Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard's Cabin in the Woods is a cinematic feast for those of us who love horror movies and understand that the tease "don't look in the basement" is an inevitable invitation to do just that. But the wonder of Cabin is that that hackneyed warning leads to a fantastic array of outlandish terror/slasher genre tropes and tricks all in the service of ... well, I'll leave that alone. The story, written by wunderkind Joss Whedon (Buffy, the Vampire Killer and Firefly) and first-time director Goddard, is a bloody moebius strip, twisting in and around itself after introducing the four comely college kids (slut, jock, geek and virgin) and one unrepentant stoner who go off for a weekend in a remote cabin, without Internet or cellphone access. The film is brimming with vitality and smartness and humor and is, not a little bit, inspired.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 9

The Wire Season 2 Episode 9: Stray Rounds. In what was, at least for me, a stroke of dramatic genius, David Simon and company chose to bookend this unsettling episode with Janus images -- two faces of drug dealing enforcement. The episode opens with ragtag incompetence and chaos as Barksdale's street level enforcer Brodie (J.D. Williams) tries to push interlopers off his corners with a show of firepower. A young boy getting ready for school catches a stray bullet and is left dead in the bedroom of his apartment. His mother's screams close the opening sequence and offer proof positive that change is needed. When Stringer Bell and Brianna Barksdale tell her brother Avon, who is still behind bars, of the trouble they're having holding onto their portion of the West Baltimore drug trade, he tells them he'll take care of it by pulling in some muscle from New York. Little do they or the viewers know what that portends, not just for the disputing drug slingers but for Stringer and Avon. The episode closes with the introduction of the new enforcer -- the unassumingly bespectacled and bow-tied Brother Mouzon (a terrific Michael Potts) looking up at the towers that he has been summoned to tame.

The Hunger Games

Gary Ross's The Hunger Games is a highly watchable amalgamation of classic dystopian texts -- 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Wizard of Oz (?) among others -- that sets the child-in-peril trope front and center to uncertain effect, IMO. I'm not familiar with the source material -- Suzanne Collins' novel of the same name -- but expect that it develops the back story of the insurrection that resulted in the creation of the 12 districts from which two children are pulled every year to fight to the death in an elaborate war game. The children, a boy and a girl, are chosen in a lottery and shipped off to the Capital -- imagine the Emerald City without it's stylish sensibility -- to be schooled. The children -- some of them ringers -- are fawned over by garishly attired nabobs and trained in the fine art of evisceration. The film has several winning performances, most notably Jennifer Lawrence, a young bowwoman who volunteers for the Games when her little sister's number is called, and Woody Harrelson as her drunken mentor, whose job it is to make her a likable and bankable warrior. Despite the quality of the performance, inventive camera work and intriguing set design and costuming, this is still a pretty dismal and barbaric affair. I'm not a fan of the notion of turning animalized children onto each other as broadcast entertainment and don't understand the message I'm to take away from this film. It's entertaining enough, I suppose, but I left the theater sure the film wlll make a mint but I'm not certain if that's such a good thing.

Game Change

HBO's Game Change was illuminating and entertaining but a fairly safe affair overall. Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was a spot on duplication of the Alaska governor's distinctive manner and cadence and only in the last reel began to evolve into the annoying diva that the left loves to hate. The story itself was not wholly unsympathetic to John McCain or the men and women who forced the political marriage between the unlikely pair and who suffered the ignominy of tapping a candidate for vee-pee who was wholly unqualified. There are no villains in the film unless you count a political system guided by expediency, damage control and polling.

Sunshine

Reading dire reports of solar flares interrupting earthy affairs, I was reminded of Danny Boyle's intriguing but not totally satisfying foray into science fiction, Sunshine (2007). Boyle is better known for his wholly satisfying Slumdog Millionaire and his indispensable cult hits Trainspotting (1996) and Shallow Grave (1994). Sunshine tells the story of an international crew of astronauts on a mission to deliver an explosive payload the size of Manhattan island to the sun, where it will reignite the star, which is diminishing and threatening life on Earth. This will be the Earth's second attempt, as the previous effort failed mysteriously. As with the best science fiction with which I'm familiar, this adventure is merely backdrop for more existential musings. Some of which, admittedly I could not parse. Still, the visuals are kind of amazing. It's well worth checking out, IMO.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 8: Duck and Cover

The Wire Season 2 Episode 8: Duck and Cover. From end to end, The Wire was a character study of a city, David Simon's beloved Baltimore, and the individual troubled lives of cops and robbers, pushers and politicians and the innocents who were too often caught in the crossfire (literally). Det. Jimmy McNulty is a tough character to pull for because he's an ill-tempered braggart (an Irishman, through and through) who suppresses the better angels of his conscience with alcohol and cheap sex. McNulty opens this episode by driving his car into bridge underpass supports -- several times. It would be disturbing and puzzling if viewers hadn't already witnessed McNulty's self-destructive and self-pitying tantrums. When he ends up bloodied in an all-night diner ordering eggs and scrapple and picking up the waitress, we might be tempted to dismiss the whole affair as Jimmy being Jimmy, and it certainly is that. But it's also Simon's way of reasserting McNulty's aching need to be needed. As McNutly's best friend says in his defense, "when he ain't policing he's a picture postcard of a drunken, self-destructive fuck-up. And when he is policing... he's pretty much the same motherfucker. But on a good case, he runnin' in front of the pack. That's as close as the man comes to bein' right." The show's resident sage Lester Freamon will eventually get fed up with McNulty's shenanigan's and urge him to get a life away from the stakeouts and the wiretaps. It's great advice that McNulty never embraces ... and the show is better for it.

The Artist

Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist is a rather surreal silent treatment of the classic old dog / new tricks conceit set in 1920s Hollywood. It was a terrific gamble that was spot on. The film is a wonder. Hazanavicius delivers a picture that is not only fresh but refreshing even for those of us who see a lot of movies. The film's vibrancy radiates from the screen in ways I haven't felt in years. It's compact and precise, like a exquisite timepiece, but with heart. (More on that later.) One immaculately staged scene is representative of the artistry that's in every scene of this film. It takes place on an open stairway in the fictitious Kinograph studios where veteran silent film star George Valentin (a stellar Jean Dujardin) runs into the young starlet he discovered, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, what a marvel she is). Valentin has just had an upsetting meeting with studio heads in which it was announced that talkies were the future; the silent age essentailly over. The stairway exchange between George and Peppy moves elegantly from George's anxiousness to Peppy's ardor. It's poignant and pure perfection.

The Artist is a flawless film that bests that other truly flawless work released last year -- Scorsese's Hugo -- in that the meticulousness of the Artists's acting, camera work, staging and design do not compete with one another for the audience's attention or awe. At the end of Hugo, I felt I seen an important work by a master director. At the end of The Artist, I felt the same but also enriched and better for having seen it.

Post-Oscar Thoughts

I was saying to a friend just before last night's Oscar telecast that I could not see both Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis winning for their performances in The Help. I won't say it was naive of folks to think that both of these fine actresses would walk away with the gold (especially in light of Streep's singular leading lady performance in The Iron Lady, the kind of picture the Academy loves ... biopics) but it was overly optimistic of fans of The Help to think it possible. It just wasn't going to happen. I would not diminish neither Spencer's nor Davis's performances by saying that while different they were still quite similar and maybe too similar for Academy voters looking to make a statement. Those folks would have prefered the spiky Minny to the more resigned Aibileen, I think. (Hollywood loves to reward roles that stand up to the man ... remember Denzel Washington Oscar win in a supporting role for his performance as the beaten but never bowed former slave in Glory?) Also, in terms of pure heft of performances, Davis's Aibileen was essentially a crucial but supporting role. The star of the film was actually Emma Stone, the narrative was told through her and it was she who defined the action. The film producers wanted to recognize Davis (as resourceful and reliable an actress as Hollywood will allow) with a nod and helped build the buzz about a possible win. They could not put both Davis and Spencer up for supporting actress -- they would have cancelled each other out. But I think putting Davis up for leading actress probably was in the end unfair to her ... in light of the weight of not just Madame Streep's performance but the other three women who OWNED and were the FACES of the pictures they were in. Davis, though important to The Help, didn't really own that film. In the end, as a nominee, Davis will be considered for membership in the Academy. They would be fools not to issue that invitation today for the mileage the motion picture industry got and will continue to get out her and The Help.

The Grey

Joe Carnahan's The Grey is only incidentally about a group of men who survive a deadly aircraft crash in the Alaskan wilderness. For me, that event is only backdrop for a fascinating exploration of what it means to be alive and our relationship with our present ... not so much about what comes next. Liam Neeson is on camera for 90 percent of this film and much of that time his face fills the frame -- brows knit in concentration, indignation, terror. He is Ottway, the leader of a dwindling group of oil field workers who walked away from the crash. He leads their efforts to fend off the attacks of menacing wolves (which are to be read more as metaphorical representations of life's exigencies) and the night's numbing cold (that long last sleep that awaits us all). Yes, members of the small band fall one-by-one but that's not the story ... it's how the men are changed by each of these deaths that was far more interesting to me. One of the most powerful scenes -- there are a dozen enormously thought-provoking moments in this picture -- comes just after the plane crashes and Neeson's Ottway gently guides a fatally injured oilman into the warm arms of death with his voice. It's a masterfully crafted scene, played in extreme closeup, the camera trained on eyes, scraggy beards, bloody hands. It will be imprinted on your brain.

I'd put off seeing this film because I found the trailer so unappetizing -- another survivor adventure. But The Grey is actually Carnahan's poetic essay on the meaning of life. Do see it.

Shame

British director Steve McQueen's Shame is wonderful in the conventional sense -- intensely artful directing and powerful performances -- but it is unconventionally wonderful, as well, because it expertly mixes static resignation and frantic discomfiture. It's a movie about people not being comfortable in their own skins, even as they bare that skin to the world. The lead characters, Brandon Sullivan (a mesmerizing Michael Fassbender) and his sister Sissy (an equally terrific Carrie Mulligan), are driven by some unseen and unspoken past events into lustful rages that make them toxic to others, each other and to themselves. Brandon is a sex addict who works in an office with computers and lots of glass (it doesn't really matter what he does; he's just brilliant at it) and he spends a great deal of time scrolling the Internet for porn and stalking the streets of New York for willing sex partners. Sissy is a needy and clingy possible nymphomaniac just arrived in the Big Apple from L.A., where she was involved with a man who, apparently, she can't live with or without. McQueen films Mulligan in extreme close up singing the entirely of New York, New York in a lethargic meter that, like so much else in this film, will test the viewer's patience but will reward that patience when something will click and the device will become apparent. It's voyeurism. McQueen films interactions between characters so deliberately and at such great length (think John Cassavetes if he'd stripped his casts naked) that what at first is enticing eventually becomes distasteful. An early scene between Brandon and an unnamed female passenger on the subway transpires without a word being uttered, just glances between the two. The woman is at first flattered by his attention, then she's allured, but as Sullivan's gaze is unwavering, she loses her seductive pout and feels menaced by him. It's a brilliant scene in a film loaded with them but because Fassbender's prominent member is on display in a few scenes it will not be for every taste. It's a film about sex but it is decidedly not sexy.

Safe House

Denzel Washington fascinates me. More accurately, Denzel Washington's career fascinates me. He's one of a handful of A-list Hollywood African Americans who have maintained their box office appeal through savvy choices. He's done TV (St. Elsewhere) and Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing) and Spike Lee (a lot) and has never, in my opinion, appeared in, backed or directed a truly bad film. Many of his films are thoughtful explorations of human relations and weakness (Fallen) and many of them are richly textured examinations of black life in America (Antwone Fisher) more than a few are have the military as a backdrop. Some are decidedly weaker than others but each is boosted, considerably, by the sheer discipline of Washington performances. He's a force of nature -- but not an earthquake. He's more like a Hurricane. (Couldn't resist.) In the last decade or so, he's paired up with good to excellent B to B+ list Hollywood heartthrobs -- Ethan Hawke in Training Day, Chris Pine in Unstoppable and now Ryan Reynolds in Daniel Espinosa's Safe House, a good film with a mountainous body count and a story that is frustratingly incomplete. Washington plays a rogue CIA agent who for about a decade has been acquiring and selling secrets about undercover operations sponsored by the U.S. and its allies. Reynolds is the safe house "housekeeper" in Cape Town, South Africa, charged with delivering Washington's Tobin Frost to Langley when Frost turns himself in to the American consulate after a failed attempt on his life. The action is pretty much confined to Cape Town but there's plenty of it, maybe more than is actually needed. The story -- which owes a huge debt to the Bourne trilogy -- desperately needs more quiet moments between Washington and Reynolds, who is splendid, so that the audience can actually feel what's happening between these two men because that's where the real spy vs. spy story is. As a side note, who knew Berg of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place would turn into such a fine actor? I didn't but Reynolds delivers.

Chronicle

Josh Trank's Chronicle is not an easy film to assess. It succeeds on a couple of cinematic levels -- as well-crafted sci-fi / teen angst -- but it falls short on other more elusive levels, I think. It's the story of a trio of friends who find a mysterious glowing rock in a cavern in suburban Seattle and subsequently develop the ability to move objects through force of will. The boys (played winningly by Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Michael B. Jordon) have fun videotaping (chronicling?) the exploration of their new powers. They bond and win some much needed affirmation for damaged young Andrew (DeHaan), who is brutalized by his drunken father even as his mother lies slowly dying in the family's living room. Trank's narrative is tight and fresh and the early super power sequences are clever and seamless. But, then, matters turn, jarringly dark. It's not so much that the outcome is unforeseen; it's telegraphed well and often from the beginning. It's more that it's unrelentingly, terribly grim. Chronicle is well made, no question, but it's so dark it's hard to see the point it's trying to make. I would NOT recommend taking young children to this film.

The Wire Season 2 Epsiode 7: Backwash

The Wire Season 2 Episode 7: Backwash. The relationship between dock worker Nick Sobotka and his feckless cousin Ziggy is one of the more interesting in the second season and mirrors the familial tragedies found in the Barksdale clan. Casting the towering Pablo Schreiber as Nick and the comparatively diminutive James Ransone (whose acting was often too cartoonish by half) as Ziggy was smart and the stark difference in their physical presence signalled (perhaps to pointedly) the differences in their personalities, as well. Nick's physicality demands respect; Ziggy's, derision, which he receives in mounds. When Nick takes over the little piece of drug dealing action that his cousin tried to foster, Ziggy fumes and pouts. Ziggy has been bested by his tall, handsome cousin, and moves on to more reckless dealings that, inevitably, lead to his downfall. And, to add injury to injury, the loyal and industrious Nick is closer to Ziggy's father, union boss Frank Sobotka, than Ziggy is himself. What's a boy got to do to get his father's attention? Kill somebody?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I'd never seen Mike Newell's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before last night and enjoyed watching the Brit who went on the direct the nightmare that was The Prince of Persia deliver some decent thrills in what is pretty much a pudgy transitional film in the ordinarily lean and mean Potter series. Having not read the book I don't know if the problem lies in the source material, the screenplay or Newell's interpretation of either or both but it's not as nimble as the other entries -- particularly the cappers released last year. Still, the film moves the saga of the wizard boy / messiah along responsibly and we finally get a look at "he who must not be named" -- a scenery chomping Ralph Fiennes in his now-familiar Lon Chaney skeletal death mask. But in the final analysis, I found it entertaining though unremarkable.

The Woman in Black

Surely someone with Daniel Radcliffe's star power could have picked a weightier post-Potter vehicle than James Watkins' beautifully art directed but amateurish period ghost story "The Woman in Black." Radcliffe (how many hundreds of millions of dollars is his face worth?) plays Arthur Kipps, a young London attorney during the early years of the last century who receives an ultimatum from his boss to get his act together or move on. Kipps, the widowed father of a 4-year-old, accepts the challenge to travel to the remote home of a deceased client, read through her papers, and get the estate, Eel Marsh, ready for sale. Kipps leaves his son in the care of the nanny and travels by train to the village of Crythin Gifford, where the residents tell him there's no room in the inn, he's not welcome and that he should take the first train back to London ... or else. Kipps refuses, preferring to stay employed, and, of course, the disquieted, bitter spirit of the lady of the title runs amok killing villagers as she goes. Aside from the predictability of the narrative, problems with the film begin with Kipps holding out a shilling to bribe a carriage driver to take him out to Eel Marsh. After cutting to the driver, the camera returns to Kipps who is now holding a significantly larger coin. It's a bush league continuity gaffe but when combined with nonsensical points of view, inexplicable 5 o'clock shadows on Radcliffe's boyish cheeks and mysteriously vanishing pets, it's scary how bad this movie is.

The Descendants

Alexander Payne makes smart movies about people (most often men) who are decidedly unheroic but are, generally speaking, good, even though their actions are often questionable. They do bad things for good reasons. Citizen Ruth, Election and Sideways were modern day morality tales, to my mind, and wonderful ones at that. They are so rich because of the person Payne chose to put at the center of the stories -- Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Paul Giamatti, respectively-- all terrific, intelligent performers.

Now there's George Clooney, who pulls on the skin of sad perplexity that is Matthew King, the protagonist in Payne's new film The Descendants. Clooney, individually, and the film, as a whole, have been celebrated as stellar examples of modern cinema and Payne as a true auteur of closely observed American tales. I would agree. What makes Clooney (who is so much more than an A-list movie star -- he's a real, honest-to-gosh actor) so good in the role as a near-widowed father of two unruly girls whose mother lies in a coma is his total immersion into the part. It's not the kind of immersion that requires bucketfuls of makeup (J. Edgar) or histrionics (Young Adult) but rather deep understanding of what's on the mind of a man at his wits' end and who, seemingly, with every additional scene must shoulder another burden.

Clooney's performance is quietly brilliant and deserving of every accolade he's received. His stunning young co-star Shailene Woodley, who plays his foul mouthed and foul tempered older daughter, is a revelation. Bravo, to all parties

The Wire Season 2 Episode 6: All Prologue

The Wire Season 2 Episode 6: All Prologue. This marvelous episode is one of the strongest from the second season because it is loaded with classic moments, from Omar's testimony against the murderous Bird to Greggs' and Prez's visit with a plainspoken stripper. But in this episode viewers also bid farewell to D'Angelo Barksdale. The writers give D'Angelo a strikingly insightful speech toward the end of this episode. It's set in a classroom at the prison where inmates are discussing The Great Gatsby. D'Angelo (played by Larry Gilliard Jr.) shares that a man's character is the sum total of his earlier deeds, the prologue. It's not really about the trappings that he gathers around himself (foreshadowing to a later discover about his nemesis Stringer Bell) but about the man himself, his heart, his soul. It's a perfectly pitched moment that resonates tragically as we watch, stunned, as D'Angelo falls victim to an assassin inside the prison who is hired by Stringer to silence his best friend's nephew, for fear he, D'Angelo, might flip and bring down the Barksdale organization. This episode is terrific from first to last.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 5: Undertow

The Wire Season 2 Episode 5: Undertow. The fine character actor Chris Bauer plays union boss Frank Sobotka, a role that Bauer, who works a lot, has described as one of the greatest characters he's ever played. Most viewers of the second season would agree that Sobotka is a character of nearly Shakespearean complexity. A truly tragic figure, not brought low by hubris, arrogance or greed but by the cosmos or the Fates. Sobotka is a kind and caring, though misguided man, who, not unlike Michael Corleone in Godfather 3, tries to rise above the crime and corruption of the Greek's drug and prostitution trade but is pulled back down, the undertow of this episode's title. And as befits classic tragic figures, Sobotka, a truly good bad man, pays dearly for his actions.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a curious work for me because the wonderfully gritty Swedish version was released just two years ago. Those of us who see a lot of movies might wonder why Fincher felt moved to create what is ostensibly the same film in spoken English and, for the most part, written Swedish. (I would really appreciate Fincher explaining the logic behind that decision. Is this supposed to suggest authenticity? Frankly, it made no sense to me.) But then the answer to the first question lies within the question, I guess. American audiences would not be (have not been) turned on by a subtitles-heavy version of a complex story of murder and intrigue in the Norse lands. Stieg Larsson's "Girl" novels have been devoured globally so getting the most bang out of a film adaptation in Anglophone markets would require no subtitles. I can find little to quibble about with Fincher's telling of the tale of the damaged and damaging computer genius Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) and the discredited investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) who are hired to investigate a nearly 50 year old disappearance. Several times I felt like I was watching the touring company of a show I'd already seen on Broadway. That might seem odd considering Craig is such a fine actor and Mara herself is terrific but it just goes back to my opening comment -- Why was the movie made? I'm sure the answer to that question can be found in the Hollywood press but it's not apparent on the screen.

Carnage

Roman Polanski's Carnage, the film adaptation of Yasmina Reza's stage play "God of Carnage," is a feast for movie goers who enjoy watching people behaving badly. The film is a close, economical rendering of Reza's story of a pair of parents meeting in the home of the couple whose 11-year-old son was attacked by a schoolmate, the son of the other couple. Jodi Foster and John C. Reilly are the parents of the "victim," and Cate Winslet and Christoph Waltz are the parents of the child who Waltz early on describes as a "maniac." This character's admission introduces the theme that seems to underlie Reza's cynical treatment of contemporary America -- that entropy many of us feel or observe might be attributed to our general resignation, acceptance, of moral decay as the new world order. The boys' altercation -- which is shown during the opening credits -- isn't actually what this often howlingly funny film is about, a fact that is becomes increasingly apparent the more the couples drink, revealing poorly hidden animosities and disaffection. Polanski's direction of Carnage is sure and clean and the film is entertaining if you enjoy your meat blood red.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 4: Hard Cases

The Wire Season 2 Episode 4: Hard Cases. The Wire never wanders too far from the idea that family is the locus of both solace and disaster. The parasitical Barksdale operation is every bit a crime family as anything in the Mafioso, maybe more so. In Season 2, the show's creators extended their examination of cancerous familial ties to include the dysfunction of the Sobotka stevedores -- misguided but well-meaning Frank, his fiercely loyal nephew Nick and Frank's clown prince of a son, the substantially endowed Ziggy. These men are as toxic to one another as the imprisoned Avon Barksdale is to his nephew D'Angelo, who in Season 2 is doing 20 because of Avon's rash decision to have D'Angelo transport a heroin re-up from New York City to Baltimore. At the end of the first season, D'Angelo was ready to turn the entire kit-and-caboodle of his murderous kin and their hangers-on over to Baltimore's Finest but was dissuaded by his mother Brianna, a fascinating combination of Medea and Calpurnia, who urged him to think of his son, his baby's Mama, and the cousins. It worked. D'Angelo took the 20 but then in Season 2 tells Brianna, Avon and the rest to leave him be. But, tragically, he cannot escape the reach of the family's most treacherous member, Stringer Bell.

We Bought a Zoo

Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo is not so much about acquiring things (the zoo) as it is about letting go (the past). It's the true story of a recent widower, writer Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon), and his two children -- Rosie, a precocious 7-year-old (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) and Dylan, a darkly cantankerous 14-year-old (Colin Ford) -- who take possession of a small preserve for endangered species near L.A. It was Mee's attempt to find peace for himself and his famiy away from the things he associated with his deceased wife. Daughter Rosie is delighted by the move; Son Dylan, not so much. It's a fairly smart film and is not as much about fish out of water as one might expect. It has bigger notions to ponder, like, what would lead a fish to leave the water in the first place. It's a good movie with some winning performances from Damon, Ford, Scarlett Johansson as the chief zookeeper, and Elle Fanning as her daughter.

Beginners (2010)

Mike Mills's semi-autobiographical film Beginners (2010) is about both change and stasis -- change that is imposed by circumstances and the stasis that results from fear and pain and the fear of pain. Mills tells the story of a septuagenarian father who comes out to his 40-something son and soon after receives a diagnosis of inoperable cancer. The father is played by Christopher Plummer and the son is Ewan McGregor, who are wonderful in this keenly perceived and intimate tale. Mills uses an interesting elliptical style as the story of the father, Hal, taking a younger lover and plunging head first into gay activism intertwines with that of the son, Oliver, falling, hesitantly, for a beautiful and intriguing French actress he meets at a party. The father, though terminally ill, is all youthful abandon while the son is the epitome of caution and dismay. It's a wonderful juxtaposition, and, to Mills's credit the film avoids cliche and jeremiads about destiny and fate and seizing the day. And love, while it doesn't quite triumph, does acquit itself nicely. Beginners is a sweet and tender movie.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 3: Hot Shots

The Wire Season 2 Episode 3: Hot Shots. Stage actor Pablo Schreiber, Lieb Schreiber's younger brother, was a standout in The Wire's second season. As Nick, an under-employed dockworker (there was no other kind in Baltimore) caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Schreiber -- a tall, classically handsome man -- was the most tragic figure in the Sobotka clan because he not only had to witness, helplessly, as his family disintegrated with the killing of his uncle Frank and the imprisonment of his cousin Ziggy because of their involvement with the Greek's murderous brigade -- but he also watched as the only life he'd ever known was dismantled, block by block, brick by brick. In that regard, Nick was not so very different from the crosstown corner boys and drug dealers who he early on disparaged but then later came to emulate. Though the title of this episode refers to a package of spiked dope (hot shots), it could just as easily refer to Nick, who, despite being well over 6 feet tall, desperately wanted to be a bigger man. We were pulling for him and the other men who too often turned to crime to feed their families. (As a side note, Schreiber's superbly contained performance in Season 2 made his co-star, James Ransone's Ziggy, seem clunky and cartoonish in comparison. I will comment in more detail on Ziggy in a later posting.)

The Adventures of Tin-Tin

What to say about Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tin-Tin? I feel the same way about this film as I did about Martin Scorsese's Hugo: A master filmmaker can take technical innovations introduced by lesser lights and show how it's really done. Tin-Tin (a motion-captured feature starring the bodies and voices of Jamie Bell, Andy Sirkis and Daniel Craig) is leagues beyond your run-of-the-mill animated wizardry. Each frame is so richly detailed it is almost an excess of artistry. It was too fabulous. I was put in mind of Stendahl Syndrome, that phenomenon that happens to some folks who visit art museums and are overwhelmed by the beauty. That's how I felt about Tin-Tin, which is based on the classic adventure comics by Belgian artist Georges Remi, who went by Herge. Tin-Tin is a ginger headed reporter who jets around the world with his faithful and equally intrepid terrier Snowy. In the film, Tin-Tin follows clues around the globe (literally) to a pirate's hidden treasure. It's a wildly exhausting ride but, oddly enough, it's so well-crafted it feels more like a masterclass exercise than anything.