Paranormal Activity 3 is the third installation in a film franchise that up to now I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve previously reviewed Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2 on pretty positive notes. Like The Blair Witch Project, which scared the crap out of my friends and I in the 90′s, the Paranormal Activity series has been pretty pioneering in its creation of thrills and chills.

The third installation, however, makes it clear that the premise has worn itself absolutely thin.

The premise of all these films has been simple: Something is haunting the house, let’s film it. In Paranormal Activity the entire film is shot through the perspective of a single camera that’s either on a tripod or being carried handheld for the purpose of capturing something crazy that’s going on somewhere in the house.  It’s convincing and the perspective doesn’t feel contrived. In Paranormal Activity 2, almost all of the action is captured by the homeowner’s robust video surveillance system which neatly covers all of the rooms, and outside, with well-placed stationary cameras. It’s very convincing and allows the narrative to unfold in a way that makes the viewer feel truly like a helpless bystander. Loved it.

I admit, I had incredibly high hopes for Paranormal Activity 3 and that’s probably, in part, why I was so completely disappointed.

Paranormal Activity 3 was directed by the same team that brought us Catfish, an incredibly well-craft documentary from 2009. Unfortunately, the team’s penchant for human interest stories doesn’t translate into creating a great horror film. The camera, in part, is what ruins it. Unlike the previous two films, Paranormal Activity 3 is set in 1988 so we can’t expect high-tech surveillance systems or high-definition cameras.

Instead, our main protagonist is a wedding videographer with an editing studio and all kinds of video equipment lying around. He does create some pretty cool means to monitor the house’s paranormal activity. A camera mounted to on oscillating fan is probably this movie’s most unique thrill. Watching a room come slowly in and out of the frame as the camera pans back and forth… depending on what’s in that room it can be terrifying! But that’s about it. When the protagonist is constantly dragging a heavy handheld camera everywhere, and I mean everywhere, it really falls apart and becomes a lot less convincing for the viewer. At some point the viewer begins to ask themselves, “Would he really be bringing a camera with him right now?” And the spell is broken.

The other disappointing aspect to the film is that they simple show and tell too much. The last twenty minutes of the film is about where it comes off the rails. At this point our protagonist is running around with a camera the whole time and not only is that wholly unconvincing but the plot itself is just down-right silly. The whole strength of the Paranormal Activity franchise and why it was so pioneering was that it showed very little. The thrills were, literally, bumps in the night. A noise off camera. A door opening ever so slightly. And then the occasion great big thrill like someone being dragged out of bed by invisible hands or something flying across the screen. It ramped up and always very little was shown. Paranormal Activity 3 disappoints by showing way too much, and what they show is way too goofy to be terrifying.

According to the Internet a fourth installment in this series is being produced by the same directors as the third. Try again? Unfortunately, all three of these movies broke box office records in their own right. They were all successful. So I guess the money machine will keep on cranking out more. I’ll probably end up watching them, as a diehard fan, but I’m fairly confident that the franchise has run its course and it’s time to put it to bed.

Favourite Films of 2011

I had a quick look around because I was curious and it seems like Tree of Life is topping everyone’s lists this year. We have it in the queue but haven’t got around to watching it yet. I’m curious now though and I wonder if it would change things if I were to watch it first.

The curious bit, however, about the two films that did make my list is that both feature the unmatched Paul Giamatti as the leading actor. This wasn’t intentional but when I looked at everything I’d watched this year and boiled it down to just a couple of my favourites… Do I have a particular bias towards anything that Paul Giamatti does? Perhaps. Is he undoubtedly the best actor working in Hollywood right now? Yes, sir.

Barney’s Version

Barney’s Version is a brilliant take on the novel by Canadian literary heavyweight Mordecai Richler. I remembering having to read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in my O.A.C. (Grade 13) English class. I probably only understood about a third of what I read at the time but I can certainly appreciate a heavily nuanced and deeply moving plot a lot more now that I’m older. Barney’s Version is a movie about love, marriage, family, and memory. It’s wonderfully-acted (duh), well-written (duh), and unfolds itself in a fantastically pleasing fashion distilling all the very best parts of a well-developed Woody Allen movie. Complicated, comedic, and charming sums it up pretty well too.

Win Win

Win Win follows in the same genre of comedy as another of my all-time favourite movies Lars and the Real Girl. I’ll sum it up like this: Small town, quirky characters, social conundrums, and the kind of plot that sometimes seems like something you couldn’t make up if you tried. Like Lars, we’re treated to ninety minutes of some truly great and wholly surreal story-telling about people, a place, and a number of situations we’d never even thought about before. In this film, Giamatti plays and small-time lawyer and high-school wrestling coach as if he were born for the role.

Favourite Music of 2011

I have to be honest here, I’m losing my touch a little bit. It used to be that I’d troll around the Internet for hours every week seeking out new musical entrees to dig my teeth into. This past year, between teaching, walking the dog, union work, and taking a couple of extra courses online I haven’t had the opportunity to avail myself of a whole lot of new music. I worry I might’ve missed something great—it keeps me up at night.

Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What

If you ever get a late night phone call from a heavily-disguised voice saying they’ve got me hostage and won’t release me unless you pay $1,000,000 the first thing you should do is ask some kind of question that only I can answer, just to prove they really have me and that I’m alive. If you asked who my favourite artist of all time is the answer, bar none, is Paul Simon. If the hostage-takers say differently then I’m probably already dead.

I didn’t love Paul Simon’s 2006 Surprise. Musically it had a lot going out and I loved that but Simon felt vocally weak, tired even. I don’t like tired Paul Simon. I used to put on Surprise and long for the Graceland days when Paul was younger and more energetic and I worried that maybe, finally, the great Paul Simon was on the out and out. Of course, I was absolutely wrong.

So Beautiful or So What is Simon’s greatest album since Graceland. It’s a guitar album—which is a pretty awesome direction for Simon—and features a lot of songs driven by virtuosic guitar melodies. It’s clear that Paul Simon has some serious guitar chops and he didn’t want us to forget. Both lyrically and musically this album is an absolute powerhouse. It runs the gamut from slow, lyrically rich near-ballads to lyrically rich up-beat, foot-stomping tracks and even some songs that are both.

tUnE-yArDs, w h o k i l l

Be honest, the first thing you think when you see a band name stylized like that is, “Avoid!”

Fortunately for me, when I first year about tUnE-yArDs it was on the CBC Radio’s Q—if I had actually seen their name first I probably wouldn’t even have given them a chance. Prejudice avoided!

tUnE-yArDs is mostly New England-based Merrill Garbus and a whole lot of loops. Her first album, I gather, was recorded entirely on cassette tape and was a one-woman show. 2011′s w h o k i l l is studio-produced and features help from some of her friends as well.

How to describe how great w h o k i l l is? I’ll say a few things. First, Garbus evidently spent some time in Kenya, a place that I’ve been to as well, and adapts a lot of African percussion rhythms into her music. Second, there are saxophones. Third, well OK, tUnE-yArDs is like a jazz, afro-funk, nouveau politique explosion that packs so much power I feel like you could take this record, play it for the people of North Korea, and instantly the entire country would rise up, overthrow their government, and democratically elect a new leader. Oh, and it’d be a she.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver

I missed the Bon Iver craze the first time around. Despite the best efforts of my good friend Andrew, I never really bothered with Justin Vernon’s 2008 For Emma, Forever Ago. I heard all about the mystique of being locked in a cabin in the woods, writing and recording using an old reel-to-reel recorder or something like that. I liked the idea but, for whatever reason, not enough to actually do any investigating. Finally—through what must’ve been an act of compassionate grace from the God—I decided to check out Bon Iver’s self-titled second album.

What how.

Bon Iver (2011) is like a sonic dream that Brian Eno would be envious of. What sets this album a part from everything else released in 2011 is the kind of depth packed into every track. The songs are stories about people and places set to music that can only be described as something out of someone’s wildest imagination. It’s soft and subtle and you kind of just float a long but there’s so much going on at the same time that you’re swept away just trying to take it all in. Not to mention Vernon’s now-trademarked vocal delivery which is, also, like something out of a dream I had once.

R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage (1982 – 2011)

It turns out that half of my picks this year were thanks to one particular friend with very good musical tastes.

I’ve always liked R.E.M., kind of in the background. Growing up when I did I missed my chance to like them when they were at their very best so whenever I thought about accessing their catalog of music it always seemed a little bit daunting. Where to begin? I knew, from loving Taking Heads, that I would like their early stuff but I was dying for some kind of career retrospective, something to serve as an overview.

Thankfully, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage came out and it was a steal on iTunes—40 tracks for $16. As far as retrospectives go, you really can’t go wrong here.

Favourite Television of 2011

It’s been a decidedly good year for television and if I’ve been remiss when it comes to seeking out good new music I think I’ve compensated in terms of what we’re watching these days. There’s a lot out there so it’s been a bit of a challenge picking out just a couple but here they are.

The Good Wife

The Good Wife is a legal drama with a lot of layers. Underneath the normal case per episode format is a pretty hefty plot line about politics, adultery, and corruption—a depth that sets it a part from all the other legal dramas that came before it. It’s as much a character study as it is a series of cases to be solved and that’s what I like about it. It’s timely and relevant and tackles big issues with a great cast of characters.

Once Upon a Time

From some of the people behind the epically successful LOST, Once Upon a Time takes a bunch of fairytale characters and plunks them down in the real world with absolutely no idea who they are. Like LOST, Once Upon a Time plays with the idea of alternate universes, alternate identities, memory, and mystery. I’ll say this: Finally, a show that we can really sink our teeth into.

Honourable mention goes to shows that have become reliable stalwarts like Modern Family (which never ceases to be funny) and Being Erica (which ended its run in dignity after jumping the shark mid-season).

Win Win is a movie about a small-town lawyer who coaches a high school wrestling team. It’s about an old man in a retirement home, his grandson, and his wayward mother. It’s about relationships, how they begin and how they end, how they break down and evolve, and the consequences of our actions. It’s a creative and inventive story, full of the same kind of deep humour that packed a movie like Lars and the Real Girl or The Family Stone. It packs a similar moral punch, too.

Win Win feels very much like an independent film. I compare it to Lars and the Real Girl because it has that same kind of small-town charm, the same kind of atmosphere. And like Lars and the Real Girl it’s incredibly well-acted. First of all, you’ve got Paul Giamatti. Everything Giamatti touches turns to gold, in my opinion. I consider him one of the best actors in Hollywood right now, and he’s winning awards to prove it. But beyond Giamatti, this film is very well-cast and that cast carries the film along the whole way. Even Jeffry Tambor (George Bluth Sr. from Arrested Development) and Bobby Cannavale (from nothing in particular) are incredibly hilarious in the roles as, ostensibly, colour commentary. So funny, which is kind of rare these days. And not over the top, which is also rare.

And Win Win is complicated. It doesn’t necessarily solve everything in a neat little bundle. Things get complicated and realistic. It’s a well-written, well-acted, and very hilarious comedy that doesn’t resort to silly gags or pedestrian humour to get its point across.

I don’t think it’s destined to win an Oscar or a Golden Globe and it’s not necessarily breaking any incredible new ground but it’s very good—very, very good. Win Win is—yup, I’m gonna say it—an absolute win. You should see it.

It struck me, after unintentionally watching two very similar films, to do a themed review. I’m calling this Summer Films in Small Spaces; these are two excellent movies to watch this summer—popcorn thrillers—dealing with very small, cramped, and confined spaces.

Buried (2010)

Buried is one of those love-it-or-hate-it movies. You’ve probably heard of the film because it was one of those daring productions, something different out of Hollywood, and it garnered a lot of press when it came out. Why? Because the entire hour and a half movies features only one set, a coffin, and one actor on screen, Ryan Reynolds. Here, I’ll sum up the plot for you this way: Ryan Reynolds, trapped in a coffin, somewhere in Iraq. He wakes up there, trapped, and spends the rest of the movie trying to get out.

Thing is, this film is brilliant, and it’s two very important details that make it so captivating.

First, like any good thriller, Buried is one of those films that makes you ask the question, “What would I do if it were me?” Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés puts you there, in that coffin, and you can’t—cannot!—help but imagine what you’d do in a similar situation. The phone calls Reynolds makes, his desperate attempts to escape, his frantic decision-making: This puts you right there in the action and you don’t want to miss a minute.

The second detail, and this only enhances the first, is the absolutely ingenious use of lighting and cinematography. You’d think, you’d really think, that you couldn’t do much in a coffin but you’d be wrong. Cortés and his cinematographer play with angles and lighting in such brilliant ways, with such expert skill, that you’re interested—actually interested—in seeing the inside of a coffin for 90 minutes. And it isn’t just because Ryan Reynolds is so easy on the eyes.

Buried packs a punch. In fact, it punches you right in the face, and it doesn’t apologize. Nor should it.

Devil (2010)

If Buried is a sucker punch, Devil is ten shots to the kidneys.

You may have heard the backstory surrounding Devil; I wrote about it a year ago as well. Devil is based on a concept by one of my favourite, although sometimes beleaguered, directors M. Night Shyamalan who in turned based his concept off of the brilliant mystery writer Agatha Christie. The concept itself is simple: there are a group of strangers who are trapped in an elevator, among them is the Devil.

Unlike Buried, much of the action takes place outside of the actual elevator, which is a relief, because this movie might’ve been a disaster as a character study. Instead, the film revolves around the drama in the elevator—an increasingly sinister scene—and the drama on the outside as building security, police, and an expanding cast of emergency workers, try to sort out the situation.

Does it sound awesome yet?

Devil, being based off a detective fiction novel, is one-part murder mystery and one-part thriller. Combined, it is a million parts awesome. I know, the film itself received mixed reviews (as did Buried) but I am absolutely sold, and not just as an M. Night Shyamalan fanboy.

Devil is a thriller-mystery of the highest order, and incredibly intense. If I have one critique of the movie itself it would be the casting of the religious security guard—the poor guy left to explain to everyone else what’s really going on—as a stereotypical Hispanic male. Come on, Hollywood, there are Catholics outside of the immigrant, low-wage communities.

All in all, both Buried and Devil are, in my opinion, perfect summer movies. The kind of action and drama that you can sit down to, bowl of popcorn in your lap, and really enjoy. These aren’t high film, but they are artfully and skillfully made. And I dare you—dare you—to try and tear your eyeballs away from the screen while watching either of these movies. Impossible to do.

Back in 1988 a man named Jack Rebney and a crew of amateur filmmakers were under contract with Winnebago Industries to make an industrial promo film for Winnebago salesman to use across the country. The infomercial was filmed over the course of a dozen days, in the heat of the summer, in the middle of Iowa. Rebney, being a seasoned broadcaster whose career included two stints with CBS, quickly lost patience battling the scorching heat, the vexatious fly population, and his bumbling production crew. The result of Jack’s lost patience? The famous Winnebago Man outtakes reel. Outtakes peppered with so much swearing and so many breakdowns and brilliant catch phrases that it earned Rebney the title “The World’s Angriest Man” and became, arguably, the first viral video (originally passes around on VHS tapes).

Winnebago Man, the 2009 documentary, is the quest of one filmmaker, Ben Steinbauer, to track Rebney down and find out exactly what made him so angry. The resulting film is brilliant.

Steinbauer, while annoying and vexatious himself at times, hires a private detective to find Rebney and from there we begin an emotional, mysterious, and humorous adventure into the foothills of Northern California. Without spoiling too much I can tell you that this film packs a wonderful story, has a very good pace, and if you like human interest dramas about truly interesting people than you’ll enjoy this film. In fact, after watching it I thought how interesting it would be to see more of these “Where Are They Now” videos about former YouTube stars—those, of course, who didn’t intend to achieve stardom.

All in all, if you like documentaries, or even if you can mildly tolerate them, this is a great summer film to spend an afternoon or evening with. Oh, and it has a lot of swears.

Last year, Paranormal Activity took the box office by storm. Shot for a staggeringly low $15,000 the movie quickly became the highest grossing film of all time, in terms of return on investment. The popularity was due, in part, to a pretty successful viral marketing campaign using Twitter and Facebook.

Paranormal Activity 2 did it again, according to Wikipedia, breaking box office records for the highest grossing opening for an R-rated movie—beating out Watchmen. This, again, with relatively little to no traditional marketing or promotion.

If you didn’t see the first installment what you need to know about the franchise is this: the movies follow the lives of ordinary people who are being tormented by a ghost—an evil spirit—and is filmed in a reality-TV, first-person kind of perspective. In the first movie, it was shot largely by one of the lead characters who captured the poltergeist activity on an HD video camera, sometimes hand held, and during the night, on a tripod using nightshot. This perspective, in the first film, lent to the creepy, restrictive atmosphere of the whole thing and like The Blair Witch Project before it, served to really scare the heck out of viewers.

Paranormal Activity 2 takes a slightly different tact from the first film, while still remaining pretty true to the spirit of the original film.

Without giving away too many details, this film follows a different family, equally haunted by strange phenomenon that seems to increase and escalate. Following a supposed break-in which happens early on in the movie, the family install a high-tech security system in their house complete with cameras that can see in the dark!

What follows are things that go bump in the night and characters who slowly begin losing their mind during the day.

Personally, I like the idea of the film unraveling through the surveillance system cameras along with some hand held shots rather than just the hand held shots of the first movie. The security system cameras allow the story to unwind in much greater detail simply because you can see more of what’s going on. The sacrifice, of course, is that the really restricted narrative of the first movie—since it’s only one camera—is lost but since the film still takes place just inside of one house you’re still left feeling trapped and helpless throughout most of the movie, and it works.

Overall, Paranormal Activity 2 is pretty much everything you’d expect after seeing the first installment but different enough to keep you guessing and interested, I think, all the way till the end. The one downfall with the movie though, in my opinion, is the ending. In a film that ramps up to the climax the whole way through deciding how to end it must be a tricky job and I think, in this case, perhaps a better decision could’ve been made. Still, if you liked the first one the second one is definitely worth checking out for a few thrills.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Colin Firth for The King’s Speech

Maria and I were never able to see Bitiful, which the always brilliant Javier Bardem is nominated for, but we’ve heard that he was really good. Still, I’d find it very hard to believe that his performance was better than Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. Firth absolutely lived his role as the stammering reluctant King of England. Firth became the awkward, nervous, bleary-eyed King George using his entire body, in scenes that made me cringe. I loved even the way he carried himself, so unsure, so scared of everything. Throughout the film too, I thought his transformation was subtle and believable.

Compared to Jeff Bridges in True Grit—who was hilarious but fairly run-of-the-mill—and Jesse Eisenberg—who was pretty one-dimensional—Firth is the clear stand-out choice. His character was complex, incredibly complex, and his interpretation is absolutely brilliant.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

I admit I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in this category having only seen Black Swan and Winter’s Bone. I’ll tell you what though, if Portman doesn’t win I would be incredibly surprised. Portman’s otherworldly transformation as the lead dancer in her company’s production of Swan Lake has to be the best performance by an actress for 2010. Her madness was subtle. Her take on the character was very simple, but I think that just lent to an even more frightening performance: she appeared, on the surface, to be a simple character but then layer upon layer begin to, literally, peel away. I think this will be Portman’s year when she takes the stage and when her career moves up to that next level.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech

If Geoffrey Rush doesn’t win for Best Supporting Actor then it better be John Hawkes for his role in Winter’s Bone.

Let’s start with Hawkes. In his role Teardrop, the emotionally unpredictable Uncle to a girl searching for her father, Hawkes is pretty stellar. He’s scary, but believable. He’s complicated but like all of the actors in Winter’s Bone, he makes it seem real like he isn’t acting at all, like you’re almost watching a documentary—a very good one.

However, absolutely hands down, Geoffrey Rush needs to take this award. If Colin Firth’s stuttering King is an unforgettable performance then so is Rush’s pull-no-punches speech therapist Lionel Logel. Rush is nothing short of hilarious through virtue of being so confident in himself and so clever. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition: Rush playing a headstrong, self-assured common man against Firth’s nervous, stammering monarch.

Best Cinematography

Black Swan

In my opinion, this is perhaps the hardest category to call this year because there are three pretty predominant front-runners.

First is Inception. For all those naysayers, Inception was, visually, a pretty stunning film. There were lots of interesting things done with the camera to create a cohesive, yet absolutely mind-bending movie. Think of the action scenes, that whole upside-down segment, etc. It’s definitely in the running.

The King’s Speech is also nominated and if you weren’t paying pretty close attention you might’ve missed it but this film has some stellar camera work. Framing Colin Firth in a super wide angle against the crumbling wall of Geoffrey Rush’s office. Or filming Rush, rising from his chair, his face taking up the whole frame, looming over Firth with an absolutely palpable sense of authority and confidence.

Finally, there’s Black Swan, and this is the film I’m going to pick as the winner. When I reviewed this film I made a bit about how great I thought the camera was, following Natalie Portman around so closely and so controlled it only added to the sense that Portman’s life was constricted, constrained, and enhanced her madness. I loved it, and I think it worked well enough to deserve an Oscar.

Best Editing

The Social Network

I don’t think editing needs to be wildly impressive to win an award, I think it needs to be good and in the case of The Social Network, it was really well done. The movie was edited to keep the pace as a good clip, to unwind the story with perfect timing and the multiple storylines told around the different lawsuits, if you’ve seen the film, were done really well. The way it was written, this was a film that could’ve easily fallen apart without a good editor but obviously it had one and I think it’ll easily win in this category.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Social Network

The only other contender in this category, in my opinion, is Winter’s Bone which could also easily win. In both cases, the dialogue is pretty outstanding but I think The Social Network is the more likely to take the prize. Aaron Sorkin is simply the dialogue master and his screenplay was so fast and furious, so clever and complicated, that it made the film that much more enjoyable to watch.

Best Original Screenplay

Inception

Easily, folks, easily. It’s a pretty brilliant concept for a film even if it was robbed from Total Recall. No other contenders.

Best Picture

The Social Network

In my mind, in this heavyweight category, the one that matters the most, there are two contenders: The King’s Speech and The Social Network. Both films are about really interesting, niche subjects: the inventor of Facebook and the stammering King of England. Both are character-driven dramas with really interesting lead characters, really snappy dialogue, and both are really well acted.

In my opinion, The King’s Speech has far more compelling characters. Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth stand heads and shoulders above The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg. But The Social Network has a quicker pace to it, it feels slightly better put together. While The King’s Speech feels a bit weighty and dragging, at times, The Social Network never slowed down. I liked that about The Social Network, and I think, despite the better character performances in The King’s Speech, it’s overall feel and pacing might see it lose to The Social Network.

Still,  it’s a very tough call… and we’ll have to see.

Caper films are a dime a dozen.

Enter The Town.

Set in the Charlestown area of Boston, Mass. The Town follows around a group of career criminals as they struggle to make sense of the oh-so-difficult world around them. Raised to do crime, this group of confused young men know nothing else and when one of them, a woe-begone Doug MacRay played by Ben Affleck, tries to bow out of a life of hijinks things go wrong. Oh, and he falls in love with one of their kidnap victims, which is usually also a big no no.

The Town hits on just about every cliche you can imagine, and probably some that you hadn’t thought of but when you see them being perfectly played out in front of your eyes you’ll go, “Oh yeah, that’s so corny!”And then weep.

Really though, The Town is a fine movie. It’s a caper film, but it brings nothing new to the genre. It’s the kind of par for the course movie that pulls no surprises on you and leaves you, in the end, with exactly what you expected after the first twenty minutes. The characters are slightly complex, but not particularly deep, and you can get a pretty good read on who’s who shortly after the film begins. There’s the brains, the goofy fat guy, the quiet guys with no lines, and the uncontrollable wild card character played by Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker fame. To his credit, Renner does a pretty good job but I get the sense he’s already been type-cast after just a couple of films.

The plot too is predictable, including the last half of the film in which the old gang needs to do just one more big job and then they can call it quits. I bet you can guess how the job goes?

Still, the one redeeming factor for a caper film is being party to some really cool heists so maybe The Town draws us in that way? No, not really, and this is why I find the film hard to forgive.

See I don’t mind a movie just being a movie because there’s a place for that: entertainment. A caper film doesn’t have to reinvent the caper genre like Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels did. A caper movie can just be another caper movie and that’s fine. Throw in all the appropriate ingredients, bake it in the mold, and after a few million dollars its done. But, for me, The Town doesn’t even cut it as a cookie cutter caper film.

The characters are dry, the plot is predictable, and the one thing that I really enjoy and find redeeming in even the most uncreative of caper films, the heists, are all pretty blase. There’s no real build up, there’s no real pay off, and instead we’re left with long stretches of really boring talking punctuated by what looks like it might be an interesting and intricate job but turns out to be a dud. Even as an ordinary run-of-the-mill action, adventure, or drama film it falls pretty short of the mark. Oh, and that love interest I mentioned earlier? It lasts for a couple of scenes, it’s wholly under-developed, and incredibly hard to believe.

In sum, I’ll put it this way. When my lovely wife described what she thought The Town was like from watching the trailer she said, “It’s like Batman.” Now any film that’s like Batman, The Dark Knight, that is, I’m very interested in seeing. Unfortunately for both of us, The Town ended up being an awful lot more like Weekend at Bernie’s 2 than it did a well-crafted, intelligently-executed, interesting adventure film.

Black Swan is an exercise in imagination and patience; a lesson in ambition and jealousy.

First thing, don’t watch Black Swan if you’d like to feel good by the end. Watch Black Swan if you’re in the mood for a fair share of nightmares and a queasy kind of uneasy feeling at the end of the film. What I’m saying is that it’s a pretty hard pill to swallow.

Black Swan follows a young ballerina, played expertly by Natalie Portman, whose ambition is to be the lead dancer in her company’s adaptation of Swan Lake. That said, it isn’t a ballet movie. Black Swan is a kind of character study. Throughout the course of the film we follow around Portman’s character, almost in a kind of reality TV style, as her ambition drives her deeper and deeper into her role in the ballet, and as it drives her to become more and more mistrustful, jealous and, of course, stark-raving mad.

The film is brilliantly shot. Through a very restricted point-of-view, we see Portman’s madness unfold. The camera follows her around, and often very tightly. We only see what’s immediately around her. If she’s being followed, we don’t see what’s behind her. If she’s dancing, or stretching, or washing her face we see only the bare minimum: her. This sense of restriction is heightened in Portman’s tiny apartment that she shares with her mother, in their tiny kitchen, in her stifling bedroom. And this whole sense of being enclosed, being restricted both by the cinematography and the set is played off brilliantly against Portman’s emotions, her mother’s dotting, her long, slow descent. It’s absolutely gripping, and great.

Portman herself is a pretty intense study too. Her portrayal of ballerina Nina Sayers is this kind of delicate balance between someone who’s absolutely and entirely fragile—poised on the bare edge of a pin—and a dark, sinister individual capable of the blackest of deeds. She plays these two sides of the coin, this balancing act, with enormous skill and talent. I mean, it’s Natalie Portman, and I’m scared to death of her?!

She’s in good company, too. Her kind of nemesis is another ballerina, an annoying and kind of showy gossip girl played by Mila Kunis. Her company’s director is a slimy, disturbing and dirty European played by Vincent Cassel. And her mother is a controlling, neurotic played wonderfully by Barbara Hershey. Each in their own way, these characters move in and out and around Portman’s character’s narrative and each plays their own important role—and, more importantly, plays it well.

If you’re looking for a film—not a movie—to watch out of this bunch of Oscar picks, Black Swan might be the one. It’s not an easy film by any means, but it’s great film-making. An exercise, I think, in the art of making a film. Dark, eerie, and leaves you wholly unfulfilled. But, it’s art, and it succeeds, with accolades.

I am a huge fan of Ethan and Joel Coen, you must understand. I also enjoy myself a good Western. So when I heard that the Coen brothers were working on a Western, I flipped.

When I first saw the trailers for True Grit, I had a pretty good idea about what I thought the film would be. I pictured something right smack in between No Country for Old Men and O Brother Where Art Thou. Somewhere between a gritty, thriller-drama in the desert and a bumbling odyssey adventure with upright pianos and barn burnings. This, I thought, would be cinema perfection.

True Grit, however, ended up being anything but perfection and despite the Oscar nod—despite the laudable performance by newcomer Hailee Steinfeld—I found it to be a pretty disappointing film.

It’s all down to expectations though.

What I expected, coming into this film, was a kind of comedy of errors in the wild West. But this wasn’t what Joel and Ethan Coen wanted to deliver. Instead, True Grit is what Roger Ebert called a “straight genre exercise”. True Grit is simply a Western.

True Grit is a adapted from a novel. In fact, it was already pretty famously adapted by John Wayne in an earlier film. But, in the novel the main voice is that of the protagonist, the young and fiercely Protestant Mattie Ross, played in this version by Hailee Steinfeld. In the John Wayne adaptation, it’s Wayne himself who is the focal point of the film. The Coen brothers saw this as a mistake and so in their adaptation are more faithful to the text.

It works, in a way.

Steinfeld as Mattie Ross is an interesting and simply hilarious character to follow around. At fourteen, she has a fiery passion and such self-confidence that her appearance in any scene in the movie is just a joy to behold. Her strong Protestant convictions—at fourteen!—are believable in the way they’re portrayed and fuel her quest—the premise of the movie—to find her father’s killer. It’s wonderful as well how natural this whole adventure seems to her. While there are times when she’s clearly in over her head she seems, on the whole, to be completely unfazed by the fact that they’re ruthlessly and relentlessly tracking down the man that murdered her father—as if it’s simply what’s required, necessary. She’s fourteen!

True Grit is very well cast. Alongside Steinfeld is Jeff Bridges, hot off last year’s Academy Award for his work in that other cowboy film. In his role as the rogue U.S. Marshall, Bridges is channeling some otherworldly persona which, at times, comes about as close as an O Brother Where Art Thou performance as we see in this film. It’s a truly great performance. So too is Matt Damon’s performance as the hard-to-pin-down Texas Ranger LaBoeuf. Damon’s character is slippy, the kind of personality that comes across like they don’t know much but are really holding all the cards. Like Bridges, Damon truly owns his role.

The difficulty for me though was giving everyone a fair shake and I left the movie feeling like no one really got enough screen time. By the end I wanted more Steinfeld, I wanted more Bridges, and I wanted more of Matt. I was left feeling like I hadn’t had the chance to get to really know any of them. Maybe it’s the plot, which is an awful lot of people coming and going for no particular reason. Or maybe it’s the result of this kind of ensemble cast with what seemed like almost three lead actors. Either way, I was left with the distinct impression that I’d hardly got to know anyone before the film was over.

To be fair, True Grit has been pretty well received but just about everyone. The first part was my own expectations. Good on the Coen brothers for working out a straight genre kind of film. But again, I would’ve loved to have seen a more Wild West adventure. The film is well-acted and there’s a ton of Oscar buzz surrounding Steinfeld’s performance but, again, I felt like none of these all-star actors really got a chance, a good long chance, to shine. The bottom line though is that any way you look at it, a film like True Grit is head and shoulders above most everything else out there, warts and all.