As someone who’s decidedly uninterested in auto racing, I was admittedly skeptical when a good friend highly recommended Asif Kapadia’s Senna, a documentary about the legendary Brazilian auto racer who died tragically in action at the age of 34. I shouldn’t have doubted him. Senna isn’t really about auto racing at all (though there are a few gripping finishes): rather, it’s about how one’s near-deity status in their profession of choice can touch the world on a nearly unimaginable scope. It’s also a surprisingly deft examination of the power of faith: while it feels suspiciously like the football player thanking God post-touchdown early on, it smoothly grows into a much richer subtext. A sequence near the end, where Senna’s close friend—and doctor—Sid Watkins, who wasn’t a religious man, feels the presence of a higher power right when Senna draws his final breath, is almost supernaturally powerful (it’s also creepy to note just how uncomfortable and nervous Senna was before the fatal race). Yet Kapadia’s assured editing assures that the biblical angle is never overplayed, and since Senna is essentially all archival footage, the moments that DO arise pack an emotional wallop. Senna’s first half, which focuses more on Senna’s rise to prominence and his Federer/Nadal-esque rivalry with fellow F1 champ Alain Prost, is very solid, but it’s the second hour that really catapults this to must-see territory. The tragedy of Senna’s far-too-early death can’t be cheapened, but it’s heartwarming to see all the silver linings that came from it, a renewed determination to improve safety in F1 racing (since the death, Watkins has led the charge, and there have been no deaths) and a foundation that’s changed the lives of 12 million Brazilian children among them. I would have liked to have learned a bit more about Senna the man (his family, love life, etc), but since he seemed to live for racing and a greater purpose, that’s a minor quibble at most. Don’t let a lack of interest in the “subject matter” deter you from actively seeking Senna out—along with James Marsh’s Project Nim, it’s the best documentary of the year.

72/100

The rapid-fire fall from grace of Eliot Spitzer, the former of Governor of New York, was indeed sudden and precipitous, and Alex Gibney’s documentary about the man, his flaws, and the many circumstances surrounding his outing is, for the most part, sharp and astute. Client 9 is creatively edited—some might call it scattered, but I really enjoyed the way Gibney bounced around between Spitzer’s strengths (a non-stop motor and thirst for results; a fierce desire to weed out corruption; a passion for equality and transparency) and weaknesses (an overly pugnacious approach with his peers that bordered on flat-out belittling; obtuse stubbornness). Rather than turn Client 9 into a sermon on morals or pigeonholing Spitzer’s idiotic mistake into an overall characterization of the man himself, Gibney shows us that Spitzer’s dalliances with prostitutes were a manifestation of something richer. What, exactly? Rampant insecurity, perhaps spurred by being the son of a highly successful real estate mogul? Self-loathing? A pure example of being power-hungry? We’re given flashes of all these possibilities—Spitzer himself speaks fairly regularly throughout the documentary, and candidly, at that—but I wish Gibney had dug even deeper into this fascinating, unique man. Because in so many ways, Eliot Spitzer sums up what we all suspect most politicians, in some form, are: brilliant but tainted individuals who, throughout their many years in the public spotlight, have accumulated many skeletons in their closets. The question becomes how much their mistakes should be held against them, and Client 9, by highlighting Spitzer’s fearless willingness to take on the biggest banks and Hedge Funds on Wall Street (numerous enemies made along the way be damned) without apologizing for his blunders and flaws, comes tantalizingly close to being a truly all-encompassing take on its subject matter…but doesn’t quite get there. It’s a solid documentary, one well worth seeing, but it could have been even better.

65/100

I suppose I can see why someone who pays very little attention to politics would get a good bit out of George Clooney’s The Ides of March. Me? I found it teetering on useless. Clooney, an outspoken political activist, has clear goals here. The first half of The Ides of March is, essentially, a reprisal of the 2008 Obama campaign and Democratic Primary. With Clooney as Barack Obama (Er, Mike Morris)! Ryan Gosling as David Plouffe (Stephen Meyers)! And Phillip Seymour Hoffman as David Axelrod (Paul Zara)! Morris, played passably by Clooney, is the effervescent Presidential candidate who’s going to revolutionize politics. He’s the real deal, an eloquent speaker attracting scores of young followers, including the laser-sharp Meyers, a grizzled-verteran-at-30 who, for the first time, has gone starry-eyed for the fresh-faced Morris’ promise. Zarra, meanwhile, is more cautious, yet cutthroat underneath this frumpy exterior. Sound familiar? It should to anyone who sat transfixed in 2008. Even the Morris campaign poster looks exactly like the infamous Obama “hope” image. As such, The Ides of March’s opening half feels pretty lifeless, a rehash of a recent political phenomenon dressed up to seem more daring than it actually is. It’s closer to AMC’s hokey The Killing than anything else.

The second half shifts gears a bit. Now, Clooney turns to liberal, and overall, disenchantment with Obama, or on a grander scale, disappointment with how all politicians tend to break the hearts of those who love them most, though he encompasses this within other political themes and current events. In The Ides of March, it’s a sex scandal (something that we’ve seen plenty of recently) that threatens Meyers’ idealism and the campaign’s future, but it could just as easily have been the failure to come through on campaign promises. The cynicism of politics is omnipresent throughout The Ides of March, but without any fire. The only actor who really digs into his character is Paul Giamatti as Bill Duffy, Zarra’s rival campaign manager for the opposition. Everyone else trudges sleepily through the motions. The dark underbelly and brutality of this world has been portrayed millions of times, and Clooney fails to bring anything new to the table. If this specific story had been told before Obama’s rise to glory, it would have packed more of a punch. As it is, The Ides of March is dull as dishwasher.

39/100

After a recent rereading of Norton Juster’s astonishingly intellectually astute “The Phantom Tollbooth”—a magical novel that holds up brilliantly over time—I found myself with the urge to seek out a cinematic version, as the story is ripe for the screen. Just one seems to exist: the legendary Chuck Jones’ 1970 film, which is 95% animation and 5% Dennis-the-Menace-esque live action. Well, the live action segments are pretty silly—Butch Patrick as Milo is a bit too hammy for my liking—but the animated portion, which covers the vast swath of the picture, is a surprisingly loyal adaptation that gives us all the wonderful characters that make the book so special. Tock, the Humbug, Azaz, the Mathemagician, DYNNE, the Whetherman, the Which…the list goes on and on, and The Phantom Tollbooth doesn’t shirk on many. The order of events is a bit mixed up, but that’s forgivable given Jones’ attempt to keep things brisk—ironically, The Phantom Tollbooth could easily have taken on an extra 15 minutes of weight without toppling over from bloated runtime syndrome. The animation is clean, with enough pop to do Dictionopolis and company justice. Parents and children alike could do much worse than giving the movie a go, but not until they’ve thoroughly engrossed themselves in the book several times over.

66/100

Nestled between the insufferable The Station Agent (2003) and the immensely moving The Visitor (2007), Thomas McCarthy’s third movie, Win Win, is luckily closer to the latter than the former in terms of quality. There’s a real earnestness to the proceedings: if someone had relayed the setup to me via email or over cocktails, I would have bet heavily that we’d be looking at a sappy mess of clichés. To my delight, McCarthy continues to display an evolving delicacy (my primary, and major, issue with The Station Agent was its complete lack of subtlety, and how it hammered its viewers over the head with its point on a regular basis), managing to avoid portraying Win Win’s characters as caricatures. The premise: beleaguered attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), who doubles as a wrestling coach at the local high school, has a faltering legal practice—he can’t afford an IT guy, or even a new boiler—and his personal finances are becoming shakier and shakier. Through a legal loophole, he appoints himself guardian of his elderly, wealthy client Leo (Burt Young), and shuttles him off to a nearby old-age home, thereby avoiding the responsibility of guardianship while pocketing the $1,500-a-month commission. But things get hairy when Leo’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) shows up at his doorstep, having run away from his alcoholic mother Cindy (Melanie Lynskey) in Ohio, and Mike has to balance his careers, moral hazards, and a developing fondness for the quiet-but-supremely-talented Kyle.

McCarthy deftly keeps things from spiraling into the predictable or hokey. For instance, despite Mike’s conniving move, he never comes across as a particularly slimy guy. In fact, if we didn’t know that he’d played the court, we wouldn’t think much was wrong with him at all. He visits Leo regularly, grows to care for Kyle deeply, and wants the best for his family. Of course, there’s certainly some opportunistic behavior going on—when Mike discovers that Kyle used to be a top-ranked wrestler in Ohio, it takes him about two seconds to pounce—but his emotions and actions always seem authentic. This is a man who’s scared, and if he can find a way to help the ones he loves without seriously affecting someone else, he’s willing to do it. Similar analyses apply to Kyle’s evolution as a character, and even those of Mike’s down-to-earth wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) and his recently-divorced, lost-in-life best friend Terry (Bobby Cannavale). All have personality traits that seemingly lend themselves to hokum, but they all manage to transcend that and come  across as totally believable. The acting certainly helps matters: while there’s not a mind-blowing performance in the bunch, Giamatti, Young & co. all turn in stellar work.

So what holds Win Win back from being a great film? Well, first and foremost, it lacks the emotional heft of The Visitor. While McCarthy shows the same compassion for those that society has discarded as he did in his previous works—little people in The Station Agent; illegal immigrants in The Visitor; emotionally abandoned child in Win Win—he’s unable to deeply tap into our reservoir of feelings here. There’s a workmanlike feeling throughout Win Win, one that’s effective and unsentimental, but never ultimately rewarding. The final 20 minutes or so also aren’t on the same level as the rest of the picture: they feel slightly more scripted and less authentic. That’s a shame, because it saps a lot of the momentum that Win Win had built up throughout. Flaws aside, there’s a lot to like about Win Win, and McCarthy’s approach and sensitivity should serve him well as he continues to evolve as a filmmaker.

65/100

Sigh. Bridesmaids is yet another entry into the “OMG, I laughed my fucking ass off!” genre of contemporary comedies that I just can’t get into. Actually, Bridesmaids represents a pretty big step up on Knocked Up and The Hangover in my book. There’s a definite genuineness to the proceedings, and it’s well-acted across the board. Kristen Wiig has gotten most of the hype for her lead performance as maid-of-honor Annie Walker —and it’s deserved; she mixes deadpan with emotion very well—but I was equally impressed by “Damages” star Rose Byrne as the lonely-and-overcompensating Helen Harris. The real star, though, is Melissa McCarthy as the mannish, brutish-but-loving Megan. She steals every scene she’s in. And there are some definite very moments. So what’s the problem? Well, first and foremost, anything that has Judd Apatow’s name to it seems to go on far longer than it should. There was absolutely no reason for Bridesmaids to be over two hours long—at 85 minutes, it might have been a sharp, snappy barrel of laughs with some substance to it. But at its actual length, it drags far too often. I like that Bridesmaids aspires to be more than just a dumb comedy, but that doesn’t mean it needs to belabor its point for what feels like eons. Director Paul Feig tries to fill the time by having Annie hit rock bottom time and time again, which eventually starts to get wearisome and irksome. Perhaps I’m being slightly harsh on Bridesmaids, a movie that has its heart in the right place, but overstretched dramedies are a pet peeve of mine, so I just can’t go higher than a barely positive rating.

57/100

For the most part, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II picks up right where Part I, the franchise’s shining beacon on a hill, leaves off. “The Deathly Hallows”, which marks the conclusion of J.K. Rowling’s celebrated series, is a dark, dark book, with plenty of death, sadness, and agony. In both Part I and Part II, director David Yates, who’s grown quite nicely since decent-but-unspectacular stabs at Parts 5 and 6 of the HP saga, properly chooses to tell the story with (mostly) imagery and music. Part I, in particular, captures the fear that grips the land with a surprisingly deft touch. Gone were the frequent goofy exchanges between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Warson), replaced by ominous lighting and subtle glances. The atmosphere conveys more than dialogue ever could, and it’s a joy to watch, especially for die-hard Potter fans. Part II mostly keeps this pattern up—the whirlwind revelations of Snape’s (Alan Rickman) true motives and loyalties, a highly anticipated emotional powerhouse in the books, will bring tears to any fanboy’s eyes—but Yates occasionally lets himself slip: he can’t quite keep himself from slipping in a groan-inducing “zinger” here and there, and the postscript, which was arguably necessary in the novels, could definitely have been axed from the picture. Still, quibbles aside, it’s a very strong closing act to the cinematic adaptations of the beloved books. I found myself giving fairly weak entries, particularly Chamber of Secrets and Order of the Phoenix, a pass due to my joy in seeing Hogwarts and co. on screen in all its glory…but along with Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban, Deathly Hallows represent the finest films of the lot, and should become components of many a holiday marathon viewing session.

70/100

An entertaining, if by-the-numbers, entry to the sword-and-shield genre, Black Death features lots of blood, disease, and the seemingly requisite Sean Bean with flowing locks, grimy beard and noble banter—after his roles in The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Troy, among others, it’s almost surprising to not find him somewhere in the medieval mix. Anyway, Black Death tells the tale of the deeply religious knight Ulrich (Bean) and the young, naive monk Osmond (Eddie Redmayne): bound together by a common goal, if different motivations, they seek a village supposedly untouched by the deadly bubonic plague, where a fearsome necromancer is rumored to reside. The religious themes are laid on incredibly thickly—subtle, Black Death is not. It puts forth its questions about the power of one’s faith without any pretenses: in a way, you could call Smith’s approach similar to that of a very poor man’s Ingmar Bergman. Like, say, The Seventh Seal, Black Death relies on imagery and lighting to present its allergorical message. Mist, nature, faces in the water; it’s all memorably shot. Obviously, comparing Smith’s film to Bergman’s masterpieces is grossly unfair, but it’s a helpful analogy in terms of directorial approach to the issues (though Black Death is much gorier than anything in Bergman’s canon!). Otherwise, Black Death is pretty by the book—Bean leads a decent, if unspectacular, cast, and Smith’s direction can best be described as competent-but-risk-averse. All in all, this is a solid movie that should appeal to those who like the subject matter, though it won’t inspire anybody that finds the topic dull to reconsider with fresh eyes.

60/100

Steve McQueen’s Shame, the portrait of a New York sex addict, fits squarely into the category of missed opportunity: despite a myriad of strong attributes, it’s an incredibly shallow depiction of a seriously fascinating topic. First, the pluses: Michael Fassbender is dazzling as Brandon, the sex-starved protagonist whose isolated existence is thrown into a tizzy when his similarly fucked-up-but-in-a-different-way sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up at his door with nowhere else to go. Suddenly, Brandon’s day-to-day routine is entirely disrupted. He can’t have sexual video chats on his laptop because Sissy’s fucking his boss in his bedroom. He can’t masturbate without the risk of his sister walking in on him. For all effective purposes, he can’t be anymore, and like a heroin addict separated from his needle, he begins to spiral out of control. All this sounds much more gripping than it actually is, though. McQueen is a very talented director, and that comes through in his visual choices—New York City pulsates with nervous energy through his lens, as it should, and several long takes are hypnotic—and the soundtrack is fantastic. But the writing barely scratches the surface of what should have been a terrific subject. Despite Fassbender’s best efforts, Brandon just isn’t that interesting of a character; he’s simply a man with an addiction. Two terrific sequences with a beautiful co-worker whom he attempts to emotionally engage with—and subsequently can’t perform sexually—hint at what could have been, but we’re mostly given what we’d expect to see from someone with Brandon’s disorder: compulsive behavior regardless of venue, a foray into the homosexual world. It’s the equivalent of seeing a drunkard sneak a shot of tequila in a back room. Would large swaths of critics be impressed with a standard depiction of an alcoholic or chain smoker? We’re also teased with a childhood cause for Brandon and Sissy’s emotional disorders—sexual molestation, perhaps?—but it’s never appropriately explored, and doesn’t achieve anything lingering so far in the background. Fassbender and McQueen’s skillset keep Shame from being a waste of time, but its bland presentation of a dark, intense condition prevents it from being something special.

57/100

Embattled filmmaker Roman Polanski has always been drawn to the dark sides of humanity, so it’s no surprise he’d be drawn to the play “Carnage,” a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-esque chamber drama. Polanski’s take on Carnage rarely leaves the Brooklyn home of Michael (John C. Reilly) and Penelope (Jodie Foster) Longstreet, a warm-and-fuzzy-on-the-outside couple whose son Ethan just came out of emergency dental surgery. Why? Because Zachary, the son of Alan (Christoph Waltz) and Nancy (Kate Winslet) Cowan, sent him there during a playground squabble with a stick to the face. What begins as a cordial discussion about how to resolve the matter like adults quickly dissolves into chaos, with the Cowans seemingly unable to leave the apartment in Exterminating Angel fashion. Carnage runs the gamut of alienating character traits. There’s the compulsive Crackberry addict Alan, a big shot lawyer working on a prescription drug case, excusing himself every five minutes to take a call. The fiercely liberal Penelope—a non-fiction writer with an affection for impoverished countries—alternates vigorously espousing left-wing positions with seeming to project them to make herself feel better about who she is. Michael starts off as a submissive husband type before cracking open the aged whiskey and letting his disgust with Penelope and the world—and frustration with his kvetchy, sick mother—out into the open. And Nancy? Between periods of political correctness and emotional eruptions, she vomits all over a prized book.

There’s no question that each of these characters has a certain level of caricature to them, but Waltz (who took home an Oscar for Inglourious Basterds in 2010), Winslet, and Reilly are so good that it’s not a major hindrance. Foster’s performance, on the other hand, seems forced at times. It’s not really a natural role for her, and while she gets an A for effort, that’s not enough to keep her from being the clear weak link among the quartet. Similarly, the spilling out of pent-up frustration from within a tightly-protected image isn’t a unique subject mater, but Polanski keeps things brisk (Carnage is only 79 minutes long), and there’s enough wit and humor in the screenplay to mostly make up for its limitations. Some might dismiss Carnage as overly snarky and pseudo-intellectual, and if we’re hoping for Polanski to recapture his ambitious, daring form of the 60’s and 70’s, there’s some validity to the film’s shortcomings. But the execution is strong enough to match any reasonable expectations, and Carnage is worth seeing for the acting and hamster (trust me) alone.

67/100