OSCAR 2013 - Pre-Show Thoughts & Predictions & Rants

"Why yes, that Anne Hathaway was quite good. But Daniel Day Lewis, now there's a *real* actor. Also, Kathryn Bigelow was snubbed. Oh, and why didn't Spielberg put any vampires into his movie about me?" - Abraham Lincoln

2013 OSCAR PRE-SHOW THOUGHTS AND PREDICTIONS:

- Well, it's once again almost Oscar time, and as usual all anyone can talk about is the politics behind the awards, rather than the actual merit of the films, actors, and directors that are nominated. Personally, I found this year's nominees an odd mix of deserving talent peppered with some truly jaw-dropping omissions. The reason I say jaw-dropping is that you would think that Kathryn Bigelow getting a Best Director nomination, for example, would be a no-brainer - not just as a movie fan, but also if you're going by the Academy's usual tendencies. Sure, last year, many of my favorite films like Drive and Young Adult were snubbed altogether from the Oscar race. But that, at least, was somewhat expected (and it was similarly but sadly expected that some of 2012's most incredible movies - like CLOUD ATLAS - would get excluded). But this year, the Oscars don't even necessarily seem to follow any sort of internal logic. Zero Dark Thirty up for Best Picture, but no Bigelow for Best Director (despite the film's incredible direction)? Okay ...

Again, it comes down more to politics and cult of personality - in terms of nominations, winners, and in the public discourse. Example #1: Ben Affleck. Look, Argo was a fantastic film, and Ben Affleck's transition from actor-in-bad-movies to director-of-awesome-movies has been really cool to watch. But is it reasonable to say that there were at least five other films in 2012 that were better-directed than Argo? Yes, very reasonable in my estimation. Is it also reasonable to say that there were several films in 2012 that were, overall, even better and more impactful than Argo? Yes, also reasonable. So, people, stop talking about Ben Affleck. The man will get his due in due time.

Of course, there are many great films and great performances that I would have loved to have seen recognized at this year's Oscars. To that end ...

MY TOP 15 SNUBBED OSCAR PICKS:

1.) Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director (Zero Dark Thirty)
2.) Moonrise Kingdom for Best Picture
3.) Wes Anderson for Best Director (Moonrise Kingdom)
4.) Quentin Tarantino for Best Director (Django Unchained)
5.) Dwight Henry for Best Supporting Actor (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
6.) Frank Langella for Best Actor (Robot & Frank)
7.) Jim Broadbent for Best Supporting Actor (Cloud Atlas)
8.) Tom Tywer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski for Best Director (Cloud Atlas)
9.) Doona Bae for Best Supporting Actress (Cloud Atlas)
10.) Safety Not Guaranteed for Best Picture or Best Original Screenplay
11.) Rian Johnson for Best Director (Looper)
12.) Liam Neeson for Best Actor (The Grey)
13.) The Grey for Best Picture
14.) Jason Clarke for Best Supporting Actor (Zero Dark Thirty)
15.) Samuel L. Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Supporting Actor (Django Unchained)

No doubt, many of the Academy's picks this year are "safe." Even a movie like Zero Dark Thirty, which in past years would be a shoe-in, may end up getting penalized for the political controversy surrounding it. And of course, despite efforts to make the Oscars feel a little younger and fresher, with indie picks like the very-much-deserving Beasts of the Southern Wild, there is still a pretty wide gulf between what is and isn't considered an "Oscar movie." Suffice it to say, the big exclusion this year in that regard was clearly Moonrise Kingdom - one of Wes Anderson's best-ever. But several other notable indies with quirky sensibilities - Safety Not Guaranteed and Robot & Frank, for example, were also left off the list completely. So too goes it for 2012's big action flicks that were deserving of consideration. Movies like The Avengers, The Grey, and The Raid: Redemption were all pulpy and over-the-top in their own way, sure - but all were also absolutely impeccably-made and deserving of awards consideration (The Grey, in particular, was really overlooked by critics in general - it's a future cult classic, no question). Similar sentiments could be shared about the superlative Cloud Atlas. It's a big, epic, sweeping, emotionally-charged movie - with Oscar-friendly actors like Tom Hanks and Halle Barry and Jim Broadbent. But I suppose that the future-shock sensibilities of the Wachowskis are still a bit too much for most people (especially when removed from the confines of hard sci-fi a la The Matrix), most especially Oscar voters. I know that opinion was divided on Cloud Atlas, but man, to me it was the year's most epic cinematic tour de force.


With all that said ... that still doesn't make it cool to hate on great films just because they *were* showered with golden Oscar love (hmm, that sounded wrong -- oh well). Chief example - LINCOLN. Okay, so perhaps Spielberg flubbed the ending a little bit, but still - this was a phenomenal film, and certainly one of the year's most towering cinematic achievements. I'll be very happy for actor-supreme Daniel Day Lewis should he win Best Actor, and for living legend Spielberg if he were to win for Best Director. Honestly, after the disappointing War Horse, Lincoln was a great return to form for him. Silver Linings Playbook is another one that certain people have been hating on. I'll defend the movie to anyone - it's just a fantastic film, and it's got everything - amazing lead performances, knockout direction from David O. Russell ... And trust me, it's such a well-done, fell-good movie - part of me really *wants* to hate on it, just because. But again, forget the cult of personality stuff, forget misgivings about anything labeled as a romantic comedy, and just watch the movie with an open mind. I did, and I loved it. Has part of me loved it not-as-much after it seemed to inspire hundreds of annoying Facebook posts stating stuff to the effect of "ZOMG NEW FAV MOVIE EVS!". Yes. Ugh. Please, go away. And was Jackie Weaver's part really substantial enough to deserve an Oscar nom? Probably not. But my point is: don't hate on Lincoln just because it seems ready-made for Oscar love, don't hate on Silver Linings just because you find Bradley Cooper annoying from making the godawful Hangover movies (it's a hurdle to get over, I know), and hey, don't even hate on Amour because you haven't seen it yet and/or the idea of a movie about two old people slowly dying makes you want to run and hide and cry.

So here we go, here are my picks:

DANNY'S OSCAR PICKS 2013:

BEST PICTURE

Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty
Will Win: Argo

- This one annoys me, because I feel like an Argo win is going to have more to do with politics than anything else. No question in my mind: Zero Dark Thirty was the better film of the two. Whereas Argo simplified its story by packaging it as a Hollywood-style thriller, Zero Dark Thirty had zero pandering - it was challenging, smart, and thematically ambitious. But Argo is a story about how Hollywood saved the world. Therefore, there's probably no beating it.

BEST ACTOR

Should Win: Daniel Day Lewis
Will Win: Daniel Day Lewis

- There are few things that movie fans of all stripes can agree on, but one of them is this: Daniel Day Lewis is a beast. The man can do no wrong, and when he's got a role this good, this iconic, this well-written (kudos, Tony Kushner) ... there's no stopping him.

BEST ACTRESS

Should Win: Jessica Chastain
Will Win: Jessica Lawrence

- I'm actually a huge fan of both Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty and of Lawrence in Sliver Linings. Personally, I give the slight edge to Chastain, because her role in that film was subtler, more nuanced, and ultimately more powerful and iconic. But Lawrence was also fantastic - both very funny and very fearless - and she'll probably be rewarded for it. This was one of those "I just made America fall in love with me" roles - and Lawrence's real-life lovability probably also doesn't hurt her chances.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Should Win: Tommy Lee Jones
Will Win: Tommy Lee Jones

- TLJ was just a firecracker in Lincoln, and it's one of those incredible roles that quite simply brings the house down. It was a reminder of why Tommy Lee is such a damn fine actor - I mean, he steals the show in a movie that's basically bursting at the seams with A-level actors. My only regret is that this award will come at the expense of the always-awesome Christoph Waltz. But the weird thing about his role in Django is that it's really the lead role. Same goes for Philip Seymour-Hoffman in The Master (and that movie's mixed reactions will hurt it - justifiably so in my opinion - despite its two incredible lead performances)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Should Win: Anne Hathaway
Will Win: Anne Hathaway

- Hmm ... I don't really like the nominees in this category, which is quite weak this year overall. That said, Anne Hathaway unquestionably tore the house down in her part in Les Mis. But my feelings about the film as a whole were very mixed, and it makes you wonder about how Oscar votes should be considered. It's like picking the NBA MVP ... can you really give it to the player with the best points-per-game average if his team has a losing record? Not really. So, personally, I don't like giving Hathaway a prize if the film as a whole was only okay (though, somehow, it's nominated for Best Picture). But Hathaway will win, and unfortunately, there are no other nominees who make a strong enough of a case to knock her out.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Should Win: Frankenweenie
Will Win: Wreck-It Ralph

- Man ... Frankenweenie was one of my favorite films of 2012, and in my opinion one of the most unfairly overlooked. People have apparently so soured on Tim Burton that they decided not to pay attention to a film that was a true return-to-form for him. No question in my mind, Frankenweenie should win. But what movie did Oscar voters' kids and grandkids love most this year? No question on that one either - Wreck-It Ralph FTW.

BEST DIRECTOR

Should Win: toss-up
Will Win: David O. Russell

- This is easily the hardest major category to call and in which to pick a favorite. Spielberg may be the favorite in some respects, but Lincoln is also not really a director showpiece (it's an actor showpiece). Spielberg could still win, but I think ultimately David O. Russell will take it for the way he skillfully framed Silver Linings Playbook, to get the most out of his actors, and to really take the audience on an emotional roller-coaster ride. I also really like Ang Lee's work on Life of Pi. But I wonder if some of the more controversial creative choices he made on the film (the sometimes-awkward framing device, for example) will hurt him. And ... I also give incredible props to Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild. In some ways he might be my personal pick here for what he accomplished on a low budget and with a cast of mostly untrained actors. The whole category feels off without Kathryn Bigelow though - she was my clear #1 pick as Best Director of 2012 ... how is she not here? But ultimately, Russell, I think, takes it (and if he does, I expect a huge backlash from film geeks, to whom I say in advance "stay calm").

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty
Will Win: Zero Dark Thirty

- I have a feeling that ZDT will win this category as a sort of "we really did love ya', but hey, our hands were tied" sort of make-up prize. It also helps that writer Mark Boal has a great reputation, and is known as the rare screenwriter who does true journalistic-style research while crafting his scripts. I will say, this is a loaded category. Tarantino and Wes Anderson are two heavyweights and personal favorites, and would be more-than-deserving winners.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Should Win: Lincoln
Will Win: Lincoln

- Lincoln had a phenomenal screenplay, packed with memorable moments and quotable lines. Tony Kushner nearly topped his previous collaboration with Spielberg, Munich, and delivered a definitive account of Lincoln's presidency and the passage of the 13th amendment.

BEST FOREIGN FILM

Should Win: no opinion
Will Win: Amour

- Amour - also nominated for Best Picture, making it a seeming shoe-in for this award. Have also heard great things about films like Kon-Tiki, but seems like Amour's got this one locked.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Should Win: Life of Pi
Will Win: Les Mis

- To me, Life of Pi was the most visually-beautiful film of the year. But Oscar loves a period piece, and Les Mis is likely this year's winner in many of these categories.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Should Win: Lincoln
Will Win: Les Mis

- See above.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

Should Win: "Skyfall"
Will Win: "Skyfall"

- Come on now, "Skyfall" is the only legit song in this category - and it's a pretty excellent song too from no less than beloved songstress Adele. Plus, it's an acknowledgement of the quite-good latest Bond flick, which many feel was snubbed from other categories.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Should Win: Lincoln
Will Win: Lincoln

- John Williams ... the man is a legend and an institution, to the point where you almost want to discount him just because, well, been-there, done-that. But let's be honest, the score for Lincoln literally gave me chills ... DURING THE TRAILER. On a sidenote though, how in the heck was Cloud Atlas not nominated here?! Whatever else you think of the film, its score was incredible. Damn you, Oscars.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Should Win: no opinion
Will Win: Searching for Sugar Man

- Man, there are a couple of films on this list that I've been dying to see - most of all The Gatekeepers and Searching for Sugar Man, which I've heard universally great things about. It seems like this story about a long-forgotten musician who finds he has a following across the globe is the one to beat.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Should win: Life of Pi
Will Win: Life of Pi

- Life of Pi, again, looked stunning. I've got to go with it here. Skyfall is perhaps a close second, and a Skyfall win would mean a win for the great Roger Deakins, who's somehow never won an Oscar. But still, Life of Pi is my pick. I mean, come on - that flying-fish scene? Incredible.

BEST FILM EDITING

Should Win: Argo
Will Win: Argo

- Here's one where I give it up for Argo - the film was impeccably edited. The way the movie creates tension and builds up to its harrowing finale is incredible, and deserves to be rewarded (and also, for its amazing opening sequence with the raid on the U.S. embassy).

BEST MAKEUP

Should Win: The Hobbit
Will Win: Les Mis

- The Hobbit has Gandalf and Bilbo and Orcs. That, to me, makes it worthy (even if the movie does use too much CGI, in places it should have stuck to practical f/x). But Les Mis will take it.

BEST SOUND EDITING

Should Win: Argo
Will Win: Argo

- Argo wins this, and deservedly so. On a technical level, the movie is top-notch - and its mixture of real-life news footage with new footage (particularly in terms of audio) is also aces.

BEST SOUND MIXING

Should Win: Les Mis
Will Win: Les Mis

- Here's where I do give Les Mis props - the way they captured live singing and somehow made it work in the context of a film is actually a pretty amazing trick.

BEST VISUAL F/X

Should Win: Life of Pi
Will Win: Life of Pi

- Part of me wants to give at least a shout-out to Prometheus. Script issues aside, it was one of the most visually-stunning films I've seen, well, ever. That said, Life of Pi creates a CGI tiger (as well as an entire menagerie of wild animals) that are utterly convincing. That tiger becomes not just one of the year's most impressive visual effects, but also one of the year's most compelling characters. Now that's award-worthy.

BEST SHORT FILM - ANIMATED

Should Win: Paperman
Will Win: Paperman



- There is a SIMPSONS short nominated here. The Simpsons could win Oscar gold, and hey, that would be sort of awesome. But Paperman ... I mean, it's incredible. I think it got a round of applause in the theater when I saw it. It's one of those pieces that makes you just smile and think "wow, animation kicks ass."

BEST SHORT FILM - LIVE ACTION

Should Win: ???
Will Win: Asad

BEST DOCUMENTARY - SHORT

Should Win: ???
Will Win: Redemption

- And that's it for now. Feel free to leave comments or picks of your own. Or just go watch Cloud Atlas and cry about it not getting any nominations. Or watch The Grey, and be awesome. But hey, no matter who wins or loses, just, you know, don't be mean. Because as Lincoln said ..."shall we stop this bleeding?" Yes, Mr. President ... we shall.

SIDE EFFECTS Is A Twisty, Hitchcock-Esque Thriller

SIDE EFFECTS Review:

- The less you know about Side Effects, the better. Well, to some extent. The marketing for the film - purportedly director Steven Soderbergh's final directorial effort - led me to believe that this would be a socio-political thriller in the vein of his earlier Contagion. But actually, this is something much different. Yes, elements of the film do offer a chilling look at the Big Pharma industry and our society's over-reliance on mood-altering prescription drugs. But Soderbergh isn't content to just create some sort of industry expose. What he does seem interested in is crafting a suspenseful, twist-filled thriller that calls to mind the films of Hitchcock and other masters of the genre. And so I say go into SIDE EFFECTS with an open-mind, and simply be aware that all is not as it seems.

The events that kick off the plot barely hint at what's to come, and Soderbergh is clearly enjoying toying with us and leading us down a particular narrative path, only to take some sharp right turns. As the movie begins, we meet Emily (Rooney Mara), a young woman soon to be reunited with her husband Martin (Channing Tatum), now that he's finished a four-year stint in jail for insider trading. Emily is doing her best to re-acclimate to married life, but she is struggling. She's had a hard go of it over the last few years, and has struggled with depression and anxiety. When her husband returns, she is despondent and distant. And so, Emily begins seeing a well-regarded psychiatrist, Dr. Banks (Jude Law) to try to improve her mental health. Banks is a good shrink, but he's also very much in bed with the Big Pharma companies that recruit people like him to distribute their latest anti-depression drugs. With a big payday coming his way from its manufacturers, Banks puts Emily on the new drug - called Ablixa. And, well ... that's where things start to get weird.

To say anymore about the plot would be to give too much away. But I got a lot of enjoyment from watching that rare film where I really had no idea what was coming - where the director seemed intent on pulling the rug from under us and subverting our expectations. It helps that Soderbergh does such a masterful job at ratcheting up the tension. The movie brims with an edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting intensity that rarely lets up. And Soderbergh keeps things chugging along at a solid clip - mixing the muted colors and windy-city urban environments of 70's thrillers with the claustrophobic, boxed-in vibe of old film noirs. What I also really liked was that the script by Scott Z. Burns keeps you guessing. For much of the film, even as new information is released, you're still not 100% sure who's lying, who we can trust, and who may just be out-of-their-mind. The movie, as it goes, invites theorizing and guessing games, and half the fun is trying to stay a step ahead of the film.

What does eventually derail things a bit is the sheer heights of craziness that the plot goes to. What starts out as a more straightforward film ends up going to some pretty weird, out-there places. And to accept some of the movie's more far-out turns requires some major, major suspension of disbelief. Suffice it to say, this is one where you'll be actively wondering just *how* everything fits together, and why certain things unfolded the way they did, or why certain characters acted in a certain way if it turns out that ________ was actually the case. All of the craziness does sort of stay in the tradition of the kind of left-field twists that Hitchcock was known for, but still ... it can all be a lot to swallow.

But what makes the film so eminently watchable are the rock-solid performances. Rooney Mara is the show-stealer as Emily. I'm not sure that many other actresses could have pulled off what Mara does here - playing a dark, multi-layered character who constantly keeps you guessing. Jude Law, on the other hand, really anchors the film. Although his character is, in some ways, unsympathetic, his maddening quest for the truth about Emily is what propels the movie forward. We're with him every step of the way. Law is one of those great actors who rarely seems to get a part of the quality he deserves - but here, he's got it. A really impressive, memorable performance - and the cat and mouse game that unfolds between him and Mara is uber-compelling - in large part thanks to these two talented actors. Those two carry the film, although Tatum is also quite good, as is Catherine Zeta-Jones - who is sort of a fun x-factor, as an enigmatic psychiatrist who Emily had consulted with prior to meeting Dr. Banks.

The movie is all tension and atmosphere - with Soderbergh delivering a real pot-boiler, made even better thanks to a couple of stellar performances. From the look and feel of the film, to the great, moody score, I really dug the movie's aesthetics. At times, it does walk a line between delivering great twists and going a bit too far for the sake of shock value. But mostly - if this is Soderbergh's final film - it's a testament to the director's mastery of genre and pacing, and his constant willingness to experiment and subvert audience expectations. For me, SIDE EFFECTS was a really cool surprise.

My Grade: B+

IDENTITY THIEF Struggles for Laughs

IDENTITY THIEF Review:

- I like Jason Bateman. I like Melissa McCarthy. And I remain a fan of director Seth Gordon, who gets a near-lifetime pass from me after making one of my favorite films of the last decade, The King of Kong. But IDENTITY THIEF is not worthy of the talents of any of those three. It's a comedy that aims only for the most obvious targets, with a story that barely holds together, and jokes that almost universally fall flat. It's a movie that, at times, is so dire that it actually made me feel sorry for those involved - McCarthy in particular. McCarthy is a talented and funny woman. She does not need to be doing this sort of bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. She doesn't need to do a movie where nearly every joke is about how she's fat/ugly/gross. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of controversy about criticisms of the actress and her work. I wholeheartedly agree that derogatory comments directed at the actress are unwarranted and uncalled for. But what's sad is that this is a film that almost invites those kind of comments. That said, sometimes a movie can transcend a basic or uninspired premise if the jokes hit. In Identity Thief, they do not. They land with a thud.

The film has one of those only-in-Hollywood premises in which Bateman, as struggling financial analyst Sandy Bigelow Patterson, has his identity stolen from him by McCarthy's trailer-trash crook Diana. Bateman is on shaky ground at his job and in some financial trouble already, so he is desperate to reclaim his ID from McCarthy. And so a plan is arranged in which he'll track her down himself, and somehow force her to come back with him and confess her crimes to the police, thus exonerating him of all of the various things done in his name and with his bank account.

The film is structured very much like any given 80's-era roadtrip film, with the unlikely duo of Sandy and Diana chasing each other, being chased (they run afoul of a couple of shady characters who Diana has gotten mixed up with), and getting into trouble as they journey cross-country.

To that end, the film gets a boost from a few fun actors like Robert Patrick and Jonathan Banks (of Breaking Bad) showing up as criminal heavies. But they also feel underutilized (Banks, especially), and they - like almost everything else in the movie - feel like distractions to give Bateman and McCarthy something to keep them occupied. Plenty of great comedies have gotten laughs by placing their clueless main characters into these sorts of everyone-is-after-'em situations, but Identity Thief never really has fun with that concept. Again, all of the shenanigans just feel like filler. Another great example is Eric Stonestreet's appearance as a southern-fried horndog who takes a liking to McCarthy. There is literally no point to the character except to say: isn't it funny to watch two fat people get it on? Actually, it's not that funny, especially given that the movie delivers the extended scenes of plus-sized lovin' with barely any boundary-pushing. What I'm getting at is - I don't mind a good gross-out gag as long as it's suitably shocking and unexpected. But everything in Identity Thief is *exactly* what you would expect.

Aside from some sparks of life from Patrick, other cast members like Amanda Peet, John Cho, and Jon Favreau seem to be simply going through the motions. Bateman could play this part in his sleep, and he basically does. Okay, I'll give him credit - he gives it the old college try. But even a guy with his expert comic timing just can't do much with such a dud of a script. It's no surprise then that the movie's few chuckle-worthy moments are the ones that feel at least semi-improvised. McCarthy had some scene-stealing moments just recently in the improv-friendly Judd Apatow's This Is 40, and she gets in a couple of off-script-seeming lines here and there in this one that are, easily, the highlights of the film. But those moments are few and far between. Most of the dialogue is just painfully by-the-numbers.

Now, perhaps this movie could have been a harmless-if-not-hilarious film if it didn't try to accentuate its comedy with some absolutely grating moralizing. What made me actively irritated with the film was its insistence that, after an hour and a half of convincing us that Diana was a gross, horrible, selfish person - all of a sudden we're supposed to buy her as a character that we should care for and root for. We're supposed to buy that Jason Bateman would befriend and care for this woman after she just ruined his life. We're supposed to believe that after a quick makeover and a new dress, Diana is no longer an ugly beast, but a beautiful woman who is also, really, beautiful on the inside. The movie goes for pure sentimentality that is totally unearned. And the movie feels hypocritical for trying to make us laugh at the expense of Diane - to make her the monstrous villain of the film - only to quickly try to turn the tables and make her likable. It all feels pretty cheap, and it really soured me even further on the movie. What gets me is that the movie could have told the story of Diana's personal journey from selfish criminal to good and selfless person. But it never really tells that story. It milks McCarthy for every pratfall and gross-out moment it can, and then suddenly flips a switch and says no, we the audience - like Bateman - had her all wrong. And so I cringed at that moment when McCarthy presents herself to Bateman done-up and in a nice dress, and he smiles at the woman who ruined his life and says "you look beautiful." McCarthy's looks had never been a plot-point until then - so it feels like a half-hearted apology for everything that came before at her expense. Finally, there's some sort of explanation that McCarthy steals identities because she herself never had a real identity. All info-dumped at the end of the movie. All contrived because the movie couldn't stand by having McCarthy simply play a badguy. I'm trying to verbalize why the movie so rubbed me the wrong way, and it might be this: on paper, the movie was about a woman who steals someone's identity to comedic effect, but in practice, it ends up - for no good reason - being a movie about how a fat, weird, ugly, and misunderstood person may also be a good (and maybe even not-so-ugly!) person deep down inside. I hate that that's a movie. It's 2013, we shouldn't need a movie to tell us this. And I'm not pulling the fat thing out of thin air. Like I said, a good portion of the movie's jokes are about McCarthy's size and the way she looks. Except when the movie is about how we shouldn't judge her for the very qualities it mocks. In my book, that's not necessarily a recipe for great comedy.

My Grade: C-

BULLET TO THE HEAD Hits Hard

BULLET TO THE HEAD Review:

- Bullet to the Head probably could not have been released at a worse time. It's a violent, dark action film that's a throwback to the 80's when these sorts of grimy, un-PC splatterfests were the norm at the cinema, often starring Sylvester Stallone, and often directed by guys like Walter Hill, who returns from a lengthy hiatus to helm this one. In the wake of serious questions about violence in the entertainment industry, it's no wonder that an old-school shoot-'em-up titled Bullet to the Head bombed at the box-office. To that end, there's a whole generation that frowns upon the old-school, testosterone-driven style of filmmaking that is the bread and butter of guys like Stallone. Coming hot off the heels of Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand biting the box-office dust, it is no surprise that the darker, grittier Bullet to the Head also tanked badly. Still, if you're an old-school action fan, I think the film is worth a look. It's not a genius movie by any means, but I found it a refreshing throwback that oozed Walter Hill's trademark neo-noir atmosphere. This is the kind of R-rated forbidden fruit that kids of the 80's will be able to appreciate - the kind of no-holds-barred badassery that you rarely see anymore.

Again, that's not to say that Bullet to the Head is a fantastic film. It suffers from a very uneven script that lacks the kind of wit and cleverness that could have made this one truly memorable. Hill does his best to polish things up with some decent one-liners, some hard-hitting narration from Stallone's world-weary hitman character, and some atmospheric direction that recalls classic 80's action. But it's not quite enough to ensure that the film 100% clicks. A lot of it is the script, which falls flat in places (for every decent zinger, there are probably two clunkers), and never really finds its through-line. Essentially, this is the story of a hard-boiled hitman (Stallone), forced to team with a dogged but fresh-faced cop (Sung Kang), to take down a cabal of corrupt businessmen. The recurring theme is that both Stallone and Kang have their own moral codes that come into conflict, but they've got to find a middle ground in order to work together. To that end, there's an urban Western-ish vibe to the film ... something that is definitely familiar ground to Hill, best known for films like The Warriors and The Driver. But nothing really clever or novel is done with the premise - with the rift between the two characters - except to emphasize that it exists. Kang also doesn't have any particularly great chemistry with Stallone, and you do wonder if the overall movie might have been elevated with a stronger presence in that role. It's not 100% his fault though ... some of the weakest moments of the film are those in which Kang is supposed to look like this new-school techie just because he (wait for it) uses his smart phone to look up information (made more amusing by the fact that his smart phone is a clunky-looking Blackberry). They could have found more novel ways to play up the differences between Kang and Stallone ... that's for sure.

To that end, an overarching issue is that too many of the film's characters are just utterly generic. Sure, on one level it's fun to see Jason Mamoa (Game of Thrones, Conan) playing a sadistic heavy, or Christian Slater as a drugged-out corporate sleazebag, or Sarah Shahi (Fairly Legal) as Stallone's tattoo-artist daughter ... but you also wish there was at least a little more meat to these characters - something to make them pop. The converse of that, of course, is that the movie is quite well cast, and like I said, it's fun just seeing underutilized actors like Mamoa and Slater and the sultry Shahi in the film. There's even a decent cameo from Holt McCallany, the star of the much-missed cable drama Lights Out.

As for Stallone, he's in fine form here. Sure, he looks a little strange - his face now an odd mesh of grizzled middle age and plastic-y smoothness ... but hey, there are few action icons more charismatic or great at playing the badass than Sly. And it's great to see him in such a dark, hard-boiled role - something we haven't seen him do in quite a while. Stallone puts a lot into this one - and mixes up the character's stoicism with moments of rage, sadness, and sardonic humor.

And then there's Hill. I love the starkness, the coldness, the steely, urban jungle sort of vibe that Hill brings to the film. There's a great economy of storytelling that many other directors could learn from. And ... when the action does ramp up, it's brutal and hard-hitting. That axe-fight teased in the trailers, between Sly and Mamoa? It's even more kickass in the film than I hoped.

I'll also give a special shout-out to the film's score -a great blues/rock medley that screams "old-school action," reminding me of classics like They Live and Hill's own The Warriors. Again, the movie never lacks for atmosphere - it looks, feels, and bleeds badassery on a visual and sonic level.

For me, BULLET TO THE HEAD was an enjoyable film, and a nice reminder of the days when R-rated action flicks from guys like Hill, Carpenter, and others delivered low-budget - but uniquely memorable - thrills. This is not one for the weak of heart. This is old-school. And yeah, the movie has its share of issues ... but sometimes - especially in this world of ultra-slick, decidedly nonthreatening blockbusters - something a little unpolished, a little clunky, a little ugly, a little rough around the edges, a little unsettling ... is just what the doctor ordered.

My Grade: B

WARM BODIES Is a Zombie Movie With Brains (!) and Heart

WARM BODIES Review:

- Don't be fooled by the marketing push - WARM BODIES is most definitely not just "Twilight with zombies." In fact, this is a dark, funny, satirical film that is both reverent of classic zombie films, but also intent on introducing a lot of new, original ideas into the zombie cannon. That said, this is in fact a film about zombie romance. And yes, that's an idea that sounds cheesy or even off-putting on paper - I mean, zombies are heartless undead monsters whose only desire is to feed on human flesh ... right? Well, to Warm Bodies' credit, the romance is handled in a clever manner that has a loose but fairly simple internal logic to it. And against all odds, there's actually some real heart to the film. A zombie film with both brains and heart? Tasty.

Based on a novel, Warm Bodies puts us inside the head of a young zombie ... as it turns out, zombies still have very human-esque inner-thoughts - there's just a vast disconnect between what they are thinking, and what they're actually able to articulate through speech and movement. Their memories of their past lives are fragmented and mostly lost. Our protagonist (Nicholas Hoult) doesn't remember his name, except that it started with "R." But in between his primal drive to feast on humans, he's got a surprisingly complex inner monologue going on. It gets even more complex when, while attacking some humans, R eats the brain of a young guy named Perry (Dave Franco). As it turns out, brains are like a drug for zombies, because eating a brain floods a zombie with memories and feelings from the brain's owner. And so, as he devours Perry's brain in front of his terrified friends, R is flooded with memories and sudden feelings for Perry's girlfriend, Julie (Teresa Palmer). So instead of attacking her, R kidnaps her - in true monster movie fashion - and takes her back to his zombie lair, housed in an airport that's become overrun with the walking dead. There, R tries to maintain some semblance of a human life - he collects old rock records and DVD's (he's amusingly got a copy of the classic "Zombie" in his collection). And as R spends more time with Julie, something strange happens ... he begins to evolve, slowly, and become increasingly less zombie and more human.

Unfortunately for R, he's got some major problems to contend with, even as his humanity slowly begins to return. For one thing, it so happens that Julie's dad (John Malkovich) is the militant leader of what's-left-of- humanity's anti-zombie forces - and he's determined to rescue his daughter and kill all zombies in his way. Secondly, there's a breed of uber-evil skeleton zombies called Bonies - longtime zombies who've devolved into skeletal creatures who kill both humans and regular zombies with equal vigor. The Bonies' numbers have been growing, and they're now becoming a massive threat to everyone, zombies included.

Director Jonathan Levine (50/50) skillfully weaves these threads together. While the heart of the story revolves around the relationship between R and Julie, there's some pretty epic stuff going on in the background, and the movie's got some exciting, visceral action scenes and some uber-cool moments of creature horror. And yet, Levine films a lot of the film in a very straightforward, non-showy style that grounds it in a quirky, left-of-center reality. The action really ramps up in the third act, but before that, there's a major emphasis on comedy and satire. A few movies (think Shaun of the Dead) have done the humans-are-already-basically-zombies angle, but Warm Bodies does it very well and in its own unique manner. R is sort of a great proxy for every smitten guy who can't quite articulate his thoughts and feelings to the girl he's digging. Similarly great is the relationship between R and Rob Cordry's M. Their zombie-bro friendship is hilarious, because their supportive zombie grunts and uncommunicative hang-out sessions are, let's face it, not all that different from the way most dudes act around each other. Cordry is easily one of the film's highlights though - he has some gut-bustingly funny, laugh-out loud lines - but most of the time, he's just slyly funny.

Meanwhile, I give a ton of credit to Hoult for his performance here. The way he's able to create a fully fleshed-out (no pun intended) performance while playing a zombie - it's pretty crazy. Hoult is given the leeway to inject some humanity into the character - especially as R begins his transformation - but the way he mixes zombie mannerisms with real human emotion is well done. Meanwhile, Teresa Palmer shows some real promise as Julie. A cut above other young actresses I've seen, she does a nice job working with Hoult, and the two have a nice chemistry. Also very good is Analeigh Tipton as Julie's best friend Nora - a spunky doctor keen on studying R and his evolving physiology.

If there's one casting complaint, it's probably just that John Malkovich feels underused, and his character underserved. It feels like if you get an actor like Malkovich, it's worth it to give him some scenes to really chew on, and make sure he's got at least a couple of standout moments. Mostly though, he's a non-factor until close to the end of the movie. But I will say, he does make the character into more than he might have been otherwise, and he shines during some key moments of the film.

To that end, the movie's biggest fault is probably that a lot of the details, and the overall mythology, of the film feel glossed over, and in some instances rushed. From little inconsistencies that nag at you (like the zombies being slow moving in some instances, but fast in others), to a lack of overall context for this world and the status and numbers of the human survivors. Some of that detail and world-building does seem to take a major backseat to the central relationship of R and Julie, and all of the various fun/awkward/cutesy moments between them. But hey, the fact that Warm Bodies *does* have so much humor, action, and satire in addition to the romance was, to me, a really cool and welcome surprise.

So, sure, WARM BODIES has a bit of teen angst and young romance, but it works surprisingly well, and in a way where, from the get-go, it's clear that this is in another universe from Twilight and the like. If anything, the film's heart is genuine - there's sweetness and schmaltz, but - who knew? - the film mines some real feel-good vibes from a zombie apocalypse setting. These days, shows like The Walking Dead mire their characters in a never-ending, nihilistic hell that never gets better. Warm Bodies turns the zombie genre on its head by showing that, hey, maybe even in a zombie apocalypse, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

My Grade: B+

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS Is A Bad Brew

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS Review:

- I'm all for a great B-movie. But what I don't like is a bad movie trying to salvage itself by throwing in random edginess, by turning the tables and trying to make the audience think it's in on the joke - when that likely wasn't even the original intention. It can be a fine line. This past summer, for example, a lot of people dismissed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, thinking that its over-the-top title and genre mash-up stylings automatically meant it was a bad movie. And yet, I found it to be a lot of fun - a movie that knew exactly what it was doing, and skillfully walked the line between legitimate action/horror film and self-aware pulp fiction. However, Hansel and Gretel has little of that same finesse. It's violent and gory for the sake of being violent and gory, and its main running gag is to have fairy tale characters drop f-bombs like they're in a Tarantino flick. Furthermore, it all seems fairly tacked-on ... not integral to the plot, and not consistent with the overall tone of the film - which more often than not, is whimsical and cutesy. This makes HANSEL & GRETEL feel like a bit of a mess, unsure if it wants to imitate the Disney-with-a-twist modern fairy tale feel of Once Upon a Time, or to be a B-movie grindhouse flick catering to the midnight movie crowd.

The premise of the film is at once bare-bones and yet overly convoluted. Basically, the Hansel and Gretel of fairy tale fame, following their initial encounter with and disposal of the famous witch who lived in the house-made-of-candy, grow up to become badass, leather-clad witch-hunters in a world that is apparently overrun with witches. That's the simple part. But the movie takes some kind of sadistic pleasure in casually tossing out bits of mythology that we're led to believe are big and important, but that ultimately add up to, well, not much. There's something about Hansel having candy-poisoning, and needing to take a regular injection to keep him healthy and alive (yep, seriously). There's something else about Gretel herself being a witch (because her mother was one?), and therefore being some sort of chosen one - a good witch whose blood contains magical properties. There's a Big Bad - a particularly nasty witch played by Famke Janssen, who has some sort of uber-scheme involving the aforementioned magical witch blood. There's a troll, who is the standard-issue monster-with-a-heart-of-gold. And there's a sort of stock nerdy/fanboy-type character who worships Hansel and Gretel and who joins up with them on their adventures. All of this leads to total brain shut-off about half way through the movie. I wasn't sure what the characters were doing, or why. I pretty much got to the point where I was just in it to see some decent pyrotechnics.

And there are some pretty decent pyrotechnics in the film. The movie doesn't skimp on over-the-top violence, and so there's a lot of dumb-but-fun action that keeps things moving at a decent clip. The film does this whole steampunk thing where the characters all have anachronistic fantasy weapons that are the medieval equivalents of every crazy-ass videogame gun ever imagined. This too translates into the characters' wardrobe - they all look less like fairy tale characters and more like they just dropped in from the Matrix movies. Or probably more accurately, the Underworld movies.

The movie tries way too hard to be badass, but the badassery is virtually all surface-level. Take Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter ... the reason that movie worked so well is because the character of Abe Lincoln is so fully-drawn, and it becomes this great juxtaposition of a well-mannered, soft-spoken, determined U.S. president using his famously steely will to purge his nation of the undead. But Hansel and Gretel ... well, they're pretty much devoid of defining personality traits. Hansel is Jeremy Renner being very Jeremy Renner-esque ... stern, serious, humorless, etc. That's really all there is to the character. And Gemma Arterton's Gretel is similar - perhaps a tad bit spunkier and more carefree, but mostly, it's just Gemma Arterton in form-fitting leather. Not that there's anything wrong with that ... except the movie doesn't even have her do anything particularly sexy or interesting. That's what makes the excessive use of profanity more jarring than novel - it'd be one thing if it somehow fit with the characters' personalities, but since they have such little personality in the first place, it feels very, very forced.

Renner and Arterton both seem only partially-invested in the film, and I don't blame them. They're given very little to sink their teeth into. Luckily, there are some good supporting players in the mix, like a Peter Stormare, a guy who really needs no reason to go all-out and act crazy - he just does, and it helps inject some life into the film. Same goes for Janssen, who if nothing else, seems to have some fun playing the queen-bitch of the witches. The other thing I'll say for the movie is that it does have some fun sets (i.e. the Candy House) and some really nice f/x. In particular, I dug the design and execution of the troll character - who had a Jim Henson-esque look that reminded me of something out of old-school fantasy films.

If only more of the movie dared to go old-school and embrace straight-up fantasy storytelling. The direction mixed quick-cutting new-school chaos with locations that often look less fantastical and more like someone's backyard. The movie features lots of generic-looking fields and forests, and the movie tends to look drab and bland in a way that makes it feel small-scale and low-budget. And rarely have I seen a movie that has such a lack of geography. Hansel and Gretel seem to just wander and stumble from place to place, ending up in a strange village one minute, and in their childhood home the next. Sadly, the one time the movie really grabs you and takes on an epic, imaginative feel is in the animated opening credits, which are quite well done.

I was not one of the haters who prematurely bagged on this flick. In fact, I was pretty excited going in, and eager to see what I hoped would be a fun, delightfully over-the-top genre-bender. The movie was indeed over-the-top, but a couple of good witch-slayings is not enough to create a great movie or even a great B-movie. Ultimately, I had to do my best to enjoy myself by laughing at the movie and its absurdities, but that only got me so far. I suppose there's some enjoyment to be had in watching this ironically - but not much. This isn't a gloriously bad movie - just a mediocre one.

My Grade: C-

THE LAST STAND Infuses Old-School Action With New-School Excitement

THE LAST STAND Review:

- Those who are predisposed not to like Arnold Schwarzenegger's particular brand of pumped-up action movies, well ... they may still get a kick out of THE LAST STAND. The movie is, after all, the American debut of acclaimed Korean director Kim Jee-Woon (I Saw The Devil). And Jee-Woon makes this much more than just a nostalgia trip. This is fresh, funny, slick, exciting, over-the-top filmmaking. This is a potent mix of Asian extreme cinema with good old-fashioned American badassery. On that note, if you did grow up with Arnold, if you do regard him as an action icon, and if you are eagerly awaiting that icon's return to a starring role - well, The Last Stand is a fantastic return to film for the former governor of California. The Last Stand plays perfectly to Arnold's strengths - giving him some great one-liners, some great hard-hitting action, and a story that plays up the actor's iconic, larger-than-life status. The film fully acknowledges Arnold's advancing age - in fact, it has a lot of fun with the concept. But it also shows you why Arnold still kicks ass - it positions him as a throwback and a hardass. Sure, he's older and a bit worse for wear - but come on ... when a sadistic crime lord is heading to your town to lay waste to it, en route to the border - is there anyone else you'd want as your last line of defense? Old-school action movie fans know the answer - and if you have doubts, then The Last Stand will put them to rest.

In The Last Stand, Arnold plays Ray Owens, an ex-LAPD cop who, after some stuff went down in LA, decides to ditch the big city for the quiet life of a small-town sheriff. And so, in a sleepy Arizona border town, Owens serves as the way-overqualified long arm of the law, heading up a barely-qualified staff of deputes. However, Owens and his staff have to step it up when Gabriel Cortez - a dangerous Mexican drug lord - escapes federal custody, steals a souped-up experimental car, and makes a dash for the border - eluding the FBI and local cops at every turn. Cortez appears to be home free and on his way to freedom. Except, of course, for the fact that Owens, his team, and a town full of gun-toting, half-crazy sons-of-bitches still stand in his way - a challenge that Cortez, surely, did not anticipate.

At first glance, the movie's obvious affection for this town full of gun-nuts might come off as a little disquieting, especially in the wake of recent tragedies. But I think there is a clear element of satire here - a streak of absurdist humor that calls attention to the fact that, hey, this is the kind of thing that could *only* happen in the hyper-reality of the movies. On that note, The Last Stand is an incredibly funny movie - this is a film that is winking at the audience the entire way through. It's incredibly self-aware, and in the way it does its best to play to the audience. It's the kind of film that goes for the crazy moments, the applause-worthy one-liners, and that completely understands that, yes, it is an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie - no apologies - and it has a lot of fun reminding us what that means. And yet, it also tweaks the formula - modernizing it for today's more savvy audiences.

And so even though in some ways this is a throwback (my god, an action movie where you can actually follow the action!), it also is super-slick and even a bit dangerous. Kim Jee-Woon infuses the film with the kineticism and style of post-modernist extreme cinema - the kind that's been popularized in Korea thanks to guys like Jee-Woon and Oldboy's Chan Wook-Park, and here in the US thanks to Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and their ilk. Jee-Woon totally gets what we love about old-school action flicks, and gives those qualities a shiny polish of sly self-awareness. But this isn't just a purely silly movie. It's often laugh-out-loud funny, with great gags, and a game cast with plenty of comic chops (Johnny Knoxville, Louis Guzman). But this is also a movie that hits the "awesome" mark over and over again. Everything here is just, well ... satisfying. The story expertly builds and builds until we're chomping at the bit for the climactic showdown. The action hits hard and with impact - visceral gun battles, breakneck car chases, and even a classic fist fight. Point being: even though there's plenty of humor, the movie also brings the pain when need be - and does so in classic, audience-pleasing style. Suffice it to say, it's been a long time since I was so purely and unabashedly rooting for an action film's hero to kick ass and save the day.

 And of course, our heroes are nothing without good villains. And The Last Stand has a very good villain in douchey slimebucket Cortez, played with aplomb by Eduardo Noriega. But even better is the great Peter Stormare as Cortez's advance man, the guy who's made it his personal mission to make Schwarzenegger's town Cortez's gateway to the border. I'm not quite sure what Stormare is going for here (his accent is all over the map), but there's no doubt that he cranks it up to eleven and goes full-on crazy in this film. So yeah, Stormare vs. Arnold feels like an epic battle of iconic hero vs. iconic villain. All that's missing is a wood-chipper. On the side of the angels, there's Knoxville - whose role is nowhere near as substantial as the marketing would have you believe. And that's cool. He's great as a funny supporting character - a local one-man militia who's seemingly been preparing for this criminal invasion his whole life. Guzman - come on, he rules it. As a pudgy, lazy lawman confronted with his first real test of mettle ... he nails it. And then there's Forest Whitaker - another dude who is perfect for the movie's over-the-top aesthetic. As the lead FBI agent tracking Cortez, Whitaker's trademark brand of crazy adds to the movie's pulpy, grindhouse vibe. Hell, there's even a pretty good love story in the mix, as a by-the-book deputy finds herself having to team with her sad-sack ex-boyfriend - a regular in the drunk tank - who's got to rediscover his long-lost mojo in the fight to save the town. Oh, and Harry Dean Stanton has an awesome cameo as an off-his-rocker farmer.

And as for Arnold - sure, maybe he's a bit rough around the edges after a long acting hiatus, but overall he is in fine form here. Nobody else delivers those one-liners with quite the same snap. And hey, he's having fun here. This isn't him coming back and trying to be the Arnold of old. This is him returning as the grizzled, old-school vet who might be a step slow but can still deliver a knockout right hand. This is vintage Arnold, but it's also an encouraging sign that the man's comeback won't just be about him acting like he's still a young man.

On Kim Jee-Woon ... this is most definitely a talent to watch. The guy has a talent for crafting striking, vivid imagery and visual motifs, but also has a knack for crazy-ass action in which you feel every smash, hit, and cut. It's exciting to see him go to work here, bringing together a variety of influences to create an action film that pays homage to what's come beforem but that also feels new and different.

I came out of The Last Stand feeling, well, pumped-up. Here was an exciting blend of old-school action with new-school cinema, that was both a vintage entry in the Ah-nold cannon and something new and different and exciting. The movie crackled with gorgeous visuals and eye-popping action, and the narrative was refreshingly simple-yet-effective. Fans of classic action should run to check this out, as should fans of cutting-edge filmmaking. Arnold is back, yes - but he's brought some exciting new blood with him for his return.

My Grade: B+

A Final Farewell to FRINGE: Thoughts From The Other Side

 A Fond Farewell to FRINGE.

- Back in 2002, The X-Files came to an end, and it felt like the end of an era. I had watched the show since it started in 1993 (I was 10 years old), and I was in college when it ended (I was 20). I could point to a variety of influences that had instilled in me a love for the fantastic, for the mind-expanding, for the weird - but The X-Files would be first and foremost. By the time it was over, I was a bonafide sci-fi geek - and just about everything else on TV at the time seemed tame, boring, and small-minded in comparison. Of course, little did I realize, at the time, that we were on the verge of a new TV renaissance. Thanks to the influence of the grittier, more mature shows on cable TV, and the risks being taken by networks to adapt to a changing, more fragmented audience, we suddenly found ourselves in a new Golden Age of daring, rich, compelling TV. In 2004, Lost premiered, and there it was - the next X-Files - the next sci-fi cult TV phenomenon. Lost put JJ Abrams on the map. It brought a new sense of scale and scope to sci-fi TV. It bombarded the viewer not just with intriguing mysteries, but also with a cast of incredibly interesting characters. Over the years, Lost lost its way a bit, and the time was ripe in 2008 for a new sci-fi series to swoop in and steal some of Lost's buzz. Of course, this new show would also come from producer JJ Abrams, and it would debut with the same sort of excitement and buzz that Lost did years earlier. This was to be the next big thing, the next X-Files, the next must-watch show. This was FRINGE.

FRINGE was one of the first big new shows that I followed after moving to LA in 2005. True, it didn't premiere until 2008, but long before that, I had my eyes on it. I remember getting a hold of the pilot script when it first surfaced. I printed it at work and had a giddy smile on my face - I walked past one of the few co-workers who I thought might share my excitement over it, and proclaimed: "I've got it. The new JJ Abrams pilot. Fringe!" I eagerly paged through the pilot, discovering a tense, ambitious story about a mad scientist freed from a mental ward - reunited with his con-man son in order to help save the world. Joined by a stony FBI Agent, the trio investigated super-science phenomena while uncovering a deeper mystery at the heart of it all. This was great stuff. But one thought kept rolling through my mind: "man, whoever they get to play this mad-scientist guy ... he had better be *good.*"

As it turned out, John Noble was more than good as Dr. Walter Bishop - he was awesome. From Episode 1 of Fringe, I loved Noble's portrayal of a broken man, a science genius with a fractured psyche who had risked his sanity - and the world's safety - to save his son long ago. Even when I had my doubts about Fringe in its early episodes - when I questioned Anna Torv as FBI agent Olivia Dunham, when I wondered if the show was just a sleek would-be X-Files, when I bemoaned the fact that the "monsters-of-the-week" often felt half-heartedly conceived - the thing that always kept me coming back, the reason why I never for a moment considered dropping the show, was John Noble as Walter Bishop.

After five years and countless memorable moments, I think it's time to officially place Dr. Bishop in the category of all-time great, iconic sci-fi characters. Move over Mulder, Scully, Sawyer, and Spock - and make room for the good doctor in all his whacked-out glory. John Noble may have consistently, inexplicably gotten overlooked by the Emmys year after year, but what he did as Walter was nothing short of award-worthy. He crafted a character who was at times side-splittingly funny, but who could also be absolutely terrifying. Walter Bishop could make you laugh, make you shudder, and break your heart in the span of minutes. In middle-age, Walter could come across as a goofy grandfather - an eccentric, good-natured man who loved strawberry milkshakes, Red Vines, fart jokes, and the occasional drug-fueled trip. But his goofiness is also what made him a hero both lovable and tragic. In his youth, Bishop was a hard man - a man of science, a man of hubris, a man who never let morality get in the way of his quest for knowledge. Along with his partner, William Bell (played by Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy), Walter started a program in which he experimented on young children with mind and body-altering chemical compounds - the Cortexifan trials. He developed all sorts of weaponizable things for the government - interested more so with the science behind them than the dangerous implications of their existence. But Walter's ultimate test came when his young son Peter died. Desperate for a way to get his son back, Walter devised a plan to cross-over to another, parallel universe. He found his own doppelganger, and that of his son. He stole the other Peter and brought him back to our world - in doing so, forever damaging the structural integrity of both worlds. Devastated by what he'd done, Walter ended up experimenting on his own brain. He fractured his own mind - robbing himself of his own steely intelligence and becoming mad in the process. And so Fringe, in which we join Walter - not just on his journey to repair his relationship with his son, but to repair the very world he helped to damage - became the epic story of Walter Bishop's redemption.

And that ... that is what made FRINGE such a great show. Through all of the strange twists and turns that its narrative took, it was always held together by a common thematic underpinning. So many of the great shows lost their way over time because they strayed from their central themes, deciding suddenly that the show was *actually* about something entirely different than what was originally intended. But Fringe never went off the rails in that way, because Noble as Bishop was so sturdy an anchor.

John Noble did some of the best acting I've ever seen on Fringe. His "Walterisms," were classic - nonsensical rants of righteous anger ("Potassium Bromate! Do you know what you're putting into our bodies? Death! Delicious, STRAWWWBERRY-flavored death!"), and absurdist asides that would have me rolling with laughter. But Noble's face was also just a well of emotion - sadness, determination, fear, love - the man could do it all. When he played his more with-it alternate from Earth 2, we saw a glimpse of the more tyrannical "Walter That Was." But "our" Walter was a thunderstorm of humor, heart, and emotion - and Noble never failed to nail it.

Of course, this was also Anna Torv's show. Torv was justifiably singled out as a weak link when the show began. As damaged, determined agent Olivian Dunham, Torv often came off as stilted and bland in those early episodes. But she got better. Way better. And over time, Agent Dunham became one of the best and most badass characters on TV - a kickass woman who was smart, fearless, and a crack shot. Over the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about the portrayal of women in TV and film, and the need for strong female characters who aren't just window dressing. Olivia became Exhibit A for how to do a great, strong, legitimately badass female character on television. And Anna Torv, man, she just kept surprising me. When she was asked to play her own alternate (dubbed "Fauxlivia" by fans), she stepped up to the challenge with aplomb. The Earth 2 Olivia shared some of the same traits as her Earth 1 counterpart, but was less restrained - cockier, less empathetic, operating with swagger and a smile. The show kept throwing crazy plot points at Torv, and each time she rose to the occasion. Against all odds, she pulled off a storyline in which Olivia was possessed by the spirit of Nimoy's William Bell, and made it work. In Season 5, she shifted her character to become more subdued, more maternal. Through it all, she made Agent Dunham into one of the absolute best characters on TV. Anna Torv made me a believer.

Joshua Jackson, also. Few took him seriously as an actor before Fringe - but now, you've got to. As Peter Bishop, Jackson began his time on Fringe as a shifty smart-ass, but evolved into a brave, quick-thinking hero who both honored his father and learned from his sins. And you've also got to mention Lance Reddick as Broyles - the no-nonsense, uber-badass leader of Fringe Division, the elite group that Walter, Peter, and Olivia would come to work for. Reddick is so full of gravitas that it hurts. No one else could have given the show the kind of regal, resolute dosage of awesome that he did, week in and week out. There's also Jasika Nicole as Astrid, Walter's loyal lab assistant. Astrid could have been a one-note character, but Jasika made her an integral part of the show, and gave Fringe some of its most heart-filled and touching moments. Her relationship with Walter was so good, so real-seeming, that there may have been no more moving scene in the series finale than their final exchange. Throughout the show, a running gag was that brain-addled Walter could never quite get her name right - calling her everything from Astro to Ashcan. But in the finale, when Walter, in a moment of clarity, looks up at his steadfast partner and remarks "Astrid ... it's a beautiful name" ... my god - amazing.

There are so many other fantastic actors that made an impact on Fringe. Blair Brown made Nina Sharp's ambiguous agenda endlessly fascinating. Nina's company - Massive Dynamic - was surely one of the most intriguing and downright coolest parts of Fringe's sci-fi mythology. Seth Gabel joined the show late as Lincoln Lee, but he immediately became a fan-favorite. On Earth 1, he was shy and geeky, harboring a hopeless crush on Olivia. But on Earth 2, he was a charismatic hotshot - a leader of that world's militaristic version of Fringe Division. Leonard Nimoy, of course, was always a welcome sight as William Bell. But it was the great Jared Harris who became the show's breakout villain - the scarred, hate-filled, universe-hopping David Robert Jones. Kirk Acevedo was also a big part of the show's run, as Olivia's FBI mentor Charlie Francis. For most of Fringe's lifetime, Michael Cervaris was otherworldly as The Observer - even when we found out his name, September, he still was alien-like and mysterious. But in Season 5, humanized and transformed, September became an unexpectedly integral figure in the finale - made all the more great by Cervaris' nuanced performance. As Etta, the grown-up future daughter of Peter and Olivia, Georgina Haig was the fresh-faced hero of Season 5 - the vision of goodness in a world gone mad. Conversely, Michael Kopsa's menacing Captain Windmark was the expressionless face of a dystopian future robbed of light and joy.

You've also got to give a well-deserved shoutout to showrunners J.H. Wyman and Jeff Pinkner. Often overlooked, these two have done what many have not been able to - steer an ambitious sci-fi series through five seasons and let it grow and change while never spiraling out of control. Wyman and Pinkner and the rest of the Fringe team deserve a lot of credit - for a show that told a cohesive big-picture story, but that also delivered some of the finest individual hour-long episodes we've seen on TV over the last decade, period.

Fringe evolved a ton over the years. Looking back, it's hard to believe that the show began life with Torv's Agent Dunham paired with Mark Valley's ill-fated Agent Scott. Or that Ari Graynor was once a series regular as Olivia's sister. Or that Kevin Corrigan's enigmatic Sam Weiss was once thought to be the key to the series' then-numerous mysteries. I never expected that the show's final season would take place in a dystopian future where the once harmless-seeming beings called The Observers ruled the earth with an iron fist. But through it all, FRINGE stayed true to it core themes and characters. Somehow, it took us to other dimensions and other times - from monster-of-the-week procedural to sci-fi serialization - and yet held together as a cohesive narrative that could still be boiled down to its basic thematic tenets.

Fringe adopted many of the best aesthetic qualities of shows like The X-Files and Lost. It had a great atmosphere of foreboding, tinged with an offbeat sense of humor and a surprising amount of heart. The show almost always looked amazing - and featured some truly inspired design for its creatures, characters, and worlds. The music was always a highlight. Especially in the dystopian setting of Season 5, I've loved the John Carpenter-esque score used to maximum dramatic effect. What was so remarkable though was the detail put into these worlds to distinguish, say, our world from the colder, more futuristic Earth 2. Earth 2 felt different, distinct, and of course the details big and small drove that home - from its flying zeppelin ships to its bronze Statue of Liberty to little, fanboy-friendly details like the "alternate" versions of classic comic book covers, glimpsed on the walls of Peter's Earth 2 bedroom. And I'll say it again - the way that the actors on the show portrayed multiple versions of their characters was nothing short of amazing. John Noble as the grimly ruthless "Walternate," Jasika Nicole as autistic savant Earth 2 Astrid, and of course Anna Torv and the multiple versions of Olivia - all amazing. They were so good that when an episode was partially set in Earth 2, you half expected to see other actors' names pop up as special guest stars in the credits.

One thing that I also always loved about Fringe is that Fringe loved science. Lost went off the rails in large part when it abandoned science fiction for all-you-need-is-love spirituality, but FRINGE took joy in science and pseudo-science right up until the very end. Yes, the show did at times infuse its science-y core with a mild dose of hokey "love is the answer" sentimentality, but that never stopped Fringe from being a show that reveled in science in a way that few other shows, ever (okay, maybe Star Trek: The Next Generation), have done. Some of the most joyous moments on Fringe were those in which Walter or Peter giddily explained some neat-o bit of science, often with few visual aids but a chalk or dry-erase board. Fringe was often about the dangers of unchecked science, but it was also very much about the joy of scientific knowledge and discovery. Often, the show would seem to say that there was no problem that couldn't be solved, no jam that these characters couldn't get out of, by using the power of their brains to think outside the box. Fringe celebrated science, intelligence, and creativity. Not to get too political, but in a world in which science, facts, knowledge, and smarts often seem to be viewed with a skeptical eye by the masses, it was awesome to see a show that reminded us of the wonder and awe to be found through brainpower, through innovation, through boundary-pushing ideas.

It's amazing - I've been blogging now for almost 10 years, and Fringe was one of the big shows that I used to write about consistently, back when I was doing weekly TV reviews. Looking back at my initial thoughts on the show, there was indeed a lot of skepticism there at the outset. But Fringe kept evolving - making bold leaps and never failing to take narrative chances. Just as Lost was losing momentum, Fringe was quietly becoming the best show on TV. It barely cracked my Top 10 in 2008, but moved up in 2009. In 2010, I named it the Best TV Show of the Year. The show's second season saw an incredible string of episodes - as we learned about Peter's otherdimensional origins, met a time-travelling Peter Weller in the instant-classic "White Tulip" episode, and got our first glimpse of "the other side," Fringe quickly cemented itself as not just a wannabe, but as a new classic in its own right. Seasons 2 and 3 of Fringe are just off-the-chain good. And Season 5 was a nice epilogue of sorts - a self-contained, highly-serialized sci-fi story that brought things full circle for the characters.

And that finale ... while it felt rushed in parts, I will say that I enjoyed it greatly, especially in terms of how it worked as send-off for these characters, and as a tribute of sorts to the history of the show. The final raid on the Observer HQ was a gloriously insane, Cabin in the Woods-esque climax, as all manner of monsters-of-the-week were unleashed on the Observers, who never knew what hit them. "That is cool!" exclaims Walter, as one of his repossessed super-science weapons causes a hapless Observer to defy gravity and float, immobilized, into the air. And yes, it was friggin' cool. FRINGE never lost sight of the cool-factor over all these years. At the same time, that anchor that was always there - Walter and his journey - again formed the backbone of the finale. Walter, walking off into the great unknown - sad because he must leave his son, but satisfied in that he has, seemingly - and finally! - found his ultimate redemption and done his part to save the same world - the same people - that he once almost destroyed.

What's funny about this finale though is something that's true when most great stories come to an end - the sense of finality mixed with an overpowering feeling that these characters still exist, that they live on. Just as I sometimes wonder what Mulder and Scully are up to these days, I too will wonder about Walter Bishop, and Peter and Olivia, and Broyles, and Astrid. Sure, the finale ended with Walter separated from his family by centuries, and with Olivia and Peter finally at peace with their daughter Etta. But come on, this is FRINGE ... who's to say that some world-conquering threat won't prompt Walter to jump back to the present to enlist the help of his old friends? Who's to say that Peter and Olivia won't get caught up in some transdimensional hijinks that requires getting the old gang back together? Who's to day that Etta won't one day grow up to be the same sort of resourceful badass we saw in Season 5, and go off on her own universe-spanning quest? This is the power of great fiction. These character now exist. Our universe is but one in the multiverse, and only the lack of Walter's Window prevents us from peering over. But for five seasons, our screens have been our Windows. And who's to say that these characters won't continue to evolve, to grow, to persist even when we're not looking in on their lives?

FRINGE's journey undoubtedly became a highly emotional one for its fans and for its cast and crew. This summer, I sat at the Fringe panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, and watched as actors like Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, Jasika Nicole - even Lance Reddick! - broke down in tears talking about the show's final season and what the show had meant to them. Donned in mass-distributed old-timey Observer hats, the audience clapped and cheered in appreciation. Fringe had become one of the Great shows, and more - a beloved fictional universe in its own right. Just as Walter Bishop had done, Fringe itself had "crossed over," through the looking glass, and here it was on the other side.

We've all been part of it - "a great adventure," as Walter might smile and say, "like The Guns of Navarone!" We all travel to different worlds and other universes every day, in our own way. But for five years, I am glad that I got to be a part of this one. Whatever comes next - whatever the next potentially great sci-fi show might be ... it will have a hell of a lot to live up to. Fringe will be missed, but it will also still be there, somewhere, in the multiverse. For us, the adventure continues.

MAMA Is Grim Fairy-Tale Fun

MAMA Review:

- Mama is easily a cut above your average horror film. While it does have some of the standard-issue jump scares and common-sense deprived characters of your typical run-of-the-mill horror flick, it's got a lot that separates it from the pack, and that elevates it above so many of the other generic horror movies to have come out recently. For one thing, under the guidance of producer and creative genius Guillermo Del Toro, Mama has a rich, compelling mythology and an even richer visual palette. The movie looks amazing - blending gothic horror with creepy-fairy-tale fantasy to weave some truly spellbinding sequences. Director Andres Muschietti really knocks it out of the park. The movie also has heart - I can't remember the last time I saw a horror movie where I actually felt fully invested in the characters, and felt not just fright, but sadness and joy. Finally, MAMA has got one of the best actresses in the biz today - Jessica Chastain. Proving that there isn't anything she can't do, Chastain plays against type as a gothed-out riot girl who is an interesting and complex character. MAMA is good stuff - creepy, cool, and a lot of fun.

The movie starts out on a harrowing note, as we're immediately thrust into an intense scene of domestic hell. A mentally unstable father - played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones) - drives his two young daughters through a snow-covered mountain road. We find out that the father has just murdered his wife, and might now have similar intentions for his daughters. But the car crashes, and the trio end up deep in the snow-covered woods. They stumble through the trees and twigs until they come across an old, abandoned cabin. They take shelter, as the father contemplates doing harm to his innocent children. But suddenly, the father is thwarted and disposed of by a vengeful spirit - "Mama." This spirit watches over the children, and for five years, raises them as her own - as feral, animalistic creatures - deep within the woods. Eventually, the children are found by a search party - their uncle Jeffrey (also played by Coster-Waldau) has kept looking for them all this time. He and his girlfriend Annabel (Chastain) take in the girls, who are now very much damaged by their experiences in the woods. The older daughter, Victoria, can still speak - and adjusts a little easier to being in civilization again. But the younger daughter, Lilly, is far gone - she doesn't talk, she walks on all fours, and she still has an unholy connection to the spirit she calls Mama. And Mama still has a connection to the girls. Jealous and rage-filled, Mama haunts Jeffrey and Annabel's home in hopes of reclaiming the girls she believes are hers and hers alone to love.

The two young girls in the film are fantastic. Megan Charpientier, who plays the older Victoria, is the more conflicted of the two - struggling to become a normal girl again and escape the influence of Mama. Lilly, the younger daughter, played by Isabelle Nelisse - is just delightfully deranged - weird and eerie and wholly convincing as a person who has known virtually nothing except for life in the wild. Together, they really help make the movie as good as it is. Even as you're semi-terrified of the girls, you also can't help but come to feel invested in their well-being.

And that same evolution is what makes Jessica Chastain's Annabel such a compelling character. She's a punk rocker who doesn't want kids. She's not a bad person, just a little rough around the edges - and definitely not enthused about taking in two feral kids who talk to a possibly vengeful spirit. But Annabel does slowly come to care for these kids, and it's a character arc that happens slowly, but in a way that really makes Annabel feel fully-fleshed-out. And man, it's sort of amazing watching Chastain in this so soon after Zero Dark Thirty - it's a completely different character, but Chastain just sort of disappears into the role. If you didn't know it was her, you might think it was a completely different actress. She, also, really elevates this film with her performance.

Visually, the movie has a dark fairy-tale vibe and also shows a lot of J-horror influence. Some may complain that some of the movie's visual motifs - like the smoky black holes that appear in the walls, signalling the presence of Mama - are too derivative of other Japan-influenced horror flicks. But I thought there was a real visual inventiveness to the movie that helped it to feel like more than just a pastiche of genre influences. And in the third act, when things get really crazy and sort of epic, there are some gorgeous scenes of ethereal mayhem. There's even a really cool, ultra-stylized dream-sequence that tells Mama's backstory, shot in a disorienting first-person perspective, that I thought worked well.

And again, I found myself surprised at how the movie turned out to be much more than just scares. There's heart in MAMA - as in, there were some moments that I had chills, and some moments where I felt sad and/or moved for these characters. And there is some strong narrative complexity here as well, in that there are some nicely-drawn parallels between Mama and Annabel, and some poetic symmetry in how their relationships with Victoria and Lilly evolve.

Before I get too caught up in praising the film though, I will point out that its high points are nearly matched by some moments of lameness and cheese. Two key side characters, for example - a psychiatrist working with the girls, and a steely aunt in a custody battle with Jeffrey and Annabel - are often eye-rollingly one-note. As such, they often act according to horror movie cliche, and make the sort of lame-brained decisions that will have you screaming at the movie screen. The movie can also feel a little jumpy. While I appreciate that it doesn't spend too much time having everyone doubt Mama's existence, or dwell too much on the "mystery" of her backstory, some sequences do feel slightly rushed. Namely, characters have to make a lot of big, Mulder-esque leaps towards the end of the film. Something that happens in a lot of movies, sure - but in Mama, there are enough instances of characters acting with nuance and intelligence that the moments when they don't are particularly jarring. Finally, given that most of the movie has a great, creeptastic atmosphere, I also felt like there were way too many jump-scare attempts. It felt unnecessary - especially in the instances where the scares were just fake-outs.

Overall though, MAMA really impressed me - and I'd count it as one of the most interesting and rewarding horror movies I've seen in a while. I really enjoyed the twisted fairy-tale-esque vibe of the film - the Del Toro touch really gave the movie that extra visual pop. It also felt like there was more thematic depth, more epicness, and more genuine emotion on display than in most horror flicks. And if that's not enough, there's also Jessica Chastain in fine form, rocking goth gear and a bad attitude and making even more of a case for her status as one of the best actresses in Hollywood. Whoah mama indeed.

My Grade: B+

It's 2013 and It's Time To Stop The Madness! A New Year's RANT OF DOOM.

- Well, here we are, and it's 2013 ... guess that whole Mayan apocalypse thing didn't quite pan out.

After a string of exhaustive 2012 Year-In-Review posts, I was a bit blogged-out. At the same time, I wanted to kick off 2013 with some good material, and was trying to figure out what to write. As often happens though, the subject matter found me (as opposed to the other way around), and here I am with a lot to say as we find ourselves midway through January.

Basically, my question of the moment is: HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY?!

Now, this is largely a pop-culture blog, so I ask that question through a pop-culture-tinged lense. But still, the question remains, and it invariably ties to a larger socio-political context. It's no wonder that post-apocalyptic fiction is so popular right now ... sometimes it really does feel like the end is nigh. Not even the end of things on a material level, but the end of reason, sanity, and level-headedness.

I will start with the macro-view of things and talk about something that's obvious: America has a problem with violence. This past year, there were scores of horrific shootings that made one wonder what the hell was wrong with people. There was an added dimension of horror to these incidents because they largely took place in places that we regard as safe havens: movie theaters, malls, and most of all, schools. Incident after incident occurred, with the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back being the Sandy Hook school shooting in my home state of Connecticut. The fact that innocent children were gunned down - kids under 10 years old - it was almost too much to bear. Still, even thinking about it is almost impossibly sad, and hard to wrap one's brain around.

As I (and most rational people, I think) see it, there are two main addressable issues here. One is gun control. Many of these incidents were perpetrated by assault rifles and other weapons far too powerful to be available for civilian use. Few are advocating the ban of guns altogether, but many want to see sensible regulations on what kinds of guns can be sold, and to whom. For years, I've found it frustrating that this issue has been tossed aside as a political minefield not worth addressing or spotlighting in national debate and discourse. It's a shame that it took such horrific incidents to finally get the conversation going again. The second issue is mental health. There seems to be a real issue with the identification and treatment of mental illness here in America. It's too hard and too costly for many families to have mentally ill sons or daughters properly treated or cared for. And as relates to gun control, the fact that people with mental illness had such easy and free access to guns is maddening.

The fact is - certain people and factions in America just have ridiculously backwards and asinine views of guns and their rights as relates to them. The gun culture in America is harmful, problematic, disruptive, and just plain misguided. Too many people fancy themselves to be soldiers, vigilantes, and cowboys - and are living in a fantasy world in which one must stockpile bullets in the event that the US government turns on its people.

In any case, there was a moment after the Sandy Hook shooting in which the one silver lining seemed to be that we were, finally, going to turn a corner. But now, I worry that, as often happens, we are letting the moment pass us and get buried under an avalanche of distractions, politics, and sound-bytes designed not for reasonable discussion, but to feed the beast of a 24-hour news cycle.

And that brings me to the micro view. As I look around, I see intelligent discussion about violence in America being swallowed up by brainlessness. I see the hard conversations - the ones about gun control and treatment of mental illness - being undermined by the same old easy conversations, where pundits and politicians blame things like movies and videogames for all of our problems.

The sudden resurgence in attacks against the videogame industry really bothers me for how misguided it is. For one thing, last time I looked, none of the attackers in the major shooting incidents in 2012 were children. All were adults. So why then is there the constant need to talk about the effect of media on them? Lord knows - any work of fiction or nonfiction, be it the Bible, Shakespeare, Die Hard, or Call of Duty - has the same ability to warp a mentally unstable person's mind. There's nothing new here, and there's no reason why we should condemn STORIES for real-life actions. What I am seeing now is a movement towards the worst possible thing in a free society: censorship. In Connecticut, residents of the town of Southington are getting together to BURN violent videogames. Are you kidding me? How is this any different than burning books, movies, or music? This is Farenheit 451 come to horrific life. There always has been and always will be media that is inappropriate for children, and it's the responsibility of parents to ensure that their kids are exposed to age-appropriate material. But to limit what stories adults are exposed to because of fear of the story's content? That, my friends, is crazy. So how about if instead of burning / destroying games, the parents of Southington actually do their jobs and parent, rather than act like savages in their own right?

This same madness extends to the world of television, where the recent TCA event - in which networks show off their new series for critics and journalists - was riddled with accusations of too-violent content. Again, why should series aimed at an adult audience concern themselves with such things? Furthermore, to reduce media to base-level labels like violent and nonviolent severely undermines questions of context and quality. In the world of TV, this is especially true. Over the last decade and a half, we've seen a renaissance in quality on television. We've seen dark and mature shows - from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad - that are more intelligent, more nuanced, more complex - than most of what used to be churned out. TV has become challenging and adult - no longer just a pacifier, no longer just an idiot-box. So of course, people are now coming out of the woodwork to criticize it.

The truth is that there will always be art that revels in violence for the sake of violence. We have a primal part of us that is excited by violence as the ultimate life-or-death challenge. Drama is best when the stakes are high - and no stakes are higher than life and death. This is literal and metaphorical - after all, what is the fascination with professional sports if not as a microcosm of life and death. Isn't the warlike strategy of football basically warfare in miniature, the tackles a stand-in for killing blows? Don't we all enjoy the drama of all-or-nothing, winner takes all? That is always going to be reflected in our culture. At the same time, there is also always going to be art that celebrates life, goodness, friendship, love, and the human spirit. We all have a need for those kinds of stories, and they will always be there. Sometimes, an outwardly violent tale can actually turn out to be uplifting and good - take Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Sometimes, an outwardly sweet story can actually end up being soul-crushing - look at the stories of Charlie Brown: a cute cartoon character for kids whose adventures are actually almost nihilistic in their negative outlook on life. Point being: you can't just label something as violent-bad or peaceful-good. In fact, I think there's a strong argument to be made that people who live lives in which they repress their minds to violence and sex and anything that challenges their worldview ... those are the people who often end up with the most problems. How many politicians, Catholic priests, and other would-be role models have turned out to be hypocritical people who act out on the very things they preach most loudly against? It's why the people calling for censorship - either self-censorship or imposed-on-others censorship, often strike me as the craziest of all.

At the movies, you've not got journalists ganging up on guys like Quentin Tarantino and his latest film, Django Unchained. The criticisms are not new for Tarantino, but they seem to be heightened due to the recent anti-violence, anti-everything-that's-not-100%-politically-correct hysteria. Now, Django is unquestionably a complicated film from a tonal perspective. It's got a pulpy, over-the-top, often comedic style that references Spaghetti Westerns, grindhouse cinema, and blaxploitation flicks. But it also has some real social commentary beneath the surface, and its portrayal of slavery in the pre-Civil War south is starkly brutal and disturbing. And yet, people are fixated on the movie's use of the n-word. People are reducing the movie to over-the-top pulp - even though there's much more to it - and therefore taking issue with a supposedly silly movie's use of a very serious word. Again, it's an issue of reductivism - people are too lazy to really examine the film's themes, its contrasting tones, its genre influences, and what it's saying about slavery and race - and are instead framing criticisms in sound-bytes ready-made for FOX News. The exact same reductivism is happening with regards to the movie's violence. Obviously, Tarantino is a guy who enjoys the visceral, subversive thrill of a great action scene. He is a great storyteller, and a master of building up narrative tension that culminates in violent climax. But rather than have intelligent discussions about the movie's narrative beats, people seem to want to simply label it as violent, and that's that. How many Oscar-winning movies could have just been labeled as violent - and therefore not worthwhile - and that's that? How many great books could be labeled as violent - and therefore not worth further analysis or cultural merit - and that's that?

This same logic applies to videogames. After all these years, too many mainstream critics and "journalists" fail to engage with the medium on any level except with regards to violence vs. non-violence. There is a whole world of aesthetics and craft that don't get discussed outside of enthusiasts. Gameplay, graphic artistry, control, precision, immersiveness, challenge, and yes - story and theme. I think about The Walking Dead videogame that I named as game of the year for 2012. There is violence and horror in it, yes. But it also put you in the role of protective father-figure, group leader, and redemption-seeker. And yet, in the spewed-out non-discussion of games, in which "violent" games are being burned in Southington, a game brimming with artistic merit might be thrown into the flames.

But back to movies, the most prominent example of small-minded reductivism has to be the recent "controversy" around Zero Dark Thirty, which I find sort of shocking. Here is one of the most intelligent, well-crafted films of 2012 - a movie that never talks down to its audience - that is being attacked from all sides for no reason except, again, to stir the pot. At the least, it was reassuring to know that the movie still did solid box-office this week despite all of the crazy complaints. It makes me wonder if we live in such a sound-byte oriented society that we no longer know how to process nuance or complexity. It's the same way in which everyone yelled about the "fiscal cliff" without knowing a damn thing about it, except that it was coming and it was bad. With Zero Dark Thirty, there is now a controversy about the depiction of torture in the movie. How is this possible? What's true is that the movie opens the floodgates for discussion and debate about America's use of torture in the war on terror. What isn't true is that it endorses torture. In fact, the most prominent theme of the entire movie is the psychological toll that torture takes - on those directly involved in administering it, and on the country as a whole. The depiction of torture in the movie is never cathartic or exploitative - instead, it's hard-to-watch and almost makes you sympathetic for the prisoners. But what's brilliant about the film is that it doesn't really lean one way or the other - it presents torture in a way that forces you as a viewer to think about its benefits vs. its consequences. Key words being: "forces you to think."

Somehow, complaints about the film's exact accuracy morphed into a meme stating that it was controversial because it endorsed torture. First of all, these criticisms are not the same at all. Second, I don't see how it's fair to criticize a movie that represents still-classified events as being not wholly accurate. The movie is journalistic and real-feeling in its broad strokes, but I don't think most expected it to capture the entire hunt for Bin Laden in minute detail. It disappoints me that politicians would so forcefully condemn the movie for this reason. But this all goes back to what I was talking about earlier: not paying attention to a story's broader themes, instead focusing only on details that might prove offensive if taken out of context. Let's look at Zero Dark Thirty as a whole - the entire movie is clearly a fictionalized amalgam of real people and events, put together in order to tell a story about a specific moment in American history, and the slow and scar-tissue laced road to healing post-9/11. Jessica Chastain's character is based on some real people in the CIA, but isn't a direct representation of any one person. The same goes for most of the film's other characters. So already, from Moment One in the movie, we as viewers know that this isn't a documentary, but an approximation of real events, assembled in dramatic fashion in order to make a broader thematic point. Argo used the same sort of artistic license. As did Lincoln. AS DID EVERY FICTIONAL MOVIE ABOUT REAL EVENTS EVER MADE.

And so, in the discussion about what - exactly - is truth vs. fiction in Zero Dark Thirty, the real discussion that the movie *should* be prompting conveniently gets totally lost. The movie should be inspiring meaningful conversation about to what lengths America should go to preserve its safety and its freedom, about what lines we should draw to distinguish us from our enemies, about the symbolic importance of finding Osama Bin Laden and the work that still needs to be done even after his death.

But America seems to be having a moment where intelligent conversation is being totally washed out by reactionary outrage. We are better than this. And I know that because we count among us intelligent and gifted storytellers like Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Spielberg who have been telling the story of America in interesting, thought-provoking (and - gasp! - sometimes violent) ways. My sincere hope for 2013 is that we stop the madness and stop the calls for censorship. That we stop confusing the real issues with the imagined ones. That we tackle what is practical and pragmatic instead of what is baseless. Let's embrace those ideas and those voices that challenge us, make us think, and make us smarter, and tune out those that reduce everything to sound bytes and dogmatic us vs. them fear-mongering. Let's remember that there's nothing wrong with being different, or thinking different, or being an individual - in fact, that's what makes America great in the first place. When everything becomes Blue vs. Red, side vs. side, we lower ourselves to the reductivism I've been rallying against. Let's start using our brains again, and remember that the world is a weird and complicated place - but that that's what makes it great.