Short Take: "The Muppets", "The Adventures of Tintin".

Appealing to nostalgia might not be the best angle to use in a society where history is constantly relegated to a previous, usually inferior, level of existence, however this is exactly what The Muppets does and it does it magically. Based on the beloved characters made famous by Jim Henson in the late 1970s, the film tries to rekindle the memories of those who loved the Muppets, while introducing them to a whole new generation.
Injected with the fresh blood of director James Bobin and musical composer Bret McKenzie (two of the men behind the amazing Flight of the Conchords) and writer/actor Jason Segel, the movie is a pure labor of love, done by the people who grew up with these characters and who wanted younger people to get to know them.
The movie in a way is a fictitious version of its creation. When it starts we meet Gary (Segel) and Walter, two brothers who live in Smalltown, USA and who grew up loving the Muppets (one of the first scenes has them watching the show together in an episode with Steve Martin as a guest). Walter has a special reason for loving them more: he is a Muppet himself.
Gary and his girlfriend Mary (Adams) take Walter to Los Angeles so he can make his dream come true and visit The Muppets' studio, however once there, Walter is appalled to find out that not only is the lot practically deserted, but an evil businessman (Cooper) has decided to steal it and turn it into an oil refinery.
Walter sets out on a mission to get all the Muppets back together and raise the money to save the studio.
Call it a mix between a telethon (moviethon?), an old fashioned "let's put a show together" spectacle and a trip down memory lane.
The film goes the extra mile to put a smile on audience faces while paying tribute to the enormous legacy The Muppets have had in pop culture but more than that it works as a superb exercise in postmodern theories regarding memory and its direct relation with mass entertainment.
Many people may not remember when they took their first step or when their first tooth fell out but they're more than likely to remember the first time they watched their favorite movie or their favorite TV show. Why and how media has developed parallel to our sensory is perhaps a matter best left to anthropologists and sociologists, however the issue with this film is that it taps onto something similar to an imagined collective consciousness; its pleasures exclusive to those who feel at home watching The Muppets.
The film's meta elements wonderfully convey the nature of filmmaking and interestingly enough lead us to question the prevalence of film as a medium, for example how will future generations feel about the use of current celebrities as "stars"? The film itself makes a point - in some truly outrageous jokes - about the ups and downs of star power. If people fifty years from now think of Jack Black as a movie star, then the movie will have huge nostalgic power, however if they wonder who the hell the fat guy with the weird smile is, the film will prove a point. Either way The Muppets come out winners.

The Adventures of Tintin might very well be the best movie Steven Spielberg has made in a decade. Unlike his "live action" projects which suffer from his excessive use of sentimentality and his need to tie everything up with a lovely bow, this graphic novel adaptation is served from its source material's no-bullshit approach to entertaining, which is something Spielberg has truly excelled at.
Tintin reminds you of the Indiana Jones movies and some of his family classics like E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial because you can feel how the director is loving every minute of it. Motion capture seems to have opened up a door that he's kept shut in favor of more "serious" films. From its lovingly detailed opening sequence, to its wonderful homage to Lawrence of Arabia the film thrives with a restlessness that becomes truly addictive. The work of the actors is superb and the film has one of the most exciting sequences Spielberg has ever shot.
It's refreshing to see how medium experts are finding new life in modern techniques.

Grades:
The Muppets ***½
The Adventures of Tintin ***

Short Take: "Senna", "Jane Eyre" and "Warrior".

Ayrton Senna was widely regarded as one of the best race car pilots in the history of sport and Asif Kapadia's masterful documentary proves why. The thrilling film closely follows Senna's trajectory beginning as an amateur and then going all the way to him being World Champion on three consecutive years. The film chronicles his rivalry with teammate Alain Prost, with whom he engaged in psychological warfare on and off the racing track. What remains so stunning about this film, is how it trespasses into narrative fiction while retaining elements of non-fiction cinema. Most documentaries make you aware that you are watching reality being bent and that for all you want to do about it, the events being related are unchangeable. What goes on with Senna is quite the opposite, the film is done entirely with archival and news footage (there are no modern day interviews or intrusive narration) all of this helps create a seamless chain of events that trick us into thinking we might be watching fiction. We know for a fact that we're not, but the narrative is so precise and flawless that we ask ourselves, why were that many cameras near Ayrton all the time? The entire film has an eerie prescience, as if the people involved knew one day these fragments of their lives would be used to tell a life story. With that said, the film avoids sensationalism, instead turning Ayrton into a mythical figure with a tainted human spirit. His love of god and country are as great as his ego (sometimes he sounded deluded, as if he was the Joan of Arc of racing) and for all the inevitability of its tragic finale, you always hope things will turn out different for him in the end. They don't of course, but Senna proves that truth can sometimes be much more harrowing than fiction. 

Out of all the English classic novels, it always results mystifying to ask ourselves how did the Brontë's oeuvre end up falling into the romance genre when their twisted stories of suffering among the English moors perhaps fit better in the category of horror. The greatest adaptation of any of their works is probably I Walked With a Zombie because it goes to the heart of its literary adaptation, Jane Eyre, removes all the romantic bullshit and sees it for what it is: a tale of sadomasochism disguised as love. With that said, most of the world chooses to see Jane Eyre as a tale of doomed romance and love conquering it all, which would make for an interesting essay on how messed up our conceptions of love are...but that's a whole different story. In this adaptation of the classic novel, the usually insipid Mia Wasikowska gives life to Jane Eyre, the suffering governess who goes through a Dickensian childhood only to end in an even more tortuous relationship with her employer, the damaged Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender). Director Cary Fukunaga goes the traditional way and turns the film into a showcase of classic studio filmmaking with gorgeous sets, a sweeping musical score and Judi Dench. Perhaps it's best to approach the movie as if you were watching a classic Hollywood production, given that Fukunaga injects little into it and like in his previous movie, some scenes offer themselves to be taken as parody (Rochester telling Jane how he's far from handsome comes to mind). It's great that Fassbender and Wasikowska put so much into their roles, because they make the film's artifice achieve a delightful balance.

Warrior is a movie that lingers dangerously between parody and serious filmmaking and can best be comprised by calling it: a greatest hits kind of movie. Taking elements that have worked before for similarly themed movies (although fans of it can argue that all films are versions of other films) director Gavin O'Connor brings us a tearjerker that combines Rocky, The Fighter, Karate Kid and a few biblical parables to create a movie aimed to please everyone. Tom Hardy stars as Tommy, a former marine who returns to the States and asks his ex-alcoholic dad (Nick Nolte) to train him for a mixed martial arts championship named Sparta (for 300 lovers). Meanwhile, Tommy's estranged brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton) is going through an economic crisis that forces him to sign up for the same championship in order to save his house from being foreclosed. Tommy, obviously, hides a dark secret about his days in Iraq and Brendan, who works as a high school teacher, must hide his new moneymaking scheme from his students (somehow mixed martial arts are the equivalent of prostitution to the film's Capra-esque characters) and of course the final showdown will be between the siblings, but which one should win? The real problem with Warrior is that it's so many different movies, that it ends up being none. The acting is quite good, Edgerton and Hardy are terrific and surprisingly sincere, but the plot feels forced and drags on for too long. If you've seen any of the movies it borrows from, you really don't need to bother with it...
However, here's a theory: the movie grabs a soldier and a schoolteacher - two of the most "heroic" and valued professions in the USA - takes away their "integrity" and pitches them against each other in a brutal fight for money. What is the film saying about the worth of morality in a world where the economy plummets constantly? Now, that would've made a much more interesting movie...

Grades:
Senna ***½
Jane Eyre ***
Warrior **

Defiance *1/2

Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell
George MacKay, Mark Feuerstein, Alexa Davalos, Tomas Arana
Allan Corduner, Iddo Goldberg

With "Defiance" Edward Zwick proves there isn't a sociopolitical event he can't trivialize.
Set during the Nazi occupation of West Belarus during World War II, it tells the story of the Bielski brothers, who fled to the local forests after their family was murdered, where they formed a resistance that fought the invaders and eventually rescued 1,200 Jews.
Problems rise between the people as they must form an informal community while escaping the ever threatening Nazi soldiers.
Craig as older brother Tuvia and Schreiber as Zus give the film a respectable feel as they reflect sibling problems while giving convincing performances.
Craig does tough, sensitive guy like few people and there's no amount of moving disdain that Schreiber's grin can't muster, but the rest of the actors are just there to fill their Holocaust movie character quota.
The usually charming Feuerstein plays the "intellectual" who argues with the spiritual guy (Corduner) in random scenes that feel contrived and naive.
"Defiance" does get its action scenes right though, Eduardo Serra's cinematography gets you right in the battles and the film perhaps should've embraced its shallowness and play out like a romantic version of the Bielski saga as over the top heroism.
The film is worth a look if only as a reminder that the Jews didn't react passively during the Holocaust, as Hollywood has constantly tried to make us believe; they fought back and strove hard for survival.
In this raw desperation to keep alive we find the film's most compelling moments; watching dozens of people share the same plate of food, fight for it when they don't have it and face the moment when they have to shoot someone for the first time, makes for an affecting experience.
One that Zwick isn't aware he is creating, because he reduces everything to every Holocaust cliché we've seen.
Grandiose speeches before an important battle? Check.
Cold blooded murder justified because the lead actor commits it? Check.
Sudden romantic interests in the midst of annihilation? Check.
Dismissal of laws, stressed throughout as being unbreakable, just because someone's heart is warmed? Check.
The list goes on and on as Zwick turns the Bielskis into Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments" (he even has them "part" a body of water).
When one of the characters points out the irony that they are being attacked in the eve of Passover, we don't link this fact with actual historical accuracy but with Zwick's need to over dramatize everything.
Then he goes as far as making all the plot work just so the brothers will resolve rivalry issues and bond in a slightly homoerotic embrace once it's all over.
"Your Jewish sentimentality is heartwarming, but counter-revolutionary" warns officer Ben Zion (Arana) to Zus who has left his camp to fight in the front with the Russians.
Zwick's film isn't smart enough to be subversive and its kind of sentimentality (complete with real pictures of the Bielskis during the end credits) is disrespectful because instead of making us sit in awe about such an admirable deed it mostly just makes us want to look away.

Jumper *

Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell
Samuel L. Jackson, Rachel Bilson, Diane Lane

David Rice (Christensen) is a jumper: he can teletransport himself to anywhere in the world by just thinking about it. He can sunbathe atop the Sphynx, surf in Maui after a one night stand in London and he can travel two inches closer to the remote control on his couch.
Since he was a teenager David has lived by robbing banks and then using the money to buy himself expensive things and lead a carefree life.
When he watches people waiting to be rescued on TV and the words "out of reach" should sound like a cue for him to come help, he chuckles and turns it off.
In other words, David has the power of irresponsibility.
One day he discovers there is a group called the Paladins, led by Roland Cox (Jackson) whose sole mission is to kill jumpers.
He runs away, after going back to his hometown to get his childhood love Millie (Bilson) and while having a Roman holiday meets Griffin (Bell) a fellow jumper with whom he teams up to get rid of the Paladins.
It's of course out of the question to believe in a film that has people teletransporting themselves all over, but even for something like this, there should be a string of veracity that makes the characters and situations believable within the context.
"Jumper" has none of it.
What we get is a lot of explosions, even more "whoosh" sounds and fast editing, along with awful perfomances.
The film never feels the need to elaborate on why the featured jumpers have dedicated their powers to hedonism or haven't at least looked for easy jobs to keep their secret safe.
If you wanna try to look deeper into what the film might be all about we have on on side the jumpers, whose irresponsibility and the way in which they travel causing mischief is reminiscent of what a child would do.
Then we have the Paladins who want to stop them (even if the reason Cox gives is that "only God should be able to be everywhere") but in a way they are adulthood trying to catch up with these kids.
If the methods are a bit drastic, one might argue that maturity usually involves hard knocks when it arrives, but of course all this would be looking too far into a movie whose existence results impossible to defend.
Christensen's casting as the lead is puzzling, unless they wanted David to be played in a robotic manner (and can we really believe that someone who won't commit to an apartment will go back because he has never stopped loving his childhood sweetheart?)
Jackson is so over the top that he isn't even as selfconsciously campy as he usually is.
Bell is good, if only because his caddish ways never let his character take any of the crap he does seriously. The British actor must've known he was in the movie for the money and makes no effort trying to prove otherwise.
But what results plain disappointing is how aimless Liman's direction is. Like his jumpers he has lost all clue of the commitment filmmaking should be.
And while he gets to throw double decker buses in the middle of the desert and stage instant crosscountry battles, he doesn't seem to be extracting any fun out of it.
During the film's most ironic sequence David tells Griffin they should unite like "Marvel heroes".
What the characters, and the director, misunderstood is that superpowers don't instantly make you a super hero.
They should have taken cue from a true hero, and a much much better film that reminded us that with great power, comes great responsibility.