The Lovely Bones

Joe's Thoughts:
The Ugly Bones.

Creation

Drew's Thoughts:
Creation is a handsome looking biopic about Charles Darwin with good performances from Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. The second half of the film gets weighed down in flashbacks and hallucinations making the narrative more convoluted than it need be but overall it's a pretty good movie worth considering.

The Princess and the Frog

Drew's Thoughts:
Though I'm not the biggest Disney fan in the PFA (I'll let Joe and Colleen duke it out for that title) I was intrigued (and glad) someone at Disney is finally drawing again. Computer animation can be effective certainly but I'm getting pretty sick of it so it was nice to hearken back to the days of Aladdin and other non-computer animated childhood favorites.
The Princess and the Frog, written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin), is a twist on "The Frog Prince" set in New Orleans. The story is pretty standard but all the New Orleans cliches/stereotypes make for a more interesting backdrop than usual. Tiana, who's not actually a princess, dreams of opening her own restaurant when she encounters the Maurice Chevalier-esque playboy Prince Naveen who has been turned into a frog by the villainous Dr. Facilier, a beatnik voodoo doctor voiced by Keith David (Requiem for a Dream). When she kisses the prince she unexpectedly turns into a frog and they go on an adventure through the bayou, meeting a jazz loving gator and Cajun firefly, in the hopes returning to human form.
It's not destined to be a classic but it's the most fun a Disney film has been since Enchanted.

Collapse

Drew's Thoughts:
Collapse, the latest film by Chris Smith (American Movie), is a 70 something minute discussion with Michael Ruppert, a chain smoking, dog loving, LAPD cop/whistle blower turned investigative journalist who predicted the current economic crisis in his self-published newsletter From the Wilderness. Going in, I have to say, I didn't think a feature length interview would be very interesting (I wasn't a big fan of Fog of War for instance.) Yet this film is actually very fascinating and engaging, due to the content and the director's brisk pacing of the film.
After a bit of back story about how Ruppert tried to expose the corruption facilitating a drug trade operating within the LAPD, Ruppert launches into the many facets of the current collapse discussing peak oil, energy production, food production, war and the financial system among others.
So the big question regarding the film is, is this guy a crackpot? One of the reasons that makes the film good is that the filmmakers aren't totally sure what the answer to that question is either (i.e. they don't exalt him in the way that many docs do to their subjects.) I'd say he's probably a little bit of a crackpot but he has a bevy of interesting and provocative things to say that are worth pondering regardless of whether you totally believe him.
And besides, Ruppert is very passionate about what he says and passionate people are always very engaging and fun to watch. He occasionally drops a few hilarious non-catch phrases like "you got to separate the ice cream from the bullshit."
One of the best docs I've seen this year.

(500) Days of Summer

Drew's Thoughts:
(500) days of shit... hoo! I'm throwing rocks tonight.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to chip away at the goodwill he earned for his work in Angels in the Outfield as he plays the lamewad who falls in love at first sight with Zooey Deschanel who plays Summer (har har, get it??) the Belle & Sebastian-quoting indie dream girl who has cute quirks like loving Ringo Starr only because no one else loves him. To be honest, the movie sort of seems written to just make Zooey Deschanel feel good about herself because the narrator is very fond of saying how every male past age twelve is hopelessly and uncontrollably attracted to her.
Anyway, then Summer likes him because he listens to The Smiths and likes Knight Rider or something and then they hang out in IKEA which turns her on, then they have sex, then Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a big dance number set to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams" to celebrate the achievement. Then they hang out some more, watching porn, yelling "penis" really loudly in parks for amusement and looking at buildings because JGL would rather be an architect than write greeting cards. Then they break up and JGL is sad.
So yeah this is so sickeningly "indie" that I couldn't even finish it (the soundtrack certainly doesn't help either.) I don't know if they get back together in the end and I definitely don't care.
W.O.T. (...waste 'o time)

Avatar

Drew's Thoughts:
Crapatar.

The Road

Drew's Thoughts:
The simultaneously best and worst thing about the big screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is that it reminds you what a great book the novel is. Though it does so mainly by being a version of The Road from the alternate universe where everything good actually sucks.
For the most part, they got visual look of the film down pretty well. Everything is varying shades of grey, landscapes are desolate but not barren etc. Unfortunately, they don't have any other aspects down very well at all. Despite getting the look technically right, the film doesn't create any atmosphere whatsoever. The film opens with idyllic life, before the whathaveyou devastated everything, where Viggo has a mustache and horses and Charlize is pregnant and not on suicide watch; then it shows you when the whathaveyou devastates everything which was a really dumb choice. The story is about the man and his son not the man and his wife yet the boy doesn't get introduced until a little while later. In general, there's way too much Charlize Theron in the film anyway. And the kid is twice as old as he should be. And Viggo Mortensen is not a very good actor and doesn't do much to persuade me otherwise with this film. And moreover they don't really have much of a father/son chemistry, Viggo keeps telling me how much he loves the boy but I don't really feel it...
And the film falls into disappointing Hollywood conventions throughout, such as when "exciting" things happen thunderous music and quick editing are cued (there shouldn't have been any music in the first place.) And even despite that, the film still moves at a leaden pace. Most egregious of all though, is the film takes the book's enigmatic dialogue and makes it cheesy as hell, with the poor performances stripping away its thought-provoking nuances.
It's incredibly disappointing coming from John Hillcoat, whose first film The Proposition is very good and especially because this project had a lot of potential. McCarthy's works are very easy to adapt; the way he writes is easily filmable. No Country for Old Men turned out well, for instance. All a director really needs to do is figure out which parts to cut out and then put what's on the page onto the screen. He or she doesn't need to and should not write more scenes for Charlize Theron.
Up to this point, I've always wondered what the unnamed catastrophe in the novel actually was and now it seems like this film could very possibly be the disaster in question.

Fish Tank

Drew's Thoughts:
Fish Tank, Oscar-winning writer/director Andrea Arnold's coming of age story, is sort of an amalgam of Precious, An Education and Save the Last Dance; fortunately, it's better than all of those.
After a shaky start, the film finds its legs and ends up being pretty good. The film follows 15 year old Mia (played by Katie Jarvis) who lives with her mum and younger sister in low-income housing in London suburb, Essex. Her days consist of wandering around, watching MTV, and drinking two liter bottles of generic brand cider and practicing her dance moves in a vacant apartment.
Things change when her mum gets a new boyfriend Connor (Hunger's Michael Fassbender) and this is when the movie starts taking shape. Jarvis and Fassbender's scenes together are the heart of the film really and the exploration of their relationship is the most interesting aspect of the film.
The charismatic Connor is a lot nicer to Mia and her mum and sister than they are to each other and they are all rather smitten with him. He also encourages and aids Mia's interest in dancing, making Connor a quasi-father/older brother figure as well as an object of desire.
The film seems like it should have been slimmed down by at least 20 minutes; various symbolic bits and subplots, such as a white horse chained up in empty lot that Mia repeatedly tries to free, aren't really necessary or that effective. However, the bulk of the movie is good and suprisingly engaging. Fassbender is good as well and I think Katie Jarvis should definitely be added to the list of Best Actress contenders at the Dolphins this year.

Big Fan

Drew's Thoughts:
Big Fan is the directorial debut of Dolphin-nominee Robert Siegel who wrote last year's Best Picture winner The Wrestler. Unlike The Wrestler though this is more of a comedy, though a dark one.
The film follows Patton Oswalt as the titular character, Paul, a massive NY Giants fan whose life routinely consists of working in a parking garage tollbooth listening to his favorite radio show Sports Dog and writing out and rehearsing the statement he plans to make when he calls into the show after getting off work. He does this everyday, continuing an ongoing debate with Philadelphia Phil, another obsessed fan alligned with the rival "Eagle nation". On Sundays, Paul tailgates with all the other fans before watching the game in the stadium parking lot on a TV hooked up to a car battery.
What seems like a sudden turn of good fortune falls into Paul's lap when he encounters his favorite player one night but things turn nasty when the player puts Paul in the hospital.
Siegel has a lot to learn when it comes to directorial technique but he tells a very unusual story that moves in unexpected ways. Patton Oswalt also gives an engaging performance as someone you might ridicule normally but you certainly sympathize with him in the film.
Big Fan is a pretty good and uncommon movie, though I don't think it's strong enough to muscle out any of the preexisting Dolphin contenders.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Drew's Thoughts:
I love a well-done exposé as much as the next person but the documentaries that I really take to are ones that focus on people. It takes a wise film maker to know who's interesting enough to make a film about but with a good director behind the camera you get amazing results such as American Movie, The King of Kong, Grizzly Man and Dig! to name a few.
Anvil! isn't nearly on the same level as those I just mentioned but it is still quite good. Anvil, as you learn in the film's opening minutes, is a Canadian metal band that was continually poised for global mega-success at any moment. Except that moment never came and even as the 80s passed them by they kept chugging along in the hopes of catching their big break in a radically different music industry. The film catches up with them as they are gearing up for a massive European tour that they are justly stoked about it and follows them through imminent mishaps and failures.
You get to know the two core members, hilariously named Lips and Robb Reiner, and come to respect them and root for them even in the face of certain failure. There is something inherently compelling about watching people trying to achieve their dreams whatever they may be.
One of the best documentaries of the year.

Good Hair

Drew's Thoughts:
Chris Rock narrates this fascinating and hilarious look into African-American hairstyles, focusing somewhat on the idea of natural "African hair" not being conceived as "good hair." The film isn't really out to take a big stance on the subject one way or the other but it was interesting to learn about how much importance various hair treatments are to the African-American community (and the insane amounts of money the hair care industry makes annually from the black community.)
There are a variety of talking heads giving their viewpoints on the subject ranging from Maya Angelou and Al Sharpton to Ice-T. Nearly all the people weighing in deliver lively and funny commentary and it's a rare case when a documentary delivers quotable lines but this film does.
Good Hair is an immensely enjoyable film and one of the Best Docs of the year.

The Cove

Drew's Thoughts:
Though I saw this was winning Best Doc awards left and right I was a tad skeptical that a movie about animal rights activists would tickle my fancy. Even if the animals in question were dolphins. I definitely shouldn't have judged this book by it's cover. The film follows a small Ocean's 11style team of specialist who gather various types of recordings and evidence of massive, daily dolphin slaughters in northern Japan.
Last year everyone raved about Man on Wire and how impeccably made it was and it really wasn't. The Cove however is. It covers its subject from multiple, equally interesting angles. It's sometimes touching and often appalling. And damn, it is one of the tensest films I've seen this year. I'd say only Antichrist and The Hurt Locker are ahead of it in pure cinematic intensity and exhilaration.
Absolutely one of the best documentaries of year. Must see material.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Drew's Thoughts:
Though The Men Who Stare at Goats, based on a book about U.S. Military experimentation with use of psychic powers, was savaged by the Reel Geezers I found it to be surprisingly good.
The film is not without flaws though. It's somewhat apparent that first timer Grant Heslov hasn't directed before as the film feels somewhat formless. And though stronger direction would have benefitted the film certainly, it is still mostly successful thanks to a funny script by Peter Straughn and the comic pairing of Ewan McGregor and George Clooney.
Clooney, who carpet bombed filmgoers this season with his presence upon the release of this, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up in the Air within the span of a month, somewhat surprisingly does his best work of the year here. I was discussing with a number of people recently Clooney's lack of range as an actor and how that is buffeted with his charisma. Clooney gets a little outside of his persona in this film which is nice to see. His wildly manic-depressive take on the character works well with Ewan McGregor's hesitant straight man. Whether he's engaging in sleep-deprived cackling, cursing the equipment that his own department designed or is just depressed and forlorn about the curse of death Kevin Spacey laid upon him, George Clooney is hilarious in this movie. Enough to make him a surprise, last-minute contender for a Best Actor nom at the upcoming Drews. (I did not see that coming.)
The film doesn't have much of a plot and considering how the best moments of the film are Clooney and McGregor bantering back and forth whilst stranded in a desert or in captivity, I feel like even less story would have been a more adventurous choice and yielded even better results. It's when the film broadens its scope somewhat to include peripheral characters played by Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey that the film's weaknesses become more apparent. Bridges and Spacey are fine and have funny moments but their characters aren't particularly well developed, at least not to fully congeal with the much better developed sphere that Clooney and McGregor occupy in the film.
Though it's a bit light, The Men Who Stare at Goats is funnier than most other films this year which is most certainly a worthwhile achievement.

Sherlock Holmes

Drew's Thoughts:
Guy Ritchie's adaptation of the classic stories is probably the first of many, which I'm not too sure how I feel about. Sherlock Holmes is an entertaining diversion but not much else. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are both pretty good but I was disappointed with the averageness of the dialogue. Though Ritchie's rock 'em sock 'em, stylized direction is present here his penchant for sharp, funny, profanity-laden dialogue isn't. This is a bummer because despite being given the freedom of an R-rating he doesn't take advantage of it.
The film ends up being a decent popcorn mystery, with a good score and art direction, but I feel like it could have been bit more memorable had it been approached with more creativity.