Hugo

Martin Scorsese's Hugo is a phenomenal piece of filmaking that comes close to transcending the medium to which it pays such sumptuous homage. Reflecting on it and writing about it is kind of like trying to tell someone why Van Gogh's The Starry Night is a masterpiece. Yes, one could talk about color and brush strokes, but in the end, the work's greatness is intrinsic and beyond itemization. To attempt to do so would be tedious, pedantic and, frankly, insulting to the work.

And, yet, Scorese's Hugo is rich in (1) cinematic ingenuity (his now famous seemingly endless tracking shots have been bested here and the 3D technology is so beyond brilliant it's truly intimidating), (2) narrative intelligence (the film weaves history and fantasy and pathos and comedy seamlessly) and (3) authentic humanity (not an ounce of sticky sentimentality to be found). During the last reel I felt both exhausted and genuinely inspired.

Hugo is the story of a young orphaned French boy (Asa Butterfield) who lives in a train station so that he might tend to the clocks as his uncle had but to do so he must elude the station's gimpy constable (Sasha Baron Cohen). Hugo has inherited his absent father's skills for fixing things (and, yes, indirectly people) even though Hugo himself feels badly in need of mending. The boy fixes a mechanical man that once belonged to the great French filmmaker Georges Melies (played by Ben Kingsley), a pioneer who is clearly a hero of Scorsese's. Therein lies the movie's adventure, a fabulous exploration into dreams and imagination and the nature of family. What an achievement. Oscar contender? Unquestionably.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 1: Ebb Tide

The Wire Season 2 Episode 1: Ebb Tide. When The Wire returned in June 2003 after nearly a year's hiatus, fans were probably nearly starved for more of the same. After all, loose ends had been left dangling at the end of Season 1: Stringer Bell, the second-in-command and brains behind the Barksdale drug-dealing organization, had not been arrested (though Avon Barksdale was behind bars) and for all intents and purposes dope fiends were still "fiending" for whatever was for sale on the West Side corners.

But Season 2 opens with Det. Jimmy McNulty, the star of the series, on a police boat patrolling the Baltimore Harbor, the detail he had specifically requested NOT to get after the Major Crime Unit was disbanded. When McNulty and his partner pull a floater from the Bay, it seems like the series is heading in another direction. In actuality, however, the dead young woman floating in the Harbor was Simon & Company's clever introduction to the overarching theme is Season 2 -- the drug trade is just one parasitic enterrpise feeding on this nation and the players come in all hues and from all shores.

The Muppets

I really enjoyed James Bobin's The Muppets but fear young children will be bored despite the brilliant colors of the velveteen frog and his pals. The film -- whose human stars are Jason Segel and Amy Adams -- tells the story of Gary's (Segel's) fuzzy and stunted "muppety" brother Walter whose only desire is to visit The Muppet Studios in Los Angeles and see where the magic was made. So, Gary, Walter and Gary's longtime girlfriend Mary catch the Greyhound and head to Tinseltown and find the studio under threat of the buldozer. Still, singing and dancing ensue. The movie is fat with celebrity cameos and gags and musical numbers that are much like those staged in Bobin's off-kilter but tuneful HBO series The Flight of the Conchords. That is to say, the jokes are satricial and self-referential but kiddies would probably want more meaty action and less ham (no offense Miss Piggy).

Immortals

Tarsem's Immortals is an often stunning tribute to excess and the unsettling conflation of sword-and-sandal homoeroticism (ala 300) and mindless, though beautifully choreographed, brutality. The film is not so much about the Greek legend of Theseus, the hero who slew the Minotaur, as it is about the passing of the age of gods. The film doesn't necessarily raise the bar on the integration of live action and CGI -- and the acting (though performed by really beautiful people -- Henry Cavill and Freida Pinto) is just OK -- but the movie certainly sets a new standard for the number of decapitations that can be stuffed into 100 minutes of movie. It is truly astounding.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 13: Sentencing

The Wire Season 1 Episode 3: Sentencing. The cap to the first season of this remarkable show ties up some loose ends but leaves others dangling in the wind. In the previous episode, Cleaning Up, Det. Leander Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson) tells Lieut. Cedric Daniels that the Barksdale case was the best police work he'd ever done but feels "unfinished." Episode 13 echoes that sentiment. Even though Avon Barksdale and much of his crew are sent to prison, we, the viewers, know the size and complexity of the drug trade, the desperation of users AND corner dealers, and the powerlessness of the police to do much to stem the tide. All of this is punctuated by the hooded figure of everyone's favorite stick -up boy, Omar Little relieving a dealer of his ill-gotten gain. "It's all in the game, right?"

J. Edgar

The aging make-up on the three wonderful principals in Clint Eastwood's intriguing J. Edgar -- Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts and Armie Hammer -- is a bit startling but rather than distracting me it forced me to pay greater attention to what the actors were saying and to their eyes ... that's where this story of loyalty and trust was actually played out. The script by Dustin Lance Black, who won the Oscar for the screenplay for Milk, is disjointed and theatrical -- like its human subject -- but it is also enormously affecting. It's the story of the intersection of crime, politics and power in the person of the founder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But it's also a love story, actually three love stories: Hoover's Oedipal relationship with his mother, his chaste romance with his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson, and his megalomaniacal love for this country. It's not a hero's tale; Hoover is portrayed as often cold toward and demeaning of those closest to him. But that's not to say Hoover is an unsympathetic character. In one important scene late in the film, Hoover asks his dutiful assistant, Helen Gandy (Watts), "Do I kill everything I love?" She assures him he does not but it's said with the kind of caution one summons when trying to console without revealing one's lack of conviction. You can hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 12: Cleaning Up

The Wire Season 1 Episode 12: Cleaning Up. Michael B. Jordan's portrayal of Wallace, the lost boy / runner in the Barksdale drug syndicate, was one of the most affecting performances in the first season. And this episode, Cleaning Up, belongs to this tragic character. The seizure of Barksdale cash and stash by Baltimore police drives Avon and Stringer Bell into damage-control mode, which means silencing anyone who might connect them to drugs and murder. Wallace is one of the two gentlest and most guileless characters in the entire series -- the other is port police officer Beatrice Russell from Season 2 -- and Stringer suspecs him of being weak. Bell orders Bodie and Poot (Wallace's boys from the projects) to put Wallace down. Regular viewers were no doubt startled by the execution, which was committed in the abandoned tenement where Wallace cared for a half-dozen street children. The betrayal (wonderfully filmmed) is upsetting and heartbreaking. BTW, in the final episode of Season 1, Sentencing, D'Angelo Barksdale's ringing indictment of Stringer's bloody deed -- "String, where's Wallace? Stringer! Where's Wallace? Where's Wallace, String?" -- was an amazingly chilling moment ... haunting and splendid.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 11: The Hunt

The Wire Season 1 Episode 11: The Hunt. John Doman as Major William Rawls gets star billing in the series throughout the program's 5-season run and for good reason. He's a pretty foul though essential creation for the show. His profane careerism epitomizes the kind of police officer who exercises Det. Jimmy McNulty and the other stalwarts in the major crimes unit. And yet, in this episode, The Hunt, the writers add levels to Rawls that probably blindsided some viewers.

McNulty is wallowing in self-pity over the shooting of Kima Greggs and Rawls is having none of it. As he tries to help McNulty pull himself together, Rawls states, emphatically, "You, McNulty are a gaping asshole. I know it, and I'll be fucked if everybody in CID didn't know it. But I'll be also fucked if I let you sit here and think you did a single fucking thing to get a fucking cop shot. Believe it or not, not everything is about you. Get it into your head, McNulty, it's not your fault. And the motherfucker telling you this, he fucking hates your guts. So you know that if it was your fault I'd be the first son of a bitch to tell you. Shit went bad; she took two for the company. That's the only lesson here."

This is marvelous writing and the scene is stellar.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 10: The Cost

The Wire Season 1 Episode 10: The Cost. This episode belongs to Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) and it's a bit of a pity that it's not as strong as those that bracket it. Kima's relationship with her lover Cheryl never seemed to be particularly well-developed for me. (Maybe straight white men find it difficult to write about lesbians of color.) Even though Cheryl was given more screentime than most of the other spouses of principal players in the series, she never moved far beyond being a disapproving scold, which is unfortunate. Cheryl was a journalist in a relationship with a police officer but that was NEVER explored. Instead, the writers chose to take the baby path for these two women. I will say this choice opened up some truly interesting opportunities for Greggs but Cheryl just became more disapproving and more scolding. No matter. Greggs delivers a wonderful monologue midway through this episode in which she recounts for Cheryl and their friends over drinks the moment she knew she wanted to be real po-leese. It's well done and, yes, darkly foreshadowing of how this episode would end.

Cat Stevens - Where Do The Children Play (live)

Ben Harper "Power of the Gospel"

XTC This World Over

XTC - King For A Day

Clannad Coinleach Ghlas an Fhomair

Little Steven - Bitter fruit

Fall in the Peace Garden

Ides of March

George Clooney's Ides of March is competent treatment of one of Clooney's favorite topics -- political dysfunction (see the 2003 HBO K Street series he created with Steven Soderbergh). Clooney directed and stars Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Morris, who is preparing for the Ohio Democratic Primary. Helping Morris are his campaign chief Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman)and media strategist Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling). This cynical film is about the cynical machinations of "big league"cynical politics -- in other words ... innocence is sacrificed, loyalty is dashed and heroes are brought low. The cast -- which also includes winning performances by Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright and Evan Rachel Ward -- is terrific, but their considerable talents are put to the sad task of telling such a dispiriting story.

50/50

Jonathan Levine directed The Wackness (2008), a superior small film that was only able to cover half of its estimated $6 million budget through ticket sales. Levine's 50/50 is another terrific small-ish motion picture that I'm confident will do much better. For one thing, unlike the earlier flick, 50/50 has Seth Rogen's rapscallion vulgarity to draw boorish guys into what is ostensibly a Lifetime chick flick for dudes. For another thing, the film is a study in human resilience.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one of the most engagingly intelligent actors who is not a major box office draw, is Adam, a young public radio producer in Seattle who receives a cancer diagnosis that does little to change his demeanor. You see, he's so inurred to life's dissatisfactions and disappointments that when he tells his disbelieving therapist that he's at ease, you really believe him.

Rogen plays Adam's best friend and co-worker Kyle who has his own detachment issues, and Bryce Dallas Howard plays Adam's self-involved artist girlfriend. (Between her roles in this film and in The Help, Howard's 2011 has been the Year of the Bitch.)

The lovely Anna Kendrick, who was so striking in Up in the Air opposite George Clooney, is marvelous as Adam's untrained and unprepared but totally winning therapist. Kendick's scenes with Gordon-Levitt alone are worth the price of admission and are studies in wounded guardedness as romance.

Moneyball

Baseball, as a sport, is so accessible and yet so rich in malleable complexity that it's easy to imagine it having been created by a Harvard dropout and called Faceball. Both the game's accessibility and complexity are on display in Bennett Miller's excellent film Moneyball. The film is based on the 2003 book by Michael Lewis, which explored a new model used by the financially disadvantage Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane to hire and field a winning team. Because the film is so layered, I chose to view it as not only an exegesis of America's favorite pastime but as a treatment of our seemingly chronic inability to let go of the familiar. Brad Pitt as Beane and Jonah Hill as Beane's Yale-educated numbers cruncher / new world visionary are truly splendid and their scenes together are finely crafted, thanks to scriptwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. One particularly terrific scene has Pitt and Hill juggling player trades so hilariously and adroitly I was reminded of the work of Hope and Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis. Lovers of baseball might not love this film, but as a motion picture, Moneyball hits a homerun ... and is blessedly free of sports cliches.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 9: Game Day

The Wire Season 1 Episode 9: Game Day. The creators of The Wire clearly loved this show and all of its people, but they appeared to love some characters more than others because of the generosity they showed to them. Proposition Joe Stewart, the portly and predatory kingpin on Baltimore's Eastside, is given many singularly hilarious (and chilling) moments and lines during the series' run. The character is introduced in this episode, Game Day, as Avon Barksdale's competition. A sparkling metaphor for The Game of the drug trade, the basketball match up is rigged, of course, because neither man wants to play fair, only to win. When Joe takes the game, and $100,000, of Avon's money with a ringer, he's signalling to viewers that he's a force to be reckoned with. His appearances, which are often brief but terrific, are to be savored and studied.

Favorite Prop Joe line? Joe to stick-up boy Omar Little: "You ever steal from me, I'll kill your whole family." Joe to Nicky Sobotka (Season Two) after agreeing to repay Nicky for Joe's nephew's dirty dealings: "Fool, if it wasn't for Sergei here, you and your cousin would be some cadaverous motherfuckers." Genius.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 8: Lessons

The Wire Season 1, Episode 8: Lessons. Det. Jimmy McNulty is a terrific police officer but a wreck in nearly every other aspect of his life. He's a manipulative co-worker, an unfaithful husband, and a clueless, though not unloving, father. Episode 8 opens with McNulty setting his young sons on the trail of the Barksdale drug operation's second-in-command Stringer Bell, with whom McNulty is, understandably, obsessed. While his sons conduct a front-and-follow on Bell, McNulty loses the boys in the mall. The scene fades to the opening credits while McNulty stands helplessly by as mall security page his boys over the intercom. Later in the episode, as McNulty recounts the event to his buddy Det. Bunk Moreland, he voices no regret at involving his boys in the escapade. In fact, he brags about it. Bunk is unimpressed.
Dominic West is ostensibly the star of the series and it's no mystery why. He's a wonderful actor and his character is central to all that transpires in the first season, though the argument could be made McNulty was eclipsed by other characters in later seasons. In the first episode of the series, David Simon establishes McNulty as the catalyst for the creation of the special detail that led ot the surveillance of the Barksdale crew and revived many of his colleague's stagnant careers and stanched their cynicism. Still, it's McNulty's outsized personality and his seemingly bottomless capacity for self-pity that makes him such a delightful character to watch, cheer for and occasionally to disparage.

Warrior

Gavin O'Connor's Warrior is not a great film but it is a truly fine picture that strikes all the right chords and has an indominatable spirit at its core, much like its numerous pugilistic predecessors (from Stallone's Rocky to Russell's The Fighter). Yes, it's a stand-up cheer kind of affair but it's also thoughtful and poignant. The story is set in the crazy world of high stakes mixed martial arts caged competitions (of which I'm blissfully unfamilar) and revolves around the fractured relationship between two estranged brothers (the beefcake pinup duo of Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton) and their formerly alcoholic father (a terrific Nick Nolte). Needless to say, bitterness and regret fuels a lot of the fighting -- in and out of the ring. All three of the leads are fine as is Jennifer Morrison (House's Dr.Cameron), who plays the anxious but supportive wife of Edgerton's character. The film tracks the brother and their opponents as they move toward the predictable but tremendously entertaining last act in Atlantic City. O'Connor masterfully builds into the middle of the picture a split-screen montage of separate storylines as the brothers train for the $5,000,000 tourney. It's a super piece of film editing. Interestingly, and commendably, for a truly engagng film about fighting there's precious little blood spilled in Warrior.

Drive

There is so much beauty in Nicholas Winding Refn's film "Drive" that it comes close to being a work of art. It's beautifully conceptualized (the many interiors are almost tableaux), beautifully paced (it's slow but not languorous; it's deliberate, thoughtful and meaningful), beautifully acted (star Gosling has always been a prodigiously talented actor and Albert Brooks's Brooksian pacing and delivery are oddly perfectly pitched for his role as a menacing gangster). The film is exhausting and brutal and mesmerizing and not to be missed.

Contagion

Steven Soderbergh's crackerjack thriller Contagion is a film without a star but that's not to say it's starless. In fact, the movie is brimming with Hollywood A-listers -- Damon, Cotillard, Law, Winslet, Fishburne, Paltrow, Gould -- all of whom play characters are waging individual battles against a worldwide killer virus that appears to be spread through touch. Soderbergh has an uncanny gift for narrative, and having a large cast and a half-dozen cities doesn't detract from this story's clarity or urgency. I don't know what we're to make of the story's indictment of a number of governmental and quasi-governmental agency and human selfishness, but knowing Soderberg, I'm pretty sure the bottom line is if we would only stop being asses we might make it out of this alive.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 7: One Arrest

The Wire Season 1 Episode 7: One Arrest. Andre Royo's Bubbles is, like the rogue Robin Hood Omar Little, an  intriguing dramatic invention, and I suspect maybe the character is rooted in a real person the show's creator David Simon knew as a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. Bubbles has a pitiful drug habit but, strangely, he seems to rise above pity because his kindness and generosity are ennobling. In Episode 7, Bubbles asks Greggs to get his friend Johnny out of the clink and together Bubbles and Johnny go to an N.A. meeting, part of the parole deal, where Bubbles meets Walon (played by rocker Steve Earle). In one of the most affecting scenes in the first season, Bubbles rises from his seat when the call is issued to anyone wanting to live to come forward. Bubbles does so, gets the hug and the key ring and returns to his seat. His face -- one of the most interesting of all of the cast members in the series -- reads "ambivalence," "uncertainty," and "fear." It's a truly touching moment.