A Bright 'Future' for X-Men Movies

by Brett Parker

 

The X-Men universe is so vast with colorful personalities and wildly imaginative storylines that the film incarnations of this world have wheeled out decidedly varying tones.  Some of the (better) installments adhere to the solemnity of that world’s existential traumas while others were more willing to extract the pop grandeur from these superheroes’ comic book absurdity.  X-Men: Days of Future Past finds a satisfying balancing act between these two inherent yet contradictive aspects of the mythology: it’s dug firmly into comic book flights of fancy, yet its sense of ideological dread looms over every moment of this film.  The mutants on display may pummel each other with superpowers and bounce around like cartoon gods, but their plights and conflicts are undoubtedly of the highest dramatic order.  

The film opens in a dystopian future where giant robots known as Sentinels hold a terrifying sway over the world in which they capture and kill both mutants and humans who have the potential to develop mutant genes.  Most of the X-Men we’ve come to know have been slaughtered by these Sentinels and only a small band of mutants are left standing in the world.  In China, lone survivor Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is able to meet up with fellow mutants Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellan), and  Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) in hiding.  Kitty reveals how she has the power to send a mutant’s present subconscious back in time to their older body with their knowledge of the future intact.  Realizing that the Sentinel nightmare came about after shape-shifting assassin Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) murdered the inventor of the Sentinels, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), Professor X concludes that someone must travel back in time and prevent Mystique from every carrying out that murder.  Realizing his indestructible nature makes him the only one who can withstand the force of time-travel, Wolverine volunteers to be the one who goes back.

As he wakes up in the 1973 version of his body, Wolverine realizes he has no time to waste and must track down both the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) and younger Magneto (Michael Fassbender).  This proves to be endlessly complicated, for Professor X is a disillusioned soul whose telepathic powers seem to be fading as the result of an anti-paralysis drug.  Meanwhile, Magneto has been captured by the U.S. Government after being blamed for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Even in spite of the fact that the two men couldn’t hate each other more at this point in their lives, Wolverine tries effortlessly to unite the two of them to help him prevent a grim future, all while trying to track Mystique as she carries out vengeful missions of mutant freedom across the globe.  

This is the first X-Men movie Bryan Singer has helmed since 2003’s X2: X-Men United, and not only has his confidence sharpened by observing other X-Men movies not getting things quite right, but making Superman Returns and Valkyrie in the meantime surely taught him more about blending spectacle and drama.  This is perhaps the X-Men movie with the most effective imagery, doing its comic book roots proud without sacrificing its dignity.  My favorite scene involves the super-speedy mutant Quicksilver (a livewire Evan Peters) who damn near slows time down as he races to save his fellow mutants from being shot at by security guards (time is so slow to Quicksilver that he has time to listen to “Time in a Bottle” on his headphones during his attack, bringing floating beauty to a scene of violent urgency).  Thanks to loopholes in telepathy and time-travel, there’s a wonderful scene where both the young and old Professor X’s get to confront each other face-to-face, not only fulfilling a great fanboy fantasy but bringing verve to a classical sci-fi device.  The film’s most hard-hitting scene shows images of Sentinels ferociously tearing apart mutants edited over Magneto’s climactic speech about why mutants are not to be messed with.  The skillful editing by John Ottman exquisitely counterbalances the sinister nature of Magneto’s words by showing the fearsome desperation they were born out of.

 

The X-Men movies have dished out such a wide variety of characters that X-Men: Days of Future Past appears to have picked the most appealing ones and used them effectively.  At this point in the game, Hugh Jackman could dish out Wolverine’s awesomeness in his sleep, although the 70’s time period here greatly compliments the young Clint Eastwood myth within the character that’s been great fun to spot before.  Jennifer Lawrence brings a down-to-earth American girl vibe to mystique, helping to make the character more sympathetic than ever before.  James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are fantastic in the ways they call upon old-school British-flavored thespian class to flesh out their characters.  Their wonderful dedication and conviction is based around their duck-to-water understanding  that superheroes speaking hyperbole in capes and masks is a modern day update on Shakespeare's kings and warriors.  Fassbender especially has a monologue on an airplane filled with such raging command that his Old Vic grandeur literally shakes the plane.  The fact that the duo convinces you Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton would’ve fit in perfectly with this world gives the film an extra kick of excitement.  

What’s so enduring about the entire X-Men mythology is how the relentless prejudices the mutants face could be a stand-in for any oppressed minority throughout history.  Ian McKellen was drawn to the material for its allusions to gay rights while the Jewish Bryan Singer certainly is attuned to the Holocaust allegories present (after all, he did make Apt Pupil and Valkyrie).  While the future imagery of Sentinels exterminating undesirables certainly evokes Nazism, the mechanical and pitiless methodology of their attacks uncomfortably suggests drone warfare.  The chilling revelation here hints that all forms of violent regulation eventually lurches towards the same nightmarish outcome.  What’s complex about the film’s resolution is how both the virtuous mutants and the villainous ones need both of their ying-yang ideologies meshed together in order to combat a hellish society.  Ponder how the ending couldn’t have been brought about without both sincere empathy and wicked duplicity.  

By melding the X-Men’s past with their future, Bryan Singer and his confederates have finally been able to make an X-Men movie that takes all the bits you’ve loved from every installment (even the weaker ones) and combine them into a satisfying whole.  It’s a delicate balance that I think can be improved upon towards more powerhouse installments (and judging by the epic after-credits sequence, we’re in for yet another monumental adventure with our favorite mutants).  If future X-Men movies keep building on its powerful elements with cinematic wonder, then we can finally start to visualize sequels that match the scope and awe of the beloved comics.  

Old-School 'Godzilla' Meets New-School Relevance

 by Brett Parker

You really do let out a gleeful squeal the first time you see him.  The camera pans up over a skyscraper-sized reptilian body obscured by thunderous shadows while an unholy chorus wails over the soundtrack.  Once we reach the top of this scary sight, lightning strikes and we’re able to make out that the creature is Godzilla himself, and man oh man, is he ready to get down to business.  We’re certainly not talking about the confused-looking iguana from Roland Emmerich’s botched 1998 version, but the bad-ass, guy-in-a-rubber-suit mystique of Japanese fever dreams.  That demonic grin and ear-shattering roar we’ve come to maniacally cherish are both fully intact and you smile knowing that old-school monster ferociousness is ready to be served.

The success of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is based on the realization that we’ve really missed the “classical” big guy kicking the crap out of scaly foes while turning the world into his own sandbox of destruction.  It’s just too bad those pesky humans keep getting in the way of the camera.  The time-honored tradition of melodramatic humans being subjected to Godzilla’s wrath while themes of man-abusing-nature get tossed around are fully honored, all while being basked in the current trend of making everything gritty and gloomy.  While there isn’t too much here my inner-intellectual can really complain about, my inner-10-year-old really wishes the humans could just sit down so he could enjoy all the monster ass-kicking in peace.  Yet a popcorn thrill ride that satisfies both the college professor and kindergartner inside you is pretty much the definition of solid Hollywood filmmaking these days, so I should probably just calm down.  

The film opens as all Godzilla movies do, with mortified scientists scrambling around trying to warn everybody about alarming nuclear activity that appears to be harboring something gigantic and abnormal.  A nuclear expert named Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is obsessed with searching a quarantined plant in Japan for answers to a mysterious incident that killed his wife, Sandra (Juliette Binoche).  His naval officer son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), tries to convince him to let it go, but Joe is convinced that something fishy is still going on within the site.  His suspicions turn out to be right, for scientists are harboring a giant monster in hibernation out of the public eye.  Before Joe can tell the world, haywire ensues and a colossal winged monster emerges from the site and goes off in search of what is believed to be another MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) out in the world.

Government officials ponder how they can possibly contain and defeat two gargantuan mutant creatures intent on pure destruction.  They quickly realize that their only hope may be yet another oversized animal-beast that’s been kept hidden in secret for many years.  He’s been hiding out in the ocean for decades and has frantically been kept under-wraps by big government until the emergence of these new creatures cause him to leap into action.  They call him “Godzilla” and he sets out to directly confront the other two monsters wreaking havoc across the globe.  The humans scatter about and scheme desperately to protect themselves, for they know that when all these giant beasts clash with each other, they’ll lay a smack-down on the planet that has never been seen before in history.  

While the creatures in Godzilla are evoked with the latest in state-of-the-art CGI, their movements and behavior directly copy the hokey brawling so prominent at the dawn of this film series, and that turns out to be a popcorn blessing.  Edwards wonderfully marries the camera and effects to create alluring imagery (my favorite being a barely-conscious Ford being lured away from a nuclear blast by helicopter), but there’s no denying how the creatures are mimicking the cheesy monster movie mayhem of cinematic yesteryear.  While their movements are more agile, and Seamus McGarvey’s dark and grayish cinematography helps mask the silliness, these mutant wrestling matches deliver the jolly goods you’ve always treasured within these movies.  Godzilla’s climactic “finishing move” had me cheering out loud in the theater.

But it can’t just all be reptilian rumbles, for a Godzilla movie isn’t truly a Godzilla movie without worrisome humans around to remind us that this is all a cautionary warning about nature.  It’s a sad testament to man’s constant disrespect towards nature that a Godzilla picture has proven to be such an enduring formula, for this movie covers every ritualistic beat of the tradition--frantic scientists, booming musical score, epic metropolitan destruction---and feels as relevant today as it did in the 50’s.  Online conspiracy theorists are quick to remind us how government duplicity, incompetence, and arrogance is causing deep repercussions for our planet’s well-being and these modern day anxieties fit in perfectly with these creature-feature formalities.  Perhaps my  slight annoyance with panicky humans getting in the way of monster brutality provides the shrewdest critique of our modern world yet, for we all whine and moan about our right to live when eventually we’ll have to just get the hell out of nature’s way and let it play out the exact way it wants to.  

The actors on display prove dedicated to the stern, traumatized moods the tone demands of them, although you do find yourself wishing more silliness would creep into the membrane.  Most impressive of all is Bryan Cranston who damn near wrings out all the thespian anguish he can to deliver the most epically concerned of all concerned scientists.  The gifted Aaron Taylor-Johnson gives us a brooding and focused action figure, making you sort of yearn for the days when a quick-witted charmer was standard-issue in these kinds of proceedings.  Part of me thinks having Channing Tatum here in his 21 Jump Street glory would not only be a blast but speak bundles about how modern-day males would handle a global catastrophe.  It’s always nice to see Sally Hawkins and Elizabeth Olsen, but their roles are so beneath their skill sets that I wonder if they were secretly offended by the script.  Meanwhile, Ken Watanabe seems to enjoy his simple scientist role, probably because it’s a celebrated tradition in his country the way American actors play lawyers.  Call me crazy, but I always thought Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime would’ve been the ideal human to place in a Godzilla movie.  The most over-the-top human of all sharing the screen with the most over-the-top creature of all would’ve been such a bewildering hunk of Hollywood cheese that I’m genuinely surprised a 90’s studio head never concocted it.

With Godzilla and his debut film Monsters, it’s apparent that Edwards wants to explore a realistic spacial relationship between humans and giant creatures, and it’s a testament to his ideals that this is probably the closest to a “realistic” Godzilla flick we’ve ever gotten (maybe this is strongly felt cause it makes the grand implausibility of the 1998 Roland Emmerich version eat serious dust).  Yet somehow I still prefer Pacific Rim, the cheerful giant monster epic which built its world around an infectious Star Wars-like mythology and still ended up saying tons about nature and nationalism anyways.  The irony here is that for all the film’s dreary warnings about the crippling forces of nature, it dishes out a happy Hollywood ending filled with as much triumphant idealism as Top Gun.  As Godzilla takes his victorious final march out to sea, the film’s final message appears to be that no matter what happens, nature will come down on our side and everything is gonna turn out alright in the end.  It’s a smirking ending filled with cockeyed assuredness, the very thing the entire movie spent warning us about. 

      

'Rise' of a Sexy Warrior Queen

by Brett Parker

The most striking thing about 300: Rise of an Empire is how in a blockbuster franchise that celebrates loutish macho-man testosterone, a woman turns out to have the biggest balls (metaphorically speaking) throughout the entire movie.  As this sequel aims to dish out more images of bare-chested ancient warriors spilling blood in a CGI-on-acid landscape, sexy brunette goddess Eva Green shows up to not only steal the entire film but become the only good reason for it’s existence.   Clad in all-black-everything with fishnet stockings and golden stegosaurus spikes on her back, Green’s Artemisia of Caria is the kind of sword-wielding, blood-thirsty, porcelain-skinned goth babe that would make Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton reach for a cigarette.  Maybe if she had a better movie to play off of, I wouldn’t be gushing so hard, but this is like watching Cleopatra slashing her way through Oompa-Loompa Land.

300 was the tale of a small army of Spartans who stood their ground against the armies of the vast Persian empire in a last stand to protect their homeland.  They were crushed and defeated, but the brave tenaciousness they showed in the face of adversity promised to be echoed throughout the ages.  It’s that very tenaciousness that the Athenian army hopes to cling onto in this sequel as the Persian army sets their sights on all of Greece.  As the merciless force pulling the strings behind the scenes for King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), Artemisia of Caria (Eva Green) takes command of a naval fleet to crush the remainder of Greece with a fearsome army.  The only thing standing in her way is Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), a noble Athenian who rallies his level-headed countrymen and motivates them to hold off their enemies at sea.  This sparks an all-out nautical attack, in which boats clash into each other and armies slice-and-dice their opponents until only one nation is left standing.

300: Rise of an Empire wants to build on the first film’s poetry for neanderthals, but it lacks the brutish electricity and deranged philosophies that bewildered us the first time.  I enjoyed the first 300 on a (very) simple-minded level, mostly for the way it aspired to bring cinematic beauty to Frank Miller’s ultraviolent graphic novel panels and for the way it barbarically skewered simple philosophies, like Field of Dreams for cavemen.  Everything in the sequel feels watered down and doesn’t have the same sense of thuggish hysteria that proved surprisingly gripping the first time around.  The biggest difference in terms of action is how the battle scenes here are naval fights at sea as opposed to the land combat of the first one.  Instead of strategic blood-battles across a bare land-scape, warriors take impossible leaps across wooden sea vessels to beat the pulp out of whatever mariner-warriors stand in their way.  While both films deal in over-the-top CGI, the actions feels more incoherent this time around, denying us the fluid beauty-meets-the beast visuals the first one had quite a handle on.

It also doesn’t help matters that none of the male characters on display register at all.  They all fit the description of handsome-yet-generic Troy leftovers, but there’s nothing memorable about them at all.  The only one you can really single out is Sullivan Stapleton, but that’s because he’s been forced into the franchise’s leading spot since Gerard Butler ate dust in the first one.  Say what you will about Butler, but his virtue is to bring magnetism to burly, baroque lunkheads in the same vein in which we recall fondness for Big Moose from the Archie comics.  Stapleton wouldn’t even pass muster starring in a made-for-basic-cable gladiator movie on the Family Channel.  Considering how disgruntled moviegoers found alarming political ideologies the first time around, I wonder if the casting of more “simple” actors is supposed to be a pointed political statement.  If the first 300 is meant to represent the cockeyed war-mongering of the George W. Bush era, then perhaps the sequel is meant to reflect the Obama era: blue-clad warriors trying to be clear-headed about democracy....and ending up in chaos anyways.  It’s sort of worth noting how the heroes on display here aren’t as muscular as the ones from last time around.

You really do find yourself just marking the time until Eva Green shows up on screen.  She really does lay waste to every other performer and visual around her.  Even King Xerxes, the flamboyant, glowing god-king who seemed so fascinating in the first film, is reduced to a side-show clown in Artemisia’s presence.  Green proved to be one of the most powerful of Bond Girls in Casino Royale and was able to spoof seductresses while staying seductive in Dark Shadows, but putting her beauty in an action-princess light catapults her to a whole new stratosphere.  The film’s only memorable and powerful moments are the ones in which her royal gravitational pull yanks the entire movie into her orbit.  The most fierce image comes when she kneels before a king wielding several dismembered heads with her face covered in blood.  The scariest part of the whole moment is the killer determination in her eyes that could damn near set the screen on fire.  In a movie filled wall-to-wall with over-the-top violence, the only heart-stopping moment comes when Artemisia begins having aggressive sex with Themistocles in an attempt to get him to join her side.  As her body gyrates away, the demonic intensity in her face puts everyone else’s war-faces to shame and her nude body reminds us that it’s been a long time since an R-Rated Hollywood product treated us to an all-out sex scene just for the hell of it.  Between Cameron Diaz getting it on with a car in The Counselor and Eva Green commanding the screen in the buff, maybe Hollywood is finally getting it’s sexual mojo back.  

Look, there’s two camps of people in this world: those who thought 300 was an awesome display of bad-ass-ness or those who thought it was a complete waste of time.  If you’re in the former, then you’ll be disappointed to find that this sequel isn’t nearly as good as the first, and if you’re in the latter, then you knew since the first trailer dropped to stay far, far away from this one, so that’s settled.  But if you’re a fan of super-sexy, action heroines fully prepared to take over your fantasies, then 300: Rise of an Empire has a really awesome prize hidden for you within an awful box of cereal.  I can’t remember the last time such a fantastic female character was trapped in such a worthless movie.  The most positive thing I can say about this flick is that it had me pointing to Eva Green’s poster in the lobby afterwards while shouting “THIS....IS....SEXY!”

A 'Night' to Remember

by Brett Parker

One of my biggest pet peeves about cinema is movies about dating that ring completely false and toss around contrivances like grenades.  So what was so noteworthy about Edward Zwick’s About Last Night from 1986 was how much it got right in the love department.  As the film follows the trajectory of a big city romance from uneasy beginning to bittersweet end, you realize there’s enough real world stresses and recognizable complications to satisfy romantic matters at hand.  Rob Lowe and Demi Moore deliver their most engaging and tender of performances while Jim Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins dish out unique comic angles within their personas.  Most people nowadays remember the film for it’s tantalizing sex and nudity, making one nostalgic for a time when Hollywood felt more open to things like that.  While it may have strayed considerably from David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago on which its based, you must admit that watered-down David Mamet is still better than most Hollywood products out there.

As the ceremonial go-to Valentine’s Day flick of this year, About Last Night has been given the remake treatment and fans of the original will be happy to know that the newer version is as smart and sustainable as the original.  The big differences this time is the use of predominantly black leads and plenty of leeway for Kevin Hart, the Aladdin’s Genie of modern comedies, to let loose with manic energy.  I must admit that I prefer the latest version to the original, for it’s more nuanced, technically astute, charismatic, funny, and sincere in its steps.

The film follows Danny (Michael Ealy) and Debbie (Joy Bryant), two attractive Los Angeles natives who begin dating after being awkwardly set-up by Bernie (Kevin Hart) and Joan (Regina Hall), their best friends who are conducting a roller-coaster relationship of their own.  They begin a sunny courtship filled with affection and intimacy that eventually leads them down the path to a real relationship.  Even as Bernie and Joan begin to fall apart in a disastrous fashion, Danny and Debbie decide to take the next step and move in together.

As soon as the duo take the plunge and end up in the same apartment, tensions between the sexes begin to flare.  Little quirks and underlying judgements boil to the surface, and Danny and Debbie both realize that relationships take way more work than the singles-bar scene would suggest.  Does the couple have a strong enough love to overcome hardships or are they doomed to end up as troubled as Bernie and Joan?

Like the earlier film, the main objective here is to examine the trials and tribulations of a modern day couple living together, giving apt attention to the “what now?” phase that occurs just after the courtship.  While the story has the rhythms of a romantic comedy, it shows its smarts by focusing on occupational resentments, dog-owner plights, hermetic bickering, and Mars-Venus relations everyday couples can surely relate to.  Satisfaction comes in the way this remake proves to be cooler and more alluring in its distinctions, as if Prince did a cover of a Bruce Springsteen ballad.  

The challenge for actors in a glossy romantic comedy is to be be both magnetically charming and calmly relatable, two ideals which can put a peculiar hindrance on each other.  Yet this cast proves to be winning personalities that are a pleasure to spend two hours with.  Michael Ealy is an impressive star with such mega-wattage leading man qualities that it’s kind of frustrating that Hollywood hasn’t yet figured out that he could be the next Steve McQueen.  Even though he looks like a supercool movie star, he still proves effective at being a warm and sympathetic everyman.  Joy Bryant may lack the powerful beauty of Demi Moore, but she’s better at conveying everyday-female soulfulness.  Regina Hall proves to be more of a comedic live-wire than Elizabeth Perkins and she’s often hilarious in her feminine musings (her chicken mask scene is one for the ages).  And at this point in life, you’ve made up your mind about Kevin Hart: you either love this clownish tornado or you don’t.  As for me, I can’t help but be charmed by the little guy.  Instead of being weighed down by his shortcomings, Hart pushes a refreshing joy through his elfish frame.  In most of his movies, especially here, he touches on male epiphanies with such goofball sincerity that I can’t help but be touched by it.

Even with its smart perceptions, About Last Night still falls into that category of movies about pretty people in a pretty city who can easily tidy up all the messy things in their lives.  Yet its ultimate triumph is how most couples may recognize themselves through these characters and might even find a few helpful ways to deal with their own anxieties.  Plus the movie is a fine excuse for Ealy and Hart to work their cinematic muscle and further prove that they’re ready for bigger cinematic game.  Hopefully David Mamet watches (even though he’ll undoubtedly shake his head a bit) and grows a burning desire to work with both those gents.  

The Top 10 Movies of 2013

by Brett Parker

There was a time when people would tell you all about everything that’s wrong in this world with a certain amount of hysteria in their voices.  If you were alive and present in 2013, you probably talked about such things with the same sanitized calmness you’d use to read off a grocery list.  A gaze through the news and social media nowadays would prove to anyone that the freaks are out in full force and have plenty to work with.  We have political uncertainty, a troubled economy, alarming violence, shameless dating catastrophes, and a zombie-like reliance on technology that would make Johnny Five raise an eyebrow.  But the most troubling thing of all may just be how people have grown an uneasy complacency with all of this.  Chaos has become the new normal.  In a world gone completely out-of-whack, accepting the out-of-whackness has become a rational coping mechanism.

Looking over the films of 2013, you can’t help but notice that keeping calm amongst suffocating madness and carrying on was some kind of unifying theme.  Whether facing environments of alien robots, sinister science experiments, rampant greediness, suicidal car races, elaborate con games, or violent battles to the death, movie characters did their damnedest to survive.  Watching these compelling folks keep their cool amongst bewildering circumstances certainly gave me a lot to connect with and helped me flesh out my Top 10 Movies of 2013:

1) The Wolf of Wall Street

The Catholic Martin Scorsese has always been a filmmaker who shows us the temptations and darkness involved with sin, and the Wall Street Satan he focuses his camera on this time revels in sinful temptations that are stunningly fascinating.  Through the true life tale of infamous penny stock huckster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio, a man possessed), Scorsese not only transplants ancient Roman decadence to modern-day New York, but also gives slimy stock traders the Goodfellas treatment.  The result is a hypnotic portrait of shameless wealth, sexual depravity, and alarming drug use that makes Wall Street look like Sesame Street.  But this isn’t just lunacy for lunacy sake, for you’d have to be a fool to miss the morals and decency that become serious collateral damage in the process.  Most chilling of all is the film’s final scene which shows that in the religion of money, a business Beelzebub can be recast as the Christ of cash.

2) The World's End
Edgar Wright is quickly becoming one of my favorite filmmakers for the way he sets out to spoof a beloved genre of cinema and ends up churning out a superior work that can stand with any film in said genre.  So it’s damn near mind-blowing how The World’s End shrewdly marries an alien bodysnatcher flick with a midlife reunion tale and teaches both types of film a serious thing or two.  After grappling with a zombie apocalypse and super-cop gunplay, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost once again hurl their friendship into a movie-mad playground, although this trip takes their bromance to surprisingly painful depths.  Even though this movie supposedly caps the end of the duo’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” The World’s End will make you wish they’d keep bringing their cheeky touch to every film genre ever.

3) The Great Gatsby
Literary purists scoffed and guardians of subtlety are still shaking their heads, but Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby adaptation is a grand explosion of colors and sounds I find damn near impossible to resist.  Armed with a cast that delivers the best acted film version of the novel yet, Luhrmann plays fast and loose with historical accuracy to deliver the Gatsby of our teenage fever dreams: a frisky, candy-coated world that’s just as grand and delusional as the title character (played by Leonardo DiCaprio with commanding insight).  It’s only when we apply our modern minds to the giddy dream world on display that we see the emotional cracks in the foundation, bringing great illumination to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s bittersweet truths and heartbreaking disillusionment.  

4) Upstream Color
I’m not entirely sure about everything that happens in Upstream Color, only that it’s certainly a difficult and beautiful mediation on the human spirit.  As brainy auteur Shane Carruth guides us through an elaborate and creepy experiment that hijacks the souls of two innocent people (Carruth and Amy Seimetz) through a strange osmosis, we are left to ponder the hidden terrors of our own emotions and the thriving perseverance inherent in humanity.  As these two damaged souls struggle to get to the bottom of their victimization, we see the colorful and challenging ways Carruth pits science against heart, with heart dealing the final winning blow.  

5) Rush
Ron Howard once again displays his fascination with mythic men in high-risk occupations by focusing on the real life story of James Hunt (a lively Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (a masterful Daniel Bruhl), two Formula One drivers who carried out an intense rivalry in the 1976 racing season.  Rush is one of the best movies about racing ever made thanks to its understanding that the sport is a platform for the ego to taunt various men and push them towards transcendence.  As Howard shows off some of the sexiest and vibrant filmmaking of his career, it’s his focus on the peculiar drama just outside the cars that pushes this manly-man’s tale towards poetry.

6) Don Jon
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut plunges headfirst into some very uncomfortable truths about our cultural expectations, but it offers up a sweet hope for even the most delusional of modern-day people.  Levitt himself wonderfully plays Jon, a lothario who realizes his porn addiction may be threatening the “perfect relationship” plans of his girlfriend, Barbara (a funny Scarlett Johansson).  Levitt shows the strikingly funny and sad ways the dreamy idealism of our media consumption can seriously distort the real things we should be looking for in human relationships.  As Jon goes from championing the superficial to appreciating soulfulness, you realize that Levitt’s film may just be the perfect wake-up call for plenty of human sheep out there.

7) American Hustle
Most cinematic con games excite us with plenty of visual razzle-dazzle, yet David O. Russell brings such a tale to his level of freewheeling oddness to show us just how maniacal a con game actually looks.  As Russell veterans Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and Jennifer Lawrence push themselves to comic and sleazy extremes, American Hustle puts us in a hypnotic trance with the fast flashiness of the 70s and the mind-boggling complications of con artistry.  We’re used to seeing players in cinematic hustles acting ultra-slick and too-cool-for-school, but Russell’s love of screwy outsiders pushes such characters to beautiful depths of ridiculousness and poignancy we may not have sensed before.

8) Much Ado About Nothing
The Joss Whedon touch involves taking overly-familiar pop archetypes and giving them fresh new angles of humor, heart, and pathos.  Here he takes stuffy Shakespearean types we’ve been seeing our whole lives and fills them with modern day jitters and California sunniness.  Filmed on a break from shooting The Avengers at his own house, Whedon’s black and white adaptation of the William Shakespeare comedy assembles bit players and friends from throughout his work and the result perfectly nails the play’s slapstick humor and romantic yearning.  It’s rare for a Hollywood director to film a classical work in his own backyard, so it’s some kind of miracle that this turns out to be one of the best adaptations ever of said work.

9) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
When you ponder that one of last year’s most scathing critiques of American society came in the form of a young adult sci-fi adventure, you realize that Catching Fire is no ordinary pop ride.  With devilish insights into the ways pop culture distracts the people from terrifying government truths, Catching Fire gave youngsters plenty of unwelcome thoughts to grasp about the real world.  But it wasn’t all bleakness, for this sequel dished out an irresistible Empire Strikes Back vibe with thrilling sets, ace supporting roles (Sam Claflin and Jena Malone are dynamite), killer make-up and costumes, and a plunge into darkness that punched up the alertness to exciting new heights.  Respect must be paid to a sequel that smokes the original and gets you all-kinds-of-fired up for the next installment in ways you never expected.

10) Her
Our heavy reliance on ever-expanding technology has always walked a fine line between hopefulness and horror, and no modern film better understands that than Spike Jonze’s Her.  This futuristic story of a lonely writer (a wonderfully heartfelt Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with his advanced computer system (Scarlett Johansson is the lovely voice of the romantic ghost in the machine) challenges the audience to decide if such a development is supreme insanity or an exhilarating new angle on romantic love.  What’s remarkable is how it makes a very persuasive argument for the latter.  Filled with lush colors, a soothing score from Arcade Fire, and delicate acting, Jonze just may have convinced us that surrendering to technology could be more Woody Allen than The Terminator.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

-Gravity

-The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 

-Pacific Rim

-Saving Mr. Banks

-12 Years a Slave

Robert Redford Gives His 'All'

by Brett Parker

All is Lost has to be one of the purest man vs. nature films ever made simply because that’s all there really is to it: man and nature.  There’s no supporting characters, no cutaways to multiple locations, no flashbacks, no backstory, or no spoken dialogue (except for a voice-over reading a devastating letter), just a quiet man alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean trying to stay alive once everything goes wrong.  That may sound like something of a gamble, but All is Lost proves that stripping a literal ocean of cliches away from a survival tale can be quite riveting.

The film opens with an unnamed Man (Robert Redford) alone on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  The boat accidentally collides with a lost shipping container adrift in the ocean, ripping a hole in the hull.  The Man uses all the tools he can to patch up the hole, but these efforts prove to be useless once the boat wanders into a violent storm that eventually sinks the vessel completely.  This pushes the Man further out into the dangers of the ocean, armed with only an inflatable life raft and a small emergency kit.  As he fends off hunger, sharks, and more stormy weather, The Man tries to develop some kind of makeshift strategy to get himself through his increasingly disastrous situation.   

After making his feature length debut with Margin Call, All is Lost further shows writer/director J.C. Chandor’s taste for tales where men are stripped of everything they find important.  Yet while Margin Call showed characters giving into dread in the face of a financial collapse, All is Lost proves to be more uplifting by showing a character’s unrelenting fight to live in the face of certain death.  By giving obsessive focus to the simple yet intelligent tactics needed to stay afloat and alive at sea, Chandor is able to show the human will in its barest essence to highlight the strong perseverance that can be evoked in all of us against monumentally traumatizing odds.  Since a lot of moviegoers today can relate to losing things of great value and being knocked down to very taxing circumstances, they’ll especially find special resonance in this impossible survival tale (which would also help to explain the recently strong box office performance of Gravity, outside of its special effects).  That’s why a sailor’s level-headed strategy to overcome the ocean’s unforgiving conditions told in bare-bones form turns out to be way more entertaining that you’d initially suspect.

Robert Redford has certainly solidified himself as a Hollywood legend not only because of his matinee idol looks and efforts as an Americana auteur, but also for his internal army of simple acting gifts that one could easily blink-and-miss.  He’s proven to be a master of subtlety, getting more economy from controlled restraint than some of his more melodramatic counterparts, and he can display a rugged resourcefulness in adventurous situations.  Here these two ideals get the workout of their lives since Redford is completely isolated and plunked into one of his deadliest cinematic scenarios yet.  Since there’s no one to play off of, his performance has to rely solely on the steeliness of his actions and the aching look of impending agony in his eyes.  And since his character has no real backstory (or even a name), all we have to go on is his primal human need to survive, which Redford delivers with piercing feeling.  This performance is a master class in physical acting.

An interesting aside in Michael Feeney Callan’s biography of Redford suggests that most of his films could be seen as romances in which Redford is the romantic hero and Nature itself is “the girl.”  In that sense, All is Lost could be one of those relationship dramas in which a long-standing couple reach their breaking-point and test each other to see if they can keep going on together.  As a couple, Redford and Nature have certainly had their ups-and-downs over the years, but now Nature is fed up and dishing out all it’s capable of while Redford responds like a good husband fighting to keep things (literally) afloat.  These kinds of films usually end with the main couple staying together or completely dissolving, yet Chandor leaves it up to the audience to decide if Redford and Nature work things out or part ways permanently.  Considering everything we’ve ever learned about Redford and the Human Spirit in general, I’m optimistic that things ended on a happy note.  

A Wasted Trip to 'Vegas'

by Brett Parker

Much ado has been made about the cast of Last Vegas, for it marks the very first time Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline have appeared together onscreen in the same feature.  Even the grumpiest of cinephiles has to smile at such a line-up, and what’s really delightful is that they haven’t been thrown together for a pretentious drama but rather a wild Vegas romp that allows the fellas to indulge in some guy’s guy shenanigans.  So it’s all kinds of disappointing that the final product comes up awfully short on big laughs and real feelings.  These veteran aces happily look more-than-game to get their crazy on, but they unfortunately don’t have a script or director willing to tap into their full potential.

As the film opens, we meet an older businessman named Billy (Michael Douglas) as he reads the eulogy at his friend’s funeral.  Feeling the wistful pinch of old age at that exact moment, Billy decides to propose to his much younger girlfriend (Bre Blair) right from the podium.  She accepts, and a wedding is hastily rushed into place.  Before he walks down the aisle, Billy thinks it’s best to throw a bachelor party in Las Vegas with his old pals.  So he calls upon Paddy (Robert DeNiro), a depressed widow, Archie (Morgan Freeman), an ailing grandpa with some life left in him, and Sam (Kevin Kline), a bored retiree, to help him celebrate his last weekend of being a free man.

Pretty soon, the gang flies off to Vegas and find out just how old they really are.  As the fellas tangle with drag queens, mixed drinks, VIP club life, and a bikini contest, they very much look like hopelessly confused seniors.  Making matters more complicated is a lounge singer (Mary Steenburgen) who conjures up old wounds between Billy and Paddy.  This causes the gang to work overtime to conquer their past, and ailing bodies, to party it up Vegas-style as best they can.

I literally laughed out loud when I first saw the joyous trailer for this film, but the buck truly stops there.  Repressed senior citizens let loose in America’s playground seems like an endless well of comic material, but the script from Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love.) reveals nothing but tired geezer jokes and low-level gags that would be too lame for a basic TV sitcom.  Hope could’ve been restored if the film held lyrical insights into the hardships of growing old, but everything here seems so damn contrived.  The actors on display appear to be going through the motions of a commissioned fluff job instead of pulling real perceptions from their weathered depths.  Director Jon Turteltaub is no stranger to putting movie stars in fish-out-of-water scenarios (and he directed the very funny Cool Runnings), but he usually just dishes out simple-minded standards and hardly seems like the right man to indulge in this cast’s inner-hedonists.  While it’d probably be a bit much to ask Todd Phillips to repeat his magic from The Hangover, perhaps directors like Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, or Jon Favreau could’ve brought the fun we yearn for.

Incompetent comedies are unfortunately a dime a dozen, but this one feels more shameful because these cherished thespians hold an excited enthusiasm to cut loose and live it up way more than the film allows them to.  Morgan Freeman seems to be the most thrilled to be silly, and a scene where he gets drunk on Red Bull & Vodkas then decides to dance is easily the funniest moment in the entire film.  Kevin Kline has a blast toying with his serious image by showing us a man desperate to get wild but gets hindered by a lifetime of being uptight.  Michael Douglas can evoke a wily smoothie by just simply showing up, but he actually delivers the film’s only real moment of poignancy by delivering a wounded dialogue about how hard growing old is.  Robert DeNiro can deliver a hardened, no-nonsense personality better than anybody, but we really wish he wasn’t made to be so serious and let loose with some unhinged wackiness.  We know he can play gruff, but it would’ve been something if he could play zany here.

So if you’re looking for a quirky film with treasured elderly actors hamming it up over bromantic shenanigans while facing the wintertime of their lives, then Stand-Up Guys is actually the movie you’re looking for.  Of course that earlier film is just as equally contrived, but it’s a hell of a lot more funny and enjoyable than this Vegas flick.  So as we throw Last Vegas into the cinematic trash bin, I’m wishing on a movie studio that maybe another scheduling miracle can happen where these four stars can align again in a better and funnier vehicle.  For their rascally smirks, mischievous eyes, and dressed-to-the-nines swagger show they could be sensational in a more dynamite comedy.

'The Counselor' with Grim Advisements

by Brett Parker

The Counselor marks the first original Hollywood screenplay from famed novelist Cormac McCarthy, and if you were expecting something on par with his celebrated novels Blood Meridian or The Road, then you can be considered more optimistic than most.  From where I sit, the final result plays more like a watered-down and glamorized No Country for Old Men.  Yet on a pure entertainment level, the film makes us realize that snappy noirs don’t exactly grow on trees these days and we’re grateful to have Ridley Scott’s expert sizzle to guide us through this wild ride.

The film follows a lawyer (Michael Fassbender) known only as “The Counselor” (after all, this is a Cormac McCarthy character).  While he appears to have the perfect upscale life with a beautiful fiance (Penelope Cruz), he claims his “back’s up against the wall” with financial matters and decides to to go in on a drug deal with his shady business pal, Reiner (Javier Bardem).  Their plot revolves around distributing a shipment of drugs to be transported across the Mexico-Texas border in a sewage truck.  Even though a shady operator named Westray (Brad Pitt) warns him about all the brutal ways such a deal could go wrong, The Counselor still decides to go all-in with the plan.

Thanks to unforeseen violent dealings and catastrophic coincidences, everything with the drug shipment goes spectacularly wrong and The Counselor quickly gets a target on his back.  Reiner has no helpful advice for him and Westray advises him to run very far away, but The Counselor is terrified that cartels will get to his fiance before anything.  So a race beings to save his beloved, and himself, as it becomes painfully obvious that blood is about to be spilled.

No one will ever really accuse The Counselor of being one of McCarthy’s masterworks, yet the film itself brings back fond memories of a time when even the most generic of noirs dished out endless riches of crackerjack dialogue and colorful character bits.  Of course, all of this is basked in McCarthy’s bleak view of humanity, recalling No Country for Old Men’s ideas on the corrupting nature of greed and how magnificently unforgiving the drug world can be.  Perhaps the most distinctive thing about the script is its paranoid misogyny streak which would be pretty appalling if the philosophical style it’s presented in didn’t make us ponder that even cavemen and savages have feelings, too.  Besides, such feelings cumulate with the insanely startling scene where Cameron Diaz, as Reiner’s cold-hearted girlfriend, has sex with a Ferrari, so help me God.  Diaz’s acrobatics, McCarthy’s hilarious description of the act, Bardem’s facial reaction to witnessing it, and the aquatic metaphor used to describe such a things all help to instantly place the whole shebang in the pantheon of unforgettable sex scenes, for better or worse.  

Even if this is all Cormac McCarthy going through his familiar motions, it gets more verve thanks to Ridley Scott going through his motions.  His taste for glowing, gorgeous landscapes paint not the lived-in southern landscape of No Country for Old Men but an upscale, glamorous one that strongly exudes the greedy hollowness that holds a giant grip on this world.  While Scott tends to dab in varying genres, the one unifying thing in all his work is the bruising humanity that tends to rear its head in environments of immoral hysteria.  And it’s that very sneaky humanity that helps make McCarthy’s grim worldview more wrenching here than it’s been in past adaptations of his work.  This is greatly exemplified in a sensationally crushing scene where The Counselor disintegrates once he is elegantly told by a cartel official (Ruben Blades) about the true nature of grief and suffering.

Of course, Scott also holds a knack for allowing expert actors to show off some lively grit.  Michael Fassbender certainly has the movie star goods (a scene in which he gazes upon a poster of Steve McQueen damn near halts the film with its blatant allusions), and he wrings all the anguish he can from an underwritten role (for all his actions, we never truly do understand The Counselor’s financial desperation or desire to walk on the wild side).  Cameron Diaz pools all her resources to nicely exude icy blonde calculation, which certainly gets the workout of its life in the Ferrari scene.  Javier Bardem is a laugh riot as a flamboyant entrepreneur who hilariously cares more about satisfying his girlfriend than he does about the fact that he could potentially die at any moment.  Brad Pitt uses his curated coolness to wonderful effect as a man who’s seen it all, and his final scene will surely stay etched in your nightmares forever.  And Penelope Cruz may be pure window decoration here, but she’s easily convincing as the only virtuous person in sight.

Since we’re in Cormac McCarthy territory, you can be sure that The Counselor has a merciless and depressing ending that holds no sympathy for narrative conventions or audience comfort.  We may have reached the point where such business has become cliche for McCarthy, but his cliches still shatter most normal storytelling cliches.  It’s those very bleak and unconventional traits that make The Counselor a haunting and exciting affair, and it proves to be rather hard to shake.  The dialogue will inspire much laughter and alarm while the narrative treats us to a sex scene and a death scene we’ll never forget.  While it may not be transcendent, its greatest achievement is to show us how most Hollywood musings about the drug world just might be pure fantasy and drivel.  

The Nail-Biting Perils of Being 'Captain'

by Brett Parker

I remember that day in 2009 when America was glued to the startling suspense in the ordeal of Captain Richard Phillips, the cargo ship captain who was being held hostage by Somali pirates on a lifeboat in the ocean.  All the media outlets were hanging onto every bit of the unfolding drama until Navy SEALS intervened with awe-inspiring expertise to end the ordeal.  After feeling horrifying sympathy for Phillips, beaming pride in our navy, and great sadness over the awful circumstances that cause Somali piracy, the cinephile in me couldn’t help but ponder that this would all make for an exciting movie one day.

And so it has.  Director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum) has taken his knack for wringing kinetic cinematic danger from real world events and applied it to Captain Phillip’s tale, turning it into a gripping thriller.  But nothing here feels terribly boasted or “Hollywood-ized.”  Greengrass appears to stick to the factual details of the horrible event, and that proves to contain all the high-wattage tension needed to give this film juice.  It also provides a lead role for Tom Hanks, who hasn’t had an interesting part in ages, that lets him shine with true grit.

On April 8th, 2009, the Maersk Alabama finds itself in dangerous waters as it ships 17,000 metric tons of cargo en route to Mombassa, Kenya.  Four Somali pirates, all between the ages of 17-19, board the ship with AK-47s.  The pirates’ leader, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), points a gun at Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) and starts demanding money or the crew will be killed.  Thanks to training on how to handle piracy situations, the crew knows enough to shut down the ship in its place and hide in the cargo room.  Thanks to quick-thinking, knowledge of the ship, and the crew overpowering one of the pirates, Captain Phillips is able to convince the Somalians to leave the ship with $30,000 from the safe.  But those circumstances turn out not to please the pirates, for they take Phillips with them on the ship’s lifeboat as collateral for more ransom.  

Thus begins a hostage situation in which Phillips is trapped on a 28-foot lifeboat with armed gunmen who plan on taking him back to Somalia and negotiate a million-dollar ransom for his release.  The U.S. Navy gets word of his capture and send in destroyer ships and Navy SEALS to try and rescue him.  As the pirates try to outthink the Navy to get what they want, Phillips tries his very best to talk some sense into Muse, who holds a hardheaded refusal to give up quietly.  It soon becomes clear that if the pirates don’t surrender, the Navy will have to hurt these young men, or Phillips himself will end up killed.

Like Kathryn Bigelow, Greengrass likes to take deadly situations and strip them down to as much bare-bones realism as possible.  Yet instead of focusing on heavy-handed dialogue and overly-done action, he likes to stay grounded in the character’s behavior and reactions to touch on bigger ideas.  Captain Phillips doesn’t betray this technique, for Greengrass keeps his shaky-cam tightly focused on the claustrophobic intensity of the situation for maximum effect.  This is especially felt in the battle of wills between Phillips and Muse, for the tension works a vice-grip on you once you realize these two leaders actually have lots in common: self-reliant resourcefulness, a strict adherence to duty, a clear-eyed view of the bigger picture, etc.  Since explosive violence feels like the impending result, their chess match keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

The real-life Captain Phillips has expressed repeatedly how he’s no Superman, but just an Average Joe who did the job required of him.  Well Tom Hanks was born and bred to play resourceful everymen, and this is his first truly dynamite role in quite some time.  Ron Howard once noted how Hanks is a star that audiences love to watch while he thinks, and that ideal gets the workout of its life here, for Phillips really only has the experience and intelligence in his head as a defense and it’s exciting to watch his steely calculation even as his body language suggests a man mortified to his core.  The other ace performance comes from Barkhad Abdi, who makes Muse just as “professional” as Phillips while suggesting an inner-ocean of weariness the Captain can only hint at.  Instead of relying on cackling evil or reckless hysteria to get his effect, Abdi wisely illuminates an acute perseverance that must be followed to combat the dire circumstances of his home country.  If the dialogue doesn’t exactly fill in the harrowing circumstances that forced these Somalians into piracy, Abdi’s performance says it all.

Even though the current-events checker in us knows exactly how this true life story ended, the film’s final act still turns out to be as riveting as high-seas adventures get.  The mounting tensions, the erupting violence, the suggestions of death, and the Navy’s race to find a solution all create a whirlwind of intensity that will almost leave you feeling just as spent and shaken as Phillips feels in his devastating final scene.  Even though another director would’ve treated us to more poetic flourishes and philosophical muses, we realize that Greengrass’s tight and frantic busywork did all it needed to do to spell out the enormous power of the United States’ grasp and the monumental desperation that caused the Somalians to take them on with wrongheaded hostility.  It’s rare to find an adventure so thrilling, so true-to-life, and so packed with ideological melancholy, which is why Captain Phillips isn’t a movie to treat lightly at all.

'Prisoners' of Contrivance

by Brett Parker

Prisoners is a thriller that wants to display both the traumatized grit of Mystic River and the macabre perversity of Seven, yet it quickly shows us that such a combination can be  quite the tall order for even the most game of productions.  The film’s grand dramatic perceptions and kinkier plot points don’t exactly meld comfortably with each other, and they put a hindrance on the film’s hopes for transcendence.  But you can’t accuse the script of being lazy, for even the more boneheaded developments are intricately planted with a clockwork shrewdness, and the cast swings for the fences as if they’re utterly convinced this B-movie could be the next great American drama.

The movie opens on a rainy Thanksgiving where carpenter Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and his family celebrate the holiday with their married neighbor friends, Franklin (Terrence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis).  It’s a seemingly relaxed affair until  the grown-ups notice that their daughters Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) and Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons) went for a walk and never returned.  The girls were last seen playing near a mysterious RV parked in the neighborhood, and this leads to police detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) being called in to investigate.  Loki tracks down the RV parked by woods next to a highway, and he discovers a mentally-challenged introvert named Alex (Paul Dano) holed up inside.

A lack of any evidence inside the RV and Alex’s apparent low-I.Q. force the police to let him walk, but Keller expresses serious doubts.  Alex appears to have dropped some curious and ambiguous hints that he may have encountered the girls at some point and Keller is furious that the police aren’t doing anything more about him.  So while Loki hurtles himself into a complex and disturbing investigation, Keller kidnaps Alex at gunpoint and decides to conduct his own interrogation.  He holds him hostage in an abandoned apartment complex and plans on beating and torturing him until he reveals information about the girls’ whereabouts.  Can Loki solve the case before Keller goes too far?

The big idea here is how an unspeakable tragedy can turn everyone involved prisoners of tortured emotions and devilish impulses that come awfully close to resembling the dark forces that orchestrated the tragedy in the first place.  So the best thing about the film is the way the seasoned cast wrings startling anguish from their arsenals to give such themes a bruising resonance.  The big standout is Jackman, who relentlessly delivers such excessive intensity that you truly wonder if he passed out from exhaustion after every take.  If you’ve ever watched a thriller and thought certain characters didn’t get worked up or mad enough over a dangerous situation, then Jackman’s performance will stun you.  I think even Wolverine would flinch from this character, which should tip you off to how strongly Jackman’s rage illuminates the core of a desperate father pushed to the brink.  As for Gyllenhaal, it’s not hard to see parallels between his character here and the one he played in Zodiac, for both are morose obsessives fixated on a dark case.  Yet he’s alert and lively enough here to excel past police archetypes.  Howard and Davis also prove compelling in roles that reveal themselves to be the anchors of moral reasoning amidst the chaos all around them.  Dano nicely plays up his more neurotic and strange traits to craft a convincing outsider whose mental state truly keeps you guessing.  And I give Melissa Leo serious props for bringing a lived-in gravity to a seemingly simple character with a faulty background.

All of this is certainly gripping and suspenseful as it rolls along, but then everything starts to flirt with macabre territory that isn’t too terribly far off from, say, Psycho or The Silence of the Lambs.  The problem is that these developments prove to be either too preposterous or too vague to hold any real weight.  There’s much ado about a specific red herring character whose very nature is so magnificently ridiculous that I couldn’t buy it for the life of me (he could be the most insane literary nut ever, my apologies to Annie from Misery).  When everything is revealed in the end, the outcome is so strangely over-the-top that you feel it leans more towards screenwriting contrivances than realistic horrors.  To be fair, there’s enough hints and clues in the script to oppose the notion that the ending is all trucked-in nonsense, but it doesn’t color in the kind of credible depth the film’s bigger ideas cry out for.  

In spite of its sporadic clunkiness, Prisoners is still a gripping entertainment with considerable brains in its head.  Like any good mystery, it pulls you in deeper every step of the way and you’re willingly alert to every new revelation, even if they do turn out to be a bit unsatisfying.  Perhaps if the film ditched its horror show pretensions, it could’ve reveled more strongly in its ideas of end-justifying-the-means torture and hysteria breeding moral irresponsibility, turning up the temperature on a truly haunting critique of modern day America.  Even though the film pulls a few punches with this idea, it’s still impressive to see a Hollywood vehicle willing to dive into such darkness.  And it’s also thrilling to see that in a roll-call of powerful thespians, Jackman emerges as the hands-down champion in this acting event.