Coming Soon: A look back

We don't rush into our best-of lists for each year. Early January is a time to catch up on the titles that show up on other critics' lists. And there's a lag in release dates out here in the high desert.

For instance, "Inside Llewyn Davis" and "Her" open Jan. 10. And the Guild Cinema finally brings two contenders to town in the next week or so -- "The Broken Circle Breakdown" and "A Touch of Sin."

We'll probably also wait for the Jan. 14 video release of "The Spectacular Now" to finalize our list. So stick with us and expect the big 2013 extravaganza around mid-month.

As a preview, here's a list so far of 2013 releases that have received an A or an A-minus:

• Nebraska
• Blue Is the Warmest Color
• Short Term 12
• Enough Said
• Bert Stern: Original Madman
• Supporting Characters
• War Witch
• Museum Hours
• In a World ...
• Mud
• 20 Feet From Stardom
• Frances Ha
• Before Midnight
• Upstream Color

And for review, here are links to previous best-of lists:

• 2005, 2006, 2007 
• 2011
• 2012
• The Aughts

One-Liners: Fiction

THE HUNT (B+) - Mads Mikkelsen is powerful as a presechool teacher falsely accused of sexually abusing his young charges.

Just when life seems to be turning around for Lucas -- he's regaining custody of his teenage son, and cute Nadja is making her move -- little Klara (a mesmerizing Annika Wedderkopp), confused by Lucas' kindness and by a pornographic image she has seen, accuses him of exposing himself to her. The interview done by the head teacher and a specialist brought in to assess the situation is a deft depiction of manipulation and misunderstanding and the frustration of dealing with young children. For some reason, everyone assumes that a 4-year-old would never make up such a thing. Soon, incited by the adults, other children start to exhibit "signs" of possible abuse.

The brilliance of Thomas Vinterberg's movie (he co-wrote it with Tobias Lindholm) is how he takes a simple premise and turns it into an absolute horror film, as Lucas' life unravels and he becomes an outcast in the small town. Soon, the viewer can't help but wonder if Lucas may, in fact, have done something wrong. All of his previous, seemingly innocuous actions (holding hands with Klara, helping a boy use the toilet, play-wrestling with the kids) now seem questionable.

Mikkelsen ("A Royal Affair" and the lead role in TV's "Hannibal") brings an elegance and dignity to his role. Lucas' kindness is real, and so is his sense of outrage over the almost casual way in which one stray comment from a child can snowball into a profoundly damaging scandal. Thomas Bo Larsen is equally moving as Klara's father, Theo, who is one of Lucas' best friends. To Vinterberg's credit, Theo's reaction to the incident is in no way black and white. And the performance drawn from little Annika is an amazing accomplishment; she has the unsettling innocence of the girl from "Poltergeist" along with the assuredness of an adult like Nicole Kidman.

The title comes from the hunting crowd Lucas hangs with and the rite of passage he hopes to see his son pass through. (And, of course, the obvious metaphor of the hunter becoming the hunted.) The opening scene shows the grown men frolicking naked in a frigid lake, suggesting that we never fully lose our innocence but rather surrender it at times to society and to the perils of being a trusting part of a community. 

THE ANGELS' SHARE (B) - An endlessly charming Scottish tale of a ragtag group of petty criminals falling in together during their community service to discover a fondness for the production of whisky, thanks to their kindly overseer who takes them to a distillery on one of their field trips.

The story revolves around Robbie (the magnetic Paul Brannigan), who just barely escapes a prison sentence, in part because his girlfriend is about to give birth to a son. Robbie catches hell from the thugs he assaulted and fields threats from his girlfriend's dad, who wants Robbie out of her life. After the birth of his son, he vows to put his violence behind him.

While performing community service, four of the participants bond under the direction of Harry, a friendly chap who loves his whisky and fancies himself a would-be aficionado. The group includes the cartoonishly dense Albert (Gary Maitland) who plays off Harry in a way that recalls Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington from Gervais' animated HBO show.

Robbie leads the gang in a caper involving a rare cask of whisky worth more than a million dollars. The plot unfolds neatly and believably.

Veteran filmmaker Ken Loach oversees the production with a sure hand. The story is downright quaint at times, sort of like Danny Boyle's "Millions," and wouldn't be out of place on the Hallmark Channel if it weren't for the characters' wall-to-wall foul language.  The movie overcomes a slow start to win the viewer over, and the ending is just about perfect.

One-Liners: Fact

DIRTY WARS (C) - It's the Jeremy Scahill show! Starring ... Jeremy Scahill ... and a cast of bad guys and their victims.

This is a bizarre way to present an exposé of America's covert wars in the battle against terrorism. The journalism here takes a back seat to director Rick Rowley's fetishistic fascination with our intrepid hero, Scahill, known for his work for the Nation and "Democracy Now." We get endless shots of Scahill skulking around Yemen or walking lonely through the streets of his Brooklyn neighborhood (if only all those hipsters knew what the U.S. government is doing in their name and how selflessly this tortured soul is battling valiantly to expose the truth!).

We see the scary world through Scahill's penetrating blue eyes -- for instance when he's gazing longingly out a train window -- except when he's going all "CSI Miami" and wearing sunglasses on an airplane. We see him shopping at a local bodega (oh, the utter emptiness of capitalist society!) or type-type-typing on his little laptop or testify valiantly before a clueless Congress.

Scahill's target here is JSOC -- the Joint Special Operations Command that is running the drone show without regard to borders or moral lines. There's a compelling story to be told about the criminal military acts being committed by the Obama administration, but a very special episode of MTV's "Catfish" is not the way to go about it.

LA CAMIONETA (B) - This is a sweet little documentary about decommissioned school buses in the United States getting second lives in Central America. Director Mark Kendall, in his first full-length film, takes a wistful approach. He lets the men who retrieve the buses and those who refurbish them tell their stories, and Kendall spends time with the men and their families.

Kendall finds drama in the dangers the men encounter, first driving through Mexico and then navigating Guatemala, where in a recent year 130 bus drivers were killed by gangs demanding extortion money. The focus is on one bus that makes its way from Pennsylvania to Guatemala. Workers methodically rebuild the bus and give it a new shell, with fresh paint and design flourishes.

Nothing exciting happens here, but the 71 minutes pass pleasantly, and you've gained an appreciation for another culture and the zen of the cycle of life.

Hooray for Hollywood

AMERICAN HUSTLE (B) - One of the big titles of the end of the year is a bloated, shallow piece of filmmaking by David O. Russell, who nonetheless hits some entertaining high notes with a cast that turns the volume up to 11 throughout.

A phrase popped into my head during the plodding second half, as Russell takes too much time to get to his clever twist at the end: showing off. The director here is showing off. Also showing off are the cinematographer, hair stylist and costume designer; the talented cast; and Amy Adams' breasts.

As good as the performances are, you can't help but occasionally get taken out of the story and think that these are really good actors sinking their teeth into the pulpy material. Christian Bale hams it up as a con man, Irving Rosenfeld, working with Adams' phony Lady Edith before they get busted by the FBI and roped into cooperating with the Abscam affair, led by Agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). You admire Bale for diving into the character -- all comb-over, articulation and disgusting belly -- and his transformation is amazing at times; but too often his little tics (like adjusting his glasses) come across as overly mannered. Cooper, with his own crazy curly hair, hits some high notes but also comes across as an intense Method actor trying to bring his character to life. Adams can deliver a look and a line like no one -- most of her best ones here are in the trailer -- but she, like Bale and Cooper, struggles to bring any depth to her role. They are all undermined by the stretched-soup script, which treats the characters like props or just delivery systems for snappy lines and constant lip-syncing to '70s hits.

Faring a little better is Jeremy Renner as the conflicted mayor of Camden, who is desperate to revive Atlantic City and has convinced himself that he has to lie down with a few scummy people in order to deliver for the good people of New Jersey. Even at his finest, though, he seems to be channeling Joe Pesci from better movies. The best performance, though, comes from the smallest of the major roles: Jennifer Lawrence as Irving's neurotic wife, Rosalyn. Lawrence finds nuance and substance in a character that could have been just another throwaway floozy like the countless Jersey mob wives we've seen over the years. The film comes alive whenever she's around, and her performance makes me curious about seeing Russell's last film, "Silver Linings Playbook."

(By the end, too, I felt bad for Lawrence and Adams, who, along with most of the supporting female cast, are asked to repeatedly spill their cleavage all over the screen via push-up bras and plunging (era-appropriate) necklines. I was around in the '70s -- and a teenager for much of it -- and while the styles were an abomination, I don't remember it as being such a golden era of side-boob.)

Somehow, Russell thought he needed 2 hours and 18 minutes to try to spin an epic. But this all plays like a series of satisfying vignettes, strung together like highlight reels from famous mob movies. The comedy is well done (starting with Irving's opening scene in front of the mirror with a comb and some hair glue); the drama, not so much.

When the mob shows up halfway through, you know there's a precious torch-passing happening from Scorsese to the next generation, an official coronation overseen by Robert De Niro Himself in an uncredited cameo (in which he's refreshingly old-school ominous in a scene that, overall, falls flat). It's at that point where the screenplay (by Russell and a no-name co-writer) gets muddled and the cast loses its momentum on the muddy track.

What we're left with is a sometimes brilliant director producing an often-entertaining star vehicle, with a cast that can't help but chew the vintage scenery. I'm sure they all had fun showing off. That's Hollywood for you. That's showbiz.

Family Ties: 'Nebraska'

NEBRASKA (A) - I don't feel compelled to write much about this movie, perhaps because I feel oddly protective of it. Others have critiqued the hell out of it. Go read those reviews; or just go see this wisely funny and profoundly touching film. Storytelling on the screen doesn't get much better than this.

Alexander Payne follows up his surprisingly satisfying "The Descendants" with this s mart character study of Woody Grant (a beyond-haggard Bruce Dern) and his son David (Will Forte), who agrees to drive the old coot from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, in order to collect the million dollars Woody foolishly thinks he's won from a marketing firm.

June Squibb is a trip as Woody's endlessly hectoring wife, Kate, who has an unkind word for everybody whose name comes up in conversation, even while standing at their graves. The most tender words to Woody she can manage are "You big idiot," offered with a kiss to the forehead. If ever a history of a marriage was masterfully summed up with one line, it's this from 70-something Kate, complaining to her son about Woody: "His mother spoiled him."

The brilliance of Payne's accomplishment here lies in his depiction of Woody's family in rural Nebraska -- they are odd but not cartoonish; they are mockable but not unimaginable. Tim Driscoll and Kevin Ratray are perfect as the thick-skulled brothers joined at the quip who enjoy knocking down big-city, smarty-pants cousin David, especially over his apparent lack of driving prowess. Payne's script is economical, and he conveys volumes with simple shots, like a roomful of stone-faced old men gathered to watch Sunday football, their complicated shared history just lingering in the air.

Everyone wants a piece of Woody's money. Stacy Keach comes out of nowhere to nearly steal the show as Woody's old business partner, Ed Pegram, who is trying to put the screws to David with scowling threats. One of the best lines comes from Ed, who laments the decline of marriage by noting that divorce used to be considered a sin: "I guess God changed his mind." Keach also treats us to a karaoke version of "In the Ghetto."

But it's Dern who holds this all together, with a nuanced performance of a man who seems to be losing his mind or may just be acting out like a 12-year-old seeking attention. His demons follow him everywhere; he can't resist the blinking light of the tavern in his old hometown. Forte holds his own as the exasperated son, who gleans a few old stories that give his dad some dimension and allow David to both understand his father and find some peace while indulging him.

One shot in the valedictory final scene captures it all: David is scrunched down, child-like, looking up at his father -- their roles, for a few seconds, reversed to the way it used to be, long ago. Like many other gems scattered throughout the film, it's a million-dollar moment.

The Big Others

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY (B) - I would need several more viewings to even hazard an inspired guess as to what pop philosopher Slavoj Zizek is trying to impart to those of us of ordinary intelligence. In this follow-up to his and Sophie Fiennes' "Pervert's Guide to Cinema" (2006), Zizek again riffs on Hollywood's broad messages in order to put forth a grand discourse on ideology, capitalism and governmental control.

Fiennes places Zizek in replicas of sets of films like "Taxi Driver" and "Titanic," and the effect is endlessly amusing. Zizek spends much time explaining the Big Other, the stand-in for God in godless communist states. Other times he's riffing on romantic relationships. My favorite theory: that the Titanic's crash into the iceberg was actually a boon to Rose and Jack, because it saved them from the inevitable relationship stasis that would have set in after a few weeks of whirlwind romance and allowed her to idealize her dead lover through the years.

I can't analyze the content here with any authority. Hell, even my philosopher pal with the big brain took the Fifth afterward and called for a transcript in order to step into the ring with the Slovenian Slugger.

You let this tsunami of intellect wash over you and you try to keep up with Zizek's dialectic as if you are gasping for air, grasping for recognizable concepts as if they are lifelines. It's like a mind-altering drug; you walk out of the theater exhilarated and a little wasted, and eventually your mind snaps back into its pedantic place.

ISHTAR (D+) - I've always been curious about this classic stinker starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty as songwriters getting caught up in CIA intrigue in northern Africa, and what better way to appreciate it than on the cornball channel THIS-TV, commercials and all.

At times this has brief flashes of the brilliance of writer/director Elaine May -- for instance, in a quirky throwaway line here and there, particularly with Hoffman's awkward, deadpan delivery . Charles Grodin arrives as a CIA operative, trying to rescue the film but failing miserably.

This might have worked when it was released during the VHS era. At that time, the Hope-Crosby road movies were as much in its rearview mirror as "Ishtar" now is in ours. May presents it as cheesy homage to old movies -- with pure slapstick, including shtick with a blind camel -- but it now plays as painfully out of date and as out of tune as Beatty and Hoffman trilling their horrible tunes (which were carefully crafted by Paul Williams). Maybe this would have had a chance with some lesser known actors giving it their all rather than a couple of lazy stars phoning it in and fearful of bombing.

By the final reel, this farce completely unravels, and it all seems rather sad. No one stood up to tell May and her cast that they were making a bad movie.

New to the Queue

And the big titles just keep on comin' ...

Asghar Farhadi follows up his flawless "A Separation" with another drama about separation, "The Past."

David O. Russell is usually good for every other movie, so, despite reservations (including the whoring out of Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence), we'll go for "American Hustle."

The chatty French drama "What's In a Name?"

Dare we, again, go the full LaBute? His latest attack is "Some Velvet Morning."

The quirky documentary about the good works of Swiss pediatrician/cellist/clown Beat Richner in Cambodia, "Beatocello's Umbrella."

The quirky Christmas tale "White Reindeer."

Shall we dip back again into Joe Swanberg's deep well? The presence of star Jane Adams might make us go back to that well again for "All the Light in the Sky."

Twin personal documentaries from Polish filmmaker  Wojciech Staron, "Two Lessons."

I'll probably wait for video for "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues." That way I can fold laundry during the parts with Steve Carell.

Troping out

CRYSTAL FAIRY & THE MAGICAL CACTUS AND 2012 (B+) - An almost documentary-level road trip film from Sebastian Silva ("The Maid") is rescued by a strong cast lifting up a slight script. Michael Cera -- totally in the zone here -- is Jamie, an American in Chile who corrals three local brothers into hunting down a San Pedro cactus for a beachcomber mescaline experience.

First, however, Jamie meets a new-age manic pixie dream girl who goes by the name Crystal Fairy, a fellow American, and invites her on the trip. Almost immediately, Crystal's zen vibe clashes with Jamie's hyperactive personality as a passive-aggressive bully. You'll either love or hate Cera here; this feels like the ultimate skittish man-child he was born to play.

Gaby Hoffmann, a former child actor, is perfect as the uninhibited Crystal Fairy, who quickly earns the nickname Crystal Hairy for the tufts of untended body hair she's not ashamed to show off in front of the boys. She's all about meditation and blessings and talking out her feelings; Jamie just wants to score a cactus and go lose his mind. The brothers, only one of whom speaks decent English, are around mostly to serve as foils and as a charming Greek chorus.

The hunt for the cactus is fun, and their time on the beach culminates in the classic cliche of the confessional around the campfire. The reveals here are both bizarre and underwhelming. But by that time, you've grown fond of all five characters. Silva's hand-held camerawork and smart script produce five very real 20-somethings bouncing off of each other and building up a relationship not only with each other but with the viewer. Cera is a wonder to behold, and Silva wisely follows the actor's lead. A small gem.

TOUCHY FEELY (B-minus) - The impeccable Lynn Shelton ("Humpday," "Your Sister's Sister") wastes a strong cast with this slight mood piece about the healing powers of alternative therapies. My biggest gripe is the reliance on a tired trope -- older characters taking a drug trip to open their minds and hearts -- to bring epiphanies to the main characters.

The entrancing Rosemarie DeWitt is Abby, a masseuse who suddenly not only loses her touch but is repulsed by sight of skin, even that of her boyfriend Jesse (Scoot McNairy). Meantime, her super-meek dentist brother Paul (a distractingly lethargic Josh Pais) resuscitates his practice by finding a magic healing connection with his patients.

Allison Janney is sadly misused here as a cartoonish reiki therapist who counsels Abby and mentors Paul. And Ellen Page ("Juno") seems lost as Paul's daughter Jenny, who has a mental block about applying to college and gets randomly crushy.

Abby pulls away from Jesse immediately after he asks her to move in with her (he was just supposed to be a fun rebound). The cast struggles to find the connections between the characters, and I'm not sure whether most of that was intentional on Shelton's part. Some shots are downright powerful -- such as when Abby is jolted out of a supermarket trance by one big tear falling down her cheek. But other scenes -- Page professing her love out of the blue -- are overwrought.

This is a rare misstep from Shelton. She's normally sure-handed and in sync with her cast. Here, it's not clear what she's going for, and too many of the actors seem either miscast or misguided. Worth it, still, for some of those special moments.

BONUS TRACK
A key song from the "Crystal Fairy" soundtrack, "Man on Fire," from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros:

Mumbleporn

DRINKING BUDDIES (C-minus) - We've previously noted the maturing of the Mumblecore movement. With that, I suppose, comes the opportunity for self-indulgent, shoestring filmmaking but now featuring B-list stars.

Here we're dealing with fauxteur Joe Swanberg ("Hannah Takes the Stairs" and not much else worth noting; he has spit out about 20 titles in 8 years as a writer/director, so they dissipate quickly). He throws together a mostly improvisational drama about two couples on shaky ground who get messed up in each others' relationships. (I'm not giving too much away here; the thin plot is telegraphed almost immediately.)

Here, Olivia Wilde (TV's "House") and Anna Kendrick ("Up in the Air") are asked to riff on an outline of a script and carry the bulk of the load up against a couple of duds played by Ron Livingston ("Office Space," and even more lethargic than usual) and Jake Johnson (TV's "The New Girl," which explains a lot). Swanberg's big idea here is to put these actors in various scenes and ask them to act like normal people just shooting pool or shooting the shit, letting his camera capture the magic. Here's the problem: No magic happens when the cast acts naturally. Watching a guy in a lumberjack beard and ironic trucker hat tease Wilde as if they're middle-schoolers or watching Kendrick pretend to play a board game is about as entertaining as watching any random couple of precious 30-year-olds banter away snarkily while sipping microbrewed beers at any random slacker gathering on a given Saturday night.

The whole experiment is just not interesting (and, sad to say, neither are the actors as actors), and that mode drags on for two-thirds of the movie. It's not until the final reel, when Wilde and Kendrick get an opportunity to cut loose -- to actually act rather than play hipster make-believe or serve as cutesy playthings -- that this production has anything of value to communicate, as it finally offers an insight or two into the female characters' needs and desires.

Swanberg has essentially filmed a series of rehearsals. Some of the scenes work; most of them don't. This is part of the process of making an interesting low-budget indie drama; but merely strung together, they don't make a complete film. Maturing as a filmmaker doesn't just mean you indulge your every idea and draw a few recognizable names to your project. For now, Swanberg is coming off as a middling talent with film stock to burn.

Holy Crap!* - Brian DePalma's "Passion"

Where do we begin with Brian DePalma's cheap, hackneyed attempt to interpret a French thriller while still clinging to frayed threads that once connected him to Hitchcock.

The writing is execrable. The acting is laughable. The attempts at intrigue and tension fall flat. The plot often makes no sense. The camera work is uninspired. The colors are washed out. This is a Hitchcock effort on an Ed Wood budget.

Rachel McAdams is supposed to be a high-powered ad exec in, for some reason, Germany apparently (Berlin? But where everyone speaks English) who is scheming to get back to the big time in New York by stealing the idea of an underling played by a painfully out-of-her-depth Noomi Rapace ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"). McAdams is also helping her sleazy boyfriend siphon money from the agency. The boyfriend, Dirk, is played by the wooden, grimacing Paul Anderson, whose take on the villain here is about as convincing as that found in a silent film. Only Karoline Herfurth, as the stereotypical pining lesbian, escapes with her dignity intact.

At least we now know that McAdams can't carry a film. And could it be the language barrier or is Rapace just a bad actress?

It often reminded me of the old "Second City TV" sketch "Bad Acting in Hollywood." Some segue-ways will make you scratch your head. The lip-stick lesbian scenes will make you snicker.  The multiple "it was just a dream" tricks will have you rolling your eyes. DePalma's tiresome obsession with shoes and lipstick might creep you out.

This wanna-be thriller runs out of gas about two-thirds of the way through, as it disintegrates into a dull police procedural, in which folks start speaking German. To keep a semblance of a plot alive, DePalma (making "Dressed to Kill" seem like it was released centuries ago) tosses in a grab-bag of plot twists willy-nilly, desperate to entertain us.

But suffering through this low-budget laugher, you'll be hard-pressed to discern any passion either in the movie or the production.

GRADE: D

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here and here and here.

Pink Turns to Blue

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (A) - This is one of the best relationship movies I've ever seen, and one deserving of its leisurely three-hour unfolding.

Teenage Adele (the riveting Adele Exarchopoulos) is exploring and trying to reconcile not necessarily her sexuality but her repressed passion. She'll end up finding more than she bargained for in Emma (an intense Lea Seydoux from "Farewell, My Queen"), an older, bratty graduating art student with baby-blue hair.

We get only a fleeting glimpse of Emma during the first hour or so. Meantime, we get a good sense of Adele's daily ennui and irritability. Fitting nicely into the film's wall-to-wall sensuality, we get multiple scenes of Adele sleeping and eating (a lot of soft pasta is slurped) and crying (complete with copious snot). She is an awkward high school senior, having unfulfilling sex with a boy, struggling to fit in with her brash female friends but finding more comfort in the company of her gay male pal, whom she follows to a gay bar for a night of dancing. Curious, she wanders over to a lesbian bar, and the full-lipped beauty is welcomed like fresh meat in a shark tank.

Emma, looking more than a little creepy with her heavy-lidded eyes and a Dylan sneer, makes the connection with Adele. Soon after, she shows up outside the grounds of Adele's school, in a pedophile's stance. (Emma's probably no more than seven years older, and Adele is certainly of age, but director Abdellatif Kechiche cleverly sets a tone here with the shot of Emma lurking with that vampire glare.) Heavy petting in the park ensues, and when Adele shows up to school the next day, she is besieged with foul-mouthed insults from those female classmates; their vicious attacks are shocking in both their bile and their ordinariness. (I don't know what's more naive of me -- that I didn't think this would still go on at a high school in 2013 or that I expected the whole European continent to be free of homophobia.)

Undaunted (and clearly turned on like never before), Adele dives into bed with Emma, and soon it's hard to tell who is shark and who is meat. They are voracious, especially in the infamous (and quite erotic)10-minute sex scene in which they consume each other's flesh from just about every angle imaginable. In the afterglow, it's clear that the student has found her teacher and the artist her muse.

But the next hour is when "Blue" earns its hardcore cinematic credibility. If you've ever fallen into a relationship based on base carnal desire, you'll identify with Adele and Emma's attempt at being a couple. I was mesmerized by a party scene in which Adele struggles to find any sort of connection with Emma's crowd of intellectual art buddies. (In a nice touch, Adele has told her parents during one of Emma's visits that Emma is just a school pal tutoring her in philosophy.) Adele plays the happy homemaker role by cooking for the party and trying not to come off as a stupid kid among the adults. She's a trophy wife, essentially, and you chafe along with her and feel her ache.

Exarchopoulos has a way of letting her big beautiful eyes slowly go dead, and in a flash of a moment you sense the question: Why and how did this happen to us? Seydoux, meantime, plays it cold, and Emma almost dares Adele to stray. Indeed, much of the third hour is spent exploring the indeterminate stretch of time dealing with that inevitable fiery breakup. Again, Exarchopoulos lets her sensuality pour out of her (along with more snot), only to reveal that vulnerable, hollow spot inside. In those final scenes, the time frame skips ahead appreciably, and Adele, now teaching young elementary children, wears granny glasses and looks like a spinster before she has hit 30.  

This heartbreaking film effortless walks us through the teenage high-wire route from childhood to adulthood (and all the sexual excitement that can entail), followed by the long slog through the minefield of relationships and the seeming impossibility of connecting in an intimate and fulfilling way with another human being.

BONUS TRACK

Riffing on our headline, we'll pick a more favorite and appropriate Husker Du song to blast:

The evil of banality

Two that straddle the line between recommended and not:

SUNSHINE CLEANING (B-minus) - Oh, you want to cheer for Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as Albuquerque sisters who go into business cleaning up crime scenes while struggling to make ends meet. But it's difficult to escape the idea that these are two actresses slumming in a film in which sappy overwhelms smart.

Adams plays a noble single mom, sleeping with a married cop who won't leave his wife but at least hooks her up with the crime-cleanup work, even though she doesn't have the resources or the licensing to handle the job. She gets child-care help from her wacky father -- Alan Arkin in an overly familiar role -- who cooks up hare-brained schemes in a stale Disney sort of way. Her son has an inquiring mind of a soul-searching angel, and he, too, is more Opie Taylor than real kid. Nothing much digs below the surface.

Throw in a one-armed store owner with a heart of gold, and the quaintness is just too much to bear. It's a harmless hour and a half, but it's a missed opportunity for a meaningful drama. 

HANNAH ARENDT (C+) - More of a lecture than a movie, this chronicles the German Jewish philosopher and her controversial coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961 for the New Yorker, in which she finds the banal humanity in the Nazi mastermind (or, as she says, his "shocking mediocrity").

This is surprisingly stagnant, with mostly wooden actors (save for Barbara Sukowa in the title role) emoting with their faces and reciting writerly lines, in an overly dignified "Masterpiece Theater" manner. At times this is literally as exciting as watching someone write an epic five-part article, typing away on the typewriter; or, god forbid, someone editing the article; or even, yes, someone reading the article.

The story finally finds some footing and gains a bit of momentum in the second half, when Arendt is accused of blaming the Jews in part for their own demise. But director/writer Margarethe von Trotta doesn't quite make this movie matter enough. Arendt is a fascinating character; here, she comes off as a chain-smoking bore.

New to the Queue

Movies with meat on their bones start arriving:

It's Michael Winterbottom back with Shirley Henderson, experimenting with time in "Everyday."

Michel Gondry animates a conversation with Noam Chomsky in "Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?"

Stephen Frears returns with what looks like a powerful drama pairing Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, "Philomena."

A pair of vintage French documentaries getting new releases: the Cinemascope look at a blacksmith, "Cousin Jules" (1971) and Chris Marker's famous celebration of peacetime "Le Joli Mai" (1962).

The latest from the Coen Brothers, of course, "Inside Llewyn Davis."

The quirky indie about a home-schooled teen, "Breakfast With Curtis."

A documentary about a high school basketball star whose fortunes diverged from his former rival LeBron James, "Lenny Cooke."

A manly movie about blue-collar brothers, set in the Iraq War era, from the director of "Crazy Heart," "Out of the Furnace."

Inadvertent Double Feature

We streamed two movies back-to-back, and they both improbably happened to feature Kevin Corrigan in the same role of video-store clerk. We last ran across Corrigan in "Supporting Characters":

WALKING AND TALKING (1996) (B+) - Nicole Holofcener's debut is awkward at times, like a colt finding its footing or a filmmaker finding her voice. But it's a winning take on the friendship of two women (Catherine Keener and Anne Heche) as they navigate their various romantic relationships while struggling to keep their own together.

This is the beta version of Holofcener's world of privileged but guilt-ridden middle-class white women (here, in a world of land-lines and answering machines as plot devices) struggling to find fulfillment in a satisfying career and with a spouse who can keep up. Keener looks so young; her eyes sparkle, and that quirky behavior and offbeat delivery are in full flower. Their supporting men, including Corrigan and Liev Schreiber, bring a fresh perspective and some dimension to the romantic-comedy genre.

You might wince a few times at the self-indulgence (there's a very sick cat, and not a little wallowing by Keener's character), but Holofcener builds nicely to a satisfying conclusion.

Here's our recent review of Holofcener's latest, "Enough Said."

THE FUNERAL KINGS (B) - I thought it would get tiring to watch 14-year-olds swearing like sailors and playing with guns, but I was charmed by this coming-of-age saga of Catholic school boys trying to run with the older crowd. It helps that brothers Kevin and Mathew McManus wrap this up in a tidy 85 minutes.

This played like a riff on "Stand by Me" by way of John Hughes or John Powers. Nonetheless, this umpteenth version of growing up Irish Catholic has a steady charm, and the McManus boys know how to pace a story. Youngsters Dylan Hartigan and Alex Maizus hold their own as suburban adolescent gangsta-wannabes, and Jordan Puzzo is a fine counterweight as the more reserved blond-haired cute kid they drag along into their escapades, which spin off from the free passes they are granted in order to serve as altar boys at funerals.

There's a bit of a nostalgic "Peanuts" quality here, because the boys' parents are mostly unseen. The pivoting story of one of the boys' brothers feels undercooked. But the foul-mouthed little bastards make up for any deficiencies with their determination to out-Moe-Howard each other.

Soundtrack of Your Life: Sir Douglas and the Police

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems:

Date: 19 November 2013, 6:50 p.m.
Place: Trader Joe's (Uptown)
Song: "She's About a Mover" (1965)
Artist: Sir Douglas Quintet
Irony Matrix: 4 out of 10
Comment: Sheer joy among the produce

Date: 17 November 2013, 5/15 p.m.
Place: Midtown Sports & Wellness
Song: "King of Pain" (1983)
Artist: The Police
Irony Matrix: 2 of 10
Comment: I was hit with a wave of anti-nostalgia and a keen insight: This is the poster child for overblown crap that heralded the excesses of the early MTV era and the eventual co-opting of "alternative" music.

In happier times ...

One-Liners: meh

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (B) - I can watch Matthew McConaughey in just about anything, and there's plenty of Matthew here in his classic good-ol'-boy mode. But director Jean-Marc Vallee struggles to inject enough air into this balloon -- the real-life mid-'80s story of Ron Woodruff, a homophobic Texan suffering from AIDS who opens a "buyers club" to provide experimental drugs and natural products from Mexico to those desperate for treatment.

McConaughey is not hurting for one-liners to toss around. But even his shtick gets stretched thin over the course of a poky two hours. Jared Leto is wonderful as the cross-dressing druggie Rayon, a die-hard Marc Bolan fan who goes partners with Woodruff. Denis O'Hare is wasted as a bad-guy doctor who's in bed with the makers of AZT and with the FDA. Jennifer Garner just doesn't have the chops to pull off the role of the fellow doctor with a soft spot for Woodruff's endeavor; she seems to shrink with every role.

This is a strong drama in a lot of ways, but it too often comes off as preachy, with one-dimensional villains that don't rise above the level of those in an average TV drama. It's an enjoyable film, with a few powerful scenes -- mostly involving McConaughey and Leto (the heart of the movie), who both lost an incredible amount of weight to look positively skeletal -- but it falls short of must-see storytelling. 

THE ARMSTRONG LIE (B) - Entertaining but certainly not essential viewing, this documents the downfall of Lance Armstrong, who was done in by his 2009-10 comeback attempt (when filmmaker Alex Gibney began this project) and hit rock bottom with his confession to Oprah Winfrey earlier this year (when Gibney finally had his unexpected ending).

Armstrong is a tough subject to crack, and Gibney never really gets inside the mind of the disgraced Tour de France champ; maybe no one could. Armstrong ran his team like a mafia boss, spending years denying the obvious -- that he cheated with drugs and blood doping every year he competed and strong-armed others into doing the same. 

The hero of the story is the dogged Betsy Andreu, wife of a former Armstrong teammate, who heard the truth from Armstrong's own lips and, seeing the way her husband was batted around, was determined to see justice done. 

Gibney has fun poking fun at himself -- this started out as a bit of a fanboy celebration of the 2009 comeback -- getting caught up in the myth and then watching it get dismantled. He gets Armstrong to sit down after the Winfrey interview but we don't get much more drama or revelation. Maybe -- less than a year after that public confession -- we've already moved on from the Armstrong saga. The filmmaker is a victim of timing here.

One-Liners - Yea

SHORT TERM 12 (A-minus) - A near-perfect little gem. Or maybe it's too perfect.

Two hipster 20-somethings, Grace and Mason (the powerful Brie Larson and the hirsute John Gallagher Jr., resembling a greasy millennial Ben Affleck), run the day shift of a halfway house for at-risk teens. Grace has her own troubled history, and some old wounds resurface when a younger version of herself, arsty-gothy Jayden (a compelling Kaitlyn Dever), shows up.

It's difficult to watch young people who are in pain, but new writer/director Destin Cretton provides a deft touch, creating likeable characters who fit neatly into stereotypes yet still feel real. The overall result is something short of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" but with more gravitas than "It's Kind of a Funny Story."

Larson as Grace runs the show -- both the halfway house and the movie itself -- and it's her arc that proves to be quite gripping. She can't bring herself to open up about her past experiences or her present emotions to Mason, even when a life-changing event should bring them closer. Dever is nearly Larson's match, putting up a tough front but unable to totally hide the girl inside. Another revelation is newcomer Lakeith Stanfield as Marcus, a meticulously controlled ball of rage who communicates through intense but thoughtful rap songs as he tries to deal with the reality of soon turning 18 and being cast out into the world.

Cretton gets just a tad too cutesy with his adolescent characters and with a tidy ending that tugs at the heartstrings. But it's hard to quibble with such an honest attempt at filmmaking that is so expertly executed.

WADJDA (B+) - Young Waad Mohammed is captivating in the title role in this groundbreaking film written and directed by a Saudi Arabian woman, Haiffa al-Mansour, about a girl who puts her all into a Quran-recital competition in order to win the prize money and be able to buy a bicycle and ride with the boys -- a scandalous thought, even in this day and age.

The film is both shocking in its depiction of a religion's degradation of women and heartwarming in offering some hope for the next generation. This is an important story, solidly told. Mohammed has the face (and the hi-tops) and the skills to carry such a film.

The story, though, does plod during the first third. The relationship between Wadjda's parents feels a little under-developed. And al-Mansour overdoes the scenes of repression, hitting the viewer over the head with the stone-age horrors imposed on women, repeating herself as she does it. This is brighter than a film like Osama, but far less powerful.

One-Liners - Nay

RENOIR (C+) - This is the near-epitome of style over substance. It plays like a Renoir painting come to life. Which means it can be lovely to look at but as fascinating as a bowl of fruit at times.
The cinematography is stunning, inviting you into its lushness, even on a TV screen. There's just not much meat on the bones of the plot, which gets pulled into too many directions. 

Elderly Auguste Renoir (a convincing Michel Bouquet) has staved off death during the depths of World War I by finding yet another nubile young model to serve as his naked muse. That would be free-spirited Andree (Christa Theret) who is, indeed, beauty personified; you can practically feel that silky soft skin. Wounded war hero Jean Renoir (who would go on to marry Andree and make her a star in his early movies) limps into the picture to create an odd mix of bizarre love triangle and Freudian father-son feuding. "Limp" being the key word. Meantime, the house biddies bicker endlessly about Renoir pere's legendary cycling through of models/mistresses.

None of that really sticks. What's left is a luscious period piece that, like Ms. Theret, is easy on the eyes.

THE TO-DO LIST (C+) - I'm trying to figure out who the audience might be for this film about a newly minted high school graduate -- a nerdy mathlete -- who decides to create a sexual to-do list so that she doesn't enter college an inexperienced virgin. The sex is PG but the language is graphically R, and it all plays like a cartoon.

Aubrey Plaza is fun to watch, as always, and the supporting cast is pretty game, but the whole project is a mess. It's a bizarre multi-generational stew: It's an homage to the early '80s era of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (with a dreadfully unfunny "Caddyshack" reference tossed in), set in 1993, created by a Gen X'er, starring a 28-year-old portraying a 17-year-old, and released in 2013. It's at once an embarrassingly quaint classic teen sex romp and a modern display of post-Apatow vulgarity.

The cheapness of the production is obvious throughout, with frequent continuity gaffes. The script is repetitive. The plot is classic connect-the-dots. The premise is rather ridiculous. The parents are unbelievable (and it's not easy to waste Clark Gregg, like writer/director Maggie Carey does here). The idea is that Plaza's geek doesn't recognize the terms for any of the sex acts she's about to run through (and, conveniently, doesn't have the Internet around), but you'd think a valedictorian could figure out what a "dry hump" is or would just ask around, especially since her sister and two best friends are portrayed as stereotypical movie sluts.

The frank dialogue is kind of fun in the let's-watch-women-talk-cute-n-dirty kind of way, but I actually fast-forwarded a little through this. I felt my life slipping away, and I didn't need to be reminded of my own high school and college years too often spent watching frivolous shlock like this.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN (2010) (F) - It feels good to give this thinly veiled attack on teachers an actual letter grade. It is disingenuous, manipulative, mawkish, inadequately sourced and downright false at times. No teacher -- even a sharp non-union charter school employee -- would allow this to stand as a first draft.

This is the work of a jerk with an ax to grind. Be warned.

The discreet charm of the bourgoisie

ENOUGH SAID (A-minus) - Nicole Holofcener makes movies that skim by under the radar and can feel nearly weightless. That doesn't make them insignificant.

Holofcener is a studious observer of the existential weight of middle-class privilege: white guilt ("Please Give") or women's self image ("Lovely & Amazing"). Her latest adult comedy, a love story starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini, is one of Holfcener's most satisfying. It's a simple tale of love and coupling and of aging and regret. It's a wry, bittersweet breakdown of a budding relationship between a man and a woman, each divorced, settling into middle age and watching a daughter go off to college.

The film relies heavily on Louis-Dreyfus, a TV comedian, and she comes through like a seasoned movie veteran. Louis-Dreyfus has never not been funny -- even in the sitcom "The New Adventures of Old Christine," if you happen to stumble on a repeat at an odd time of day, and especially in HBO's "Veep" -- and here she's her usual charming self, schlumping around L.A. with a massage table on her back as Eva, a mobile masseuse. The physical comedy of just her hauling that table in and out of the back of her car never gets old.

Eva attends a party with pals Sarah and Will (Toni Collette and Ben Falcone) and, separately, meets poet Marianne (Catherine Keener), a potential new customer, and shlubby Albert (James Gandolfini), a meet-cute potential mate. She agrees to a date with Albert and has a great time, despite a lack of physical attraction at first (he's got that big belly and a doughy face). Meantime, she gives Marianne massages and the two become friends, with Eva serving as a sounding board for the neurotic writer, who mainly bitches about her goofy ex-husband, who happens to turn out to be ... Albert.

The true genius of this movie is the fact that Eva soon puts two and two together but does nothing about it and proceeds to undermine both relationships. Sucking up Marianne's poison empowers Eva to undermine her fledgling romance with Albert before it has a chance to plant roots. It's a subtle psychological study, and soon Eva is channeling Marianne and henpecking poor Albert and embarrassing him in front of friends (and embarrassing herself more in the process). This all builds to an inevitable sitcom reveal, and the final third of the film chronicles the self-loathing of Eva, as she tries to repair the damage done to the relationship, as well as come to terms with the departure of her daughter, Ellen, off to Sarah Lawrence. Eva has neglected her daughter's emotional well-being, in particular by palling around with Ellen's clingy best friend Chloe.

It's tough to explain how touching this film is, and also how funny it is. There are few all-out belly laughs. I did like this exchange between Eva and Sarah and Will over Sarah's obsession with rearranging her furniture on a weekly basis. Will is baffled over why Sarah keeps moving stuff around:

Eva: She's filling a hole.

Will: I'll fill your hole.

Sarah (sighing): Different hole.

Unfortunately, many of the scenes with Sarah and Will (and the inept maid who they can't bring themselves to permanently fire) are not fully fleshed out; good ideas and key plot devices, but not quite three-dimensional. They do factor in a pivotal scene, hosting Eva and Albert at dinner, where Eva can't help herself and cruelly nags Albert to the point of exasperation. (I squirmed a bit, because I'm sure I've done that to mates in the past, thinking I was being clever; but I also laughed out loud during the scene, especially over the running gag about Eva being endlessly amused by the fact that Albert apparently doesn't know how to quietly whisper.)

Why is Eva sabotaging the relationship? It can't just be because the guy's a physical mess. She's got some deep problems gnawing at her. She can't be real with Albert or her daughter. She won't jettison Marianne because she thinks Marianne is so needy that she'll fall apart if Eva doesn't stay friends with her. (Marianne is mostly bereft of friends, though she does have Joni Mitchell on speed dial.) All the while, Louis-Dreyfus draws us further in through a face that is no longer a comic mask but that of a handsome 50-ish woman who has been wounded in the past and hasn't figured out a way to recover.

Holofcener offers a clue to what's going on in an early scene, when Albert and Eva are in a post-coital cuddle. Eva, facing away from him, her eyes lifeless, says, "I'm tired of being funny." Albert responds with, "Yeah, me, too." There's a pregnant pause, and then Eva says, "But you're not funny."

She's being playful, but cutting. She's cynical and more than a little worn down. And she's putting up a facade, unable to let a person get a glimpse of her raw emotion.

Like this lovely film, she is being sweet and sarcastic, because that's all she knows how to do at the moment.  

Bonus Features

This movie features a trio of my favorite supporting actresses: Catherine Keener, Michaela Watkins and Amy Landecker. Pardon me if I have a bit of a type.

Other A-grade films by Nicole Holofcener, in order of preference:

• Lovely & Amazing
• Please Give
• Friends With Money
• Walking and Talking

True Stories

STORIES WE TELL (B) - There's a fine line between meta and manipulative. The fact that Sarah Polley has expressed surprise that many of us don't catch on to the camera tricks she employs in her amber-drenched family memoir goes to show that she's truly descended from show people with a flair for the self indulgent.

Polley, whose segue from acting to directing ("Away From Her" and "Take This Waltz") has been impressive, turns the camera on her family history, which revolves around her captivating mother, a sometime actress who died young, about 25 years ago, and left behind a secret that goes to the heart of Polley's very existence. As she grills her father (and employs him as a narrator using his own memoir), siblings and family friends, it's all rather fascinating.

Until you realize, or don't, that Polley starts mixing in re-creations -- albeit scratched and grainy -- with the archival footage. A glimpse of a key character with a perfectly sad, heartbreaking expression on his face while he sits lost in the back pew of the mother's funeral, might elicit gasps of emotion -- but then leave you miffed while the credits roll and you realize it was staged. (I thought it was odd that there would be so much footage from the funeral, but then, as I said ... Show People!)

Polley's point is that we each have a version of the past. I'm with her on the theory that most of our memories are not legitimate; we'd be shocked to watch an actual reel from the past and discover how much we'd been deluding ourselves. I'm just not convinced that this was the way to make that point and tell this story. It seems like more of a crutch (for lack of footage) than an intentional strategy. Polley's final sin is an excessive running time. She sets us up for an ending at least three times before (re)winding up for another big finish, on her way to a bloated 1:48 running time.

While I loved seeing this film (and might re-view it and have a different perspective), I was reminded of a more effective (and experimental) attempt at a similar subject -- Jonathan Caouette's harrowing "Tarnation." Despite its re-enactments, that documentary felt achingly real. And it clocked in at a tidy 88 minutes.

BONUS TRACKS

Compare trailers for "Tarnation" and "Stories We Tell"

Randy Old Mad Men

Two more docs:

BERT STERN: ORIGINAL MADMAN (A-minus) - Ah, that thin pink line: womanizer or merely a lover of women? I identified with Bert Stern, an advertising photographer from the golden era, and if you think he's a creep, I'm not offended. 

Stern, a self-taught photographer back in the 1950s, broke through with iconic imagery for vodka ads before training his lens more and more on women. He is famous for having taken the final photographs of Marilyn Monroe for Vogue. His recounting of those two sessions are lovely and heartbreaking; you ache for the teenage boy locked inside a charming man's body. He often talks, quaintly, about "making out" with women -- or more often, wanting to make out with various women. He married a ballerina and saw her (still sees her) as more of a trophy than a woman; after he ran through his share of women and drugs (Dr. Feelgood again) during the wild '60s, she took the kids and left him.

The filmmaker here is one of Stern's current companions, Shannah Laumeister (he also hangs out every week with a pair of ditzy twins). Laumeister is much younger than he is; they first met when she was well under-age, but she returned to him around age 18, and they fell in together. Stern is now about 80, and their domestic situation seems quite tame. While much of the reaction to this film will revolve around Stern's affection for and exploitation of his subjects, you have to wonder what Laumeister's game is. She injects herself into the proceedings, making the personal public; in fact, she gladly splashes Stern's nude shots of herself. Who's zooming whom here?

Stern is a fascinating, if laid-back, subject. Many of the interviews feature him in a reclining position, tossing off recollections or witticisms with a lazy, resigned northern drawl, nearly catatonic at times. He looks to be clinically depressed, perhaps beaten down by the idea that he had the world at his command and is as weighed down by the memory of happiness as he is by his vast archives of negatives. (In fact, he admits that he wishes he had saved some of that frivolity for later in life -- spread the joy to make his twilight years more worth living.) It doesn't make him any less smug; just ... preternaturally practical and clinically wistful.

There's a lot going on here, much more than a home movie about a glum, elderly hedonist. I was rooting for him to crack a big grin, raise his eyebrows and bust out a big laugh recalling some crazy time, perhaps with Twiggy or Liz Taylor.

In the end, Stern was a hunter and the models were his prey. That's old-fashioned biology at work. It's refreshing to hear Stern essentially own up to that. He sums it up this way: "I'm obsessive. That's why I take pictures, I guess. I get obsessive about the things I'm looking at. I want them. And I put them in the camera, and they're mine."

Did he say "things" when he was talking about, mostly, women? Yep.

FAR OUT ISN"T FAR ENOUGH: THE TOMI UNGERER STORY (B) - And then there's ol' Tomi Boy. This documentary is a touching valentine to an unheralded artist, Tomi Ungerer, a trailblazer in children's books who challenged perceptions by daring to produce both kid lit and erotica.

Born in France and raised in Nazi-occupied Alsace, Ungerer is more German than French. He came to New York as a young man and quickly made his mark, cranking out quirky children's books that influenced luminaries like Maurice Sendak and Jules Feiffer, both seen here as admiring talking heads. One day Ungerer met a woman who liked to play a little rough, and the experience helped unleash Ungerer's naughty side. He explored that world and expressed himself naturally through his art on a separate track from the children's market.

In a long-ago world of naive media, it wasn't a big deal for an artist to live such a double life; he apparently was discreet about his dual existence. Eventually, though, the industry grew uncomfortable with that set-up; he was cast as somewhat of a pervert, his children's books disappeared from print and he was generally shunned. He retreated into seclusion and eventually to Ireland, where he finally found a welcoming community.

Ungerer, now in his 80s, is still an unabashed admirer of the female form, especially the backside. He's got a twinkle in his deep blue eyes, and he smokes like a fiend. He offers a few pearls of wisdom, including his explanation of the phrase used as a title of the film.

The documentary itself lags in spots. It spends a bit too much time on his early years and it suffers from a lack of archival footage; thus, it leans on his artwork as a major crutch. Many of his drawings are powerful; he was especially vocal and blunt about his opposition to America's imperialist war in Vietnam during the 1960s. Informed by his World War II experience that left him virulently opposed to imperialism, his work from that era is among his sharpest and most profound. Director Brad Bernstein also relies on almost exclusively men as talking heads; they're rather dry, and they don't give us a good sense of Ungerer's primal connection with women and sex.         

Like Stern, Ungerer has a magnetism that draws you in and makes you wonder: What's his secret?