Reviews by JxSxPx

This could have turned out incredibly icky. Think about it for a moment: severely handicapped man goes on a quest to lose his virginity. Hollywood Quirk © could have taken over this screenplay and film and drug it into the ground. Mercifully, and with great élan, I can admit that all of those worries can be put to rest. The Sessions is delicate, humane stuff being explored.

Aside from Joaquin Phoenix, John Hawkes turned in one of my favorite male performances of the year. Normally an actor takes this kind of role to prove that they are the real deal, and because they’re hungrily going after awards-glory. Not so Hawkes. His twisted body, his character is a polio survivor, who is immobile from the neck down, and facial contortions could read as easy awards pandering, but Hawkes digs so much deeper and crafts a warm, loving presence. This is a man who uses humor and empathy to greet the world, and Hawkes renders this humanistic presence in vivid detail by the time the film ends. It’s moving stuff for his performance alone.

Once we add in Helen Hunt as his sex surrogate, a woman who is normally all business who begins to crack under his charms is especially poignant. Yes, her nudity is brave, but people are missing the point. Her sex scenes aren’t tasteless provocations; they’re natural extensions of the storyline and provide moments of true tenderness between these two people. They’re not just engaging in sex, but she is gently guiding him to full-on actualization as a person, these scenes remind us that sex can be gentle, sweet and life-affirming under the right circumstances. And Hunt bravely bares everything she’s got – literally and figuratively – as the surrogate.

Sure, the priest played by William H. Macy may border on the adolescent, but I found his overall character to be a nice sounding board for Hawkes’. They have some funny moments, like when Hawkes admits that he believes in God so that he can have someone to blame for his poor luck in life. It’s an open-hearted glimpse into these two men, and a touching moment.

The ending of the film comes a little abruptly, and it must be said, after charming us with such adult explorations of the themes and images of the story, it’s a bit of a letdown that they couldn’t deliver a more satisfactory ending. I’ve probably made The Sessions sound terribly serious, but much of it is actually funny following the model setup by Hawkes’ character as humor to lessen a precarious situation and provide us a common entry point. Yet I still found myself in a confused emotional state when it ended – do I cry because I was so moved? Or do I smile because I witnessed the merging of soul, mind and body into one? I was left somewhere in between, and The Sessions has stayed with me longer than I thought it would have. It’s just that quietly good.

For a solid 2/3 of its running time, Rust and Bone is a fractured and painful story of two desperate people coming together. It’s not until the final twenty minutes or so that it seems to fly off with no regards on how to actually end it, but all of that can be forgiven when you realize how delicate and wonderful the two central performances are.

The central love story takes on a strange permutation of “Beauty & the Beast,” although which of the two is the beauty and the beast depends on what moment we are currently experiencing. Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a soulful but damaged brute who is stuck raising his son and training to become an MMA fighter. His character knows little outside of brutality and coarseness. Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) is a sensual woman who works in a Sea World-like water park training orcas and making them do tricks for politely awed families and tourists. They meet as a chance encounter before the accident that takes away her legs, and eventually reconnect after it occurs.

Thus begins a complicated and bleak entanglement which resembles some kind of love story, but not necessarily a happy one. He is a wild he-man who needs someone to tame him and rope him in, and she’s someone who is experienced in training and domesticizing wild animals. He is the beast to her beauty, but in a way she is also the beast to his beauty. After losing the accident, Stephanie shuts down from the world. Her ache and bed-ridden depression seem incredibly realistic for someone who has survived a horrific accident and come away a double amputee. This he-man reawakens her to the outside world and also provides a sexual reawakening.

Much of their early relationship involves them acting as little more than friends and fuck buddies. Their sex scenes are more like animalistic lust and need than passion and love. But as they slowly begin to depend on one another, it grows into something more…stable isn’t the word, because it’s definitely not that at this point. Rust and Bone could have easily dipped into exploitative soap opera territory, but the emotional distance from so much of the action prevents that. As do the two central performances which anchor the film, as best they can, in reality.

Marion Cotillard continues to carve out a fascinating and rewarding post-Oscar career for herself. Even if her projects don’t turn out fantastic, Nine, she’s the best thing about them. And here she’s allowed to plum emotional depths and create a quietly poetic marvel of a performance. The scene where she reenacts her hand gestures and the visual cues that she employed in her orca show on the roof of her apartment is a tiny wonder as she brings layers without saying a single word. And the scene where she goes to the aquarium to visit the animals, and through the glass has it perform a few simple tricks broke my heart, and she did it all through her body language.

Matthias Schoenaerts matches her every step of the way. He way get the “showier” role, but he brings something of a young Brando’s energy, physicality and soul-searching to the role. His character is all muscle, sex and carnage, yet lurking underneath is a man searching for someone to tame in. His animal looking for a master is solidly done work. And in a more just cinematic universe he would have gotten some awards love along with Cotillard. They’re both just that good.

The problem with Rust and Bone occurs when the narrative switches from the two of them examining their physical and psychological hurts to an accident involving Ali’s son. This is the act that is setup to tie up the various plot strands and give us our ending, but it blows by so quickly that it made me think the writers didn’t know how to end the story and just dashed something off. The final shot of the happy nuclear family walking off into the sunset feels tonally different and at odds with the rest of the story which showcases the stages of denial, grief and anger that occur when something traumatic happens to us.

When it first started, I was more than a little worried that Silver Linings Playbook would be a movie which made mental illness seems quirky and funny, and not the debilitating and often harrowing experience it actually can be. But the atomic bomb which annihilated all doubts I had about the movie came in the form of Jennifer Lawrence.

Well, maybe not any and all doubts, I still take issue with the movie industries insistence on creating “fixable” and attractive hysterics. Real life mental illness is a lifelong struggle that one does not magically overcome by falling in love with another mentally ill person. But no matter, there’s enough in Silver Linings Playbook to feel that a happy ending for these character may be deserved, after all, they do suffer quite a bit throughout.

Pat (Bradley Cooper) is fresh out of a stay in a mental institution, he moves back in with his parents (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro), and falls in love with troubled Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). Much of the film plays out in conventional rom-com fashion, with the mental illness sprinkled on top as a quirk, but the uglier scenes are the ones that resonate. Their love story is pleasing and all, but I found myself more interested in the film when Pat was saying things about how he hated his illness and wanted to control. These tiny glimpses into the actual troubled minds at work are worth sticking through the plot contrivances.

I said that the movie didn’t really ignite for me until Jennifer Lawrence came into it, and that is very much true. Her portrayal of Tiffany is all fractured nerves, neediness and compulsions to both connect with someone and destroy that relationship. She allows for Bradley Cooper’s character to finally emerge from kooky-movie-headcase into (mostly) fully rendered human being. Scenes of these two comparing mood stabilizing drugs or arguing over which is crazier ring with an authenticity missing from much of the rest of the film. And their performances are dynamite, Lawrence isn’t surprising given the depths she was able to plunder in Winter’s Bone, but Cooper is practically a revelation here. Never once resting on his charm and good looks, instead showing us that he’s unafraid to appear ugly, desperate or broken, Cooper delivers a performance which hopefully shows that he’s ready to move away from Hangover sequels and into more serious dramatic parts.

Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver turn in quiet and effecting work as Pat’s parents. Weaver’s role is the least showy, and yet she’s always stellar, turning on a dime between concern and understanding. She wants her son to get help, and is supportive and calm, even when her emotions are running high, but also knows that her husband isn’t exactly the picture of mental health. De Niro’s sensitivity is a welcome reminder of the greatness he could so easily achieve in the earlier part of his career. His obsessive compulsive behavior is authentic to anyone who has witnessed a sports fanatic at work trying to summon the gods of fate and chance to be on their team’s side.

The problems come in the plot machinery loudly running in the background. Somehow a bet placed on both a football and a dance contest coming up in their favor is supposed to help alleviate and fix the mental issues of the father and son. And the less said about Chris Tucker’s utterly useless character, who gets dropped in from time to time to remind us that mental illness can be kooky and fun, the better for it we’ll all be. The romantic angle plays out exactly as it would if this were a film starring Jennifer Aniston, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock or Reese Witherspoon. This balmy, soothing touch actually hurts the film overall.

While the performers are giving it their all, and delivering some laudable work, the script lets them down. But every so often it’ll whip up a real scene which details the struggle and ugliness of a life lived with instability and emotional spillover. Silver Linings Playbook could have ditched the quirk and been a story we could have invested in more. I never once hated the film, though I did feel a little uncomfortable during the first few minutes, but I found myself more entertained by the ephemerality in the script and the greatness of the performances. There’s a good foundation here, but not enough work went in to building something more true and original.

I almost feel as if I should preface everything I say with this: I’m a huge fan of musicals. If I didn’t have problems with finding and staying on key, or with my pitch, I’d totally be doing musical theater right this moment. The problem is, Les Miserables comes from a generation of stage productions which are insanely popular despite not being of much artistic value or merit. It’s from the Andrew Lloyd Weber-era of pure spectacle, shows which beat you over the head with their insistence on making you feel something instead of earning it through good writing, filled with refrains of essentially one song rewritten over and over again.

To boil it down even further: Les Miserables main problems occur within the stage show, and, as such, there’s little to no fixing them in a film adaptation. But the film adaptation didn’t have to be this overbearing.

That’s not to say Les Miserables is completely without merits, and there are many things to admire about the film. But the summation of the parts does not add up to a pretty whole. Of course, if the literal translation of your film’s title is “The Miserables,” I don’t think anyone goes into this expecting to come out having had a good time. But Les Miserables tends to glorify the worst aspects of showboating and wears its neediness to be loved out in the open, which leads to some garish and vulgar displays of sheer emotional manipulation.

But let’s start off with the good stuff. In a near Herculean effort, Hugh Jackman manages to make this whole enterprise watchable through his central performance alone. The film never works, but with anyone but Jackman leading the charge onscreen, it would have been a colossal failure. With a role that requires him to speak-sing “I’m Jean Valjean!” roughly once every five minutes; Jackman finds a way to anchor in it some semblance of reality and brings a gravity and wounded soul that really sells not just the role, but the film.

Eddie Redmayne and Anne Hathaway deliver what are without a doubt the best performances in the film as a young student revolutionary and a fallen woman. Redmayne is all soulful glances and fervent hope as he discovers first love and political idealism. His performance of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” is one of the few songs and images that stick with you long after the film has ended. It’s also one of the few quiet moments in which real, palpable emotion can be felt as Redmayne delivers the ache and isolation at being the only one left alive in his group of friends.

And what more can be said about Anne Hathaway’s performance? Like Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, all it took for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to be wrapped up was one song. And much like Hudson, it is THE song from the musical. Hathaway is dynamite, and her brief screen time punches a hole in the film that it never recovers from, but her “I Dreamed a Dream” is heart-wrenching. Singing that song with the full emotional commitment she does would be enough, but the insistence on framing it in real-time and like Falconetti-does-Broadway makes her performance stand out that much more. This isn’t a pretty, lilting version of the song; this is pure from-the-gut-up anguish being expelled from her character.

And scene-stealers Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen give the movie its few laugh riots. The film could have actually used them more often to break up some of the monotony of depressive character developments and images. “Master of the House” is edited within an inch of its life, but their performances in the number are fantastic. Granted, they do seem to have stumbled in from a totally separate universe than the rest of the film, but Shakespeare’s template of very serious drama mixed in with clowns has simply been carried over for these gruesome, malice-filled shysters.

The costumes, sets, makeup and sheer scope of the project are a wonder to behold. Each lovingly detailed and expertly crafted, but I’ve officially run out of superlatives to talk about in the film.

The musical score is by and large forgettable, practically un-hummable, and the lone new song is no better. Characters don’t emote through song, they lazily explain everything through it. For instance, Hathaway’s Fantine begins the film working in a factory. When we meet her, she’s singing with the rest of the workers about how they’re poor, miserable, work in a factory, dirty and sick. They announce through song instead of developing characters or dramatize their hopes and fears, desire and regrets, they’re simply saying “We work in a factory, we’re poor, we’re dirty, and it sucks to be us.” These pronouncements get to be more than a little ridiculous when you have Russell Crowe singing that he is Javert practically every time he is onscreen, as if they were worried that we’d forget who is character was and his function in the story.

And let’s talk about the story – I’m normally pretty lenient on a musical’s story, but Les Miserables stretches the credibility past the breaking point. No matter what Valjean does or where he goes, Javert magically shows up to chase him down and bring him to justice for minor infractions. Javert’s constant bloodhound chase isn’t terribly interesting, and seems more to do with the plot requiring him to show up in a situation than a natural extension of the story developments. The subplots – Fantine, the Thenardiers, the student revolutionaries – are far more interesting than the main thrust of the narrative, but in a three hour film, they’re totaled out to about twenty minutes each.

And Tom Hooper, normally a Masterpiece Theater-type, has decided that what this movie needed more than anything was handheld cameras and frantic editing like it was an action movie. The insistence on close-ups for many of the solo numbers isn’t too awful, but the handheld camera proves distracting as it bops and bounces all over the place in numerous spots. And all I’m saying is if you take a shot every time someone hits a big glory note and the camera pulls back to reveal the CGI Paris, you’d get wasted pretty quickly.

Given that most of the problems with the film are in the sloppy directing, editing and writing, I’m not sure if a great movie could have been made from these materials. A better one, sure. But a great one? Not with a (play)book like this one.

I saw The Master with my best friend, and we’re both huge fans of Paul Thomas Anderson. It seemed like the perfect combination of events. I was with the right person to discuss the film with afterward, and we were both familiar with the director’s prior work so we knew what to expect. Except, we really didn’t, because after the film ended we just looked at each other trying to figure out what we had just watched, hoping maybe the other one could give us some insight.

Months passed by, and we kept bringing it up, and eventually we decided that it was a film that doesn’t immediately strike you as something brilliant. It needs to crawl under your skin and live there for a little while as you absorb everything you’ve just seen and experienced. It doesn’t all add up neatly, but The Master was one of the best movie-going experiences I had in all of 2012. I think this could be looked back upon as a masterpiece that wasn’t properly beloved in its time.

Like any film in Anderson’s oeuvre, The Master is deliberately elliptical about numerous aspects of its narrative, preferring to burrow itself into your brain and let you parse together what is and isn’t there. There’s no definitive proof over the kind of feelings Lancaster Dodd and Freddie Quell have for each other, but there are more than a few theories and each could be backed up by the film if you look at it just so.

For me the main narrative thrust of the film is the master/mentor relationship between Freddie Quell’s raging id and Lancaster Dodd’s ego-maniacal cult leader. I don’t see a homoerotic undertone to their relationship like most people. What I see is one man seeking to stroke his own ego and prove his power by taming another man who is a figure of wild pleasures and the id given corporeal form. Getting Quell is join his group and become his devotee is nothing but a power play disguised as fatherly concern and authoritarian grandstanding.

And there’s still the oblique understanding who the titular moniker refers to. On an obvious, surface-level reading is concerns Dodd’s rank within the cult group he’s established. But within the central relationships – Quell, Dodd and Peggy, Dodd’s newest and younger wife – the power struggles muddle who is and who is not the master, as it changes over time. Is Freddie Quell ultimately the master of his own life and destiny? I suppose, in a way, the film was leading up to his self-actualization.

But how to explain the confusing relationship between Dodd and Quell, and who is the master between them? There’s an element of masochism, on an emotional level, going on there. And who has the upper-hand changes subtly and reverts back over the course of the film. And then there’s the relationship within the Dodd household. Consider Peggy’s presence, eternally playing the supportive, loving wife and lurking in the background of scenes. But there are moments when she flashes a deeper, darker undercurrent to her personality to both of the men. A scene involving a handjob quickly escalates into full-on emotional manipulation that in any other year would have given Amy Adams the Oscar.

The three central performances go a long way towards anchoring and selling the film. Joaquin Phoenix should just be handed the damn Oscar outright. No other performance this year matches his for sheer freedom and risk-taking. It was dangerously easy to dip Freddie Quell into sub-Brando caricature, think of an actor doing an impersonation of him in On the Waterfront and you’d understand, but Phoenix never even heads in that direction. His body is frequently bent and broken, his lips curled and twisted in odd ways, Phoenix finds a way to show us the disturbed, broken mind within this man. I guess some could consider him overacting, but I think his is the male performance of the year. Unafraid to look crazy or unattractive on camera, or to even be asked to do things which could make him look childish and immature, Phoenix attacks the role like I’ve never seen him do so before.

My second favorite performance in the film is Amy Adams’ Peggy. I’ve already mentioned how she keeps most of her performance at a modulated pace, preferring to keep a suburban housewife poker face and linger in the background of scenes. But when she is called to rage with fury, or go to disturbing places to illicit the results she wants, you can’t help but become slightly afraid of her. Anderson has wisely cast Adams in a part that uses her sunny, cheerful exterior that we’ve grown accustomed to, and allowed for her to promptly turn it upside down, inside out and destroy it.

And, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who I don’t think has ever given a performance that I didn’t like. Ok, that I didn’t outright love and think was the greatest since his previous one. Here he wears a painfully bleached haircut, and frequently looks pink and bloated from too much booze. I love how fearless he is in changing his looks for a role. But it’s the way in which he erupts like a geyser that haunts you. His character is eternally on the precipice of exploding into rages and is being backed into corners by naysayers and doubtful third-parties. His ego knows no bounds, and the moment it is questioned he proceeds to lay into someone with emotional torrents while sitting perfectly still, his only movements being in his face, occasionally his hands and his voice which rises and falls so easily.

I have spent all of this time talking about the characters, their relationships and trying to make sense of it all. I haven’t even mentioned the beautiful cinematography, which should win the Oscar this year, nor the films numerous other merits. But that’s the mystery of a film like The Master, its opacity, its ability to leave so many things open-ended intrigues and fascinates and leads to long discussions afterwards. Now, this is what I call movie-making.

Let’s all just take a breath and a step back and actually look at Argo for a minute. Is it a bad movie? Not by a mile. In fact, it’s probably one of the better mainstream films to come out in 2012. But is it the awards-worthy juggernaut that it looks to become in the coming weeks? God, no! Nomination it for Best Picture all you want, but don’t give it the damn thing.

Argo is a perfectly fine movie, well made and efficiently acted, no one really stands out since most characters are just quick sketches and nothing more. It is very much of the tradition of heavily fabricated, loosely based on true events films that preceded it. It is pure middle-of-the-road, safe, warm, disposable entertainment that doesn’t reverberate or incite much worthy debate about its merits besides the fact that everyone seems to have gone totally screwy in Awards Land and handed it everything but the Oscar for Best Picture, which is probably being prematurely engraved as I write this.

Enough ranting for now, let’s get down to brass tax.

Argo is a traditional caper film that works so long as you don’t think too deeply about what is going on in the plot. The three act structure is practically sign-posted on its way to the conclusion which we all know is going to happen as soon as it begins. But it does a few things right on the way there.

Alan Arkin and John Goodman, given little to do but making the most of it, nail all of their laughs and make for a fine comedic duo. Sure, Arkin has been trading on this cantankerous, sarcastic old man routine for a while, and has used it to more heartfelt and surprising effect in Little Miss Sunshine, but he still nails his laughs. It’s not really award-winning work here, since there’s just a thin fragment of a character – loud, cranky, wise-ass elderly producer – but Arkin is a veteran who knows how to milk his lines for all they’re worth.

In fact, from top to bottom, the film is well acted, even if the only person with anything to do is Ben Affleck, who also produced, directed and co-wrote the screenplay. Various character actors get to display their skills, but they mostly left me wanting to spend more time with them and get to know them better. This isn’t to say that the man who got the hostages out isn’t a hero, or undeserving of a movie about him, but there’s so much of the true story that’s under-represented or utterly rewritten here that the lack of real personas in danger hurts the film.

And while the film is obviously rewritten to be more exciting than the actual story, several sequences call attention to themselves for being clear forgeries and boldfaced lies, Affleck does manage to sustain the tension and execute the moments well enough. Despite knowing how well it’s all going to end, there are times when Affleck allows for us to feel doubt about the certainty of the outcome.

But that’s about all I’ve got when it comes to effusive praise. The sequences which call obvious attention to them also factor into two other problems with the film: it’s got an ugly and irresponsible jingoistic streak and it represents all Iranian people are hellhounds sniffing and slobbering for blood.

While out in the bazaar disguising the Americans as Canadians in a scouting mission for a film, it devolves into a giant marauding mass ready to stain the ground with their blood. Except for one character, all Iranians we see are either permanently fixated in this mode, or quickly turn from human beings into unbalanced psycho killers. The juxtaposition of the noble white figures against the foreign and crazed brown-skinned Others is an ugly reminder of the simplified thinking that creates the us-versus-them mentality.

And the lone Iranian woman who isn’t presented this way isn’t given a voice, despite being important to the success or failure of the whole operation. This teeters away from outright racism into a more morally uncomfortable territory. We’re a stone’s throw away from Birth of a Nation-level ugliness here. This isn’t too downplay the realities of the time, yes, Iranians really did call for American blood. But this gross oversimplification of events isn’t the main problem. After all, Zero Dark Thirty took highly complicated events and distilled them down into more manageable moments. But Argo never bothers to leave any of its moments or issues as thorny, dark or complicated as Zero Dark Thirty. Argo prefers to have you leaving the theater screaming out “‘Merica, fuck yeah!”

A more artistically adventurous film could be made out of this material. One that doesn’t pander to base-level instincts and prefers to leave the edges jagged and frayed. This smooth, clean, glossy presentation is very safe and easy to digest. That’s probably why it keeps winning everything, because everyone leaves the theater thinking of only how they had been entertained and nothing more. There are no worrisome questions or images to stick with you, and in the end, everything is perfect and happy.

Hold on tight cause this is going to be a long one... You've been warned.

There are movies with large ambitions that dare to think big and go outside the box, and then there is Cloud Atlas. This is a movie so sprawling, drunk on ides and visuals that the three hours it takes to tell its various stories, which don’t always connect neatly or even at all, feels like only the beginning. It may not be a perfect film, but in terms of sheer scope, ambition, passion and craft on display – it’s a glorious, once in a lifetime kind of achievement.

There are six stories which overlap in actors and themes, detailing the interconnectedness of the human race, its penchant for violence within itself and to those it deems “Others” and, of course, in reincarnation, predestinated outcomes and love. If it remains a little frayed around the edges, if connections are a little sloppy, that’s to be forgiven, because it somehow, through sheer force of will and alchemy I guess, does work.

Five actors play various roles in all six stories (Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving), in some they are but small cameos, in others supporting roles and the leads in the rest. This isn’t just merely an excuse for actorly showboating, and mercifully none of them resort to “Look ma! I’m acting!”/Brechtian-levels of performance side-show caricatures, but a chance to craft human beings who have loved and fought and reconnected for several lifetimes.

I believe that every viewer will have their own personal connections and favorites among the six stories, and for me the best and most engaging where the ones set in 1936, 1973, 2144 and 2321, the last of which serves as a wraparound framing device. The 1849 story, which sees Jim Sturgess and Tom Hanks engage in a transatlantic journey from the Pacific Islands back to the civilization of home and the disturbing illness and conspiracies at play, isn’t terrible, but it didn’t have the resonance or interest that the others did. While Hanks delivers a strong performance, this section was marred by poor prosthetics which made Hanks look like a rubbery figure, undermining some of the menace of his character, and the less said about Susan Sarandon’s nose, the better.

And the 2012 story, humorous but not of a piece with the rest of the film, gives Jim Broadbent some excellent comedic beats to toy with. That he turns in such fine work isn’t surprising, but the whole storyline feels so light and inconsequential in comparison to the rest of the film. I suppose a storyline with some levity was necessary so Cloud Atlas didn’t entirely sink into Big Ideas speak and visual inventiveness, but something more at stake than accidentally being locked in a retirement home and causing chaos would have been nicer, and probably made the whole segment cohere with the rest better.

And now on to the four sections which struck me for various reasons.

The segment in 1973 features a reporter (Halle Berry) investigating claims that a nuclear power plant was unsafe. The tone and style harken back to films like All the President’s Men or China Syndrome. Like the other segments that I liked the most, I felt this one had enough story and merit to be its own feature. Throughout Cloud Atlas one of the actor I was most surprised by was Halle Berry, to call her career uneven is an understatement. After championing her work in Monster’s Ball, Their Eyes Were Watching God or Introducing Dorothy Dandrige, and seeing her career devolve into Catwoman, Gothika and Perfect Stranger, to choose just three of a terrible post-Oscar career, I was ready to call it a wash. But she turns in solid work here, I’m not sure if this segment or the one set in 2321 features her best performance. There are a couple of weak spots in it, chiefly the makeup turning Doona Bae into elderly Mexican woman, it never looks natural or authentic, instead taking the form of large chunks of latex glued on to her. Luckily, she’s only briefly involved, and the rest of it succeeds admirably.

The post-civilization segment, 2321, could have easily failed, and I’m sure for a lot of people the complicated jargon and heavy patois will be too much. Yet I found it to be intoxicating. This is one segment where everything came together perfectly. The makeup which transforms Hugh Grant into a monstrous looking cannibal tribe leader is horrifying. Same goes for Hugo Weaving’s transformation into a green-skinned demonic being dressed in Victorian garb complete with a cockney accent who appear to only Tom Hanks’ character. His performance is terrifying and minimally acted when he could have gone so much bigger, which only makes his creature creepier.

The 2321 segment sees the rebuilding of society after the collapse. There are now two different levels, the higher class which lives in some kind of pristine, all-white futuristic cruise ship/space ship, and the dirty serfs who live in huts and have to contend with roving bands of cannibals and other tribes trying to pick fights. Halle Berry, the emissary from the stars hoping to find something from the top of the mountain near the village, and Tom Hanks, the village-man/love interest who helps her find it, have a surprisingly nice chemistry and, shockingly, prove to be credible as action heroes. Sure Berry has some history as an action heroine given her roles in Die Another Day and the X-Men franchise, but her Storm mostly stayed off on the sidelines and Jinx, while played well and with a certain grasp of campy winks, was a poorly written character. Hanks, for his part, is mostly known as either a serious dramatic actor, or a loveable and warm presence from comedies like Big. To see them performing various action-movie feats, and not embarrass themselves, is a nice and unexpected treat.

Lastly, we come to the two segments which reverberated with me the most. The 1936 story sees Ben Whishaw, who had a great year between this and Skyfall, and James D’Arcy play lovers, who are, of course, doomed. Whishaw is a penniless musician who takes a job with Jim Broadbent’s elderly, nearly blind composer, helping to write down his melodies and sort out a piece he’s been struggling with. Told mostly through the correspondence between Whishaw and D’Arcy, it is a tender and heartbreaking portrait of a half-finished love affair.

Hopefully, if there’s any justice in the cinematic universe, Whishaw will come out of this experience with bigger opportunities for him in further films. He’s a wonderfully talented, and very attractive, sensitive-looking English soul. I bet, if Perfume is any indication, he could turn his looks and manners into some truly surprising performances in the future.

And, finally, the CGI-fest that is the 2144 segment. While it looks like the most expensive of the lot, it also has the most emotional destructive story. This one, more than any other, really hits home on the theme of the cruelty of man. It’s hard to describe the storyline without giving everything away, but I’ll do my best.

Jim Sturgess, attractive and charming, and Doona Bae get their biggest and best roles out the lot in this story, which sees a futuristic South Korea slowly being torn asunder from corrupt and disturbing business practices which pose the question of whether or not they’re ethical, moral and if we have a responsibility to clones. It’s an elastic premise which can be seen as a cipher for any number of civil rights issues. And that’s probably why, much like the 1936 story, it hit me the hardest. A full-length version of this film would be a 21st century Blade Runner, maybe even encroaching on darker, thornier subject matter and imagery. The makeup and CGI used to change around various Anglo actors in Asians gets a little distracting, some transition better than others, but, and I most comment on the stupid accusations of racism lodged at this film, I never found it be racist or mean-spirited.

It made logical sense for Halle Berry to be transformed into an elderly Asian man, a white Jewish woman, and so forth, to pick just one actor out of many. This is a film which shows us context and visual clues to trance the reincarnation of various souls throughout time. Of course the host body is going to take on various appearances and looks, and it would be distracting, and completely dismantle the concept, to have different sets of actors for each individual segment. Reusing the same performers in different makeups, races and genders echoes the point home for us in a quick and easy way. For people to not understand that basic concept, well, I just don’t really know what else to say. Looking for something that wasn’t there? Easily offended?

In a simplistic way, the stories connect very easily: The journal Sturgess keeps in 1849 is read by Whishaw in 1936 while he writes the “Cloud Atlas sextet.” This orchestral movement is heard by Berry in 1973, along with D’Arcy briefly appearing as the elderly version of his character from the 1936 segment. Berry’s storyline is turned into a novel, which Broadbent publishes in 2012. His ordeal in the nursing home is turned into a movie, which Bae watches in 2144. And, lastly, video messages and political texts that Bae delivered in 2144 are now considered holy works and gospel in 2321.

But that’s a very surface view of the film, the Reader’s Digest or Cliff’s Notes variation. There’s so much more to dine yourself upon in this film. That’s how I ended up writing a three-page Word document review about it. It’s a meat-and-potatoes/full course film. It might be a sloppy around the edges, but I’m thankful for the experience. Oscar worthy? In my opinion this should dominate the tech categories and possibly pick up a Best Picture nomination for sheer audacity and scope.

I got the distinct sense about midway that Justice League: Doom was going to be all a great lead-up to a rushed, action-heavy, truncated third act. I was right. Doom borrows liberally from the well-known and beloved storyline Tower of Babel, in which an arch-villain of the JLA gets their hands on Batman’s secret files on how to eliminate every member of the group, should it ever become necessary.

I’ve never understood the insistence on making these things as short as possible. Doom really suffers from the rushed script, never allowing the plot to slow down enough for us to truly digest what we’re seeing happen before we’re on to the next set piece. My best theory is budgetary issues making it so they can only afford to produce so much of an animated feature.

That Batman has a secret set of files to take down characters as overly-powered as Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and Superman is no great shock, a nice wrinkle in his complicated characterization and sense of heroism. His thinking behind creating such safety nets is coldly logical, even if it does betray his closest friendships.

Once they’re stolen by a group made up some of the League’s most infamous adversaries and implemented, the film becomes a wall-to-wall action extravaganza filled with nice animation, clean and effective character designs (although Superman does look a little too boyish for my taste), a reunion of most of the DCAU’s Justice League series cast and interesting twists as we watch the heroes greatest strengths become their downfalls.

The problem is that the film barely begins to explore this moral quandary – is Batman truly wrong for creating contingency plans? Why didn’t he create one for himself? – before it settles into slam-bang-pow action mode. The reactions to various characters learning that Batman has created these plans and his reasoning behind it is limited to the very last scene in which they discuss it for about two minutes. He’s not completely in the wrong for creating these files. Where he messes up is in not securing them better. Think about it, if we lived in a world where Superman could go rogue either through his own volition or through some kind of mind-control, wouldn’t you want a plan to help stop him? Schools, government facilities, your work place all have these kind of safety steps and procedures should anything go wrong – why wouldn’t we have them for our superheroes?

It’s this kind of interesting moral ambiguity and debate that could have made Justice League: Doom rank up there with Batman: Under the Red Hood as one of the greatest of these movies. As it is, it’s a very good one, never quite giving itself the chance to fully blossom. Doom is a little bit better than Doomsday, and about as good as Public Enemies.

Superman gets an unfair rep nowadays. Many non-comic readers, and quite a few comic book lovers, scoff at him as a relic of the distant past. A happier, more naïve time in which heroes could be good and wholesome, and there’s also an image of him as a bland, problem-free Apollonian Boy Scout.

It was with these cynical viewpoints in mind that Joe Kelly crafted one of the great Superman stories in Action Comics #775, “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?,” a story which saw Superman come face-to-face with a group of ‘heroes’ who not only weren’t afraid to kill, but thought of themselves as god-like figures here to choose the best options for the masses.

The film, also written by Joe Kelly, would have been one of the best of the DC movies if the animation had been done in a more consistent manner of the mature, dark story line. The very cartoony, kid-friendly look of the whole thing is jarringly at odds with amorality of the Elite members’ actions, and the finale which sees Superman tap into his latent dark side.

Superman’s ultra-rubbery movements and gigantic square jaw are highly distracting while he’s trying to be contemplative or express his moral outrage against this group and their actions. I don’t understand why they stuck so closely to the art of Michael Turner in Apocalypse or Ed McGuinness in Public Enemies, yet they couldn’t be bothered with trying to match the look and feel of Doug Mahnke’s expressionist and emotive style which would have been much more effective to the story.

Having gotten such a well-written script, and decent if never transcendent animation, the voice cast is also uniformly excellent, which should come as no great surprise. George Newbern, along with Tim Daly, pretty much (co-)owns the role of animated Superman, and hearing his voice come out of the character is a great match of vocal tone and personality to the particular look of a character. Pauley Perrette surprised me in her performance of Lois Lane, having never watched NCIS I couldn’t tell what to expect from her. But her tough-girl sarcasm and hard-ass demeanor are a nice reminder that Lois Lane at her best should recall Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, and Perrette nails it. The rest of the cast is made up of the reoccurring voice actors from all of the DC animated enterprises, amongst numerous other appearances. They do their typically great work.

While it never gels together to be the great film it should be, Superman vs. the Elite does enough right to make it one of the better DC animated films. This presents us with a Superman we can believe in, and gives him a story to prove that, yes, he is still relevant and needed in our modern times. And if they were looking for a more ambitious and adventurous big screen story to borrow from in the comics, this wouldn’t be a bad choice.