Life of Pi
A visual marvel, yes, and reportedly even more wonderful in 3D, but how's the film on the whole? At first, I was worried it was going to be a Zen Tuesdays With Morrie, which it sort of is, but it ends up in more complex, ambiguous, and surprisingly moving territory. (2012 is truly a year for films about the role of art/stories in our lives). The necessity of a seemingly thankless framing device doesn't become clear until the end, but the moral is far more personal than preachy, nuanced rather than pedantic, and for that reason it has stuck with me. When my roommate asked if it was worth an $11 ticket price, I said $8.50. That must count for something. 4 out of 5 stars.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Buzzy as hell ever since its big wins on the festival circuit, Beasts has gotten credit (which it deserves) for being something different than the normal Sundance film, and I have to applaud its weirdness, analog effects, and strong cast. In large part, this is what American independent film should be: not small, relatively off-beat studio films, but acts of low-budget ingenuity that make something out of modest resources. On a technical level, Beasts is bewitching, with an excellent synthesis of camerawork and music and an insanely magnetic child star. But the bewitchment is relied on too heavily to cover shaky writing—the dialogue sometimes goes flat, while most of the characters scarcely distinguish themselves—and when you get to what the film is actually saying, you run into problems. Despite loving modernity, I'm always up for movies about the battle against it, but if that's what the movie is going for, the pre-modern world never looks that good, and the modern world never looks that bad. And so the film's central moral (about poor people in New Orleans who refuse help so they can keep their dignity and freedom) feels disingenuous, unearned, and not thought-out, like an inside story written by an outsider. 3 out of 5 stars.
A Royal Affair
If the title "A Royal Affair" sounds like a blank template for the costume dramas that always come out this time of year, you're not far off. The film is the true(ish) story of the mad King Christian VII of Denmark, who, urged by his radical physician, enacted a series of controversial liberal reforms, all while the physician was sleeping with the queen. The whole thing has a flat Masterpiece Theatre vibe (with space cleared for tasteful sexiness), and it's a bit of a bummer that the Academy has chosen to give it a Best Foreign Film slot over so many more interesting international contenders. But it has its moments, particularly towards the end. The last 20 minutes are more interesting than Christian VII's Wikipedia page, which is more interesting than the rest of the film. 3 out of 5 stars.
Okay. The acting is excellent, and David O. Russell, who becomes a better director of human chaos simply by being less chaotic, gives it more craft than a comedy about a bi-polar sports fan and a bi-polar widow would otherwise have. (One of the joys of the film is the way it captures the dynamic of a family where everyone talks over one another, and I have to give props to any director who gets laughs from Chris Tucker by having him be eerily restrained). But throughout the charm of it all, I kept thinking: are we still doing this? Making quirky-yet-safe comedies about misfits who bond over the course of a narrative that gets more and more predictable as it goes? And then I wished that we, like Bradley Cooper's character, could move on. 3 out of 5 stars.
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