10. Easy A

Speaking of performances by actors lifting a film…

I love a great teen movie for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, they’re always fun. There are honestly just not that many fun movies out there these days. Why do you think everyone went to go see Grown Ups?  That movie was clearly a pile of poop from the get-go, and it made $160 million. There’s just a dearth of movies where no one gets pregnant or deals with their parents’ suicide or is beaten to death in a bathroom with a rusty crowbar. I think about this every year during Oscar season, when everyone is gushing about whichever movie featured the most inspiring someone-overcoming-something this year. Why not have some more hijinks in the theater next year? For chrissakes, even Bride Wars made $60 million at the box office. There’s clearly a market for hijinks. 

How hard can these movies be to create? The new kid befriends the likable outsider, a few pranks are pulled, there’s an encounter with a eccentric principal played by a B-list comedian, followed by a raucous party scene where the bully get the tables turned on him, and the loser ends up with the girl of his dreams just as the sun’s coming up. Roll credits. I’m thinking of a late March release date. And wait, wasn’t that paragraph essentially the whole pitch for Take Me Home Tonight? 

What’s more, these movies are always hugely rewatchable. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched Can’t Hardly Wait, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused, Mean Girls (judge not!), etc. More movies should be so easy to keep coming back to. Will I ever watch 127 Hours again? Or True Grit? Or even The King’s Speech? Being frivolous doesn’t mean it’s not lasting.

But then I stop and think about how many of these movies – such as the ones in the opening paragraph – are just awful, and how easy it is for these movies to dissolve into lame sight gags and camera-mugging. That’s not the case here, though.

Emma Stone is a delight in this movie. She’s somehow just as perfectly convincing as the dorky outsider as she is as the untouchable girl in Superbad. There’s something very grounded about her that comes through in every line read, that makes it seem totally realistic that Jonah Hill or Jesse Eisenberg or whoever could end up with her despite all physical evidence to the contrary. She’s bright and exuberant and effortlessly funny here, but it doesn’t hurt that her supporting cast is so strong.

I’ll skip over the appearances of Cam Gigandet, Aly Michalka and Amanda Bynes, because everyone else is so good that I’m able to pretend that those actors never existed. There are strong performances by Thomas Haden Church, Lisa Kudrow, Penn Badgley, and Dan Byrd, all of whom are given roles that require both humor and gravity, which all four of them amply supply. But the trophy has to go to Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Stone’s parents, who are so in tune with each others comedic rhythm that it feels almost as if the camera’s just been left on and is picking up their natural chemistry. If someone wants to make a TV show where these two can snark affectionately at each other every week, I will watch the hell out of that. Oh, here’s a clip. 

In summary (I’m trying to end this review like a high school essay. Didn’t know if that was coming across. I’m thinking of copying sentences of the first paragraph and pasting them here), more hijinks!  And more Tucci and Clarkson. And less pregnancy-suicide-beatings and more whipped cream-themed food fights and mascots getting hurled into pools and such.  I think these are all things all of us can get behind.

11. True Grit

Speaking of misleading trailers…

I know, I know, I didn’t mention the (mostly minor) trailer issues in The Other Guys, but I certainly will mention them here, because on True Grit, those issues mattered.

The Coen Brothers are famous for their propensity for telling stories in an unconventional fashion. Considering how hard studios push you towards the middle, until every studio film is perfectly cookie-cutter, it’s astonishing how far they’ve been able to stray from the norm. And if sometimes I’m not totally on board (I know I’m a contrarian, but I had very mixed feelings about how No Country For Old Men was structured), the highlights are strong enough that I’m willing to accept that when you take filmmaking risks, the results are sometimes uncomfortable for the average moviegoer.

That’s not nearly the case here – True Grit’s plot is exceptionally well laid-out – but in the Coen Brothers’ efforts to make the film’s story fit neatly into a trailer, it misleads the audience into thinking that the end of the movie is actually the middle, and gives away most of the climax. Boo. And don’t try telling me that I can’t blame the Coens for how a trailer was edited, as if they didn’t have control of that. These are the people who edit their own movies under a fake name. They’re gonna know how that trailer’s went together.

And weirdly, I feel like no one but me noticed. Part of the problem with the Coen Brothers is that whenever they land a hit like this one, critics and film buffs are reluctant to criticize any element of the story since someone will immediately retort, “but you see, that was the whole point of the film,” and then they’ll look like a dunderhead.

But the truth is, True Grit, like No Country For Old Men before it, ends with a whimper and not a bang (all right, all right, there’s a lot of guns involves, so technically it does kind of end with a bang). And truth be told, I wasn’t watching the screen for parts of it, because there were snakes involved.  But there’s a number of ways to turn a story on its head, and their way never seems to make the viewer go “Ooooh.” Instead, we just go “Oh.”

The Coen Brothers are the Andy Reid of filmmakers. There’s no one better than them, up until the two-minute drill, and then they lose everything good that brought them to that point.

It’s a shame, because the movie that precedes the unremarkable ending is a very good one. Jeff Bridges is excellent and perfectly incoherent as Rooster Cogburn (no one could say he was aping John Wayne’s performance, because that was about as un-Waynian as it gets) and Hailee Steinfeld is much better actress at 13 than some people pulling in $5 million a picture (don’t make me call you out, Robert Pattinson. You know who you are). The gold star goes to Matt Damon, however, who I continue to maintain is considerably underrated as an actor, even as a movie star (go back and watch his roles in The Bourne Supremacy and The Informant! back-to-back. Then, try to name any actor who could pull off both roles as convincingly). He’s just as good here as he is in everything.

True Grit is worth seeing (especially if you’ve skipped the trailer), and deserving of all the Oscar love it’s getting, but maybe that’s more an indicator of the excellence of performance by its stars than a sign-off on the movie as a whole. 

12. The Other Guys

Speaking of… hmm, I’ve got nothing for this one. This gimmick’s getting a little tired. Speaking of fun, I guess? Weak.

(I'm not all that happy with how this review turned out, but I figured you might notice if the list was missing a "12", so here it is):

You might have noticed, but Will Ferrell is a very funny person. But you might have also noticed that he’s been in a lot of bad movies. And while everyone’s been burned at least one Ferrell movie – for me, it was Bewitched, what a rancid mess that was – and that’s made them a little leery of slapping down good money to see an undirected Ferrell vamp for two hours. At the release of any Ferrell movie, moviegoers gather to it warily, sniffing surreptitiously for the scent of desperation.

There’s no need to worry. The Other Guys is yet another collaboration of Ferrell with Adam McKay, the director with whom he’s made almost all of his best work (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers). Yes, I know, Ferrell’s been good in other things (Old School, Elf, Stranger Than Fiction), but the concern with a Ferrell movie is not with whether it’s going to be as good as Old School, but rather whether it’s been bad as Kicking and Screaming, or The Producers (egads, The Producers. Ick).

Paired with blue-collar tough guy Mark Wahlberg, whose usually well-disguised lack of height has never been more obvious (seriously, he doesn’t seem to come up to Ferrell’s shoulder), the two play inept New York City cops overshadowed by flashier members of the force. Ferrell, a timid paperwork-pusher, butts heads constantly with Wahlberg, a street cop stuck behind a desk after accidentally shooting Derek Jeter in the leg (I know, I know, happens to the best of us). Wahlberg wants to be back out on the streets, Ferrell is perfectly content with his current life.

Of course, movies being what they are, the pair soon finds themselves thrust to the forefront of a major investigation, and the hijinks ensue like crazy. Wahlberg finds his comedic rhythm by falling back on his patented over-enunciated line shouting (I’m not sure if its Stockholm Syndrome or what, but that shout gets funnier the longer you’re exposed to it. I bet if you watched The Fighter right after this, it’d be hilarious). So the comedic heavy lifting is left to Ferrell, who carries the film by playing a strange combination of his character from Stranger Than Fiction and the “I drive a Dodge Stratus!” guy.

Not all of the bits work – most of the extended scenes Ferrell and Wahlberg have with Michael Keaton as the police chief are a bit of a bust – but when the two of them get rolling together, it’s just as inspired as any of Ferrell’s runs with John C. Reilly or Vince Vaughn. And McKay seems to know exact how to keep Ferrell both grounded in the character while still giving him freedom to go off into inventive riffs - his bit about his alternate persona, a pimp-for-hire named Gator, is the best part of the film.

Don’t be dissuaded by past stumbles - or its slightly misleading trailer. The Other Guys is every bit as good as Step Brothers and just shy of Talladega Nights, and is a worthy addition into “Best Of Will Ferrell” canon, a collection that will probably need an awfully good curator one day to weed through all the dreck.



13. Kick-Ass

Speaking of a wholehearted dive into flesh-ripping and bone-breaking…

This film was forgotten quickly by the movie-going public, for reasons not quite clear to me. At the time of its release, it was controversial enough – having a 12-year-old girl spew that much profanity is bound to raise eyebrows, and that’s without even considering the film’s excessive violence. But it seems to have already disappeared from the public mindset, and showed up on almost no “Best Of” lists, even among critics who gravitate towards this sort of movie.

I’ll admit, it’s faded a little in my mind, too. I remember enjoying the movie quite a bit, but I can’t recollect the film nearly as clearly as I can other films I saw around the same time (Alice In Wonderland, Iron Man 2) despite enjoying it much more. I’m not sure why it’s so forgettable. The movie’s a little light, perhaps, and maybe its message is a little convoluted. But in the midst of a glut of comic book movies, where heroes plow endlessly into buildings and lamp posts and iron girders and get up without a scratch, I remember being thrilled to watch the whole idea turned on its head. What would happen if someone really did try to become a superhero? Especially if that person didn’t have any idea what they were doing?

The film is carried by excellent performances by Moretz, Aaron Johnson, and surprisingly, Nicholas Cage, and plays out in a way that’s somehow a light mockery of superhero plots and yet perfectly natural at the same time. All of the absurdity of it – rocket-packs and spandex suits and a little girl killing dozens of henchmen – all seems totally believable.

But despite keeping its foot loosely planted in the real world, and its willingness to explore the dark side of what being a real-world superhero would really entail, it never loses that one thing that superhero movies can’t seem to keep a hold of anymore: its sense of fun. The film is packed with elegantly choreographed action sequences and the plot clips along at a thrilling pace. If all superhero movies were willing to play things this fast-and-loose, summer movies would be a lot more fun.

14. 127 Hours

Speaking of strange things that actually happened…

My relationship with this film is well documented on this blog, but for those of you unfamiliar with the story: a few years back, I was working as a intern at the film company of a major Hollywood director. While most of my tasks were standard intern fare (making copies, getting coffee, working phone lists), once I won a little bit of their trust, they began handing me the occasional script or book to do coverage on. I would read the piece, write up a two-page summary, and let my bosses know if I thought we should pursue it or pass on it.

 Most of the scripts were dreck, but one of the books they handed me was intriguing. It was Aron Ralston’s Between A Rock and Hard Place, the true story of a climber whose arm was trapped under a boulder.  He survived there for several days before he was forced to saw off his own arm to escape.

I enjoyed the book but thought it wouldn’t work at all as a film. The main character spends almost all of his time trapped against the rock, thinking sad thoughts and panting with thirst. There’s a rescue attempt by his family, but they never find him. Most of the money parts are pretty gross: he drinks his own urine, pokes experimentally at his dead flesh, and finally, y’know, cuts off his own arm. I recommended that my company pass on it. I have no idea if they considered my recommendation at all, but I know that they never made a bid on the rights, and they never made the movie.

Flash forward five years, and 127 Hours is an Oscar-nominee for Best Picture. Ouch.

My ego might have taken a hit from this escapade, and I’ve been rooting pretty heavily against the film from day one (I was recently cackling triumphantly at its scant $6M box office, until its Oscar nod pushed it back into theaters). But today, I have come to praise 127 Hours, not to trap it against a rock and cut its arm off. It’s a good film.

But first, it needs to be said: I was right to reject the book. This movie is essentially unmakeable. Only a yeoman’s effort by James Franco, aided by Danny Boyle’s helter-skelter stylings, elevates the movie from being dull gross-out flick. If the film were in hands any less capable, the story wouldn’t work at all. Most of the critics who’ve rated the movie seem to agree. I’ve hardly seen a review where the phrase “essentially unfilmable” didn’t pop up somewhere. It’s a tough movie to make.

Boyle deserves a chunk of the credit, but this is Franco’s movie through and through, and the whole effort rides on his surprisingly capable shoulders. I’ve always loved Franco and his dopey, devil-may-care persona, but if you’d told me a few years ago that the star of Annapolis and Flyboys (and the director of The Ape!) would be the Oscar-nominated lead of an Oscar-nominated film, there’s no chance in hell I would’ve believed you. But Franco is perfect here, so comfortable in the skin of the solitary, self-reliant hiker that you feel almost as if it’s the first time he’s ever really played himself. Keeping the audience’s attention for 85 minutes while flopping uselessly against a rock is no small feat, and there’s only a handful of actors out there who could manage the role the Franco played here. And… dare I say it?... maybe none who could do it better.

That said, 127 Hours is solid but a touch unremarkable. The film’s a little slight, and Boyle’s frenetic search for meaning in Ralston’s life – ex-girlfriends forgotten, siblings ignored, parents estranged – all seem a touch desperate in their shouts for your rooting interest.  None of the relationships really sticks, not in the way that Franco’s bid for survival just for survival’s sake seems to. When the money scene hits and he makes his final, desperate push for escape, it seems more obligatory than it does earned.

As for the arm-cutting itself? I wasn’t bothered by the unflinching nature of the nature of the scene – in fact, having read the book, I felt they could have gone much further – but then I’m rarely bothered by appropriate violence. The scene called for a wholehearted dive into flesh-ripping and bone-breaking, and once I know to expect something, I don’t have any problem with the filmmakers going at it whole hog. Considering the nature of the film, I’d be disappointed if they did anything less.