Selma

"Our feet are tired, but are souls are rested."
-Martin Luther King

In the opening scene of "Selma," directed by Ava DuVernay, Martin Luther King stares into a mirror and mentions a "disdain for hopelessness." He's simultaneously putting on his tie. It is 1965. It's an incredible way to open the movie, with a haunting score by Jason Moran (in his debut). But then we immediately go from Oslo, Norway to Birmingham, Alabama, where four young girls are descending stairs in what appears to be a church, and it doesn't require a PhD in History to at least suspect what is coming. The church explodes, killing the four girls inside.

King, played exceptionally by David Oyelowo, is not going to tire from his success in helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and becoming a Nobel laureate -- he's instead going to Washington, D.C. to try and stress to President Lyndon Johnson that more urgent work is desperately needed, and they need LBJ's help. Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, blacks are still being systematically persecuted, and this is made possible by segregationist white governors, police chiefs, juries, etc. If a perpetrator actually sees his day in court (a rarity), then the white jury always finds the white criminal not guilty. Why? Because, MLK tells LBJ, to serve on a jury, a person needs to be registered to vote. And while, technically, blacks did have the right to vote in 1965, as the next scene demonstrates, this was often not actually the case. In the scene, Annie Lee Cooper (played by Oprah Winfrey, a producer of the film), attempts to register (again) to vote. She is rudely asked to recite the preamble to the Constitution. Upon beginning, she is then rudely demanded to identify how many county judges there are in Alabama. She answers correctly. "Name them," is the next order. Her request is denied.

The film accurately portrays Cooper's bravery and her punching a police officer, and Winfrey has stated that she wished to portray the character because of her courage. The depiction of President Johnson, however, has become a bit more controversial. A group of historians and Johnson advisers have pushed back against the notion that King and Johnson had a tense relationship, or that they disagreed about the procedure for solving the problems. Johnson historian Julian E. Zelizer recently wrote at Vox that Johnson and the civil rights leaders were partners, not adversaries. And as Bill Moyers, himself a former Johnson adviser, has pointed out, it was not Johnson who was behind the wiretapping of King's phones. The culprit? Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, two years earlier. And it should not be doubted that the FBI was ruthless toward King. In addition to the wiretapping, an FBI agent, using terms like "filthy" and "abnormal," sent King a letter suggesting the civil rights leader kill himself.

While the scenes with Johnson might be seen as dumbing-down the history of everything, I don't think they hurt the film too much. While it's truly bizarre that Oyelowo didn't receive a Best Act nomination, his fellow Brits give disappointing performances. Tom Wilkinson isn't particularly good as LBJ, and neither is Tim Roth, whose accent sounds more like an exaggerated version of Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards" than it does than the venomous governor of Alabama, George Wallace (whose daughter, incidentally, claimed Wallace saw the errors of his ways and regretted his years of proclaiming that in Alabama there would be "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"). The rest of the cast, however, is sufficient and plentiful: Common, Wendell Pierce, Lorraine Toussaint, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. all appear as civil rights activists, as does Martin Sheen as a judge hearing the case of the legality of the banning of marching in Selma, and Carmen Ejogo (another Brit) is excellent as Coretta Scott King. In her scenes, Ejogo (who also played the character in "Boycott" from 2001 and who had met her) portrays Coretta not only as a concerned wife but one understandingly angry about her husband's infidelity in scenes demonstrating that DuVernay and her team aren't afraid of de-mythologizing MLK a bit.

"Selma it is." King and his advisers agree to go to Selma to march to Montgomery in a demonstration to demand their right to vote. They concentrate on a "defined battleground," and predictably are met with violence; it's "open season," as Johnson warns. One young man is shot and killed in front of his family. In scenes that provoke demonstrators to ask how it can be that troops were being sent to Vietnam but not Selma, skulls are cracked and scores of people chased. These are not, in any stretch of the imagination, easy moments to watch. As the judge Sheen plays notes, "the wrongs are enormous." So it was then, and so it is, frankly, now.

Is "Selma" a great film? No, and at times it doesn't aspire to be more than a mediocre movie about history, much like "The Imitation Game" before it. I hope that this continues the success of Oyelowo, who also appeared in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Lee Daniels' The Butler," and I hope that the Academy (which is 93 percent white and 76 percent male, and has been stung by a Twitter campaign called #OscarsSoWhite with tweets like "they didn't see 'Selma' but their housekeeper said it was really good") continues to not only diversify but also has enough sense to nominate DuVarney when she earns it. That being said, "Selma" is a movie you should see, but that does not make it one of the year's best.

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The Interview

This is what all the fuss was about? A film showcasing James Franco trying way, way too hard? A film light on satire and heavy on bathroom jokes? Yes, indeed, this is, we have all found out, at the center of a geopolitical scandal like none before it. What was meant to be the third part of the Rogen/Franco trilogy (the first being the overrated "The Pineapple Express" and the second being the underrated "This Is the End") has become one of the most controversial motion pictures of our time, and all for nothing.

Here, Franco is Dave Skylark, a celebrity news journalist who shares a concern with his producer, Aaron Ropoport (Seth Rogen), that they and their show are not taken seriously by their fellow journalists and the public. Anxious to show the world their true talent, they discover that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (his name has not been altered for the movie; perhaps his personality hasn't, either) is a huge fan of the show, and so they have an epiphany: interview Kim himself. The CIA, however, isn't opposed to the idea of the two of them going to the most isolated nation in the world, but they would certainly appreciate it if the two of them could "take him out." Dave and Aaron are understandably a bit stunned. "You mean for drinks?" Aaron asks.

In "The Interview," Franco gives the least funny performance of his entire career, a performance so devoid of humor it makes his job as Oscar host look like a gem. He creates a character that is perhaps the most annoying in cinematic history, a rich celebration of desperate gibberish and cruel obnoxiousness. Just when it can't become any more over the top, he goes full-Smeagol, twitching and squirming about -- and we're barely ten minutes into the movie. Franco is an actor who is known for his immoderate hyperactivity in movies, but may this movie be a warning to all actors to avoid such an approach.

The movie continues, but the laughs do not. There are practically a dozen cameos, and none of them funny. Eminem comes out as gay ("the greatest moment in gay history"), Rob Lowe has no hair, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays with dogs, or something -- the stuff of comedic genius. Hollywood (and late-night comedians) need to learn that celebrity cameos aren't automatically funny, and they certainly aren't here. Rogen himself, though, usually offering the only chuckles sprinkled throughout the movie, doesn't really provide anything unique compared to his previous material. True, Rogen and Franco do have a couple of funny moments. As the North Korean guards bang on their door, the two, with material to assassinate Kim, must surely hide it, so they expectedly perform a false conversation: "Uh, I'm gonna take a shower." To which the reply is, "Okay...I'm gonna take one with you." Skylark and Kim develop a bit of a friendship; the latter shows off his tank that was a gift to his grandfather from Stalin. "In my country," Skylark assures him, "it's pronounced 'Stallone.'" The two relate to one another, and there are obvious allegories to the Kim-Dennis Rodman "friendship."

At least some props must be given: There are a few genuinely good moments of satire, not only poking fun at America's enemies, but America itself. The actor who plays Kim (Randall Park) is pretty good, and I couldn't help but think that the movie does, in fact, get better as it goes. I, for one, will never not be a joyful witness to a mocking of such a disgusting pig like Kim. (My sincere apologies to pigs everywhere for the comparison, for it is truly unjust.) 

But my ultimate conclusion is that this is certainly a missed opportunity. I know this is pretentious of me, but I think most folks would not understand that the portrayals of Kim, North Korea, and how North Koreans view their leader are not quite exaggerations in the movie. The film accurately portrays the fake crying, the charades of propaganda throughout every aspect of the country, and the deification of the Kim supreme leaders. Kang Chol-hwan, a defector from North Korea who survived ten years in a North Korean concentration camp, wrote in his memories that to his childish eyes, "Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il were perfect beings, untarnished by any base human function. I was convinced, as we all were, that neither of them urinated or defecated. Who could imagine such things of gods?" "The Interview" puts it in a bit more sophomoric way by stating that Kim "has no need for a butthole."  Perhaps a movie like "The Interview" will help people everywhere realize not only the numerous absurdities of North Korea, but also the atrocities, the ultimate and complete oppression that is totally unprecedented, unlike anything ever seen in recent humor history. (Imagine if Hitler and Stalin dominated every aspect of their respective citizens' lives and if their families ruled for three generations.)

One could wonder if it's a good idea to laugh about this sort of thing when such things are actually occurring. Beyond that, while there now appears to be some doubt about who actually hacked Sony, some have argued that putting on your Uncle Sam hat and chanting U-S-A! as you watch Kim being mocked is what Kim actually wants you to do. But memories of this scandal behind the release of "The Interview" will far outlive the movie itself. And beyond that, as mentioned, this is a dismal attempt at satirizing a terrible despot. The Greatest Generation had "The Great Dictator." We have "The Interview."

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The Polar Express

"The Polar Express" certainly starts out with a great deal of ambition while trying to make sure it presses all the right notes required of a Christmas movie. There's a calm, mystical score by Alan Silvesti, the usual composer of director Robert Zemeckis, and quite impressive visual effects. There's a poem (as all stories about Christmas must have) of a young boy who is starting to lose faith in Santa. He picks up an encyclopedia to discover that the North Pole is, contrary to all the stories he's been told, "devoid of all life." (Oh, knowledge -- how cruel you are.) The epiphany of this boy's awareness of Santa is where things start to spoil. The score becomes overly repetitive, and the "is-it-real-or-is-it-not" animation begins to make some of the characters looks like aliens. Fairly soon, it becomes evident that the only thing devoid of life in this film is the film itself.

Trains in the movies are usually magical things. One would think that would be the case here, in a movie that features some sort of ghost-hobo and flying reindeer. It's true that things certainly look quite magical in "The Polar Express." After all, an actual train shows up in front of the house of young "Hero Boy." (Yes, that's what he's credited as.) Our young boy is performed by...Tom Hanks? Yes, not only does Hanks, who has shown us that he can play a man dying of AIDS and a man with a mental disability and everything else, play the train conductor (the central adult character) and practically every adult male role in the film, but also "Hero Boy." Why Zemeckis and crew didn't simply have Daryl Sabara (who voiced the character) provide the motion-capture is something I just don't understand. Anyway, Hero Boy gets on the train to the North Pole because why wouldn't he? If we are to believe that a train can show up (and go to) such a place, then we must believe that Hero Boy would get on that train. (Seriously, what a terrible name for a character.) Hero Boy (argh, it sounds so stupid) meets a group of children, one of whom, Hero Girl (who wrote this?), seems to have a crush on him. Another one, a know-it-all (I suppose I should mention that that's the character's name, as well) is not only performed but also voiced by an adult, which just adds to the misery of hearing a child say the words "wise guy." Then we are witness to two not-so-competent (or safe) train engineers whose annoying attributes make Jingle and Jangle, the humorless elf duo of "The Year Without a Santa Claus," look like amateurs in the realm of humor and efficiency. These are several of the attempts at humor that I can't imagine even children laughing at.

This movie isn't all bad. Hanks does do a mostly sufficient job as most of these characters, even though he hams it up so often. "The Polar Express" looks and feels quite wondrous and even frightening, like the graveyard of forgotten toys. One of them even appears to come to life and wants to attack the young boy. "The Polar Express" turns ten years old this year, and the scenes like that have aged well. So no one would deny that Zemeckis, who started his computer animation trilogy with "The Polar Express," is a master of visual storytelling. But his best movies, like "Back to the Future," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," and "Forrest Gump," focus more on character than visuals. Here, the opposite is true. Its only focus is on visuals, with every sequence trying to top itself, to the point where a giant star on a giant Christmas tree nearly crashes through the skull of one of Santa's elves. And for some reason, 45 minutes into the movie, it embraces its chaotic train ride energy and suddenly becomes a musical. You know how they say you know you've seen a good musical when you leave the theater and the songs are stuck in your head? I can't even imagine the ones who worked on the productions of these dismal songs to have them stuck in theirs upon leaving the studio.

The song that Haley Joel Osment-lookalike sings fortunately finishes, and our characters finally make it to the North Pole, which oddly enough does seem devoid of life (in the figurative, sarcastic sense) but (of course) is inhabited by an army of elves all dressed in red, crawling over each other to shower their adoration on their fascist of a master. The characters (who might just be representing the most annoying portrayal of children in any movie) finally meet Santa Claus (who is also played by Tom Hanks), and then the movie still goes on for another 15 minutes. No exciting train scene can save this film. Ten years later, "The Polar Express" is, for some reason, considered a holiday classic. Call me Ebeneezer, but this movie is crap.

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The Theory of Everything

"O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer time."

-W.H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening"

In the beginning, the camera immediately shifts from Hawking in a wheelchair to Hawking on a bike. He is a "strange" and "clever" fellow, with crooked glasses and in an intense quest to solve equations and get the girl. These early scenes feature Eddie Reddmayne being calmly lectured and encouraged by his professor, played by David Thewlis, who issues homework assignments that might send students to the hospital. And yet this professor is quite impressed with Hawking, despite the latter's submitting assignments on scraps of wrinkled papers. It is remarkable that such a character falls for a girl whose interest in Medieval poetry of the Iberian peninsula might seem antithetical to his obsession with physics; surely, her belief in God is in opposition to his purely logical mind. But fall in love they do. This is a love story, and while not the best of the year, it works best when seen through that prism. When seen through the prism of the standard biographical film, as the filmmakers and distributors wish us to do, "The Theory of Everything" doesn't shine so much.

As mentioned, it's quite remarkable that these two fall in love. As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr reminded us, religion uses the language of poetry far more than science does. Hawking, upon bringing her home to his family for a Sunday meal, describes to her his requirement to refrain from religious thought when conducting science, but is met with a firm reply: "Sounds less of an argument against God than against physicists." He has met his match. Beyond that, the girl, Jane Wilde (played by Felicity Jones), is rather attractive, while Hawking (with all due respect not only to him but also Reddmayne, who used to model) has a nice smile but a very awkward (yet witty and obviously brilliant) persona. They go to the ball, and there's a majestic dance scene (with no dancing from our two characters), lit perfectly by cinematographer Benoit Delhomme. In the first third of the film, though, despite its pretty figurative and literal fireworks, "The Theory of Everything" seems to be a somewhat bland biographical motion picture, providing not much else. It's like "A Beautiful Mind" but slightly more boring. But of course it will be nominated for Best Picture -- it's the type of movie that makes the Academy salivate.

Hawking trips, just as he develops an idea for the beginning of the universe, and is taken to the hospital. He is diagnosed with motor neuron disease (a.k.a Lou Gehrig's disease) and is expected to live only two more years. His thoughts won't change, but no one will know what they are. He begins to limp, quite noticeably, and in no time he has a cane. Soon after that, he has to crawl up and down the stairs. He is continually told that he has only two years left. This is where the acting gets quite challenging for Reddmayne. Not only does he have to portray a real-life figure, one who is known around much of the world, but also one who starts shy yet articulate but is forced to have his physical abilities stripped from him. He has to convey a lot of emotions -- jealousy, ambition, lust, love -- with few words. Reddmayne gave us some pretty good acting in "My Weekend with Marilyn" and "Les Miserables," but here he is exceptional. You will remember his performance, but forget virtually everything else about the movie.

Why? For one, it tries to compensate by having innovative visual effects -- the fire sequence sparking his epiphany that "black holes are not, in fact, black at all" looks nice, but then the film doesn't give us much more. This is an intriguing story, no doubt, and I think human beings, for the most part, will forever be drawn to these types of fighter stories. "The little one has done it!" as one character exclaims. Hawking isn't simply a brilliant scientist, but a devoted father and husband, even able to chase around his young children in his electronic wheelchair. In spite of all his troubles, he perseveres, continuing to write and even retain his boyish grin, if only to annoy his wife, who is growing frustrated with worrying about him, as he refuses to see specialists regarding his choking spells. His father (Simon McBurney) joins in the prodding. Stephen eventually concedes. 

There's a powerful moment where Jayne orders Hawking's doctor to do an emergency operation because "Stephen must live." She is warned that Stephen might not survive the journey. "He will," she insists. Indeed, he barely does. He has to talk with a computerized voice (an American one, to the surprise of his wife), but he actually seems to be trying to make the best of it, quoting Clark Gable's "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" and shouting "exterminate" while playing with his children. And he still likes reading copies of "Penthouse."  

I liked "The Theory of Everything," and yet I was underwhelmed by it. I wanted something a bit more audacious and creative, not a check-the-box style safe movie from Hollywood to try and gain some awards. As I mentioned, Reddmayne is incredible; the movie itself is forgettable.        

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Gone Girl

An Irish prince leaves his perfect wife at their perfect home. How perfect is his life? So much that on the night he fell in love with his wife, there was a storm of sugar surrounding them. There aren't many cinematographers better than Jeff Bronenweth, and his camera makes that scene, in particular, hauntingly beautiful. His excellent cinematography lights a dark, dark world, as is often the case in the movies of David Fincher, the Prince of Darkness. When the man comes home, his wife is gone. His perfect world is turned upside down.

The man in our movie is Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck. He goes to a bar to drink with the bartender, who incidentally is his sister (Carrie Coon). Why is he drinking? Why not--it's his fifth year wedding anniversary. The bar is under the name of his wife, played by Rosamund Pike in her best performance. Pike's debut was as a Bond girl in "Die Another Day" a little more than a decade ago, but she hasn't really been given a chance to prove herself since. Here, however, she really shines, in a performance that will (or at least should) get her an Oscar nomination. Her character, Amy, is, in the first half of the movie a "complicated" woman, a "nagging shrew" whom no one particularly likes. But that would be too simple. In the second half, it's an entirely different story for her. I cannot elaborate, but I am permitted to say my opinion of the twist, which is this: While it did provide Pike with an opportunity to demonstrate her talent, it also produced some eyeball-rolling. In the history of dumb movie twists, this might be one of the dumbest.

But back to our couple. Nick is remarkably calm considering his wife has just disappeared. While it can only be natural to side with him as an audience member, the evidence is clearly piling up against him in the movie, and an objective detective (Kim Dickens) continually grills him. Our story bounces back and forth so that we see just how bad Nick and Amy were at marriage; it's as if it could have been titled "Scenes from a Marriage About to Turn Mysterious and Violent." The wife is increasingly frightened by her husband, and perhaps vice versa.

There are a lot of compelling moments here about cable media's obsession with scandal, dangerous "Fatal Attraction"-style marriages, and other human flaws. But one cannot help but feel that these would all be so much more interesting to think about while reading the novel. It seems almost inevitable to think unfavorably about a film adaption if one has seen the original material beforehand, but I haven't read "Gone Girl," and yet I know I would have had a better experience reading it than watching the movie. Yet probably the most interesting ideas (in the novel or the movie) are the gender issues. Despite the fact that improvements for women have been one of the most impressive gains in the rights revolutions we've seen over the past century, we still live in an unfortunate era where women are not only underrepresented but shockingly mistreated (to say the very least). Here, we have a story where women are not only capable of such disturbing violence, but they are also the most interesting characters. Well done, Fincher and company.

Fincher's directing is commendable as always, but his storytelling is a bit weak. Frankly, I often have this reaction when watching many of his films. Other than "Se7en," I can't think of an instance where I was totally amazed at his filmmaking. But he has, at least, gotten quality performances from his players, especially Pike and Affleck. Affleck, who won Oscars for writing "Good Will Hunting" and producing "Argo," has shown us arguably his best performance, and Pike, as mentioned, has never been better. The actors in smaller roles--Dickens, Tyler Perry as Affleck's attorney and Neil Patrick Harris as a rich man who has been obsessing over Amy for years--likewise are quite enjoyable to watch. But while the actors are sufficient and mostly have been given satisfying words from screenwriter Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the novel), this is ultimately a mediocre film. After an incredible climax, it goes on for another unwelcomed twenty minutes. It's certainly intriguing but, like most Fincher movies, forgettable.

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Frances Ha

Upon first glance, it would seem that these two young ladies are happily in love. They are Frances (Greta Gerwig) and Sophie (Mickey Sumner), running around and playing in the New York jungle featured so beautifully in black and white, in Noah Baumbach's "Frances Ha." It might take a while, but it becomes more evident that they are not a couple, but instead two young women in love with each other only in the platonic sense. This is a story about friendship, and it's off to a nice start--the black and white, the energy, Bowie's "Modern Love" sprinkled about. But it quickly realizes that it doesn't have much else to offer.

Maybe it's in black and white because it knows there's not much else there. Frances asks Sophie early in the film to tell her "the story of us." That's essentially what this movie is--the story of two friends and "the story of them." Think of all the fine films there have been on such a profound topic--"Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Stand by Me," "Au revoir les enfants," "Bridesmaids"--and compare them to this. How disappointing.

Frances is a character who always "feels bad," constantly apologizing for the most minuscule things. With Sophie, she has an intimate soul mate, one who shares her enormous aspirations--they even want honorary degrees. Frances is a dancer, but she struggles to find work even within the company she dances with. She's an old-fashioned individual, one who watches French movies, reads on the subway, and shuns modern obsessions with phones. This movie is so Woody Allen-esque but misuses the inspiration. At one point, she arbitrarily goes to France to...show us how quirky she is? To really show us that she makes poor choices? I don't know. All she does there is go to the cinema to watch "Puss in Boots," probably because the writers thought we would laugh if we heard the word "puss." It's a bit dangerous to make a movie about New York and Paris in black and white; whereas Woody Allen gave us a hopeless romantic roaming the streets in a pleasant time-travelling adventure through Paris, Baumbach has given us a woman watching a "Shrek" spin-off.

Frances' lack of success and unique personality continue. She finds herself in debt from her trip to France and doesn't find much opportunity in her dance company. She awkwardly makes her way through dinner conversations, in ulcer-inducing moments in this movie that dreadfully fall flat. What exactly is this movie trying to show us through this character? My only conclusion is how annoyed I was, and particularly at the words "I'm sorry." I don't think I've ever heard it so many times in one movie.

There aren't many other things to make up for it. Adam Driver might be a hit on HBO's "Girls," but his film performances have been mediocre or forgettable at best, and he was particularly annoying in the recent "What If." (Let's hope he'll be better in Martin Scorsese's "Silence" and J.J. Abram's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens.") Here, he's not much better. He does offer a humorous line at one point, teasing Frances that he was "pretending to be a liberated woman" in refusing to sleep with her. He plays Levi, one of the artists she moves in with. Another is Dan, played by Michael Esper, who continually says "un-dateable," thereby offering more examples of the awkwardness of the film's screenplay, written by both Gerwig and Baumbach. Such repetition and bad dialogue is the stuff of weak plays. The dialogue is pretty atrocious, particularly that given to Esper. His character claims to be writing a screenplay for "Gremlins 3." Why? Who cares. The so-called dialogue was probably improvised, as if, the filmmakers thought, to give it more legitimacy. So hip. At one point, we are told that "the only people who can afford to be artists are rich." That's deep.

So this "quirky" comedy is actually rather painful, the kind that folks will tell you you're supposed to like, and you must have inferior taste if you don't. It tries too hard to be clever and humorous and fails at both. Greta Gerwig is a remarkably talented actress who simply has chosen a bad role and given a sub-par performance. As the co-writer of this film, she deserves extra criticism. But I'm confident she'll be better next time.

   

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The Blair Witch Project

It's not quite reality. In one of the weaker scenes of “The Blair Witch Project,” the somewhat groundbreaking mockumentary horror film of 1999, a character teases his fellow documentarian about her never-ending use of the camera. He now understands why she's in love with it, why she continues to film even though some very strange and eerie things have been happening to them on their trek into haunted woods. This movie is not quite reality, but it sure as hell feels like it. We're told in the beginning that in October of 1994, “three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.” And thus, a genre changed.

I agree with them that the woods during Halloween are haunting enough. Burkittsville (a real-life town of about 150 people) according to our student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard), used to be known as Blair. A small cemetery contains an unusually high number of dead children. Some of them, we are told, were murdered by an insane man who kidnapped them and killed them two-by-two with an ax, with one looking away in the corner. He eventually entered the town and declared, “I'm finally finished.” His reason? A witch was torturing him and told him she would stop if he killed the children. There are several other scary stories like this sprinkled throughout the exposition. One of them is the story of the Blair Witch, a local legend grandparents used to tell their children to scare them to bed early. Mary Brown, an older woman the town has written off as crazy, tells our three protagonists a story of how when she was a young girl fishing with her father, a woman who appeared to be completely covered with hair approached her. Because the three filmmakers note that Mary Brown also claims to be a scientist doing research for the government, they ignore her ominous story and drive off for the woods. There, they meet two fisherman, one of whom describes the story of Robin Weaver, an unfortunate soul who vanished, apparently caused by an old woman--or witch--whose feet never touched the ground.

These stories are eerie enough and would make a fine film of their own, but they're not particularly scary. “The Blair Witch Project,” however, is truly scary. Influenced by other horror films (its utilization of both color and black-and-white is reminiscent of “Night of the Living Dead” and the more obvious similarity is to "Cannibal Holocaust") and obviously influential (with the most obvious influence being on “Paranormal Activity” and a host of other horror films), it might be considered one of the best of all time. While not as scary as "Paranormal Activity," it certainly is more real-looking. Perhaps the reason is that, like "Jaws" before it, our witch is never seen (or is it?). Instead, we are witness to our characters being woken at night to the sound of silent cackles. There are piles of rocks mysteriously placed outside their tent. Their map goes missing. One morning, there appears to be slime surrounding the tent. The camera can barely pick it up, but who cares? It's much scarier to simply take their word for it. In fact, hardly anything can often be seen, and this works mostly to the directors' (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez) favor. The movie is so simple yet brilliant because it rests on our shared phenomenon of being scared in the woods at night. Add a witch and I can't even imagine. 

    

While the three actors are not necessarily bad, the constant improvisation leads to overacting. There's an incessant amount of shouting at each other as they argue their way into madness, constantly being hunted by a witch seen, not heard. Josh teases Heather about the camera, telling her it's not quite reality. Well, for one, it's hardly realistic that a group of characters in such dire situations would continue filming, or that they would have moments of levity and laughter in their breaks from being hunted. The reality of things like witches I'm sure will be debated for centuries, but if such creatures do exist, it can be concluded that they probably lack any sense of compassion or mercy. If there are witches, they are probably more like the Blair Witch than Harry Potter. 

Hungry, cold and hunted, the three continue to do their best to crawl out of the vast woods, but to no avail. There is an absolutely terrifying climax in a house deep, deep in the woods. It's impossible to see what exactly is going on, but it's hauntingly eerie. Handprints everywhere and a silent scream somewhere in the foods. How I would hate to be alone in the woods, hunted by a witch. Terrifying. 

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Enemy

Chaos. So begins "Enemy," a film even darker than the previous movie Jake Gyllenhaal and director Denis Villeneuve did, last year's "Prisoners." (Perhaps there's some sort of Von Triers-like melancholy trilogy in the making.) There are genuinely few films quite like "Enemy," so bizarre, so rich, so likely to inspire nausea. It's not a perfect film--at times it becomes a bit full of itself, with upside cameras and bizarre dreams and that sort of thing. But it's quite a thought-provoking one, and one that's gorgeous to look at. The cinematography should elevate Nicolas Bolduc as the new "prince of darkness," and it's as if Villeneuve found the absolute creepiest areas in all of Canada for the scenery.

Gyllenhaal is Adam Bell, a history professor telling his students about dictators and control. Control and obsession. It's a pattern that repeats itself through history, he tells them. His life is fairly mundane. He has a beautiful girlfriend (played by Melanie Laurent) but there doesn't seem to be much in their love life. Upon the recommendation of a colleague, he decides to watch a "feel-good" movie called "When There's a Will There's a Way." He doesn't appear to enjoy it too much. But a bizarre dream (set to operatic music) suddenly shoots him awake and he immediately returns to the movie to find the scene which appeared in his dream. And here he finds himself, or at these someone who looks exactly like him, as if it's his twin brother or something. His twin is Anthony and also is played by Gyllenhaal (obviously). He is the complete antithesis to Adam. Whereas Adam is meak, Anthony is confident. Adam is sloppy, Anthony is neat. The only similarity other than their looks and sharing the same first-letter is the fact that they both have beautiful girlfriends.

Such an eerie movie. There's truly exceptional cinematography here. The whole thing looks so Kubrickesque, with the obvious comparison being "Eyes Wide Shut," as both share themes of obsession, golden cinematography, and eroticism. But "Enemy" is more than that (and superior to "Eyes Wide Shut"). The best analysis of the film has been from Forrest Whickman in Slate. He hints that this is a monster movie without explicitly stating so; Whickman points out several clues, including repeated images of spider webs, some of which are obvious, and some of which aren't. The image of the spider is everywhere, and serves as an interesting representative of totalitarianism. He also notes that while the novel "The Double," which serves as the film's inspiration, is not a story of authoritarianism, its author, Jose Saramago, lived under a fascist regime in Portugal and "his work frequently explores totalitarianism and his experiences under a fascist regime through metaphor and allegory."    

Spiders like patterns, don't they?

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Robin Williams

Thomas Brown once noted that death is the cure for all illnesses. This is a morbid way to start a tribute for one of our national treasures, Robin Williams, who died yesterday of an apparent suicide. But let me explain. In "What Dreams May Come," one of his most underrated films, Williams plays a grieving husband whose wife commits suicide. When he, too, later dies, he discovers that she is not in Heaven waiting for him. He is understandably angry, demanding to know why his wife is being punished simply because she ended her suffering. It's a powerful scene, one that could provoke thought and dialogue about suffering and dying.

It appears evident that Williams spent the last several years of his life suffering. He was in and out of rehab, battling drug and alcohol addiction for years. He recently divorced his second wife; his sitcom on CBS, "The Crazy Ones," was canceled after only one season; and the majority of his films in the past decade have been considered flops. Clearly, these were taking a toll. No one deserves suffering, and no one deserves to be blamed for attempting to end their suffering. I feel deeply sorry for Williams and his many family members and for the world, for we have truly lost a decent human being and a comedic genius. I cannot, though, but feel at least an ounce of satisfaction that he will no longer suffer. No one deserves such suffering.

About his acting, where to start? He first got America to adore him through his guest appearances on "Happy Days" as an eccentric alien in the era of sci-fi re-emergence. His character eventually got his own TV show, "Mork and Mindy." There were his dramatic roles, like playing the introverted doctor opposite Robert De Niro in Penny Marshall's "Awakenings," one of the best films of 1990. In his review of the film, Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic called Williams a "unique maniacal treasure, part competent actor, part Jonathan Winters spin-off, part socio-political surgeon." Williams understood that there were essentially no laughs in the film, and that's how the role should be played. There wasn't even a slight hint of the screwball Tasmanian devil he so often became onscreen. In Mike Nichols' "The Birdcage," he understood that the humor there called for him to be the straight man (no pun intended), and while there were moments where Nichols let Williams be Williams, the actor understood that he often needed to cede the humor to Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest and Hank Azaria. It is one of his very best works.

He knew how to play terrifying as well. 2002 was his Year of Hitchcock. The first pitted him against Al Pacino in Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia," taunting his opponent, an LA cop (Pacino) suffering from sleeplessness in Alaska while trying to solve a murder mystery. "Don't worry, Will," he whispers. "You can sleep when you're dead." That same year he played a terribly lonely photo developer who becomes dangerously obsessed with a family in "One Hour Photo." It was the dark characters that made Williams, an actor trained at Juilliard, the most interesting to watch. A perfect example is the last terrific film he made: "World's Greatest Dad," in 2009. I wrote at the time that it was the perfect visualization of the human need to provoke the sympathy of others, and that it was one of Williams' best films.

But Robin Williams will most likely be remembered for his outrageously funny performances: rapidly spitting out humor and slight diatribes in "Good Morning Vietnam," which earned him his first Oscar nomination (he was also nominated for "Dead Poets Society," "The Fisher King," and won for "Good Will Hunting"); being as equally funny to children as to adults in "Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest" and Disney's "Aladdin," in which he improvised 16 hours of material, so much that apparently the Academy turned down a request to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay because so much of it was ad-libbed; and of course, his role as a divorced father so desperate to spend time with his children that he disguises himself as a British nanny in "Mrs. Doubtfire." I cannot think of a funnier performance on film, and it was a shame that he was not nominated for Best Actor.

I'm very skeptical of alternative medicine, and yet I can't not be intrigued by laugh therapy. Here's how the Cancer Center's page of the remedy opens: "We were born with the gift of laughter. Laughter is a natural medicine. It lifts our spirits and makes us feel happy. Laughter is a contagious emotion. It can bring people together. It can help us feel more alive and empowered."

Empowered. We are at our lowest when we are not. There are three obvious examples of how Williams utilized laughter therapy to empower others. The first regards his dear friend and roommate from Julliard. Lauren Lapalater at Buzzfeed has written a great article titled "The Lifelong Friendship of Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve." Read it, and you will come across a passage from Reeve's memoirs describing his fear heading into a risky surgery after his accident left him paralyzed: He describes a man walking in dressed as a doctor and speaking in a Russian accent, announcing that he was to perform a rectal exam on Reeve. Reeve wrote: "For the first time since the accident, I laughed. My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be okay."

The second story involves another friend, Steven Spielberg, who directed Williams in "Hook," in which Williams plays a grown-up Peter Pan who has forgotten Neverland and now is a stern lawyer who doesn't spend time with his kids. Spielberg was filming "Schindler's List," an immensely taxing project that left him drained and depressed. It was Williams who called Spielberg, filming in Poland, to crack jokes and cheer him up. Spielberg called these "comic care packages over the telephone." The third example is not a real-life one, but a film: "Patch Adams." It's not a particularly good film, but it celebrates his unique gift of helping others through humor. Sometimes, that humor could be a bit too potent, as was the time he appeared on "Inside the Actor's Studio" (in what was probably the show's best episode). Apparently, an audience member was rushed to the hospital for a hernia--she was laughing so hard during Williams' appearance.

I haven't even mentioned his charity work: He was involved in about 50 charities, including the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. With Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg, he hosted "Comic Relief," raising funds to help the homeless. Crystal responded to the news on Twitter with simply "No words." Goldberg seconded: "BillyCrytal is right. There are NO words."

While death might be a cure, so too is laughter. Steve Allen told us that our world would be intolerable without laughter; John Cleese called laughter a force for democracy; Stephen Colbert noted that one cannot be laughing and be afraid at the same time. "If you're laughing," he said, "I defy you to be angry." And I defy you to find someone who has made us laugh as much as Robin Williams did. What great comfort laughing is, and what a great comfort Robin Williams has been to us all.

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Noah

In his exhaustive anthology of the history of violence called "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Steven Pinker starts with the Bible, which "depicts a world that, seen through our modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery." He cites Matthew White, who estimates that through 600 passages that discuss violence, the number of deaths is around 1.2 million--genocidal numbers. The victims of the flood would increase the number to 20 million.

Incidentally, Pinker's thesis is that humans are, contrary to the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" philosophy of the media, actually becoming more peaceful, not more violent. He humorously opens his work by reminding us of the Cain killing Abel story: "With a world population of exactly four, that works out to a homicide rate of 25 percent, which is about a thousand times higher than the equivalent rates in Western countries today."

Director Darren Aronofksy embraces this violence. His "Noah" is heavy on it. At one point, the title character, played by Russell Crowe, throws a spear at an adversary. I can't wait for the action figure; it will make Paramount Pictures a fortune. Is this really a Darren Aronofky film? It is, and "Noah" is the great disappointment of the year. It feels like an amateurish undertaking filled with fairy tale dialogue. There are scenes with the Watchers (?), sort of fallen angels who are punished by being rocks. They are conflicted about helping Noah build the ark. Some of them are voiced perfectly (like by Frank Langella); others, not so much (like by Nick Nolte). (You could complain about how these rock things are not in the Bible, but as Aronofsky points out, neither is an E.T. finger-to-finger touch between God and Adam.) There are some positives--the scenery (filmed in Iceland) is otherworldly, and Aronofsky and his team have colored the world with blue, orange and green. It's completely surreal. ILM's imagery of the Watchers and the ark sometimes look realistic and innovative, and sometimes it does not. It has a certain quality reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen's work, but it fits. There is a massive battle in rain just as the maelstrom begins. It's exciting, but it doesn't fit.

Typically, movie reviews are required to include a paragraph or several explaining the plot. Is it necessary here? Probably not. You likely know the plot. The fourth story in the Bible, God has become angry with humans and has decided to kill them. But a very select few (Noah and his family) will be saved by building an ark and putting two of every animal on it. Martin Scorsese has talked about how the movies that have stayed with him the longest were the ones that didn't focus on plot so much as character, mood, and style. But with "Noah," despite our familiarity with the story, the plot is more interesting than everything (and everyone) else.

Crowe is reunited with his co-star from "A Beautiful Mind," Jennifer Connelly. She's not particularly good here, but most of it's not her fault--she's given such poor dialogue and not much else to do other than try and decide if she wants to speak in an American or British accent. The same goes for Emma Watson, who can't seem to not raise an eyebrow in each of her scenes. Her co-star from "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," though, Logan Lerman, does a fine job. He plays Ham, Noah's middle son (the one who is eventually cursed by Noah), jealous and sexually frustrated. The reason for the curse has divided scholars for generations, and yet one is indirectly provided here (and actually, there's not much of a cursing so much as an inability to "fix something that is broken"). Anthony Hopkins plays Methuselah, Noah's grandfather. The saying "as old as Methuselah" comes from the idea that this Biblical character apparently lived the longest, dying at a ripe old age of 969 (which is surely possible). It's easy to see why this saying is accurate. In virtually every scene he's in, Methuselah just wants someone to bring him berries. He finally gets them, and how happy he becomes. Hopkins has never, to my knowledge, given us a bad performance, but he has made a handful of bad films, and this is one of them. Finally, Ray Winstone is an effective villain. He plays Tubal-cain, a descendant of Cain. Winstone does the expected hissing and such, but he reveals that this is a somewhat interesting character, for his (and Noah's) confusion and frustration have plagued humans for eternity. In essence, these two men must be saying to themselves, "I pray, and yet I hear nothing."

As for Crowe, he has always had an impressive presence on screen in a wide variety of films: "L.A. Confidential," "The Insider," "Gladiator," "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the Universe," "American Gangster," "Man of Steel." His presence is here as well in his characterization of Noah. Aronofsky has said that his depiction of Noah embraces a balance between justice and mercy. Noah, however, through much of this film, leans toward the former, succeeding in getting everyone to hate him. His son pleads with him as their fellow human beings drown. "They are just people," he says. Noah's reply is terse: "There is no room for them." When it is revealed that on board the ark, Ila (Watson) has miraculously become pregnant (she is barren), he is sure that this will infuriate the Creator and he promises to destroy the child if it is a girl. The accident of birth.

My expectations of this film were so high not because it's a Russell Crowe movie or because it's a movie about the ark or anything else other than the fact that it's directed by Darren Aronofsky. Think of his previous films--"Requiem for a Dream," "The Fountain," "The Wrestler," "Black Swan." I opened by asking if "Noah" really is an Aronofsky film. I'm still not sure. His theme of obsession, so prevalent in other movies--drugs in "Requiem for a Dream," lost love in "The Fountain," a comeback in "The Wrestler," and perfection in "Black Swan"--is somewhat noticeable here in that Noah is obsessed with obeying the Creator and not with helping his fellow humans. But everything else is so distracting that one couldn't possibly contemplate much on this theme. This is indeed an Aronofsky film, but unfortunately it's a bad one. Still, he's arguably the most exciting director around; certainly the most exciting younger director. I'm confident his next film will be better.

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