Reviews by JxSxPx

Now I’m not saying that this is up there with Jean Cocteau’s poetic masterpiece La Belle et La Bête, but this is how you reinvent a fairy tale for the big screen. All of the story beats are there, but they’ve been twisted, expanded upon and remain highly sexualized and violent, no Disney-friendly scrub brush has removed any of the psychological complexity here. That’s right, I’m calling you out Mirror Mirror, the first, but by no means best, Snow White adaptation of 2012.

Snow White & the Huntsman truly does focus on the two of them, and twists the story away from the generic, anemic heroine besting the wicked stepmother with the help of numerous friends into a more girl-power tale, beefing up not only Snow White’s personality and presence, but that of the Huntsman as well. Everything is given a harder edge, at once going for an over-the-top visual splendor, which at times has things happening for no other reason than that they look cool, and a Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones dirty/realistic world in which famine and disease are unglamorous sufferings and most people look like they haven’t bathed in days.

All of the ingredients that we think of when it comes to Snow White are here: the pallid heroine, the handsome prince, the brawny huntsman, the nightmarish escape through the woods, the seven dwarves, and, of course, the glamorous, dangerous Queen. And, unlike Mirror Mirror, this actually features the poisoned apple and the death of the Queen. But how it uses them is really very interesting.

Kristen Stewart is pretty, but Charlize Theron is a super-humanly gorgeous being. The movie explains that Snow White is fairer than the Queen due to her capacity to love, care and nurture; it’s a nice side-step for something that always bothered me about every screen incarnation of the tale. No one truly believes that Disney’s animated heroine is more beautiful than the slinky, seductive Queen, at least this movie returns to the roots of the story and gives a reasoning behind Snow White’s eventual ascension as fairest of them all.

A new wrinkle has been added to the story, a town made up of women who live on the outskirts of the kingdom and have damaged themselves so they’re no threat to the Queen. It’s a smart new dimension to the story, and really opens up the world beyond the palace, forest and cottage. This sequence gives us a moment to realize that there is an actual kingdom at stake here, complete with peasants and gentry who are real people with needs, values, fears and dreams.

And the performances add a great deal to the surprising twists and turns it takes to the story. The dwarves as presented here are anything but the seven compartmentalized personalities that we think of them as in our collective consciousness, but a rag-tag group of unique faces and personalities, seemingly borrowed from a British gangster film. There’s a true element of danger when actors like Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins and Ray Winstone portray normally cuddly little side-kicks.

Chris Hemsworth, brawny, hunky and bruised in equal measures, proves that when a meatier role is offered to him, he may just excel at it. This isn’t an awards caliber performance, but it proves that he may yet have depths and interesting emotional layers to discover as an actor. The Huntsman wouldn’t seem like a role which would require any complexity, but there’s a great arch for his character to go on and Hemsworth nails it each and every step of the way.

Theron as the queen delivers a performance that I am of two minds about. On one hand, she’s given a richer backstory and reasoning behind her evil plotting and vanity. As a child she was told that her only value and contribution to the world was her beauty, so any intelligence (which she possesses) or other qualities were never given a chance to ripen. When needed to strike a withering look, or have moment of naked emotion, to reveal the tremendous hurt, bitterness and anger behind her bitchery, Theron nails the role. But she also has several moments when she decides that drag queen-level high camp and overacting would serve the story well. It’s by turns a fabulous, engaging portrait of a woman with few options forced to trade-in on her good looks at the expanse of her soul, and screaming, flailing diva caricature preening on display. She’s a far better evil queen than Julia Roberts, I will say that much.

And, of course, one cannot talk about this movie without mentioning the sheer visual wonder on display. The world of the film may be surrounding in darkness, and have an overall glacial feeling, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some beautiful special effects for us to feast upon. Snow White’s hallucinations over the dark forest see tree branches turn into black snakes, slithering and twisting in midair, and demonic gargoyles emerging from dead trees. Albino fairies crawl out of birds, or were riding on them depending on how you look at it. And when we meet the great forest spirit, which tiptoes into plagiarism of Princess Mononoke territory for a brief second, the very vegetation begins to spring to life as mushroom’s sprout eyes, moss covered rocks turn into turtles, vines growing on trees turn into green snakes and other such phenomenon. It’s beautiful to look at, but there are times when some images seem done just for the sake of it. I’m still unsure what the queen’s dip into a giant tub of milk only to arise looking like a marble statue was supposed to mean or symbolize, but it sure was a nifty image for the trailers.

Is this film even necessary? God, no, seeing as how the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy is roughly only a decade old. Is it a lot of fun, adding more heart and depth of character to Peter Parker? You betcha. Still doesn’t make it necessary, but at least it goes about righting some of the wrongs from Raimi’s trilogy.

Another origin story seems a little excessive given that Spider-Man, like Batman or Superman, seems to have an origin that we all already know as a mass group. But this time around, we’re actually told how and why he came to raised by his strict, loving and caring Aunt May (Sally Field, not given much to do besides look concerned and project maternal warmth) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen, finding a perfect balance between authoritarian and trying to be the “cool” surrogate dad).

Peter Parker’s parents are a topic which typical gets ignored by most adaptations of Spider-Man. The 90s animated series barely tapped that storyline for, maybe, two episodes in a sixty-five episode run. While there are still mysteries left unresolved at the end of this film, at least we know that this variation of the franchise will take a more personal, closer look at Parker and his paternal issues (which is pretty fertile ground).

Two of the major problems with the film tie back in to this vague storyline about his parents, which has a deeper connections to everything that’s happened even if we aren’t totally certain how just yet, and several story-lines have plot holes. When Osborn’s sidekick disappears after an encounter with the Lizard on a bridge, he literally just disappears. No explanation is given as to where he went or how he got there, this is clearly an issue of something being edited out of the film. Another is the time when Lizard creates several minors during the prolonged climatic battle at the end. We’re shown a group of cops turning into humanoid lizard creatures, but we never get a payoff of them doing anything. Yet they still show up at the very end having returned to normal. There are other small examples of these issues, but those two most readily stuck out in my mind.

I’ve never gotten the insistence on maintaining Peter Parker being in high school, especially since Andrew Garfield (adorable and perfect as Parker/Spider-Man) and Emma Stone (a pistol as Gwen Stacy) look older and possess jobs that are far beyond that of any high school age teenager. They both plays their roles well, but it’s distracting how much older they look than the actual high school age extras. And Stacy’s job as chief intern at Oscorp seems much more like a job that a college-age student would have, bumping up their ages would have fixed this problem in no time.

If it seems I am being nit-picky over nerdy, comic book fanboy things, well, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The Amazing Spider-Man does so many other things right, that when it goes wrong it just left me frustrated. Finally we have a Spider-Man who cracks jokes and is a complete smart-ass, cocky and blabbering constantly during his heroic deeds. And the attention paid to his costume during the last section of the film should be noted. Unlike most superhero films which see the hero get into a big fight, his suit get damaged only for the next scene to feature restored magically to its pristine condition, this film sees Spider-Man’s suit take damage and consistently deteriorate. A giant slash mark across his chest from an earlier battle with the Lizard remains clearly visible throughout the film. I appreciated this attention to continuity, but it made the lapses in the story more prominent. They could pay attention enough to make sure the costume shows a consistent amount of wear and tear, but not enough to explain where one prominent supporting player wanders off to?

Much of what’s right about this film is thanks to the cast. Garfield excels in the role, making for a far better, more realistic and accurate Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire’s whiny, constantly weeping version. He has a certain spunk and impish spark that is most appealing in the role, and he brings a real sense of joy and exuberance to it. Stone is smart, tart and tough as Gwen Stacy. It’s nice to see a comic book movie give a girl something to do besides stand around waiting to be taken hostage by the villain. In fact, there’s a scene late in the film where she hides and out-smarts the Lizard, trying to locate an antidote for his serum that will turn all of Manhattan into his reptilian kingdom. And Rhys Ifans does a great turn as Dr. Curt Connors, a conflicted man whose hubris proves to be his downfall. As he slowly slips away from reality and sanity preferring to be in his Lizard state, we realize that this serum and its side effects are like a highly addictive drug. His sweaty, almost uncomfortably close to detoxing scenes as Connors in-between the mad thrashing and pure rage of the Lizard are humane and ground the character in some semblance of reality. If he never achieves the same level of greatness that Alfred Molina did as Doctor Octopus, well it’s not for a lack of trying.

Mercifully, The Amazing Spider-Man also gives us action scenes of surprising clarity, mostly forgoing the heavily edited ADHD-style so in vogue lately. We can clearly who is where and their relationship to objects around them. Even if the physics require an extended leap as an audience to buy into them, at least we know where the characters are aiming for and what they’re trying to achieve.

The Amazing Spider-Man may not be a great superhero film, but it’s a lot of fun. And it promises to be a quieter, more warm and heartfelt series than the clanging of metal in Iron Man or the only interesting by half Thor. It has many faults and a serious case of déjà vu in some story beats, but at least it’s trying to accurately capture the tone and spirit of not only its hero, but of his corresponding source material.

It’s a Ridley Scott film, so right off the bat we know it’s going to be a meticulously composed, lit, shot and edited beauty. But Prometheus is a maddening movie which poses questions that it doesn’t even bother to answer, or even bring back up after throwing them out there, and can’t make up its mind over whether or not it’s a companion piece of the Alien franchise or the long-gestating prequel. It’s a schizophrenic film in which various plot points, devices and characters change on a whim with little-to-no regard for what has come before.

The film begins its story with a gigantic white Engineer swallowing a black liquid and promptly dying/decomposing before our eyes. Where he is exactly is never explained, nor is what he’s committing ritualistic suicide for. It’s all a load of vague but beautiful images. Even if the makeup job on the Engineers is distracting on how rubbery and synthetic it looks, never fully convincing us that this is a creature to be amazed and silenced in the face of.

No matter. We rush forward to 2089 and meet our two opposing scientific minds – atheist Darwinian evolutionist vs. Christian creationist believer – and, of course, they’re lovers too. Anyway, they keep finding these same cave paintings/stone engravings from ancient times with a figure pointing towards a group of three stars. They gain backing through a privately funded trip by a believed dead eccentric billionaire’s company, and we’re off to explore the universe in the Alien mythos.

And for a period of time, it all plays out in a completely fascinating way. So, Prometheus ISN’T the long-awaited prequel to the whole thing, but a separate entity that expands upon the same universe? Interesting, I enjoyed it.

But then the references to Alien come in, and lead to a conclusion that I can only describe as the filmmakers suddenly going “Oh shit! We need to make this a prequel and tie it in after all!” midway through production. Because it’s right around the midsection of the film that things begin to go flying off the rails at an ever quickening speed.

It took enough of a leap for me to buy into a highly expensive space mission being funded on the slimmest of hunches with little-to-no empirical evidence, but once we get into the mysterious black ooze, David’s twisty-turny machinations and the Engineers having a gloriously bloody freak-out, I was ready to get off this space ride.

You see, while digging around in the bottom levels of the space caverns, they discover a throne room with a moving painting featuring an Alien Queen in the crucifix position, a giant statue of a head and hundreds of containers of black ooze. It’s all appropriately atmospheric and unnerving, but once the black ooze is unleashed to wreak havoc upon the world things just get confusing as the film cannot decide to stick to what it is exactly that this stuff does. It changes willy-nilly depending on what they need it to do.

One moment it transforms a tiny worm into an albino space-cobra with a vaginal opening for a mouth, the next it’s able to turn a dead member of the crew into a contortionist zombie who attacks them, and yet still it transforms another member into a diseased humanoid who looks like he’s suffering from a kind of super-AIDS. And so it goes. This black ooze does whatever the plot requires it to do and never sticks to the logistics that had been established when it was first introduced. So this black ooze can kill the Engineers, but it can also transform someone into a chalky, sore-ridden mess AND impregnate someone who was sterile with an octopus-like creature? Sure, why not, I guess.

And then there’s David, beautifully portrayed by a glacial Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers, two characters who change personality stripes at the drop of a hat. David, like most androids in the Alien universe (Bishop and Call being the exceptions), cannot be trusted on the basis that he’s an android alone. And that he has an secret submission isn’t surprising. What’s surprising is how quickly he betrays that submission and manages to stay active for an incredibly long time without a power source. And he somehow has all the knowledge of the Engineers after stumbling across their layer on his own and spending a few hours there. I’ll grant that an android can assimilate data at a far quicker rate than a human ever possibly could, but the sheer amount of information he would have had to assimilate wouldn’t have taken so quick a time.

And Theron’s character is introduced as a remote Hitchcockian blonde, complete with own secrets and agendas, with a splash of the tough-girl/riot grrrl-power ethos of the original franchise. A subplot about her possibly being an android is brought up, never answered, and forgotten as quickly as it was presented. Her descent into screaming, useless, helpless female is embarrassing. Not for Theron, who plays it all incredibly well, but for the inconsistent writing.

This leads us back to the Engineers, and the faux-profundity of the whole Science vs. Religion debate at the heart of the film. It’s a fancy window dressing that means nothing more than that. The debate is never fully engaged, nor does it really go anywhere besides one character eternally believing and getting her belief reaffirmed through her horrific travails, and the other dying off at the expense of magical black ooze. If the Engineers are gods, or the creators of mankind, and the one we saw at the beginning was giving of itself to create life on earth, why are they so intent on bringing us back to kill us off? And, if this isn’t their home planet, why are they stuck here?

Of course these questions are never answered. They’re only brought up for the inevitable franchise they were hoping to spiral off of this film. The film begins by exploring another pocket of the Alien universe before devolving into a proto-facehugger and Engineer battle that gives birth to an early form of the xenomorph we all know and love. So now we’ve got Prometheus telling us that the Alien franchise was actually symbolic of the Big Issues in life. What? The xenomorph is actually a symbolic form of a hellish demon unleashed upon unsuspecting masses to horde more souls for its dark master? Ha!

As someone who grew up on the Alien franchise I can say this, yes, there was symbolic characters and story lines to real world issues: Ripley being shunned out for being a crazed woman in Aliens by the patriarchy at work in both the military and big government should feel real enough to anyone who has had to face the glass ceiling, or the racism/prejudice involved with androids throughout the franchise, learning to accept and trust the “other.” But the films were mostly well-made and well written exercises in haunted house terror and intense military carnage wrapped up in a sci-fi bow.

For all its posturing to Big Issues and Ideas, Prometheus can’t seem to make up its mind about what the Engineers are, or why. By the time an Engineer straps itself into a gun turret and launches the spaceship which we once thought was a cave or dwelling into the air, we know that all of those big questions were just silly mysticism trying to make the film seem deeper than it was. During, roughly, the first hour when Prometheus focuses in on creating an intense, exciting horror/thriller/action film that it’s at its best. Right after the abortion scene (which is probably the best sequence of the whole film until she keeps running and banging her stitched together stomach on sharp or jagged objects, performing feats which should have ripped the staples out and caused her to bleed to death, but I digress…) is when the hysterical mumbo-jumbo kicks into overdrive and the plot threads unravel at a rapid pace, and it’s all over. In the theater, much like in space, no one could hear me scream.

I wasn’t expecting much out of Bernie. I’d lost my taste for Jack Black right around the time I got into the upper levels of high school. But I wasn’t just pleasantly surprised, Bernie gave me a revelatory performance by Black, a deliciously twisted and dark comedic film filled with grotesque small-town denizens who wouldn’t seem out of place in a Southern Gothic short story from Faulkner or O’Connor. That it’s based on a true story isn’t surprising, the real world is a far stranger place than any writer’s imagination could ever be.

It tells the story of a happy-go-lucky mortician who befriends a small town’s shrillest and meanest old wealthy widow. As their friendship begins to turn more and more controlling and abusive, he snaps and kills her. The hilarious part of the story is that everyone in the town is glad that he did it, and no one wants to him to be found guilty. And just about every person in the town wants the case to be dropped, and admits that if it does go to trial that none of them will vote against him. That is, until the District Attorney, and a town outsider, comes in and makes sure that Bernie gets sent straight to jail one way or another.

The film is hard to describe as it exists somewhere between totally fictional account and pseudo-documentary. You see, practically all of the townspeople are played by the real life denizens who share their anecdotes about the three main players and the tragicomic incident at the heart of the story. They prove two things: the myth of southerners being born storytellers who can inject warmth, humor and acidic comments wrapped in good-natured cheer are absolutely true, and that small town people, particularly of the Texan/southern variety, are an eccentric bunch.

Beneath the blacker-than-midnight humor there is a complicated love poem to small town eccentricity, seeing as how it never judges any of its characters or their actions and simply lets the real people just sit there and tell their stories. There’s no big city, liberal mindset painting these people as backwater inbred too kooky and dumb for us to take seriously. Their natural warmth, humor and strangeness shine through. It’s a complicated film that seemingly morphs back-and-forth at will. It’s never cleanly wrapped up, or even smoothly transitioned between one and the other, but its ambition is a major part of its charm.

And while I found McConaughey to be the weakest link of the three leads, each of them hits the correct tone and appear to be having a grand time portraying their characters. Black turns his manic, ADHD energy down and guides towards creating a cheerful character. I wasn’t aware he could play anything other than “Jack Black,” but Richard Linklater also guided him to a unique and heartfelt performance in School of Rock, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised by this. But it’s Shirley MacLaine who is clearly relishing the chance to play so spiteful and contradictory a person. She temporarily thaws and turns into a semi-decent human being long enough for Bernie to tell everyone she’s not as bad as seems, before promptly and irrevocably changing back into the screaming, manipulating toddler she always was.

This year saw a lot of great movies come through, and Bernie was a real unexpected delight for me. It’s not perfect, but its far more unique and ambitious that most of the neater, more tidy offerings we get in any given year. That it tries to forge its own genre, or reinvent several offers – I’m not quite sure, is reason enough to seek it out and that is to say nothing of the performances, humor and through-the-looking-glass homespun charm.

The Marvel films are a mixed bag, really. Alternately they’re films which give the comic book/superhero genre a much needed boost of fun, manic energy and great comedic zingers, and films which follow a routine paint-by-numbers aesthetic, wedging in characters and plot lines, sprinkled with easter eggs for the inevitable sequel, without bothering to form a coherent or interesting storyline to go with them. The Avengers is really no different. It’s the summarization of the “Phase One,” as it has been dubbed, and occasionally plays like the extended trailer for the inevitable sequel.

That Joss Whedon is at the helm was both a blessing and a curse. Whedon has many strengths, and I loved his work on Astonishing X-Men, but he seems to lack a cinematic eye. There’s no shot which inspired much whimsy, wonder, awe or excitement. And much of the film – from the production design to the costumes – looks like it was filmed for television instead of for the big screen. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s uniforms are embarrassing cheap looking. As is Captain America’s modern day costume, what was wrong with his outfit from the first movie? It looked more believable in action, unlike this bulky thing which makes him look a mess and weighed down. There’s nothing in these outfits to make you believe for a split second that they’re true military-level combat-ready gear. And their bases are all too shiny and new to look like they’ve seen any kind of use beforehand. I’m guess most of the budget went to paying the cast and the special-effects, which are top notch.

But, thankfully, Whedon’s strengths, snark and character building, remain intact. While there may not be much going on cinematically speaking, there’s plenty of rich character building moments to focus in on. Black Widow’s introduction to the movie springs immediately to mind. And Tom Hiddleston’s Loki practically steals the entire spotlight outright throughout most of the film. Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner and Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark have a clever meeting of the geek minds that also sees Stark trying to get the big, green rage monster to come roaring out.

But that’s the problem with The Avengers, it is made up of moments, some engaging, some absolutely terrible, that don’t add up to much. The first thirty minutes is chock full of purple prose and tin-eared dialog, cringe-inducing acting and characters being introduced and hyped up as major players before being tossed to the sidelines (I’m looking at you Hawkeye, one of my favorites from the comic). And the climax, which has a character seemingly sacrificing themselves for the greater good, inspires no true emotional investment. We know that they’ll live to see another day; Marvel already announced the title, director and release date of the next film in their solo franchise.

Perhaps being shackled by Disney and Marvel’s demands for frivolous entertainment left Whedon in a state where he was trying to write and direct a behemoth franchise collider/starter with one hand tied behind his back? It’s the best theory I could come up with as to why this plays out in such a predictable manner.

Nary a chance is taken with plot beats, remember when I said that Marvel films are typically paint-by-numbers? Well, if you try, you don’t even have to try hard, you can see where this film is heading twenty minutes before it even gets there. Oh look! They’re all in-fighting! Will they be able to put aside their differences in time for the third act’s grand scale invasion? Duh!

It’s not that The Avengers had to be a token action movie that’s the main problem with it; it’s that it never takes a chance. We had how many films trumpeting up to the arrival of this one? And it plays it all so very safe. With films like X-Men: First Class and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy taking the superhero genre to unique and unexpected places, The Avengers insistence on sugar-high, empty calories is a bit of a disappointment. When Batman gets his back broken, financially ruined and emotionally shattered by Bane, you feel something. When Iron Man and Captain America are trying to restart the wing on the SHIELD Helicarrier, you know neither one of them are truly in danger. The difference between these two scenarios is that we haven’t been given any moment to doubt or fear for our heroes; we know they’re going to win as soon as the action scene starts.

But at least the cast seems to be having a ball. Ruffalo and Hiddleston really are the highlights of the film. Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth deliver the same strong performances as Captain America and Thor as they did in their respective films. Scarlett Johansson, shockingly, was actually given something to do this time around and equates herself well enough. I never understood the mass geek love for Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson, but I think I’ve finally unpacked a tiny bit of it. Jeremy Renner, perfectly cast as Hawkeye, is given nothing to do besides stand around (looking pretty) either shooting arrows or being a brainwashed zombie. One of the film’s greatest flaws is not having introduced his hot-headed character more and given him more to do, he’s like their version of Wolverine in a way. And I, for one, am getting greatly tired of Downey Jr’s snarky take on Iron Man. It was entertaining and cute in the first movie, and now it’s just grating on my nerves. Stark can have those moments, but they never ask him to dig deeper into the character and look beyond the arrogant braggart. There’s a lot of meat in the character’s back-story and personality that the films haven’t even begun to expand upon, instead they rely upon him to be a cocky bastard.

So, there you have it. The sets and costumes look cheap, it starts off unevenly paced filled to the brim with astoundingly poor dialog, and eventually becomes a mindless, fun diversion. You’d think with the billion dollar box office gross and the multiple-film lead-up/hype it would have been a more ambitious and rewarding experience. Maybe they’re saving it for the sequel. Lord knows they’ve got an awesomely dark and disturbed choice of villain for it.

It’s an odd mixture from the start. It grafts one of Shakespeare’s lesser known (and, in general, lesser) works to a movie that’s trying to recapture some of the artistry and brains of The Hurt Locker. That is never quite succeeds is obvious, that it even dared is admirable, that it is Ralph Fiennes first directorial effort is remarkable.

Shakespeare is a hard beast to handle for any director, be they modernized adaptations or accurate to the play’s setting. It requires a certain amount of pacing and rhythm, and finding actors who can find the musicality within the language and not fuck it up. Kenneth Branagh keeps getting toted as the modern day Shakespearean adaptor, but his movies are flawed works. (Can we not discuss Keanu Reeves’ performance in Much Ado About Nothing?) Julie Taymor’s Titus was a radical takeoff and succeeded more than it failed, and had an artist with a bold, singular and unique vision and voice behind it.

But what does this have to do with Coriolanus? Quite simply, this has more to do with Taymor’s reinventions than with Branagh’s star-studded and inert adaptations. The modern-day warfare setting actually works fairly well with the storyline, since Fiennes never tries to push any agenda or strain the parallels and allegories too far. Instead he just lets the text wrap itself around the setting, and it mostly proves that the “more things change the more they stay the same” platitude.

But the insistence on rapid-fire editing and handheld shaky camera movements throughout the film prove more distracting and distancing from the material than anything else. When the camera is allowed to form a coherent image, framing the actors and settings and observing as they scheme and speechify, it becomes electrically alive. The magic of Shakespeare is the dialog, and very rarely is it the business going on around it.

But Fiennes does wisely assemble a game cast filled with both heavyweights and unexpected choices. Gerard Butler, seemingly sacrificing his earlier career choices for two acting modes – rom-com uncouth bastard or action-film belter constantly speaking from his well-oiled and defined chest, here proves to be a delight. He never truly finds the right groove of the language and his performance is not as polished as it would or should be, but he acquits himself very well and proves surprisingly nuanced and effective. Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox are, of course, wonderful in their roles. But who would expect anything less from those two?

Coriolanus though is truly a two-actor showcase. Vanessa Redgrave as Volumina, Coriolanus’ mother, is a scheming yet loyal, power-hungry yet rational contradictory presence seeking to usher her son into the consulship in which she will be a phantom puppet string manipulator. And Fiennes in the title role proves, once more, that he is one of the most underrated and undervalued actors currently working. His shaved head, battle scars and permanent sneer when not in the battlefield quickly essay a man who is not at peace if he isn’t causing bloodshed. He has no love or time or patience for political games, instead believing that his various militaristic accomplishments prove his worth. He is ultimately undone by his disdain for the general populace and his inability to put on a happy front and deliver sound bites and perform tap-dance routines for the public to consume. His performance shows us that perhaps this man is both a perpetuator of crimes and brutality and the victim of a different kind of brutality and criminality. The movie itself may be messy and chaotic, but it has enough merits to be worth a look.

Yes, it is an utterly bizarre world that Genesis and Lady Jaye inhabit, but the thing that sticks with you the most is the love and affection that they genuinely feel for each other and their group of friends/colleagues. The assemblage of audio and video forms a disorientating peak into their lives together, and the work that they created.

If nothing else, the anarchic, freewheeling spirit of the film evokes the music, short films and performance pieces of Genesis P’orridge and Lady Jaye. Their singular vision as artists – that their bodies and love affair was the creation of a new gender identity – is reflected in the hodgepodge assortment of clips randomly clipped together in-between the basic narrative of how they met, began their love affair and art project, and how Lady Jaye succumbed to cancer.

If the films adherence to resembling their chaotic creation process and work in how it was edited together, it seems safe to say that it wears and grates towards the end. Even at a slim 72 minute running time, it seems not like they ran out of unique things to say or highlight from the couple, but ways in which to say them. But beneath all of the fussiness is a true portrait of a singular, deeply caring and loving couple. They respect and admire each other, and show a genuine urge to bring out the best in each other. It is an unconventional relationship, but it is proof positive that love comes in various shapes and sizes, that each couple is its own unique entity, and, in the end, we always remember those who touched our lives the deepest and they’re never truly gone or forgotten because the love will remain, forever.

The Universal Monsters are a cinematic world that I love to inhabit. Yes, the sets are obviously artificial creations comprised of plywood, paint and an overactive fog machine, but with the proper cinematography, they can be given a dramatic, atmospheric spark. It’s a deliciously oddball world where misfits and damaged souls turn into devilish, monstrous ids who leave carnage and destruction behind, but really are just poor misunderstood souls who need a friend and to be loved. Having said all of that, I must admit to a bit sacrilege: Dracula has always been my least favorite of the major players. I love the novel, and other film adaptations, and while this particular one does have its charms and high points, I think the parts are more interesting than the total.

Before it descends into a drawing room melodrama with too much chatter and not enough creepy, expressionistic gothic horror, Dracula lives up to the acres of prose and critical analysis describing why it’s a classic and thought of as a masterpiece. The whole lead-up to England is rendered in a dream-like, hallucinatory manner which has more in common with grotesque fever dreams than anything else.

Dracula’s castle, seemingly filled to the brim with spider webs, rats, and, for some inexplicable reason, armadillos, lit mostly by torches and giant shattered windows which seem to illuminate all of the dust and rot in the air, is a masterpiece of visual invention. This is the kind of setting that only could be brought to life through cinema. It is fully realized, a completely original creation which seems to isolate the film somewhere between the Victorian era and the 1930s. A castle made up of equal parts European elegance gone to waste, and a living castle from some fairy-tale’s wicked aristocracy.

This opening (roughly) 30 minute stretch is a film firing on all cylinders, creating something wholly unique and original, a film that easily marries German expressionism to the American cinema. It’s aided by two fantastic performances which liven up even the deadest of scenes in the second and third sections of the film. Dwight Frye as Renfield essays the transition from cheerful, plucky, green English solicitor to insane, blood-thirsty madman with remarkable skill. The shot of him looking up through the hold of a ship is not only deservedly famous, it’s still disturbing after all these years; his manic smile, bulging eyes and laugh alone are enough to give you nightmares for days. It also signifies the last time Dracula is ever anything of interest.

Once we exit the ship and make our way through London, the film comes to a crashing bore. Many films have been leveled with just being a “filmed play,” but Dracula is that actual insult being put into practice. The word “uncinematic” shouldn’t be the first thing that pops into your head when discussing the film that married expressionistic techniques to the American film industry, but it’s an apt one. You’re now stuck with 45 minutes of characters sitting around talking and not doing much of anything else. Occasionally an action will happen, but it leads to nothing but more scenes of the characters sitting around talking about the actions they should be taking.

So, thank god for Bela Lugosi’s central performance. Not only does he electrify the film into being watchable and enjoyable during the sloggy second and third chunks of the story like Frye, but his essaying of the character is so much more than the pop culture shorthand of “I vant to suck your blood!” that we’ve come to think of it as in our collective psyche. His Dracula is a collection of European gentlemanly elegance, an undertone of sexual predator and pregnant pauses which speak louder than the actual words he is saying. His seduction of Renfield is highly disturbing for what he doesn’t say, and how freakishly polite and gracious a host he is, before being punctured by moments of aggression and outright violence. His Dracula is a hideous monster interior wrapped up in a sophisticate from the Old World.

I will never question why Dracula is considered a masterpiece, or a great film: the two central performances, the sets, the cinematography, being the first film to marry a European sensibility to a burgeoning American genre, and that it was one of the first super-sized hits to launch the horror genre out of the American film ghetto are all reasons enough to admire it, watch it, even love it. But it’s imperfect – frequently stage bound, unbearably dull and tedious as it goes on – yet, I can’t help but feel a little bad for kicking a classic. Especially the one that launched a group of films that I have always held dear to my heart, but Dracula just doesn’t hold up on its own or when compared to, say, The Bride of Frankenstein.

Its pedigree is first rate, the kind of cinematic stuff of which mythical films are made of. And, from a technical stand point, it’s a lush, dreamy epic filled with war, romance, survival, eternal love and devotion, death and hope. But it never ignites the burner beyond a cool, distant flame when it should have engulfed with scorching white heat. Cold Mountain relies a little too heavily on longing, icy stares in its central relationship, goes a tad too broad with some supporting players, and can’t overcome an episodic narrative structure to really invest us in the tragic romance at the core.

Concerned far less with any true realistic grasp of the Civil War (where exactly are any black characters of note or importance?), and more in-line with a high-class romance novel, Cold Mountain tells the doomed love affair of Inman (Jude Law) and Ada (Nicole Kidman). Their romance was barely starting when the war breaks out and rips them from each other, nothing more than a few longing glances and stolen kisses to sustain themselves upon as they both keep those embers glowing throughout their time apart. One of the film’s main flaws in how icily and distant the central romance is treated. There’s no sexual heat or chemistry between these two, just two pretty people staring at each other vacantly, coldly.

But I digress. While injured in the war, Inman decides to walk (!) back to Ada and Cold Mountain, where she lives. Along the way he encounters one colorful character after another, each played by an actor eager to make a lasting impression with limited screen time. Ada, struggling to stay alive after the death of her father (Donald Sutherland, removed from the film far too soon), gets help from Ruby (Renée Zellweger), a cartoonish spark plug who raises Ada from the living-dead and helps her on her way to self-actualization.

Thus, we have the basic premise for the three hour film. Certain cameo roles linger in the mind and we wish we could have spent more time with them. Philip Seymour Hoffman shows up for two sequences as a randy man of the cloth in the first, and later as the same man long after he’s stopped being a preacher. His rascal of a character is well-played by Hoffman (but when is he ever bad?), and enlivens up the scenes against wooden Inman. Then there is Brendan Gleeson, Ethan Suplee and Jack White (of the White Stripes) as a trio of traveling musicians with ties to Ruby. Gleeson is particularly effective in his scenes as he seems to be playing an actual person in an actual landscape as opposed to much of the pretty doll posturing of several other cast members. And Jack White surprisingly shows off a gift for acting, he’s tender, sweet and head-over-heels for Ruby.

The most touching episode is the one in which Inman comes across a war widow with a young infant. The widow is played by Natalie Portman in a truly poignant performance. She’s desperate for a little bit of human kindness and for the warmth and comfort of her husband. What almost befalls her is too awful a fate for such a sweet, wounded creature, and I won’t reveal what happens or how it plays out, but Portman knocks her brief screen time out of the park.

This takes us back to our three leads, who offer up varying performances in what feels like two or three tonally different movies. Law and Kidman, 90% of their screen time kept apart, seem to live in two different films. Law’s a survival story about the hellish nature of war, the determination to return to domesticity, and he quietly delivers a nice performance. There are moments of pure movie star charisma, but he isn’t asked to do too much besides stare off prettily and grow an increasingly large amount of facial hair (which looks far too groomed). His character is the one stuck travelling from place to place, meeting new and quirky bit players. He must be the stoic, determined hero to everyone else’s scenery-chewing.

Kidman, an actress who can be cold and remote in the best possible ways, is almost mostly tasked with staring off into the distance. Even in the scenes where she is supposed to look like death is encroaching upon her, her hair, eyebrows and nails are all far too manicured. This distances us from her performance, which makes it easy to feel sympathetic for her but hard to root for her. That she spends so much time moodily walking around and gazing into the distance is the fault of the script, as Kidman’s presence gives her character an ethereal edge that is quite nice.

Zellweger appears on the screen and saves us from the tedium of watching Inman and Ada walk around, stare dreamily, and say maybe two words for long stretches of time. But her performance is so broad that it dips into caricature. She’s got a great introduction and a few good scenes with Gleeson, but she decides to pitch her performance at such a large, grand level that it gets to be a little too much. She seems to have wandered in from an entirely different movie.

But Cold Mountain isn’t all bad. There’s many parts to praise – the sets, costumes, cinematography, score are all top rate. Yet everything is working to look so glossy and classy that it keeps the film at a remote glance. There is no whole, complete work of art that the film is working towards. And there are a few moments of true emotion and human connection which are quite nice, yet too much time is spent looking at what amounts to a moving diorama. But it sure is pretty to look at.

Hand-drawn animation doesn’t appear nearly often enough for my liking. But the few recent hand-drawn films have done unique and bold things with the genre. There’s Studio Ghibli, who continually produces smart, adult-orientated features, and foreign films like Peresepolis and The Secret of Kells which expand the look and language of the medium.

The Secret of Kells, with its bold lines, matte surfaces and distinct lack of perspective and background, is a wondrous and beautiful film to absorb yourself into. It looks like an illuminated manuscript given life. And, much like Studio Ghibli and Persepolis, has a much calmer, quieter pace and tone than the frantic American offerings. Since it’s based on Irish mythology and folklore, which I know very little about, some of the symbols and story beats are vague and elliptical to me, but it’s a gorgeous place to get a little lost in.

I’ve said this before about both animated and foreign films, they can give us a window into other cultures, give us faces and voices we wouldn’t dream of utilizing in American films, and this film is a prime example of my point. Learning about Aisling, a woodland fairy who can take the form of a white wolf, was fascinating to me. I still have numerous questions about them, but the film was a unique introduction to a new variant of a well-known mythological figure. And I knew close to nothing of the Book of Kells other than it was an illuminated manuscript. What makes this book so mystical and magical is something that I’m still unsure of, but I found not knowing every detail to be no hindrance to my enjoyment.

I still have questions about Crom Cruach, a pagan deity whom much of the surrounding plot revolves around and seems to require a basic understanding of to get the deeper symbolic meaning. If nothing else, I walked away with a vast interest in Celtic mythology, and if this literate, intricately animated film can make me, a full-grown adult, interested in reading up more on the subject, I hope it could do the same for younger viewers. But with so many of the DreamWorks, Blue Sky and other animated studios popping out pop-culture heavy, sardonic, ADHD joyless, soulless animated vehicles, I’m not sure this quiet film will entice them enough to make it all the way through.

The only true problem with the film is the rushed ending. No sooner do the Vikings attack the abbey and surrounding village then we’re rushed into a montage of years, decades possibly, zipping past us as the manuscript is finished, our young hero grows up, wanders through the woods and returns to the abbey. This lone sequence breaks the steady, majestic pace of the film, preferring to wrap things up quickly instead of letting it unfold gently. Being an independent production, maybe there wasn’t enough resources to fully conclude the film and this rushed ending was necessary. No matter, the old/new world culture clash, visual originality and constant inventiveness strengthen it. Add in the Celtic, Biblical and pagan mythologies comingling and clashing and you’ve got a boldly original animated film that puts the Shrek franchise and any of the recent Disney princess crop to shame.