Time Magazine

What’s Wong With This Picture?
Time Magazine Sucks
By Cole Smithey

The May 21, 2012 issue of Time Magazine is a significant bellwether. It speaks volumes about the state of America’s steadily imploding media, of which Time Magazine has crossed a line into tabloid exploitation. It could well be the magazine’s Waterloo. The New York Post has nothing on Time Magazine anymore.

A presentational image of a “mother” casually standing in front of a photographer’s white screen with her left tit exposed to allow her nearly four-year-old “son” (with the unisexual Assyrian name of Aram) to suck on it. He wears army fatigue pants and a gun-metal-gray t-shirt, and stands on a child’s chair that makes him only 18" inches shorter than his mother. The image is offensive across a wide scale of social decency. Pedophilic overtones saturate the militarized image. The chair is important because it creates an optical illusion of the child being older — much older than he is. His limp hands dangle helplessly at his mother's crotch. Dressed in a black leotard with her right hand on her hip, and her left knee cocked so that her ballet-slipper-styled shoe heel rises from the floor, suggests a come hither expression attenuated by a rebellious fuck-you attitude that dares the viewer to guess at what else she’s capable of. Her dead facial expression makes her look like a machine-woman — an android.

The representational (versus presentational) distinction is important. Here is a woman, acting as a “model.” She uses her own child to make a political statement. Skinny, blonde, and objectively sexy with tan lines that demarcate her arms from her pale white breast, the woman (Jamie Lynne Grumet) clearly intends to be the poster mom for a cult that, at best, adds more sand on the scales to the belief that most people have no business procreating. The 26-year-old Grumet isn’t yet old enough to qualify for the MILF designation that some male readers will be tempted to bestow upon her. She looks closer to 18 than to 30. One thing is certain; she cares more about her political agenda/image than she does about the vulnerable child at her breast.

The headline “ARE YOU MOM ENOUGH?” establishes a bullying editorial tone with a military association — think, “Be All You Can Be.” The rhetorical question is only barely softened by the sub-head, “Why attachment parenting drives some mothers to extremes—and how Dr. Bill Sears became their guru.” Note the incorrect use of the word “guru,” which is a Sanskrit term for a teacher of “Indian religions.” Talk about mixed metaphors — they are here in spades.

Whether or not the photo personally offends you, you should recognize that the posed image is more than just provocative. No kind of parallel image involving a 26-year-old male and his three or four-year-old daughter would ever pass for anything other than an actionable example of incestuous sexual exploitation. It doesn’t help matters that the boy in question sports a belly. The child is already overweight. Whether or not the boy yet perceives a sexual relationship with his mother; the effects of his long-term breastfeeding are already visible on his body.
Aram’s camouflage pants underscore a significant aspect of the photo’s subtext. The boy is being fattened up for war. His artificially created mental, emotional, and sexual state will be repurposed by a military complex poised to capitalize on his unique psychology.

The fractures are showing at Time Magazine, and every other TMZ-influenced media outlet that makes up what passes for news in this country. America doesn't do news anymore. War on civility is declared. Are we DEMOCRACY ENOUGH to do something about it? Only time will tell. You can start by canceling your subscription to Time Magazine, and or never buying it again.

SPOILER ALERT! CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?

SPECIAL ADDENDUM:
SPOILER ALERT!
CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH? 
By Cole Smithey

It kills me when otherwise knowledgeable and savvy critics such as Matt Singer and Devin Farachi fall into naïve traps about things such as spoilers. Read any Roger Ebert film review, and you’ll get a good idea of what a film is about. A few specific plot elements will be discussed because that’s the only way for a reader to get a grasp of a film’s narrative terrain. It’s the nature of the beast. If you are a moviegoer who doesn’t want to have a critic’s ideas or revelations influencing your experience, don’t read any reviews before seeing a movie. Duh. Wait until after.

That’s not to say, however, that a critic should necessarily give away a key surprise a filmmaker builds into his or her story. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” — the original "slasher" film — is a good example. If the film came out today, you couldn’t — as a critic — reveal the narrative twist that comes late in the story. Hitchcock cleverly planted the twist to send audiences out of the theater shocked by what they had learned.

However, a film like “The Cabin in the Woods” announces its plot twist in the opening scene. As such, there is no “shocking surprise” for an audience, or critic, to contend with. There is merely a set-up — one that is not very well illuminated during the course of the movie. Nonetheless, it does present the entire groundwork for the story. To pretend otherwise is pure denial. The film wants to serve as a piece of social satire, but it fails so miserably in that regard, that no one seems to notice.

There is a dumbing down of film criticism occurring via the hive mind of aggregate culture that favors arcane commercial concepts such as RottenTomatoes’ “Fresh Certification.” Are you, as a critic or an audience member, really going to fall for that nonsense?

Any critic who complains in a review about how “hard,” “impossible,” or “unfair” it is to write about a movie is clearly not cut out for the job. It is so sad to read essentially the same review over and over again from so many “critics.” There’s a stupefying similarity between reviews of “Cabin in the Woods” coming from critics ranging from Ann Hornaday (The Washington Post), to Ian Buckwalter (NPR), to Andrew O’Hehir (Salon), and the list goes on. At least those critics don’t resort the strictly amateur maneuver of quoting from the film’s press materials as Michael Phillips (the Chicago Tribune) chooses to do.

But go ahead and believe the hype about “The Cabin in the Woods.” You are only setting yourself up for disappointment. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Social Media Government

How to Make American Democracy Work For Real Now
By Cole Smithey

The 2012 Presidential election doesn’t matter. Not at all. A social media mechanism that allows every American citizen to propose public policy (foreign and domestic) and vote on such proposals, on the other hand, would effectively put every single politician out of work. Firing American’s political functionaries will necessarily include the office of the President. The new face of American leadership will be an accurate compilation of all of its citizens.

Modern technology is about to allow for an absolutely pure form of Democracy run by and for the people. It couldn’t have happened ten years ago, but it’s on its way now. We don’t need anymore stinking corporate-controlled monkeys pretending that they’re working in the interest of the public good. The public will decide on all policy priorities, big and small.

We’ve already seen the power of social media to effect immediate change in a mathematically democratic way. When Verizon announced it would impose a two-dollar charge upon payments made online, social media enabled the public to effectively vote down Verizon’s decision. The company retracted its would-be surcharge. That’s Democracy in action. It doesn’t matter who identifies as a Democrat, Tea-Partier, Libertarian, or Leftist--voting is an intrinsically independent and egalitarian action. How you vote on each particular proposal—not one of two corporate-backed candidates--will add up to your true political identity.
For all of the chest-beating American politicians do about how well Democracy works, those elected men and women have no clue about how a purely mathematically driven form of pure democracy could put them out of work. The Occupy Movement is already situated to execute the necessary revolution that will send senators, congress people, and White House staff packing once our new social media platform of automated Democracy is in place. It won’t take long.

How will it work?

First of all a group of computer specialists and hackers will need to build the site’s infrastructure. It will need to be absolutely impervious to attack. It will also need to be organized in a thoroughly transparent way so that an ongoing record of all voting is always available for inspection. No more hanging chads or voter fraud. Everyone will be able to see exactly where every single vote came from. No more lobbyists. No more corporate string-pulling. You want Democracy; this is what it will look like very soon.

A group of moderators will need to be hired (I propose a modest annual salary). These moderators will handle the tasks of organizing the proposals that people post. Once a proposal reaches a specific numerical threshold, it will be put up as a bill which citizens will vote upon. If it passes, it goes into effect immediately.

There will be many bugs to be worked out, so it’s important that the system be put into place alongside our current structure of Government. Once Washington begins to be eclipsed by our more automated form of Democracy the Occupy Movement will need to take physical action to take over their offices, which will become completely open to the public. 24-hour voting centers will be opened to accommodate anyone who wants to vote. Assistants will be on hand to assist homeless and elderly people to vote. An open-door public policy will add to a sense of well-being in the country. Unlike revolutions that leave behind a power vacuum, the gaping hole of Democracy will already be filled by the people—all of the people.

If this idea sounds anti-elitist and full of humanitarian social responsibility, that’s because it is. But what we the gathered masses do with such a pure form of Democracy is entirely up to us, the people—not a corporation or a bunch of rich white-guy bankers. Social Media Government is coming.

Cole Smithey’s Worst & Best Films of 2011

2011 was an incredibly fascinating year in cinema. America’s two finest directors, Martin Scorsese and Stephen Spielberg, elevated children’s cinema with efforts that far outshone Hollywood’s apparent monopoly ruled by Pixar and Disney. Although neither “Hugo” nor “The Adventures of Tintin” made it into my top-10, they each deserve every bit of critical esteem lavished upon them.

Documentaries continued to carve out a significant section of high quality cinematic art. Errol Morris’s “Tabloid” and Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” both deserve honorable mention.

As with any year, 2011 saw a string of cinematic abominations that deserve little more than a roll-call. In the interest of attending to the more significant matter of counting down the 10 finest movies the year had to offer, here are my list of films that bored me nearly to tears.

10. The Rite

9. Skateland

8. Stake Land

7. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

6. Super

5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

4. Meek’s Cutoff

3. Film Socialism

2. Paranormal Activity 3

1: Rubber 

This year’s 10 best films showed an exceptional amount of originality, rigor, and inventiveness. It’s with great pleasure that I share my favorite examples of why I keep returning to the cinema day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

10. The Arbor

Docudrama director Clio Bernard approaches a dead British playwright's life of persecution and abuse via the lens of situations from her autobiographical plays. When Andrea Dunbar died in 1990, at age 29, she was enjoying some theatrical success. The filmmaker obtained candid audio interviews with Dunbar's surviving family members, who still reside in the same impoverished Bradford estate housing where Dunbar lived. Using a technique called "verbatim cinema," Bernard uses professional actors to lip-synch with interview audio so that the spectator receives the information in a strangely organic fashion. "The Arbor" is a groundbreaking cinematic achievement.

 

 

9. Bellflower

The preteen boys of the '70s who played "war" in their backyards and pored over dirty magazines in their clubhouses are transmogrified into a pair of 21st century twentysomething misfits in writer/director/actor Evan Glodell's wild and woolly contemplation of apocalyptic America. Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are a pair of best friends obsessed with building a flamethrower gun and flame-spewing muscle car named Medusa, after the name of their two-man gang "Mother Medusa."

Evan Glodell has invented a bold vision of independent cinema that pisses down throat of the "mumblecore" indie movement. Call it "apocalypticore." Here is a movie that sears itself into your eyeballs and brain.

8. Project Nim

James Marsh examines the 25-year chronicle of Nim Chimpsky, a research chimpanzee who was put through the mill in the service of science. Nim's origins trace back to early 1970s hippie Columbia University professor Herb Terrace. Terrace took the baby chimp away from his mother and attempted to train it to communicate through sign language.

With access to a tremendous amount of archival footage of every stage of Nim's life, Marsh intersperses stylistically staged interview segments with many of the participants. Project Nim is an in-depth documentary with far-reaching implications about modern culture. It's impossible not to be swept up in the fragmented story of a de facto child who is repeatedly abandoned by people who exploit him with both good and bad intentions.

7. Take Shelter

Apocalypse looms large in writer/director Jeff Nichols’s intimate tale of social, mental, and economic duress. Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) is a construction worker living in rural Ohio with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and young hearing-impaired daughter Hannah. Curtis reads a worst-case scenario into foreboding cloud formations he sees. He also suffers from terrifying nightmares, about a coming storm, which cause him to wet the bed. Torn over whether his family's history of mental illness has made its way into his brain—his mother is schizophrenic--Curtis seeks out counseling.

“Take Shelter” captures a macro-micro snapshot of America’s post-9/11 zeitgeist at a moment when a decade of fear fatigue has left the country numb. When everyone is seeking shelter from economic, natural, and human-implemented disaster, no place is safe.

6. The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodóvar proves himself an apt technician at sustaining suspense in the thriller genre. Returning to work with Pedro Almodóvar for the first time in over 20-years, Antonio Banderas brings his A-game to a deliciously diabolical role. Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is a mad scientist with plenty of method to his particular madness of creating an indestructible skin. His wife died in a car fire. His daughter committed suicide. He harbors vengeance. But why?

"The Skin I Live In" is a haunting film that tips its hat to Alfred Hitchcock. There's a goodly dose of Georges Franju's 1960 French horror classic "Eyes Without a Face." Elliptical time shifts tell the story in a disjointed fashion that makes you want to see the film twice even as you're watching it. There's mystery here to savor as you would any great piece of cinematic art. Pedro Almodóvar has created a masterpiece.

5. Moneyball

Director Bennett Miller does the improbable. You don’t have to be a math nerd or a baseball fan to savor every minute of Miller’s cinematic balancing act built on Billy Beane’s ah-ha season with the Oakland Athletics in 2002. Brad Pitt gives the performance of a lifetime as former big league player Billy Beane, who recognizes talent when he sees it even if that talent is for crunching numbers. Only Pitt could make chewing tobacco look sanitary. Jonah Hill establishes himself as a dramatic actor of consequence as Peter Brand, a bean-counter with an unconventional viewpoint amount which baseball stats matter most. Together, Pitt and Hill are exquisite.

If last year's thinking-outside-the-box-movie "The Social Network" gave cynical insight to a social activity platform that is already approaching a crisis of identity, "Moneyball" has a more lasting quality. What’s profoundly interesting is how the romanticism of baseball comes through via sidelong moments of deeply personal experience.

4. The Artist

"The Artist" conjures a bygone era that reminds us why we love Hollywood. Director Michel Hazanavicius's wonderfully nuanced movie made a splash at Cannes and then became the critical darling of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

Hazanavicius meticulously squeezes in an encyclopedic catalog of silent film conventions while staying true to the ideas behind them. The result is a movie that never feels forced or derivative.

The movie is full of sweet little surprises. Between brilliantly executed performances, dance numbers, and an exquisitely told romantic story about loss and redemption, this flawlessly crafted film shimmers. Visually, it’s astoundingly gorgeous. Equal parts drama, romance, spectacle, and comedy, "The Artist" is an instant classic.

3. Drive

Playing with a William Friedkin-like level of patient intensity, atmospheric style, and shocks of violence Dutch director Nicolas Winding Refn creates his own 21st century dialectic of cinema. "Drive" is a film-lover's dream. Hossein Amini's adaptation of James Sallis's pulp novel provides Ryan Gosling with the kind of cool-blooded character actors would kill to portray. Known only as Driver, Gosling wears a trademark silver racing jacket with a big gold scorpion embroidered on the back. His curious fashion sense matches his singular motivation to drive...fast.

The moody techno soundtrack by Cliff Martinez is the hippest thing around. Sexy, violent, and stylized like you can’t believe, “Drive” is a big-screen movie that oozes charisma and pops with brutality. Yum.

2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is more than a character study. It is an examination of a highly skilled occupation that demands such complete and utter commitment that all emotional response must be submerged to a point of permanent poker-faced resolve. No one can be trusted and yet loyalty to the group is mandatory. A company party where the agents pretend to let their hair down momentarily arrives as a key sequence for what it says about the way British spies of the period interacted. Every jovial smile conceals suspicion and secrets. Tomas Alfredson’s flawless staging provides a fly-on-the-wall view that allows the audience to peek behind the characters’ well-defended shroud of secrecy to discover yet another one that hides beneath. The story is about how loyalty and integrity are enforced in a spy agency where such values add up to much more than a simple matter of life and death. They represent the safety and viability of an entire system of government.

1. Melancholia

2011 was the year of apocalypse in cinema. "The Tree of Life," "Take Shelter" and "Melancholia" each offer differing visions of Earth's waning days.

Lars von Trier evinces consolation for the end of planet Earth and all its evil inhabitants in the form of a colossal planet named Melancholia, which is travelling on an elliptical collision course.

Von Trier’s infamous Cannes festival publicity stunt wasn’t anymore outrageous than anything that drips nightly from Bill O-Reilly but it got the filmmaker himself thrown out of the festival in a manner befitting an outlaw filmmaker.

Had the jury at Cannes chosen von Trier's superior "Melancholia" over Terrence Malick's cluster-bomb "The Tree of Life" in spite of von Trier's "persona non grata" status, justice would have been served. As with all of von Trier’s films, “Melancholia” will divide audiences. Atheist audiences can take special pleasure in von Trier’s exquisitely uncompromising vision. After all, what’s a beginning without an end?

NYFF 2011 in Perspective

The New York Film Festival 2011
By Cole Smithey

Easily the best New York Film Festival I’ve experienced in the 15 consecutive years I’ve attended it, 2011 was truly an exceptional year. Of the 17 films I saw there was only one disappointment (Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants”) and one unforgivable dog (“Martha Marcy May Marlene” – I compulsively make fun of the title every time I say it). Martin Scorsese personally introduced a surprise screening of his latest film “Hugo” to a packed house.

Documentary filmmaking enjoyed strong entries with Chris Hall’s and Mike Kerry’s “The Ballad of Mott the Hoople” (which sadly will go to DVD), Joe Berlinger’s and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost 3,” and Alex Stapleton’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.” Martin Scorsese’s named also showed up on the MTV-aired doc “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”

While overrated festivals like Toronto pretend to compete with Cannes, and unfocused festivals like Tribeca continue to feel around for an identity, the New York Film Festival has proven once again that it knows how to treat filmmakers, celebrities, and its participating journalists. Kudos to Richard Peña, John Wildman, Courtney Ott, and the rest of the staff at Lincoln Center for making 2011 a festival to remember.

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismaki's humanist themed comedy of manners and intentions is a whimsical allegory about the desperate plight of immigrants and the communal actions needed to address the issue. There's an air of magical realism in the film's tone that places shoeshine man Marcel (Andre Wilms) in the unique position of harboring a young illegal immigrant named Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) from West Africa in Marcel’s French hometown of La Havre.

Marcel leads a frugal existence with his loving wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) in a small house on a little back street of the sleepy seaside town. The couple's minimalist lifestyle still allows for simple pleasures. With his wife's approval Marcel slips out to his favorite bar for an aperitif while Arletty prepares their dinner. Arletty doesn't want her husband know she's dying from cancer. So it comes as a shock when she has to be rushed to the hospital for an extended stay. When a dock guard hears the cry of a baby coming from a sealed shipping container, local officials are called in to open the giant London-bound metal box. Inside are a group of immigrants from which Idrissa escapes before running into the sympathetic Marcel who agrees to help the boy get to London to reunite with his mother.

Filmed with a deliberately simplistic regard, Kaurismaki embraces a regional sense of identity that allows supporting characters to flourish. Police Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) gets wind of Marcel’s complicity in hiding the boy, and makes his position clear to Marcel. Enjoyable scenes between Darroussin and Wilms play out with a suspenseful sense of deadpan humor. As with all of the Finnish auteur’s films, there’s a bitter sweetness at play. When Kaurismaki adds the story’s final grace note it comes as rich reward. Few filmmakers have such delicate command of the poetic potential of cinema.

The Kid With a Bike

The Dardenne brothers tweak slightly their polished neorealist formula of personalized socially consciousness cinema related to their home country of Belgium, and their hometown of Seraing in specific. Composed music plays a role. The Dardennes continue the focus of their oeuvre on the plight of the country's youth. The result is a somewhat less than convincing story about a troubled 11-year-old boy named Cyril (Thomas Doret).

Having been recently abandoned by his single-parent father Guy (Jérémie Renier), Cyril searches desperately for his dad, and for his bicycle which has also gone missing. The manic boy escapes from the boys' home where he has been placed to return to the now empty apartment he once occupied with his father. Chased by his keepers back into the home Cyril throws himself at a visiting woman who sits in a lobby. Hairdresser Samantha (Cecile de France) helps reunite Cyril with his bike and agrees to look after the violence-prone boy on weekends. Samantha is at a loss to understand Cyril's self-destructive impulses that land him in a string of violent altercations. Still, Cyril's good fortune expands when Samantha agrees to keep him with her full time. Cyril’s guardian angel helps him track down his dead-beat dad at the restaurant where he works. Guy gradually makes clear that he wants nothing to do with his needy son. The filmmakers explore too shallowly Guy's reasoning for essentially throwing his son away. This, coupled with a lack of perspective on Samantha's backstory, weighs heavy on the film as a narrative contrivance that is nonetheless buffered by Thomas Doret’s exceptional performance.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

"Work-shopped in a Sundance writing and directing lab" proves to be the kiss of death for an overwrought and underdeveloped psychological thriller that refuses to either poop or get off the pot. Newbie writer/director Sean Durkin wears his obsession with Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke on his snot-covered sleeve. Evidently they don't teach that flashbacks are a bad idea at NYU film school—where Durkin attended--or at Sundance since exactly half of Durkin's story is told using the most common crutch in narrative existence.

Durkin has an ace up his sleeve in newcomer Elizabeth Olsen, whose beguiling nubility and haunting mood shifts the filmmaker milks for all they’re worth. Olsen plays the title character whose name Martha gets transmogrified to Marcy Mae by a creepy cult leader named Patrick (John Hawkes) who feeds on the flesh of his mostly female clan on a remote farm commune in the Catskills. Martha's "Marlene" identity is the least explained, and is left dangling along with every other plot thread the filmmakers bother to create.

Martha runs away from the commune at the beginning of the story. She calls her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), who she hasn't been in touch with for two years, to come pick her up. Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy) take Martha into their spacious riverside home in Connecticut. Martha displays odd behaviors such as skinny dipping in broad daylight and crawling in bed with Ted and Lucy while they're having sex. She doesn’t believe in such capitalist traps as pursuing a career. She holds onto firm but unstated beliefs about “the right way to live.”

Flashbacks reveal Martha's rape at the hands of Patrick, and her indoctrination as a "leader and teacher" at the commune. The filmmaker constantly jockeys back and forth between Martha's increasingly problematic situation with Lucy and Ted, and her not so distant past that informs her subconscious and conscious mind. Martha is an unreliable protagonist the audience is tempted to side with in spite of her volatile personality. "Martha Marcy May Marlene" comes across as an extreme right-wing fantasy about the leftist mind. If we take Martha, as the filmmakers seem to intend, to represent the kind of person engaged in the global protests against savage corporate greed then we are forced to admit that they are emotionally disturbed sociopathic human beings. The big problem with the movie is the filmmakers forgot to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In spite of its all-too-obvious machinations “The Kid with a Bike” touches on social ills in a direct fashion without preaching. When Cyril falls in with a neighborhood thug to perform a violent crime with no reason other than for the approval of an older male figure, we see clearly what the filmmakers are getting at. A kid with a bike is nothing without both a mother and a father figure. The Artist Inspired proof that a black-and-white silent film with a 4:3 aspect ratio can be more entertaining than a 3D anything, "The Artist" conjures a bygone age of Hollywood that reminds us why we love cinema. Director Michel Hazanavicius's wonderful movie made a splash at Cannes before becoming the critical darling of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

The Artist

Jean Dujardin ("OSS 117 - Lost in Rio") combines Errol Flynn and Fred Astaire in his role as silent film superstar George Valentin. The story finds matinee idol Valentin enjoying a glamorous silent film career in Los Angeles near the end of the Roaring Twenties. Flawlessly tailored and groomed, here is a man who can do no wrong. His marriage to a grumpy wife (Penelope Ann Miller) isn't all it's cracked up to be but George has his constant companion, a Jack Russell terrier, to keep his sprits up. Valentin goes along for the ride when Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), an ambitions young starlet, creates a welcome bit of impromptu romantic zing during a public photo op. The kiss she plants on George’s cheek makes front page news. With her infectious smile and adorable dance moves Peppy's silent film career catches fire in the company of the suave and urbane Valentin. The advent of the Talkies doesn't bode well for Valentin, who refuses to participate for a reason that only becomes clear late in the story. Peppy is more adaptable. Cast aside by his producer (John Goodman), Valentin dips into his personal savings to produce, direct, and act in silent movie that necessarily flops on the same day as the release of Peppy's breakout sound role. Our impeccable hero hits the skids.

Apart from a precise use of appropriate music, Michel Hazanavicius teases the audience with sound as a delightful narrative ingredient. Will we ever hear Valentin speak? It is a silent movie after all.

Between brilliantly executed performances, dance numbers, and an exquisitely told romantic story about loss and redemption, is a flawlessly crafted film that shimmers. Visually, it’s astoundingly gorgeous. Equal parts drama, romance, spectacle, and comedy, "The Artist" is an instant classic. There is a line of thinking that states a film has to linger around for a decade before it can have a "classic" status bestowed upon it. To that notion I say, watch "The Artist."

Pina

Like his German compatriot Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders has a knack for the documentary form. Wenders's 1999 Buena Vista Social Club remains one of the best music documentaries ever made. Unlike Herzog however, Wenders may want to consider sticking exclusively to this type of storytelling in light of his recent failing efforts with narrative film. His last film "Palermo Shooting" (2008) is a film better left forgotten.

In discovering the human and artistic impact of his friend, the famed late choreographer Pina Bausch, Wenders takes a unique approach that involves set piece reenactments of Bausch dance routines performed by her fiercely devoted company of dancers, the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Bausch started the company in 1973. Wenders puts state-of-the-art 3D technology to ideal usage in capturing the dynamic vibrancy of transformative dance numbers that reveal the personalities of the individual dancers, as well as the bold vision of their artistic muse. Interspersed between the dances are brief direct-to-camera reminisces from individual dancers about Pina that tell the story of an artistic force of nature who lived and breathed nothing but dance.

Wenders had been in discussions with Bausch for many years about making such a film. Sadly, the visionary choreographer passed away in 2009 just as "Pina" was entering pre-production. Audiences will find much inspiration in the film's many passionate solo, pas de deux, and group dances performed in public spaces and in various theatrical settings. Natural elements such as dirt and water take on mystical qualities in dynamic dance performances that truly take your breath away. There are many aural, visual, and visceral surprises in this sublime film. If you aren’t a fan of dance, you will be after seeing Pina’s magnificent dances performed by dancers who worked with her for decades. "Pina" was one of the highlights of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

One of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema gets his due in a comprehensive love-letter documentary that celebrates Roger Corman's illustrious film career from top to bottom and inside-out. The inspirations, ideologies, and methodologies of Corman’s "one-man-band" of independent filmmaking come through in exhaustive clips from his more than 200 films, and from a plethora of interview segments. Aside from outspoken interview sequences with Corman himself, documentarian Alex Stapleton interviews everyone from the filmmaker's wife and business partner Julie Corman to Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, John Sayles, Peter Fonda, William Shatner, and Pam Grier. The effect is a raucous celebration of Roger Corman's polite demeanor, colorful films, and his stripped-down approach to movie-making that gave so many directors and actors their start.

"Monster From the Ocean Floor," "Apache Woman," The Little Shop of Horrors," "Bucket of Blood," "The Fast and the Furious," "Death Race 2000," "The Intruder," and his psychedelic exploration of LSD "The Trip" are just a handful of Corman's many films examined with more insights than seem possible for such a fast-paced documentary. It would be a daunting task for any filmmaker to even attempt a documentary about such a prolific and influential figure as Roger Corman, but Alex Stapleton lovingly crafts a 95 minute filmic encyclopedia that touches all of the bases. "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" fills an essential chapter of cinema history. It is destined to become an integral addition to the curriculum of more than a few college film courses.

The Descendants

Death and dying play a big part in Cinema's current zeitgeist. From apocalyptic films like "Melancholia" to cancer-themed comedies like "50/50" there is a pressing dialogue of facing up to the reality of certain death with some amount of courage and dignity. So it is that Alexander Payne struggles to make funny the pending death of a comatose adulterous wife whose husband Matt (George Clooney) must facilitate a socially responsible passage for the mother of his two daughters. Perhaps the best thing "The Descendants" has to offer is its depiction of Hawaii as a place like any other that only appears as a tropical paradise on the surface. Payne has mastered a certain style of deadpan humor exemplified in a scene where Clooney's cuckold runs down a suburban street in sandals. He is anxious to question his friends about their knowledge of the man his wife was cheating on him with before she was critically injured in a waterskiing accident. There’s a slapstick air to Clooney’s gawky physicality and the sound of flip-flops hitting asphalt. Still, it’s a scene you feel like you’ve seen a hundred times before. There’s numbness to the humor. Alexander Payne is certainly a competent director. He knows just where to put the camera. But as a writer he remains stuck in a navel-gazing kind of rut. “About Schmidt” (2002) fell prey to Payne’s sluggish sense of ponderous humor. “Sideways” was his best film because he stepped outside the need to gaze upon ugliness. In “The Descendants,” the writer/director takes a brighter disposition in a literal sense. Hawaii’s bright sunlight and natural beauty work some magic. But it’s not enough to resuscitate a script that is as depleted as the comatose character toward which the narrative steers. 

My Week With Marilyn

Michelle Williams delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Marilyn Monroe in director Simon Curtis's thoughtful adaptation of the legendary actress' diaries by Colin Clark. At 23 Clark served as 3rd assistant director to Laurence Olivier for his 1956 romantic comedy "The Prince and the Showgirl." Here Eddie Redmayne movingly portrays a star-struck young Brit who momentarily wins the heart of the most sensual creature on the planet while working as Marilyn’s hand-picked liaison to the British theatrical world—a culture upon which she is an obvious encroachment. Michelle Williams effortlessly evokes the tragic icon's layers of insecurity and hopeless romanticism, which slip into fits of manic depression. Williams's mesmerizing set-piece performance of songs, such as a climatic rendition of "That Old Black Magic" transports the film into the erotic euphoria that Monroe stirred in the hearts and libidos of men. Equally effective is a charming dance number Williams reenacts from the film within the film. Williams's magical transformation into Marilyn Monroe is uncanny; you never question it for a moment. Although the movie has its weak spots--Julia Ormond turns in a one-note portrayal of Vivian Leigh and Zoe Wanamaker veers toward caricature as Paula Strasberg--Michelle Williams delivers a deft multidimensional character study built on truthfulness and soul. “My Week With Marilyn” isn’t just a gem; it’s a diamond.

The Skin I Live In 

Pedro Almodóvar proves himself an apt technician at sustaining suspense in the thriller genre. Antonio Banderas returns to work with Almodóvar for the first time in over 20-years, since his memorable performance "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!." The years have been kind to Banderas who brings his A-game to a deliciously diabolical role. Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is a mad scientist with plenty of method to his particular madness of creating an indestructible skin. His wife died in a car fire. His daughter committed suicide. He harbors vengeance. But why? The Toledo-based doctor conducts experiments in the privacy of his luxurious mansion laboratory. Not even Dr. Frankenstein had it so good. His mother (Marisa Paredes) serves as his dutiful maid. Almodovar's meticulous attention to detail keeps you hypnotized. Every visual component is exact in color, placement, and scale. Naturally, the evil doctor is using a human being to live inside the hybrid-pig-DNA membrane he has perfected. His comely patient Vera (Elena Anaya) is confined to a large room. She wears a skin-tight body suit and practices yoga for hours on end. Dr. Ledgard secretly observes Vera through a large two-way mirror. Elena Anaya is an exquisite object of fetishistic delight for Almodovar to pour his patient camera over.

Based on Thierry Jonquet's novel "Mygale" "The Skin I Live In" is a haunting film that tips its hat to Alfred Hitchcock. There's a goodly dose of Georges Franju's 1960 French horror classic "Eyes Without a Face." Elliptical time shifts tell the story in a disjointed fashion that makes you want to see the film twice even as you're watching it. There's mystery here to savor as you would any great piece of cinematic art. Pedro Almodóvar has created a masterpiece. Plan on seeing it twice.

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Nuri Bilge Ceylon continues his minimalist yet universal exploration of society with a fascinating police procedural that values story over plot and character over prejudice. The mastermind behind such instant classics as "Climates" and "Three Monkeys" uses every detail of atmosphere and human communication to tell a quietly complex story about a murder and the imperfect methods of the men assigned to solve the crime.

At night Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) accompanies a group of police officers and a soldier as they drive around the dark outskirts of the Anatolian steppe. They have with them two incarcerated suspects they hope will lead them to the grave of a missing man. Police Commissar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) lets his temper flare at his prisoner who leads the three-vehicle caravan on a wild goose chase in search of a "round tree" by one of the road's many fountains that provide water for travelers in the arid region. Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel) reigns in Naci when the Commissar turns violent against his prisoner. The cops joke about food and engage in a bland kind of non-specific repartee that diffuses tension even as it subtlety discloses fragments of personal information. They stop for food at the home of man whose beautiful daughter momentarily entrances them.

"Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" is a film about how detectives communicate. It’s also about how entrused public servants wrangle with overpowering emotions and personal secrets. Anger and sadness are traits to be submersed under rote routines of professional conduct. Their personal sense of justice can be confused and arbitrary. And yet, these men are doing a job that must be done. Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a lover of humanity. His great concern for every one of his characters that goes beyond their innocence or guilt. He recognizes the balance of both qualities in their actions. As a sociological study, the film is edifying on many levels. As a drama it is at turns inscrutable, revealing, and moving. The cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a transformative one. It is unique and honest. Most significantly, it is rare.

Carnage

Roman Polanski's cinematic chamber-piece rendition of Yasmina Reza's celebrated stage play "The God of Carnage" is an outsized comedy contained in the confines of a New York apartment.

Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play Penelope and Michael Longstreet, a bourgeoisie married couple whose son lost a couple of teeth to a schoolyard bully who hit him in the mouth with stick. Rather than take America's kneejerk legal route, the mostly well-intentioned couple attempt to resolve matters via an afternoon discussion with the parents of the offending bully. Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz play the bully’s parents Nancy and Alan Cowan. Alan is a corporate attorney with a mind like a steel-trap and a constantly ringing cell phone that takes precedence to all other concerns. Nance is an investment broker with a queasy stomach. The Cowans and the Longstreets are equally matched in the area of self-righteousness, but not so much in the realm of what used to be called political correctness. Hiding behind a veneer of politeness, each character digs deeper into their personal bag of tricks to articulate a holier-than-thou brand of intellectual independence. Tempers flare, insults are tossed, vomit flies, and a bottle of scotch is consumed on the way to seeing a myriad of hypocrisy that lurks inside high-minded examples cultured, educated, and civilized society. The laughs come hard and fast.

There's considerable gratification in watching this quartet of great film actors working in Polanski’s deliciously theatrical setting. The film was shot in real time. The director himself makes a cameo appearance as a curious neighbor. Brief, explosively funny, and sardonic as hell “Carnage” is what you might get if you condensed three of Woody Allen’s early films into a 75 minute one-act. This movie is a kick. The Woman WIth Red Hair Japan's Pink Film genre lasted from the early '60 through the mid-'80s. Although Western audiences are most familiar Nagisa Ōshima's 1976 film “In the Realm of the Senses” as the genre’s most representative film, Japan’s Pink Film industry provided several generations of filmmakers with a lucrative outlet for their creativity. One of the country's oldest production studios “Nikkatsu” turned exclusively to making what it termed Roman Porno in the early '70s to compete for audiences distracted by television. Each Roman Porno film had to have four nude or sex scenes per hour. Nikkatsu served as an ideal training ground for Tatsumi Kumashiro, who directed his first film "Front Row Life" in 1968 and went on to be one of the genre's most prolific directors.

The Woman with Red Hair

Kumashiro's 21st film, "The Woman with Red Hair" is a study in social commentary disguised as porn. Construction worker Kozo and his pal have outdoor sex with the boss’s daughter before picking up a red-haired woman eating noodles at a truck stop in the pouring rain. Kozo takes the girl (Junko Miyashita) back to his squalid apartment where the lovers slip into a marathon of love-making interrupted by economic and social pressures that surround them. Character-discovery occurs during ravenous sex acts that extend to kinky expressions of fantasy and revealing post-coital conversations. The woman is on the run from an abusive boyfriend. She has a son she left behind. She might be a recovered heroin addict. One thing is certain; the woman with red hair is insatiable.

In keeping with strict codes of Japanese law that forbade the showing of genitalia or pubic hair, Tatsumi Kumashiro composes the sequences of unbridled love-making with clever angles and purposefully placed foreground objects. There’s a nervousness and honesty in the way the lower class couple express themselves. Anger and violence tempers their efforts at finding fresh paths toward a fleeting pleasure that must be refreshed immediately lest it vanish forever. Incredibly lusty and inflected with a cinéma vérité style “The Woman with Red Hair” aspires to a degree of social realism that features the surroundings of its characters as an influence that causes them to live in a state of constant fear. It compares favorably with Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 film “Red Desert.” The emotionally exposed characters battle against oppression by an industrial world with a confused humanity hungry for release.

A Dangerous Method

Christopher Hampton's stage play "The Talking Cure" provides the basis for David Cronenberg to dive into the largely overlooked story of Sabina Spielrein and her influence on the fathers of modern psychoanalysis--Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Sabina (played with astonishing authority by Keira Knightley) is a Russian Jewish patient brought to Jung's Burgholzli Clinic in Zurich in 1904. Her "hysteria" impedes her speech as she contorts her face, neck, and head in violent spasms. Outwardly, she appears quite insane. Michael Fassbender's Jung is able to calmly look beyond Sabina's off-putting physical demeanor in the interest of curing her. Jung is intent on using Sabina as a premier test patient for Freud's conversational therapy which he mistakenly calls "psychanalysis."

The film glides effortlessly across years as Jung meets Freud (Viggo Mortensen) to discuss psychoanalysis. Cronenberg masterfully controls the soundscape. Music is never allowed to intrude on a scene. Ugliness becomes beautiful; beauty becomes divine. Jung and Freud share a special bond of intellectual endeavor that comes through in their candid conversations about dreams. Jung shares his nighttime reveries for Freud to openly dissect. Privately, Jung questions Freud’s insistence that sex is the crucial element to all mental dysfunction even if his own experience with rehabilitating Justine points to just such a conclusion. Jung assists the perceptive and unguarded Sabina in her pursuit to become a psychoanalyst. He also seeks out a rationalization to ignore his wife and children long enough to enter into an adulterous BDSM affair with the heretofore virginal Sabina.

“A Dangerous Method” is a lush character study and history lesson that tenaciously explores the personal conflicts of ego and id between Jung and Freud. The film also pays generous homage to the woman whose outré sexual desires enabled her to turn Freud’s theories around. Freud entrusted her with several of his patients for her to treat. As an actors’ showcase the film is stunning. Vincent Cassel gives a memorable portrayal as the nihilistic psychiatrist Otto Gross, who encourages Jung to take sexual advantage of his patient. David Cronenberg has matured into a director of immeasurable confidence and gracefulness. He maintains his trademark fearlessness toward sexual obsessions and their potentially cataclysmic effects. Like Otto Gross he is incapable of “passing by an oasis without stopping to drink.”

Melancholia

Melancholia 2011 is the year of apocalypse in cinema. "The Tree of Life," "Take Shelter" and "Melancholia" each offer differing visions of Earth's waning days. Lars von Trier evinces consolation for the end of planet Earth and all its evil inhabitants in the form of a colossal planet named Melancholia, which is travelling on an elliptical collision course. Von Trier opens the film with one of the most haunting and lushly composed sequences ever captured on film. Kirsten Dunst's Justine placidly observes in hyper slow motion as electricity flows between an overcast sky and her fingertips. Black birds fall around her like harbingers of a funeral procession. Dunst’s delicate features are filled with stern ambivalence. As she reveals through her actions during the night of her wedding party, Justine’s atheism has prepared her bettern than believers to live out the final hours of human existence with a composure calculated to allow for whatever choices she might make. Telling off her demanding boss, and cheating on her doting husband (Alexander Skarsgård) of just a few hours, are obligatory actions. Justine is an anti-heroine without a trace of superficiality. She's a lying, cheating hypocrite just like everyone else. The difference is she admits it to herself. If Justine sounds like an alter-ego of the filmmaker who shook the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, getting himself thrown out of the festival for his incendiary comments during a press conference; she most certainly is.

Had the jury at Cannes chosen von Trier's superior "Melancholia" over Terrence Malick's cluster-bomb "The Tree of Life" in spite of von Trier's "persona non grata" status, justice would have been served. As with all of von Trier’s films, “Melancholia” will divide audiences. Atheist audiences can take special pleasure in von Trier’s exquisitely uncompromising vision. After all, what’s a beginning without an end?