Manic

Impressions before seeing it
Their on-screen relationship seemed to be celebrated by fans in (500) Days of Summer, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the first time Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel worked together. People generally liked this movie as well, and I was curious as to why when I knew it was about young people in an asylum.

How was it?
We usually think of asylums as being for the insane, but these kids aren't. At least not in the strait jacketed dementia sort of way. Mostly they've been institutionalized because troubled home lives have made them excessively violent and emotionally unstable. Dr. Monroe (Don Cheadle, playing it calm and soft-spoken like a good counselor should) subjects them to group therapy sessions in an attempt to rehabilitate them.

Director Jordan Melamed applies a gung-ho documentary style that is highly effective here, as it makes the characters and events feel very real. I don't even think the actors were wearing makeup, which is very rare, but then this is an indie movie and not a Hollywood blockbuster. Watching these characters, it was sometimes hard to like them because they're so damaged, but it was also hard to hate them because it's not their fault they turned out that way. This puts you in a neutral territory that pushes you toward rooting for Dr. Monroe, because he genuinely wants to help these kids but is starting to doubt himself. I like how he would ease into the group therapy, my favourite example being one where he started off with everyone discussing whether Batman could defeat Wolverine, and then when one kid complained that it was a stupid argument because they're both fictional, he transitioned into having them talk about real fights they've been in. Smooth, Doc.

Recommendation
Ultimately, what Manic reminds me of is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but for Generation X. There's even a quiet Native American kid and some basketball scenes. I enjoy movies like this that take an intimate look at something I'm not personally familiar with, like asylums, so I found it to be fascinating and sometimes even funny. It has a certain charm to it in spite of a cast of characters I wouldn't necessarily want to be in the same room with. For a low budget movie that is 11 years old (actually, it feels older), it holds up well.

My Top 10 Movies of 2011

I watched nearly 30 films last year and liked almost all of them, so this was a difficult list to narrow down. You'll find some honourable mentions at the end, but here are the ones that made the cut... (Note: click on a movie title to see the full review.)

10. 30 Minutes or Less

I know this one bombed and people seem to have already forgotten about it, but I thought it was a lot of fun and the comedic cast made all of the jokes work.

9. Hanna

A very cool action thriller led by a talented young actress and  an experienced veteran. I think it does more for feminism when you have two female leads in an action movie and neither of them dress in skimpy clothing (I'm referring to you,  Sucker Punch.)

8. The Muppets
People of all ages can enjoy this movie thanks to a blend of heartfelt nostalgia and the wonder and silliness of childhood. Probably the warmest and sunniest movie of the year.

7. Moneyball
I'm not a sports fan, but I do enjoy the occasional sports movie, and I found this behind the scenes look at baseball drafting to be both fascinating and inspirational, and it almost made me appreciate baseball. Still not about to watch an actual game, though.

6. Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen is good at romanticizing a city, but here he also romanticizes a time period in this charming little time travel romance. It is a foible of human memory that many of us will always long for the past rather than appreciate where we are now.

5. A Separation
This gripping Iranian drama puts you right in the center of a conflict and challenges you to choose a side when it knows neither is more right than the other. Very thought-provoking and ripe for discussion.








4. Super 8
Mixing The Goonies with filmmaking, alien adventure, and a bunch of Spielberg films makes for a highly entertaining and enjoyable ride. I like movies where a group of kids goes on an adventure, because they don't have the capability of adults but they have twice the imagination and sense of excitement.

3. Melancholia
As the title suggests, it's not exactly a happy film, but it is a well executed and beautifully shot end of the world epic with great naturalistic performances from the cast. Too bad an unfortunate comment from the director ensured that it was snubbed at the Oscars.






2. Attack the Block
One of those insanely fun movies where, as you watch, you just keep thinking to yourself, "This is awesome." I really like the idea of a gang of thugs becoming heroes when they have to defend the city block from predatory aliens. From the trailer, I wasn't sure whether I would like it and almost didn't watch it; that would have been an enormous mistake.






1. Carnage
Unbelievably, I had even more fun watching this than Attack the Block. The cast is fantastic, the writing is strong and funny, and the final shot works as a hilarious punchline that undercuts the entire movie. And all shot in one apartment. Nice work, Polanski.



Honourable mentions: The Descendants, Another Earth, 50/50, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Rum Diary, Hugo

Click here for my 2010 list.

A Separation

Impressions before seeing it
Heard a lot of good things, it won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and the trailer was intriguing. This was the last film on my list of movies from 2011 I wanted to see (top 10 list coming very soon!).

How was it?
As a result of this Iranian couple's separation, an altercation occurs that spirals into a serious legal matter that continues to escalate. Needless to say, it was intense and gripping in a way that has your full attention as you anticipate the next development in the conflict. The camera work is very unseemly, done in a handheld documentary style so that you can focus on the performances without being reminded that you're watching a movie. I always liked that about that style of shooting; it makes you feel like you're there.

The most interesting thing about A Separation is the way it plays with viewer sympathies. As the court case unfolded, I found it continuously difficult to choose a side; neither party was entirely right or wrong, because everyone was a bit of both. This conveniently puts us into a head space similar to that of Termeh, the couple's daughter who doesn't want to choose between her parents (though I should clarify, for those who haven't seen it, that the legal battle is not between husband and wife). Like Doubt, it is a film situated in a grey area that offers no solution; that's for you, the viewer, to decide. Not every moviegoer appreciates a movie with no closure, but I say those are the best films to discuss with others, because the answers are always up for debate.

Recommendation
No complaints; it was entirely entertaining and thought-provoking, and I learned a little about Iranian culture, too. If you don't hate subtitles or open endings, I definitely recommend it.

Men in Black III (In Ginormous 3D IMAX!)

Impressions before seeing it
I don't actually remember the second movie at all (only saw it once years ago, as opposed to seeing the first one several times even though I saw it even longer ago), but Men in Black is generally a fun franchise.

How was it?
MIB III didn't start off too well, as it begins with the film's over the top villain, Boris the Animal (played by a completely unrecognizable Jemaine Clement - yes, the guy from Flight of the Conchords) breaking out of moon jail. Everything about the scene is hackneyed, and Boris' dialogue throughout most of the movie is kind of heavy-handed. Then we have Will Smith's J doing a lot of "Yo, I'm the hilarious black guy!" with some bland one-liners. I can't remember to what extent he did this in the previous movies, or if it worked better in the first two, but it fell flat here.

However, the film does pick up when K (Tommy Lee Jones) is around, and J eventually has to go back in time to save his partner's life. Josh Brolin as a younger K does a fine impression of Jones and even bears a slight resemblance. Perfect casting there. Even though Jones was absent for much of the movie while J visited the past, and J was still the protagonist, to me this installment was all about the development of K's character, which I appreciated. And as I repeatedly say, I'm a fan of things involving time travel and altering of timelines.

The highlight, as with all three films in the series I suppose, is the special effects on the weird alien creatures. Watching the movie on a giant IMAX screen, it was more or less in high definition and everything looked disgusting - which is to say it looked great, because you could see all of that alien slime and guts and what have you (there is a great action sequence involving J and a giant killer fish that is one of the more memorable scenes in the movie). As for the 3D, I think it was underused. There were only a couple of scenes where it looked cool, but there weren't enough eye-popping shots to warrant it being in 3D at all. The best part for 3D was actually the trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man beforehand, which looks to be visually fantastic.

Recommendation
For the third movie in a series, MIB III is not as bad as it could be. It mostly fails as a comedy (though you do get some amusing cameos from Bill Hader and Will Arnett), but as a sci-fi action time travel alien movie, there is enough fun to make it worth watching. Fans of the series should, I presume, be pleased that they're getting more of the same.

The Walking Dead - Season One

I was impressed when I watched the pilot about a year and a half ago, but I didn't get around to watching the entire season until now. What I like most about this show is that it doesn't rely too heavily on the horror of zombies; they're more a part of the setting than the subject of the show. Upon seeing the rest of the season, I'd place it as a drama about people trying to survive in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, not a horror about people gradually being killed by them. The latter would have been boring to me.

I think I'm also drawn to the scenery of the abandoned cityscape, like in the poster above. There's something fascinatingly haunting about a city that stands still when I normally associate cities with liveliness. Other apocalypse movies have this, but this one just feels like it has more empty space. Maybe because there isn't as much rubble. Not a lot of buildings were destroyed, there's just corpses and abandoned vehicles everywhere.

The season was a short six episodes, so I don't have a lot to say about the actual story and characters, but I think it was well done in terms of depicting how people act in desperate situations. The group of survivors had its share of douchebags, cowards, heroes, and lunatics, which I suppose are the four behavioural extremes of life-threatening situations. Obviously they're not having an easy time, but I like that they were given moments of happiness here and there so that the show didn't get too morbid. But at the moment nobody in the cast stands out as being a favourite character. I need more time to warm up to them.

Best Episode: The second episode, "Guts", in which Rick escapes both a tank and a department store with some newly discovered survivors, one of whom is left to die and one of whom steals a sports car.

This Season in Television - 2011-2012 (Part 1)

Happy anniversary to the blog, which has been around for 3 years as of today!  A pretty big waste of time considering how few people read it, so let's waste some more time revisiting the TV season! All of the shows I watched this season (there were about 15 of them) are eligible to win these awards, even if I only watched a couple of episodes, but only those 15 shows.

Best New Show: It's a draw between New Girl and Awake, but given that one is a comedy and one is a drama, I'm not going to choose between them.  New Girl started out as a Zooey Deschanel vehicle where her character was the only funny one - which I didn't mind - but later evolved into a more cohesive ensemble comedy where everyone was able to make me laugh at different points.  It may not be as good as Community or Parks and Recreation, but it was still the best new comedy this season.  Awake had by far the best premise of anything that debuted this season, and it delivered everything it promised with a show that was engaging, enigmatic, moving, and powerful.  It's disappointing that it was cancelled, yet I was wholly satisfied by the ending.

Worst New Show: I'm not going to say The Playboy Club (which I liked more than most people did, I think); I'm going to say Smash, NBC's other big drama.  What puzzles me is why, between Smash and Glee, no one can write a musical television series that isn't infuriating.  To be fair, the writing wasn't nearly as messy as Glee's, but the characters were all such pretentious snobs that the half-hearted attempts to make them likeable did not outweigh how uninteresting they were.

Best Comeback: I define this award as going to the series that had a significantly better season this year than the previous one, but there isn't anything that qualifies this time around.  By saying that, I don't mean everything sucked; I mean everything was just as good or worse (see next award).

Worst Comeback: Here's an easy one.  Worst Comeback goes to Glee, which is always riddled with problems but somehow managed to get even worse this year as they unnecessarily added new characters (and then mostly ignored them), random storylines (also mostly ignored), and offensive attempts at handling serious issues.  Runner up: The Office, which still has its moments but isn't the same without Steve Carell.

Most Creative: For the second year in a row, Community is the most creative show on television.  Its experiments in different genres and styles remain unmatched in a medium that is slowly becoming homogenized.  Runner up: Awake, because it took the police serial and made it awesome.

Least Creative: I'd have to go with Suburgatory on this one. Not so much for the concept (although it isn't mindblowing), but for the humour, which was often dull or predictable, or both.  Especially in the Christmas episode, after which I stopped watching because it played out like it was written for children.  Plus voiceovers should be used sparingly and work better when the narrator isn't a character in the story (see Arrested Development). Runner Up: Up All Night, for many of the same reasons as Suburgatory, only it's less mediocre.

Best Opening Title Sequence: This is a new category this year, because I remembered how much I love credits sequences when they're done in a cool way.  Community often changes their credits for special episodes, and the coolest this season was probably the video game intro in "Digital Estate Planning".  Runners up: Community (Law & Order title sequence in "Basic Lupine Urology"), New Girl (the execution of it is almost like a live play, plus Zooey wrote the theme song herself.)

Best Finale Cliffhanger: I think a lot of shows didn't even have cliffhangers this season because they were worried about being cancelled, but there was one awesome cliffhanger that had me excited for the next season, and that was on Once Upon a Time.

Hero of the Season: Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation.  She may not be the funniest character on the show, but she is just as lovable as the rest of the cast and her determination, dedication, strength, and warmth is what makes her awesome (she won Hero 3 times this season).  Runners up: Andy from Parks and Recreation, Jess from New Girl.

Douchebag of the Season: Alicia from Survivor: One World.  While she didn't win Douchebag the most times this season, and her castmate Colton was just as awful, she wins this one because I had to sit through every episode of the season listening to her brag, insult people, make offensive remarks, and pretend she's good at strategizing, all while the other players inexplicably seemed to like her.  I really couldn't stand her by the last few episodes, but I'm so happy she didn't win.  Runners up: Ryan from The Office (who did win Douchebag the most times: 4), Nellie from The Office, Coach Roz from Glee.

Part 2 coming up later this summer, which will contain my choices for the best episodes of the shows I watched.