Short Take: "This Means War" and "Friends with Kids".

We get it, romance has evolved with the changing times and the movies have to adjust to the new ways in which people meet and fall in love, however this shouldn't mean that in the process we also must relinquish our human dignity, something that This is War not only suggests but encourages.
Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine) are two CIA secret agents who are "grounded" after ruining a mission and spend their boring office time trying to meet women. Tuck is a romantic with old fashioned ways who recurs to online dating to meet someone, FDR is a playboy who beds a different woman every night. They accidentally end up setting eyes on the same woman, consumer marketing expert, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) who by dating different men finds the perfect outlet to escape from her ex-boyfriend's shadow, try out her wilder sexual side and practice housekeeping. Where the movie suggests that Lauren is a hands on, ultra feminist woman, the plot and character development merely make her dalliances look like irresponsible promiscuity and of course, she is the only one getting accused of it, the guys and their jobs make them look like heroes who have earned the right to use their security clearance to harass the woman they think they're in love with. For all its misogyny, double standards and ultra conservative morality (you know who Lauren will pick from the very start) the film's greatest mistake is how utterly joyless it feels. Witherspoon seems to have forgotten how to be bubbly and charming, while Hardy and Pine hardly make for heroes worth pining for. The only war this movie declares is one against the intelligence and taste of its audience.

If you were one of those die-hard fans who were craving a Friends reunion, Friends with Kids should be the movie to dispel those wishes. Even if it's in no way associated to the popular TV show, the film works as a post-finale version of it, given that it un-creatively matches three women with three men to create the same dynamic as the series. Two of the couples are together and have started families, the single friends are those eternal bachelor (Adam Scott) and bachelorette (Jennifer Westfeldt) who seem to enjoy their "freedom" too much to lose it just to fit in with social norms.
In order to prove how awesome they are, the two friends decide to have a child and raise it without the typical family structure, of course their plan backfires as the movie conservatively reminds us that friends can't have sex and remain just friends, that children need two parents to be happy, that marriage is something we should all aspire to, and an assortment of other stereotypes that romantic comedies and dramas have helped perpetuate.
The problem at this point isn't whether they are right or not (morality and ethics aren't as universal as we'd think) but that movies like these pretend they will defy the conventional, only to become even more stilted and predictable themselves. The ending in Friends with Kids for example seems to be straight out of a cheesy 80s movie and the thing is that writer/director Westfeldt does not deliver it with a wink, she really thinks her movie is sincere.
More than a decade ago, Westfeldt brilliantly explored alternative sexual orientations in the wonderful Kissing Jessica Stein, if the characters in her new movie spent doing as much melancholy but hilarious soul searching as the characters in that one did, instead of screaming, cursing and dashing off dinner tables when upset we might've had our hands on a movie with some insight. Instead what we get are grownups who have replaced toys with wine, espresso machines and cursing to hide the fact that they are really nothing but kids.


Grades
This Means War ½
Friends With Kids *

Short Take: "War Horse" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

We get it, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is trying to show us how spying was done in the pre-internet, pre-GPS days, but few espionage thrillers have ever felt as downtrodden and well, lacking in thrills as Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John LeCarré's novel. Gary Oldman stars as the iconic George Smiley, a British intelligence agent whose methods are as laconic as the underrated actor's ability to insert himself so effortlessly into all his characters.
With extreme attention to detail and an earthy color palette - as well as stylized 70s camera moves - by DP Hoyte Van Hoytema, the film concentrates enough on the surroundings and period details, that it forgets that there's a story to be told, and more importantly as it should be in most spy films, there is a mystery to be solved.
In this case the British suspect there is a Communist mole in their organization, but ask anyone how they solve this and most will come to realize that at some point the movie lost their attention. Its execution is admirable but unless Alfredson was trying to make a point about the dullness of bureaucracy, or deglam crime as David Fincher expertly did in his masterful Zodiac, which he certainly doesn't seem to be doing, the film turns out to be an exercise in dullness in which elegant British actors are killed or double crossed while dressed in uninteresting khaki tones.

Out of all the popular directors from his generation, all of whom claim to be devoted cinephiles, Steven Spielberg seems to be the one who cultivated the most middlebrow taste. If not, ask yourself why of all John Ford's films, he had to choose the tepid How Green Was My Valley as his point of reference for War Horse?
There is nothing wrong with him liking Valley per se but to choose one of Ford's most inferior, albeit award winning, works is the equivalent of being an opera singer and doing Christina Aguilera covers. With that said, War Horse desperately tries to recreate what once was Hollywood's way of filmmaking: interior sets, excessive melodrama and strong family values. Spielberg is either paying tribute to the least challenging productions of an era or writing a guidebook on how to win Academy Awards.
Everything in War Horse feels like it belongs in a different era, and more often than not, it should've stayed there. What once was sweeping, now is obscenely manipulative and as a postmodernist exercise the film doesn't have much to say about the current world.
Human characters are perhaps unnecessary as the movie follows the title horse, named Joey, as he goes from owner to owner, surviving WWI in the process. Because we are asked to devote our attention to an animal, the film gets away with complex character development and tends to rely too much on just how adorable we find Joey. The horse, like some sort of Jesus or Forrest Gump, changes the lives of everyone he touches, which more often than not results in unintentional comedy.
It's truly sad to see actors like Mullan and Arestrup at the service of an equine but by the time when Watson is forced to do her frumpiest Jane Darwell impression, the film reaches new lows in how it so cynically tries to squeeze tears out of its audience.
War Horse should've inspired the old fashioned adjective "jolly", instead it goes all out on the preposterous "mush".

Grades
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy **
War Horse *

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 **

Inception **

Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy
Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy
Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine

Inception gets wrong everything that film noir got right. Perhaps, because in its attempt to create something groundbreaking and original, while obviously referential, it forgot that complexity and depth are often found within simplicity.
Nolan alludes to some of his idols like Stanley Kubrick and Michael Mann to come up with an ambitious facade that reveals deep inside there wasn't much to be said after all.
To put it in a blunt analogy, the movie is the equivalent of receiving a beautifully wrapped package for your birthday only to realize it contains socks.
Inception takes place in a future where corporate espionage has moved to the next level. Instead of sending spies into the companies; ideas and thoughts are stolen directly from the minds of its creators.
Using a machine and a series of sedatives, these dream thieves are able to navigate the minds of people and access hidden information. They create entire dreams, populate them with characters and other tricks to invade the person's subconscious.
But these dreams are made out of different levels and contain all kinds of rules that make this much harder than one would think.
This process is called "extraction" and Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is the go-to-man for these kind of jobs. Of course he has a dark past that led him to this line of work; in his case it's his tempestuous relationship with his wife Mal (Cotillard) and the fact that he's a fugitive who's been trying to make it back home for a while.
One day Dom receives a unique request from powerful businessman Saito (Watanabe), he doesn't need information, he needs "inception", to implant an idea inside his main competitor's (Murphy) mind.
Inception is some sort of urban myth, few people think it can be done, and Cobb reluctantly takes on the job after Saito promises he will clear his charges and make sure he gets back home safe.
To proceed with the heist, Cobb recruits Arthur (Levitt), his main partner and logistics man, Eames (Hardy) a clever impersonator capable of taking on anyone's personality in dreams, Yusuf (Rao), an experienced chemist who provides the sedatives and Ariadne (Page) an architect meant to design the various levels of the dreams.
The plot then moves like your regular heist movie and just like one, pulls cards out of its sleeves to make every twist and turn feel like the ultimate thrill. The thing about Inception is that it's so in love with its own grandiosity that it forgets to have any fun.
By providing certain rules that regulate the dream world (and are sure to become part of geek boy lexicon like the dialogue in Fight Club) the screenplay tries to conceal the fact that Nolan isn't capable of handling different levels of existence in the way Robert Altman did (without the fantastic sci-fi aid mind you).
One of the major elements about the dream world is that as the characters go down one level, time changes. This gives Nolan the opportunity to push slow motion to the limit and come up with some nice looking photographic tricks that make less obvious the fact that Nolan's eyes were bigger than his creative stomach. He tries to inject complexity into pausing action.
Because honestly nothing really happens during these time swifts which usually require the characters to fall asleep in order to work.
The whole movie actually functions on a paradoxical premise: we get the rules but they don't make much sense.
Sure, one could say that sci-fi allows its creators to bend reality and push the imagination but what are we supposed to think about a movie in which the characters are so faithful to the regulations of the world they inhabit, when the screenplay is constantly telling us to take a "leap of faith". Is this leap meant to make us ignore the plot holes in Nolan's writing?
How then, one might wonder, is it possible for the characters to keep secret from each other when invading someone else's mind?
If they are all in one person's subconscious and get to travel together from mind to mind, wouldn't it make sense that they all knew what the other was thinking? To go into these kinds of questions would make the movie fall like a house made out of playing cards and perhaps it's better to give Nolan the benefit of the doubt.
Yet even if it wasn't for the lackluster writing, Inception is doomed by its exhaustive and exhausting attempt to seem clever.
Nolan draws from film noir to come up with the whole plot. We have the "last job", the "man without a past", the femme fatale and other basic elements that made up the film style.
However noir was effective because it took place in a universe where dreams didn't exist, where people became archetypes trying to rediscover humanity.
In films like The Maltese Falcon ("the stuff which dreams are made of") and Out of the Past we saw human decay being explored in such a unique way that we saw the stories take place in locations that seemed real but we knew were representations of larger themes.
These movies about detectives, prostitutes and disloyal crooks were actually studies of the pathologies found in society and explorations of the implications popular culture was beginning to have on the collective psyche.
Yet talking about them, it's hard at first to see them for more than what they are. Inception on the other side, takes these stories into the location they were actually taking place in (the human mind) and by overexplaining them ironically robs them of their entire oneiric qualities.
Film noir is dream-like, Inception somehow is not.
Added to this, we have to wonder about the reality suggested in the world where Inception takes place. Nolan never bothers in suggesting there are any sort of ethical implications to what the dream thieves are doing.
We have to wonder if more people in this world are aware that this exists. Without this it's almost impossible for this technique to feel menacing. How can someone fear what they can't fathom possible?
The movie lacks a feeling of threat that goes beyond what the characters are going through. As personal as the subconscious they're invading might be, there is still a body that owns it and is presumably regulated by things like the law and societal rules.
Why then does the movie forgo all this and tries to trick us by making it seem as if it's only these characters who exist in the world (even taking into account some plot twists, it would still be rather limited to stick to such a facile theory).
It would be easy to dispute almost any element about the film's structure but the one thing nobody can deny is the lack of coherence in the dichotomy between mind and emotion.
We are constantly reminded by the characters that as logical as dreams may seem, they are ruled and commanded by feelings.
It's even one of the main points in planning the heist.
When it comes to executing this though, the movie falls apart disastrously even if a lot of the characters are constantly talking about emotions.
"What do you feel?" asks Mal, in what should've been the movie's emotional center. Instead of making the audience shed a tear, this scene just proves how disconnected the movie is from its own speech.
As if Nolan too chose to forget a truth he once knew...or maybe just lacks the directorial skills to aim at both mind and heart.
Not that there's anything wrong with it, in fact Kubrick made a career out of the purely cerebral, Nolan perhaps should also stick to what he knows best.
Sadly because the movie doesn't have the emotional core it refers to so much, we are denied the opportunity of watching either an entertaining heist flick or a tragic romance.
But not everything about the movie disappoints. The action sequences are interesting although their reminiscence to the Batman flicks and Insomnia make it seem like all these characters dream of are Christopher Nolan movies. It would've been interesting to see him play with these landscapes in a more surrealistic way, perhaps not pushing it all the way into whimsical territory like Hitchcock and Dalí did but at least toying a bit more with all the fuss about how in dreams you can build whatever you want.
Then there's Marion Cotillard who not only gets the film's most interesting "character" but also makes Mal so rich and complex that an eventual plot twist will leave us scratching our heads in awe. Watching her walk with the elegance of Marlene Dietrich while the world, literally, falls apart around her is watching an actress at the height of her powers. There is nothing she can't do.
The same can not be said about the movie, which proves that the more you talk about ideas doesn't mean you are particularly enlightened.

FYC: Best Actor in a Leading Role

Filippo Timi for "Vincere"

Willem Dafoe for "Antichrist"

Sam Rockwell for "Moon"

Tom Hardy for "Bronson"

None of them will ever happen.
But they make more sense in my mind than that Yoda redux Morgan Freeman has been getting so praised for.

Bronson ***

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Tom Hardy
Matt King, Edward Bennett-Coles, James Lance
Hugh Ross, Katy Barker

How would you feel if a movie about a sociopath didn't care in the least if we understood his behavior or not?If you would feel offended or cheated then "Bronson" is not the movie for you.
It's a perversely entertaining portrait of Britain's most violent prisoner: Michael Peterson, better known as Charles Bronson.
He took on the name of the famous action star in his bareknuckle boxing days on the advice of his agent. This also happened during one of his paroles; the man has been in prison on and off for thirty four years now and as the movie let's us know, there is no programmed date for his release.
Since redemption, at least in the terms of our society, is out of the question for Bronson, director Winding Refn approaches him not like a story to tell, but as a fascinating subject which you only watch, because you can't interpret it.
From the beginning Bronson let's us know he doesn't blame his parents for his violent nature and the movie never tries to dig deep into what might have gotten him started.
Some people perhaps never got rid of their animal instincts and their nature isn't comprehensible for the rest of us.
In that way Bronson's love for confrontations can only be compared to a wild animal and even those usually have self defense motives.
We are left then watching this man take off his clothes, grease himself up and provoke the prison guards-by kidnapping someone usually-to get into a fight with him.
Something makes him thrive violence and the results are compelling to say the least. Hardy's performance is a work of art in itself.
Considering he doesn't have a real plot to follow and the movie becomes a monologue most of the time, his performing abilities are stunning.
With his bald head, upside down mustache and imposing physique, he often recalls a cartoon villain and Hardy provides him with enough charm to make us feel guilty for rooting for a criminal.
Watching him it's impossible not to be reminded of Malcolm McDowell's iconic Alex from "A Clockwork Orange" (and the director makes no secret that he was highly influenced by Kubrick's work) but his grin makes for a slightly chillier effect because we remember he's playing someone that's actually alive out there.
He addresses the audience like the ablest of hosts and Hardy encompasses Bronson's wish of fame and stardom to such a degree that we begin to wonder if somehow deep inside Bronson hasn't already accomplished his mission by becoming so notorious?
The film's aesthetic wonders and spot on musical choices (when they play the Pet Shop Boys "It's a Sin" it's impossible not to let out a chuckle) also serve to remind us that we're living in a world where violence no longer takes much of our thoughts.
We have become so used to it that "Bronson" becomes a sort of voyeuristic guilty pleasure.
"You don't wanna be trapped inside with me sunshine" he says.
But we are and we like it.

RocknRolla **

Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson
Mark Strong, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven, Jimy Mistry

Tom Wilkinson seems to draw immense pleasure from unleashing his inner sleaze playing Lenny Cole, a London crime boss negotiating a multimillion deal with a Russian property dealer (Karel Roden).
There’s also One Two (a hilarious Butler), Mumbles (Elba) and “Handsome” Bob (the scene stealing Hardy) a group of crooks trying to intercept the money from the deal with the aid of a sly accountant (Newton). Add to this an allegedly dead junkie rock star named Johnny Quid (Kebbell), a stolen painting (and ingenious McGuffin), carnivorous crawfish and a duo of Russian hitmen. Put all of those characters, situations and items together and you end with this movie, where the plot is the last thing that matters, but that doesn’t keep Lenny’s assistant Archie (the wonderful Mark Strong who by far owns the movie with his mixture of tough and coolness) from trying to narrate everything.
Guy Ritchie has a knack for brutal comedy (and his writing isn’t half bad) that gives the movie its intense energy and entertainment value, but he also has some deep rooted issues that make the movie lack something.
One of them is his insistence with gay jokes; from Brad Pitt’s ultra toned physique in “Snatch”, to Adriano Giannini’s scruffy appeal in “Swept Away” Ritchie has a weird ability to capture the beauty of the male body that would make Derek Jarman’s eyebrows give an ironic raise (and who can blame him when he was married to the gay icon by excellence…).
In this film he makes one of his characters gay, but instead of using this to stereotyped, yet effective, comedy purposes he has several other characters become fascinated by what this homosexuality implies about them.
This discomfort would’ve been effective (gay crooks!?! A riot!) if the director wasn’t drawing unintentional homoerotic attention to random moments of the film.
Ritchie turns a chase sequence of ACME proportions into a Hugo Boss perfume ad by having a very fit thug take his shirt off to reveal his extremely ripped physique…in slow motion.
The same two characters will later become involved in a torture scene which includes gagging, policemen hats and vodka. And “I’m not gay” becomes almost a catchphrase within the movie.
Another of Ricthie’s problems is his need to create his own language and untie himself from other currents. While it’s immediately obvious that “RocknRolla” draws heavily from the filmographies of Tarantino, Scorsese and even the Rat Pack (going by way of Steven Soderbergh), Lenny often reminds other characters and the viewers that they aren’t gangsters.
This constant need of Ritchie to reaffirm his role, which here evokes vintage James Bond and Sam Peckinpah, only comes off looking as a slightly pathetic fear of being emasculated (again…he was married to Madonna, one can’t blame him entirely).
“RocknRolla” spends far too much time worrying about what it’s not that it ends up not knowing what it actually is.