MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011)

Woody Allen’s latest comic confection follows Hollywood screenwriter turned would-be novelist Gil (an appealing Owen Wilson) as he and fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) soak up the Parisian atmosphere (as do we, thanks to gorgeous cinematography by Darius Khondji) during a pre-wedding trip.  Like the protagonist of his novel-in-progress, Gil romanticizes the past and waxes rhapsodic about the artistic community of 1920s Paris.  Inez, meanwhile, fixates on more pragmatic matters related to the impending marriage.  Late one night Gil becomes lost wandering the streets and, as the clock strikes midnight, obtains a ride from revelers in a vintage car.  They arrive at a party in full swing, and Gil discovers he has been whisked back in time by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife, Zelda (Alison Pill).  Soon he is hobnobbing with Ernest Hemingway (a very funny Corey Stoll), who expresses an interest in Gil’s novel.  But when he leaves the party to get the manuscript, Gil finds himself back in present day.  Each night Gil returns to the midnight spot, and each night the car returns him to his writer’s utopia.  There he meets illustrious figures from the day -- Salvador Dali (a manic Adrien Brody) and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), among others – and falls for a costume designer and sometime model named Adriana (Marion Cotillard).  Meanwhile the distance between Gil and Inez grows.  In this film writer/director Allen whimsically exposes our need to idealize the past at the expense of enjoying the present (a variation of a theme he pursued in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO).  But Allen himself also indulges.  The scenes set in the past are so bursting with passion and the performances so joyous, like Gil we long to return to them.  And Allen stacks the deck against the present.  McAdams has rarely been this unlikeable as the self-absorbed Inez, Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy bristle as her shallow, suspicious parents, and Michael Sheen perfectly plays the boorish know-it-all Paul, who acts as Paris tour guide to the engaged couple.  And while the film never reaches the heights of an ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN, I would be a hypocrite indeed if I failed to admit that I savored its many pleasures.

SUPER 8 (2011)

With this film writer/director J.J. Abrams (who directed the engaging STAR TREK reboot) aspires to make the ultimate Steven Spielberg movie from the 1970s and early 1980s.  A feat that Spielberg (who produced and seemingly approved of this two-hour tribute) hasn’t achieved since JURASSIC PARK (1993).  But what felt fresh 20-some years ago feels calculated now.  Instead of fashioning a story that showcases Spielberg’s signature style from that era, Abrams has chosen to ape the style at the expense of coherent story, using an aesthetic akin to a television clip show episode.  Call it Spielberg’s greatest hits without the charm, wit, or sense of wonder.  Set in 1979 the film follows young Midwest teen Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) whose mother has died in a factory accident and whose father, local deputy Jackson (Kyle Chandler), blames town drunk and fellow factory worker Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) for her death.  Dainard has a pretty daughter named Alice (Elle Fanning) upon whom Joe has a crush.  When Joe’s friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) casts Alice in his 8mm zombie movie Joe takes a renewed interest in helping his friend with makeup and model building.  While shooting a night scene at the local train station, the kids witness a truly spectacular derailment (a set piece which strains credulity beyond the breaking point even for a summer popcorn picture).  The disaster looses both a literal monster in the form of a CG alien, and a figurative one in the form of the military, led by the menacing Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich).  Sadly Abrams can’t decide whether he’s making a horror/adventure movie (like JAWS) or a coming-of-age story (like E.T.) or a first contact film (like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS), and none gets sufficient screen time to engage.  Worse, he telegraphs every meaningful moment with on-the-nose dialogue and cloying reaction shots.  The actors, young and old, do the best they can with the ham-fisted material, but only Fanning is able to rise above the syrupy morass.  This cynical exercise in faux nostalgia could, at a stretch, be considered a success.  Abrams has indeed made a Spielberg movie; just not a good one.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (2011)

At a Nazi concentration camp young magnetic mutant Erik Lehnsherr witnesses Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) gun his mother down after the boy fails to move metal objects upon demand.  Two decades later mind-reading Charles Xavier/Professor X (James McAvoy) plays foster brother to shape-shifting Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and lectures about genetic mutations, while Erik/Magneto (now played by Michael Fassbender) hunts for the elusive Shaw to exact his revenge.  In the meantime Shaw has gathered an army of mutants around him, including the icy Emma Frost (January Jones).  He aspires to world domination by initiating nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis.  CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) stumbles upon this plot and enlists Charles’ help.  Charles and Erik join forces and gather their own army of mutants, including the nerdy Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult).  The film’s story by Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer has potential.  However, screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn squander it with clunky, clichéd dialogue and too many scenes that lack dramatic tension.  The most egregious example relates to Professor X and Magneto’s eventual philosophical split over coexisting with humans.  Though a foregone conclusion, director Vaughn and the writers make the mistake of treating it as such from the outset and kill any potential drama.  Vaughn’s action scenes are artless and incoherent, and he does a huge disservice to most of his actors.  Bacon feels miscast and self-conscious, while McAvoy, Jones and Lawrence are subdued and lifeless.  Byrne shows some spunk and spark, while Hoult’s Hank manages some geeky charm before being transformed into the wooden Beast.  The remaining mutant characters, however, aside from their specific abilities, are generic and barely register.  But the same cannot be said for Fassbender, who mesmerizes as the vengeful and mistrustful Magneto.  He deserves a much better film.

THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)

There are few filmmakers as ambitious or as frustrating as Terrence Malick.  His latest cinematic tone poem moves back and forth in time, exploring life, faith and forgiveness.  We begin with the middle-aged Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) in their beautiful, empty home as they learn that one of their teenage sons is dead.  It is never made clear how the son died (though I had the impression he had killed himself).  We only know that the mother is bereft and the father nagged by vague guilt.  Next we flash forward to present day where surviving son Jack (Sean Penn) still grapples with grief for his brother and anger at his father.  Then it’s back to the Big Bang and the arrival of the dinosaurs (I’m not kidding) until we finally return to the O’Briens in the 1950s as they start their family.  There the story, such as it is, becomes more linear, and we follow the O’Briens from the birth of their three sons through the boys’ childhood.  While Mrs. O’Brien shows her children the way of grace and creates a warm, nurturing environment, Mr. O’Brien teaches his children the way of nature and comes down hardest on Jack (now played by Hunter McCracken) in relaying life’s hardscrabble lessons.  Gorgeously shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, Malick’s film, in its best moments, feels like captured communal memory.  The wonder of seeing the world through childlike eyes has rarely been more effectively conveyed.  And Malick elicits remarkably natural performances from novice actors McCracken and the beatific Laramie Eppler, who plays younger brother R.L.  Pitt works hard at being the hyper-achieving father who takes his personal frustrations out on his family, and Penn broods through his brief moments in the film.  Chastain, however, effortlessly registers every subtle shade of emotion through her delicate features and tethers us to this ephemeral movie.  Writer/director Malick tackles big philosophical issues with a lyrical, ludicrous commitment but has no new answers.  And while the end result is admirable, it is far from satisfying.

BRIDESMAIDS (2011)

Writers Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig and director Paul Feig have struck a rich, raucous vein with this raunchy yet heartfelt comedy about a maid-of-honor on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Annie (co-writer Wiig) is teetering on the emotional and fiscal edge.  Her failed baking business has forced her to share an apartment with creepy British siblings, and she’s physically involved with a self-absorbed jerk (the uncredited Jon Hamm).  But when her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces she’s just become engaged and wants Annie to be her maid-of-honor, Annie agrees with barely concealed panic.  As a further complication fellow bridesmaid Helen (Rose Byrne) begins competing with Annie and taking over the wedding plans.  Mumolo & Wiig’s generous script gives its stellar ensemble ample comedic breathing room and allows each scene’s humor to play out in full, while director Feig shows perfect restraint during the movie’s outrageous set pieces.  At the risk of giving too much away, the bridal party dress fitting, the flight to Las Vegas, and the bridal shower meltdown may be the most painfully funny scenes you’ll see in a film this year.  Playing against expectation Rudolph’s bride is the warm seeming calm around which the higher-strung bridesmaids spin, while Byrne masks Helen’s insecurity with passive-aggressive overcompensation.  Wendi McLendon-Covey, as a marriage- and child-weary matron, and Ellie Kemper, as an anxious newlywed, make the most of their smaller roles, while Chris O’Dowd nicely underplays Annie’s potential romantic interest.  As the crass and aggressive bridesmaid Megan, however, Melissa McCarthy steals nearly every scene she’s in.  Her character is one that could have gone wrong in so many ways, but McCarthy’s fearless commitment delivers huge laughs.  But in the end this is Annie’s movie, and the luminous Wiig channels Lucille Ball in her prime, balancing physical comedy with understated vulnerability.

THOR (2011)

In the realm of Asgard aging king Odin (Anthony Hopkins) intends to install warrior son Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as his successor, which does not sit well with other son Loki (Tom Hiddleston).  The ceremony is interrupted when frost giants from the realm of Jotunheim, Asgard’s longtime enemy, attempt to steal an item of power.  Against his father’s command, the arrogant Thor travels to Jotunheim and breaks the uneasy truce.  As punishment the furious Odin banishes Thor to the realm of Earth where he falls, literally, into the hands of stargazing scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her team (Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings).  Meanwhile back in Asgard, Odin becomes ill and Loki conspires with the fire giants to control the realm and kill his brother.  Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the psychologically rich and thematically complex Christopher Nolan BATMAN reboots.  I was certainly conned by Robert Downey, Jr.’s quirky charms in the first IRONMAN movie, which this new Marvel franchise seems eager to emulate.  THOR, however, has neither the ambition of the former nor the charisma of the latter.  The script, credited to Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and Don Payne from a story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich, feels thin and lacks engagement with character or story.  Relationships and motivations are reduced to off-hand lines, and obstacles are all-to-easily overcome.  Director Kenneth Branagh exacerbates these failings by adopting a visual style alternating between the derivative and the self-conscious.  His action scenes are lifeless, and he elicits tepid performances from an otherwise solid cast.  Hopkins sleepwalks through the role even in the few scenes when his character is upright.  Skarsgard seems apologetic with every line he utters.  Hemsworth is all beefcake and no sizzle, with his best moments and biggest laughs in the all-too-few scenes where the hapless warrior adjusts to mundane life on Earth.  Portman is unconvincing both as a scientist and a romantic lead, and the chemistry between Jane and Thor is nonexistent.  Any notion that audiences will be clamoring for future sparks is laughable.  Dennings, in the obligatory comedic sidekick role, and Hiddleston, bringing a modicum of depth to his conniving villain, glimmer in a film that otherwise comes off as a 3D wet blanket.

SCREAM 4 (2011)

Like it or not the original SCREAM set the gold standard for self-referential horror-comedy.  The underappreciated SCREAM 2 kept the franchise moving at a brisk clip by taking itself less seriously.  On the other hand, the justly maligned SCREAM 3 felt tired and lumbered to its foregone conclusion.  Like horror franchises of the past, this one appeared dead and buried.  But true to genre conventions, appearances often are not what they seem.  In this series reboot Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro (on the anniversary of the horrific Ghostface killings – naturally!) along with her publicist (a callously funny Alison Brie) to promote her new book.  Meanwhile former journalist Gale Weathers-Riley (Courtney Cox) fights writer’s block and struggles in her marriage with now police chief Dewey (David Arquette).  Soon Ghostface is terrorizing a new generation of fresh-faced teens and clueless adults who happen to get in the way.  Among the cast of potential victims and/or suspects are Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts), spunky best friend Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), creepy ex-boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella), geeky horror aficionados Erik (Robbie Mercer) and Charlie (Rory Culkin), and overenthusiastic deputy Judy (Marley Shelton).  The body count increases as the suspect list dwindles until the bloody dénouement, in which motives are revealed and loose ends torturously wrapped up.  Despite the efforts of director Wes Craven and original screenwriter Kevin Williamson, the end results are a mixed bag.  On the plus side, returning (read: surviving) cast members Campbell, Cox and Arquette feel like old friends you’re happy to see, and you genuinely fear for their characters’ safety.  In general the same cannot be said for the new blood.  Except for Panettiere and Culkin the pretty teens in harm’s way barely register enough to raise blood pressure beyond the visual machinations of Craven and plot devices of Williamson.  More to the point, this precociously clever series has swallowed its own tail.  And though fans of the genre (and I’m one) could easily spend their money on worse fare, I sincerely hope that this time the franchise is really and truly dead.