Best Films of the Year

1.  Lincoln – Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner took a big, complicated story from history and crafted a riveting political procedural out of it.
2. Argo – Ben Affleck successfully transported us to the late 1970s in this fictionalized but thrilling retelling of a long-classified true story.
3. Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell reboots the movie romance with this tale of damaged people trying to work through their baggage and make a connection.
4. Django Unchained – In his best movie since Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino fearlessly takes on slavery, using the tropes of the spaghetti western and blaxploitation films.
5. Cloud Atlas – This dizzyingly ambitious film adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel sweeps us along through six interconnected stories about freedom, slavery, justice and human progress.
6. Life of Pi –  Ang Lee took a tricky book and made an absolutely beautiful movie of it.  Go see it.
7. Moonrise Kingdom – It’s been a long time since I’ve even liked a Wes Anderson movie, and I LOVED this one.  It’s quirky, dear and features production design to die for.
8. Compliance – One of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen, particularly because it’s based on actual incidents.  Watch the movie, then go to the internet and read about it.
9. Safety Not Guaranteed – Perhaps the first film inspired by a Craig’s List ad, and for a time traveler, yet.
10. Sound of My Voice – An eerie, ultra-low-budget psychological time-travel thriller starring and written by the beautiful and talented Brit Marling.

HONORABLE MENTION:  Robot and Frank, Chronicle, The Impossible, End of Watch, Arbitrage, Not Fade Away, Les Miserables, The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey, Stand Up Guys, 21 Jump Street

Lead Actress

*Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Emanuelle Riva, Amour

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Lead Actor

*Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Jack Black, Bernie

John Hawkes, The Sessions

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Jean-Louis Trintignant, Amour

HONORABLE MENTION:  Denzel Washington, Flight;  Frank Langella in Robot and Frank; Richard Gere in Arbitrage; Tom Holland, The Impossible

Compliance's Ann Dowd

Supporting Actress

Susan Sarandon, Jeff Who Lives At Home

*Ann Dowd, Compliance

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Melissa McCarthy, This is 40

Supporting Actor

Javier Bardem, Skyfall

Robert DeNiro, Silver Lining’s Playbook

The glorious Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Christoph Walz, Django Unchained

*Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained

Honorable Mention:  Jake Johnson, Safety Not Guaranteed; Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower; Francois Cluzet, Little White Lies; Domhnall Gleeson, Anna Karenina

Director

Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

*Ben Affleck, Argo

Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom

Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, Cloud Atlas

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Adapted Screenplay – it’s a TIE

*Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)

*Lincoln (Tony Kushner)

Original Screenplay

*Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)

Safety Not Guaranteed (Derek Connolly)

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola)

Moonrise Kingdom

Foreign Language Film

The Intouchables  (France)

*Amour (Austria)

Snabba Cash (Sweden)

Generation P (Russia)

Documentary Feature

The Queen of Versailles

The Imposter

*How to Survive a Plague

The Central Park Five

Production Design

Moonrise Kingdom

*Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Cloud Atlas

Underrated!

Haywire

Hysteria (the vibrator movie!)

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Ruby Sparks

Liberal Arts

Best Action Thriller

Premium Rush

Funniest Movie of the Year

21 Jump Street

Okay This Has to the VERY LAST Documentary about the West Memphis Three

West of Memphis

I Know It Wasn’t Exactly GOOD, But That Director Tarsem Singh Can Sure Bring the Pretty

Mirror, Mirror

Most Misnamed Movie

Bully:  A documentary about bullying in which almost no bullies appear.

What a Great Career He’s Having

Mark Duplass, who’s directing films (Jeff Who Lives At Home) and acting in them (Zero Dark Thirty, Safety Not Guaranteed).  Go Mr. D.!

What a Great Career SHE’S Having

Not only does Jennifer Lawrence have a huge big-budget franchise going, but she’s got TWO Best Actress Academy Award nominations.  At age twenty-two.

Show Me Something, Spurlock

While Morgan Spurlock is still appealing and handsome, his film Mansome was shallow and inconsequential.  He still hasn’t put out a feature that fulfills the promise of his superb debut Super Size Me.

Ray And Tayler “Get In Shape For Your Movie” Award

Colin Farrell, Total Recall

Please Can We See More Of

Snabba Cash’s Joel Kinnamon

Safety Not Guaranteed’s Aubrey Plaza

Compliance’s Ann Dowd

Stand Up Guys’ Lucy Punch

Generation P’s Vladimir Epifantsev

Vladimir Epifantsev

Anna Karenina’s Domhnall Gleeson

The Impossible’s Tom Holland

Not Totally Sure He Can Actually Act, But He Can Sure Heat Up the Screen

Garrett Hedlund

Everyone Loved It But Me

The Avengers.  I’m so tired of comic book superhero movies.  They simply devolve into CGI showcases.  Yawn.

Special “Three Strikes, You’re Out” Award

To the hilariously named Taylor Kitsch, who brought his great looks and charisma-free presence to THREE expensive bombs in one year:  John Carter, Battleship, and Savages.  Hope you have a Plan B, handsome!

Further Proof that Pixar’s Best Days are Behind Them

Brave

Worst Theatrical Trailer for a Good Movie

Amour.  The trailer gave you no inkling of what the damn movie was about.  Except that it was about old people.

By a Large Margin, The Most OVERRATED Film of the Year

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Worst Movies I Saw This Year

John Carter

Seven Psychopaths

Keep the Light On

Rise of the Guardians

Absolutely Positively the Worst Film of the Year

Prometheus.  It was shockingly, swinishly bad.  It was stupid and virtually incoherent.  I did not enjoy it.

Boo

Trends That Need to Be Over

No title card at the beginning of a movie (it’s pretentious)

Unnecessarily jerky handheld camera work (also pretentious)

Too much frantic energy on the screen (I’m looking at you, Hobbit and Rise of the Guardians)

In Memoriam!

Davy Jones (66)

Marvin Hamlisch (68)

Hal David (91)

Andy Williams (84)

Dave Brubeck (91)

Ben Gazarra (81)

Kathryn Joosten (72)

Richard Dawson (79)

Ann Rutherford (94)

Ernest Borgnine (95)

Celeste Holm (95)

Sherman Hemsley (74)

Tony Martin (98)

Phyllis Diller (95)

Michael Clarke Duncan (54)

Herbert Lom (95)

Larry Hagman (81)

Jack Klugman (90)

Charles Durning (89)

Robert B. Sherman (86)

Nora Ephron (71)

Richard Zanuck (77)

Whitney Houston (48)

Tony Scott (68)

Dick Clark (582)

Comments?  Complaints?  Fawning compliments?  Leave a comment!!

The inevitable and shockingly obvious comparison to Condi Rice shows what a sham this whole thing is. Rice repeated her “Mushroom Cloud” talking point OVER AND OVER. Didn’t keep the Republic party from confirming her as Secretary of State.

Even better, McCain is calling her “unqualified.” This from the man who picked, as his running mate… do I have to actually say it?

Go home, Lindsay Graham. Go home, John McCain. Strap on a Depends and yell at those pesky kids to keep off of your lawn.

Morning, Republican Party.  Thanks for coming.  Have a seat.  Can I get you some coffee?  Tea?  How about a joint?  Sorry, a little joke lol.

 I won’t keep you long.  I just want to make sure you understand what happened yesterday.  Yes, I know it was a very upsetting day for you all around.  Yes, we can wait a moment.  No problem.  Do you need a tissue?

 Okay.  So here goes.

 I want to help you, Republican Party.  I don’t want you to make the same mistakes in 2016 that you made yesterday.

 It’s important that you understand that your Angry White Man Anti-Gay Anti-Woman Anti-Immigrant Anti-Anything-That’s-Not-Your-Brand-of-Christian Anti-Science Anti-Fact campaign, which came very close to winning yesterday, will never come this close to winning ever again in a National Election. 

 I’ll explain.

 Let’s take those stances in reverse order. 

 THE ANTI-FACT THING. 

 Let’s look to history for a little perspective.  When Bill Clinton was President, you HATED him.  But the things you went after him for were actual things.  Whitewater was an actual situation.  Travelgate was actually based on a real incident.  Clinton’s roving genitals were a REAL problem.  Next, during the Bush years, our people hated Bush, but we went after his REAL failings:  A trumped up phony war, the treasonous outing of an acting CIA operative, clueless economic policies.

 All that changed when it appeared during the Democratic primary process that The Magic Negro was overtaking lefty favorite Hillary Clinton.  From that moment, until the present day, you have engaged in a shameless campaign of fabrication about Barack Obama.  You’ve branded him a Kenyan, a Muslim, a Nazi, a Socialist, a Communist.  You have claimed he’s after your guns.  You’ve claimed that he’s after your religious freedom.  It was all lies, and despite the best efforts of Fox News, yesterday you were shown that…

 AMERICA DIDN’T FALL FOR IT.

 THE ANTI-SCIENCE THING/THE ANTI-ANY BRAND OF CHRISTIANITY BUT YOUR OWN THING

 Global warming is real.  Women’s bodies don’t have magic Rape Sperm Detectors.  It’s not curtailing your religious freedom when the law prevents you from discriminating against other people or trying to impose your religious ideas on other people. 

 Perhaps the biggest mistake you made in this area was your cynical and transparently hypocritical embrace of Mitt Romney as a “good Christian.”  He’s not a Christian.  He’s a Mormon, and if you’d turned Fox News off for five minutes and done just a tiny bit of reading about the Mormon church, you would know that this man believes stuff even YOU would consider wacky.  And yet you branded Obama, who’s an ACTUAL Christian, a Muslim.  Again, if you knew four atoms worth of facts about Islam, you’d know there’s no such thing as a “stealth Muslim.”  No President would be able to hide the fact that he prays towards Mecca five times a day and keeps a halal kitchen in the White House (look it up).

 Scariest of all, guess what the fastest-growing religious demographic in our country is?  Yep, it’s us non-religious folks.  We’re gaining ground at a dizzying pace, as young people reject the Bronze Age superstitions of their parents.  In every election going forward, the “Christian” base you think you can play to is going to be a smaller and smaller slice of the electoral pie.

But you tried to sell all this nonsense to the American People and ….

 AMERICA DIDN’T FALL FOR IT. 

 THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT THING.

 Bush got 40% of the Hispanic vote!  McCain got 30%.  Guess how much Romney got last night?  20%.  Yeah.  It turns out all those Hispanic voters were listening when you spewed all that anti-immigrant hate, and as a consequence…

 AMERICA DIDN’T’ FALL FOR IT.

 THE ANTI-WOMEN THING

Romney was TROUNCED by women voters last night.  And two of the most notorious Republican lawmakers who made stupid and hateful remarks about rape were defeated as well.  It turns out, women DO vote in this country.  And they’re not going to vote for you if you don’t think they know when they’ve been raped, and you don’t think they own their own bodies.

You counted on women, and people who LIKE women (like me) to hate the Black Nazi more than they loved themselves, but…

 AMERICA DIDN’T FALL FOR IT.

 THE ANTI-GAY THING

This one must REALLY chap your ass, because it’s been such a bountiful Golden Goose for soooooo long.  In days gone by, you could whip up your electorate by spreading lies about gay people for free.  No more.  When the President came out for equality for gay people, it HELPED him, it didn’t bury him.  Your candidate, on the other hand, maintained a position that no longer reflects a majority of the American public:  He supported an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would have made gay people second class citizens forever. 

 Even more dramatic, America elected its first openly gay senator last night.  And in an unprecedented series of victories, marriage equality was on the ballot in four states and WON IN ALL FOUR STATES. So there.  Gay people are here to stay, my homophobic Republican friend.  You tried to demonize us once again, but…

 AMERICA DIDN’T FALL FOR IT.

 THE ANGRY WHITE GUY THING

 This one is probably the hardest one for you to take.  But please understand the reality of the situation.  This was the LAST presidential election in our history in which white voters are the majority.  Which means the blaring voices of your Tea Party are going to grow dimmer and dimmer in the coming years.  You counted on xenophobic white guys to clinch the election for you, but…

 AMERICA DIDN’T FALL FOR IT.

 For four years, your entire focus has been on making sure Barack Obama was a one-term President.  Not on making the country better, not on creating jobs, not on expanding freedom.  You’ve been obsessed, like a stalker, at neutralizing The Magic Negro. 

 To defeat him, you nominated, by default, a Rich White Empty Suit.  A man so conviction-free that if he had won it would have been essentially having a lobbyist for President.  A man more comfortable with lying than I am with sitting through double features.  A man you KNEW wasn’t really a good man.  You just thought he might be an ELECTABLE man.  It was a cynical move on your part, and you’ve paid the price. 

 All of your lies, and all of your billions of Rich White Guy dollars, didn’t work yesterday. 

 Now that you’ve utterly failed, I hope you decide to find some wisdom in this failure.

 I hope you come back in 2016 with something better than the Klown Kar of crazy candidates you had this time.  I hope you start ignoring the crazier members of your party.  I hope you decide to grow up and embrace policies that actually benefit the middle class. 

 While you’re casting about for new techniques, I discourage you from studying the Democrats.  We really kind of suck at politics.  We did not do a very good job at selling the President’s many accomplishments during this campaign.  We only won because we had the better candidate.

 So, in closing, I’d like to thank you, Republican Party.  Thanks for the enormous stimulus package your rich sugar daddies just infused into the economy.  Thanks for being my fellow Americans.  I want America to be a great place for you just like I want it to be a great place for me.  We’re all in this together. 

 Now get out of my office.  I’ve got a conference call with Lady Gaga, Cris Kluwe and Elizabeth Warren in a minute.

 It’s not a book that at once struck me as remotely filmable.  First of all, it’s six different stories, told in six completely different writing styles.  Next, there’s the book’s odd, nesting, Russian-Doll-like structure.  Finally, there’s the unavoidable fact that it’s a challenging book.  The novel’s riches require a bit of patience and focus from the reader.  It’s not exactly a beach novel.

 I can’t believe anyone would put up a pile of money to film such an odd book.  But I guess when you are the creative force behind the $1.6 billion Matrix franchise, you can get the suits to cough up some dough.

 This book feels about as unfilmable as Kurt Vonnegut’s legendary time-travel odyssey Slaughter-House Five.  And that makes sense, because that’s the film that Cloud Atlas most reminds me of.  I was shocked at what a beautiful and coherent film director George Roy Hill made of Vonneguts’s book, and I am happy to report I am quite happy to report that, despite all expectations, Cloud Atlas, the film, is a splendid and worthy work.

 To tackle the six stories, Lena and Andy Wachowski have joined forces with the uber-talented German director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run).  The Wachowskis directed three of the stories, and Tykwer the other three.

 The interconnected stories concern:  1) an ailing doctor trying to survive a long sea voyage back to San Francisco, 2) a disreputable young composer trying to advance his ambitions by assisting a retired legend, 3) a crusading reporter tries to uncover a scandal at a nuclear power plant, 4) a cynical publisher on the lam from thugs, 5) a Korean clone gets swept up in a violent revolution and 6) survivors of civilization’s collapse attempt to call for help from off-world colonies.

 To help reinforce what, in the novel, are subtle connections between the stories, the directors have cast familiar and not-so-familiar actors in a dizzying array of roles.  And before you raise your hand and refer to the idiotic “controversy’ regarding some Caucasian actors playing Asian roles, please note that in this ensemble piece men play women, women play men, white and  black play Asian, Asian plays white, etc.  It’s all over the map.

 The filmmakers also wisely ditched the shells-within-shells structure of the took to tell all six stories at the same time.  This, naturally, also helps you understand the resonance and connections between the stories.

 While this all may seem a bit too ambitious for their own good, the fact is, the three directors pull off something rather miraculous.  Just as when you read the book, you’re not quite sure what everything is about, but it’s never less than fascinating for a minute.  Its puzzle-like structure actually invites multiple viewings.  What is the story trying to tell us?  Is it about reincarnation?  Fate? Revolution?  Maybe it’s about all of those things.

 Just as the novel provided author David Mitchell a great showcase to show off six very different writing styles, the film allows the directors to simply go crazy with film genres.  There’s 19th century seafaring adventure, melancholy period drama, crackling 1970s thriller, modern situation comedy, high-tech futuristic action, and post-apocalypse survival.  The remarkable thing is that every sequence is effective and vivid.  Rather than getting annoyed with all the jumping around between stories, it’s thrilling to watch each develop and approach their climax at the same time. 

 It’s also a gas to watch Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon (Oscar winners all), Hugh Grant, Keith David, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Hugo Weaving, Ben Wishaw, James D’Arcy, and many others showing up in a stupifyingly diverse range of roles. 

 It’s also fun to simply sit there and connect the dots.  Watch how many times the number 6 is woven into the story, for instance.  And the concept of falling.  And slavery.

 Does it add up to a masterpiece?  Only time will tell if we consider it that, but even if it isn’t, Cloud Atlas is a gloriously entertaining heap of a movie that no one should miss.

 I lived in New York from 1979 to 1990, which means I was at the epicenter of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic.  When it began, in 1981, I was a deeply closeted student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.  I had zero gay life at the time, and I don’t think the disease even began seeping into my consciousness until at least 1983, which is the first time I knew someone who was diagnosed.

 The stunning new documentary How to Survive a Plague begins four years after this, when there had already been several hundred thousand worldwide deaths to this horrifying illness. It’s the story of ACT UP, an activist organization which arose in response to the government’s slow reaction to the epidemic.

 The organization was famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for its aggressive civil disobedience tactics.  It launched nonviolent but highly disruptive assaults on City Hall, the National Institutes of Health, and perhaps most infamously, St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The problem that ACT UP (which stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which makes it a sort of compound acronym) was trying to solve was the glacial pace of research and drug testing.  The amazing thing about their story is that they actually largely succeeded in their goals.

 This was a story that I knew pretty well, but I still found the film riveting, because it is so well made. 

Activist Peter Staley

One big challenge the filmmakers had was the fact that the footage they needed was mostly decades old, and many of the principal players were dead.  They surmounted this challenge admirably, and the film presents a lively cast of fiercely dedicated characters.  These were people whose lives had been utterly disrupted by this horribly, mysterious and deadly disease.  For them, the stakes couldn’t have been higher.

 I can’t remember the last time I saw a film that actually made me feel ashamed.  I sat there watching the ferocious dedication these men and women had to saving lives.  They put themselves, their very bodies, on the line, time and again.  What was I doing during those years?  Auditioning for acting parts, working as a word processor, and going to plays and movies.  Why didn’t I help?  Just because I, as a still-closeted person, was relatively unaffected by the plague?  Shame on me.

Larry Kramer, relentless and indispensible agitator

 I was inspired by these activists, many of which knew they themselves were doomed.  They knew that the answers they were demanding would most likely come too late to benefit them.  They were trying to stave off the holocaust for the future.  And as anyone who has benefitted from the protease inhibitors that have helped arrest the development of the virus can tell you, they largely managed to do just that.  Sure, there’s no cure yet, but an HIV+ diagnosis is not usually the impending death sentence that it was in 1988.

 One more great thing about the movie is that it pulls off a jaw-dropping reveal very late in the movie that I won’t spoil.  This gimmick gave the movie even more power than it already had.

If you can take revisiting such a painful time, I highly recommend you check out How to Survive a Plague.  Directed by David France.

Rusty, to properly answer this I have to mention my Theory of Special Powers.  Everyone you know who’s worth anything has Special Powers in some area.  My sister Donna has Special Organizing Powers, for example (she could have straightened out the mess in Iraq).  Your own mother has the Special I’m Always Sweet and Fabulous Power.  Remember James Boedecker?  He had the Special I Was Born With This Ridiculous Physique Power.

I have several Special Powers, and one of them is Remembering and Recognizing Show business People.  I have a casting director’s memory.  In fact, casting directors think I should BE a casting director.

Also, I’ve been a bookwork since second grade.  And I am a lifelong Lazy Writer.  So I have the Lazy Writer’s worship of people who can actually put down the donut/PS3 controller/Kindle long enough to actually write something and finish it and get it published.

Michael Lewis

I LOVE my writers.  I’ve written to many of them over the years, and they ALWAYS write back.  I have received letters from Garry Trudeau, Charles Schulz, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Isaac Asimov – and all of those were before email.  I watch interviews with them.  I read about them.  I read their blogs.  I go meet them and hear them speak at Book Festivals.

So I remember writer’s faces.  Also, it doesn’t hurt if they are handsome, like Michael Lewis.

Of course, handsome isn’t a requirement.  I’d instantly recognize Joyce Carrol Oates, and we all know she looks like an “After” photo of a certain diminutive fisherman named Sméagol.

So this Special Power of mine acts like an antenna that’s always powered up.  So I notice things like, Hey, that’s Edward Albee I his running shorts on the elevator with me.  Or, hey, that’s Alex Rocco from The Godfather on the elevator with me.  Or I meet Gore Vidal in a porn shop in West Hollywood.  Or, Hi, aren’t you Octavia Butler perusing the stacks at the library next to me?  Or, look, I’m holding the door at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for Oscar Winner Linda Hunt.  It happens to me all the time.

I have no doubt that I would instantly recognize Terry Pratchett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, George R. R. Martin, John Scalzi, Michael Connelly, or John Irving.

I’m sure you have Special Powers, too, Rusty.  What are they?

So it’s always a good thing to find Mr. L. playing the rare lead.  In Robot and Frank, he plays Frank, an aging, divorced ex-con whose two busy children (James Marsden and Liv Tyler) are trying to cope with his increasing senility.

Since the movie is set in the near future, Marsden shows up one day with a gift for Frank:  a robot assistant.  Naturally, Frank hates the idea, but his son gives him an ultimatum:  Work with the robot or face exile into the Old Folks Home.

Thus begins a quietly delightful relationship.  Robot (that’s his only name) is voiced by the talented Peter Saarsgard, and he’s programmed to not only help Frank around the house, but to work on his overall health as well.  He forces Frank to adhere to a strict schedule and to exercise.  He further annoys Frank by planting a garden.

But since Frank is a cat burglar by trade, and since this is a movie, it’s only a matter of time before Frank manipulates Robot into becoming his new partner in crime.

I realize on the page that sounds pretty silly, but the movie pulls it off quite elegantly.  It reminds me of one of Blake Snyder’s screenwriting rules:  Having Fun With the Premise.  It’s awfully fun to watch Frank coach Robot on lock picking and cajole him into accepting that planning a heist is actually healthy for his mental acuity.

Besides Robot and his kids, the other important relationship in the movie is with the local librarian (the always-more-than-welcome Susan Sarandon).  Frank enjoys flirting with her, and during the course of the movie he tries to find opportunities to step up his game.

Robot and Frank is a model of modest, sturdy, engaging filmmaking.  It should be referenced in film school.  It’s full of lovely little details that help tell the story.  One example is when the local sheriff (Jeremy Sisto) witnesses a casual display of Robot’s superhuman agility.  You can see the wheels start to turn in his head.

The film is also full of very nicely framed and composed shots.  There are times, like a late scene involving the two title characters, where the staging actually adds layers of meaning in an elegant way.

Robot and Frank is also an example of one of my personal favorite subgenres:  The Small Science Fiction film.  The movie clearly had a small budget, but it’s so charming you could care less that you’re obviously watching a small person (Dana Morgan) walking around in a robot suit.

The science fiction angle also adds additional context and food for thought that wouldn’t be present otherwise.  It’s easy to see that this is a buddy movie, but it’s also about the changing way we humans interact with technology.  It’s even about how we think about technology.  What happens when an artificial intelligence we’re talking to seems like a real person?  How does this change the relationship?  How does it change us?

The director of the film is Jake Schreier, who is the former keyboardist for Francis and the Lights, and the warm and clever screenplay is by Christopher D. Ford.

I can only make one serious criticism of the movie:  In the third act, there’s a reveal regarding Frank’s faulty memory that’s not entirely convincing.

But that’s a very small quibble.  Find an art house cinema near you and see Robot and Frank.

r is a petty, jealous tyrant who disallows basic human attributes like sexuality, but who enthusiastically promotes murder, genocide, intolerance, xenophobia, and misogyny.

For a while I considered calling ahead and asking the hotel to keep these reprehensible books out of my hotel room, but then I realized, this isn’t about me. What about the children? Both books are written with a certain air of authority. What if an impressionable child, or even an adult with sub-normal critical thinking skills, were to come across these books? Think of the damage that could occur on these unsuspecting travelers!!

So now, it’s part of my public service to take these books out of the hotel the morning after I check in and dispose of them, so they can’t hurt anyone.

Sure, it’s a lot of trouble, but I have to think of the greater good here. In this small way I make the world a little safer.

I encourage all my fellow travelers who care about their fellow man to do the same.See more

Major Thespian! (really!!)

I actually have less to say about the movie itself than I do about the cast.  So let’s dispense with the movie stuff first:

Magic Mike is very lite entertainment, done professionally well by a good director, decent screenwriters and good actors.  There’s nothing inspired about any of it, but it doesn’t sink into stupidity, either, which is a definite possibility in a movie about male strippers in Tampa.

My Channing Tatum stars as an ambitious thirty-year old lunk named Mike who is saving up for his dream – a custom furniture crafting business – by working as a roofer, bookkeeper, car detailer, and stripper.  When he meets a hangdog but cute and buff nineteen-year-old loser (Alex Pettyfer), he unwisely brings him into his cheesy world of spangled jockstraps, drug dealers and giddy, dangerous women.  Possible romance (with the loser’s sister) and mild misadventures ensue.

Nothing in the movie feels particularly important; the stakes are all there, but feel a bit like Senior Class Play stakes rather than the real thing.  And that’s okay.  After all, did I mention this is a movie about male strippers in Tampa.

So let’s talk about the cast.

First of all, Matthew McConaughey.  He gives it his best shot at Dallas, the Tampa strip club entrepreneur with dreams of moving his act to Miami.  His role is a little bit like Tom Cruise’s in Jerry McGuire:  the character plays to all of his strengths andweaknesses, so that even the things that may generally annoy you about the star really work as this sleazy, aging yet still ridiculously buff hustler.  It’s not quite Oh God Please Give Me My Overdue Oscar Nomination Acting, but it’s close.  I’m not a particular fan of the man, but he’s a professional, and he brings it here, even acquitting himself well in his one big strip scene.

Ask me about Stanislavsky's Acting Method as I grind my crotch into your face.

However, I’m quite puzzled by the presence of Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello in “supporting” roles as two of the other strippers at the club.  Puzzled because they have absolutely nothing to play.  I can see why the filmmakers wanted them in the movie:  they certainly add marquee value.  But they seriously need new agents.  Because they should have only agreed to bare their asses in the picture if the screenwriters and the director guaranteed that they’d actually have roles to play.  As it is, they’re glorified extras.  They barely have lines.  It’s almost distracting.  Manganiello and Bomer are both good actors with thriving television careers, and they should have demanded more high-quality involvement in the movie.  Or passed.

Alex Pettyfer, as the kid, is his usual pretty self.  He needs to work much harder to hide his British accent, though.

Crikey! I should have spent less time working out and more time with the dialog coach!

I was happy to see Gabriel Iglesias in the movie.  I’ve been impressed by him ever since he appeared on (and was thrown off of ) “Last Comic Standing” in 2006.

Now to the women.  I really rather enjoyed Olivia Munn, an actress/module I am most familiar with for her former hosting duties on G4’s “Attack of the Show!”  She’s good as Mike’s bisexual booty call buddy.

As to Cody Horn as Mike’s love interest, well… I’m afraid that considering her very thin resume coupled with the fact that her father is Alan F. Horn, former head of Warner Brothers Studios and current chairman of Walt Disney Studios, my only reaction is “well isn’t that special, she got to star in a movie!!”  For her next project, she might consider expanding her emotional range past the Pretty Pout.  And to Soderberg:  I hope the favor you’re putting in the bank in return for hiring her turns out to be worth it.

Watch me go through the full range of emotions from A to B.

Finally, the movie’s star, Channing Tatum.  This is my Channing’s fourth major release this year, and here’s the thing:  He’s been quite good in all of them.  They weren’t all blockbusters, certainly, but then, his only movies that make big money seem to be the ones based on cheesy 80’s properties (21 Jump Street, G.I. Joe).

Tatum has great looks and solid movie star charisma.  He’s also an indecently good street dancer for a white boy, and he acutally is a former stripper, so his moves in Magic Mike are unassailable.  His acting agility is convincing and effective, as well.

The bottom line is, anyone who makes fun of Channing Tatum at this point in his career is stupid and wrong.

So:  Can I recommend Magic Mike?  Depends on how much you want to watch legitimate actors impersonate slimy male strippers.  If that does it for you, then get thee to the theater.  If not, well, you might be better off catching Moonrise Kingdom.