15. Catfish

Due to my addiction to ESPN’s stalwart “30 For 30” series, I probably watched more documentaries this year than in all my years prior combined. I’ve usually ignored the ones that blow through my local multiplex, figuring that I’ll catch them on DVD later (or at least convince myself that I will). Catfish was the first doc that I actively sought out.

I hadn’t planned to see it at first. It was marketed as a Blair Witch-style horror film, for some reason, an advertising angle that couldn’t be further from the truth. Then it was advertised as a cinematic shocker, a movie with such a stunner of a final twist you should feel free to kill your best friend if they let the details of it slip to you. And sure, there are some surprises in the movie, but they’re all of the “the main character doesn’t know what’s happening, but now the plot’s moving along and he’s learning things and here’s the final confrontation and now the movie’s done” sort of surprises. A dead Bruce Willis doesn’t pop out of the wall or anything.

 What actually lured me to the movie was the thing that drives anyone to a movie – people telling me that it was great and that I should see it. I saw it, and it was.

The film follows a twenty-something photographer named Nev Schulman, living in New York City, who develops a friendly correspondence with an 8-year-old painter in Michigan via Facebook. Their relationship spreads to her family, including the girl’s mother and older sister, the latter of which Nev starts dating via phone calls, text messages, and the like.

Nev lives with a pair of filmmakers, who begin to film him, ostensibly in order to explore the way social interactions work over the internet. But as Nev’s relationship with the sister develops, things start to become…. well, I better leave it there. Lack of twist ending or no, I’m not going to spoil anything, in case you were exposed to its ad campaign and this review tempts you to rip out my intestines with a butter knife.

What I liked about this film is how remarkable the story we’re watching unfold really is. It’s so unlikely that Morgan Spurlock congratulated the filmmakers after the screening, calling it “the best fake documentary he’d ever seen.” Even the filmmakers admitted that they stumbled on this movie almost entirely through luck.

I felt the same as Spurlock, that the situation seemed almost too perfect to have really happened. Could something so odd really have taken place with cameras rolling to watch it? In this age of cell phone cameras and constant self-promotion, I suppose it doesn’t seem all that unlikely. And as bizarre as this story of Facebook lies is, it’s not that much stranger than ones I’ve heard, or imagined myself. Sometimes the strangest thing you can think of is the thing that actually happened.

16. Tangled

Speaking of flashy visuals that find a way to be more than that…

It’s a generally accepted fact that the magic has gone out of Disney. After a brief, impossibly strong run from ’89-’94 (The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King), it’s been hit and miss for the studio ever since. I’ve enjoyed some of the films (Mulan and Bolt were both solid, and I have a special place in my heart for The Emperor’s New Groove), but I’ve skipped most without a second thought and haven’t regretted it – though I’m assuming that the people who actually might’ve (Anyone see Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Chicken Little, or Home on the Range? You have my sympathies).

But along comes Tangled with a remarkably simple pitch: do a classic Disney princess story, with all the magic and wonderment and songs sung by princesses staring out windows that comes with such things, but do it as a computer animated film instead. Bet the guy who thought up Meet The Robinsons is kicking himself he didn’t think of that.

Times being what they are, of course you have to have famous names to voice the characters (when did this practice start? The earliest I can remember is Robin Williams in Aladdin, other than Burl Ives as a claymation snowman). Fortunately, instead of being distracting or schticky, both of the stars cast here are excellent choices. Mandy Moore gives her sighing princess just the right amount of spunk, while Zachary Levi lends an intrinsic niceness to a roguish hero who could’ve turned unpleasant in the wrong hands.

The real hero here is the animation, though. It’s only very recently that animators have been able to animate human faces in ways that aren’t disconcerting, and Tangled is a nice blend of cartoony and realistic, with a surprisingly endearing bit of 3-D animation thrown in. The finished product works perfectly. There’s a beautiful bit towards the end where the characters release thousands of floating candles to the sky, and the camera weaves in and around them, till the viewer ends up dizzy from trying to take it all in at once.

Maybe the magic isn’t all the way back in Walt’s old stomping grounds (I can’t be the only one worried about the full-length Winnie-The-Pooh film next year), but it was awfully nice to go into a Disney movie and be so pleasantly surprised.

17. Tron Legacy

Speaking of a collection of cool ideas and flashy visuals…

Tron Legacy is a visual movie. And I mean that as a full-throated compliment – it’s stunningly well realized as a big-picture event, with near-perfect special effects (I’ll give it a pass on the young Jeff Bridges effect), beautiful uber-modern monochromatic design, and some of the best 3-D since Avatar. If movies are supposed to take you into another world, then this one more that fits the bill. I just wish the world it took you to were a little more vibrant.

To be fair, almost the entire movie takes place inside a computer game, so if everything feels a little wooden, that’s part of the experience. But the lack of real interaction proved a great deal more wearing than I would've thought. When Michael Sheen bursts onto the screen two-thirds of the way through as a shady gay nightclub owner, I couldn’t believe how relieved I was that one of the characters was finally showing some personality.

No offense to Garrett Hedlund, who seems to be a solid young acting talent, but he’s not given much to do here. The film leaves him out to dry, endlessly staring blankly at green screens as a succession of massive visuals are superimposed around him. Olivia Wilde has a nice turn here as a computer program seeking to understand humanity, and Bridges gives his reluctant-father role all the personality he can muster, but his quasi-Dude persona seems grating in this cold, blank world – the weight of it clamps down on the viewer, and we come to expect each line to be delivered with the same informative dullness as the one before.

More disorienting are the troubling plot holes. Major structural questions nag at the mind througout the film: How are these characters physically inside a computer program if the whole thing fits on one data card? Where did they get the food that they’re eating? And (spoiler alert) how can a computer program possibly leave the game and become a human being in the real world?

But all this I can handle, as long as once these characters are in the world, they remain true to whatever logic the world necessitates. But with each turn, things only get more confusing. What makes these programs turn evil – and then back – without explanation? Why would a computer program takes bribes? If every piece of important information you own is on a round disc, why do you use it as a weapon and throw it at people? And if the portal home is so hard to get to, why is there a train that goes straight there? (I wasn’t the only one to notice that one).

I’m a sucker for event movies, and flashy visuals make it easy to get my attention. But for me to go home with a smile on my face, they’ve got to find a way to be more than that.

18. Iron Man 2

Speaking of a few great scenes surrounded by predictable fluff…

Look, Robert Downey, Jr. is a national treasure. Every line read he does during this movie is pitch perfect, the sort of world-weary sardonic take that’s effortless for him but forced by everyone else.

But sometimes the rest of the movie doesn’t hold up around him, so much so that even the director, Jon Favreau, was forced to admit it in interviews later. Of course, that’s not really his fault.  Marvel clearly wanted to use this movie as leverage for their whole Avengers franchise, and a good deal of the movie is pointless b-story as a result: Nick Fury and the Black Widow try to convince him to join the Avengers for a while, then he talks to the agent who represents them for a while. It has nothing to do with plot even a little, and if this was a serialized TV show, some of what they were saying would be interesting as we anticipated a developing storyline. But this is a movie, not a TV show, and when I leave the theater, I don’t want to say “well, that was a little dull, but that other movie they kept referencing that’ll be out two years from now should be amazing!”

Some superhero movies are better the second time around, when the hero’s themes can be more fully explored: Superman II, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2, etc. And Iron Man is the perfect candidate for a darker, more introspective film – he has father issues, dependency issues, self-absorption issues, not to mention alcoholism. Tony Stark is an intriguing, complex, character who can be unwrapped over time, not a blank metaphor like Superman or Batman. And it seemed that the movie that Favreau wanted to make was more about that. But this script seemed like a bunch of studio executives all jamming their vision into one movie – Scarlett Johansson fighting people! An Iron Man suit that comes in a suitcase! Robots soldiers with rocket launchers! Sam Rockwell acting crazy! Micky Rourke acting crazy! – rather than being its own thing. Sometimes we don’t just want a collection of cool ideas and flashy visuals and explosions in our summer movies. Sometimes we want a real movie.

19. The Runaways

Speaking of being perceived a terrible actress…

Kristen Stewart is in this movie. And she’s very good in it, as shocking as that may be to some people. Not that it matters. Despite all of the actors’ best efforts, this movie goes completely off the rails long before we get to the third act.

The Runaways is the story of Joan Jett’s first band, featuring a coquettish young singer named Cherie Currie, played by Dakota Fanning, and ruled over by a domineering, self-absorbed manager named Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon).

The movie hits all the notes you think. Jett and Currie are lonely, disconnected teens with a love of music but no real training. They’re assembled into a band together by Fowley, who sees money to be made in a rough-edged punk band with underage sex appeal. They start to hit it big, and then – shockingly – things start happening too fast for all of them!

Drugs! Drinking! Fights! Girl-on-girl sexual tension! Things are spiraling out of control! Who could possibly have seen this coming?

The movie falls into all the same band-movie tropes. The slow descent into a hazy, strung-out, drug-obsessed life happens with the same slow, somber beats you’d expect, until the characters are simply stumbling unhappily from scene to scene.  For most of the film, the only time any life is injected into the film is when Shannon barrels onto the screen, waving his arms and gleefully chewing the scenery.  

Stewart, Shannon and Fanning are all excellent in the film – Shannon in particular is fantastic – but I’m most struck by Fanning’s performance in the film, though not for the right reasons. The Runaways focuses heavily on the sexualization of Cherie Currie, a petite 15-year-old girl, who Fowley dresses in the most skimpy of lingerie and constantly pushes her to act as lewdly as possible. It’s a sad example to see on film, but the part is played by Fanning, who was only fifteen herself when she played the role. Scenes featuring her acting lasciviously are stretched out, and the camera lingers over her young form. The line between portraying underage sexuality and taking part in it blurs, and seems to disappear entirely. In many ways, it’s a more disturbing role than her more famous one in Hounddog.

Instead of watching the story of Joan Jett’s rise to rock stardom, instead the film slowly collapses into an aimless exercise in Rock Bio 101. We end up with a few great scenes surrounded by a pile of predictable fluff.