127 HOURS (dir. Danny Boyle)
How do you make a film about a guy who was trapped beneath a boulder for five days? Those who are familiar with “Slumdog Millionaire” know that director Danny Boyle doesn’t hold anything back in his films. That same frenetic, impossibly energetic style takes hold in this telling of real-life adventurer Aron Ralston’s ordeal. “127 Hours” puts viewers right in the cave with Ralston, who eventually freed himself by cutting off his arm with a cheap Swiss Army knife. Boyle depicts that part in graphic detail, complete with the sound of cannon fire to correspond with the snapping of bones. While the film is sometimes tough to watch, and rightly critical of Ralston’s reckless behavior, it is ultimately a story of triumph.
I had a chance to speak to Ralston after the “127 Hours” screening at the Telluride Film Festival in September. When I asked Ralston what adventure he was planning on taking next, he smiled and told me that he was going to climb one of the nearby 11,000-foot mountain peaks – this time, with a buddy. Like Danny Boyle’s direction, Ralston can’t help but keep sprinting forward.
-Max Siegel
THE GHOST WRITER (dir. Roman Polanski)
Roman Polanski is a natural at dealing with the inner depths and realization of paranoia. The feeling that,no matter what one does, any attempts to escape the inevitable will only prove futile is a staple in the political thriller genre. But for Polanski, it’s become a sort of obsession, so it’s no wonder that “The Ghost Writer” marks a return to form for the aging director, as well as one of the best films of the year.
At a time when he seems to be gaining greater attention for his house arrest and possible extradition to the U.S., Polanski still approaches his latest effort with the skills of a master who knows the key elements of a great thriller. Mood and tone are the keys for Polanski to access a fairly rudimentary story and turn it into an unnerving journey into substantiated fear.
It’s always a pleasure to see filmmakers do what they know how to do best. Although some may deride him for his personal ordeals, “The Ghost Writer” comes across as a response to all those who would rather focus on Polanski’s darker personal life by illuminating an artist who still has a few tricks left.
-Jawad Qadir
I AM LOVE (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
A Shakespearean family tragedy, a sumptuous visual feast and a whole lot of Tilda Swinton’s face – Luca Guadagnino’s “I Am Love” is many, many things. Like a Thanksgiving meal, the film’s offering of sensual and sensory overload – from the Baroque architecture of Milan to John Adams’ classical score that never stops swelling – will leave you overwhelmed and exhilarated. Tilda Swinton, also known as god, plays the lead (perhaps title) role of Emma Recchi, a Russian emigre and the matriarch of an Italian high society family. But Emma, swept off her feet by a really hot chef and his orgasmic prawns, deigns to leave her dynasty in exchange for a life of headboard-pounding-ly good sex – and love.
Though Guadagnino’s film is often totally flamboyant and over-the-top, making the quiet moments quite savory, he never ceases to work at such a high level of craft. Swinton, who not only takes off her clothes but also speaks Russian, Italian and English, gives a hell of a performance. “I Am Love” is everything you could ask for in a film and it even manages to inaugurate a new cinematic genre: food pornography.
-Ryan Lattanzio
INCEPTION (dir. Christopher Nolan)
An impressively constructed 148-minute fantasia on perception, creation, dreams and alternate realities, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” unfolds as a love letter to cinema itself. The film marks a personal turning point for the director who, in the span of a decade, gave us the millennium’s inaugural mindfuck in “Memento” and has since carved a remarkable personal niche in studio filmmaking.
Backed by a stellar supporting cast, Leonardo DiCaprio plays the protagonist Dom Cobb as a complex man, possibly an extension of Nolan himself: frenetic, intelligent, uncommonly driven. “What’s the most resilient parasite?” we hear him ask rhetorically. “An idea. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.” So convinced is Cobb of his ability to create and manipulate that he remains tragically unaware of his own vulnerability.
In the end, it is the shared obsession between architect and creation in the film – as Nolan’s determination to realize his grandest undertaking merges with Cobb’s quest to simultaneously free himself of his past and cling to it in desperation – that elevates “Inception” above the sum of its parts.
-David Liu
MOTHER (dir. Bong Joon-ho)
An extreme example of the power of maternal instinct, Bong Joon-ho’s thriller, “Mother,” chronicles one woman’s attempts to absolve her son of a murder she believes he could not possibly have committed. But rather than casting any one party in the wrong, Bong uses the plot’s ambiguous elements to explore the complexities of moral choices while regaling viewers with stunning displays of the South Korean countryside.
Kim Hye-ja, the film’s leading lady, brilliantly commands the suspenseful plot. Though quaint and adorable at a first glance, her face seems able to silently convey every subtle nuance of her character’s emotions as her quest throttles her between moments of hope and savage desperation. Kim’s character – an herbalist and acupuncture practitioner inseparably attached to her mentally challenged adult son – demonstrates that dire circumstances (and sometimes mere chance) can tilt even the most basic moral standards off their axes. Bong and Park Eun-kyo’s meticulously crafted script and Kim’s adept acting make for an enthralling investigation of dubious personalities in dubious circumstances.
-Nastia Voynovskaya
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (dir. Edgar Wright)
When you watch a fresh-faced young actor up on a screen punching a dude, and then that dude turns into a shower of gold coins, does it touch a special place in your heart? There’s a logic to it that appeals – and makes sense – to members of a certain generation who grew up with gaming as a major constellation in their cultural universe. Edgar Wright’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” adapted from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume modern comics masterpiece, renders a tale of romance in the language of video games, comics and indie rock.
“Pilgrim” makes pitch-perfect use of these contemporary signifiers to the end of storytelling, painting the external world in the hues of internal fantasy. Wright and his excellent ensemble cast have realized everything from bass guitar battles to the pouty intensity of Kim Pine (Alison Pill), a sort of Glowering Cynic Dream Girl, with loving integrity to the source material and a zest for visual expressionism. Bonus: Michael Cera’s turn as the film’s bafflingly immature title character may be his best since “Arrested Development.”
-Sam Stander
SHUTTER ISLAND (dir. Martin Scorsese)
By all accounts, Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” should be hackneyed and tired. In the vein of the great 1940s noir thrillers, the film digs into the disturbed recesses of a man’s psyche with all the requisite elements of the genre: the insane asylum, the political conspiracy and the omnipresent fog. However, as the film follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) through the convoluted cliffs and caves of the titular landscape, what becomes clear is that nothing is what it seems.
Haunted by a foreboding soundtrack and jolting images of a pained past, the undertones of Nazi experiments, McCarthyism and familial tragedy subvert any assumptions one may have previously held about the plot. The audience is taken in and never released from this persistent tension until the final reveal. It’s a testament to bothy Scorsese’s direction and the skill of his actors, especially Michelle Williams, that the climax is not ruinous despite its potential predictability. Scorsese’s nuanced calculations of character and craft elevate the film above just adrenaline-driven amusement to a film that can stand amongst his finer achievements as a master of storytelling.
-Jessica Pena
THE SOCIAL NETWORK (dir. David Fincher)
Fast, funny and exhilarating, “The Social Network” reaffirms David Fincher as the most subversive studio filmmaker working in Hollywood today. The “Zodiac” helmer further cements his status as an heir apparent to Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks with his blistering portrait of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s youngest billionaire.
Working from a 162-page screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, Fincher paces the film to the pulse of a psychological thriller. Along the way, he elicits remarkable performances from his ensemble cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Rooney Mara, radiant twenty-somethings whose collective distaste toward tradition and bureaucracy is beautifully expressed in Sorkin’s fiercely independent characterizations.
As Fincher’s restless vision and Sorkin’s incisive dialogue merge, “The Social Network” blossoms into a masterclass in cinematic craft, so meticulously constructed and realized that each individual scene and line of dialogue cascades into a totalizing quest for progress and fulfillment.
-David Liu
TOY STORY 3 (dir. Lee Unkrich)
Pixar has really been sticking it to the world’s tear ducts lately, hasn’t it? First “Up” came out with that incredibly sad montage that pretty much came out of nowhere. Then, just when you were convinced “Toy Story 3” would have to suck according to some unbending law that all sequels with numbers greater than two must be terrible, you found yourself in the theater with droplets of salt-watery nostalgia streaming down your face as you fondly remembered your own childhood, your own toys – your own living room viewings of “Toy Story” and its first sequel.
And as those tears rolled down your face, you could feel the built-up layers of cynicism washing away with them, but not your hard-won life experience. Because “Toy Story 3” isn’t just a hugely effective nostalgia trip. For those of us who have aged with Andy, the film also serves as a gentle (and funny, of course) reminder that it is possible to grow up without growing callous. Some sequels do deserve to be made.
That said, if they release “Toy Story 4,” I might actually kill someone. Just kidding, it’ll probably be good, too.
-Jill Cowan
WINTER’S BONE (dir. Debra Granik)
Winter’s Bone” isn’t what you would call an uplifting film. Ree, a teenage girl played by the fantastic Jennifer Lawrence, tries to find her father, a drug addict who has placed the family’s house for bail. It’s a simple story, but that central plot isn’t what’s really important; the film is really about how meth tears rural communities apart. “Winter’s Bone,” which was shot on location in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, stands out because of its haunting atmosphere. You can almost smell the decay as Ree wanders among different, violent family clans, visiting decrepit houses in a futile search for help.
Watching “Winter’s Bone” can be a painfully intense experience, but like the best neorealist films, it is anchored by the quiet strength of its hero. What Ree lacks in physical power she makes up for in perseverance and pragmatism. Audiences may squirm at the sight of Ree teaching her younger siblings how to skin a (real-life) squirrel, but there’s something touching about the gesture. It’s a passing of the torch in a land where family and neighborliness have faded into distant memory.
-Max Siegel