2) Another year has gone by, marking another year that I didn’t finish my screenplay. Currently devoting a whole lot of time to that front as a result, and the progress has been kickass. Will keep you posted.

3) Tying into that, I just can’t kick this nagging feeling that I should be making movies instead of reviewing movies. Don’t take that as a swan song or anything, but the monkey’s on my back and he’s only getting heavier.

4) Recently discovered Final Fantasy VI, 17 years after everyone else did. It is great, it is distracting.

5) I’m actually getting married in four days to the best gal in the Milky Way, so that’s been keeping me pretty preoccupied. With that being said, it might be a little while ’til I get back into the swing of things, but it’s for an awfully good cause.

Anyway, there ya’ have it. Sorry for being so incognito as of late, but life calls. Keep it real, folks.

- Aiden R.

BEETLEJUICE!

When it comes to the reasons why the world needs more Keaton, Beetlejuice is case in point. When it come so the best movie Keaton’s ever been in, I might have to take issue. All the same, hell of a movie and swell voting to boot, folks.

RESULTS:
- Beetlejuice: 8 votes
- Batman: 4 votes
- Batman Returns: 4 votes
- Toy Story 3: 3 votes
- Jackie Brown: 3 votes
- Cars: 1 vote
- Multiplicity: 1 vote
- Porco Rosso: 1 vote
- Out of Sight: 0 votes (tragic…)
- Clean and Sober: 0 votes
- Pacific Heights: 0 votes
- Mr. Mom: 0 votes
- Night Shift: 0 votes
- Other: 1 vote for Jack Frost (interesting choice,) 1 vote for The Dream Team (never seen it,) and 1 vote for “ALL OF THEM!” (Amen to that.)

Bonus points for an awesome cartoon tie-in.

MARV STEPPING BAREFOOT ONTO A RUSTY NAIL!

If they weren’t out to murder a child, I’d feel pretty bad for what Harry and Marv had to go through. Then again, they should be thanking their lucky stars they made it into that house with their spines intact. What a bunch of Scrooges.

Swell voting, folks!

RESULTS:
- Rusty nail to the foot: 9 votes
- Blowtorch to the skull: 4 votes
- Tarantula on the face: 3 votes
- Door knob from Hell: 3 votes
- Paint cans to the face: 3 votes
- Iron to the forehead: 3 votes (easy pick for me, should have resulted in instant death)
- Ice stairs: 2 votes

And apologies for dropping off the face of the Earth these past 10 days. Had every intention of giving a heads up, but alas, vacation got the better of me. That and starting a file on Final Fantasy VI for the first time in my life. Curse all these hobbies…

VERDICT:

Quite the improvement on the original, but can’t quite top the book.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about a famed Swedish journalist who finds his reputation tarred and feathered when he loses a high-profile legal battle against a billionaire industrialist. After resigning from his up-and-coming publication, he receives an unexpected call from a Swedish business tycoon requesting his presence at once. He visits the old man and is promptly given a proposition despite having no prior experience as a criminal investigator or ever having watched a single episode of CSI: Stockholm: to find out which of his potential employer’s family members murdered his great-niece some 30 years prior. With time to kill and the promise of a big fat payday even if he comes up empty-handed, he takes the job. With the assistance of a right-hand woman who could hack her way into the Pentagon with the effort it takes me to remember my Facebook password, the unlikely crime-solving duo start unearthing a tomb of secrets that some close by are trying very hard to keep buried.

Before we begin, go read the book if you haven’t already. I know, I know, not the best way to kick things off and I can feel your eyes rolling from here. I promise this won’t be a “book vs. movie” review, but having read it myself and having seen the original Swedish adaptation, I’m glad I was in the know. For those who aren’t, get ready for a doozie. The first reason you should read the book is that it will result in a literary addiction similar to what crackheads feel when Santa brings them their very first rock and pipe for Christmas (because I’m totally an authority on the matter.) The second reason is that it’s roughly 600 pages long, it’s jam-packed with more characters, details, and information than you can shake a stick at, and since all of it is vital to the story and overall experience, there’s just no way to cram it all into a 158-minute span.

That was one of the problems with the Swedish movie: not having a firmer grasp on who to flesh out and what to spend time on. This is not one of the problems with the remake. Writer Steven Zaillian does a fine job of whittling the dialogue down to a bare minimum while adding a healthy dose of character in the process, but this movie belongs to David Fincher. As far as selective editing and intentional film making is concerned, Fincher’s a goddamn assembly line. Every last scene is here for a reason, and as soon as its purpose is fulfilled, it goes right along to the next one without skipping a beat or wasting a breath. Reading that back, this might sound like one big episode of The West Wing with the fast-forward button held down, but that’s far from the reality of it. As one of my friends put it (a Fincher fanboy of the highest order, not that I’m any different,) David Fincher is a director who knows exactly what he’s doing, and it won’t take long with this movie before you realize the truth of that statement.

The upsides of this approach are that it allows for a lot of information to be packed into a short frame of time, it moves things along at a breakneck pace which transforms it from a talking heads movie into a full-blown thriller, and it makes you pay attention. The downsides of this approach are that it gives you a lot of information in a short from of time, it conveys a lot of the clues and developments through inference and things unsaid, and it’s unforgiving if you bought a ticket just because you liked the booby poster. If I were going into this movie blind or with the same mindset that led me to Ghost Protocol, I think I’d be tearing my hair out. But that’s not the kind of book Stieg Larsson wrote, and that’s not the movie Fincher’s made. There’s an ass-kicker of a story to be told here, and if you can’t keep up, it’s kind of your own fault as cold as that may sound. Then again, that only seems fitting for the emotionally frigid movie that this is.

Although as incredibly effective as his direction is, I wish he had taken his time a bit more often. When he does, it makes for some scenes that’ll stall your lungs before knocking the wind out for good measure. There isn’t much room for baited tension in this movie, and that’s too bad considering this is David Fincher, a dude who knows some shit about baiting tension before we can realize there’s a hook through our cheek. But when it’s there, it’s fantastic, and it’s also worth mentioning that he’s given us the best opening credits sequence of the year that looks like something straight out of the gnarliest of Nine Inch Nails videos.

But Fincher aside, the biggest selling point of this movie is far and away the one role that every girl with daddy issues would have killed for and then some: Lisbeth Salander. When I saw Rooney Mara in The Social Network, I didn’t see a badass bitch with the scars and piercings to prove it. I don’t think anyone saw it, but here she is looking like the bastard love child of Mudvayne and Powder, and she freaking destroys. There’s a good reason this movie isn’t called The Man with the Libel Conviction, and it’s the same reason everyone but the Academy went so ape over Noomi Rapace these past couple years. Lisbeth is one tempest of a character, she’s beyond eccentric compared to the rest of the cast, and it’s always great to see tough female characters who run the show with gusto and take pleasure in putting the opposite sex in their place. Hard to say whether she trumps Rapace, but this is one seriously demanding role and she goes all out with it. Would be pretty darn shocked if she didn’t walk away with some wins come February, ’cause she earned ‘em.

Even so, this movie isn’t about Lisbeth Salander, it’s actually about our disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, regardless of the title. My biggest complaint about the Swedish version is the way Blomkvist and all his complexities were so blatantly put on the back burner so as not to take the spotlight away from Lisbeth. From the outset, Blomkvist has the immediate appeal of wet clothes against the backdrop of Rooney Mara’s mohawk, but the truth of the matter is that Blomkvist is every bit as interesting as his punked-out partner. I mean, it takes a long time for Blomkvist and Salander to start working together, they’ve got a lot going on in their respective lives outside of the murder mystery, so it’s really nice to see that Zallian and Fincher gave each of them their due both before and after they team up. And while he never stood a chance at upstaging Mara, this is still Daniel Craig’s best role since Casino Royale.

Also bizarre seeing Yorick Van Wageningen go from a jolly Dutchman named Joost in The Way to Lisbeth’s scumbag mother-effer of a legal guardian. Talk about night and day, but the role suits him disturbingly well.

And lastly there’s the score from the almighty Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross which is as good as it already sounds. Currently undecided as to whether their involvement here works as well as it did in The Social Network, but it’s nevertheless a perfect complement to the tone of the movie. So many haunting, gorgeous tracks here, especially the few that sound like Trent slamming keys in the grand ballroom of an abandoned castle. You’ll get it when you hear it, or you could just be the man/woman and buy the three-disc soundtrack prontosaurus.

As much as I liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and as impressed as I am by how well Fincher handled it, I still can’t help but feel a bit lackluster about it all. This is the third time I’ve heard the story, and I don’t know if it was a story I needed to hear three times. Some of the story’s greatest strengths lie in its ruthless unpredictability and giving the reader an outrageously wide berth to put the pieces together, so when you know every road that the plot’s gonna take, you start hoping for the detours. Although I did appreciate some of the more subtle liberties that Zaillian took with the source material, like an unexpected turn of events towards the end, ignoring the prison sentence Blomkvist has to serve, and skipping over all the time he spends writing his book against the guy who put him there. Also nice to see more time spent on key players and less time spent on the two dozen family members who are all potential suspects, even if it might make the mystery a bit easier to unravel.

God, this is an easy movie to ramble about, time to wrap it up. If you’ve never taken the trip, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is as wild, rough, and memorable as they come. If you’ve been here before, it might be familiar, but by the same token, that might just be me. As a devoted worshiper at the church of Reznor and someone who’s been Fincher-crazy since I figured out what the fuck was in the fuckin’ box, it’s hard to deny this movie a recommendation with everything it does so well.

But do yourself a favor, read the book first.

VERDICT:
9/10 Wordless Choruses

The best silent film I’ve seen all year.

Set in 1920s Hollywood, The Artist is about a silent film star at the top of his career who takes a charming girl under his wing as she tries to make a name for herself in Tinseltown. He’s riding high and loving life, that is until “talkies” make their debut and the actor finds his forte turning into yesterday’s news. As his protege jumps on the bandwagon and becomes the latest siren of the silver screen, the actor’s pride get the best of him as he risks everything to stick with the old and write off the new as a passing fad. Much to his chagrin, the plan doesn’t quite pan out. Before long, his marriage, livelihood, and dignity start to crumble while his protege watches on, doing whatever she can to help from the shadows.

So how is awesome is it that this movie is out right now and getting all these awards and whatnot? In this day and age, you go to a studio exec and you tell ‘em you want to make a silent movie about silent movies, there’s a strong chance he’ll shoot you dead and get away with it. The general assumption when there’s money on the line is that backing a project like this would be a money pit, something only movie snobs and old farts would go see. If it was my money in question, I’d probably wouldn’t risk it either, but that’s the problem. Too many studios today equate bigger budgets with better movies and are more than happy to sacrifice the story if it makes for a sweeter payday, and that’s why these movies don’t get made. It’s been a really long time since we’ve had an option like The Artist to choose from, and now that it’s here, you’ll be wondering what took so long.

Although for a lot of folks, this is a pretty tough sell. It’s not in 3D, it’s not in color, it’s starring two French people you’ve probably never heard of, it’s not even in widescreen, and when you’re not reading subtitles, you’re trying to read lips. Who am I kidding, that’s more of a death sentence than it is a tough sell. But I guess I’m not a lot of folks, ’cause before I bought the ticket, before I took the ride, I was loving this movie. I have no idea what spurned writer/director Michael Hazanavicius to take this inspired trip back in time, but that seems to be the big theme this year, doesn’t it? Woody did it with Midnight in Paris, Marty did it with Hugo, and now that Hazanavicius is doing it, seems to me like film makers aren’t too keen on the 21st Century these days. Whatever the reason, I’m behind it 100% if it’s getting us movies like these.

And nothing against Woody or Marty, but what Hazanavicius does here is just plain brilliant. It’s such a surprisingly literal approach to telling this silent story that it takes a bit of getting used to since we’re so attuned to hearing voices when mouths start moving. I have no excuse for the tragic shortlist of silent movies that I’ve seen, so walking into this was like walking into Bizarro World. Everything is shown, very little is told, and intertitles are used at an absolute bare minimum. But before you know it, it feels natural, you get sucked in, and as you follow this plot that’s driven by body language, you’ll wonder why sound was such a big deal in the first place. It’s funny, I just watched Pulp Fiction for the first time in ages recently, and as much as I love the way Tarantino writes, his characters do not stop talking. It’s not a problem with every movie because some people, like Tarantino, just know how to write dialogue, but it seems to me that the art of subtlety a dying practice.

I feel like a broken record saying this, but one of the most aggravating qualities in a person, invented or real, is the impulse to talk for the sake of talking. Apparently Hazanavicius is on the level, and I can’t praise him enough for it. All too often, film makers and studios underestimate the audience’s ability to follow along if things are spelled out, but this movie is living proof of what little dialogue you need to tell a story that speaks volumes. When his characters make key statements or when conversations are held, we’ll get the occasional intertitle to keep up, but most of the time Hazanavicius just lets his wonderful cast of mutes do the talking, and the system works like gangbusters.

So the story revolves around one George Valentin who’s played by one Jean Dujardin. The only other thing I know Dujardin from is OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, another Hazanavicius joint where he stole the show as the French, attractive version of Austin Powers. If he was magnetic then, he’s a freaking hadron collider now. God, when this guy smiles, you’ll want to get up dance; when he’s at the bottom of a bottle, you’ll want to crawl in there with him. He’s just so incredibly expressive in his physicality and it’s amazing how well he pulls it off without going overboard. Dude has one hell of a face to work with and, boy, does he know how to mug with it. Still partial to Michael Shannon in Take Shelter, but Dujardin is an awfully, awfully close second for best male performance of the year.

Dujardin’s real-life wife, Berenice Bejo, is also fantastic for all the same reasons as his on-screen sweetheart, Peppy Miller. As you can image, these two have a whole lot of chemistry going for ‘em and they just light up the screen when they’re together. Again, what a face, and these two can cut some rug like you wouldn’t believe. Bonus points for Valentin’s totally awesome Jack Russell Terrier who makes that Hollywood hack Lassie look like a bow-legged mutt with canine scurvy.

And while I still have to hear what Reznor and Ross put together for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, they’re gonna have some stiff competition with this score in the running. Not only is it pitch-perfect throughout and easy on the ears, it’s so cool to watch the music guide the action and vice-versa as though it’s a supporting character. Only worry is that it might not be eligible come awards season since one of songs is “Pennies from Heaven,” and that’s the kind of hooey that’s gotten some of the best scores disqualified. Freakin’ Academy…

Anyway, it’s more than deserving of all the acclaim it’s continuing to garner even if it’s not my #1 for the year. I can see how some folks would take this is as a love letter to the silent era, but to me, that’s selling it short. Aside from its great little story about love, redemption, and the tides of change; aside from its phenomenal premise that had me sold from the start; aside from the achievement it is from both a technical and storytelling standpoint; and aside from having one of the best dream sequences I’ve ever seen, The Artist is just a magical, delightful, and truly unexpected experience that grabs hold of you right up until the last two words that’ll leave you smiling from ear-to-ear. This is how you take two steps forward by taking one step back, and it couldn’t have come at a better, or more pertinent, time.

Remember this when you see Titanic in 3D next year.

Not my favorite Reitman effort, but damn is it wicked.

Young Adult is about a thirty-something divorcee who spends her nights getting blackout drunk with random one-night stands and her days ghostwriting the final entry in a once-popular series of young adult novels. One day, she receives a mass email from her high school sweetheart announcing the birth of his first child. Instead of sending it to the Trash Bin like a normal person, she takes it as a sign and heads back to her podunk hometown for the first time in forever. When she gets there, she winds up befriending the fat geek she ignored all throughout high school, and soon after begins her conquest to win back her old flame from his new wife and kid.

Remember how warm and fuzzy you felt the last time Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody teamed up for Juno? Even I wanted to get pregnant after that movie. Well imagine Juno grew up and spent the next 20 years drowning her sorrows in reality TV and Maker’s Mark, wishing every day that she’d kept the baby and stuck it out with Paulie Bleeker (who’s now shacked up with some chick in a band.) That’s our young adult, Mavis Gary, and she is a freakin’ mess. For a film making duo that stole our hearts four years ago, I wasn’t expecting them to give ‘em back four years later looking like ash trays, but whether you like or loathe this movie is ultimately dependent on what you make of Mavis.

I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with characters to compare her to, and as much I like to think that Kenny Powers, Regina George, and Travis Bickle are all fitting candidates, Mavis is one-of-a-kind. When we first meet her, there ain’t much to write home about. Depressing, pathetic, washed-up, irresponsible, unhealthy, unapologetic – all wonderful adjectives to sum her up in a nutshell. Not the kind of person you’d like to spend thirteen bucks and 94 minutes on, although there is something amusing about the rose-colored glasses she wears, her morning-after routine that starts with chugging Diet Coke from the liter, and the way she’s so convinced that everyone around her are the ones stuck in a dead-end. The only thing she isn’t cynical about is her own selfish ambitions, yet as much as you can’t root for her in the slightest, I still had a hard time hating her. I just felt bad for her.

Maybe it’s that I never had a high school sweetheart to pine over during my mid-life crisis that I still haven’t reached, and that I don’t have a void in my life that can only be filled with a time machine. The only thing about Mavis I can relate to is that I knew girls like her in college and those were girls I wanted nothing to do with. Her unlikely confidante who comes in the form of Patton Oswalt is an entirely different matter though. Aside from my wholehearted belief that Patton Oswalt is a goddamn genius as both a comedian and human being, he’s perfectly cast and absolutely great as Matt Freehauf, the anti-Mavis from top to bottom. Granted, his character’s circumstances and reasonable outlook on life make him a whole lot easier to feel for and care about, but this story needs Matt and his push-and-pull with Mavis is one of the best things it has going for it. Being a geek, I saw a lot more of myself in Matt than in Mavis, and without him around, this prima donna would have been too much to bear.

Man, I have no idea why Patton Oswalt isn’t in more movies. Someone needs to fix that.

And Charlize Theron is unsurprisingly awesome as Mavis. Look, if you had a recurring role on Arrested Development, you’re already set for life in the awesome department, but that’s beside the point. It’s one thing to look the role of a former prom queen who still probably mentions it on her resume’, it’s another thing to sell it and cut loose as the totally misguided man-eater that Mavis Gary is. Being no stranger to playing a self-destructive gal, Theron throws herself down the spiral and does a bang-up job of keeping Mavis from coming off as a grown-up “plastic.” Still a bit confused as to how a boozehound like Mavis can eat fast food for every meal, barely exercise, and still look like Charlize Theron, but again, beside the point.

Also nice to see Patrick Wilson in a role that doesn’t have him looking like a door-greeter at Abercrombie & Fitch.

But here’s the thing: for 95% of the movie, I dug Mavis Gary as the highly atypical character that she is and could refrain from passing judgment because there’s a lot more going on below the surface than she’d care to have anyone know. But then comes a morning-after heart-to-heart towards the end of the movie between her and Matt’s sister, played by Collette Wolfe. By this time, Mavis’ plans have gone about the way you already think they’ll go, and the chat starts out sweetly enough with Matt’s sister encouraging Mavis to be proud of who she is and what she’s accomplished. This could have been a turning point for both Mavis and the tone of the story as a whole, but instead Mavis responds to Matt’s sister with, “You know what? You’re right! Thanks a mil and go fuck yourself!” The more I keep thinking about the conversation and what I was supposed to take away from it (and from the movie as a whole,) the one thing that keeps coming to mind is, “No, Mavis. You go fuck yourself.” It’s what dropped this movie down from a 7 and still has me borderline pissed off.

I don’t like Mavis Gary as a person, but it works because she’s not looking for my approval. So if there’s one thing I can applaud screenwriter Diablo Cody for, it’s for giving us an antihero to get behind and refusing to sugarcoat her flaws. I feel like we’re all so used to seeing movies centered around people we can root for and connect to because those are the people we want to spend time with, but it’s nice to have some variety from the other end of the spectrum every once in a while, even if we do get stuck with the occasional Greenberg. At the end of the day, I’d rather dislike a protagonist than feel neutral about them, and as much as there is to dislike about Mavis, it was hard not to get invested in her train wreck of an existence.

And if there’s a second thing I can applaud Diablo Cody for, it’s that she’s still a damn good writer. From Matt’s homemade Star Wars whiskey to all the ’90s alt rock references that turn up on everything from T-shirts to mix tapes, I love the way she builds her characters through pop culture references. Makes for a nice complement to the ’90s alt rock soundtrack and it’s just sharp writing to boot, even if the humor’s a bit too bitchy for my taste.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mavis Gary since I left the theater last weekend and I’ve still got some thinking ahead of me. I can’t kick this nagging feeling that the world doesn’t need people like Mavis to fight the bad fight for us, but hers is nevertheless one of the more complicated and divisive character studies I’ve come across in ages. I almost want to see it again just to help me decide which side of the fence I’m on. Emphasis on “almost.” But whether you walk out of the theater wondering why you went in at all or you just so happen to see yourself in mean old Mavis, you’ll walk out of Young Adult feeling something, and that’s certainly better than nothing. Hell of a conversation topic at the least.

VERDICT:
9/10 Tower Heists

The best one yet, the best thrill ride of the year, total insanity.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol picks up with the Impossible Missions Force’s top agent Ethan Hunt getting busted out of a Moscow prison so that he break into the Kremlin and steal the launch codes to some nuclear warheads. When things don’t go according to plan and the Kremlin gets blown the hell up, the US is blamed for the attack and the IMF, along with all of its members, are immediately disbanded. With no one else to support him and his ragtag crew, Hunt busts out the gadgets and gets to globetrotting in order to stop a mad scientist before he kicks off a nuclear holocaust.

I think the last time I saw the first Mission: Impossible was when it was still out in theaters, and while I vaguely remember liking it, I was mostly just scarred for life by Emilio’s death-by-elevator scene. Then there was the second one which was both beyond ludicrous and had way too many dove cameos; and most recently was the third which was pretty darn wild despite a story that didn’t make a lick of sense. Given the shaky track record and the fact that I could only see it in IMAX, I feel like I should have been more hesitant going into this one. But what can I say, I was a total sucker for that ass-kicker of a trailer, and sometimes you gotta go for the IMAX. Definitely added an extra something to the 6-minute Dark Knight Rises prologue that played beforehand.

Now, I’ve gotten excited over some action-packed trailers before, and more often than not, that kind of behavior has led to some major letdowns. The sad truth is that it’s easy to cram all the best parts of a movie into a two-minute span and then buffer the finished product with two hours of disappointing fluff, the hard part is taking that two-minute highlight reel and then kicking the audience in the face for two hours like you promised. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, I should know better, but as you can see quite plainly from the poster, the only disappointment you’ll be experiencing is that you didn’t bring a second pair of fresh undies.

Folks, this thing is just nuts, and the man to be thanking is director Brad Bird. Yup, it’s the first live-action movie by the guy who did The Incredibles, and whoever handed him the reigns deserves a big, fat high-thirty. I mean, it really is like watching a live-action Pixar movie. Unless you’re one of those quacks who still thinks Pixar movies are for kids, I can’t think of a better endorsement than that. Everything flows seamlessly from one scene to the next, each new impossible scenario gets injected with an extra 20 cc’s of impossibility just to make things interesting, and it’s so effing awesome to see a movie that keeps one-upping itself without nuking the fridge. There were a lot of moments where this movie could have done just that, and in someone else’s hands it absolutely could have happened, but with Bird behind the wheel, it’s a high-octane blast from start to finish. Have no idea how he got some of the jaw-dropping, hurl-inducing shots he did amidst some seriously epic set pieces either.

Although that’s not to say that the only reason this movie succeeds is because of Bird’s involvement.

Thanks to the likes of Collateral and Tropic Thunder, Tom Cruise has done an impressive job of remaining in my good graces over the years despite my best efforts to write him off. I want him to be the kooky bastard who couch-surfed on Oprah, I want him to be the uber-defensive Scientologist who gave that glib bastard Matt Lauer the 411 on psychology, I want him to be the best beach volleyball player the United States Air Force has ever seen. But then he starts doing all his own death-defying stunts off the tallest building in the word with the same amount of effort it would take me to cannonball off the deep end, and all of that nonsense disappears into the void. Dammit, Tom… He may be pushing 50, but he makes it look good and he’s totally entertaining to watch. Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, and Jeremy Renner are also on-point as Hunt’s team members, but I was just psyched to see the ridiculously underused Josh Holloway get some love for once as a late IMF agent.

And the gadgets here are so, so, so, so boss. To name a few, we’ve got Spider-man gloves, magnet suits, travel-size mask-makers, and even a Beemer straight out of Minority Report to beat the traffic in style. Wasn’t excited about the gadgets going in and wasn’t expecting them to be a selling point, but they’re just endlessly wild to see in action. Certainly helps when they’re not stupid as hell and beyond convenient. Can’t help but wonder how these guys manage to be so outrageously prepared for each mission despite such limited resources and short notice, but apparently the IMF thought of everything before shit went down. Better to not ask questions about these kinds of things. It’s weird considering that one of the reasons Casino Royale was so good was ’cause they got rid of all the gadgets, but then again, Ethan Hunt never got his Gadget Card revoked for para-surfing off a glacial tidal wave.

The one and only thing that I was pretty bummed out about is Michael Nyqvist as our villain of the hour, Kurt Hendricks. The first thing that sucks is that Philip Seymour Hoffman was so freaking good as the bad guy in Mission: Impossible III that Nyqvist was kinda doomed from the start. The second thing that sucks is that Nyqvist doesn’t even get the chance to one-up his predecessor because Hendricks is a shell of a character. In his defense, the dude wants to go War Games all over us so he needs to be taken out, but since he has absolutely no vendetta against or history with Ethan Hunt or the IMF, you don’t really care about him outside of the threat he poses. He’s essentially the finish line and nothing more, and that’s a damn shame considering how fleshed-out all the good guys are. And not that it’s really pertinent, but the third thing that sucks is that Nyqvist’s character got the shaft in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, too! Bizarre how this guy can’t catch a break no matter how big his movies are.

Still, I’ll take the weak villain in light of everything else that flat-out destroys. Also nice to have a story that actually adds up for a change.

After digging Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for being the antithesis of this movie, I was awfully taken aback by what a time I had with Ghost Protocol. It wasn’t a mindless experience in the least, it’s as fun as they come, and I was breaking out in flop sweats every ten minutes from all the crap Ethan keeps getting himself into and out of. Seriously, I was a mess, thought I was going through menopause or something. The long and short of it is that there aren’t too many franchises out there that manage to kick this much ass by the fourth installment let alone the first. Fourth installments are where franchises go to die and the world doesn’t need another fourquel to clog up an industry that’s already overflowing with unoriginality and unnecessary sequels. But now we’ve got Ghost Protocol, and it is one pants-crapper of an exception.

LIEUTENANT STANSFIELD!

He loves Mozart, hates kids, and doesn’t take too kindly to people taking his cocaine or killing his henchmen. Sounds pretty misunderstood to me.

This one was a no-brainer, but Gary Oldman’s the man and there ain’t too many folks who can play crazy like he does. Swell voting, folks!

RESULTS:
- Lt. Stansfield: 18 votes
- Drexl Spivey: 8 votes
- Dracula: 4 votes
- Zorg: 3 votes
- Ivan Korshunov: 1 vote
- Lee Harvey Oswald: 1 vote
- Shelly Runyon: 0 votes (one of the more under-appreciated sonsabitches in recent movie history)
- Other: 1 vote for “Voldemort” (so close…)

And everyone knows he’s British, right?

Haven’t crossed my legs this hard since Teeth.

The Skin I Live In is about a brilliant surgeon who develops a genetically enhanced, fire-proof flesh after his wife gets in a car crash that leaves her burned from head to toe. Horrified by the way she looks, she goes ahead and offs herself, leaving the surgeon very, very sad. The test subject for his experiment is a beautiful woman he keeps locked in his house who bears a striking resemblance to his late wife. As his testing comes to an end, he promises her freedom at the risk of her revealing his secret operation to the world. But when the son of his housemaid shows up out of the blue and puts everyone’s lives in jeopardy, the surgeon is forced to take matters into his own hands.

So talk about a change of pace for writer/director Pedro Almodovar. Last time I checked, this is a guy who made a name for himself by celebrating and empowering women in film, not a guy who thought Buffalo Bill was really misunderstood and decided to make a movie to clear his good name. But more than anything – yes, even Antonio – that’s what’s so immediately intriguing about this movie: Pedro Almadovar’s first stab at a horror/thriller. I don’t know what caused this, maybe he was trading emails with Kevin Smith, but for a film maker who’s been all drama, all the time for Godknowshowlong, he pulls this off quite well…eventually.

The reason for that ellipses there is because this starts out pretty darn shaky. I’m all for movies that don’t give you much insight as to what the hell is going on as a way to make you listen up, but this was just odd. By the end of the first Act, you’ll get the basics: Antonio’s a nutjob widower, he’s keeping this mysterious gal prisoner, he shouldn’t be doing that (let alone be splicing together pig and human DNA,) and the housemaid’s in on it, too. It works well in establishing what kind of people we’re dealing with here and it creates a solid foundation for the surplus of reveals that come to light down the road. But then the housemaid’s son shows up and the whole thing turns into a Spanish soap opera. Even with the weak explanation as to why he’s there and why he’s important, nothing about him arriving at the front door in a spandex lion costume struck me as a logical direction to take the story in. Then he gets inside, starts being a lowlife, and kicks off a big to-do filled with sex, violence, and every Spanish soap opera fan’s favorite thing in the world…betrayal! Dios mio!

It’s pretty bizarre, I didn’t know what the hell to make of it.

And then, just as things seem like they’re coming together some ten minutes later, the story suddenly flashbacks to six years prior, seemingly abandoning everything that just happened in the last half-hour so that we can follow along with a brand new set of protagonists we’ve never met. I almost gave up at that point. Was not in the mood to pull a Chungking Express and watch two different movies in the same movie.

The good thing is that it does get better, a lot better actually. I can’t really say much because the reason this movie recovers as well as it does is due entirely due to a turning point that made everyone in the theater react in a chorus of, “Holy-effing-shit.” Don’t bother guessing, there’s no way you’ll get it. The only thing I will say is that it’s at this very moment that things start making sense and the plot begins moving in a direction that you can get behind. In hindsight, I completely understand why Almodovar structured this the way he did, but in real-time, it’s not without its problems. Alright, not saying anything more on the matter, you can thank me later.

But for a genre that’s very much out of his comfort zone, it’s interesting how this still manages to feel like a natural progression for Almodovar. Even though it’s be driven by a lunatic who treats his women like most would treat a pet hamster, a lot of the usual Almodovar themes are here. The woman in question, Vera, is one tough cookie who’s got Antonio wrapped around her finger and you’ll be rooting for her twice as much by the end was you will be at the start. From how many times she gets naked to how many different people get boinked, it’s also an extremely sexual movie that feels as natural as it does aggressive. If you’ve seen an Almodovar movie before, this should all sound pretty familiar, and since these are all aspects that make his movies soar, it’s cool to see them in such a different setting. Also nice to see a director who can put sex at the forefront without making it feel forced or awkward. An unusually difficult thing to find these days, but a lot of credit goes to the cast in that regard as well.

That sexy bastard Antonio Banderas does a fantastic job playing the mad doctor himself, Robert Ledgard. His killer looks and emotionally numb demeanor totally betray what he’s capable of, so when he really starts to get his evil on, it’s mighty sinister when he goes about it with the bedside manner of a process server. Although my one issue with Legdard is that his unusually trustworthy nature is a tad horseshit considering the circumstances. I don’t care how much she looks like your dead wife, dude. You give that girl an inch and you bet your sweet ass she’ll be taking a mile. And on that note, Elena Anaya pretty much steals the show as the girl down the hall, Vera. Helps that she’s got the best character of the lot, but she goes all out and gives a really bold performance that just keeps on commanding the screen. Freaking gorgeous, too.

Man, how does Melanie Griffith let Antonio get away with this stuff? Homey does not leave much to the imagination.

So the structure could use some work, it misses out on a lot of opportunities that could have made for a pretty thrilling ride, and its effectiveness as a whole is dependent on a central gimmick. Then again, boy, is it some gimmick. In a world where people make movies about human centipedes, it takes a lot to shock our sick fascinations these days, so the fact that this one is a lightning bolt to the solar plexus goes an awfully long way. But aside from the one thing in this movie that I keep referring to but can’t talk about, The Skin I Live In is a pretty crazy character study fueled by grief, revenge, sex, and identity with a lot of layers and some serious staying power. Still think I’ll stick to his dramas, but more power to Almodovar for coming up with this sick puppy and making me terrified of stuff that I couldn’t have cared less about beforehand.

VERDICT:

One of those movies that makes you wanna live.

Beginners is about a single, thirty-something graphic designer whose mother passes away, at which point his seventy-something father tells him that he’s gay and is determined to spend his last years being gung-ho about it. Not one to rain on his old man’s parade, the graphic designer openly supports his dad’s new lifestyle. Soon after, his father starts going steady with a younger man, but then he gets diagnosed with cancer and he passes away having lived the life he’d always wanted. Soon after that, the graphic designer hits it off with a French actress at a Halloween party, they start going steady too, but after a long history of sabotaging his relationships thanks to his parents’ shell of a marriage, the graphic designer begins to worry whether he’ll sabotage this one as well or follow in his father’s open-hearted footsteps.

It’s based on writer/director Mike Mills’ relationship with his own late father, and I’m still pretty flabbergasted at how quickly I realized that this was one of the best things I’ve seen all year. From the outset, it might seem like the gay dad aspect is the one thing keeping this from being a pretty run-of-the-mill story about real people with real problems. And even though that’s the very outlook that kept me from bumping this to the top of my Netflix queue for so long, I love movies about real people with real problems, and I feel shame for having taken so long. But in going with the theme of this movie, better late than never.

The big thing that sold me on this in record time is that it’s just plain magical, almost in the way that Amelie is. There’s an undercurrent of sadness in these characters that comes in the form of death, grieving, or broken hearts, but more than anything, they stand as a call to life despite the sorrow. It’s little things, like roller skating through a hotel lobby after getting kicked out of a roller rink, or dressing up as Sigmund Freud at a costume party and getting to a know a beautiful girl by analyzing her on the couch. I don’t know, that might not sound like much in text, but when you see how much these characters get out of everyday pleasures and cutting loose in the most grade school of fashions, you’ll wish you were there with them. When I wasn’t choking up at the parts where you can imagine things would get emotional, I was grinning my face off and just having a grand old time watching these kids in adult’s clothing.

As a writer, Mills gives us personality and authenticity to spare. All of the little routines and habits of these characters don’t feel like creativity in motion, they feel like a journal in motion. It’s personal, it’s funny, and it’s special to see movies that wear its heart on its sleeve like this. And as a director, Mills does an outstanding job of making this his own and using the screen as his canvas. It helps to see it in action, but there’s something very Vonnegut about the way Mills tells this story. There’s a dog who speaks in subtitles, the plot jumps back and forth from past to present so much that you’ll be doubling back to remember there’s two story lines, and McGregor’s character, Oliver, tells us the history of his family by showing us still images of what life looks like now and what life looked like in the ’50s. If you’ve read Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse-Five, you’ll know what I’m talking about, and being Kurt Vonnegut’s #1 fan, I was all about it. It’s unique, it’s out there, and not only does it work wonders from a stylistic standpoint, but it’s an effective, non-preachy approach that speaks volumes about the way people and society has changed over the course of a generation.

And like I said, the gay dad aspect is definitely one of the more attention-grabbing things about this, and the subject of gay rights ends up playing a pretty substantial role as a result. It’s not there’s a political agenda behind it, it’s just a testament to how warped our opinions of homosexuality once were, how far we’ve come, and how it’s not about who you love, but that you love that matters in the long run. I also feel like it’s a lot more common to see stories about kids coming out to their parents rather than vice-versa, and I love how honest Oliver is throughout about how it affects him. There are no screaming matches or flipped lids, instead there’s understanding and feelings that go unspoken until the time is finally right. They’re friends as much as they are family, but what’s most interesting about the dynamic between Oliver and his father is the way one is stifled by his own insecurities and other was stifled by a world that diagnosed homosexuality as a mental illness. Their stories are similar in that they both have the chance at a fresh start, but where they differ is how they tackle the opportunity in front of them. It’s impossible to miss how much these two care about each other and how important they are in each other’s lives, and it’s even more interesting seeing Hal’s influence on Oliver play out in Oliver’s relationship with his main squeeze, Anna.

Not being the son to a gay father, I didn’t really have much going in the way of empathizing through personal experience, but being pretty confident that offspring are in my future, I’d be mighty pleased if my kid and I had a relationship like Oliver and Hal’s. And on that note, I just loved Christopher Plummer in this movie as Hal. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got a contagious smile and never stops showing it off, but being someone who tries to live by the phrase “Get busy living, or get busy dying,” Hal is a man after my own heart. Plummer has always been one of the legends and this is one of his best roles in years that’s totally deserving of the hype. Nothing too flashy, he just brings a whole lot of a humanity to a man you’ll adore spending time with.

And better yet, Ewan McGregor is just as good. Even if his circumstances aren’t relatable, his down-to-Earth performance absolutely is. I’ve always been a huge McGregor fan, so it’s always nice to see him doing his thing and doing it well. And while her only time in the spotlight is through a handful of childhood memories, Mary Page Keller is great as Oliver’s hilarious, deadpan, kid-at-heart mom; the gorgeous Melanie Laurent – who is quickly becoming one of my new favorite actresses – is magnetic and delightful as Oliver’s love interest, Anna; and Arthur, Oliver’s semi-telepathic Jack Russel Terrier, will make you want to run out and buy one. Did anyone else know that they were originally bred as hunting dogs? Interesting, right? Thanks, Mike Mills!

But aside from the Jack Russell Factoids, there’s a lot of wisdom to take away from this movie and there’s something very brave about having the courage to live and having the courage share it with the world at large. As much as it’s about Mills coping with the death of his parents, it’s about what Mills gained from their lives and what we can all gain from them in turn. I hope I’m not belaboring the point, but Beginners is just a wonderful little slice of life that comes from, and goes right to, the heart. Sometimes the only things preventing us from taking life by the reigns is ourselves, and sometimes we need a reminder to of that. Consider this a heads up.