Mean Girls

BREATHE (B+) - This slow burn of a suspense film builds to a powerful conclusion, as a friendship between high school girls escalates into a rivalry.

Melanie Laurent (seen in "Inglourious Basterds" and here behind the camera for the second time) burrows deep into the psyche of two teenagers -- a good girl and a rebellious interloper -- establishing a deep bond that threatens to tear them both apart. Without hyperbole or horror-movie cliches, "Breathe" takes a rather calm approach to the intensity of young female friendships.

Suburban French teen Charlie (Josephine Japy) is a studious young lady living a mundane existence until bad-girl Sarah (Lou de Laage) transfers into her school and seeks her out as a friend. They fuse quickly, sharing a casual but combustible intimacy as Sarah drags Charlie toward the edge. But Sarah is unpredictable and unstable. She flips out on Charlie for introducing her to a friend as a "classmate" rather than as a friend.

When the inevitable fallout occurs, Sarah becomes an unrelenting bully. Charlie's asthma becomes an obvious metaphor for the the way in which Sarah took her breath away at first but then stifled her attempts to blossom. Charlie struggles to hold back a response until a shocking burst of violence that closes the film with a final haunting image.

Laurent joins a growing line of directors in recent years who have captured the dynamics among teenage girls during a critical phase of maturity. (See "It Felt Like Love" and "Girlhood" for two examples.) She has a facility behind the camera and knack for pacing. De Laage and Japy give bold, raw performances, unafraid of an intimacy that never feels exploitative.

Laurent eventually overplays her hand at the very end by relying on horror tropes that turn the drama up to 11, turning both girls into ogres. But the film is often compelling and beautifully shot.

HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994) (B) - This one, from a generation ago, ratchets up the intensity between its teenage heroines but also wigs out on over-the-top performances and pulpy fantasy sequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet future acting heavyweights Melanie Lynskey ("Hello, I Must Be Going," HBO's "Togetherness") and Kate Winslet, making their film debuts here as imaginative, sensitive girls who push the boundaries of friendship and sensuality in early '50s New Zealand. Lynskey is dark-haired and disturbed Pauline, a budding writer in a working-class home, and Winslet plays the prissier Juliet, the daughter of bourgeois Brits. Their connection grows into obsession and role-playing, with a shared love of Mario Lanza and a touching intimacy that horrifies their parents.

The girls role-play when they are together, occasionally exploring a heavenly fantasy world full of bright colors and their clay-model characters come to life and grown full size). They write each other religiously when apart (Juliet is sickly and spends time away in a TB ward). Juliet's parents threaten to take her back to Europe or send her off to South Africa, raising the stakes for the girls, desperate to stay together at any cost.

They hatch a scheme to murder Pauline's mother and use a stash of money to run off together. Will the parent push them over the edge? If you don't know the true story behind the script, you might get caught up in the building suspense.

Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") is at the helm here, with longtime writing collaborator Fran Walsh dramatizing a true-crime page-turner. His pulpy production and extreme melodrama presage his worldwide success in bloated fantasy films. The over-the-top visuals have a cartoon quality that at times recalls Robert Altman's live-action "Popeye." One quick shot of the girls running on a pier and Pauline flying off into the water is breathtaking. Too often, though, Jackson seems to be merely showing off.

Both Lynskey and Winslet are called on to ham it up beyond reason. They scream and sob often, and Lynskey's brooding intensity and broad mannerisms scream "nut case" from the very start. (Don't forget her turn as the crazed stalker on the mainstream sitcom "Two and a Half Men.") Now accomplished, nuanced actors, they must look back at these performances and wince a bit. The adults all come off as both ordinary and monstrous, the enemies of these idealistic dreamers.

Flaws aside (Jackson has always been an acquired taste), this is a giddy expression of art and joyful storytelling. It's a historical artifact that launched two memorable careers. And it's an intense depiction of teen-girl bonding for the ages.
 

The Little Chill

THE INTERVENTION (B) - This acting exercise has its moments, and it carries you along nimbly to a tidy ending with an obvious twist. Before we mention the plot, let's cut to the chase. This small movie -- about four couples gathering at a summer home, "Big Chill" style, to confront one of the couples about their horrid marriage -- flirts with must-see status because of its own gathering of five powerhouse indie actresses:

• The always revelatory Melanie Lynskey ("Goodbye to All That," "Hello, I Must Be Going").
• The arresting Cobie Smulders (last year's "Results")
• The maturing Alia Shawkat ("Nasty Baby," "Wild Canaries")
• Veteran Natasha Lyonne ("Hello, My Name Is Doris," TV's "Orange Is the New Black")
• And Clea DuVall (the droll bodyguard/body double for Selina Meyer in HBO's "Veep"), who wrote and directed this simplistic but effective comic drama.

DuVall plays Jessie, the host, who has been dating Sarah (Lyonne) for three years, even though Jessie likes 'em younger and Sarah likes 'em maler. Lynskey is Annie, engaged to Matt (a wooden Jason Ritter) but who keeps putting off her wedding planning. Annie also is struggling with sobriety. Shawkat plays lively Lola, the 22-year-old kittenish plaything of Jack (an overwrought Ben Schwartz), who is trying to forget a tragic loss. They are all gathered to confront Jessie's sister, Ruby (Smulders) and her husband, Peter (Vincent Piazza), a toxic couple begging for this intervention.

Of course, as the movie unfolds, it's no big secret that each of the other couples have serious issues that they are avoiding or hiding from each other. Lynskey (whose airplane scenes bookend the film) takes the reins early and sets the pace. It is rare that you will find an actor who can play a convincing drunk, but she pulls it off here. As her abiding fiance, Ritter shows the emotional range of a scolded puppy. 

Lola is a lit match just waiting to be tossed into the dry tinder surrounding Jessie and Sarah's love nest, with the writer-director the most likely candidate to be seduced. Smulders (still a surprise in her post-sitcom phase) and Piazza (HBO's "Boardwalk Empire") develop a sizzling synchronized sniping. The only time husband and wife really click is when kicking ass at charades, doing a mind-meld that blows the others' minds. Meantime, their bumbling pals are too chicken to get to the weekend's main subject. That allows for time for their own couplings to fritter and fray.

DuVall, in her debut, has a decent eye and an ear for dialogue, but her script occasionally lapses into paint-by-numbers screenwriting. Lola is a bit of an idiot savant, and some of her lines have a forced "from the mouths of babes" preciousness. Jack isn't much more than a mope, a pale version of Jay Duplass's conflicted Josh on "Transparent." Also transparent are a few narrative devices. It's one of those movies where all eight of the characters awake and show up in the kitchen at the exact same time -- the better to force the big reckoning. 

Nitpicks aside, DuVall brings a fresh perspective to a cliched set-up, and she is well-served by Lynskey, who rallies her sisters for a memorable ensemble performance.

BONUS TRACKS
The soundtrack also boasts a collection of female indie power players who mostly fly under the radar. First up is Tegan and Sara with the trippy "Fade Out":



We also get a snippet of Alice Boman performing "What Are You Searching For":



And the retro quirk of Hinds, with "Bamboo":

Inadvertent Double Feature: America's Sweetheart

A pair of Anna Kendrick movies on the holiday, from different ends of the cinema spectrum, hipster indie to Disney musical:

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (B-minus) -  An interesting but ultimately pointless exercise in holiday gloom from love-hate director Joe Swanberg.

He assembles three very talented women -- Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey and Lena Dunham -- for some first-rate riffing on romance and marriage. Kendrick plays Jenny, a twenty-something dealing with a breakup who shows up at the Chicago home of her brother Jeff (Swanberg) and his Aussie wife Kelly (Lynskey) and their toddler, immediately stirring up trouble with her erratic behavior and binge drinking.

Dunham is Carson, Jenny's loquacious pal. Early on, they share a drink with Kelly, drawing out of her some ennui and frustration over having given up life as a novelist to have a child. The three women have a few very good scenes together -- including brainstorming the plot of a cheap romance novel -- and their banter features some quality indie improv. Kendrick is fine, as usual, but Swanberg gives her only one note to play (and an annoying Valley Girl patois). Lynskey, much better in 2012's "Hello, I Must Be Going," looks lost most of the time. Dunham again proves she's the nimble comic mind behind "Girls."

The story, however, goes nowhere. Swanberg stretches our patience by repeatedly featuring cutesy scenes with his real-life child -- at the risk of turning this into an unbearable home movie. This had all the ingredients of a quiet gem -- and there are some fine moments to be found in these 82 minutes -- but it ends up being a disappointment.

INTO THE WOODS (C-minus) - If you want to see a good musical (and we're rarely in the mood), find one with memorable music. This fairy-tale cocktail drones too often and never soars like a movie musical should.

Our annual Christmas Day Mainstream Movie gave us two hours of visual delights and a few sharp performances, but as a story -- merging Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel in a forest setting with a wicked witch -- this Broadway adaptation is a mess.

Ms. Kendrick acquits herself well as Cinderella the Bird Lady, playing coy with a dolt of a prince, a wry turn from Chris Pine. Emily Blunt is surprisingly strong (and in wonderful voice) as the Baker's Wife, seeking to lift the witch's curse so they can have a baby. Newcomer Lilla Crawford holds her own with the adults as Red Riding Hood. Others tend to be distractions: Johnny Depp is silly as the Big Bad Wolf; Christine Baranski is miscast as Cinderella's step-mother; Meryl Streep is out of control as the Witch.

James Lapine adapted his own musical. "Chicago's" Rob Marshall directs. Few of us will be singing or humming these tunes in the coming days. I had a good 10-minute nap halfway through, which helped me survive the spectacle. Those who witnessed the whole thing were not as lucky. 

BONUS TRACK
Swanberg assembled a soundtrack with a retro sound, including this one from Swede Joel Alme:

Dark Days

I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (B-minus) - Melanie Lynskey barely salvages a bizarre story about a woman seeking revenge for a simple home burglary. Coming off like Columbo stepping in for Charles Bronson in "Death Wish," Lynskey's beleaguered Ruth bumbles her way through the first two acts with the help of dorky Tony (Elijah Wood), a twerp who dreams of ninja warriorhood.

The final act falls apart in an onslaught of violence and bloodshed. The early charm and quirkiness are decimated by the sloppy, ugly finale. A few supporting performances stand out, including Christine Woods and Robert Longstreet as the parents of the teen burglar, and David Yow (lead singer of the Jesus Lizard) as the creepy leader of the burglary ring. The jangly small-town weirdness has a pleasing pace, and there are just enough offbeat moments to make this charming. Until that charm disappears.

This is the directing debut of Macon Blair (he wrote it, too), who starred in the similarly gritty "Blue Ruin" in 2013.

BONUS TRACKS
The soundtrack also comes to the rescue of "I Don't Feel at Home."  Here is Fern Jones with "The World Is Not My Home":



And an early '60s nugget from Bob Fryfogle, "Six Feet Under":


  

Kids today! (Wait, what year is it?)

From the DVD files, two takes on teens. And we're not grading on a curve.

Finally, a Christian film with nuance and smarts, worthy of serious consideration. Thank God. 

"THE WISE KIDS" (A-minus) is a sweet, heart-swelling drama centering around three teens in Charleston, S.C., on the brink of adulthood, during the spring and summer before college, all wrestling with their faith to various degrees. Brea is the preacher's daughter who is mired in doubt as she starts to think independently and question the teachings of the church and her parents. Laura, who can feel Brea's friendship slipping away, doubles down on Jesus, exploding in occasional outbursts of fundamentalism and refusing to yield on the literal word of God.  Tim is in the middle, loyal to his Christian faith but not ignoring his burgeoning homosexuality.

Writer/director Stephen Cone anchors the story as a church leader and music/theater director questioning his own sexuality. Elizabeth is his wife, suffering with heartache and longing; it's hard to tell if she's crushing on the new youth-minister candidate or just his happy marriage. If that all sounds melodramatic, it very well could have been. But Cone strikes the perfect tone throughout, not afraid, for instance, to let a glance take the place of dialogue. He has an effortless way of conveying awkwardness.

And his no-name cast is pitch-perfect throughout. Molly Kunz as Brea is the big bat in this lineup, and she carries the story while remaining restrained and refined. Tyler Ross as Tim is sweet but substantial, though Ross's Michael Cera shtick could get old if he gets typecast as "the budding gay filmmaker" (see his turn in the wonderfully quirky "Nate and Margaret"). Allison Torem is just the right kind of manic as Laura, who is kind of the wild card here. At two different junctures she feels compelled to remind others that just because she takes an Originalist approach to the Bible doesn't mean she's stupid; it comes off as a fascinating echo rather than redundancy or filler. And Sadiah Rifai is a revelation as Elizabeth; Cone methodically peels back the layers of Rifai's physical beauty while simultaneously unpacking the depths of her character, scene by scene.

The whole film is beautifully layered. While the story is steeped in the tension between Christianity and sexuality, and two of the main characters struggle with coming out, no one utters the word "gay" until the final reel (if I'm not mistaken). And that typifies Cone's confident, masterful touch as both a screenwriter and director. He gets everything just right.

 ***

On the other end of the grading scale, we're reminded that the transition from tween to teen sometimes veers off into twee.

The cartoonish memoir "THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER" (D+) is a mawkish mix-tape masquerading as a movie. Writer/director (and source material author) Stephen Chbosky aims for something in the general direction of John Hughes and Augusten Burroughs with this autobiographical tale of his high school days and falls embarrassingly short.

Our hero, Charlie, is a little cipher whose childhood trauma is revealed slowly in clunky flashbacks (trapping the brilliant Melanie Lynskey in a thankless role). The bookish bore is surrounded by the Breakfast Club's understudies, each one a cardboard cut-out that's about as fresh as Dobie Gillis. Freshman Charlie pines for the cute, damaged Sam, who welcomes him into her clique of fellow seniors. Will clueless Charlie make his move before Sam goes off to Penn State? Will they all defeat their adolescent demons? Will Sam even get accepted into Penn State?? Oh, boy, won't this all make a swell novel someday!

The movie stumbles out of the gate by throwing wildly different eras of music at us, and we are taken out of the film while we try to figure out just exactly which era we're supposed to be in. In one scene our precocious teens are declaring "Come On, Eileen" to be "cool" when played at a dance (the gee-whiz kind you'd expect to be headlined by the Archies), and in the very next scene Cracker's "Low" pulses at a party while innocent Charlie is tricked into getting high for the first time (revealing the brooding nerd to be a veritable Jerry Seinfeld -- those rascals!). Are we in 1982? 1993? When exactly was the heyday of mix tapes, cordless phones and goth girls? Sam's favorite song is by the Cocteau Twins, but Charlie gives her a Beatles 45 as a gift. And once we finally agree that what we're watching takes place in the early '90s, just so we can get on with things already, here come the '70s, perversely fetishized throughout. Chbosky threatens to ruin David Bowie's "Heroes" the same way "Moulin Rouge" murdered "Your Song." (By the way, Stephen, you're way late to the "Heroes" party now, and you were in 1993 -- when you were 23.) And is there really any insight or emotion left to wring out of "Rocky Horror" fandom? (Not just one scene begging to be edited here but two.)

In the end, this is little more than Chbosky's scattered aging-hipster soundtrack full of painfully obvious alt-classic tracks from the likes of the Smiths and Sonic Youth, used as a device to string together moments of melodrama.

And the cast is directionless. Paul Rudd is cloying as Mr. Anderson, the English teacher who feeds classic novels to Charlie because, darn it, he just knows that the kid will one day be the novelist that good ol' Mr. Anderson never will be. This is my first experience with the manic pixie dream girl Emma Watson, and she gives it the old high school try as Sam, but she and fellow 20-something Logan Lerman, playing Charlie, show the depth and nuance of a pair of Muppet Babies.

This isn't so much a period film set in the early '90s (we're pretty sure), as it is a parody of a cheap TV drama made in the early '90s. Would you believe they actually still greenlight movies in the 2010s in which a student does his impression of the shop teacher in front of the class ... only to have the teacher walk in at that very moment! Or a movie where a character, talking on the phone with that crazy chatterbox friend, lays the receiver down mid-conversation, walks away and returns later only to find her still gabbing away. Or a movie that places an interminable Christmas scene at the pivotal halfway point, one in which the hipster kids give each other just the right secret-Santa gifts, such as a vintage typewriter or a suit and tie ... that just happens to fit perfectly.  Or a movie where the jocks trip the nerds, sparking a fistfight in an inexplicably unsupervised cafeteria and revealing one character's superhero-like strength. (And, of course, one of the football stars is a closeted homophobic gay blockhead.)

Toward the climax, one of the kids actually compares the narrative in progress to an "ABC Afterschool Special." (You, sir, are no Lance Kerwin.)

And what's the lesson we've learned, boys and girls? Just because you can write a novel -- and Chbosky's book could very well be brilliant -- it doesn't mean you can write and direct a movie. During that endless Christmas scene, Sam urges Charlie: "Write about us." I'll bet the real Sam wishes she could take those words back.

New to the Queue

Summer heats up:

Coming to the Guild Cinema later this month, Steve James' documentary about Roger Ebert, "Life Itself."

Richard Linklater's epic real-time dramatization of kids growing up over the course of 12 years, "Boyhood."

A road trip in Iceland for a couple of aging American boomers, "Land Ho!"

Joe Swanberg is back, as quick as ever, with a strong cast (including Melanie Lynskey, Anna Kendrick and Lena Dunham) in a brooding holiday film being released in summer, "Happy Christmas."

If only for a glimpse of his wife, Lisa Bonet, the hulking Jason Momoa's Native American drama set in the West, "Road to Paloma."

A thoughtful drama about a teenager running his uncle's Mexican no-tell motel, "The Empty Hours."

A documentary about the minor league Portland Mavericks of the 1970s, "The Battered Bastards of Baseball."

Banned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi follows up "This Is Not a Film" with "Closed Curtain."

New to the Queue

Bracing for the fall ...

An American teenager and his dad adrift in Germany, "Morris From America."

We'll lift our soft ban on WWII stories for a drama about a West German prosecutor hunting down Nazi war criminals, "The People vs. Fritz Bauer."

A first feature about the rural life of a family in Guatemala in the shadow of a volcano, "Ixcancul."

A woman trying to make a film while dealing with her ailing mother, from Italy, "Mia Madre."

It looks like a cheap "Big Chill" knockoff (subbing a marriage for death -- nice), but there's Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne and Alia Shawkat, so we're adding "The Intervention."

A mother working as a housekeeper in France while raising two teenage girls, "Fatima."
  

Digging for Cred

DIGGING FOR FIRE (B-minus) - OK, so Joe Swanberg can assemble an A-list cast of indie actors. And he's always had a knack for drafting a tight script full of natural dialogue. But where are we?

His previous three films have averaged a C grade, though I've never considered any of them a waste of time. Here he's got a fine idea -- a struggling couple has separate weekend adventures -- but he never gets things far enough off the ground.

Tim (the rather bland Jake Johnson from "Drinking Buddies," TV's "New Girl") and Lee (the endlessly appealing Rosemarie DeWitt) are in a bit of a rut, focusing their energies on their pampered 3-year-old boy, Jude (Swanberg yet again foisting his big-headed toddler on viewers). They take a house-sitting trip to the swanky upstate home of one of Lee's clients. While exploring the grounds, Tim finds a rusted handgun and a bone. Lee goes off to visit her parents (Sam Elliott and Judith Light), dropping off the kid so that she can have a gals' night out with an old friend (our gal Melanie Lynskey) who bails on her. So Lee, giddily child-free, heads out on the town. On his own, Tim starts excavating the property, in search of some sort of mystery.

Separated, Tim and Lee are presented with tests of their fidelity. Tim hosts a party with his buddies, and pretty young Max (Brie Larson) tags along and eventually spends the night. Tim takes her on a dinner date, and they go back to the house. She joins him in the dig, clad in short shorts and combat boots. Lee, meanwhile, has a meet-cute in a pub with Ben (a charming Orlando Bloom), and they embark on a "Before Sunrise" odyssey.

The film is weighted in metaphor. Tim's digging is a lesson in leaving well-enough alone and tamping down your deepest desires. Johnson is limited as an actor, but he plays well off of Larson, who is one of the most interesting actors around, though Swanberg doesn't really know how to handle her character. In fact, the director has an embarrassment of riches here. In addition to the fine actors mentioned already, we're treated to Mike Birbiglia in a wonderfully deadpan performance as Tim's pal (and conscience); Sam Rockwell as another buddy with substance-abuse and anger-management issues; the compelling Jane Adams in one throwaway scene; and Chris Messina, Jenny Slate, Ron Livingston and even Anna Kendrick (who starred in "Happy Christmas").

It's an impressive production. But the story is just a little too thin. There's not enough at stake here, and fears of a trite ending are realized.

Joe Swanberg has talent and friends. But he's been making average movies the past few years. He's overdue to either break out or fade out. We haven't given up on him yet.
 

Odd-Couple Buddy Road Movie

FOLK HERO & FUNNY GUY (B+) - This surprisingly authentic and effective buddy movie pits everyman Alex Karpovsky as a neurotic struggling comedian against gruffy pretty boy Wyatt Russell, playing a successful pop star.

The incongruous pair are believable as longtime friends whose fortunes have diverged. This is the inspired writing-directing debut of character actor Jeff Grace, and he's got a touching story to tell and a winning touch with his cast.

Russell's Jason is guarding against burnout by doing a low-key acoustic tour of the East Coast, and he invites Karpovsky's Paul to come along as his opening act, urging him to ditch his boring freelance life and finally pursue his stand-up dream. Things get complicated on the eve of the tour when they spot Bryn (Meredith Hagner) at an open-mic and Jason invites her to open, as well.

Grace avoids love-triangle tropes with this traditional set-up, and he keeps things loose with some apparent improv, including a winning exchange between the guys in the car listing their all-time favorite dude solo acts. (Karpovsky's parody of an imaginary Springsteen tale is particularly charming.)

Karpovsky (HBO's "Girls," "Supporting Characters") finds depth in this irascible loser, still reeling from getting dumped by his fiancee. ("That's why I don't date hot girls," a comedy-club pal (Michael Ian Black) tells him.) Paul stubbornly sticks with his dud of an amateur set, drawing crickets every time he tries his riff on e-vites. Russell ("Ingrid Goes West") brings playboy Jason down to earth, particularly with his own pathetic lovelorn maneuver that brings things to a climax. Hagner is wildly appealing as a three-dimensional character whose future does not depend on either of these two goofballs.

Melanie Lynskey and David Cross are perfect in second-half cameos, the latter as the passive-aggressive host of a community radio station morning show. Unlike Paul's shtick, the lines land cleanly here, and there is heart to spare. This one could sneak up on anyone.

BONUS TRACK
The soundtrack is rife with songs by Adam Ezra, as well as originals from Russell and Hagner. But as the credits hit, we're treated to this 1967 nugget from Brenton Wood, "The Oogum Boogum Song":


 

New to the Queue

Is that all there is? ...

With trepidation, we give Paul Thomas Anderson and Joaquin Phoenix (last collaborating in the disappointing "The Master") another chance, with Thomas Pynchon's L.A. noir story "Inherent Vice."

Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns with his latest Anatolian epic, "Winter Sleep."

Chris Rock's shot at the next tier, what we hope is a smart and funny film, "Top Five."

The debut of writer/director Talya Lavie about women marking time in an Israeli military outpost, "Zero Motivation."

It looks stupid, but the cast is strong (J.K. Simmons, Nikki Reed, Greg Kinnear), in a story about a man investigating the death of his pet, the noir spoof "Murder of a Cat."

A devastating look at our corporate overlords and income inequality, the documentary "Poverty, Inc."

Our gal Melanie Lynskey is a wife who dumps her husband (Paul Schneider) in "Goodbye to All That."

The one-two punch of Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric in a stalled marriage, "If You Don't, I Will."

Doing the Sundance

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times has a thoughtful piece about some of the highlights of the Sundance Film Festival and finds political threads -- real or imagined -- as we descend into the Trump era. That's an excuse for us to flag a few promising offerings that splashed at the fest.

Familiar faces

Kumail Nanjiani, one of our favorites from HBO's "Silicon Valley," co-wrote (with his wife, Emily V. Gordon) a biographical dramedy about a Pakistani-born comic who must deal with parents who disapprove of his white American girlfriend, "The Big Sick." (Warning: Judd Apatow is a producer.)

Indie auteur Alex Ross Perry ("Listen Up Philip," "The Color Wheel," "Queen of Earth") explores the world of some unlikable women in "Golden Exits."

Eliza Hittman ("It Felt Like Love") returns to the world of young adults with "Beach Rats," about another teenager adrift in the world.

Melanie Lynskey ("Hello, I Must Be Going," "The Intervention") plays a depressed woman who seeks revenge on burglars in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore," the debut film from Macon Blair ("Blue Ruin").

Miguel Arteta ("Cedar Rapids"), who has spent a lot of time lately in the TV world ("Getting On," "Nurse Jackie"), is back on the big screen with writer Mike White (HBO's "Enlightened"), where they previously scored  with  "The Good Girl" and "Chuck & Buck." Their new project is "Beatriz at Dinner," starring Salma Hayek as a new-age hippie type who inadvertently falls in with the 1-percent crowd.


Dee Rees, last seen directing the coming-of-age tale "Pariah" (our fourth favorite film of 2011), is back with "Mudbound," a sweeping World War II-era story of a black family and the white clan that owns the land on which they work. Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige star.


Craig Johnson ("The Skeleton Twins," "True Adolescents") teams with Daniel Clowes ("Ghost World," "Art School Confidential") for "Wilson," starring Woody Harrelson as an obnoxious misanthrope.

Luca Guadagnino ("A Bigger Splash," "I Am Love") explores a May-December gay romance in the early '80s in "Call Me by Your Name."

Jenny Slate and Gillian Robespierre follow up "Obvious Child" with a '90s period piece about cheating among the various generations, "Landline."

Fresh voices

"Quest" is a documentary created over decades looking at a black Philadelphia family coping with life in the big city, including urban violence.

Geremy Jasper debuts with "Patty Cakes," about a chubby young woman from New Jersey looking to hit it big as a rap star.
  

Best of Ever, Vol. 13: Job Security

 Two classics for the price of one. Inspired to finally finish these reviews so that I can at least start a tribute to Robert Redford, who died this week at 89. Expect a fuller retrospective down the road.

UP IN THE AIR (2009) (A) - Everything comes together perfectly synchronized in this charming rumination on loneliness and loss and the hubris of flying solo through life.

 

George Clooney is classic Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a motivational speaker with a winning smile who flies around the country for an HR consulting firm, for the express purpose of firing people during layoffs. Remember, this landed during the depths of the Great Recession, and Jason Reitman recruits a few real laid-off people to play the victims of corporate downsizing.

Clooney is the middleman among a powerful trio of co-stars -- there is Jason Bateman as Ryan's wonderfully cynical boss; Anna Kendrick as Natalie, a whippersnapper who has come up with a plan to conduct the firings efficiently by video conferencing; and Vera Farmiga as Alex, a fellow random frequent flier, who trysts with Ryan whenever they can arrange to overlap at the same hotel in the same city on the same night. Clooney and Farmiga smolder as the hot middle-aged friends with benefits, and Kendrick is manic as the ball of neuroses who, before implementing her video scheme, must first travel with Ryan in order to get a firsthand feel for the in-person process.

This sets the table for the characters to confront their lingering demons: Ryan as the smug confirmed bachelor who thinks he's got life aced, and Natalie, the emotionally icy automaton who must deal with the breakup of her engagement while sitting face-to-face with the workers impacted by her careerist corporate manipulations. Their mentor-mentee banter is priceless -- Ryan deploys strategic stereotypes to guide her through airport security as efficiently as possible, and when he confronts Natalie about her aggressive keyboard flourishes, she responds curtly, "I type with purpose." 

Reitman's screenplay (with Sheldon Turner) does not miss a beat across 109 taut minutes, and he builds to a third-act dramatic arc that upends the hero's (literal) journey. Ryan's goal is to achieve 10 million air miles to join a ridiculously exclusive club; his home is as much in the sky as it is in the barren apartment he keeps in the middle of nowhere (Omaha, Neb.). Reitman sends Ryan and Alex to Wisconsin for the wedding of Ryan's sister. Ryan seems estranged from his two sisters and out-of-place in the heartland (because he's out of place everywhere, you see), and he falls victim to the oldest tradition in the book -- being around a wedding and family digs up a well of emotion that he foists onto Alex, endangering their no-strings arrangement. (The cast is so overstuffed that some viewers might not appreciate the nuanced work of Melanie Lynskey as the bride and Danny McBride as the groom who gets cold feet and must sit for a talking-to from Ryan, the worst person to advocate for marriage and commitment. Good thing he's a bull-shitting motivational speaker.)

Reitman has a couple more twists to reveal in the homestretch -- Natalie will be confronted with the real-world consequences of her chosen profession, and Alex and Ryan must resolve their situationship. The filmmaker draws his characters so finely and deeply that the various fallouts from their interactions feel like gut punches. Ryan's tutoring of Natalie feels real beneath the wisecracks. There is not a false move here; it's just exquisite storytelling with both a brain and a heart.

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) (B+) - Were there three prettier people in 1969 than Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross? Were they believable back then as scruffy outlaws from the Wild West circa 1899? Let's not overthink a classic.

Redford and Newman chew up and spit out a script by William Goldman ("All the President's Men," "The Princess Bride") as swaggering bandits bedeviling the railroads before going on the lam. Butch Cassidy (Newman) is the head of a gang -- in an early scene he cleverly fends off a coup by a rival member (played by Ted Cassidy, Lurch from "The Addams Family") -- and Sundance (Redford) is a famed gunslinger. When a train robbery goes awry, this becomes a western road movie, with Butch and Sundance barely keeping one step ahead of the law. 

 

It's a little difficult separating the former cultural phenomenon with the product on the screen as it stands 56 years later. There is the famous leapfrom a cliff into a raging river -- trapped on the cliff, Sundance is afraid to jump because he can't swim, to which Butch guffaws: "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!" And then there's the famous scene of a new contraption, the bicycle, with Butch and Etta Place (Ross) frolicking to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" sung by B.J. Thomas. (Ross too often is treated like a third wheel in the film, pardon the pun.)

The film was a breakthrough for George Roy Hill, who would reunite with his two main leads a few years later with another touchstone, "The Sting," an even bigger hit. He keeps things loose, letting the charm of his cast buoy the narrative, without turning this into a farce. Hill has a firm grasp of the conventions of the western genre, which at that point was undergoing a "Bonnie & Clyde"-style correction at the onset of the American New Wave. 

Redford and his feathered coif never quite come across as authentic, but the veteran Newman is all grit as the weathered bandit who knows he is running out of options. Ross rejoins the proceedings when Butch and Sundance decide to flee to Bolivia, believing that their scent will go cold while they knock off some easy prey, like the local banks. The culture clash is amusing without being condescending. The one-liners zing right up until the very end, when a hail of bullets and a freeze frame solidify our anti-heroes as Hollywood legends.

The BEST films of 2012

I still haven't seen every 2012 release that I wanted to see, but it's silly to wait until, say, April, to put together a definitive list, so here we go, putting a bow on the best in show.

2012 was a pivotal year of sorts, and my list steps back a bit from any attempt at a grand analysis of cinema or the technical achievements of storytelling. As often as not I was aware of my moviegoing experience in the moment, and while I didn't forsake great filmmaking just for the popcorn and cushy chairs, I often treasured the idea of being in the theater with a certain crowd, stewing in that space in that time. I saw "First Position," a documentary about young ballet dancers, with a nearly sold-out contingent of mostly women and girls at the Guild Cinema. I packed in eight movies in two days with my favorite movie companion at the Santa Fe Film Festival in December. I walked out of "Damsels in Distress" after the first half hour in favor of a stroll around Downtown at sunset. I cried during "Flight" and "The Sessions" at the megaplex. I paid $13 in Manhattan for a solo matinee of "Oslo, August 31st." I was profoundly moved by "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present" on a laptop in my living room.

But it was the kids who got to me the most. One-third of my Top 15 is made up of films that revolve around children. Let's not analyze it too deeply. I've developed a weakness, apparently. The Gilmore Girls have birthed a new generation.

So, while my list might seem a little more pedantic this year, it feels awfully personal and fulfilling. Here are my favorites for 2012 (so far):

THE TOP 15

1.  Polisse - The cranky characters in a Paris precinct's child-protection division create the best "Hill Street Blues" episode ever
2.  Monsieur Lazhar -A stunning, simple story of students and adults in Quebec dealing with one big tragedy and assorted little ones, with the help of a random kind stranger
3.  The Kid With a Bike - A wrenching tale of a little boy looking for parental love
4.  Flight - Exhilarating story, a great actor, delirious fun, deeply moving
5.  Take This Waltz - Sarah Polley's perfect, lightweight snapshot of a hipster couple and their challenges and longings
6.  The Sessions - A sweet old-fashioned movie with two daring, magnetic stars
7.  Sleepwalk With Me - Mike Birbiglia serves up the funniest movie of the year, a real hoot
8.  Searching for Sugarman - It broke my heart but then lifted it; the music still resonates
9.  Farewell My Queen - A luscious visual feast and a gorgeous depiction of women bonding
10. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present - The 2012 film that haunts me the most, six months on
11. Oslo, August 31st - A stark recounting of a young man's struggle to cope and go on
12. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia - Nuri Bilge Ceylan yet again has a firm grasp on the human condition
13. Hello, I Must Be Going - Melanie Lynskey is captivating yet understated in this quietly powerful story
14. Magic Mike - Maybe the most fun I had at a movie this year (on opening weekend with an audience that was almost entirely female)
15. Turn Me On, Dammit - The fifth film about kids on my list; this one is precious from beginning to end

JUST MISSED THE LIST

• Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson almost ended up on the "Off-Year" list below, and there's a tone-deaf performance by Bill Murray (speaking of off-years), but still a magical fairy tale of youth 
• This Is Not a Film - Simple yet haunting; tied (with "Starlet," below) for the best ending of the year
• Footnote - A high-minded and engaging portrayal of our competitive nature
• Attenberg - Kinetic, provocative and fun
• Alps - A good year for the Greeks
• The Turin Horse - Bela Tarr is working on a whole different level than the rest of us
• Sister - A hell of a story and a great performance from pre-teen Kacey Mottet Klein
• Starlet - A beautiful story about a disaffected young adult and the old woman she befriends
• The Deep Blue Sea - From Terence Davies, a mature, moving period piece about a woman aching to be loved
• The Color Wheel - A sharp, free-wheeling road movie featuring wonderfully sarcastic siblings
• Chicken With Plums - Lovely.
• Barbara - A smart spy saga and a subtle love story from behind the Iron Curtain
• Declaration of War - A touching tale of a French couple dealing with their infant's illness, fictionalized by the couple themselves
• The Last Ride - This year's Aussie entry in "The Proposition" category
• Union Square - I simply loved Mia Sorvino and Tammy Blanchard's performances as estranged sisters thrown together again by the former's latest drama
• Dark Horse - Not Todd Solondz's best, but his best in quite a while, continuing the comeback he started with "Life During Wartime"
• 17 Girls -  The French try their hand at a Sofia Coppola movie
• Jeff, Who Lives at Home - Silly at times, but also charming and touching in spots
  

BEST SCREENPLAY

• Kim Fupz Aakeson's Perfect Sense

TOP DOCS

• Beauty Is Embarrassing
• How to Survive a Plague
• Brooklyn Castle
• The House I Live In
• Samsara

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Good films where we just didn't click)

• Argo
• Seven Psychopaths
• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• The Queen of Versailles
• Holy Motors
• Rust and Bone
• Amour

GUILTY PLEASURES

• The Paperboy
• God Bless America (Bobcat Goldthwait has never let me down)
• Burning Man
• Nobody Else But You
• The Woman in the Fifth

ACTORS OF THE MOMENT

• Mark Duplass: Your Sister's Sister, The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Safety Not Guaranteed
• Brit Marling: Arbitrage and The Sound of My Voice

AN OFF-YEAR FOR TOP DIRECTORS

• Crazy Horse (Wiseman)
• Trishna (Winterbottom)
• The Master (Anderson)
• Keyhole (Maddin)
• 4:44: Last Day on Earth (Ferrara)

THE DUDS

• The horribly anachronistic and tone-deaf Damsels in Distress
• The tedious, monotonous, uninteresting and unfunny The Comedy
• The ridiculously lachrymose and embarrassing Rob Reiner fluff The Magic of Belle Isle

DIDN'T BOTHER

• Zero Dark Thirty
• Lincoln 
• Life of Pi
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Django Unchained

COMING ATTRACTIONS

• Tabu
• The Central Park Five
• Middle of Nowhere
• The Funeral Kings
• Not Fade Away
• Kumare

Stay tuned for reports on those last six titles once I catch up with them and plenty more as we charge forth into February . . .

A Guy's Life

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (B+) - Otto is having quite a go of it. His wife has dumped him, and he's feeling his way around the modern dating scene, including the Facebook lure of old flames. And he's recovering from a broken foot, suffered during a stupid four-wheeling accident that glaringly symbolizes both Otto's immaturity and his obliviousness.

Angus MacLachlan, who wrote the wonderful "Junebug" in 2005, goes behind the camera for the first time to film his latest script. It's a fascinating character study, pulled off well by the lanky and darkly handsome Paul Schneider ("George Washington," TV's "Parks and Recreation") as Otto.

Poor Otto is totally blindsided by Annie (Melanie Lynskey, understated but effective), who orders him to attend one of her shrink sessions ("You go to therapy?" he wonders aloud to her), where her therapist (Celia Weston) proceeds to inform Otto that his marriage is over. It's a sharp scene -- both funny and heartreaking -- and it sets a strong foundation. What follows is a series of vignettes that can be rather hit-and-miss, depending, in part, on the viewer's tolerance for the male fantasy of having beautiful young women fall all over a scruffy, messed-up manchild.

While struggling to connect with his daughter Edie (Audrey Scott), Otto -- literally limping along -- experiences a series of flings with a parade of hotties of various ages. There's Stephanie (a saucy Heather Graham), a former summer campmate who is organizing a reunion. And we meet Mildred (a smoldering Ashley Hinshaw from "About Cherry"), a modern gal who wants Otto only for the meaningless trysts and who lectures him when he has the temerity to ask her out on a traditional date. The superstar, though, is Debbie Spangler (spunky Anna Camp from "Pitch Perfect"), who is trying to be a good Christian girl (Edie drags Otto to church for an unexplained reasons) but doesn't have a firm handle on her libido or emotions.

Drowning in it, Otto still pines for the one who got away -- former girlfriend Lara (a powerful Heather Lawless), whose availability is revealed only in the final third. It all climaxes with the convergence of several solicitous women leaving an overwhelmed Otto a-fluster. Will he focus on what's important and grow as a human being? We're hopeful.

MacLachlan has a way with dialogue (especially in an otherwise throwaway scene between Otto and his doctor pal), and he captures the delight and terror of being newly single on the brink of 40. He crafts a clear narrative, but it's definitely choppy. The film's parts don't cohere into a fully successful whole. But Schneider, with is strong jaw and a Steve Martin charm and humor, makes you care about how this all turns out in the end.
 

Best of 2016

"It used to go like that, and now it goes like this."
   -- Bob Dylan, introducing "I Don't Believe You" and going electric with The Band at Royal Albert Hall in London in 1966

I was confident throughout 2016 that the Chicago Cubs were going to the World Series -- hey, hey, no doubt about it -- and when I told a Los Angeles Dodgers fan during the playoffs to give up hope and get out of the way this year, he objected, being a scientist, on the grounds that the Cubs going to or winning the World Series would create a rip in the fabric of the time-space continuum and fundamentally alter life in the universe as we know it.

Whether he was at all serious or not (and depending on your reaction to the election results a week after the World Series was clinched), things changed in 2016. And it felt fundamental. How we go forward in this space will be addressed in a future essay. For now, we'll offer a brief assessment of an off-year at the movies and dive into our lists below of the favorites and a few duds. Nothing beyond our top three or five movies is likely to be revisited down the road in some best-of-the-decade list.  There were plenty of satisfying films to experience, but few big thrills at the cineplex.

One of those thrills was "A Bigger Splash." A friend and I walked out after it on a warm June night giddy from the experience of watching Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes dueling it out as ex-lovers on an Italian island. Director Luca Guadagnino (reteaming with Swinton from "I Am Love") saturates the senses with gorgeous scenery, ripping humor, and a powerful story. It's a gift to those who are in love with love and with movies. Another Italian director, newcomer Piero Messina, had me literally on the edge of my seat with the mesmerizing slow burn of "L'Attesa" -- halfway through I wanted to jump up and go write about it -- but I eventually succumbed to guilt for allowing myself to be manipulated by Messina's unsettling male gaze at two women (a mother and a girlfriend) fighting over a dead man.

I was profoundly moved by Viggo Mortensen's performance as an unrepentant off-the-grid father stubbornly fighting for his kids after their mother's death ("Captain Fantastic"); by Kelly Reichardt's quiet masterpiece about three women coping with modern life ("Certain Women"); and by the mix of humor and pathos in "Manchester by the Sea." I loved the millennial energy of Matt Johnson and company as they followed up "The Dirties" with their found-footage lark about the Apollo space program.

Sonia Braga (in "Aquarius") and Sally Field (in "Hello, My Name Is Doris") brought nuance to the subject of older women exploring their sexuality. Meantime, kids made an impression, including the young cast of "Captain Fantastic"; "Royalty Hightower in "The Fits"; Alex Hibbert and Ashton Sanders in "Moonlight"; Markees Christmas in "Morris From America"; and Ange Dargent and Theophile Baquet in the delightful French film "Microbe and Gasoline."

I laughed the most watching "Doris," the bruising dark comedy "The Bronze," the Coen brothers' "Hail, Caesar," the gals in "Absolutely Fabulous," the guys in "Keanu," and, improbably, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in "The Nice Guys." I caught up on 2015 releases that stuck with me a long time, and demanded repeat viewings, including the moody "Dear John" and the hilarious "Fort Tilden." I cringed watching Pee-wee Herman and Christopher Guest struggle to relive past glories.

It's time to turn the page on 2016, not the best of years, but somehow a liberating one. Those Cubs exorcised a lot of childhood ghosts, so I could grow up and grow lighter. The death of Muhammad Ali removed a layer of shelter above, shook up the world, and left me in charge of the future. But first, this quick recap of the past:

THE TOP FIFTEEN

 1. A Bigger Splash -- We left the theater in a bubble of bliss after this one. Old loves, young flesh, gorgeous beaches and a heavyweight bout between Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes.
 2. Certain Women -- Three somber tales, barely intertwined, from the year's Best Director, the American master Kelly Reichardt.
 3. Captain Fantastic -- Viggo Mortensen leads a great cast of kids in this funny and heart-wrenching story of a father proudly defending the decision to raise his children off the grid.
 4. Operation Avalanche -- Not a false note in this highly entertaining imagining of young CIA operatives (and Stanley Kubrick wannabes) faking the moon landing.  Including Best Screenplay by Matt Johnson and Josh Boles.
 5. Manchester by the Sea -- Funny, heartbreaking, real.
 6. Aquarius -- The ache of nostalgia for old love affairs permeates this gorgeous slow burn of a protest film, anchored by a defiant Sonia Braga.
 7. Hello, My Name Is Doris -- Sally Field is always a delight, and she delivers more than just easy gags as a senior citizen crushing on a young co-worker.
 8. The Bronze -- More than a guilty pleasure; a wonderfully vulgar character study of a bitter, priapicly pony-tailed ex-gymnast. A fully realized satire from sitcom actress Melissa Rauch ("The Big Bang Theory").
 9. Blue Jay -- A small 80-minute masterpiece about a onetime teen couple reconnecting back in their hometown after 20 years
10. Dheepan -- Jacques Audiard gets back on his game with this harrowing tale of immigrants coping in France.
11. 20th Century Women -- Certain men will feel this one sharply in the solar plexus. An eerie Reagan-eve reverie about three women -- played beautifully by Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning -- preparing a teenage boy for manhood.
12. Louder Than Bombs -- None of the performances are particularly compelling (even Isabelle Huppert is quite subdued), but this tale of a father and two sons adrift and struggling after the death of their wife/mother nags at you a long time.
13. Microbe and Gasoline -- A wholesome and charming return to form for Michel Gondry.
14. Weiner/13th -- Two documentaries bursting with life and ideas -- a fascinating, rollicking profile of the infuriating Anthony Weiner, and Ava Duvernay's sharp indictment of the criminal justice system.
15. L'Attesa -- For the first hour, I thought this was the best film of the year; I still feel guilty for liking this gorgeous, sad drama seen through the male gaze of an Italian stylist. Still conflicted.

BONUS TRACKS

.
We got a huge kick out of the 2015 release, Fort Tilden, an insightful comedy about a pair of aimless 25-year-olds meandering around New York for a day. The cross between "Girls" and "Beavis and Butt-head" is infused with the natural chemistry of its stars, Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty

Other little gems from 2015: The gut punch of "Uncle John," the creepiness of "Entertainment," the joy of Francois Ozon's "The New Girlfriend," the thrill of "Creed," and the arresting beauty of the documentary "Racing Extinction." And then there was the release of the restored 1960 noir gem "Private Property."

JUST MISSED THE LIST

(The honorables get a mention)

• Moonlight
• Krisha
• The Fits
• Hell or High Water
• Don't Think Twice
• Rams
• Hail, Caesar
• Mountains May Depart
• Fireworks Wednesday

MORE TOP DOCS

• Landfill Harmonic
• City of Gold
• Requiem for the American Dream
• No Home Movie
• Danny Says
• Holy Hell
• Pervert Park

TOP PERFORMANCES

• Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson in "Blue Jay"
• Michelle Williams, small in "Manchester by the Sea" and "Certain Women"
• Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes in "A Bigger Splash"
• Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone in "Certain Women"
• Mahershala Ali in "Kicks" and "Moonlight"
• Sonia Braga in "Aquarius"
• Juliette Binoche in "L'Attesa"
• Bill Wise in "Krisha"
• Gillian Jacobs in "Don't Think Twice"
• Riley Keough in "American Honey"

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Good films where we just didn't fully click)

• Jeff Nichols' "Midnight Special" and "Loving"
• Damien Chazelle's "La La Land"
• Andrea Arnold's "American Honey"

GUILTY PLEASURES

• Keanu, with its absurd kitten-centric plot and a tribute to George Michael.
• The Nice Guys made me laugh a lot at its silliness.
• Absolutely Fabulous: I love watching that pair do the opposite of aging gracefully.
• The Invitation was just the right level of unnerving.
• The Intervention offered the joy of watching great actresses in a theatrical exercise, led by Melanie Lynskey.
• Night of the Living Deb was surprisingly smart and zippy fun.

THE OVER-THE-HILL GANG

• Pee-Wee's Big Holiday: So funny I forgot to laugh.
• Mascots: Christopher Guest goes to the well once too often.
• Everybody Wants Some: Someone shake Richard Linklater out of his slump.
• The Lobster: A colossal English-debut misfire by the director of "Dogtooth" and "Alps."
• The Club: Pablo Larrain ... grr.
• Maggie's Plan: Rebecca Miller wastes Greta Gerwig's talents.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

(Haven't caught these yet)

• Paterson
• Fences
• Elle
• Things to Come
• Toni Erdmann
• I Am Not Your Negro
• Cameraperson

Stay tuned for reports on those last seven movies once I catch up on them -- and plenty more -- as we churn into 2017 in earnest and in an altered state ...