"88 Minutes" is completely implausible, but it's the epitome of a star vehicle, the kind of thing that only gets made because Al Pacino agrees to do it. And he's still a good enough actor -- despite all the criticisms leveled against him that he's been doing the same thing for years -- that his line-readings are never boring. It's genuinely entertaining for the first while, and pretty funny in the way that Pacino approaches his character as a guy caught in a big mess. It's not an overly violent movie and it mostly focuses on Pacino, so if the plot is ridiculous, so what? I laughed out loud frequently and I had a pretty good time.
The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)
The plot is often preposterous -- Ledger's Joker continually and accurately assumes what seemingly everyone in Gotham will do next, and plans accordingly so they fall into his traps; even his mistakes are considered. The movie is filled with multitudes of "ingenious" sequences, such as the Joker implanting a bomb inside a living person, and they're the kinds of things that you can find thrilling once, but they serve no real purpose other than to astound the audience. Scenes are introduced and then tossed away -- we see the Scarecrow at the beginning of the film, never to be seen again. The Joker manages to break into Bruce Wayne's penthouse (referred to as the safest place in Gotham), and when Batman jumps out of the window to save someone the scene ends; but what happens to the Joker and his henchman who are still inside the penthouse? Scenes like that are just ignored. (Other scenes make no logical sense at all, like when passengers on a ship targeted to explode vote -- by putting their votes on paper and into a hat -- about whether to detonate a bomb on another boat to save their own lives.) The relative implausibility of Batman's gadgets -- he pretty much maps the entire city with sonar (and Morgan Freeman can find one person out of thirty million) -- could be forgivable, because the gadgets are part of the Batman myth. But they have none of the fun of the ones in the James Bond movies. Many of the performances are good, in particular Gary Oldman and Heath Ledger, who has a truly amazing scene where he's dressed in a female nurse's outfit. But Christian Bale's Batman is pretty much just a gruff-sounding voice. Nolan's directing seems highly influenced by Michael Mann's epic "Heat" -- note the opening bank robbery sequence. But he has none of the sleek, icy efficiency of Mann's film. (Although Nolan's film is the kind of thing that babbles about "chaos" in a city that looks like New York, to make it seem up on world issues.) Nolan's Batman isn't an epic so much as it's a movie loaded to the brim.
My Kid Could Paint That (2007, Amir Bar-Lev)
The idea that a kid could paint abstract art throws a wrench in the movement in general. If all you believe in is the end result, and if those results are the same whether authored by a kid or an educated, trained adult, then the kid truly is just as good an artist. If you believe in narratives in art, then the backgrounds of artists -- whether it's their private lives or their images (the way you "imagine" the method of painting in a Pollack painting) -- then the end results aren't all there is. If Marla's parents painted her paintings for her, then the greater question of the value of authorship comes into play -- that people are purchasing hype. The Marla brand may sell because Marla is such a young artist; however, the stand-in in art has existed at least since Warhol, Warhol himself saying that many of his works were actually developed by other people, his "name" serving simply as a generic brand -- an artistic act in and of itself. The Marla case may not be that sophisticated. Towards the end, the movie brings up a genuine sense of unease, because the mother seems honest and the father less so. (It's possible that the mother is unaware even if the father really is painting the paintings, since the two work opposing shifts.) The father is implicated, awkwardly trying to cover up why his daughter asks him for help on camera, or scrambling to expound on the brilliance of one painting that was via film proven to be painted by Marla (a painting that a gallery viewer thinks looks nothing like the other Marlas). As far as the mystery about who paints the Marlas, consider the way that the walls in the Olmstead's house are painted and compare them to Marla's paintings. Then consider the titles of her paintings ("Ode to Pollock"). The movie works on both the level of mystery and abstract art expose, and both are good.
Stop-Loss (2008, Kimberly Peirce)
It has a good heart -- its sympathies are with soldiers, and even though a character says "Fuck the President," it's not particularly political in the right-left sense. As a movie about former soldiers it's a fine enough statement; none of them are heroicized for easy sympathy (they're not Tom Hanks). But it may be too close to the Iraq war to make an overall coherent narrative. And while the movie is dedicated to real human beings, to make a war movie while the war is still going on and give it a feeling of immediacy it may need the added outrage of agitprop.
Walk Hard (2007, Jake Kasdan)
While I think it's written with a bit of mean-spirited mockery -- is it really that funny to send-up "Walk the Line," a movie about a real person who really did witness his own brother's gruesome death? -- it's also an antiquated comedy and that's kind of interesting. (With references to Elvis, Johnny Cash, and The Incredible Hulk TV show, this is a movie aimed not at teenagers but at audiences in their 50s.) What's good about it is that it's not quite as forced as other recent comedies (and there's a genuinely hilarious moment when John C. Reilly and Kristen Wiig compare their dreams; he, to be a musician; she, to live in a house made of candy). What's lousy about it is that it's a one-joke comedy. But John C. Reilly has such a truly lovely voice that at least it serves as an example of why he should be cast in a musical that doesn't think life is one big joke.
Bill (2007, Bernie Goldmann, Melisa Wallack)
Perhaps a hard sell because it's not really a comedy and it's not really an "indie" movie; it's one of those movies about a guy going through an identity crisis, and in this case happens to concern itself mostly with a budding friendship between Aaron Eckhart and the teenage Logan Lerman. Although it treads similar ground, it doesn't have the pretensions of "American Beauty."
Lions for Lambs (2007, Robert Redford)
Although it may not be a great movie, Robert Redford -- never someone I've cared about particularly -- has a genuine interest in story, even though his film is unconventional for a Hollywood drama in the sense that it's essentially a triad of debates. That in itself is enough to make it interesting, and Redford is intelligent and caring enough to make the debates worth listening to. In a general sense they deal with the apathy of Americans about this war, which has taken longer than World War 2. But what makes it particularly successful is that it's a movie where no one knows exactly what to think, but still care and look for answers regardless.
Savage Grace (2007, Tom Kalin)
A movie that combines elegant finery and decadent melodrama, it gives Julianne Moore, the fiercest American actress, her long-overdue "Mommie Dearest" role. The movie isn't a bungled art movie like that one -- it's craziness is intended -- but it's a Freudian statement if ever there was one. What could be titled "The Creation of a Homosexual," Moore's character doesn't view homosexuality as an aberration, she associates it with Proust. And even though some people may take the movie as associating homosexuality and insanity, I think it's closer to the idea of homosexuality as an evolutionary form -- Boulez, fashion, and sexual hedonism. (Moore's son, at about 12, invites another boy over while his parents are away. And the clothes in the movie -- Moore's blotchy blood-red dress; her son's lined sweater and above-the-knee shorts -- are enough to maintain interest.) The movie is marvelously cast, not just Moore, but the impeccable Stephen Dillane, the otherworldly Eddie Redmayne, and I was delighted to see Barney Clark, the wonderful child actor from Roman Polanski's equally wonderful "Oliver Twist."
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller)
Although filmmakers should be allowed to stretch and we as audiences shouldn't relegate them to churning out the same movie year after year, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is not only overlong (a trait in the Apatow tradition) but an uneasy mix of relationship drama and comedy. (It's also neither written nor directed by Apatow himself.) You can admire how the makers want a comedy that focuses on the human element and one that isn't afraid to spend some time doing it, but the laughs are few and far between, and the insights are few. Russell Brand and Mila Kunis are relaxed, open performers, but the movie seems adrift, and the only truly inspired moments -- aside from Brand's performance -- come from irrelevant scenes of Billy Baldwin as the star of a "CSI"-type drama who specializes in gruesomely awful one-liners.
Jumper (2008, Doug Liman)
Skillfully directed by Doug Liman, "Jumper" could have been a perfectly entertaining adventure comedy, but instead we're given a movie where specially gifted young men (they teleport, essentially like Nightcrawler in the X-Men movies) are hunted by a vigilante who doesn't think they should have that power, so large chunks of the movie are about them evading their captors. The opening, where a boy first discovers his power, could have set the stage for a pleasant children's adventure, but the boy gets older, and when he gets older he becomes much duller, in the form of Hayden Christenson. Luckily we have Jamie Bell, in a supernatural Angry Young Man role, to liven things up. I think Liman's directing has some fun to it, but the script is a let-down.
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