The (6) Most Disappointing Movies (I Saw) in 2011, or, can I get these 90 minutes (or 120 minutes) back?

As you can see from previous posts, I saw a lot of great movies this year (as well as several great TV shows and series), and I enjoy tipping readers off to the 10 best new and 10 best classic films I saw in 2011, but I also want to make note of the movies that disappointed me in 2011 - not the worst movies of the year, because obviously there are thousands of horrible films that I would never think of seeing (that's what we pay professional critics to do); I have high expectations for every movie I see or start to see - I've obviously chosen each movie out of the million or so available because I thought I'd like it, but inevitably we come upon some duds, so here is my list of the Most Disappointing Movies (I Saw) in 2011, which, fortunately, is not long:

I'm Going Home (2001) and A Talking Picture (2003): Readers of this blog will know that I love classic (and recent) European cinema, so I was really interested to learn about Manuel de Oliveira, a Portuguese director now a centenarian - I was really interested in seeing some great films from Portugal, which has for me been off the map of movies. Ugh - honestly, I started watching each of these two films and could not finish either - terribly stilted, stagy, seemingly going nowhere - one about a woman on a boat journey with her young daughter (?), stopping at various ports to meet local folks, no better than a travelogue (plot developed later apparently, but I could only give it so much), the other something to do with a long and dull stage show and some backstage maneuverings. I'll never know.

J. Edgar: There's got to be a great story in the life of J. Edgar Hoover, but this Eastwood vehicle doesn't tell it. Scene after scene of stilted dialog, boring biopic episode by episode unfolding of a life story, confusing regarding politics and sexuality, a classic example of way too much tell not enough show. Nothing from this film stays with me.

Tree of Life and Days of Heaven (1978): I keep thinking I ought to like Terrance Malick, he's thoughtful and serious and scrupulous, so I tried twice but honestly Tree of Life was one of the most pretentious movies I've ever seen - the story of one family and its tragedy (very poorly portrayed with extremely awkward and confusing jumps back and forth in time and huge gaps in the plot) set against weird footage of the origin of the universe, from the big bang onward. Huh? Days of Heaven was at least gorgeous to watch, but the plot was absurd: movies, even art-house cinematographic films, have some obligation to narrative consistency and coherence, which Malick disdains.

War Horse: Big, expensive, epic, dull. Do you care about a boy (actually, not even a boy - 18-year-old farmer's son who becomes a World War I soldier) and his horse? I love some animal films - e.g., Homeward Bound - but they have to have true feeling, humor, pathos. This Spielberg vehicle, despite its excellent production values (which may well earn it a few Oscars), has thoroughbred aspirations but plods along its tedious narrative path like an old workhorse bound for the glue factory.

War Horse finishes out of the money

Above all, Steven Spielberg tries hard to make great entertainment for the broadest possible film audience, his films have high moral aspirations, he insists - from the very first - on great narratives with a clear plot line and a final resolution, the characters generally are sharply drawn and they evolve through action, and the production values are always of the highest order - including cinematography, art direction, musical score (John Williams) - can anyone today do a crowd or battle scene better than Spielberg? Can any say Oscar? All that said - why is "War Horse" such a dud? The movie has all the qualities I've just referenced, yet it feels to me as if it just doesn't have a heart. First of all, entertainment, even epic entertainment, does require a reasonable pace, and at 2.20 this film is way too long and indulgent. Second, though Black Beauty may be an exception - these films work when best when we care about the human characters at least as much or more than the animals. WH follows the horse from auction to farm work, to war (WWI in France) as he passes through a string of new owners and rescuers and abusers - so at the end (spoilers here, I guess) we don't really feel much emotion when he's restored to his original owner - we've forgotten about this guy, who, by the way, seems far too old for the part. Over all, the whole film wears its intentions on its sleeve - there are no surprises or mysteries, lots of shopworn cliches (the evil landlord, for one) and other feckless sorts. Though Spielberg does a fine job showing the horrors of trench warfare, the movie is so drained of politics (no sense what the war is about), of desire (it's a family movie after all), even of serious villainy (we may be blasting one another to smithereens but we all like horses!) that it's hard to know who will really like this movie. It's a film the whole family can enjoy - or maybe not.

Breaking Bad gets better with each episode

Last night finished Season 3 of "Breaking Bad," and find it's a series that gets better with each episode. Initially I had some trouble buying into the premise - Walt is a high-school chem teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer who gets into cooking meth to raise a great deal of cash for the family he will leave behind, and then inevitably gets in way over his head with various drug runners and gangs - but over time came to care less about the likelihood of the premise and more about Walt and the other characters and what will happen to them. Walt (Bryan Crandall) is an underplayed, serious, analytic guy - not the typical protagonist of a TV series, especially a drug/crime series (and it's not a "comedy," despite the weird genre labeling sometimes attached). Other characters are adequate or better, but the series is really his. What's most striking of all, to me, is the writing - highly smart, literary, some very long monologues that are almost unique in TV, in any medium. Many of these episodes could be stage plays, and certainly some of the dialogs/monologues could be used very well for auditions or for acting workshops. One episode in particular, Fly, is a classic in that the entire 47-minute episode has only two speaking characters, most of the time in a meth lab, and it's completely captivating - again, could be done very effectively on stage. A strong series, and we await availability of Season 4.

An encyclopedia of fight-movie family-saga redemption-story cliches

"Warrior" tries really hard to be a great movies and strikes many of the same notes that have worked for the several successful films that have linked personal combat with family drama: Million Dollar Baby, The Fighter, The Wrestler, to name some recent ones - but the problem is that Warrior comes off as a encyclopedia of movie cliches. Though I was with it for a while, quite interested in the mixed-martial arts and ultimate fighting that the film establishes as its milieu, by the end the only real enjoyment in the movie was to try to predict what the characters would do in the next scene - not hard to do, by the way. Movies is a drama of conflict between alcoholic father on the mend once a great Marine and fight trainer and his two estranged sons, one a kind of bad boy with a mysterious past - he has been absent for about 13 years - and the other a good boy who's now a physics teacher and a father of 2 girls. totally improbably, the teacher loses his job (because he did smoker fight outside a bar - what? he has no contract and no union?) and takes up fighting to pay the mortgage (heartless banker will take house away - hasn't he seen It's a Wonderful Life?); other brother, equally improbably, asks dad to coach him - as both brothers enter a $5-million tournament. Can you guess that they will meet in the final? That Dad will come around? That the skeptical wife will show up to cheer? That the high-school principal will join the students in cheering on their favorite teacher? That the "bad brother" was actually a Marine hero? You couldn't guess? Anyway, despite some total wierdnesses, such as one of the trainer/coaches insists his fighter listen to Beethoven! - the fighting scenes are pretty good and Nick Nolte (the Dad) makes every movie he's in a little better - but in this case, not better enough.

The 10 Best (classic) Movies I Saw in 2011

A few days ago I posted on the 10 Best Movies (I Saw) in 2011, but they weren't, actually, the 10 best movies I saw in 2011 - they were 10 Best 2011 movies I saw in 2011. I also spend a lot of time watching, usually re-watching, great movies from the past - as we all should, why not go back to movies we loved or explore the great ones we've missed? - same with books - so to complete the picture so to speak, here are the 10 Best (classic) movies I saw in 2011 (in alphabetical order):

Au Revoir les enfants: Louis Malle's great (autobiographic?)film about boys in a boarding school in rural France during World War II - including several Jewish boys protected by the priests. Some amazing scenes, especially the conclusion.

Blow-up: Maybe not Antonioni's best but one of his most accessible, at least to an English-speaking viewership, really captures its moment in history and stands up well as a portrait of alienation - way better than I thought it would be on a re-visit.

Casablanca: Could anyone not like this movie? Such total entertainment from opening moments to the famous conclusion on the tarmac. Great characters, Bogart's most famous role, romantic, funny, moving.

Les Diaboliques: Clouzot, more Hitchcockian than Hitchcock himself, another boarding-school movie, but this one focused more on the so-called adults, mean and nasty people, and a terrifically taut and surprising plot with a great bathtub scene.

Godfather and Godfather II: masterpieces, then and still. After seeing each, I tried to post lists of the great scenes in these movies and ultimately realized I would just be recounting the entire film. American epics, in every sense of the word.

Knife in the Water and Repulsion: These two by Polanski, both stark and simple, very few characters (esp in Knife, with only 3), psychologically for of weird twists and insights, Repulsion especially imaginative as we probe the mental breakdown of Deneuve, with the camera adopting her POV - he was obviously such a major talent, and it's such a tragedy that his personal life and failings have gotten in the way of the director he might have become.

Little Fugitive: a rarely seen or discussed film, one of my faves from childhood, even better seeing it today as it's an extraordinary time capsule of Brooklyn/Coney Island in the 50s, story of a young boy lost on Coney Island and older brother's search for him - fun and moving.

Rules of the Game: Renoir's greatest, and one of the greatest of all time, better and more deep on every viewing, no film has taken on issues of social class in pre-War Europe (or anywhere, for that matter) with greater insight, humor, poignancy. The hunting sequence one of the best ever filmed, and the image of the Buddhas and of the count next to his latest musical toy are unforgettable.

- Thank you, Tom B for two corrections: it's Deneuve, not Bardot, in Repulsion; it's Clouzot, not Chabrol, who directed Les Diaboliques. And I agree with Tom that Wages of Fear is even better than Les Diaboliques - but I didn't see it in 2011.

The 10 Best (new) Movies I Saw in 2011

Not being a film critic and not being in New York or LA, I don't get a chance to see every Bulgarian or Congolese independent film and sometimes I don't even see some of the major (or minor) movies till the year after they're releases - so my 10-best list is not necessarily the 10 best films of 2011 but:

The Ten Best films (I saw) in 2011
Current or recent releases only, listed alphabetically:

Blue Valentine. Yes, a dark movie, but thoughtful and troubling and credible, with great lead performances - everything we expect of an American indie release but rarely get

Bridesmaids. Raunchy, sure; a bit of a fantasy, yes. But very funny, Wiig is terrific, and so is Rose Byrne as the evil friend.

The Descendants. Not Alexander Payne's best movie, but still one of the best movies of the year - and one of the few movies about adults. Payne works better than any other director at adapting novels, and not the obvious best-selling genre novels, either.

A Film Unfinished. A strange and haunting documentary using recovered footage from the Warsaw ghetto.

Fish Tank. Very dark movie about a young girl in the projects in Britain. Came and went, almost unnoticed. Andrea Arnold is another hugely daring and interesting director who has not received the attention she deserves.

The King's Speech. Yes it was a 2010 film, I saw it this year - and it certainly lived up to expectations. Screenplay among the best - including incredible scene when king "sings" to his therapist.

Midnight in Paris. Best Woody Allen movie in years - very well scripted, funny, tight story, moving - scenes with Hemingway are classic.

Of Gods and Men. Beautiful and unusual movie about a monastery on North Africa under siege - incredible concluding moments.

Poetry. Korean director Chang-dong Lee about the most interesting filmmaker in the world right now. Very strong movie about a woman struggling with Alzheimer's and with her life. His movies are like grand novels - rich with character and event.

Secret Sunshine. Another great movie from Lee, about a recently widowed woman trying to build a new life for herself and her son in small Korean city.

Within a few days will post on the 10 best (classic) movies I saw in 2011.

Engrossing movie about the Middle East - if you can suspend some disbelief

The recent French-Canadian film "Incendies" (the incendiaries? those who burn? people on fire?) is a very engrossing film - if, and it may be a big if, you can suspend disbelief and accept a string of unlikelihoods and narrative contrivances that make Girl with the Dragon Tattoo look like an exercise in documentary photorealism. The rather long and complex stories, told in both present tense and interpolated flashback scenes, involves a brother and sister fulfilling requests in mother's will by going back from their Quebec home to unnamed Mideast country (obviously meant to be Lebanon) to find their father, whom they'd believed to be dead, and their brother, whom they'd never known they had. Their search reveals some startling family secrets and also becomes a window through which the film can observe some of the horrors of the civil war in Lebanon and of the religious and cultural strife that has torn apart so many countries in the Middle East. In some ways, the movie is brutally honest - few if any other recent films from outside the U.S. have been so unsparing in depiction of religious violence and terrorism by fundamentalists on both Arab and Christian sides (Jews and Israelis are unmentioned in this film); in another way, it does pull its punches by never really even mentioning Arabs or Muslims - the strife is depicted as Christians versus "nationalists" in some unnamed country - although we can all read through the code. Altogether, though, a very well-paced and compelling movie - and this Notary Public also commends any film that can make not just one but two notaries into heroic figures (very funny dialog about how the whole Middle East struggle would have been obviated if there were notaries back in the days of Moses).

Alexander Payne works with novels better than any other U.S. director

I really like the movies of Alexander Payne, and "The Descendants" continues to make the case that he's one of the few writer-directors around, at least in the U.S., making movies on serious themes about adults and their problems, issues, and pleasures. He casts George Clooney against type here, as a wealthy member of the Hawaiian landowner class whom we meet at his wife's bedside as she lies dying from a boating accident brain concussion. Clooney, suddenly forced to be resposible dad, has to deal with younger two daughters acting out and out of control, plus the snarky disrespectful boyfriend of older daughter - all this, yet it's not a domestic comedy about a single dad becoming wise and competent, it's a moving drama that involves all of the characters - as Clooney learns (spoilers here) that his wife had been having an affair, which forces him to rethink everything about his life and his marriage. This movie adapted from a little-known (at least to me) novel - Payne works with novels better than any other director out there, most won't even approach a novel unless it's already a best-seller, and then they tend to ruin it. This smart movie starts off a little slow (too much VO narration - compare with opening of Payne's Sideways, which quickly established Giamatti's sad-sack character as he did a crossword while driving the LA freeways) and the end a bit drawn out, but it's probably the most intelligent, understated American film I've seen this year. I also liked the Hawaiian guitar soundtrack - though I may be alone on that one.

And in the End: Battlestar Galactic answers all the questions, almost

At last after 77 episodes we've come to the end of that great, 4.5 season epic, "Battlestar Galactica," and what a ride - for those who haven't seen it, it's a surprisingly moving and thoughtful and evocative narrative, and you ought to stop reading right now because I'm going to discuss: The End of the Series - and readers of this blog may recall, or you can go back and check, but I pretty much predicted the ending of the series on the nose way back at the outset of season 1: the space travelers from the 12 colonies are not our descendants but our ancestors. It's a totally apt and fitting conclusion to this series, and, though everything is not perfectly explained at the end - how is Starbuck able to be alive and dead at the same time, and why do Gaius and # 6 appear in the contemporary world? - the series does amazingly wrap up virtually every loose thread in a way that kind of makes sense, given the great suspension of disbelief you must commit to in order to enjoy the series. Though the series leads us to ponder some of the basic philosophical questions: e.g., what is the difference between a human and a machine, do we have free will or are we destined, and if so by whom? or what? why was Bob Dylan's music around 150,000 years ago? - it's not heavy-handed at all, but lots of fun and with characters we come to care about. All told, a series that is much better than most would ever expect, and a great entertainment.

A movie that's willing to kill off one of its stars is usually pretty good

"Contagion" is one of those movies that surprises you (or me at least), it's a lot better than I would have thought of expected. It's a medical thriller on a fairly grand scale, with a narrative taking place across the globe, on various continents, with several megastar actors all playing relatives small roles in this ensemble piece: Gwynyth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Marilyn Cotillard, Laurence Fishurne (if anyone's the lead, it's him) - all pretty good - and this from someone who generally hates this kind of multi-narrative ensemble story, such as Crash, with all its heavy-handed imagery and sociopolitical pretensions. Contagion is about an outbreak, an epidemic, of a plague related to avian flu, that seems to start in China or Hong Kong, and is brought to the States by a world-business traveler (Paltrow) who spreads the disease not only to her home in Minneapolis, where she had a brief fling with an X on her way home (this fact nearly makes her husband, Damon, question everything - he never would have known but for the forensic investigation. To give you a sense of the honesty of this movie (spoiler alert): both Paltrow and Winslet die of the disease. Wouldn't you think they're too important characters (or actors) to dump into a grave halfway through the film? In most films, at least one of them would heroically beat the odds and survive. Contagion is a very compelling and largely credible dramatization of how this plague would or could play out on many fronts: the medical investigation, the media coverage, the local panic, the CDC response, the profiteering, the allegations of favoritism, the effect on a single family (Damon's). I have only a few quibbles: movie makes the CDC doctors (with one possible minor exception) and the WHO doc into the great heroes and everyone else (local doctors, media) is villainous. But by and large it's very good, avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism. The ending, which in a montage of just a few moments, traces for us the progeny of this plague, is very provocative as well. Steven Soderbergh directed - very professional, well-paced, and for the most part on the money.

A textbook case of telling not showing: Why J. Edgar is a failed movie

One would think that there's so much material in the life of J. Edgar Hoover that you could make not just one great film about the man but many: the rise of the FBI and its fight against crime, the delusions and paranoia that destroyed the old man at the end of his career, the Lindbergh kidnapping case that made the FBI a world-famous organization, the conflicts with great leaders such as JFK and MLK, the repressed or secret homosexual life of the director, and so on. All of these elements are in Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar," but you know what - it's a totally boring movie. It just goes on and on (2-plus hours, or course) with endless exposition, everything explained and laid out in dialog, a textbook case of telling not showing. There are very, very few actual dramatic scenes - and it's not that I need a movie to be full of action, but characters need to be doing something other than talking, unless we're watching an Eric Rohmer movie, which this is not. Yes, we see that Hoover was a complicated guy - that he was prescient in bringing modern crime-solving techniques to the bureau but that he was delusional and power-hungry and personally tortured. But it seems as if we're watching a textbook documentary, there's no life to this movie at all The most interesting part, for me, is Hoover's relationship with his partner, Toleson - their scenes together are the movie's best - but there's nothing developed. The movie takes no real stance on Hoover, it's cool and distant, most of it shot in dark interiors, the only really strong image is DiCaprio's ever-present face: he does well at portraying Hoover throughout his long career, the makeup artist did a great job on this, but we always feel DiCaprio is playing a part, not living it.

Adding one note re "Midnight in Paris": I'd forgotten that Carla Bruni was in this movie, and when I saw later that she played the sculpture-garden guide, it explained something to me: I wondered why Wilson didn't end up with the guide character (whom he revisits in order for her to translate a French diary for him), and my guess is that in the original script he did end up with the guide but when Woody Allen was able to stunt-cast Bruni in the part he had to rewrite - would have been too weird for Wilson to walk off into the rain with the First Lady of France, so Allen added the periperhal character of the flea-market sales girl, who in the end walks into the rain with Wilson. BTW, the lovers walking into the rain is I think a slight homage and reworking of the end of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, when the lead character walks off alone into the rain at the end.

Owen Wilson meets Ernest Hemingway - some of Woody Allen's best dialog ever

Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" is a throwback and a return to the form and sensibility of some of his best movies. We get the familiar enamored look at a beautiful city, the tortured relation between a young guy and the beautiful girl with whom he's obviously mismatched, and most of all the playful fascination and complete devotion to art, music, ideas, and literature, and withering (though funny) contempt for pseudo-intellectuals (as in the great McLuhan scene in Annie Hall or the literary-magazine party where W.A. sneaks off to watch a Knicks game on TV in - which film was it?) Allen always casts his movies well, and the choice of surfer-slacker Owen Wilson to play the would-be novelist, a character that Allen himself would have played a generation ago and that is so deeply imprinted with Allen's tone and voice and wit, is shrewd and surprising and effective. Wilson leaves his beautiful and shallow and vain fiancee behind to walk the streets of Paris at night, where he is transported into the 1920s and meets a # of his heroes, including FS Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates is hilarious) Luis Bunuel (Wilson suggests a movie plot to him - Exterminating Angel - and Bunuel is just puzzled: How come they can never leave the room? Why don't they just get up and leave?), and most amusingly Hemingway (some of Allen's funniest dialog ever). The film recalls the time-transports of Play It Again, Sam and, even more so, the great short story The Kugelmass Episode. Autobiographical elements aside (hero leaves rich and cold fiancee for a very young woman who at last seems to understand him and his romantic obsessions; I hate to think that Allen thinks of himself as a Hollywood hack with dreams of literary greatness, however), the timing and plotting is clever and well-paced and it's a totally fun movie to watch - a bauble at times, but also a tribute to the great writing and ideas and well-made plots and rich cultural life of a time long past.

The Gamm Theater's great Hamlet production - with an original insight at the end

Last night saw a great production of "Hamlet" at the Gamm Theatre, in Pawtucket, R.I. - very fast-paced with excellent timing, 2.5 hours and completely riveting for the entire audience in this intimate house - stark set with simple red drapery backdrop and bare minimum of props kept our focus on the characters, the action, and the language - Tony Estrella's Hamlet was particularly excellent, played in near-contemporary dress, with good American inflection on the lines, especially the soliloquies, which made all seem natural and free, a character wrestling with a terrible fate and a troubled soul. I'd say the emphasis from direct Frederick Sullivan Jr. was on the craft in Hamlet's behavior - they seemed to go with the interpretation of Hamlet as a shrewd plotter who puts on his madness to provoke others and to draw them out - and yet the character still has edges and ambiguities, e.g., if his madness is a strategy, why is he so brutally cruel to Ophelia? There may have been a few moments over the top - some of the physicality was a little too much (e.g., the Ghost on the floor re-enacting the poisoning) but for the most part the action was just right - not too stagy, not too staid - the fencing very well staged, and frightening. Finally, worth noting is the interesting emphasis on Fortinbras and the troops from Norway, especially at the end (the Norwegian army scene and the rarely heard "How all occasions" soliloquy is very effective, too) - at the end, as Fortinbras settles in on the throne and a Norwegian flag unfurls, the it's an obvious echo of the German occupation of the 40s, and Sullivan does something I've never seen or heard of: the Norwegian soldiers execute Horatio, offstage, at the end, leaving nobody left in the Danish court to tell Hamlet's story. Made me go back and read the last line again, this time with new appreciation of the possibilities. (BTW, I've always hated Horatio and found him to be a terrible and feckless friend to Hamlet, not much more helpful that R&G. I think Charles Marowitz was first to discuss this aspect of Horatio's character.)

A likable enough movie that could have been so much better: Beginners

Mark (?) Mills's "Beginners" is a likable enough movie despite, in my view, some major flaws - almost the definition of a three-star (out of 5) movie: It helps, getting into it, to know that the movie is to some degree autobiographical - the story of a late-30s single guy whose father reveals to him, shortly after he's widowed, that he's gay and that, in his late years, he intends to (and does) lead an openly gay life, after a lifetime in the closet and in a loveless marriage. This is very rich material, and Mills handles it effectively, with warmth and humor - helped a lot by a terrific Christopher Plummer as the dad. This part of the movie feels like a documentary, especially with some good archival clips that convey changing mores and several flashbacks that show the 30ish guy, played well by Ewan Magregor, in his childhood with a very lonely, troubled mom - some of this reminds me of a few of the recent extraordinary documentaries about ordinary people, such as Dear Zachary or Capturing the Friedmans. All that said, the parallel plot - young man meets a girl and they engage in a romance that reeks of a thousand other indie films and that never seems engaging or even credible for a moment: roller skating through a deserted mall and a hotel corridor, spray-painting graffiti on massive billboards over LA, the cute meet (at a costume party where he's dressed as Freud), the pop psychology (her father burdened her with tales of loneliness), the improbable setup (she's an actor put up in a posh hotel - but we never see a moment of her work), and finally the cute re-connect (he shows up, surprise, at her nyc apartment but she's in LA) - all this like a dead weight on a movie that could have been so much better.