In The Cut (2003)

Whaddya know, one of Campion’s bold formal gambles pays off! It goes overboard at times, sure, but the way Campion plays with focus and depth of field put me square in the main character’s head in a way no shooting style has since I first saw Martha Marcy May Marlene. The whole film is very stream of conscious, as Frannie sadly narrates to the audience using a chalkboard*, and the style aids that dreamlike feeling, as well as amplifying the anxiety of the handheld camera.

Frannie is a truly captivating character, and one of the few cinematic writers who really FEELS like a writer (again, the narrow depth of field simulates how she views the world as tiny off-kilter details, like the strippers spraying down the stripper pole with disinfectant), so it’s unfortunate that she is saddled with a far less interesting serial killer plot. It serves it’s purpose as far as tightening the screws on her life, and it pays off surprisingly well (if a little too on the nose for my taste) but In The Cut makes the mistake of turning it into an actual mystery (serving up a rogues gallery of potential suspects) instead of some unknowable source of tension and fear.

I had zero problem with Meg Ryan and didn’t think her acting was poor in any scenes, but I have no real cultural connection to her (I think, other than this, the only film of hers I’ve seen is When Harry Met Sally) so I was never once distracted by her playing against type.

*I look back at film history, think of the amount of subtle thematic content that has been lost due to classroom chalkboard scenes, and I weep. I WEEP I tell you. B

Zodiac (2007)

Like a non-documentary Errol Morris film, this is a visually dazzling essay on impossibility of Objective Truth. Fincher’s absolute dedication to fucking with the audience gives this film some of it’s best WTF moments, like when Robert Grayson’s dozenth useless detail finds himself in the basement of some theater organist, horrifying everyone in the audience despite the fact that the sole reason we have to fear him is that the music got creepy. Fincher so thoroughly gooses the audience, my girlfriend yelled at the screen at one point “WHY AM I STILL SO SCARED OF THIS?!?”, despite not only being previously familiar with the case (and thus knowing no more new murders would occur) but also already having seen the film. Instead of focusing on the tolls obsession takes on these characters lives, Fincher gets you to obsess over the case too, giving each new piece of circumstantial evidence such tantalizing allure right up until the end (love the dueling factoids in the epilogue that DNA on the envelope didn’t match Leigh and that the anonymous phone calls to Graysmith’s house stopped once Leigh died) that you can’t help but be taken in by the whirlwind of details every time. Procedural perfection. A

The Avengers (2012)

I’d almost go as far as saying that this makes me understand the appeal of superhero comics, but most of the appeal for me is that this movie is so goddamned funny, which superhero comic books so rarely are (campy sure, but not funny) so I guess this just makes me understand the appeal of Joss Whedon instead. As is it’s probably the best superhero movie ever made, though I can only imagine how under-developed everything would have felt to someone who didn’t see the other Marvel movies (in fact, I bet it would be a lot like when I saw Serenity without having seen Firefly).

They wisely put the focus on characters and make good use of their nearly 2.5 hour running time to allow every one to have important moments with every other one. Well, Hawkeye gets a little bit of the short stick but fuck him, he should have grown a personality. In fact, this movie hammers home what all the Marvel movies (whose quality has ranged from pretty great to fairly terrible) have gotten right: great lead actors (or, in the case of Mark Ruffalo, even greater replacements). There’s not a single person in this movie who you wish they would spend less time with. Unless Loki counts, but the main opposing force here isn’t even the villians, it’s LACK OF COOPERATION.

Which is perfect because, approached so earnestly and heart-felt, it adds to “made for children” nature of the whole movie, which is probably what comic book movies should be (I’m sorry if that sounds a little condescending but the pure glee I see coming from comic fans who have seen this make me seem like this is totally the appeal from the start). Not to say that going subversive or dark can’t result in something truly remarkable but, let’s be honest, The Dark Knight often works in spite of itself.

Here the feeling is so strong and pure and colorful (A COLORFUL ACTION MOVIE! WITH A FULL PALATE! I COULD CRY I’M SO HAPPY) that it feels like the sum result of not just the past 4 years of Marvel movies, but the past 34 years of superhero movies. See this in a theater, see it with other people, and don’t be afraid to pump your fist. If there’s a better time to be had in theaters this summer, 2012 will go down as one of the greatest film years ever. A-

The Kids Are Alright (2010)

What a useless movie. Annette Benning can’t save this piece of crap. It’s portrayal of same sex parenting would have felt progressive ten years ago. Maybe. D

Collateral (2004)

I suppose the balancing act of all movies of this nature is that once you have established a quick pace, a ticking clock and limited time frame (which is to say, we know 15 minutes in that this film will only take place over the course of a night), you can’t really go back on that. Time spent in the jazz club talking Miles Davis, time arguing philosophy in the cab, any history on Vincent’s character at all would all be fine in any other kind of movie. But here, they just feel like wastes of time. Even the tension of the cops chasing down Vincent and Max is totally botched, as they climax during the film’s worst sequence, the club shoot-out. But even though it gets these things wrong, it gets a lot more right. For one thing, the performances are top-notch (especially Jamie Foxx), and the action scenes it gets right (everything after the cab wreck) are incredible. Though for my money, nothing beats that hospital scene. In a Tony Scott or Michael Bay movie, that mom would have been so generic, but here she’s played super-specific and it elevates what could have been cheap comic relief into true character development. B

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

The fact that Clementine is a subversion of the manic pixie dream girl (a real life cliche long before it ever became an indie film trope) doesn’t change the fact that her character is anemic. If all we saw of her was in Joel’s memories and the second courtship at the beginning and the end, that’d be acceptable, but given her paralell story with Patrick I feel a little depth could have been in order. And Joel’s character is the typical Charlie Kaufman sad sack, but where Cage, Cusack and Hoffman were able to make that compelling and human, Jim Carrey mostly just gives exagerrated moping expressions. And the less we say about how ridiculous a 42 year old man playing a 20-something looks, the better.

Also, we only see why Joel loves her, not what she would ever see in him. You can make assumptions about the kind of girl she is, what insecurities she’s hiding, and why she’s attracted to sad sacks (and, like me the first twelve times I saw this, you probably did just that, filling in her empty vessel with memories from girls in your own past) but none of that is in the film. In those ways, her character fulfills all the worst parts of the manic pixie dream girl trope like any other film. What separates Clementine from Natalie Portman in Garden State, or Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, is that Kate Winslet is such a phenomenally gifted actor that she actually makes Clementine seem real. As written, I can’t imagine any other actress pulling off anything short of grating. But then you compare the character to Shirley MacClaine in The Apartment or Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, and the shortcomings seem much more apparent. Which is really just praising with faint damnation, because compare any female character in film history to those two and you probably get the same result.

It should be said that I’m not coming from an entirely objective place regarding Clementine. Lines like “I apply my personality on in a paste” only remind me of annoying people I’ve met, not the crazy magical ones, but since this movie came out my Junior year of high school, it can be hard to distinguish which of “those” girls were just imitating Kate Winslet in this movie. In general, this is more the kind of girl I liked in high school than now. And even though that means that the magic of Joel falling in love with her in the film’s opening is lost on me (which we, the audience, are clearly supposed to be doing as well) it might sound silly to complain on such weird and subjective grounds.

But that’s why two characters falling in love always works best when we know who they are. It may not be fair to bring up Annie Hall again (even though Charlie Kaufman started it when his script essentially remade it) but think about Annie and Alvy. We know who they are, where they come from, and what attracts them to each other AS we see them falling in love. We never get that info here (sorry, but hiding under a table and killing an injured bird do NOT amount to real character development) so even upon rewatching the film, your connection is mostly required on you filling in the blanks with your own past, which is the exact same thing that bad romantic comedies do. This is NOT a bad romantic comedy, by any means, but that’s probably why these problems stand out so much more.

Of course, I spend all this time talking about the small (but important) parts of the movie that don’t work because you already know that the rest is totally and utterly brilliant. The script, the direction, the photography, the editing, it’s all sublime. But in my book, those two characters are the difference between an A+ and an A.