Where the Wild Things Are

Visionary director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation.) has made an instant-classic live-action children's film that could very well become the 21st century's The Wizard of Oz. His adaptation of author Maurice Sendak's iconic children's book Where the Wild Things Are is rich, dark, and challenging even to adult viewers. It establishes in its young protagonist Max a hero who is combustible, impulsive, and highly insecure. While most children's films create a precocious and idealistically noble tot wise beyond his or her years, Wild Things reprsents Max in all his broken, destructive glory and paints a picture (in scenes both real and surreal) of what it genuinely feels like to be a child.

Whether or not children will embrace the film is questionable. I simply can't help but hope that they will. It's a truly magical and mysterious film which feels delicately woven and yet utterly natural. To question a scene, a moment, a frame seems superfluous. It is what it is and it is best simply to allow it to wash over you. It is, after all, an experience film. The narrative is simple: rambunctious Max causes trouble at home and flees to a magical island where he meets the "wild things" who reflect to him his own animal anxieties. Plot is not a major component here, nor should it be. It's a film about irrational feelings, sensory experiences, and gradual transitions. It is subtle and beautiful both in its gentle story and stunning visual style. Jonze's decision to portray the titular creatures through the use of elaborate puppet suits rather than CGI makes this a decidedly timeless film which tickles the imagination. It's a brave choice which pays off tremendously in making the audience feel for the giant, furry beasts who are almost certainly imaginary even in the narrative space of the film.

Ultimately, Spike Jonze's dreamy, gold-tinged euphoric adolescent fantasia will be a love it or hate it experience based on whether the moody haze of the film is found intoxicating or simply dull. There is no bare bones plot to keep the stragglers at bay. It will either grip you or leave you at the starting gate. Either way, there's doubtless a film with more nerve and raw passion to be released all year. That such a gorgeous, non-commercial masterpiece has managed to open in 3,500 theaters seems miraculous. A treat for everyone nationwide.

Grade: A

An Education

Director Lone Scherfig's coming of age drama, An Education, is a crackling account of one 16 year-old girl's liaison with an older man in 1960s London. Jenny, the teen in question, is not a mindless moppet but rather a free-spirited burgeoning intellectual with a penchant for all things French and an aspiration to attend Oxford. She's portrayed by actress Carey Mulligan in a performance so rich, natural, and fully-realized that the young Brit has found herself a sudden stateside star in the making. She's aided by a full ensemble of impressive players, including Peter Sarsgaard (as lover David), Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour (as Jenny's concerned parents), Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike (as David's suspicious and alluring pals), Olivia Williams (as doting teacher Ms. Stubbs), Emma Thompson (as Jenny's school's headmistress), and Happy-Go-Lucky's Sally Hawkins (in a scene which will break all hearts).

The film's script, adapted by Nick Hornby from a memoir by Lynn Barber, is full of wit, sharp insight, and a playful sense of adventure. It's not preachy or sullen but rather gently revelatory in the way it navigates true drama with all the humor and joy intact. The relationship between Jenny and David is allowed to have both charm and squirm, and the latter character's persona (a slick con man at best) is a tight rope walk of complex layers and manipulation. David offers young Jenny a world of opportunity complete with posh concerts, art auctions, and a trip to Paris. The young lady is then placed between worlds, wanting only the lavish luxury David offers but still obligated to a family which has dedicated themselves to her academic pursuits.

What's most refreshing is that this is a smart movie about smart people who make real choices, real errors in judgment, and ultimately suffer real consequences. It stands apart as a sophisticated, yet by no means stale, character drama that feels plucked from another era (perhaps its own period). It explores ordinary life and complication with great nuance.

Grade: A-

DVD Pick: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell - director Sam Raimi's highly anticipated return to horror - explodes onto the screen in very fine form. In a nod to older works (including his own Evil Dead franchise), Raimi opens with a vintage Universal logo as a stylistic and tonal indicator. This is a an adrenaline fueled roller coaster ride of a horror piece that is committed to hard scares and good fun and has absolutely nothing (NOTHING) to do with tourists who get lost in Europe and end up having viking milkmaids skin them alive to drink their blood. It is truly of a different, pre-Saw and even pre-Scream era in which sadistic torture and ultra-ironic audience nods are altogether out of the equation. Point of order: Sam Raimi and brother Ivan penned the script in 1993 and then shelved it for all these years. Thankfully, the piece was not lost completely. Drag Me to Hell is some of the most masterful pulp of this or any decade and bears no shame for its commitment to a passe style. In fact, if all is right in the world, Drag Me to Hell will make what is old new again. I'd gladly see a dozen more Raimi-like low-camp high-chill romps than any number of Hostel-like abuse tomes.

Paranormal Activity

The so-called "scariest movie of the decade" is really a fairly sedate, sufficiently spooky creeper which capitalizes on the very primal fear of the vulnerable slumber. The film is shot in the building sub-genre of POV horror with unknown actors, one set, and a budget of $11,000. It chronicles the supposed haunting of Katie Featherston by a demon that has followed her since early childhood. Katie, now living with boyfriend Micah, has agreed to film their bedroom at night in order to capture the culprit on film. The couple records slight sounds and small movements at first but their continuing investigation of the phenomenon leads to one very pissed off demon and a much terrorized Katie.

A film like this is awfully hard to calibrate. How much casual banter do we need before the spooky stuff happens? How spooky should it be? How real? What will audiences tolerate? In many instances, writer/director Oren Peli gets it right. Several sequences, including the "powder night," pack a very potent mix of human emotion, suggestive horror, and just the right dose of the supernatural. Other ones, including a very cartoonish flaming Ouija board, simply take the gimmick too far. And the film's ending is chilling to a point....then nothing but overboard. If this really were found footage, it would be the most definitive proof of the supernatural ever caught on tape. What's wrong here is that the film all too often drifts from the novelty of subtle proof of the demonic to very cliché and recycled horror elements that are too convoluted to truly work in this format. At times, early in the film, it seems we're getting hardly any scares (a few thumps and nothing more). Later, it's a bit too much. A full-on demon-palooza. Not the eerie slow build scares the film does best. Paranormal Activity is far from perfect, but it is a nice experiment and it works well enough to be worth attending, albeit with modest expectations.

Cynics will likely grow weary of the main couple and their very "horror movie" decisions about the best ways to protect themselves. Somehow they manage to convince themselves (and attempt to persuade the audience as well) that they'd be best served by handling this situation alone and without the help of a professional demonologist, that fleeing their house would be a futile effort, and that it's best to just keep going to sleep every night as per usual and filming it to see what monsters attacked them in their sleep. That either of them voluntarily goes to sleep on the 21st (and final) day of their plight seems altogether insane and improbable.

As much as I like to back the dark horse indie, if pushed I would easily choose Sam Raimi's similarly themed and more lavishly produced Hollywood thriller Drag Me to Hell over this more mild concoction. Still, it's an impressive feat for such a small production and the final product is a thoroughly enjoyable, if overhyped, Halloween season treat.

Grade: B+

A Serious Man

For all the talk of A Serious Man being a major departure for the brothers Coen, the film feels quite Coen-y. It's actually something of a culmination which fine-tunes many elements of the absurd, the surreal, and the darkly comic which have percolated in the brothers work for several decades. Oft-obsessed with all the ways things can go wrong (particularly in the world of crime), the Coens have wielded Murphy's law like a narrative weapon film after film. A Serious Man is the first of their works to actually speak the question of divine acts of misfortune aloud and give them religious context. Relative unknown Michael Stuhlbarg gives an incredible performance as Lawrence Gopnik, a put upon physics professor experiencing a Job-like series of unfortunate events which call his faith into question. Seeking answers, he speaks to the local rabbis in an to attempt to find God's meaning for his misfortune.

The movie opens quite uniquely with a Yiddish fable prologue shot in vintage aspect ratio and made to look somethig like an old European film. It is followed by a credits sequence revealed to be taking place inside the ear canal of Lawrence's son, Danny (Aaron Wolff), a rebellious child listening to Jefferson Airplan in Hebrew class. Almost every scene in this constantly surprising masterpiece feels like a stroke of genius. Most importantly, the Coens have never been so assured in their craft. Each moment feels so distinct and vivid; every line of dialogue feels clear and specific. Famous for filming every line of their script, the Coens go as far as to even decide the "umm..." and "aahhh..." sounds character make as they stammer. And no one authors awkward quite like Joel and Ethan Coen.

A Serious Man is a varied affair, a gentle comedy and an engrossing tragedy as well. It ponders fate, the place of a man in his world, and the ability of a good man to remain strong in the face of so much despair. It very subtly suggests in its stunning, sudden climax that the breaking point of one good man is the point at which the world fall's apart. In what must be one of their very greatest films, the Coens have created an absolutely unmissable, quintessentially American drama with playful rhythmic dialogue and unforgettable images. It's a film steeped in Jewish culture which dares to ask big questions about faith in a dark time.

Grade: A

Zombieland

Credit Zombieland for knowing its place in the celluloid universe. Rather than attempting something grand and falling flat, the utterly fun and frivolous zombie comedy, set in a post-apocalyptic planet earth, simply savors its role as a nonsense happy rollercoaster ride. So much so that it does indeed build to an amusement park set climax which includes several gags involving actual rollercoasters.

Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) stars as "Columbus, Ohio" (no names in Z-Land), a paranoid loner who has managed to survive the annihilation of the human race by being constantly alert and without sentimental attachments. He finds a zombie killing companion in Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who doesn't just survive the zombies but actually derives pleasure from screwing with their mushy, flesh-craving brains. The pair's expedition goes relatively well until they cross paths with a sneaky team of con artists (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) who undergo a slow transistion from adversaries to adopted family.

Not exactly a plot-heavy film, Zombieland more or less follows the quartet on their cross country journey to Los Angeles where rumor has it there is a zombie free amusement part. Along the way they make a memorable stop in the Hollywood hills which includes a film-stealing cameo by a very game celebrity guest. This meta-moment proves the most memorable, and original, of the film's devices which usually don't rise above the path laid by previous horror spoofs.

All and all, though, this is a weirdly funny little gem loaded with good laughs and lots of thrill seeking spirit. Harrelson has a lot of fun playing his renegade badass role (a zombie movie staple) and manages to create a lovable, gun-toting degenerate who is alone worth the price of admission. Factor in the odd appeal of pint-sized, angel-faced Breslin stealing cars and shooting up zombies in a role Dakota Fanning wouldn't dream of touching, and you've got a cocktail for one of this Fall's weirdest entries and biggest sleeper hits.

Grade: B

Bright Star

Early on in Jane Campion's pin-drop silent and intimitate romantic drama Bright Star, poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) describes to his beloved Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) the experience of poetry. She tells him how she struggles to "work it out" and he corrects her by likening a poem to a dive in a lake. It's not about getting to the shore right away, it's about the sensory experience of being in the lake itself. No doubt Campion took much the same approach in making this film. Gorgeous cinematography by George Fraser and a trio of sublime performances by leads Cornish, Whishaw, and Paul Schneider (as Keats' companion Charles Armitage Brown) make this a fully rewarding experience. Though, for all of Campion's grace with her camera and good measure of collaboration with her creative team and on-screen performers she has gone and made her herself a "wading film" in which the audience soaks up the sensory experience but goes nowhere very fast.

This is not necessarily a good or a bad thing but it does speak to the appeal of the piece. It's more for the lovers of poetry than for those who love a good quick, plot driven read. The plot is simply this: John loves Fanny but is too poor to marry her. They long to be together always and experience varying degrees of connectedness, constantly dreaming of the life they cannot have together. What lingers most in the mind after viewing Bright Star aren't the details of the plot but certain distinct images (a field of lavender, a dustpan full of dead butterflies).

Something of a visual poem, it's likely to have its fans and detractors. The script is highly literate and bathed in Keats' own work (even the closing titles play to a recitation by Whishaw). A slow start leads into a magnetic second and third act, concluding with a very stunning and shattering finale that place Schneider and Cornish in the best of lights and make them two of the season's most memorable performers thus far.

Grade: B+

Jennifer's Body

In hindsight, Jennifer's Body never really could have been anything more than a cult hit, which hopefully it one day will be. The ever divisive Diablo Cody (Juno) is back in form, a good thing for some and a not so good thing for others, with an 80s obsessed pop culture drenched screenplay that works in everything from Vagisil to Emma Roberts' starrer Aquamarine in an attempt to make its every lick of dialogue extra twisty, "witty," and dissectable. Cody is not the first to fall in love with wordplay and she won't be the last. For viewers still mad at the dialogue in Juno, Body will offer no safe haven.

The good news is that not only is Jennifer's Body more loaded with slang no one actually says in real life, but it's also quadruply surprising, edgy, and subversive. To state it simply: Body is Juno with the volume turned up and the sentiment dialed back. If you loved Juno, you might just like this more. If you loathed it, steer clear. Love it or hate it, what's most admirable here is that Cody, one of the view auteur screenwriters working right now, manages to convey a complete, sadistic, and incredibly original vision. Realized visually by director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight), Body is a rare thing: a horror film with a female perspective. Best friends Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried) are pinned against one another in the aftermath of Jennifer's abduction by renegade emo rockers and eventual sacrifice to the devil (to the tune of "867-5309/Jenny," no less). The result being a succubus possessed Jen who feeds on the bodies of teenage boys. Consider it Heathers with The Exorcist spiked in for good measure.

Not only is Jennifer a fabulously unhelpless female villain (and perhaps the best possible excuse for the existence of Megan Fox, fabulous here in full bitch mode), but she is also very much a victim. Making this an oddly layered girl-on-girl love story/fight to the death in which both Needy and Jennifer get to be dark, twisted, and broken. It's hard not to see past the gnarled teeth and cannibalism to see the weird tale of abuse and subsequent spiraling destruction at the film's core. Most specifically, stupid boys who ruin young girls' lives and leave it up to their best girlfriends to pick up the pieces. It's pop horror with underlying wit and smarts, painting one high school girl's descent into darkness with broad horror overtones that grab at the Twilight generation without losing a sense of allegory.

Grade: B+