It’s baffling that with such a rich and iconic source material like “Alice in Wonderland,” something could be as bland, cliched, emotionless and by-the-book (comparitively) as Tim Burton’s “adaptation” of the children’s novel.

Burton is a pretty divisive filmmaker, and his appeal to the tween/teen emo/goth/Hot Topic/what-have-you crowds has gotten him a good deal of undeserved malice from a lot of people. I tend to really like his work, with some little exceptions here and there (his awful Batman films and Planet of the Apes, for example). You would think that he would have some sort of vague connection to the Alice stories. They mix the absurd and the dark in interesting ways that you’d expect Burton could hone in on and relate to his typical subject matter, but instead his adaptation feels like a complete paycheck movie with almost none of the heart and soul prevalent in his other work.

To digress for a moment, Burton seems well aware of the styles he’s become known for and for the past few films he’s not only made self-aware jabs at them, he’s outright mocked them in some instances (the “By the Sea” segment in Sweeney Todd, for example). This fact makes certain elements of his “Alice” all the more troubling. Everything “Burtonesque” in the film–and this has been pointed out in numerous reviews–seems completely artificial, like, as one reviewer pointed out, someone was attempting to copy Burton. He seems to have put very little effort in maintaining his style but also including that admirable self-awareness. The film is just Burtonesque for the sake of it, when none of the subject matter of the film really calls for it.

Before I go any further on the negatives, let me just point out some very good thing about the film. For one, Mia Wasikowski makes an excellent Alice, and the fact that they decided to make Alice older isn’t really a problem at all (I’ll elaborate on what the problem WAS further on). She has a lot of charisma and charm and she does the “strong-willed woman” thing well. Really, most of the performances were good. Depp’s Hatter was a tad much, and the attempts at developing the Wonderland characters was really ill-advised (he’s mad, he likes tea, and he’s a hatter. Done and done.), but the acting and voicework was mostly good. One small negative standout was Crispin Glover, whose Knave of Hearts was conceptually interesting, but his performance was far from inspired or interesting.

What most people will get out of the film is the visuals, which, admittedly, were pretty good despite my low expectations based on the trailers. The 3-D worked very well and the environments, CGI characters, etc. all looked pretty gorgeous. The problem there, however, is that the environments all feel completely useless and artificial. Burton attempts to create this vast world but there’s no consistency and you can’t really feel the connections from place to place. Everything looks great but feels closed-in like a set.

But that’s enough sweet-talk. Back to the bad stuff, of which there is plenty.

I think the biggest problem I had here was that instead of being a unique and updated adaptation of the story or even a new version of the Disney film, Burton’s “Wonderland” tries this whole new thing by setting it 13 years after Alice’s first venture into Wonderland. Meaning, when she goes to Wonderland now, everyone remembers her but she doesn’t remember going, and since she left things have gotten a lot worse. The major problem here is this: Alice’s escape into Wonderland in this film is due to her needing to rebel against the social norms that she’s struggling with as well as the aristocracy that is about to force her into a marriage she doesn’t want. It’s not a bad idea by any means–except that nothing in the film once she gets to Wonderland has any sort of context with those conflicts. She goes to Wonderland, has the adventures and all that, and then comes back and is all of a sudden a smarter person for it even though nothing she’s done throughout the film has had anything to do with her real life.

Another problem is the plot in general. Instead of just being a series of absurd and occasionally disturbing episodes featuring different Wonderland inhabitants, Alice has to save Wonderland (or Underland as it’s pointlessly referred to in the film) from the Red Queen, who is using the Jabberwocky to keep everyone under her control because…well, for no reason, really. The White Queen used to rule, but then the Red Queen burned down some random village and stole the crown, but we don’t really get any idea of what needs to be ruled or how to do so because of how poorly developed Wonderland is as a setting. Which obviously goes back to every piece of Wonderland feeling like a setpiece. This is because the original story IS setpiece after setpiece, and you can’t just randomly translate that into a story like this without developing it much further than they do here. The script was written by Linda Woolverton, who wrote Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Apparently she forgot how to format a simple story in those fifteen years where she wasn’t working.

Which finally brings me to one other major problem with the film (thanks to the writing, of course). Instead of feeling like an adaptation of the story, it feels, quite simply, like all of the really well-known bits and pieces of the story were plopped in randomly simply because they were well known, and they’re given no purpose or context other than to be there. Some examples: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” is the Mad Hatters sort of pseudo-catchphrase in the film. Why? Just because, I suppose. There are all sorts of lines of dialogue like this, and it’s like we’re supposed to be enjoying them just because we’ve heard them before (they’re mostly from the Wonderland animated film, as well, which wasn’t a very faithful adaptation in the first place, not that it really hindered it). The same is true of most of the characters, who seem to just be there to be there. Almost none of them serve a purpose other than, “oh, look, there’s the March Hare, there’s the dodo, there’s the mouse.”

I have a feeling Burton cared very little about what he was doing here, and despite the solid visuals and reasonably good acting, his Alice in Wonderland is insanely uninspired, emotionless, and worst of all, completely lacking in the spirit of both the original stories or even Disney’s original film. It’s a shame.

“Powerful” is the most appropriate way to describe Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s latest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio and his first foray into the horror/thriller genre since his Cape Fear remake in the early 90s. I haven’t seen that film, but I’m willing to bet Shutter Island is a wholly different animal. A combination of psychological terror, drama, and exploration of psychology, the Red Scare, and the origins of violence within man, the film follows DiCaprio as a man tasked with investigating the disappearance of a dangerous patient from the Ashecliffe Mental Institution on Shutter Island, a place where only the most dangerous of mental patients are held.

The missing woman, Rachel Solando, apparently disappeared despite being under constant watch. There is no way off the island except the ferry on which DiCaprio’s character, Teddy, and his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) arrive. So where did she go? She escaped without shoes, food, or clothes warmer than the typical patients’ garb. If she is out there, are Teddy and Chuck going to find a woman or a body?

Teddy finds himself with other dilemmas, however, when he begins to wonder how much truth there is to anything the hospital staff is saying. Things get even worse when a hurricane hits the island and there’s no chance of a ferry home. Teddy’s stuck, and he has to find out what’s going on in this hospital.

Shutter Island seems to borrow a good deal stylistically from The Shining, especially in the contrasts between the dismal and dark Ashecliffe halls and the vibrant and disturbing visions Teddy has of his past, both as a soldier who helped liberate a concentration camp in WWII and as a husband whose wife died in a horrible fire. There are truly haunting images in this film, more deeply affecting and soul-crushing than outright horrific, and it all suggests something far bigger than a simple mystery. Scorsese looks deeply into the human mind here, in ways he hasn’t approached for a long while.

Taking place in the mid-50s, there is plenty of sometimes subtle but mostly overt references to the Red Scare and fear of nuclear war, and the film is absolutely brilliant in its use of those kind of subjects (as well as typical old horror tropes like Nazi experimentation) to recreate classic horror but at the same time unmask it for the paranoid madness it all was. The film is also a very powerful indictment of certain schools of thought and practices within 50s psychology and in fact some reactions to psychological trauma in our modern world. The film basically asks, “At what point must you realize someone you love is no longer within their right mind? And can you go on ignoring it, or must you do something about it before it goes completely out of control?” Like Max von Sydow’s Dr. Jeremiah Naering says in one of the more climactic moments of the film: “Don’t you agree that if you see a monster, you must stop it?”

Speaking of von Sydow, the film is filled to the brim with numerous character actors who are pretty much all absolutely astounding, even those that pretty much only appear very briefly (Patricia Clarkson, Elias Koteas, Ted Levine, and Jackie Earle Haley each basically get a scene each, but every one of them is brilliant and they stay with you long after they’re gone). DiCaprio gives his strongest performance since The Aviator, and Ben Kingsley and von Sydow are suitably suspicious and cryptic. It’s pretty much always a pleasure to see a veteran like von Sydow anyway, so it was especially great to see him in such a mysterious and dark role. Ruffalo, as always, is quite good.

Shutter Island is simply one of the best explorations of the human mind out there, and though it deals with Scorsese’s typical themes regarding origins of violence within people and homage to the cinema that he loves so much, it is a wholly unique work within his canon, and when the final moments passed and my heart steadied, it became clear that it stands easily among his best work. It’s a hard choice to make, but his partnership with DiCaprio is coming closer and closer to besting that with Robert De Niro. I won’t go quite that far, though; that work has had a lot longer to sit within the audience’s mindset, whereas there’s still plenty of time to look back on Scorsese’s work with DiCaprio. Regardless, this is certainly one of many completely successful ventures for the duo.

If there is one prevailing criticism I have of Peter Jackson, it’s that the man simply cannot resist schmaltz. It’s there in Lord of the Rings, albeit infrequently and never to the point that it hinders the film, but it’s there and it tends to aggravate. King Kong has even more of it, and there it actually does hurt the film to a small degree. So I suppose it’s logical that his next film should finally be the one that falls victim to schmaltz and doesn’t recover. At least, not totally.

The first forty-five minutes of The Lovely Bones is, to put it plainly, masterful. It’s heartwrenching, overwhelmingly tense, and intriguing. After this first act Jackson finally stops resisting and an absolutely astounding level of melodrama pours in. It’s almost embarrassing to watch it. The characters become caricatures, the sap increases tenfold, and the storytelling gets more and more trying. For all intents and purposes, I was sure this was it and the film would simply dissolve into inescapable garbage.

Thankfully, Jackson is able to recover some semblance of the fantastic film he began with. The tension mounts once again, and we’re pulled back in, and though we’re still treated to some absurdly out-of-place sentimentality, things seem to get back to normal. The film finishes this way, but not before a climax that is, well, laughable, but forgivable considering what precedes and follows it.

So I suppose where most people wind up loathing this film because of the pretty poor second half, I have been more forgiving. It seems silly, considering how much I disliked an entire third of it, but the other parts transcend the bad material so easily. I haven’t been this moved by a film this year. At all. Not A Serious Man. Not Up in the Air. Nothing. The best of the year could not match the utter power a great deal of this film has, and I’m willing to forgive Jackson’s transgressions for that.

As one final note: the performances, for the most part, are phenomenal. Wahlberg’s trademark adult naivete works very well for his portrayal of a sort of goofy, clueless, but profoundly caring father. Stanley Tucci, as our ruthless and deeply reprehensible villain, gives what is by far his greatest performances and one of the best performances of the year. Saoirse Ronan, though falling into a bit of overacting on occasion, stands up very well next to her older fellow castmembers. Susan Sarandon and Michael Imperioli do their thing, and they’re very good. The rest of the cast is adequate.

Overall, could’ve been a masterpiece, falls short due to Jackson’s typical over-sentimenal bull. Still quite good.

Really a sight to behold. James Cameron has basically proved it’s possible to show people pretty much anything with film, so long as you have the money and smarts to do it. And yes, this movie took much more than money; the effort Cameron showed in the scrïptment for the film really shows. Pandora looks and feels like the real deal – a planet we have not yet found, an entire ecosystem yet to be discovered that we’re seeing for the first time. The Na’vi seem – and, most importantly, look – like they exist. The dead eye problem Robert Zemeckis has been fighting with since he took up his hack animated projects? Solved. Movement, both in body and face? Legit. Yeah, I knew they weren’t real. I knew I was watching a movie. But that doesn’t make them seem any less real within the context of the film. When the Na’vi interact with humans, it looks real. Completely. No over-glossy finish. No inconsistent collision. No awkwardness.

Of course the film isn’t perfect. We’re dealing with the creator of the Terminator films, and the dialogue shows it. Not bad all-around, but there are some cringe-worthy moments, and the amount of “whoa!”‘s and “outstanding!”‘s along with other little one-liners (plus some really patronizing expository dialogue) definitely don’t let you forget you’re watching a Hollywood action picture. Thankfully, it just happens to be a damn good Hollywood action picture. The characters are all generally action archetypes, but they really work here, and Sam Worthington gives quite a good lead performance, well above his so-so (but comparitively stellar) performance in the most recent Terminator. Also great were Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang as our two villains, the brains and the brawn respectively.

I especially loved the rather subtle way Cameron had Lang’s character sort of serve as the true opposite to Worthington’s; Jake Sully (Worthington) has been destroyed by war. He cannot live unless behind the guise of his avatar, which allows him freedom, spirit, peace, love. Quaritch (Lang) lives for war; he has no interest in the resources Pandora produces, he just wants to destroy. But he too lives behind another face – the face of his warships, especially his walking mechanical suit without which he is weak on this planet, both in body and spirit.

And of course this wouldn’t be a James Cameron film without the badass heroine. We get three here: Zoe Saldana’s wise and thoughtful Na’vi named Neytiri, Sigourney Weaver’s scientist Grace Augustine, and Michelle Rodriguez’s one-liner spouting fighter pilot Trudy Chacon. The romance between Worthington and Saldana’s character is the backbone of the movie, and it works extremely well for one between an avatar and an alien.

The multiple messages Cameron seems to be pushing get a bit tiring, of course; so the human military wants the resources and the native inhabitants are in the way. We feel the need to educate them and get them to leave, or eliminate them entirely. So yeah. There are parallels to both American history with the Native Americans and our current international “concerns” that happen to revolve around resources under the ground of our enemies (or sorry, the people we’re, like, saving or something, whose culture might as well be alien to us).

So is it cliched? A bit. But we’ve never seen this story told in such a way before. Pocahontas in Space? OK. Maybe. But it’s the best damn interpretation of the story I’ve ever seen, and the action and visual effects never feel like they’re overwhelming the story. They help, not hinder, and in the greatest and most beautiful ways.

Let there be no doubt, you will never see another film quite like this. Generally encapsulating everything I want in a film, John Paizs’ brilliant ode to the “color crime” genre of the 40s and 50s and educational films of the same era is practically overflowing with absurdity and, with few other words to describe it, pure genius.

Basically, John Paizs portrays Steven, a struggling screenwriter who is adept at writing beginnings and endings, but has a lot of trouble when it comes to the middle. He can write little elements, perhaps, but nothing significant. This troubles him greatly, but he finds some hope in his friendship with the little girl next door (who narrates the tale, as Steven never speaks).

The film so perfectly replicates its source that you wouldn’t even know it was made in the 80s, but for the bizarre storytelling. Paizs is a longtime friend of fellow Winnipeg-based filmmaker Guy Maddin, and there are very obvious similarities in their work. Like Maddin, Paizs has a deep admiration for the films he’s attempting to both recreate and parody, and it shows, because it never feels like a mockery. You can feel the heart in the material.

I’m at a loss to describe it any further, but it’s one of the best films I’ve seen, and it’s a shame Paizs hasn’t been more prolific (or perhaps it’s not, as this may be the only masterpiece he needs). I urge any fan of Maddin, surrealism, absurdism, or anything of the sort to see this film by any possible means.

As I have come to expect from Jim Jarmusch, The Limits of Control is a complex, ponderous, gorgeously photographed bit of fiction disguised as a genre film, this time as a thriller. Isaach De Bankole plays an unnamed man, meandering about in Spain, going from mysterious contact to mysterious contact (portrayed by a wide range of actors and actresses, including Gael Garcia Bernal and John Hurt). We don’t know his ultimate goal; each person he meets discusses an element of art or science, informs him of when and where to meet his next contact, and then departs.

The Limits of Control is, at its simplest, a celebration of bohemian culture. Jarmusch finds that there is conflict raging between the realists & corporate devils and the artists, musicians, scientists, philosophers, etc. We explore this conflict through Bankole’s emotionless eyes. Reality is arbitrary, several characters say, and so we are not given reality. The film is quite dreamlike, very much in the vein of Jarmusch’s other genre-defying Dead Man. The cinematography by Christopher Doyle, who I read has worked with WKW, is absolutely beautiful.

The flick’s nowhere near perfect. It overstays its welcome a bit, and the dialogue can get just a tad tiresome and obvious on occasion. It’s thoroughly enjoyable, though, and it’s worth a look for the visuals alone. I prefer the other Jarmusch films I’ve seen (Broken Flowers, Dead Man, and Coffee & Cigarettes), but this is certainly a continued confirmation of the man’s talents.

PLUS MY FINAL LINKLATER RANKINGS AT THE END

It’s Impossible… was an interesting watch less for the immediate content in the film but moreso for exploring Richard Linklater’s beginnings, both through his first feature-length movie and (because, honestly, the film was far too banal for me to focus on it independently) his commentary on the film, both of which provide a look into the roots of his styles and sensibilities (the film has many elements frequenting his films to this day – technical minimalism, long takes, loose narrative, exploration of consciousness and dreaming, etc.) as well as an interesting look into the origins of who is really the first independent filmmaker of the 90s.

The film is an attempt at many things; it served predominately as an outlet for Linklater’s lack of an ability to communicate his thoughts through his own words. Like many characters in his films, he required other sources to communicate, ie quotes from novels, images and thoughts from other people and films, etc. It also gave him a technical education in film. He made the whole thing on his own: he wrote, directed, shot, recorded, edited, and starred (though he’d manage a small film crew on occasion when a casual onlooker would curiously ask him what he was doing while setting up the camera). In the middle of the film his commentary also explains how he educated himself in film history as well, so he was an all-around autodidact in his craft. And in doing so Linklater’s film and subsequent commentary actually serve as a rather impressive quick education (along with many other things, obviously) in starting out in independent cinema. He explains that it’s not easy – “there are no prodigies, no idiot savants, no easy rewards in filmmaking” he explains. It tooks him nine years to get to Slacker, and I think watching this film with the commentary would give a lot insight to aspiring filmmakers.

Not to forget the film itself, even in its celebration of banality it does have very charming little moments (appropriate for its subject matter, really). Filmed in Super 8, it doesn’t have a lot of visual flair, but there are still some pretty good-looking shots of cityscapes and landscapes from trains, and Linklater, filming it cinema verite on an actual road trip, manages to take advantage of little lucky moments, such as a scene where he meets a woman in an airport, films them sitting together, and then when she falls asleep later in the evening he takes the opportunity to pop the camera on, film himself writing her a goodbye letter (all while some charming sort of musack plays in the background), and then leaving, turning the camera off and carrying it along after he gets all he needs for the shot (and the bags he’s carrying all happen to be filled with equipment and film stock). The film really thrives on coincidences like this. One more example: Linklater makes a little homage to Sterling Hayden early in the film, with a clip of Kubrick’s The Killing playing in the background, and then later in the film Linklater plops the camera down as he flips through TV channels. By sheer coincidence a channel has another Hayden film playing.

He also challenges the viewer with his simple narrative – just a character, meandering around the country, no real plot to speak of. Even the shot compositions challenges the viewer. For example, there are moments where the camera looks out the window of a train, and you may expect some beautiful view, but instead there are only walls of buildings right up in your face. Another sequence shows Linklater and a friend climbing a mountain in Montana, and when they finally reach the top the camera simply looks at the two men sitting on the grass and denies the audience the gorgeous view of the city.

I know most people, even a lot of film lovers, may disregard a filmmakers debut, but this one really gave some insight into Richard Linklater. You can see where he’s going, and where he’s been. And his meandering character might as well be who we are first introduced to in Slacker – just Linklater, arriving in some random town on a train, and as we leave this character from his debut we’re introduced to this new, wide range of intellectuals, romantics, and madmen, characters that would become typical of his filmography, and we’re introduced to his style of dialogue for the first time, and while we leave his debut behind, the spirit still remains.

So, as I’ve now seen every bit of feature-length work from the phenomenal Richard Linklater (and thankfully all of it well within this past year), my rankings of his work:

Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunrise/Sunset (1995/2004)
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Dazed & Confused (1993)
School of Rock (2003)
Tape (2001)
SubUrbia (1996)
Fast Food Nation (2006)
Slacker (1991)
The Newton Boys (1998)
It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)
Bad News Bears (2005)

One of the few remaining entries in Mr. Linklater’s filmography for me to see (the others being Bad News Bears and his independent debut, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books), and I’m glad I didn’t pass it up like I originally intended. A good old fashioned bank robbers story told with the heart and humor consistent in its real-life subjects, The Newton Boys is a consistently engaging and well-acted bit of popcorn entertainment.

The four bank-robbing boys are portrayed quite well by four nineties staples: Matthew McConaughey (giving one of his best performances), Skeet Ulrich, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Linklater regular Ethan Hawke (as wonderfully charismatic and charming as always). Each captures the essence of their character enormously well and the supporters, including Dwight Yoakam and Julianna Margulies, are great as well.

The film definitely isn’t perfect – the plot is a tad obvious, the characterization is basic and the dialogue is far from Linklater’s best, but for a little bit of rip-roaring escapism it does the trick and then some, and it’s certainly well-directed – you’d never know it was Linklater’s first foray into this kind of territory.

So if you’re ever looking for a good, fun Western/bank robber flick, here’s where to turn.

Well, to use a tired but appropriate metaphor, they can’t all be homeruns. The final Linklater film for me to see besides his oft-forgotten indie debut It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books, the remake of sports comedy classic The Bad News Bears is also his worst, and by a pretty significant margin.

Rife with ill-advised and insulting cliches from the start, the film sort of serves as the antithesis of Linklater’s other mainstream release The School of Rock. Whereas that film certainly had its share of cliche and cheese, it was also very honest, heartwarming, and its characters rose above the cliche to become well-rounded people themselves, even Jack Black, who has long gained the reputation of “wacky rocker type” but was really quite excellent in it. That film was completely successful, and really had a very similar plot – lowlife brings a gang of unlikely kids together with the intention to gain glory for himself but they all manage to learn something from each other along the way. I think the problem here is that The School of Rock was written by the brilliant Mike White, and this was written by the two folks who wrote the far darker Bad Santa.

That’s not to say Bad News Bears is a complete failure. For the first two-thirds or so it’s generally pretty entertaining, mostly because of Billy Bob Thornton’s excellent performance as Coach Buttermaker (which I can only imagine isn’t as good as Matthau’s original performance, though I haven’t seen it) and Linklater’s typically solid direction. There are some incredibly funny moments. But then the last act comes around, and all of the conflict that the early bits of the film somehow refused to develop in any meaningful way all comes to a head, seemingly just because the script calls for it.

The film really isn’t terrible – just very mediocre. I suppose that says pretty good things about Linklater’s overall oeuvre.

Worth watching for a quick laugh or if you’re into underdog flicks or Billy Bob Thornton’s brand of comedy. Otherwise pass on this one.

This, without a single doubt, is what every family film should aspire to be. Truly understanding of its subject moreso than any film I’ve seen before, Jonze has made a work so gratifying, original, and faithful to the heart and soul of its source material that I can hardly believe it’s not simply an idealistic vision conjured by its main character.

The film is brought into a cohesive whole less by its plot and more by an unbridled, chaotic series of emotions. It doesn’t bother itself with exposition – Jonze has never been one for it, anyhow – instead it simply pushes us into Max’s world and we simply see it with and through him. Though it’s as wild as its title and characters suggest, it has a serious contemplative side, and I found myself (and nearly find myself now, just thinking about it) almost in tears at how beautifully Jonze has managed to capture the very essence of childhood. There is an element of nostalgia here not necessarily just for those familiar with the original work by Maurice Sendak, but for that time in your life in general. And that it can speak on such a level, and also manage to speak to children (without a hint of low-brow, excessive, or patronizing humor), is beyond miraculous.

There is also, of course, the entire exploration and deconstruction of “family,” – again, from a child’s point of view, of course – but what better way to attempt an understanding of the love and inevitable conflict of family than through new, far less jaded eyes?

And what a performance the aptly-named Max Records gives as Max. I won’t go so far as to say it’s the most skillful child performance I’ve ever seen, but it’s quite possibly the most accurate and heartfelt. And to think he’s done so well, created such a wonderful and believable character, almost entirely working alongside nothing but puppetry and CGI, speaks levels about both his talent and the absolutely phenomenally constructed Wild Things, which never feel artificial, and whose personalities, puppetry and voices allow them more life than any special effect-created character I’ve seen before.

I was entertained. I was thrilled. I felt truly involved with this world, with Max’s small escape, with his attempt to understand, and his gradual realization that family is not easy, but why should it be? I was reminded of why I am so in love with film.