Thor (2011)

Thor has always struck me as an odd addition to the company of superheroes because, well, he’s Thor, for crying out loud – the Norse god of thunder. What business does a god have mixing in with the likes of Tony Stark and Peter Parker? And how is this fair? What sort of criminal element really poses a threat to a deity? The new movie version of Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh, does actually find a way to solve the second problem by realizing that a hot-tempered god might be his own worst enemy (albeit with some company by film’s end). It has a harder time, however, with that first problem. The god stuff and the earthly-hero stuff never quite gel. Thor feels like two movies uncomfortably shoehorned into one.

One movie concerns goings-on in Asgard, here imagined as a far-off planet home to god-like beings and fabulous art direction. Asgard is ruled by the “All-Father” Odin (Anthony Hopkins, in full-bore regal mode). Odin has been grooming his sons, the boisterous warrior Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the sly magician Loki (Tom Hiddleston), to become leaders of men, er, gods, er, whatever. On the eve of elder son Thor’s accession to the throne, however, he defies his father’s wishes and pays a belligerent visit the gods’ perennial enemies the Frost Giants (who all look rather like the demonic cousins of the Blue Man Group) – renewing the age-old war between them. Furious at his son’s arrogance and lack of control, Odin banishes Thor from Asgard to “Midgard” (Earth, lucky us) until he can learn a little humility. Thor’s trademark divine weapon (a hammer called Mjollnir) follows him, landing embedded in rock and only to be pulled out by one who can rightfully wield it.

Here the second movie kicks in. Thor finds himself in modern-day New Mexico, where he is literally run into by an energetic young astrophysicist named Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Jane, assisted by her mentor Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and intern Darcy (Kat Dennings), has been tracking cosmic disturbances by charging around the desert in a van (I like to think of this as the Gram Parsons method of physics research). When she meets a man who seems to have come from one of these disturbances, Jane is both fascinated and, well, disturbed. The guy looks awfully human (and cute) to be from beyond…and yet he seems to know stuff…For his part, Thor just wants to get his hammer back before the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., led by the nigh-unflappable Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) spirit it away, or before the Frost Giants make a move back at Asgard, where Loki has gotten an upgrade in royal standing - for better or worse.

This all sounds like pretty silly stuff, and on a certain level it is. Thor pays its dues with the kind of winks and chuckles we associate with modern comic-book movies (Thor’s method of ordering more coffee, for example), but the surprising thing is that Branagh finds a way to play most of it straight. This is the most earnest superhero movie I’ve seen in a while, and it may well be that this is due to an Englishman being at the helm. Perhaps it takes a European to do (literal) mythology without trying to debunk it. The whole thing has a kind of “Masterpiece Theater” feel to it. This is real heroics – no metaphors needed.

The Asgard storyline is, after all, truly Wagnerian stuff, and Branagh, who is famous for his Shakespeare films, seems to be more at home with the gods of war and royal intrigue. Yes, much of this material is pitched at a Shakespeare-Company level where everything is Really Important, but there is real emotional resonance to this half of the story. It’s in Asgard that the deeper themes come up – parental expectations, brotherhood, loyalty, and so forth. The shiny armor and shimmering CGI bridges can’t obscure the mythic roots of the tale. There’s a reason people still study this stuff, and if Thor sends a few kids scurrying to the myth section of the local library, all to the better.
On Earth, however, the movie falters. Gods are notoriously one-dimensional, known by their jobs or attributes. But what’s a workable strategy in Asgard is less successful in New Mexico. Jane is spunky, Darcy is funny, Dr. Selvig is smart, and that’s about it (though at least Mr. Skarsgard is allowed to play genuinely Nordic for a change). The script aims at a romance between Jane and Thor, but it never really takes off. This is not the actors’ fault. Ms. Portman and Mr. Hemsworth smile and cuddle gamely, but there’s nothing really written for them. They feel for each other because the plot demands it, nothing more—which is a problem for some later story developments.

Neither Thor as a character nor Mr. Branagh as a director are known for subtlety, and so in that sense this is a good pairing. Thor is a big, bright (at least in 2-D), loud, shiny summer movie about a big, loud, shiny guy, er, god. What subtlety is to be found sneaks in through the a few of the performances. Mr. Hiddleston is especially worthy of note as Loki, who is as conflicted as Thor is brash. Idris Elba is interesting but underused as the oracular warrior Heimdall, who dresses like an Academy Award and speaks like Gandalf. And it’s been fun to watch Mr. Gregg add shades to Coulson over the course of several films. Others are fare less well. Colm Feore growls appropriately as the king of the Frost Giants, but he’s buried under tons of make-up and saddled with the decidedly un-terrifying name of “Laufey.” Equally stymied are a quartet of actors playing Thor’s adventuring buddies, including Jaimie Alexander as the obligatory Valkyrie type, and the always-welcome Ray Stevenson as the Falstaffian Volstagg. These characters never register as much more than “Thor’s pals.” As for Thor himself, Mr. Hemsworth hits (hammers?) just the right notes. His Thor is capable of being a lout, but never completely loses our sympathy. He also understands the key to the fish-out-of-water scenes, which is that Thor must never know he’s funny. It’s a fine star turn, and Thor is charismatic enough to be welcome back in the Avengers group-pic and the inevitable Thor sequels.

Thor is the rare comic-book movie that could actually benefit from a little more running time, to fill out its thinner elements. The end result is a little too choppy and incomplete to be perfect – some fun disparate scenes, but not a great movie. It also tries a little too hard to push the upcoming Avengers film (Selvig has a colleague who worked with “gamma rays” and disappeared! Oho! That government archer is played by Jeremy Renner! Wonder who he is?). Overall, though, it delivers an entertaining kick-off to the “big movie” season. There’s some good old fashioned Saturday-afternoon-matinee wonder here. Thor is not exactly fit for the gods, but it’s not too bad for a mortal outing.

Winter’s Bone (2010)

Winter’s Bone is film noir in indie-film clothing. Oh, sure – it mixes credible actors with regional locals and lovingly films a bleakly beautiful swath of America. But the film is after myth, not sociology. There’s realism here, but overall, Winter’s Bone is less PBS than Faulkner, and the movie is all the stronger for it. This movie is tough to take, but it will stick with you.

The plot centers on 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence, all of 19 during filming), a tough-beyond-her-years Ozarks teen who is essentially raising her younger siblings. He mother lives with them, but says little and does less. Some sort of mental illness. All Ree will say is “My mom is sick.” Her dad? Well, he’s been in and out of jail for cooking meth. He’s out now, but not at home. One day the sheriff pulls up. Ree’s dad is due in court. He’s posted the family home as bail. If he doesn’t show, the rest of the Dollys are homeless. Ree vows to track him down and make him show, if she can.

From there the movie tracks Ree’s attempts to locate her missing father. She starts with his former meth-cooking buddies – most of them distant kin. But they won’t talk. “Talkin’,” one says, “just creates witnesses.” Slowly Ree begins to uncover things about her family—-immediate and extended—-that are probably better left unknown. The trouble is, Ree no longer has the luxury of not knowing.

What Ree discovers, and what help and hurt she gets from her kin, including her not exactly avuncular uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) and fearsome clan matriarch Merab (Dale Dickey), are best not revealed here. The solution to the mystery, wonderfully Gothic though it is, is only part of the pleasure of Winter’s Bone. Just as remarkable is Ree’s journey itself. Working from a novel by Daniel Woodrell, director Debra Granik and co-writer Anne Rosellini fashion a gripping tale of self-reliance and family honor. Ree is formidable. She cooks, hunts game, stares down surly relatives and takes beatings all with equal poise. Her situation is dire, but she doesn’t want charity (“Never ask for what ought to be offered,” she tells her brother). What she wants is decency. Turns out that’s harder to come by.

Woodrell’s novels have been called “country noir,” and Winter’s Bone works both halves of that label with success. The filmmakers shot completely on location, in real Ozarks houses, and peopled the cast with local citizens. Robert Duvall took a similar approach to The Apostle, and as in that film, the results in Winter’s Bone are palpable. The place is a character here, and the film feels lived-in. We feel like we come in in the middle of something much older, and that’s exactly right. It also helps that, though stereotypical flourishes appear (mountain music, trailers), the people Ree meets are not allowed to descend into caricature. There are dangerous folk aplenty, but no real villains. You probably wouldn’t want to back Ree in a corner, either.

As for the noir angle, not only does the plot follow the traditional gumshoe shape (including roughings-up, shifty lawmen, and unexpected help), but the movie grasps the central dynamic of film noir: the unlikely insertion of a moral character into an amoral world. Ree has a moral code; she expects family to do the right thing. Not all agree. The movie’s drive comes from that disagreement.

All this makes Winter’s Bone sound like a thriller, which it is, in its way—but not an action thriller. This is an acting movie, and the home-run here belongs to Jennifer Lawrence. Miss Lawrence is too round-faced and healthily pretty to really be this girl, but that’s the movies for you. What she does is let her appearance go hang and build up Ree from the inside. Eyes narrowed, jaw set, and feet planted, Lawrence embodies Ree’s determination. It’s a tough little performance, and it sells the film. Ree isn’t cute or lovable, but we root for her because she is who she is. The turn got Lawrence an Oscar nod, and deservedly so. John Hawkes also grabbed a nomination for his work as Teardrop, which is a fine study in quiet menace.

Adding nicely to the mix is the dialogue, much of which I assume is straight from or close to Woodrell’s actual words. These characters speak with the sort of terse crackle associated with Elmore Leonard or Cormac McCarthy. When an erstwhile enemy shows up on Ree’s porch, Ree brandishes a gun, plainly saying she wants to “blow a big hole clean through your f---ing guts.” “I know you do,” the enemy replies, “but you won’t.” Or consider Teardrop, pointedly hushing his wife by saying “I already said shut up with my mouth.”

This is dark stuff, and Winter’s Bone won’t be to everyone’s liking. But if some of the literary names dropped throughout this review sound like your cup of tea (with a bit of Jack Daniels in it), then this film is worth finding on DVD. In one of my favorite exchanges, Ree admits to her uncle “You always have scared me.” “That’s ‘cause you’re smart,” Teardrop replies. Smart and scary – that’s the Dolly family. That’s Winter’s Bone.

True Grit (2010)

Reports of the Western’s death are always greatly exaggerated. Sure, it’s not the dominant genre it once was (theaters are now crammed with action flicks and romantic comedies), but the Western remains there in the background, waiting. Nowadays, the genre serves as a proving ground of sorts for directors—a cinema staple to take on and adapt to the filmmaker’s tastes. Sort of the way most cooks have their own take on chili: the basics stay the same, but the meat or seasoning is different. With True Grit, the Coen Brothers bring their Western recipe to the table. The result is a satisfying entry – straightforward, with just a hint of the usual Coen spice.

True Grit is, of course, an adaptation of the same Charles Portis novel that inspired the 1969 film starring John Wayne. Thus, it’s not really fair to call the Coens’ film a “remake” of that film. It’s another version of the same source material (and the Coens have claimed in interviews to be incredibly smitten with the original book). The Duke casts a long shadow, though – the role of Rooster Cogburn won Wayne an Oscar – and comparison is inevitable. Let’s just say that each version of the story has its own pleasures. This movie doesn’t erase the memory of the earlier one, but neither does it damage it. Both films prove that good story and good acting win through in any era (or genre).

The story is one of revenge. Young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), of Yell County, Arkansas, learns that her father has been shot and killed during a business trip to Ft. Smith. Arriving to collect his body and effects, Mattie finds that the local law, while stringent in its own right (there’s a triple hanging going on as she hits town), has no interest in pursuing fugitives into “Indian territory.” So to track down the murderer, Mattie hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a one-eyed U.S.-Marshal-cum-bounty-hunter who tends to shoot first and do pretty much anything else later. Mattie believes in an eye for an eye, and so Cogburn’s idea of leaden justice suits her. Adding complexity, however, is a Texas Ranger named LeBoeuf (Matt Damon), who’s after the same man, and might rather have him alive. Turns out there’s a reward for bringing him to Texas.

The bulk of the movie follows the uneasy alliance of Cogburn, Mattie, and LeBoeuf as they head out to bag the no-good Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Their specific adventures are best left for you to discover. None fall outside the expectations of the genre. More interesting than these characters’ actions, however, are their words. Lifted largely direct from the novel by the Coens, the dialogue snaps along with a vaguely archaic crackle. Hardly anyone uses contractions, or short sentences, but there is wit aplenty (Cogburn, when Mattie promises his fee: “I don’t believe in fairy tales, sermons, or stories about money.”) This movie is at least as fun to listen to as to look at, and, given Roger Deakins’s cinematography work, that’s saying something.

Much has been made of the fact that this is not a “Coen Brothers Movie,” and, indeed, it is not filled with the sort of odd shenanigans or outright wacky folks to be found in, say, The Big Lebowski or O Brother, Where Art Thou? True Grit does, however, benefit from the Coens’ usual ear for dialogue and their uncanny ability to capture place – whether it’s the frozen North of Fargo or the half-baked rural South of O Brother. Beyond a little rough language and some special effects violence, this is not an “updated” Western. It feels like the Old West. The trails look ridden and the costumes look lived in. That arch dialogue feels right at home.

It is worth noting, though, that while wacky characters are few (maybe the bear man counts), the leads are all bona fide eccentrics. Mattie is not at all the “cute” movie girl. With her tight braids, dark dresses, serious manner, and quick wit, she’s rather like Wednesday Addams raised by Puritans. LeBoeuf is a bit of a dandy and a pedant, affecting fringed coats, jangly spurs, and a professorial pipe. Cogburn is a drunk and a chain-smoker, and has acted ornery so long that he’s forgotten it’s an act. In Steinfeld, Damon, and Bridges, the Coens found exactly the right people to breathe life into these strange characters. We come to like them for who they are, and not just because the script says we should.

Bridges naturally has a thankless job: inhabiting a role made iconic by an already iconic actor. Wisely, he does not try to top John Wayne (not even John Wayne could top John Wayne), but steps a little to the side with a tip of his hat. Wayne played Cogburn like the star of a Western. Bridges plays him like an extra from HBO’s “Deadwood” whom you can almost smell from the screen. The role allows Bridges to do many things Bridges does well: crankiness, humor, laid-back loquacity, and even a hint of pathos. The greatest compliment I can give is that I didn’t see a man onscreen playing “The John Wayne role.” I just saw Rooster Cogburn.

Hardly any actor working straddles the line between nerd and action star was well as Matt Damon, and that’s exactly what is required for Laboeuf. The character could easily be a buffoon, but Damon underplays and keeps him plausible. I believed that LaBoeuf was indeed a bit of a prig, but I also believed he knew his way around a rifle. Mattie is the first full-length film role for Hailee Steinfeld, but you wouldn’t know it. Much like her character, the young actress holds her own against older, formidable men. This is one tough girl. Josh Brolin makes Chaney both dumb as a box of rocks and slippery as a rattlesnake, and Barry Pepper turns in nice work as a savvier outlaw named Lucky Ned, whose luck may not extend to meeting Rooster Cogburn (it’s Pepper’s job to say the line famous from the ’69 film: “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!” He gets through it.).

Have the Coens made flashier films than this one? Sure. But there’s nothing at all wrong with True Grit. This is a solid film, well written, beautifully shot, and competently acted. The Coens have mixed up a tasty twist on an old classic genre. This is pure storytelling. If it’s eye candy you want, I suppose there’s always Tron: Legacy.

The Town (2010)

You know that NRA slogan – “guns don’t kill people, people do”? Ben Affleck’s film The Town is built on similar logic – guns don’t rob banks, people do. This is a crime drama, all right, but its more about the people than about their crimes. The opening informs us that Charlestown, a “blue collar neighborhood” of Boston, is notorious for producing heist artists and bank robbers. “Blue collar” is exactly right. For the characters in The Town, robbery isn’t a kick; it’s a job. You all but expect them to punch time cards after a heist. And like any other job, robbery can get complicated. There are bad days at the office, times you just want to quit, and even (maybe) an office romance. The Town is a genre piece through and through, but it takes time to create real characters, and that lifts it above the pack.

The Town focuses on a slick team of Charlestown-bred robbers, led by Doug MacRay (Affleck). Also on the team are electronics expert Desmond (Owen Burke), ace driver Gloansy (Slaine), and Doug’s friend Jem (Jeremy Renner) who provides the muscle. In the course of a bank heist, Jem gets nervous and takes a young bank manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage. You know, just in case. It makes Doug uneasy; kidnapping is a whole other thing. They let Claire go unharmed. Yeah, they were masked and she was blindfolded – but how much might she know? Plus, Jem swiped her driver’s license. Turns out she lives in Charlestown. Oops.

Jem offers to tail Claire and see who she talks to, and what they talk about. But Doug knows Jem is too high-strung, so he takes the job himself. Turns out that, when they both aren’t at “work,” Doug and Claire hit it off. She sees him as an ordinary, likable guy. He sees her as a lead on a new, ordinary life. If only there weren’t a few pesky secrets getting in the way. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents led by the relentless Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) is closing in on the gang. And, wouldn’t you know, a local crime lord, Fergie the Florist (Pete Postlethwaite) picks just this time to offer Doug’s gang that One Big Job. We all know how that one goes.

Indeed we do. What keeps The Town from felling like the same old thing is that Affleck and his team make the film about personalities, not capers. Yes, there’s violence here, the action scenes are well done, and the heists are taut and suspenseful. The real tension here, though, comes from personalities. One of the tensest scenes, in fact, hinges not on who will shoot whom, but where people sit at a café table (I will leave you to discover why). I always appreciate a movie that generates more interest in characters based on what they might do than what we see them doing, and that is the case here. The plot features two wild cards. One is the hotheaded Jem. The other is Doug’s fundamental decency. Both, it turns out, could spell trouble. This movie shares more than its Boston setting with Good Will Hunting, which Affleck co-wrote. Both movies deal with the importance of choices, the costs of lying (to others and to oneself), and relationship to the past. That’s more than you usually get out of a crime picture; parts of your brain can actually get traction on this one.

Affleck, already known as a screenwriter and actor, shows a deft directing touch in The Town. Stylistic flourishes are at a minimum, and the pace never flags (more impressive a feat than it sounds – this is a talky film for an action flick). The action scenes, even if occasionally improbable, are easy to follow. I especially liked the car chase through the narrow alleys of Boston – placement and not number of cars mattered for a change. I’m tired of chases that leave a set looking like Hurricane Katrina just came through. This one - tight, twisty and desperate - feels both more realistic and more entertaining than most. The movie looks good, and is exciting where it should be, without being over the top.

The Town’s biggest asset is characterization, and the ensemble cast deserves a lion’s share of the credit. Doug is not a big stretch for Affleck, but he does what is required. Doug is believably tough when he needs to be, and also believably decent, and smart. Affleck has always excelled at good-hearted fellows with rough edges, and Doug is a credible addition to that list. Jeremy Renner, who is in danger of being typecast as the Guy You Don’t Want to Hang Out With, manages the difficult feat of making Jem both troubling and somehow understandable. Yes, the guy is dangerous, but he has reason to be—and darn it all if he doesn’t make some sense. It’s a worthy follow-up to his lauded turn in The Hurt Locker. As Frawley, Jon Hamm makes use of the same icy charm he displays as Don Draper on “Mad Men,” though the agent gets to show more emotion than the ad man. Claire is probably the character least well served by the screenplay, but Rebecca Hall nonetheless makes her seem real. Doug and Claire have believable chemistry. Able support is provided by Chris Cooper as Doug’s incarcerated father, Blake Lively as Jem’s drug-addled sister (who carries a torch for Doug), and, naturally, Mr. Postlethwaite as a florist whom you don’t want delivering anything to your door.

By the end, things shake out in ways that aren’t that surprising. What is surprising is that the film really takes the time to earn its payoffs. The Town is conventional in many aspects, but it’s not on autopilot. This is a solid second effort behind the camera for Mr. Affleck, and a pleasurable turn by a handful of talented actors. Like one of Doug’s plans, The Town is a well-executed caper.

The Social Network (2010)

Yes, David Fincher’s The Social Network is about Facebook. But that’s sort of like saying that Star Wars is about space flight: it’s in there, but it’s not really the meat of the film. The Social Network is a smart, quick-moving look at the creative process and its collateral damage, and the high cost of success and fame. It wouldn’t matter if the bright young men at the film’s center had invented a new light bulb or a coffee maker – how the invention happens and what happens because of it are what matter here.

The film follows Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in his rise from Harvard sophomore to head of the world’s favorite networking site. It begins not just in the middle of things, but in the middle of a conversation. Zuckerberg is having a talk with his girlfriend in a bar, and the talk goes badly in most ways such a talk can go badly. They break up, and Zuckerberg sulks his way back to his dorm. With a stomach full of beer and a mouthful of sour grapes, he goes online. First he turns to his blog, writing angry slurs about the girl’s family and figure. But the judgmental nature of his posts gives him an idea. Zuckerberg hacks the pictures out of the online “facebooks” of Harvard houses, and, using a formula his best friend uses to rank chess opponents, creates Facemash, a site where men can rank the attractiveness of women. It’s like fantasy football for looks, and in a matter of hours has become so popular with undergraduate males that the web traffic crashes Harvard’s network.

The site earns Zuckerberg the hatred of Harvard’s women, and probation from its administrative board, but it also does what he hoped it would – makes him famous as a hacker. He is soon approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both Armie Hammer), alpha-male twins who are star rowers but also have a great idea for an exclusive Harvard networking site (“The Harvard Connection”). They have clout, but no programming skills—but Zuckerberg does. Their idea gives him his own, and Zuckerberg proceeds to stonewall the Winklevosses while developing his own networking site, “The Facebook.” As the twins stew, Zuckerberg talks his friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) into bankrolling the spread of The Facebook – he’ll even bring Saverin onboard as “Chief Financial Officer.” The site, of course, is off like a rocket--so much so that it lands on the radar or erstwhile Napster inventor and professional schmoozer Sean Parker (a delightfully shallow Justin Timberlake), who promises to take Zuckerberg to the big time. Of course, this may mean an upgrade from that old staff of friends and roomies, but so it goes.

That it doesn’t go smoothly is more or less well known. The film is framed by twin depositions in lawsuits Zuckerberg later faced from the angry Winklevoss twins and the resentful Saverin. How much of this is “true?’ Hard to say. The filmmakers didn’t have much contact with the real players, and that’s ultimately to the film’s benefit. This is a story, not a documentary, and Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin focus less on facts than on the effects of the decisions Zuckerberg, et. al. made. The Social Network feels like a cross between a story of creativity ala Shakespeare in Love and a story where a group of guys dreams up a caper that gets them in over their heads (like the first two Guy Ritchie films). The “social network” at issue here is not so much the website as the people who surround it. Of course, one of those “networks” survives while the other dissolves. That friendships are destroyed over a product whose chief activity is “friending” others only adds a helping of delicious irony.

Of course, a story about guys writing code and having conversations isn’t necessarily riveting stuff. Fincher and Sorkin, however, prove to be exactly the team to pull it off. Sorkin has always written well about writers, and Fincher, in Fight Club, famously brought one man’s imaginings to wonderful life. Together with their actors, the two craft a tale that moves at a breakneck pace, maintains interest, and gives you things to think about long afterward. It helps that both take a more direct approach than in times past. Sorkin’s wordy script has all the music and crackle of a fireworks display (when a partner of the Winklevoss twins wants to “hire the Sopranos to beat the s--- out of” Zuckerberg, one of the twins responds, “We can do that ourselves. I’m six-five, 220, and there’s two of me!”). Fortunately, the writer avoids the bombast that has marred some of his later TV outings. Likewise, Fincher—who can do visual tricks and pyrotechnics with the best—tones it way down. The best compliment I can give him is that I didn’t notice the direction, but every shot felt right. The score, by Trent Reznor (yes, that Trent Reznor) and Atticus Ross, provides energy and drive without grabbing too much attention. This is a very well-made film.

It helps that the performers all create well-rounded (let’s avoid “real,” for the obvious reasons) people. We know Eisenberg can do geeky and chatty, and those skills serve him well as the brilliant and argumentative Zuckerberg. But he also brings a coldness to the part, and its to his credit that we’re never sure how much of that chillness is real hard-heartedness, how much is defense mechanism, and how much is the simple indifference of a man who lives mostly in his head. It’s a performance that’s a little pathetic, a little creepy, a little off-putting, and a lot watchable. Garfield’s Saverin is more conventionally likeable – a well-dressed economics major who makes more in stocks than most students make in their summer jobs. The smart partner everyone ignores has been done before, but Garfield makes it clear that it’s Saverin’s morality that is ultimately violated, not his business sense. He’s cheated, yes—but he’s also heartbroken. Timberlake is one of the film’s small joys – his Parker is all surface glitz and buried insecurity. This, too, could have been a cliché character – the “playboy entrepreneur” – but Timberlake lets us see that Parker, though more gregarious, craves acceptance just as much as Zuckerberg. Parker blows more cash, but neither man is really in this for the money. It’s deeper than that. Hammer, with many an assist from a double and camera tricks, is great fun as the Winklevoss twins, and Rooney Mara is a nice breath of common sense as the girl who first calls Zuckerberg on his flaws and starts the face-ball rolling. One would hope she got a cut of the Facebook profits—that is, if she were real.

Much has been made of whether or not this film, with its Machiavellian plotting, will “tarnish” Zuckerberg’s reputation. I doubt it. For one thing, no one associated with the film ever talked to him, so there’s no way this can be an accurate representation. And for another, the knowledge that the creator of a popular product is a jerk rarely diminishes the public’s enthusiasm for either one – just ask Simon Cowell. The Facebook connection makes The Social Network timely. The film’s deeper themes of inspiration, loyalty, betrayal, and the price of fame make it timeless. You don’t have to know or use Facebook to enjoy this movie. It’s simply well-crafted, from start to finish. I suppose it’s a compliment to the film and its subject matter to sum up in Facebook terms: I liked this. I suggest you do, too.

Get Low (2010)

The old hermit rides his mule cart into town. He says he’s looking to arrange a funeral. His own. The kicker? He wants it now, while he’s still alive to appreciate it. The local priest is a little uneasy about this. Not the town undertaker, though. It’s bad when a funeral home is hurting for business. So he’ll take the request. But how do you plan a “funeral party” for a live man who hasn’t spoken to anyone in 40 years? Who can possibly deliver a eulogy? Is it still a eulogy, if the guy is standing right there?

This odd circumstance (based, I learn, on a somewhat true tall tale of a Tennessee man who attended his own massive funeral) is the basis for Aaron Schneider’s film Get Low. The movie, set in 1930s Tennessee, does in fact unfold like something Mark Twain might have told, with a little bit of rough humor, a little bit of mystery, and a whole lot of comment on what makes people tick. The old hermit is Felix Bush (Robert Duvall), who sports a beard like an Old Testament prophet and shoots trespassers like a nervous moonshiner. The undertaker is Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), a slick transplant from Chicago, who knows very well that bodies ride lighter in the hearse when relieved of heavy burdens of cash. Frank’s assistant is Buddy (Lucas Black), a good-hearted new father who spends a lot of time trying to work out what these two shifty older fellows are on about. Also in the mix are Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), a friend of Frank’s and one-time girlfriend of Felix (back before the beard), and a pair of pastors: town priest Gus Horton (Gerald McRaney), who doesn’t quite know what to make of Felix, and Illinois preacher Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs), who knows exactly what to make of Felix, but doesn’t want to say. There’s also the matter of the woman who appears in a faded photo on Felix’s wall, and a story about a man falling out of a house on fire.

There’s really very little plot. Felix’s odd request, his odder manner, and his odder-still history serve as excuses for the characters to bounce off each other and, in the process, explore themes of life, death, forgiveness, and redemption. There are mystery elements (the identity of the woman in the photo, for instance), but the answers are seldom surprising. The fact of knowledge matters less to this film than what people do with knowledge. For example, at first Felix wants anyone who knows a story about him to come to his funeral and tell it. It turns out, though, that some stories are more interesting to Felix himself than others. There’s something he needs to hear. What it is matters less than why he needs to hear it, and who he needs to hear it from. Get Low evokes thought, not surprise, and is better for that fact.

Really, though, the film is about the acting. Duvall, Murray, and Spacek could read recipe cards for an hour and a half and still be entertaining. None of the three breaks new ground here. Duvall’s done the complex loner before, Spacek’s done the sweet-but-tough belle before, and Murray’s done the world-weary quipster before. But watching these three together is like watching three star athletes run time-tested plays: the joy is in the execution. Duvall and Murray in particular are experts at wringing meaning out of a single grunt or half-smile. In lesser hands, Felix Bush would be ridiculous—but with Duvall in the role, he’s real. Cobbs brings a nice authority to Rev. Jackson. Black is adequate as Buddy (often saddled with needless reaction shots). The part mostly calls for him to be the optimistic foil to the two grumpy old men, but, exactly because those two old men are played by Duvall and Murray, Black’s performance often seems to lack depth. The film wants us to think the character has learned something by the end, but the performance doesn’t show it. McRaney, himself an actor of some physical presence, is criminally underused here. I wonder if some of his part ended up on the cutting room floor.

The rest of the film isn’t as solid as the acting. There are some strange shifts in tone, and certain plot strands that seem dropped for no good reason. The two opening sequences – a flashback to the burning house, and a nearly wordless bit where some kids who sneak onto Felix’s land learn the error of their ways—show a creative spark that soon fades into more pedestrian modes of storytelling. Nothing is wrong with the look of the film – the costumes and setting are right on target. It’s just that the film overall lacks a certain unity. This is one of those movies that seems not to trust itself, and that’s a shame given the quality of the talent involved. The style of the piece just isn’t up to the level of the acting it contains.

Still, there’s a lot to like here. There’s nothing wrong with watching an expert cast go through the paces, and it’s nice to see a film that remembers that the most special of effects are those created by human voices and faces. Get Low is also remarkable for two other reasons: in a culture increasingly obsessed with shallow youth, here’s a film about complex older characters; and the movie is actually about serious things – about faith, about grief, about dealing with the past, about how if it takes a village to raise a kid, it may also take one to understand a grown man.

I find that I like the film the more I think about it after the fact, which is both a compliment and a criticism – a compliment to the content, a criticism of the experience itself. This is a film that makes you think, and for that, and for the performances, I can recommend it. It’s a good film, but not a great one—a wry, soulful look at some of the dustier corners of the human psyche. I’m serious about the Twain comparison. Many books get turned into movies these days. Get Low is that rare movie that might actually work just as well as a book. Especially if you could get Duvall, Murray, and Spacek to read the CD version. Or those recipe cards. I’m in either way.

Inception (2010)

In graduate school, I read a book called The Craft of Thought by Mary Carruthers, which explained the way in which medieval monks were able to memorize enormous quantities of Biblical text. The monks constructed vast spaces in their minds—“rooms” in which they could store verses. To remember, they mentally walked through the structures they’d made: one room held, say, the Psalms. Another held the Gospel of Luke. And so on. Christopher Nolan’s Inception takes that idea of mental structures and uses it as the basis of a heist movie. What if a person’s mental “rooms” could be invaded by outsiders, and looted for their contents? And what if someone started messing with the architecture? Could you alter a person’s mind not with external suggestion, but from inside? What would be the consequences for them? For you?

The world of Inception accepts that these things are possible. The “extraction” of ideas from a person’s head, by sneaking into the virtual reality of their subconscious while they dream (minds are more vulnerable then), is available as form of corporate espionage—the ultimate in intellectual property theft. One of the best in the business is a man named Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose services have been retained by wealthy energy company owner Saito (Ken Watanabe) in order to mentally thieve some secrets. That job doesn’t go quite as planned, but Saito likes what he sees and offers Cobb a different job: not extraction (the theft of an idea) but inception (the planting of an idea). Saito wants to convince the heir to a powerful rival corporation (Cillian Murphy) to break up the empire he is set to inherit from his dying father. Inception is complicated (the film explains) because the mind, like the body, resists foreign entities. The mind will attack invading thoughts the way antibodies attack viruses. Most in the extraction business think inception is essentially impossible, but Cobb has reason to believe otherwise. Plus, Saito offers a juicy reward: he has the money and pull to clear up some nasty lingering legal business involving Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) and children. Cobb takes the assignment.

What follows is essentially a caper picture, though the exact details are best left for you to discover, as Inception is at least as much about procedures as results. As usual, the mastermind—Cobb—assembles a crack team. Cobb’s team includes his resourceful right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); a “forger” named Eames (Tom Hardy) whose specialty is faking personalities rather than documents; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), an expert in brain chemistry; and Ariadne (Ellen Page) a brilliant young architecture student who will design the mental space in which to trap the mark. As usual, the basic plan for the heist is explained beforehand, setting up the rules of the game, as it were. And then the careful plan goes into action. But you know what they say about best-laid plans…

What elevates Inception above most action-heist pictures is its focus on the mind, and I mean that in two senses. First, of course, is that minds are the arenas of adventure here, as characters jump between levels—and owners—of consciousness much the way James Bond jumps between exotic locales. But the movie also aims (a rarity these days) at the audience’s minds. This is an action film, yes, but it requires real attention. It may not be quite the mind game that the trailers (or a few stylistic winks by director Nolan) try to make it, but you sit through this on autopilot at your peril. And like Nolan’s immensely popular The Dark Knight, Inception manages to hint at—if not adequately address—some bigger themes amidst all the robbery, gunplay, and special effects.

And the effects are impressive. The “mental spaces” can be engineered in ways that real-life physics would make impossible: cities fold up on themselves, cliffs and buildings melt and rotate, and passageways shift and emerge in ways that would make Hogwarts jealous. Nolan makes excellent use of the visual medium here to represent subjective consciousness. I can’t imagine this story being told in another format, and that’s a compliment. Inception is the second movie I’ve recently seen that really showed me a different world onscreen—the other was Avatar—and its also the first movie to take the groundbreaking effects in films like Dark City and The Matrix as foundations to build upon rather than templates to copy. The filmmakers also deserve credit for putting the thing together. At one point, the characters are immersed in at least three levels of mental world, but we never lose track of what is happening in which level.

With a cast that features the names already mentioned, along with supporting ringers Pete Postlethwaite, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine, it’s hard to go astray. The acting is competent across the board. Gordon-Levitt continues to nudge the boundaries of his range, and is good here as Cobb’s more practical foil. Murphy, who knows his way around unsettling situations, plays it straighter than usual this time. Hardy and Rao get to produce some of the better-deserved of the film’s snickers. Page’s role is in some ways the most obvious, as the neophyte who gets trained in mental espionage, and Cotillard’s role is in many ways the most complex, for reasons best left unexplained here. The heaviest acting burden, however, falls on DiCaprio. Cobb has the most to do both in terms of plot and character development, and must seem, at different times, both trustworthy and untrustworthy as a barometer of what is going on. Yes, he’s an expert in the mind—but as in most fields, even experts have difficulty applying their insights to themselves. This plays to DiCaprio’s strengths: I find the actor is always best when he can play his tendency toward bravado off some nagging uncertainties, letting his narrow features suggest equal parts slyness and confusion. That’s the case here. DiCaprio sometimes brings depth to parts that don’t require it, creating muddled characters—but a little depth and muddle is just right for Cobb. I believe him when he says he’s improvising—up to the point where I don’t. And that’s as it should be.

Some grumbling is already beginning about the nature of the “dreams” represented in Inception—that they’re too stable and logical to be true “dreams.” Of course they are. As author Neil Gaiman notes, “dream logic is not story logic,” and Nolan has a story to tell. A literal visual transcription of a dream would be a chaotic mess. But it’s worth remembering two things here. First, the mental worlds in Inception are not true “dreams” at all, but artificial mazes created by Cobb’s team. Dreaming is only the issue because that’s when the mind lets its defenses down. Second, and more important, dreams do seem logical when we’re in them (as the movie points out), and that logic is highly subjective to the person dreaming. What Inception is really after is how we create reality—how ideas take root and what effects they have in both the long and short term. Every one of us, like Cobb and his team, try to create worlds our minds can navigate while protecting our deeper secrets. That my world and your world might conflict is, in some sense, the dynamic that powers this movie. As is the idea that my world might conflict with itself. Do we plan it that way? No. But you know what they say about best-laid plans.

Inception itself may not represent a perfect plan. It tries a little too hard to surprise us, and the fact that a few elements drop out along the way is either a flaw or an illustration of dream logic (I’m not sure which). The movie itself is like an intriguing dream: interestingly made, enjoyable to the senses, and equal parts tense and simply entertaining. And if you aren’t sure what it all adds up to when it’s over, at least it was fun to go through. There’s craft and thought here, and I much prefer an action film that plays with my mind to one that forces me to turn it off. Is Inception the stuff dreams are made of? No. The stuff box-office hits are made of? That’s more likely.