean a fanboy can’t rest with the Trek, be a nice guest to the Trek.) In the darkest days of this needless galactic schism, Trekkies often considered SW fans to be middlebrow, sophomoric science-fantasy types (if not budding Fascists), while those of the Jedi ilk often looked down upon their Trek brethren as Aspergers-suffering mouth-breathers, even more unsocialized and hopelessly nerdy than they.

But on the nineteenth hour of the seventh day of the fifth month of 2009, (or, if you’d prefer, Stardate 62851.9), the war at long last ended. For, with the release of the eleventh film in the latter franchise, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, these once-feuding universes converged. Blessed with a charismatic and appealing cast that smooths over much of the choppy writing turbulence therein, Abrams’ Trek reboot isn’t only a rousing, over-the-top, sometimes patently absurd space opera that borrows as much from Lucas’ original trilogy as it does from its erstwhile source material — It’s also probably the best of the Star Wars prequels. The more I’ve thought about it over the past few days, the less sense the movie makes, and the more and more shamelessly derivative Trek seems. But darned if I didn’t have a good time during the Big Show itself, which, of course, is what really matters in the end.

This iteration of Trek begins with an on-duty starship encountering the usual deeply weird phenomena on the fringes of Federation territory — in this case, a lightning storm in space. And, just like that giveaway red shirt on an unknown Away Team member (see also: Sam Rockwell in Galaxy Quest), the fact that said ship is not emblazoned Enterprise but, rather, the U.S.S. Kelvin signifies that there’s probably some serious trouble ahead. (Also, just as Lts. Chekov and Uhura on the original bridge signifed an optimistic faith in mankind’s ability to move past the Cold War, racial inequality, and other seemingly intractable dilemmas of the Sixties, the fact that the Kelvin is captained by Pakistani-American actor Faran Tahir, most recognizable as the Mandarin-sponsored Afghan terrorist of Iron Man, indicates that the Trekverse laudably remains an hopeful and inclusive one.)

Well, the allegorical obstacles in Trek may come and go, but then as now, aliens with ridges and/or tattoos on their head are usually up to no good. And, sure enough, a disgruntled Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana) soon emerges from said lightning cloud and obliterates the Kelvin…but not before some daring, ultimately suicidal heroics by acting Captain George Kirk. Cut to several years later, when Kirk’s only son, James Tiberius, is acting out his abandonment issues by transgressing authority whenever possible amid the cornfields of Iowa. (Hey, good news, Ad Rock — the Beastie Boys still get some run in the 23rd century.) Meanwhile, over on the planet Vulcan, Spock, a young boy of mixed lineage — Vulcan father, human mother — fends off the taunts of his schoolmates and struggles more than most to keep his emotions in check. (Playing Spock’s parents are Ben Cross, looking quite a bit like the Sarek of old, Mark Lenard, and Winona Ryder, inexplicably cast to wear bad age make-up, respectively.)

Another jump forward, and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine, a real find), still raisin’ less corn and more hell than most around him, is shamed into joining Starfleet after a bar brawl by Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who just-so happened to write his dissertation(?) on Kirk the elder’s heroism. (Pike will conveniently forget much of this later on.) Meanwhile, Spock (Matthew Quinto, making the post-Sylar leap) has had it up to his eyebrows with Vulcan nativism and has subsequently enlisted in Starfleet himself, where his duties include, among other things, developing the diabolical Kobayashi Maru. These two men are clearly on a collision course: Kirk’s bold, earthy blend of action and intution — “leap before you look,” basically — is the exact opposite of Spock’s cold embrace of logic and reason. And, when Nero returns to threaten Vulcan, and, subsequently, Earth, will these two potential heroes be able to get past their obvious differences and form a winning team? Unfortunately, Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban, doing a pitch-perfect DeForrest Kelley) has been shuffled to the background, and isn’t really around to square that circle like he once did.

There’s more to the story, of course, including a mid-act time-travel twist that, especially by Trek standards, is more elegant than most. (I particularly liked how it preserved all of the classic continuity while allowing for anything to happen in this new, pocket universe.) But the basic gist here is: Let’s get the Band Together! And, as per the “future-nostalgia” habit of so many prequels these days, Trek spends a good bit of its run just getting all of the Enterprise‘s ducks in a row — Scotty in the engine room, Bones in the medbay, Uhura (wo)manning the comm, etc. This could all get pretty tiresome in terms of inside-baseball, I guess — there are shout-outs to everything from Orion slave girls to Scott Bakula’s beagle — if the cast here wasn’t so uniformly game for anything that comes along. Kirk, Bones, Chekov, and Scotty in particular are all written a bit broadly, but the actors really succeed in selling even the goofiest subroutines here. And having the imprimatur of you-know-who of the classic era — playing Obi-Wan Kenobi basically — really lends Abrams’ Star Trek reboot a touch of class that I’m not even sure the Shat could’ve provided.

Now, speaking of Obi-Wan, I guess it’d be a bit churlish, after the depressing lowlights of Insurrection and Nemesis, to begrudge fans of this universe “A New Hope.” Still, even with glimmers of Trek’s previous highs — the surveying-the-Enterprise sequence of The Motion Picture, the humor and ship-to-ship combat of Wrath of Khan — every so often, there’s just an extraordinary amount of ganking from the Original Trilogy going on here. Now, as I said above, I’m one who thinks there’s a lot more in common between Wars and Trek than is often acknowledged. Whether it’s Luke using the Force at the last possible moment, or simply Scotty/Geordi reversing the dual positronic overlays on the tachyon inhibitors surrounding the dilithium field, we’re still in deus-ex-machina territory nine times out of ten. (And imho, Trek, despite its reputation, was never really close to being hard-sci-fi anyway.) That being said, the sweeping, larky space opera tone of Star Wars has been almost completely appropriated here by Abrams and his writing team, to the point where it almost seems actionable. (Although, now that I think about it, the SW prequels, with their flat, wooden scenes of actors discoursing interminably about the taxation of trade routes and/or New Agey questions of morality, was actually pretty close to bad Trek.)

And it’s not just the tone. Despite having some very Skywalker-ish Daddy issues, and sharing his very own “Twin Suns” moment of destiny with a constitution-class starship in Iowa drydock, James T. Kirk here is, for all intent and purposes, a swaggering, swashbuckling “scoundrel” in the mode of Han Solo. There’s a Mos Eisley-ish cantina sequence where, particularly by Trek standards, Star Wars-style aliens abound. The pre-sibling reveal, Luke-Han-Leia love triangle of ANH is grafted note-for-note onto Spock-Kirk-Uhura. There’s an ice moon strongly reminiscent of Hoth, with a Wampa-like creature and (in one of the weakest moments of the film) a Naboo-like “always a bigger fish” food chain. (On this one i’ll concede, it’s also a lot like Rura Penthe, the “aliens’ graveyard” of Star Trek VI.) They even go so far as to give Scotty an ugnaught (although, it does look a bit like Twiki, and given a later Augustus Gloop-like incident involving Montgomery Scott and a water-pipe, it could also be an Oompa-Loompa.) If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then it’s clear: new Trek and old-school Star Wars are very much on the same page.

Unfortunately, that page as presented here still needs one more rewrite. Thanks to the sterling cast and some spiffy camerawork (the ubiquitous lens flares do get to be a bit much, tho), I happily went along for the ride for most of Trek. But even during the funhouse itself, some glaring errors in logic become harder and harder to ignore. Now, I’m not talking about continuity lapses with what’s come before — I think the reboot here makes sense on its own terms, and that’s not my bag when it comes to Trek anyway. Nor am I really talking about science problems, even though they’re considerably worse here than usual for Trek. (Much violence is done to our understanding of black holes in this film — Schwarzchild does not exist in this dojo. Then again, it’s probably too much to ask that Trek get gravity wells right when, judging by the completely absurd freefalling-onto-the-space-drill sequence, regular ole gravity is hard enough. But, hey, once you accept warp speed, I guess all bets are off anyway.)

No, the real problems arise with basic storytelling lapses that, if you’re wired that way (and I suspect most sci-fi fans are), will nag at you even during this otherwise transporting film. [Some spoilers to follow.] Like, where was Nero over the past twenty-five years, and why didn’t he use any of that time to rethink his somewhat dubious motives for vengeance? (Wiping out the Federation wouldn’t prevent in any way his planet’s demise, which, as explained, was caused by Romulus’ star going supernova.) Even given the sudden emergency at hand, why are there absolutely no ranking officers of any consequence — Pike excepted — on board the Federation’s newly-built flagship, the USS Enterprise? If it’s a serious enough matter to send raw cadets from the Academy, wouldn’t some of Starfleet’s old hands in and around San Francisco also answer the call?

Also, if “Red Matter” — don’t ask — is as unbelievably, mind-blowingly powerful as it’s portrayed here, why did the Vulcan Science Academy even bother to create — and then send off! — a heaping Big Gulp-size quantity of it? Talk about your WMD. For that matter, particularly given what happens with this stuff late in the film, why was Nero even bothering with the big Space Drill part of his plan anyway? Seems a bit purposeless, doesn’t it? And, even allowing for the mystical, Force-like workings of Fate (as well as his dubious dispatch from the Enterprise itself), Cadet Kirk running into you-know-who in a random cave in the middle of nowhere at exactly the best possible moment was show-stoppingly ludicrous. It’s the type of thing you’d expect from poorly-thought-out fanfic, not a $100 million movie.

Now I don’t mean to get too lost in the nitpicks. I really enjoyed myself during Star Trek, and, despite its storywriting faults, it’s almost assuredly the best film in the franchise since Khan (or The Voyage Home, I guess, if you’re more into the funny-Trek. I also quite enjoyed First Contact at the time, and I always thought Undiscovered Country was underappreciated.) Check your brain at the door, and Trek is about as good a reboot as we all could’ve hoped for, and a fun, sexy, summery throwback to the space operas of yore. Hey, it’s almost definitely the best Tyler Perry film ever made, and, now that the 2.0 Trekverse is up and running, you can definitely count me in for another installment with this here crew. Particularly if — from Hell’s heart, he stabs at thee! — they actually land Javier Bardem as the Big Bad for ST XII: Khan Strikes Back. Just don’t give him a Star Destroyer, and please keep Kirk away from the carbonite.

Soap Spies and Soapbox Conspiracies.

As per the norm of late, I seem to be well behind on both my movie-watching and movie-reviewing these days. (It’s been awhile since Watchmen.) In an attempt to rectify the former, at least, I hit up the multiplex a few weekends ago with a decision to make. Eventually, and based mainly on which projected path would involve the least amount of downtime between shows, I decided to forsake an Apatow-ish afternoon with the old Freaks & Geeks gang (I Love You, Man, Adventureland, Observe and Report — still haven’t seen any of those) in favor of the latest batch of conspiracy-minded thrillers. Well, at least one of ’em was worth it.

First up was Tony Gilroy’s frothy but entertaining Duplicity, a tongue-firmly-in-cheek, corporate espionage rom-com of sorts that sadly didn’t make much of a splash at the box office. After a meet-cute in Dubai involving MI-6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) and CIA asset Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), we cut to rival cosmetics company CEO’s Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson going mano-a-mano like it’s Paris in 1778. Both looking for a leg up in the cutthroat world of shampoo, hand cremes, and lotions — not to mention a chance to roundly humiliate the other in corporate combat — these two masters of the universe have invested enough into their respective espionage and counter-intelligence departments (run by Milk/Michael Clayton‘s Denis O’Hare and writer-director Tom McCarthy respectively) to make Mossad blush.

Enter (once again) top-notch professional spies Ray and Claire, who discover they’ve both been hired by Giamatti’s intel outfit years after their earlier falling-out in Saudi Arabia. Will these two photogenic spooks be able to bury the hatchet long enough to fulfill their mission objective of screwing over Wilkinson good? Or was that particular hatchet perhaps buried on an earlier Roman holiday? As you might imagine from a movie called Duplicity (by the writer of the Bourne films, no less), nothing is what it seems at first. And most everyone, not the least our two protagonists, is playing more than a few angles.

Blessed with charismatic performances from its two leads — I don’t usually cotton to Julia Roberts much, but she’s fine here — Duplicity is a jaunty bit of fun that mainly works because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Sure, the wheels-within-wheels of the plot don’t quite always catch — They’re often contrived and sometimes needlessly convoluted. (If anyone out there saw the movie, could you explain what the significance of the marked bench was? I missed it.) And some of the setpieces definitely take too long, and don’t make much sense regardless. (See for example, the hunting-for-a-fax-machine sequence, which even the characters eventually call out as ludicrous.) But Duplicity gets away with much of this because it’s so goofy and good-natured about it all. If the cosmetics angle didn’t tip you off from jump street, the stakes of the game here are purposely hokey and overwrought — People talk about the MacGuffin here, a possible cure for baldness, like it’s the Ark of the Covenant.

In the end, Duplicity is probably 15-20 minutes too long, its final couple of twists are pretty easy to see coming, and the film then spends too much time showing us all the myriad details we could’ve worked out on our own. But it’s an amiable production through and through, and there are worse ways to spend two hours than watching Owen and Roberts sally sharp-edged barbs back-and-forth, debate the economic possibilities of frozen pizza, and occasionally tumble into the sack. At the very least, I didn’t leave Duplicity feeling cheated.

Which brings us to Kevin MacDonald’s State of Play, a movie that was sorely lacking the state-of-play that exuded from every soap-scrubbed pore of Duplicity. No, this is a Big Serious Film, about Big Serious Issues, like Sinister Political Corruption and the Decline of Newspapers and such. Now, I unfortunately missed the original BBC miniseries version of this tale, but from the cast alone (John Simm, Kelley MacDonald, Bill Nighy, Marc Warren, James McAvoy, Polly Walker) I have to bet it’s pretty good. But, as far as this American retelling goes, I found State of Play thoroughly ham-handed, mostly unbelievable, and often risible.

Darkness sets in early in State of Play, as the film begins with two seemingly unrelated deaths in our nation’s capital. First, a homeless bagsnatcher is hunted down in Georgetown and — conspiracy alert — executed with a ruthless, professional precision. Then, a comely Capitol Hill aide falls in front of a subway train in the middle of morning rush hour. (DC-area folks might find themselves pondering why said aide walked through Dupont Circle and Adams-Morgan to board a train over in Roslyn, Virginia. Everyone else will just wonder why the fact she fell in a small security camera “blind spot” is so important when there had to have been several dozen eye-witnesses at the scene.)

We are then introduced to gruff, slovenly beat writer with a heart-of-gold Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe), who lumbers around the rest of the movie like a newspaperman out of Sesame Street — he not only knows every single working-class-joe in the District, but they all seem to want to do him favors. The yin to McAffrey’s yang over at the Washington Globe is Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), the smart, attractive, but unfortunately surface-skimming blogger at the new online desk. McAffrey and Frye are assigned to cover the two murders for the Globe respectively, but there’s a catch. For the dead aide, it turns out, happened to be having an affair with her boss, the up-and-comer Rep. Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), who was currently leading a congressional investigation into Pointcorp, a Blackwater-style private military contractor.

What’s more, Rep. Collins was once none-other-than newsman McAffrey’s college roommate, and, complicating matters even further, both have shared the attentions of the congressman’s wife (Robin Wright Penn). Will Cal use his journalistic pull to smooth things over for his two old friends in the press? Will Della be able to renounce her bloggeriffic tendency to wallow in scandalous ephemera and find the real story buried here? And, when it comes out that the murders are inevitably linked and that there’s something very Dark and Troubling going on in the corridors of Washington, will Cal take Della under his wing and find a way to make her a “real” journalist? I mean, that’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far.

Even with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, who were originally cast as McAffrey and Collins respectively, gone from this production, State of Play has all the marks of a Big Important Film, including respected name actors popping up all over the place. The supremely talented Helen Mirren is passable as the hard-nosed, tough-talking editor/doyenne of the Globe, but she isn’t done any favors by the script, which keeps forcing her into goofy, Prime Suspect-style exclamations of Britishness. Jeff Daniels has some fun as a smarmy, probably-Republican Senator (“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain around me“), David Harbour of Revolutionary Road shows up as our slightly-off-kilter Deep Throat, Harry Lennix and Best Supporting Actress nominee Viola Davis briefly play a detective and coroner respectively, and Jason Bateman just about walks away with the film as an oily club promoter caught in the middle of all the shenanigans. (He plays it broad, and seems to be the only person involved who recognized what a B-movie this is.)

But even all the talent on-screen can’t save State of Play from its very significant flaws. For one, the film clearly purports to be a paean to investigative journalism a la All the President’s Men, but the conspiracy that drives the story is outlandish in several ways. Basically — moderate spoilers here — it involves corporate and para-military thugs at the Blackwater outfit doing whatever is required to achieve their ultimate goal of “privatizing national security.” Now, I have no doubt that Blackwater and its ilk are shady as they come. And — given everything we’ve seen from them as lawless mercenaries in Iraq — it doesn’t take an extreme suspension of disbelief to envision a fictional Blackwater doing what they do here, engaging in under-the-table wetworks to protect some sizable market share.

But, and this is where the movie began to lose me, I’m not at all convinced that the Bad Guys here would even have to break the law as currently written to achieve their ultimate goal, and they definitely wouldn’t have to go to the sordid lengths suggested in State of Play. Maybe it’s news to the good people at the Washington Globe, but corruption has been effectively legalized for awhile now in DC. Why would Pointcorp be involved in such nefarious black-bag operations to ensure their pound-of-flesh profit margins, when they can just spread some money around legally and accomplish much the same objective? After awhile, I found the spy shenanigans here about as plausible as those of the evil soap corporations in Duplicity. (Honestly, did the writers not hear of Halliburton? They were bagging enormously lucrative no-bid military contracts for years the old-fashioned way.)

This brings me to my other major problem with State of Play — its depiction of journalism and what ails it. But, before I move on — and I’ll tread lightly here — State of Play makes a turn very late in the game that completely subverts the All the President’s Men conspiracy argument it’s been making up to then anyway, and it basically lets the air out of the entire movie. You can’t have it both ways, y’all.

Moving on, as most every single review will tell you, State of Play closes with a loving montage of each stage in the process of making a daily newspaper — the type being set, the rolls of paper being loaded, etc. etc. (They skip over all the crucial cutting-down-trees and paper-mill parts, of course — Let’s not get in the way of nostalgia.) And, yes, State of Play is very conspicuously crafted as a heartfelt ode to the newspaper industry in twilight, as mainly evidenced by the narrative tug between “good” journalist Cal, who pounds the beat relentlessly and tracks down every possible lead, and “bad” blogger Della, who — at first — opines without all the facts at her disposal and dishes out snark by the shovelful. (But don’t worry, it turns out she’s very trainable.)

Now, I posted briefly on this last month, but there are a lot of reasons newspapers are going under right now — market pressures, obviously, but also over-consolidation, a decline in local-area coverage, papers following the cable TV herds into surface-skimming irrelevance. And, for an equally loving, but more resonant critique of why it’s happening, I’d direct you to Season 5 of David Simon’s The Wire. As Simon says here: “In every episode, what’s being depicted is a newspaper that’s actually not connecting with the problems that exist on the ground. It’s not noticing that the police department has been cheating stats for years and making crime go away. It’s not noticing that the third grade test scores are being hyped so that No Child Left Behind is not exposed for what it is. That’s the critique, and very tellingly, almost perfectly, I think, with the exception of maybe one or two guys out there, everybody missed it.” Or, as Simon’s Gus Haynes puts it at one point when dissecting newspaper’s Pulitzer-hungry mentality: “It’s like you’re up on the corner of a roof and you’re showing some people how a couple of shingles came loose, and meanwhile a hurricane wrecked the rest of the damn house.”

Now, whatever you think of this critique, notice it doesn’t have much if anything to do with bloggers. Ok, sure, the blogging mentality spilling over into “real” journalism perhaps hasn’t helped matters any — I said as much here. But the idea that the Della Fryes of the world — or Ana Marie Coxes, if you want to bring it home — are the main reason newspapers are in trouble right now, or the main reason newspapers miss the “real” conspiracies in our midst, is so facile as to be insulting.

State of Play tells a story of a “good” journalist at a “good” DC newspaper uncovering sordid scandal and “bad” corruption at the highest levels of government, all the while making a “good” protege out of a “bad” blogger. Well, sure, it’s a nice fairy tale, but let’s get real. I don’t remember bloggers having anything to do with Judith Miller, the NYT, and every other newspaper of note enabling Dubya’s whole fake-WMD fiasco in 2002 and 2003. I don’t remember bloggers telling the NYT to sit on the illegal and warrantless wiretaps story for an entire year, and an election year at that. I don’t remember bloggers convincing the likes of Bob Woodward or Tim Russert to circle the wagons around Scooter Libby when he outed Valerie Plame. And I definitely don’t remember bloggers encouraging the establishment media to declare Dubya-era torture a non-issue that we all need to just get over, in the name of a false “looking forward” reconciliation based on willfully ignoring illegality, corruption, lies, and moral atrocities.

So, thanks for the civics lesson, State of Play, but I’m not sure I can hold those wretched, superficial bloggers entirely accountable for the decline of paper-and-ink newspapers these days. Look, I’m as sorry to see journalism in the woeful financial state it’s in as the next guy. But — when it comes to enabling and cooperating with manifestly corrupt behavior in Washington — y’all might want to look at your own hands too. Not all of those stains are ink.

Dressed in Black Again.

Today is Dylan Day, but before Together Through Life moves to first spot in the iPod rotation, some thoughts on Depeche Mode’s latest, Sounds of the Universe, released last Tuesday. (I know it’s always been fashionable to bag on DM here in the States, Southern California excepted, but I’m an old-school Mode guy from way back…as people who knew me in my youth — and the many black ensembles in my high-school wardrobe — will attest.)

To get the bad news out of the way first, the obscenely catchy first single, “Wrong,” is far and away the high point of the album. I warmed slow to this ditty at first, but, even tho’ it unfolds at a more relaxed tempo than I might prefer, it’s undeniably infectious. With Dave Gahan in full street-preacher mode and Marty Gore carrying the song home in the final stanzas, “Wrong,” like “Precious” on Playing the Angel and “It’s No Good” on Ultra, can stand proudly with the best singles of the halcyon days, and that’s no small thing.

That being said, there are a lot of filler tracks on Sounds of the Universe, and it’s a hard album to recommend to anyone but tried-and-true DM fans (who don’t need the recommendation anyway — they all bought multiple versions of it, likely along with tour tix and a DM t-shirt, last Tuesday.) Along with producer Ben Hillier, who’s good with the bells and whistles, I guess, but never really manages to make the DM sound “fill the room” as it did in the Daniel Miller/Flood days — SotU is often far too tinny), the band seem to be exploring ways to resurrect and update their old synth-sound without over-forcing the issue. The results are mixed.

(Digression: For a good example of “over-forcing the issue,” imho, listen to U2’s recent No Line on the Horizon, which to me sounds like a bunch of quintessential-to-the-point-of-feeling-contrived U2 hooks interpersed amid long sessions of random studio noodling. No songs really coalesce therein — it sounds like someone fiddling with the dial on a radio that only plays U2. And No Line is all glommed together with that uber-Lanois production sound. I like Daniel Lanois, he’s done some landmark albums — Achtung Baby, Us, Time Out of Mind — and I’ve even bought some of his solo stuff over the years. (“Sleeping in the Devil’s Bed” is a mixtape standby.) But it all does kinda sound the same after awhile.)

The question arises on SotU: What is DM’s old sound? “Fragile Tension,” like “Lillian” on the previous album, goes whole-hog with the early-synth pulse, recalling the very early days of the band — Speak & Spell, A Broken Frame, etc. Alas, it doesn’t really work. (As a vocalist, Gahan does some things really well — melisma isn’t one of them.) “Spacewalker” is another atmospheric instrumental a la “The Great Outdoors!”, “St. Jarna,” or “Agent Orange,” the type of moody keyboard piece that conjures up visions of Eurothrillers like George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (or, more on topic, Anton Corbijn’s Strange.) “In Chains,” on the other hand, is more in the later-period gospel-grunge mode of “Clean,” “Higher Love,” or “Condemnation” (with a touch of the bang-the-metal interlude of “Stripped”) — it’s perfectly acceptable, I guess, but it doesn’t really bring much new to the table.

Those tracks aside, main songwriter Martin Gore spends too many songs in the treacly New Age, post-rehab platitude rut that characterizes at least a few tracks on every album since 1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion. (See “Freestate” or “I am You,” for example.) The middle of SotU in particular — “Fragile Tension,” “Little Soul,” “In Sympathy,” the Beatlesque by way of Tears for Fears second single “Peace” — all run together in this fashion.

Speaking of sounding-like-TfF, my second favorite song on the album is probably “Perfect,” which argues amusingly that even when you consider the Anathem-like philosophical ramifications of string theory, the DM multiverse is still on the bleak side. (“In a parallel universe that’s happening right now, things between us must be worse, but it’s hard to see just how.“) That being said, with its mid-80’s key changes and all, “Perfect” sounds eerily like a long-lost Howard Jones number.

In its favor, SotU is the first DM album where the Gahan-penned contributions intermix with the Gore fare enough to be virtually indistinguishable. Indeed, while two of the Gahan songs — “Come Back” and “Miles Away/The Truth Is” — are a little over-produced (The stripped down version of “Come Back” which leaked a few months ago attests to this), it’s the lead singer, rather than Gore, who seems to have a better handle on “that classic DM sound.” In effect, while Gore sometimes seems a bit lost in his gospel influences lately, Gahan — as one review I read somewhere well put it — has improved to the point of becoming a pretty good Depeche Mode tribute band.

Now even I, a DM fan of long standing, am prone to bag on how much of the classic Mode oeuvre revolves around sex, sin, obsession, religion, and redemption. (My love is a black car, and you crucify me on the steering wheel because I asked you to, etc. etc.) Still, the best moments on Sounds of the Universe are when they stop reaching for some new synthetic harmony and, as with “Wrong”, just let that old freak flag fly. Put another way, it’s when DM stops trying to fuse their early synth and later gospel periods into a new, cohesive sound and goes right for the crunchy, tongue-in-cheek “Master and Servant”-to-“Personal Jesus”-style crowd-stompers that the album really works best.

Gahan’s “Hole to Feed,” for example, is a jaunty ditty about what one might call the Benjamin Braddock problem — once you’ve finally managed to land the one true love you’ve been writhing and pining for…well, then what? (“We are here, we can love, we share something. I’m sure that you mean the world to me. When you get what you need, there’s no way of knowing what you have is another hole to feed.“) As for “hole to feed,” I’ll let you figure that one out. But, like any number of vaguely raunchy DM songs (or like Gary Oldman endlessly stuffing the hole in his backyard with cash in Romeo is Bleeding), the metaphor here isn’t very oblique.

Similarly, with its creepy-filthy blips and trademark Gahan croon, “Corrupt,” the album closer, is another electroblues number that’s right in DM’s usual wheelhouse (“I could corrupt you, it would be easy. Watching you suffer, Girl, it would please me.“) And it suggests the sexy, mordant fun the band could be having if they stop trying to grope toward some new respectable Zen plateau and just unabashedly do what they do best.

Along those lines, I’d argue that some of the best songs of the SotU sessions were inexplicably left off the album (but are included in the deluxe version, which also offers 14 very worthwhile demos of earlier songs such as “Walking in My Shoes” and “Little 15”. Think DM standards done with Magnetic Fields simplicity.) That may be because they just feel looser and less forced than many of the album cuts. A sinister electronic sibling to Kristin Hersh’s indie rock standard “Your Ghost,” DM’s “Ghost” is driven by the most infectious and mesmerizing synth backbeat of the new tracks. (“I’m the ghost in your house, calling your name. My memory lingers, you’ll never be the same. I’m the hole in your heart, I’m the stain in your bed, the phantom in your fingers, the voices in your head.“)

“The Sun and the Moon and the Star” is the type of throwback torch song that Martin Gore probably writes over breakfast every morning, but it’s still more resonant than “Jezebel,” the one that’s officially on the album. (And, tbh, neither will replace classics like “Somebody” or “The Things You Said” in the hearts of Gore aficionados.) And “Oh Well,” the first song co-written by Gore and Gahan, succeeds because it’s nothing more or less than what it aspires to be — a propulsive club cut designed just to get ’em dancing. I’ll let that song sum up my general impression of SotU, which is a mostly harmless outing, and works best when it doesn’t try so hard: “It’s nothing to feel ashamed about, nothing I can complain about. Oh well.“

The Gods Must Be Crazy.

“Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen, and keep your eyes wide — the chance won’t come again.” As in the original comic, two Dylan songs bookend Zack Snyder’s ambitious, admirable, and flawed adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, the critically-acclaimed tale of the rise and fall of Cold War superheroes (which I’ve now seen twice.) The first, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” comes direct from Dylan himself, and scores the impressive, easter egg-filled opening credit montage that is one of the highlights of the film. Here, Snyder has taken the world of Watchmen, fused it with some quality Bob, and made something transporting and uniquely filmic. (Fanboys and fangirls, note the original Nite Owl saving the Waynes. By the way, Dylan, US History, and superheroes — yes, this sequence is easy for me to love.)

On the other hand, over the end credits, we get a a truly terrible version of “Desolation Row” by My Chemical Romance, whom I’m not particularly familar with but who, on the basis of this cover, would seem to be derivative, talentless hacks. Now, I’m not averse to Dylan played fast and loud. To hear it done right, check out Rage Against the Machine excavating the angry heart of “Maggie’s Farm”, or the White Stripes’ live takes on “Isis” or “Lovesick”, or, of course, Jimi’s “All Along the Watchtower” (also in the movie, right where it is in the book.) But MCR have completely missed both the power and the poetry of “Desolation Row,” and just play it fast, sloppy, and nu-punk like the faux-Green Day cover band (which makes them faux-faux-Pistols) they seem to be.

If I’ve spent a lot of time here talking about these two Dylan songs at the onset instead of Watchmen, it’s because they mirror the dichotomy present in the film. In certain sequences like the opening credits, Snyder manages to catch lightning in a bottle and really bring elements of the graphic novel to life, albeit in truncated form. There are moments in the movie, usually involving Rorschach or Dr. Manhattan, where I was struck by the sheer sensation of seeing the book leap off the page. (Short plot summary for the uninitiated: In an alternate-America 1985, on the eve of what appears to be nuclear Armageddon, one of a dwindling band of ex-superheroes is murdered in (and then out of) his New York City apartment. Rorschach, a borderline-psychotic right-wing vigilante who dresses like Philip Marlowe and rasps like Christian Bale, wants to know why. It’s a dangerous question.) The altered ending notwithstanding, it’s somewhat amazing to me that we got a Watchmen movie this close to the source material, and, by all accounts, Snyder had to fight tooth and nail with the studio suits for every cynical, resolutely uncommercial facet of it.

But, at other times, Snyder’s bad habits sadly leak through and undeniably taint the end product, most notably in the gratuitous violence present here. In interviews, Snyder can sometimes come off as a geekier version of the white fratboys in Harold and Kumar. (“Dude, that’s so extreme!“) And that better-harder-faster mentality results in some serious whiffs along the way in Watchmen, when Snyder ratchets up the gore and bone-breaking at the expense of the story. However close the movie gets to gorgeously capturing Manhattan’s reveries on Mars (although I wish the Doc’s living in an endless now was better emphasized.), it basically drops the ball completely on Rorschach’s “origin” (which I quoted in my pre-movie post), mainly because Snyder sidesteps the existential horror of Kovacs’ story to amp up the violence of it. In the comic, Kovacs has pierced the veil of the sheltering sky and discovered all is blackness. In the movie, he just seems to be on a torture-porn killing spree. Same goes for a scene involving Dan (Nite-Owl) and Laurie (Silk Spectre) getting jumped by the Top Knots gang in a dark alley. It’s bone-crushingly brutal when it doesn’t need to be, actually has these two kiling people Rorschach-style, and seriously detracts from the more interesting scene it’s intercut with, that of Dr. Manhattan inadvertently exposing his disinterest in humanity in an interview with Ted Koppel.

Now, as with loud, angry Dylan covers, I’m not averse to gore or over-the-top violence when it serves the narrative. To take an example, there’s a scene involving human entrails stuck to the ceiling (don’t you want to see this now?) which is also overly Snyderish, but I think works in context. (The voiceover is making Hollis Mason’s point that, with the arrival of Dr. Manhattan (i.e. the advent of atomic weaponry), the superhero game has forever changed — it’s no longer gallantly nabbing bankrobbers and pursesnatchers with a few “Wham! Pow!” four-color blows, but something much darker and more lethal.) But Snyder’s Watchmen is unnecessarily violent at the wrong times (see also Big Figure’s henchmen), and then inexplicably goes soft at the moments when gore is virtually required. I’m referring here to the consequences of the Big Plan, which feel strangely weightless in the movie, partly because (in this cut) no characters we’ve been following are anywhere close to Ground Zero and partly because, unlike every other action sequence in the movie, it’s all very PG-13 all of a sudden. (Contrast this with the opening of Chapter 12 in the comic, which is basically several pages of horrific imagery, unlike anything we’ve yet seen in the story.) Now, I’m willing to bet dollars-to-donuts that 9/11-squeamish studio types were unyielding about the soft-pedaling of the climax here (which, by the way, is elegant in its own way even without the squid.) Still, it’s hard to escape the feeling that, while Moore and Gibbons used violence in their tale to comment on its awfulness (and the awfulness of The Plan), Snyder often just uses it because it’s like, totally extreme.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no idea how it plays to people unfamiliar with the comic, but for the rest of us, there’s a lot to like here. Even notwithstanding some godawful, cringe-inducing age and Nixon make-up (I guess everyone was busy on Benjamin Button) and one of the worst movie sex scenes in recent memory (I’m offended on behalf of Leonard Cohen), Watchmen is a better film than some of the critical pans make it out to be. Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach is especially dead-on, and is rightfully drawing most of the acting kudos right now — This should be a career-defining role for him. But Billy Crudup’s Dr. Manhattan and, surprisingly, Patrick Wilson’s Nite-Owl are also pretty close to note-perfect. (So too is Matt Frewer’s Moloch, who absolutely nails his big moment — “You know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually? Well, that ain’t the kind of cancer I got.”) And Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Comedian and Matthew Goode’s Ozymandias grow on you, even if Ozy seems a bit charisma-starved compared to his comic counterpart. (As for Malin Ackerman’s Silk Spectre…uh, well, let’s just say she’s in it too.)

So, in short, I liked the movie, would recommend it to readers and non-readers alike, and thought even more of it the second time around when I was less burdened by expectations. (Yes, it’s wayyyy better than 300, and I’m looking forward to the 30-minute longer cut, which is rumored to spend more time with Rorschach’s shrink and the two Bernards.) Still, it’s hard to shake the nagging sense that the things I really liked about Watchmen would’ve made it into any reasonably faithful movie version, and that a different director than Snyder might’ve brought about a better, richer film in the end.

Still, as my old boss was wont to say: We don’t need people who get the ball to the twenty-yard line; we need people who can bring it over the goal line. And, for better or worse, Snyder got this ball over the goal line where Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, and Paul Greengrass couldn’t. Let’s give credit where it’s due: After twenty years of trying, they actually made a Watchmen movie, and it ended up being surprisingly close to the source material and not at all an embarrassment or cash grab. I presume the Rorschach types probably loathe this end result, compromised as it is in certain places. But for the rest of us, I’d say this new Utopia, however flawed at times, is close enough for government work.

Sweet Coraline.

Sigh…I’m running well behind on reviews again. Nevertheless, if you have the slightest amount of interest in Henry Selick’s exquisitely crafted stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, I highly recommend it. Made with as much care and attention to detail as the best of Pixar (or earlier Selick projects such as Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach), Selick’s clever Coraline is a children’s fable that moves with purpose, bristles with dark humor, and snaps together with satisfying, text-adventure logic. Like Dahl, Carroll, del Toro, and Rowling, Selick and Gaiman get that kids have more of an appetite for the unsettling and creepy than they’re often given credit for, and that the best fairy tales are often dark, scary places. Coraline is no exception. And, even if you’re not a stop-motion aficionado, the film is an eye-popping visual treat — I really wish I’d seen it in 3D.

Once upon a time, there lived a little girl named Caroline…uh, Coraline. (Dakota Fanning) Whisked away by her two writerly parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgeman) to a dilapidated apartment house in the farthest reaches of Oregon, Coraline soon finds herself as blue as her hair in her gray new home. And so, she spends her days exploring the new environs and wishing she were somewhere, anywhere else. But, as it turns out, Anywhere Else is only a short crawl away. For, behind a tiny door in the living room, there exists another world, one in which parents are never distracted with boring writing projects, and both they and the bizarre coterie of neighbors — two British spinsters, an acrobatic Russian, a boy in a skeleton mask — are always solicitous of Coraline’s well-being.

Perhaps too solicitous, in fact. While Coraline takes a shine to her “other” family at first — despite their somewhat off-putting button eyes — she starts to find them a bit suffocating after awhile, and particularly after her dear, sweet other-mother suggests she pin her eyes shut. (And just wait until we get to the coat hangers.) And, when our heroine encounters the gloomy ghosts of other (now-button-eyed) children who haphazardly wandered into this erstwhile Shangri-la, she comes to realize that other-Mother is smothering her for a reason: For all its color and beauty, Coraline’s splendiferous secret world is really just a (lonely) spider’s web, meticulously crafted to ensnare her, forever and ever and ever. Be careful what you wish for, Coraline…

I hadn’t read Neil Gaiman’s book before seeing the movie, but I’m willing to bet that the eerie tone established here — and the scuttling stop-motion monstrosities therein — are one with his vision. (In fact, even the Sandman-like dream logic of the story notwithstanding, the button-eye gimmick reminded me quite a bit of Gaiman’s Corinthian, and there’s a wager-with-the-devil made at one point that brought to mind Morpheus’ spoken-word gambit in Hell.) Even so, it’s clear that Henry Selick has brought his own demented gleam to Gaiman’s world — see, for example, the spindly, nightmarish look of Momma Big Bad, or pretty much anything here involving stop-motion terriers. And, even when the story is going through its paces, there’s always something unique and amazing to catch your eye in the frame.

A word of caution: Coraline might be a touch too frightening for really, really young kids. (And besides, that old terrier with cataracts getting force-fitted into his angel costume is about as dark as anything you’ll ever find in a purported children’s movie.) But I could imagine youngsters of a certain age, particularly those with a macabre bent, really getting into this film. And in terms of the sheer wealth of imagination and meticulous craftsmanship on display, it’s hard to imagine that very many other films this year will be in Coraline‘s orbit. You go, girl.

Drinking: A Love Story.

A(n Irish) marriage grown stale and lovelorn. A woman (Eileen Walsh) chafing under the suffocating, sexless domestication of suburban motherhood. A man (Aidan Kelly) emotionally checking out and casting a guilt-ridden, wandering eye at the nubile flesh around town. And a doomed plan (in this case, a tenth anniversary date, not a move to Paris) that will theoretically resuscitate all the feelings this couple once shared… Yes, Declan Recks’ Eden, a 2008 adaptation of a Eugene O’Brien play and the second movie I caught as part of the local Film Forum sunday series, is for all intent and purposes, Revolutionary Road with brogues. And yet, in the end I enjoyed Eden a good deal more than the Kate-&-Leo-gone-sour show.

It helps that Eden is a low-key, naturalistic affair, and — a few gamy symbols and some late-film Catholic flourishes aside — it isn’t burdened with the stilted pretentiousness that marked Mendes’ movie. But I also found the depiction of marital purgatory here considerably more realistic than the histrionics of those Revolutionary Wheelers. Rather than rage against the dying of the light, Breda and Billy, the two (former) lovers here, have just grown physically and emotionally distant. Breda the bored housewife now spends her days indulging in bodice-ripper-type sexual reveries that even she knows to be a little sad, while Billy — like no small number of Irishmen before him — has basically just disappeared into the bottle. And rather than engage in knock-down, drag-out fights as per the Wheelers, it is awkward silences, pleasantries exchanged around the (more intrusive and realistic) children, and the solace of the local pub that are the symptoms of Billy and Breda’s decay.

Nothing surprising happens in Eden, and, trust me, it’s probably not the best movie to rush out and rent for Valentine’s Day regardless. But, as a portrait of two well-meaning people drowning in quiet desperation, I found it worthwhile nonetheless.

2008 in Film.

Well, now that we’re in the second month of 2009, and since I’m *mostly* caught up on last year’s prestige crop, it seems arguably the last, best time to write up the belated Best of 2008 Movie list. (I did see one more indy film of 2008 Sunday morning, but as it was after my arbitrarily-chosen 1/31 cutoff, it’ll go in next year’s list.) Compiling the reviews this year, it seems my October hunch was correct: For a combination of reasons, I went to the movies a lot less than usual in 2008. (The review count usually clocks in around 45. Last year, I only saw 30 films on the big screen.) And, looking over the release schedule, I see lots of movies I had every intention of viewing — Appaloosa, Be Kind, Rewind, Blindness, Choke, Leatherheads — and never got around to.

At any rate, given what I did see, here’re the best of ’em. And here’s hoping the 2009 list will be more comprehensive. As always, all of the reviews can be found here. (And if a movie title doesn’t link to a full review, it means I caught it on DVD.)

Top 20 Films of 2008

[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007]

1. The Dark Knight: Yes, it’s the obvious fanboy pick. And, admittedly, TDK had pacing problems — it was herky-jerky at times and the third act felt rushed. Still, in a not-particularly-good year for cinema, Christopher Nolan’s operatic reimagining of the Caped Crusader and his arch-nemesis was far and away the most enjoyable experience i had at the movies in 2008. And if Candidate Obama was America’s own white knight (metaphorically speaking) this past year, Heath Ledger’s Joker was its mischievous, amoral, and misanthropic id. If and when the economic wheels continue to come off in 2009, will stoic selflessness or gleeful anarchy be the order of the day? The battle for Gotham continues, and everybody’s nervously eyeing those detonators. Let’s hope the clown doesn’t get the last laugh.

2. Milk: What with a former community organizer turned “hopemonger” being elected president — while evangelicals, conservatives and sundry Mormons inflicted Proposition 8 on the people of California — Gus Van Sant’s vibrant recounting of the tragedy of Harvey Milk was obviously the timeliest political movie of 2008. But, in a year that saw entirely too much inert Oscar-bait on-screen in its final months, Milk — romantic, passionate, and full of conviction — was also one of the most alive. While it extends some measure of compassion even to its erstwhile villain (Josh Brolin), Milk is a civil-rights saga that harbors no illusions about the forces of intolerance still amongst us, and how far we all still have to go.

3. The Wrestler: Have you ever seen a one-trick pony in the fields so happy and free? Me neither, to be honest, but Aronofsky’s naturalistic slice-of-life about the twilight days of Randy “the Ram” Ramzinski was likely the next best thing. I don’t know if Mickey Rourke will experience a career resurrection after this performance or not. But he won this match fair and square, and nobody can take it from him.

4. Let the Right One In: As if living in public housing in the dead of a Swedish winter wasn’t depressing enough, now there’s a nosferatu to contend with… My Bodyguard by way of Ingmar Bergman and Stephen King, this creepy and unsettling tale of a very unsparkly pre-teen vampyrer will leave bitemarks long after you step out into the light.

5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days: A 2007 release that made it stateside in 2008, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days is a movie that I probably wouldn’t ever want to watch again. Still, this grim, unrelenting journey through the seedy hotels and sordid back-alleys of Ceaucescu’s Romania is another hard one to shake off. And, tho’ I caught it early on, it remained one of the very best films of the year.

6. WALL-E: If you saw one movie last year about a boy(bot) from the slums meeting — and then improbably wooing — the girl(bot) of his dreams, I really hope it was WALL-E. Hearkening back to quality seventies sci-fi like Silent Running, Andrew Stanton’s robot love story and timely eco-parable is a definite winner, and certainly another jewel in the gem-studded Pixar crown. I just wish it’d stayed in the melancholy, bittersweet key of its first hour, rather than venturing off to the hijinx-filled, interstellar fat farm. Ah well, bring on Up.

7. Iron Man: Much better than I ever anticipated, Jon Favreau’s (and Robert Downey Jr.’s) Iron Man kicked a summer of superheroes off in grand fashion. In the end, I preferred the gloomy stylings of Gotham in 2008, but there’s definitely something to be said for this rousing, upbeat entrant in the comic movie canon. It delivered on its own terms, and it was a much better tech-fetishizing, boys-and-their-toys type-film than, say, 2007’s Transformers or (I suspect) 2009’s GI Joe. Bonus points for the Dude going all Big Jeff Lebowski on us here…now quit being cheap about the sequel.

8. Man on Wire: 4:40pm: Two foreign nationals and their American abettors successfully navigate past the guard checkpoint of the World Trade Center’s South Tower. Their fanatical mission: To use the WTC as a symbol to transform the world…through an act of illegal, death-defying performance art. Although it never explicitly mentions 9/11 (of course, it doesn’t need to — the towers themselves do most of the work, and reconstructing its story as a heist does the rest), the stirring documentary Man on Wire, about Phillipe Petit’s 1974 tightrope-walk between the towers, gains most of its resonance from the events of that dark day in 2001.

After seventy minutes or so, just as it seems this unspoken analogy is starting to wear thin, Petit finally steps out onto that ridiculous wire, and Man on Wire takes your breath away. Nothing is permanent, the movie suggests. Not youth, not life, not love, not even those majestic, formidable towers. But some moments — yes, the beautiful ones too — can never be forgotten. (Note: Man on Wire is currently available as a direct download on Netflix.)

9. U2 3D: One of two 2008 films (along with #16) which seemed to suggest the future of the movie-going experience, U2 3D was both a decently rousing concert performance by Dublin’s fab four, and — more importantly — an experimental film which played with an entirely new cinema syntax. Just as students look back on D.W. Griffith films of a century ago as the beginnings of 2D-movie expression, so too might future generations look at this lowly U2 concert and see, in its layering of unrelated images onto one field of vision, when the language of 3D really began to take off. At which point someone might also say, “Man, I wish they’d played ‘So Cruel’ instead of some of these tired old dogs.”

10. The Visitor: I wrote about Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor (which I saw on DVD) some in my Gran Torino review, and my criticism there stands: As with Torino, the central thrust of this story is too Bagger Vance-ish by half. Still, it’s fun to see a likable character actor like Richard Jenkins get his due in a starring role, and he’s really great here. And, if the “magical immigrant” portions of this tale defy reality to some extent, McCarthy and Jenkins’ vision of a life desiccated by years of wallowing in academic purgatory — the humdrum lectures, the recycled syllabi, the mind-numbingly banal conferences, all divorced from any real-world interaction with the issues at hand — is frighteningly plausible.

11. Synecdoche, New York: Long on ambition and short on narrative coherence, Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is the There Will Be Blood of last year’s crop, in that it’s a film that I think will inspire a phalanx of ardent defenders among movie buffs, who will argue its virtues passionately against all comers. For my own part, I admired this often-bewildering movie more than I actually enjoyed it, and ultimately found it much less engaging than Kaufman’s real magnum opus, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Still, I’m glad I made the attempt, and it’s definitely worth seeing.

12. Frost/Nixon: Two man enter, one man leave! More a sports movie than a political one, Ron Howard and Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon is a decently entertaining depiction of two hungry down-and-outers locked in the debater’s version of mortal kombat. That being said, I kinda wish the stakes had seemed higher, or that the substance of the issues at hand — Vietnam, Cambodia, Watergate — had been as foregrounded as the mano-a-mano mechanics of the interview. Plus, that scene where Tricky Dick sweeps the leg? That’s not kosher.

13. Snow Angels: David Gordon Green’s quiet, novelistic Snow Angels is an early-2008 film I caught on DVD only a few weeks ago, and it’s been slowly sneaking up the list ever since. Based on a 1994 book by Stewart O’Nan, the movie depicts the intertwined lives of a small New England community, and recounts the tragic circumstances that lead to two gunshots being fired therein one winter afternoon. (If it sounds like Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, it’s very close in form, content, and melancholy impact.)

In a movie brimming over with quality performances — including (an ever-so-slightly-implausible) Kate Beckinsale, Nicky Katt, Amy Sedaris, and the long-forgotten Griffin Dunne — three actors stand out: Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby fall into one of the most honest, believable, and affectation-free high school romances I’ve seen in a movie in ages. And the always-watchable Sam Rockwell sneaks up on you as a perennial loser who tries to be a good guy and just keeps failing at life despite himself. At first not much more than an amiable buffoon as per his usual m.o., Rockwell’s gradual surrender to his demons — note his scenes with his daughter, or in the truck with his dog, or at the bar — gives Snow Angels a haunting resonance that sticks with you.

14. Burn After Reading: As I said in the original review, it’s not one of the all-time Coen classics or anything. But even medium-grade Coen tends to offer more delights than most films do in a given year, and the same holds true of their espionage-and-paranoia farce Burn After Reading in 2008. From John Malkovich’s foul-mouthed, (barely-)functioning alcoholic to George Clooney as a (thoroughly goofy) lactose-intolerant bondage enthusiast to, of course, Brad Pitt’s poor, dim-witted Chet, Burn introduced plenty of ridiculous new characters to the brothers’ already-stacked rogues’ gallery. This is one (unlike The Ladykillers) that I’m looking forward to seeing again.

15. Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Another catch-up DVD rental, this was Woody Allen’s good movie last year (as opposed to the woeful Cassandra’s Dream), and a smarter-than-average relationship film (as one might expect from the man behind Husbands and Wives and Annie Hall.) There’re some definitive Allen tics here that take some getting used to in the new environment of Barcelona — a very Woody-ish omniscient voiceover, some Allenesque quips emanating from Scarlett Johannson and the striking Rebecca Hall (late of Frost/Nixon and The Prestige), and, as per Match Point and Scoop, some rather outdated depictions of the class system. (Hall’s fiance, played by Chris Messina of Six Feet Under, is basically a caricature of the boring, born-entitled Ivy League grad, circa 1965.)

Still, if you can get past all that, Vicky Cristina is quite worthwhile. (And, as far as the Oscar buzz goes, I’d say Javier Bardem makes more of an impression here than does Penelope Cruz.) Whether you’re as old as Woody or as young as Vicky and Cristina, the story remains the same: love is a weird, untameable thing, and the heart wants what it wants.

16. Speed Racer: Easily the most unfairly maligned movie of 2008 (and I’m not a Wachowski apologist — I thought Matrix: Revolutions was atrocious), Speed Racer is an amped-up, hypercolorful extravaganza of the senses, and, this side of the original Matrix, one of the more interesting attempts I’ve seen at bringing anime to life. Critics derided it pretty much across the board as loud, gaudy nonsense, but, then as now, I’m not sure what they went in expecting from the film adaptation of a lousy sixties cartoon involving race cars and silly monkeys. This is where some readers might ask: “Um, are you really saying Speed Racer is a better movie than Revolutionary Road?” And I’m saying, yes, it’s much more successful at what it aimed to accomplish, and probably more entertaining to boot. Sure, Racer is a kid’s movie, but so was WALL-E. And, given most of the drek put before the youths today, it’s a darned innovative one. Plus, I’ve seen a lot of filmed laments about quiet-desperation-in-the-suburbs in my day, but for better or worse, in my 34 years of existence, I had never seen anything quite like this.

17. Gran Torino: Alas, Speed Racer, it seems, grew old, got ornery, and began fetishizing his car in the garage instead. Good thing there’re some kindly Hmong next door to pry open that rusty heart with a crowbar! Like The Visitor, Torino suffers from an excess of sentiment when it comes to its depiction of 21st-century immigrants and their salutary impact on old white folks. But, as a cautionary coda to a lifelong career glorifying vigilantism, Eastwood’s Gran Torino has that rusty heart in the right place, at least. And while Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski may be a mean old cuss, Eastwood’s performance here suggests that the old man’s got some tricks in him yet.

18. A Christmas Tale: I wrote about this movie very recently, so my thoughts on it haven’t changed all that much. A bit pretentious at times, Arnaud Desplechin’s anti-sentimental holiday film has its virtues, most notably Chiara Mastroianni eerily (and probably inadvertently) channeling her father and the elfin Mathieu Amalric wreaking havoc on his long-suffering family whenever possible. It’s a Not-So-Wonderful Life, I guess, but — however aggravating your relatives ’round christmastime — it’s still probably better than the alternative.

19. Tropic Thunder: Its pleasures were fleeting — I can’t remember very many funny lines at this point — and even somewhat scattershot. (Tom Cruise as Harvey Weinstein by way of a gigantic member was funny for the first ten minutes. Less so after half an hour.) Still, give Tropic Thunder credit. Unlike all too many comedies in recent years, it didn’t try to make us better people — it just went for the laugh, and power to it. And when the most controversial aspect of your movie turns out not to be the white guy in blackface (or, as we all euphemistically tend to put it now, “the dude disguised as another dude“), but the obvious Forrest Gump/Rain Man spoof, I guess you’ve done something right.

20. W: Nowhere near as potent as Stone’s early political forays, JFK and Nixon, W still came close to accomplishing the impossible in 2008: making the out-going president seem a sympathetic figure. I suppose several other films could’ve sat with distinction in this 20-spot — In Bruges or Benjamin Button, perhaps — but none of them would’ve afforded me the opportunity to write these lovely words once more: So long, Dubya.

Honorable Mention: It wasn’t a movie, of course. But 2008 was also the year we bid farewell to The Wire. Be sure to raise a glass, or tip a 40, in respect. (And let’s pray that — this year, despite all that’s come before — a “New Day” really is dawning.)

Most Disappointing: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Worth a Rental: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, In Bruges, Revolutionary Road, Valkyrie

Don’t Bother: Cassandra’s Dream, Cloverfield, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Doubt, Hellboy II: The Golden Age, The Incredible Hulk, Quantum of Solace, Slumdog Millionaire, Wanted

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler, Sean Penn, Milk, Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Best Actress: Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Lina Leandersson, Let the Right One In, Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight, Josh Brolin, Milk, Jeff Bridges, Iron Man, Sam Rockwell, Snow Angels
Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler, Tilda Swinton, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Unseen: Appaloosa, Australia, The Bank Job, Be Kind, Rewind, Blindness, Body of Lies, Cadillac Records, Changeling, Choke, The Class, Defiance, Eagle Eye, The Fall, Funny Games, Hancock, Happy Go Lucky, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, Leatherheads, I Loved You So Long, The Lucky Ones, Miracle at St. Anna, Pineapple Express, Rambo, The Reader, Redbelt, RockNRolla, The Spirit, Traitor, Waltz with Bashir

A Good Year For

Billionaire Do-Gooders (The Dark Knight, Iron Man)
Lonely Old White Guys (Gran Torino, The Visitor, The Wrestler)
Magical Immigrants (Gran Torino, The Visitor)
Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon)
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Burn after Reading)
Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man, Tropic Thunder)
Romance at the Junkyard (WALL-E, Slumdog Millionaire)
Sam Rockwell (Choke, Frost/Nixon, Snow Angels)
Teenage Vampirism (Let the Right One In, Twilight)
Tosca (Quantum of Solace, Milk)

A Bad Year For

GOP Ex-Presidents (Frost/Nixon, W)
Political Do-Gooders (The Dark Knight, Milk)
Pulp Heroes (The Spirit)
Vigilantism without Remorse (Gran Torino, The Dark Knight)
Would-Be Assassins (Valkyrie, Wanted)

2009: Avatar, The Box, Bruno, Coraline, Duplicity, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Knowing, The Lovely Bones, New York, I Love You, Observe and Report, Push, Sherlock Holmes, The Soloist, State of Play, Star Trek, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, Terminator: Salvation, Up, Where the Wild Things Are, The Wolfman, Wolverine and, of course,

Hrm.

Do They Know It’s Christmas Time at All?

A cancer-stricken mother. Three disgruntled siblings. A buried family tragedy. All together for the holidays. If Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale, which I caught at the local Sunday morning Film Forum, were an American movie, it’s a safe bet to guess it’d be schmaltzy and cloying as all hell. (In fact, you could argue this premise has already been explored here several times, both decently well (The Royal Tenenbaums) and as exactly the sort of saccharine-infused claptrap one would expect (The Family Stone.)) But, no, A Christmas Tale is a French film through and through, and as such it veers far closer to the rambling and pretentious than it does to grade-USA Christmas schmaltz. This is the type of movie that introduces its acts with title cards (“Jubilation,” “Ghosts”), where any family scab worth picking at once is worth picking at three times, and where folks sometimes read timely Nietzsche quotations to each other…just like your house at Christmas, I’m sure.

I don’t mean to be hard on the film — In fact, I mostly enjoyed it. It’s textured and novelistic and relatively engaging, if a little long at two and a half hours. But it’s also very much the kind of story that moves a certain type of film snob — I’m looking at you, Andrew O’Hehir — to overpraise, usually exclaiming something along the lines of “Finally, a film about ‘real people’ rather than costumed superfreaks!” (See also David Edelstein on (the very good) Man on Wire for this tendency at its most innocuous, or David Denby on the last Matrix for it at its worst.)

Now, I don’t really see the two as mutually exclusive — there’re enough films to go around — and I’d like to think I enjoy both. (Would The Wrestler have been better with outer-space werewolves? I doubt it. Ok, well, maybe.) Nevertheless, while I was entertained by the film, Christmas set off my “Emperor’s New Clothes'” pretentiousness-detector relatively early in its run (It’s been finely honed over my time in grad school.) Call me a Berkman-style philistine if you will, but 140 minutes of watching the Vuillards — the clan of this particular christmas carol — wrestle with their family traumas over wine and jazz standards, often in not-quite-believable fashion, was just about enough for me.

After a father’s speech over a gravesite, A Christmas Tale begins with a sad fairy tale of sorts. (It’s told with puppet silhouettes, as per Henry Selick or Amelie.) Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon, marrying up) and Junon (Catherine Deneuve, still a beauty) had two children, Joseph and Elizabeth. But Joseph, it soon turns out, suffers from a disease of the bone marrow, and neither his parents nor Elizabeth are compatible with him. So, the couple has another child, Henri, but he too cannot save Joseph, and the Vuillards’ first-born perishes. A fourth child, Ivan, comes later, but the original sin of the family is set: Henri could not save his older brother’s life, and thus, for all intent and purposes, he was born a failure.

In the modern-day, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny, the nurse of Diving Bell and the Butterfly) has grown into a melancholy playwright with a distant husband and a schizophrenic son (Emile Berline). Her brother Henri (Mathieu Almaric, also of Diving Bell) is basically a screw-up, living down to everyone’s expectations of him enough that Elizabeth eventually banishes him from her presence. Ivan, the youngest (Melvil Poupaud), is the charismatic peace-maker of the family, who hopes to bring his siblings together again. (But he has his own domestic problem, of which he is dimly aware: a potential love-triangle involving his wife (Chiara Mastroianni, looking frighteningly like her famous father and playing the daughter-in-law of her mother) and his cousin (Laurent Capelluto).) Into this fractured family dynamic, a bombshell is dropped — Junon, the matriarch, is diagnosed with the same fatal cancer that felled Joseph years earlier. And this time, irony of ironies, the only compatible relatives for a life-prolonging bone marrow transplant are Elizabeth’s son…and Henri the exile. Who’s got the hand now, big sister?

This story, along with several other strands of interaction, slowly develops over the Christmas week, as all the various wings of the Vuillards get cooped up together, back in the nest. To its credit, A Christmas Tale doesn’t push on these narratives, but lets them unfold organically over the course of the movie. In fact, the film isn’t really plot-driven at all — It moves languidly to the rhythm of conversation, and there are a number of clever or resonant ideas buried therein. The transplant on everyone’s mind works as a great metaphor for the whole enterprise — Junon’s body could very well reject Henri’s marrow, i.e. the gift of family could well kill her, which is very far from the notion of family as an unadulterated joy that you might find in your average holiday film. (Indeed, mother and son have a grand ole time continually expressing their (feigned) indifference toward one another, although that’s clearly mostly for show.)

Still, as the movie progresses, and the same underlying tensions simmer to near-boil over and over again, and the big issues (mortality, infidelity) get shrugged off while small ones turn into battles of bon mots or even fistfights, I began to feel quite a bit like Henri’s girlfriend-along-for-the-ride (Emmanuel Devos), who checks out of the proceedings well before the jig is up. That sure is a great family you have there, Msr. and Mme. Vuillard. Happy holidays, good luck with the transplant, and bon soir. I’m sure y’all will have a swell time with the ritualistic airing of grievances without me.

Shootin’ at the Walls of Heartache.

“I’m an old broken-down piece of meat and i deserve to be all alone. I just don’t want you to hate me.” If that’s your man, then tag him in: The final and best film of last Friday’s four, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler is a downbeat, moving, and resonant character study of a man past his moment. If Frost/Nixon was the “feisty underdog takes on the champ” Rocky movie of the day, The Wrestler captured the other half of that famous story — the aging athlete shuffling around his “real” life, looking for any place he can make sense of himself outside the ring. (Warning: At least in the violence of its fight scenes, this is more Raging Bull than Rocky.)

Now, I have little-to-no interest in professional wrestling. (Ok, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Rowdy Roddy aside, I did use to be cognizant of some of the second-tier characters and plotlines back in the day — the Four Horsemen, Nature Boy Ric Flair, etc. etc. And I did attend a WWF match in Atlanta back in the summer of ’95. But like about half of the crowd that night, I was there ironically.) Still, The Wrestler is a movie that works, I think, regardless of the immediate milieu involved. It could be a tale about anyone — wrestlers, writers, athletes, actors (not unlike Mickey Rourke) — who find themselves closer to an early death, or at best years of anonymity, loneliness, and toil, than they are to their halcyon days.

Speaking of the glory days, The Wrestler begins with an audio montage of Randy “the Ram” Robinson at his peak. This was, of course, the Eighties, when excess was in fashion, hair bands ruled the radio, and the Ram pummeled his nemesis, the Ayatollah (Ernest Mlller), in front of capacity crowds at Madison Square Garden. (Don’t worry, they get along fine outside the ring. In fact — are you sitting down? — this movie actually suggests that pro wrestling is, well, fake. Of if not “fake” per se — there’s quite a bit of real pain involved — then “predetermined.”)

Cut to 2008. Axl Rose has given way to Kurt Cobain, who gave way to Justin Timberlake. And, after twenty years of drugs and horribly violent beatings, Randy (nee Robin Ramzinski) has been reduced to plying his trade in high school gyms and VFW halls. His body is breaking down, his injuries — and bad habits and creditors and appetite for (self-)destruction — are catching up with him, and he’s been forced to work day shifts at a local supermarket to help pay the rent on his mobile home. And, even though his community of fellow wrestlers is far and away the friendliest bunch of jacked-up juicers you’ll ever meet — backstage, group hugs rather than ‘roid rage are the order of the day — there’s isn’t really any Adrian to soothe the days for Randy. Nor, unlike Gran Torino and The Visitor, are there any magical immigrants around the corner, soon to warm Randy’s aged heart and remind him of the bright side of life. (Ok, there is a stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), but she’s dealing with her own demons and tries to keep Randy at “customer’s” length, even tho’ she and he are kindred spirits of sorts — she writhes, and Randy bleeds, for our entertainment.)

Amid these long days at the supermarket, violent nights in the ring, and the occasional forlorn and empty convention appearance, two events occur to shake Randy out of this complacency. One is a proposed twenty-year anniversary rematch against the Ayatollah, who’s now selling cars in New Mexico but would game for a nostalgia bout. The other, more dire occurrence is a heart attack, which Randy suffers after a particularly brutal match (and I mean brutal.) The doctors say another tussle in the ring might well kill him, and so Randy tries to go straight, as it were (and to reconnect with his little girl (Evan Rachel Wood), for whom he was clearly an absentee father.) But Randy the Ram was never particularly good at playing the part of Robin Ramzinski, and things just tend to be more complicated and disappointing outside the ropes. Chairs, headbutts, and clotheslines Randy can handle, but life? Life tends to be painful through and through. And (unlike rolling around on broken glass and barbwire, it seems), life will cut you right to the bone.

The Wrestler was penned by a former editor-in-chief of The Onion, Robert Siegel, and at times an impish, mordant sense of humor peeks out the edges of the film. (See, for example, Randy’s boss at the deli (Todd Barry), or the scenes involving old-school Nintendo and fireman’s boots.) But, most of the time, the movie just ambles along amiably like its star — It feels honest, humble, low-key, naturalistic…and a million miles away from Aronofsky’s other, flashier films (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain.) I wouldn’t cry foul if The Wrestler manages to pin down Oscars for Rourke and/or Tomei, and it’s too bad Aronofsky got locked out of Best Director contention this year — dabbling in the ‘rassling form has clearly been good for him. (I haven’t seen The Reader, but, frankly, the Stephen Daldry nod looks as suspect to me as your average WWE match. By even favorable accounts, that flick is literally and figuratively Holocaust porn.) In any case, The Wrestler is well-worth catching, and one hopes it lends itself to the type of career renaissance for Rourke et al that the Ram so desperately desired.

After the Thrill is Gone.

And you thought the iceberg was cold. After watching Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio flail about and suffocate in the suburban purgatory of Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, you get the sense that Leo might’ve actually caught a lucky break by going down with the ship. In any event, blessed with award-caliber performances, sober purpose, and stately production values, Road is unfortunately a dry and somewhat lifeless film in the end, one that probably works best as an extended meta-comment on the sadly untenable Titanic vision of romance. If it wins Winslet that long-deserved Oscar, so be it, but otherwise Revolutionary Road is pretty missable.

If you haven’t seen the trailer, the setup is thus: Slumming-it longshoreman Frank (di Caprio) and aspiring actress April (Winslet) meet at a party, fall in love, and get married. So far, so good. (The movie covers this very quickly, since it correctly presumes we all saw Titanic.) But when, following the rules of the game, Frank takes a sales job at his father’s place of work, the Wheelers buy a house in the Connecticut suburbs from the unsinkable Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), and the two have a few (exceedingly well-behaved, given how much grief they cause) kids, the unmistakable whiff of decay starts to set in.

Weren’t these two meant to travel the world and stay forever enthralled with each other? I mean, the suburbs are great and all for “average” people (say, Shep and Millie, the couple next door), but the Wheelers? And now the only throes of passion these two indulge in are screaming matches about relatively innocuous subjects, like April’s stab at community theater. (Suffice to say, Frank, who starts sleeping with at least one of his secretaries out of boredom, doesn’t much feel like King of the World anymore.) So when April comes up with a plan for the family to move to Paris and start over, they both lunge for it like a liferaft, one last-ditch chance to escape their desperate circumstances. But is venturing across the pond — this time, with no iceberg along the way, presumably — really a feasible plan, and will it change anything anyway? After all, wherever you go, there you are…and that same old spouse is sitting right next to you.

Part of the problem with Revolutionary Road is that, although Richard Yates’ 1961 novel was ahead of its time (no less than Kurt Vonnegut called it his generation’s Gatsby), by now we’ve seen all this before. We saw director Sam Mendes lambast the oh-so-stifling confines of suburbia in 2000’s overripe American Beauty. We saw Kate Winslet wither on the suburban vine in Todd Field’s Little Children. And we can watch beautiful, self-medicating people grapple with suburban ennui, marital boredom, outdated gender roles, and the postwar workplace every week on Mad Men. So, at this point, Road no longer feels all that revolutionary.

The other main problem is Mendes. While word is the man is an excellent stage director, I can’t say I’ve much cared for any of his movies (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead.) And, here, Mendes’ stagy reserve helps undo the film. For whatever reason, Revolutionary Road often feels as cold, sterile, and clinical towards its characters as a boy pinning down butterflies. (This is particularly surprising given that Winslet is Mendes’ real-life wife.) When Leo frets and sulks in his fifties suits, and the tendrils of smoke from his cigarette dance to some mournful period tune or another, it’s impossible not to think of Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love or 2046, heartfelt movies that almost burst at the seams with melancholy and ache. But here, everything feels distant and removed, like a reverie on, well, an iceberg. And, when you don’t feel particularly involved with the characters, it’s hard not to notice how slack the film goes in its final third, as we all wait patiently for one of the Wheelers to follow through on the decision they clearly made half an hour before. (And when it finally happens, as Stephanie Zacharek and others have noted, the moment is over-stylized to the point of becoming ludicrous anyway.)

Still, there are small things to admire about Revolutionary Road despite its many flaws. The last two scenes in the movie (one between Shep and Millie, the other involving Kathy Bates and her husband) help to drive home a point which makes the movie considerably more interesting. Namely, that it’s not really the drabness of the suburbs driving the Whee(d)lers bonkers, but their own innate character flaws and inability to comprehend how adult, lifelong relationships often work. Winslet’s self-absorbed April can’t ever get over the fact that she didn’t turn out to be a unique and beautiful snowflake — welcome to the real world, Mrs. Wheeler — and di Caprio’s anxiety-ridden, constantly needy Frank just can’t stop poking at the sleeping dogs in his midst. (Like R.E.M.’s The Apologist, he’s at his most monstrous when he’s just trying “to work things out.”)

And then there’s Michael Shannon’s character, who shows up in the middle going as a dinner-guest who’s been through some electroshock therapy, and the guy so crazy he must be sane. The part is a cliche through and through, and (like most truth-tellers, I guess) Shannon overstays his welcome. (I preferred his random “howdy, chico” turn in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.) But, at least for a few moments, he breaks through the pall of stultifying stateliness otherwise cast over this dark corner of the suburbs.