Like Crazy (USA) Directed by Drake Doremus  Written by Drake Doremus; Ben York Jones  Starring Felicity Jones; Anton Yelchin; Jennifer Lawrence; Alex Kingston; Oliver Muirhead; Charlie Brewerly

In three years, twenty eight year old director/co-writer Doremus has somehow made three feature films, including his latest, Like Crazy, which won the grand jury prize at the 2011 Sundance film festival.

Like Crazy is an intimate portrait of young love, and the two leads, Anton Yelchin as Jacob, and Brit Felicity Jones as Anna, give truthful, open performances in a spare story that manages to refrain from devolving into soap, sap, or simplicity. While the plot is hardly perfect, with a major device that does not always feel entirely organic, and a few details that seem a bit convenient or writerly (the complete omission of any of Jacob’s friends or family; the lack of reference to his affording a cool loft and work space; Anna’s quick professional ascension in a difficult industry; Jacob’s obvious ability to move to London at any time), any failings are ultimately redeemed by a fittingly downplayed tone, with emotion arising out of small, improvisational feeling moments as opposed to big, arching scenes full of angst.

Shooting on the DSLR Canon 7D, Doremus relies heavily on jump cuts, still photography, and odd angles to create a series of prettily composed montages demonstrating time pass. While an over reliance on montage almost always signals a less then fully fleshed out plot/script, here the device actually manages not to seem overly stale, and keenly captures elements of the exhilaration of burgeoning love without coming off as excessively cloying or manipulative (cliched shots of bumper cars and the Santa Monica Pier notwithstanding).

Jacob, a somewhat stoic/reserved, curly haired furniture design major, and Anna, a pretty, sensitive, super eloquent English major meet in their senior year and begin a love affair that forms the basis for the film. The two are are initially happy, immersed in the rapture of newly being together, but Anna’s forced looming departure, and subsequent visa issues throw a monkey wrench into their bliss. The film documents their attempts at navigating a long distance relationship as they begin their careers in cities on opposite sides of the Ocean.

The devil is in the details and it is here that Doremus and company should be applauded. The design and visuals are top notch, utilizing the lightweight, portable camera to give urgency to the exterior shots, and getting the look of the interior spaces just right. We are throughout treated to some wonderfully tender cinematic moments, lit with care, and feeling fully workshopped and fresh - looks, gestures, sighs, and touches between two people in the hypnotic throes of what one can only assume is first love for them both.

In the way that this time of life is confusing and mysterious for most, we as audience are not allowed all the biographical details about either Jacob or Anna, and they continuously struggle to get across to one another the strength (though at times complicated nature) of their feelings, choosing gestures, notes, texts, and gifts to express what cannot always be adequately verbalized. The longing ache of attachment that borders tentatively on obsession is evocatively portrayed (differently for each character) through a roller coaster of connections, separations, and re-connections that have an audience unsure of how it will all resolve.

While the stakes are relatively small - simply the love and future of two likable, attractive young people, this very smallness winds up a strength. Where obstacles are usually presented in films of the type  - disapproving parents, infidelity, disease - here the couple faces a selection of more ordinary, messy difficulties. Yes, there is the ever present construct of the visa issue, but time, distance, youth, jealousy, and the subsequent natural slipping away of what was once firmly in their grasp, namely that precious commodity of true romantic love, combine to add up to what mostly feels reminiscent of real life couplings, and the confusion, fear, and desperation their love brings about are all touchingly portrayed.

Like Crazy includes nice supporting turns from the lovely Jennifer Lawrence as Sam (who gets much accomplished with little dialogue); Charlie Brewerly as Simon; Finola Hughes as Liz; and Alex Kingston and Oliver Muirhead as Anna’s parents, but the film naturally resides in the moments between Jones (an actress to watch) and Yelchin. Based on (or inspired by) Doremus’ real life relationship with his ex wife, comparison to films like 500 Hundred Days of Summer; Before Sunrise/Sunset; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are not unwarranted. A knowing, sensitive look at first love that will ring true for all who, for better or worse, have been there.

Page One: Inside the New York Times (USA) Directed by Andrew Rossi Written by Andrew Ross; Kate Novack

Page One is an examination of the inner workings of The New York Times, a newspaper that has been on the vanguard of journalism for the past one hundred and sixty years, but rather than a strict procedural the film is more succinctly about the changing nature of media, and the ways The Internet is contributing to the demise of traditional outlets, in part by shifting the very business model it has depended on.

The institution that published the Pentagon Papers, and long served as a standard bearer, and the pinnacle aspired to by other papers and journalists all over the world, The Times hit a rough patch in recent years. Along with the systemic crash in advertising, subscription, and readership dollars, as well as the massive layoffs that followed, several scandals rocked their once unimpeachable reputation. These included widespread plagiarism by reporter Jayson Blair, and wildly inaccurate, fabricated articles written by Judith Miller about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The film focuses on several individuals who work for the paper, most prominently David Carr, who reports on media through the media desk. Carr is an interesting character, an ex-crack addict from Minnesota, who raised two kids as a single father and managed to turn his life around. Red faced, slightly hunchbacked, with a raspy voice and accent straight out of Fargo, Carr is a tenacious reporter, who eloquently posits about the future of his own paper (conceding he is an unabashed fan), and print media in general, and during the filming a well-publicized controversy erupts over Carr’s investigative work digging into the bankruptcy of The Chicago Tribune and it’s billionaire owner Sam Zell.

Others featured include younger reporters like Tim Arango and Brian Stelter, and editors Bill Keller (who stepped down as executive editor earlier this year) and Bruce Headlam, giving us several voices, and a wider look at how stories get written and approved. The phenomena of WikiLeaks also plays out during the filming, further deepening the dialectic about news sources, and the role traditional newspapers now hold in a wider media landscape, one that has potentially altered long held journalistic ethical considerations and procedures.

While the pace is frenetic, and the film doesn’t completely deliver on the promise of the title, some interesting, relevant discussion is carried out concerning the concept of print newspapers providing much of the content for newer channels to filter to their audiences, and what might happen if these powerful traditional entities with the deep pockets and clout to stand up to other powerful institutions (big business, government, et al) were to disappear, and the question of where exactly then would investigative reporting come from. While Internet news sites can disseminate information to their audience quickly and expediently, there are still real questions about whether they have the necessary infrastructure available to spend months digging into stories that need reporting - covering wars, exposing well entrenched corruption. There is little doubt that all reportage involves some degree of bias, but what to make of a future spearheaded by the likes of Julian Assange, who falls somewhere in a gray area of computer hacker/journalist/activist/information terrorist.

Director Andrew Rossi does an excellent job bringing forth conversation about Gawker; Pro Publica; The Huffington Report and some of the other leading Internet sources, and interviews with famed Washington Post/Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein; author Gay Talese (who wrote a famous book on The Times, Kingdom and the Power (1969); and author and journalist Sarah Ellison (War at the Wall Street Journal), to provide insight and color. While this is not actually a narrow view of the day to day working of a paper, nor is it a much needed examination of the failure of traditional media to do the kind of salient investigative reporting it touts itself as doing, it is a prescient look at a wider question that speaks to the implications surrounding how we will get our information in the future.

Moneyball (USA) Directed by Bennett Miller  Written by Aaron Sorkin; Steve Zaillian  Starring Brad Pitt; Jonah Hill; Phillip Seymour Hoffman; Robin Wright Penn; Chris Pratt; Spike Jonze; Kerri Dorsey; Robert Kotick

Based on Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Moneyball is made in the same vein as another recent popular film based on a non-fiction bestseller, The Social Network. Perhaps this should come as no surprise since both well-crafted scripts bear the stamp of Aaron Sorkin (this time sharing credit with Steve Zaillian (American Gangster; Schindler’s List), who wrote a polish on the initial script). Like David Fincher before him, Director Bennett Miller (Capote) manages to take recent history and spin it in such a way that the events never seem boring, or drawn out, or cliche.

On paper, a film about the General Manager of the 2001 Oakland A’s and his battle to compete in an unfair economic landscape, really shouldn’t work, which is partly why this project took so long getting to the screen. Once upon a time Stephen Soderbergh was set to direct, but the plug was pulled some five days before shooting was to begin due to controversy over Soderbergh’s own version of the script, which relied heavily on interviews with real life people, and eliminated fictionalized elements. 

When one thinks about it, Moneyball takes many of the conventions of the traditional sports pic - that is, it gives us a rag tag bunch of misfits who no one believes in; a flawed, but ultimately selfless leader, driven by demons, who goes out on a limb to prove something to himself; a cutesy kid who wants to spend more time with her father; a crusty coach and bottom line owner, and so and so on… and yet…

In film it’s all about tone. And Sorkin/Miller et al understand that there is beauty to be derived in the very basic idea of a good tale told well. Thus, although all of the usual plot devices may be hanging out for all to see, the film somehow feels fresh. Perhaps, in part, it’s the depiction of the main characters and the way they relate to one another - the fact that Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is obviously a lonely man, and yet the subject isn’t something that is ever actually discussed; the odd working friendship that develops between he and assistant Peter Brand (in real life, Paul DePodesta, who unlike Hill’s character was an ex-college player/scout), played by, Jonah Hill, that never gets sappy; Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s nifty portrayal of Manager Art Howe (who has complained about being inaccurately portrayed), and the way that his interaction with Beane is played for some laughs, but never allowed to verge into parody.

The film itself is sweeping in the sense that it covers a year or so in time pass, using woven flashbacks to cover Beane’s personal history, but ala The Social Network, screen graphics, and key inserts help to provide pace and feed us lots of information in a clever way. Under the eye of DP Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight; Inception), there are a host of nicely composed shots of Beane alone in contemplation, real and constructed baseball highlights, empty parks, a hitter in a batting cage, all married in an a masterful editing job (Christopher Tellefsen) that deserves to be noted.

The rest of the cast, which includes Robin Wright Penn, Chris Pratt, and Spike Jones (in an amusing cameo), is solid as well, though it all revolves around Pitt (who fought to bring the story to the screen and is one of the producers), who manages to convey the affable, cocky manner of an ex-jock, easygoing and smiling, but with an intense desire to win boiling underneath the facade. Pitt’s partner in crime, Hill (in his first big dramatic role), also proves to be an excellent choice, doing his deadpan best as a nerdy Sabermetric guy from Yale who Beane plucks from The Cleveland Indians. Their scenes together are some of the best in the film.

Though clearly a number of liberties were taken with the real life events (e.g. in real life the A’s had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball), Miller chooses to employ a host of non-professional actors, who work well to create an authentic feel. The scenes at the table with Beane’s grizzled team of scouts are examples of getting solid performances from non actors, something that can only be accomplished by a skilled director. Likewise, the baseball scenes range from stylized to doc-like, but the look and feel always comes across as intentional, as opposed to so many sports films that, hampered by budget or actors who aren’t athletes, wind up reading false. Ultimately, Miller delivers an impressive meld of realism and stylization, an alchemy that more often than not proves difficult to achieve.

Moneyball has its flaws - several scenes with Beane’s aspiring musician daughter (Kerri Dorsey) come dangerously close to schmaltz, recalling similar ones repeated in Showtime’s Californication; and while Pitt is certainly a handsome man, there are at least a couple too many beauty shots of him brooding, driving by himself, and sitting in an empty park (we get it already, he’s haunted by his past failures and wants to succeed); and of course there is little attention paid to the fact that, unlike other small market teams like The Tampa Bay Rays; and Florida Marlins, Beane has never been able to win a championship. There is little doubt, however, that this will stand as one of the better films coming out of Hollywood this year.

The versatile Steven Soderbergh has made films stretching across myriad genres, while embracing a wide range of production models, throughout a career that includes directing over twenty features, as well as producing and directing a host of other narratives, documentaries, and television.

If not for his connection with the Ocean films, Soderbergh’s career might be judged in a somewhat different light, but those grossly commercial efforts forever stamp him as one of the few directors in recent memory who have the ability to move fluidly between projects of diverse budgets and ambition, and the attendant criticism that goes with the implication of his having sold out. Sure, if you are McG, or Michael Bay, or Brett Ratner, there is no expectation that you will ever create anything of the slightest artistic import. If you are Steven Soderbergh, however, you clearly know better.

It is perhaps this very ability to move in whatever circles he chooses - call it power, or adaptability, or whatever one might deem it, that makes Soderbergh something of an enigma. What is hard to deny is that he is one of the top visual storytellers in cinema (who also shoots his own films), and his compositions are often startlingly original. The man who made Che; Out of Sight; Solaris; Traffic; The Limey; and Sex Lies and Videotape is an intelligent, thought provoking artist with deep pockets of skill at his disposal.

If it were not for the likes of The Ocean Series; and, for instance, Erin Brockovich, one might more easily compare Soderbergh to someone like Michael Winterbottom, another filmmaker who is nearly impossible to categorize or define. Unlike most auteur directors, who traditionally mine personal territory throughout their careers, both of these men continue to take chances, making films about a variety of subjects, and bouncing around with such alacrity that it is challenging to define the themes of their work. The difference, of course, is that Winterbottom (by choice or necessity) doesn’t make films with the kind of budgets at Soderbergh’s disposal.

As Soderbergh talks about taking a sabbatical from filmmaking, we get Contagion, a big, finely crafted, vaguely dystopic/apocalyptic pandemic drama about government health institutions and what might happen if an infectious disease spread throughout the world. The film hearkens to some of the recently made films about world politics like Syriana (Soderbergh was one of the producers) and Babel, and to some extent Soderbergh’s own, Traffic, films that cross language and cultural divides, and seem to point toward our ever flattening world.

Creating a cohesive film with such a sweeping scope is no small task. Contagion was made for sixty million dollars, a huge amount of money to be sure, but nothing close to what is now considered de rigeur for most films of this size, particularly those in the sci fi realm. The idea has been done before, most notably, in Outbreak (1995), but Soderbergh’s entry is masterfully executed, moving though several storylines with whirlwind speed, while managing to give a stratified view of an event over a period of time.

Normally, this type of film suffers from overdone special effects/CGI; sappy, moralizing speeches; maudlin, melodramatic family moments; actors playing technical people who awkwardly spout science to explain the story to an audience; clipped storylines that ultimately leave an audience unsatisfied, or all of the above. Here, Soderbergh (working from a Scott Z. Burns script) mostly manages to stay the course by keeping the pace brisk and judiciously choosing scenes and montage sequences that illuminate without hammering us over the head.

The cast is superb, an embarrassment of riches that includes Gwyneth Paltrow as Beth Emhoff, an American woman who gets sick while traveling to Hong Kong on business; Matt Damon, as her befuddled husband, Mitch; Laurence Fishburne as Doctor Ellis Cheever, a high ranking member of the CDC (Center for Disease Control); Kate Winslet, a CDC investigator working for Cheever; Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede, a blogger concerned with government cover up; and Marion Cotilliard as Dr. Leonora Orantes, a researcher for the World Health Organization.

It seems obvious that Burns and Soderbergh, et al, relied on their research, and consultant Dr. Ian Lipkin (head of the school of Public Health at Columbia), for the science feels right. Only a few stumbles (the janitor storyline; a cloyingly saccharine scene toward the end), mar what is an extremely well done procedural examining bureaucracy, the connectivity of the nations of the world, and personal morality in the face of widespread catastrophe.

The Trip (UK) Directed by Michael Winterbottom   Starring Steve Coogan; Rob Brydon; Claire Keelan; Rebecca Johnson; Kerry Shale; Margo Stilley

There are several moments in Michael Winterbottom’s latest that recall sections of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliant The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). Steve Coogan, playing a version of himself, is forced to travel long distances from the inns and hotels where he is staying in order to get phone reception, and we see him set against vast natural backdrops as he attempts to connect to the people in his life; there are also numerous long lensed static shots of a vehicle trolling along through the Northern English countryside that also remind us of similarly composed frames as Kiarostami’s erstwhile director and crew traverse the desert in search of their film.

The Trip started as a three hour/six part series for the BBC, and has been edited down to feature length for a theatrical release. That it takes a meta approach is unsurprising given the players involved (Winterbottom; Coogan; and Welsh comedian Rob Brydon) collaborated onTristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005), a meta film if ever there was one. Like Kiarostami, Winterbottom is interested in, among other things, the relationship between filmmaker and audience and the way we perceive reality as it relates to the making of narrative/documentary, often blurring the line between the two. Winterbottom is nearly unpinnable when it comes to categorizing him as a director, seemingly intentionally navigating his career in such a manner that he has always been impossible to pidgeonhole. He continues to be highly respected by his peers and legitimate critics, however, and there is no dearth of top talent looking to work for and with him.

On the surface, The Trip’s premise of Coogan being hired by a publication (The Observer) to write about top shelf restaurants in Northern England, and bringing his friend Brydon along when his American girlfriend Mischa (Margo Stilley) and he take a break, sounds, frankly, like a snooze-fest. Structurally, the film bears some similarities to another famous for having two main characters who do nothing but talk, Louis Malle’s My Dinner With Andre. While Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory similarly waxed poetic on subjects such as philosophy and art, among other intellectual matters, Coogan and Brydon are comedians and thus their conversations are more entertaining, albeit perhaps less substantial in content (a fact not helped by brevity that one can assume is the result of having to conform to the less than two hour run time).

The best thing about The Trip, beyond the laughs, is that Winterbottom imposes little overt commentary into the proceedings. Reportedly wholly improvised, Coogan and Brydon are allowed to be alternatingly funny, boring, annoying, selfish, and their opposites. Coogan’s character (one we’ve seen before) is a self-involved womanizer who looks down on Brydon’s career. Brydon comes off as an easygoing sort who concedes that Coogan is more famous and successful, but is simultaneously proud of his own accomplishments and relishes simply having the opportunity to make people laugh. Brydon longs to return home to his wife and child. Coogan misses his girlfriend (or recent ex), and would like to get back together with her, but seems more obsessed by legitimizing his career, and working with top directors (his American agent tells him it’s a good time to be Steve Coogan).

There are some excruciating moments with Brydon doing terrible impressions of American actors like Al Pacino, but the dueling Michael Caines and James Bonds are funny, and the sparring that goes on between the two is consistently amusing, even if it does eventually get trying. Coogan and Brydon annoy and entertain one another, seemingly in equal doses, and we as an audience feel much the same. The strength of their interaction is, in fact, that we imagine ourselves along for the ride, enjoying the fun, while dreading the claustrophobia that comes along with it.

The Trip itself consists of nothing more, really, than Coogan and Brydon driving in a Range Rover and making pit stops at various high end restaurants where they are served expensive multi course meals. Shots of the chefs preparing the food and waiters in designer suits serving them are infused with table conversation between the two as they comment on what they are eating, about comedy, their personal lives, poetry, literature, geography, and various other subjects. The pair also visit various landmarks, including a home of Samuel Coleridge, and Bolton Abbey. Brydon spouts poetry and does impressions non-stop (many of which bring about eye rolling and pleas for him to stop from Coogan); Coogan vomits geographical factoids and rambles on ceaselessly about himself and his career.

Yes, the minutiae and bickering gets tiresome at times, but the idea is that we have two forty-something men aging in vastly different ways. Brydon settled and satisfied, in love with his wife and baby, happy to be nothing more than a funny man. Coogan, divorced, smoking pot, chasing women, and feeling insecure as to his place in the business as a legitimate actor. He dreams about working with Wes and P.T. Anderson and The Coen Brothers, longing to be respected as a dramatic actor, while failing perhaps to grasp all the gifts he is presented with. At one point, Brydon compares him to Don Quixote.

Ultimately, The Trip is probably not enough of one thing or another - not a real food and travel guide; not a true comedy; not weighty enough to be actual drama; not satirical enough to be an actual mockumentary, but like it’s director it is satisfied with being difficult to categorize, content with merely existing as itself.

Tree of Life (USA) Directed by Terrence Malick   Written by Terrence Malick   Starring Brad Pitt; Jessica Chastain; Sean Penn; Hunter McKracken; Laramie Eppler; Tye Sheridan

Sixty Seven year old Terrence Malick, he of the breathtakingly sumptuous Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), has famously managed to make a grand total of five narrative features in his some forty years as a filmmaker. He once, in fact, went two entire decades between films. It is impossible then not to compare him to the late, great Stanley Kubrick, a man who may have been as well known for his oddities and the paucity of his output as he was for the dozen outstanding features he made in his some forty five years in the business.

Like Kubrick, Malick virtually eschews all publicity, and like his fellow American director (Kubrick later relocated to England), Malick has been accused of creating art that lacks a certain warmth or humaneness. Kubrick made coldly aseptic pieces that explored the intellectual questions that haunted his fecund mind. An inventor of sorts, who came up with a number of technical innovations that pushed the boundaries of what was possible photographically, Kubrick was in every way a visual filmmaker of the highest order. Malick, for his part, is also considered by most to stand in select company as one of the finest image makers in the history of the medium.

Malick is known for his reliance on voice-over - so much so that there have been questions raised about his reputed disdain for acting and actors - stories told of him barking orders at established thespians who are forced to do repeated takes walking through the woods, or lifting a leaf. Like Kubrick, Malick’s perfectionism, is the stuff of legends. He is, in some ways, more painter, photographer, or installation artist, than a traditional director of narratives. The difference, of course, being that his work costs many millions of dollars to make, appears in multiplexes, and stars A level Hollywood actors.

In the same way it is impossible not to link Kubrick and Malick, it is also difficult to ignore the similarities between 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) and Tree of Life. While Kubrick connected apes to a story about space, Malick weaves his tale of the suburban Texas O’Brien family in the 1950s with a nearly wordless flash forward of one of the boys as as an adult (Sean Penn), and long sections of no less than the big bang - shots of the cosmos replete with explosions and bubbling earth and the beginning of life itself. Thus we get dinosaurs and fish and bugs aplenty thrown into this wildly concocted stew, a whole IMAX-worthy documentary almost (and there has literally been talk about one being released), for our movie buck.

The question of whether a single frame of footage beyond the main story of the family is even one iota necessary is perhaps ultimately only for Malick to judge - for he is the artist and clearly every inch of the film has been agonized over to an infinitesimal degree. Still, one can’t help but wonder how conscious the man is of the seemingly preposterous proportions of the pretension on display. Is Malick so full of hubris that he feels capable of capturing the essence of human existence, or is the reach for such universal connection through art in and of itself a monumentally valiant endeavor adding up to a form of humility?

Clearly, there is auto-biography at work here as the main narrative mirrors Malick’s roots. The story involves Jack (Hunter McKracken), the eldest of three sons of Mr. (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. (Jessica Chastain) O’Brien. Pitt is no less than excellent as a father who consistently borders on abuse, a frustrated musician/inventor, consumed by pettiness and his own lack of professional success, constantly instructing and lecturing his browbeaten children on everything from table manners to music, attempting to soften his stern didacticism with physical affection, but failing to truly connect to them on any level. His intense domineering manner is juxtaposed with the children’s nearly silent but loving and ethereal Mom (Chastain is luminous in her role), who reassures them, tucks them into bed, and shares in their kids games. Framing the story, is the knowledge that one of the boys will later die at nineteen (as one of Malick’s younger brother did around the same age).

Though the scenes with the family are strung together in a quasi-non-linear way, leaving the audience to posit about certain elements of the story, Malick is not at all subtle with his overall message via voice-over. He starts the film with with a written quote from the Book of Job and all along has Jack wondering out loud about his own soul, about the influences his mother and father are having upon him, about God, and the purpose of life itself. Played with intensity, young McKracken’s Jack is compelling in his wide eyed innocence and growing pubescent anger, confusion, and discontent. Laramie Eppler as R.L. and Tye Sheridan as Steve are also well cast (a process that reportedly took a year).

The idea for the film, or at least its general scope, can be traced back to the seventies when Malick was involved with a project called Q. The film was never made, but Malick spoke, over the years, of doing a story about the beginning of the universe. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubetzki; Production Designer Jack Fisk; Visual Effects Supervisor Dan Glass; and (providing an identifiable link with Kubrick) effects master Douglas Trumbull - receiving his first feature credit in twenty seven years, assist Malick in bringing his vision to light, and the results, taken on their own, are impressive. From a technical standpoint, everything in the film is of the highest order, frame after frame of gorgeous and sometimes haunting visuals, accompanied by an elaborate score of classical choral music.

When examining the correlation between the sections, one can argue a need for the quiet, desultory pieces of adult Jack riding in elevators, telling his father over the phone he thinks about his dead brother everyday, staring up at sprawling urban architecture, and not listening during a business meeting - a troubled middle aged man who feels lost in his own life. It becomes more difficult, however, to justify the inclusion of a latter section (dream sequence?) that has Jack on a beach, tentatively passing through a doorway, one that has him walking through a kind of desert, or any of the beautiful though disconnected extended passages of visual yawping. There is no compelling metaphor at work when the filmmaker is simply spelling it all out in exhausting 138 minute detail.

When looking back at the film it is not the grand photography of the universe unfolding, or the very lovely images of the adult Jack being reunited with his family on a beach that remain with the viewer - rather, the heartfelt, poignant moments of simplicity - a baby playing on the lawn; a child uncomfortable with a father whom he resents, hugging him; the same father trying to explain himself to his child; a man attempting to teach his sons how to fight; a boy getting caught looking at a girl in class; one brother picking on another. There is beauty and revelatory power in this ’small’ story, and one can’t help but wonder of the ’smaller’ film that could have been, and how much more it might have said about our lives. The very prominent tree (flown in to the set and re-planted), focus on gardening, weeding, and tending the lawn, and the many low angled shots of buildings, tree tops, and sky serve as more than enough symbolism by themselves. The inclusion of all of this other ’stuff’ merely lessens their effect.

The issue with Tree of Life has nothing to do with Malick’s ability as a director. The Harvard/Oxford educated Rhodes Scholar is a genius filmmaker and there are very few of those in the world. However, a film must be judged on its merits and reach. Because Malick reaches for it all he demands that we judge the film along with the very best of its kind, and the end result translates into a finished product with an amazing, at times stunning, central narrative that is compromised by the inclusion of bombastic visual imagery that seems (to this layman anyway) virtually without cause.

Biutiful (SPAN) Directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu   Written by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; Nicolas Giacabone; Armando Bo  Starring Javier Bardem; Marciel Alvarez; Hanna Bouchaib (Ana); Guillermo Estrella (Mateo); Eduard Ferndez; Cheikh Ndiaye; Diaryatao Daff; Lang Sofia; Luo Jin Lin; Cheng Tai Chen

At two and a half hours Biutiful still feels overstuffed, as if co-writer/director/producer Inarritu could have constructed a mini-series or several films out of the material. The main criticism levied at Inarritu in the past has never focused on his abilities/talent, for he is simply one of the best craftsmen working today. He also consistently manages to elicit outstanding acting performances from experienced well-known performers and non-professionals alike. What bothers people about the director though is his tendency toward pretension, his overreaching multi-story-lines, and an overall inability to pull himself back from the excesses of moralizing commentary on everything from world economies, politics, and the nature of death.

Most filmmakers would be more than sated with a narrative involving a criminal hustler and single father with a bipolar/substance addicted ex, who learns he is dying of cancer and has, at best, several months to live. Instead, Inarritu chooses to bestow upon his lead magical powers that allow him to speak with the dead, and adorns his narrative with several sub stories involving exploited Asian and African immigrants working in the various illegal businesses he maintains. At least with his previous efforts, the director’s multiple stories felt balanced, if, at times, showing the strain of the melding of somewhat disparate elements. Biutiful, though, is first and foremost a showcase for Bardem and his undeniably immense talent, and therefore his character’s story takes precedence, with the several side plots merely sprinkled in to further up the the social relevance quotient.

It’s not that there isn’t merit in discussing the abuses of globalization that has workers being paid pennies in developing countries in order for established nations (such as our own) to reap the benefits of decreased production costs. It’s not that the issue of new, undocumented immigrant workers in these same developed countries being housed in awful conditions and paid paltry wages by exploitative entrepreneurs running various scam businesses isn’t a worthy topic. The problems here include the fact that these issues call for a film dedicated to a full exploration. Further, these are issues that have been explored recently by a variety of directors, and done with more subtly and depth at that.

Inarritu is focused on making very important, timely films, each and every time out of the box reaching for the most dramatic of circumstances, unapologetically navigating the waters of didacticism with every stroke. When he manages to create the right formula, ala 21 Grams, marvelous things can happen - bravura acting with the best kind of emotive expressions of pain, loss, sadness, and anger. When it falls flat there is a particularly loud thud because the drop is coming from some pretty lofty heights.

Biutiful is, again, nothing if not a forum for the talents of the wonderful Javier Bardem as Barcelona slum area criminal and single father, Uxbal, and his performance is worthy of any and all accolades that come his way. It is, after all, not Bardem’s fault that the entire affair is at least one half hour to forty five minutes too long, or that there are far too many scenes that simply do not advance the story in any way. Despite his undeniably charismatic presence, the meticulously composed visuals by famed cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, and excellent supporting performances from the likes of Marciel Alvarez as Uxbal’s troubled ex Marambra, and Hanna Bouchaib and Guillermo Estrella as their children, there is simply not enough for everyone else to do. As compelling as Bardem is there is only so much one can demand from an actor. When he is not on screen the film grinds to a screeching halt, and the inclusion of a homosexual relationship between two men running a sweat shop feels tacked on and completely unnecessary.

The same can be said for the superfluousness magic realism of a bookended dream sequence and the plot-line that has Bardem able to see dead people, a device that has been played to death itself, and adds nothing to the depth and/or development of the individual characters, or the story as a whole. The inclusion of this spiritual element reads as self-indulgent nonsense, and it seems apparent that Inarritu has not only failed to be chastised by the steady line of criticism devoted to his excesses - rather, it has become apparent that he is actually dedicated to upping the ante. In the way that Tarantino is like a runaway train who seems to have no one telling him to slow down, Inarritu is, frankly, an artist run amok, a gifted filmmaker in almost every way who has no one telling him to dial it back, to edit himself, to refrain from taking himself so damn seriously.

There are beautiful visuals and quietly acted moments galore in Biutiful - enough that one feels the loss for the film (or films) that could have been. It is hard to come up with a current director in his or her prime who brings more to the table, who is capable of individual scenes, sections, moments that are any better that what this director can put up on screen. Alas, films are judged by their overall composition, and prizes are not awarded for a series of fantastic beats - rather, we judge a piece of art by its overall effectiveness and how successful it is in accomplishing what it reaches for.

We do not expect the same kind of finesse and social relevance from a Jud Apatow comedy as we do from a filmmaker who makes dramas about life’s biggest questions. Inarritu wants very much to be taken very seriously, and his films are therefore judged by the parameters he himself establishes. In the final analysis, Biutiful recalls the recent Italian film, Gomorrah (2008), a similarly occasionally brilliant piece of cinema that also attempted to say too much. Like Gomorrah, Biutiful wants to make universal statements, but fails to hold up to the promise of its reach, never coalescing as a cohesive entity, despite the many excellent individual elements contained in the over crowded mix.

Another Year (BRIT) Directed by Mike Leigh   Written by Mike Leigh  Starring Jim Broadbent; Ruth Sheen; Lesley Manville; Imelda Staunton; Oliver Maltman; Peter Wight; David Bradley; Martin Savage; Karina Fernandez; Michele Austin; Philip Davis

Sixty eight year old Mike Leigh has been producing realist social dramas for some forty years. They are extended slice of life vignettes, really; morality plays (Leigh arose out of a theater background) without the whopping payoffs or didactically delivered life lessons; more often than not tales about simple, working people nuanced with slyly delivered commentary on social morays and class; stories about everyday life events that thankfully seem to shy away from soap opera melodrama.

Yes there have been bigger budgeted period offerings in the last decade-plus that included Topsy Turvy (1999) and Vera Drake (2004), and the look and style have gotten more cinematic as his career has progressed, but Leigh hasn’t ever strayed very far from the kind of low budget films he was making through the BBC at the beginning of his prolific and acclaimed directorial career.

Leigh’s process, now well documented, involves heading into a rehearsal or work-shopping period with the actors without a fully developed script of any kind. Aided by character descriptions, the actors improvise, helping to develop their roles and the dialogue within given scenes, and eventually a written screenplay emerges, culled from this meeting of the minds. Here, Leigh relies on some long time collaborators like Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, who respectively play Tom and Gerri, a long time married couple nearing retirement age, who form the center-piece of story that explores aging, loneliness, and the contrast between those who are settled (internally, professionally, family/relationship-wise) and those who are decidedly not.

Though his films are normally infused with humor, Leigh is never afraid to expose human pettiness, jealousy, and crassness. He is, almost wholly, uninterested in tying up his stories in bows to be easily delivered for his audiences. No apologist, ambiguity and contradiction abound with the people Leigh chooses to display, and his inclusion of difficult, oft unlikable people, demonstrates an abiding desire to reflect life back to us by challenging our perceptions of human nature, the human condition, and in the process, ourselves. Like Cassavettes, Leigh’s particular representation of reality ironically (or perhaps naturally) has a stylization of its own, and to some the awkward pauses and constant chatter may be off-putting. The fidelity of endeavoring to achieve some form of truth by refusing to beautify the words and people, however, almost always leads us to transcendent moments of realization and emotional resonance so rarely achieved in cinema.

Another Year is quite true to its title as we merely observe the outwardly mundane passing of a calendar year in the lives in of an aging couple and their small social sphere that includes a few of their friends, their son, and his new girlfriend. Very little information is provided up front about their pasts, and we only manage to glean bits and pieces of their personal and shared histories as we go.

Tom, a geological engineer, and Gerri, a social worker, seem relatively happy with with their relatively small lives. Owners of a modest, but comfortable and warm home, they share a common passion for cooking, and for the gardening they do in a collective, and they genuinely seem to enjoy one another’s company. Their son, Joe, a thirty year old lawyer, begins the film unattached, but eventually meets Katie (Karina Fernandez), a clinical physical therapist for the elderly, and the two seem quite happy together. This nuclear family, and that of Gerri’s co-worker Tanya, seem to stand in sharp contrast to the disintegrating lives of some others we come in contact with - namely, Gerri’s messy alcoholic, neurotic co-worker Mary (Lesley Manville), and Tom’s obese, alcoholic, and depressed friend Ken (Peter Wight) and nearly catatonic brother Ronnie (Lesley Manville), all three of whom seeming like they are one more life blow away from jumping off a bridge.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, Leigh was unafraid to show us a lead character who could be annoyingly chipper; here, it is the secondary characters who drive us nuts with their neediness, lack of connection, and unease. Lesley Manville is the standout and easily the most grating of these down in the mouth souls, a bundle of constant talk and nervous energy, the thinly veiled despair, desperation, and fear emanating from her every pore. Despite the powerful cast (that includes the wonderful Imelda Staunton in a cameo) the film lives in Manville’s Mary, and it is only when she is finally silenced that the power of her folly and utter unhappiness is fully realized.

Rabbit Hole (USA)  Directed by John Cameron Mitchell   Written by David Lindsay-Abaire  Starring Nicole Kidman; Aaron Eckhart; Sandra Oh; Dianne Weist; Miles Teller; Giancarlo Esposito; Jon Tenney; Tammy Blanchard

David Lyndsay-Abaire adapted the screenplay for Rabbit Hole from his own play (which won a Pullitzer) of the same name. Always there are major challenges in translating from stage to screen, and despite the pedigree of all involved there are moments in the film when one can imagine speeches being shortened to accommodate the new medium. Thankfully, while the subject matter (a couple dealing with the tragic loss of their young child) is certainly dour, and the reliance is most definitely on the well-written dialogue, Abaire and director John Cameron Mitchell manage to avoid most of the torpor and stilted speechifying marking so many similar adaptations.

Nicole Kidman, looking physically more natural than she has in years, is excellent as Becca , a somewhat uptight suburban upper middle class New York housewife who finds herself reeling from the cavernous void left in her life by her the loss of her son eight months before. Ensconced in the grieving process, she and her husband, Howie (Aaron Eckhart), are angry, despairing, and unable to communicate what they need from one another, their marriage obviously teetering and on the verge of tearing apart.

Convinced that things will never return to normal, Becca is disdainful of the group they attend for parents who have lost children. Gaby (Sandra Oh) and her husband lost their child a full eight years previous and still evidently find solace in participating, which leaves Becca feeling even more hopeless. While wanting to return to physical intimacy with his wife, and entertaining thoughts of them having another child, Howie obsessively watches a video of his son on his phone, and is loathe to put away any of the child’s items.  Becca vehemently rejects notions of God playing a role in the tragedy, recoils from Howie’s touch, and has little desire to socialize with friends or family, but wants to sell their house, pack up their child’s things, and move on. The two cannot seem to agree on finding a balance between keeping their son’s memory alive and the acceptance and transitioning that so acutely and obviously needs to take place.

The films gives us a nuanced look at one couple’s attempts to hang on to their marriage after having their collective and individual heart torn asunder. The immensely gifted Kidman and reliable Eckhart carry the film, though they are ably aided by some nice supporting performances from veteran Dianne Weist (as Becca’s Mom) and a surprisingly subtle and oddly, effectively quiet turn from from Miles Teller as their son’s accidental killer, Jason, a high school senior who himself is trying to live normally despite the tremendous guilt, sorrow, and self-loathing he is contending with.

There are few adult American dramas that achieve this kind of balance - showing us truly emotional, gut-wrenching moments without resorting to melodrama. The questions Becca and Howie ask of themselves, of one another, seem like those any couple under the same conditions might be faced with. The relationships highlighted are all of the human, complicated variety, treated with the kind of care and understanding that can only arise from exceptional writing. 

Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus; Hedwig) seems to understand that this one is about the actors and dialogue and impressively widens the scope of the play, while staying fittingly focused on the lives of the couple and their immediate family and friends. The film essentially revolves around twitchy, reactive, and slightly stuck up Becca, who, when we meet her, is too proud/consumed with grief to accept help of any kind. Her condescension and icy demeanor only begin to melt as she discovers the wisdom there is to be gained from reaching out to those who care about her - sensitivity and warmth developing (or re-emerging anyway) as she discovers that continuing to go it on her own will likely lead to self-destruction.

While the loss of a child is any parent’s nightmare, and stands as a particularly severe metaphor, the film does serve as an example of how pain and suffering have the power to devastate families, but also potentially simultaneously aid individuals within these units in experiencing transformative growth.

Blue Valentine  Directed by Derek Cianfrance  Written by Derek Cianfrance; Joey Curtis; Cami Delavigne  Starring Ryan Gosling; Michele Williams; John Doman; Jen Jones; Faith Wladya; Mike Vogel

Not that it’s some kind of secret, but let it be said that Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl; Half Nelson) and Michelle Williams (Synechdoche, New York; Wendy and Lucy) are two of our finest working actors. Take their commitment to a project that has been incubating for years, and combine it with a passionate first time feature director and co-writer (Derek CianFrance) who has long battled to bring it to screen, and there was an obvious potential for great things.

Using a fractured narrative that artfully bounces from present day to various seminal and everyday events in the relationship past of married couple Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams), Blue Valentine delivers information in a tight-fisted way, tantalizing an audience with a slow acclivity that allows us increasing bits of insight into the difficult, complicated, frustrating, and ultimately  heartbreaking  relationship between these two people.

Cindy, a hospital nurse, is obviously fairly bubbling with barely contained anger and resentment toward husband Dean, a house painter and amateur musician with an alcohol problem, who seems relatively content with his mundane job, cigarettes, and day time beers. While the couple clearly loves their young daughter Frankie (Faith Wladya), Dean is the goofy, fun Dad, while Cindy acts as the killjoy disciplinarian. The festering disallusionment and misunderstanding are practically tangible as the two seem almost entirely unable to relate to one another - Cindy nearly silent; both of them taking cheap verbal shots at one another. Ryan drinks too much, Cindy seems uninterested in touching her husband, but the open question propelling us forward is what exactly happened to these two people that brought them to this point?

In most relationship films, the answers would eventually reveal themselves to be of the easy and pat variety, the life of this coupling delineated in a series of obvious, readily identifiable plot points drawing a clear charted path to the dysfunctional place where they currently reside. Blue Valentine is never that simple or obvious, and the few answers we do get arrive in the form of non linear (though brilliantly placed) flashbacks, which wind up supplying us with important details that help to contextualize, but hardly definitively explain, the couple’s myriad issues.

Director Cianfrance’s documentary background is obvious, and he shoots in an apt handheld style, skillfully allowing a series of small scenes to unfold, each contributing to the story like so many children’s building blocks. To say that the naturalistic acting on display is first rate would be a severe understatement. Gosling and Williams individual and dual portrayals of two halves of a couple accomplishes the very difficult feat of illuminating for us a damaged relationship that feels dutifully lived in, one marked by silences as telling as any of the words they manage to utter to one another.

The end result of the characterizations by these two actors are all the more remarkable because they are not the kind of showy, emotive performances that can sometimes stand outside of a film, instead feeling fully work-shopped, developed, and ultimately realized, their interior subjective and shared reality peeking through in looks, gestures, and muttered lines of dialogue. The two actors work in concert to draw a picture of a disintegrating marriage between two real people, each possessing their own individual pre-meeting pasts, as well as evolving perceptions of one another, themselves, and their own history together.

It may be impossible to accurately pinpoint the essence of what lies between two people entwined in any romantic relationship, and Blue Valentine seems to take this concept as a given, respecting the idea that the exact elements that go into any coupling may be virtually unknowable. Instead, as the story develops, the moments between these two begin to accumulate, and (bolstered by what we learn about how they got together), we can begin to draw our own conclusions about what exactly has brought their relatively short marriage to such dire straights.

A wonderful debut from a talented director and two performances that will easily stand alongside any other in 2010 are the highlights of a film that serves as an example that despite all the evidence to the contrary there is still vital cinema being made in this country.